I wanted you also at my side as we approached Paris, the _coup d’œil_ of which as you enter the Place Louis Quinze is superb. In one point of view the eye takes in, as if in an immense panorama the entire circle of those objects which at once exalt and degrade man, exhibit his power, and prove his nothingness. Palaces that have stood for ages, the great triumphal pillar which records the conquests of that preternatural chief who frowned the world into fetters at his feet, then that spot where the martyred Bourbons ascended the scaffold, where that angel Elizabeth exchanged the horrors of her prison for the crown of glory that awaited such faith, such love, such heroism as her’s! But whither is my pen straying? What is there in Paris that you have not at your finger’s ends? Aye, you could direct me to the very shelf in the Royal Library on which any book is placed which you desired to consult. You could send me north, south, east, or west, in the Jardin des Plantes for this, that, or the other class of _Linnæus_. You could take a wand, and, pointing to the pictures of the Louvre, give me a history of every subject which they exhibit, and name the master who executed each. In short, the only thing which you at this moment in the county of Kerry could not describe much more accurately to me than I to you is precisely that which no pen is capable of conveying, namely, the direct impression made upon the senses by the objects themselves; and this is so exhilarating, that I seem to myself to tread on air, and to breathe an atmosphere, like that which Saussure found on the summit of Mont Blanc, almost threatening delirium by its rarefaction. How striking the difference between history and fiction in the effects produced upon the mind while we are visiting the several theatres allotted to the drama of one or the other! All the charms of association, the powers of memory, the magic of imagination, are called into vivid action as we take our seat in a chair which had held Henry the Fourth, or place ourselves at a table on which Sully wrote; but when we look upon a Prior Park as the seat of Mr. Allworthy, Tom Jones vanishes from the scene, and we feel almost ashamed when fictitious personages lay claim to any region of the brain except that which is inhabited by fancy. “Unreal mockery hence” is the sentiment which I felt on viewing the scene of Fielding’s tale, and being desired to mark the wood, the pond, the garden, which are supposed by the author to have witnessed the early _squabbles_ of Bliffield and the youthful hero. Is not this an argument for keeping truth and fiction separate?