* The first horrors of the revolution are well known, and I have seen no accounts which exaggerate them.  The niece of a lady of my acquaintance, a young woman only seventeen, escaped from her country-house (whilst already in flames) with her infant at her breast, and literally without clothes to cover her.  In this state she wandered a whole night, and when she at length reached a place where she procured assistance, was so exhausted that her life was in danger.—­Another lady, whom I knew, was wounded in the arm by some peasants assembled to force from her the writings of her husband’s estates.  Even after this they still remained in France, submitted with cheerfulness to all the demands of patriotic gifts, forced loans, requisitions and impositions of every kind; yet her husband was nevertheless guillotined, and the whole of their immense property confiscated.

Retrospections, like these, obliterate many of my former notions on the subject of the Emigrants; and if I yet condemn emigration, it is only as a general measure, impolitic, and inadequate to the purposes for which it was undertaken.  But errors of judgment, in circumstances so unprecedented, cannot be censured consistently with candour, through we may venture to mark them as a discouragement to imitation; for if any nation should yet be menaced by the revolutionary scourge, let it beware of seeking external redress by a temporary abandonment of its interests to the madness of systemists, or the rapine of needy adventurers.  We must, we ought to, lament the fate of the many gallant men who have fallen, and the calamities of those who survive; but what in them has been a mistaken policy, will become guilt in those who, on a similar occasion, shall not be warned by their example.  I am concerned when I hear these unhappy fugitives are any where objects of suspicion or persecution, as it is not likely that those who really emigrated from principle can merit such treatment:  and I doubt not, that most of the instances of treachery or misconduct ascribed to the Emigrants originated in republican emissaries, who have assumed that character for the double purpose of discrediting it, and of exercising their trade as spies.

The common people here, who were retained by Le Bon for several months to attend and applaud his executions, are still dissolute and ferocious, and openly regret the loss of their pay, and the disuse of the guillotine.

—­I came to Arras in mourning, which I have worn since the receipt of your first letter, but was informed by the lady with whom my friends lodge, that I must not attempt to walk the streets in black, for that it was customary to insult those who did so, on a supposition that they were related to some persons who had been executed; I therefore borrowed a white undress, and stole out by night to visit my unfortunate acquaintance, as I found it was also dangerous to be seen entering houses known to contain the remains of those families which had been dismembered by Le Bon’s cruelties.