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SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS - VOLUME 3
SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS - VOLUME 3 VARIOUS SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS VOLUME III
FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS
Selected and Edited with Introductions etc. by
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
and of "The Best of the World's Classics" etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: Paris: The Seine and Bridges]
Vol. III
Part One
Introduction to Volumes III and IV
France and the Netherlands
The tourist bound for France lands either at Cherbourg Havre or
Boulogne. At Cherbourg he sees waters in which the "Kearsarge" sank the
"Alabama"; at Havre a shelter in which long before Caesar came to Gaul
ships with home ports on the Seine sought safety from the sea; and at
Boulogne may recall the invading expedition to England planned by
Napoleon but which never sailed.
From the Roman occupation many Roman remains have survived in England
but these are far inferior in numbers and in state of preservation to the
Roman remains found in France. Marseilles was not only an important Roman
seaport but its earliest foundations date perhaps from Phoenician times
and certainly do from the age when Greeks were building temples at Paestum
and Girgenti. Rome got her first foothold in Marseilles as a consequence
of the Punic wars; and in 125 B.C. acquired a province (Provincia Romana)
reaching from the Alps to the Rhone and southward to the sea with Aix as
its first capital and Arles its second. Caesar in 58 B.C. found on the
Seine a tribe of men called Parisii whose chief village Lutetia stood
where now rises Notre Dame.
Lutetia afterward became a residence of Roman emperors. Constantius
Chlorus spent some time there guarding the empire from Germans and
Britons while Julian the Apostate built there for himself a palace and
extensive baths of which remains still exist in Paris. In that palace
afterward lived Pepin le Bref ("mayor of the palace") son of Charles
Martell and father of the great Charles. Romans built there an
amphitheater seating ten thousand people of which remains are still
visible.
Lyons was a great Roman city. Augustus first called it into vigorous life
his wish being to make it "a second Rome." From Lyons a system of roads
ran out to all parts of Gaul. Claudius was born there; Caligula made it
the political and intellectual capital of Provincia; its people under an
edict of Caracalla were made citizens of Rome. At Nimes was born the
Emperor Antoninus. In Gaul Galba Otho Vitellius Vespasian and Domitian
were made emperors. At Arles and Nimes are Roman amphitheaters still
regularly put to use for combats between men and wild beasts--but the wild
beasts instead of lions and tigers are bulls. At Orange is a Roman
theater of colossal proportions in which a company from the Theatre
Francais annually presents classical dramas. The magnificent fortress city
of Carcassonne has foundation walls that were laid by Romans. Notre Dame
of Paris occupies the site of a temple to Jupiter.
As with modern England so with modern France; its people are a mixture of
many races. To the southwest in a remote age came Iberians from Spain
to Provence Ligurians from Italy; to the northeast Germanic tribes; to
the northwest Scandinavians; to the central parts from the Seine to the
Garonne in the sixth century B.C. Gauls who soon became the dominant
race and so have remained until this day masterful and fundamental. When
Caesar came there had grown up in Gaul a martial nobility leaders of a
warlike people with chieftains whose names are familiar in the mouths and
ears of all schoolboys--Aricvistus and Vercingetorix. When Vercingetorix
was overthrown at Alesia Gaul became definitely Roman. For five hundred
years it remained loyal to Rome. Within its borders was established the
Pax Romana and in 250 A.D. under St. Denis Christianity. When the
disintegration of the empire set in five centuries afterward Gaul was
among the first provinces to suffer. With the coming of the Visigoths and
Huns from the Black Sea the Pranks and Bnrgundians from beyond the Rhine
the Roman fall was near but great battles were first fought in Gaul
battles which rivaled those of Caesar five centuries before. Greatest of
all these was the one with Attila at Chalons in 451 where thousands
perished.
When the Roman dominion ended Rome's one great province in Gaul became
seventeen small principalities and power drifted fast into the hands of a
warlike aristocracy. Then a strong man rose in Clovis who in 508 made
Lutetia his capital his successors enriching and adorning it. From these
beginnings has been evolved in twelve hundred years the great modern
state--through Charlemagne and his empire-building Louis XI. and his work
of consolidating feudal principalities into one strong state through a
Hundred Years' War fierce wars of religion a long line of Bourbon kings
with their chateaux-building in Touraine and Versailles the Revolution of
1789 the Napoleonic era the Republic. An historical land surely is this
and a beautiful land with her snow-capped mountains of the southeast her
broad vineyards unrivaled cathedrals her Roman remains ancient olive
groves her art her literature her people.
Belgium and Holland were included in the territory known to Rome as Gaul.
Here dwelt a people called the Belgii and another called the Nervii--that
tribal nation whom Caesar "overcame" on a summer's day and the same
evening "in his tent" "put on" the mantle that was pierced afterward by
daggers in the Senate House. From these lands came the skilled Batavian
cavalry which followed Caesar in pursuit of Pompey and forced Pompey's
flight at Pharsalia. From here afterward came other Batavians who served
as the Imperial Guard of Rome from Caasar's time to Vespasian's. In race
as in geographical position the Netherlands have belonged in part to
France in part to Germany the interior long remaining Gallic the
frontier Teutonic. From Caesar's time down to the fifth century the land
was Roman. Afterward in several periods it was in part or in whole
included in the domain of France--in Charlemagne's time and after; under
Louis XI. who sought somewhat unsuccessfully its complete submission;
under Louis XIV. who virtually conquered it; under the French Revolution
and during Napoleon's ascendency. On Belgium soil Marlborough fought and
won Ramillies and Wellington Waterloo.
Belgium and Holland were for long great centers of European commerce--at
Bruges Ghent Antwerp Rotterdam Amsterdam--rivals of English ports
Holland an ancient adversary of England and her valiant enemy in great
wars. A still fiercer struggle came with Spain. Perhaps an even greater
conflict than these two has been her never-ending war with the sea.
Holland has been called a land enclosed in a fortress reared against the
sea. For generations her people have warred with angry waves; but as
Motley has said they gained an education for a struggle "with the still
more savage despotism of man." Let me not forget here Holland's great
school of art--comparable only to that of Spain or even to that of Italy.
F. W. H.
Contents of Volume III
France and the Netherlands--Part One
INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. III AND IV--By the
Editor.
I--Paris
The City Beautiful--By Anne Warwick
Notre-Dame--By Victor Hugo
The Louvre--By Grant Allen
The Madeline and Champs Elysees--By Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Palais de Justice and Sainte Chapelle--By Grant Allen
The Hotel de Ville and the Conciergerie--By Augustus J. C. Hare
Pere la Chaise--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Musee de Cluny--By Grant Allen
The Place de la Bastille--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Pantheon and St. Etienne du Mont--By Grant Allen
St. Roch--By Augustus J. C. Hare
II--The Environs of Paris
Versailles--By William Makepeace Thackeray
Versailles in 1739--By Thomas Gray
Fontainebleau--By Augustus J. C. Hare
St. Denis--By Grant Allen
Marly-Le-Roi--By Augustus J. C. Hare
The Village of Auteuil--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Two Trianons--By Augustus J. C. Hare
Malmaison--By Augustus J. C. Hare
St. Germain--By Leitch Ritchie
St. Cloud--By Augustus J. C. Hare
III--Old Provence
The Papal Palace at Avignon--By Charles Dickens
The Building of the Great Palace--By Thomas Okey
The Walls of Avignon--By Thomas Okey
Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge--By Thomas Okey
Orange--By Henry James
Vaucluse--By Bayard Taylor
The Pont du Guard--Aigues-Mortes--Nimes--By Henry James
Arles and Les Baux--By Henry James
IV--Cathedrals and Chateaux
Amiens--By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rouen--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Chartres--By Epiphanius Wilson
Rheims--By Epiphanius Wilson
(_Cathedrals and Chateaux continued in Vol. IV_)
List of Illustrations
Volume III
Frontispiece
Paris: The Seine and Bridges
Notre Dame Paris
Portion of the Louvre Paris
Church of the Madeleine Paris
Napoleon's Sarcophagus Paris
The Burial Place of Napoleon Paris
Column and Place Vendome Paris
Column of July Paris
The Pantheon Paris
The House of the Chamber of Deputies Paris
The Bourse Paris
Interior of the Grand Opera House Paris
Front of the Grand Opera House Paris
The Arc de Triomphe Paris
Arch Erected by Napoleon Near the Louvre Paris
The Church of St. Vincent de Paul Paris
The Church of St. Sulpice Paris
The Picture Gallery of Versailles
The Bed-Room of Louis XIV. Versailles
The Grand Trianon at Versailles
The Little Trianon at Versailles
The Bed-Room of Catherine de Medici at Chaumont
Marie Antoinette's Dairy at Versailles
Tours
Saint Denis
Havre
The Bridge at St. Cloud
[Illustration: Notre Dame Paris]
[Illustration: Church of the Madeleine]
[Illustration: Portion of the Louvre]
[Illustration: Paris: Column and Place Vendome]
[Illustration: Burial Place of Napoleon]
[Illustration: Napoleon's Sarcophagus]
[Illustration: Paris: Column of July in the Place de la Bastille]
[Illustration: Pantheon Paris]
[Illustration: House of the Chamber of Deputies]
[Illustration: Bourse Paris]
I
PARIS
The City Beautiful
By Anne Warwick
[Footnote: From "The Meccas of the World." By permission of the publisher
John Lane. Copyright 1913.]
The most prejudiced will not deny that Paris is beautiful; or that there
is about her streets and broad tree-lined avenues a graciousness at once
dignified and gay. Stand as the ordinary tourist does on his first day
in the flowering square before the Louvre; in the foreground are the
fountains and bright tulip-bordered paths of the Tuileries--here a glint
of gold there a soft flash of marble statuary shining through the trees;
in the center the round lake where the children sail their boats. Beyond
spreads the wide sweep of the Place de la Concorde with its obelisk of
terrible significance its larger fountains throwing brilliant jets of
spray; and then the trailing upward vista of the Champs Elysees to the
great triumphal arch; yes even to the most indifferent Paris is
beautiful.
To the subtler of appreciation she is more than beautiful; she is
impressive. For behind the studied elegance of architecture the elaborate
simplicity of garden the carefully lavish use of sculpture and delicate
spray is visible the imagination of a race of passionate creators--the
imagination throughout of the great artist. One meets it at every turn
and corner down dim passageways up steep hills across bridges along
sinuous quays; the masterhand and its "infinite capacity for taking
pains." And so marvelously do its manifestations of many periods through
many ages combine to enhance one another that one is convinced that the
genius of Paris has been perennial; that St. Genevieve her godmother
bestowed it as an immortal gift when the city was born.
From earliest days every man seems to have caught the spirit of the man
who came before and to have perpetuated it; by adding his own distinctive
yet always harmonious contribution to the gradual development of the
whole. One built a stately avenue; another erected a church at the end; a
third added a garden on the other side of the church and terraces leading
up to it; a fourth and fifth cut streets that should give from the
remaining two sides into other flowery squares with their fine edifices.
And so from every viewpoint and from every part of the entire city
to-day we have an unbroken series of vistas--each one different and more
charming than the last.
History has lent its hand to the process too; and romance--it is not an
insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow but the holy warriors of
Saint Louis the roistering braves of Henry the Great the gallant
Bourbons the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their
monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower but
there they are eloquent of days that are dead of a spirit that lives
forever staunch in the heart of the fervent French people.
It comes over one overwhelmingly sometimes in the midst of the careless
gaiety of the modern city the old ever-burning spirit of rebellion and
savage strife that underlies it all and that can spring to the surface
now on certain memorable days with a vehemence that is terrifying. Look
across the Pont Alexandre at the serene gold dome of the Invalides
surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful
slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut
down for the lust of one man's ambition; and when that is spent and the
wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation a costly
asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left--and the great
Emperor has done his duty!
Or you are walking through the Cite past the court of the Palais de
Justice. You glance in carelessly--memory rushes upon you--and the court
flows with blood "so that men waded through it up to the knees!" In the
tiny stone-walled room yonder Marie Antoinette sits disdainfully composed
before her keepers; tho her face is white with the sounds she hears as
her friends and followers are led out to swell that hideous river of
blood.
A pretty artificial city Paris; good for shopping and naughty
amusements now and then. History? Oh yes of course; but all that's so
dry and uninspiring and besides it happened so long ago.
Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale among the jewellers' and
milliners' shops and Maxim's glance up at the Madeleine down at the
obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago this
was the brief distance between life and death for those who one minute
were dancing in the "Temple of Victory" the next were laying their heads
upon the block of the guillotine.
Notre-Dame
By Victor Hugo
[Footnote: From Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris." Translated by A.L. Alger. By
permission of Dana Estes & Co. Copyright 1888.]
The church of Notre-Dame at Paris is doubtless still a sublime and
majestic building. But much beauty as it may retain in its old age it is
not easy to repress a sigh to restrain our anger when we mark the
countless defacements and mutilations to which men and time have subjected
that venerable monument without respect for Charlemagne who laid its
first stone or Philip Augustus who laid its last....
Upon the face of this aged queen of French cathedrals beside every
wrinkle we find a scar. "Tempus edax homo edacior;" which I would fain
translate thus: "Time is blind but man is stupid." Had we leisure to
study with the reader one by one the various marks of destruction graven
upon the ancient church the work of Time would be the lesser the worse
that of Men especially of "men of art" since there are persons who have
styled themselves architects during the last two centuries.
And first of all to cite but a few glaring instances there are assuredly
few finer pages in the history of architecture than that facade where the
three receding portals with their pointed arches the carved and
denticulated plinth with its twenty-eight royal niches the huge central
rose-window flanked by its two lateral windows as is the priest by his
deacon and subdeacon the lofty airy gallery of trifoliated arcades
supporting a heavy platform upon its slender columns and lastly the two
dark and massive towers with their pent-house roofs of slate harmonious
parts of a magnificent whole one above the other five gigantic stages
unfold themselves to the eye clearly and as a whole with their countless
details of sculpture statuary and carving powerfully contributing to
the calm grandeur of the whole; as it were a vast symphony in stone; the
colossal work of one man and one nation one and yet complex like the
Iliad and the old Romance epics to which it is akin; the tremendous sum
of the joint contributions of all the force of an entire epoch in which
every stone reveals in a hundred forms the fancy of the workman
disciplined by the genius of the artist--a sort of human creation in
brief powerful and prolific as the Divine creation whose double
characteristics variety and eternity it seems to have acquired.
And what we say of the facades we must also say of the whole church; and
what we say of the cathedral church of Paris must be said of all the
Christian churches of the Middle Ages. Everything is harmonious which
springs from spontaneous logical and well-proportioned art. To measure a
toe is to measure the giant.
Let us return to the facade of Notre-Dame as we see it at the present day
when we make a pious pilgrimage to admire the solemn and mighty cathedral
which as its chroniclers declare inspires terror. This facade now lacks
three important things: first the eleven steps which formerly raised it
above the level of the ground; next the lower series of statues which
filled the niches over the doors; and lastly the upper row of the twenty-
eight most ancient kings of France which adorned the gallery of the first
story from Childebert down to Philip Augustus each holding in his hand
"the imperial globe."
The stairs were destroyed by Time which with slow and irresistible
progress raised the level of the city's soil; but while this flood-tide
of the pavements of Paris swallowed one by one the eleven steps which
added to the majestic height of the edifice Time has perhaps given to the
church more than it took away for it is Time which has painted the front
with that sober hue of centuries which makes the antiquity of churches
their greatest beauty.
But who pulled down the two rows of statues? Who left those empty niches?
Who carved that new and bastard pointed arch in the very center of the
middle door? Who dared to insert that clumsy tasteless wooden door
carved in the style of Louis XV. side by side with the arabesques of
Biscornette? Who but men architects the artists of our day?
And if we step into the interior of the edifice who overthrew that
colossal figure of Saint Christopher proverbial among statues by the same
right as the great hall of the palace among halls as the spire of
Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every
space between the columns of the choir and the nave kneeling standing
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