Snipsnap's request, to include her ladyship in our little' party, and was not a little mortified to be refused.

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"Ne m'en voulez pas, ma chère,” said she, “ mais votre miladi est une femme aux aventures. On this point, our queen, like your own, is difficult. Miladi Harriette is not of our society at the chateau, and it would not suit me to be seen at her house, or have her seen at mine. D'ailleurs, charmante femme; but too much talked of."

After being compelled to convey this refusal-however cautiously worded, ungracious enough—I thought it right to attend Lady Harriet's next soirée, when my attention being awakened on the subject, I certainly did notice that her coterie consisted of persons, like the articles displayed at some great china sale in London, damaged or defective; a family (or a tea set) mismatched by the unsatisfactory disappearance of a daughter, (or a cream ewer,) or an elderly roué (or vase) with the gilding worn off. There are, however, so few English houses of consideration open à jour fixe in Paris, that Lady Harriet's retains a certain vogue, particularly with certain persons desirous of meeting certain other persons, and uncertain of an elsewhere. To-night, to my great amazement, as I sat gossipping with Lady Harriet, who possesses the fluent glibness of discourse peculiar to one who has passed twenty years en causeries, in came the Duke of Merioneth, arrived only this evening in Paris, and coming to note his arrival at Lady Harriet's exchange, as a merchant might have done at Lloyd's. He appeared at once delighted to see me, and vexed to see me there.

The duke has been passing the autumn at his place n Wales, surrounded by his own family, so that he could tell me nothing of those concerning whom I was most anxious to hear. His inquiries of myself plainly proved that he has made himself acquainted with all my proceedings since I quitted England. He seemed as much au fait of every particular of my travels as my courier. The duke's journey hither seems to have been a sudden movement, but he will be an addition to society. We have a variety of English personages in Paris this winter, all having their own orbits and pursuits, and contributing little to the general amusement. They have introduced the detestable custom of great dinners, which tire out one's spirits without pleasure or profit.

Pozzo di Borgo's house, by-the-way, is said to be a

1

great loss to society; but I meet every night several striking Russian beauties, who are supposed to play the same parts in Paris which Alexander despatched one of the fairest of his court to enact at that of Napoleon. A still more captivating woman is one who might pass alternately for Russian, English, French, Italian, German, or Spanish; a perfect linguist, an accomplished artist, a clever musician, and, better than all, a pretty woman; who sways the world of diplomats and dandies, not with a rod of iron, but a rod of loadstone-nay, perhaps a divining rod, for many believe there must be magic in her influence. An object of spite to her own sex, all the world, on arriving here, is put on its guard against her wiles, yet all the world entangles itself in the piquante countess's net as blindly as if the warning had been spared!

I cannot, however, forgive anything that is young and pretty for soiling its taper fingers with the dirty work of politics! Let our sex glory in the public triumphs of fathers, husbands, brothers, lovers; but the successes to be conquered by back-stairs influence, the molelike mining and countermining of petty intrigue, are a vile species of contrebande, and unworthy of the purity of feminine nature.

I am assured that the animosities of politics have greatly abated during the last two years. Still, there are certain circles in Paris which greatly resemble the hustings of an English election; and when some new deserter sneaks over to the enemy, that is, some Carlist beauty appears at one of the balls of the chateau, fearful is the hue and cry raised after the delinquent. In vain does she plead the fruitlessness of resistance to the established order of things, the example of those older and wiser than herself, the necessity of opening a career for her husband and children; political partisans are animals which give tongue, but give no ear.

One of the grand secrets of this vehemence of political zeal is want of occupation. The education of such French women as were born at the early period of the great revolution was of necessity neglected; and these ignorantissimes, who have now attained to middle age, having nothing learned and nothing forgotten, "throw themselves" into politics just as formerly elles se seraient jétées dans la dévotion. Some doting peer, or displaced préfet, occupies the post formerly assigned to the père

directeur, and their bigotry takes only a minor object for its idolatry. The uncultivated minds of such women are easily overmastered by a ruling passion which they mistake for a ruling principle; and happy those of the rising generation, who, if ungifted with faculties applicable to the highest purposes of study, are at least trained to devote their leisure hours to music, drawing, and les arts d'agrémens, so as to secure them against the possession of that particularly evil spirit, the genius of political intrigue! I never yet saw a female saint or a female politician, who had not taken up her vocation in the want of rational employment.

The Duke of Merioneth left his name for me this morning; and to-night I met him au concert à la cour, to which I accompanied Madame de Merinville. These concerts are admirably arranged; I never heard a better selection of music. The invitations are issued so as to distinguish the non-dancing part of the community, as far as the petits bals distinguish the dancers; but on the whole they are less exclusive than the private balls. This is the first appearance of the Duke of Merioneth at the court of Louis Philippe; and though a professed Liberal, I am convinced he was disturbed by compunetious visitings, at finding himself the guest of the successor of Charles X.; nay, I predict that, during his stay here, he will mechanically re-enrol himself under the banners of the noble Faubourg. His grace will be diverted by hearing of a conquest I have effected in that seventh heaven of heraldry. Two evenings ago, just as I was dressed for Lady Harriet's, I received a visit of ceremony from Madame de Bretonvilliers, to tender matrimonial overtures for my hand (and jointure) in the name of her respectable uncle, the old Duc de Clisson, whose style and titles are said to engross the parchment of a whole patriarchal flock; but whose rent roll, soit dit en passant, would lie in a nutshell. The venerable duke affects to find in me the tone of the vieille cour; declares that there was an inter-alliance between the houses of Clisson and Montresor, in the time of Philip Augustus; and protests that his chateau on the Durance, an old turretted barn furnished to receive Maria de Medicis on her road from Tuscany to the arms of Henri IV., would be a paradise with such an Eve as Madame de Delaval for its Duchess of Clisson. Madame de

Delaval knows better; and, without permitting the marchioness to enter into financial particulars, or refer me, as she wished, for explanations to the notaire of the house of Clissons, I begged to decline the honour of the alliance. She seemed to think it would have been convenient to sign the marriage contract on the same day with that of Malvina de Rochemore.

This morning, being bright and sunshiny, I have devoted to sightseeing; to the churches of Notre Dame, so inferior to our own cathedrals of York and Lincoln; St. Eustache an architectural whim, conceived in the worst taste, but producing an imposing effect; St. Etienne du Mont, the most ancient and beautiful of the religious temples of Paris; the ill-fated Pantheon, a type of the unsoundly based but gradually designed modern monarchy of France; and lastly, the Chapel of the Invalides, one of the noblest trophies of the Siècle de Louis XIV. As I admired its glorious nave, and the clever ruse by which its fine pavement was preserved from destruction during the revolution, I could not but place myself in the position of General Serrurier, the governor, who received the first visit from Napoleon on his return from Elba, when he beheld the eagle eye of his former benefactor raised to the empty space whence the banners, the trophies of ten years of victory had been basely removed.

I visited last week the city of the dead-the cemetery of Père la Chaise; and, admitting all the charges made against it of bad taste and frivolous sentiment, could not stand unmoved in the burial-place of fifty thousand cotemporaries, including so many illustrious names, so many memorable victims. Sepulchral monuments are liable, above all other works of art, to the hazard of that single but fatal step, from the sublime to the ridiculous, as our own churches of St. Paul and Westmin-, ster Abbey unfortunately demonstrate. But, with the exception of Canova's monument at Vienna, to the memory of the Grand Duchess Maria Christiana of Luxe T'eschen; Rauck's, to the Queen of Prussia; and Constan's, in the Cathedral of Sens, to the Dauphin and Dauphiness, the Continent has nothing to show in rivalship with those of Mrs. Nightingale, in Westminster Abbey; of Mrs. Howard, at Corby; the Wodehouse children, at Lichfield; or Miss Johnes Knight, at Hafod.

The cemetery of Père la Chaise is, above all, strikingly deficient in monuments. The statue of General Foy, by David, is calculated for the senate-house rather than the sepulchre; and all the rest on which cost and care have been bestowed, consist in mausolea of granite, closed by solid gratings, containing marble altars adorned with massive plate. Of one stately burying-place (honourably mentioned by Madame Trollope) some curious anecdotes are recorded. The Muscovite lord of the lady to whose remains it is dedicated, one of the richest individuals in Europe, directed, in the first outburst of conjugal grief, the purchase of a considerable piece of ground to be consecrated to her memory. Second thoughts, and the sculptor's estimate, arrived in process of time; and, instead of devoting the whole territory to its original destination, a reasonable space was allotted to the countess, and the remainder to the construction of other graves. That these should be suffered to lie tenantless seemed absurd; and the count, on receiving one day a visit from a favourite protégé, an eminent French tragedian, who had been attached to his private theatre, presented, with unexampled generosity, to the astonished histrion the title deeds of a vault in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, instead of the pension he had been fondly anticipating. Three other graves, however, remained to be disposed of; and one morning the beautiful Countess 0- who was dying by slow degrees of a cancer, was found by her physician bathed in tears. "I know I am getting rapidly worse," cried she; “I know I look shockingly to-day. That monster - has been here, trying to persuade me to purchase one of his horrible caveaux!" So much for the magnanimity of the magnificos of Muscovy!

Madame de Merinville, after amusing me with this eventful history, favoured me with a still more scandalous anecdote connected with one of the favourite heroes of Madame Trollope. A lady fair, some time since an object of idolatry to the celebrated bard so prominently bossed with the organ of veneration, was invited, a few summers ago, by her gentle shepherd to a partie de campagne-an understood crisis in a French affaire de cœur. Attired in a bewitching demie toilette, the lady stepped into his calêche, anticipating a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, to conclude, probably, with a dinner at St. Cloud or Courbevoie; and, after some hours passed in the open