For instance: Bonaparte, Carnot,[1] Mouge,[1] le Blond,[1] Berthelet,[1] Foucroy,[1] Revellière,[1] Lepoux,[1] Cambacères, Merlin,[1] Talleyrand,[1] Roederer,[1] François de Neufchâteau, Chenier,[1] Thonin,[1] Mouette,[1] have all been known for their assassinations, robberies and atrocious crimes. Foucroy was the cause, for instance, of the murder of the immortal Lavoisier. All these ruffians and others space prevents my naming, furnish abundant matter for inquiry and reflection, but it is impossible to include such a length of biographies in a letter; but before I leave Paris I intend to procure sufficient authentic documents by which upon my return (should I escape in safety from the tyrant’s grasp) I shall be then enabled to drag these philosophical murderers and thieves out of their National Palace, strip them of their silken disguises, and expose them in all their naked deformity to the execration of mankind. In vain do they flatter themselves that by the arts of a meretricious rhetoric they elude the vigilant pursuit of injured innocence and affronted justice, in vain do they suppose that they shall court foreign applause by associating with the learned of other countries. It is a disgrace and a dishonour to be favoured by the National Institute where a band of sanguinary ruffians pollute the halls consecrated to learning, science and wisdom. Whoever lives under a government where religion, morals and public freedom are revered, ought to reject their silver medal and _procès verbal_, as he would cast away from him food contaminated with poison. If it be an honour to be elected a member of a society, learned, indeed, but fundamentally vicious and depraved, why not petition to be admitted to the Palace of Pandemonium? The devils in hell are fully as knowing as the members of the Institute, and, for ought I know, not done greater evil to mankind. They are the fittest colleagues for such men, and not the upright and pensive cultivators of science and literature. XXVIII THE CENTRAL MUSÉE DES ARTS. THE GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE. [Sidenote: MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE] When the French Republicans first took up arms, they protested to the world that they fought not for conquest, but to spread their beneficent doctrines of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and that wherever their victorious standards were spread, the liberty and property of nations should be respected. Their first campaigns were directed against their warlike neighbours who hovered round their frontiers; and when they succeeded in repelling the veteran troops of the continental Powers, they began a career of robbery, pillage, rapine and destruction, which has no parallel in the history of disciplined nations, nor even in that of predatory hordes of barbarians. The principle on which the robberies of the French have been conducted has been to _aggrandise_ France by the utter _impoverishment_ of other countries.