[Footnote 1: It may not be amiss to observe that RAPHAEL employed the _impasto_ colour but in few of his pictures, of which the _Transfiguration_ is one wherein it is the most conspicuous: his other productions are painted with great transparency, the colours being laid on a white ground; which rendered still more difficult the operation above-mentioned. _Note of the Author_.] LETTER XXXI. _Paris, December 10, 1801._ "Of all the bridges that were ever built," says Sterne, "the whole world, who have passed over it, must own that the noblest--the grandest--the lightest--the longest--the broadest that ever conjoined land and land together upon the face of the terraqueous globe, is the PONT NEUF." The _Pont Neuf_ is certainly the largest, and, on account of its situation[1], the most conspicuous, and most frequented of any of the bridges in Paris; but, in the environs of the capital, is one which surpasses them all. This is the _Pont de Neuilly._ The first stone of the _Pont Neuf_ was laid by Henry III in 1578, and the foundation of the piles was begun to be formed on the opposite side; when the troubles of the League forced DU CERCEAU, the architect, to withdraw to foreign countries. The work was not resumed till the reign of Henry IV, who ordered it to be continued under the direction of MARCHAND; but, owing to various causes, the _Pont Neuf_ was not finished till 1674. The length of this bridge is one thousand and twenty feet, and its breadth seventy-two; which is sufficient to admit of five carriages passing abreast. It is formed of twelve arches, seven of which are on the side of the _Louvre_, and five on the side of the _Quai des Augustins_, extending over the two channels of the river, which is wider in this place, from their junction. In 1775, the parapets were repaired, and the foot-way lowered and narrowed. SOUFFLOT, the architect of the Pantheon, availed himself of this opportunity to build, on the twenty half-moons which stand immediately above each pile, as many rotundas, in stone, to serve as shops. On the outside, above the arches, is a double cornice, which attracts the eye of the connoisseur in architecture, notwithstanding its mouldering state, on account of the _fleurons_ in the antique style, and the heads of Sylvans, Dryads, and Satyrs, which serve as supports to it, at the distance of two feet from each other. As the mole that forms a projection on this bridge between the fifth and seventh arch, stands facing the _Place Dauphine_, which was built by Henry IV, it was the spot chosen for erecting to him a statue. This was the first public monument of the kind that had been raised in honour of French kings. Under the first, second, and third race, till the reign of Lewis XIII, if the statue of a king was made, it was only for the purpose, of being placed on his tomb, or else at the portal of some church, or royal residence which he had either built or repaired.