after Mr. Canning left Paris I remember meeting the late Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkner, in the Rue de Rivoli, and lauding the condescension of Charles X. towards our eloquent countryman. 'Well,' said Sir Arthur, his conduct is very unlike that of his son, the Duke of Angoulême, who gave the wife of M. Assioti, Commissary-General, in Scotland, a seal inscribed with his name, as a lasting memorial of the efforts of her husband to provide accommodation for Charles X. and the Duke in Edinburgh. "If ever the hour arrives," said his Royal Highness in giving this seal, "that my family are reinstated, present this (showing the seal), and you shall know we are neither insensible nor ungrateful." Some years afterwards, when Charles X. was on the throne, and the lady in Paris, the circumstance was brought to the Duke's recollection by letter, and he took no notice of a request in writing from her to facilitate her access to a public institution. Complaints of this kind were made by many English and Scotch who had rendered the elder Bourbon family great civilities in exile, both in London and at Holyrood.'

Villele was at this time Minister, and was certainly one of the ablest men in France as manager of the Chamber, and leader of a party. As a speaker, he was sound and sensible, rather than showy. His talent for business was acquired in the French navy, and as manager of a sugar estate in the Isle of Bourbon. A man of far greater powers of speech than the first Minister, was De Peyronnet, keeper of the seals, who gloried in sustaining and advocating the most unpopular measures. De Peyronnet was, however, a man of little wisdom. He was subsequently one of the ministers who signed the fatal ordonnances of Charles X. Among the bitterest opponents of De Peyronnet, were Benjamin Constant and Casimir Perier. I was never acquainted with the latter, but Constant I knew well. He was thoroughly master of German and English literature, and spoke

our language well. Early in life he had studied at Edinburgh, where he was contemporary with the late Sir J. Mackintosh. Constant had an irresistible propensity for play, and was in 1825 and 1826 a frequent attendant at the Cercle des Etrangers. He was lame, and a valetudinarian at this period, and six years later his health and fortunes were completely ruined by the excitements of party and of play. By play he won his small house in the Rue d'Anjou St. Honoré, and from this he would have been ejected in his last moments, had not Louis Philippe assisted him with a sum of three hundred thousand francs in 1830.

It was in the year 1824 that a witty and agreeable Irishman of my acquaintance offered me a letter to a Mr. Lewins, calling himself De Luynes, of the Rue St. Florentin, a friend of M. de Talleyrand. He stated that the former would present me to that remarkable man, and further mentioned that Lewins himself was an employé either in the Bureau des Affaires Etrangères or in the Ministère des Cultes, I forget which. I took the letter and delivered it in due course. Mr. Lewins, of whose previous history I knew nothing, appeared to me a man of about fifty-five years of age, short, thickset, and rather vulgar in appearance. His manner was reserved and dry; his conversation curt and cautious; his demeanour reticent and observant. He questioned me much about England, and more particularly as to the condition of Ireland. I answered frankly and to the best of my ability, and used in turn the privilege of questioning my questioner about France, her institutions and public men. Among the rest I spoke of M. Frassynous, Bishop of Hermopolis, Minister of Worship and Public Instruction, whose oraison funèbre on the death of Louis XVIII. I shortly before heard and now sharply criticised. Mr. Lewins listened, I could see, with ill-disguised impatience, and in a few moments said, 'Well, come and breakfast with me to-morrow.

Afterwards I'll present you to Monseigneur d'Hermopolis, and perhaps you may be inclined to retract or modify your censures.' To breakfast I went, and was afterwards presented to the Bishop in his ecclesiastical costume. The manner of the prelate was unctuous, and worthy of the functionary who adroitly made the disciples of Loyola sink the name of Jesuits and call themselves Pères de la Foi. Souvent,' he remarked, on est obligé de plier devant la force des choses.' Frassynous was an able controversialist and a man of fine

elocution, and was after 1830 appointed tutor to the Duke de Bordeaux by Charles X. He died in his seventy-seventh year in 1842. I was not at that time aware that Lewins had been one of the Executive Directory of the United Irishmen. He had been originally in the Irish Post Office, and was sent by the Executive Directory of the United Irishmen to solicit the assistance of the French Directory, and also to apply to Holland and Spain. He was in high favour with Barras, Talleyrand, Pleville, Lepelley, Charles Lacroix, Carnot, Merlin de Douai, and Generals Hoche and Desaix, and was all but acknowledged as Minister from Ireland in 1797. Subsequently he was, I believe, employed in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and was, at the time I first saw him, attached to the Ministry of Public Instruction. He was a man of considerable ability, but I did not like his manner, and from the moment his history was known to me my intercourse with him ceased.

There was at this time living at Paris in very good style, at No. 4 in the Rue Trudon, an Irish gentleman of very good fortune, named Mr. John Fitzgerald Lattin, of Morristown Lattin, in the county of Kildare. He had been brought up at the Académia Nobile of Turin, and had entered the Gardes Françaises before 1789. During the Reign of Terror he left France, and returned at the Peace of Amiens, establishing himself in the street of which I speak. Here I visited him

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in December, 1824, and casually inquiring if he knew a Mr. Lewins, the accomplished old gentleman imparted to me a portion of the information here set down.

I may in passing state that from 1823 to 1836 Mr. Lattin's dinners at the Rue Trudon (a street leading from the Rue Boudreau to the Rue Neuve des Mathurins), were among the most agreeable in Paris. There was a frank hospitality and the very best company, French and English. There have I met Hyde de Neuville and Martignac, Lords Dudley, Nugent, Alvanley, Kinnaird, and Howden, and Luttrell, Sir Robert Wilson, Arthur Aston, and, I think, Lavalette Bruce, afterwards a barrister of the Western circuit, a man who spoke French with purity and fluency. Another agreeable house in those days was the late Marquis of Sligo's. A famous giver of dinners, too, was Mr. Marsh, of the Rue du Bourbon, Faubourg St. Germain. He was a man of considerable wealth, who made his fortune as a contractor, and settled in Paris after the peace. He understood the art of good living thoroughly, practising his hospitality once or twice a week during the season. You met all the lions of Paris, native and foreign, at his house. Here for the first time I saw Sir Sidney Smith, a simple quiet man, and Captain Usher, who conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena.

At the house of an old French colonel, near the Rue des Brodeurs, Boulevard des Invalides, I met, in 1827, General Arthur O'Connor, of whose ability I heard men who detested his principles speak highly. I was greatly struck with this remarkable man. He had the manners and bearing of a thorough gentleman, and was not defiled by any of the nastinesses of a vulgar demagogue. His opinions were frank and undisguised, and there was in his manner_ nothing of the cunning and Jesuitism which marked Irish demagogues of a later generation. On political subjects he spoke with temper and dignity, and I could see that he had no sympathies with the sordid and sacerdotal agitators

who were figuring on the Irish scene three-and-thirty years ago. The day following I was to dine with a lady of rank. I mentioned in the course of the evening the remarkable person I had met the day previously. Thirty-two years ago,' she said, 'I knew the nephew of the late Lord Longueville intimately, when he was member for Cork county, and in every society he was then considered one of the ablest and one of the handsomest and most distinguished-looking men in the Irish Parliament, and half the belles of the day, myself among the number, were over head and ears in love with him. All that, however, was three or four years before the Irish Rebellion, in which he was implicated.' After 1827, though he survived for twentythree years dying only in 1850, at the age of eighty-four-I never saw General O'Connor, who was quite a different man from Lewins. It is curious that for the last seventy years, indeed I may say for the last century, there have been Irishmen engaged, like Lewins, in the French Foreign and Government offices. In 1794, an Irishman named Jackson' was employed by the French Government to inflame Ireland; and in 1795, 1796, 1797, and 1798, Irishmen named Madgett, Sullivan, Elliot, Duckett, and MacSheehy, were all employed for a like purpose by the French Ministers for Foreign Affairs. Charles de la Croix and Carnot employed two Irish priests of the names of Fitzsimon and Aherne to accomplish objects deemed desirable by France. There is nothing new under the sun. The tactics of

sixty-four years ago are had recourse to in our day. Many of the diatribes written against England in France during the last eight or nine years have been penned by Irishmen, and some of them by Irish priests domiciled in France.

One of the most agreeable houses in Paris in my early days was that of Lady Aldborough, the wittiest woman of her time. Another agreeable house was that of Lady Arran (mother of the Duchess of Inverness), who used to give charming little dinners. Madame Popkin's house on the Quai Malaquai (a sister of Lydia White) used also to be greatly frequented.

A portion of the summer of 1827 I spent at Dieppe, where was then sojourning the Duchess of Berry, and where I sorrowfully learned the death of Canning. Soon after, Lord Granville, with whom Canning had been staying the year before, came to Dieppe, and I never saw any one more profoundly afflicted at the loss of a friend, than this accomplished and amiable nobleman. There is a great difference between the Dieppe of 1827 and 1860, but as 'l'art d'ennuyer est l'art de tout dire,' I must reserve what I have to say of French watering-places for a second paper. I have not spoken either of Charles X., of La Bourdonnaye, of Martignac, of Polignac, of Bourmont, or of the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe, or of his long reign of eighteen years, or of the bar, journalists, and literary men of France from 1824 to 1848. I have discoursed too much probably of restaurants and cafés.

I may be pardoned for desiring to say a word at some not distant day.