FRANCE.
France, "with all thy faults I love thee still!" No man should travel from his cradle to his grave without paying thee a visit by the way: with a disposition prone to enjoyment, it lightens the journey amazingly. The French are a kind people, and it must be his fault who cannot live happily with them. Pity it is, possessing, as they do, whatever can contribute to the felicity of a people in a state of peace, that war should be indispensable in order to render their idea of happiness complete. La gloire and la guerre form the eternal burden of their song—as if the chief business of life were to destroy life. They would fight to-morrow with any nation on earth, for no better an object than the chance of achieving a victory. Laugh at me, if you please, for uttering what you may consider a foolish opinion, but I look upon it as a serious misfortune to them that the two words Gloire and Victoire rhyme together: they so constantly occur in that portion of their poetry which is the most popular, and the best calculated to excite them in a high degree—their vaudeville songs—that the two ideas they express have become identical in their minds; and he will deserve well of his country who shall discover the means of making glory rhyme to peace.—Ibid.