SINCE MY arrival here, I had been cogitating the shape and designation under which to throw the travelling memoranda I promised you of this journey, when I luckily met, in strolling through the Palais Royale, a French publication, entitled, "Quinze Jours a Londres, a la fin de 1815;" a good translateable title, I thought, and not unfit

for my own lucubrations: Therefore, with your leave, I shall entitle them, FIFTEEN DAYS IN PARIS at the end of 1816; although the time it has cost, and must cost me, to acquire half the information respecting this capital, which my great coadjutor, Monsieur Quinze Jours, attained in that short period regarding ours, will rather exceed the limit. When I become tiresome, you will, of course, cease to give me insertion; and I, besides, commit my work to you under the same impression that a draper sends his cloth to an experienced fashioner, to be cut, framed, and trimmed into a garment, suitable to the taste of his customers, of which he, the said fashioner, must be the best judge.

A very judicious friend of mine, in relation to this undertaking, advised me to beware of any attempt at being bril. liant; and, whenever I imagined 1 had turned a sentence with peculiar happiness of phraseology, or elegance of style, by all

means to strike it out. He warned me I should soon be aware of the rectitude of this advice; and, as I have always gone wrong when I have run counter to this gentleman's opinion, I shall, however loth, restrain myself from the use of a great number of the "felicities of language" wherewith I had provided myself from the various Letters, Journals, Guides, Visits, and Re-visits, on, of, and to Paris, which I thought it needful to read previous to my departure. Still, however, I may not have done enough; and should you, in perusing the proofs, find any thing that strikes you as being fine, I think, on the whole, you bad better also follow our friend's opinion, and score it out without mercy.

Your readers, thus, must be content to find my Paris and Parisians much more usual and ordinary persons and places than they have been accustomed to have them represented. I am interdicted the "glancing brilliancy" of the Parisian air, which gives a "startling distinctness" to every object; and the whole "floating and swarming vivacity, variety, gaiety, burst, whirl, and shew of French existence," as well as the "red handkerchiefs that shoot about the streets," and the "sprawling baths that stretch their leviathan forms on the green crystal water,” (all of which flowers a less-fettered tourist has given you' two pages,) are to me as the grapes in the fable.

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I must also plead guilty to some facts of omission which may take from the interest of my narrative; but you shall have in veracity what you want in imagination. I shall only describe what I have seen; lest Monsieur Quinze Jours shall say of me also, "Je crois qu'il n'a pénétré que dans nos

anti-chambres, et a fait d'imagination le tableau des salons et des boudoirs, comme l'abbé de Vertot le récit du siége de Rhodes."

Were one allowed the latitude of French fancy indeed, it were something; but with you the demand for truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth, operates as a terrible cramper of genius. My friend, Quinze Jours, in fifteen days,-besides all that is usually to be met with during such a period in London,-witnessed a boxing match at Primrose Hill, where part of the ring was composed of English women of fa shion. He went to the play, and saw gravediggers in King Lear,-a bottle thrown at the performers, and a man precipitated from the gallery into the pit. He was at church, when a fat Englishman, in pulling off his cocked-hat, dragged a large bushy wig along with it, coolly replaced both, the hind part before, and then marched up the aisle with a lady on each arm, all three unconscious of the misfortune, till the risibility of the spectators obliged the clergyman to suspend his discourse! This was luck, but Monsieur had also his misfortunes: He had to relieve from starving, a painter, his countryman, who had been cheated by an

English merchant that employed him, at the price of four hundred guineas, to paint a family-piece, in which the said merchant was to represent Agamemnon; his daughter, Iphigenia; and his two sons, Calchas and Achilles. Nay, it was further stipula ted, after the picture was half-finished, that Agamemnon should have a round wig, and Achilles be dressed in a colonel's uniform. One day the house next his lodgings was burned to the ground; which, however, gave Monsieur an opportunity of saying the happiest things on the subject of English sans-froid. Another day a suicide hanged himself in the chamber above him, and this, although a distressing case, fortunately enabled him to witness and describe a coroner's inquest.

Adventures in such variety, and in so short a space, fall to the lot of few; and, were an Englishman to narrate them, they would, in all likelihood, be called by his unceremonious countrymen, improbable, if not impossible; and yet, I assure you, this book has reception and belief in Paris. It is time, however, to dismiss this preliminary matter, and close my first Letter.

D.

No. III.]

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1817.

THE sketch of our friend Peter Grievance's character having met with good acceptance from our readers, we are tempted to fill up the following pages with a conversation which that unfortunate gentleman held with another worthy of our acquaintance a few days since.

Peter, who, among his other mishaps, is seldom without a fit of the rheumatism or toothache, had crept into a bookseller's shop, well-flannelled on the body, and his neck, as well as long thin peaked chin and meagre jaws, muffled in a large double Barcelona handkerchief. It was here his fortune to meet with his old acquaintance, Andrew Pismire, whose temper forms a whimsical contrast with his own. Andrew is, what Allan Ramsay describes in a single line,

A short-hough'd man, but full of pride.

He does not, any more than our friend Grievance, consider himself as being exactly promoted in life according to his me

rits; but, being a man of an alert mind, and a good deal of comfortable self-conceit, (which, let the reader be assured, is like a shirt of mail against the shafts of fortune,) he has not permitted his disappointment to abate his spirits or render his conversation less lively. Indeed, the sole effect of the failure of his hopes has been to exasperate a natural humour of contradiction, and sharpen his polemical talents. He seldom lets a proposition pass unchallenged; and is said to have been engaged in a duel in his youth, merely from having habitually made use of the unlucky phrase, "I deny that," when an officer of dragoons was describing the battle of Minden. He took warning from this incident; and now, when the party whom he engages wears a coat of any other colour than black, contents himself with observing, " that is not beyond challenge," or, "that may be dispu ted." As Andrew, besides great alertness and promptitude of language, has some reading and information, he often carries the victory with a high hand, walks from

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the scene of dispute upon tiptoe, and digests his beef-steak in as much triumph as if he had won the battle of Waterloo.

Pismire was sitting with his face to the fire, and his back to the other people in the shop; an attitude which he assumes with the caution of those wild animals who are aware that their presence would startle the objects of their pursuit. For Pismire, whose object it is to spring upon the first unguarded proposition which may admit of challenge, has observed, that the very sight of his contentious visage is apt to alarm those quiet persons who love to speak their simple minds without being called upon to defend each word so soon as it is beyond the limit of their mouth. Some have indeed suspected, from the uniformity with which Andrew maintains this posture, that he assumes it in consequence of some private article of treaty with the master of the warehouse of learning, who is supposed to have observed his custom slacken when the acute visage of Andrew Pismire was present too obviously to those who were about to enter the premises. But this may be considered as idle slander. Proceed we to the matter.

Peter had just entered the shop, and, with a mumbling sound, which the swathed state of his jaws rendered scarce intelligible, was assuring the loungers in the backroom, that this infernal weather would ruin all the world, except doctors and sextons, when the sharp voice of Mr Andrew Pismire exclaimed, the speaker still retaining his position," Good weather enough if fools knew how to be contented with it."

of my life, and what's more, I never knew any one who was."

"What, my old friend, Mr Grievance ?" said Andrew, whirling his chair round; for, by having extorted an answer, he felt that he had involved his unwary opponent without possibility of retreat," It is no wonder, my old friend, if you complain of the weather, with as much flannel about your face as would make an under-petticoat, were such things worn now-a-days. For shame, man; case-harden your system, souse your head into a bason of cold water."