Such is the 'gamin' of Paris; and in spite of his follies and his fickleness, there is something in the rags darkened by gunpowder, in the garment torn by the sword, and pierced by the ball, that a foreigner respects. But who is that young man, fantastically attired, a buffoon at the carnival, a jockey at the race-course-the beloved of prostitutes and parasites, gorged with the gluttony of pleasure, besmeared with the dirt of brothels and debauch? Who is that modern Polemon to whom philosophy would address herself in vain?-who is that “bourgeois Bassompièrre," that "rentier Richelieu," who imitates the vices without having the wit, the arrogance, without having the nobility, of a bygone age; who might be the 'roué' of the regent but for his dullness the courtier of Louis XV. but for his vulgarity-who thinks to disguise the stupidity of his ideas under the coarseness of his language, and to illustrate the sordidness of his birth by the glare of his extravagances?† At least there was talent and intelligence among the 'élégans' of Versailles; and the force and the character which they wanted at the court they found on the scaffold.

But let us turn from those windows where you see light and music, and champagne, and tumult, to yon dim and learned square, overshadowed by the Sorbonne! There, opposite the miserable building, where Rousseau dreamt of Heloise, in the arms of his 'grisette' (Therese,) there is a small but clean and neat ' restaurant.' The name over the door is Flekoteau-name sacred to the early dinners of the wise and eloquent of France. Enter between three and four o'clock, and take your seat at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long fair hair, falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the midnight vigil: his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the wrists; his trowsers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is the native of the south, pale and swarthy; his long black locks, parted from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed with a slight ' moustache,' and the semblance of a beard gives to his meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round the room, with their meagre portions of meat and bread, their pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or science. With them is the future*-but where is the

past? Come with me, reader: it is our last pilgrimage: come with me to that spot, where,

selves to the theatre. The vacant time not thus disposed of, is occupied in smoking, talking, (still a favourite amusement of the French,) and reading the light works of the day, which fill the innumerable 'salons litéraires' or circulating libraries in that part of Paris where the schools are situated. This indeed is a circumstance worth remarking; no young Frenchman is ever completely idle, completely illiterate, and completely uninformed. In our universities the great mass of those who are called 'gay men' in contradiction to 'reading men,' the great mass of these never open a book, never take up a newspaper, never read three lines even of Byron or Walter Scott, or the most popular living authors of the day; they hunt, they shoot, and drive; or if they cannot afford the reality of these amusements, they gratify themselves with the shadow, and are to be seen smoking in a shooting-jacket, or lounging in the livery stables, or leaning out of the windows and flourishing a tandem-whip. The theatre, which would have afforded this set of scholars some resource and some education, is peremptorily forbidden, though it would be easy, by proper regulations, to obtain in it a means for elevating the taste, and giving a literary turn to the mind of many who are otherwise inaccessible to instruction or improvement. In Paris the most idle of these gay men I have been describing have a certain elegance of taste and love of letters. They read, they admire, they frequently worship the popular genius of the time, and youth is not passed without producing some of those elevating and poetic

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 medical 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