n6 MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON. [Chap. IV. 



perhaps a praying child, or some other cast. The gardens 

 were now getting thronged with people bringing their offerings 

 to the tombs, tending the gardens, or promenading. But we 

 were attracted to the fosse commune , to see how the common 

 people are buried." Of this he gives a graphic account. One 

 day he dined at a co-operative dining-room frequented by 

 workmen, and was delighted to find it so clean and attractive, 

 as well as so cheap. His love of beauty was gratified by the 

 statues and paintings by the old masters at the Louvre, from 

 which he hardly knew how to tear himself away ; but his chief 

 pleasures were the bathes in the- Seine, and quiet times for 

 meditation in the Church of the Madeleine, which had been 

 recently built. " All the grandeur of the palaces appears 

 tawdry ; but this is magnificently rich without any cloy, and 

 the intense beauty of the white marble statues, over the floor 

 of inlaid coloured marbles, and covered by the porticoes of 

 gilded marbles, with the rich steel altar-rails — in fact, every- 

 thing about it perfectly entrances me. All appears to me in 

 harmony with religious feelings." That which he most 

 thoroughly enjoyed, and which he thought worth going to Paris 

 to get, was an excursion to Fontainebleau, with a small party, 

 of which he was conductor. The forest scenery was an intense 

 delight to him, and songs and reading and congenial friends 

 made him very happy. On their return journey, they fell in 

 with an English engineer, who had been three years in Italy, 

 part of the time in the army. He had commanded 140 men 

 at Rome, of whom only fifty-eight survived the siege, and he 

 gave them a vivid and awful description of the horrors of war. 



On the way home, they stopped at Amiens to see the 

 Cathedral, which was shown by a verger who had a real love 

 for it, and managed to take them all round it, inside and out. 

 They embarked next day for Boulogne. "The man bowed 

 most politely, as I tendered my peace-ticket instead of a pass- 

 port ; and we took leave of France, and immediately began — 

 to reckon by halfpence, some to be sick : how the wind did 

 blow against the tide, but what cared I? I sat perched 

 the whole time on the bowsprit, every wave splashing over the 



