Much has been said of a Parisian Sunday. Certainly it is an allowed day of recreation. But in London we begin our Sabbath on the Saturday night, and do no business on the morrow; it does the heart good to see the steam-omnibus full passing under the bridges; and on Monday the population, still bent on pleasure, pour forth in waggon and boat-loads. On the contrary in Paris, there are very few shops which now shut up on Sunday, and you see the artisan and the mechanic still at work. He now never uses the day, or prefers some other. This is very much, I think, occasioned by the omnibus and other vehicles doubling their fares on Sunday; and therefore another occasion of festivity is attended with less trouble and less expense; but their pleasures are of a sober and serious description. I have heard a lecture on mathematics delivered by Dupin. The crowd at the doors made it difficult to obtain a place; the rest are dispersed through the galleries, the museums, which are all opened, and all are thus occupied with the sciences or the fine arts. Certainly the theatres are crowded in the evening; but the people flock to see the gloomy dramas we have mentioned, or performances which partake of the nature of sciences or of the fine arts; and in the summer they go to the fêtes in the environs of the metropolis. But the shows are of a most serious description, and the amusements all sober; while our fairs have been pronounced by a Frenchman, M. Jouy, "une folie," an insane frenzy; and this distinction between the sober discretion of the French and the intoxicated conduct of the English is nowhere more palpable than in the often-made remark of the Vandalism exercised by us in all public exhibitions, and the preservation of public monuments by them.

The Paris correspondent of the Times newspaper, during the last celebration of the Three Days of July, contrasted the seriousness of the French on that occasion with the gaiete de cœur displayed by the English during the Coronation, and in the fair at Hyde Park. Many pass the day in a cemetery in the company of those whom, once shut up in a vault, we never more think of, and our fastidious ears never more like to hear mentioned. The omnibuses from the Place des Victoires to Père la Chaise are as numerous as those from Padington to the Bank; and relations, as numerous as the passengers of the latter, on days sacred to the departed, flock to this deadweight, and share their dividends of affection. In the streets of Paris, in the Palais Royal, the Tuileries' gardens, in the hours of public appearance, there is no air of insouciant gaiety. The men are employed in studying the newspapers. Mrs. Trollope has graphically described the different parties. The Carlist with his souvenirs passed, and hopes dead, and indifference and disdain of the present; the juste-milieu, busy, unquiet, in the midst of enemies; and the republican, proud, savage, bloody à la Robespierre. The rest hold family conversations; they scarcely seem to have left their apartments; none wear the holiday air we see in England. Follow them into their cafés and restaurateurs,-the book and the newspaper divide attention with the table, and no animated conversation breaks the universal silence. The Bourse is the only place where the general stillness is interrupted,—that melancholy buzz, the auri sacra fames,—and there it is an obligation, because business is carried on by criers. The gambling houses are the essence of gravity, and the fixedness of black and unutterable pur.

poses. You take a cabriolet,-if the driver is not asleep, he is making the best use of his time, and is deep in some work of wisdom. The coachman and footman at the door commence their literary labours whenever they set down their masters. Not a song escapes the lips of the workman or the shopman as they pass on, or are engaged in their labours; no whistling of airs, no caterwauling of foreigners, and grinding of a thousand organs, as in London; nor at night does Bacchus break forth in any boisterous joy, when darkness conceals excess. No Toms and Jerrys parade the streets. Should any joyous convives join in a chorus, they sing the Marseillaise or Parisienne. A political catch is the highest effort of festive enthusiasm.

But what is it which keeps all the population in reading, as if fresh ordonnances were issued every day, and life depended upon knowledge. The size of the papers confines them to strict utility; no broad sheets with departures, arrivals, fashionable parties, on dits, and scandal, but lugubrious articles on politics. Each party indulges in the most lamentable pictures and predictions and nearly every journal is in opposition to the existing state of things. Literary and scientific essays make up the rest of the daily information. Some others have in their hands a new system of society; or if it is what is called light reading, it would sit heavy on an English digestion:-the romances of Victor Hugo, Balzac, Sand, with all the horrors of their school; the Sorrows of Werter; the novels of Richardson, which are voted dull and prosy by English readers; the deep, prolonged, and perhaps monotonous sentiments of the Nouvelle Eloise; the classic and tragic interest of Corinne; the profound contemplation of Young's Night Thoughts; the despair of soul in Oberman; the meditations and reveries of Lamartine; the melancholy reflections of Chateaubriand.

The old French school of painting is famous for horrors, the melancholy triumph of art; their sobriety of purpose and submission to the authority of the past have given no room to work out efforts at originality, such as the caprice of a Turner and a Constable, and the more reasonable eccentricities of a Martin. But there is another species of drawing, which unites the fine arts with the humour and situa tion of the drama, in which we excel all other nations, and wherein the French fail, namely, the caricature. That of the French is dull, and mixed with too savage a feeling; ours is the essence of fun, so that all parties must laugh, even the victims.*

Paris, in architectural appearance, is no longer the gay and laughing city of the middle ages which Victor Hugo speaks of, with its three hundred and fifty churches, their bells simultaneously chiming, but sad in looks as in souvenirs. The muddy Seine flows by the long and sombre line of the Louvre and Tuileries, and the reflective promenader is filled with bloody recollections of the Tour de Nesle, the Morgue, and the Temple, prison of kings, and the deserted cathedral of a defunct religion.

There is sobriety and uniformity in the modern architecture of Paris which wearies by its monotony. From the Regent's Park to St. James's on each side we have all the orders, and all the possible combinations of architecture, with the contrast of country in our parks, squares, &c. While the French have employed centuries on * We are very strongly disposed to doubt the accuracy of this and other posi tions of our author, but we give the paper as it reached us.-ED.

the same building, we finish in a few years whole towns, streets, and palaces. Our streets, and public places are named generally after insignificant persons, eternal Charlottes and Georges; the French from grand epochs and characters,-The Quai Voltaire, Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, the place de la Concorde, Champs Elysées, &c. &c.

But of what a melancholy character are the objects which the citizen of Paris or the stranger goes to see as the wonders and curiosities of a great capital! The Morgue, with its daily victims ; the cabinet of M. Dupont, with the representations in wax of horrible diseases; the Catacombs, skulls, ribs, and cross bones ranged together the Pantheon, to bury their great men,-one would suppose from "the country in gratitude to her great men" without, and the contents within, that either there were very few great men or great ingratitude in France. Though the Madeleine is now a church, it was originally a temple of Glory, destined to bury the generals of Napoleon. However the people have chosen their own burial-ground; and Père la Chaise is now the grand attraction for the citizens and strangers. By all parties, and in all times, death seems to have been fêted in Paris.

We occupy a great deal of time in eating and drinking, and sit hours at table, while the French rise directly nature is satisfied, and proceed to their employment. The two sexes separate with us, but the French men and women at all times, and on all subjects alike, discourse together. No women have shown so much character, been so little given to fritter away their time, as the French. They instituted the order of the Sœurs de la Charité; Madame Ro. land de la Tour founded an order of Recluses, who shut themselves up all their lives in a cave to lament some irreparable affliction. The Maid of Orleans, Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland of the revolution, are instances of heroism, profound melancholy, and political enthu siasm; Madame Dacier, Marquise Chatelet, Madame De Stael, show a depth of scientific learning, almost confined to the industry of men. If you read some of the writings of the authoresses of the present day, like Madame Dudevant, you would never believe they were the productions of a female, so masculine is their character. The females exercise all the occupations, and gain the emoluments of men; they keep the accounts; they are at the bourse, and even at the gaming-table; they are behind every counter; they act as clerks and negociants; and often in manufacturing towns get their thousand francs a month; even the common women make a provision out of their prostitution to settle themselves in life. But our ladies must talk scandal, our farmers' daughters leave the dairy, read the last new novel, and play the piano. "But," say we, "the French are a trifling nation, because they think seriously about trifles, which make up the sum of life." Says an English author, "they have advanced everything to the rank of a science, or an art, -whether cutting your hair, tying your cravat, or cooking your dinner; they have manuals and instructions for everything, and everything worth doing at all, they would do well, or, to use their own term they would have perfectionne."

The French, of all nations, are an occupied and busy people,they must be doing something; but we show a disposition to trifle away our lives, or risk them in trifles,-cock-fights, boxing-matches,

and steeple-chases. We praise ourselves as being a very charitable people. What did we subscribe for the family of Walter Scott ?-less than ten thousand pounds; the French more than forty thousand pounds for Foy, and the most splendid monument in Père la Chaise. The English are scattered all over the Continent, unable to fix their thoughts, or their feet, running over everything, considering nothing, and instanced for their levity; but the French can stay in their own country and find amusement among themselves, unbitten by our mania of locomotion. Their journeys are generally undertaken for business, private and public, or for education, or to make researches. They are pensioned by government, or they are exiles; or they are on a tour of propagandism, risking their lives in aid of their own parties or opinions, and in the contentions of foreigners. The French show respect to people of genius and learning in society, whilst we treat them with comparative indifference, so that a great astronomer of our country said, that he never knew he was anybody till he went abroad; and the way we treat the lions of one season and forget them the next, certainly proves a levity and puerile trifling in our character. We must, however, except the anniversaries of the Scientific Association, when all the lions are paraded about the country like other shows, and so well fed, that, like the animals in the menage. ries, the best time for seeing them is their feeding-time.

The language of the French has not changed so much in words or expressions as our own; we use a great variety of different significations; the French have one standard, and an academy, and their language being more fixed and certain, is in more general use, perhaps on that account. The most eminent preachers and defenders of the Roman Catholic faith, are Frenchmen; the Sorbonne was the most brilliant school of their theology, and La Trappe founded the severest order in monasticism; they have been the most zealous in the cause of missions, while our exertions are but incipient; St. Louis was their king, and the latter days of Louis the Fourteenth were those of a modern saint: they have kept to their faith with much greater con. stancy than we to ours; the catalogue of our sects enrolls the most marvellous of human absurdities, the most common associations of sanctity and profaneness; the French have gone from religion to infidelity, but this requires serious thought, and it was the work of philosophers, read and considered by the people. When a nation is led away by such men as Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, &c., they must be a thoughtful and a serious people. You must not talk reason to our Island-you must provoke its fanaticism. The French, in their history, have ever displayed a more gloomy sternness of disposition than ourselves; they are almost the only instance of success in persecutions. Charlemagne, the most successful apostle of the sword, showed his nation and successors on the throne the way to the massacre of St. Bar. tholomew, which certainly extinguished protestantism for ever in France, when the two parties were nicely balanced, and all the rest of Europe were looking on to see which religious side would triumph. The one led by the king cut off the other, as the Sultan of Turkey the Janissaries, and the Pacha of Egypt the Mamelukes; and the protestant soldiery were, like them, a band of profligate tyrants, who, apart from religious considerations, it was the interest of a nation to get rid off: they have given the

whole world evidence of their ferocity and love of plunder in the sack of Rome under the Constable Bourbon. Perhaps this success in mowing down opposition, adopted by one of their kings, induced the people in the revolution to cut off the heads of all who were supposed to be the enemies of liberty, and to a certain extent this general massacre an. swered their expectations. There is a French royalist historiar, Lacretelle I think is his name, who approves of the policy of the St. Bartholomew's massacre; and there are those of the opposite faction who would, if they had the upper hand, from their admiration of Robes. pierre, &c. and the slaughters à la Fieschi, of the innocent, the guilty, and their own instruments, again establish the system of universal execution. Indeed, but the other day, a female revolutionist, Mademoiselle Gronvelle, recommended it. Perhaps no nation in Europe has assassinated so many of their kings and princes, and this not from conspiracies of nobles, but from personal feelings, as in Russia and elsewhere. We are wont to accuse the French of political inconstancy and frivolity; but we hurried from a republic to despotism quicker than they, and made fewer struggles for our liberty. We voluntarily accepted the restoration-it was not forced upon us the feelings of the French, modified by circumstances, continued the same; but we shifted from fanaticism, the cause of our revolution, to the opposite extreme of impiety and moral profligacy. We have the anecdote of a Cromwell who, when sentencing a king to death, spirted the ink in the face of a colleague. The three days of July are unprecedented, when a metropolis let loose respected everything, reclaimed their liberty, which had been stolen from them, and took nothing else. The only contemporary event we have, are the Bristol riots-and what a difference! The French are soon roused to revolt, and will easily sacrifice their lives for their liberties, and show by their conduct that they care for nothing else. Is not that some proof of a reflective, deepthinking people? They feel the dignity of citizens. The soldier would not allow himself to be classed with felons, and submit to stripes, But this seriousness of purpose, this tenax propositi, has been, perhaps, the misfortune of the French, and the key to the whole of their character. Sterne says it is the defect of their politeness. It is the same with their politics, history, manners, their fine arts, music, painting, architecture, drama, and even fashions. Whatever they take up, they do too much. In what is original and peculiar to them, in whatever they imitate the good they would make perfect, till from the sublime, it has dropped to the ridiculous. No nation ever copied more; and imitation, says Lady Mary Wortley Montague, is generally the excessive of the original, and therefore ludicrous; and this tendency to excess has, in the imitation of the Greeks, Romans, English, only produced unnatural and extravagant resemblances-made them exhibit the opposites of extreme loyalty and hatred of kings-alternate monarchy and republicanism. According to events, they reach the heights of joy, or descend to the blackest abyss of despondency. It was at such a crisis when Julian remarked their melancholy. They had just suffered from long wars, and the Emperor had relieved them. We see the same general expression at present, from their ineffectual endeavours to enlarge the sphere of their liberties. It is to be hoped that the sun of their political horizon, which has so often sunk in blood, may one day rise in a brighter hemisphere, and succeed to midday splendour.