independent of its achievements, one of self-respect, of growing
knowledge, and assured satisfaction. Without some pursuit thus enlisting
the higher powers and justifying, as it were, the independent career of
a resident, it is astonishing how the crust of selfishness gathers over
the heart in Paris; the habit of living with an exclusive view to
personal enjoyment, where the arrangements of life are so favorable,
becomes at last engrossing; and a soulless machine, with no instincts
but those of self-gratification, is often the result, especially if no
ties of kindred mitigate the hardihood of epicurism.

We soon learn to echo Rochefoucauld's words as he entered Mazarin's
carriage,--'everything happens in France;' and, like Goethe, cast
ourselves on the waves of accident with a more than Quixotic
presage,--if not of actual adventure, at least of adventurous
observation; for it is a realm where Fashion, the capricious tyrant of
modern civilization, has her birth, where the '_vielle femme remplissait
une mission importante et tutelaire pour tous les âges_;' where the
_raconteur_ exists not less in society than in literature; the elysium
of the scholar, the nucleus of opinion, the arena of pleasure, and the
head-quarters of experiment, scientific, political, artistic, and
social.

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,