Is there any former lover of Paris who imagines that, when the barricades of the last insurrection have been removed, the devastations repaired, and the street lanterns mended, Paris will wear, with its republican face, the same aspect as it did of old? If there be such a man, let him still cherish the fond delusion, and not come and see. Or, would he learn the truth, let him try the experiment of taking from the fairest face he knows and loves, the gay, coquettish cap of gauze and ribbon, the light, butterfly-like chef-d'oeuvre of the most tasty fancy of a French marchande des modes, and let him put on that head the Phrygian cap of liberty, the bonnet rouge, in all its startling coarseness of red cloth. He thinks, perhaps, that the face will be the same, or at least wear the same expression as before! Fatal mistake! Animated, gay with colour, flushed with the red reflected tints, picture-like even, may be the pretty face—but it will have utterly lost its former charm; it will look staring, vulgar, swaggering, disordered, at best Bacchante-like. Or, to take a more psychological comparison:—Let him think back upon the time when he was in love, and wandered in the company of the beloved, and try to remember how he looked upon the objects that surrounded him. Of a surety, whatever their natural want of beauty they wore a peculiar look of brightness; there was a magical veil of rose-coloured charm upon all. Let him then reflect upon the aspect of the same spot when she was gone. The objects remained the same, but certainly they wore not the same air to his eyes; they were the identical objects he had looked upon before, and yet he could have sworn that they were changed—that the whole landscape was discoloured. And so it is with Paris. Streets, squares, and houses are the same, but its moral appearance is totally altered: there is a changed look in the very air; the impression on the mind is as different as rose-colour is from gray upon the sense; the psychological tint has been washed out, blurred away, and replaced by a troubled, confused, indescribably unharmonious and uncongenial colour.

But without attempting to convey to others a feeling impossible to define, it is easy enough to point out the altered state of being of the French capital in the outward physical aspect of republican Paris. True, the marks of devastation have been almost entirely removed from the Boulevards and principal streets with wonderful alacrity on the part of the municipal authorities. Young trees have been planted on the spots where the old ones were cut down to form barricades: they look stunted, meagre, and unhappy enough, to be sure—very like the young republic that their frail stems typify—but they manage to keep up the look of the line of avenue. There they stand, all ready to be cut down again for the construction of fresh barricades, if ever they grow big enough before they are wanted, which is certainly a very doubtful matter. The asphalte is already laid down once more in the holes of the broken-up trottoirs, or at least smoke and stench enough prevail in the labours of plastering it down; and in a short time the iron railings of the Boulevard du Rempart will again prevent drunken citizens in smocks from falling down into the street below; at all events, there is mortar and solder enough ready on the pavement to do the work. On the opposite side of the way, that fatal building, the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, before which so frightful a scene of carnage was acted, looks much as it did of yore—perhaps only a little dirtier, a little more public-office-like—although young citizens en blouse mount guard before its gates instead of soldiers of the line, and on its walls, smeared with blood-dipped fingers, glare before one's eyes, unwashed away by rain, the startling capitals—"Mort a Guizot." But it is to be presumed that the eyes of passers-by will get used to the bloody words—forgotten, perhaps, before many months in other visions of blood—perhaps smeared over in their turn by "Mort À ——." Who can tell? The pavement has been long since restored to the streets; although, to tell the truth, here and there the disjointed, ill-replaced stones still slightly lift their heads to tell a tale of past devastation, and proclaim their readiness to rise again at a moment's warning; and fiacres jolt uneasily over them—very much like the Provisional Government over the rough work left them to stumble against by the Revolution. But, upon the whole, Paris has nigh recovered its former material look, and might almost cheat the wanderer, who looks only upon stone walls, and pavements, and lamp-posts, into the belief that it has undergone no change, and retained no scars from its late burning eruptive disorder, unless he stroll past two spots which startle him into a recollection of the truth. Here the long faÇade of the palace of the Tuilleries, its window-panes all smashed, its shutters shattered—the broken casket of royalty! There the quondam Palais-Royal, its walls still blackened by the bonfires of royal furniture lighted in its courts; its windows paneless, its once flowered terraces bare or boarded with planks. And, opposite, the smoked walls of that ruined building, on the other side of the square, where the last defenders of royalty were shot down, or were flung back to perish in the blazing pile of the vast guard-house.

But if Paris has thus washed away its blood and dirt, thus mended its rent garments, thus patched over its scars, where then is the great change? Come and see! The scenes with which the streets of republican Paris teem are such as those who have only known the city in its kingly garb have never witnessed.

What was the aspect of Paris formerly on one of those bright champagne-like spring days, when the Parisian butterflies of all classes, the humble gray moth as the sparkling tiger-fly, came forth to sun themselves in the golden air? There were crowds—but listless, easy, careless crowds, that sauntered they knew not whither, and turned back they knew not why—crowds of beings who ran over each other, and almost over themselves, as they fluttered hither and thither, enjoying the brightness of the sky without rendering themselves any reckoning of their enjoyment. There are still crowds in the streets; but no longer listless, easy, careless crowds. They form in large groups, and knots, and circles on the pavement, and at street corners, and at the entrance of galleries and passages; and, from the midst of the mass, if you can get near enough to hear, comes the sound of haranguing or of disputing. Each group is an al fresco club in which the interests of the country at large are being discussed; and round about is ever a dark murmuring, and a rumour, and a ferment—and sometimes minor disputants break off from the parent knot; and presently they form a nucleus for a fresh encircling crowd; and another group takes up its standing; and a great banian-tree of politicising knots drops its branches, which thus take root up and down the Boulevards, far and wide, until the whole long avenue is planted with separate little circles of disputants or spouters. Here a well-dressed man assures his unknown auditors that the arbitrary and despotic measures of an obnoxious Minister of the Interior destroy all confidence, and prepare the ruin of the country, with the fear of another Reign of Terror: there a workman on a bench, with violent gesture and inflamed countenance, declares that the salvation of the republic, one and indivisible, hangs upon the despotism—he gives it another name—of the same Minister of the Interior—for the time being, the hero of the people. But think not that the blouse is sundered from the frock-coat, or the varnished boot from the clouted shoe. Here you see a young ÉlÉgant of the Faubourg St Germain, his legitimist principles and his old dynastic hopes prudently concealed behind the axiom, "All for France! FranÇais avant tout!" discussing amicably a knotty point about elections, or the measures of the Provisional Government, with an unshaved artisan in a smock: and look! they are of one mind—or apparently so—and the kid-gloved hand grasps the rough, callous, toil-hardened palm. Here again a good bourgeois, a shopkeeper, in his uniform as a National Guard, the grocer of your street corner maybe, holds Monsieur the ex-Count, his customer, by the button, to develop his last republican scheme for the certain remedy of the financial crisis. A little further on, a dark-browed man, in a ragged coat, with a tricolor cockade, scarcely concealing the blood-red ribbon beneath, declares to a knot of young schoolboys, that the only method to avert the general misery is by the spoliation of the vile rich; but meets with little sympathy, and goes away scowling, as if he thought that his time would yet come. And here again a gamin, a very child, with his snub nose insolently cocked in the air, his sabre bound about his body, and his musket on his arm—for he just comes from keeping guard—is holding forth upon the interests of the Republic to a red-faced, mustached old gentleman, who looks like an old general; and who smiles good-temperedly on the urchin, and listens, until the young patriot thinks probably that he has sufficiently enlightened "granny" upon the art of sucking republican eggs, and swaggers off, screeching Mourir pour la Patrie, at the top of his shrill voice. And around each of these minor centres of two suns is all the hemisphere of listening planets and satellites. And thus every where is a fusion, according to the best-established republican principles of ÉgalitÉ: and no great harm done, were the doctrine to rest there—every where ferment, commotion, murmur, movement. But the old Parisian flaneur, with his easily satisfied curiosity, his desultory wanderings, his careless movements—and what Parisian of the street-crowds, man, woman, or child, had not formerly more or less of the spirit of a true flaneur?—is gone from the streets of Paris. A citizen has something else to do than flaner: he feels all the weight of the interests of the country on his own individual shoulders; and he has no time now but for making harangues, on which the welfare of France depends, and discussing political or social questions, equally for the welfare of all humanity. It is wonderful how quickly the change has come over the spirit of his dream. But fashion and contagion work miracles.

Come! look at this picture now. It is a bright moonlight night. The beams of the full moon are whitening the long line of elevated columns of the Bourse. In the large, open, moonlit place before it are crowds—every where crowds—in isolated circles again, looking like clumps of little wooded islands in a glistening lake. Let us approach one of the dark masses. In the midst of the circle stands a young fellow, bare-headed, shaking his fair locks about him most theatrically, and "baying at the moon." He is mounted on a tub, or some such temporary pulpit. His arms are tossed aloft in the moonlight with such energy that we feel convinced he fancies himself a second Camille Desmoulins animating the Parisian population against the tyrants of the country. We get as near as we can, and we now catch his words. He is, in truth, haranguing against tyranny, but the tyranny of the shopkeepers; and he calls upon all citoyens and true patriots to join him in a petition to the Government for the closing of shops on Sundays and holidays at twelve o'clock, instead of three in the afternoon! But the mass around does not seem to catch his enthusiasm; for I see none of those shifting lights in the chiaro-obscuro of the crowd, that would indicate one of those electric movements that fall upon popular masses, under the influence of inspiration. Now, he cries, "Vive la Republique! citizens, friends, let us to the Faubourg St Antoine!"—the workman's quarter, where Émeutes are generally cooked up. But no one seems inclined to follow him into that distant region, in order to get up a shop-shutting insurrection; and more than one voice calls out, "plus souvent!" or, Anglice, "I wish you may get it!"

Come! here is another picture. The night this time is dark and drizzly. Upon the pavement of the now naked flower-market, beneath the quiet ghostly white walls of the Madeleine, stand thick groups of men: there are some hundreds of them—some in cloaks, some in thick coats, some with their hats slouched down upon their brows, all wearing, in their several patches of murmuring forms, an air of conspiracy, which is greatly increased by the sombre and inclement state of the night. And conspirators they are—but bold-faced conspirators in the face of a dripping heaven. In republican Paris, however, there is, as yet, no police to prevent conspiracy: and in this instance the plotters are not conspiring against republican France, but against monarchies and empires. The dusky forms are those of the German democrats, who are holding a desultory council for the raising of a German army to go and conquer the liberties of the great German republic they intend to found. To-morrow their address to the "citoyens FranÇais," calling on them to lend arms and give money towards the recruitment of their force, will be on all the walls of Paris. In a day or two a few hundreds will be off, with the full conviction that they are to mix their own republican leaven of sourness into all the freshly baked German constitutional governments, and proclaim their republic wherever they go. They are talking, in this bigger group, not only of "breaking tyrant-chains," but of "wreathing laurels for their own brows."

Think not also that the Boulevards retain their glittering aspect of rich decorated shops, teeming with the luxury of colour and gilding as before. We are in the midst of a financial crisis, and misery and want are increasing daily. Trade has ceased with the want of confidence; ruin has fallen on many; workmen have been dismissed, and shop-boys turned adrift in hundreds upon the streets; and, in spite of the "roasted larks" all ready for hungry mouths, and "showers of gold" which the Government promises as about to fall from the heaven of the republic upon the working classes, it is not only on the faces of the tradespeople at their shop-doors, or behind the mockery of their plate-glass windows, that there is impressed a gloom, but upon the many hundreds and thousands who seek work and cannot find it, and who wander up and down with hanging heads, or while away their weary hours in lounging about the outskirts of the disputing groups. See! how many shops are shut! See! how sadly the placard of "boutique À louer," upon the closed doors, meets the eye at every ten steps, and tells a tale of bankruptcy; how many rows of dismal shutters, like coffin-lids erect upon their ends, give by day to the streets that funereal look they formerly only gave by night; and chalked upon these shutters are still the words—"armes donnÉs au peuple," a still remaining souvenir of the days of tumult, disorder, and bloodshed, when every house in Paris was scrawled over by the same announcement, in order to prevent the forcible entry of the mob into private dwellings to carry off defensive weapons. If we step aside into one of those monster-shops, with their vast corridors, and avenues, and galleries, and staircases, which lately were so crowded that it was difficult for customers to be served even by the hundred commis within, what a scene of desert listlessness meets our eyes! There is scarce a solitary customer who wanders amongst their long galleries, vainly draperied and beshawled with all the rich wonders of modern manufacture. The weary-looking shop-boys, the few that remain, run out of breath from one end of a long gallery to another to get what you want, for they have now several departments of the establishment under their care. There is not a trace here of Paris as it was.

Come out in the streets again! What has become of the bright look they wore? There are no longer the belles toilettes of the last Parisian fashion—no gay dresses, or but a scanty, worn-out, tawdry show—none of the ancient splendour of rich Paris. A few ÉlÉgants, it is true, familiar faces, may be still met upon their former lounging haunts on the Boulevards; but they are few, and their varnished boots even have a dull lustreless look, that is perfectly sympathetical with the general gloom. Several, certainly, may be met in the uniform of the National Guard, but with such an altered, any thing but "lion"-like mien, that you do not recognise them at first, and cut half your best acquaintances. The equipages which formerly dashed hither and thither over the pavement, are now rarÆ aves in the streets; and the few who exhibit thus openly their superior wealth have, for the most part, considered it advisable to have the armorial bearings upon the pannels of their vehicles painted over. Most of the upper classes have put down their carriages, and sold or sent away their horses. The unfortunate "rich," however, are in sad straits; if they show themselves en voiture, while their humbler neighbours walk on foot, they may stand a chance, in the new realm of "ÉgalitÉ," of having their ears saluted with the menacing cry of "À bas les aristocrates—À bas les riches!" if they restrict their expenses and reduce their establishments, they run the risk of being seriously denounced as favourers of the "conspiration de l`Économie," which they are supposed to form in order to injure the republic by refusing to spend their money. Where the people are lords and masters, the upper classes have evidently a far harder game to play, and much less tolerance to expect, than in the contrary rule. In the aspect of the streets, then, there is not a trace of Paris as it was.

How looks the scene? There are plenty of ill-dressed men moving about with anxious faces: they are the hungry crew from the provinces, come to solicit places in the new order of things, and snatch what morsel of the cake they can in the general scramble. They may be known by the size of their tricolor cockades, and streaming ribbons at their buttonhole; for they think it necessary to proclaim, as flauntingly as they can, by symbol, the republican principles which, they suddenly find out, always and from all times, although unknown to themselves, animated their souls. And blouses there are in plenty, as of course. They are the kings of the day, and they are not yet chary of their royal persons, or tired of exhibiting the consciousness of their royalty in the streets. Some of these braves citoyens have got far beyond the comparison, "drunk as a lord"—they are "drunk as an emperor:" and with their ideas of aristocratic power, and their maxim of "all for us, and nothing for nobody else," why should they not be? Besides, as they choose to have much pay and no work, how could they better employ their time? The uniforms of the National Guards are now almost more numerous than the frock-coat and round hat; and though so fallen from their high estate before the frowning demonstration of the people, these former soi-disant defenders of the liberties of their country assert a certain predominance in the aspect of the moving scene. Where so lately arms were never seen, having been strictly prohibited by orders of the police, now pass by you, at all times, bands of armed men, in tolerably ragged attire, or en blouse, with muskets on their arms, their white sword and cartouche belts crossing their breasts, and little bits of card-paper stuck in their caps. These are small battalions of the newly recruited garde mobile—recruited chiefly from the idle refuse of the people; and as they march hither and thither continually, they seem still to have a faint idea that they are obeying orders from their officers: but how long this fancy of obedience and discipline will be still entertained among them, is a very ticklish question. Some of them are standing sentinels at the gates of the government buildings and public offices, in lieu of the soldiers of the line that formerly met your eye there. Here again, before the Hotel de la Marine, are a few sturdy-looking sailors, the most honest in physiognomy of most of the individuals you meet; and with their blue dresses, and ribbon-bound glazed hats, give a new feature, and not an unpicturesque one, to the street scene. A few soldiers still roam about in desultory manner; the jealousy of the people will not allow of any armed force but their own within the walls of Paris; and they have a debauched demoralised look that they wore not of old; for they no longer obey orders, wander about at will, and return to their barracks only when they want to be fed. Without seeking for any marked republican fashion, there may be thus found sufficient change in the outward attire of the general throng to show at once that you are in the streets of republican Paris, and not Paris as it was. And yet, specimens of the fantastic republican attire of a gone-by time, the recollections of which few, one would think, would wish to recall, are not altogether wanting. A few bonnets rouges,—the Phrygian caps of liberty,—with tricolor cockades on one side, startle the eye sometimes: some adventurous female of the lower classes crosses your path now and then with a similar coiffure, and in a tricolor dress of red, blue apron, and white collar; and here and there a tricolor-bedecked fellow, with a fanner in his hands, invites you to witness his feats of republican jugglery. This, however, is the mere child's play that mocks an old comedy,—an old tragedy, I should have said. Little is as yet done to parody that fearful epoch of French history: people do not even address each other as "citoyen" and "citoyenne." The name appears only in public documents. What King People may require, when it feels more fully its own strength—what comedy, or what tragedy, of old times it may choose to act again, remains to be seen upon the dark and gloomy page of the future. The new-born giant only stretches his arms as yet, and crushes a fly or two in sport; as yet he scarcely knows his awful power.

Now listen to the street-cries in the formerly orderly thoroughfares of the capital. What an incessant screeching of voices,—rough, shrill, clear, and husky—fills the air, and, if not deafens, tears the ears. From an early hour of the morning until after midnight, the hoarse screaming ceases not in the streets. Wo betide the nervous and impressionable! they are sure to go to bed nightly with a headach. All this eardrum-rending clamour has reference only to one object of all,—that of the necessary daily food of republican Paris—of the newspapers. Their name now is legion. With one ambitious exception, all the old established newspapers are submerged in this deluge of republican prints. We have now two or three "Republiques," "La Reforme," "La LibertÉ," "Le Salut Public," "La voix du Peuple," and who can tell how many other "voices" besides, including "La voix des Femmes;" for the milder sex already lifts its voice still more fiercely if possible than the ruder. But it would be as difficult to enumerate all the names of the demons in a fantastic poet's "inferno," as all the titles of the new republican newspapers that howl around one in the distracted streets of Paris. There is one, as was before said, that is screeched more noisily, more assiduously, more sturdily, than all the others; and the sounds of its hawking ring long in the ears after the streets have been left, and even pursue the bewildered street-wanderer to his bed, and in his dreams. It weighs in weight of noise against all the other papers of Paris taken in the mass. Listen! What do you hear? Nothing but "DÉmandez la Presse!" "La Patrie!" "DÉmandez la Presse!" "La voix des Clubs!" "DÉmandez la Presse!" "La vrai DÉmocrate!" "DÉmandez la Presse!" and so on to the "crack of doom." It is the journal of an intriguing man, of strong sense, and stronger ambition, who has not yet obtained that power at which he grasps; but as the whole paper is for one sou, it will be strange if, with this active system of living puffing, he arrive not at some great pinnacle, or fall not into some deep abyss. Ears, however, will get accustomed to the cannon of the battlefield; but the harassed spirit gets not easily accustomed to the bodily assaults of every moment. At every step newspaper-venders obstruct your path, rushing down upon you like cab-drivers in the streets of Naples: the thousand rival sheets of printed paper are flared in your face, thrust into your hand, forced into your bosom, ten at a time, with the accompanying howl of "only a sou!—only five centimes!"

Suppose that, for a moment—a bold supposition!—you have escaped from the attacks of these invading hordes of republican journalism, you must not fancy that your future path is unobstructed. Of course, in republican Paris, a street-police would be considered as the most frightful of tyrannies; universal license is the order of the day. Besides the politicising and haranguing crowds already mentioned, your course is hemmed by countless others. Here is a juggler—there a quack-doctor—there a monkey—here a pamphlet-vender; and each has its thick encircling throng of idlers around it. And, alas! how many there are who have now no business but to idle. The thickest crowd, perhaps, is round a long-haired meagre fellow, who is crying "Les crimes de Louis Philippe, et les assassinats qu'il a commis—all for two sous!" to an admiring and applauding throng of the lowest classes. Some better feelings murmur at this useless ass's kick at the dead lion; but they are few. Move on! There is another obstructing crowd before a host of caricatures on the walls; of course, they are all directed against Louis File-vite," as he is termed, and his accolyte "Cuit-sot." There is a rare lack of wit in them, be they allegorical, typical, or fanciful; but they are sure to attract a gaping and a laughing throng. Move on again, if you can! You find two or three hommes du peuple, in blouses, planted before you, who cry, authoritatively, and without budging themselves to the right or to the left—"Faites place, nom de Dieu!" And you, of course, make room; and if you are disposed to reverence, you will take off your hat to them too; for these are your lords and masters,—what say I? your kings! and no autocrat was ever more despotically disposed. Move on again, if you can! You will stumble over the countless beggars stretched across the pavement, or squatting in gipsy-like groups, or thrusting wounds and sores into your face. Many there may be real sufferers from the present misery, but the most are of the got-up species. It is now the beggars' saturnalia; they keep high holiday in the streets. The people have cried "A bas les municipaux—À bas les sergents de ville!" Those execrable monsters, the agents of a tyrannical power, have been driven away, if not massacred, in the last "three glorious days:" and the people want no police,—"the great, the magnanimous, the generous, the virtuous," as the Government calls it in its proclamations.

Try to move on once more! Before the walls, all plastered with handbills of every kind, are again throngs to read and comment. On every vacant space of wall, at every corner, are posted countless addresses and advertisements. The numerous white bills are decrees, proclamations, addresses, and republican bulletins of the Provisional Government, all headed with those awful words, "Republique FranÇaise," which make many a soul sink, and sicken many a heart, with the remembrance of a fearful time gone by. And decrees there are which hurry on the subversion of all the previously existing social edifice, without reorganising in the place, destroying and yet not building anew;—and proclamations more autocratic and despotic, in the announcement of the reign of republican liberty, than ever was monarchic ordinance;—and addresses to the people, couched in vague declamation, telling these rulers of the day, "Oui, peuple! tu es grand—oui, tu es brave—oui, tu es magnanime—oui, tu es gÉnÉreux—oui, tu es beau!" with an odious flattering such as the most slavering courtier never ventured to bestow upon the most incensed despot;—and bulletins declaring France at the pinnacle of glory, and happiness, and pride—the object of envy and imitation to all people. Private addresses from individuals or republican bodies there are also innumerable, in the same sense; until one expects to see angels' wings growing behind the backs of every blouse, forming harmonious contrast with the black unshaven faces. But we are far from being at the end of the long lines of handbills, that give Paris the look of a city built up of printed paper. Here we have announcements of clubs—the mille e tre noisy mistresses that court the fascinating, seductive, splendid Don Juan of a Republic; there are four or five in every quarter of the town, almost in every street. And then come their professions de foi; and then their addresses to the people, and their appeals, and their counsels to the Government, and their last resolutions, and their future intentions—say, their future exactions. Most greet the fall of the social edifice with triumph; but few, if any, let you know how they would reconstruct anew: some boldly state their object to be "the enlightenment of a well-intentioned but ignorant Government, which it is their duty to instruct:" others call down "the celestial vengeance, and the thunders of heaven, on their head, if ever they should deceive or lead astray the people." Here again we have petitions to Government, and demands, and remonstrances from individuals or small bodies—delegates, they tell you, of the people's rights;—some wild and inflammatory, some visionary to the very seventh heaven of political rhapsody, but all flattering to the Peuple Souverain, whose voice is the voix de Dieu! Here again we have whole newspapers pasted on the walls, with articles calling upon the people to take arms again, since their first duty to their country is "mistrust." Now a proposition to tax the revenues of the rich in a progressive proportion of one per cent for every fortune of a thousand francs, two for every two thousand, fifty for every fifty thousand, "and so on progressively,"—without stating, however, whether those who possess a revenue of a hundred thousand francs are to pay a hundred per cent, or what is to become of those who possess two hundred thousand. Now, a menacing call upon the Government to perform their duty in exacting the disgorgement of that vile spoliation of the nation, the indemnity granted to the emigrants at the Restoration, as belonging to the people alone. Here again are numerous addresses and appeals from and to all foreign democrats in Paris—Germans, Belgians, Italians, Poles—calling for meetings, and begging the "braves FranÇais" to give them arms and money to go and conquer the republics of their respective countries by force. Here again, other notices from all trades, and companies, and employments, appointing meetings for the consideration of the interests of their partie; tailors, cafÉ-waiters, bootmakers, choristes of theatres, gens de maisons, (servants,) even to the wandering hawkers on the public ways, and lower still, all wanting to complain to the Provisional Government of the restraint laid on their free rights. Here again, proposals for congratulatory addresses, and felicitations to the Government, from all manner of various representatives of nations resident in Paris. Here again, ten or twelve solitary voices of braves citoyens, proposing infallible remedies for the doctoring of the financial crisis. Here again, advertisements, in republican phrase, recommending to the "citoyennes," "now that the hour is come, to take up their carpets," some especial wax for their floors; or reminding the "Citoyens Gardes Nationaux," that, "in this moment of the awakening of a country's glory, when they watch over the interests of France, and are indefatigable in patrolling the streets of the capital," the citoyen "so and so" will cut their corns with cheapness and ease! And all these are pasted about in confused pell-mell; all are headed with the necessary "Vive la Republique!" Wonder then not, at the thick crowds about these documents, all treating of a country's weal, all announcing some new and startling design, all devoured by eager eyes. Wo betide, however, the citoyen who may leave his house door closed for a whole day!—he will find it barricaded with plastered paper from top to bottom on the morrow; or the shopkeeper who may lie too long a-bed—it will be a difficult task for him to take down his placarded shutters: and both will stand a chance of getting hooted for venturing to displace a printed paper headed with the talismanic words, proclaiming individual liberty of person and opinion. No tyranny like a mob tyrant, I trow.

Apropos of advertisements, the play-bills will no less startle the ancient habituÉ of Paris, were he now again to return to his old haunts. The names, formerly so familiar to his eyes, are gone in many instances. The old AcadÉmie de Musique is now the ThÉÂtre de la Nation; the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, the ThÉÂtre de la Republique; the ThÉÂtre du Palais Royal, the ThÉÂtre Montansier. In this confusion he will be still more confounded by the composition of the bills: every where the announcement of patriotic songs and chorusses, sung between the acts—of Àpropos pieces, allegorical or historical—of titles such as "Les Barricades," "Les Trois Revolutions," "Les Filles de la LibertÉ," "La Revolution FranÇaise," and so forth, throughout all the theatres in Paris. Even in the ex-ThÉÂtre FranÇais he will scarcely trust his astonished eyes to see that "Mademoiselle Rachel will sing the Marseillaise between the acts." Oh! theatre-loving old habituÉ of Paris, you will think that your wits have gone astray, and that your senses are deceiving you! The new names of streets will no less bewilder your mind. All that smacked of royalty, or dynasty, or monarchic history have already republicanised themselves, as is the old wont of Paris streets under every change of government: there are many that have long since forgotten all the hundred and one names that they have already borne. Then you will know how to pity the embarrassment of an unlucky man who lived in the Rue Royale St HonorÉ. On going out in the morning of the 25th of February, he found unexpectedly that he lived in the Rue de la Republique. Well, he made up his mind to that; but the Rue Rambuteau had already claimed this glorious title; so the Rue Royale had to make shift with that of the Rue de la Revolution. But now came again another prior claim; and the ex-Rue Royale was again despoiled. Now it has no name at all: and the poor individual in question, as far as his direction goes, might as well live in the ruins of Palmyra.

But to return to the outward aspect of republican Paris.

Hark! what a noise of awkward drumming! and see! a host of men of the lower classes comes pouring down the street, in hundreds—nay, in thousands. Several banners are borne among them: they shout "Vive la Republique!" and sing with that utter bold disregard of time, which, the French themselves would tell you, is peculiar only to supposed unmusical England. The Marseillaise or the now so popular Mourir pour la Patrie, or the Ca ira of fearful memory; and interlard their discordant efforts at chorus with screams of "À bas les aristocrates!" Scarcely has the horde rushed past you, than there comes another, and another, and another, until your brain whirls with the unceasing throngs. Now it is a troop of women, banners also at their head; now again a long line of more orderly, and better dressed men; but they cry "Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!" Now again a band of ruffian fellows, with the howl of "À bas les riches!" They cross your path at every step, these marching bands. Sometimes they are deputations of all the different trades, or subdivisions of peculiar branches of handiwork—tailors, joiners, scavengers, paviours, sign-painters, wet-nurses, cooks, and so forth, as far as the imagination or the memory can reach in enumeration, and still further; and they are all streaming to the Hotel de Ville, to harangue the Provisional Government on their several rights and wrongs, desires and demands. Sometimes they are mere bands promenading for the sake of promenading, screeching for the sake of screeching, and making demonstrations, because whatever is theatrical, whatever smacks of show and parade, whatever gives them the opportunity of exhibition, and with it the hope of admiration, is the ruling passion of the people; or because they have nothing else to do, and will not work, although the Government pays them daily with the country's money. Now comes a troop of would-be Hungarian patriots, in their national dress, their attilas, pelisses, braided pantaloons, singing a national hymn—somewhat better than the French, by the way—flaring about banners, and getting up all sorts of Quixotic theatrical manifestations, lowering their banners in mere sport, flourishing them upon others, and calling upon the manes of several of the "victims of liberty murdered in their country's cause." These are specimens of the Hungarian nation of the frantic description, who, after carrying felicitations to the Provisional Government in the name of their country, are now parading the streets to show themselves off. Now comes again a long troop of young fellows in light-coloured blouses, bound with lacquered leather belts around their waists: they have broad white beavers on their heads, mounted by black, red, and yellow cocks' feathers; and they bear banners of black, red, and gold—a more picturesque throng than those you usually meet. The colours are the colours of the German nationality: the young men are German patriots. Poor deluded young fellows! their minds have been excited by designing men; and they are about to march off to Germany "to conquer the liberties of the German republic," expecting that all Germany is to rise again at their puny call, and at the sound of that magical name "republic." They have been begging for arms and ammunition, and money, of all Paris; and now, with the slender succour they have obtained, they go to meet their fates.But now comes a fresh marching mass of many thousands, with the usual accompanying drums and banners: there are women and children among the throng—if children still there be in France, when every urchin fancies himself a man. They distinguish themselves from the others by the tall bare poplar stems they bear. These are great poetically and symbolically-minded patriots of the lower classes, who are bent on planting trees of liberty all over Paris. They protest that they are fully earning the pay the country gives them, by enacting these wonderful feats for the country's good. Their delegates knock at house-doors, and thrust themselves into private dwellings, to beg—no! to demand contributions for the celebration of their fÊte; and these republican fÊtes are of every day and every hour. The ancient habituÉ of Paris will not find his capital much embellished by the aspect of these tall unsightly bare stems erected at every corner, on every square, on every vacant space of ground, although they be all behung with banners, and garlands, and tricolor streamers. Let us follow some of these immense gangs. In some instances they have got a priest among them to bless their patriotic fÊte: and the poor ecclesiastic is dragged along with them, oft-times pale and trembling at the thought of the unusual ceremony he is thus violently called upon to perform. Now again they summon the whole clergy of some rich parish church to come forth in cope and stole, and with incense and banner, and all the hundred other rich accessories of the pomp of Catholic ceremony, to bestow the blessing on these naked emblems of a country's naked liberties, and pronounce a political sermon, felicitating France on the awakening glories of the republic, established by divine Providence and a people's might, before the poor ragged pole. Sometimes again they come, fresh with triumphs, from the Hotel de Ville, where they have constrained one or more of the members of the Provisional Government to accompany them—some of them nothing loth, when popular demonstrations are to be theatrically made—and to give vent to wonderful speeches, flattering to this people, "si grand, si magnanime, si gÉnÉreux, si beau!" &c., &c., as before, as every day, as in every word they are to hear; all which flattering words teach them how their excellence is ill recompensed, and how it ought to exact still more. They are now at work with more or less of this pomp, and in the midst of a greater or lesser concourse of spectators. The pavement is torn up: a hole is dug in the street; the tree is planted, pulled up to its elevation, firmly fixed in the ground—although, by the way, in many instances, the poor tree of liberty looks in a very tottering state—and the havock committed in the pavement more or less repaired. The acclamation is great: shouts, shrieks, cries rend the air: the religious benediction is over: the priests hurry away as quietly as they can: the members of the Government retreat, escorted by a deputation of delegates, after an oration: and now the Marseillaise, or the Mourir pour la Patrie, are again screeched in discordant chorus, amidst the incessant firing off of guns. All day the tumult lasts throughout the city: to a late hour of night the firing in the air is incessant. A barricade of stones and poles is erected round the precious emblem of liberty: the surrounding houses are constrained by threats of window-breaking to illuminate in honour of King-People: pitch fires are bright at each corner of the barricade: and patriotic boys, who devote themselves for their country's weal, are posted, with muskets on arm, to do sentry-duty all night round the tree—lest any audacious enemy of the country should compromise the safety of the republic by attempting to pull down one of the many hundreds of its emblems that now disfigure the streets of Paris. Again, who would recognise his old Paris in these strange scenes, or in the night pictures, thus faintly sketched, which meet his eye at every turn? When these mighty deeds for a country's welfare and glory shall come to end—when Paris shall have been all so beplanted that it will resemble a naked forest, what great feats to prove their zeal in behalf of Republican France will they next invent? "Qui vivra verra" is a favourite French proverb. Heaven grant that it be not reversed, and that "qui verra ne vivra pas!"

But see! they have already invented another great patriotic amusement. Whence come those discordant howlings? A band of fellows is rushing up and down the Boulevards, dragging along a bust of the ex-King, by means of a rope round its neck; they have attached to it a label, "Louis Philippe À la lanterne!" See! what a frantic delight they express in their schoolboy amusement. How wonderfully their ferocious faces picture forth "the grand, the generous, the magnanimous, the beautiful!" They flourish sticks about at carriage windows, with the cry of "À bas les riches! À bas les aristocrates!" and they forcibly turn such equipages out of their royal way, if their path be crossed by adventurous coachmen. But as yet they do no real harm; and the pacific majority is hopeful in its force to restrain, if the time for restraint should come.

Now again comes pouring down from the Rue du Faubourg St Denis, another host of men, women, and children, howling the "Ca Ira." They have got a great placard among them, declaring, that if their landlords do not remit to them their rents, for two quarters at least, they will burn down their masters' houses over their heads: and, unobstructed, this screeching mob invades the streets. But this is rather too much, even amidst the license due to King People in Republican Paris. To-morrow will be posted on the walls of the capital, a notice from the Prefet de Police, appealing to the good sense of the mob not to burn houses, and containing a half-concealed under-current, but an under-current only, of threat.

Now again you may be witness to a grotesque scene of a high revolutionary tone. We are in the purlieus of one of the great public schools of Paris—the collÉges, as they are termed. Suddenly the street is invaded by several hundred boys: they rush along uttering hideous vociferations; before them flies a well-dressed middle-aged man: he flies as if for his life, and is pursued by showers of stones from the young revolutionary insurgents. This flying man, these screaming and pursuing children—what a lesson there is in it! Let us catch hold of one of the little urchins, and ask what all the uproar means. He tells us that the object of all his schoolboy hate, is a tyrant—a tyrant like Louis Philippe; and that, like Louis Philippe, they are driving him forth with scorn. "What has he done then?" we ask. "He was too strict," is the only reply; and on rushes again the young revolutionist to join in the general pursuit, with a big oath, and the cry of "Vive la Republique! À bas les tyrans!"

Now again, late in the evening, hurries past a detachment of National Guards. We ask, what now is afloat in a city where every day something new and startling crosses our life's path. We are told that the citizen troops are hastening to the rescue of a newspaper editor, who has ventured to write articles in opposition to the Government. His house is being stormed by an angry and excited mob; they threaten to break his presses, if not burn the whole establishment. In vain he meets the mob with courage, and asserts the right of that "liberty of opinion," which the republic has proclaimed as one of its first benefits. He is not listened to. What is liberty of opinion, or any liberty, in the sense of a mob, compared with its own liberty of doing what it listeth? They advance upon the house with threatening gesture—they pour in: the National Guards arrive, and a scuffle ensues. With difficulty the mob is driven back, and sentinels are posted. But now the crowds, in the dim night, grow thicker on the Boulevards than ever; and violent declamation is still heard from the midst against the man who, whatever be his real ends and aims, has the courage to assert an opinion contrary to the mass. Partisans there are, for and against: and high words arise, and threats are again proffered: and along the damp night air comes ever the murmur of many angry voices far and near: and the rumour ceases not, the crowd disperse not. And in the distracted city, where was firing, and shouting, and singing, and drumming, all day, there is still the agitation and the tumult long and late into the night.But let us take a turn to the neighbourhood of the Hotel de Ville, the seat of the Government; other fresh scenes will there meet our eyes.

Daily and hourly pour up into the open space before the fine old building, such troops of drumming, banner-bearing men and women as have been before described. Sometimes they are deputations from the various trades, full of all sorts of grievances, for which the members of the Provisional Government are expected to find immediate remedy;—sometimes they are bands of workmen, all couching, under different expressions, the demand for much pay and little work;—sometimes they bear addresses from various nations all speaking in the name of their country, which probably would disavow them;—sometimes they are delegates from the thousand and one clubs of Paris, who all choose to lay their resolutions, however frantic and impracticable they may be, before the Government, and expect to impose upon it their distracted will;—sometimes they are a body of individuals, who have got some fancy for a remedy of the financial crisis, which, of course, unless it would offend them bitterly, the Government is expected forthwith to adopt. Deputations, addresses, counsels, demands, exactions,—they must all be admitted, they must all be heard, they must all receive flattering promises, that probably never will, and never can be fulfilled. See! they come streaming up from all sides, from streets and quays, in noisy inundating floods; and now the streams mingle and roar together, and struggle for precedence. Generally, delegates are despatched to obtain audiences of the persecuted members of the Government; but sometimes, again, some tired minister or other is forced to appear in front, and harangue their importunate petitioners, amidst cries of "Vive la Republique!" For those who dwell upon this place, Paris must appear to be in a state of constant revolution. The noise, the tumult, the drumming, the shouting, the marching and the countermarching, never cease for a moment.

See! to-day there is a tumult before the faÇade of the old building. Battalions of National Guards have marched up, without arms, to protest against a despotic and arbitrary ordinance of an ambitious and reckless minister. They bring up their petition as thousands of other deputations have brought up theirs; the square is filled for the most part with long military-looking lines of their uniforms. But in a sudden, they have come to a check. Before the long faÇade of the line of building, are posted bodies of armed men, of the lower classes, with muskets charged and bayonets fixed. The demonstration of the National Guards, who dare to murmur at the will of their governors, spite of the proclamation of the reign of liberty, is not to be received. Anger and indignation is on the faces of all the citizen-soldiers; their feelings are excited; they cry, "down with" the obnoxious minister; they are met by cries from the armed people, of "down with the National Guards! down with the aristocrats!" The middling classes are now considered, then, as the aristocrats of the day; and the people treat them, as they have treated, in days gone by, the titled noblesse—as enemies! But now they advance in rank and file, determined to force an entrance to the Government palace: and the people oppose them with pointed bayonets; and drive them back; disperse them like sheep; pursue them down the quays; and the unarmed mob, collected in countless crowds around, joins in the cry of "down with the National Guards!" The National Guards are vanquished. They were considered in the revolutionary days of combat as the heroes, and allies, and defenders of the people. Only a few weeks are gone by since then; and they, in turn, are overthrown in a bloodless revolution. Their prestige is lost for ever. The last barrier is thrown down between the upper and the lower classes—the breakwater is swept away: and when the day of storm and tempest shall come, when the angry waters shall rise, when the inundation shall sweep on and on in tumultuous tide, what shall there be now to oppose it?

On the morrow, what a scene! From a very early hour of the morning, bands of hundreds and of thousands, in marching order, have poured down upon Paris from all the suburbs. From north, south, east, and west, they have come in countless hordes into the central streets and squares of the capital. Along the Boulevards, from the Bastile, from the heights of Montmartre, down the avenues of the Champs ElysÉes and the quays—from beyond the water and the Faubourg St Martel, they have come, sweeping on like so many mountain torrents. Every where as they advanced they have proferred cries of "Down with the National Guards! down with the aristocrats! down with the legitimists! down with the enemies of the Republic!" Better dressed men in many instances have marshalled them on their way; and among the inhabitants of Paris goes forth a murmur, that they have been roused to this state of tumult by the accolytes of the obnoxious minister, with the intention of overawing his colleagues and displaying his own power. And if, in truth, they shout "long live" any one, it is his name they cry: his noble-hearted and more moderate colleague, lately so popular, has lost a people's favour. And now the hundred torrents have met upon the quays, and before the Hotel de Ville; and hundreds of banners with manifold inscriptions are waving in the air; and troop upon troop is marshalled into some degree of order: but fearful is the mass: awful is the demonstration of a people! And now the members of the Government are compelled, one and all, to come down upon the elevated terrace before the faÇade of the Hotel de Ville: they are behung with tricolor scarfs, the ends of which stream with long gold fringes; their heads are bared before their masters and the rulers of the land. And now the host of people defiles before them; and they make speeches, and cry "Vive la Republique! Vive le peuple!" And the people, proud of its force, and rejoicing in its demonstration, that shows its power over the bourgeois, answers with shouts that rend the air. Heavens! what a scene! This is Republican Paris, indeed, I trow!

But come quickly to the Boulevards: the mighty mass has passed away to the column of liberty in the Place de la Bastile; and it will come down the Boulevards in overwhelming tide, exulting in its triumph. And now it comes. The long line, five abreast—there are nearly two hundred thousand in this great army—stretches on and on, almost from one end to the other of the immense central artery of the capital. It comes, and the chorus of the Marseillaise rolls like thunder along, dying away but to burst forth again. Hark! how it peels along the Boulevards! It comes, and the senses swim as the host goes by, marching on, and on, and on—confusing the sight with the incessant passing of such a stream of living beings, and its waving banners; deafening the ears with the menacing cries of "Down with the aristocrats!" and the discordant chorussing of confused patriotic songs—for the Marseillaise now gives way to the fearful Ca Ira. It comes, and it seems as if it never would end. Awful, indeed, is the display of a people's force, thus excited and inflamed by designing leaders! At last the mighty procession passed away, leaving consternation and alarm behind it. But think not that Paris resumes its usual aspect. The various bands break up at last, but they still parade the streets in several battalions: and the shouting and howling and singing cease not during the day.

But the night of the same day is come, and all is not yet done. Not content with its triumph, the people demands that all Paris should honour it with a festival, whether it will or not. Down the Boulevards come the hordes again, slowly, and pausing as they came on: they are chanting, in measured notes, the words "Des lampions! des lampions!" amidst the cries of "Illuminate, or we break your windows! Down with the aristocrats!" Why all Paris should be illuminated, because it has pleased King People to make a demonstration, it would be too insolent to inquire. It is a fancy, a caprice—and autocrats will have fancies and caprices. It is the people's will; and, however fantastic or unreasonable, the will must be obeyed. "Des lampions! des lampions!" The monotonous chant is impressed upon the ears with stunning force, until you believe that you must retain it in your bewildered brain until your dying day. And as they come along, see how readily the will of the people is obeyed! There is no readiness so quick as the readiness of fear. Up and down, from above and from below, right and left, in long irregular lines, until the lines of light become more general and more regular—see the illumination bursts forth from the faÇades of all the houses. Windows are rapidly opened on every side, in sixth stories as on first floors, on every terrace, on every balcony; and lamps, lanterns, candles, pots of grease, all flaming, are thrust out at every one. See! how the light darts up and down like wildfire, dancing along the houses in the darkness of the night, with an increasing phosphoric flicker. You may mark the progress of the mob, as it goes farther on in dusky mass, and is lost to sight in the gloom, not only by the eternal monotonous cry that bids the inhabitants illuminate, coming from the distance, but by the gleaming track it leaves behind it like a gigantic, broad tail of fire. Presently all the Boulevards will be brightly lighted; and the gleams of the many thousand points of light will illuminate a thickly moving crowd of beings, that look like the uneasy spirits of some gloomy pandemonium. Fairy-like, however, has the magical illumination sprung forth at the people's bidding, and fairy-like does it flicker on all sides in the night. All the other principal streets are burning also on either side, like long bands of spangled stuff glittering in the sun. The Faubourg St Germain, suspected of legitimacy, has long since been the first to yield to threats, and demonstrate at its windows its supposed sympathy in a people's triumph; and to-morrow we shall be told by the republican papers, how Paris was in an ecstasy of joy—how all the population strove in zeal, with one accord, to fÊter le peuple gÉnÉreux—how spontaneous was this illumination of republican enthusiasm. Spontaneous was the feeling that dictated it, certainly; but it was the spontaneity of fear—the fear of the quietly-disposed in the face of a reckless and all-powerful mob!

Let us turn now from the glittering illuminated streets.

What is that unusual light, streaming dimly, and in blurred rays, across the damp night air, from the windows of the chapel of St Hyacinthe, attached to the church of the Assumption in the Rue St HonorÉ? In such a place, at such an hour, it has something ghastly and unearthly in its nature. And hark! from within there comes a noise of hoarse murmuring, which swells sometimes suddenly into discordant shouts, that are almost groans. The impression conveyed by both sight and sound is little like any that Paris, even on its murkiest nights, and under its most dismal veil, ever bestowed on you before. The unwary wanderer in Paris streets by night, in search of romance, may have had visions of theft, assassination, misery, crime, before his eyes, in the dark silent thoroughfares, but always visions of a most positive earthly nature; now he cannot help fancying himself transported into some old town of mystic Germany, with some fantastic, mysterious, unearthly, Hoffmannish deed going on near him. Are the headless dead, among the victims of a prior revolution, risen from their bloody vaults, to beckon unto their ghastly crew new victims of another? or are demons rejoicing in that once sanctified building, that the reign of men's most evil passions should have begun again in that disturbed and fermenting city? Such is the first impression the dim scene conveys. Do you ever remember such in other days? Let us follow those dark forms that are gliding across the court of the church, and mounting the steps of the illumined chapel. We enter; and the scene, although neither ghastly nor demoniac, is scarcely less strange than if spectres and demons had animated the interior. Faintly lighted by a few dripping candles is the long dismantled chapel; and damp, dreary, funereal-looking, is the whole scene. A dim crowd, in this "darkness visible," is fermenting, thronging, struggling, and pushing in the aisle. At the further end, in that vaulted semicircle where once stood the altar of the Lord, rises a complicated scaffolding behung with black cloth. With your imagination already excited, you may fancy the dark construction a death-scaffold for the execution of a criminal—it is only the death-scaffold of the social state of France. We are in the midst of a republican club. On the highest platform, occupying the space where was the altar, sit president and secretaries of the society—the new divinities of the consecrated building. Yes! the new divinities; for they arrogate to themselves the same right against which they declaimed as blasphemy in kings—the "right divine." You will not listen long before they tell you so; besides, their first maxim is, "La voix du peuple est la voix de Dieu." On the lower platform before them stand the orators. Hark to the doctrines that they promulgate for the subversion of all existing order in the country, amidst shouts and screams, and cries of violent opposition sometimes, but generally of applause. See! the haggard, lanky-haired republican youths, who have shouted out all their fury, give way to a quiet, respectable-looking old man, whose gray hairs glimmer faintly in the candle-light. A feeling of greater calm comes over you: you imagine, after all this "sound and fury, signifying nothing," his old head will pacify the hot, maddened blood of frantic boys. What does he say?—"Yes, the republic is one and indivisible—it is more than indivisible—it is God!" You shrink back disgusted. Can the rhapsody of republican fanaticism go further? Are these Christian men? or are they really evil unearthly beings in a human form? The confused scene around you is almost enough to make you think so. But real enough is the eternal clatter of the president's hammer on his table. He rolls his eyes furiously; he browbeats every orator who may not be of his own individual opinion, and dares to be "moderate" when he is "exaltÉ;" and when your head aches—your heart has ached long ago—with the furious noise of the president's hammer, which you expect every moment to smash the table to pieces, you edge your way out of the dark fermenting crowd, and hurry forth, glad to breathe the purer air of heaven.

Ferment there is ever enough now in the streets of Paris by night: it ceases not. There are throngs pouring in and out of all the various thousand-and-one republican clubs of Paris, like wasps about their nest; but it is in the dim night air, and not in the bright sunlight of day—in dirty coats and smocks, and not with bright wings and variegated bodies. The wasp, too, stings only when he is attacked—the republican wasps seek to attack that they may sting. The al fresco clubs also crowd the Boulevards, in the chance medley confusion of all men and all principles. But see! there is here again, in the Rue du Faubourg du Roule, a confusion of a still more complicated nature—the swarming in and out of the small district school-house is even more virulent than is usual. It is another night-scene, such as the old habituÉ of Paris never witnessed, certainly. What is occurring? Let us crowd in with the others. What a scene of frantic confusion! A crowd springing upon benches, howling, screeching, yelling. At the further end of the low room is a ruined gallery, in which stands, surrounded by his friends, a man dressed in a red scarf, with the red cap of liberty on his head: he has a pike in his hand, and he vainly endeavours to make himself heard by the excited crowd. For some time you will be unable to comprehend the nature of the scene: at last you discover that an ultra republican, of the most inflamed ideas, wants to establish a Jacobin club. A "Jacobin club!" There is terror in the very word, and in all the fearful recollections it conveys. But here the good sense of the artisans and small tradespeople of the district is against so appalling a reminiscence of a fatal time. "Down with the bonnet rouge!" they cry. "Down with the red scarf! No Jacobins! no Jacobins! their day is gone. No terror!" Thank God! there is some good sense still among the people. "Down with the president—away with him!" they cry. He doffs at last his blood-red Phrygian cap—they are not content: he doffs his blood-red scarf—they are not content: he lays aside his red cravat—they are not content: the pike—all—his very principles, probably, if they would have them. But no. They make a rush at last up into the "tribune;" they drive the would-be Jacobin and his friends down. In vain a small minority declares them all "aristocrats—paid agents of legitimacy"—I know not what republican names of reproach. The honest workmen thrust the party forth from their district school-house. They escort these objects of their contempt with ironical politeness to a side-door, bearing the candles they have seized from the tribune in their hands. The door is closed over the Jacobin party—a shout of triumph resounds. But in the street, before the school, is long a noisy throng. The good moon, although now and then obscured by passing clouds, shines kindly on it. She seems to smile more kindly upon those who have done a good deed, although a deed of suppressed violence, than on most of the distracted throngs she illumines in her course over the disturbed city. Good moon! would we could accept thy augury, and hope for holy calm! The scenes thou shinest upon cannot continue thus, 'tis true. A change must come—a change for the better or the worse. Heaven grant that our foreboding prove not true—that, when thou comest forth in thy fulness again, another month, thou mayest smile on better order, on calmer groups!

Before we part company, old habituÉ of Paris, we must cast a glance at all the public buildings we pass. On all—public offices, columns, fountains, monuments, churches, dismantled palaces—on all alike floats the republican banner—on all are painted in broad characters the words, "LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ!" "FraternitÉ!" Vain word, when each man grows day by day more and more bitterly his neighbour's enemy. "EgalitÉ!" Vain word again, and vain word ever, spite of the efforts of the rulers of France to bring down to one level all the intelligence, the talent, the feelings, and passions of human nature, that Providence, in its holy wisdom, has made so different and so unequal. "LibertÉ!" Vainest word of all! In the present state of things, there is constraint in every scheme, tyranny in every tendency, despotism in every doctrine.

But enough. We will not begin to discuss and speculate upon the destinies of France. All this sketch would strive to do, is to convey an idea, however vague, of the present outward state of Republican Paris.