g known as the Corps de Garde, and by certain
portions of the Church of St.-Pierre.

Aire formerly had a cathedral, but during the worst period of the Terror
that exemplary ruffian, Joseph Lebon of Arras, the unfrocked priest, who
organised pillage and massacre throughout the Pas-de-Calais, frightened
the good people of Aire into a frenzy of destruction and devilry. The
Church of St.-Pierre was then a collegiate church, but it was turned
over to the worship of the Supreme Being invented by Robespierre,
desecrated and defaced and left in a deplorable state. It had already
suffered, like so many other churches all over France and England, from
the ingenious 'restorers' of the eighteenth century, who have left their
sign-manual on the upper part of the edifice and on the mass of a huge
organ loft which crushes and disfigures the main entrance. The greater
part of the building is of the fifteenth century; and it has been
restored within our own times as tastefully and effectively as in the
circumstances was possible, under the supervision and in part, I
believe, at the cost of a devoted and conscientious curate, a member of
a Scotch family long fixed in Artois, the Abbe Scott, who took charge of
the church at the end of the reign of Charles X. and who now lies buried
in the building he did so much to preserve. It is a very considerable
church, measuring three hundred feet in length and a hundred-and-twenty
in width; with a height of seventy feet in the main nave. The ogival
windows are filled with rich, stained glass; all the ancient monuments
which escaped the fury of 1793 have been excellently restored, and the
church bears witness in its condition to the active piety of the
faithful of Aire.

The 'Corps de Garde' is a quadrilateral jewel of Flemish architecture of
the end of the sixteenth century. It was of old the central point of the
city, where the armed citizens met who patrolled the streets like the
burghers of Rembrandt's magnificent 'Ronde de Nuit.' A gallery runs
round it of arcades, and brickwork supported by monolithic columns.
Above these arcades runs a frieze of trophies of arms with the
attributes of St. James--the mayor of the city in whose time it was
built bore the name of this apostle--and the cross of Burgundy.

The principal facade fronts the 'Grande Place,' and is surmounted by a
picturesque pointed roof. An attic storey, running all around the
building, is richly decorated with sculptures of the Th