_Retrospect--The Directory--they become unpopular--Causes of their unpopularity--Also at enmity among themselves--State of public feeling in France--In point of numbers, favourable to the Bourbons; but the Army and monied Interest against them--Pichegru, head of the Royalists, appointed President of the Council of Five Hundred--Barbé Marbois, another Royalist, President of the Council of Ancients--Directory throw themselves upon the succour of Hoche and Buonaparte--Buonaparte's personal Politics discussed--Pichegru's Correspondence with the Bourbons--known to Buonaparte--He despatches Augereau to Paris--Directory arrest their principal Opponents in the Councils on the 18th Fructidor, and Banish them to Guiana--Narrow and Impolitic Conduct of the Directory to Buonaparte--Projected Invasion of England._ While the conqueror of Italy was pursuing his victories beyond the Alps, the French Directory, in whose name he achieved them, had become, to the conviction of all men, as unlikely to produce the benefits of a settled government, as any of their predecessors vested with the supreme rule. [Sidenote: RETROSPECT.] It is with politics as with mechanics, ingenuity is not always combined with utility. Some one observed to the late celebrated Mr. Watt, that it was wonderful for what a number of useless inventions, illustrated by the most ingenious and apparently satisfactory models, patents were yearly issued: he replied, that he had often looked at them with interest, and had found several, the idea of which had occurred to himself in the course of his early studies. "But," said he, with his natural masculine sagacity, "it is one thing to make an ingenious model, and another to contrive an engine which shall work its task. Most of these pretty toys, when they are applied to practical purposes, are found deficient in some point of strength, or correctness of mechanism, which destroys all chance of their ever becoming long or generally useful." Some such imperfection seems to have attended the works of these speculative politicians who framed the various ephemeral constitutions of France. However well they looked upon paper, and however reasonable they sounded to the ear, no one ever thought of them as laws which required veneration and obedience. Did a constitutional rule preclude a favourite measure, to break it down, or leap over it, was the French statesman's unhesitating practice. A rule was always devised applicable to circumstances; and before that, the theory of the constitution was uniformly made to give way. [Sidenote: THE DIRECTORY.]