rior, and, accordingly, proceeding onwards, I have seldom enjoyed a more agreeable contrast than when, on coming into the space in front of the great prison from which I had just been released, I beheld close before me the Embarcadère or terminus of the Lyons Railway, the emblem of liberty and locomotion.

PÈRE LA CHAISE.

As on the morning previous to the review I had received from my oculist his last prescription, I was exceedingly anxious to take it and my eyes to Old England. On reflection, however, I felt there remained half a day's work for each of them to perform. On the Place de la Bastille I therefore stopped a fiacre that was hobbling by, and, having taken my seat, and by means of the handle inside having very carefully fastened the door, I told the coachman's large face, which on looking upwards I found close to my own, where it was to go; and, accordingly, out of the innumerable streets which in all directions radiate from the place from which we were about to start, he selected that which, without turning to the right or left, ran straight to the scene I was desirous to visit,the cemetery of Père la Chaise.

I had taken so much interest in the various objects I had hitherto visited, that almost habitually as I approached them I had experienced,

by anticipation, a portion of the pleasure the realization of my curiosity subsequently afforded me. In the present instance, however, every time the poor horse nodded his jaded head, every time the driver whipped his neck, and every time the carriage jolted over the commonest description of loose stones, I felt that somehow or other I was a loser by the ope.. ration; that something pleasurable had been shaken out of me; in fact, that as I approached the mansions of the dead I was infinitesimally becoming less and less cheerful; and what in my sinking condition appeared to me to be anything but consoling was that the Rue de la Roquette at every step of the horse was evidently also becoming more and more gloomy.

The gaiety of Paris appeared not only to be fading away, but to be rapidly dying. At first the houses merely grew poorer-looking and a little smaller then came a dead wall, then an open shop full of tombstones, then a few houses, then a rather longer dead wall, then a good many houses, then a shop full of bright round wreaths of yellow immortelles, then a couple of houses, then a shop full of nothing but jet black wreaths and white ones, then one teeming with yellow ones at last, after passing another dead wall we came to a climax of woe, made up of

shops full, one after another, of monuments, images, statues, and crosses, of all shapes, sizes, and prices.

After gradually ascending for nearly half a mile along the paved gloomy valley of the shadow of death above described, the calèche, after having passed the Barrière d'Aunay, stopped at the lofty iron entrance gates of the cemetery of Père la Chaise, and as soon as I had dismissed my driver I found myself in the centre of a scene which really quite amazed me.

Between the railings of the iron gate, and towering above the dead wall that surrounds the cemetery, I caught a glimpse of a confused variety of the monuments, obelisks, crosses, &c., I had expressly come to visit. But what arrested, and indeed for some minutes entirely engrossed my attention, was a crowd of women seated for a considerable length on each side of the wall, close to different-coloured umbrellas protecting from the sun large piles of bright yellow, snow-white, and rusty black round " forget-menot" immortelles of various sizes, and yet, not satisfied with such a stock, these women were busily occupied in making sepulchral wreaths faster than one would conceive it could be possible to sell them. Besides which there were tastily arranged and suspended upon the dead

wall garlands and crosses of everlasting flowers of all colours--blue, yellow, green, orange, with spotted blue and white. In whatever direction I walked, sometimes before me, sometimes behind me, sometimes on each side, and sometimes from all sides at once, cheerful-looking women in different voices were earnestly advising me to buy either a sepulchral wreath, cross, or garland. The only sister of the lot that did not address me was a very ugly one with an olive-coloured face, black hair, brown comb, and no cap, employed in eating with a stick, out of a dark-coloured earthen pot, grass-green spinach.

On passing through the iron gates, between two lodges, on one of which I observed inscribed in large letters—

“ RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE,"

and on the other

"LIBERTÉ, FRATERNITÉ, EGALITÉ,”—

my eyes and mind were completely bewildered by the sudden appearance of a forest of monuments, which looked as if the tenants of the innumerable graves before me had, one and all, in the various attitudes of their respective tombs, arisen to declare that even in the republic below