jor-general to the bounty of Louis XVI. but when he considered the immense value of the revolutionary plunder, called national property, and that those who confiscated could also premote, he did not hesitate what party to take. A traitor is generally a coward; he has every where experienced defeats; he was defeated by his royalist countrymen in 1793, by his Mahometan sectaries in 1800, and by your countrymen in 1801.

Besides his Turkish wife, Menou has in the same house with her, one Italian and two French girls, who live openly with him; but who are obliged to keep themselves, by selling their influence and protection, and perhaps sometimes even their personal favours. He has also in his hotel several gambling tables, where those who are too bashful to address themselves to him or his mistresses, may deposit their donations, and if they are thought sufficient, the hint is taken and their business done. He never pays any debts, and never buys any thing for ready money, and all persons of his suite, or appertaining to his establishment, have the same privilege. Troublesome creditors are recommended to the care of the special tribunals; which also find means to reduce the obstinacy of those refractory merchants or traders who refuse giving any credit. All the money he extorts or obtains is brought to this capital, and laid out by his agents in purchasing estates, which, from his advanced age, and weak constitution, he has little prospect of long enjoying. He is a grand officer of Buonaparte's Legion of Honour; and has a long claim to that distinction, because, as early as on the 25th of June, 1790, he made a motion in the National Assembly, to suppress all former Royal orders in France, and to create in their place only a national one. Always an incorrigible flatterer, when Napoleone proclaimed himself Ali the Mussulman, Menou professed himself Abdallah the believer in the Alcoran.

The late vice-president of the Italian republic, Melzi-Eril, is now in complete disgrace with his sovereign, Napoleone the First. If persons of rank and property would read through the list of those, their equals by birth and wealth, who, after being seduced by the sophistry of impostors, dishonoured and exposed themselves by joining in the revolution, they might see that none of them have escaped insults, many have suffered death, and all have been or are vile slaves, at the mercy of the whip of some

upstart beggar, and trampled upon by men started up from the mud of lowest birth and basest morals. If their revolutionary mania were not incurable, this truth, and this evidence, would retain them within their duty, so corresponding with their real interest, and prevent them from being any longer borne along by a current of infamy and danger, and preserve them from being lost upon quicksands or dashed against rocks.

The conduct and fate of the Italian nobleman and Spanish grandee, Melzi-Eril, has induced me to make these reflections. Wealthy, as well as elevated, he might have passed his life in uninterrupted tranquillity, enjoying its comforts without experiencing its vicissitudes; with the esteem of his contemporaries, and without reproach from posterity or from his own conscience. Unfortunately for him, a journey into this country made him acquainted both with our philosophers and with our philosophical works; and he had neither natural capacity to distinguish errors from reality, nor judgment enough to perceive, that what appeared improving and charming in theory, frequently became destructive and improper when attempted to be put into practice. Returned to his own country, his acquired half-learning made him wholly dissatisfied with his government, with his religion, and with himself. In our revolution he thought that he saw the first approach towards the perfection of the human species; and, that it would soon make mankind as good and as regenerated in society as was promised in books. With our own regenerators, he extenuated the crimes, which sullied their work from its first page, and declared them even necessary to make the conclusion so much the more complete. When, therefore, Buonaparte, in 1796, entered the capital of Lombardy, Melzi was among the first of the Italian nobility who hailed him as a deliverer.

The numerous vexations, and repeated pillage of our government, generals, commissaries, and soldiers, did not abate his zeal, nor alter his opinion. "The faults and sufferings of individuals," he said," are nothing to the goodness of the cause, and do not impair the utility of the whole." To him, every thing the revolution produced was the best; the murder of thousands and the ruin of millions were with him nothing, compared with the benefit the universe would one day derive from the principles and instruction of our armed and unarmed philosophers. In recom

pense for so much complacency, and such great patriotism, Buonaparte appointed him, in 1797, a plenipotentiary from the Cisalpine Republic to the Congress at Radstadt; and in 1802, a vice-president of the Italian Republic.

As Melzi was a sincere and disinterested republican fanatic, he did not much approve of the strides Buonaparte made towards a sovereignty that annihilated the sovereignty of his sovereign people. In a conference, however, with Talleyrand at Lyons, in February, 1802, he was convinced that this age was not yet ripe for all the improvements our philosophers intended to confer on it; and that to prevent it from retrogading to the point where it was found by our revolution, it was necessary that it should be ruled by enlightened men, such as he and Buonaparte, to whom he advised him by all means, never to give the least hint about liberty and equality. Our minister ended his fraternal counsel with obliging Melzi to sign a stipulation for a yearly sum, as a douceur for the place he occupied.

The sweets of power shortly caused Melzi to forget both the tenets of his philosophy and the schemes of regeneration. He trusted so much to the promises of Buonaparte and Talleyrand, that he believed himself destined to reign for life, and was, therefore, not a little surprised, when he was ordered by Napoleone the First, to descend, and salute Eugenius de Beauharnois, as the deputy sovereign of the sovereign King of Italy. He was not philosopher enough to conceal his chagrin, and bowed with such a bad grace, to the new Viceroy, that it was visible he would have preferred seeing in that situation, an Austrian Archduke, as a governor-general. To soften his disappointment, Buonaparte offered to make him a Prince, and with that rank indemnify him for breaking the promises given at Lyons; where it is known, that the influence of Melzi, more than the intrigues of Talleyrand, determined the Italian Consulta in the choice of a president.

Immediately after Buonaparte's return to France, Melzi left Milan, and retired to an estate in Tuscany; from that place he wrote to Talleyrand a letter, full of reproach, and concluded, by asking leave to pass the remainder of his days in Spain, among his relatives. An answer was presented him by an officer of Buonaparte's gens-d'armes d'Ellte, in which he was forbid

to quit Italy, and ordered to return with the officer to Milan, and there occupy his office of Arch-Chancellor, to which he had been nominated. Enraged at such treatment, he endeavoured to kill himself with a dose of poison, but his attempt did not succeed. His health was, however, so much injured by it, that it is not supposed he can live long. What a lesson for reformers and innovators!

LETTER LIII.

Paris, September, 1805.

MY LORD,

A RIDICULOUS affair lately occasioned a great deal of bustle among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps. When Buonaparte demanded for himself and for his wife the title of Imperial Majesty, and for his brothers and sisters that of Imperial Highness, he also insisted on the salutation of a Serene Highness being given to his Arch-Chancellor Cambaceres, and his ArchTreasurer Le Brun. The political consciences of the independent representatives of independent continental Princes, imme-. diately took the alarm at the latter innovation; as the appellation of Serene Highness has never, hitherto, been bestowed on persons who had net princely rank. They complained to Talleyrand, they petitioned Buonaparte, and they dispatched couriers to their respective Courts. The minister smiled; the Emperor cursed, and their own cabinets deliberated. All routes, all assemblies, all circles, and all balls, were at a stop. Cambaceres applied to his sovereign, to support his pretensions, as connected with his own dignity; and the diplomatic corps held forward their dignity as opposing the pretensions of Cambaceres. In this dilemma, Buonaparte ordered all the ambassadors, ministers, envoys, and agents en masse, to the castle of the Thuilleries. After hearing, with apparent patience, their arguments in favour of established etiquette and customs, he remained inflexible, upon the ground that he, as master, had a right to confer what titles he chose, within his own dominions, on his own subjects; and that those foreigners who refused to submit to his regulaitons, might

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return to their own country. This plain explanation neither ef fecting a conversation, nor making any impression, he grew warm, and left the refractory diplomatists, with these remarkable words: "Were I to create my Mameluke, Rostan, a King, both you and your masters should acknowledge him in that rank."

After this conference, most of their Excellencies were seized with terror and fear, and would, perhaps, have subscribed to the commands of our Emperor, had not some of the wisest among them proposed, and obtained the consent of the rest, to apply once more to 1 alleyrand, and purchase by some douceur, his assistance in this great business. The heart of our minister is easily softened; and he assented upon certain conditions, to lay the whole before his sovereign, in such a manner, that Cambaceres should be a made a Prince as well as a Serene Highness.

It is said, that Buonaparte was not easily persuaded to this measure, and did not consent to it, before the minister remarked, that his condescension in this insignificant opposition to his will, would proclaim his moderation and generosity, and empower him to insist on obedience, when matters of the greatest conse•quence should be in question or dispute. Thus our regicide Cambaceres owes his princely title to the shallow intrigues of the agents of legitimate sovereigns. Their nicety in talking of innovations with regard to him, after they had without difficulty, hailed a sans-culotte an Emperor, and other sans-culottes Imperial Highnesses, was as absurd as improper. Report, however, states, what is very probable, that they were merely the duped tools of Cambaceres' ambition and vanity, and of Talleyrand's corruption and cupidity.

Cambaceres expected to have been elevated to a Prince, on the same day that he was made a Serene Highness: but Joseph Buonaparte represented to his brother that too many other Princedoms would diminish the respect and value of the Princedoms of the Buonaparte family. Cambaceres knew that Talleyrand had some reason at that period to be discontented with Joseph, and therefore asked his advice, how to get made a Prince, against the wishes of this Grand Elector. After some consideration, the minister replied that he was acquainted with one way, which would, with his support, certainly succeed; but it requir