the trees which had been felled to clear the esplanade around the fortifications, the task of surmounting such obstacles, even though not defended at all, seemed a grave and serious undertaking. In all these towns, so far as I could discover, the feeling of the people was decidedly in favour of the legitimate monarch; and I cannot doubt that this impression is correct, because elsewhere, and in similar circumstances, those who favoured Bonaparte were at no pains to suppress their inclinations. In one or two towns they were preparing little fetes to celebrate the king's restoration. The accompaniments did not appear to us very splendid; but when a town has been so lately taken by storm, and is still garrisoned by foreign troops and subjected to military requisitions, we could not expect that the rejoicings of its inhabitants should be attended with any superfluity of splendour.

Meanwhile we advanced through this new and bewildering scene of war and waste, with the comfortable consciousness that we belonged to the stronger party. The British drums and bugle-horns sung us to bed every night, and played our reveillée in the morning; for in all the fortified towns through which we passed there were British troops and a British commandant, from more than one of whom we experienced attention and civility.

kicked, plunged, snorted, and screamed, in full concert with the eternal smack of the whips, as well as shrieks, whoops, and oaths of the jack-booted pos tillions, lugging about our little barouche in a manner that threatened its demolition at every instant. The French postillions, however, who, with the most miserable appliances and means, usually drive very well, contrived, by dint of quartering and tugging, to drag us safe through roads where a Yorkshire post-boy would have been reduced to despair, even though his horses had not been harnessed with ropes, fastened together by running nooses. The forest of Chantilly was probably magnificent when it was the chase of the princely family of Conde; but all the valuable timber-trees have been felled, and those which now remain appear, generally speaking, to be about twenty years old only, consist ing chiefly of birch, and other inferior timber used for fire-wood. Those who acquired the domains of the emigrants after the Revolution, were generally speculating adventurers, who were eager to secure what they could make of the subject in the way of ready money, by cutting timber and selling materials of houses, partly in order to secure the means of paying the price, and partly because prudence exacted that they should lose no time in drawing profit from a bargain, of which the security seemed rather precarious.

When we reached Pont de St. Maxence, which had been recently the scene of an engagement be- The town and palace of Chantilly, rendered clas tween the Prussians and French, we found more sical by the name of the great Prince of Conde, affordmarked signs of hostile devastation that in any ed us ample room for interesting reflection. The place through which we had yet travelled. It is a town itself is pleasant, and has some good houses good large market-town, with a very fine bridge agreeably situated. But in the present state of interover the Oise, an arch of which had been recently nal convulsion, almost all the windows of the houses destroyed, and repaired in a temporary manner. of the better class were closed, and secured by outer The purpose had probably been to defend the pas- shutters. We were told that this was to protect sage; and as the river is deep, and the opposite them against the Prussians, with whom the town bank is high and covered with wood, besides having was crowded. These soldiers were very young lads, several buildings approaching to the bridge, I pre- chiefly landwehr, or militia, and seemed all frolicsume it might have been made a very strong position. some, and no doubt mischievous youths. But, so far It had been forced, however, by the Prussians, in what as I could see, there was no ill nature, much less manner we found no one to tell us. Several houses atrocity, in their behaviour, which was rather that of in this town had been burnt, and most of them riotous school-boys of the higher form. They posseemed to have been pillaged. The cause was evi-sessed themselves of the jack-boots of our postillions, dent, from the number of embrasures and loop-holes and seemed to find great entertainment in stumping for musketry which were struck out in the houses up and down the inn-yard in these formidable acand garden-walls. The attempt to make a village coutrements, the size and solidity of which have into a place of defence is almost always fatal to the been in no degree diminished since the days of Yohousehold goods, since it is likely to be burnt by one rick and La Fleur. But our Prussian hussars were or other of the parties, and certain to be plundered seen to still greater advantage in the superb stables by both. Military gentlemen look upon this with a of Chantilly, which have escaped the fury that levelvery different eye; for I have been diverted to hear led its palace. The huge and stately vault, which Bome of them, who have given me the honour of pride, rather than an attention to utility, had contheir company in my little excursion from Paris, structed for the stud of the Prince of Condé, is forcensure a gentleman or farmer with great gravity ty feet high, two hundred yards in length, and upfor having built his house and stationed his court of wards of thirty-six feet in width. This magnificent offices in a hollow, where they were over-looked apartment, the enormity of whose proportions and commanded; whereas, by placing the buildings seemed better calculated for the steeds of the King a little higher on the ridge, or more towards right or of Brobdignag than for Houyhnhnms of the ordinary left, they might, in case of need, have acquired the size, had once been divided into suitable ranges of dignity of being the key of a strong position, and, in stalls, but these have been long demolished. In the all probability, have paid for their importance by centre arises a magnificent dome, sixty feet in diamsharing the fate of Hougoumont. eter and ninety feet in height; and in a sort of reWe were informed at St. Maxence that the hand cess beneath the dome, and fronting the principal of war had been laid yet more heavily upon the entrance, is a superb fountain, falling into a huge neighbouring town of Senlis, through which lay shell, and dashing over its sides into a large reserour direct route to Paris, and near which an action voir, highly ornamented with architectural decorahad taken place betwixt a part of Blucher's army tions, This fountain, which might grace the court and that of Grouchy and Vandamme, which, fall- of a palace, was designed for the ordinary supply of ing back to cover the French capital after the battle the stable. The scale of imposing magnificence of Waterloo, had accomplished a retreat that placed upon which this building was calculated, although those who commanded it very high in public esti- at war with common sense and the fitness of things, mation. We felt no curiosity to see any more of the must, in its original state of exact order and repair, woes of war, and readily complied with a proposal have impressed the mind with high ideas of the power of our postillions to exchange the route of Senlis for and consequence of the prince by whom it was planthat of Chantilly, to which they undertook to carry ned and executed, and whose name (Louis Henry us by a cross road through the forest. Le beau che- de Bourbon, seventh Prince of Conde) stands yet min par terre, or fine green-sward road, which they recorded in an inscription, which, supported by two had urged as so superior to the public causeway, had mutilated genii, is displayed above the fountain. unfortunately not possessed the same power of resist- But what would have been the mortification of that ing the tear and wear of cavalry, artillery, and bag-founder, could he have witnessed, as we did, the gage-wagons. It was reduced to a sort of continued wet ditch, varying in depth in a most irregular manner, and through which the four stallions that drew us

spacious range with all its ornaments broken down and defaced, as if in studied insult; while its high and echoing vault rung to the shouts, screams, and

gambols of a hundred or two of the dirtiest hussars | when it was again to be possessed by its legitimate and lancers that ever came off a march, to whose owner. This is the more likely, as the furniture of clamours the shrill cries of their half starved and the duke's own apartment is plain, simple, and in miserable horses added a wild but appropriate ac- good taste. He seems popular among the inhabitcompaniment. Yet whatever his feelings might ants, who, the day preceding our arrival, had, under have been to witness such pollution, they would all the unfavourable circumstances of their situation, have been inferior to those with which his ancestor, made a little fete to congratulate him upon his restothe great Condé, would have heard that the Sarma- ration, and to hail the white flag, which now once tian partizans who occupied Chantilly formed part more floated from the dome of the offices, announcof an invading army, which had marched, almost ing the second restoration of the Bourbons. without opposition, from the frontiers to the capital, and now held in their disposal the fates of the house of Bourbon and of the kingdom of France. The old domestic of the family who guided me through these remains of decayed magnificence, cast many a grieved and mortified glance upon the irreverent and mischievous soldiers as they aimed the buts of their lances at the remaining pieces of sculpture, or amused themselves by mimicking his own formal address and manner. "Ah les barbares! les barbares"-I could not refuse assent to this epithet, which he confided to my ear in a cautious whisper, accompanied with a suitable shrug of the shoulders; but I endeavoured to qualify it with another train of reflections:- Et pourtant, mon ami, si ce n'étoit pas ces gens-là !"- "Ah, oui, Monsieur, sans eur nous n'aurions peut être jamais revû notre bon Duc-Assurément c'est un revenant bon--mais aussi, il faut avouer qu'il est revenu en assez mauvaise compagnie."

At some distance from these magnificent stables, of which (as frequently happens) the exterior does more honour to the architect's taste than the inside to his judgment, are the melancholy remains of the palace of the Prince of Condé, where the spectator can no longer obey the exhortation of the

poet,

"Dans sa pompe elegante, admirez Chantilly,
De heros en heros, d'age en age embelli."

Besides the Petit Chateau are the vestiges of what was once the principal palace, and which, as such, might well have accommodated the proudest monarch in the world. It was situated on a rock, and surrounded by profound and broad ditches of the purest water, built in a style of the richest Gothic architecture, and containing within its precincts every accommodation which pomp or luxury could desire. The demolition has been so complete, that little remains excepting the vaults from which the castle arose, and a ruinous flight of double steps, by which visiters formerly gained the principal entrance. The extent, number, and intricacy of the subterranean vaults, were such as to afford a retreat for robbers and banditti, for which reason the entrances have been built up by order of the police. The chateau, when in its splendour, communicated with a magnificent theatre, with an orangery and greenhouse of the first order, and was surrounded by a number of separate parterres, or islands, decorated with statuary, with jets d'eau, with columns, and with vases, forming a perspective of the richest architectural magnificence. All is now destroyed, and the stranger only learns, from the sorrowful tale of his guide, that the wasted and desolate patches of ground intersected by the canals, once bore, and deserved, the names of the Gallery of Vases, the Parterre of the Orangerie, and the Island of Love. Such and so sudden is the downfall of the

console ourselves, my dear friend, while we look from the bartizan of the old mansion upon the lake, and its corresponding barrier of mountains, that the beauties with which nature herself has graced our country are more imperishable than those with which the wealth and power of the house of Bourbon once decorated the abode of Chantilly.

I may add, that the neighbourhood of Chantilly exhibits more picturesque beauty than I had yet remarked in France.

PAUL.

The splendid chateau once corresponded in mag-proudest efforts of human magnificence. Let us nificence with the superb offices which we had visited, but now its vestiges alone remain, a mass of neglected ruins amid the broad lake and canals which had been constructed for its ornament and defence. This beautiful palace was destroyed by the revolutionary mob of Paris early in the civil commotions. The materials, with the lead, iron, carpenter work, &c. were piled up, by those who appropriated them, in what was called Le Petit Chateau, a smaller edifice annexed to the principal palace, and communicating with it by a causeway. Thus the small chateau was saved from demolition, though not from pillage. Chantilly and its demesnes were sold as national property, but the purchasers having failed to pay the price, it reverted to the public; so that the king, upon his restoration, had no difficulty in reinstating the Duke of Bourbon. The lesser chateau has been lately refitted in a hasty and simple style, for the reception of the legitimate proprietor; but the style of the repairs makes an unavoidable and mortifying contrast with the splendour of the original decorations. Rich embossed ceilings and carved wainscot are coarsely daubed over with white-wash and size-paint, with which the remains of the original gilding and sculpture form a melancholy association. The frames alone remained of those numerous and huge mirrors,

"in which he of Gath,

Paris

LETTER XII.

PAUL TO HIS SISTER.

Tuilleries-Reflections-Tuilleries-Parisian PunningStatue of Bonaparte-Public Works by Bonaparte-Want of Pavement-Courts before the Houses-No Smoke over ParisThe Seine-Church of St. Genevieve-Tombs in the Pantheon ---Mirabeau and Marat-Voltaire and Rousseau-Anecdote.

YOUR question, my dear sister, What do I think of Paris? corresponds in comprehensive extent with your desire that I would send you a full and perfect description of that celebrated capital; but were I to reside here all my life, instead of a few weeks, I am uncertain whether I could distinctly comply Goliah, might have seen his giant bulk with either request. There is so much in Paris to Whole without stooping, towering crest and all." admire, and so much to dislike, such a mixture of But the French artisans, with that lack of all feel- real taste and genius, with so much frippery and ing of convenance, or propriety, which has well affectation, the sublime is so oddly mingled with been described as a principal deficiency in their na- the ridiculous, and the pleasing with the fantastional character, have endeavoured to make fine tic and whimsical, that I shall probably leave things out of the frames themselves, by occupying the capital of France without being able to deterthe room of the superb plates of glass with paltry mine which train of ideas it has most frequently exsheets of blue paper, patched over with gilded fleurs- cited in my mind. One point is, however, certain;de-lis, an expedient the pitiful effect of which may that, of all capitals, that of France affords most be easily conceived. If I understood my guide right- numerous objects of curiosity, accessible in the ealy, however, this work ought not to be severely criti- siest manner; and it may be therefore safely procised, being the free-will offering of the inhabitants nounced one of the most entertaining places of resiof Chantilly, who had struggled, in the best manner dence which can be chosen by an idle man. As their funds and taste would admit, to restore the for attempting a description of it, that, you know, chateau to something like an habitable condition is far beyond the limits of our compact, which you

must have quite forgotten when you hinted at such the watch. In these sounds there was pride, and a proposal. The following sketch may not, how-victory, and honour, some portion of which descendever, be uninteresting. ed (in imagination at least) to each, the most retired and humblest fellow-subject of the hero who led, and the soldiers who obeyed, in the achievements which had borne the colours of Britain into the capital of France. But there was enough around me to temper the natural feelings of elation, which, as a Briton, I could not but experience. Monuments rose on every side, designed to commemorate mighty actions which may well claim the highest praise that military achievement alone, abstracted from the cause in which it was accomplished, could be enti tled to. From the centre of the Place Vendome, and above the houses of the Rue Rivoli, arose the summit of the celebrated column which Bonaparte had constructed upon the plan of that of Trajan; the cannon taken at Ulm and Austerlitz affording the materials of its exterior, and which is embossed with a detailed representation of the calamities and subjection of Austria. At no great distance lay the Bridge of Jena, an epithet which recalls the almost total annihilation of the kingdom of Prussia,

If we confine our observation to one quarter of Paris only, that, namely, which is adjacent to the Royal Palace, I presume there is no capital which can show so many and such magnificent public edifices within the same space of ground. The Tuilleries, whose immense extent makes amends for the deficiencies of the architecture, communicate with the royal gardens, which are used as public walks, and these again open into the Place de Louis Quinze, a large octagon, guarded by a handsome balustrade, richly ornamented at the angles, having, on the one hand, the royal gardens with the range of the palace, on the other the Champs Elysées, a large space of ground, planted and laid out in regular walks like those of Hyde-Park. Behind is the extensive colonnade of a palace, called by Bonaparte the Temple of Victory, and since the Restoration the Temple of Concord. Another large and halffinished temple was rising in the front by the command of Bonaparte, which was dedicated to the honour of soldiers who had died in battle. The build-In the front of the Tuilleries are placed, on a triing was to have been consolidated solely by the umphal arch, the Venetian Horses, the trophies of weight of the massive stones made use of, and nei- the subjugation of Italy, and in the neighbouring ther wood, iron, or lime, was to be employed in its Louvre are deposited the precious spoils of victories construction; but schemes of ambition as ill ce- gained and abused in every country of Europe, formmented interrupted its progress. A line of buildingsing the most resistless evidence, that the hand extend on either hand, forming a magnificent street, which placed them there, had once at its arbitrary called La Rue Rivoli, which runs parallel with the disposal the fortunes of the greater part of the civi iron palisade of the garden of the Tuilleries. lized world. No building among the splendid monuments of Paris, but is marked with the name, or device, or insignia of an emperor, whose power seemed as deeply founded as it was widely extended. Yet the gourd of the prophet, which came up in a night and perished in a night, has proved the type of authority so absolute, and of fame so ditfused; and the possessor of this mighty power is now the inhabitant of a distant and sequestered isl et, with hardly so much free-will as entitles him to claim from his warders an hour of solitude, even in the most solitary spot in the civilized world. The moral question presses on every bosom, was it worth while for him to have climbed so high to render his fall the deeper, or would the meanest of us purchase the feverish feelings of gratified ambition, at the expense of his reflections, who appeared to hold Fortune chained to his footstool? Could the fable of the Seven Sleepers have been realized in Paris, what a scene of astonishment would have been prepared for those, who, falling asleep in 1813, awakened from their torpor at the present moment! He who had seen the Pope place the crown upon the head of Napoleon, and the proud house of Austria.compelled to embrace his alliance, Prussia bent to the dust beneath his footstool, England excluded from each continental connexion of commerce or alliance, Russia overawed and submissive, while Italy, Germany, and the greater part of Spain, were divided as appanages among his brothers and allies,-what would have been the surprise of the waking moment, which should have shown him the Prussian cannon turned upon the bridges of Paris, and the sove reigns of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, with the representatives of almost all the other nations of Europe, feasting in the capital of France with the general and minister of England, supported by a force which made resistance equally frantic and hopeless! The revolution of ages must have appeared to him to have been accomplished within the space of little more than twenty-four months.

It was on the second night after my arrival in Paris, that, finding myself rather too early for an evening party to which I was invited, I strolled out, enjoying the pure and delicious air of a summer night in France, until I found myself in the centre of the Place de Louis Quinze, surrounded, as I have described it, by objects so noble in themselves, and so powerfully associated with deep historic and moral interest. And here I am at length in Paris," was the natural reflection, "and under circumstances how different from what I dared to have anticipated! That is the palace of Louis le Grand, but how long have his descendants been banished from its halls, and under what auspices do they now again possess them! This superb esplanade takes its name from his luxurious and feeble descendant; and here, upon the very spot where I now stand, the most virtuous of the Bourbon race expiated, by a violent death inflicted by his own subjects, and in view of his own palace, the ambition and follies of his predecessors. There is an awful solemnity in the reflection, how few of those who contributed to this deed of injustice and atrocity now look upon the day, and behold the progress of retribution. The glimmering lights that shine among the alleys and parterres of the Champs Elysées, indicate none of the usual vigils common in a metropolis. They are the watch-fires of a camp, of an English camp, and in the capital of France, where an English drum has not been heard since 1436, when the troops of Henry the Sixth were expelled from Paris. During that space, of nearly four centuries, there has scarce occurred a single crisis which rendered it probable for a moment that Paris should be again entered by the English as conquerors; but least of all could such a consummation have been expected at the conclusion of a war, in which France so long predominated as arbitress of the continent, and which had periods when Britain seemed to continue the conflict only in honourable despair."

There were other subjects of deep interest around From this slight sketch, you may have some geneme. The lights which proceeded from the windows ral idea of the magnificence of that quarter of Paris and from the gardens of the large hotel occupied by which adjoins to the Tuilleries, crowded asit is with the Duke of Wellington, at the corner of the Rue palaces, public monuments, and public buildings, des Champs Elysées, and which chanced that even- and comprehending in its circuit ornamented gardens ing to be illuminated in honour of a visit from the and extended walks, open to the inhabitants for exallied sovereigns, mingled with the twinkle of the ercise or pleasure. I ought also to describe to you camp-fires, and the glimmer of the tents; and the the front of the palace itself, a magnificent range of music, which played a variety of English and Scot-buildings, corresponding with the Louvre, another tish airs, harmonized with the distant roll of the drums, and the notes of that beautiful point of war which is performed by our bugles at the setting of

immense royal mansion, from which the Tuilleries is only divided by the superb square, cailed La Place du Carousel. The only screen betwixt this square

I

site of the Bastile. The sort of castle, or Howdar, with which this monstrous statue was to have been accoutred, was designed for a reservoir, the water of which, being discharged through the trunk into a large cistern, or fountain, surrounding the pedestal on which the animal was placed, was to supply with water all that quarter of Paris. The model of this gigantic grotesque is exhibited in stucco near the place which it was designed to have occupied, and such is the deference of the present government for the feelings of la gloire nationale, that they have not yet ventured to avow, that, in a time of national poverty and distress, they mean to dispense with erecting a monument, which, after being accomplished at immense expense, must appear bizarre and fanciful, rather than grand and impressive. In the meanwhile they are, in justice to the ancestors of the present king, reclaiming for the Bourbons those public buildings, which, by inscriptions and emblems, Napoleon had consecrated to his own dynasty. N.'s are every where disappearing, or undergoing a conversion into H.'s and B.'s, an operation in which the royal stone-cutters are as much called upon to exert their dexterity as the poor sign-painters in Roye, Peronne, and Cambray. They have, indeed, the same benefit of experience, having, not very long ago, accomplished the counterpart of the metamorphosis. Such are the minute and ridiculous consequences which indicate a change of government, as much as the motion of straws, twigs, and withered leaves upon the surface, indicates the progress and subsiding of a torrent.

and the court of the Tuilleries, is a magnificent railing of wrought iron, which gives freedom to the eye, not only to survey the extended front of the chateau, but to penetrate through the central vestibule of the palace into the gardens beyond, and as far as the Champs Elysees. In the centre of this screen the public have admittance to the court-yard of the palace, beneath a triumphal arch, which Bonaparte erected in imitation of that of Septimius Severus. The effect of this monument seems diminutive when compared to the buildings around; the columns, made of a mixed red and white marble, are rather gaudy; and the four celebrated Venetian horses, formed of Corinthian brass, which occupy the top of the arch, have been injudiciously harnessed with gilded trappings to a gilded car, driven by a gilded Victory. It is said Bonaparte intended to have plaEced his own figure in the car; but it came to his ears, (for he was self-tormentor enough to inquire after such matters,) that the disaffected had hailed it, as likely to afford a good opportunity for calling him mountebank with impunity, since, while they should point to the chariot, the epithet Le Charlatan might easily be substituted for Le Char le tient. Thus a threatened pun saved Napoleon's image one descent at least, by preventing its temporary elevation; and it also saved the French taste the disgrace of adding another incongruity to the gilded car, harness, and driver. This monument is now undergoing considerable alterations. The Austrians are busy in exchanging for plain slabs of marble, the tablatures placed around the arch: the sculptures almost all reiate to the humiliation of the Emperor On the whole, it must be acknowledged, that of Austria, there represented cap-in-hand before Bonaparte, though unscrupulous in appropriating Bonaparte, who appears covered and in an authorita- the merit of his predecessors, bent an earnest and tive posture. The French rebelled against the mu- active attention to perfecting whatever grand or tilation of this monument at its commencement, magnificent plans they had left uncompleted, thus and attempted something like a riot, but were in- establishing his own reputation as heir of the mostantly called to order by a strong Prussian guard. narchy, as well as of the revolution. His ambition The work now goes on quietly, and not without to distinguish himself sometimes soared beyond some respect to the feelings of the Parisians: for popular prejudice, and hurried him into extravaganthere are blinds of wood put up before the scaffold-ces of expense, which the Parisians seem in general ing, to save their eyes the mortification of seeing its progress. It is not doubted that the horses themselves will be removed in due time.*

In the meanwhile the statue of Bonaparte, which was last year taken down from the pillar in the Place Vendome, is said to have experienced an odd transition. It had been exchanged for a certain number of busts and small figures of Louis XVIII., just as a large piece of coin of one reign is given for an equivalent in the small money of another. The figure of the abdicated emperor for some time found refuge in the yard of an artist, by whom it has since been sold to an Englishman. The purchase is believed to be made in behalf of the Duke of Wellington, in which case the statue will be a striking ornament to the palace destined by national gratitude as an acknowledgment at least of the debt, which even the wealth and generosity of Britain cannot pay in full.

To return to the works of Bonaparte. It cannot be denied that he showed great ability and dexterity in availing himself of that taste for national display, which is a leading feature of the French character. Yet this was, at least, as much evinced in the address with which he adopted and carried through the half-accomplished plans of Louis XIV. and his successors, as in any work of original genius which can be decidedly traced to his own design. The triumphal arch, and the pillar in the Place Vendome, are literal, almost servile, imitations of the column of Trajan and the arch of Severus. But the splendid extension of the Louvre, by the combination of that striking pile with the Tuilleries, upon the side which had been left unfinished, although the work of Bonaparte, and bearing his name, is, in fact, only a completion of the original design of Louis XIV. One original plan Napoleon may indeed claim as his own--the project, namely, of erecting a stupendous bronze figure of an elephant upon the

*This removal has since taken place-See a very lively ac count of the circumstances, and its effect upon the feelings of the Parisians, in Mr. John Scott's" Paris Revisited."

to deem unnecessary. Such is the plan of his Rue de l'Empereur, now Rue de la Paix, a fine street, running from the Place Vendome to the Boulevards des Capucines, which not only boasts a breadth corresponding to the magnificence of the buildings, but is actually accommodated with two gutters, one on each side, instead of that single kennel in the centre, where the filth floats or stagnates in all the other streets of Paris. But even the Emperor Napoleon, in the height of his dignity, dared not introduce the further novelty of a pavement on each side. This would be, indeed, to have destroyed that equality between horse and foot, walkers, drivers, and driven, which appears to give such delight to a Parisian, that if you extol to him the safe pavements and foot-paths of an English street or road, he will answer with polite composure-"C'est tres bien pour Messieurs les Anglois-pour moi, j'aime la totalité de la rue." Good phrases, saith Justice Shallow, are and ever must be commended; and this, of la totalité de la rue, reconciles a Parisian walker to all the inconveniences of being ridden down or driven over. But the privilege of totality by no means compensates to the aged, the timid, the infirm, not to mention females and children, for the accidents to which they are exposed. At present these are multiplied by the numerous accession of strangers, all of whom drive in their own way, and give their own mode of warning, which the pedestrian must construe rightly upon his own peril. Here he hears the Hey! hey! of a member of the English Four-inhand Club; there he is called to attention by the Gare! gare! of a Parisian petit maitre, or a German Freyherr; and having escaped all these hair-breadth risks, he may be ridden down at the next turning by a drosky, the driver of which, a venerable Russian charioteer, with a long beard flowing down to his girdle, pushes right on to his destined course with the most unperturbed apathy, without giving passengers warning of any kind to shift for themselves.

The risk, however, to pedestrians, does not form my only objection to the French metropolis, abstracted