how indispensable. We are very comfortably situated; we have delightful bed-rooms, a little ante-chamber, and the prettiest saloon, looking on a charming garden. The quiet is such a relief; for in Rue Louis-le-Grand we could not hear each other's voice for the noise; and above my head was a printer, and opposite my window a carpenter's. I do not know what it may be in the city, but at the West End there is nothing that can give an idea of the noise of Paris; the streets are all paved, the omnibusses innumerable, and carts and carriages all of the heaviest kind. I was delighted with the giraffe—it is like the creation of a fairy tale—with the light, graceful head, like that of a serpent, and the heavy, ill-shaped body of an animal; it seems as if nature had been making two creatures at once, and not having time to finish both, joined them together in a hurry, being about as well matched as marriages in general.*[1] The elephant, too, was stupendous, it gave me sensation of fear, and made me understand, better than anything else, the gigantic size of life in the East. Next to these was a tremendous cedar of Lebanon, more like a tree built than one planted. Such a tree, standing alone in a plain, would be the most magnificent temple in the world. I have read as many books as I could get, having subscribed to a French library. We have not an idea of French literature in England. As far as I can judge, it is full of novelty, vivid
- ↑ * Unequal marriages are, it is true, seldom happy, but sometimes those which appear to be equal at the outset, turn out no better. Baron Holland, of tall memory, used to tell that in walking out near London one day he saw an old wizened Italian Tramp on one side of the road with two or three monkeys, and on the other a rather buxom woman trudging along in the same manner with a tambourine. He was struck by the contrast, and entering into chat with the lady found she was the Signor's wife, and asked her, How she could marry that old man? "Oh, Sir," said she, with a deep drawn sigh, and a meaning glance at the questioner, "when I married him, he had a dromedary!"
