On the subject of the French manners and customs we feel disposed to say little, because general observations, on the habits of so large and diversified a community, are rarely just, and because our extended intercourse with France, for the last ten years, must have given to the majority of our readers full opportunity to form their judgment upon this topic, either from personal observation, or the remarks of our numerous travellers.

While an Englishman, on landing in France, will be to a degree surprised and disgusted with the apparent negligence and want of cleanliness and decorum which pervade the manners of the people, he will feel these in no small degree counterbalanced by the uniform cheerfulness, hospitality, and frankness of all classes. Every thing is out of order; the common inns are complete Irish cabins, and the streets much resembling those of the Auld Town' of Edinburgh, in regard to certain accumulations and general filthiness; while each sex considers the most unreserved enquiries into your business and objects fully warranted by the universal willingness to acquaint you with their own. The eyes of our countrymen are also particularly engaged by the remarkable activity of the women of the middle and lower classes. While in England the domestic circle and its cares are felt to occupy them sufficiently, particularly as we advance from the lowest stations in life; in France they are in the habit of taking part in almost every kind of business, and appear even more frequently than the male sex in shops and warehouses. This produces naturally a degree of coarseness in the manners of the middle class of females not seen in this country. There is also said to be a remarkable contrast between the restraint observable in the females of France before marriage, and the unbounded license of their deportment afterwards.

His vivacity and love of society, urge a Frenchman to singular excesses: he is all ardor of course in love and friendship, but he is con

sumed with 'ennui' out of society. It is his element, to the utter neglect of personal stability of character; the life of his pleasures and the centre of his gratifications.' Hence all ranks of society love display: effect is the great and almost sole aim of a parliamentary oration; and the middle and lower ranks work, sit, debate, and converse in the streets with a pantomimic eagerness to accomplish that great object. No one has, on the whole, characterised the French with more true English feeling, than the late lamented Mr. Scott.

'The essence of their character,' he observes, ' is an exuberance of animal spirits, producing excess of mobility, and a perpetual restless activity. They are quick, ingenious, fertile in expedient, buoyant against difficulty or adversity; but mutable, trifling, confident, vain, credulous, and incapable of moderation. With much that renders them amiable in society, as readiness to oblige, delicate attentions, kind sympathy, and lively sensibility, they are often of insecure commerce, from laxity of principle, unmeaning professions, jealous irritability, and a strong propensity to intrigue.'

They are a clever people, they are an active people, they are a gay people; but they are not deep or sound thinkers; they do not feel virtuously, or permanently; they have no native relish for the charms of nature, the shallow sophistications and theatrical forms of artificial systems are their favorites;-they can see nothing but simple facts, they cannot detect causes, consequences, and connexion, and (what is worst of all) their actions are not indexes to their hearts. Hence they must be, and are, smart conversers, amiable talkers, dexterous workers,-persons who pull down pyramids to see what they contain,-who make drawings of ruins, exhibitions of statues, and speeches at institutes :-but hence they cannot be, and are not, either inspired poets, sound moralists, or correct politicians. Look at all the great modern discoveries of concealed truths, that have done honor to human knowledge, and advantage to human condition, scarcely one of them has been made by France-but France has robbed the discoverers of their honors, and France has raised many splendid but false theories, and Frenchmen have been very able and industrious compilers, collectors, linguists and travellers. On the other hand, by far the majority of the atrocities, disappointments, and sufferings, which have befallen the world during the last 100 years, have had their source in France; there is scarcely an imaginable extreme of opposite follies and crimes into which she has not plunged herself within that period;there is not an example of imprudence which she has not afforded, not a possible boast of vanity which she has not offensively made, and from which she has not been disgracefully driven. It would be unworthy of a rational man to feel incensed against a nation, but it would be dastardly and unfaithful towards all the most important interests of our nature, to fall silently in with pretensions that are untrue, unfair, and mischievous. There is no shape in which the claim of being the greatest people in the world

can be made, in which it has not been made by the French.—It is repeated day after day, under every possible change of circumstances; now as conquerors, now as vanquished, now as republicans, now as imperialists, now as royalists. Whatever freak they cut, whatever tumble they take,-whether they stand on their heads or their heels, or lie or sit, they poke their faces in those of their neighbours, with a supercilious grin of satisfaction, and an intolerable assumption of superiority.'

POPULATION. France in 1791, when of about the present extent of territory, according to a survey then made, contained 26,363,600 inha

bitants: in 1817 she was computed to number 29,000,000 of inhabitants.

The ratio of the increase of population in this country is found to be greatest in the lower classes; the middle and upper ranks seldom having large families, and men of such stations being little habituated to steady industry. The illegitimate births are not numerous except in Paris.

The following tables exhibit both the actual existing state of the population according to the latest returns; and the progress of it with regard to births, marriages, and deaths

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PART II.

HISTORY OF FRANCE.

SECT. I.-THE VARIOUS RACES OF ANCIENT GAUL.

The people who inhabited France at the most distant epoch of its history are scarcely known but in the writings of their conquerors, the Romans. They undoubtedly owed their origin to other conquering nations mixed with the people they had subdued. Cæsar represents them as warlike, going always armed, and ready on all occasions to terminate their differences by the sword; as a people of great levity, and little inclined to idleness; but hospitable, generous,

confiding, and sincere. They were so possessed with the idea of what has been called the right of the strongest, that they claimed the power of life and death over their wives and children. The Druids, their priests, who were the sole depositaries of learning amongst them, were indebted to the credulity of the people for the deference they paid to them. These priests ruled the people by the terror of their anathemas; they were exempt from all tribute to the state, and abounded in riches. Like many other barbarians, they sacrificed human victims. It is said, however, that they taught the doctrine of one Supreme Being; but it seems more probable, that they maintained only the superstitions