NAPOLEON: A Study

NZ Truth, Issue 141, 29 February 1908, Page 8

NAPOLEON : A Study

OF HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER

From Physiological and Psychological Standpoints.

iltefteif the above heading, Profes- j jj/ot Oaborae delivered the last of his geties of lectures oti physiology, on. the evening of the - Bth. Soptember, at the Independent HalL. CoilinsStreet, : Melbourne, before a large and appreciative audience. In proposing '&■ vote of thanks, to Professor OsborneijDr.' Meyer characterised the course as having been excepiipnally Interesting and instructive.:. 1/he lectures' stood; for "popular. science" m its best ;sense, and should -stimulate." fthe study of physiology ... with* our growing boys and girls. .Properly." safeguarded, he thought tha,t physio-, logy should form an essential element •■-. ; . '•■ :■ ,-. " „v •.;. . ' : ' •.'■ -;jjsr^stJi?pOL curricula;. i%Le f ",-inqsi6n . 'was seconded by Mt H. T%ies '. Turner, who paid a high teribUije. "to Professor Osbbrne and his iwbrlc m the community. T-he motion was.' carried by acclamation; ThV'f.oijpwing is" the full text of ffehe lecture":— Oliver Wendell :.-. Holmes . remarked Ibhat the best recipe for living to old agecwas.'to advertise for parents v of ' sound constitution.-. This ■humorous . advioe implies.tbat is herer ditaryji-rand such it, appears to ..be,, especially-: in%the male line". ._. But when/ : iwe;Eome.:to-:.i?hat i indescribable com-v bination^. of -faculties which - we call genius, , great a?i£e ; ...as. x&gaids its parental ; or_ ancestral origin. -The subject oi heredity has only recently been, taken; up, m, a. scientific, manner; ; and though, little that' Is fin- ' al has been enunciated,, the.controversy that isat present" being waged between the ancestral. >' school' of. Pearson and Weldon, and the upholding .of Mendel's .theory, is -rapid- 1 ly. clearing t,heair,;,ajid' adding fresh, facts. o£ high .importance. .' Lei; us "try to apply some of this: knowledge to ibhe problem ■ OF NAPOLOSON'S GENIUS. Charles Bouuaparte, the father, had; somewhat of the same ..physiognomy, asvhis illustrious , -son ; he was also" fond of politics, and. of suggesting constitutional changes. That he should have died, of the same disease ■ as his son is probably a mere accident, though here; againv futiure re-: search may. find out something. His intelligence was above the. average,' but -he was , lacking m energy,, had no, grip, of money matters,.. and was constantly on the brink of utter poverty. If we look to his wife. ; for the qualities of mental and physical energy, we certainly find them ; and al- i bo the fact that -she kept a 'tigjht 'grip, , of her strings. .But Letitiaßa--molini was • certainly, not the one andonly strong^ and .economical J woman- in the worjld at tfeat. time, and | we may:, imagine Jbhat many of. her sex as good as she were married to inch as good as, or much better than, Charles Bounaparte ; and yet \ it was she who gave birth tp Napoleon. A suggestion may be /thrown out here. If .we imagine certain v Characters, which we may call Nar poleonic, were present m Charles, but of course very ..poorly developed, and that the. same iChaxacters were presr ent m Letitiain a higher degree, aiid further,-, that these characters ..were, such that. they, tended to ;v ßemain united to each other— to adopt .the pftrasosology- of Mendel's law, if CJharles and Letitia were gamogeneti'cally pure and possessed the same cha^raxiters, the. one m a. high,- the other m alow degree,, then there is a strong ■; tendency : that amongst the offspring there would 'be found one or more with these characters m a very high degree. "The Qlasisic instance of this m the vegetable wbrld Is 'the crossing of a dwarf - pea with a tall pea, • which gives rise to a giant pea fasr exceeding m height its taller parent. Thjs explanation may be very wide -of the mark, but it , shows that there is nothing contrary; to physical law m a child being superior to its parents, or, indeed, TO ITS ANCESTOR^, > immediate or remote. . Another obser- ! i vation we may make" is that while "talent may persist a.few ■generations; iin a family, true gehius : does not. Genius' 'may m the grandpar- , ents and parents, .'but when, it, blazes > out m full intensity it appears to culminate, and; leaves but Jittle trace ■ among' the progeny, .'ti-eniiis we may describe as highly recessiye^ to use ; again the i>hraSeolagy of moaern heredity theories. " '. Another factor includ- ,!. Ed , m heredity is a that pi race. Napo- _ icon; ;on both sides, was Italiaa ; to be more accurate, Florentine, and historians have not been able to de.tect m his la,ter character certain ftraits reminiscent of his countryman, ■ we may also say fellow-totcnsman, ; MachiavelH. : . ', A BACKWARD YOUTH. •Napolieon as a boy does . not seem /t6 have exhibited any unusual mental powers, ; except, perhaps, ;those of .. miimory. Self-restraint he undoubt- : ; edly possessed' to a high degree ; but - the orilv foreshadoteing of his imaginative, faculties is to be fpund m his sensitiveness as regards his poverty ; and nationality, a sensitiveness, ' .which was almost mofbid > ..and > which r led to his early habits, of seclusion and aloofness. In many respects the . young Napoleon may be looked upon ; us a type of late developing boy—, that is to r say, he passed through ■/ the' various mental and physical plm- : ses of hpyhootl a year , or two later : than the average-r-a. condition which • is pre-eminently more heathy than the other extreme precocity, and is • generally associated with a history of longevity m. ■ •': \ • .. ONE OR FOTH PARENTS. ,-'■ This character he presents until his, ' emptional 'faculties blossomed into piower m adolescence, a period of which he is a particularly interesting study. That -emotional attitude . which appears m adolescence, and for .which we have no better term tlrah the old-fashioncft one,- "sensibility," may be ' tal'en as a very fair, indication of the intensity Of the imaginative and creative .faciilths. It fietjuenlly: appears combined with, a melanchplfii. which, tliough it may be juih^nsc',' "is-gen'e'xai'ly c^'apeseent. ' Thus WOL lSn<\ tho youthful Napoleon on his. |>^S^l"*''in to Corsica brooding pJ6iic H#^^p%£b*rer ■ and Wfttching tho ,

after-glow on the hills. The best evidence for this, however, is found m the essay on "Happiness," which he j?frote m his twenty-second year. The essay; bears markedly the stamp of adolescence, and would usually he put down to a youth of seveateen or eighteen ; but we know that Napoleon at this time looked much younger than his years— more like a boy of fifteen than one who attained bis. majority. The following passage from the essay . ILLUSTRATES THIS POINT :— "See the sun set on the sea, melancholy will overcome you ; you will abandon yourself to it ; the melancholy of nature cannot be resisted. ■Thus also the silence of 2. starlit night after the fierce heat , of a sum-mers-day,s-day, the calm reflection of a solitary' • evening after your family have -retired; to -rest, a night spent alone m some great cathedral j- a tent life 1 on the island of Monte. Christo., under the. wall of a ruined monastery, lulled by the roaring of the waves." One tribute to the young Napoleon we , must, not forget to pay. He was remarkably high-minded-, and , with morals of unquestioned purity; a] fact wMoh, taken m conjunction with his emotional nature, his racial pro- ! eiiyafcies, and his education m a 1 school notorious for its laxness, must always - / STAND TO HIS CREDIT. I Tie dictum that great movements ' produce great men to carry them j through,' receives but little support; from the iiistory of the French Revolution. With the possible, exception of Mirabeau and of Daaton,. the actors m- that • terrible tkama were men of \quit© mediocre calibre. More truly may we .state, that the stimulus exerted by this movement acted upon those: who were m the plastic age of: adolescence or early manhood at the time. In this the Revolution is not exceptional. Shakespeare aud Marlowe were twenty-four when the Armada .was destroyed ; Napoleon was twenty . . WHEN THE BASTILE FELL. Lot. us glance, for a moment at th» young men of revolution times who were afterwards to be famous. Of the same age, as Napoleon were Ar i thur Weliesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington ; Cuvier, the great anatomist and- geologist ; Hurnbolt, th* traveller, and man of science ; Sydney Smith, wit and pamphleteer. One year younger were- Thorwalsden, Hegel, Beethoven, and Wordsworth. Two yeara younger were Walter fc>cott, Ling-ard, Muiigo Park, and Isaac Disraeli. Three years younger were Coleridge, Hogg, and the economist, Ricardo. That is surely a notable list,! ! STIMULATING SUCCESS. .1 We may picture : Napoleon at this| time as a young man of less than average height, slender m physique and boyish m face, with full lip? somewhat prominent nose, olive cow .! plexion.-and large, grey eyes. That he had no idea of his own powers, or rather, that Ms genius had yet awakened, we must believe, but that he impressed his contemporaries favor-a-bly is s>hown by ■■ has promotion. Theire is- in the biographies of most •illustrious men a singular hiatus be- j tween boyhood and the first beginnings of fame, and we ask . ourselves how did :tfoe young man get to ,know the leaders of the day, and . succeed.! iri^ being entrusted with" responsible duties? In such cases We t assume .that -the youth, by his energy, .and alertness,., gave . , '.■••. A FAVORABLE IMPRESSION • that be was lavish with ' his ideas, and worked for the love of working. Thus at was with the young Napoleon. Neither the military services that he rendered at Toulon, nor his "whiff of grape-shot" at* Paris w.ere of sufficient moment to warrant his promotion to. the rank of general and comorander of the army ofltaly. It came about, nevertheless, aird Napoleon entered on a campaign which sta,rtled the nations of Europe. Very probably Napoleon was just as much startlod as the nations, for he found success easy of achievement, and became suddenly aware of his own superiority. The reciprocal action of success and confidence is a well-known psychological law. Success facilitates and increases 1 confidence, ., and this increased confidence foegets still further success, and so on, until the first failure, or series of failures, is reached. Nor must we forget- m this connection the ACTION OF THE MIND on the body, . Recent physiological research has shown, how , profoundly mental conditions can, influence heart and artery, muscls and digestive gland. Over these organs the will has no control, but their efficiency, by an automatic nervous mechanism, rises, and falls with joy- or depression of mind. It is no exaggeration to state that the physical organisation of Napoleon could never have stood the strain he put upon it had not his mind been filled with a bound-? le.ss confidence. "And yet, perhaps, I felt most happy after my victories m Italy. What enthusiasm . was shown for me ! What cries of 'Long live, the Liberator of Italy,' and all this when I was only twenty-five. From that moment X perceived what 1 might some day become; I saw tyie whole world passing beneath me, just as .if I had been borne up into the air."- -, SLEEPING AT WILL. .Five years later Napoleon was ! First Consul. We arc fortunate m possessing faithful portraits of him at this period, and they show him still thin, m figure, and with a face that, except for the full lips and strong cartilages of the nose, is lit-? erally skin and bone. The hair is snaky and the eye blazing. Phyriognomy is not yet a science, but anyone can see m these portraits of .the First Consul a soul consuming itself with its own fierce and uncontrolla"ble energy. . j Napoleon learnt m Iris Italian cam.paign' that a successful general must bo up 0' nights," and so v/e read ,of him waking at midnight, and kicking into activity, 2Ae rsitausted s«c-

ond m command. It is a misconception to imagine that Napoleon persistently deprived himself of sleep. According to De Bourienne, he slept seven hours out of the twenty-four, besides taking a nap m the afternoon. The faculty he certainly did possess was that of sleeping at will, and of remaiudng awake and alert for comparatively long periods when his activity could be useful. "Do not awake me when you have good news to communicate ; with that there is no .hurry. But when youi bringt me bad news ROUSE ME INSTANTLY." Such were his orders m Paris, but during the conduct of a campaign his hours of sleep were certainly curtailed, and on the battlefield it was his habit to remain wide awake until the fig-lit was over. The most extraordinary instance of this occurred m the 1797 campaign, when he was up i and about for five consecutive days without any interval of rest. The physiological comment we make on this is not only what a superb nervous system he had, but also what supeib arteries ! ' Forty-eight hours of activity i« quite enough to lower the blood-pressure of a strong man m a very marked degree, unless it be kept up by intense mental excitement or physical pain. Even if it be so kept up, there is usually afterwards a considerable reactionary fall. . But Napoleon* we read, slept for thirty-six hours after the long vdgil, and arose as fresh as ever. Even the petty details of his life during the Consulate interesting. He dreaded . corpulency, though there 'was no indication of that ever occurring ; he would spend a couple of hours m a warm bath. This habit, which afterwards grew on him notably, he doubtless acquired by finding 1 it act as a sedative to his impatient brain and body, an impa'tienee which is -, exemplified even m the smallest acts of his life v as, for .instance, his inability to shave himself without gashing his chin. THE 7yENITH. The year 1806 shows Napoleon- at the very pinnacle of his marvellous powers. On the first of January of that year Paris . was m' a frenzy of excitement, and. no wonder, for on that day one hundred and twenty standards captured at Austerlitz, and , representing the defeat of 400,000* Russians, Austrians, Swedes, and English, were carried m procession through the shouting streets. On the evening of the .26th of the same month the great victor arrived m person. The day following his arrival he plunged into the internal administration of his empire. He found financial matters m a critical state, and it was he alone that righted them. In the course of this year he bujlt bridges,, roads,; monuments, fountains, quays, and churches; he founded the Imperial University < of Paris, which .still exists as a monument to -Iris genius ; he reformed taxation and reorganised the Bank of France. His military forces were SCATTERED FAR AND WIDE, but all m commanding positions, and all m immediate subordination to his Imperial will. The troops of. Landcs •were m Swabia, the Grenadiers of v Oudenot 'm Switzerland, tho corps of Augerau m Frankfort. One detachment of Ms forces was m Holland, another was driving the English out of Italy. Nor were his battalions mere engines of destruction. Into whatever^ out of the way province his soldiers^ penetrated their medievalism .vanished, and modern thought and modern industrial progress commenced, it was m this year, too, that he dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, the oldest political institution of the w"orld, inaugurated the Empire of Austria, created a number .of new kingdoms, and shook THE PETTY SQUABBLING princelings of Germany into v unity. There remained on the Continent of Europe but • one military nation that he had not subdued, namely, Prussia, and Prussia, ' relying on her cavalry and . infantry, long held invincible, burned to measure swords wfth the upstart Emperor. How typical of Napoleon's method is that scene which we may picture to ourselves as it occurred on tjhe night of •flhe thirteenth of October. The infantry and cavalry are sleeping round 1 their • bivouac fires, for the. night is intensely cold ; but the Emperor is not in -his 'quarters. If we search for him we shall find him torch m hand, lighting the steep path up which his artillery is being dragged, and urging the perspiring men to still more frantic exertions . Next . m orning. I the battle of Jena is fought,, and Prussia is stricken to the ground. ; -[yr a - .- - ■■' t ous ENERGY. "The astonishing feature of ' Napoleon's mind is its immunity from'fatigue. This is all the more remarkable when we consider the wide range of his activities. He was not only general and Emperor, but, as Lord Rosebery had said, he was his own War Office, his own Admiralty, his own Ministry of eyery kind. He kept up half-a-dozen police agencies of his own, and was admittedly a man who it was dangerous to attempt to hoodwink. Even if he had done nothing more than maintain a vast empire m civic and military splendor, without national debt he would remain a. wonder. ,T>he superb machinery of his brain cortex worked swiftly and without fatigue. Nerve ceJls would one moment be throbbing out their impulses at high power and speed, and . the next be hushed to absolute, rest. Further, he could switch THE WHOLE CURRENT of his mental energy from one direction to another without slowing down m rate, or jarring the delicate valves and nerve bearings of liis brain. We may here note that the other body mechanisms of Napoleon kept pace with his mental requirements. Sometimes, m cases of great mental activity, the body gives way through some inherent and grave defect, but more often this takes place m consequence of worry. The brain may be active, but confidence is lost, and work ds carried out rather from fear of failure than joy m t.he workmanship. If such be the case the body of necessity suffers, blood pressure falls, the muscles get slack, digestion is impaired, and the body may lose flesh, or more accurately stated, fat. Now, the insulating material of the nervous system is a phosphorised fat, and any condition j which impairs fat replenishing im- i pairs also the nerve machinery, and 1 so the feeling of worry is iacreased, and so on m a vicious circle. In such cases, too, sleep is never so sound, aad tfce imperfect sleep aggra-

rates the other conditions.; A 1 low blood pressure, too, MEANS FEEBLE NUTRITION of all parts of the body. With Napoleon confidence never ebbed, and knowing; the nerve connections as we do, we may say that his arteries were elastic, his blood pressure high, (bis abnormally slow pulse indicates ' this), his muscles braced, and his digestive juices poured out m full quantity-. Moreover, Iris was a confidence that would not vanish with the first failure. At the battle of Aspern-Esslicg, on 22nd May^ 1809, the hitherto invincible general met with 1 his first serious defeat. His losses amounted to twenty thousand men and the valiant | Lannes was dead. His marshals gathered round him m the evening gloomy and despondent, but left him alert and buoyant with hope. A few weeks later the defeated army sailed out again m a night of awful rain and thunder, this, time to write Wagram on its banners. NERVOUS FORCE WEAKENING. It is interesting and often amusing to note' the number of men and the number of factors which different historians describe as the chief cause of the downfall of Napoleon. The real causes are doubtless many and complex, but the physiological factor; must not be ignored. "One has but a short time for war," he said at Austerlitz. "lam good for another six years, and then I shall have to stop." His meaning is. plain. The intensity of the emotional, intellectual, and physical strain of continuous generalship demands youth to see it through. Soon the nerve cells will show signs of wear and tear, but they will last long if the speed be eased off a little. Six years fxom .Austerlitz brings us to the end of 1811, when the French Empire was at its height —next yea* came Moscow AND ALL ITS HORRORS. The question at once arises whether Napoleon's physical downfall ' was actuated by acts of physiological unrighteousness. That question we must answer m a mild affirmative. He was very temperate with alcohol,.- he did not smoke, and was not addicted to any drug. His enemies accused him of over-indul&eneo - m coffee drinking and tobacco snuffing, but tliese charges break down utterly on tnvesjldsfttion. The selfrestraint which kept him . pure as a youth shielded him from enervating excesses m manhood. What tlieu were his 'physiological shortcomings ? Firstly, he ate his meals too hurriedly ; m fact, he ate ravenously, and never spent more than twenty minutes over his dinner, which might be served at any hour oi the evening, even up to midnight— the terrified chef meanwhile cooking one fowl after the other lest the Emperor should get HIS FAVORITE DISH COLD. Napoleon's teeth, though discolored, were sound and strong, But there is little doubt that ho failed to come up to the Glad stonian standard of thirty-two chews.. The consequence was inevitable. Even as First ' Consul \ie suffered from occasional fits of vomiting, severe enough to suggest poisoning.- On his march to Moscow he was obliged, at least on one occasion, to take opium to relieve gastric pain. At the battle of Prestten. he came back to his quarters drenched through with rain, and the spot least strong m his., body was affected. Probably to tims severe intestinal attack, more than to any other cause, was due his failure to follow up his victory. It may be, too, that this unpliysiological treatment of his stomach induced the cancer whi^h eventually killed him. . OVER-INDULGED IN WARM BATHS. ' The effect of this indulgence has probably been over-estimated by historians, but we must admit • that two or three 'hours' soaking m hot water is not the best preparation for a burst of physical activity. TfoixdW and most important of all, he did not husband his powers, immense thourfi they were, and slow 4ow.n a ' little when nature warned him. In 1806 Napoleon had lost his thinness and was robust m person ; at this time he had already done enough work to wear him to the bone, had not his mind been superbly hopeful, and confident. At ,the. battle of Wagram, m 1809", Napoleon was noticeably stout. This m itself meant nothing, for to this he was born predesigned, and activity is by no means** incompatible with increased - weightin fact, the nervous activity of a well- . fleshed man is of a healthier character than that OF THE CASSIUS TYPE. The nerves are better insulated and sleep is sounder. But m 1811 Napoleon scaled more than m 1809, yet his vaulting ambition had committed' lvim to plans which he ought not physically to have touched. In 1813 he had visibly deteriorated from his old standard. His craving for sleep became greater, but sleep he was often destined not to enjoy. It is almost pathetic to read, as one can m the chronicles, of a raw winter night m a German town when all is still and silent m the deserted streets. Then a rumbling is heard, and a carriage comes rattling over the pavement, its lamps gleaming dismally through the darkness and mist. With it are tr6opers on horseback. The cquippage halts at an inn, and the Emperor, comes out dressed and ready) for the day. Then, the old town clock strikes THE WEE SMALL HOUR OF ONE; Pierhaps Napoleon had retired to rest after a busy day at ten o'clock— he is forty-four, and inclining to corpulency. But the strain is beginning to tell on him — he is getting petulant, and worse than petulant, morose. It is impossible to assign a definite date to the first appearance of nervous failure m Napoleon, but 'it is very evident m 1812, when he set o9 for Moscow and disaster, That splendid memory which began by storing columns of logarithms at Bri-enne, which enabled him, as First Consul, to pigeon-hole m his brain the position of nearly every field gun m the Republic, has begun to fail. But his ambitions are vaster than ever. As ho rides be plans how -he will send his columns clown the Euphrates, - how he 1 will conquer India, how he will enclose the Mediterranean with 'Ms empire, and all the while he has forgot- | ten to have his horses properly shod I for a wintry climate. He speaks of troops that do exist, he adds to- ! gether the number of his men, and adds' them wrongly ; he is corrected by some daring marshal, and promptly forgets the correction. "A DOOMED iVTAN." In 1813 things were worse. ' The

Duke o! Wellington • spoke scathingly of Napoleon's tactics at Leipzig, and military authorities since saeni to agree with the Duke's strictures, j Napoleon here developed a further sign of -deterioration ; he lost his old, swift decision. He would talk m a half soliloquy and scrawl meaningless-, -things on paper, where formerly he # would have made a panther hound and caught the enemy unawares. He stayed on m the beleaguered city of. Leipzig with the massed armies of five nations closing m on him like wolves ; he stayed on, though every man of his army, foredoomed to death by wounds or typhoid , knew that safety lay alone m flight. At last the retreat sounded, but it was too late. As -the victors marched m with bands playing, 'the Emperor of the French was being borne along -by the i panic-stricken wrecks of an army, - the lines of his face calm and majestic, but with the perspiration of mental agony rolling down his cheeks. After Leipzig, Napoleon WAS A DOOMED MAN -; if was now the turn of his enemies to learn confidence by success, and to fight bravely because they fought with hope. Then occurred one of those grand rallies— which even the enemies of Napoleon must admire— i the campaign of 1814. Ambition, had i gone ; he had now to fight, for dear life, and with bis back to the wall. The ■£• overwr ought nervous system . spurted into activity. ,The Bavarian army? that thought to stop him he swept aside after three days' hard fighting,. Weak" m horses, . guns, and men, hovelessly outnumbered by the enemy, the news from Paris getting daily more ominous, he still hoped against 'hope, and fought bravely on. 'fi am still the man. I was at Wagram and Austerlitz," he wrote on the 14th March, and the marvel is that for a brief space he was i; 'but the spirit soon ebbed, the tired body clamored for rest, and on the 11th April -he signed Ms abdication— his enemies <b:ad. . . BBATEN.HIM TO THE PIT. At Elba . N&poleon had nothing to, do but grow fatter, which he did until his corpulency became unsightly. He could, however, take these things quietly, eat' well, and sleep well, and exert himself no more than was necessary to wini friends by politeness or cajole his enemies with flattery. But "the end had come. That last spurt of the battered machinery had done some inward . mischief . . He began from this time to suffer from a number oS minor complaints, none of them serious, but all of them harassing. Some days he looked strong and active ; on others he was plainly and palpably ill. TOE END. We need not dwell on the fiasco of the Hundred Days. That "unsightly and obese" individual, more like a Spanish friar than a Caesar, who let himself be tricked by his Ministers, and who dozed over a book when he ought to have been haranguing the Chambers, was certainly a human being, but not Napoleon. Of. course, a spurt was necessary, and it came ; we see it at Ligny, but it had died off at Waterloo. We ask ourselves would it have made' much difference, after all, if Wellington had not won the" battle. '.'■.. At St. Helena the deterioration' went steadily on. It is surely a mistake to picture the. fallen- monarch as a caged animal, walking restlessly to and fro m bis den. Such he was only at times when a fit of energy was. on him, and certainly i-t was an energy that could make his captors stare ; now it was gardening, now dancing parapets for imaginary in'faJKbry, now a fit of dietaljion which lasted unbroken ! for eighteen hours. But the greater part of his time was spent m bed, or m his hot bath, or reading TO YAWNING MARSHALS, or falling asleep when read to. Death came at fifty-two, an age when no, one could, be m his prime who had done a tithe of Napoleon's work. Doubtless he might have .lived many years longer, but cancer, the greatest of'human ills, closed the. last act of the tragedy. "And so m the midst of the great hurricane he passed out of life, charging at the head of his" ghostly legions. ' ■. . •. ■ • It is a high tribute to Napoleon's 'genius that at the end of nearly a century^ we are still too close to him to judge his life dispassionately. To some Napoleon is a scourge like Attila, to others a refining fire^ to some a monster, , blood-dyed and inhumanly selfish, to others a hero fit for apotheosis. Among the many facets of his character , there is one on which the physiologist will ' love ,to gaze, ,and that is his strenuous but healthy activity m his prime. With the ethical failings of Napoleon, this paper does not deal. Man is, after all, an animal, and Napoleon was A MAGNIFICENT. SPECIMEN. The influence of the East had spread asceticism and self-centred introspection over Western Europe for many centuries after Rome had fallen. With the dawn of the nineteenth century came an unheard-of thirst for knowledge, and later on an un-hcard-of thirst for action. It was m this latter that Napoleon was the pioneer of the present, linking our activities with the great activities of the past. He; was the first man 6i our modern world to know the value of time/, ■he^nvas the first to preach and practice the doctrine of efficiency. If he promulgated any gospel it was surely that contained m three simple words in' a letter to Masseno, "Actiyite, aetivite, Vitesse." has had occasion previously to make insulting remarks about the crooked capers of a cantankerous cop named Tanner, or Sixpence, or Sprat, or TizzLe, or whatever Ms name is, and who hangs out at Pahiatua. This Gd regards himself m the light of an omnipotent being m the town where 'Enery 'Awkins was defeated for Parliament, and if anybody opens his mouth, to ,'h-i.m the offender is run m for insulting behavior or something. On a recent Saturday night, as the pubs were closing, this sixpennorth of coppers interrupted the conversation of three pedestrians, and knocked one of them (a horse-breaker) down. One of the victim's friends protested, and received a blow on the thinker that made him feel rocky. The horso-educat'or was ! later charged with "threatening be- ! havior," and parted up 27s to the ; exchequer. Is this brutal bobby, who | is only- half a cleaner, to continue his reign of terror m Pahiatua, or is he to bo dismissed from the force for threatening behavior to the public ? '