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rassembloit dans un salon, on ne songeoit qu'à plaire et s'amuser: où l'on n'auroit pu, sans une excessive pédanterie, avoir la prétention de montrer de grandes vues sur l'administration! où l'on avoit de la grace, de la gaieté et toute la frivolité qui rend aimable, et qui repose le soir du poids de la journée, et de la fatigue des affaires. Aujourdhui-on se croit profond parce qu'on est lourd, et raisonnable parce qu'on est grave; et lorsqu'on est constamment ennuyeux, comme on s'estime! comme on se trouve sage!'

In a drawing-room, she continues,

où tout le monde entassé, pressé, se tient debout, on vante l'esprit de la maîtresse de la maison; mais à quoi lui sert-il? Elle ne peut ni parler ni entendre. Un mannequin placé dans un fauteuil feroit aussi bien qu'elle les honneurs d'une belle soirée. C'est là une assemblée à l'Angloise! Il faut convenir que les soirées à la Française passées jadis à, &c. valcient bien mieux que cela. Mais nous retrouverons sans doute les graces Françaises dans les soirées particulières: point du tout; vous n'entendrez là que des dissertations, des déclamations, et des disputes.'

The picture is correct, and much more might be said to heighten it. Let any person, after reading the works which give an account of French society in former times, go to a ministerial reception of the present day, and then to the best private circles, numerous or small; and he will not credit that what he read and what he sees relate to the same people. Before, male and female were chequered through society, like the houses on a chess board, in such a way that every man was surrounded by women, and every

woman by men; but now, on a formal line of chairs are seated the fair, while, at the opposite extremity, stand the others; and in the waste between them, silence-silence-reigns. The ladies indeed maintain a tolerable countenance in their melancholy solitude; the topic of the toilette extricates them from every embarrassment. But the exhibition of the men is disastrous beyond description. Gallantry rejects them, politics have not yet received them; and between the two they make the most amphibious appearance. Where gravity is not natural it becomes grotesque; and Liston would be as irresistible in Cato Uticensis as in Tony Lumkin.

It may be admitted, then, that in the upper circles, regular affairs of gallantry and systematic intrigues are less frequent today than formerly: but it remains doubtful, to say the least, whether it is so because the feelings upon this head are chastened, or because female virtue is held in higher estimation now than it used to be. The reason, many acute observers maintain, is to be sought for in circumstances of another class-in the diminution of intercourse attendant on a different system of society, a greater separation between the sexes, and the ambition of the men directed in another channel. The present condition of the women, say

these,

these, is to the full as equivocal as that of the men; for if they are not treated, as formerly, like idols, neither is the sex respected as in England. Their state is something between that of a useful and of an ornamental thing; not enough of the former to gratify the mind, or of the latter to make them as rapturous as their grandmothers used to be. Their posture certainly is awkward enough, and the present generation of men is not inclined to help them out of it; to pull them over towards reason, or to lure them towards pleasure. And this desertion is the more unpardonable in the descendants of so many knights errant, as the evident propensity of the ladies is to become again their bauble. Whether the present state of society in France will be lasting or not we cannot say. Whether it will make the distance between men and women habitual, and thus really improve the feeling of morality, is equally doubtful. Did we see religion and virtue increase, and probity and justice upon some most important points becoming healthy and vigorous throughout the nation, we should not hesitate to answer this question affirmatively. But there are many bad symptoms to be got over; and the fact which we have admitted is, we much fear, a mere accident in the system.

It may be necessary to say something in defence of ourselves for thus avowing the suspicion that female virtue is not held in much higher estimation in France now than formerly. There is a law, humane enough, which declares that the only son of a widow shall be exempted from drawing for the conscription. About five years ago an unmarried woman presented a petition to the chamber of deputies, praying that her natural son might be put upon the same footing as the only sons of all widows. The commission of petitions unblushingly read this demand at the tribune, and the honourable assembly heard it unmoved. Certainly so public a mark of indifference to female virtue never was given by any constituted, by any legislative authority, in the old regime. Yet the French are very fastidious upon some parts of female concerns. When the Duchess d'Angoulême, after an exile of a quarter of a century, returned to Paris, the principal thing which struck all ranks in this daughter of the Cæsars, the child of a murdered king and queen, the female heir to the throne, was the smallness of her hat and the English tournure.

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Formerly-to speak plainly-adultery was the vice of the fashionable; it belonged too much to high life to be permitted to inferiors; and the French peasantry were pretty generally supposed to be the fathers of their own children. But, when the blast of equality levelled the mighty, this lordly privilege was invaded; and the sins of the nobility, torn with their titles from their loins, descended

to their vassals. The bond of religion and the dread of law, the awe of superiors and the authority of parents were laid low, and every passion prowled without restraint. Marriage was no longer necessary; and those who did go through the ceremony observed but slightly its injunctions. The most unbridled license prevailed in classes who, before, had no more pretensions to unchastity, than to a coach and six; and the wives of artizans became as faithless as duchesses had ever dared to be. In these ranks of society, we jament to say, depravity is at this moment incredibly profound and common; and we shall conclude the subject by a picture, which, were it not authentic, official, issuing from a ministerial portfolio, we should not dare to present. Fabulous as it may appear, it is nevertheless a part of the annual report of the minister of the home department, on the state of the city of Paris.

NUMBER OF CHILDREN BORN IN PARIS.

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1817 The returns for this year were mislaid by accident.

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From this table it appears that, from the year 1815 to the year 1824, both inclusively-and deducting 1817-the number of children born in Paris was 225,259, of whom 82,426 were illegitimate; that is to say, that, during the last ten years, thirty-six per cent. or more than one-third of the new annual population of Paris was born out of wedlock. The returns of the children deserted by their parents dated only from 1818, and include but

seven years. During that period 180,189 children were born, of whom 54,554 were illegitimate, and 49,503—an almost equal number-were deserted by their parents; that is to say, that during this period of the new annual population born in Paris were illegitimate; and, or more than one-fourth, were deserted by their parents. So much then for the city which the French consider to be more moral than London, or, at least, to be more refinedly vicious. But, moreover, they hold Paris to be the seat of luxury, of elegance, of pleasure, of civilization, of intellect, of the arts, &c. &c. &c. We shall now add a table of the births and deaths, and of the places where these occurred, in order to show the advantages which all these things procure to the said city. BIRTHS AND DEATHS IN PARIS.

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1817

The returns for this year were mislaid by accident.

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From this it appears that, during the last ten years-1817 omitted-10 per cent. of the children born in Paris came into the world in the hospitals, and 37 per cent. of the deaths occurred in the same abodes of wretchedness. It might from this be inferred,

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ferred, that hospitals are very numerous and very excellent in Paris. They are not so, and private charities contribute little to their support. When the filth and poverty of the Salpétrière and of the Bicêtre, the two principal receptacles for the starving, are considered, it must be confessed that the luxury of Paris is a sad succedaneum for happiness. Such a picture of depravity, and of its sure attendant misery, could not be found in any othe Christian capital; yet, in none, is so much gilding so beautifully performed. It must be recollected too that this picture is not drawn by spleen or envy; nor, on the other hand, by persons who, fearing to retain any national prejudice, overstep the modesty of truth, and become illiberal from excess of liberality. It is the ingenuous report of a prefect to a minister, and from him to the public, neither of whom saw the least harm in it, or they would not have published it.

Some

To bid adieu to Madame la Comtesse de Genlis-We never met with such a work before. It is not full of such disgraceful vice and meanness as the Confessions of Rousseau, but it is as much disordered by vanity as they are by susceptibility; and we know not whether we have been more amused or disgusted by the perusal. We should be much puzzled to decide in what class of literature to place this performance; whether it belongs to fact or to fancy. The authoress is too much versed in the composition of historical romance to give it up at once; and these eight volumes certainly partake of the mongrel qualities of that hybrid walk, in so much that she is allowed never to have indulged her imagination more than on the present occasion. persons, however, have been bolder than we wish to be; and, on account of the part which her harp plays toward her self-adulation, and a little too by reason of the inscription which La Harpe the critic-who, by the bye, without possessing a word of English, pronounced Racine to be a greater master of human nature than Shakspeare-placed upon her bust, have called these eight tomes le roman de la harpe. In the mean time we cannot but thank Madame de Genlis for giving us, in the midst of much fiction, of many reticences and embellishments, of no little filth, and some indelicacies, which we could not, even in a foreign language, hint at, an image of the manners and morals (mœurs) of her contemporary Parisians, which we must most heartily recommend to the perusal and proper study of our countrymen.

ART.

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