The Champs Élysées—The Élysée Palace—Longchamp—The Bois de Boulogne—The Château de Madrid—The Château de la Muette—The Place de l’Étoile.

BEFORE entering the Champs Élysées, the greatest pleasure thoroughfare in Paris, next to, if not before, the line of boulevards, a brief examination of the frontiers, as approached from the Place de la Concorde, may be advisable. This region of the capital was for a long time one of those marshes by which ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was enclosed like a fortress. Then it became cultivable land and passed into the hands of market gardeners, who grew their vegetables in fields by no means “elysian,” until the latter part of the reign of Louis XV.

The ancient marsh was bounded on one side by the Seine, on the other by the Faubourg St. Honoré, which in the eighteenth century was already a favourite locality for mansions of the nobility. The market gardens, more fertile, perhaps, by reason of their marshy origin, were traversed by the Chemin du Roule—so named from the slope called rotulus, in the days of Lutetia, of which the culminating point is now marked by the Triumphal Arch.

At the entrance to the Champs Élysées stands the celebrated marble group known as the Horses of Marly; and close to the entrance is the garden of the Élysée Palace (Élysée Bourbon, to call it by its historical name), whose principal gates open into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. Built in 1718 by the architect Mollet on a portion of the St. Honoré marshes which had been given by the Regent to Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Count of Evreux, the Élysée Palace passed in 1745 from the count’s heirs to Madame de Pompadour. Her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, inherited it from her, and, holding the appointment of Inspector and Director of Royal Buildings, he embellished the palace and made great improvements in that portion of the neighbourhood known to-day as the Champs Élysées. It was now only that the mansion, called successively Hôtel d’Evreux, Hôtel de Pompadour, and Hôtel de Marigny, received the name of Élysée.

Towards the period of the Revolution, in 1786, the Élysée Palace was purchased by the king, and, according to the terms of a royal decree, was to be reserved for the use of princes and princesses visiting the French capital as well as ambassadors charged with special missions. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the structure was bought by the Duchess of Bourbon, when Élysée Bourbon became its recognised name.

This very appellation was enough to condemn it in the days of the Revolution; and the Duchess of Bourbon having migrated, her property was seized and confiscated. Sold by auction, it was acquired by Mlle. Hovyn, who seven years later ceded it to Murat; and Murat, on leaving Paris to assume the crown of Naples, presented it to the emperor.

Napoleon accepted the gift and took a fancy to his new edifice. He often resided there; and after the defeat of Waterloo it was at the Élysée that he signed his abdication in favour of his son.

In 1814 and 1815 the Élysée was temporarily occupied by Alexander I. of Russia. At the Restoration, the Duchess of Bourbon, returning to France, claimed her property. Her rights were recognised, but she was prevailed upon to accept, in lieu of the Élysée, the Hôtel de Monaco in the Rue de Varennes, which she left by will to the Princess Adelaide of Orleans, sister of Louis Philippe.

Under the Restoration, it was at the Élysée, now called once more Élysée Bourbon, that the Duke and Duchess of Berry resided until 1820, when, after the assassination of the duke, the duchess felt unable to live there any longer.

The duke and duchess were the last permanent tenants of the Élysée, which under the reign of Louis Philippe was utilised, in accordance with the intentions of Louis XVI., as a resting-place for royal guests, or guests of the first importance. In its new character it received Mahomet Ali Pasha of Egypt, and Queen Christina of Spain.

Since the establishment of the Third Republic the Élysée has been made the official residence of the President; and it has been inhabited, one after the other, by M. Thiers, Marshal MacMahon, M. Grévy, and M. Carnot.

It has been said that the Élysée Palace stands between the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Élysées, with its principal entrance in the street. Between these two thoroughfares stood the ancient Village du Roule, which possessed, as far back as the thirteenth century, an asylum for lepers with a chapel attached to it. This chapel was in 1699 elevated to the rank of parish church, under the invocation of St. Philip. Being now too small it was pulled down; and in place of it was built the present church of St. Philippe du Roule, which underwent a partial transformation in 1845 and 1846.

The principal avenue of the Champs Élysées was planted with trees in 1723; but it was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that the Champs Élysées, or rather that portion of the avenue known as Longchamp, became a haunt of fashion.

The so-called promenade of Longchamp was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, frequented by the most aristocratic society. Gradually after the Revolution it got to be a more miscellaneous resort, to become ultimately, in modern times, a sort of show ground for fashionable milliners and dressmakers, hatters and tailors. The Abbey of Longchamp, whence the promenade derived its name, was founded as a convent in the thirteenth century by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX., and pulled down at the time of the Revolution. It was situated close to the Bois de Boulogne, near the village of that name.

“I wish to ensure my salvation,” wrote the Princess Isabelle to Hémeric, Chancellor of the university, “by some pious foundation. King Louis IX., my brother, grants me 30,000 Paris livres, and the question is, shall I found a convent or a hospital?” The Chancellor’s advice was to establish an asylum for the nuns of the order of St. Clara.

In 1260 Isabelle built the church, the dormitories, and the cluster of the Humility of Our Lady; and according to Agnes d’Harcourt, who has written her life, the whole of the 30,000 livres was consumed. The year afterwards, on the 23rd of June, the nuns of the rule of St. Francis took possession of the abbey in presence of Louis IX. and all the Court. The king gave considerable property to the nuns, whom he often visited, and, by his will, dated February, 1269, this sovereign, on the point of undertaking his last expedition to Palestine, left a legacy to the Abbey of Our Lady. Isabelle in this very year ended her days within its walls.

The royal origin and associations of the house which the princess had founded ensured for it the patronage of successive French sovereigns—Marguerite and Jeanne de Brabant, Blanche de France, Jeanne de Navarre, and twelve other princesses, taking the veil there; and it is recorded that Philippe le Long died in it with his daughter Blanche by his side on the 2nd of December, 1321, of complicated dysentery and quartan fever. When he was approaching his end the abbé and monks of St. Denis came in procession to his aid, bringing with them a piece of the True Cross, a nail that had been used at the Crucifixion, and one of the arms of St. Simon. The exhibition and application of these pious relics gained for the king enough time to make his will, after which he expired.

Longchamp had no fewer than forty nuns in residence. Its proximity to Paris, its illustrious origin, its not less illustrious visitors, its aristocratic inhabitants, its vicissitudes during the sanguinary civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its decline, and, ultimately, its ruin, invested it with extraordinary interest. As regards the history of the abbey, it must be mentioned that, as with all other convents, its discipline gradually became relaxed until at last purity gave way to licence. Henri IV. took from Longchamp one of his mistresses, Catherine de Verdun, a young nun of twenty-two, to whom he gave the priory of St. Louis de Vernon, and whose brother, Nicholas de Verdun, became first President of the Parliament of Paris.

It is evident from this letter that there were intimate relations between the Abbey of Longchamp and Paris. It had been the custom, moreover, since the fifteenth century, to go to Longchamp to hear the friars of the order of Cordeliers preach during Lent.

“In 1420,” says the journal of Charles VII., “Brother Richard, a Cordelier, lately returned from Jerusalem, preached such a fine sermon that the people from Paris who had been to hear it made more than one hundred fires on their return—the men burning tables, cards, billiard-tables, billiard-balls, and bowls; while the women sacrificed head-dresses, and all kinds of body ornaments, with pieces of leather and pieces of whalebone, their horns and their tails.”

A great many miracles were said to take place through invocations addressed to the Princess Isabelle, whom Pope Leo X., by a bull dated January 3, 1521, had canonised; while he, at the same time, granted to the nuns of Longchamp the privilege of celebrating annually, in her honour, a solemn service on the last day of August. From the early days of the reign of Louis XV. date those regular pilgrimages to Longchamp during Holy Week, which were soon to degenerate into mundane promenades.

Up to the time of the Revolution the Bois de Boulogne was little more than a wilderness. Napoleon I. cut walks and avenues through it, and caused trees to be planted, so that it was already one of the most agreeable places in the neighbourhood, when, in 1815, after the Waterloo campaign, the soldiers of the Duke of Wellington and of the Emperor Alexander I. encamped beneath its groves; which they are said to have mutilated and ravaged.

The Bois de Boulogne was considerably diminished when, in 1840, the fortifications of Paris were being constructed, the wood being traversed by the lines of brickwork. Soon afterwards, in 1852, under the Second Empire, it was made over to the town of Paris, and converted by the municipality into a park after the English model, with all the agreeable delightful features it now possesses.

The first improvement introduced was the river with its picturesque islands and the lake with its wooded banks and its Swiss cottages. The waterfalls or “cascades” give their name to the celebrated restaurant and café constructed by their side; and for the last thirty or forty years the Bois de Boulogne has possessed spacious avenues, with grass borders and endless rows of lamps. The grass plots in every direction, and here and there wide lawns, give a softness to the general picture which has not its equal in any European capital.

In the Bois de Boulogne stood formerly the Château de Madrid, said to have been erected by King Francis I. in memory and on the pattern of the one where, after the defeat of Pavia, Charles V. had held him captive. In spite of the recollections which it must have evoked, and which it is said to have been intended to evoke, Francis I. often visited his castle in the wood. It was turned to questionable use by various kings of France, and Henry III. varied the diversions of which it was so often the scene by introducing combats between wild beasts and bulls. One night, however, this depraved and sanguinary monarch dreamt that his animals wished to devour him, and the next morning he gave orders that they should all be killed and replaced by packs of little dogs. What remains of the ancient château is now a fashionable restaurant. Close by is the delightful Bagatelle, built in sixty-four days by the Count of Artois, and called at one time Folie d’Artois. Above the principal entrance the Count (afterwards Charles X.) had inscribed the words, Parva sed apta. Under the Revolution this “small but suitable” structure was used for public festivals; and it was here, at the time of the Restoration, that the Duke of Bordeaux, posthumous son of the Duke of Berry, was brought up.

The Duke of Bordeaux (who afterwards took the title of Count of Chambord) was the last representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons, a house which is said to have produced since the fourteenth century some six hundred remarkable men, chiefly soldiers, and which, apart from their feats of war, founded thrones in all the Latin countries of Europe—in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. It has been said that the duke was brought up as a child at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne; and many were the speculations and suspicions of which he was at that time the subject. When, indeed, after the Revolution of 1830 Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, assumed the crown, and was thereupon accused by the partisans of the dethroned Charles X. of violating his promise to act as Regent until the majority of the Duke of Bordeaux, a paper was issued, apparently by the Orleanists, denying that the Duke of Bordeaux was the legitimate son of the assassinated Duke of Berry, eldest son of Charles X. The Courrier Français, a journal devoted to the new dynasty, now published a letter which had first appeared ten years before in the Morning Chronicle of London, asserting the illegitimacy of the Count of Chambord.

The Morning Chronicle, in publishing the document about six weeks after the Count’s birth, denied its authenticity, adding, however, that it was being industriously circulated in every part of France, and that a copy of it had been addressed to the ambassador of every Power represented at Paris. It was not, of course, under Charles X. published in any Paris newspaper; and when at last, in Louis Philippe’s reign, it found its way into the columns of the Courrier Français it was impossible not to notice that the journal which first printed it was one devoted to the interests of the new king.

The Champs Élysées form a pleasure resort for all classes of the Parisian population; and the number of lightly constructed booths for the sale of cakes and toys show that among the frequenters of the Avenue Marigny there are a good number of children, many of whom may be seen driving about in little goat-chaises.

The Avenue Marigny, with its interminable files, at every hour of the day, of horsemen, horse-women, and carriages, leads directly to the Triumphal Arch, known as the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, from which a magnificent view may be obtained of the whole line of the Champs Élysées from its commencement as marked by the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde.

The prize is of the value of 100,000 francs, of which half is furnished by the Town of Paris and half by the five great railway companies of the North, the West, Lyons, Orleans, and the South. The sight, as one approaches the course, suggests Ascot and Goodwood rather than Epsom; and the great majority of the sightseers seem to take more interest in the carriages and the costumes than in the racing, or even the betting, though the betting plague has settled upon Paris, where it replaces the lotteries and the gambling-houses suppressed by law. In a publicly organised form, betting is illegal, but the evil is a difficult one to deal with, and it is now tolerated in France, if not formally permitted. Every now and then an example is made of some unhappy offender; but these rare instances serve simply to excite the spirit of betting already so wide-spread amongst the community at large.

The amusements of the Champs Élysées, although of a much more trifling kind than that royal one of racing reserved for the Bois de Boulogne, have from the earliest times been as remarkable for their variety as for their originality. The Parisians were always great lovers of public amusements, even from the days of Charles V. and Charles VI., when tight-rope dancers, whom it would be difficult to equal in the present day, walked down a rope stretched from the towers of Notre Dame to the Palais de Justice. One acrobat who excelled in performing this feat was so agile and so rapid that he seemed to fly, and was called the “flying man.” One day he stretched a rope from the summit of one of the towers of Notre Dame to a house on the Exchange Bridge, danced as he came down it, holding, meanwhile, in one hand a flaming torch, and in the other a wreath, which, just as Queen Isabeau de Bavière passed across the bridge, in making her entry into Paris, he placed on her head, and immediately afterwards re-ascended to the point whence he had started.

Another tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, performed similar feats under the reign of Louis XII.

The most popular entertainments of those days were representations of mysteries. These religious dramas were played when the king entered Paris, and on other joyful occasions. Some of the subjects were taken from the Old, some from the New Testament, others from the Lives of the Saints. They were treated either in prose, in verse, or even occasionally in pantomime.

In the year 1425 the game of climbing the greasy pole is said to have been for the first time introduced. On St. Giles’s Day inhabitants of the parish under the invocation of that saint invented “a new diversion.” They planted a long pole perpendicularly in the Rue aux Ours opposite the Rue Quincampoix. They fastened to the top of the pole a basket containing a fat goose and six small coins. Then they oiled the pole, and promised goose, money, basket, and pole itself, to anyone skilful enough to climb to the top. But the most vigorous were unable to complete so slippery an ascent; and at last, after a succession of ludicrous failures, the goose was given to the one who had got the highest; though he received neither the pole, the money, nor the basket. The same year the Parisians invented a still more remarkable entertainment. They formed at the Hôtel d’Armagnac in the Rue St. Honoré an enclosure into which they introduced a pig and four blind men, each of them armed with a stick. The pig was promised to whichever of the four could beat it to death. The enclosure was surrounded by numerous spectators impatient to see the conclusion of this “comedy,” as Dulaure calls it, though the pig might have described it by a different name. The blind men all rushed towards the spot where the animal, by its cries, proclaimed itself to be, and then struck away with their sticks, hitting, as a rule, one another, and not the pig; which, says a contemporary writer, caused infinite mirth to the assembly. They renewed the attack again and again, but never with any success; and although they were covered with armour from head to foot, they exchanged amongst themselves blows so severe that, despairing at last of the pig, they retired from a game which was pleasant only to the spectators.

The Royal Military School of Louis XV.—The National Assembly—The Patriotic Altar—The Festival of the Supreme Being—Other Festivals—Industrial Exhibitions—The Eiffel Tower—The Trocadéro.

A WHOLE chapter might be devoted to the café concerts, the swings, the merry-go-rounds, and other entertainments of a constantly varying kind, which are to be witnessed and, according to taste, enjoyed from morning to night in the Champs Élysées. But against the frivolity of these popular diversions may well be placed the great international exhibitions of which the Champs Élysées have from time to time during the last thirty-six years been the scene.

Until 1789 no one was admitted to the Military School but sons of officers and noblemen. In the first year of the Revolution the Constitutional Ministers of Louis XVI. procured a decree from the Council which abolished the qualification of nobility. This was not so great an innovation as it may appear, since Louis XV. had by a decree of the year 1750 granted privileges of nobility to officers; the children, therefore, of all officers were admissible to the Military School. The institution was all the same of doubtful origin; and not knowing what else to do with it the Convention abolished it in June, 1793, took possession of its funds, and changed the building into a flour magazine and a cavalry depôt.

Soon afterwards, with a mutability characteristic of the time, the Revolutionary Government came to the conclusion that a Royal Military School, however detestable as of royal origin, would become admirable if the title of Republican were applied to it. It was accordingly decided in June, 1794, that each district of the Republic should send to Paris “six young citizens under the name of pupils of the School of Mars, aged from sixteen to seventeen years, in order to receive a Revolutionary education with all the knowledge, sentiments, and ideas of a Republican soldier.” The project was voted for on a report of Barère, who had drawn a droll parallel between the students of the Royal Military School (descended from “some feudal brigand, some privileged rogue, some ridiculous marquis, some modern baron, or some court flunkey”) and what the students of the School of Mars would be—“the offspring of Republican families, of parents of restricted means, or of useful inhabitants of the country. What,” Barère went on to say, “has ever come out of the Military School? What has this brilliant college produced? No able officer, not a general, not an administrator, not one celebrated warrior.”

It had produced, all the same, General Bonaparte, who was even then preparing the plans of his Italian campaign. The very next year the young cadet of the Royal Military School reentered the École Militaire to establish his headquarters there as general commanding in chief the army of Paris. When he became emperor he inscribed on the portico of the school these words: “Napoleon’s headquarters”; which only disappeared in 1815, when a regiment of the Imperial Guard was replaced in the building by the Royal Guard.

Since it has ceased to be a school the so-called École Militaire has been used as a cavalry and artillery barrack.

The Champ de Mars, in front of the École Militaire, has a very varied history. Here in the ninth century the Normans were defeated by Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, Count of Paris; who called the scene of his exploit, not Champ de Mars, but more explicitly, Champ de la Victoire. Then for many centuries the Field of Victory, or of Mars, seems to have witnessed nothing in particular until, at last, under the reign of Louis XV., it became the scene of a grand review in which the students of the Royal Military School took part. While the review was going on a young officer, nephew of Orry, controller of finance, who had suffered from the persecution of the king’s favourite, was brought before a court-martial on an accusation of treason, suggested by the defeat of the French army in Germany. He was about to be condemned, when the king was informed by express, that not only was young Orry no traitor, but that the whole army, compromised by a serious mistake on the part of its commander, Marshal Maillebois, owed its safety to Orry’s presence of mind, and to a vigorous charge of cavalry directed by him. Louis XV. gave the young man a new commission, thus marking the opening of the Champ de Mars by an act of justice.

On the 5th of June all military and naval bodies, national or foreign, were invited to send a number of delegates, according to the forces represented, to an assembly which was to be held in the Champ de Mars on the 14th of the month following. The details of the celebration were regulated by special decree; and artists of all kinds were invited to make suggestions towards the arrangement and decoration of the plain. It was determined in the first instance to convert this plain into a sort of basin or amphitheatre with sloping sides and a hollow in the middle. Many thousands of labourers were employed in this work, and they were ultimately joined by the whole population of Paris, just as two years afterwards all classes and conditions of people took part in the preparations for the festival of the Altar to the Country.

On the day appointed deputations arrived from all parts of France, the visitors being hospitably entertained by private citizens, or received by innkeepers at reduced charges. Special seats were reserved for them at the meeting of the National Assembly; and they, in their turn, were full of enthusiasm for the Assembly, for the people of Paris, but above all for King Louis XVI. On the 13th, the day before the festival, the king reviewed the troops, the deputations, and a good portion of the Paris National Guard, on the Place Louis XV., and in the Champs Élysées.

At five o’clock in the morning the National Guard and the entire population were on foot. Many had passed the night in the Champs Élysées, and several regiments of National Guards had marched there at midnight in order to be in good time for the approaching celebration. The deputies from the provinces assembled at the Bastille, where eighty-three white flags bearing the names of their respective departments were distributed among them. At seven o’clock the march began, headed by a body of cavalry belonging to the National Guard of Paris, which was followed by a body of infantry, the electors of Paris, the Paris Commune, and the National Assembly, preceded by a regiment of children, and followed by a regiment of old men with the flags of the sixty battalions of Paris around them. Then came the representatives of the federated departments, preceded by two marshals of France with a numerous staff, and followed by a number of officers of various corps, including the King’s Body Guard. The procession passed through the town amid the acclamations of the people and to the sound of artillery, approaching the Champ de Mars by way of the Champs Élysées, and crossing the river by a bridge of boats constructed the night before just opposite the village of Chaillot.

At the entrance to the Champ de Mars, now transformed into a vast circus, had been raised a triumphal arch bearing a number of inscriptions, among which may be cited the following:—

In the Champ de Mars 300,000 persons had assembled, men, women, and children, on the slopes of the newly-made amphitheatre, all wearing the national colours. The hillsides of Chaillot and of Passy were equally filled; as further on were the amphitheatres of Meudon and St. Cloud, of Mont Valérien and Montmartre. In front of the Military School were ascending rows of seats, covered with blue and gold drapery, for the king, the court, the National Assembly, the various constituted bodies and the most distinguished guests. In the centre of the Champ de Mars, on a raised piece of ground, was a monumental altar to the country with four immense staircases on the four sides. This altar was itself two years later made the object of a festival.

The king had for this day only been named Chief of the National Guards of France. He appointed La Fayette to perform the duties of the post.

At half-past three a salvo of artillery announced the beginning of the festival. The king was seated in his tribune, having on his right the President of the National Assembly at the same level as himself. La Fayette came forward to take the king’s orders, and the ceremony commenced with a solemn mass, celebrated, according to general tradition, by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, afterwards to be known under every kind of government in France, including the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of Louis Philippe, as Talleyrand the Minister. According, however, to credible accounts, it was not Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, but Montmorency, Grand Almoner of France, who performed mass on this solemn occasion. The prelate was in any case assisted by two hundred priests, who, wearing tricolour sashes, surrounded the altar; then the oriflamme symbol of the federation was blessed, together with the banners given to the deputations from the provinces. Finally La Fayette ascended the staircase, radiant, but full of emotion, and placing the point of his sword on the Altar of the Country, pronounced in a loud firm voice this sacred oath: “We swear to be for ever faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; to maintain with all our power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king; to protect the persons and property of all, and to remain united to all Frenchmen by the indissoluble bonds of fraternity.”

Meanwhile the crowd in the Champ de Mars was constantly increasing; and soon it was summoned by beat of drum, and with all the usual formalities, to disperse. Nothing came of this demand except a shower of stones hurled at the National Guard. The regular troops, composed principally of Royal Guards, replied by firing wildly at all around them. The patriotic altar was soon covered with blood and surrounded by corpses.

The crowd fled as rapidly as its numbers would permit, but it was now charged by cavalry, and afterwards fired into by artillery. To stop the carnage La Fayette rode up to the guns, himself exposed to their shots. The number of persons killed has, of course, been differently—very differently—estimated; but according to a moderate computation, at least 1,500 persons were slain.

General La Fayette, and Bailly, Mayor of Paris, had given a general order to repel force by force, and the responsibility of the massacre was accepted by Bailly. It was for this reason, indeed, that in November, 1793, he was sentenced to death, his execution taking place on the very scene of the massacre.

When armies were being hastily formed for repelling the invasion of the German sovereigns the recruiting office was in the Champ de Mars, where amphitheatres were erected with flags bearing this inscription, “Our country is in danger.” On a table, supported by two drums, the officers of the Municipality inscribed the names of those who wished to enlist, and the enthusiasm, now wide-spreading, gave to France fourteen armies, which, untrained as bodies, (though they contained numbers of trained men disbanded from the royal army) proved themselves valiant, and indeed invincible, in the field.

The next great festival which was held in the Champ de Mars was that of the Supreme Being. All that was done during the Revolution against religion was aimed particularly at the clergy and the monks, the Inquisition and the stake. The celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being had been fixed, according to the Revolutionary calendar, for the 20th Prairial, and the famous painter David had been charged with the elaboration of the programme. The day which Robespierre had chosen for the celebration coincided precisely this year with one of the great Catholic festivals—that of Whitsuntide.

Robespierre had been elected President of the Assembly. At eight o’clock in the morning the beginning of the Festival was announced by a discharge of artillery from the Tuileries. Flowers had been brought to Paris from thirty miles round, and every house in the City had its garland, while all the women carried bouquets and all the men branches of oak. A vast amphitheatre constructed in the National Garden (the garden of the Tuileries, that is to say) held the members of the Convention, each of whom carried in his hand a bouquet of flowers and of ears of corn.

Robespierre, detained by his duties at the Revolutionary Tribunal, arrived late, at which there was some amusement. Dressed in the blue coat worn by the representatives of the people, and holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat, he exclaimed: “O Nature, how delightful, how sublime is thy power! How tyrants must tremble and grow pale at the idea of such a Festival!”

After the founder of the new religion had, in accordance with the programme, delivered his discourse, whence a few words have been cited, he walked down from the amphitheatre in company with his fellow-members of the Convention. At the entrance to the Palace had been erected a pyramid consisting of dolls representing atheism, ambition, egotism, and false simplicity; then came the rags of misery, through which could be seen the decorations and splendour of the slaves of Royalty. Robespierre went forward with a torch and set fire to these impostures. When wretchedness and vice had been consumed, the statue of Wisdom was discovered unfortunately a little scorched by the flames in which its opposites had perished.

Then there was a fresh discourse from Robespierre, after which hymns by Chénier and Désorgues, with music by Gaveaux, were sung. The music of the hymns, from one or two specimens preserved, seems to have been poor, but given forth by thousands of voices it was doubtless impressive. After an invocation to the Eternal, the young girls strewed their flowers on the ground, mothers raised their children in their arms, and old men stretched out their hands to bless the young ones, who swore to die for their country and their liberty. Revolutionary in its origin, the Festival of the Supreme Being, celebrated throughout France, helped everywhere to raise the Catholic party; which was not precisely what its founders had aimed at.

Another solemn festival was held in the Champ de Mars, to celebrate the capture of Toulon from the English, as brought about by a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose name was being repeated from mouth to mouth by admirers as yet unable to foresee that the object of their admiration would before many years be the ruler of France; for, “born of the Republic,” he was, in the energetic words of Chateaubriand, “to kill his own mother.”

On the 3rd of December, 1804, the day after the coronation of the Emperor at Notre-Dame, the Champ de Mars was to be the scene of yet another festival—the distribution of eagles among the different regiments of the French Army.

It was in the Champ de Mars that Napoleon, after his return from Elba, gave a banquet to some 15,000 soldiers and National Guards; and again in the Champ de Mars that he assembled deputations from all the army-corps and all the State bodies convoked to hear the promulgation of the “additional Act” which gave new character to the old Napoleonic Constitution. This was the assembly known as that of the Champ de Mai, so called from the month in which it was held.

Under the Restoration the Champ de Mars became the scene of a military representation in which the Duke of Angoulême, at the head of the army which had fought, or rather had executed a military promenade, in Spain, attacked some battalions playing the part of the Spanish army, which at the proper moment retreated. Then the high ground since known as the Trocadéro was stormed, as the Trocadéro of Spain had been stormed in the war just terminated; and it was now that the idea was conceived of treating the Arc de Triomphe as a triumphal arch erected to the glory of the army of Louis XVIII.

Under the reign of Louis Philippe, the military representation of which under Louis XVIII.’s reign the Trocadéro had been made the scene was repeated, with the replacement of the Trocadéro by Antwerp. This display, on a very grand scale, was attended with a crush, a panic, and almost as many accidents as were caused by the celebrated fireworks on the Place Louis XV., on the occasion of Marie Antoinette’s marriage.

It was under the Restoration that the Champ de Mars was used as a course for the first races, or at least the first races of a popular character, established in France. They were, after some years, as already mentioned, transferred to Longchamps. Under the Second Empire, or rather when the Second Empire was about to be proclaimed, the Champ de Mars witnessed a magnificent review and distribution of eagles—the prelude, in fact, to the establishment of the imperial form of government. “Take back these eagles,” said the prince president on this occasion, “not as a symbol of threats against the foreigner, but as a recollection of an heroic epoch, as a sign of nobility for each regiment in the service. Take back these eagles which so often led your fathers to victory, and swear, if necessary, to die in their defence.” This was the last of the many political scenes of which the Champ de Mars has been the theatre. In 1867 it furnished a site for the annex or supplementary building where, in connection with the Universal Exhibition of that year, the machinery was displayed.

No account, whether of the Champs Élysées or of the Champ de Mars, would be complete without some mention of the Universal Exhibitions of which the Elysian Fields and the Field of Mars have both been the scene. The first Universal Exhibition was held in England during the summer of 1851, but the first Industrial Exhibition on a large scale, without assistance or competition from the foreigner, took place in France immediately after the Revolution, of which it was one of the natural consequences.

In 1855 France, not to be outshone by England, opened in her turn a Universal Exhibition in the Champs Élysées, imitated in part from the glass structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, but less fairylike though, it may be, more substantial. Sixty years have passed since the opening of France’s first Industrial Exhibition; held at a time when, before the introduction of steamboats and railways, it would have been difficult, even if it had been thought desirable, for foreign manufacturers to compete with the manufacturers of France. The French Exhibition was held at the very height of the Crimean war; a sad reply to those who in the Universal Exhibition of 1851 saw a promise, if not a guarantee, of perpetual peace. Once more in 1867 the illusory nature of the belief that international commerce must put an end to international war was at least indicated by the important part played in the midst of the steel manufactures by Herr Krupp’s breech-loading cannons, which were seen to do such dreadful work in the campaign of 1870. Even while the Exhibition was being held the Luxemburg difficulty seemed on the point of bringing France and Prussia into the field.

The building erected for the first of France’s International Exhibitions having been found too small, the second and third, in 1867 and 1878, took new territory in the Champ de Mars; and in addition to the principal building a number of so-called annexes or supplementary buildings were established, chiefly for the display of machinery; while, besides the Champ de Mars, the fourth, held in 1889, took in the Avenue Suffren, the Quai d’Orsay, the terrace of the Invalides, the banks of the Seine, and the Garden of the Trocadéro.

The whole, beheld from afar in a bird’s-eye view, formed an enormous ellipsis, with the marvellous Eiffel Tower in the centre. M. Eiffel, a French engineer, whose name would seem to denote a German origin, proposed the tower with which his name is now for ever associated five years before the date fixed for the Universal Exhibition. He was already known by some important works, such as the great iron bridge at Bordeaux, and several other bridges in the south of France; also by the Douro Viaduct, and by the bridge over the Szegedin Road, in Hungary. He had been employed in connection with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, where he had charge of the machinery annex.

The Americans had proposed to commemorate the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1875 by a tower one thousand feet in height, equal to about 305 French metres. But they abandoned the project, which was to be realised by M. Eiffel, whose tower is within five metres of the height contemplated by the architects and engineers of Philadelphia. The calculations for the Eiffel Tower, formed entirely of iron trellis work, had been so carefully made that when the component parts, prepared separately, were brought to the workshops of the Champ de Mars to be verified and adjusted, they fitted to the greatest perfection. To give an idea of the dimensions of the Eiffel Tower it may be mentioned that the towers of Notre-Dame rise to a height of sixty-six metres above the level of the soil, while the Cathedral of Cologne, the loftiest in the world, does not exceed 159 metres. To go back to the remotest antiquity, the Eiffel Tower is half as high again as the notorious Tower of Babel, of which the altitude was 625 feet, otherwise 208 metres and a few centimetres. At its base the tower measures, on each of its four sides, 100 metres, and it slopes up to a platform at the summit which measures, on each side, ten metres.

The first platform, with immense rooms for different purposes, is sixty-six metres above the level of the soil; just eight metres less than the towers of Notre-Dame, and it presents a surface of 5,000 square metres. It may be reached either by a staircase of 350 steps, or by a lift. The second platform stands 115 metres above the level of the soil, and measures thirty metres on each side, the area of the floor being 1,400 square metres. Here the Paris Figaro established a printing office, whence issued the special edition of the Eiffel Figaro, in which were printed the names of all the visitors. The third platform, 276 metres in height, can only be reached by lift. It is surmounted by a campanile, or bell tower, in the Italian style, twenty-four metres in height, which is divided into apartments for scientific experiments, and which includes M. Eiffel’s reception rooms. At the very top of the structure is a light, of the power employed in the great French lighthouses. The view from the Eiffel Tower becomes naturally more and more vast as one ascends; and M. Eiffel has had maps drawn showing the points visible from the third, or highest platform, to the ordinary sight. This map is exhibited on the third platform.

On the north may be distinguished two villages in the department of the Somme, seventy kilometres from Paris (four kilometres = two-and-a-half miles); on the north-east the forest of Hallatte, at the back of Cenlis, distant seventy-five kilometres; on the east two hills in the direction of Château Thierry, eighty-two kilometres; on the south-east the environs of La Ferté-Bernard, in the department of the Marne, eighty-two kilometres; on the south, the other side of Étampes, sixty-two kilometres; on the south-west the Cathedral of Chartres and a hill at the back, eighty-three kilometres; on the west the Château of Versailles, the chapel of Dreux, and the environs of Dourdan, at a distance of fifty kilometres; and finally on the north-west the forest of Lyons, ninety kilometres.

The Eiffel Tower was one of the greatest attractions of the Exhibition of 1889; and it remains a lasting memorial of that greatest of great exhibitions, which, on certain Sundays and holidays, attracted as many as 400,000 visitors. It has been calculated that it received altogether twenty-five million visitors—or, what is not quite the same thing, twenty-five million visits—which gives an average of 139,000 daily. Apart from the rich and varied interest belonging to the manufactures, the works of art, the products of all kinds, natural and artificial, that were on view, the Exhibition possessed a high significance in a political sense. It showed to Europe and to the world that France had more than recovered from the calamities of the war, and that she was once more in the very foremost rank of civilised powers. As in all exhibitions, the scientific departments attracted less attention, and were less frequented than the restaurants and the refreshment rooms; though here, also, there were opportunities for study, especially for those interested in ethnology.

Universal exhibitions have been compared to small towns, but they bear a greater resemblance to small worlds; and this was particularly the case with the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which was a microcosm on rather a large scale. There was no part of the world unrepresented in its varied departments, especially in the departments consecrated to eating and drinking, where national dishes and beverages were served by attendants in national costume. Here, side by side with an Algerian or Turkish coffee-house, where Mocha of guaranteed authenticity was provided, with narghilis, chiboucks, and Oriental cigarettes as appropriate accompaniments, stood a Dutch tavern purveying genuine curaçoa, or a Bavarian beerhouse. Vienna was in evidence by its so-called “cutlets” of chopped meat, and Austria generally, together with Hungary, by rare and characteristic wines. The Spanish Café was as remarkable for the black mantillas, with eyes to match, of the waitresses, as for its Malaga and its Xeres. The Danish Café was distinguished by its kümmel, and the Swedish Café by its punch, made in the Swedish style, and handed to the customer (also in the Swedish fashion) by fair-haired, fresh-complexioned Swedish maidens. The Russian traktir, taken in connection with specimens of Russian village huts, formed a compendium of Russian popular life, in a country where the popular and the aristocratic, often strangely opposed, are sometimes strangely intermingled. The wooden isbas, with their high roofs, curiously surmounted by semblances of horses’ heads, which have not only a picturesque, but a mystical significance—true examples of Russian rural architecture—showed such artistic carving above the portico, and at other points, that many a dull cynic declined to regard them as authentic, and held them to be mere fabrications, intended to astonish and delude the foreigner, even as Catherine II. is supposed to have been deluded by the village panoramas got up for her benefit in desert tracts by the ingenious Potemkin.