judgment to the other.

During the winter of 1836 Comte Adam was the fashion, and Clementine
Laginska one of the queens of Paris. Madame Laginska is now a member
of that charming circle of young women represented by Mesdames de
Lestorade, de Portenduere, Marie de Vandenesse, du Guenic, and de
Maufrigneuse, the flowers of our present Paris, who live at such
immeasurable distance from the parvenus, the vulgarians, and the
speculators of the new regime.

This preamble is necessary to show the sphere in which was done one of
those noble actions, less rare than the calumniators of our time
admit,--actions which, like pearls, the fruit of pain and suffering,
are hidden within rough shells, lost in the gulf, the sea, the tossing
waves of what we call society, the century, Paris, London, St.
Petersburg,--or what you will.

If the axiom that architecture is the expression of manner and morals
was ever proved, it was certainly after the insurrection of 1830,
during the present reign of the house of Orleans. As all the old
fortunes are diminishing in France, the majestic mansions of our
ancestors are constantly being demolished and replaced by species of
phalansteries, in which the peers of July occupy the third floor above
some newly enriched empirics on the lower floors. A mixture of styles
is confusedly employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility
to give the tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never,
on the other hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways
of imitating the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more
talent, in distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon
the garden at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a