In reflecting on this melancholy termination of this great conqueror's history, our minds naturally revert to the scenes of his childhood, and we wonder that so amiable, and gentle, and generous a boy should become so selfish, and unfeeling, and overbearing as a man. But such are the natural and inevitable effects of ambition and an inordinate love of power. The history of a conqueror is always a tragical and melancholy tale. He begins life with an exhibition of great and noble qualities, which awaken in us, who read his history, the same admiration that was felt for him, personally, by his friends and countrymen while he lived, and on which the vast ascendency which he acquired over the minds of his fellow-men, and which led to his power and fame, was, in a great measure, founded. On the other hand, he ends life neglected, hated, and abhorred. His ambition has been gratified, but the gratification has brought with it no substantial peace or happiness; on the contrary, it has filled his soul with uneasiness, discontent, suspiciousness, and misery. The histories of heroes would be far less painful in the perusal if we could reverse this moral change of character, so as to have the cruelty, the selfishness, and the oppression exhaust themselves in the comparatively unimportant transactions of early life, and the spirit of kindness, generosity, and beneficence blessing and beautifying its close. To be generous, disinterested, and noble, seems to be necessary as the precursor of great military success; and to be hard-hearted, selfish, and cruel is the almost inevitable consequence of it. The exceptions to this rule, though some of them are very splendid, are yet very few. THE END. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: 1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors, and to ensure consistent spelling and punctuation in this etext; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the original book. 2. The chapter summaries in this text were originally published as banners in the page headers, and have been moved to beginning of the chapter for the reader's convenience.