Excerpt from The History of Napoleon the First, Vol. 1 Was the eighteenth century an exception in this? Did it pursue an Utopia? Nay; it carried on the work of its fore runners, - the sixteenth which saw the birth Of the Reformation, and the seventeenth which saw the triumph of English insti tutions it' was in communion with all the stirring spirits of the past; it marched along the great highway of the human mind, and knew this, and it was this confidence that threw over its decline an air of serene majesty. The thinkers who had shed a lustre over its course, were followed by great practical men who carried their plans into execution. After Locke, Montes quien, Voltaire, and Rousseau, rose Turgot, Franklin, Mirabeau, and Washington. The American Republic, child of experi ment, irreproachable as a creation of pure reason, was on the point of rising up beyond the seas to serve as a beacon to all future societies. The future appeared so assured, and the course of events SO irresistible, that even the wisest among them were not proof against a certain intoxication, and in their too scornful impatience of facts, they pushed impetuously out to the very verge and final limits of the possible. Not content with proclaiming the end of religious and political despotism, they went on to predict the end of superstition, the end of misery, the end of slavery, the end of conquest, the end of war. It was towards this time that there was born in a small island, obscure and nearly without history, a child who was to be called napoleon bonaparte. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.