y, and above all with Mr. Pitt.

The personal intercourse which took place between Fox and Napoleon,
during the peace of Amiens, has already been alluded to. It was
calculated to make all men regard the chances of a solid peace between
France and England as increased by the event which transferred the reins
of government, in the latter country, into the hands of the illustrious
opponent of Mr. Pitt. But the peculiar feelings of English politicians
have seldom been understood by foreigners--never more widely
misunderstood than by Buonaparte. When Fox visited him, as First Consul,
at the Tuileries, he complained that the English Government countenanced
the assassins who were plotting against his life. Mr. Fox, forgetting
all his party prejudice when the honour of his country was assailed,
answered in terms such as Napoleon's own military bluntness could not
have surpassed--"Clear your head of that nonsense." And now, in like
manner, Mr. Fox, once placed in the responsible management of his
country's interests, was found, not a 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