To give to our country a liberal constitution which restores its ancient Cortes, secures the property and liberty of individuals, breaks the fetters which were imposed upon genius, establishes a government, and fixes the national prosperity, ... to place upon the throne of the Spaniards a just and amiable Prince who will govern by the laws, and will have no other happiness than that of his people, ... such is the work of consummate wisdom for which the Junta offers to your Imperial and Royal Majesty its tribute of respect and gratitude. It would perpetuate that tribute by a durable monument voted in its own name and in the name of all the Spaniards of all climates, of all the individuals of a numerous family dispersed over a great portion of the globe; who will not delay with one accord to bless their generous benefactor, and who will transmit his august name to the remotest generations with the glorious appellation of the Restorer of the Spains.” ♦BUONAPARTE IS EMBARRASSED IN REPLYING TO IT.♦ The Deputies stood in a circle round Napoleon while their President delivered this base address. For the first, and perhaps the only time in his public life, Buonaparte was at a loss for a reply. He spake indeed more than three-quarters of an hour, but it was vaguely and hesitatingly, in confused and broken sentences, his head bending down, and when he raised it at times, it was only again to let it fall. None of those memorable expressions came from him which the hearers bear away, none of those sparkling sentiments and pointed sentences, ... those coruscations which at other times characterized his discourse. It seemed as if the powers both of thought and of language had forsaken him. From one subject he passed to another unconnectedly, resuming them with as little reason as he had broken them off, and frequently repeating the same flat meaning in the same cold and vapid words. His manifest embarrassment would have been ludicrous to all persons present, if the necessity of restraining themselves had not rendered it as painful to them as it was to himself. So strange and utter a destitution of his wonted talents astonished those who witnessed it. Perhaps Buonaparte was sickened with excess of adulation, and contemplating mournfully the condition to which men, once of proud intellect, patriotic hopes, and generous desires, had debased themselves in subservience to his purposes, regarded them with compassion rather than contempt. Perhaps he compared in sure anticipation the opinion which posterity would pronounce upon these transactions with the language which was now addressed to him. The cloud was not of the understanding alone, but of the heart. The work, he then believed, was done; this was the concluding scene of the drama, the plot had been fully developed, and the intended catastrophe was brought about; but in the hour of success it is scarcely possible that he should not have contrasted the reflections which then came upon