In my short walk from the Quai du Châtelet I could not have seen less than ten thousand men, and again I was struck by the contrast between the soldiers of the two nations. In the stunted and undeveloped make of these youthful French levies, any observant spectator, though not a physician, might have beheld the offspring of parents who had overtaxed their vital energies by dissipation and luxury. Physical degeneration had set in among the inhabitants, not of the large towns only,--such as Marseilles, Lyons, and Paris, or Roubaix and St. Étienne,--but in the rural parts of the country likewise, ever since the days of the Revolution. Napoléon's wars had consumed the men of France during his twenty campaigns. But that was not all. I have spoken of the decay of religion; it was a patent fact; and, with religion, morality had seen its own influence decline. Legal restrictions on the disposal of property had given strength to the system, whereby married persons limited their families according to their means and social position. That is the undoubted cause of the estrangement between the average layman and the Catholic clergy that has so long prevailed; for against this system the clergy have set their faces, as they were bound to do. With such parents, and especially when their fathers set them the example, it was not to be wondered at if the growing lads had put away religion at an early age, and so lost the moral restraint which would have enabled them to turn out valiant men, sound in mind as in body, and a match for any Germans. Their sunken eyes and pinched faces, their whole bearing, indeed, told a very different tale. We were looking on, in those unhappy days, at the wreck of a population which, in shame and defeat, was paying the penalty of laws not to be broken with impunity. So much for the rank and file. As regards the singular want of courage no less than competency among their officers, it may with truth be affirmed that one of the main factors, in addition to those already mentioned, was the total neglect of early training, and the absence of that physical education which tends to a manly development. This system, which characterises public school life in England and Germany, and which results for the most part in a straightforward character, and an undaunted temper, had not then been introduced into France. It is now not unknown there, and will perhaps change the disposition of the coming generations. Many tokens there are to prove that such a change is greatly needed.