LE VIEILLARD. 12. Le sort est injuste, sans doute, Mais n'est pas toujours rigoreux. Dieu qui' m'a placé sur ta route, Dieu t'offre un ami: sois heureux! * The following is, in the original, a more rattling kind of song. Here is a translation : LE VOYAGEUR AMOUREUX. 1. 'Twas once my artless lute I bade 2. Full deftly have I led the dance, 3. Fair, brilliant sex! inur'd to please, 4. The English prude,† with feign'd alarms, It is proper to remark that this Song is calculated to give pain, from the demonstration it gives of the atheistical tendency of French thought. It is but justice to despised French courtesy, to say that there is no sneer in the original. The expression is simply beautiful, so much so that the translator found he could not render it. It was thus :-" Si les femmes en Angleterre ont timidite, douceur. &c." U. But the full prime of woman's charms 5. A belted knight, though stark and stour, Embalms the suffering peasant's brow. 6. The nations have I travell'd far, But woman, be she brown or blonde, 7. How's this? my heart it burns, I wot, With a Paris dame come lock my lot, No other love can with hers compare. I find that I would fain come to a conclusion in the estimate of French character-so difficult is it to hold the mind in an equiponderating and philosophical state of indecision. Although my general impression of France is more favourable than I had anticipated; although I have seen no quarrelling among the men, women, and children; no drunkenness; and although there is an aspect of courtesy and benignity throughout the land, yet the memory of the scenes of St. Bartholomew's day and the Revolution, acts as a fearful impediment to the verdict I might otherwise adopt: and I find Voltaire's memorandum also, about the tiger and monkey, has a like prejudicial effect. Wednesday, May 20. Although I had not seen half the curiosities of Paris which are without doors, and few of those that are within, my allotted time was nearly spent, and I began to feel the ligatures of home and duty press gently on my remembrance. I therefore left, to another opportunity, the survey of museums, libraries, colleges, and institutions; monuments, prisons, hospitals, cemeteries, and manufactories. And it now becomes necessary for my reader and me to recollect ourselves a little, and ponder whether we have acquired any ideas, or views, that may be of benefit at home-that being the great end of travel. Although I had paid some attention previously to the state of French morals and character, by comparing the memoirs of travellers with one another, and with facts admitted by themselves, or generally acknowledged; and also by cross-questioning various intelligent individuals of my acquaintance, who had made the grand tour, or had lived on the continent; and was thus prepared to believe that we formed, on this side of the channel, too severe a judgment of the French, and too exalted an opinion of ourselves; yet I confess I was scarcely ready for so great a change to this sentiment, as I was forced to undergo during my short residence abroad. But I may well be disposed to concede, that my intimacy with continental affairs has been so vague and transitory, as to make the notions I may have imbibed little to be depended upon: still, these having been much formed upon the observations of others better situated to settle a judgment, I am induced to conceive, that they may not be utterly useless to those who wish to arrive at some rational conclusion upon the subject. Whatever be the depth of man's depravity against heaven, and the duties of the first table of the law, I incline to think that our neighbour is not, in general, so great a sinner against us as we are prone to take him for. How gigantic is the growth of uncharitableness! how often are we bound to confess that some action or speech, done or said, as we at first thought, in hostility to our feelings or character, turns out to have had no reference to us whatever! K When a quarrel happens between man and man, enlarged by years of collision and strife; when the differences require the arm of law to redress them-if we listen to one party only, what a load of injury hás been accumulated on an innocent sufferer! and it is when the matter has been sifted and separated by a jury, that we come to find how small the detriment that has accrued after all to the plaintiff, balanced by an equal quantum of mischief, that has been perchance bestowed by him on his opponent in the course of their bickering. To apply this to the case of Great Britain and France. No candid inquirer ought to take for granted the character which the generality of the one kingdom would charge upon the other and in truth, the inhabitants of no nation could cohere as members of a social body, who were guilty of such a hideous reach of dissoluteness and profligacy, as we would impute to the plurality of the subjects of the French territories. But in prosecuting an inquiry into this subject, it ought to be more our concern, by a process of comparison to lay open the dust and the cobwebs of our native dwellings, for the purpose of purification, than merely to white-wash the abodes of the Frenchman; or to throw a delusive covering over those deformities of his character, which might give just offence to the friends of truth. I confess that I feel an extraordinary difficulty in treating of the subject, for this very reason, that in attempting to controvert what I conceive to be a false estimate, I may seem to excuse or palliate what is in its nature inexcusable, and to be viewed as sinful and guilty only. But there is no saying to what amount the progress of national improvement is impeded by a proud resolution to keep our eyes undeviatingly rivetted on our own perfections. How great has been the obstruction to real melioration among ourselves, in the haughty delight with which Scotsmen have, for ages past, been wont to point at their Parish |