An Italian proverb declares that if you would succeed you must not be too good. Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and helped himself with his hands and his head. The art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic. He had a directness of action never before combined with so much comprehension. History is full of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons to be much pitied, for they know not what they should do. But Napoleon understood his business. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He put out all his strength; he risked everything; he spared nothing; he went to the edge of his possibilities. This vigour was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and punctuality. His very attack was never the inspiration of courage, but the result of calculation. The necessity of his position required a hospitality to every sort of talent, and his feeling went along with this policy. In fact, every species of merit was sought and advanced under his government. Seventeen men in his time were raised from common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal, duke, or general. I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society. His life was an experiment, under the most favourable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. He did all that in him lay to live and thrive without moral principle. _Goethe_ I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet goes attended by its shadow. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures. Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class. Still, the writer does not stand with us on any commanding ground. I think this to be his own fault. There have been times when he was a sacred person; he wrote Bibles; the first hymns; the codes; the epics; tragic songs; Sibylline verses; Chaldæan oracles. Every word was true, and woke the nations to new life. How can he be honoured when he is a sycophant ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public? Goethe was the philosopher of the nineteenth century multitude, hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with the century's rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and by his own versatility dispose of them with ease; and what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of manners, of property, of paper-money, of periods of belief, of omens, of luck, of whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.