That Napoleon in his most transcendent moments was great simply by stupendous intellect and amazing will; that in his baser moments he was inconceivably callous, cynical, arrogant and mean, perhaps few persons in these days will be found to deny. But it is overstating the case to assert, as has been done, that he persecuted Madame de Staël from unmitigated envy of her superiority. Much as he resented intellectual power in a woman, it is nevertheless most likely that what really inspired his action against Madame de Staël was her turbulent disposition and the restless mind which made her the centre of Parisian opposition. As to this opposition itself, without any wish to detract from its sublimity, it may fairly be asked whether—at the time Constant began his denunciations, and Madame de Staël encouraged them—it was altogether well-timed. To declaim against Napoleon’s growing despotism was perhaps irresistible to independent spirits; but such declamation necessarily remained sterile of results in the state in which France then was. What would these orators have substituted for the strong will of a Dictator? The greed for place of a Talleyrand? The mystic fervor of a Montmorency? The dissolute ambition of a Barras? Between the sanguinary excesses of the _Terreur Rouge_, the lust for revenge of the _Terreur Blanche_, the incorrigible short-sightedness and criminal frivolity of the “Coblentz” faction, the diseased logic of the Jacobins, and the frightful collapse of intelligence, morality, decency, and humanity that extended from end to end of France, it is difficult to understand what ruler could have governed it for other ends than personal ones. Napoleon sprang armed from the ruin of France, as a kind of fatal embodiment of all the evil under which she groaned and all the crime that stained her. And yet who shall say that his career of conquest, desolating as it was, could have been spared from European history? It enters as a factor into almost all that this closing century has brought us—the unity of Italy, the power of Germany, France’s own awakening to the limitations of her destiny. It was not given to any mortal, eighty years ago, to foresee all this; and Madame de Staël, who was in most things of a preternatural acuteness, only foresaw the coming despotism and its immediate, not its ultimate, results. Nevertheless, had her bias against Napoleon not been a personal one, she might have submitted more quietly to his first acts of tyranny, and only protested when his insatiable ambition had prostrated France at the feet of the nations. She might have done this, because she was constantly led away by her feelings, and could be blind on occasion. That she was not more dazzled by Napoleon must be considered a lucky accident.