their deputies to answer questions which he needed not have asked, or to lend their sanction to a conscription which, requiring no other sanction than that of his own merciless tyranny, sets all laws and all feelings at defiance. And though doubtless the Deputies indulged gratuitously in impious adulations, yet it was ap parent, that, in some of their blasphemies, they echoed the known pretensions of the adventurer whom they addressed. In their hall of meeting, they placed the Imperial Eagle over the Ark of the Covenant, and blended the cyphers of Napoleon and of Josephine with the unutterable name of God. This was only French flattery in Jewish costume. But when they applied to him the prophesies of Isaiah and Daniel, when they called him the "Lord's anointed Cyrus!" "The living image of the Divinity!" "The only mortal according to God's own heart, to whom he has entrusted the fate of nations, because he alone could govern them with wisdom,"--these things resembled the profane language of his infidel bishops, and of his own proclamations, too much to escape notice. And when they reminded him that "he had overcome, as conqueror, the ancient

land of the eternal pyramids, the scene of their ancestors' captivity; that he had appeared on the banks of the once sacred Jordan, and fought in the valley of Sechem, in the plains of Palestine,"*--such expressions appeared to indicate a project for re-settling them in the Holy Land, as part of his plans respecting Egypt. Nay, as he had successively imitated Hannibal, and Alexander, and Charlemagne, just as the chance of circumstances reminded him of each, was it improbable that Mahommed might be the next object of his imitation; that he might breathe in incense till he fancied himself divine; that adulation, and success, and vanity, utterly unchecked as they were, having destroyed all moral feeling and all conscience, should affect his intellect next; and that, from being the Cyrus of the Lord, he would take the hint which his own clergy had given him, and proclaim himself the temporal Messiah? Nothing was too impious for this man-nothing too frantic ;-and, alas! such was the degradation of Europe and of the world, England alone excepted, that scarcely any thing seemed to be impracticable for him.

Another speculation was, that, in Co-operation with the Russians, he would march an army through Persia to the Indies, and give a mortal blow, in Hindostan, to the prosperity and strength of England; for it was one of the preposterous notions of our times, that the power of England depended upon these foreign possessions-the acquirements, as it were, of yesterday! An ominous present was said, by the French journalists, to have been sent him by the Persian sovereign,-two scymitars, one of which had belonged to Timur, the other to Nadir Shah.* The intrigues of his emissaries at the Persian court, and with the Mahrattas and Mahommedan powers in Hindostan, were supposed to render this project probable; and the various routes which his army might take, were anxiously traced upon the map, by those whose forethought had more of fear in it than of hope. But Buonaparte was now enacting the part of Charlemagne, and had not leisure, as yet, again to take up that of Alexander, which he had so long laid aside. He was, indeed, at this time, actually master of the whole continent of Europe, Sweden alone excepted, which was secured by its poverty, its iron climate, and its unimportance, more than by its strength, though strong enough to have resisted the world, had there been one heart and will among its inhabitants. It was not worth his while to conquer Sweden, and, therefore, by an obvious policy, he left Russia to fight his battles in that country, and waste her forces there, that the magnanimous Alexander, as it was now his

turn to becall him, might fall an easier victim whenever his turn was

come.

An attack upon Gibraltar had, at different times, been threatened. One great object of Buonaparte was to shut us out from the Mediterranean; we had lost our popularity in Egypt; we had given up Minorca at the peace, and abandoned our partizans there to the vengeance of their own government;-our blind subserviency to the court of Sicily, rendered his conquest of that island certain, whenever it suited him seriously to attempt it; were but Gibraltar taken, our ships would have no port between England and Malta; and Malta itself, infinitely important as it might be made by an enlightened and enterprising policy, would then become a useless and expensive possession. It was indeed an arduous attempt to besiege a fortress so celebrated for its strength; but the greater, therefore, would be the glory of conquering it: there were reports of which he could not be ignorant, that the place had been weakened by imprudent excavations; and the cost of lives at which it was to be purchased, would not enter into his calculations; that would fall upon the Spaniards and the poor German or Italian conscripts-while the fame, and the main advantages of the acquisition, would accrue to France. These speculations appeared more probable after his unprovoked seizure of Portugal: for, if Gibraltar were to be besieged, one of the preliminary steps would be to secure the port of Lisbon against us. Accordingly, when intelligence ar

rived that the Spaniards were repairing the old barracks, near the rock, that tents were ordered for a French army at Cadiz, and that the usual communication which had existed between the garrison and the neighbouring parts of Spain, was suspended, many persons began to believe that the attempt would be made. So strongly did this opinion prevail, that the Duke of Kent addressed a letter to the King, soliciting permission, as Governor of that fortress, to return to his post; and, when this permission was refused, he thought it expedient to publish his letter in the newspapers, for the purpose, as he expressed himself, "of clearing his own character from the aspersion that must unavoidably attach to it, in consequence of his absence from his government at such a moment, were it conceived to be voluntary on his part, or that he had been passive on the occasion."

It soon, however, became apparent, that the forces which Buonaparte was marching into Spain were designed to effect some important revolution in the government of that country,---though of what nature that revolution would be no reasonable conjecture could be formed. On the 30th of October, in the preceding year, a proclamation* was issued from the Escurial, in which the King of Spain accused his son, the Prince of Asturias, of conspiring to dethrone him: "My life," he said, " which has so often been in danger, was too long in the eyes of my successor. Being informed that he had entered into a project to dethrone me, I thought proper to enquire personally into the truth of the fact; and, surprising him in my room, I found in

his possession the cypher of his correspondence. In consequence of this discovery, I immediately convoked the Governor and Council, in order that they might make the necessary investigation; the result has been the detection of several malefactors, whose imprisonment I have ordered, as also the arrest of my son." Six days after the date of this ex- Nov. 5. traordinary proclamation, another was issued, in which two letters from the Prince were contained.— The first, which was addressed to the King, was in these terms: "Sire and Father, I am guilty of failing in my duty to your Majesty; I have failed in obedience to my father and King. I ought to do nothing without your Majesty's consent but I have been surprised. I have denounced the guilty,---and beg your Majesty to suffer your repentant son to kiss your feet." The other was to the Queen, in which he requested pardon for the great fault that he had committed, as well as for his obstinacy in denying the truth; and he requested her mediation in his favour. In consequence of these letters, the King said, and of the Queen's entreaty, he forgave him— "for the voice of nature unnerved the hand of vengeance." The Prince, he added, had declared the authors of this horrible plot, and laid open every thing in legal form, consistent with the proofs which the law requires in such cases. The Judges, therefore, were commanded to continue the process, and submit their judgment to the King, which was to be according to the magnitude of the offence, and the quality of the offender. Meantime, at the request of his Council, he ordered a public

thanksgiving for this interposition of Divine Providence in his behalf.

This mysterious affair has never been clearly elucidated. The Spaniards imputed it to the machinations of Don Manuel Godoy, Prince de la Paz, or of the Peace, an upstart, who, from being, in the most infamous sense of the word, the favourite of the Queen, had attained the highest power in the state. This man was completely subservient to France, and it was supposed in this country, that, whether any such conspiracy as was alledged had existed or not, the real plot was devised by Buonaparte, for the sake of exciting divisions in the royal family. This opinion is supported by Don Pedro Cevallos, in his exposition of Buonaparte's conduct in the usurpation of Spain, a document against the validity of which all objections which have been raised are futile and fallacious. It is in all its parts consistent with itself, and with the characters of all the personages of whom it treats; nor is there any inconsistency in the character and conduct of its author.

The Spaniards are, perhaps, the only people who have undergone no national degradation when their country was degraded. A series of imbecil sovereigns had reduced it from the most powerful kingdom in the world, to a secondary state, whose government, for nearly the last century, had been inglorious abroad and oppressive at home. But while Spain was regarded with pity or contempt, a different feeling prevailed concerning the Spaniards; they were universally acknowledged to be an honourable people. It was not so generally known that they felt and groaned for the degradation of their country. When the French Revolution broke out, the young and the

ardent-minded there, as in the rest of Europe, eagerly adopted principles which promised a new and happier order of things, though the partizans of those principles were comparatively less numerous than in any other country, in consequence partly of the state of the press; still more because of the feeling and devotion with which the Spaniards are attached to their religion and all its forms. There were, however, many, and those of the best of the Spaniards, who hoped to obtain that reformation in their government, by the assistance of France, which, without such assistance, they knew it would not only be hopeless, but fatal to attempt. That attachment which they had formed to the French Republic, too many transferred to the French empire.-Monstrous as this inconsistency may appear, we see it exemplified among ourselves, and the transition is easily explained; for having, from their principles, at first acquired the feelings of a party, they deluded themselves by supposing that, in serving their party, they served their principles, till at last they had no other principle than the party interest itself. Thus it is that Massaredo and Urquijo, beginning in feelings of true patriotism, have ended in rendering themselves infamous to all posterity, as traitors to their country.

Another class of Spaniards had been hostile to the French Revolution, till its character was changed by Buonaparte. They saw nothing to fear in the principles of his government; and the acts of personal atrocity which he committed did not sufficiently alarm them. The unhappy circumstance with which the war with England had commenced irritated them against this country, and