At eight o’clock the water-works were put in motion, and the variagated lamps with their many devices, displaying flowers, stars, and wheels, all with a brilliancy that can scarcely be described, seemed to throw everything in the shade we had seen at Versailles.  At nine o’clock the train was announced, and after a good deal of jamming and pushing about, we were again on the way to Paris.

LETTER VI.

The Tuileries—­Place de la Concorde—­The Egyptian Obelisk—­Palais Royal—­Residence of Robespierre—­A Visit to the Room in which Charlotte Corday killed Marat—­Church de Notre Dame—­Palais de Justice—­Hotel des Invalids—­National Assembly—­The Elysee.

PARIS, August 28.

Yesterday morning I started at an early hour for the Palace of the Tuileries.  A show of my card of membership of the Congress (which had carried me through so many of the public buildings) was enough to gain me immediate admission.  The attack of the mob on the palace, on the 20th of June, 1792, the massacre of the Swiss guard on the 10th of August of the same year, the attack by the people in July 1830, together with the recent flight of king Louis Philippe and family, made me anxious to visit the old pile.

We were taken from room to room, until the entire building had been inspected.  In front of the Tuileries, are a most magnificent garden and grounds.  These were all laid out by Louis XIV., and are left nearly as they were during that monarch’s reign.  Above fifty acres surrounded by an iron rail fence, fronts the Place de la Concorde, and affords a place of promenade for the Parisians.  I walked the pleasing grounds, and saw hundreds of well dressed persons walking under the shade of the great chestnuts, or sitting on chairs which were kept to let at two sous a piece.  Near by is the Place de Carrousel, noted for its historical remembrances.  Many incidents connected with the several revolutions occurred here, and it is pointed out as the place where Napoleon reviewed that formidable army of his before its departure for Russia.

From the Tuileries, I took a stroll through the Place de la Concorde, which has connected with it so many acts of cruelty, that it made me shudder as I passed over its grounds.  As if to take from one’s mind the old associations of this place, the French have erected on it, or rather given a place to, the celebrated obelisk of Luxor, which now is the chief attraction on the grounds.  The obelisk was brought from Egypt at an enormous expense; for which purpose a ship was built, and several hundred men employed above three years in its removal.  It is formed of the finest red syenite, and covered on each side with three lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions, commemorative of Sesostris—­the middle lines being the most deeply cut and most carefully finished; and the characters altogether number more than 1600.  The obelisk is of a single stone, is 72 feet in height, weighs 500,000 lbs., and stands on a block of granite that weighs 250,000 lbs.  He who can read Latin will see that the monument tells its own story, but to me its characters were all blank.