The Sorbonne, the seat of the Paris faculties of letters, science, and Protestant theology, has been rebuilt and increased in size. The Sorbonne contains lecture-halls and class-rooms, and an extensive library open to the public. There gratuitous lectures are given and degrees are granted by the University of France.
Near the Sorbonne is the Collège de France, where gratuitous lectures are also delivered by eminent scholars and men of letters, as well as a large number of colleges and lycées, the great public schools of France for secondary instruction.
The Ecole Polytechnique, the School of Medicine and the School of Law, the Observatory, and the Jardin des Plantes, with its great museums of natural history, are situated in the same quarter of Paris.
The principal public library is Bibliothèque Nationale, which originated in a small collection of the books placed by Louis XI. in the Louvre.
Industries of Paris.—Paris cannot be described as a manufacturing town. Its chief and peculiar industries produce articles which derive their value not from the cost of the material, but from the skill and taste bestowed on them by individual workmen. They include jewelry, bronzes, artistic furniture, and decorative articles known as articles de Paris. In consequence of [485] the intelligence and taste required in their trades the Paris workmen are in many respects superior to the machine hands of manufacturing cities.
STAIRWAY OF HONOR, GRAND OPERA HOUSE
Versailles (vér-sālz´ Fr. pron. ver-säy´), is situated eleven miles west-southwest of Paris. It contains a famous royal palace, a great part of which is now occupied by the Museum of French History, consisting of paintings; but some of the apartments are still preserved with the fittings of a royal residence. The chapel is well proportioned and sumptuous. The great gallery, called the Galerie des Glaces, is one of the finest rooms existing; it is two hundred and forty by thirty-five feet, and forty-two feet high, adorned with mirrors and gilding, and with ceiling-paintings by Lebrun representing the triumphs of Louis XIV.
Here King William of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in 1871. The council-chamber, the bedroom of Louis XIV., the antechamber of the Mil de Boeuf, the Petits Apartements of the queen, and the theater are all historic and highly interesting.
The gardens are the finest of their kind. They abound with monumental fountains profusely adorned with groups of sculpture, and supplied the model for those of half the palaces of Europe.