quiet and as calm as myself. Every one I see
appears to experience this same flatness, just like the reaction
produced on the spirits the first day or two after the Italian
Carnival, when the cessation of gaiety, though felt to be a relief to
the frame, leaves the mind unfitted for repose.

I find this feeling is generally experienced, for several of the
shop-keepers, whose profit,--nay, whose very bread, depends on the
restoration of social order, confess it. One person, the wife of a
jeweller, owned to me to-day that Paris was now beginning to be very
_triste_.

"To be sure they were no longer afraid to open their shops, and
commerce they hoped would soon become active again, but there was no
more the same interest continually awakened, as when every hour,--nay,
every minute brought some new event, and she and her neighbours looked
out to behold the fighting in the streets, the wounded and the dying
dropping around, and trembled for their own lives, and for the safety
of those dear to them." In short, as she admitted, the want of
excitement was experienced by all those who had lately become
accustomed to it, as much as it is felt by the habitual gamester who
cannot live without play.

This is a dangerous state for the people of a great city to find
themselves in. Vastly more dangerous than if subdued by a
long-continued excess of excitement, their moral as well as their
physical force required repose, and they gladly resigned themselves to
it.

To a sober-minded denizen of England, the ungovernable pride,
insatiable vanity, and love of fighting, inherent in the French, appear
really little short of insanity, to so great an excess do they push
these manias. This will always render them so difficult to be governed,
that it will require no ordinary abilities and firmness in him who
undertakes the arduous task of ruling them. Yet the very excess of
these passions renders the French the most able, as they decidedly are
the most willing, instruments to be employed in achieving the aims of
the wildest ambition, or the most glorious enterprises. He will the
longest and most securely govern them, who calls these passions into
action, provided always that they meet no check, for the French not
only bear adversity impatiently, but soon turn against him who has
exposed them to it: witness their conduct to the Emperor Napoleon, who,
while success frowned his banner, was their idol.

Playing at soldiers is the favourite gam