The façade is composed of a pavilion flanked by two wings. Following an arrangement borrowed from military architecture, two doors were contrived, the little one for the foot-passengers and the large one, which was the door of honour, through which the Cavaliers entered. Both had pointed arches and were ornamented with an archivolt with crockets. One of them still possessed, until about a dozen years ago, its ancient sculptured panels and ornamental iron-work. Above these doors is a large niche with very rich ornamentation, which originally sheltered the equestrian statue of Charles VII. On its right and left is a false window, in which you see the statue of a man-servant in the one and that of a maid-servant in the other, both in the costume of the period. Above this niche the wall is pierced by a large window with four panes, whose tracery reproduces hearts, armes parlantes of the proprietor, and a fleur-de-lis, a sign of his recognition by King Charles. A cornice of foliage forms the top of the wall of the pavilion, which is crowned by a very high roof with four sloping and concave sides. Upon the front and back faces of this roof is a large skylight-window and on its lateral faces, a stock of chimneys. On the summit of the roof is an imposing ridge which ends with two long spikes.

The back of the pavilion is exactly like the front, with the exception of a statue of Cœur corresponding to that of the king. To the right of the pavilion there rises an octagonal campanile of great elegance; at its base is a balustrade in whose open-work runs a phylactery, carrying the motto, which is frequently repeated in the building and which characterizes perfectly him who adopted it:

À vaillans cœurs[11] rien d’impossible.

Notwithstanding the mutilations to which the house of Jacques Cœur has been condemned by its fate, it is certainly one of the most interesting and best preserved of all the civil buildings of the Middle Ages. A vast amount of information regarding the intimate life of the people, which has so great an attraction for the archæologist, is to be found here. If the fact that the study of buildings should be the inseparable companion to that of history was less evident, the house of Jacques Cœur would afford us an opportunity to demonstrate the truth; in reality, when we have studied this building we certainly gain a much clearer idea of the manners of Charles VII.’s reign than could be obtained from a host of lecturers upon history.

Jules Gailhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes. (Paris, 1865).

WAT PHRA KAO.
CARL BOCK.

The first glimpse of Siam which the traveller obtains at Paknam is a fair sample of what is to be seen pretty well throughout the country. As Constantinople is called the City of Mosques, so Bangkok may, with even more reason, be termed the City of Temples. And not in Bangkok only and its immediate neighbourhood, but in the remotest parts of the country, wherever a few people live now, or ever have lived, a Wat with its image, or collection of images, of Buddha, is to be found, surrounded by numberless phrachedees, those curious structures which every devout Buddhist—and all Buddhists are in one sense or another devout—erects at every turn as a means of gaining favour with the deity, or of making atonement for his sins. On the rich plains, in the recesses of the forests, on the tops of high mountains, in all directions, these monuments of universal allegiance to a faith which, more perhaps than any other, claims a devotee in almost every individual inhabitant of the lands over which it has once obtained sway, are to be found. The labour, the time, and the wealth lavished upon these structures are beyond calculation....

The work which, in popular estimation at least, will make his Majesty’s reign most memorable in Siam, is the completion and dedication of the great royal temple, Phra Sri Ratana Satsadaram, or, as it is usually called, Wat Phra Kao. The erection of this magnificent pile of buildings was commenced by Phra Puttha Yot Fa Chulalok, “as a temple for the Emerald Buddha, the palladium of the capital, for the glory of the king, and as an especial work of royal piety.” This temple was inaugurated with a grand religious festival in the year Maseng, 7th of the cycle, 1147 (A. D. 1785), but, having been very hastily got ready for the celebration of the third anniversary of the foundation of the capital, it was incomplete, only the church and library being finished. Various additions were made from time to time, but the Wat remained in an unfinished state until the present king came to the throne. The vow to complete the works was made on Tuesday, the 23rd of December, 1879. The works were commenced during the next month and completed on Monday, the 17th of April, 1882, a period of two years, three months, and twenty days. Thus it was reserved for King Chulalonkorn, at an enormous outlay, entirely defrayed out of his private purse, and by dint of great exertions on the part of those to whom the work was immediately entrusted, to complete this structure, and, on the hundredth anniversary of the capital of Siam, to give the city its crowning glory.

WAT PHRA KAO.