The Opera.—In the evening I went to the French Opera, which is still one of the lions of Paris. It was once in the Rue Richelieu; but the atrocious assassination of the Duc de Berri, who was stabbed in its porch, threw a kind of horror over the spot: the theatre was closed, and the performance moved to its present site in the Rue Lepelletier, a street diverging from the Boulevard.

Fond as the French are of decoration, the architecture of this building possesses no peculiar beauty, and would answer equally well for a substantial public hospital, a workhouse, or a barrack, if the latter were not the more readily suggested by the gendarmerie loitering about the doors, and the mounted dragoons at either end of the street.

The passages of the interior are of the same character—spacious and substantial; but the door of the salle opens, and the stranger, at a single step, enters from those murky passages into all the magic of a crowded theatre. The French have, within these few years, borrowed from us the art of lighting theatres. I recollect the French theatre lighted only by a few lamps scattered round the house, or a chandelier in the middle, which might have figured in the crypt of a cathedral. This they excused, as giving greater effect to the stage; but it threw the audience into utter gloom. They have now made the audience a part of the picture, and an indispensable part. The opera-house now shows the audience; and if not very dressy, or rather as dowdy, odd, and dishevelled a crowd as I ever recollect to have seen within theatrical walls, yet they are evidently human beings, which is much more picturesque than masses of spectres, seen only by an occasional flash from the stage.

The French architects certainly have not made this national edifice grand; but they have made it a much better thing,—lively, showy, and rich. Neither majestic and monotonous, nor grand and Gothic, they have made it riant and racy, like a place where men and women come to be happy, where beautiful dancers are to be seen, and where sweet songs are to be heard, and where the mind is for three or four hours to forget all its cares, and to carry away pleasant recollections for the time being. From pit to ceiling it is covered with paintings—all sorts of cupids, nymphs, and flower-garlands, and Greek urns—none of them wonders of the pencil, but all exhibiting that showy mediocrity of which every Frenchman is capable, and with which every Frenchman is in raptures. All looks rich, warm, and operatic.

One characteristic change has struck me everywhere in Paris—the men dress better, and the women worse. When I was last here, the men dressed half bandit and half Hottentot. The revolutionary mystery was at work, and the hatred of the Bourbons was emblematised in a conical hat, a loose neckcloth, tremendous trousers, and the scowl of a stage conspirator. The Parisian men have since learned the decencies of dress.

As I entered the house before the rising of the curtain, I had leisure to look about me, and I found even in the audience a strong contrast to those of London. By that kind of contradiction to everything rational and English which governs the Parisian, the women seem to choose dishabille for the Opera.

As the house was crowded, and the boxes are let high, and the performance of the night was popular, I might presume that some of the Élite were present, yet I never saw so many ill-dressed women under one roof. Bonnets, shawls, muffles of all kinds, were the costume. How different from the finish, the splendour, and the fashion of the English opera-box. I saw hundreds of women who appeared, by their dress, scarcely above the rank of shopkeepers, yet, who probably were among the Parisian leaders of fashion, if in republican Paris there are any leaders of fashion.

But I came to be interested, to enjoy, to indulge in a feast of music and acting; with no fastidiousness of criticism, and with every inclination to be gratified. In the opera itself I was utterly disappointed. The Opera was Zerline, or, The Basket of Oranges. The composer was the first living musician of France, Auber; the writer was the most popular dramatist of his day, Scribe; the Prima Donna was Alboni, to whom the manager of the Opera in London had not thought it too much to give £4000 for a single season. I never paid my francs with more willing expectation: and I never saw a performance of which I so soon got weary.

The plot is singularly trifling. Zerline, an orange-girl of Palermo, has had a daughter by Boccanera, a man of rank, who afterwards becomes Viceroy of Sicily. Zerline is captured by pirates, and carried to Algiers. The opera opens with her return to Palermo, after so many years that her daughter is grown up to womanhood; and Boccanera is emerged into public life, and has gradually became an officer of state.

The commencing scene has all the animation of the French picturesque. The Port of Palermo is before the spectator; the location is the Fruit Market. Masses of fruits, with smart peasantry to take care of them, cover the front of the stage. The background is filled up with Lazzaroni lying on the ground, sleeping, or eating macaroni. The Prince Boccanera comes from the palace; the crowd observe 'Son air sombre;' the Prince sings—

After this matrimonial confession, which extends to details, the prime minister tells us of his love still existing for Zerline, whose daughter he has educated under the name of niece, and who is now the Princess Gemma, and about to be married to a court noble.

A ship approaches the harbour; Boccanera disappears; the Lazzaroni hasten to discharge the cargo. Zerline lands from the vessel, and sings a cavatina in praise of Palermo:—

Zerline is a dealer in oranges, and she lands her cargo, placing it in the market. The original tenants of the place dispute her right to come among them, and are about to expel her by force, when a marine officer, Rodolf, takes her part, and, drawing his sword, puts the whole crowd to flight. Zerline, moved by this instance of heroism, tells him her story, that she was coming "un beau matin" to the city to sell oranges, when a pitiless corsair captured her, and carried her to Africa, separating her from her child, whom she had not seen for fifteen years; that she escaped to Malta, laid in a stock of oranges there;—and thus the events of the day occurred. Rodolf, this young hero, is costumed in a tie-wig with powder, stiff skirts, and the dress of a century ago. What tempted the author to put not merely his hero, but all his court characters, into the costume of Queen Anne, is not easily conceivable, as there is nothing in the story which limits it in point of time.

Zerline looks after him with sudden sympathy, says that she heard him sigh, that he must be unhappy, and that, if her daughter lives, he is just the husband for her,—Zerline not having been particular as to marriage herself. She then rambles about the streets, singing,

After this "hommage aux oranges!" to the discredit of Paradise, on which turns the plot of the play, a succession of maids of honour appear, clad in the same unfortunate livery of fardingales, enormous flat hats, powdered wigs, and stomachers. The Princess follows them, apparently armed by her costume against all the assaults of Cupid. But she, too, has an "affaire du coeur" upon her hands. In fact, from the Orangewoman up to the Throne, Cupid is the Lord of Palermo, with its "beau ciel, plaine fertile." The object of the Princess's love is the Marquis de Buttura, the suitor of her husband's supposed niece. Here is a complication! The enamoured wife receives a billet-doux from the suitor, proposing a meeting on his return from hunting. She tears the billet for the purpose of concealment, and in her emotion drops the fragments on the floor. That billet performs all important part in the end. The enamoured lady buys an orange, and gives a gold piece for it. Zerline, not accustomed to be so well paid for her fruit, begins to suspect this outrageous liberality; and having had experience in these matters, picks up the fragments of the letter, and gets into the whole secret.

The plot proceeds: the daughter of the orangewoman now appears. She is clad in the same preposterous habiliments. As the niece of the minister, she is created a princess, (those things are cheap in Italy,) and she, too, is in love with the officer in the tie-wig. She recognises the song of Zerline, "Achetez mes belles oranges," and sings the half of it. On this, the mother and daughter now recognise each other. It is impossible to go further in such a denouement. If Italian operas are proverbially silly, we are to recollect that this is not an Italian, but a French one; and that it is by the most popular comic writer of France.

The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf is forbidden by the pride of the King's sister, the wife of Boccanera, but Zerline interposes, reminds her of the orange affair, threatens her with the discovery of the billet-doux, and finally makes her give her consent: and thus the curtain drops. I grew tired of all this insipidity, and left the theatre before the catastrophe. The music seemed to me fitting for the plot—neither better nor worse; and I made my escape with right good-will from the clamour and crash of the orchestra, and from the loves and faux pas of the belles of Palermo.

The Obelisk.—I strayed into the Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison the finest space in Paris. I cannot call it a square, nor does it equal in animation the Boulevard; but in the profusion of noble architecture it has no rival in Paris, nor in Europe. Vive la Despotisme! every inch of it is owing to Monarchy. Republics build nothing, if we except prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially squalid, bitter, and beggarly. What has America, with all her boasting, ever built, but a warehouse or a conventicle? The Roman Republic, after seven hundred years' existence, remained a collection hovels till an Emperor faced them with marble. If Athens exhibited her universal talents in the splendour of her architecture, we must recollect that Pericles was her master through life—as substantially despotic, by the aid of the populace, as an Asiatic king by his guards; and recollect, also, that an action of damages was brought against him for "wasting the public money on the Parthenon," the glory of Athens in every succeeding age. Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe—two openly, and the third secretly, as despotic as the Sultan—were the true builders of Paris.

As I stood in the centre of this vast enclosure, I was fully struck with the effect of scene. The sun was sinking into a bed of gold and crimson clouds, that threw their hue over the long line of the Champs ElysÉes. Before me were the two great fountains, and the Obelisk of Luxor. The fountains had ceased to play, from the lateness of the hour, but still looked massive and gigantic; the obelisk looked shapely and superb. The gardens of the Tuilleries were on my left—deep dense masses of foliage, surmounted in the distance by the tall roofs of the old Palace; on my right, the verdure of the Champs ElysÉes, with the Arc de l'Etoile rising above it, at the end of its long and noble avenue; in my front the Palace of the Legislature, a chaste and elegant structure; and behind me, glowing in the sunbeams, the Madeleine, the noblest church—I think the noblest edifice, in Paris, and perhaps not surpassed in beauty and grandeur, for its size, by any place of worship in Europe. The air cool and sweet from the foliage, the vast place almost solitary, and undisturbed by the cries which are incessant in this babel during the day, yet with that gentle confusion of sounds which makes the murmur and the music of a great city. All was calm, noble, and soothing.

The obelisk of Luxor which stands in the centre of the "Place," is one of two Monoliths, or pillars of a single stone, which, with Cleopatra's Needle, were given by Mehemet Ali to the French, at the time when, by their alliance, he expected to have made himself independent. All the dates of Egyptian antiquities are uncertain—notwithstanding Young and his imitator Champollion—but the date assigned to this pillar is 1550 years before the Christian era. The two obelisks stood in front of the great temple of Thebes, now named Luxor, and the hieroglyphics which cover this one, from top to bottom, are supposed to relate the exploits and incidents of the reign of Sesostris.

It is of red Syenite; but, from time and weather, it is almost the colour of limestone. It has an original flaw up a third of its height, for which the Egyptian masons provided a remedy by wedges, and the summit is slightly broken. The height of the monolith is seventy-two feet three inches, which would look insignificant, fixed as it is in the centre of lofty buildings, but for its being raised on a plinth of granite, and that again raised on a pedestal of immense blocks of granite—the height of the plinth and the pedestal together being twenty-seven feet, making the entire height nearly one hundred. The weight of the monolith is five hundred thousand pounds; the weight of the pedestal is half that amount, and the weight of the blocks probably makes the whole amount to nine hundred thousand, which is the weight of the obelisk at Rome. It was erected in 1836, by drawing it up an inclined plane of masonry, and then raising it by cables and capstans to the perpendicular. The operation was tedious, difficult, and expensive; but it was worth the labour; and the monolith now forms a remarkable monument of the zeal of the king, and of the liberality of his government.

There is, I understand, an obelisk remaining in Egypt, which was given by the Turkish government to the British army, on the expulsion of the French from Egypt, but which has been unclaimed, from the difficulty of carrying it to England.

That difficulty, it must be acknowledged, is considerable. In transporting and erecting the obelisk of Luxor six years were employed. I have not heard the expense, but it must have been large. A vessel was especially constructed at Toulon, for its conveyance down the Nile. A long road was to be made from the Nile to the Temple. Then the obelisk required to be protected from the accidents of carriage, which was done by enclosing it in a wooden case. It was then drawn by manual force to the river—and this employed three months. Then came the trouble of embarking it, for which the vessel had to be nearly sawn through; then came the crossing of the bar at Rosetta—a most difficult operation at the season of the year; then the voyage down the Mediterranean, the vessel being towed by a steamer; then the landing at Cherbourg, in 1833; and, lastly, the passage up the Seine, which occupied nearly four months, reaching Paris in December; thenceforth its finishing and erection, which was completed only in three years after.

This detail may have some interest, as we have a similar project before us. But the whole question is, whether the transport of the obelisk which remains in Egypt for us is worth the expense. We, without hesitation, say that it is. The French have shown that it is practicable, and it is a matter of rational desire to show that we are not behind the French either in power, in ability, or in zeal, to adorn our cities. The obelisk transported to England would be a proud monument, without being an offensive one, of a great achievement of our armies; it would present to our eyes, and those of our children, a relic of the most civilised kingdom of the early ages; it would sustain the recollections of the scholar by its record, and might kindle the energy of the people by the sight of what had been accomplished by the prowess of Englishmen.

If it be replied that such views are Utopian, may we not ask, what is the use of all antiquity, since we can eat and drink as well without it? But we cannot feel as loftily without it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality, and virtue would be lost to us without it; we should lose the noblest examples of the arts, some of the finest displays of human genius in architecture, a large portion of the teaching of the public mind in all things great, and an equally large portion of the incentives to public virtue in all things self-denying. The labour, it is true, of conveying the obelisk would be serious, the expense considerable, and we might not see it erected before the gate of Buckingham Palace these ten years. But it would be erected at last. It would be a trophy—it would be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary country from which civilisation spread to the whole world.

But the two grand fountains ought especially to stimulate our emulation. Those we can have without a voyage from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a six years' delay.

The fountains of the Place de la Concorde would deserve praise if it were only for their beauty. At a distance sufficient for the picturesque, and with the sun shining on them, they actually look like domes and cataracts of molten silver; and a nearer view does not diminish their right to admiration. They are both lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both consisting of three basins, lessening in size in proportion to their height, and all pouring out sheets of water from the trumpets of Tritons, from the mouths of dolphins, and from allegorical figures. One of those fountains is in honour of Maritime Navigation, and the other of the Navigation of Rivers. In the former the figures represent the Ocean and the Mediterranean, with the Genii of the fisheries; and in the upper basin are Commerce, Astronomy, Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes, and all spouting out floods of water. The fountain of River Navigation is not behind its rival in bronze or water. It exhibits the Rhine and the Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and flowers, of the vintage and the harvest, with the usual attendance of Tritons. Why the artist had no room for the Seine and the Garonne, while he introduced the Rhine, which is not a French river in any part of its course, must be left for his explanation; but the whole constitutes a beautiful and magnificent object, and, with the sister fountain, perhaps forms the finest display of the kind in Europe. I did not venture, while looking at those stately monuments of French art, to turn my thoughts to our own unhappy performances in Trafalgar Square—the rival of a soda-water bottle, yet the work of a people of boundless wealth, and the first machinists in the world.

The Jardin des Plantes.—I found this fine establishment crowded with the lower orders—fathers and mothers, nurses, old women, and soldiers. As it includes the popular attractions of a zoological garden, as well as a botanical, every day sees its visitants, and every holiday its crowds. The plants are for science, and for that I had no time, even had I possessed other qualifications; but the zoological collection were for curiosity, and of that the spectators had abundance. Yet the animals of pasture appeared to be languid, possibly tired of the perpetual bustle round them—for all animals love quiet at certain times, and escape from the eye of man, when escape is in their power. Possibly the heat of the weather, for the day was remarkably sultry, might have contributed to their exhaustion. But if they have memory—and why should they not?—they must have strangely felt the contrast of their free pastures, shady woods, and fresh streams, with the little patch of ground, the parched soil, and the clamour of ten thousand tongues round them. I could imagine the antelope's intelligent eye, as he lay panting before us on his brown patch of soil, comparing it with the ravines of the Cape, or the eternal forests clothing the hills of his native Abyssinia.

But the object of all popular interest was the pit of the bears; there the crowd was incessant and delighted. But the bears, three or four huge brown beasts, by no means reciprocated the popular feeling. They sat quietly on their hind-quarters, gazing grimly at the groups which lined their rails, and tossed cakes and apples to them from above. They had probably been saturated with sweets, for they scarcely noticed anything but by a growl. They were insensible to apples—even oranges could not make them move, and cakes they seemed to treat with scorn. It was difficult to conceive that those heavy and unwieldy-looking animals could be ferocious; but the Alpine hunter knows that they are as fierce as the tiger, and nearly as quick and dangerous in their spring.

The carnivorous beasts were few, and, except in the instance of one lion, of no remarkable size or beauty. As they naturally doze during the day, their languor was no proof of their weariness; but I have never seen an exhibition of this kind without some degree of regret. The plea of the promotion of science is nothing. Even if it were important to science to be acquainted with the habits of the lion and tiger, which it is not, their native habits are not to be learned from the animal shut up in a cage. The chief exertion of their sagacity and their strength in the native state is in the pursuit of prey; yet what of these can be learned from the condition in which the animal dines as regularly as his keeper, and divides his time between feeding and sleep? Half-a-dozen lions let loose in the Bois de Boulogne would let the naturalist into more knowledge of their nature than a menagerie for fifty years.

The present system is merely cruel; and the animals, without exercise, without air, without the common excitement of free motion, which all animals enjoy so highly—perhaps much more highly than the human race—fall into disease and die, no doubt miserably, though they cannot draw up a rationale of their sufferings. I have been told that the lions in confinement die chiefly of consumption—a singularly sentimental disease for this proud ravager of the desert. But the whole purpose of display would be answered as effectually by exhibiting half-a-dozen lions' skins stuffed, in the different attitudes of seizing their prey, or ranging the forest, or feeding. At present nothing is seen but a great beast asleep, or restlessly moving in a space of half-a-dozen square feet, and pining away in his confinement. An eagle on his perch and with a chain on his leg, in a menagerie, always appears to me like a dethroned monarch; and I have never seen him thus cast down from his "high estate" without longing to break his chain, and let him spread his wing, and delight his splendid eye with the full view of his kingdom of the Air.

The Jardin dates its origin as far back as Louis XIII., when the king's physician recommended its foundation for science. The French are fond of gardening, and are good gardeners; and the climate is peculiarly favourable to flowers, as is evident from the market held every morning in summer by the side of the Madeleine, where the greatest abundance of the richest flowers I ever saw is laid out for the luxury of the Parisians.

The Jardin, patronised by kings and nobles, flourished through successive reigns; but the appointment of Buffon, about the middle of the eighteenth century, suddenly raised it to the pinnacle of European celebrity. The most eloquent writer of his time, (in the style which the French call eloquence,) a man of family, and a man of opulence, he made Natural History the fashion, and in France that word is magic. It accomplishes everything—it includes everything. All France was frantic with the study of plants, animals, poultry-yards, and projects for driving tigers in cabriolets, and harnessing lions À la Cybele.

But Buffon mixed good sense with his inevitable charlatanrie—he selected the ablest men whom he could find for his professors; and in France there is an extraordinary quantity of "ordinary" cleverness—they gave amusing lectures, and they won the hearts of the nation.

But the Revolution came, and crushed all institutions alike. Buffon, fortunate in every way, had died in the year before, in 1788, and was thus spared the sight of the general ruin. The Jardin escaped, through some plea of its being national property; but the professors had fled, and were starving, or starved.

The Consulate, and still more the Empire, restored the establishment. Napoleon was ambitious of the character of a man of science, he was a member of the Institute, he knew the French character, and he flattered the national vanity, by indulging it with the prospect of being at the head of human knowledge.

The institution had by this time been so long regarded as a public show that it was beginning to be regarded as nothing else. Gratuitous lectures, which are always good for nothing, and to which all kinds of people crowd with corresponding profit, were gradually reducing the character of the Jardin; when Cuvier, a man of talent, was appointed to one of the departments of the institution, and he instantly revived its popularity; and, what was of more importance, its public use.

Cuvier devoted himself to comparative anatomy and geology. The former was a study within human means, of which he had the materials round him, and which, being intended for the instruction of man, is evidently intended for his investigation. The latter, in attempting to fix the age of the world, to decide on the process of creation, and to contradict Scripture by the ignorance of man, is merely an instance of the presumption of Sciolism. Cuvier exhibited remarkable dexterity in discovering the species of the fossil fishes, reptiles, and animals. The science was not new, but he threw it into a new form—he made it interesting, and he made it probable. If a large proportion of his supposed discoveries were merely ingenious guesses, they were at least guesses which there was nobody to refute, and they were ingenious—that was enough. Fame followed him, and the lectures of the ingenious theorist were a popular novelty. The "Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy" in the Jardin is the monument of his diligence, and it does honour to the sagacity of his investigation.

One remark, however, must be made. On a former visit to the Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy, among the collection of skeletons, I was surprised and disgusted with the sight of the skeleton of the Arab who killed General Kleber in Egypt. The Arab was impaled, and the iron spike was shown still sticking in the spine! I do not know whether this hideous object is still to be seen, for I have not lately visited the apartment; but, if existing still, it ought to remain no longer in a museum of science. Of course, the assassin deserved death; but, in all probability, the murder which made him guilty, was of the same order as that which made Charlotte Corday famous. How many of his countrymen had died by the soldiery of France! In the eye of Christianity, this is no palliation; though in the eye of Mahometanism it might constitute a patriot and a hero. At all events, so frightful a spectacle ought not to meet the public eye.

HÔtel des Invalides.—The depository of all that remains of Napoleon, the monument of almost two hundred years of war, and the burial-place of a whole host of celebrated names, is well worth the visit of strangers; and I entered the esplanade of the famous hÔtel with due veneration, and some slight curiosity to see the changes of time. I had visited this noble pile immediately after the fall of Napoleon, and while it still retained the honours of an imperial edifice. Its courts now appeared to me comparatively desolate; this, however, may be accounted for by the cessation of those wars which peopled them with military mutilation. The establishment was calculated to provide for five thousand men; and, at that period, probably, it was always full. At present, scarcely more than half the number are under its roof; and, as even the Algerine war is reduced to skirmishes with the mountaineers of the Atlas, that number must be further diminishing from year to year.

The Cupola then shone with gilding. This was the work of Napoleon, who had a stately eye for the ornament of his imperial city. The cupola of the Invalides thus glittered above all the roofs of Paris, and was seen glittering to an immense distance. It might be taken for the dedication of the French capital to the genius of War. This gilding is now worn off practically, as well as metaphorically, and the prestige is lost.

The celebrated Edmund Burke, all whose ideas were grand, is said to have proposed gilding the cupola of St Paul's, which certainly would have been a splendid sight, and would have thrown a look of stateliness over that city to which the ends of the earth turn their eyes. But the civic spirit was not equal to the idea, and it has since gone on lavishing ten times the money on the embellishment of lanes.

The Chapel of the Invalides looked gloomy, and even neglected; the great Magician was gone. Some service was performing, as it is in the Romish chapels at most hours of the day: some poor people were kneeling in different parts of the area; and some strangers were, like myself, wandering along the nave, looking at the monuments to the fallen military names of France. On the pillars in the nave are inscriptions to the memory of Jourdan, Lobau, and Oudinot. There is a bronze tablet to the memory of Marshal Mortier, who was killed by Fieschi's infernal machine, beside Louis Philippe; and to Damremont, who fell in Algiers.

But the chapel is destined to exhibit a more superb instance of national recollection—the tomb of Napoleon, which is to be finished in 1852. A large circular crypt, dug in the centre of the second chapel (which is to be united with the first,) is the site of the sarcophagus in which the remains of Napoleon lie. Coryatides, columns, and bas-reliefs, commemorative of his battles, are to surround the sarcophagus. The coryatides are to represent War, Legislation, Art, and Science; and in front is to be raised an altar of black marble. The architect is Visconti, and the best statuaries in Paris are to contribute the decorations. The expense will be enormous. In the time of Louis Philippe it had already amounted to nearly four millions of francs. About three millions more are now demanded for the completion, including an equestrian statue. On the whole, the expense will be not much less than seven millions of francs!

The original folly of the nation, and of Napoleon, in plundering the Continent of statues and pictures, inevitably led to retribution, on the first reverse of fortune. The plunder of money, or of arms, or of anything consumable, would have been exempt from this mortification; but pictures and statues are permanent things, and always capable of being re-demanded. Their plunder was an extension of the law of spoil unknown in European hostilities, or in history, except perhaps in the old Roman ravage of Greece. Napoleon, in adopting the practice of heathenism for his model, and the French nation—in their assumed love of the arts violating the sanctities of art, by removing the noblest works from the edifices for which they were created, and from the lights and positions for which the great artists of Italy designed them—fully deserved the vexation of seeing them thus carried back to their original cities. The moral will, it is to be presumed, be learned from this signal example, that the works of genius are naturally exempt from the sweep of plunder; that even the violences of war must not be extended beyond the necessities of conquest; and that an act of injustice is sure to bring down its punishment in the most painful form of retribution.

The Artesian Well.—Near the HÔtel des Invalides is the celebrated well which has given the name to all the modern experiments of boring to great depths for water. The name of Artesian is said to be taken from the province of Artois, in which the practice has been long known. The want of water in Paris induced a M. Mulot to commence the work in 1834.

The history of the process is instructive. For six years there was no prospect of success; yet M. Mulot gallantly persevered. All was inexorable chalk; the boring instrument had broken several times, and the difficulty thus occasioned may be imagined from its requiring a length of thirteen hundred feet! even in an early period of the operation. However, early in 1841 the chalk gave signs of change, and a greenish sand was drawn up. On the 26th of February this was followed by a slight effusion of water, and before night the stream burst up to the mouth of the excavation, which was now eighteen hundred feet in depth. Yet the water rapidly rose to a height of one hundred and twelve feet above the mouth of the well by a pipe, which is now supported by scaffolding, giving about six hundred gallons of water a minute.

Even the memorable experiment confutes, so far as it goes, the geological notion of strata laid under each other in their proportions of gravity. The section of the boring shows chalk, sand, gravel, shells, &c., and this order sometimes reversed, in the most casual manner, down to a depth five times the height of the cupola of the Invalides.

The heat of the water was 83° of Fahrenheit. In the theories with which the philosophers of the Continent have to feed their imaginations is that of a central fire, which is felt through all the strata, and which warms everything in proportion to its nearness to the centre. Thus, it was proposed to dig an Artesian well of three thousand feet, for the supply of hot water to the Jardin des Plantes and the neighbouring hospitals. It was supposed that, at this depth, the heat would range to upwards of 100° of Fahrenheit. But nothing has been done. Even the Well of Grenelle has rather disappointed the public expectation; of late the supply has been less constant, and the boring is to be renewed to a depth of two thousand feet.

The Napoleon Column.—This is the grand feature of the Place de VendÔme, once the site of the HÔtel VendÔme, built by the son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'EstrÉes; afterwards pulled down by Louis XIV., afterwards abandoned to the citizens, and afterwards surrounded, as it is at this day, with the formal and heavy architecture of Mansard. The "Place" has, like everything in Paris, changed its name from time to time. It was once the "Place des ConquÊtes;" then it changed to "Louis le Grand;" and then it returned to the name of its original proprietor. An old figure of the "Great King," in all the glories of wig and feathers, stood in the centre, till justice and the rabble of the Revolution broke it down, in the first "energies" of Republicanism. But the German campaign of 1805 put all the nation in good humour, and the Napoleon Column was raised on the site of the dilapidated monarch.

The design of the column is not original, for it is taken from the Trajan Column at Rome; but it is enlarged, and makes a very handsome object. When I first saw it, its decorations were in peril; for the Austrian soldiery were loud for its demolition, or at least for stripping off its bronze bas-reliefs, they representing their successive defeats in that ignominious campaign which, in three months from Boulogne, finished by the capture of Vienna. The Austrian troops, however, stoutly retrieved their disasters, and, as the proof, were then masters of Paris. It was possibly this effective feeling that prevailed at last to spare the column, which the practice of the French armies would have entitled them to strip without mercy.

In the first instance, a statue of Napoleon, as emperor, stood on the summit of the pillar. This statue had its revolutions too, for it was melted down at the restoration of the Bourbons, to make a part of the equestrian statue of Henry IV. erected on the Pont Neuf. A fleur-de-lis and flagstaff then took its place. The Revolution of 1830, which elevated Louis Philippe to a temporary throne, raised the statue of Napoleon to an elevation perhaps as temporary.

It was the shortsighted policy of the new monarch to mingle royal power with "republican institutions." He thus introduced the tricolor once more, sent for Napoleon's remains to St Helena by permission of England, and erected his statue in the old "chapeau et redingote gris," the characteristics of his soldiership. The statue was inaugurated on one of the "three glorious days," in July 1833, in all the pomp of royalty,—princes, ministers, and troops. So much for the consistency of a brother of the Bourbon. The pageant passed away, and the sacrifice to popularity was made without obtaining the fruits. Louis Philippe disappeared from the scene before the fall of the curtain; and, as if to render his catastrophe more complete, he not merely left a republic behind him, but he lived to see the "prisoner of Ham" the president of that republic.

How does it happen that an Englishman in France cannot stir a single step, hear a single word, or see a single face, without the conviction that he has landed among a people as far from him in all their feelings, habits, and nature, as if they were engendered in the moon? The feelings with which the Briton looks on the statue of Buonaparte may be mixed enough: he may acknowledge him for a great soldier, as well as a great knave—a great monarch, as well as a little intriguer—a mighty ruler of men, who would have made an adroit waiter at a table d'hÔte in the Palais Royal. But he never would have imagined him into a sentimentalist, a shepherd, a Corydon, to be hung round with pastoral garlands; an opera hero, to delight in the sixpenny tribute of bouquets from the galleries.

Yet I found the image of this man of terror and mystery—this ravager of Europe—this stern, fierce, and subtle master of havoc, decorated like a milliner's shop, or the tombs of the citizen shopkeepers in the cemeteries, with garlands of all sizes!—the large to express copious sorrow, the smaller to express diminished anguish, and the smallest, like a visiting card, for simply leaving their compliments; and all this in the face of the people who once feared to look in his face, and followed his car as if it bore the Thunder!

To this spot came the people to offer up their sixpenny homage—to this spot came processions of all kinds, to declare their republican love for the darkest despot of European memory, to sing a stave, to walk heroically round the railing, hang up their garlands, and then, having done their duty in the presence of their own grisettes, in the face of Paris, and to the admiration of Europe, march home, and ponder upon the glories of the day!

As a work of imperial magnificence, the column is worthy of its founder, and of the only redeeming point of his character—his zeal for the ornament of Paris. It is a monument to the military successes of the Empire; a trophy one hundred and thirty-five feet high, covered with the representations of French victory over the Austrians and Russians in the campaign of 1805. The bas-reliefs are in bronze, rising in a continued spiral round the column. Yet this is an unfortunate sacrifice to the imitation of the Roman column. The spiral, a few feet above the head of the spectator, offers nothing to the eye but a roll of rough bronze; the figures are wholly and necessarily undistinguishable. The only portion of those castings which directly meets the eye is unfortunately given up to the mere uniforms, caps, and arms of the combatants. This is the pedestal, and it would make a showy decoration for a tailor's window. It is a clever work of the furnace, but a miserable one of invention.

The bronze is said to have been the captured cannon of the enemy. On the massive bronze door is the inscription in Latin:—"Napoleon, Emperor, Augustus, dedicated to the glory of the Grand Army this memorial of the German War, finished in three months, in the year 1805, under his command."

On the summit stands the statue of Napoleon, to which, and its changes, I have adverted already. But the question has arisen, whether there is not an error in taste in placing the statue of an individual at a height which precludes the view of his features. This has been made an objection to the handsome Nelson Pillar in Trafalgar Square. But the obvious answer in both instances is, that the object is not merely the sight of the features, but the perfection of the memorial; that the pillar is the true monument, and the statue only an accessory, though the most suitable accessory. But even then the statue is not altogether inexpressive. We can see the figure and the costume of Napoleon nearly as well as they could be seen from the balcony of the Tuilleries, where all Paris assembled in the Carousel to worship him on Sundays, at the parade of "La Garde." In the spirited statue of Nelson we can recognise the figure as well as if we were gazing at him within a hundred yards in any other direction. It is true that pillars are not painters' easels, nor is Trafalgar Square a sculptor's yard; but the real question turns on the effect of the whole. If the pillar makes the monument, we will not quarrel with the sculptor for its not making a miniature. It answers its purpose—it is a noble one; it gives a national record of great events, and it realises, invigorates, and consecrates them by the images of the men by whom they were achieved.

Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile.—It is no small adventure, in a burning day of a French summer, to walk the length of the Champs ElysÉes, even to see the arch of the Star, (Napoleon's Star,) and climb to its summit. Yet this labour I accomplished with the fervour and the fatigue of a pilgrimage.

Why should the name of Republic be ever heard in the mouth of a Frenchman? All the objects of his glory in the Capital of which he glories, everything that he can show to the stranger—everything that he recounts, standing on tip-toe, and looking down on the whole world besides—is the work of monarchy! The grand Republic left nothing behind but the guillotine. The Bourbons and Buonapartes were the creators of all to which he points, with an exaltation that throws earth into the shade from the Alps to the Andes. The Louvre, the Madeleine, the Tuilleries, the HÔtel de Ville, (now magnified and renovated into the most stately of town-houses,) the HÔtel des Invalides, NÔtre Dame, &c. &c. are all the work of Kings. If Napoleon had lived half a century longer, he would have made Paris a second Babylon. If the very clever President, who has hitherto managed France so dexterously, and whose name so curiously combines the monarchy and the despotism,—if Louis Napoleon (a name which an old Roman would have pronounced an omen) should manage it into a Monarchy, we shall probably see Paris crowded with superb public edifices.

The kings of France were peculiarly magnificent in the decoration of the entrances to their city. As no power on earth can prevent the French from crowding into hovels, from living ten families in one house, and from appending to their cities the most miserable, ragged, and forlorn-looking suburbs on the globe, the monarchs wisely let the national habits alone; and resolved, if the suburbs must be abandoned to the popular fondness for the wigwam, to impress strangers with the stateliness of their gates. The Arc de St Denis, once conducting from the most dismal of suburbs, is one of the finest portals in Paris, or in any European city; it is worthy of the Boulevard, and that is panegyric at once. Every one knows that it was erected in honour of the short-lived inroad of Louis XIV. into Holland in 1672, and the taking of whole muster-rolls of forts and villages, left at his mercy, ungarrisoned and unprovisioned, by the Republican parsimony of the Dutch, till a princely defender arose, and the young Stadtholder sent back the coxcomb monarch faster than he came. But the Arc is a noble work, and its architecture might well set a redeeming example to the London improvers. Why not erect an arch in Southwark? Why not at all the great avenues to the capital? Why not, instead of leaving this task to the caprices, or even to the bad taste of the railway companies, make it a branch of the operations of the Woods and Forests, and ennoble all the entrances of the mightiest capital of earthly empire?

The Arch of St Denis is now shining in all the novelty of reparation, for it was restored so lately as last year. In this quarter, which has been always of a stormy temperature, the insurrection of 1848 raged with especial fury; and if the spirits of the great ever hover about their monuments, Louis XIV. may have seen from its summit a more desperate conflict than ever figured on its bas-reliefs.

On the Arch of the Porte St Martin is a minor monument to minor triumphs, but a handsome one. Louis XIV. is still the hero. The "Grand Monarque" is exhibited as Hercules with his club; but as even a monarch in those days was nothing without his wig, Hercules exhibits a huge mass of curls of the most courtly dimensions—he might pass for the presiding deity of perruquiers.

The Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, erected in honour of the German campaign in 1805, is a costly performance, yet poor-looking, from its position in the centre of lofty buildings. What effect can an isolated arch, of but five-and-forty feet high, have in the immediate vicinity of masses of building, perhaps a hundred feet high? Its aspect is consequently meagre; and its being placed in the centre of a court makes it look useless, and, of course, ridiculous. On the summit is a figure of War, or Victory, in a chariot, with four bronze horses—the horses modelled from the four Constantinopolitan horses brought by the French from Venice, as part of the plunder of that luckless city, but sent back to Venice by the Allies in 1815. The design of the arch was from that of Severus, in Rome: this secured, at least, elegance in its construction; but the position is fatal to dignity.

The Arc de l'Etoile is the finest work of the kind in Paris. It has the advantage of being built on an elevation, from which it overlooks the whole city, with no building of any magnitude in its vicinity; and is seen from a considerable distance on all the roads leading to the capital. Its cost was excessive for a work of mere ornament, and is said to have amounted to nearly half a million sterling!

As I stood glancing over the groups on the friezes and faces of this great monument, which exhibit war in every form of conflict, havoc, and victory, the homely thought of "cui bono?" struck me irresistibly. Who was the better for all this havoc?—Napoleon, whom it sent to a dungeon! or the miserable thousands and tens of thousands whom it crushed in the field?—or the perhaps more unfortunate hundreds of thousands whom it sent to the hospital, to die the slow death of exhaustion and pain, or to live the protracted life of mutilation? I have no affectation of sentiment at the sight of the soldier's grave; he has but taken his share of the common lot, with perhaps the advantage, which so few men possess, of having "done the state some service." But, to see this vast monument covered with the emblems of hostilities, continued through almost a quarter of a century, (for the groups commence with 1792;) to think of the devastation of the fairest countries of Europe, of which these hostilities were the cause; and to know the utter fruitlessness and failure of the result, the short-lived nature of the triumph, and the frightful depth of the defeat—-Napoleon in ignominious bondage and hopeless banishment—Napoleon, after having lorded it over Europe, sent to linger out life on a rock in the centre of the ocean—the leader of military millions kept under the eye of a British sentinel, and no more suffered to stray beyond his bounds than a caged tiger—I felt as if the object before me was less a trophy than a tomb, less a monument of glory than of retribution, less the record of national triumph than of national frenzy.

I had full liberty for reflection, for there was scarcely a human being to interrupt me. The bustle of the capital did not reach so far, the promenaders in the Champs ElysÉes did not venture here; the showy equipages of the Parisian "nouveaux riches" remained where the crowd was to be seen; and except a few peasants going on their avocations, and a bench full of soldiers, sleeping or smoking away the weariness of the hour, the Arc de Triomphe, which had cost so much treasure, and was the record of so much blood, seemed to be totally forgotten. I question, if there had been a decree of the Legislature to sell the stones, whether it would have occasioned more than a paragraph in the Journal des Debats.

The ascent to the summit is by a long succession of dark and winding steps, for which a lamp is lighted by the porter; but the view from the parapet repays the trouble of the ascent. The whole basin in which Paris lies is spread out before the eye. The city is seen in the centre of a valley, surrounded on every side by a circle of low hills, sheeted with dark masses of wood. It was probably once the bed of a lake, in which the site of the city was an island. All the suburb villages came within the view, with the fortifications, which to a more scientific eye might appear formidable, but which to mine appeared mere dots in the vast landscape.

This parapet is unhappily sometimes used for other purposes than the indulgence of the spectacle. A short time since, a determined suicide sprang from it, after making a speech to the soldiery below, assigning his reason for this tremendous act—if reason has anything to do in such a desperate determination to defy common sense. He acted with the quietest appearance of deliberation: let himself down on the coping of the battlement, from this made his speech, as if he had been in the tribune; and, having finished it, flung himself down a height of ninety feet, and was in an instant a crushed and lifeless heap on the pavement below.

It is remarkable that, even in these crimes, there exists the distinction which seems to divide France from England in every better thing. In England, a wretch undone by poverty, broken down by incurable pain, afflicted by the stings of a conscience which she neither knows how to heal nor cares how to cure, woman, helpless, wretched, and desolate, takes her walk under cover of night by the nearest river, and, without a witness, plunges in. But, in France, the last dreadful scene is imperfect without its publicity; the suicide must exhibit before the people. There must be the valete et plaudite. The curtain must fall with dramatic effect, and the actor must make his exit with the cries of the audience, in admiration or terror, ringing in the ear.

In other cases, however varied, the passion for publicity is still the same. No man can bear to perish in silence. If the atheist resolves on self-destruction, he writes a treatise for his publisher, or a letter to the journals. If he is a man of science, he takes his laudanum after supper, and, pen in hand, notes the gradual effects of the poison for the benefit of science; or he prepares a fire of charcoal, quietly inhales the vapour, and from his sofa continues to scribble the symptoms of dissolution, until the pen grows unsteady, the brain wanders, and half-a-dozen blots close the scene; the writing, however, being dedicated to posterity, and circulated next day in every journal of Paris, till it finally permeates through the provinces, and from thence through the European world.

The number of suicides in Paris annually, of late years, has been about three hundred,—out of a population of a million, notwithstanding the suppression of the gaming-houses, which unquestionably had a large share in the temptation to this horrible and unatonable crime.

The sculptures on the Arc are in the best style. They form a history of the Consulate and of the Empire. Napoleon, of course, is a prominent figure; but in the fine bas-relief which is peculiarly devoted to himself, in which he stands of colossal size, with Fame flying over his head, History writing the record of his exploits, and Victory crowning him, the artist has left his work liable to the sly sarcasm of a spectator of a similar design for the statue of Louis XIV. Victory was there holding the laurel at a slight distance from his head. An Englishman asked "whether she was putting it on or taking it off?" But another of the sculptures is still more unfortunate, for it has the unintentional effect of commemorating the Allied conquest of France in 1814. A young Frenchman is seen defending his family; and a soldier behind him is seen falling from his horse, and the Genius of the future flutters over them all. We know what that future was.

The building of this noble memorial occupied, at intervals, no less than thirty years, beginning in 1806, when Napoleon issued a decree for its erection. The invasion in 1814 put a stop to everything in France, and the building was suspended. The fruitless and foolish campaign of the Duc d'AngoulÊme, in Spain, was regarded by the Bourbons as a title to national glories, and the building was resumed as a trophy to the renown of the Duc. It was again interrupted by the expulsion of the Bourbons in 1830; but was resumed under Louis Philippe, and finished in 1836. It is altogether a very stately and very handsome tribute to the French armies.

But, without affecting unnecessary severity of remark, may not the wisdom of such a tribute be justly doubted? The Romans, though the principle of their power was conquest, and though their security was almost incompatible with peace, yet are said to have never repaired a triumphal arch. It is true that they built those arches (in the latter period of the Empire) so solidly as to want no repairs. But we have no triumphal monuments of the Republic surviving. Why should it be the constant policy of Continental governments to pamper their people with the food of that most dangerous and diseased of all vanities, the passion for war? And this is not said in the declamatory spirit of the "Peace Congress," which seems to be nothing more than a pretext for a Continental ramble, an expedient for a little vulgar notoriety among foreigners, and an opportunity of getting rid of the greatest quantity of common-place in the shortest time. But, why should not France learn common sense from the experience of England? It is calculated that, of the last five hundred years of French history, two hundred and fifty have been spent in hostilities. In consequence, France has been invaded, trampled, and impoverished by war; while England, during the last three hundred years, has never seen the foot of a foreign invader.

Let the people of France abolish the Conscription, and they will have made one advance to liberty. Till cabinets are deprived of that material of aggressive war, they will leave war at the caprice of a weak monarch, an ambitious minister, or a vainglorious people. It is remarkable that, among all the attempts at reforming the constitution of France, her reformers have never touched upon the ulcer of the land, the Conscription, the legacy of a frantic Republic, taking the children of the country from their industry, to plunge them into the vices of idleness or the havoc of war, and at all times to furnish the means, as well as afford the temptation, to aggressive war. There is not at this hour a soldier of England who has been forced into the service! Let the French, let all the Continental nations, abolish the Conscription, thus depriving their governments of the means of making war upon each other; and what an infinite security would not this illustrious abolition give to the whole of Europe!—what an infinite saving in the taxes which are now wrung from nations by the fear of each other!—and what an infinite triumph to the spirit of peace, industry, and mutual good-will!

The Theatres.—In the evening I wandered along the Boulevard, the great centre of the theatres, and was surprised at the crowds which, in a hot summer night, could venture to be stewed alive, amid the smell of lamps, the effluvia of orange-peel, the glare of lights, and the breathing of hundreds or thousands of human beings. I preferred the fresh air, the lively movement of the Boulevard, the glitter of the CafÉs, and the glow, then tempered, of the declining sun—one of the prettiest moving panoramas of Paris.

The French Government take a great interest in the popularity of the theatres, and exert that species of superintendence which is implied in a considerable supply of the theatrical expenditure. The French Opera receives annually from the National Treasury no less than 750,000 francs, besides 130,000 for retiring pensions. To the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, the allowance from the Treasury is 240,000 francs a-year. To the Italian Opera the sum granted was formerly 70,000, but is now 50,000. Allowances are made to the Opera Comique, a most amusing theatre, to the Odeon, and perhaps to some others—the whole demanding of the budget a sum of more than a million of francs.

It is curious that the drama in France began with the clergy. In the time of Charles VI., a company, named "ConfrÈres de la Passion," performed plays founded on the events of Scripture, though grossly disfigured by the traditions of Monachism. The originals were probably the "Mysteries," or plays in the Convents, a species of absurd and fantastic representation common in all Popish countries. At length the life of Manners was added to the life of Superstition, and singers and grimacers were added to the "ConfrÈres."

In the sixteenth century an Italian company appeared in Paris, and brought with them their opera, the invention of the Florentines fifty years before. The cessation of the civil wars allowed France for a while to cultivate the arts of peace; and Richelieu, a man who, if it could be said of any statesman that he formed the mind of the nation, impressed his image and superscription upon his country, gave the highest encouragement to the drama by making it the fashion. He even wrote, or assisted in writing, popular dramas. Corneille now began to flourish, and French Tragedy was established.

Mazarin, when minister, and, like Richelieu, master of the nation, invited or admitted the Italian Opera once more into France; and MoliÈre, at the head of a new company, obtained leave to perform before Louis XIV., who thenceforth patronised the great comic writer, and gave his company a theatre. The Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera of France now led the way in Europe.

In France, the Great Revolution, while it multiplied the theatres with the natural extravagance of the time, yet, by a consequence equally inevitable, degraded the taste of the nation. For a long period the legitimate drama was almost extinguished: it was unexciting to a people trained day by day to revolutionary convulsion; the pageants on the stage were tame to the processions in the streets; and the struggles of kings and nobles were ridiculous to the men who had been employed in destroying a dynasty.

Napoleon at once perceived the evil, and adopted the only remedy. He found no less than thirty theatres in Paris. He was not a man to pause where he saw his way clearly before him; he closed twenty-two of those theatres, leaving but eight, and those chiefly of the old establishments, making a species of compensation to the closed houses.

On the return of the Bourbons the civil list, as in the old times, assisted in the support of the theatres. On the accession of Louis Philippe, the popular triumph infused its extravagance even into the system of the drama. The number of the theatres increased, and a succession of writers of the "New School" filled the theatres with abomination. Gallantry became the spirit of the drama—everything before the scene was intrigue; married life was the perpetual burlesque. Wives were the habitual heroines of the intrigue, and husbands the habitual dupes! To keep faith with a husband was a standing jest on the stage, to keep it with a seducer was the height of human character. The former was always described as brutal, gross, dull, and born to be duped; the latter was captivating, generous, and irresistible by any matron alive. In fact, wives and widows were made for nothing else but to give way to the fascinations of this class of professors of the arts of "good society." The captivator was substantially described as a scoundrel, a gambler, and a vagabond of the basest kind, but withal so honourable, so tender, and so susceptible, that his atrocities disappeared, or rather were transmuted into virtues, by the brilliancy of his qualifications for seducing the wife of his friend. Perjury, profligacy, and the betrayal of confidence in the most essential tie of human nature, were supreme in popularity in the Novel and on the Stage.

The direct consequence is, that the crime of adultery is lightly considered in France; even the pure speak of it without the abhorrence which, for every reason, it deserves. Its notoriety is rather thought of as an anecdote of the day, or the gossiping of the soirÉe; and the most acknowledged licentiousness does not exclude a man of a certain rank from general reception in good society.

One thing may be observed on the most casual intercourse with Frenchmen—that the vices which, in our country, create disgust and offence in grave society, and laughter and levity in the more careless, seldom produce either the one or the other in France. The topic is alluded to with neither a frown nor a smile; it is treated, in general, as a matter of course, either too natural to deserve censure, or too common to excite ridicule. It is seldom peculiarly alluded to, for the general conversation of "Good Society" is decorous; but to denounce it would be unmannered. The result is an extent of illegitimacy enough to corrupt the whole rising population. By the registers of 1848, of 30,000 children born in Paris in that year, there were 10,000 illegitimate, of which but 1700 were acknowledged by their parents!

The theatrical profession forms an important element in the population. The actors and actresses amount to about 5000. In England they are probably not as many hundreds. And though the French population is 35,000,000, while Great Britain has little more than twenty, yet the disproportion is enormous, and forms a characteristic difference of the two countries. The persons occupied in the "working" of the theatrical system amount perhaps to 10,000, and the families dependent on the whole form a very large and very influential class among the general orders of society.

But if the Treasury assists in their general support, it compels them to pay eight per cent of their receipts as a contribution to the hospitals. This sum averages annually a million of francs, or £40,000 sterling.

In England we might learn something from the theatrical regulations of France. The trampling of our crowds at the doors of theatres, the occasional losses of life and limb, and the general inconvenience and confusion of the entrance on crowded nights, might be avoided by the were adoption of French order.

But why should not higher objects be held in view? The drama is a public necessity; the people will have it, whether good or bad. Why should not Government offer prizes to the best drama, tragic or comic? Why should the most distinguished work of poetic genius find no encouragement from the Government of a nation boasting of its love of letters? Why shall that encouragement be left to the caprice of managers, to the finances of struggling establishments, or to the tastes of theatres, forced by their poverty to pander to the rabble. Why should not the mischievous performances of those theatres be put down, and dramas, founded on the higher principles of our nature, be the instruments of putting them down? Why should not heroism, honour, and patriotism, be taught on the national stage, as well as the triumphs of the highroad, laxity among the higher ranks, and vice among all? The drama has been charged with corruption. Is that corruption essential? It has been charged with being a nucleus of the loose principles, as its places of representation have been haunted by the loose characters, of society. But what are these but excrescences, generated by the carelessness of society, by the indolence of magistracy, and by the general misconception of the real purposes and possible power of the stage? That power is magnificent. It takes human nature in her most impressible form, in the time of the glowing heart and the ready tear, of the senses animated by scenery, melted by music, and spelled by the living realities of representation. Why should not impressions be made in that hour which the man would carry with him through all the contingencies of life, and which would throw a light on every period of his being?

The conditions of recompense to authors in France make some advance to justice. The author of a Drama is entitled to a profit on its performance in every theatre of France during his life, with a continuance for ten years after to his heirs. For a piece of three or five acts, the remuneration is one twelfth part of the gross receipts, and for a piece in one act, one twenty-fourth. A similar compensation has been adopted in the English theatre, but seems to have become completely nugatory, from the managers' purchasing the author's rights—the transaction here being made a private one, and the remuneration being at the mercy of the manager. But in France it is a public matter, an affair of law, and looked to by an agent in Paris, who registers the performance of the piece at all the theatres in the city, and in the provinces.

Still, this is injustice. Why should the labour of the intellect be less permanent than the labour of the hands? Why should not the author be entitled to make his full demand instead of this pittance? If his play is worth acting, why is it not worth paying for?—and why should he be prohibited from having the fruit of his brain as an inheritance to his family, as well as the fruit of any other toll?

If, instead of being a man of genius, delighting and elevating the mind of a nation, he were a blacksmith, he might leave his tools and his trade to his children without any limit; or if, with the produce of his play, he purchased a cow, or a cabin, no man could lay a claim upon either. But he must be taxed for being a man of talent; and men of no talent must be entitled, by an absurd law and a palpable injustice, to tear the fruit of his intellectual supremacy from his children after ten short years of possession.

No man leaves Paris without regret, and without a wish for the liberty and peace of its people.