lest piles in Europe, and as a
painting-gallery, it reflects great credit upon France. I used to
frequent it, yet I must, to be honest, confess that many of its pictures
are too sensual and licentious to suit my taste. Are such pictures as
can be found in the French gallery, pictures which express sensuality
and debauchery, productive of good?

Is it well to look at so much nakedness, even if it be executed with the
highest art? In portions of the Louvre there is altogether too much
nakedness, and I humbly hope that American ladies will never get so
accustomed to such sights that they can stare at them in the presence of
gentlemen without a blush. I now allude to the most licentious pictures
in the collection. I saw French women stop and criticise pictures which
I could not look at, in their presence, at least--pictures which
exhibited the human form in a state of nudity, and at the same time
expressed the most shameful sensuality and portrayed the most licentious
attitudes. I cannot believe a woman of perfectly pure mind can delight
to look at such pictures in a public gallery. But this nakedness is all
of a piece with many other things which characterize French society, and
but shows the corrupt state of the morals of the French people.

[Illustration: JARDIN DES TUILLERIES.]

PUBLIC GARDENS.

The gardens of Paris are almost numberless. Some of them are free, and
others are open only to those who pay an entrance fee. The latter class
is great in numbers, from the aristocratic _Jardin d' Hiver_ down to La
Chaumiere. In the first you meet the fashionable and rich, and in the
last, the students with their grisettes, and the still poorer classes.
But I will not describe this class of gardens in this article.

The Tuileries gardens are perhaps as aristocratic as any in Paris, if
that term can be appropriately applied to a _free_ garden, and they are
certainly among the finest in the world. They are filled with statues
and fountains, trees and flowers. The western part is entirely devoted
to trees, almost as thickly planted as our American forests. The care
which is taken of this grove of trees surprised me, and I think would
any new-world visitor. The trees grow closely to the southern wall of
the gardens, yet do not protrude their branches over the line of the
wall. The sight is a singular one from the banks of the Seine, outside
the walls of the garden, for the whole grove looks exactly as if it had
been _sh