By studying his own foolishness, he knew what ropes to pull to make their fool’s bells jingle. He is, therefore, of the weaknesses and worser powers of men, the ablest metaphysician that has appeared. One of his remarks opens the mind, as snuff opens the head. He was a poet in practice. Sydney’s rule, “Fool! look into thy heart and write,” he obeyed; and wrote empires. Of course, an adventitious power like this cannot be measured; in fact, when supplied by so seething a fancy and so combining an intellect as he had, it is altogether illimitable; he had only to conceive a new idea to possess a new power. He therefore belongs to that class of men of whom Du Quesnay has said that one and one make a hundred and eleven. When you can define the genius of Shakspeare, you will be able to describe the _character_ of Napoleon; the two things are cognate. As we see him, he was not an entity, but a mere crystallization of ideas, which were continually depositing around him like the successive layers of an oyster shell. A philosophical Haüy might split off crystal after crystal of ideas, and he would find the ultimate crystal still an idea. Every thing of him was visionary, and not substance. Squeeze him in your hand, and he crushes like a dandy’s locks. Try that process on such a man as Wellington, and you soon feel the bone. In sooth, the Duke is all bone.” “But you would not think of comparing Wellington and Napoleon,” said Mr. Temple. “No more than I would compare the frothy forms of the rock with the granite substance of the Alps. There are some sentiments,” said he, with a fervent, suppressed tone, “which lie so deep within us that they seem to be a part of our souls; in me, veneration of Wellington is such. Since the Duke of Marlborough was buried, there has not lived, nor lives there, a man to whom I bow with an entire reverence, excepting Wellington. When I stood face to face with him, I felt how truly Scott had said that he was the only man in whose presence he felt himself nothing.” “But do you think that he has Bonaparte’s genius?” “Perhaps not; but where you see a man who is great without genius, you see the greatest kind of man the world knows any thing of; and where you see a poet who prevails without passion, you see an order of poetry high and enduring; such, on the one hand, is Wellington; on the other, Pope. All that such men do is done by force of intellect and might of character, and the results are true and permanent.” “No doubt the Duke is a great man.”