and oppressing the
world! They have great intellectual gifts, and still greater social
graces; but, in the political sphere, they have no real regard for
freedom, and will gladly lay their liberties at the feet of any master
who will enable them to domineer over other nations. Napoleon I. is more
than their hero: he is their God. Many of them, the soldiery especially,
have no other object of worship. I saw in a shop-window a print of
Napoleon I., Napoleon II., and the Prince Imperial, all in military
uniform and surrounded by the emblems of war. It was entitled, "The
Past, the Present, and the Future of France." Military ambition has been
the Past of France, is her Present, and seems too likely to be her
Future. In some directions, she has promoted civilization; but,
politically speaking, she has done, and probably will long continue to
do, more harm than good to mankind.

I may say with truth, that, having seen America, and brought away an
assured faith in human liberty and progress, I looked with far more
serenity than I should otherwise have done on the Zouaves, swaggering,
in the insolence of triumphant force, over the neglected ashes of Turgot
and Mirabeau. I felt as though, strong as the yoke of these janizaries
and their master looked, I had the death-warrant of imperialism in my
pocket. There is a Power which made the world for other ends than these,
and which will not suffer its ends to give way even to those of the
Bonapartes. But to all appearances there will be a terrible struggle in
Europe,--a struggle to which the old "wars of the mercenaries" were a
trifling affair,--before the nations can be redeemed from subjection to
these armed hordes and the masters whom they obey.

From Caen I visited Bayeux,--a sleepy, ecclesiastical town with a
glorious cathedral, which, however, shows by a huge crack in the tower
that even such edifices know decay. Gems of the Norman style are
scattered all round Caen and Bayeux; and one of the finest is the little
church of St. Loup, in the environs of Bayeux.

I found that the old French office-book had been completely banished
from the French churches by the Jesuit and Ultramontane party, and the
Roman (though much inferior, Roman Catholics tell me, as a composition)
everywhere thrust into its place. The people in some places
recalcitrated violently; but the Jesuits and Ultramontanes triumphed.
The old Gallican spirit of independence is extinct in the French Church,
and its