No visit to a tomb, however solemn or however sad, can approach in thrilling horror to the sensation caused by passing the threshold of this charnel-house. The tomb calls us to the contemplation of the common, the inevitable lot; but this gathering place of sin and death arouses thoughts of all that most outrages nature, and most foully violates the sanctuary of life, into which God has breathed his spirit. But I was steadfast in my will to visit it, and I have done it. The building is a low, square, carefully-whited structure, situated on the Quai de la Cité. It is open to all; and it is fearful to think how many anxious hearts have entered, how many despairing ones have quitted it. On entering I found myself in a sort of low hall which contained no object whatever. If I mistake not, there is a chamber on each side of it: but it was to the left hand that I was led, and it was thither that about a dozen persons who entered at the same time either followed or preceded me. I do not too well remember how I reached the place where the bodies are visible; but I know that I stood before one of three large windows, through the panes of which, and very near to them, lighted also by windows in the roof, are seen a range of biers, sloping towards the spectator at an angle that gives the countenance as well as the whole figure of the persons extended on them fully to view. In this manner I saw the bodies of four men stretched out before me; but their aspect bore no resemblance to death--neither were they swollen or distorted in any way, but so discoloured as to give them exactly the appearance of bronze statues. Two out of the four had evidently been murdered, for their heads and throats gave frightful evidence of the violence that had been practised upon them; the third was a mere boy, who probably met his fate by accident: but that the fourth was a suicide, it was hardly possible to doubt; even in death his features held the desperate expression that might best paint the state of mind likely to lead to such an act. It was past mid-day when we entered the Morgue; but neither of the bodies had yet been claimed or recognised. This spectacle naturally set me upon seeking information, wherever I was likely to find it, respecting the average number of bodies thus exposed within the year, the proportion of them believed to be suicides, and the causes generally supposed most influential in producing this dreadful termination. I will not venture to repeat the result of these inquiries in figures, as I doubt if the information I received was of that strictly accurate kind which could justify my doing so; yet it was quite enough so, to excite both horror and astonishment at the extraordinary number which are calculated to perish annually at Paris by self-slaughter.