But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?--"I love this people," says he in his "_Misopogon_," "because they are serious and severe like myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate. The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government, have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation. Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief, and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them. The French government was originally that of all the northern nations--of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was almost the only administration of the French in the first two generations, before Charles the Simple. When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but originally there was not the least similitude between them.