other to route at night, lounging at watering-places, and blowing their brains out at the regular seasons. It is hardly therefore to be presumed, that the inferior species of English, who compose the gentry of the United States, are gayer, more polished, or less suicidical, than their progenitors of the mother country.

The reigning president, unless fame belies him, is much addicted to gallantry, and not very fastidious in his loves. One of the vice-presidents was also, it is said, of similar propensities, and as indiscriminate in their indulgence. From such striking instances, is not a very general depravity inferrible? What an extraordinary race the medley of colours will produce in the course of a century! If polygamy were permitted, (and I wonder that in so free a country there should be any restraints,) a father of a family, happening to live to a green old age, might assemble children of all colours round his own table.

Of the men of America, the less you write the better. I shall have no objection to receive reports of that sex, whose peculiarities must constitute your chief and perhaps only entertainment. But of their ignorant and sordid masters, absorbed in trade and republicanism, who seem to know and desire no distinctions, but such as are to be earned with the sweat of their brows, I desire to hear as little as possible. For I never could subscribe to a sentiment of your favourite Dryden, that

Prodigious actions may as well be done
By weaver's issue, as by prince's son.

1

Whatever statistical details you may think proper to communicate, and whatever natural anomalies, I consent to brood over, for the benefit of human nature and zoology. But spare me, I beseech you, spare me, my worthy instructor, long stories of republican bipeds and commercial usages.

*

I have been in Paris ever since you left us, without one summons to Liège; and I do not think I should depart without at least three. Porriget hora. During part of the time, the emperor was gone to the wars; and we endeavoured to amuse ourselves as well as we could in his good city, during his august absence. Since his return, there has been nothing but rejoicing and festivity. Half a dozen crowned heads are now within our walls, each one holding a separate and splendid court, so as to render it ample employment for any one day, to pay our respects to all their majesties. The garden of the Thuilleries, and wood of Boulogne, are thronged with beauty, elegance, and fashion. Frescati, the opera, and all the theatres, overflow every night. Masquerades, public parades, and every imaginable refinement of spectacle and amusement, are kept up in a perpetual round. But his I. and R. M. leaves us soon, it is said, for another campaign; when, of course, much of this splendour will subside. Is it not a singular fact, that Charlemagne, Charles V. of Spain, and Napoléon, resemble each other, in being always on the wing, for a journey or a war?

I am interrupted-Good God . . . have only time to add farewell; a long, perhaps an eternal faremy beloved friend and guide

well.

Think not

LETTER II.

PHARAMOND TO INCHIQUIN.

Dated at Liège...

[The preceding letter was enclosed in this―E.]

POOR Charlemont !-The enclosed letter was forwarded to me open, from the prefecture of * * with some strictures

I have also received, by a private hand, a communication on the subject from O., with all the particulars. It seems, that on intelligence of an apprehended descent near Cherbourg, he was forced to volunteer to the conscription, without even drawing lots. The day after his attachment to a company, he was permitted to go to his lodgings, under a serjeant's guard, and in his regimentals, to secure his little effects; by which he had an opportunity to bid adieu to O. and the rest. The tear glistened in his eye, and farewell faltered on his tongue. But the drum summoned him away; and, inspired with the sound, after desiring his unalterable affection to be presented to you and me, he flew to his comrades at the gate, and marched away with them to his quarters.

B

The feelings with which this amiable youth appears to have been overcome at the moment of his arrest, and indeed I will confess the dismay with which I first heard of his being torn from us, led me into a train of reflection on that prodigious engine of state, the military conscription, which, I am happy to say, has terminated in the removal of all my uneasiness, and my entire reconcilement to that most useful and indispensable measure of state necessity. Mankind are prone to immediate impressions, without lifting up their contemplation to results; and they suffer momentary actual privations to counterpoise distant permanent advantages. But what can be more contradictory to the first principles of a body politic, than that one of its members, a muscle or a fibre, should refuse its office in any way the whole body may command it? The conscription is unpopu lar, because the operations of superior upon inferior minds are always incomprehensible and ill received. But it is not a measure of to-day; nor is it an offspring of the revolution, fertile as that crisis was in hardy and powerful creations. "I have seen, in my youth," says one of the most unimpeachable of French historical writers, these forced recruits led off in chains like malefactors." It is nothing more than the impressment of the English, without which their ablest statesman openly declared, in parliament, that it was

* J'ai vu dans mons enfance ces recrues forcées conduites à la chaine commés des malfaiteurs.-Duclos, Mem. Sec. vol. 1. p. 9.