The first volume of the work extends from a survey of the conditions under which Napoleon was born and reared to the conclusion of his twenty-eighth year. The first events depicted are those historical movements in which the Bonapartes, within the narrow limits of their island, were involved in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century; and the last event recorded in this volume is the fall of Venice, at the end of May, 1797. I incline to regard this as the most interesting, though not the most important, of the four great volumes of Professor Sloane's work. In the nature of the case the ascendant of a man is the more inspiring part. In it he appears as an orb whose full majesty, not yet revealed, solicits the imagination and kindles by sympathy the ambitions that in some measure are common to us all. Here in volume I is portrayed the youth of the man Napoleon Bonaparte. In this he is revealed in the full charm of that electrical audacity which had as yet lost none of its sharpness and burning flash. Nor had Napoleon, as a _man_, as yet become sufficiently involved with the general maze of history, sufficiently immersed in the storm-cloud of that tempestuous epoch, to be lost from view. This volume shows the man emerging from boyhood into the full career of a military conqueror. It shows him in his magical transformation from the character of an adventurer into the character of a leader of armies and a dictator of events. It also shows Napoleon with the still fluid heart of boyhood passing through the lava floods of his first loves, in particular his love for Josephine, into the age of cynicism and calculation. This first volume brings sufficiently to memory the progress of the youthful Napoleon. Here we see him at his mother's knee; then in the time of his school days; then in Paris and Valence; then as a neophyte author, quite absurd in his dreams; then on garrison duty, and then swept away with the tides of the oncoming revolution. In the smoke of the South his slender figure is seen here and there until he emerges at Toulon. In his character of Jacobin he becomes a general in the army at a time of life when most men are happy to be lieutenants. Then for the first time he touches the revolutionary society of Paris. He meets Josephine; Barras delivers her to the coming man. They are wedded, and from that date the stage widens, the wars in Italy break out, and the young general begins to whirl his sword at Mantua, Arcole, and Rivoli--from which he was wont to date his military birth, saying on that occasion, "Make my life begin at Rivoli;" and finally at Montebello and Venice, where, in the late spring of 1797, he is joined by Josephine. There from the French capital they seemed to stand afar as the cynosure of all revolutionary eyes, expecting a greater light.