nce, and over her gates to-day one may read, _Entree de
Paris_. The Parisian is, and always has been, conscious of his
citizenship, proud of his city, careful of her beauty, jealous of her
reputation. The essentials of Parisian life remain unchanged since
mediaeval times. Busy multitudes of alert, eager burgesses crowd her
streets; ten thousand students stream from the provinces, from Europe,
and even from the uttermost parts of the earth, to eat of the bread of
knowledge at her University. The old collegiate life is gone, but the
arts and sciences are freely taught as of old to all comers; and a
lowly peasant lad may carry in his satchel the portfolio of a prime
minister or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his
mediaeval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The
boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy
student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant
self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a Francois Villon find
their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the
fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the
fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins to those of the
Commune, have throughout the crises of her history ensanguined her
streets with the blood of citizens.[1] Let us remember, however, when
contrasting the modern history of Paris with that of London, that the
questions which have stirred her citizens have been not party but
dynastic ones, often complicated and embittered by social and
religious principles ploughing deep in the human soul, for which men
have cared enough to suffer, and to inflict, death.

[Footnote 1: "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to
the present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar
on his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades.]

Those writers who are pleased to trace the permanency of racial traits
through the life of a people dwell with satisfaction on passages in
ancient authors who describe the Gauls as quick to champion the cause
of the oppressed, prone to war, elated by victory, impatient of
defeat, easily amenable to the arts of peace, responsive to
intellectual culture; terrible, indefatigable orators but bad
listeners, so intolerant of their speakers that at tribal gatherings
an official charged to maintain silence would march, sword in hand,
towards an interrupter, and after a third warni