the feeling of unhesitating attachment, and
unqualified loyalty, which has so long prevailed in most countries of
the world, but which the citizens of a free country should indulge only
when it has been deserved by long experience and tried virtue.

It was with different, but not less interesting feelings, that we
listened to the same tune from the splendid bands of the Russian and
Prussian guards, as they passed along the Boulevards; on their return to
their own countries; It was a grand and moving spectacle of political
virtue, to see the armies which had been arrayed against France,
striving to do honour to the government which she had assumed:--instead
of breathing curses, or committing outrages on the great and guilty
city, which had provoked all their vengeance, to see them march out of
the gates of Paris with the regularity of the strictest military
discipline, to the sound of the grand national air, which spoke "peace
to her walls, and prosperity to her palaces,"--leaving, as it were, a
blessing on the capital which they had conquered and forgiven: It was a
scene that left an impression on the mind worthy of the troops who had
bravely and successfully opposed the domineering power of France,--who
had struggled with it when it was strongest, and "ruled it when 'twas
wildest," but who spared it when it was fallen;--who forgot their wrongs
when it was in their power to revenge them;--who cast the laurels from
their brows, as they passed before the rightful monarch of France, and
honoured him as the representative of a great and gallant people, long
beguiled by ambition, and abused by tyranny, but now acknowledging their
errors, and professing moderation and repentance.

CHAPTER VIII.

PARIS--THE FRENCH ARMY AND IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT.

IT is certainly a mistake to suppose, that the military power of France
was first created by Napoleon, or that military habits were actually
forced on the people, with the view of aiding his ambitious projects.
The French have a restless, aspiring, enterprising spirit, not
accompanied, as in England, by a feeling of individual importance, and a
desire of individual independence, but modified by habits of submission
to arbitrary power, and fitted, by the influence of despotic government,
for the subordination of military discipline. Add to this, the
encouragement which was held out by the rapid promotion of soldiers
during the wars of the revolution, when the highest military