—­[This unfortunate Prince was very ill-calculated to recommend, by his personal character, the institutions to which the nobility clung with so much fondness.  Nature had endowed him with an excellent heart, but with very limited talents; and his mind had imbibed the false impress consequent upon his monastic education.  He resided at Malmaison nearly the whole time of his visit to Paris.  Madame Bonaparte used to lead the Queen to her own apartments; and as the First Consul never left his closet except to sit down to meals, the aides de camp were under the necessity of keeping the King company, and of endeavoring to entertain him, so wholly was he devoid of intellectual resources.  It required, indeed, a great share of patience to listen to the frivolities which engrossed his attention.  His turn of mind being thus laid open to view, care was taken to supply him with the playthings usually placed in the hands of children; he was, therefore, never at a loss for occupation.  His nonentity was a source of regret to us:  we lamented to see a tall handsome youth, destined to rule over his fellow-men, trembling at the eight of a horse, and wasting his time in the game of hide-and-seek, or at leap-frog and whose whole information consisted in knowing his prayers, and in saying grace before and after meals.  Such, nevertheless, was the man to whom the destinies of a nation were about to be committed!  When he left France to repair to his kingdom, “Rome need not be uneasy,” said the First Consul to us after the farewell audience, “there is no danger of his crossing the Rubicon” (Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, vol. i. p. 363).]—­

In order to show still further attention to the King of Etruria, after his three weeks’ visit to Paris, the First Consul directed him to be escorted to Italy by a French guard, and selected his brother-in-law Murat for that purpose.

The new King of a new kingdom entered Florence on the 12th of April 1801; but the reception given him by the Tuscans was not at all similar to what he had experienced at Paris.  The people received the royal pair as sovereigns imposed on them by France.  The ephemeral kingdom of Etruria lasted scarcely six years.  The King died in 1803, in the flower of his age, and in 1807 the Queen was expelled from her throne by him who had constructed it for her.

At this period a powerful party urged Bonaparte to break with the Pope, and to establish a Gallican Church, the head of which should reside in France.  They thought to flatter his ambition by indicating to him a new source of power which might establish a point of comparison between him and the first Roman emperors.  But his ideas did not coincide with theirs on this subject.  “I am convinced,” said he, “that a part of France would become Protestant, especially if I were to favour that disposition.  I am also certain that the much greater portion would remain Catholic, and would oppose, with the greatest zeal and fervour, the schism of a part of their fellow-citizens.  I dread the religious quarrels, the family dissensions, and the public distractions, which such a state of things would inevitably occasion.  In, reviving a religion which has always prevailed in the country, and which still prevails in the hearts of the people, and in giving the liberty of exercising their worship to the minority, I shall satisfy every one.”