If there be one respect wherein more than any other, Paris is central to all the world, it is in the matter of cookery. Of this subject, the French are universally allowed to be absolute masters. No word has a more rightful place in their vocabulary than the word, 'gourmand.' But let it not be hastily inferred, that all Frenchmen breakfast and dine well. I do believe that except in a few of her largest cities, there can be no more barren and unsatisfactory eating than in France. Nay, I query whether all the eulogies we hear about French cooking, must not be confined to Paris alone, and even in Paris, to some half a dozen renowned restaurants. In my travels through the kingdom, I have been surprised to find on what wretched diet wretchedly cooked, the millions live. In my observations about this metropolis, I have likewise been surprised to find its multitudes of the poor classes subsisting on meagre soups, tasteless bread, villanous meats, and sour wines. There is a numerous class just above the very poor, which lives at the magazins-devin. Then come the wealthier patrons of the eighteen and twenty-two sous eating-houses. There is still a large and richer class which constitutes the public of the

two francs restaurants. After them, come the respectably rich supporters of the third and second rate eating-houses. Finally we arrive at the comparatively small public of the great and costly centres ;—the Rocher de Cancale, Grignons, the Grand Vatel, the Deux Fréres, the Café de Paris, and Vefours and Verys. We likewise come to the comparatively few, who at hotels,-as Meurices, at club-rooms, and at their private residences, sit down each day to sumptuous banquets. France contains thirty-three and a half millions of people. It is but an exceedingly small fraction of this immense multitude, that knows any thing from experience of the beauties of French cookery. No one however, who has, not so much a relish for food, as a taste for eating, but may wish to dine, though but in imagination, at one of the Parisian restaurants. To such, moreover, it may not be uninteresting, as dinner time is distant, to walk for a few hours over some of the establishments, through which the aliment then to be enjoyed, has passed, ere it reached the hand of the cook, and the assiette of the garçon. If all Paris were to be annihilated, except merely that part of it which may be called its system for directly administering to the palate, there would still remain, in buildings and people, a very respectable city. And if we should go still further on, and annihilate of this system all, except what legitimately tends to make merely our dinners and breakfasts worthy of their name, still would there survive a very large town.

Of these establishments, the most prominent are the Abattoirs, the Markets, and the Comestibles. Abattoirs there are five, situated in the suburbs of the city. They are from Napoleon's idea, and have all been constructed since 1809. Previous to that time, the slaughter-houses were scattered about, here and there, over the city, tainting the atmosphere and helping to make Paris then, what Paris is now, the nastiest city on all the continent. The great original idea of Bonaparte was worthy of him, and when detailed, and embodied into plans by Happe, and Radel, and Gisors, formed the most magnificent establishments of their kind in Europe. They were erected at an expense of more than three millions of dollars. Let us walk through the Abattoir de Popincourt. Leaving a very pleasant promenade shaded by trees, you enter a large gate, and a cicerone, in the shape of an old woman holding a bunch of keys, salutes you with, 'Bon jour, Monsieur.' You are within four walls, embracing a parallelogram of about six hundred and fifty, by five hundred and seventy feet. This amplitude pleases you. Around this space, and near the wall, are eight bouveries, or stone buildings for oxen, sheep, and calves, hither brought from the markets of Sceaux, Poissy, and others in the vicinity. They will accommodate, of the first, four hundred head; of the second, three thousand; and of the third, fifteen hundred. You are delighted with the extreme neatness of the interior of these buildings. In front of four of them, and on opposite sides of the parallelogram, are four other

buildings, each one hundred and forty feet long, by about one hundred broad, into which said oxen, and sheep, and calves are momently dragged to the slaughter. Each of these buildings is separated by a finely paved and slanting court into two piles, which are themselves divided off into sixteen different butch

ering apartments. The ventilation of these apartments is perfect, and the inclined pavement, which by the way,

'all the time runs blood,'

is kept rather clean, by water continually streaming over it from two elevated reservoirs, placed on a third side of the parallelogram. These reservoirs, are supplied through aqueducts from the little village of Belleville. The division of labor is here very minute, and the speed with which these hundred men perform their bloody business, might quiet the fears of the most voracious eater in all the metropolis. It is hardly worth while, particularly to describe the appearance of the animals, in this stage of their progress onward to their destinies. We may soon have an opportunity of contemplating them at Grignon's, under the more interesting form of Fricandeau-au-jus, and Rognons à-la-brochette. I will only add that the weekly butchering in this Abattoir is of about six hundred oxen, one thousand calves, fifteen hundred sheep, and two hundred cows; and that a duty is paid on each slaughtered animal, of six francs for an ox, four for a cow, two for a calf, and for a sheep, ten sous. In other

parts of the establishment, are spacious rooms for forage, others for melting and preparing tallow, commodious watering places, and in the loft of many of them, are spaces for drying skins. The Abattoir of Popincourt, with that at Montmartre, is the largest ; and its form and system may be taken as examples of the form and system of the others.

Of the twenty-two provision markets of Paris, I observe, that with three or four exceptions, their origin dates not back beyond 1809, and that after St. Germains and the Halle-aux-Blés, not one of them can compare with the fine establishments of Liverpool, New-Castle-on-Tyne, and others in Great Britain; nor distantly approach the specimen, superior to them all, which adorns the city of Boston. The largest, and among the oldest existing, is the Marché des Innocens. The space it covers was converted from a cemetery to its present purpose, in 1786. In 1813, four extensive wooden galleries were erected. About that time, Bonaparte, under whose reign nearly all the improvements in this department, were begun, conceived the large project of assembling at this spot, all the markets of Paris, in a square of one hundred acres. A noble scheme it was, and when executed, would have been a fit complement to his splendid Abattoirs. Bonaparte fell. The stupid dynasty again came in, and with it, much of that indifference to the wants and comforts of the common people, which characterized it, previous to the Grand Revolution. With the exception of the fish market, and that for butter, eggs and cheese, the