One of the loveliest features of Paris is the Seine.  I was never tired of walking along its course.  Its granite embankments; its numberless superb bridges, throwing their graceful spans across it; its clear, limpid water; its paved bed; the women washing; the lively little boats; and the many noble buildings that look down upon it,—­make it the most charming citizen-river I ever beheld.  Rivers generally get badly soiled when they come to the city, like some other rural travelers; but the Seine is as pure as a meadow brook wherever I saw it, though I dare say it does not escape without some contamination.  I believe it receives the sewerage discharges farther down, and is no doubt turbid and pitchy enough there, like its brother, the Thames, which comes into London with the sky and the clouds in its bosom, and leaves it reeking with filth and slime.

After I had tired of the city, I took a day to visit St. Cloud, and refresh myself by a glimpse of the imperial park there, and a little of Nature’s privacy, if such could be had, which proved to be the case, for a more agreeable day I have rarely passed.  The park, toward which I at once made my way, is an immense natural forest, sweeping up over gentle hills from the banks of the Seine, and brought into order and perspective by a system of carriage-ways and avenues, which radiate from numerous centres like the boulevards of Paris.  At these centres were fountains and statues, with sunlight falling upon them; and, looking along the cool, dusky avenues, as they opened, this way and that, upon these marble tableaux, the effect was very striking, and was not at all marred to my eye by the neglect into which the place had evidently fallen.  The woods were just mellowing into October; the large, shining horse-chestnuts dropped at my feet as I walked along; the jay screamed over the trees; and occasionally a red squirrel—­larger and softer-looking than ours, not so sleek, nor so noisy and vivacious—­skipped among the branches.  Soldiers passed, here and there, to and from some encampment on the farther side of the park; and, hidden from view somewhere in the forest-glades, a band of buglers filled the woods with wild musical strains.

English royal parks and pleasure grounds are quite different.  There the prevailing character is pastoral,—­immense stretches of lawn, dotted with the royal oak, and alive with deer.  But the Frenchman loves forests evidently, and nearly all his pleasure grounds about Paris are immense woods.  The Bois de Boulogne, the forests of Vincennes, of St. Germain, of Bondy, and I don’t know how many others, are near at hand, and are much prized.  What the animus of this love may be is not so clear.  It cannot be a love of solitude, for the French are characteristically a social and gregarious people.  It cannot be the English poetical or Wordsworthian feeling for Nature, because French literature does not show this sense or this kind of perception.  I am inclined to think the forest is congenial to