I am sure, at least, that no British records could furnish pictures of native manners and native acts so dissimilar at different times from each other as may be found to have existed here. The most striking contrast that we can show is between the effects of Oliver Cromwell's rule and that of Charles the Second; but this was unity and concord compared to the changes in character which have repeatedly taken place in France. That this contrast with us was, speaking of the general mass of the population, little more than the mannerism arising from adopting the style of "the court" for the time being, is proved by the wondrously easy transition from one tone to the other which followed the restoration. This was chiefly the affair of courtiers, or of public men, who as necessarily put on the manners of their master as a domestic servant does a livery; but Englishmen were still in all essentials the same. Not so the French when they threw themselves headlong, from one extremity of the country to the other, into all the desperate religious wildness which marks the history of the Ligue; not so the French when from the worship of their monarchs they suddenly turned as at one accord and flew at their throats like bloodhounds. Were they then the same people?--did they testify any single trait of moral affinity to what the world thought to be their national character one short year before? Then again look at them under Napoleon, and look at them under Louis-Philippe. It is a great, a powerful, a magnificent people, let them put on what outward seeming they will; but I doubt if there be any nation in the world that would so completely throw out a theorist who wished to establish the doctrine of distinct races as the French.
You will think that I have made a very circuitous ramble from the Marché des Innocens; but I have only given you the results of the family speculation we fell into after returning thence, which arose, I believe, from my narrating how I had passed from the tombeaux of the _victimes de Juillet_ to the place where Henri Quatre received his death. This set us to meditate on the different political objects of the slain; and we all agreed that it was a much easier task to define those of the king than those of the subject. There is every reason in the world to believe that the royal Henri wished the happiness and prosperity of France; but the guessing with any appearance of correctness what might be the especial wish and desire of the Sieur Hapel du département de la Sarthe, is a matter infinitely more difficult to decide.