During all this time Joseph kept up almost a daily correspondence with his brother. The letters of Napoleon were written hurriedly, in the midst of overwhelming cares, intended to be entirely private, with no idea that their unstudied expressions, in which each varying emotion of his soul, of hope, of disappointment, of irritation, found utterance, would be exposed to the malignant comments of his foes. The friends of Napoleon appeal triumphantly to this unmutilated correspondence, running through the period of many long and eventful years, to prove that Napoleon was animated by a high ambition to promote the interests of humanity; that he was one of the most philanthropic as well as one of the greatest of men. Joseph himself, whose upright character no intelligent man has yet questioned, says, in his autobiography, written at Point Breeze, New Jersey, when sixty-two years of age: "Having attained a somewhat advanced age, and enjoying good health, disabused of many of the illusions which enable me to bear the storms of life, and replacing those illusions by that tranquillity of soul which results from a good conscience, and from the security which is afforded by a country admirably constituted, I regard myself as having reached the port. Before disembarking upon the shores of eternity, I wish to render an account to myself of the long voyage, and to search out the causes which have borne so high, in the ranks of society, my family, and which have terminated in depriving us of that which appertains to the humblest individual--a country which was dear to us, and which we have served with good faith and devotion. "It is neither an apology nor a satire which I write. I render an account to myself of events, and I wish to place upon paper the recollections which they have left behind. There are some transactions which I now condemn, after having formerly approved of them; there are others of which I to-day approve, after having formerly condemned them. Such is the feebleness of our nature, dependent always upon the circumstances which surround us, and which frequently govern us--a thought which ought to lead every true and reflective man to charity.