remote posterity of the reality of merely fabulous conquests.  Bonaparte was, however, mistaken as to the mode of accomplishing the object he had in view.  His ciphers, his trophies, and subsequently his eagles, splendidly adorned the monuments of his reign.  But why did he wish to stamp false initials on things with which neither he nor his reign had any connection; as, for example the old Louvre?  Did he imagine that the letter, “N” which everywhere obtruded itself on the eye, had in it a charm to controvert the records of history, or alter the course of time?

   —­[When Louis XVIII. returned to the Tuileries in 1814 he found that
   Bonaparte had been an excellent tenant, and that he had left
   everything in very good condition.]—­

Be this as it may, Bonaparte well knew that the fine arts entail lasting glory on great actions, and consecrate the memory of princes who protect and encourage them.  He oftener than once said to me, “A great reputation is a great poise; the more there is made, the farther off it is heard.  Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues and resounds in after ages.”  This was one of his favourite ideas.  “My power,” he would say at other times, “depends on my glory, and my glory on my victories.  My power would fall were I not to support it by new glory and new victories.  Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me.”  This was then, and probably always continued to be, his predominant idea, and that which prompted him continually to scatter the seeds of war through Europe.  He thought that if he remained stationary ha would fall, and he was tormented with the desire of continually advancing.  Not to do something great and decided was, in his opinion, to do nothing.  “A newly-born Government,” said he to me, “must dazzle and astonish.  When it ceases to do that it falls.”  It was vain to look for rest from a man who was restlessness itself.

His sentiments towards France now differed widely from what I had known them to be in his youth.  He long indignantly cherished the recollection of the conquest of Corsica, which he was once content to regard as his country.  But that recollection was effaced, and it might be said that he now ardently loved France.  His imagination was fired by the very thought of seeing her great, happy, and powerful, and, as the first nation in the world, dictating laws to the rest.  He fancied his name inseparably connected with France, and resounding in, the ears of posterity.  In all his actions he lost sight of the present moment, and thought only of futurity; so, in all places where he led the way to glory, the opinion of France was ever present in his thoughts.  As Alexander at Arbela pleased himself less in having conquered Darius than in having gained the suffrage of the Athenians, so Bonaparte at Marengo was haunted by the idea of what would be said in France.  Before he fought a battle Bonaparte thought little