a
highly finished portrait and a glaringly coloured transparency. The
feminine, the graceful, and the natural, are never lost sight of for a
moment.

The French are admirable critics of acting, and are keenly alive to the
beauties of a chaste and finished style, like that of Mademoiselle
Mars. In Paris there is no playing to the galleries, and for a simple
reason:--the occupants of the galleries here are as fastidious as those
of the boxes, and any thing like outraging nature would be censured by
them: whereas, in other countries, the broad and the exaggerated almost
invariably find favour with the gods.

The same pure and refined taste that characterises the acting of
Mademoiselle Mars presides also over her toilette, which is always
appropriate and becoming.

Accustomed to the agreeable mixture of literary men in London society,
I observe, with regret, their absence in that of Paris. I have
repeatedly questioned people why this is, but have never been able to
obtain a satisfactory answer. It tells much against the good taste of
those who can give the tone to society here, that literary men should
be left out of it; and if the latter _will_ not mingle with the
aristocratic circles they are to blame, for the union of both is
advantageous to the interests of each.

Parisian society is very exclusive, and is divided into small coteries,
into which a stranger finds it difficult to become initiated. Large
routes are rare, and not at all suited to the tastes of the French
people; who comment with merriment, if not with ridicule, on the
evening parties in London, where the rooms being too small to contain
half the guests invited, the stairs and ante-rooms are filled by a
crowd, in which not only the power of conversing, but almost of
respiring is impeded.

The French ladies attribute the want of freshness so remarkable in the
toilettes of Englishwomen, to their crowded routes, and the knowledge
of its being impossible for a robe, or at least of a greater portion of
one than covers a bust, to be seen; which induces the fair wearers to
economise, by rarely indulging in new dresses.

At Paris certain ladies of distinction open their _salons_, on one
evening of each week, to a circle of their acquaintances, not too
numerous to banish that ease and confidence which form the delight of
society. Each lady takes an evening for her receptions, and no one
interferes with her arrangements by giving a party on the same night.
T