Of the remaining public buildings, with the exception of the churches and hospitals, of which we mean soon to treat, the following, which we have not room to describe more minutely, are the most important. The Garde Meuble, or the depot of the jewels and valuable furniture of the crown ; the Military School; the Palace of the Legion of Honour; the Institute; the Mint, or HOtel des Monnoies; the Royal Printing House; the Town-hall; the Hotel de Ville; the Palais de Justice, &c. The two last mentioned form an assemblage of buildings, contain ing the courts of justice, the public boards, and, in its lower part, the prison of the Conciergerie.
But amid all this unrivalled splendour and elegance of Paris, it is not superior to London in the size and magnifi cence of its churches. The two most important buildings of this nature which the French capital can exhibit, are those of Notre Dame and the Pantheon,neither of which is equal in grandeur or extent to St. Paul's in London. These edifices, however, are of the most massy and inter esting description. Notre Dame, the metropolitan church, and the only Gothic structure of note in Paris, is situated in the city, the oldest part and centre of the capital, and rises to a stupendous height above all the buildings which surround it. It is no less than 414 feet in length ; its width is 144 ; and it is 102 in height. Its architecture is not probably of the finest gothic; massy greatness is its dis tinguishing feature; and it strikes the beholder more from its immense size than from the beauty of the proportions in which it is formed. It is so old, that the date of its erection is unknown ; the venerable and gloomy antiquity of its appearance affords a striking contrast to the airy brilliancy of the modern buildings with which the city is filled ; its walls are crusted over with the smoke of ages ; and of all the edifices in Paris, the cathedral of Noire Dame conveys to us the most lively impressions of the massiveness and durability of ancient architecture. The Pantheon, or cl.urch of St. Genevieve, while it answers the purposes of a place of public worship, is used also as a place of sepulture for illustrious characters. The portal, in imitation of that of the Pantheon at Rome, consists of a superb peristyle of twenty-two Corinthian columns, each of which is five feet and a half in diameter, and fifty-eight in height. The front is adorned with elegant sculpture and colossal figures; and above the portico is the follow ing simple inscription, in reference to its being used as the burial ground of the great, ..lux Brands amen, la Patric.
reconnoissarte. Its situation is extremely conspicuous, being placed on an eminence ; and the approach to it is by an immense flight of steps, which form the base of the building; it terminates in a dome of vast dimensions, which being the highest object in Paris, (282 feet,) is visi ble from any part of the city. The churches in Paris are extremely numerous, but those of St. Sulpice, St. Eus tache, and St. Roche, all of which are large and elegant, are the only other ones that deserve to be particularly specified. There are four protestant places of worship in Paris, all of which were originally catholic buildings, and of which the ancient Church of the Oratory is the largest and the most splendid.
From treating of churches, the transition is natural to the consideration of cemeteries, with which till lately Paris was not very amply furnished. The Parisians were for merly accustomed to bury in the churches, or in places of sepulture situated within the precincts of the city. These were so very few in number, and so limited in point of extent, that necessity at length compelled the inhabitants to adopt a mode of interment, extremely inhuman and re pulsive. A deep trench was made, into which corpse after corpse was successively deposited, till the putrid heap nearly reached the level of the surface. The exha lations which these trenches emitted having become ex tremely disgusting and unwholesome, government at length found it necessary to interfere ; the offensive practice in question was strictly prohibited ; and two large burial grounds in retired situations beyond the walls have been opened, one for the southern, and the other for the north ern district of Paris. In addition to these, the Catacombs, those subterraneous quarries whence the city was built, and by which a great proportion of it is undermined, have, since the latter part of the 18th century, been partially converted into a large burying repository, to which all the bones that could be collected in the ancient cemeteries within the city have been removed ; and the sites of these cemeteries are now occupied as squares, or as market places. The bones, having been carefully cleaned, are regularly piled along the sides of the different passages of the Catacombs, some of which are a mile or two in length, containing the remains of several millions of human be ings, and forming one of the most striking objects con nected with the French metropolis.