[ 500 ] [MAY, 



ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPH LETTERS. 



[!N 1806, the writer of this note was residing at Brussels. At that period 

 a fashion prevailed among ladies of collecting autographs. Madame 

 Guilleminot, sister-in-law of the well-known General, applied to a sister 

 of Napoleon, with whom she was on terms of intimacy, to request a few 

 " Autographs." The Princess mentioned the circumstance to Cambaceres, 

 the Chancellor of the empire, \vho gave orders to the keeper of the state 

 papers to send a quantity to Brussels. The writer was present when an im- 

 mense package of papers arrived for Madame Guilleminot from Paris. He 

 was desired by this lady to select those letters which appeared the most 

 interesting. This task he performed, and was permitted to copy all those 

 papers which might be deemed worthy of publicity at some 1 future period. 

 Several hundred letters were copied, of which the three subjoined are 

 specimens. Many of these are in English, and those in French are 

 literally translated. It may be asked, how such various documents came 

 into the government archives ? This question can only be solved by sup- 

 posing a very natural hypothesis that the Bureau Noir of the police 

 had unsealed a great many of the letters, and had not taken the trouble 

 either to send them, when they were found to contain no dangerous 

 political intelligence, to the proper owners, or even to burn them, a 

 circumstance of by no means urifrequent occurrence. The extremely 

 curious epistle of Marat, was probably found among the papers of the 

 republican some months after his death, when his name became a term 

 of opprobium among the French. In the collection there are two other 

 English letters, and several French ones from this gentle creature. The 

 letter from Beaumarchais, the author of Figaro, and the Barber of Seville, 

 in which he describes a visit to that eccentric nobleman, Lauraguais, is a 

 ludicrous sketch. Some letters from Africa, of which there are several, give 

 a faithful and interesting account, somewhat a la Mary Montague, of the 

 inhabitants of Algiers, with curious particulars respecting the harem of 

 the Dey, of which this lady was an inmate. These, however, 1 must 

 defer. W. J.] 



* From Marat to Mr. William Daly. 



" My dear Mr. Daly, " Dec. 



*' I promised that at my arrival at Paris that I would write you. I 

 would prefer to address you in French, as I am not perfect in your 

 language ; but as some of our friends, to whom you shall show this 

 letter, do not know the French, and as I wish most ardently to be called 

 to their remembrance, I have resolved to make an effort in order that I 



* This letter is given verbatim. It hears no other date except " Dec. ;" but was 

 probably written between 1780 and 1786. Marat had in that interval been in 

 England. From the number of erasures it is evident this was the original rough 

 copy, and appears to have cost some lahour in composing. The character of the 

 writer is sufficiently well known to those acquainted with the annals of the French 

 revolution. He not only voted for the death of the king, but actually proposed 

 that the body should be divided into 112 parts, and sent to every department in 

 France. He also wished that all persons beyond a certain age should be put to 

 death, in order that the country might be purified. The miscreant was at length 

 stabbed while in his bath by a beautiful female named Charlotte Corday, who had 

 travelled from the south of France to Paris for this express purpose. 



