so slightly with mankind; and the most wonderful part of his story is, the intensity of sway which he exerted over the minds of those in whom he so seldom permitted himself to contemplate anything more than the tools of his own ambition.  So great a spirit must have had glimpses of whatever adorns and dignifies the character of man.  But with him the feelings which bind love played only on the surface—­leaving the abyss of selfishness untouched.  His one instrument of power was genius; hence his influence was greatest among those who had little access to observe, closely and leisurely, the minutiae of his personal character and demeanour.  The exceptions to this rule were very few.

Pride and vanity were strangely mingled in his composition.  Who does not pity the noble chamberlain that confesses his blood to have run cold when he heard Napoleon—­seated at dinner at Dresden among a circle of crowned heads—­begin a story with, When I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere?  Who does not pity Napoleon when he is heard speaking of some decorations in the Tuileries, as having taken place “in the time of the king, my uncle?"[76]

This last weakness was the main engine of his overthrow.  When he condescended to mimic all the established etiquettes of feudal monarchy—­when he coined titles and lavished stars, and sought to melt his family into the small circle of hereditary princes—­he adopted the surest means which could have been devised for alienating from himself the affections of all the men of the revolution, the army alone excepted, and for re-animating the hopes and exertions of the Bourbonists.  It is clear that thenceforth he leaned almost wholly on the soldiery.  No civil changes could after this affect his real position.  Oaths and vows, charters and concessions, all were alike in vain.  When the army was humbled and weakened in 1814, he fell from his throne, without one voice being lifted up in his favour.  The army was no sooner strengthened, and re-encouraged, then it recalled him.  He re-ascended the giddy height, with the daring step of a hero, and professed his desire to scatter from it nothing but justice and mercy.  But no man trusted his words.  His army was ruined at Waterloo; and the brief day of the second reign passed, without a twilight, into midnight.

We are not yet far enough from Buonaparte to estimate the effects of his career.  He recast the art of war; and was conquered in the end by men who had caught wisdom and inspiration from his own campaigns.  He gave both permanency and breadth to the influence of the French Revolution.  His reign, short as it was, was sufficient to make it impossible that the offensive privileges of caste should ever be revived in France; and, this iniquity being once removed, there could be little doubt that such a nation would gradually acquire possession of a body of institutions worthy of its intelligence.  Napoleon was as essentially, and irreclaimably, a despot, as a warrior; but his successor, whether a Bourbon or a Buonaparte, was likely to be a constitutional sovereign.  The tyranny of a meaner hand would not have been endured after that precedent.