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