Having been at the Criminal Tribunal to-day, I now recollect that I have never yet described to you the costume of the French Judges.—­Perhaps when I have before had occasion to speak of it, your imagination may have glided to Westminster Hall, and depicted to you the scarlet robes and voluminous wigs of its respectable magistrates:  but if you would form an idea of a magistrate here, you must bring your mind to the abstraction of Crambo, and figure to yourself a Judge without either gown, wig, or any of those venerable appendages.  Nothing indeed can be more becoming or gallant, than this judicial accoutrement—­it is black, with a silk cloak of the same colour, in the Spanish form, and a round hat, turned up before, with a large plume of black feathers.  This, when the magistrate happens to be young, has a very theatrical and romantic appearance; but when it is worn by a figure a little Esopian, or with a large bushy perriwig, as I have sometimes seen it, the effect is still less awful; and a stranger, on seeing such an apparition in the street, is tempted to suppose it a period of jubilee, and that the inhabitants are in masquerade.

It is now the custom for all people to address each other by the appellation of Citizen; and whether you are a citizen or not—­whether you inhabit Paris, or are a native of Peru—­still it is an indication of aristocracy, either to exact, or to use, any other title.  This is all congruous with the system of the day:  the abuses are real, the reform is imaginary.  The people are flattered with sounds, while they are losing in essentials.  And the permission to apply the appellation of Citizen to its members, is but a poor compensation for the despotism of a department or a municipality.

In vain are the people flattered with a chimerical equality—­it cannot exist in a civilized state, and if it could exist any where, it would not be in France.  The French are habituated to subordination—­they naturally look up to something superior—­and when one class is degraded, it is only to give place to another.

—­The pride of the noblesse is succeeded by the pride of the merchant—­ the influence of wealth is again realized by cheap purchases of the national domains—­the abandoned abbey becomes the delight of the opulent trader, and replaces the demolished chateau of the feudal institution.  Full of the importance which the commercial interest is to acquire under a republic, the wealthy man of business is easily reconciled to the oppression of the superior classes, and enjoys, with great dignity, his new elevation.  The counting-house of a manufacturer of woollen cloth is as inaccessible as the boudoir of a Marquis; while the flowered brocade gown and well-powdered curls of the former offer a much more imposing exterior than the chintz robe de chambre and dishevelled locks of the more affable man of fashion.