28G 
THE PASTEBOARD CITY. 
The mason of Cayenne, having built up the walls, has only to suspend 
to them a succession of floors or platforms, following in that dry hot 
land the type of our human habitations. But the European mason, 
working with pasteboard, in a damp climate, where even in the 
summer heavy rains are frequent, adopts a different plan: a house 
within a house , a hive completely isolated from the envelope which 
encloses it. This is the most successful device for an ardent and chilly 
people, whose life-flame needs careful guarding. 
As it is without, so it is within. As the house, so too the inha¬ 
bitant. We men are not yet sufficiently acquainted with the influence 
exercised upon our moral dispositions by our habitations. This dupli¬ 
cation of walls, this potent envelopment of a people so completely shut 
up under its strong twofold enclosure, largely contributes to the unity 
of the commonwealth. 
Observe another singularity: shall we call it a trivial one ? No; 
to the serious observer it is of importance. The city has two gates; 
its people enter by the one, and pass out by the other, so that no con¬ 
fusion can take place, and no collision between the ingressing and 
egressing crowds. This plan is adopted by all people who economize 
time, and wish to transact their business expeditiously. In London, 
the rule is the same as with the wasps: on the one side those who are 
coming, on the other those who are going; each person keeps to the 
right; these take one footpath, those another. No such impediment is 
met with in the Strand as the idlers of our Hue Vivienne, who inces¬ 
santly convert themselves into a serious obstacle, and swim laboriously 
in the confusion they create. 
But to return to our subject. 
What is the object of these constructions ? Is this robust being, 
endowed with such an intensity of vital force, more afraid of the air 
than numbers of delicate insects,—than the nervous spider, which has 
only a house of thread, or even lives under a leaf ? Therein lies the 
lofty mystery of life for the higher insect. It is this which stimulates 
the universal genius of the ant either above ground or under ground. 
It is this which inspires the activity, the persevering toil and economy 
