However, putting sentiment and personal feeling of every kind apart, so much that is admirable in Paris owes its origin to him, that his ambition and his usurpations are involuntarily forgotten, and the use made of his ill-gotten power almost obliterates the lawless tyranny of the power itself. The appearance of his statue, therefore, on the top of the column formed of the cannon taken by the armies of France when fighting under his command, appeared to me to be the result of an arrangement founded upon perfect propriety and good taste. When his effigy was torn down some twenty years ago by the avenging hands of the Allies, the act was one both of moral justice and of natural feeling; and that the rightful owners of the throne he had seized should never have replaced it, can hardly be matter of surprise: but that it should now again be permitted to look down upon the fitful fortunes of the French people, has something of historic propriety in it which pleases the imagination. This statue of Napoleon offers the only instance I remember in which that most grotesque of European habiliments, a cocked-hat, has been immortalized in marble or in bronze with good effect. The original statue, with its flowing outline of Roman drapery, was erected by a feeling of pride; but this portrait of him has the every-day familiar look that could best satisfy affection. Instead of causing the eye to turn away as it does from some faithful portraitures of modern costume with positive disgust, this _chapeau à trois cornes_, and the well-known loose _redingote_, have that air of picturesque truth in them which is sure to please the taste even where it does not touch the heart. To the French themselves this statue is little short of an idol. Fresh votive wreaths are perpetually hung about its pedestal; and little draperies of black crape, constantly renewed, show plainly how fondly his memory is still cherished. While Napoleon was still among them, the halo of his military glory, bright as it was, could not so dazzle the eyes of the nation but that some portentous spots were discerned even in the very nucleus of that glory itself; but now that it shines upon them across his tomb, it is gazed at with an enthusiasm of devoted affection which mixes no memory of error with its regrets. It would, I think, be very difficult to find a Frenchman, let his party be what it might, who would speak of Napoleon with disrespect. I one day passed the foot of his gorgeous pedestal in company with a legitimate _sans reproche_, who, raising his eyes to the statue, said--"Notre position, Madame Trollope, est bien dure: nous avons perdu le droit d'être fidèles, sans avoir plus celui d'être fiers." FOOTNOTE: [1] April 1835. LETTER III. Slang.--Les Jeunes Gens de Paris.--La Jeune France.--Rococo.--Décousu.