precaution." Our English pride was certainly gratified this evening, but
it was by the voluntary civility which we experienced during our walk
from this young man and several others who had been prisoners in our
country. It is peculiarly pleasing to find those who visited England
under circumstances commonly the most unfavourable, expressing grateful
recollections of their treatment, and ready to acknowledge them by
little attentions. We found, indeed, nothing but friendly faces among
that very class of people of whom we should have been most shy of making
inquiries, and at the very place where we should have expected them to
excite the least pleasant recollections. Two marines accosted us on the
quay, to point out a sand-bank which the English had attempted to cut
through during the siege of Toulon, in order to facilitate the entrance
into the harbour; and on our inquiry whether they had penetrated as far
as a station where we saw a 140 gun ship and some others laid up, they
answered with a laugh, "Ah oui, Messieurs, ils etoient la, et encore
plus loin, je vous en reponds."

It were to be wished on many accounts, that the French government would
keep their galley-slaves as much out of sight as they do their arsenal.
Under the ancient regime, these unfortunate creatures were only employed
in the works of the latter place, which they never left; but under the
present system, those only who are condemned for life are so treated,
and the rest are employed in different parts of the port, where they
perform the work of horses, in the most public manner, chained by the
leg in pairs. Some were drawing timber, and stone carts; and others,
rather more favoured, were laying the pavement of the pier, with a
single heavy iron link on one leg. How far economy may justify this
arrangement, or whether the exposure of incorrigible offenders may
answer as a public example, it is not for a mere visitor to determine;
but certainly a plan more adapted to deaden and sear the sense of shame
which may still remain in them, and brutalize their minds by constant
irritation, can hardly be devised. The mildness and temper with which
the guard and superintendants appear to behave is not likely to
counteract sufficiently the effect of the constant gaze of passengers, a
circumstance which to judge by one's own sensations must tend to stifle
those feelings of repentance which solitary confinement naturally
induces, and harden every manly particle of