A French master and mistress issue their orders to their domestics with much more familiarity than the English do; take a lively interest in their welfare and happiness; advise them about their private concerns; inquire into the cause of any depression of spirits, or symptom of ill health they may observe, and make themselves acquainted with the circumstances of those in their establishment.

This system lessens the distance maintained between masters and servants, but does not really diminish the respect entertained by the latter towards their employers, who generally find around them humble friends, instead of, as with us, cold and calculating dependents, who repay our hauteur by a total indifference to our interests, and, while evincing all the external appearance of profound respect, entertain little of the true feeling of it to their masters.

Treating our servants as if they were automatons created solely for our use, and who, being paid a certain remuneration for their services, have no claim on us for kindness or sympathy, is a system very injurious to their morals and our own interests, and requires an amelioration.  But while I deprecate the tone of familiarity that so frequently shocks the untravelled English in the treatment of French employers to their servants, I should like to see more kindness of manner shewn by the English to theirs.  Nowhere are servants so well paid, clothed, fed, and lodged, as with us, and nowhere are they said to feel so little attachment to their masters; which can only be accounted for by the erroneous system to which I have referred.

——­ came to see me to-day.  He talked politics, and I am afraid went away shocked at perceiving how little interest I took in them.  I like not political subjects in England, and avoid them whenever I can; but here I feel very much about them, as the Irishman is said to have felt when told that the house he was living in was on fire, and he answered “Sure, what’s that to me!—­I am only a lodger!”

——­ told me that France is in a very dangerous state; the people discontented, etc. etc.  So I have heard every time I have visited Paris for the last ten years; and as to the people being discontented, when were they otherwise I should like to know?  Never, at least since I have been acquainted with them; and it will require a sovereign such as France has not yet known to satisfy a people so versatile and excitable.  Charles the Tenth is not popular.  His religious turn, far from conciliating the respect or confidence of his subjects, tends only to awaken their suspicions of his being influenced by the Jesuits—­a suspicion fraught with evil, if not danger, to him.

Strange to say, all admit that France has not been so prosperous for years as at present.  Its people are rapidly acquiring a love of commerce, and the wealth that springs from it, which induces me to imagine that they would not be disposed to risk the advantages they possess by any measure likely to subvert the present state of things.  Nevertheless, more than one alarmist like ——­ shake their heads and look solemn, foretelling that affairs cannot long go on as they are.