us
in popular feeling. It resembles an epidemic from which few of the
class more peculiarly exposed to it escape.

Walked into the streets to-day, for a carriage cannot yet pass through
them. Never did any town, not actually sacked, present a more changed
aspect. Houses damaged by shots, windows smashed, pavements destroyed,
and trees cut down or mutilated, meet the eye along the Boulevards. The
destruction of the trees excited more regret in my mind than that of
the houses. There, many of them lay on the ground shorn of their leafy
honours, offering obstructions on the spots which they so lately
ornamented, while others stood bare and desolate, their giant limbs
lopped off, their trunks shattered by bullets, and retaining only a few
slight branches oh high, to which still adhered the parched,
discoloured, and withered leaves, sole remnants of their lately
luxuriant foliage.

The houses may be rebuilt and the streets newly paved, but how many
years will it take before these trees can be replaced! Those who loved
to repose beneath their shade, or who, pent in a city, were solaced by
beholding them and thinking of the country of which they brought
pleasant recollections, will grieve to miss them, and, like me, own
with a sigh, while contemplating the ravages occasioned by the events
of the last few days, that if good ever is effected by that most
dangerous of all experiments, a revolution, it is too dearly bought.

The people seem as proud and pleased as possible with the
accomplishment of the task they took in hand. How long will they
continue so? They are like a too-spirited horse who, having mastered
his rider, requires a bolder and more expert hand to subjugate him
again to obedience, and the training will be all the more painful from
the previous insubordination. Of one thing the people may be proud, and
that is, their having not stained this revolution with any of the
crimes that have left so indelible a blot on the former one.

How soon does the mind habituate itself to an unnatural state of
excitement! My _femme de chambre_ positively looked blank and
disappointed this morning, when, on entering my _chambre a coucher_,
she answered in reply to my question, whether any thing new had
occurred during the night, "_Non, miladi, positivement rien_." Strange
to say, I too felt _desoeuvre_ by the want of having something to be
alarmed or to hope about,--I, who meddle not with politics, and wish
all the world to be as