Britain, is the voice of the press equally scandalous, vindictive, and rank with that offence which makes the virtuous grieve, as that whose notes are loud on the other side of the Atlantic. If a foreigner were to form his opinion of Englishmen, from the character given by the press to those public men of whom it has most occasion to speak, he must necessarily set them down. as arrant knaves indeed. If his idea of British prosperity be derived from the Englishman's idea of the same, he can often think no less than that the nation is buried in wretchedness. For it is rather an amusing anomaly, that while John Bull pronounces himself the greatest, the mightiest, the most glorious personage in the world, he likewise complains most bitterly of his government, of his national progress, and is not satisfied in any argument, unless he has uttered the solemn words: Sir, we are in a most perilous crisis.' If you would see England raked fore and aft, set an English Tory and an Irish Catholic Priest into hot conversational conflict with each other. Not an institution, not a prominent man, not a prevailing measure of the times will survive that conflict. And yet your Tory will inform you that he helps to pay the enormous interest of the national debt, for the honor and glory of being called an Englishman.'

I have had some opportunity of seeing John in his self-satisfaction, and his self-reproach. Well, sir,” asked a gentleman, as I left the royal arsenal and dock yard at Woolwich, knowing me to be an American, 'what do you think of these works, sir?' 'Ah,

sir,' said another, if you have so good an opinion of us from what you see on the Thames, what will you say on travelling throughout the Island?' 'Depend upon it, sir,' said a little gentleman from Coventry, 'depend upon it, England in her commerce, in her naval powers, her wooden walls,' as we like to call them, ha, ha, ha, in her royal revenues, in her, in her, her resources, sir, is, be assured, sir, she is a prosperous nation, a very great nation, sir.' I was not disposed to contradict him. Leaving him alone, however, he may in a short time rather contradict himself. He is a Tory, and let only the note of politics be sounded, and lo! the words 'corruption,'' national disgrace,' 'wide spread desolation,' 'irretrievable ruin,' and so forth, fly from his lips with as much alacrity as the blood flies into his visage. How far the press has been instrumental in bringing about the state of mind implied in the above violent expressions, I do not pretend to say. Suffice it for the present to remark, that the denouncing and inflammatory character of many of its harangues and criticisms, executed as they are by large ability, tend to create and keep up a state of public excitement, a sort of O'Connell agitation, which many of the judicious and the good most sincerely deplore.

VIII.

A PARISIAN SABBATH.

'Nous avons une littérature, une philosophie, une religion.

Chose remarkable! aucune nation dans l'univers n'a peutêtre pris plus de soin que la France, de sa civilization intellectuelle, et de sa civilization morale; elle en receuille maintenant les fruits.'

Journal des Debats in January, 1837.

THANK God,' said I, as this morning I read the article from which the above sentences are taken- thank God, religion has at length been restored to France. The evidences of such restoration may be doubtless seen in thronged churches, in the periodical press, in the literature, and particularly in the observance of those sacred institutions which religion claims as peculiarly her own. The sabbath, I have been taught to believe, is one of those institutions. It will be scrupulously observed by a people, who, with their philosophy and their literature, possess a religion, and who have taken the extremest care of their intellectual and moral cultivation. I will walk abroad,' continued I. 'It is a pleasant sabbath morning. I wish to contemplate one impressive proof of the moral regeneration of France. I shall doubtless wander through tranquil streets, amidst a serious population bending its course piously towards the sanctuaries, and every moment will my eye and ear bear witness, that the mighty

heart of the city, for six days deeply agitated, has found a much-desired sabbath of rest.'

I had moved hardly twenty paces from No. 10, Rue de Rivoli, when my ears were saluted by the beating of drums, and the music of a martial band. A thousand soldiers were following these sounds into the Place Carrousel. A review was about to take place. I had witnessed many similar reviews on the same spot, but never before on the sabbath. 'Well,' said I, so far as the military are concerned, Paris does not, according to my notion, seem to be rallied about the banners of the Prince of Peace.'

What

Watching the manoeuvring of several companies of the National Guards, I soon lost in laughter all recollection of the sanctity of the time. There can be no wider chasm between the physical appearance of men, than that which separates the National Guards from the Troops of the Line. How pitiful seem the latter, in those long gray coats and red pantaloons! How villanously diminutive is their stature ! good-for-nothing expressions look blank on their visages! And yet they handle their muskets with a precision, harmony, and dexterity that proclaim in every instant the omnipotence of the drill. But at their side is ranged a battalion of National Guards. Behold their portly stomachs, their massive frames, their fine complexions, their plump cheeks, their eyes full of expression, and their tout-ensemble abounding in consequential citizenship. They are your martial personification of the embonpoint; the idea of that

word in another vehicle; the Falstaff à la Française. These are the men unto whom, by its sixty-sixth article, is confided the protection of the Charter of 1830. They are men of business. They have pecuniary interests in society, and of course are interested in the preservation of public tranquillity. They are the peculiar security of Louis Phillippe and his throne. Still do they look any thing but martial; and as for their bearing, it is altogether unsoldierlike. Your National Guard marches along behind a pair of spectacles, caring little for his gait, still less for his musket; laughing with his comrade, joking with his captain, or muttering to himself; mistaking' shut pan' for 'shoulder arms,' and apparently requiring for the correspondence of his step with time, the benefit of legs visibly chalked 'left,' 'right.' When on duty, he is half the time laughed at by others, and the remaining half by himself. He knows that he cuts a laughable figure, that he is each night burlesqued upon the stage, and caricatured in every print-shop under the words, 'Tribulations of the National Guards.' Hence has he no particular ambition to look or walk the soldier. Sometimes he parades in a huge cloak; sometimes he marches smoking a cigar; sometimes he 'orders arms' to take snuff; and always is he talking, always does he laugh at his awkward blunders in tactics, and always does he look fat. Indeed slenderness and angularity are no longer national features. The age of lean marquesses has gone by. The French men are fat, the French women are fat, and so far as fatness is