The Arch of St Denis is now shining in all the novelty of reparation, for it was restored so lately as last year. In this quarter, which has been always of a stormy temperature, the insurrection of 1848 raged with especial fury; and if the spirits of the great ever hover about their monuments, Louis XIV. may have seen from its summit a more desperate conflict than ever figured on its bas-reliefs. On the Arch of the Porte St Martin is a minor monument to minor triumphs, but a handsome one. Louis XIV. is still the hero. The "Grand Monarque" is exhibited as Hercules with his club; but as even a monarch in those days was nothing without his wig, Hercules exhibits a huge mass of curls of the most courtly dimensions--he might pass for the presiding deity of _perruquiers_. The _Arc de Triomphe du Carousel_, erected in honour of the German campaign in 1805, is a costly performance, yet poor-looking, from its position in the centre of lofty buildings. What effect can an isolated arch, of but five-and-forty feet high, have in the immediate vicinity of masses of building, perhaps a hundred feet high? Its aspect is consequently meagre; and its being placed in the centre of a court makes it look useless, and, of course, ridiculous. On the summit is a figure of War, or Victory, in a chariot, with four bronze horses--the horses modelled from the four Constantinopolitan horses brought by the French from Venice, as part of the plunder of that luckless city, but sent back to Venice by the Allies in 1815. The design of the arch was from that of Severus, in Rome: this secured, at least, elegance in its construction; but the position is fatal to dignity. The _Arc de l'Etoile_ is the finest work of the kind in Paris. It has the advantage of being built on an elevation, from which it overlooks the whole city, with no building of any magnitude in its vicinity; and is seen from a considerable distance on all the roads leading to the capital. Its cost was excessive for a work of mere ornament, and is said to have amounted to nearly half a million sterling!