All this, to be sure, is two months old, and belonged to that festive season of the Paris year, which goes before the summer. Now, if report speaks true, with provincials gone home, and the booths along the Champs Elyssées struck, and the theatric stars escaped to Belgium, or the Springs, the Parisian is himself again. He takes his evening drive in the Bois de Boulogne; he fishes for invitations to Meudon, or St. Cloud; he plots a descent upon Boulogne, or Aix la Chapelle; he studies the summer fashions from his apartments on the Boulevard de la Madeleine; he takes his river-bath by the bridge of the Institute; he smokes his evening cigar under the trees by the National Circus; and he speculates vaguely upon the imperial prospects of his President, the Prince Louis. Meantime, fresh English and Americans come thronging in by the Northern road, and the Havre road, and the road from Strasbourg. They cover every floor of every hotel and _maison garnie_ in the Rue Rivoli. They buy up all the couriers and valets-de-place; they swarm in the jewelry and the bronze shops of the Rue de la Paix; and they call, in bad French, for every dish that graces the _carte du jour_ in the restaurants of the Palais Royal. They branch off toward the Apennines and the Alps, in flocks; and, if report speak true, the Americans will this year outnumber upon the mountains of Switzerland both French and German travelers. Indeed, Geneva, and Zurich, and Lucerne, are now discussed and brought into the map of tourists, as thoughtlessly as, ten years since, they compared the charms of the Blue Lick and the Sharon waters. Look at it a moment: Ten days, under the Collins guidance, will land a man in Liverpool. Three days more will give him a look at the Tower, the Parks, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Paternoster Row; and on the fourth he may find himself swimming in a first-class French car, on damask cushions, at forty miles the hour from Boulogne to Paris. Five days in the capital will show him (specially if he is free of service-money) the palaces of Versailles, the Louvre, the park at St. Cloud, the church of Notre Dame, the Madeleine, the Bourse, the Dead House, a score of balls, half as many theatres, the pick of the shops, and the great Louis himself. Three other summer days, allowing a ten hours' tramp over the galleries and sombre grounds of Fontainebleau, will set him down, at the door of "mine host" of the Hotel de l'Ecu, in the city of Geneva, and he will brush the dews from his eyes in the morning, within sight of the "blue, arrowy Rhone," and "placid Leman, and the bald white peak of Mont Blanc." A Sunday in the Genevese church, will rest his aching limbs, and give him hearing of such high doctrine as comes from the lips of Merle d'Aubigné, and Monday will drift him on _char-a-banc_ straight down through wooded Sardinia--reading Coleridge's Hymn--into the marvelous valley of Chamouny.