he diplomatic spoliation of Europe, which was only stopped at
its very extremities.

All the great noblemen of feudal Germany, were seen at Paris
exhibiting their ceremonial, whose obsequious formalities were much
more agreeable to the first consul than the still easy manner of the
French; and asking back what belonged to them with a servility which
would almost make one lose the right to one's own property, so much
had it the air of regarding the authority of justice as nothing.

A nation singularly proud, the English, was not at this time
altogether exempt from a degree of curiosity about the person of the
first consul, approaching to homage. The ministerial party regarded
him in his proper light; but the opposition, which ought to have a
greater hatred of tyranny, as it is supposed to be more enthusiastic
for liberty, the opposition party, and Fox himself, whose talents
and goodness of heart one cannot recollect without admiration, and
the tenderest emotion, committed the error of shewing too much
attention to Bonaparte, thereby serving to prolong the mistake of
those, who wished still to confound with the French revolution, the
most decided enemy of the first principles of that revolution.

CHAPTER 10.

New symptoms of Bonaparte's ill will to my father and myself.
--Affairs of Switzerland.

At the beginning of the winter 1802-3, when I saw by the papers that
so many illustrious Englishmen, and so many of the most intelligent
persons in France were collected in Paris, I felt, I confess, the
strongest desire to be among them. I do not dissemble, that a
residence in Paris has always appeared to me the most agreeable of
all others; I was born there--there I have passed my infancy and
early youth--and there only could I meet the generation which had
known my father, and the friends who had with us passed through the
horrors of the revolution. This love of country, which has attached
the most strongly constituted minds, lays still stronger hold of us,
when it unites the enjoyments of intellect with the affections of
the heart, and the habits of imagination. French conversation exists
nowhere but in Paris, and conversation has been since my infancy, my
greatest pleasure. I experienced such grief at the apprehension of
being deprived of this residence, that my reason could not support
itself against it. I was then in the full vivacity of life, and it
is precisely the want of animated enjoyment, which leads mos