No doubt there is a great deal of truth in these maxims; but in spite of them, and many more like them, death has never been rendered very attractive to persons enjoying good health and a fair degree of prosperity. Death bears about the same relation to life that the Catacombs do to Paris; and I have never yet known any man or woman who would willingly quit the gay Boulevards or the delightful Champs Elysées to walk in the bone-lined and noisome vaults of the subterranean city. We passed only through the main avenues of the Catacombs,—there is very little variety in them,—and after spending nearly three hours underground, having supped full of material horrors, we reached another staircase, and once more ascended to the light of day, and the blessed sunshine. I had no idea where we were, and I was somewhat surprised to find that we came out nearly a mile and a half from where we had gone down. The charming capital never, I think, appeared quite so charming as it did on that delicious afternoon when I returned from death and decay to the living and the loving, to the comforts and the joys, of the upper world. [Sidenote: AN ENGLISHMAN’S OPINIONS.] While we were in that vast subterranean graveyard, I was struck by the different effect it produced upon different persons in our party. An Englishman, who was extremely anxious to “do the thing, you know,” was superlatively disgusted after he had passed the vestibule, and declared the Catacombs the “beastliest place” he had ever seen. He grumbled like Vesuvius before eruption, and swore that the French authorities ought to be exposed for permitting the subjects of Her Majesty to thrust themselves into such a “bloody” hole. He even suggested that it was a French trick to get rid of certain true and noble Britons, and, of course, threatened to write to the Times on the subject. He was constantly predicting that the rock overhead would tumble down and bury us all, and really seemed uncomfortable because something horrible did not happen. After he had gone half way through, he wanted to go back, and when he had reached the end of the route, he was much dissatisfied that we hadn’t done a great deal more. He fretted and fumed every minute of the three hours, and did his best to render every one as nervous and discontented as himself.