of the early church with that of the first French kings; the site of a _fosse commune_ attests the valor of republican martyrs; the Champs Elysées are the popular earthly fields of a French paradise. One _café_ is famed for the beauty of its mistress, another for the great chess-players who make it a resort; one is the daily rendezvous of the liberals, another of royalists, one of military men, another of artists; they flourish and fade with dynasties, and are respectively the favorites of provincials and citizens, gourmands and traders, men of letters and men of state.[A] The _Monte de Piété_ acquaints us with the vicissitudes and expedients of fortune; the _Hotel Dieu_ is a temple of ancient charity; the _Hospice des Enfants Trouvées_ startles us with the astounding fact that half the children born in Paris are illegitimate; and the Morgue yields no less appalling statistics of suicide. In Vernet's studio we feel the predominance of military taste and education in France; in the _Ecole Polytecnique_, the policy by which her youth are bred to serve their country; at the manufactories of the Gobelines and Sévres china, we perceive how naturally the mechanical genius of the race finds development in pottery and fabrics instead of ships and machines, as across the Channel and beyond the ocean; and in the self-possession, knowledge of affairs, and variety of occupation of the middle class of women, we see why they have no occasion to advocate their rights and complain of the inequality of the sexes. [Footnote A: 'Mes habitudes de dîner chez les restaurants,' says a Parisian philosopher, 'ont été pour moi une source intarrissable de surprises, de decouvertes, et de revelations sur l'humanité.']