liking to England and its inhabitants. The Dowager Lady Hawarden, the
Marquise de Brehan, the Baroness d'Etlingen, Madame d'Ocaris, Lady
Barbara Craufurd, and Lady Combermere, composed the rest of the female
portion of the party.

Lady Hawarden has been very pretty: what a melancholy phrase is this
same _has been_! The Marquise de Brehan is still a very fine woman;
Lady Combermere is very agreeable, and sings with great expression; and
the rest of the ladies, always excepting Lady Barbara Craufurd, who is
very pretty, were very much like most other ladies of a certain time of
life--addicted to silks and blondes, and well aware of their relative
prices.

Madame Craufurd is very amusing. With all the _naïveté_ of a child, she
possesses a quick perception of character and a freshness of feeling
rarely found in a person of her advanced age, and her observations are
full of originality.

The tone of society at Paris is very agreeable. Literature, the fine
arts, and the general occurrences of the day, furnish the topics for
conversation, from which ill-natured remarks are exploded. A
ceremoniousness of manner, reminding one of _la Vieille Cour_, and
probably rendered _à la mode_ by the restoration of the Bourbons,
prevails; as well as a strict observance of deferential respect from
the men towards the women, while these last seem to assume that
superiority accorded to them in manner, if not entertained in fact, by
the sterner sex.

The attention paid by young men to old women in Parisian society is
very edifying, and any breach of it would be esteemed nothing short of