Is it the blood, the rearing, or the religion of these people which makes them what they are?  They are full of passion; yet they are gentle and forbearing toward every one whom they suppose does not desire to wrong or offend them; they are generous and unexacting, abounding in the charity of the heart, philanthropic, and seemingly from instinct practising toward all the world all the Christian virtues.  They are brave, and quick to resent insult or wrong, and prefer death to dishonor; scrupulously just in all transactions with their fellow-men, forbearing toward the foibles of others, without envy, and without malice.  In their family intercourse they are respectful and kind, and particularly to their children:  they are cautious never to oppress or mortify a child—­directing the parental authority first to the teaching of the heart, then to the mind—­instilling what are duties with a tenderness and gentleness which win the affections of the child to perform these through love only.  Propriety of deportment toward their seniors and toward each other is instilled from infancy and observed through life.  All these lessons are stamped upon the heart, not only by the precepts of parents and all about them, but by their example.

The negro servants constitute a part of every household, and are identified with the family as part of it.  To these they are very kind and forbearing, as also to their children, to whom they uniformly speak and act gently.  A reproof is never given in anger to either, nor in public, for the purpose of mortifying, but always in private, and gently—­in sorrow rather than in anger; and where punishment must be resorted to, it is done where only the parent or master, and the child or servant, can see or know it.  This is the example of the Church.  The confessional opens up to the priest the errors of the penitent, and they are rebuked and forgiven in secret, or punished by the imposition of penalties known only to the priest and his repentant parishioner.  Is it this which makes such models of children and Christians in the educated Creole population of Louisiana? or is it the instinct of race, the consequence of a purer and more sublimated nature from the blue blood of the exalted upon earth?  The symmetry of form, the delicacy of feature in the males, their manliness of bearing, and the high chivalrous spirit, as well as the exquisite beauty and grace of their women, with the chaste purity of their natures, would seem to indicate this as the true reason.

All who have ever entered a French Creole family have observed the gentle and respectful bearing of the children, their strict yet unconstrained observance of all the proprieties of their position, and also the affectionate intercourse between these and their parents, and toward each other—­never an improper word; never an improper action; never riotous; never disobedient.  They approach you with confidence, yet with modesty, and are respectful even in the mirth