“He was certainly a great man,” was the safe and quiet answer. The elder did not make any immediate reply to this enunciation of opinion on the part of his young companion. The other therefore supposed, and very naturally, that the answer which he had given was not altogether satisfactory. He proceeded, therefore, but still cautiously:--“He was a man of great ambition; and he was also a disappointed man.” All this seemed but the echo of everybody’s opinion, let their view of the man’s character otherwise be what it may. The elder stranger then spoke again: “I do not think he was a great man. The word great is an epithet too comprehensive to be applicable to a disappointed man. To be a great man, it is necessary that there should be in the mind those powers and that forethought which will guard against frustration and disappointment. Greatness is not in place and in name, it is purely in the mind. I will grant you that Napoleon Bonaparte had great military powers--great legislative powers--great discernment of human character; but he was not great over himself: he wanted power to guide his power. And let a man have all other powers and all other talent, if he have not the power of power and the talent of talent, he may be a distinguished, he may be a notorious man, he may produce grand effects; but he will not be a great man. True greatness is calm; for it feels and guides its own power.” The young man listened to this, and to more than this; for the elder one was more voluble than we have represented him. He perhaps loved paradox; many persons do; and some love to listen to paradox, if it be agreeably uttered, and be not too obviously a determined contradiction of the common feelings and opinions of mankind. The young man then replied: “But Napoleon produced great changes in men’s minds, and great effects on the frame of civil society, and he has left many monuments of his wisdom.” “True,” replied the elder one: “Napoleon, as you call him, has done much in the world, and perhaps more than any other individual in whose ambitious steps he seems to have trodden. But he was raised up by a wise Providence to teach humanity that it may grasp at what is beyond its power. Alexander was a lesson merely to warriors; Cæsar to men of intrigue and aspiring talent; Bonaparte to men of consummate talent of almost every description; and if the world be not pestered with a hero till there shall rise a man of greater talents than Napoleon Bonaparte, it may rest in peace for many centuries.” “I never took that view of the subject,” replied the young man. “There is however something in what you say. Still I cannot but think that Napoleon was a great man.”