"How I envy you the sight of that delightful Montpelier, of which one reads and hears so much!" exclaims many an untravelled lady, no doubt, to her travelled brother or cousin. No place certainly sounds more familiarly in the ear as a novel-scene; and its very name is associated with ideas of beauty, verdure, retirement, orange groves, hanging woods, and all the et ceteras of a spot. "Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live, Is worth the best joy that life elsewhere can give." The truth is, that the Montpelier of the imagination may be found at Vico, Sorrento, Massa di Carrara; or, with a little alteration, in some spots of our own Devonshire coast. The real Montpelier is a large, opulent, well-frequented provincial capital, full of noise and dress, and possessing an air of neatness and fashion, but totally devoid of any thing allied to the poetry of nature. It stands on a round sweeping hill, commanding a considerable extent of land and sea; but the sea-coast is chiefly an expanse of low ground and etangs, or salt-water lakes; and the neighbouring hill country, resembling in form a succession of cultivated downs, has neither height nor variety to recommend it. The most interesting spot in Montpelier is the Place Peyrou, a public garden raised on high terraces, in a situation commanding the rest of the town. At the extremity of the principal walk stands an elegant open building of the Grecian order, overarching a basin into which the waters of the celebrated aqueduct of Montpelier are received, and from thence distributed through the town. The aqueduct itself, which springs from the foot of this pavilion, and conveys the water from the crest of an opposite hill, is a truly noble work, and, though modern, worthy in every respect of a Roman aedile. It was erected by the states of Languedoc in honour of Louis XIV. whose statue is placed in the garden. Like the Pont du Gard, it consists of two tiers of arches, fifty of which we counted in the lower range, and one hundred and fifty in the upper, until the lessening perspective baffled all farther attempts at reckoning. The architecture is inferior in dignity and massiveness to that of the Roman work, but exceeds it in extent, and probably in the quantity of masonry employed. Nothing can be more elegant than its general form, and the manner in which it is united to the terrace of the Place Peyrou.