a mile in length!

During the heat of the late finance discussion, all sorts of unpleasant
things were said of America, for the money-power acts here as it does
everywhere else, proving too strong even for French _bon ton_, and,
failing of facts and logic, some of the government writers had recourse
to the old weapon of the trader, abuse and vituperation. Among other
bold assertions, one of them affirmed, with a view to disparage the
vaunted enterprise of the Americans, that while they attempted so much
in the way of public works, nothing was ever finished. He cited the
Capitol, a building commenced in 1800, and which had been once destroyed
by fire in the interval, as an example.

As one of the controversionalists, on this occasion, I certainly had no
disposition to debase my mind, or to descend from the level of a
gentleman who was compelled to bow before no political master, in order
to retort in kind; but as is apt to be the case under provocations of
this sort, the charge induced me to look about, in order to see what
advantages the subjects of a monarchy possess over us in this
particular. The result has made several of my French friends laugh, and
acknowledge that they who "live in glass houses should not throw
stones."

The new palace of the Louvre was erected more than two centuries since.
It is a magnificent pile, surrounding a court of more than a quarter of
a mile in circumference, possessing many good statues, fine bas-reliefs,
and a noble colonnade. In some respects, it is one of the finest palaces
in Europe. The interior is, however, unfinished, though in the course of
slow embellishment. Now a principal and very conspicuous window, in the
pavilion that caps the entrance to the Carrousel, is unglazed, the
weather being actually excluded by the use of _coarse unplaned boards_,
precisely in the manner in which one is apt to see a shingle palace
embellished at home. One hundred francs would conceal this deformity.

The palace of the Tuileries was built by Catherine di Medici, who was
dead before the present United States were first peopled. It is a
lantern-like, tasteless edifice, composed of different pavilions,
connected by _corps de batimens_ of different sizes, but of pretty
uniform ugliness. The stone of this vicinity is so easily wrought, that
it is usual to set it up, in blocks, and to work out the capitals and
other ornaments in the wall. On a principal portion of this palace,
_these unwrought bl