"Do you know ---- ----?" has been a question I have repeatedly asked respecting a person whose name is cited in England as the most esteemed French writer of the age,--and so cited, moreover, to prove the low standard of French taste and principle. "No, madam," has been invariably the cold reply. "Or ----?" "No. He is not in society." "Or ----?" "Oh no! His works live an hour (too long!) and are forgotten." Should I therefore, my friend, return from France with an higher idea of its good taste and morality than I had when I entered it, think not that my own standard of what is right has been lowered, but only that I have had the pleasure of finding it differed much less than I expected from that of our agreeable and hardly-judged neighbours on this side the water. But I shall probably recur to this subject again; and so, for the present, farewell! FOOTNOTE: [2] G. Sand. LETTER X. Lonchamps.--The "Three Hours' Agony" at St. Roch.--Sermons on the Gospel of Good-Friday.--Prospects of the Catholics.--O'Connell. I dare say you may know, my friend, though I did not, that the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Passion-week are yearly set apart by the Parisians for a splendid promenade in carriages, on horseback, and on foot, to a part of the Bois de Boulogne called Lonchamps. What the origin could be of so gay and brilliant an assemblage of people and equipages, evidently coming together to be stared at and to stare, on days so generally devoted to religious exercises, rather puzzled me; but I have obtained a most satisfactory explanation, which, in the hope of your ignorance, I will communicate. The custom itself, it seems, is a sort of religious exercise; or, at any rate, it was so at the time of its institution. When the _beau monde_ of Paris first adopted the practice of repairing to Lonchamps during these days of penitence and prayer, a convent stood there, whose nuns were celebrated for performing the solemn services appointed for the season with peculiar piety and effect. They sustained this reputation for many years; and for many years all who could find admittance within their church thronged to hear their sweet voices. This convent was destroyed at _the_ revolution (_par excellence_), but the horses and carriages of Paris still continue to move for evermore in the same direction when the last three days of Lent arrive. The cavalcade assembled on this occasion forms an extremely pretty spectacle, rivalling a spring Sunday in Hyde Park as to the number and elegance of the equipages, and greatly exceeding it in the beauty and extent of the magnificent road on which they show themselves. Though the attending this congregation of wealth, rank, and fashion is still called "going to Lonchamps," the evolutions of the company, whether in carriages, on horseback, or on foot, are at present almost wholly confined to the noble avenue which leads from the entrance to the Champs Elysées up to the Barrière de l'Etoile.