any modern Parisian would admit to possess any
direct or truthful reference to Paris life as it is. People certainly
continue to dine at Very's; but Englishmen no longer get tipsy there, no
longer smash the plates or kick the waiters. In lieu of dusky
billiard-rooms, the resort of duskier sharpers, there are magnificent
saloons, containing five, ten, and sometimes twenty billiard-tables. The
_Galeries de Bois_ have been knocked to pieces these thirty years. The
public gaming-houses have been shut up. There are no longer any brutal
dog-and-bear-baitings at the Barriere du Combat. There is no longer a
_Belle Limonadiere_ at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. _Belles
Limonadieres_ (if I may be permitted to use one of the most inelegant,
but the most expressive, of American colloquialisms) are "played out."
The Catacombs have long since been shut to strangers. The _Caveau_
exists no more. Old reprobates scarcely remember the _Cafe d'Enfer_. The
_Fete_ of St. Louis is as dead as Louis XVIII., as dead as the _Fetes_
of July, as the _Fetes_ of the Republic. There is but one national
festival now,--and that is on the 15th of August, and in honor of St.
Napoleon. There are no more "glims" to smash; the old oil _reverberes_
have been replaced by showy gas-lamps, and the _sergents de ville_ would
make short work of any roisterers who attempted to take liberties with
them. The old Paris of the Restoration and the Monarchy is dead; but the
Thane of Cawdor--I mean George Cruikshank--lives, a prosperous
gentleman.

I brought the book away with me from Mexico, all the way down to Vera
Cruz, and so on to Cuba, and thence to New York; and it is in Boston
with me now. But it is not mine. The Don did not even lend it to me. I
had only his permission to take it from the library to my room, and turn
it over there; but when I was coming away, that same body-servant,
thinking it was my property, carefully packed it among the clothes in my
portmanteau; and I did not discover his mistake and my temporary gain
until I was off. I mention this in all candor; for I am conscious that
there never was a book-collector yet who did not, at some period or
other of his life, at least meditate the commission of a felony. But the
Don is coming to the States this autumn, and I must show him that I have
not been a fraudulent bailee. I shall have taken, at all events, my fill
of pleasure from the book; and I hope that George Cruikshank will live
to read what I have w