The French Revolution will ever be wrapped in clouds and darkness to those who direct their attention to itself alone. The only light that can illuminate its course must be sought in the times which preceded it. Without a clear perception of the former society of France, of its laws, of its defects, of its prejudices, of its littleness, of its greatness, it is impossible to comprehend what the French have been doing in the sixty years which have followed its dissolution; but even this perception will not suffice without penetrating to the very quick into the character of this nation. When I consider this people in itself it strikes me as more extraordinary than any event in its own annals. Was there ever any nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in all its actions; more swayed by sensations, less by principles; led therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes greatly above it;--a people so unalterable in its leading instincts, that its likeness may still be recognised in descriptions written two or three thousand years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily thoughts and in its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement to itself, and to be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the sight of what it has done;--a people beyond all others the child of home and the slave of habit, when left to itself, but when once torn against its will from the native hearth and from its daily pursuits, ready to go to the end of the world and to dare all things; indocile by temperament, yet accepting the arbitrary and even the violent rule of a sovereign more readily than the free and regular government of the chief citizen; to-day the declared enemy of all obedience, to-morrow serving with a sort of passion which the nations best adapted for servitude cannot attain; guided by a thread as long as no one resists, ungovernable when the example of resistance has once been given; always deceiving its masters, who fear it either too little or too much; never so free that it is hopeless to enslave it, or so enslaved that it may not break the yoke again; apt for all things but excelling only in war; adoring chance, force, success, splendour and noise, more than true glory; more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of good sense, ready to conceive immense designs rather than to accomplish great undertakings; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of the nations of Europe and that best fitted to become by turns an object of admiration, of hatred, of pity, of terror, but never of indifference!