[Note 19: 1020 feet by 72. Westminster-bridge is 1220 feet long, but
only 44 feet wide.]
The cupola of the _Halle au Bled_, or corn and flour market, is one
hundred and twenty feet in diameter; it forms a perfect half circle,
whose centre is on a level with the cornice, forty feet from the ground.
The vault or dome is composed merely of deal boards, four feet long, one
foot broad and an inch thick.[20]
[Note 20: The inner diameter of the dome of St. Peter's, at Rome,
138 feet, which is the same size as that of the pantheon in Rome. St.
Paul's in London 108. The Invalids in Paris 50.]
Describing the church of _St. John of the Minstrels_, so called, because
it was founded by a couple of fidlers, in 1330. _M. du Laure_ says,
"Among the figures of saints with which the great door is decorated, one
is distinguished who would play very well on the fiddle, if his
fiddle-stick were not broken."
There is a parcel-post as well as a letter penny-post in Paris.
The salary of the executioner was eighteen thousand livres _per annum_;
[21] his office was to break criminals on the wheel, and to inflict
every punishment on them which they were sentenced to undergo.
[Note 21: £750 sterling; I know not the present salary.]
There are no longer any _Espions de Police_, or spies, employed by
government. "That army of thieves, of cut-throats, and rascals, kept in
pay by the ancient police, was perhaps a necessary evil in the midst of
the general evil of our old administration. A body of rogues and
traitors could be protected by no other administration than such a one
as could only subsist by crimes and perfidy. Those were the odious
resources of despotism. Liberty ought to make use of simple and open
means, which justice and morality will never disavow."
There is a school at the point of the isle of St. Louis, in the river
_Seine_, to teach swimming; persons who chuse to learn in private pay
four _louis_, those who swim among others, half that sum, or half-crown
a lesson; if they are not perfect in that art in a season, (five summer
months) they may attend the following season _gratis_.