ion, as tending to change the
direction of the public mind, from military affairs into more pacific
employments, was sedulously discouraged, and the consequence is seen, in
that melancholy ignorance which is distinguishable in those generations
of the French people which have sprung up since the revolution, and
frequently even amongst the old nobility.[51] "Vous etes Ecossois?" said
a French nobleman to me; 'Oui, Monsieur.' "Oh, que cela est drole." 'Et
comment, Monsieur?' "C'est le pays de Napoleon. C'est un isle n'est ce
pas?" 'Oh que non, Monsieur.' "Ma foi, je croyois qu'on l'appelloit
_l'isle de Corse_." Whether, in the geographical confusion of this poor
Marquis's brain, he had mistaken me for a Corsican, or actually believed
that Napoleon was a Scotchman, is not very easy to determine.

"You are an Englishwoman?" said the wife of a counsellor to one of the
ladies of our party: "and I have been at London."--"And how did you like
the people?" "Oh, they are very charmant; _bot_ I like better that other
town near London,--Philadelphia."

It is well known, that formerly in France the order of the Jesuits had
acquired so pre-eminent an interest, as to insinuate themselves into
almost every civil branch of the political government; and that, more
especially, by the seminaries which they established generally
throughout the kingdom, they had created a system of national education,
in many respects highly beneficial to the community. As to the effects
produced by this system, under the Jesuits, on the literature of France,
very different opinions certainly may be entertained; and that
artificial, and in many respects unnatural, style of poetry which has
arisen, and still continues in France, may be perhaps attributed,
amongst other causes, to that excessive passion for classical learning
which was so religiously instilled, whereever the influence of these
seminaries of the Jesuits extended. The utter abolition of this order is
well known, and the consequence is, that where there existed formerly a
general passion for that species of literature, which they cultivated,
and which consisted in an intimate and critical knowledge of the
languages of antiquity, and a taste for classical learning, as the only
object of their imitation, there remains now nothing but a deep and
general ignorance upon every object unconnected with military affairs;
an ignorance which is the more fatal in its consequences, because it is
founded upon