NAPOLEON is the most prominent and best known character of the modern world. He is the complete embodiment of those qualities and tendencies which are still at work in promoting the progress of civilization. Above this representative character he adds that rude, aggressive, personal force which seems rather to belong to the early stages of emergence of any people from barbarism. He sprang from barbarous Corsica, but speedily became the accepted leader of enlightened France. He was born in an obscure rank of outcast society, and by innate genius became master of the proudest nation of Europe and almost sovereign of the civilized world. Like Alexander of the ancient world, he did not merely conquer and destroy, he gave a new impulse to civilization, he promoted arts and sciences, he established a new order which has survived his personal destiny. His career is the key-note of the nineteenth century.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in the island of Corsica, on the 5th of February, 1768. He afterwards gave out that he was born on the 15th of August, 1769, being his saint's day, and that is usually considered as the date of his nativity; but that the former is the real date is proved in the most authentic way by the attestation of himself, his brother Joseph, and other principal members of his family, on the occasion of his marriage with Josephine, in 1795, which still exists in the Parish register in Paris, where the marriage was solemnized. In the baptismal register

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of his native parish, his name is written Bonaparte, but his father generally signed himself Buonaparte. This latter spelling is more in accordance with Italian orthoepy. Napoleon, after he became general of the Army of Italy, always signed his name Bonaparte. His brothers likewise adopted the same way of writing it.

Napoleon's father's family was originally from Tuscany, but had been settled in Corsica for several generations. Charles, the father of Napoleon, was educated at Pisa for the profession of the law. Before the birth of Napoleon, his father had served under Paoli in the defence of his country against the French, to whom the Genoese had basely sold the island. The entire submission of Corsica to France took place in June, 1769, about a month before the recognized date of Napoleon's birth. In this way he claimed to be born a subject of France. The family of Bonaparte, having shown their titles, was registered among the nobility; and Charles, some years after, repaired to Paris, as a member of a deputation of his order, to Louis XVI. Yet when some Italian genealogists, in the days of Napoleon's greatness, tried to flatter him by tracing back his pedigree to the Dukes of Treviso, he cut them short by saying that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Montenotte, his first victory over the Austrians.

Napoleon's mother, Letizia Ramolino, was a woman of great beauty, courage and ability, and these were marked qualities of her son. Napoleon ever treated her with affection and respect, and repeatedly sought her judicious advice. He received the rudiments of his education at Ajaccio, in Corsica, where Count Pozzo de Borgo, afterwards his persevering and bitter opponent through life, was also instructed. Through Count Marbœuf's interest, Napoleon was subsequently, at the age of eleven, admitted to the military school of Brienne, in Champagne, France, as a king's pensioner. At this academy, where he remained for several years, his talents, especially for mathematics and the exact sciences, attracted the attention of his instructors. The annual report of the InspectorGeneral of the military schools in 1784 thus describes the young Napoleon: "Distinguished in mathematics, tolerably