confirmed at Amiens, on the 27th of March, 1802. Napoleon still
prosecuted his ambitious projects, extended his power in Italy, and
caused himself to be appointed consul for life, with the power of naming
his successor.


SCHEME OF INVASION RENEWED.

It must be in the memory of most who recollect the period, that the
kingdom of Great Britain was seldom less provided against invasion than
at the commencement of this second war; and that an embarkation from the
ports of Holland, if undertaken instantly after the war had broken out,
might have escaped our blockading squadrons, and have at least shown
what a French army could have done on British ground, at a moment when
the alarm was general, and the country in an unprepared state. But it
is probable that Bonaparte himself was as much unprovided as England
for the sudden breach of the treaty of Amiens--an event brought about
more by the influence of passion than of policy; so that its
consequences were as unexpected in his calculations as in those of Great
Britain. Besides, he had not diminished to himself the dangers of the
undertaking, by which he must have staked his military renown, his
power, which he held chiefly as the consequence of his reputation,
perhaps his life, upon a desperate game, which, though he had already
twice contemplated it, he had not yet found hardihood enough seriously
to enter upon.

He now, however, at length bent himself, with the whole strength of his
mind, and the whole force of his empire, to prepare for this final and
decisive undertaking. The gun-boats in the Bay of Gibraltar, where calms
are frequent, had sometimes in the course of the former war been able to