however, for the mightiest heritage of Napoleon in his brainchildren of the second generation, the Genii of the Code. The Code Napoleon claims to-day its two hundred million subjects. "The Law should be clean, precise, uniform; to interpret is to corrupt it." So ruled the Emperor; and now, a century later, Archbishop Temple (born in one distant island the year Napoleon died in another) bears testimony to the beneficent sway of Napoleon's Word-Empire. Criticising English legal phraseology, the Archbishop of Canterbury said, "The French Code is always welcome in every country where it has been introduced; and where people have once got hold of it, they are unwilling to have it changed for any other, because it is a marvel of clearness." Surely if ever Style is the Man, it is Napoleon, otherwise the inspection of over seven million words, as marshalled forth in his Correspondence, would not only confuse but confound. As it is, its "hum of armies, gathering rank on rank," has left behind what Bacon calls a conflation of sound, from which, however, as from Kipling's steel-sinewed symphony, "The clanging chorus goes Law, Order, Duty and Restraint, Obedience, Discipline." LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NAPOLEON FROM AN ENGRAVING BY T. WRIGHT, AFTER EUGÈNE BEAUHARNAIS AFTERWARDS VICEROY OF ITALY (Photo- JOSEPHINE BEAUHARNAIS Circa 1795 (Photogravure) Frontispiece Face page 121 Face page 198 FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER, DATED APRIL 24, 1796 Pages 202-3 |