have witnessed, as we did, the 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 and lancers that ever came off a march, to whose clamours the shrill cries of their half-starved and miserable horses added a wild but appropriate accompaniment. Yet whatever his feelings might have been to witness such pollution, they would have been inferior to those with which his ancestor, the Great Condé, would have heard that the Sarmatian partisans who occupied Chantilly formed part of an invading army, which had marched, almost 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 butts 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'était pas ces gens-là!"-"Ah oui, Monsieur, sans eux nous n'aurions peut-être jamais revu notre bon Duc-Assurément c'est un bon revenant-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 élégante, admirez Chantilly,
De héros en héros, d'âge en åge embelli."

The splendid chateau once corresponded in magnificence 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, etc., 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,

But the French partisans, with tha tlack of all feeling of convenance, or propriety, which has well been described as a principal deficiency in their national character, have endeavoured to make fine things out of the frames themselves, by occupying the room of the superb plates of glass with paltry sheets of blue paper, patched over with gilded fleurs-delis, an expedient The pitiful effect of which may be easily conceived. If I understood my guide rightly, however, this work ought not to be severely criticised, being the free-will offering of the inhabitants of Chantilly, who had struggled, in the best manner their funds and taste would admit, to restore the chateau to something like an habitable condition when it was again to be possessed by its legitimate owner. This is the more likely, as the furniture of the duke's own apartment is plain, simple, and in good taste. He seems popular among the inhabitants, who, the day preceding our arrival, had, under all the unfavourable circumstances of their situation, made a little fete to congratulate him upon his restoration, and to hail the white flag, which now once more floated from the dome of the offices, announcing the second restoration of the Bourbons.

Beside 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 visitors 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 proudest efforts of human magnificence. Let us 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 pic turesque beauty than I had yet remarked in France.

PAUL.

LETTER XII.

PAUL TO HIS SISTER.

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"Pain, in 15/4" in

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-Public Works by Bonaparte-Want of Pavement-Courts before the Houses→→
No Smoke over Paris-The Seine-Church of St Genevieve-Tombs in the Pan-
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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 with either request. There is so much in Paris to admire, and so much to dislike, such a mixture of real taste and genius, with so much frippery and affectation, the sublime is so oddly mingled with the ridiculous, and the pleasing with the fantastic and whimsical, that I shall probably leave the capital of France without being able to determine which train of ideas it has most frequently excited in my mind. One point is, however, certain;-that, of all capitals, that of France affords most numerous objects of curiosity, accessible in the easiest manner; and it may be therefore safely pronounced one of the most entertaining places of residence which can be chosen by an idle man. As for attempting a description of it, that, you know, is far beyond the limits of our compact, which you must

have quite forgotten when you hinted at such a proposal. The following sketch may not, however, be uninteresting.

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 Tuileries, 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, plaated 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 half-finished 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 building was to have been consolidated solely by weight of the massive stones made use of, and neither wood, iron, or lime, was to be employed in its construction; but schemes of ambition. as ill cemented interrupted its progress. A line of buildings extend on either hand, forming a magnificent street, called La Rue Rivoli, which runs parallel with the iron palisade of the garden of the Tuileries.

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 its 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 me. The lights which proceeded from the windows and from the gardens of the large hotel occupied by the Duke of Wellington, at the corner of the Rue des Champs Elysées, and which chanced that evening to be illuminated in honour of a visit from the allied sovereigns, mingled with the twinkle of the camp-fires, and the glimmer of the tents; and the music, which played a variety of English and Scottish 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 the watch. In these sounds there was pride, and victory, and honour, some portion of which descended (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 tem→ per 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 entitled to. From the centre of the place Vendôme, 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. In the front of the Tuileries are placed, on a triumphal arch, the Venetian Horses, the trophies of the subjugation of Italy, and in the neighbouring Louvre are deposited the precious spoils of victories gained and abused in every country of Europe, forming the most resistless evidence, that the hand which placed them there had once at its arbitrary disposal the fortunes of the greater part of the civilized 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 bounded as it was widely extended, Yet the gourd of the prophet,