The Gardens are on a scale of magnificence corresponding with the palace, but laid out with the usual formality. There are innumerable fountains, woods, lawns, parterres, canals, temples, grottoes, and all that art, in concert with nature, could devise, to render them worthy the monarch of a mighty empire. The playing of the fountains is a great object of curiosity at Versailles, and it costs a prodigious sum to set them in motion. We might have witnessed it had we chosen to violate the sabbath for the gratification of our curiosity. Wearied with so much magnificence, and disgusted with the character of its author,*

!

• It seems that the haughty Louis was somewhat dissatisfied with it himself before his death, for he is said to have exhorted his successor to the following effect: "I have been too fond of war, do not imitate me in that, or in being too expensive. Take advice on all occasions, and endeavour to discover the best that you may follow it. Relieve your people as soon as you can, and do that which, unfortunately, I could not do." He also enjoined upon him not to be forgetful of his duty to God. Such advice from the lips of such a man, and at such an hour, is affecting and powerful. None, since the days of Solomon, had lived in greater splendour, or pursued more eagerly the gratification of his passions; yet, to the king of France, as well as to the king of Israel, it was all "vanity and vexation of spirit." What different views have we of the scenes and occupations of life, on a dying bed, to those which lured and fascinated us in the gay and giddy vortex of dissipation and of pleasure. Let, then, the dying speak, while the living listen to their voice-Let the gay and the dissipated hear their testimony, and give it all its weight, for even one of their own poets saith,

-that tongues of dying men enforce attention Like deep harmony——

For they speak truth who speak their words in pain."

whose vanity is marked by every object that meets the eye, and whose baser passions are indicated by not a few, we returned to Paris. Our coachman took us home by another route, chiefly along the banks of the Seine, which afforded us, as we approached the capital, a fine view of the bridge, erected by Buonaparte to commemorate the victory of Jena, and also the foundations of the palace which he had began to build for the infant King of Rome.

I must not omit to mention how much we were all delighted with the mistress of the hotel where we refreshed ourselves at Versailles, and where I was compelled to repose for awhile. There was a kindness, and frankness, and artless simplicity about her which exceedingly interested us. She was free, affable, and easy, without being frivolous, cringing, or obtrusive; and her anxiety to please, seemed to spring more from the amiableness of her disposition, than from interest or politeness. Nor shall I easily forget the feeling of sympathy with which she regarded my indisposition, and prepared a sofa for my repose. She was the first human being, except our own party, upon whom I have looked with emotions of confidence and pleasure, since my leaving England; and there was about her an air of maternal tenderness and unaffected sincerity, which seemed to warrant that confidence, and could not fail to touch me, under circumstances of indisposition, and in a land of strangers. Your's, &c.

LETTER XIV.

Paris.

MY DEAR

WE have been over the Thuileries. I was much struck with the magnificence of the interior. Although there is not the exquisite taste of St. Cloud, nor the massive grandeur of Versailles, yet the apartments are sufficiently splendid in their furniture and decorations, to render them worthy the residence of a monarch. To enter into a description of the exterior of the palace, would be a waste of time. You have heard or read, again and again, that it is a long range of buildings, erected at different periods, and exhibiting various orders of architecture, differing in height and ornament, connected together and terminated by elegant pavilions. If the laws of symmetry and proportion are violated by this curious architectural mixture, it must be confessed that there is an air of romantic beauty pervading the whole, and that the appearance of the pavilions, and those portions of the palace which are occasionally seen above the foliage or through the avenues of the gardens, is

extremely gay and fascinating. Of this palace, where every thing seems to have risen as by enchantment, to flatter the vanity, and administer to the luxuries of its inmates, Madame Bertrand was once the mistress: all that it contained was at her command. I was much affected, as we were surveying its magnificence, with an anecdote of her, which was related by Sir S. When he was at Longwood, Madame Bertrand exceedingly interested him by the amiableness of her manners. He was touched by a survey of the miserable hovel to which she was there confined-and still more, as, looking round the wretched apartment, she shrugged up her shoulders and said, "Ah! Monsieur, voici les Thuileries!" What instructive lessons do these palaces read to those who visit their beautiful galleries and magnificent saloons, if they are but disposed to consider them aright-and none more impressive than the Thuileries. What a horrid tragedy was acted within these walls on the night of the memorable tenth of August: when the wretched king and queen were compelled to leave the palace of their ancestors, miserable fugitives in their own capital, and seek a shelter from the brutal fury of the populace in the hall of the National Assemblywhat a refuge!-only to meet there with indignities less supportable than death--while the hours of darkness that succeeded were occupied in deeds of slaughter, and the morning dawned upon the mangled bodies of the slain lying exposed in the

halls, and on the staircases, and about the avenues of the Chateau. The more sober politicians of those times hailed the approach of revolution, as a kind and generous being who would give them liberty and peace. They little thought that they were letting loose a many-headed monster, whose music was dying groans, whose element was blood, and who would lead them over the bodies of their murdered citizens, to the vassalage of a still fiercer despotism. Like the incendiary, who desires to destroy only the property of his enemy, they saw the conflagration spread far wider than they contemplated, and bidding defiance to every effort to extinguish it, involve friend, and brother, and neighbour, all in one horrible and promiscuous ruin! Then, indeed, like our first parents, their eyes were open, but it was only to gaze on misery and wretchedness. Then they discovered that the people were not ripe for the boon they would have imparted: but, dazzled with the light that dawned too rapidly upon them, the promised liberty was soon converted into madness-anu freedom, to use the language of an elegant writer, perished like a garland in the grasp of popular fury."

But I have wandered from the Thuileries-and no wonder its history, for the last few years, exhibits such strange vicissitudes, that the mind must wander, that reflects at all, as it meditates upon