Take a couple of instances from "actual life" as the fashionable novel-puffers say.

A little, fat, silly woman, who in no country but this would ever have pretensions to beauty, has lately set up a circulating library in our street. She lends the five-franc editions of the English novels, as well as the romances of her own country, and I have had several of the former works of fiction from her store: Bulwer's "Night and Morning," very pleasant, kind-hearted reading; "Peter Priggins," an astonishing work of slang, that ought to be translated if but to give Europe an idea of what a gay young gentleman in England sometimes is; and other novels never mind what. But to revert to the fat

woman.

She sits all day ogling and simpering behind her little counter; and from the slow, prim, precise way in which she lets her silly sentences slip through her mouth, you see at once that she is quite satisfied with them, and expects that every customer should give her an opportunity of uttering a few of them for his benefit. Going there for a book I always find myself entangled in a quarter of an hour's conversation.

This is carried on in not very bad French on my part; at least I find that when I say something genteel to the library-woman, she is not at a loss to understand me, and we have passed already many minutes in this kind of intercourse. Two days since, returning "Night and Morning to the library-lady, and demanding the romance of Peter Priggins," she offered me instead "Ida," par M. le Vicomte Darlincourt, which I refused, having already experienced some of his lordship's works; next she produced "Stella," Valida," "Eloa," by various French ladies of literary celebrity; but again I deelined, declaring respectfully that however agreeable the society of ladies might be, I found their works a little insipid. The fact is, that after

being accustomed to such potent mixtures as the French romancers offer you, the mild compositions of the French romanceresses pall on the palate.*

"Madame," says I, to cut the matter short, je ne demande qu'un roman Anglais, Peter Priggins;' l'avez vous ? oui ou non?"

"Ah!" says the library-woman, "Monsieur ne comprend pas nôtre langue c'est dommage."

Now one might, at first sight, fancy the above speech an epigram, and not a bad one, on an Englishman's blundering French grammar and pronunciation; but those who know the library-lady must be aware that she never was guilty of such a thing in her life. It was simply a French bull, resulting from the lady's dulness, and by no means a sarcasm. She uttered the words with a great air of superiority and a prim toss of the head, as much as to say, "How much cleverer I am than you, you silly foreigner! and what a fine thing it is in me to know the finest language in the world!" In this way I have heard donkeys of our two countries address foreigners in broken English or French, as if people who could not understand a language when properly spoken could comprehend it when spoken ill. Why the deuce do people give themselves these impertinent, stupid airs of superiority, and pique themselves upon the great cleverness of speaking their own language ?

Take another instance of this same egregious national conceit. At the English pastry-cook's (you can't readily find a prettier or more graceful woman than Madame Colombin, nor better plum-cake than she sells)

* In our own country, of course, Mrs. Charles Gore, Miss Edgeworth, Miss FerTrollope, Miss Mitford, Miss Pardoe, Mrs. rier, Miss Stickney, Miss Barrett, Lady Blessington, Miss Smith, Mrs. Austin, Miss Austin, &c., form exceptions to this this note a humble tribute of admiration rule; and glad am I to offer per favor of to those ladies.

- at Madame Colombin's, yesterday, a huge Briton, with sandy whiskers and a double chin, was swallowing patties and cherry-brandy, and all the while making remarks to a friend similarly employed. They were talking about English and French ships. "Hang me, Higgins," says Sandywhiskers, "if I'd ever go into one of their cursed French ships! I should be afraid of sinking at the very first puff of wind!"

What Higgins replied does not matter. But think what a number of Sandy-whiskerses there are in our nation, fellows who are proud of this stupid mistrust, who think it a mark of national spirit to despise French skill, bravery, cookery, seamanship, and what not. Swallow your beef and porter, you great, fatpaunched man; enjoy your language and your country, as you have been bred to do; but don't fancy yourself, on account of these inheritances of yours, superior to other people of other ways and language. You have luck, perhaps, if you will, in having such a diet and dwelling-place, but no merit.... And with this little discursive essay upon national prejudices, let us come back to the pictures, and finish our walk through the gallery.

In that agreeable branch of the art for which we have I believe no name, but which the French call genre, there are at Paris several eminent professors; and as upon the French stage the costume-pieces are far better produced than with us, so also are French costume-pictures much more accurately and characteristically handled than are such subjects in our own country. You do not see Cimabue and Giotto in the costume of Francis the First, as they appeared (depicted by Mr. Simpson, I think) in the Royal Academy Exhibition of last year; but the artists go to some trouble for collecting their antiquarian stuff, and paint it pretty scrupulously.

Mr. Jacquard has some pretty small pictures de genre; a very good one,

indeed, of fat "Monks granting Absolution from Fasting; "of which the details are finely and accurately painted, a task more casy for a French artist than an English one, for the former's studio (as may be seen by a picture in this exhibition) is generally a magnificent curiosity-shop; and for old carvings, screens, crockery, armors, draperies, &c., the painter here has but to look to his own walls and copy away at his ease. Accordingly, Jacquard's monks, especially all the properties of the picture, are admirable.

M. Baron has "The Youth of Ribera," a merry Spanish beggarboy, among a crowd of his like, drawing sketches of them under a gardenwall. The figures are very prettily thought and grouped; there is a fine terrace, and palace, and statues in the background, very rich and luxurious; perhaps too pretty and gay in colors, and too strong in details.

But the king of the painters of small history subjects, is M. Robert Fleury; a great artist indeed, and I trust heartily he may be induced to send one or two of his pieces to London, to show our people what he can do. His mind, judging from his works, is rather of a gloomy turn; and he deals somewhat too much, to my taste, in the horrible. He has this year “A Scene in the Inquisition." A man is howling and writhing with his feet over a fire; grim inquis itors are watching over him; and a dreadful executioner, with fierce eyes peering from under a mysterious capuchin, is doggedly sitting over the coals. The picture is downright horror, but admirably and honestly drawn; and in effect rich, sombre, and simple.

"Benvenuto Cellini" is better still; and the critics have lauded the piece as giving a good idea of the fierce, fantastic Florentine sculptor; but I think M. Fleury has taken him in too grim a mood, and made his ferocity too downright. There was always a dash of the ridiculous in the

man, even in his most truculent moments; and I fancy that such simple rage as is here represented scarcely characterizes him. The fellow never cut a throat without some sense of humor, and here we have him greatly too majestic to my taste.

"Old Michael Angelo watching over the Sick-bed of his servant Urbino," is a noble painting; as fine in feeling as in design and color. One can't but admire in all these the manliness of the artist. The picture is painted in a large, rich, massive, vigorous manner; and it is gratifying to see that this great man, after resolute seeking for many years, has found the full use of his hand at last, and can express himself as he would. The picture is fit to hang in the very best gallery in the world; and a century hence will no doubt be worth five times as many crowns as the artist asks or has had for it.

Being on the subject of great pic tures, let us here mention,

712. "Portrait of a Lady," by Hippoly to Flandrin.

Of this portrait all I can say is, that if you take the best portraits by the best masters, - a head of Sebastian or Michael Angelo, a head of Raffaelle, or one of those rarer ones of Andria del Sarto, -not one of them, for lofty character and majestic nobleness and simplicity, can surpass this magnificent work.

This seems, doubtless, very exaggerated praise, and people reading it may possibly sneer at the critic who ventures to speak in such a way. To all such I say, Come and see it. You who admire Sir Thomas and the "Books of Beauty" will possibly not admire it; you who give ten thousand guineas for a blowsy Murillo will not possibly relish M. Flandrin's manner; but you who love simplicity and greatness come and see how an old lady, with a black mantilla, and dark eyes, and gray hair, and a few red flowers in her cap, has been painted by M. Flandrin of Lyons. If I were Louis Philippe, I would send a legion

of-honor cross, of the biggest sort, to decorate the bosom of the painter who has executed this noble piece.

As for portraits (with the exception of this one, which no man in England can equal, not even Mr. Samuel Lawrence, who is trying to get to this point, but has not reached it yet), our English painters keep the lead still, nor is there much remarkable among the hundreds in the gal lery. There are vast numbers of English faces staring at you from the canvases; and among the miniatures especially, one can't help laughing at the continual recurrence of the healthy, vacant, simpering, aristocratic English type. There are black velvets and satins, ladies with birds of paradise, deputies on sofas, and gencrals and marshals in the midst of smoke and cannon-balls. Nothing can be less to my taste than a potbellied, swaggering Marshal Soult, who rests his baton on his stomach, and looks at you in the midst of a dim cloud of war. The Duchess de Nemours is done by M. Winterhalter, and has a place of honor, as becomes a good portrait; and, above all, such a pretty lady. She is a pretty, smiling, buxom blonde, with plenty of hair, and rather too much hands, not to speak disrespectfully; and a slice of lace which goes across the middle of her white satin gown seems to cut the picture very disagreeably in two. There is a beautiful head in a large portrait of a lad of eighteen, painted by himself; and here may be mentioned two single figures in pastel by an architect, remarkable for earnest, spirituel beauty; likewise two heads in chalk by De Rudder, most charming sketches, full of delicacy, grace, and truth.

The only one of the acknowledged great who has exhibited this year is M. Delacroix, who has a large picture relative to the siege of Constantinople, that looks very like a piece of crumpled tapestry, but that has, nevertheless, its admirers, and its merits, as what work of his has not?

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PARIS, July 20th, 1843. If I had been his Majesty Louis Philippe, and the caricaturist had made fun of me ever so, I would, for the sake of the country, have put up with the insultaye, perhaps have gone a little further and encouraged it. I would be a good king, and give a premium to any fellow who, for a certain number of hours, could make a certain number of my subjects laugh. I would take the Salle des Pas perdus, and have an exhibition of caricature-cartoons, with a dozen of handsome prizes for the artists who should invent the dozen ugliest likenesses of me. But, wise as the French King proverbially is, he has not attained this degree of wisdom. Let a poor devil but draw the royal face like a pear now, or in the similitude of a brioche, and he, his printer, and publisher, are clapped into prison for months, severe fines are imposed upon them, their wives languish in their absence, their children are deprived of their bread, and, pressing round the female author of their days, say sadly, "mama, où et notre père ?"

It ought not to be so. Laughing never did harm to any one yet; or if laughing does harm, and kings' majesties suffer from the exhibition of caricatures, let them suffer. Mon Dieu ! it is the lesser evil of the two. Majesties are to be had any day; but many a day passes without a good joke. Let us cherish those that come. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that the opinion commonly held about the gaieté Française is no more than a mystification, a vulgar practical joke of the sort which the benevolent mind abhors. For it is a shame to promise

us something pleasant, and then disappoint us. Men and children feel in this matter alike. To give a child an egg-shell, under pretence that it is an egg, is a joke; but the child roars in reply, and from such joking the gentle spirit turns away abashed, disgusted.

So about the gaiété Française. We are told that it still exists, and are invited by persons to sit down and make a meal of it. But it is almost all gone. Somebody has scooped out all the inside and swallowed it, and left only the shell behind. I declare, for my part, I know few countries where there is less joking than in France; it is of a piece with the boasted amenity and politeness of the Gauls. Really and truly, there is more real and true politeness in Wapping than in the Champs Elysées. People whom the stranger addresses give him civil answers, and they are leaving off this in France. Men in Wapping do not jostle ladies off the street, and this they do in France, where the charcoal man, drinking at the corner of the wine-shop, will let a lady's muslin slip into the gutter rather than step aside an inch to allow her to pass.

In the matter of novels especially, the national jocularity has certainly passed away. Paul de Kock writes now in such a way as not to make you laugh, but to make you blush for the intolerable vulgarity of the man. His last book is so little humorous that even the English must give him up-the English, whose island is said after dinner to be "the home of the world," and who certainly gave Monsieur Paul a very hearty wel