[6] We are not permitted to allude to the fête of St. Cloud as a scene of _pastoral_ amusement, or of the primitive simplicity which is associated with that epithet. The French are not a pastoral people, although they are not less so than the English; neither are the suburbs of a metropolis rural life. They are too near the pride of human art for pastoral pleasures, and no aristocracy is more infested with little tyrants than the neighbourhood of great cities, the oppressors being too timid to trust themselves far out of the verge of public haunts, in the midst of which they would be equally suspicious. Amusements are at all times among the best indications of national character; a truth which the ancients seem to have exaggerated into their maxim _in vino veritas_. Here the national comparison is not "odious." Three Sunday fairs are held within six miles of Paris, in a park, as was once the custom at Greenwich: the latter, though a royal park, does not boast of the residence of royalty, as does St Cloud. The objection to the day of the French fêtes is cleared by another argument. But what would be the character of a week-day fair, or fête, in Kensington Gardens? The intuitive answer will make the moral observer regret that man should so often place the interdict on his own happiness, and then peevishly repine at his uncheery lot. Night, with her poetic glooms, only served to heighten the lustre of the fairy fête; and as I receded through the wood, the little shoal of light gleamed and twinkled through "branches overgrown," and the distant sounds began to fall into solitary silence--even saddening to meditation--so fast do the dying glories of festive mirth sink into melancholy--till at once, with the last gleam and echo, I found myself in a pleasant little glade on the brow of the hill. The day had been unusually hot--all was hushed stillness. But the darkening clouds were fast gathering into black masses:-- The rapid lightning flames along the sky. What terrible event does this portend? The stifling heat of the atmosphere was, however, soon changed by slight gusts of wind; the leaves trembled; and a few heavy drops of rain fell as harbingers of the coming storm; the pattering ceased; an impressive pause succeeded--broken by the deepening roar of thunder.