gality of Napoleon's divorce from Josephine; because a dispensation from the pope had not been previously obtained.

All the respectable Americans recently returned from France join in confirming the truth of those statements which describe the Great Nation, including Holland and Italy also, as suffering under all the accumulated weight of horrors, that tyranny, vice, and penury can inflict upon the life of man. They represent the interior of that country as deserted and bare; the agriculture is carried on chiefly by women, who also perform the office of harnessing the posthorses to the very few carriages which pass to and fro; travelling being extremely rare along the roads of France, except within twenty or thirty miles round Paris. Scarcely a man is seen in the whole country under sixty years of age, nor a boy above sixteen, thanks to the Conscription system, which has diffused its benedictions over this regenerated people ever since the year 1792. The manufactures are decayed; the external commerce is annihilated; and the interior trade is so completely stagnated that a traveller can scarcely ever get change for a single Napoleon d'or at the town or village where he stops; but receives a paper-memorandum denoting how much change is due to him; this memorandum is presented at the next place where he stops, and if sufficient to pay his expenses there, is deposited accordingly; if more than sufficient, he receives another memorandum stating how much is yet due in change from his piece of money, and so on.

A sufficient proof of the miserable want of internal communication between the different parts of France, is to be found in the great inequality in the price of wheat in the different departments. The Mercuriales addressed by the prefects of various departments towards the close of 1808, to the Minister of the Interior, state the bushel of wheat in the department of

the Ille and Vilaine at 10 francs, 68 cents; in the departments of Morbihan, Maine and Loire, at 12 francs, 70 cents; and in those of the Alps, the Var, the Apennines, and mouths of the Rhone, at 32 francs. If there were any proper communication kept up between the different departments, and any active commercial capital floating in France, these very unequal prices in a grain, for which there is a constant demand, would speedily be brought much nearer to a general level throughout the empire.

The French metropolis itself presents the most striking contrast of extreme magnificence and the most abject misery; but every where vice is triumphant, and shews herself in all the deformity of unblushing profligacy; the palaces, like the sepulchres of old, are white and glistening without, but within full of rottenness and of dead men's bones; the Sunday is entirely disregarded, the shops, and stores, and places of public resort being on that day, as open and free of access as on any other portion of the christian week; the stews and brothels are without number, and carefully fostered and encouraged by Napoleon, who indeed is their great co-partner in the wages of their iniquity; and not contented with zealously plying the midnight orgies of promiscuous lust, the Parisians rival the infamy of the degenerate Italians in presenting to the eye of the indignant foreigner, as he traverses the streets under the broad glare of the noon-day sun, the horrible spectacle of an actual perpetration of that unnatural crime which is not so much as to be named among christians. As the fit consummation of these outrages upon all the dutiesof morality and decencies of life, the French and the other vassals of Buonaparte, in speaking of him use the language of blasphemy; in France they call Napoleon "tout-puissant," the omnipotent; and in Germany they call him "der Atmeichte," the Al

mighty; and this through fear; the execration of Napoleon being diffused over the whole continent.

From the account of a late traveller on the continent of Europe, the following facts respecting the condition of Holland and France are taken. "On Sunday I arrived at Amersfort. After visiting a friend I went to church, where I observed such indecencies as I never before witnessed in a place of worship. Most of the men had their heads covered with their hats, bonnets, or night-caps, and many with great phlegm smoked their pipes, facing the clergyman preaching in the pulpit. The unconcern of the audience at such behaviour proved that it was In which I was con neither new nor uncommon. firmed by my friend, who lamented that since the French friends of liberty had regenerated the Dutch patriots, the people of Holland had sunk to a level with those of France in religion and morality; and went to church as to a public house, displaying the same brutal manners and unfeeling minds. He assured me that some of the lower people carried with them to church gin, brandy, and tobacco; and that the sermon of the preacher was frequently interrupted by the political discussions or vulgar jokes of the audience. Upon my inquiry if blasphemy and sacrilege were not within reach of the laws, I was answered that in the revolutionary laws was no question of a God or of his worship. The professors of religion and its propagators had fallen into the same disrepute with religion itself. Every one is at full liberty to style them fools and hypocrites, and the Divinity whom they adore, our Saviour, an impostor.

"Before the revolution Amsterdam contained four hundred thousand inhabitants; of whom only four thousand five hundred were reduced to beggary, or a charge upon the community. In 1806, the official documents prove it to have lost above one fourth of its population; and of the remainder nearly one third,

or eighty-five thousand souls, have no resource but that which compassion allows to poverty," &c.

"In 1789, the population of Lyons, in France, amounted to 170,000 souls; at present it scarcely reaches two thirds of that number. The respectable manufacturers were then six thousand and forty-five, at present they barely reach six hundred. Fifty-four bankers, and seven hundred and ten capital merchants were then established at Lyons; now the bankers of any credit are only six, and the merchants of property sixty-two. In the silk manufactories were then employed forty-seven thousand persons; now hardly eight thousand can find work. The consequence of this decrease of means to support and reward industry, is an increase of vice, idleness, criminality, and beggary, among the lower orders. Christianity in France approaches every day nearer to its extinction. The degradation of christianity in the person of its ostensible chief, has produced the same revolution in religious, as the humiliation and murder of the head of the kingdom of France had already effected in political sentiments; and most Frenchmen are religious as well as political free-thinkers. Talleyrand said, while the Pope was fraternizing with Buonaparte to the Thuilleries, Christianity in France will descend into the tomb without giving either alarm, or making any noise; because the present generation of French clergy will leave no posterity behind them. Their faith is buried with them, and no resurrection of either is to be apprehended by the friends of philosophy. Indeed when we remember that all the present French priests must be now either old, or above the middle age, as since 1790 scarcely any young Frenchmen have entered into orders; it is not improbable that within twenty or thirty years the altars of Christ in France will be deserted for want of officiating ministers."

In confirmation of these accounts may be also ci

ted part of the exhortation addressed, in the Lentseason of 1807, by M. de Maddolx, bishop of Amiens, to his diocesans, "We have learned with the most lively grief that many of our diocesans refuse to pay that light contribution which we had fixed towards the support of our seminary for clerical education. Are you then ignorant, my dear christian brethren, that death mows down your pastors, and that we every day experience the heaviest losses? Two years are not elapsed since we have sate on the episcopal seat of Amiens, and already a hundred and one priests have sunk under their painful labors; in the same time we have only ordained four; we are therefore alarmed at the number of parishes which remain destitute of religious assistance, and of those which are threatened with the same calamity; especially when we reflect that among those who remain three hundred and forty-three have reached seventy years of age; ninety-four have passed that age; and others more loaded with infirmities than with years, are apparently on the borders of eternity."

Can Buonaparte adopt more effectual means of banishing even the semblance of christianity from France, than by extinguishing the priesthood; which must speedily perish in consequence of the scanty stipends attached to their office? For young men will not easily be induced to follow a profession which ensures to them a life of poverty and starvation. Add to which, the conscription carries off to the army all the young men as fast as they arrive at the age which would allow them to enter upon the study of the clerical profession.*

In the " Literary Panorama," Vol. 4. pp. 145— 168, we have a description of the state of religion in

* Mr. Walsh in his "American Review," No. 1. pp. 190-192, (which has come to our hands while these pages are passing through the press) states that Buonaparte is on the eve of destroying popery by force on the European continent; without waiting for its gradual extinction,