even then it is usual to have the service in a private room. One old
lady, a woman perfectly competent to decide on such a point, told me
frankly:--"We never do it, except by way of a frolic, or when in a humour
which induces people to do many other silly and unbecoming things. Why
should we go to the _restaurateurs_ to eat? We have our own houses and
servants as well as the English, or even you Americans"--it may be
supposed I laughed--"and certainly the French are not so devoid of good
taste as not to understand that the mixed society of a public-house is
not the best possible company for a woman."

It is, moreover, a great mistake to imagine that the French are not
hospitable, and that they do not entertain as freely, and as often, as
any other people. The only difference between them and the English, in
this respect, or between them and ourselves, is in the better taste and
ease which regulate their intercourse of this nature. While there is a
great deal of true elegance, there is no fuss, at a French
entertainment; and all that you have heard of the superiority of the
kitchen in this country, is certainly true. Society is divided into
_castes_ in Paris, as it is everywhere else; and the degrees of elegance
and refinement increase as one ascends as a matter of course; but there
is less of effort, in every class, than is usual with us. One of the
best-bred Englishmen of my acquaintance, and one, too, who had long been
in the world, has frankly admitted to me, that the highest tone of
English society is merely an imitation of that which existed in Paris
previously to the revolution, and of which, though modified as to usages
and forms, a good deal still remains. By the highest tone, however, you
are not to suppose I mean that laboured, frigid, heartless manner that
so many, in England especially, mistake for high breeding, merely
because they do not know how to unite with the finish which constant
intercourse with the world creates, the graceful semblance of living
less for one's self than for others, and to express, as it were, their
feelings and wishes, rather than to permit one's own to escape him--a
habit that, like the reflection of a mirror, produces the truest and
most pleasing images, when thrown back from surfaces the most highly
polished. But I am anticipating rather than giving you a history of what
I have seen.

In consequence of our not having brought any letters, as has just been
mentioned, and of not h