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СНАР. ІІІ. Steam-engines, pistols, palaces of light, and one-one face only, ever re-appearing, in all the changeful moods of beauty; such was the stuff my dreams were made of. But they were of short duration. The morning light found me in the midst of a controversy-divided against myself. Devisme's, or no Devisme's?" "Such was the first question. It was easily decided in favour of Devisme's, inasmuch as it was evident I could not, in common honesty, retain the property of another. But plainly two courses now lay before me. I might learn M. Biot's address, and order the pistols to be sent to him when repaired; and thus might my name disappear altogether from the dramatis persona of the play, of which a part had already been rehearsed save and except as it stood in perishable plumbago as my signature to M. Calmet's note; or I might continue to play the part I had undertaken through the whole of Act I.-perhaps even as far as Act V., and then, disregarding cues and prompter's suggestions, upset the plot, and wind up my affairs as walking gentleman, by walking off the stage. It was the old, old question, that all have debated; the old alternative on which all have vibrated; the old choice which comes to us in many forms, but comes to us all-the straight path or the crooked. The last had many powers; the "great and strong wind" of Inclination, the earthquake element of Passion, the burning fire of Youth. For the first there was only a still small voice. Sometimes it seemed to assume a mother's, a sister's tone; and now it would come yet nearer as the voice of one more tender and more holy still. But when I closed my eyes to think of Stephanie, and let my thoughts loose upon a thousand bright possibilities all circling around her, the voice grew still and small indeed. To meet her, to converse with her, to have frequent opportunities of familiar intimacy with her purposely created for me-above all, knowing the secret, to have a silent power over her-even over all that wealth of beauty!...... The voice grew more still and more feeble; till, away in

the faint distance, it was as the voice of a stranger, and I heeded it not. Surely my mind was made up; yet somehow the morning light was now shining so happily, so peacefully into my room-the same light that was filling the loving hearts at home with new treasures of love, and awaking many holy ones to be holy still-so tender was the light, so akin to the voice that had whispered of ways of pleasant- · ness and paths of peace, that when I rose from my inward controversy, I had not dared to name, even to myself, the answer that my soul had but too surely made.

In spite of passports, Paris is so well known to us English that it is almost superfluous to put the paradox in writing, that there every house is a whole square of houses. Thus it is that when you pull up your blind of a morning, if your window look (as mine did) into the court, the secrets of many households are revealed. There is no reserve, no concealment here. Look, for instance, at that bi-valve window opposite. In spite of the fact that there is a young lady dressing in the room, both valves are thrown open, and the summer air is not more free to enter than the stranger's glance. To be sure she is in a tolerably advanced stage of investiture, but all the mysteries of hairdressing may yet be witnessed. First of all, sundry hair-pins are removed from somewhere away in the occipital region, and suddenly a whole flood of raven tresses fall over breast and shoulders in beautiful disorder. Beautiful as it is, however, disorder hath no chapter in the institutes of capillary economy, and soon that leveller of levellers common to men, women, cocks, and mermaids, is sweeping down all opposition; and, having made an equal distribution to north, south, east, and west, sails lightly down the middle, tracing the meridian for the day in a wake of dazzling white. New distribution and more levelling. Further subdivision on either side. Introduction of artificial bodies resembling rats deprived of head, legs, and tail, one on either side. Back division wound up, and all ends finally made to meet under cover of a back knot. Nor concludes the divine

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operation here. You may next observe the lady advance to the window, put her comb five or six times through her brush, thereby collecting what a few minutes ago had been parts of herself, and then, as lax, heretical and schismatic, give them to the winds. Such interesting spectacles you may publicly witness, any fine morning (as I did on this particular one), from any window looking into any court, in any house in France-and, I opine, nowhere else. As I said before, I will exclude, as much as possible, any detail of my professional life: suffice it to say I performed my duties conscientiously, and, I think, well. They were light and easy; and from an early hour in the evening my time was at my own disposal. Saturday was always my own, as my pupil (a fine boy about thirteen years of age) invariably spent that day at Enghien, with the family of his uncle, who resided there.

As soon as my first day's work was over, I found my way from the Rue di Rivoli, where we lived, to the Boulevard des Italians, taking with me the pistols which now seemed charged with my happiness. At Devisme's I was told that there was seemingly nothing wrong with the pistols; but that if I would leave them, they would be tested in the shooting-gallery .next morning. I promised to return at the same hour next evening, and hear the decision regarding them.

I did so, found that the fault had been very slight, received the pistols, and, thus armed, proceeded to No. Rue de la Ferme des Maturins. But the old presentiments returned as soon as I saw the house I was in search of. All the suspicions that that scene on the night of the Fête Napoléon had given rise to, and a thousand more-dark thoughts of M. Biot's possible private history, and of the connection between him and the villain-faced Guissac-involuntary and unuttered citations of old familiar texts, about "the counsel of the ungodly, and the way of sinners;" these, though but halfacknowledged, scared me, and I passed by the house whispering to myself that, after all, perhaps M. Biot had not dined, and it would be much better to call later in the evening.

So I strolled for an hour or two about the city, reaping "the harvest of a quiet eye;" and truly is there no city on earth where such a harvest is more abundant. Every street is crowded with incident and amusement. Here it is a juggler, performing such marvels with the simple apparatus of two yard-long rods; such eccentricities of revolution and counterrevolution; such miracles of tossing, catching, balancing, whirling, intercepting, as might satisfy a generation seeking after a sign. Here it is a man, framed in the mould of Hercules, shivering blocks of unmistakeable stone with a blow of his fist. Here it is a man with one leg and no arms, who, nathless, loads and discharges a gun, threads needles, writes his name, and then goes through the ceremony of shaving himself with a dexterity that the oldest shaver amongst us had better forbear to imitate. Here

it is a fancifully-dressed individual haranguing from a phaeton on the virtues and cheapness of a certain drug in his possession, which can cure all the diseases that French flesh is heir to. And here is a whole colony of Marionette theatres, wherein, in the course of a five minutes' walk, by merely bestowing a glance upon each (which you may do for nothing) you will see, in grotesque miniature, the various stages and phases of human life, including love, murder, imprisonment, death; ay, and a step or two farther down sometimes. And each of these has its crowd, and it is especially in watching them that the quiet harvest above-mentioned is to be reaped. But now there is a general sensation, and the little detached crowds deploy into line; for the green and gold are seen in the distance, and anon the Imperial cortège sweeps by, and every Frank doffs his hat; for even the stanchest Orleanist among them feels that Despotism out an-airing savours of the Constitution.

But into what have we been betrayed by the recollection of our two hours' stroll? Actually into the commencement of a description of the general aspect of Paris! And as yet we have only got a slice of the grotesque, and a flavour of the Imperial. We have got all the heavy moral to do yet, as read in the faces of the crowds just hinted at; and all the architectural, as yet untouched; and all the peculiarly Parisian, as it is to be seen in these four miles or so of Boulevards, and in that great Palais Royal (a Paris within Paris), and in the Gardens of the Tuileries-no; fortunately it is eight o'clock, and the public are just being drummed out of them by the Municipal Guard. So we will leave them out of account; as indeed, on second thoughts, we had better leave the rest too. In the first place, because we could not properly dispose in a few pages of material abundant enough and worthy enough for an epic poem ; and, secondly (and more powerfully), because many times during many months have our eyes been greeted with the conspicuous information that no railway-station seems to have escaped :

PARIS, from LONDON BRIDGE, 20s.

Again I found myself before the house of M. Biot; and this time, giving myself not a moment to reflect, I rapidly entered, and having been favoured by the Concièrge with the concise instruction," premier, a droite," I hurried upstairs, rang the bell, and felt myself irrevocably committed. A domestic, about whom nothing impressed me except the evident fact that he was an Italian, appeared at the summons, and in a few seconds more, I was in the presence of M. Biot.

I was shown into a large, handsomely furnished room, which was brilliantly lighted up. Under the first dazzling effect of the sudden transition from the soft twilight without to this artificial noonday, I seemed to be entering a crowded salon; but imagination and a profusion of mirrors had squared and cubed the real num