ed
amidst the competition and jealousies of public life.

"When it was reported in Paris that the great Napoleon was dead, I passed
the Palais Royal," says a French writer, "where a public crier called,
'Here's your account of the death of Bonaparte.' This cry which once
would have appalled all Europe fell perfectly flat. I entered," he adds,
"several cafes, and found the same indifference,--coldness everywhere; no
one seemed interested or troubled. This man, who had conquered Europe
and awed the world, had inspired neither the love nor the admiration of
even his own countrymen. He had impressed the world with his
marvelousness, and had inspired astonishment but not love."

Emerson says that Napoleon did all that in him lay to live and thrive
without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal law of
man and of the world, which balked and ruined him; and the result, in a
million attempts of this kind, will be the same. His was an experiment,
under the most favorable conditions, to test the powers of intellect
without conscience. Never elsewhere was such a leader so endowed, and so
weaponed; never has another leader found such aids and followers. And
what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense
armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men,
of this demoralized Europe? He left France smaller, poorer, feebler than
he found her.

A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich
or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make
whether you did what was right or what was wrong?

"The 'Vicar of Wakefield,'" said George William Curtis, "was sold,
through Dr. Johnson's mediation, for sixty pounds; and ten years after,
the author died. With what love do we hang over its pages! What springs
of feeling it has opened! Goldsmith's books are influences and friends
forever, yet the five thousandth copy was never announced, and Oliver
Goldsmith, M. D., often wanted a dinner! Horace Walpole, the coxcomb of
literature, smiled at him contemptuously from his gilded carriage.
Goldsmith struggled cheerfully with his adverse fate, and died. But then
sad mourners, whom he had aided in their affliction, gathered around his
bed, and a lady of distinction, whom he had only dared to admire at a
distance, came and cut a lock of his hair for remembrance. When I see
Goldsmith, thus carrying his heart in his hand like a palm branch,