Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ought always to be ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance it is capable of making." He never economized his ammunition, but on a hostile position rained a torrent of iron, shells, balls, grape-shot, to annihilate1 all defense. He went to the edge of his possibility, so heartily was he bent on his object. It is plain that in Italy he did what he could, and all that he could; he came several times within an inch of ruin, and his own person was all but lost. He was flung into the marsh at Arcola. The Austrians were between him and his troops in the confusion of the struggle, and he was brought off with desperate efforts. At Lonato and at other places he was on the point of being taken prisoner.

He fought sixty battles. He had never enough. Each victory was a new weapon. "My power would fall, were I not to support it by new achievements. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest must maintain 1 me.” He felt, with every wise man, that as much life is needed for conservation as for creation. We are always in peril, always in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved by invention and courage. This vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his intrenchments. His very attack was never the inspiration of courage, but the result of calculation.1 His idea of the best defense consisted in being always the attacking party. "My ambition," he says, was great, but was of a cold nature." Everything depended on the nicety of his combinations: the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. His personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. "At Montebello I ordered Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse; and with these he separated the six thousand Hungarian grenadiers before the very eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and I have observed it is always these quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle."

66

1 Derivation?

Before he fought a battle Bonaparte thought little about what he should do in case of success, but a great deal about what he should do in case of a reverse of fortune. The same prudence and good sense marked all his behavior. His instructions to his secretary at the palace are worth remembering: "During the night, enter my chamber as seldom as possible. Do not awake me when you have any good news to communicate; with that there is no hurry: but when you bring bad news, rouse .me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost." His achievement of business was immense, and enlarges the known powers of man. There have been many working kings, from Ulysses to William of Orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of this man's performance.

To these gifts of nature Napoleon added the advantage of having been born to a private and humble fortune. In his later days he had the weakness of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the prescription of aristocracy; but he knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret of his contempt for the born kings, and for "the hereditary donkeys," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. He said that, in their exile, "they had learned nothing, and forgot nothing." Bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of military service; but, also, was citizen before he was emperor, and so had the key to citizenship. His remarks and estimates discovered the information and justness of measurement of the middle class.

Those who had to deal with him found that he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher as well as another man. When the expenses of the empress, of his household, of his palaces, had accummulated 2 great debts, Napoleon examined the bills of the creditors himself, detected overcharges and errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums. His grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, he owed to the representative character which clothed him. He interests us as he stands for France and for Europe; and he exists as captain and

1 prescription, here used in the legal sense of "immemorial sanction" 2 from Lat. cumulus, a heap

king only as far as the Revolution or the interests of the industrious masses found an organ and a leader in him.

In the social interests he knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on that side. The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He filled his troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and himself. They performed under his eye that which no others could do. The best document1 of his relation to his troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon promises the troops that he will keep his person out of reach of fire. This declaration, which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion of the army to their leader.

GOOD-BY, PROUD WORLD!

GOOD-BY, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I am not thine:
Too long through weary crowds I roam,
A river ark on the ocean brine,

Too long I am tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good by to Flattery's fawning face ;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace:
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street,
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,
To those who go, and those who come,
Good by, proud world, I'm going home.

1 document = official evidence

I go to seek my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone;
A secret lodge in a pleasant land,

Whose groves the frolic fairies planned,
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,1
1

And evil men have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

THE SEA

BEHOLD the Sea,

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July:
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men ;
Creating a sweet climate by thy breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,3
And, in thy mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.

Rich are the sea-gods: - who gives gifts but they?

1 lit. "a little round;" i. e. a song whose burden is repeated

2 an allusion to Exodus iii. 2-5

3 Compare "Balm of hurt minds."— Macbeth, ii. 2.

They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls :
They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,1

Wealth to the cunning artist who can work

This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves !

A load your Atlas shoulders can not lift!

CONCORD FIGHT2

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone,

That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

1 a skilful craftsman of Grecian mythology

2 This hymn was composed for the occasion of the unveiling of a monu ment to commemorate the fight at Concord, April 19, 1775

« AnteriorContinuar »