little to the surprise and disappointment of Napoleon, about as close and watchful a negotiator as he could have had to deal with in Pitt himself.  The English minister employed on this occasion, first, Lord Yarmouth,[54] one of the detenus of 1803, and afterwards Lord Lauderdale.  For some time strong hopes of a satisfactory conclusion were entertained; but, in the end, the negotiation broke up, on the absolute refusal of Napoleon to concede Malta to England, unless England would permit him to conquer Sicily from the unfortunate sovereign whose Italian Kingdom had already been transferred to his brother Joseph.  Mr. Fox was lost to his country in September, 1806; and Napoleon ever afterwards maintained that, had that great statesman lived, the negotiation would have been resumed, and pushed to a successful close.  Meantime, however, the diplomatic intercourse of the Tuileries and St. James’s was at an end, and the course which the negotiation had taken transpired necessarily in Parliament.

It then came out that the article of Hanover had not formed one of the chief difficulties;—­in a word, Napoleon had signified that, although the Electorate had been ceded by him to Prussia under the treaty of Vienna, at the close of 1805, Prussia yielding to him in return the principalities of Anspach, Bareuth and Neufchatel, still, if the English Government would agree to abandon Sicily, he, on his part, would offer no opposition to the resumption of Hanover by its rightful sovereign, George III.  This contemptuous treachery being ascertained at Berlin, the ill-smothered rage of the court and nation at length burst into a flame.  The beautiful Queen of Prussia, and Prince Louis, brother to the king, two characters whose high and romantic qualities rendered them the delight and pride of the nation, were foremost to nourish and kindle the popular indignation.  The young nobility and gentry rose in tumult, broke the windows of the ministers who were supposed to lean to the French interest, and openly whetted their sabres on the threshold-stone of Napoleon’s ambassador.  The lovely Queen appeared in the uniform of the regiment which bore her name, and rode at its head.  The enthusiasm of the people thus roused might be directed, but could hardly be repressed.

Nor was it in Prussia alone that such sentiments prevailed.  Split as Germany has for ages been into many independent states, there has always, nevertheless, been felt, and acknowledged, a certain national unity of heart as well as head among all that speak the German language:  the dissolution of the empire was felt all over the land as a common wrong and injury:  Napoleon’s insulting treatment of Prussia was resented as indicative of his resolution to reduce that power also (the only German power now capable of opposing any resistance to French aggression) to a pitch of humiliation as low as that in which Austria was already sunk; and, lastly, another atrocious deed of the French Emperor—­a deed as darkly unpardonable as the murder of D’Enghien—­was perpetrated at this very crisis, and arrayed against him, throughout all Germany, every feeling, moral and political, which could be touched either by the crimes or the contumelies of a foreign tyrant.