number of these shops is great, and their stores of curious things incredible.  It appears to me that all France has poured her relics of the old system into the warehouses of the capital.  The plunder of the chateaux and hotels has enriched them to a degree that must be witnessed to be understood, and to me it is matter of surprise that some of our wealthy travellers do not transfer many of these treasures to the other side of the Atlantic.

I usually spend an our or two with M——­, in the gallery of the Louvre, from two to four:  he returns home with me to dinner; and at seven, which, at this season in this latitude, is still broad day, we issue forth for a promenade.  Paris, I have often told you, is a picturesque town, and offers endless sources of satisfaction, beyond its living throngs, its society, its theatres, and its boulevards.  The public displays at the Academy, and its meetings of science, taste, and philanthropy are little to my taste, being too artificial and affected, and I have found most enjoyment in parts of this little world that I believe travellers usually overlook.

The churches of Paris want the odour, the genial and ecclesiastical atmosphere and the devout superstition that rendered those of Italy so strikingly soothing and pleasant; but they are huge piles, and can always be visited with pleasure.  Notre Dame de Paris is a noble monument, and now that the place of the archbishop is destroyed, one is likely to get better views of it, than is apt to be the case with these venerable edifices.  A few evenings since M——­, and myself ascended the towers, and seating ourselves on the leads, looked down, for near an hour, on the extraordinary picture beneath.  The maze of roofs, out-topped, here and there, by black lacquered-looking towers, domes, pavilions of palaces, and, as is the case with the Tuileries and Louvre, literally by a mile of continuous structures; the fissures of streets, resembling gaping crevices in rocks; the river meandering through the centre of all, and spanned by bridges thronged by mites of men and pigmy carriages; the crowds of images of the past; the historical eminences that surround the valley of the capital; the knowledge of its interior; our acquaintance with the past and the present, together with conjectures for the future, contributed to render this a most impressive evening.  The distant landscape was lost, and even quarters of the town itself were getting to be obscure before we descended, helping singularly to increase the effect produced by our speculations on those ages in which Paris had been the scene of so many momentous events.