quackery was swept away forever, one may hope, by its virulent outbreak. No half-way nostrums, no outside tinkering, answered for this fiery patient, whose fever set the whole continent of Europe in a blaze. War itself was gentle in comparison with the acts of its savage delirium, in which the vengeance of defrauded ages fell upon victims most of whom were innocent of personal offence. The reign of humanitarian theory led strangely to a period of military predominance which has had no parallel since the days of Alexander of Macedon. Then War itself died of exhaustion. The stupor of reaction quenched the dream of civil and religious liberty. But the patient stirred again in 1830 and 1848, and the dream, scarcely yet realized, became more and more the settled purpose of his heart.

Now the government in 1830 was manifestly in the wrong. The stupid old Bourbon Prince, Charles X., had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing, but the French people had learned and unlearned many things. They had learned the illusion of Monarchy, the corruption of the demagogue, the futility of the sentimentalist. The impotence of the aristocracy was one of the lessons of the day. Was ever a people more rapidly educated? Take the canaille of the pre-revolutionary history, and the peuple of the Revolution. What a contrast! It is the lion asleep in the toils, and the lion awake, and turning upon his captors in fury. The French people have never gone back to what they were before that great outbreak. The mighty, volcanic heart has made its pulsations felt through all assumptions, through all restraints. Yet the French people are easily tricked. They are easily led to receive pedantry for education, bigotry for religion, constraint for order, and successful pretension for glory.

The Revolution of 1848 was justified in all but its method. And method has often been the weak point in French politics. Methods are handed down more surely than ideas are inherited. The violent measures whose record forms so large a part of French history have left behind them a belief in military, rather than in moral, action. The coup d'état would seem by its name to be a French invention; but it is a method abhorred of Justice. Justice recognizes two sides, and gives ear to both. Passion sees but one, and blots out in blood the representatives of the other. The Revolution of 1848 was the rather premature explosion of a wide and subtle conspiracy. But if the conflicting opinions and interests then current could have encountered each other, as in England or America, in open daylight, trusting only in the weapons of reason, a very different result would have been achieved. Do not conspire, is one of the lessons which Paris teaches by her history. Do not say, nor teach others to say: "If we cannot have our way, we will have your life." Say, rather: "Let both sides state their case, and plead their cause, and let the weight of Reason decide which shall prevail."

Paris as I first knew it, half a century ago, was a place imposing for its good taste and good manners. A stranger passing through it with ever so little delay would necessarily have been impressed with the general intelligence, and with the æsthetic invention and nicety which, more than anything else, have given the city its social and commercial prestige.

In those days, Chateaubriand and Madame Récamier were still alive. The traditions of society were polite. The theatres were vivacious schools of morality. The salon was still an institution. This was not what we should call a party, but the habitual meeting of friends in a friend's house,—a good institution, if kept up in a good spirit.

The natural sociability of the French made the salon an easy and natural thing for them. Salons were of all sorts. Some shone in true glory; some disguised evil purposes and passions with artificial graces. I think the institution of the salon indigenous to Paris, although it has by no means stopped there.

The great point in administering a salon is to do it sincerely. Where the children are put out of the way, the old friends neglected, the rich courted, and celebrities impaled and exhibited, the institution is demoralizing, and answers no end of permanent good. A friendly house, that opens its doors as often and as widely as the time and fortune of its inmates can afford, is a boon and blessing to many people.

I suppose that the French salons were of both sorts. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain historical set of Parisian women who dealt very lightly with the Decalogue, but who, on the other hand, gave very pleasant little suppers. French society, no doubt, afforded many occasions of this sort, but far different were the meetings in which the literary world of Paris listened to the unpublished memoirs of Chateaubriand; far different was the throng that gathered, twice a day, around the hearth of the wise and devout Madame Swetchine.

In the days just mentioned, I passed through Paris, returning from my bridal journey, which had carried me to Rome. I was eager to explore every corner of the enchanted region. What I did see, I have never forgotten,—the brilliant shops, the tempting cafés, the varied and entertaining theatres. I attended a séance of the Chamber of Deputies, a lecture of Edgar de Quinet, and one of Philarete Charles. De Quinet's lecture was given at the Sorbonne. I remember of it only the enthusiasm of the audience,—the faces at once fiery and thoughtful, the occasional cries of "De Quinet," when any passage particularly stirred the feelings of the auditors. Of Philarete Charles, I remember that his theme was "English Literature," and that at the close of his lecture he took occasion to reprobate the whole literary world of America. The bon homme Franklin, he said, had outwitted the French Court. The country of Franklin was utterly without interest from an intellectual point of view. "When," said he, "we take into account the late lamentable disorders in New York (some small election riot, in 1844), we shall agree upon the low state of American civilization and the small prospect of good held out by the republic." He was unaware, of course, that Americans were among his hearers; but a certain tidal wave of anger arose in my heart, and had not my graver companion held me down, I should have arisen then, as I certainly should now, to say: "Monsieur Philarete Charles, you are uttering falsehoods."

In those days, I first saw Rachel, then in the full affluence of her genius. The trenchant manner, the statuesque drapery, the chain-lightning effects, were much as they were afterwards seen in this country. But when I saw her, seven years after that first time, in London, I thought that her unrivalled powers had bloomed to a still fuller perfection than before. Of finest clay, thrilled by womanly passion and tempered by womanly tact, we need not remember the faults of the person in the perfection of the artist. Alfred de Musset has left a charming account of a supper at her house. I certainly have never seen on the boards a tragic conception equal to hers. Ristori, able as she was, seemed to me to fall short in Rachel's great parts, if we except the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which the Christian woman, following the crucifix to her death, showed a sense of its value which the Jewish woman could neither feel nor counterfeit.

The gallery of the Louvre recalls the finest palaces of Italy, and equals, in value and interest, any gallery in the world. Venice is far richer in Titian's pictures, and Rome and Florence keep the greatest works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. To understand Quintin Matsys and Rubens, you must go to Antwerp, where their finest productions remain. But the Louvre has an unsurpassed variety and interest, and exhibits not a few of the chief treasures of ancient and modern art. Among these are some of the masterpieces of Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Conception of Murillo,