Two powerful nations have been vitally affected by natural calamities.
The former of these calamities was inevitable by human prudence, and
uncontrollable by human skill; the latter was to be foreseen at any
distance by the most ignorant, and to be avoided by the most unwary. I
mean in the first the Plague of the Athenians; in the second the
starvation of the French. The first happened under the administration
of a man transcendently brave; a man cautious, temperate, eloquent,
prompt, sagacious, above all that ever guided the councils and
animated the energies of a state; the second under a soldier of
fortune, expert and enthusiastic; but often deficient in moral
courage, not seldom in personal; rude, insolent, rash, rapacious;
valuing but one human life among the myriads at his disposal, and that
one far from the worthiest, in the estimation of an honester and a
saner mind.
It is with reluctant shame I enter on a comparison of such a person
and Pericles. On one hand we behold the richest cultivation of the
most varied and extensive genius; the confidence of courage, the
sedateness of wisdom, the stateliness of integrity; on the other,
coarse manners, rude language, violent passions continually exploding,
a bottomless void on the side of truth, and a rueful waste on that of
common honesty.... So many pernicious faults were not committed by
Xerxes or Darius, whom ancient historians call feeble princes, as were
committed by Napoleon, whom the modern do not call feeble, because he
felt nothing for others, coerced pertinaciously, promised rashly, gave
indiscriminately, looked tranquilly, and spoke mysteriously. Even in
his flight, signalized by nothing but despondency, Segur, his
panegyrist, hath clearly shown that, had he retained any presence of
mind, any sympathy, or any shame, he might have checked and crippled
his adversary. One glory he shares with Trajan and with Pericles, and
neither time nor malice can diminish it. He raised up and rewarded all
kinds of merit, even in those arts to which he was a stranger. In this
indeed he is more remarkable, perhaps more admirable, than Pericles
himself, for Pericles was a stranger to none of them.