find the
poorest cobbler, whose little shanty is next to the proud mansion of
some millionaire, a man of really more mental attainments than his
rich and haughty neighbour; in which case the millionaire will do well
to look to it that the cobbler does not make love to his wife; and if
he does, nobody need care much, for the millionaire will be quite sure
to reciprocate.

The great statute, "tit-for-tat," is, I believe, equally the law of
all nations; besides, love is a great leveller of distinction, and it
is in this levelling mission that it performs some of its most
ridiculous antics. When a rich man's daughter runs off with her
father's coachman, as occasionally happens, the whole country is in a
roar of laughter about it. There is an innate, popular perception of
the ridiculous, but everybody sees and feels that in such cases it is
misplaced and grotesque. Everyone perceives that the woman's heart has
taken the bit in its mouth, and run away with her brains. But, as
comedy is often nearly allied to tragedy, so sorrow is sure to come as
soon as the little honeymoon is over. This romantic love cannot
flourish in the soil of poverty and want. Indeed, all the stimulants
which pride and luxury can administer to it can hardly keep it alive.
The rich miss who runs away with a man far beneath her in education
and refinement must inevitably awake, after a brief dream, to a state
of things which have made her unfortunate for life; and he, poor man,
will not be less wretched, unless she has brought him sufficient money
to give him leisure and opportunity to indulge his fancies with that
society which is on a level with his own tastes and education.

WITS AND WOMEN OF PARIS

The French wits tell a laughable story of an untravelled Englishman
who, on landing at Calais, was received by a sulky red-haired hostess,
when he instantly wrote down in his note-book: "All French women are
sulky and red-haired."

We never heard whether this Englishman afterwards corrected his first
impressions of French women, but quite likely he never did, for there
is nothing so difficult on earth as for an Englishman to get over
first impressions, and especially is this the case in relation to
everything in France. An aristocratic Englishman may live years in
Paris without really knowing anything about it. In the first place, he
goes there with letters of introduction to the Faubourg St. Germain,
where he finds only the fossil remains of the ol