h as to entitle the place to preserve certain of its
privileges. In this document, the castle is described as standing in the
centre of a marsh, surrounded by forest, and as so remote from all
civilization, as to be nearly forgotten. This, it will be remembered, is
the account of a royal abode, that stands within thirty miles of Paris.

In the very heart of the French capital, are the remains of an extensive
palace of one of the Roman Emperors, and yet it may be questioned if one
in a thousand, of those who live within a mile of the spot, have the
least idea of the origin of the buildings. I have inquired about it, in
its immediate neighbourhood, and it was with considerable difficulty I
could discover any one who even knew that there was such a ruin at all,
in the street. The great number of similar objects, and the habit of
seeing them daily, has some such effect on one, as the movement of a
crowd in a public thoroughfare, where images pass so incessantly before
the eye, as to leave no impression of their peculiarities. Were a
solitary bison to scamper through the Rue St. Honore, the worthy
Parisians would transmit an account of his exploits to their children's
children, while the wayfarer on the prairies takes little heed of the
flight of a herd.

As we went to Lagrange, we stopped at a tavern, opposite to which was
the iron gate of a small chateau. I asked the girl who was preparing our
_gouter_, to whom the house belonged. "I am sorry I cannot tell you,
sir," she answered; and then seeing suspicion in my face, she promptly
added--"for, do you see, sir, I have only been here _six weeks_." Figure
to yourself an American girl, set down opposite an iron gate, in the
country, and how long do you imagine she would be ignorant of the
owner's name? If the blood of those pious inquisitors, the puritans,
were in her veins, she would know more, not only of the gate, but of its
owner, his wife, his children, his means, his hopes, wishes, intentions
and thoughts, than he ever knew himself, or would be likely to know. But
if this prominent love of meddling must of necessity in its very nature
lead to what is worse than contented ignorance, gossiping error, and a
wrong estimate of our fellow-creatures, it has, at least, the advantage
of keeping a people from falling asleep over their everyday facts. There
is no question that the vulgar and low-bred propensity of conjecturing,
meddling, combining, with their unavoidable companion,