, likewise, by a wall, with
gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort of covered gallery. He was
not quite a stranger to a certain instinct, neither systematic nor of
general application, but practical and effective on occasion, in favor of
the freedom of industry and commerce. Before his time, the ovens
employed by the baking trade in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of
certain religious or laic establishments; but when Philip Augustus
ordered the walling in of the new and much larger area of the city "he
did not think it right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old
liabilities, and he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to
bake their bread, either for themselves, or for all individuals who might
wish to make use of them." Nor were churches and hospitals a whit less
than the material interests of the people an object of solicitude to him.
His reign saw the completion, and, it might almost be said, the
construction of _Notre-Dame de Paris,_ the frontage of which, in
particular, was the work of this epoch. At the same time the king had
the palace of the Louvre repaired and enlarged; and he added to it that
strong tower in which he kept in captivity for more than twelve years
Ferrand, Count of Flanders, taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines. It
would be a failure of justice and truth not to add to these proofs of
manifold and indefatigable activity on the part of Philip Augustus the
constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University
of Paris, and its masters and pupils. It was to him that in 1200, after
a violent riot, in which they considered they had reason to complain of
the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which, by regarding
them as clerics, exempted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction,
so as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. At that
time there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom save by
granting some privilege.

A death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong in
constitution as in judgment struck down Philip Augustus at the age of
only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Pacy-sur-Eure to Paris to be
present at the council which was to meet there and once more take up the
affair of the Albigensians. He had for several months been battling with
an incessant fever; he was obliged to halt at Mantes, and there he died
on the 14th of January, 1223, leaving the kingdom of France far more
e