orward in delighted and graceful attention; her
features just Grecian enough to be a model of delicate beauty, just
Roman enough to be noble; her colour heightened to that of youth by the
heat of the room, and her costume, in which all the art of Paris was
blended with a critical knowledge of the just and the becoming. And yet
this woman was a grandmother!

The men of France have the same physical and the same conventional
peculiarities as the women. They are short, but sturdy. Including all
France, for there is a material difference in this respect between the
north and the south, I should think the average stature of the French
men (not women) to be quite an inch and a half below the average stature
of America, and possibly two inches. At home, I did not find myself
greatly above the medium height, and in a crowd I was always compelled
to stand on tiptoe to look over the heads of those around me; whereas,
here, I am evidently _un grand_, and can see across the Champs Elysees
without any difficulty. You may remember that I stand as near as may be
to five feet ten; it follows that five feet ten is rather a tall man in
France. You are not to suppose, however, that there are not occasionally
men of great stature in this country. One of the largest men I have ever
seen appears daily in the garden of the Tuileries, and I am told he is a
Frenchman of one of the north-eastern provinces. That part of the
kingdom is German rather than French, however, and the population still
retain most of the peculiarities of their origin.

The army has a look of service and activity rather than of force. I
should think it more formidable by its manoeuvres than its charges.
Indeed, the tactics of Napoleon, who used the legs of his troops more
than their muskets, aiming at concentrating masses on important points,
goes to show that he depended on alertness instead of _bottom_. This is
just the quality that would be most likely to prevail against your
methodical, slow-thinking, and slow-moving German; and I make no
question the short, sturdy, nimble legs of the little warriors of this
country have gained many a field.

A general officer, himself a six-footer, told me, lately, that they had
found the tall men of very little use in the field, from their inability
to endure the fatigues of a campaign. When armies shall march on
railroads, and manoeuvre by steam, the grenadiers will come in play
again; but as it is, the French are admirably adapt