PARIS.

HAVING reached the BARRIERE DE PASSY, we enter Paris by the banks of the Seine. The view of the city, as will be seen by the opposite engraving, comprehends little more than the towers and domes of the loftier buildings, with the hill of Montmartre behind; yet the general effect-assisted prodigiously, no doubt, by the broad and beautiful river-is grand and imposing. Our own progress through this wilderness of men must be as swift as that of the river itself; and a glance on either bank is all we can bestow upon the wonders of the metropolis, as we breast the current of the Seine.

At present, we feel only a kind of dim consciousness that we have entered Paris; for as yet there are few houses, and nothing at all of the bustle of a great city. Before us, in the distance, are two square towers, which it is impossible not to recognise as those of Notre Dame. On the right hand side of the river appear the domes, no doubt, of the Invalides and the Pantheon, and the towers of Saint Sulpice; and on the left, an immense and massive pile of building, which, if there be any truth in pictorial representations, must be the Tuileries and the Louvre, connected together like the Siamese twins.

On our right hand is the river; on our left, for a considerable distance, a plantation of small trees stuck in the bare earth, which, destitute of a single blade of vegetation, has been trampled as hard as the court-yard of an inn.

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PARIS FROM THE PLACE DE LOUIS XV.

This is the Elysian Fields! In the time of Louis XIV the whole of this space was under cultivation, except the Coursla-Reine, which had already been planted by Marie de Medicis. At the end of these shady, though not very agreeable walks, we find an extensive area, denominated, according to the fancy of individuals, the Place Louis XVLouis XVI-de la Revolution-de la Concorde.

Standing in the middle of this Place, the spectator beholds Paris in its most agreeable and imposing attitude. Looking towards the river, he sees before him the Pont de la Concorde, covered with colossal statues of the great men of France, and leading to the Chambre des Députés. In the opposite direction, where every house seems a palace the view terminates with the beautiful church of the Madeleine. On his right are the gardens of the Tuileries, with the palace at the bottom of their majestic walks; on his left, the ascending line of the Avenue de Neuilly, carried through the Elysian Fields, and terminating in the triumphal arch of l'Etoile. If you fill up the vacuities and background of this picture with the steep roofs, and towers, and domes of the city, your imagination will have achieved a view of Paris only inferior to the original.

On this Place de la Concorde there perished, in the year 1770, three hundred individuals of an immense crowd, attracted thither to witness the rejoicings on the marriage of Louis XVI. Twenty-three years afterwards Louis was still the hero of the scene: he appeared before his still rejoicing people on a stage erected on the same spot, and his head fell under the axe of the guillotine, amidst the plaudits of the spectators. The area about this time was called the Place de la Revolution; and a statue of Louis XV, which had adorned it was overthrown, and replaced by a colossal image of Liberty. When Napoleon fairly