of his enterprise and perseverance.

To my whimsically formed taste, OLD PARIS has in it very much to delight,
and afford valuable information. Not that I would decry the absolute
splendor, gaiety, comfort, and interminable variety, which prevail in its
more modern and fashionable quarters. And certainly one may fairly say,
that, on either side the Seine, Paris is a city in which an Englishman,--
who is resolved to be in good humour with all about him, and to shew that
civility to others which he is sure to receive from the better educated
classes of society here--cannot fail to find himself pleased, perfectly at
ease, and well contented with his fare. Compared with the older part of
London, the more ancient division of Paris is infinitely more interesting,
and of a finer architectural construction. The conical roofs every now and
then remind you of the times of Francis I.; and the clustered arabesques,
upon pilasters, or running between the bolder projections of the façades,
confirm you in the chronology of the buildings. But time, caprice, fashion,
or poverty, will, in less than half a century, materially change both the
substance and surfaces of things. It is here, as at Rouen--you bewail the
work of destruction which has oftentimes converted cloisters into
workshops, and consecrated edifices into warehouses of every description.
Human nature and the fate of human works are every where the same. Let two
more centuries revolve, and the THUILERIES and the LOUVRE may possibly be
as the BASTILLE and the TEMPLE.

Such, to my feelings, is Paris--considered only with reference to its
_local_: for I have really done little more than perambulate its streets,
and survey its house-tops--with the important exceptions to be detailed in
the succeeding letters from hence. Of the treasures contained _beneath_
some of those "housetops"--more especially of such as are found in the
shape of a BOOK--whether as a MS. or a Printed Volume--prepare to receive