The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and black sky. Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and colour. Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of _gutter_--not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some as high as the Tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is their favourite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of rude gaiety to the looks. Milkwomen, with a little crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the chief material of the Parisian _café-au-lait_. Gay wineshops, painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are filled with workmen taking their morning’s draught. That gloomy-looking prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now occupy that mansion; they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners; they make hooks and eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the Legislature to superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago, and are at the Porte St. Denis itself. There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass; it commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories--nymphs and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact, singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then, _round_ the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect of triumphal arches), you cross the Boulevard, which gives a glimpse of trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and the great vehicle clatters into the courtyard, where its journey is destined to conclude.