A most superb avenue is the road which gradually ascends from the Pont de Neuilly to the Barrière de l’Etoile, the unfinished works of which terminate this unrivalled perspective. I forget whether there are two or four rows of elms on either side--and such trees! This splendid road was alive with carriages, equestrians, and pedestrians, as I rode up it to the _barrière_; and here another magnificent scene burst upon me. Hence the road descended gradually towards the city, handsome houses, and even rows of houses, intermingling with the masses of foliage on either side; and far away, in hazy, dreamy distance, this avenue was terminated by the heavy but imposing mass of the Tuileries, with the spotless banner of ancient France waving gracefully in the evening breeze from the elevated central mass. I returned from this interesting excursion just as the fading tints of the western sky began to sober down into the greys of twilight. My curiosity was excited by this peep of Paris, and the next morning actually found me riding slowly down from the Barrière de l’Etoile towards the Place Louis Quinze, delighted with the novelty of the scene by which I was surrounded. On either side of the road, among the noble trees, were handsome houses, the large open windows and balconies of which were filled with green shrubs and brilliant flowers. Beyond these I came to a wide open space everywhere covered with trees, but poor ones compared to the giants forming the avenue. Under these a regiment of English hussars, and a band of Cossacks, were in bivouac together--a novel and amusing scene. The soldiers and their horses were objects of curiosity (English as well as Cossacks) to a crowd of idle Parisians who stood by, not in silent contemplation of the _strange animals_, but chattering like a pack of monkeys, and explaining what they saw to those of their neighbours less gifted with the powers of conception. Carriages, too, as they passed, and groups of young men on horseback (looking half-military, half-bourgeois, from their mustachioed upper lips, erect carriage, holstered saddles, and cavalry bridles), paused to contemplate the foreign bivouac. If these last were amused with my countrymen and their friends, I was no less so with them. There was something irresistibly comic in their self-satisfied air as they paraded their managed cats of steeds before the fair ones in the carriages, and the affected, contemptuous looks they cast on the hardy fellows who had so recently chased their own braves (perhaps some of themselves) from Brussels to Paris. The equipages, too, were worthy of notice: they reminded me of Ireland--“_Nothing of a piece_.” Handsome carriage, well-dressed servants, dog-horses and shabby harness; or shabby servant and beautiful horse, new harness, and an old jarvey of a carriage--the fair dames within invariably smart. No comparison can be instituted between French and English equipages. The neatness and perfect completeness,