situations despise. Their labour is frequently
demanded where refusal is impossible, and obedience attended with no
remuneration. They themselves are hurried away, if young, to fill up the
miserable quotas of the conscription; torn from the happiest scenes of
their youth, and banished from every object of their affection. If old,
they are doomed to pass their solitary years uncomforted, and
unsupported. The hopes of their age may have fallen, but amidst all this
complicated misery, it is indeed most wonderful that they yet continue
to be cheerful. The accustomed gaiety of their spirits will not even
then desert them; and meeting with a stranger who enters into
conversation with them, or seated with a few friends at a caffe, they
will sip their liqueurs, smoke their segars, and talk with enthusiasm
of the triumphs and glory of the _grande nation_, although these
triumphs may have given the fatal blow to all that constituted their
happiness, and in this glory they may see the graves of their children.
This is not patriotism: It is a far lower principle. It is produced by
national pride, vanity, thoughtlessness, a contempt or ignorance of
domestic happiness, and all this allied to an unconquerable levity and
heartlessness of disposition. It is not therefore that severe but noble
principle, the silent offspring between thought and sorrow, which
soothes at least where it cannot cure, and alleviates the acuteness of
individual sufferings, by the consolation that our friends have fallen
in the courageous execution of their duty. It has in its composition
none of those higher feelings, but is more an instinct, and one too of a
shallow and degrading nature, than any thing like a steady and
regulating moral principle.

This, however, which makes them unconscious to any thing like
unhappiness, renders them, under imprisonment, banishment, and
deprivation, more able to endure the hardships and reverses of war than
any other troops.

It is perhaps an improper word in speaking of imprisonment and
banishment to a Frenchman, to say they endure it better; the truth is,
they do not feel it so acutely, and the reason is, that the military,
owing to their restless and wandering life, are comparatively less
attached than other troops to their native country. They suffer better,
because they feel less.

In courage the English soldiers certainly equal them, and in physical
strength they far surpass them; but the mind of a Frenchman is, fo