night this all glittering with light and throbbing with exciting music and sparkling with flowing wine, bright eyes and fine dress, and this is like what the Champs Elysées appeared to me. Walking up, inside, about two hundred and fifty. steps of stone, I find myself upon the top of the Arc de Triomphe. This is claimed to be the finest triumphal arch on earth. It is one hundred and sixty feet high, one hundred and forty-six feet broad, and seventy-two feet deep. It is arched two ways, that is, two avenues cross beneath it at right angles. It was commenced in 1806, and not finished until 1836, and was designed to commemorate the success and glory of Napoleon the Great. It cost nearly two millions. of dollars, and it bears upon its sides the most magnificent pictures carved in high relief great events in the history of France and Napoleon. It stands on a slight eminence in the "Star" where twelve handsome avenues centre at its base. What a panorama of glory and beauty is here spread out! Thousands of carriages and people are moving quietly over the smooth and wood-paved streets. The atmosphere is quite clear. What a contrast with London! Here we can look over the whole great city of two millions of laughing and suffering men and women. Yonder is the gleaming Seine, and in at least three directions are seen mounts in the dim distance where fortifications and monuments, or great public buildings stand, or are being erected. Yonder, to the north, stretches the great, deep green forest of Bois de Boulogne, with its twenty-five thousand acres, containing towns, lakes, fountains and palaces There is historic St. Cloud, where the great Napoleon once appeared in great splendor with his almost invincible army, bearing bright banners, and brilliant badges and scarfs. Away there is the column of July, 1830, standing in the Place de la Bastile. There is the Pantheon with its vast dome, and there the two towers and spire of the great and ancient Notre Dame Cathedral, and nearer stands the Palace Louvre and the Luxembourg. Yonder is the lofty gilded dome of the Invalides, a fitting canopy for the dust of the ambitious Napoleon. There, fountain-guarded, stands the beautiful obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and here to the right the beautiful and extensive Palace Trocadera rears its two lofty towers nearly three hundred feet above the waters of the Seine, looking down upon its broad, magnificent dome, and the great fountains in a wide garden of fragrant beauty. But it is time I descend from this enchanting eminence. I bought a book of Paris views from the handsome young lady who took charge my umbrella while I admired the gorgeous scene. of I wish all my readers could see how beautiful it is to look down upon a broad boulevard in which stand four long rows of beautiful trees, while fine statues and fountains sit on diamonded thrones amid the sweetest and most brilliant angels of vegetation. The young lady smiled and looked somewhat puzzled as she wrote, in compliance with my request, her name and a short sentence in French in a note-book which I carry to supplement my memory. As I had walked quite enough, I took a street-car going toward the Hotel St. Petersbourg. The street-cars here are clean, handsome and neatly painted, and many passengers ride outside on top. I told you that I put up at a hotel where the clerks and waiters, though French, spoke English. At 6:30 o'clock we entered the dining-saloon in a court, flanked by flowers and shrubbery. The canopy was splendid with chandeliers, flowers, angels and stars, and the walls were resplendent with mirrors and gay curtains held in exquisite forms by graceful hands of silk and metal. But I must hasten; I cannot stay to tell you fully how an army of polite and finely-dressed young men quickly supplied the wants of the two hundred or more people who chatted in English around the three large tables; how wines, liquors and sodas of various colors flowed and foamed, while good, clear water filled half the goblets; how a dozen beautiful monogramed plates were placed before each guest from time to time as he helped himself from liberal waiters, passed at his left hand, and ate and conversed for more than an hour. Yes, the French are cooks; they could please me in this line greatly and easily. We begin with soup, and passing through courses. of fish, flesh, fowl and vegetables, we go on to puddings, etc., and finish with a cluster of grapes or a peach. Though for the first half hour at dinner you might remain hungry, that sensation would certainly depart before the close of the repast. The dinner hour is ended; it is nearly 8 o'clock; the city is brilliantly lighted up and thousands of visitors from various parts of the world are either walking and riding out, or still planning where they will pass the evening or greater part of the night. CHAPTER XVII. PARIS: HER PAST, PRESENT; PALACES AND PRISON. A CITY PEERLESS IN BEAUTY-BUILDINGS BOW TO WINNERS OF GLORY EAGLE-MOUNTED BANNERS AND NUMIDIAN LIONS-CÆSAR IN A WOLF DEN-MANY I now stand in a well-lighted and grand thoroughfare in the gay capital of France, nearly four thousand miles from the little vale where I was born and where Mr. Bennett helped me to find "Paris" on a well-worn map. I think of the history of this great city in the heart of France. This city, peerless in beauty, where banners of love or banners of war are always unfurled; where cannon have boomed in battle and orchestras throbbed music for dancers; where captains, generals, |