carried out by the architect Mansart, were begun in 1661, and in
1682 the residence of the Court was definitely fixed at Versailles,
connected by new roads with the capital. Colbert made a last effort to
keep the king at Paris, and to divert the immense sums which were being
swallowed up in Versailles to the completion of the Louvre. The very
dulness of the site of Versailles, leaving everything to be created,
was an extra attraction in the eyes of Louis XIV. The great difficulty
to be contended with in the creation of Versailles was the want of
water, and this, after various other attempts had failed, it was
hoped to overcome by a canal which was to bring the waters of the Eure
to the royal residence. In 1681 22,000 soldiers and 6,000 horses were
employed in this work, with such results of sickness that the troops
encamped at Maintenon, where the chief part of the work was, became
unfit for any service. On October 12, 1678, Mme. de Sévigné writes to
Bussy-Rabutin:--
“The king wishes to go to Versailles; but it seems that God does
not, to judge from the difficulty of getting the buildings ready
for occupation and the dreadful mortality of the workmen who are
carried away every night in waggons filled with the dead. This
terrible occurrence is kept secret so as not to create alarm and
not to decry the air of this _favori sans mérite_. You know this
_bon mot_ of Versailles.”
Nine millions were expended in the Aqueduct of Maintenon, of which the
ruins are still to be seen, then it was interrupted by the war of 1688,
and the works were never continued. Instead, all the water of the pools
and the snow falling on the plain between Rambouillet and Versailles
was brought to the latter by a series of subterranean watercourses.
No difficulties, however--not even pestilence, or the ruin of the
country by the enormous cost--were allowed to interfere with “_les
plaisirs du roi_.” The palace rose, and its gigantic gardens were
peopled with statues, its woods with villages.
Under Louis XV. Versailles was chiefly remarkable as being the scene
of the extravagance of Mme. de Pompadour and the turpitude of Mme.
du Barry. Mme. Campan has described for us the life, the very dull
life, there of “Mesdames,” daughters of the king. Yet, till the great
Revolution, since which it has been only a shadow of its former self,
the town of Versailles drew all its life from the _château_.
Approaching from the town on entering the grille of the palace
from the _Place d’Armes_ we find ourselves in the vast _Cour des
Statues_--“_solennelle et morne_.” In the centre is an equestrian
statue of Louis XIV. by Petitot and Cartellier. Many of the surrounding
statues were brought from the _Pont de la Concorde_ at Paris. Two
projecting wings shut in the _Cour Royale_, and separate it from the
_Cour des Princes_ on the left, and the _Cour de la Chapelle_ on
the right. Beyond the _Cour Royale_, deeply recessed amongst later
buildings is the court called, from its pavement, the _Cour de Marbre_,
surrounded by the little old red _château_ of Louis XIII.
The _Cour de Marbre_ was sometimes used as a theatre under Louis
XIV., and the opera of _Alcestis_ was given there. It has a peculiar
interest, for no stranger can look up at the balcony of the first floor
without recalling Marie Antoinette presenting herself there, alone, to
the fury of the people, October 6, 1789.
The palace of Versailles has never been inhabited by royalty since the
chain of carriages drove into this court on October 6, to convey Louis
XVI. and his family to Paris.
From the _Grande Cour_ the gardens may be reached by passages either
from the _Cour des Princes_ on the left, or from the _Cour de la
Chapelle_ on the right. This palace has had three chapels in turn. The
first, built by Louis XIII., was close to the marble staircase. The
second, built by Louis XIV., occupied the site of the existing _Salon
d’Hercule_. The present chapel, built 1699–1710, is the last work of
Mansart.
Here we may think of Bossuet, thundering before Louis XIV., “_les
royaumes meurent, sire, comme les rois_,” and of the words of
Massillon, “_Si Jésus-Christ paraissait dans ce temple, au milieu de
cette assemblée, la plus auguste de l’univers, pour vous juger, pour
faire le terrible discernement_,” etc. Here we may imagine Louis XIV.
daily assisting at the Mass, and his courtiers, especially the ladies,
attending also to flatter him, but gladly escaping, if they thought he
would not be there....
All the furniture of Versailles was sold during the Revolution (in
1793), and, though a few pieces have been recovered, the palace is for
the most part unfurnished, and little more than a vast picture-gallery.
From the antechamber of the chapel open two galleries on the ground
floor of the north wing. One is the _Galerie des Sculptures_; the
other, divided by different rooms looking on the garden, is the
_Galerie de l’Histoire de France_. The first six rooms of the latter
formed the apartments of the Duc de Maine, the much indulged son of
Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon.
At the end of the gallery (but only to be entered now from the Rue
des Réservoirs) is the _Salle de l’Opéra_. In spite of the passion of
Louis XIV. for dramatic representations, no theatre was built in the
palace during his reign. Some of the plays of Molière and Racine were
acted in improvised theatres in the park; others, in the halls of the
palace, without scenery or costumes; the _Athalie_ of Racine, before
the King and Mme. de Maintenon, by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr. The
present Opera House was begun by Jacques Ange-Gabriel under Louis XV.
for Mme. de Pompadour and finished for Mme. du Barry.
The Opera House was inaugurated on the marriage of the Dauphin with
Marie Antoinette, and nineteen years after was the scene of that
banquet, the incidents of which were represented in a manner so fatal
to the monarchy, given by the body-guard of the king to the officers of
a regiment which had arrived from Flanders....
The garden front of the palace has not yet experienced the soothing
power of age: it looks almost new; two hundred years hence it will be
magnificent. The long lines of the building, with its two vast wings,
are only broken by the top of the chapel rising above the wing on the
left.
The rich masses of green formed by the clipped yews at the sides of
the gardens have the happiest effect, and contrast vividly with the
dark background of chestnuts, of which the lower part is trimmed, but
the upper falls in masses of heavy shade, above the brilliant gardens
with their population of statues. These grounds are the masterpiece of
Lenôtre, and of geometrical gardening, decorated with vases, fountains,
and orange-trees. Lovers of the natural may find great fault with these
artificial gardens, but there is much that is grandiose and noble
in them; and, as Voltaire says: “_Il est plus facile de critiquer
Versailles que de le refaire._”
The gardens need the enlivenment of the figures, for which they were
intended as a background, in the gay Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.
as represented in the pictures of Watteau; but the Memoirs of the time
enable us to repeople them with a thousand forms which have long been
dust, centring around the great king, “_Se promenant dans ses jardins
de Versailles, dans son fauteuil à roues._”
The sight of the magnificent terraces in front of the palace will
recall the nocturnal promenades of the Court, so much misrepresented by
the enemies of Marie Antoinette.
Very stately is the view down the main avenue--great fountains of many
figures in the foreground; then the brilliant _Tapis Vert_, between
masses of rich wood; then the _Bassin d’Apollon_, and the great canal
extending to distant meadows and lines of natural poplars.
_Days near Paris_ (London, 1887)
THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN.
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN.
Welcome to Lincoln! Upwards of twenty summer suns have rolled their
bright and genial courses since my first visit to this ancient
city,--or rather, to this venerable Cathedral: for the former seems
to be merged in the latter. There is no proportion between them. A
population of only twelve thousand inhabitants and scarcely more
than an ordinary sprinkling of low commonplace brick-houses, are but
inharmonious accessories to an ecclesiastical edifice, built upon the
summit of a steep and lofty hill--pointing upwards with its three
beautiful and massive towers towards heaven, and stretching longways
with its lofty nave, choir, ladye-chapel, side chapels, and double
transepts. For _site_, there is no Cathedral to my knowledge which
approaches it....
[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN]
Upon a comparative estimation with the Cathedral of York, Lincoln may
be called a volume of more extensive instruction; and the antiquary
clings to its pages with a more varied delight. The surface or exterior
of Lincoln Cathedral presents at least four perfect specimens of the
succeeding styles of the first four orders of Gothic architecture.
The greater part of the front may be as old as the time of its
founder, Bishop Remigius,[5] at the end of the Eleventh Century:
but even here may be traced invasions and intermixtures, up to the
Fifteenth Century. The large indented windows are of this latter
period, and exhibit a frightful heresy. The western towers carry you
to the end of the Twelfth Century: then succeeds a wonderful extent
of Early English, or the pointed arch. The transepts begin with the
Thirteenth, and come down to the middle of the Fourteenth Century; and
the interior, especially the choir and the side aisles, abounds with
the most exquisitely varied specimens of that period. Fruits, flowers,
vegetables, insects, _capriccios_ of every description, encircle the
arches or shafts, and sparkle upon the capitals of pillars. Even down
to the reign of Henry VIII. there are two private chapels, to the left
of the smaller south porch, on entrance, which are perfect gems of art.
Where a building is so diversified, as well as vast, it is difficult to
be methodical; but the reader ought to know, as soon as possible, that
there are here not only two sets of transepts, as at York, but that
the larger transept is the longest in England, being not less than two
hundred and fifty feet in length. The window of the south transept is
circular, and so large as to be twenty-two feet in diameter; bestudded
with ancient stained glass, now become somewhat darkened by time, and
standing in immediate need of cleaning and repairing. I remember, on my
first visit to this Cathedral, threading the whole of the _clerestory_
on the south side, and coming immediately under this magnificent
window, which astonished me from its size and decorations. Still, for
simplicity as well as beauty of effect, the delicately ornamented
lancet windows of the north transept of York Cathedral have clearly a
decided preference. One wonders how these windows, both at York and
at this place, escaped destruction from Cromwell’s soldiers.... The
Galilee, to the left of the larger south transept, is a most genuine
and delicious specimen of Early English architecture. In _this_
feature, York, upon comparison, is both petty and repulsive.
Wherever the eye strays or the imagination catches a point upon which
it may revel in building up an ingenious hypothesis, the exterior of
Lincoln Cathedral (some five hundred feet in length) is a never failing
source of gratification....
Let us turn to the grand western front; and whatever be the
adulterations of the component parts, let us admire its width and
simplicity;--the rude carvings, or rather sculpture, commemorative of
the life of the founder, St. Remigius: and although horrified by the
indented windows, of the perpendicular style, let us pause again and
again before we enter at the side-aisle door. All the three doors are
too low; but see what a height and what a space this front occupies! It
was standing on this spot, that Corio, my dear departed friend--some
twenty years ago--assured me he remained almost from sunset to dawn of
day, as the whole of the front was steeped in the soft silvery light
of an autumnal full moon. He had seen nothing before so grand. He had
felt nothing before so stirring. The planets and stars, as they rolled
in their silent and glittering orbits, and in a subdued lustre, over
the roof of the nave, gave peculiar zest to the grandeur of the whole
scene: add to which, the awfully deepening sounds of Great Tom[6] made
his very soul to vibrate! Here, as that bell struck the hour of two,
seemed to sit the shrouded figures of Remigius, Bloet, and Geoffrey
Plantagenet,[7] who, saluting each other in formal prostrations,
quickly vanished at the sound “into thin air.” The cock crew; the sun
rose; and with it all enchantment was at an end. Life has few purer,
yet more delirious enjoyments, than this....
The reader may here, perhaps, expect something like the institution
of a comparison between these two great rival Cathedrals of Lincoln
and York; although he will have observed many points in common between
them to have been previously settled. The preference to Lincoln
is given chiefly from its minute and varied _detail_; while its
_position_ impresses you at first sight, with such mingled awe and
admiration, that you cannot divest yourself of this impression, on a
more dispassionately critical survey of its component parts. The versed
antiquary adheres to Lincoln, and would build his nest within one of
the crocketted pinnacles of the western towers--that he might hence
command a view of the great central tower; and, abroad of the straight
Roman road running to Barton, and the glittering waters of the broad
and distant Humber. But for one human being of this stamp, you would
have one hundred collecting within and without the great rival at
York. Its vastness, its space, its effulgence of light and breadth of
effect: its imposing simplicity, by the comparative paucity of minute
ornament--its lofty lantern, shining, as it were, at heaven’s gate, on
the summit of the central tower: and, above all, the soul-awakening
devotion kindled by a survey of its vast and matchless choir leave not
a shadow of doubt behind, respecting the decided superiority of this
latter edifice.
_A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the
Northern Counties of England and in Scotland_ (London, 1838).
THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK.
AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
We now left the village behind, and rode out across a wide plain,
barren and hillocky in some parts; overgrown in others with coarse
halfeh grass; and dotted here and there with clumps of palms. The
Nile lay low and out of sight, so that the valley seemed to stretch
away uninterruptedly to the mountains on both sides. Now leaving to
the left a Sheykh’s tomb, topped by a little cupola and shaded by a
group of tamarisks; now following the bed of a dry watercourse; now
skirting shapeless mounds that indicated the site of ruins unexplored,
the road, uneven but direct, led straight to Karnak. At every rise in
the ground we saw the huge propylons towering higher above the palms.
Once, but for only a few moments, there came into sight a confused
and wide-spread mass of ruins, as extensive, apparently, as the ruins
of a large town. Then our way dipped into a sandy groove bordered by
mud-walls and plantations of dwarf-palms. All at once this groove
widened, became a stately avenue guarded by a double file of shattered
sphinxes, and led towards a lofty pylon standing up alone against the
sky.
Close beside this grand gateway, as if growing there on purpose, rose
a thicket of sycamores and palms; while beyond it were seen the twin
pylons of a Temple. The sphinxes were colossal, and measured about
ten feet in length. One or two were ram-headed. Of the rest--some
forty or fifty in number--all were headless, some split asunder, some
overturned, others so mutilated that they looked like torrent-worn
boulders. This avenue once reached from Luxor to Karnak. Taking into
account the distance (which is just two miles from Temple to Temple)
and the short intervals at which the sphinxes are placed, there cannot
originally have been fewer than five hundred of them; that is to say,
two hundred and fifty on each side of the road.
Dismounting for a few minutes, we went into the Temple; glanced round
the open courtyard with its colonnade of pillars; peeped hurriedly into
some ruinous side-chambers; and then rode on. Our books told us that
we had seen the small Temple of Rameses the Third. It would have been
called large anywhere but at Karnak.
I seem to remember the rest as if it had all happened in a dream.
Leaving the small Temple, we turned towards the river, skirted the
mud-walls of the native village, and approached the Great Temple by way
of its main entrance. Here we entered upon what had once been another
great avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep cut with
hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some grand landing-place
beside the Nile.
And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed by in the
morning rose straight before us, magnificent in ruin, glittering to
the sun, and relieved in creamy light against blue depths of sky. One
was nearly perfect; the other, shattered as if by the shock of an
earthquake, was still so lofty that an Arab clambering from block to
block midway of its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK.]
On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dismounted.
Shapeless crude-brick mounds, marking the limits of the ancient wall
of circuit, reached far away on either side. An immense perspective
of pillars and pylons leading up to a very great obelisk opened out
before us. We went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above
our heads, and entered the First Court. Here, in the midst of a large
quadrangle open to the sky stands a solitary column, the last of a
central avenue of twelve, some of which, disjointed by the shock, lie
just as they fell, like skeletons of vertebrate monsters left stranded
by the Flood.
Crossing this Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to a mighty
doorway between two more propylons--the doorway splendid with coloured
bas-reliefs; the propylons mere cataracts of fallen blocks piled up to
right and left in grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone.
Only a jutting fragment of the lintel stone remains. That stone, when
perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches across. The doorway must
have been full a hundred feet in height.
We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus engraven on arm
and breast with the cartouche of Rameses II., we crossed the shade upon
the threshold, and passed into the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti the
First.
It is a place that has been much written about and often painted;
but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed
and pallid impression. To describe it, in the sense of building up a
recognisable image by means of words, is impossible. The scale is too
vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and
littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing. It is a place
that strikes you into silence; that empties you, as it were, not only
of words but of ideas. Nor is this a first effect only. Later in the
year, when we came back down the river and moored close by, and spent
long days among the ruins, I found I never had a word to say in the
Great Hall. Others might measure the girth of those tremendous columns;
others might climb hither and thither, and find out points of view, and
test the accuracy of Wilkinson and Mariette; but I could only look, and
be silent.
Yet to look is something, if one can but succeed in remembering; and
the Great Hall of Karnak is photographed in some dark corner of my
brain for as long as I have memory. I shut my eyes, and see it as if I
were there--not all at once, as in a picture; but bit by bit, as the
eye takes note of large objects and travels over an extended field of
vision. I stand once more among those mighty columns, which radiate
into avenues from whatever point one takes them. I see them swathed
in coiled shadows and broad bands of light. I see them sculptured and
painted with shapes of Gods and Kings, with blazonings of royal names,
with sacrificial altars, and forms of sacred beasts, and emblems of
wisdom and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand at
the foot of one--or of what seems to be the foot; for the original
pavement lies buried seven feet below. Six men standing with extended
arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, could barely span it round. It casts
a shadow twelve feet in breadth--such a shadow as might be cast by
a tower. The capital that juts out so high above my head looks as
if it might have been placed there to support the heavens. It is
carved in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and glows with undying
colours--colours that are still fresh, though laid on by hands that
have been dust these three thousand years and more. It would take not
six men, but a dozen to measure round the curved lip of that stupendous
lily.
Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one hundred and
twenty-two in number) are gigantic too; but smaller. Of the roof they
once supported, only the beams remain. Those beams are stone--huge
monoliths carved and painted, bridging the space from pillar to pillar,
and patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow.
Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the one end a
flame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm against a background
of glowing mountain. To right, to left, showing transversely through
long files of columns, we catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining
the roofless walls in every direction. The King, as usual, figures
in every group, and performs the customary acts of worship. The Gods
receive and approve him. Half in light, half in shadow, these slender,
fantastic forms stand out sharp, and clear, and colourless; each figure
some eighteen or twenty feet in height. They could scarcely have looked
more weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight
reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on, and the sky shut
out. It all looks right as it is; and one feels, somehow, that such
columns should have nothing between them and the infinite blue depths
of heaven....
It may be that the traveller who finds himself for the first time in
the midst of a grove of _Wellingtonia gigantea_ feels something of the
same overwhelming sense of awe and wonder; but the great trees, though
they have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the
mystery that comes of human labour. They do not strike their roots
through six thousand years of history. They have not been watered with
the blood and tears of millions.[8] Their leaves know no sounds less
musical than the singing of the birds, or the moaning of the night-wind
as it sweeps over the highlands of Calaveros. But every breath that
wanders down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the
sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under the
chariot-wheels of the conqueror.
_A Thousand Miles up the Nile_ (London, 2d ed., 1889).
SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.
CHARLES YRIARTE.
The document by which the council of the municipality of Florence
decided the erection of her Cathedral, in 1294, is an historic monument
in which is reflected the generous spirit of the Florentines.
“Considering that all the acts and works of a people who boast of
an illustrious origin should bear the character of grandeur and
wisdom, we order Arnolfo, director of the works of our commune, to
make the model, or a design of the building, which shall replace
the church of Santa Reparata. It shall display such magnificence
that no industry nor human power shall surpass it.... A government
should undertake nothing unless in response to the desire of a
heart more than generous, which expresses in its beatings the heart
of all its citizens united in one common wish: it is from this
point of view that the architect charged with the building of our
cathedral must be regarded.”
It must be admitted that it would be difficult to express a more noble
idea and a more elevated sentiment than this.