Much as I deplore some of the consequences of the Revolution in France, and the atrocities by which it was stained, it is impossible not to admit the great and salutary change effected in the habits and feelings of the people since that event.

Who can live on terms of intimacy with the French, without being struck by the difference between those of our time, and those of whom we read previously to that epoch?
The system of education is totally different.

The habits of domestic life are wholly changed.

The relations between husband and wife, and parents and children, have assumed another character, by which the bonds of affection and mutual dependances are drawn more closely together; and _home_, sweet _home_, the focus of domestic love, said to have been once an unknown blessing, at least among the _haute noblesse_, is now endeared by the discharge of reciprocal duties and warm sympathies.
It is impossible to doubt but that the Revolution of 1789, and the terrible scenes in the reign of terror which followed it, operated in producing the change to which I have referred.

It found the greater portion of the _noblesse_ luxuriating in pleasure, and thinking only of selfish, if not of criminal indulgence, in pursuits equally marked by puerility and vice.
The corruption of the regency planted the seeds of vice in French morals, and they yielded a plentiful harvest.