Rue du Petit Musc, Paris: street vendors outside a liquor shop;a group of soldiers walk down the street on the left, while a boy wearing clogs sweeps the street. Coloured aquatint by R.B. Peake.

"In an endeavour to exhibit the most common characters of the streets of Paris, en passant, this subject comprehends a female dealer in fried bacon, a pan of which she carries on a charcoal fire in a kind of leathern tray, depending from her shoulders; the costume of her customer; a baker with his basket; the wood porter;an old clothesman who, with a French facility, dignifies himself into a marchand d'habits; and patroles of soldiers relieving guard &c. The streets are mostly without foot pavement, narrow and dirty. A pedestrian stranger is in the constant dread of being overturned by the velocity of the cabriolets; his ear is perpetually assailed with the vociferation of gare! which implies that he is to squeeze himself against the wall and let a wheel of the carriage pass within an inch of his person There is much irregularity about the buildings; the houses are amazingly lofty, yet there is an appearance of good architectural taste on the exteriors of most of them."—Peake, loc. cit.