Notre Dame is not a modern imitation. The great cathedral stands on the little Ile de la Cité which was the beginning of Paris, inhabited two thousand years ago by the Parisii, a Celtic tribe whose name survives. For eight centuries it has been a Christian church. The west front is rich in statues of the kings of France. The originals were destroyed in the Revolution, but have been replaced. The cathedral itself was turned into the mockery of a Temple of Reason, with a woman of the town enthroned as its deity. Napoleon’s wise statesmanship restored the church to its rightful usages. The Commune once more made free with the old shrine, using it as barracks. Among its relics is the robe Archbishop Darboy wore when the Communists put him to death. The churches of Paris have weird stories to tell. The sacred spot where Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, was buried, in the sixth century, was a place of worship until the Revolution changed it into a Pantheon. It became a church once more in 1851, though in its crypt lie Voltaire, Rousseau, and other famous writers. The tomb of Napoleon is beneath the Dome of the Church of the Invalides, attached to the home for veterans founded by Louis XIV.
The famous palace of the Tuileries was built in the sixteenth century for Catherine de’ Medici. It was the home of emperors and kings, and the shrine of precious treasures of art from that time down to the fall of the second empire, when the Communists destroyed it beyond repair. The politics of spite never yet inspired its votaries to create a thing of beauty for posterity to enjoy. Opposite the blank left by this vandal outrage stands the Louvre, perhaps the greatest jewel casket of art in existence, certainly beyond human power to replace if destroyed. Yet even the Louvre was, in 1870, undermined by the mob in power, who longed to blow it into nothingness—in their pious enthusiasm for enlightened progress. This two-hundred-year old palace is a wonder of architectural beauty. Its museums are famous for the statuary and paintings by the great masters. The Venus of Melos stands as the chief feature of one gallery. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian and others of their rank are represented here among the two thousand pictures, besides innumerable masterpieces in various arts. The gallery of Apollo passes description as a chamber, were it empty. Its contents have almost fabulous value.
The Luxembourg Palace was built in 1620. It has known strange experiences—first royal habitation, then a prison during the Revolution, again a palace under the Directory and Consulate, and at last the house of the Republic’s Senate. The Palais Royal was built for Cardinal Richelieu. After his death it had a king for its master, to-day its grand arcades echo to the chatter of bargain-seeking shoppers, despite the firebrands of the Communists. Adjoining it is the national playhouse, the Comédie Française, which also had a narrow escape from the caresses of the reformers. Molière managed this theatre for a while, for which, and because he gave the world immortal plays, he was denied Christian burial. His statue, however, makes amends. A greater theatre as to size and gorgeousness is the Grand Opera House. Three acres of central ground were cleared of ordinary buildings and streets to make room for this imposing structure, which is the most ornate of its kind in the world. The mere pictures of its staircase and foyer are bewildering in magnificence.
After weariness of city sights it is good to make for the Bois de Boulogne, the main park of Paris. Its twenty-three hundred acres are connected with the Champs-Élysées by several avenues, of which the finest is the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, three hundred and fifteen feet wide and forty-two hundred long. The drive round the lake is the rendezvous of fashion every afternoon. The zoological garden, model dairy, the avenue of acacias, the field of Longchamps, where races and reviews take place, are among the showplaces. At the opposite, the east, side of the city is the spacious Bois de Vincennes, a favorite park with many attractions. The monuments of Paris are familiar to the average reader who stays at home. The July Column replaces the Bastille, the Vendôme Column, with its statue of Napoleon as Cæsar, was pulled down by the Commune and has risen again. Arches, fountains and statuary abound on all sides. Père la Chaise cemetery is the favorite field of oratory, many eulogies of the dead being political harangues of extreme types. Here are buried enough celebrities to immortalize a monumentless city, Abélard and Héloïse, Chopin, Rossini, Bellini, Cherubini, Alfred de Musset, Bernardin de St.-Pierre, Beaumarchais, Béranger, Talma, Racine, Molière, Lafontaine, Balzac, and many national statesmen. In Montmartre cemetery lie Heine, Murger, Halévy, Gautier, Troyon. Lafayette and many of the old nobility who perished in the Revolution, repose in the Picpus burial-ground.
There are many attractive places near Paris, such as Versailles, which must be counted among the city sights. This old town has grown up around the palace built by Louis XIV. It has not been inhabited by royalty since the Revolution, but is a museum devoted “to all the glories of France.” The halls are thronged with statues and portraits of the great men of history and her victorious battles. The bedroom of the Grand Monarch, the halls of the kings and marshals, the Queen’s Chamber, and every corner of the building are rich in historical memories. The great park and famous fountains, the royal coaches, the Grand Trianon villa which was the home of Madame de Maintenon, and the Petit Trianon, the cosy country cottage of Marie Antoinette, all have their fascinations. So might we notice St. Cloud, the favorite residence of the last emperor, and St. Denis, with its ancient cathedral, where the kings of France during eleven centuries were buried. The Revolutionists dug up the royal bones and flung them into a ditch, whence they were afterwards borne back into the crypt of St. Denis. The region of Paris teems with associations, grown sacred by age and sentiment, yet its citizens rarely appear to be in the serious vein. Their mode of life conduces to rapidity of thought and quick passing of emotions. Over a simple glass of sweetened water grave-looking men will vivaciously enact a dialogue which a stranger to the country might suppose was the prelude to a tragedy, when it is only a comparison of views on last night’s ballet. The outdoor gatherings in front of the innumerable cafés is one of the charms of the gay capital. The habit is Parisian to the core. They sit and quiz the human menagerie as it parades for their delectation; at least this is the complacent view taken of the moving crowd by the true Parisian. The great streets are made for grand informal parades; there is elbow room for hundreds of thousands and each avenue has a park-like aspect. The French are gifted with the instinct of perfect taste in most things, and this shows nowhere more effectively than in their planning and using a city for artistic ends. Every street stall and lamppost is made part of the general scheme of adornment.
The first few explorations of Paris will fill the mind with wonder and admiration. Then comes the irrepressible desire to know what all its magnificence, its historic object-lessons, all its inexhaustible resources of art and invention, will lead to. A hopeless question, yet the past piques curiosity about the future. So stupendous a monument to human achievement of every order surely betokens an abiding greatness. A people capable of creating a Paris must be destined to a millennium of happy peace and unbroken prosperity. National temperament rarely changes, but bitter experience cannot forget the consequences of former laxity in managing the helm of state. Paris owes it to modern civilization and to posterity to conserve its remaining treasures, at whatever cost.
Amsterdam after Paris may suggest water after wine. A watery city it is and water is excellent at times, if not always. The water streets of the Dutch capital are, sometimes, if not always, inky, and ink of an odor best described by prefixing a couple of consonants. Yet old Amsterdam is full of charm, though not of the Parisian kinds. Its quaint houses have a general look of being turned end-on to the street, their ornamental gables make a sky-line suggestive of a lady’s lace collar. Many of them have a projecting crane with rope and pulley, giving a warehouse appearance to private dwellings. They are still used to save dirtying the stairs when goods are delivered. Cleanliness is the prevailing vice of Amsterdam dames. From bedroom to kitchen every room, and everything in every room, is painfully clean. Between six and eight in the morning every good housewife swills the front of her home from the roof to the curbstone, whether it needs it or not.
