of England, merely occupied in making money, and born of parents who have spent their lives in the same pursuit,—but a middle class of all degrees and all professions, a middle class that does not stand between the gentry and the people, but between the mob and the monarch. In the streets, the walks, the theatres,- this class, sauntering on the boulevards,-laughing loud at the Variétés-undressed at the opera-spreads every where its own easy and unceremonious air; and Paris is fashioned to its habits, as it was formerly to the habits of the spendthrift ' noble' and the soberbourgeois;' and the same causes that have carried more seriousness into one portion of society have carried more amusement into another. Few are poor,-few are rich; many are anxious to enjoy; and every thing is contrived to favour this combination of poverty and pleasure.

Monsieur

There are many places where a person can live upon as little, but there is no place where a person can live so magnificently upon a little as Paris. It is not the necessaries that are cheap, but the superabundancies. Bontin, an old bachelor, whose few remaining locks are carefully adjusted, prefers enjoying his ' rente' of eighty napoleons a year in idleness, to gaining six times as much by an occupation. You conclude immediately that M. Bontin is a

man who has acquired in the world the best rules of philosophy, that he is a sample of unsophisticated tastes, and that it is precisely the same thing to him whether he dine upon a suprême de volaille' at the restaurant's, or crunch a hard piece of dry bread in solitary discomfort. Here is the mistake-Monsieur Bontin dines not at Very's, but at La Place des Petit Pères ; -this is all the difference: he pays twenty-two sous, instead of eight francs, for his soup, his two dishes, his wine and his dessert. You say the meat is bad, the wine is sour, the dessert is meagre,-it may be so; he does not enter into these details. His dinner is composed of the same number of dishes, and has the same appearance that it would have if he were six times as rich. This is all he knows, and with this he is perfectly contented. Does he fancy a bath to quicken his flagging pulse, and flatter himself into the belief that he is not yet what should be called aged? Do you suppose that he is to abstain from this bath because he is poor? No; he is merely to abstain from the Bains Chinois where he would pay three francs, and go to the Bains rue Montmartre, where he has the same portion of warm water for ten sous.' Is he of an amorous propensity? He sighs not, it is possible, in the foyer' and the 'coulisses.' He

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repudiates from his midnight dreams the voluptuousness of the opera dancer, the agacerie of the actress; he seeks not his 'bonne fortune' at the banker's ball, or the duchess's 'conversazione'-but he inspires with his flame the fair 'lampiste' opposite; or reposes more languidly in the easy arms of the fair fringemaker,* whose aërian habitation is approximate to his own. Has he that incongruity of disposition which distinguished our roving forefathers,† holds he in equal abomination the quiet of his ' quartier' and the exercise of his legs,-and is he compelled to choose either dread alternative, because to him neither horse, nor groom, nor cabriolet, appertains? Heaven forbid! neither does he call to the cabriolet or the hackney-coach on the stand, which, in the first place, would be an exertion, and the next, an extravagance. No; he abides inertly at his door, with three-pence in his hand, and the first omnibus that passes transports him from the Jardin des Plantes to the Rue de Rivoli. Paris, we know, even in these

* A class very numerously circulated throughout the topmost regions of Paris.

† Mirâ diversitate naturæ cum iidem homines sic ament inertiam et oderint quietem.—Tac.

That is, from one extremity of Paris to the other.

times of civilization, is but miserably furnished with one necessary convenience. Do not let our poverty-stricken Petronius complain! The magnificent Vespasienne* anticipates his wants, and supplies the deficiency which the architect has left in his humble dwelling. What is denied to him? Is there a passion he cannot indulge?—even that passion of the rich man, the strongest perchance that the rich man possesses -the passion which filled the pension-list of Louis XVI., and has crippled the pride of our nobility? Is he deprived of its indulgence? can he not ruin himself if he pleases? can he not throw his fortune avariciously away with piles of accumulated gold before his eyes? Here the state provides for his desires, and the gambling-house and the lottery-ticket are accommodated to the ambitious prodigality of his miserable purse.

I said that few in Paris are rich, few poor No workman employed gains on an average much less than eight hundred francs per annum. Hardly any workman, willing to work, is without employment; and the average income of each Parisian, taking one with the other, has been considered one thousand francs. On this fact reposes the equality which strikes us, and

* Des commodités ambulantes! ....

the reign of that middle class, whose dominion and whose aspect I have described. This income of one thousand francs* Mr. Millot has divided, and according to his calculation— the washerwoman costs the Parisian more than the schoolmaster; the new-year's gift more than the accoucheur; the theatre twice as much as the nurse; the librarian and bookseller half as much as the theatre; the bath the same as the bookseller and librarian; and the money spent in luxury and amusements considerably more than that which is expended in the purchase of fuel, the dearest article of Parisian existence. Nor let it be thought that Parisian gaiety is owing entirely to a Parisian climate! They who are now watching the weather-glass in our land of fogs, may like to know that the Parisians themselves have, in the way of weather, something to complain of.

Paris has in the year (on an average of twenty years) but one hundred and twenty-six days tolerably fine.+