FRANCE, ITALY, AND SWITZERLAND -1886 -1887 415 



until the present day; and that they have in our own 

 century shown themselves more vigorous than ever. 

 Lord Acton insisted that we have no means of knowing 

 the processes of Caesar s mind; that we know the mode 

 of thinking of only two ancients, Socrates and Cicero; 

 that possibly, if we knew more of Shakspere s mental 

 processes, the preeminence might be claimed for him,, 

 but that we know nothing of them save from his writ 

 ings; while we know Napoleon s thoroughly from the 

 vast collections of memoirs, state papers, orders, conver 

 sations, etc., as well as in his amazing dealings with the 

 problems of his time; that the scope and power of Na 

 poleon s mental processes seem almost preternatural, 

 and of this he gave various remarkable proofs. He ar 

 gued that considerations of moral character and aims, 

 as elements in greatness, must be left out of such a dis 

 cussion; that the intellectual processes and their results 

 were all that we could really estimate in comparing men. 

 Sir Henry Keating observed that his father, an officer in 

 the British army, was vastly impressed by the sight of 

 Napoleon at St. Helena; whereupon Lord Acton re 

 marked that Thiers acknowledged to Guizot, who told 

 Lord Acton, that Napoleon was &quot;un scelerat.&quot; That 

 seemed to me a rather strong word to be used by a man 

 who had done so much to revive the Napoleonic legend. 

 Lord Acton also quoted a well-authenticated story 

 vouched for by two persons whom he named, one of them 

 being the Count de Flahaut, who was present and heard 

 the remark that when the imperial guards broke at 

 Waterloo, Napoleon said, &quot;It has always been so since 

 Crecy.&quot; 



Toward the end of February we went on to Florence,, 

 and there met, frequently, Villari, the historian; Man- 

 tegazzi; and other leading Florentines. Mention being 

 made of the Jesuit Father Curci, who had rebelled 

 against what he considered the fatal influence of Jesuit 

 ism on the papacy, Villari thought him too scholastic to 

 have any real influence. Of Settembrini he spoke highly 



