Amiens, October, 1792.

I arrived here the day on which a ball was given to celebrate the return of the volunteers who had gone to the assistance of Lisle.*

The bombardment of Lisle commenced on the twenty-ninth of September, at three o’clock in the afternoon, and continued, almost without interruption, until the sixth of October.  Many of the public buildings, and whole quarters of the town, were so much damaged or destroyed, that the situation of the streets were scarcely distinguishable.  The houses which the fire obliged their inhabitants to abandon, were pillaged by barbarians, more merciless than the Austrians themselves.  Yet, amidst these accumulated horrors, the Lillois not only preserved their courage, but their presence of mind:  the rich incited and encouraged the poor; those who were unable to assist with their labour, rewarded with their wealth:  the men were employed in endeavouring to extinguish the fire of the buildings, or in preserving their effects; while women and children snatched the opportunity of extinguishing the fuzes of the bombs as soon as they fell, at which they became very daring and dexterous.  During the whole of this dreadful period, not one murmur, not one proposition to surrender, was heard from any party.

     —­The Convention decreed, amidst the wildest enthusiasm of applause,
     that Lisle had deserved well of the country.

     —­Forty-two thousand five hundred balls were fired, and the damages
     were estimated at forty millions of livres.

The French, indeed, never refuse to rejoice when they are ordered; but as these festivities are not spontaneous effusions, but official ordinances, and regulated with the same method as a tax or recruitment, they are of course languid and uninteresting.  The whole of their hilarity seems to consist in the movement of the dance, in which they are by not means animated; and I have seen, even among the common people, a cotillion performed as gravely and as mechanically as the ceremonies of a Chinese court.—­I have always thought, with Sterne, that we were mistaken in supposing the French a gay nation.  It is true, they laugh much, have great gesticulation, and are extravagantly fond of dancing:  but the laugh is the effect of habit, and not of a risible sensation; the gesture is not the agitation of the mind operating upon the body, but constitutional volatility; and their love of dancing is merely the effect of a happy climate, (which, though mild, does not enervate,) and that love of action which usually accompanies mental vacancy, when it is not counteracted by heat, or other physical causes.