Paris, and left for several months ignorant of the fate of his wife and family. His reminiscences of that dreadful period so lately stirred a crowd in the Manchester Free Trade Hall that I need not repeat them here. I shall never forget the few hours we spent at M. Cook's before service and after, when all our party was present. In a letter to a little girl I may probably tell how his dear children sang us lots of French hymns, their mamma leading, and how we reciprocated with English hymns. But I must tell how the Rev. James Smith, of Warrington, preached in English to Pastor Cook's people a very plain and very pithy sermon, which Pastor Cook translated, while the people listened with deep attention. The French singing was sweet and very effective. Were I a minister I would rather be a Pastor Cook preaching to unbelieving Frenchmen -and he can preach-than a humdrum at some St. Sepulchre or Bethel, where all the congregation have got gospel-hardened.

[It may interest some readers to know that Pastor Cook was one of the few saved from the wreck of the Ville du Havre in November 1873, when upwards of 260 lives were lost. He remained on board the Loch Earn with an injured friend, praying with and comforting the sailors, and was again saved from a watery grave, a vessel having taken the Loch Earn passengers and crew off only six hours before she sank. A few weeks after, however, he died in the South of France, from the effect of his sufferings. He was a fine noble fellow.]

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LETTER IV.

MORE ABOUT PARIS.

PARIS, April 1st.—I am now up (seven o'clock), dressed, and ready for breakfast and Marseilles. We have had an excellent time. Our inn is very good-fit for any one, and the kind English lady has all the ways of a motherly Englishwoman. She has travelled much, is read up in paintings, &c., like an artist, as we found when going through the galleries of the Luxembourg. Even she had to draw her rations of horse-flesh last year. She tells many tales of the sufferings of middleclass people during the siege, and the horrors borne during the Commune, which were far worse. The inn is close by the Hôtel de Ville (the Mansion House. of Paris), and of it-an immense pile-nothing but bare walls now remain. A petroleuse was brought for safety to this inn, who had been caught setting fire to a private house not far off, to which she had got entrance on some trumpery plea. No motive could.be assigned. The cats, rats, dogs, and horse-flesh tales of which we heard were by no means myths or exaggerations, and Madame Perret's story of her first piece of white bread is quite touching. A small bit for her husband, maid, and self, and the rest carried to a neighbour who had given her potatoes during the siege

THE LOUVRE AND TUILERIES.

19

-the neighbour carrying part to an invalid mother. Let me now tell you something of what we have seen. Under the guidance of the Rev. E. Cook, Mr. Smith's old college friend, we visited the picture and statuary portion of the Louvre, which is quite untouched, although its neighbours, the Tuileries, are in far more complete ruins than I had conceived from the newspapers. M. Cook is a most intelligent gentleman, a good historical scholar, and able from his French birth and long residence in Paris to bring many other qualities to bear in showing us quickly and intelligently the chief works of the chief artists of the world. I had seen most of them when in Paris before, I suppose. At least I remember many tired hours in "doing the Louvre." But now it was a matter of ease. We were able to appreciate his criticisms, to trace the stages of a painter's career, and award our humble meed of praise where otherwise we should have passed on, lost in a crowd of mythological, theological, and sacerdotal subjects. I cannot stay to dwell on the paintings. I have but a confused remembrance of criticizing Paul Veronese's huge picture of the "Marriage in Cana of Galilee," where the popular notion of the wedding of a poor humble couple is dispelled, and we have a mansion with numbers of onlookers, including a dog in a gallery, harpers, singers, winetasters, &c., scores in number. I dwell with pleasure, however, on one sweet Madonna face the only one worthy of a Jewess and of the "Blessed above Women." The painter has had the good sense to give her husband the appearance of a fine manly Jew-not over Jewish, and to put into the faces of both the happy, beaming, contented looks of a well-matched pair. Need I speak of the Venuses, the Zephyrs, the Cupids, or the rooms devoted to the

glory of one deceased queen's humdrum life? No. If my pen were that of a ready writer on the pictures of Rubens, and Salvator Rosa, and half a dozen others known to every man of education, I would dwell on the pictures at the Louvre. But of the best of such descriptions it would be said-" Alas, master, it is borrowed!"

Of the statuary-and its name is legion-we took a long inspection. The Roman Emperors known to fame are shown at various periods of their lives, and some might be traced by the development of their bumps and lumps in a way which ought to have warranted the free and independent electors of Rome in decapitating them in good time. But perhaps "Bumpology" Iwas not then a science. Nero when old must have been a vile-looking fellow, and that he ever could have used that sweetest of all musical instruments, the fiddle, is now to me a matter of question. No doubt it is an error of some copyist, or an interpolation in the text.

In the Louvre are various statues removed from the gardens of the Tuileries. Some such, and others not removed, have lost a head, a hand, or been calcined beyond recovery. The Communists have left their mark in Paris. Petroleum is a power among the forces of the world. Paris was certainly in a fair way for extinction, but the damaged buildings, with three or four exceptions, were what are labelled "National property."

LETTER V.

MARSEILLES.

MARSEILLES, April 2nd.-We are here, safe and sound, after being on the rail from eleven yesterday forenoon to 6.30 this morning-535 miles. The London and NorthWestern would have done it in half the time. Again we secured a compartment for ourselves, which was quite a luxury for such a long journey, and we secured it on this wise: You have perhaps heard me tell how on the French lines passengers are not permitted to enter on the platform until the door of the room is opened in which they are herded, so that late comers fare as well as others in the general rush for seats. We could not bear the idea of being separated for a day, and the station-master was not to be reached. In the emergency I luckily thought of two ladies whom I had seen holding an almsbag near the entrance of the passenger room. I popped a franc into the bag of the elder, and asked her to do what she could for us. In an instant she and her younger fellow-beggar-I don't use the word offensively-went to the station-master, and introduced me, I do not know as what-it might have been as a subscriber to the fund for the release of deceased station-masters' souls from purgatory, if such a fund there be-and in a twinkling we were ushered into a carriage which was at once labelled