FRENCH CHARITY.
In the foregoing observations I have not hesitated to refer to some faults, vanities, and unreasonable expectations which attracted my attention during my residence in Paris. I shall now offer a few remarks and a little narrative connected with one of the noblest virtues that can elevate and adorn human nature, and which I believe to exist in the French character to a degree far beyond what would be imagined by the travellers whose brief visits enable them to take only transient or superficial views of French society. There is no civilized nation more charitable than the French. They have no legalised and established system of poor laws, but their cities abound with benevolent institutions, and the requirements of helpless age or unprotected infancy are never disregarded. There is no lack of charity in any class—even the rag-pickers will share their slender means in alleviating human suffering. Amongst the more affluent there is very little mediocrity of religious feeling; they are generally devout or indifferent, but very few are uncharitable. The means of relief for the suffering of indigence are almost always administered through religious agencies; and the mercy that is manifested in a generous and unostentatious succour of the poor, exemplifies very frequently the words of Shakespeare—
"It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
For many of those who were indifferent to religion, but disposed to charity, have been themselves caught, reformed, and reconciled through the energies which they employed for relieving the necessities of others.