Imagine a disciplined mind alive to the lessons of the past and yet with sympathy for casual impressions, free, intent and reflective,--and Paris becomes a museum of the world. Such a visitor wanders about the French capital with the zest of a philosopher; he warms at the frequent spectacle of enjoyable old age, notwithstanding the hecatombs left at Moscow and Waterloo, Sebastopol and Magenta; he reads on the dome of the Invalides the names of a hundred battle-fields; muses on the proximity of the lofty and time-stained Cathedral, and the little book-stall, where poor students linger in the sun; detects a government spy in the loquacious son of Crispin who acts as porter at his lodgings; pulls the _cordon bleu_ at a dear author's oaken door on the _quatrième etage_ in a social mood, and recalls Wellington's marquee on the Boulevard Italien, in the midst of the gay throng; notes the dexterity of a peripatetic shoeblack at his work; loves to sup in one of the restaurants of the Palais Royal, because there Dr. Franklin was entertained by the Duke of Orleans; remembers, at the church of St. Genevieve, that Abelard once lectured on its site; and, gazing on the beautiful ware in one of the cabinets of the Louvre, muses of the holy patience of Palissy. By the handsome quays and bridges of the Seine, he tries to realize that once only an islet covered with mud hovels met the wanderer's view. He smiles at the abundance of fancy names, some chosen for their romantic sound, and others for the renowned associations, which are attached to vocalist, shop, and mouchoir. He separates, in his thought, the incongruous emblems around him at this moment,--tricolor and cresent, St. George and the Lilies, 'God save the Queen' and High Mass, banners that have floated over adverse armies since the crusades,--amicably folded over the corpse of a French veteran! Nor are character and manners less suggestive to such an observer; if an American, he beholds with astonishment, after all he has heard of the proverbial courtesy of the French, women habitually yield the wall to men, and stops with ill-disguised impatience, on returning from an afternoon's ride, to have his carriage examined at the gate; contrasts the degraded state of the lower orders with the general urbanity and quietness of demeanor and the stern sway of political rule; marks the little crucifix and cup of holy water at the head of the peasant's bed, and the diamond cross on the lace kerchief of the kneeling empress; recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise of sentiment, and the exquisite mixture in their proceedings of tact, calculation, and geniality. * * * * * THE TRUE BASIS.