e west. To the east, the beautiful
plain of Saint-Mande, Montreuil, and Vincennes, with the lofty towers
of its fortress.--The fertile banks of the river Marne, are on the
North, and in the South, the horizon encircles Bicetre and Meudon.

The various tombs are placed without order or regularity: they are
mostly enclosed with trellis work of wood, sometimes by iron railing;
and consist of a small marble column, a pyramid, a sarcophagus, or a
single slab, just as may have suited the fancy or the taste of the
friends of the departed.--Some surrounded with cypress, some with
roses, myrtles, and the choicest exotics; others with evergreens, and
not unfrequently a single weeping willow, with the addition of a rose
tree!

This intermixture of the sweetest scented flowers and fruit trees, in
a burying ground, among the finest pieces of sculptured marble, with
evergreens growing over them, in the form of arbours, and furnished
with seats, cannot fail to produce in the mind of the person who views
it for the first time, peculiar and uncommon feelings of domestic
melancholy, mingled with pleasing tenderness.

Who could be otherwise than powerfully affected, as I was, by the
first objects that presented themselves to me on entering the
place?--A mother and her two sons, kneeling in pious devotion at the
foot of the husband's and the father's grave! At a short distance, a
female of elegant form, watering and dressing the earth around some
plants at her lover's tomb!--not a day, and seldom an hour, passes,
but some one is seen either weeping over the remains of a departed
relative, or watching with pious solicitude the flowers that spring up
around it.

Among the many interesting objects that presented themselves at my
first visit, was the tomb of Abelard and Heloise, which had not long
since been removed from the convent of the Augustins, where I had seen
it in 1815.

At a little distance, to the left of the former, was the burial place
of Labedoyere. The fate of this brave and unfortunate officer is well
known; his youth, and misled zeal, have procured him a sympathy which
his fellow sufferer Marshal Ney did not find, and did not merit.

In the centre of a square plot of ground enclosed with lattice work,
is erected a wooden cross, painted black. Neither marble, nor stone,
nor letters, indicate his name. Two pots of roses, and a tuft of
violets, alone marked the spot, which is carefully weeded. There is
something more affe