rediction was like the prayers of the Homeric heroes--

"One half the gods dispersed in empty air."

Poland was not to be liberated; the crisis was superb, but the weapon was
not equal to the blow. It was the first instance in which the French
Emperor was found inferior to his fortune. With incomparable force of
intellect, Napoleon wanted grandeur of mind. It has become the custom of
later years to deny him even superiority of intellect; but the man who, in
a contest open to all, goes before all--who converts a republic, with all
its ardour, haughtiness, and passion, into a monarchy at once as rigid and
as magnificent as an Oriental despotism--who, in a country of warriors,
makes himself the leading warrior--who, among the circle within circle of
the subtlest political intrigues, baffles all intrigues, converts them
into the material of his own ascendency, and makes the subtlest and the
boldest spirits his instruments and slaves--has given sufficient evidence
of the superiority of his talents. The conqueror who beat down in
succession all the great military names of Europe, must have been a
soldier; the negotiator who vanquished all existing diplomacy, and the
statesman who remodelled the laws, curbed the fiery temper, and reduced to
discipline the fierce insubordination of a people, whose first victory had
crushed the state, and heaped the ruins of the throne on the sepulchre of
their king--must have been a negotiator and a statesman of the first rank.
Or, if those were not the achievements of intellect, by what were they
done? If they were done without it, of what value is intellect? Napoleon
had then only found the still superior secret of success; and we deny his
intellect, simply to give him attributes higher than belong to human
nature.--No man before him dreamed of such success, no man in his day
rivalled it, no man since his day has attempted its renewal. "But he was
fortunate!" What can be more childish than to attempt the solution of the
problem by fortune? Fortune is a phantom. Circumstances may arise beyond
the conception of man; but where the feebler mind yields to
circumstances, the stronger one shapes, controls, and guides them.

This man was sent for a great purpose of justice, and he was gifted with
the faculties for its execution. An act of imperial guilt had been
committed, of which Europe was to be purged by penalty alone. The fall of
Poland was to be made a moral to the governments of the earth; a