* An English gentleman, who was asked by a republican Commissary,
     employed in examining the prisons, why he was there, replied,
     “Because I have not the misfortune to be a Frenchman!”

This is a large manufacturing town, and the capital of the department of l’Oise.  Its manufactories now owe their chief activity to the requisitions for supplying cloth to the armies.  Such commerce is by no means courted; and if people were permitted, as they are in most countries, to trade or let it alone, it would soon decline.—­The choir of the cathedral is extremely beautiful, and has luckily escaped republican devastation, though there seems to exist no hope that it will be again restored to the use of public worship.  Your books will inform you, that Beauvais was besieged in 1472 by the Duke of Burgundy, with eighty thousand men, and that he failed in the attempt.  Its modern history is not so fortunate.  It was for some time harassed by a revolutionary army, whose exactions and disorders being opposed by the inhabitants, a decree of the Convention declared the town in a state of rebellion; and this ban, which operates like the Papal excommunications three centuries ago, and authorizes tyranny of all kinds, was not removed until long after the death of Robespierre.—­Such a specimen of republican government has made the people cautious, and abundant in the exteriors of patriotism.  Where they are sure of their company, they express themselves without reserve, both on the subject of their legislators and the miseries of the country; but intercourse is considerably more timid here than at Amiens.

Two gentlemen dined with us yesterday, whom I know to be zealous royalists, and, as they are acquainted, I made no scruple of producing an engraving which commemorates mysteriously the death of the King, and which I had just received from Paris by a private conveyance.  They looked alarmed, and affected not to understand it; and, perceiving I had done wrong, I replaced the print without farther explanation:  but they both called this evening, and reproached me separately for thus exposing their sentiments to each other.—­This is a trifling incident, yet perhaps it may partly explain the great aenigma why no effectual resistance is made to a government which is secretly detested.  It has been the policy of all the revolutionists, from the Lameths and La Fayette down to Brissot and Robespierre, to destroy the confidence of society; and the calamities of last year, now aiding the system of spies and informers, occasion an apprehension and distrust which impede union, and check every enterprize that might tend to restore the freedom of the country.—­Yours, &c.

Amiens, April 12, 1795.

Instead of commenting on the late disorders at Paris, I subjoin the
translation of a letter just received by Mrs. D-------- from a friend,
whose information, we have reason to believe, is as exact as can possibly
be obtained in the chaos of little intrigues which now comprise the whole
science of French politics.

“Paris, April 9.