The sketch is taken in the park of Monceaux, at the western extremity of the capital. The old trees stand there pretty nearly as they did, although some have been cut down or torn up, no one can well say why, unless it may have been from a spirit of devastation for devastation's sake; the old clumps, and the grass-plots, although sadly worn, are still there; but how different is the aspect of the spot from that which might have been sketched last year in the same sweet spring-tide! The calm and the make-believe rurality are gone. Where nurse-maids and children gambolled on the greensward, or a couple of lovers lingered so near the tumult of the capital, and yet so secluded and unobserved, or the dreamer lounged to dream at ease, although the roar of the great city still rang in his ears, is now a scene of confusion and disorder. A herd of miserable, or idle and reckless men, have been there got together; and the spot has been allotted as one of the newly constituted revolutionary national workshops. "Workshops!" what irony in the word! Work there is none for the wretched men to do; profit there is none, at the very best, to expect from it. The impoverished and harassed country is burdened with new taxes, to keep the dangerous and disorderly in a seeming state of quiet; the fears of a government, or even its treacherous designs, call for funds from all the country to pay this herd of men, who prefer eating the bread of idleness as their due--for have not they been told that they are the masters, and that the country must support them?--to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow, when they are enabled to do it: and all this sacrifice shall not hereafter avert the danger anticipated by those fears.