JOURNAL OF A TOURIST.-NO. III.

1 HAVE now been in Paris several days have traversed it in various directions, and inspected all its most celebrated structures: the result is a conviction that we saw the best of it in our first excursion; that a great deal is sacrificed for effect; and that the feelings of admiration excited by the first coup-d'œil, will not by any means be increased by a more minute acquaintance with its interior system and economy. Its luxury and magnificence are principally external; while in London these qualities exhibit themselves chiefly in the interior of buildings. Paris attains its most distinguishing feature (the lofty range and extensive plan of her houses) by a great sacrifice of domestic comfort; and we shall be less surprised at the handsome designs of the architects, if we reflect that each structure is tenanted by a little colony of its own. Such is the case in a great proportion of the most elegant erections, and the annoyances to which it subjects the inmates are neither few nor trifling. The stairs, being "open to all parties," are very often "influenced by none," so far as regards their conservation in a proper state of cleanliness, especially if the lodgers, as is very aptto be the case in Paris, keep a dog or two upon each floor.

The pavements here, though generally excellent in the centre of the street, and kept in good order by the limited traffic, the total absence of any ponderous carriages, and the imperturbability of the stones when once laid down, universally wants that indispensable article of comfort to pedestrians-a foot-pavement. Walking is not only fatiguing and distressing to the unaccustomed soles of Englishmen, but it compels them to move in perpetual discomfort, from the necessity of being everlastingly on the qui vive, and looking before and behind, and on one side, if they wish to avoid an unprofitable encounter with a fiacre or cabriolet. It is very illustrative of the different notions of comfort in the two countries, that while here, with an immediate supply of materials under their feet, they neglect to use them, in England they procure this accommodation from a great distance and at a vast expense, and with undistinguishing luxury extend it to the narrowest street and the shabbiest alleys. In Paris, probably, the disregard of a trottoir originated in that aristocratical feeling, which considered the common people as nothing; so at least Rousseau seemed to think, when he judged from our English foot-paths, that they were something, and thanked God for it. If to all these points of indisputable inferiority it be added, that the French metropolis is entirely without those extensive and handsomely planted squares that form such an embellishment to London; and that its streets, with a few exceptions, are not so long, or so wide, or so regular as ours, it may be doubted whether, upon the whole, it deserves the name of a finer city, if by that phrase we mean to indicate a greater combination of external and internal recommendations:-though it must always be conceded that the immediate purlieus of the Court present an assemblage of magnificence and beauty unrivalled in London, or perhaps in any other city. The whole country, indeed, to judge by what we have seen, exhibits traces of a long-continued, but tasteful despotism, which has sacrificed France to Paris, and Paris to the Court.

it has not been fribbled away upon thatched cottages, Chinese pa-, godas, and sprawling green dragons, of which the present age would be still more ashamed, but for the consoling reflection that in a few years such fantastical gewgaws will have tumbled to pieces, and be no more remembered than the tin and tinsel palaces in the last scene of one of Astley's pantomimes. Speaking individually, I would rather contribute half my substance to the embellishment of a Versailles, than a tithe of the sum to unnecessary wars (and unnecessary most wars are); yet what a trifle is the cost of this stupendous piece of extravagance, when compared with that of a few campaigns! Unfortunately Louis XIV. united both modes of expenditure. Going over a palace is generally a great drudgery; they have all a strong family-likeness:-from the ceilings, "where sprawl the saints of Verrio and La Guerre," down to the tesselated marble under foot, where "half the platform just reflects the other," they are alike apt to be very fine and very tiresome. Servants in rich old-fashioned liveries led us from room to room, exclaiming, “Salon de Mars!" Salon d'Apollon!"-"Salon de Mercure!" and "Salon de Diane !" till we began to speculate with some pleasure on the exhaustion of the Heathen Deities; but alas! they were succeeded by the divinities of legitimacy, and the officers of their almost interminable household. The want of furniture, all of which disappeared in the Revolution, adds to the monotony of the chambers, which seem to be astonished at their own forlorn finery, as they glitter in the gorgeousness of the new gilding with which they have been lately decorated. Here and there an obnoxious pannel torn out, attested the political change which had so unexpectedly restored its old masters, which was also evidenced by the sedulous restoration of the fleur de lis, perhaps destined at no distant period to be again supplanted. With the exception of the Chapel, which, in spite of Voltaire's lampoon, is very elegant, though somewhat too gaudy-and the great gallery, 222 feet in length, with its mirrors reflecting the gardens and waters,we encountered nothing very striking, till, on passing through some gloomy and shabby passages, we groped our way into the once magnificent Amphitheatre, or Salle des Spectacles, now dismantled, silent, and abandoned to dust, darkness, and desolation. Every thing that was royal, joyous, and festive, conspired to give splendour and eclat to this masterpiece of luxury, which was completed in 1770, on the marriage of the unfortunate Louis XVI. The Amours of the Gods, painted by Du Rameau, on the ceiling, could hardly suggest to the imagination scenes of more voluptuous enchantment than were once realized on the floor below, when, on the removal of a portion of the gilded columns, which were made hollow for that purpose, the whole arena was converted into a sumptuous ball-room; and the most splendid Court in Europe, in the height of its lustre, headed by Marie Antoinette in the zenith of her fascinations, mingling in the graceful dance, dazzled the spectator with the sight of beautiful and laughing faces, and sparkling diamonds, and nodding plumes, and gay colours, all reflected and multiplied a thousand times by the innumerable mirrors with which every box and every wall was completely pannelled. We sat in the very box which had been so often graced by Royalty; we stood on the boards where they had danced ;-here

nad the music poured its exhilarating strains; here had the laugh resounded amid the encounter of bright eyes, and the sparkling coruscations of wit. Gracious God! what a frightful change did a few years present!-That lovely Queen, with her ill-fated husband, and a great portion of the beauty and chivalry of their court, all miserably slaughtered; the rest in exile, penury, and wretchedness; the palace devastated by an infuriate mob; and this glorious temple of their festivity left as we now beheld it-denuded of all its gildings, and trappings, and costly mirrors; the paintings crumbling to decay; the boards creaking beneath the foot; and spiders weaving their webs, amid gloom and silence, athwart the trelliswork of that box, over which the beautiful arm of Marie Antoinette had so often been suspended!

A superannuated domestic, harmonizing well with this affecting picture of human instability, conducted us over the dilapidated grandeur. There are men in humble station whom one involuntarily respects for the appalling changes they have witnessed, and the consequent feelings of which their bosoms must be the depositories: and this was such a person. Taken when a boy into the service of royalty, he had been present at the marriage of Louis XVI., when there were ten thousand people lodged in the palace, and every one of its rooms rang with mirth and music: he had seen the Queen address the raving mob of Paris from the balcony of the Old Court, when they came here to seek her: he had trembled with horror and dismay when the same couple, whom he had seen united at the altar amid prayers, blessings, and festivities, were savagely hurried to the guillotine: and, finally, at the sacking of Versailles, he had fled into concealment, but not until he and some faithful fellow-servants had hidden the portraits of the royal family beneath the floor of the Sacristy, at a time when a discovery of such treason to the new order of things would infallibly have cost him his head. After a long interment these pictures had, upon the restoration of the Bourbons, emerged into light, if that can be called light, which in the blaze of a summer noon diffused little more than a darkness visible around the stage part of this tattered theatre, where they stood without frames, as if still afraid of venturing into the haunts of men. Our venerable Cicerone led us from queen to king, and from monarch to mistress, detailing, with profound respect, the marriages and relationships of each, until we came to one which he passed unnoticed; and on inquiring the reason, he replied, with a careless toss of his head, that it was only a church picture. Those persons are assuredly very wrong who connect the ancient order of things with a necessary respect for religion: respect for an earthly divinity it may indeed have inculcated, and here, where a loose monarch is every where seen deified in marble in the midst of his mistresses, such devotion was probably as fervent as it was prevalent; but this is directly opposed to that pure religion which, bidding us disclaim the lusts of the flesh and all earthly pomps, has morality for its basis, and Heaven for its reward. Here, as well as upon several other occasions, we observed that, amid various classes in France, Christianity was considered with indifference, and in some instances with contempt.

Passing by the Grand Reservoir, an enormous and lofty mound of stone, constructed for the supply of a single water-work, we advanced into the gardens, laid out in the usual formal style of parterres, green vistas, and alleys; but magnificently decorated with 150 marble statues of rare workmanship, besides numerous figures, vases, and groups, of bronze, all of which we commanded from the elevated terrace where we stood; while, in whatever direction we turned our eyes, columns and various combinations of water were thrown aloft into the air, some immediately surrounding us, some from the successive terraces beneath us: some having the nodding plumage of their summits relieved by the verdant alleys and niches in which they were embowered; while others shooting up against the bright blue sky turned over their foaming capitals, like Corinthian pillars; or, as the wind gently agitated them, scattered their silver spray in the last gleams of the setting sun. It was a scene of enchantment-a dream,-an attempt to embody some of the descriptions in the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," of which we only beheld the perfect realization when we reached the Bosquet de la Colonnade, a circular enclosure of thirty-two marble columns decorated with Naiads, Sylvans, and Genii, holding the attributes of love, surrounding a central basin, and noble group of the Rape of Proserpine, every one of the numerous figures keeping up a perpetual discharge of water, until the whole enclosure was enveloped in a cloud of foam. If these sparkling exhibitions and beautiful baubles had recalled to us the fantastic fables of our infancy, not without some passing impressions of their puerility, or at least of their trivial value in the eye of genuine taste, we had a treat in store for us, infinitely more exquisite in itself, and unalloyed by any of these drawbacks upon our delights. This, too, was a scene calculated to revive the visions of our early reading, but of those more classical fictions of Grecian story, which transport the imagination to the Vale of Tempe, or the hallowed precincts of Mount Parnassus and Delphi. Quitting the planned parterres and radiated walks of the gardens, we passed through a gate into an unfrequented enclosure, left in the wild luxuriance of Nature, when, after winding a little while among shady walks, we came abruptly upon a sloping grass-plot, shelving down to the Baths of Apollo. An enormous rock, o'er-canopied by lofty trees and umbrageous shrubs, is hollowed out into three grottos, representing the entrance into the Palace of Thetis, in the centre one of which is Apollo seated, surrounded by six nymphs attiring him after the bath: in the two side grottos are Tritons watering the horses of the tuneful god; at their feet is the bath from which he is supposed to have just emerged,, not circumscribed by marble or cut into squares, but hiding its edges in the grass and rushes; while the whole, shut in by a surrounding grove, has the exact aspect of such a nook in Arcady or Thessaly, as we may imagine the deity to have selected for the purpose. The sculptures, universally admitted to be the chefsd'œuvre of Girardon, are most exquisite; and the scenic accompaniments and embellishments imparted to them such an air of reality, that we contemplated them in an ecstasy of silent reverence, half inclined to shrink behind the trees, lest we should be consi