deep in the country, after so many days of hard and heavy diligenceriding. Yet here are customs-men, with their swords hung to their belts, marching along the walks, as if they were veritable coast-guard, and wore the insignia of government, instead of the authority of the cityand were in search of smugglers, instead of levying the octroi dues upon the corn and wine of the Saone and the olives of Provence. Soldiers, too, are visible at every turn, for the people of Lyons have ever been disposed to question earliest the rights of the constituted authorities, and the liberal government of the charter reckon nothing better preventive of the ill effects of this prying disposition, than a full supply of the small men in crimson breeches, who wear straight, sharp swords upon their thigh, and man the great fortification upon the hill above the city, which points its guns into every alley and street. There is more earnestness in faces in this town of Lyons, than one sees upon the Boulevards, as if there was something in the world to do beside searching for amusement. There is a half-English, business-look grafted upon a careless French habit of life; and blouse and broadcloth both push by you in the street, as if each was earning the dinner of the day. But the blouse has not the grace of the Paris blouse; nor has the broadcloth the grace of the Paris broadcloth. Both have a second-rate air; and they seem to wear a consciousness about them of being secondrate; whereas your Parisian, whether he be boot-black to a coal seller of the Faubourg St. Denis, or tailor in ordinary to the Count de Paris, feels quite assured that nothing can possibly be finer in its way than his blouse or his coat. Even the porter cannot shoulder a trunk like the Paris porter, the waiter cannot receive you with half the grace of a Paris waiter; and the soi-disant grisettes, who are stirring in the streets, are as much inferior to those of the Rue Vivienne, in carriage and air, as Vulcan would have been inferior to Ganymede as cup-bearer to Jove. Even the horses in the cabs have a dog-trot sort of jog, that would not at all be countenanced in the Rue de la Paix; and carters shout to their mules in such villainous patois Lyonnais, as would shock the ear of the cavalry grooms at the School Militaire. Yet all these have the good sense to perceive their short-comings; and nothing is more the object of their ambition than to approach near as may be, to the forms and characteristics of the beautiful City. If a carman upon the quay of the Rhone, or the Saone,-which romps through the other side of the city, could crack his whip with the air and gesture of the Paris postman, he would be very sure to achieve all the honours of his profession. And if a Lyonnaise milliner woman could hang her shawl, or arrange it in her window, like those of the Place Vendôme, or Lucy Hoquet, her bonnets would be the rage of all the daughters of all the silk mercers in Lyons. They have Paris cafés at Lyons,-not, indeed, arranged with all the splendour of the best of the capital; but out of it, you will find no better, except perhaps at Marseilles. Here you will find the same general features that characterize the Paris café; in matters of commercial transaction, perhaps the exchange overrules the café; and in military affairs, probably the junto of the Caserne would supersede the discussions at breakfast; but yet, I am quite assured, that the most earnest thinking here, as in nearly every town of France, is done at the cafe. The society of the Lyons cafés is not so homogeneous as in their. types of Paris. Here, blouses mingle more with the red ribbon of the legion of honour; and a couple of workmen may be luxuriating at one table over a bottle of Strasburg beer, while at another a young merchant may be treating his military friend in the blue frock coat, and everlasting crimson pantaloons, to a pint of sparkling St. Peray. The café, too, does not preserve so strictly its generic character, and half merges into the restaurant. At any rate, I remember seeing the marble slabs covered with napkins at five, and stout men with towels under their chins, eating stewed duck and peas. And later in the evening, when I have dropped into the bright-lighted café, just on the quay from which the Pepin steamer takes its departure for Avignon, I have seen strong meat on half the tables. As there is more work done in a provincial city, so we may safely presume there is more eating done: my own observation confirms the truth. So it is that the breakfast comes earlier, and those who loiter till twelve in a Lyons café, are either strangers or playactors, or lieutenants taking a dose of absinthe, or workmen dropped in for a cup of beer, or some of those youngsters who may be found in every town of France, who sustain a large reputation with tailors and shop-girls, by following, closely as their means will allow, the very worst of Paris habits. The coffee itself is short, as every where else, of Paris excellence; but the nice mutton chops are done to a charm, and there is so much of broad country about you,-to say nothing of the smell of the great land-watering Rhone at the door, that you feel sure of eating the healthy growth of the earth. The chief of the Paris journals may be found, too, in the Lyons café; and what aliment are they to poor provincials! It were as well to deprive them of the fresh air of heaven, as to deny them such food;— even the garçons would pine under the bereavement. The spiritless provincial journals are but faint echoes of detached paragraphs from the capital; they aid the digestion of the others, not from a stimulus supplied, but rather as a diluent of the exciting topics of the city. Nothing but local accidents, and the yearly report of the mulberry crop could ever give interest to a journal of Lyons. In consequence they are few and read rarely. Still the provincial editor is always one of the great men of the town; but newspaper editing is on a very different footing, as regards public estimation, in France, from that in America. And in passing, I may remark further, that while our institutions are such, from their liberality, as ought to render the public journal one of the most powerful means of influencing the popular mind, and as such, worthy of the highest consideration, in view of the opinions promulgated, and the character of the writers, yet there seems to be no country in which men are less willing to give it praise for high conduct, or reproach for what is base. The restaurants of such a city are not far behind those of Paris, except in size and arrangements. Lyons, like Paris, has its aristocratic dinner-places, and its two-franc tables, and its ten-sou chop-houses. In none, however, is anything seen illustrative of French habitude, but is seen better at Paris. As in the cafés, so you will find larger eaters in the restaurants of the provinces; and the preponderance of stewed fillets and roast meats, over fries and comfits, is greater than at even the Grand Vatel. You will find, too, that many of the Paris dishes, which appear upon the bill of the day, are unfortunately consumed; but if you order them, you will be sure of the compassionate regards of the old widow lady sitting next table to you with three blooming daughters; for if a stranger but smack of Paris in ever so slight a degree, he is looked upon in every corner of France as one of the fortunate beings of the earth. It is presumed-nay, it is never even questioned,―by a thoroughsouled Frenchman, especially such as have never journeyed up to Paris, that whoever has visited la belle ville has reached the acme of all worldly pleasures;—that every other city, and the language of every other, are barbarous in the comparison. A Paris lover would break as many hearts in the provinces, as a Paris advocate would write codicils, or a Paris cobbler make shoes. None harbour the hallucination so entirely as the women of the provinces; hint only that they have the air of Parisians, and you make friends of shrewish landladies, and quizzing shop-girls-though their friendship, I am sorry to say, is no guarantee against being cheated by both. It would be very hard if Lyons had not its share of those sights, which draw the great world of lookers-on,-who travel to see the outside and inside of churches and palaces, but who would never think of walking out of their hôtel at dinner-time, to try a meal in such snug restaurants, as may be found on the square by the Hôtel de Ville,-to look the people fairly in the face. And a very quiet and fine old square is that, upon which the rich black tower of the Hôtel de Ville of Lyons throws its shadow. Its pavement is smooth and solid, its buildings firm, tall, and wearing the sober dignity of years. Civil carriage-men hold their stand in the middle, and toward mid-afternoon, loiterers group over the square, and ladies are picking their way before the gay shop-windows at the sides. The proud old hôtel itself is not a building to be slighted; and the clock that hammers the hours in its dingy, but rich inner court, could tell strange stories, if it would, of the scenes that have transpired under its face, in the cruel days of the Directory. Nowhere was murder more rife in France than at Lyons; and the council that ordered the murders held their sittings in a little chamber of the same Hôtel de Ville, whose windows now look down upon the quiet, gray court. It is still there now; you may see a police officer hanging idly about the doorway, and at the grand entrance is always a corps of soldiers. Two colossal re clining figures, that would make the fortune of any town in America, still show the marks of the thumping times of the Revolution;-it was the old story of the viper and the file, for the statues were of bronze, and guard yet in the vestibule, their fruits and flowers. The fame of the cathedral will draw the stranger on a hap-hazard chase of half the steeples in the town; nor will he be much disappointed in mistaking the church of Nôtre-Dame for the object of his search. And abundantly will he be rewarded, if his observation has not extended beyond the French Gothic, to wander at length under the high arches of the Cathedral of St. John. Shall I describe it ?-then fancy a forest glade-(you, Mary, can do it, for you live in the midst of woods) a forest glade, I say, with tree-trunks huge as those which fatten on the banks of our streams at home; fancy the gnarled tops of the oaks, and the lithe tops of the elms, all knit together by some giant hand, and the interlacing of the boughs tied over with garlands;-fancy birds humming to your ear in the arbour-wrought branches, and the gold sunlight streaming through the interstices, upon the flower-spotted turf, and the whole bearing away in long perspective to an arched spot of blue sky, with streaks of white cloud, that seems the wicket of Elysium. Then fancy the whole,-tree-trunks, branches, garlands, transformed to stone-each leaf perfect, but hard as rock;-fancy the birdsinging the warbling of an organ-the turf turned to marble, and in place of flowers, the speckles of light coming through stained glass,-in place of the mottled sky at the end of the view, a painted scene of glory warmed by the sunlight streaming through it, and you have before you the Cathedral of St. John. In front of the doors, you may climb up the dirty and steep alleys of the working quarter of the town; and you will hear the shuttle of the silk-weavers plying in the dingy houses, six stories from the ground. The faces one sees at the doors and windows are pale and smutted, and the air of the close filthy streets, reminds one of the old town of Edinburgh. The men, too, wear the same look of desperation in their faces, and scowl at you, as if they thought you had borne a part in the rueful scenes of '94. The guillotine even did not prove itself equal to the bloody work of that date; and men and women were tied to long cables, and shot down in file! A little expiatory chapel stands near the scene of this wholesale slaughter, where old women drop down on their knees at noon, and say prayers for murdered husbands and murdered fathers. The Rhone borders the city; the Saone rolls boldly through it and each of its sides are bordered with princely buildings; and on a fête day the quays and bridges throng with the population turned loose,the cafés upon the Plâce des Celestins are thronged, and not a spare box of dominoes, or an empty billiard-table, can be found in the city. The great Place de Bellecour, that looked so desolate the morning of my arrival, is bustling with moving people at noon. The great bulk of the Post Office lies along its western edge, and the colossal statue of Louis XIV. is riding his horse in the middle. The poor king was dismounted in the days of La Liberté, and an inscription upon the base commemorates what would seem an unpalatable truth, that what popular frenzy destroyed, popular repentance renews;-not single among the strange evidences one meets with at every turn, of the versatility of the French nation. Lyons has its humble pretensions to antiquity; but the Lugdunensem aram of Roman date, has come to be spilled over with human blood, instead of ink; making fourfold true the illustration of Juvenal: "Accipiat, sane mercedem sanguinis et sic There is an island in the river, not far from the city where Charlemagne is said to have had a country seat;-if so, it was honourable to the old gentleman's taste, for the spot is as beautiful as a dream; and Sundays and fête days, the best of the Lyons population throng under its graceful trees, and linger there to see the sun go down in crimson and gold, across the hills that peep out of the further shore of the Rhone. PARA; OR, SCENES AND ADVENTURES ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZON. BY J. E. WARREN. "Regions immense, unsearchable, unknown, Bask in the splendour of the solar zone.” "MONTGOMERY. CHAPTER III. Removal to the Roscenia de Nazere.--Curious Monument.-Charming Garden.Chico.-Variety of Fruits.-Pine-apples and Bananas.-A dreamy Siesta.First Hunt in the Forest.-An old Ruin.-A Monkey Adventure. A FEW days after my arrival at Para, as I was promenading the streets one morning, I was suddenly accosted by a familiar voice, and, looking up, whom should I see but an old schoolmate of mine, comfortably seated on the balcony of a large stone house, quietly smoking his fragrant cigar. It was truly a pleasure thus unexpectedly to meet a well-known face in a strange land, especially when belonging to so generous a friend, as this young man afterwards proved himself to be. Shaking me cordially by the hand, he insisted upon taking us in and introducing us to his father, who was one of the richest and most influential men in the city. The old gentleman appeared to be glad to see us, and treated us with a vast deal of politeness. We talked to him about America, and Portugal, and Brazil, and he in return told us quite a number of interesting stories and incidents connected with the province. He was a Portuguese by birth, but had been a resident of Brazil for upwards of twenty years. As soon as Mr. Darim (for this was the gentleman's name) understood that we had come out to Brazil for the sake of our health, and of pursuing the study of natural history, he very kindly offered us the entire control of a charming country-seat of his, situated within a mile of the city, called "The Roscenia de Nazere." As this estate was just on the borders of the forest, and therefore well located for the collection of birds and other natural curiosities, we of course did not hesitate to accept Mr. Darim's noble offer. We In two or three days, having made all necessary arrangements, bought our provisions, and hired a cook, we took our departure for Nazere. An odd spectacle we presented in walking out to the Roscenia. had chartered ten or twelve blacks to carry out our luggage, each of whom was loaded with some item of provisions or of luggage. One had a sack of beans, another a hamper of potatoes, while a third carried a large basket of farinha poised upon his head. We ourselves marched along in the rear, with our trusty guns mounted on our shoulders and long wood-knives gleaming in our hands. Scarcely had we proceeded beyond the limits of the city, when we were encompassed by a strange and magnificent vegetation. Groups of palm trees, with their tall stems and feather-like branches, were waving in the distance, while plants of curious form, and bushes teeming with flowers, surrounded us on every side. The scenery of the Largo da Polvera (over which we passed in our route) was very picturesque and fine. A row of low cottages ran along side, fronted by a narrow walk. These little habitations were tenanted by blacks and Indians, and had quite a neat and pretty appearOn the opposite side, at the distance of several hundred yards, one ance. VOL. XXIII. C |