The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-22

lect applied to clVlcs. fau 4A poleon listened to Talleyrand his dynasty might today be occupying the seats of the mighty held by a peas ant President even as the dynasty of Ser nadotte, brother-in-law of Joseph Bona i parte, survives in far-away Sweden. Tal- leyrand, himself successfully riding every wave of tempest which abated not itsfury his whole life through. died at a great age in honor and power; wise counsellor to every party he agreed to serve, traitor i to none that was true to itself and France. indispensable to all.
 1 At Chantilly the old fox looks calmly down from his canvass upon the pigmy princeets about him and over across the way at the wan face and wistful gaze of the little provincial adventurer, who disdained his admonitions and went to his doom whilst yet in his prime, with a. not unkindly cynicism as if to say: Well. I did my best to save you, and only saved myself as the ship was going down." 1 I have passed through all the Ma poleonio stages; the boys adoration of | the prowess of the warrior; the mans reaction against tyranny and havoc; the students period of suspended judgment, l of reflection and research. to settle upon a definite belief touching the most com plicate and interesting human problem the world has thus far had to consider in It's reading of history. This portrait of Ger ards tended to confirm my impression. It represents a young man of 2s, rather pale and thin of visage. with dark chest | nA of sadness, of lips weak and feminine: not particle of the self-consciousness which appears in the later pictures, nor the least posing for effect. It Is not the Napoleon of the battle pieces; not the Napoleon of 1 the Coronation, of Elba and Waterloo and St. Helena. grand, gloomy and pecu- liar;" 1t is the Napoleon of St. Cyr and the Rue St. Honore; the dreamer who owed San Gene his wash bill; the solic- itous brother who watched tenderly over little Louis; the sentimentalist who fell in love with the widow Beauharnais; the poor Corsican. not yet full knowing of his power, a very youth in the simplicity and earnestness with which he seemed to return my heart-throbs of compassion and sympathy.
 I could have gone away and cried with the thought of him and them, and all of 1t; the fall from grace; the de- lirium of ambition; the debauch of glory; ending upon a lone barren isle of the ocean in one long wall of despair, Prome- theus bound to the rock, not in a fic- tion, or drama, but in real, actual life in living flesh and blood.
 
 young man, might have gone without achievement to speedy dissolution and death as myriads of such have gone; he went to renown unmatched in all the ages, yet leaving nothing except itself behind; not even deterrent warn | ing to mankind; creature of accident, vic tim of circumstance, albeit for a season | very cock of the walk, vanQuisher and creator of systems, conqueror and maker of kings. living in a house of cards to wither and die in captivity.
 | Lord Rosebery and MT. Whitelaw Reid. the one in his thoughtful resume of the last days of the immortal Cor sican, the other in his admirable introduce ton to the Duo de Broglie's publication | of the Memoirs prepared by the great diplomatist with such pompous regard for | historic perspective, have given us the latest and best expositions of Napoleon and Talleyrand. The former premier, however, wrote whilst he was still party leader engaged in the activities of Brit | isn politics and having a certain regard l if not for the prejudices of Englishmen yet for the English point of view, whilst | ha phaG Ia his learning and conscientious and minute his investigation. appears not to have read Lord Dalling's exhaustive study of the illustrious scion of Ferrigord, whom he mus, have personally met in the early days of his own diplomatic career. New ertheless the world owes its thanks to MT. Reid and Lord Rosebery for interpreta- tions which can be found nowhere else so tersely and so deftly done.
 Napoleon was simply a great specialist. | What Edison and Marconi are to electric ity he was to war. Outside the area of the battlefield and it's lines of communi- cation he was never at home. It came to be superstition with him that, hay ing risen by the sword. he could only stand by the sword. That was not true except as he made 1t true.
 The notion that he was statesman, or in anywise a man of comprehensive intellect, Is contradicted by the facts of every stage of his extraordinary career. Brought up Catholic. he had learned enough of human nature as he had en- countered 1t through the Terror and in the streets of Paris to know that neither a governmenut, nor people, can safely exist without a religion. So he recalled the Church of Rome. He had read enough of history to understand the need of law So he got together the eminent jurists of the time and they devised in his name the Code Napoleon.
 Such trial essays in political economy were elemental and intuitive. He was a novice into whose hands fate had thrust the winning cards. He could call by name and decipher the lore of those with the pictures; the kings and queens and knaves; even those perhaps of the larger denomination; but he never knew just how to play the lesser.
 In time Europe learned his game and played it against him. His luck forsook him and. with this change of luck, his mistakes began to be as frequent and as signal as his former strokes of genius had been. Finally the very elements rose against him and down he went. In vain. still to pursue the familiar illustration of the cards. Talleyrand sought to teach