Paris now offers an interval of tranquillity which we mean to avail ourselves of, and shall, in a day or two, leave this place with the hope of procuring passports for England.  The Convention affect great moderation and gratitude for their late rescue; and the people, persuaded in general that the victorious party are royalists, wait with impatience some important change, and expect, if not an immediate restoration of the monarchy, at least a free election of new Representatives, which must infallibly lead to it.  With this hope, which is the first that has long presented itself to this harassed country, I shall probably bid it adieu; but a visit to the metropolis will be too interesting for me to conclude these papers, without giving you the result of my observations.

—­Yours. &c.

Paris, June 3, 1795.

We arrived here early on Saturday, and as no stranger coming to Paris, whether a native of France, or a foreigner, is suffered to remain longer than three days without a particular permission, our first care was to present ourselves to the Committee of the section where we lodge, and, on giving proper security for our good conduct, we have had this permission extended to a Decade.

I approached Paris with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had passed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental association than external objects.  Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness.  We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the world, or have expired on the scaffold.  Public places are not less numerous, nor less frequented; but, far from inspiring gaiety, we behold them with regret and disgust, as proofs of the national levity and want of feeling.

I could almost wish, for the credit of the French character, to have found some indications that the past was not so soon consigned to oblivion.  It is true, the reign of Robespierre and his sanguinary tribunal are execrated in studied phrases; yet is it enough to adopt humanity as a mode, to sing the Revel du Peuple in preference to the Marseillois, or to go to a theatre with a well-powdered head, instead of cropped locks a la Jacobin?  But the people forget, that while they permitted, and even applauded, the past horrors, they were also accessary to them, and if they rejoice at their termination, their sensibility does not extend to compunction; they cast their sorrows away, and think it sufficient to exhibit their reformation in dressing and dancing—­

          “Yet hearts refin’d their sadden’d tint retain,
          “The sigh is pleasure, and the jest is pain.” 
                                        Sheridan.

French refinements are not, however, of this poetical kind.*