PARISIAN NEWSPAPERS.

27

paid one hundred and fifty louis to convey her to England.

But to return to Victor Hugo and his speech. What hopes of solid happiness can be entertained for a country whose salvation is said to depend on its opera or theatres? And that the expression found ready and willing acceptation was evident, for the representatives present applauded to the echo. They did more, they voted large sums to the theatres. May not Rabelais' double etymology be still applied to the French metropolis? - Par-ris and Lutetia.

The farina of deep-dyed sentimental romance and folly borne on the wings of thousands of Feuilletons, which quickens even with blowing, doubtless greatly contributes to maintain this levity.

The number of newspapers published in Paris is perfectly astounding. They are screamed about the Boulevards and principal streets from morning to night. The prices are regulated to suit the means of the humblest mechanic. Some are given away. Here is the announcement of one:-Journal des Fiancées. Ce Journal est distribué le Lundi de chaque semaine aux principales familles qui marient leurs enfans." Political brochures are poured from obscure presses with marvellous rapidity, affording unquestionable evidence of the restless state of the times. The same thing happened in 1789. Arthur Young relates under the date of September in that year. The business going forward at present in

28

NINEVITE ANTIQUITIES.

Every

Thirteen came out

the pamphlet shops of Paris is incredible. hour produces something new. to-day, sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week.'

It is pleasing to see amidst all this political chaos that the city is yearly undergoing improvements. Hopes are entertained that before long the Louvre will be completed. It ought to be finished, to make the concatenation of original ideas inviolable and complete. A striking instance of the attention paid to science and art by the French government, be it republican or monarchical, is presented by the exhibition of antiquities from Nineveh, to which a room in the sculpture department of the Louvre has been appropriated. M. Botta has been more fortunate than Mr. Layard. His bulls are now to be seen in all their mystic majesty, whilst those exhumed by the enterprising Englishman are yet lying prostrate on the Busrah strand.

The old Custode drew especial attention to the lotus leaf surmounting the head-dress of the kings. He maintained stoutly that it was the fleur-de-lys, and that the Bourbons were descended from the Ninevites!

Paris is certainly a splendid city, compared to which, our metropolis is dreary and dusky—

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,

says Keats. Public edifices of harmonious proportions-vast and grand, are especial joys to the denizen of large cities. How numerous are the buildings in Paris which afford pure delight to the spectator!

How comparatively few are they in London! With all our wealth, we fail to produce a real great work. Look at the New Houses of Parliament-but the reader will ask, from what point? Reasonably, too, for the entire river façade of that huge pile can only be seen in its comprehensiveness from the decks of penny steamboats.

In a climate like that of London, florid Gothic architecture is nearly as inappropriate as Chinese, and yet millions of pounds are expended in minute carvings and tracery, the details of which cannot be seen excepting by telescopic eyes. The architect must have had the comfort of sparrows much at heart when he designed those legions of kings and queens and bearded figures-lions, unicorns, and dressings (court dressings) of the windows, for to their uses will they be applied. In the folds of a ruff, in the gatherings of a mantle-nay, in the very face of majesty for sparrows are impudent creatures-will the nests of these birds be made. The beautiful capitals of the Corinthian pilasters in Somerset House, where I reside, and on which I have the happiness of looking from my bed-room window, are alive before the breeding season with these birds; and long before they have constructed their nests, the leaves of the acanthus and the spiral volutes are eclipsed by bunches of hair and pendant straws.

Great architects have always held that buildings should be framed in the spirit of their purposes. The New Houses of Parliament are utterly meaningless;

they might have been built for the performance of gorgeous ballets, for a series of Puseyite chapels, for showy shops; in fact, for anything rather than the solemn and grave deliberations of a great national legislative assembly. Remembering that for these purposes they were erected, it is lamentable to reflect how small a modicum of æsthetic perception they manifest.

But this is no fitting place to show how entirely the excellent architectural precept of Vitruvius— Utilitas, firmitas, venustas—has been disregarded in the erection of the greater part of our public buildings, and in none more than the New Houses of Parliament.

CHAPTER II.

TOURISTS

OURISTS are not sufficiently sensible of their obligations to engineers, by whose clever contrivances they are enabled to skim like summer butterflies from pleasure to pleasure.

From Paris to Orleans was wont to be a tedious, dislocating kind of journey; now, thanks to a railway, it is an after-dinner affair. We dined at Veray's,

-as the cathedral clock struck nine, we entered the court-yard of the Hôtel Orleans in the ancient city of La Pucelle. But the railway has failed to impart any of the life and movement of Paris to Orleans. It stagnates still in all its dull provinciality. True, our hotel quivered yet with the excitement which had been occasioned by the visit of Louis Napoleon a few days previously, who paraded the streets with a cavalcade of officers, on his way to open a new line of railway. Our landlady was, however, much more eloquent respecting a certain lady, whose beauty had turned the heads of half Orleans. The lady in question had preceded the President of the Republic, and engaged a set of rooms in the hotel commanding a view of the street. Attired in a 'parure superbe,' she gazed eagerly on Louis Napoleon as he passed, and, like a fair lady of old, waved her scarf to the