Walked into the streets to-day, for a carriage cannot yet pass through them.  Never did any town, not actually sacked, present a more changed aspect.  Houses damaged by shots, windows smashed, pavements destroyed, and trees cut down or mutilated, meet the eye along the Boulevards.  The destruction of the trees excited more regret in my mind than that of the houses.  There, many of them lay on the ground shorn of their leafy honours, offering obstructions on the spots which they so lately ornamented, while others stood bare and desolate, their giant limbs lopped off, their trunks shattered by bullets, and retaining only a few slight branches oh high, to which still adhered the parched, discoloured, and withered leaves, sole remnants of their lately luxuriant foliage.

The houses may be rebuilt and the streets newly paved, but how many years will it take before these trees can be replaced!  Those who loved to repose beneath their shade, or who, pent in a city, were solaced by beholding them and thinking of the country of which they brought pleasant recollections, will grieve to miss them, and, like me, own with a sigh, while contemplating the ravages occasioned by the events of the last few days, that if good ever is effected by that most dangerous of all experiments, a revolution, it is too dearly bought.

The people seem as proud and pleased as possible with the accomplishment of the task they took in hand.  How long will they continue so?  They are like a too-spirited horse who, having mastered his rider, requires a bolder and more expert hand to subjugate him again to obedience, and the training will be all the more painful from the previous insubordination.  Of one thing the people may be proud, and that is, their having not stained this revolution with any of the crimes that have left so indelible a blot on the former one.

How soon does the mind habituate itself to an unnatural state of excitement!  My femme de chambre positively looked blank and disappointed this morning, when, on entering my chambre a coucher, she answered in reply to my question, whether any thing new had occurred during the night, “Non, miladi, positivement rien.”  Strange to say, I too felt desoeuvre by the want of having something to be alarmed or to hope about,—­I, who meddle not with politics, and wish all the world to be as quiet and as calm as myself.  Every one I see appears to experience this same flatness, just like the reaction produced on the spirits the first day or two after the Italian Carnival, when the cessation of gaiety, though felt to be a relief to the frame, leaves the mind unfitted for repose.

I find this feeling is generally experienced, for several of the shop-keepers, whose profit,—­nay, whose very bread, depends on the restoration of social order, confess it.  One person, the wife of a jeweller, owned to me to-day that Paris was now beginning to be very triste.