know the principal national costumes contained in Babin's collection;
Goupil's display of prints has placed the tiger-hunts of Africa and the
sittings of the English Parliament before their eyes; they have become
acquainted with Queen Victoria, the Emperor of Austria, and Kossuth, at
the office-door of the Illustrated News. We can certainly instruct them,
but not astonish them; for nothing is completely new to them. You may
take the Paris ragamuffin through the five quarters of the world, and
at every wonder with which you think to surprise him, he will settle the
matter with that favorite and conclusive answer of his class--"I know."

But this variety of exhibitions, which makes Paris the fair of the
world, does not offer merely a means of instruction to him who walks
through it; it is a continual spur for rousing the imagination, a first
step of the ladder always set up before us in a vision. When we see
them, how many voyages do we take in imagination, what adventures do we
dream of, what pictures do we sketch! I never look at that shop near
the Chinese baths, with its tapestry hangings of Florida jessamine,
and filled with magnolias, without seeing the forest glades of the New
World, described by the author of Atala, opening themselves out before
me.

Then, when this study of things and this discourse of reason begin to
tire you, look around you! What contrasts of figures and faces you
see in the crowd! What a vast field for the exercise of meditation! A
half-seen glance, or a few words caught as the speaker passes by, open
a thousand vistas to your imagination. You wish to comprehend what these
imperfect disclosures mean, and, as the antiquary endeavors to decipher
the mutilated inscription on some old monument, you build up a history
on a gesture or on a word! These are the stirring sports of the mind,
which finds in fiction a relief from the wearisome dullness of the
actual.

Alas! as I was just now passing by the carriage-entrance of a great
house, I noticed a sad subject for one of these histories. A man was
sitting in the darkest corner, with his head bare, and holding out his
hat for the charity of those who passed. His threadbare coat had that
look of neatness which marks that destitution has been met by a long
struggle. He had carefully buttoned it up to hide the want of a shirt.
His face was half hid under his gray hair, and his eyes were closed, as
if he wished to escape the sight of his own humiliatio