near to excite the warmest admiration.  Each side is 408 feet, and although there is a degree of uniformity, taken en masse, preserved, with two of the facades particularly, yet on examination the ornaments are found to be different, each side requires much close study after a coup-d’oeil has been taken of the whole, and the more it is inspected, the more beautiful will it be found; the statues and different devices are by five different sculptors, the most celebrated of their day, the order of the pillars is generally corinthian, but there are some, which are composite.  The external facades are by no means burthened with ornament, the north and western sides being perfectly plain, the south side has a noble effect, and faces the quay, having plenty of room to admit of its being properly viewed and justice rendered to its noble range of forty corinthian pilasters; this is by Perrault, as well as the eastern side, which is certainly one of the finest specimens of modern architecture that can be imagined.

A grand colonnade composed of 28 coupled corinthian columns has the most splendid effect, the basement story being perfectly simple, whilst the central mass of the building which forms the gateway is crowned by a pediment of stones, each 52 feet in length and three in thickness; all is vast, all is grand about this noble front, which is justly the admiration of every architectural connoisseur, no matter from what part of the world he may come.

Of the interior volumes might be said, I must first, after conducting my reader to the great door on the southern side of the building, direct his attention to the grand staircase, which is of a most splendid character, as to design, and consistently beautiful as to execution.  The visiter after passing by a small room filled with very old paintings enters a larger when the grand gallery extends before him, which is unrivalled in the world, being above a quarter of a mile in length, and 42 feet in width, filled with paintings, principally from the old masters, but of them I will treat in a future chapter; it contains 1406 pictures some of them being of immense size.  We will now pass on for the moment to the other apartments.  The bed-room of Henry IV must arrest our attention, and the eye naturally falls on the alcove where his bed was placed, the oak carving, and gilded mouldings have been preserved exactly in the same state that they were when he died.  We next proceed to a suite of rooms containing paintings of the Spanish, French, Flemish, and Italian schools; others devoted to drawings; of the latter there are 1293.  Another range of apartments is on the ground floor and called the Museum of Antiquities, containing statues and various specimens of sculpture, in all 1,116 objects.  Other suites of rooms are appropriated to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and in some of the apartments are objects of great value; that the amount of real worth of the contents of the Louvre must be incalculable,