These waters are
as turbid, tumultuous, unbridled, as when forests covered all these
banks - fit symbol of peoples and nations in their mad career,
generation after generation.
Institutions, like hewn granite, may wall
them in, and vast arches span their flow, and hierarchies domineer
over the tide; but the scorning waters burst into life unchangeable,
and sweep impetuous through the heart of Vanity Fair, and dash out
again into the future, the same grand, ungovernable Euphrates stream.
I do not wonder Egypt adored her Nile, and Rome her Tiber. Surely, the
life artery of Paris is this Seine beneath my feet! And there is no
scene like this, as I gaze upward and downward, comprehending, in a
glance, the immense panorama of art and architecture - life, motion,
enterprise, pleasure, pomp, and power. Beautiful Paris! What city in
the world can compare with thee?
And is it not chiefly because, either by accident or by instinctive
good taste, her treasures of beauty and art are so disposed along the
Seine as to be visible at a glance to the best effect? As the instinct
of the true Parisienne teaches her the mystery of setting off the
graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of
the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and
embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine
is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either
side, called _quais,_ lined with her stateliest palaces and
gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, and is enveloped in dense smoke
and fog. London lowers; the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the
Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama.
Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye
from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like
an arrow, casting its shadow on every thing of beauty or grandeur
Paris possesses.
Rapidly now I sped onward, paying brief visits to the Palais de
Justice, the Hotel de Ville, and spending a cool half hour in Notre
Dame. I love to sit in these majestic fanes, abstracting them from the
superstition which does but desecrate them, and gaze upward to their
lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual
sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not
seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths
of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little
ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air
is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel
Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a
quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St Genevieve, and the
new - now the Pantheon; went onward to the Jardin des Plantes, and
explored its tropical bowers. Many things remind me to-day of New
Orleans, and its levee, its Mississippi, its cathedral, and the
luxuriant vegetation of the gulf. In fact, I seem to be walking in my
sleep in a kind of glorified New Orleans, all the while. Yet I return
to the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place Vendome, and in the
shadow of Napoleon's Column the illusion vanishes. Hundreds of battles
look down upon me from their blazonry.
In the evening I rested from the day's fatigue by an hour in the
garden of the Palais Royal. I sat by one of the little tables, and
called for an ice. There were hundreds of ladies and gentlemen eating
ices, drinking wine, reading the papers, smoking, chatting; scores of
pretty children were frolicking and enjoying the balmy evening. Here
six or eight midgets were jumping the rope, while papa and mamma swung
it for them. Pretty little things, with their flushed cheeks and
sparkling eyes, how they did seem to enjoy themselves! What parent was
ever far from home that did not espy in every group of children his
own little ones - his Mary or his Nelly, his Henry or Charlie? So it
was with me. There was a ring of twenty or thirty singing and dancing,
with a smaller ring in the centre, while old folks and boys stood
outside. But I heard not a single oath, nor saw a rough or rude
action, during the whole time I was there. The boys standing by looked
on quietly, like young gentlemen. The best finale of such a toilsome
day of sightseeing was a warm bath in the Rue du Bac, for the trifling
sum of fifteen sous. The cheapness and convenience of bathing here is
a great recommendation of Paris life. They will bring you a hot bath
at your house for twenty-five cents, and that without bustle or
disorder. And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my
experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless
slumber.
Thursday, June 9. At the Louvre. Studied three statues half an hour
each - the Venus Victrix, Polyhymnia, and Gladiateur Combattant. The
first is mutilated; but if _disarmed_ she conquers all hearts,
what would she achieve in full panoply? As to the Gladiator, I noted
as follows on my catalogue: A pugilist; antique, brown with age;
attitude, leaning forward; left hand raised on guard, right hand
thrown out back, ready to strike a side blow; right leg bent; straight
line from the head to the toe of left foot; muscles and veins most
vividly revealed in intense development; a wonderful _petrifaction,_ as
if he had been smitten to stone at the instant of striking.
Here are antique mosaics, in which colored stones seem liquefied,
realizing the most beautiful effects of painting - quadrigae, warriors,
arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of
French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture - La Meduse,
by Gericault. It is a shipwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean.
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