And from this point we start afresh, and begin the same business over again, with sundry fresh interludes.

All this is highly amusing to the English Public to hear and read of; but I doubt whether our countrymen would like to be actual performers in such a drama.

Whether the French really are so, or whether they are mystifying us in the accounts they send over, I will not presume to decide.  But if the former supposition be the true one,—­if they have been so long really acting over and over again in their own persons such a drama, it must be allowed that they deserve to be characterized as they have been in the description given of certain European nations:  “An Englishman,” it has been said, “is never happy but when he is miserable; a Scotchman is never at home but when he is abroad; an Irishman is never at peace but when he is fighting; a Spaniard is never at liberty but when he is enslaved; and a Frenchman is never settled but when he is engaged in a revolution.”

POSTSCRIPT TO THE TWELFTH EDITION.

“Time” says the proverb, “rings Truth to light.”  But the process is gradual and slow.  The debt is paid, as it were, by instalments.  It is only bit by bit, and at considerable intervals, that Truth comes forth as the morning twilight to dispel the mists of fiction.

It is above forty years that men have been debating the question:—­Who were the parties that burned the city of Moscow?—­without ever thinking of the preliminary question, whether it ever was burnt at all.  And now at length we learn that it never was.

The following extract from a New Orleans paper contains the information obtained by an American traveller—­one of that great nation whose accuracy as to facts is so well known—­who visited the spot.

  INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL—­CITY OF MOSCOW.

Senator Douglas is said to have made the discovery, while travelling in Russia, that the city of Moscow was never burned!  The following statement of the matter is from the Muscatine (Iowa) Inquirer: 

“Coming on the boat, a few days ago, we happened to fall in company with Senator Douglas, who came on board at Quincy, on his way to Warsaw.  In the course of a very interesting account of his travels in Russia, much of which has been published by letter-writers, he stated a fact which has never yet been published, but which startlingly contradicts the historical relation of one of the most extraordinary events that ever fell to the lot of history to record.  For this reason the Judge said he felt a delicacy in making the assertion, that the city of Moscow was never burned!

“He said, that previous to his arrival at Moscow, he had several disputes with his guide as to the burning of the city, the guide declaring that it never occurred, and seeming to be nettled at Mr. Douglas’s persistency in his opinion; but,