"How thankful I am to you, Sir, for delivering to the just execration of all time that stupid and ferocious people which, since twelve hundred years, has afflicted the fairest countries of the earth! One smiles with you at the hope of seeing it return to the desert whence it came. "You have inspired me with a passing feeling of indulgence for the Arabs, for the sake of the fine comparison which you have drawn between them and the savages of North America. "Providence seems to have led you to Jerusalem to assist at the last representation of the first scene of Christianity. If it be no longer granted to the eyes of men to behold that Tomb, 'the only one which will have nothing to give up on the Last Day,' Christians will always find it again in the Gospels, and meditative and sensitive minds in the pictures which you have drawn. "The critics will not fail to reproach you with the men and incidents with which you have covered the ruins of Carthage and which you could not have seen, since they no longer exist. But I implore you, Sir, confine yourself to asking them if they themselves would not have been very sorry not to find them in those engaging pictures. "You have the right, Sir, to enjoy a form of glory which belongs to you exclusively by a sort of creation; but there is an enjoyment still more satisfying to a character like yours, that is, to have endowed the creations of your genius with the nobility of your soul and the elevation of your sentiments. It is this which, at all times, will ensure to your name and memory the esteem, the admiration and the respect of all friends of religion, virtue and honour. "It is on this score that I beg you, Sir, to accept the homage of all my sentiments. "L. F. DE BAUSSET, _ex-Bishop of Alais._" M. de Chénier[32] died on the 10th of January 1811. My friends had the fatal idea of pressing me to take his place in the Institute. They urged that, exposed as I was to the hostilities of the head of the Government, to the suspicions and annoyances of the police, it was necessary that I should enter a body then powerful through its fame and through the men composing it; that, sheltered behind that buckler, I should be able to work in peace.