paramour. From Baltimore he went to Washington, in order to make his compliments to President Jefferson: he was soon after followed by Madame Bonneville and her sons, His reception at Washington was cold and forbidding. Even Mr. Jefferson received him with politic circumspection; and such of the members of congress as suffered him to ap proach them, did so from motives of curiosity. Policy dictated this course. If Paine had been popular, no matter how despicable or how wicked, he would have been courted; but as he was not, he was shunned. The leaders of the party in power were apprehensive that he would write for it, and they were sure that if he did, he would injure it; hence he was contemptuously neglected by them. His figure was indeed much against him: it was that of a little old man, broken down by intemperance, and utterly disregardful of personal cleanliness. His intemperance he could not conceal, nor had he, to all appearance, a wish to conceal it. He was daily drunk with his favorite brandy, and every body saw or heard of his intoxication.

Fearful as the leaders of the party were that he would injure their popular prospects by publishing, his pen could not be restrained. Sufficiently intrenched with popularity to trample upon the constitution, to sanction political anarchy, or to countenance irreligion, Mr. Jefferson had expressed a wish that he would "continue his useful labours," and, in this instance grateful, he had resolved not to disappoint his expectations. Encouraged, therefore, by the president, coun tenanced by the presence of Bonneville's wife, and cheered with his bottle, he commenced at Washington the publication of half a dozen letters, addressed "to the citizens of the United States." These, except his letter to Samuel Adams, are party, rude, malignant effusions. In one of them he remarks, with equal coarseness, impudence and vanity :-"The scribblers who know me not, and who fill their papers with paragraphs about me, besides their want of talents, drink too many slings and drams in a morning to have any chance with me."(b) This he published at Washington, where it was notorious that he was in the constant practice of drinking slings and drams, not only in the morning, but all the day through. His letter to Samuel Adams was in reply to a cool and cautious one which that gentleman, respected for the services he had rendered his country, and interesting from the (6) Letter 4.

loss of his sight, had written to him on the subject of the Christian Religion. "When," he observes, "I heard that you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved, that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the interest of the citizens of the United States. Will you excite among them the spirit of angry controversy ? I am told that some of the newspapers have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet on the principles of your Age of Reason. Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other man, can unchristianize the mass of our citizens? We ought to think ourselves happy in the enjoyment of opinion, without the danger of persecution by civil or ecclesiastical law." Paine's answer was returned through the medium of the newspapers! In this he counterfeits a friendship for Mr. Adams, which he was incapable of feeling for any human being. Rejoicing in the opportunity which the letter had given him, to propagate his deistical doctrines, his answer is full of vulgar sayings and impertinent sneers He assigns some reasons for publishing, sooner than he had originally intended, his Age of Reason, which, that his disciples in the United States might be countenanced and encouraged, he vindicates. Speaking of the causes which induced him to publish the Age of Reason when he did, he observes :-" In "In the first place, I saw my life in continual danger. My friends were falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads off; and as I every day expected 'the same fate, I resolved to begin my work.'

Paine's memory was uncommonly good, but his great want of veracity often got the better of it. If the reasons which he here assigns for writing the Age of Reason when he did, be true, those which he had assigned before are false. The period of which he speaks was the year 1793. It was then that his friends were losing their heads in Paris as fast as the national razor could cut them off; it was then that he every day expected the same fate. His election to the national assembly was announced to him in London, on the 13th of Sept. 1792. On the 15th of the same month, he wrote his letter at Calais, addressed to Mr. Dundas. In January, 1793, the king was decapitated. In the summer of the same year, Robespierre cut off heads in gross, and without ceremony, In Dec. 1793, Paine himself was imprisoned. Having witnessed all these catastrophes, but his own, which

he anticipated, "I resolved, (he adds,) to begin my work." Let us compare this with what follows.

In his preface to the Age of Reason, part second, is the subjoined passage, which, in another place, and for another purpose, I have quoted. "I have already mentioned, in the former part of the Age of Reason, that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion, but that I had originally reserved it to a late period of life, intending it to be the last work I should undertake. Some circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year NINETY, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the revolution, which philosophy had diffused, had been departed from.'

Here, he had "determined," in the year 1790, to delay the work no longer, because the humane principles of the revolution, even then, had been departed from. But in his letter to Mr. Adams, it was not, he says, until the year 1793, that "I resolved to begin my work," and he assigns very different reasons for it. These are, because the heads of his friends were struck off, and because he himself every day. expected the same fate. No two accounts of the same fact could be more contradictory and opposite. The first in date is probably true, being first written. The last, which is not true, was written in the hope of inducing Mr. Adams to believe, that he had something of humanity about him.

Having paid his compliments to Mr. Jefferson, and gratified him by" continuing his useful labours," he left Washington for New-York, accompanied with Madame Bonneville and her sons: (c) he arrived, as I have mentioned in the preface. He found his farm at New-Rochelle greatly increased in value, notwithstanding the consumable part of the mansion, had in the year 1790, been accidentally destroyed by fire. "Even in my worldly concerns, he observes, I have been blessed. The little property I left in America has been increasing in the value of its capital, more than eight hundred dollars every year, for the fourteen years and more, that I have been absent from it." (d) In another place

(c) Passing through Baltimore, he was accosted by the Reverend Mr. Hargrove, minister of a new sect called the New Jerusalemites. You are Mr. Paine, said Mr. Hargrove. Yes. My name is Hargrove, sir, I am minister of the New Jerusalem Church here. We, sir, explain the scripture in its true meaning. The key has been lost above four thousand years, and we have found it. Then, said Paine, drily, it must have been very rusty.

(d) Letter 4 to the citizens of the United States.

he remarks:-"My property in this country is now worth six thousand pounds sterling, which put in the funds will bring me 4007. sterling a year." (e) Yet with all this property, meanness and avarice would not permit him to remain at Lovett's hotel more than eight or ten days. During his stay, he was visited by the labouring class of emigrants from England, Ireland and Scotland, who had there admired his Rights of Man. With these he drank grog in the taproom, morning, noon, and night. Admired and praised by them, he strutted about, or rather staggered about, showing himself to all and shaking hands with all. One day labourer would say; drink with me, Mr. Paine; another, drink with me-and he very condescendingly gratified them all. The leaders of the party to which he had attached himself, paid him no attention: he was studiously avoided by them. But two or three persons of any thing like distinction publickly visited him, and seeing his vulgarity and love of liquor, their visit was short. He complained of inattention without perceiving the cause. While at Lovett's, he fell over a high stair-case in a paroxysm of intoxication. Being much hurt, it was given out that his fall was occasioned by an apoplectic fit!

In making his arrangements for a permanent residence amongst us, he contemplated the abandonment of Madame Bonneville, whom he had seduced from her husband in Paris, and brought amongst strangers! Besides his estate at New-Rochelle, he had a small house and a few barren acres at Bordentown, New-Jersey. This little property, which he afterwards sold for seven hundred and fifty dollars, he proposed to give to her, and to settle her upon it as a school mistress; but she resolutely and successfully resisted his unfeeling project. For a long time he represented her as the wife of his friend, a republican printer in Paris, with whom he had boarded, and who, disliking the new order of things under the First Consul, was every day expected to emigrate to the United States. Those who believed him, thought well of that kindness in which his friend's wife and her children had found refuge; but his cruel treatment of her soon dissipated the delusion, and convinced all who knew him, that to the crime of seduction, he was adding that of inhumanity. (f)

(e) Letter to Thomas Clio Rickman, of London. See the London edition, 1804, of his letters to the citizens of the United States.

(f) The elder Bonneville, about fourteen, returned to his father in

From Lovett's he went to the house of Mr. Carver, farrier, in Cedar-street, whom I have already mentioned; an honest, faithful, industrious man, who gratuitously accom modated him for a few weeks. At Carver's he finally concluded to live on his farm, as soon as he could remove Mr. Purdy, the occupant, from it; to take the two children with him, and to leave Madame Bonneville in the city, to provide for herself as well as she could.

But before his departure for New-Rochelle, the persons who had paid him attention at Lovett's, angry at the neg lect of the higher orders, were anxious to testify their esteem for him by giving him a public dinner, if a sufficient number could be prevailed with to be present. The intended honour was mentioned to Paine, who highly approved of it, and manifested great solicitude for its accomplishment. After many consultations on the sort of dinner which could be given, and the sort of persons who on such an occasion would probably attend in open day at Lovett's, the proposed place of feasting, a subscription was set on foot, and the city canvassed for names. Two or three weeks of diligent search and importunity obtained between sixty and seventy. The dinner was therefore given, and Paine conducted from the table as mellow as he wished to be. (g) Paris, in the year 1805. He detested Paine, and lad as he was, would scarcely speak to him. Ah! he would often say, Paine is not so well known in the United States as in Paris. He has broken up the tranquillity of my father's house! Paine would not pay his passage to France. The boy returned in a French ship, in which his mother procured him a passage gratis. Benjamin and Thomas remained with Paine.

(g) Paine, as he himself observes, had a taste and talent for poetry. The following effusion of fancy, addressed to Mrs. Smith, lady of Sir Robert, which he wrote at Paris, he repeated to me from memory, soon after his arrival in New York. He thus introduced the lines himself.

"Mr. Paine corresponded with a lady, and dated his letters from "The Castle in Air." while she addressed hers from "The Little Corner of the World." For reasons which he knew not, their intercourse was suddenly suspended, and for some time he believed his fair friend in obscurity and distress. Many years afterwards, however, he met her unexpectedly at Paris in the most affluent circumstances, and married to Sir Robert."

FROM THE CASTLE IN AIR,

TO THE

THE LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD.

In the region of clouds where the whirlwinds arise,
My castle, of fancy was built;

* No one but himself could mistake them. A delicate female could not bear his company.