and justice
rendered to its noble range of forty corinthian pilasters; this is by
Perrault, as well as the eastern side, which is certainly one of the
finest specimens of modern architecture that can be imagined.

A grand colonnade composed of 28 coupled corinthian columns has the most
splendid effect, the basement story being perfectly simple, whilst the
central mass of the building which forms the gateway is crowned by a
pediment of stones, each 52 feet in length and three in thickness; all
is vast, all is grand about this noble front, which is justly the
admiration of every architectural connoisseur, no matter from what part
of the world he may come.

Of the interior volumes might be said, I must first, after conducting my
reader to the great door on the southern side of the building, direct
his attention to the grand staircase, which is of a most splendid
character, as to design, and consistently beautiful as to execution. The
visiter after passing by a small room filled with very old paintings
enters a larger when the grand gallery extends before him, which is
unrivalled in the world, being above a quarter of a mile in length, and
42 feet in width, filled with paintings, principally from the old
masters, but of them I will treat in a future chapter; it contains 1406
pictures some of them being of immense size. We will now pass on for the
moment to the other apartments. The bed-room of Henry IV must arrest our
attention, and the eye naturally falls on the alcove where his bed was
placed, the oak carving, and gilded mouldings have been preserved
exactly in the same state that they were when he died. We next proceed
to a suite of rooms containing paintings of the Spanish, French,
Flemish, and Italian schools; others devoted to drawings; of the latter
there are 1293. Another range of apartments is on the ground floor and
called the Museum of Antiquities, containing statues and various
specimens of sculpture, in all 1,116 objects. Other suites of rooms are
appropriated to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and in some of
the apartments are objects of great value; that the amount of real
worth of the contents of the Louvre must be incalculable, one casket
alone of Mary de Medicis is estimated at several thousand pounds, and
there are many articles equally costly. One portion of the building is
devoted to every thing that concerns naval architecture and an immense
variety of marine objects, with a number of curious