courtliness of their own; but it was more the manner of our own
country gentlemen of the last century, than the polish of Versailles.
Their habits of living on their domains, of country sports, of
intercourse with their peasantry, and of the general simplicity of
country life, had drawn a strong line of distinction between them and
the dukes and marquises of the royal saloons. Like all Frenchmen of
the day, they conversed largely upon the politics of France; but there
was a striking reserve in their style. The existing royal family were
but little mentioned, or mentioned only with a certain kind of sacred
respect. Their misfortunes prohibited the slightest severity of
language. Yet still it was not difficult to see, that those
straightforward and honest lords of the soil, who were yet to prove
themselves the true chevaliers of France, could feel as acutely, and
express as strongly, the injuries inflicted by the absurdities and
vices of the successive administrations of their reign, as if they had
figured in the clubs of the capital. But the profligacies of the
preceding monarch, and the tribe of fools and knaves whom those
profligacies as naturally gathered round him as the plague propagates
its own contagion, met with no mercy. And, though they were spoken of
with the gravity which became the character and rank of the speakers,
they were denounced with a sternness which seemed beyond the morals or
the mind of their country. Louis XV., Du Barri, and the whole long
succession of corrupting and corrupted cabinets, which had at length
rendered the monarchy odious, were denounced in terms worthy of
gallant men; who, though resolved to sink or swim with the throne,
experienced all the bitterness of generous indignation at the crimes
which had raised the storm.

We had our songs too, and some of them were as contemptuous as ever
came from the pen of Parisian satire. Among my recollections of the