mpest. Paris
says to the stranger, "I am beautiful: I have ever been beautiful, and
I wear loveliness like a crown."

The streets are as gay as the summer sunshine in them; the boulevards,
as the wide streets and avenues for pleasure walks are called, seem
channels of happiness, through which the tides of life run as brightly
as they glimmer along the Seine. "La belle Paris!" says the stranger
as he comes, and "La belle Paris!" he utters respectfully as he goes.

We do not wonder that the French love it; that Napoleon gloried in it,
and that Mary Queen of Scots left it with a heavy heart. Here human
nature has light, warmth, and glow; and love, sympathy, and patriotism
are everywhere to be seen.

"Where are the ruins caused by the siege and the Commune?" asked Frank
Gray, after the Class had been driven through a number of streets. "I
do not see the first sign of there having been a recent war and
revolution."

"In the fall of 1870," said Master Lewis, "shot and shell for a long
period fell around the city and into it like rain. In the following
spring the Commune was declared the government of Paris, and it seemed
bent on destroying the city's beauty, and overturning its monuments of
art. The Vendome Column, which celebrated the victories of Napoleon
the Great, was pulled down as a monument of tyranny; the Palace of the
Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville were set on fire; and the wealthy
citizens who had endured the siege by a foreign foe fled from their
own countrymen. To-day most of the houses destroyed by the war and the
Commune are rebuilt, and the streets are as splendid as in the gay
days of the Empire."

The Class took rooms in the _Grand Hotel_, one of the largest and
finest houses for public entertainment in Europe. Its first visit was
to the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame, whose history is as old as
Christianity in France, and which even before that period was a Pagan
temple. Here _Te Deums_ for all of the nation's victories have been
sung; funeral orations of kings have been pronounced, confessions of
sin for a thousand years have been made, and masses innumerable
celebrated. Here Napoleon the Great was crowned, and Napoleon III. was
married. Here the Goddess of Reason, after being borne through the
streets in state, was enthroned during the Revolution of 1793. It has
thirty-seven chapels.

In entering the cathedral the Class seemed to be in a new world. The
rose-colored windows flooded the edifice wi