short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue de l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some public building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will do--in order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the gigantic monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall not catch a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain (as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's toy bricks. Perhaps on the roof there is some gilding, and you ask yourself the question why it is there. These facades, of which there are so many, vary in detail; in effect they are all the same, an utter weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research into the city brings increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish, of feebleness, and weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in sugar for the top of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any advantage of view; there are none of those sudden views so common and so striking in English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an oppressive regularity. Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring assertion. From about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval outwork which had grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface of the square. Unless you had been told that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter. In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into competition with Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably lacking in all that should inspire a reverential feeling?