men and women, I have ever seen.  Among the speakers of the evening were Cobden and Fox.  Cobden in physiognomy and appearance might almost pass for an American, and has a certain New England sharpness and shrewdness in his way of dealing with a subject.  His address was argumentative, yet there was a certain popular clearness about it, a fertility of familiar illustration, and an earnest feeling, which made it uncommonly impressive.  Fox is one of the most fluent and ingenious speakers I ever heard in a popular assembly.  Both were listened to by an audience which seemed to hang on every word that fell from their lips.

The musical world here are talking about Colman’s improvement in the piano.  I have seen the instrument which the inventor brought out from America.  It is furnished with a row of brass reeds, like those of the instrument called the Seraphine.  These take up the sound made by the string of the piano, and prolong it to any degree which is desired.  It is a splicing of the sounds of one instrument upon another.  Yet if the invention were to be left where it is, in Colman’s instrument, it could not succeed with the public.  The notes of the reeds are too harsh and nasal, and want the sweetness and mellowness of tone which belong to the string of the piano.

At present the invention is in the hands of Mr. Rand, the portrait painter, a countryman of ours, who is one of the most ingenious mechanicians in the world.  He has improved the tones of the reeds till they rival, in softness and fullness, those of the strings, and, in fact, can hardly be distinguished from them, so that the sounds of the two instruments run into one another without any apparent difference.  Mr. Rand has contrived three or four different machines for making the reeds with dispatch and precision; and if the difficulty of keeping the strings, which are undergoing a constant relaxation, in perfect unison with the reeds can be overcome, I see nothing to prevent the most complete and brilliant success.

Letter XXVII.

Changes in Paris.

Paris, August 9, 1845.

My last letter was dated at London, in my passage across England.  I have been nearly a fortnight in Paris.  In ten years I find a considerable change in the external aspect of this great capital.  The streets are cleaner, in many of them sidewalks have been made, not always the widest to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this climate—­it has rained every day but one since I entered France.