istless course, and serene in the enjoyment of
immortal power: not St Michael when struggling with the Demon, and
marring the beauty of angelic form by the violence of earthly passion,
but St Michael in the moment of unruffled triumph, restraining the might
of Almighty power, and radiant with the beams of eternal mercy.

CHAPTER VI.

PARIS--THE FRENCH CHARACTER AND MANNERS.

We do not by any means consider ourselves as qualified to enter fully
into the interesting subject of the national character of the French;
but we shall venture to state, in this place, what appeared to us its
most striking peculiarities, particularly as it is observed at Paris.
Our stay in the capital was too short, and our opportunities of
observation too limited, to entitle us to speak with confidence; but it
is to be remembered on the other hand, that there is a surprising
uniformity of character among the French, which facilitates observation.
The habit of constant intercourse in society, which constitutes their
greatest pleasure, and has made them, in their own opinion, the most
polished nation on earth, appears not merely to have assimilated their
manners to one another, in the manner so finely illustrated by the
celebrated simile of Sterne[2], but to have engendered a kind of
conventional standard character, by which all those we observe are more
or less modelled.

The most striking and formidable part of their general character is, the
_contempt for religion_ which is so frequently and openly expressed. In
all countries there are men of a selfish and abstracted turn of mind,
who are more disposed than others to religious argument and doubt; and
in all, there are a greater number, whose worldly passions lead them to
the neglect, or hurry them on to the violation of religious precepts;
but a great nation, among whom a cool selfish regard to personal comfort
and enjoyment has been deliberately substituted for religious feeling,
and where it is generally esteemed reasonable and wise to oppose and
wrestle down, by metaphysical arguments, the natural and becoming
sentiments of piety, as they arise in the human breast, is hitherto, and
it is to be hoped will long continue, an anomaly in the history of
mankind.

We heard it estimated at Paris, that 40,000 out of 600,000 inhabitants
of that town attend church; one half of which number, they say, are
actuated in so doing by real sentiments of devotion; but to judge from
the very small n