an emergency which was to be over before an answer of any kind could be received.

However, the gallant Marshal led the way on this occasion, as he had done on so many others, and the diplomatists-extraordinary ordered their equipages to follow the stream, a principle which is the essence of all success in diplomacy, as well as in all things of this life.

My next movement was to pass in review their equipages, drawn up in the Bird-Cage Walk, now a wide and public road, but once a retired path where Charles II., the brother of our St Germain's King, a hundred and fifty years ago, used to take his morning's promenade, attended by his courtiers and spaniels, two races of animals which, differing in the number of their legs, agreed in several capital points, the only exceptions of which I know any thing being that the spaniels, though they fondle, do not flatter; and though they may bite now and then, never betray.

The carriages were fully worth the trouble of looking at them. They were certainly superb affairs. John Bull is supposed to be the best of coachmakers and the worst of politicians, to be unequalled in building an equipage, and the worst in constructing a treaty, of any man in existence. But time seems to equalize all things; and as we have within these later years certainly arrived at the art of making the most ridiculous of possible treaties, we have almost reached him in the art of panels, harness, and hammercloths. The Marshal's carriage was a prodigiously glittering creation. A cornice of fretted and flowered silver a foot high surrounded its top. The solitary star of the Legion of Honour blazed on its blue panels; half extinguished every where else, it flashed from its blue escutcheon as from a sky. The Marshal had the good taste to allow no competitor to rival it, among the fifty orders which he had conquered or commanded from the trembling courts of the continent. His baton was the only additional emblem. But it was enough.

The other carriages were of Spanish and Portuguese, Austrian and Russian grandceism. Inside sat uniforms of every conceivable embroidery, spangled with every conceivable order. The wearers were all but in

visible. Moustache, whisker, and chintuft accomplished this object for their faces, and I was content with the privation.

As the time was approaching when the procession was to move, I returned to our friend's house. The streets had now assumed a new appearance. The moving crowd moved no longer, it had formed solid masses on the trottoir; the police force had taken their stand along the line in front of the masses; the troops were spread in front of the police; the space in the centre was gravelled over, and kept clear for the carriages; and what was infinitely more to the purpose, in the way of ornament, the ladies had taken their places in the balconies. This view was worth all that I had seen, and worth all the gilded carriages that I ever hope to see.

Let me pause a moment to recover my breath, and I shall give you my final opinion of the beauty of Englishwomen. They are the only women in the world who can venture to show their faces in daylight! Let this be said without any undue qualification of my homage for foreign beauty in general, and French beauty in particular.

"Quoi-Neron est il amoureux ? Depuis un moment; mais pour toute ma

vie,

J'aime (que dis-je aimer ?) j'idolatre

Junie.'

But it was made for the light of chandeliers. Its poignancy, like gunpowder, sleeps until it is touched by flame. It is a fine picture, but the picture requires to be placed in the right position, to be shaded by draperies, and coloured by contrast, and a hundred other ingenuities, which amply exercise the taste and talents of the possessor. In fact, its finest effect is like every other fine thing in our country; it is theatrical. The scene must not be approached too near, nor glared on with too much light, nor dimmed with too little-but the lamps are essential, and then we have nothing to do but to gaze, and be undone.

For an hour or two we had amused ourselves with the spectacle of the carriages conveying the nobility to the Cathedral. Next to the women, by far the finest things in England are the horses. The Duke of Northumberland's steeds, covered with blue ribbons, the Duke of Devonshire's,

the Duke of Buccleuch's, and a multitude of others, were superb animals. And the prices given for them are superb. An English gentleman, who seemed fully conversant with such matters, told me that the Duchess of Kent's horses cost each upwards of 8000 francs! But those English nobles are the richest in the world. Many of them could buy a German principality, prince and all, and even their tenth class could swallow up a dozen of our majorats. This enormous opulence arises from two things, the possession of pedigree, and the absence of pride. Some of the noble families reach back to the Normans, and are like mighty rivers whose course is perpetually swelled by smaller rivers falling into their course. Those families gradually become the deposit of a succession of minor families. But when the English noble family decays in its exchequer, it seldom exhibits any scruple whatever, to recruit its losses by an alliance with the commercial classes. A handsome girl is not thought the worse of for bringing a couple of millions of francs in her hand. She gains her grand object, a title; the honest trader who has made her dower gains his grand object, the honour of having a peer for a son-in-law; the peer gains his grand object, a sum sufficient to pay off the incumbrances of the family estate; and the bargain thus pleases every body but the maiden aunts and the Herald's College, for whom nobody cares.

As I stood at one of the windows, looking down over a whole parterre of bonnets and beauties in front, at the endless stream of showy vehicles which carried the elite of England to the Abbey, I happened to say something implying a doubt of the Marshal's reception by the populace. "The higher ranks of your country," I observed to a solid-looking Englishman, who was uneasily standing on a bench to make the same experiment over my shoulders, for we were crowded like pigeons in a coop, "will doubtless treat him with the respect due to his rank, but the people in the streets, what will they do ?"

"I shall undertake to say," was the reply, "that they will treat him better than even the higher ranks, if he has the sense to prefer cordiality to ceremony."

"Well, who can help them? The newspapers don't care a pin's-head upon the subject, nor do the people. But newspapers are like those policemen before you, they flourish their staves to show that they can knock down upon occasion; or, like the wild beasts in the Zoological Gardens, they roar to remind you of their existence, and show their teeth to tell you that they want something to eat. But, sir, with all respect for your country, I never met a Frenchman who could be persuaded that every peevish paragraph in a London newspaper was not a declaration of war, and that the writer was not a Secretary of State."

"But your graver publications, your Reviews, have taken up the subject, and angrily too."

"Well, and who can help the Reviews? We have no censorship here, and every one who has an opinion may give it, and this very license breaks off the point of the sting. Who cares for an opinion, when it is only one of a million of opinions? A man in a garret thinks your Marshal the greatest general that the sun ever shone upon. A man in a drawingroom, with a Turkey carpet, and an ormolu inkstand, thinks that he does not know a musket from a pocketpistol. A man in a printing office today compares him to Marlborough and Turenne, next day he pronounces that he is not fit to carry their knapsacks. Who cares for all this? Besides, to do the English papers justice, they did not begin. A pamphleteer on the other side of the water opened the ball, sank Wellington to the dust, and lifted Soult up to the skies. This put the match to the gun, and off it went."

"Yes, the beginning of the skirmish I allow to have been French. But the pamphleteer was so obscure, his reasons were so absurd, and the whole was so evidently the work of Jacobinism to sour the people of England

against the Marshal, and the Marshal against the people, that English sagacity should have seen through the scheme and despised it."

"Perhaps so; they certainly ought to have shown more temper than to care about such tricks. But the bulldog lives for fighting; show him the bull, and whether it is for sport or slaughter he flies at it. As for the battle of Thoulouse, the whole affair has been over nearly a quarter of a century; three-fourths of all men alive were born since and know nothing about it; the other fourth have forgotten it, excepting old women and lords of the bedchamber. We might as well abuse each other for the wars of the Edwards, or quarrel about the chivalry of Amadis de Gaul."

The

The trumpets of the squadrons leading the procession were now heard, and all eyes were turned to its entrance into the street. It looked as fine as plumes, cuirasses, chasseurs, and valets all over gilding, and carriages hung all over with chasseurs and valets, could look; it was an endless column of all kinds of brilliancy glittering under a cloudless sun. As the principal equipages passed, and were recognised, the populace gave them huzzas, more or less loud according to their favouritism. The Duchess of Kent, as the Queen's mother, shared largely in the huzzas. Duke of Sussex, as her uncle, shared still more largely, his relationship and his radicalism combining. But among this moving panorama of princes, by far the most warmly applauded was Soult. My English friend looked at me with a face of triumph at the success of his prediction. "I told you how it would be," said he. "Yes," was my answer, "your nation knows how to pay the rights of hospitality." "Not an atom of it," said this intractable Cicerone. "Do you think that these fellows below are for any thing of the kind? Not they; they are merely indulging in the national curiosity; and they are not the worse for that neither. Every man of them has heard of Soult, and every man is trying to get a sight of his weatherbeaten face. They know him to be a brave old soldier, and they don't care a feather whether he fought against them or for them. To do them justice, they never think of the blow after the battle; and whether the affair is a

boxing-match or a campaign, no people on earth are more ready to shake hands when all is over, and say no more about it."

After this homely exposition of the soul of John Bull, how shall I rise to the description of the pomps within the Abbey. I shall not attempt the difficulty. I must leave it to your vivid imagination to conceive all that is conceivable on such subjects-the splendour, the loyalty, the embroidered robes of the Duchess of Sutherland, and the diamond stomacher of Prince Esterhazy, whose outer man on this day, I understand, has been valued by the authorities on such subjects at a quarter of a million sterling. Never was a noble so well worth running Never was away with. a prince whose value would be so vexatiously diminished by his returning to those times of simplicity when coats and waiscoats were unknown. However, he is a favourite here, for reasons less sparkling, perhaps, than his wardrobe, but not less important to his mission. The newspapers will tell you all the formal proceedings of the day. The ceremony is the same in all its chief features with our own. The Pope, however, neither comes across the Alps for it, nor are the Cardinals an essential part of the performance. But the whole is ecclesiastical in the highest degree. The prelates are the managers-every part of the crowning

is performed by the hands of archbishops and bishops. The laity, peers, Privy Councillors, and even Ministers stand at an awful distance while the Sovereign receives the diadem from the hands of the Church, and pledges herself to its privileges for ever and ever. When the golden circlet is laid on the royal brow the Peerage place their coronets on their own, and shout, having nothing else to do. A roar of artillery announced the auspicious act to the multitude without, and was answered by acclamations. We next heard the answering roar of cannon from their different positions round the city; and then the day of pomp was done. The Queen retired, followed by the coroneted crowd, the pageantry disappeared like phantoms, and a philosopher, looking at the sudden clearance of the scarlet benches, might have moralized on the vanity of human things, though at the imminent hazard of being locked in for the night.

If he had, his philosophy would have cost him more than his supper-for the night was even more amusing than the day. London was one blaze of illumination. Stars that eclipsed all their namesakes in the skies, flashed from the fronts of numberless buildings. Inscriptions of fire, portraits framed in flaming rainbows, all the miracles of lamps and gas were in full vigour, and the night closed with fireworks from various commanding points, which, at a distance, gave the idea of a general conflagration of the metropolis, and which, if the astronomers of the moon happened to have been awake at the hour, must have given them materials for many a paper of erudite absurdity in their Memoires de l'Institut," or immortalized some Lunarian Buckland.

which, shutting at once the heart, the brain, and the eyes of an empire, makes ambition innocent, pleasure stingless, gaming dull; and money light as air; makes the young Queen forget that she has this day worn a crown worth three millions of francs, and that a hundred dukes and princes are sighing to lay their caps and coronets at her footstool; hushes even Grisi's trumpettones; makes Taglioni's twinkling feet as stiff as marble, and extinguishes all things for the time but policemen and parliamentary orators, the peacemakers and peace-breakers of that system of refined barbarism which we call civilized society. Thus in soli tude, and reflections worthy of an ultra-philosopher, have I finished one day. I think the ghost of Titus stands before me, and bids me go to bed. Or Burrhus himself, inspired by our immortal bard, exclaims,

"Plût aux dieux, que ce fut le dernier de ses crimes!"

DEAR ALPHONSE

Since the coronation London has been a round of entertainments-balloons in the public gardens-fêtes at the palace and dinners at the ambassadors'. The eternal succession has absorbed all our faculties. The life of a diplomatist in this country is no trifle. Between trying to recollect the faces of the well-dressed multitude to whom you are perpetually introduced, and to whom you must afterwards bow on pain of death; sitting out three interminable courses every day; and afterwards either doing the honours of the embassy at home, or doing your own abroad, in the midst of some nightly thousands, with the thermometer at 90 degrees, and Musard's band stunning you with Polonaises for twelve hours together, I have had serious thoughts of abandoning all hope of being minister for foreign affairs in my time, and retiring to the comparative solitudes of Paris.

But, to-day, we have had something of a higher kind to take off a little of our ennui. The English artillery, taken as a whole, is known to be one of the finest corps in their army. The

July 5.

English themselves speak of it as the finest corps in Europe. I had, accordingly, some curiosity to see its performances not that I have quite got rid of that salutary idea which makes a Frenchman in every part of the globe think that France can do every thing better than any other people, but that the remarkable calmness with which an Englishman generally makes an assertion has some effect in making you believe it to be a fact. The want of this calmness does us prodigious harm in the matter of imposing on mankind. We throw too much passion into our statement to win credulity. I never could fully believe an Italian upon any subject whatever; his visage worked too strongly for the purpose, his arms and legs were in too much muscular convulsion, his voice was too high; in short, he made my conviction so much an affair of his soul and body, that my confidence instinctively hung back; but when he proceeded to tear his hair, scream, and dance about the room, I set it down for a fiction at once. Why should any man put all this machinery in motion when the fact was

strong enough of itself? Here the composure of the Englishman has all the advantage. If he acts the knave, he does it with all the look of perfect indifference to the effect; he tells his tale, and leaves you to take it just as you may; he suppresses all the advocate, and you accept him as the historian. But-à nos moutons.

As the review was to be some miles from London, at the chief station of the artillery in England, I rose two hours before my time, breakfasted with unusual despatch, and, after discharging those petty cares of the toilet which form so important a part of our duty, I ordered my horse, and, exactly at an hour before noon, galloped towards the scene. You will have to learn that, though Woolwich, the place of rendezvous, is perhaps three leagues from what is called London, it is actually almost a part of this monster-metropolis-a monster which is evidently proceeding to devour every field for fifty miles round; and which will soon make a blade of grass as remarkable a curiosity to the eyes of the citizens as a rhinoceros. The road, though broad, level, and admirably kept in order, as are all the high-roads of this country, was lined through the chief part of the distance with houses some of those guinguettes, surmounted with full-length paintings of Welling ton, Howe, Mi Lord Grey, and other warlike and civil lights and disturbers of this restless world; the paintings, of course, wholly inferior to our French signs, for we are excellent in medioerity, but exhibiting all the honour that could be given by remorseless embroidery and gigantic epaulettes. At intervals rows of private houses, called by the general name of terraces, stretched along, and now and then a pretty villa peeped from its bowery trellises and silvan shades, as if to remind the passenger that he was not still in the heart of the most inordinate collection of brick on the face of the earth.

The visitants, including all the foreign Ambassadors, all their suites, military and civil, a crowd of generals, and a following crowd of fashionable people, in dashing equipages, now be gan to pour along. The inhabitants of the houses on both sides flocked to their windows in their best apparel; we thus had a preliminary review of our own; and if popular curiosity could stamp

popular distinction, many a man, as simple as your friend, became unconsciously a public character. The cavalcade continued to rush on, now and then a little impeded by the obstinacy of some noble driver of a barouche and four, who insisted on taking his own way, and overtaking every body's else; the sight of a dragoon posted across the road to prevent our running out of the train; or the approach of some supereminent personage to whom all the inferior world were bound to yield. I myself drew up in succession to a shoal of Ambassadors, took off my cap with all humility to his Highness of Nemours, who rushed by me on a fierce, fast-trotting English horse, too rapidly, I fear, to have been sensible of my loyalty in a strange land, and made a salaam, worthy of a dragoman, to his Highness Mahommed Ben Ali Ben Uglou, representative of the Sublime Porte, and through him representative of the Sun and Moon. He was worthy of the magnitude of his mission; long-bearded and grim, equally vast and venerable, with the look of a dreamer and diplomatist of the first water; the whole idea, however, much diluted by a pair of spectacles. What necessity can those Tartars have for such contrivances of an effeminate civilisation? The Turcoman sees a caravan fifty miles off, or shoots his man at a mile off without spectacles. The Tartar rides a hundred miles a-head, through swamp, sand, forest, and mountain, straight as an arrow; finds his way from the Wall of China to the bat. tlements of Astracan, and robs a province, or overruns an empire, without them. It is only in cities, among the enfeebled sons of Europe, or this supreme generation of elegance who love debility for its own sake, that such appendages can become necessary. The Turk ought to wear them no more than the American Indian. Savages alike, and differing only by the difference between a cachemere shawl and a painted skin, they ought to be alike contemptuous of every thing that can impair the original dignity of their nature. The Moslem's spectacles spoiled my homage for the man of the scymitar. I looked no more even at the head of Mohammed.

The review ground lies beyond Woolwich, part of it along the banks of the Thames, which here are low, and part of it on an elevated plain inland.