the materials of a second infernal machine, which had been found upon some ingenious Italians; they wished to make it pass for a contrivance they meant to put in practice against the British fleet, but the government knew better. He showed us also some weapon, which had been taken upon George, and the pistols of Pichegru. It seems singular that these two names should be connected, but George had a mind far above the station in which fortune had placed him, and ought not, as I have before observed, to be confounded with an assassin. He declared upon his trial and in a manner which carried conviction to the mind of every one present, that if assassination had been his object, he might more than once have effected it; being a man of great personal strength he had for some time been employed to cleave wood for the use of the palace, and had worked as a labourer at Malmaison. He might here certainly have surprised the first consul at any time in the garden, and given a cruel interruption to some dream of future greatness, or of deep-laid vengeance: for hatred and vengeance divide that mind at the caprices of which all Europe, England and perhaps Russia excepted, is made to tremble. Upon being asked by the Judge, how he could answer to himself the having shot an officer in the execution of his duty, and when all resistance was useless, "I thought,” replied George, "that I might possibly effect my escape, and I felt it perfectly justifiable to repel violence by force. But the poor man, as you say, was doing his duty, and I am sorry enough for him to wish that you had been in his place." Pichegru will be known to future ages as one of the greatest military characters of France, and is remembered with affection by all who were of his intimate acquaintance as a goodhumoured, cheerful man. What the extent of his plan was, can hardly now be ascertained, but it is said to have embraced half the republic in its ramifications. Providence, in permitting it to fail notwithstanding the fairest prospects of success, must have decided what was best, but every one must regret the fate of Pichegru, a great and gallant general, an amiable and kind-hearted man, strangled by a midnight murderer in his bed.

In the course of my acquaintance with a great variety of persons and of frequent conversation with those I have accidentally sat next to, I never found one who did not believe that Pichegru was murdered. You will wonder, perhaps, that such a subject should be canvassed under such a system of police; but there are moments when the public feeling bursts forth in a way not to be controlled.

"The flesh will quiver where you drive the knife,
"And sighs and tears by nature grow on pain.”

VOL. II.

C C

The grand judge is said to have informed the first consul at the time of the duke d'Enghien's death, that if all were to be taken up, who spoke freely of that measure, the prisons of the republic would not contain them.

We visited what Kotzebue calls a great and capital collection of machines and models, where various implements of rural industry, ploughs, windmills, water machines, steam engines, and beehives, all very prettily done in miniature, and ranged along upon the different tables of several large halls, which were once in the occupation of the fathers of the oratory: there are models also of all the various machines of spinning and weaving wool or cotton, and a representation of the process of working up clay into porcelain, or leather into shoes with exact models of the tools used in these and twenty other trades and manufactories. Some collection of the sort, extending to the latest and most valuable inventions for saving labour might be of service, but it is hardly probable that any revolution, which can annihilate all knowledge of the various trades that supply us with the necessaries of life, would respect this collection of Lilliputian machinery, in forming which, the time of several ingenious artists has been egregiously thrown away. It put me in mind of the emperor of China's observation upon the models of various useful machines which made part of the presents carried to him by Lord Macartney's embassy, "I fancy," said the old monarch, "these pretty things were intended as presents for my great grandchildren;" and I should not be surprised if his imperial majesty of France took the hint and converted this great collection of models into a warehouse of toys for the amusement of the younger branches of his family.

We were much pleased with the panorama of Naples, which is the only one we saw. The spectator ascends an elevated seat in the centre of a large circular room, and looks down upon the representation of the city, as he might upon the city itself from the steeple of a church, and no illusion can be more complete. The city of Naples, the beautiful intermixture of land and water in the neighbourhood, crowds in the streets, vessels at anchor, or under sail, the extent of the Mediteranean as far as the sight could reach, and the distant island of Caprea seemed beneath us. It was superior to any thing I had conceived possible, and consoled me for my disappointment at the phantasmagorie, of which I had heard very exaggerated and confused accounts. We all know, that the apparent magnitude of an object, seen through a lens, increases or decreases as the eye or the object approaches or retires from the lens, and that the effect is the same when the shadow of the object is thrown upon a wall; the shadow becomes a giant or a dwarf, in proportion as you move the original or the lens (if you make use of

one) through which the rays pass. You must have seen proofs of this in the magic lantern, and if you could suppose a person on the opposite side of the sheet frequently made use of on these occasions, the shadows cast on it would appear to that person as the figures in one part of the exhibition of the phantasmagorie do to the spectator. He is placed in entire darkness, the reflection of the object on the curtain between him and the apparatus appears at first like a luminous point, it then becomes an owl, or an insect, or a death's head, and grows rapidly larger, and he, guided or rather misguided by experience, supposes the figure is approaching him, till he is almost tempted to brush it away

with his hand. It then diminishes in the same manner. Another branch of the phantasmagorie has something in it more singular. Figures are made to appear in any part of the room, which is rendered as dark as possible, and to disappear the moment after. Sometimes they are likenesses of a universally well-known public character now no longer alive; but more frequently they are representations of Time, or Death, or of a Fury such as the poets describe them, or of some other strange figure calculated to alarm the imagination of the spectator. These being made to move along over the heads of the audience (who are earnestly requested not to stretch out their hands) are probably suspended from long and light poles like fishing-rods. How they are rendered luminous at pleasure I know not, but the whole appeared to me a very childish representation. I was, however, extremely pleased with an optical experiment made by means of a concave mirror, such as I-had never before seen performed. The mirror being entirely concealed, a bunch of beautiful flowers appears, the spectator approaches and examines it at his leisure; but finds, when he tries to take it in his hand, that it is an airy vision and no more. An image can thus be formed in the air, and extension and form become objects of sense where there exists neither solidity nor sensible resistance, and we may conceive how with a little air of mystery and a few hard words, a man might give himself the air of a conjuror in a country village.

We will now, as we have been so long speaking of Paris, make an excursion to Versailles, and it will be, unfortunately, almost the only excursion I shall be able to give you an account of, for the weather has been almost continually bad. The road leads through the Bois de Boulogne, which affords the inhabitants of Paris a delightful variety, and particularly in Summer, and of a Sunday's afternoon, when the tradespeople and little shopkeepers of the city, with their families, intermixed with the peasantry of the neighbourhood, may be seen strolling in every part of the wood, and dancing on some lawn, or under a shade, or collected in groups before the doors of a public house. The opulent, who have splendid equipages, and the young men desirous of showing

themselves or their horses and curricles, may be seen taking the air here, and even the emperor sometimes condescends to enliven the scene by his presence. A deer is turned loose upon those occasions the night before, and his majesty, after keeping his attendants for hours in the palace yard, and hundreds of hungry Parisians in momentary expectation of catching a look at him, condescends, for an hour or two, to put on the semblance of amusement, and as he moves to his carriage, or as it hurries him along, he bows, and puts on what he means should be a smile, but it extends only to the distortion of his mouth, and to the showing of his teeth, which are singularly white. At a very short distance from Paris we passed below the hill on which stand the villages of Antenil and of Passy; the first was to the celebrated Despeaux what Twickenham was to Pope, and Passy commands the attention of every American as having been, for some years, the residence of Dr. Franklin: I had once, though but for a short time, the pleasure of cultivating the acquaintance of Dr. Franklin, and have played at chess with him. He was extremely fond of the game, and entered into all the spirit of it; pleased, no doubt, at being able to give way for a moment, like other people, to the sensations of hope and fear, to feelings which, in the weightier concerns of life, he very carefully concealed the operations of. He was, at the period I allude to, retired from all public cares but the government of Pennsylvania, and was gliding cheerfully and almost gayly into the vale of years. You have heard of his discoveries in electricity and have read his memoirs. It is to be regretted that these last were not brought down to the more interesting periods of his life, to events on which the fate of nations depended, and in the direction of which it was the lot of this distinguished countryman of ours, whose talents had elevated him from the humblest walks of life, to bear a conspicuous part. He might have told us, as he looked back upon the stormy ocean of British and American politics, how far he had been swayed by interest or ambition, how far a sense of injurious treatment and opprobrious language had influenced his conduct, and what was really in his mind and at the bottom of his heart during the whole of our revolutionary contest; a contest which he affected to deplore, and yet certainly promoted, and by arts not always justifiable even in the relaxed morality of a statesman. Considering him exclusively as an author we have, perhaps, rather exaggerated his merit, and have supposed him great because we ourselves were little; but he undoubtedly possessed great good sense, great natural sagacity, and a mode of familiar explanation which enabled him to carry conviction home to the breasts of those to whom he addressed himself. With these powers of the mind he most meritoriously exerted himself to amuse and to inform, and knew how to promote every sentiment of industry and eco

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nomy, in classes where those useful virtues are so necessary, and yet so generally neglected, while he seemed chiefly intent on exciting a smile. On subjects of general politics and political economy he certainly entertained some erroneous opinions. His constitution of Pennsylvania was such as he must, upon mature deliberation, have disapproved of; it was of the sort to which men of some talents but of mean ambition are always partial, inasmuch as it renders their assistance at all times necessary, and their supremacy unavoidable; and his ideas on luxury, on commerce, and on agriculture, as the only source of national prosperity, will but serve, perhaps, to mislead some modern statesman, who, without his integrity, his good sense, and his practical experience, may, for our sins, be placed for a time at the head of the nation; such a one, and perhaps he is already in being, may fancy himself a philosopher too, and may be for ascertaining under what circumstances the people of America can exist, and upon how little, and how long; and may be trying experiments upon us as upon animals in an air pump: there is another subject upon which it would have been highly interesting to have learned the opinion of Dr. Franklin. It would have been highly interesting to know what he thought, when arrived at the maturity of reason and experience, of the ultimate effect of the revolution upon the happiness of those, whose fate had been involved in that great event. He could not, I think, but have rejoiced, that the noble stand made by the people of America, had tended to preserve the liberties even of those against whom their exertions were directed, and who certainly have not declined in any one circumstance of national prosperity. I am here a witness, even upon this hostile shore, of the admiration which their fearless perseverance, and their unshaken public spirit can create, for never was their power more irresistible at sea, and never were their triumphs more splendid. On our side, without any great addition to individual happiness, there has certainly been a very great increase of all which bespeaks national prosperity, and we have been saved, perhaps, from that degrading state of ignorance, of gross enjoyment, and lazy luxury, which Barrow and Percival describe in the wealthy planter of Ceylon and southern Africa. The mind of the American has now a scope which it could never, but for the revolution, have attained. Numbers have made laws, have administered justice, have drawn up forms of government, and have concluded treaties, who, but for the revolution, would have been toiling at the humblest avocations of the bar, or of commerce, or, perhaps have been following the plough. General Washington would have been known but as the most industrious, the most silent, and the best drest man of his neighbourhood, and all the active merit of general Greene