It is in vain to call the Syren's song discord, to say that nectar is but extract of wormwood, and Ambrosia but a mess of Spartan pottage. The first sound, and the first taste, disabuse the ignorant, adding the stimulus of surprise to what was but too attractive without it. No, let us fairly acknowledge the magic, and then try our best to repel its influence. You know that I shall keep all my _scenery_, whether moral or physical, for fireside talk, _perhaps_ at Glenalta, and not so much as a moon-beam on the Coliseum will you have in the way of description, already exhausted by abler limners than I am; but I cannot avoid adding my testimony to the charms of foreign society. It is not that it is wiser or better; it is not that you have better cheer, or one half so good accommodation as at home. No, the whole necromancy exits in one monosyllable--ease. In England ease is _practised_; in France it springs naturally from every one with whom you converse. In England people are _remembering_ to forget themselves; in France they do _really_ forget themselves, and in this simple circumstance resides the whole secret of being _at ease_. In England people _run_ to shew you how freely they can _walk_, never considering that _ease_, that grand desideratum, is as much banished by over exertion to be gay, as by the torpor of _mauvaise honte_. In France there is neither a _jerking_ activity, nor a leaden stupor, but people convey the idea, while you are in their company, of being pleased, interested, and animated, by the subject of conversation. There is no _acted_ egotism, no effort at making display; and the effect of an evening passed in a Parisian society is that of gaiety without fatigue. You have, perhaps, not heard a single sentence that you desire to treasure; but there has been no _strain_ upon your animal spirits. You have spoken naturally what really presented itself to be said, instead of _fishing_ for a theme, and having to recollect at every turn whether you were going to speak to a man or a woman. In fine, conversation, however trifling, flows on the Continent, while with us it resembles _pints_ of water, _chucked_ one after another into a pump. You work the handle, and up comes your pint, but there is no more till you make a new deposit, and a fresh exertion. It is unnecessary to add that I speak of _mixed_ society, and of its _average_ state in the two countries. Come to the sincere intercourse of mind and heart, when the affectations of fashion are in _abeyance_, or I should more justly say where they have never existed, and who would go to any climate of the earth from that in which our happy stars have placed us, to enjoy "the feast of reason and the flow of soul!" Ireland and Scotland, remember, are always included in this preference. But we do not understand _society_, even imitating the French, as we prove, alas, that we can do continually, in their _faults_, while we cannot throw off our whalebone and buckram. In France there is