Fearing a like transformation in the French population of New Orleans, M. Marmier, delighted to find himself mistaken, thanks Heaven for his escape from the frigid zone of Yankee-land, and for once more finding himself, for the first time since he left Canada, amongst people with hearts as well as heads, whose commercial pursuits do not preclude social enjoyments and friendly attentions to a stranger. He notes a vast difference between the aspect of New Orleans and that of the other cities of the Union. In the Louisianian capital there is more of holidaymaking, and less of unremitting money-seeking; there are to be found gay dinners, agreeable pastimes, music in the streets and coffee-houses, manners more courtly and dress more elegant, an opera and a vaudeville. This, at least, is the case in the French portion of the city; and the inhabitants of the American quarter have benefited, our traveller assures us, by the contact and intercourse of their lively and amiable neighbours. Even in New Orleans, however, he finds things to blame, or at least to deplore. The principal of these is the fatal practice of duelling, which has brought desolation into so many Creole families. _A. N., victime de l'honneur à 24 ans_, is the brief but significant inscription upon a plain tombstone, before which he pauses during his ramble amidst the flower garlands and green shrubberies of the carefully kept cemetery. Duels in Louisiana are much less frequent since the passing of a law which deprives the duellist of his civil rights for a space of five years, and which closes to him the profession of the bar, and the avenues to certain public employments. No law, however, can tame the fierce passions of the men of the Southern States, or prevent those extempore duels, fought out on the instant of quarrel, with revolver and Arkansas toothpick--a Gargantuan toothpick, M. Marmier shudderingly explains, having a two-edged blade, a foot long and two or three inches wide. Before quitting the Union, whose inhabitants and institutions have certainly met with little favour at his hands, M. Marmier apologises for any undue severity into which he may possibly have been betrayed. "If," he says, "in my remarks on the social relations of the Americans, I have been unjust towards them, I sincerely ask their pardon. In towns and cities one feels a desire to meet benevolent glances and friendly words from our fellow-men; and this, with some rare exceptions, which I gladly treasure up, is what I sought in vain in the great cities of the United States. Whether my search was unskilful, I know not; or whether, like an impatient miner, I too hastily abandoned a bed of rocks which concealed a precious vein. It is possible I may have done so. The one thing certain is, that in Canada and at New Orleans the sympathetic vein was revealed to me at once, and I had but to extend my hands to be met on all sides with a friendly grasp."