Staatsbibliothek

MUNCHEN

PARIS.

ENTRY.

The entrance into London by the Thames-The Entrance into Paris by the Champs Elysées-Passing by the 'Caserne,' intermingled with cafés and salons littéraires The Invalides; the Tuileries; the Chamber of Deputies-The Rue de Rivoli-The universal movement of pleasure-Paris not the climate of Paris-View of an autumnal evening from the Rue de la Paix-Proverb respecting the Boulevards.

It is by the Thames that the stranger should enter London.... the broad breast of the great river, black with the huge masses that float upon its crowded waters-the tall fabrics, gaunt and drear, that line its melancholy shores-the thick gloom through which you dimly catch the shadowy outline of these gigantic forms-the marvellous quiet with which you glide by the dark phantoms of her power into the mart of nations-the sadness, the silence, the vastness,

the obscurity of all things around—prepare you for a grave and solemn magnificence: full upon your soul is shadowed the sombre character of "the golden city;" deep into your thoughts is breathed the genius of the great and gloomy people, whose gloom and whose greatness are, perchance, alike owing to the restless workings of a stern imagination. Behold St. Catherine's Docks, and Walker's Soap Manufactory! and “Hardy's Shades! Lo! there is the strength, the industry, and the pleasure-the pleasure of the enterprising, the money-making, the dark-spirited people of England. "Hardy's Shades!" -singular appellation for the spot dedicated to festivity! Such is the entrance into

London by the Thames.

Let us change the scene, reader !—you are at Paris!

To enter Paris with advantage you should enter it by the Champs Elysées: visiting for the first time the capital of a military nation, you should pass under the arch, built to commemorate its reign of victories. Coming to dwell among the most gay and light-hearted people in the universe, you ought at once to rush upon them in the midst of their festivities. Enter Paris, then, by the Champs Elysées! Here are the monuments that speak to you of the great soldiers;

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and here the guinguettes' that display to you the great dancers of Europe. You pass by the old gardens of Beaujon; you find the 'caserne' (and this tells you a good deal of the nation you are come to visit) intermingled with cafés' and 'salons littéraires;' and you see the chairs under the trees, and the open spaces left for the ball; and if you stop to read an advertisement, it will talk of the 'Chevaux mécaniques,' and of the Bal paré,' and of the 'Concert des Champs Elysées,' and the sun shines upon the golden cupola of the stately Invalides, and on the glittering accoutrements of the sauntering soldier; and before you are the Tuileries, with their trees and terraces, which yonder misplaced monument,* cannot quite conceal; and to your right are the Seine and the Chamber of Deputies, and to your left the Corinthian architecture of those tall palaces that form the Rue de Rivoli. The tricoloured flag floats from the gates of the Royal Gardens; the military uniform, mixed up with the colouring of every passing group, enriches it with its deep-blue and its bright scarlet; the movement about you is universal: equipages of all kinds are passing in all directions; the movement is universal, but differing from that * The Egyptian column.

you are accustomed to in England,―the movement is the movement of idleness and of pleasure; an indescribable mirth reigns in all you see, and the busy gaiety of Paris bursts upon you with the same effect as the glad brightness of Italy.

The people, too, have all the habits of a people of the sun; they are not the people of one stock; collected in every crowd are the features and the feelings of divers races and different regions. In Paris you are not in the climate of Paris-France is brought into a focus, and concentrated in the capital you find all the varieties that vivify the many provinces of the kingdom. It is this which gives a city of the North the gracious and agreeable aspect of the South, and transports the manners that are legitimate to the olives and the myrtles of Provence to the elms of the Champs Elysées and the Boulevards. London is the city of the English, as Constantinople is the city of the Turks.-Paris is the city of Europe; it unites more than any city in the world the wants of a variety of classes, the habits of a variety of people. With the snow you have the sledge of St. Petersburg; with the summer the music, the nightly promenade, the ice, the lemonade, and all-but the sea and the sky of Naples.