he influence of England in the
East, and ultimately subverting her Indian empire--that expedition was
the _first_ which tarnished the military renown of the Republic, cost
her a fleet, and lost her an army. Of the army which Napoleon led to
Egypt, not a battalion returned to Europe but as the prisoners of
England!

The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed _expressly_ at England.
Its object was the invasion of England--the Spanish war broke down the
military renown of the Empire, and was pronounced by Napoleon to be
the origin of his ruin!

The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed _expressly_ at England. Its
object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of
the north--that invasion was punished, by the ruin of the whole
veteran army of France!

Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with
an arrogant assumption of victory--"Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais."
Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict
_destroyed_ him; his laurels, his diadem, and his dynasty, were
blasted together!

It is not less memorable, that during the entire Revolutionary war,
France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one
exception--the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the
French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But
this, too, had its punishment--and one of the most especial and
characteristic retribution--Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By
a fate unheard of even among fallen princes, the man who had
treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a
prisoner, was delivered into English hands, was consigned to captivity
in an English island, and died the prisoner of England!

I speak of events like these, not in the spirit of superstition, nor
in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways
of Providence. I record them, in a full consciousness of the
immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of
the supreme Disposer. But they convey, at least to my own feelings, a
confidence, a solemn security, a calm yet ardent conviction, that
chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great
tide of things, in its rise and fall, has laws, which, if unapproached
by the feebleness of human faculties, are not the less true, vast, and
imperishable; that if, like the air, the agency of that ruling and
boundless authority is invisible, we may yet fee