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Paris , Sept- 15- —After three days of repose and social enjoyment with our friends at , we find ourselves again in this vast city . It is an
object too great for the study of the passing traveller . However , in the fortnight which we allow ourselves , we shall see a great deal to amuse , and something , I doubt not , to instruct and improve us .
I prefer ^ le country character of France to that of the city . In the former , the good fruits of the Revolution are visible at every step : previous to that era , in the country , the most numerous class , the bulk of the population , all but the nobles and the priests , were wretchedly poor , servile and thievish . This class has assumed
a new character , improved in proportion to the improvement of its condition . Servility has vanished with their poverty \ their thievishness , an effect of the same cause , has also in great measure disappeared . But there is a selfishness and avarice , too
prevalent in the general character of the people ; which may be natural to their present state of society , from the virtues of industry and economy in exceif . I question if a proportionate amelioration has taken place among the Parisians , a sort of insulated
nation , who know very little , and seem to care as little , about the rest of France . With a restrained press and education under the direct influence of government , I should think very meanly of French political liberty , under any
form of government : I could not long toreathe in an atmosphere so dense and polluted . Not a pamphlet is exhibited by the booksellers except on the side of the prevailing politics : nothing" of liberal discussion existing " ,
except by contraband . Every paragraph in the public journals is modelled und pared dawn to suit the temper of the Tuilleries , whatever that temper may be ,- —to-day : just so , it would be adapted to an opposite temper to-morrow .
Sunday , Sept , 18—Being a day of fete at St . Cloud I joined all Paris in toiling through the heat and dust to visit the favourite abode of Buonaparte . Plere we walked through a few rooms and saw a few fountains . The young men and maiden * diverted themselves with blind man ' s buff , and many other game *; smd we all re-
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turned—fatigued and contented . Never were people entertained , or provided with occupation , at so cheap a rate as the Parisians . This I had often heard 3 and the hundred thousand individuals , who found themselves well satisfied with the amusements of this
day , proved it . I was struck with a medallion on the base of an urn of great beauty in a saloon at St . Cloud : the figure , apparently the late Emperor , restraining a wild horse , which he has caught by the under jaw , with
the inscription " Vaganti tandem \ mponitur fraenunij" meaning , I suppose , French liberty . Though a symbol of Napoleon ' s tyranny , it is the most beautiful work of art 1 ever beheld .
As we were taking our refreshment at a restaurateur ' s in the village of St . Cloud , the Duchess of Angouleme arrived in a state coach with eight horses , and was met , directly opposite to our window , by an open landau and six , which was to convey
her to the palace . She changed carriages among an immense crowd , who paid her very little attention . This moved the choler of a flaming royalist of our company , and led to a political discussion , which afforded me fresh
reason to observe how surprisingly little is known , by this party in Paris , of the revolution in the French character which has really taken place . They are so dazzled by their own gaudy city , that they think but lightly of the twenty-six millions of independent inhabitants of France who are not
in the Parisian circle . Paris is tltf punctum saliens , the organ of political feeling ; elsewhere political feeling is absorbed in the love of tranquillity . The court may seem to be of the same importance as under the ancieri regime ; when the peasantry were a mere number , and the nobility and the church were the French
nation , of which the court was the centre . The fact , however , is now far otherwise : it is the indifference and not the insignificance of the people which now gives consequence to the politicians of the TuiUeries . Should that indifference be rouzed , the charm will be broken .
Sept . 19 . —There was a magnificence about Buonaparte which carries you away in defiance of your sober judgment . To-day I gained a sight of the astonishing colossal elep hant , which was to have beea elevated on
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74 State of France .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1815, page 74, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1757/page/10/
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