If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble café’s in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers, representing “Les Gloires de l’Armée Française,” the “Seasons,” the “Four Quarters of the World,” “Cupid and Psyche,” or some other allegory, landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, is undeniable. In Paris, the manner in which the cafés and houses of the restaurateurs are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums were expended upon the painting of “Véry’s” or “Véfour’s,” of the “Salle Musard,” or of numberless other places of public resort in the capital. There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a marchand de vin. These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people. But the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family, however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English quarter, or of his little room au sixième in the Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds. In the first, probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp. We have named here, we believe, the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those—as doubtless there are many—of our readers who have looked over Monsieur Aubert’s portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte’s little emporium in the Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all these artists are in their genre. We get in these engravings the loisirs of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity, as with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of