these places of amusement, the Circus of the
Champs-Elysées, affords space for three
thousand five hundred visitors. Next in size are
the National Theatre (the old Olympic
Circus), which will hold two thousand two
hundred and fifty-nine, and the Theatre of
Porte Saint Martin holding about two hundred
less. The Opéra Comique has space for an
audience of two thousand, but the Grand
Opéra of Paris will not accommodate more
than eighteen hundred and eleven. The
Comédie Française and the Odéon are within
two seats of equal size; one able to accommodate
fifteen hundred and sixty, the other
fifteen hundred and fifty-eight. Two of the
theatres, which hold more than a thousand
(Beaumarchais and Saint Marcel), were closed
in 1851. Six of the theatres hold numbers
varying between a thousand and six hundred;
and one (the Spectacle d'Arcole) is calculated
to admit not more than two hundred and fifty
visitors to each of its entertainments.

To the theatres of Paris there must be
added a hundred and fifty-six places of public
amusement; namely, twenty cafés offering
the charms of song, six offering dramatic
entertainments, concert and dramatic halls,
public ball-rooms and guinguettes. These are
frequented daily by an average of about
twenty-four thousand visitors. If we add
these, therefore, to our former calculation, it
will appear that there exist means in Paris
for affording nightly public entertainment, in
the way of drama, dance, or song, to no less
than one in every eighteen of the inhabitants
of Paris, which number of course includes the
aged, the sick, the infants, and the destitute.

Amusement on a scale like this is by
no means provided to the Londoners, and,
as it is, managers lack support in England.
How is it in France? We have supposed in
the above calculation that all the Paris
theatres are open at one time; that, however,
never is the case. The supply, in Paris, of
theatrical amusement is kept too frequently
ahead of the demand; disasters among
managers are quite as common with the
French as with the English, and the cost of
producing the amusement treads so closely on
the heels of the remuneration offered for it
by the public, that Paris would not, by any
means, appear to be the Paradise of managers.
This cost, however, is not waste; it drops in
the shape of bread, as we have said, into a
great many mouths. In precise terms it may
be stated, as will be shown in detail presently,
that the theatres of Paris—without counting
the work given by them to upholsterers in the
town, washerwomen, bill-stickers, and others—
provide an actual subsistence for four thousand
seven hundred individuals, upon most of
whom, it is of course to be understood, that
families or relations are depending for support.
The toll levied in the box-office or at the
pit-door, therefore, if it can be spared, is justly
paid. The economic housekeeper, who finds
that the mind's vigour is not best supported
by a course of labour from which hours of
recreation are excluded, may satisfy his heart
by feeling that, in more than a mere selfish
sense, the money spent upon a reasonable
participation in the amusements of his fellow-
townsmen is not thrown away.

The French Government has, however, for
a long time been of opinion, that as entertainment
is a luxury, so the people who spend
labour in providing entertainment for the
public, are the very people whose abundance
must be taxed. Wherein the abundance of a
player or scene-shifter consists, we have not
yet discovered; nor do we know why the
receipts derived from poetry and music should
especially be mulcted on the score of luxury.
Corsets are unnecessary luxuries—why not
tax milliners? Bon-bons are unnecessary
gratifications—why does not the Government
of France take for the poor a tenth out of the
tills of the confectioners? We do not understand
these things. We can only say that the
theatres of Paris and all places of public
entertainment are required to pay a very
oppressive tax, under the title of the Right of
the Indigent. It was paid in old times as a
voluntary alms, and was made by Louis the
Fourteenth in 1699—who fixed it at the
modest amount of a sixth of the receipts—
payable to the credit of the general Hospital.
In 1716, a distinct and extra payment of a
ninth was claimed in favour of the Hôtel-
Dieu. This Right of the Indigent has, since
that date, been variously modified; even, at
one time, abandoned for a few years at the
beginning of what used to be called the
Revolution. The abandonment of the claim,
however, was but of brief duration, and since
1817, its produce has been annually
comprehended in the budget. It amounts now to
about an eleventh part of the gross receipts,
and yielded, in 1851, nine hundred and ninety-
three thousand francs. This tax, of course,
scrapes a great deal of butter from the bread
of all who work behind the scenes of the
theatres in Paris. Revolutions also, which
may at least be expected to occur in France
as frequently as we have in England dissolutions
of our Parliament, play sad work with
the cash-box of the Paris manager and with
the cupboards of those who depend upon him
for employment. In the last ten years of the
reign of Louis Philippe, the yearly receipts
taken at places of public amusement in the
capital, rose from seven to eleven millions of
francs. From eleven millions taken in 1847,
the receipts fell suddenly in 1848 to less than
seven millions, and from that point they have
been gradually rising, so that last year they
had again risen to ten millions and a half.
We shall be curious to see the figures for the
current year when it is closed. Although the
temporary manager of France deals largely
himself in fireworks and pageants offered
gratuitously to the public; yet his spectacles
have, for the most part, failed through so
much adversity of wind and weather, that the