tation; but many of his books are no
less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine
feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all
popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on
every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the
skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers,
Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose
contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the
age?

The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of
the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with
his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious
facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable
quarter of the town called St. Martin's-lane. This sweeping mode of
argument, _a particulari_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the
Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and
gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable
habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is
no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and
Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a
_short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a
dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long
experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any
man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however
palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and
time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all
nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and
habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
traveller has commented on the French Chamber of Deputies, without
expending much eloquence and a great deal of honest indignation on the
practice of speaking from a tribune, written orations being in their
opinion a ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what is
the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not ten, there are not
five men who could address the house extempore; not from any
deficiency of ability--not from any want of information, logical
force, and fluency--the names of Thiers, Guiz