EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 61 



so on his father's side. When the students of Shaks- 

 pere's antecedents and lineage give the time and 

 research to the Ardens which has hitherto been wasted 

 on the Shakesperes, we shall hear more of William 

 Arden and less of William Shakspere. 



It has been said that the chief characteristics of a 

 good family stock are gentle manners, cultivated 

 tastes, and honourable principles. Letitia Ramolini 

 could not transmit what she did not possess, and her 

 son had but little of gentleness, or loftiness of aim, 

 or honour. A man of gentle nature does not by habit 

 toss his hat into the corner of the room ; or in fits of 

 mere petulance not of anger throw his watch on the 

 floor, or dash the nearest vase into a hundred fragments. 

 Naturally refined natures are not the monopoly of any 

 station in life ; but high principles truth, honour, 

 justice were all as foreign to the Corsican woman's 

 son as were gentle manners. 



Good and evil are, it may be, not very unequally 

 distributed among the various types of character, but 

 both good and evil are naturally more conspicuous in 

 individuals of the active type. Napoleon is, perhaps, 

 the most brilliant and the least pleasing example of 

 that active and less impassioned temperament which, 

 in other notable examples, has given to the world 

 invaluable service. Brilliant genius and brilliant 

 opportunity met in him : but these are not enough, for, 

 while intellectual nerve was weighty, moral nerve was 

 lacking, and the final results to the man and to his 

 adopted country were not brilliant : he left France a 

 little less than he found it. 



He had, in extreme degree, all the anatomical or ' 

 bodily signs of the busy and less deeply emotional 

 temperament. In every portrait his head is advanced 



