Dine alternately at Hotel Meurice and Hotel de Paris. Dinners in good style, weather changeable. One day fine, the promenade at the champs Elysees crowded with fashionables and dashing equipages. One carriage in particular with two Indies (wanting in charms), a chasseur behind dressed like a field marshal, the coachman and footman elevated in front in scarlet trimmed with gold. Knee breeches and curled wigs, all manner of devices to display and attract attention.

The wind a little cold. The carriage windows for the most cart drawn up and the gentlemen muffled up in their pal tots. Went to the performance of Guilliame Tell at the accademie and the due d'olonne at the Opera comic -

Went with Mr. Laidler to St. Denis, who for economy would go by a small kind of omnibus. Carrying six persons with one horse - a very mean conveyance, which found afterward are called "pot de chambre."

St. Denis a villas two leagues from Paris. The church of the same name contains the monuments of the Kings of France from the time of Clovis to the last of the Bourbons, whose ashes were sacred odiously disturbed in the revolution to efface all remembrance of them and the venerable Gothic edifice turned into a store house. The monuments have been restored and are in the subterranean parts of the church called the caveat -

[March 19] At the opera of the acadamie royale this evening to see the performance of the new opera the reine de Cherre - Dupies the tenor pleased me best -

[March 20] Showers all day with scarce an interval to allow a short walk. Stepped into the church of St. Germain Auxerrois. Much amused at the theatrical manner in which the acolytes swing the censors at the opera comic in the evening - Richard cour de Lion and the Domino noir -

Am just returned from a visit to that vast field of repose - Pere Lachaise. Was astonished at the number of monuments mostly in stone and marble and of all possible variety in form - temples, pyramids, obelisks, columns etc.

The marble temple with Doric columns, erected by her husband the Russian prince Demidoff to the princess of that name is among the most modern and beautiful, as also those erected Massena, Suchet and Lefebre. Among the most ancient are the tombs of Lafontaine and Moliere in rather a neglected state. Nearly nine tenths of the whole are in the form of a little temple, with an alter inside and name of the owners over the door as Famille Prosper Hibon, Paira Doux etc.

If they were situated any where else than in a cemetery they might be taken for temples of Clodina. Nearly all have more or less of garlands of everlastings deposited on them, renewed from time to time by the visits of the friends of the deceased. Met numbers coming for that purpose, but none absorbed in grief like the poor Turkish widow I saw at the cemetary of Stamboul. It is said the Parisians have expended at Pere Lachaise 100 million of francs, sufficient to build a town of 40,000 inhabitants during the last thirty years only -

Changed my hotel for the Chatham No. 57 - Rue neuve St. Augustin. A large room on first floor at three francs, which prefer to a little room in the Rue Richelieu at same price -

Passed through Nogent in the night and by daylight this morning was at Charenton - on the outskirts of Paris. Entering the city, along the quays on the seine, passing the Jardin des Plantes. Crossed the Pont Neuf and along the noble facade of the Louvre. Have put up at the Hotel de Paris in Rue Richlieu near the Boulevard Italien. Table d'hote five francs and room three - everything in first rate style, but much more expensive than what I have lately paid in Italy and elsewhere.

A fine spring day - the garden of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysees filled with promenaders - nurses with children in immense quantity - walked as far as the arc de l'Etoile [photo taken circa 1900] -

Packed trunks and booked myself for Paris in the diligence. Left Dijon at 6 in the evening with one companion in the coupe. Slept a little during the night and by day light in the morning first observed the river Seine.

At the neat little town of Chatillon the seat of a sou prefecture - during the whole day passed over Champagne - a flat level country and highly cultivated. Scarcely a tree to be seen. At 2 o'clock arrived at Troyes - an irregular built town of wooden houses and 40,000 inhabitants mostly engaged in the stocking weaving business. Soon after leaving Troyes commenced on a paved road which continues for thirty leagues on to Paris - rumbling and jolting at a terrible rate -