acres of ground, surrounded by a high wall.
and looking from the outside like a cavalry
barrack. At the iron gates Is a small
functionary in a large cocked hat. "Monsieur
desires to see the abattoir? Most certainly."
State being inconvenient In private transactions,
and Monsieur being already aware of
the cocked hat, the functionary puts it into a
little official bureau which it almost fills, and
accompanies me in the modest attire—as to
his head—of ordinary life.

Many of the animals from Poissy have come
here. On the arrival of each drove, it was
turned into yonder ample space, where each
butcher who had bought, selected his own
purchases. Some, we see now, in these long
perspectives of stalls, with a high overhanging
roof of wood and open tiles rising above
the walls. While they rest here, before being
slaughtered, they are required to be fed and
watered, and the stalls must be kept clean.
A stated amount of fodder must always be
ready in the loft above; and the supervision
is of the strictest kind. The same regulations
apply to sheep and calves; for which, portions
of these perspectives are strongly railed off.
All the buildings are of the strongest and
most solid description.

After traversing these lairs, through which,
besides the upper provision for ventilation
just mentioned, there may be a thorough
current of air from opposite windows in the
side walls, and from doors at either end, we
traverse the broad, paved, court-yard until
we come to the slaughter-houses. They are
all exactly alike and adjoin each other, to
their number of eight or nine together, in
blocks of solid building. Let us walk into
the first.

It is firmly built and paved with stone. It
is well lighted, thoroughly aired, and lavishly
provided with fresh water. It has two doors
opposite each other; the first, the door by
which I entered from the main yard; the
second, which is opposite, opening on another
smaller yard, where the sheep and calves are
killed on benches. The pavement of that
yard, I see, slopes downward to a gutter, for
its being more easily cleansed. The slaughter-house
is fifteen feet high, sixteen feet and a
half wide, and thirty-three feet long. It is
fitted with a powerful windlass, by which one
man at the handle can bring the head of an
ox down to the ground to receive the blow
from the pole-axe that is to fell him—with
the means of raising the carcase and keeping
it suspended during the after-operation of
dressing—and with hooks on which carcases
can hang, when completely prepared, without
touching the walls. Upon the pavement of
this first stone chamber, lies an ox scarcely
dead. If I except the blood draining from him,
into a little stone well in a corner of the pavement,
the place is as free from offence as the
Place de la Concorde. It is infinitely purer
and cleaner, I know, my friend the functionary,
than the Catherdral of Notre Dame. Ha, ha!
Monsieur is pleasant but, truly, there is
reason, too, in what he says.

I look into another of these slaughter-houses.
"Pray enter," says a gentleman in
bloody boots. "This is a calf I have killed
this morning. Having a little time upon my
hands, I have cut and punctured this lace
pattern in the coats of his stomarch. It is
pretty enough. I did it to divert myself."—"It
is beautiful, Monsieur, the slaughterer!". He
tells me I have the gentility to say so.

I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In
many, retail dealers, who have come here for
the purpose, are making bargains for meat.
There is killing enough, certainly, to satiate an
unused eye; and there are steaming carcases
enough, to suggest the expediency of a fowl
and salad for dinner; but, everywhere, there
is an orderly, clean, well-systematised routine
of work in progress—horrible work at the
best, if you please; but, so much the greater
reason why it should be made the best of.
I don't know (I think I may have observed, my
name is Bull) that a Parisian of the lowest
order is particularly delicate, or that his
nature is remarkable for any infinitesimal
infusion of ferocity; but, I do know, my potent,
grave, and common counselling Signors, that
he is forced, when at this work, to submit
himself to a thoroughly good system, and to
make an Englishman very heartily ashamed
of you.

Here, within the walls of the same abattoir,
in other roomy and commodious buildings, are
a place for converting the fat into tallow and
packing it for market—a place for cleansing
and scalding calves' heads and sheeps' feet—a
place for preparing tripe—stables and coach-houses
for the butchers—innumerable
conveniences, aiding in the diminution of
offensiveness to its lowest possible point, and the
raising of cleanliness and supervision to their
highest. Hence, all the meat that goes out
of the gate is sent away in clean covered carts.
And if every trade connected with the
slaughtering of animals were obliged by law
to be carried on in the same place, I doubt, my
friend, now reinstated in the cocked hat (whose
civility these two francs imperfectly acknowledge,
but appears munificently to repay)
whether there could be better regulations than
those which are carried out at the Abattoir of
Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, for I am
away to the other side of Paris, and to the abattoir
of Grenelle! And there, I find exactly the
same thing on a smaller scale, with the
addition of a magnificient Artesian well, and a
different sort of conductor, in the person of a
neat little woman with neat little eyes, and a
neat little voice, who picks her neat little way
among the bullocks in a very neat little pair
of shoes and stockings.

Such is the Monument of French Folly
which a foreigneering people have erected, in
a national hatred and antipathy for common
counselling wisdom. That wisdom, assembled