His oratorical career was not of long duration. The Normal School was quickly suppressed; and Volney, disgusted and fatigued with fruitless endeavours to benefit his country, determined on deserting it for ever, and seeking in the New World that tranquillity which he had failed to find in the Old. On his arrival in the United States of America, in 1795, he was well received by Washington, who gave him many public marks of his confidence and friendship. It is said, however, though I know not upon what grounds, that John Adams, elected president in 1797, entertained feelings highly inimical to Volney, who, a short time before, had criticised severely, perhaps unjustly, his “Defence of the Constitutions of the United States.” It is even insinuated by Durozoir, whose unsupported testimony I should, however, refuse to accept in a matter of this kind, that our traveller was driven from America by the unmanly revenge of John Adams in the spring of 1798. Be this as it may, he was suspected by the Americans of being engaged in a conspiracy for delivering up Louisiana to the Directory; while in France, on the other hand, he was accused of having asserted that Louisiana could never become an advantageous possession of the French republic. While his mind was thus harassed by contradictory and absurd suspicions, Dr. Priestley published his “Observations on the Progress of Infidelity,” &c., in which Volney, says Durozoir, who probably had no more read Priestley’s pamphlet than I have, was denounced as an “atheist, an ignoramus, a Chinese, and a Hottentot.” Priestley was no doubt a rough polemic, too much addicted, perhaps, to hard names; but the work which he denounced had, in many respects, a highly mischievous tendency, and in refuting it some degree of warmth was pardonable. On our traveller’s return to France, where he had been elected a member of the Institute during his absence, he became once more intimately connected with Napoleon, whom, in 1794, he had dissuaded from seeking military employment in Turkey or Russia, and by his influence caused to be restored to his rank in the army. Napoleon was not ungrateful, and when elected to the consulate was desirous of naming Volney his colleague. This dignity, however, the traveller refused, as well as that of minister of the interior, which was soon afterward offered him. He was content with the mere rank of senator. When at a future period Napoleon was about to assume the title of emperor, Volney ventured to oppose him, observing that _it were better to restore the Bourbons_. From this time forward he was invariably found among that small minority in the senate who condemned and opposed the despotic measures of the emperor; yet he allowed himself to be decorated with the rank of count, and the title of commandant of the Legion of Honour. Still he took little share in political matters, preferring before all distinctions retirement and study.