some means of permanent and substantial remedy for the evils I have been describing.  I have frequently enquired the cause of this singular misery, but can only learn that it always has been so.  I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich without generosity.  The decay of manufactures since the last century must have reduced many families to indigence.  These have been able to subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the evil, instead of endeavouring to remedy it.  But the benevolence of the French is not often active, nor extensive; it is more frequently a religious duty than a sentiment.  They content themselves with affording a mere existence to wretchedness; and are almost strangers to those enlightened and generous efforts which act beyond the moment, and seek not only to relieve poverty, but to banish it.  Thus, through the frigid and indolent charity of the rich, the misery which was at first accidental is perpetuated, beggary and idleness become habitual, and are transmitted, like more fortunate inheritances, from one generation to another.—­This is not a mere conjecture—­I have listened to the histories of many of these unhappy outcasts, who were more than thirty years old, and they have all told me, they were born in the state in which I beheld them, and that they did not remember to have heard that their parents were in any other.  The National Assembly profess to effectuate an entire regeneration of the country, and to eradicate all evils, moral, physical, and political.  I heartily wish the numerous and miserable poor, with which Arras abounds, may become one of the first objects of reform; and that a nation which boasts itself the most polished, the most powerful, and the most philosophic in the world, may not offer to the view so many objects shocking to humanity.

The citadel of Arras is very strong, and, as I am told, the chef d’oeuvre of Vauban; but placed with so little judgement, that the military call it la belle inutile [the useless beauty].  It is now uninhabited, and wears an appearance of desolation—­the commandant and all the officers of the ancient government having been forced to abandon it; their houses also are much damaged, and the gardens entirely destroyed.—­I never heard that this popular commotion had any other motive than the general war of the new doctrines on the old.

I am sorry to see that most of the volunteers who go to join the army are either old men or boys, tempted by extraordinary pay and scarcity of employ.  A cobler who has been used to rear canary-birds for Mad. de ____, brought us this morning all the birds he was possessed of, and told us he was going to-morrow to the frontiers.  We asked him why, at his age, he should think of joining the army.  He said, he had already served, and that there were a few months unexpired of the time that would entitle him to his pension.—­“Yes; but in the mean while you may get killed; and then of what service will your claim to a pension be?”—­ "N’ayez pas peur, Madame—­Je me menagerai bien—­on ne se bat pas pour ces gueux la comme pour son Roi."*