Political economists assert that the supply of every article follows the demand for it in a degree nicely proportioned to the wants of the population; and it is upon this principle, I presume, that we must account for the present affluence of a talent which some few years ago could hardly be said to exist in France, and might perhaps have been altogether denied to it, had not the pages both of Fenelon and his eloquent antagonist, Bossuet, rendered such an injustice impossible. It was, I think, about a dozen years ago that I took some trouble to discover if any traces of this glorious eloquence remained at Paris. I heard sermons at Notre Dame--at St. Roch--at St. Eustache; but never was a search after talent attended with worse success. The preachers were nought; they had the air, too, of being vulgar and uneducated men,--which I believe was, and indeed still is, very frequently the case. The churches were nearly empty; and the few persons scattered up and down their splendid aisles appeared, generally speaking, to be of the very lowest order of old women. How great is now the contrast! Nowhere are we so certain of seeing a crowd of elegantly-dressed and distinguished persons as in the principal churches of Paris. Nor is it a crowd that mocks the eye with any tinsel pretensions to a rank they do not possess. Inquire who it is that so meekly and devoutly kneels on one side of you--that so sedulously turns the pages of her prayer-book on the other, and you will be answered by the announcement of the noblest names remaining in France. Though the eloquence of the pulpit has always been an object of attention and interest to me in all countries, I hardly ventured on my first arrival here to inquire again if anything of the kind existed, lest I should once more be sent to listen to an inaudible mumbling preacher, and to look at the deaf and dozing old women who formed his congregation. But it has needed no inquiry to make us speedily acquainted with the fact, that the churches have become the favourite resort of the young, the beautiful, the high-born, and the instructed. Whence comes this change? "Have you heard l'Abbé Coeur?" was a question asked me before I had been here a week, by one who would not for worlds have been accounted _rococo_. When I replied that I had not even heard of him, I saw plainly that it was decided I could know very little indeed of what was going on in Paris. "That is really extraordinary! but I engage you to go without delay. He is, I assure you, quite as much the fashion as Taglioni."