principal pediments; upon one is sculptured Mount Calvary, Abelard in his monastic dress, two busts, and an angel holding in his arms the soul of Abelard. The opposite pediment represents, in bassreliefs, the several figures that comprised the procession at AbeJard's funeral. Within the chapel is the tomb, upon which are two statues in a recumbent posture,-Abelard and Heloise, in a good state of preservation. Upon the sarcophagus, in bassrelief, are some of the Fathers of the church. The inscriptions were too much effaced to be deciphered correctly. Pope, in his inimitable verses, has immortalized this couple. I wonder any poet dare touch upon these characters, after reading such a splendid production. When I read it in your house, one evening several years ago, I thought it one of the finest pieces of composition of the kind, with which I was acquainted, in the English language. And, but for that short poem, few foreign travellers would take much interest in the monument.

Shortly after our return to Paris, we were favoured with a call at our hotel, from the Rev. Mr. Toase, Wesleyan missionary, who kindly offered to render us any assistance in his power to render our visit to Paris agreeable and entertaining. We considered this very kind, and were truly grateful. Some poet, Mr. Montgomery, if I am not mistaken, speaks feelingly upon a sort of "heart sickness" and "blank of mind," which strangers feel after being subjected for a considerable time to the inconvenience of a foreign language, which they but imperfectly understand. He tells us too of the refreshing joyfulness which the sound of one's native language diffuses over the spirit, when favoured with it suddenly and unexpectedly :—

When in foreign climes, 'midst sounds unknown,
We hear the speech or music of our own,
Roused to delight, from dear abstraction start,
And feel our country beating at our heart."

Thus it was with us; we were glad to see Mr. T., and to hear his voice; and thankful to the Wesleyan Missionary Committee, for placing one of their faithful missionaries in this great city. Mr. Toase preaches in the French language, and is doing much good; while he is rendered a blessing to English travellers,-in health and in sickness, in extricating them from difficulties, imparting "secular advice," or spiritual consolation. Ever, in Jesus, affectionately,

LETTER XXX.

J. C.

MY DEAR SIR,

TO THE SAME.

Paris, September, 1844.

TO-DAY we visited the Louvre. We had some difficulty in obtaining admittance, as our passports had been sent to the ambassadors at the French court for signature; but, after a short demur, and some ceremony, we were allowed to enter. How rapidly did five or six hours pass away "amidst the wonders" of this great national museum. I could fill many pages with "pencillings" which now lie before me, but, on looking them over, they appear so dry, and so uninteresting, and moreover differing so little from “the thousand and one" descriptions of "the curiosities of the Louvre," with which you and your select circle at

are already familiar, that I have just concluded, for the sake of my own credit, and your patience, to consign the greater part of them to oblivion. The Picture Gallery is a world in itself;-a scene of enchantment. Only think of a gallery, more than seven

hundred paces in length, by fourteen paces in breadth, the walls of which are covered from end to end with the noblest productions of the most celebrated masters of by-gone centuries. We were particularly pleased with several large paintings, of collossal magnitude, in a large hall leading to the principal gallery, of singular merit; rich in variety, imagination, and poetry; full of movement and interest, and displaying great faithfulness to nature, propriety of arrangement, and charm of colouring.

There are several large rooms in the same story, which present about six hundred paintings, chiefly of the French, Flemish, Spanish, and Italian schools; some of which are extremely coarse and ordinary, both in drawing, colouring, and expression, and which, but for their antiquity, would probably long ere this have been consigned to the lumber rooms. We noticed others, however, which, in the opinion of my travelling companion, and he is a better judge than I can have any pretensions to be,—are admirable for composition, feeling, and energy.

The Gallery of Statuary, is rich in the works both of the ancient and modern chisels. Whoever visits this great museum, cannot fail to be impressed with an exalted idea of the national taste of France, for all that is beautiful, grand, instructive, and ennobling in the fine arts. As we are soon to visit the land so long famous for painting and sculpture, I may with propriety excuse myself from enlarging here. A detail of "first impressions," among the works of art in the Louvre, would, I fear, be premature, and only lay the foundation for repentance. I am certain, if spared to return to Paris, that I shall be better qualified to decide upon those points you have proposed, with regard to the "treasures of art, in the Louvre," than I feel myself at present.

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We have just returned from an agreeable visit to

the Pantheon, a sort of national mausoleum; for although it has quite the appearance of a church, it seems to be used for no other purpose than as a place of sepulture for the great men of the nation. The following extract from my notes will, perhaps, afford you a better and more pleasing impression than a more laboured description, which I feel quite incapable of just now. The "freeness and freshness" of the thoughts will, I hope, make up for the absence of that sort of "detail" which you require. What a noble portico have we here! There are not less than twenty-two fluted Corinthian columns,-say five feet in diameter, and sixty feet high. The eye ranging upwards rests upon that tranquil pediment, and its massive sculpture, and is detained at length upon that imposing motto on the plinth: Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante, “ Their grateful country" (dedicates this)" to her great men. From thence vision

ranges over the entire structure, which shows a front of between two and three hundred feet; thence upward to the superb dome, which terminates at an altitude of two hundred and fifty feet from the pavement. How majestic and imposing! But how strangely contrasted with the little heaps of dusty bones, which the noble structure shelters and honours! How humiliating!-but "the mind is the standard of the man." How solemnly did these lines flow through my mind, as Mr. Hudson was quoting them just as we were approaching this building: he referred with the poet, of course, to the "skull"-the skulls-the mortal remains of the dead whose vaults we intended to visit:

"Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, its portals foul.
Yes! this was once ambition's airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.
Behold through each lack lustre, eyeless hole,

The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,

And passion's host that never brook'd control :-
Could all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,

People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?"

We are now within the interior. Architectural critics have been severe upon this edifice, provoked, . possibly, by the boast of the French architect, that it would rival St. Paul's, at London, and even St. Peter's, at Rome; in which it is too true he has most signally failed. Want of solidity, has, I believe, been considered its principal defect. That array of small arches which support the vault overhead, seem too airy and unsubstantial for the weight they sustain; their arabesque and fanciful mould appears too fragile to bear the superincumbent and tremendous mass of architecture which rests upon them. The sentiment of a traveller is calculated to make one feel rather " nervous," in attempting to risk farther inspection. "When the traveller peruses the inscription on the frieze, Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante, and recollects that the country here, means the bloody faction of the Jacobins; and the great men alluded to were the writers who prepared, or the assassins who accomplished, the revolution,-Voltaire, and Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Marat, he will not regret that a church thus profaned, and turned into a Pandemonium, should tumble to the ground, and crush in its fall the impure carcasses that are still allowed to putrify in its vaults." The remembrance, however, that the edifice has weathered the storms of many years, removes feelings of apprehension, and we proceed. The interior, notwithstanding a few defects, is imposing and grand. Although in the form of a Greek cross, and several of its parts unequal in dimensions, there is a union of detail, and a harmony of parts, which overspread, like a solemn charm, the whole. The columns which divide the nave from the aisles, harmonize in order with the portico,