It is a pile of building, forming several courts between the _Quai
des Célestins_ and the _Place de la Liberté_, formerly the _Place de
la Bastille_. Charles V had here erected some storehouses for
artillery, which were lent very unwillingly by the Provost of Paris
to Francis I, who wanted them for the purpose of casting cannon. As
was foreseen, the king kept possession of them, and converted them
into a royal residence. On the 28th of January 1562, lightning fell
on one of the towers, then used as a magazine, and set fire to
fifteen or twenty thousand barrels of powder. Several lives were
lost, and another effect of this explosion was that it killed all the
fishes in the river. Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV rebuilt the
Arsenal, and augmented it considerably. Before the revolution, the
founderies served for casting bronze figures for the embellishment of
the royal gardens. The Arsenal then contained only a few rusty
muskets and some mortars unfit for service, notwithstanding the
energetic inscription which decorated the gate on the _Quai des
Célestins_:
"Ætnæ hæc Henrico Vulcania tela ministrat,
Tela gigantæos debellatura furores."
NICOLAS BOURBON was the author of these harmonious lines, which so
much excited the jealousy of the famous poet, SANTEUIL, that he
exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "I would have wished to have made them,
and been hanged."
During the course of the revolution, the buildings of the Arsenal
have been appropriated to various purposes: at present even they seem
to have no fixed destination. Here is a garden, advantageously
situated, which affords to the inhabitants of this quarter an
agreeable promenade.
The before-mentioned libraries are the most considerable in Paris;
but the _National Institute_, the _Conservative Senate_, the
_Legislative Body_, and the _Tribunate_, have each their respective
library, as well as the _Polytechnic School_, the _Council of the
School of Mines_, the _Tribunal of Cassation_, the _Conservatory of
Music_, the _Museum of Natural History_, &c.
Independently of these libraries, here are also three literary
_dépôts_ or repositories, which were destined to supply the public
libraries already formed or to be formed, particularly those
appropriated to public instruction. When the Constituent Assembly
decreed the possessions of the clergy to be national property, the
_Committee of Alienation_ fixed on the monasteries of the _Capucins_,
_Grands Jésuites_, and _Cordeliers_, in Paris, as _dépôts_, for the
books and manuscripts, which they were desirous to save from
revolutionary destruction.