212 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



riety, and quaintness, and picturesqueness, and is of 

 all possible shades of dinginess and weather-stains. 

 It shows its age, shows the work of innumerable gen- 

 erations, and is more an aggregation, a conglomeration 

 than Paris is. Paris shows the citizen, and is mod- 

 ern and democratic in its uniformity. On the whole, 

 I liked London best, because I am so much of a coun- 

 tryman, I suppose, and affect so little the metropoli- 

 tan spirit. In London there are a few grand things 

 to be seen, and the pulse of the great city itself is 

 like the throb of the ocean ; but in Paris, owing 

 either to my jaded senses, or some other cause, I saw 

 nothing that was grand, but enough that was beauti- 

 ful and pleasing. The more pretentious and elabo- 

 rate specimens of architecture, like the palace of the 

 Tuileries, or the Palais Royal, are truly superb, but 

 they as truly do not touch that deeper chord whose 

 awakening we call the emotion of the sublime. 



But the fitness and good taste everywhere dis- 

 played in the French capital may well offset any con- 

 siderations of this kind, and cannot fail to be refresh- 

 ing to a traveler of any other land ; in the dress and 

 manners of the people, in the shops, and bazaars, and 

 show-windows, in the markets, the equipages, the fur- 

 niture, the hotels. It is entirely a new sensation to 

 an American to look into a Parisian theatre, and see 

 the acting and hear the music. The chances are 

 that, for the first time he sees the interior of a theatre 

 that does not have a hard, business-like, matter-of-fact 

 air. The auditors look comfortable and cozy, and 



