What mute eloquence in these walls! What an appeal to the imagination in the calmness! Earthly voices die away on the threshold, and peace, dovelike, broods over the very entrance. A daily visit to such a temple gives life a certain elevation. The very poor who come here to pray must acquire a certain dignity of character. How many generations have worshipped beneath these arches! The saints have passed over the very pavement I tread. I recall St. Louis, who, out of respect to our Lord, had laid off his shoes and divested himself of his royal robes, bearing solemnly into this church the holy Crown of Thorns. And great sinners, too, are in this long procession of the past. There is Count Raymond of Toulouse, barefoot, and clad only in the white tunic of a penitent, coming to receive absolution from the papal legate before the grand altar. When one recalls the popes, cardinals, and other dignitaries of the church, the kings and queens and knights of the olden time who have been here, one almost shrinks from entering such a throng of the mighty ones of the earth. It seems as if he were elbowing the Great Monarch or the gallant Henry of Navarre. On the galleries around the nave were formerly suspended the flags and standards taken in war, and it was in allusion to this custom that the Prince of Conti, after the victories of Fleurus, Steinkerque, and La Marsaille, made an opening in the crowd around the door of the church for the Marechal de Luxembourg, whom he held by the hand, by crying: "Place, place, messieurs, au tapissier de Notre Dame!"--"Room, room, gentlemen, for the upholsterer of Notre Dame!" It is charming to see the birds flying about in the arches of this church, as if nature had taken its venerable walls to her bosom. It made me think of the old hermits of the middle ages, living with the sea-birds in their ocean caves. Like St. Francis, the canons of Notre Dame say the divine office with their "little sisters, the birds;" and the bird is the symbol of the soul rising heavenward on the wings of prayer. We, like the birds, build our nests here for a few days. Blessed are we if they are built within the influences of the sanctuary which temper the storms and severities of life. It is only in the clefts of the rocks that wall in the mystic garden of the church that there is safety for the dovelike soul. In the transept is the altar of Our Lady, starry with lamps. Above her statue is one of her titles, appealing to every heart--Consolatrix afflictorum! To this church M. Olier came, in all his troubles, to the altar of Mary. There is also a fine statue of her over the grand altar, formerly at the Carmes. No church is complete without an altar of the Blessed Virgin. Wherever there is a cross, Mary must be at its foot, as at Calvary, directing our eyes, our thoughts, our hearts, to him who hangs thereon. "O that silent, ceaseless mourning! O those dim eyes! never turning From that wondrous, suffering Son!