' Sir Francis mentions that he was considered of sufficient
importance to be under surveillance. '"You are," said very gravely to
me a gentleman in Paris of high station, on whom I had had occasion to
call, "a person of some consideration. Your object here is not
understood, and you are therefore under the surveillance of the
police." I asked him what that meant. "Wherever you go," he replied,
"you are followed by an agent of police. When one is tired, he hands
you over to another. Whatever you do, is known to them; and at this
moment there is one waiting in the street until you leave me."'
We need say no more. The people who, under all phases of
government--despotism, constitutional monarchy, and universal-suffrage
republic--coolly tolerate, nay, they admire and vindicate, this
atrocious system of personal restraint and espionage, are totally
unfit for the enjoyment of civil liberty. In conclusion, we can hardly
recommend the book before us, further than to say, that its gossip,
though often prosy to the verge of twaddle, is also sometimes droll
and amusing from its graphic minuteness.
* * * * *
[Footnote 2: _A Faggot of French Sticks_, 2 vols.
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