must pass away, before the assistance of the government or the contributions of individuals can restore them to their ancient splendour. I was present at Notre Dame, on the day of thanksgiving for the victory of Austerlitz; and upon this occasion the solemnities of religion were aided by the charms of musick and the pomp of military parade. The different publick bodies, the great magistrates of the empire, and the princes, attended in state, to express their gratitude to heaven for the glory of the empire, and the safety of the emperour. I very much doubt, however, if more than a dozen individuals were sincere in their expressions of satisfaction; and perhaps not one attached any serious and solemn idea to the festival of the day. It is but twelve years since, a great many of these very people assembled in this very church, to sing hymns in honour of the goddess of Reason, with a sort of sacred musick, and all the mockery of devotion. Robespierre, who had none of those eminent advantages of mind or body, which enabled some distinguished personages of antiquity to enslave their country; who had neither a commanding figure nor persuasive eloquence, and was not even brave; had that which supplied the absence of every requisite in the accomplishment of his purposes. He had cunning to affect disinterestedness; he could talk of virtue, and avail himself of the violence and crimes of others, and yet take the merit, at a proper time, of repressing and punishing them. He would not venture to enter the city as Pisistratus did Athens, with a fictitious deity at his side, but he

permitted Hebert and Chaumette to introduce the goddess of Reason to the convention, and to install her upon the principal altar of Notre Dame. The former archbishop of Paris had already divested himself of his episcopal ornaments before the convention, asserting, that all religion was founded on imposture, and requesting forgiveness for having so long contributed to abuse the credulity of the people. When Chaumette, who had been formerly a schoolmaster, and Hebert, who had been a priest, approached at the head of a procession composed principally of the dregs of the capital, and presented to the representatives of the French nation the object, which, as they said, was alone worthy of adoration; let men no longer, cried Hebert, tremble at the imaginary thunders of a deity, whom their terrors have created. Let Reason be the only divinity in France; and behold, the goddess in person offers herself to our adoration! So saying, he removed a veil from the face of a beautiful woman, properly habited for the occasion. The multitude now shouted, the convention applauded, and the new religion was established. The next step was to celebrate the rites of the goddess; and that her triumph might be more complete, the scene chosen for the purpose was the cathedral of Notre Dame. The feast given to the people of Paris on that day, was the greatest outrage upon decency, that perhaps ever took place; it exhibited the reunion of every vice, and was equal to all that the Roman poets have related or invented of the unhallowed rites of Isis or Osiris. The same scandalous scenes, with

inferiour means of celebration indeed, but with all possible profanation, took place at the same time in all the principal cities of the republick. Some young female, distinguished for her personal attractions, and frequently the weeping daughter of parents who had fallen victims to the revolution, saw herself surrounded by the vilest of her sex, and was compelled to perform the principal part upon these occasions ;* while a troop of peasants bore along with every mark of derision, and as sacrifices to be laid upon the altar of Reason, all that had ever been considered as sacred to the purposes of religion by the piety of their ancestors. It was at this same period of the revolution, and while the supposed efforts of France in the cause of liberty, commanded the sympathy and good wishes of so many in America, that these vile scenes were exhibited, and that those devastations were committed, of which the Museum at the Petits Augustins has received the remains.

By far the greater part of the sepulchral and other monuments were mutilated or destroyed, and

*It is probable that the inventors and promoters of these impious and absurd processions in honour of the goddess of Reason were desirous of imitating the ludicrous ceremonies of the 14th century into which the Saturnalia of the Romans had degenerated. On one occasion a Pontiff or Bishop of Fools, attended by his great officers, and attired in the most ridiculous manner, headed a procession to the Cathedral, where the feast of Fools was celebrated by performing the semblance of church worship amidst gaming, and tumbling, and the grimaces and contortions of buffoons, who personated the inferiour attendants at the celebration of the rites of Religion. The feast of the ass, which without being less profane, was perhaps still more absurd, if possible, seems also to have afforded some hints.

the great body of the people, as if infected by the madness of the government, which had ordered the royal vaults at St. Denis to be opened, and all their ancient kings and princes, all the Valois, and the Bourbons, to be thrown promiscuously into one common pit, proceeded to violate all the burial places of the republick, where the remains of persons of rank and fortune had been deposited. The lady who represented the goddess of Reason, was a - Mademoiselle Oliva of the opera, the same who had been employed some time before, on account of her resemblance to the queen, to personate that unfortunate princess in the affair of the diamond necklace. I am willing to believe, that she was in both cases the reluctant instrument of some unprincipled men, and that she had performed her part upon the stage of the opera, with infinitely more satisfaction than in either of the two last instances. Like the princess, whose name had been so scandalously abused, she was made to finish her days at the guillotine. Such also was the fate of Hebert and of Chaumette, and of the apostate archbishop. It must have been a striking lesson, to compare the guilty terrors that overwhelmed this wretch, with the smile of serenity with which Madame Roland and the princess of Monaco went to execution.

Adjoining the cathedral is the archiepiscopal palace, where the Cardinal de Retz once fortified

* See a very interesting account in Chateaubriand's genie du Christianisme of the situation in which those bodies were found. Henry IV. had remained entire, so as to be immediately recognized by those who were conversant with pictures and statues of him.

himself against the court, during the regency of Anne of Austria, and whence he marched almost in battle array to the palace of justice, where the Prince of Condè might, as it was supposed, had he been unable to defend himself, have made some attempt upon his person. You will see a well drawn character of this famous Cardinal by Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, in one of Madame de Sevigne's letters; but I know of no book within your reach that can give you a proper idea of the war of the Fronde, which he was chiefly the occasion of. Such a mixture of pleasantry and atrociousness, of songs and assassinations, of epigrams and battles, the world never before saw; and far better would it have been for mankind, if a similar spirit had prevailed during the late revolution. The memoirs

of the Cardinal de Retz are less read than they deserve to be; they paint the inclinations and principles of a very extraordinary man, who, without acrimony, hatred, or low-minded jealousy, could lavish his fortune, risk his person, or devote his time, in order to excite a civil war. It was to him a frolick, and an amusement that he was fond of. The conspirators were the only characters he admired in history. He had distinguished himself when a student at the University, by a translation from some Italian author, of the conspiracy of Fiesque, which Robertson has rendered so interesting in his history of Charles V. and was yet a young man, when we find him engaged, by his own account, in a plot to assassinate the Cardinal de Richelieu, whose personal safety, and upon so