Joseph, Cardinal Fesch, was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 8th of March, 1763, and was in his infancy received as a singing boy (enfant de chœur) in a convent of his native place. In 1782, whilst he was on a visit to some his of relations, in the island of Sardinia, being on a fishing party, some distance from shore, he was, with his companions, captured by an Algerine felucca, and carried a captive to Algiers. Here he turned Mussulman, and until 1790 was a zealous believer and professor of the Alcoran, In that year he found an opportunity to escape from Algiers, to return to Ajaccio, when he abjured his renegacy, exchanged the Alcoran for the Bible, and in 1791 was made a constitutional curate, that is to say, a revolutionary christian priest. In 1793, when even those were proscribed, he renounced the sacristy of his church for the bar of a tavern, where, during 1794 and 1795, he gained a small capital by the number and liberality of his English customers.

After the victories of his nephew Napoleon in Italy, during the following year, he was advised to reassume the clerical habit; and after Napoleon's proclamation of a first consul, he was made archbishop of Lyons. In 1802, Pius VII. decorated him with the Roman purple; and he is now a pillar of the Roman faith, in a fair way of seizing the Roman tiara. If letters from Rome can be depended upon, Cardinal Fesch, in the name of the emperor of the French, informed his holiness the Pope, that he must either retire to a convent, or travel to France;

either abdicate his own sovereignty, or inaugurate Napoleon the First a sovereign of France. Without the decision of the sacred college, effected in the manner already stated, the majority of the faithful believe, that this pontiff would have preferred obscurity to disgrace.

While Joseph Fesch was a master of a tavern, he married the daughter of a tinker, by whom he had three children. This marriage, according to the republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at Ajaccio; Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the church, left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves, considering himself still, according to the canonical laws, a bachelor. But Madame Fesch, hearing in 1801 of her ci-devant husband's promotion to the archbishopric of Lyons, wrote to him for some succours, being, with her children, reduced to great misery. Madame Letitia Buonaparte answered her letter, inclosing a draft for six hundred livres, 251. informing her that the same sum would be paid her every six months, as long as she continued with her children to reside at Corsica; but that it would cease the instant she left that island. Either thinking herself not sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the Buonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope. On the first day his holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal

Fesch was by his side. Profiting at a moment's silence, she called out loudly, throwing herself at his feet, Holy Father! I am the lawful wife of Cardinal Fesch, and these are our children. He cannot, he dares not deny this truth. Had he behaved liberally to me, I should not have disturbed him in his present grandeur. I supplicate you, Holy Father, not to restore me my husband, but to force him to provide for his wife and children, according to his present circumstances.”—“Matta-ella è matta, santessimo Padre! She is mad-she is mad, Holy Father," said the Cardinal: and the good pontiff ordered her to be taken care of, to prevent her from doing herself, or the children, any mischief. She was indeed taken care of, because nobody ever since heard what has become either of her or her children; and as they have not returned to Corsica, probably some snug retreat has been allotted them in France.

The purple was never disgraced by a greater li'bertine than Cardinal Fesch; his amours are nu ́merous, and have often involved him in disagreeable scrapes. He had in 1803 an unpleasant adventure at Lyons, which has since made his stay in that city but short. Having thrown his pocket-handkerchief at the wife of a manufacturer of the name of Girot, she accepted it; and gave him an appointment at her house, at a time in the evening when her husband usually went to the play. His eminence arrived in disguise, and was received with open arms. But he was hardly seated by her side, before the door of a

closet was burst open, and his shoulders smarted from the lashes inflicted by an offended husband. In vain did he mention his name and rank! They rather increased than decreased the fury of Girot, who pretended it was utterly impossible for a cardinal and archbishop to be thus overtaken with the wife of one of his flock: at last Madame Girot proposed a pecuniary accommodation, which, after some opposition, was acceded to, and his eminence signed a bond for one hundred thousand livres, 4001. upon condition that nothing should transpire of this intrigue; a high price enough for a sound drubbing. On the day when the bond was due, Girot and his wife were both arrested by the police commissary Dubois (a brother of the prefect of police at Paris), accused of being connected with coiners, a capital crime at present in this country. In a search made in their house, bad money to the amount of three thousand livres, 1251. was discovered, which they had received the day before, from a man who called himself a merchant from Paris, but who was a police spy, sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the cardinal, the emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon condition that they should be transported for life to Cayenne.

This is the prelate on whom Buonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara, and to constitute a successor of St. Peter. It would not be the least remarkable event in the beginning of the remarkable nineteenth century, were we to witness the papal throne occupied by a man, who from a singing boy became

a renegado slave; from a Mussulman, a constitutional curate; from a tavern-keeper, an archbishop; from the son of a pedlar, the uncle of an emperor; and from the husband of the daughter of a tinker, a member of the sacred college.

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His sister, Madame Letitia Buonaparte, presented him, in 1802, with an elegant library, for which she had paid six hundred thousand livres, 25,0001.; and his nephew Napoleon allows him a yearly pension double that amount. Besides his dignity as a prelate, his eminence is ambassador from France at Rome, a knight of the Spanish order of the Golden Fleece, a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, and a grand almoner of the emperor of the French.

The archbishop of Paris is now in his ninetysixth year; and at his death, Cardinal Fesch is to be transferred to the see of this capital, in expectation of the triple crown and the keys of St. Peter.

ON A BLIGHTED ROSE BUD.

(By Mary Simmons*.)

SCARCE had thy velvet lips imbibed the dew, And Nature hail'd thee infant queen of May; Scarce saw thy opening bloom the sun's broad ray, And to the air its tender fragrance threw ;

She died in the year 1801, in the middle of her twelfth year.