I know not what effect this new costume may produce on the rebels or the enemy, but I confess it appears to me more ludicrous than formidable, especially when a representative happens to be of the shape and features of the one we have here.  Saladin, Deputy for this department, and an advocate of the town of Amiens, has already invested himself with this armour of inviolability; “strange figure in such strange habiliments,” that one is tempted to forget that Baratraria and the government of Sancho are the creation of fancy.  Imagine to yourself a short fat man, of sallow complexion and small eyes, with a sash of white, red, and blue round his waist, a black belt with a sword suspended across his shoulders, and a round hat turned up before, with three feathers of the national colours:  “even such a man” is our representative, and exercises a more despotic authority than most Princes in Europe.—­He is accompanied by another Deputy, who was what is called Pere de la Oratoire before the revolution—­that is, in a station nearly approaching to that of an under-master at our public schools; only that the seminaries to which these were attached being very numerous, those employed in them were little considered.  They wore the habit, and were subject to the same restrictions, as the Clergy, but were at liberty to quit the profession and marry, if they chose.—­I have been more particular in describing this class of men, because they have every where taken an active and successful part in perverting and misleading the people:  they are in the clubs, or the municipalities, in the Convention, and in all elective administrations, and have been in most places remarkable for their sedition and violence.

Several reasons may be assigned for the influence and conduct of men whose situation and habits, on a first view, seem to oppose both.  In the first ardour of reform it was determined, that all the ancient modes of education should be abolished; small temporary pensions were allotted to the Professors of Colleges, and their admission to the exercise of similar functions in the intended new system was left to future decision.  From this time the disbanded oratorians, who knew it would be vain to resist popular authority, endeavoured to share in it; or, at least, by becoming zealous partizans of the revolution, to establish their claims to any offices or emoluments which might be substituted for those they had been deprived of.  They enrolled themselves with the Jacobins, courted the populace, and, by the talent of pronouncing Roman names with emphasis, and the study of rhetorical attitudes, they became important to associates who were ignorant, or necessary to those who were designing.