It is impossible to characterize the =Renaissance= in a few short sentences. In one aspect, it was a return from =Gothicism= to =Classical usage=, somewhat altered by the new conditions of life. At first you will probably only notice that in architecture it substituted round arches for pointed, and introduced square doors and windows; while in other arts it replaced sacred and Christian subjects and treatment by mythological and secular. But, in contrast with mediævalism, it will reveal itself to you by degrees as essentially =the dawn of the modern spirit=. The =Louvre= is the noblest monument of the =French Renaissance=. From the time of St. Louis onward, the French kings began to live more and more in the northern suburb, the town of the merchants, which now assumed the name of La Ville, in contradistinction to the Cité and the Université. Two of their chief residences here were the Bastille and the Hôtel St. Paul, both now demolished—one, on the Place so called, the other, between the Rue St. Antoine and the Quai des Célestins. But from a very early period they also possessed a _château_ on the site of the Louvre, and known by the same name, which guarded the point where the wall of Philippe Auguste abutted on the river. François I^{er} decided to pull down this picturesque turreted mediæval castle, erected by Philippe Auguste and altered by Charles V. He began the construction in its place of a magnificent Renaissance palace, which has ever since been in course of erection. Its subsequent growth, however, is best explained opposite the building itself, where attention can be duly called to the succession of its salient features. But a visit to the exterior fabric of the Louvre should be preceded by one to =St. Germain l’Auxerrois=, the parish church, and practically the chapel, of the old Louvre, to which it stood in somewhat the same relation as the Ste. Chapelle to the home of St. Louis. Note, however, that the church was situated just within the ancient wall, while the _château_ lay outside it. The visitor will doubtless be tolerably familiar by this time with some parts at least of the exterior of the Louvre; but he will do well to visit it now =systematically=, in the order here suggested, so as to gain a clear general idea of its history and meaning.] A. THE FABRIC