Turning to the second great power of the Old World, we may assert that there is not a harbor on the entire French coast of capacity or convenience proportionate to the demands of a national emporium. Though the site of Paris was chosen by a nation in no sense commercial, and the constitutional prejudices of the people are of that semi-barbarous kind which affect at the same time pleasure and a contempt of the enterprises which pay for it, there has been a decided anxiety among the foremost Frenchmen since the time of Colbert to see France occupying an influential position among the national fortune-hunters of the world. Napoleon III. shares this solicitude to an extent which his uncle's hatred of England would never permit him to confess, though he felt it deeply. The millions which the present Emperor has spent on Cherbourg afford a mere titillation to his ambitious spirit. Their result is a handsome parade-place,--a pretty stone toy,--an unpickable lock to an inclosure nobody wants to enter,--a navy-yard for the creation of an armament which has no commerce to protect. No wonder that the discontented despot seeks to eke out the quality of his ports by their plenteous quantity,--seizing Algiers,--looking wistfully at the Red Sea,--overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,--striking madly out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,--playing Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile, to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary Commercial France, he plays ship with Eugenie on the gentle Seine, or amuses himself with the marine romance of the Parisian civic escutcheon. No one will think for an instant of comparing Paris with New York in respect to natural advantages. The capitals of the other Continental nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest condition of individual liberty,--class servitude, sumptuary and travel restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest necessaries of life from the area within which it is confined. _A priori_, therefore, we might expect that the metropolis of America would arise on New York Island, and in process of time become one of the greatest capitals of the world.