Not even the novelist’s most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of them) can give him credit for excessive partiality towards the hero who was the first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not only knew the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander) had ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled in the history of man.

I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of the Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it), it was a fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a rock when, by adopting a more humane policy, his incomparable genius might have been used to carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his return from Elba.  The tumult which surrounded his career had changed; he saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his great scheme of renewing the heart of things.  He knew it would take time, and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was putting forth supreme efforts to destroy him.  They were out for blood, and he was in too great a hurry.

In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, “Ah! if I could have governed France for forty years I would have made her the most splendid empire that ever existed!”

His demand on fortune was too great, and notwithstanding the knowledge he had of human nature, he could not check the torrent of treason that had been sedulously nursed against him by his enemies until it ignited the imagination of those whom he had a right to expect would stand loyally by him in an hour of tribulation such as no other man had ever experienced.

It is true that he made history (brilliant history if you like) in those latter days, but oh! the anguish and the baseness of it all.

Caesar made history too; neither did this ruler succeed altogether.  Brutus, his friend, forsook and dispatched him, and possibly that was the most enviable finish to a great career.  Did Napoleon fare better than his prototype, inasmuch as he was not the victim of the assassin’s dagger?  Intoxicated with the spirit of charity, his conquerors decreed that he should be deported to a secluded place of abode on a barren and unhealthy rock, there to be maintained at a cost to the nation of L12,000 a year, and succumb as quickly as possible like a good Christian gentleman.

The presumption of Lord Keith in observing to Napoleon that it was preferable for him to be sent to St. Helena than to be confined in a smaller space in England or sent to France or Russia, and the Emperor’s supposed reply—­“Russia!  God preserve me from it!”—­is almost unbelievable, and in the light of what he constantly asserted while England’s captive, this expression may be regarded as a fabrication.