Sir Sidney has no vices to conceal behind his spreading and imperishable laurels. His public character is before the approving world. That peace which his sword has accelerated, has afforded us an undisturbed opportunity of admiring his achievements in the field, and of contemplating his conduct in the retired avenues of private life, in which his deportment is without a stain. In him there is every thing to applaud, and nothing to forgive. Yet thus glorious in public, and thus unsullied in private, the conqueror of Bonaparte, and the saviour of the east, owes the honours, _which he adorns_, to foreign and distant powers. To the _grateful_ government of his own country, he is indebted for an ungracious paltry annuity, inadequate to the display of ordinary consequence, and wholly unequal to the suitable support of that dignity, which ought for ever to distinguish such a being from the mass of mankind. The enemies of sir Sidney, for envy furnishes every great man with his quota of such indirect eulogists, if they should honour these pages with a perusal, may, perchance, endeavour to trace the approving warmth with which I have spoken of him, to the enthusiasm of a friendship dazzled, and undiscriminating; but I beg to assure them, that the fame of sir Sidney is better known to me than his person, and that his noble qualities have alone excited the humble tribute which is here offered to one, for whom delighted Nature, in the language of our immortal bard, "--------------------------------might stand up, and say to all the world, this _is_ a man----" CHAPTER XVI. _A fashionable Poem.--Frere Richart.--Religion.--Hotel des Invalides.--Hall of Victory.--Enemies' Colours.--Sulky Appearance of an English Jack and Ensign.--Indecorum.--The aged Captain.--Military School.--Champ de Mars.--The Garden of Mousseaux._ The conversation whilst I was at Paris, was much engaged by a poem, describing the genius and progress of christianity written in imitation of the style of Ossian, which excited very considerable curiosity. From the remarks of some shrewd acquaintances of mine, who had perused the work, I learnt that the principles of the poem seemed strongly tinctured with the bewildered fancies of a disordered mind, conveyed in very heavy _prosaic_ blank verse. "It was the madness of poetry, without the inspiration."