Wonderful is the effect upon
soldiers of such enduring and separate remembrance, which operates always
as the most touching kind of personal flattery, and which, in every age of
the world, since the social sensibilities of men have been much developed,
military commanders are found to have played upon as the most effectual
chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare
endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate mimicries
of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian mummery,
Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office, in his own
name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in every brigade,
(whose private history he had previously caused to be investigated,)
alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their personal or family
career; a furlough accompanied this letter, and they were requested to
repair to Paris, where the emperor anxiously desired to see them. Thus was
the paternal interest expressed, which their leader took in each man's
fortunes; and the effect of every such letter, it was not doubted, would
diffuse itself through ten thousand other men.
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