Paris to be regarded as expressing the
sense of the people, the assassination of this turbulent journalist must
be considered being the case, that the departments are for the most part,
if not rejoiced, indifferent--and many of those who impute to him the
honour of martyrdom, or assist at his apotheosis, are much better
satisfied both with his christian and heathen glories, than they were
while he was living to propagate anarchy and pillage. The reverence of
the Convention itself is a mere political pantomime. Within the last
twelve months nearly all the individuals who compose it have treated
Marat with contempt; and I perfectly remember even Danton, one of the
members of the Committee of Salut Publique, accusing him of being a
contre revolutionnaire.

But the people, to use a popular expression here, require to be
electrified.--St. Fargeau is almost forgotten, and Marat is to serve the
same purposes when dead, to which he contributed while living.--An
extreme grossness and want of feeling form the characteristic feature of
the Parisians; they are ignorant, credulous, and material, and the
Convention do not fail on all occasions to avail themselves of these
qualities. The corpse of Marat decently enclosed in a coffin would have
made little impression, and it was not pity, but revenge, which was to be
excited. The disgusting object of a dead leper was therefore exposed to
the eyes of a metropolis calling itself the most refined and enlightened
of all Europe--

"And what t'oblivion better were consign'd,
Is hung on high to poison half mankind."

I know not whether these lines are most applicable to the display of
Marat's body, or the consecration of his fame, but both will be a lasting
stigma on the manners and morals of Paris.

If the departments, however, take no interest in the loss of Marat, the
young woman who assassinated him has created a very lively one. The
slightest anecdotes concerning her are collected with avidity, and
repeated with admiration; and this is a still farther proof of what you
have heard me advance, that neither patriotism nor humanity has an
abundant growth in this country. The French applaud an act in itself
horrid and unjustifiable, while they have scarcely any conception of the
motive, and such a sacrifice seems to them something supernatural.--The
Jacobins assert, that Charlotte Corday was an emissary of the allied
powers, or, rather, of Mr. Pitt; and