adise of the Senses; a focus of Enjoyment, not of Happiness. Nowhere
are Youth and its capacities more prodigally lavished; nowhere is Old
Age less happy or less respected. Paris has tens of thousands who would
eagerly pour out their hearts' blood for Liberty and Human Progress, but
no class or clan who ever thought of denying themselves Wine and kindred
stimulants in order that the Masses should be rendered worthier of
Liberty and thus better fitted to preserve and enjoy it. Such notions as
Total Abstinence from All that can Intoxicate are absolutely unheard of
by the majority of Parisians, and incomprehensible or ridiculous to
those who have heard of them. The barest necessaries of life are very
cheap here; many support existence quite endurably on a franc (18 3/4
cents) a day; but of the rude Laboring Class few can really afford the
comforts and proprieties of an orderly family life, and the privation is
very lightly regretted. The testimony is uniform that Marriage is
scarcely regarded as even a remote possibility by any one of the poor
girls of Paris who live by work: to be for a season the mistress of a
man of wealth, or one who can support her in luxury and idleness, is
the summit of her ambition. The very terms "grisette" and "lorette" by
which young women unblest with wealth or social rank are commonly
designated, involve the idea of demoralization--no man would apply them
to one whom he respected and of whose good opinion he was solicitous. In
no other nominally Christian city is the proportion of the unmarried so
great as here: nowhere else do families so quickly decay; nowhere else
is the proportion of births out of wedlock so appalling. The Poor of
London are less comfortable as a class than those of Paris--that is,
they suffer more from lack of employment, and their wages are lower in
view of the relative cost of living; but Philanthropy is far more active
there than here, and far more is done to assuage the tide of human woe.
Ten public meetings in furtherance of Educational, Philanthropic and
Religious enterprises are held in the British Metropolis to one in this,
and the number interested in such undertakings there, as contrasted with
that in this city, has an equal preponderance. I shall not attempt to
strike a balance between the good and evil prevailing respectively in
the two Capitals of Western Europe: the reader may do that for himself.

SIGHTS OF PARIS.

The first object of interest I saw in Pa