At first glimpse it looks a long, dull harmony of stone,—a uniform grey, with high emblazoned gates and closed lodges. But note the peeps into flowery old courtyards, the charming tufts of garden foliage lifting their green branches above the high walls. Glance down the sudden break in the street, where a kind of tall walled terrace runs, trellised, rich in leafage, as silent as the street of a dead city, where wealth shelters itself from envy by its tone of subdued and sober elegance. And yet it is not more trim than are the haunts of commerce, the abodes of labour. Who would not envy the flower-women of the Quai des Fleurs, with their glorious vista of stone and waterway? The curving Seine, ribboned round its beautiful old island, grey-walled, upon the river’s brink; the spire of the Sainte Chapelle, painted gold, upon a soft or brilliant sky, and the magnificent gates of the Palace of justice, as much theirs as are the rich man’s priceless possessions in his own house. The pleasure of possession alone is lacking in their enjoyments; but they miss its anxieties, and they have not to pay for the keeping in order of all those splendours upon which their eyes daily repose. To talk of taste in connection with Paris seems as unnecessary to-day as to speak of coals in Newcastle. And yet it is the prevalence of taste everywhere that perpetually surprises inhabitants of less privileged places. Whatever these people do, whatever they make, whatever they wear, the result is pleasing to the eye. If the picturesque is not always achieved, be sure neatness is. Give a poor woman an old skirt or bodice, and instantly will she go home, take it to pieces, and make a new skirt or bodice out of it that will gladden the eye, once upon her. So in her modest way will she improve the general view, and freshen up a porter’s lodge or little doorway. It is by the united action of all those various devices of a race of unerring taste and an indestructible sense of neatness, that Paris, in all its open corners, and byways, and thoroughfares, is, by outward manifestations, the home of permanent and unchequered grace and suavity.