For the peculiar quality which marks out Prussian arms and ambitions from all others of the kind consists in this wrinkled and premature antiquity.

There is something comparatively boyish about the triumphs of all the other tyrants.

There was something better than ambition in the beauty and ardour of the young Napoleon.

He was at least a lover; and his first campaign was like a love-story.

All that was pagan in him worshipped the Republic as men worship a woman, and all that was Catholic in him understood the paradox of Our Lady of Victories.