wish there were more
of them.

But what grace, what sense, what witchery, there can be, for instance,
in a young girl's standing on one great toe and raising the other foot
to the altitude of her head, I cannot imagine. As an exhibition of
muscular power, it is disagreeable to me, because I know that the
capacity for it was acquired by severe and protracted efforts and at the
cost of much suffering. Why is it kept on the stage? Admit that it is
not lascivious; who will pretend that it is essentially graceful? I was
glad to see that the more extravagant distortions were not specially
popular with the audience--that nearly all the applause bestowed on
those ballet-feats which seem devised only to favor a liberal display of
the person came from the little knot of hired "claqueurs" in the center
of the pit. If there were many who loved to witness, there were few so
shameless as to applaud.

If the Opera is ever to become an element of Social life and enjoyment
in New-York, I do trust that it may be such a one as thoughtful men may
take their daughters to witness without apprehension or remorse. I do
not know whether the Opera we now have is or is not such a one; I know
_this_ is not. Its entire, palpable, urgent tendency, is "earthly,
sensual, devilish." In none was the instinct of Purity ever strengthened
by beholding it; in many, it must, in the nature of things, be weakened
with each repetition of the spectacle. It is no marvel that the French
are reputed exceedingly reckless of the sanctions and obligations of
Marriage, if this is a part of their State-supported education.

I came away at the close of the third act, leaving two more to be
performed. The play is transcendent in spectacle, and has had a very
great success here.

XVII.

PARIS, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.

PARIS, Sunday, June 15, 1851.

I marvel at the obliquity of vision whereby any one is enabled, standing
in this metropolis, to anticipate the subversion of the Republic and the
restoration of Monarchy. Such prophets must belong essentially to that
school which teaches the omnipotence of paper Constitutions and dilates
with bristling hair on the appalling possibility that Washington, or
Hamilton, or Franklin, might not have been chosen to the Convention
which framed our Federal Constitution, and that Constitution
consequently have remained unperfected or unadopted. The true view I
understand to be that if the Constitution had thus failed t