Excerpt from Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. 5

N apoleon's master-passion was a hunger of future fame. What will history say - what will posterity think? - were the speeches oftenest in his month: they became his princi les of action. Doubtless this love of renown had been early instil ed into him by some accidental instruction; it probably produced some of 1115 earliest steps in life: and when he first felt that it was likely toobe gratified, when it first occurred to him that he was in a position in which all the world were beginning to talk of him, we may conceive with what ardour this passion would grow - with what devouring energy it would arm his will: effect would become a cause, and give that impetus to his career which endured to the termination of his existence. This observation is rendered parti cularly necessary when the historian has to take into consideration the documents from St. Helena, which nearly all proceeded from his own mouth, and all of which were corrected either by his own pen, or under his own direction. The Memoirs of St. Helena are neither more nor less than the views which Napoleon wished posterity to take of his own character and actions; truth is only so far considered or managed that it may not start up a refractory witness against the wished for complexion of the case. M. De Bourrienne gives us clearly to understand, that an inconsistency between his statements and those of the St. Helena mss is not to be held as fatal to his more authentic narration. He has often, in these documents, says M. De Bourrienne, recounted as a fact that which was only an idea, and moreover an idea born in St: Helena, the child of misfortune, and transported by his imagination into Europe to the time of his prosperity. In 811011, it would seem from 7m. De Bourrienne's report - and he is not smgular - to be a grand mistake if any one were to write the his tory of Napoleon after the proclamations and the bulletins which proceded from his own pen, or what is more, from the confiden tial and apparently unstudied communications of St. Helena.

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