imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability,
wonderfully encourages and liberates us. This capacious head, revolving
and disposing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating such
multitudes of agents; this eye, which looked through Europe; this
prompt invention; this inexhaustible resource;--what events! what
romantic pictures! what strange situations!--when spying the Alps, by
a sunset in the Sicilian sea; drawing up his army for battle, in sight
of the Pyramids, and saying to his troops, "From the tops of those
pyramids, forty centuries look down on you;" fording the Red Sea;
wading in the gulf of the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais,
gigantic projects agitated him. "Had Acre fallen, I should have changed
the face of the world." His army, on the night of the battle of
Austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his inauguration as Emperor,
presented him with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the fight.
Perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure he took in making these
contrasts glaring; as when he pleased himself with making kings wait
in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, and at Erfurt.

We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of
men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready
actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be
accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in
less degrees; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage,
and thoroughness. "The Austrians," he said, "do not know the value of
time." I should cite him, in his earlier years, as a model of prudence.
His power does not consist in any wild or extravagant force; in any
enthusiasm, like Mahomet's; or singular power of persuasion; but in
the exercise of common sense on each emergency, instead of abiding by
rules and customs. The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always
teaches,--that there is always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly