member of the Convention.  I have no doubt but the report is false, and, most likely, fabricated by the Comite de Salut Public, in order to palliate an act of injustice previously meditated.

It is needless to expatiate on the atrocity of making individuals, living here under the faith of the nation, responsible for the events of the war, and it is whispered that even the people are a little ashamed of it; yet the government are not satisfied with making us accountable for what really does happen, but they attribute acts of cruelty to our countrymen, in order to excuse those they commit themselves, and retaliate imagined injuries by substantial vengeance.—­Legendre, a member of the Convention, has proposed, with a most benevolent ingenuity, that the manes of the aforesaid Beauvais should be appeased by exhibiting Mr. Luttrell in an iron cage for a convenient time, and then hanging him.

A gentleman from Amiens, lately arrested while happening to be here on business, informs me, that Mr. Luttrell is now in the common gaol of that place, lodged with three other persons in a miserable apartment, so small, that there is not room to pass between their beds.  I understand he was advised to petition Dumont for his removal to a Maison d’Arret, where he would have more external convenience; but he rejected this counsel, no doubt from a disdain which did him honour, and preferred to suffer all that the mean malice of these wretches would inflict, rather than ask any accommodation as a favour.—­The distinguishing Mr. Luttrell from any other English gentleman is as much a proof of ignorance as of baseness; but in this, as in every thing else, the present French government is still more wicked than absurd, and our ridicule is suppressed by our detestation.

Oct. 22.

Mad. de ____’s homme d’affaires [Agent] has been here to-day, but no
news from Amiens.   I know not what to conjecture.   My patience is almost
exhausted, and my spirits are fatigued.   Were I not just now relieved by
a distant prospect of some change for the better, my situation would be
insupportable.—­“Oh world! oh world! but that thy strange mutations make
us wait thee, life would not yield to age.”   We should die before our
time, even of moral diseases, unaided by physical ones; but the
uncertainty of human events, which is the “worm i’the bud” of happiness,
is to the miserable a cheering and consolatory reflection.   Thus have I
dragged on for some weeks, postponing, as it were, my existence, without
any resource, save the homely philosophy of "nous verrons demain."
["We shall see to-morrow.”]

At length our hopes and expectations are become less general, and if we do not obtain our liberty, we may be able at least to procure a more eligible prison.  I confess, the source of our hopes, and the protector we have found, are not of a dignity to be ushered to your notice by citations of blank verse, or scraps of sentiment; for though the top of the ladder is not quite so high, the first rounds are as low as that of Ben Bowling’s.