the Palais Royal are more splendid, the articles in these are more substantially rich and good. But the Boulevard is the great point of attraction for me, and there I passed this morning, until it was time to return here before dark, lounging from the Rue Royale to the Boulevard du Temple and back again, with an occasional turn down the Rue de Richelieu, or the Passage des Panorama and Feydeau, into the Rue Vivienne and Palais Royal. The Boulevards (for there are many, every few hundred yards having a different designation) form a sort of circular road round what once was Paris, separating it from the Faubourgs, now forming part of the great whole; and these Boulevards form a street about as broad as Oxford Street, perhaps broader. This, without excepting the Palais Royal, is the most amusing part of Paris. The houses along this immense avenue are neither regular nor uniformly handsome, but high and low, rich and poor, wood and stone--from the cottage to the palace. A broad footway (not a paved _trottoir_) next the houses is in many parts shaded by rows of lime-trees, and separated from the road by a shabby wooden railing. The road is incessantly thronged with carts, fiacres, cabriolets, private equipages, and horsemen; every now and then a detachment of _gens-d’armes_ is seen urging their way soberly through the crowd. This forms a lively and amusing scene enough, particularly just now, from the contrast between numerous well-appointed English equipages and the clumsy vehicles and tinsel finery of the native. But it is in the footway one finds the greatest source of amusement, and most food for philosophical contemplation. Here one meets promenaders or passengers in every variety of European, and even some Asiatic, costumes. Some, you may know by their lounging gait, are employed only in killing time and dispelling _ennui_; others, bustling from shop to shop and from table to table, are people whose money burns in their pockets, and their amusement consists in getting rid of it as quickly as possible for articles utterly useless to them, and which, laid aside to-morrow, will quickly be forgotten. Again, a third, and by far the most numerous class one sees here, have a directly contrary employment to the last--they are people whose pockets burn to have money in them; and accordingly here, in this great thoroughfare, we find them resorting to all sorts, even the most ludicrous, the vilest, and the most degrading means of obtaining their end. Here tables innumerable are set out under the trees covered with all sorts of cheap articles--toys, perfumery, cutlery, combs, and articles in horn, bone, wood, metal, glass--every thing and every article upon each table of the same price. In passing along, one is deafened by the incessant and rapid vociferations of these dealers enumerating the various articles upon their tables, eulogising them in the most ridiculous terms, and announcing their price: “Dix sols pour chacun!--dix sols, dix sols--dix sols