In fine, alas! there is something absent from the man which would have both beautified himself and added a saner beauty to his work--the pursuit of those finer ideals which mean consistent devotion to duty and broad sympathy with human nature, irrespective of nation, colour, and position, in its yearnings and in its fate. Fascinated by material aims, worshipping the Napoleonic epopee to the extent of framing his conduct by it, measuring the happiness of existence rather by its honours and furniture than by its moral attainments, he missed the first poetry of love as he missed the last wisdom of age. This limitation of the man makes itself sorely felt in his writings, where we, more often than not, tread a Dane's _Inferno_, unrelieved by the brighter glimpses and kindlier impulses that still are found in our world of self-seeking and suffering.