short-breasted coats, made in the same style as those of the first
Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen,
distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked
military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the
middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent,
in colored gowns and caps; and laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen,
young artists, too, no doubt looking with educated eyes at these
art-treasures, and I think, as a general thing, each man was mated with a
woman. The soldiers, however, came in pairs or little squads,
accompanied by women. I did not much like any of the French faces, and
yet I am not sure that there is not more resemblance between them and the
American physiognomy, than between the latter and the English. The women
are not pretty, but in all ranks above the lowest they have a trained
expression that supplies the place of beauty.

I was wearied to death with the drawings, and began to have that dreary
and desperate feeling which has often come upon me when the sights last
longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our time in Paris,
however, is brief and precious, we next inquired our way to the galleries
of sculpture, and these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I
should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, on the basement
floor. Hall after hall opened interminably before us, and on either side
of us, paved and incrusted with variegated and beautifully polished
marble, relieved against which stand the antique statues and groups,
interspersed with great urns and vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets,
busts of historic personages, and all manner of shapes of marble which
consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. Not that I really
did feel much impressed by any of this sculpture then, nor saw more than
two or three things which I thought very beautiful; but whether it be
good or no, I suppose the world has nothing better, unless it be a few