The French inscription was the happy thought of M. Pastoret, one of the few Academicians that embraced at its origin the principles of the Revolution, which he followed through its varying phases, until he attained an advanced age. The first mortuary deposit in the Pantheon was that of Mirabeau, in August, 1791; and, on the 30th May ensuing, the anniversary of the death of Voltaire, "L'Assemblée Nationale déclara cet écrivain le libérateur de la pensée, et digne de recevoir les honneurs décernées aux grands hommes," &c. On the 27th August following, a similar distinction was decreed to J. J. Rousseau; but in January, 1822, the tombs of these apostles of incredulity were removed, until replaced in 1830. In July, 1793, the monster Marat was inhumed there, "amidst the deepest lamentations and mournful expressions of regret for the loss sustained by the country in the death of the most valued of her citizens," whose corpse, however, on the 8th February, 1795, was torn from its cerements and flung, with every mark of ignominy, into the filth of the sewer of Montmartre. In the vicissitudes of popular favour even Mirabeau's effigy was burned in 1793. Such have been the alternations and ever-recurring contests in the feelings and principles of the ascendant parties-- "Et velut æterno certamine prælia pugnasque Edere, turmatim certantia; nec dare pausam, Conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris." _Lucret._ ii. 117. The cost of this beautiful edifice may be estimated at about a million sterling, or, taking into consideration the difference in the value of money at the periods, one-third of what was expended on our cathedral of St. Paul. The architect of this and other noble monuments of art, Jean Germain Soufflot, born in 1704, died in August, 1781, the victim, it is said, of the jealousy of his rival artists, whose malignant attacks on his works and fame made too deep an impression on his sensitive feelings, though supported in this trial of his moral fortitude by his most intimate friend and director, that genuine philanthropist, the father and institutor of the _Deaf and dumb_,--the Abbé de l'Epée, in whose arms he died. No one it has been observed, was more justly entitled to have the achievement of his genius invoked, as our Wren's has been, and indicated to the inquirer, as the fit repository of his mortal remains. He did not, however, live to contemplate the completed structure. The sculptor David, who has embellished the pediment with numerous statues, is now a refugee in Brussels, possibly the relative, but certainly the political inheritor of his great namesake's ultra-revolutionary sentiments, the eminent painter, I mean, and _âme damnée_, as he was called, of Robespierre, an exile, too, in Belgium for many years.