ten-tenths of a penny—if you can calculate how
much that is with the help of Cocker. The
quality of the Little Journal — unlike that of
mercy — is apt to be a little strained, chiefly
in the military direction; though why that
should be is difficult to say. A French
soldier is much more likely to spend ten
centimes in little glasses of brandy or little
pipes of tobacco than in any little journal
whatever, especially as many journals are
like many wild-beast shows — the pictures
outside are the best thing belonging to them,
and therefore it is hardly worth paying a
penny to look within. The tendencies of the
Little Journal indicate, perhaps, how
completely France is pervaded by the military
element. Everybody there either is, has been,
or is going to be, a soldier, or is nearly related
to somebody who has been, is going to be, or is
a soldier—ladies included, because, from the
saintly and devoted sister of charity to the
spirited and adventurous officer's wife, to the
bold, heroic, and independaut vivandiere, to
the reckless and dissolute female camp
follower, to the base old harpy who buys
and sells superfluities, the list of females
attached to the French army, for good or
for evil, is very considerable in number and
length.

Amongst the articles of luxury hitherto
confined to ladies of a certain station and the
persons they employ—the milliners and
dressmakers—are fashion books. Sally and Susan
used to be content to copy their mistress,
after their mistress had copied La Belle
Assemblée. But the Parisian Sallys and
Susans—such at least as are not bonnes, or
nursemaids, wearing the costume of their
province, now need not take their fashions at
second-hand. They can have, for three
half-pence (twopence by post), La Toilette de
Paris, of which the number before me gives
coloured woodcuts of three delicious head
dresses, two (not a pair of) tasty sleeves, two
caps, a collar, a pelerine, and another remarkable
thing of the same genus, named a dress
canezou; besides these, there is a coloured
engraving of three full-length figures, a lady
and two children, the whole accompanied by
very respectable descriptions and several
pages of quite passable literature. When,
therefore, you go to your dressmaker's, and
are coolly told by her first or second clerk
(formerly assistant, or shopwoman) that
"Madame cannot be seen to-day; Madame is
busy composing," or "Madame does not feel
inspired this morning; she has driven to the
Bois de Boulogne to refresh her ideas;" be
not disconsolate. The Toilette de Paris will
help you out of your difficulty.

That music should be popularised in a
metropolis which is one vast arena of pleasure,
is no more than natural and consistent.
Vocal music being the more familiar form of
the art, it is likely that its practice in everyday
societies should be aided by the dissemination
of words alone, leaving the melody to
be learnt by ear, in the case when it was not
fitted to some well-known tune, as was
effected by the Little Warblers of years gone
by, and by collections of Dibdin's soul-stirring
verses. And, accordingly, means for facilitating
vulgar singing exist in the Album du
Ménestrel, the Minstrel's Album, in the
AIbum des Concerts, the Concert Album, and
other sheets of songs beloved by the multitude
in spite of their abominable type and
still more abominable paper. Their influence
on the people at large is well known to
illustrious personages. Shortly before a
President became an Emperor, wandering
singers—mostly a woman standing on a chair
under the shade of a large red umbrella, and
accompanied by her husband scraping a
cracked fiddle in unison with the tune of the
song, to give greater precision to the melody
—rushed from town to town in such numbers
and with such frequency as to raise a suspicion
that it was not altogether a private
speculation of their own, but that they had
received a mission from more knowing heads
than those which they had carried on their
shoulders. Their repertory invariably
consisted of sentimental, comic, and Napoleon
dynastic songs, in nearly equal proportions,
the latter having the casting vote. There was
The Henpecked Husband and the Exile of
Saint Helena, the Sorrowful Widow and the
Hero of Austerlitz, the Cobbler's Misfortunes
and the Retreat from Russia, so mixed up
and interlaced together, that you could not
buy, or listen to, or look at, a sou's-worth of
the one without the other's meeting your
eyes or your ears. Approving thousands
had their minds prepared for what was to
follow, exactly as the recitative leads first to
the andante and then to the triumphant
bravura.

Resuscitations in art sometimes succeed;
no late resuscitation has evinced greater
inherent vitality than that of the famous
Lancers' Quadrilles, which I, the scribe, was
delighted to dance with other little boys and
girls, long before I or anybody else had
dreamt that a Household Words would ever
exist for me to write in. The Lancers, in
France, are the favorite of the day;
perhaps, with so vivacious a people, it may
be safer to call them the favourite of
yesterday, although they are sometimes
faithful in their favour, out of very
capriciousness. At the first re-appearance of the
Lancers, they were admired by the million
as ardently as when London crowds used to
go and get their ribs broken to see them
performed in Tom and Jerry. The figure which
we used to style "Morning Calls," that wherein
the minuet reverences are made, and the
final romp with its half-military evolutions,
are especially the objects of interest. "How
graceful it is! How genteel it is! How beau
and how charming!" is the sincere tribute
of praise which has been offered to these
ancient quadrilles, a hundred times, by