American savage, in preference to this arrogant assumption of an empty
superiority. Why, the very tone in which every Frenchman, from fifteen
to five-and-forty, utters the words "la France," is enough to raise the
laugh, or make the blood boil, of all mankind.

Nearly twenty years after this, I happened to be sitting one day with
Gentz, the most memorable practical philosopher of his age and country.
Germany was then in the most deplorable depression, overrun with French
armies; and with Napoleon at Erfurth, in the pride of that "bad
eminence" on which he stood in such Titanic grandeur, and from which he
was so soon to be flung with such Titanic ruin. Our conversation
naturally turned on the melancholy state of things.

"I think," said the great politician, "that this supremacy must fall. I
might not think so if any other nation were the masters of Europe; but
France, though often a conqueror, has never been a possessor. The
insolence of the individual Frenchman has been the grand obstacle to the
solidity of her empire."

To my remark, that her central position, her vast population, the
undaunted bravery of her troops, and the military propensities of her
people, fitted her to be the disturber of Europe.

"Yes," was the sage's answer; "but to be no more than the disturber. Her
power is the whirlwind; for purposes which man may never be able fully
to define, suffered, or sent forth, to sweep the Continent; perhaps,
like the tempest, to punish, nay, perhaps in the end to purify; but the
tempest is scarcely more transitory, or more different from the dew that
invisibly descends and silently refreshes the land."