ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
(From gems in the Florentine Museum.)
Look at Julius Cæsar on the other hand. Under similar circumstances, what was his ambition? To make himself imperial master of Rome, and to subject his fellow-citizens for his own personal aggrandizement. His thoughts never extended beyond his own immediate existence. Posterity never entered into his calculations. Unlike his successor Augustus—though he had greater facilities if he had been less sensually ambitious—he patronised no art—literary or scientific. His one idea was self, without one refinement or softening alloy. Granted that Alexander’s ambition was also selfish, there was yet this difference between them; the one (Cæsar) sought only his present personal and sensuous profit; the other (Alexander) laboured to earn “a name on History’s page to make him ‘Great.’” The one was the common prose, the other the epic poem. The one sacrificed his fame to himself, the other himself to his fame; and the world has recognized and recorded this distinction: for while the one is remembered as “the enslaver of his country,” the other is immortalized as “the Great.”
A similar contrast may be drawn between the characters and noses of the two modern heroes, Napoleon and Wellington. Like Alexander and Cæsar, the only point in which their characters assimilate is their warrior, physical energy; and this exhibits itself in whatever is Roman in their Noses. In all other respects they are diametrically opposite; the Nose of Wellington being purely (almost in excess) Roman; while Napoleon’s partakes largely of the refining qualities of the Greek.
To describe the character of Napoleon would be to repeat what we have said of Alexander; for whether the similarity was accidental, or arose from mental conformity (their Noses were remarkably alike), or was intentionally imitative on the part of the former,[[20]] it is certainly most striking.
Ambition of future fame was far more the ruling passion of Napoleon than lust of present power. His mind, with all its imperfections and meannesses (as whose is without?), was too noble to be satisfied with mere personal aggrandizement.
All the great mistakes of his life were occasioned by his obedience to the passion for future fame. When swayed by the mere desire of power, all his acts were successful. But when he saw all Europe (except one little pugnacious island) lying helpless at his feet, he began to revolve schemes which could not enhance, but might risk, his personal power. Then he attempted to realize his long-cherished dream of Eastern conquest—a conquest not to be held, but to be overrun; a conquest like that of Alexander, Nadir Shah, or Zinghis Khan. Often did he exclaim, “the seat of all fame is the east.” To realize this empty fame, he took the false step of invading Egypt. Foiled there, he still hoped to penetrate Asia by land, and gathered all his strength to overwhelm Russia, his last and greatest error. They greatly err who think these were mere schemes to keep France embroiled, lest peace should annihilate his power. They equally err who ridicule and attribute to a childish vanity his ambition to link himself by marriage with the imperial families of Europe. It was no childish vanity, but a politic endeavour to found a dynasty, which should hand down his name as its founder to the latest ages. They again who can see nothing better in the melancholy spectacle of Napoleon at St. Helena, engaged in falsifying records and altering figures to deceive the world, than a drivelling vanity, utterly miscomprehend the man. Fame, fame to the utmost limits of human duration, was to his last moment his highest ambition. Foiled in everything else, he yet hoped to secure fame. He knew that under his name the most eventful page in the History of Europe, since the fall of Rome, must be written, and he naturally desired
“To be among the worthies of renown,
And so sit fair with fame, with glory bright.”
DANIEL.