to the most trifling hors d'œuvre, being carefully served round in succession to the eighteen guests before the ceremony was concluded. Champagne was not introduced till dessert; yet its aid was not wanting, as in England, to enliven the party. Everybody talked incessantly; nor did I once hear that ominous clatter of knives and forks, which has often betrayed to me the dullness of my own dinner table. During dinner, a single glass of Sherry, and weak Bourdeaux and water, seemed the beverages in favour; at dessert, Champagne and Tokay. The French of the present day are singu larly temperate; and a lady seen to drink a glass of pure wine, or a second glass of Champagne, would be unkindly thought of. At the conclusion of dessert, we were handed by the gentlemen to the drawingroom, coffee having been already served; and in a few minutes the carriages of the ministers were announced, and the solemn affair was over. In my ignorance, I had not ordered my carriage till ten o'clock; but Madame Lemaître, perceiving my embarrassment, good-naturedly proposed that I should accompany her to her sister's, Madame Fournier's, the wife of a rich receveur-général, who has music every Sunday evening. There I found the Grisi, the venerable Grasini, Tamburini, Rubini, and, above all, the great maestro, Rossini himself, the idol of all these financial people. The wittiness for which he was long celebrated is said, indeed, to be in some degree obscured by the excellence of their dinners and suppers; they have crammed him into dullness. Madame Fournier's music was exquisite; her society, I suspect, so-so. The women were over-dressed and affected; the men, "des fashionables," a bad imitation of English dandies, and decidedly the least admirable class of la jeune France. The ineffability of an Englishman of fashion, with his five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand a year-his valets, and villas, and travelling carriages, and hunting boxes-is comparatively a consistent folly. From Eton to Almack's he is pampered into the languid, supercilious inanity which dozes through a London season, after the labours of its moors, its Melton, and its steeple chases. Not so these pseudo-"fashionables" of the Café Tortoni; with their two or three hundred per annum, pour tout potage, their lives must consist of an alternation of luxe el indigence. We know that their black satin fronts and collars were invented for economical purposes, and that

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they are miserably lodged and fed, to enable them to perform their daily lounge in the Bois de Boulogne on a tolerable horse, and secure a weekly stalle at the opera. Their finery is a hollow affair.

January 1st.-This is no weather for sightseeing; I have therefore deferred my visits to the wonders of the metropolis till a milder season; and, being at Rome, am doing as the Romans do. Le jour de l'an !—three inches of snow and forty thousand people-nay, I should think, twice as many-in the streets. To-day everybody calls upon everybody; millions of visiting cards are dispersed by people who make it their business to undertake the circulation; and, for once in its life, all the world is generous. During the last week, the toyshops of Giroux, la Porte Chinoise, and the Palais Royal, have presented a perpetual stream of customers; and it would be a curious task to compute the amount of money expended from Christmas to new-year's day, in the purchase of sugarplums and gewgaws equally useless. N'importe !—the whole city is in movement; no business no care. Every face wears a smile, for the French possess, beyond all people, the art of disencumbering themselves at will of the troubles of life; they put aside their vexations for a day, as they would a hat or a cloak; while we English, labour as we will, find it impossible to pluck out every thorn from our sides on even the most exciting occasion: hence our careworn aspect. Life sits heavy upon us; we are a grave, considering people, deeply impressed with our moral responsibilities.

2d.-Last night the ministers, corps diplomatique, and public bodies, were received at court, pour souhaiter la bonne année à leurs majestés. To-night it has been our turn, and I had the satisfaction of seeing the staterooms in full splendour. I can imagine nothing more regally royal. The grand staircase and salle des maréchaux, dazzlingly white, and radiantly illuminated, are worth a whole parish of Pimlico palaces!

The receptions here are very differently managed from our drawingrooms. The ladies attending are placed, as they happen to arrive, along the whole range of state apartments; the royal family, entering from the petits apartemens, address themselves in succession to each, pursuing the long line till they return again, hoarse and

fatigued, to the point from whence they started. First, appears the king, attended by his état major, preceded by the aide-de-camp in waiting, who names every lady to his majesty. To each the king addresses, with obsequious courtesy, some commonplace remark, and passes on. Next comes the queen, for whom the same ceremonial is observed by her lady of honour: after her Madame Adelaide; then the two charming princesses; lastly, the Dukes of Orleans and Nemours. You hear nothing but the iteration of the same barren phrases: "I hope you are not inconvenienced by the heat;" "Have you been long in Paris?" "Do you make a prolonged stay in France?" Towards myself, and those with whom the royal family are personally acquainted, a greater degree of familiarity is exhibited; but there is something of kindliness, of bienveillance, of bonté, in the demeanour of the queen, imparting value to her most trifling compliments.

I accompanied Madame de Merinville to the reception, who pointed out with pride the representatives of many of the first houses in France; would I could have shown her, in return, a more desirable display of my countrypeople! In addition to the fifty or sixty who did us honour, there were several hundreds who could ground no pretensions to appear there upon previous presentation at our own court, and among them several decidedly and notoriously inadmissible. This arises from want of due importance being invested in the English ambassadress. No English gentleman can be presented to the king, except by his ambassador; no English lady ought to obtain access to the queen, unless under the sanction of her ambassadress. At present applications are made direct to the dame d'honneur, and immediately granted. Invitations follow, and England becomes most unworthily represented at the court of the Tuileries.

To procure access to the British embassy, on the contrary, it is indispensable, to produce a sufficient letter of recommendation. Mine, which was from Lady Southam, secured me a kind reception, an immediate invitation to dinner, and a general one to the Friday evening parties.

French families, who have the entrée, maintain their privilege of coming uninvited whenever the ambassadress receives company; but very few Carlists visit the embassy; not from deficiency of regard or respect to

wards its occupants, but because they are apprehensive of meeting certain ministerial and political notabilités, with whom they do not choose to come in contact.

Next in importance is the salon of the Austrian ambassadress, the personal friend of our own, and one of the most amiable and graceful women of the day.

3d.-To-night I made my début in the circle of Madame de Bretonvilliers; and I am still shivering at the recollection! The great gloomy courtyard in the Rue de Grenade, the dark damp staircaise, the stifling garlicscented antechamber, the ill-lighted rooms, the formal assemblage, were not compensated by the vastness of the antiquated saloons, and the magniloquent nomenclature of the guests. No young people, the ladies scarcely even in demie-toilette, muffled in bonnets and shawls-and coldness and formality enough to have frozen a salamander. I was presented to several duchesses whose titles are historical, and who, by their appearance, may have figured in the Fronde. But I suspect there was a vapour of the Tuileries clinging to my garments, for they eyed me most contemptuously. We had two Boston tables and a "wisk;" eau sucrée and weak sirup and water were handed round by way of refreshment; the candles seemed to burn dim; the lofty saloon was as hazy as one of our great theatres in the month of November; a sensation of ague seemed creeping over me. Dinner invitations, from the Bretonvilliers, are as much out of the question as to the table of his holiness. The people of his caste are supposed to dine, but the fact has never been proved to foreigners by ocular demonstration.

We are apt to fancy in England that every great French family has its Ude; whereas none but the ambassadors, ministers, or great bankers affect to give dinners or even keep a chef. There was only Rothschild, in all Paris, who could venture upon Carême !

Just returned from a brilliant ball chez le ministre de These ministerial fetes are considered far from select, but my eye is not yet sufficiently familiar with the surface of French society to detect the fault. The house, an official residence, was noble, and nobly lighted; the orchestra admirable; and the whole thing faultlessly arranged. A French ballroom presents a more orderly aspect than ours. The ladies are seated side by side

round the room, generally in a double row; and no gentleman would dream of usurping a place among them; the seats are occupied by the same persons throughout the evening; when they dance, a handkerchief or bouquet is left to engage the place. The room, has, consequently, the appearance of being lined with beautiful women, who are led out to dance, then reconducted to their seats. There is no wandering up and down, no pushing to get in here or out there, as in an English party, whereon the demon of restlessness appears to have set his seal. Our ladies fair are, in fact, too fond of lounging about on the arms of men, to whom they are comparatively strangers, to stare at this beauty, laugh at that quiz, or ascertain, by the most insolent coolness of investigation, whether they like the looks of Lady A. or Lady B. sufficiently to be introduced to her. They seem to fancy themselves privileged in rudeness towards any one not exactly belonging to their own set; to sneerto elbow-to push aside. French women, on the contrary, are peculiarly courteous to strangers. If thrust against their intentions into a crowd, there is a coaxing tone in their merest, "Pardon madame, mille pardons!” which, if not sterling gold, is very pretty tinsel.

The men in society here take my fancy less than the women. The very young ones affect Anglomania, and talk of nothing but horses and la chasse, in a tone of affectation ridiculous to English ears. Still worse are the jeune élégans, the look-and-die class, who dress à la moyen age, and, like other mites, are vast underminersof female reputation. I omit a few charming old men of the old school, all urbanity and good breeding; but after a time their flowery nothingness becomes tedious; and, on the whole, the most agreeable companions are the men of about fifty, whose youth was passed at the imperial court, where ability was the passe partout ; men of the world, who know the world like men." From one thing, at least, you are secure in French societythe proud, reserved, unsocial, "superior man," so often met with in England-a miser of his own mind, who stalks through life as if he owed no kindly reciprocation of sociability to his fellow-creatures. The French seem to have their temper or their temperament more under their own control than the English.

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Just returned from a ball at the Tuileries! what a singular scene!-truly and indeed the fête of a roi