Nominglly the Paris season ends with the Grand Prix, that is to say in the middle of June; but the tendency, nowadays, is to prolong it, so that the second week in July is at hand before the town finally departs for Dieppe, Trouville, 'Arcachon, Royau, Aix, or wherever it may be.' Thus there is an increasing disposition to: approach the dates of the London season. Life is particularly it teresting and'pleasaat in Pai 'There are garden parties without number, cither given at suburban houses or by various fashionable' clubs. A favourite meeting-place of am afternoon is the'Ile do' Putdaux, the' most sgrecable lawn-tennis club in Europe.' It is situated on an. island in the Seine communicating with the bank by a ferry.' The club. house is most perfectly equipped, but the grounds are the principal charm. Flow beds and groves of trees divide the different. courts, and fashionable society watches the champions pitted against one another of an afternoon, the while it sips tea and consumes airy trifles of pastry; beneath large and picturesque-looking red umbrellas. Several times a week, too, there are dinner-parties, often followed by a cotillion: These reunions, where rank and beauty and fashion are to be met, are features, also, of the club in the Bois de Boulogne which devotes itself to polo—a game which has been taken up with great enthusiasm by a nimber of French cavalry officers and society men. As: to the: prowess of the French ° in- lawn-tennis, nothing is more obvious. Their great progress in the game was first pointed out t me, two or three years ago, by Mr. R. F. Doherty, who makes: yearly visits to France to play the local "cracks" and yearly finds his task a little harder. The French champion, M. Alex Décagis, is to be soon at Wimbledon, this year, at the international meeting with another first-class player and it is certain that, if he is ini anything like form, he will give his English opponents a lively time. One of the reasons of the growing proficiency of the French in sports is the fact that the schools are beginning to teach the mens san in corpora sano principle, that fundamental doctrine of the English system. F.cworly the unhappy youths in a French lycée were little better than slaves. They worked hard at never-ending lessons and their recreation was limited to walks, two-and-two, in the public streste, or an occasional game of and-ball or croquet. Now the athletic spirit lies prison and the boys play football and pelota (s game of Basque origin recently introduced into France), and enjoy spirited rallies of tennis. The d is not far distant, perhaps, all the large secondary schools will have their properly equipped teams and, perhaps, even their hare and hounds. But' against the full development of the idea of sound and vigorous recreation, one must set the obstinate fact that everything in this complicated civilisation is ruled by examinations. French parents thken in bulk (though there are numbers of exceptions personally known to me) are keener for the intellectual progress of their boys and girls than for the growth of muscle. Moreover, has not an English sportswoman declared that the playing hockey and golf, to which the fait daughters of Albion are so much wedded at this moment, roughens the complexion and-enlarges the feet? What could be greater condemnation, in the eyes of French mothers, of athletic exercise for girls? Such characte es, even though sot against sound health and an absence of "nerves," are not the kind of commodity to find ready commerce in the marriage market.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.