HISTORIC DOUBTS RELATIVE TO

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

LONG as the public attention has been occupied by the extraordinary personage from whose ambition. we are supposed to have so narrowly escaped, the subject seems to have lost scarcely anything of its interest. We are still occupied in recounting the exploits, discussing the character, inquiring into the present situation, and even conjecturing as to the future prospects of Napoleon Buonaparte.

Nor is this at all to be wondered at, if we consider the very extraordinary nature of those exploits and of that character, their greatness and extensive importance, as well as the unexampled strangeness of the events, and also that strong additional stimulant, the mysterious uncertainty that hangs over the character of the man. If it be doubtful whether any history (exclusive of such as is avowedly fabulous) ever attributed to its hero such a series of wonderful achievements compressed into so small a space of

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time, it is certain that to no one were ever assigned so many dissimilar characters. It is true indeed that party prejudices have drawn a favourable and an unfavourable portrait of almost every eminent man; but, amidst all the diversities of colouring, something of the same general outline is always distinguishable, and even the virtues in the one. description bear some resemblance to the vices of another; rashness, for instance, will be called courage, or courage rashness; heroic firmness and obstinate pride will correspond in the two opposite descriptions, and in some leading features both will agree. Neither the friends nor the enemies of Philip of Macedon or of Julius Cæsar ever questioned their courage or their military skill. Buonaparte, however, it has been otherwise. This obscure Corsican adventurer-a man, according to some, of extraordinary talents and courage; according to others, of very moderate abilities and a rank coward advanced rapidly in the French army, obtained a high command, gained a series of important victories, and, elated by success, embarked in an expedition against Egypt, which was planned and conducted, according to some, with the most consummate skill, according to others, with the utmost wildness and folly. He was unsuccessful, however; and, leaving the Army of Egypt in a very distressed situation, he returned to France, and found the nation, or at least the army, so favourably disposed

towards him, that he was enabled, with the utmost ease, to overthrow the existing Government, and obtain for himself the supreme power; at first under the modest appellation of Consul, but afterwards with the more sounding title of Emperor. While in possession of this power, he overthrew the most. powerful coalitions of the other European States against him, and, though driven from the sea by the British fleets, overran nearly the whole Continent, triumphant. Finishing a war, not unfrequently, in a single campaign, he entered the capitals of most of the hostile potentates, deposed and created kings at his pleasure, and appeared the virtual sovereign of the chief part of the Continent, from the frontiers of Spain to those of Russia. Even those countries we find him invading with prodigious armies, defeating their forces, penetrating to their capitals, and threatening their total subjugation; but at Moscow his progress is stopped: a winter of unusual severity, co-operating with the efforts of the Russians, totally destroys his enormous host; and the German sovereigns throw off the yoke, and combine to oppose him. He raises another vast army, which is also ruined at Leipsic; and again another, with which, like a second Antæus, he for some time maintains himself in France, but is finally defeated, deposed, and banished to the island of Elba, of which the sovereignty is conferred on him. Thence he returns, in about nine months, at the head of six

hundred men, to attempt the deposition of King Louis, who had been peaceably recalled. The French nation declare in his favour, and he is reinstated without a struggle. He raises another great army to oppose the Allied Powers, which is totally defeated at Waterloo; he is a second time deposed, surrenders to the British, and is placed in confinement at the island of St. Helena. Such is the outline of the eventful history presented to us; in the detail of which, however, there is almost every conceivable variety of statement, while the motives and conduct of the chief actor are involved in still greater doubt, and the subject of still more eager controversy.

In the midst of these controversies, the preliminary question, concerning the existence of this extraordinary personage, seems never to have occurred to any one as a matter of doubt; and to show even the smallest hesitation in admitting it would probably be regarded as an excess of scepticism, on the ground that this point has always been taken for granted by the disputants on all sides, being indeed implied by the very nature of their disputes. But is it in fact found that undisputed points are always such as have been the most carefully examined as to the evidence on which they rest? that facts or principles which are taken for granted without controversy, as the common basis of opposite opinions, are always themselves established on sufficient grounds? On the contrary, is not any such funda

mental point, from the very circumstance of its being taken for granted at once, and the attention drawn off to some other question, likely to be admitted on insufficient evidence, and the flaws in that evidence overlooked? Experience will teach us that such instances often occur witness the well-known anecdote of the Royal Society, to whom King Charles II. proposed as a question, whence it is that a vessel of water receives no addition of weight from a live fish being put into it, though it does if the fish be dead. Various solutions of great ingenuity were proposed, discussed, objected to, and defended; nor was it till they had been long bewildered in the inquiry that it occurred to them to try the experiment; by which they at once ascertained, that the phenomenon which they were striving to account for-which was the acknowledged basis and substratum, as it were, of their debateshad no existence but in the invention of the witty monarch.

Another instance of the same kind is so very remarkable that I cannot forbear inentioning it. It was objected to the system of Copernicus when first brought forward, that if the earth turned on its axis, as he represented, a stone dropped from the summit of a tower would not fall at the foot of it, but at a great distance to the west; in the same manner as a stone dropped from the masthead of a ship in full sail, does not fall at the foot of the mast,