on a character like that of the French, is more fatal to a popular body than even hatred or contempt.  The long duration of this disastrous legislature has excited an universal weariness; the guilt of particular members is now less discussed than the insignificance of the whole assemblage; and the epithets corrupt, worn out, hackneyed, and everlasting, [Tare, use, banal, and eternel.] have almost superseded those of rogues and villains.

The law of the maximum has been repealed some time, and we now procure necessaries with much greater facility; but the assignats, no longer supported by violence, are rapidly diminishing in credit—­so that every thing is dear in proportion.  We, who are more than indemnified by the rise of exchange in our favour, are not affected by these progressive augmentations in the price of provisions.  It would, however, be erroneous and unfeeling to judge of the situation of the French themselves from such a calculation.

People who have let their estates on leases, or have annuities on the Hotel de Ville, &c. receive assignats at par, and the wages of the labouring poor are still comparatively low.  What was five years ago a handsome fortune, now barely supplies a decent maintenance; and smaller incomes, which were competencies at that period, are now almost insufficient for existence.  A workman, who formerly earned twenty-five sols a day, has at present three livres; and you give a sempstress thirty sols, instead of ten:  yet meat, which was only five or six sols when wages was twenty-five, is now from fifty sols to three livres the pound, and every other article in the same or a higher proportion.  Thus, a man’s daily wages, instead of purchasing four or five pounds of meat, as they would have done before the revolution, now only purchase one.

It grieves me to see people whom I have known at their ease, obliged to relinquish, in the decline of life, comforts to which they were accustomed at a time when youth rendered indulgence less necessary; yet every day points to the necessity of additional oeconomy, and some little convenience or enjoyment is retrenched—­and to those who are not above acknowledging how much we are the creatures of habit, a dish of coffee, or a glass of liqueur, &c. will not seem such trifling privations.  It is true, these are, strictly speaking, luxuries; so too are most things by comparison—­

          “O reason not the need:  our basest beggars
          “Are in the poorest thing superfluous: 
          “Allow not nature more than nature needs,
          “Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.”

If the wants of one class were relieved by these deductions from the enjoyments of another, it might form a sufficient consolation; but the same causes which have banished the splendor of wealth and the comforts of mediocrity, deprive the poor of bread and raiment, and enforced parsimony is not more generally conspicuous than wretchedness.