after two or three years of unalloyed happiness; she has an infant, perhaps, in each arm. Do we pity her? Deeply,-acutely; we could almost weep for her. Well; we meet a woman in the autumn of life, whose summer has been passed with the first and only object of her affections; hearts that yearned towards each other in youth, time has made one; in every inclination, wish, hope, fear, they have heightened the pleasures of life by a mutual enjoyment of them, and alleviated its sorrows by sharing them together. Death has divorced them, and we see her-alone! We are very sorry for her, and her four or five children; it is "a sad loss:"-we say so, and of course we mean it; but are we as sensitive to this picture as to that?

If we make second marriages a principal feature in this dissertation on widows, we do so because it is their "being's end and aim," as is incontrovertibly proved by their all but universality. Old widows, even if poor, sometimes lend an able hand in the retaliation of which we have before spoken; but, unfortunately, they also very frequently, when they happen to have wealth, become themselves objects of scorn and derision. Perhaps the most offensive creature in existence, and, save one, the most contemptible, is the worn-out, toothless, hairless, wrinkled jade, who attempts,

Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!
To recreate, with frail and mortal things,
Her withered face;"

and then, upon the strength of a long purse, puts herself up, a decayed vessel, to Dutch auction, herself proclaiming what she is worth, to be knocked down-we are almost unmanly enough to wish it were not figuratively to some needy young spendthrift, of whose grandmother she must have been a juvenile contemporary. Widows of this stamp are almost always women raised from low stations, from whom, perhaps, little delicacy or refinement is to be expected. There is hardly a season in which some carcase-butcher's or grocer's wealthy relict is not the talk, and wonder, and emetic of the town.

We must not conclude with exceptions, however, where they create so unfavourable an impression; we will rather turn to those portly and obliging widows who, after looking a little about them as single women, fall in with some comfortable old gentleman who very much wants a housekeeper, and somebody to mix his grog o' nights, and at once agree to take the situation. The old boy puts all his affairs into her hands, and they rub on together cosily enough the remainder of their days. Every one admits it to be "a very suitable match;" if an objection be made by anybody, it merely comes from some expectant nephews or nieces.

There are widows we think, we must admit it, who, widows once, remain so for ever, and from inclination, or rather from disinclination to encourage any impression, or even thought, that might weaken or interfere with the memory of the past; but we must repeat that they are never young, and rarely middle-aged widows: they are women past the meridian of their days, whose griefs, not violent or obtrusive, have yet been solemn and absorbing; women who have lost the vanity of believing they can accommodate themselves to any man; and, dwelling on the happiness they have enjoyed, cherish its recollection as an act of devotion to one "not dead, but gone before." VOL. II.

20

They wear their "weeds" as long as they are of this world; and there is always a quietness, if not gravity of demeanour, that perfectly assorts with them. In society they are always respected; by those who know them, loved; they do not hesitate to talk of their married life, and live over many of its scenes, to those who are interested in listening: herein they differ from married widows, if we may use the expression, who very rarely talk of their first union to any one but their husbands; they, perhaps, hear of it something too much, and too often!

And now, having passed our compliments and paid our respects, we must take our leave. We have been guilty of one rudeness,-we have had all the talk to ourselves: in return, we promise to be patient listeners, should any fair controversialist think fit to propound her views on this "highly-interesting and important subject."

PETRARCH IN LONDON.

I.

NEAR Battersea a lonely flower grew,
It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing :
The skies smiled on its blossoming,
And poured into its breast their balmy dew;
Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;
Its face was fairer than the mist that veils
Aurora's self, ere she has bid the day

Laugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.
Fairest of all!-companions she had none;

For Fate had torn them from her tender side.
She seemed a virgin suing to be won,

And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.
This cauliflower,-which I now call a flower,-
I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.

II.

The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,

Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,
Then turns his anxious eyes upon the ground
To where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:
Sweet thoughts of" "bacco," and the opium feel
That lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist,
Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,
Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!
Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hod
Fall down before the spirits of his heart;
Till Reason interferes her magic rod,

"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,
So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fix

An airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

ADVENTURES IN PARIS.

BY TOBY ALLSPY.

THE FIVE FLOORS.

THE Boulevards may be said to perform for Paris the functions fulfilled by the cestus of Venus towards that amphibious goddess, by surrounding it with a magic girdle of fascinations. Every sort and variety of entertainment is to be found comprised in their cincture of the city, from the stately Académie de Musique and Italian Opera (full of dandies and dowagers), to the trestles of rope-dancers, amphitheatres of dancing-dogs, and galleries of wax-work, (full of ploughboys and pickpockets,)—and every species of domicile, from the gorgeous hôtel to the humble stalls of the venders of liquorice-water and galette. At one extremity we have the costly menu of the Café de Paris, with its ortolans and poudings à la Nessebrode; at the other, the greasy fricots of La Courtille. The Café Turc brays forth with Tolbecque, and an orchestra of trumpets and bassoons; the guinguettes of the Faubourg St. Antoine scrape away with their solitary fiddle. Every species of shop and merchandize, from the sumptuous magazin of Le Revenant to the boutique à vingt-cing sous; every species of temple, from the Parthenonic Madeleine, to that aërial shrine of liberty, the site of the Bastille. Every gradation of display between splendour and misery is epitomized in the circuit of the Boulevards.

Play, opera, farce, feats of equestrianism, funambulism, somnambulism, and humbugism of every colour, industrious fleas, and idle vendors of magic eye-salve, successively arrest the attention; while in the vicinity of the Café Tortoni, famous for the coldness of its ices and heat of its quarrels, the courtier marron plies his trade of trickery; stockjobbing has full possession of the pavé; and almost within hearing of the knowing ears of the Jockey-Club, and the ears polite of the Club Anglais, bulls and bears outbellow the fashionable jabber of the Boulevards.

On emerging from the head-quarters of English Paris,-the Rue de la Paix,-to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens, the eye is dazzled by gilding, gas-light, plate-glass, scagliola, or moulu, varnished counters, and panelling in grotesque and arabesque, interspersed with glittering mirrors, as appliances and means of getting off the lowest goods at the highest rate. A little further, and by an imperceptible gradation, vice succeeds to frivolity. Instead of milliners and jewellers, we find billiard-tables and gambling-houses, deepening at length, into the more tremendous hazards of the Stock Exchange. After passing the vicinity of the Bourse, we come, naturally enough, to the quarter of the Jews; passing through the speculative neighbourhood of Le Passage des Panoramas, which is but a splendid game of chance materialised into stone and marble.

Next to this gaudy section of the modern Babylon dwells solid trade, the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin,-accompanied by such theatres and such coffee-houses as might be expected to minister to the sensual and intellectual delights of the marchand en gros; melodrama, and the Porte St. Martin,-the Cadran Bleu, and its unctuous cuisine. The vicinage of Rag Fair (the marché aux vie

linges) succeeds; then the Boulevard still bearing the name of Beaumarchais (the mansion formerly inhabited by the creator of Figaro being appropriately occupied by a refinery of salt); and lastly, in the wake of rags and wits, the site of the Bastille,-the rallying-point of the most seditious parish of Paris, the republican quarter of the manufacturers, the tremendous Faubourg St. Antoine.

It was precisely at the boundary limit between the pleasure and business sections of the Boulevards, at the corner of the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, on an airy second-floor with a projecting balcony, commanding a view of the sporting world to the right, and the trading world to the left,-the idle west, and active east,-that there lived a certain Monsieur Georges,-a little wizened man, of doubtful age, doubtful fortune, doubtful reputation. Everything about him was equivocal. In Paris people occupy themselves far less than in London with the affairs of their neighbours: the great have something better to do, the little something worse; the rich being too busy with play, the poor too busy with work, to have leisure for the dirty scandals which spring up like fungi in that region of lords and lackeys, Grosvenor Square. Nevertheless, the porter's lodge of every Parisian house is a chartered temple of echo, having a gossipry and a jargon of its own. The porter's lodge knits stockings, reads novels, and composes romances; peeps into letters, interrogates chambermaids, and confederates with duns. A man loose in his habits had need be very close in his domestics, in order to escape the detection of his porter's lodge.

Yet, in spite of fifteen years' domiciliation in that polished corner of the Boulevards, Monsieur Georges, though far from a beauty, was still a mystery. Madame la portière had never been able to discover whether " Georges" was a surname given by father to son, or a Christian name given by godfather to godson. She sometimes thought him a single man, sometimes a double, nay, sometimes a treble. Curious varieties of the fair sex occasionally visited the balconied saloon,-young, old, and middle-aged,-shabby-genteels who passed for poor relations, and glaring tawdry who passed for worse. There was no roost in his abode, however, either for the birds with fine feathers, or the birds without. Monsieur Georges's foible was not that of hospitality. His interests were too intimately cared for by a ferocious femme de confiance, who set himself and his house in order, and caused his establishment to be designated in the neighbourhood as that of Georges and the Dragon.

If not generous, however, the little man was strictly just; he gave nothing, but he kept nothing back. He paid his way with the praiseworthy punctuality remarkable in those who never pay an inch of the way for other people.

It is a hard thing, by-the-bye, that while male designations leave the facts of the man's bachelorhood uncertain, a spinster is specially pointed out by the malice of conventional phraseology. Mr. or Monsieur may be married or single, as he pleases; but Mrs. and Madame assume, even on the direction of a letter, their airs of matronly superiority over Miss or Mademoiselle. While her master rejoiced in his ambiguity as Monsieur Georges, Mademoiselle Berthe was designated to mankind and womankind in all the odium of spinsterhood; and exclamations of "old maid" and "chissie" followed her

daily passage past the porter's lodge, the moment the "grim white woman" reached the first floor.

Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes, without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little, sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running, his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour, and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and, on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till, after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges pronounced him to be an incorrigible gamin, sentenced him to "bring firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous Parisian architect, a mansarde,) and his board in the porter's lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,—the knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,―having consented to feed and cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month, id est, five weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; he did almost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.

.

Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness, buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothed gamin the place nearest the chauffrette, (fire she had none,) while Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot to hold him. Madame Grégoire,-whose only daughter was the wife of a puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrows rouged et noired into bullfinches, or whitewashed into canaries, on the Pont Neuf,-transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier, serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and Mademoiselle Berthe's household.

""Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup, (a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon, and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string* * The business of a porter in Paris is to open the gates of the house to comers and goers after dusk, by means of a cord, which is fixed in the lodge.