George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[141] them kindly enough as a party, and even permits Mad. Murat to live in Paris for the prosecution of claims against the government, and lately received Prince Musignano with a sort of distinction which he [Musignano] boasted of more than once to me. . . .

I went to about twenty, or, occasionally, five-and-twenty of the principal salons, and they were all infected with the different shades of the political parties that now divide France; a state of things much worse for society, as well as for the practical administration of government, than if there were but two great divisions running through the whole. . . . . Now here are five different sets, and though it was possible to escape from them all, and go to the literary and philosophical salons of Lamartine, De Gerando, Jomard, Jouy, and some others, yet it is a chance if you would not, after all, even there, fall into the midst of. political disputes between some of those who, even on this neutral ground, could not help the ascendancy of the partisanship that governs them everywhere else.

The Diplomacy—except at Lord Granville's, which was always flooded with English, and at General Cass's, which was nothing but stupid-had no open salons this winter . . . . . The effect of the whole of this is, that the society of Paris is less elegant than it used to be. Its numbers are greater and its tone lower, and politics are heard everywhere above everything else. . . . .

Everything in France, its government, its society, its arts, the modes of life, literature, and the morals and religion of the country, are in a transition state. Nothing is settled there. Nothing, I think, is likely to be in our time.