Dumont, who is married, and has besides the countenance of a white Negro, never visits us without occasioning a general commotion amongst all the females, especially those who are young and pretty.  As soon as it is known that he is expected, the toilettes are all in activity, a renovation of rouge and an adjustment of curls take place, and, though performed with more haste, not with less solicitude, than the preparatory splendour of a first introduction.—­When the great man arrives, he finds the court by which he enters crowded by these formidable prisoners, and each with a petition in her hand endeavours, with the insidious coquetry of plaintive smiles and judicious tears, that brighten the eye without deranging the features, to attract his notice and conciliate his favour.  Happy those who obtain a promise, a look of complacence, or even of curiosity!—­But the attention of this apostle of republicanism is not often bestowed, except on high rank, or beauty; and a woman who is old, or ill dressed, that ventures to approach him, is usually repulsed with vulgar brutality—­while the very sight of a male suppliant renders him furious.  The first half hour he walks about, surrounded by his fair cortege, and is tolerably civil; but at length, fatigued, I suppose by continual importunity, he loses his temper, departs, and throws all the petitions he has received unopened into the fire.

Adieu—­the subject is too humiliating to dwell on.  I feel for myself, I feel for human nature, when I see the fastidiousness of wealth, the more liberal pride of birth, and the yet more allowable pretensions of beauty, degraded into the most abject submission to such a being as Dumont.  Are our principles every where the mere children of circumstance, or is it in this country only that nothing is stable?  For my own part I love inflexibility of character; and pride, even when ill founded, seems more respectable while it sustains itself, than concessions which, refused to the suggestions of reason, are yielded to the dictates of fear.—­Yours.

February 12, 1794.

I was too much occupied by my personal distresses to make any remarks on the revolutionary government at the time of its adoption.  The text of this political phoenomenon must be well known in England—­I shall, therefore, confine myself to giving you a general idea of its spirit and tendency,—­It is, compared to regular government, what force is to mechanism, or the usual and peaceful operations of nature to the ravages of a storm—­it substitutes violence for conciliation, and sweeps with precipitate fury all that opposes its devastating progress.  It refers every thing to a single principle, which is in itself not susceptible of definition, and, like all undefined power, is continually vibrating between despotism and anarchy.  It is the execrable shape of Milton’s Death, “which shape hath none,” and which can be described only by its effects.—­For instance, the revolutionary tribunal condemns without evidence, the revolutionary committees imprison without a charge, and whatever assumes the title of revolutionary is exonerated from all subjection to humanity, decency, reason, or justice.—­Drowning the insurgents, their wives and children, by boatloads, is called, in the dispatch to the Convention, a revolutionary measure—­*