The Parisians are distinguished by their loquacity. Having occasion to employ a hair-cutter, I was quite stunned by his volubility of tongue. King Archelaus would find it difficult to be suited here; for being asked how he would have his hair cut, he answered—"silently."
After many ineffectual attempts, I at last succeeded in satisfying my curiosity by seeing the assembly of the Legislative Body. The building is one of the greatest ornaments of which Paris can boast; it was chiefly the work of Buonaparte, who was satisfied to lodge these gentlemen in a palace, provided they did not interfere in the government of their country. I was not gratified in proportion to the trouble I had in getting into the hall, by the short and uninteresting debate which ensued. This House was occupied during the greatest part of my stay in Paris in discussing the forms proper to be observed when the king meets the peers and commons.
The deputies object, that the king should himself desire the peers to be seated, and that they should only receive that permission through the medium of the chancellor: how the point has been decided, I have not been since informed.
The weather was intensely hot during part of my stay at Paris, the quicksilver being occasionally at 26° Réaumur, equal to 90° of Fahrenheit's scale, and the sky without a cloud, there not being, in general, such a cloud of smoke over Paris as generally obscures the atmosphere of London. Yet, I believe, the best accounts allow that London is to the full as healthy a city as Paris, and if cleanliness is conducive to health the point can admit of little doubt. During part of this oppressive weather, I used generally to resort, about mid-day, to the gallery of the Louvre, being anxious to take every opportunity of contemplating its superb collection of the works of art. There, notwithstanding the number of visitors, the marble floors and ventilators rendered the air much more cool than it was out of doors. I generally set out on my rambles through the city at as early an hour as custom would permit, and in the evening, often joined the pedestrians in the gardens of the Tuilleries, which were always thronged with company of all descriptions. There are a vast number of chairs under the trees, and their proprietors demand one or two sous for the right of sitting in them. I have been assured that this inconsiderable charge procures a total by no means contemptible.
I sometimes extended my walk into the Champs Elysées, which extend a long way beyond the Place de Louis XV. Its avenues are lighted like the streets of Paris, by lanthorns, suspended across them by ropes and pulleys, which give a stronger light than our lamps, but do not seem equally secure. At the end of the centre avenue, which runs in a straight line from the grand entrance to the Tuilleries, Buonaparte had lately begun a triumphal arch to commemorate the victories of his armies; and still further, exactly opposite the bridge of Jena, he caused a vast number of houses to be destroyed, to make way for a projected palace for the King of Rome. The foundations only of this edifice had been laid before the overthrow of Buonaparte, and this large plot of ground now presents a scene of waste and desolation.
The present government, which will not prosecute so expensive and useless an undertaking, will still have to make compensation to the owners of the buildings of which only the ruins remain.
The quarter of St. Antoine is celebrated in the annals of the Revolution; and, indeed, there are but few parts of Paris, which do not recall to one's mind some of those scenes so disgraceful to humanity of which it was the great theatre. The Place Royale in this district is only remarkable, for having been built by Henry IV.: it forms a square with a small garden in the centre, but has long ceased to be a fashionable residence. In Paris there are no squares similar in plan to those in London, but occasionally one sees places formed by the junction of streets, &c. The town-house is a large, and as I think, a tasteless Gothic edifice; and in the Place de Grève stood that guillotine which deprived such incredible multitudes of their lives. At one period of the Revolution every successful faction in turn, endeavoured, as it should seem, to exterminate its enemies, when it succeeded in possessing itself of the supreme power, which then chiefly consisted in the command of this formidable instrument; and these successive tyrants, like Sylla, were often in doubt whom they should permit still to remain alive.
I do not know that the invention of the guillotine, is to be ascribed to the ingenuity of the French, but they will for ever remain obnoxious to the charge of the most dreadful abuse of it. I have heard it stated that, so late as the reigns of Elizabeth, and James the First, an instrument similar to the guillotine, was used for the execution of offenders in the vicinity of Hardwicke Forest, in Yorkshire.