great things, because they are adapted to
excite its sublime instinct, and call it into action. It is negligent
in ordinary things, because they are beneath it, and have nothing in
them to stir it up: if, however, it do turn its attention to them, it
fertilizes them, aggrandizes them, and gives them a new and unexpected
appearance, that had escaped vulgar eyes."

And with how vast a genius must he have been endowed! he, who,
occupied by the torments of ambition, military calculations, political
schemes, and the anxieties inspired by the enemies of his crown and of
his life, still found sufficient time, sufficient calmness, sufficient
power, to command his numerous armies; to govern twenty foreign
nations, and forty millions of subjects; to enter solicitously into
all the particulars of the administration of his states; to see every
thing; to sift every thing to the bottom; to regulate every thing; in
fine, to conceive, create, and realize those unexpected improvements,
those bold innovations, those noble institutions, and those immortal
codes, that raise the civil glory of France to a degree of
superiority, which alone can match its military glory. But I know not
why I attempt to combat such adversaries: they who are blind to the
genius of Napoleon, have never known genius itself, and I ought to
give them no answer, but that of Rousseau: "Silence, ye uninitiated!"

The Emperor, by his decrees issued at Lyons, had in some degree
repaired the wrongs imputed to the royal government. One grievance
still remained for him; the slavery of the press. The decree of the
24th of March[80], by suppressing the censors, the censorship, and
the superintendance of the bookselling trade, completed the imperial
restoration.

[Footnote 80: This decree, and all those previously
dated from the palace of the Tuileries, contained
no title but simply that of "Emperor of the
French." The "&c. &c.," noticed with anxiety in the
proclamations and decrees from Lyons, were
suppressed. They had been inserted without
reflection, without object, and merely from custom.
The Emperor, too, would not have his familiar
letters continue to be concluded in the usual form:
"On which I pray God, to have you in his holy
keeping, &c." "All those antiquat