ceived the plan of joining the Tuileries to the Louvre, enclosing within a square of palaces the Place du Carrousel, with its exquisite triumphal arch, but the completion of this magnificent design, commenced by the First Emperor, has been reserved to grace the opening years of the reign of his nephew. Of the four triumphal arches, which decorate Paris, two were erected in honour of Louis the Fourteenth, and you may see him on that of the Porte St. Martin in the character of Hercules. In the statues of that heathen deity, we see him invariably represented with very short, close-curled hair, and, no doubt, the classic tradition would have proved a serious difficulty to the court-sculptor, if the history of Samson had not come to his aid, and enabled him to "convert" Hercules. The artist has happily blended the costume of Olympus and of Versailles, and thus we behold Louis the Fourteenth with a club, and Herculus with a peruke. Should they have encountered in this guise in the Elysian Fields, (not to be confounded with the Champs Elysées) which of them must have been the more electrified, is a question which I leave to the savants, pagan and pious. Then, there is the superb triumphal arch of the Barrière de l'Etoile, with its towering solidity, and colossal sculpture. But its soaring pride wants the delicate grace of the Arc du Carrousel, the prettiest toy in stone in all Paris. It is surrounded by a Victory borne in a chariot drawn by four horses, modelled in bronze after the celebrated steeds of St. Mark, which occupied their place in the time of Napoleon, but were subsequently restored to Venice by the allies. These last have a strange history. At the commencement of the fourth crusade, when "blind old Dandolo" was Doge, there was held one day on the Place of St. Mark an assembly of the Venetian citizens, in the middle of whom suddenly appeared six French Knights, in their coats of mail, with the red cross burning on their breasts. "Princes of Venice," said one of their number, "behold us here in the name of the most puissant nobles of France, to supplicate you that you may consider Jerusalem how it is in the power of the Turk, and its holy places profaned by the feet of the Infidel. You are Lords of the Ocean; aid us, then, we pray you, that the chivalry of France may pass the seas in your ships to the shores beyond, that lead to the Holy Land." A thousand cries answered, "St. Mark for Venice! We will aid. Dieu le veut!" A fleet was equipped, and was ready to sail, when a new incident fired the zeal of the Venetians. This was the arrival of Alexis, a young prince of the Greek Imperial family, who came to

demand assistance in behalf of his father, the Emperor Isaac, who had been dethroned by his brother. The youth of Alexis (he was but twelve years of age) his graceful manners, and the wrongs of his family, still more, the promises of recompence he proffered in return for the services he sought for the race of the Comneni, urged the Crusaders to redouble their efforts. Old Dandolo took the command of the Venetian fleet, which speedily set sail from Venice, and cast anchor, after some months, on the waters of the Propontis. The victory of the Crusaders was complete, and Isaac, the father of the young Alexis, was restored to his throne, but his first act was to revoke the promises made in his name by his son. A new revolution followed in the city of revolutions, and another blood-stained usurper mounted a throne accustomed to usurpation. Young Alexis was put to death, and to avenge his murder, and the slaughter of many of the Crusaders by the Greek population, the French and Venetians stormed Constantinople, and the unfortunate city became speedily the scene of the most frightful excesses. The conquerors divided the booty, and the Venetians possessed themselves of the celebrated bronze horses, which adorned the Place in front of St Sophia. Once before had these same steeds witnessed the sack and utter ruin of a Greek city. It was in the second century before Christ, when Mummius, the General of the Roman Republic, took Corinth, the crown of two seas. They rested at Rome, till the troubles of the Western Empire caused the seat of Government to be transferred to the city of Constantine, and they shared the emigration of Roman power to the shores of the Bosphorus. Long were they stabled at Venice, but the Christian Corinth fell in its turn, though Napoleon was more humane than Mummius or Dandolo. Then were the horses of St. Mark "bridled," as Byron tells us, and harnessed to the triumphal car of a greater conqueror than any whose hand they had hitherto obeyed. And Paris fell, like Corinth, like Constantinople, like Venice, but unlike these, retrieved her ancient supremacy. But the steeds of St. Mark escaped her mastery, and led by Austrian hands, retraced their steps to their Venetian resting-place, leaving others of a native breed to compensate in some degree their absence.

The Place du Carrousel owes its name to a fête given on its site by Louis the Fourteenth, which was diversified with ancient and modern amusements, tournaments, ballets, races, &c. A building of timber, painted and upholstered with more of expense than of taste, half

theatre and half "stand-house," had been erected on occasion of this festivity, and terribly stirred the bile of a French poet of the time, who was more earnest in his wrath than felicitous in his satire. His doggrel is after this fashion:

"Wooden cirque, with windows five,

Big, be-gilt, be-blued beehive,

Amphitheatre of deal,

Boast the joiner's clumsy zeal,

Palace nailed and hammered up,

Where Kings and clowns together sup,

Hippodrome of Pantagr'el;

Pretty place this Carrousel,

Shaped just like an oyster-shell !”

The Tuileries passed from Napoleon to Louis the Eighteenth, and Charles the Tenth. And the palace knew a new master, who seated himself wisely on "the throne surrounded by republican institutions.” And this too shall be shattered. The old man has been subtle, but not wise. His energies, enfeebled by age and even by power, are not equal to the crisis he has provoked. For eighteen long years, or nearly, he has been King of the Barricades, and by that same ladder whereby he mounted, shall he descend.

It is the "10th of August once more, and again the Tuileries witness the fall of a King. Louis Philippe totters through the garden of the Tuileries, and reaches the Place de la Concorde. There he finds a hackney-coach, and in this humble equipage the discrowned son of Philippe-Egalité, commences his flight, with, for starting-point, the very spot, where, fifty-five years before, the first republic began its course on the scaffold of Louis the Sixteenth. The time is, surely, not one for reflection, in the easy-chair sense of the word. Yet, is there an immense power of abstraction in the human mind. Years may be compressed into an instant. The heart of man is a world within itself. What wonder then if, on such a spot, and in such a time, there is room in this old man's memory for de Genlis, and his artificial, over-instructed boyhood; Dumouriez and his perilous manhood; Switzerland and his tutor-days; America, Italy, England, for he has seen men under every sun, and under every institution? But experience is not always wisdom, nor necessity resource, nor old age dignity. These days past, the artillery has resounded in Paris. But its feeble peal was not such as Valmy's

famous cannonade boomed forth into the ears of Europe. Time and man are changed. Where to-day is Dumouriez? Where the gallant young Duke de Chartres? Back in the last century—both dead long ago. To-day we only see unbudging Bugeaud, and a citizen," no longer "King," soon to be "citizen " no more, but exile, simply.

In 1848 a decree of the Provincial Government converted the Palace into an hospital for the wounded of February, and destined it thenceforth to assume the title, and subserve the uses, of an improvised Hôtel des Invalides Civils. This was a ruse which was intended, and had for effect, to save the Tuileries from the popular fury, which threatened to set it on fire, and lay it in ashes, “from turret to foundation-stone." A subsequent decree ordained the completion of the Louvre, and the continuation of the Rue de Rivoli. Whilst the necessary alterations were in progress, the remains of the Palais Bourbon were discovered by the workmen in digging the foundations for the new buildings destined to unite the Tuileries and the Louvre. It was built by the Constable Charles de Bourbon, but was demolished early in the 16th century, with the exception of a chapel, and of a vast gallery which served as a theatre for the fêtes of the court. In 1577 a company of Venetian actors performed in this theatre, and the price of admission to their entertainments was something more modest than that which opens the doors of the opera, in our days, to the admirers of the musical drama. It amounted-if the dignity of the word be not considered out of place to the sum of four sous, (two pence.) In 1658, this theatre was granted to Molière, and l'Etourdi and the Depit Amoureux were presented," amidst the plaudits of Louis the Fourteenth and his court. In his reign its demolition was effected to make room for the colonnade of the Louvre, of which the Grand Monarque laid the first stone in 1665. Nearly two hundred years from this date, in July 1852, Prince Louis Napoleon, then President, laid the first stone for the new works undertaken for the completion of the Louvre, and its junction with the Tuileries, which have since been effected with wonderful energy and rapidity. The Garden of the Tuileries was separated from the Palace, before the time of Louis the Fourteenth by a street called the Rue des Tuileries. The Garden then enclosed an aviary, a menagerie, of which we have made previous mention, an orangery, and an enclosed Warren. It was surrounded by a strong wall, and a deep ditch, like a fortified place. In the year 1655, Le Nôtre, the French Paxton

of the 17th century, was charged with the execution of a new plan for the garden of the Tuileries, and it was he who constructed the two terraces which still exist, that which adjoin the Quay, and that of the Feuillants. Of this date is the splendid avenue, which leads from the Palace to the now Place de la Concorde, and which gives an interesting view of the triumphal Arc de l'Etoile, distant very nearly two English miles from the Tuileries. I need hardly observe that the triumphal arch did not exist in the time of Le Notre, whose master little dreamed that the hill which bounded, then, as now, the western horizen visible from the windows of his palace, should in after ages be crowned by a monument erected by the hands of another dynasty than his. The history of France is comprised in that same avenue. At the Tuileries, the ancient race of Kings, who ignored their true origin in the dream of Divine Right, and on the summit of the Arc de l'Etoile the new dynasty, raised up like the old, on the bucklers of the Franks, but which has not yet forgotten how, and by whom, the imperial dignity has been conferred-at the Tuileries, the dictum, l'etat c'est moi, at the Barrière de l'Etoile, the Appel au Peuple there the old society, at that height of prosperity, and fulness of developement, whose culminating glory casts over the 18th century a shadow ominous of retrogression-here, the modern society, renewing itself amidst ruin and danger, but with youth for its title and the future for its heritage-on the palace front of the Tuileries, the royal creed, now visible only to the eyes of history, par la grăce de Dieu, Roi de France, and high in air, above the western horizon opposite the unsculptured, but not the less, existing, and legible inscription, par la grâce de Dieu, et la volonté nationale, Empereur des Français. Truly, the grande allée of the Tuileries, and the avenue of the Champs Elysées, are not to be measured by yards, and metres only. Two miles long, did you say? We reckon them still-moretwo centuries, from end to end.

The Gardens of the Tuileries are adorned with a profusion of statues, all of them of the highest merit as works of sculpture, but almost all offensive to christian taste. The cant of art has been suffered to triumph over the propriety of decent manners. Strange inconsistency—a rigorous exactness of speech is required in an age which tolerates the public exhibition of indecent statues. The subject can only be hinted at, not debated. Your island modesty must turn away its eyes sometimes in the Gardens of the Tuileries. Allons.