Nearer to my residence, and of a kindred style of architecture, is the church of ST. GERMAIN AUX AUXERROIS.  The west front or porch is yet sound and good.  Nothing particularly strikes you on the entrance, but there are some interesting specimens of rich old stained glass in the windows of the transepts.  The choir is completely and cruelly modernised.  In the side chapels are several good modern paintings; and over an altar of twisted columns, round which ivy leaves, apparently composed of ivory, are creeping, is a picture of three figures in the flames of purgatory.  This side-chapel is consecrated to the offering up of orisons “for the souls in purgatory.”  It is gloomy and repulsive.  Death’s heads and thigh bones are painted, in white colours, upon the stained wall; and in the midst of all these fearful devices, I saw three young ladies intensely occupied in their devotions at the railing facing the altar.  Here again, I observed priests examining young people in their catechism; and others in confessionals, receiving the confessions of the young of both sexes, previous to their taking the first sacrament on the approaching Fete-Dieu.

Contiguous to the Sorbonne church, there stands, raising its neatly constructed dome aloft in air, the Nouvelle Eglise Ste. Genevieve, better known by the name of the PANTHEON.  The interior presents to my eye the most beautiful and perfect specimen of Grecian architecture with which I am acquainted.  In the crypt are seen the tombs of French warriors; and upon the pavement above, is a white marble statue of General Leclerc (brother in law of Bonaparte,) who died in the expedition to St. Domingo.  This, statue is too full of conceit and affectation both in attitude and expression.  The interior of the building is about 370 English feet in length, by 270 in width; but it is said that the foundation is too weak.  From the gallery, running along the bottom of the dome—­the whole a miniature representation of our St. Paul’s—­you have a sort of Panorama of Paris; but not, I think, a very favourable one.  The absence of sea-coal fume strikes you very agreeably; but, for picturesque effect, I could not help thinking of the superior beauty of the panorama of Rouen from the heights of Mont Ste. Catharine.  It appears to me that the small lantern on the top of the dome wants a finishing apex.[10]

Yonder majestic portico forms the west front of the church called St. SULPICE ...  It is at once airy and grand.  There are two tiers of pillars, of which this front is composed:  the lower is Doric; the upper Ionic:  and each row, as I am told, is nearly forty French feet in height, exclusively of their entablatures, each of ten feet.  We have nothing like this, certainly, as the front of a parish church, in London.  When I except St. Paul’s, such exception is made in reference to the most majestic piece of architectural composition, which, to my eye, the wit of man hath yet devised.  The architect