The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass, from the railroad station, through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women, under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses, palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence highborn duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri, and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honour of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty stones. [Illustration: THE CHEAP DEFENCE OF NATIONS A NATIONAL GUARD ON DUTY] After pacing, for some time, through such dismal streets, we _déboucher_ on the _grand place_; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the glories of France. In the midst of the great, lonely plain, this famous residence of King Louis looks low and mean.--Honoured pile! time was when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate;--fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women, from Paris, broke through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace. We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.,--all the mistresses of his successor,--and all the great men who have flourished since the French empire began. Military heroes are most of these: fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of ‘all the glories’ of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage, filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.