contempt. It is difficult to say which of these conditions
is the worst, the former or the latter. Among physicians and lawyers,
however, you meet with many individuals, who, having been educated
probably in foreign countries, or under the old _regime_, preserve still
a passion for that which is so generally despised.

In speaking of the education of the French people, it is impossible for
any one who has at all mingled in French society, not to be particularly
struck with what I before alluded to, the extreme ignorance and the
limited education of the women, even amongst the higher orders. In a
family of young ladies, you will but rarely meet with one who can
accurately write her own language; and in general, in their cards of
invitation, or in those letters of ceremony, which you will frequently
receive, they will send you specimens of orthography, which, in their
defiance of every established rule, are as amusing as Mrs Win. Jenkins'
observations on that grave and useful gentleman, _Mr Apias Corkus_.
Amongst the boys, any thing like a finished education was as little to
be expected; the _furor militaris_ had latterly, in the public schools,
proceeded to such a pitch, as to defy every attempt towards giving them
a general, or in any respect a finished education. They steadily
revolted against any thing which induced them to believe that their
parents intended them for a pacific profession. Go into a French
toy-shop, and you immediately discern the unambiguous symptoms of the
military mania. Every thing there which might encourage in the infant
any predilections for the pacific pursuits of an agricultural or
commercial country, is religiously banished, and their places supplied
by an infinite variety of military toys:--platoons of gens-d'armerie,
troops of artillery, tents, waggons, camp equipage, all are arranged in
imitative array upon the counter. The infant of the _grande_ nation
becomes familiar, in his nurse's arms, with all the detail of the
profession to which he is hereafter to belong; and when he opens his
eyes for the first time, it is to rest them upon that terrible machinery
of war, in the midst of which he is destined to close them for ever.

In every country, and in every age of the world, the great and leading
effects of tyranny, and of military despotism, will be discovered to
have been the same. Nothing could be a stronger corroboration of this
remark, than that singular and unexpected parallel which