Another, and a very different novelty, is the new flower-market, that is now kept under the walls and columns of the majestic church of La Madeleine. This beautiful collection of flowers appears to me to produce from its situation a very singular effect: the relative attributes of art and nature are reversed;--for here, art seems sublime, vast, and enduring; while nature is small, fragile, and perishing. It has sometimes happened to me, after looking at a work of art which raised my admiration to enthusiasm, that I have next sought some marvellous combination of mountain and valley, rock and river, forest and cataract, and felt as I gazed on them something like shame at remembering how nearly I had suffered the work of man to produce an equal ecstasy. But here, when I raised my eyes from the little flimsy crowd of many-coloured blossoms to the simple, solemn pomp of that long arcade, with its spotless purity of tint and its enduring majesty of graceful strength, I felt half inclined to scorn myself and those around me for being so very much occupied by the roses, pinks, and mignonette spread out before it. Laying aside, however, all philosophical reflections on its locality, this new flower-market is a delightful acquisition to the Parisian _petite maîtresse_. It was a long expedition to visit the _marché aux fleurs_ on the distant quay near Notre Dame; and though its beauty and its fragrance might well repay an hour or two stolen from the pillow, the sweet decorations it offered to the boudoir must have been oftener selected by the _maître d'hôtel_ or the _femme de chambre_ than by the fair lady herself. But now, three times in the week we may have the pleasure of seeing numbers of graceful females in that piquant species of dishabille, which, uniting an equal portion of careful coquetry and saucy indifference, gives to the morning attire of a pretty, elegant, Frenchwoman, an air so indescribably attractive. Followed by a neat _soubrette_, such figures may now be often seen in the flower-market of the Madeleine before the brightness of the morning has faded either from their eyes, or the blossoms they so love to gaze upon. The most ordinary linen gown, made in the form of a wrapper--the hair _en papillote_--the plain straw-bonnet drawn forward over the eyes, and the vast shawl enveloping the whole figure, might suffice to make many an _élégante_ pace up and down the fragrant alley incognita, did not the observant eye remark that a veil of rich lace secured the simple bonnet under the chin--that the shawl was of cashmere--and that the little hand, when ungloved to enjoy the touch of a myrtle or an orange blossom, was as white as either. LETTER XXVI. Delicacy in France and in England.--Causes of the difference between them.