The aspirations of France after glory in the field had been indulged, during the period of which we have treated, dreadfully for other countries, and the requital to herself was sufficiently fearful. A sentiment friendly to peace and good order has of late years distinguished even those two nations, which, by a rash and wicked expression, have been sometimes termed natural enemies. The enlarged ideas of commerce, as they spread wider, and become better understood, will afford, perhaps, the strongest and most irresistible motive for amicable intercourse--that, namely, which arises from mutual advantage; for commerce keeps pace with civilisation, and a nation, as it becomes wealthy from its own industry, acquires more and more a taste for the conveniences and luxuries, which are the produce of the soil, or of the industry, of other countries. Britain, of whom all that was selfish was expected and predicated by Napoleon and his friends--Britain, who was said to meditate enchaining France by a commercial treaty (which would have ruined her own manufactures,) has, by opening her ports to the manufactures of her neighbour, had the honour to lead the way in a new and more honourable species of traffic, which has in some degree the property ascribed by the poet to Mercy-- "It blesseth him who gives, and him who takes." To the eye of a stranger, the number of new buildings established in Paris, and indeed throughout France, are indications of capital and enterprise, of a nature much more satisfactory than the splendid but half-finished public edifices which Napoleon so hastily undertook, and so often left in an incomplete state. The general improvement of ideas may be also distinctly remarked, on comparing the French people of 1815 and 1826, and observing the gradual extinction of long-cherished prejudices and the no less gradual improvement and enlargement of ideas. This state of advancement cannot, indeed, be regular--it must have its ebbs and flows. But on the whole, there seems more reason than at any former period of the world, for hoping that there will be a general peace of some lengthened endurance; and that Britain and France, in particular, will satisfy themselves with enjoying in recollection the laurels each country has won in the field, and be contented to struggle for the palm of national superiority by the arts of peaceful and civilized industry. FOOTNOTES: [158] Hobhouse's Letters from Paris, written during the Last Reign of Napoleon.--S. [159] Moniteur, June 22; Montgaillard, tom. viii., p. 220. [160] Montgaillard, tom. viii., p. 222. [161] Fleury de Chamboullon, tom. ii., p. 296; Miss Williams' Narrative. [162] Montgaillard, tom. viii., p. 223; Fouché, tom. ii., p. 282; Las Cases, tom. i., p. 10; Savary, tom. iv., p. 98.