, but not uncommon in Paris.

I went one day outside the walls of Paris, and took dinner in a
beautiful spot where the sun was almost entirely excluded by the trees
and shrubs, in gardens attached to a restaurant. I had a capital dinner,
too, for a small price, better than I could have had for double the
money at a London hotel.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEOPLE--CLIMATE--PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS--HOTEL DES INVALIDES.

THE PEOPLE.

The French people, so far as one may judge from Paris, are very
difficult to study and understand. They are easy of access, but it is
difficult to account for the many and strange anomalies in their
character.

The intense love of gayety and the amount of elegant trifling which
shows itself everywhere as a national characteristic, does not prepare
one to believe that some of the greatest of mathematicians,
philosophers, and scientific men are Frenchmen and Parisians; but such
is the fact. The French are fickle, love pleasure, and one would think
that these qualities would unfit men for coolness, perseverance, and
prolonged research; and I am sometimes inclined to think that the
proficiency of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not
so much the result of patient investigation and laborious and continued
study, as a kind of intuition which amounts to genius. The French mind
is quick, and does not plod slowly toward eminence; it leaps to it.
Certainly, in brilliancy of talents the French surpass every other
nation. I will not do them the injustice to speak of them as they are at
this moment--crushed under the despotism of Louis Napoleon--but as they
have been in the last few years, and indeed for centuries. Paris is a
city of brilliant men and women. A French orator is one of the most
eloquent speakers, one of the most impressive men, any country can
furnish. The intelligence of the Paris artisans would surprise many
people in America. We have only to examine the journals which before the
advent of the empire were almost exclusively taken by the
working-classes of Paris, to see the proof of this. Their leaders were
written in the best essay-style, and were the result of careful thought
and application. Such journals could never have gained a fair support
from the artisans of New York. They were not mere news journals, nor
filled up with love-stories. They contained articles of great worth,
which required on the part of the reader a love of abstract truth and
the consideratio