The _sheet of water_ is about sixty yards long and three yards broad. Upon this the gay Parisians perform their nautical exploits or _promenade sur l’eau_. The illuminations and fireworks are on such an inferior scale that the price of admission, three livres (or half a crown), is absolutely exorbitant. Frascati, at the corner of the rue de la Loi, on the boulevard, is the most elegant lounge in Paris. The garden is small but well lighted--along each walk are busts of the French and English poets, and at the extremity of the principal one is a pretty little hermitage, arranged with great taste. Nothing is paid for admission, the proprietors are amply compensated by the prices the fashionable company of Paris pay for the exquisite ices in the form of peaches and other refreshments supplied at no very immoderate price. There is no place of public amusement here which unites so much elegance with decency, and I was never satisfied with the fascinations of Frascati _below stairs_. Above the apartments are reserved for gamblers. [Sidenote: THE BOULEVARDS] Chantilly, in the Champs Elysées, is a lower kind of Tivoli, a franc is the price of admission, which includes refreshments. The inferior orders in France conduct themselves with more propriety and are less riotous than the Londoners who assemble at Bagnigge Wells and the so-called tea gardens of our Metropolis. On the other side of the water, near the residence of the British Minister, in the Faubourg S. Germain, is a fashionable walk in the Garden of Biron. But that which gave me most pleasure was the solitary and unfrequented garden of the Luxembourg. To this solitude I fled when I wished to avoid the noise of Paris. It was also a place of conversation with my friends. Here I learnt the _true_ history of the French Revolution from personages who had distinguished themselves in that wonderful event, here I was instructed in the characters of those who now govern France; this was the rendezvous of concealed Royalists and avowed Republicans. I shall never forget the walks in the Gardens of the Luxembourg. We were too remote from the office of Fouché for our whispers to reach it, and we were too well guarded to become objects of suspicion. The Government are now repairing the Palace, and the new Senate is to hold its sittings there. The garden will then be cleared and beautified. There are three or four other public walks in Paris. The Gardens of the Arsenal, the Soubise and the Temple, but they are totally deserted. The garden of the Tuileries, attached to the residence of the First Consul, the Garden of the Palais Royal and the Jardin des Plantes I have not yet described. Each of these gardens has been the scene of extraordinary events and deserve a detailed account and description. XII