True art is ‘nature to advantage drest;’ it is here a powdered beau. The prodigality of littleness, the excess of ornament, the superficial gloss, the studied neatness, are carried to a pitch of the romantic. The Luxembourg gardens are more extensive, and command a finer view; but are not kept in the same order, are dilapidated and desultory. This is an enclosure of all sweet sights and smells, a concentration of elegance. The rest of the world is barbarous to this ‘paradise of dainty devices,’ where the imagination is spell-bound. It is a perfectly-finished miniature set in brilliants. It is a toilette for nature to dress itself; where every flower seems a narcissus! The smooth gravel-walks, the basin of water, the swans (they might be of wax), the golden fishes, the beds of flowers, chine-asters, larkspur, geraniums, bright marigolds, mignonette (‘the Frenchman’s darling’) scenting the air with a faint luscious perfume, the rows of orange-trees in boxes, blooming verdure and vegetable gold, the gleaming statues, the raised terraces, the stately avenues of trees, and the gray cumbrous towers of the Tuileries overlooking the whole, give an effect of enchantment to the scene. This and the man in black by Titian, in the Louvre just by (whose features form a sombre pendant to the gay parterres) are the two things in Paris I like best. I should never tire of walking in the one, or of looking at the other. Yet no two things can be more opposite.[[30]] The one is the essence of French, the other of Italian art. By following the windings of the river in this direction, you come to Passy—a delightful village, half-way to St. Cloud, which is situated on a rich eminence that looks down on Paris and the Seine, and so on to Versailles, where the English reside. I have not been to see them, nor they me. The whole road is interspersed with villas, and lined with rows of trees. This last is a common feature in foreign scenery. Whether from the general love of pleasurable sensations, or from the greater warmth of southern climates making the shelter from the heat of the sun more necessary, or from the closeness of the cities making a promenade round them more desirable, the approach to almost all the principal towns abroad is indicated by shady plantations, and the neighbourhood is a succession of groves and arbours.
The Champ de Mars (the French Runnymede) is on the opposite side of the river, a little above the Champs Elysées. It is an oblong square piece of ground immediately in front of the École Militaire, covered with sand and gravel, and bare of trees or any other ornament. It is left a blank, as it should be. In going to and returning from it, you pass the fine old Invalid Hospital, with its immense gilded cupola and outer-walls overgrown with vines, and meet the crippled veterans who have lost an arm or leg, fighting the battles of the Revolution, with a bit of white ribbon sticking in their button-holes, which must gnaw into their souls worse than the wounds in their flesh, if Frenchmen did not alike disregard the wounds both of their bodies and minds.
The Jardin des Plantes, situated at the other extremity of Paris, on the same side of the river, is well worth the walk there. It is delightfully laid out, with that mixture of art and nature, of the useful and ornamental, in which the French excel all the world. Every plant of every quarter of the globe is here, growing in the open air; and labelled with its common and its scientific name on it. A prodigious number of animals, wild and tame, are enclosed in separate divisions, feeding on the grass or shrubs, and leading a life of learned leisure. At least, they have as good a title to this ironical compliment as most members of colleges and seminaries of learning; for they grow fat and sleek on it. They have a great variety of the simious tribe. Is this necessary in France? The collection of wild beasts is not equal to our Exeter-‘Change; nor are they confined in iron cages out of doors under the shade of their native trees (as I was told), but shut up in a range of very neatly-constructed and very ill-aired apartments.
I have already mentioned the Père la Chaise—the Catacombs I have not seen, nor have I the least wish. But I have been to the top of Mont-Martre, and intend to visit it again. The air there is truly vivifying, and the view inspiring. Paris spreads out under your feet on one side, ‘with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,’ and appears to fill the intermediate space, to the very edge of the horizon, with a sea of hazy or sparkling magnificence. All the different striking points are marked as on a map. London nowhere presents the same extent or integrity of appearance. This is either because there is no place so near to London that looks down upon it from the same elevation, or because Paris is better calculated for a panoramic view from the loftier height and azure tone of its buildings. Its form also approaches nearer to a regular square. London, seen either from Highgate and Hampstead, or from the Dulwich side, looks like a long black wreath of smoke, with the dome of St. Paul’s floating in it. The view on the other side Mont-Martre is also fine, and an extraordinary contrast to the Paris side—it is clear, brown, flat, distant, completely rustic, full of ‘low farms and pelting villages.’ You see St. Denis, where the Kings of France lie buried, and can fancy you see Montmorenci, where Rousseau lived, whose pen was near being as fatal to their race as the scythe of death. On this picturesque site, which so near London would be enriched with noble mansions, there are only a few paltry lodging-houses and tottering windmills. So little prone are the Parisians to extricate themselves from the sty of Epicurus; so fond of cabinets of society, of playing at dominoes in the coffee-houses, and of practising the art de briller dans les Salons; so fond are they of this, that even when the Allies were at Mont-Martre, they ran back to be the first to give an imposing account of the attack, to finish the game of the Revolution, and make the éloge of the new order of things. They shew you the place where the affair with the Prussians happened, as—a brilliant exploit. When will they be no longer liable to such intrusions as these, or to such a result from them? When they get rid of that eternal smile upon their countenances, or of that needle-and-thread face, that is twisted into any shape by every circumstance that happens,[[31]] or when they can write such lines as the following, or even understand their meaning, their force or beauty, as a charm to purge their soil of insolent foes—theirs only, because the common foes of man!
‘But let thy spiders that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way;
Doing annoyance to the feet of them
That with usurping steps do trample thee;
Yield stinging-nettles to mine enemies;
And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,