ginary assimilations of acts, which a change of
manners has rendered different, fancy themselves more than equal to their
prototypes.*

* The vicissitudes of the revolution, and the vengeance of party,
have brought half the sages of Greece, and patriots of Rome, to the
Guillotine or the pillory. The Newgate Calendar of Paris contains
as many illustrious names as the index to Plutarch's Lives; and I
believe there are now many Brutus's and Gracchus's in durance vile,
besides a Mutius Scaevola condemned to twenty years imprisonment for
an unskilful theft.--A man of Amiens, whose name is Le Roy,
signified to the public, through the channel of a newspaper, that he
had adopted that of Republic.

--A man who solicits to be the executioner of his own brother ycleps
himself Brutus, and a zealous preacher of the right of universal pillage
cites the Agrarian law, and signs himself Lycurgus. Some of the Deputies
have discovered, that the French mode of dressing is not characteristic
of republicanism, and a project is now in agitation to drill the whole
country into the use of a Roman costume.--You may perhaps suspect, that
the Romans had at least more bodily sedateness than their imitators, and
that the shrugs, jerks, and carracoles of a French petit maitre, however
republicanized, will not assort with the grave drapery of the toga. But
on your side of the water you have a habit of reasoning and deliberating
--here they have that of talking and obeying.

Our whole community are in despair to-day. Dumont has been here, and
those who accosted him, as well as those who only ventured to interpret
his looks, all agree in their reports that he is in a "bad humour."--The
brightest eyes in France have supplicated in vain--not one grace of any
sort has been accorded--and we begin to cherish even our present
situation, in the apprehension that it may become worse.--Alas! you know
not of what evil portent is the "bad humour" of a Representant. We are
half of us now, like the Persian Lord, feeling if our heads are still on
our shoulders.--I could add much to the conclusion of one of my last
letters. Surely this incessant solicitude for mere existence debilitates
the mind, and impairs even its passive faculty of suffering. We intrigue
for the favour of the keeper, smile complacently at the gross
pleasantries of a Jacobin, and tremble at the frown of a Dumont.--I am
ashamed to be the chronicl