We close our view of Bonaparte's character by saying that his original
propensities, released from restraint, and pampered by indulgence to a
degree seldom allowed to mortals, grew up into a spirit of despotism
as stern and absolute as ever usurped the human heart. The love of
power and supremacy absorbed, consumed him. No other passion, no
domestic attachment, no private friendship, no love of pleasure, no
relish for letters or the arts, no human sympathy, no human weakness,
divided his mind with the passion for dominion and for dazzling
manifestations of his power. Before this, duty, honor, love, humanity
fell prostrate. Josephine, we are told, was dear to him; but the
devoted wife, who had stood firm and faithful in the day of his
doubtful fortunes, was cast off in his prosperity to make room for a
stranger, who might be more subservient to his power. He was
affectionate, we are told, to his brothers and mother; but his
brothers, the moment they ceased to be his tools, were disgraced; and
his mother, it is said, was not allowed to sit in the presence of her
imperial son. He was sometimes softened, we are told, by the sight of
the field of battle strewn with the wounded and dead. But, if the
Moloch of his ambition claimed new heaps of slain to-morrow, it was
never denied. With all his sensibility, he gave millions to the sword
with as little compunction as he would have brushed away so many
insects which had infested his march. To him all human will, desire,
power were to bend. His superiority none might question. He insulted
the fallen, who had contracted the guilt of opposing his progress; and
not even woman's loveliness, and the dignity of a queen could give
shelter from his contumely. His allies were his vassals, nor was their
vassalage concealed. Too lofty to use the arts of conciliation,
preferring command to persuasion, overbearing, and all-grasping, he
spread distrust, exasperation, fear, and revenge through Europe; and,
when the day of retribution came, the old antipathies and mutual
jealousies of nations were swallowed up in one burning purpose to
prostrate the common tyrant, the universal foe.
[Footnote 47: From a review of Sir Walter Scott's "Life of Napoleon,"
printed in the _Christian Examiner_ in 1827 and now included in Volume
I of the collected edition of Channing's writings.]
Such was Napoleon Bonaparte. But some will say he was still a great
man. This we mean not to deny. But we would have it understood that
there are various kinds or orders of greatness, and that the highest
did not belong to Bonaparte. There are different orders of greatness.
Among these the first rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness,
or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with
the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death,
to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature;
scorns all meanness and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience
a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the
powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause of freedom
and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour,
and is ever "ready to be offered up" on the altar of its country or of
mankind.
Of this moral greatness, which throws all other forms of greatness
into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Tho clothed with the
power of a god, the thought of consecrating himself to the
introduction of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the
character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his
mind. The spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice seems not to
have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition. His ruling
passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral
greatness has too much simplicity, is too unostentatious, too
self-subsistent and enters into others' interests with too much
heartiness, to live an hour for what Napoleon always lived, to make
itself the theme, and gaze, and wonder of a dazzled world. Next to
moral, comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of
that word; and by this we mean that sublime capacity of thought,
through which the soul, smitten with the love of the true and the
beautiful, essays to comprehend the universe, soars into the heavens,
penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past,
anticipates the future, traces out the general and all-comprehending
laws of nature, binds together by innumerable affinities and relations
all the objects of its knowledge, rises from the finite and transient
to the infinite and the everlasting, frames to itself from its own
fulness lovelier and sublimer forms than it beholds, discerns the
harmonies between the world within and the world without us, and finds
in every region of the universe types and interpreters of its own deep
mysteries and glorious inspirations. This is the greatness which
belongs to philosophers, and to the master-spirits in poetry and the
fine arts.
Next comes the greatness of action; and by this we mean the sublime
power of conceiving bold and extensive plans; of constructing and
bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery of means,
energies, and arrangements, and of accomplishing great outward
effects. To this head belongs the greatness of Bonaparte, and that he
possest it we need not prove, and none will be hardy enough to deny. A
man who raised himself from obscurity to a throne, who changed the
face of the world, who made himself felt through powerful and
civilized nations, who sent the terror of his name across seas and
oceans, whose will was pronounced and feared as destiny, whose
donatives were crowns, whose antechamber was thronged by submissive
princes, who broke down the awful barrier of the Alps and made them a
highway, and whose fame was spread beyond the boundaries of
civilization to the steppes of the Cossack, and the deserts of the
Arab; a man who has left this record of himself in history, has taken
out of our hands the question whether he shall be called great. All
must concede to him a sublime power of action, an energy equal to
great effects.