es; some but of one story; some
as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is
their favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give
a strange air of rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little
crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
the chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait. Gay wine-shops, painted
red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are filled
with workmen taking their morning's draught. That gloomy-looking
prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for
Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now
occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread
of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of
all the other prisoners; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes,
and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure
they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature
to superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago,
and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.

There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it commemorates
some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with
fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then,
round the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect
of triumphal arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of
trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and
the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and
the great vehicle clatters into the court-yard, where the journey is
destined to conclude.

If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked horns,
it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are
in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of Diligences.
Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs,
like your English vehicle