everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it
were painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and
black sky. Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life
and color. Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening
line of GUTTER,--not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a
picture invaluable. On each side are houses of all dimensions and
hues; some but of one story; some as high as the tower of Babel.
From these the haberdashers (and this is their favorite street)
flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of
rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little crowd of
gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the
chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait. Gay wine-shops,
painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings,
are filled with workmen taking their morning's draught. That
gloomy-looking prison on your right is a prison for women; once it
was a convent for Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of
the softer sex now occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in
the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and
wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners; they make
hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every
Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it.
Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to superintend the
morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor creatures
continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago, and
are at the Porte St. Denis itself.

There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it
commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus
Magnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-
gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over