Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/307

Rh period, here is an extract worth giving it is Napoleon's comment on a proclamation to the Corsicans which had been written by his brother Lucien:

"I have read your proclamation; it is worth nothing. It contains too many words and too few ideas. You run after pathos; that is not the way to speak to nations."

Here already we see the final philosophy of Napoleon. His view of human nature is low; self-interest is the one guiding motive―unchecked, uncrossed, unmixed by other and higher impulses; the people, when they attack constituted authorities, are rabble to be shot down, and the one art of government is to rule men through their base passions. After all, the sternest critic of Napoleon is himself; the portrait he draws with his own hand, is very like that of M. Taine. M. Levy―if he wanted to make his hero a saint―should have omitted his hero's own letters.

was restored to his rank, and then he rushed back home again―still filled by that strong sense of family obligation which may be distinctively Corsican―as it is distinctively Irish―and making sacrifices at this period, as throughout his life, for his relatives, which, as I have said