ed since the days of the troubadours (a portentous
collection), and the big butcher's knife with which, according to the
legend, Henry, Duke of Montmorency, who had conspired against the great
cardinal with Gaston of Orleans and Mary de'Medici, was, in 1632,
beheaded on this spot by the order of Richelieu. With these objects the
interest of the Capitol was exhausted. The building indeed has not the
grandeur of its name, which is a sort of promise that the visitor will
find some sensible embodiment of the old Roman tradition that once
nourished in this part of France. It is inferior in impressiveness to
the other three famous Capitols of the modern world--that of Rome (if I
may call the present structure modern) and those of Washington and
Albany!

The only Roman remains at Toulouse are to be found in the museum--a very
interesting establishment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectly
as I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged; and the gallery of
paintings, which is the least interesting feature, was the only part
that was not upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the modern French
school, and I remember nothing but a powerful though disagreeable
specimen of Henner, who paints the human body, and paints it so well,
with a brush dipped in blackness; and, placed among the paintings, a
bronze replica of the charming young David of Mercie. These things have
been set out in the church of an old monastery, long since suppressed,
and the rest of the collection occupies the cloisters. These are two in
number--a small one, which you enter first from the street, and a very
vast and elegant one beyond it, which, with its light gothic arches and
slim columns (of the fourteenth century), its broad walk, its little
garden with old tombs and statues in the centre, is by far the most
picturesque, the most sketchable, spot in Toulouse. It must be doubly so
when the Roman busts, inscriptions, slabs, and sarcophagi are ranged
along the walls; it must indeed (to compare small things with great, and
as the judicious Murray remarks) bear a certain resemblance to the Campo
Santo at Pisa. But these things are absent now; the cloister is a
litter of confusion, and its treasures have been stowed away confusedly
in sundry inaccessible rooms. The custodian attempted to console me by
telling me that when they are exhibited again it will be on a scientific
basis and with an order and regularity of which they were formerly
innocent. But