scenery which represented the apartments of the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie of the old regime, too costly for the first, too meagre for the last,-is obliged to be laid aside, in order to give place to new decorations, where Monsieur Magnon and Monsieur de Montmorency, the rich notaire and the rich noble, equally display an elegant opulence unaccompanied by pomp. Wealth has lost its ancient and aristocratic splendour, but, in becoming more citizenlike in its air, it has become more complete and finished in its details. "There was greater state in my time among the rich," said an old gentleman to me the other day, "more horses, more plate, more servants,—but the table-cloth was not so fine and so clean, the rooms were not so well lighted. The bourgeoisie, however, was a different race, -they lived frugally and laid by their money, not with the idea of becoming gentlemen themselves, but with the hope and expectation that their great grandchildren might become so. People rose gradually; the son of a shopkeeper purchased a charge, his son purchased one higher, and thus by degrees the family which had begun at the shop rose to the magistracy and the Parliament." The diffusion of knowledge, the division of fortunes, have descended and spread tastes formerly more exaggerated and more confined. The few have lost a habit of extravagance,—the many have gained a habit of expense. There is a smaller number of persons who squander away their fortune, there is a smaller number of persons who save. In this, as in everything else, the striking characteristic of Paris, of Paris in 1834,-is the kind of universal likeness that reigns throughout it. The great mass of Parisians (whether we observe their habits, their manners, or their language) are so many casts struck from the came coin. The last revolution seems to have completed the decree of Procrastes, and every one appears before us cut and stretched to the same measure.

The grand seigneur on his charger, covered with pearls and dressed in a coat that cost him the price of an election (57,000 francs), was seen no more after the early days of the reign of Louis XIV.* The archbishop with his ecclesiastical pomp,the courtier with his coach and six, his splendid liveries and

* See Bassompierre.

his running footmen, disappeared shortly after '89. The marshal of the empire with his fierce familiarity,―his prancing horses and his military magnificence, bade adieu to Paris in 1817. The old provincial noble, stiff in the rattling carriage magnificently empanelled, proud of his long genealogy, his written discourse, the smile of the minister, and the praise of the Quotidienne, has vanished from the streets since 1830and lo! before you are the almost undistinguishable mass of eighty thousand national guards, and fifteen thousand electors. In this community are confounded journalists, generals, bankers, barbers, the richest capitalist and the poorest patentee,all classes are comprised in one immense middle class,-a class not, like the middle class 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 and the sober bourgeois; 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. 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 superabundances. Monsieur Bontin, an old bachelor, whose few remaining locks are carefully adjusted, prefers enjoying his rent of sixty 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 soli-' tary discomfort. Here is the mistake-Monsieur Bontin dines not at Véry's, but at La Place des Petits 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 desert. You say the meat is bad, the wine is sour, the desert 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 be 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 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 quarter 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 threepence 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 times of civilization, is but miserably furnished with one necessary convenience. Don't let our poverty-stricken Petronius complain! The magnificent VespasienneS anticipates his wants, and supplies the deficiency which the archi

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

Mirâ diversitate naturæ cum îdem homines sic ament inertiam et oderint quietem.-Tac.

That is, from one extremity of Paris to the other. $ Des commodités ambulantes qui s'appelent ainsi.

tect 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 upon an average less than about 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 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 to a Parisian climate entirely! They who are now watching the weatherglass 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.*

But what may not be said of these one hundred and twentysix days! They contain the history of France. The sun shines; and behold that important personage who has so frequently decided the destiny of Paris! See him in his black and besmeared blouse, his paper cap, and his green apron. There he is on the quays, on the Boulevards, in the PalaisRoyal; wherever Paris is more essentially Paris-there he is, laughing, running, shouting, idling, eating. There he is at the fête, at the funeral, at the bridal, at the burial, above allat the Revolution. Hark, as he cries Vive la France! vive la liberté ! And he rushes on the bayonet, he jumps upon the cannon, he laughs at death-he fears nothing—but a shower of rain; and was ever found invincible until Marshal Lobau appeared against him,—with a water-engine. Such is the gamin of Paris, who, in common with the gods, enjoys the privilege of perpetual youth. Young at the League, young at the Fronde, young in 1789, young in 1830, always young and always first when there is frolie or adventure; for the character of the Parisian is the character of youth; gay, careless, brave at all ages; he is more than ever gay, and careless, and brave, when he is young.*. 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 Bassompierre,” that "rentier Richelieu," who imitates the vices without having the wit, the arrogance without having the nobility, of a by-gone age; who might be the roué of the regent, but for his dulness—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 ?+

* It is thus that the boy, taking with superior energy the universal direction, never fails to be at the head of every Parisian movement.

Such is the type of one of that clique of young men, vulgarly called