- tude, and eternal faithlessness that the perversest
witch ever clamoured for. Such is her power that I am tempted to believe that if her ideal were a high, instead of a low, one, she might invent a type of Parisian very different from the well-known boulevardier and hero of French romance. But alas! this is her failing. She has no other ideal than that of ruling by the senses, and mastering the worst in man by the worst in herself. The ideal in her is wrecked on the alluring rock of her own making,—dress, for which she lives, and without which Paris would not be the Paris we know; and, being frail and human and sadly silly, as the best of us are,—Heaven be praised!—we admire even when we would fain deplore.
The finest impression the life of London leaves on memory is that of the wealthy quarters. The pageant of Rotten Row is unforgetable. The splendid roll of life and movement along Piccadilly, the bright impressiveness of Park Lane, of those squares of lofty town palaces, give such a notion of privilege and purse as may be had on no other spot of the globe. But the happiest and most lasting impression of Paris lies in the poor and populous quarters. Who in memory dwells most on the magnificence of the Champs Elysées? Who in after years, remembering Paris, cares about all the luxury of the Park Monceau, with its fashionable
