commanded to put away, as the world calls it, the childish things."

LYDIA.-Oh, I believe it-the infant's dream is a creation, and perhaps as beautiful as we know it must be pleasing, for there are no smiles like infant smiles.

CURATE.-And past that age, when the external world has given its lessons in pictures, which in practice and education we only imitate, do we not find the impressions then made of a goodness, a beauty, not realised and acknowledged in advanced life, as existing actually in the scenes themselves?

AQUILIUS.-At the earlier time, we take up little but what is consonant to our affections; the minor detail is an after lesson: but as to this "natural" of landscapes, which seems to have so long held our artists and amateurs under an infatuation-as they construe it-this mindless thing,-after all what is its petty truth? Could the boy who hides himself under a hedge to read his Robinson Crusoe, put on canvass the pictures his imagination paints, do you think they, wonld be exactly of the skies and the fields every day before his eyes? A year or two older, when he shall feel his spirit begin to glow with a sense of beauty, with the incessant love and heroism of best manhood-see him under the shade of some wide-spreading oak devouring the pages of befitting romance, The Seven Champions of Christendom," the tale of castles of enchantments, of giants, and forlorn damsels to be rescued. Do you not credit his mind's painting for other scenes, in colour and design, than any he ever saw? The fabulous is in him, and he must create, or look on nothing. He will take no sheep for a dragon, nor farmer Plod-acre for an enchanter, nor the village usher for an armed knight. The overseer will not be his redresser of wrongs. There is vision in his day-dream, but it is painting to the mind's eye; and imagination must be the great enchanter to conjure up a new country, raise rocks, and build him castles; nay, in his action to run to the rescue, he has a speed beyond his limbs' power, an arm that has been charmed with new strength. Now is he not quite out of the locality, the movement and power of any world he

ever saw, of any world to whose laws of motion and of willing he has ever yet been subject? Take his pictures-look at them well; for I will suppose them painted to your sight: nay, put yourself in his place and paint them yourself-forgetting before you do so all you have ever heard said about landscape painting. Have you them? then tell me, are they untrue? No, no, you will admit they are beautiful truth. The lover paints with all a poet's accuracy, but not like Denner. Now, if this mind-vision be not destroyed,-if the man remain the poet, he will not be satisfied with the common transcript of what, as far as enjoyment goes, he can more fully enjoy without art. He will have a craving for the ideal painting, for more truths and perhaps higher truths than the sketch-book can afford. And if he cultivate his taste, and practise the art too, he will find in nature a thousand beauties before hidden, that while he was the view-seeker, he saw not; he will be cognisant of the suggestive elements, the grammar of his mind and of his art, by which he will express thoughts and feelings, of a truth that is in him, and in all, only to be embodied by a creation.

CURATE.-I fear the patrons of art are not on your side. Does not encouragement go in a contrary direction?

GRATIAN.-Patrons of art are too often mere lovers of furniture,-have not seriously considered art, nor cultivated taste. And if it be a fault, it is not altogether their own; it is in character with genius to be in advance, and to teach, and by its own works. It is that there is a want of cultivation, of serious study, among artists themselves. If the patron could dictate, he would himself be the maker, the poet, the painter, the musician,— excellence of every kind precedes the taste to appreciate it. It makes the taste as well as the work: my friend Aquilius has made me a convert. I had not considered art, as it should be viewed, as a means of, as one of the languages of poetry. In truth, I have loved pictures more for their reminiscences than their independent power; aud have therefore chiefly fixed my attention on views-actual scenery, with all its particulars.

THE spring of the year 183- found me in Paris, whither I had gone, immediately after Christmas, for a fortnight's stay, and where I had remained four months. The prolongation of my visit will not surprise those who appreciate and enjoy the gay metropolis of France, in the most agreeable season. The festivities of the new year, with its gratulations and embraces, and tons of bonbons, of racy flavour and ingenious device, were no sooner over, than we found ourselves in full carnival. From the aristocratic regions of the noble Faubourg, where linger, in fossil preservation, the last relics of the ancien régime, to the plebeian district of the Marais; from the brilliant hotels of St Honoré and the Chaussée, peopled by rose-water exquisites and full-maned lionesses, to the remote and ignoble purlieus of Saints Dennis and Anthony, where tailors and tinkers dwell and thrive and propagate their kind, pleasure and enjoyment reigned. With the old year, the wet season had concluded; a clear bright frost had ushered in the new. Paris got rid of its mud and misery, and turned out in a new paletot and well polished boots for a ramble on the Boulevards. This was for four or five hours of the day; but night was the time to see the noisy dissolute old city in its glory, prancing and capering as madly as if it had stumbled upon the fountain of Jouvence, and had taken a pull at the regenerating element that had restored it to its teens. Appalling was the amount of eating, drinking, and merriment, occurring within its precincts; succulent breakfasts in the forenoon, and fat dinners of many courses in the evening, and riotous suppers at all hours of the night, liquidated by Burgundy in big bumpers, and Champagne in pint tumblers, and stiff punch, stinging hot and burning blue, in bright silver bowls. Then there was dancing, and masquing, and flirting, till day-dawn-of pretty late arrival at that season; sleep was at a discount, and desperate revellers who never took a wink of it, that could possibly be discovered, rushed from

the ball-room to a cool breakfast on oysters and Sauterne, and rose therefrom fresh as cowslips, ready to begin again. Paris was a vortex of gaiety and dissipation, whence, once drawn in, it was scarcely possible to extricate one's-self. I did not make the attempt. I was too well pleased with my snug sunny entresol on the Italian boulevard, with my dainty fare at the adjacent restaurant, with the twinkling feet of the Taglioni, and the melodious quaverings of Rubini and Duprez, then in full song; with my occasional visits to rout and masquerade, and more frequent ones to the hospitable dining rooms and saloons of a few old friends, both French and English. Then, for ride or walk, what better than the Champs Elysées, crowded with ruddy pedestrians, arch grisettes and lounging soldiers; traversed by sledges innumerable of every variety of form-dragon, sphinx, and mermaid, dolphin, lion, swan, enough to stock a mythological museum and a zoological garden-coursing up and down the road, and in the crisp frosty alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, drawn by smoking foam-speckled steeds, half hidden beneath ribbon panoply and high panache, sending silver sounds of countless bells before them, and delighting the eyes of all beholders by the sight of other belles, whose clear-toned voices and lightsome laugh rang not less sweet and silvery than the tinkle of their metal-tongued rivals, through the rare and sun-lit ether, as they sat, sunk in furs and velvets, with bright eyes and ruddy lips, and smooth firm cheeks just slightly mottled by the cold, beside the enviable cavaliers to whose charioteership they confided themselves. In short, the combination of Parisian attractions forbade departure, and I dreamed not of it till February had flown. Then I turned my eyes channelwards, and my thoughts to passports and posthorses, when sudden rumours reached me of eastern gales and virulent influenza raging on Britain's shores; and of March dust, proverbially precious, but practically odious, careering

in dense and blinding clouds through London's tortured streets. This was ample excuse to linger a few weeks longer in my agreeable quarters, until spring came in earnest, and the sun was so warm, and the air so balmy, and the chestnuts in the Tuileries' gardens, just burst into foliage, presented so glorious a mass of tender green, that, although often taking leave, I still was loath to depart. And thus it came to pass that, on a bright fresh April morning, I found myself seated in a Palais Royal coffee-house, in tranquil enjoyment of creaming chocolate, a damp newspaper, and the noiseless attendance of admirably drilled waiters.

I have always loved the Palais Royal, associated as it is with my earliest and most pleasurable recollections of Paris; and with sincere regret have I noted the rapid decline of what was once the heart and focus of the French capital. At the time I now speak of, although its best days were long past, it was still far removed from the deserted and desolate state into which it has since sunk: it had not yet dwindled into a dreary quadrangle of cheap tailors, pinchbeck jewellers, and shops to let, traversed in haste by all who enter it, save by newly-imported provincials, sauntering nurserymaids, and a few old loungers, who, from long habit, haunt the fabric after the spirit has fled. The melancholy truth is, that the march of morality ruined the Palais Royal. So long as it was the headquarters of dissipation, it throve and flourished exceedingly; it was merry and much frequented, like the mansion of some rich and jovial profligate, whom all abuse, but from whose well-spread table few care to absent themselves. Then the Palais Royal, to the stranger, almost comprehended Paris: all the luxuries, necessaries, amusements, and pleasures of life, were found within its walls: it was the bazaar, the tavern, the harem, and the gaminghouse of Europe. The reforms wrought in it since the peace by its present royal owner, however advantageous to its good fame and comeliness, have been grievously detrimental to its vivacity and pocket. In 183-, the last of these changes, the finishing-stroke, as it may be termed, the suppression

of the gambling tables, although fully resolved upon, had not yet taken place. The coffee-houses were still numerous and crowded, the shops magnificent and prosperous; the garden and arcades, now abandoned to mischievous boys, and to puling infants in nurses' arms, were thronged from morn till midnight with visitors of all nations and classes, lured thither by curiosity, or by the demon PLAY. There was always abundant food for observation, if only in the noisy groups who paced the avenues of trees, discussing the chances of the dice or the events of the morning's sitting, and in the flushed or haggard countenances that each moment entered and issued from the doors of the various hells. With a genial sky, a rush-bottomed chair, and the occasional assistance of a sou's worth of literature, obtained from the old women who dwell in wooden boxes, and hire out newspapers, an entire day might be passed there with amusement and profit. Occasional incidents, sometimes dramatic enough, varied the monotony, never great. The detection of a pickpocket, a loudvoiced quarrel, often resulting in blows or a challenge, the expulsion from the rouge-et-noir temple of some unlucky wretch, whom ruin had rendered unruly, were incidents of daily occurrence. For those whom the minor drama did not satisfy, there was an occasional bit of high tragedy, in the shape of a suicide from losses, or an arrest for fraud. Not long before the time I speak of, a group of persons, standing in the garden, were startled by the fall of a body at their feet. It was that of a gamester, who, after losing his last franc, had thrown himself from the elevated window of the pandemonium where his ruin had been consummated.

"I believe I have the pleasure of seeing Mr -," said a voice in English, as I paused for a moment, my breakfast concluded, before the door of the coffeehouse, planning the disposal of my day.

I looked at the person who thus addressed me; and, although I pique myself on rarely forgetting the faces of those with whom I have once been acquainted, I confess that in this instance my memory was completely