Orientals who visit Paris for the first time are at a loss to conceive anything more magnificent than its streets and its palaces and gardens. After having been in England, however, their opinion is materially altered, though I must still admit that there are some striking features in Paris; amongst these, the Boulevards, Champs ElysÉes, Tuileries, the Louvre and Luxembourg, are the most attractive. Of the greater part of the streets of Paris I can say but little; and there are some so filthy, narrow, and almost impassable, as to outstrip the meanest town in Turkey. Nothing but the uncouth wooden sabots of the French could at any season traverse them. Though I must acknowledge that nothing can surpass the easy elegance and refinement of the higher classes of society, it would appear, from what a poor countryman of mine told me, that the second-rate lodging houses are miserable in the extreme. One would imagine, from his description, that they went to the opposite extreme to luxury. Complaining bitterly of his fate, for he had all his life before been accustomed to opulent independence in Lebanon, he wrote to me the other day as follows, viz.:—

“The disagreeable first-impression made upon my mind on first taking possession of my lodgings here (Paris), was the melancholy resemblance existing between my chimney-place and a Syrian church-yard, for I can assure you that its shape resembles exactly one of our ordinary tombstones. For the first few nights I hardly dared look at it before going to bed, lest I should have my rest broken by dreams of spectres and other horrid sprites of the imagination. In addition to its disagreeable appearance, it smokes so terribly that I dare not light a fire, though shivering with cold, lest I should lose my eyesight from the effects of the smoke; but this is not all; the door will not shut well, the floorings are of damp bricks, and the rooms are built without respect to proportion, elegance, or comfort. The house I am living in is eight stories high, and heigho! poor me, I live on the fourth floor, so that I have a hundred steps to mount up and down a dozen times a-day. The greatest nuisance of all is, that the street door is continually being left open, so that any one given to pilfering is at perfect liberty to walk up and down stairs and help himself to whatever the fates may throw in his way. There certainly is nominally a concierge. This old worthy, however, is either so engrossed with an old newspaper or so comfortably napping, that he is perfectly unconscious of all passing around him.

“I have vainly complained to him of this negligence, and pointed out the inconvenience and interruption I was perpetually being exposed to by people rapping at my door, under the pretext of inquiring if M. So-and-so lodged there, but evidently with the intention of finding out if there was any one within to hinder their forcing an entrance. His invariable reply used to be, ‘Eh bien! que voulez vous que je fasse.’ There are no bells, so that I may die in a fit, or be burnt to death before any assistance could be obtained.”

Such is the deplorable picture drawn by my poor friend, who, on the other hand, lauds up to the skies lodgings of a similar class in London, and as he is a sharp, acute man, I have little doubt but that he is correct in his ideas.

What surprised me very much in Paris was the apparent ignorance of the French with regard to the cities and towns of the Holy Land. I forgot at that period that they were restricted from reading their Bibles, and that consequently very few of them were likely to have the names of places, and people familiar to the English and ourselves, so firmly impressed upon their minds. My appearance and costume never excited curiosity. When they asked me whence I came from, and I answered Syria, the word made no impression on them.

“Where is that?” said one man to another in my hearing.

“Ma foi, je ne saurais vous dire—unless it be some obscure village in Algeria which our colonists have not yet explored.”

Of course the higher classes are not guilty of such ignorance, for who could have thrown a better light on the beauties and localities of Syria than the learned and amiable Lamartine, whose accurate work, Souvenirs de l’Orient, is deservedly popular over Europe.

I have many pleasant souvenirs of the friends I met in Paris. The hospitable reunions of their Excellencies the Turkish and the English ambassadors—the kindness of the American representative, Mr. Rives—the brilliant balls I was invited to by various families of fashion—and an adventure at the hotel V....—never to be forgotten, and which it is my intention at some future period to publish, which I have no doubt will interest many of my English readers—all these I recall with pleasure, and I avail myself of this opportunity with gladness to thank my many friends in Paris for the courtesy and kindness I have ever met with at their hands. But putting these aside as elegant exceptions, I prefer on the whole England, and the friendship of an Englishman to that of a Frenchman,—the private character of the former has a sounder foundation, and they know how to appreciate real moral, domestic comfort and happiness, such as our countrymen seek for and find amongst the citron groves and gardens of Syria.

Now it can hardly be said that a Frenchman knows what domestic bliss signifies. With him the CafÉ is a sine qu non; he may have an amiable and charming wife, a young and attractive family, every charm of domestic happiness that should link his heart and thoughts with home, and draw him towards it as the only true and rational source of enjoyment; but he leaves all these, and looks upon them as insipid; his sole delight is to wander about from cafÉ to cafÉ, varying his amusements by an occasional game at billiards or a petit verre, else he strays from theatre to operas, from operas to balls, and some of the wealthier classes live for weeks, and sometimes months, in the country in the strictest seclusion, practising an economy amounting to penuriousness, in order that they may, on their return to town, be enabled to gratify this passion. The wives of these gentlemen, continually deserted, left to themselves, and naturally of a gay turn, which in many instances arises from a neglect of a proper moral education, form those liaisons with others, which are publicly known and talked about with the utmost nonchalance, and which, in my humble opinion, are an outrage to the name of Christianity, and a disgrace to a nation acknowledged in every other respect to stand high in the scale of civilization. I cannot describe what a painful effect it has upon the mind of Syrian strangers to witness such things countenanced in France; they leave the country with very poor opinions of its civilization—poorer still of its Christianity; and they disseminate these opinions amongst our own people on their return to Syria; hence it arises that oftentimes the poorer and more ignorant inhabitants of Syria, who cannot distinguish one European nation from another, but who set all down under the head of Franks, and suppose all to be of one creed and manner of thinking, are apt to imagine that the English are only next-door to infidels, and consequently a people to be feared, if not entirely avoided; but this is an error which I will occupy myself in rectifying as soon as I can find time to distribute tracts in Syria descriptive of the laws, manners, customs, and religions, of the different nations of Europe.

But to return to the French, or rather the middle classes of the French. I found it almost invariably the case that should a Frenchman invite you to a cafÉ, he does so in the full expectation that you in your turn will give him a treat. His character is inconsistency personified—he is fickle and capricious—he enters freely into conversation with you, and lets you into all his secrets during the first five minutes of his acquaintance, and he entertains you with a string of personal adventures. With him every one is mon cher! mon brave! mon ami! He could kiss and hug you on parting, and swears eternal fidelity. The next day his ardour has cooled—the third he restricts himself to a bow—the fourth, and he mingles with the crowd—and you never meet him again perhaps in a life-time.

For a ball-room society give me Paris—for a quiet untiring friend, give me England. And of the two my heart prefers the latter.

From France I travelled to Vienna. After delivering my letters to the minister in that city, I proceeded to Constantinople. On arriving there I took up my abode with my old friend the Emir Sayed, the grandson of the Emir Beschir.