that he threw his own cap after the silver money, for the record adds a further payment to him 'for a certain cap belonging to him, which was likewise thrown to the people.' All the records of this age at Aire are picturesque with lively accounts of all manner of junketings, carousals, and festivities, and the good people seem to have passed no small part of their lives in merry-making. There is a curious entry on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduke Philip to Mary of England. This auspicious event was celebrated at Aire by a grand procession, followed by 'songs and ballads in honour of the married pair;' and the treasurer paid to 'Johan Gallant, goldsmith, iiii. livres iiii. sols for the silver presents, to wit, an eagle, a leopard, a lion, and a fool--all in silver--which were given to those who made the songs, ballads, and games in honour of the said good news!' Like Calais, St.-Omer, and other cities of this region, Aire offered a refuge in 1553 to the unfortunate inhabitants of the ancient historic city of Therouanne, which, after a heroic defence by d'Esse de Montmorency, was taken in that year, five days after the death on the ramparts of the gallant commander, by the troops of Charles the Fifth, and by his orders razed to the ground. The details of this merciless destruction recall the sack of Rome by the Imperialists; and it is the blackest feature in the black record of the First French Revolution that the men who then got control for a time of the government of France, in the names of Liberty and Progress, deliberately and wantonly rivalled the most unscrupulous of the kings and emperors whom they were constantly denouncing, in their treatment, not of foreign fortresses conquered in war, but of French cities, of the lives and the property of French citizens, and of the most precious monuments of French history. Charles the Bold at Dinant and Charles the Fifth at Therouanne were outdone, in the prostituted name of the French people, by the younger Robespierre at Toulon and by the paralytic Couthon at Lyons.