of it. This fact is affirmed by some, and denied by others.

But all those passions which so despotically govern other men, possessed
but a feeble influence over a genius so firm and vast as his: at the
utmost, they may have imparted the first momentum which impelled him
into action earlier than he would have wished; but without penetrating
so deeply beneath the folds of his great mind, a single idea, an obvious
fact, was enough to hurry him, sooner or later, into that decisive
struggle,--that was, the existence of an empire, which rivalled his own
in greatness, but was still young, like its prince, and growing every
day; while the French empire, already mature, like its emperor, could
scarcely anticipate any thing but its decrease.

Whatever was the height to which Napoleon had raised the throne of the
south and west of Europe, he perceived the northern throne of Alexander
ever ready to overshadow him by its eternally menacing position. On
those icy summits of Europe, whence, in former times, so many floods of
barbarians had rushed forth, he perceived all the elements of a new
inundation collecting and maturing. Till then, Austria and Prussia had
opposed sufficient barriers; but these he himself had humbled and
overthrown: he stood, therefore, single, front to front with what he
feared; he alone remained the champion of the civilization, the riches,
and the enjoyments of the nations of the south, against the rude
ignorance, and the fierce cupidity, of the poorer people of the north,
and against the ambition of their emperor and his nobility.

It was obvious, that war alone could decide this great
arbitrament,--this great and eternal struggle between the poor and the
rich; and, nevertheless, this war, with reference to us, was neither
European, nor even national. Europe entered into it against her