third of the
whole, is very able. Its defect consists in the leniency of its
judgment on that gigantic public criminal. Napoleon was a grand
example of a great man, who demonstrated, on a wide theatre of action,
what can be done in this world by a colossal intellect and an iron
will without any moral sense. In his disregard of humanity, and his
reliance on falsehood and force, he was the architect at once of his
fortune and his ruin. No man can be greatly and wisely politic who is
incapable of grasping those universal sentiments which underlie all
superficial selfishness in mankind, and of discerning the action of
the moral laws of the universe. Without this, events cannot be read in
their principles. The only defect in Napoleon's mind was a lack of
moral insight, the quality of perceiving the moral character and
relations of objects, and, wanting this, he must necessarily have been
in the long run unsuccessful. It is curious that of all the great men
which the Revolution called forth, Lafayette was almost the only one
who never violated his conscience, and the only one who came out well
in the end. Intellectually he was below a hundred of his
contemporaries, but his instinctive sense of right pushed him blindly
in the right direction, when all the sagacity and insight of the
masters in intrigue and comprehensive falsehood signally failed.

_Romance of the History of Louisiana. A Series of
Lectures. By Charles Gayarre. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

The romantic element in historical events is that which takes the
strongest hold upon the imagination and sensibility; and it puts a
certain degree of life into the fleshless forms of even the
commonplace historian. The incidents of a nation's annals cannot be
narrated in a style sufficiently dry and prosaic to prevent the soul
of poetry from finding some expression, however short of the truth. It
seems to us that there is much error in the common notions regarding
matters of fact. Starting from the unquestionable axiom that
historians should deal with facts and principles, not with fictions
and sentimentalities, most people have illogically concluded that
those histories are the worthiest of belief which address the
understanding alone, and studiously avoid all the arts of
representation. Now this is false in two respects--such histories not
only giving imperfect and partial views of facts, but disabling the
memory from retaining even them.