“O, shame of Gallia, in one sullen tower
     “She wets with royal tears her daily cell;
     “She finds keen anguish every rose devour,
     “They spring, they bloom, then bid the world farewell. 
     “Illustrious mourner! will no gallant mind
     “The cause of love, the cause of justice own? 
     “Such claims! such charms!  And is no life resign’d
     “To see them sparkle from their parent throne?”

How inconsistent do we often become through prejudices!  The French are at this moment governed by adventurers and courtezans—­by whatever is base, degraded, or mean, in both sexes; yet, perhaps, would they blush to see enrolled among their Sovereigns an innocent and beautiful Princess, the descendant of Henry the Fourth.

Nothing since our arrival at Paris has seemed more strange than the eagerness with which every one recounts some atrocity, either committed or suffered by his fellow-citizens; and all seem to conclude, that the guilt or shame of these scenes is so divided by being general, that no share of either attaches to any individual.  They are never tired of the details of popular or judicial massacres; and so zealous are they to do the honours of the place, that I might, but for disinclination on my part, pass half my time in visiting the spots where they were perpetrated.  It was but to-day I was requested to go and examine a kind of sewer, lately described by Louvet, in the Convention, where the blood of those who suffered at the Guillotine was daily carried in buckets, by men employed for the purpose.*

     * “At the gate of St. Antoine an immense aqueduct had been
     constructed for the purpose of carrying off the blood that was shed
     at the executions, and every day four men were employed in taking it
     up in buckets, and conveying it to this horrid reservoir of
     butchery.” 
                         Louvet’s Report, 2d May.

—­These barbarous propensities have long been the theme of French satyrists; and though I do not pretend to infer that they are national, yet certainly the revolution has produced instances of ferocity not to be paralleled in any country that ever had been civilized, and still less in one that had not.*

* It would be too shocking, both to decency and humanity, to recite the more serious enormities alluded to; and I only add, to those I have formerly mentioned, a few examples which particularly describe the manners of the revolution.—­

At Metz, the heads of the guillotined were placed on the tops of their own houses.  The Guillotine was stationary, fronting the Town-house, for months; and whoever was observed to pass it with looks of disapprobation, was marked as an object of suspicion.  A popular Commission, instituted for receiving the revolutionary tax at this place, held their meetings in a room hung with stripes of red and black, lighted only with sepulchral lamps;