“You were pleased the other day with that admirable essay, which you were reading, entitled “Historical doubts respecting the existence of Napoleon Buonaparte,” in which the argument is so perfectly established that, if we give reins to scepticism, we have no _demonstrative_ proof, at this moment, that the wonderful Buonaparte who swayed the world by the magic of an almost preternatural influence for a few years, and is now _forgotten_, put himself under the protection of Captain Maitland, and visited Spithead on board the Bellerophon. What wonder that you should know no more than that your boat put off from the shore, on which you saw a dense crowd of assembled spectators, that you neared the stern of a great vessel, saw a little man with a star on his breast and a cocked hat upon his head, were told and _believed_ that it was the royal prisoner, the usurper of France, the wizard Corsican at whom you gazed from your wherry, when you have no _demonstration_ that you are General Douglas, no _irrefragable_ proof that you belong to that line of Scottish heroes from whom you believe yourself to be sprung, and may not be, on the contrary, a foundling transplanted from the parish of St. Giles’ into your splendid cradle, where first you received the fond caresses of your reputed parents. “See then how much we are _obliged_ to take for granted; and is there any greater difficulty in believing that consciousness of identity, which we never doubted, may form a part of our essence hereafter, than that it is inseparable from our existence here, however the continuity of remembrance may be interrupted? All _analogy_ is with me, and I now find this idea, which once was a stumbling block, easy and familiar.