was therefore exposed to
the eyes of a metropolis calling itself the most refined and enlightened
of all Europe--

"And what t'oblivion better were consign'd,
Is hung on high to poison half mankind."

I know not whether these lines are most applicable to the display of
Marat's body, or the consecration of his fame, but both will be a lasting
stigma on the manners and morals of Paris.

If the departments, however, take no interest in the loss of Marat, the
young woman who assassinated him has created a very lively one. The
slightest anecdotes concerning her are collected with avidity, and
repeated with admiration; and this is a still farther proof of what you
have heard me advance, that neither patriotism nor humanity has an
abundant growth in this country. The French applaud an act in itself
horrid and unjustifiable, while they have scarcely any conception of the
motive, and such a sacrifice seems to them something supernatural.--The
Jacobins assert, that Charlotte Corday was an emissary of the allied
powers, or, rather, of Mr. Pitt; and the Parisians have the complaisance
to believe, that a young woman could devote herself to certain
destruction at the instigation of another, as though the same principles
which would lead a person to undertake a diplomatic commission, would
induce her to meet death.

I wrote some days ago to a lady of my acquaintance at Caen, to beg she
would procure me some information relative to this extraordinary female,
and I subjoin an extract of her answer, which I have just received:

"Miss Corday was a native of this department, and had, from her earliest
years, been very carefully educated by an aunt who lives at Caen. Before
she was twenty she had decided on taking the veil, and her noviciate was
just expired when the Constituent Assembly interdicted all religious vows
for the future: she then left the convent, and resided entirely with her
aunt. The beauty of her person, and particularly her mental
acquisitions, which were superior to that of French women in general,
rendered an object of much admiration. She spoke uncommonly well, and
her discourse often turned on the ancients, and on such subjects as
indicated that masculine turn of mind which has since proved so fatal to
her. Perhaps her conversation was a little tinctured with that pedantry
not unjustly attributed to our sex when they have a little more knowledge
than usual, but, at the same time