altogether by surprise: such stately edifices, prolonging themselves in
unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, ever and anon, a long vista of a
street, with a column rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch,
wrought in memory of some grand event. The light stone or stucco, wholly
untarnished by smoke and soot, puts London to the blush, if a blush could
be seen on its dingy face; but, indeed, London is not to be mentioned,
nor compared even, with Paris. I never knew what a palace was till I had
a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuileries; never had my idea of a city
been gratified till I trod these stately streets. The life of the scene,
too, is infinitely more picturesque than that of London, with its
monstrous throng of grave faces and black coats; whereas, here, you see
soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats, Zonaves with turbans,
long mantles, and bronzed, half-Moorish faces; and a great many people
whom you perceive to be outside of your experience, and know them ugly to
look at, and fancy them villanous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards
the French people; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances melt
and mingle with mine. But they do grand and beautiful things in the
architectural way; and I am grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is
a most splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect trophies in of
all its triumphs; and on one side of it is the Tuileries, on the opposite
side the Champs Elysees, and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw
large cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. The Champs
Elysees, so far as I saw it, had not a grassy soil beneath its trees, but
the bare earth, white and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else,
would assure me that I was out of England.

We had time only to take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk;
and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I
think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but
very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg,--