f their
ignorance, and as proud as poor. This project was therefore relinquished
for the time; but a number of the children of the principal ci-devant
German nobles, who, by the Treaty of Luneville and Ratisbon, had become
subjects of Bonaparte, were, by the advice of Talleyrand, offered places
in French Prytanees, where the Emperor promised to take care of their
future advancement. Madame Bonaparte, at the same time, selected
twenty-five young girls of the same families, whom she also offered to
educate at her expense. Their parents understood too well the meaning of
these generous offers to dare decline their acceptance. These children
are the plants of the Imperial nursery, intended to produce future pages,
chamberlains, equerries, Maids of Honour and ladies in waiting, who for
ancestry may bid defiance to all their equals of every Court in
Christendom. This act of benevolence, as it was called in some German
papers, is also an indirect chastisement of the refractory French
nobility, who either demanded too high prices for their degradation, or
abruptly refused to disgrace the names of their forefathers.

LETTER XII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the Imperial
diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of Rome. The
Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria and Baden,
have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive support towards
obtaining it at the first vacancy. Those, however, who have paid
attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who remember his
pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or rather a second
Charlemagne; and who have traced his steps through the labyrinth of folly
and wickedness, of meanness and greatness, of art, corruption, and
policy, which have seated him on the present throne, can entertain little
doubt but that he is seriously bent on seizing and adding the sceptre of
Germany to the crowns of France and Italy.

During his stay last autumn at Mentz, all those German Electors who had
spirit and dignity enough to refuse to attend on him there in person were
obliged to send Extraordinary Ambassadors to wait on him, and to
compliment him on their part. Though hardly one corner of the veil that
covered the intrigues going forward there is yet lifted up, enough is
already seen to warn Europe and alarm the world. The secret treaties he
concluded there with most of the petty P