multiplicity of words it must happen of course that a certain quantum
of ideas is intermixed: and somehow or other, by dint of listening,
talking, and looking about them, people _do_ learn, and information to
a certain point is general. Those who have knowledge are not shy of
imparting it, and those who are ignorant take care not to seem so; but
are sometimes agreeable, often amusing, and seldom _bêtes_. Nowhere
have I seen unformed sheepish boys, nowhere the surliness,
awkwardness, ungraciousness, and uneasy proud bashfulness, I have seen
in the best companies in England. Our French friend Lucien has, at
fifteen, the air and conversation of a finished gentleman; and our
English friend C---- is at eighteen, the veriest log of a lumpish
school-boy that ever entered a room. What I have seen of society, I
like: the delicious climate too, the rich skies, the clear elastic
atmosphere, the _out of doors_ life the people lead, are all (in
summer at least) delightful. There may be less _comfort_ here; but
nobody feels the want of it; and there is certainly more
amusement--and amusement is here truly "le suprême bonheur."
Happiness, according to the French meaning of the word, lies more on
the surface of life: it is a sort of happiness which is cheap and ever
at hand. This is the place to live in for the merry poor man, or the
melancholy rich one: for those who have too much money, and those who
have too little; for those who only wish, like the Irishman "to live
all the days of their life,"--_prendre en légère monnaie la somme des
plaisirs_: but to the thinking, the feeling, the domestic man, who
only exists, enjoys, suffers through his affections--

"Who is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noonday grove--"

to such a one, Paris must be nothing better than a vast frippery shop,