roduce its effect. They are turned to every point of
view in which they can be seen to the best advantage. All the parts are
so arranged as to point out their relation, and to furnish a true idea
of the spirit of the whole transaction.

This speech may stand for a model. Never, for the triumphal decoration
of any theatre, not for the decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or
even of this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from
the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so
truly drawn, so closely and so finely wrought, or in which the forms are
brought out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing colors. It
puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry with which Virgil proposed to
adorn the theatre he was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the
Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and
melancholy windings through banks wasted by the barbarians of Gaul. He
supposes that the artifice is such, that the figures of the conquered
nations in his tapestry are made to play their part, and are confounded
in the machine,--

utque
Purpurea intexti tollant aulaea Britanni;

or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically, but not less in
the spirit of the prophet than of the poet,--

"Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,
Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,
And show the triumph which their shame displays."

It is something wonderful, that the sagacity shown in the Declaration
and the speech (and, so far as it goes, greater was never shown) should
have failed to discover to the writer and to the speaker the inseparable
relation between the parties to this transaction, and that nothing can
be said to display the imperious arrogance of a base enemy which does
not describe with equal force and equal truth the contemptible figure of
an abject embassy to that imperious power.

It is no less striking, that the same obvious reflection should not
occur to those gentlemen who conducted the opposition to government. But
their thoughts were turned another way. They seem to have been so
entirely occupied with the defence of the French Directory, so very
eager in finding recriminatory; precedents to justify every act of its
intolerable insolence, so animated in their accusations of ministry for
not having at the very outset made concessions proportioned to the
dignity of the great victorious power