There are ninety persons now employed, of whom I saw several at work. It is astonishing with what facility they seem to perform the most difficult tasks, but I am told that the art is not learnt without much time and considerable attention. The apprenticeship requires six years, and at least eighteen are necessary to make a proficient. The workmen are not locked up within the walls of the manufactory, as was the case during the monarchy, but they are kept under the constant “surveillance[77] of the police.” Most of the pieces now in hand have been ordered by the first consul, and are destined to form the ornament of St. Cloud, and other public buildings. From the _Gobelins_, situate in the most distant part of the Fauxbourg St. Germain, I drove along the new Boulevard to the observatory. I found here only some common sized telescopes, on which I observed with pride the respectable name of “Dollond,” of London. I was informed that a magnificent instrument of this kind is preparing on the plan of Herschel, which is to be twenty-two feet long, with a speculum of platina. It is to be moved on a platform, for the purpose of making observations, by means of a machine invented for the purpose. I ascended the top of the building, and the view thence, which commands all Paris, is grand and striking. Near the observatory is the nursery of that humane establishment called “les Enfans trouvés,” which is still kept up on the old philanthropic plan. Orphan children, deprived by death of their parents, or abandoned by them, are received here without question, recommendation, or inquiry, and are nursed with tenderness, well fed, properly educated, and lastly, qualified for some trade or profession, in which they are afterwards placed at the expense of the public. Their infancy is passed in the building shown to me; they are, at a certain age, sent into the country, for the benefit of the air, and then return to the principal hospital of the institution at Paris, where their education is completed. Their number is seldom less than a thousand. I shall continue to speak of the different objects I have lately seen, in the same order in which I visited them.