FROM DR. RUDOLF STAUB, IN PARIS, TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH, AT GOTTINGEN.

My dear brother in Science--I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you
the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned then that I intended to
leave my hotel, not finding it sufficiently local and national. It was
kept by a Pomeranian, and the waiters, without exception, were from the
Fatherland. I fancied myself at Berlin, Unter den Linden, and I
reflected that, having taken the serious step of visiting the
head-quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and project myself; as
much as possible, into the circumstances which are in part the
consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity. It
seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this
preliminary operation of placing myself in relations, as slightly as
possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of
causes, with the spontaneous home-life of the country.

I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French
extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income
insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-
gratification, by providing food and lodging for a limited number of
distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room alone
in the house, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance,
which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement,
though very lucidly proposed by myself; was not acceptable to the
mistress of the establishment (a woman with a mathematical head), and I
have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the
opportunity that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of
studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French
nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the
satisfaction of the _taste_, which is the governing quality in its