After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we deboucher on
the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous
residence of King Louis looks low and mean--Honored pile! Time was when
tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.
Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the
charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a
penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.

We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed
in pictures and marble; catalogs are written about these miles of canvas,
representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to Waterloo--all
the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the mistresses of his successor--and all
the great men who have flourished since the French empire began. Military
heroes are most of these--fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in
voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of
whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and
epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains,
under the guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon.

By far the greater part of "all the glories" of France (as of most other
countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on
the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to
the virtue called courage; filling their history-books with tales about
it, and nothing but it.

Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls
with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family
but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has been humbled to