After all I have told you, and all that you may have heard from others, I am nevertheless inclined to believe that the high society of Paris is quite as exemplary as that of any other large European town. If we are any better ourselves, is it not more owing to the absence of temptation, than to any other cause? Put large garrisons into our towns, fill the streets with idlers who have nothing to do but to render themselves agreeable, and with women with whom dress and pleasure are the principal occupations, and then let us see what Protestantism and liberty will avail us in this particular. The intelligent French say that their society is improving in morals. I can believe this assertion, of which I think there is sufficient proof by comparing the present with the past, as the latter has been described to us. By the past, I do not mean the period of the Revolution, when vulgarity assisted to render vice still more odious--a happy union, perhaps, for those who were to follow,--but the days of the old _régime_. Chance has thrown me in the way of three or four old dowagers of that period, women of high rank, and still in the first circles, who, amid all their _finesse_ of breeding, and ease of manner, have had a most desperate _rouée_ air about them. Their very laugh, at times, has seemed replete with a bold levity that was as disgusting as it was unfeminine. I have never, in any other part of the world, seen loose sentiments _affichés_, with more effrontery. These women are the complete antipodes of the quiet, elegant Princesse de ----, who was at Lady ---- ----'s this evening; though some of them write _Princesses_ on their cards, too. The influence of a court must be great on the morals of those who live in its purlieus. Conversing with the Duc de ----, a man who has had general currency in the best society of Europe, on this subject, he said,--"England has long decried our manners. Previously to the Revolution, I admit they were bad; perhaps worse than her own; but I know nothing in our history so bad as what I have witnessed in England. The King invited me to dine at Windsor. I found every one in the drawing-room, but his Majesty and Lady ----. She entered but a minute before him, like a queen. Her reception was that of a queen; young, unmarried females kissed her hand. Now, all this might happen in France, even now; but Louis XV, the most dissolute of our monarchs, went no farther. At Windsor, I saw the husband, sons, and daughters of the favourite, in the circle! _Le parc des Cerfs_ was not as bad as this."