ancy was fascinated. The whole flimsy
furniture in the chambers of the general mind vanished. New emotions,
new purposes, new sanctions appeared in its stead. There was a sad
lack of ethical definitions, an over-zealous iconoclasm as to
religion, but there were many high conceptions of regenerating
society, of liberty, of brotherhood, of equality. The influence of
this movement was literally ubiquitous; it was felt wherever men read
or thought or talked, and were connected, however remotely, with the
great central movement of civilization.

No land and no family could to all outward appearance be further aside
from the main channel of European history in the eighteenth century
than the island of Corsica and an obscure family by the name of
Buonaparte which had dwelt there since the beginning of the eighteenth
century. Yet that isolated land and that unknown family were not
merely to be drawn into the movement, they were to illustrate its most
characteristic phases. Rousseau, though mistakenly, forecast a great
destiny for Corsica, declaring in his letters on Poland that it was
the only European land capable of movement, of law-making, of peaceful
renovation. It was small and remote, but it came near to being an
actual exemplification of his favorite and fundamental dogma
concerning man in a state of nature, of order as arising from
conflict, of government as resting on general consent and mutual
agreement among the governed. Toward Corsica, therefore, the eyes of
all Europe had long been directed. There, more than elsewhere, the
setting of the world-drama seemed complete in miniature, and, in the
closing quarter of the eighteenth century, the action was rapidly
unfolding a plot of universal interest.

A lofty mountain-ridge divides the island into eastern and western
districts. The former is gentler in its slopes, and more fertile.
Looking, as it does, toward Italy, it was during the middle ages
closely bound in intercourse with that peninsula; richer in its
resources than the other part, it was more open to outside influences,
and for this reason freer in its institutions. The rugged western
division had come more completely under the yoke of feudalism, having
close affinity in sympathy, and some relation in blood, with the
Greek, Roman, Saracenic, and Teutonic race-elements in France and
Spain. The communal administration of the eastern slope, however,
prevailed eventually in the western as well, and the differences