The writers upon Art in Paris are a subject neither to be escaped from, nor handled easily. While pointing out the characteristic features of the musical world of the French, it is impossible not to advert to the quantity of words expended upon its cares and concerns by the literary as well as the professional men of the day. There is hardly a circle, be it ever so grave, where the art is not discussed with a fluency and a decision startling to an Englishman, who has become used, owing to the bad habits of a century, to hearing Music mentioned in intellectual society with apology and hesitation. There is hardly a journalist addicted to les belles lettres who does not give Music a turn in the course of his month's labours, and vent his pretty paragraphs, not merely in praise or attack of Madame Thillon, the graceful and coquettish little Englishwoman at the Opera Comique, — or Mademoiselle Heinefetter's chances of keeping her ground at L'Académie, — not merely concerning the wild entrechats of Mademoiselle Maywood, the American (who should wear a branch of wild vine round her head, or an Indian cincture of feathers, when she dances, so national are her graces)—or the majestic attitudes of Mademoiselle Theresa Elssler, or the brilliant pantomime of her incomparable sister, — but in eulogy of the grand names and immutable principles of Gluck, Bach, and Palestrina.