said lately to have threatened them, may they boldly resent and timely oppose every effort made by domestic oppression or foreign invasion, which may tend to bring them back to that state in which they were declared, by the law of the land, to be "un peuple serf, corvéable et taillable, à merci et à miséricorde!" que c'est joli! Le T-e-m-ple de Madame! Mais c'est charmant, c'est beau." “On voit bien, madame,” said a royalist to me, who had repeated this mot de sentiment upon every change and key of the sentimental gamut, " on voit bien, madame, que votre Canning est un homme à sentiment, avec infiniment d'esprit! Le temple de madame! Ah que c'est beau!” FRANCE. BOOK II. SOCIETY. "A mesure que la philosophie fait des progrés, la sottise rédouble les efforts pour établir l'empire des préjugés.' BOOK II. SOCIETY. National Characteristics.-Sketch of Manners, before the Revolution.-During the Revolution. Under the Imperial Government.-Actual State of Society and Manners, in France." The Children of the Revolution."-Royalists.-Ultra-Royalists.-Constitutionalists, and Buonapartists.—Conversation.-Raconteurs.-Political Vaudevilles.Tone of the Circles.-French Youth.-The Elève of the Polytechnic School.-Religious Institutions. -School of Ecouen. NATIONAL idiosyncrasy must always receive its first colouring from the influence of soil and of climate; and the moral characteristics of every people be resolvable into the peculiar constitution of their physical structure. Religion and government, indeed, give a powerful direction to the principles and modes of civilized society, and debase or elevate its inherent qualities, by the excellence or defect of their own institutes. But the complexional features of the race remain fixed and unchanged, the original impression of nature is never effaced. The portrait drawn of the ancient Gauls, by Cæsar, preserves its resemblance to the French of the present day, notwithstanding the various grafts that have been inserted into the national stock. And Agathias and Machiavel have nearly given the same sketch of the same originals, at periods of very remote distance, and with views of very different tendency. Susceptible and ardent, impetuous and fierce, the most civilized of all the barbarians, whom Rome subjected to her yoke, are still the most polished people of Europe; and the French, through all the vicissitudes of their political fortunes, through all the horrors of the most sanguinary epoch of their revolution, have exhibited that inherent tendency to social attachment, that capability of generous devotion, and that fund of bon-hommie (to use a word of their own creation, for a feeling peculiar to themselves), which evince that the worst form of religion and government could not destroy the happy elements of |