his greatness, and the lowest of their comparative littleness.

After being astonished at such a display of gorgeous magnificence, I approached, with increased delight, the enchanting little palace and grounds of the late queen, distant from Versailles about two miles, called the Petit Trianon, to which she very justly gave the appellation of her little Palace of Taste." Here, fatigued with the splendours of royalty, she threw aside all its appearances, and gave herself up to the elegant pleasures of rural life. It is a princely establishment in miniature. It consists of a small palace, a chapel, an opera house, out-offices and stables, a little park, and pleasure grounds; the latter of which are still charming, although the fascinating eye and tasteful hand of their lovely but too volatile mistress, no longer pervade, cherish and direct their growth and beauty. By that reverse of fortune which the Revolution has familiarised, the Petit Trianon is let out by the government to a restaurateur. All the rooms but one in this house were pre-occupied on the day of our visit, in consequence of which we were obliged to dine in the former little bed-room of the queen, where, like the Idalian goddess, she used to sleep in a suspended basket of roses. The apertures occasioned by the hooks formerly rivetted in the ceiling and wainscot, to which the elegant furniture of this little chamber of repose had once adhered, are still visible.

After dinner, we hastened through our coffee, and proceeded to the gardens. After winding through gravelled walks, embowered by the most exquisite and costly shrubs, we entered the elegant temple of Cupid, from which the little favourite of mankind had been, if he could have felt, unwillingly and rudely expelled, as appeared by the fragments of his pedestal.

From this temple we passed through the most romantic avenues, to a range of rural buildings, called

the queen's farm, the dairy, the mill, and the woodmen's cottages; which, during the queen's residence at the Petit Trianon, were occupied by the most elegant and accomplished young noblemen of the court. In front of them, a lake, terminated on one side by a rustic tower, spreads itself. These buildings are much neglected, and are falling into rapid

ruin.

Whilst we were roving about, we were obliged to take refuge from a thunder storm, in what appeared to us a mere baru; upon our entering it, we found it to be an elegant little ball-room, much disfigured, and greened over by damp and neglect. In other parts of this petit Paradis, are caves of artificial rock, which have been formed at an immense expense, in which were formerly beds of moss, and through which clear streams of water glided, Belvidere temples, and scattered cottages, each differing from its neighbour in character, but all according in taste and beauty. The opera house, which stands alone, is a miniature of the splendid one in the palace of Versailles.

The sylvan ball-room is an oblong square, lined with beautiful treillages, surmounted with vases of flowers: the top is open. When the queen gave her balls here, the ground was covered by a temporary flooring, and the whole was brilliantly lighted. As we passed by the palace, we saw, in the queen's little library, several persons waltzing.

Could the enchanting beauty of Austria, and the once-incensed idol of the gay and the gallant, arise from her untimely tomb, and behold her most sacred recesses of delight thus rudely exposed, and converted into scenes of low and holiday festivity; the temples which she designed, defaced, their statues overthrown, her walks overgrown and entangled, the clear mirror of the winding lake, upon the placid surface of which once shone the reflected form of the Belvidere, and the retreats of elegant taste covered with the

VOL. XXVII.

reedy greenness of the standing pool, and all the fairy fabric of her graceful fancy, thus dissolving in decay; the devoted, hapless Marie would add another sigh to the many which her aching heart has already heaved! * The first consul is said to add to his other extráordinary powers an acute and comprehensive knowledge of finance. Monsieur S― informed me that whenever he waited upon him in his official capacity with the national accounts, he displayed an acquaintance with the most complicated statements, which seemed intuitive.

He exhibits the same talents in philosophy, and in matters which are foreign to those vast objects of public employ which have raised him to his present height of glory, and which in general preclude the subordinate enjoyment of elegant study.

Those acquirements which Providence, in its wisdom, has thinly scattered amongst mankind, and which seldom ripen to full maturity, although cherished by the most propitious advantages, and by the unreposing labours of a long and blissful existence, spread their rich abundance, in the May morning of life, before this extraordinary being, who, in the commencement of that very revolution upon the ruins of which he has stepped to supreme authority, was a beardless stripling.

From the great performers upon the public stage of life, our conversation, one evening, at Madame S's, by a natural transition, embraced a review of the wonderful talents which have at various times adorned the lesser drama of the theatre. Madame S made some judicious remarks upon the French players of distinction, to all of whom she imputed a manner and enunciation which have been imbibed in a school in which Nature has not been permitted to preside. Their tragedy, she said, was inflated with too much pomp, and their elegant comedy suffered by too volatile an airiness. She bestowed upon our immortal Garrick the most decided preference and

superiority to any actor whom she had even seen. The opportunity which she had of judging of his powers, was short and singular, but fully enabled her to form a decisive opinion. When Garrick visited Paris for the last time, she was just married. This celebrated actor had letters of introduction to Monsieur S. At a large party, which Monsieur Sformed for the purpose of doing honour to his distinguished visitor, he exhibited several specimens of his unrivaled talents. Amongst others, he represented in dumb show, by the wonderful powers of his expressive countenance, the feelings of a father, who in looking over a lofty balcony with his only child in his arms, by accident dropped it. The disaster drove the unhappy parent mad. Garrick had visited him in his cell; where the miserable maniac was accustomed, several times in the course of the day, to exhibit all those looks and attitudes which he had displayed at the balcony. On a sudden he would bend himself forward, as if looking from a window into the street, with his arms folded as if they embraced a child, then he would start back, and appear as if he had lost something, search the room round and round, run again forward, as to the railing of a window, look down, and beat his fore head, as if he had beheld his infant bleeding, and breathless upon the pavement. Garrick's imitation was exquisite. The feelings of his beholders were wrought up to horror, and the tears and consternation of a gay fashionable French party, were applauses more flattering to the British Roscius, than the thundering acclamation which, in the crowded theatre, followed the flash of his fiery eye, or the close of his appalling speech.

In the course of one of my morning rambles in Paris, I visited the ruins of the celebrated Bastille,

The cause which induced Garrick to visit this unhappy person was, it is said, to render the of his King Lear more perfect.

representation

of which prison only the the arsenal, some fragments of its massy walls, and two or three dungeons, re main. The volcanic vengeance of the people has swept away this mighty fabric, which the infuriate mind of republican liberty denounced as the frightful den of despotism, upon the approach to which no marks of returning foot-steps were imprinted, whilst, in her mad career, she converted every private dwelling in the metropolis into a revolutionary prison: so much for popular consistency!

In the mutations of time, to what different purposes are the same places applied! Where the consuming martyr expired, the unwieldy prize-hog is exposed to sale; and the modern Parisian derives the sources of warmth and comfort from a place, the very name of which once chilled the circulation of his blood. The site of the Bastille is now a magazine of wood, which supplies the city with fuel.

The overthrow of this dungeon has not rendered state prisons out of fashion in the republic, although it has mitigated the severity of their internal government. The towers of the Temple look down upon the prostrate ruins of the Bastille.

From this memorable spot of ground I went to the observatory. In the rooms, which open upon an artificial terrace, were some astronomical apparatus of great magnitude. A very ingenious frame was then constructing, for elevating or depressing the astronomer and the telescope at the same time, by an easy and simple construction of the machinery. The observatory is a noble building, and contains libraries, ́students' rooms, and apartments for the various arti ficers and mechanists who are occupied in fabricating the apparatus and instruments necessary to the science of astronomy. From the exterior of the dome, there is a fine view of the city, suburbs, and country.

* Smithfield.