The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-03

Wnlcn lB estimated IN our own days as more
than thousand horsepower. In this gift
lay the secret Of the stubborn vitality which
has carried Troyes over series of catastro-
phes which would have been fatal to most
towns, and, above all, over the cessation of
the great commercial exchange with which
its name is most familiarly connected.
It is not often that we refer our readers to
Mrs. Magnall's catechism, but there is one
answer in that remarkable compilation Of
useful knowledge which unfolds succinctly
enough the main interest of Troyes The
ingenious qUestioner who asks why certain
table is called Troy weight, is told that it re-
ceived it's name from its use at the fair Of
Troyes. Through the eleventh and twelfth
centuries its fairs stood first among the great
commercial gatherings in which the reviving
spirit of trade and industry was undoing
the isolation of the darker ages which had
passed away. But even in destroying these
they illustrated in a vivid way the local
iealousies, the industrial hostility of the
world which they were transforming. just
as in the one great fair which still preserves
the tradition of the past, the Russian fair of
Novgorod, the jealousy of guilds and peoples
showed itself at Troyes in the sepa-
rate stations occupied by the various
trades ds,,,d5 and Languages ; as they they stood TODD
led down to the abbey of Notre Dame. Below
the drapers of Flanders stood the merchants of
the Levant; the traders of Arras were face to
face with the money-changers of Cahors; be-
meath the buttresses of st. Johns safe the
Lucca bankers; the narrow side streets we're
full of the stalls of Montauban and Douai, or
of traffickers who thronged thither from the
rose gardens of Provins. Hay market and
leather market clustered round the abbey
walls, and in the midst of the hungry, disor-
derly crowd, the provident care Of the counts
had established an oven and pillory. All
the local names which preserved these curious
details have been swept away by the spirit of
modem improvement, but the street now
called the Rue Notre Dame, which leads down
the slope of the upper town to the Prefecture,
has, in fact grown out of the long line Of
movable stalls which formed the Fair In
the midst of it stands the Church of St. John,
originally the chapel of the traders, but
linked by one memorable event with our
own history. The Treaty of Troyos, in
which the succession of France passed
with the hand of Katherine to Henry Of Lam
caster, was signed before the high altar of
the cathedral; the wooing, SO oddly told by
Shakespeare, must have taken place in the
palace of the counts The marriage itself was
celebrated in the Church of st. John Strange
as its general effect is, the Church is worthy
of its historic renown. It's great length gives
it the air of being far grander building than
it really is. The nine bays of it's nave look
even longer through the hatness of the low
vaulting, while a weird surprise is flung over
the whole by the sudden rise of the choir to
almost double the height of the western por-
ton of the church. We can hardly doubt that
Henry's choice of the church FOR his marriage
was part of that policy of Cancellation towards
the merchant class which showed itself at
home in his commercial legislation, and in
the elaborate accounts of his victories which
he forwarded to his citizens of London. The
Fair had, indeed, long lost its earlier import
ance in the fifteenth century, but the fine
houses of the merchant princes Of that date,
with their huge recessed gables and pic
turesqus oriels projecting over the
street, show that even then it
remained one of the great industrial
centres of France. 1t is this strictly indus
trial character which distinguishes It's history
so sharply from that of most towns of its
class. 1t is often as interesting to notice
what is not in town as what is in it, and
| what the eye at once misses in Troyes is any
monument of purely municipal life. The fine
Hotel de Vile is OF comparatively modern
date; there is no town tower, no 6etrOt, as at
Amiens or ST. Riquier, to tell of struggles for
liberty, or for the political independence of
the commune. Perhaps it was a little difficult
| to quarrel even for Independence with such
sovereigns as the Count of Champagne. But
| this utter absence of all elements strange to
our modern ideas gives us, as we stand in
| its streets, a sense of continuous life such
as we seldom find elsewhere From
| its first origin till to-day the life of
the town moves without break. Its very
| site indicated the peaceful, busy temper
| which it has preserved throughout; Celtic as
is it's origin, the gentle dip of the city of the
Tricassini forms a startling contrast to the
| height crowned with the towers of Celtic
Chartres. II is busy thriving place still,
| and is evidently sharing in the fresh CONNER
| cial impulse which recent legislation has
| give to the towns of Northern France. But
| its charm lies in the fact that trade and COM
| merce are no new corners in it; the frequent
| wains, the whirl of the stocking-loem, the
| cotton bales piled in its courtyards, are only
| the continuation of an industrial energy
| which reaches back for eight hundred years.
The most exquisite monument of architec-
tural art within its walls is, in fact, the con-
secration of this industrial spirit. Son of a
| poor cobbler of Troyes jacques Pantaleon
| rose from the post of choir-boy in its caths-
| drRl to the highest Office in the medieval
| Church. As Pope he is famous for the
| cruel extinction of the House of Hohenstauf-
| fen, and for the handing over of Southern
| Italy to Charles of Anjou. AS a citizen of
Troyes he has left nobles memorial in the
| church which he erected on tho site of his
fathers shop. Mere fragment as it is, for of
| the nave only single story was ever com
| pleted, st. Urbain's ranks among the finest
| examples of the art of the thirteenth century.
| 1t is idle to compare it, as is sometimes done,
| with the Sainte Chapelle; its characteristic
feature is rather to be found in the union of
the perfect grace and purity of such
rival with freedom and variety of decora-