If Napoleon's qualities as usurper, statesman, and warrior be as remarkable as they appear, why was his time so short, what were the causes of his decline, and what is his place in history? The causes of his decline may be summed up in a single word--exhaustion. There exists no record of human activity more complete than is that of Napoleon Bonaparte's life. In its beginnings we can see this worshiper of power stimulating his immature abilities in vain until, with reckless desperation, he closed the period of training and made his scandalous bargain with Barras; then, grown suddenly, inexplicably rich, becoming with better clothing, food, and lodging physically more vigorous, he seems mercilessly to drive the rowels into his own flanks until initiative, ingenuity, and ruthlessness are displayed with apparently superhuman dimensions. The period of achievement is short, but glorious in politics; the age of domination is long and exciting. Throughout both there is the same wanton physical excess and intellectual dissipation. Then comes the turn. Every human age has in it the germs of the next; we begin to die at birth, and the characteristic qualities and powers of one period diminish as those of the next increase. So it was with Napoleon. He compressed so much, both as regards the number and importance of events, into so short a space that his times are like those wrinkled Japanese pictures which are made by shriveling a large print into a small compass--intense and deep, but unreal. To change the metaphor, he found the ship of state dashing onward, with her helm lashed and no one daring to take the task of the steersman in hand. He cut the lashings and laid hold. His unassisted efforts as a pilot gave the vessel a new course; but he had no steam or other mechanical power, no _deus ex machina_, to aid him; and, as the storm increased, exhaustion followed; he seemed to be steering when, in reality, his actions were under the compulsion of events he was not controlling; and this continued until the wreck.