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Worse than this, when the Free States by overwhelming majorities have just expressed their conviction, that slavery, as he creature of local law, can claim no legitimate extension beyond the limits of that law, he asks their consent to denationalize freedom and to nationalize slavery by an amendment of the Federal Constitution, that shall make the local law of the Slave States paramount throughout the Union.

Well, this may be truth or joke this may be a sneer or a simple assertion: our vulgarities and our insolences may, perhaps, make us as remarkable as that high breeding which we assume to possess. It may be that the Continental society ridicules and detests us, as we walk domineering over Europe; but, after all, which of us would denationalize himself? who wouldn't be an Englishman?

The climate of Touraine or of Tuscany, the Swiss lakes, the Rhine and its castles, whatever is best in Europe, I would root up, if I had my say, and set down here between the Pyrenees and the Straits of Gibraltar. At the same time, I should denationalize Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoi and Dostoievski, making them Spaniards.

Fortunately, Goethe was able to plead his age in excuse; and the world was therefore spared the sight of a great genius saddled with an imperial commission and writing a Napoleonized version of Cæsar's exploits and policy. But the pressing character of the invitation reveals the Emperor's dissatisfaction with his French poetasters and his intention to denationalize German literature.

This event, it is true, was decided by the Dowager Empress; but no one, least of all Napoleon, could harbour any doubts as to its significance. In truth, Napoleon's chief triumphs at Erfurt were social and literary. His efforts to dazzle German princes and denationalize two of her leading thinkers were partly successful. Goethe and Wieland bowed before his greatness.

The right of subjects to denationalize or expatriate themselves, except to escape a tyranny or an oppression which would forfeit the rights of power and warrant forcible resistance to it, does not exist, any more than the right of foreigners to become citizens, unless by the consent and authorization of the sovereign; for the citizen or subject belongs to the state, and is bound to it.

"I am for one deeply convinced," and here he showed he differed from Lord Durham, "of the impolicy of all such attempts to denationalize the French. Generally speaking, they produce the opposite effect from that intended, causing the flame of national prejudice and animosity to burn more fiercely."

"My daughter Julia would please me much better if she cultivated a little common sense, and adopted the plain, republican manners fitted to the eventualities of her future life, instead of aping foreign fashions, and doing her best to denationalize her character." Monsieur Auguste Charmant shrugged his shoulders, Mrs. Brandon clasped her hands, and the former, rising said,

The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble opinion, gone far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize Egypt, to degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold cosmopolites.

This event, it is true, was decided by the Dowager Empress; but no one, least of all Napoleon, could harbour any doubts as to its significance. In truth, Napoleon's chief triumphs at Erfurt were social and literary. His efforts to dazzle German princes and denationalize two of her leading thinkers were partly successful. Goethe and Wieland bowed before his greatness.