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in his name to the soldiers of the Great Army. But before the design could be carried out he met the Duke of Wellington one day at Waterloo, and Napoleon was longer a name to conjure with. Then Louis XVIII. took up the matter, restored the design of the church, and proceeded to complete it as an expiatory offering to the royal victims of 1793. Another revolution intervened; but the work was finally completed in 1842. Four revolutions therefore occurred between the beginning and the completion of this edifice. And yet the finished building has stood here long enough to pass through two

more.

If we step over the threshold we find ourselves in a large rectangular hall having a row of little chapels on either end and a round choir. The church is of massive stone,

and there is not a window in it, the light being admitted solely through little spaces in the three great domes which make up the roof. The walls and ceilings are covered with fine paintings, and the whole. interior is fairly aglow with colour.

From the space just in front of the Madeleine we may look down the broad Boulevard of the Madeleine and its continuation, the Boulevarde Capuchine, which form a portion of the old or only boulevards erected upon the line of the old walls, destroyed in the time of Louis XIV. This magnificent boulevard, extending in a grand sweep from the Madeleine away round to the Place of the Bastile, a distance of some three miles, is nowhere less than one hundred feet wide, including the broad pavements, and is paved with asphalt, so that, in spite of the enormous

tides of traffic continually surging through, it is comparatively noiseless. It is lined with trees, and as you walk or ride through it in the evening you pass between two rows of the handsomest, the richest, the most brilliantly illuminated, and altogether the most tempting shops or stores to be found anywhere 11 the world.

passes along the boulevards, which for miles are thickly lined with these shades, is continually threading his way between and among the chairs and tables where the Parisians, with their wives and sweethearts, are eating, sipping their light drinks, and enjoying life as apparently no other people in the world enjoy it.

Perhaps about a mile from the Madeleine we reach the New Opera House, as it is commonly called, though it bears on its front the

One of the most remarkable features of Paris is the cafe. There is nothing just like it in England or America, nor, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. The peculiarity of the Parisian cafe is that the guests sit and do their eat

ing and drinking, not within the building, but out upon the sidewalk. During the day, when the patrons are few, they keep close to the building, in the shade of the awning; but at night the chairs greatly increase in number, and push far out upon the flags and often beyond the curbstone into the roadway, and the pedestrian, as he

LA PLACE DE LA BASTILE.

inscription, "Academie Nationale de Musique." It occupies the centre of an open space entirely surrounded by broad streets. The site occupied by the building and this little square above it cost two million dollars, while the building itself, materials for which were brought from every corner of the globe, cost about eight millions

more, making the entire expense of this place of amusement something more than ten millions of dollars. Then to properly set off the building two broad, handsome avenues were cut straight through the heart of the city, at a cost of ten millions

more.

The Opera House receives a subsidy of about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year; that is to say, about five hundred dollars a day, from the Government, and several other theatres and opera houses in Paris are liberally aided from the public purse. You see, therefore, that every French citizen who has anything to pay taxes on is obliged to contribute to the support of the theatre and the opera, even though he may have conscientious scruples. against them. I am not aware,

however, that any Frenchman has ever raised that objection.

One of the features of Paris most noticeable to a foreigner, perhaps, is the little omnibus stations so characteristic of Paris. The omnibus system, by the way, is an excellent one when you understand it. But you usually have to be put off a bus two or three times before you appreciate its merits. In time you discover that the vehicles stop regularly at little stations, where those who understand the system. obtain bits of pasteboard bearing numbers in the precise order of their application for them, entitling them in the same order to the vacant seats in the busses as they arrive. These little stations being not far apart, it is a matter of no difficulty to obtain these numbers, and when that is done the system