the day by folding doors, with a circular panel in the wall above for light and air. Adjoining the bed recess is a small dressing-closet, with an entrance from the recess as well as from the room. The floor is laid with glazed tiles, and the usual apparatus for dressing supplied, without requiring to enter the room, which is usually furnished as a parlour.

In the smaller class of houses, occupied by respectable families, we find such recesses for beds entering from the drawing-room, so carefully do the French economize space. The floors of the rooms are generally laid with diagonal boarding, stained, and so carefully polished as to render it difficult for unpractised feet to walk over them. The carpets seldom cover the whole floor, a broad margin being left round the wall, so that the heavier furniture stands clear of it, which renders it less bulky and easily lifted. Indeed, in the warm summer weather, the floors are often without carpets entirely.

The kitchen is generally a very small apartment, as compared with those of our own houses, and but sparingly supplied with closets or scullery accommodation. From the peculiar construction of the kitchen range, little heat, dust, or smell, is created in cooking. The cooking apparatus of ordinary houses consists of a series of small choffers, heated by charcoal, raised on a platform about the height of an ordinary table, on which kettles or pots of various sizes are placed for boiling or stewing meat. They have, besides, a small portable fire place and oven, so light as to be easily lifted about, for roasting meat, which is placed on the same platform when in use. A projecting hood envelopes the whole platform, and carries off all vapour or smoke into the chimney. Charcoal is always used in the kitchen, and generally wood for the room fires, though

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Clothes

coal is now getting more into use than formerly. The kitchen is supplied with a stone sink to receive and carry off the slops from washing dishes and the like. are seldom washed in the house, being generally sent to washing establishments, which one sees in abundance floating like arks on the Seine, in which the busy laundresses ply their calling, the Seine supplying them with abundance of pure water. There is no supply of water to any of the houses in Paris: it has all to be brought from the wells in the streets by water-carriers, who are paid at the rate of two or three shillings a-month (or more), according to the supply. Water, therefore, is a comparatively scarce commodity in the houses, although it flows very plentifully in the streets, in the water channels of which it is allowed to run for two hours in the morning, when they are being swept by the dustmen, and also for a similar period in the after part of the day, by which means the street gutters are kept pure and sweet, even in the hottest weather.

If there is such an abundant supply of water in the streets, what shall we say for the cabinet d'aisance, where there is not a drop, except in a brown jar, which is placed in the corner of the small apartment. Any description of this necessary convenience, even in some of the best hotels, is impossible. With all the elegance and refinement of the Parisian, this is a department in which he is a hundred years behind us. In the better class of houses you sometimes meet with this convenience, such as it is, often in a dark, ill-ventilated corner. In other cases you have only one or two such, common to the whole stair. In no case is there a supply of water; and the whole aspect of the place is most offensive. The man of energy and skill sufficient to work out a general improvement on this de

partment of the domestic economy of the Parisians, would deserve to be immortalized. The want of water supply in the upper floors of the houses, and the prohibition of drainage into the Seine, present such obstacles as to render our ordinary plumber's apparatus unsuitable. With a supply of water in every house, such as we enjoy here, and a separate system of drainage, all difficulties would be removed. And it is to be hoped that the present Emperor, who has already done so much for the improvement of Paris, will not cease till he has accomplished this most desirable object. A pipe, with a trumpet-shaped mouth, fitted with a wooden seat, is the amount of the apparatus in use. It is carried directly into the fosse d'aisance, or cess-pool, in the back court or cellar floor, under the building, always in a perpendicular line with the soil-pipe, as no bends are allowed, or would work, in consequence of the want of water. These receptacles are all built by rule, under strict surviellance of the police, so as to be perfectly tight. They are cleaned out by the police authorities, or by a public company. The mode of doing so is ingenious. A large barrel or tun, on a cart, is brought to the spot, the air having been previously exhausted by an air pump, a hose is let down into the fosse d'aisance, and the contents rush into the exhausted receiver. Great pains are taken to make a thorough cleaning while they are at it, the whole being lime-washed and purified.

While all surface water, therefore, and the slops of the kitchen and scullery, are carried by drains directly into the Seine, no soil whatever is allowed to enter the river, which is kept nearly as pure in passing through Paris.as it is before entering it, and which thus diffuses a cool and healthy current of fresh air through the most crowded parts of the city, greatly counterbalancing the evils arising

from the defective system of drainage to which I have referred.

The elegance of the interior decoration of the cafés and restaurants of Paris must have struck every one who has visited that tasteful capital. The same quality of decoration pervades the private dwellings, varying in extent according to the means of the occupants.

The wood work of the drawing room is generally painted in a light shade, nearly white, the smaller members of the mouldings being gilded. Oil paint is seldom used for the walls; when it is so, the shades of colour are generally light, of a gray, drab, or green hue, formed into panels, and ornamented with stencilling in a light shade. More frequently the walls are papered, which is generally of a low tone, the ornaments flat, of the same shade as the ground. Green, gray, or French white are the prevailing colours, finished with an ornamental gold border. We rarely find those gaudy papers, with garlands of roses and other imitations of natural flowers, which pass here for French papers. These gaudy designs are, I fear, prepared by the manufacturers to meet the demands of their customers on this side of the channel. The ceilings are generally white, the plaster ornaments hatched with gold; the smaller members of the enrichments being done in solid gilding, which is distributed with great judgment, so as to bring out the detail of the ornament rather than to obscure it by a dazzling display of gold on the prominent features. Mirrors are introduced in great profusion. The mantel-piece, even in spacious saloons, is usually very low as compared with ours, seldom exceeding 3 feet to the top of the shelf. In this way

the mirror becomes a serviceable ornament, and forms a pleasing feature of the mantel-piece, in which the decorations and figures in the apartment are reflected; very often

a corresponding mirror is placed on the opposite wall, reaching to the floor, which gives a double reflection, and has a striking effect on entering the apartment, the dimensions of which appear to be greatly enlarged.

In the finer mansions, this is carried to a still greater degree of artistic effect, by the introduction of mirrors at the opposite ends of separate apartments, the centre panel of the division wall being opened up, and a sheet of polished plate glass introduced, so that the vista of both rooms is repeated at each end by the mirrors. I observed a very striking and beautiful effect of a similar kind in one of the ducal mansions in the Faubourg St. Germain. The apartment looked into the garden, and was lighted by three tall casement windows carried down to the floor, and filled with plate glass; immediately in front was a colonnade, with statuary and vases tastefully disposed, and at the end of the garden a rich mass of foliage formed a natural alcove for a beautiful group of statuary; a grass lawn and pateras of flowers occupied the space between the colonnade and the shrubbery in the back ground. Within the apartment, and on the wall opposite the windows, were three mirrors, corresponding exactly with the windows in size and mode of finishing. Whichever way you looked, therefore, whether into the garden or to the opposite wall, you had the same rich groups of statuary, vases, flowers, and foliage. The effect was extremely beautiful.

The hotels or mansions of the great are never, in Paris, placed on the line of the street, as with us, but are always preceded by a court and followed by a garden. The façade towards the street is sometimes a mere wall enclosing the front court. More generally, the apartments of the concierge and the coach-houses occupy the building next the street, in the centre of which is the gate and corridor. The stabling and