would call business.  The thoughtful brow, the abstracted, look, the hurried step.. which you see along Cheapside and Cornhill ... are here of comparatively rare appearance.  Yet every body is “sur le pave.”  Every body seems to live out of doors.  How the menage goes on—­and:  how domestic education is regulated—­strikes the inexperienced eye of an Englishman as a thing quite inconceivable.  The temperature of Paris is no doubt very fine, although it has been of late unprecedentedly hot; and a French workman, or labourer, enjoys, out of doors—­from morning till night those meals, which, with us, are usually partaken of within.  The public places of entertainment are pretty sure to receive a prodigious proportion of the population of Paris every evening.  A mechanic, or artisan, will devote two thirds of his daily gains to the participation of this pleasure.  His dinner will consist of the most meagre fare—­at the lowest possible price—­provided, in the evening, he can hear Talma declaim, or Albert warble, or see Pol leap, or Bigotini entrance a wondering audience by the grace of her movements, and the pathos of her dumb shew, in Nina.

The preceding strikes me as the general complexion of character of three fourths of the Parisians:  but then they are gay, and cheerful, and apparently happy.  If they have not the phlegm of the German, or the thoughtfulness of ourselves, they are less cold, and less insensible to the passing occurrences of life.  A little pleases them, and they give in return much more than they receive.  One thing, however, cannot fail to strike and surprise an attentive observer of national character.  With all their quickness, enthusiasm, and activity, the mass of French people want that admirable quality which I unfeignedly think is the particular characteristic of ourselves:—­I mean, common sense.  In the midst of their architectural splendor—­while their rooms are refulgent with gilding and plate-glass; while their mantle-pieces sparkle with or-molu clocks; or their tables are decorated with vases, and artificial flowers of the most exquisite workmanship—­and while their carpets and curtains betray occasionally all the voluptuousness of eastern pomp ... you can scarcely obtain egress or ingress into the respective apartments, from the wretchedness of their locks and keys! Mechanical studies or improvements should seem to be almost entirely uncultivated—­for those who remember France nearly half a century ago, tell me that it was pretty much then as it is now.  Another thing discomposes the sensitive nerves of the English; especially those of our notable housewives.  I allude to the rubbishing appearance of their grates—­and the dingy and sometimes disgusting aspect of carpets and flowered furniture.  A good mahogany dining table is a perfect rarity[199]—­and let him, who stands upon a chair to take down a quarto or octavo, beware how he encounter a broken shin or bruised elbow, from the perpendicularity of the legs of that same chair.