means. At the end of a pretty tesselated
passage beside the shop, there is, at the foot of the
stairs, a snug little glass case or lodge. Looking
in, you will usually see a woman in a
clean cap knitting a stocking; a gilt pendule
is certain to be ticking on the chimneypiece;
and a clean bed ensconced in an alcove. This
woman's husband—always dressed, in the
morning, in a cap and a coarse green apron—
is one of the trustworthy and serviceable
class of domestic hall-keepers, or porters, for
which Paris is remarkable. He polishes the
stairs, polishes the banisters, polishes
everything he can lay his hands upon, and has
generally polished his own manners too. He
is shrewd, steady, observant, and can keep
his own counsel withal. Every floor pays
him a small, fixed, monthly stipend; and he
is the guardian genius of the whole house. You
ask his wife on which floor your friend lives,
and she, the portress on duty, takes all sorts of
pains to make you understand her directions,
if she sees there be any dulness in your foreign
apprehension. You ascend a flight of oak stairs
(carefully, for the porter-husband is polishing
his way down from the top, vigorously) by the
help of a banister supported by bronzed and
gilt rails. Your friend's door opened, admits
you to a little hall, in which, when it is shut
after you, you feel as much isolated from the
world as if you were standing on the mat of
the private residence of the honourable
Deputy of St. Vitus's Backlane, near Camber-
well Green. Little drawing-rooms, dining-
room, study, nursery, bed-rooms, kitchen (and
a back-stair leading to it, for servants and
tradesmen), all furnished with an amount of
sensible taste highly suggestive to all the
Deputies in all Camberwell. And all— horrid
idea!—over a shop. Yet your friend may be an
English baronet or a foreign count, with
thousands a-year, and with some capital horses in
a stable close by. Does Monsieur Viteplume,
chef de bureau at the office of the Minister
of the Interior, who lives in the floor above,
or Madame Bonnebonnet, the court milliner,
who lives over him, or M. Burin, the engraver,
who resides nearer heaven by the altitude of
one story, or Jules Cordon the journeyman
bootmaker, or Mademoiselle Fleurschâteau,
who each inhabit the attic apartments—
ever interfere with the rich baronet, or with
one another? Never. When the cobbler
meets the baronet or the government official,
or madame or mademoiselle, on the stairs, he
claims them as neighbours only by a polite
bow, and " bon jour."

Even in the more private streets, few people
occupy a whole house. There is generally a
court-yard surrounded by apartments, with
one common entrance. Sometimes, houses
are clustered together round a larger
courtyard, and called a cité. In the poorer
quarters, some of these cités—which have
fallen in the general sweep, swarmed to a
degree prejudicial to health ; but their
populations are now distributed.

This plan of residence of course necessitates
large houses. There are no Prospect
Places, Adeliza Terraces, or Paradise Rows
in Paris: no small, mean, slightly-built streets;
but every house is of sufficient dimensions to
admit of architectural display. Even in the
humblest parts of the town the houses are
lofty and substantial.

When the stipulated five years shall have
elapsed, and the contemplated improvements
shall be completed, Paris will be a marvel
of improvement. And London ? London
will go on talking for and against improvement,
for another half-century or so, and
will remain, as to its general ugliness, pretty
much what it has been for the last ten or a
dozen years. The Hôtel de Ville in Paris
and the Guildhall in London, are mightily
expressive, in their vast differences, of the
intelligence and spirit of the public bodies
they represent. But then the corporation of
Paris really expresses Paris itself, while the
corporation of London expresses nothing but
obsolete pretences and abuses.

DECIMAL MEASURES.

WEIGHT is a measure of density—of the
amount of ponderable material elements
contained within a given bulk of substance. The
above heading, therefore, intends to include
decimal weights and measures: which we must
also adopt if we are determined to enjoy the
full benefit of decimal moneys of account, and
of a decimal coinage.

In the case of weights and measures, there
arises, for us, a difficulty in fixing on the
unities, or starting-points, of our system,
which does not occur in the case of money.
Value is an arbitrary and conventional thing;
an article is worth what it will fetch in the
market, and no more. And, what is of still
more importance, values are always fluctuating.
Money is nothing but a set of signs
contrived to represent certain values of
merchandise. But, in more than the popular
sense, there is nothing fixed or stable about
money. The very gold and silver of which
we make our money-counters, change their
value, often considerably, from week to week.
Consequently, the French have selected the
franc as the unit of their accounts and
circulation, and we are likely to take the
sovereign as ours, simply because it happens
to suit them, and ourselves, respectively best.
Nature will help us to no standard for the
regulation of our stock-exchange and bourse
transactions. She gives, takes, transmutes,
restores, decomposes and reproduces; but
her capital in hand remains always the same;
not a particle of matter disappears from her
surface or her kernel; not a single elementary
atom is annihilated, or created in addition.
In short, Nature does not buy and sell, and
never, that we know of, gains or loses.

On the contrary, Nature is as precise and
fixed as the ratio of the force of gravity to