The following article has been compiled from the different works ofThomas Carlyle, and embodies all he has written, or at least published,about Napoleon Bonaparte. We offer it in the absence of a more elaboratework on this subject, which we hope one day to see from the penof this gifted and earnest writer. It is a glimpse of the insight of theclearest-headed Seer of our age, into the noisiest great man of the last,about whom we listen with pleasure to each new voice, perhaps criticallyand doubtingly, yet for our own part colored by that absorbing,painful interest, which induced us when a boy to close the book whichfirst told us of his doings, after having traced his meteoric flight to the‘monster meeting’ at Moscow, unable to proceed to the catastrophe;and it was months before we could bring ourselves to read on, of theheroism which charmed, or the glitter which dazzled us, to its finalchaos and night. On Napoleon’s right to the title great, the characterof his greatness, and what would be left if the smoke-clouds, battle-gloryand so on were torn away, we will offer but a few words. Of thetitle in its best sense but few now believe him worthy, perhaps no thinkeror reflecting man. He is a volcano rather than a sun, a destroyer morethan a creator; and our sympathy is mingled with little of that whichwe feel for the martyr; who dies rather than sell his birthright, heaven,for any mess of earth’s pottage, or for him who spends his life in thesearch for truth, and in speaking it to mankind, taking no heed for himselfwhat he shall eat and wherewithal he shall be clad. No! thefeeling is far more akin to that which we have for a deep-playing gambler,whom we know to have some noble impulses. How eagerly, yetsorrowingly we watch his movements! The dice rattle, they are thrown,and again thrown; thousands after thousands he wins and lays aside;and at last, in the madness of the game, stakes the whole sum, with hishouse, estate, all on the hazard of one cast. With beating heart welisten to the rattling of the dice, and with strained gaze watch the blow.The box is lifted—all is lost. Now we are excited by the daring of thisbeing, and feel deeply, more so if we know him to have something of abetter nature, some nobler impulses, but the interest is still in the greatgambler, not in the great man; and though his boldness startles, andfor the moment carries us away, yet ever with our admiration comes astill small voice from the ‘inner sanctuary,’ which whispers of thosewhom his winnings ruined, or the dependents who were reduced to beggaryby his loss. Would the great man have played the game at all?
We have always felt that Napoleon stepped down from his greatnesswhen he let them hurry him away alive to that island-prison; and thereis reasoning in this feeling itself, which most persons feel on reading ofhis career, which his worshippers would do well to consider in its variousbearings; for if Napoleon, (when the royal guard, his last hope, wascut to pieces at Waterloo, and crying to Bertrand, ‘It is finished,’ heturned and fled,) had placed himself before the last cannon which sentdestruction to his foes, and let its ball end his career and life together,who is there but would feel that