of the city, as if we were in a country town of New England. Our house is small, but convenient; and with the kitchen and the porter's lodge, and the porte cochere, and the Court-yard, has the appearance of a Hotel in miniature. The office of porter, at a public hotel, is generally filled by some inferior tradesman, who can by pulling a string, raise the bolt without moving from his seat, or his shop-board; but in private houses he is a servant so stationed as to attend the gate, and whose business it is to sweep out the rooms and staircase, and to rub the floors every morning; they are so frequently from Switzerland, that the words porter and Swiss, are become synonymous; ours, however, is a Savoyard, who having wandered at a very early age from his native mountains, and swept chimnies, and cleaned shoes, and gone of errands, and practised all the various modes of living, which his nation seems in possession of in Paris, is now settled down for life as a porter, contented to get his victuals, and about twelve pounds a year. Our coachman is a man advanced in life, with a very grave countenance, and a head nicely powdered. He would not upon any account mount the coachbox of a morning, before two enormous curls, which he wears at the sides, were completely arranged, and he declared to me upon his veracity, that this article of his toilette cost him full sixty sous a quarter. Our cook also must be introduced to your acquaintance; not Dame Leonarde of immortal memory, nor Dame Jacintha whose ragouts were so perfect, understood the business of the kitchen better, but she has other talents which would have qualified her for a distinguished place in the kitchen of the Sicilian Nobleman, and we find ourselves obliged to overlook her accompts very regularly every day. We have a valet de place also, who has all the merit those sort of people ever have; he has his favourites among the tradesmen, and levies, I presume, a small contribution at our expense. A water carrier keeps the house well supplied with water, and since the invention of filtrating fountains, the Seine water is as good as that of your best springs at the mountains. A part of Paris is supplied with this necessary life by the powers of the steam engine of Chailcot, the practicability of which was a cause of discussion for the wits of Paris, for Mirabeau and Beaumarchais among the rest, till their attention was called off to objects which have not been productive of such general utility. There is a great deal yet to be described on the

North side of the river; all the places of public amusement are there, and of these I must give you some account; but we will first make an excursion to the other side, at the South Eastern extremity of the city. Let me request you therefore to return to your plan of Paris, and to draw a line, or stretch a thread from the Southern extremity of the Thuilleries, to the Luxembourg, which you will easily find; a continuation of the line will strike the Rue St. Jaques, at the English Benedictines; another, at an obtuse angle, will carry you to the Gobelim manufactory, hence the Rue St. Marcel will conduct you to the ancient and now obscure church of St. Medard, and you will afterwards pass along the Rue Neuve d'Orleans, to the Garden of Plants. From the Garden of Plants we will return homewards by the Rue St. Victor, and the place Marbert, and across the island of the city, where the ancient palace of Justice, on the one side, and the Metropolitan church of Notre Dame, on the other, will deserve our attention as we pass: having crossed to the Quai Voltaire, the line soon brings you to the Rue des Petits Augustins, and shortly after to the ancient abbey of that name: this street, des Petits Augustins, was formerly a canal, that divided the Scholar's meadow, where Sully describes himself as having exposed his life in so careless a manner, after the death of Madame de Rosny; at the upper end of it stands the former convent of Augustin monks where all the monuments and other pieces of ornamental sculpture, which could be saved from the ruin of the churches during the madness of the revolution, have been deposited; these curious relics of ancient art, and memorials of distinguished persons are here arranged in different apartments, according to their respective antiquity, and one has the satisfaction to trace the progress of sculpture through the course of many succeeding centuries; when the tombs at St. Dennis were opened, the pretence was to make use of the leaden coffins, which had been accumulated there in so many ages, for the purpose of war, but the chief object of the wretches who then governed, was to lower the Regal Character, in the estimation of the nation by this last insult: fortunately, with all their desire to destroy, the greater part of the monuments were preserved, and are now here; the intrinsic merit of the sculpture, in those pieces which were meant to represent the earlier kings, is very small indeed. Clovis, Chilperic, and Clotaire, are so many blocks of mishapen stone, in which

there is at best, but a rude imitation of the human figure; it was this last, who, as he felt himself dying, was heard to exclaim, "And who is this mighty God of Heaven, that can at his pleasure, remove the greatest monarch upon earth?" For so this bar barian supposed himself. The statue of St. Louis, however, is somewhat better; it is formed, indeed, like the others, of very ordinary stone, and the features are considerably defaced, but in this rude representation, and after a lapse of six centuries, there is an air of goodness and simplicity, and more of countenance, than I could ever discover in many of the master-pieces of Grecian art. The leaden saint upon his hat, and the air of cunning and malignity are expressive of Louis XI; the guards of this wretched tyrant watching day and night over his person, and the walls of his castle covered with iron spikes, and his looking about so anxiously in his last moments for some earthly mediator between heaven and himself, would prevent any succeeding monarch, we might suppose, from giving way to those suspicions, and to that implacable resentment, which rendered the latter part of the reign of Louis so fatal to his subjects; but man will not be benefitted by the experience of others: the face of Louis XII, is that of an emaciated old man, but I considered it with great attention and respect; it was he who said, upon being told that the Parisians ridiculed his mode of living, I had rather they should laugh at my parsimony and simplicity, than be made to weep by my oppression and tyranny. The Historian of his life says, he might have lived many years longer, had he not in order to please his young wife, the beautiful Mary of England, so materially altered his mode of living. He had always been accustomed to dine at eight; but he now dined at noon, and instead of going to bed at the good old hour of six, he would frequently sit up till near midnight. It would lead us frequently into error, I know, to apply the system of Lavater upon every occasion, but Richelieu, though supported by Religion, and with Science weeping at his feet, and in the attitude of a dying man, discovers a proud and domineering spirit in his countenance, while there is something yielding and compliant in the air and attitude of his successor Mazerin. You will see in Voltaire's Louis XIV, what immense sums of money this last left behind him; one of his modes of amassing, was to buy up the engagements of the government, which he knew how to depress the price of, and to pay himself the full nominal

value from the Royal Treasury. Another of the distinguished ministers of France, whose statue is seen here at full length is Louvois, in whose countenance, and in the swelling of whose upper lip there is a great deal of character expressed. I accompanied the administrator of the museum, as he is called, up stairs, and he there showed me in a closet the bust of Louis XV; who appears to have been one of the handsomest men of his time, with those of the late king, and of the unfortunate Maria Antoinette, in whose air there is a great deal of energy and animation: she appears, as she really was, every way superior to Madame de Barry, whose bust is in the same closet; this last was a handsome woman, but her beauty has an insipidity of expression, only fitted for the Haram. There is a garden annexed to the Museum, which contains among other tombs, that of Abelard and Eloisa, which was brought from Paraclete, but the bones of these unhappy lovers are in a box above stairs, with a partition between them, such as became the piety of a prior, and the sanctity of a holy abbess. This decent attention to the poor remains of two persons, who lived so many years ago, and whose lives were of so little importance to society, is one of the most splendid triumphs of English Poetry. There is something extremely solemn in this assemblage of kings, statesmen, and soldiers, of great ladies distinguished once either for their beauty, or their high birth, and of magistrates, and men of letters; it seems an emblem of a future state, in which all ranks and generations will lie confounded: the mean neighbourhood of some of these-of Piron and Voltaire, for instance, reminded me of that passage in Pope's Windsor Castle, where he describes one common tomb as receiving those whom the same country could not formerly contain:

"And by his side the much fear'd Edward sleeps."

It is at the same time highly gratifying to trace the progress of sculpture through so many centuries, and to observe the changes which have taken place in dress. The stiff stays, and long waists of former days, are still more frightful, I think, in stone, than in colours. The art of sculpture took its rise among the fine forms, and in the fine climate of ancient Greece; thence it passed to their conquerors the Romans; but the removal of the seat of government together with every eminent artist, and every valua

ble production of former times under Constantine, and the inroads of barbarians afterwards, put an end to the art in Rome, while the zeal of the image-breaking kings, and the prevalence of the Mahometan religion were fatal to it in the East. It is said to have been revived in France under St. Louis, and to have attained its utmost perfection there, before the time of Louis XIV, when the simplicity and elegance of antiquity were neglected, for imaginary taste and false dignity. What effect the Revolution may have had upon this, and upon the sister art of painting, does not seem yet decided. There have been some eminent painters, and among the rest David has been much spoken of, but I think the figures of his pictures exaggerated, and the colouring false; every object of them seemed tinged with yellow; as to sculpture, the art is too expensive to be successfully patronized by a government, which, with a most splendid court, an immense army, a number of needy dependants to provide for, and a fleet to create, is extremely limited in its pecuniary resources, and borrows no money, but by anticipating on the next year's revenue, and at the rate of nine per cent. A figure as large as life costs nearly 600l. Such at least was the information given me by one of the most eminent sculptors, whom I found living at the ancient Sorbonne: he informed me at the same time, that having contracted for a statue with the former Royal government, for which he was to receive 550 he had delivered it to their successors in the time of Jacobinism, and that the value paid him in the depreciated assignats amounted to 12 livres. I did not neglect, as you may very well suppose, that corner of the Museum, where are the monumental busts of the most eminent poets; Racine, the Virgil of the French language; Moliere, and La Fontaine, to whom no poets of any age or country, can be compared; and Boileau, who may be compared to Pope, are placed as they deserved to be, in conspicuous stations. This last with the correctness of Pope, with more delicacy of expression, and at least as much genius, had the difficult part to fill of a courtier, who depends upon the regard of a monarch, the vainest of mankind, and yet wishes to retain the reputation of integrity, and freedom of speech; upon being told once by a person, who wished to overrule his objections to some literary production, that the king had already declared himself to be of a different opinion; God forbid, Sir, said Boileau, that his majesty should ever understand these things as