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.*

     * This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon
     by an anonymous writer in the following terms: 

“At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented.  The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed—­so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies.  Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves—­

          ’Le malheur Qui n’est plus, n’a jamais existe.’

     But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not
     return, we must keep them always present in our recollection.”