brother, and his most intimate friends. He
repeats them to his wife and children; they
form part of the fabric of his mind.

The other day I saw in a narrow by-
street, a glowing picture of Fame; beneath
it was written: " A la vraie gloire"— " To
true glory."  It was the sign over a pork
butcher's shop.

The principal changes that strike me today
in Paris, after an absence of about a
dozen years, are, that the whole population
of the boulevards have become fat;
and that the tripping little grisette, with
her pretty cap, and neat inexpensive dress,
has disappeared from the streets, and
been replaced by the " demoiselle du
magazin," who dresses in a yellow-braided
jacket and high-heeled boots.  In like
manner, the brisk little fellows who lived
on fried potatoes and vaudevilles, and
went humming about their shop work,
have become discontented prigs with mutton-
chop whiskers, who pass their evenings
in organising strikes, and the rest of their
time in dreaming of " une serieuse position
sociale."  I observe, also, the importation
of spurious British manners and customs,
on a most extensive scale: ridiculous
imitations of the ugliest parts of English dress,
such as our hats and ungainly boots; the
general use of yellow hair-dye and monstrous
wigs; lastly, the decline and fall of
French cookery.

This plump people, though they have
grown so round, no longer imagine
delicate dishes, as in the hungry days before
the first revolution when they had all such
empty stomachs, and such hungry minds.
They have become so satiated with succulent
food as to be indifferent to the finer arts
of the kitchen. No new culinary invention
of world-wide reputation has been discovered
in Paris since the "Mayonnaise;" and
every recent addition to French fashionable
dinners is of foreign importation.  There
is a grievous list of them, " Rompsteack a
la moelle:" a thick chunk of tough beef with
clumps of marrow lying in a glutinous
lake of brown sauce; hard knobs of roast
mutton; hash.  Finally, even turtle soup,
melted butter, cayenne pepper, and hot
gin-and- water, have made their appearance
at the best tables. The hot gin-and-water
is indeed called " krock," but under this
name it is nationalised; and its effect on
the lively Parisian temperament is to make
it suddenly and wildly boisterous.

The cafes, full of that universal out-of-
door life which made Paris so delightful to
the passing traveller if he lingered but a
day there, are gradually but surely giving
place to clubs and more sedentary habits.
The government officials, retired officers,
professional and literary men, who formerly
only slept and dressed at their lodgings,
now retire into dark entresols in charge of a
nurse who cultivates them like mushrooms.
There they dine and live, appearing only
on the boulevard towards five o'clock for
their absinthe, or, horrible to relate, their
" gin and bitters."

One must turn quite aside from the busy
quarters of the city, to catch a few glimpses
of the pretty old life.  I have found one
place where I used to dine twenty years
ago, and which still seems to be patronised
by almost the very same customers I left
sitting there when I eat my last " cotelette
en papillotes" and cauliflower salad there,
in other times.  I have been dining at this
place for the last few days, behind an
English gentleman with a bashful back.  He is
on a honeymoon trip to Paris, and he and
his wife are charming people. Youth and
beauty, joy and love, hope and fortune,
make the whole world pleasant to them.
The gentleman, a fresh-faced squire from
one of the midland counties, feels himself
so inferior to his bride that hence the
bashfulness of his back.  But she is very
proud of him, proud of his strength, and
manliness, and fair name.  She has been
brought up at home, perhaps in some
secluded old priory or manor house, and
Parisian ways are so strange to her, that
she confronts them with the amazing courage
of the frightened.  I fancy her dresses
must have been made in a small English
country town; but she has bought a wonderful
Parisian bonnet, and her own mother
would be taken aback to see the dashing
mode in which she wears it, and to hear her
valiant talk in broken French.  Every time
she produces this astonishing foreign
language, and the puzzled waiter confidently
looks as if he understood it, I see the
squire's bashful back contract with a sort
of spasm, and the crimson blood rises till it
colours his neck and ears, and he looks
like a dahlia all ablow.  He seems half
gratified and half alarmed.

Opposite this happy pair are a party of
French people, come up on some business of
settlements or will-making, from Brittany.
It is composed of two gentlemen, both very
old, and a lady of a rare type of loveliness.
Her eyes are sober eyes, full of a sweet
and healing beauty. The cares of those
two old men look softened and lessened in
them.  It is easy to see that she leads a good