We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is less insupportable.—­I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of precautions.  I shall be here less liable either to surprize or observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted, (which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual form.  You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French republicans.

It will not be improper to notice to you a very ingenious decree of Gaston, (a member of the Convention,) who lately proposed to embark all the English now in France at Brest, and then to sink the ships.—­Perhaps the Committee of Public Welfare are now in a sort of benevolent indecision, whether this, or Collot d’Herbois’ gunpowder scheme, shall have the preference.  Legendre’s iron cage and simple hanging will, doubtless, be rejected, as too slow and formal.  The mode of the day is “les grandes mesures.”  If I be not seriously alarmed at these propositions, it is not that life is indifferent to me, or that I think the government too humane to adopt them.  My tranquillity arises from reflecting that such measures would be of no political use, and that we shall most likely be soon forgotten in the multitude of more important concerns.  Those, however, whom I endeavour to console by this reasoning, tell me it is nothing less than infallible, that the inutility of a crime is here no security against its perpetration, and that any project which tends to evil will sooner be remembered than one of humanity or justice.

[End of Vol.  I. The Printed Books]

[Beginning of Volume II.  Of The Printed Books]

Providence, Dec. 20, 1793.

“All places that are visited by the eye of Heaven, are to the wise man happy havens.”  If Shakspeare’s philosophy be orthodox, the French have, it must be confessed, many claims to the reputation of a wise people; and though you know I always disputed their pretensions to general gaiety, yet I acknowledge that misfortune does not deprive them of the share they possess, and, if one may judge by appearances, they have at least the habit, more than any other nation, of finding content under situations with which it should seem incompatible.  We are here between six and seven hundred, of all ages and of all ranks, taken from our homes, and from all that usually makes the comfort of life, and crowded together under many of the inflictions that constitute its misery; yet,