over whose folded page memory" with sad eyes" will hereafter mourn in secret. Golden, irrevocable moments of blithe sixteen, how carelessly are

"Je voudrais être femme," said a witty French-writes happy promises on the open book of life, man of our acquaintance the other day, "pour avoir eu seize ans-cet age quand on aime encore le sucre, et dejà le bal!" Exactly the French, epigrammatic, antithetic, paradoxical way of ex-ye squandered! Earnest plastic feelings of eredupressing what has doubtless passed in one form or other, as a feeling or a fancy, through the head or heart of most men-in some lucid interval of contempt for the dull routine of petty cares and vulgar interests which engross virile existence, and make up what we pompously call our "affairs." Who, indeed, is there

lous sixteen, how soon by the rude handling of experience are ye hardened and perverted. Alas! impatient sixteen, yearning for the fulfilment of dimly apprehended revelations—soon enough will the curtain of the future be raised-soon enough will the great hierophant, Time, draw back those friendly folds that protect the illusions, while they hide the disappointments of life. Wherefore, gentle sixteen, be happy in your own pure thoughts, At such a distance from his youth in grief," and "innocent daily habits;" satisfy your naïve that he can watch without a wistful interest the curiosity, enjoy your vivid impressions; observe palpitating eagerness of sweet feminine sixteen- and feel-wonder and learn-while sensation and now anticipating, with tumultuous hopes and fears, perception keep their first keen edge, and spotless the untried glories of the ball-room, or day-dream-fancy may still wander free. And if ever, in the ing of the fairy-land that lies beyond the curtain of the opera-house; and anon,

"So blunt of memory, so old at heart,

"As though a rose should fold and be a bud again," pursuing with equally lavish enthusiasm some childish ambition of lesson-book or skipping-rope —some enterprise of the school-room or the lawn; or haply essaying, with fresh inquisitive senses, some hitherto untasted flavor or fragrance of fruit or dewy flower. Happy, ambiguous age, when the old impetuosities of the race and the romp begin to be moderated by nascent instincts of as yet inexplicable modesty; when the half-ripened lips withdraw, with a doubtful coyness, from indiscriminate cousin-kisses; when the ready blush comes to be felt as a strangely-new sensation—an enigma that asks its interpretation of the heart. Happy age, when the clear-ringing laughter of sexless childhood is exchanged still oftener and more

pauses of your jocund activity, you find time to keep some artless record of your April-existenceso common-place-yet so full of poetry!-how gladly will gray age, stopping on the brink of the tomb, accept your little present; well pleased to forget his wrinkled knowledge in your simpler, in his husky broken bass,-to renew his long-forsurer wisdom,-to mimic your bell-toned prattle gotten faith in your happy illusions!

And lo! even as we write, here lies before us the very gift we were invoking;-a tiny volume, senting a series of the freshest possible impressions appropriately clad in pale spring-green, and preof London and Paris life, as reflected in the camera lucida of a young girl's heart-the honest heart of sixteen.*

We have read the cheerful little book all through, with an involuntary smile, like childhood's, playing incessantly about our lips, and unfurrowing our old brow; while such a swarm of by-gone fancies and associations came crowding back into our a long year, and hardly thought to enjoy again. snowy pate, as we have not revelled in for many Not that the book pretends to any, great literary merit, or claims to rank high as an original work; on the contrary, it is put forward with becoming diffidence, as a series of observations probably deficient in novelty and interest, and "offered only to show how national peculiarities and habits strike persons in different ways." But there is the frankness of unsophisticated sixteen in every page; and the thoughts are so simply expressed, *"Impressions and Observations of a Young Person "With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a during a Residence in Paris, with occasional Visits to London," &c., 1844.

often for the maiden's pensive mood; and the myrtle-chaplet, twined around the brow in some chance impulse of infantine mirth, remains appropriately to crown the musing aspirant to deeper than Eleusinian mysteries. Happy age, when the past, the present, and the future-memory, action, hope-endow with all their privileges, oppress with none of their cares. Not yet has the fair young tree been mutilated by the harsh surgery of the pruning-knife; not yet has the reluctant mother, yielding to the inevitable constraints of our corrupt and ill-organized society, begun her sad task of repression,

daughter's heart."

and so natural, that they seem to have come up | ory of childhood, the subjoined little incident; and spontaneously, like daisies in a meadow-all the how natural to enthusiastic sixteen, the reflection fresher, too, for being watered by a shallow stream with which it concludes:of delightfully transparent philosophy, through "The general sympathy for the queen and royal which the childish errors shine like many-colored family here, upon the occasion of their bereavepebbles in a brook. With what a charming na- ments, was most natural. Everybody who ever ïveté, for example, is the transitional character of had the good fortune to know them, must appresixteen, with its lingering affection for sugar-ciate their goodness of heart; my opportunities plums, and its incipient predilections for dress and dance, betrayed in the following succinct confes

"The good taste displayed in ladies' collars is one of the characteristics of Paris; the embroidery With what exquisite unconsciousness does our is frequently most elaborate, and its delicacy as grave little moral philosopher touch the tenderest exquisite as its richness. The collars are as perpoint of French manners in the following simple fect in their form as in their execution; a Pariremark; which, had it emanated from an older sienne would never feel at ease, if she conceived pen, might have been taken for a bit of covert for a moment that her collar did not set perfectly irony

"The fashion of curling the hair becomes more "The heroines of almost all the French plays and general in Paris, and the classic shining bandeaux tales that I have seen or read, are young widows; have been partially abandoned for ringlets; the in English, they would not have been already mar-rich abundant curls of the Duchesse de Nemours ried; the French appear to begin where the English leave off. I have never heard this properly accounted for, but have always preferred English books, probably from feeling more sympathy with the heroines."

"A Frenchman would not be seen giving his arm | heard French people acknowledge the superiority to a lady on each side. The inattention to this of English children, and I cannot account for this custom by the English renders them often an ob- barbarous system being persevered in.” ject of ridicule when walking in the streets, or in places of public amusement in Paris; the French call it panier à deux anses. If a Frenchman is seen with two ladies, he gives his arm to one, the second lady taking the arm of the other."

"At theatres and other public places in France, except at the Italian Opera, which is usually resorted to, previously to balls and other réunions, young ladies are seldom seen décoltées; the exposure of the neck and shoulders is not considered good taste; when the dress is low, the neck is usually covered by a scarf or collar. Children, too, are generally more warmly clad here than in England; the French attributing the cause and prevalence of consumptive complaints to the want of sufficient clothing in childhood."

Here is a pretty trait of mœurs prettily noted :"Many a servant or peasant in going to market, many an artisan in going to his daily work, enters a church, and remains there in some corner unobserved; this must arise from piety of the heart; nobody perhaps thinks better of them for doing it, nor would think worse of them if they did not. The cold stone replaces the cushioned prie-Dieu among the poor, nor appears too hard to those who enter the church to pray unobserved."

Sixteen, at church, directs particular attention to subjects matrimonial; and she delivers most matronly opinions about nurses, babies, and the unfolding intellect :

"One of the most beautiful groups in the Madeleine is that of marriage, by M. Pradier; it is on the right hand side immediately on entering; the three personages composing it, the priest, bride, and bridegroom, have each a distinct and striking beauty.

"A great writer has said that there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the mind of a young child; this might never have struck me without having read it; but it is quite true. I have a little brother, much younger than myself, and to watch the expansion of his intellect from infancy to childhood has been most delightful. I suppose it will continue with his increasing years, but when an innocent child grows into a mischievous young gamin, although it is quite natural and proper that it should be so, the interest in him continues, but the sources of his amusements and pleasures are not quite so apparent or agreeable as when he was younger.'

Water, as it appears in fountains, fogs, and dew, is treated of by our sprightly, versatile young friend, in three consecutive paragraphs ::

"The want of fountains in London appears strange; the French are very fond of them; Paris abounds in them; and the Place de la Concorde owes its chief beauty to them. They give the capital an air of coolness and gaiety, particularly in summer. The French excel in out-door orna

ments.

"The greatness and beauty of London consist in more useful and durable establishments, although sometimes less pleasing to the eye; perhaps too it is considered that there is water enough in London without adding artificially to it. The magnificent Thames, the Serpentine, and pieces of water in the parks and Kensington Gardens, are worth all the fountains of Paris."

"Fogs are not, as many suppose, entirely unknown in Paris; they even continue for some days; but, wanting the smoke and atmosphere of London, are neither so thick nor as yellow. A Parisian fog is vapory, and looks like the ghost of a London one it does not give the same melancholy appearance to the town."

climate of France is so dry that dew is nearly unknown, the evenings of summer are not relieved by any damp, and are often more oppressive than during the day.

"It has often surprised me never to have seen noticed by an older observer, or an abler pen, the vast difference between French and English nursery "One of the delights of the country in England is maids and bonnes d'enfants. In England, it is not the refreshing dew. English persons are geneuncommon to see young children left to the care rally quite afraid of walking at night, on account of girls from fifteen to seventeen, the most thought-of the dampness: to me it is delightful. The less age in life; to whom, to trust one's property would be considered almost madness, whilst the most precious of all treasures, young children, are freely confided to them; indeed it would seem that girls disqualified by youth and inexperience for any "To the effect of dew may possibly be attributed other service are best suited for this. A poor woman who would not dare to offer her daughter as the fraîcheur, as the French call it, of the English a cook, house, or laundry-maid, will freely do so complexion, that beautiful union of red and white. for a place in the nursery. In France, there is no mired in the Parisian cheek. A French lady, so much more pleasing than the dead white adsight more agreeable than the respectable, mat- Madame de G, née Princess de B, ronly-looking bonnes d'enfants who are seen in the been heard to say, that whenever there was a costumes of their province, attending their young brouillard, she either walked in the open air, or charges either in the Tuileries garden, at Paris, or in the shade of the promenade publique put her head out of the window, in the hope of which generally surrounds every French country catching some English fraîcheur." town."

has

Apropos of fountains, we may observe, that "French mothers and nurses roll up their in- they are by no means appropriate ornaments to fants until they look like little mummies; this the capitals of cold rainy countries. Doubtless, a must be very injurious, by confining the natural fountain is beautiful, spouting its lucid water high motions and growth of the child, which, on begin-into the clear sunshine, breaking in mid-air into a ning to walk, has no strength in its legs, and must

grow a weakly, frail thing. English children in thousand flashing prisms, and falling back in their long dresses, look much prettier, and, being at graceful curves upon the ringing marble; but, liberty, are more likely to be healthy; I have even without the sun, what becomes of its life, light,

and color? what object can look more pitiable, or strike the fancy with a stronger sense of inconsistency, than a fountain, on a bleak November day, wet through in a drenching rain? One longs to provide the rheumatic-looking Tritons with umbrellas. Jesting apart, the true purpose of a fountain is to cool a sultry air, and to supply it with a quantity of moisture necessary for healthy and agreeable respiration. The true and the beautiful are too intimately connected for that which shocks common sense ever to affect pleasurably a correct artistic feeling. London fountains, therefore, should be kept playing in the hot summer months only; during the season of rain and snow the water should be turned off: to fit them for which intermittent action, the design of the masonry and sculpture should be such as to have monumental effect and beauty independently of the flow of water. We know not what may be the intention of the architect with respect to the fountains in Trafalgar Square; but we trust never to shiver at the spectacle of two dreary jets d'eau laboriously drilling their way through a dense London fog, and drizzling back, with a chilly patter, into the leaden lack-lustre pools beneath.

Many of the subsequent observations are entertaining, and they are all more or less characteristic of sixteen; some as noting odd little details of fact and fashion, which the less microscopic perceptions of older observers would scarcely have descried; others, on the contrary, as betraying the secret ambition of sixteen to add a little to its age-to be taken for a personage of discreet years, grave experience, and judicious counsels; which elderly lucubrations are, perhaps, the most amusingly sixteenish of all :

servility; they thank you so much for nothing, and offer so many things which you do not want, that to enter a shop in London becomes distheir behavior if, after giving an infinity of agreeable. I have often thought what would be trouble, one purchased nothing,-whether all the politeness with which they overwhelm you, might not be turned into a different channel."

"The Parisian cemeteries are very pretty, both in situation and general appearance; much pure and unaffected feeling is displayed in the inscriptions, and in the little gardens with which most of the tombs are ornamented. The whole breathes a melancholy but pleasing air of sentiment, without the gloom which attaches to churchyards. There is only one drawback-the intimation that the gardener of the establishment keeps up gardens by the year, which raises a suspicion that all the pretty flowers may not be the offering of affection, hands. I trust and believe, however, that this is but are sometimes placed there by mercenary only resorted to by persons who are obliged to quit Paris, and are anxious that the graves of those they have loved best may not be neglected."

"In one of the numbers of the Journal des Demoiselles, a work that I would recommend to the attention of young ladies as containing much Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, describing the different amusing information, there is a translation from forms of national vanity in the person of a Frenchman who lavishes all his praise on France, and an Englishman who speaks of his country with sarcastic despondency. The Frenchman finds in his country everything that is good and great; whilst the Englishman can find in England nothing either good or great; until the Frenchman, having satisfied his own vanity, is obliged to help the Englishman out by taking a pinch of snuff, and adding, you too are a very great nation, very.' Go where they may, the French never forget their country in the beauty of others; when describing the finest capitals of Europe, they will observe, C'est bien, mais cela ne vaut pas Paris;' to the mountains of Switzerland and the plains of Italy, their reply is, ‘C'est joli, mais cela ne vaut pas notre beau pays de Normandie.' The English, on the contrary, although surrounded at home by every beauty and comfort, either from modesty or disinclination, seldom mention them, much less do justice to them. If the two countries were reversed, and a Frenchman went to London, and saw there tonneaux of the porteurs d'eau as in Paris, he would instantly exclaim: In my country, the métropole du monde civilisé, we have water and gas in every house, railroads to every town, and ships to every quarter of the globe.' The English in Paris most amiably keep all this in the back ground; admire the fountains at which the water-carrier fills his cart, the flowers which have not half the perfume "The number of children, of which, with their or beauty of their own: the gas which dazzles in nursery maids, every square appears to be full the theatres, but in half the streets of Paris does in London; the groups in the streets of those not ever exist; and the toy of a railway to St. of the lower order, who would hardly be sup-workmen to Rouen. The French are quite right: Germain, now extended by English money and posed old enough to be trusted alone, yet carrying a younger brother or sister, unable yet to the finest monuments, and objets d'art; a counthey have a magnificent capital, embellished with walk, is very striking after Paris, where, from the scarcity of children, it would appear as if King end, and wine and olives at the other; they appretry containing two climates, growing corn at one Herod had passed that way." ciate accordingly all they have, whilst the Eng"The English shopkeepers appear in an unfavor-lish never appear more delighted than when depreable light after the French; the civility amounts to ciating the verdant beauty and commercial mag

"One of the peculiarities of Paris, which the summer visitors never see, is the marchand de marrons; he arrives from the country upon a certain day, with his apparatus and stock of chesnuts, and takes possession of his winter quarters, generally at the corner of some well frequented street. Habit has rendered him expert in his special mode of cookery, and his customers are by no means confined to casual passengers, the inhabitants of the neighborhood being supplied by him. You are only attracted to him by his fourneau, for he makes no noise; mercurial as the population of this country is said to be, I question if an Englishman in the same situation could resist, seeing a crowd pass him, from crying Hot chesnuts!' The perfect silence of the marchand de marrons is really remarkable; the day of his departure is as regular as that of his arrival."

pificence of our country, and appearing only to recollect that the one produces damp and the other smoke.

"Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris attracted so many persons to visit this venerable cathedral, that the bell-ringer who shows the upper part of it, being continually asked for Quasimodo's room, and forgetting, or rather not knowing that the whole was a fiction, has actually adopted a shed near the belfry to satisfy the curiosity of the Parisians in this respect.".

further trouble, giving out an agreeable aromatic smell. As well as immediately recovering an expiring fire, they look ornamental when piled in a basket at the fire-side."

"During my visits to French châteaux, I have often asked myself whether country-houses and villas in England have the superiority over the châteaux of France; they have both their beauties and agréments, corresponding with the different taste of each country. The long avenues of beautiful old trees, which usually lead to the French châteaux, although formal, are not without a certain air of majesty, whilst the dark wood which over

"The harness of the post-horses in France is very rough, sometimes consisting of little but a collar and ropes. The postilions have a charac-hangs and forms a magnificent back-ground, throws teristic air which they owe chiefly to their costume. The term post boy would apply less than in England, as they are generally men of large stature. The great boots and powdered queues are no longer common. The boots, however cumbrous, could not be said to be entirely useless, for I remember to have seen a postilion fall from his horse, and the wheel of the calèche go over his leg; but, to our surprise, he got up unhurt. Some of the postilions have such perfect command of their whips as to crack a simple air with it: I have heard 'Au clair de la lune' given in a manner not to be mistaken."

an appearance of melancholy grandeur over the whole. I shall not readily forget the effect one such as described had upon me while travelling on a dark night; there must have been a fête, for suddenly at a turn in the road, as if called up by the wand of a magician, burst on the view an illuminated château, every window lighted, and the trees bearing festoons of lamps; it was the more striking as for miles there had scarcely been a single habitation, and immediately after passing it, the scene again relapsed into darkness and solitude. A comparatively modern château in France would give an English traveller the idea of ruin, as in England even ruins are kept in the best possible repair, which is, I think, carrying neatness

too far.

We will conclude our notice of these daintilytouched little sketches, with the graceful and feel

"The Musée at Versailles, beautiful as are the great gallery, the paintings by Vernet, and the collection of the old masters in the upper story, contains some very indifferent pieces; so confused and unfinished, that they remind one of 'Mort du général je ne sais qui, à la bataille de je ne sais quoi. The only wonder is, how so great a numbering expressions that close the volume itself; which, of paintings and statues could be gotten together and beautifully arranged in so short a time, except that like the embellishments of Paris, the establishment of foot pavements, the completion of public buildings, the fortifications, in a word all that the king of the French undertakes, appears as if done by magic; if works of utility and magnitude confer upon their author the title of great, surely Louis Philippe is a truly great man."

"Public attention was, a short time since, much attracted by a remarkable building operation on the boulevard Bonne-Nouville: the road has been lowered, during which the foundations of the houses were entirely cut away; it thus became necessary to support the upper part of the houses, whilst the lower part was rebuilt; the cutting away the road having, however, left a greater space than existed before, afforded room for an additional story; as the addition was from below, the people above found themselves raised a floor higher from the new road. This became the subject of a laughable little piece at a minor theatre. A person, having left his wife in Paris, in their apartment au second, returns from a journey to Algiers; his home on the second floor, which he enters as usual, having, during his absence, become a third floor, gives rise to the usual equivoque of a man making himself at home in another person's house, until the change is explained to him, and he is told that his wife is above in her old apartment, which has from a second thus curiously become a troisième."

"The Elysian fields are now paved!" "The pommes de pin, which were introduced last year for lighting fires, are very convenient; if kept dry, they ignite immediately with a match, and when placed under the wood kindle it without

though confessedly a slender contribution to literature, will yet, we venture to predict, brighten with pleasant reminiscences many a time-dimmed eye; for our own part, in taking leave of the clever and evidently amiable young authoress, we offer her the hearty thanks of a very old man, whose flagging pulse she has quickened, and whose slackened nerves restrung, with the "sensations of sixteen."

"The late visit of the queen of England to the château d'Eu must have been most gratifying to the king and the royal family of France; one of the most delightful circumstances attending that visit, was the interview of two young, accomplished, and beautiful women, both mothers of children destined at a future day, and may it be far distant, to rule over England and France, and who, a short time since, might have been said to rejoice in husbands of their choice, young, handsome, and valiant. Alas! for the poor Duchess of Orleans! May a like affliction never visit our royal mistress. I know nothing about politics, but have so often heard with regret of differences between England and France, that the news of the queen's visit was the more gratifying as likely to cement a good understanding between my native and my adopted country. France is dear to me from having passed in it the happy days of my childhood, in having had a brother born on its soil, in having, even during my short existence, lived to see its capital improve in beauty, extent, and civilization; and although, when I visit my native land, I am lost in wonder and admiration at the magnitude of her metropolis, at her wealth, her commerce, bringing luxuries from every quarter of the globe, at the almost incredible rapidity of her internal intercourse, and