Project Gutenberg's Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Volume 7,
by Lewis Goldsmith

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Title: Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Volume 7
Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

Author: Lewis Goldsmith

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #3898]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COURT OF ST. CLOUD ***

Produced by David Widger

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

By Lewis Goldsmith

Volume 7

LETTER XXIV.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--Though loudly complained of by the Cabinet of St. Cloud, the
Cabinet of St. Petersburg has conducted itself in these critical times
with prudence without weakness, and with firmness without obstinacy. In
its connections with our Government it has never lost sight of its own
dignity, and, therefore, never endured without resentment those
impertinent innovations in the etiquette of our Court, and in the manner
and language of our Emperor to the representatives of legitimate
Sovereigns. Had similar becoming sentiments directed the councils of all
other Princes and the behaviour of their Ambassadors here, spirited
remonstrances might have moderated the pretensions or passions of upstart
vanity, while a forbearance and silence, equally impolitic and shameful,
have augmented insolence by flattering the pride of an insupportable and
outrageous ambition.

The Emperor of Russia would not have been so well represented here, had
he not been so wisely served and advised in his council chamber at St.
Petersburg. Ignorance and folly commonly select fools for their agents,
while genius and capacity employ men of their own mould, and of their own
cast. It is a remarkable truth that, notwithstanding the frequent
revolutions in Russia, since the death of Peter the First the ministerial
helm has always been in able hands; the progressive and uninterrupted
increase of the real and relative power of the Russian Empire evinces the
reality of this assertion.

The Russian Chancellor, Count Alexander Woronzoff, may be justly called
the chief of p