laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt
upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued
to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt
features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered alone
about the streets of Paris in 1795.

They had the same love of method and of order. The accounts of the
Virginian constable was not more scrupulously kept than the ledgers
of Napoleon's household, nor could they show a greater regard for
economy than the tailor's bill, still extant, on which the future
Emperor gained a reduction of four sous. But it was not on such
trivial lines alone that they run parallel. An inflexibility of
purpose, an absolute disregard of popular opinion, and an unswerving
belief in their own capacity, were predominant in both. They could
say "No." Neither sought sympathy, and both felt that they were
masters of their own fate. "You can be whatever you resolve to be"
may be well placed alongside the speech of the brigadier of
five-and-twenty: "Have patience. I will command in Paris presently.
What should I do there now?"

But here the parallel ends. In Jackson, even as a cadet, self was
subordinate to duty. Pride was foreign to his nature. He was
incapable of pretence, and his simplicity was inspired by that
disdain of all meanness which had been his characteristic from a
child. His brain was disturbed by no wild visions; no intemperate
ambition confused his sense of right and wrong. "The essence of his
mind," as has been said of another of like mould, "was clearness,
healthy purity, incompatibility with fraud in any of its forms." It
was his instinct to be true and straightforward as it was Napoleon's
to be false and subtle. And, if, as a youth, he showed no trace of