The vaunted courtesy of the old school, the smooth urbanity that prevailed in former days of settled government and long-established aristocracy, had disappeared amid the savage republicanism of the revolution and the military furor of the empire; recent reverses had stung the national vanity to the quick; and English travelers, who crowded to Paris on the return of peace, expecting to meet with a gay, good-humored, complaisant populace, such as existed in the time of the "Sentimental Journey," were surprised at finding them irritable and fractious, quick at fancying affronts, and not unapt to offer insults. They accordingly inveighed with heat and bitterness at the rudeness they experienced in the French metropolis; yet what better had they to expect? Had Charles II. been reinstated in his kingdom by the valor of French troops; had he been wheeled triumphantly to London over the trampled bodies and trampled standards of England's bravest sons; had a French general dictated to the English capital, and a French army been quartered in Hyde Park; had Paris poured forth its motley population, and the wealthy bourgeoise of every French trading town swarmed to London; crowding its squares; filling its streets with their equipages; thronging its fashionable hotels, and places of amusements; elbowing its impoverished nobility out of their palaces and opera-boxes, and looking down on the humiliated inhabitants as a conquered people; in such a reverse of the case, what degree of courtesy would the populace of London have been apt to exercise toward their visitors? [Footnote: The above remarks were suggested by a conversation with the late Mr. Canning, whom the author met in Paris, and who expressed himself in the most liberal way concerning the magnanimity of the French on the occupation of their capital by strangers.]