served-Patissiers. where you may regale on patties and ices-theatres and billiard rooms. But the Palais Royal, which is justly said by the Parisians to be without its equal in the world, demands to be principally noticed, now that I am to touch on these subjects. It is a square enclosure, formed of the buildings of the Orleans Palace; piazzas make a covered walk along three of its sides, and the center is an open gravelled space, with a few straight lines of slim trees running along its length. There is a neat compact elegance visible in the architecture of what was the palace-but the building is now insignificant compared with its purposes, and you can no more attend to its proportions, than you could fix your attention on the prospects adorning the banks of a river, if you were hurried down one of its cataracts. it suggests recollections of atro city, and supplies sights of fascina→ tion: it displays virtue and vice living on easy terms, and in immediate neighbourhood with each other. Excitements, indulgencies, and privations-art and vulgarity -science and ignorance-artful conspiracies, and careless debau cheries-all mingle here, forming an atmosphere of various exhalations, a whirl of the most lively images, a stimulating melange of what is most heating, intoxicating, and subduing. The Palais Royal was the focus of the revolution: its coffee-bouses, its theatres, its cellars, its gamb ling-houses, its bagnios, poured forth their living streams into its central space, to listen to the invitations of the orators, who incited the people to carry into effect the tremendous plans organized within its concealments. It was here, that a joke, or a nod, operating on a loose, reckless, heartless, rabble, was, in general, the mandate of torment and carnage-and sometimes, by well-timed and fortunately directed obscenity and falsehood, the instrument of dissipating the fury of those whom mercy could not soften, and justice could not restrain. A raging, vociferating gang of murderers, men and women, brandished their pikes to destroy the house and family of an aristocrat, who had himself escaped from their fury. An appeal to principle and feeling was out of the question at such a time, and to such beings; but a profigate pleasantry supplied the suitaThe Palais Royal has grown to ble application.Why pull down .be what it is, out of these habits his house?"-exclaimed the interand dispositions, and now presents cessor, mounted on a chair-" it › the most characteristic feature of is his landlord's :"- "why kill his -Paris: it is dissolute, gay, wretch-wife?"-" she is the public's:"ed, elegant, paltry, busy, and idle: why massacre his children?" The climate of France, and the character of the French, conspire to cause them to seek their pleastres out of doors. Home is the only place they neglect; it is a place only for their necessities; they must sleep there-and the tradesmen must transact their business there; a bed, a table, and a few chairs are therefore wanted, and a small room or two, uncarpeted and bare, must be hired. I speak, of course, of the middle and inferior classes. But all that is inspiring and comfortable, they seek out of doors and all that they pride themselves in being able to procure, is in the shape of decoration and amusement. す Q 2 "they "they are probably some of your own."-A yell of merriment broke out from the congregation of furies, and the laugh of vice proved, in this instance, a reprieve for the innocent. The infamous Duke of Orleans, to whom the palace belonged, here expended his immense wealth in nursing, by means of the most horrible immoralities, the revolution, of which he himself was the victim. The scenes that were acted here at that time are not susceptible of description: the almost unbounded revenues of this weak and wicked prince, were directed at the suggestion of the most abominable wretches, to every purpose of human depravity, included within the opposite limits of sensual indulgence, and cold and cruel ambition. From hence issued out the ferocious mobs of prostitutes, poissardes, and blackguards, whose character and conduct form the history, for several years, of a nation calling itself great. The day at length came, when he who had never been but the creature of those whom he fancied he guided, was to perish by the storm he had assisted to raise. The Duke of Orleans was dragged to his death by the mobs who had been trained in his pay, and his last journey was marked by an incident truly French those who had partaken of the debaucheries and crimes of the Palais Royal, stopped its owner opposite to its well-known gate, when he was on his way to the fatal machine that was to terminate his miseries and crimes! They wished to read in his haggard countenance the emotions caused by this sight, so pregnant with intolerable recollections; they could not deny themselves the indulgence of this extra barbarity; they would not be deprived of the right of exlting over the fall of guilt, in which they bad deeply participated! The Palais Royal is still a place where news and politics are discussed, and it puts on its air of bustling dissipation, and lounging sensuality, at an early hour of the morning. The chairs that are placed out under the trees, are to be bired, with a newspaper, for a couple of sous a piece: they are soon occupied; the crowd of sitters and standers gradually increases the buz of conversation swells to a noise-the cafes fillthe piazzas become crowded-the place assumes the look of intense and earnest avocation-yet the whirl and the rush are of those who float and drift in the vortex of pleasure, dissipation, and vice. The shops of the Palais Royal are brilliant; they are all devoted either to toys, ornaments, or luxuries. Nothing can be imagined more elegant and striking than their numerous collections of ornamental clock-cases; they are formed of the whitest alabaster, and many of them present very ingenious and fanciful devices. One, for instance, that I saw, was a female figure, in the garb and with the air of pleasure, hiding the hours with a fold of her scanty drapery; one hour alone peeped out, and that indicated the time of the day; the mechanism of the works caused it to be succeeded by the next in succession. There are also several passages at the back of the place itself, all full of this sort of display, though of an inferior kind, and including the features of vice in more distinct deformity. Many of the shops in these, are kept by small booksellers, who expose their wares beyond their windows on stalls; and the mention ing of this fact, induces me to notice here, two circumstances highly characteristic of Paris, and indicative of its moral and social state. The first is the extreme profligacy and filthiness. of the books and prints that are exposed for sale, The vilest publications lie about every where, throwing in your face a grossness which amounts rather to brutality than mere sensuality. It is a proof how deep and general is the viciousness of manners which causes this, that they run through all the degrees necessary to adapt them to every class of purchasers. Some are as elegant as art can make them,-others mere villainous deformities. There are editions of the works of all the established anthors, graduated for every description of taste:-in one the prints are chaste and good, in another licentiousness begins to appear, in a third it is more apparent,— in a fourth it amounts to obscenity. All these are finely executed, but there are others, regulated according to the same scale of wickednesss, which are done in a much inferior way for the wants of the poor. From the completeness of the supply may be judged the extensiveness and certainty of the demand. But the most horrible circumstance connected with this branch of Parisian manufacture remains to be told; it is so much a matter of common trade, that the women in the shops, and every shop is kept by a woman, vend these articles with the utmost unconcern. To return now to the Palais Royal. It may, after this digres sion, be supposed to be the hour of diuner; and the salons of the restorateurs are all full. In proportion as the homes of the Parisians are uncomfortable in an English man's estimation, their places of public resort and refreshment have an air of enjoyment, abundance, frankness, and congeniality, to which he has been utterly unac customed. From five to half past seven, crowds of both sexes pour into all the numerous receptacles of this description, the invitations to which hang forth so thick as to astonish the British stranger. The price charged within for dinner, is specified on many of the signs, and varies from twenty-five sous, about one shilling, to four franks, above three. For these sums four or five dishes a head are promised; half a bottle, or a bottle of wine, a desert of fruit, and bread "at discretion." The latter stipulation of this engagement is no trifling one, for it is known that a Frenchman's discretion in the article of bread, is not of the soberest kind. The superior Restorateurs, however, specify nothing;-and here both the supply and the serving-up are of the most elegant description. Casts from the exquisite antiques in the Louvre, stand in the niches,-lamps, with beautiful shades, throw a noble light on the tables,-the waiters are active, and Madame, the mistress, sits in her splendid recess, as a superintending divinity, decorated, stately, yet gracious; her looks full of the consciousness of her sex and station, her manner, welcoming, polished and adroit.-In the artifices of cookery, and all the seductions of the table, the French are adepts: -nothing can be more unfounded than the common idea in England, that they are comparatively temperate in this respect. Their variety of dishes tempts the appetite, their rich sauces apply themselves irresistably to the palate; instead of eating less meat, because they take take more soup than the English, they add the additional soup to a much larger repast of meat than is commonly made in England. A little delicate looking woman, will think it no violation to say-" 0, mon Dieu! j'ai mangé pour quatré, ---and really, both females and men apply themselves with a determination, dexterity, and carelessness of observation, to the contents of their numerous dishes, which, in a country where the secret is less known how to redeem by manner the essential grossness of things, would constitute downright gormandizing. a The advance of the evening throws out still more prominently the native and most peculiar fea tures of the Palais Royal. When the numerous windows of its immense mass of building are lighted up, and present to the eye, contemplating them from the dark and deserted ground in the center, burning exterior, leading the imagination to the lively scenes within, perhaps a more impressive spectacle is not to be found in the world. From the foundations of the building, floods of light stream up, and illuminate crowds that make their ingress and egress to and from the cellars, that are places both of amusement and refreshment: here there are dancing dogs, blind men who play on musical instruments, hallad singers, petite plays, and the game of dominos. The tables are crowded with men and womenwives mingle with prostitutes, tradesmen with sharpers; the refreshments are all of a light nature; nothing like intoxication is seen, and there is no very gross breach of decorum in behaviour. It is very certain, that if there were any similar places of resort in London, such abominable con duct would prevail among them, that they would become insufferable nuisances; whereas in Paris, there is nothing seen painfully to offend the eye, and this is enough to satisfy the Parisians that they ought not to shock the mind. In regard to the nuptial ties and abstinence from sensual indulgences, the French are notoriously less strict than the English : but their prostitutes are better behaved, and their public assemblages are not so boisterous-the causes of which are, that their women of the town are less a peculiar class than those of England. Above the cellars and the shops of the Palais Royal, there are the elegant Cafes, the common and licensed gambling houses and bagnios, and, still higber, the abodes of the guilty, male and female, of every description. The first mentioned (the Cafes) are in fact brilliant temples of luxury: on entering them for the first time, one is almost struck back by their glare of decoration and enjoyment. Ladies and gentlemen in their colours, and statues in their whiteness, and busy waiters, and painted walls, and sparkling delicacies of every kind, are mingled, and repeated, and extended in appearance to in finity, by numerous mirrors, which add vastness to elegance, and the effect of a crowd to the experience of accommodation. Leaving these scenes where pleasure puts on her gayest trappings, and appears in all her smiles and fascinations, you may enter others where her attire is coarser, and she has assumed more of the louring, jaded, desperate look of vice. The Cafe Montensier was a theatre during the revolu tionary period, and it still continues to be divided into galleries and The gambling rooms.constitute spectacles purely shocking. They are licensed and inspected by the government, and therefore they are orderly and regular on the surface of their arrangements and behaviour, but they are licensed by the government, and therefore they destroy the foundations of order, morals, honour, and loyalty. On entering these horrid places, you are first startled by the prepa ration of taking from you your hat and stick in the anti-chamber; when you proceed into the rooms where they play, your heart is withered by anxious looks, and a heated stillness, rendered more impressive by the small interruptions given to it by the sudden sharp click of a bit of wood, which intimates that the winner is seizing his money. About these hellish tables, half-pay officers, private soldiers, clerks, and ex-employes, are seen in a desperate contention with treacherous fortune; the expression of the face as the trembling hand puts down the piece of money is awful; one piece follows another; gold is succeeded by silver, and, from five franc coins, the unfortunate wretch is reduced to the risk of a single franc. He loses it, and leaves the room with a face that bespeaks him drained and desperate. For what atrocity is he not now prepared? The appearance of women at these tables is still more horrible; their sex, which is so susceptible of lovely appearances, natural and moral, seems equally calculated to display. the features of deformity in their most revolting aspects. There is yet much more that belongs to the Palais Royal, but I believe I have described all that will bear description. Prostitu tion dwells in its splendid apartments, parades its walks, starves in its garrets, and haunts its corners. It is not, certainly, so riotous in its manner as in England; but it is easy to see, that its profligacy is of a deeper, fouler, more nauseous kind. Old men and old women are employed as regular inviters, and they think they consult the interests of those who employ them, by putting their invitations in terms the most offensive to a manly taste. Such is the Palais Royal;-a vanity fair, a mart of sin and se duction! Open, not on one day of festival, or on a few holidays, but every day of the week. Every day does it present stimulants and opportunities to profligacy and extravagance, to waste, and riot, and idleness. It is there-always ready to receive the inclined, to tempt the irresolute, to confirm bad habits, and dispel good resolu tions. It is there, as a pestilential focus of what is dangerous and depraved, a collection of loose and desperate spirits, in the heart of a luxurious capital, as a point of union for every thing that is evil, where pleasure, in all her worst shapes, exists, in readiness to be adapted to every variety of disposition, and to enslave and corrupt the heart by making the senses despotic. There is but one Palais Royal in the world, say the Parisians, and it is well for the world that there is but one. Besides the amusements bere alluded to, there are ten theatres in Paris, |