The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1895-04-27
NAPOLEON'S APPRENTICESHIP.
1t Was Ended at the Close of the Touiou
CamDaiyn.

-
1t Was Ended at the Close of the Touion
Campaign.
At this point Bonaparte's apprentice
years may be said to have ended; he
was virtually the mar he remained to
the end. A Corsican by origin, he re-
tanned the national sensibility and an
enormous power of endurance both
physical and intellectual, together
with the logged persistence found in
the medieval C~orsicans. He was de-
voted with primitive virtue to HE fam
lily and his people, but was willing to
sacrifice the latter, mt least, to his am
bition. His moral sense, having never
been developed by education. and,
worse than that, having been befogged
by the extreme sensibility of Rousseau
and by the chaos of the times which
that prophet had brought to pass, was
practically lacking. Neither the hos
tility of his father to religion nor his
w experience with the Jesuits could,
however, entirely eradicate a supersti-
ton which passed in his mind for faith.
Sometimes he was a s~coifer, as many
with weak convictions are: but in gen.
era hc IL IL IOTuldl ana outward re-
spect for the church.
His theoretical education had been
narrow and one-sided; but his reading
and his authorship, in spite of their SUI
perfcial and desultory character, had
given him certain large N fairly def
mite conceptions of history and pol
tiles. But his practical education!
What a polishing and sharpening he
had had against the revolving world
most ages. He was a master in the
art of civil war, for he had been not
merely an interested observer, but an
active participant in it during five
years N two countries. The victim of
wiles more secret than his own, he had
grown most willy in diplomacy; an am
bilious politician, his pulpy principles
were republican in their character SO
far as they had any tissue or firmness.
His acquisitions i'm the science of war
We're substantial and definite. Neither
a martinez himself o tolerant in any
way of routine, ignorant in fact of
many hateful details, among others of
obedience, he yet rose far above tradi-
ton or practice in his conception of
strategy. lie was perceptibly superior
to the world about him in almost every
aptitude, and particularly SO in power
of combination, in originality, and in
far-sightedness. lie could neither
write nor spell correctly, but he was
skilled in all practical applications of
mathematics; town and country, noun
tains and plains, seas and rivers, were
all quantities in his equations. IN
trustworthy of himself, he strove to
arouse trust, faith and devotion in
those about him; and concealing sue
c~essfully his W purpose, he read the
hearts of others like an open book.
OF pure minded affection for either
men or women he had so far shown
only n little, and had experienced in
return even less; but he had studied
the arts of gallantry, and understood
the leverage of social forces. To these
capacities, some embryonic, some per-
fectly formed, add the fact that he was
now "a cosmopolitan, and there will he
outline, relief, and color to his char
acter. Il am in that frame of mind. "
he said of himself about this time, lin
which men are on the eve of battle,
with n persistent conviction that since
death is imminent in the end, to be un
easy is folly. Everything makes me
brave death and destiny; and if this
goes on, | shall in the end, my friend,
no longer turn when II carriage passes.
My reason is sometimes astonished at
all this; but it is the effect produced on
me by the moral spectacle of this land
ice pays-ci, not patrieC, and by the habit
of running risks" This is the power
and the temper of a man of whom an
intimate and confidential friend pre-.
dicted that he would never stop short
unit he had mounted either the throne
or the scaffold .-Prof. w. Nj. Sloane, in
Century.