an interval of rest and leisure, to consolidate his conquests at home and
abroad. He had not renounced the glorious and ill-defined project of the
imperial government which he affected to exercise over Europe. "If England
made a new coalition," he wrote to M. Otto, "the only result would be a
renewal of the history of the greatness of Rome."

It was to the honor of the First Consul, in the midst of this brilliant
political and military renown, and in spite of his impulsive and
ungovernable disposition, that he understood that the restoration of
peace, the joy of victory, and the hope of a regular government, were
unable to satisfy all the wants or regulate all the movements of the human
soul. Personally without experience of religious prejudices or feelings,
free from any connection with philosophical coteries, Bonaparte did not
limit himself to a sense of the support which religion could lend in
France to the new order which he wished to establish: he understood the
higher wants of minds and consciences, and the supreme law which assigns
to Heaven the regulation of human life. The doctrines of Christianity, as
well as the divisions of the Christian Church, were indifferent to him; he
did not understand their importance, and would have thought little of
them; but he knew that, in spite of the efforts of the eighteenth century
philosophy--in spite of the ravages caused by the French Revolution, the
attachment and respect of many for the Catholic religion had still great
power. He knew also that Catholicism could not be re-established in
France, under his auspices, without the assistance and good will of the
Court of Rome. No impression was made on his mind by the attempts made to
persuade him to found in France an independent church freed from all
connection with the Papacy, or by the arguments used in favor of
Protestantism. His traditional respect, as well as the religious sentiment
of the mass of the French nation, were in favor of Catholicism. His good
sense, as well as his profound instinct of the means of action in