stones may inspire. Not so with this bewitching and exacting Paris. Everything here combines to force your powers of resistance; and while you are musing in the Louvre or the Musée de Cluny, behold, the roar of revolution is heard without, and down the solemn halls must you hurry into the blithe air,—forgetful of past, of dreams, of historic associations, of sentimental reveries in front of Leonardo's "Gioconda," to learn the latest whim of a petulant city, to learn the latest black deed of whichever party you have come to detest as a personal enemy.
Elsewhere will you meet architectural effects more beautiful,—quaint old streets a thousand times more captivating, reaches of river more lovely and more strange,—but nowhere else will you find modern life unrolling in an atmosphere of such beguilement, set in a frame of such large and harmonious beauty. Nowhere else will you find the very poorest in a measure to be envied, since even they, with a little good will and an eye to look about and enjoy, may make something cheerful of their lives by reason of their environment. The perspective of starvation is not an agreeable one anywhere on earth, but surely a dry crust may be not altogether ungratefully munched walking along the quays of Paris, with those broad sweeps of lines and hues of enchantment upon either horizon; and something not unlike a step of delight may be danced
