wretchedly poor, servile, and thievish. This class has assumed a new character, improved in proportion to the improvement of their condition. Servility has vanished with their poverty; their thievishness, an effect of the same cause, has also in a great measure disappeared. But selfishness and avarice are 'too prevalent among the generality of the people; which may be natural to their present state of society. I question if a proportionate melioration has taken place among the Parisians, a sort of insulated nation, who know very little, and seem to care as little, about the rest of France.

The decorum of manners in both sexes, which prevails universally, surprised and delighted me. Here are none of those exhibitions of profligacy, which disgust you at every step in the villages in England; no ragged wretches staggering home from a filthy ale-house. One drunken

man, and but one, I saw in all my journey.

Intimately connected with the temperance of the men, is the modesty of the women, and equally exemplary. A habit of economy and frugality, accompanied by a perfect indifference to style and show, is another characteristic of the French nation, extending through all ranks; and is entirely inconsistent with the fashionable frivolity which has been attributed to them.

There is more appearance of enjoyment, and less positive suffering than I ever beheld before, or had any conception of. The people of France, though infinitely behind the English in the accommodations of life, seem to be as much their superiors in the art of living.

From Dieppe to Montpellier we have scarcely seen a working animal whose condition was not excellent. Oxen, horses, and now mules and asses are fat and well looking, but not pampered. Poultry is an important object in French farming; it is a question whether there is more weight of mutton consumed than of poultry.

This looks like prosperity; and when I add, that we have not seen among the labouring people, one such famished, worn-out, wretched object, as may be met with in every parish of England, I had almost said on every farm; this, in a country so populous, so entirely agricultural, denotes real prosperity. Again from Dieppe to this place, I could not easily point out an acre of waste, a spot of land not industriously cultivated, though not always well,

according to our notions. France, so peopled, so cultivated; moderately taxed; without paper money, without tithes, without poor rates, almost without poor; with excellent roads in every direction, and overflowing with wine and oil, must be, and really is, a rich country; yet there are few rich individuals.

The population of France seems to be arranged thus: a town depends for subsistence on the lands immediately surrounding it. The cultivators individually have not much to spare; because, as their husbandry is a sort of gardening, it requires a large country population, and has in proportion, less superfluity of produce. Thus is formed a numerous but poor country population. The daily supply of the numberless petty articles of French diet, employs, and therefore produces, a multitude of little traders. It must be brought daily from the country; and the number of individuals whom this operation employs is beyond calculation. Multitudes, again, make a scanty living by retailing through the streets these low-priced and perishable articles. The cultivator receives payment for his surplus produce in sous, and he expends only sous.

The tradesman is on a par with the farmer: as they receive so they expend. And thus 50,000 persons may

inhabit a district with a town of 10,000 inhabitants in the centre of it; bartering the superfluity of the country for the arts and manufactures of the town: poor from generation to generation, and growing continually poorer as they increase in numbers; in the country, by the division and subdivision of property; in the town, by division and subdivision of trades and professions. Such a people, instead of proceeding from the necessaries to the comforts of life, and then to the luxuries, as is the order of things in England, are rather retrograde than progressive. French houses are generally large, old, and shabby; expensive in their original construction; and filled with people who have no means of building such houses now: they can hardly afford to repair them. There is no advancement in French society; no improvement, nor hope of it. Yet they seem happier than we are. Being much on a level among themselves, and possessing enough to supply their temperate wants, they feel no degradation,

The labouring class is certainly much higher, on the social scale, than in England. Every opportunity of col

lecting information on this subject confirms my first impression, that there are very few really poor people in France. In England, a poor man and a labourer are synonymous terms: we speak familiarly of the poor, meaning the labouring class: not so here. I have now learnt enough to explain this difference; and having received the same information from every quarter, there is no room to doubt its correctness.

Every body assures me that agriculture has been improving rapidly for the last 25 years; that the riches and comforts of the cultivators of the soil have been doubled during that period; and that vast improvement has taken place in the condition and character of the common people.

The national domains, consisting of the confiscated estates of the church and the emigrant nobility, were exposed to sale during the pecuniary distresses of the revolutionary government in small portions, for the accommodation of the lowest order of purchasers, and five years allowed for completing the payment. This indulgence, joined to the depreciation of assignats, enabled the poorest description of peasants to become proprietors; and such they are almost universally; possessing from one to 10 acres. And as the education also of the poor was sedulously promoted during the early years of the revolution, their great advance, in character as well as condition, is no mystery.

On my first landing I was struck with the respectable appearance of the labouring class; I see the same marks of comfort and plenty every where as I proceed. I ask for the wretched peasantry, of whom I have heard and read so much; but I am always referred to the revolution: it seems they vanished then.

Laws.

The Code Napoleon still forms the law in France, and breathes a spirit of humanity throughout. The punishment of death, which, according to Blackstone, may be inflicted by the English law on 150 different offences, is now in France confined to the very highest crimes only, the number of which does not exceed 12. A minute attention has been paid to the different degrees of guilt in the commission of the same crime; and according to

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these the punishments are as accurately proportioned as the cases will permit. One species of capital punishment has been ordained, instead of that multitude of cruel and barbarous deaths which were marshalled in terrible array This punishment along the columns of the former code. is decapitation by the guillotine. The only exceptions to this are in the case of parricide and high treason, when the right hand is first cut off.

Women.

In French society, females make an uncommonly prominent figure. Being remarkably free from diffidence or reserve, they take the lead in conversation, discuss every subject with an air of authority, and settle even the most important political questions with as much ease as they expatiate on points of dress and external decoration.

The condition of women in this country has been differLady Morgan obently estimated by different writers. serves that "there is perhaps no country where the social The position of women is so delectable as in France. darling child of society, indulged, not spoiled, presiding over its pleasures, preserving its refinements, taking nothing from its strength, adding much to its brilliancy, permitted the full exercise of all her faculties, retaining the full endowment of all her graces, she pursues the golden round of her honoured existence, limited only in her course by her feebleness and her taste; by her want of power, and absence of inclination to overstep the modesty of nature,' or to infringe upon the privileges exclusively the attribute of the stronger sex.

"there is But Madame de Stael, on the contrary, says, no country in Europe in which women enjoy so little happiness in love as in France." If the happiness of women consists chiefly in the charities and endearments of domestic life, and her condition is most favourable where the highest honour is paid to female virtue, and the widest distinction made between the virtuous and vicious part of the sex, it is not in France that her 'position' is the most ' delectable.'

"The air of the French females," says Mr. Scott, speaking of the women of Paris, "is full of a certain species of witchery; but it is strongly marked by mannerism. Its

secret seems to lie in making the external woman exclusively display the peculiarities of her sex; her looks, her turns, her whole manner of speaking and acting is sexual. The distinction between male and female is never for a moment lost sight of by either. A Frenchman, when he addresses a woman, models his conversation and carriage according to her peculiar instincts, charms, and weaknesses; and in this consists his boasted politeness to the softer sex. But the question is, whether it does not imply a stooping to, instead of a raising towards? Can women have any thing given them in shape of deference, that can atone for the loss of equality? Is it humouring they are fond of? They are raised above their helpmates, as children are raised on high chairs. In this very prefer-* ence there is an insult; but there is worse degradation in the employment to which they are put.

"They are taught to make the most of their influence as women, in order to gain for themselves and those connected with them, the mercenary ends which arise out of the competitions, hazards, desires, and necessities of daily life. The bad effect of this on the delicacy of their minds requires no exposure, and their artificial, active, adroit, and intriguing habits, have, in fact, given to their physiognomies and manner, an active, watching, attacking sort of air, which, however powerful it may be in its way, is not the power which most properly belongs to woman, or that best becomes her in the exercise.

"The system of married life, in France, is one by which the lady enjoys a sort of artificial authority and influence, raising her to appearance much above the claims of her sex and relationship, but existing at the expense of that cordial communication and heart-felt, disinterested deference, which distinguish unions founded on a more judicious basis. She is installed in various prerogatives that look flattering and desirable, but they are chiefly favourable to the discharge of functions, from which a true respect for her sex, cherished by the men, would entirely preserve her, and the enjoyment of gratifications, which a proper self-respect on her own part would prohibit her from partaking."

"There is nothing," says Mr. Raffles, "like domestic life in Paris. Marriages are, for the most part, contracts formed for convenience and not for love. From such con