II NAPOLEON AND PERICLES
Reading edition
Two powerful nations have been vitally affected by natural calamities. The former of these calamities was inevitable by human prudence, and uncontrollable by human skill; the latter was to be foreseen at any distance by the most ignorant, and to be avoided by the most unwary. I mean in the first the Plague of the Athenians; in the second the starvation of the French. The first happened under the administration of a man transcendently brave; a man cautious, temperate, eloquent, prompt, sagacious, above all that ever guided the councils and animated the energies of a state; the second under a soldier of fortune, expert and enthusiastic; but often deficient in moral courage, not seldom in personal; rude, insolent, rash, rapacious; valuing but one human life among the myriads at his disposal, and that one far from the worthiest, in the estimation of an honester and a saner mind.
It is with reluctant shame I enter on a comparison of such a person and Pericles. On one hand we behold the richest cultivation of the most varied and extensive genius; the confidence of courage, the sedateness of wisdom, the stateliness of integrity; on the other, coarse manners, rude language, violent passions continually exploding, a bottomless void on the side of truth, and a rueful waste on that of common honesty.... So many pernicious faults were not committed by Xerxes or Darius, whom ancient historians call feeble princes, as were committed by Napoleon, whom the modern do not call feeble, because he felt nothing for others, coerced pertinaciously, promised rashly, gave indiscriminately, looked tranquilly, and spoke mysteriously. Even in his flight, signalized by nothing but despondency, Segur, his panegyrist, hath clearly shown that, had he retained any presence of mind, any sympathy, or any shame, he might have checked and crippled his adversary. One glory he shares with Trajan and with Pericles, and neither time nor malice can diminish it. He raised up and rewarded all kinds of merit, even in those arts to which he was a stranger. In this indeed he is more remarkable, perhaps more admirable, than Pericles himself, for Pericles was a stranger to none of them.