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the aspect of London society has changed greatly since Margaret's visit there in 1846, the Paris which she saw that winter may be said to exist no longer, so completely is its physiognomy transformed by the events of the last thirty-seven years. Like London, Paris had then some gems of the first water, to which nothing in the present day corresponds. Rachel was then queen of its tragic stage, George Sand supreme in its literary domain. De Balzac, Eugène Sue, Dumas pére, and Béranger then lived and moved among admiring friends. Victor Hugo was in early middle age. Guizot was in his full prestige, literary and administrative. Liszt and Chopin held the opposite poles of the