That difficulty, it must be acknowledged, is considerable. In transporting and erecting the obelisk of Luxor six years were employed. I have not heard the expense, but it must have been large. A vessel was especially constructed at Toulon, for its conveyance down the Nile. A long road was to be made from the Nile to the Temple. Then the obelisk required to be protected from the accidents of carriage, which was done by enclosing it in a wooden case. It was then drawn by manual force to the river—and this employed three months. Then came the trouble of embarking it, for which the vessel had to be nearly sawn through; then came the crossing of the bar at Rosetta—a most difficult operation at the season of the year; then the voyage down the Mediterranean, the vessel being towed by a steamer; then the landing at Cherbourg, in 1833; and, lastly, the passage up the Seine, which occupied nearly four months, reaching Paris in December; thenceforth its finishing and erection, which was completed only in three years after.
This detail may have some interest, as we have a similar project before us. But the whole question is, whether the transport of the obelisk which remains in Egypt for us is worth the expense. We, without hesitation, say that it is. The French have shown that it is practicable, and it is a matter of rational desire to show that we are not behind the French either in power, in ability, or in zeal, to adorn our cities. The obelisk transported to England would be a proud monument, without being an offensive one, of a great achievement of our armies; it would present to our eyes, and those of our children, a relic of the most civilised kingdom of the early ages; it would sustain the recollections of the scholar by its record, and might kindle the energy of the people by the sight of what had been accomplished by the prowess of Englishmen.
If it be replied that such views are Utopian, may we not ask, what is the use of all antiquity, since we can eat and drink as well without it? But we cannot feel as loftily without it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality, and virtue would be lost to us without it; we should lose the noblest examples of the arts, some of the finest displays of human genius in architecture, a large portion of the teaching of the public mind in all things great, and an equally large portion of the incentives to public virtue in all things self-denying. The labour, it is true, of conveying the obelisk would be serious, the expense considerable, and we might not see it erected before the gate of Buckingham Palace these ten years. But it would be erected at last. It would be a trophy—it would be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary country from which civilisation spread to the whole world.
But the two grand fountains ought especially to stimulate our emulation. Those we can have without a voyage from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a six years' delay.
The fountains of the Place de la Concorde would deserve praise if it were only for their beauty. At a distance sufficient for the picturesque, and with the sun shining on them, they actually look like domes and cataracts of molten silver; and a nearer view does not diminish their right to admiration. They are both lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both consisting of three basins, lessening in size in proportion to their height, and all pouring out sheets of water from the trumpets of Tritons, from the mouths of dolphins, and from allegorical figures. One of those fountains is in honour of Maritime Navigation, and the other of the Navigation of Rivers. In the former the figures represent the Ocean and the Mediterranean, with the Genii of the fisheries; and in the upper basin are Commerce, Astronomy, Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes, and all spouting out floods of water. The fountain of River Navigation is not behind its rival in bronze or water. It exhibits the Rhine and the Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and flowers, of the vintage and the harvest, with the usual attendance of Tritons. Why the artist had no room for the Seine and the Garonne, while he introduced the Rhine, which is not a French river in any part of its course, must be left for his explanation; but the whole constitutes a beautiful and magnificent object, and, with the sister fountain, perhaps forms the finest display of the kind in Europe. I did not venture, while looking at those stately monuments of French art, to turn my thoughts to our own unhappy performances in Trafalgar Square—the rival of a soda-water bottle, yet the work of a people of boundless wealth, and the first machinists in the world.
The Jardin des Plantes.—I found this fine establishment crowded with the lower orders—fathers and mothers, nurses, old women, and soldiers. As it includes the popular attractions of a zoological garden, as well as a botanical, every day sees its visitants, and every holiday its crowds. The plants are for science, and for that I had no time, even had I possessed other qualifications; but the zoological collection were for curiosity, and of that the spectators had abundance. Yet the animals of pasture appeared to be languid, possibly tired of the perpetual bustle round them—for all animals love quiet at certain times, and escape from the eye of man, when escape is in their power. Possibly the heat of the weather, for the day was remarkably sultry, might have contributed to their exhaustion. But if they have memory—and why should they not?—they must have strangely felt the contrast of their free pastures, shady woods, and fresh streams, with the little patch of ground, the parched soil, and the clamour of ten thousand tongues round them. I could imagine the antelope's intelligent eye, as he lay panting before us on his brown patch of soil, comparing it with the ravines of the Cape, or the eternal forests clothing the hills of his native Abyssinia.
But the object of all popular interest was the pit of the bears; there the crowd was incessant and delighted. But the bears, three or four huge brown beasts, by no means reciprocated the popular feeling. They sat quietly on their hind-quarters, gazing grimly at the groups which lined their rails, and tossed cakes and apples to them from above. They had probably been saturated with sweets, for they scarcely noticed anything but by a growl. They were insensible to apples—even oranges could not make them move, and cakes they seemed to treat with scorn. It was difficult to conceive that those heavy and unwieldy-looking animals could be ferocious; but the Alpine hunter knows that they are as fierce as the tiger, and nearly as quick and dangerous in their spring.
The carnivorous beasts were few, and, except in the instance of one lion, of no remarkable size or beauty. As they naturally doze during the day, their languor was no proof of their weariness; but I have never seen an exhibition of this kind without some degree of regret. The plea of the promotion of science is nothing. Even if it were important to science to be acquainted with the habits of the lion and tiger, which it is not, their native habits are not to be learned from the animal shut up in a cage. The chief exertion of their sagacity and their strength in the native state is in the pursuit of prey; yet what of these can be learned from the condition in which the animal dines as regularly as his keeper, and divides his time between feeding and sleep? Half-a-dozen lions let loose in the Bois de Boulogne would let the naturalist into more knowledge of their nature than a menagerie for fifty years.
The present system is merely cruel; and the animals, without exercise, without air, without the common excitement of free motion, which all animals enjoy so highly—perhaps much more highly than the human race—fall into disease and die, no doubt miserably, though they cannot draw up a rationale of their sufferings. I have been told that the lions in confinement die chiefly of consumption—a singularly sentimental disease for this proud ravager of the desert. But the whole purpose of display would be answered as effectually by exhibiting half-a-dozen lions' skins stuffed, in the different attitudes of seizing their prey, or ranging the forest, or feeding. At present nothing is seen but a great beast asleep, or restlessly moving in a space of half-a-dozen square feet, and pining away in his confinement. An eagle on his perch and with a chain on his leg, in a menagerie, always appears to me like a dethroned monarch; and I have never seen him thus cast down from his "high estate" without longing to break his chain, and let him spread his wing, and delight his splendid eye with the full view of his kingdom of the Air.
The Jardin dates its origin as far back as Louis XIII., when the king's physician recommended its foundation for science. The French are fond of gardening, and are good gardeners; and the climate is peculiarly favourable to flowers, as is evident from the market held every morning in summer by the side of the Madeleine, where the greatest abundance of the richest flowers I ever saw is laid out for the luxury of the Parisians.