voice and dramatic power lent every addition.

I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern
society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses,
manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was
the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver,
the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors
and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich
and aristocratic did not like him. England, the center of capital, and
Rome and Austria, centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. The
consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the
foolish old men and old women of the Roman conclave,--who in their
despair took hold of anything, and would cling to red-hot iron,--the
vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of
Austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active
men, everywhere, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle
class, make his history bright and commanding. He had the virtues of
the masses of his constituents; he had also their vices. I am sorry
that the brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal
quality which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is
treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the
sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in
the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant
career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means.

Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. The
highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population
of the world,--he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. He
is unjust to his generals; egotistic, and monopolizing; meanly stealing
the credit of their great actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte;