is the head of the municipality, of the police and fire brigades, cleansing, draining, and water-supply departments.  The history of Paris is the history of France, for the national life has been, and is, in an extraordinary degree centred in the capital.  It was the scene of the great tragic drama of the Revolution, and of the minor struggles of 1830 and 1849.  In recent times its great humiliation was its siege and capture by the Germans in 1870-71.

PARIS, the second son of Priam and Hecuba; was exposed on Mount Ida at his birth; brought up by a shepherd; distinguished himself by his prowess, by which his parentage was revealed; married OENONE (q. v.); appealed to to decide to whom the “apple of discord” belonged, gave it to Aphrodite in preference to her two rivals Hera and Athena; was promised in return that he should receive the most beautiful woman in the world to wife, Helen of Sparta, whom he carried off to Greece, and which led to the TROJAN WAR (q. v.); slew Achilles, and was mortally wounded by the poisoned arrows of Hercules.

PARIS, MATTHEW, English chronicler; a Benedictine monk of St. Albans; author of “Chronica Majora,” which contains a history written in Latin of England from the Conquest to the year in which he died (1195-1259).

PARK, MUNGO, African traveller, born at Foulshiels, near Selkirk; was apprenticed to a surgeon, and studied medicine at Edinburgh; 1791-93 he spent in a voyage to Sumatra, and in 1795 went for the first time to Africa under the auspices of the African Association of London; starting from the Gambia he penetrated eastward to the Niger, then westward to Kamalia, where illness seized him; conveyed to his starting-point by a slave-trader, he returned to England and published “Travels in the Interior of Africa,” 1799; he married and settled to practice at Peebles, but he was not happy till in 1805 he set out for Africa again at Government expense; starting from Pisania he reached the Niger, and sending back his journals attempted to descend the river in a canoe, but, attacked by natives, the canoe overturned; and he and his companions were drowned (1771-1805).

PARKER, JOHN HENRY, archaeologist and writer on architecture; originally a London publisher, his chief work the “Archaeology of Rome,” in nine vols., a subject to which he devoted much study (1800-1884).

PARKER, JOSEPH, an eminent Nonconformist divine, born in Hexham; minister of the City Temple; a vigorous and popular preacher, and the author of numerous works bearing upon biblical theology and the defence of it; his magnum opus is the “People’s Bible,” of which 25 vols. are already complete; b. 1830.

PARKER, MATTHEW, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Norwich; was a Fellow of Cambridge; embraced the Protestant doctrines; became Master of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; was chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and made Dean of Ely by Edward VI.; was deprived of his offices under Mary, but made Primate under Elizabeth, and the Bishop’s Bible was translated and issued under his auspices (1504-1575).