Disappointment awaits the man who, having read or heard the French account of any place in France or the French dominions, expects to find it realised, or even nearly so. With them all is exaggeration and bombast; even the accounts of their most respectable and veracious writers, in all matters relating to France or the French, must be received _cum grano salis_. Disappointment certainly was mine after reading and hearing so much of the several gardens (as Frascatin, Tivoli, the Jardins Turc and du Prince) when I turned into the latter of these two celebrated places in the Boulevard du Temple. Certes, I took it _en déshabillé_, for the evening and by lamp-light is its hour of triumph, and then I am here always. The guide-book speaks of “un jardin agréable.” What did I find? Certainly no garden--a yard (gravelled) divided by hedges (such ones as may be expected in a town) into several compartments, in which are a few boxes; one side bounded by the _salle_, with its usual accompaniments--the others, by gables or back walls of the neighbouring houses; figure irregular, and space very confined. Having nothing fixed for Friday, I made a wandering day of it. Up one gloomy street, down another; at last found myself in the Place des Innocens, in which is held the principal vegetable-market of Paris. The Place is large but gloomy; houses very high, of a dark-coloured stone, and in the usual French style, windows open, and exhibiting all the variety of clothes hanging to dry, flowers, rich curtains and common ones, &c. &c., incident to buildings inhabited by so many different families. The area presented a varied, characteristic, and moreover an interesting picture. The whole space was covered with large umbrellas, fixed upright over the different tables, &c., the convex surfaces of which, of all the hues of the rainbow (pink predominating), reminded me strongly of the _testudo_ of the ancients. Amidst these arose, to the height of some forty or fifty feet, the noble Fontaine des Innocens, with its fine _nappes d’eau_. Not only the Marché itself, but the Rue de la Ferronnerie, and several adjacent ones, seem quite the focus of business, such stir and bustle do they present. The profusion of fruits and vegetables in this market is remarkable, more particularly when it is remembered that not only Paris itself, but also the whole neighbouring country, is occupied by countless hosts of foreigners. The old ladies, seated under their immense umbrellas (formed generally of alternate pink and white breadths), or stumping about in their _sabots_, give a very animated air to this scene, which, however, is rendered less pleasing from the overpowering smell of decayed and decaying vegetable matter profusely strewed over the pavement. It is an amusing place this Marché, and although only now mentioned, I have visited it more than once. Besides this, there are numerous other markets in different parts of the town, the neatest