of the lowest portion of the population of a luxurious capital, appear to have been the most strenuous, and, indeed, almost the only supporters of royalty; while the great families, instead of being indignant at novelties which levelled them, in point of political rights, with the meanest subject, eagerly embraced the opportunity of altering that form of Government which alone made them great.  It is, however, but justice to say that, though Marquis de Gallo gained the good graces of Bonaparte and of France in 1797, he was never, directly or indirectly, inculpated in the revolutionary transactions of his countrymen in 1799, when he resided at Vienna; and indeed, after all, it is not improbable that he disguises his real sentiments the better to, serve his country, and by that means has imposed on Bonaparte and acquired his favour.

The address and manners of a courtier are allowed Marquis de Gallo by all who know him, though few admit that he possesses any talents as a statesman.  He is said to have read a great deal, to possess a good memory and no bad judgment; but that, notwithstanding this, all his knowledge is superficial.

LETTER XXIV.

Paris, August, 1805.

My lord:—­You have perhaps heard that Napoleon Bonaparte, with all his brothers and sisters, was last Christmas married by the Pope according to the Roman Catholic rite, being previously only united according to the municipal laws of the French Republic, which consider marriage only as a civil contract.  During the last two months of His Holiness’s residence here, hardly a day passed that he was not petitioned to perform the same ceremony for our conscientious grand functionaries and courtiers, which he, however, according to the Emperor’s desire, declined.  But his Cardinals were not under the same restrictions, and to an attentive observer who has watched the progress of the Revolution and not lost sight of its actors, nothing could appear more ridiculous, nothing could inspire more contempt of our versatility and inconsistency, than to remark among the foremost to demand the nuptial benediction, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes, a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a Merlin, with a hundred other equally notorious revolutionists, who were, twelve or fifteen years ago, not only the first to declaim against religious ceremonies as ridiculous, but against religion itself as useless, whose motives produced, and whose votes sanctioned, those decrees of the legislature which proscribed the worship, together with its priests and sectaries.  But then the fashion of barefaced infidelity was as much the order of the day as that of external sanctity is at present.  I leave to casuists the decision whether to the morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.