FRANCE.

Hotel de Louvre, January 6th, 1858.--On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks

and half-dozen carpet-bags being already packed and labelled, we began to

prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at

the door by half past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge

station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already

many people in the streets, growing more numerous as we drove city-ward;

and, in Newgate Street, there was such a number of market-carts, that we

almost came to a dead lock with some of them. At the station we found

several persons who were apparently going in the same train with us,

sitting round the fire of the waiting-room. Since I came to England

there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly

bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the

atmosphere. We started at half past eight, having taken through tickets

to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat

tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we

started; but it did not make us more than half comfortable, and the frost

soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we

could only glance at the green fields--immortally green, whatever winter

can do against them--and at, here and there, a stream or pool with the

ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild

season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes;

and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to

find nothing genial and hospitable there any more.

At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway station close upon a

shingly beach, on which the sea broke in foam, and which J----- reported

as strewn with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with an old

church in the midst; and, close, at hand, the pier, where lay the steamer

in which we were to embark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no

heart to explore the town, or pick up shells with J----- on the beach; so

we kept within doors during the two hours of our stay, now and then

looking out of the windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and

rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the British Channel

generally communicates to the craft that navigate it.

At about one o'clock we went on board, and were soon under steam, at a

rate that quickly showed a long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind

us. It is a very dusky white, by the by, and the cliffs themselves do

not seem, at a distance, to be of imposing height, and have too even an

outline to be picturesque.

As we increased our distance from England, the French coast came more and

more distinctly in sight, with a low, wavy outline, not very well worth

looking at, except because it was the coast of France. Indeed, I looked

at it but little; for the wind was bleak and boisterous, and I went down

into the cabin, where I found the fire very comfortable, and several

people were stretched on sofas in a state of placid wretchedness. . . .

I have never suffered from sea-sickness, but had been somewhat

apprehensive of this rough strait between England and France, which seems

to have more potency over people's stomachs than ten times the extent of

sea in other quarters. Our passage was of two hours, at the end of which

we landed on French soil, and found ourselves immediately in the clutches

of the custom-house officers, who, however, merely made a momentary

examination of my passport, and allowed us to pass without opening even

one of our carpet-bags. The great bulk of our luggage had been

registered through to Paris, for examination after our arrival there.

We left Boulogne in about an hour after our arrival, when it was already

a darkening twilight. The weather had grown colder than ever, since our

arrival in sunny France, and the night was now setting in, wickedly black

and dreary. The frost hardened upon the carriage windows in such

thickness that I could scarcely scratch a peep-hole through it; but, from

such glimpses as I could catch, the aspect of the country seemed pretty

much to resemble the December aspect of my dear native land,--broad,

bare, brown fields, with streaks of snow at the foot of ridges, and along

fences, or in the furrows of ploughed soil. There was ice wherever there

happened to be water to form it.

We had feet-warmers in the carriage, but the cold crept in nevertheless;

and I do not remember hardly in my life a more disagreeable short journey

than this, my first advance into French territory. My impression of

France will always be that it is an Arctic region. At any season of the

year, the tract over which we passed yesterday must be an uninteresting

one as regards its natural features; and the only adornment, as far as I

could observe, which art has given it, consists in straight rows of very

stiff-looking and slender-stemmed trees. In the dusk they resembled

poplar-trees.

Weary and frost-bitten,--morally, if not physically,--we reached Amiens

in three or four hours, and here I underwent much annoyance from the

French railway officials and attendants, who, I believe, did not mean to

incommode me, but rather to forward my purposes as far as they well

could. If they would speak slowly and distinctly I might understand them

well enough, being perfectly familiar with the written language, and

knowing the principles of its pronunciation; but, in their customary

rapid utterance, it sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to

myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties. . . . It gives a

taciturn personage like myself a new conception as to the value of

speech, even to him, when he finds himself unable either to speak or

understand.

Finally, being advised on all hands to go to the Hotel du Rhin, we were

carried thither in an omnibus, rattling over a rough pavement, through an

invisible and frozen town; and, on our arrival, were ushered into a

handsome salon, as chill as a tomb. They made a little bit of a

wood-fire for us in a low and deep chimney-hole, which let a hundred

times more heat escape up the flue than it sent into the room.

In the morning we sallied forth to see the cathedral.

The aspect of the old French town was very different from anything

English; whiter, infinitely cleaner; higher and narrower houses, the

entrance to most of which seeming to be through a great gateway,

affording admission into a central court-yard; a public square, with a

statue in the middle, and another statue in a neighboring street. We met

priests in three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee-breeches; also

soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants and children, clattering over the

pavements in wooden shoes.

It makes a great impression of outlandishness to see the signs over the

shop doors in a foreign tongue. If the cold had not been such as to dull

my sense of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I should have

taken in a set of new impressions, and enjoyed them very much. As it

was, I cared little for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy

the cathedral of Amiens, which has many features unlike those of English

cathedrals.

It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered

look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a

great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the

latter gives is of magnitude and mass; this French cathedral strikes one

as lofty. The exterior is venerable, though but little time-worn by the

action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous

niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth

century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed

arches; and the interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any

that we had seen, and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it

being of such an airy height, and with no screen between the chancel and

nave, as in all the English cathedrals. We saw the differences, too,

betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was

originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has

been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of

the side aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated

to some Saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the

crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various

kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand

upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a

great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were

to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers.

Artificial flowers were hung at some of the shrines, or placed under

glass. In every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional,--a little

oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the

priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and

speak, through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural

and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Saviour, the

Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the

chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing

in the Holy of Holies, where the High Altar stands. There is not much

painted glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-windows, however,

that looked antique; and the great eastern window which, I think, is

modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of

work, since the structure was erected, and is foot-worn by the successive

generations, though still in excellent repair. I saw one of the small,

square stones in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there are a

thousand older ones. It was gratifying to find the cathedral in such

good condition, without any traces of recent repair; and it is perhaps a

mark of difference between French and English character, that the

Revolution in the former country, though all religious worship disappears

before it, does not seem to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical

monuments, as the Reformation and the reign of Puritanism in the latter.

I did not see a mutilated shrine, or even a broken-nosed image, in the

whole cathedral. But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics

against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at them, were

symptoms of sincerer religious faith than the French were capable of.

These last did not care enough about their Saviour to beat down his

crucified image; and they preserved the works of sacred art, for the sake

only of what beauty there was in them.

While we were in the cathedral, we saw several persons kneeling at their

devotions on the steps of the chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his

fingers in the holy water at the entrance: by the by, I looked into the

stone basin that held it, and saw it full of ice. Could not all that

sanctity at least keep it thawed? Priests--jolly, fat, mean-looking

fellows, in white robes--went hither and thither, but did not interrupt

or accost us.

There were other peculiarities, which I suppose I shall see more of in my

visits to other churches, but now we were all glad to make our stay as

brief as possible, the atmosphere of the cathedral being so bleak, and

its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our feet. We returned to the

hotel, and the chambermaid brought me a book, in which she asked me to

inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, and the

authorization under which I travelled. After the freedom of an English

hotel, so much greater than even that of an American one, where they make

you disclose your name, this is not so pleasant.

We left Amiens at half past one; and I can tell as little of the country

between that place and Paris, as between Boulogne and Amiens. The

windows of our railway carriage were already frosted with French breath

when we got into it, and the ice grew thicker and thicker continually. I

tried, at various times, to rub a peep-hole through, as before; but the

ice immediately shot its crystallized tracery over it again; and, indeed,

there was little or nothing to make it worth while to look out, so bleak

was the scene. Now and then a chateau, too far off for its

characteristics to be discerned; now and then a church, with a tall gray

tower, and a little peak atop; here and there a village or a town, which

we could not well see. At sunset there was just that clear, cold, wintry

sky which I remember so well in America, but have never seen in England.

At five we reached Paris, and were suffered to take a carriage to the

hotel de Louvre, without any examination of the little luggage we had

with us. Arriving, we took a suite of apartments, and the waiter

immediately lighted a wax candle in each separate room.

We might have dined at the table d'hote, but preferred the restaurant

connected with and within the hotel. All the dishes were very delicate,

and a vast change from the simple English system, with its joints,

shoulders, beefsteaks, and chops; but I doubt whether English cookery,

for the very reason that it is so simple, is not better for men's moral

and spiritual nature than French. In the former case, you know that you

are gratifying your animal needs and propensities, and are duly ashamed

of it; but, in dealing with these French delicacies, you delude yourself

into the idea that you are cultivating your taste while satisfying your

appetite. This last, however, it requires a good deal of perseverance to

accomplish.

In the cathedral at Amiens there were printed lists of acts of devotion

posted on the columns, such as prayers at the shrines of certain saints,

whereby plenary indulgences might be gained. It is to be observed,

however, that all these external forms were necessarily accompanied with

true penitence and religious devotion.

Hotel de Louvre, January 8th.--It was so fearfully cold this morning that

I really felt little or no curiosity to see the city. . . . Until after

one o'clock, therefore, I knew nothing of Paris except the lights which I

had seen beneath our window the evening before, far, far downward, in the

narrow Rue St. Honore, and the rumble of the wheels, which continued

later than I was awake to hear it, and began again before dawn. I could

see, too, tall houses, that seemed to be occupied in every story, and

that had windows on the steep roofs. One of these houses is six stories

high. This Rue St. Honore is one of the old streets in Paris, and is

that in which Henry IV. was assassinated; but it has not, in this part of

it, the aspect of antiquity.

After one o'clock we all went out and walked along the Rue de

Rivoli. . . . We are here, right in the midst of Paris, and close to

whatever is best known to those who hear or read about it,--the Louvre

being across the street, the Palais Royal but a little way off, the

Tuileries joining to the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde just beyond,

verging on which is the Champs Elysees. We looked about us for a

suitable place to dine, and soon found the Restaurant des Echelles, where

we entered at a venture, and were courteously received. It has a

handsomely furnished saloon, much set off with gilding and mirrors; and

appears to be frequented by English and Americans; its carte, a bound

volume, being printed in English as well as French. . . .

It was now nearly four o'clock, and too late to visit the galleries of

the Louvre, or to do anything else but walk a little way along the

street. The splendor of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me

altogether by surprise: such stately edifices, prolonging themselves in

unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, ever and anon, a long vista of a

street, with a column rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch,

wrought in memory of some grand event. The light stone or stucco, wholly

untarnished by smoke and soot, puts London to the blush, if a blush could

be seen on its dingy face; but, indeed, London is not to be mentioned,

nor compared even, with Paris. I never knew what a palace was till I had

a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuileries; never had my idea of a city

been gratified till I trod these stately streets. The life of the scene,

too, is infinitely more picturesque than that of London, with its

monstrous throng of grave faces and black coats; whereas, here, you see

soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats, Zonaves with turbans,

long mantles, and bronzed, half-Moorish faces; and a great many people

whom you perceive to be outside of your experience, and know them ugly to

look at, and fancy them villanous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards

the French people; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances melt

and mingle with mine. But they do grand and beautiful things in the

architectural way; and I am grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is

a most splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect trophies in of

all its triumphs; and on one side of it is the Tuileries, on the opposite

side the Champs Elysees, and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw

large cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. The Champs

Elysees, so far as I saw it, had not a grassy soil beneath its trees, but

the bare earth, white and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else,

would assure me that I was out of England.

We had time only to take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk;

and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I

think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but

very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg,--

new, bright, magnificent, and desperately cold.

A great part of this architectural splendor is due to the present

Emperor, who has wrought a great change in the aspect of the city within

a very few years. A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, ought

to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, since he makes it his

policy to illustrate his capital with palatial edifices, which are,

however, better for a stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay

for.

We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing some of the galleries of the

Louvre. I must confess that the vast and beautiful edifice struck me far

more than the pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains,--

the shell more than the kernel inside; such noble suites of rooms and

halls were those through which we first passed, containing Egyptian, and,

farther onward, Greek and Roman antiquities; the walls cased in

variegated marbles; the ceilings glowing with beautiful frescos; the

whole extended into infinite vistas by mirrors that seemed like vacancy,

and multiplied everything forever. The picture-rooms are not so

brilliant, and the pictures themselves did not greatly win upon me in

this one day. Many artists were employed in copying them, especially in

the rooms hung with the productions of French painters. Not a few of

these copyists were females; most of them were young men, picturesquely

mustached and bearded; but some were elderly, who, it was pitiful to

think, had passed through life without so much success as now to paint

pictures of their own.

From the pictures we went into a suite of rooms where are preserved many

relics of the ancient and later kings of France; more relics of the elder

ones, indeed, than I supposed had remained extant through the Revolution.

The French seem to like to keep memorials of whatever they do, and of

whatever their forefathers have done, even if it be ever so little to

their credit; and perhaps they do not take matters sufficiently to heart

to detest anything that has ever happened. What surprised me most were

the golden sceptre and the magnificent sword and other gorgeous relics of

Charlemagne,--a person whom I had always associated with a sheepskin

cloak. There were suits of armor and weapons that had been worn and

handled by a great many of the French kings; and a religious book that

had belonged to St. Louis; a dressing-glass, most richly set with

precious stones, which formerly stood on the toilet-table of Catherine

de' Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers had been. And

there were a thousand other treasures, just as well worth mentioning as

these. If each monarch could have been summoned from Hades to claim his

own relics, we should have had the halls full of the old Childerics,

Charleses, Bourbons and Capets, Henrys and Louises, snatching with

ghostly hands at sceptres, swords, armor, and mantles; and Napoleon would

have seen, apparently, almost everything that personally belonged to

him,--his coat, his cocked hats, his camp-desk, his field-bed, his

knives, forks, and plates, and even a lock of his hair. I must let it

all go. These things cannot be reproduced by pen and ink.

Hotel de Louvre, January 9th.--. . . . Last evening Mr. Fezaudie called.

He spoke very freely respecting the Emperor and the hatred entertained

against him in France; but said that he is more powerful, that is, more

firmly fixed as a ruler, than ever the first Napoleon was. We, who look

back upon the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the past, a

great bowlder in history, cannot well estimate how momentary and

insubstantial the great Captain may have appeared to those who beheld his

rise out of obscurity. They never, perhaps, took the reality of his

career fairly into their minds, before it was over. The present Emperor,

I believe, has already been as long in possession of the supreme power as

his uncle was. I should like to see him, and may, perhaps, do--so, as he

is our neighbor, across the way.

This morning Miss ------, the celebrated astronomical lady, called. She

had brought a letter of introduction to me, while consul; and her purpose

now was to see if we could take her as one of our party to Rome, whither

she likewise is bound. We readily consented, for she seems to be a

simple, strong, healthy-humored woman, who will not fling herself as a

burden on our shoulders; and my only wonder is that a person evidently so

able to take care of herself should wish to have an escort.

We issued forth at about eleven, and went down the Rue St. Honore, which

is narrow, and has houses of five or six stories on either side, between

which run the streets like a gully in a rock. One face of our hotel

borders and looks on this street. After going a good way, we came to an

intersection with another street, the name of which I forget; but, at

this point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his

dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and

more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were

high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old

part of London, being of light-colored stone; but I never saw anything

that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow,

crowded, and rambling street.

Thence we turned into the Rue St. Denis, which is one of the oldest

streets in Paris, and is said to have been first marked out by the track

of the saint's footsteps, where, after his martyrdom, he walked along it,

with his head under his arm, in quest of a burial-place. This legend may

account for any crookedness of the street; for it could not reasonably be

asked of a headless man that he should walk straight.

Through some other indirections we at last found the Rue Bergere, down

which I went with J----- in quest of Hottinguer et Co., the bankers,

while the rest of us went along the Boulevards, towards the Church of the

Madeleine. . . . This business accomplished, J----- and I threaded our

way back, and overtook the rest of the party, still a good distance from

the Madeleine. I know not why the Boulevards are called so. They are a

succession of broad walks through broad streets, and were much thronged

with people, most of whom appeared to be bent more on pleasure than

business. The sun, long before this, had come out brightly, and gave us

the first genial and comfortable sensations which we have had in Paris.

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 Bourbons 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 towards

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.

Before the close of the service a contribution-box--or, rather, a black

velvet bag--was handed about by this military verger; and I gave J----- a

franc to put in, though I did not in the least know for what.

Issuing from the church, we inquired of two or three persons who was the

distinguished defunct at whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we

had some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last week, and is still

above ground. But it proved to be only a Madame Mentel, or some such

name, whom nobody had ever before heard of. I forgot to say that her

coffin was taken from beneath the illuminated pall, and carried out of

the church before us.

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 Elysees may

look pretty in summer; though 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. There were merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other

provision for children's amusements among the trees; and booths, and

tables of cakes, and candy-women; and restaurants on the borders of the

wood; but very few people there; and doubtless we can form no idea of

what the scene might become when alive with French gayety and vivacity.

As we walked onward the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance,

looking huge and massive, though still a long way off. It was not,

however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur

of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its

airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity;

nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase

within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted

by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye

view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable

avenues shoot with painful directness right towards it.

On our way homeward we visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which

is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal,

and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The

shaft is wreathed round and roundabout with representations of what, as

far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has

a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of

artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of

Napoleon, still ardent enough to expend a franc or two in this way.

Hotel de Louvre, January 10th.--We had purposed going to the Cathedral

of Notre Dame to-day, but the weather and walking were too unfavorable

for a distant expedition; so we merely went across the street to the

Louvre. . . . .

Our principal object this morning was to see the pencil drawings by

eminent artists. Of these the Louvre has a very rich collection,

occupying many apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibale Caracci,

Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and

almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or

whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they

had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye,--

that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it

in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a

happiness in these rude, off-hand sketches, which they never felt again

in the same work, and which resulted in disappointment, after they had

done their best. To an artist, the collection must be most deeply

interesting: to myself, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome.

In the same suite of apartments, there is a collection of miniatures,

some of them very exquisite, and absolutely lifelike, on their small

scale. I observed two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of

them especially so, with its cloud-like white hair. I do not think we

have produced a man so interesting to contemplate, in many points of

view, as he. Most of our great men are of a character that I find it

impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavishing any amount of

sympathy upon them. Not so Franklin, who had a great deal of common and

uncommon human nature in him.

Much of the time, while my wife was looking at the drawings, I sat

observing the crowd of Sunday visitors. They were generally of a lower

class than those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of uniforms,

and, for the most part, ugly little men, but decorous and well behaved.

I saw medals on many of their breasts, denoting Crimean service; some

wore the English medal, with Queen Victoria's head upon it. A blue

coat, with red baggy trousers, was the most usual uniform. Some had

short-breasted coats, made in the same style as those of the first

Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen,

distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked

military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the

middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent,

in colored gowns and caps; and laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen,

young artists, too, no doubt looking with educated eyes at these

art-treasures, and I think, as a general thing, each man was mated with a

woman. The soldiers, however, came in pairs or little squads,

accompanied by women. I did not much like any of the French faces, and

yet I am not sure that there is not more resemblance between them and the

American physiognomy, than between the latter and the English. The women

are not pretty, but in all ranks above the lowest they have a trained

expression that supplies the place of beauty.

I was wearied to death with the drawings, and began to have that dreary

and desperate feeling which has often come upon me when the sights last

longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our time in Paris,

however, is brief and precious, we next inquired our way to the galleries

of sculpture, and these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I

should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, on the basement

floor. Hall after hall opened interminably before us, and on either side

of us, paved and incrusted with variegated and beautifully polished

marble, relieved against which stand the antique statues and groups,

interspersed with great urns and vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets,

busts of historic personages, and all manner of shapes of marble which

consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. Not that I really

did feel much impressed by any of this sculpture then, nor saw more than

two or three things which I thought very beautiful; but whether it be

good or no, I suppose the world has nothing better, unless it be a few

world-renowned statues in Italy. I was even more struck by the skill and

ingenuity of the French in arranging these sculptural remains, than by

the value of the sculptures themselves. The galleries, I should judge,

have been recently prepared, and on a magnificent system,--the adornments

being yet by no means completed,--for besides the floor and wall-casings

of rich, polished marble, the vaulted ceilings of some of the apartments

are painted in fresco, causing them to glow as if the sky were opened.

It must be owned, however, that the statuary, often time-worn and

darkened from its original brilliancy by weather-stains, does not suit

well as furniture for such splendid rooms. When we see a perfection of

modern finish around them, we recognize that most of these statues have

been thrown down from their pedestals, hundreds of years ago, and have

been battered and externally degraded; and though whatever spiritual

beauty they ever had may still remain, yet this is not made more apparent

by the contrast betwixt the new gloss of modern upholstery, and their

tarnished, even if immortal grace. I rather think the English have given

really the more hospitable reception to the maimed Theseus, and his

broken-nosed, broken-legged, headless companions, because flouting them

with no gorgeous fittings up.

By this time poor J----- (who, with his taste for art yet undeveloped, is

the companion of all our visits to sculpture and picture galleries) was

wofully hungry, and for bread we had given him a stone,--not one stone,

but a thousand. We returned to the hotel, and it being too damp and raw

to go to our Restaurant des Echelles, we dined at the hotel. In my

opinion it would require less time to cultivate our gastronomic taste

than taste of any other kind; and, on the whole, I am not sure that a man

would not be wise to afford himself a little discipline in this line. It

is certainly throwing away the bounties of Providence, to treat them as

the English do, producing from better materials than the French have to

work upon nothing but sirloins, joints, joints, steaks, steaks, steaks,

chops, chops, chops, chops! We had a soup to-day, in which twenty kinds

of vegetables were represented, and manifested each its own aroma; a

fillet of stewed beef, and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fricassee.

We had a bottle of Chablis, and renewed ourselves, at the close of the

banquet, with a plate of Chateaubriand ice. It was all very good, and we

respected ourselves far more than if we had eaten a quantity of red roast

beef; but I am not quite sure that we were right. . . .

Among the relics of kings and princes, I do not know that there was

anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches

long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI.

There was a map,--a hemisphere of the world,--which his father had drawn

for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a

magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled

scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of

Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these

things. What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword and

sceptre, and the last Dauphin's little toy cannon, and so much between

the two!

Hotel de Louvre, January 11th.--This was another chill, raw day,

characterized by a spitefulness of atmosphere which I do not remember

ever to have experienced in my own dear country. We meant to have

visited the Hotel des Invalides, but J----- and I walked to the Tivoli,

the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees, and to the Place de

Beaujou, and to the residence of the American minister, where I wished to

arrange about my passport. After speaking with the Secretary of

Legation, we were ushered into the minister's private room, where he

received me with great kindness. Mr. ------ is an old gentleman with a

white head, and a large, florid face, which has an expression of

amiability, not unmingled with a certain dignity. He did not rise from

his arm-chair to greet me,--a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the

gout, feeling it impossible that he should have willingly failed in

courtesy to one of his twenty-five million sovereigns. In response to

some remark of mine about the shabby way in which our government treats

its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of his own troubles

on that score; then expressed a hope that I had made a good thing out of

my consulate, and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign; to

which I replied that, for various reasons, I had resigned of my own

accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. We agreed, however, in

disapproving the system of periodical change in our foreign officials;

and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought to be a citizen both

of his native country and of the one in which he resided; and that his

possibility of beneficent influence depended largely on his being so.

Apropos to which Mr. ------ said that he had once asked a diplomatic

friend of long experience, what was the first duty of a minister. "To

love his own country, and to watch over its interests," answered the

diplomatist. "And his second duty?" asked Mr. ------. "To love and to

promote the interests of the country to which he is accredited," said his

friend. This is a very Christian and sensible view of the matter; but it

can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplomatic history, that a

minister can have had time to overcome his first rude and ignorant

prejudice against the country of his mission; and if there were any

suspicion of his having done so, it would be held abundantly sufficient

ground for his recall. I like Mr. ------, a good-hearted, sensible old

man.

J----- and I returned along the Champs Elysees, and, crossing the Seine,

kept on our way by the river's brink, looking at the titles of books on

the long lines of stalls that extend between the bridges. Novels,

fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behavior and etiquette,

collections of bon-mots and of songs, were interspersed with volumes in

the old style of calf and gilt binding, the works of the classics of

French literature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and of

those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to look at these books.

On the other side of the street was a range of tall edifices with shops

beneath, and the quick stir of French life hurrying, and babbling, and

swarming along the sidewalk. We passed two or three bridges, occurring

at short intervals, and at last we recrossed the Seine by a bridge which

oversteps the river, from a point near the National Institute, and

reaches the other side, not far from the Louvre. . . .

Though the day was so disagreeable, we thought it best not to lose the

remainder of it, and therefore set out to visit the Cathedral of Notre

Dame. We took a fiacre in the Place de Carousel, and drove to the door.

On entering, we found the interior miserably shut off from view by the

stagings erected for the purpose of repairs. Penetrating from the nave

towards the chancel, an official personage signified to us that we must

first purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a

franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we

were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche

or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in

this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered

doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the

late Archbishop of Paris, on the floor of the cathedral. [But this was a

mistake. It was the archbishop who was killed in the insurrection of

1848. Two joints of his backbone were also shown.] Also, that some

gorgeously embroidered vestments, which he drew forth, had been used at

the coronation of Napoleon I. There were two large, full-length

portraits hanging aloft in the sacristy, and a gold or silver gilt, or,

at all events, gilt image of the Virgin, as large as life, standing on a

pedestal. The guide had much to say about these, but, understanding him

so imperfectly, I have nothing to record.

The guide's supervision of us seemed not to extend beyond this sacristy,

on quitting which he gave us permission to go where we pleased, only

intimating a hope that we would not forget him; so I gave him half a

franc, though thereby violating an inhibition on the printed ticket of

entrance.

We had been much disappointed at first by the apparently narrow limits

of the interior of this famous church; but now, as we made our way round

the choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its painted window,

its crucifix, its pictures, its confessional, and afterwards came back

into the nave, where arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to

the conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the greatest of pities

that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred

by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre

of the edifice, and screening all its best effects. It seems to have

been already most richly ornamented, its roof being painted, and the

capitals of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illuminated in fresco;

and no doubt it will shine out gorgeously when all the repairs and

adornments shall be completed. Even now it gave to my actual sight what

I have often tried to imagine in my visits to the English cathedrals,--

the pristine glory of those edifices, when they stood glowing with gold

and picture, fresh from the architects' and adorners' hands.

The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity

which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its

ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by

pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us and

spreading about us in such a firmamental way, that we cannot spoil them

by any pettiness of our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our

pettiness into their own immensity. Every little fantasy finds its place

and propriety in them, like a flower on the earth's broad bosom.

When we emerged from the cathedral, we found it beginning to rain or

snow, or both; and, as we had dismissed our fiacre at the door, and could

find no other, we were at a loss what to do. We stood a few moments on

the steps of the Hotel Dieu, looking up at the front of Notre Dame, with

its twin towers, and its three deep-pointed arches, piercing through a

great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like gloom around these

entrances. The front is very rich. Though so huge, and all of gray

stone, it is carved and fretted with statues and innumerable devices, as

cunningly as any ivory casket in which relics are kept; but its size did

not so much impress me. . . .

Hotel de Louvre, January 12th.--This has been a bright day as regards

weather; but I have done little or nothing worth recording. After

breakfast, I set out in quest of the consul, and found him up a court, at

51 Rue Caumartin, in an office rather smaller, I think, than mine at

Liverpool; but, to say the truth, a little better furnished. I was

received in the outer apartment by an elderly, brisk-looking man, in

whose air, respectful and subservient, and yet with a kind of authority

in it, I recognized the vice-consul. He introduced me to Mr. ------, who

sat writing in an inner room; a very gentlemanly, courteous, cool man of

the world, whom I should take to be an excellent person for consul at

Paris. He tells me that he has resided here some years, although his

occupancy of the consulate dates only from November last. Consulting him

respecting my passport, he gave me what appear good reasons why I should

get all the necessary vises here; for example, that the vise of a

minister carries more weight than that of a consul; and especially that

an Austrian consul will never vise a passport unless he sees his

minister's name upon it. Mr. ------ has travelled much in Italy, and

ought to be able to give me sound advice. His opinion was, that at this

season of the year I had better go by steamer to Civita Veechia, instead

of landing at Leghorn, and thence journeying to Rome. On this point I

shall decide when the time comes. As I left the office the vice-consul

informed me that there was a charge of five francs and some sous for the

consul's vise, a tax which surprised me,--the whole business of passports

having been taken from consuls before I quitted office, and the consular

fee having been annulled even earlier. However, no doubt Mr. ------ had

a fair claim to my five francs; but, really, it is not half so pleasant

to pay a consular fee as it used to be to receive it.

Afterwards I walked to Notre Dame, the rich front of which I viewed with

more attention than yesterday. There are whole histories, carved in

stone figures, within the vaulted arches of the three entrances in this

west front, and twelve apostles in a row above, and as much other

sculpture as would take a month to see. We then walked quite round it,

but I had no sense of immensity from it, not even that of great height,

as from many of the cathedrals in England. It stands very near the

Seine; indeed, if I mistake not, it is on an island formed by two

branches of the river. Behind it, is what seems to be a small public

ground (or garden, if a space entirely denuded of grass or other green

thing, except a few trees, can be called so), with benches, and a

monument in the midst. This quarter of the city looks old, and appears

to be inhabited by poor people, and to be busied about small and petty

affairs; the most picturesque business that I saw being that of the old

woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and of wood at the cathedral door.

We bought two of these yesterday.

I must again speak of the horrible muddiness, not only of this part of

the city, but of all Paris, so far as I have traversed it to-day. My

ways, since I came to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I

never before saw a pavement so universally overspread with mud-padding as

that of Paris. It is difficult to imagine where so much filth can come

from.

After dinner I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries; but as dusk

was coming on, and as I was afraid of being shut up within the iron

railing, I did not have time to examine them particularly. There are

wide, intersecting walks, fountains, broad basins, and many statues; but

almost the whole surface of the gardens is barren earth, instead of the

verdure that would beautify an English pleasure-ground of this sort. In

the summer it has doubtless an agreeable shade; but at this season the

naked branches look meagre, and sprout from slender trunks. Like the

trees in the Champs Elysees, those, I presume, in the gardens of the

Tuileries need renewing every few years. The same is true of the human

race,--families becoming extinct after a generation or two of residence

in Paris. Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an

artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking

root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever.