PARIS. 107 



are no longer masters to teach you civility, nor young ladies who 

 sell you compliments. The Parisians under a serious government 

 are not so frivilous as of yore : the vanity then confined to the 

 toilette and the drawing-room has taken a prouder flight, and 

 prances on the "Champ de Mars/' or harangues in the "Chambre 

 des Deputes." The passions are the same, but a new machine 

 works them into a different shape, and produces another manu- 

 facture from the same materials. We see the change that other 

 laws and other ideas produce, and the popular spirit which has 

 elevated the character of the people* has civilized the hackney 

 coaches, widened the streets, and saved two hundred per annum 

 of the lives of his majesty's subjects.f We see what new ideas 

 and new laws have changed, but we see also how much new 

 ideas and laws have left unaltered. The wish to outvie, the 

 desire to please, the fondness for decoration, the easy transition 

 from one passion or one pursuit to another, the amour propre, the 

 fickleness of the Parisian, are still as visible as they are under the 

 " Grand Monarque :'^ while, alas ! the morals of society (if I may 

 venture to say so) even yet remind you of the saying of Montes- 

 quieu, " Que le Franf ais ne parle jamais de sa femme, parcequ'il 

 a peur d'en parler devant les gens qui la connaissent mieux que 

 lui." 



I have said that the Parisian is almost as fickle as he was. 

 During the old hierarchy of ranks and professions he could ^be 

 fickle ill little but his pleasures. The career which conducted 

 him to the grave was traced at his cradle, and if he were born a 

 footman, all he could hope was — to die a butler. The life of the 

 Parisian has changed ! you may see in it the aspect of Paris 

 itself. A new spirit; a spirit of commerce, of gain, of business? 

 has made the city and its citizens different from what they were : 

 the Bourse is the monument of the epoch ; even the fire-work 

 and the dance have been driven from their old resort, and lo I 

 Beaujon and Tivoli are destroyed by a building speculation! 

 But the same character which presided over the amusements has 

 entered into the affairs of this volatile and light-hearted people, 

 and among the causes of that distress so severely felt in 1830, 

 we had to remark the careless, unreflecting, and variable dispo- 



* "We see," says Mercier, who wrote jnst previous to the revolution of 

 eighty-nine, "we see at every step we take in the mud, that the people who 

 go on foot have no share in the government.*' 



i Two hundred was the average calculation of persons run over in the 

 streets of Paris: this species of amusement was much in fasiiion during the 

 latter days of the old regime. 



