He is never weak and literary, but acts with
the solidity and the precision of natural agents. He has not lost his
native sense and sympathy with things. Men give way before such a man
as before natural events. To be sure, there are men enough who are
immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics
generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the
presence of scholars and grammarians; but these men ordinarily lack
the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. But
Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and
generalization, so that men saw in him combined the natural and the
intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun
to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. He came
unto his own, and they received him. This ciphering operative knows
what he is working with, and what is the product. He knew the properties
of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and
required that each should do after its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic.
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