The Alvan Stewart Papers

Introduction Biographical Sketch The Diary Sample Pages Bibliography

May 16 - June 10, 1831 Across the Atlantic, New York to Liverpool	June 11 - June 18, 1831 Landing in Liverpool; Travel to London	June 19 - June 26, 1831 London	June 27 - June 30, 1831 From London to Paris
July 1 - July 8, 1831 Paris	July 9 - July 14, 1831 Paris	July 15 - July 21, 1831 From Paris to Havre	July 22 - September 1, 1831 Return across the Atlantic, Havre to New York

Paris, July 9 - July 14, 1831

July 9th. Day treads on the heel of day and I never wished time away more than I do in this gay city. This morning I crossed the Seine and called on our minister Mr. Rives who went very much into detail about the 27,000,000 of francs agreed by France to be given by France to our country for Bonaparte's spoliation. Mr. Rives thinks if Charles 10th Polignac administration had continued he would have made this very treaty easier. The duty on Wine has been lowered one half for ten years in the United States by this treaty to buy off the claim which France sets up under the Louisiana purchase of being preferred before all other nations in the commerce of that River; this right on the part of France could not be submitted to although it was stipulated in the Louisiana purchase. We have bought her off by mitigating the duty one half on her wines imported into the United States. She, France, has reduced the duty on our cotton near one half by same treaty. I think the treaty is the best we could get. Mr. Rives says he never should have succeeded but by the indirect threat of redness by violence on the part of our citizens, either by reprizal or war. And he seems to think that a menacing course was worth a thousand appeals to the magnammity of a chivalrous nation, for every compliment we paid France, we were sure to be outgeneralled and receive then in return.

After I left the Minister, I went to my friend Mr. James Fenimore Cooper, and found his family at breakfast. I staid two hours and listened to Mr. Cooper, who has travelled and kept house in London, Paris, Geneva, Bavaria, Florence, Venice and Rome. He has spent five years in Europe by which he has gained much information which will supply him with never-failing sources for book making. For he tells me that each new book he publishes appears and is printed the same day in New York, London, Paris, Vienna and Rome, in the English, French, German and Italian languages.

He showed me some of his manuscripts. He has invited and agreed to take me next Wednesday to Versailles and St. Cloud. Which I consider very kind in Mr. Cooper, as I was coming away I was most affectionately requested to come and spend Monday evening with them. This is the man whom Americans in Paris call haughty, distant, proud, and with whom they cannot get acquainted; his youngest daughter is a little older than Jane, say about three years. She is under the care of her instructress, playing two delightful tunes; I then came away.

I then took a coach and went to the great Parisian Banker's Mr. Hottinger, and staid with him at his banking house about one hour and drew 2,700 francs, he gave me three bank bills of 500 francs each, on the Bank of Paris, which bills are not good out of Paris. I received 520 francs in silver, and 680 francs in gold. This will be all I will want from here home. I then went and paid 750 francs for my passage home and paid 100 francs for Joseph, which money I had before received from Joseph. I then took a coach and crossed the Boulevards and came home, and at 6 P.M. I went to dine at Palais Royal, and then bought a 15 franc fan for Jane. I then shopped for two hours in the Palais Royal, Rue Richelieu, and Boulevards. I examined silks, and clasps, and ear rings from store to store till I was tired. I went and examined the New Exchange, a most splendid building. I then at 8 P.M. went to Larntiers 104 Rue Richelieu, and met about eighty Americans, who assembled for the purpose of raising funds, and for the sacred cause of liberty in Poland, and memoralizing our own country on this matter. Mr. Cooper was called to the chair, Dr. Washington of Georgia was Secretary, and I being chairman of the former committee on this subject was called on to open the meeting which I did in a speech which was repeatedly cheered with the greatest enthusiasm. I then introduced a string of resolutions which were passed; Mr. Cooper read an address for the American people, which was adopted. I subscribed 40 francs to this glorious cause, and thank God that he has enabled me to do it.

I then came down through the Palais Royal and went to my bed between 11 and 12 o'clock.

Sunday July 10th. At 10 A.M. I went to St. Roche church in Rue St. Honore. It is a most splendid ancient church. I staid here about two hours and listened to the Roman Catholic ceremonies in singing Latin Psalms and creeds of one description and another.

It is very grand in the organ department. The singing was solemn. In one part of this immense pile, the priests are baptizing an infant at the font, at another, they are saying a mass and funeral service over a dead body which stands on a bier; at another place the eucharist, or the bread for the Lord's supper is carried on three biers, hanging in silver baskets, each bier is borne by four beautiful boys, all around the church, on the outer course twice; it is then offered by a priest to the communicants, which means every body who will partake, it was offered to me, but I declined. Contributions were demanded of me three times before the sermon begun, the last one is two sous for the chair I sat in, the other two were for the support of the establishment generally. There are twelve marble scenes representing the twelve scenes preceding Christ's death, with the death and burial in the tomb, which is very grand. Where calvary is represented the church is so large, that they have real rocks lying around the foot of the cross, and have a real new tomb cut out of the rock, wherein, the last of the twelve scenes, Christ dead is seen borne down into this new tomb, rocks lying around and they are truly huge rocks, and a real sepulchre. These scenes appeal very strongly to the imagination. But alas, look into this town today, and no man could suppose that Paris was any part of Christendom. There is everything visible except the smallest respect for the Lord's day.

About 2 P.M. old Mr. Barnett, the American Consul, he staid with me ten hours and talked incessantly. He got letters this morning from Dr. Eve of the state of Georgia, who went to Warsaw about one month since to devote his life in favor of Poland and liberty. The letter shown me by Mr. Barnett presented externally a curious fact. The letter had 1000 of holes of the size of a pin which had been pricked through it and had been smoked, and bathed in vinegar, and held with a tongs over a hot fire at the first post office in France, in order to annihilate the seeds of the plague or cholera morbus, supposed to be contaminated with it, coming from Poland and through the ports of Holland and Germany infested therewith.

Such precaution is very proper. The letter was written nine days before from Warsaw. The Dr. cannot find words to express his admiration of the Poles for their devotion, patriotism and gallantry in defence of their country. He says that sickness, misfortune and defection are making such inroads upon the Russians, that they will not continue the War later than fall. He says the Russians have lost by the cholera, disease, generally and killed in battle and prisoners taken from them to the amount of 80,000 men, 16,000 of whom are prisoners to the Poles. The Poles have also taken 30,000 strands of arms, 35 cannons and a number of standards.

The Dr. Eve further says the Poles lost 8,000 men in the battle of Praga of the 25th of March, and 4,000 more in the battle of Ostrolenska of June last. Gen'l. Deibitch died June 10th, some say of cholera, some of poison, and some of apoplexy.

Mr. Barnett gave me a long account of the attempts to remove him after 35 years of service, and a list of American marriages by him consummated and fees received. I saw in the list that about three weeks since Mr. J.J. Roosevelt, alderman, and lawyer of great excellence of New York was married to Miss Van Ness, the daughter of Gov. Van Ness our Minister at Spain. About 5 P.M. Mr. Barnett and I adjourned to the Palais Royal, and at one of the best restaurateur's in Paris eat our dinner and paid each six francs therefor; we then went to a coffee room and took coffee, a few minutes after dining, according to the custom of Paris; at our dinner we had two bottles of wine, one of Sherry and the other of Burgundy. Among my prints is a bill of fare from which we chose our dinner. We then took a walk to the Boulevards, where the dash and pomp of fashion were taking their fashionable round, after lounging a short time we came down the Rue Richelieu through the Palais Royal home, where we continued sitting and conversing till near 11 o'clock, when Mr. Barnett went home. I must say he has been a most instructive companion and a highly polished man. He has a French wife, and sons who are men, and one of them a consul in Holland, and another at Venice.

Monday Morning July 11th 1831. This morning I arose and felt quite unwell and was not able to eat breakfast. I had a disagreeable bone, on Joseph's account, to pick with Madame's man servant, who makes our beds. I went to the Police to get my passports, and did so, and bought me the 7 codes of French Law bound for which I paid eight francs. I then went to the Museum of Natural History, and the Garden of Plants, and the Gallery of comparative anatomy and I saw more things than I could record in ten years. It is truly matchless and worthy of all the praise which has been bestowed upon it. In the first place here is a garden, as my guide informed me, containing 280 acres of land cut into hill and dale, containing every thing from the mighty cedar of six feet in diameter, with branches fifty feet long, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, or the feeblest violet which trembles in the breeze. And what is wonderful in this collection of all trees, plants, grasses and herbs which spring out of the earth, there is by the side of each plant an iron rod running into the ground and standing about two feet out with a piece of sheet iron on the top four inches square, slanting towards you, painted white, the ground work, and there the name of the plant written in black on the white ground work in the technical Latin name and generally translated into French.

Hill, dale, forest, trees, plaintain, palm-trees, magnolia, the cedar of Lebanon, every sort of tree to be found on the four quarters of the globe is flourishing here. I cannot speak but with the profoundest admiration of that public spirit, which has collected such a magazine of plants, such a botanical store house, where in half a days walk, man may see all that nature is her infinite variety has suffered to spring from her vast and prolific bosom. I have taken by violence three or four twigs of this forest, one is from the Cedar brought from Mount Lebanon, and another from Mount Ararat. The other plant I know not from whence or what it is.

I then bid farewell to this Paradise in Botany, and went into a room of comparitive anatomy, where every bone found in the whale, the elephant, the rhinoceras, the hippopotamus, lion, tiger, buffalo, deer, shark, alligator, man, woman, child, all domestic animals, all wild animals, both by sea and land, stand on their feet in skeleton form, by which the anatomy of all animals may be compared, amongst which the giraffe or cameleopard, who holds his head the highest of all animals appears the most conspicuous. I then went out and viewed these animals alive in their different departments, I saw twenty or thirty different bears, different goats, sheep of every clime, twenty tigers, thirty or forty lions, raising young ones, cameleopard playing around with his head twenty five feet high, elephants bathing and rolling themselves in great squares of stone masonry filled with water. Ostriches, condors, and eagles running around in their native majesty, bears climbing trees, and standing on their hind legs.

I then went to view all the animals by sea and land stuffed in the skin looking to the life. It occupied a hall three stories high, two or three hundred feet long on both sides. The genus and species of each is classed. The snakes, alligators and crocodiles, the hippopotamus and unicorn were very grand.

Then came the secrets of the earth in the shape of Mineralogy. Then came the insects of all description. I forgot to mention that in comparative anatomy, there are some dreadful, double-headed monsters of our race, and that dissection has been carried to such a pitch as to show blood vessels alone, tendons alone, muscles alone, nerves alone. The nerves alone make a man appear like a bunch of coarse crinkled hair. Wonderful. Here is the anatomy of a man, woman, and child of each nation under Heaven.

July 12th Paris. This has been a most interesting day. Last night Mr. James Fenimore Cooper agreed that I should come and breakfast with him at 7 A.M. and he would take a coach and carry me to Versailles. This morning I arose and felt quite unwell and feverish, at 6 A.M. having had a bad night; however after shaving and examining the fur on my tongue, I went to Mr. Cooper's, Rue St. Dominique No. 59, and found his servants eating breakfast in the lodge, and Mr. Cooper not up, but he arose immediately and called to me to amuse myself with American newspapers as late as June 10th which I did for twenty minutes, when Mr. Cooper, his little son, and myself sat down to a warm loaf, fine beef steak, and a cup of Mocha coffee. After breakfast we got into a superb carriage with elegant horses, and a genteel driver and hastened away for twelve miles to the gorgeous palaces of Versailles costing $200,000,000. We first came to the Hospital of Invalids, and military school on the left, the Elysian Fields on the right, the next place on the left is the Champ de Mars, two miles square, where is seen on parade days many times, one hundred thousand troops under arms, here the gay and dissolute run horses, here the cavalry are trained, here the frolicsome run chariot races; it is truly a magnificent place. We then crossed the most western 14th bridge over the crooked Seine, when Mount Calvary broke on the view, a small palace, the residence occassionally of Bonaparte, it is on a high hill and shows to great advantage.

We passed a place called "Passy" notable as the residence of Franklin, Jay and Jefferson, just on the environs of Paris, from whence their letters are dated to the French government, both on the subject of our independence as well as upon the matters of subsequent treaties. I saw in this vicinity a street called "Rue Franklin." We then passed the great French porcelain factory, the greatest in France belonging to the government; it is said to be the best in the world out of China. We crossed the Seine again on a bridge built by Bonaparte after the great battle of Iena which name he gave this bridge; immediately on our right the little village of St. Cloud, which has a palace, which is at this moment occupied by the King of France and his family; he stays much of the summer at St. Cloud, in the fall, winter and spring at the "Palais Royal" at Paris. On a hill near St. Cloud in a forest, arises a fine column built by Bonaparte, when he was first Consul, on which a telegraph was fixed to correspond with another on the top of the Palace of the Tuilleries, so that when at St. Cloud, five miles from the factious city of Paris, he could learn in one minute any information, which the past might be too slow in conveying. We went one or two miles further, when we alighted with a view of seeing one of those entrances made into the bowels of the earth, to obtain stone, which is an entrance to the catacombs, or a place like the catacombs. The catacombs strictly speaking occupy the middle section of that part of Paris lying south of the Seine extending partly under the river to the island on which Notre Dame stands; this little island in the days of Julius Cesar, Charlemagne, and in fact till the 10th century was the only fortified part of Paris, in which the citadel stood being an island of ten acres or less. The catacombs have arisen in this way: the whole of Paris and the surrounding country rest on a quarry of stone, almost as soft as chalk until exposed to the action of the sun, when it becomes indurated and hard; in fact you can saw it with great ease.

The immense collossal fabrics, with which Paris abounds, in palaces, hospitals, churches, hotels, and other huge edifices were taken from beneath the surface of Paris, by the means of galleries cut under the upper crust leaving certain portions of the quarry to support the upper crust of Paris. Curious to relate trees have sometimes dropped through and occasionally houses, though not often. These catacombs have been for ages the receptacle of human bones. That is to say a grave yard would be emptied of its skeletons after the flesh had disappeared. The skeletons collected and put in the catacombs: for instance a certain apartment has nothing but skull bones, another thigh bones and so on arranges with great taste and very fancifully, through the subterranean galleries of Paris, which are known by the name of the catacombs. But I have wandered from my journey into the catacombs, but will now return. Near St. Cloud we again crossed the Seine by a bridge which is five miles below Paris, and at this bridge is a curious weir to catch the dead bodies of those who commit suicide in Paris by jumping from its numerous bridges, into the Seine, or those who are murdered and are thrown into the River, or those who may have been accidentally drowned, and it is supposed that this weir catches two or three a day through the year. One of the bridges, which I passed the oftenest last week, called Pont Royal, four persons threw themselves from it during the week, all of which except a young woman were drowned. Mr. Cooper saw two of them jump in, and the woman was one whom the humanity of the spectators saved.

We now approached Versailles, where the monarchs of France had been busy for three centuries in exhausting the French nation, in erecting palaces, avenues, river-gods and godesses, terraces, and assembling all the extravagant scenes in heathen mythology in the most extravagant marbles, making lakes, hill, broken rocky ravines, orangeries, French gardens, English gardens, all sorts of water works, all in which crocodiles, sharks, alligators, tortoises, lions and tigers in bronze and fine marble, in marble basins of from 100 to 200 feet in diameter are made to spout water. In fact is was the determination of Louis the 14th who was born here and reigned as king 70 years and died here, to make Versailles the admiration of the World, in which all the rich and extravagant tales told of palaces in the Arabian Nights Entertainments should be more than realized.

Versailles has not been the residence of the Court since Louis 10th and Marie Antoinette were taken from here and brought to Paris, where they were executed. Even great Bonaparte himself in his greatest splendor said he was not rich enough to live at Versailles and furnish those apartments as they required. In Louis 14th's time in 1675 and so on to 1789, there were something like 100,000 inhabitants at Versailles; now it has but 30,000. So that the Court, gentlemen and priests, appurtenant there to, and officers military and civil which filled all of these splendid apartments, avenues, parterres, and gardens were not less than 70,000. There were 2,000 priests, there were 1,800 soldiers, gentlemen receiving Lieutenant's pay as a body guard. There was a theater, an opera house and the most extravagant church in the World; all paid by the Court for the Royal amusement. As you approach Versailles from the east you go through an avenue 40 rods wide, two miles long extending to the front of the palace. As you come to the palace this avenue is called the avenue leading to the palace from the Tuilleries in Paris. Another avenue of like dimensions, runs of for miles towards the palace at Fontainbleau; another to Vincennes; another to St. Cloud; two other avenues of like magnitude extend as far as the eye can see to two other palaces, whose names I have forgotten, these avenues have each a center avenue with trees meeting at the top, and two side avenues with trees meeting at the top in the same way the whole making but one avenue of this grand character leading from the palace of Versailles to the different palaces. The trees are cut, sheered and clipped in all kinds of fantastic forms.

The palace appears to occupy forty acres and seems to be on a hill, and by nature it would have stood on a swamp.

Off at the south you behold a lake a mile and a half in length and three quarter's in breadth, the excavation of the earth form the ground where the lake is, was piled up and made the hill where the palace is. The palace has a center piece of about 200 feet, and two wings of 500 feet each with a corresponding breadth. From the palace you descend regular parterres for 50 or 60 rods, filled with orangeries, all sort of marble basins filled with water 100 feet in diameter, with bronze and marble animals and statuary by thousands, and sculpture by regiments. The hill of Versailles is hollow so that the orangeries, some of which trees are 400 years old, are in the winter time rolled on wheels under the mount of earth on which Versailles stands, in order to protect them from the frost. Each orange tree has twenty or thirty bushels of earth standing around it roots in a square box, which box stands on wheels. You look to the south, west and north for miles through the avenues amidst the huge forests of pine, tiel, poplars, hemlocks and 10,000 other trees of whose names I am ignorant. Away to the west you see another artificial lake with pleasure boats on it. As you are conducted into the woods you are led through circular marble gateways in imitation of ancient Roman ruins. the marble is of white, green, yellow, and these arched gateways stand thirty feet high and encircle one of the marble basins 100 feet in diameter on every side, filled with water, from the center of which Neptune is coming out of the water in marble with his sea nymphs. At another place Apollo is bathing in a stream which comes through the gorge of a mountain, which is wild and picturesque as one of the rugged ravines of Nature among the rocks; his attendants are waiting on him and his horses in marble are drinking; many scenes differing a little from this, occur in this wilderness of beauty. We next visited the little traneau palace in the woods built for Madame Manitenon, wife of Louis 14th. This place was fitted up by Bonaparte, for his sister, which I do not remember. He often came here himself. The furniture is the same as left by the Bonaparte's, everything silk damask, every variety of marble, looking glasses, chandeliers, damask curtains, weighty with gold tassels; saloons 100 feet long to receive company in the sides of which are transparent mirrors. The urn where Bonaparte and his sister, and his first wife Madame Beauharnais used to wash at is still here. The toilette rooms etc. This was a favorite place of Marie Antoinnette who expend a good deal of money in making the earth appear frightful by a ledge of artificial rocks, and a dark gallery cut through them underground, where our conductor informed us curious things could be told, if the trees and rocks of this obscure passage had tongues to tell, or eyes to see, or ears to hear, the curious pranks of debauchery which have here taken place. We next went to a little palace in the woods not much larger than a gentleman's country-seat. Here are a few elegant rooms. This was built by Louis 14th for Madame Pompadour his chief mistress of 75. This place was often visited by Bonaparte and his first wife Madame Beauharnais. We were shown the table at which Bonaparte sat, when he signed his divorce from the unfortunate lady. Bonaparte's chamber here, was afterwards a favorite one of Charles 10th and Louis 18th. I saw the looking glass at which they all three had stood in the last 25 years and made their toilette. The washing vase and bed are still here. These rooms as well as the other little palace are lined with splendid paintings. We next went about a quarter of a mile into the forest, to see what had been a portion of the amusements of the Royal blood of France, in the reign of Louis 10th, which was called playing shepherd of the Alps. For which purpose Marie Antoinnette had a little thatched farm house built about twenty feet square exactly after the form of a common French peasant's house, thatched about a foot thick with straw, for a covering, in this she made butter and cheese and milked a cow dressing herself just like a peasant's wife when the very furniture inside was said to cost the enormous sum of $10,000. Next was a little larger thatched farm house in which Louis 10th as principal farmer worked, ploughed and hoed and wore his cap; next was the priest of the Parish's house, in which the Archbishop of France with the outward appearance of a poor curate living on a hundred francs a year; the next house was a little farm house, in which the great Prince of Conde lived in same style; next was the mill, where you see a common grist mill and a water wheel, and the miller was the king's brother late Louis 18th, who took the bags of grain from a little jack and took the grist into the mill, in his white miller's hat ground it and brought it out; Charles 10th had a little blacksmith shop and shod the horses of the village all blacked up in his smithy. A number of the great duchesses were pot-wrestlers. Thus you see royalty making ridicule, and mockery, and pastime of honest industry, which is said to have provoked the nation among other things very much to see the royal family cutting up such shameful and disgusting pranks. We next went back to the great palace of Louis 14th where we first entered a saloon 400 feet long the most splendid in Europe, the immense concave over head is completely covered with the most beautiful paintings. One is almost overwhelmed with the amplitude, richness and vastness of this Hall, in which the Levees were given by Louis 14th in his glory; we next went into the most beautiful series of Rooms the imagination could contrive short of solid gold; the king's reading room, his eating, sleeping, visit-receiving, and library rooms; then followed a suite of the queen's of equal magnificence.

I saw the very bed in which the ill-fated Marie Antoinette was sleeping on the night, the mob rushed into her room and killed her faithful Swiss guards on the stairs, when she miraculously escaped by an invisible side door to her apartment, and run through a crooked dark passage 400 feet across the palace to the bed room of Louis 16th and escaped. I then went and stood on that part of the gallery, where Marie Antoinette and the young dauphine stood with Gen. La Fayette, while Gen. La Fayette harangued and assuaged the enraged multitude standing below in the Palace Yard thirsting for the blood of the Royal family. We next went to the Bull's Eye or waiting chamber where those who had petitions to present to the king stood whole days waiting in breathless anxiety for their turn to view the Royal smile or frown.

We next went into the chapel which is part of the palace where the Royal family pretended to worship. Every extravagance is here to be found, silk velvet seats and cushions for 50 or 60 below for the Royal family, but dukes and nobles had to walk into the gallery to see the devotion of Louis 14th with his seventy-five mistresses. The domes of the chapel although the richest productions of the pencil of the 16th century ornament them, still there is an awful and shockingly impious and disgusting sight to see the painter attempt to paint God about 18 inches long under the semblance of a white-headed old man, with angels fluttering about him, and the wicked Louis 14th in the same group. Awful and shocking blasphemy. We next went and saw the room Louis 14th was born in, then the one he died in, after being king 70 years. Then the rooms in which Louis 15th was born and died. Also the one occupied by Louis 16th till he was taken to Paris. These immense halls constituting the palace are generally without moveable furniture. The nation is so vain she is not willing to destroy what cost $200,000,000 although it is an expense to keep 400 or 500 men to take care of the grounds. The nation can never use these halls again on account of the expense, for it is said $14,000,000 of money would be required to furnish them with furniture. They are forever deserted. These halls where all the pomp of power, where all the tinselled minions of its creation, who were warned into existence by the rays of royal favor, where the great courtiers bent the knee, where the minstrels swept the lyres, are living monuments of the instability of all things in this world and that everything short of a permanent and well grounded hope in the happiness of a hereafter is the vanity of vanities. These kings have gone to account with their admiring, hating, or loving subjects before the King of kings, where the king or the subject will only be regarded as they have loved the laws of God and obeyed them. I hastened away from this pile of wonder and astonishment, that the nation instead of bearing with such extravagant abuses of power, in wasting the wealth, the sweat and blood of France in such enormous, useless expenditures of public money; my only wonder is the nation bore it so long. Versailles is to this day a living argument of the necessity of the revolution. I came home with Mr. Cooper; he and his kind lady pressed me to take dinner, but I was in too much of a hurry and declined Mr. Cooper told me today he was fearful of rising in La Vendee in favor of the Carlist's Faction, and that government arrested about 100 persons in Paris in the last three days and threw them into prison as suspected emissaries of Charles 10th.

July 13th. This day I have spent $100 in buying little things for my family. I have bought things before; and if the land transportation was not so dear for 150 miles, I would have bought more, especially if I had understood the French language, as I am liable to gross imposition every moment from the lying, cheating, whoring, fiddling, learned, fighting, polite French, I therefor decline making further purchases. I ransacked the Palais Royal and made part of my little purchases there, and part in the Faubourg of St. Honore. After this was done I settled with my Landlady, Madame resolutely cheated me out of 30 francs in spite of all I could do. I then went to the Diligence office and found only two spare seats in the Interieur, all of the rest being taken in the Coupe, and even the Rondeau and outside with the driver. It was a mere accident that I got these seats, as they are frequently take, five, six, and seven days in advance. I paid 34 francs for me and Joseph, and have got to pay two sous and a half for each pound, the baggage weighs over 40 pounds. From here I visited my friend Cooper's family and spent an hour while Mrs. cooper prepared a present for Mrs. Isaac Cooper. This family have been as kind as a brother and sister I never shall forget them. Coming home I was taken quite unwell and went to bed at 7 P.M. and arose at,

7 A.M. of the 14th of July my last day in Paris. I went to the Worthy old Mr. Charles Barnett, American Consul and bid him farewell, she has treated me with the affectionate kindness of a father. He sent Jane a present of prints and Mrs. Stewart a present of Gen'l. La Fayette, done in bronze by the great painter David. He had two of them and therefore he gave me one. What a most worthy and charming man, this man is, who has been 35 years American Consul at Paris. I parted from him with tear for tear. I then strayed through a vast common and took a coach to visit my English friend Mr. Robinson, who has been sick and is now better, I found him at his house Rue Montholon 24, Bio; I bade him farewell, and ordered my cocher to drive about three miles through the circular Boulevards, the great broad circular way of Paris, wider than Broadway in New York, lined with trees, beautiful houses, and shops, fountains with six lions spouting water; passed the Olympic theater, where wild beasts fight, and three or four theaters adjoining it; passed on to the place of the ancient Bastile; this being the day of the month and year in 1789, when it was broken down, is commemorated to the great fear of the present government as the hot republicans have agreed to plant the free of Liberty there in one corner of this spot today. The king and his ministers have ordered 10,000 of the National Guards to this place, and in the king's place and garden near it where I saw the troops with their arms today at 12 o'clock at Noon. There is a colossal elephant standing in the center of the old Bastile as large as fifty common elephants, who when entirely finished is to spout water which is contained in an immense stone cistern erected on the back of the elephant. I saw the fosse or ditch communicating by water with the Seine and old Bastile. The people were in great numbers thronging the old Bastile ground from which they are kept back by ropes passing through stones. Last night the king sent a great number of the leaders of the tree planting business to jail. The onset to be made by the people if any is at 5 P.M. of this day, I do not believe however any blood will be spilt. I next visited a Protestant church the Oratone in St. Honore. Next I visited the great Corn house of Paris, which is a great curiosity, being a dome of 150 feet high, and 150 broad at the bottom, surrounded by circular arches, in the interior and exterior in which there is probably 2,000,000 bushels of wheat at this time to be sold by different factors.

The dome immense as it is was constructed of a kind of iron railing by Bonaparte. I next visited an English bookstore and found the books too dear to purchase. I eat my dinner and wrote this scroll, and must now take my baggage to the office and bid at 5 P.M. farewell forever to the wonderful and astonishing city of Paris. Farewell! While my baggage was fixing on at the office of the Messagers, I took a look at this wonderful depot of diligences, found an immense circular building with offices for the baggage of the different countries, write ten over the door of the apartment, with in almost every instance, a diligence standing with it hindpart towards the door. There is the office for England by Calais, for Spain by Bordeaux, for Portugal, for Italy, for Switzerland, for Prussia, for Germany, for Vienna, for St. Petersburgh, Russia, for Holland and Belgium, for Rouen and Havre, and many other places in the interior of France. There is another establishment exactly like this in Paris, where everything is provided in the same way and was formerly an opposition, but have not agreed to charge exactly alike, and not run by each other on the road, which makes travelling very expensive in France. Between five and six o'clock just before I mounted the diligence a messenger came to me from our Consul Mr. Barnett with a present of pictures to me, one a likeness of himself and another I have not seen on a roller as he wishes me not to open it till I get home, and three other pictures I am to give Gen'l Morris. His messenger told, Mr. Barnett would have come to see me but he dare not leave the place in his house, as they were fighting in his neighborhood at the Place of Louis 16th about planting the tree of Liberty, the young Republicans swearing they would do it on Bastile day, the king and his ministers swearing they should not, as it tended to riot, anarchy, and the subversion of the government. The soldiers had bayonetted three republicans, who were dead, and wounded others, and firing was brisk in that quarter when the messenger came away. I was very sorry that I now found myself compelled to leave Paris, as every thing was on board, passage paid, for I had not believed blood would be shed, but if it must, I should like to have seen and known more about the fighting of a Parisian mob. I saw them pulling up the pavement in one place in Paris today, whether to repair the sheet or for fighting I knew not. I shall know all about the mob before I sail as I can get particulars at Rouen or Havre. After mounting the interior of the diligence I was like a prisoner for the time being, for although I could feel much I could see little. After passing a number of streets without sidewalks slanting from each side to the middle, so that the center of the street has running filth or water the whole time on the surface. There are a few sidewalks in Paris, say thy fiftieth part are sided with walks. The paving stones of Paris and London are every way better than those in the American cities. A load of four, five, or six tons drawn by eight of those powerful horses used for cart service, will not apparently jar one of those paving stones. The stones appear to be ten inches long, seven inches wide, and eight inches thick a little crowning on the upper side. They are laid down on pounded stone, with sand and gravel in the interstices, which are small and their size prevents their ever being broken and their ever being removed. We crossed the Boulevards which was thronged with its fashionable walkers, who came to see and be seen. We then passed into Great St. Denis Street, one of the great roads out of Paris leading through this fashionable retreat of part of Paris about three or four miles form the great city. It is a sort of Faubourg of observation or Vidette Guard of Paris in the North. Bonaparte made much of this place as a station for troops, fine walks, fine restaurateurs, and a fine canal was excavated here by his authority, and in what part of Paris or France is not the hand of that great master seen, if seen at all, in some object possessing public utility, beyond a mere display of vanity, and benefit to the operatives, who made the work?

France in her agricultural departments are said to be uncommonly fine this year, I saw all kinds of plums, cherries, grapes, melons etc, sold in Paris, as well as strawberries and raspberries, for less money by one half than I ever saw the same things sold for elsewhere. In leaving Paris for Rouen, a few miles brought me into that ancient and renowned division of France, Normandy. Rouen was the capital of Normandy in her glory when her aspiring Duke, William the Conqueror of England, the terror of object France at his feet was the Duke of Normandy. This was the title, and his sword the friend whose assistance he asked when he applied for the English and made the French one set loosely on its occupant. The wheat is in the midst of harvest and very fine, now on the 14th and 15th of July. That is winter wheat as there is not much other. The rye and barley are in the same condition and very fine. The oats look as if they would not do; to cut till the middle of August or 1st September. Beans, vetches, cabbages, turnips, parsnips, onions, carrots, potatoes all appear forward and abundant especially for a summer which has been so cool, but few warm days and less warm nights. No fences or ditches, for miles in the region of Normandy appear to protect crops, nothing for forty or fifty miles from Paris, where I saw a hedge around a farm. The first village of any great importance we came to was Fleury about 18 or 20 miles from Paris. From Paris the country rolls in fine but shallow swells and is well timbered. And each tree on a man's own farm has a mark put on it by the commissioners of forests, showing him what tree he is allowed to cut down and sell, or use, or burn. As Frances uses but little mineral coal, but an immense quantity of charcoal. By this arbitrary law the present and the next generation are secured against a want of fuel and wood for other purposes. France has therefore more would growing than any other country, in fact at the distance of two or three miles the woods appear as fine as in those parts of the State of New York, where it has been settled for 20 years, with this exception that in France the roads are generally lined with trees. Lombardy poplar has been considered a profitable tree to raise for the proprietor, for what it wants in excellence it makes up in its prematurity and vigorous growth. In England the law being different the present proprietor of land who wishes to raise ready money sells of the timber on his estate, which sixty years will not replace. It is said the present king of France as an individual is the richest man in Europe, sold in a particular year all the timber the law allowed him to sell off at this time, and it came to half a million of dollars. Fleury is a wild place standing on a bluff appearing two or three hundred feet high, that is the houses arise in hers almost perpendicularly above each other; it is a very picturesque place indeed, but its ancient history I cannot now call to mind. I believe it is called the town of Fleury and not village. It has the appearance of an ancient town, which did not believe in departing form the customs of their ancestors.