ed away, and time has mellowed the
works of thy sublime pencil, mayst thou be remembered only as _their_
creator; may thy fame repose herself upon the tableau of the dying
Socrates, and the miraculous passage of the Alpine hero, may the
ensanguined records of thy political frenzy, moulder away, and may
science, who knew not blood till thou wert known, whose pure, and
hallowed inspirations have made men happier, and better, till thou wert
born, implore for thee forgiveness, and whilst, with rapture she points
to the immortal images of thy divine genius, may she cover with an
impenetrable pall, the pale, and shuddering, and bleeding victims of thy
sanguinary soul!

The great abilities of this man, have alone enabled him to survive the
revolution, which, strange to relate, has, throughout its ravages,
preserved a veneration for science, and, in general, protected her
distinguished followers. Bonaparte, who possesses great taste "that
instinct superior to study, surer than reasoning, and more rapid than
reflection," entertains the greatest admiration for the genius of David,
and always consults him in the arrangement of his paintings and statues.
All the costumes of government have been designed by this artist.

David is not without his adherents. He has many pupils, the sons of
respectable, and some of them, of noble families residing in different
parts of Europe. They are said to be much attached to him, and have
formed themselves into a military corps, for the purpose of occasionally
doing honour to him, and were lately on the point of revenging an insult
which had been offered to his person, in a manner, which, if
perpetrated, would have required the interest of their master to have
saved them from the scaffold.

But neither the gracious protection of consular favour, nor the
splendour of unrivalled abilities, can restore their polluted possessor,
to the affections and endearments of social intercourse. Humanity has
drawn a _sable circle_ round him. He leads the life of a proscribed
exile, in the very centre of the gayest city in Europe. In the gloomy
shade of unchosen seclusion, he passes his ungladdened hours, in the
hope of covering his guilt with his glory, and of presenting to
posterity, by the energies of his unequalled genius, some atonement for
the havoc, and ruin of that political hurricane, of which he directed
the fury, and befriended the desolations, against every contemporary
object that nature had endea