ries of atheism than perversity. The Illuminati,
brothers and friends of Montgelas, have not been idle in that country.
Their writings have perverted those who had no opportunity to hear their
speeches, or to witness their example; and I am assured by Count von
Beust, who travelled in Bavaria last year, that their progress among the
lower classes is astonishing, considering the short period these
emissaries have laboured. To any one looking on the map of the
Continent, and acquainted with the spirit of our times, this impious
focus of illumination must be ominous.

Among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps, there exists not the
least doubt but that this Montgelas, as well as Bonaparte's Minister at
Munich, Otto, was acquainted with the treacherous part Mehde de la Touche
played against your Minister, Drake; and that it was planned between him
and Talleyrand as the surest means to break off all political connections
between your country and Bavaria. Mr. Drake was personally liked by the
Elector, and was not inattentive either to the plans and views of
Montgelas or to the intrigues of Otto. They were, therefore, both doubly
interested to remove such a troublesome witness.

M. de Montgelas is now a grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour,
and he is one of the few foreigners nominated the most worthy of such a
distinction. In France he would have been an acquisition either to the
factions of a Murat, of a Brissot, or of a Robespierre; and the Goddess
of Reason, as well as the God of the Theophilanthropists, might have been
sure of counting him among their adorers. At the clubs of the Jacobins
or Cordeliers, in the fraternal societies, or in a revolutionary
tribunal; in the Committee of Public Safety, or in the council chamber of
the Directory, he would equally have made himself notorious and been
equally in his place. A stoic sans-culotte under Du Clots, a stanch
republican under Robespierre, he would now have been the most pliant and
brilliant courtier of Bonaparte.

LETTER XIII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--No Queen of France ever saw so many foreign Princes and
Princesses in her drawing-rooms as the first Empress of the French did
last year at Mentz; and no Sovereign was ever before so well paid, or
accepted with less difficulty donations and presents for her gracious
protection. Madame Napoleon herself, on her return to this capital last
October, boasted that she was ten millions of livres--