Page:The Commentaries of Caesar.djvu/17

 ble; and in all that he attempted he succeeded. His is the name that culminates among those of the men who made the United States a nation, and does so by the eager consent of all its people. And his work came altogether from patriotism,—with no alloy of personal ambition. But it cannot be said that the things he did were great as those which were done by Cæsar, or that he himself was as potent in the doing of them. He ventured everything with as grand a purpose as ever warmed the heart of man, and he was successful; but the things which he did were in themselves small in comparison with those effected by his less noble rival for fame. Mommsen, the German historian, describes Cæsar as a man too great for the scope of his intelligence and power of delineation. "The historian," he says, speaking of Cæsar, "when once in a thousand years he encounters the perfect, can only be silent regarding it." Napoleon also, in his life of Cæsar, paints his hero as perfect; but Napoleon when doing so is, in fact, claiming godlike perfection for that second Cæsar, his uncle. And the perfection which he claims is not that of which Mommsen speaks. The German intends to convey to us his conviction that Cæsar was perfect in human capacity and intelligence. Napoleon claims for him moral perfection. "We may be convinced," says the Emperor, "by the above facts, that during his first consulate, one only motive animated Cæsar,—namely, the public interest." We cannot, however, quite take the facts as the Emperor of the French gives them to us, nor can we share his conviction; but the common consent