I have tried your patience in my last two letters with long disquisitions on architecture and on dates. I propose to give you in this, a little more of what Humboldt would call my personal narrative, i. e. to mention every thing which I think will at all interest you, but for which I have prepared no other place. I dined every day at Rheims at the table d’hôte, the time for which was five o’clock, but it was called half-past four. The company usually assembled a few minutes before dinner, and consisted in all of about twenty persons; five of them were members of a Juré, of a sort of court of appeal: who the others were I cannot tell you: there were some changes every day, but several were constant attendants. In England we so constantly see fish at the commencement of the entertainment, that we fancy this to be its natural place. In France the order of dishes follows rather the mode of dressing than the substance of the meat, and you have first boiled, then fried, afterwards stewed, and at last roast. Birds in each mode follow the more solid food, and here, with the roast meat, we often had plain boiled fish. The French rarely eat the meat and vegetables together, each is considered as a distinct dish, and eaten separately; indeed all the mixtures are made in the kitchen, and you hardly ever see a Frenchman unite in his plate the contents of two different dishes—that is the cook’s privilege. Thus you see the spirit of independence distinguishes us from our neighbours even in these trifles. Last came cheese, pastry, and fruit. Among the last were always walnuts, and one of our amusements was to crack them in various modes. The man who bore the bell in this exercise placed the back of a knife on the nut, and struck the edge with the naked palm of his hand, so forcibly as not merely to break the shell, but to smash it completely. French knives are seldom very sharp, but these were nearly new, and better than common, and I have often met with blunter at an English table. The conversation, as you may suppose, was various: politics were sometimes incidentally mentioned, but never formed the direct subject. The institution of juries seemed to be considered too good to admit of any question. An advocate related to us various stories which had occurred to him professionally; and as they were well told, I was much interested by them. One was of a Chouan chief, who being accused of rebellion, was desirous, against the opinion of his advocate, of clearing himself by certain witnesses of expurgation. I do not recollect the term, but the fact was, that these witnesses were to give evidence on oath, not merely as to character, but also to express their full assurance of his innocence. I do not know if any thing of this sort now exists in France, or whether it was general at the time the advocate was speaking of, or confined to some province: you will recollect, that we had such a custom in the ecclesiastical courts in England. The first witness called, said that he knew personally nothing about the prisoner, but relying on common report, he believed him to be a rebel. The poor Chouan fainted on finding his hopes thus blasted, but the advocate taking advantage of the name, which was a common one in the country, contrived, by confounding him with other persons, to get him off.
Some time afterwards, as the lawyer was travelling from Bayonne to Rochelle, the diligence was attacked by a party of rebels, but he being asleep, did not at first comprehend what was the matter, till one of his companions pulling him by the arm, and at the same time calling him by name, told him he must get out. The chief of the robbers hearing the name, inquired for further particulars, and on learning who he was, embraced him eagerly, and though his face was half covered with a mask, the advocate felt his tears on his own cheeks. There was some money belonging to government in the carriage; this was taken; but the Chouan would permit none of the private property to be touched, and gave to the driver a pass, by means of which they arrived safely at Rochelle, through three other bands which infested the road. The advocate wrote a particular account of the whole story and sent it to a gazette, but the government of the day, unwilling to have it acknowledged that a Chouan could possess gratitude, or any good feeling, would not permit the publication.
Just out of Rheims there is a fine public promenade, planted with several rows of good sized trees, with many diverging paths; it leads from the highest gate of the town, down to the water-side, and is really a very pleasant place in itself, and particularly so in a country so generally bare as this is. No French town of any size seems to be without an accommodation of this sort, which is alike conducive to the beauty of the place, to health and pleasure. Why is it that we have so few examples of the sort in England? Is it that our taste, or our pride, would not permit us to enjoy it? Or does it proceed from a sort of stinginess, which so strongly pervades some of our public institutions, while in others they are characterized by the opposite vice of profusion? Beyond the promenade is a public garden, called Trianon. Here a ball was given one evening, the price of admission to which was two sols, “une mise decente” was essential, but a person might be admitted in jacket and trowsers. Some persons were dancing in a small garden by the light of a few lamps, and others were looking on, but the company was not numerous, and my companion complains that dancing is gone out of fashion in France. Nobody, he says, dances now but old women and children.
The weather was very cold at Rheims, and one morning (2nd May) even frosty; the last day of my residence there was wet. The diligence to Soissons, on Sunday, being full, I hired a carriole, which is something much like a taxed cart, but lined with tapestry. We were seated on a bundle of straw; there were two horses, one between the shafts, and one outrigger. The first part of our road lay through an open common field, as usual, but on looking back, the appearance of the cathedral was very fine. The two towers, rising at the end of the long range of building, put me in mind of Westminster Abbey, though nothing can be more different when the parts are considered separately. The latter part of our journey seemed somewhat more pleasant, but a mizzling rain would not permit us to enjoy it.
Before reaching Soissons, our outrigger, which carried the postillion, became very restive, and we dismounted. As soon as he seemed a little more quiet we got in again, but were hardly seated, before the horse began again to kick and twist himself about: in a few moments the postillion was on the ground. I jumped out, and ran to him, but he had already disengaged himself. He was entangled in the traces, and seemed to be among the horses’ feet, so that I expected to have found him with half his bones broken, but he was not materially hurt. The vicious animal did not cease kicking till he had thrown himself down and broken the traces. He was afterwards quiet enough, and we reached Soissons without farther difficulty at about half-past three. After dinner I walked out, in spite of the bad weather. The first object was the ruin of the church of St. John the Baptist. The two western towers only remain, each crowned with a spire; the rest was destroyed at the revolution, and some huge masses of masonry lie scattered about, the remains of the ancient edifice, but no vegetation yet softens the crudeness of the ruin; no mosses or lichens break the harshness of the lines, and give richness and variety of colour; no venerable trees spread their majestic branches around, and by their deep and solemn shade give spirit and relief to the building. The inhabitants of Soissons obtained permission for these towers to remain as ornaments to their city, and even as they are, they are very beautiful, and time will render them more so. They are of a late Gothic, with the characteristic compound arch in the details, and enriched points to the trefoils. Each tower terminates in a small spire, but it preserves, quite to the bottom, a pyramidal form. I took my course along the rampart, where there has been a broad walk, but it was cut up by the garrison in order to raise defences against the Prussians in the last war. The effort was of little use, and the town suffered much; the greatest scene of ruin was where a powder magazine blew up; it divided the fortifications quite to the foundation, destroyed all the houses near it, injured a great many more, and shattered the windows throughout the place. Repairs are commenced, but the town in general looks very melancholy and forlorn, and the windows of the cathedral are still patched with straw. I continued my walk along the rampart, but the thick weather did not permit me to see much of the prospect. It looks, in one part, over the public promenade, but the old trees were destroyed by the Prussians, and the present are only about six feet high. What a long time it will take to repair the injury of a few weeks! The rampart here making a sudden bend, I left it, and passed by what once was a church dedicated to St. Leger. The southern front is of early Gothic, but I shall leave that for a comparison with some other Gothic buildings: I could not obtain admittance. Thence I proceeded through the principal square, where the town-hall once stood. My next object was the cathedral, which, in character, is something like that at Rheims, but far inferior in scale and execution: the south transept finishes in a semicircle, having been the choir of a more ancient church of the early French Gothic. During my absence Mr. Le Blanc found out a vault in the convent of St. Medard which had served as a prison to Louis le Debonnaire, in 833. This day was observed as the anniversary of the return of Louis XVIII., and two candles were placed, in the evening, on the outside of one of the windows of our room, by way of illumination, and a few drunken soldiers rambled about the streets, crying vive le roi! White flags, or handkerchiefs, were very generally hung out at the windows during the day, but I saw nothing which indicated any popular enthusiasm in favour of the Bourbons. Next day the weather became yet worse, and in the afternoon, we took our places in the diligence and returned to Paris; my post, as usual, was in the cabriolet. The conducteur was the son of a man who had a little property of his own of about thirty acres, but he had followed the prince of Condé, to whom he was attached, out of the country, and had lost it all. This story contains nothing improbable, but it is amusing to hear how constantly those in the lower stations of life, had been reduced by the revolution. My blanchisseuse, who is the most graceful woman in the world, and speaks the best French, was obliged to have recourse to washing dirty linen, as the means of gaining a subsistence, in consequence of that event, and there is scarcely a cabriolet driver who has not been a man of some importance.
This journey presented some very pleasant scenes; always, I believe, in valleys among the strata lying above the chalk. The forest of Villars Coterie, containing sixty thousand arpents, belonging to the duke of Orleans, makes an agreeable variety, though it is too uniformly a covert of small trees to be beautiful. Several straight avenues are cut through it; and when we passed any which looked quite clear and even, and exhibited the sky at the termination; the conducteur, and a third person in the cabriolet, never failed to pronounce them superbes, magnifiques, or to apply some other epithet equally sounding, and wondered much I did not join in their admiration. We arrived at Paris about seven o’clock, on a fine but cold morning.
On the 11th of May, at seven in the morning, I attended M. de Fontaine’s lecture on botany at the Jardin du Roi. The room is larger than the lecture room at the Royal Institution in London, but without galleries; and the entrances are at the top, above the ranges of seats. It had the appearance of being pretty nearly full, but this could not be the case, as it is said to hold one thousand two hundred persons, and the number then present was only estimated at six hundred; this, however, is a good class. The ascent of the steps is very steep, which gives every possible advantage of seeing, but the room is too large; and those on the back can neither hear nor see very distinctly; besides M. de Fontaine’s manner is not calculated for so large a place. He speaks at times very rapidly, and seemed rather to pitch his voice to some ladies near him, than to the remoter part of his audience. The subject was quite elementary, explaining the different parts of plants, and their uses; without any thing of the principles of classification and of natural affinity, the part in which the French school is supposed to excel. The garden used to be called des plantes, but now du roi. I do not know the reason of the change. It is very large, but only a small portion is appropriated to the science of botany; it is divided into large squares, by straight and wide walks, which are always open, and form an agreeable promenade, but you cannot enter into the squares without permission. One of these is intended to contain a collection of plants arranged according to the system of Jussieu, but it is very defective, especially in the plants of France, a sensible proportion of which are under wrong names. Many parts are much too crowded, as you may easily comprehend, when I tell you that they allot for each forest tree, a space of about four feet square; other squares are dedicated to experiments in horticulture and agriculture. There is one square appropriated entirely to experiments in standard fruit trees; some of these have a whimsical appearance, especially those where new roots have been given to old trees. Two, three, four, or even five young slips are planted near the tree intended to be so treated, and the heads being cut off at a proper season, the top of the remaining part is inserted into the old trunk and grows to it. The slips continue to increase in size, and in two or three years the old trunk may be cut away. In some instances the reports are very favourable to this process, and in one case in particular, where the original wood was sound, the addition of these extra roots had made the tree increase very much faster than a neighbouring tree, apparently of equal strength, which had been chosen as an object of comparison. The department of grafts contains also a number of curious particulars, and M. Thouin, the professor, was so good as to accompany me, and to explain the various experiments. Virgil has said, that if you pass a vine through a walnut-tree, it will bear the most large and beautiful fruit, but bitter and uneatable. To use M. Thouin’s expression, “le fait est faux,” he made several attempts to conduct a vine through the trunk of a walnut-tree, but as soon as it began to enlarge sufficiently to feel the confinement, it uniformly died, and he was never able to procure any fruit from it. He then passed a vine through a pear-tree, whose wood being softer, did not compress it so much as entirely to stop its growth; but the grapes produced above this insertion did not differ in size or flavour from those below. If then, he reasoned, the grapes are altered in size or flavour by passing through a walnut-tree, the converse of the proposition ought to hold good, and we shall alter the walnuts by passing a branch through a vine; the experiment was tried, but both grapes and walnuts remained as they were before.
Another graft is called ‘des charlatans;’ Pliny says that Lucullus shewed him a tree producing grapes, apples, pears, cherries, and other fruit, belonging to trees having no relation to each other, from the same root; and this, he tells us, was effected by grafting. It has been a problem ever since, among gardeners, to produce this tree of Lucullus; M. Thouin has succeeded, not by grafting, but by planting the several stocks in a hollow trunk.
From the garden I went into the museum of natural history, which is open to persons with tickets, from eleven to two, three times a week. The first floor contains a large, but ill-disposed room, for fishes and reptiles, a library which I did not see, and an extensive suite of rooms for the collection of minerals. There is an interesting collection of extraneous fossils, and especially of those of the plaster beds at Paris, but, altogether, it rather fell short of my expectation, not in the substances, but in their arrangement. We are told also of a geological collection, but the specimens are not geologically disposed. The upper floor is thrown into a single room, divided into several parts, but the divisions are left open at the middle, so that the whole is exposed at one view; it is very long, of a moderate width, but low in proportion; and it is either partially, or entirely in the roof; in short, it is by no means handsome, and has completely the look of an enormous garret. I shall give you what I suppose to be the dimensions of each part; they are wholly from guess, but may help you at least in the comparative sizes. First part 28 × 24, principally monkeys. Second part 60 × 28, contains an elephant, a rhinoceros, and an hippopotamus, all in glass cases; it looks rather ridiculous to see these enormous things taken so much care of, but they are fine animals and well preserved. An Arabian and Russian horse, the quagga of Vaillant, a zebra, and the young of each of these stand exposed in the room. Other quadrupeds are placed in glass cases around it. Third division, 86 × 28, also quadrupeds. After this is a little space forming the segment of a circle, which seems awkward, ugly, and useless. Fourth part 108 × 28, birds all round; the cases are extremely deep, and the birds, except a few very large ones, are placed on little stands side by side, all facing the spectator and nearly close together, so that little is seen either of the side or back of the bird. This might be the more easily obviated as there are frequently several specimens of the same species. The plate glass of the cases is magnificent. The subjects are well preserved and scientifically arranged. Another segment of a circle follows. Fifth part, 36 × 28, also birds; along the middle of the three divisions, three, four, and five, runs a stand of two tables united,
and a part rising above them in the middle; containing a superb collection of insects, shells, zoophytes, podophthalmata, and eggs of birds; and, since the light is introduced on both sides of the apartment, they are very well seen. Sixth, 60 × 28, quadrupeds, mostly deer and antelopes; in the middle is a great basking shark, a camel, oxen, and the giraffe killed by Vaillant.
On the 12th of May I walked up Mont Martre. It is a curious looking place, having apparently been, in its original state, a hill neither so high nor so steep as Hampstead Heath, but all the sides have been dug away to procure gypsum, and only the top remains, with the roads leading up to it, presenting all round either steep banks or perpendicular faces. The gypsum is dug out of two beds, of which the upper is, I suppose, twenty-five feet thick; of the lower I did not see the bottom. It has very much the colour and fracture of coarse lump sugar, but the grain is rather finer. Between the two courses, and above the upper, are beds of white clay, at least when dry it appeared quite white; but there are some intermediate beds of clay and sand of a darker colour, and the whole is crowned by a thick bed of yellow sand, which forms the soil of the summit of the hill. This is a very narrow strip, with a row of windmills, from whence I enjoyed an excellent view. Paris was covered with a little whitish smoke, at least that was the case over the most thickly inhabited part, but nothing like the dense yellow fumes of London. By the appearance of the horizon, I judged my elevation to be about equal to that of the summit of the Pantheon, and a little above that of the dome of the Invalides. The cross at the top of the former is about 280 feet above the pavement, and as this building stands on an elevated spot, Mont Martre must be more than 300 feet above the Seine. Below the quarries, and sometimes between them, are vineyards as open as the corn-fields in England, and mixed with the vines are currant and gooseberry bushes, and a few larger fruit trees. The vine stumps were about three feet a part, and the leaves, which had just begun to appear, were dark and shining. About Chartres the young vine leaf is almost always covered with thick down. Here and there was a bush of hawthorn not yet in flower, whence I conclude the Parisian spring is not a great deal more forward than that of the south of England.
I leave you to conclude that I have seen the elephant, the catacombs, the observatory, and a hundred other curiosities of this city; they are too familiar for any novelty of description, yet I ought not entirely to omit a visit to the Ecole des Mines. Here is a superb collection of minerals; the objects are very numerous, and the specimens frequently very beautiful. The arrangement is by provinces, distinguishing those which are lost to France, from those which still constitute part of the country. It occupies a range of rooms of about 130 feet in length towards the garden, and one or two besides, in which the specimens are arranged mineralogically. There is also on the ground floor a library, and a further collection of minerals. I was likewise conducted to the collection of M. de Dré, which, for the beauty of the specimens, is said to be the finest in Europe. In all these museums, I have been struck with the arrangement which displays every thing at once; a great deal of room is necessarily given up to this purpose, but it is well applied, for the ease which it offers of reference and comparison, as well as for communicating an air of magnificence which is suitable for public institutions. Two large paintings of David are at present exhibited, and I did not fail to visit them. The subject of one is Leonidas about to attack the Persians, after he found that they had discovered a passage over the mountains. That of the other, the interposition of the Sabine women who had been carried away by the Romans, to prevent the battle between the two people. The drawing is said to be, and I dare say is, perfectly true to nature, but not to beautiful nature. The stories are not very well told, nor the figures well disposed or well lighted. The relief is excellent, and in spite of the harsh colouring, some of the figures seem quite to stand from the canvass.
I have already anticipated the results of my excursion to Chartres, Dreux, and Mantes. This journey gave me a better idea than I had before of French cross road travelling. A cabriolet is an enclosed one horse chaise. A pot-de-chambre differs from a cabriolet in being deep enough to admit two seats, one before the other, each seat usually holding three persons, all looking towards the horses; the back is the seat of honour, but it is a very unpleasant one. The cabriolets de poste will rarely hold more than two persons conveniently, and one I had from Chartres to Dreux, would not even do that. The difference on taking a voiture or a cabriolet de poste, is, that the former does not change horses. Travelling post for two or three persons, (independently of food and lodging) costs just three francs per league. For travelling in voiture, you make what bargain you can, but to judge from my own experience, the terms are favourable, when you have to give two francs per league, and a few sous ‘pour boire’ to the postillion. I paid on the occasion above-mentioned eighteen francs, without understanding whether the precise distance were nine leagues, or only seven, and that two more were allowed for the badness of the road: indeed nothing could be worse. The high roads in France are good, though I am not quite reconciled to the pavé; but the cross roads are very bad, and the worst points are usually in the villages. There is probably more traffic at these parts, and as nothing is ever done to them, they are consequently the worst. The government only takes care of the great roads; and every thing of public convenience, not done by government, is either neglected, or if performed at all, it is in a very slovenly manner. What is more provoking, is, that one sees heaps of gravel by the road sides, collected from the fields and vineyards, but which it appears to be nobody’s business to dispose over the road. We had a very skilful driver, who galloped among the deep ruts, which it seemed impossible to avoid, and still more impossible to follow. Travelling in the royal diligences costs about fourteen sous per league, and you give the postillions two sous each stage, or about one sol per league, and the conductor, perhaps, twice as much, in all seventeen sous; the league is about two miles and a half English. You may therefore calculate French posting, where you have to hire the carriage as well as the horses, at twenty-four sous, or one shilling per mile; travelling in voiture at ninepence; by the diligence threepence halfpenny, or for two people, to keep up the comparison, sevenpence. The scenery on this excursion was better than on the preceding, without being good, except on our return through St. Germain en Laye, and Marli, where it is highly beautiful. The Seine winds under a steep woody bank; the other side of the river is comparatively flat, but well cultivated and well shaded; I can think of no nearer resemblance than Richmond Hill. Here is more hill, and consequently more variety, but it has not the richness of the English scene; and the banks of the Seine are not to be compared with those of the Thames, either for natural or artificial ornament.
After again returning to Paris, I amused myself with some excursions in the neighbourhood, either on foot, or in some of the conveyances, like our short stages, which abound here. In one of these I passed the bridge at Neuilly, perhaps the most celebrated in France, having five arches, each of 120 feet span, so that the width of the river must be about that of the Thames at London Bridge. The Seine has been called a ditch, but at Paris it is wider than the Thames at Richmond, and at Neuilly, the scale marked a depth of ten feet. In 1740 it rose to 26 feet. In looking along this bridge from the water’s edge, the arches all seem rather crippled, perhaps owing to their being formed of segments of circles, but this is not a very obvious defect, and the bridge is certainly very beautiful: if however, the arches were not quite so flat, it would be better. The double line of arch is ungraceful, and were it not very apparent that the outer line is false, the bridge would be ugly.
After rambling about some time without any particular object in view, I found myself unexpectedly by the palace of St. Cloud. I wondered at first what magnificent building was before me, having quite forgotten that it lay in my route; but after I had convinced myself of the fact, and admired the noble view from the terrace, I set myself to consider the front, which is composed of a central building, and two advancing wings of smaller elevation; but it is hardly worth any particular criticism. Reading in large letters the usual inscription, “parlez au concierge,” I did as I was bid, and immediately entered the palace. The state rooms are very magnificent, yet there is much bad taste, much of mere show and glitter, and great abundance of painted imitations of marble, miserably performed. The Salon de reception is, however, really grand. The hangings are dark crimson, with black roses; there is a very deep gold border, and gilt moulding; a rich gilt cornice, and a painted ceiling. This is the only room of which the border is altogether decidedly lighter than the walls, as recommended by Mrs. Schimmelpenning, and nothing can be more beautiful than the effect.
I continued my ramble to cascades without water, and to a tower which is called a pyramid. The river sweeps beautifully under the fine hanging woods of the park, and if the banks are less bold, and the natural scenery less striking than at Marli, the artificial accompaniments, with Paris in the distance, are superior.
There are at Paris three courses of Botanique rurale, that is, three botanists make weekly excursions with a number of pupils. Jussieu is the public professor of this branch, and his high reputation induced me to wish to join his party. There is no difficulty in it, the lecture is perfectly open, and no introduction is necessary. On Wednesday, 29th May, I repaired to the appointed place (of which public notice is always given) at the entrance of the avenue of St. Cloud. I was told that the class sometimes amounted to two hundred. On this occasion there were, I suppose, half the number, but it is difficult to judge, as a large portion is always scattered about. It was quite a novelty to botanize in such a crowd, and a very amusing novelty. The party seemed to be taken from all classes, among them were several ladies, and many who had the appearance of gentlemen, but the larger portion, I apprehend, were students in the School of Medicine at Paris, and these are in great measure derived from a lower class in society, than that which peoples the English, or even the Scotch universities. No person can exercise the trade of an apothecary, without a certificate of having attended certain courses of botany. Some were evidently mechanics, and one or two private soldiers. It has, I understand, always been the case in France, that among the private soldiers, there have been some who have attended the different courses. How honourable this is to the French character, and how much more favourable to morals, than where the only resource for an idle hour is the alehouse! Nor should I be satisfied with the observation, that they would be better employed in working for their families. Man has a right occasionally to relaxation, and to some exciting amusement; nor do I believe that either his moral or physical health can be well preserved without it. In England, a gentleman or lady would not choose to be seen in such an assembly of all classes; why is it that our pride will not permit us to enjoy, without excluding our inferiors? In fact, with all our boast of superior religion and superior charity, there is more of contempt in our manners towards the lower classes, and less of kindness, than in, I believe, any other nation of Europe. It may be merely in manner, and may regard only trifles; but as nine-tenths of human life is made up of trifles, I am more indebted to him who will make me happy in them, than to him who would relieve me in the other tenth of serious misfortune.
The plan of instruction seemed to be for the students to collect plants, and to present them to Jussieu for names, which they write down, and then preserve the plant, without any examination of the characters. I heard him thus supply names to Veronica chamædrys, Ranunculus acris, and many other flowers equally common in France and England; whence you may suppose that no very intimate knowledge of the science is expected from the pupils. In plants of less frequent occurrence, the professor himself was not very ready, and often appealed to a manuscript list which he carried with him. One brought him Hypnum curvatum, “C’est une mousse,” but the student was not satisfied, and Jussieu at last thought it might be H. myosuroides. I do not know if these species have been accurately distinguished in France. Another brought Bromus mollis, he called it B. secalinus, and seemed to me to misname several others; whence I conclude that he was not ready in distinguishing species: a sort of knowledge which is not, I believe, the forte of the French botanists, but which, without overvaluing it, one had certainly a right to expect from the professor of botanique rurale, since it seems to make the exclusive object of his lessons. I confess his employment of thus merely giving names to pupils who know nothing about the matter, must be very tiresome, but it is his own fault that it is so. He might have selected six or eight of the best informed pupils, and have referred to them, all those inquirers who did not know the most common plants, or who wisely determined Serapias grandiflora to be a Convallaria; and out of every twelve pupils, I suppose at least ten were in this state, and these of course were the most troublesome. He then would have had leisure to look about a little himself, and to have entered into details with those who were more advanced, and explained to them, as they brought him the different plants, the particulars in each tribe to which they ought chiefly to attend. Those whom he pitched upon to be his assistants would have been proud of the office, and the distinction would have been no small stimulus to their exertions. Among the number of pupils with whom I conversed, I found only two who had any idea of examining the plants and judging for themselves: to hear the name given by Jussieu to the individual, and to write it down, seemed to be the whole object of their ambition.
I professed myself curious about the Orchideæ, and every body tells me, as I had before heard in London, that the neighbourhood of Paris is very rich in Orchideæ. Oh! you will find them at Meudon, at Montmorenci, at Sceaux, at St. Maur; and as long as I deal in generals, I seem to be gaining information; but when I inquire about particular species, and the exact places in which they grow: I find only that the French are very skilful in warding off questions they cannot answer.
Another of my excursions was to Versailles. The road is not unpleasant, and I cannot say that I was disappointed in the palace, or in the gardens, for I neither expected nor found them beautiful. The size of the former is, as you know, immense. Internally, there are two principal suites of apartments, one of which is gilt upon a white ground, the other harlequined with different sorts of marble, and enriched with painting and gilding. In general, both are bad; but in the former it seems to be the disposition, and not the nature of the colours which displeases, as the bed-room of Louis XIV., and the antichamber, where the style of decoration is more simple and in better taste, are highly beautiful. In the marbled suite also, a long gallery, on the ceiling of which are painted the exploits of Louis XIV., and a saloon at each end of it, are very handsome; principally because the architect has been contented with fewer marbles, and disposed them less capriciously.
In the park, the great object has been to display long, straight avenues of trees; but the intervening parts are irregularly disposed, and contain corn-fields, meadows, and wild thickets. Even in the gardens, nothing is attended to but straight walks, and near the palace varied figures in coloured sand are disposed upon the grass-plots. There are some noble orange-trees, but they are cut into the form of mops, and the orangery, though a fine building, supporting the terrace, has the air more of a place intended for coolness, than one to secure warmth and light. There are two magnificent flights of steps, but not being directed towards the palace, they are rather deformities than beauties, as they have the appearance of leading to nothing. The water-works are not expected to play till the 25th of August. It requires three months to supply the reservoirs, and they are exhausted in half an hour.
The dishes at a Parisian restaurateur’s are sufficiently numerous, but going to one with a party of Frenchmen, I found that it was usual to multiply the number still more, by ordering a portion for two or three persons, and dividing it among a greater number. I pleaded ignorance of French cookery, and left my companions to provide for me, which they did extremely well. I do not know that I have mentioned a practice very common here of ordering a bottle of wine, and only drinking and paying for the half. I have seen a man order two bottles of different sorts, and pay for half of each; and on another occasion, at Legacq’s, one of the guests acknowledged to three quarters, and paid accordingly. After dinner we drank our coffee at the Café d’Apollon. This is an establishment uniting a coffee-house and a theatre. The stage is a little elevated, and the lower part of the coffee-room forms the pit; above are two ranges of galleries, instead of boxes, provided with seats and tables as below; the representation is continued great part of the day and all the evening, but there is some legal impediment to the performance of regular pieces, and the actors are not very good. However, the novelty of the thing makes it amusing for once or twice, and the room is handsome. It is furnished on each side with a range of pilasters, ornamented with gilding, and really good both in design and execution, and the space between the pilasters is filled with looking-glasses, so that the whole is very splendid.
I have not yet completed all I had to say to you about the Gothic edifices of Paris and its neighbourhood, and indeed it would be unpardonable to omit the church of the once famous abbey of St. Denis. The first church here is said to have been founded by Dagobert about 629.[12] We are told by the early writers that it was executed with consummate art; the columns and the pavement were of marble; the interior brilliant with gold, jewels, and precious stones, and the roof of the building immediately over the altar was covered externally with pure silver. In spite of all this magnificence, it was taken down in the following century, to be rebuilt on a larger scale, by Pepin, and it was completed and consecrated in 775 by Charlemagne; in 865 the abbey was occupied and plundered by the Normans, but apparently not destroyed; and it seems to have remained nearly in the same state till the abbacy of Suger, in 1122. This prelate, after repairing the dormitory, refectory, and other parts of the abbey, determined on giving to the church, larger dimensions and a more magnificent character; how much he performed is not certain. It is thought not to have amounted to a complete rebuilding, but that after having restored the towers and the west front, he turned his attention to the interior, and, a part of the church being completed, it was dedicated in 1140. In June, in the same year, he laid the foundation of the rond point, which was finished in 1144, but after this he still continued his restorations till his death, in 1151. Notwithstanding all that was done at this period, the church was in such a state of decay in 1231, that Eudes Clement undertook to rebuild the greater part of it from the ground, in which he was assisted by St. Louis and his mother Blanche. The choir appears to have been nearly finished under this abbot; and the rest of the new work, which consists of the transept and nave was carried on by his successors, and terminated under Matthieu de Vendôme in 1281. Even the western front is not of one style of architecture, and there is much of it which I feel inclined to attribute to Suger, but which the French antiquaries consider as belonging to the older edifice, while some of our English ones would contend, perhaps, that it was built by Eudes Clement. It is not however of the style adopted in the thirteenth century in France, but corresponds with my first style of French Gothic. The day I was there was cold, and I was unwell; and the reflection, that I could return at any time, relaxed my efforts, and now I am about to leave Paris, without having repeated my visit. What appears of the inside, I rather believe to be of the thirteenth century than early in the twelfth; and I should assign to it a later date than that of the cathedral at Amiens, because all the parts are more slender. The windows are very large, and rose-headed. The church seems all window, and as the glass is at present without colour, and the building of a pale stone; the glare is very disagreeable, and diminishes greatly the admiration which the lofty and elegant architecture might justly challenge. Underneath the choir is a crypt, supposed to have been part of the church of Pepin, or, if you will, of Dagobert. Whittington accedes to the former opinion, although some ancient capitals, still remaining, offer models of architecture with the pointed arch; and I rather suppose them to have been part of the erections of Suger, between 1140 and 1150. On one of them is a curious car, and they are worth notice, whatever the date of them may be. Adjoining to the church is a very beautiful sacristy of modern architecture, ornamented with paintings of the present French school, some of which have great merit.
Having now conducted you, as well as I can, to the conclusion of the thirteenth century, I shall look back, and communicate a few gleanings of subjects, either less interesting in themselves, or which I have not had opportunity to examine particularly. At Braine sur Vesle, near Soissons, and at Poissy, I observed churches, perhaps rather Norman than Gothic, which seemed to merit investigation. There is a very pretty little church at Soissons decidedly Norman, although the arch of the doorway is slightly pointed. The church of St. Leger, in the same city, founded by St. Gauzlin in 1129, is not of so early a style, but rather of the first Gothic. The southern front has an opening of three equal simple parts, not united in a common arch: above this is a window with three divisions, and a rose in the head, formed of little pillars placed round a centre, probably the earliest form of a rose, or wheel, or marigold window, but here rather puzzling, as it only forms part of the opening, whereas we usually find the roses kept perfectly distinct in the terminating windows, till the middle of the thirteenth century. At each angle the buttress takes the form of an octangular turret, ending in a little spire of stone, but carved to represent shingles. The gable has only small, square-headed openings, and rises higher than these spires.
At Chartres is a church, dedicated to St. André, whose western front exhibits a handsome Norman doorway, with a triple window of early Gothic, and over that, the arch of a window of the fourth style, probably of the fifteenth century; at which time a choir was added to the original church, extending on arches, across the river. This choir is entirely destroyed, but the arches which supported it remain. There is also a handsome Norman gateway in the castle at Dreux. To return to Chartres; the church of St. Peter is praised by Whittington, at least I suppose him to mean this, by his church and convent of St. Père, built by Hilduard, a Benedictine monk, in 1170. It is also praised in the description of Chartres which I purchased, but I think with very little reason. The windows of the body of the building, divided by moulded mullions, announce a style decidedly posterior to that of the cathedral. The lower part of the choir, and the aisles, are very rude and heavy, and may be much more ancient than the upper part. It is now used as a parish church. At Dreux there is a cathedral of late Gothic, but it is not good either in design or execution, nor is it on a large scale: a small piece, however, on one side, is pretty. At Limay, near Mantes, is a Norman tower and spire; and the present external wall presents a series of arches walled up, which seems to have divided the aisles of the ancient edifice. The inside was so full of people, that I could not enter. The church of St. Germain Auxerre is said to be one of the oldest in Paris: this can only be true of some remaining portions of old work: the west front was built in 1435. The moulded ribs, instead of shafts, the entire want of capitals, and the bases of different heights, would have induced me to assign even a later period.
St. Jacques de la Boucherie has a fine Gothic tower of the latest style; it was erected in the reign of Francis I. St. Severin, St. Martin, St. Nicholas des Champs, St. Gervais, St. Étienne du Mont, and St. Eustache, form an instructive series of the downfall of Gothic architecture in Paris. In general they are not beautiful, yet there are in each of them some happy effects. St. Severin is the best, because the purest Gothic, and it has an air of space and lightness, which is very pleasing; but it is on a small scale, and the workmanship rude. Some parts of it are of a much earlier style.
The Count Alexandre la Borde is preparing an interesting work on French antiquities. The monuments of the thirteenth century are plentiful in France, and many of them exquisitely beautiful. Buildings of an earlier period are said to be more abundant in the south; and M. La Borde was so good as to shew me drawings of some ancient churches in those parts, of the greatest magnificence. Large edifices of the fourteenth, and beginning of the fifteenth century are rare, but of these he also has some beautiful drawings. The style of them much resembles that of our decorated Gothic, but what has been very happily called the perpendicular style seems never to have prevailed in any part of France, either as to the disposition of the tracery in the windows, or to the palm-tree vaulting exhibited in King’s College Chapel. There are here and there some traces of an approximation to the latter, but they are heavy and awkward. The last specimen free from the decorations of Roman architecture in Paris is, probably, St. Gervais, built in 1581 (omitting all consideration of the western front, which was added in 1616). The first, in which Roman decorations are introduced, is, I believe, St. Eustache, and in this point of view both these churches merit attention; in the former a crown-like pendant in the centre of the vault of the Lady Chapel is curious, and many think it beautiful. The latter church is altogether Grecian in its parts, throughout the nave and transepts; but their disposition and arrangement, the lofty proportions, and the general effect, are completely Gothic. The vaulting of the rond point is by a rather complicated system of ribs; that of the Lady Chapel is still more intricate, and is indeed a very curious example of the architecture of the time, and much admired by the French antiquaries: it is however heavy and unpleasing, and has the air rather of a modern imitation, than of late Gothic. I observed a date of 1640 on one part of the north transept. The church was begun, according to Le Grand, on the 19th of August, 1532, and finished 1642; the portico was added in 1754: as that of St. Étienne du Mont was rebuilt by Francis I., the date of these two churches could not have been far apart.
Even to the last age of French Gothic it is rare to see any mouldings along the ridge of the vault, and the groining, with the exception of the oblique groining which I attempted once to describe to you, is generally simple, and varies very little from first to last. Before I left England this subject had excited my attention, but I did not arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. In some of our Saxon architecture, for example, we have groins, where the ridge of the cross vaulting is considerably arched; but I am not sure that the principal vault forms, on the line of the ridge, a series of arches, as it does in the continental architecture, and so remarkably in the church of St. Germain des Prés. In our Gothic of the thirteenth century I believe the cross vaulting is always arched on the ridge, and the ridge of the principal vault forms also a series of arches nearly flat; but whether these arches are the same in the cross vaulting and principal vaulting, whether they are pointed, or segments of circles, is what I have not been able to determine. In our last style of Gothic architecture, two very different modes of vaulting prevailed; one was nearly that formed by a portion of a sphere cut off by four vertical planes, or like a handkerchief exposed to the wind, and held by the four corners. The arch was, however, seldom quite circular, but had something of a point; the other was formed by courses spreading out beyond each other half round a common centre, so that the vault was formed by a number of funnels touching each other; or rather, while they touched, to form the principal vault, they cut each other to form the cross vaulting. These funnels were universally concave on the section, not straight lines forming regular cones; the intermediate spaces were either left flat, or filled up with pendentives smaller than the funnels, but of the same form. This sort has been called the palm-tree vaulting, because the ribs, gracefully spreading from the tops of the little shafts, present something of the form of a palm-tree, and as this is a much prettier name than funnel-shaped vaults, we will, if you please, adopt it. If you imagine these palm-trees to close against each other in all directions, you will have an arrangement differing less in its appearance from the first than you would readily imagine. If you suppose a square room covered with a true groin, and cut off in the height of the vaulting, the plan at the section would take the form shewn at a,