�ty-five men. women and children—to the gorgeous Madeleine in Paris, and the gay people of the metropolis of France. The Madeleine is not the cathedral of Paris, but far surpasses Notre Dame in the beauty of its exterior and the dazzling splendor of its interior adornments. It was in course of erection before the first Revolution (1789), but work was then suspended. Napoleon the First contemplated its completion and dedication as a temple of glory, but his purpose was defeated by his own downfall in 1815. Louis XVIII. restored it to its original destination, and decreed that it should contain monuments to his brother, Louis XVI., and his wife Josephine, and the sister of the two kings, Mademoiselle Elizabeth. It was finished during the reign of Louis Philippe, and consecrated to Religion. It is a splendid specimen of architecture, of Grecian style; is surrounded by fifty-two Corinthian columns, and the interior is abundantly supplied with colossal statues of saints, and paintings and frescoes of surpassing beauty. The cost of this sumptuous edifice was 13,079,000 francs; about $2,615,800, at a time when a dollar would purchase three times as much labor as now. The Madeleine is 378 feet in length, and in breadth is 138. I had seen and admired its exterior on several days preceding Sunday, October 6, and then went within it. The day was clear and mild, and vast numbers of people were abroad in gay apparel. In such a place, on that day of the week, witnessing the services of the Catholic Church, the mind naturally turns to Fenelon, the St. John of his day and nation; to Bourdaloue, whose discourses were so searching as to cause the sensual Louis XIV. to remark, "When I hear other good preachers I am pleased with them; when I hear Bourdaloue, I am displeased with myself;'" to Bossuet, the ardent ecclesiastic, whose controversy with Fenelon left him the victor through the decision of the Pope, but caused the world to regard Fenelon as the better man; and to Massillon, whose name comes down the centuries as one of the great lights in the Papal Church.
The interior of this beautiful temple is really bewildering, until the eye has become accustomed to its adornments. Frescoes of surpassing beauty are spread upon the immense ceiling, and paintings and sculpture abound on every hand; figures of Christ and the apostles, and men and women who were canonized by the Papal Church, with a firmament of the utmost splendor represented in the arched roof, high above the heads of the great concourse below, are the adornments of an edifice transferred from its original design as a temple of glory, commemorating the victories of Napoleon in Germany, into a house of worship, dedicated to the rites of a gorgeously appointed praise. On that forenoon there may have been no more than five thousand people in the Madeleine, and there may have been ten thousand. Multitudes went only so far within as to dip their fingers in water with which several stone vessels were filled, and touch the fingers to forehead and breast—then passing out to mingle with crowds in the streets. High Mass was performed that day. A great company of nuns, in the white cap and other simple apparel of that sisterhood, occupied large space in front of the high altar. This company and their singular dress, contrasted with the exceeding splendor of objects by which they were surrounded, constituted a spectacle "more easily imagined than described." The tall, lighted candles, placed on massive altars; priests, some in the simple garb of Franciscan monks, others in scarlet and gold vestments, so plenteously displayed in the altar service; censers, emitting agreeable odors; exhilarating music by many voices, with the pealing of a visible and the responses of an invisible organ; the elevation of the Host and the administration of the Sacrament, could not fail of making an abiding impression upon minds susceptible to the outer splendors of Christian worship.
A SUNDAY AMONG THE ALPS.
It was with surrounding objects of unspeakable grandeur that the writer spent Sunday, September 22, 1850, in the Vale of Chamouny, beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc. This valley is a narrow
