exception from the conscription of young men preparing
themselves for priesthood. Bonaparte always answered: "Holy Father, were
I to consent to your demand, I should soon have an army of priests,
instead of an army of soldiers." Our Emperor is not unacquainted with
the real character and spirit of his Volunteers. When the Pope
represented the danger of religion expiring in France, for want of
priests to officiate at the altars, he was answered that Bonaparte, at
the beginning of his consulate, found neither altars nor priests in
France; that if his reign survived the latter, the former would always be
standing, and survive his reign. He trusted that the chief of the Church
would prevent them from being deserted. He assured him that when once he
had restored the liberties of the seas, and an uninterrupted tranquillity
on the Continent, he should attend more, and perhaps entirely, to the
affairs of the Church. He consented, however, that the Pope might
institute, in the Ecclesiastical States, a seminary for two hundred young
Frenchmen, whom he would exempt from military conscription. This is the
stock from which our Church establishment is to be supplied!

LETTER XXIX.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The short journey of Count von Haugwitz to Vienna, and the long
stay of our Imperial Grand Marshal, Duroc, at Berlin, had already caused
here many speculations, not quite corresponding with the views and,
perhaps, interests of our Court, when our violation of the Prussian
territory made our courtiers exclaim: "This act proves that the Emperor
of the French is in a situation to bid defiance to all the world, and,
therefore, no longer courts the neutrality of a Prince whose power is
merely artificial; who has indemnities to restore, but no delicacy, no
regard to claims." Such was the language of those very men who, a month
before, declared "that His Prussian Majesty held the balance of peace or
war in his hands; that he was in a position in which no Prussian Monarch
ever was before; that while his neutrality preserved the tranquillity of
the North of Germany, the South of Europe would soon be indebted to his
powerful mediation for the return of peace."

The real cause of this alteration in our courtiers' political jargon has
not yet been known; but I think it may easily be discovered without any
official publication. Bonaparte had the adroitness to cajole the Cabinet
of Berlin into his interest, in the firs