The catacombs are, or is, (for I have forgotten my English grammar,) one of the _lions_ of the environs of Paris; and such a _lion_! Let the word "lumen" mean "life," and call it "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." When the Cimetière du Père la Chaise was substituted for church-yards, out of these latter, now to be applied to secular uses, were dug the human bones that were found in laying the foundations of buildings: these bones were carried to certain stone quarries, now no longer worked, a little to the south of Paris. So far, so good: but it came into the heads of the managers of this affair to make a pretty thing of it: on the sides of the passages of the quarry, and in the wider spaces, they ranged these bones in squares and circles, and wheels and stars; a skull in the middle, and rays of thighbones, brachia, and lacerti; of the ossa, ilium, ischium, and coccygis,--there was no os _sacrum_,--they made obelisks and pyramids; and this "region of horror,"--these "doleful shades,"--under the abused name of the catacombs, attract the idle and curious traveller to see by what fantastic devices that which is most respectable and venerable to humanity and to faith can be tricked out into raree-show. This place cannot be visited without inconvenience: it were to be wished, as in the case of the opera tune, that, instead of difficulty, there might be impossibility: it is excessively damp; moisture issues from above, though on the sides it is hidden by the choice tapestry with which they are decorated; but the ground is slippery; each person gropes along with a wax taper in his hand, sometimes obliged to curve himself. It is some consolation, at length, to find here an altar, on which, once in the year, on All Souls' Day, a _missa pro defunctis_ is said. I trust in the good taste, if not in the piety of the French people, so far, as to hope that this altar will be set up in a chapel above-ground, and that the catacombs will be filled with earth, and closed till the consummation of all things. The cimetière and the catacombs are, strictly speaking, in the environs of Paris, being without the walls. I made however with my sons several excursions to places in the neighbourhood, setting out in the morning, passing the day at the place of our visit, and returning in the cool of the evening. Mrs. ----, and my daughters, who had remained in England for the purpose of spending some time with her relations before quitting the country, arrived at Paris, under the conduct of one of her brothers, towards the middle of July,--in fact, as it happened, on the memorable fourteenth. I took an apartment for a month in the Rue Neuve des Mathurins, and during that month also we made excursions. I shall make a few observations on what I saw; and "first with the first," the pride of Louis XIV and of France, the deserted palace or château of Versailles.