impressed us strangely. The houses, with their earthenware roofs and old walls, had an antique look, and these, with the jabber of talk among the French, told us that we were pilgrims indeed.

Not so when we reached Paris. Not having our tongue in as yet, to the little French we knew so imperfectly, we were compelled to address ourselves to the railroad agents, who spoke English. There we first began to realize the fact, and not the form only, of French courtesy. As soon as we let the officers know that we were Republicans from America, and not English, how they hopped about to show us our baggage, and even accompanied us to our hotel. Let American travellers in France not forget, to dispossess the minds of those who have charge of them or theirs, of the idea that they are British. You ought to see a Paris cabman take off a gruff John Bull, with his churlish crossness, and his shrug of discontent.

Not expecting to remain in Paris longer than was necessary to prepare our passports for Italy, we took but small and imperfect glimpses of the capital. But such as we took rewarded us well. How proud the French are of their capital! and they have reason to be. Not of their long and dirty streets, with little or no pavements, of which a great part of the city consists; but of their Boulevards, the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the gardens of the Tuileries, and other spots which we visited.

We needed no guide. Our company being inside, I mounted the cab, and with a modicum of bad French began the duty of guide and interpreter, as well as of learner and teacher.The shrewd cabman could readily understand me. He drove us to the famous Arch of Triumph, from which we took a view of the city. The arch itself is worth a visit to Paris. It is erected to honor Napoleon, his soldiers, and his victories. It is replete with carving, representing every variety of prowess by arms, and every mode of its consequent glory. From such a point I could not dwell upon detail.

Buy a medal, or give the old lady at the entrance a gratui

tous franc, and you may ascend the Arch. What a glorious prospect is here on every side! You will, with the aid of Gallignani's map, or with the aid of some Parisian, perceive the principal points of interest in the throbbing life of gayety and glory below. In front are the Champs Elysées, with their fine walks, seats and shades; and throughout, are scattered stalls, booths, and circuses, together with thousands of human beings. Indeed it is no uncommon thing, of Sundays, to see at least two hundred thousand assembled in these retreats. That place of foun

You will rcognize

tains before us, is the Place de la Concorde. one of the fountains as the original of one in the French department of the Great Exhibition. Still in front are the gardens of the Tuileries the Place du Carousal, with its fine arch, and the Louvre.

But we have not time even here for particulars. Let us walk about the arch, to find how Paris looks generally, with its roads leading back to Versailles and St. Germaine, its chateaux and its forts.

Then again for the cab and a minute inspection of the Luxembourg. There we confess that even Hyde Park is beaten. Its long rows of statues, its elegant flower-plots, its terraces, its splendid fountains, its urns, its delicious umbrageousness, its glorious palace, and above all, its thrilling associations with the great names of France, render it, thus far, the prominent object in our travels.

But what shall we say of Nôtre Dame, whose superb architecture calls for the best and loftiest sweep of the vision? We drive round to wonder at the work of man in rearing such a pile, and at the work of Time in touching its stone with decay. We enter. Hushed is the air! "Peace, be still!" the spirit of the place seemeth to say. One or two figures are in prayer at the other end of the Cathedral; all else seems a SPIRITUAL PRESENCE! How high, how deep-deep, is the air above! Move slowly and solemnly along, and gaze upon the master works of sacred painting to your right and left, until you stand before the altar! Then look upward. What a Tabernacle, Great God! is this for THEE?

In such a temple, the ALMIGHTY, if ever shrined visibly, would appear! What mellow splendors from the many-colored windows meet each other midway under the dome, and shower their united flood of rainbows on the scene below! Here is a place where His Presence may be felt, even to the renewing of life, to the brightening of heavenly Hope, and to the antedating o celestial felicity. Would that we could here linger, until the sacred atmosphere of the temple should purify our souls, and create a new and holier essence for the cycles of eternity!

We almost forget that human greatness, "only not divine," was here enthroned, amid the pomp and circumstance of power, in the person of Napoleon. What songs, what breathings from yon old organ, what display of insignia and ceremonial observances, what an array of military valor and pride, what crowds of expectant spectators then made Nôtre Dame the shrine of earthly ambition in its proudest worship!

But we pass to another scene, where an ambition and a greatness of another mould is celebrated. Not in loud murmurs. Oh! no-the tombs beneath the Pantheon weep eternal silent moisture over the remains of the truly great of France. "La Patrie," hath remembered them by a most fitting, a most tearcompelling, a most magnificent tribute.

Thus has France, while erecting her memorials to victory all over her capital, not forgotten the immortalization of Thought, which endlessly wings its way down to the latest generations, through the works of her scholars and literary men! No one can fail to observe, even without visiting France, the intense feeling constantly flowing out in honor of her great men. Persons, rather than principles are reverenced. Immortalization of renowned names has superseded the immortality of the soul. The latter is almost an obsolete, if it ever were a prevalent idea. All classes of the community unite in homage to the hero. The very churches are built to honor humanity, not Divinity. The names of the citizens who fell in July 1830, are engraved upon splendid shafts; but the principles which prompted the revolu

tion and which lie at the root of all popular sovereignity, were as evanescent as last Sunday's gala. Dynasties may be overturned, barricade-war be declared biennially, the vivas of the people changed weekly; yet the great citizens of France will ever receive apotheosis. The seven millions who have in December 1851, sustained the coup d'état of a BONAPARTE, have been mostly moved by the name upon the bulletin.

However fickle the populace of this city may be, it is cerain, that for all the revolutions of France, her Pantheon, to the truly great, will remain as everlasting as their fame. "Art," it has been well said, "is dependent on the tone of the public mind, as the more delicate plants on atmosphere and weather." It needs a general enthusiasm for beauty and sublimity, like that in the time of the Medici, to call forth a host of great spirits. No less it needs the same enthusiasm to erect monuments to their memory. France has had her era of enthusiasm. Indeed, it is an element which never subsides in her bosom. We may well rely upon it to protect the monuments it has reared.

Tired, but not sated with Parisian spectacles, we wended our way to the hotel, there to experience a new mode of life, wherein the café is united to the lodging-place, where the garçon plays the part of the English John, and the fat fellow with a white sugar-loaf cap, presides over cutlets and omelettes, the very Zeus of Olympian cookery. You know French cookery is as world-famous as Yankee notions. Did you ever hear it accountde for? You did not? Here it is, from Savarin himself. "When the Britons, Germans, Cimmerians, and Scythians broke into France, they brought with them a large voracity, and stomachs of no ordinary calibre. Hence Paris became an immense refectory." Is not that a perfect sequitur? At any rate, we blessed those hungry heathen, and felt one more of the glories of the French capital, with an intensity, quickened by exercise and seasoned by novelty.

Every body has heard of a French diligence. To my ima

It

gination, it always had a piratical cast of countenance. swelled up in my fancy as a huge, lumbering, lazy, wallowing, unwieldy, rickety vehicle, requiring as many guards as passengers. Either this impression was erroneous, or else vehicles have improved rapidly in France. Look at that huge mass in three parts, with a loading that would do honor to a regiment of donkeys, or a patient road-wagon in Pennsylvania. It does at first sight look gloomy enough, yet in every thing it seems comfortable. Start off; and away we rattle, amid the hallooing of boys, the gaze of women, with the crack of the whip, (how the French do eternally snap their whips!) and the merry blast of the horn.

Dr. Johnson thought that one of the greatest exhilarations of life, was a start of a pleasant morning upon an English coach. He might have enlarged the remark so as to comprehend his French neighbors. Rattle-rattle-amidst the narrow lanes of the merry Parisians-down one rue, up another, past this column, near that image-and at last we find the open air and a splendid railway station. Soon our diligence is hoisted upon the cars-an odd-looking genius of steam; and without change, we are dashing by gardens with stone circular wells, surrounded by flowers, and little tracts of land cut up into smaller ones, all smiling with cultivation.

Let me remark that the land here is owned or leased in little tractlets; which are subdivided into as many plots as will raise wheat, barley, rye, oats, grass, and vetches (a red flowering grass for horses, similar to our clover). They also sow tares, to cut them up while green, for cattle. Their stock is all confined, so that even fences are dispensed with. Prominent among the divisions of the tractlets are the twisted grape vines, trimmed closely, and just now tufted with verdure. The hills are staked plentifully for their aid. Flax, mustard, and turnips, some of them in flower, are also distributed. The price of ordinary peasant labor, as I learned from our conductor, is only about one franc at best (19 cents) per day; and when the laborers