unhallowed as the flame that gleams about corruption, an unnatural gaiety lives among the

emotions which ennoble the after-passages of life. But to few of the students is literature merely an amusement, few are the idle and jovial possessors of three or four hundred francs a month. The medica students, more particularly those born of poor parents, and struggling expressly for a profession, are frequently in a state of almost absolute destitution, and forty, fifty, and sixty francs a month is the allowance of many of these young men, who have lodging, food, and fire, and clothing, to procure as they can out of this pittance; bad living, unhealthy air, and hard study, produce a frightful proportion of deaths amongst these unhappy youths. The only comfort and consolation which their misery receives is at the hands of the ' grisette.' This friend, an honest, though perhaps too indulgent personage, who has no parallel in our society, is the student's beneficent genius. Between the grisette' and the student there exists a species of fraternity: they lodge frequently in the same house. If the student be ill, the grisette' attends him; if the student's linen be out of repair, which happens frequently, the grisette' mends it for him. The student, in his turn, protects the grisette,' gives her his arm on a Sunday in the Luxembourg, or pays the necessary penny, and conducts her across the bridge. Equally poor, equally in need of kindness and protection, brought together by their mutual wants, they form naturally and immediately a new link in society.

All this part of Paris, in the neighbourhood of the

dead!-come with me to those tombs, fantastically arranged, where a frivolous affection miserably displays itself, in hanging an artificial garland, bought at the gate for two 'sous,' upon the tomb of the lover who was adored! There lie Abélard and Héloïse-the monk and his mistress how many thoughts, customs, doctrines, chances, changes, revolutions, in that sepulchre ! ...There is Masséna, General of the empireFoy, statesman of the restoration; for yonder cemetery, opened only twenty years ago, already contains two dynasties. But pass through the crowd of pyramids, obelisks, mounds, columns,

Luxembourg, is affected by the character of its youthful inhabitants. They feel this; they feel they are in their own domain; they walk with their heads high, and their caps, or hats, cocked on one side. The poor and more studious carry a book under their arm, the richer and more adventurous brandish a stick.

In the same quarter as the students, and mingling with them, live a great number of the young literary men of France; of the journalists, of the novelists, of the dramatists, melodramatists, writers of tales, reviewers, &c. &c.; less seriously occupied than the poorer students, not so idle as the wealthier ones, they form an intermediate link between the two, and tend doubtless to inspire both with that love of polite learning, that passion for lighter literature, with which all the young part of France is imbued.

VOL. I.

E

that surround you on either side; turn from the tombs that are yet fresh, and look down from yonder elevation on the monuments that mingle ages!-what a mass of history is there! Behold the ruins of that palace, built for the modern King of Rome!-behold the church of Saint Louis, the statue of Bonaparte!-look for the site of the temple of Jupiter!-for the house of Ninon de l'Enclos!-for the apartment of Danton-the palace of Richelieu! It is time that gives a magnificence to vastness: it is memory that gives a venerability to age.

Let your imagination darken that river by the overshadowing gloom of the wood, sacred to the weird mysteries of Druidical superstition!-lead through the narrow streets of yonder isle the gay procession of Bacchus and of Ceres!--people the city that I see with the flitting and intermingling figures of cowled monks and steel-armed warriors!-paint the tumults of the League-the massacre of St. Bartholomew !-paint Charles, with the fatal arquebuss in his hand, at yonder window, and the Seine red and tumid with Protestant blood!behold the Parliament, stiff and sombre, marching on foot to the Palais Cardinal, in deliverance of Broussel; and the town, distracted with the

fêtes, and the duels, and the ambition, and the quarrels, of the gay and noble cavaliers of that courtly and gallant time!-And now see the stalls of the Rue Quincampoix, miserable exhibition of the degraded chivalry of France! and lo! Mirabeau in the tribune! Lafayette, on his white horse, in the Champ de Mars !-Napoléon returning from Egypt, and walking to the Institut!-the Grande Armée, drawn up on the Place du Carrousel !-the Cossacks encamped in the Champs-Elysées !-the Garde Royale flying from the Louvre !-and the Garde Nationale reviewing on the Boulevards!....