until MM. Masson and Chuquet gave a new and faithful
portraiture of the "Little Corporal's" youth. Mr. Oscar
Browning's present book is not a mere abridgment of Napoleon Inecmnu and La Jeunesse de Napoleon. He has controlled those works by researches of his own, presenting his results in the readable and lively style which marked his .Age of the Condottieri and his notable little biography of
"Swedish Charles."
The gods of history are always objects of unreasoning hatred or worship until the lapse of ages enables men to regard them without passion. In our time the pendulum has swung between Wordsworthian detestation of the French "Jupiter Scapin," and the feelings of the Whigs who wanted their dear "Boney " to be left to himself after the escape from Elba, and plotted for his rescue when the Bellerophon,' after "the Hundred Days," lay at anchor off Portsmouth. Lord Rosebery has made the captivity of St. Helena a martyrdom, no less a scholar than Lord Acton laid it down that Napoleon's characteristic mark was "goodness," while M. Masson calls his own veneration for his hero a
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