capable of being misrepresented, so as to suit the purpose of their master.  Mr. Drake, envoy at Munich, and Mr. Spencer Smith, at Stuttgard, were deceived in this fashion; and some letters of theirs, egregiously misinterpreted, furnished Buonaparte with a pretext for complaining, to the sovereigns to whom they were accredited, that they had stained the honour of the diplomatic body by leaguing themselves with the schemes of the Chouan conspirators.  The subservient princes were forced to dismiss these gentlemen from their residences; but the English ministry made such explanations in open Parliament as effectually vindicated the name of their country.  Lord Elgin, British ambassador at Constantinople, had been one of those travellers detained at the out-breaking of the war, and was now resident on his parole in the south of France.  He was, on some frivolous pretext, confined in a solitary castle among the Pyrenees; and there every device was practised to induce him to, at least, receive letters calculated, if discovered in his possession, to compromise him.  But this nobleman, sagaciously penetrating the design, baffled it by his reserve.  Being liberated from confinement shortly after, he communicated what had happened to a friend, a member of the French Senate, who traced the matter home to some of Fouche’s creatures, and congratulated Lord Elgin on having avoided very narrowly the fate of Pichegru.

Sir George Rumbold, the British minister at Hamburg, escaped that consummation still more narrowly.  During the night of the 23rd October a party of French soldiers passed the Elbe, as Ordonner and his gang had crossed the Rhine on the 14th of March, and boldly seized Rumbold within the territory of an independent and friendly state.  He was hurried to Paris, and confined in the fated dungeons of the Temple:  but none of his papers afforded any plausible pretext for resisting the powerful remonstrance which the King of Prussia thought fit to make against an outrage perpetrated almost within sight of his dominions; and, after a few days, Sir George was set at liberty.

Meantime, while all the princes of Europe regarded with indignation (though few of them, indeed, cared to express the feeling openly) the cruel tragedies which had been acted in France, the death of Pichegru had suppressed effectually the hopes of the royalists in that country, and the exile of Moreau deprived the republicans of the only leader under whom there was any likelihood of their taking arms against the Chief Consul.  He resolved to profit by the favourable moment for completing a purpose which he had long meditated; and, on the 30th of April, little more than a month after the Duke d’Enghien died, one Curee was employed to move, in the Tribunate, “that it was time to bid adieu to political illusions—­that victory had brought back tranquillity—­the finances of the country had been restored, and the laws renovated—­and that it was a matter of duty to secure those blessings to the nation in future, by rendering the supreme power hereditary in the person and family of Napoleon.”—­“Such,” he said, “was the universal desire of the army and of the people.  The title of Emperor, in his opinion, was that by which Napoleon should be hailed, as best corresponding to the dignity of the nation.”