buying, and so they get the utmost for their money."

'I was very much struck, madame,' was my reply, with an open air sale of furniture-of household goods generally-that takes place, on certain days, on the Place of the Hôtel de Ville, in Brussels. People who have goods to sell go out into the public square, and get the best price people can afford to give for them. I am quite sure, open markets of this description in great towns would be a boon to the poorer inhabitants. Do away with the auctioneer, and his low followers, who really steal a houseful of furniture in an hour or two, and then go and divide the booty among themselves. Set aside broad open spaces, where the man who has to sell may come in direct contact with the man who has to buy. In England, where the man in difficulties is stripped by legal harpies, by attorney, accountant, sheriff, auctioneer, and the sale-gang; where the broker can sweep a house clean at his own price-where the laws that affect the poor are harsher than in any kingdom I have dwelt in-such facilities as you have here for cheap buying and selling, such markets of all description as abound in your cities, would be so many ways to the social salvation of the hardest working race on the face of God's earth.'

'Permit me to observe,' Madame Barbizon interrupted, that whatever my Cash Temple, as you are pleased to call it, may be, it is not the place for

moral reflections on the relative social arrangements of States. Besides, I came here for a certain purpose with which you have nothing to do. I thank you for your company, and——’

'But, madame,' I protested, I cannot think of leaving you in this crowd, and among all these people.'

Madame Barbizon laughed, and said, 'I am at home, and this is my way,' pointing down one of the crowded side avenues. 'Sans adieu !'

And, in a moment, she disappeared behind tiers of blankets, mattresses, and impermeables.

'What a clever, scheming, right-minded, brave little woman!' said I, as I strode through the grand avenue of the Cash Temple, to the pleasant open air.

CHAPTER XV.

MADAME FIN-BECAT HOME.'

MADAME FIN-BEC receives, in the season, every Monday evening. It has been her day for many years. The amiable custom gives her no trouble. A well-furnished tea-table-the tea being the finest in the market, not of the coarse flavour English tea-drinkers usually affect-some dishes of petits-fours, and a savarin, and the preparations are told. In the winter, sometimes, a sip of punch in the ante-chamber; on extra late nights a cup of bouillon before her guests risk the cold air. This is, I have always thought, a happy mean between the feeding bouts of England and the uncheered receptions of Spain. I have often heard the French people charged with a lack of friendship, and I think they are open to it, but they are eminently sociable. Their love of amusement compels them to be often in company. Music, lively conversation, little games, the dressing of a cotillon, make their evening. They look for no supper; they are in the highest spirits with a sirop. Very few of them could afford to receive twenty or thirty people in their rooms

N

every week, if it was necessary to feed their guests. In England, directly you ask people to dances, they have a vision of a supper-table, ices, and champagne. Pleasant accompaniments enough, but not necessaries to refined social inter

course.

If English people would only think so, and reduce the present galling expenses of seeing society, they would, as a member of the Jockey Club observed to me, 'grease the wheels of life!' and many a family now troubled and crippled by the cost of its social gentilities would have a new era of ease opened upon it. There would be no Gunther bills, no crushing wine accounts. And, in addition, the tone of society would be improved. It would be more intellectual than it is. There would be salons as there are in France, where the wit would be the feast; and where a general interchange of ideas among cultivated men and women would be the vivifying enjoyment.

"Your ideas,' said one of Madame Fin-Bec's guests to me,' will never grow in the soil of perfidious Albion. I have been in their society, at our embassy, and in their own houses. Crowds, refreshments - refreshments, crowds; and their journeys à pas de course, from one mob to another, that is what I saw. Their dinners! The most expensive, over-laden, formal ceremonies I ever attended. The Chinese are not more formal. The arm that is offered you is as rigid and

unsympathetic as the elbows of their chairs. You see the wine warm them a little. They simmer at dessert. You find every luxury money can buy; but with the exception of a few houses, not that naturalness, that élan, we have in good society. Among the English middle classes, the best-behaviour air of their salons is inexpressibly painful.'

'I maintain, comtesse,' was my reply, that the stiffness comes from the ceremony which accompanies all social intercourse in England. Their welcome is hearty when a stranger passes within their gates, but he finds ceremony in the heart of the home. The children are formal, and come down from their nursery after dinner painfully brushed; the breakfast table is laid out with the stiffness of a chessboard, and down come the ladies and gentlemen all at one even temper, with one formal salute. This is very difficult for the Frenchman, or the Italian-aye, or the German, to bear.'

'Don't talk about it,' said the sparkling little countess, who must have suffered agony in such an atmosphere; and she shook her shoulders at the mere remembrance of the coldness.

'It is but snow,' I went on to say; it chills your hands, for a moment, but there is warmth under it.'

'Monsieur Fin-Bec,' the vivacious Frenchwoman said, turning upon me, and laying the edge of her fan upon my arm, 'you will not