able, on the score of another
vice, viz., ingratitude. Napoleon not only never forgot a favor, but,
unlike most ambitious characters, never allowed subsequent injuries to
cancel his recollection of services. He was uniformly indulgent to the
faults of those whom he had once distinguished. He saw them, he
sometimes exposed and rectified, but he never punished or revenged them.
Many have blamed him for this on the score of policy; but if it was not
sense and calculation, it should be ascribed to good-nature. None, I
presume, will impute it to weakness or want of discernment."

This account of Napoleon's ideas on religion is curious, and we think
new.

"Whatever were the religious sentiments of this extraordinary man, such
companions were likely neither to fix nor to shake, to sway nor to alter
them. I have been at some pains to ascertain the little that can be
known of his thoughts on such subjects, and, though it is not very
satisfactory, it appears to me worth recording.

"In the early periods of the Revolution, he, in common with many of his
countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both
in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his
subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he
professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in
fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and
yet more in private and sober discussion, he not only gravely disclaimed
and reproved infidelity, but both by actions and words implied his
conviction that a conversion to religious enthusiasm might befal
himself, or any other man. He had more than tolerance--he had indulgence
and respect for extravagant and ascetic notions of religious duty. He
grounded that feeling not on their soundness or their truth, but on the
uncertainty of what our minds may be reserved for, on the possibility of
our being prevailed upon to admit and even to devote ourselves to tenets
which at first excite our derision. It has been observed that there was
a tincture of Italian superstition in his character; a sort of
conviction from reason that the doctrines of revelation were not true,
and yet a persuasion, or at least an apprehension, that he might live to
think them so. He was satisfied that the seeds of belief were deeply
sown in the human heart. It was on that principle that he permitted and
justified, though he did not dare to authorize, the revival of La Tr