At the bottom of all this, no doubt, will be found a constitutional melancholy that goes a great way to account for the opposite excesses into which the national character runs. A Frenchman is at heart the saddest man in the universe; but his nature is of great compass at both ends, being deficient only in the repose of the middle notes. And this constitutional melancholy opposed to the habitual frivolity (it never deserved to be called mirth) of the French is now more palpable than ever. Commercial depression has brought it out in its darkest colors. The people having got what they wanted, begin now to discover that they want every thing else. The shops are empty--the Palais Royal is as _triste_ as the suburb of a country town--and the drive in the Champs Elysées, in spite of its display of horsemen and private carriages, mixed up in motley cavalcade with hack cabriolets and omnibuses, is as different from what it used to be in the old days of the monarchy, as the castle of Dublin will be by-and-by, when the viceregal pageant is removed to London. The sparkling butterflies that used to flirt about in the gardens of the Tuileries, may now be seen pacing moodily along, their eyes fixed on the ground, and their hands in their pockets, sometimes with an old umbrella (which seems to be received by common assent as the emblem of broken-down fortunes), and sometimes with a brown paper parcel under their arms. The animal spirits of the Parisians are very much perplexed under these circumstances; and hence it is that they alternately try to drown their melancholy in draughts of fierce excitement, or to solace it by gentle sedatives. George Sand has done herself great honor by this charming little drama. That she should have chosen such a turbulent moment for such an experiment upon the public, is not the least remarkable incident connected with it. Only a few months before we heard of her midnight revels with the heads of the Repulican party in the midst of the fury and bloodshed of an _emeute_; and then follows close upon the blazing track of revolution, a picture of household virtues so sweet and tranquil, so full of tenderness and love, that it is difficult to believe it to be the production of the same hand that had recently flung flaming addresses, like brands, into the streets to set the town on fire. But we must be surprised at nothing that happens in France, where truth is so much stranger than fiction, as to extinguish the last fragment of an excuse for credulity and wonder. AMUSEMENTS OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.