standing joke. A deceived and dishonored husband is "The land that will not render Service unto thee, Can have no defender For its borders free." was true then and has been ever since, and that the united testimony of history will shew it. But it is well not do dwell too long on this point, lest we should forget that this licentiousness, shocking par as it is, is not the most crying fault of the nation. The great and awful sin of the French is a negative one their want of faith, their Mephistophelean incredulity for virtue, their Manichean belief in the success of evil, their Epicurean belief in things material only. Faith is surely the entelechy, the vital, energizing principle of Christianity. Christian faith was a new element introduced into theology; not like sanctioning and defining points of morality which had been imperfectly understood and rudely practised before, but something of which the Heathen had no conception it was a new idea impressed on the human mind. And it is just this idea which the French have destroyed among themselves. They have no abiding and realizing faith in the superintending interference of God; they cannot even sincerely echo the saying of the Greek tragedian, that the Deity is still mighty in Heaven, overseeing and ruling things below! They have no faith in the existence of great moral principles, truth, purity, integrity. They have no faith in God's creatures, man or woman, in the veracity and fidelity of the one or the virtue of the other. What little faith remains in the country is to be found in the relics of the Legitimist party, and theirs is a faith too nearly allied to superstition and bigotry, a faith which is not inconsistent with Modemy narrow-mindedness and hatred of truth, which does not interfere with intolerance on the one hand or immorality on the other, which does not hinder the Corsaire, for instance, from abusing the English and the Americans, Kossuth and Palmerston, in the most shameless way, as an interlude to its indecent narratives of actresses and its sneers at domestic life. Such a want of faith in a people is the most fatal of sins, because it is the least curable. A man may be dissipated, profane, criminal; it is a shame and a sorrow that he should be so. But so long as he acknowledges the existence of virtue, so long as he says: "I am not good, but there are those who are, and there is such a thing as goodness;" so long as he approves the meliora though he may run after the deteriora, so long there is hope for him: but when he has acquired a disbelief in virtue, and will neither be good himself nor allow any one else to be so, then is his condition fearful indeed. Moralists have erred in dwelling exclusively or chiefly on the indecency of French literature; they have applied to the Parisian novelists a test which would equally banish Rabelais and Swift and Aristophanes, and give us only family editions of Shakespeare. It is the want of belief in virtue, the chaos of principles, the apotheosis of vice, that constitutes the true mischief of these books. How this unhappy condition of the French mind was brought about is a much disputed and much disputable question of history. The Legitimists, and the friends of old-established despotism generally throughout Europe, of course, attribute it to the excesses of the first Revolution. Liberals, as naturally, carry the causes of it farther back; and a good Protestant may be pardoned for suspecting that it is something like a judgment on the nation, for having, in old times, deliberately preferred error to truth, and intolerance to toleration; that the wicked schemes of Madame de Maintenon, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the persecutions which drove out of France the most virtuous part of its population, have been fearfully avenged on the generations succeeding. But whatever be the cause, the melancholy fact is too apparent. The sole belief of the French is material and Manichean, confessing the power of the Prince of this world. For Religion, they have set up what their writers profanely call Love, but which it is not easy to represent in one word decently and truthfully at the same time perhaps the nearest expression to it would be Passion. For inward principle, they have set up outward manner; for a test of merit, they have taken the only test they can comprehend tangible worldly success. Hence, with the greatest refinement, and a very great intellectual superiority, the French have no moral elevation whatever. They talk a great deal about virtue, and purity, and honor, and self-denial; you will hear more about these on the French stage, and in French books and newspapers, than you will in any other country: but it is all talk, sheer blague, meaning nothing except to throw dust in one's eyes. They are positively incompetent to appreciate true greatness of soul. See, for instance, how the reception of Kossuth by the American people has affected the French. They were utterly unable to comprehend it. That a defeated and fugitive exile, who had nothing to give, but was himself in want of everything; that such a man should be welcomed as a hero, and his progress through a great country be like a triumphal march, was a worship of the setting sun beyond their understanding. They could only account for it by supposing that the Americans were so puerile or so blasés as to run after the most insignificant objects of curiosity. A scribbler in a French newspaper calling Kossuth an insignificant object! This moral incapacity shows itself in a thousand ways in giving prizes for virtue, and having moral comedies written to order; in the utter disregard for oaths and à fortiori for pledges, which so notoriously distinguishes French politicians; in the inability of French novelists, so exceedingly clever in the delineation of wickedness, to create a good man, an orthodox hero of romance. Now, to come back to our theme again; the old saying about virtue being peculiarly necessary to the duration of a republic, hacknied as it has become, often denied as it has been, I fully receive and endorse. The only danger is that, in drawing inferences from it, citizens of a republic may reason the wrong way, and say: Because we are a Republic, therefore we are the most virtuous people in the world; instead of: If we wish to secure our Republic, we must preserve our virtue. But faith is also most necessary, strong faith, in the institutions of the Republic, which does not prevent a wholesome watchfulness of individuals, or indeed, it must be added with sorrow, an occasional abuse of this watchfulness into unfair and embarrassing suspicions. The French have not this strong political faith; they have never had it, from the time of Louis XIV. down to this day. The frequent changes of their government are enough to show it. Had they believed in any of their governments since 1789 — even in that of Napoleon with the same earnestness which we entertain for our Constitution, it must have stood in spite of all the pressure from without. It has been stated that the French are destitute of moral elevation. At the same time, they are very intelligent, and very impressionable ready to admire what they understand that is to say, any achievement of courage or talent. Hence it follows that a man who is clever, daring, and successful, loses no moral ground by being unscrupulous; his dishonesties, his illegalities, his perjuries, do not excite the same popular indignation that they would in England or America. Every reader can make the application for himself, without its being necessary for me to say anything personal in reference to the Prince-President. The French have admitted success as the test of merit; the end of success justifies, in their eyes, the adoption of all means. Such could not be the case in England or America. Well, the French have chosen their government, as they had a perfect right to. Si populus vult decipi decipiatur. But Americans may draw one or two lessons from the present occurrences in France. 1. Louis Napoleon has been elected and re-elected by universal suffrage. Ergo, universal suffrage is not necessarily of itself a preservative against tyranny. Like all other kinds of suffrage, its effect depends upon the character and wisdom of those who exercise it, not on any virtue or charm inherent in its name or form. 2. England has at present, and has had for years: a. Free right of travel through her territory without passports; b. A free Press; c. Free right of public meetings. France has none of these things, and never had for any length of time. The first and second of these rights affect foreigners as well as citizens. Every American who has lived in England, and in France, has the difference of the two countries in respect of personal liberty brought home to him every day. Can any rational man hesitate as to which is the free country, France or England? Can any American, who is an American, hesitate as to which country has more points of sympathy with our own? Knickerbocker, February 1852. AN INTERCEPTED PARISIAN EPISTLE. We have great pleasure in presenting the accompanying 'Letter from Colonel Cranberry Fuster to Jefferson J. Grabster, Junior, Esquire, Acting Editor Pro. Tem. of the Oldport Daily Twaddler. ED. KNICKERBOCKER. Paris, Rue St. On-a-ray, November 10, 1851. 'MY DEAR JEFFERSON: We have always maintained, as you doubtless remember, that it does a young man, or even a middle-aged man, much good to see something of foreign lands; not that he can possibly hope to learn any thing there, especially in the way of morals or politics, but because (according to the popular belief, to dissent from which would be flat blasphemy) his experience of other countries must infallibly make him more contented and better satisfied with his own. Such a lesson cannot but be of great value, and is worth being learned thoroughly: it is therefore gratifying to find so many of our countrymen, particularly the more juvenile portion, disposed to learn it thoroughly. They frequently occupy several years in comparing the institutions of benighted Europe with our own, and studying the phases of life under despotic or semi-despotic governments, among all sexes and classes of the population. It can hardly be doubted that, when they return, it will |