Mr. Sloane's Life of Napoleon

“ AFTER all, let them condense, suppress, and mutilate as they please, it will prove very troublesome to make me disappear altogether.” Yet on first glancing at the brave frame in which the Century Company has placed Professor Sloane’s portrait of the Little Corporal, it seems for a moment that Napoleon was wrong, — qu’on a réussi à le faire disparaître tout à fait. A more careful examination, however, shows our suspicions to be ungrounded; for if we look curiously between the pictures, a rivulet of text is discovered which justifies the great leader’s confidence in his future. The outlines of his portly person may be obscured, as in his coronation robes, but disparu — tout à fait — no !

While it is the text, we are almost ashamed to say, to which we propose to invite the reader’s attention, we will pause for a moment before the " Persian apparatus.” We wonder if Mr. Sloane does not sometimes long for Horace’s unassuming chaplet of myrtle, his companions are so simply clad: Fournier in a close-fitting jacket of Lyncolne grene; Pierre Lanfrey neatly attired in olive ; Seeley in his butternut coat; Thiers somewhat more conspicuous, indeed, but with a solid simplicity befitting the reign of the Bourgeois King. May not such display give rise to animadversions, if not to downright suspicions, among the more serious-minded ? The student, at least, has learned by hard experience to shun sumptuous exteriors, yet nothing, perhaps, with half the external pretensions of Mr. Sloane’s work has ever before come into his hands. Will he not promptly assume that it is not for him, and in so doing sadly limit the scope of the book’s usefulness ? He ought, however, to recollect that by some perversity of the publishers even good books may be adorned with inappropriate or absurd illustrations. Henri Martin’s scholarly history of France, for example, has a picture of the moyen âge, and another of Louis XIV. in pantalets, surrounded by his court, the latter not necessarily without interest. And this brings us to the question of a possible canon of criticism in dealing with illustrated historical works.

Our newer methods of pictorial reproduction have made it possible to provide the reader, often in an inexpensive form, with a profusion of more or less judiciously chosen illustrations. In the present work, the Century Company has (not inexpensively) included “eightyeight reproductions of the masterpieces of painting in their original colors, and two hundred and twenty full-page engravings in tint and black and white.” This newly developed power of accurately reproducing a variety of illustrative material can, if rightly used, do much to render our notions of the past vivid and correct and the study of history engaging. Germany has furnished a veritable model in the magnificent history of the world, in separate treatises, edited by Professor Oncken. One is filled with astonishment, on opening the volumes of the series, to discover the abundance of material available in almost every field of history. From France we have the beautiful colored facsimiles of mediæval illuminations in the new history of the French language and literature edited by M. Petit de Juleville. In our own country, Miss Putnam’s William the Silent and the new edition of Mr. Fiske’s American Revolution may be cited as good examples of judicious illustration. But there is surely a distinction to be made between Titian’s Charles V. and Meissonier’s 1814, between a facsimile of that wonderful philological monument the Oaths of Strassburg and A Wounded Cuirassier quitting the Field. The publishers of Mr. Sloane’s work either have failed to recognize any such distinction, or have perversely neglected it. Not only have they violated every sound principle of selection, but by producing volumes in size somewhere between an unabridged dictionary and an atlas, and by using utterly irrelevant pictures, they have done all they could to deter the reader from the letterpress, and hopelessly to distract such attention as he may painfully bring to bear upon the historian’s modest contribution to the work. Few maps are given; some even of those which appeared in the magazine have been suppressed, presumably because they were scarcely genteel enough. Much contemporaneous illustrative material of the greatest interest has been entirely overlooked : the caricatures of the period, for instance, which are more amusing and assuredly more instructive than pictures of Josephine choosing a new frock, and of Moreau, with his back to us, looking over a snowy precipice. A mediæval historian asks us to forgive his digressions, for these, he confidently claims, delight the reader as the tasty side-dish (sapidum et extraneum mensœ appositum ferculum) gladdens the heart of the hungry. But if the hors d’œuvres become too numerous, they threaten at once our stomach and our purse.

Mr. Sloane enjoys the great privilege and advantage of being the first to give to the English-reading public the benefit of the scientific investigation of the Napoleonic period, which has been so actively prosecuted during the past twenty or thirty years by European scholars. The layman had fallen sadly behind, and if he sought the best available accounts of the time was still thrown upon translations of the treatises by Thiers and Lanfrey, — works of great scholarship, indeed, but marred by partisan spirit. What Fournier has done for German readers Professor Sloane has aimed to do for us; he has put it in our power to overtake, for the moment, the scholar. This is a great service ; it is the primary merit of the work, and one to which we must not permit ourselves to be blinded by any fault of detail. The task is a very difficult one. Of all biographies, that of Napoleon is by far the most arduous for the biographer, both because of the vast range of Napoleon’s activities, which identify his life, during a decade and a half, with the history of Europe, and because of the overwhelming mass of historical material to be examined. We may add to these difficulties the perturbing effects of the violent extremes of feeling which Napoleon aroused in his contemporaries, and which have perpetuated themselves until our own day. As M. Aulard once said to us, all historians of the French Revolution fall into two classes, those who favor the Revolution and those who do not. This somewhat primitive classification applies quite as well to those who have dealt with the succeeding period, although even among the subjects of the Empire some cool heads, like Miot and Pasquier, may be discovered. The success of Mr. Sloane’s work — and it has received a species of ovation rarely accorded to historical treatises since the days of Prescott and Motley — is largely attributable to the public’s well grounded conviction that it has at last an impartial account of the great Emperor of the French. The first question which the average intelligent reader asks, upon taking up a history, is whether the writer is unbiased. To him fair-mindedness appears the prime essential, since he cannot, like the scholar, sip honey even from the most poisonous diatribe. In respect to its impartiality, the most captious critic could find no fault with Mr. Sloane’s attitude. He neither exhibits the complacent confidence of Thiers that everything worked together for the glory of France, nor joins Lanfrey in his zealous search for new traits of gratuitous fiendishness. There is, on the other hand, none of the nambypamby of O’Connor Morris, who solemnly concedes that, with all his virtues, Napoleon “ was not a pious or a scrupulous man.”

Satisfied on the question of impartiality, the reader next asks, Does the work contain anything new? Newness, however, is relative. What is new to the public at large may, of course, be commonplace to the student. At certain stages in historical research, rare geniuses like Ranke and Macaulay have been able to treat great periods in a way to gratify both the scholar and the public, but such instances are exceptional, for the scholar demands a highly concentrated and explicitly substantiated account, which is too often unintelligible or distasteful to the general reader. Such happy appeals at once to the learned and to the simply intelligent and cultivated must become more and more infrequent, since the activity of research and what M. Brunetière has aptly called the furor de l’inédit almost preclude the possibility of pursuing time-consuming archival study, and at the same time mastering and presenting for the benefit of the public the vast range of already accessible material. In no instance would it be more difficult to perform this double task than in dealing with Napoleon. Even if we exclude second-hand accounts, which almost without exception are quite worthless, a small library could be made up of the published primary sources relating to Napoleon and his times. An Italian savant has begun a critical bibliography for this period, of which five little volumes have been published, reaching the letters " Bern. ’ Napoleon’s correspondence alone, including supplementary collections, fills forty or fifty stout volumes, while scores of those who fought his battles, conducted his affairs, or frequented his court have left each his record, filling its foot or so of shelf-room. We no longer hang upon the words of Bourrienne or Madame Junot, but Miot de Melito, Marmont, Madame de Rérausat, and Baron de Marbot may not be neglected. The literature of Germany is as abundant and almost as important as that of France itself ; for it was in Germany that the Napoleonic régime left its most lasting effects, and there the first definite reverses were encountered. Much that offers itself as material is mere gossip, or is so diluted as to be quite properly ignored, and thus the really essential sources for a scientific account of Napoleon’s career need not exceed, perhaps, three or four hundred volumes. But estimate the available material as we may, it is overwhelmingly great, so pray let us not demand or expect anything from the archives in a biography prepared for a popular magazine. Let us be thankful to have an unbiased account, based upon or controlled by Napoleon’s own letters, Sandoz-Rollins’ reports, Czartorsky’s reminiscences, and the publications of Bailleu and Vivenot from the Prussian and Austrian archives. Let the story be but impartially and honestly retold from the material to be had in the libraries of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, and the public may be assured that the archives hide little which can substantially modify the tale.

In one portion of his field, however, Professor Sloane claims to have gone farther than this, and in dealing with the early youth of Napoleon to have added something to even the scholar’s knowledge. Misled by special study of an essentially obscure, and in its details relatively unimportant phase of the subject, he has devoted two thirds of his first volume, no less than one sixth of the entire work, to his “ lanky ” hero’s adventures before the 13th Vendémiaire. The result is an ill-starred attempt to combine a contribution based upon original investigation with the requirements of a popular history. The student had already at his disposal at least two special works upon the early life of Bonaparte,—Jung’s, in three volumes, with many interesting documents, and Böhtlingk’s Napoleon Bonaparte. Of the former Mr. Sloane has very properly made use, and he might much better have prepared a brief technical paper embodying any additions to or rectifications of the investigations of his predecessors, and thus spared the reader a most wearisome excursus. Should we ever learn the details of the origin and history of Shakespeare’s strained relations with Sir Thomas Lucy, it would still be inexpedient, in our biographies of the poet, to allow such knowledge to interfere in any way with the fullest and clearest account of his later literary achievements and surroundings. Accounts of Lieutenant Bonaparte’s Essay on Love or of the vicissitudes of his mother’s mulberry plantation may perhaps gratify the reader’s curiosity, but such things might well have given way to a full statement, for example, of the condition of France when Napoleon became its ruler, or of the New Germany of 1803. It is these general considerations which furnish the real key to Bonaparte’s success, rather than trivial if more immediately personal incidents. Mr. Sloane is evidently half conscious of this, and makes repeated attempts to show the reader how the Corsican episodes discover the genius of later years.

While discreetly rejecting some of M. Jung’s fantastic theories, Mr. Sloane seems in one place to have been led into error or obscurity by his predecessor. In speaking of the reasons for the elder Bonaparte’s visit to Versailles in 1779, he says : “ Necker was trying his promising schemes. There was among them one for a body consisting of delegates from each of the three estates, — nobles, ecclesiastics, and burgesses, — to assist in deciding that troublesome question, the regulation of the imposts. The Swiss financier hoped to destroy in this way the sullen, defiant influence of the royal intendants. In Corsica, the governor and the intendant both thought themselves too shrewd to be trapped, securing the appointment from each of the Corsican estates of men who were believed by them to be their humble servants. The needy suitor, Charles de Bonaparte, was to be the delegate at Versailles of the nobility.” Elected in the summer of 1778, the deputies arrived at Versailles in January, 1779. Their presence there is attested by documents which M. Jung has printed from the archives, providing that the three députés de Corse, one from each estate, shall be indemnified for their expenses. Both M. Jung and Mr. Sloane assert that these gentlemen were appointed and summoned to Versailles in consequence of Necker’s reforms. Neither writer appears to realize that he has either made a startling historical discovery, or fallen into an error which any one familiar with the history of the eighteenth century should have avoided. What were these mysterious deputies doing at the French court ? Necker, according to his daughter, never even dreamed of reviving the Estates General. In a memorial to the king in 1778, it is true, he advocated a system of provincial assemblies which were designed partially to replace the intendants ; but the first of these assemblies was tentatively established in Berri, by a decree of July 12, 1778, a month after the date assigned by Jung for the election of Charles Bonaparte as a deputy of Corsica. The matter is easily explained, however, for Corsica was one of the provinces of France which enjoyed the privilege of sending deputies to the court, and the elder Bonaparte and his companions had doubtless been chosen to present the cahier of the Corsican assembly to the king.

Of the young Bonaparte’s early career Mr. Sloane says most truly : " The story of his reception and adventures in Corsica has no fascination ; it is neither he roic nor satanic, but belongs to the dull and mediocre realism which makes up so much of commonplace life. It is difficult to find even a thread of continuity in it: there may be one as to purpose; there is none as to either conduct or theory.” Reviewing the hero’s life up to his definite departure from Corsica at the age of twenty-three, our author sympathetically adds : “ It is impossible to conceive of a lot more pitiful or a fate more obdurate than his so far had been. There was little hereditary morality in his nature, and none had been inculcated by training ; he had nothing of what is called vital piety, nor even sincere superstition. A butt and an outcast at a French school under the old régime, he had imbibed a bitter hatred for the land indelibly associated with such haughty privileges for the rich, and such contemptuous disdain for the poor. He had not even the consolation of having received an education. His nature revolted at the religious formalism of priestcraft; his mind turned in disgust from the scholastic husks of its superficial knowledge. What he had learned came from inborn capacity, from desultory reading, and from the untutored imaginings of his garden at Brienne, his cave at Ajaccio, or his barrack chambers. What more plausible than that he should first turn to the land of his birth, with some hope of happiness, usefulness, or even glory ! What more mortifying than the revelation that in manhood he was too French for Corsica, as in boyhood he had been too Corsican for France !

. . . But the most prominent characteristic of the young man was his shiftiness, in both the good and the bad senses of the word. He would perish with mortification rather than fail in devising some expedient to meet every emergency; he felt no hesitation in changing his point of view as experience destroyed an ideal, or an unforeseen chance was to be seized and improved. Moreover, repeated failure did not dishearten him.”

As has already been remarked, the task of depicting Napoleon’s career is one of peculiar difficulty, since it is impossible to disassociate his personal history from the eventful history of his times. The French Revolution, which rendered his achievements possible, must necessarily be dwelt upon at some length ; the conditions, not only in France, but in Europe at large, must be explained, if the reader is to understand even the elements of Napoleon’s imperial policy. Thus, the biographer, do what he may to narrow his field, must write or reproduce the history of Europe during a fateful and complicated period of transition from the old order to the new; for the Europe of 1815 was not the Europe of 1792, in spite of the efforts of the Congress of Vienna artificially to restore some of the old appearances. A writer undertaking a life of Napoleon may, of course, presuppose a knowledge of the history of the period. But he might as well presuppose at the same time a knowledge of Napoleon himself, and lay down his pen. If the reader is familiar with the treaty of Campo Formio, the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Continental Blockade, he must be already acquainted with the Emperor of the French. The failure adequately to describe the stage upon which Napoleon and his fellow actors played constitutes the most conspicuous weakness of the work before us. In the first place, the Revolution, which was the primary and essential explanation of Napoleon’s success, is treated with neither discrimination nor accuracy. The events described are ill chosen, and indicate no thorough grasp of the most significant phenomena of the period. The Reign of Terror is portrayed in the good old lurid fashion, and Sorel, Aulard, and Stephens would seem to have written in vain. We find the extraordinary assertion that “a single circumstance ” — namely, the military organization of Carnot —“ changed the French Revolution from a sectarian dogma into a national movement.” Was the abolition of the feudal system a sectarian dogma ? Was not the great national victory of civil liberty (which is the most correct definition of the French Revolution) assured, long before Carnot became a member of the Committee of Public Safety ? Marie Antoinette and the Count of Artois may have believed a restoration of the ancien régime to be possible, but even the most devoted royalists agreed, before Louis’ deposition, that the old system was gone, never to return. Besides the larger misconceptions, there are a number of minor blunders and misstatements which are difficult to extenuate. For example, Mr. Sloane says that after the fall of the Bastille the king “ came to reside among his people in Paris.” Louis’ stay in the capital did not extend beyond two or three hours. Napoleon is spoken of as receiving a certificate in the fall of 1790 to prove that he was “ devoted to the new republican order.” This was several months before a republic was dreamed of, except by a half dozen enthusiasts like Desmoulins. “ A rude and vigorous but eerie order of things had been inaugurated on November 24, 1793, by the socalled republic.” To what does this refer ? Other inaccuracies of statement might be noted which cannot be justified simply by the necessity of conciseness.

On turning from Mr. Sloane’s description of affairs in France to his treatment of the conditions in the various states included in Napoleon’s sphere of action, the inadequacy of his work becomes still more apparent. He assumes that the reader is familiar with complexities of German territorial relations which must be carefully explained even in books destined for Germans themselves. The reader will certainly fail to realize Napoleon’s place in history if he is not given to understand that the territorial reconstruction of Germany in 1803 was one of the most significant events in the history of Europe for several centuries. This general want of clearness in presenting the great world-interests of the Napoleonic régime is intensified by inaccuracies similar to those already noted in the case of France. Almost everything in the meagre account of the important treaty of Lunéville is sadly topsy-turvy. “ The Grand Duke of Tuscany lost his land, and, like him of Modena, received no other compensation except a grant from the Breisgau in Germany ; the Rhine from source to mouth was to be the French boundary.” But there was, in reality, no hint of giving the dispossessed sovereign of Tuscany any portion of Breisgau. As for making the Rhine the boundary of France from its source to its mouth, it is hardly necessary to say that Napoleon never contemplated that, even at the height of his power. Article VI. of the treaty says explicitly that the Rhine shall hereafter form the boundary between the French Republic and the German Empire “ from that point where the Rhine leaves Swiss territory to the point where it reaches Batavian territory.” The Frick valley, in northern Switzerland, Mr. Sloane speaks of as about to be handed over to Austria, but the house of Hapsburg had been the happy possessor of the district for at least five centuries. The purpose really was, according to the treaty, to make this territory a part of Switzerland, to which it belongs geographically.

If, then, we look at Napoleon’s career as dominated and explained by two great groups of circumstances, — by the conditions in France and Europe on the one hand, and by his own psychological make-up on the other, — it will be generally admitted that Mr. Sloane has been but moderately successful in elucidating the environment of the man. He tells us little which serves to explain how such insanely ambitious schemes as those of Napoleon came to be gratified, nor has he enabled us to measure the greatness of Napoleon’s work even in France, not to mention the lasting effects of his influence upon Germany and Italy. But if the attempt to describe European conditions by innuendo has failed. Mr. Sloane is more fortunate in his analysis of Napoleon’s character and aims, and of his " supernal greatness.”

He rightly attributes to Napoleon an idealism which was one of the chief secrets of his success ; at bottom, perhaps, a selfish, personal ambition, but of such magnificent scope, so free from the trammels of immediate possibilities, that it may well be called idealism. “ Never was a man more practical in his own eyes, or, from his own point of view, more concrete and direct in his motives or conduct. Seizing every opportunity as it arose, he was the type of what is to-day called in France an opportunist. But for all that, not the least element of his supernal greatness was an ever present idealism.” Napoleon himself realized his double nature, and the presence of qualities perhaps never before combined in so high a degree in the same man. He once explained to Madame de Rémusat that he had, even as a very young man, the capacity of reveling in seemingly quite hopeless dreams of future greatness, and then, turning abruptly from the idealist into the man of expedients and hard sense, he could dwell upon immediate possibilities, and grasp all the details with an instinct for the merely practical most rarely associated with the tendency to build air-castles. Admit a supreme development in the same individual of these two contradictory and almost mutually exclusive qualities, take from him all hampering respect for morality and all regard for the bonds of affection, why should he not succeed ?

Mr. Sloane refuses to fix the origin of Napoleon’s ambitious plans so early as some have done. " Many historians proclaim,” he says, " the existence of a great life-scheme, declaring that with satanic power the boy had prearranged every detail of his manhood. Of this there is not the slightest proof.” Our author, in placing the conscious formulation of Napoleon’s projects in the year 1803, when he was thirty-four years old, appears to have overlooked the remarkable passage in the memoirs of Miot de Melito, reporting a conversation in June, 1797, with the conqueror of northern Italy.

“ I found Bonaparte,” Miot writes, " at tho magnificent residence of Montebello [near Milan], on the 13th of Prairial, in the midst of a brilliant court, rather than the headquarters of an army. Severe etiquette was already maintained in his presence. His aides-de-camp and officers were no longer received at his table, and he exercised great care in the choice of those whom he did admit, it being considered a rare honor, obtained only with difficulty. He dined, so to speak, in public, and during the meal the inhabitants of the country were admitted to the dining-room and allowed to feast their eyes upon him. He showed himself, however, in no way embarrassed or confused by these exhibitions of esteem, and received them as if he had always been accustomed to such tributes.

. . . Bonaparte took us for a walk in the extensive gardens of his beautiful residence. The promenade lasted towards two hours, during which the general talked almost continuously. . . .

' What I have done so far is nothing,’ he said to us. ' I am but at the opening of the career I am to run. Do you suppose that I have gained my victories in Italy in order to advance the lawyers of the Directory, the Carnots and Baras ? Do you think, either, that my object is to establish a republic ? What an idea ! A republic of thirty millions of people with our habits and vices ! How could such a thing ever exist ? It is a chimera with which the French are infatuated, but which will pass away in time, like all the others. What the French wish is glory and the gratification of their vanity ; as for liberty, of that they have no conception. Look at the army ! The victories which we have just gained have given the French soldier his true character. I am everything to him. Let the Directory attempt to deprive me of my command, and they will see who is master. The nation must have a head, a head who is made illustrious by glory, and not by the theories of government, fine phrases, or the talk of idealists, of which the French understand not a whit. Let them have their playthings, and they will be content. They will amuse themselves and allow themselves to be led, if the goal is but cleverly disguised.’ ” Miot, it may be said, is one of the most discreet and reliable of those who have given us their impressions of the period, and we have no reason to doubt that the swellingly audacious young general of twenty - seven said something very like the report just given.

Mr. Sloane concedes that Napoleon’s motives, during the early months of the Consulate, may “ properly be stigmatized as those of personal ambition ; but they were much more. Half educated and half barbarous as he was in his disdain of human limitations, there was in his heart a clear conception that good can come only of good, and therefore he had a definite purpose to do the most possible in order to illuminate his own rise by the regeneration of society.” Yet this was mere calculation, for Mr. Sloane confesses that “ even the notion of duty, not to speak of its practice, was foreign to him ; generosity, honesty, and sincerity were utopian conceptions of which his world and his experience had never known. The attractive visions and ideals of virtue which mingled with the speculations of Rousseau or Voltaire had become, like the mirage of the desert, empty illusions that heighten the barrenness of self-interest and ambition beneath them. Human greed, passion, vanity, — such, Bonaparte declared, are the motive forces by which kings rule ; the justice of governors was for him the safeguarding of comfort, of material prosperity, and of the superstitions which, under the name of religion, create a moral power necessary to the public order.” Voilà tout. Mr. Sloane would have us note an occasional gleam of generosity, such as the regard shown for the venerable Wurmser at the surrender of Mantua, or Napoleon’s announcement, “ in words full of pathos,” to General Clarke of the death of his nephew. “ But the hours when the general-in-chief was war-worn, weary, tender, and subject to human regrets like other men were not those which he revealed to the world.”

That Napoleon regarded the Peace of Amiens simply as a short armistice, and asserted, as early as 1802, that he was doomed to fight almost without intermission throughout his term of office, Professor Sloane doubts ; urging that “ the notices of the time which have come down to us from those not in the thick of plot and intrigue — men like Rapp and others of his kind — create a different impression, that Bonaparte was heartily sick of war, and really desired peace. Yet it is impossible to feel sure of the First Consul’s innermost desire, in view of the great army at his back, eager for war, and still posted at the most advantageous points of Europe. Where such an army exists there must be a powerful military party, and such a party must influence a great general,

. . . But the charge that already in 1802 France was the destined victim of Bonaparte’s ambition, and all Europe but its tool, remains unproved. He was not yet convinced that war was essential for the extension of his influence, and there is no proof until two years later that his dreams of western Europe had taken definite form.”

In regard to the title “ Emperor,” which Napoleon chose for the new hereditary dignity, Mr. Sloane says : “ The word has acquired a new significance in our age, but then it still had the old Roman meaning. It propitiated the professional pride which had taken the place of republicanism in the army, and while plainly abolishing democracy, it also bade defiance to royalism.” But can it be true that after eighteen centuries of constant usage with an altogether different connotation, the word had retained any of its original meaning of “ general ” or “ commander " ? Charlemagne was the Emperor par excellence of French popular tradition, and with the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and his theoretically imposing office all were of course familiar ; but did any one, except the scholar, ever think of the origin of the term ? Did any considerable number of the upstart army officers of the time know their Livy and Sallust well enough to have their " professional pride ” tickled by this delicate allusion, on the part of their new ruler, to his military origin ? Had the word lost its “ old Roman meaning,” a few months later, when Francis I. assumed the title " Emperor of Austria,” or did he choose the term to propitiate the warlike courtiers ?

The usefulness of Mr. Sloane’s work is much impaired by a heaviness of style and an awkwardness of expression which sadly try the reader’s patience. A sentence must often be re-read before its meaning becomes clear. The defective structure of sentences and paragraphs impedes the reader, for Mr. Sloane constantly violates that elementary rule of rhetoric which requires words to be so arranged as to produce a flow of ideas, instead of eddies and countercurrents of thought. In a serial history carelessness might perhaps be extenuated, on the ground that the publication by installments offers an exceptional temptation to eleventh-hour composition, with all its attendant evils. There is, however, no excuse for permitting these inadvertences to find their way into the final edition. We may pass over such minor infelicities as “ pregnant step,” " baubles necessary just so long as they were useful,” the eye’s " penetrating quality which veiled the mind within,” " I shall not endure it,” or even " ancient friend : ” these do not hinder, although they may offend the reader. The prevailing vice is an unskillful arrangement of words and sentences ; for example, the latter part of the following extract: “ It is not entirely clear where Buonaparte was during this time. It is said that he was seen in Valence during the latter part of January, and the fact is adduced to show how deep and secret were his plans for preserving the double chance of an opening in either France or Corsica, as matters might turn out. The love affair to which he refers in that thesis on the topic to which reference has been made would be an equally satisfactory explanation, considering his age.”

Attempts to relieve the dreary monotony by an occasional recourse to the figurative are not more successful. Speaking of Napoleon’s career of ambition, Mr. Sloane says : " His career had been marked by many blunders, and he had often been brought to a stand on the verge of some abyss which threatened failure and ruin ; yet, like the driver of a midnight train, he kept the headlight of caution trimmed and burning. Careless of the dangers abounding behind the walls of revolutionary darkness which hedged his track, he ever paused before those immediately confronting him, and sometimes retreated far to find a hazardless circuit. Brumaire was almost the only occasion of his larger life on which, unwary, he had come in full career upon an open chasm. Fate being propitious, he was saved. Lucien, with presence of mind, opened the throttle, and, by releasing the pent-up enthusiasm of the soldiers at the critical instant, safely drove the machine across a toppling bridge.”

This want of ease and naturalness is the more felt since Mr. Sloane is but an indifferent story-teller. We may perhaps experience a slight thrill at Lodi, but we are left cold at other equally exciting junctures. Surely, even the most modern historian need not sacrifice every jot of romance upon the altar of scientific precision. He ought, indeed, to shift the emphasis, and to point out that certain events have been invested with a fictitious glamour which must disappear as we look at the facts more carefully ; but every ardent investigator will find new and neglected phases of his subject susceptible of enthusiastic treatment. It may well be that the crossing of the St. Bernard was quite as commonplace as Mr. Sloane depicts it; certainly there was little danger ; many of the French troops crossed by other routes, and as Thiers long ago pointed out, Napoleon did not plan the expedition with the idea of taking the Austrians in the rear. The magnificent culmination of the campaign was an afterthought. Mr. Sloane’s phlegm is justified in this instance; but if the drama must be thus robbed of a thrilling situation, the reader might have been compensated by a more vivid presentation of some of the less familiar events. Even a slight tincture of controversy might have helped. We all feel more interested in the events which Napoleon and his admirers can be shown to have grossly misrepresented ; we enjoy, on the other hand, the refutation of the surly suggestions of his enemies. Controversy, however, Mr. Sloane has sedulously avoided, — deterred, doubtless, by Lanfrey’s ill-humored use of polemic. Still the reader cannot but feel aggrieved when he discovers Napoleon to have been so much less interesting than he had supposed.

There should be no hesitation, nevertheless, in declaring the book, in spite of all drawbacks, a most important addition to our historical literature. It may be cumbersome in style, it may show signs of haste and carelessness, it may fail to compass the whole world-embracing field of Napoleon’s influence ; it can still justly claim to be the only fair-minded and scholarly biography of Napoleon in English which we possess. Its general excellence serves to throw its imperfections into relief. The work is evidently the result of such prolonged and painstaking research that, could it but receive the careful revision it merits, and be freed from the encumbrances which hinder a wide and useful circulation, Mr. Sloane’s would probably long remain the great standard Life of Napoleon I.