star, the popular author, the famous militaire, the brilliant cantatrice will attract those who are insensible to the zest of pâtés and champagne. 'Do you know that man?' asks some aristocrat of the illustrious guest when they encounter the parvenu-Amphytrion. 'He dines me occasionally,' is the cool reply. Foreigners of either sex, even with a damaged reputation, find no obstacles to such partial successes. Let the frail one have preserved somewhat of her youthful vivacity and the bulk of her fortune, and she has only to hunt up a poor Marchesa or Countess of the Faubourg San Germain, and install her as a friend of the house, in a costly hotel, and coronated paste-board will soon fill her vase in the ante-chamber, and wits and beauties, official and distinguished strangers surround her fauteuil. That there is little meaning in these arrangements; that they merely serve as a pastime, like an opera or vaudeville we pay to witness, is true; but, on the other hand, facilities thus easily obtained by cash and policy, afford scope and yield opportunities for the display of character and the drama of social life, which more exclusive circles never know. The art tenir un salon is one peculiar to the French, and there are ladies of that nation, whose fame is as traditionally and even historically established as that of great generals, statesmen, and poets; their rivalry equals the competition of the other sex in war and politics; and, strange as it may appear to an American, the social prestige thus acquired and transmitted is as often based upon sin as sanctity; an equivocal character united to attractions of manner or rare intelligence, makes the popularity of one Madame and a reputation as a devotee that of another. In a word, society in Paris is an arena so free, versatile, necessary—protected by established conventionalities, and moulded by the laws of taste—that it includes infinite possibilities, as the French memoirs and plays annually demonstrate.

A social atmosphere thus concentrated in effect, and diffusive in its nature, brings into contact associations which more intense domestic life and a more formal organization keep apart. The company in an English drawing-room may vary from year to year, but its tone and character remain intact; while in Paris saloons are designated by historical allusions and renowned for special and temporary features. If it is desired to recal a certain epoch and set of people, the whole idea is conveyed by such names as Hotel Rambouillet or the Salons du Restoration; whereas Holland House bears an identical fame as a place consecrated by intellectual hospitality, under successive reigns. Pedantry and artificial consequence belong to the fashionable levees of Louis the Fourteenth's time, while those of the first Napoleon represent an entirely diverse set of ideas and feelings. It is because society is directly exposed to the 'form and pressure' of the hour in Paris that it is thus Protean; religion, politics, and the taste in art and letters instantly stamp the talk and the manners as the coin of the realm bears the image of a new potentate; the life of the family, of the devotee, of artistic genius, of statesmanship and of arms, penetrate and interfuse in the social sphere, and an acute writer, therefore, alludes with literal truth to the period when 'the perfume of the boudoir mingled with the incense of the sacristy.' There phrases of society are bestowed upon art and politics; the favorable commencement of a new regime has been called its honey-moon; and a critic of Watteau's pictures refers to him as 'cet maitre coquet et naif.'

The caprice and tasteful arrangements in the minutiæ of life, noted by Yorick in his sketch of a Sunday in the French metropolis, when La Fleur brought the butter for his master's dejeuner, on a fresh currant-leaf, and found the bouquet he presented his own chosen fair had changed hands three times in the course of the day—though not so patent now, are equally characteristic; the valet still knows his master's debts, and the femme de chambre her mistress's love affairs; there is the same familiarity in the relation of master and servant, but the chance is, there is less gossip between them, as both have more ideas and think oftener than before the days of cheap literature, steam, and telegraphs. Comedy still makes sport of husbands; 'the literary mind of France takes a religious turn' occasionally; and 'people laugh at every thing' as they did in the time of the young Duchess of Burgundy, whose remark to this effect was then considered so naive. The mariage de convenance is quite as prevalent, children as artificial, and old people as child-like; the precieuses ridicules are, however, on the wane, being fused in the cosmopolitan pressure of a more general intelligence, while the femme savante has given place, in a great degree, to the female authors, who are too alive to the inspiration of the times, and their own ideas to be pedantic.

To such an extent does the tyranny of custom dominate in the social history of France, that duels and gaming have their periods of triumph as well as bonnets and constitutions; at times they have each enjoyed a fashionable prestige, so that individuals, without the least taste for either occupation, in order to be comme il faut have sought to lose a notable amount at roulette and to provoke some famous swordsman to combat. An acute observer of Parisian life, prophesies that two growing tastes are now at work destined to modify the French character, one the rage for English horses, and the other the use of cigars. Of the normal traits of the national mind, that which apparently remains most intact is the instinct of military life. The same adaptation for the camp that we recognize in Froissart's Chronicles and Napoleon's campaigns, is obvious at this moment. 'This is worth considering,' says Montaigne, 'that our nation places valor (vaillance) in the highest degree of virtue.'

The same extravagant notion of an Englishman's whims and sangfroid prevail in the French capital as used to supply farce-writers before the age of steam. Veron recently published the anecdote of un Anglais, who had been his neighbor at a restaurant for several weeks, bidding him good-by one day, as he was going on a trip round the world; and eighteen months after, the traveller reäppeared at the accustomed hour and table, and found his old companion in the same seat; meantime, the Englishman had circumnavigated the globe. We are told in Paris of every conceivable mania on the part of English collectors; one spent a fortune in bottles of water from all the rivers in the world, one in every kind of pipe, and another in specimens of bird's eggs. On the other hand, the French are better understood across the Channel; it is curious, at the present era of alliance, to read one of the old travellers, who reported France to Londoners, in the heyday of British prejudice. 'What is there,' says the famous Thomas Nashe, 'in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in friendship, perfect slovenry, and to love no man for my pleasure? I have known some that have continued there by the space of half-a-dozen years, and when they came home they have had a little, weerish, lean-face, under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoken English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travel, but to distinguish the true Bordeaux grape and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans; yet peradventure to wear a velvet patch on their face and walk melancholy with their arms folded.'