POINT D'HONNEUR.

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but a mere degradation from the rank of a soldier, to which he can never afterwards be admitted. The culprit, in grave cases of delinquency, is sent to the galleys, or consigned to hard labour.

The point d'honneur runs so high in the French army, that a soldier once degraded can never re-enter the service in any capacity: any attempt to force him into it would produce a mutiny among the men. a soldier never receives a blow, even from his officer, without resenting it sur le champ. If For the same reason, he did, in the first place his comrades would no longer company with him; and in the next, the cer that committed the outrage would inevitadly be put to death. conduded, that degradation is to a French It may, therefore, be

soldier the most impressive of all admonitions,

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and upon such minds must make a deeper ssion than any mere corporal inflictions bly do, where the sense of dishonour

is esse. An instance of this lively feeling face occurred in Sicily, when I was dere. One of our soldiers, who had been

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always remarkable for his strict good conduct, was reprimanded on parade by his officer; which made so great an impression, that no sooner was the parade over, than he stepped quietly aside and blew his brains out. I hope it will not be long before the horrible and impolitic practice of flogging will be abandoned in both our services: it never can improve a good character, and it infallibly hardens a bad one.

The custom of reasoning by blows, which has so long been a part of our naval and military discipline, is banished even from the schools of France. Boys are made to feel, like soldiers, the disgrace of their conduct, but are never struck. The lowest of the people will not put up with a blow. To be known to do so is exclusion from society; and accordingly their differences, when serious, are settled like gentlemen. There were two men, when I visited the hospital, under Baron Larry, who had been brought in the day before with tremendous gashes on the head, inflicted in a duel. One had his ear nearly off. Not long since, the conductor of a diligence having

received some harsh language from a traveller, bore long without complaint; at last, able to stand it no longer, he doffed his frock, and taking his cordon d'honneur out of his pocket, and deliberately placing it in his button-hole, delivered himself as follows: "Sir, I have

borne very long with you in my capacity of conductor; but take care how you proceed further in this insolence, or you will have to answer to me as a soldier and a man of honour." A challenge even from such a person is refused at great hazard of being disgraced. Many individuals who had been decorated in the campaigns of Buonaparte with medals and other marks of distinction, are at this present moment among the peasantry, delving and ploughing. I should have observed, that when an officer has been unfortunately guilty of lifting his hand to a soldier, it is not uncommon for the private first to kill the officer and then himself.

March 8th.-I know of nothing in Paris which better repays the trouble of seeing than the Conservatoire des Arts et des Métiers, or

grand National Repository of Mechanical Inventions, where you are shewn a sample of every imaginable machine or model, from a spinning-jenny to a wheel-barrow. There is a most bountiful store of rural implements, and of ploughs alone more than a hundred different kinds. The numerical amount of the agricultural specimens, en tout genre, is 530. A prize exhibition takes place every five years, on which occasion the competition often runs high and hot, producing cases of acrimonious rivalry that the judges find very difficult to decide. When two persons lay claim to the same invention, the precedence is determined by the date of the application to the Préfet of the department. A list of both inventions. and inventors is published annually, in a register of every thing to be seen, felt, heard, or understood about Paris, called the Journal du Commerce. In one of these lists I find 160 rewarded for discoveries or improvements of some sort or other in 1825; it matters not how humble the improvement. The list contains brevets d'invention for smoothing linen,

wooden shoes, the sewing of gloves, and an apparatus for feeding infants! Could a man make his claim clear to an improved method of whistling, I doubt not he would with difficulty escape the distinction of being registered among the honoured few (hundreds) in the Journal du Commerce.

Among the curiosities you are shewn a loaf of sugar made from beet-root,-the same identical loaf that was deposited there by order of Napoleon, when aiming a death-blow at our 'ships, colonies, and commerce." It is of a very dirty white, and the manufacture so expensive, that, as we all know, the attempt was relinquished as hopeless.

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There were many clumsy things, and some absurd ones; of the latter class was a boat, worked with a huge heavy sort of paddles at the stern, put in motion by wheels equally clumsy, in the centre, which must occasion a great deal more toil to manage than oars. I am sure one of our Thames watermen, with a pair of sculls, could beat it hollow, and with much less labour; besides, the boat was liable