t are to live and move in it are also mean, essentially
mean. Nothing grand in them? Yes, doubtless in the veriest grub as to
capacity, but the capacity is undeveloped.

_Ergo_, as to the intrigue or fable, and as to the conduct or evolution
of this fable--novels must be the chief natural resource of woman.

_Moral Certainty._--As that a child of two years (or under) is not party
to a plot. Now, this would allow a shade of doubt--a child so old might
cry out or give notice.

This monstrous representation that the great war with France (1803-15)
had for its object to prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of
France--which recently, in contempt of all truth and common-sense, I
have so repeatedly seen advanced--throws a man profoundly on the
question of what _was_ the object of that war. Surely, in so far as we
are concerned, the matter was settled at Amiens in the very first year
of the century. December, 1799, Napoleon had been suffered by the
unsteady public opinion of France--abhorring a master, and yet sensible
that for the chief conscious necessity of France, viz., a developer of
her latent martial powers, she must look for a master or else have her
powers squandered--to mount the consular throne. He lived, he _could_
live, only by victorious war. Most perilous was the prospect for
England. In the path which not Napoleon, but France, was now preparing
to tread, and which was the path of Napoleon no otherwise than that he
was the tool of France, was that servitor who must gratify her grand
infirmity or else be rapidly extinguished himself, unhappily for
herself, England was the main counter-champion. The course of honour
left to England was too fatally the course of resistance. Resistance to
what? To Napoleon personally? Not at all; but to Napoleon as pledged by
his destiny to the prosecution of a French conquering policy. That
personally England had no hostility to Napoleon is settled by the fact
that she had at Amiens cheerfully conceded the superior power. Under
what title? would have been the most childish of demurs. That by act she
never conceded the title of emperor was the mere natural diplomatic
result of never having once been at peace with Napoleon under that
title. Else it was a point of entire indifference. Granting the
consulship, she had granted all that could be asked. And what she
opposed was the determined war course of Napoleon and the schemes of
ultra-Polish partition to which Napoleon ha