and conveyed to Madrid.  On returning to France he was received with the utmost joy by his subjects; in this reign the principles of protestantism were first promulgated and several persons were burnt for subscribing to the tenets of Luther.  Francis was occupied constantly with war, from the commencement of his reign until the year of his death.  He had many virtues but they were sullied by infidelity to his engagements, and his persecution of the protestants whom he sacrificed as heretics.  Notwithstanding that his time was so much occupied by his enemies that a very short period of his reign was passed at Paris, he found means to embellish that city; the Church of St-Merri in the Rue St-Martin was built by his orders, precisely as it now stands, in the year 1520.  The style is Sarrasenzic, much richness of sculpture is displayed, particularly over and around the middle door, well meriting the close attention of an amateur.  At the same period were many of the churches now standing extensively repaired and nearly rebuilt, amongst which St. Eustache, St. Gervais, St. Jacques-la-Boucherie, of which the tower only remains, St. Germain-l’Auxerrois, etc., several colleges and hospitals were instituted, fountains and hotels erected, but scarcely any of them are now to be seen, or at any rate very few as constructed in their original form.  He was succeeded by his son Henry II in 1547, who like his predecessors was constantly occupied with war, but gained one point, that of taking the last place which the English retained in France, being Calais, which surrendered to the Duke de Guise; after a reign of thirteen years Henry was killed at a tournament held in the Rue St-Antoine, by Montgomery, the captain of his guard.  The cruelties of which he was guilty towards the protestants entirely eclipse whatever good qualities he possessed, which principally consisted in desperate courage with extraordinary prowess; he was also zealous in his friendships.  According to Dulaure, that part of the Louvre which is the oldest, was built by Henry II from the design of Pierre Lescot.  I have found other authors attribute the erection of a portion of the Louvre to Francis, but it appears that his son had all pulled down which was then standing, and had it built as it now remains, except the wing in which the pictures are exhibited, which is of a more recent date, and was not terminated until the time of Louis XIV.  The augmentation of some few colleges and hospitals were the only acts of this reign from which any advantages to Paris were derived.

In 1559, at the age of sixteen, Francis II ascended the throne; his name is familiar to us as the first husband of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots; his mother, Catherine de Medici, of infamous memory, took the reigns of government in her hands and wreaked all her fury upon the protestants.  Francis, too young to have displayed any decided tone of character, expired in 1560; the persecution of the huguenots,