Naples. This carelessness will at last derange the administra tion of the army and destroy its discipline. Send me perfectly accurate returns." "The returns of my armies," says he, in a letter written in 1806, "form the most agreeable portion of my library." Again, speaking of these monthly reports, which filled twenty thick volumes, he says: "When they are sent to me, I give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to observe the difference between one monthly return and another. No young girl enjoys her novel so much as I do these returns." Lord Brougham, in noticing this extraordinary attention to details, says: "The captain who conveyed Napo leon to Elba expressed to me his astonishment at his precise. and, as it were, familiar knowledge of all the minute details connected with the ship. I heard from one connected with the great Helvetic mediation, in 1802, that, though the deputies soon found how hopeless they were of succeeding with the First Consul, yet they felt themselves defeated in the long discussion by one more thoroughly master of all the details of the complicated question than they could have believed it possible for any foreigner to become."

It was this practice which enabled him to concentrate his forces in so overwhelming numbers on a given point; for his close scrutiny into details - his almost preternatural knowledge of the place where a corps, or even a company, of his vast armies was to be found at any time. produced exactness and punctuality among his sub-officers, and hence the various detachments of his army were always where he wished at the very hour. His armies, in short, were, together, "only one great engine of desolation, of which he was the head or brain. Numbers, spaces, times, were all distinct in his eye. The wheeling of every legion, however remote, was mentally present to him; the tramp of every foot, the beat of every drum, the rumbling of every carriage-wheel, sounded in his ear." The success of his plans, therefore, being left to no contingency, so far as contingencies could be guarded against, was as absolutely certain as human wit or wisdom could make it. A striking

illustration of this is furnished by the campaign of 1805, as described by an English writer. In that year Napoleon broke up the great camp he had formed on the shores of the Channel, and gave orders for that mighty host to defile toward the Danube. Vast and various, however, as were the projects fermenting in his brain, he did not simply content himself with giving the orders, and leaving the elaboration of its details to his lieutenants. To details and minutia, which inferior captains would have deemed too microscopic for their notice, he gave such exhaustive attention that, before the bugle had sounded for the march, he had planned the exact route which every regiment was to follow, the exact day it was to arrive at each station on the road, the exact day and hour it was to leave that station, as well as the precise moment when it was to reach its place of destination. These details, so thoroughly premeditated, were carried out to the letter, and the result the fruit of that memorable march - was the victory of Austerlitz, which sealed for ten long years the fate of Europe. It was to the same business qualities, not less than to his military genius, that Napoleon's great opponent, the Duke of Wellington, owed his successes. He left nothing to chance, but carefully provided for every contingency. He gave his attention, not only to the great matters, but to the pettiest details of the service; and was wont to concentrate all his energies, at times, on things apparently so ignominious as the manner in which the soldiers were to cook their provisions, their shoes, camp-kettles, biscuits, horse-fodder, and the exact speed at which bullocks were to be driven. It was owing, in

a large measure, to this practical talent and constant watchfulness of small matters that he not only won brilliant victories amid the greatest discouragements, but had the rare distinction of never losing a battle.

The

So with our own generals, Sherman and Thomas. correspondence of the former during the late war, published by the government, shows that for months and months before his "great march" through the South, he was studying the

H

country through which he was about to go, its resources, its power of sustaining armies, its populousness, the habits of the people,in short everything that could throw light upon the probable success of his expedition. He had, in fact, literally gone over the entire country in advance. Of General Thomas, his comrade, General Steadman tells us that "he was careful in all the details of a battle, but once in the fight, was as furious and impetuous as Jackson. He lacked nothing to make a perfect man. No man ever imparted so much enthusiasm to his troops, and I never saw a commander who could hurl at any enemy the entire force of his army with such violence as General Thomas."

Is it not strange that, in the face of these facts, men will neglect details that many even consider them beneath their notice, and, when they hear of the success of a business man who is, perhaps, more solid than brilliant, sneeringly say that he is "great in little things"? Is it not the "little things" that, in the aggregate, make up whatever is great? Is it not the countless grains of sand that make the beach; the trees that form the forest; the successive strata of rock that compose the mountains; the myriads of almost imperceptible stars that whiten the heavens with the milky-way? And of what is human happiness made up, but of little things? "One principal reason," says Jeremy Bentham, "why our existence has so much less of happiness crowded into it than is accessible to us, is that we neglect to gather up those minute. particles of pleasure which every moment offers to our acceptance. In striving after a sum total, we forget the ciphers of which it is composed; struggling against inevitable results, which he cannot control, too often man is heedless of those accessible pleasures whose amount is by no means inconsiderable when collected together. Stretching out his hand to catch the stars, man forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so multitudinous, and so various."

CHAPTER IX.

PRACTICAL TALENT.

"Every fish has its fly; but even the right fly is not enough; you must play it nicely at the right spot."

SO.

The man who sees too widely is nearly sure to be indecisive, or to appear Hence, also, comes an appearance, sometimes of shuffling, and sometimes of over-subtlety, which is very harmful to a man. - ARTHUR HELPS. And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought.

SHAKESPEARE.

Ni Bacon, ni Shakespeare, ni Molière, ni Pascal, ni Tasse, ni Dante n'auraient fait grande figure dans une revolution. Ils auraient trop vu, trop compris, trop douté, trop craint, trop souffert, trop pressenti, et trop dedaigné. - PHILERETE CHASLES.

"At a gathering in Australia, not long since, four persons met, three of whom were shepherds on a sheep-farm. One of these had taken a degree at Oxford, another at Cambridge, the third at a German university. The fourth was their employer, a squatter, rich in flocks and herds, but scarcely able to read and write, much less to keep accounts."

A

NOTHER vital element of success is practical talent, or

that indescribable quality which results from a union of worldly knowledge with shrewdness and tact.

An English writer, in describing a thoroughly practical man, says that "he knows the world as a mite knows cheese. The mite is born in cheese, lives in cheese, beholds cheese. If he thinks at all, his thoughts (which, of course, are mitey thoughts) are of cheese. The cheese-press, curds, and whey, the frothy pail, the milkmaid, cow, and pasture, enter not the mite's imagination at all. If any one were to ask him, 'Why cheese?' he would certainly answer, "Because cheese'; and when he is caten by mistake, he tastes so thoroughly of the cheese that the event remains unnoticed, and his infinitesimal. identity becomes absorbed in the general digestion of caseine matter, without comment of the consumer."

These remarks, though a seeming jest, only burlesque an important truth; namely, the thorough identification with his business, and comparative indifference to all things else, which are necessary to every man who would succeed in any art, trade, or profession. Of all the causes of failure, there is none more frequent or fruitful than the lack of practical talent. The fact that to give good advice implies no capacity of following it has often been illustrated in the world's history. The mere theorist rarely evinces practical wisdom; and, conversely, the practical man rarely displays a high degree of speculative ability. The possession of brilliant intellectual qualities, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, proves a bar rather than a help to worldly advancement. If you try to cut a stone with a razor, the razor will lose its edge, and the stone remain uncut. A very high education, again, unless it is practical as well as classical and scientific, too often unfits a man for contest with his fellows. You have rifled the cannon till the strength of the metal is gone. Intellectual culture, if carried beyond a certain point, is too often purchased at the expense of moral vigor. It gives edge and splendor to a man, but draws out all his temper. There is reason to fear that in the case of not a few persons the mind is so rounded and polished by education, so well balanced, as not to be energetic in any one faculty. They become so symmetrical as to have no point; while in other men, not thus trained, the sense of deficiency and of the sharp, jagged corners of their knowledge lead to efforts to fill up the chasms, that render them at last far more learned and better educated men than the smooth, polished, easy-going graduate who has just knowledge enough to prevent the consciousness of his ignorance. In youth it is not desirable that the mind should be too evenly balanced. While all its faculties should be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or three rough-hewn features of massive strength. Young men who spend many years at school are too apt to forget the great end of life, which is to be and do, not to read and brood over what other men have been and done. Emerson tells us that England