My first visits were paid to churches and to bookseller’s shops.  Of churches, the Cathedral is necessarily the principal.  It is large, lofty, and of an elegant construction, of the Grecian order:  finished during the time of Stanislaus.  The ornamental parts are too flaunting; too profuse, and in bad taste.  This excess of decoration pervades also the house of the Governor; which, were it not so, might vie with that of Lord Burlington; which it is not unlike in its general appearance.  In the Cathedral, the monument of Stanislaus, by Girardon, is considered to be a chef-d’ouvre.  There was a Girardet—­chief painter to Stanislaus, who is here called “the rival of Apelles:”  a rival with a vengeance!  From thence I went to an old church—­perhaps of the thirteenth, but certainly of the fourteenth century.  They call it, I think, St. Epreuve. In this church I was much struck with a curious old painting, executed in distemper, upon the walls of a side aisle, which seemed to be at least three hundred years old.  It displayed the perils and afflictions of various Saints, on various emergencies, and how they were all eventually saved by the interposition of the Virgin.  A fine swaggering figure, in the foreground, dressed out in black and yellow-striped hose, much delighted me.  Parts of this curious old picture were worth copying.  Near to this curiosity seemed to be a fine, genuine painting, by Vandyke, of the Virgin and Child—­the first exhibition of the kind which I had seen since leaving Paris.  It formed a singular contrast to the picture before described.  On quitting this old church, I could not help smiling to observe a bunch of flowers, in an old mustard pot—­on which was inscribed “Moutarde Fine de Nageon, a Dijon—­” placed at the feet of a statue of the Virgin as a sacred deposit!

On leaving the church, I visited two booksellers:  one of them rather distinguished for his collection of Alduses—­as I was informed.  I found him very chatty, very civil, but not very reasonable in his prices.  He told me that he had plenty of old books—­Alduses and Elzevirs, &c.—­with lapping-over vellum-bindings.  I desired nothing better; and followed him up stairs.  Drawer after drawer was pulled out.  These M. Renouard had seen:  those the Comte d’Ourches had wished to purchase; and a third pile was destined for some nobleman in the neighbourhood.  There was absolutely nothing in the shape of temptation—­except a Greek Herodian, by Theodore Martin of Louvain, and a droll and rather rare little duodecimo volume, printed at Amsterdam in 1658, entitled La Comedie de Proverbes.  The next bookseller I visited, was a printer.  “Had he any thing old and curious?” He replied, with a sort of triumphant chuckle, that he “once had such a treasure of this kind!” “What might it have been?” “A superb missal—­for which a goldsmith had offered him twelve sous for each initial letter upon a gold