many a finished landscape, destined to grace a crystal boudoir, or decorate a gilded pavillion, has ferved to furnish the fair artist with the cruft of bread which, in fome lonely garret, fhe moistens with her tears. What a long and mournful page of tranfitions the domestic annals of a revolution contain ! CHAP. CHAP. III. Amusements of Paris.-Balls.-Festivals.—Supper given by a Contractor:-Drefs.-Parallel between a Contractor and a Stock-holder.-New Ariftocracy.-Modern Royalifts.-Odeon.-Bals à la Victime.—Tivoli.—Elyfium.Bagatelle and other Public Gardens.-Glaciers of Paris. IF the morning at Paris is devoted to bufiness, the evening at least belongs to pleafure: over thofe hours fhe holds an undivided empire, but is worshipped at innumerable altars, and hailed by ever-varying rituals. During the last winter the amufements of twenty-four theatres, which were opened every night, were every night fucceeded by public and private balls, in fuch numbers, that there were no lefs than two thousand ball-rooms infcribed on the registers of the police, which keeps its wakeful vigils over every fort of amufement, in all their gradations, from the bright blaze of waxen tapers which difplays the charms of nymphs dreffed dreffed à la fauvage, or à la grec, who grace the fplendid ball de Richlieu; to the oily lamp which lights up the seventh story, or the vaulted cellar, where the blind fidler's animating fcrape calls the fovereign people to the cotillon of wooden fhoes. These two thoufand ball-rooms of the capital afford ample proof that no revolution has taken place in the manners of the French, and that they are still a dancing nation. They have indeed of late fully demonstrated to the world that they are capable of greater things; and that when the energies of their fouls are called forth, they can follow Buonaparte across the bridge of Lodi; but when their minds return to their natural position, every barrack has a room appropriated for dancing, and the heroes of Arcole, as well as the mufcadins of Paris, "All knit hands, and beat the ground The The fetes of the court, it is afferted by the few perfons remaining in France, by whom they were frequented, were but tawdry fplendour compared with the claffical elegance which prevails at the fetes of our republican contractors. As a fpecimen of these private balls, I fhall trace a fhort sketch of a dance lately given by one of the furnishers of ftores for fleets and armies, in his fpacious hotel, where all the furniture, in compliance with the present fashion at Paris, is antique; where all that is not Greek is Roman; where stately filken beds, maffy fophas, worked tapestry, and gilt ornaments, are thrown aside as rude Gothic magnificence, and every couch refembles that of Pericles, every chair those of Cicero; where every wall is finished in arabefque, like the baths of Titus, and every table, upheld by Caftors and Polluxes, is covered with Athenian bufts and Etrufcan vafes; where that modern piece of furniture a clock is concealed concealed beneath the claffic bar of Phoebus, and the dancing hours; and every chim ney-iron is fupported by a Sphinx, or a Griffin. The drefs of his female vifitors was in perfect harmony with the furniture of his hotel, for although the Parifian ladies are not suspected of any obftinate attachment to Grecian modes of government, they are most rigid partizans of Grecian modes of drefs, adorned like the contemporaries of Afpafia-the loose light drapery, the naked arm, the bare bofom, the fandaled feet, the circling zone, the golden chains, the twifting treffes, all difplay the most inflexible conformity to the laws of republican coftume. The most fashionable hairdreffer of Paris, in order to accommodate himself to the claffical tafte of his fair cuf tomers, is provided with a variety of antique bufts as models; and when he waits on a lady, enquires if the chufes to be drest that day à la Cleopatre, la Dianne, or la Pfyche? I |