poorest gentleman, jealous of his richer neighbour, would live as well as he does. Ribbons, looking-glasses, are things, without which the French could not live. Fashion is the veritable demon of the nation; one sex is as vain and as desirous of pleasures as the other; and if the women never stir without a mirror, the men also may be seen arranging and combing their wigs publicly in the streets. There is not a people so imperious and so audacious as these Parisians; they are proud of their very fickleness, and say that they are the only persons in the world who can break their promises with honour. In vain you look for modesty, wisdom, persons who have nothing to do (a Sicilian is speaking), or men who have grown old. But if you don't find modesty, wisdom, or old age, you find obsequiousness, gallantry, and politeness. Go into a shop, and you are cajoled into buying a thousand things you never dreamt of, before you obtain the article you want. The manner of the higher classes is something charming—there are masters who teach civility, and a pretty girl the other day offered to sell me compliments. The women

dote upon little dogs. They command their husbands and obey nobody. They dress with grace. We see them at all hours, and they dote on conversation. As to love, they love, and listen to their lovers, without much difficulty-but they never love long, and they never love enough. I have not seen a jealous husband, or a man who thinks himself unhappy and dishonoured because his wife is unfaithful.

"During the Carême, the people go in the morning to a sermon, and in the evening to a comedy, with equal zeal and devotion. The Abbés are in great number, and the usual resource of ladies in affliction. The young men are perpetually in the racket-court--the old men pass their time at cards, at dice, and in talking over the news of the day. The Tuileries are the resort of the idle and those who wish, without taking any trouble about it, to be amused. It is there that you laugh, joke, make love, talk of what is doing in the city, of what is doing in the army; decide, criticize, dispute, deceive. Chocolate, tea, and coffee are very much in vogue; but coffee is preferred to either tea or chocolate; it is thought a remedy for low spirits. A lady learnt the other day that her husband had been killed in battle: "Ah, unhappy that I am!' said she, quick, bring

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me a cup of coffee!' The inhabitants of Paris are lodged upon the sides of the bridges, and even upon the tops and tiles of the houses. Although it does not rain often, you can't help walking in the mud, for all the filth of the town is thrown out into the streets, which it is impossible for the magistrates, however strict, to keep clean. The ladies never go out but on mulesthe gentlemen walk in large high boots. The hackney-coaches are old, battered, and covered with mud. draw them have no flesh on their bones. brutal; they have a voice so hoarse, and so terrible, and the smacking of their whips so horribly increases the noise, that no sooner is the rattling machine in movement, than you imagine all the furies at work in giving to Paris the sounds of the infernal regions."

The horses which The coachmen are

Such was Paris above a century ago; let any one reflect upon the immense changes that have taken place since that time. Let any one reflect that we have had since then, Law, Voltaire, Rousseau-the orgies and bankruptcy of the Regent, the reign of Louis XV., the decapitation of Louis XVI., the wars and terrors of the republic, the tyranny of the empire, the long struggle of the restoration,-let any one reflect, that since then have been born the doctrines of equality and liberty, which will probably change the destinies of the world. Let any one, I say, reflect on all this, and tell me, as he reads the passage I have cited, whether the resemblance is not strong between the past and the present ?—whether, in looking at Paris under Louis Philippe, he cannot trace all the main features of its picture taken during the time of Louis XIV.?

Paris is certainly altered; the ladies no longer ride on mules, and the gentlemen do not arrange their head-dress in the public streets. The shopkeepers have lost their extraordinary civility, the noblesse have lost the exquisite polish of their ancient manners; there are no longer masters to teach you civility, nor young ladies who sell you compliments. The Parisians under a serious government are not so frivolous as of yore: the vanity then confined to the toilette and the drawing-room has taken a prouder flight, and prances on the Champs de Mars, or perforates in the chamber. The passions are the same, but a new machine works them into a different shape, and produces another manufacture from the same

materials. We see the change that other laws and other ideas produce, and the popular spirit which has elevated the character of the people,* has civilized the hackney coaches, widened the streets, and saved two hundred per annum of the lives of his majesty's subjects. We see what new ideas and new laws have changed, but we see also how much new ideas and laws have left unaltered. The wish to outvie, the desire to please, the fondnesss for decoration, the easy transition from one passion or one pursuit to another, the amour-propre, the fickleness of the Parisian, are still as visible as they were under the Grand Monarque: while, alas! the morals of society (if I may venture to say so) even yet remind you of the saying of Montesquieu,” “Que le Français ne parle jamais de sa femme, parce qu'il a peur d'en parler devant les gens qui la connaissent mieux que lui." I have said that the Parisian is almost as fickle as he was. During the old hierarchy of ranks and professions, he could be fickle in little but his pleasures. The career which conducted him to the grave was traced at his cradle, and if he were born a footman, all he could hope was to die a butler. The life of the Parisian has changed; you may see it in the aspect of Paris itself. A new spirit,—a spirit of commerce, of gain, of business, has made the city and its citizens different from what they were: the Bourse is the monument of the epoch; even the firework and the dance have been driven from their old resort, and lo! Beaujon and Tivoli § are destroyed by a building speculation. But the same character which presided over the amusements has entered into the affairs of this volatile and light-hearted people, and among the causes of that distress so severely felt in 1830, we had to remark the careless, unreflecting, and variable disposition which induced the capitalist now to enter into a business with which he was wholly unacquainted; now to transport his capital, suddenly and without reflection, from one branch of industry to another ;-impatient of delay, uncalculating of

"We see," says Mercier, who wrote just previous to the revolution of eighty-nine, we see at every step we take in the mud, that the people who go on foot have no share in the government."

Two hundred was the average calculation of persons run over in the streets of Paris: this species of amusement was much iu fashion during the latter days of the old regime.

S Public gardens.

consequences, and incessantly tormented by the unproductive appetite for novelty and adventure.* Du reste, Paris might still pass for a vast hotel. There are eight hundred cafés and one thousand restaurants, and here you are served on silver, amidst gilding, and painting, and glass; while the garçon who says, Que voulez-vous, Monsieur ? presents a carte with upwards of two hundred articles,† and lo! there are still cafés and estaminets, taverns and the frequenters of taverns, and it is at night, as you see these places, brilliant with light, filled with guests, surrounded by loungers, that you catch the character of Paris, such as it is, such as it was a century ago, when tempted by Law with those prints of Louisiana, ‡ in which a people, as the beau idéal of happiness, were represented indulging themselves in the sun; rich without labour, and deriving most of their pleasures from their senses. In this city there are one hundred and ninety-two S places of public amusement,—of amusement for the people, without counting the innumerable guinguettes at the barriers where the populace usually hold their Sunday revels. To those who are fond of facts, the manners of Paris may be thus described :

There are twenty thousand persons every night at the theatres; five public libraries are constantly full; and one hundred cabinets de lecture. You will find about an equal number of celebrated dancing masters, and of celebrated teachers of mathematics; ** and the municipality pays one-third more for its fêtes than it does for its religion. +t

A passion for enjoyment, a contempt for life without pleasure,

M. Beres "Causes du Malaise, 1831."

In 1819 Paris received 801,524 hectolitres of wine, 70,819 oxen, 6,481 cows, 67,719 calves, 329,000 sheep, 64,822 pigs and wild boars, 1,267,364 kilogrammes of dry cheese, and above 479,000 pounds of bread per day, or 113,880,000 kilogrammes per year; add to this 323,610 hectolitres of potatoes. Besides which were sold chickens, ducks, game, &c. to the amount of 7,601,402 francs, butter to the amount of 7,105,531 fr. eggs, 3,676,302 fr.— See note (in Appendix, under Paris), for principal articles of consumption before the revolution of eighty-nine, and for a bill of fare at a restaurant's.

One of the devices of Law to favour the success of his scheme was to publish these prints, addressed to the passions and dispositions of the populace he seduced.

SA calculation in 1817, since which they are much augmented.

**

I have taken this from "Le Livre d'Adresses," "livre," says Fontenelle, "qui contient le plus de vérités.”

+ See account of the Préfet de la Seine.

a want of religion and morality, fill the gambling-house, the Morgue, and the Enfans trouvés. Such have been the effects of the revolution!.... No; the revolution has had little to do with these misfortunes. Before the revolution there were forty thousand prostitutes,* there are now six thousand. Before the revolution there were fifteen licensed maisons de jeu, there are now eight. Before the revolution, observes Mercier, "all the money of the provinces passed to the capital, and all the money of the capital passed to its courtezans." Before the revolution, says Chamfort, I remember to have seen a man who quitted the ladies at the opera, because they had no more honour than the ladies of the world. It is not then to be lamented that political events have changed the manners of the Parisians so much, but that they have changed their manners so little; this is the subject for lamentation. There is a change, however, to which political events have no doubt contributed, but which, during the later years of the old government, time and the character of the French were tending to produce. The gradual fusion of the different classes, which ancient usages had kept apart, would, without the shock that blended and confused all ranks violently together, have naturally given to one set of persons many of the ideas and habits of another. You see no longer in Paris a nobility that lives upon credit, and boasts of its ruin with ostentation. The families that still inhabit the great hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain are more orderly, more economical, more moral in their habits than heretofore. But, as in a voluptuous people the habits of the lower classes mount up to the higher, so in a vain nation the habits of the higher classes descend more naturally to the lower. The manners of the old aristocracy then have had a greater effect upon the manners of the middling classes, than the manners of the middling classes have had upon those of the aristocracy. Among the nobility of the stock exchange, the office and the counter, there reigns a luxury at present, which, sometimes sighed for by such persons, was rarely seen of old. If you want a proof of this, you have the best, you have the theatres, where the antique scenery, the

* This calculation is given by Mirabeau.

† On vit sur crédit . . . on publie avec ostentation qu'on est ruiné. . See Mercier, Tableaux de Paris.