tory is more lively, and takes
different views. Carlyle's work is extremely able, but the
most difficult to read of all his works, in consequence of
his affected and abominable style. Lamartine's History of
the Girondists is sentimental, but pleasing and instructive.
Mignet's History is also a standard. Lacretelle's Histoire
de France, and the Memoirs of Mirabeau, Necker, and
Robespierre should be read. Carlyle's Essays on Mirabeau and
Danton are extremely able. Burke's Reflections should be
read by all who wish to have the most vivid conception of
the horrors of the awful event which he deprecated. The
Annual Register should be consulted. For a general list of
authors who have written on this period, see Alison's index
of writers, prefixed to his great work, but which are too
numerous to be mentioned here.

CHAPTER XXXI.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

[Sidenote: Napoleon Bonaparte.]

Mr. Alison has found it necessary to devote ten large octavo volumes
to the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte; nor can the varied events
connected with his brilliant career be satisfactorily described in
fewer volumes. The limits of this work will not, however, permit a
notice extending beyond a few pages. Who, then, even among those for
whom this History is especially designed, will be satisfied with our
brief review? But only a brief allusion to very great events can be
made; for it is preposterous to attempt to condense the life of the
greatest actor on the stage of real tragedy in a single chapter. And
yet there is a uniformity in nearly all of the scenes in which he
appears. The history of war is ever the same--the exhibition of
excited passions, of restless ambition, of dazzling spectacles of
strife, pomp, and glory. Pillage, oppression, misery, crime, despair,
ruin, and death--such are the evils necessarily attendant on all war,
even glorious war, when men fight for their homes, for their altars,
or for great ideas. The details of war are exciting, but painful. We
are most powerfully reminded of our degeneracy, of our misfortunes, of
the Great Destroyer. The "Angel Death" appears before us, in grim
terrors, punishing men for crimes. But while war is so awful, and
attended with all the evils of which we can conceive, or which it is
the doom of man to suffer, yet warriors are not necessarily the
enemies of mankind. They are the instruments of the Almighty to