haps she died, perhaps she discarded him, perhaps the love-suit was denied. There is many a dull, prosaic individual who could give you, from his own experience, all the plot of an imaginative romance. But because that bright dream is not for him, he does not therefore think, despite the warnings and anathemas of Mr. Trollope, that he is called upon to abstain from getting married. And marrying, from what he allows to be secondary motives, recognizing that marriage will not be a great spiritual power, but a worldly transaction, he determines that money shall form one of those secondary motives. But there is this difference between him and the heiress-hunter, that, with our friend, money only counts for one of various influences. He would not sacrifice womanliness, goodness, culture, for any amount of it. He has his income-or at all events, is able and willing to work for it; and is not, like the heiress-hunter, aspiring to be merely kept' by the woman he makes his wife. And perhaps there are good lines in store for these men. The heart, like its enshrouding form, is fearfully and wonderfully made. There is a deep spring gushing beneath the rocks, and flowers and shadows even in the desert. Insensibly the solitary is set in families; the solitary place is glad; though the golden summer of the year is gone, a later summer sets in, not unlike, and there is a solemn tenderness that more than consoles for early dreams.

But the happiest kind of heiresshunting, after all, is when a man has honestly sought and won a girl's love, and makes the discovery,

and not till then, that she is an heiress. I remember the aspiration of David Copperfield when he became enamoured of the eldest Miss Larkins. He imagined the paternal Larkins coming to him and saying: 'Youth is no objection. Here are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy.' I have known instances where a hardly less juvenile Copperfield has had such aspirations granted, and has, by a single happy flirtation of festive summer days, won lands and riches such as are rarely conceded to a long life of industry. And very pleasant it must be for an honest lover to have it laboriously explained to him how much property his wife will have, and be consulted about the disposition of it. He will not think much of the money part of his prize at present; but he will none the less feel the comfort of it one of these days. But there is, perhaps, even a happier way of obtaining a fortune through a wife: when the tried good wife unexpectedly inherits one, after long years of marriage life. She will hasten, with overflowing heart, to pour it all into the slender coffers of the husband, thankful that it was not hers at a time when her untried nature might have caused her, on its account, to lose the treasures of his love, and glad to give this evidence of wifely devotion. This kind of event is not so very uncommon in real life; and I think it is well worth the attention of the describers of contemporary manners, as indicating that happiest kind of transmutation, beyond any elixir, of changing common metal to gold, of transmuting gold itself into the currency of the Spiritual City.'

NE Monday morning, not long

ONE

ago, I took up the Constitutionnel' (Paris newspaper) for the sake of Nestor Roqueplan's theatrical feuilleton, or weekly comment on theatrical events. There it was in its place as usual, occupying the ground-floor of two whole pages, well-informed, sharp, yet fair and good-natured. A few hours afterwards another newspaper announced that Nestor Roqueplan was dead! Impossible it can be the writer,' I said. It is a father, cousin, uncle, or nephew. There are probably more Nestor Roqueplans than one. The event certainly took place at the Théâtre du Châtelet, of which the true Nestor was then the manager; but the deceased namesake may have been staying with him at the time. The hand that wrote those amusing sentences about what took place only a day or two since cannot now be cold and rigid !'

It was so, nevertheless. The proof of that article had been corrected by its writer only a few hours before death made it the last. An ailing heart, which had for some time threatened mischief, brought about, as usual, a sudden catastrophe. The witty tongue was silent; the fluent pen was still.

Nestor Roqueplan, though born in the south, spent his life as a veritable Parisian, and few men would be more missed from Paris than he. He died unmarried, in his sixty-fifth year; but he was one of those men who refuse to grow old at all in mind, and as little as possible in person. The latter effort cost, of course, a considerable amount of making-up.' It is not my intention even to sketch his biography, which may be imagined as that of a single man about town, a popular contributor to periodical literature, and successively manager of several of the Paris theatres, including the Grand Opera. The memoirs of such a personage might be made to fill volumes of amusing gossip. I will merely mention that, like the late Duke of Wellington,

he was the author of many expressions and sayings, which he let fall apparently unconscious of their aptness, but which were immediately adopted into the popular vocabulary. For instance, he gave the name of lorettes to certain women who showed a predilection for the parish of Notre Dame de Lorette; he also fitted with the title of petits crevés the Parisian representatives (only more effete) of the Dundreary type. My object is to direct the reader's attention to the book in which he concentrated his whole individuality. He himself was the essence of Paris; the book is the essence of himself. Its title is explained in the briefest of prefaces. People say: Strychnine, Quinine, Nicotine, Aniline. I say: Parisine.

'NESTOR ROQUEPLAN.'

What follows is a sample of the Lutetian elixir.

Next to the fact of having actually been born-the indispensable first step in human existence, without which no others are possiblemarriage is perhaps the most important event of human life. Now marriage, as it exists in French society, is assuredly one of the institutions with which chance has the most to do. In Germany, England, and the United States, there is more opportunity for individual choice. Marriageable girls know nothing there of the French system of sequestration. They enjoy a liberty by which they largely profit to know and to be known. Engagements-the prefaces to marriage-not being a series of empty official conversations under the surveillance of parents and guardians, have a reality and an earnestness which render social mistakes somewhat difficult. And as if those preliminaries were insufficient, marriage there is not absolutely indissoluble.

We may add that marriages in France are either rash or interested. Their neighbours act at the same time more cautiously and more generously. They think more of the face and of the disposition than

or

of the portion; and if neither of the parties can contribute more than empty purses, they renounce they adjourn their union. The man has greater reliance on himself, and cheerfully reckons on his own unaided resources: he wants a companion for life, and not a partner in business; a wife, and not a Co. in his concerns.

Marriage, in Parisian society, is simply an affair whose conditions are bargained for in an undertone, amidst the bustle and roar of the great metropolis. To unite, through the agency of a notary and a priest, the existence of a young lady with sharp-pointed heels to the existence of a young man with hair parted down the middle, seems easy enough; but in reality, for every family, and especially at present, now that the old social classifications are completely upset, the question of marriage is sombre as the unknown future. Do the fortunes which spring up so rapidly and so magically add no column of cares to the account-books of those whose children grow taller while their capital swells? If you were an upstart of yesterday yourself, would you give your daughter to a budding young upstart? Certainly not. You are too well aware of the danger of the means employed for starting up. People who have recently made large fortunes are fonder than ever of hunting out, for their daughter's husband, some noble scion of the Faubourg SaintGermain, impoverished by cards. and courtesans. A grand name on one side; great wealth on the other. These alliances of interest and vanity bring about ridiculous complications, which cannot be shaken off till the third generation.

An ambitious financier, of vulgar manners, gave his daughter to a worthy man of lofty parentage. Although irreproachable in his conduct towards the lady, he could not conquer the prejudices of his own private circle. Sometimes, on returning from a grand family dinner, the father-in-law would confide his sorrows to his wife. She, strong, stout, and well stocked with resignation, would answer, 'So long as

we are not sent to dine in the pantry, we mustn't complain.'

The do-nothing nobility of France -they cannot be called the aristocracy, because they enjoy no cracy whatever-are preparing for themselves a future which is anything but rose-coloured. While the English aristocracy strives to earn its privileges by its laborious activity, its high education, by the part it takes in public and private affairs, never ceasing to belong to the English people, not a few French 'gentilshommes (ignorant as the carp at Fontainebleau, who still fancy themselves living in the reign of François I., gamblers and dissolute out of vanity rather than inclination) strive hard to increase the general wealth of the nation with the remnants of their inheritance, already cut up by the Civil Code.

Restaurateurs, carriage-builders, and insatiable women, are the agents by whom this democratic decomposition of great families is effected. And as the king of France is no longer there to prop up tumbling houses; as the present laws of inheritance, with their system of infinite division, reduce illustrious names to incomes of fifty pounds a year; as misfortunes and losses are never repaired by labour, and as bourgeoises will then invariably marry bourgeois, the hidalgos will have to refrain from marriage, for fear of engendering a race of beggars.

But besides persons of really noble birth-and French nobility, like French property, is subject to the law of infinite division-there are brummagem, pinchbeck, selfmade nobles, who are not to be put down by the ridicule they excite.

Given a Monsieur whose name is Mâchelard, and who is very much disgusted with his name; the first temptation to ennoble himself is excited by street lads who address him with pompous titles when they open his carriage-door. The longing is kept alive by his tailor, who sends in his bill to M. de Mâchelard. Horsedealers and carriage-builders make the malady chronic. It is

*The word has a different meaning to our gentleman.' It implies that a person is of noble birth.

impossible to buy a horse and trap in the Champs Elysées without being treated as a Count. Then the servants come to take the orders of M. le Comte; the porters hand the letters and cards to M. le Comte. Then follows the purchase of half a dozen cottages in a village, say Floricourt, thirty or forty miles away from town, whose name he usurps, with the complicity of the peasants, who dub him with the title in order to earn double wages. The thing is done in a couple of years. By that time M. Mâchelard really believes himself to be the Comte de Floricourt. He avoids misalliances, and his children are insolent.

Without the links of family life, society holds together but loosely. Consequently, fashion, which meddles with everything, will never succeed in making large families ridiculous. What is a household where there are no children? It is a tête-à-tête in perpetuity, embittered by reproaches which are never expressed in words, for want of knowing whose the fault is; it is the haughty sarcasms of mothers of families irritating the childless wife, but sparing the husband; it is wealth unavailingly possessed, or leaking out into illicit channels; it is the certainty of meeting the last hour in solitude, or in the presence of heirs who measure their demonstrations of attachment by the importance of their share. A house without children is more melancholy than a house which has lost its children; because that at least treasures up a portrait, a lock of hair, a broken toy-souvenirs of joys and sorrows experienced in common. It has at least a tomb to which it can carry its tribute of flowers, and think of the past.

On the other hand, the living flock of brats are the amusement and the tyrants of the whole establishment. There is a competition as to who shall oppose the least resistance to the little despots, who, from the very first, try their strength -that is, their tears-in the subjugation of their nurses and mammas. The mother imagines the most elegant fal-lals to welcome the pretty

squallers on their entrance into the world; subsequently she will dress them as little Scotchmen, little Cossacks, as Scapins, Crispins, until, costumed with the schoolboy's tunic, they never lace their shoes, catch perennial colds in the head without troubling themselves about pockethandkerchiefs, and make albums of postage-stamps. As to the father, the advent of the prodigy fills him with pride-and enables him to vary his evening amusements. He takes to it so kindly-he is delighted to be so fatherly and free, that he does his best to be as fatherly and free as possible.

Philosophers have observed, in every' cercle' or club, that as soon as wives have fairly entered on their first grossesse, the husbands return to their nightly whist. What is called the plongeon, the dip or diving, that is, the disappearance of a new-married man, does not exceed six months on an average. Two preparatory months, for paying his court, and four months of decent and proper convenance after the wedding. After that he resumes all his bachelor habits, and his wife begins to complain with bitterness 'that there is no getting him away from his club.' From that date also, the most moderate whist may possibly become a dangerous game. It is no longer a house without children, but a house without a husband.

As the child grows, he becomes more and more frisky-and more and more inquisitive. It is a mistake not to be reserved in the presence of children; ordinarily, people speak and act (especially servants) as if they were not there. Before they can talk, we fancy them blind and deaf; when they talk, we believe them incapable of understanding; when they undoubtedly do understand, we take them to be inattentive or indifferent. A sensible woman said on this subject, 'I have always feared and respected my children from the time when they were five minutes old.' Children, in fact, resemble people who understand a language without being able to speak it. They see, hear, and compréhend with such

extraordinary quickness and precocity, that their parents regard them as marvels of intelligence, which they really are in the first days of childhood.

In their manifestations of family affections, the parents mostly act in this wise: the father manifests for his daughter an attachment which the mother more especially bestows on her son. Both of them obey a law which is at once mysterious and reasonable. The father falls into the habit of directing his faculties, his force, his fortune, to the side on which lie danger, weakness, and the absence of means of acquiring wealth. The mother, through an unconscious return of coquetry, is delighted to indulge in a second love. She loves her husband twice by loving her son, in whom his father resumes a hopeful existence. One of a mother's most delightful emotions is experienced the day when her son first puts on breeches. He is a little man!

With a mother devoted to her duties and to the future prospects of her children, the desire of finding as soon as possible a second protector, a champion, a name, produces a blindness which is complete. At every one of the stages passed by this creature whom we have been ourselves, whom we love when we have him, and whom we call the dear boy,' her blindness augments. As soon as the age of lace, and ribbons, and feathers is past, the infant suddenly grows ugly and continues so without intermission for fifteen years. School deforms and bleaches him. He is grotesque in his tunic and leather girdle. His feet and his face are always untidy. Poor mamma considers him charming.

At his first pipe, soon after the age of twelve, she gives him a good scolding, promising, however, not to tell papa. 'Pipes are horrid. If it was only a cigar, why--Here; there's some money to buy cigars, like most of your other schoolfellows.'

At the first manifestation of down on his lip, mamma runs to papa, and says, Haven't you noticed it? Alfred has got a moustache!'

'He's a beauty, your son; and his moustache is a beauty. I'd much rather he had got a prize or two.'

When domestic rumours-sometimes the lad's boastful talk-inform the lady that he has set his first step in gallantry, again she hurries to papa, and whispers, Don't you know it? Alfred has a sweetheart; he's in love. No wonder; such a good-looking young man!'

Daddy knits his brows and growls, 'He'll spend all his money about some hussey.'

'Money! He has got no money! You ought to allow him pocketmoney.'

'In my time we had nothing of the kind, and nevertheless

Whether papa gives it or not, Alfred is sure to have money. The mother relishes the supreme delight of giving the spoiled child money without his father's knowledge.

Ever fond, ever indulgent, resigned to see her son stretch his wings, provided she can tie a string to his leg, mamma does not like him to take his flight to unknown worlds whence he might be a long while before returning. She prefers his remaining within the sphere of her world.

Morality and civilisation agree in imposing legitimate unions as a social duty. But a man is not necessarily a rebel and egoist because he refrains from fulfilling that duty, any more than those who do accomplish it are without exception models of self-denial, fidelity, and disinterestedness.

Besides marriages of reparation, what motives usually determine the majority of other marriages? Some people marry without knowing why. A certain number have been heard to say, 'In our family, we marry from father to son, and I do the same.' A valid reason, certainly; and if things do not turn out well, if they are wretched in their quality of husbands, they make up for it in their quality of lovers, as writes the author of the 'Persian Letters.' Others know perfectly well why they marrynamely, to finger a dowry and