The master workman found at his disposal two most important conditions: a clean tablet so far as the monarchical and revolutionary systems were concerned, and a great body of able and educated men anxious to coöperate with him. Their aim, like his, was to make the nation strong and illustrious. But for them the Revolution, confined in their minds to France, was over; while for him, viewing it as a European movement, it was in full operation. Whether they were royalists like Dufresne, or Girondists like Defermon, or radicals like Fourcroy, or moderates like Regnault and Roederer, or pardoned anti-Fructidorians like Portalis and Barbé-Marbois, they were all alike animated with zeal for a strong national life. But Bonaparte and a few of his intimates looked on renovated French nationality as only the means to a further end. In a pamphlet review of the situation, written in 1801, Hauterive declared that the rotten European structure resting on the balance of power had been overthrown by the wars of France, which was now, by her military and financial strength, and by the principles of her government, ready and able to make the beginning in a peaceful and prosperous federation of nations. This was the revolutionary program in another form: under the new conditions of French organization it eventually developed into a scheme of European empire, in which a modernized and glorified reproduction of Charles the Great, a French Charlemagne, was the central figure. Careful students of the life and labors of Bonaparte can scarcely believe that human power could accomplish what he had already done. His activity as strategist and general, as statesman and administrator, had hitherto been fabulous: in the first years of the Consulate it was simply doubled. To the minutest detail, every department of the rising state received his attention, more or less complete as occasion required. During the year 1801 the ablest observers in the country, having been assigned one to each of the military divisions into which the land was divided, were occupied in compiling comprehensive reports to serve as a basis for legislation. These papers took into consideration finance, the army, the administration, public instruction, the alms-houses, the roads and canals, commerce and industry, the public temper--in short, everything which concerned the well-being of the people. They were the material of Bonaparte's studies, and for the most part he mastered them. In this work he utterly discarded the theory and ideals of the revolutionists; the romance was ended, history must begin, he said. To govern France as it is, to forget France as it had just been; to discard the type unit of humanity, to deal with the real man in every station; to scorn generalities, to assemble details; to abandon possibilities, to secure actualities,--this was the trend of his mind; the practical, the useful, the working machine were his goal. At this