itings may make it better!

Our house is situated within view of a very pleasant public walk, where I
am daily amused with a sight of the recruits at their exercise. This is
not quite so regular a business as the drill in the Park. The exercise
is often interrupted by disputes between the officer and his eleves--some
are for turning to the right, others to the left, and the matter is not
unfrequently adjusted by each going the way that seemeth best unto
himself. The author of the _"Actes des Apotres"_ [The Acts of the
Apostles] cites a Colonel who reprimanded one of his corps for walking
ill--_"Eh Dicentre,_ (replied the man,) _comment veux tu que je marche
bien quand tu as fait mes souliers trop etroits."_* but this is no longer
a pleasantry--such circumstances are very common. A Colonel may often be
tailor to his own regiment, and a Captain operated on the heads of his
whole company, in his civil capacity, before he commands them in his
military one.

*"And how the deuce can you expect me to march well, when you have
made my shoes too tight?"

The walks I have just mentioned have been extremely beautiful, but a
great part of the trees have been cut down, and the ornamental parts
destroyed, since the revolution--I know not why, as they were open to the
poor as well as the rich, and were a great embellishment to the low town.
You may think it strange that I should be continually dating some
destruction from the aera of the revolution--that I speak of every thing
demolished, and of nothing replaced. But it is not my fault--"If freedom
grows destructive, I must paint it:" though I should tell you, that in
many streets where convents have been sold, houses are building with the
materials on the same site.--This is, however, not a work of the nation,
but of individuals, who have made their purchases cheap, and are
hastening to change the form of their property, lest some new revolution
should deprive them of it.--Yours, &c.

Arras, September.

Nothing more powerfully excites the attention of a stranger on his first
arrival, than the number and wretchedness of the poor at Arras. In all
places poverty claims compulsion, but here compassion is accompanied by
horror--one dares not contemplate the object one commiserates, and
charity relieves with an averted eye. Perhaps with Him, who regards
equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth
and disease, and the blooming beauty