r of the Zouave
and the Priest; and of the dominion of these two powers in France, if
they can abstain from quarrelling with each other, it is difficult to
foresee the end.

I have spoken bitterly of the French Empire. It has not only crushed the
liberties of France, but it is the keystone and the focus of the system
of military despotism in Europe. Bismarck, O'Donnell, and all the rest
who rule by sabre-sway, are its pupils. It is intensely
propagandist,--feeling, like slavery, that it cannot endure the
contagious neighborhood of freedom. It has to a terrible extent
corrupted even English politics, and inspired our oligarchical party
with ideas of violence quite foreign to the temper of English Tories in
former days. It is killing not only all moral aspirations, but almost
all moral culture in France, and leaving nothing but the passion for
military glory, the thirst of money, and the love of pleasure. It is
reducing all education to a centralized machine, the wires of which are
moved by a bureau at Paris; and we shall see the effects of this on
French intellect in the next generation, "Ils ont tue la jeunesse," were
the bitter words of an eminent and chivalrous Frenchman to the author of
this article. Commerce is no doubt flourishing, and money is being made
by the commercial classes, at present, under the Empire; but the highest
industry is intimately connected with the moral and intellectual
energies of a nation; and if these perish, it will in time perish too.

I have no means of knowing whether the morality of the court and the
upper classes at Paris is what it is commonly reported to be; though,
assuredly, if the performances of Therese are truly described to us,
strange things must go on in the highest circles. Historical experience
would be at fault, if a military despotism, with a political religion,
did not produce moral effects in Paris somewhat analogous to those which
it produced in Rome. The fashionable literature of the Empire, which can
scarcely fail to reflect pretty accurately the moral state of the
fashionable world, is not merely loose in principle, (as literature
might possibly be in a period of transition between a narrower and an
ampler moral code,) but utterly vile and loathsome; it seeks the
materials of sensation novels from the charnel-house as well as from the
brothel.

At Dieppe, my last point, I visited that very picturesque as well as
memorable ruin, the Chateau d'Arques. It is a monum