Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/575

 Roscbcry : Napoleon, Tlic Last Phase 565 period of history is so systematically judged by the light of another. To Mr. Roosevelt, recent progress may be summed up in the two phrases re- ligious and political liberty, and he looks at every event of the seven- teenth century through these spectacles. The result is a distinct curi- osity in historical literature. Externally, the book is a handsome vol- ume, uniform in binding with the author's Rough Riders. It has numer- ous illustrations, for the most part interesting and well chosen, though the propriety of including fanciful battle-scenes by a modern illustrator may well be questioned. Guernsey Jones. NapolcLvi : The Last Phase. By Lord Roseberv. (New York: Harper and Brothers. 1901. Pp. 284.) To read a book by an Englishman which treats without prejudice the dims Hannibal of Great Britain yields one a novel pleasure. After Waterloo, Napoleon's life presents little which interests the student of his greater deeds ; for except to check off historical misstatements, the sifting of the years in St. Helena is barren. Yet Lord Rosebery has made a readable volume by his discrimination in awarding praise and blame. Except for short digressions on the great Corsican's loss of bal- ance by superhuman successes, on his "supreme regrets," and on the es- timate of man, ruler and captain, Lord Rosebery confines himself to a marshalling of evidence, and a description of the dramatis per sotiae. He handles Sir Hudson Lowe, that "unfit representative of Britain," with- out gloves. Living in the only good residence on the island, with a salary of ^12,000 a year, "hapless and distracted Lowe" was a child- ish, petty tyrant of the great prisoner in his charge, for the maintenance of whose entourage of fifty-one people in a collection of huts which had been constructed as a cattle-shed, a paltry ^8,000 was awarded — though later this pittance was increased. "There are few names in history so unfortunate as Lowe's." His absence of gentlemanly instincts and his quarrelsomeness made a difficult situation intolerable, and covered him with ridicule worse than ignominy. Of Napoleon's suite each member is fairly characterized : sympathetic Grand Marshal Bertrand and his lovely wife ; the voluminous, Boswellian, but mysterious and unreliable Las Cases ; suave Montholon, the blind de- votee ; mendacious Antomarchi, the physician, and O'Meara, M.D., of the long and worthless book ; that "fretful porcupine " Gourgaud, whose impertinences, because of his devotion. Napoleon so patiently over- looked, and who in his lachrymose diary has unwittingly given us a pic- ture of the Emperor in his last years "almost brutal in its raw realism." What has been written of this period also comes in for criticism : War- den's literary inventiveness, the fabrications of Santini, the so-called Letters from the Cape, Lady Malcolm's Conversations from Napoleon and others. Scott's estimate of the great man is weighed and found wanting. If only for its culling-out of historical myths and lies, the book would have a distinct value.