It is not the necessaries, but the luxuries of life that are cheaper here. Wine, ornamental furniture, the keep of horses, the price of carriages, the entrance to theatres, wax-lights, fruit, books, the rent of handsome apartments, the wages of men-servants, are all greatly cheaper, and direct taxes greatly less. But even this is not the chief reason why a residence in Paris may be found economical to persons of any pretension to rank or style at home. The necessity for parade, so much the most costly of all the appendages to rank, may here be greatly dispensed with, and that without any degradation whatever. In short, the advantage of living in Paris as a matter of economy depends entirely upon the degree of luxury to be obtained. There are certainly many points of delicacy and refinement in the English manner of living which I should be very sorry to see given up as national peculiarities; but I think we should gain much in many ways could we learn to hang our consequence less upon the comparison of what others do. We shudder at the cruel madness of the tyrant who would force every form to reach one standard; but those are hardly less mad who insist that every one, to live _comme il faut_, must live, or appear to live, exactly as others do, though the means of doing so may vary among the silly set so prescribed to, from an income that may justify any extravagance to one that can honestly supply none. This is a folly of incalculably rarer occurrence here than in England; and it certainly is no proof of the good sense of our "most thinking people," that for one private family brought to ruin by extravagance in France, there are fifty who suffer from this cause in England. It is easy to perceive that our great wealth has been the cause of this. The general scale of expense has been set so high, that thousands who have lived in reference to that, rather than to their individual fortunes, have been ruined by the blunder; and I really know no remedy so likely to cure the evil as a residence in Paris; not, however, so much as a means of saving money, as of making a series of experiments which may teach them how to make the best and most enjoyable use of it. I am persuaded, that if it were to become as much the fashion to imitate the French independence of mind in our style of living, as it now is to copy them in ragoûts, bonnets, moustaches, and or-molu, we should greatly increase our stock of real genuine enjoyment. If no English lady should ever again feel a pang at her heart because she saw more tall footmen in her neighbour's hall than in her own--if no sighs were breathed in secret in any club-house or at any sale, because Jack Somebody's stud was a cut above us--if no bills were run up at Gunter's, or at Howell and James's, because it was worse than death to be outdone,--we should unquestionably be a happier and a more respectable people than we are at present.