"In point of gaiety (for gaiety read dissipation) it affords nothing comparable with that of London. A few ministerial fetes every winter may perhaps exceed in brilliancy the balls given in our common routine of things; but for one entertainment in Paris at least thirty take place _chez nous_. Society is established with us on a wider and more splendid scale. The weekly _soirees_, on the other hand, which properly represent the society of this place, are dull, meagre, and formal to the last degree of formality. There is no brilliant point of reunion as at Almack's,--no theatre uniting, like our Italian Opera, the charm of the best company, the best music, and the best dancing. Of the thousand and one theatres boasted of by the Parisians, only three are of a nature to be frequented by people of consideration, the remainder being as much out of the question as the Pavilion or the Garrick. Dinner parties there are none; water parties none; _dejeuners_, unless given by a foreign ambassadress, none. A thousand accessories to London amusements are here wanting. In the month of May, I am told, the public gardens and the Bois de Boulogne become enchanting. But what is not charming in the month of May? Paris, perhaps, least of all places; for at the commencement of the month every French family of note quits the metropolis for its country seat, or for sea or mineral bathing. Foreigners and the mercantile and ministerial classes alone remain. What, then, I would fain discover, constitutes the peculiar merit of inducing persons uninstigated by motives of economy to fix themselves in the comfortless and filthy city, and call it Paradise? Alas! my solution of the problem is far from honourable to the taste of our absentees. _In Paris people are far less amenable than in London to the tribunal of public opinion_; or, as a lady once very candidly said to me, `One gets rid of one's friends and relations.'"