His character was spoilt, or at least not adapted to the purposes of freedom, by a military education. The BOURBONS brought him up at one of their military schools, where his head was filled with CÆSAR and ALEXANDER, and then complained of him for his ambition: that is to say, the legitimate monarchs will let you be as ambitious and warlike as you please, provided you assist _their_ ambition and wars; but if not, you are a blood-thirsty conqueror and a tyrant. Some writers have attempted to confound, on _this_ occasion, ambition with mere ordinary selfishness. This is paltry and ridiculous. Napoleon was never so cool as when contemplating eminent success. Those who have carried him the news of victory have frequently supposed that he had learnt it before, or that he did not credit them. It warmed no feature of his countenance; it lit up no additional lustre in his eye. Yet this was not indifference; he had acquired a habit of subduing the ordinary emotions of mankind. Defeat and error certainly enraged him towards those who contributed to such mortifications; but they never had power to hurry him into any efforts to repair disaster. His intemperance never extended itself to his plans or resources, as a general. Let us look to the course of his feelings when the thunderbolt of his fortune was expended at Moscow. He had recourse to no dribbling efforts on which to hang the flame of military hope. He negotiated the plan of his retreat with all the precision of an attorney, who leaves nothing unprovided for. Trifles alone disturbed Napoleon. The offence of an inattention on the part of an attendant would make him angry; but if the world had burst asunder, and only left him a place to stand upon, he would have regarded it through his eye-glass as an experiment in natural philosophy! Had Napoleon lived in times of less turbulence, he would have been a still greater statesman than a warrior. It is a fact not to be disputed, that it was this great man who definitively freed the entire Continent of Europe from that democratic mania, of all other tyrannies the most cruel, savage, and unrelenting, and which was in full, though less rapid, progress when he, by accepting the diadem of France, restored the _principles_ of monarchy to its vigour, and, at one blow, overturned the many-headed monster of revolution. To attain this beneficial end, HE SPILT NO BLOOD! The decapitation of Louis, in which he could have had no concern, completely overwhelmed the Bourbon dynasty; but Napoleon, in one single day, re-established that monarchial form of government which the imbecile ministers of England had, with so much expense of human life and treasure, been for many years unsuccessfully attempting to restore!