in his presence imagined him capable of offering them an indignity.

The Parisian whose dress bespeaks his poverty and his honest occupation, mingles in the crowd in the Louvre and the Jardins du Roi; but lest his clothes should soil the robes of a lady, or the surtout of an Englishman, he carefully picks his way, and shuns with a degree of gallantry to give his neighbour pain, by the misfortune of coming in contact with his homely garb; or being prevented examining something that had engaged the stranger's curiosity, by passing between his eyes the object, to distract the view he had been taking of it.

It is nevertheless true, the Parisians will amuse themselves with the monkeys, the wolves, the lions, the bears in the menagerie; and they will feed old bruin, better known by the name of Martin, and compel him to climb his tree, and perform his accustomed feats; but all this is an amusement peculiarly their own. Martin is in a deep large pit, and the walls at its edges are usually crowded with the curious whom he invites thither by his knowledge of what different cries import, and for how much he must climb the tree in the middle of his pit. In short, Martin, is as sage as the sapient pig, and can amuse the Parisians, as much as his hoggish friend, Toby, can the spectators who crowd to Spring Gar

dens.

Frenchmen, in fact, one and all, look upon the shrubberies in the Jardins des Plantes, the Luxembourgh, the Thuilleries at St. Cloud and Versailles, as so many things, whether trees, plants or flowers, or statues, shewn to the public, that they are interested in preserving, and they visit them with the satisfaction and the veneration a Musselman would feel, who had travelled from Damascus on foot to Medina to worship at the shrine of his prophet.

But whence arises this trait of character in men who are otherwise, to judge of them from their external appearance, the very lowest and the poorest of society? for the bourgeois are excluded in the consideration of this question. The munificence displayed in putting these fine sights within the reach of all, is most probably the true cause.

SECTION III.

JOURNEY TO ST. DENIS.

DR. WALKER and his pupil returned home highly delighted with their day's excursion; and early on the following morning they renewed their peregrinations, and set off for St. Denis. Upon passing over the place Louis Quinze, many melancholy recollections came into the mind of the Doctor. It was here the unfortunate Louis XVIth expiated a life of suffering by an ignominious death. It was in the place Louis Quinze that two thousand persons lost their lives at the celebration of a national fête upon the day of his coronation! But this was not the only day marked for festivity that was distinguished by unexpected death, for the courier, who was conveying the intelligence of his birth to Louis XV. was killed by a fall from his horse. It is fortunate for the traveller that no national column has been reared in the centre of this immense octagon, (the place Louis Quinze,) for from thence he enjoys the superb perspective that presents itself around the chateau of the Thuilleries, the magnificent alleys of trees in the Champs Elysees extending as far as the barrier de l'Etoile, the terraces of the royal gardens, the basins, the statues, the Garde Meuble, and the Palace of the Institute of Marine; and on the opposite side in the distant perspective, appears the Palace of the Corps Legislatif. From the centre of this place is also seen the triumphal monument of the Barrier de l'Etoile, and the Carousel, the new Madelline Church, begun in part, through the donation of Madame de Pompadour, but stopped in its construction since the revolution broke out; but which in time will become a new ornament to the capital, when the government shall be able to complete this great undertaking.

The entrance to the Champs Elysées, particularly arrests the traveller's attention, decorated with the superb horses from Marlé, which correspond perfectly to those others that surmount the entrance to the Thuilleries.

"Great mansion of the dead!" ejaculated Dr. Walker as they approached St. Denis, which so long recalled to Frenchmen's minds both their kings and their great men, but whom suddenly, in 1793, the furious men who then governed

France, decreed should be dragged from their tombs, not only here, but in all places of the republic. Will posterity believe that a commission was appointed to see accomplished this work of destruction-this glorious trait of liberty and equality of the more glorious revolution! On Saturday the 12th of October, of the same year 1793, these worthies having given orders to exhumate, in the Abbey of St. Denis, the ashes and bodies of kings, of queens, of princes, and of princesses, and of celebrated men, many of whom had been inhumated nearly 1500 years, to make leaden bullets of their coffins, to defend the goddess of liberty! Conformable to a decree of the National Convention, the workmen, curious to see the ashes of a great man, commenced their undertaking by opening the tomb of Turenne; and from this period, till the 18th of January 1794, this unholy work of unholy France, still went on, and all the remains of the kings, the queens, the princes and princesses of three dynasties, were en suite by order of the convention, thrown pèle-mèle into two large trenches dug opposite the northern portal of the church; and over these remains was laid a thick bed of quick lime to destroy them more rapidly and more surely !"

"Is it possible, Sir!" said Edward. “Oh, how barba

rous?"

"Barbarous indeed," replied his tutor, "and yet not more barbarous than true; but St. Denis still stands, and will, I trust, stand for ages; for it is not more renowned for its antiquity, its fine Gothic architecture, and the grand and touching recollections which it brings to one's mind, than for its being one of those French monuments which ought to inspire the deepest historic interest from the various vicissi tudes it has experienced. Consecrated, from time almost immemorial, to the reception of the illustrious dead, it has witnessed the rapid flight of ages which consigned to its sepultural vaults, the supreme, the successive grandeur of human life. Faithful depository! What France had produced the most illustrious during twelve hundred years, thou didst preserve intact in thy precious dépôt; and the veneration of Frenchmen for all the corpses shut up in thy vast bosom but added to the veneration with which they were wont to be inspired for the name and the memory of thy patron!

“But, ah! a time arrived when this ancient respect which the French bore to the persons of their monarchs, vanished away, when the royal sepulchres of St. Denis, which ought.

to have been defended with the last drops of blood Frenchmen had to shed against the Vandalism of revolutionary factions, by respect for the ashes of the dead alone, were violated by sacrilegious hands; and the cathedral of the apostle of France, unworthy of such devastation, was stripped of its dépôt of the ashes of the dead, which had rendered it celebrated among all nations.

"Considered under this last point of view, the Church of St. Denis will remain an unique monument upon earth. It will attest to ages yet to come to what excess of madness and delirium a people may be carried when they break through social institutions, when they throw off the yoke of salutary laws; of religion and of morality!

"Built, as one may say, with the French monarchy, this church partook also of its ruins, and had well nigh disappeared with it; but it was its destiny to stand almost entire in the centre of the horrible revolution; it was its destiny to receive again, in its subterranean vaults, prepared for the French kings, the ashes of this royal race, who have again remounted on the throne of their fathers; and He who directs the fate of people and of empires, arrested, of his own accord, the destroying arms of the Vandals of 1793.

"Of its splendour before the Revolution, one can form no idea. No church of France possessed treasure so rich, and at the same time, so celebrated as that of St. Denis. Its sa criste ; its c s cabinet of relics, was an object of admiration to all those who came to see it. Dulaure's description of it, before this epoch, mentions objects, which credulity alone could render precious; and some that deserved to be respected, if in 1793, there had been any respect for what was either human or divine. Terrible epoch, that which incontestibly teaches the useful lesson, that the funeral pile of a nation is a revolution, such as we have seen it in this country, debasing the national character, and rendering France, for a time a reproach and a bye-word, among the nations of the universe.

"Since that fatal epoch the grass has grown over the common grave of kings, and the astonished traveller no longer distinguishes the spot, where in mutual friendship the monarchs rest, who governed France for above twelve hundred years."

Edward deeply impressed with the Doctor's observations, remained silent, and after a short pause, his friend continued thus,

"Yet not content with having thus profaned the last asylum of their kings, many members of the Convention wished that the church of St. Denis should be destroyed, de fond en comble! nor were they a little surprised when the great body of that assembly rejected this proposition; but they found out that it was covered with lead, and a decree passed in 1794, to strip off this lead d'enfaire de balles destinées à la punition des ennemis de la republique! and the great bell of St. Sulpice was melted down into two sols pieces to purchase muskets for the troops of the rebel chief, Monsieur Equality."

"After their decree respecting St. Denis," said Edward, "I am not at all surprised that the bell of St. Sulpice should be converted into money."

DR. WALKER." Deprived of its magnificent great glass windows in 1796, the cathedral of St. Denis, this superb monument of the piety of early religion, remained for a long time exposed to all the injuries of the weather, and to all the inclemencies of the seasons. And though in 1797, it was again proposed to erase this ancient fabric, and on its scite to make a public walk for the good people of Francade," (it was thus the town of St. Denis was named by the apostles of liberty,) the efforts of M. Petit Rudel, then inspecting architect of public monuments at Paris, preserved this edifice from total ruin.

"During all the time of the directorial government, the church of St. Denis remained in a state the most deplorable to the eyes of the few who still preserved any respect for the institutions of their ancestors; but when under the consulate, order succeeded licentiousness, the friends of the arts united to demand that the necessary repairs which this church required should be made on it; and the government too wise to refuse to comply with any means of gaining additional popularity, acceded to their urgent wishes.

"When Bonaparte became emperor, he accelerated these repairs, and in 1806, he promulgated, on the 20th of February, a decree, which informed all good Frenchmen,' that the church of St. Denis was consecrated as a burial place for the emperors! A chapter of ten canons was charged with the service of the church. This chapter was selected from among the bishops who had seen sixty years glide over their aged heads, and who found themselves too infirm to perform their episcopal functions. They were to enjoy in