They sit, now and then, silent and gloomy, and mourn for the "Pauvre France." "Nous sommes bien tombes." This is a good sign, but will it outlive a single gleam of success?
Shall we not in that case have the Gallic cock crowing as lustily as ever?
The French have many amiable and engaging qualities, and if adversity would only teach them wisdom, the country is rich enough to rise from the ruin which has overtaken it.

M.Jules Simon has published a plan of education which he says in twenty years will produce a race of virile citizens; but this is a little long to wait for a social regeneration.

At present they are schoolboys, accustomed to depend on their masters for everything, and the defence of Paris is little more than the "barring out" of a girls' school.

They cannot, like Anglo-Saxons, organise themselves, and they have no man at their head of sufficient force of character to impose his will upon them.

The existing Government has, it is true, to a certain extent produced administrative order, but they have not succeeded in inspiring confidence in themselves, or in raising the spirit of the Parisians to the level of the situation.