away, and modern Paris has rolled over it, and its place remembers it
no more. It was a fine old house, roomy, airy, bright, sunny, cheerful,
with large apartments and a capital play-ground, formed by that
old-fashioned device, a quincunx of linden trees, under whose shade we
carried on very Amazonian exercises, fighting having become one of our
favorite recreations.

This house was said to have belonged to Robespierre at one time, and a
very large and deep well in one corner of the play-ground was invested
with a horrid interest in our imaginations by tales of _noyades_ on a
small scale supposed to have been perpetrated in its depths by his
orders. This charm of terror was, I think, rather a gratuitous addition
to the attractions of this uncommonly fine well; but undoubtedly it
added much to the fascination of one of our favorite amusements, which
was throwing into it the heaviest stones we could lift, and rushing to
the farthest end of the play-ground, which we sometimes reached before
the resounding _bumps_ from side to side ended in a sullen splash into
the water at the bottom. With our removal to the Barriere de l'Etoile,
the direction of our walks altered, and our visits to the Luxembourg
Gardens and the Parc Monceaux were exchanged for expeditions to the Bois
de Boulogne, then how different from the charming pleasure-ground of
Paris which it became under the reforming taste and judgment of Louis
Napoleon!

Between the back of our play-ground and the village suburb of Chaillot
scarcely a decent street or even house then existed; there was no
splendid Avenue de l'Imperatrice, with bright villas standing on vivid
carpets of flowers and turf. Our way to the "wood" was along the
dreariest of dusty high-roads, bordered with mean houses and
disreputable-looking _estaminets_; and the Bois de Boulogne itself, then
undivided from Paris by the fortifications which subsequently encircled
the city, was a dismal network of sandy avenues and _carrefours_,
traversed in every direction by straight, narrow, gloomy paths, a dreary
wilderness of low thickets and tangled copsewood.

I have said that I never returned home during my three years' school
life in Paris; but portions of my holidays were spent with a French
family, kind friends of my parents, who received me as an _enfant de la
maison_ among them. They belonged to the _petite bourgeoisie_ of Paris.
Mr. A---- had been in some business, I believe, but when I visited him
he