was ever edging our
march towards his Bastille Column and his cut-throat Quartier
Montmartre, I, the negative; drew it a little into more polished circles
where wit and talent sparkled. The Vicomte D'Haberville, a French
d'Argentenaye, took us to a reception--not too proud of us I daresay,
for the gloss of his shoes and the magnificence of his cravat outshone
us as the sleek skin of a race-horse does a country filly. Especially
did he eye Quinet a little coldly, so that I could scarcely persuade the
proud fellow to come.

To the astonishment of the Vicomte, however, Quinet was the attraction
of the evening. Taine and Thiers were there, and fired by a remark from
one of these his famous men, the young Radical had ventured a clever
saying.

Thiers looked at him a sharp glance as he heard the accent:

"Vous etes des Provinces, monsieur?"

"No, sir--from New France."

"We had once,--in America--a colony of the name," replied the statesman,
reflecting.

"France has it still. It is a colony of hearts!"

Quinet awakened interest; was inquired into and drawn out, and we were
invited to a dozen of the most interesting salons of the capital.

O but those Parisians are clever! Why is it they are so much more
brilliant than we? Perhaps because there intellect is honored.

Quickly, through these surroundings, our knowledges and tastes
advanced--Quinet's verging to the path of social science--mine to an
artistic sense which suddenly unfolded into life and became my chief
delight. The enthusiasm for Paris gradually led me to another offer by
Life of a Highest Thing. To say it shortly--the salons led to a pleasure
in the artistic, the society of artists to a growing appreciation of
fine works of skill, and these, to Italy and Rome.

Do you desire to rest eyes upon the noblest products of the hand of man?
Go into the Land of Romance as we did, and wander among its castled
hill-tops, its ruins of Empire, its cathedrals in the skill of whose
exhaustless grandeurs Divinity breathes through genius. Meditate in
reverence before the famous masterpieces of antiquity--the Venus of
Milo--the silent agony of the Laocoon, the Hyperion Belvedere. Learn
from Canova's pure marble, and Raphael's Chambers, and from Titian, and
Tintoret, and the astonishing galaxies of intellect that shine in their
constellations in the sky of the true Renaissance.

Then you may say as I did, "At length, I am finding something great and
best. The beautifu