The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A. B. Clayton del. from Sketches by J. Woods.

Arch at Orange.

London. Published by J & A Arch. May 1^st. 1828.

LETTERS
OF AN
ARCHITECT,
FROM
FRANCE, ITALY, AND GREECE.

BY

JOSEPH WOODS, F.A.S. F.L.S. F.G.S.

AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER

OF THE SOCIETY OF GEORGOFILI AT FLORENCE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

JOHN AND ARTHUR ARCH, 61, CORNHILL.

1828.

PREFACE.

Many books of travels in the south of Europe have been published; some of them written by men of talents and information, who were attached to the fine arts, and to architecture as one of them; and many professional works treating on the architecture of Italy and Greece, of greater or less excellence, have been given to the world; but I do not know that there is any one in which the author, after examining the most celebrated edifices of ancient and modern times, endeavours to explain to what circumstances they owe their power of pleasing; and what are to be considered as defects, tending to diminish that power. The subject has been slightly and incidentally touched upon by more than one traveller, but not treated with that care and detail which it deserves. To the architect, it is of the greatest importance: it is no less than the knowledge of what he is to shun, and what to imitate; by what different modes of building he can produce the same effects, or how, by methods nearly similar, he can produce different effects. In short, in what manner, with means always in some degree limited, either by the nature of the material to be employed, the customs of the country, the expense, or the taste or no taste of the employer, he can produce BEAUTY. The plans and details of a great many edifices have been measured with care, and published with considerable accuracy; and knowing the original building to be beautiful, we copy, and re-copy its parts, without considering whether all the particulars conduce to the same harmonious effect, or whether those forms which please under certain circumstances, may not displease in others: nor are we entirely free from the danger of neglecting that character and propriety of ornament, on which the beauty of the whole must in some measure depend. In all the fine arts, but particularly in architecture, the eye is frequently pleased without our being able to explain why; and this why has sometimes escaped in the drawings and measures which have been published of the edifices. This connexion of cause and effect is then the great end and object of the architect; the completion and consummation of his studies; and this it is the object of the author of the present work to explain, as far as his abilities and opportunities will admit. The sentiment of wanting such guidance on his own part, first incited him to make the attempt, and the frequent observation of how little the student in architecture, on first setting out on his travels, knows how, or what he is to study, has encouraged him to persevere. He wishes to shew that the young architect has a more important task to perform, than that of measuring and re-measuring what has been a thousand times measured: a task requiring much more mental exertion, and conducing in a much higher degree to his future excellence. The first place in the art is still unoccupied. The ancients had a Phidias, excellent alike in sculpture and architecture; but the moderns have certainly yet produced no one, who can occupy in architecture, the lofty eminence which Raphael does in painting.

This general and enlarged view of the subject will also, he flatters himself, be not without its use and interest amongst amateurs. The uneducated man judges by his feelings; the half educated by rule. He who is thoroughly master of the subject returns again to his feelings, but to feelings trained and purified by study and reflection: and this training of the mind to a true taste for what is good and beautiful, is an employment exceedingly pleasant in itself, and conducing to that perfection of the intellect, which it is the object of every man to attain. A person who thus criticizes every fine building which he sees, without vanity or presumption, with a sincere desire to find out whatever is excellent, and to understand, and fully enter into, the reasons for any admiration which has been generally bestowed upon it by others, yet at the same time not blindly following authority, but bringing everything to the test of his own feelings and judgment, will form to himself a habit, profitable not only when applied to architecture, and the other fine arts, but in every subject on which the human understanding is exercised.

The following work will be found to be composed, almost entirely, of observations on the principal buildings which occurred to the author in his route through France, Italy, and a small part of Greece. Yet, though always attending to this as the principal object, he does not profess to confine himself so closely to it, as not occasionally to have touched on almost every subject which came in his way, partly in the hope of communicating what is not generally known, partly with a desire of relieving his readers from a tedious monotony of subject, which after all, from the nature of a book of travels, must consist of observations in some degree loose and detached; and not of deep and extensive reasonings, even if the author’s mind were capable of producing them; but more perhaps to relieve the tedium of the writer himself, who, too much habituated all his life to diversify his studies, would have found himself crampt by restrictions which limited him to a single subject. The substance was contained in a series of letters written during the journey. Some things of a private nature have of course been omitted; others, consisting principally of dates and dimensions, have been added on the authority of books, or of his friends; and some observations made on a subsequent tour in 1825 and 1826, have been united to the present publication. The arrangement of the subjects has at times been altered, from that which they occupied in the original letters, and two or more letters have sometimes been compressed into one; but on the whole, neither the substance nor the form has been materially changed.

Some persons may deem an apology necessary for the positive tone which the author has adopted in mere matters of opinion. He had in fact, at first, frequently introduced the expressions, I think, It seems to me, and others similar. The reflection that whatever he could say on such subjects, was necessarily the mere expression of his own sentiments, has ultimately induced him to reject such phrases, except where his own mind was not fully made up.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOL. I.

[LETTER I.]

JOURNEY TO PARIS.

Bed-room and bed at Calais, p. 1.—Peculiarities of French towns, 2.—Journey to Boulogne, 2.—Combination of parts to form a perfect cathedral, 2.—Account of the head of St. John the Baptist, and of the bones of St. Firmin, 3.—Cathedral of Amiens, 4.—Western fronts of Churches, 6.—Comparison of French and English churches, 6.—Central towers, 6.—Unequal towers in front, 7.—Doorways, 7.—Rose windows, 9.—Ridge moulding, 10.—Effect of different styles of architecture, 10.—School-boys, 13.—Paper-hanging, 14.—Journey to Beauvais, 14.—Cathedral at Beauvais, 14.—Oblique groins, 15.—Catholic ceremonies, 16.—Nôtre Dame de Basse œuvre, 17.—St. Stephen, 17.—Fragments of ancient architecture, 18.—Situation of Beauvais, 18.—Lodgings at Paris, 18.

[LETTER II.]

GENERAL ACCOUNT OF PARIS.

Apartment at Paris, 19.—Boulevards, 20.—Gardens of the Tuileries, &c., 20.—Champs Elysées, 20.—Straight and winding walks, 21.—Walk through Paris, 21.—Quays, 21.—Bridges, 22.—Narrow and crooked streets, 22.—Palais Royal, 22.—Café de Mille Colonnes, 23.—M. du Fourny, 23.—Effect of collections in the fine arts, 24.—Denon, 24.—Bibliothèque Royale, 25.—Humboldt, 26.—Institute, 26.—Visconti, 27.—Percier, 27.—Millin, 28.

[LETTER III.]

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

Journey to Chalons, 29.—Nôtre Dame de Chalons, 29.—Styles of Gothic, 30.—Chevet, 31.—Change of form in the bases of the shafts or piers, 31.—Portals, 32.—Forms of piers, 32.—St. Wulfram at Abbeville, 33.—Forms of ornaments, 33.—Intersecting bases, 34.—Church at L’Epine, 35.—St. Germain des Prés, 36.—Pointed arches, 37.—Nôtre Dame at Chalons continued, 40.—Old monuments, 41.—Cathedral at Chalons, 42.—Italian tiles, 42.—Journey to Rheims, 42.

[LETTER IV.]

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

Church of St. Remi at Rheims, 44.—Crypt, 45.—Church at Mantes, 45.—Cathedral at Chartres, 47.—French guide-books, 47.—Shift of the Virgin, 48.—Elevation of roof in French churches, 49.—Shrine-work round the choir, 53.—Disposition of the people, 54.—Nôtre Dame at Paris, 54.—Comparison with Westminster Abbey, 57.—Cathedral at Rheims, 57.—Disposition of coloured glass, 59.—Method of judging of the comparative merits of buildings, 59.—Roman arch, 60.—Vaulted chamber, 60.

[LETTER V.]

RETURN TO PARIS.

Table d’hôte, 61.—Chouan, 62.—Promenades, 62.—Journey to Soissons, 63.—Ruined church of St. John the Baptist, 64.—Walk round the town, 64.—St. Leger, 64.—Cathedral, 64.—Anniversary of the return of Louis XVIII., 65.—Return to Paris, 65.—Jardin du Roi, 65.—Museum, 67.—Mont-martre, 68.—Mineralogic collections, 69.—Paintings of David, 69.—Excursion to Chartres, Dreux, and Mantes, 70.—Cross-road travelling, 70.—Bridge at Neuilly, 71.—Palace of St. Cloud, 71.—Botanique rurale, 72.—Versailles, 74.—Restaurateurs, 75.—Café d’Apollon, 75.—Church of St. Denis, 75.—Churches at Braine sur Vesle, 77.—St. André at Chartres, 77.—St Père at Chartres, 77.—Cathedral at Dreux, 78.—Church at Limay, 78.—St. Germain Auxerre, 78.—St. Jaques de la Boucherie, 78.—St. Severin, 78.—St. Martin, 78.—St. Etienne du Mont, 78.—St. Nicolas des Champs, 78.—St. Gervais, 78.—St. Eustache, 78.—Groins, 79.

[LETTER VI.]

EDIFICES OF PARIS.

Church of the Assumption, 82.—Val de Grace, 82.—Sorbonne, 82.—Invalides, 83.—Gilding, 83.—Hospital of the Invalides, 83.—Dormer windows, 83.—Hotel de Clugny, 84.—Church of the Institute, 84.—History of the Church of St. Geneviève, 84.—St. Roch, 92.—St. Sulpice, 92.—Illuminated statue, 93.—St. Philippe en Roule, 93.—Palace of the Tuileries, 93.—Space in French buildings, 94.—Louvre, 95.—Garde Meuble, 97.—Galleries of the Louvre, 97.—Palais de Justice, 99.—Palace of the Luxembourg, 99.—Palais du Corps Legislatif, 100.—Ecole de Médecine, 100.—Fountain, 101.—Hotel de Ville, 101.—Halle aux blés, 101.—Abattoirs, 101.—Fountains, 102.—Palais des Thermes, 102.—Aqueduct of Arcueil, 103.

[LETTER VII.]

PARIS.

Academy, 104.—Sèvres, 106.—M. Prudhom’, 107.—Gallery of M. Sommariva, 107.—Theatres, 107.—Signs, 108.—Festivals, 108.—Religious opinions, 109.—Illuminations, 111.—Liberty of the French, 112.—Political opinions, 113.

[LETTER VIII.]

JOURNEY TO LYON.

Journey to Troyes, 115.—Cathedral, 116.—Progress of crenated ornament, 118.—Church of La Madelaine, 118.—St. Urbain, 119.—Journey to Dijon, 119.—Cathedral, 120.—Church of St. Michel, 120.—Nôtre Dame, 121.—Working tradesmen, 124.—Journey to Lyon, 124.—Cathedral at Chalons sur Saone, 125.—Church at Tournu, 125.—Approach to Lyon, 126.

[LETTER IX.]

LYON.

Cathedral at Lyon, 127.—Rose and marigold windows, 128.—St. Paul, 130.—St. Nizier, 130.—Imitation of Roman mouldings, 131.—Church at Aynai, 131.—Hotel de Chevrière, 132.—Roman aqueduct, 132.—Crypt under church of St. Irene, 132.—Museum, 133.—Deficiency of general knowledge among the French, 133.—Country about Lyon, 133.—Cafés, 134.—French politeness, 134.—Theatre, 135.—Relicks, 135.—Constructions in Pisé, 136.

[LETTER X.]

SOUTH OF FRANCE.

Voyage to Vienne, 137.—Bridge, 137.—Church of St. André le Bas, 137.—Ancient temple, 138.—Pyramid, 138.—Roman arch, 138.—Roman fragments, 138.—Cathedral, 138.—Elevated platform, 139.—Church of St. Michel, 141.—Churches by the Rhone, 141.—Value of the Louis, 141.—Voyage down the Rhone, 141.—Ferries, 142.—Descent of the Rhone, 143.—Pont St. Esprit, 143.—Mummies, 143.—Orange, 144.—Triumphal arch, 144.—Roman and Greek capitals and bases, 145.—Theatre, 146.—Circus and amphitheatre, 147.—Walk to Avignon, 147.—Voyage to Beaucaire, 148.—Beaucaire, 148.—Quack, 149.—Castle of Beaucaire, 150.—Tarrascon, 150.—Advertisement, 150.—Maison carrée at Nismes, 151.—Temple of Diana, 151.—Public garden, 152.—Idea of comfort, 152.—Amphitheatre, 152.—Roman gateway, 153.—Tour magne, 153.

[LETTER XI.]

SOUTH OF FRANCE.

Pont du Garde, 154.—Journey to Arles, 154.—Arles, 154.—Amphitheatre, 155.—Theatre, 155.—Capitol, 156.—Obelisk, 157.—Remains of baths, 157.—Sarcophagi, 157.—Journey to St. Remi, 159.—Arch, 159.—Sepulchral monument, 160.—Vaucluse, 160.—Roman monuments mentioned by Millin, 161.—Chronological arrangement of buildings in the South of France, 161.—Nôtre Dame de Dom, 162.—Cavern-like Gothic, 163.—Church at Orange, 164.—Cathedral at Arles, 164.—Church at Tarrascon, 165.—Cathedral at Nismes, 165.—Church at St. Remi, 166.—Cathedral at Valence, 166.—Cathedral at Vienne, 167.—Inversion of ornament, 167.

[LETTER XII.]

SOUTH OF FRANCE.

Bridge at Avignon, 168.—Collections at Avignon, 169.—Papal palace, 169.—Tower of massacre, 169.—Journey to Grenoble, 170.—Grenoble, 171.—Visit to the Grande Chartreuse, 171.—Tomb of Bayard, 173.—Journey to Geneva, 174.—General observations on the French, 174.—Persecution of the Protestants at Nismes, 175.

[LETTER XIII.]

GENEVA.

Neighbourhood of Geneva, 178.—The Saleve, 178.—Ferney, 178.—Geneva, 179.—Church of St. Pierre, 179.—Walk to Chamounix, 181.—Waterfalls, 182.—Effects of sunset on the snow, 183.—Glacier, 183.—Montanvert and Mer de Glace, 185.—Walk to Martigny, 186.—Tête noire, 186.—Goitres, 186.—Pissevache, 187.—Vallais, 187.—Bex, 187.—Direction of valleys, 187.—Salt springs, 188.—Walk to Meillerie, 188.—Lausanne, 189.—Cathedral at Lausanne, 189.

[LETTER XIV.]

TOUR IN SWITZERLAND.

Ride to Bern, 191.—Fribourg, 191.—Bern, 191.—Models of Mountains, 191.—Gymnasium, 191.—Ride to Thun, 192.—Unterseen, 192.—Lauterbrunnen, 193.—Staubbach, 193.—Avalanche, 193.—Wengern Alp, 194.—Alp, 194.—Grindelwald, 195.—Castle of Unspunnen, 195.—Niesen, 196.—Kanderthal, 196.—Gemmi, 196.—Baths of Loetsch, 197.—Vallais, 197.—Rainbow, 197.—Simplon, 197.—Swiss churches, 198.—Swiss cottages, 198.—Duomo d’Ossola, 198.—Via crucis, 198.—Walk to Locarno, 199.—Lago maggiore, 200.—Borromean islands, 200.—Statue of St. Charles, 201.—Walk to Lugano, 201.—Lake of Lugano, 202.—Walk to Menaggio, 203.—Lake of Como, 203.—Villa Pliniana, 203.—Walk to Como, 204.

[LETTER XV.]

MILAN.

Cathedral, 205.—Effect of gloom, 209.—View from roof, 210.—Steeple of St. Godard, 210.—Ornamental arches, 211.—Church of the Passione, 211.—Iron ties, 211.—Roodloft, 212.—Madonna di S. Celso, 212.—Courts, 212.—San Satyro, 212.—Sant Eustorgio, 212.—Saint Ambrose, 213.—Want of elevation in churches in Italy, 214.—Funeral, 214.—Madonna delle grazie, 216.—Painting of Last Supper, 217.—Church of St. Mark, 217.—Palace of government, 218.—Colours, 218.—Brera, 219.—Arches upon columns, 219.—Italian painting, 219.—Great hospital, 220.—Roman columns, 220.—Mosaics, 220.

APPENDIX.—PAVIA.

Canal from Milan to Pavia, 221.—Cathedral at Pavia, 221.—Church of the Carmine, 221.—San Francesco, 222.—San Salvadore, 222.—San Michele, 222.—San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro, 222.—Church erected by Pellegrino Pellegrini, 223.—University, 223.—Bridge over Ticino, 223.—Botanic garden, 223.—Certosa, 223.

[LETTER XVI.]

VERONA.

Journey to Verona, 225.—Theatre at Brescia, 225.—Lago di guarda, 225.—Amphitheatre at Verona, 225.—Roman gateway, 227.—Bridges, 227.—Church of Santa Anastasia, 227.—Cathedral, 228.—Church of St. Zeno, 229.—Cloisters of St. Zeno, 231.—Old church of St. Zeno, 231.—Tomb of Pepin, 232.—Remains of the Bishop’s Palace, 232.—Pellegrini chapel, 232.—Relicks, 233.—San Fermo, 235.—Freedom in examining churches, 236.—Tombs of the Scaligers, 236.—Sanmicheli, 236.—Fortification, 237.—Palaces, 237.—Tomb of Juliet, 237.

[LETTER XVII.]

VICENZA—PADUA.

Journey to Vicenza, 238.—Vicenza, 238.—Lombard money, 239.—Palladio, 239.—Basilica, 240.—Palazzo Capitanale, 241.—Fabbrica Conte Porto al Castello, 241.—Palazzo Tiene, 241.—Triumphal arch, 242.—Church of Madonna del Monte, 242.—Rotonda, 242.—Palazzo Valmarana, 243.—Palazzo Trissino, 243.—Palazzo Barbarano, 244.—House of Palladio, 244.—Palazzo Chiericati, 244.—Palazzo del Conte Orazio da Porto, 244.—Olympic theatre, 244.—Church of Santa Corona, 245.—Cathedral, 245.—Padua, 245.—Church of St. Antony, 246.—Church of the Eremitani, 247.—Church of the Arena, 247.—Baptistery, 247.—Palazzo di Ragione, 247.—Church of Santa Giustina, 248.—Cathedral, 248.—Church of La Madre Dolente, 249.—University, 249.—Tomb of Antenor, 249.—Museum of the Palazzo Gazzola, 249.—Painting, 249.

[LETTER XVIII.]

VENICE.

Journey to Venice, 251.—Venice and Venetian life, 251.—Italian theatre, 253.—Piazza di San Marco, 255.—Orologio, 256.—Campanile, 256.—Church of St. Mark, 256.—Ducal palace, 261.—Harbour and canal of the Giudecca, 262.—Venetian palaces, 263.

[LETTER XIX.]

VENICE.

Gondolas, 265.—Santa Maria gloriosa de’ Frari, 265.—Santi Giovanni e Paolo, 266.—S. Stefano, 266.—Santa Maria del Carmine, 266.—San Zaccaria, 267.—Ducal palace, 267.—San Jacopo in Rivo alto. 268.—Scuola di San Rocco, 269.—Procuratie Vecchie, 269.—Zecca, 270.—Procuratie Nuove, 270.—Campanile, 270.—Loggia, 270.—Sansovino, 271.—Church of San Martino, 271.—San Giorgio de’ Greci, 271.—Church of San Francesco della Vigna, 271.—Redentore, 272.—St. George, 273.—S. Nicola de’ Tolentini, 273.—San Pietro in Castello, 274.—S. Simeon Piccolo, 274.—Santa Maria del Rosario, called Gesuati, 274.—San Barnaba, 274.—Santa Maria della Salute, 274.—Santissimo Salvadore, 275.—Prigione Nuove, 275.—Lions, 275.—Pictures, 276.—Painted outsides of houses, 277.

[LETTER XX.]

BOLOGNA.

Journey to Bologna, 278.—Residence at Bologna, 279.—Roman money, 279.—Paintings of Bolognese school, 280.—Church of San Petronio, 280.—San Stefano, 282.—San Giacomo maggiore, 283.—Cathedral, 283.—San Giorgio, 283.—San Salvadore, 284.—San Paolo, 284.—San Bartolommeo, 284.—San Domenico, 284.—Madonna del Monte, 284.—Portico, 285.—Certosa, 285.—Palazzo Ranuzzi, 285.—Torre degli Asinelli, 285.—Torre Garisendi, 285.—Disputations in Romish church, 286.—State of Italy, 286.—Superstition at Bologna, 291.—Mezzofanti, 292.

[LETTER XXI.]

FLORENCE.

Journey from Bologna, 294.—Vetturino system, 294.—Apennines, 294.—Italian time, 295.—Florence, 295.—Cathedral, 295.—Different notions of antiquity, 299.—Campanile, 299.—Baptistery, 299.—Church of Santa Croce, 300.—San Remigio, 301.—Santi Apostoli, 301.—Unfinished fronts, 301.—Santa Maria Novella, 301.—San Lorenzo, 302.—Sagrestia nuova, 304.—M. A. Buonarroti, 304.—Burying-place of the Medici, 304.—Church of Santo Spirito, 305.—Annunziata, 306.—Madonna del Carmine, 306.—St. Mark, 307.—Cose stupende, 307.—Old nobility of Florence, 307.—Palazzo Vecchio, 308.—Loggia, 308.—Gallery, 309.—Palazzo Pitti, 309.—Palazzo Riccardi, 309.—Palazzo Strozzi, 310.—Palazzo Pandolfini, 310.—Casa Michelozzi, 311.

[LETTER XXII.]

JOURNEY TO ROME.

Fiesole, 312.—Journey to Siena, 312.—Siena, 313.—Gutturals, 313.—Piazza, 313.—Cathedral of Siena, 313.—Hospital, 315.—Church of San Domenico, 315.—History of Siena, 315.—Neighbourhood of Siena, 315.—Ventriloquist, 316.—Radicofani, 317.—Acquapendente, 317.—Lake of Bolsena, 318.—Bolsena, 318.—Monte Fiascone, 319.—Orvieto, 319.—Cathedral, 319.—Bishop’s palace, 321.—Church of San Michele, 322.—Church of San Domenico, 322.—Church of San Lorenzo, 322.—Well of Sangallo, 322. Palazzo Soliana, 322.—Pal. Gualtieri, 322.—Bollicame, 322.—Viterbo, 323.—Cathedral, 323.—Church of the Trinità, 323.—S. Francesco, 323.—Monte Cimino, 323.—Lake of Vico, 323.—Capraruola, 323.—Church of the Teresiane, 324.—Ronciglione, 324.—Campagna, 324.—Sutri, 324.—Amphitheatre, 325.—Subterranean church, 325.—Bridge, 325.—Baccano, 326.—Arrival at Rome, 326.

[LETTER XXIII.]

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.

General impressions, 327.—Capitol, 327.—Palatine hill, 328.—Disposition of hills, 329.—Lodging, 330.—Steps of the Trinità, 330.—Forum, 330.—Capitoline hill, 331.—Tabularium, 331.—Temple of Jupiter Tonans, 331.—Richness of detail in Roman architecture, 332.—Temple of Concord, 332.—Arch of Septimius Severus, 333.—Mamertine prisons, 333.—Column of Phocas, 334.—Temple of Saturn, 334.—Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, 334.—Temple of Romulus and Remus, 335.—Jupiter Stator, 335.—Form of shaft of the columns, 337.—Effect of slight variations, 337.—Temple of Peace, 338.—Progress of architecture in Rome, 338.—Arch of Titus, 340.—Temple of Venus and Rome, 341.—Coliseum, 341.—Arch of Constantine, 342.—Baths of Titus, 342.—Vivarium, 344.—Baths of Livia, 345.—Palace of the Cæsars, 345.

[LETTER XXIV.]

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.

Temple of Romulus, 346.—Forum Boarium, 346.—Arch of Janus, 347.—Arch of the goldsmiths, 347.—Cloaca maxima, 347.—Temple of Patrician Modesty, 348.—Temple of Vesta, 348.—Foliage of the Corinthian capital, 349.—Greek and Roman styles of ornament, 349.—Temple of Fortuna Virilis, 350.—House of Rienzi, 350.—Pons Palatinus, 350.—Temples of Filial Piety, &c. 350.—Theatre of Marcellus, 351.—Theatre of Pompey, 351.—Portico of Octavia, 351.—Baths of Agrippa, 351.—Pantheon, 352.—Use of bricks, 353.—Use of discharging arches, 353.—Pyramidal form in buildings, 354.—Coffers on domes, 357.—Basilica of Antoninus, 359.

[LETTER XXV.]

ST. PETER’S.

History of the building, 361.—Model, 362.—Expense, 365.—Cracks, 366.—Sacristy, 367.—Cause of its want of apparent magnitude externally, 369.—Internally, 372.—Sculpture in the church, 374.—Change of design from Greek to Latin cross, 377.—Gilding, 378.—Effect of magnificence, 380.—Pietà of Michael Angelo, 380.—Monuments, 380.—Mosaic, 381.

[LETTER XXVI.]

BASILICAN CHURCHES.

San Paolo fuori delle mura, 383.—Churches visited to obtain indulgences, 383.—Churches which have the Porta santa, 383.—Patriarchal churches, 383.—Ancient basilica of St. Peter, 386.—St. John Lateran, 387.—Corsini chapel, 388.—Cloisters, 388.—Scala santa, 389.—Triclinium, 390.—Baptistery of Constantine, 390.—Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 390.—Santa Maria in Trastevere, 391.—S. M. di Ara Cœli, 391.—San Grisogono, 392.—Quattro santi, 393.—San Pietro in Vincolis, 393.—Figure of Moses, 394.—Santa Agnese fuori delle mura, 394.—Temple of Bacchus, 395.—San Lorenzo fuori delle mura, 396.—Santa Maria Maggiore, 397.—Chapels, 399.—Santa Sabina, 399.—St. Clement, 400.—Small courts, 400.—San Martino de’ Monti, 401.—Baths of Trajan, 401.—Santa Pudenziana, 401.—Santa Prassede, 402.—Santa Maria in Domnica, 402.—Marble boat, 402.—San Giorgio in Velabro, 402.—Ancient towers, 402.

[LETTER XXVII.]

LIVING AT ROME—MODERN CHURCHES.

Roman life, 404.—Play at Orphan school, 407.—Carnival, 407.—Race, 408.—Festina, 409.—Display of military authority, 410.—Italian language, 410.—Climate, 411.—Roman churches, 412.—Method of lighting, 413.—Church of S. Andrea, 414.—St. Ignazio, 415.—Church of the Jesuits, 416.—Santi Apostoli, 417.—Santa Agnese in Piazza Navona, 417.—San Carlo alle quattro fontane, 417.—Sant Andrea del Noviziato, 418.—Santa Maria di Consolazione, 418.—Three smaller churches, 418.—Santa Maria in Campitelli, 418.

[LETTER XXVIII.]

ROME.

Roman spring, 419.—Easter ceremonies, 419.—Benediction, 425.—Vatican palace, 426.—Sistine chapel, 426.—Galleries of Vatican, 428.—Arazzi of Raphael, 428.—Camere of Raphael, 429.—Loggie of Raphael, 430.—Mode of considering paintings, 430.—Museum, 432.—Statues, 433.—Greek and Roman schools of art, 434.—Library, 436.—Omission of cornice, 437.

[LETTER XXIX.]

PALACES OF ROME.

General observations, 438.—Campidoglio, 439.—Museum, 442.—Cancellaria, 443.—Palazzo Giraud, 444.—Sora, 444.—Stoppani, 444.—Massimi, 445.—Farnesina, 445.—Architecture of Sangallo, 446.—Palazzo Saccheti, 446.—Farnese, 446.—Competitions, 447.—Architecture of Giulio Romano, 448.—Palazzo Cenci, 448.—Architecture of Vignola, 449.—Court of Palazzo Farnese, 449.—Church of Sant Andrea, 449.—Villa Giulia, 449.—Palazzo Alessandrini, 450.—Ruspoli, 450.—Quirinale, 450.—Combination of colours, 451.—Horses of Phidias and Praxiteles, 452.—Palazzo della Consulta, 452.—Architecture of Fontana, 453.—Palace of St. John Lateran, 453.—Sapienza, 453.—Architecture of Bernini, 454.—Palazzo della Propaganda, 454.—Ghigi, 454.—Barberini, 454.—Architecture of Borromini, 454.

[LETTER XXX.]

ROME.

Piazza di Spagna, 456.—Piazza del popolo, 456.—Public gardens, 457.—French academy, 457.—Church of the Trinità de Monti, 458.—Capuchin convent, 458.—Piazza Barberini, 458.—Quirinal hill, 459.—Viminal, 459.—Esquiline, 459.—Church of St. Antony, 459.—Trophies of Marius, 459.—Arch of Gallienus, 459.—Temple of Pallas, 460.—Temple of Mars Ultor, 460.—Baths of Paulus Æmilius, 461.—Forum of Trajan, 461.—Column of Trajan, 462.—Basilica of Trajan, 462.—Church of Nome di Maria, 463.—Church of Santa Maria di Loreto, 463.—Effect of gilding, 463.—Sepulchre of C. P. Bibulus, 463.—Colonna palace, 463.—Baths of Constantine, 464.—Enormous fragment, 464.—Fountain of Trevi, 465.—Loggia of the Palazzo Rospigliosi, 465.

LETTERS OF AN ARCHITECT.

LETTER I.
JOURNEY TO PARIS.

Paris, 16th April, 1816.

It is a great advantage to me that I can address letters on architecture to a person for whose taste and judgment I have so much esteem, but who at the same time is not an architect. Being obliged to avoid a great many technical phrases and forms of speech, which often serve as a convenient shelter for ignorance or superficial knowledge, I shall find it necessary to study the subject myself more attentively on all those points which can interest a general observer, and to explain myself with more care and precision.

I shall not trouble you with any observations on English ground; and indeed, between London and Paris, the road is so well known, and so often travelled, that it seems almost an impertinence to detain you on it, except to examine the two magnificent cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais; yet there are some particulars on this frequented track which strike an architect more than they would a general observer.

My bed-room at Calais, with its high ceiling and broad striped paper, was very different from what one finds on your side of the water. The bed is, almost every where in France, placed sideways against the wall. It has head and foot boards, and the square uprights which support them are terminated with a vase, or some such ornament, at least on that side of the bed towards the apartment. Above, a pin with an ornamented head, whose projection from the wall is equal to the width of the bed, supports a long curtain of white dimity, which falls in a pleasing curve over the head and foot boards, and being of a considerable width, may be drawn forward so as nearly to conceal the bed. This arrangement certainly leaves the room much more at liberty than ours, and looks better; and as it is not considered any impropriety to receive company in a bed-room, these circumstances are of more consequence here than in England; yet they are desirable every where, and the only disadvantage I perceive arises from the necessity of rolling out the bedstead in order to make the bed, an inconvenience apparently very trifling.

There are doubtless some peculiarities in the French towns, but on the whole fewer than I expected: the principal are, perhaps, that the houses are without parapets, and that they have dormer windows,[^[1]] the front of which is usually upright over the wall of the house, the eaves being sometimes continued across, and sometimes omitted. There is no flat paving for the footpaths, but the streets are not narrower, if so narrow, as in the country towns in England.

Every body knows that the road from Calais to Boulogne is not pleasant. About Boulogne the scenery is much more agreeable, as we pass along a valley adorned with trees and hedges. There is, I am told, a law that all proprietors shall plant the sides of the road which passes by or through their grounds: unfortunately there is no law which compels the trees to grow, and a green stake is thrust into the ground, which may either live or die; if the latter, it is very easy to thrust in another the succeeding year. After passing the town of Samer, about ten miles from Boulogne, we again ascended the chalk hills, and had a most beautiful view, coloured with uncommon richness and splendour, as the landscape faded under the shades of evening; but I believe the charm depended principally on this colouring. We continued our journey through the night, and the next morning at eleven reached Amiens.

You did not, I believe, when in France, see the cathedral of Amiens, but you have heard of it, and of the beauty of its nave. The French say, that to form a perfect cathedral you must unite the front of Rheims, the spire of Chartres, the nave of Amiens, and the choir of Beauvais. The parts would not combine very well, but I hope at a future time to conduct you to all these edifices. The cathedral of Amiens was founded by Bishop Everard, in order to provide a suitable depository for the head of St. John the Baptist and the body of St. Firmin. The former saint, according to Rivoire, (Description de l’Eglise Cathédrale d’Amiens, p. 160) was beheaded in the prisons of the castle of Macheronte, or of Sebaste, (i. e. of Samaria). The Emperor Valens endeavoured in vain to transfer the head to Rome. Theodosius, more fortunate, brought it from the village of Cosilaon in Siberia, to enrich Constantinople; but whereabouts this village is situated, or when, or why, or how any part of St. John the Baptist travelled into Siberia, I have not been able to learn. A gentleman of Picardy being present at the assault of Constantinople, on the 12th of April, 1204, found among the ruins of an old building, called the Palace of the Arsenal, two great dishes of silver, in one of which was this head of the Baptist, and in the other that of St. George, as was fully testified by their respective inscriptions. The dishes were large and heavy, and the discoverer was in want of money; he therefore sold them to pay his expenses, reserving, however, two smaller vessels which immediately contained the sacred relics. What became of the head of St. George we are not told, but that of St. John was transported to Amiens, where it arrived on the 17th of December, 1206, the clergy and people going out to receive it. The record of this event bears date in March, 1210. The skull is not entire, the back part being apparently deficient, and there is an oblong hole over the left eye, supposed to have been made by the knife of Herodias.

After such a long account of one relic it would be unfair not to make some mention of the other. The bones of St. Firmin had been discovered some time before the acquisition of the head of St. John the Baptist, by a miraculous ray of light which shone upon the spot where they were buried; and the authenticity of the relic was farther proved, not only by a delightful and healing odour which arose from them, but also by a supernatural warmth which dissolved the snow then upon the ground, made the grass grow, and the trees put forth their leaves, and, in short, turned winter into summer.

I have given you quite enough of these fables, let me now turn to facts better authenticated. An old cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1218. The foundations of the present edifice were laid in 1220, according to the designs of Robert de Lusarche. Bishop Everard, the founder, died in 1222. The pillars of the choir and nave were completed in 1223; the north transept was erected in 1236, Geoffry d’Eu being bishop. Robert de Lusarche had, probably, died in the interim, as the architects, at the latter period, were Thomas de Courmont, and Renault de Courmont, his son. The vaulting of the nave and side aisles was completed under Arnold, who governed the church of Amiens from 1236 to 1247; at the same time a magnificent stone tower was erected over the centre of the cross. This tower was entirely of open work, it was destroyed by lightning in 1527, and the wooden spire, which at present exists, was erected two years afterwards. The building, exclusive of the side chapels, was completed in 1288, according to an inscription formerly existing on the pavement, now no longer legible. The following dimensions are from Rivoire, (p. 24) reduced to English measure. They are, perhaps, not all of them perfectly exact, but I had not opportunity to examine them minutely, and am not apprehensive of any material error.

Having thus given you a sketch of the principal dates and dimensions of this magnificent edifice, I will endeavour to give you some idea of its present appearance. A detailed account of all the parts would require a residence of some weeks on the spot, but my object is rather to communicate the impression produced on the mind of the observer, and to point out the leading sources of that impression, than to enter into minutiæ. The distant view exhibits a great square mass of building, a little varied by the slightly superior elevation of one of the western towers, and by a very slender spire or pinnacle of wood rising from the centre to twice the general height. The ridge of the roof of York Minster is 112 feet from the pavement. That of Salisbury Cathedral, 115 feet; St. Paul’s at London, 112; Westminster Abbey, 140; the cathedral at Amiens, 208 feet. This comparison may help you to form some idea of the appearance of the last mentioned edifice, towering above the houses of a provincial city. What was the design of the original central spire of open work in stone, and what was its height, it would be curious to determine. Central towers of that date in England seem to have been low and heavy, and if that of Norwich Cathedral be cited to the contrary, still it does not at all help us to form a judgment of what a spire of open work would have been. The spire and the upper part of the tower at Salisbury are thought to be of a more modern date. The highest western tower is surmounted by one of those steep roofs which still seem to have something attractive to French eyes, but which to mine are absolute deformities. On approaching the edifice, the richness of the western front is very striking. There is a certain similarity in the disposition of this part in all the French churches of the thirteenth century. The cathedrals of Amiens, of Nôtre Dame at Paris, and at Rheims, are distinguished from our English buildings by nearly the same particulars, though they differ much from each other. They assume in this part more of a pyramidal form; the space between the western towers is proportionally smaller than with us. The doorways are much larger; a rose or marigold window is placed over the central opening, and above that is one or more ranges of niches, with statues nearly hiding the triangular gable end of the nave. Sometimes one, or even two ranges of niches occur below the marigold window, as is the case in the example before us. Sometimes the window is between two ranges of niches, and in some instances there are two rose windows. These windows and niches form the elements of the composition, but the arrangement varies in almost every edifice. The division immediately above the porch at Amiens is marked by a range of twenty-two niches, containing as many statues, which are supposed to represent the kings of France, from Charlemagne to Philip Augustus; the latter died in 1223, and this coincidence of his death with the æra of the building seems to have been used by the modern antiquaries in assigning names to the statues. The profusion of ornament in this front is not without its effect, but we endeavour in vain to trace any simple principle of arrangement, and a certain degree of confusion diminishes the pleasure which would otherwise be felt. This objection is applicable more or less to the external of all Gothic buildings, and the more the parts are multiplied the more obvious it becomes: yet it is not a style of architecture which can succeed without a considerable proportion of ornament, and perhaps even of intricacy. On the inside of a Gothic edifice of the best periods, although the parts are numerous, yet they all seem to arise from the mode of construction, and to follow each other so naturally, that the eye and mind are led from one to the other through the whole system. With the outside the case is otherwise; the form of no one part seems to depend on that below it, but each might as well be surmounted by something different as by that which really succeeds it. The ranges of arches in these fronts have the effect of dividing the height of the composition into horizontal bands, and there can be no doubt that in the pointed architecture, the perpendicular lines should prevail over the horizontal. I think that in the present instance these horizontal lines are less striking in the building than in the usual engravings, perhaps because in reality we have no point of view sufficiently distant to permit the eye to embrace the whole composition.

I have a few more words to say on the outside of this cathedral. The two towers are of unequal height; the seat of the archbishop alone, according to my usual guide, Rivoire,[^[4]] was distinguished by two equal towers, as is the case at Paris and at Rheims. In Turkey the privilege of more than one tower is still restricted to the royal mosques, but I believe it is altogether the fancy of this author that any similar regulation existed for the forms of Christian churches.

There are three doorways. This disposition, which is sometimes observable in our cathedrals, is very general in the larger religious edifices of France. The middle, says Rivoire, was for the clergy, that on the right for the men, that on the left for the women. The middle door at Amiens is called that of the Saviour, because his image adorns the pilaster at the meeting of the two leaves of the door, which here, and very commonly elsewhere in France, divides the doorway into two parts. The two sides, and the parts above, present a very elaborate composition, representing, as is supposed, the Last Judgment. Mr. Rigollot, a member of the Academy of Amiens, imagines that he traces in it the prevalence of the superstitions of Sabeism, and has given a description wherein he corrects some errors and inaccuracies of Rivoire; and a very ingenious, and I think in general satisfactory, elucidation of his own opinion. The right, or southern doorway is called that of the Mother of God, the image of the Virgin Mary being in a similar manner placed in the middle. That on the north is distinguished by the statue and name of St. Firmin, to whom the cathedral is dedicated. The latter doorway is farther remarkable by the twelve signs of the zodiac, which are sculptured on it, with the rural labours of the corresponding months of the year. It exhibits also fourteen figures of saints, of which St. Firmin and St. Dionysius are represented carrying their heads in their hands. Was it not St. Severinus who not only took his head in his hand after he had been decapitated, but actually walked with it to the altar, and participated in the holy communion?

On entering the church one is immediately struck by a fine appearance of space and airiness. This is partly owing to the great dimensions; the nave is 10 feet wider, and above 50 feet higher than that of Salisbury Cathedral. The side aisles at Salisbury are only 38 feet high. Those at Amiens are 64; and this I have no doubt also contributes greatly to the impression of superior magnificence. In length the French cathedrals are generally inferior to ours, but they are without screens, and the whole extent presents itself at once to the eye of the spectator. A range of side chapels, corresponding with the divisions of the side aisles, is also a noble feature which we have not in any English building, or have it only very imperfectly in Chichester Cathedral.

These dimensions and comparisons may perhaps assist your imagination in forming an idea of the building, but it is impossible to communicate the feelings produced by the first view of its interior. It not only far surpassed my expectations, but possessed a character and expression quite new to me. In our English cathedrals the eye is confined to one avenue, and the sublime effect is nearly limited to the view along it. Here the sight seems to penetrate in all directions, and to obtain a number of views, all indeed subordinate to the principal one, but all beautiful, and offering, by the different position of the parts with regard to the spectator, the greatest variety. I sat down for some time to enjoy this sublime scene, and then paced slowly up the nave, as far as the intersection of the cross, where my attention was arrested by the beautiful rose window at each end of the transept. Without seeing them one can form no idea of how much beauty a rose window is capable; the splendid colouring of the glass, glowing among the rich tracery, has a brilliancy and magnificence for which I can cite to you no parallel in England.

On the rise of the Italian school of architecture the preceding style, which then received the appellation of Gothic, was reproached as heavy, dark, gloomy, and void of simplicity. Nothing can be more unjust than this censure. In its interiors, on the contrary, it offers the greatest simplicity and harmony; not entirely free from defects, and occasionally exhibiting traces of the rude age in which it flourished, but bearing these as slight blemishes on a beautiful face. It is extremely light, as opposed to heavy, for no style of building performs, or appears to perform so much with so little material; and the blaze of daylight from its numerous and spacious windows is insufferable, when not corrected by the deeply coloured glass, and even by its coarse joinings. These rose windows, brilliant as they are when seen from below, I found, on nearer inspection, to be divided by very wide strips of lead, and these again had collected about them a quantity of dust, which still farther obscured the light, but all this was lost in the general splendour of the effect as seen from below. These two large roses of the transept open into a square space underneath them, so that, strictly speaking, they are not rose windows, but merely rose-headed. The circle, however, occupies so large a portion, and the remainder is comparatively so insignificant, that we must be permitted to call them rose windows. That of the nave comprises only the circle. The design of the tracery is, probably, somewhat later than that of the building; at least, in England we should attribute it nearly to the middle of the fourteenth century, here we know enough of the building to assign it with confidence to the thirteenth. Those of the transept I judge to be later still, chiefly on account of their union with the window below. The western rose has become internally the dial of the clock; the figures denoting the hours are more than seven feet apart, and the hour hand moves nearly an inch and a half in a minute. In that of the northern transept we find the pentalpha, a form to which some persons imagine a mysterious meaning to be attached. The same arrangement which prevails in the nave is continued in the choir, only the outer aisle being no longer divided into chapels, there is a double side aisle continued from the transept to the polygonal end of the building; to this part chapels are again attached, presenting five sides of an octagon. The ladies’ chapel, in the centre, is lengthened, but terminates in the same manner.

In the French Gothic there is no moulding along the ridges of the vault, except, and that rarely, in some of the latest edifices. This moulding, in drawings of English buildings, is generally represented as a straight line, but does, in fact, usually form a crooked one, descending to the direct arch, and rising to the intersection of the groins. In the French buildings this mode of construction is much more evident than with us, the intersection of the groins being always considerably higher than the point of the direct arch, and sometimes so much so, for instance, in the church of St. Germain des Près, in Paris, as to form almost a portion of a dome. In some of the late Gothic examples I think I have seen exactly the reverse take place, and the point of the direct arch made the highest in the vaulting.

It is totally impossible that any style of building should be peculiarly calculated for a particular set of opinions. Some Protestant writers attribute to Gothic architecture a mysterious connexion with the Roman Catholic religion, and, indeed, seem to think that all magnificent churches have a tendency to support that system. Such an opinion does not deserve consideration, but it is certainly true, that some buildings are calculated to excite emotions favourable to religious impressions, to produce a serious frame of mind, and one in which we are more inclined to acknowledge the present existence of superior power, and more ready to submit to the influence of this conviction. Such means of excitement are liable to abuse, and no person can remain long in these edifices, and observe what passes before him, without being made sensible of the power they possess by the degree to which it is abused. But as this abuse is by no means a necessary attendant on the use, it is not a fair argument against it. Mankind in general, at least in France and England, are dull and sluggish in the affairs of religion; they find it difficult to detach their thoughts sufficiently from worldly affairs. It is desirable, therefore, that every help should be given them, for in this, as in every other good object, human means are to be used, when they are put within our reach. A place of worship should, therefore, in the first place, possess in its style and decoration, a decidedly different appearance from a common dwelling-house: this tends to break the associations with the every day employments of life, and gradually to form new associations with the objects of religion, which become of considerable importance in the government of the attention. A merchant, on entering his counting-house, is more strongly led to think of ships and commerce, than on coming into a dining-room. Secondly, a place of worship should possess a decided character of power and sublimity: if from the conditions of our nature any style of building is calculated to induce serious feelings, that style is fitted for a church. In the third place, if any style be already connected in our imagination with the duties of religion, it is fitter for the purpose than one, which having equally the two former qualifications, is deficient in the latter. These considerations point out the Gothic architecture as preferable to every other, for the churches of our own country; but it would not be at all necessary, in the erection of new structures, to retain the awkward arrangement usually found in a parish church.

I have already observed that the chapels at Amiens are not coeval with the building, but some of them are very little posterior. They are said to have originated from the following circumstance. In the year 1244, Geoffroi de Milly, great bailiff of Amiens, hung five clerks, or scholars, without any legal process, because they were accused by his daughter of an assault on her person. It is uncertain whether they were really guilty, or whether, having surprised her in too close conference with her lover, she accused them in order to invalidate their testimony against herself. The bishop, indignant at this wanton abuse of power, after examining the circumstances, pronounced the following severe sentence, and though it must be confessed that the bailiff had fully merited it, yet it seems astonishing that so galling a penance could be strictly performed, which we are told was the fact. Geoffroi was to be conducted on the following Saturday after dinner and before vespers, i. e. between one and two o’clock, with his arms and feet naked, a halter round his neck, and his hands tied behind him, in the manner usually practised towards felons, from the place called Malmaison to the gallows; and after reposing there a little while he was to be reconducted as far as the church of St. Montau, at which place his hands being untied, the body of one of the said five clerks, with a cloth of fine linen, was to be delivered to him, and he was to carry it to the Mother Church, and thence to the burying ground of St. Dionysius, and afterwards, in the four following days to carry the other four bodies in the same manner, first to the Mother Church, and then to the Cemetery. Moreover, he was directed to appear at the cathedral at Rheims, at the other churches of the diocese, and at the churches of Rouen, Paris, and Orleans, and to attend the processions on one Sunday, or feast day, at each, with his arms and feet naked, his hands tied behind him, and without any thing to shelter him from being fully seen, and at each place, during the procession, the sentence of his condemnation was to be read. Moreover, he was to swear never to hold any office conveying jurisdiction, and to submit himself in all particulars to the sentence of the bishop, and to perform all that it enjoined within the time prescribed, and to bring back with him certificates from each place of his having done so. Moreover, he was to provide five basins of silver, each weighing five marks, in which were to be five wax candles, each weighing three pounds. These were to be kept constantly burning in the church at Amiens, and the criminal had to provide funds in perpetuity. Nor was this all; the day after the feast of “Monsieur St. Jean Baptiste,” he was enjoined to take a journey to the Holy Land, and never to return to Amiens, without the consent of the bishop and chapter. Not content with thus punishing the bailiff, the bishop issued a decree against the mayor and aldermen (echevins) of Amiens, for having permitted the bailiff to proceed to such extremities against the five clerks, condemning them, under penalty of a thousand marks of silver, to found six chapels, and to appoint to each a rent of twenty Parisian livres, and in consequence of this decree were founded the first chapels of this church. Before quitting the nave I must point out two monuments too interesting to pass unnoticed, though such objects do not come within my general plan, except as they afford examples of architecture. They are on the right and left of the western doorway, and represent, in brass figures of the size of life, bishop Everard, the founder of the church, and Bertrand D’Abbeville, who completed it. They were originally placed in the midst of the nave, but were transferred in 1762 to their present position. On the pavement of the church is a labyrinth, indicated by the arrangement of black and white stones which compose it. Such an ornament occurs in many French churches. I do not know if it had any mysterious meaning.

Finding myself very cold while making my sketches, I walked round the church, through the galleries, and in the roof. The latter is very well constructed, three braces resting at different heights on each side of the king-post, exemplifies the origin of an English word for that part, roof-tree.

The timbers are generally small, but they are well disposed and well put together. They are said to be of chesnut, a statement still more general in France than in England as to the timber of old buildings, but I have no proof that it is not oak. The rafters are laid flatwise; the laying them edgewise is an improvement of modern date in England, and has not yet got into general use in France. The tie-beam is placed several feet above the vaulting. The central spire is also said to be of chesnut. It is well built, but the ornaments, which look sharp, and accurately defined, from below, appear round and clumsy when close to the eye. One may walk also on the outside over the roofs of the side aisles and chapels, among the flying buttresses, and behind the statues of the front gallery.

I found a very fine point for an external view of the cathedral in the garden of the Palais de Justice, but the cold and snow interrupted me. The palace seems now to be a school. Soon after I entered the garden, the maid-servant came in, in order to drive out the boys. They were quite as untractable as English boys usually are under the same authority, but after some quarrelling she gave one as loud a box on the ear as I ever heard; it rung through the court, and echoed from the ruins of a neighbouring monastery. One of them hid himself behind a tree, and after the danger was over, came out to tell me that he was very fond of drawing, that they had a drawing-master in the school, that they did little but draw, and that the master would not let them use compasses, but sometimes allowed them to measure. I objected to the latter liberty. “Ah Monsieur, vous savez que quand on commence à dessiner, on ne peut pas juger des mesures.” “Mais pour vous,” I replied, “qui dessinez bien?” “Ah pour moi qui dessine bien, ce n’est pas permis, il me gronderoit bien s’il trouvoit que je mesurois quelque chose.”

I stayed at Amiens the whole of the 13th of April, dining at the table d’Hôte, and accustoming myself to French language and French manners. The salle-à-manger was ornamented with a paper which seems very common at the inns, representing the principal buildings of Paris, not badly executed. Although the room is about forty feet long, there is no repetition of the pattern; you may easily conceive that an immense number of blocks must have been used. Indeed, I was once told by a paper-hanger in London, that he had seen papers in England which were executed by means of 150 blocks, and that he used to think that a very great number; but going afterwards to Paris, he had there seen some which required two thousand five hundred. My landlady conducted me into another room, where she shewed me the representation of a chase, in which both the forms and the colouring were really very good, and into a third, which was adorned with the history of Cupid and Psyche. I do not say the execution was such as you would be satisfied with in a painting, but yet all the parts were expressed with a considerable degree of truth and accuracy, the groups were well disposed, and the light well managed.

About noon, on the fourteenth, I again found a place in the cabriolet of the diligence, and proceeded to Beauvais, snow falling almost all the time. It was dusk when we arrived there; and the high, black mass of the choir rising above the houses of the town, all covered with snow, did not prepossess me in favour of the building. During the night the thermometer sunk to 25° of Fahrenheit, and the next morning was excessively cold, with frequent showers. Before reaching the cathedral, I inquired at a bookseller’s shop for some account of it. He had no such work, but shewed me a history of the town, “publiée sur la demande de Monsieur le Maire de Beauvais, et aux frais de la ville.” On looking over it I found little to answer my purpose, and begged permission to copy a few lines which might perhaps be useful to me. He most politely begged me to take the book, and keep it as long as I wanted it. I observed an account of the church of St. Etienne, said to be of very high antiquity, and the bookseller pointed out to me the description of an image, which, he assured me, had been a pagan idol: “Et comment, monsieur,” said I, “peut on s’assurer de la grande antiquité de cette statue?” “Eh,” replied he, “vous le trouverez dans les commentaires de César.” This was said with the greatest air of science imaginable.

On approaching the cathedral I was surprised at the richness and beauty of the external decoration. Seen from the south-east, it is much superior in this respect to Amiens, because the ornaments and their disposition are more dependent on each other, and seem more connected with the construction of the building. There are two ranges of pinnacles on the buttresses of the choir. Those of the inner range are slender, and carried up nearly as high as the walls of the clerestory. The outer are lower, and of more solid proportion; both ranges are ornamented, and their effect is very rich and magnificent. The “portal,” using this word to include the end of the transept, is of late date, and very much ornamented. The entrances are, you know, at the ends of the transepts, the nave never having been erected; and here again, on entering the church, the great window, with its splendid rose, terminating the vista, displays all its beauties. Passing down the centre, the view of the choir is really sublime; and the slender columns, the triple range of windows, and the loftiness of the upper ones, have an appearance almost supernatural. It is considerably higher than that at Amiens; and to judge by the eye, I should say that the ridge of the vaulting does not fall short of a hundred and sixty feet, but I do not think it on that account to be preferred. The columns at Beauvais are too slender, the arches between them too narrow, and the vault too high. Every quality is carried to excess. If the nave were built, the height would not appear so disproportionate; but it would still be too great, and the want of proportionate width would be more conspicuous. Another important objection is in the groining of the roof, which is too complicated. In a common groin one vault crosses another at right angles: in this instance two smaller vaults cross the principal one obliquely; we have therefore three vaults crossing each other in the same point; or, perhaps it would be better to say, that six vaults meet in one point. There are dates on some of the arches of the transept of 1575, 1577, 1578, 1580. This mode of construction was certainly introduced much earlier, but I do not know precisely at what period. In England, I think we find a similar construction in part of Canterbury Cathedral; and it is represented, but not very clearly, in Britton’s work on that edifice, pl. 17. The pillars of the choir are alternately larger and smaller, which renders it probable that the disposition of the vaulting was contemplated at the time of the foundation of the church. It has been suspected that these intermediate piers are posterior to the design of the building, but this does not appear to me to be the case. Whittington says that this roof fell down in 1802; whence could have arisen such an error?

The transept is furnished with side aisles, which are not so high as those of the choir. The choir has at its commencement a double range of side aisles, an arrangement productive of great beauty. The pillars of the choir are formed by small shafts, attached to a circular pier. In those of the transept the smaller shafts are united by curved lines to the principal shaft, so that each pillar on the plan is bounded by an undulating line, without any angle. Even in the earlier part the bases are more capricious than at Amiens; the pillars themselves are more slender, the capitals less distinct: all of which are proofs of its erection posterior to that cathedral.

I have still to state a few dates of this building. The foundations were laid in 991, by Hervé, fortieth bishop of Beauvais, but nothing of this construction remains to give any character to the present work; the roof and vaults were burnt in 1225. In 1281 the great arches of the choir fell down, and mass could not be said for forty years; and this perhaps may give us the era of the present choir, i. e. about 1324. Yet there are fragments undoubtedly of an older edifice; as, for example, at each end of the aisles of the transept, where there is a small wheel window. The transept was not begun till 1500. It was finished, with a central tower which rose to the height of four hundred and seventy-five feet. If this account be correct, it appears rather remarkable that the transept should contain no trace of Roman architecture. The Chateau de Gaillon, in Paris, begun in 1490, and finished in 1500, contains ample evidence of the introduction of that style, though it still retains much of the Gothic in the ornaments and their arrangement. There are, however, I believe, other buildings in France of the early part of the sixteenth century, perfectly Gothic.

My observations in the cathedral were interrupted by the office, and, as it was the first opportunity I have had of witnessing these ceremonies, I stayed to see what was going forward, paying half a sol for my chair. Each individual crosses himself on entrance. This, the use of holy water, and the bowing to the altar, seem very ridiculous to a Protestant. The first and last may be thought to announce, for the moment at least, attention to sacred things, but it would be difficult to assign any rational motive for the introduction of the holy water. Historically, it may, perhaps, be deduced as a symbol of purification from sin, but in the actual practice such an application appears absurd. I saw some water prepared and consecrated at Amiens, but the ceremony is not very impressive; and neither there nor at Beauvais did the dress of the officiating priests appear to me either dignified or graceful. The kneeling of the congregation consists in this: that each person turns the back of the chair from him; and tipping it a little, places one or both knees against the seat. In one not previously seated, the change of position is hardly observable.

The oldest fragment in Beauvais is a part of the ancient church of Nôtre Dame de Basse Œuvre. The east end presents a pretty large circular-headed window, with a flat, broad reticulated ornament round it in low relief, and some imperfect figures above. A portion of cornice, with the billeted moulding, also remains, and a few of the side arches, the whole being but a portion of the ancient nave. A floor has been inserted internally, to make it suitable for a magazine of wood, and the whole strengthened with brick piers. I can readily believe it to have been erected early in the eleventh century, or perhaps in the tenth, before the full development of the Norman style of architecture; but there is too little of it, and it is in too damaged a condition, to be of great interest. The work already mentioned assures us that it was erected in the third century, and that one of the existing figures was a pagan idol, as proved by its nakedness.

The church of St. Stephen is also very ancient, and it is far more perfect than Nôtre Dame de Basse Œuvre. It is said to have been erected or restored by St. Firmin in 997, but I suspect that this is too early for any part of the present design. The western front presents fragments of about the year 1200, but sadly injured during the revolution. The sides are adorned with a range of very little arches, forming, not an arcade, but an ornament under the cornice; a few of them, however, rest on slender shafts. This, I apprehend, is somewhat more ancient. The northern end of the transept has three semicircular-headed windows: the southern has two, and over them a fine wheel window, with figures representing the wheel of fortune; the gable is ornamented with interlacing rods of stone. There is also a fine Norman doorway on the north side. Internally the nave appears to have undergone no considerable alteration since its erection. The pillars are formed of square piers, with four large semi-elipsoid shafts attached, and four smaller cylindrical ones, nearly detached. The bases are attic, but of a form which indicates the beginning of the Gothic taste in that particular; and perhaps we may say that the whole, both inside and out, announces an erection of about the middle of the twelfth century. There were, I apprehend, no pointed arches in the original edifice. The transept is of mixed architecture, and the choir is of a late style. Its vaulting bears date 1548, but the design of this part must be attributed to the fifteenth century.

There are several other fragments in Beauvais. Two ancient towers, at the entrance of the episcopal palace, with high French roofs, and two Norman towers behind. Four Saxon arches, opposite the flank of the palace, have belonged to some richly ornamented building; and there is some mixed construction in the ancient walls. Parts of these are said to be of the fourth century, but internal evidence of this is wanting.

The soil about Beauvais is chalky, divided by small, narrow valleys, with steep sides, which afford situations for the vines: the little hill of Ste. Symphorienne, just out of the town, presents a very good view of it. The stumps of the vines rise about a foot from the ground; the poles were disposed in conical heaps, much as our hop-poles are, but the vine-poles are shorter. In some of the orchards, which are abundant, there are gooseberry bushes among the larger fruit trees, and these are the only things which look green. In the evening I again found a seat in the cabriolet of the diligence, and arrived at Paris about nine o’clock this morning. I have established myself in a small room in the Hotel du Phôt, Rue du Phôt; for which I am to pay forty francs per month, and two francs per month to François, who makes the bed, cleans the room, blacks shoes, brushes coats, and, in short, performs the united services of valet and chambermaid. The situation is pleasant, but rather too much out of town.

LETTER II.
GENERAL ACCOUNT OF PARIS.

Paris, April, 1816.

In my last I conducted you, among the intricacies of Gothic architecture, to Paris. I have now to tell you what I have seen in this city, and in two or three places, at no great distance, which I have visited; but before I plunge again into the uncertainties of dates, and the mysteries of round and pointed arches, zigzag ornaments, and trefoils, I am disposed to send you some general observations on Paris and its vicinity, at the risk of repeating what you have heard or read twenty times before; and I will begin by a little of the internal domestic architecture, exemplified in my own bedroom, which I have had plenty of time and opportunity to examine, and which I find to correspond with what I have generally observed elsewhere. In the first place, the rooms are usually papered; and it is very rarely that one sees the lower part of wainscot, or with a dado. It is indeed sometimes papered in a different manner, and with horizontal stripes about three feet from the floor, to indicate surbase mouldings. The floors are of hexagonal tiles, waxed and rubbed, in order to give them a sort of polished surface. We see no lofty double chests of drawers, but all are of a height to serve also as tables, and they are almost universally covered with a marble slab. This is a very handsome arrangement, as the polished stone always looks neat and clean, and it is not injured by a little water accidentally spilt upon it. There is frequently a column at each front angle, and the upper drawer advancing a little before the others, forms an architrave, the whole face of which draws out. The bed I have before described to you. There is no shelf over the chimney, but generally a looking-glass, and frequently a picture. The chamber which I occupy has an open fireplace for burning wood, but a more usual arrangement is to have a large stove, cased with glazed tiles, within the room, which communicates a moderate but lasting warmth at a small expense of fuel. My window looks out into a little garden, and I am almost close to the Boulevards on the one hand, and to the garden of the Tuilleries and the Champs Elysées, on the other. The plan of these boulevards is a noble conception, and one of the proudest monuments of useful magnificence that Paris has to boast. They form a wide street, or rather avenue, lined with trees, round the oldest and most thickly inhabited parts of the town, introducing the country into the city, and providing both for the health and pleasure of its inhabitants. They seem to have been originally planned to surround, and not to divide the city. Those on the north side were cleared and planted in 1660; on the south, not till 1760. They form a pleasant promenade, though not every where equally so, and they are within the reach of a short walk for all the inhabitants of Paris. Places of public entertainment abound, as you may suppose, in this circuit; theatres, coffee-houses, restaurateurs, hotels; indeed, such places are very numerous throughout Paris. The guide books tell you that it contains 3,000 hotels, 2,000 restaurateurs, 4,000 coffee-houses. The estaminets (pot-houses) are very frequent, and wine and spirit shops almost without number. Add to these the traiteurs, patissiers, confiseurs, and epiciers, and you may imagine that Paris is not a place to starve in. In one of my rambles I amused myself, for some distance, with counting the number of houses appropriated to these purposes, and found more than every other applied to one or the other of them.

The garden of the Tuilleries consists of straight walks, in avenues of lime and horsechesnut trees, cut into regular forms. There are beds of flowers near the palace, and in the summer it is further ornamented with rows of fine orange trees. The Champs Elysées is a less ornamented continuation of the same system. Between the two is a large open space called, originally, the Place of Louis Quinze, afterwards of Concord, and of the Revolution; to the south of this one may see, over the Seine, the magnificent portico of the Chamber of Deputies, and to the north, the beginnings of an edifice which was to have been the Temple of Glory, but what its future name will be is very uncertain. Nearer is the Garde Meuble, a building intended to surpass the celebrated façade of the Louvre. It is very beautiful, but why the architect has not fully succeeded I shall endeavour to explain at a future time. A fine avenue, bounded by a double range of trees, continues from the Elysian Fields to the Barrière de Neuilly, and thus we have a straight line from this barrière (begun on a magnificent scale, but not yet completed) to the front of the Tuilleries, which, if mere length could produce the impression, would certainly be very magnificent. To a certain degree it is so, and the elevation of the ground, towards the barrière, is very favourable to it, but the grandeur is not in proportion to the apparent effort.

However pretty the winding walks of our English gardens may be, they are not at all suited for a place of public resort, where any impression of magnificence is intended. They never show the people, which is a point of great consequence. The disposition of the objects in straight lines, has in itself an imposing, or to use a term more English, an impressive effect, but this has its limits, and I suspect not very extended ones. The too great length of the line makes the individual parts appear little, and the mind is not satisfied with the general impression of sublimity, unless it find the character supported by the objects in its immediate neighbourhood. Beyond a certain point almost any additional length is nearly lost, and, in proceeding along it, we feel its want of variety, without any compensation. I am persuaded that, if a man were placed at the point where two narrow avenues meet, one of them a mile in length, and the other two, he would not readily distinguish the difference. By extending the line too much, also, in places of public resort, it becomes impossible to fill it with people, and this deficiency is more sensible than the length of the avenue.

One of my first employments at Paris was to ramble over it and take a general view of the city. I crossed the Seine at the Pont Louis Quinze, and walked along the noble quays as far as the Island, admiring, on the opposite side, the vast extent of the united palaces of the Tuilleries and Louvre, which, whatever may be the defects and incongruities of their architecture, must always, from their long continued lines, communicate to a stranger the idea of great magnificence. The quays themselves are also an object well worthy of attention, they form a wide street on each side of the river, which is embanked in stone throughout its whole course, in Paris; and whether I looked up the river, towards the Pont Neuf and Nôtre Dame, or downwards, to the Chamber of Deputies, the Pont Louis Seize, the Champs Elysées, and Mount Valerian, I had always a noble scene before me. The narrow quays and crowded shores of the Thames, in London, do not permit any scene of this sort. The completion of this design is due to Bonaparte, and it certainly is an honour to him. Some writers have complained of the want of variety, and that the Parisians are thus shut out from the natural banks of the river, but the natural banks of a river, running through a city, are merely mud and rubbish.

I continued my walk to Nôtre Dame, and afterwards, returning to the south shore, proceeded to the Jardin des Plantes, or du Roi, as you please. I then crossed the Pont Austerlitz, one of the new bridges built by Bonaparte. This is of iron, as is also the Pont des Arts, or du Louvre, but the latter is for foot passengers only. The Parisians boast of their bridges, but without great reason; this Pont d’Austerlitz is fine for an iron bridge;[^[5]] the Pont Neuf has little pretension to beauty; the Pont des Arts is a light, not to say a slight construction of iron, for foot passengers; the Pont Royal is a well-constructed bridge, but hardly a handsome one; the Pont d’Jena is a caricature of flat elliptical arches, and apparent lightness; and its merit is confined to some ingenuity in the construction, in order to obtain this effect; which, nevertheless, is certainly a blemish. Nothing is of more importance in a bridge than an appearance of solidity.

In this tour I did not by any means confine myself to a direct course, but turned off to the right or the left, if I saw any building of more consequence than ordinary, or if the ancient aspect of the houses near gave me reason to consider the general character of the street deserving of notice.

The streets on the south side of the river, within the ancient walls, are, I think, still more narrow and winding than those on the north. But all Paris abounds with crooked dirty lanes. We complain of the obscure situation of many of the principal buildings in London; nothing can be worse placed than some of those in Paris. However detrimental this may be to the appearance of the building, considered individually, I do not know whether it may not, occasionally, heighten the general impression of magnificence. The apparent waste of architecture gives an idea that the means are abundant, and that the objects have been produced without effort; and the notion of painful exertion is always highly prejudicial to the sentiment of sublimity.

The Palais Royal is an immense building, inclosing a large court, or garden, containing not only shops, but splendid coffee-houses and great salles-à-manger. Nothing in London can give you any idea of this place; from its immense extent, the variety and splendour of its exhibitions, and the constant crowd to be met with. “The number of arches is 113; the ground floor of each, in shops and coffee-houses, &c., lets for 3,000 francs per annum, the first floor for 1,200, and the third and fourth for 500 each, thus making the annual produce of each division, comprising one arch, and the parts above it, 6,000 francs, or 240l., and, consequently, that of the whole, to 27,120l., to which an addition is to be made for the Galerie de Bois, the shops of which produce each 1,200 francs per annum, but of their number I am ignorant.”[^[6]] The architecture is not good, yet the great extent of the garden, and the continuity of the surrounding buildings, decorated with a uniform style of ornament, produce a rich and striking coup d’œil; and it must be observed, that this uniformity consists in the repetition of parts, which, though not perfect, yet when compared with the London rows of brick-houses, or the almshouse Gothic of the House of Lords, may justly be esteemed magnificent.

The Café des Mille Colonnes is in the Palais Royal, and is perhaps the most celebrated in Paris. It is a large room, surrounded with half columns against the walls, and all the spaces not occupied by the doors and windows are filled up with looking-glass. But its celebrity has been less owing to its architectural splendor than to its beautiful mistress. The lady was seated at the bar in a very handsome chair, dressed in a gown of crimson satin, and the bar itself, and all about her, was highly ornamented. This is usually the most finished and decorated part of a French coffee-house, and this heightening of enrichment, in the principal point of the apartment, is certainly well judged, and tends much to enhance the splendor of the whole. It is the same in principle, as far as architecture is concerned, with the highly finished altar of a church, and those who possess the poetry of the art will feel the importance of these accessories. You see I am considering the lady merely as an ornament to architecture, but unfortunately, this highest enrichment is not at the command of the artist. After satisfying my curiosity with a general view of the city, the next object was to acquire some knowledge of its inhabitants, and on the 18th I began to deliver my letters of introduction. I do not mean to give an account of all the visits I paid, but merely a sketch of such as I think may interest you. One was to Mr. Du Fourny, professor of architecture. On the pavement, at the entrance of his apartment, is the word salve, copied from a mosaic at Pompei, and his rooms are ornamented with various fragments of antiquity. He was very angry with the Duke of Wellington for having assisted in stripping the museum, and attributed the whole to the English government, but a little further conversation served to explain his idea, which was, that the English might have hindered it if they would, and that they ought to have done so. This is a very frequent ground of complaint amongst the French, but I know not what claim they can imagine themselves to have had to our interference in their favour. That the union of these objects was not for the general advantage of art, seems to be acknowledged by almost all those who have the best opportunities of observing its progress, and Mr. Du Fourny was one of upwards of eighty French artists, who, much to their honour, petitioned that the spoils of Italy might not be brought to Paris. It has been imagined that this request proceeded from an idea, that the Louvre being thus filled, no employment would remain for the native artists, and that in fact the market would be overstocked. But it is sufficiently obvious that these objects are not brought into the market, and that without them no one would have thought of filling the Louvre with paintings, while the existence of such a gallery excites the taste for collections, and multiplies the employment of the painter. The ill effect of such an immense collection is, that it gives a certain sort of familiarity with a degree of excellence, beyond what artists of these degenerate days are capable of attaining, and forces them to seek distinction in extravagance and manner. This consequence would be less to be dreaded if the union of second-rate artists in academies did not give them a degree of consequence and influence beyond that to which they are naturally entitled. It has been considered as a very extraordinary reproach to the French school, that its members did not improve in point of taste by the habitual acquaintance with these glorious productions; but no school would have improved. The artist who hunts them out in different places fixes them in his memory and his heart, he makes use of them without fear, or at least he is not afraid of showing, in his productions, what he has been studying; and it is perhaps an advantage, that at last he has not the original painting at hand to render him ashamed of his own effort. The artist to whom they are constantly accessible has before his eyes the incessant reproach of want of originality, and is obliged to shun an imitation of style, painful in so many ways to his feelings and his reputation.

On another occasion I called on Denon, who received me in the most friendly manner, and shewed me his Egyptian drawings. The spirit and life that he puts into every thing is delightful. He has a very good museum, containing, as might be expected, a large collection of Egyptian antiquities. He possesses also some very fine paintings, and a most valuable collection of drawings of the Italian masters.[^[7]] I noticed a bust of Napoleon, and observed to him that it seemed to be a prohibited figure in Paris. He replied, that it was the bust of his benefactor, and that political events could not discharge the obligations of private gratitude. Amongst the slavish flattery which on both sides has lately so disgraced the French character, how noble does this sentiment appear!

On the 22d, M. De Bure, the well known bookseller, took me to the royal library. It occupies two floors, surrounding a court above 300 feet long, and 75 feet wide, the rooms at one end being double. The printed books are said to form 350,000 volumes, and there are more manuscripts than would fill the shelves of the London Institution. The whole extent of surface for books must, I conceive, exceed 25,000 feet. Here is a large library of large paper copies, and a series of rooms for books of prints, maps, drawings, &c. The height of the bookcases is about 11 feet, and over them is a gallery. The books are frequently in a double range, the larger behind, and the smaller in front, so that you see the former over the latter. Among other things is an immense collection of what they call topography, which contains the plans and details of a great number of buildings, some of which are Gothic. I took some pains to see what there was; but the want of any arrangement which would lead me to the different subjects, made it a difficult task, and the drawings, when found, appeared for the most part, to be very poor and inaccurate. There are several drawings on a large scale, made for the purpose of explaining some alterations in the choir of Nôtre Dame. These exhibited particularities, principally in the vaulting of the bas chœur, which appeared to me very remarkable, while others were quite incomprehensible. On referring to the building I found both the one and the other totally false; a gross inaccuracy, so immediately within reach of correction, gives ground to suspect similar defects in many others.

After having satisfied my curiosity at the library, I called upon Humboldt. He is a most interesting man, for he talks a great deal, and as he has seen much, and thought much, almost every word he says conveys both pleasure and information. Within a quarter of an hour he led me deep into the Mexican antiquities, shewing me the history of Adam and Eve, and the fall of man, exhibited in the hieroglyphic paintings of the country, and explaining to me all the particulars. He observed, that this coincidence with the traditions of Western Asia was a very wonderful fact: as from their geographical position, and other circumstances, the Mexicans, and other tribes of North America, have been supposed to be derived from the Tartar or Chinese nations of Eastern Asia, where no such history is retained. He talks of visiting the ruins of Babylon. I told him I thought he had travelled enough; he said he had hardly begun; and I replied, he would weep like Alexander, for more worlds to travel in.

After this conversation, M. Humboldt conducted me to the Institute, where he introduced me to Richard, and pointed out to me Jussieu, Latreille, Lacepede, Laborde, and several other of the present distinguished literary characters of France. Nothing could be more kind or attentive than his whole conduct.

Here also is a very fine library, which owes its foundation to Cardinal Mazarine. The small room, for the ordinary meetings of the Institute, is, I suppose, 50 feet long; and the principal room of the library 60 feet. Both are filled with books.

On the 24th I attended a public meeting of the Institute. Of all the dull things resorted to by way of amusement, I think a public meeting of the Institute is the most stupid. The room occupied for the purpose was anciently the church of Les Quatre Nations. Its form is a Greek cross, or perhaps rather an octagon, with four recesses; and the dome, and the recess which anciently formed the choir, are occupied by the members. The auditors, seated in the other three recesses, each of which is divided into two heights, neither see nor hear well; but a favoured portion occupying part of the centre, are better off. This was the first meeting since the Institute had been new modelled, and it was very fully attended. M. de Vaublanc made a long speech. He was followed by the Duc de Richelieu. The third was M. De Fontanes. Choiseul Gouffier, as representative of classical literature, read an essay on Homer. Cuvier, the champion of natural history, produced a report on the progress of science, and if his view of the subject was not very profound, or his mode of reasoning always perfectly accurate, it was the better suited to a public assembly. M. de Campenon was the last I heard. He read an epistle in verse. You will not expect me to tell you much about the subjects; there was little in any of them worthy of being remembered. The burthen of the song was the praise of their wise and good king, ce beau roi, ce grand roi, but what monarch is too poor to buy praise? It seemed indeed rather out of place, if we consider this as a scientific meeting, but in truth, it is merely a public exhibition to please the good people of Paris. The style of speaking is very disagreeable to a stranger. The periods are divided into short portions of a very few syllables, the last of which is dwelt upon longer than the others, and if you repeat the syllables tutitaa, tuttaa, tutitaa, tutiritaa, tutitaa, tuttaa, lengthening out the aa sufficiently, you will have no bad idea of French elocution.

Among the distinguished men whom I saw at Paris, I must not omit to mention M. Visconti, whose modesty and plain good sense in conversation are equal to his vast knowledge of antiquities. I had to take up the cudgels in his apartment in defence of Gothic architecture, but did not succeed at all, and I felt myself very much cramped from the want of a familiar acquaintance with French terms. My opponent was an Italian, and his shoulders touched his ears when I ventured to admire the simplicity of the Gothic, as exhibited in the insides of the finest cathedrals.

The first architect in Paris, in point of taste and knowledge of design, is Percier, and probably the first in Europe. I had a great deal of conversation with him about Gothic, which he does not much admire, but prefers that of the south of France, to that of the north. However he is not so bigotted against it as to wish to exclude it altogether from art, but reserves it for an occasional “bon bouche,” by way of variety; while his really substantial every day food is the Greek architecture, or rather the Roman. M. Percier is not less distinguished for his kind and judicious treatment of the young architects and students in architecture, than for his professional talents. Here is no jealousy, no keeping back information; for every species of assistance and advice they all look up to Percier: such an union is delightful.

The sçavant who is supposed to know most of Gothic architecture in Paris is M. Millin. He is certainly an able antiquary, and a man of general information, but not very profound in any thing, perhaps not even in his favourite pursuit. He has published some works of considerable value on French antiquities; but architecture is not the part in which he is strongest, though his “Antiquités nationales” consists chiefly of architectural subjects. He offered me the use of his library, which is a very excellent one on these subjects, and the permission would be of great value, if my stay at Paris were long enough to enable me to avail myself of it. I have every reason to believe that the offer was perfectly in earnest, and that he would have been gratified by my acceptance of it.

LETTER III.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

Rheims, May, 1816.

I engaged a young French artist of the name of Le Blanc to accompany me in an excursion to Chalons sur Marne, and Rheims, in order to assist me in sketching the Gothic Architecture of those two places. The road is not very pleasant; the first part lies mostly through a common field, but with trees of a tolerable size on each side: these trees admit of a side and front view of the country, but not an oblique one: from the straightness of the road, the front continues always the same, and the side view escapes in a moment, so that we have no time to dwell on any object. Tired of one everlasting defect, I began to wish the trees altogether out of the way; but before reaching Chalons, I became still more tired of an open country, to which the eye could hardly distinguish any boundary, and heartily wished for the trees again. The surface of the ground is a continued gentle undulation, and whether with or without trees, the straight road makes this form extremely sensible, and it is hardly possible to conceive any thing more dull and wearisome. This character however is not without exception. La Ferté is situated in a very pleasant valley, with scattered trees, steep banks, villages, and distant hills; and a little beyond the town, the road winds round the head of a charming hollow, of no great depth. The hills are steep, and partly woody, and the scene rich, with the mixture of trees, hedges, and cultivated ground; meadows, vineyards, and abundance of orchards, whose delicious fragrance was wafted by a soft and gentle breeze, very different from the cold winds which swept over the naked country. Chalons offered to our curiosity two Gothic churches. The cathedral, of which I have little to say, and that of Nôtre Dame, which both for its antiquity, and the beautiful effects of certain dispositions not usually met with, is extremely interesting. We find here a number of particulars, which generally accompany each other in these ancient French churches: these are, First, square towers, with semicircular headed openings. The mouldings round the windows are often ornamented; but the buttresses (which have little projection) and the surface of the walls, are always unadorned. Secondly, the windows are without tracery, and those of the choir are disposed three together, the middle one being the largest: this arrangement prevails also in Salisbury Cathedral, and in some other English buildings of the same period. Thirdly, detached single columns, which might almost be called Corinthian, support the arches at the back of the choir. Fourthly, the side aisles of the choir are generally in two stories, and frequently of the nave also: the upper story is supposed to have been for the use of the women. Fifthly, there is a gallery or triforium round the choir, above the two stories of the bas chœur, and below the windows, which is not continued along the nave. Sixthly, the end of the choir is circular, not polygonal, and the little chapels which surround it, and which are hardly ever wanting in France, are also terminated in portions of circles: in the later styles of Gothic Architecture both these became polygonal. Seventhly, the mouldings and ornaments externally are more like the Roman, than they are in the Gothic of a later period. Some of these peculiarities may be traced from the ponderous architecture which preceded it, and some may be pursued into the more ornamental style which followed. In attempting to arrange the productions of architecture in a chronological series, we shall find many aberrations in the style of building, from the exact order of dates: a fashion may be continued in one province, some years after it has ceased to be practised in another. Even in the same city the genius of one man may introduce a mode of construction afterwards generally followed, and there may yet be a considerable interval between its first introduction and its general adoption. It may be said then, that the cathedral of Amiens is less early than that of Nôtre Dame at Paris; meaning thereby to infer, not a precise priority of date in the latter, but that it exhibits indications of an earlier stage of knowledge or of taste; and announces a state of art, which, generally speaking, preceded that exhibited in the former.

I think I can now distinguish four styles of French Gothic; the earliest is that which I have just described, as exemplified in the church of Nôtre Dame, at Chalons; the second, that of the thirteenth century, is exhibited on a magnificent scale in the cathedral of Amiens. Here the lower part of the tower is ornamented with niches and statues; the upper part is comparatively plain, and very light. The windows are single, much larger than in the preceding style, divided by mullions, and I believe always rose-headed. There is only one story of aisles, which is nearly, or quite, as high as the two were before. The piers behind the choir, and every where else, except those of the chevet, are bundled, and adorned with rich capitals, representing detached foliage, or sometimes other objects: those of the chevet are sometimes, but not always simple. This word chevet, I have adopted from Whittington, without knowing whether he is correct in the use of it. It means, I think, in common use, the head-board of a bed. The part indicated by it in churches, as I understand it, is the circular or polygonal end of the elevated building forming the great avenue of the church. It is called also by the French the rond point. Our cathedrals rarely finish in this manner, and I do not recollect any appropriate name for the part in our language. Milner, I believe, calls it the apsis, but this is more properly applied to the great semicircular niche of the ancient Basilicas, in which the architecture of the nave was not resumed, as it always is in Gothic churches. This rond point or chevet, is, in this style, always a portion of a polygon, and not of a circle, and the chapels attached to it are also polygonal. The mouldings are much deeper, and more strongly contrasted than in the former style. Thus, at St. Remi, at Rheims, the bases are moulded nearly as in the first of the following figures,

Fig 1.

Fig 2.

in the cathedral of the same city, as in the last: the first exemplifying the taste of the first period; the second, that of which we are now treating. You may find in the one all the parts which are observable in the other, and in the same order. They are both modifications of the ancient Attic base, but managed very differently in the two examples, and so as to produce very different effects. A similar system of diminished heights, increased projection, and deeper hollows, is carried still further in the succeeding period, but the original disposition is no longer so strictly observed. During the prevalence of this style, the distinct leaves of the capital, imitated however clumsily from the ancient Corinthian, began to give way to running foliage. Besides the edifices already mentioned, the choir at Beauvais exhibits a late example of this style, where some of its characteristics are giving way to those of the third.

In the third style, the roses over the windows were generally succeeded by variously disposed foliage; and even the great rose windows were sometimes displaced for more intricate ornaments, or if the circular form was retained, the winding divisions of its area assumed something of a leafy form. In the former styles, the portals were almost exclusively adorned with shafts, placed in reveals, i. e. in receding angles made for them, thus,

and with statues; or three-quarter columns and statues, were placed against a sloping surface. In this, hollow mouldings are introduced, with a beautiful running foliage, the middle of which is worked in entire relief. The capitals of the piers and shafts are diminished both in number and size; and the shafts themselves form part of the masonry of the piers. This mode of construction is, however, occasionally found in much earlier buildings. There are specimens of this style in Paris, but no good one; and I have not met with any fine building altogether belonging to it.

The fourth style is more arbitrary and fanciful than the others, and less reducible to rule, so that it is difficult to say when it began or ended. Perhaps we should not estimate its full establishment earlier than the fifteenth century; but some buildings of the fourteenth exhibit more or less of the following characteristics. The piers, instead of being composed of a central mass and surrounding shafts, seem to be sometimes bundles of mouldings, with deep hollows between them; sometimes, as in the transept of the cathedral at Beauvais, they present merely an undulating outline, the projecting parts of which have the appearance of ribs, and branch out on the vaulting. The following sketches may serve to explain the general progress of the plans of the piers: in the first style they are sometimes massive cylinders; sometimes as at a. In the second, they are often as at b, but perhaps more frequently have only four attached shafts. The third varies from this towards C, and is at times still more complicated: D and E belong to the fourth style.

I have thought at times that the last mode (E) was adopted from economy. It is posterior in date to the other, and perhaps might be considered as forming a distinct style, but it is not accompanied with such a marked difference in the other parts as to enable me to separate it. The cathedral of St. Wulfram, at Abbeville, offers excellent examples of both sorts of piers. The portal and the five first arches of the nave in that church are the commencements of a most magnificent edifice, with the earlier characters of this fourth style. The remainder is an economical continuation of much inferior architecture, probably of about the year 1500. In the first the piers are formed somewhat in the manner above represented at D, in the other they are as at E; in both, the parts divide, and find their bases at different altitudes; and this peculiarity, and the want of capitals, I consider as the two most distinguishing marks of this style; for the idea of columns being thus lost, the capitals are almost always omitted. This style is also distinguished by more fanciful tracery, by mouldings interlacing with each other, and by the crenated ornament lying before the other ornaments, instead of forming the inner edge of the opening, thus:

the mouldings a a being continued close behind the ornament, and entirely detached from it. There is a crenated ornament in the great doorway at Amiens. It is on the first of a succession of ribs forming the vault of the portal; but though the inner ribs may be seen behind it, it does not lie over, or rather on the mouldings, as in the fourth style, but stands as the termination of a separate part, or division, of the architecture. This crenated ornament is also sometimes placed obliquely. Compound arches of this form

are frequently repeated in the divisions of the windows; and curved gables,

instead of straight ones, in the ornaments of the buttresses and pinnacles. In this style the architects seem to have had an aversion to flat surfaces, as well as to right angles among their mouldings. They were fond of dividing the thickness, and increasing the apparent intricacy, by giving to each half a different ramification; making for instance two sets of mullions and tracery in one opening, one before the other, and totally without correspondence.[^[8]] They divided the mouldings into separate parts, and placed those of their bases at different heights, one set of vertical mouldings passing between the bases of other vertical mouldings, and the bases of these again, are interrupted by the high plinths of the former bases, as if each penetrated the solid stone, and reappeared again where that did not cover it; many of these fancies are evidently taken from basket work.

The remaining fragment of the church of St. John the Baptist at Soissons, belongs to this style, and the new tower and spire at Chartres form a most beautiful specimen. The shrine work that surrounds the choir at Chartres is also an exquisite miniature example, which I shall mention more particularly hereafter. At about two leagues from Chalons, at a small village called L’Épine, is a little church of the fourteenth century. One tower only has been completed, and crowned with an elegant spire; but had the front been finished, it would offer perhaps the most beautiful specimen of Gothic external composition in the world. The arch of the doorway is large; even more so than the usual proportion in French churches, and its ornaments reach to the top of the rose window over it. The spire is short, with little flying buttresses at its base. It rises from an octagonal turret placed on the tower. Many of the parts themselves may be thought clumsy, but they are beautifully disposed, and every little defect vanishes in the perfection of the whole. Inside also it is an elegant building, if you except the white wash and yellow wash with which it is at present variegated. The front, including the two first arches of the nave, appears to be somewhat posterior to the rest of the church.

If we compare these examples with the buildings in our own country, we shall find the first nearly to correspond with the earliest specimens of what has been called the early English. The eastern parts of the cathedral at Canterbury form the best example I can cite to you; Salisbury Cathedral, and the transept at York, both agree with it in some particulars, while in others they approach to the second French style. Of this, after making some allowance for national differences, Westminster Abbey will furnish you a pretty good idea, or the eastern end of the cathedral at Lincoln. The nave at York would also belong to this style, excepting the vaulting and the west window. Of the third style good examples are rather deficient in England as well as in France; and perhaps it might be considered only as a variety of the second, yet it has a distinct and peculiar character. In our own buildings it is marked by a more complicated arrangement of the ribs on the vaulting; and in general it may be observed, that the English architects paid more attention to the enrichment of this part than the French. After this the two nations held a different course, and I can produce you no parallel to my fourth French style; nor have I met in France with any building like the choir at York, King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, or that of Henry the Seventh at Westminster.

I hope this general view of the subject will enable you to comprehend more easily my accounts of particular buildings, but in order to explain myself more fully, I shall request your attention to a very curious building of early date, which has been the subject of much controversy in France.

The church of St. Germain des Prés claims to be the oldest in Paris.[^[9]] The first edifice was begun by Childebert in 557, and finished in 558, a degree of expedition which does not announce much magnificence; yet we are told that it was in the shape of a cross, and that the fabric was sustained by large marble columns, the ceiling was gilt, the walls painted on a gold ground, the pavement composed of rich mosaic, and the roof externally covered with gold. This description is by Gislemer, a monk of the abbey, who lived at the end of the ninth century, after the church had been twice burnt by the Normans; and perhaps it rather gives us the author’s opinion of what a church ought to be, than what this once was. The building however does not appear to have been totally destroyed, since Morard, who became abbot in 990, perceiving that the repairs since its ruin by the Normans, had been hastily and slightly executed, determined to pull it down entirely and rebuild it; and he is said to have had the satisfaction of completing it, nearly as it exists at present, before his death, which happened in 1014. We learn from the inscription which was formerly legible on his tomb, that he added to the church a tower, containing a bell (signum): this addition may seem to throw some doubt on the extent of the works executed by him. A dedication took place in 1163, but we cannot suppose the building stood complete and useless for all that period. The old cloister was taken down in 1227, and another begun and finished in the course of the same year by Eudes, the abbot. A new refectory was commenced in 1236, and in 1244 the great chapel of the Virgin was undertaken. These were executed from the designs of Pierre de Montereau, and are cited as proofs of his exquisite taste and skill. The Chapter House, and a beautiful chamber which adjoined it, were constructed about the same time, and the dormitory over them in 1273; but all these parts have been destroyed during the revolution. A new cloister was erected in 1555, but in 1579 the church is described as being much out of repair, and though some restorations and alterations were made in 1592, yet in 1644 it was in a most dilapidated and dangerous condition. The nave was covered with the fragments of the ceiling, and in parts with the tiles of the roof; the pavement was so sunk, that it was necessary to descend to it by steps; and the vaulting of the transept threatened to fall in. The whole of these deficiencies were repaired in the course of two years, the vaulting of the transept was renewed, and the nave for the first time vaulted with stone. The pillars were ornamented with composite capitals, some of the windows enlarged, a new doorway opened to the south, and an alteration made in the disposition of the choir, which seems to have been the only part of the fabric which had been kept in sufficient repair. As it now stands the church is not a very large one. The inside is low and gloomy;[^[10]] in the nave and part of the choir, the piers consist of four half columns attached to a square pillar, the vaulting of the nave is slightly pointed, but the known recent date of this part renders its form of little consequence, nor is that of the choir of much more historical value. The piers of the chevet are cylindrical. All the arching is round, except that of the chevet, where the French and Whittington say it was pointed from necessity; but this is not very evident: the openings are smaller, but this is not the only way of carrying the arches to the same height. This may be done in the first place by making a Gothic arch formed from two centres, with a larger radius than the semicircular arches, (a pointed arch with the same radius would not rise so high) or with an arch from two centres, and the same radius on a base somewhat more elevated, or lastly, by a semicircular arch on a much more elevated base. The following diagram will explain this better than words.

To judge by the eye, the arches of St. Germain des Prés lie nearly in the middle between the second and third, i. e. between b and c. The base is considerably elevated by a perpendicular line continued above the capital, and the radius of the curve is smaller than that of the semicircle of the arches in the square part. As the architects have in some degree availed themselves of this elevated base, it is evident that they might, by doing it a little more, have preserved the semicircular form, and they must have been conscious that they had it in their power to do so. There is no gallery along the nave, but we find one round the choir, with square-headed openings. It has been much disputed whether this was, or was not the original form. M. Du Fourny contends, that as the first ceiling was of wood, and probably flat, it was highly natural that they should make these openings square-headed; but I think he is wrong. On the two towers at the entrance of the choir, we see openings, the lower parts of which are exactly similar to those abovementioned, and they are divided in the same manner by a little pillar; but these are arched above. It is probable that the arches have been removed in order to make room for the windows of the clerestory above, which in fact come down to them, but of which the lower part is filled up. All the windows are round-headed, (except those of the little chapels) without tracery or division of any sort, ornamented with a billetted moulding externally, and entirely plain within. Those of the chapels are pointed, but with the same ornament, and equally without tracery. There are some Saxon (or Norman) arcades below these windows; but there can be no doubt that these chapels in their present form (exclusively of the vaulting) are somewhat posterior to the church. The vaulting of the aisles is circular, and remarkably arched on the ridge, so as to present nearly a succession of portions of domes. The capitals, as usual in the Norman architecture, are very various, some resemble baskets, others are formed of a collection of figures of animals: some bear a resemblance to the Corinthian, but the masses are smaller in proportion to the size of the capital, and the relief less strongly marked. In this I think the artist judged rightly, and that the looseness of the Corinthian foliage would have been inconsistent with the massiveness of such a pillar. Here are also some decidedly composite capitals under the vaulting, but these were probably introduced in the repairs of 1644. Whittington says, that the proportions of the columns of the choir approach nearly to those of the Corinthian order. The shafts of the latter have full eight diameters in height: those of the former about four and a half.

The western tower is entirely incrusted in a wall of modern masonry except at the top, where we may observe a story of what we call Saxon architecture, with circular headed windows divided by little columns. In the other two towers, which flank the clerestory of the choir, the arches are also semicircular; but the openings are separated by piers, not by columns, and the workmanship of both, though somewhat differing, is more rude than that of the western tower. Judging by the little portion still exhibited, I should conclude this the latest of the three. Yet, as the masonry of these two ruder towers forms an essential part of the edifice, and the aisles are continued through their lower story, without exhibiting any difference of style in that part, we can hardly suppose them prior to the rest, more especially as the arches of the recesses, corresponding with the gallery of the choir, are surmounted with pointed arches. I cannot attribute this form to any alteration, because these arches do not correspond in style with any other restoration of the building. I must therefore be content to attribute the body of the church to Morard, excluding the vaulting, and to doubt about all the rest.

The western portal of this church exhibits the pointed arch. It is at present ornamented with shafts set in reveals, but some of them are restorations, and occupy the place either of statues, or of columns with statues attached to them: above is a series of ten small figures, whose faces have been broken by the Iconoclasts of the eighteenth century. The lower figures have been adduced as proofs of the antiquity of the tower, because they are supposed (two of them at least) to represent the family of Childebert, but the conclusion certainly does not follow from the premises, and I have no doubt that this portal, ancient as it is, was posterior to the body of the church. To make a theory for the chronology of this edifice from the dates we find in books, compared with the evidence of the architecture, we may suppose the bulk of the western tower to have been built in the eighth century, but nothing of this work remains exposed to view: the body of the church, northern tower, and lower part of the southern tower by Morard, between 990 and 1014: the upper part of the southern tower very shortly after. The upper part of the western tower followed. The western portal was certainly posterior to 1028: the reasons for fixing on this date are derived from the cathedral at Chartres. Bulliart does not give any representation of the arch of this doorway, and Whittington’s whole theory seems to indicate that he supposed it semicircular. I shall resume this subject in my observations on Chartres.

I have kept you so long vacillating about St. Germain, that you are tired of it, and so am I. After all, one derives but little satisfactory evidence from a building so rude, and so frequently altered, but it has been strongly pressed into the history of French architecture, and I could not pass it over; and now, after this terrible digression, I will return to the church at Nôtre Dame, at Chalons, an edifice in many respects similar, but of a much more finished construction, exhibiting more of its original form, and to judge from a comparison of the internal evidence, of a date very little later. It is an excellent specimen of what I have called the first style of French Gothic, but it is not entirely free from alterations. This church is said to have had formerly eight towers, and as many spires. I cannot make out the places of more than four; two at the end of the nave, and two at the entrance of the choir, immediately beyond the transept. Such an arrangement seems not to have been unfrequent; but here, both in this building, and in the cathedral, these towers flank the aisles of the choir: at St. Germain’s at Paris they abut upon the clerestory, and the aisles pass through them. On one of the towers in front, there is a wooden spire, the general form of which is an acute octangular pyramid, with a small square pyramid on the spaces left at each angle of the tower. This is the arrangement of the pinnacles over the buttresses of the cathedral of Rheims, but it has nothing to do with the Saxon towers of this building. The style of these towers much resembles the summit of the western tower of St. Germain, but is more ornamental, the semicircular headed windows being divided by groups of little columns, and the parts subdivided by a detached column. The projections are remarkably bold. There is no pointed arch in any of these towers inside or out, except in the upper story of two of them, and here they are without doubt of a later date; and the architecture of the church, which is mostly pointed, is not so united to the towers as to bring in the parts with perfect regularity. There are two stories of aisles to the nave as well as to the choir, and in some points of view the effect of this is so pleasing, that I feel quite reluctant to condemn it. The upper story cuts in places some ancient mouldings. In this vaulting a is the lowest point of the ridge, b is somewhat higher, and c still higher.

The piers of the chevet are circular, with capitals in some degree resembling those of the Corinthian order, and the slender detached columns behind the choir have, still more nearly, Corinthian capitals and proportions. They present something peculiarly graceful and pleasing in their appearance. As they certainly do not appear calculated to sustain the thrust of an arch, it is difficult to shew a reasonable ground for the admiration one cannot help feeling. The union of circular chapels with the circular end of the choir and its aisles, each part having its ornaments exceedingly well disposed, is also a beautiful circumstance in the external view; but it is rather conceived than seen in this instance, as the outside is much encumbered by small houses, and there are some enormous plain buttresses, on the date of which I will not pretend to decide: if they are posterior to the church, the original ceiling must have been of wood. The pavement is almost entirely composed of old monuments engraved in stone, exactly in the manner of the brass plates in England. Many of them represent the architecture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: one or two, from their extreme simplicity, may be taken from the architecture of the twelfth. There are none in which the arch is not pointed, and the trefoil ornament is always exhibited. Amongst, I dare say, two hundred monuments of this sort, I observed only one figure in mail, and that I could not find again on searching for it; and a fragment of one in plate armour: the earliest date is 1201, but the figures are not perfectly clear. There are also tombs of a blue stone, inlaid with white. I longed for Mr. L.; here were materials for an excellent lecture on the progress and changes of dress among our forefathers. I do not know that there is any thing amongst them which might not be found in England, but at the same time I know no place in England where there is such a collection of costumes.

The cathedral at Chalons has a tower at each end of the west side of the transept, a disposition not at all pleasing. Parts of these towers seem to be of the same date with those of Nôtre Dame, but they have been altered and added to in the seventeenth century, at which time the present vaulting, the two spires, and the whole of the west front, were erected by the Cardinal de Noailles. The body of the edifice appears to belong to the thirteenth century. Its nave has four ranges of windows: those of the clerestory; those of the galleries or triforia, great part of which are opened into windows; of the aisles; and of the side chapels. The last form no part of the original design; they are very low, and it would be an improvement to take them away. The slender spires which surmount the old towers, are perforated in all directions; and though they cannot be much praised, have something of a light and elegant effect. There is a considerable quantity of good stained glass in Nôtre Dame, and some likewise in the cathedral, but not so much; and the great rose window at the west end of the latter is entirely without it. I was in the church in the evening when the setting sun shone full into the building, and produced a painful glare, instead of the rich mellow splendor of painted glass in similar circumstances.

Chalons was the first place where I observed in common use the semicircular tiles, which are usually shown to us in Italian landscapes, but they were small and ill laid, and had a crowded effect.

We left Chalons early on the morning of the 30th of April, and for the first six leagues saw nothing but a boundless common field. The diligence does not change horses, but stops to rest them for an hour or two in the middle of the journey. The harness was partly rope, and partly leather, and some of the traces were chains. The rope traces are rather apt to break, because no one thinks of putting new ones, as long as there is any chance that the old ones will hold out the stage, but the chain traces are worse. They are originally slight, but when a link gives way its place is supplied by a bit of leather; this seldom lasts long, and it is not uncommon for it to give way a second time in the same stage, but with the most heroic perseverance the postillions apply another piece of leather. I have not yet met with the phenomenon of an iron chain entirely of leather, but I hope to see some considerable approach to it. The latter half of the ride presented to our view a range of hills, about two miles distant on the left, not very high, but steep and broken, the upper part mostly covered with wood, and the lower with vineyards. These hills form the edge of the materials occupying the Paris basin, which every where exhibit a strong contrast to the rounded swells of the chalk country. There were also some little hills on the right, but these were naked, except a few groups of trees at the base. This, though not a beautiful landscape, was a considerable improvement on the shelterless plain of the morning. There was something at least to amuse the imagination, but it did not last long, and we returned long before reaching Rheims to the usual expanse of common field.

LETTER IV.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

Paris, May, 1816.

Having conducted you to Rheims, I now proceed to give you an account of what I saw there, and if it should contain a few digressions as long as those in my last, I hope you will forgive me, for this Gothic Architecture offers continual temptations to lead me out of the direct road. I shall begin, not with the cathedral, but with a much more ancient building, which is supposed to have served as a cathedral before the present edifice was erected. The church of St. Remi is said by Whittington to have been dedicated in 1049. I know not whether he mean the nave or the choir, but they are certainly of different periods. The Recueil des Abbayes, &c. says it was built in the time of Charlemagne, and consecrated by Leo IX., who was pope from 1048 to 1054; the nave, except the vaulting, is much in the style of St. Germain des Prés, at Paris, but the pillars are of various shapes, and do not seem the result of one design. There are two stories of aisles to the nave, and to the straight part of the choir, and above these are the principal windows of the clerestory, with semicircular heads, and over them a range of circular openings, which I do not recollect to have seen elsewhere. The buttresses, externally, are alternately semicylindrical with a small projection, and rectangular with a very considerable one; the first are parts of the original structure, and evidently denote the roof to have been of timber, and not vaulted; indeed all the vaulting appears to be posterior to the walls and piers; the latter were probably added at the same time with the vaulting which rendered them necessary. The middle of the western front is a restoration, in which many old parts have been re-used, and the fragments of marble and granite render it probable that the spoils of some Roman building were employed in the ancient edifice. The two old towers remain, the southern doorway, and the window over it are beautiful specimens of what I have denominated in a former letter, the third style of Gothic; and are probably of the fourteenth century. The choir is of the first style, very much resembling that of Nôtre Dame at Chalons, and though this church is certainly inferior in general effect to the one just mentioned, yet some of the partial views it presents are, I think, superior to any thing there. The flying buttresses of the choir are supported, on their first separation from the building, by a little column; and a narrow gallery, which surrounds the clerestory, passes between these columns and the body of the church. The same disposition prevails at Nôtre Dame at Chalons, at Amiens, and at the cathedral at Rheims. There are some granite shafts of columns in the church, which have perhaps belonged to an ancient temple.

Under this church is a crypt, where we are shewn the tombs of Clothaire the First, and of Sigismond, king of Burgundy. The former died in 561, probably at Soissons; the latter was thrown with his wife and family into a well at Orleans, and we should not certainly expect to find him in the same chapel with one of his principal enemies at Rheims. A simple vault, or succession of vaults of small dimensions, can give us no internal evidence of the time of its construction.

And now, in order to preserve something of a chronological order, let me transport you from Rheims to Mantes, where I have since seen a church which is a puzzle for the antiquaries. Whittington says that it was built by Eudes de Montreuil, and I understand him to quote Millin for the assertion; but I cannot find the passage in that writer. On the contrary, Millin tells us that it was built by the same architect who built Royaumont. Now, Royaumont was finished in 1228, sixty-one years before the death of E. de Montreuil, which took place in 1289. The first church which was erected at Mantes is said to have been built in 865, but it was destroyed by William the Conqueror; and we certainly see at present no remains of any edifice of that date, yet Millin seems inclined to consider the northern doorway of the western portal as part of the original construction. Altogether this church has the appearance of a building that has undergone considerable alterations at different periods. In what I take to be the original work, the nave has two stories of aisles, the end of the choir is round, and the windows are without tracery. In the clerestory and in the lower aisles the windows are pointed; in the upper aisles they are entire circles; all have Saxon ornaments externally, and are quite plain within. All these circumstances indicate a style prior to that existing at the beginning of the thirteenth century, which is the date generally assigned to the edifice, under the auspices of Blanche of Castille, mother to Louis the Ninth. Two towers have been added at the west end. The southern, which is said to be the most ancient, is a very strange composition of slender Gothic. The upper story but one is surrounded by a colonnade, if the expression be admissible, of two ranges of columns, one above another, without either arch or architrave between them, but merely connected with the wall by a stone slab on each capital of the lower range. The upper range supports arches, on which rest several unconnected slabs, steeply sloping, wrought into scales, and conducing neither to the beauty, the strength, nor the shelter of the edifice. The north-west tower, built, according to the tradition of the place, three hundred years after the other, is much less light in its construction, and not much more handsome. It would rather appear more ancient than posterior to the first, if there were any difference, but the summit is comparatively modern, and this has probably given birth to the opinion that its date is so much posterior.

Many of the chapels appear to have been built in the thirteenth century, at which time the vaulting of the nave and choirs was perhaps added, and some of the windows of the upper aisle were altered from their original circular form, into that which they now bear. Later still (in 1405) the porch of the southern door of the western entrance was erected. It is very beautiful, and is the only part of the edifice which is so. Besides these, are a great many other incongruities which are probably assignable to different periods. The vaulting is with oblique groins, as at Beauvais. You know, that in oblique groining, the piers are usually alternately larger and smaller. In this church, the direct arch between the greater piers seems to be formed on an equilateral triangle, or nearly so, rising on the capitals of the shafts; but on the smaller piers the perpendicular line is continued considerably above the capital, and the direct arch between them is consequently very obtuse. Perhaps it was this whim which attracted the admiration of Sufflot, who is said to have been lost in astonishment at the hardiesse of the vaulting, although the nave is only 34 feet wide. The boldness of the architect is however sufficiently conspicuous in other respects, for the piers of the chevet are only 1 foot 11 inches in diameter, to support a vaulting which rises 102 feet 6 inches (English measure) from the ground. One of them is consequently crippled, and has been banded and supported on every side with iron. M. Gabriel, one of the companions of Soufflot, in his examination of this church, contends that the six columns of the chevet might all be cut away, and that nevertheless, by the scientific disposition of the stones, the upper part and the vaulting would remain secure: this indeed would be something wonderful. All the arches of the nave and choir are pointed.

So much for Mantes, but I have still to trespass upon your patience before I bring you back to Rheims, with an account of a building, which from its early date, its peculiar architecture, and its great magnificence, I consider the most interesting specimen of the Gothic style in France, or probably in the world. I had conceived, from what Whittington says of it, pp. 54, 55, 57, that I should find a building of the Norman taste, but this is not the case; Chartres is decidedly Gothic, of a peculiar manner indeed, but such as one would suppose posterior to all the three edifices above described. There are some additions to the original building, but these are extremely well marked, and the mass of the edifice is so clearly the result of one design, and the production of one period, and the time of its erection is so well authenticated, that it takes place of all other cathedrals in antiquarian interest, and yields to few in beauty. Let me relate to you what information I have been able to pick up on the spot, it may help you to form some idea of what one has to wade through to arrive at any satisfactory results in the history of French Gothic. I first bought a little book of the history of Chartres, in order to obtain the dates of the different parts, but I learnt from it little of what I wanted to know. The author begins by telling us, that the ancient nations of Gaul were the most religious people in the world, and that the innocence of their lives, and the holiness of their priesthood, made them worthy to participate in the most important revelations, and to have the future incarnation of the Word shewn to them, long before it was accomplished. There were, he says, three classes of people to whom this communication was made, the Magi, the Sybils, and the Druids. The first learnt it by their knowledge of astrology, the second received the gift of prophecy in recompense of their virginity, and the Druids knew by a prophetic spirit rather than by any fortuitous prediction, that a virgin would one day bear a son for the salvation of the world; and they consequently raised altars in several places, inscribed virgini parituræ, (did they write Latin?) and amongst others there was a very celebrated one at Chartres.

When afterwards Christianity was preached in these parts, there were three circumstances of similarity in the Christian and Druidical rites, which greatly facilitated its progress. The worship of the virgin, who, according to their traditions, was to bring forth a son; the offering of bread and wine, usual in their sacrifices; and the adoration of the Tau, that is, of the cross. The Christian service was performed at the ancient altar of the virgin, and crowds thronged from all parts of the universe to present their offerings. The present cathedral is built over the grotto where this altar formerly stood.

The most famous relic here was the shift of the virgin, which was stolen from a Jew widow by some pious patricians of Constantinople. It was taken from them by an emperor, whose piety was, I suppose, of the same sort, and presented to Charlemagne, who brought it to Aix. It was removed thence by Charles the Bald, and given to the cathedral at Chartres. This relic has of course performed abundance of miracles, but most of these are what would be called by many people in England special providences. And, if amongst us, we had no division into sects, would not these special providences soon become to be considered as miracles, and alleged as proofs of the truth of particular doctrines? We have no reason then to pride ourselves on our freedom from such superstitions, as it depends on circumstances over which we have no control, but much cause to be thankful, not that we have this or that form of worship, but that we have the liberty of thinking for ourselves on religious subjects. This book is not an antiquated work: it was printed in 1808, and may serve to prove, that whatever injury the revolution may have done to religion in the minds of the French, it has by no means rooted out superstition.

There is a public library at Chartres, containing between twenty and twenty-five thousand volumes, and I there found a history of the city deserving more attention; although even in this, the author employs 200 pages in telling us what happened before the arrival of the Romans. This folly seems as strong in France as it is said to be among the Welsh; and many of the local histories are prefaced by an account of Samothès, the son of Japhet, who first peopled Gaul, and a long series of princes, who gave successively their names to the Druids and Bards, to the Celts, the Gauls, and even to the Francs. These, instead of being a German nation, were the subjects of Francus, the son of Hector, called Astyanax and Scamander by Homer, who came to France and married the daughter of Rhemus, king of Rheims. It was only a return to the land of his forefathers, for Dardanus, the founder of the Trojan line, was a Frenchman.

But to return to this History of Chartres, which was written by a M. V. Chevard, and printed at Chartres. It assures us that the old cathedral was burnt in 1020; that Fulbert, who was then bishop, began the present edifice almost immediately, but that it was not completed at the time of his death, in 1028, although it appears to have been considerably advanced. We are even told that it was finished before the middle of the eleventh century, but this word is often used very loosely in the accounts of Gothic buildings. Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, who died in 1083, covered the main body of the edifice with lead. The basnef, the towers, and the west front, were finished in 1145. The south porch was added in 1060, by Jean Cormier, or Jean Le Sourd, physician to Henry I. of France. The famous steeple is one of those of the western front. The place was formerly occupied by a wooden one, but this being burnt in 1507, gave rise to the present, which rose almost immediately from the ruins. I had heard so much of the height of this steeple, that the first view of it disappointed me in this respect, but the great elevation of the body of the building in the French churches, effectually prevents any such extreme impression of height as is produced by the spire of Salisbury Cathedral; or, at least, the elevation must be indeed enormous to occasion it. The vaulting of these edifices is more lofty, and the space between that and the timber roof is much greater than is usual in England; indeed, sometimes in our churches the direct tie-beam is omitted, in order to bring the vaulting absolutely into the roof. The roof itself is also higher. Altogether the ridge of the roof at Chartres must be full 50 feet higher than that at Salisbury, and 50 feet added to the mass of the building, and taken from the spire, will greatly diminish the apparent elevation of the latter. The height of the edifice is very much lost in its bulk. It even forms a base for the lighter part, and in some degree a standard by which to measure it. Afterwards, however, in walking round the town, and seeing the cathedral in different points of view, I gave to the height its full value. The impression was not that of a very high steeple, but of a very lofty church: an effect greatly enhanced by its fine situation, on the summit of a hill, with the town collected at its foot. The whole height of the new spire is 403 English feet. The upper part of the tower and the spire, are of the most light and beautiful work imaginable. The ornaments are executed with the greatest delicacy, and in entire relief, the stems of the vines, and the bunches of grapes which enrich the mouldings being entirely detached, and the work suspended merely by the extremities of the leaves; and all the veins and ribs are shown as if they were to be seen at hand, instead of at an elevation of 300 feet. Even parts, which cannot be seen at all from below, are finished with the same care. The staircase, by which one ascends this spire, forms a little tower of itself, also of open work, quite independent of that which supports the spire. The opposite spire is much more solid and simple in its form, and seems to be part of the edifice of Fulbert; its height is 365 feet, and its appearance is more like that of Norwich than any other English spire I am acquainted with, but the resemblance is not at all continued in the tower which supports it. There are several pinnacles rising above the base of the spire, and the whole composition is more Gothic than at Norwich. As the cathedral was two or three times destroyed by fire, before it was erected in its present form, i. e. before the time of Fulbert, it is possible that some of the lower part of this tower belonged to an earlier edifice; the pointed arch is however exhibited in it. The whole western front is very beautiful. The porch is ornamented with statues and columns, as at Rheims and Amiens, but not in such profusion, nor is it so deep. The execution is also more stiff and rude, and the resemblance is probably much stronger to the western doorway of St. Germain, as it existed before the revolution, than to either of these buildings. Some of the statues are merely stuck to the little columns behind them, under others there is a projection to receive the feet, but very small, and apparently insufficient. Over them are small canopies, which are likewise attached to the shaft of the column. The capitals of these columns, instead of foliage, are formed of little figures, with canopies over them, surmounted by what have the appearance of little models of large buildings. It is remarkable that, although the arches of this doorway are somewhat pointed, yet the architecture represented in the models never is so. In the south portal, on the contrary, which I shall describe by and by, where these models are tenfold more abundant, a considerable number have pointed arches. This circumstance seems very extraordinary if this western doorway was built, as is asserted, eighty-five years after the southern porch. Over the great door is a triple window, the middle division being the largest and highest, the only instance of this disposition in the building. Above this is a magnificent rose window, but of simpler arrangement, and a larger portion of solids than we find in those of a later date. The windows of the nave and choir are also terminated by a rose, but with this singular difference, that in the great roses the exterior is ornamented with mouldings, while the internal faces are plain; in the smaller ones, on the contrary, the internal faces are moulded and the outside is plain.

The southern porch is very curious on many accounts. It was built, as I have already said, in 1060, by Jean Cormier, physician to Henry I. This date is important, because it seems exceedingly well authenticated, and the addition of the porch proves the church, if not finished, yet to have been in a state of great forwardness at that period. There are openings, not arched, but square-headed, combining all the parts of this porch into a sort of open portico. It abounds with detached shafts, of which there are none within the church, with large and small figures, and with models of architecture, in some of which, as I have already remarked, the pointed arch is exhibited. The arches of the porch itself are all pointed. The footstools of the figures are usually themselves grotesque human figures, and many of them with crowns. These statues, and the canopies over them, are much better managed than in the western front. They are rudely finished, but the labour bestowed on the lace of some of the garments shews that this rudeness was the effect, not of negligence, but of want of skill. The foliage of the capital of the columns spreads over the underside of the canopy. Above the porch is a range of five windows, of equal size and height, and over these a rose window. In the transept at Amiens, the angular spaces between a similar range of arches, and a circle above them, are opened, and form additions to the rose window; here they are closed, and no attempt is made to unite them. There is, as usual, a gallery in front of the gable, and at each end of this gallery is a small octangular tower, surmounted by a spire. This seems to have been a common mode of finishing in the early French Gothic; it occurs at a church in Soissons, which bears all the marks of antiquity; and in other places. The general opening of the windows, both in the clerestory and aisles, in this church, is round-headed, but they are divided by a large plain mullion (such as I have never seen elsewhere) into two parts, each of which has a pointed arch, and over them is a rose.

It was, perhaps, part of the original design to have a tower on each side of each end of the transept, and one on each side of the choir, but the parts which are now exhibited of these towers, above the roofing of the church, seem to be of later date; none of them are finished, and what has been performed of the two latter does not correspond with the work of the other four. These are ornamented with numerous little shafts, extremely long and slender, most of which are united to the solid masonry, but those at the angles are detached, in order to give an exaggerated appearance of lightness. I imagine them to be posterior to those of Nôtre Dame, at Paris, but earlier than those at Rheims; but among the various efforts which ultimately completed the first mentioned of these churches, we cannot determine during which the towers were built, and the priority of date is left in great uncertainty, for the style of building is not decisive, or rather, I have not sufficient knowledge to be able to determine it from that character. The northern front of the cathedral at Chartres presents a similar style of ornament, but without the projecting porch, which makes so important and interesting a feature on the south.

Chartres is very rich in painted glass; in this respect it far exceeds any other cathedral I have seen; the colours are deep, without losing their brilliancy, and the light is stronger than at Rheims, although the windows of the aisles, with only one or two exceptions, are painted, as well as those of the clerestory. The glass is said to be half an inch thick; I believe this is not much thicker than some of the old glass in York cathedral. Many of the windows contain escutcheons. This church is 461 feet long internally, and the vaulting is 113 feet high, the piers of the nave are composed alternately of octagonal pillars, with four circular shafts attached to them, and of circular pillars, with as many octagonal shafts attached to them. All the arches and the vaulting are pointed, except perhaps (and of this I am not sure), that the cross vaulting of the nave may be of circular arches. The construction of the roof has been much praised, but it is not good; the timbers are all small, and the trusses are very close together. At the point of the choir there is as usual a maître poutre of immense size, which you are told supports the whole roof, but which in fact supports nothing, being itself suspended by the converging rafters. There is a space of about six feet between the tie-beam and the top of the vaults.

SHRINE-WORK AT CHARTRES.
London. Published by J & A Arch. Cornhill. March 1^st. 1828.

The single story of side aisles, the polygonal end of the choir, the piers which support the groins behind it, and the windows of the choir single, and not disposed by threes, all unite to refer this building to the second style of French Gothic; which the greater massiveness of the work, and the presence of some circular arches in the towers, might otherwise render doubtful. The single story of aisles and the greater height of the building seem to indicate a later period than Nôtre Dame at Paris, but on the other hand the smaller windows, surmounted in the nave by a single rose, the more solid divisions of the great rose windows, and the style of finishing externally, announce an earlier stage of the art. If I had to estimate the date from the architecture, I should be very much puzzled by many peculiarities, either very rare, or not met with elsewhere; but on the whole, excepting a portion of the towers, I could not have placed it before 1150.

With good proportions, beautiful parts, and finely coloured windows, you will conclude that the whole impression produced is sublime; but I wish I had you here, where you would find some better proof of this, than the cold conviction of your reason. The people seemed very devout, and were all day long kissing the pedestals, and various parts of the decorative architecture, about a figure of the virgin, which is almost black. In this part of France the virgin is usually represented with a very dark complexion; and such is, I believe, the case with the most popular images of her in all Catholic countries. There is a labyrinth in the pavement which is said to be a league, measured along all its folds; a countryman applied to me to know if this was true. I told him it was impossible, and shewed him that the number of turns, multiplied by the length of the middle one, only gave 1320 feet, but he was determined to believe as his fathers had believed before him.

I must not quit the cathedral without mentioning the beautiful shrine-work which surrounds the choir, to see which is alone well worth a journey to Chartres. It consists of forty-five compartments, forming a sort of continued gallery, and contains in all about two hundred and fifty figures, each of three feet high. It is a very curious specimen, both for the extreme delicacy of the workmanship, and as a model of the last period of Gothic architecture in France. It is complete point lace in stone, and some of the threads are not thicker than the blade of a penknife. The style is rich and beautiful, or at least many parts are beautiful; but as a whole, it wants simplicity, and is inferior in design to the architecture of King’s College chapel at Cambridge, and perhaps even to Henry VII. chapel at Westminster; but the extreme intricacy of the multiplied ornaments in the last-mentioned building does not please me. In the work at Chartres the disposition of the masses is much more simple and intelligible, but the tracery and detail of the ornaments are even more confused. It is worthy of notice that the vaulting continues entirely simple, and without any trace of the palm-tree branching, exhibited in that of King’s College chapel, or of the still more complicated arrangement of that of Redcliff church at Bristol. This fine work is in two series, the first of which is said to have been executed with the surplus of the money raised for erecting the spire. It is precisely of the same style as that erection, if we make allowance for its greater delicacy, adapted to the different nature of the work; but no dates are marked on it: this forms the largest part. The second series exhibits some traces of the knowledge of Roman architecture, and has dates from 1523 to 1530. This is ornamented with arabesques in imitation of the Italian cinque cento. I observed two dates of a later period, T. Bovdin Mil vi^c xi, and a similar inscription of 1612, but there is no difference of style to account for them.

I was led by the accounts of Chartres to suppose I should find some vestiges of very high antiquity in the crypt under the cathedral, but I was disappointed; there seems to be nothing but what is coeval with the building, and the vaults do not extend under the whole edifice, but only under the chapels and side aisles. The people in this neighbourhood are more unfavourably disposed towards the Bourbons than those who live to the east of Paris. A woman observed that I was one of those who had brought back Louis XVIII. She had nothing to say against them or him, but the tones of her voice did not promise that she would say any thing for either. The conducteur of the diligence perhaps was not a Napoleonite. “Whether God or the devil, Napoleon or Louis XVIII. be on the throne,” he observed, “the laws should be obeyed. There were revolutions in France before this, of which they talk so much; for instance, in the times of Charles V., who drove the English out of France; and if the French were now as devoted to their country as they were then, these things could never have happened.” I could not be displeased with any Frenchman for a feeling of soreness at the interference of foreigners in the affairs of his country, however political circumstances may have required it.

The two churches last described, and that of Nôtre Dame at Paris, may be considered as belonging to a style of Gothic, intermediate between the first and second of those I have enumerated; and as I wish to give you a sort of historical series elucidating the progress of architecture, I shall here introduce some account of the French metropolitan edifice. This is said to have been originally founded by Childebert, in 522. It had 30 marble columns, and very large windows, according to the account left us of it by Fortunatus, a cotemporary poet.[^[11]] This description, however, has nothing to do with the present building, which was commenced in 1010 by Robert the Pious. After his death it was neglected, and little was done till 1165, when Maurice de Sully, a liberal and munificent prelate, filled the see of Paris, and to him we seem to have been indebted for the greater part of the edifice. He destroyed the old church of Childebert, which had existed till this period; and in the year 1181 the eastern part was so far advanced, that it was consecrated by Henry, the Pope’s legate, and by the bishop himself, who died the next year. Odo de Sully succeeded, and prosecuted the work with great zeal till his death in 1208, so that for forty-three years from the resumption of the work, it was carried on with spirit, and we must suppose a large portion of it was completed. Pierre de Nemours, who died in 1220, is thought to have finished the nave and western front. The last figure of a king exhibited in its galleries is that of Philip Augustus, who died in 1223, and this is one reason for supposing it finished in his reign, but it is not a very strong one. The south transept was not, however, begun till 1257, as we are informed by a Gothic inscription on the porch, and an ancient church of St. Stephen was then destroyed to make room for it. The present rose window was renewed on the model of the ancient one in 1726. The date of the north transept is unknown; it probably preceded the south; but its porch and chapels are assigned by Le Grand to the fourteenth century.

The front is heavy, but not so heavy as usually represented in engravings; I think this appearance arises in part from the square solidity of the towers, and in part from the horizontal lines being marked too strongly, a circumstance which always produces a bad effect in Gothic architecture. I have not been able to determine whether it was intended to crown these towers with spires: I am inclined to answer in the affirmative, but rather from analogy than from direct proof. According to Landon there were twenty-five statues of kings in the arches over the western porch, viz. thirteen of the first race, nine of the second, and seven of the Capetian. They entirely filled one range of arches and no more. Now there are two ranges of arches above the doorways in this front, the lower of which, according to the elevation given by the same author, presents twenty-four niches, and the upper twenty-six. Query, how many statues were there, and where did they stand? Felibien, in his plate of the elevation, which is much better than Landon’s, figures twenty-eight niches in the lower arcade, viz. nine in the middle, seven on one side, and eight on the other, and four on the buttresses. The upper arcade is a gallery not intended for statues, the middle part of which is open on both sides. The arches of the lower range have trefoil heads, and appear from below to be entirely composed of models of architecture. The canopies of the portal abound also with models of architecture, resembling in this, and in the style of sculpture, the south portal at Chartres. Perhaps the design of these, though not the execution, may be attributed to the time of Maurice de Sully, in 1165, but this brings the date a century later than that of Chartres. I wish very much to discover that the south porch in that cathedral was of 1160, instead of 1060, but I cannot persuade myself that the physician of Henry I. lived to build it a hundred years after his sovereign’s death. The Matilda mentioned as having contributed to the church, may be the widow of the emperor.

Whittington says, “The eastern end, which is triagonal and very plain, was probably one of the first Gothic structures in France (1168). This plainness, from a proper regard to uniformity, was maintained in the subsequent part of the building, excepting in the chapels, which are of later date;” this I do not comprehend; the eastern end is semi-circular, and is richly ornamented externally with slender shafts, and spires of different heights, which may perhaps have been added at the same time with the chapels, if these are indeed posterior, but assuredly they do not make part of them. It seems to me that those parts which remain without ornament have never been completed, for they exhibit abrupt terminations, which were not in the taste of the Gothic architects at any period. All the flying buttresses are exceedingly slender, and altogether the construction of Nôtre Dame may be considered as among the boldest, and most successful, existing in Gothic architecture; although even here we find some traces of the too great operation of the thrust of the arches of the side aisles.

On entering Nôtre Dame one is struck with the double range of side aisles and open chapels besides, making an entire width of seven divisions, instead of five, as at Amiens, or three, as in our churches. It is generally supposed, that if two dimensions of a building are great, they will appear of less magnitude if the third be great also. For instance, in a very large building, great height will diminish the apparent extent in the plan, great length will diminish the apparent width, and a narrow room will look higher than a wide one of the same height and length. Yet certainly the impression of space is much less at Nôtre Dame, than in the narrower and loftier edifice at Amiens. One of our travellers has estimated the size of Nôtre Dame as about half that of Westminster Abbey; and some non architectural friends with whom I have talked on the subject, thought that he perhaps underrated it, but that certainly the French building was much smaller than the English. Nôtre Dame is 416 feet long internally, and 153 wide: the length of the transept hardly surpassing the width of the nave and side aisles. Westminster Abbey is 360 feet long and 72 wide. The transept, indeed, is 195 feet long, but the whole internal area of the French building must be at least twice as much as that of the English. Whence is this very false estimate of its size? Does it depend merely on the injudicious arrangement of the parts, or is it in some degree to be attributed to a patriotic determination to find every thing best in our own country? Here are two stories of side aisles, and this double range, and the very slender columns which divide the openings of the upper, are in some points of view very pleasing. There are three arches over each of the larger openings below, united into one common arch; but the space included between the three smaller arches and the larger one is a blank wall. This has a very bad effect, especially as it is a part in which we are accustomed to expect ornament; indeed the arrangement of this gallery is inferior to that before noticed in Nôtre Dame at Chalons. The vaulting of the nave and choir is with oblique groins, as at Beauvais and Mantes. The vaulting itself, according to Millin, is only 6 inches thick.

With the cathedral of Nôtre Dame I conclude what I had in my mind to say to you of the progress of Gothic architecture, previous to its full development in the cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais. Another proud specimen of architecture of that period is found in the cathedral of Rheims. It was founded, we are told, in 818, but I have some doubt whether the early structure thus spoken of was not the church of St. Remi, and not one occupying the site of the present cathedral. It was burnt in 1210, together with great part of the city of Rheims. A new cathedral was immediately begun, but the ancient crypt was left; now we are not shewn any ancient crypt at the cathedral, but there is one at St. Remi. The work went on with great rapidity, for the altar was dedicated on the 18th October, 1215, and the body of the church was finished in 1241. It appears probable that this finishing does not include the famous western front, which however was completed before 1295. Thus you see the bulk of the building was erected in thirty-one years; while at Paris two active bishops could not bring theirs to so forward a state by forty-three years of persevering exertion, although the foundations were previously laid, and probably a considerable quantity of materials prepared, and although the transept was not included. The size was not much greater, and the expense must have been decidedly less, on account of the inferior richness of the latter building. This difference is rather surprising, especially when we take into consideration, that the Parisian bishops had the support of the monarch. Of the portal, or west front, the plate in Whittington is the best I have seen, though it retains many errors of a large but very bad engraving, published in 1625. It must have been partly copied from this, or from some other, which may be traced to a common origin, but not without a reference to the building, because several mistakes are rectified, and the details are better given, though the drawing is on a much smaller scale. One important error is not to be attributed to the old plate; the octagonal turrets placed at each angle of the western towers, are not closed, but entirely open, consisting merely of the slender shafts, which are kept in their upright position by numerous iron ties. The part above the arches supported by these shafts is the base of an unfinished spire, and the whole summit of the towers is evidently of a temporary nature; even as a temporary finish, however, there neither are, nor apparently ever were, any fleurs-de-lys.

In the richness and magnificence of the external architecture, Rheims is superior to any other cathedral I have seen, and probably to any which has ever been erected. Whittington’s plate above cited will give a tolerably correct idea of the western front, but none of the effect produced by the same profusion, extended over the whole surface of a great building. I do not know whether the view of the back of the choir is not even more striking than that of the great entrance, the buttresses all terminating in little spires, all the parts running up into pinnacles, all subordinate to a spire, 256 feet in height, which crowns the rond point, and is surmounted by an angel of gilt bronze. I do not know, by the bye, whether this angel be of gilt bronze, but I know that such a piece of magnificence existed at Chartres, and my imagination, rather perhaps than my memory, pictures it here. Nothing but an angel would do in such a place, the situation is far too dangerous for that of any human being. This spire on the chevet, perhaps rather hurts than assists the general effect of the church, when seen from a distance, but after passing near the back of the choir, no one could wish it away, and if the spires in front, and whatever was intended in the centre, were completed, it would probably form an agreeable accessory from every point of view. All these spires and pinnacles are richly decorated, and what is more, the ornaments are highly beautiful, both in design and execution; the sort of plume which finishes some of the pinnacles, is one of the most graceful terminations I have met with. There are some trifling differences of detail in the corresponding parts, but the general form is always similar, and the character is uniformly preserved. None of these differences are distinguishable without examination.

Passing from the outside to the interior, the first circumstance which struck me was the obscurity of the nave, contrasted with the light of the aisles. The coloured glass of the former has been preserved, while that of the lower windows has very little colour. The opposite disposition of white glass in the clerestory, and coloured in the nave, would be preferable, yet this has a better effect than I should have expected à priori, and I conceive would even find advocates. It is probably owing to this arrangement that the coloured glass at Rheims seems to have little brilliancy. The whole length of the building is 466 feet, that of the clerestory 386, the width of the latter 47. The nave is 121 feet in height; the aisles I suppose about 54 feet, or something less than half: all the parts are well finished, but the interior has by no means the predominating beauty of the exterior. We may judge of details by rule, but the only true method of estimating the excellence of an architectural composition is by the sentiment it produces. I must acknowledge that this is in some respects, an uncertain criterion, as the impression produced depends in part upon the temper of the mind at the moment, and even on the feelings of the body. However, we may make allowances, and we may repeat the trial under different circumstances. It is on this ground that I pronounce the inside of the cathedral at Rheims to be inferior to that of Amiens or of Chartres. The capitals of the columns of the nave in this cathedral are of very full and deep relief; the foliage runs round the capital, and is often very gracefully disposed; this is a step towards the third style of French Gothic, the first and second having in general only detached leaves or figures. The construction of the roof is very curious: the architect seems to have intended to gain double strength by applying a king-post truss on each side of the timbers of a queen-post truss. The latter rises on the outside of the walls, the former on the inside, and its principal rafters meet in a point considerably lower than if they followed the direction of those of the other truss. The tie-beams are about 12 feet above the point of the vaulting. All the timbers are said to be of chesnut, and the proof is, that no spiders are found upon it. Over the great arches of the intersection are four semicircular arches, evidently intended to discharge the weight of a central tower or spire, from the pointed arches of the internal vaulting, and therefore proving the intention of raising such a tower. From the frequent mention we find of central towers in the descriptions of the French churches, it is probable that this intention was coeval with the design of the church. Of all these described stone central towers or pyramids, however, I have not had the good fortune to meet with one, and a large proportion of them seems to have been destroyed.

Besides its Gothic architecture, Rheims has to boast an interesting relic of Roman times. It is unfortunately built up in the modern wall of the city, and not easily seen, except in a general view of such parts as project from the face of the later work. Three columns and an arch are sufficiently visible, and parts of three other columns; and enough remains to enable one to make out the plan, and to shew that there were three nearly equal arches, and eight columns disposed in four pairs; the larger intercolumns are of course occupied by the arches, the smaller have niches and medallions; the entablature is entirely gone, but it is possible to creep into a vault in the thickness of the city wall, where we see near at hand the soffite of one of the arches, with the ancient stucco. The design was not very simple, but the execution is good for its purpose. The flutes of the columns finish square under the capital. The astragal of the necking has been cut; the capitals are too much wasted to form any decided opinion from them, but on the whole it appears to be a monument of a good period.

There is also a vaulted chamber, probably a sepulchre, which was discovered in 1738. The vault is ornamented with octagonal compartments and roses, in stucco, and the walls with painting. I did not see it, and only know it from a little printed description, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Comte Gregoire.

LETTER V.
RETURN TO PARIS.

Paris, June, 1816.

I have tried your patience in my last two letters with long disquisitions on architecture and on dates. I propose to give you in this, a little more of what Humboldt would call my personal narrative, i. e. to mention every thing which I think will at all interest you, but for which I have prepared no other place. I dined every day at Rheims at the table d’hôte, the time for which was five o’clock, but it was called half-past four. The company usually assembled a few minutes before dinner, and consisted in all of about twenty persons; five of them were members of a Juré, of a sort of court of appeal: who the others were I cannot tell you: there were some changes every day, but several were constant attendants. In England we so constantly see fish at the commencement of the entertainment, that we fancy this to be its natural place. In France the order of dishes follows rather the mode of dressing than the substance of the meat, and you have first boiled, then fried, afterwards stewed, and at last roast. Birds in each mode follow the more solid food, and here, with the roast meat, we often had plain boiled fish. The French rarely eat the meat and vegetables together, each is considered as a distinct dish, and eaten separately; indeed all the mixtures are made in the kitchen, and you hardly ever see a Frenchman unite in his plate the contents of two different dishes—that is the cook’s privilege. Thus you see the spirit of independence distinguishes us from our neighbours even in these trifles. Last came cheese, pastry, and fruit. Among the last were always walnuts, and one of our amusements was to crack them in various modes. The man who bore the bell in this exercise placed the back of a knife on the nut, and struck the edge with the naked palm of his hand, so forcibly as not merely to break the shell, but to smash it completely. French knives are seldom very sharp, but these were nearly new, and better than common, and I have often met with blunter at an English table. The conversation, as you may suppose, was various: politics were sometimes incidentally mentioned, but never formed the direct subject. The institution of juries seemed to be considered too good to admit of any question. An advocate related to us various stories which had occurred to him professionally; and as they were well told, I was much interested by them. One was of a Chouan chief, who being accused of rebellion, was desirous, against the opinion of his advocate, of clearing himself by certain witnesses of expurgation. I do not recollect the term, but the fact was, that these witnesses were to give evidence on oath, not merely as to character, but also to express their full assurance of his innocence. I do not know if any thing of this sort now exists in France, or whether it was general at the time the advocate was speaking of, or confined to some province: you will recollect, that we had such a custom in the ecclesiastical courts in England. The first witness called, said that he knew personally nothing about the prisoner, but relying on common report, he believed him to be a rebel. The poor Chouan fainted on finding his hopes thus blasted, but the advocate taking advantage of the name, which was a common one in the country, contrived, by confounding him with other persons, to get him off.

Some time afterwards, as the lawyer was travelling from Bayonne to Rochelle, the diligence was attacked by a party of rebels, but he being asleep, did not at first comprehend what was the matter, till one of his companions pulling him by the arm, and at the same time calling him by name, told him he must get out. The chief of the robbers hearing the name, inquired for further particulars, and on learning who he was, embraced him eagerly, and though his face was half covered with a mask, the advocate felt his tears on his own cheeks. There was some money belonging to government in the carriage; this was taken; but the Chouan would permit none of the private property to be touched, and gave to the driver a pass, by means of which they arrived safely at Rochelle, through three other bands which infested the road. The advocate wrote a particular account of the whole story and sent it to a gazette, but the government of the day, unwilling to have it acknowledged that a Chouan could possess gratitude, or any good feeling, would not permit the publication.

Just out of Rheims there is a fine public promenade, planted with several rows of good sized trees, with many diverging paths; it leads from the highest gate of the town, down to the water-side, and is really a very pleasant place in itself, and particularly so in a country so generally bare as this is. No French town of any size seems to be without an accommodation of this sort, which is alike conducive to the beauty of the place, to health and pleasure. Why is it that we have so few examples of the sort in England? Is it that our taste, or our pride, would not permit us to enjoy it? Or does it proceed from a sort of stinginess, which so strongly pervades some of our public institutions, while in others they are characterized by the opposite vice of profusion? Beyond the promenade is a public garden, called Trianon. Here a ball was given one evening, the price of admission to which was two sols, “une mise decente” was essential, but a person might be admitted in jacket and trowsers. Some persons were dancing in a small garden by the light of a few lamps, and others were looking on, but the company was not numerous, and my companion complains that dancing is gone out of fashion in France. Nobody, he says, dances now but old women and children.

The weather was very cold at Rheims, and one morning (2nd May) even frosty; the last day of my residence there was wet. The diligence to Soissons, on Sunday, being full, I hired a carriole, which is something much like a taxed cart, but lined with tapestry. We were seated on a bundle of straw; there were two horses, one between the shafts, and one outrigger. The first part of our road lay through an open common field, as usual, but on looking back, the appearance of the cathedral was very fine. The two towers, rising at the end of the long range of building, put me in mind of Westminster Abbey, though nothing can be more different when the parts are considered separately. The latter part of our journey seemed somewhat more pleasant, but a mizzling rain would not permit us to enjoy it.

Before reaching Soissons, our outrigger, which carried the postillion, became very restive, and we dismounted. As soon as he seemed a little more quiet we got in again, but were hardly seated, before the horse began again to kick and twist himself about: in a few moments the postillion was on the ground. I jumped out, and ran to him, but he had already disengaged himself. He was entangled in the traces, and seemed to be among the horses’ feet, so that I expected to have found him with half his bones broken, but he was not materially hurt. The vicious animal did not cease kicking till he had thrown himself down and broken the traces. He was afterwards quiet enough, and we reached Soissons without farther difficulty at about half-past three. After dinner I walked out, in spite of the bad weather. The first object was the ruin of the church of St. John the Baptist. The two western towers only remain, each crowned with a spire; the rest was destroyed at the revolution, and some huge masses of masonry lie scattered about, the remains of the ancient edifice, but no vegetation yet softens the crudeness of the ruin; no mosses or lichens break the harshness of the lines, and give richness and variety of colour; no venerable trees spread their majestic branches around, and by their deep and solemn shade give spirit and relief to the building. The inhabitants of Soissons obtained permission for these towers to remain as ornaments to their city, and even as they are, they are very beautiful, and time will render them more so. They are of a late Gothic, with the characteristic compound arch in the details, and enriched points to the trefoils. Each tower terminates in a small spire, but it preserves, quite to the bottom, a pyramidal form. I took my course along the rampart, where there has been a broad walk, but it was cut up by the garrison in order to raise defences against the Prussians in the last war. The effort was of little use, and the town suffered much; the greatest scene of ruin was where a powder magazine blew up; it divided the fortifications quite to the foundation, destroyed all the houses near it, injured a great many more, and shattered the windows throughout the place. Repairs are commenced, but the town in general looks very melancholy and forlorn, and the windows of the cathedral are still patched with straw. I continued my walk along the rampart, but the thick weather did not permit me to see much of the prospect. It looks, in one part, over the public promenade, but the old trees were destroyed by the Prussians, and the present are only about six feet high. What a long time it will take to repair the injury of a few weeks! The rampart here making a sudden bend, I left it, and passed by what once was a church dedicated to St. Leger. The southern front is of early Gothic, but I shall leave that for a comparison with some other Gothic buildings: I could not obtain admittance. Thence I proceeded through the principal square, where the town-hall once stood. My next object was the cathedral, which, in character, is something like that at Rheims, but far inferior in scale and execution: the south transept finishes in a semicircle, having been the choir of a more ancient church of the early French Gothic. During my absence Mr. Le Blanc found out a vault in the convent of St. Medard which had served as a prison to Louis le Debonnaire, in 833. This day was observed as the anniversary of the return of Louis XVIII., and two candles were placed, in the evening, on the outside of one of the windows of our room, by way of illumination, and a few drunken soldiers rambled about the streets, crying vive le roi! White flags, or handkerchiefs, were very generally hung out at the windows during the day, but I saw nothing which indicated any popular enthusiasm in favour of the Bourbons. Next day the weather became yet worse, and in the afternoon, we took our places in the diligence and returned to Paris; my post, as usual, was in the cabriolet. The conducteur was the son of a man who had a little property of his own of about thirty acres, but he had followed the prince of Condé, to whom he was attached, out of the country, and had lost it all. This story contains nothing improbable, but it is amusing to hear how constantly those in the lower stations of life, had been reduced by the revolution. My blanchisseuse, who is the most graceful woman in the world, and speaks the best French, was obliged to have recourse to washing dirty linen, as the means of gaining a subsistence, in consequence of that event, and there is scarcely a cabriolet driver who has not been a man of some importance.

This journey presented some very pleasant scenes; always, I believe, in valleys among the strata lying above the chalk. The forest of Villars Coterie, containing sixty thousand arpents, belonging to the duke of Orleans, makes an agreeable variety, though it is too uniformly a covert of small trees to be beautiful. Several straight avenues are cut through it; and when we passed any which looked quite clear and even, and exhibited the sky at the termination; the conducteur, and a third person in the cabriolet, never failed to pronounce them superbes, magnifiques, or to apply some other epithet equally sounding, and wondered much I did not join in their admiration. We arrived at Paris about seven o’clock, on a fine but cold morning.

On the 11th of May, at seven in the morning, I attended M. de Fontaine’s lecture on botany at the Jardin du Roi. The room is larger than the lecture room at the Royal Institution in London, but without galleries; and the entrances are at the top, above the ranges of seats. It had the appearance of being pretty nearly full, but this could not be the case, as it is said to hold one thousand two hundred persons, and the number then present was only estimated at six hundred; this, however, is a good class. The ascent of the steps is very steep, which gives every possible advantage of seeing, but the room is too large; and those on the back can neither hear nor see very distinctly; besides M. de Fontaine’s manner is not calculated for so large a place. He speaks at times very rapidly, and seemed rather to pitch his voice to some ladies near him, than to the remoter part of his audience. The subject was quite elementary, explaining the different parts of plants, and their uses; without any thing of the principles of classification and of natural affinity, the part in which the French school is supposed to excel. The garden used to be called des plantes, but now du roi. I do not know the reason of the change. It is very large, but only a small portion is appropriated to the science of botany; it is divided into large squares, by straight and wide walks, which are always open, and form an agreeable promenade, but you cannot enter into the squares without permission. One of these is intended to contain a collection of plants arranged according to the system of Jussieu, but it is very defective, especially in the plants of France, a sensible proportion of which are under wrong names. Many parts are much too crowded, as you may easily comprehend, when I tell you that they allot for each forest tree, a space of about four feet square; other squares are dedicated to experiments in horticulture and agriculture. There is one square appropriated entirely to experiments in standard fruit trees; some of these have a whimsical appearance, especially those where new roots have been given to old trees. Two, three, four, or even five young slips are planted near the tree intended to be so treated, and the heads being cut off at a proper season, the top of the remaining part is inserted into the old trunk and grows to it. The slips continue to increase in size, and in two or three years the old trunk may be cut away. In some instances the reports are very favourable to this process, and in one case in particular, where the original wood was sound, the addition of these extra roots had made the tree increase very much faster than a neighbouring tree, apparently of equal strength, which had been chosen as an object of comparison. The department of grafts contains also a number of curious particulars, and M. Thouin, the professor, was so good as to accompany me, and to explain the various experiments. Virgil has said, that if you pass a vine through a walnut-tree, it will bear the most large and beautiful fruit, but bitter and uneatable. To use M. Thouin’s expression, “le fait est faux,” he made several attempts to conduct a vine through the trunk of a walnut-tree, but as soon as it began to enlarge sufficiently to feel the confinement, it uniformly died, and he was never able to procure any fruit from it. He then passed a vine through a pear-tree, whose wood being softer, did not compress it so much as entirely to stop its growth; but the grapes produced above this insertion did not differ in size or flavour from those below. If then, he reasoned, the grapes are altered in size or flavour by passing through a walnut-tree, the converse of the proposition ought to hold good, and we shall alter the walnuts by passing a branch through a vine; the experiment was tried, but both grapes and walnuts remained as they were before.

Another graft is called ‘des charlatans;’ Pliny says that Lucullus shewed him a tree producing grapes, apples, pears, cherries, and other fruit, belonging to trees having no relation to each other, from the same root; and this, he tells us, was effected by grafting. It has been a problem ever since, among gardeners, to produce this tree of Lucullus; M. Thouin has succeeded, not by grafting, but by planting the several stocks in a hollow trunk.

From the garden I went into the museum of natural history, which is open to persons with tickets, from eleven to two, three times a week. The first floor contains a large, but ill-disposed room, for fishes and reptiles, a library which I did not see, and an extensive suite of rooms for the collection of minerals. There is an interesting collection of extraneous fossils, and especially of those of the plaster beds at Paris, but, altogether, it rather fell short of my expectation, not in the substances, but in their arrangement. We are told also of a geological collection, but the specimens are not geologically disposed. The upper floor is thrown into a single room, divided into several parts, but the divisions are left open at the middle, so that the whole is exposed at one view; it is very long, of a moderate width, but low in proportion; and it is either partially, or entirely in the roof; in short, it is by no means handsome, and has completely the look of an enormous garret. I shall give you what I suppose to be the dimensions of each part; they are wholly from guess, but may help you at least in the comparative sizes. First part 28 × 24, principally monkeys. Second part 60 × 28, contains an elephant, a rhinoceros, and an hippopotamus, all in glass cases; it looks rather ridiculous to see these enormous things taken so much care of, but they are fine animals and well preserved. An Arabian and Russian horse, the quagga of Vaillant, a zebra, and the young of each of these stand exposed in the room. Other quadrupeds are placed in glass cases around it. Third division, 86 × 28, also quadrupeds. After this is a little space forming the segment of a circle, which seems awkward, ugly, and useless. Fourth part 108 × 28, birds all round; the cases are extremely deep, and the birds, except a few very large ones, are placed on little stands side by side, all facing the spectator and nearly close together, so that little is seen either of the side or back of the bird. This might be the more easily obviated as there are frequently several specimens of the same species. The plate glass of the cases is magnificent. The subjects are well preserved and scientifically arranged. Another segment of a circle follows. Fifth part, 36 × 28, also birds; along the middle of the three divisions, three, four, and five, runs a stand of two tables united,

and a part rising above them in the middle; containing a superb collection of insects, shells, zoophytes, podophthalmata, and eggs of birds; and, since the light is introduced on both sides of the apartment, they are very well seen. Sixth, 60 × 28, quadrupeds, mostly deer and antelopes; in the middle is a great basking shark, a camel, oxen, and the giraffe killed by Vaillant.

On the 12th of May I walked up Mont Martre. It is a curious looking place, having apparently been, in its original state, a hill neither so high nor so steep as Hampstead Heath, but all the sides have been dug away to procure gypsum, and only the top remains, with the roads leading up to it, presenting all round either steep banks or perpendicular faces. The gypsum is dug out of two beds, of which the upper is, I suppose, twenty-five feet thick; of the lower I did not see the bottom. It has very much the colour and fracture of coarse lump sugar, but the grain is rather finer. Between the two courses, and above the upper, are beds of white clay, at least when dry it appeared quite white; but there are some intermediate beds of clay and sand of a darker colour, and the whole is crowned by a thick bed of yellow sand, which forms the soil of the summit of the hill. This is a very narrow strip, with a row of windmills, from whence I enjoyed an excellent view. Paris was covered with a little whitish smoke, at least that was the case over the most thickly inhabited part, but nothing like the dense yellow fumes of London. By the appearance of the horizon, I judged my elevation to be about equal to that of the summit of the Pantheon, and a little above that of the dome of the Invalides. The cross at the top of the former is about 280 feet above the pavement, and as this building stands on an elevated spot, Mont Martre must be more than 300 feet above the Seine. Below the quarries, and sometimes between them, are vineyards as open as the corn-fields in England, and mixed with the vines are currant and gooseberry bushes, and a few larger fruit trees. The vine stumps were about three feet a part, and the leaves, which had just begun to appear, were dark and shining. About Chartres the young vine leaf is almost always covered with thick down. Here and there was a bush of hawthorn not yet in flower, whence I conclude the Parisian spring is not a great deal more forward than that of the south of England.

I leave you to conclude that I have seen the elephant, the catacombs, the observatory, and a hundred other curiosities of this city; they are too familiar for any novelty of description, yet I ought not entirely to omit a visit to the Ecole des Mines. Here is a superb collection of minerals; the objects are very numerous, and the specimens frequently very beautiful. The arrangement is by provinces, distinguishing those which are lost to France, from those which still constitute part of the country. It occupies a range of rooms of about 130 feet in length towards the garden, and one or two besides, in which the specimens are arranged mineralogically. There is also on the ground floor a library, and a further collection of minerals. I was likewise conducted to the collection of M. de Dré, which, for the beauty of the specimens, is said to be the finest in Europe. In all these museums, I have been struck with the arrangement which displays every thing at once; a great deal of room is necessarily given up to this purpose, but it is well applied, for the ease which it offers of reference and comparison, as well as for communicating an air of magnificence which is suitable for public institutions. Two large paintings of David are at present exhibited, and I did not fail to visit them. The subject of one is Leonidas about to attack the Persians, after he found that they had discovered a passage over the mountains. That of the other, the interposition of the Sabine women who had been carried away by the Romans, to prevent the battle between the two people. The drawing is said to be, and I dare say is, perfectly true to nature, but not to beautiful nature. The stories are not very well told, nor the figures well disposed or well lighted. The relief is excellent, and in spite of the harsh colouring, some of the figures seem quite to stand from the canvass.

I have already anticipated the results of my excursion to Chartres, Dreux, and Mantes. This journey gave me a better idea than I had before of French cross road travelling. A cabriolet is an enclosed one horse chaise. A pot-de-chambre differs from a cabriolet in being deep enough to admit two seats, one before the other, each seat usually holding three persons, all looking towards the horses; the back is the seat of honour, but it is a very unpleasant one. The cabriolets de poste will rarely hold more than two persons conveniently, and one I had from Chartres to Dreux, would not even do that. The difference on taking a voiture or a cabriolet de poste, is, that the former does not change horses. Travelling post for two or three persons, (independently of food and lodging) costs just three francs per league. For travelling in voiture, you make what bargain you can, but to judge from my own experience, the terms are favourable, when you have to give two francs per league, and a few sous ‘pour boire’ to the postillion. I paid on the occasion above-mentioned eighteen francs, without understanding whether the precise distance were nine leagues, or only seven, and that two more were allowed for the badness of the road: indeed nothing could be worse. The high roads in France are good, though I am not quite reconciled to the pavé; but the cross roads are very bad, and the worst points are usually in the villages. There is probably more traffic at these parts, and as nothing is ever done to them, they are consequently the worst. The government only takes care of the great roads; and every thing of public convenience, not done by government, is either neglected, or if performed at all, it is in a very slovenly manner. What is more provoking, is, that one sees heaps of gravel by the road sides, collected from the fields and vineyards, but which it appears to be nobody’s business to dispose over the road. We had a very skilful driver, who galloped among the deep ruts, which it seemed impossible to avoid, and still more impossible to follow. Travelling in the royal diligences costs about fourteen sous per league, and you give the postillions two sous each stage, or about one sol per league, and the conductor, perhaps, twice as much, in all seventeen sous; the league is about two miles and a half English. You may therefore calculate French posting, where you have to hire the carriage as well as the horses, at twenty-four sous, or one shilling per mile; travelling in voiture at ninepence; by the diligence threepence halfpenny, or for two people, to keep up the comparison, sevenpence. The scenery on this excursion was better than on the preceding, without being good, except on our return through St. Germain en Laye, and Marli, where it is highly beautiful. The Seine winds under a steep woody bank; the other side of the river is comparatively flat, but well cultivated and well shaded; I can think of no nearer resemblance than Richmond Hill. Here is more hill, and consequently more variety, but it has not the richness of the English scene; and the banks of the Seine are not to be compared with those of the Thames, either for natural or artificial ornament.

After again returning to Paris, I amused myself with some excursions in the neighbourhood, either on foot, or in some of the conveyances, like our short stages, which abound here. In one of these I passed the bridge at Neuilly, perhaps the most celebrated in France, having five arches, each of 120 feet span, so that the width of the river must be about that of the Thames at London Bridge. The Seine has been called a ditch, but at Paris it is wider than the Thames at Richmond, and at Neuilly, the scale marked a depth of ten feet. In 1740 it rose to 26 feet. In looking along this bridge from the water’s edge, the arches all seem rather crippled, perhaps owing to their being formed of segments of circles, but this is not a very obvious defect, and the bridge is certainly very beautiful: if however, the arches were not quite so flat, it would be better. The double line of arch is ungraceful, and were it not very apparent that the outer line is false, the bridge would be ugly.

After rambling about some time without any particular object in view, I found myself unexpectedly by the palace of St. Cloud. I wondered at first what magnificent building was before me, having quite forgotten that it lay in my route; but after I had convinced myself of the fact, and admired the noble view from the terrace, I set myself to consider the front, which is composed of a central building, and two advancing wings of smaller elevation; but it is hardly worth any particular criticism. Reading in large letters the usual inscription, “parlez au concierge,” I did as I was bid, and immediately entered the palace. The state rooms are very magnificent, yet there is much bad taste, much of mere show and glitter, and great abundance of painted imitations of marble, miserably performed. The Salon de reception is, however, really grand. The hangings are dark crimson, with black roses; there is a very deep gold border, and gilt moulding; a rich gilt cornice, and a painted ceiling. This is the only room of which the border is altogether decidedly lighter than the walls, as recommended by Mrs. Schimmelpenning, and nothing can be more beautiful than the effect.

I continued my ramble to cascades without water, and to a tower which is called a pyramid. The river sweeps beautifully under the fine hanging woods of the park, and if the banks are less bold, and the natural scenery less striking than at Marli, the artificial accompaniments, with Paris in the distance, are superior.

There are at Paris three courses of Botanique rurale, that is, three botanists make weekly excursions with a number of pupils. Jussieu is the public professor of this branch, and his high reputation induced me to wish to join his party. There is no difficulty in it, the lecture is perfectly open, and no introduction is necessary. On Wednesday, 29th May, I repaired to the appointed place (of which public notice is always given) at the entrance of the avenue of St. Cloud. I was told that the class sometimes amounted to two hundred. On this occasion there were, I suppose, half the number, but it is difficult to judge, as a large portion is always scattered about. It was quite a novelty to botanize in such a crowd, and a very amusing novelty. The party seemed to be taken from all classes, among them were several ladies, and many who had the appearance of gentlemen, but the larger portion, I apprehend, were students in the School of Medicine at Paris, and these are in great measure derived from a lower class in society, than that which peoples the English, or even the Scotch universities. No person can exercise the trade of an apothecary, without a certificate of having attended certain courses of botany. Some were evidently mechanics, and one or two private soldiers. It has, I understand, always been the case in France, that among the private soldiers, there have been some who have attended the different courses. How honourable this is to the French character, and how much more favourable to morals, than where the only resource for an idle hour is the alehouse! Nor should I be satisfied with the observation, that they would be better employed in working for their families. Man has a right occasionally to relaxation, and to some exciting amusement; nor do I believe that either his moral or physical health can be well preserved without it. In England, a gentleman or lady would not choose to be seen in such an assembly of all classes; why is it that our pride will not permit us to enjoy, without excluding our inferiors? In fact, with all our boast of superior religion and superior charity, there is more of contempt in our manners towards the lower classes, and less of kindness, than in, I believe, any other nation of Europe. It may be merely in manner, and may regard only trifles; but as nine-tenths of human life is made up of trifles, I am more indebted to him who will make me happy in them, than to him who would relieve me in the other tenth of serious misfortune.

The plan of instruction seemed to be for the students to collect plants, and to present them to Jussieu for names, which they write down, and then preserve the plant, without any examination of the characters. I heard him thus supply names to Veronica chamædrys, Ranunculus acris, and many other flowers equally common in France and England; whence you may suppose that no very intimate knowledge of the science is expected from the pupils. In plants of less frequent occurrence, the professor himself was not very ready, and often appealed to a manuscript list which he carried with him. One brought him Hypnum curvatum, “C’est une mousse,” but the student was not satisfied, and Jussieu at last thought it might be H. myosuroides. I do not know if these species have been accurately distinguished in France. Another brought Bromus mollis, he called it B. secalinus, and seemed to me to misname several others; whence I conclude that he was not ready in distinguishing species: a sort of knowledge which is not, I believe, the forte of the French botanists, but which, without overvaluing it, one had certainly a right to expect from the professor of botanique rurale, since it seems to make the exclusive object of his lessons. I confess his employment of thus merely giving names to pupils who know nothing about the matter, must be very tiresome, but it is his own fault that it is so. He might have selected six or eight of the best informed pupils, and have referred to them, all those inquirers who did not know the most common plants, or who wisely determined Serapias grandiflora to be a Convallaria; and out of every twelve pupils, I suppose at least ten were in this state, and these of course were the most troublesome. He then would have had leisure to look about a little himself, and to have entered into details with those who were more advanced, and explained to them, as they brought him the different plants, the particulars in each tribe to which they ought chiefly to attend. Those whom he pitched upon to be his assistants would have been proud of the office, and the distinction would have been no small stimulus to their exertions. Among the number of pupils with whom I conversed, I found only two who had any idea of examining the plants and judging for themselves: to hear the name given by Jussieu to the individual, and to write it down, seemed to be the whole object of their ambition.

I professed myself curious about the Orchideæ, and every body tells me, as I had before heard in London, that the neighbourhood of Paris is very rich in Orchideæ. Oh! you will find them at Meudon, at Montmorenci, at Sceaux, at St. Maur; and as long as I deal in generals, I seem to be gaining information; but when I inquire about particular species, and the exact places in which they grow: I find only that the French are very skilful in warding off questions they cannot answer.

Another of my excursions was to Versailles. The road is not unpleasant, and I cannot say that I was disappointed in the palace, or in the gardens, for I neither expected nor found them beautiful. The size of the former is, as you know, immense. Internally, there are two principal suites of apartments, one of which is gilt upon a white ground, the other harlequined with different sorts of marble, and enriched with painting and gilding. In general, both are bad; but in the former it seems to be the disposition, and not the nature of the colours which displeases, as the bed-room of Louis XIV., and the antichamber, where the style of decoration is more simple and in better taste, are highly beautiful. In the marbled suite also, a long gallery, on the ceiling of which are painted the exploits of Louis XIV., and a saloon at each end of it, are very handsome; principally because the architect has been contented with fewer marbles, and disposed them less capriciously.

In the park, the great object has been to display long, straight avenues of trees; but the intervening parts are irregularly disposed, and contain corn-fields, meadows, and wild thickets. Even in the gardens, nothing is attended to but straight walks, and near the palace varied figures in coloured sand are disposed upon the grass-plots. There are some noble orange-trees, but they are cut into the form of mops, and the orangery, though a fine building, supporting the terrace, has the air more of a place intended for coolness, than one to secure warmth and light. There are two magnificent flights of steps, but not being directed towards the palace, they are rather deformities than beauties, as they have the appearance of leading to nothing. The water-works are not expected to play till the 25th of August. It requires three months to supply the reservoirs, and they are exhausted in half an hour.

The dishes at a Parisian restaurateur’s are sufficiently numerous, but going to one with a party of Frenchmen, I found that it was usual to multiply the number still more, by ordering a portion for two or three persons, and dividing it among a greater number. I pleaded ignorance of French cookery, and left my companions to provide for me, which they did extremely well. I do not know that I have mentioned a practice very common here of ordering a bottle of wine, and only drinking and paying for the half. I have seen a man order two bottles of different sorts, and pay for half of each; and on another occasion, at Legacq’s, one of the guests acknowledged to three quarters, and paid accordingly. After dinner we drank our coffee at the Café d’Apollon. This is an establishment uniting a coffee-house and a theatre. The stage is a little elevated, and the lower part of the coffee-room forms the pit; above are two ranges of galleries, instead of boxes, provided with seats and tables as below; the representation is continued great part of the day and all the evening, but there is some legal impediment to the performance of regular pieces, and the actors are not very good. However, the novelty of the thing makes it amusing for once or twice, and the room is handsome. It is furnished on each side with a range of pilasters, ornamented with gilding, and really good both in design and execution, and the space between the pilasters is filled with looking-glasses, so that the whole is very splendid.

I have not yet completed all I had to say to you about the Gothic edifices of Paris and its neighbourhood, and indeed it would be unpardonable to omit the church of the once famous abbey of St. Denis. The first church here is said to have been founded by Dagobert about 629.[^[12]] We are told by the early writers that it was executed with consummate art; the columns and the pavement were of marble; the interior brilliant with gold, jewels, and precious stones, and the roof of the building immediately over the altar was covered externally with pure silver. In spite of all this magnificence, it was taken down in the following century, to be rebuilt on a larger scale, by Pepin, and it was completed and consecrated in 775 by Charlemagne; in 865 the abbey was occupied and plundered by the Normans, but apparently not destroyed; and it seems to have remained nearly in the same state till the abbacy of Suger, in 1122. This prelate, after repairing the dormitory, refectory, and other parts of the abbey, determined on giving to the church, larger dimensions and a more magnificent character; how much he performed is not certain. It is thought not to have amounted to a complete rebuilding, but that after having restored the towers and the west front, he turned his attention to the interior, and, a part of the church being completed, it was dedicated in 1140. In June, in the same year, he laid the foundation of the rond point, which was finished in 1144, but after this he still continued his restorations till his death, in 1151. Notwithstanding all that was done at this period, the church was in such a state of decay in 1231, that Eudes Clement undertook to rebuild the greater part of it from the ground, in which he was assisted by St. Louis and his mother Blanche. The choir appears to have been nearly finished under this abbot; and the rest of the new work, which consists of the transept and nave was carried on by his successors, and terminated under Matthieu de Vendôme in 1281. Even the western front is not of one style of architecture, and there is much of it which I feel inclined to attribute to Suger, but which the French antiquaries consider as belonging to the older edifice, while some of our English ones would contend, perhaps, that it was built by Eudes Clement. It is not however of the style adopted in the thirteenth century in France, but corresponds with my first style of French Gothic. The day I was there was cold, and I was unwell; and the reflection, that I could return at any time, relaxed my efforts, and now I am about to leave Paris, without having repeated my visit. What appears of the inside, I rather believe to be of the thirteenth century than early in the twelfth; and I should assign to it a later date than that of the cathedral at Amiens, because all the parts are more slender. The windows are very large, and rose-headed. The church seems all window, and as the glass is at present without colour, and the building of a pale stone; the glare is very disagreeable, and diminishes greatly the admiration which the lofty and elegant architecture might justly challenge. Underneath the choir is a crypt, supposed to have been part of the church of Pepin, or, if you will, of Dagobert. Whittington accedes to the former opinion, although some ancient capitals, still remaining, offer models of architecture with the pointed arch; and I rather suppose them to have been part of the erections of Suger, between 1140 and 1150. On one of them is a curious car, and they are worth notice, whatever the date of them may be. Adjoining to the church is a very beautiful sacristy of modern architecture, ornamented with paintings of the present French school, some of which have great merit.

Having now conducted you, as well as I can, to the conclusion of the thirteenth century, I shall look back, and communicate a few gleanings of subjects, either less interesting in themselves, or which I have not had opportunity to examine particularly. At Braine sur Vesle, near Soissons, and at Poissy, I observed churches, perhaps rather Norman than Gothic, which seemed to merit investigation. There is a very pretty little church at Soissons decidedly Norman, although the arch of the doorway is slightly pointed. The church of St. Leger, in the same city, founded by St. Gauzlin in 1129, is not of so early a style, but rather of the first Gothic. The southern front has an opening of three equal simple parts, not united in a common arch: above this is a window with three divisions, and a rose in the head, formed of little pillars placed round a centre, probably the earliest form of a rose, or wheel, or marigold window, but here rather puzzling, as it only forms part of the opening, whereas we usually find the roses kept perfectly distinct in the terminating windows, till the middle of the thirteenth century. At each angle the buttress takes the form of an octangular turret, ending in a little spire of stone, but carved to represent shingles. The gable has only small, square-headed openings, and rises higher than these spires.

At Chartres is a church, dedicated to St. André, whose western front exhibits a handsome Norman doorway, with a triple window of early Gothic, and over that, the arch of a window of the fourth style, probably of the fifteenth century; at which time a choir was added to the original church, extending on arches, across the river. This choir is entirely destroyed, but the arches which supported it remain. There is also a handsome Norman gateway in the castle at Dreux. To return to Chartres; the church of St. Peter is praised by Whittington, at least I suppose him to mean this, by his church and convent of St. Père, built by Hilduard, a Benedictine monk, in 1170. It is also praised in the description of Chartres which I purchased, but I think with very little reason. The windows of the body of the building, divided by moulded mullions, announce a style decidedly posterior to that of the cathedral. The lower part of the choir, and the aisles, are very rude and heavy, and may be much more ancient than the upper part. It is now used as a parish church. At Dreux there is a cathedral of late Gothic, but it is not good either in design or execution, nor is it on a large scale: a small piece, however, on one side, is pretty. At Limay, near Mantes, is a Norman tower and spire; and the present external wall presents a series of arches walled up, which seems to have divided the aisles of the ancient edifice. The inside was so full of people, that I could not enter. The church of St. Germain Auxerre is said to be one of the oldest in Paris: this can only be true of some remaining portions of old work: the west front was built in 1435. The moulded ribs, instead of shafts, the entire want of capitals, and the bases of different heights, would have induced me to assign even a later period.

St. Jacques de la Boucherie has a fine Gothic tower of the latest style; it was erected in the reign of Francis I. St. Severin, St. Martin, St. Nicholas des Champs, St. Gervais, St. Étienne du Mont, and St. Eustache, form an instructive series of the downfall of Gothic architecture in Paris. In general they are not beautiful, yet there are in each of them some happy effects. St. Severin is the best, because the purest Gothic, and it has an air of space and lightness, which is very pleasing; but it is on a small scale, and the workmanship rude. Some parts of it are of a much earlier style.

The Count Alexandre la Borde is preparing an interesting work on French antiquities. The monuments of the thirteenth century are plentiful in France, and many of them exquisitely beautiful. Buildings of an earlier period are said to be more abundant in the south; and M. La Borde was so good as to shew me drawings of some ancient churches in those parts, of the greatest magnificence. Large edifices of the fourteenth, and beginning of the fifteenth century are rare, but of these he also has some beautiful drawings. The style of them much resembles that of our decorated Gothic, but what has been very happily called the perpendicular style seems never to have prevailed in any part of France, either as to the disposition of the tracery in the windows, or to the palm-tree vaulting exhibited in King’s College Chapel. There are here and there some traces of an approximation to the latter, but they are heavy and awkward. The last specimen free from the decorations of Roman architecture in Paris is, probably, St. Gervais, built in 1581 (omitting all consideration of the western front, which was added in 1616). The first, in which Roman decorations are introduced, is, I believe, St. Eustache, and in this point of view both these churches merit attention; in the former a crown-like pendant in the centre of the vault of the Lady Chapel is curious, and many think it beautiful. The latter church is altogether Grecian in its parts, throughout the nave and transepts; but their disposition and arrangement, the lofty proportions, and the general effect, are completely Gothic. The vaulting of the rond point is by a rather complicated system of ribs; that of the Lady Chapel is still more intricate, and is indeed a very curious example of the architecture of the time, and much admired by the French antiquaries: it is however heavy and unpleasing, and has the air rather of a modern imitation, than of late Gothic. I observed a date of 1640 on one part of the north transept. The church was begun, according to Le Grand, on the 19th of August, 1532, and finished 1642; the portico was added in 1754: as that of St. Étienne du Mont was rebuilt by Francis I., the date of these two churches could not have been far apart.

Even to the last age of French Gothic it is rare to see any mouldings along the ridge of the vault, and the groining, with the exception of the oblique groining which I attempted once to describe to you, is generally simple, and varies very little from first to last. Before I left England this subject had excited my attention, but I did not arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. In some of our Saxon architecture, for example, we have groins, where the ridge of the cross vaulting is considerably arched; but I am not sure that the principal vault forms, on the line of the ridge, a series of arches, as it does in the continental architecture, and so remarkably in the church of St. Germain des Prés. In our Gothic of the thirteenth century I believe the cross vaulting is always arched on the ridge, and the ridge of the principal vault forms also a series of arches nearly flat; but whether these arches are the same in the cross vaulting and principal vaulting, whether they are pointed, or segments of circles, is what I have not been able to determine. In our last style of Gothic architecture, two very different modes of vaulting prevailed; one was nearly that formed by a portion of a sphere cut off by four vertical planes, or like a handkerchief exposed to the wind, and held by the four corners. The arch was, however, seldom quite circular, but had something of a point; the other was formed by courses spreading out beyond each other half round a common centre, so that the vault was formed by a number of funnels touching each other; or rather, while they touched, to form the principal vault, they cut each other to form the cross vaulting. These funnels were universally concave on the section, not straight lines forming regular cones; the intermediate spaces were either left flat, or filled up with pendentives smaller than the funnels, but of the same form. This sort has been called the palm-tree vaulting, because the ribs, gracefully spreading from the tops of the little shafts, present something of the form of a palm-tree, and as this is a much prettier name than funnel-shaped vaults, we will, if you please, adopt it. If you imagine these palm-trees to close against each other in all directions, you will have an arrangement differing less in its appearance from the first than you would readily imagine. If you suppose a square room covered with a true groin, and cut off in the height of the vaulting, the plan at the section would take the form shewn at a,

in the Gothic of the thirteenth century, it will frequently, I believe, have the shape at b,

the angles of the groins being rather kept back; on the method first described it will be as at c:

in the palm-tree roof thus:

The transition from b to d does not appear difficult; but it seems to me, that between these, in England at least, the straight ridge, or one very nearly straight, came into use; and even one where the ridge descends towards the meeting of the groins.

LETTER VI.
EDIFICES OF PARIS.

Paris, June, 1816.

Methinks I hear you rejoice that my everlasting disquisitions about Gothic architecture must at length be nearly finished. Do not, however, be too sanguine, the subject may recur again when I move southward, and I suspect that you will pronounce on my architecture, as I do on the trees by the road sides; while you have it you will think it very tiresome, and wish it away, but when it is gone, the barrenness and emptiness of the remainder will make you wish the architecture back again. In the observations which I am now about to give you on the modern buildings of Paris, you will at least escape a multitude of doubts about dates. I shall follow the order of Le Grand and Landon’s Description de Paris et de ses Edifices, as their little prints may help me to recall my observations; and let me add, that the criticisms of these authors are usually very judicious. In their general observations they praise too highly to correspond with the impression of any taste not educated in France; in their details, they perhaps, censure too much to be safe guides to a person who has not studied the subject, because these criticisms occur in the descriptions of celebrated buildings, with whose merits, they take it for granted, that their readers are familiar.

The church of the Assumption is circular, 62 feet in diameter, and I suppose, 100 feet high; whatever may be its precise elevation, it is certainly much too high. The eight pair of pilasters which surround the lower part, are spaced unequally; four of the intervals being larger than the other four, in order to give ample room for the altar, the pulpit, and the doorways, and to suggest also something of the form of a cross. In the upper part the disposition is regular; the effect of this discordance is exceedingly bad. The Val de Grace has a rich appearance externally, the inside is a warehouse, and has not character enough to make much impression under such circumstances; it is the design of François Mansard, one of the most celebrated architects that France has produced, but not finished under his direction. The interior of the church of the Sorbonne is handsome, but they are now fitting it up as a workshop for a sculptor. The architect was Mercier, who built also for Cardinal Richelieu the old part of the Palais Royal.

The Dome of the Invalides is the masterpiece of Jules Hardouin Mansard. The church and hospital are from the designs of Liberal Bruant. A striking defect in its present state is, that the gilding of this dome terminates too abruptly. It insulates that part from the rest of the building, and from all other surrounding buildings; there is nothing to carry off the effect. On this consideration it would be better with less of this ornament, but it is an experiment which does not leave a doubt of the advantage of employing it externally, for the production of beauty and magnificence; and it is equally conclusive against Repton’s idea of gilding the dome of St. Paul’s, an operation which would not only produce a harsh spot, disagreeing with every thing around it, but would be in itself disagreeable. So much has been done at the Invalides, that it is easy to imagine the rest, and to perceive that no breaking down of the boundaries, no accessory edifices, also gilt, could make such a lump of metal pleasing. We learn then, that in thus employing gilding, we must take care not to dispose it in a too continuous and apparently solid mass; to apply it principally to one part of the building, but not to confine it there, but to let it re-appear in smaller quantities on some other parts; and, in a city, not to limit it to one edifice, but to let others in some degree partake of it. I say nothing of the expediency of gilding from the short duration of its splendour, which is quite another consideration. The inside of the church at the Invalides is heavy and displeasing. It has two stories of arched aisles in the height of the pilaster, both are low, but the upper is particularly so, and very awkward. The interior of the dome (which quite forms a second church) is rich and magnificent, but there is too much light, or rather perhaps, a great deal of the light is placed too low, and the painting and gilding are not well disposed. Externally, the merit is principally confined to the dome and its drum, which are very beautifully managed. As for the hospital, it has no beauty. A very whimsical idea occurs in the garret windows in the front of the building, which represent suits of armour with holes in the breast; a more palpable instance of bad taste can hardly be cited, since the artist has thus destroyed the idea of defence, which he appears to have intended to excite. We frequently see, in France, the garret windows highly ornamented. This has sometimes a good effect; but it is principally where the architecture retains something of the Gothic. In the Hotel de Clugny, which exhibits a good deal of that style, they are very richly decorated, and communicate a character of domestic architecture to the edifice, which is at once pleasing and proper; a peaceful dwelling should not look either like a church or a castle. I do not know whether it would be impossible to make the garret windows of importance in Roman architecture, but I have never seen it done successfully.

The church of the Quatre Nations, that is to say, the central building of the palace of the Institute, is neither handsome without, nor convenient within. Viewed externally it appears little, and I believe this is, in part, owing to the irregular disposition of the columns. The want of regularity destroys the idea of their being essential parts of the building, and they become mere ornaments, placed according to the caprice of the architect. The openings under the dome are also greatly too large, and this not only has the effect of diminishing the apparent size, but also communicates to the whole an appearance of disproportion. The front is ornamented by four lions, which supply as many threads of water: these are not inserted in the engraving of Le Grand’s work. The whole building together is certainly fine, but I think rather too low; and I have my usual complaint to make of the smallness of the centre, and of the high roofs to the pavilions. On the inside of the central building, the disposition of the galleries in recesses, on three sides of the dome, is not bad for effect when they are filled with people; but the spectators, who find themselves in so many holes in the wall, have reason to be dissatisfied.

I spent some hours, a few days ago, at the church of St. Geneviève, entering with M. Rondelet, the architect, into all the details of the original construction, and of the settlement which had taken place. It was built by Soufflot, for Louis XV., who allotted to the erection an additional four sous on every ticket in the lotteries. The annual produce of this was valued at 364,000 livres, nor does it appear that the amount fell short, but in the beginning, the directors anticipated their revenues in the purchase of the ground, and perhaps also in the conduct of the edifice; and various other expenses, and some considerable buildings, were saddled on the funds, so that in 1780, after the death of Soufflot, and twenty-five years after the commencement of the building, the works were at a stand for want of money. In 1784 a precise estimate was formed of the sums yet required, and it was found that, to complete the building according to Soufflot’s plan, it would require 5,340,000 livres, and 1,203,000 for the square round it, and for the avenues; and the amount of the funds appropriated, after paying the interest of the sums borrowed, was 193,500 livres per annum, so that it would have required thirty-four years to terminate the work, and ten years and a half more to repay the debts. M. Rondelet, in his Mémoire Historique, enters into an explanation of the proposed mode of raising money for the purpose of carrying on the works, which, I confess, I do not understand. The income seems to jump from 193,000 to 278,000, without any cause; they were to borrow 400,000 livres per year, and to repay 100,000 of the old debt, which, to my dull understanding, seems just the same as borrowing 300,000. For the loan they were to pay interest at five per cent., and by this method it was calculated that they should raise enough to complete the building and surrounding improvements in twelve years. In fourteen years afterwards, supposing the funds to remain untouched, and no farther expenses to intervene, the creditors might be paid, but if by any accident the works should be prolonged a few years more than was contemplated in this estimate, the interest of money borrowed would exceed the funds. After all it comes to our approved plan of paying debts with borrowed money. For five years, i. e. 1785-6-7-8-9, the works seem to have gone on with spirit, and near 2,500,000 livres were expended. At this time all the solid work of the edifice was completed, and it appears, that about the end of 1789, the first serious alarm was excited, although some cracks had been observed as early as 1776. In 1789, a stone broke in one of the pillars of the dome, and in replacing it, the faulty construction was betrayed.

It is doubtless very interesting to an architect, to understand the construction of those buildings, where any difficulty was to be overcome, in which the efforts of the artist have perfectly succeeded. It is, perhaps, still more instructive to trace the causes of failure in those which have exhibited some considerable defect. The true maxim of an architect is, to spare nothing necessary to make the building perfectly firm and durable, but at the same time to admit nothing superfluous; a building which stands secure might, perhaps, have been equally secure with a portion of materials, and, consequently of expense, considerably smaller; a building which fails, we are sure was not strong enough; and if it do not begin to fail till after it has received its whole weight, it becomes particularly worthy of attention as an elucidation of the minimum which may be employed, or rather, which must be avoided, for the evil on one side is so incomparably greater than that on the other, that it would be a folly not to err systematically in some degree, by giving more strength than is absolutely necessary. The piers of the dome of St. Geneviève did not so decidedly yield to the pressure as to stop the progress of the building till nearly two years after the dome was completed and the centres removed. It was not till 1795, when, in order to adapt the edifice to its republican destination, some masses of hard stone, intended to receive the ornaments, were cut away, that any considerable defects became sensible. The slight motion given by the repeated jarring of this operation was sufficient to destroy the equilibrium of the forces.

The soil on which this church was built had been found on an examination, previous to laying the foundations; to be full of pits, some as much as eighty feet in depth, which had been dug to procure an earth for a sort of coarse pottery, a circumstance which does not give us a favourable idea of any part of the foundation. These pits were very carefully filled up, and the foundations, and erection of the vaults, carried on so as to give a perfectly firm basis for the superstructure. This operation has completely succeeded, and does not exhibit the slightest trace of failure or settlement. These works were begun in 1755: in 1764, Louis XV. placed the first stone of one of the pillars of the dome, an honour which is supposed to have excited some jealousy against the architect. Great clamour was raised against the price paid for cutting the stones, and the cautious and scientific method of proceeding at first adopted, was abandoned exactly at the point when care and nicety were most necessary. The piers, consequently, instead of being built of stones perfectly squared, with true beds, were composed of such as presented merely an even face, whilst frequently the internal mass was very defective.

Soufflot himself seems to have directed the beds of the stones to have been wrought smooth for a depth of four or five inches from the external face, and the remainder to have been roughly sunk three or four lines, in order to receive the mortar; a method bad in itself, as it evidently throws the principal weight to the face of the pier, i. e. to the weakest part, instead of spreading it equally over the whole surface, or with rather a tendency to the centre. Even these directions had not been attended to; but the builder, content to make the outside of his work fair, had used stones in many instances which were wedge-shaped; and joints which only presented a thickness of one or two lines externally, were two inches, or two inches and a half, wide on the inside; the filling in stones by no means fitted their places, and the interstices thus left, were so little filled with mortar, that in one place, on examination, the work admitted several pailfuls of grout. In order to obviate any immediate ill effect from the unequal beds of the stone, calles, or little bits, generally, as it appears, of wood, were inserted, in order to support each block to its level. Above the piers of the dome the work was better executed, both in principle and practice, and the internal surfaces were merely picked to hold the mortar, without any sinking, under the direction of M. Rondelet; yet, even in this part, the want of large stones has made it necessary to introduce a prodigious quantity of iron-work to support arches, where the construction required a single stone.

The first appearance of weakness, as I have already observed, was in 1776, when on removing the centres of the great arches some few pieces flanched off, but they were of little consequence. In 1779, while they were continuing the drum of the dome, new appearances of the same sort occurred, and Soufflot employed workmen to sawkerf[^[13]] the joints, in order that the weight might bear more upon the solid mass of the pier; and during this operation the calles were taken out wherever they came within reach. After the death of Soufflot, which happened in 1780, an examination of the cracks and flanchings was undertaken; but it was not till 1788 that they began to replace the broken stones. Nevertheless, in 1797, when Rondelet first published his work (if I understand him right), there were in one of these pillars three hundred and sixty-seven cracks, of which one hundred and thirty-eight formed lezards; two hundred and eighty-three flanchings; sixty-four points where the stone had been crushed by the incumbent weight; fifty-four separations of the upright joints; three hundred and forty-four pieces renewed, thirty-seven of which had been renewed a second time.

It is marvellous that under such circumstances they should have continued the work, since it was evident, from the pieces twice supplied, that the progress of the settlement was going on sufficiently to make itself sensible, even while the centering of the dome remained; yet it does not appear, as I have already said, that any immediate mischief followed the striking of those centres, and it was not till 1796 that the ultimate stability of the edifice was considered doubtful. At that time a commission of architects was appointed to examine the state of the building, and report on the best means of proceeding. These gentlemen examined the piers, and completely ascertained the defective mode of workmanship which I have above explained; and they found that the piers and columns under the dome, had settled irregularly in consequence of it. One pier had sunk five inches and two lines, French measure, the whole of which must have taken place in the height of the columns (thirty-seven feet eight inches), as every thing above and below was firm. Such defects in the workmanship seemed sufficient to account for the failure of the construction; but it was necessary to know, whether if perfect, the piers would have had sufficient solidity, and whether there was any defect necessary to be attended to in the disposition of the weight above. Soufflot made some experiments to ascertain the pressure which the stone ‘du fond de Bagneux’ used in these pillars, would support; but it appeared probable that the instrument he used was defective. Rondelet therefore repeated the experiments, both with Soufflot’s machine, and with one of his own contrivance. According to the first, each pier would support a weight of seventy million three hundred and sixty-two thousand, seven hundred and twenty pounds, supposing it to be a single block of stone; according to the last, of twenty-seven millions, three hundred and twenty-nine thousand two hundred and twenty-two; a tremendous difference, and yet the estimate is still probably too high, as even in Rondelet’s machine, some power is lost by friction. As however it is probable, that from the bad construction of the piers, the weight was not supported by more than a fourth part of the superficies; their strength, calculated on Rondelet’s machine, would not exceed six million eight hundred and thirty-two thousand, three hundred and five pounds, while the weight of a quarter of the dome was ascertained to be seven millions, four hundred and forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty. We must, however, be careful how we make use of these combinations of experiment and calculation, since it would appear from them that the piers of the bridge of Neuilly, to support arches of 120 feet span, instead of 13 feet thick, as they actually are, need only have been about four inches, and the walls of a house five stories high, require only three lines and a half in thickness at the bottom. As for the distribution of weight the commissioners condemned the method adopted, owing to a change in the plan during the progress of the work, of making the drum of the dome pass a little on the outside of the line of the uprights; but they contented themselves with recommending the establishment of centering to relieve the weight, while the broken stones were removed, and replaced with such an incrustation carefully worked, as would be sufficient to sustain the whole building.

All the principal architects before Soufflot have given their domes a strong tendency towards the centre, but it does not appear to me that this is necessary, nor even in most cases expedient; nor was that of St. Geneviève faulty from the adoption of a different maxim, any farther than as it tended to throw a larger portion of the weight on the three-quarter columns at the acute angles of the piers.

The centres for this method of restoration were already ordered, when, at the solicitation of the builder, another examination by the inspectors of the Bridges and Ways was ordered by the minister. In France, the architects and engineers never agree; and therefore, in order to have an opinion of their own, these inspectors, although they could not help finding the same causes of failure, yet voted the centering proposed by the architects unnecessary; stating that the defective construction of the piers, and the consequent danger of the building, had been much exaggerated, and that the incrustation recommended was insufficient, and injurious to the beauty of the architecture; and instead of this, they advised the insertion of angular flying buttresses. This would have added to the load, without increasing the strength of the edifice, since the direct pressure, and not any lateral thrust, was the source of the evil.

The architects and engineers continued debating while the evil was increasing. Two mathematicians were appointed to examine the reasons on both sides, but they declined pronouncing which was right, and it was agreed that the architects, the inspectors, and mathematicians, should each report separately to the minister of the interior. Other commissioners were appointed in 1798, who were frightened at the progress of settlement which had taken place in the two years preceding, and requested the immediate erection of the centres proposed by the architects; but unfortunately they desired that M. Rondelet, M. Gauthier, inspector general of Ponts et Chaussées, and M. Patté, who had published in an early stage of the work, some observations on the insufficiency of the piers, should be joined with them. The indulgence of this request produced new difficulties and new debates. At last, in 1799, a commission of the members of the Institute recommended the completion of the erection of the centres; and this appears to have been executed; but nothing farther was done till 1806, when it was decided to restore the building to its original destination as a church. The pillars were rebuilt under the direction of M. Rondelet, on the principle at first recommended by the architects. The whole now seems perfectly firm, and the appearance of the building, if you will allow a person to judge who never saw it in its original state, not at all injured. It is certainly a beautiful edifice, the general proportions are good, and there is much grace and elegance in the outline; but there are also many defects. To begin, as usual, with the outside. The columns of the portico are too wide apart, there ought to have been eight instead of six in the front row. The two columns forming a projection on each side beyond the line of the portico, are great blemishes; very injurious to the general effect, and the more so, because they are palpably placed there for no other purpose than to enhance it; and the four internal columns on each side, are most awkwardly doubled against the external columns and the pilasters. If instead of these eighteen columns, there were sixteen, disposed like those of the Pantheon at Rome, this part would have been incomparably finer. The body of the building is too plain for the portico; the eye requires either pilasters, or something which might produce a similar effect, to be continued all round, in order to preserve the same character throughout the edifice, or at least some returns at the north and south entrances, of the magnificence of the western front. It is as necessary in architecture as in painting, to avoid every thing which makes an unconnected spot in the composition. The breaks which exist as apologies for the want of pilasters, have a foolish and unmeaning effect; and the uninterrupted continuance of an ornament of the height of the capital, is heavy and displeasing. Above this, the pedestal, if I may so call it, of the dome, by its plainness and simplicity, forms a relief to the more ornamented portions of the building, and affords a noble base for the upper part. The columns of the drum are well proportioned and well arranged. The attic above them is perhaps rather too high, and the flat ribs of the dome itself are objectionable, especially, distinguished as they now are, by being painted yellow on a gray ground. This dome is triple, and the outer is, in parts of its surface, only eight inches thick. It is not a portion of a sphere, but like those of most modern churches, would form a point, if the summit were not cut off to receive the lantern. This is right, where a dome is elevated, and surmounted by another form of edifice. In a building where a dome and its direct support constitute the whole of the apparent mass, or even where the dome forms the centre of a building, not very high in proportion to its extent, the portion of a sphere is better; but where the effect of height is intended, the somewhat pointed form of the dome maintains the general tendency to a pyramidal form. This is hardly accomplished at St. Geneviève, principally, however, I believe, from the injudicious truncated form of the lantern, which was not a part of the original design, but an addition of the present architect, and intended to support a colossal statue of Fame. It has never been finished; and perhaps when surmounted either with such a statue, or with a ball and cross, it will have a better appearance, because it will be more in harmony with the general form of the edifice. In the interior there is less to censure, and I never enter it without fresh pleasure. In its light and elegant appearance, it resembles the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, more than any other edifice in England; and like that perhaps, is rather deficient in the solemnity which ought to accompany a religious edifice. There is no heaviness in any part, but in some respects rather the contrary appearance of insufficiency. The new piers are no stronger than seems necessary to support the work above; yet I must confess, that the disposition of the columns, forming the nave into squares, each of which is covered with a shallow dome, though giving an air of lightness, produces a certain degree of confusion, and is vastly inferior in majesty and sublimity, to a nave with a continued vault leading to one central dome. It is perhaps this circumstance, more than any other, which communicates an air of gaiety, one might almost say, of levity, to the interior. The four square pillars over the columns, which advance at the angles to support the smaller domes, are preposterously little. There are other defects in the details of the building, which I shall not point out to you; but in spite of them all, one cannot refuse it the rank of one of the most beautiful edifices in Europe. A stranger is usually conducted to the vaults below, whose long, low, gloomy arcades, produce a solemn impression; especially when connected with the idea of their destination to receive the illustrious dead. The individual objects they contain have no other merit. They consist of paltry wooden models of proposed monuments to Voltaire and Rousseau, and plain stone sarcophagi of some of the imperial generals and nobles.

The church of St. Roch was built by Mercier, for Louis the Fourteenth. It is pleasant to follow the boasted architects of that age, and to judge of their merits by comparing them with one another, and with their successors. That school is entirely gone by in Paris, and a very different one, more closely founded on the Roman architecture, has succeeded. Though sufficiently varied, they are however both French; as far as the buildings which have been erected enable us to judge. The design may show the taste and talent of the architect, but the adoption and execution are more connected with the taste of the age and country. In both schools there is much knowledge, and much imagination and ingenuity; in both there is a deficiency in purity and nobleness of taste; yet the present is certainly much preferable to the old. No modern architect would cut up his building so unmeaningly as is done in the front of St. Roch; nor would it be admired if he did. This is the design of J. R. Cotte in 1736, and has been much praised in its time—a short one for the durable productions of architecture. There are now, I think, several French architects who would produce a better design for the interior; for notwithstanding the effort to give effect by the succession of four edifices one within another, presented to the view at a single glance; and by the gilding and painting with which it is adorned, it is not impressive. It is, however, rich and showy, and deserves observation, independently of the sculpture with which it is ornamented, some of which is very good. In the extreme niche is a crucifixion in marble, illuminated by a concealed light from above, with very good effect; by the side of this is a calvary, where a similar management is attempted, but with less success, principally because there are several lights instead of one.

There is a great display of architecture both inside and outside of St. Sulpice, but neither the one nor the other is pleasing. The latter (the front at least) is by Servandoni, and is very much admired; but I think the defects are not merely in details, but in the choice of form, and the disposition of the principal parts. The use here made of two orders is not good, and the upper, with its piers and arches, and half columns resting on the insulated columns below, is quite too heavy. The lower part of the towers ought to have presented a considerable extent of plain surface, which would have seemed a proper basement to the superior part, and contrasted with the shadows of the portico, and with the multiplication of surface resulting from the colonnade in the centre; instead of which, in the present arrangement, the eye confounds it with the portico, and disconnects it with the towers. At the extremity of the church, behind the choir, is a little recess, with a statue of the virgin, illuminated by means of a concealed window, which is admirably managed. I walked through the church without being aware of what I had to expect, and thus coming upon it by surprise, the effect was enchanting. There is something of a purplish hue, either in the light or the material, which is a defect. The Ladies chapel, in which it is placed, is darkly rich in painting and gilding, and has but little light, most of which is by concealed openings just above the cornice, and directed towards the body of the church; and its general gloom very much enhances the effect of the illuminated figure. On looking externally at the recess or niche which contains the statue, it appears to have two small, oval windows, perhaps 12 inches by 9, precisely in the angle where the circular part unites with the body of the building. Internally, the light appears to proceed from one side, and from the top; perhaps the two windows were found too much, and one of them has been consequently stopt up.

St. Philippe en Roule is a handsome church, viewed on the outside, but I think looks better in an engraving than in the reality. The details are bad, and indicate great want of taste in the architect. In the interior likewise, the general design is good, and the details and ornaments defective; but the great fault of this church is, that it produces no sort of impression. I have not been able to satisfy myself to what this extreme tameness is owing; perhaps a very poor wooden ceiling may have some influence.

The extent of the Champs Elysées, and the Jardin des Tuilleries, the number of statues with which they are ornamented, and the gay crowd which peoples them, form a very striking scene, and prepare one for the lengthened front of the palace, to which they seem to belong; excepting its extent, however, this palace has no merit. Whether we consider the whole mass, or the parts of which it is composed; their proportions taken separately, or their proportions as component parts of one edifice; there is nothing to excite admiration; and even were the lower parts better, as long as the abominable high separate roofs remain, it is impossible that the whole should please. The central part, i. e. the middle pavilion, the ‘Corps de Logis,’ on each hand, and the two adjoining pavilions, were built by Catherine of Medici, from designs of Philippe de Lorme and Jean Bullant. Happy if it had never been extended any farther; for this part, though not in a pure taste, possesses some beauty, and the advancing terrace, supported on arches, has a pleasing appearance. Then came Ducerceau, who without any feeling for the general effect, added the two extreme divisions on each side, equally discordant between themselves and with what had been done before. Attempts were made under Louis XIV. to harmonize the whole, but the parts were too heterogeneous; and with its insignificant centre, the smallest division of the whole, and its overwhelming roof, this may probably boast of being the most conspicuously ugly piece of architecture in Europe. Passing through the archway, into the Place de Carousel, the size of the square, considered as the court of a single building, excites astonishment. The opening at present displayed must be equal to Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and when all the old buildings, which are now in the way, shall have been cleared off, there will be more than double that space. Still, however, the architecture is very bad, and the new part is made to correspond with all the breaks and caprices of the opposite side. This appears to me injudicious, as a few easy alterations in the old work would simplify and beautify it amazingly, and the internal arrangement would also have been benefitted. This old side forming a gallery of communication between the two palaces, was begun by Henry IV., under the direction of Étienne Duperon, continued by Louis XIII. and finished by Louis XIV. The new side was erected by Napoleon. After all this, the eye is hardly prepared for the vast length of the building displayed upon the quay. Indeed, whether from the gardens, the Place de Carousel, or the quay, the prevailing impression given by the palace of the Tuilleries is, that it is very large, and very ugly; but the immense extent always gives an idea of magnificence, and we must acknowledge it worthy of royalty. As compared with the public buildings in England, those of France have generally this advantage, that there seems to have been no want of power; and this alone gives a degree of pleasure. Their taste may not be good, but they seem to do all that it requires; whereas, in the buildings of London, it seems as if more would have been done, and more space occupied, if the means had been accessible. In France, on the contrary, inside and outside, the idea of ample space is always communicated. The inside of the Tuilleries I have postponed, in hopes that the king will go to Fontainebleau, which it is said he will do shortly.

We now come to the Louvre, which was begun by Francis I.; and one portion of it was completed under Henry II. Francis ordered designs from Serlio; who had, it is said, the modesty and good sense to prefer those of Pierre Lescot, abbot of Clugny, to his own, and magnanimity to say so. Every body knows the story of Bernini, who, on seeing the designs of Claude Perrault for the eastern front, told Louis XIV., that with such an architect in Paris, it was quite useless to send for one from Italy. Le Grand treats this as a fable, probably originating in what really took place between Serlio and Pierre Lescot. I do not like these transfers of generous deeds; they always lessen the faith with which one reposes upon their truth. Mercier, under Louis XIII., continued the designs of Lescot; enlarging however the plan, and erecting the central pavilion in the east side with the caryatides; the space between that and the angle having been originally intended to form the entire court. After building the celebrated gallery, Perrault erected a third order round part of the court, which was not completed till under Napoleon. The architecture of this building is very much superior to that of the Tuilleries, and I willingly add my suffrage to that of every body else, as to the beauty of its eastern front. In what does this beauty consist, what are its defects, and how might they on another occasion be avoided? These are questions very important to an architect, and such as he ought to apply to every fine building which he sees.

I think its beauty may be attributed to three sources. The simplicity of the outline, and general distribution; the excellence of the proportions; and the depth of the gallery, which gives a fine and impressive mass of shade. The chief defects are the great arched windows in the side pavilions, and the arch over the central doorway, cutting the basement entirely in two. The basement windows are rather too high, and they would probably be better if square-headed. The side doorways of the central pavilion are on the contrary rather too low. There is a certain want of simplicity, arising chiefly from the above-mentioned defects, but partly also from the division of the edifice into five parts, of which the centre wants consequence; and from the unequal spacing of the doubled columns. Compared with other edifices of that period, and even with those of the present day, the design is beautifully simple; but if brought to the standard of the beau ideal, we find something to desire in that respect. After all the admiration so constantly given to the simple architecture of the Greeks, and the praise so uniformly bestowed on those modern buildings which offer the same character of simplicity, it seems astonishing at first view, that it should be so difficult to persuade architects to be simple. The proportions, and even the ornaments of the basement, the columns, the entablature, and the balustrade, are just what one would wish. They are all beautiful, all suited to one another, to the general disposition, and to one essential peculiarity, which consists in the coupled columns of the galleries. I have heard it sometimes disputed whether single columns would not have been preferable. If the question be, whether a more beautiful building might not be formed by columns placed singly, than by columns placed in pairs, the discussion is reasonable, and perhaps the general and true answer would be in the affirmative; but it would no longer have been the same design. No one could propose to put a single column in the place of each pair: the straggling weakness of such an arrangement would be insufferable. They must be placed nearer together, and this would bring the windows nearer together. The lower windows would then appear crowded: other arrangements must be made to obviate this defect, one thing depending on another, till step by step the whole composition is changed. Perhaps it would have been better if the architect had omitted altogether the central pavilion, and continued the gallery in an unbroken line; all the piers and pairs of columns being equally spaced, and the three lower middle openings made a little larger than the rest, and brought down to the ground as doors. The side pavilions would have remained unaltered, except that the middle window of each on the principal floor would be of the same size and form as the others. This arrangement would not admit any carriage way, but the design is not calculated for a carriage way, and it would look better without one. In praising the ornaments, I ought to have excepted the oval tablets over the windows, which are not pleasing.

The front of the Louvre towards the Seine, is also a noble piece of architecture, very much in the style of the eastern façade, but it not only wants the relief produced by the deep gallery, but the single arrangement of the columns has obliged the architect to bring the windows of the basement too near together, and it consequently wants solidity and repose: here we see something of what modifications would be necessary to adapt single columns to this design, and their effect. Another example of this sort is at the Garde Meuble, in the Place Louis XV., and the building is very beautiful; yet the architect has not altogether succeeded, and this front is decidedly inferior to that of the Louvre. The piers of the basement are too slender, and the gallery wants the fine depth which gives so much effect to the celebrated work of Perrault. Added to this, the sham porticos of the side pavilions, with their unmeaning pediments, seem to be squeezed in between the two bits of wall which bound them. In the inside of the court of the Louvre we have quite another style of architecture, but this also is very fine. Though composed of a great number of little parts, yet with some exceptions the arrangement is clear and obvious, and the effect rich and handsome. Of the inside of this vast collection of buildings, I have seen only the rooms of sculpture, and the great gallery. The staircase to the latter is magnificent, but rather narrow for its object, its accompaniments, and for the scale of the building; and as for the rest, these rooms offer more to be avoided than imitated. In my dreams for buildings, which have been sufficiently numerous, I have sometimes endeavoured to obtain a gallery of enormous length, imagining to produce thereby a magnificent effect; but I am now completely cured of any such attempt; the result is neither grand nor beautiful, and though the multiplied faults of these apartments might be avoided, yet I am convinced that it is an arrangement which no art could render agreeable. These galleries are not at present open to the public, but I obtained an order of admission from M. du Fourny. The lower rooms are vaulted, with abundance of painting and gilding on most of the ceilings,[^[14]] but the effect is heavy; they are not high enough for such a disposition of their parts. The hall of the Apollo is a vault of no great elevation, with five smaller arches cutting into the principal one on each side, for as many windows and niches. The Apollo did occupy a niche at the end, with a column of granite on each side of it. The light falls rather too horizontally upon those statues which receive it the best, but those on the same side with the windows receive it from below, it being reflected from the pavement; at least this was very strongly the case when I was there, the sun shining brightly into the room.

The Salle du Laocoon has a somewhat similar arrangement, with three windows; the ceiling is rich with painting and gilding, and this is good; but the windows, instead of being cut up into the vaulting, are kept below a continued cornice, which makes the want of height more sensible, and renders the direction of the light still more unsuitable to the exhibition of the statues.

The Salle des Hommes illustres has seven windows. It is divided into three parts by eight columns of gray granite disposed in pairs, the middle division being the smallest. This disposition is bad. The middle division ought to have been the largest, and even then it would not deserve much praise; the ceiling of the end is coved, that of the middle groined; the walls are painted to imitate the granite columns. This would have been incomparably better done by our best London workmen; and as we may reasonably suppose that in such a situation, the best painters Paris could furnish were employed, it is fair to conclude that we exceed them in this respect. The room which contains the Diana has a waggon-headed ceiling, panelled and painted white, with gilt mouldings.

The handsomest room by far is the Salle des Muses, which has never been finished, but which contains nevertheless some very fine statues. The walls are covered with beautiful marbles, for the most part of a dark colour, which suits the sculpture exceedingly well; and they are finished with a very handsome cornice; but the vault occupies too large a proportion of the height, and is besides, all white, which makes it obtrusive.

The two middle parts of the great gallery of pictures are now occupied by tapestry; the other parts are still crowded with too many pictures, and a large portion are very fine pictures. The defect of height is here still more sensible than below. To look well, it should at least be half as high again, and even that would be scanty. The light is introduced differently in different parts. Sometimes there are skylights on both sides, and sometimes windows on one side or the other, or on both. The light is in most parts introduced rather too low, but if they were all lighted from the skylights there would be little cause to complain; and why they are not, it would be difficult to explain, for the external distribution of the openings would, I believe, give two ranges of windows, or windows and skylights, on both sides, all along. The ceiling is waggon-headed, the ornament rather frippery, and the divisions, which seem intended to indicate a suite of apartments, are not good in themselves, and have a very insignificant appearance. They are formed by arches springing from coupled columns; and here again is a paltry little central division: this however is not of much consequence, as the extravagant length does not permit one to catch the disposition at any single point of view.