respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in this
fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; having given up his
portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to
occupy his humble apartments in the house which he possesses, and of
which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at
one of the ex-Minister's soirees, where the Duchess of Dash made
her appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or
three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister en
retraite, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a
thing heard of? No, thank heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the
difference.

But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters
and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome,
exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a
life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers's grand
villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a
penny-a-liner: no such luck); when one contemplates, in imagination, M.
Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture-gallery
of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege
of princes only, and accompanied--nay, for what I know, actually
trundled--down the gallery by majesty itself--who does not long to make
one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious
jabber of France; or, at least, adopt it for his native country, like
Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made
Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY
of him.

Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the Ecole Royale
des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their
performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to
leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of
the Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in
England (in the neighborhood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundreds
of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The subjects are
almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by every variety
of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and
Andromaches in a complication of pa