140

guineas a

In my time a red

his dinners at Richmond and Greenwich; his cigars at three pound, and his many tailors. sufficient for a soldier; now our young officers seem to take every opportunity, by their costume, of assuring the

coat was

world that they

are not in the least connected with the army;

whereas, by one of the curious contradictions of human nature,

the civilians

that they are

take every possible pains to induce the belief military. Let Mr. Ferdinand de Fytchett take care; else will his Royal Highness commanding-in-chief take away his commission, and his papa cut him off with a shilling. After all, I believe Ferdinand is a good lad, but he is wild; and if your admired Mr. Reginald Tapeleigh be truly as you as decorous as Telemachus, Mr. Fermaintain, dinand is, at the least, a very dangerous Mentor for that wellThe behaved youth. young men, you say, did not stay at the Hôtel du Louvre. They declared it to be dear and uncomfortable, and "hung out"-to use their unpolished language-how rude and overbearing the young men of the -at an hotel called Lille et Albion, in the present day are !The last time I was in Paris with Sir Rue St. Honoré. Charles, A.D. 1839, we stopped at Meurice's. Everybody stopped at Meurice's then, or else at the Windsor or the Wagram. Those Hotels have gone out of fashion now, I suppose, like your mamma. I hope the De Fytchetts found their suite of rooms au premier, for which you inform me they paid forty francs a day, without candles or firing-large enough.

Did you find Paris much changed? Bah! I am talking to a little girl. You had never been there before. Frederica, you say, found it much altered. I dare say she did; from the time when she and Madame de Vergenne's pupils walked two and two in the Champs Elysées, and were put en pénitence on their return to the pension, for turning their heads to look at

the dancing dogs, and the Théâtre Guignol. Dear, delightful Champs Elysées: with all the changes the present Ruler has worked in Paris, railroad tracks for omnibuses, vast boulevards pierced through crowded quarters, new palaces, new quays, huge barracks, Regent's Park-like villas in the suburbs, electric telegraphs, macadam and other innovations, I am weary of reading of-yea, even to Halles Centrales, the Louvre finished, the Sainte Chapelle restored, and that wonderful Bois de Boulogne and Pré Catelan-he cannot take away the distinguishing signs, the imperishable characteristics of the Champs Elysées and the Boulevards. To the end of the chapter there will be, I predict, in the one, circuses, dioramas, puppet shows, cafés chantants and beerhouses al fresco, Polichinelle, the dancing dogs, the Guignol, quacks, conjurors, little children in goat carriages, nursemaids ogled by bearded sapeurs, little boy soldiers with gaby faces, trousers too tight for them, and smoking nasty cheap cigars, the fumes of which impregnate and poison the air. There will be corseted and strapped-up dandies bowing and grimacing to the ladies in their carriages on the drive, or who have alighted from those vehicles to sweep the smooth paths with their vast rich skirts. There will be other dandies on horseback vainly endeavouring to ride like Englishmen, and, in their timorous yet frenzied gesticulations and tenacity, looking much more like baboons astride. There will always be the same lumbering yellow omnibuses, fiacres, citadines, and cabriolets, with the rawboned, ill-groomed, club-tailed horses, the same washerwomen's carts toiling towards Neuilly or Boulogne, the same trotting gendarmes, and cantering maquignons in blouses from the adjoining livery stables, showing off spavined screws to wittols who imagine themselves judges of horse-flesh. Always beneath the trees, too, the same boys and girls' schools softly pacing two and two, guarded by stern pions and sub-govern

esses.

The same stealthy priests in cassock, bands, buck shoes, and shovel hats, prowling on the skirts of the gay pro menade, pretending to con their breviaries, but, it always seemed to me, surveying nurserymaids and soldiers and children and mountebanks, even to the dancing dogs, with evil eyes. Times change, costumes change, details of manners change, but I am sure, my Louisa, that the crowd you saw but one short week ago was, to all intents and purposes, the same brilliant assemblage I have so often surveyed; the same which, in wigs and hoops and swords and laced coats, made the Champs Elysées charming a hundred years ago. Always, too, must there have been the same prattling, grinning, nodding and beckoning, and shoulder-shrugging hilarity in that unrivalled and sempiternal multitude, straining their best energies to the task of doing nothing with ease, grace, and cheerfulness. Always must there have been the same glorious blessed sunset at the end of that grand vista. You saw the sun sink below the horizon through the magnificent archway of the Etoile. The arch was not half finished when I first beheld Paris.

For I was a bit of a school-girl, fifteen years old indeed, just emancipated from Miss Grummidge's finishing academy in Old Brompton, and my papa and mamma took advantage of the great peace of 1815, when the ambition of Buonaparte was so fearfully punished, and the valour of the Britisharmy, commanded by his Grace the Duke of Wellington, sotriumphantly asserted. We had just as happy a party as you had lately and perhaps the very merriest of our party was the poor old Marquis Aillerdest Pigeon, who had been glad enough for years to impart to us girls, and for so much a quarter, the finishing touches in French conversation and accent. He was to get back his large estates now, dear old gentleman, with his nice powdered head and little bobbing

pigtail. His beloved Monarch was restored, and as he pinned his cross of St. Louis once more on the breast of his snuff-coloured spencer, he said that the ancien régime was to be restored too, and that the Great Waters that had overflowed were to be turned back once more into their narrow channel. Poor old Marquis! He found a wholesale grocer in quiet possession of his estates, and I believe he never got an acre of his broadlands back. He died in Louis Philippe's time, a poor pensioner on the old Civil List, but hopeful and believing to the last that the Great Waters would be turned back into the narrow channel. At the peace of 1815, his name and his misfortunes gave him a sort of temporary celebrity, and he went to court, to the Tuileries, and St. Cloud. Little did we Brompton school-girls imagine, when we teased the snuffy, chatty old gentleman, who taught us our conjugations, and when we hung paper addenda to his pigtail, that he possessed one of the noblest and most famous names of France-that his ancestors had fought in the Crusades, and that he himself, in the days of Louis the Wellbeloved, had been deigned worthy to monter dans les carrosses du roi-to ride in the carriage of the most Christian King. Well, it was the year 1815, and we enjoyed ourselves very much. We went to see a droll farce called Les Anglaises pour rire," in which a M. Vernet was very amusing, and the dress and conversation of the hated English-they loathed us then, my dear, as they do nowwere extravagantly but ludicrously caricatured. We saw the horses of St. Mark taken down from the triumphal arch of the Carrousel, and carted through the streets by Austrian soldiers on their way back to Venice, the French standing by, grinding their teeth and cursing in an impotent manner. We saw the streets and Boulevards thronged with Cossacks, Kirghese, Croats, Czecks, Magyars, Prussian and Austrian

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soldiers, staring at the gorgeous shop windows, and pulling and handling, with a brute curiosity, the rich stuffs that hung at the door-jambs. We saw foreign sentries at the doors, and foreign flags flying on the roofs of the stately public edifices erected by that wonderful Napoleon. We walked in the Palais Royal, and saw the Russian officers, who seemed almost to live there, crowding the galleries, encumbering the cafés, swaggering in and out of the gaming houses -one could hear, walking in the vestibules, the ring and chink of the gold coin in the saloons above-and drinking champagne at ten o'clock in the morning. We went to the Barrière du Combat, and saw a poor broken-down donkey baited, and at last almost torn to pieces by savage dogs;— how I cried! and papa said it was not half so cruel as a cockfight. We saw the fat, infirm old king being wheeled about in a chair in front of the Pavillon de l'Horloge at the Tuileries; and in the grand gardens of the palace papa pointed out Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier, Benjamin Constant, Marshal Soult, M. Dénon (who knew so much about Egypt), and innumerable other celebrities. We heard a lecture on Optics at the Institute, and saw the Allied Sovereigns and the Hetman Platoff at the Grand Opera. And last of all, my dear, we saw the Champs Elysées, not as yet in all their glory, for the Arc de l'Etoile, commenced by Buonaparte in glorified vaunting of his victories, was not terminated. there was the same sparkling crowd, the same perpetual fair, with one strange menacing addition which I saw, but which will not, I should think, be seen again on this side the century. All the upper portion of the Champs Elysées, and far up the Route de Neuilly, was occupied by lines of bellshaped tents, glinting sharp and white among the richlytinted autumnal foliage of the trees. Mars had set up his shield and spear in these Elysian fields. There was a great

But