loving principle, in order to distract the attention of the mass from the sad realities of their legislation. The gamins of Paris are, it is true, an excitement-craving generation; and a new melodrame diverts their clamours from old political grievances. The theatres are therefore made the dog of Alcibiades, and with its tail cut off by the charlatans at the head of affairs."

"By charlatans, meaning the doctrinaire ministry?" "The doctrinaire, or any other. During at least a century following such a national convulsion as the crisis of the Revolution of '89, a country is not to be governed without some spice of charlantry. The mountebank, who composes his nostrums of springwater, though a deceiver in his way, is less reprehensible than one who compounds them with deleterious drugs. Our emperor, while dazzling the eyes of Paris with golden bees and gorgeous coronations, re-established the finances ruined by the directorial system; and extended the limits of a realm which prospered in proportion to its aggrandizement."

"And do you imagine," said I, not wishing to encounter one of those ecstatic panegyrics of Napoleon so often inflicted upon me in the circle of Madame de Mérinville," that the lull of stormy elements we just now experience will prove permanent?"

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In such a century, what can be pronounced permanent?" was the old man's sage reply. "Now that the worship of the right divine is extinct, and kings, in their turn, are subjected to the tribunal of public opinion, who can decide upon the stability of a government? Tomorrow evil counsellors may gain the ascendency, or the progress of years enfeeble the mind of our new sovereign. More ordonnances, more barricades, and, perhaps, more experiments with another fils de St. Louis. A nation that has once attempted to pry into its destinies by the interpretation of mare de sang, as coolly as the old women of Paris establish their divinations upon mare de café, is never again to be trusted. The instincts of the bloodhound are awake."

"An exciting cause, you think, is alone wanting ?"

"An exciting cause, and the coincidence of circumstances. The grandsons of the heroes of the grande armée are more likely than their sons to organize themselves into a military nation, inasmuch as the memory of glory is more permanent than that of suffering.

Even so, when the eye-witnesses of the sanguinary scenes of the Revolution become a past generation, their successors will recur only to the abuses it served to reform, and new Mirabeaus will live and die, and be immortal. It has been said of Paris, that its mud is sprinkled with spangles, (an assertion far more true in a moral sense, than as indicating the excess of luxury it purports to illustrate ;) and the tinsel thus mixed up with the clay of our populace is apt to dazzle and mislead people as to its real value and consistency."

And thus, if my old gentleman be a prophet of and in his own country, the French have some dozen years of tranquillity before them previous to a new nation-quake.

I cannot understand the motive of my sister in remaining so pertinaciously silent with respect to Lord Hartston and his movements. Is her forbearance the result of accident or design? Are the Herberts of opinion that, since we cannot be lovers, we never can be friends; or are they simply pre-engrossed with the affairs of their own family? No, not that! Whenever I have chosen to fancy my sister least interested in my fortunes, I have been eventually compelled to admit my own injustice and her unintermitting sisterly affection. She has probably excellent reasons for her silence. Although not married to Lady Sophia Rossana, he may have other engagements, which she is not at liberty to divulge; or, as the confidante of the old lady, she may be aware. No matter! why lose my time in. surmises? Lord Hartston's affairs are clearly no affair of mine.

*

Our carnival concluded gayly with a bal costumé at one of the chrysocal-Carlist notabilities of fashion. AshWednesday brought omelettes and penitence for the French, and petits comités and the Italian opera for the English. We have now reached the end of Lent, and I am warned by hail-storms, the blossoming of the almondtrees, and of the milliners' shops into Longchamps fashions, that Easter is at hand. Another week, and I shall set forth upon a new pilgrimage.

What have I gained, I wonder, by my séjour on the continent? Have I been as dséennuyée as I expected, or have I grown wiser as well as merrier? Wiser is, alas! a mighty word to apply to so light a thing as woman; but even Herbert the Gruff will admit that I am at least a trifle liberalized or de-conventionized by my trip.

Of all the moral distempers prevalent in fashionable London, conventionality is certainly the most infectious. That world of the two thousand, with its weighty chains, if not of iron, of chased gold; its codex argenteus of little greatness, or great littleness, inscribed in silver letters upon purple vellum; its studied ignorance of all things worth knowing; its knowingness in all matters better consigned to oblivion; that world of the two thousand obtained last year unlimited influence over my mind. Its narrow horizon became my universe, its sneer my law of reprobation, its plaudits my voice of fame. But travel has taught me that my celestial empire is not (as my more than Chinese ignorance supposed) the centre of the terrestrial globe. I have lived where its ukases are unnoted, its interdicts inoperative. In laying aside my bigotry, however, let me be careful not to fall into atheism. Though prepared to rail with King Henry against “the idol ceremony,” and to admit the possibility of enjoying an airing in a carriage with mis-matched horses, and servants unliveried and unseemly, I must not carry with me to the land of etiquette all the rough and ready disorderliness of the continent. An emancipated slave makes, I believe, the worst of freemen; but I hold myself enfranchised only from the bonds of fashion, and still retain my allegiance to the laws of society.

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"Ah, poor soul," cried Madame de Mérinville, embracing me, when I went yesterday to pay her my visite d'adieu; now that the summer is at hand, you are about to commence your career of London dissipation, to suffocate yourself in stifling ball-rooms, and toil under an afternoon sun through a round of.horrible morning visits. Quelle corvée! Diamonds, coëffures de cérémonie, silks

and satins in the month of June!"

"And you?" said I, anxious to know her alternative for the only objects I have observed to occupy her attention.

"I, you know, am less my own mistress than any body. Mérinville's business in the Chamber, and mine at the Tuileries chain me to Paris. But even here we manage to enjoy the pleasures of the rural season. D'abord, our beautiful public gardens, with their groves of chestnuts and lilachs, in whose shade we venture to sit and chat during the hot weather without incurring forfeiture of caste. Then, our rides in the Bois de Boulogne, our concerts en plein air, our Tivoli, our Franconi."

213

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