FRENCH PLAYERS AND PLAYHOUSES.[13]

[13] "_The Theatres of Paris_. By Charles Hervey." London and Paris,
1846.


In these dull days of latter winter few of our readers will quarrel with
us for transporting them to the gayest capital in Europe, the city of
pleasure, the Capua of the age. In London, at least, there is just now
little to regret; it wears its dreariest, dirtiest, and most
disconsolate garb. The streets are slippery with black mud and blacker
ice, a yellow halo surrounds the gas lamps, even the Bude lights look
quenched and uncomfortable; cabmen, peevish at the paucity of fares,
curse with triple intensity the wood pavement and the luckless garrons
that slide and stumble over it; the blue and benumbed fingers of Italian
grinders can scarcely turn the organ handles; tattered children and
half-starved women, pale, shivering, and tearful, pester the pedestrian
with offers of knitted wares, and of winter nosegays, meagre and
miserable as themselves. The popular cheerfulness and merry-making of
Christmas time are over, and have not yet been succeeded by the bustle
and gaiety of the fashionable world. London is abandoned to its million
of nobodies; the few thousands whose presence gives it life are still on
the list of absentees.

Mark the contrast. But a minute ago we were in London--dull, empty
London--and behold! we are in Paris--gay, crowded, lively Paris--now
at the height of its season, and in full swing of carnival dissipation.