The Parisians, Book 2.

four years a childless widower, but his receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment less magnificently monde for the absence of a presid

. She had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of

ense desire to be admitted into those more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with ecl

ashion and the

y to grief, and when the money-lender's son lost that potent protect

ich. His aspirations for social rank now revived, but his wife sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature; sympathized little with her husband's genius for ac

y the purchase and annexation of an adjoining house; redecorated and refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to his credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the purpose, a nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His collection of pictures was not large, and consisted exclusively of the French school, anci

attered carelessly about the room might have been admired in the cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti. Beyond this room lay the salle de danse, its ceiling painted by ---, supported by white marble columns, the glazed balcony and the angles of the room filled with tiers of exotics. In the dining-room, on the same floor, on the other side of the landing-place, were stored in glazed buffets not only vessels and salvers of plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, matchless specimens of Sevres and Limoges, and mediaeval varieties of Venetian glass. On the ground-floor, wh

ents devoted to hospitality ministered to the delighted study of artists, to whom free access was given, and of whom two or three might

ew among the richest left it without a sigh of envy and despair. Only in such London houses as belong t

s and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated diplomatists, ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreigners, plutocrats of

Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,-which is more than can be said of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had no other property, however, than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he was a lively and sparkling contributor. In his

wered Graham, "not to be pleased with

ris one was relieved from the pain of seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,-each tortuous street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities, what interesting recollections,-all swept away! Mon Dieu! and what for,- miles of florid facades staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness tha

a guest at my father's country-house. You were then fete as one of the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially favoured b

ouis Philippe, ce cher petit J

the public in the interest of the family firm. I remember my father saying to you in answer, 'No royal house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch and to signalize its representatives by social respect and official hono

in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the

Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more emp

or my Napoleon," sai

ure and intellect you are far superior to the mass of your fellow Parisia

, vous etes t

f seraph could devise, it would not be two years-I doubt if it would be six months-before out of this Paris, which you call the Foyer des Idees, would emer

e thing,-les beaux, esprits se rencontrent. The fault of us French is impatience, desire of change; but then it is that desire which keeps the world going and retains our place at the head of it. However, at thi

f a foreigner, I recognize much for which France should be grateful to the Emperor. Under his sway her material resources have been marvellously augmented; her commerce has been placed by the treaty with England on sounder foundations, and is daily exhibiting richer life; her agriculture had made a prodigious advance wherever it has allowed room for capitalists, and escaped from the curse of petty allotments and peasant-proprietors, a c

her hand," sai

o Augustus; and there are many startling similitudes between them in character and in fate. Each succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had contrived to unite autocracy with the popular cause; each subdued all rival competitors, and inaugurated despotic rule in the name of freedom; each mingled enough of sternness with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the commencement of his power,-but it would be an absurd injustice to fix the same degree of condemnation on the coup d'etat as humanity fixes on the earlier cruelties of Augustus; each, once firm in his seat, became mild and clement,-Augustus perhaps from policy, Napoleon III. from a native kindliness of disposition which no fair critic of character can fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one salient difference. Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how completely he succeeded in the task, to rally round him all the leading intellects in every grade and of every party,-the followers of Antony, the friends of Brutus; every great captain, every great statesman, every great writer, every mail who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian constellation, and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of human intellect and genius. But this has not been the good fortune of your Emperor. The result of his system has been the, suppression of intellect in every department. He has rallied round him not one great statesman; his praises are hymned by not one great poet. The celebrates of a former day stand aloof; or, preferring exile to constrained allegiance, assail him with unremit

seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered; "Virtue and Honour banished from courts

ers of Paris!" cried

st our ouvriers? A German count cannot condesc

hey have among them men of aspirations as noble as can animate the souls of philosophers and poets, perhaps not the less noble because common-sense and experience cannot follow their flight; but as a body the ouvriers of Paris have not been elevated in political morality by the benevolent aim of the Emperor to

in all rich communities, especially where democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To a certain extent they exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously increasing in England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the United States of America; they are, I am told on good authority, making themsel

rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then, and not till then, the t

brious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he takes alar

ermany being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying

ourse,-tres j

so slowly that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find it out; but when completed, it will be the greatest revolution s

mans transformed the world! Wha

printing, and the expansion of a monk's quarre

s. This compliment to his deceased father immensely gratified but at the same time considerably surprised the Englishman. His father, no doubt, had been a man of much influence in the British House of Commons,-a very weighty speaker, and, while in office, a first-rate administrator; but Englishmen know what a House of Com

the selfish element of the practical supersede the generous element. Your father never did so in his speeches, and therefore we admired him. At the present day we don't so much care to study English speeches; they may be insular,-they are not European. I honour England; Heaven grant that you may n

hat is your German

e lively Vicomte,-"a German co