_Napoleon and the Marshals of the Empire. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 2 vols. 12mo._
The present work is to some extent an attempt "to head" Mr. Headley. For our part, we profess to have as much patience as any of the descendants of Job, but we must acknowledge that we have broken down in every effort to master the merits of the quarrel between the publishers of the present volumes and the Author of Napoleon and his Marshals. Accordingly we can give no opinion on that matter. In respect to the value of the volumes under consideration, as compared with a similar work by Mr. Headley, there can be little hesitation of judgment. It is idle to say, as some have said, that a work which has run through fifteen editions, as Mr. Headley's has done, is a mere humbug. On the contrary, it is a book evincing a mind as shrewd as it is strong, aiming, it is true, rather at popularity than excellence, but obtaining the former by possessing the sagacity to perceive that accounts of battles, to be generally apprehended, must be addressed to the eye and blood rather than to the understanding; and this power of producing vivid pictures of events Mr. Headley has in large measure. Hence the success of his book, in spite of its exaggerations of statement, sentiment and language.
The present work evinces a merit of another kind. It is a keen, accurate, well-written production, devoid of all tumult in its style and all exaggeration in its matter, and giving close and consistent expositions of the characters, and a clear narrative of the lives, of Napoleon and his Marshals. It is evidently the work of a person who understands military operations, and conveys a large amount of knowledge which we have seen in no other single production on the subject of the wars springing out of the French Revolution. The portraits of fifteen of the marshals, in military costume, are very well executed.
The portion of the work devoted to Napoleon, about one third of the whole, is very able. Its defect consists in the leniency of its judgment on that gigantic public criminal. Napoleon was a grand example of a great man, who demonstrated, on a wide theatre of action, what can be done in this world by a colossal intellect and an iron will without any moral sense. In his disregard of humanity, and his reliance on falsehood and force, he was the architect at once of his fortune and his ruin. No man can be greatly and wisely politic who is incapable of grasping those universal sentiments which underlie all superficial selfishness in mankind, and of discerning the action of the moral laws of the universe. Without this, events cannot be read in their principles. The only defect in Napoleon's mind was a lack of moral insight, the quality of perceiving the moral character and relations of objects, and, wanting this, he must necessarily have been in the long run unsuccessful. It is curious that of all the great men which the Revolution called forth, Lafayette was almost the only one who never violated his conscience, and the only one who came out well in the end. Intellectually he was below a hundred of his contemporaries, but his instinctive sense of right pushed him blindly in the right direction, when all the sagacity and insight of the masters in intrigue and comprehensive falsehood signally failed.