r hard
service, far better constituted than that of an Englishman. Nothing, it
is well known, is so difficult as to rally an English force after any
thing approaching even to a defeat. This is by no means the case with
the French, and the history of the last campaign, preceding the
restoration of the Borbons, contains a detailed account of many
successive' defeats, after which the French army rallied and fought as
undauntedly as before; and during the last war there was not perhaps a
single battle contended with more determination than that of Toulouse.

In regard to the lower orders of the peasantry, it is amongst them alone
that we can yet distinctly discern the last traces of the ancient French
character. They are certainly, from the sale of the great landed estates
at the revolution, (which, divided into small farms, were bought by the
lower orders,) for the most part comparatively in a rich and independent
situation; and poverty is far more generally felt by the higher classes
of the nation, than by the regular peasantry of the country. Yet with
all this, they have become neither insolent nor haughty to their
superiors; and you will meet at this day with more real unsophisticated
politeness, and more active civility amongst the present French
peasantry, than is to be found among the nobility or the soldiery of the
nation.

It is to them alone that the hopes of the revival of the French nation
must ultimately turn. It is from this quarter that France, if she is
ever to possess them, must alone derive those pacific energies, which,
whilst they may render her as a nation less generally terrible, will yet
cause her to be more individually happy.

In every country, we must regard the peasantry as the sinews and stamina
of the state. They are, in every respect, to the nation what the heart
is to the individual; the centre from which health, energy and vigour
must be imparted to the remotest portions of the political body. If such
is the rank held by the peasantry _in all countries_, much more
important: is the station which they at present fill in _France_, and
far more momentous (owing to the circumstances in which that kingdom now
stands), are the duties which they owe to their country. It is there
alone that any sufficient antidote can be found for that political
misery, occasioned by such a course of unprincipled national triumphs,
as had been so long the boast of France, and which we have so lately
closed in all