The crowd in the streets continued to increase every hour. It was evident that the city already contained ten times as many guests as it could accommodate with lodgings. There was not a public house where a bed or even a dinner could be obtained. All round the city, in vacant spaces, were temporary erections of booths, tents, shanties and other hasty and imperfect structures, for the accommodation of the thousands and thousands who could find no better quarters. At night, the whole city was a blaze of lamps; every street being brilliantly illuminated. This exhibition is not performed as with us, merely by placing lights in the windows, but by such artificial and tasteful arrangement of them as adds greatly to the picturesqueness and magnificence of the scene. The two great streets bordering the river, and the three bridges crossing it, were lined with lofty scaffoldings, representing castles, towers, obelisks, and orders of architecture. These were hung with millions of lamps, and the whole exhibited a scene of dazzling and fairy magnificence, that reminded me of oriental splendor and the visions of enchantment. The crowd of spectators completely blocked up the streets, and it was impossible to move in any direction without great difficulty. All night long the streets were full, and the blaze of the illumination was kept up till the light of the lamps began to fade away in the brightness of the dawn. In the immense numbers of those who thronged the city, few thought of a lodging for the night. Indeed, a lodging within doors, was out of the question with regard to the most of them--there were not houses to hold them. The greater part of these houseless guests were country people, who had travelled on foot from a distance, and began towards morning to feel the fatigues of their journey and sight-seeing. Sleep overpowered them amidst the din and hurly-burly of the crowd, and they threw themselves by hundreds and by thousands on the steps of the doors, and on the pavements in nooks and corners, to sleep. The steps of the churches were black with heaps of men and women piled one upon another, fast asleep. Fortunately, the night was most balmy and serene, and they were all too much accustomed to the open air to suffer by this exposure.