have existed, as I am confident
His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in
all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign
both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."

Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private
carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the
post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew
and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and
given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence.
Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before,
led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of
the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors
of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were
then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which
they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable
village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and
venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played
an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous
of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his
army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a
horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary
resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were
they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French
army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from
being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on
the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of
his emperor across the Beresina.

The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to
still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate
himself from his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before
the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of
escape.

Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends
with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the
travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had
rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind,
could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the
travellers wer