LER was
astonished when she landed at the American Hotel, to find that her dinner
had been prepared by a Parisian cook; and yet she had come over here to
show us her French steps. Simple Fanny! How did she think we could live
without French cookery, if we could not live without French dancing? What
traveller has ever visited a remote village that a French _modiste_ had
not visited before him? Is it possible to dine any where, without having a
French bill of fare thrust into your hand, and some dish with an _a la_
under your nose? Is there a living being in any part of the world willing
to make oath to having visited a ball-room or a church without
encountering a French dress or a French bonnet? The Quakers cannot; they
would as soon wear scarlet ribbons as any other than French gloves and
French muslins.

Untravelled New-Yorkers as they walk through Broadway, and see the names
of Madame Grand-this and Mons. Grand-that '_from Paris_,' over every other
shop-door, and see the French shoes, the French gloves, the French
chocolate, the French clocks, the _liqueurs_, the _bon-bons,_ the
_bijouterie_, the _meringues_, the _pates-de-foi-gras,_ in the windows,
may think that the Gauls have marked us for their 'own peculiar;' but it
is so in St. Petersburgh, 'tis so in Constantinople, 'tis so in Lima, in
the Banda Orientale, in Rio, in Mexico, in Montreal, in London, in Vienna,
in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Grand Cairo--'tis so all over the earth.
The Sorbonne and the Louvre rule the world. Can any body be tired, or
weary, or dumpish? No. We must be _ennuyeed_, or _blaze_, or _fatigue_, or
something else ending in _e_. Does any lady ever give an evening party?
No. Nothing but a _soiree_. Are there any more gatherings of friends? No;
only _reuenions_. Is it possible to dance a cotillion in English? Is there
any body in New-York with sufficient moral courage to sleep upon any thing
short of a French bed-stead? Is there a chamber-maid who will lie upon any
thing less than a _paliastre_? Are there any more fat, or plump, or round,
or full people? No. Even Falstaff would be inclined to _embonpoint_ if he
were alive, in these days of Gallic supremacy. Well might VICTOR COUSIN
and the rest of them declare that the French were not defeated at
Waterloo. The allied armies entered Paris it is true, but they made their
Exodus in slavery. The English, Germans and Russians went home from France
manacled with French fashions, and not a soul of