crowds of seals which had been caught while still alive by the freezing of the waters in which they remain imprisoned. Their carefully prepared skins have furnished us with warm clothing. Nothing is more curious than thus suddenly to catch sight of, as it were through a mysterious glass case, one of these huge marine animals, sometimes a whale, a shark or a devil fish, and that star-like flora which carpets the seas. Though appearing crystallized in its transparent prison, in its Elysium of pure brine, it has lost none of its secret charm, that was quite unknown to our ancestors. Idealised by its very lack of motion, immortalised by its death, it dimly shines here and there with gleams of pearl and mother of pearl in the twilight of the depths below, to the right, the left, beneath the feet or above the head of the solitary skater who roams with his lamp on his forehead in pursuit of the unknown. There is always something new to look forward to from these miraculous soundings, so different from the soundings of former time. Never a tourist has come home without having discovered some interesting object--a piece of wreckage, the steeple of some sunken town, a human skeleton to enrich our prehistoric museums, sometimes a shoal of sardines or cod. These splendid and timely reserves come in very handy for replenishing our bill of fare. But the chief fascination of such adventurous exploration is the sense of the boundless and the everlasting, of the unfathomable and the changeless by which one is arrested and overwhelmed in these bottomless depths. The savour of this silence and solitude, of this profound peace, the sequel to so many tempests, of this almost starless gloaming and twilight with its fleeting gleams, reposes the eye after our underground illuminations. I will not speak of the surprises which the hand of man has lavished there. At the moment when one least expects it one sees the submarine tunnel along which one is gliding, enlarged beyond all measure and transformed into a vast hall in which the fancy of our sculptors has found full play, a temple of vast dimensions with transparent pillars, with walls of enthralling beauty that the eye in ecstasy attempts to fathom. That is often the trysting place of friends and lovers, and the excursion begun in dreamy loneliness is continued in loving companionship. But we have wandered long enough in these halls of mysteries. Let us return to our cities. One would look, by the bye, in vain for a city of lawyers there, or even, for a court of justice. There is no more arable land and therefore no more lawsuits about property or ancient rights. There are no more walls, and therefore no more lawsuits about party walls. As for felonies and misdemeanours, we do not know exactly why, but it is an obvious fact that with the spread of the cult of art they have disappeared as by enchantment, while formerly the progress of industrial life had tripled their numbers in half a century.