The lion got away. Then came an instantaneous upheaval of old revolutionary France, which had now become imperial France. The Emperor was welcomed home as a returning god. The country was drained to the last drop of its resources, and everything was staked on the final strategy of the Hundred Days and the hazard of the ever-memorable battle.

“There was a sound of revelry by night,”

and then the imperial eagle was seen stretched upon the plain, pierced through with the shafts of banded nations. He was caged and transported to that far rock which in his school-essay at Autun he had described thus: “St. Helena is a small island!” He found it so. For nearly six years his captivity continued until his stormy career ended in a May hurricane that might well have shaken the desolate foundations of his ocean-girt prison. Then the historical tide rolled on without him. France was transformed into the old image, but her soul was still imperial. At last the bones of her great dead were recovered, to be placed at rest in that red-black sarcophagus over which the world looks down and wonders.

Such is the fiery but fruitful chaos through which the life-line of Napoleon is drawn with a master hand by Professor William Milligan Sloane. My judgment is that, on the whole, he has produced the greatest biographical work which has yet appeared in American literature. I think that in the main his accomplishment has been equal to his ambition. It is not an unworthy thing that an American professor, at the seat of an American university, turning his energies to this great task, has succeeded in making a well-nigh final record of the life and work of that unequalled organizer, that sublime dissembler, that cruel reformer, that heartless philanthropist, who, for half a lifetime, converted old Europe into a mire of murder and desolation, for the ultimate good of man.

Only one thing may be said in adverse criticism of Professor Sloane’s book, and that is, that his style is too mathematical and too little imaginative for the subject which he has in hand. His rather cold precision, however, we concede to him; for it is, no doubt, the natural method of his expression. We do our part to acknowledge and welcome the remarkable work which he has produced, and to commend it to all readers as the best existing and best probable account of the personal and historical career of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Footnotes

  1. It will be recollected that Macaulay has pictured a New Zealander of some future day as sitting upon a broken arch of London Bridge, contemplating the ruins of St. Paul’s cathedral; and readers of the classics may recall the forecast of Seneca in the time of Nero, as to the discovery of a Western continent by which Rome should be dwarfed: “In later ages the time shall come when the ocean shall loosen the chains which bind us, a mighty continent shall be disclosed, and a deity shall unveil a new world beyond Britannia.” [Return to text]
  2. Those who have followed the course of events in Japan since the beginning of the new era will remember that upon the return of Prince Iwakura, in 1873, from his around-the-world embassy, Mr. Yeto had to withdraw from the cabinet, owing to a difference of opinion between him and the Prince with regard to the Corean problem then pending. Returning to his native province, Saga, he tried to raise troops against the government (to carry out, of course, his own convictions in regard to the Corean problem), resulting in the famous “Saga rebellion” of 1873. Defeated by the government troops, he betook himself to the interior of the country in disguise, was arrested, found guilty of treason, and executed according to law. It is a familiar saying in Japan that Mr. Yeto died a criminal at the hand of his own Penal Code. [Return to text]
  3. I make mention of these two gentlemen as representative of two classes of a fairly large number of Japanese lawyers, viz., those who have been educated in the United States, and those who have received their education in England. Mr. Hatoyama is a D. C. L. of Yale. For nearly ten years (1880-1889) he was a professor of law in the University of Tokio Law School, and during most of this time he was also Dean of the school. Mr. Hoshi is a barrister-at-law of one of the English Inns of Court. For many years he was regarded as the leader of the Japanese bar. Like many distinguished members of the English bar, he is more of a lawyer than of a jurist. [Return to text]
  4. I refer to Professors Hodzumi, Tomii, and Ume. Prof. Hodzumi is a barrister-at-law of the Middle Temple, and is one of the ablest representatives of English law in Japan. Prof. Tomii is a Docteur en Droit of the Facility of Lyons, and is by far the ablest expounder of the French codes in Japan. Prof. Ume, though a bearer of the same degree from the same Faculty as Prof. Tomii, has attended several German universities, and is more of the German school than of the French. The Commission itself consisted of several other distinguished personages, with the Prime Minister at the head. But these three professors composed what was called the “Compilation Committee,” so that practically they were the Commission. [Return to text]
  5. Prof. Ume, a member of the Commission, is responsible for these statements so far as they relate to the codes and laws consulted. The classifications, however, are my own. [Return to text]
  6. This may be a mere conjecture on my own part. It is possible that the Commissioners never consulted his book, though to assert such a thing of them would be an insult to their scholarship. Be it as it may, it is a fact beyond question that their arrangement of these topics presents a remarkable coincidence to that of Prof. Holland’s, and this is a matter upon which every thoughtful Japanese may well pride himself. [Return to text]
  7. Defined in the Standard Dictionary as follows: “The science that treats of citizenship and of the relations between citizens and the government: a new word directly derived from the adjective civic, introduced by Henry Randall Waite.” [Return to text]
  8. “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.” By Willian Milligan Sloane, Ph. D., L. H. D.; Professor of History in Princeton University. Four volumes, imperial octavo; pp. 1120. New York: The Century Company. Boston: Balch Brothers, 1896. [Return to text]

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