ought to be one—I think a little while I cool
my heels in the evening breeze.  The Elysian
fields are a capital place for thought.  A fair,
with round-abouts, conjurors, and dancing
booths, goes on continually in one part;
reviews and inspection of troops take place
frequently in another; while the roadway and
its intersecting avenues are always more or
less thronged with vehicles.  Yet there are
shady walks, and sequestered nooks and
benches, far from the turmoil of the world,
and where the contemplative man may take
his recreation—where you may write sonnets
to the stars, to Lesbia, or to Pyrrha, get a
maiden speech by heart, or concoct the rough
draft of a love letter—and be all the while as
free from annoyance, or interruption, as
though you were in the rat-cage at the top
of the Monument on a rainy day, or Saint
Simon Stylites a-top of his column all the
year round.  I could think, now, on the
decadence of empires, the mutabilities of
fortune, the state of Europe, or the
Maynooth grant; but I find a subject of reflection
sufficiently ample in the handful of
change, which I have held till the coins are
warm.  Let me glance thoughtfully at them,
ere I consign them to my waistcoat pocket.

Here is a brave piece of money—a two-
franc coin, bearing the effigy of Louis Philippe,
Roi des Français, 1835.  This looks prosperous,
rosy, clean-shaven, well-to-do in the world.
The edges are neatly milled, the letters and
numerals cleanly and brightly stamped.  The
monarch's whiskers are symmetrically curled;
I can almost discern a wink in the royal eye,
a mythical finger laid against the royal nose,
and that seem to say: "Lyons is muzzled.
Jacques Lafitte has eaten his heart.  I no
longer fear the newspapers, for Thiers is
minister, and Guizot shall be, and Armand
Carrel sleeps in Père la Chaise, shot to death.
Rentes are on the hausse; all my sons are brave,
and all my daughters virtuous; not a whale-
bone is loose in the umbrella of Orleans."
The two-franc piece is a business-like coin, a
favourite with the shopkeepers, who call it
affectionately "the piece of forty."  Next to
the noble, the glorious, the bourgeoisie-beloved
dollar, la belle et bonne pièce de cent sous, or
"cartwheel," as the commons more irreverently
term it, which from 1830 to 1848 was
the fountain and main-spring, the be all and
end all of French honour, virtue, mercy,
courage, and patriotism—next to this deified
shekel of Gaul, the two-franc piece is the
favourite guest at counter and bureau.  Louis
Philippe coined the pieces of forty by myriads;
so, on a smaller scale, are they patronised by
his equally business-like son-in-law, Leopold
of Belgium.  They are not popular, however,
with the obese, broadcloth-clad, faro-drinking
Belgians, who being large and fat-faced, resent
as an impertinence the advent of a coinage
which is large and fat-faced too.  They even
turn up their noses at the crisp, classic thaler of
Prussia; their delight is in "fiddler's money,"
—battered, pockmarked Dutch guilders,
Austrian zwanzigers all holes and corners, like
weevilly biscuits; they have even a sneaking
kindness for the abominable silver-groschen
of the Rhine provinces.

Next in my handful of change is a franc—
somewhat battered, somewhat worn, slovenly
in what I may call the tire of the wheel, but
stern and austere-looking, and of an ashen
hue, very different from the smug garishness
of the Philippine coins, and the flashy,
Britannia metal-like glitter of the second
republic. The effigy it bears is more that of
an "ancient Roman than a Dane" or of a
Frenchman.  Were this piece bronzed, decently
notched, and passably spotted with verdigris,
I should (did I know anything of numismatics,
which I don't,) imagine it to be some
old medal, stamped with the head of Trajan
or of Constantine.  But the lofty forehead,
the eagle eye, the Grecian nose, the exquisitely
chiselled mouth, with its inexorable lips and
rounded chin, the sparse locks of hair, and the
laurel wreath binding the temples, all belong
to a modern emperor.  The legend is yet clear
enough for me to read "Napoleon Empéreur,"
and on the obverse, "République Française,
1806."  This was, I think, after a certain
ceremony had taken place in the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, at which the Pope of Rome
assisted, and there must have been a good
deal of the "République Française" left
in 1806.

A half-franc comes next.  It bears the
same head—the features more filled out,
perhaps, and the expression a trifle more
thoughtful.  Let me look at the inscription.  Ah!
the poor "République" is nowhere by this
time, for here I read, "Napoleon: Empéreur
et Roi ;" on the obverse, "Empire Français,
1812."  I read, and lo! like an army the
thoughts come rushing on me, conjured into
life by this worn and tarnished fragment of
silver.  There is the Arc de l'Etoile, behind
which the sun is bleeding to death in his
crimson shroud, while my lady moon looks on
with a cold unpitying eye, forgetting that he
will rise again, and chase her from the skies
to-morrow.  There is the triumphal arch,
commenced by him, completed by the king who
proscribed his family, sculptured over with
the list of his victories—lying wonders, many
of them—but of which others have filled the
world with awe.  There, in the Place de la
Concorde, where the golden pillars and
fountains glisten; there, far beyond where
the austere pavilion of the Tuileries, grown
grey in the experiences of slaughter and
pillages, bodes among the cypress-like trees,
and jealously shrouds the bloody Carrousel
behind, of whose courtyard there is not a
stone uncemented with gore; there, to the
right and to the left, by the marble Madeleine,
by the bridge leading to the palace of the
legislature; there, down the long line of
quays, where the boy soldiers are staring
greedily at the lithographed presentments of