His  career  must  be  nearly  parallel  (so  to  speak)  with
the  direction  of  the  national  energies,  and  must  merge
with  their  main  current  at  an  imperceptible  angle.  It  is
the  chief  error  of  those  who  deliberately  plan  success  that
they  will  not  leave  themselves  amenable  to  such  influences,
and  it  is  the  most  frequent  cause  of  their  failure.  Thus
such  men  as  arrive  at  great  heights  of  power  are  most
often  observed  to  succeed  by  a  kind  of  fatality,  which  is
nothing  more  than  the  course  of  natures  vigorous  and
original,  but,  at  the  same  time,  yielding  unconsciously  to
an  environment  with  which  they  sympathise,  or  to  which
they  were  born.
It  is  not  difficult  to  determine  the  accidents  of  action,
temperament,  and  locality  which  predispose  to  success  in
one's  own  society.  It  is  less  easy  to  appreciate  what  cor-
responds to  them  under  foreign  conditions.
It  was  seen  in  the  first  chapter  that  Paris  sums  up  in
herself  those  conditions  in  the  case  of  the  French  nation ;
and  it  was  seen  also  (a  point  of  peculiar  importance)  that
Paris  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  ill  at  ease
— out  of  herself,  demanding  her  place  and  yet  anxious  as
to  the  means  by  which  it  might  be  attained.
