A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE. 



191 



affect so little the metropolitan 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 beautiful and pleasing. The more pretentious 

 and elaborate specimens of architecture, like the pal- 

 ace of the Tuileries, or the Palais Royal, are truly su- 

 perb, 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 displayed 

 in the French capital may well offset any considera- 

 tions of this kind, and cannot fail to be refreshing to 

 a traveller of any other land ; in the dress and man- 

 ners 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 cosey, and quite at 

 home, and do not, shoulder to shoulder, and in solid 

 lines, make a dead set at the play and the music. The 

 theatre has warm hangings, warm colors, cosey boxes 

 and stalls, and is in no sense the public, away-from- 

 home place we are so familiar with in this country. 

 Again, one might know it was Paris by the character 

 of the prints and pictures in the shop-windows ; they 



