ne; the apartments good,
and the _cuisine soignee_. In this latter point the French hotels are
far superior to the Italian; but in civility and attention, the hosts
of Italy have the advantage.

We had no sooner dined than half-a-dozen persons, laden with silk
handkerchiefs and ribands, brocaded with gold and silver, and silk
stockings, and crapes, all the manufacture of Nismes, came to display
their merchandise. The specimens were good, and the prices moderate; so
we bought some of each, much to the satisfaction of the parties
selling, and also of the host, who seemed to take a more than common
interest in the sale, whether wholly from patriotic feelings or not, I
will not pretend to say.

The _Maison Carree_, of all the buildings of antiquity I have yet seen,
is the one which has most successfully resisted the numerous assaults
of time, weather, Vandalism, and the not less barbarous attacks of
those into whose merciless hands it has afterwards fallen. In the early
part of the Christian ages it was converted into a church, and
dedicated to St.-Etienne the Martyr; and in the eleventh century it was
used as the Hotel-de-Ville. It was then given to a certain Pierre Boys,
in exchange for a piece of ground to erect a new hotel-de-ville; and
he, after having degraded it by using a portion of it as a party-wall
to a mean dwelling he erected adjoining it, disposed of it to a *Sieur
Bruyes, who, still more barbarous than Pierre Boys, converted it into a
stable. In 1670, it was purchased by the Augustin monks from the
descendants of Bruyes, and once more used as a church; and, in 1789, it
was taken from the Augustin monks for the purposes of the
administration of the department. From that period, every thing has
been done for its preservation. Cleared from the mean houses which had
been built around it, and enclosed by an iron palisade, which protects
it from mischievous hands, it now stands isolated in the centre of a
square, or _place_, where it can be seen at every side. Poldo
d'Albenas, a quaint old writer, whose book I glanced over to-day,
attributes the preservation of the _Maison Carree_ to the fortunate
horoscope of the spot on which it stands. His lamentations for the
insults offered to this building are really passionate.

The _Maison Carree_ is not square, though its denomination might lead
one to suppose it to be so, being nearly eighty feet long, and only
thirty-eight feet wide. Elevated on a base of cut stone, i