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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by

JAMES R. GILMORE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

JOHN A. GRAY,
Printer, Stereotyper, and Binder,

26 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York.

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The Skeptical Mother. W. H. HOLCOMBE,. The Wives of the Poets. T. B. ALDRICH, The Wife's Lament. R. H. STODDARD,. Treachery. FITZ-JAMES O'BRI N,..

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PARIS and Life There. H. T. TUCKERMAN,..1, 475 The Rainbow. HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT,

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The Sea. EDWARD S. RAND, Jr....
The Fisher's Daughter. C. H. WEBB,..
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.156 WAR, A few Words about the,.....

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THERE is a subtle relation between the mere spectacle of Parisian life and French history, like that which exists between physiognomy and character. Careful observation of this sparkling tide on the surface will reveal the hidden currents that direct its play. The success of a man in France has been justly described as achieved moitié par son savoir, moitié par son savoir-faire. Two characteristics at once impress an American in Paris the provision for life independent of homes, and the excessive tendency to system and detail: from the one comes a diffusive habit of feeling well adapted to pastime, but most unfavorable to efficient individuality; and from the other, a devotion to routine which secures results brilliant in themselves but limited in their consequences. The bare fact that we of England and America, however wide and intense be the sphere of our activity, instinctively revolve about a permanent centre, hallowed and held by the triple bond of habit, love, and religion, gives a certain dignity and permanence to our interests and aims which nourish political as well as personal consistency. Imagine the case reversed: suppose, like civilized Ishmaelites, we dwelt in a kind of metropolitan encampment, requiring no domicile except a bed-room for seven hours in the twenty-four, and passing the remainder of each day and night as nomadic cosmopolites: going to a café to breakfast, a restaurant to dine, an estaminet to smoke, a national library to study, a cabinet de lecture to read the gazettes, a public bath for ablution, an open church to pray, a free lecture-room to be instructed, a thronged garden to promenade, a theatre to be amused, a museum for science, a royal gallery for art, a municipal ball, literary soirée, or suburban rendezvous for society. Would not the very custom of enacting all the functions of mundane existence, apart from the idea and the retirement of home, generalize our ways of thinking, make us more children of the time, and weaken the tenacity,

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