Sir Robert sat up late that night, or rather began early on the following day, to copy the stories he had most relished into the diary, and do what justice he could to "the rebel yell," and, having added an admirably discriminating chapter on "the present political situation in the States," concluded with, "How striking is the good sense, the good feeling, that both the conquerors and the conquered have shown, on the whole! In other countries, how often has a war far less bloody and protracted left in its wake evils far greater than the original one, in guerilla warfare, murders, ceaseless revolt, and smouldering hatred lasting for centuries on one side, and centuries of tyranny, oppression, executions, confiscations, on the other! A brave and fine race this, not made of the stuff that goes to keep up vendettas, shoot landlords, blow up rulers, assassinate enemies. They can fight as well as any, and they have shown that they can forgive better than most,--taken together, true manliness. It may be that they are influenced by a consideration which is said to be always present to an American,--'Will it pay?' and of course so practical a people as this see that anarchy doesn't pay; but I would rather attribute their conduct to nobler, more generous motives, and in doing this seem to myself to be doing them no more than justice." F.C. BAYLOR. [TO BE CONCLUDED.] OUR VILLE. The picturesqueness of France in our day is confined almost exclusively to its humble life. The Renaissance and the Revolution swept away in most parts of the country moated castle, abbaye, grange, and chateau, to replace them with luxurious but conventional piles and ruins humbly restored and humbly inhabited. Many a farmhouse with unkempt _cour_ and dishevelled _pelouse_ is the relic of a turreted château, stables are often desecrated churches, seigneurial _colombiers_ shelter swine, and battlemented portals to fortified walls serve, as does the one of our ville, to house hideously-uniformed _douaniers_ watching the luggage of arriving travellers. Our ville was never an aristocratic one, and to this day very few of our names are preceded by the idealizing particle _de_. We have an ancient history, however,--so ancient that all historians place our origin at _un temps trèsrecule_. We had houses and walls when Rouen yonder was a marsh, and we saw Havre spring up like a mushroom only two little centuries and a half ago. Besieged and taken, burned and ravaged, alternately by Protestant and Catholic, no wonder our ville has not even ruins to show that we are older than the fifteen hundreds. Still, ancient though we are, we have always been a ville of humble folk,--hardy sailors, brave fishers, and thrifty bourgeois,--and to-day, as always, our highest families buy and sell and build their philistine homes back toward the _côte_, while our humble ones picturesquely haunt the _quais_.