Napoleon cannot be called a “good” man in the usually accepted sense of so latitudinarian a word. He was the instigator of more than one political crime, yet he had a heart that could beat for the afflicted; he would say the most unkind and cruel things of Sir Hudson Lowe, to whose care he was committed at St Helena, and play at bears with little Betsy Balcombe during her stay in the same island. So complex a personality must necessarily defy to a great extent the set-square and compasses both of panegyrist and detractor. Guided by no standard code of morality, he created his own, that of expediency. “No name,” says Lord Rosebery, “represents so completely and conspicuously dominion, splendour and catastrophe. He raised himself by the use, and ruined himself by the abuse, of superhuman faculties. He was wrecked by the extravagance of his own genius. No less powers than those which had effected his rise could have achieved his fall.” In a book limited to a certain number of pages many phases of a crowded life such as Napoleon’s must necessarily receive somewhat scant treatment. It has been found impossible to treat military events in full, but the general outlines of the various campaigns have been given, and the narratives of first-hand authorities quoted whenever practicable. For general reading a description of a battle by a man who was present is always to be preferred to the minute details of the most painstaking student. As regards authorities, special reference must be made to Volume IX. of the monumental “Cambridge Modern History,” Dr J. Holland Rose’s just and impartial “Life of Napoleon I.,” Sir John Seeley’s somewhat disparaging “Short History of Napoleon the First,” Mr F. Loraine Petre’s masterly studies of the Polish, Prussian, and Austrian campaigns, Sir Archibald Alison’s “History of Europe,” which has by no means lost its usefulness since more modern research has added to our knowledge of the epoch, Mr Oscar Browning’s interesting “Boyhood and Youth of Napoleon, 1769-1793,” and Mr Hereford B. George’s “Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia.” A host of other volumes dealing with the same inexhaustible subject which line the shelves of my crowded library have also been utilised, I trust, to good purpose. When the late Admiral Eden was a senior midshipman he was told by his Admiral that he should accompany him on a visit to the fallen Emperor at St Helena. “We waited for Napoleon in an outer room,” he afterwards told a friend, “and you must imagine how eagerly I expected his entrance. The door was thrown open at last, and in he came. He was short and fat, and nothing very attractive but for his eye! My word, sir, I had never seen anything like it.