More than any other capital of mankind it is cosmopolitan in its present and its past. From
the natural advantages of its site it is the queen city of the earth, seated upon a throne.
After the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon bade his secretary, M. de Meneval, bring him the largest possible
map of Europe. In anxious and protracted interviews the Emperor Alexander had insisted upon the
absolute necessity to Russia of the possession of Constantinople. There was no price so great, no condition so
hard, that it would not have been gratefully accorded by the Russian czar for the city's acquisition. Napo-
leon gazed in silence earnestly and long at the map wherein that continent was outlined, of which he, then at the zenith of his power, was the autocratic arbiter. At last he exclaimed with earnestness, "Constantinople ! Constantinople ! Never ! it is the empire of the world ! "[/b]