As with men, so with cities. When ever one of the latter becomes famous, and the eyes of the world are fixed upon it, we desire to know more of it than what is presented on the surface. A thousand little details, trifling, perhaps, in themselves, share in the interest attaching to the whole to which they belong. And as the most interesting biographies of great men are those which not merely make us acquainted with the prominent features of their lives-with the great exploits which they achieved-but also follow them into their solitude or home-life, so the most attractive chronicles of states and cities are those which enter into the seemingly unimportant minutiæ, neglected by the general historian and the compiler of the guide-book.

Lutetia (civitas) Parisiorum is first mentioned in Cæsar's Commentaries. Lutetia has had various derivations assigned to it, but most probably it is the Latinized form of Loutouhezi, the Celtic for "a city in the midst of waters," it having been built on an island in the Seine. In the fourth century it received the name of the people whose chief city it was. During the middle ages it was supposed that Francus, a son of Hector, founded Paris, and also Troyes in Champagne, giving to the former the name of his uncle. In all likelihood, it comes from the Celtic par or bar, a frontier.

Christianity, according to Gregory of Tours, was first preached to the Parisians by St. Dionysius, or Denis, in the year 250; and the first synod held in Paris took place in 360, which seems to prove that the Christian missionaries had already made numerous converts there. Paganism, however, was not wholly uprooted until the episcopate of St. Marcellus, who died in 436, and who, according to a legend,

is said to have hurled into the Seine a frightful dragon which desolated the city, and which, perhaps, was the emblem of heathenism.

Julian the Apostate had a great liking for Paris, and spent five winters there. He praises its inhabitants for their intelligence and good conduct, and the surrounding vineyards for their excellent produce. An edifice. improperly called the Thermes de Julien, still exists in the Rue de la Harpe, which perpetuates his memory, and possibly served as his residence. In his time, the Montagne Ste. Geneviève was a sort of Campus Martius; the gardens of the Luxembourg were occupied by a Roman camp, and Roman villas lined both sides of the Seine.

The Merovingians made Paris their capital, and Clovis constantly resided there. His sons, while dividing his states, judged the possession of Paris of so great importance that they shared it among themselves, and agreed that none of them should enter it without the consent of the others. Under this dynasty, several of the Parisian churches were founded. Childebert built the church of St. Vincent, afterward St. Germain des Prés, the vaulting of each window in which was supported by costly pillars of marble. Paintings decorated with gold, covered the ceiling and the walls. The roof, composed of plates of gilded bronze, when struck by the rays of the sun, dazzled the eyes of beholders with its brilliancy.

Under Louis VI. and Louis VIL Paris became celebrated for its schools. The best known were the Cathedral School, the school of St. Germain des Prés, and that of Ste. Geneviève. At the first mentioned, Guillaume de Champeaux taught theology, and counted among his pupils the well-known Ab&

lard, at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century. In 1118 Abélard opened on the Montagne Ste. Geneviève his famous school, which soon eclipsed all the others, and at which no less than ten thousand scholars attended.

Philip Augustus, judging that Paris was not sufficiently protected by its walls, caused a tower to be built outside them, on the site of a Louveterie, or wolf-hunting establishment, from which it received the name of the Louvre. It served at once for a royal residence, a fortress, and a state-prison, and was completed, according to the original plan, in 1204. It was under this monarch that the streets of Paris were first paved. One day, while standing at a window of his palace in the city, the mud or filth in the street, shaken by some vehicles which were passing, exhaled an unbearable stench, which invaded the royal nostrils. It was then that Philip conceived the project of paving the streets. The work was done at the expense of the town, the pavement consisting of rough flagstones, about three feet and a half square, and six inches in thickness.

It was in this reign, in 1182, that the legate of the holy see consecrated the cathedral of Notre Dame, begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris. This immense edifice, however, was not finished till the reign of Charles VII. in the fifteenth century. The original flooring of Philip Augustus was lately found at eight or nine feet below the surface; and the thirteen steps which in his time, it is said, led to the entrance have disappeared. It was under Philip that the municipality of Paris received its first developments, and assumed a regular form. Besides the provost, who, as officer of the king, presided over the courts of justice, there was the syndic, nominated by the community of merchants, whose duty it was to protect the commercial interests of the town. He was afterward called the provost of the merchants, and was assisted by echevins, who formed his council. Un

der Philip, this officer acquired many new rights. The police, the streets, the care of public edifices, the administration of the lands belonging to the town, passed from the provost of Paris to this functionary.

Philip was also the patron of learning. He instituted schools in the Rue du Fouarre. Fouarre, or foare, from which is derived the existing fourrage, (forage,) is an old French word signifying straw. The scholars in those simple ages sat upon bundles of straw during the lectures, and as this custom naturally resulted in the frequent appearance of that material in the neighborhood of the schools, the street received its title from it. During the middle ages, no traffic was permitted in this street, in order to obviate any disturbance to the students.

Philip the Fair founded the parliament of Paris. It held its sessions in the king's palace, (Palais de Justice,) which, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was entirely abandoned to it. In this palace was the vast hall which served for receiving the homage of vassals, giving audience to ambassadors, public festivities, and other occasions of national interest, at one of the extremities of which was an enormous marble table, round which sovereigns alone were permitted to sit; and upon which, at certain times of the year, the society of clercs de la basoche (lawyers' clerks) gave dramatic entertainments of a farcical character.

In the fourteenth century, as now, Paris was celebrated as the seat of fashion in dress, though those dazzling magasins de nouveautés which we now admire there did not then exist. Wearing apparel, as well as other merchandise, was generally sold by criers in the streets. "They do not cease to bray from morning till night," writes Guillaume de Villeneuve. Venders of all classes swelled the discordant concert. To cry goods for sale was the daily special occupation; among others, of the three hundred blind men supported by the king, St. Louis. These unfortunates, it seems, were in

the habit of performing their duties without guidance, and the consequence was that they frequently came in collision, and gave each other severe contusions.

The first stone of the famous Bastille was laid by the provost of Paris, in the reign of Charles V., 1369. That formidable edifice was built for the purpose of protecting the king, who had seen his authority braved by the Parisians while residing in his palace in the city, which on that account he quitted. He frequently dwelt in the Louvre, of which the Bastille was a pendant, and of which M. Vitet gives the following picturesque description as it was in the fourteenth century: "The king caused to be raised outside the moats a number of buildings, useful and ornamental, of a middling height, forming what were then called basses-cours, and united to the château by gardens of considerable extent. One cannot imagine all the various objects that were heaped together in these dependencies and gardens. Besides lodgings for the officers of the crown, there were a menagerie of lions and panthers, birdrooms, aviaries for the king's parrots, fish-ponds, basins, labyrinths, tunnels, trellises, leafy pavilions-the favorite decoration of gardens in the middle ages. These parterres, cut in symmetrical compartments, and thrown in the midst of buildings varying in form and elevation; that chaos of towers and turrets-the former rising heavily from the moats, the latter as if suspended from the walls; that pell-mell of pointed roofs, here covered with lead, there with varnished tiles, some crested with heavy vanes, some with tufts of various colors-all this has no resemblance to a modern palace; but that disorder, these contrasts, which seem to us only barbarously picturesque, appealed quite differently to the imagination in those days, and were not without their grandeur and majesty. These were the bright days of the feudal Louvre, when it was living, peopled, and well cared for."

The space of ground which, until

lately, formed the Marché des Innocents, was, in the middle ages, the principal cemetery of Paris. It was surrounded by a sort of vaulted gallery, which was reserved for the corpses of distinguished persons and for dressmakers' shops. Here, in the year 1424, the English, who were then masters of Paris, gave a grand fete of rejoicing for the battle of Verneuil. and indulged in a frightful" dance of the dead" over the level tombstones. In the middle of the cemetery rose an obelisk, surmounted by a lamp, which alone feebly illumined at night the field of the dead, and animated its solitude. But at sunrise all was changed-daylight brought back with it noise, luxury, and pleasure.

Victor Hugo, in the chapter of his romance, Notre Dame de Paris, entitled Paris à vol d'oiseau, (book iii. chapter ii.,) gives a vivid description of the town as it was in the fifteenth century. Paris, according to him, was at that time divided into three distinct parts-the city, the university, and the town. The city, occupying the is land, was the oldest and smallest, and was the mother of the other two. “It stood between these," he says, "like a little, old woman between two tall, handsome daughters." The university was on the left bank of the Seine, stretching between points which at present correspond with the Halles aux Vins and La Monnaie. The town, the largest of the three divisions, was on the right side of the river. Each of the divisions formed a town, depending for its completeness upon the others. The city had churches; the town, palaces; the university, colleges.

In 1539, Francis I., having given permission to the Emperor Charles V. to traverse France, entertained the idea of receiving him at the Louvre, which underwent, on that account, a general restoration, according to the style of the renaissance; but as soon as the emperor departed, Francis, perceiving that the new works were mere ly of a temporary character, resolved to build a new palace on the same site

as the former one, and confided its erection to Pierre Lescot. The building, begun in 1541, was continued till the death of Henry II. It is the finest portion of the Louvre; the south-west angle. When Catherine de Médicis came into power, she dismissed Lescot, engaged an Italian architect, and caused that wing to be built which advances toward the river.

In 1564, tired of the Louvre, Catherine bought a piece of ground called the Salbonière, covered with potteryworks, the Tuileries Saint Honoré, and commenced the palace which received its name from the fabrics which had occupied its site. For six years, the new edifice steadily progressed; but Catherine, having learned from her astrologer, Ruggieri, that it was her fate to die under the ruins of a house near St. Germain, suddenly gave up the works of the Tuileries, because it was in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and built the Hôtel de Soissons, on the site of the present cornmarket.

The famous Pont Neuf was begun in 1578, Henry III. laying the first

stone.

The Place Royale was completed in 1612. Here Cardinal Richelieu soon afterward built a palace, which he called the Palais Cardinal, but which, in a spirit of regal munificence, he presented to his king, Louis XIII. Thenceforth it became the Palais Royal. Numerous hotels of the noblesse sprang up in the same quarter, and with them first appeared there the warehouses for bijouterie and other fancy goods, for which the Palais Royal is at present so celebrated. A writer of that time severely blames the merchants of these shops for permitting their wives to flirt with customers"all to induce them to buy a fashionable collar, a child's purse, a drachm or two of perfume for the perruques or a boy's wooden sword." Speaking of perruques, we must not omit to mention that they reached their full development at the time of Louis Quatorze. Their most celebrated maker

was a M. Binet, from whom they sometimes were called binettes. They weighed several pounds, sometimes cost a thousand crowns, and rose five or six inches above the brow. The word binette still exists in the language of the Paris gumin, designating a person with a droll countenance.

The last insurrection at Paris before the revolution was that called the Fronde, (sling.) This revolt received its name in a singular manner. In the moat of the town, near Saint Roch, the little boys of the quarter used to fight with slings. When the constable appeared, they all took to their heels. In the disputes of the parliament, a young counsellor, Bauchaumont, observed the modesty and docility of the members in the presence of the king, and their turbulence in his absence. "They are quiet just now," said he, "but, when he is gone, they will sling (on frondera) with a will." The word remained. The Fronde soon gained the whole town, which eagerly took the side of the insurgents, as the first cause of the troubles was a new tax on houses built outside the walls. Afterward, when the rebellion was quelled, the Parisians paid dearly for their share in it. Their privileges were abolished, a royal garrison took the place of their civic guards, and magistrates dependent on the crown, that of the municipal authorities.

Deprived of its independence, it became the sole glory of Paris to be the stage on which the splendors of the court of Louis XIV. were revealed. In 1662, that king gave an idea of what his reign would cost by the famous fête du carrousel, which has left its name to the vast place between the Louvre and the Tuileries. It cost 1,200,000 francs. Gold and silver were employed in so great profusion on the trappings of the horses, that the material of which they were made could not be distinguished from the embroidery with which it was covered. The king and the princes shone with the prodigious quantity of diamonds with which their arms and the harness of

their horses were covered. About the same time the Tuileries and the Louvre were completed, and a garden was designed for the former by Le Nôtre. The former garden of the Tuileries, like other ancient French gardens, comprised a strange medley; among other objects, it contained a pretty little abode, beside the quay, and mysteriously concealed by a thick grove, which Louis XIII. had given to his valet-dechambre, Renard, who had furnished it with rare and costly articles, and had made it a secret rendezvous for young seigneurs, and the scene of luxurious petits soupers.

It was in 1669 that Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador at the French court, introduced the use of coffee into Paris. The first café was opened at the foire St. Germain, which was then one of the most frequented and fashionable places of resort in the town, and the suppression of which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, went

far to destroy the industry and commerce of the left bank of the river, to the profit of the right. An Armenian named Pascal afterward established a café, which was much in vogue, called the Manouri, upon the Quai de l'Ecole; and, in 1689, a Sicilian, Procopio, opened the Café Procope in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which was for long the favorite place of reunion for the savans and beaux-esprits of the period.

But the café reminds us that we are leaving Paris in old times for the Paris of the present, and that we are close upon that blood-written page, the revolution, which divides the chronicles of the former from those of the latter. These notes must not be brought to a conclusion without the acknowledgment that from M. MalteBrun's laborious compilation, La France Illustrée, they derive whatever archæological interest they possess.

STUDENTS of Irish topography are sometimes at a loss to account for so many names of places in that island bearing the prefix "Kil." The explanation of this seeming want of inventive nomenclature is that the word Kil is an abbreviation or corruption of the vernacular Cill, a church; thus, Kilkenny means the church of St. Canice, or Kenny; Kilmore, the great church, more meaning, in the Irish, great or large; Kildare, church of the oak, from daire, oak. In the early ages of Christianity the church or abbey was to the people of Ireland what the feudal castle or walled town was to the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, at once a rallying point in case of danger, and a common centre

where learning, trade, and the mechanical arts found teachers and patrons,

The Irish, before and long after their conversion, were essentially an agricultural people, caring little for large towns; and, though insular, seem to have neglected foreign commerce, except such as flowed from their periodical incursions in Britain and Gaul, or which necessarily arose out of their emigration from the north of Ireland to Scotland. Hence we find that, while most of the inland cities and towns bear the name of some favorite saint or church, the seaports generally owe their origin and name to the Danes and Anglo-Normans.

The first Catholic churches erected in Ireland, of which we have any au