This pillar of vain glory is not so high as the Monument of London, nor so well terminated at the top. Like the ancient Roman columns, built for similar purposes, it is surrounded by a belt, encircling the shaft in a spiral direction, on which are represented the various actions of the campaign, that terminated with the battle of Austerlitz, and the occupation of Vienna. These bas-reliefs, however, although no doubt extremely flattering to French vanity, spoil altogether the architectural beauty of the column, and would certainly have been seen to more advantage on the interior of the walls of the Temple of Glory, or some such building.
The Théâtre des Italiens, where Catalani performs, is a building deserving notice, as a fine piece of architecture; and, like the Théâtre de l'Odeon, forms one side of a small square, which renders the approach to it safe and easy; for in this respect the Opera House and Théâtre Français are as inconveniently situated as our Drury-lane or Covent-garden. Speaking of the external appearance of the French theatres, the Théâtre de l'Opera Comique ought not to be passed by without observing the well-sculptured caryatides which embellish its front.
The next day, Sunday, the 7th of January, I visited the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. This is an establishment in the old priory of St. Martin, for the deposition of all patent machines, which are here exhibited to the public for their improvement and amusement. Specimens also of the various manufactures of France in cotton, silk, wool, and leather, are here deposited, with the tools, utensils, and machines employed in making them.
One long gallery is filled with models of different manufactories, such as powder-mills, of which you see the graining-room, and drying-room, with the different implements so arranged as if the mill were actually at work. There are also brick and lime-kilns, iron-founderies, sawing-mills, splitting-mills, porcelain manufactories, and potteries, oil of vitriol works, and every kind of public manufactory, all made after a certain scale, and with such apparent precision, that they give perhaps to a spectator a more complete idea of their several uses than if he were in the very manufactories which they represent. I was amused by an immense collection of little windmills and watermills, both under-shot and over-shot, with their sieves, &c.
They exhibit also a great variety of lamps, oil being usually burnt in France, and many different kinds of locks, one of which, a door-lock, had an ingenious piece of mechanism attached to it, for the purpose of seizing any one by the hand who should attempt to pick it. But, in general, the show of locks, as well as every article of hardware and cutlery, was much inferior to the hard and sharp ware of English make.
The old church of the priory is filled with agricultural implements and fire-engines. The former, as far as I am a judge, are much ruder than ours; but different kinds of land must certainly require different kinds of ploughs and harrows, &c. The fire-engines are numerous, among which I observed one of Bramah's. I saw too a very clever kind of fire-escape, consisting of a series of ladders, of different widths, which are placed upright on a small truck running on four low wheels, and which, when brought to the required situation, are worked up one above another to any height, by the means of a windlass. Among a variety of very beautiful time-pieces, one is remarkable for the complicated structure of its pendulum. This is made upon the old English principle, of two self-correcting metals, which you know thus keep it of the same length in all temperatures and climates; but the different pieces of metal are joined together in a curious manner, the use of which I do not understand. The ball of this pendulum is a little chronometer, keeping, they say, exact time with the large one, which itself preserves in motion. To another time-piece, made by a German, there is attached on the top a very pretty little orrery, inclosed in a glass sphere, on which are engraved, with fluoric acid, the different, constellations, &c. Here is also the car in which was performed the first aërial voyage ever undertaken; but it is a clumsy, heavy thing, of the size and shape of a large slipper-bath.
On Monday, the 8th of January, I left Paris with regret, but with the hope of again visiting it, and joined my regiment at Creil, a poor dirty town, near Chantilly, where I was obliged to content myself with a nasty unfloored apartment in a miserable auberge. During the first fortnight I scarcely stirred from the house, the surrounding country being all under water.
On the 28th of January, having received orders to march for the frontiers, I left Creil, after sojourning there three weeks, during which nothing occurred to me worthy of notice, but a trip to Chantilly, the former residence of the Prince de Condé. But little now remains of that which was undoubtedly the finest chateau in France, excepting the stables, and their necessary accompaniments, then occupied by a detachment of our waggon train, being large enough for the accommodation of 300 horses. They are at some distance from the high road, from which they look like the chateau itself. A book is published, with twenty descriptive plates, giving an account of the chateau and grounds as they formerly existed, a copy of which I purchased on the spot.
At Amiens, where I had leave to halt for a few days, I by good luck got myself billeted on the house of a young gentleman with whom I travelled from Boulogne sur Mer on my first arrival in this country. I found his father a sensible, well-educated man, but low and desponding on account of the general distressed state of his commercial connexions, and his mother an active domestic woman, although of a rich and superior family. Being received with great cordiality, I of course found myself very comfortable. With this family I might have boarded for four Napoleons per month, including every thing,—about 40l. per annum[1].
Amiens is a fine old town, they say of 60,000 inhabitants; but unless they are closely packed, I should think of not more than 40,000. It is clean, but dull; and there is only one public building worthy of notice, the cathedral. This is certainly very fine, but wants a lofty spire or a handsome tower to make it what it ought to be. It was built by the English, when the good Henry VI. was King of France, and in many parts resembles the edifices in England erected during the same period, especially in its nave, which the French speak of proverbially, and which I think is the only part of English fabrication. It is in the form of a cross, as usual, and has two low square towers at the west end; these have an awkward appearance, and are badly proportioned to the rest of the building, the one being lower considerably than the other, but why I do not know, the necessity of this deviation from architectural uniformity not being sufficiently evident to pass with me as faultless. The grand entrance is highly ornamented by an immense number of sculptured busts and animals, with full-length figures. The interior of the nave is very chaste and elegant, and the wood-work of the stalls in the choir is the best finished thing of the kind I ever saw.