Notwithstanding the raptures in which our people spoke of Paris, which some of them visited the very first evening of our coming here, yet it was only a day or two ago that I could tear myself from the country and go thither. The village and _les villageois_ had not yet lost the freshness of novelty. Strolling about the street gossiping with the people has been a source of infinite amusement to me, and I have been much interested in observing their peculiar manners and habits. The harvest, which has just commenced, causes considerable stir in the village, as all the produce of the fields is brought to be stored in their granaries here. The villages round Paris have anything but a rural aspect: houses of stone, roofed either with tiles or slates, from two to three and even four storeys high; large windows, like those of town houses; the attics are their granaries, hay-lofts, &c., and a window or door, furnished with a crane and tackle similar to those of our merchants’ stores, furnishes the means of hoisting in the sheaves, bundles of hay, &c. The consequence of this is, that our streets are all in a bustle--loaded carts continually arriving from the fields, and drawing up under the entrance-window of their respective houses. Bundles and sheaves are mounting into the air, and various gossiping groups are formed below. The peasantry in this neighbourhood are almost all of them proprietors of the lands they cultivate. As with us, the law obliges every man to put his name, &c., on his cart; so we see continually “Jacques Bonnemain, cultivateur,” “Jean le Mery, propriétaire,” &c. The figures composing these street-groups are sturdy well-made men; much more active and springy than our clowns, although sufficiently rustic. Their costume, too, widely differs from everything we are accustomed to associate with rusticity. The bronzed visage, surrounded by its setting of black locks, surmounted by the _bonnet de nuit_, usually white, or having once been so, round jackets of blue-striped cotton stuff, and trousers of the same--bare feet, thrust into a pair of clumsy _sabots_, complete the costume. Amongst the young men and boys I have remarked a much greater proportion of handsome intelligent faces than one usually sees in any English village; our rustics are generally coarse-featured, and have a most unintellectual expression of face. The French peasant not only has the advantage in point of person and carriage, but infinitely so in his address. The women partake of the labours of the field, and enter largely into the composition of our village groups. Their general costume is not unpicturesque. They are always without gowns, the exposed stays (not always very clean) sometimes laced up, sometimes quite loose and open; blue and white, or pink-striped petticoats; neck partially covered by a coloured handkerchief (_fichu_[13]); the head by another, gracefully turned round it, something in the