Foreigners in Paris seem to be very much swayed in their judgments and adoption of French politics by the mental and moral atmosphere they breathe, as well as by their own natural tendencies. The average Briton far too rarely stoops to consider the question of Republicanism, but condemns it beforehand on aristocratic principles. Mr. Bodley, who wrote a singularly pretentious work on France, frequented Bonapartist circles, and sat at the feet of the Comte de Mun, and sundry other political noblemen of the same mind; and the consequence is two tomes to prove that what France wants is another Napoleon—the very thing that nearly ruined her. The daughter of a sister Republic carries her millions into France by marriage with some needy nobleman, who has already figured in no estimable light in the pages of contemporary history written by fashionable romancers, under the guise of fiction, and she perhaps brandishes her parasol at the head of a band of miscreants, called _La Jeunesse Royaliste_, in enthusiastic admiration of its mission to batter the hat of a guest, an old man, the Head of the State, the Representative of France before the world. Mr. Bodley’s ideal appears to be not the good of France, but the triumph of the ideal of the archbishops and owners of castles. The Republic is bad form, and he would fain see it overthrown for the pleasure of his good friend, the Comte de Mun. What the Parisianised, ennobled American subject wants is to see her admirable and chivalrous husband Court Chamberlain, or something of the sort;—she, too, yearns for the life which every other countess in Paris wants, a Court to confer a forgotten dignity upon herself, and if she longs for the re-establishment of the old privilege, it is in order to patronise and protect those she fondly deems her inferiors. Other rich or needy foreigners in Paris wish for a Court to shine at, a monarchy or an empire, to be able to boast of their powerful relations. And what none of them will see is that France, in her several experimental moods, is seriously labouring to discover the form of government best suited to her needs, and that the elect of the people still hope, through trial and blunder, to reach the ideal of a progressive liberality. But the passion, the earnestness, of all these Parisianised foreigners in their adoption of the several prejudices and aspirations of Paris prove the truth of my assertion, that Paris absorbs us in her furnace of ardent sentiments and theories as no other place does. We can not stand by and view the spectacle of her follies and furies like a philosopher. Needs must we go down into the fray, which in reality does not concern us, and brandish the stick or parasol of revolt, whatever our nationality. Needs must we adopt a party in the land which regards us mistrustfully as foreigners, and rewards our generous enthusiasm for its multiple causes by calling us “Sans-patrie,” “Jews,” and “Traitors from Frankfort,” subsidised