From Household Words.

FRENCH DOMESTICITY.

food, called in English sweetbread, was charged as the smile of a calf), or a mutton cutlet, or s piece of bifstek from the entre-cotes, or anything else small and relishing for the plat de viande. Anyhow, it is sure to contain something useful and domestic, whether in the shape of frait, vegetables, meat, or butter and eggs, of which there is a large consumption in a French household; something that few English ladies would buy for themselves, and fewer still carry home through Regent Street, when dressed, as our little friend is to-day. We have seen a marquise of the real old nobility, a rich woman too, carry a big flower-pot from the Marche des Fleurs, at the Madeleine, with as much indifference as our fine ladies would carry a bouquet or a fan.

A FRENCHWOMAN's characteristics are generally that she is unexceptionally shod; that she wears inimitable gloves; that she has a toilette of two colors only, with a distracting way of wearing a shawl; that her manners are bewitching, full of small graces and delicately-shaded coquetteries, but never wanting in the nicest appreciation of external proprieties, to which her Hirtations are always subordinate; that she has a marvellous facility of walking clean through the dirty streets of Paris, and as marvellous a knack of holding up her skirts with one hand over her left hip (I have seen many Englishwomen try to imitate this, but I never saw one succeed); that Let us follow this little woman, and see how she has a supernatural preservation of youth, and she lives in her own house, and if she be there a bewildering habit of mistaking her friend's only the gay butterfly she looks in the streets, or husband for her own. These are her popular if she have any graver notion of the duties of life characteristics, and few people allow her any than dress and flirting. We follow her into a other; but those who know her well, know that by-street, and into another by-street, a third, and other thoughts beside dress and flirting work be- a fourth-perhaps to the Quartier du Roule, perneath those smooth bands of glossy hair, which haps to Chaillot, or just in the contrary direction, look as if they had taken a lifetime to bring into to the Marais, or to Bercy. She suddenly extintheir present high condition of polish and intri-guishes herself in the yawning jaws of a portecate arrangement, and that the hands, in their close-fitting gloves, can do something better than make up caps or crochet purses; that she is not only an agreeable woman of society, but also a careful kousekeeper, an affectionate mother, and a submissive wife,

Look at that pretty little woman, tripping pleasantly along the boulevard, and chatting gaily with the bonne in the high white Normandy cap, who walks familiarly by her side. The bonne is carrying an infant, clothed all in white down to its boots, or in blue and white, which shows that it is voué au blanc, or au bleu et blanc: that is, consecrated to the Virgin for one, perhaps for two years, either for fear or for gratitude. Our little woman herself is dressed in perfect good taste; from head to foot not an incongruous color, not an ill-fitting line. Her bonnet alone would madden the country milliner who should try to discover the structural secret of all those clippings of silks, and laces, and ribbons, and how it was that each color and material seemed to belong so entirely to the others, and to harmonize with, or form the compliment of the whole. Examine closely, and you will find this pretty bonnet, and that elegantlooking gown which fits like wax, are both of the simplest material; they appear to be good enough for an English duchess, but it is the richness of good taste and arrangement, not of stuff, that our Parisian coquette delights in; and she knows how to look better in a cheap print than many others in satin or in velvet. She has an elegantly-shaped basket in her hand, and she carries it gracefully, and not at all as if it were filled with common household stuff. But lift up the cover, and you will find a bunch of sorrel leaves (oseille), or a thick slice of pumpkin (potiron), for to-day's dinner, if it be Friday, when they must have soupe maigre for conscience' sake; or, perchance, if inclined to expenditure, and the dinner may be gras, you will see a small ris de veau (in a bill we know of, this article of

cochere in one of these by-streets, let us say in the Rue de la Pépinière, near the Faubourg Saint Honoré. She stops at the porter's lodge to take her key, and speak a few words pleasantly to the porter: in all probability more than a few, for our little woman loves talking, and is usually well informed on all the gossip of the quartier. She hears all that has happened in her absence, including the arrest of certain unfortunate brig ands, who have been marched between files of soldiers with fixed bayonets, to the house of the commissaire, opposite: or that Madame Unetelle has gone out in a petit coupé with Monsieur Un-tel; and, Mon Dieu!-but some people are blind. Our friend shrugs her shoulders in virtuous indignation, and, mindful of a possible future, calls the concierge Monsieur or Madame with praiseworthy perseverance; for she pays respect to every one. In France the rendering, in England the exacting, of respect, marks the true blood, in rather diverse manners. She and her child, and the bonne, now mount the stairs. First, second, third, fourth flights; again another, and at the fifth the bonne unlocks the door, and the family enter.

It is an apartment of four pièces, or rooms, inclusive of the kitchen, and exclusive of the antichambre; a small vestibule without light, where, if they want an additional room, the servant is often put, to sleep, when not domiciled in the kitchen. The rest of the suite is composed of a salle à manger, a salon, one bedroom, and s kitchen. This is a very common partition of the upper stories in Parisian houses, and goes under the name of a petit appartement. The rooms are well furnished, and the first thing which strikes the visitor is the lightness of the general effect The window-curtains are of muslin, clean and pure; they cost very little, yet they are exceedingly elegant; there is no carpet, but little round pieces, woven expressly for the purpose, and placed before each chair, and a few low footstools or tabourets, do carpet duty; and the floors are

may live on the best floors, while the other occu
pants graduate off, through the well-to-do middle
classes, up to work people in the attics; the gen-
eral arrangements being public to the noble and
the workman alike. Small as this circumstance
may seem, it is one of the many causes which re-
fine the French workman and bring him into
pleasant brotherhood with the rich and high.
In an apartment such as we have described;
where all is simple, elegant, plain, and thorough
ly well-assorted; where there has been very little
expense and a great deal of artistic taste in the
choosing of the furniture; our young wife begins
her housekeeping, when she does not live with
the parents of one or the other side, as often
happens with newly-married people, and which
is indeed the mode if the wife be young, as she
generally is. But the little woman we have fol
lowed over the pavement of the Italians, has
earned herself the right of independence now,
by her motherhood; so she and her husband,
who is an employé in a government office, have
established themselves in their present home,
and have taken their stand as one of the nuclei
of society.

highly polished, and generally of wood, worked respectable appearance, with modest private acdiagonally. The chairs, tables, and sofas are of companiments. It does not stamp poverty with beautiful shapes, and the easy chairs are delight-degradation, and force the less wealthy to herd ful. Flowers grow in a jardinière in the win- together in low neighborhoods, where house-rent dow, and cut bouquets are in vases on the table, is cheap because houses are badly built and badly and on the chiffoniers, and, on each side of the situated. In such a house, barons and marquises ormolu clock, which is sure to be in the centre of the chimney-piece against the mirror-for you may be certain of the mirror over the fire-place: that is one of the great facts of French furniture, never absent. This is the salon. The diningroom is more scantily furnished. The floor is of hexagon-shaped tiles, and there is no fire-place, but a stove instead, which is pretty sure to smoke, and quite certain to stifle, without warming you; and in summer, flowers and flower-pots stand on the stove instead of on the chimney-piece. There is a table, there are some chairs, and two armchairs, a kind of side-board, and a clock-not so handsome as the drawing-room clock, but still a clock. We pass now to the bed-room, which opens into the drawing-room. Indeed, we ought to have given the description of the rooms as they stand. First, the antichambre, which opens into the dining-room; through the dining-room is the salon, and through the salon, with a door leading into the antichambre and facing the kitchen, is the bed-room. The bed-room is almost more tastefully arranged than the salon, for the mistress spends chief part of her in-door life here. The two beds are close together, and very small; they stand within a kind of alcove or re- But there are other things necessary to domes cess, and are almost entirely screened by white tic life besides chairs and tables; and a ménage curtains, bordered with pink, and tied up with must have a well-organized commissariat, as large pink rosettes, that hang before the recess. well as an upholstery department. Here it is that The armoire, or wardrobe, is of mahogany, and our true Frenchwoman shines pre-eminent. How has large mirrored doors; and there is a round best to market-how to save a few centimes by glass, framed in muslin, tied up also in pink, as haggling, cheapening, stinting, without absolute in the days of Louis Quatorze; and the dressing-dishonesty or starvation-employs her faculties table, where it stands is clothed in the like dra- to the utmost; as much so as a general's vicpery. The washing apparatus, we are bound in tualing his troops in a hostile country. Early sorrowful truth to say, is small and inefficient. in the morning, our little woman, so fresh and A skeleton tripod, holds one baby basin for the gay in the afternoon, sallies out to market, dresswhole family, and the ewer is not much larger ed in garments that defy appearances and fashion. than the milk-jug used for the coffee at breakfast. She enquires the price of everything she sees, The skeleton has two small ribs; the upper one whether she wants the article or not, and offers for the soap-dish, and the lower one for a tooth-about a third, sometimes half, less than the sum glass-rarely used; but there are none of the demanded for what she does intend to buy. In luxurious addenda of sponge-basin, nail-brush, vain the marchands scream at the top of their dishes, etc., etc., which we have made necessities. voices to madame, exhorting her to be reasonaWe cannot help wondering how the French are ble-in vain they pluck her by the sleeve and asable to make themselves even look clean with such sure her that Monsieur son Mari will be charmed scanty provision for the purpose. But, passing with her if she take him home these delicious by that lean tripod, we come to vases of artificial greens, or that ravishing asparagus. She tells flowers, placed on the table close by; to another them they must talk common sense, and bids clock, not quite so handsome as the one in the them ask such prices of the English, who know drawing-room, but very pretty, nevertheless; to no better. She generally ends by bargaining her a sofa, an easy chair, a table covered with wo- articles down to her own prices, and walks off man's work, more rounds of carpet and circular with them in triumph for she has saved perhaps tabourets, and a second wardrobe, also with glass a couple of sous by half an hour's vociferation. doors, for Monsieur le Mari. This completes At the butcher's it is the same. the inventory of the bedroom, which does service She helps to cook the dinner she has bought; for the lady's boudoir as well. The servant's for servants are wasteful with charcoal, and she room (when she does not sleep in the ante-cham-knows to an inch how little she can use. In bre) is up stairs, still higher; and the child or that marvellous place. a French kitchen-where children sleep with the parents.

This is an exceedingly common style of house arrangement in Paris, and is by no means a desirable style. It secures a good position and a

two or three little holes in a stove, cook such delicate dishes, and perform such culinary feats as our great roaring giants of coal fires have no conception of-she flits about like a fairy, creat

ing magical messes out of raw material of the same with her table-linen. Napkins at breakfast, most ordinary description. She mixes up the napkins at dinner, and fresh tablecloths or upper milk and eggs that make the foundation of the napkins constantly renewed. These real luxusoupe à l'osoille, if it be meagre day. This sor-ries are also gained by industry and energy, for rel soup is a great favorite in economical house- the bonne washes them at home. But perhaps, holds, and is vaunted as being highly rafraichiss- if she have only one child, our little woman keeps ant for the blood; indeed, one of the most re- no servant, and gets on with a femme de ménage, freshing things you can take, next to a tisane of or a femme de journée, who comes twice in the lime flowers. She mixes the salad-oil, salt, and day; to clean the house in the morning, and pepper, are all she puts into it; she fries the po- again in the afternoon to help prepare dinner, tato chips, or peeps into the pot of haricots, or and wash up the service afterwards. In this sces that the spinach is clean, and the asparagus case, there is a frotteur once or twice a week-a properly boiled. And then she turns to the plat man who scrubs and polishes the floors by skatsucré, or sweet dish, if she have one for dinner-ing over them on brushes. The water, wood, the riz au rhum, or the œufs à la neige, or the and charcoal are brought up by men; and, crême à vanille-all simple enough and cheap, by the way, the water-carrier is generally one of and not to be unwittingly rejected, if properly made. In fact our friend does the work of head cook; the servant doing the dirty work. Yes, though a lady born and bred, refined, elegant, and agreeable in society, a belle in her way, yet she does not think it beneath her dignity to lighten the household expenses by practical economy and activity. The dinner of a French family is cheap and simple. There is always soup, the meat of the stew-pan-sometimes, if not very strict in expenditure, another plate of meat-generally two vegetables dressed and eaten separately; and sometimes, not always, a sweet dish. If not that, a little fruit, such as may be cheapest and in the ripest season. But there is very little of each thing; and it is rather in arrangement than in material that they appear rich. The idea that the French are gourmands in private life is incorrect. They spend little on eating, and they eat inferior things; though their cookery is rather a science than a mere accident of civilization. At home the great aim of the French is to save; and any self-sacrifice that will lead to this result is cheerfully undertaken, more especially in eating and in the luxury of mere idleness. No Frenchwoman will spend a shilling to save herself trouble, She would rather work like a dray-horse to buy an extra yard of ribbon, or a new pair of gloves, than lie on the softest sofa in the world in placid fine-ladyism, with crumpled gauze or bare hands.

A word, too, on the more feminine matters of economy; for they are curiosities in their way, and may be of use to one class of the readers of Household Words. Only those who have seen the results of this side of saving would believe in their possibility, unless initiated in the process. A Frenchwoman cleans her gloves, light boots, ribbons, silks, and laces, at the cost of a few sous, and with surprising success. They pass for new at any but the closest inspection, and are worthy to do so. A Frenchwoman never buys a lining for a new gown; she cuts up her old gowns, or worn-out petticoats instead. She unpicks and stitches up again, changes, turns. irons, and renews, until every inch of the stuff has served half-a-dozen purposes, and there is not an unworn thread left in the whole garment. A Frenchwoman is always noticeable for her clean linen-cuffs and collars always white and fresh; but then she works them herself, and washes them at home; and thus procures another large feminine luxury at small cost. It is the

the honestest men of the quarter, and may be trusted like a commissioner, or the horologer who winds up the clock in a hotel. And it is our little woman's supreme delight, after she has dusted all the ornaments in her rooms, and superintended the secoud déjeûner, to dress herself smart and gay, and sit at the open window and work; and amusement varied in the summer by leaning out of the window, which she will do many times in the day; especially if it commands a street. After dining she may be invariably seen there, side by side with her husband, who is probably smoking, and frequently, if it be very warm, in his shirt-sleeves. After they have lounged there for half-an-hour, they stroll into the Champs Elysées, or on to the Boulevards, and, if he is in a good humor, they take chairs at a café chantant, and sip a glass of sherbet, or a cup of black café; and thus for a few sousperhaps she saved them between the butcher's and the greengrocer's to-day-they enjoy music, fresh air, society, and gaiety, in their most innocent and attractive forms. Or they go to the play: especially on Sundays, after they have done their duty at the eleven o'clock mass.

Our government employé is poor, it is true. He has only about a hundred pounds a year,perhaps he may make up three thousand francs, or a hundred and twenty pounds; but thousands of well-dressed young married people have no more, and many who look every bit as well as they, have not so much. They think their fine toilettes and their theatre tickets well purchased by a few stinted dinners and a little extra handiwork. They would rather slave in the mornings, and enjoy themselves in the evenings, than spend a monotonous existence of dull idleness and lazy respectability. Perhaps they are not so far out in their code of social philosophy.

Nothing can be more innocent than the pleasures of a French family, and nothing more domestic, if domesticity mean family union, and not house incarceration. A French father and mother take their children with them wherever they go. Into the Tuileries gardens, that paradise for little people; into the Bois de Boulogne, and under the shadow of the stately trees of Saint Germains; or through the royal avenues of Versailles. Wherever they are, there is mon fils of six or seven years old, and ma fille of two or three. They see no degradation in amusing even their youngest children; and you will often observe a stalwart fellow, six foot high.

dandling his baby as deftly as a professional | if she be not married; and it is a common form nurse; and that before the open eyes of the of punishment for unworthy mothers, to deprive whole Tuileries world. People don't laugh at them of this power for a term of years. Again, him for it; some respect him, but most take it the practice, universal even among the poorest, as a matter of course-they do just the same of saving up marriage portions for the daughters, themselves. This does not look like that uni- shows that the parental affections can take the versal renunciation of family ties which has long form of self-sacrifice as well as of over-indulgence. been a popular idea among us concerning the Then, as to the more purely domestic habits. In French. Indeed, they live more with each other the middle class, once a week certainly, perhaps than we do; and are both more respectful to the oftener, they have family réunions of fathers and aged and more careful of the young. The affec- brothers, and sisters and mothers, and they make tionate respect paid to parents is peculiarly de- dinners, and form parties, only among themlightful, and must strike every English person selves, with wonderful zeal and constancy. Our who mixes in French society. As for the chil- little woman, for instance, has a married brother, dren, they live entirely with the parents. After and her husband has another married brother, a certain age, generally after they are four years and a sister also married; and these several fraold, they dine with them at six o'clock, and they ternities, with their children, and fathers, and are never absent from the mother's side until mothers, make up a goodly company. Yet, large they go to a college or a convent to be educated. as this home circle is, it all converges into a Thousands of young French girls have never point once or twice a week; and dinners and slept a night away from the paternal roof; and, soirées are given in the most domestic manner if thoroughly well brought up, their bedrooms possible. True, the husbands sometimes go out open into, and are only approached from, the and smoke their cigars in a café, and read the mother's. French nurses and mothers are ex- newspapers there, while sipping their absinthe ceedingly indulgent, and have a great horror of and water, or chocolate; and sometimes, too, Englishwomen, whom they believe to be harsh they dine out together at a restaurant, instead and cruel. Only those deeply bitten by the of at home. But these facts argue no want of Anglo-mania, which Béranger reprobates, would family feeling. They are simply characteristics place an Englishwoman near their children. It is a common saying that those who keep an English servant must keep a servant to attend on her.

of Parisian life, not necessarily including either license of habits or indifference. Indeed, the whole tenor of the French middle-class life is strongly the reverse; although we know this is a new view of French character, and one which many will not accept.

However, it is certain that a little wholesome discipline might not be thrown away on the Adolphes and the Eulalics of our acquaintance; On the whole, there are many worse things and a strong-hearted Saxon, of good sense and than a French ménage, with its cheapness, its vigorous mind, might work a salutary reform gaiety, its out-of-door pleasures, its social charms among many of those tiny Gallic rebels who set and artistic arrangement. And though that at naught all law, and utterly despise all order. little dark-eyed woman has the terrible fault of Still, if the result be that the children are over- perverting the thing that is, and of reading letspoiled, at least it proves the kind-heartedness ters that don't belong to her, and of suspecting and patience of the parents. It is a strange and at first sight an anomalous fact, that a nation so free and individual as the French in many things, supports such stringent parental discipline as their code allows. Up to the age of twenty-one, a son may be imprisoned by his father for vicious, or, as we should term it fast, habits-gaming, contracting debts, and so forth. At no time of his life, if he be not a widower, can he marry without his parents' consent, unless he have recourse to three judicial citations. A mother has power over her daughter to the end of her life,

A RUSSIAN BATH.

every one she knows, sees, or hears of, of im moral practices, yet, in spite of these fearful misdemeanors, there is something so arch, animated, and bright in her, that, between her tact and her cleverness, her gracious manners and her spirituelle conversation, she is a very fascinating little person. If she were but truthful and severely honorable-which she is not always, more's the pity!-she would be an admirable specimen of feminine attractiveness and loveable womanhood.

order alone was yet complied with, or perhaps understood. About a dozen of the coarser sex THE bathing-rooms in all the public baths were seen, dimly, however, through a dense mist, were, until very lately, common to both sexes; some passing to and fro, and others sitting upon but by an order from the Government the sexes benches by the walls, all quite in the independent are now separated, and each has one large room state of nature; and about as many of the fair apart. But this very commendable attempt to sex, in a condition almost equally independent, introduce a degree of delicacy unknown before yet not ashamed, or apparently in the least dehas not quite established the principle. In the gree conscious of any indelicacy whatsoever. general apartment into which we first entered We were, however, in an atmosphere in which many of both sexes were waiting to enter two clothes were scarcely supportable, and which crowded bath-rooms; and the scene already pre-made us soon put off the greater part of our sented sufficient proof that the letter of the own. Habit reconciles us to almost everything.

Lastly, the bather mounts to a bench considerably higher than that upon which he has hitherto been sitting, in search of still greater heat; and the attendant, now armed with a birch bough, on which the dried leaves are preserved for the purpose, proceeds to a thorough sweeping or brushing of the bather, rather than rubbing, which appears to apply friction enough to restore the circulation (which by this time has become languid) upon the outer parts of the body-Hill's Travels in Siberia.

Indeed, there was so much bustle and appear- temperature. The attendant then proceeds to ance of business in procuring tickets for admis-pour quantities of water over the head of the sion into the bathing rooms, from an attendant bather, and next to rub his body with dried grass. who stood within a counter, upon which a small After this has been a little while persevered in, lamp was burning, and with the entrances and the bather is placed, sitting, upon a bench; and exits of bathers and attendants, that the scene the perspiration now runs down the body in was more calculated to remind us of cases streams. But the rubbing is still persevered in and positions in which we are sometimes for about ten minutes longer. The next step is placed by necessity, where the mind is too an exposure to the contrary extreme, which is much occupied, perhaps by some work of not the most agreeable part of the process. It is charity, to leave room for niceness in its per- now necessary for the bather to mount to a bench ceptions, rather than presented the charac-about four feet high; and while he is seated here, a ter which description is apt to impress. After bucket of icy cold water drawn from the second having cast off almost all our remaining clothes, cock is dashed against his back. The effect of this which was absolutely necessary before we pro- is to start the whole vital frame, as if the clectric ceeded further in our investigations, both on ac- spark had passed through the body, from which count of the state of the atmosphere, and the now proceed fresh floods of perspiration more dashing of water in all directions within the profuse than ever. The next step is scarcely baths which we were about to enter, we were led less severe, and again in the opposite extreme. by an attendant into an apartment full of Water is now thrown into the metal stove, from bathers, where we found ourselves in an atmos- which you are not far distant, and from which inphere at a temperature between forty and forty-stantly rushes out a hot vapor with such force, that five degrees of Réaumur, as the usual heat, and it is especially necessary to have the back turned in the midst of figures still dimly seen through to receive it, and at the same time to shut the eyes. the mist, which was here doubly more dense than that in the outer chamber, and in such a scene of confusion, that it was not until we had nearly reached the termination of the long room, crowded with bathers on both sides, that we were aware of what now appeared-that we were breaking the letter as well as the spirit of the new law, and parading about among the daughters instead of the sons of the land. Upon this discovery, however, we made our retreat. We took, after this, a little more minute survey of the apartments that it was lawful for us to enter. But, instead of attempting any further description of the scene within the common bathing-rooms, I shall state more exactly the manner in which the private bath which I took was administered; and when it is remembered that the same process is in action upon sixty or seventy bathers at the same time in the public bath, the scene there will be easily conceived. We had not to leave the public bath-house to find private baths, there being several passing good within it; and we each now chose his own room, and entered accompanied by an attendant, which is indispensable. In that which I chose, I found an ante-room used for the purpose of undressing. Here I observed the thermometer was at thirtyeight degrees of heat. But upon opening the door, and entering the proper bathing-room, where the temperature was at forty-seven degrees, I found the heat almost insupportable. At the moment of meeting this atmosphere, the respiration became sufficiently difficult to be slightly painful. But this effect of the sudden change passed away as the perspiration increased; and I afterwards felt no inconvenience when the heat was augmented to fifty degrees. Upon one side of the room, two large wash-tubs were standing beneath two enormous metal cocks; and, upon the other, there was a stove fixed in the wall. The process commences by the bather placing himself standing in a shallow tub, which is filled by the attendant with water mixed to an agreeable

NEW BOOKS.

We have received the following new books from the publishers :

The Works of Joseph Addison. Vol. V. Messrs. Putnam & Co. have now completed this handsome edition. It includes the whole contents of Bishop Head's edition, with Letters and other Pieces, not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's Essay on his Life and Works. Edited, with Explanatory Notes, by George Washington Greene.

"No whiter page than Addison remains,
He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth;
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue through the heart."
Pope.

The Agriculture of Massachusetts, as shown in the Returns of the Agricultural Societies, 1853. Prepared by Charles L. Flint, Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. The State has done a public good by causing Mr. Flint to prepare this valuable record. Mr. Flint has also sent us his First Annual Report as Secretary of the Board of Agriculture: Jan. 1854.