should they continue to disregard the usual conditions of warfare between civilised peoples. . . . Whatever it may cost, it shall be an eye.for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Some days after this the Archbishop of Paris, a number of priests, M. Bonjean, President of the Court of Cassation, and others, to the number of two hundred in all, were arrested by the Commune and held as hostages. Slowly the days moved on for the next four or five weeks, for Thiers, with very questionable policy, determined to make no decisive effort till he had a very large force.

At last this force was collected, and bit by bit the outer fortifications fell into the hands of the Versailles troops. On the afternoon of Sunday, 21st May, the attacking forces entrenched the gate of St. Cloud, and were now fairly within the city. During Monday and Tuesday they kept pushing onwards. On Wednesday, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Palais Royal, the Hôtel de Ville, the Rue Royale, and the Ministry of Finance were in flames. The desperate Communists had determined to destroy the city they could not possess! Happily they failed in their purpose, as far as regarded the chief public and historic buildings of Paris, for the Louvre, with its priceless treasures, and Notre Dame, with its many memories, were saved; but a vast amount of damage was done. Convicted criminals were released from

prison, and sent through the city with cans of petroleum to fire buildings. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this same terrible week mock trials-for they merit no other name-of the hostages were held. They were condemned and shot. Of these deaths that of Monsignor Darboy, the venerable Archbishop of Paris, excited the most profound horror and sorrow. The struggle on the part of the Communists was now over; in reality the last desperate fight was on Saturday and Sunday at Père la Chaise. No quarter was asked or given. At last this final attempt at resistance was also crushed. Then began a long series of military executions. Every member of the Commune who was found was shot at once, so also were those found in the possession of arms. Many women, who were supposed to have poured petroleum on the flames, were also shot. "When at length stillness fell upon the awful strife of these few days, the appearance of Paris was ghastly in the extreme. Corpses lay heaped together amid the blackened ruins in every variety of contortion and mutilation. It was estimated that ten thousand of the insurgents had been killed during the fighting of that week.' And so this fearful chapter in the history of Paris ended. We need not pursue the subject further, or tell the story of the Communist trials, which shortly after began in due form.

HE Czar of Russia

is not merely a mighty temporal monarch, having absolute power over his subjects in earthly matters;

he is a spiritual potentate also, for he is the head of the Greek Church, and as such an object of sacred awe and veneration to the millions that belong to that form of the Christian faith. In a certain sense it is true that the Queen of England is supreme head upon earth of the Church of England, but she is so merely by an Act of Parliament passed

under Henry VIII.,-an act aimed at the papal supremacy, and not designed to express a profound belief existing in a great mass of men. In Russia this is the state of affairs. The great bulk of the population have this belief, and it enters largely into their every-day lives.

The coronation of the czar, then, is an event of great and special importance; it is like the consecration of a bishop as well as the crowning of a king. The czar unites in himself the double sovereignty of medieval Europe, for he is both pope and emperor.

The coronation of the present czar, which took place on Sunday, the 27th May, 1883, was accompanied with festivities of a very glorious and mag

nificent kind, and with such demonstrations of popular loyalty as left no doubt that the great mass of the Russian people were quite untainted by the Nihilist heresy. As the ceremony, however, did not depart in any essential particular from that observed on such occasions, we shall not particularise, but shall prefer to give a general account of a coronation ceremony in Russia, which we draw from a correspondent of the Daily News, who writes in anticipation of the event:

"The ceremonies which will take place in Moscow shortly are the same which have been most strictly adhered to since the time of Peter the Great. Some of the insignia used are, it is true, very much older. The original crown, a pointed cap of cloth of gold edged with ermine, a cross made of the wood of our Saviour's cross, a small vase of cornelian containing the holy anointment, a chain of gold, and a collar with seven medallions upon which are embroidered scenes from the Saviour's life: these were the old insignia sent by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Komnenos to the Grand Duke Monomach as early as 1114. But these relics are no longer used, although they adorn the altar of the coronation chapel, the Uspenski Sobor. In olden times the emperor only was crowned, and the empress was not even present during the coronation; but Peter the Great, who had married his mistress, a beautiful country girl, in 1708, desirous to gain the respect of his people for the mother of his children, published an ukase, according to which the Empress Catherine was to be crowned in the Kremlin at Christmas. It has since been the custom to announce the date of the coronation some time before it takes place, to enable the people to come from great distances.

Peter the Great was the first who placed the crown upon his own head and upon that of the empress, declaring

Up to that time the patriarch had invested the emperor with the insignia of his power. He also caused two chairs only to be placed upon the raised platform where the coronation took place, whereas in former times there had been a chair for the patriarch. The new crown for the Empress Catherine was adorned with 2,654 diamonds and the great ruby which Peter's father had some time previously bought in Peking. The empress also wore a mantle of cloth of gold, embroidered all over with the imperial eagle, and lined in ermine. Peter's grandson, Peter II., added to the insignia and was invested with the Imperial sword, the banner, and the chain of the Order of St. Andreas, instituted by Peter the Great. The three empresses who followed were all crowned in the same manner as Catherine I., but their successor, Paul I., had a new Imperial crown made for himself, the crown which Alexander III. will place upon his head on the 27th inst. I saw this crown in 1872 at the time of the Statistical Congress in St. Petersburg, and I am not surprised to hear that it is valued at three million roubles. diamonds which form one compact mass, divided in the middle and surmounted by a cross, are all of equal size, as large as over-grown peas, and all as matchless in colour as they are well assorted. The empress's crown is about two-thirds as large as that of the emperor. In the same glass case as these priceless gems lies an object still more valuable, but very much out of place-a beautiful miniature Madonna by Raphael's hand, the Madonna di Perugia. About fifteen years ago an impoverished noble family of Perugia announced its intention of selling a prayer-book upon the cover of which Raphael had painted the sweetest of all his Madonnas. The then Minister of Public Instruction, Signor Correnti, begged the Parliament to vote 60,000 francs for the purchase of the little

The