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 gaming-house 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 loud-voiced 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