Part 8

The next stage brought us to _St. Germain en Laye_, or to the verge of the circle of low mountains, that surround the plains of Paris. Here we got within the influence of royal magnificence and the capital. The Bourbons, down to the period of the revolution, were indeed kings, and they have left physical and moral impressions of their dynasty of seven hundred years, that will require as long a period to eradicate. Nearly every foot of the entire semicircle of hills, to the west of Paris, is historical, and garnished by palaces, pavillions, forests, parks, aqueducts, gardens or chases. A carriage terrace, of a mile in length, and on a most magnificent scale in other respects, overlooks the river, at an elevation of several hundred feet above its bed. The palace itself, a quaint old edifice of the time of Francis 1st., who seems to have had an architecture not unlike that of Elizabeth of England, has long been abandoned as a royal abode. I believe its last royal occupant was the dethroned James II. It is said to have been deserted by its owners, because it commands a distant view of that silent monitor, the sombre but beautiful spire of St. Denis, whose walls shadow the vaults of the Bourbons; they who sat on a throne not choosing to be thus constantly reminded of the time, when they must descend to the common fate and crumbling equality of the grave.

An aqueduct, worthy of the Romans, gave an imposing idea of the scale on which these royal works were conducted. It appeared, at the distance of a league or two, a vast succession of arches, displaying a broader range of masonry than I had ever before seen. So many years had passed since I was last in Europe, that I gazed, in wonder at its vastness.

From St. Germain we plunged into the valley, and took our way towards Paris, by a broad paved avenue, that was bordered with trees. The road now began to show an approach to a capital, being crowded with all sorts of uncouth looking vehicles, used as public conveyances. Still it was on a Liliputian scale as compared to London, and semi-barbarous even, as compared to one of our towns. _Marly-la-Machine_ was passed; an hydraulic invention to force water up the mountains to supply the different princely dwellings of the neighbourhood. Then came a house of no great pretension, buried in trees, at the foot of the hill. This was the celebrated consular abode, _Malmaison_. After this we mounted to a hamlet, and the road stretched away before us, with the river between, to the unfinished _arc de L’Etoile_, or the barrier of the capital. The evening was soft, and there had been a passing shower. As the mist drove away, a mass rose like a glittering beacon, beyond the nearest hill, proclaiming Paris. It was the dome of the Hotel of the Invalids!

Though Paris possesses better points of view, from its immediate vicinity, than most capitals, it is little seen from any of its ordinary approaches, until fairly entered. We descended to the river, by a gentle declivity. The _château_ and grounds of _Neuilly_, a private possession of the Duke of Orleans, lay on our left; the _Bois de Boulogne_, the carriage promenade of the capital, on our right. We passed one of those abortions a _magnificent_ village (_Neuilly_,) and ascended gently towards the unfinished arch of the star. Bending around this imposing memorial of—Heaven knows what! for it has had as many destinations as France has had governors—we entered the iron gate of the barrier, and found ourselves within the walls of Paris.

We were in the _avenue de Neuilly_. The _Champs Elysées_, without verdue, a grove divided by the broad approach, and moderately peopled by a well-dressed crowd, lay on each side. In front, at the distance of a mile, was a mass of foliage that looked more like a rich copse in a park, than an embellishment of a town garden, and above this, again, peered the pointed roofs of two or three large and high members of some vast structure, sombre in colour and quaint in form. They were the pavillions of the _Tuileries_.[4] A line of hotels became visible through trees and shrubbery on the left, and on the right we soon got evidence that we were again near the river. We had just left it behind us, and after a _détour_ of several leagues, here it was again flowing in our front, cutting in twain the capital.

Footnote 4:

Tuileries is derived from _Tuil_ or tile; the site of the present gardens having been a tile yard.

Objects now grew confused, for they came fast. We entered and crossed a paved area, that lay between the Seine, the _Champs Elysées_, the garden of the _Tuileries_, and two little palaces of extraordinary beauty of architecture. This was the place where Louis XVIth, and his unfortunate wife, were beheaded. Passing between the two edifices last named, we came upon the _Boulevards_, and plunged at once into the street-gaiety and movement of this remarkable town.

LETTER V. TO R. COOPER, ESQUIRE, COOPERSTOWN.

We were not a fortnight in Paris, before we were quietly established, _en bourgeois_, in the _Fauxbourg St. Germain_. Then followed the long and wearying toil of sight-seeing. Happily, our time was not limited, and we took months for that which is usually performed in a few days. This labor is connected with objects that description has already rendered familiar, and I shall say nothing of them, except as they may incidentally belong to such parts of my subject as I believe worthy to be noticed.

Paris was empty in the month of August, 1826. The court was at St. Cloud; the _Duchesse de Berri_ at her favourite Dieppe; and the fashionable world was scattered abroad over the face of Europe. Our own minister was at the baths of Aix, in Savoy.

One of the first things was to obtain precise and accurate ideas of the position and _entourage_ of the place. In addition to those enjoyed from its towers, there are noble views of Paris from Monmartre and Père la Chaise. The former has the best look-out, and thither we proceeded. This little mountain is entirely isolated, forming no part of the exterior circle of heights which environ the town. It lies north of the walls, which cross its base. The ascent is so steep, as to require a winding road, and the summit, a table of a hundred acres, is crowned by a crowded village, a church, and divers windmills. There was formerly a convent or two, and small country houses still cling to its sides, buried in the shrubbery that clothe their terraces.

We were fortunate in our sky, which was well veiled in clouds, and occasionally darkened by mists. A bright sun may suit particular scenes, and peculiar moods of the mind, but every connoisseur in the beauties of nature will allow that, as a rule, clouds, and very frequently a partial obscurity, greatly aid a landscape. This is yet more true of a bird’s-eye view of a grey old mass of walls, which give up their confused and dusky objects all the better for the absence of glare. I love to study a place teeming with historical recollections, under this light; leaving the sites of memorable scenes to issue, one by one, but of the grey mass of gloom, as time gives up its facts from the obscurity of ages.

Unlike English and American towns, Paris has scarcely any suburbs. Those parts which are called its _Fauxbourgs_ are in truth integral parts of the city, and, with the exception of a few clusters of wine-houses and _guinguettes_, which have collected near its gates to escape the city duties, the continuity of houses ceases suddenly with the _barrières_, and, at the distance of half a mile from the latter, one is as effectually in the country, so far as the eye is concerned, as if a hundred leagues in the provinces. The unfenced meadows, vineyards, lucerne, oats, wheat, and vegetables, in many places, literally reach the walls. These walls are not intended for defence, but are merely a financial _enceinte_, created for offensive operations against the pockets of the inhabitants. Every town in France that has two thousand inhabitants, is entitled to set up an _octroi_ on its articles of consumption, and something like four millions of dollars are taken, annually, at the gates of Paris, in duties on this internal trade. It is merely the old expedient to tax the poor, by laying impositions on food and necessaries.

From the windmills of Montmartre, the day we ascended, the eye took in the whole vast capital, at a glance. The domes sprung up through the mist, like starting balloons; and, here and there, the meandering stream threw back a gleam of silvery light. Enormous roofs denoted the sites of the palaces, churches, or theatres. The summits of columns, the crosses of the minor churches, and the pyramids of pavillion-tops, seemed struggling to rear their heads from out the plain of edifices. A better idea of the vastness of the principal structures was obtained here, in one hour, than could be got from the streets in a twelvemonth. Taking the roofs of the palace, for instance, the eye followed its field of slate and lead, through a parallelogram, for quite a mile. The sheet of the French opera resembled a blue pond, and the aisles of Notre-Dame, and St. Eustache, with their slender ribs and massive buttresses, towered so much above the lofty houses around them, as to seem to stand on their ridges. The church of _St. Geneviève_, the Pantheon of the revolution, faced us, on the swelling land of the opposite side of the town, but surrounded still with crowded lines of dwellings; the Observatory limiting, equally, the view, and the vast field of houses, in that direction.

Owing to the state of the atmosphere, and the varying light, the picture before us was not that simply of a town, but, from the multiplicity and variety of its objects, it was a vast and magnificent view. I have frequently looked at Paris since from the same spot, or from its church towers, when the strong sun-light reduced it to the appearance of confused glittering piles, on which the eye almost refused to dwell; but, in a clouded day, all the peculiarities stand out sombre and distinct, resembling the grey accessaries of the ordinary French landscape.

From the town we turned to the heights which surround it. East and south-east, after crossing the Seine, the country lay in the waste-like unfenced fields which characterize the scenery of this part of Europe. Roads stretched away in the direction of Orleans, marked by the usual lines of clipped and branchless trees. More to the west commences the abrupt heights, which, washed by the river, encloses nearly half the wide plain, like an amphitheatre. This has been the favorite region of the kings of France, from the time of Louis XIIIth, down to the present day. The palaces of Versailles, St. Germain, St. Cloud, and Meudon, all lie in this direction, within short distances of the capital, and the royal forests, avenues, and chases, intersect it in every direction, as mentioned before.

Farther north, the hills rise to be low mountains, though a wide and perfectly level plain spreads itself between the town and their bases, varying in breadth from two to four leagues. On the whole of this expanse of cultivated fields, there was hardly such a thing as an isolated house. Though not literally true, this fact was so nearly so, as to render the effect oddly peculiar, when one stood on the eastern extremity of Montmartre, where, by turning southward, he looked down upon the affluence, and heard the din of a vast capital, and by turning northward, he beheld a country with all the appliances of rural life, and dotted by grey villages. Two places, however, were in sight, in this direction, that might aspire to be termed towns. One was _St. Denis_, from time immemorial, the burying place of the French kings, and the other was _Montmorency_, the _bourg_ which gives its name to, or receives it from, the illustrious family that is so styled, for I am unable to say which is the fact. The church spire of the former, is one of the most beautiful objects in view from Montmartre, the church itself, which was desecrated in the revolution, having been restored by Napoleon. St. Denis is celebrated, in the Catholic annals, by the fact of the martyr, from whom the name is derived, having walked, after decapitation, with his head under his arm, all the way from Paris to this very spot.

Montmorency is a town of no great size or importance, but lying on the side of a respectable mountain, in a way to give the spectator more than a profile, it appears to be larger than it actually is. This place is scarcely distinguishable from Paris, under the ordinary light, but on a day like that which we had chosen, it stood out in fine relief from the surrounding fields, even the grey mass of its church being plainly visible.

If Paris is so beautiful and striking, when seen from the surrounding heights, there are many singularly fine pictures, in the bosom of the place itself. We rarely crossed the Pont Royal, during the first month or two of our residence, without stopping the carriage to gaze at the two remarkable views it offers. One is up the reach of the Seine which stretches through the heart of the town, separated by the island, and the other, in an opposite direction, looks down the reach by which the stream flows into the meadows, on its way to the sea. The first is a look into the avenues of a large town, the eye resting on the quaint outlines and endless mazes of walls, towers, and roofs, while the last is a prospect, in which the front of the picture is a collection of some of the finest objects of a high state of civilization, and the back ground a beautiful termination of wooded and decorated heights.

At first, one who is accustomed to the forms and movements of a sea-port, feels a little disappointment at seeing a river that bears nothing but dingy barges loaded with charcoal and wine casks. The magnificence of the quays seems disproportioned to the trifling character of the commerce they are destined to receive. But familiarity with the town soon changes all these notions, and while we admit that Paris is altogether secondary so far as trade is concerned, we come to feel the magnificence of her public works, and to find something that is pleasing and picturesque, even in her huge and unwieldy wood and coal barges. Trade is a good thing in its way, but its agents rarely contribute to the taste, learning, manners, or morals of a nation.

The sight of the different interesting objects that encircle Paris stimulated our curiosity to nearer views, and we proceeded, immediately, to visit the environs. These little excursions occupied more than a month, and they not only made us familiar with the adjacent country, but, by compelling us to pass out at nearly every one of the twenty, or thirty, different gates, or barriers, as they are called, with a large portion of the town also. This capital has been too often described to render any further account of the principal objects necessary, and in speaking of it, I shall endeavour to confine my remarks to things that I think may still interest you by their novelty.

The royal residences in Paris, at this time, are, strictly speaking, but two, the Tuileries and the Palais Royal. The Louvre is connected with the first, and it has no finished apartments that are occupied by any of princely rank, most of its better rooms being unfinished, and are occupied as cabinets or museums. A small palace, called the _Elysée Bourbon_, is fitted up as a residence for the heir presumptive, the Duc de Bordeaux; but, though it contains his princely toys, such as miniature batteries of artillery, &c., he is much too young to maintain a separate establishment. This little scion of royalty only completed his seventh year not long after our arrival in France, on which occasion one of those silly ceremonies, which some of the present age appear to think inseparable from sound principles, was observed. The child was solemnly and formally transferred from the care of the women to that of the men. Up to this period, Madame la Viscomtesse de Gontaut-Biron had been his governess, and she now resigned her charge into the hands of the Baron de Damas, who had lately been Minister of Foreign Affairs. Madame de Gontaut was raised to the rank of Duchess on the occasion. The boy himself is said to have passed from the hands of the one party, to those of the other, in presence of the whole court, _absolutely naked_. Some such absurdity was observed at the reception of _Marie Antoinette_, it being a part of regal etiquette that a royal bride, on entering France, should leave her old wardrobe, even to the last garment, behind her. You will be amused to hear that there are people in Europe, who still attach great importance to a rigid adherence to all the old etiquette, at similar ceremonies. These are the men who believe it to be essential that judges and advocates should wear wigs, in an age when, their use being rejected by the rest of the world, their presence cannot fail, if it excite any feeling, to excite that of inconvenience and absurdity. There is such a thing as leaving society too naked, I admit, but a _chemise_ at least, could not have injured the little Duke of Bordeaux, at this ceremony. Whenever a usage that is poetical in itself, and which awakens a sentiment without doing violence to decency, or comfort, or common sense, can be preserved, I would rigidly adhere to it, if it were only for antiquity’s sake; but, surely, it would be far more rational for judges to wear false beards, because formerly Bacon and Coke did not shave their chins, than it is for a magistrate to appear on the bench with a cumbrous, hot, and inconvenient cloud of powdered flax, or whatever may be the material, on his poll, because our ancestors, a century or two since, were so silly as to violate nature in the same extraordinary manner.

Speaking of the Duke of Bordeaux, reminds me of an odd, and, indeed, in some degree, a painful scene, of which I was accidentally a witness, a short time before the ceremony just mentioned. The _emigrés_ have brought back with them into France, a taste for horse-racing, and, supported by a few of the English who are here, there are regular races, spring and autumn, in the _Champs de Mars_. The course is one of the finest imaginable, being more than a mile in circumference, and surrounded by mounds of earth, raised expressly with that object, which permit the spectators to overlook the entire field. The result is a species of amphitheatric arena, in which any of the dramatic exhibitions, that are so pleasing to this spectacle-loving nation, may be enacted. Pavillions are permanently erected at the starting-post, and one or two of these are usually fitted up for the use of the court, whenever it is the pleasure of the royal family to attend, as was the case at the time the little occurrence, I am about to relate, took place.

On this occasion, Charles Xth came in royal state, from St. Cloud, accompanied by detachments of his guards, many carriages, several of which were drawn by eight horses, and a cloud of mounted footmen. Most of the dignitaries of the kingdom were present, in the different pavillions, or stands, and nearly or quite all the ministers, together with the whole diplomatic corps. There could not have been less than a hundred thousand spectators on the mounds.