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220
THREE YEARS IN EUROPE.

the largest mediæval churches in Paris, 348 ft. long and 144 ft. wide, while the great height of the nave, (104 ft.) and the beauty of the surrounding chapels give the interior a noble and imposing appearance. When royalty was done away with in France in 1793, the revolutionists in their madness celebrated the Feast of Reason in this spacious Church!

To the south of the central market is another church of a very different character. It is the church of St. Germain L'auxerrois, situated immediately to the east of the Louvre. St. Germain Church.It was a church founded as early as the eleventh century, but for the most part restored in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This ancient church has a sad and mournful association,—for it was the bell of this church which rang the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholemew! Thousands of French protestants were massacred on that occasion and hundreds of thousands of honest hard-working Huguenots were afterwards expelled from France. Is it a wonder that when the reaction came, an attempt was made to do away with religion altogether in the neighbouring church of St. Eustache?

As we walk down the Rue de Rivoli further eastward, we come to the celebrated Hotel de Ville, perhaps the finest Town Hall in the world. Hotel de Ville.But the present building is not old but only a reproduction of the magnificent edifice which was completed in 1628, but was destroyed by the infamous Communists in 1871. When I visited Paris last,