occupied with groups of waltzing and quadrilling votaries.  As the evening darkened, lamps began to glisten in every direction, and the well-lighted cafes resembled so many Chinese lanterns; and these, aided by the discordant sounds of scores of instruments, gave the whole scene an air of enchantment, or rather a slight resemblance to one of its exorcisms.  The effect was, however, improved by distance.  Accordingly, I stole through a solitary shrubbery walk, which wound round the hill, and at length led me to a forest-like spot, or straggling wood, which flanked the whole of the carnival.  Viewed from hence, it was, indeed, a fantastical illustration of French gaiety, and it momentarily reminded me of some of Shakspeare’s scenes of sylvan romance, with all their fays and fairy population.

The English reader who has not witnessed one of the fetes of St. Cloud, may probably associate them with his own Vauxhall; but the resemblance is very slight.  At one of these entertainments in France, there is much less attempted, but considerably more effected, than in England; and all this is accomplished by that happy knack which the French possess of making much of a little.  Of what did this fete consist—­a few hundred lamps—­a few score of fidlers, and about as much decoration as an English showman would waste on the exterior of his exhibition, or assemble within a few square yards.  There were no long illuminated vistas, or temples and saloons red hot with oil and gas—­but a few slender materials, so scattered and intermixed with the natural beauties of the park, as to fascinate, and not fatigue the eye and ear.  Even the pell-mell frolics of St. Cloud were better idealities of enjoyment, than the splendid promenade of Vauxhall, in the days of its olden celebrity; for diamonds and feathers are often mere masquerade finery in such scenes—­so distant are the heads and hearts of their wearers.[6]

[6] We are not permitted to allude to the fete of St. Cloud as a scene of pastoral amusement, or of the primitive simplicity which is associated with that epithet.  The French are not a pastoral people, although they are not less so than the English; neither are the suburbs of a metropolis rural life.  They are too near the pride of human art for pastoral pleasures, and no aristocracy is more infested with little tyrants than the neighbourhood of great cities, the oppressors being too timid to trust themselves far out of the verge of public haunts, in the midst of which they would be equally suspicious.

Amusements are at all times among the best indications of national character; a truth which the ancients seem to have exaggerated into their maxim in vino veritas.  Here the national comparison is not “odious.”  Three Sunday fairs are held within six miles of Paris, in a park, as was once the custom at Greenwich:  the latter, though a royal park, does not boast of the residence of royalty, as does St Cloud.