-day to take a last view of the convents: they are now
advertised for sale, and will probably soon be demolished. You know my
opinion is not, on the whole, favourable to these institutions, and that
I thought the decree which extinguishes them, but which secured to the
religious already profest the undisturbed possession of their habitations
during life, was both politic and humane. Yet I could not see the
present state of these buildings without pain--they are now inhabited by
volunteers, who are passing a novitiate of intemperance and idleness,
previous to their reception in the army; and those who recollect the
peace and order that once reigned within the walls of a monastery, cannot
but be stricken with the contrast. I felt both for the expelled and
present possessors, and, perhaps, gave a mental preference to the
superstition which founded such establishments, over the persecution that
destroys them.

The resigned and pious votaries, who once supposed themselves secure from
all the vicissitudes of fortune, and whose union seemed dissoluble only
by the common lot of mortality, are now many of them dispersed,
wandering, friendless, and miserable. The religion which they cherished
as a comfort, and practised as a duty, is now pursued as a crime; and it
is not yet certain that they will not have to choose between an
abjuration of their principles, and the relinquishment of the means of
existence.--The military occupiers offered nothing very alleviating to
such unpleasant reflections; and I beheld with as much regret the
collection of these scattered individuals, as the separation of those
whose habitations they fill. They are most of them extremely young,
taken from villages and the service of agriculture, and are going to risk
their lives in a cause detested perhaps by more than three parts of the
nation, and only to secure impunity to its oppressors.

It has usually been a maxim in all civilized states, that when the
general welfare necessitates some act of partial injustice, it shall be
done with the utmost consideration for the sufferer, and that the
required sacrifice of moral to political expediency shall be palliated,
as much as the circumstances will admit, by the manner of carrying it
into execution. But the French legislators, in this respect, as in most
others, truly original, disdain all imitation, and are rarely guided by
such confined motives. With them, private rights are frequently
violated, onl