by permission of the police, and with a policeman present to report their doings. The most brilliant members of the Institute could discuss political questions only under cover of Greece or Rome; and in the Parliament of the nation every statesman spoke with a curb in his mouth, upon which rested the finger of the President, upon whom rested the hand of the Emperor. Every man of note or influence was watched, and his doings, his plans, and his thoughts were known-the system was so perfect! How, then, is it there is come so marvellous a change? For more than a thousand years Paris has been "governed" in this way; she is used to it, but from time to time she has broken up into eruption; the most frightful of which has come to be known as the French Revolution and the Commune. A sham civilisation breeds mischief, and who can, who dare, predict the future?

It has been well said, "Bayonets are a convenient thing, but it is difficult to sit on them."

The government was paternal. The Emperor not only kept the people from breaking out into disagreeable insurrection, but he sav that they were fed and amused. Taxation is thorough and searching, and none can fail to see how closely the Parisians live to starvation; but they never do starve. Why? From time to time we learn that France is in the market to buy wheat in vast quantities. What for? It is to feed the people of Paris, when work runs low and the machine creaks. The people must be cared for, too, when they are sick, and they must be amused to the requisite degree. These things "Government" undertakes to do in Paris.

The whole administration of charities and public aid is also thoroughly organised, under the Prefect of the

Seine. The Director, in 1864, estimated that those who would demand relief in 1865 would number 259,199,1 of whom 100,0002 were registered poor (permanent paupers), 91,355 were in hospital, 30,000 sick beside were treated at their own houses, and 23,416 abandoned children were placed in the country.

was

Two hundred and sixty thousand paupers in the city of highest civilization, does not tell a pleasant tale ! The population in 1860 1,700,000, and in 1866, 1,825,274 one-eighth of all not able to support themselves by their own labour; another 100,000 were soldiers, and 60,000 ranked as criminal class. Anything might happen and mighty convulsions have happened.

It is certain that life is as difficult in Paris as anywhere, notwithstanding so many foreigners who go there believe it the most delightful city of the world, and that life there is easy, gay, and fascinating. Paris is not all Champs Elysées and Rue de Rivoli.

It has been said there is no starvation, while there is,-a vast population of 260,000 belonging to the pauper class. Another indication of the wide-spread poverty and of the hard struggle for existence prevailing in Paris, is seen in the Mont de Piété. This is a great governmental pawnbroker's shop, with various branches, and is thoroughly systematised. It guards the poor against the extortion of free pawnbroking. Through fifteen years, 1,313,000 articles were pawned annually, and the average of the loans was but 17 francs 40 centimes-some three dollars and a half. This may help to dispel the illusion that the people of Paris are gay and light-hearted. My own experience (brief though it was) led me to the belief that no people lived so closely, so carefully, or were in such grim earnest to get a subsist

2 118,000.

Clothing and textile fabrics... 104,887 Jewellery

18,731 19,507

Printing, engraving, &c. It may be curious to learn what these earn. I find that the wages of men range from 3.25 francs to 20 francs a-day-or from about 3 shillings to 16s.; those of women from half a franc to 10 francs, or 8s.

I discover another fact-new to me, and it may be to you-that 87 out of the 100 of them can read and write. It is not the want of what we call education, then, that Paris suffers from.

While among the figures, it may be well to say here, that for the last sixteen years Paris has exported annually some 160,000,000 francs, or 6,000,000l. worth of manufactured articles.2

The budget of Paris-receipts and expenditures about the same for the year 1867 is officially stated at 241,653,613 francs, or about 8,500,000l. Nearly the whole of of this is raised from the people of Paris. Every egg is taxed, every dog is taxed, water is taxed, burials are taxed, wood is taxed, hay is taxed, night-soil is taxed-everything is taxed. It must be, for independently of the Prussian indemnity and the enormous expenses of the war, the police and National Guard required yearly the pretty

1 Galignani for 1867.

little sum of 15,329,000 francs, and public works (what is called "beautifying Paris") 23,681,000 more. The people, the workmen, and those who amuse, get most of this from the strangers, and the government gets it from the workmen. Its system of taxation is thorough, and there is no escape.

Is Paris an earthly paradise for woman? Rich women and strange women may find it so; but the great mass of women there are intensely industrious, and are poor. The Parisians have discovered the art of utilising their women. They have converted them from lovely and loving companions for man, serene partner of his joys and his sorrows, doubler of his prosperities, sharer of his misfortunes from careless, inconsequent, unproductive creatures, into the shrewdest, toughest. hardest, homeliest, and most productive of the race. It is doubted whether ten handsome women can be found in Paris to save it. They produce vastly, everything but children.

-

"Love"-so called-is in the market; and in the Latin quarter, as well as in others, whole populations of women, called Grisettes, are up for hire as temporary companions of students. These are not to be described as harlots. While the engagement lasts they are true to their part of the bargain; they keep therooms, they cook the food, they wash,. and mend, and make; and when Sunday comes, in their neat dresses they go out upon cheap and pleasant. excursions, or they enjoy a cheap theatre in the evening, and are not abandoned women, in our sense of the term. This life is their business, and there is no shame and no con-demnation among them.

There is much less apparent vice in Paris than in any great city, and the "social evil" does not stalk the streets as in London and New York..

Ibid.

All here is systematised also. Every house of prostitution is known and registered; its inmates are all registered; and they are subjected to monthly examinations, to secure them and the people against disease. Some 50,000 malheureuses1 are so registered, and there are 25,000 to 30,000, besides these, who are not registered. They are not allowed to dress conspicuously, or to walk in the best streets soliciting custom. All is done decently and in order. Marriage is becoming more and more difficult, and non-marriage more and more easy.

Young American women, of the nouveau riche, are taken to the Paris market, because there marquises and barons abound; these want money, the others want titles. Among the upper classes, too, so much rank strikes hands with so much rank or so much money; but all is a matter of business, settled upon business principles, before the final consummation. In such a condition of things we should not look for much domestic bliss, nor much domestic jealousy: we do not-they do not exist.

We come now to a rather startling assertion. It is, that in the modern civilisations of Paris, and other great cities, the strongest instinct of woman's nature, maternity, is nearly extinct. Materialism has taken its place. Women marry for money, not for love; they yield their virtue to the charms of money, not to the blandishments of passion. They are not sensual. A few facts may help to sustain these assertions. The legitimate births to a marriage in the Department of the Seine (Paris), in 1854, were but 2.51; while in the rural populations they were 3.25. It appears that in 1800 the births in all France were 3.33; in 1855 they had declined to 2.50 per cent. Among the shopkeepers, the common reply is, "We cannot afford to have

children;" and they do not have them. Among the upper classes they do not wish to have them, and they do not have them. Among the poorer classes there is, as there is everywhere much heedlessness. But here steps in an agency which enables these poorer women to keep at work. There are eighteen crèches, or public nurseries, which receive some 2,500 babies yearly, whose mothers, thus relieved of their care, are enabled to keep at work. We come now to another fact. About five thousand children are annually abandoned to the foundling hospital. This has in its charge, mostly in the country, 23,228 abandoned children, who know neither father nor mother, and whose mothers never see or know their offspring.

The women of Paris do not love children, do not want them, and do not have them. The maternal in stinct is suppressed, or it is sacrificed to the insatiable necessities of life, or to the claims of pleasure.

The women of Paris are not beautiful, nor are they loving; but they are most capable, most dexterous, most fascinating. What they lack in beauty, they make up in skill, in tact, in subtle flattery, in neatness, and in sense. They are thorough in their business, whatever it is, and do it well. Paris has shown what a wonderful creature a woman may become, when her nonsense is converted into sense, her aspirations into worldly wisdom. An American or an English woman can hardly believe the point of perfection a whole city of women may reach in the arts of this world. It is well known that the Grisettes are shrewd, cool, worldly to the extreme; yet they are the most agreeable creatures in the world; and their sisters of the higher classes are like them, only softened and tempered by the downy beds of prosperity upon which they lie.

:

It is hardly necessary to assert that the Parisian woman is not the model woman-what God intended her to be but whatever she is, she is equal, if not superior, to the man. Upon him, the lord of creation, him. of the upper class, tobacco, coffee, wine, and high spiced pleasures have done their work, and he is pale, slight, weak, idle. The men of the lower classes, the "ouvriers," are short, but stout and active; from them is made up the army of France, which had no equal for swiftness, audacity, and endurance. Below these come the population of crime (60,000), whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. The "gamin" of Paris, the boy, who knows neither father, mother, home, nor God, is a breed; most keen, most cunning, most enduring, most audacious. They grow into thieves and desperadoes, and ply their trades in the slums of the city, and under the shadow of the Tuilleries.

Thirty thousand chiffonniers, who pick their living out of the garbage of the streets, exist in Paris. But we have no figures to express the rich of the city. Do they number as many? I doubt it. Still, the Bourse is an institution. In a great Hall, surrounded with Corinthian columns of white marble, between the hours of 12 and 3 every day (Sunday excepted, I believe), gathers a crowd of men. Among them are the haut noblesse and the German Jew. They buy and they sell stocks with a noise and fury that is deafening. The mania for getting rich, and swiftly, pervades all classes; and here all classes come to gamble and speculate, and here millions are lost and won daily. It was easy enough to see how those who knew what the Emperor was going to say, might buy or sell safely. Here the Morny's and the "Brethren of the Elysée," were understood to have amassed

their ample millions, which enabled them to rival the revels of Sardanapalus, and to die much eulogized. The old nobility went down before the "new men" of the Empire.

The art of living has been a profound study in Paris for a century, and is more perfected than elsewhere; that is, here everything is utilised, and nothing is wasted. Only the very rich live in a whole house; living in suites of rooms, upon one floor of a house, is universal. On the best floor are the salons and fine apartments for the rich; on the next floor, those for the well-to-do; above, for the artisans, and higher up for the poor.

Eating has become a fine art. Restaurants of every grade abound, and more people eat at them than in any other city of the world. Homelife is not so fascinating in Paris as in England; and the café supplies warmth, light, entertainment, and gossip. It is not so dull as home, and dulness the Parisian hates. Within a short time singing-cafés have sprung into life, and at them a new charm is furnished free. Here Therese became known, and won fame and money. She had talent, she had voice, she had wants, and she had audacity. She soon found that the impure paid better than the pure, that vile images were more seductive than noble thoughts, and she threw around these all the witchery of eye, tone, and gesture, of which she was mistress. Whether she sang in the café or the open street, she was thronged with delighted men. Before long she was sought by the highest ladies of Paris, eager to learn from her the arts which brought men to her feet. They learned to sing her songs, and it is quite true that Therèse has sung in the first salons of Paris, and in the presence of royalty itself. She has retired full of praise and money, with a supreme contempt for elegant society, which she believes baser than herself.

Food is all-important. The Halles Centrales stand upon the once burying ground of the Church of the Innocents. This is the great central market, and here are sold, yearly, 110,000 beeves, 46,000 cows, 169,000 veals, 840,000 sheep, and some 36,000,000 pounds of dressed meat.1 240,000,000 eggs are consumed yearly in Paris, 28,000,000 pounds of butter, and 292,500,000 pounds of meat. And yet the consumption of meat here is found to be twenty per cent. less than in London. Wine flows into the city at the rate of 70,000,000 gallons a year; and as the water-supply is poor, it is freely drunk. I have said that nothing is allowed to be wasted. Coffee-grounds are sold and resold; "Arlequins" sell every kind of broken meat and refuse food; the butter-tasters spit out the butter from their mouths on to straw laid on the floor to catch it; this straw is put into boiling water, the butter is skimmed off, and is sold to confectioners. The confectionary of the city is famous and most delicious. The market-women-dames de la Halle- are a rich, robust, and powerful class. They are proud of themselves and of their business, which they attend to thoroughly and indefatigably. They love to They love to appear at coronations and christenings of great families, wearing their bravery and jewels, to present congratulations and to be complimented. They have been powerful instigators and promoters of rebellions, and even emperors did not care to trifle with them.

man is for food, of woman for clothes. She may endure the deprivation of food, but without clothes she dies. The clothes one absolutely needs are such as will protect one from the inclemency of the weather; what one wants, pen cannot tell.

The wardrobe of Fayaway consisted of one garment of cotton cloth, tied about the waist with a cord braided of soft grass. The wardrobe of the Princess Mconsisted of 119 dresses of silk, each of 119 pieces, and trimmed with 1,900 yards of trimmings; 164 morning-gowns of various materials, adorned with one million of buttons; 61 walking-dresses and cloaks, ornamented with one ton of bugles; 51 shawls of various sizes and colours; 152 petticoats, in variety; 275 other undergarments; 365 pairs of stockings; 156 pairs of gloves of every known colour; 49 pairs of boots and shoes; 71 sashes and belts; 64 brooches, in variety; 72 pairs of earrings, in variety; 31 fans; 24 parasols; I umbrella, &c., &c. Such, in brief, is the wardrobe now of a first-class Parisian lady.

How does she get these things? Ah, that is a question, for she makes none of them herself. Twenty kinds of sewing-machines each do the work of fifty sewers; these are at work night and day. Beside them, 150,000 men and women at least are at work in Paris making clothes to cover the nakedness of the race; and over 455,000,600 francs worth are produced here annually. Not only are there new clothes made to this extent, but three firms in Paris sell annually, of "old clothes," over £600,000 worth. This is vast-it is fabulous

true.

1 Paris Guide.

There is a mystery about this subject that man's mind cannot fathom. It may be suggested by the question, What is fashion? We

* 68,200,000 gallons.