rts, before all, that France owes such living
and lasting power. In every quarter of the civilized world there are
distinguished writers, painters, and eminent musicians, but in
France they exist in greater numbers than elsewhere. Moreover, it
is universally conceded that French writers and artists have this
particular and praiseworthy quality: they are most accessible to people
of other countries. Without losing their national characteristics, they
possess the happy gift of universality. To speak of letters alone:
the books that Frenchmen write are read, translated, dramatized, and
imitated everywhere; so it is not strange that these books give to
foreigners a desire for a nearer and more intimate acquaintance with
France.

Men preserve an almost innate habit of resorting to Paris from almost
every quarter of the globe. For many years American visitors have been
more numerous than others, although the journey from the United States
is long and costly. But I am sure that when for the first time they see
Paris--its palaces, its churches, its museums--and visit Versailles,
Fontainebleau, and Chantilly, they do not regret the travail they have
undergone. Meanwhile, however, I ask myself whether such sightseeing
is all that, in coming hither, they wish to accomplish. Intelligent
travellers--and, as a rule, it is the intelligent class that feels
the need of the educative influence of travel--look at our beautiful
monuments, wander through the streets and squares among the crowds that
fill them, and, observing them, I ask myself again: Do not such people
desire to study at closer range these persons who elbow them as they
pass; do they not wish to enter the houses of which they see but the
facades; do they not wish to know how Parisians live and speak and act
by their firesides? But time, alas! is lacking for the formation of
those intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their
grasp. French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors
leave us with regret that they have not been able to see more than the
surface of our civilization or to recognize by experience the note of
our inner home life.

How, then, shall this void be filled? Speaking in the first person, the
simplest means appears to be to study those whose profession it is to
describe the society of the time, and primarily, therefore, the works of
dramatic writers, who are supposed to draw a faithful picture of it. So
we go to the the