uences and permanent results, this appears to be true; and yet
it was only one of many sides. Next in importance, if not equal to it,
was his activity in politics and diplomacy. It is easy to call names,
to stigmatize the peoples of Italy, all the nations even of western
Europe, as corrupt and enervated, to laugh at their politics as
antiquated, and to brand their rulers as incapable fools. An ordinary
man can, by the assistance of the knowledge, education, and insight
acquired by the experience of his race through an additional century,
turn and show how commonplace was the person who toppled over such an
old rotten structure. This is the method of Napoleon's detractors,
except when, in addition, they first magnify his wickedness, and then
further distort the proportion by viewing his fine powers through the
other end of the glass. We all know how easy great things are when
once they have been accomplished, how simple the key to a mystery when
once it has been revealed. Morally considered, Bonaparte was a child
of nature, born to a mean estate, buffeted by a cruel and remorseless
society, driven in youth to every shift for self-preservation,
compelled to fight an unregenerate world with its own weapons. He had
not been changed in the flash of a gun. Elevation to reputation and
power did not diminish the duplicity of his character; on the
contrary, it possibly intensified it. Certainly the fierce light which
began to beat upon him brought it into greater prominence. Truth,
honor, unselfishness are theoretically the virtues of all philosophy;
practically they are the virtues of Christian men in Christian
society. Where should the scion of a Corsican stock, ignorant of moral
or religious sentiment, thrown into the atmosphere and surroundings of
the French Revolution, learn to practise them?

Such considerations are indispensable in the observation of
Bonaparte's progress as a politician. His first settlement with the
various peoples of central Italy was, as he had declared, only
provisional. The uncertain status created by it was momentarily not
unwelcome to the Directory. Their policy was to destroy existing
institutions, and leave order to evolve itself from the chaos as best
it could. Doctrinaires as they were, they meant to destroy absolute
monarchy in Italy, as everywhere else, if possible, and then to stop,
leaving the liberated peoples to their own devices. Some fondly
believed that out of anarchy would arise, in a