The Luxembourg gardens I have spoken of with some particularity in another place.

The Jardin d’ Hiver is a winter garden, and contains many roofed hot-houses.  The public are admitted by the payment of one franc.  There are occasional displays of flowers and plants.

The Champs Elysees form one of the most delightful promenades in Paris.  They contain no plants or flowers, but are so thickly planted with trees, that they may be called gardens.  It was originally a promenade for Marie de Medici.  It runs along the banks of the Seine, from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch.  The length is a mile and a quarter, the breadth three hundred and seventy-three yards.  All the public fetes take place on these fields.  On the right is the promenade, and on the left under the trees and in open spaces are fairs, instrumental performances, shows, etc. etc.  It is one of the most dazzling scenes in the night that ever eye beheld.  I well remember that on my first visit to Paris, I wandered out of my hotel and saw the Champs Elysees in the evening.  The sight was almost overpowering.  The whole place was a scene of splendor.  The trees and grounds were one blaze of lamps.  Scattered over it were little theaters, concerts in the open air, every kind of show, coffee-houses, restaurants, and every kind of amusement.  The concerts charge nothing.  But if you enter within the ring you pay for a seat a trifle, and also for your refreshments.  Almost everyone who entered, (it was all in the open air,) bought a glass of something to drink, and sat down to enjoy it with the music.  Fiddlers and mountebanks abounded in every direction, and beggars were more numerous if possible than the spectators.  But not one solicited alms.  It would jar too coarsely upon the Parisian refinement.  A beggar sings, looks piteously, plays his flageolet or harp, but never asks for money!  The whole scene presented to me was one of the most brilliant I ever witnessed, and it probably impressed me more from the fact that I was unprepared for it.  I have often since frequented it in the evening, but never wearied of it.

The Jardin des Plantes is the most beautiful free garden in the world.  It was founded in 1635 by Louis XIII.  Buffon was its most celebrated superintendent.  He devoted himself enthusiastically to its cultivation and development.  It was at periods, during the revolutionary times, much neglected, but it continued to prosper through everything, unlike many of the other gardens.  It consists of a botanical garden with several large hot-houses and green-houses attached; several galleries with scientific natural collections; a gallery of anatomy; a menagerie of living animals; a library of natural history; and lastly, a theater for public lectures.  Everything is open to the people—­lectures and all—­and take it altogether, it is the finest and noblest garden in the world.