of a camp, and they studied under arms. But this was not enough. While their bodies were moulded to military slavery, the glowing sentiments of freedom, inspired by classical learning, were carefully repressed in their minds. In the books adopted by the university, the antique virtues of Greek and Roman sages were proscribed or disfigured. Cato was stigmatized by the modern Cæsar, as a seditious fellow, who would have done better to have lived, and accepted the croir d'honneur of the times. When the boys had recourse to their dictionaries for epithets, or metaphors, they found a long article entitled NAPOLEO, containing, with many periphrases, his exploits in the north and the south; and where the eye reposed on twenty magnificent epithets, the great, the valiant, the generous, invincible, &c. applied to the said NAPOLEO. In this dictionary a certain people called BRITANNI Were not forgotten; they were designated as cruel, implacable, false, with many other graceful appellations.

Thus the young students found a written law for their political opinions, which they had only to receive. Their priests, on one side, taught them a catechism, in which, not to honour Napoleon, was to incur eternal penalties; and their literary professors, on the other, showed them that, whatever might be his influence in heaven, he was the unquestionable master of the earth.

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LETTER XII.

Recruiting Law.

THE Count D'Artois when he first set his foot on the soil of France, and answered the acclamations of the people by the flattering words, "Il n'y a qu'un François de plus," told them at the same time, that the droits reunis and the conscription should be abolished. But these promises, poured forth in the enthusiasm of the moment, could not be fulfilled. France could not exist without soldiers, or without taxes. The droits reunis changed its name for that of contributions indirectes; and the conscription, that word at which every mother trembles, became the recruiting law.

Bonaparte, by his horrible mode of enforcing the conscription, had made all the women of France his enemies, and their influence being sufficiently powerful in this

country, their resentment, no doubt, contributed to his overthrow. Thus, with regard to the conscription, as Sieyes observed of the death of the Duke d'Enghien, he committed not merely a crime, but a blunder. Bonaparte had a great contempt for women; he suffered indeed his contempt for the whole human race to be too apparent, and that contempt led him into errors fatal to himself. He tried the endurance of mankind too far; his temper, his passions, were always impelling him forwards, and he wanted the sagacity to know where to stop. He had however, it must be allowed, good reason for not respecting mankind; he never beheld them but at his feet:

"Je les vois à ses pieds baisser leur tête altiere;

Ils peuvent murmurer, mais c'est dans la poussiere."* He had seen men the most distinguished for their acquirements shrink at his glance; and he had found, amid a world of flatterers,

* Semiramis.

only one Ducis, who steadily rejected his proffered honours. In mentioning this last ` of the Romans, I ought not to forget, however, another poet, who refused to strike one chord of his lyre in praise of Napoleon when at the height of his power; while, in his pathetic lines on the royal family in exile, Delille became, what M. de Chateaubriant calls, with his usual beauty of expression, "le courtisan de l'adversité." *

The fundamental principle of the conscription was established by the Constituant Assembly; the aristocratic party at that time opposed this law on account of its democratic principles. It bound every individual to serve his country, without exception or privilege. Advancement in military rank was also open to all, so that a private soldier, of which many honourable examples could be cited, might become a marshal of France. Bonaparte perverted the system of conscrip

* The courtier of adversity.