PREFACE.
I have thought of various methods for presenting these Essays in a collected form. The first and most natural suggestion was that I should, after a careful comparison of their conflicting points of view, and an assortment of their statements, present to the reader a final estimate and a finished picture. I found it impossible to adopt this course. Napoleon had so many sides; was not only so contradictory in himself, but produced such contradictory impressions on different people, that it lay far beyond my power to make one consistent picture of him, and to decide with anything like confidence between testimony at once so contradictory and so authoritative. The plan to which I have been driven, then, is to present these Essays pretty much as they originally appeared—which means that I have made
