atmosphere of political intrigue, to which it had been so long accustomed. When speaking of confidential correspondence, we do not, of course, allude to those indecent libels penned daily in the French capital; and, we regret to say, with the knowledge, or under the superintendence, of persons who, though known for profligacy in private life, were the confidential companions and bosom friends of personages whose praises we have heard, even to satiety, for austerity of morals, and who are held up as samples of every public and private virtue. Those chroniclers of scandal spared neither sex, nor age, nor rank. The meanest agency was set to work to furnish amusement for the _Cabinet_ of the Czar during his hours of recreation; and to record stories and anecdotes in the style and manner of _Taillement des Réaux_, the _Œil de Bœuf_, or the _Chevalier de Faublas_. With such unerring guides, it is no wonder that the Czar believed that the propitious moment was come. It was represented to him that the Court of Paris was more corrupt, more profligate, than that of Louis XV.; that all France was impoverished, degraded, and discontented, anxious to throw off the yoke of the Buonaparte, eager to receive a sovereign flung to it by any foreign despot; or, at all events, utterly incapable of resisting any encroachment, much less avenging any insult from abroad. The ruler of France, he was told, was overwhelmed by the difficulties that naturally encompass every government in its commencement. His declaration of the _pacific_ policy of the empire was but the unwilling avowal of his weakness, and of his fears. The agitation of political parties, he believed, ruined the country, though, since 1789, political intrigues, secret societies, and conspiracies never were more powerless than at the moment we speak of. The agents who thus instructed the Emperor of Russia crowned those reports by depicting Louis Napoleon as apathetic, because they saw him calm; as hesitating and timid, because they saw him patient and moderate.