with the hour and the heat. The morning is for the sedate and serious old gentleman; the noon for the "bonne" and the children; the afternoon for the more ambitious crowd, in whose midnight dreams yonder walks and orange-trees are strangely mingled. There is the theatre of their glory!--the theatre on which a new bonnet is to be tried, a new compliment to be adventured; there is the stage where the elegance of a mistress is to be displayed, the reputation of a rival to be destroyed. But if the Tuileries are remarkable, they are remarkable not only as the lounge of nursery maids, and of that modern race of time-killers who go to these gardens rather for the sake of being seen than of being amused; they are remarkable as the birth of a new epoch, which they still represent,--the epoch of gallantry and of the arts, of Catherine de Medicis, and of Marot--of Marot, who said with so much grace, Si j'étais roi d'Asie, J'aimerais mieux quitter mon sceptre que ma mie: Then wrote Rabelais and Montaigne; then commenced the assemblies which intermingled the two sexes; the royal and courtly assemblies which Brantôme defends as a more honest system of libertinage than that which flourished under the Roi des Ribauds;* then Lescot revived the science of architecture in the Louvre, and Goujon the graceful art of sculpture; and bishops proud of their disobedient beards,† and ladies * Tu voudrais sçavoir qu'estoit il plus louable au roy ou recevoir une si honneste troupe de dames et damoiselles en sa cour ou bien de suivre les erres des anciens roys du temps passé qui admettaient tant de p... ordinairement en leur suite, desquelles le roy des Ri bauds avait charge et soin de leur faire despartir quartier et logis, et là commander de leur faire justice si on leur fesait quelques torts. Et que ces Dames étant trèz nettes et saines (au moins aucunes ne pouvaient, &c. &c.)-Vide Brantôme, t. v. t The custom of long beards, which commenced under Francis I., under the voluptuous sanctuary of the mask,* filled the churches, loitered on the new quay, or circulated in the dark and narrow streets peopled with magicians, and sorcerers, and devils ;† epoch celebrated for the invention of silver forks and silk stockings,-epoch of necromancy, of idolatry, of pleasure, and of religion; epoch when you might have seen the farce" Du débat d'un jeune moine et d'un viel gen-d'arme par devant le Dieu Cupidon pour une fille;" epoch, when the imagination, still given to magic and devotion, was beginning to decorate debauch! and cruelty and lust, passions which nature seems to have intermingled, had each their horrible sacrifices, and their pompous and voluptuous fêtes; while now the mistress of Henry II., now the mother of Charles IX., demanded holocausts for their revels, and mingled the accents of pleasure with the cries for Protestant blood. And with the arts came the vices of Italy: robed in sackcloth, the chaplet at his neck, the sovereign of France§ paraded the streets of Paris; or, dressed as a woman, his breast open and bare, and adorned with necklaces, his hair died, his eyelids and his face besmeared and painted, delivered himself up in the secret recesses of his palace to the infamies of his "mignons ;' among whom (wild mixture of debauch and devotion!) he distributed the relics and the blessed beads solicited from Rome. Lo! by the side of the bonfire, the banquet!-by the side of the temple dedicated to the holy worship of the meek Jesus, the column|| consecrated to the impieties of profane astrology! And yet 1 who allowed his beard to grow in order to hide a wound, became general. Adopted by the clergy, it was forbidden by the Parliament, the respectable magistracy of which manfully persevered in shaving. * Masks, which came into fashion towards the end of the reign of Francis I., were intended to preserve the complexion, and persevered in for the sake of other conveniences. † De l'Estoile, in speaking of a supposed magician hung in the reign of Charles IX., says, that according to that magician there were thirty thousand sorcerers then in Paris. Diane de Poitiers. Henry III.-De l'Estoile, vol. iv. Erected by Catherine de Medicis, for her astrological observations. when Catherine from yonder height looked down on the masked and mysterious city at her feet, she saw the same people-here occupied with magic, there assassinating from superstition; she saw the same people that we see now, that we saw but a very short time ago, dressed in the costume of the Carnaval,* and pulling down the palace of their archbishop. "July 4, 1548, the scholars armed, rushed fiercely upon the Abbaye St. Germain des Prés, besieged it, made breaches in its walls, broke down the trees, the trellices, demolished the neighbouring houses. In January, 1549-in May, 1550—similar seditions; but the scholars were not alone on these occasions; the working classes (ouvriers), the shop-boys (varlets de boutiques), joined with the mob. In 1557 the troubles became yet more serious." The same troubles preceded the reign of Louis XIV. :-for every period of improvement is a period of agitation; and the brave and capricious populace, the rebellious and tumultuous youth of Paris, ever ready for battle, ever eager of change, ever impatient of rule, receiving the character of each era of civilization, have always retained their own; have always been valiant, fickle, insolent, and gay. It was amid this mixture of gross and barbarous luxury, of abandoned license, of mysterious rites, of terrible and sanguinary superstition, that the arts, as I have said, arose; and that love, no longer the guerdon of adventurous chivalry, became the prize of the gentle smile, the whispered compliment, and the graceful carriage. Born of this epoch, the Tuileries, I repeat, represent its character. The ghosts of the Medici may still rove complacently through their gardens, and amid the statues of ancient Greece move a crowd that would have done honour to the groves of Epicurus. * The most formidable, and certainly the most picturesque, of modern" émeutes." Here you saw the mob pulling down the "fleursde-lys," and ransacking the episcopal palace; here you saw the harlequin and the domino, and all the buffooneries of a Parisian masquerade. VOL. I.-C 5 I have been anxious to give a general idea of the aspect of Paris, as it is in such descriptions, as well as in more philosophical disquisitions, that the character of a people is to be found; but I have no intention to speak of all that is interesting or curious in this metropolis. Who has not been fatigued with details of the Jardin des Plantes, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, and the numberless "et cætera" of modern tourists ? DIVISIONS. Divided in 1702; in 1789, by the Convention-More divided by manners than laws-Description of the Chaussée d'Antin-The Faubourg St. Germain-The Quartier of the Students-The Marais -Faubourg St. Antoine-The old city. THIS city has undergone a variety of divisions. In 1702 it was divided by Louis XIV. into twenty 66 quartiers" or districts; a division which did not suffice in 1789, when it was necessary to make a new distribution, in order to elect the deputies of the States-General. Finally, by a decree of the Convention, Paris was formed into twelve municipalities, each of which contained four" quartiers ;" and this arrangement is still maintained. But it is not so much by its laws as by its manners that Paris is divided. There are districts differing as widely, one from the other, in the ideas, the habits, and the appearance of their inhabitants, as in the height and size of their buildings, or the width and cleanliness of their streets. The Chaussée d'Antin breathes the atmosphere of the Bourse, the Palais Royal, and the Boulevards; it is the district of bankers, stock-brokers, generals of the empire, rich tradespeople -and represents May-fair and Russell-square intermingled. The Chaussée d'Antin is the district fullest of life, most animated, most rife with the spirit of progress, of change, of luxury, of elegance. Here you will find all new buildings, all new arcades, all new passages; here first appear all new inventions; here are first opened all new shops; here are given the richest and most splendid balls; here you meet a race who go to bed late, frequent the theatres, fill the opera, whitewash their houses every year, and new paint their carriages; here you see the insolence of "parvenu" power-the contempt of the thick lip and the turnedup nose-contempt which is adequately returned by the possessor of yon dim and vast hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain-for we are come to another district to the district of the long and silent street; of the meager repast and the large and well-trimmed. garden; of the great court-yard; of the broad and dark staircase. This is the "quartier" inhabited by the administrations-by the old nobility; this is the quartier" which manifests no signs of change, no widening and straightening of streets, no piercing of passages it hardly possesses a "restaurant" of note, and has but one unfrequented theatre. And now, not far from where we are, is the "quartier" of the students; "quartier" at once poor and popular; amid which-monument legitimate to the district, inhabited by that brave and exalted youth who knew how to vanquish for an opinion in July, to suffer for an opinion in June-monument legitimate to the district, inhabited by those eloquent and illustrious professors who give to France a glory superior to that of arms-rises the Pantheon! And yonder is the Observatory, and the Jardin des Plantes, and the memory of Cuvier. 66 Then there is the Marais-the retreat of the oldfashioned judge and the old-fashioned merchant, where the manners have been changed almost as little as the houses, by the philosophy of the eighteenth century— no carriages, no equipages, not a solitary cabriolet in the streets! All is still, silent; you are among the customs of the provincial village and the grand hotels of the time of Louis XIII. Then there is the Faubourg St. Antoine-residence of those immense masses |