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We have just attempted to restore, for the reader's benefit, that admirable church of Notre-Dareater part of the beauties which it possessed in the fifteenth century, and which it lacks to-day; but we have o,--the view of Paris which was then to be obtained from the su long groped one's way up the dark spiral which perpendicularly pierces the thick wall of the belfries, one eed, at last abruptly, upon one of the lofty platforht and air,--that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread out, on all sides at once, before the eye; a spectacle ~sui generis~, of which those of our readers who have had the good fortune to see a Gothic city entire, co in Bavaria and Vittoria in Spain,--can readily form an idea; or even smaller specimens, provided that they are well preserved,--Vitré in Brittany, Nordhausen in Prussia

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago--the Paris of the fifteenth century--was already a gigantic city We Parisians generally ained, since Paris has not increased much over one-third since the time of Louis XI It has certainly lost ained in size

Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of the City which has the form of a cradle The strand of that island was its first boundary wall, the Seine its first moat Paris rees, one on the north, the other on the south; and two bridge heads, which were at the saates and its fortresses,--the Grand-Châtelet on the right bank, the Petit-Châtelet on the left Then, fro too cribbed and confined in its island, and unable to returnthither, crossed the water Then, beyond the Grand, beyond the Petit-Châtelet, a first circle of walls and towers began to infringe upon the country on the two sides of the Seine Soes of this ancient enclosure still remained in the last century; to-day, only the memory of it is left, and here and there a tradition, the Baudets or Baudoyer gate, "Porte Bagauda"

Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the heart of the city outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, and effaces this wall Philip Augustus makes a new dike for it He ireat towers, both lofty and solid For the period of more than a century, the houses press upon each other, accumulate, and raise their level in this basin, like water in a reservoir They begin to deepen; they pile story upon story; they ush forth at the top, like all laterally corowth, and there is a rivalry as to which shall thrust its head above its neighbors, for the sake of getting a little air The street glows narrower and deeper, every space is overwhelmed and disappears The houses finally leap the wall of Philip Augustus, and scatter joyfully over the plain, without order, and all askew, like runaways There they plant theardens fro with 1367, the city spreads to such an extent into the suburbs, that a neall becoht bank; Charles V builds it But a city like Paris is perpetually growing It is only such cities that becoraphical, political, moral, and intellectual water-sheds of a country, all the natural slopes of a people, pour; wells of civilization, so to speak, and also sewers, where coence, population,--all that is sap, all that is life, all that is the soul of a nation, filters and aly, drop by drop, century by century