and the allies, led by Marlborough and Prince
Eugene, we find Valenciennes again playing a leading part. And during
the last blind, desperate effort of France to shake off the domination
of the scoundrels who had fastened themselves upon her vitals at Paris
after the collapse of the monarchy, Valenciennes became the theatre of
the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of
Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as
unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in
both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence and
consequent lack of the most ordinary prudence and forecast.

A morning may be spent with both profit and pleasure in the galleries of
the Hotel de Ville at Valenciennes. The building is of the early
seventeenth century, and was remodelled and partially reconstructed
under the Second Empire. It is spacious and not without a certain
dignity, but, like the streets and squares, it is ill kept.

The galleries which occupy the whole of the second floor are extensive,
well-lighted, and with a more careful and systematic arrangement of the
pictures would be of considerable value to students of art. Valenciennes
certainly had painters of merit before the sixteenth century. One of
these, celebrated by Froissart, Maitre Andre, was both a sculptor and a
painter. In 1364 he became 'imagier' of Charles V. of France. The
statues of that king, of Jeanne de Bourbon his queen, and of King John
and King Philip, still extant at St.-Denis, are his work. Two exquisite
manuscripts illuminated by him still exist; one in the Bibliotheque
Nationale at Paris, the other at Brussels.

Simon Marmion, who died at Valenciennes on Christmas-day, 1489, was the
court painter of that high and puissant prince, Philippe, Duc de
Bourgogne, and ranked among the chiefs of the Flemish School. Pictures
of his exist at Bruges, Nuremberg, and Paris. The Valenciennes museum
has an _ex-voto_ on wood, the history of which is curious. It was found
broken into two pieces, and hidden away behind a confessional in the
cathedral of Notre-Dame. How it came there no one knows. It may have
been flung there during the pillage of the church, or put there to save
it. At all events, having been carefully (not too carefully) restored
and cleaned, it now presents two interesting pictures, one of St. John,
holding in his right hand a book on which the Paschal Lamb reposes, with