The fountains of the Place de la Concorde would deserve praise if it were only for their beauty. At a distance sufficient for the picturesque, and with the sun shining on them, they actually look like domes and cataracts of molten silver; and a nearer view does not diminish their right to admiration. They are both lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both consisting of three basins, lessening in size in proportion to their height, and all pouring out sheets of water from the trumpets of Tritons, from the mouths of dolphins, and from allegorical figures. One of those fountains is in honour of Maritime Navigation, and the other of the Navigation of Rivers. In the former the figures represent the Ocean and the Mediterranean, with the Genii of the fisheries; and in the upper basin are Commerce, Astronomy, Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes, and all spouting out floods of water. The fountain of River Navigation is not behind its rival in bronze or water. It exhibits the Rhine and the Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and flowers, of the vintage and the harvest, with the usual attendance of Tritons. Why the artist had no room for the Seine and the Garonne, while he introduced the Rhine, which is not a French river in any part of its course, must be left for his explanation; but the whole constitutes a beautiful and magnificent object, and, with the sister fountain, perhaps forms the finest display of the kind in Europe. I did not venture, while looking at those stately monuments of French art, to turn my thoughts to our own unhappy performances in Trafalgar Square--the rival of a soda-water bottle, yet the work of a people of boundless wealth, and the first machinists in the world. _The Jardin des Plantes._--I found this fine establishment crowded with the lower orders--fathers and mothers, nurses, old women, and soldiers. As it includes the popular attractions of a zoological garden, as well as a botanical, every day sees its visitants, and every holiday its crowds. The plants are for science, and for that I had no time, even had I possessed other qualifications; but the zoological collection were for curiosity, and of that the spectators had abundance. Yet the animals of pasture appeared to be languid, possibly tired of the perpetual bustle round them--for all animals love quiet at certain times, and escape from the eye of man, when escape is in their power. Possibly the heat of the weather, for the day was remarkably sultry, might have contributed to their exhaustion. But if they have memory--and why should they not?--they must have strangely felt the contrast of their free pastures, shady woods, and fresh streams, with the little patch of ground, the parched soil, and the clamour of ten thousand tongues round them. I could imagine the antelope's intelligent eye, as he lay panting before us on his brown patch of soil, comparing it with the ravines of the Cape, or the eternal forests clothing the hills of his native Abyssinia.