their relations, affords too
much reason to believe that the social affections have little permanent
influence on their minds. We must, however, admit, that they exhibit in
misfortunes of a different kind--in calamities which really press upon
their own enjoyments of life, the same gaiety of heart, and the same
undisturbed equanimity of disposition. That gaiety in misfortune, which
is so painful to every observer, when it is to be found in the midst of
family-distress, becomes delightful when it exists under the deprivation
of the selfish gratification to which the individual had been
accustomed. Both here, and in other parts of France, where the houses of
the peasants had been wholly destroyed by the allied armies, we had
occasion frequently to observe and admire the equanimity of mind with
which these poor people bore the loss of all their property. For an
extent of 30 miles in one direction, towards the North of Champagne,
every house near the great road had-been burnt or pillaged for the
firewood which it contained, both by the French and the allied armies,
and the people were everywhere compelled to sleep in the open air. When
we spoke to them on the subject of their losses, they answered with
smiles, "Tout est detruit: tout est brule, tout, tout;" and seemed to
derive amusement from the completeness of the devastation. The men were
everywhere rebuilding their fallen walls, with a cheerfulness which
never would have existed in England under similar circumstances; and the
little children laboured in the gardens during the day, and slept under
the vines at night, without exhibiting any signs of distress for their
disconsolate situation. In many places, we saw groupes of these little
children in the midst of the ruined houses, or under the shattered
trees, playing with the musket shot, or trying to roll the cannon balls
by which the destruction of their dwellings had been
effected;--exhibiting a picture of youthful joy and native innocence,
while sporting with the instruments of human destruction, which the
genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds would have moulded into the expression of
pathetic feeling, or employed as the means of moral improvement.

CHAPTER V.

PARIS--THE LOUVRE.

To those who have had the good fortune to see the pictures and statues
which were preserved in the Louvre, all description of these works must
appear superfluous; and to those who have not had this good fortune,
such an attempt could con