tell, those wrinkled and feeble old men!  What visions of Marengo and Austerlitz and Borodino shift still with a fiery vividness through their fading memories!  Some may have left a limb on the Lybian desert; and the sabre of the Cossack may have scarred the brows of others.  They witnessed the rising and setting of that great meteor, which intoxicated France with such a blaze of power and glory, and now, when the recollection of that wonderful period seems almost like a stormy dream, they are left to guard the ashes of their ancient General, brought back from his exile to rest in the bosom of his own French people.  It was to me a touching and exciting thing, to look on those whose eyes had witnessed the filling up of such a fated leaf in the world’s history.

Entrance is denied to the tomb of Napoleon until it is finished, which will not be for three or four yours yet.  I went, however, into the “Church of the Banners”—­a large chapel, hung with two or three hundred flags taken by the armies of the Empire.  The greater part of them were Austrian and Russian.  It appeared to be empty when I entered, but on looking around, I saw an old gray-headed soldier kneeling at one side.  His head was bowed over his hands, and he seemed perfectly absorbed in his thoughts.  Perhaps the very tattered banners which hung down motionless above his head, he might have assisted in conquering.  I looked a moment on those eloquent trophies, and then noiselessly withdrew.

There is at least one solemn spot near Paris; the laughing winds that come up from the merry city sink into sighs under the cypress boughs of Pere Lachaise.  And yet it is not a gloomy place, but full of a serious beauty, fitting for a city of the dead.  I shall never forget the sunny afternoon when I first entered its gate and walked slowly up the hill, between rows of tombs, gleaming white amid the heavy foliage, while the green turf around them was just beginning to be starred by the opening daisies, From the little chapel on its summit I looked back at the blue spires of the city, whose roar of life dwindled to a low murmur.  Countless pyramids, obelisks and urns, rising far and wide above the cedars and cypresses, showed the extent of the splendid necropolis, which is inhabited by pale, shrouded emigrants from its living sister below.  The only sad part of the view, was the slope of the hill alloted to the poor, where legions of plain black crosses are drawn up into solid squares on its side and stand alone gloomy—­the advanced guard of the army of Death!  I mused over the tombs of Moliere and La Fontaine; Massena, Mortier and Lefebre; General Foy and Casimir Perier; and finally descended to the shrine where Abelard reposes by the side of his Heloise.  The old sculptured tomb, brought away from the Paraclete, still covers their remains, and pious hands (of lovers, perhaps,) keep fresh the wreaths of immortelles above their marble effigies.