SIR,—You have asked me to tell you what I think of French affairs. I shall be pleased to do so; but I ought perhaps to begin by cautioning you against believing, or too much heeding, what I say. However, I do not imagine that I need do so; for with your experience of the public journals, you will be quite aware that it is not difficult to be an ‘occasional correspondent.’ Have your boots polished in a blacking-shop, and call the interesting officiator an ‘intelligent _ouvrier_;’ be shaved, and cite the _coiffeur_ as ‘a person in rather a superior station;’ call your best acquaintance ‘a well-informed person,’ and all others ‘persons whom I have found to be occasionally not in error,’ and—abroad, at least—you will soon have matter for a newspaper letter. I should quite deceive you if I professed to have made these profound researches; nor, like Sir Francis Head, ‘do I no longer know where I am,’ because the French President has asked me to accompany him in his ride. My perception of personal locality has not as yet been so tried. I only know what a person who is in a foreign country during an important political catastrophe cannot avoid knowing, what he runs against, what is beaten into him, what he can hardly help hearing, seeing, and reflecting. That Louis Napoleon has gone to Notre Dame to return thanks to God for the seven millions and odd suffrages of the French people—that he has taken up his abode at the Tuileries, and that he has had new napoleons coined in his name—that he has broken up the trees of liberty for firewood—that he has erased, or is erasing (for they are many), _Liberté_, _Egalité_, and _Fraternité_ from the National buildings,—all these things are so easy and so un-English, that I am pretty sure, with you, they will be thought signs of pompous impotence, and I suppose many people will be inclined to believe the best comment to be the one which I heard—‘_Mon Dieu, il a sauvé la France: la rue du Coq s’appelle maintenant la rue de l’Aigle!_’[33] I am inclined, however, to imagine that this idea would be utterly erroneous; that, on the contrary, the President is just now, at least, really strong and really popular; that the act of December 2nd did succeed and is succeeding; that many, that most, of the inferior people do really and sincerely pray _Domine Salvum fac Napoleonem_.