former days and the court swords strutting out behind, like pins stuck through dry beetles. See them haunting the scenes of their former splendor, in hopes of a restitution of estates, like ghosts haunting the vicinity of buried treasure: while around them you see Young France, grown up in the fighting school of Napoleon; equipped en militaire: tall, hardy, frank, vigorous, sunburnt, fierce-whiskered; with tramping boots, towering crests, and glittering breastplates.

It is incredible the number of ancient and hereditary feeders on royalty said to be housed in this establishment. Indeed all the royal palaces abound with noble families returned from exile, and who have nestling-places allotted them while they await the restoration of their estates, or the much-talked-of law, indemnity. Some of them have fine quarters, but poor living. Some families have but five or six hundred francs a year, and all their retinue consists of a servant woman. With all this, they maintain their old aristocratical hauteur, look down with vast contempt upon the opulent families which have risen since the revolution; stigmatize them all as parvenus, or upstarts, and refuse to visit them.

In regarding the exterior of the Tuileries, with all its outward signs of internal populousness, I have often thought what a rare sight it would be to see it suddenly unroofed, and all its nooks and corners laid open to the day. It would be like turning up the stump of an old tree, and dislodging the world of grubs, and ants, and beetles lodged beneath. Indeed there is a scandalous anecdote current, that in the time of one of the petty plots, when petards were exploded under the windows of the Tuileries, the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at four o'clock in the morning, when a scene of the most whimsical

confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were found foisted into the huge edifice every rat-hole had its occupant; and places which had been considered as tenanted only by spiders, were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It is added, that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scamering and slamming of doors, and whisking away in night-gowns and slippers; and several persons, who were found by accident in their neighbors' chambers, evinced indubitable astonishment at the circumstance.

As I have fancied I could read the French character in the national palace of the Tuileries, so I have pictured to myself some of the traits of John Bull in his royal abode of Windsor Castle. The Tuileries, outwardly a peaceful palace, is in effect a swaggering military hold; while the old castle, on the contrary, in spite of its bullying look, is completely under petticoat government. Every corner and nook is built up into some snug, cosy nestling-place, some "procreant cradle," not tenanted by meagre expectants or whiskered warriors, but by sleek placemen; knowing realizers of present pay and present pudding; who seem placed there not to kill and destroy, but to breed and multiply. Nursery maids and children shine with rosy faces at the windows, and swarm about the courts and terraces. The very soldiery have a pacific look, and when off duty, may be seen loitering about the place with the nursery-maids; not making love to them in the gay gallant style of the French soldiery, but with infinite bonhommie aiding them to take care of the broods of children.

Though the old castle is in decay, every thing about it thrives; the very crevices of the walls are tenanted by swallows, rooks, and pigeons, all sure of quiet lodgment: the ivy strikes

its roots deep in the fissures, and flourishes about the mouldering tower.* Thus it is with honest John: according to his own account, he is ever going to ruin, yet every thing that lives on him, thrives and waxes fat. He would fain be a soldier, and swagger like his neighbors; but his domestic, quiet-loving, uxorious nature continually gets the upper hand; and though he may mount his helmet and gird on his sword, yet he is apt to sink into the plodding, painstaking father of a family; with a troop of children at his heels, and his womenkind hanging on each arm.

I have spoken heretofore with some levity of the contrast that exists between the English and French character; but it deserves more serious consideration. They are the two great nations of modern times most diametrically opposed, and most worthy of each other's rivalry; essentially distinct in their characters, excelling in opposite qualities, and reflecting lustre on each other by their very opposition. In nothing is this contrast more strikingly evinced than in their military conduct. For ages have they been contending, and for ages have they crowded each other's history with acts of splendid heroism. Take the Battle of Waterloo, for instance, the last and most memorable trial of their rival prowess. Nothing could surpass the brilliant daring on the one side, and the steadfast enduring on the other

* The above sketch was written before the thorough repairs and mag◄ nificent additions made of late years to Windsor Castle.

The French cavalry broke like waves on the compact squares of English infantry. They were scen galloping round those serried walls of men, seeking in vain for an entrance; tossing their arms in the air, in the heat of their enthusiasm, and braving the whole front of battle. The British troops, on the other hand, forbidden to move or fire, stood firm and enduring. Their columns were ripped up by cannonry; whole rows were swept down at a shot the survivors closed their ranks, and stood firm. In this way many columns stood through the pelting of the iron tempest without firing a shot; without any action to stir their blood, or excite their spirits. Death thinned their ranks, but could not

shake their souls.

A beautiful instance of the quick and generous impulses to which the French are prone, is given in the case of a French cavalier, in the hottest of the action, charging furiously upon a British officer, but perceiving in the moment of assault that his adversary had lost his sword-arm, dropping the point of his sa bre, and courteously riding on. Peace be with that generous warrior, whatever were his fate! of battle, with the foundering fortunes of his chieftain, may the turf of Waterloo grow green above his grave!—and happier far would be the fate of such a spirit, to sink amidst the tempest, unconscious of defeat, than to survive, and mourn blighted laurels of his country.

If he went down in the storm

over the

In this way the two armies fought through a long and bloody day. The French with enthusiastic valor, the English with coolinflexible courage, until Fate, as if to leave the question of superiority still undecided between two such adversaries, brought up the Prussians to decide the fortunes of the field.

It was several years afterward, that I visited the field of Waterloo. The ploughshare had been busy with its oblivious. labors, and the frequent harvest had nearly obliterated the vestiges of war. Still the blackened ruins of Hoguemont stood, a monumental pile, to mark the violence of this vehement struggle. Its broken walls, pierced by bullets, and shattered by explosions, showed the deadly strife that had taken place within; when Gaul and Briton, hemmed in between narrow walls, hand to hand and foot to foot, fought from garden to court-yard, from court-yard to chamber, with intense and concentrated rivalship. Columns of smoke towered from this vortex of battle as from a volcano: "it was," said my guide, "like a little hell upon earth." Not far off, two or three broad spots of rank, unwholesome green still marked the places where these rival warriors, after their fierce and fitful struggle, slept quietly together in the lap of their common mother earth. Over all the rest of the field, peace had resumed its sway. The thoughtless whistle of the peasant floated on the air, instead of the trumpet's clangor; the team slowly labored up the hill-side, once shaken by the hoofs of rushing squadrons; and wide fields of corn waved peacefully over the soldiers' grave, as summer seas dimple over the place where the tall ship lies buried.

To the foregoing desultory notes on the French military character, let me append a few traits which I picked up verbally in one of the French provinces. They may have already ap peared in print, but I have never met with them.