tions; and even a new château, raised upon its ruins, is itself a ruin. Some broken walls, some roofless chambers, some crumbling towers, -and these are all. Peasants amuse themselves with their uncouth games in places where it would once have been death for a serf to enter. In the hollow below, a white spire rises in the midst of a few scores of houses, the remains of the fated city; and, in the distance, the Seine, majestic and beautiful, flows calmly and unswervingly on—like the fate of the human race! F CHAPTER V. LILLEBONNE. THE next morning, before going forth to visit in detail a place which, judging by the scraps and outlines of its history that had stuck to our memory, we were prepared to find so interesting, we were amused by a little dispute at the breakfast-table. We know not what were the merits of the case, or, in fact, what was the bone of contention among the feasters; but the words of a lady, who spoke with some heat, and great volubility, made such an impression upon us, as to turn away for the moment our thoughts from the GaulicRoman-Saxon-Norman-French city of Lillebonne. "Politeness!" exclaimed she, "French politeness! what a farce! You may as well talk of French chivalry, or of any thing else that belonged to an earlier age, but which is unknown in ours. The French of to-day are brutes! - low, vulgar, coarse-minded, ill-mannered brutes! They grin and chatter, I grant you, at a woman like so many monkeys; but as for the true respect which is shewn in action, in sacrifice, in endurance and forbearance, they know nothing about it. cold, phlegmatic Englishman is a thousand times more of a gentleman, as he calls it,—a word which has no synonyme in our language, although it resembles the chevalier of ancient times. If a woman is in danger The from the rain, whose umbrella, whose cloak, is at her service? The Frenchman's? Trust him! He buttons himself up to the chin with a grimace; while the Englishman, without moving a muscle, strips himself to the waistcoat, if necessary, and sits dripping like a water-god through the shower. If we are to be carried across the dirty road from the door of the diligence, who leads us by the end of the finger, choosing the cleanest place for his own tiptoes? Why, the Frenchman. Who, in the same situation, takes us up in his arms, and stalks, like a statue moved by magic, through the very depths of the mud, that he may land us, without a soil upon the hem of our gown, upon the pavé?· The Englishman, I say. French politeness! bah!"* It may be that the historical reference in the lady's speech harmonised with the nature of our thoughts; but, at all events, incongruous as the subjects may seem, we walked forth to view the Juliobona of the Romans, immersed in a reverie upon French politeness. : The fair disputant is right. The character of the French, so far as the male sex is concerned, has changed they are no longer a polite people. This discovery we must ourselves have made long since unconsciously, without having had the sense to apply it; for no sooner had she spoken, than we felt, from a hundred before-unheeded experiences, that she was right. The sovereignty of the women in France is supported by an ancestral prestige, which is daily *If we have not translated her speech, we hope we have at least guessed at the meaning of the fair Havraise, and have thus redeemed a very questionable security-the word of a traveller. vanishing. The Revolution, which overthrew the crown, shook the empire of beauty to its foundation; and the affair of July has left her only the memory of vanished greatness, and the shadow of a throne. As for the imperial régime that came between, it was apparently favourable to the falling cause, although really the reverse. The Bonaparte people were parvenus, and clung to all the prestiges of the preceding dynasty with the jealous eagerness of an attorney's wife, who suddenly finds herself, by some hocus-pocus of the law, the squiress and lady of the manor. Had Napoleon been a prince by birth, he would have contented himself with filling the throne of Saint Louis, instead of exaggerating the kingdom into an empire. This Cockneyism (universal word!) of the imperial family threw such an air of ridicule upon all their pretensions, that, even when bending before the queens and princesses (titled and untitled) of the house, the imagination, by the mischievous instinct of contrast, associated them with the idea of the mop and the wash-tub. As for the English, every body knows that we are all bulls and bears, and so we have no character to lose; but, notwithstanding, we are more polite, in the true sense of the word, than the French. Upon that question we will peril life and limb! Even the external garb of politeness is now almost universally laid aside in France. Formerly, and as late as the sixteenth century, if you met the public executioner on the road, he would mould his features into an expression of the most cordial bonhomie, and exclaim, "God preserve you from my hands!" When |