The walks I have just mentioned have been extremely beautiful, but a great part of the trees have been cut down, and the ornamental parts destroyed, since the revolution--I know not why, as they were open to the poor as well as the rich, and were a great embellishment to the low town. You may think it strange that I should be continually dating some destruction from the aera of the revolution--that I speak of every thing demolished, and of nothing replaced. But it is not my fault--"If freedom grows destructive, I must paint it:" though I should tell you, that in many streets where convents have been sold, houses are building with the materials on the same site.--This is, however, not a work of the nation, but of individuals, who have made their purchases cheap, and are hastening to change the form of their property, lest some new revolution should deprive them of it.--Yours, &c. Arras, September. Nothing more powerfully excites the attention of a stranger on his first arrival, than the number and wretchedness of the poor at Arras. In all places poverty claims compulsion, but here compassion is accompanied by horror--one dares not contemplate the object one commiserates, and charity relieves with an averted eye. Perhaps with Him, who regards equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth and disease, and the blooming beauty who avoids while she succours him, the offering of humanity scarcely expiates the involuntary disgust; yet such is the weakness of our nature, that there exists a degree of misery against which one's senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts at the appearance of the poor of Arras.--These are not the cold and fastidious reflections of an unfeeling mind--they are not made without pain: nor have I often felt the want of riches and consequence so much as in my incapacity to promote some means of permanent and substantial remedy for the evils I have been describing. I have frequently enquired the cause of this singular misery, but can only learn that it always has been so. I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich without generosity. The decay of manufactures since the last century must have reduced many families to indigence. These have been able to subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the evil, instead of endeavouring to remedy it. But the benevolence of the French is not often active, nor extensive; it is more frequently a religious duty than a sentiment. They content themselves with affording a mere existence to wretchedness; and are almost strangers to those enlightened and generous efforts which act beyond the moment, and seek not only to relieve poverty, but to banish it. Thus, through the frigid and indolent charity of the rich, the misery which was at first