It is sufficient to recall, among others of this class, the celebrated Hotel de Beauvais which will illustrate the reference. Not only was this magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of construction. This edifice exists to-day, in part, at No. 68 Rue Francois Miron, and the visitor may judge for himself as to its former elegance. Loret, in his "Gazette" in verse, recounts a visit made to the Hotel de Beauvais in 1663 by Marie Therese, the Queen of Louis XIV. Mercredi, notre auguste Reine, Cette charmante souveraine, Fut chez Madame de Beauvais Pour de son amiable palais Voir les merveilles etonnantes Et les raretes surprenantes. Times have changed, for the worse or for the better. The sedan-chair and the coach have given way to the automobile and the engine, and the wood fire to a stale calorifer, or perhaps a gas-log. The comparisons _are_ odious; there is no question as to this; but it is by contrast that the subject is made the more interesting. From the old Palais des Thermes (now a part of the Musee de Cluny) of the Roman emperors down through the Palais de la Cite (where lodged the kings of the first and second races) to the modern installations of the Louvre is a matter of twelve centuries. The record is by no means a consecutive one, but a record exists which embraces a dozen, at least, of the Paris abodes of royalty, where indeed they lived according to many varying scales of comfort and luxury. Not all the succeeding French monarchs had the abilities or the inclinations that enabled them to keep up to the traditions of the art-loving Francis I, but almost all of their number did something creditable in building or decoration, or commanded it to be done. Louis XIV, though he delayed the adjustment of Europe for two centuries, was the first real beautifier of Paris since Philippe Auguste. Privately his taste in art and architecture was rather ridiculous, but publicly he and his architects achieved great things in the general scheme. [Illustration: _The_ Louvre _The_ Tuileries & _The_ Palais Royal _of_ To-Day] Napoleon I, in turn, caught up with things in a political sense, in truth he ran ahead of them, but he in no way neglected the embellishments of the capital, and added a new wing to the Louvre, and filled Musees with stolen loot, which remorse, or popular clamour, induced him, for the most part, to return at a later day.