Alexandria Advertiser And Commercial Intelligencer

THE ABBE SIEYES.

THIS man has lived through all the disasters of the French revolution, and has acted a part in almost every faction that has in its turn governed the great nation. The singular fate of the abbe proves that he is either very harmless, or, what is more probable, that he possesses the greatest facility in changing his creed, and that as he finds one wave of public opinion breaking under him, can very dexterously shift himself to the next.

When Mr. Burke wrote upon the revolution, Sieyes was filling his "pigeon holes" with new constitutions for his country; he has escaped amidst all the convulsions that have since taken place, and it is not recollected whether he is now one of the cyphers of the consulate, or is retired, again to stuff his "pigeon holes" with constitutions. The following anecdote shows that he is "wiser in his generation" than almost all his associates.

A foreigner in France called at a shop where such things were usually sold, to purchase the prints of the most conspicuous actors in the revolution. The man shook his head, while he ran over the list, and then said, that having preserved his sanity to his property, he had destroyed all his prints successively, as the originals became proscribed, or were sacrificed. "At the accession of a new party, (continued he) I always prepare for a visit, clear my windows and shelves of the exploded heads, and replace them by those of their rivals. Nay, I assure you since the revolution, our trade is become as precarious as that of a gambler. The constitutionalists, indeed, held out pretty well, but then I was half ruined by the fall of the Brissotins; and before I could retrieve a little by the Herbertsists and Dantonists, they too, were out of fashion. " "Well, but the Robespierrians; you must have gained by them?"-- "Why, true: Robespierre and Marat answered well enough; yet they are gone after the rest, Here, however (says he, taking down an engraving of the Abbe Sieyes) here is a piece of merchandize that I have kept through all parties, religions and constitutions, and now you see him in fashion again, mounted on the wrecks and supported by the remnants of both his friends and enemies; Oh! he's a knowing one."