Peace commissioners, however, settled the difficulties, as old ladies do tea, by a long chat around a covered table. Bonaparte, who had made a flying military trip to Egypt, had got the Pyramids to look down on him from their stony, century-crusted tops, while he slaughtered the Mamelukes at their feet, had pushed across the desert with the _mirage_ of empire ever rising upon his unslaked sight, had made a disagreeable tour of the Holy Land, and had attempted twenty-three times in vain to take St. Jean D’Acre, came back to Paris to be made First Consul in December, 1799,—a Roman office, which he filled like a Roman, by subjugating all Europe by arms and insolence. The gristle of the Corsican had at last stiffened into the bone of a ruler of a large, consolidated empire; and the concentration of power in his hands enabled him to concede to the justice of America what the shifting authority of constituted assemblies, conventions, legislative assemblies, and directories were too weak to dare. Bonaparte met the American commissioners around the round table, himself as round in power as it in shape, and in September, 1800, gave his autograph to a treaty of peace which shielded American independence of action from the insults of the envoys of a nation hitherto friendly,—a nation which had in a timely and efficient way, mainly to help itself against an old rival, helped us, but which, for the preceding ten years, had claimed, and offensively insisted in return, not from our gratitude, but as a right, that we should give our assistance to their ever-shifting schemes, with many of which we had no sympathy, and at a time when to furnish aid was almost to ruin our young strength. While the Frenchman was thus bestriding Europe, putting England to her straits, and in fact even to such despair as to find relief in the Pitt, our American Colossus fell before the only foe which was ever permitted to be his conqueror. Washington died December 14, 1799. The year following the seat of government was removed to the District of Columbia, where, by frequent patching since, it has been made to stand much wear and tear. The city named after Washington is still the greatest atlas in the United States, its large geography requiring the most patient study to find out what one is looking for. Many die without accomplishing it, some by it. The wheel-shaped city has rotated off from its periphery so many different officials, that, although like a velocipede it is very hard riding, it cannot well be stopped without considerable injury to its Federal rider.