Perhaps If Somebody
Had Seen Him Reading Dampier's Voyages, As He Read Cook's On The Way To
Egypt, That Fact Would Have Been Instanced As Another Proof, Not Of His
Fondness For Extremely Fascinating Literature, But Of The Nourishment Of
A Secret Passion To Seize The Coasts Which Dampier Explored.
Napoleon had been a good and a diligent student.
The fascinating but
hateful characteristics of his later career, when he was the Emperor with
a heart petrified and corroded by ambition, the conqueror ever greedy of
fresh conquest, the scourge of nations and the tyrant of kings, too often
make one overlook the liberal instincts of his earlier years. His passion
for knowledge was profound, and he was the pronounced friend of every
genuine man of science, of every movement having for its object the
acquisition and diffusion of fresh enlightenment. It is an English
writer* (* Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century 1
152 to 154.) who says of him that he was, "amongst the great heroes and
statesmen of his age, the first and foremost if not the only one, who
seemed thoroughly to realise the part which science was destined to play
in the immediate future"; and the same author adds that "some of the
glory of Laplace and Cuvier falls upon Napoleon." He took pleasure in the
company and conversation of men of science; and never more so than during
the period of the Consulate. Thibaudeau's memoirs show him dining one
night with Laplace, Monge, and Berthollet; and the English translator of
that delightful book* (* Dr. Fortescue, page 273.
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