don the charge is usually 4d.). The woman told us that to every bed she allowed clean sheets once a fortnight. Each room had one window, and we found every one in the house wide open. Although Dr. M'Carty had now shown us the poorest description of people of whose condition he was cognisant, I have no doubt that an agent of the police could have led us to scenes of greater misery than those I have described. JARDIN DES PLANTES. ON coming out of the Boulevart de l'Hôpital I found myself close to the Jardin des Plantes, and as I had procured an ordinary order of admission, which happened to be in my pocket-book, I walked into it. The politeness which distinguishes the French nation is not only retailed by every citizen of Paris, but with a liberality which merits the admiration of the civilized world. is administered wholesale by the French Government to every stranger who visits their metropolis. For instance, the magnificent cabinets of comparative anatomy, the gallery of zoology, the specimens contained in the mineralogical and geological galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, are only open to the citizens of Paris on Tuesdays and on Fridays; whereas any traveller, however humble his station, on application in writing, or by merely producing his passport certifying that he is a stranger in the land of a great nation, is, in addition to the days mentioned, allowed free entrance on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Wednesdays the collections are closed for cleaning, and on Sundays no person is admitted. Dogs must always be muzzled, and, to prevent mischief, they are not allowed in any instance to enter that portion of the grounds in which the loose animals are kept. I had scarcely entered the gardens when I was accosted by a short, active man of about fifty-five years of age, with a brown face and an arched nosee-it arched concavely, snoutwise--who in a few words, very logically explained to me 1st, That I was evidently a foreigner; 2ndly, That being a foreigner I must necessarily be total. ly ignorant of the localities of the Jardin des Plantes; 3rdly, that being ignorant I should be lost in the intricacies of its curiosities; 4thly, That he was an authorised commissionaire; in short, that I knew nothing, he everything, and THEREFORE that I should gain infinitely by putting myself under his care. The demonstration was so complete, that by the utterance of "Allons donc !"* I gruffly consummated the alliance he proposed; and the two syllables could not, I am sure, have flown twenty yards, before I and the brown-faced man with the arched nose were walking together rather vigorously along a broad path, shaded by trees, towards the gallery of zoology. I now discovered as in hasty love matches has but too often proved to be the case-that my guide and I were unhappily missuited to each other, and the consequence was we had at least six quarrels-or, to state the case more fairly, he forced me to quarrel with him about half a dozen times-before we had proceeded a hundred yards. The subject of our dispute, which I submit to the unprejudiced judgment of the reader, was as follows. I-looking upon the man as my. slave, and recollecting the American maxim "that every man has an undoubted right to flog his own nigger,”—felt I was authorised to put to him little questions as fast as each, one after another, bubbled up in my mind; but every time I attempted to do so, and before I had got out three words, he invariably stopped me full butt by advising me to go and see the animals and the labyrinth, for reasons which I, in return, would not allow him to utter. In fact, just as a new member in the House of Commons, who, having written out his maiden speech, and learnt it by heart, cannot deliver himself of any other, so had my guide only one way of showing me what he thought I ought to see; in fact, my ideas, whether first, second, or third-class passengers, were all to run on his rails. I told him I would not give a sou to see all the animals in the world; that I detested a labyrinth; and as he began to see I evidently disliked him too, and that I was seriously *Get on then! thinking of a divorce, he shrugged up his shoulders, and we walked in silence towards the gallery of zoology, a plain building of three stories high, 390 feet in length, into which I was very glad to find that he, not being a stranger, was not allowed to enter. The magnificent collection in the seven great apartments of this establishment are classed according to the system of Baron Cuvier. In the first room stands a marble statue of Buffon, appropriately surrounded in this and also in the following room by a complete collection of highly-varnished turtles and tortoises of all sizes, little fishes and serpents in bottles, enormous large ones suspended from the ceiling, snakes in the corner, and aquatic birds of every possible description in all directions. In the third are congregated more than 2000 reptiles of 500 different sorts, divided into four great families, namely, Chelonians, commonly called tortoises; Saurians, or lizards, comprehending crocodiles, &c.; Ophidians, or serpents; and Batracians, vulgarly termed by the uninitiated toads, frogs, &c. The fourth contains crustaceous species, comprehending brachyures, anomures, macroures, stomapodes, amphipodes, and xyphosures. The fifth is enlivened by a great variety of stuffed apes, monkeys, ourang-outangs, and chimpanzees. In the sixth are zoophytes, sponges, nautili, and fossil shells. In the seventh is a beautiful statue in white marble, by Dupaty, representing vivifying Nature, surrounded by a quantity of stuffed goats, dogs, and Ilamas. From this splendid collection I ascended by a staircase, the walls of which-no doubt with a view to keep the pot of the mind of visitors constantly boiling-have been appropriately hung with dolphins, seals, and other marine animals, to the second story, composed of four vaulted rooms, in the first of which are various species of mammalia, such as foxes, bears, weasels, and kangaroos. The next room swarms with apes, armadillos, bears, wolves, hyænas, and ferrets. In the third, a long gallery, intersected by four arches, contains, principally in glass cases, upwards of 10,000 stuffed birds of 2500 different sorts, forming the most complete collection in Europe. In the centre of rooms Nos. 2, 3, and 4, just described, are arranged in glass cases a complete collection of polypterous and apterous insects, also nests of termites, hornets, and wasps, with specimens of the devastations effected in wood by different species of worms; likewise a numerous collection of shells, mollusca, zoophytes, echini, &c. On the ground-floor are two rooms full of duplicates of zoophytes and specimens preserved in spirits; and in the third mammiferous animals of the largest class, such as ele phants, hippopotami, morses, rhinoceros, &c. On the whole the gallery of zoology of the Jardin des Plantes is estimated to contain upwards of 200,000 specimens of the animal kingdom, among which are 2000 specimens of mammalia, of nearly 500 different species, and 5000 specimens of fishes of about 2500 species; besides which there is a very complete variety of tubifores, madrepores, millepores, corallines, and sponges. While, with Galignani's guide-book in my hand, I was hastily passing through the chambers I have detailed, now stopping for a moment to look at a large specimen and then at a little one, I could not help acknowledging how pleased my guide-who had been trying in vain to allure me to the living animals of the Garden-would be could he but witness the feelings which, on very slippery boards, I experienced as I walked between scales of serpents, shells of tortoises, skins of animals, and the plumage of birds, whose bodies were all gone, and whose joyous lives had long been extinct; all had been the captives of man; all had died either by his hands, or in his hands; and although their variety was infinite, their congregation astonishing, and the method of their arrangement most admirable, yet in point of beauty, every specimen -whether of a poor bird with wings extended always in the same attitude, of an animal with glass eyes and puffy legs, of a gouty-looking fish immoveably floating in spirits of wine -was but an unsightly mockery of the living creatures with which it has pleased an Almighty Power to ornament and animate that tiny speck of his creation on which we live. On descending the slippery stairs into the fresh air, my ́guide-who had been waiting at the door like a cat watching for a mouse-instantly joined me, and probably having, like myself, had time to reflect on the subject of our disputes, he conducted me very obediently towards the point I had named, without once reverting to the labyrinth or to the animals, which I have no doubt, were still meandering and swarming in his mind. Nevertheless, to every little question I was about to put to him, he could not refrain from beginning to give me a long answer before I had said three syllables; and his apprehension was so uncomfortably quick, and his retention of speech so feeble, that I had become quite disgusted with him, when, as we were walking together rather quickly, he suddenly stopped. On the ground on my right, with her back against a row of iron rails, was seated a poor woman with two children by her side; another, a little boy, had been playing with a ball; and it was because the child had thrown his ball between the rails, out of his reach, and stood wistfully looking at it, that my guide had stopped in the very middle of a question I was asking him. "Pardon, Monsieur !"* said he to me, leaning towards me, and taking out of my left hand my umbrella, with which, after a good deal of dexterous fishing, he managed to hook out the lost ball. The child joyfully seized it. "Qu'est-ce que vous allez dire à Monsieur ?" said his mother to him. "Merci, Monsieur !' said the boy, looking my guide full in the face, and slightly bowing to him. The man touched his hat to the poor woman, and then walked on. "Well!" said I to myself, "that scene is better worth beholding than a varnished fish, or a stuffed monkey!" and after witnessing it, and reflecting on it, somehow or other, I quarrelled no more with my guide. I had now been conducted, according to my desire, to the Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy, which, by the unwearied exertions of Baron Cuvier, by whom it was arranged, and under whose direction most of the objects were prepared, has become the richest and most valuable collection in Europe. On entering the ground floor I gazed for some minutes at an assortment of skeletons of whales, of a variety of marine animals, and of a male morse,-brought by Captain Parry from the Polar Regions; then proceeding into the next room, and afterwards up stairs, I found myself surrounded by mummies, then by rows of human skulls phrenologically arranged; then appeared the skulls of various animals; then *Pardon me, Sir! What are you going to say to the gentleman ? |