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OURIENNE'S memoirs, unfortunately, are not to be trusted at all. Even if they were not written, as Savary states, by an unknown person, and signed by Bourienne after he became demented, the character of the man is very much against them. He was discharged from Napoleon's service for complicity in a shameful stock-jobbing operation; and though Napoleon afterwards relented and sent him as consul to Hamburg, he never permitted Bourienne to be near him after tha time. His story in regard to Napoleon's amour with the wife of a captain of infantry lacks confirmation. His talk is too much like that of a discharged

servant.

Romancing comes naturally to a French woman. Both Madame Junot and Madame de Remusat had grievances of their own against the Emperor. It is well known that the father of Madame de Remusat attached himself to Tallyrand, and went out of office with him in 1810. Madame Junot's grievance was of a more subtle kind. Her husband was one of the Emperor's favorite commanders, and yet he never was created a marshal of France. A lack of dignified character may have been a sufficient reason for this, but his wife, of course, could not understand it, and unquestionably felt it as a slight. In her earlier household reminiscences of Napoleon she appears in quite an amiable light, but she did not sustain this character in after life, and the Emperor spoke of her as rather a flashy sort of person. The society she moved in certainly was not high-toned -witness the remark she recounts, made in company, about Pauline Bonaparte's ears-and her small animosities

are sometimes very amusing. One of the results of Madame de Remusat's memoirs has been the republication of Las Cases's, O'Meara's, and other memoirs more favorable to Napoleon.

It is impossible to determine what is tact and what may be fiction in these feminine memoirs.

It is remarkable what a strong Creole clement pervaded Parisian society during the second empire. Madame de Montholon was a Creole, and an English lady who resided some time at St. Helena, considered her a very tyrannical wife. Josephine could not very well be that; but all accounts agree that she was one of the most extravagant women ever known to the historical pen. Napoleon, after praising her nat ural grace of manner, and the pleasantness of her disposition to O'Meara, concluded with the blunt remark that she rolled up mountains of debt and then told lies about them. She probably prevaricated from embarrassment, but all accounts agree that while Napoleon was in Egypt she contracted a mass of debts equal to several times the amount of his salary and if he had not risen to autocratic power he never could have liquidated them. False pride is the besetting sin of womankind. Josephine considered herself above paying for the articles that she purchased, or even inquiring their price. She wished to please everybody, which is the same as pleasing nobody; and she purchased almost every article that was offered her. Las Cases states that she bought thirty-eight hats in one month. Such a woman could have little depth, either of character or of affection. There was nothing Napoleon hated so much as foolishness; and it is probable. that he contemplated separating from

Josephine a long time before he did

So.

Marie Louise having been born to the people, acted very differently. She only purchased what she really wished to have, and paid for it at the time. She showed true dignity of character during the trying scenes of 1814, and her only fault would seem to have been a lack of modesty-natural enough considering the family she came from.

Napoleon did not often compare men to animals, but when he did there was a reason for it. He thought Sir Hudson Lowe looked like a tiger cat; and that is just what he did look like according to the steel portrait in the last edition of Las Cases's memoirs. A long lean neck, a shallow pate, and sharp angular features bespeak a most unamiable disposition. His face is a bad one, and the only talent he seems to have possessed was that of tormenting those who were under his authority. His detention of a portrait of Napoleon's son, which was sent from Vienna, was typical of all his proceedings. Napoleon informed him in their third and last interview that he and Lord Bathurst would only be remembered by posterity for their inhuman treatment of him. It was safe enough to predict that. The British government spent between two and three hundred thousand dollars a year to keep Napoleon at St. Helena, and yet the rooms he occupied there were like those of an American tenement-house; nor was his table much better served. He certainly was not treated like a gentleman; and who was ultimately responsible for this so much as the Duke of Wellington? After O'Meara's return to Engand the facts concerning Napoleon's confinement became widely known, and it is not a supposable case that Wellington should have been ignorant of them. He was the autocrat of Great Britain for the time being, and the thought of Napoleon must have been of daily occurrence to him. As Rosebery says, Wellington was not a generous adversary, and Wellington was the real governinent.

One other remark of Rosebery de

serves a momentary consideration. He speaks of Napoleon as not having a good seat in the saddle. I suppose some Englishmen would think more of this than they would of losing a battle. A man with a figure like Napoleon's could hardly make a fine-looking horseman; but he rode over more battlefields than any commander before or since Julius Caesar, and we do not hear that he was thrown except at Arcole, where his hoise was mortally wounded. At Arsis-Sur-Aube he rode onto a bursting bombshell probably with the intention of ending his life in that manner. His horse was disabled by the explosion, and yet Napoleon kept his seat. He depended largely on rapid riding to escape capture or assassination. In this way he once arrived in Paris before his ministers were cognizant that he had left Spain.

Thiers's "Consulate and Empire" derives great advantage from the fact that the incidents of those times were still fresh in the memories of the actors. Thiers could obtain information from Napoleon's marshals, generals, colonels, and even from the soldiers of the old guard. This has given his account a freshness and pictorial liveliness such as later writers will have to struggle for in vain, unless they possess the genius of Tacitus or Carlyle. Karl Lemeke, in his "Aesthetics" takes notice that Thiers knew how to poetize; but the poetry was not in the man, but in his subject

the chivalrous crusade of a whole nation fighting against mighty odds to liberalize Europe and break the shackles of fossilized institutions. Thiers is by no means a classic. He is a diffuse, watery writer, and appears to have taken small pains with his sentences. His worst fault, however, is the constant harping on Napoleon's "inordinate ambition," which finally becomes as wearisome as the sound of the Alpine horn to travelers over the Wengern Alps.

Thiers understood politics too well to believe this himself, and the reason for it was obviously to obtain publica

tion for his book, under a Bourbon king. Louis Phillipe was a liberal, but we could not expect him to be so liberal as to permit the French people to understand that the Bonapartes were right. and the Bourbons were wrong. Thiers, therefore, compromised to suit the situation-no doubt reluctantly enough. There are few histories which do not suffer from similar perversions of the truth.

In spite of this we may fairly suppose that it was the "Consulate and Empire" which upset Louis Prillipe, and made a final end of the Bourbons. Its publication was of great assistance to Louis Napoleon's designs and this may have been more than Thiers expected or wished for.

No man, since the world began, has ever been so lied about as Napoleon. It is one measure of his importance. The British officers on the Northumberland were never tired of questioning Bertrand, Las Cases and the rest, concerning the emperor's character, habits of living, etc., and expressed much surprise at the replies they received. They admitted that he had been grossly misrepresented. This was the work of dishonest journalism, of which I have noticed the effect, even to the present day-improbable scandals, and stories of his cruelty and cowardice.

Five hundred people will read the newspapers while one will read a dignified history; and of this five hundred, nine-tenths will believe what they read as if it were the Gospel of St. Matthew. During the peace of Amiens Napoleon complained to the Brisish Ministry of the atrocious calumnies concerning him that were published in English newspapers, but the ministry replied that they had no legal right to interfere with the liberty of the press, and his only remedy would be to enter a suit for libel in an English court. This was true enough, but it is not surprising that Napoleon should never afterwards have approved of that form of liberty.

Such calumnies would have been dangerous in Germany, as the death of the book-seller Koch afterward exem

plified; but the Prussians circulated wood-cuts of the infant Bonaparte cod. dled in the arms of a demon, and other pictures of dark and dubious insinuation. Such blackguardism always happens in time of war, but it has never been so virulent or enduring as in Napoleon's case, and this for most excellent reasons. The hereditary sovereigns and the titled aristrocracy could only justify their repeated attempts to suppress this champion of struggling humanity and incite their subjects and serfs to fight against him by the most shameless falsification. The same misrepresentation is now taking place in American history Slavery is dead, but the pro-slavery spirit still lives, and sits in the professor's chair. They acted like the villain in Moliere's play, who screened himself by bringing accusations against the persons he had injured. They had, however, this kind of justification, in fact, that even if the peace of Amiens had been kept through Napoleon's lifetime, such a ruler would have made the French nation so powerful that under a less judicious successor it would have. been dangerous to its neighbors.

O'Meara reports that Sir Hudson. Lowe once remarked to him that Napoleon's death "would be of little consequence, compared with the mischief that might ensue if he escaped--not so much of himself as in the revolutions. that would be excited in various parts of Europe." This would seem to indicate that even subordinate officers ir. the British army understood the character of the conflict they were engaged in better than they pretended Napoleon only escaped in death; but the revolutions took place, nevertheless, and continued to take place until France, Spain, Italy, and even Prussia, were liberated from the despotism of Metternich and the so-called Holy Alliance. The Tory leader in Parliament. even declared at that time (1816) that the Anglo-Saxon race was the only one fit for a constitutional government.

In Las Cases's memoirs there are statements made by Napoleon himself. which strongly support the view I have

taken of him in the preceding lecture. He speaks of the autocratic period of his government as a kind of dictatorship, like those of Sulla and Caesar, "which would have come to an end when peace was firmly established." "He was necessary for the defence of France, and to preserve the principles of the Revolution. The coalition al ways existed either openly or secretly." It was not the crowned heads of Europe that hated him, "so much as the aristocracy, which is always cold, implacable, and vindictive." They want everything for themselves. If he did dream of universal empire, it was his enemies that led him into it. He did not like the ceremonial of court life; and he had an idea if he lived long enough to abdicate in favor of his son. and to spend the evening of his life traveling from one capital to another examining into public affairs, giving advice, and establishing new institutions for the benefit of the people. Savary alleges that Napoleon undertook his Egyptian expedition, for one reason, because he considered the sword-points of the enemy less dangerous than the jealousy of his fellow directors; and +hat the overthrow of the directory on his return was a question of self preservation for himself and his friends. Thiers was of opinion that it prevented the establishment of a pretorian government by the army,-like that of the Roman Empire.

Better than Savary, and perhaps the best of all memoirs, are Napoleon's own. They are said to be inaccurate, but I, who have been over the whole subject seven or eight times, have not noticed this. There are inaccuracies in all histories, for threefourths of history is written from memory-either the writer's or some other person's. Napoleon himself has pointed out mistakes in Heroditus, which no Greek scholar would seem to have noticed; but Napoleon's signal merit is that he understood human nature. His account of the Marengo campaign is a match for Thucydides's description of the Syracusean expedition. John Ropes says that what happened at the battle

of Marengo will probably never be known, but Napoleon gives such a clear and comprehensive account that we cannot only see the man fightingthe route of Victor's divisions, and the charge of Kelleman's cuirassiers-l:ut we can perceive the working of Napoleon's mind and understand the plans of his adversary. There is no ambiguity in the tactics of this battle. Napoleon in his anxiety for Suchet. who was on the other side of the enemy, pushed his right wing forward to Marengo, where it was attacked the next morning by the whole Austrian army, and was driven ou: in great confusion. The enemy next fell upon Lannes, who commanded the center, but Lannes retreated in good order, always, as Napoleon says, refusing his left wing; and the effect of this movement was to draw the Austrians round in the arc of a circle; so that they finally exposed their right flank to the attack of Dossaix and Kelleman, who were not slow to take advantage of this. Victor's division was reformed, and in less than an hour the Austrian army had become a flying mob. It is a very rare book now, and ought to be republished with notes and corrections. It would be a pleasant contrast to the tame academic histories of the present day.

After Napoleon's death, Sir Hudson Lowe, wandered about the earth ignored by his former employers, and generally avoided almost like a discharged convict.

Napoleon was in all respects an exceptional man and has to be viewed exceptionally. His powers of endurance exceeded that of any other individual of whom there is even a tradition. He worked with his secretaries until they fell asleep from exhaustion; and at Arcole for four nights he never took off his boots. Before he was twenty-eight years old he had won seventeen battles. His features were refined and classic, but his earlier coins. represent him with an uncommonly thick neck, and it may have been in some exceptional structure of the spinal column that his powers of endurance are to be accounted for.