dogs straying about the streets are sent by the police to be, kept for a week, and then, if not owned, to be sold, if they are worth anything, and, if not, to be killed. The dogs impounded— who were evidently leading a very dull life, and who all looked at me with more or less attention— consisted of two Italian greyhounds; a mastiff, with a collar and padlock; a mongrel pointer; a dog very ill, that never moved, and that lay coiled up in a circle, with his dry nose resting on his empty flank; and various other curs. One, standing at the extremity of his chain on his hind legs and pawing at me, whined and barked incessantly. The latter noise was so sharp that it went entirely through my head and partly through my heart. The poor creature seemed to know he was going to be hanged merely because he was friendless, and his pawing proposal to me was that I should be his master; in short, by noises, as well as by gestures, he entreated me to take him away. In the yard there was nothing but stables, and I could find no human being to converse with, until, looking upwards, I saw the face, shoulders, and stout arms of a great, strong, coarse-looking woman, looking down at me from a second-story window, over which, and immediately over the lady's head, was written on the whitewashed stone in buff letters the word "FANNY." I talked to her a short time about dogs in general, and about the dogs in the fourrière, over which she and her husband presided, in particular; but as she answered my questions rather gruffly, and as the poor dogs' countenances had told me all and infinitely more than I desired to remember, our missuited acquaintance soon came to an end. After leaving the poor animals to their fate, I passed, as I was walking along a large street, an immense timber-yard, in which the scantlings for a large roof were all planned and lying on the ground. Among them, with bare throats and moist faces, I saw, hard at work, thirty men dressed in blouses. Further on I observed forty or fifty men, paid partly by Government and partly by the city, busily employed in completing the demolition of a condemned street. It was Sunday. I may here remark that, out of the seven days of the week, the second Sunday in May of the fourth year of the presidentship has, by a law of the Republic, been selected for the hardest political work known, namely, the election throughout France of a new President. HOSPICE DE LA VIEILLESSE. WITH my mind overrun in all directions by dogs whining, yelping, and barking, I proceeded along the Boulevart de l'Hôpital until I found myself on a large esplanade of grass, dotted with trees. Across it were two paved roads converging to a handsome Doric gateway, supported by a pair of massive lofty columns, above which were inscribed in black paint, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité," and beneath, deeply engraved Hospice de la Vieillesse. This magnificent hospital, commonly called "La Salpêtrière,”—from its standing on ground formerly occupied as a saltpetre manufactory— and which in the year 1662 contained nearly ten thousand poor, is 120 yards more than a quarter of a mile in length, by 36 yards more than the fifth of a mile in breadth. On arriving at its gate, always open to the public every day in the week, from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, I was accosted, and, after a few words of civility on both sides, was accompanied, by a very intelligent red-faced official, dressed in blue coat, scarlet collar, with cocked hat worn crossways à la Napoléon, and ornamented with a tricoloured cockade, who conducted me into a fine, large, healthy, grass square, teeming with old women, surrounded by trees, bounded in the rear, right, and left by buildings, and in front of the entrance-gate by a very handsome church, subdivided cruciformly into four chapels. As we were walking across this spacious promenade my guide informed me that there were at present in the Hospice about five thousand old women, all of whom-excepting on Sundays and fête-days, when they are allowed to dress as they like-wear the uniform of the establishment, which is blue in summer and grey in winter. He added that their qualification for admission was either bodily or mental infirmities, or, without either of those afflictions, having attained seventy years of age. On the principal of the four altars in the church, I found eighty wax candles standing before a statue of the Virgin, behind which was the wall, painted light blue, thickly covered with silver stars. In front of the whole of this costly finery I observed upon her knees, on the hard pavement, a poor old woman. Beyond the church I was conducted through a variety of extensive gardens, grass plots covered with trees and intersected by paths, in which old women in all directions were enjoying themselves; indeed, although the institution is, I believe, the largest of its sort in the world, it had the appearance only of a place of pleasure. Here were to be seen old women ruminating on benches; there others seated in groups on grass emerald green. On Sundays and Thursdays their friends are allowed to come and see them; and accordingly, in many places I observed a young woman neatly, and, by comparison, very fashionably, dressed, sitting on a stone bench by the side of her aged mother clad occasionally in the uniform of this noble charity. On entering the laboratory, a detached building, instead of finding in it, as I expected, nothing but a strong smell of rhubarb and jalap, I perceived several persons engaged in preparing, in five great caldrons, what they called "tisane," a sort of weak gruel, which in large zinc pails— a variety of which of different sizes were in waiting is carried all over the establishment. Adjoining is the "Pharmacie," a light, airy |