to the report
of a deserter escaped from Toulon, Lord Hood has hanged one Beauvais, a
member of the Convention. I have no doubt but the report is false, and,
most likely, fabricated by the Comite de Salut Public, in order to
palliate an act of injustice previously meditated.

It is needless to expatiate on the atrocity of making individuals, living
here under the faith of the nation, responsible for the events of the
war, and it is whispered that even the people are a little ashamed of it;
yet the government are not satisfied with making us accountable for what
really does happen, but they attribute acts of cruelty to our countrymen,
in order to excuse those they commit themselves, and retaliate imagined
injuries by substantial vengeance.--Legendre, a member of the Convention,
has proposed, with a most benevolent ingenuity, that the manes of the
aforesaid Beauvais should be appeased by exhibiting Mr. Luttrell in an
iron cage for a convenient time, and then hanging him.

A gentleman from Amiens, lately arrested while happening to be here on
business, informs me, that Mr. Luttrell is now in the common gaol of that
place, lodged with three other persons in a miserable apartment, so
small, that there is not room to pass between their beds. I understand
he was advised to petition Dumont for his removal to a Maison d'Arret,
where he would have more external convenience; but he rejected this
counsel, no doubt from a disdain which did him honour, and preferred to
suffer all that the mean malice of these wretches would inflict, rather
than ask any accommodation as a favour.--The distinguishing Mr. Luttrell
from any other English gentleman is as much a proof of ignorance as of
baseness; but in this, as in every thing else, the present French
government is still more wicked than absurd, and our ridicule is
suppressed by our detestation.

Oct. 22.

Mad. de ____'s _homme d'affaires_ [Agent] has been here to-day, but no
news from Amiens. I know not what to conjecture. My patience is almost
exhausted, and my spirits are fatigued. Were I not just now relieved by
a distant prospect of some change for the better, my situation would be
insupportable.--"Oh world! oh world! but that thy strange mutations make
us wait thee, life would not yield to age." We should die before our
time, even of moral diseases, unaided by physical ones; but the
uncertainty of human events, which is the "worm i'the bud" of happiness,
is to the mis