who felt themselves always exposed to the terrible vengeance of their enemies, fortitude and valour were indispensable; and as every Frenchman soon fancied, that in fighting for his country he was fighting for himself, each army became inspired with an energy, which the discipline of mercenary troops, could neither overcome, nor withstand. Hence in the beginning of the war the Allied armies that were ordered on to a career of easy triumph, recoiled, overwhelmed with disaster and disgrace; hence the neighbouring nations were astonished, when they saw the whole frontier of France encircled with a belt of bayonets, and hence a feeling of despondency shook the very heart of Europe, when soon after, the victorious cannon of France were heard at the same time, along the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and down the banks of the Danube; on the plains of Italy, and among the mountains of the Pyrennees. Happy would it have been for the destinies of the world if the war had ended then. The soldiers of France yet retained the sentiments of citizens, and they might have returned back into the bosom of their country, satisfied with their measure of glory, and zealous only for the establishment of liberty. Better terms than those which were five years afterwards accepted at Amiens, might have been obtained in 1797; but those politicians, whose interest it was to preserve the ancient institutions of Europe, succeeded in inspiring a general belief that exertions as prodigious as those of France would be necessarily followed in a short time, by extreme debility; as the wave which is driven up highest on the beach only rolls back the faster when exhausted, and leaves a larger portion of the strand bare From this idle idea the war was continued; and when the French perceived that it could not end, so long as they were resolved to hold, what their silly elation of mind would never suffer them to think of yielding, they sat themselves down to the contemplation of conquest, as the noblest of all glories. As they could not excel other nations in the art of government, they sought satisfaction in beating them; and this martial spirit transmitted the sceptre of France in a short time, from the pikes of the mob to the bayonets of the army. The just understanding of free government, can only be acquired in the school of experience, and hence the French were entirely without it. The good sense of a few patriots, occasionally shot a few rays of light across their political horizon; but like rockets at

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night, these only served to render the general darkness more evident. Indeed I am by no means disposed to believe the French endowed with that promptitude of mind in the embracing new doctrines and habits, which the lightness and frivolity of their manners have led many to imagine. Susceptible of vehement inspirations they certainly are, but difficulties soon fatigue them. No people have shown less capacity for innovation, or fitness for establishing colonies, than they. In America, for example, whilst the English and other nations, have bent with facility to circumstances, and not resisted the adoption of evident improvements, beyond the second or third generation, the French in Canada retain pretty much the usages they carried over with them two centuries ago; and in the war of Independence, they only continued obedient to Great Britain. This may arise from the peculiar pleasantness of their social habits; or from the custom in absolute monarchies of cultivating Imagination in preference to Reason.

Throughout the revolution in France, the French prattled as much about liberty as if they really possessed it; and still their proneness to passive obedience often showed itself in ridiculous contrast with their feverish affectation of equality. When Augereau came to Paris in '97, to overthrow the constitution by military force, and was asked whether Bonaparte had not an idea of making himself king of Italy, he was so well drilled in republican phraseology, as to reply, "he is a young man too well bred for that." Many discoveries are now daily brought to light, which go to prove a constant tendency in this nation to relapse into monarchy. There is even reason to believe, that at the very moment the Directory were declaring, not only that royalty was done over forever in France, but that those men who had fancied themselves delegated by heaven to oppress her could never show their faces here again, a part of that very body was conspiring to bring back the old government. It was not attachment to liberty, but the powerful impediment which the private interests of individuals opposed to this scheme, that prevented its execution. To the general mind the word restoration conveyed the idea of counter-revolution, or the re-establishment of every thing as it had been. Now the division and sale of the lands of the church, of the emigrants, and of the crown, had thrown them into numerous hands; and the removal of every barrier,

except want of talent, to promotion in the army or state, had brought many into office, and flattered many more with the hope of distinction. If the nation could have been guaranteed against the loss of these advantages, the recal of the Bourbons would have followed in the first interval of repose after the convulsions of jacobinism were over. Those who have contemplated the French nation only at a distance, by the signs which have reached them through the false medium of the Paris journals, or the distorting atmosphere of the British gazettes, may be of a different opinion; but it is impossible to mix long with this people, and to study its dispositions by such lights as conversation and books throw out, without coming to that conclusion. An honest attachment to liberty is always firm but never turbulent; for opinions which are violent are bottomed on passion, not on principle. Now the French were so frantic in their love of liberty, that Tom Paine, who was the most extravagant democrat in America, was a man of such exceeding moderation here, that they would not listen to him when he proposed to make a present of the King and royal family to the Americans. The fact is, that although the storm of the revolution laid prostrate every institution in this realm, it did not destroy the monarchical habits of the people. When the violence of the gale came on, such opinions, fled for concealment into the recesses of every man's mind; but they lay there as in their hiding places, ready to come out on the first occasion; and so they did, like those crucifixes, images, and pictures of the royal family, which, until the restoration, were supposed to have been broken and destroyed. The men who felt most conscious of the concealment of such desires, pretended to be most infatuated with liberty; for knowing themselves to be hypocrites, they suspected their neighbours of being so likewise, and hence originated the foul system of punishment on suspicion.

The fierce and ferocious intolerance of Jacobinism did irreparable injury to the cause of liberty. By banishing from social intercourse that tranquillity which is the solace of age, and that candour and security without which existence is no blessing, it destroyed the charm of domestic life; and by holding up a spectacle of discord and cruelty as the necessary consequence of a republic, it disgusted many even with liberty itself. The atro

cious system of domiciliary visits, and the license of suspicion, which unbridled all the vice of society to devour all its virtue, and which were in themselves the legitimate offspring of that anarchical tyranny which the French mistook for freedom, caused most good men to regret the comparative happiness they had enjoyed under the old government, and to wish for its restoration. Their tree of liberty had blossomed superbly, it is true, but it had hitherto brought forth nothing but bitter fruit. Laws and constitutions alone never did, nor ever can, create a republic-they may ordain its existence and model its parts, but unless education has nursed up to proper vigour the sentiment of public virtue, a nation may adopt a republican constitution of government, but will never preserve it. "Liberty," said Lord Bolingbroke, "is a tender plant, which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it, nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care." In France its seeds were scattered loosely over the soil, without any previous preparation to receive them-they quickened, I admit, but had not time to take any deep root before the ignorant hands that went out to cultivate them, mistook them for the noxious weeds that had sprung up plentifully enough along with them, and destroyed them together.

The vanity of living at Court, and the silly ambition of being thought to possess its favours, had made the French the light and frivolous people they were before the revolution; and we know that vanity and frivolity are not republican virtues.When, therefore, Madame de Stael said, that power depraved the French more than other men, she mistook an apparent for a real cause; since if the habits of education and the example of the court had, in the minds of Frenchmen, so worn the links of the chain of principle, that they were ready to give way the moment they were put in use, it is not to the cause which tightened, but to that which weakened them, that the defect is ascribable. As the court had never recognized any other proof of merit than success, a good fame had been of little or no importance; and i acitus has said, perhaps with truth, "contemptu fama, contemni, virtutem."

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER X.

Paris, March 16th, 1820.

The dismemberment of the Directory in 1797, was fatal to the cause of republicanism in France. The democratical despots who usurped the administration of the government, scoffed at rational liberty, and transported many of its best friends out of France, to pine and perish in the pestilential heats of Cayenne. They quarrelled with America; invaded Switzerland; made a mad expedition into Egypt, and lost the ascendancy in Italy. The nation breathed somewhat more freely, it is true, under the irregular pressure of their tyranny, than during the hot collision of '93, but it became every day more and more fatigued by a political system, whose schemes were disastrous abroad and disgraceful at home. When under their direction, General Bonaparte discovered the invasion of England to be an experiment too perilous for his ambition, and that he had not yet sufficient weight of reputation to stand in balance against the Directory, he planned, with romantic audacity, the conquest of Egypt and India. The society of scientific men, which he gathered around him on this occasion, gave a moral splendour to the enterprize, which no other military crusade ever possessed, and he knew full well that the natural propensity of mankind to exalt whatever is at a distance, would induce them to exaggerate the magnitude of his exploits, and give to his name an expansive power on the national vanity. He rightly conjectured, that whilst his rivals were exhausting the measure of their popularity at home, it might be easy, if the expedition were unfortunate, to attribute the calamity to them; and should it prove successful, he might erect for himself a civilized kingdom in the land of the Ptolomies, and afterwards, according to the prosperity of circumstan ces, extend the horizon of his ambition. But perhaps, unhappily