displayed on the occasion of the classification of the Institute.  Whilst he permitted the reassembling of a literary class, to the number of forty, as formerly, he suppressed the class of moral and political science.  Such was his predilection for things of immediate and certain utility that even in the sciences he favoured only such as applied to terrestrial objects.  He never treated Lalande with so much distinction as Monge and Lagrange.  Astronomical discoveries could not add directly to his own greatness; and, besides, he could never forgive Lalande for having wished to include him in a dictionary of atheists precisely at the moment when he was opening negotiations with the court of Rome.

Bonaparte wished to be the sole centre of a world which he believed he was called to govern.  With this view he never relaxed in his constant endeavour to concentrate the whole powers of the State in the hands of its Chief.  His conduct upon the subject of the revival of public instruction affords evidence of this fact.  He wished to establish 6000 bursaries, to be paid by Government, and to be exclusively at his disposal, so that thus possessing the monopoly of education, he could have parcelled it out only to the children of those who were blindly devoted to him.  This was what the First Consul called the revival of public instruction.  During the period of my closest intimacy with him he often spoke to me on this subject, and listened patiently to my observations.  I remember that one of his chief arguments was this:  “What is it that distinguishes men?  Education—­is it not?  Well, if the children of nobles be admitted into the academies, they will be as well educated as the children of the revolution, who compose the strength of my government.  Ultimately they will enter into my regiments as officers, and will naturally come in competition with those whom they regard as the plunderers of their families.  I do not wish that!”

My recollections have caused me to wander from the journey of the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte to the seabord departments and Belgium.  I have, however, little to add to what I have already stated on the subject.  I merely remember that Bonaparte’s military suite, and Lauriston and Rapp in particular, when speaking to me about the journey, could not conceal some marks of discontent on account of the great respect which Bonaparte had shown the clergy, and particularly to M. de Roquelaure, the Archbishop of Malines (or Mechlin).  That prelate, who was a shrewd man, and had the reputation of having been in his youth more addicted to the habits of the world than to those of the cloister, had become an ecclesiastical courtier.  He went to Antwerp to pay his homage to the First Consul, upon whom he heaped the most extravagant praises.  Afterwards, addressing Madame Bonaparte, he told her that she was united to the First Consul by the sacred bonds of a holy alliance.  In this harangue, in which unction was singularly blended with gallantry,