Since the . Lille speech about the dark spots on the
horizon, the Emperor has made one further effort (at Amiens) to reassure the nervous commercial interestp of France. The Mayor of Amiens, who flatters so vulgarly that he must be more of blockhead than adulator, began his address with a sort of yloria in excelsis to the Emperor's attributes. " Sire, power, goodness, and justice realize for man the ideal of perfection. These precious gifts constitute the glory of your Majesty, and France sees it with a legi- timate pride,"—with more out of the same loom, and a sepa- rate specimen for the Empress, who was assured that her visit to Amiens at the time of the cholera would " descend from century to century to the remotest ages." The Emperor replied to this litany in words expressly intended to allay anxiety about the Salzburg meeting,—but so ineffectually that the Marquis de Moustier has had to prepare his circular, nevertheless. The Emperor said :—" Nothing, I am happy to say, has bien able to shake the confidence which, for now nearly twenty years, the French people has placed in me, and it appreciates at their just value the difficulties which we have had to.surmount. The non- success of our policy beyond the Atlantic has not impaired the prestige of our arms, because everywhere the courage of our soldiers has overcome all resistance. The events which have been accom- plished in Germany have not induced our country to abandon its attitule of calm and dignity, and it reckons with reason on the maintenance of peace. The exciting expressions of a small number have not destroyed the hope 'of seeing more liberal institutions peacefully introduced into public use ; and, in fine, the momentary stagnation in commercial affairs has not hindered the industrial classes from testifying to me their sympathies, and from relying upon the efforts of the Government to give a new impulse to baldness."
