d _noblesse_,
intermixed with a slight proportion of the actual intelligence of the
country, and here he moves round in the stagnant circles of historical
France, and it is a wonder if he gets so much as a glimpse of the
living progressive Paris. There is nothing on earth, unless it be a
three-thousand-year-old mummy, that is so grim and stiff and
shrivelled, as the pure old French nobility. France is at present the
possessor of three separate and opposing nobilities. First, there is
the nobility of the Empire, the Napoleonic nobility, which is based on
military and civil genius; second, there is the Orleans nobility, the
family of the late Louis-Philippe, represented in the person of the
young Comte de Paris; third, the Legitimists, or the old aristocracy
of the Bourbon stock, represented in the person of Henry V, Duc de
Bordeaux, now some fifty years old, and laid snugly away in exile in
Italy.

No description which I can give can convey a just idea of the
fascination of society among such wits as Dejazet; and nowhere do you
find that kind of society so complete as in Paris. Nowhere else do you
find so many women of wit and genius mingling in the assemblies and
festive occasions of literary men; and I may add that in no part of
the world is literary society so refined, so brilliant, and charmingly
intellectual as in Paris. It is a great contrast to literary society
in London or America. Listen to the following confession of Lord
Byron: "I have left an assembly filled with all the great names of
_haut-ton_ in London, and where little but names were to be found, to
seek relief from the _ennui_ that overpowered me, in a cider cellar!
and have found there more food for speculation than in the vapid
circles of glittering dullness I had left."

One of the most remarkable and the most noted persons to be met with
in Paris is Madame Dudevant, commonly known as Georges Sand. She is
now about fifty years of age (it is no crime to speak of the age of a
woman of her genius), a large, masculine, coarse-featured woman, but
with fine eyes, and open, easy, frank, and hearty in her manner to
friends. To a discerning mind her writings will convey a correct idea
of the woman. You meet her everywhere dressed in men's clothes--a
custom which she adopts from no mere caprice or waywardness of
character, but for the reason that in this garb she is enabled to go
where she pleases without exciting curiosity, and seeing and hearing
what is m