his real sentiments the better to, serve his country, and by that means has imposed on Bonaparte and acquired his favour.

The address and manners of a courtier are allowed Marquis de Gallo by all who know him, though few admit that he possesses any talents as a statesman. He is said to have read a great deal, to possess a good memory and no bad judgment; but that, notwithstanding this, all his knowledge is superficial.

LETTER XXIV.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:—You have perhaps heard that Napoleon Bonaparte, with all his brothers and sisters, was last Christmas married by the Pope according to the Roman Catholic rite, being previously only united according to the municipal laws of the French Republic, which consider marriage only as a civil contract. During the last two months of His Holiness's residence here, hardly a day passed that he was not petitioned to perform the same ceremony for our conscientious grand functionaries and courtiers, which he, however, according to the Emperor's desire, declined. But his Cardinals were not under the same restrictions, and to an attentive observer who has watched the progress of the Revolution and not lost sight of its actors, nothing could appear more ridiculous, nothing could inspire more contempt of our versatility and inconsistency, than to remark among the foremost to demand the nuptial benediction, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes, a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a Merlin, with a hundred other equally notorious revolutionists, who were, twelve or fifteen years ago, not only the first to declaim against religious ceremonies as ridiculous, but against religion itself as useless, whose motives produced, and whose votes sanctioned, those decrees of the legislature which proscribed the worship, together with its priests and sectaries. But then the fashion of barefaced infidelity was as much the order of the day as that of external sanctity is at present. I leave to casuists the decision whether to the morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.

A hundred anecdotes are daily related of our new saints and fashionable devotees. They would be laughable were they not scandalous, and contemptible did they not add duplicity to our other vices.

Bonaparte and his wife go now every morning to hear Mass, and on every Sunday or holiday they regularly attend at vespers, when, of course, all those who wish to be distinguished for their piety or rewarded for their flattery never neglect to be present. In the evening of last Christmas Day, the Imperial chapel was, as usual, early crowded in expectation of Their Majesties, when the chamberlain, Salmatoris, entered, and said to the captain of the guard, loud enough to be heard by the audience, "The Emperor and the Empress have just resolved not to come here to-night, His Majesty being engaged by some unexpected business, and the Empress not wishing to come without her consort." In ten minutes the chapel was emptied of every person but the guards, the priests, and three old women who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns, they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte's spies informed him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and made his peace.

At another time, on a Sunday, Fouche entered the chapel in the midst of the service, and whispered to Bonaparte, who immediately beckoned to his lord-in-waiting and to Duroc. These both left the Imperial chapel, and returning in a few minutes at the head of five grenadiers, entered the grand gallery, generally frequented by the most scrupulous devotees, and seized every book. The cause of this domiciliary visit was an anonymous communication received by the Minister of Police, stating that libels against the Imperial family, bound in the form of Prayer-books, had been placed there. No such libels were, however, found; but of one hundred and sixty pretended breviaries, twenty-eight were volumes of novels, sixteen were poems, and eleven were indecent books. It is not necessary to add that the proprietors of these edifying works never reclaimed them. The opinions are divided here, whether this curious discovery originated in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this method of duping his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own malignity. Certain it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the transaction, and that Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.

The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the Grand Mass said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and they looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as they once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.

Even in Bonaparte's own guard, and among the officers of his household troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go to any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now, after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the Mass as to a parade or to a review. With any other people, Bonaparte would not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and forced military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day were encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.

On the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, a company of gendarmes d'Elite, headed by their officers, received publicly, and by orders, the sacrament; when the Abbe Frelaud approached Lieutenant Ledoux, he fell into convulsions, and was carried into the sacristy. After being a little recovered, he looked round him, as if afraid that some one would injure him, and said to the Grand Vicar Clauset, who inquired the cause of his accident and terror: "Good God! that man who gave me, on the 2d of September, 1792, in the convent of the Carenes, the five wounds from which I still suffer, is now an officer, and was about to receive the sacrament from my hands." When this occurrence was reported to Bonaparte, Ledoux was dismissed; but Abbe Frelaud was transported, and the Grand Vicar Clauset sent to the Temple, for the scandal their indiscretion had caused. This act was certainly as unjust towards him who was bayoneted at the altar, as towards those who served the altar under the protection of the bayonets.

LETTER XXV.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:—Although the seizure of Sir George Rumbold might in your country, as well as everywhere else, inspire indignation, it could nowhere justly excite surprise. We had crossed the Rhine seven months before to seize the Duc d'Enghien; and when any prey invited, the passing of the Elbe was only a natural consequence of the former outrage, of audacity on our part, and of endurance or indifference on the part of other Continental States. Talleyrand's note at Aix-la-Chapelle had