Barlow's zeal was pleasing to the rulers of France. They sent him and the Abbé Grégoire to revolutionize Savoy, and to divide it into departments. After his return, he became rich by speculation, and lived handsomely in the Hotel de Clermont-Tonnerre. His reputation extended to his own country. The United States employed him to negotiate with the Barbary pirates,--that is to say, to buy off the wretched cutthroats who infested the Mediterranean. He went to Africa, and made arrangements which were considered advantageous then, and would be hooted at as disgraceful now. In the treaty with Algiers occurred a passage that gave great offence to his friends at home, and to Federalists in general. It was to this effect, if not in these words: "That the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." In 1805, after seventeen years of absence, Barlow returned to America, built himself a house near Washington, and called it Kalorama. Jefferson and the Democrats received him with open arms; he embraced them with equal warmth, and was a very great man for some time. A new edition of the "Columbiad" completed his fame,--an edition gotten up at his own expense, with engravings by his friend Robert Fulton; the paper, type, illustrations, and binding, far superior to anything as yet produced by American publishers. At the request of the President, Barlow went back to France as Minister, in the place of General Armstrong. It was the winter of the Russian campaign. A personal interview with the Emperor on the subject of the Berlin and Milan Decrees seemed necessary, and Barlow hurried to Wilna to meet him. The weather was unusually severe, the roads rough, and the accommodations wretched. Cold and exposure brought on a violent illness; and Barlow expired in a miserable hut near Cracow. The "Columbiad" is an enlargement, or rather a dilution, of the "Vision of Columbus," by the addition of some two thousand verses. The epic opens with Columbus in prison; to him enters Hesper, an angel. The angel leads Columbus to the Mount of Vision, whence he beholds the panorama of the Western Continent he had discovered. Hesper acts as showman, and explains the tableaux as they roll on. He points out the geographical features of America, not forgetting Connecticut River; relates the history of Mexico and of Peru, and explains the origin of races, cautioning Columbus against the theory of several Adams. Turning north, he describes the settlement of the English colonies, and narrates the old French War of General Wolfe and the American Revolution, with the customary episodes,--Saratoga, Yorktown, Major André, Miss McCrea, and the prison-ships. Finally, the angel predicts the glory of the world's future,--perpetual peace, unrestricted commerce, public works, health and longevity, one universal language. The globe, "one confederate, independent sway," shall