The lines, twenty-eight of which can be made at once, were drawn by pens supplied with ink from a roller. For official documents, in which the lines required were so numerous that they exceeded the breadth of the machines, other young women were employed in executing them by hand, by means of combs, the teeth of which, confined in an iron frame, were made to correspond in number and position with the lines required. In consequence of this room being rather overheated, the young women employed in it had all a very high colour; they were, moreover, not only exceedingly well dressed, but apparently quite as well behaved. Indeed, from their appearance and demeanour, no one in England would have judged them to be mechanics.

In a small chamber we came to four tables, at each of which were sitting six young women, busily occupied in folding and sewing sheets, under the direction of a superintendent, securely seated in a wired caged cell at the bottom of the apartment, which opened into an immense room, 400 feet long, in which we found in full operation the Binding Department, in all its branches. For nearly 100 yards we passed through piles of half-bound books-principally edged either with bright yellow or bright scarlet-waiting to undergo that variety of tailoring and millinery operations necessary to enable them to appear before the literary world in quarter, half, or full dress. The labourers in this immense and important workshop were, as nearly as I could judge, composed, in about equal parts, of young men and young women; and with the curiosity natural to their age, they all stopped work as our party passed the tables on the right and left, at which they respectively were seated; however, I could not but feel they had as much right to be curious about us as we had about them.

Like a hen preceding a brood of motley-coloured chickens, our young conductor now led us along a passage to the summit of a very broad staircase, where, gradually stopping, he turned round, took off his hat, and, with a slight bow, announced to us that" we had seen all." My right hand, as in duty bound, dived straight into my pocket; but as I felt it was grasping at a quantity of loose silver, of all sizes, without knowing how much to select, in a whisper I asked my fair interpreter who had been labouring hard in my behalf, to be so good as to ascertain for me what I ought to give. Our young

conductor must have instinctively understood the question I was asking, for, with that pleasing manner and mild expression of countenance which had distinguished him throughout the many weary hours we had been bothering him, he said to me, before the whole party," Monsieur, il nous est expressément défendu de rien recevoir !"* Indeed I could not induce him to accept anything.

His parting words, and a sketch of the interior of the drawing-room in which strangers are received in the "Imprimerie Nationale" of Paris, ought, I submit, to be hung up in Prince Albert's Crystal Palace, as a specimen of French politeness, not only to be admired, but to be copied by the governments and by the people of every other nation on the globe.

LA MORGUE.

Ar Paris every face I met appeared to be so exceedingly happy and so remarkably polite that from the hour of my arrival I had been in the habit, without the slightest precaution, of walking anywhere at any time of day or night. Happening, however, to mention to a French gentleman the late hour at which, entirely alone, I had passed along a certain district, he told me, very gravely, that there were in Paris-as indeed there are in all countries-great numbers of men, never to be seen in daylight, who subsist by robbery and occasionally by murder; that after dark they haunt lonely spots, and that not unfrequently, after knocking down and robbing their victims, they have summarily chucked them over the bridges they were in the act of crossing into the Seine.

"You must, my dear (mon cher'), be more careful," he said to me, with very great kindness, "or you will find your way to the Morgue!" and as I had often from others heard it was the place in which all dead bodies found in the streets of Paris or in the Seine are exposed, and as on the following day I had occasion to be in its neighbourhood, I determined I would fulfil my kind friend's prophecy by "finding my way

*Sir, we are expressly forbidden to receive anything!

to it." Accordingly, walking along the Quai, I perceived on the banks of the Seine, close before me, touching the extremity of the Marché Neuf-indeed, the nice, fresh, green vegetables in the last of the booths ranged along the wall of the Quai actually touched it--a small, low, substantial Doric building, constructed of massive, roughly-hewn stones, as large as those commonly used in England for a county jail.

On gazing at it attentively for a few minutes, a stranger might consider it to be a post-office, for a certain proportion of the crowd that was continually passing along the thoroughfare in which it stood, kept what is commonly called "popping in," while about the same number-just as if they had deposited their letters-were as regularly popping out, and then proceeding on their course.

On the east wall of this little building there hung, singing in a cage, a bullfinch, belonging to one of the vegetable-selling women in the market. On the right, standing on a chair and surrounded by a gaping crowd, was a travelling conjuror, who appeared to possess the power of making every face of his attendant assembly smile or grin with more or less delight.

After standing for some time, listening sometimes to the bullfinch, sometimes to the conjuror, but more constantly looking towards the little building between them, I approached its door, from which, just as I entered it, there walked out arm-in-arm two well-dressed ladies, with flowers in their bonnets. On entering a small room-it was La Morgue-I saw immediately before me a partition, composed of large clean windows, through each of which a small group of people, looking over each other's heads, were intently gazing. Within this partition, on the wall opposite to me, was hanging, and apparently dripping, a long, thin mass of worthless and nondescript substance that looked like old rags. On approaching the smallest of the groups I saw close to me, on the other side of the glass partition, five black inclined planes, on one of which there lay on its back, with a nose crushed flat like a negro, with its cheeks swelled out exactly as if it were loudly blowing a trumpet, the naked, livid corpse of a robust, wellformed young woman of about twenty years of age. The face, throat, chest, arms, and legs below the knees were deeply discoloured, and yet, for some reason, the thighs were quite white! The soles of her feet, which were stiffly upturned,

had been so coddled by the water in which she had been drowned, that they appeared to be almost honeycombed. From the wall above there projected eight little streams, about the size of those which flow from the rose of an ordinary garden watering-pot, arranged to fall on her face, throat, neck and legs (round her middle there was wrapped a narrow piece of oil-cloth), to keep the body wet and cool.

Above her, hanging on pegs, was the miserable inventory of her dress a pair of worn-out shoes, ragged stockings, shift, and the dripping mass (her spotted cotton gown and petticoat) which I had already observed. A more revolting, ghastly, horrid, painful sight I fancied at the moment I had never before beheld; and yet the living picture immediately in front of it was so infinitely more appalling, it offered for reflection so important a moral, that my eyes soon turned from the dead to the various groups of people who were gazing upon it; and as my object was to observe rather than be observed, I managed, with some difficulty, to get into the right-hand corner of the partition, where I was not only close to the glass, but could see the countenance of everybody within the "Morgue."

At first I endeavoured to write down, in short-hand, merely the sexes and apparent ages of the people who kept dropping in; the tide, however, in and out was so great, the stream of coming-in faces and departing backs was so continuous and conflicting, that I found it to be utterly impossible, and I can, therefore, offer but a faint sketch of what I witnessed.

Among those whose eyes were steadily fixed upon the corpse, were four or five young men with beards; among them stood several women, old and young, two or three of whom had children in their arms. One boy, of about five years old, came in, carrying an infant on his back. Many people entered with baskets in their hands. One man had on his shoulders, and towering above his head, half a sack of coals. "Oh, Dieu! que vilain!" said an old woman in a white cap, uplifting the palms of both hands, and stepping backwards as her eyes first caught sight of the corpse. Then came in two soldiers; then a fashionably and exceedingly well dressed lady, with two daughters, one about sixteen, the other about eleven, all three with flowers in their bonnets; then a welldressed maid, carrying an infant. "MON DIEU!!!" exclaimed

an old woman (the old women appeared to me to shrink from the sight most of all), as on a glance at the corpse she turned on her heel and walked out; then in ran a number of lads; a wrinkled old grandmother, with all her strength, lifted up a fine, pretty boy of about three years old, without his hat.

The point at which I stood, I was afterwards informed, was that which had been selected by a well-known French actress, who, with an esprit de corps, to say the least, of an extraordinary character, has been in the habit of repeatedly visiting La Morgue professionally to study the sudden changes of countenance of those who, as they continually pour into it, first see the ghastly objects purposely laid out for their inspection; and certainly a more dreadful reality could not be beheld, and yet, the more I reflected on what I saw, the more dreadful it appeared. The flashes of horror and disgust that suddenly distorted the faces of most of those who consecutively approached the glass windows, were certainly very remarkable; and yet the utter nonchalance of others, both young and old, and of both sexes, approaching sometimes almost to a smile, was infinitely more appalling, because it but too clearly proved how easily and how effectually those beautiful feelings in the human heart which are most admired may, by the scene I have imperfectly described, be completely ruined.

Of the dreadful history of the bruised, livid, young creature lying prostrate close to me, I was, of course, utterly ignorant. Her mind might have been ornamented with every virtue; she might have fallen into the river by accident. On the other hand, she might have committed every description of crime, and in retribution thereof have been murdered by some one as criminal as herself, with whom she had criminally been living; and yet, whatever might have been her guilt, to be exposed for three days (for such was the time she had been sentenced to lie in La Morgue) naked, in a great metropolis, to the gaze of all ranks and conditions of life-to men of all ages-was, I deeply felt, a punishment so cruel and inhuman that it might almost be said to have exceeded her offence; and yet, if she could have felt the shame that was inflicted upon her, her sufferings individually would have been utterly unimportant when compared to the wholesale injury—and, may I not add, disgrace?-which the people of Paris were suffering, from the possibility of being, first, by curiosity al