"Il s'élève à Paris un temple auguste, immense,
Digne de Geneviève et des voeux de la France.
Tardive piété! dans ce siècle pervers,
Tu prépares en vain des monumens divers.
Avant qu'il soit fini ce temple magnifique,
Les saints et Dieu seront proscrits,
Par la secte philosophique
Et des temples et de Paris."
In the original pediment, since altered by the sculptor David (of
Angers), a bas-relief represented a cross in the midst of clouds; and on
the plinth was the following inscription:--
"D. O. M. SUB INVOC. STÆ. GENOVEFÆ--LUD. XV. DICAVIT,"
which, in 1791, when a decree of the National Assembly appropriated this
monument of religion to the reception of the remains of illustrious
Frenchmen, was changed to--
"AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE."
On the restoration of the Bourbons, and of the edifice to its first
purpose, the Latin inscription resumed its place, with the addition of
"LUD. XVIII. RESTITUIT," which, however, again gave way to the French
epigraph after the revolution of 1830, still probably to be retained,
while accompanied with a due reference to the sanctified patroness of
the church.
The French inscription was the happy thought of M. Pastoret, one of the
few Academicians that embraced at its origin the principles of the
Revolution, which he followed through its varying phases, until he
attained an advanced age. The first mortuary deposit in the Pantheon was
that of Mirabeau, in August, 1791; and, on the 30th May ensuing, the
anniversary of the death of Voltaire, "L'Assemblée Nationale déclara cet
écrivain le libérateur de la pensée, et digne de recevoir les honneurs
décernées aux grands hommes," &c. On the 27th August following, a
similar distinction was decreed to J. J. Rousseau; but in January, 1822,
the tombs of these apostles of incredulity were removed, until replaced
in 1830. In July, 1793, the monster Marat was inhumed there, "amidst the
deepest lamentations and mournful expressions of regret for the loss
sustained by the country in the death of the most valued of her
citizens," whose corpse, however, on the 8th February, 1795, was torn
from its cerements and flung, with every mark of ignominy, into the
filth of the sewer of Montmartre. In the vicissitudes of popular favour
even Mirabeau's effigy was burned in 1793. Such have been the
alternations and ever-recurring contests in the feelings and principles
of the ascendant parties--
"Et velut æterno certamine prælia pugnasque
Edere, turmatim certantia; nec dare pausam,
Conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris."
_Lucret._ ii. 117.
The cost of this beautiful edifice may be estimated at about a million
sterling, or, taking into consideration the difference in the value of
money at the periods, one-third of what was expended on our cathedral of
St. Paul. The architect of this and other noble monuments of art, Jean
Germain Soufflot, born in 1704, died in August, 1781, the victim, it is
said, of the jealousy of his rival artists, whose malignant attacks on
his works and fame made too deep an impression on his sensitive
feelings, though supported in this trial of his moral fortitude by his
most intimate friend and director, that genuine philanthropist, the
father and institutor of the _Deaf and dumb_,--the Abbé de l'Epée, in
whose arms he died. No one it has been observed, was more justly
entitled to have the achievement of his genius invoked, as our Wren's
has been, and indicated to the inquirer, as the fit repository of his
mortal remains. He did not, however, live to contemplate the completed
structure. The sculptor David, who has embellished the pediment with
numerous statues, is now a refugee in Brussels, possibly the relative,
but certainly the political inheritor of his great namesake's
ultra-revolutionary sentiments, the eminent painter, I mean, and _âme
damnée_, as he was called, of Robespierre, an exile, too, in Belgium for
many years.
The epitaph above referred to of Sir Christopher Wren, under the choir
of St. Paul, celebrated as it rightly is, for its appropriate
application ("Subtus conditur hujus Ecclesiæ Conditor ... Lector, si
monumentum quæris, circumspice"), does not appear, I may add, to have
been a primary, or original thought, for it was long preceded by one of
somewhat suggestive and similar tenor in the old church of the Jesuits,
now in ruins, at Lisbon (St. Jose). "Hoc mausolæo condita est
Illustrissima D.D. Philippa D. Comes (Countess) de Linhares--Cujus,
si ... pietatem et munificientiam quæris, hoc Templum aspice"--Obiit
MDCIII. This date is long anterior to our great architect's birth
(1631), and above a century prior to his death in 1723, while, again,
the epitaph was not inscribed for several subsequent years.