lull, after the bustle and racket of the afternoon. The day has been
splendid--crisp, bright, and invigorating, and all the dandies and
beauties of Paris have been abroad, driving in the Champs Elysees,
galloping through the leafless avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, basking
in the winter sun upon the cheerful Boulevards. The morning's amusements
are over; those of the night have not yet begun. It is the moment of the
interlude, the hour of dine, and Paris is busied in the most important
of its diurnal acts. But, alas for the briefness of earthly joys, and
the limited capacity of mortal stomachs! Sad is it that not even in this
Golden Mansion can a feeble child of clay dine twice. We long for the
appetite of a Dando, for the digestion of the bird of the desert, to
recommence our meal, from the soup to the _fondu_. Vain are our
aspirations. The soft languor of repletion steals over us, as we dally
with our final olive, and _buzz_ the Lafitte. Waiter! the coffee. At the
word, the essence of Mocha, black as Erebus, and fragrant as a breeze,
from the Spice Islands, smokes beneath our nostrils, the sparkling
glasses receive the golden _liqueur_, and--WE HAVE DINED.

Good dinners and amusing theatricals enter largely into the pleasurable
anticipations of English visiters to Paris. The fame of French cooks and
actors is universal; all are eager to taste their productions, and
witness their performances. Let a tyrannical royal ordinance or
sumptuary law close the playhouses and cut down the bills of fare from a
volume to a page, and a sensible diminution will ensue in the influx of
foreigners into France. However great the desire to visit Versailles,
stare at the Vendome column, and ramble round the Palais Royal, those
attractions, if put into the scale, will frequently be found less
weighty than a vaudeville, a dinner at Very's, and a breakfast at the
renowned Rocher. In their expectations, both gastronomical and
theatrical, strangers in Paris are often disappointed. We refer, of
course, to tyros; not to the regular birds of passage who consider a
month or two in the French metropolis as essential a part of their
annual recreations as Ascot or the moors. These, of course, are well
versed in Parisian mysteries, both of the drama and the dining room. But
to the novice, a guide is necessary, whether through the crowded columns
of a _restaurateur's_ complicated _carte_, or amidst the fair promises
held out by the two dozen playbill