Of Paris, one may well concentrate one's estimate in five words: "Each epoch has been rich," also prolific, in benefits, intentions, and creations of all manner of estimable and admirable achievements. By favour of these efforts of all the reigns and governments which have gone before, the Paris of to-day in its architectural glories, its monuments in stone, and the very atmosphere of its streets, places, and boulevards, is assuredly the most marvellous of all the cities of Europe. * * * * * It may not be an exceedingly pleasant subject, but there is, and always has been, a certain fascination about a visit to a cemetery which ranks, in the minds of many well-informed and refined persons, far above even the contemplation of great churches themselves. It may be a morbid taste, or it may not. Certainly there seems to be no reason why a considerable amount of really valuable facts might not be impressed upon the retina of a traveller who should do the round of _Campos Santos_, _Cimetières_ and burial-grounds in various lands. In this respect, as in many others, Paris leads the way for sheer interest in its tombs and sepulchres, at Montmartre and Père la Chaise. In no other burial-ground in the world--unless it be Mount Auburn, near Boston, where, if the world-wide name and fame of those there buried are not so great as those at Paris, their names are at least as much household words to English-speaking folk, as are those of the old-world resting-place to the French themselves--are to be found so many celebrated names. There are a quartette of these famous resting-places at Paris which, since the coming of the nineteenth century, have had an absorbing interest for the curiously inclined. Père la Chaise, Montmartre, the royal sepulchres in the old abbey church of St. Denis, and the churchyard of St. Innocents. "Man," said Sir Thomas Brown, "is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." Why this should be so, it is not the province of this book to explain, nor even to justify the gorgeous and ill-mannered monuments which are often erected over his bones. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV.] The catacombs of Paris are purposely ignored here, as appealing to a special variety of morbidity which is as unpleasant to deal with and to contemplate as are snakes preserved in spirit, and as would be--were we allowed to see them--the sacred human _reliques_ which are preserved, even to-day, at various pilgrims' shrines throughout the Christian world. That vast royal sepulchre of the abbey church of St. Denis, which had been so outrageously despoiled by the decree of the Convention in 1793, was in a measure set to rights by Louis XVIII., when he caused to be returned from the Petits Augustins, now the Palais des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, such of the monuments as had not been actually destroyed. The actual spoliation of these shrines belongs to an earlier day than that of which this book deals.