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 90 PAEIS the welfare of Paris by important reforms of customs, laws, and police, and by establish- ing many commercial, religious, and beneficent institutions, among which last were a hospital for the blind and a school of surgery. His chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, founded in 1250 a school of theology, the origin of the famous Sorbonne, in the quarter of the university still known as the quartier Latin or Pays Latin. "While King John, taken prisoner by the Black Prince, was held captive in England, the city was governed for a time by Etienne Marcel, the provost of the merchants, independent- ly of the general state. For centuries before as for centuries after the brief reign of this popular leader, Paris was often disturbed by insurrections and popular tumults, and fierce quarrels between great lords and the king, or among themselves, with bloody fights and judicial massacres; its streets, despite royal reforms and new regulations of police in fre- quent succession, were until modern times un- safe for honest citizens after nightfall. Under Philip IV. there were brilliant, public fetes, for which Paris seems thus early to have been dis- tinguished, and "mysteries" were performed on stages set up in the open air, the first dramatic representations in Paris. Charles V. built a new palace, then called the hostel de St. Pol, afterward famous in history, with change of destination and name, as the Bastile. (See BASTILE.) The basement only of most private houses in those days was of stone ; on this rest- ed one -or more stories of timber filled between with mortar; when the proprietor's wealth permitted, the facade was covered with slates, and the projecting cornices and corner posts were adorned with carvings, representing foli- age, fantastic animals, the heads of angels, and Biblical personages. Chariots and even four- wheeled carriages, and disorders of swelling luxury, excess of gambling among the rest, are spoken of in contemporary documents. The city had overgrown its old limits, and the mon- arch caused a new fortified wall to be built, enclosing now 1,084 acres, to protect it against the incursions of the English; who, however, at the end of the reign of his insane succes- sor, marked in the annals of the city by pest, famine, and all the horrors of bloody faction, entered Paris amid Te Deum chants and great fetes, and proclaimed Henry of Lancaster king of France and England. The enthusiasm of the occasion was only surpassed by that which greeted the entrance of Charles VII. after the expulsion of the English in 1436. About this date Greek was first taught in the universi- ty, which then numbered 25,000 students. In 1438 there were 5,000 deaths at the Hotel-Dieu, and in all the city 45,000; wolves prowled through its streets, desolated by war, plague, and famine. In 1466 malefactors and vaga- bonds of all countries were invited to fill up the broken ranks of its population, which num- bered 300,000 souls before 1483, the close of the reign of Louis XI. This astute ruler fa- vored trade and commerce of all kinds, protect- ed against violent opposition the new art of printing and its connected industries, confirm- ed the privileges of the citizens, endowed the capital with its first special school of medicine, favored the first attempt at lighting its streets, and inaugurated the first rude postal system, putting it in communication with all parts of France. Under Francis I. (1515-'47) the ad- vance of Paris in material prosperity, in arts and letters, in the refinements and in the vices of civilization, received a fresh impulse. The castle of the Louvre, begun by Dagobert and repeatedly enlarged and strengthened by suc- ceeding monarchs, was swept away, and the palace of the old Louvre begun upon its site ; the hotel de ville was commenced, new streets were opened, old quarters rebuilt, and a royal free college founded. The origin of the cha- teau and gardens of the Tuileries, the endow- ment of the college of Ste. Barbe, now one of the first high schools of Paris, and. the effec- tive constitution of what is now the national library, date from the reign of Henry II., in despite of whom a Protestant church also was established. The disasters of the so-called wars of religion, culminating in the horrors of the St. Bartholomew massacre, fell heavily upon Paris, barring its progress in all directions. It revived under the rule of Henry IV., whose ac- cession it had desperately resisted. The pal- aces of the Tuileries and the Louvre were great- ly enlarged, the place Royale formed, and the pont Neuf built. Under the reign of Louis XIII., or rather of his minister Richelieu, the Palais Cardinal, now Palais Royal, was begun. The Luxembourg palace, several fine quays and bridges, and numerous magnificent private hotels in the faubourg St. Germain, date from this period ; as do also the French academy, the jardin des plantes, and the col- lege that afterward took the name of Louis-le- Grand. More than 80 new streets were laid out and many of the old ones improved in the long reign of Louis XIV., from which date also the academies, with the exception of the French academy, the observatory, the opera, and the Comedie Francaise, the Hotel des Invalides, the eastern colonnade of the Louvre, the triumph- al arches of St. Denis and St. Martin built on the site of ancient city gates, the laying out of the boulevards as promenades, the planting of the Champs lys6es, the enlargement of the Tuileries and the arrangement of its gardens nearly as they now are, the forming of the place Vendome and the place des Victoires, 33 churches, a foundling hospital, the hospice of the Salpetriere, the Gobelins tapestry manufac- tory, the first city post, the lighting of the thor- oughfares with u lanterns placed from distance to distance " (which was commemorated by a medal bearing the legend, Urbis securitas et nitor), the rudiments of the modern omnibus (an unsuccessful invention- of Blaise Pascal, in the shape of seven coaches in which "even women took their places," for five sous, but