hopse.  We may notice in particular a change in the national oath of allegiance, by which one most important clause was entirely erased:  namely, that expressive of hatred to royalty:  and an edict, by which the celebration of the day on which Louis XVI. died, was formally abolished.  Sieyes, in opposing this last measure, happened to speak of Louis as “the tyrant":—­“Nay, nay,” said Napoleon, “he was no tyrant:  had he been one, I should this day have been a captain of engineers—­and you saying mass.”  The Bourbons were very right in considering these as monarchical symptoms; but shrewd observers perceived clearly in whose favour such changes were designed to operate.  It appears that some of Napoleon’s colleagues made a last effort to circumscribe his power, by urging on him the necessity of his immediately placing himself at the head of the armies in the field; expecting, no doubt, great advantages, could they remove him from the seat of government, at the time when the new machinery was getting into a regular course of motion.  He sternly resisted all such suggestions.  “I am Chief Consul,” said he, biting his nails to the quick, “I will remain in Paris.”

And it was, indeed, most necessary for his success that he should remain there at this critical epoch; for, in the arrangement of every branch of the new government, he had systematically sought for his own security in balancing against each other the lovers of opposite sets of principles -men, who, by cordially coalescing together, might still have undone him; or by carrying their animosities to extremity, overturned the whole fabric of his manufacture.  It was thus that he had chosen one consul from the Republican party, and another from the Royalist; either of whom might, in his absence, have been tempted to undermine his sway; whereas both Cambaceres and Lebrun, overawed by his presence, proved eminently serviceable in drawing over to the interests of the Chief Consul innumerable persons, of their own ways of thinking originally, but no longer such zealous theorists as to resist the arguments of self-interest—­those strong springs of hope and fear, of both of which Napoleon, while at the Tuileries, held the master-key.  It was thus, also, that, in forming his ministry, he grouped together men, each of whom detested or despised the others; but each unquestionably fitted, in the highest degree, for the particular office assigned to him; and each, therefore, likely to labour in his own department, communicating little with his colleagues, and looking continually to the one hand that had invested him with his share of power.  It was in vain that one party objected to the weathercock politics of Talleyrand.  “Be it so,” answered the Chief Consul:  “but he is the ablest minister for foreign affairs in our choice, and it shall be my care that he exerts his abilities.”  Carnot, in like manner, was objected to as a firm republican.  “Republican or not,” answered Napoleon, “he is one of the last Frenchmen that would