Our house is situated within view of a very pleasant public walk, where I am daily amused with a sight of the recruits at their exercise.  This is not quite so regular a business as the drill in the Park.  The exercise is often interrupted by disputes between the officer and his eleves—­some are for turning to the right, others to the left, and the matter is not unfrequently adjusted by each going the way that seemeth best unto himself.  The author of the "Actes des Apotres" [The Acts of the Apostles] cites a Colonel who reprimanded one of his corps for walking ill—­"Eh Dicentre, (replied the man,) comment veux tu que je marche bien quand tu as fait mes souliers trop etroits."* but this is no longer a pleasantry—­such circumstances are very common.  A Colonel may often be tailor to his own regiment, and a Captain operated on the heads of his whole company, in his civil capacity, before he commands them in his military one.

     "And how the deuce can you expect me to march well, when you have
     made my shoes too tight?”

The walks I have just mentioned have been extremely beautiful, but a great part of the trees have been cut down, and the ornamental parts destroyed, since the revolution—­I know not why, as they were open to the poor as well as the rich, and were a great embellishment to the low town.  You may think it strange that I should be continually dating some destruction from the aera of the revolution—­that I speak of every thing demolished, and of nothing replaced.  But it is not my fault—­“If freedom grows destructive, I must paint it:”  though I should tell you, that in many streets where convents have been sold, houses are building with the materials on the same site.—­This is, however, not a work of the nation, but of individuals, who have made their purchases cheap, and are hastening to change the form of their property, lest some new revolution should deprive them of it.—­Yours, &c.

Arras, September.

Nothing more powerfully excites the attention of a stranger on his first arrival, than the number and wretchedness of the poor at Arras.  In all places poverty claims compulsion, but here compassion is accompanied by horror—­one dares not contemplate the object one commiserates, and charity relieves with an averted eye.  Perhaps with Him, who regards equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth and disease, and the blooming beauty who avoids while she succours him, the offering of humanity scarcely expiates the involuntary disgust; yet such is the weakness of our nature, that there exists a degree of misery against which one’s senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts at the appearance of the poor of Arras.—­These are not the cold and fastidious reflections of an unfeeling mind—­they are not made without pain:  nor have I often felt the want of riches and consequence so much as in my incapacity to promote