I4O GREAT MEN OF MODERN HISTORY. 



reduced to the two preceding generations being not less than an 

 average of fifty-five years each. 



HUMBOLDT. 



Humboldt was born in the same year as Cuvier, and what 

 Cuvier was to France that Humboldt was to Germany. In some 

 respects he was even greater, because no man ever had such a 

 profound and trained intellect. During his life he was recognized 

 as an authority on practically every known science. His father 

 was born in 1620, and consequently was forty-nine years old when 

 Humboldt was born. 



NAPOLEON. 



Napoleon Bonaparte was also born in the same year as Cuvier, 

 and when his father was only twenty-three. He therefore is a 

 remarkable exception, and is the most prominent man whom I 

 have been able to find born of so young a father. That he was 

 a man of great ability cannot be questioned. His ability, how- 

 ever, seems to have been only of a military order. He made sev- 

 eral literary efforts, but they were the most dismal sort of failures. 

 Although a great commander, he did not seem to be a great states- 

 man. Military success caused his ambition to become greater 

 than his judgment, led him into many blunders, and finally resulted 

 in his downfall. If he had had anything like the ability of 

 Augustus, or even Peter the Great, he would have maintained him- 

 self to the end as Emperor of France. Unfortunately I can find 

 nothing in the ancestry of either his father or his mother, but we 

 know that both were persons of great ability. The father was 

 well educated, and was a general in the army in active campaigning 

 for a year or two before the birth of Napoleon. The mother ac- 

 companied her husband in his campaigns, and Napoleon came 



