broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred
vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well; I never saw
anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical
figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft
the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see.

The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or
perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men felt
their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory. Being
of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad
to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was
over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part
usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a
gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the
air of a military man....

When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde,
and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French
idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysees may look
pretty in summer; tho I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial
at whatever season.--the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to
be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest
peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant
England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian
Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the
whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, in which Nature has
either not been invited to take any part, or has declined to do so.

There were merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other provision for
children's amusements among the trees; and booths, and tables of cakes,