Romanesque church; Shakspeare in the sixteenth the last Gothic cathedral.

And now, to recapitulate what we have said thus far, and of necessity in the briefest and not the most complete fashion, the human race has two registers, two testaments, - masonry and printing, -the Bible of stone and the paper Bible. And indeed, when we regard these two Bibles, so wide open during all the centuries, we may be permitted to regret the visible majesty of the granitic writing with its gigantic alphabets built in colonnades, pylons, obelisks, this species of human mountains that cover the world and the past, from the pyramid to the steeple, from Cheops to Strasburg. The past that is written upon these marble pages should be read again and again. The leaves of this architectural book deserve our admiration; they should be turned frequently, but we must not refuse to acknowledge the grandeur of the edifice that printing has erected in its turn.

This edifice is colossal. I have forgotten what statistician it is that has calculated that were we to place one upon the other all the volumes that have issued from the press since the days of Gutenberg, we could span the distance from the earth to the moon ; it is not that sort of greatness of which we desire to speak. Yet when we seek in thought to gather some total image of all the productions of printing up to the present date, the total impression that it leaves upon us is that of a vast construction, whose foundation is the world itself, and upon which humanity labors unweariedly, while the monstrous head of this creation of man's is lost in the deep mists of the

future. It is an ant-hill for many intelligences; a beehive where each imagination, a golden bee, arrives with its honey. The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there upon its stairways we see issuing forth the contents of the dark mysterious passageways of knowledge that wind in and out and cross each other in the interior of the building. Everywhere upon the surface art has luxuriated in arabesques, rosaces, and airy lace-work. Each individual piece of work, however isolated and capricious it may seem, has a place and a ledge of its own, and the result of the whole is harmonious. From the cathedral built by Shakspeare to the mosque of Byron a thousand turrets rise, helter-skelter, and in each other's way, in this metropolis of universal thought. At its base have been written again the ancient pages of humanity that architecture has not registered. At the left of the entrance has been placed the old white marble bas-relief of Homer; at the right, the polyglot Bible erects its seven heads. Farther on, the Romancero hydra bristles, with other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Niebelungen. But the immense building is never completed. The press, that great machine, pumping unweariedly all the intellectual sap of society, ejects incessantly new materials for its work. The entire human race is upon the scaffolding, and every soul is a mason. The most humble may stop a hole or place a stone. Rétif de la Bretonne brings his hod of mortar. Every day a new course is erected, and, independent of the original and individual bent of each writer, there is casually some bit of work that is accomplished by the many working

unitedly. Thus the eighteenth century gives us the "Encyclopédie," the Revolution gives us "Le Moniiteur." Surely this is a construction that is forever growing, and winding in endless spirals. And within this construction may be heard a confusion of tongues, the ceaseless activity and the indefatigable industry of an excited thronging humanity. This is the promised shelter of intelligence against barbarian submersions, the second Tower of Babel of the human race.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

A GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

A RIGHT enviable personage, in the year of grace 1482, was the noble gentleman Robert d'Estouteville, knight, Sieur of Beyne, Baron of Ivry and St. Andry in Marche, Councillor and chamberlain to the king, and keeper of the provostry of Paris. Already it was nearly seventeen years since he had received from King Louis, on the 7th of November, 1465, the year of the comet,1 that fine place of Provost of Paris, which was regarded rather as a seigneurie than as an office.

"Dignitas," says Joannes Læmnœus, "quæ cum non exigua potestate politiam concernente, atque prærogativis multis et juribus conjuncta est." It was a thing quite marvellous, that, in the year '82, there should be a gentleman holding the king's commission, whose letters of institution were dated as far back as the time of the marriage of Louis XI.'s natural daughter with monsieur the bastard of Bourbon. On the same day that Robert d'Estouteville had taken the place of Jacques de Villiers in the provostry of Paris, Maître Jehan Dauvet succeeded Messire Hélye de Thorrettes in the first presidency of the court of parliament, Jehan Jouvénel des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of Chancellor of France, and Regnault des Dormans relieved Pierre Puy of the post of master of requests in ordinary to the king's household. Now, over how many heads had the presidency, the chancellorship, and the mastership travelled since Robert d'Estouteville had held the provostry of Paris? It had been "granted into his keeping," said the letters patent; and certainly he kept it well. He had clung to it, incorporated himself, identified himself with it, so thoroughly that he had escaped that rage for changes which possessed Louis XI., a distrustful, parsimonious, and laborious king, bent upon maintaining, by frequent appointments and dismissals, the elasticity of his power. Nay, more. The worthy chevalier had procured the reversion of his office for his son; and already, for two years, had the name of this noble gentleman, Jacques d'Estouteville, Esquire, figured at full length beside his own at the head of the register of the ordinary of the provostry of Paris,

a rare, assuredly, and signal favor! True it is Robert d'Estouteville was a good soldier; that he had loyally lifted his pennon against "the league of the public weal;" and that he had made a present to the queen, on the day of her entry into Paris in the year 14-, of a very wonderful stag made entirely of confectionery. And, moreover, he had a good friend in Messire Tristan l'Hermite, provost-marshal