During the Renaissance period, while many of the nobility fixed their seats in the eastern and north-eastern part of Paris-within-the-Boulevards on the Right Bank, not a few erected houses for themselves in the open spaces of the =Faubourg St. Germain=. The most magnificent of these later buildings is the =Palais du Luxembourg=, erected for Marie de Médicis, after the death of Henri IV, by Jacques Debrosse, one of the best French architects of the generation which succeeded that of Jean Goujon and Philibert Delorme. It was built somewhat after the style of the Pitti Palace at Florence, where Marie was born, and it exhibits the second stage of French Renaissance architecture, when it was beginning to degenerate from the purity, beauty, and originality of its first outburst, towards the insipid classicism of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. It was for this building that Rubens executed his great series of pictures from the life of Marie, now in the Louvre; while Lesueur painted his St. Bruno legends for a Carthusian monastery within the grounds. The gardens which surround it are interesting in their way as being the only specimen now remaining in Paris of Renaissance methods of laying out; most of the other palaces have gardens designed by Le Nôtre in the formal style of Louis XIV. The Palace is now occupied by the Senate: it is practically difficult of access, and the interior contains so little of interest that it may well be omitted save by those who can spend much time in being ushered round almost empty rooms by perfunctory officials. But the exterior, the gardens, and the Medici fountain should be visited by all those who wish to form a consistent idea of Renaissance Paris. In the same excursion may be easily combined a visit to =St. Sulpice=, a church which occupies the site of an old foundation, but which was entirely rebuilt from the ground in the age of Louis XIV, and which is mainly interesting as the best example of the cold, lifeless, and grandiose taste of that pompous period. The =Faubourg St. Germain= and the quarter about it, as a whole, are still the region of the old noble families. The western end of this Faubourg, especially about the Quai d’Orsay, is given over to embassies and political machinery, particularly that connected with foreign affairs. The South Bank is also the district of the =Legislature=, in both its branches. The Quartier Latin, however, has largely overflowed of recent years into the Luxembourg district and that immediately behind it, which are now to a great extent occupied by the students, artists, and other Bohemian classes.] * * * * *