The building which was to have been a monument dedicated to the grand army, is converted into a church, for which, by its form, it was well adapted. But, instead of this edifice, a monument has been raised to the glory of the French warriors, _ære perennius_;--a work in twenty-six volumes, by a society of military men and men of letters: it is entitled "Victoires et Conquêtes" in very large capitals, "désastres et revers" in very small capitals, of the French armies, from 1792 to 1815. It is composed in the spirit of the liberal party, but with great moderation: it speaks with constant respect of the royal family of France, with unreserved freedom of Bonaparte, and with severe censure of the faults of the republican government: its hatred of England is more than patriotic,--plus quam civilia: it is written in a very respectable style, itself a history, and forming a collection of materials to be embodied into future, general, or partial histories of the revolution. Even "the Great Unknown" himself, than whom no one has a better right to disprove the assertion of Pindar, that fable delights more than truth, since so much of what is delightful in fable is of his own creation, and every one may do what he wills with his own;--even he, who may dispute with Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Ariosto, the title of "the greatest liar that ever lived,"--may have recourse to more than the latter half of these twenty-six volumes, in the composition of that story, in which every thing shall be true, yet every thing shall be astonishing. It is superfluous to wish him success: of that he is assured, both by his subject, and by the novel manner in which it will be handled; but I wish he would take the trouble of once revising his manuscript before impression, to correct the blunders of rapid composition. I saw the model in plaister of the statue in marble, of an elephant, which statue was to have been raised upon a high pedestal in the Place de la Bastille: a staircase, beginning within one of the fore-legs of the elephant, was to have led to the top of a tower on his back, from which would have been seen all Paris and its environs: from his proboscis was to have issued a fountain. The model, I am told, is now broken in pieces. Perhaps this is fortunate: the elephant might in future times have answered the purpose, if not of the Bastille, of the bull of Phalaris: after the pleasant jests we have heard of _la petite fenêtre nationale_,[15] and the _baptême republicain_[16],--who knows whether the sovereign people, calling to mind the bull of Phalaris oh the site of the Bastille, and justifying, according to custom, its own tyranny by that of others,--might not have amused itself with the bellowing of an elephant? Despots, of one or many heads, resemble each other: ----facies non omnibus una, Nee diversa tamen.