myself the interpreter, and not the judge, of the witnesses and of the evidence. I am conscious of the disadvantages of such a plan; but, on the other hand, it has its compensations. The reader will have ample material for forming his own judgment: Napoleon, too, will be presented in his vast many-sidedness; and finally, there will probably be in the reader's mind, after hearing all these conflicting voices, a nearer approach to a just and accurate estimate of Napoleon than if he had read any one set of witnesses, or if he had been confronted with a self-confident judgment on the final merits of the evidence. No human character is mathematical in its lines; and historical characters especially are much less consistent, either in their goodness or their badness, than their admirers and their foes represent. The final picture of Napoleon which these Essays will leave in the minds of the reader will, I expect, be somewhat blurred, inconsistent—perhaps even chaotic. The picture, perhaps, will be for all this the nearer to reality.
