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SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS, VOLUME III
FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS
Selected and Edited, with Introductions, etc., by
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: Paris: The Seine and Bridges]
Vol. III
Part One
Introduction to Volumes III and IV
France and the Netherlands
The tourist bound for France lands either at Cherbourg, Havre, or
Boulogne. At Cherbourg, he sees waters in which the "Kearsarge" sank
the "Alabama"; at Havre a shelter in which, long before Caesar came to
Gaul, ships, with home ports on the Seine, sought safety from the sea;
and at Boulogne may recall the invading expedition to England, planned
by Napoleon, but which never sailed.
From the Roman occupation, many Roman remains have survived in England,
but these are far inferior in numbers and in state of preservation to
the Roman remains found in France. Marseilles was not only an important
Roman seaport, but its earliest foundations date perhaps from
Phoenician times, and certainly do from the age when Greeks were
building temples at Paestum and Girgenti. Rome got her first foothold
in Marseilles as a consequence of the Punic wars; and in 125 B.C.
acquired a province (Provincia Romana) reaching from the Alps to the
Rhone, and southward to the sea, with Aix as its first capital and
Arles its second. Caesar in 58 B.C. found on the Seine a tribe of men
called Parisii, whose chief village, Lutetia, stood where now rises
Notre Dame.
Lutetia afterward became a residence of Roman emperors. Constantius
Chlorus spent some time there, guarding the empire from Germans and
Britons, while Julian the Apostate built there for himself a palace and
extensive baths, of which remains still exist in Paris. In that palace
afterward lived Pepin le Bref ("mayor of the palace"), son of Charles
Martell, and father of the great Charles. Romans built there an
amphitheater seating ten thousand people, of which remains are still
visible.
Lyons was a great Roman city. Augustus first called it into vigorous
life, his wish being to make it "a second Rome." From Lyons a system of
roads ran out to all parts of Gaul. Claudius was born there; Caligula
made it the political and intellectual capital of Provincia; its
people, under an edict of Caracalla, were made citizens of Rome. At
Nimes was born the Emperor Antoninus. In Gaul, Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
Vespasian and Domitian were made emperors. At Arles and Nîmes are Roman
amphitheaters still regularly put to use for combats between men and
wild beasts--but the wild beasts, instead of lions and tigers, are
bulls. At Orange is a Roman theater of colossal proportions, in which a
company from the Théâtre Français annually presents classical dramas.
The magnificent fortress city of Carcassonne has foundation walls that
were laid by Romans. Notre Dame of Paris occupies the site of a temple
to Jupiter.
As with modern England, so with modern France; its people are a mixture
of many races. To the southwest, in a remote age, came Iberians from
Spain, to Provence, Ligurians from Italy; to the northeast, Germanic
tribes; to the northwest, Scandinavians; to the central parts, from the
Seine to the Garonne, in the sixth century B.C., Gauls, who soon became
the dominant race, and so have remained until this day, masterful and
fundamental. When Caesar came, there had grown up in Gaul a martial
nobility, leaders of a warlike people, with chieftains whose names are
familiar in the mouths and ears of all schoolboys--Aricvistus and
Vercingetorix. When Vercingetorix was overthrown at Alesia, Gaul became
definitely Roman. For five hundred years it remained loyal to Rome.
Within its borders, was established the Pax Romana, and in 250 A.D.,
under St. Denis, Christianity. When the disintegration of the empire
set in five centuries afterward, Gaul was among the first provinces to
suffer. With the coming of the Visigoths and Huns from the Black Sea,
the Pranks and Bnrgundians from beyond the Rhine, the Roman fall was
near, but great battles were first fought in Gaul, battles which
rivaled those of Caesar five centuries before. Greatest of all these
was the one with Attila, at Chalons, in 451, where thousands perished.
When the Roman dominion ended, Rome's one great province in Gaul became
seventeen small principalities, and power drifted fast into the hands
of a warlike aristocracy. Then a strong man rose in Clovis, who, in
508, made Lutetia his capital, his successors enriching and adorning
it. From these beginnings, has been evolved, in twelve hundred years,
the great modern state--through Charlemagne and his empire-building,
Louis XI. and his work of consolidating feudal principalities into one
strong state, through a Hundred Years' War, fierce wars of religion, a
long line of Bourbon kings, with their chateaux-building in Touraine
and Versailles, the Revolution of 1789, the Napoleonic era, the
Republic. An historical land surely is this, and a beautiful land, with
her snow-capped mountains of the southeast, her broad vineyards,
unrivaled cathedrals, her Roman remains, ancient olive groves, her art,
her literature, her people.
Belgium and Holland were included in the territory known to Rome as
Gaul. Here dwelt a people called the Belgii, and another called the
Nervii--that tribal nation whom Cæsar "overcame" on a summer's day, and
the same evening, "in his tent," "put on" the mantle that was pierced
afterward by daggers in the Senate House. From these lands came the
skilled Batavian cavalry, which followed Caesar in pursuit of Pompey
and forced Pompey's flight at Pharsalia. From here afterward came other
Batavians, who served as the Imperial Guard of Rome from Caasar's time
to Vespasian's. In race, as in geographical position, the Netherlands
have belonged in part to France, in part to Germany, the interior long
remaining Gallic, the frontier Teutonic. From Caesar's time down to the
fifth century, the land was Roman. Afterward, in several periods, it
was in part, or in whole, included in the domain of France--in
Charlemagne's time and after; under Louis XI., who sought, somewhat
unsuccessfully, its complete submission; under Louis XIV., who
virtually conquered it; under the French Revolution, and during
Napoleon's ascendency. On Belgium soil Marlborough fought and won
Ramillies, and Wellington Waterloo.
Belgium and Holland were for long great centers of European
commerce--at Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam--rivals of
English ports, Holland an ancient adversary of England and her valiant
enemy in great wars. A still fiercer struggle came with Spain. Perhaps
an even greater conflict than these two has been her never-ending war
with the sea. Holland has been called a land enclosed in a fortress
reared against the sea. For generations her people have warred with
angry waves; but, as Motley has said, they gained an education for a
struggle "with the still more savage despotism of man." Let me not
forget here Holland's great school of art--comparable only to that of
Spain, or even to that of Italy. F. W. H.
Contents of Volume III
France and the Netherlands--Part One
INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. III AND IV--By the Editor.
I--Paris
The City Beautiful--By Anne Warwick
Notre-Dame--By Victor Hugo
The Louvre--By Grant Allen
The Madeline and Champs Elysées--By Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Palais de Justice and Sainte Chapelle--By Grant Allen
The Hotel de Ville and the Conciergerie--By Augustus J. C. Hare
Père la Chaise--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Musée de Cluny--By Grant Allen
The Place de la Bastille--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Pantheon and St. Etienne du Mont--By Grant Allen
St. Roch--By Augustus J. C. Hare
II--The Environs of Paris
Versailles--By William Makepeace Thackeray
Versailles in 1739--By Thomas Gray
Fontainebleau--By Augustus J. C. Hare
St. Denis--By Grant Allen
Marly-Le-Roi--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Village of Auteuil--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Two Trianons--By Augustus J. C. Hare
Malmaison--By Augustus J. C. Hare
St. Germain--By Leitch Ritchie
St. Cloud--By Augustus J. C. Hare
III--Old Provence
The Papal Palace at Avignon--By Charles Dickens
The Building of the Great Palace--By Thomas Okey
The Walls of Avignon--By Thomas Okey
Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge--By Thomas Okey
Orange--By Henry James
Vaucluse--By Bayard Taylor
The Pont du Guard,--Aigues-Mortes--Nîmes--By Henry James
Arles and Les Baux--By Henry James
IV--Cathedrals and Chateaux
Amiens--By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rouen--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Chartres--By Epiphanius Wilson
Rheims--By Epiphanius Wilson
(_Cathedrals and Chateaux continued in Vol. IV_)
List of Illustrations
Volume III
Frontispiece
Paris: The Seine and Bridges
Notre Dame, Paris
Portion of the Louvre, Paris
Church of the Madeleine, Paris
Napoleon's Sarcophagus, Paris
The Burial Place of Napoleon, Paris
Column and Place Vendóme, Paris
Column of July, Paris
The Pantheon, Paris
The House of the Chamber of Deputies, Paris
The Bourse, Paris
Interior of the Grand Opera House, Paris
Front of the Grand Opera House, Paris
The Arc de Triomphe, Paris
Arch Erected by Napoleon Near the Louvre, Paris
The Church of St. Vincent de Paul, Paris
The Church of St. Sulpice, Paris
The Picture Gallery of Versailles
The Bed-Room of Louis XIV., Versailles
The Grand Trianon at Versailles
The Little Trianon at Versailles
The Bed-Room of Catherine de Medici at Chaumont
Marie Antoinette's Dairy at Versailles
Tours
Saint Denis
Havre
The Bridge at St. Cloud
[Illustration: Notre Dame, Paris]
[Illustration: Church of the Madeleine]
[Illustration: Portion of the Louvre]
[Illustration: Paris: Column and Place Vendome]
[Illustration: Burial Place of Napoleon]
[Illustration: Napoleon's Sarcophagus]
[Illustration: Paris: Column of July in the Place de la Bastille]
[Illustration: Pantheon, Paris]
[Illustration: House of the Chamber of Deputies]
[Illustration: Bourse, Paris]
I
PARIS
The City Beautiful
By Anne Warwick
[Footnote: From "The Meccas of the World." By permission of the
publisher, John Lane. Copyright, 1913.]
The most prejudiced will not deny that Paris is beautiful; or that
there is about her streets and broad, tree-lined avenues a graciousness
at once dignified and gay. Stand, as the ordinary tourist does on his
first day, in the flowering square before the Louvre; in the foreground
are the fountains and bright tulip-bordered paths of the
Tuileries--here a glint of gold, there a soft flash of marble statuary,
shining through the trees; in the center the round lake where the
children sail their boats. Beyond spreads the wide sweep of the Place
de la Concorde, with its obelisk of terrible significance, its larger
fountains throwing brilliant jets of spray; and then the trailing,
upward vista of the Champs Elysées to the great triumphal arch; yes,
even to the most indifferent, Paris is beautiful.
To the subtler of appreciation, she is more than beautiful; she is
impressive. For behind the studied elegance of architecture, the
elaborate simplicity of garden, the carefully lavish use of sculpture
and delicate spray, is visible the imagination of a race of passionate
creators--the imagination, throughout, of the great artist. One meets
it at every turn and corner, down dim passageways, up steep hills,
across bridges, along sinuous quays; the masterhand and its "infinite
capacity for taking pains." And so marvelously do its manifestations of
many periods through many ages combine to enhance one another that one
is convinced that the genius of Paris has been perennial; that St.
Genevieve, her godmother, bestowed it as an immortal gift when the city
was born.
From earliest days every man seems to have caught the spirit of the man
who came before, and to have perpetuated it; by adding his own
distinctive yet always harmonious contribution to the gradual
development of the whole. One built a stately avenue; another erected a
church at the end; a third added a garden on the other side of the
church, and terraces leading up to it; a fourth and fifth cut streets
that should give from the remaining two sides into other flowery
squares with their fine edifices. And so from every viewpoint, and from
every part of the entire city, to-day we have an unbroken series of
vistas--each one different and more charming than the last.
History has lent its hand to the process, too; and romance--it is not
an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors
of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallant
Bourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left
their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined
tower, but there they are, eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit
that lives forever staunch in the heart of the fervent French people.
It comes over one overwhelmingly sometimes, in the midst of the
careless gaiety of the modern city, the old, ever-burning spirit of
rebellion and savage strife that underlies it all, and that can spring
to the surface now on certain memorable days, with a vehemence that is
terrifying. Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of
the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in
the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France
is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man's ambition; and
when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven
with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of
soldiers who are left--and the great Emperor has done his duty!
Or you are walking through the Cité, past the court of the Palais de
Justice. You glance in, carelessly--memory rushes upon you--and the
court flows with blood, "so that men waded through it, up to the
knees!" In the tiny stone-walled room yonder, Marie Antoinette sits
disdainfully composed before her keepers; tho her face is white with
the sounds she hears, as her friends and followers are led out to swell
that hideous river of blood.
A pretty, artificial city, Paris; good for shopping, and naughty
amusements, now and then. History? Oh yes, of course; but all that's so
dry and uninspiring, and besides it happened so long ago.
Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale, among the jewellers' and
milliners' shops and Maxim's, glance up at the Madeleine, down at the
obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago,
this was the brief distance between life and death for those who one
minute were dancing in the "Temple of Victory," the next were laying
their heads upon the block of the guillotine.
Notre-Dame
By Victor Hugo
[Footnote: From Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris." Translated by A.L. Alger.
By permission of Dana, Estes & Co. Copyright, 1888.]
The church of Notre-Dame at Paris is doubtless still a sublime and
majestic building. But, much beauty as it may retain in its old age, it
is not easy to repress a sigh, to restrain our anger, when we mark the
countless defacements and mutilations to which men and time have
subjected that venerable monument, without respect for Charlemagne, who
laid its first stone, or Philip Augustus, who laid its last....
Upon the face of this aged queen of French cathedrals, beside every
wrinkle we find a scar. "Tempus edax, homo edacior;" which I would fain
translate thus: "Time is blind, but man is stupid." Had we leisure to
study with the reader, one by one, the various marks of destruction
graven upon the ancient church, the work of Time would be the lesser,
the worse that of Men, especially of "men of art," since there are
persons who have styled themselves architects during the last two
centuries.
And first of all, to cite but a few glaring instances, there are
assuredly few finer pages in the history of architecture than that
facade where the three receding portals with their pointed arches, the
carved and denticulated plinth with its twenty-eight royal niches, the
huge central rose-window flanked by its two lateral windows as is the
priest by his deacon and subdeacon, the lofty airy gallery of
trifoliated arcades supporting a heavy platform upon its slender
columns, and lastly the two dark and massive towers with their
pent-house roofs of slate, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, one
above the other, five gigantic stages, unfold themselves to the eye,
clearly and as a whole, with their countless details of sculpture,
statuary, and carving, powerfully contributing to the calm grandeur of
the whole; as it were, a vast symphony in stone; the colossal work of
one man and one nation, one and yet complex, like the Iliad and the old
Romance epics, to which it is akin; the tremendous sum of the joint
contributions of all the force of an entire epoch, in which every stone
reveals, in a hundred forms, the fancy of the workman disciplined by
the genius of the artist--a sort of human creation, in brief, powerful
and prolific as the Divine creation, whose double characteristics,
variety and eternity, it seems to have acquired.
And what we say of the façades, we must also say of the whole church;
and what we say of the cathedral church of Paris must be said of all
the Christian churches of the Middle Ages. Everything is harmonious
which springs from spontaneous, logical, and well-proportioned art. To
measure a toe, is to measure the giant.
Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame as we see it at the present
day, when we make a pious pilgrimage to admire the solemn and mighty
cathedral, which, as its chroniclers declare, inspires terror. This
façade now lacks three important things: first, the eleven steps which
formerly raised it above the level of the ground; next, the lower
series of statues which filled the niches over the doors; and lastly,
the upper row of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, which
adorned the gallery of the first story, from Childebert down to Philip
Augustus, each holding in his hand "the imperial globe."
The stairs were destroyed by Time, which, with slow and irresistible
progress, raised the level of the city's soil; but while this
flood-tide of the pavements of Paris swallowed one by one the eleven
steps which added to the majestic height of the edifice, Time has
perhaps given to the church more than it took away, for it is Time
which has painted the front with that sober hue of centuries which
makes the antiquity of churches their greatest beauty.
But who pulled down the two rows of statues? Who left those empty
niches? Who carved that new and bastard pointed arch in the very center
of the middle door? Who dared to insert that clumsy, tasteless, wooden
door, carved in the style of Louis XV., side by side with the
arabesques of Biscornette? Who but men, architects, the artists of our
day?
And if we step into the interior of the edifice, who overthrew that
colossal figure of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues by the
same right as the great hall of the palace among halls, as the spire of
Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every
space between the columns of the choir and the nave, kneeling,
standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops,
men-at-arms--of stone, of marble, of gold, of silver, of copper, nay
even of wax--who brutally swept them away? It was not the hand of Time.
And who replaced the old Gothic altar, with its splendid burden of
shrines and reliquaries, by that heavy marble sarcophagus adorned with
clouds and cherubs, looking like a poor copy of the Val-de-Grâce or the
Hôtel des Invalides? Who was stupid enough to fasten that clumsy stone
anachronism into the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not
Louis XIV., fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII.?
And who set cold white panes in place of that stained glass of gorgeous
hue, which led the wondering gaze of our fathers to roam uncertain
'twixt the rose-window of the great door and the ogives of the chancel?
And what would a precentor of the sixteenth century say if he could see
the fine coat of yellow wash with which our Vandal archbishops have
smeared their cathedral? He would remember that this was the color with
which the executioner formerly painted those buildings judged
"infamous;" he would recall the hotel of the Petit-Bourbon, bedaubed
with yellow in memory of the Constable's treason; "a yellow of so fine
a temper," says Sauval, "and so well laid on, that more than a hundred
years have failed to wash out its color." He would fancy that the
sacred spot had become accursed, and would turn and flee.
And if we climb higher in the cathedral, without pausing to note a
thousand barbarous acts of every kind, what has become of that
delightful little steeple which rested upon the point of intersection
of the transept, and which, no less fragile and no less daring than its
neighbor, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, (also destroyed), rose yet
nearer heaven than the towers, slender, sharp, sonorous, and daintily
wrought?
An architect of good taste (1787) amputated it, and thought it quite
enough to cover the wound with that large leaden plaster which looks
like the lid of a stewpan. Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle
Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find
three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to
different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible breaches here
and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political
and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell
furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving,
shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and
quaint figures, tore down its statues--sometimes because of their
crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from
the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the
necessary decline of architecture.
Fashion did more than revolutions. Fashion cut into the living flesh,
attacked the very skeleton and framework of art; it chopped and hewed,
dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism,
in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing
which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the
plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic
architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,--marble ribbons, metallic
plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes,
wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds,
lusty cupids, and bloated cherubs, which began to ravage the face of
art in the oratory of Catherine de Medici, and destroyed it, two
centuries later, tortured and distorted, in the Dubarry's boudoir.
There are thus, to sum up the points to which we have alluded, three
sorts of scars now disfiguring Gothic architecture; wrinkles and warts
upon the epidermis--these are the work of time; wounds, brutal
injuries, bruises, and fractures--these are the work of revolution,
from Luther to Mirabeau; mutilations, amputations, dislocations of the
frame, "restorations,"--these are the Greek, Roman barbaric work of
professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole. Academies have murdered
the magnificent art which the Vandals produced. To centuries, to
revolutions which at least laid waste with impartiality and grandeur,
are conjoined the host of scholastic architects, licensed and sworn,
degrading all they touch with the discernment and selection of bad
taste, substituting the tinsel of Louis XV. for Gothic lace-work, for
the greater glory of the Parthenon. This is the donkey's kick at the
dying lion. It is the old oak, decaying at the crown, pierced, bitten
and devoured by caterpillars.
How different from the time when Robert Cenalis, comparing Notre Dame
at Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus; "so loudly boasted
by the ancient pagans," which immortalized Herostratus, held the
cathedral of the Gauls to be "more excellent in length, breadth,
height, and structure!"
Notre Dame at Paris is not, however, what can be called a complete,
definite monument, belonging to a class. It is neither a Roman nor a
Gothic church. The edifice is not a typical one. It has not, like the
abbey at Tournus, the sober massive breadth, the round expansive arch,
the icy bareness, the majestic simplicity of those buildings based on
the semicircular arch. It is not, like the cathedral at Bourges, the
magnificent, airy, multiform, bushy, sturdy, efflorescent product of
the pointed arch.
It is impossible to class it with that antique order of dark,
mysterious, low-studded churches, apparently crusht by the semicircular
arch--almost Egyptian, save for the ceiling; all hieroglyphic, all
sacerdotal, all symbolic, more loaded in their ornamentation with
lozenges and zigzags than with flowers, with flowers than with animals,
with animals than with men; less the work of the architect than of the
bishop; the first transformation of the art, bearing the deep impress
of theocratic and military discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire,
and ceasing with William the Conqueror. It is impossible to place our
cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in
stained glass and sculpture; of pointed forms and daring attitudes;
belonging to the commoners and plain, citizens, as political symbols;
free, capricious, lawless, as works of art; the second transformation
of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, unchangeable, sacerdotal, but
artistic, progressive, and popular, beginning with the close of the
Crusades and ending with Louis XI. Notre Dame at Paris is not of purely
Roman race like the former, nor of purely Arab breed like the latter.
It is a building of the transition period. The Saxon architect had just
reared the pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, brought back
from the Crusades, planted itself as conqueror upon those broad Roman
capitals which were never meant to support anything but semicircular
arches. The pointed arch, thenceforth supreme, built the rest of the
church. And still, inexperienced and shy at first, it swelled, it
widened, it restrained itself, and dared not yet shoot up into spires
and lancets, as it did later on in so many marvelous cathedrals. It
seemed sensible of the close vicinity of the heavy Roman columns.
Moreover, these buildings of the transition from Roman to Gothic are no
less valuable studies than the pure types. They express a gradation of
the art which would otherwise be lost. They represent the ingrafting of
the pointed arch upon the semicircular.
Notre Dame at Paris, in particular, is a curious example of this
variety. Every face, every stone of the venerable monument is a page
not only of the history of the country, but also of the history of
science and art. Thus, to allude only to leading details, while the
little Porte Rouge attains the almost extreme limit of the Gothic
refinement of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, in their
size and gravity of style, go back to the Carlovingian Abbey of
Saint-Germain des Prés. One would say that there was an interval of six
centuries between that door and those pillars. Even the Hermetics find
among the symbols of the great door a satisfactory epitome of their
science, of which the Church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie formed so
complete a hieroglyph.
Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosopher's church, Gothic art, Saxon art,
the clumsy round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic
symbolism by which Nicholas Flamel paved the way for Luther, papal
unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prés, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,
are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central
and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of
Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a
third, something of all.
Considering here Christian European architecture only, that younger
sister of the grand piles of the Orient, we may say that it strikes the
eye as a vast formation divided into three very distinct zones or
layers, one resting upon the other; the Roman zone, (the same which is
also known according to place, climate, and species, as Lombard, Saxon,
and Byzantine. There are the four sister forms of architecture, each
having its peculiar character, but all springing from the same
principle, the semicircular arch,) the Gothic zone, the zone of the
Renaissance, which may be called the Greco-Roman. The Roman stratum,
which is the oldest and the lowest, is occupied by the semicircular
arch, which reappears, together with the Greek column, in the modern
and uppermost stratum of the Renaissance. The painted arch is between
the two. The buildings belonging to any one of these three strata are
perfectly distinct, uniform, and complete. Such are the Abbey of
Jumieges, the Cathedral of Rheims, the Church of the Holy Cross at
Orleans. But the three zones are blended and mingled at the edges, like
the colors in the solar spectrum.
Hence, we have certain complex structures, buildings of gradation and
transition, which may be Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, and
Greco-Roman at the top. This is caused by the fact that it took six
hundred years to build such a fabric. This variety is rare. The
donjon-keep at Étampes is a specimen. But monuments of two formations
are more frequent. Such is Notre-Dame at Paris, a structure of the
pointed arch, its earliest columns leading directly to that Roman zone,
of which the portals of Saint-Denis and the nave of Saint-Germain des
Prés are perfect specimens. Such is the charming semi-Gothic
chapter-house of Boucherville, where the Roman layer reaches midway.
Such is the cathedral of Rouen, which would be wholly Gothic if the tip
of its central spire did not dip into the zone of the Renaissance.
[Footnote: This part of the spire, which was of timber, happens to be
the very part which was burned by lightning in 1823.]
However, all these gradations and differences affect the surface only
of an edifice. Art has but changed its skin. The construction itself of
the Christian church is not affected by them. The interior arrangement,
the logical order of the parts, is still the same. Whatever may be the
carved and nicely-wrought exterior of a cathedral, we always find
beneath it, if only in a rudimentary and dormant state, the Roman
basilica. It rises forever from the ground in harmony with the same law.
There are invariably two naves intersecting each other in the form of a
cross, the upper end being rounded into a chancel or choir; there are
always side aisles, for the processions and for chapels, a sort of
lateral galleries or walks, into which the principal nave opens by
means of the spaces between the columns. This settled, the number of
chapels, doors, steeples, and spires may be modified indefinitely,
according to the fancy of the century, the people, and the art. The
performance of divine service once provided for and assured,
architecture acts its own pleasure. Statues, stained glass,
rose-windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, and
bas-reliefs,--it combines all these flowers of the fancy according to
the logarithm that suits it best. Hence the immense variety in the
exteriors of those structures within which dwell such unity and order.
The trunk of the tree is fixt; the foliage is variable.
The Louvre
By Grant Allen
[Footnote: From "Paris."]
The Louvre is the noblest monument of the French Renaissance. From the
time of St. Louis onward, the French kings began to live more and more
in the northern suburb, the town of the merchants, which now assumed
the name of La Ville, in contradistinction to the Cité and the
Université. Two of their chief residences here were the Bastille and
the Hôtel St. Paul, both now demolished--one, on the Place so called;
the other, between the Rue St. Antoine and the Quai des Célestins. But
from a very early period they also possest a château on the site of the
Louvre, and known by the same name, which guarded the point where the
wall of Philippe Auguste abutted on the river. François I. decided to
pull down this picturesque turreted medieval castle, erected by
Philippe Auguste and altered by Charles V. He began the construction in
its place of a magnificent Renaissance palace, which has ever since
been in course of erection.
Its subsequent growth, however, is best explained opposite the building
itself, where attention can be duly called to the succession of its
salient features. But a visit to the exterior fabric of the Louvre
should be preceded by one to St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish
church, and practically the chapel, of the old Louvre, to which it
stood in somewhat the same relation as the Ste. Chapelle to the home of
St. Louis. Note, however, that the church was situated just within the
ancient wall, while the château lay outside it. The visitor will
doubtless be tolerably familiar by this time with some parts at least
of the exterior of the Louvre; but he will do well to visit it now
systematically, in the order here suggested, so as to gain a clear
general idea of its history and meaning....
Begin by understanding distinctly that this court is the real and
original Louvre; the rest is mere excresence, intended to unite the
main building with the Tuileries, which lay some hundreds of yards to
the west of it. Notice, first, that the Palace as a whole, seen from
the point where you now stand, is constructed on the old principle of
relatively blank external walls, like a castle, with an interior
courtyard, on which all the apartments open, and almost all the
decoration is lavished. Reminiscences of defense lurk about the Louvre.
It can best be understood by comparison with such ornate, yet
fortress-like, Italian palaces as the Strozzi at Florence. Notice the
four opposite portals, facing the cardinal points, which can be readily
shut by means of great doors; while the actual doorways of the various
suites of apartments open only into the protected courtyard. This is
the origin of the familiar French porte-cochère.
Again, the portion of the building that directly faces you as you enter
the court from St. Germain is the oldest part, and represents the early
Renaissance spirit. It is the most primitive Louvre. Note in particular
the central elevated portion, known as a Pavilion, and graced with
elegant Caryatides. These Pavilions are lingering reminiscences of the
medieval towers. You will find them in the corners and centers of other
blocks in the Louvre. They form a peculiarly French Renaissance
characteristic. The Palace is here growing out of the Castle. The other
three sides of the square are, on the whole, more classical and later.
Now across the square directly to the Pavilion de l'Horloge, as it is
called, from the clock which adorns it. To your left, on the floor of
the court, are two circular white lines, enclosed in a square. These
mark the site of the original Château of the Louvre, with its keep, or
donjon. François I., who began the existing building, originally
intended that his palace should cover the same area. It was he who
erected the left wing, which now faces you, marked by the crown and H
on its central round gable, placed there by his successor, Henry II.,
under whom it was completed. To the same king are also due the
monograms of H and D (for Diane de Poitiers, his mistress), between the
columns of the ground floor. The whole of the Pavilion de l'Horloge,
and of this west wing, should be carefully examined in detail as the
finest remaining specimen of highly decorated French Renaissance
architecture. (But the upper story of the Pavilion, with the
Caryatides, is an age later.) Observe even the decoration lavished on
the beautiful chimneys. Pierre Lescot was the architect of this
earliest wing; the exquisite sculpture is by Jean Goujon, a Frenchman,
and the Italian, Paolo Ponzio. Examine much of it. The crossed K's of
certain panels stand for Catherine de Médici.
The right wing, beyond the Pavilion, was added, in the same style,
under Louis XIII., who decided to double the plan of his predecessors,
and form the existing Cour du Louvre.
The other three sides, in a more classic style, with pediments
replacing the Pavilions, and square porticos instead of rounded gables,
are for the most part later. The south side, however, as far as the
central door, is also by Pierre Lescot. It forms one of the two fronts
of the original square first contemplated. The attic story of these
three sides was added under Louis XIV., to whom, in the main, is due
this Cour du Louvre. A considerable part of Louis XIV.'s decorations
bear reference to his representation as "le roi soleil."
Now, pass through the Pavilion de l'Horloge (called on its west side
Pavilion Sully) into the second of the three courts of the Louvre. To
understand this portion of the building, again, you must remember that
shortly after the erection of the Old Louvre, Catherine de Médici began
to build her palace of the Tuileries, now destroyed, to the west of it.
She (and subsequent rulers) designed to unite the Old Louvre with the
Tuileries by a gallery which should run along the bank of the river. Of
that gallery, Catherine de Médici herself erected a considerable
portion, to be described later, and Henri IV., almost completed it.
Later on, Napoleon I. conceived the idea of extending a similar gallery
along his new Rue de Rivoli, on the north side, so as to enclose the
whole space between the Louvre and the Tuileries in one gigantic double
courtyard. Napoleon III. carried out his idea. The second court in
which you now stand is entirely flanked by buildings of this epoch--the
Second Empire. Examine it cursorily as far as the modern statue of
Gambetta.
Stand or take a seat by the railing of the garden opposite the Pavilion
Sully. The part that now faces you forms a portion of the building of
François I, and Louis XIII., redecorated in part by Napoleon I. The
portions to your right and left are entirely of the age of Napoleon
III., built so as to conceal the want of parallelism of the outer
portions. Observe their characteristic Pavilions, each bearing its own
name inscribed upon it. This recent square, tho quite modern in the
character of its sculpture and decoration, is Renaissance in its
general architecture, and, when looked back upon from the gardens of
the Tuileries, affords a most excellent idea of that stately style, as
developed in France under François I. The whole of this splendid plan,
however, has been rendered futile by the destruction of the Tuileries,
without which the enclosure becomes wholly meaningless.
Now, continue westward, pass the Monument of Gambetta, and take a seat
on the steps at the base, near the fine figure of Truth. In front of
you opens the third square of the Louvre, known as the Place du
Carrousel, and formerly enclosed on its west side by the Palace of the
Tuileries, which was unfortunately burned down in 1871, during the
conflict between the Municipal and National authorities. Its place is
now occupied by a garden terrace, the view from which in all directions
is magnificent. Fronting you, as you sit, is the Arc de Triomphe du
Carrousel, erected under Napoleon I., by Percier and Fontaine, in
imitation of the Arch of Septimius Severus at Rome, and once crowned by
the famous bronze Roman horses from St. Mark's at Venice. The arch,
designed as an approach to the Tuileries during the period of the
classical mania, is too small for its present surroundings, since the
removal of the Palace. The north wing, visible to your right, is purely
modern, of the age of the First and Second Empire and the Third
Republic. The meretricious character of the reliefs in its extreme west
portion, erected under the Emperor Napoleon III., and restored after
the Commune, is redolent of the spirit of that gaudy period. The south
wing, to your left, forms part of the connecting gallery erected by
Henri IV., but its architecture is largely obscured by considerable
alterations under Napoleon III. Its west pavilion-known as the Pavilion
de Flore--is well worth notice.
Having thus gained a first idea of the courtyard fronts of the
building, continue your walk, still westward, along the south wing as
far as the Pavilion de Flore, a remaining portion of the corner edifice
which ran into one line with the Palace of the Tuileries. Turn round
the corner of the Pavilion to examine the south or river front of the
connecting gallery--one of the finest parts of the whole building, but
far less known to ordinary visitors than the cold and uninteresting
northern line along the Rue de Rivoli. The first portion, as far as the
gateways, belongs originally to the age of Henry IV., but it was
entirely reconstructed under Napoleon III., whose obtrusive N appears
in many places on the gateways and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, it still preserves, on the whole, some reminiscence of
its graceful Renaissance architecture. Beyond the main gateway (with
modern bronze Charioteer of the Sun), flanked by the Pavilions de la
Trémoille and de Lesdiguières, we come upon the long Southern Gallery
erected by Catherine de Médici, which still preserves almost intact its
splendid early French Renaissance decoration. This is one of the
noblest portions of the entire building. The N here gives place to H's,
and the Renaissance scroll-work and reliefs almost equal those in that
portion of the old Louvre which was erected under François I. Sit on a
seat on the Quay and examine the sculpture.
Notice particularly the splendid Porte Jean Goujon, conspicuous from
afar by its gilded balcony. Its crowned H's and coats-of-arms are
specially interesting examples of the decorative work of the period.
Note also the skill with which this almost flat range is relieved by
sculpture and decoration so as to make us oblivious of the want of that
variety usually given by jutting portions. The end of this long gallery
is formed by two handsome windows with balconies. We there come to the
connecting Galérie d'Apollon, of which these windows are the
termination, and finally reach once more a portion of Perrault's
façade, with its double LL's, erected under Louis XIV., and closely
resembling the interior façade of the Cour du Louvre....
The Collections in the Louvre have no such necessary organic connection
with Paris itself as Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, or even those
in the rooms at Cluny. They may, therefore, be examined by the visitor
at any period of his visit that he chooses. I would advise him,
however, whenever he takes them up, to begin with the paintings and
then to go on to the Classical and Renaissance Sculpture. The
last-named, at least, he should only examine in connection with the
rest of Renaissance Paris. Also, while it is unimportant whether he
takes first Painting or Sculpture, it is very doubtful that he should
take each separately in the chronological order.
At least six days--far more, if possible--should be devoted to the
Louvre Collections--by far the most important objects to be seen in
Paris. Of these, four should be assigned to the Paintings, and one each
to the Classical and Renaissance Sculpture. If this is impossible, do
not try to see all; see a little thoroughly. Confine yourself, for
Painting, to the Salon Carré and Gallery VII., and for Sculpture to the
Classical Gallery and to the three Western rooms of the Renaissance
collection.
The Madeleine and Champs Elysées
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
[Footnote From "French and Italian Note-Books." By special arrangement
with, and by permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's works,
Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1871, 1883, 1899.]
Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most beautiful church, that
might have been adapted from Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each
side there is a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by
those of the Parthenon. A mourning coach, arrayed in black and silver,
was drawn up at the steps, and the front of the church was hung with
black cloth, which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing the
people going in, we entered along with them. Glorious and gorgeous is
the Madeleine. The entrance to the nave is beneath a most stately arch;
and three arches of equal height open from the nave to the side aisles;
and at the end of the nave is another great arch, rising, with a
vaulted half-dome, over the high altar. The pillars supporting these
arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever
gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and
within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred
subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over
the altar; all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group
above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen smiling down
upon angels and archangels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing
themselves with their heavy marble wings.
There is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant
idea of the magnificence of this church, in its details and in its
whole. It was founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then
Bonaparte contemplated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or
building it anew as one. The restored Bourbon remade it into a church;
but it still has a heathenish look, and will never lose it.
When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward toward
the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which
were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy
of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy
of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet,
embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but
a sarcophagus, or something still more huge.
The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with
heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young
voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church,
between the arches, along the nave, and round the altar, was hung with
broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred
vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well; I never saw
anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical
figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore
aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see.
The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or
perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men
felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory.
Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and
was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad
when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed
the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the
audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe,
a sword, and had the air of a military man....
When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde,
and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French
idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysées may
look pretty in summer; tho I suspect they must be somewhat dry and
artificial at whatever season.--the trees being slender and scraggy,
and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to
them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh
from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of
grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered
with white dust. It gives the whole scene the air of being a
contrivance of man, in which Nature has either not been invited to take
any part, or has declined to do so.