The Sun.
London, England, 1838-10-18 00:00:00

(From the Edinburgh Reviesvir - - -
This celebrated man (Napoleon BonapartYwat sprang;
from a good family ;!.! Corsica, and while yetit.boy;ixeil-4-i.›.
-
the attention and raised the ....apes of all his`;--01,:otojelikir
In his early youth his military geniug ahone filar
gained the summit of his profession ; he Commanded at
twenty-five a military operation of a complicate and dim-
cult nature in Paris : immediately after, he rapidly led the
French armies through a series of victories till then un-
exampled, and to which even now his own after achieve..
ments can alone afford any parallel for the sudden-
ness, the vehemence, and the completeness of the
operations. That much of his success was derived from
the mechanical adherence of his adversaries to the formal
rules of ancient tactics, cannot be donbted ; and our Wel-
lington's campaigns would, in the same circtinistances, and had
he been opposed to similar antagonists, in likelihood
have been equally brilliant and decisive. But L,-; always
had to combat the soldiers bred in Napoleon's school
while Napoleon, for the most part, was matched aga.est
men whose inveterate propensity to follow the rules of arr
obsolete science, not even the example of Frederick had
been able to subdue ; and who were resolved upon being
a second time the victims of the same obstinate blindness
which bad, in Frederick's days, made genius triumph over
numbers by breaking through rules repugnant to common
sense. It must, however, be confessed, that although this
consideration accounts for the achievements of this great
warrior, which else had been impossible, nothing is thus
detracted from his praise, excepting that what he accom-
plished ceases to appear tri.eaculous ; for it was his glory
never to let an error pass unproistably to himself, nor ever to
give his adversary an advantage which !lc could not ravish from
him, with ample interest, before it was turned to any fatal
account. Nor can it be denied that when the fortune of war
proved adverse, the resources of his mind were only drawn
forth in the more ample profusion. After the ,!lattle of
Aspern he displayed more skill, as well as constancy, than
in all his previous campaigns ; and the struggle which he
made in France, during the dreadful conflict which pre-
ceded his downfall, is by many regarded as the master-
piece of his military life. Nor let us forget that the
grand error of his whole career, the mighty expedition to
Moscow, was a political error only. The vast prepara-
tions for that campaign—the combinations by which he
collected and marshalled and moved this prodigious and
various force like a single corps, or a domestic animal, or a
lifeless instrument in his hand—displayed in the highest de-
gree the great genius for arrangement and for action with
which he was endowed ; and his prodigious efforts to regain
the ground which the disasters of that campaign rescued
from his grasp, were only not successful because no human
power could in a month create an army of cavalry, nor a
word of command give recruits the discipline of veterans.
In the history of war, it is assuredly, only Hannibal who
can be compared to him ; and certainly, when we reflect.
upon the yet greater difficulties of the Carthaginian's posi-
tion—the much longer time during which he maintained
the unequal contest—still more, when we consider that his
enemies have alone recorded his story, while Napoleon has
been his own annalist—justice seems to require that the
modern should yield to the ancient commander.
But Napoleon's genius was not confined to war • he pos-
sessed a large capacity also for civil affairs. He saw as
clearly and as quickly determined on his course in govern-
ment as in the field. His public works, his political refor-
mations, especially his code of laws, are monuments of his
wisdom and his vigour more imperishable, as time has al-
ready proved, and himself proudly foretold, than all his
victories. His civil courage was more brilliant than his
own, or most other men's courage in the field. How ordi-
nary a bravery it was that blazed forth at Lodi, when he
headed his wavering columns across the bridge swept by the
field of Austrian artillery, compared with the undaunted
and sublime courage that carried him from Cannes to Paris
with a handful of men, and fired his bosom with the desire,
and sustained it with the confidence, of overthrowing a
dynasty, and overwhelming an empire by the terror of his
name !
Nor were his endowments merely those of the statesman
and the warrior. If he was not, like Cmsar, a consummate
orator, he yet knew men so thoroughly, and especially
Frenchmen, whom he had most nearly studied, that he
possessed the faculty of addressing them in strains of sin-
gular eloquence—an eloquence peculiar to himself. It is
not more certain that he is the greatest soldier whom France
ever produced, than it is certain that his place is high
amongst her greatest writers, as far as composition or
diction is concerned.
But with these great qualities of the will—the highest
courage, the most easy formation of his resolutions, the
most stedfast adherence to his purpose, the entire devotion
to the object of all his energies—and with the equally
shining faculties of the understanding by which that
firm will worked—the clearest and quickest apprehension,
the power of intense apVication, the capacity of complete
abstraction from all interrupting ideas, the complete and most
instantaneous circumspection of all difficulties, whether on
one side, or even providently seen in prospect, the intuitive
knowledge of men, and power of mind and of tongue to
mould their will to his purpose—with these qualities,
which form the character held greatest by vulgar minds,
the panegyric of Napoleon must close. He was a con-
queror ; he was a tyrant ! To gratify his ambition—to
slake his thirst of power—to weary a lust of dominion
which no conquests could satiate—he trampled on liberty
when his hand might have raised her to a secure place ;
and he wrapt the world in flames, which the blood of mil-
liroingsinayalllone could quench. By those passions, a mind, not
originally unkindly, was perverted and deformed, till
human misery ceased to move it ; and honesty, and truth,
and pity, the duties we owe to God and to man, had de-
parted from one thus given up to a single and a selfish
pursuit.

In Washington we truly behold a marvellous contrast to
almost every one of the endoviments and the vices which
we have been contemplating, and which are so well fitted
to excite a mingled admiration, and sorrow, and abhorrence.
With none of that brilliant genius which dazzles ordinary,
minds ; with not even any remarkable quickness of appre—
hension ; with knowledge less than almost all persons its
the middle ranks, and many well educated of the humbler
classes possess ; this eminent person is presented to our
observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretend-
ing, as little calculated to strike or to astonish, as if he had
passed unknown through some secluded region of private
life. But he had a judgment sure and sound ; a steadiness
of mind which never suffered any passion or even any feel-
ing to ruffle its calm ;. a strength of understanding which
worked rather than forced its way through all obstacles--
removing and avoiding, rather than over-leaping them.
IT. . . . .

His courage, whether in battle or in council,
was as perfect .as might be expected from this
pure and steady temper of soul. A perfectly just man,
with a thoroughly firm resolution never to be misled by
others, any more than by others overawed ; never to be
seduced or betrayed, or hurried away by his own weak-
nesses or self-delusions, any more than by other men's
arts ; nor ever to be disheartened by the most complicated
difficulties, any more than to be spoilt on the giddy heights
of fortune. Such was this great man—whether we regard
him sustaining alone the whole weight of campaigns, all
but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by
his resources and his courage--presiding over the jarring
elements of his political council, alike deaf to the storms
of all extremes—or directing the formation of a new Go-
vernment for a great people, the- first time that so vast an
experiment had ever been tried by man—or finally retiring
from the supreme power to which his virtue had raised him
over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had
guided as long as his aid was required—retiring with the ve-
neration of all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order
that the rights of men might be conserved, and that his
example never might be appealed to by vulgar tyrants.
This is the consummate glory of the great American ; a
triumphant warrior where the most sanguine might despair ;
a successful ruler in all the difficulties of a course wholly
untried ; but a warrior whose sword only left its sheath
when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn ;
and a ruler who, having tasted of supreme power, gently
and unostentatiously desired that the cup might pass from
him, nor would suffer more to wet his lips than the most
solemn and sacred duty to his country and his God required !
To his last breath did this great patriot maintain the
noble character of a captain the patron of peace, and a
statesman the friend of justice. Dying, he bequeathed to
his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war for liberty,
charging them " never to take it from the scabbard but in
self-defence, or in defence of their country and her freedom ;
and commanding them that, when it should thus be drawn,
they should never sheathe it nor ever give it up, but prefer
falling with it in their hands to the relinquishment thereof"
—words, the majesty and simple eloquence of which, are
not surpassed in the oratory of Athens and Rome. It
will be the duty of the historian and the sage in all ages to
emit no occasion of commemorating this illustrious man ;
and till time shall be no more will a test of the progress
which our race has made in wisdom and in virtue be derived
from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Wash-
ington !

The beautiful palace at Genoa, formerly occupied
by Queen Maria Theresa, is about to be converted into a
convent, having been granted by the King of Sardinia to the
Society of Jesuits.
The Moniteur Parisien records the death of a
woman, named Marie Priou, which happened last week in the
environs
age of of Saint Beal, inreta the Haute-Garonne, at the patri-
archal 158 years, ining, as they say, her mental
faculties to the last, although her corpse when dead weighed
only 421 b., her flesh being gone, and her skin and muscles ad-
ahge rei nogf
6t o 6
,her
she
baoolndesaloikoettapgaercahnnidenaotmt T hifleiynghapdietcheast,oaft
latnhde
for an annuity of 162 f., which the purchasersetr have consequently
had to pay for no less a period than 92 years !