manager. The greatest hotel in Paris is kept by a woman. You see women superintending everywhere;-in the reading-rooms, in the restaurants, in the estaminets, in the Cafes ;-selling tobacco in the thronged Tabacs :-tending cabinets inodories on the Boulevard Montmartre; lending newspapers in the Palais Royal, and writing out accounts in the Rue de la Paix ;-and when, alas! her vocation must needs render her form invisible, you shall still on canvass see her image, large as life, in fifty streets of Paris, under these pregnant words;-"A la Maternité. Madame Messenger, sage-femme, 9 jours, l'accouchment compris. 50 francs et au dessus.” One might infer from most of these instances that woman had changed occupation with the other sex. So far as cooking is conIcerned this is the fact. But I know not if the remark can be extended farther. While the women are thus active, the men are too generally lounging. Ten thousand brilliant shops in Paris are each day and evening presided over by ten thousand brilliant women. Here is certainly no unattractive spectacle. Therein is revealed the ingenuity of the French; since many a green one, and many a knowing one, is thus beguiled into jewellery and kid-gloves, to say no worse, merely because it is pleasant to higgle about their price. with such gentle cheaters. As to the beauty of these divinities, you shall hear many a sigh from ancient veterans of the Consulate and the Empire. They will tell you that the young loveliness of those times has vanished. The present is an old and ugly generation. So far as specimens in Cafés are concerned, the remark may be true. I have been surprised to find with so much grace, and so much courtliness, and so much gentleness, so little personal beauty combined. I hardly know an example that may be safely recommended, and yet he who should often walk through the Palais Royal, without ever looking into the Café Corazza, might be justly charged, in traveller's phrase, with "having seen nothing." Returning from this episode, I go on to say that as soon as the garçon cries" huit-cent," and deposits the coin before her, the dame du-comptoir abstracts eight sous from the hundred. The garçon, returning your change, invariably looks forward to a small pour-boire for himself. If you leave one sous, he merely inclines his head. If you leave two, he adds to the inclination a "mercie." Finally, if you generously abandon three, he not only bows profoundly, whispering mercie, but respectfully opens the door to you on departing. As you leave you will always look at the lady, and raise your hat. The quiet self possession with which she responds to your civility informs you that she has bowed to half the coffee-drinkers of Europe. Having taken our demi-tasse, suppose to vary the scene we visit an estaminet. Guided by the words: "Estaminet, 4 billiards, on joue le "-for "poule" you see the figure of a chicken, let us ascend these stairs behind the Italian Opera. At the top of these a door is opened; what is the prospect? Dimly through dense tobacco-clouds are seen groups of smokers and drinkers, chatting at their stands,-billiard-tables, and men in shirt-sleeves flourishing queues, garçons gilding here and there, some with bundles of pipes, some with bottles of Strasburgh beer, and some with eau-de-vie. the corner you discover a white-capped dame-du-comptoir, looming up through the fog, her left flanked by pipes of every length, and her right by jugs and bottles without number. A garçon,-alas ! In not the clean and polished beau-ideal of the Café Veron,-advances and looks into your face with so empathic an expression, that you are constrained to call for a cigar and a petit-verre. On observing more closely, you now perceive in one wall of the rooin a large case half filled with ordinary pipes, and in another still another case with pipes of rarest make from the rarest material, the veritable ecumede-mer. Among the thirty or forty persons here assembled there is a great deal of motion, and a great deal of talk; and, before half an hour has passed, you recognise four or five different languages. In the midst of the variety there is one thing common,-smoke is roll. ing from every mouth. Here are five gentlemen, of whom two are in uniform of the National Guard. They have called for cards. A little green square, with cards, is placed upon the marble table before them. They sip coffee, smoke ordinary pipes, and play at vingt-et vr They are Frenchmen. Yonder dark individual, in those warlike moustaches, which extend and twine about his ears, and who smokes that delicate lady's finger, as with folded arms he seriously observes the players, is a Spaniard. You observe the old gentleman sitting near him. Upon his table is a large bottle of Strasburg. His right hand half embraces a goblet of the beverage, his left is around the huge bowl of his pipe, and as with half-closed eyes he puffs those careless volumes from his mouth, you cannot mistake the German. The players at one of the billiard-tables you discover from their language to be Italians. Those at the other are Frenchmen, and he with the short pipe is Eugene, the finest player in Paris. That Eugene does nothing but play billiards. He is autocrat of the queue. Professor of his art, he will tell you that he has just come from giving lessons to the Marquis of A. or the Baron B. For such as take any interest in this elegant game, the play of Eugene is a source of much delight. Indeed parties and engagements are frequently made for the express purpose of witnessing his style. He plays the French game of three balls, counting carams and doubled. pocketings. Mark his elegant and easy position. With what graceful freedom does he manage his queue; and as its elastic point salutes the ball, the sound is half musical! How complicated are his combinations, and with what swiftness are they conceived! He has unquestionably a genius for the game; some natural capacities that way, to himself mysterious, and for which he claims no praise. You deem those balls in an unaccountable position. Eugene hardly surveys the table. Swiftly his thought passes out through his queue into the white; the white takes the red, and cushioning, spins for an instant, and then starts off in a miraculous curve towards the left, tapping gently the blue. The red has been doubled into the middle pocket. There is from every observer an exclamation of delight. Eugene notices it not. What to them was mystery is to him the simplest intellectual combination. He has moreover left the balls in the best possible position. He almost always leaves them so. Hence, when he gets the run he is a very dangerous competitor. With him the question is not so much how he shall count, as how, after counting, he shall leave the balls. Nothing I know of in its way is more charming than to watch the various developments of Eugene's design. There is not a single direction of the balls whereof, previously to his stroke, Eugene is not aware. Of course Eugene never Those providential interferences which aimless players call far-seeing of their own are not within his scope. The idea of being in luck is an abstraction whereof he never dreams. Fortune is never for him or against him. Pocketing himself would be a phenomenon. He never makes a miss-queue. There is, moreover, no kissing in his play. His strokes are firm and gentle, and graceful, and full of thought. His spread is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen, and his straight-hazards are, beyond all expression, marvellous. The style of Eugene is far beyond all other styles, as the style of Paganini is beyond all other styles. Not that Eugene never misses. But Eugene's miss is finer than the count of any other player; and as Boswell preferred the being cut by Johnson to a heartiest recognition by any other Englishman, so might you more plume yourself on a miss like that of Eugene than on the best count of the best individual who is yonder playing with him. Until this evening I had had no just conception of how intensely intellectual is the genuine game of billiards. Until now I had been accustomed to derive my pleasure therein, chiefly from the sight of polished balls noiselessly coursing over a plain of green, or darting off in angles of mathematical regularity:-from listening to the sharp, quick click of their hit, or the tinkle of bells announcing them pocketed ;—and more than all, from that extremely agreeable nervous sensation along the arm, which attends the contact of queue with ball. I now felt that I was all wrong, and that this game, like chess, was to be appreciated in proportion as it emdodied thought, and that random shots in the one should be held in the same degradation as random moves in the other. But, what's here? Music has arisen. Through the thick smokeclouds we dimly see two figures, male and female. They have each a violin. Let us drop them each a sous, and so conclude our ramblings and cogitations among the cafés and estaminets of Paris. LINES. I WATCH'D the morn break on thy natal day, In thinking that thou should'st so soon forget, Forget, and seem to break all friendship's ties, Those ties which once seem'd never to be broken; Or though on earth we're doom'd to meet no more, M. C. H. GONELLO. THE JESTER. THERE lived in Florence, centuries ago, But sometimes tis a crime to be too witty; (A hard return for such a harmless prank!)- And all his friends look'd very cool and blank, He turn'd away in lowliness of heart, Who drove him houseless from his native mart, Gonello shook the dust from off his shoes, The mirth that buoy'd him on Life's changing sea; "The world was all before him where to choose" Soon he determined what his course should be; The Marquis of Ferrara, said report, Wanted a fool to entertain his court. Gonello went to seek the situation, And backed his prayers with such a comic face. That he was duly made, by installation, Prime fool and jester to his noble grace; And having taken up this occupation, He put on motley, as became his place, And thenceforth pass'd his precious time in joking, His jests were all both laughable and new, 38 In every public question or debate His Highness made Gonello a partaker, That of a jurisprudent and pun-maker! And so his days flew by, undim'd by care. His wit broke forth like bubbles fast ascending From some deep fountain to the sunny air, Their lucid flash with rainbow colours blending. But all is evanescent that is fair, And grief on joy is evermore attending. The Marquis of Ferrara grew unwell, His grace's illness was a quartan ague, Which the physicians said they could not cure; I hope, dear reader, it may never plague you ; Doubtless tis quite unpleasant to endure. (If this digression be a little vague, you Will see how hard it is a rhyme to lure, There was one remedy, which no one dare And throw him in the sea, by way of bath, He had no great respect for wealth or rank; He plunged the marquis headlong in the spray; Then, seeing him drawn out before he sank, Took to his heels and ran with speed away; His highness was pull'd out all wet and dripping, The courtiers were all fill'd with indignation Against the graceless and audacious prater, |