But without attempting to convey to others a feeling impossible to define, it is easy enough to point out the altered state of being of the French capital in the outward physical aspect of republican Paris. True, the marks of devastation have been almost entirely removed from the Boulevards and principal streets with wonderful alacrity on the part of the municipal authorities. Young trees have been planted on the spots where the old ones were cut down to form barricades: they look stunted, meagre, and unhappy enough, to be sure--very like the young republic that their frail stems typify--but they manage to keep up the look of the line of avenue. There they stand, all ready to be cut down again for the construction of fresh barricades, if ever they grow big enough before they are wanted, which is certainly a very doubtful matter. The asphalte is already laid down once more in the holes of the broken-up _trottoirs_, or at least smoke and stench enough prevail in the labours of plastering it down; and in a short time the iron railings of the Boulevard du Rempart will again prevent drunken citizens in smocks from falling down into the street below; at all events, there is mortar and solder enough ready on the pavement to do the work. On the opposite side of the way, that fatal building, the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, before which so frightful a scene of carnage was acted, looks much as it did of yore--perhaps only a little dirtier, a little more public-office-like--although young citizens _en blouse_ mount guard before its gates instead of soldiers of the line, and on its walls, smeared with blood-dipped fingers, glare before one's eyes, unwashed away by rain, the startling capitals--"MORT A GUIZOT." But it is to be presumed that the eyes of passers-by will get used to the bloody words--forgotten, perhaps, before many months in other visions of blood--perhaps smeared over in their turn by "_Mort à_ ----." Who can tell? The pavement has been long since restored to the streets; although, to tell the truth, here and there the disjointed, ill-replaced stones still slightly lift their heads to tell a tale of past devastation, and proclaim their readiness to rise again at a moment's warning; and _fiacres_ jolt uneasily over them--very much like the Provisional Government over the rough work left them to stumble against by the Revolution. But, upon the whole, Paris has nigh recovered its former material look, and might almost cheat the wanderer, who looks only upon stone walls, and pavements, and lamp-posts, into the belief that it has undergone no change, and retained no scars from its late burning eruptive disorder, unless he stroll past two spots which startle him into a recollection of the truth. Here the long façade of the palace of the Tuilleries, its window-panes all smashed, its shutters shattered--the broken casket of royalty! There the quondam Palais-Royal, its walls still blackened by