One of the pictures in this gallery haunts me still. It is an illustration of one of Dante's immortal verses--his visit to the lake of Brimstone. The poet with a wreath of laurel round his brow stands in the center of a little boat, while his conductor in the stream propels the craft with one oar over the boiling and surging sea of hell. His countenance is filled with mingled astonishment and horror, yet he preserves his wits and observes very critically all that is about him. One poor wretch lifts his head from the liquid fire, and fastens his jaws upon the rim of the boat in his terrible agony, while one of the attendants of the boat with an oar endeavors to beat him back. On the other side a ghostly wretch has fastened his long teeth into a fellow-sufferer. The shades of light and darkness are so mingled that the effect is very striking. It is the most horrible picture I ever looked at, and I would much rather sleep in Madame Tassaud's chamber of horrors, than look at it again. In the next apartment there is a picture of Christ, which struck me as the best I ever looked at. The divine sweetness of the human and the grandeur of the God were united with wonderful skill. The face was half-sorrowful, as if the heart were filled with thoughts of a sinful, suffering world, and still upon the brow the very sunshine of heaven rested. The impression which that face made upon me will never be entirely obliterated, and its effect was far different from the illustration of Dante. The two pictures, it seemed to me, teach a useful lesson. It is that men are to be saved through love, and not through fear. Let men see God's beauty and loveliness, and you will more surely win them from error than by showing them the horrors of hell. The origin of the Luxembourg palace was as follows: about the middle of the sixteenth century, one Robert de Harley erected a large house in the middle of the gardens. In 1583 the house was bought and enlarged by the duke of Luxembourg, and in 1612 Marie de Medicis bought it for ninety thousand francs, and then commenced the present palace. During the first year of the revolution it was used for a prison; then for an assembly-room for the consuls; still later as the chamber for the peers, and now the French senate meet in it. It contains a large library, but the people cannot have access to its well-stored shelves. Students can, however, by making proper application, consult the library. One evening while walking in the Luxembourg gardens, the band playing exquisite music, and the crowd promenading to it, I met a friend, an American, who has resided in Paris for seventeen years. Taking his arm we fell into the current of people, and soon met a couple of quite pretty looking ladies arm-in-arm. They were dressed exactly alike and their looks were very much of the same pattern, and as to their figures, I certainly could not tell one from the other with their faces turned away.