period was threatening. The old
days of official repose were past, never to return. The state of Europe
was hourly assuming an aspect of the deepest peril. The war had hitherto
been but the struggle of armies; it now threatened to be the struggle of
nations. It had hitherto lived on the natural resources of public
expenditure; it now began to prey upon the vitals of the kingdom. The
ordinary finance of England was to be succeeded by demands pressing
heavily on the existing generation, and laying a hereditary burden on
all that were to follow. The nature of our antagonist deepened the
difficulty. All the common casualties of nations were so far from
breaking the enemy down, that they only gave him renewed power. Poverty
swelled his ranks; confiscation swelled his coffers; bankruptcy gave him
strength; faction invigorated his government; and insubordination made
him invincible. In the midst of this confusion, even a new terror arose.
The democracy of France, after startling Europe, had seemed to be
sinking into feebleness and apathy, when a new wonder appeared in the
political hemisphere, too glaring and too ominous to suffer our eyes to
turn from it for a moment. The Consulate assumed the rule of France.
Combining the fiery vigour of republicanism with the perseverance of
monarchy, it now carried the whole force of the country into foreign
fields. Every foreign capital began to tremble. The whole European
system shook before a power which smote it with the force of a
cannon-ball against a crumbling bastion. The extraordinary man who now
took the lead in France, had touched the string which vibrated in the
heart of every native of the soil. He had found them weary of the crimes
of the democracy; he told them that a career of universal supremacy was
open before them. He had found them degraded by the consciousness of
riot and regicide; he told them that they were the chevaliers of the new
age, and destined to eclipse the chevaliers of all the ages past. His
Italian campaigns, by their rapidity, their fine combinations, and their
astonishing success, had created a new art of war. He had brought them
romantic triumphs from the land of romance. Day by day the populace of
the capital were summoned to see pageants of Italian standards, cannon,
and prisoners. Every courier that galloped through the streets brought
tidings of some new conquest; and every meeting of the Councils was
employed in announcing the addition of some classi