892. BONAPARTE (N.), Statesmanship of.—
I have just finished reading O'Meara's
Bonaparte. It places him in a higher
scale of understanding than I had allotted
him. I had thought him the greatest of all
military captains, but an indifferent statesman,
and misled by unworthy passions. The
flashes, however, which escaped from him in
these conversations with O'Meara, prove a
mind of great expansion, although not of distinct
development and reasoning. He seizes
results with rapidity and penetration, but
never explains logically the processes of
reasoning by which he arrives at them.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 275.
(M.
1823)
