at he may bow their necks
to the yoke of slavery, that he may doom them to ignorance and
degradation, that he may extort from them their treasures by the energies
of the dungeon, the scimetar, and the bastinado, consigning the millions
to mud hovels, penury, and misery, that he and his haughty parasites may
revel in voluptuousness and splendor, deserves the execrations of the
world. Such were the rulers of the Orient. But we can not with equal
severity condemn the ambition of him, who marches not to forge chains, but
to break them; not to establish despotism, but to assail despotic
usurpers; not to degrade and impoverish the people, but to ennoble, and to
elevate, and to enrich them; not to extort from the scanty earnings of the
poor the means of living in licentiousness and all luxurious indulgence,
but to endure all toil, all hardship, all deprivation cheerfully, that the
lethargic nations may be roused to enterprise, to industry, and to thrift.
Such was the ambition of Napoleon. Surely it was lofty. But far more lofty
is that ambition of which Christ is the great exemplar, which can bury
self entirely in oblivion.

Twenty years after the discomfiture at Acre, Napoleon, when imprisoned
upon the Rock of St. Helena, alluded to these dreams of his early life.
"Acre once taken," said he; "the French army would have flown to Aleppo
and Damascus. In the twinkling of an eye it would have been on the
Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Christians of Armenia,
would have joined it. The whole population of the East would have been
agitated." Some one said, he would have soon been reinforced by one
hundred thousand men. "Say rather, six hundred thousand," Napoleon
replied. "Who can calculate what would have happened! I would have reached
Constantinople and the Indies--I would have changed the face of the world."

The manner in which Napoleon bore this disappointment most strikingly
illustrates the truth of his own remarkable assertion. "Nature seems to
have calculated that I should endure great reverses. She has given me a
mind of marble. Thunder can not ruffle it. The shaft merely glides along."
Even his most intimate friends could discern no indications of discontent.
He seemed to feel that it was not his destiny to found an empire in the
East, and, acquiescing without a murmur, he turned his attention to other
enterprises. "That man," said he, with perfect good-nature, speaking of
Sir Sydney Smith, "made me mis