Buonaparte receives news of his family; but what precisely the Police Minister says of Don Joseph we cannot discover, because it was necessary to write it in cypher: but how plain does not this cypher speak-that the Minister of Police has observed something in the King of Spain which he does not venture to communicate in the common mode to his Majesty's imperial brother!

M. Le Senateur Comte Roederer, in a private letter to M. Le Comte Dumas, tells him that he had passed two days at Morfontaine, (or as this great scholar chuses to call it, Mortefontaine,) and he gives a shrewd hint that poor Don Joseph knows that he is in 'surveillance.'

The King maintains himself strictly incognito from all the world, and receives neither ministers, nor senators, nor counsellors of state, nor military men; in short, nobody. You must perceive that his present situation, and the Emperor's absence, render this conduct, in some sort, necessary.'

Since the happy days, however, in which Roederer describes Joseph as 's'accommodant de la vie privée de Mortefontaine,' it has suited Buonaparte's purposes to drag the puppet from his retirement, and turn him into a reviewing general, a kind of chief of the staff of the new levies that defile through Paris. It is a picture ridiculous and yet not unaffecting to see this poor man--who has been an attorney, a commissary, a deputy to the assembly, a senator, a prince, a king of Naples, a king of Spain, and finally a countrygentleman buried in the deepest retirement,-hurried to the 'place du Carousel,' to perform the odious duties of a superintendant of the conscription.

A few instances more of the system of espionage.'

Every person who enters or departs from Paris is reported to the Emperor, and often by name.

A letter picked up in a hackney coach is transmitted for the perusal of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon the Great

6

Holland. Libel.-A Commissary of Police at the Hague picked up in a public coach a paper, which seems to have been dropped out of the pocket of a passenger who was there before him.

'It was a Dutch libel, containing good wishes for the enemy, and abuse of France.

This coach had conveyed some conscripts, and some guards of the company of reserve.

"Search

Search is making to discover which among them dropped this paper.'-p. 253.

A pedlar sells a caricature-more matter for the imperial ear. 'Jura; Pedlar, Picture of the Pope.-A pedlar travelling through the canton of Arinthoz, Arrondissement de St. Claude, has been selling a picture of the Pope, represented with his hands chained.

it.

'He had left this canton before the gendarmerie was informed of

'It appears that the local authorities took no steps against him. He is sought after.'-p. 255.

A poor writing-master at one of the parish schools hangs himself; the emperor must be made acquainted with it.

The Sieur L'Enfant, aged 20, writing-master at the Napoleon Lyceum, who lodged at No. 25, Cour de Commerce, hung himself in the parlour of his apartments. This young man was of a gloomy disposition.'

We are however obliged to the police for one anecdote which it has intercepted;-the subject is Mademoiselle Bertin, long the most famous milliner in Europe; who, having adorned and turned the heads of all the fine ladies in France, lost her own and her life in a singular, and we think, an affecting manner.

'On the third Sunday of the fetes at St. Cloud, she made one among the immense multitude of spectators assembled to behold the Empress. Certain recollections crowded upon her memory, and her lively emotion bathed her cheeks in tears. Her head became giddy and heated with visions. She was brought back to her house, where she was seized with a violent fever. In her delirium, she incessantly repeated, " I have seen the Queen again-I have seen my benefactress once again. Nothing remains for me now but to die." On Thursday she gave up her last breath. Her name, which was for a long time associated with the ridiculous, will be rendered honourable by gratitude. p. 338.

Old Grétry the musician dies-the theatre Feydeau gives an entertainment to celebrate his obsequies. No collection of people without the Emperor's knowledge the whole affair is detailed to his majesty! From three several spies he is informed that numbers were turned away from the door, for whom places could not be found. The very taste of the scenery is described; on the curtain was painted a sun, with the name of Grétry in the centre;' and general Count Hulin, governor of Paris, (an attendant, to speak softly, on the last moments of the Duke D'Enghein,) reports in his dispatch to the Emperor on this important subject, that for two days past all the world could talk of nothing else!' Merciful heaven! on the 27th and 28th of September, 1813, while Napoleon was consigning to foreign and dishonourable graves, 300,000

300,000 of the youth of France, all Paris could think of nothing, but a painted sun with the name of Grétry in the centre !'

But is not this tremendous police as efficacious for the punishment of crimes as for the detection of private feelings and opinions? The following fact will answer this inquiry.

A monster who confounded all the ties of nature by an incestuous commerce so abominable that the law had not provided for its punishment, is detected;-for this enormity a penalty of' détention pendant six mois' is proposed, and approved! The poor wretches that dropped the Dutch pasquinade or sold the Italian caricature, would probably have expiated their crimes with their lives; but an offence, which dissolves, as the Editor remarks, the most sacred relations of society, is censured with six months detention. "'Sblood,' (as Hamlet says) there's something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.'

Having seen that Buonaparte subjects his wife and brother, two of the least intriguing and most inoffensive beings in France, to the surveillance of the police, it is not surprising that the correspondence of individuals through the post-office should be intercepted; but it is surprising that he should find time or appetite to read such trash as is collected for him from this source.

The Duchess of Albufera writes to her husband, one of Buonaparte's own creatures: well,—her letter is opened; it contains nothing but her congratulations on the successes of the Marshal, which the Moniteur had before trumpetted; it is nevertheless sent to the Emperor!

M. Schreiber, a sub-spy to Marshal Soult, acquaints his Excellency, that the Prefect of the Gironde on one occasion when all the company were praising his Excellency, preserved the most profound and provoking silence, and took the first opportunity to change the conversation. M. Schreiber reports also, that Generals Clausel and Tirley criticise some of Marshal Soult's operations;the whole is stopped at the post-office and transmitted for the perusal of the master-critic and master-spy, the Emperor himself.

We amuse ourselves with thinking how much this publication will fill up the chasms of French correspondence, and how delighted Messrs. Soult, Clausel, and Tirley must be to find so exact a record of their mutual sentiments.

Of the private letters which have been collected, we need say but little they all bear one character of intense anxiety for the safety of the friends of the writers in the army; deplorable pictures of the internal misery of the families of France, and the most ardent prayers for the restoration of peace. We shall select one or two specimens which shew the ignorance in which the dearest relations of even officers of high rank were kept concerning their fate.

'To

'To Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon to the Grand Army. Fontenai, 26th Sept.

I live here always in suspense, but the news give me no hopes of seeing you this winter. I imagine, that, although better informed than myself, you are not, on that account, more happy. This is not living, my poor friend; this is dying. Where are you at present? I know not. We are all here in a state of painful suspense.'

To the Baron Finot, Director-General of the Engineer Park.
'Avallon, 25th Sept.

If,

I must then give up the hope of seeing you so soon. however, there were winter quarters, would you send for me? I hope So. In fine, here are four couriers, and I have no accounts from you. I am absolutely ill with anxiety about it, especially in such a vile city as this, where so many idle stories are in circulation.

I am tired of this life: one does not live; it may be called dying a thousand deaths daily. They tell me, from Paris, that a report of peace is circulating there. Ah, if that should prove true, what happiness!'

That these were the sentiments and this the tone of the universal French nation, even before the battle of Leipsic, there is abundant proof. What must its feelings now be, after the loss of 300,000 men, the invasion of her territory, the occupation of onefourth of the country by hostile armies. La paix, pour l'amour de Dieu, la paix!-is the only exclamation which has reached the ears of the English couriers in their way through France. Happy could France venture to speak out what France, with every rational being, must think, that Buonaparte and war are almost inseparably connected, and that the basis of true tranquillity and lasting peace would undoubtedly be the restoration of a legitimate government, and a recurrence to the ancient principles of civilised Europe!

But though good sense and good feeling concur in this conclusion, yet if Russia, Prussia, Austria, the Germanic States, and Sweden, should resolve to make peace with Buonaparte, no one, we presume, would seriously propose that Great Britain should continue the war alone, for the avowed purpose of forcing on France a sovereign chosen in this country, like a Lord Mayor, by acclamation of the good citizens of London.

Peace, under such circumstances, might not, perhaps, be popular, but it could not be unwise: and, in any case, it is some consolation to believe, as we gladly do, that its durability will depend, in no small degree, upon ourselves. We may enter into relations of peace with France, without abating one jot of our instinctive vigilance; and it would be degrading to our national character to doubt that we shall decline from the firmness which we have

VOL. X. NO. XX.

I I

have hitherto manifested in action, or from the confident spirit which has actuated all our deliberations.

Of the translation we can say little good. It is, as our readers will have perceived, a hasty performance. The words indeed are English, but the idiom is generally French; and in many passages we look in vain for the true import of the original terms.

ART. XI. Inchiquen, the Jesuit's Letters, during a late Residence in the United States of America; being a Fragment of a Private Correspondence, accidentally discovered in Europe, containing a favourable View of the Manners, Literature, and State of Society, of the United States; and a Refutation of many of the Aspersions cast upon this Country, by former Residents and Tourists. By some Unknown Foreigner.New-York, 1810.

ON

N the 2d of November last, a Mr. Macon, deputy to the Congress of the United States, brought up a 'Report concerning the conduct which has been observed by the English during the War.' In this Report the British government, its naval and military officers, its seamen and soldiers, are indiscriminately accused of every thing that is base, cowardly, treacherous and inhuman; such as ill-treating American prisoners; violating flags of truce; pillaging and destroying private property; exciting the savages to murder their prisoners, and to commit outrages on their dead bodies; burning houses; profaning and destroying churches, through motives of avarice and vengeance; carrying off articles of value, and destroying all that could not gratify their insatiable cupidity;' violating women, &c. &c.; together with many other horrible and atrocious deeds, all asserted to have been committed by the example, under the sanction, and in the presence, of the officers commanding his Majesty's forces by sea and laud; and the Report concludes with a resolution, that the President of the United States be requested to collect and lay before the House, during the continuation of the war, the proofs of all the infractions by the enemy of the laws of war in use among civilized nations.' From the character given of Mr. Madison by his own countrymen, and apparently justified in some small degree (it must be owned) to a hasty or prejudiced observer, by sundry of the speeches and proclamations of that venerable chief magistrate, and from the shameless audacity which marks all the averments of this Report, we should not have been surprised if the framers of it, instead of confining their worthy

* Quart. Rev, No. XV, Art. XIIL, p. 193.

president