Note 32 — LETTER VII.

Bourienne’s Memoirs have unfortunately furnished us with fewer materials for forming a judgment on Napoleon’s real character than was expected. Bourienne paints Napoleon as Bourienne, and if the dwarf had run around the feet of the giant for a century, he could never have looked in his eyes. In one thing, however, which was quite ‘à sa portée,’ he was right; namely, that the grand enemy by which Napoleon was overthrown, was the commercial class, so impoliticly driven to extremity; a class now-a-days far more powerful than church or army, and which will yield only to the still stronger power of public opinion, if ever they should come into collision.—Editor.