the prelate on whom Bonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara,
and to constitute a successor of St. Peter. It would not be the least
remarkable event in the beginning of the remarkable nineteenth century
were we to witness the papal throne occupied by a man who from a singing
boy became a renegade slave, from a Mussulman a constitutional curate,
from a tavern-keeper an archbishop, from the son of a pedlar the uncle of
an Emperor, and from the husband of the daughter of a tinker, a member of
the Sacred College.

His sister, Madame Letitia Bonaparte, presented him, in 1802, with an
elegant library, for which she had paid six hundred thousand livres--and
his nephew, Napoleon, allows him a yearly pension double that amount.
Besides his dignity as a prelate, His Eminence is Ambassador from France
at Rome, a Knight of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, a grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, and a grand almoner of the Emperor of
the French.

The Archbishop of Paris is now in his ninety-sixth year, and at his death
Cardinal Fesch is to be transferred to the see of this capital, in
expectation of the triple crown and the keys of St. Peter.

LETTER XVIII.

Paris, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--The amiable and accomplished Amelia Frederique, Princess
Dowager of the late Electoral Prince, Charles Louis of Baden, born a
Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, has procured the Electoral House of Baden
the singular honour of giving consorts to three reigning and Sovereign
Princes,--to an Emperor of Russia, to a King of Sweden, and to the
Elector of Bavaria. Such a distinction, and such alliances, called the
attention of those at the head of our Revolution; who, after attempting
in vain to blow up hereditary thrones by the aid of sans-culotte
incendiaries, seated sans-culottes upon thrones, that they might degrade
what was not yet ripe for destruction.

Charles Frederick, the reigning Elector of Baden, is now near fourscore
years of age. At this period of life if any passions remain, avarice is
more common than ambition; because treasures may be hoarded without
bustle, while activity is absolutely necessary to push forward to the
goal of distinction. Having bestowed a new King on Tuscany, Bonaparte
and Talleyrand also resolved to confer new Electors on Germany. A more
advantageous fraternity could not be established between the innovators
here and their opposers in other countries, than by incorporating the
grandfather-in-la