n, the example may be highly
pernicious, and a cause, however good, must always be injured by the use
of such means in its support.--Nothing can sanctify an assassination; and
were not the French more vindictive than humane, the crimes of the
republican party would find a momentary refuge in this injudicious effort
to punish them.

My friend La Marquise de ____ has left Paris, and is now at Peronne,
where she has engaged me to pass a few weeks with her; so that my next
will most probably be dated from thence.--Mr. D____ is endeavouring to
get a passport for England. He begins to regret having remained here.
His temper, naturally impatient of restraint, accords but ill with the
portion of liberty enjoyed by our republicans. Corporal privations and
mental interdictions multiply so fast, that irritable people like
himself, and valetudinarians like Mrs. C____ and me, could not choose a
worse residence; and, as we are now unanimous on the subject, I hope soon
to leave the country.--There is, as you observe in your last, something
of indolence as well as friendship in my having so long remained here;
but if actions were always analyzed so strictly, and we were not allowed
to derive a little credit from our weaknesses, how many great characters
would be reduced to the common level. Voltaire introduced a sort of rage
for anecdotes, and for tracing all events to trifling causes, which has
done much more towards exploding the old-fashioned system or the dignity
of human nature than the dry maxims of Rochefaucault, the sophisms of
Mandeville, or even the malicious wit of Swift. This is also another
effect of the progress of philosophy; and this sort of moral Quixotism,
continually in search of evil, and more gratified in discovering it than
pained by its existence, may be very philosophical; but it is at least
gloomy and discouraging; and we may be permitted to doubt whether mankind
become wiser or better by learning, that those who have been most
remarkable either for wisdom or virtue were occasionally under the
influence of the same follies and passions as other people.--Your
uncharitable discernment, you see, has led me into a digression, and I
have, without intending it, connected the motives of my stay with
reflections on Voltaire's General History, Barillon's Letters, and all
the secret biography of our modern libraries. This, you will say, is
only a chapter of a "man's importance to himself;" but public affairs are
now