lluded to, which was the Friday previous to the annual
meeting, the day appointed for taking into consideration the report
intended to be submitted to the full assembly of the inhabitants. The
president also read his projected speech, in the course of which he took
the opportunity of declaring in strong terms his dislike to Napoleon's
plan of education, directed almost exclusively to military affairs and
mathematics: he even stated that the present generation "etoit sans
morale."--The opinion could not be allowed to pass: he found himself
beset on all sides; not an individual supported him; and after a variety
of attempts to palliate and explain away the offensive passage, he was
obliged to consent to expunge it. This will give some farther idea of
the state of public feeling in France: the compliment upon the lilies
passed as words of course; but the same body that tolerated it,
positively refused to stamp with the sanction of their approbation, any
comparison unfavorable to the system of Napoleon, when put in opposition
to that of the subsisting government.

There is another literary body at Rouen; called _la Societe
d'Emulation_, of more recent establishment, it having been founded in
1791. Conformably to the national spirit which then prevailed, it is
directed exclusively to the encouragement of manufactories and
agriculture.--This society distributes annual medals as the reward of
improvements and discoveries, though I am afraid that as yet it has
been productive but of slender utility.

Rouen also possesses a Botanic Garden, which was founded in 1738; but
the scite which it now occupies was not thus applied till twenty years
subsequently, when the municipality conveyed the ground in perpetuity to
the academy in its corporate capacity, stipulating that it should yield
a nosegay every year as an appropriate _rent in kind_. At the revolution
a grant like this would scarcely be respected; still less did the
jacobins appreciate the pleasures or advantages derived from the garden.
The demagogues of that period seem to have entered heartily into Jean
Jacques Rousseau's notions, that the arts and sciences were injurious to
mankind: this fine establishment was seized as national property, and,
according to the revolutionary jargon, was _soumissione_; but a more
temporate faction obtained the ascendancy before the sale was carried
into effect.--The collection is extensive, and the plants are in good
order: I am not however