as estimated at
two millions, seven hundred and sixty thousand livres; five abbeys or
priories, estimated at six hundred and twelve thousand livres;
seventy-four convents of nuns, containing two thousand, two hundred and
ninety-two women, their income two millions and twenty-eight thousand
livres. When to these we add the revenue of the archbishoprick, and of
the fifteen collegiate churches, of one million, six thousand and five
hundred livres, we shall have a total of upwards of seven millions of
livres for the former ecclesiastical revenue in Paris only.[18]

[Note 18: Almost L300,000 sterling, about a tenth part of the Church
income of the whole kingdom. The establishment for the Royal Family, or
Civil List, is said to have been forty millions of livres. Thus the
Religion and the Monarch cost one hundred and ten millions of livres
annually (about five millions sterling) the greater part of which sum is
now appropriated to other uses. The convents are converted, or
perverted, into secular useful buildings, and their inhabitants have
been suffered to spend the remainder of their lives in their former
idleness, or to marry and mix with society. Annuities have been granted
to them from thirty-five to sixty louis per annum, according to their
age.]

There are about six hundred coffee-houses in Paris.

In the saloon of the _Louvre_ every other year is an exhibition of
pictures, in the months of August and September.

The Pont-neuf is one hundred toises in length and twelve in breadth.[19]

[Note 19: 1020 feet by 72. Westminster-bridge is 1220 feet long, but
only 44 feet wide.]

The cupola of the _Halle au Bled_, or corn and flour market, is one
hundred and twenty feet in diameter; it forms a perfect half circle,
whose centre is on a level with the cornice, forty feet from the ground.
The vault or dome is composed merely of deal boards, four feet long, one
foot broad and an inch thick.[20]

[Note 20: The inner diameter of the dome of St. Peter's, at Rome,
138 feet, which is the same size as that of the pantheon in Rome. St.
Paul's in London 108. The Invalids in Paris 50.]

Describing the church of _St. John of the Minstrels_, so called, because
it was founded by a couple of fidlers, in 1330. _M. du Laure_ says,
"Among the figures of saints with which the great door is decorated, one
is distinguished who would play very well on the fiddle, if his
fiddle-stick were not broken."

There is a parcel-post as well as a