feature of depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books, and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are, doubtless, well read in the mysteries of. Paul de Kock and Madame du Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James's. Balzac has, it is true, a wide-spread reputation; but many of his books are no less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the age? The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable quarter of the town called St. Martin's lane. This sweeping mode of argument, _à particular_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a _short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance.