How, we venture to ask, can so accomplished a scholar
as Mr. Browning have forgotten that biography has to do, not with the "likely," but with the actual ? And how can a "youth" with a "high standard of conduct" be called the " father " of such a " man " as the murderer of the Due d'Enghien and Pichegrn, the executioner of Hofer and Palm, the author of the plot of the Escorial and the " Ambuscade " of Bayonne, the shameless calumniator of the noble Queen Luise of Prussia, the persecutor of Madame de Steel and Madame Recamier, the insulter 'of Lord Whit- worth, Metternich, and "le nomme Stein," the robber of museums, the perpetrator of an endless series of international
* Napoleon: the Past Phase. Some Chapters on the Boyhood and Youth, of Bonaparte' 1709-1793. By Oscar Browning, M.A. London John Lane. PON. 6d. net,3
trampling under foot the prescriptions of law, generosity, and morals with a virulence such as no Sforza or Borgia ever attained P Again, our author's juvenile hero was a paragon of "marvellous wisdom" and " self-command " ; "likely" it may not sound, but History tells how the " man's " lust of power surpassed the dreams of the greatest of the world's con-
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