the American Republic and all its armaments without any insignia of
dignity, without a guard or attendants, in a common office room. And
here was a _sous-prefet_ parading the streets in solemn state, in a
gilded coat, and with a line of bayonets glittering on either hand.

From Avranches it is a pleasant walk (by the country road) to the
village of Ducie, where there is good fishing, a nice little village
inn, and a deserted chateau in the Louis Quatorze style, and of
sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now
in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its
fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to
the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves
whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the
strongholds of feudal extortion and injustice. How violent and sweeping
have been the revolutions of this people compared with those of the
stronger and more self-controlled race! In England, the Tudor mansions,
and not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the
heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of
their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal
guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the
feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and
comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how
different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de
Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered here to
see its lord, and his little provincial court, assemble along those
mouldering balustrades, and ride through the now deserted gates. But to
the grandchildren of those villagers the chateau is a strange,
mysterious relic of the times before the flood. A group of peasants
tried in vain, when I asked them, to recollect the name of its former
proprietors. One of them said that it had been inhabited by a great
lord, who shod his horses with shoes of gold,--much the sort of tale
that an Irish peasant tells you about the primeval monuments of his
country. The mansions of France before the Revolution belong as
completely to the past as the tombs of the Pharaohs. The old aristocracy
and the old dynasty are no longer hated or regretted. Their names excite
no emotion whatever in the French peasant's heart. They are wiped out of
the memory of the nation, and their place