The gay metropolis of France has not lacked chroniclers, whether indigenous or foreign. And no wonder. The subject is inexhaustible, the mine can never be worn out. Paris is a huge kaleidoscope, in which the slightest movement of the hand of time produces fantastic changes and still recurring novelties. Central in position, it is the rendezvous of Europe. London is respected for its size, wealth, and commerce, and as the capital of the great empire on which the sun never sets; Paris is loved for its pleasures and pastimes, its amusements and dissipations. The one is the money-getter's Eldorado, the other the pleasure-seeker's paradise. The former is viewed with wonder and admiration; for size it is a province, for population a kingdom. But Paris, the modern Babel, with its boulevards and palaces, its five-and-twenty theatres, its gaudy restaurants and glittering coffee-houses, its light and cheerful aspect, so different from the soot-grimed walls of the English capital, is the land of promise to truant gentlemen and erratic ladies, whether from the Don or the Danube, the Rhine or the Wolga, from the frozen steppes of the chilly north, or the orange groves of the sunny south. A library has been written to exhibit its physiognomy; thousands of pens have laboured to depict the peculiarities of its population, floating and stationary.

Amongst those who have most recently attempted the task, Mr Karl Gutzkow, a dramatist of some fame in his own land, holds a respectable place. He has recorded in print the results of two visits to Paris, paid in 1842 and in the present year. The self-imposed labour has been creditably performed; much truth and sharpness of observation are manifest in his pages, although here and there a triviality forces a smile, a far-fetched idea or a bizarre opinion causes a start. Mr Gutzkow partakes a fault common to many of his countrymen—a tendency to extremes, an aptness either to trifle or to soar, now playing on the ground with the children, then floating in the clouds with mystical familiars, or on a winged hobbyhorse. Desultory in style, he neglects the classification of his subject. Abruptly passing from the grave to the light, from the solid to the frothy, he breaks off a profound disquisition or philosophical argument to chatter about the new vaudeville, and glides from a scandalous anecdote of an actress into the policy of Louis Philippe. His frequent and capricious transitions are not disagreeable, and help one pleasantly enough through the book, but a methodical arrangement would be more favourable to the reader's memory. As it is, we lay down the volume with a perfect jumble in our brains, made up of the sayings, doings, qualities, and characteristics of actors, authors, statesmen, communists, journalists, and of the various other classes concerning whom Mr Gutzkow discourses, introducing them just as they occur to him, or as he happened to meet with them, and in some instances returning three or four times to the same individual. The first part of the book, which is the most lengthy and important, is in the form of letters, and was perhaps actually written to friends in Germany. This would account for its desultoriness and medley of matter. The second portion, written during or subsequently to a recent visit to Paris, serves as an appendix, and as a rectification of what came before. The author troubles himself little about places; he went to see Parisians rather than to gaze at Paris, to study men rather than to admire monuments, and has the good sense to avoid prattling about things that have been described and discussed by more common-place writers than himself. Well provided with introductions, he made the acquaintance of numerous notabilities, both political and literary, and of them he gives abundant details: an eager play-goer, his theatrical criticisms are bold, minute, and often exceedingly happy; an observant man, his remarks on the social condition of Paris and of France are both acute and interesting. Let us follow him page by page through his fifth letter or chapter, the first that relates to Paris. Those that precede contain an account of his journey from Hanover. On his entrance into France, he encounters various petty disagreeables, in the shape of ill-hung vehicles, sulky conductors, bad dinners, extravagant prices, and attempts at extortion, which stir up his bile, accustomed as he is to the moderate charges, smiling waiters, and snug although slow eilwagens of his own country. But he has resolved neither to grumble at trifles nor to judge hastily. A visit to France, and especially to Paris, has long been his darling project. His greatest fear is to be disappointed—imagination, especially that of a German, is so apt to outrun reality.

"Every sou upon which I read 'Republique FranÇaise,' every portrait of the unhappy Louis upon the coarse copper money, makes such impression on me, that I no longer think of any thing but the historical ground under my feet; and consoled for my trifling grievances, upon a fine spring morning I enter the great Babel through the BarriÈre St Denis.

"I am in France, in Paris. I must reflect, in order to ascertain what was my first thought. As a boy, I hated France and loved Paris. My thoughts clung fast to Germany's fall and Germany's greatness; my feelings, my fancy, ranged through the French capital, of which I had early heard much from my father, who had twice marched thither as a Prussian soldier and conqueror." Then come sundry reflections on the July revolution, and its effect on Europe. "These are chains of thought which hereafter will occupy us much. I must now think for a while of the France that I brought with me, because the one I have found is likely to lead me astray. Louis Philippe, Guizot, the armed peace, the peace at all price, the chamber of peers, the attempts on the king's life, the deputies, the Épiciers, the great men and the little intrigues, art and science, VÉry, Vefour, Musard—I am really puzzled not to forget something of what I previously knew. A hackney-coach horse, lying dead upon the boulevard, preoccupies me more than yonder hÔtel des Capucins, where Guizot gives his dinners. A wood-pavement at the end of the Rue Richelieu sets me a-thinking more than the bulletin of to-day's DÉbats. They pave Paris with wood to deprive revolutions of building materials. Barricades are not to be made out of blocks. Better that those who cannot hear should be run over than that those who cannot see should risk to fall from their high estate."

Considering that, when this was written, all the wood-pavement in Paris might have been covered with a Turkey carpet, and that up to this day its superficies has very little increased, Mr Gutzkow's discovery has much the appearance of a mare's nest. A better antidote to the stone within Paris is to be found in the stone around it. The fortifications will match the barricades. But it would be unfair to criticise too severely the crude impressions of a novice, suddenly set down amidst the turmoil, bustle, tumult, and fever of the French capital. From the pavements we pass to the promenaders.

"Pity that black should this year be the fashion for ladies' dresses. The mourning garments clash with the freshness of spring. The heavens are blue, the sun shines, the trees already burst into leaf, the fountains round the obelisk throw their countless diamonds into the air. The exhibition of pictures has just opened. Shall I go thither, and exchange this violet-scented atmosphere for the odour of the varnish? In Paris the exhibition comes with the violets—in Berlin with the asters. I prefer the autumn show at Berlin to the spring exhibition in Paris; also intrinsically, with respect to art. Our German painters have more poetry. With us painting is lyric—here all is, or strives to be, dramatic. Every picture seems to thrust itself forward and demand applause. I see great effects, but little feeling. Religion is represented by a few gigantic altar-pieces. They are the offerings of a devotion which only thinks of the saints because new churches require new pictures. New churches consist of stone, wood, gold, silver, an organ, an altar-piece. These pictures of saints belong to the ministry of public works; it is easy to see that they have been done to order. Besides them, the gallery is full of Oriental scenes, family pictures and portraits. The first are to inspire enthusiasm for Algiers, the second illustrate the happiness of wedded life, the last are matrimonial advertisements in oil colour. In the family groups, children and little dogs are most prominent; of the male portraits the beard is the principal part. It is useless to look for men here; one sees nothing but hair. Everybody wears a beard À la mode du moyen Âge—flÂneurs, coachmen, marquises, artisans. On all sides one is surrounded with Vandyke and Rubens heads, poetical beards and hair, contrasting strangely with prosaic eyes, pallid lips, and the graceless costumes of the nineteenth century."

After some more very negative praise of French art, Mr Gutzkow gets sick of turpentine and confinement, and rushes out of the Louvre into the sunshine and the Champs ElysÉes, where the sight of the throng of dashing equipages, gay cavaliers, and pretty amazons, instead of causing him to throw up his hat and bless his stars for having conducted him into such ways of pleasantness, renders him melancholy and metaphysical. He is moralising on the Parisian ladies, when a cloud of dust and the clatter of cavalry give a new turn to his reflections. "Here," he exclaims, "comes an example of earthly happiness. Louis Philippe, King of the French, surrounded by a half squadron of his body-guard; a narrow and scarcely perceptible window in his deep six-horse carriage; a King, flying by, resting not, leaning back in his coach, not venturing to look out, breathing with difficulty under the shirt of mail which, according to popular belief, he ever wears beneath his clothes. But of this more hereafter." Quite enough as it is, Mr Gutzkow; and you are right, being in so gloomy a mood, to run off to the Theatre FranÇais, and try to dissipate your vapours by seeing Rachel in ChimÈne. An unfavourable criticism of that actress, retracted at a later period, closes the chapter. ChimÈne is one of Rachel's worst parts, and her critic was not in his best humour. He found her cold, and deficient in voice. Subsequently, in Joan of Arc, she fully redeemed herself in his opinion, although he had seen the best German actresses in Schiller's tragedy of that name, with which the work of Soumet ill bears comparison. Here, he acknowledges, she raised herself to an artistical elevation to which no German actress of the present day can hope to attain.

The next actress of whom Mr Gutzkow records his judgment, is the queen of the vaudeville, the faded but still fascinating Dejazet. From the classic hall of the "FranÇais" to the agreeable little den of iniquity at the other end of the Palais Royal, the distance was not great, but the transition was very violent. It was passing from a funeral to an orgie, thus to leave PhÈdre for FrÉtillon, Rachel for Dejazet. "She performed in a little piece called the Fille de Dominique, in which she represents the daughter of a deceased royal comedian of the days of MoliÈre. She comes to Paris to get admitted into the troop to which her father belonged. She is to give proofs of her talents, and has already done so before any one suspects it. She has been to Baron, the comedian, and presented herself alternately as a peasant girl, a fantastical lady, and as a young drummer of the Royal Guard. She is seen by the audience in all these parts. Her first word, her first step, convinced me of the great fidelity of her acting. She is no queen, no fairy, or great dame out of Scribe's comedies, but the peasant girl, the grisette, the heroine of the vaudeville. All about her is arch, droll, true. Her gestures are extraordinarily correct and steady; and in spite of her harsh counter-tenor, and of an organ in which many a wild night and champagne debauch may be traced, she sings her couplets with clearness of intonation, grace of execution, and not unfrequently with most touching effect. I am at a loss fully to explain and define her very peculiar style of acting."

Mr Gutzkow thought that the French public had become careless of Dejazet, even when he first saw her, now four years ago. We believe he is mistaken, and that she is as much appreciated as ever, in spite of her five and forty years, soon to be converted into fifty. Although haggard from vigils and dissipation, neither on the stage nor off it does she look her age. The good heart and joyous disposition that have endeared her to her comrades of the buskin, have in some degree neutralized the effects of her excesses. On his second visit to Paris, our author finds her grown exceedingly old, and depreciates as much as he before praised her—calls her a rouged corpse, and makes all manner of uncivil and unsavoury comments and comparisons. He goes so far as to style her acting in 1846, languid, feeble, and insipid. Qui trop dit, ne dit rien, and this is palpable exaggeration. We perceive scarcely any difference in Dejazet now and five years ago. Her singing voice may be a little less sure, her eyes a trifle hollower—she may need rather more paint to conceal the inroads of time on her piquante and spirituelle physiognomy, but she preserves the same spirit and vivacity, verve and vigour. Her appearance this spring at the VariÉtÉs theatre, in the vaudeville of Gentil Bernard, was a triumph of talent over time; and crowded houses, attracted not by the excellence of the piece, but by the perfection of the acting, proved that Dejazet is still, which she long has been, the pet of the Parisians. She is an extraordinary actress—so true to nature, possessed of such perfect judgment, and grace of gesticulation. Not a movement of her hand, a turn of her head, an inflexion of her voice, but has its signification and produces its effect. Her performance in the picturesque and bustling second act of Gentil Bernard is faultless. The frequenters of St James's theatre have this summer had an opportunity of appreciating it. At Paris she was better supported. Lafont makes a very fair La Tulipe, but not so good a one as Hoffmann. The inferior parts, also, were far better filled on the Boulevard des Italiens, than in King Street, St James's, where the whole weight of the protracted and not very interesting vaudeville rested upon the shoulders of Dejazet.

The success of Rachel has roused the ambition and raised the reputation of the daughters of Israel, who are now quite in vogue at the Paris theatres. Mesdemoiselles Rebecca and Worms, at the "FranÇais," are both Jewesses; at the minor theatre of the "Folies Dramatiques," Judith delights a motley audience by her able enactment of the grisette. Instances have been known of very Christian young ladies feigning themselves of the faith of Moses, in hope that the fraud might facilitate their admission to the Thespian arena.

A severe judgment is passed by Mr Gutzkow upon the present state of musical art and representations in the French capital. The opera, he affirms, and not without reason, is on its last legs, sustained only by the ballet, by the beauty of the scenery and costumes. Duprez has had his day, Madame Stolz is among the middlings, Barroilhet alone may be reckoned a first-rate singer. Our author saw the ElÍsir d'Amore given by a company which he says would hardly be listened to in a German provincial town. Madame Stolz was then absent on a starring expedition. The ballet of Paquita was some compensation for the poorness of the singing. "At the 'Italiens' I heard the Barber of Seville, with Lablache, Ronconi, Tagliafico, Mario, and Persiani. This opera is considered the triumph of the Italian company; but I confess that the magnificence of the theatre, the high charge for admission, the Ohs! and Ahs! of the English women in the boxes, just arrived from London, and who had never before heard good music, were all insufficient to blind me with respect to the merits of the performance. I look upon the Italian opera at Paris as a mystification on the very largest scale, a thorough classic-Italian swindle. That a German company, composed of our best opera singers, would be infinitely superior to this Italian one, appears to me to admit of no dispute; but even at an ordinary theatre in Germany or Italy, one hears as good singing, perhaps with the exception of Lablache in Bartolo—and even he is cold and careless, devoid of freshness, and always seems to say to the audience, 'You stupid people, take that for your twelve francs a-seat!' The quackery of this theatre becomes the more intelligible when we reflect that, in all Paris, there is no other where a single note of Italian opera music can be heard, the Italians having the monopoly of the sweet melodies of their native country. The Grand Opera, and the Opera Comique, deal in French music only; and the pleasure obtainable in any small German town possessing a theatre, that, namely, of hearing Norma, the Somnambula, and other similar operas, is nowhere to be procured except by paying extravagant prices to these half-dozen Italians." This statement is not quite correct. The Opera Comique, it is true, gives nothing but French music, and poor enough it is. In this particular, the Parisians are not difficult to satisfy. A good libretto, smart scenery, a hard-handed claque, a few skilful reclames, and laudatory paragraphs in the newspapers, will create an enthusiasm even for the insipid music of Monsieur HalÉvy, and sustain the Mousquetaires de la Reine, or similar mawkish compositions, through a whole season. But at the AcadÉmie Royale, good operas are to be heard, although the singing be deficient. Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Donizetti are not the names of Frenchmen; and the operas of these and other foreign composers are constantly given in the Rue Lepelletier.

"Several German opera companies have visited Paris; have begun well, and finished badly. And here our most brilliant singers would meet the same fate, because they would be allowed to sing nothing but German music; and German operas are not listened to in Paris. But if it were possible, with only a moderately good German company, to give Norma, the Barber, Robert the Devil, the Huguenots, and Mozart's operas, (omitting the dialogue,) that company, supported by a good orchestra, and performing in a decent theatre, would carry all before them, and return to Germany laden with fame and gold. But that is the difficulty. In France every one must stick to a speciality. From the German they will hear nothing but German music, and the representation of other operas is positively forbidden him."

Without going the lengths that Mr Gutzkow does, or by any means coinciding in his sweeping censure of the artists who now furnish forth the Italian theatres of London and Paris, we doubt whether it is not fashion, as much as the excellence of the music, that draws the Élite of French and English society to the Haymarket and the Salle Ventadour, and whether a German company of equal intrinsic merit would receive adequate patronage and encouragement in either capital, supposing even that they were allowed their choice of operas, and had the benefit of a handsome theatre and an able management. Certainly they would not get the enormous salaries which, in combination with the greediness of managers, and the manoeuvres of ticket-sellers, render the enjoyment of a good opera, in London at least, a luxury attainable but by an exceedingly limited class.

Although the prices of admission to most of the Paris theatres are moderate, they are occasionally raised by illegitimate stratagems. This is especially the case when a new piece is performed from which much is expected, or concerning which, by puffery or for other reasons, the public curiosity has been greatly excited. On such occasions, the first few representations are sometimes rendered doubly and even trebly productive. The prices cannot be raised at the theatre itself without express permission from the authorities, and as this is seldom granted, another plan is resorted to. The box-office is transferred de facto from the corridor of the theatre to the open street. Whoever applies for tickets is told that there is not one left to any part of the house. Nothing then remains but to have recourse to the ticket-brokers, who carry on their disreputable commerce in the streets or at the wine-shops. In the Rue Montmartre, within a few doors of the Boulevard, there is a marchand de vin, whose establishment is a grand rendezvous of these gentry. They are the agents of the managers of the theatres. The latter sell all the tickets to themselves a fortnight beforehand, inscribing on the coupons the names of imaginary buyers, and then distribute them amongst the brokers, who sell them in front of the theatre to eager theatrical amateurs, as a great favour, and as the last obtainable tickets, at two or three times the regulation price. The theatre pockets the profits, minus a brokerage. In this manner a first representation at the large theatre of the Porte St Martin may be made to yield ten thousand francs. When a theatre is out of vogue, and filling poorly, the same system is adopted; but in the contrary sense. The marchands de billets are provided with tickets which they sell at less than the established price.

When De Balzac's drama, Les ExpÉdients de Quinola, was brought out at the "Odeon," he compounded to receive the proceeds of the first three nights, in lieu of a share of each representation whilst the piece should run. The play had been greatly talked of, the steam had been got up in every way, and the public was in a fever. It is customary enough in Paris for dramatic authors, in order at once to get paid for their labours, to barter their droits d'auteur for the entire profits of the first representations. Scribe does it at the FranÇais. When the tickets are sold at the usual prices, this financial arrangement is regular enough, and concerns nobody but author and manager. But that would not satisfy Balzac, who is notorious for his avarice. He set the brokers to work, and drove the prices up to the highest possible point, fifteen francs for a stall, instead of five, a hundred francs for a box and so forth. "Under such circumstances," says Mr Gutzkow, "it cannot be wondered if people forgot Eugenie Grandet and the PÈre Goriot, and hissed his play. To-day, nearly a hundred criticisms of Quinola have appeared. It is my belief, that, instead of reading them, Balzac is counting his five-franc pieces." The drama fell from want of merit as well as from the indignation excited by the author's greed. Although Balzac's books are read and admired—some of them at least—personally he is most unpopular. He is accused, and not without reason, of arrogance and avarice. His assumption and conceit are evident in his works. He has sacrificed his fame to love of gold; for one good book he has produced two that are trash; by speculating on his reputation, he has undermined and nearly destroyed it. Moreover, he has committed the enormous blunder of affecting to despise the press, which consequently shows him no mercy. For a fortnight after the appearance of Quinola—which, although defective as a dramatic composition, was not without its merits—the unlucky play served as a daily laughing-stock and whipping-post to the battalion of Parisian critics. Janin led the way; a host of minor wasps followed in his wake, and threw themselves with deafening hum and sharp sting against the devoted head of M. de Balzac. He bore their aggravating assaults with great apparent indifference, consoled for want of friends by well-lined pockets.

At the "Ambigu Comique," Mr Gutzkow attended a performance of the Mousquetaires, a melo-drama founded on Dumas's romance of Vingt Ans AprÈs. Its success was prodigious; it was performed the whole of last winter and spring, upwards of one hundred and fifty nights, always to crowded houses. The novel was dramatised by Dumas himself, with the assistance of one of his literary subordinates, M. Auguste Maquet. One or two of the actors at the "Ambigu" are to form part of the troop at M. Dumas's new theatre, now erecting, and which will open, it is said, this autumn. It is built by a company, and Dumas has engaged to write for it a certain number of plays yearly. The Duke of Montpensier gives it his name.

It will be the twenty-third theatre in Paris. Mr Gutzkow lifts up his hands and eyes in astonishment and admiration. "And this is granted," he says, "to that same Alexander Dumas, who, two years ago, publicly declared, that the stage and modern literature, in France especially, suffer from the indifference of the king!" He proceeds to compare this good-humoured facility with the scanty amount of encouragement given to theatricals in Prussia, with which he appears as moderately satisfied as with various other matters in the Fatherland. In Berlin, he says, although another theatre is sadly wanted, there is little chance of its being conceded either to a dramatic author or to any one else. But to follow him in his complaints, would lead us from Paris.

It is somewhat strange that Mr Gutzkow, himself a dramatist, and who tells us that his chief object in visiting Paris was to see the remarkable men of France, did not make the acquaintance of M. Dumas. We infer, at least, that he did not, for the above passing reference is all that his book contains touching the distinguished author of AngÈle and Antony, of Monte Christo and the Mousquetaires. To numerous other littÉrateurs, of greater and less merit, he sought and obtained introductions, and of them gives minute and interesting details. In Germany, as in England, Dumas is better known and more popular than any other French novelist; but, independently of that circumstance, as a brother dramatist, we wonder Mr Gutzkow neglected him. Perhaps, since he blames Balzac for overproduction, and speaks with aversion to the system of bookmaking, he eschewed the society of Dumas for a similar reason. Balzac is believed, at any rate, to write his books himself, although they suffer from haste; but Dumas has been openly and repeatedly accused of having his books written for him, and of maintaining a regular establishment of literary aide-de-camps, perpetually busied in the fabrication of tale, novel, and romance, whose productions he copies and signs, and then gives to the world as his own. His immense fertility has been the origin of this charge, which may be false, although appearances are really in favour of its truth. It seems physically impossible that one man should accomplish the mere pen and ink work of M. Dumas's literary labours; and even if, like Napoleon, he had the faculty of dictating to two or three different secretaries at once, it would scarcely account for the number of volumes he annually puts forth. From a clever but violent pamphlet, published in Paris in the spring of 1845, under the title of Fabrique de Romans; Maison Alexander Dumas & C^ie. we extract the following statement, which, it cannot be denied, is plausible enough:—

"It is difficult to assign limits to the fecundity of writer, and to fix the number of lines that he shall write in a given time. Romance-writing especially, that frivolous style, has a right to travel post, and to scatter its volumes in profusion by the wayside. Nevertheless, time must be taken to consider a subject, to arrange a plan, to connect the threads of a plot, to organize the different parts of a work; otherwise one proceeds blindfold, and finishes by getting into a blind alley, or by meeting insurmountable obstacles. Allowing for these needful preparations, supposing that an author takes no more repose than is absolutely necessary, eats in haste, sleeps little, is constantly inspired; in this hypothesis, the most skilful writer will produce perhaps fifteen volumes a-year—fifteen volumes, do you hear, Monsieur Dumas? And, even in this case, he will assuredly not write for fame; we defy him to chasten and correct his style, or to find a moment to look over his proofs. Ask those who work unassisted; ask our most fertile romance-writers, George Sand, Balzac, EugÈne Sue, FrÉdÉric SouliÉ; they will all tell you, that it is impossible to reach the limit we have fixed; that they have never attained it.

"You, M. Dumas, have published thirty-six volumes in the course of the year 1844; and for the year 1845, you announce twice as many.

"Well, we make the following simple calculation:—The most expert copyist, writing twelve hours a-day, hardly achieves 3900 letters in an hour, which gives, per diem, 46,800 letters, or sixty ordinary pages of a romance. At that rate he can copy five octavo volumes a month, and sixty in a year, but he must not rest an hour or lose a second. You, Monsieur Dumas, are a penman of first-rate ability. From the 1st of January to the 31st of December you work regularly twelve hours a-day, you sleep little, you eat in haste, you deprive yourself of all amusements, you hardly travel at all, you are never seen out of your house: consequently, if we suppose that your dramatic compositions, the bringing out of your plays, your correspondence with newspapers and theatres, importunate visitors, a few casual articles—as, for example, your letters in the Democratie Pacifique; (a series of five letters containing a fierce attack on the ThÉatre FranÇais, and on its administrator M. Buloz)—supposing, we say, that all these various occupations monopolize only one half of your time, we understand that you may have copied thirty volumes in the course of the year 1844—but only thirty! the six others must have been the result of your son's labours. Now, if you are going to publish twice as much this year as you did during the last one, how will you manage? You must either give up sleeping, and work the twenty-four hours through, or you must teach your manufacturers to imitate your hand-writing. There is no other plan possible. To deliver your manuscripts to the printers as they are delivered to you, would be to furnish proofs against yourself."

The author of this pamphlet is himself a novelist, and allowance must be made for his jealousy of a successful rival. But there are grounds for his attack. M. Dumas is known to work hard: literary labour has become a habit and necessity of his life; but he is not the man to chain himself to the oar and renounce all the pleasures of society and of Paris, even to swell his annual budget to the enormous sum which it is reported, and which he has indeed acknowledged it, to reach. We have seen works published under his name, whose perusal convinced us that he had had little or nothing to do with their composition or execution. The internal evidence of others was equally conclusive in fixing their bona fide authorship upon their reputed author. Au reste, Dumas troubles himself very little about his assailants, but pursues the even tenor of his way, careless of calumniators. The most important point for him is, that his pen, or at least his name, should preserve its popularity; and this it certainly does, notwithstanding that his enemies have more than once raised a cry that "le Dumas baisse sur la place." On the contrary, the article, whether genuine or counterfeit, was never more in demand, both with publishers and consumers. In Paris, as Mr Gutzkow says, every thing is a speciality; it requires half a dozen different shops to sell the merchandise that in England would be united in one. One establishment deals in lucifer-matches and nothing else; chips and brimstone form its whole stock in trade: it is the spÉcialitÉ des allumettes chimiques. Yonder we find a spacious magasin appropriated to glove-clasps; here is another where clysopompes are the sole commodity. We were aware of this peculiarity of French shopkeeping, but were certainly not prepared to behold, as we did on our last visit to Paris, a shop opened upon the Place de la Bourse, exclusively for the sale of Monsieur Dumas's productions. This, we apprehend, is the ne plus ultra of literary fertility and popularity. "Le Dumas" has become a commercial spÉcialitÉ. The bookseller who wishes to have upon his shelves all the productions of the author of the Corricolo, must no longer think of appropriating any part of his space to the writings of others; or if he persists in doing so, he had better take three or four shops, knock down the partitions, and establish a magasin monstre, like those of which ambitious linendrapers have of late years set the fashion in the ChaussÉe d'Antin and Rue Montmartre. Curiosity prompted us to enter the Dumas shop and procure a list of its contents. The number of volumes would have stocked a circulating library. We were gratified to find—for we have always taken a strong interest in Alexander Dumas, some of whose bettermost books we have honoured with a notice in Maga—that several of his works were out of print. On the other hand, five or six new romances, from two to four volumes each, were, we were informed by the obliging Dumas-merchant, on the eve of appearing. It was a small instalment of the illustrious author's annual contribution to the fund of French belles lettres.

In the Galerie des Contemporains Illustres, by M. de Lomenie, we find the following remarks concerning M. Dumas:—

"He has written masses of romances, feuilletons by the hundred. In the year 1840 alone, he published twenty-two volumes. He has even written with one hand the history that he turned over with the other, and heaven knows what an historian M. Dumas is! He has published Impressions de Voyages, containing every thing, drama, elegy, eclogue, idyl, politics, gastronomy, statistics, geography, history, wit—every thing excepting truth. Never did writer more intrepidly hoax his readers, never were readers more indulgent to an author's gasconades. Nevertheless, M. Dumas has abused to such an extent the credulity of the public, that the latter begin to be upon their guard against the discoveries of the traveller."

The public, we apprehend, take M. Dumas's narratives of travels at their just value, find them entertaining, but rely very slightly on their authenticity. It has been pretty confidently affirmed and generally believed, that many of his excursions were performed by the fireside; that rambles in distant lands are accomplished by M. Dumas with his feet on his chenets in the ChaussÉe d'Antin, or in his country retirement at St Germains. Nor does he, when taxed with being a stay-at-home traveller, repel the charge with much violence of indignation. At the recent trial at Rouen of a sprig of French journalism, a certain Monsieur de Beauvallon, (truly the noble particle was worthily bestowed,) the accused was stated to be extraordinarily skilful with the pistol; and in support of the assertion, a passage was quoted from a book written by himself, in which he stated, that in order to intimidate a bandit, he had knocked a small bird off a tree with a single ball. The prisoner declared that this wonderful shot was to be placed to the credit of his invention, and not to his marksmanship. "I introduced the circumstance," said he, "in hopes of amusing the reader, and not because it really happened. M. Dumas, who has also written his travelling impressions, knows that such license is sometimes taken." Whereupon Alexander, who was present in court, did most heartily and admissively laugh.

Apropos of that trial—and although it leads us away from Mr Gutzkow, who makes but a brief reference to the orgies, revived from the days of the Regency, which the evidence given upon it disclosed—M. Dumas certainly burst upon us on that occasion in an entirely new character. We had already inferred from some of his books, from the knowing gusto with which he describes a duel, and from his intimacy with Grisier, the Parisian Angelo, to whom he often alludes, that he was cunning of fence and perilous with the pistol. But we were not aware that he was looked up to as a duelling dictionary, or prepared to find him treated by a whole court of justice—judge, counsellors, jury, and the rest—as an oracle in all that pertains to custom of cartel. We had reason to be ashamed of our ignorance; of having remained till the spring of the year 1846 unacquainted with the fact that in France proficiency with the pen and skill with the sword march pari passu. Upon this principle, and as one of the greatest of penmen, M. Dumas is also the prime authority amongst duellists. With our Gallic neighbours, it appears, a man must not dream of writing himself down literary, unless he can fight as well as scribble. To us peaceable votaries of letters, whose pistol practice would scarcely enable us to hit a haystack across a poultry-yard, and whose entire knowledge of swordsmanship is derived from witnessing an occasional set-to at the minors between one sailor and five villains, (sailor invariably victorious,) there was something quite startling in the new lights that dawned upon us as to the state of hot water and pugnacity in which our brethren beyond the Channel habitually live. When Hannibal Caracci was challenged by a brother of the brush, whose works he had criticised, he replied that he fought only with his pencil. The answer was a sensible one; and we should have thought authors' squabbles might best be settled with the goosequill. Such, it would seem, from recent revelations, is not the opinion on the other side of Dover Straits; in France, the aspirant to literary fame divides his time between the study and the shooting gallery, the folio and the foil. There, duels are plenty as blackberries; and the editor of a daily paper wings his friend in the morning, and writes a premier Paris in the afternoon, with equal satisfaction and placidity. Not one of the men of letters who gave their evidence upon the notable trial now referred to, but had had his two, three, or half-dozen duels, or, at any rate, had fait ses preuves, as the slang phrase goes, in one poor little encounter. All had their cases of Devismes' pistols ready for an emergency; all were skilled in the rapier, and talked in Bobadil vein of the "affairs" they had had and witnessed. And greatest amongst them all, most versed in the customs of combat, stood M. Dumas, quoting the code, (in France there is a published code of duelling,) laying down the law, figuring as an umpire, fixing points of honour and of the duello, as, at a tourney of old, a veteran knight.

Mr Gutzkow is not far wrong in qualifying the champagne orgies of the Parisian actresses and newspaper scribes, as a resuscitation of the moeurs de RÉgence. It appears that these gentlemen journalists live in a state of polished immorality and easy profligacy, not unworthy the days of Philip of Orleans, whom M. Dumas, be it said en passant, has represented in one of his books as the most amiable, excellent, and kind-hearted of men, instead of as the base, cold-blooded, and reckless debauchee which he notoriously was. In France, to a greater extent than in England, the success of an actress or dancer depends upon the manner in which the press notices her performances. Theatrical criticisms are a more important feature in French than in English newspapers, are more carefully done, and better paid.

"As an artist," said Mademoiselle Lola Montes, the Spanish bailerina, who formerly attracted crowds to the Porte St Martin theatre—less, however, by the grace of her dancing, than by the brevity of her attire—"I sought the society of journalists."

Miss Lola is not the only lady of her cloth making her chief society of the men on whose suffrage her reputation, as an actress, depends. In Paris, people are apt to pin their faith on their newspaper, and, finding that the plan saves a deal of thought, trouble, and investigation, they see with the eyes and hear with the ears of the editor, go to the theatres which he tells them are amusing, and read the books that he puffs. Actresses, especially second-rate ones, thus find themselves in the dependence of a few coteries of journalists, whom they spare no pains to conciliate. We shall not enter into the details of the subject, but the result of the system seems to be a sort of socialist republic of critics and actresses, having for its object a reckless dissipation, and for its ultimate argument the duelling pistol. "In Paris," says Mr Gutzkow, "the critics are often dilettanti, who seek by their pen to procure admission into the boudoirs of the pretty actresses. The theatrical critic is a petit maÎtre, the analysis of a performance a declaration of love." And favours are bartered for feuilletons. It does not appear, however, that these Helens of the foot-lamps often lead to serious rivalries between the Greeks and Trojans of the press. A pungent leading article, or a keen opposition of interests, is far more likely to produce duels than the smiles or caprices even of a LiÉvenne or an Alice Ozy. In these days of extinct chivalry, to fight for a woman is voted perruque and old style; but to fight for one's pocket is correct, and in strict conformity with the commercial spirit of the age. A's newspaper, being ably directed, rises in circulation and enriches its proprietors. Journalist B, whose subscribers fall off, orders a sub-editor to pick a quarrel with A and shoot him. The thing is done; the paper of defunct A is injured by the loss of its manager, and that of surviving B improves. The object is attained. "The history of the ProcÈs Beauvallon," we quote from Mr Gutzkow, "so interesting as a development of the modern Mysteries of Paris, arose apparently from a rivalry about women, but in reality was to be attributed to one between newspapers. It is tragical to reflect, that for the Presse Emile de Girardin shot Carrel, and that now the manager of the same paper is in his turn shot by a new rival, on account of the Globe or the Epoque. We are reminded of the poet's words: Das ist der Fluch der bÖsen That!"

It will be remembered that De Girardin, the founder of the Presse, killed Armand Carrel, the clever editor of the National, in a duel. The Presse was started at forty francs a-year, at a time when the general price of newspapers was eighty francs. The experiment was bold, but it fully succeeded. The thing was done well and thoroughly; the paper was in all respects equal to its contemporaries; in talent it was superior to most of them, surpassed by none. De Girardin and his associates made a fortune, the majority of the other papers were compelled to drop their prices, some of the inferior ones were ruined. The innovation and its results made the bold projector a host of enemies, and he would have found no difficulty in the world in getting shot, had he chosen to meet a tithe of those who were anxious to fire at him. But after his duel with Carrel he declined all encounters of the kind, and fought his battles in the columns of the Presse instead of in the Bois de Boulogne. Had he not adopted this course he would long ago have fallen, probably by the hand of a member of the democratic party, who all vowed vengeance against him for the death of their idol. As it is, he has had innumerable insults and mortifications to endure, but he has retaliated and borne up against them with immense energy and spirit. On one occasion he was assaulted at the opera, and received a blow, when seated beside his wife, a lady of great beauty and talent. The aggressor was condemned to three years' imprisonment. The Presse being a conservative paper, and a strenuous supporter of the Orleans dynasty, the opposition and radical organs of course loudly denounced the injustice and severity of the sentence. De Girardin was once challenged by the editors of the National en masse. His reply was an article in his next day's paper, proving that the previous character and conduct of his challengers was such as to render it impossible for a man of honour to meet any one of them. Mr Gutzkow made the acquaintance of Girardin. "At the sight of the slender delicate hand which slew the steadfast and talented editor of the National, I was seized with an emotion, the expression of which might have sounded somewhat too German. Girardin himself affected me; his daily struggles, his daily contests before the tribunals, his daily letters to the National, his uneasy unsatisfied ambition, his unpopularity. One may have shot a man in a duel, but in order to remember the act with tranquillity, the deceased should have been the challenger. One may have received a blow in the opera house, and yet not deem it necessary, having already had one fatal encounter, to engage in a second, but it is hard that the giver of the blow must pass three years in prison. Such events would drive a German to emigration and the back-woods; they impel the Frenchman further forward into the busy crowd. Bitterness, melancholy, nervous excitement, and morbid agitation, are unmistakeably written upon Girardin's countenance."

Himself a clever critic, Mr Gutzkow was anxious to make the acquaintance of a king of the craft, the well-known Jules Janin, the feuilletonist of the Debats. "Janin has lived for many years close to the Luxembourg palace, on a fourth floor. His habitation is by no means brilliant, but it is comfortably arranged; and when he married, shortly before I saw him, he would not leave it. Le Critique mariÉ, as they here call him, lives in the Rue Vaugirard, rather near to the sky, but enjoying an extensive view over the gardens, basins, statues, swans, nurses and children, of the Luxembourg. 'I have bought a chateau for my wife,' said he, coming down a staircase which leads from his sitting-room to his study. 'I am married, have been married six months, am happy, too happy—Pst, AdÈle, AdÈle!'

"AdÈle, a pretty young Parisian, came tripping down stairs and joined us at breakfast. Janin is better-looking than his caricature at Aubert's. Active, notwithstanding his embonpoint, he is seldom many minutes quiet. Now stroking his jeune France beard, then caressing AdÈle, or running to look out of the window, he only remains at table to write and to eat. He showed me his apartment, his arrangements, his books, even his bed-chamber. 'I still live in my old nest,' said he, 'but I will buy my angel—we have been married six months, and are very happy—I will buy my angel a little chateau. I earn a great deal of money with very bad things. If I were to write good things, I should get no money for them.'

"It is impossible to write down mere prattle. Janin, like many authors, finds intercourse with men a relief from intercourse with books. The cleverest people willingly talk nonsense; but Janin talked, on the contrary, a great deal of sense, only in a broken unconnected way, running after AdÈle, threatening to throw her out of the window, or rambling about the room with the stem of a little tree in his hand. 'Do you see,' said he, 'I like you Germans because they like me—(this by way of parenthesis)—do you see, I have brought up my wife for myself; she has read nothing but my writings, and has grown tall whilst I have grown fat. She is a good wife, without pretensions, sometimes coquettish, a darling wife. It is not my first love, but my first marriage. You have been to see George Sand? We do not smoke, neither I nor my wife, so that we have no genius. Pas vrai, AdÈle?'

"AdÈle played her part admirably in this matrimonial idyl. 'She does not love me for my reputation,' said her husband, 'but for my heart. I am a bad author, but a good fellow. Let's talk about the theatre.'

"We did so. We spoke of Rachel, and of Janin's depreciation of that actress, whom he had previously supported. 'It's all over with her,' said he; 'she has left off study, she revels the night through, she drinks grog, smokes tobacco, and intrigues by wholesale. She gives soirÉes, where people appear in their shirt-sleeves. Since she has come of age, it's all up with her. She has become dissipated. Shocking—is it not, AdÈle?'

"'One has seen instances of genius developing itself with dissipation.'

"'They might stand her on her head, but would get nothing more out of her,' replied Janin. 'Luckily the French theatre rests on a better foundation than the tottering feet of Mamsell Rachel.—Do you know Lewald? Has he translated me well?'

"'You have fewer translators than imitators.'

"'Can my style be imitated in German?'

"'Why not? I will give you an instance.'

"Janin was called away to receive a visitor, and was absent a considerable time. He had some contract or bargain to settle. I took out my tablets, drank my cup of tea, and wrote in Janin's style the following criticism upon a performance at the Circus which then had a great run."

Having previously, it may be presumed, noted down the suggestive and curious dialogue of which we have given an abbreviation. We have our doubts as to the propriety, or rather we have no doubts as to the impropriety and indelicacy, of thus repeating in print the familiar conversations, and detailing the most private domestic habits of individuals, merely on the ground of their talents or position having rendered them objects of curiosity to the mob. Literary notoriety does not make a man public property, or justify his visitors in dragging him before the multitude as he is in his hours of relaxation, and of mental and corporeal dishabille. Mr Gutzkow is unscrupulous in this respect. Possessing either an excellent memory, or considerable skill in clandestine stenography, he carefully sets down the sayings of all who are imprudent enough to gossip with him, and important enough for their gossip to be interesting. Surely he ought to have informed Messrs Thiers, Janin, and various others, who kindly and hospitably entertained him, that he was come amongst them to take notes, and eke to print them. Forewarned, they would perhaps have been less confiding and communicative. The last four years have produced many instances of this species of indiscretion. Two prominent ones at this moment recur to us—a prying, conceited American, and a clever but impertinent German prinzlein. The latter, we have been informed, was on one occasion called to a severe account for his tattling propensities. With respect to Jules Janin, we are sure that Mr Gutzkow's revelations concerning his household economy, his pretty wife, his morning pastimes and breakfast-table causeries, will not in the slightest degree disturb his peace of mind, spoil his appetite, or diminish his embonpoint. The good-humoured and clever critic is proof against such trifles. Nay, as regards initiating the public into his private affairs and most minute actions, he himself has long since set the example. The readers of the witty and playful feuilletons signed J. J., will not have forgotten one that appeared on the occasion of M. Janin's marriage, having for its subject the courtship and wedding of that gentleman. The commencement made us smile; the continuation rendered us uneasy; and as we drew near the close, we became positively alarmed—not knowing how far the writer was going to take us, and feeling somewhat pained for Madame Janin, who might be less willing than her insouciant husband that such very copious details of her commencement of matrimony should be supplied as pasture to the populace in the columns of a widely-circulated newspaper. Janin got a smart lashing from some of his rival feuilletonists for his indecent and egotistical puerility. Doubtless he cared little for the infliction. Habituated to such flagellations, his epidermis has grown tough, and he well knows how to retaliate them. He has few friends. Those who have felt his lash hate him; those whom he has spared envy him. As a professed critic, he finds it easier and more piquant to censure than to praise; and scarcely a French author, from the highest to the lowest, but has at one time or other experienced his pitiless dissection and cutting persiflage. His feuilletons were once, and still occasionally are, distinguished and prized for their graceful naÏvetÉ and playful elegance of style. His correctness of appreciation, his adherence to the sound rules of criticism, his thorough competency to judge on all the infinite variety of subjects that he takes up, have not always been so obvious. And of late years, his principal charm, his style, has suffered from inattention, perhaps also from weariness; chiefly, no doubt, from his having fallen into that commercial money-getting vein which is the bane of the literature of the day. Still, now and then, one meets with a feuilleton in his old and better style, delightfully graceful, and pungent and witty, concealing want of depth by brilliancy of surface. He is a journalist, and a journalist only; he aspires to no more; books he has not written, none at least worth the naming—two or three indifferent novels, early defunct. His feuilletons are especially popular in Germany—more so, perhaps, than in France. His arch and sparkling paragraphs contrast agreeably with the heavy solidity of German critics of the belles lettres. By the bye, we must not forget Gutzkow's attempt at an imitation of M. Janin's style. He was interrupted before he had completed it, but favours us with the fragment. It is a notice of the exploits of a Pyrenean dog then acting at Paris. Its author had not time to read it to Janin, who went out to walk with his wife. "I kept my paper to myself, exchanged another joke or two with my whimsical host, and departed. I have written a theatrical article, than which Janin could not write one more childish. What German newspaper will give me twenty thousand francs a-year for articles of this kind?" One, only, whose proprietor and editor have taken leave of their senses. The article À la Janin is childish and frivolous enough; but childishness and frivolity would have availed the Frenchman little had he not united with them wit and grace. His German copyist has not been equally successful in operating that union. But to attempt in German an imitation of Janin's style, so entirely French as it is, and only to be achieved in that language, appears to us nearly as rational as to try to manufacture a dancing-pump out of elephant hide.

We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine ChimÈne smoking a cigar, PhÈdre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their foulards with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his quatriÈme, or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.

Mr Gutzkow went to see George Sand. This was his great ambition, his burning desire. He is an enthusiastic admirer of her works and of her genius. It is to be inferred from what he tells us, that he did not find it easy to obtain an introduction. Madame Dudevant lives retired, and likes not to be trotted out for the entertainment of the curious. She is particularly distrustful of tourists. They have sketched her in grotesque outline, respecting neither her mysteries nor her confidence. But Mr Gutzkow was resolved to see the outside of her house, pending the time that he might obtain access to its interior. So away he went to the Rue Pigale, No. 16, chattered with the portress, peeped into the garden, gazed at the windows which George Sand, "when exhausted with mental labour, is wont to open to cool her bosom in the fresh air." Considering that this was in the month of March, some time had probably elapsed since the lady had done any thing so imprudent. From a chapter of Lelia or Mauprat to an equinoctial breeze! There is a catarrh in the mere notion of the transition. However, Mr Gutzkow viewed the matter with a poet's eye—the window, we mean to say—and after gazing his fill, departed, musing as he went. A fortnight later he was admitted to see the jewel whose casket he had contemplated with so much veneration. "I have been to see George Sand. She wrote to me: 'You will find me at home any evening. If, however, I am engaged with a lawyer or compelled to go out, you must not impute it to want of courtesy. I am entangled in a lawsuit in which you will see a trait of our French usages, for which my patriotism must needs blush. I plead against my publisher, who wants to constrain me to write a romance according to his pleasure—that is to say, advocating his principles. Life passes away in the saddest necessities, and is only preserved by anxieties and sacrifices. You will find a woman of forty years old, who has employed her whole life not in pleasing by her amiability, but in offending by her candour. If I displease your eyes, I shall, at any rate, preserve in your heart the place that you have conceded me. I owe it to the love of truth, a passion whose existence you have distinguished and felt in my literary attempts.'

"I went to see her in the evening. In a small room, scarce ten feet square, she sat sewing by the fire, her daughter opposite to her. The little apartment was sparingly lighted by a lamp with a dark shade. There was no more light than sufficed to illumine the work with which mother and daughter were busied. On a divan in one corner, and in dark shadow, sat two men, who, according to French custom, were not introduced to me. They kept silence, which increased the solemn, anxious tension of the moment. A gentle breathing, an oppressive heat, a great tightness about the heart. The flame of the lamp flickered dimly, in the chimney the charcoal glowed away into white shimmering ashes, a ghostlike ticking was the only sound heard. The ticking was in my waistcoat pocket. It was my watch, not my heart." How intensely German is all this overwrought emotion about nothing! Fortunately a chair was at hand, into which the impressionable dramatist dropped himself. His first speech was a blunder, for it sounded like a preparation.

"'Pardon my imperfect French. I have read your works too often, and Scribe's comedies too seldom. From you one learns the mute language of poetry, from Scribe the language of conversation.'"

To which compliment Aurora Dudevant merely replied: "'How do you like Paris?'

"'I find it as I had expected.—A lawsuit like yours is a novelty. How does it proceed?'

"A bitter smile for sole reply.

"'What is understood in France by contrainte par corps?'

"'Imprisonment.'

"'Surely they will not throw a woman into prison to compel her to write a romance. What does your publisher mean by his principles?'

"'Those which differ from mine. He finds me too democratic.'

"And mechanics do not buy romances, thought I. 'Does the Revue IndÉpendante make good progress?'

"'Very considerable, for a young periodical.'"

And so on for a couple of pages. But George Sand was on her guard, and stuck to generalities. She would not allow her visitor to draw her out, as he would gladly have done. She had been already too much gossiped about and calumniated in print. She had an intuitive perception of the approaching danger. She nosed the intended book. Nevertheless, and although reserved, she was very amiable; talked about the drama—when Mr Gutzkow, remembering her unsuccessful play of Cosima, tried to change the subject—inquired after Bettina, spoke respectfully of Germany—of which, however, she does not profess to know any thing—and even smoked a cigar.

"George Sand laid aside her work, arranged the fire, and lighted one of those innocent cigars which contain more paper than tobacco, more coquetry than emancipation. I was now able, for the first time, to obtain a good view of her features. She is like her portraits, but less stout and round than they make her. She has a look of Bettina. Since that time she has grown larger.

"'Who translates me in Germany?'

"'Fanny Tarnow, who styles her translations bearbeitungen.'

"'Probably she omits the so-called immoral passages.'

"She spoke this with great irony. I did not answer, but glanced at her daughter, who cast down her eyes. The pause that ensued was of a second, but it expressed the feelings of an age."

Although Mr Gutzkow's visits to Paris were each but of a few weeks' duration, and notwithstanding that he had much to do, many persons to call upon and things to see, he now and then felt himself upon the brink of ennui. This especially in the evenings, which, he says, would be insupportable without the theatres. To foreigners they certainly would be so, and to many Parisians. The theatre, the coffee-house, the reading-room, the unvarying and at last wearisome lounge on the boulevards, compose the resources of the stranger in Paris. Access to domestic circles he finds extremely difficult, rarely obtainable. Many imagine, on this account, that in Paris there is no such thing as domestic life, that the quiet evenings with books, music, and conversation, the fireside coteries so delightful in England and Germany, are unknown in the French metropolis. If not unknown, they are, at any rate, much rarer. "The stranger complains especially," says Mr Gutzkow, "that his letters of introduction carry him little further than the antechamber. He misses nothing so much as the opportunity of passing his evenings in familiar intercourse with some family who should admit him to their intimacy." This want is most perceptible at the season when Mr Gutzkow was at Paris, March and April, treacherous and rainy months, comprising Lent, during which Paris is comparatively dull, and when many persons, either from religious scruples or from weariness of winter and carnival gaieties, refuse parties, and cease to give their weekly or fortnightly soirÉes, often more agreeable as an habitual resort than balls and entertainments of greater pretensions. Mr Gutzkow complains bitterly of the bad weather. The climate of Paris is certainly the reverse of good. The heat oppressively great in summer, rain intolerably abundant for seven or eight months of the twelve. If London has its fogs, Paris has its deluge, and its consequences, oceans of mud, which, in the narrow streets of the French capital, are especially obnoxious. The Boulevards and the Rues de Rivoli and De la Paix are really the only places where one is tolerably secure from the splashing of coach and scavenger.

"A rainy day," writes Mr Gutzkow, on the 22nd March; "the sky grey, the Seine muddy, the streets filthy and slippery. You take refuge in the passages, and in the Palais Royal. Appointments are made in the passages and reading-rooms. Dinner at the Boeuf À la Mode, at the Grand Vatel or Restaurant Anglais, reserving VÉry, VÉfour, the Rocher de Cancale, for a brighter day and more cheerful mood."

"Paris is too large in bad weather, and too small in fine. Really, when the sun shines, Paris is very small. The fashionable part of the Boulevards, the Rue Vivienne, the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, in all that region you are soon so much at home that your face is known to every shopkeeper. Always the same impressions. In the daytime often insipid; more cheerful at night, when the gas-lights gleam. The art of false appearances is here brought to the greatest perfection. The commonest shops are so arranged as to deceive the eye. Mirrors reflect the wares, and give the establishment an artificial extension, by lamplight a fantastical grandeur. You try the different restaurants, dining sometimes here, sometimes there, and gradually becoming initiated in the mysteries of the carte; for the most part avoiding all complicated preparations, and confining yourself to the dishes au naturel, as the surest means of not eating cat for calf. In the Palais Royal the shops are very dear, only the dinners on the first floor are cheap, and ennui is to be had gratis. Since so many handsome passages have been opened through the streets, the Palais Royal has lost its vogue. Some say that its decline began with its morality. The Cabinets particuliers, formerly of such evil repute, are now the smoking rooms of the coffeehouses. The Galerie d'Orleans is still the most frequented part of the Palais Royal. Here the loungers pull out their watches every five minutes; they all wait either for a friend or for dinner-time. Meanwhile they saunter to and fro, and admire the skill of their tailors in the range of mirrors on either side of the gallery.

"I followed the boulevards, the other day, from the Madeleine to the Column of July—a distance which it took me almost two hours to accomplish. From the Portes St Denis and St Martin, the boulevards lose their metropolitan aspect. They become more countrified and homely. The magnificence of the shops and coffeehouses diminishes and at last disappears. The luxurious gives way to the useful, the comfortable to the needy. At the ChÂteau d'Eau, where the boulevard turns off at a right angle, four or five theatres stand together. Here is the road to the PÈre la Chaise. Here fell the victims of Fieschi's infernal machine. From one of these little houses the murderous discharge was made. From which, I will not ask. Perhaps no one could tell me. Paris has forgotten her revolutions.

"Further on, the Goddess of Liberty flashes on us from the summit of the July Column. Why in that dancer-like attitude? It may show the artist's skill, but it is undignified, and seems to challenge the stormwind which once already blew down Freedom's Goddess from the Pantheon. Upon the column are engraved the names of the heroes of July.

"What stood formerly upon this spot? Upon yonder little house I read, 'Tavern of the Bastile.' This, then, was the birthplace of French freedom, of the freedom of the world. Upon this site, now bare, stood the fortress-prison, whose gloomy interior beheld for centuries the crimes of tyrants, the violence of despotism, whereof nought but dark rumours transpired to the world without. On the 14th July 1789, came the dawn. The Bastile was destroyed, and not one stone of it remained upon another. It is awfully impressive to contemplate this place, now so naked and empty, once so gloomily shadowed.

"We enter the suburb of the workmen, the faubourg St Antoine, the former ally and reliance of the Jacobins. Here things have a ruder and more strongly marked aspect. It is a sort of Frankfurt Sachsenhausen. By the Rue St Antoine we again reach the interior of the city, its most industrious and busy quarter. I love these working-day wanderings in the regions of labour. I prefer them to all the Sunday promenades upon the broad pavements of luxury. True that each of these intricate and dirty streets has its own particular and often nauseous odour. Here are the soapboilers, yonder a slaughter-house, here again, in the Rue des Lombards, the atmosphere is laden with the scent of spices and drugs. In the cellars, men, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, crush brimstone and pepper and a hundred other things in huge iron mortars; a noise and smell which reminds me of the treacle-grinders on the Rialto at Venice. And here, also, in these narrow alleys and dingy lanes, historical associations linger. Yonder is the battered chapel of St MÉry, where, eight years ago, four hundred republicans, intrenched in the cloisters, strove against the whole armed might of Paris, and were overcome only by artillery. To-day the French Opposition takes things more easily. Its demonstrations are dinners, as in Germany. The popping of champagne corks causes no bloodshed. Written speeches, an article in a newspaper, a toast to the maintenance of order, another against tentatives insensÉes;—it will be long before such an opposition attains its end."

Mr Gutzkow, who does not conceal his ultra-liberal opinions, seems almost to regret the revolutionary days, and to pity Paris for the tranquillity which a firm and judicious government has at length succeeded in establishing within its walls. Had a republican outbreak taken place during his abode in the French capital, one might have expected to find him raising impromptu battalions from the eighty thousand Germans and Alsatians, who form an important item of the Parisian population. His doctrines will hardly gain him much favour with the powers that be in his own country. But for that he evidently cares little. He is one of the progress; Young Germany reckons in him a stanch and devoted partisan. With his democratic tendencies, and in Paris, where monuments of revolutions abound, and where a thousand names and places recall the struggles between the people and their rulers, it is not wonderful that his enthusiasm occasionally boils over, and that he vents or hints opinions which maturer reflection would perhaps induce him to repudiate.

A visit to Michel Chevalier suggests a comparison between the different modes of attaining to public honours and ministerial office in France and in Germany. "Most delightful to me was the acquaintance of Chevalier. Delightful and afflicting. Afflicting when I contrasted the treatment of talent in Germany with that which it meets in France. Michel Chevalier, the accomplished writer who knows how to handle so well and agreeably the dry topics of national economy, of railways and public works, ten years ago was a St Simonian. When the association of Menilmontant was prosecuted by the French government, he was condemned to a year's imprisonment. But those who persecuted him for his principles, prized him for his talents. Instead of letting him undergo his punishment, as would have been the case in Germany, they gave him money and sent him to North America, commissioned to make observations upon that country. Chevalier published, in the Journal des Debats, his able letters from the United States, returned to France, became professor at the University, and, a year ago, was made counsellor of state." In opposition to this example, Mr Gutzkow traces the progress of the German candidate for his office; pipes, beer, and dogs at the university, plucked in his examination, a place in an administration, counsellor, knight of several orders, vice-president of a province, president of a province, minister.

Although there are in Paris more Germans than foreigners of any other nation, little is seen and heard of them. They do not hang together, and form a society of their own, as do the English, and even the Spaniards and Italians. They may be classed under the heads of political refugees, artisans, men of science and letters, merchants and bankers. Few of them are of sufficient rank and importance to represent their nation with dignity, or sufficiently wealthy to make themselves talked of for their lavish expenditure and magnificent establishments. They have not, like the English, colonized and appropriated to themselves one of the best quarters of Paris. Mr Gutzkow complains of the scanty kindness and attention shown to his countrymen by the richer class of German residents. "I was in a drawing-room," he says, "whose owner was indebted for his fortune to a marriage with a German lady. Yet the Germans there present were neglected both by host and hostess. The German artist or scholar must not reckon on a Schickler or a Rothschild to introduce him into the higher circles of Parisian life. These rich bankers are of the same breed as the German waiters in Switzerland and Alsace, who, even when waiting upon Germans, pretend to understand only French. Music is the German's best passport to French society. You may be a great scientific genius, and find no admission at the renowned soirÉes of the Countess Merlin. Do but offer to take a part in one of the musical choruses, to strengthen the bass or the tenor, and you are welcome without name or fame, and even without varnished boots."

We have been diffuse upon the lighter texts afforded us by Mr Gutzkow's work, and must abstain from touching upon its graver portions. They will repay perusal. A vein of satire, sometimes verging on bitterness, is here and there perceptible in his pages. It forms no unpleasant seasoning to a very palatable book.