ejected from the various houses very irregularly, there are to be seen in each street two or three men and women walking upright with, at their backs, a long narrow basket, rising a few inches above their shoulders. In their right hand they carry --swinging it as they walk-a little thin stick, about a yard long, with an iron pointed hook at the end of it. Bending over a heap, each chiffonnier first of all rakes it open with his stick, and then, with great dexterity, striking the sharp hook into whatever he deems to be of value, he whisks it high over his right shoulder into the basket on his back. The object is to get the first choice of every heap; and accordingly, while the chiffonnier is greedily hastening from one to another, the heaps he or she has scratched abroad are often almost immediately afterwards again overhauled by another. The contention is one of considerable excitement; and although it was apparently conducted by the chiffonniers under certain rules of their own, I one morning saw an old woman, wearing black gloves, bright gold ear rings, and a handkerchief wound round her head, like a vulture at its prey, drive away with great fury from the heap she was scratching at a young chiffonnier boy of about fourteen, who, at a few yards distance, stood, wolf-like, eyeing and longing to approach it.

As their time was valuable. I did not like to trouble them while they were at work with any questions, but I told a commissionnaire to select one of experience and good character, and to bring him to my lodgings after his work was done. Accordingly, two or three days afterwards, as I was sitting in my room writing, a hard lean knuckle struck my door, and, on my calling out Entrez," there appeared at it my commissionnaire, dressed in his usual suit of blue velvet, and a slight, thin, erect old man, in a blouse, whom he informed me was the chiffonnier I wanted. The introducer, with a slight bow, instantly retired, shutting the door, close to which the poor man remained standing.

6.

**

“Avancez, mon ami!" I said to him, pointing to a chair beside me. For some time he seemed very unwilling to do so : at last I prevailed upon him to sit down; and, as he was evidently alarmed at the sight of me, my papers, my pens and my ink, I talked to him about the weather, and about the fête, uutil by degrees he became comparatively at his ease.

* Come in!

+ Come forward, my friend!

His manner was exceedingly modest, mild, and gentle, and although he was very poorly dressed, he had under his faded blouse a white and almost a clean shirt.

He told me he was fifty-nine years of age-he looked seventy--and that fourteen years ago, having sustained an injury which incapacitated him from heavy work, he purchased from the police, for forty sous, the plaquet of a chiffonnier, which was on his breast, and to which he pointed. It was a round brass plate, bearing in hieroglyphics-which, although he could not decipher them, were no doubt well enough understood by the police the following description of his person, &c —

With reference to his vocation, he informed me that, by a law among themselves, the heap from every house is considered to belong to the first chiffonnier that reaches it, but that they usually work constantly in the same districts, where they are known.

My principal object was to ascertain what were the articles they obtained, and, although I fully expected my friend would be exceedingly eloquent and well informed on the subject, I had the greatest possible difficulty in extracting it from him.

"But what do you get from these heaps ?" I repeated to him for the third time.

"Tout ce qu'il y a ! Monsieur," he replied, in a faint, gentle voice.

"And of what is that composed ?" I repeated, also for the third time.

* All that there is!

"Toutes sortes de choses," ," he answered; and when pressed for an explanation he again added, with a shrug of despair, as if I was torturing him with most difficult questions, Enfin, Monsieur, je ramasse tout ce qui'il y a!"†

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At last, by slow degrees, I extracted from him that "toutes sortes de choses" was composed of the following articles, sold by the chiffonniers at the undermentioned prices :

The rest of the rubbish, consisting principally of salad, cabbage, beans, refuse of vegetables, straw, ashes, cinders, &c., considered by chiffoniers to be of no value, is, at about eight o'clock, carried away in the carts of the police.

He told me that sometimes the chiffonniers pick up articles of great value, which they are required to return to the houses from which the rubbish had proceeded, in failure of which the police deprives them of their plaquet. A few weeks since he himself had restored to a lady a silver spoon, thrown away with the salad in which it had lain concealed. Some years ago, a chiffonnier, he said, found and restored to its owner a portfolio containing bank bills amounting in value to 20,000 francs. If they find coin, they keep it. He informed me that on an average he found a silver ten-sous piece about once a fortnight; "Mais!" said he, very mildly, with a light shrug, "ça dépend de la Providence." He added that the chiffonniers of Paris worked during the hours at which people put out their rubbish, namely, from five in the morning till ten; and at night from sunset till eleven; that the latter hours were contrary to the regulations of the police, but that, as it was the habit, they were always in attendance. Lastly, he informed me that the unmarried chiffonniers principally lodge in the Faubourg St. * All sorts of things! In short, Sir, I pick up all that there is! But that depends on Providence!

Marcel, where they obtain half a bed for from two to four sous a night, which they are required to pay in advance.

I asked him how much the chiffonniers obtained per day. He replied that the value of the refuse depended a good deal on the district, and that accordingly they gained from ten to thirty sous per day, according to the localities in which they worked. He added that for several years he himself had gained thirty sous a day, but that since the departure of Louis Philippe he had not, on an average, gained fifteen. "In the month of February," he said, "we did nothing, parceque le monde. s'était retiré."

"But now that tranquillity is restored," said I," how comes it that you do not gain your thirty sous as before?"

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Monsieur," he replied, " depuis la révolution le monde est plus économe; la consommation est moins grande dans les cuisines; on jette moins d'os et de papier dans les rues." He added that some families that used to consume ten pounds of meat a day subsisted now on only four, and consequently that the chiffonnier loses like the butcher.

"Si la tranquillité vient, nous ferons peut-être quelque chose; mais," he added, very pensively, and apparently without the slightest idea of the important moral contained in the words he was about to utter, "quand il n'y a pas de luxe, on ne fait rien !" (a shrug).

What a lesson," said I to myself,--looking at his brass plaquet, faded blouse, and pale, sunken cheeks, which, beneath his thin whiskers, kept quivering as he talked,--" am I receiving in the Capital of the Republic of France from a poor, halfstarved chiffonnier! What would the Radical Members of both Houses of the British Parliament, who unintentionally would level the distinction and wealth they themselves are enjoying, say, if they could but hear from the lips of this street scavenger the practical truth that, when they shall have succeeded, they will deprive, not only the lower, but the very lowest classes of their community, of one half of the sustenance they are now receiving from the luxury' of the rich!"

Because everybody had left.

Sir, since the revolution people have become more economical; the consumption in their kitchens is less; people throw less bones and paper into the streets.

If tranquillity comes, we shall, perhaps, do something; but when here is no luxury we can do nothing.

MY LODGING.

ON my return from my stroll, at about ten o'clock P.M. of the day of my arrival in Paris, to Meurice's well-appointed hotel, I was conducted by one of the waiters to my "appartement;" and as on introducing myself to, or, to speak more correctly, into its bed, I found it to be a particularly warm, comfortable poultice, which seemed to draw from my body and bones every ache or sensation of fatigue, I soon ceased to admire it, France, England, or indeed, any body or any thing.

"Heaven bless the man who first invented sleep!"

The next morning early, awakening quite refreshed, and with a keen appetite for novelty of any description, I was amused to find not only that I myself had become, and as I lay in my bed was, a great curiosity, but that apparently the whole hotel was looking at me! My room, an exceedingly small one, on the middle floor of six stories, owned only one blindless, shutterless, window, upon which, from above, from beneath, from the right, and from the left, glared, stared, and squinted, the oblong eyes of the windows of three sides of a hollow square, so narrow that it appeared like an air-shaft, excavated in the middle of the enormous building of which in fact, it was the lantern.

On each side of my window, like the lace frills on either side of a lady's cap, there elegantly hung a slight thin muslin curtain; but, as in point of fortification this was utterly inadequate for the defences I required, I ventured after