Part 5 (1/2)
The Abbe Sicard followed up the plan to the highest perfection; 80 pupils are now admitted gratis and are brought up to different trades, others pay according to their means; the Chambers grant generally 4,000_l._ a year to this inst.i.tution. At No. 67, Rue d'Enfer, is the Convent of the Carmelites, where Mademoiselle de La Valliere, the beautiful favourite of Louis XIV, took the veil. The church of St.
Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, which is at the opposite corner, offers nothing very remarkable, the first stone was laid in 1630, by Gaston of Orleans, brother to Louis XIII. Four fine paintings of Saints however are worthy of notice.
The Pantheon, formerly the church of Sainte Genevieve, stands to the left as we descend the rue St. Jacques, and strikes upon the eye as a most n.o.ble and imposing building; it was Louis XV who laid the first stone in 1764, near the spot where stood the ancient but ruined church of St. Genevieve. It is affirmed that he was persuaded by Madame de Pompadour to erect this monument as a thanksgiving after his having had a severe illness. The architect was Soufflot, the style is purely Grecian. Twenty-two fluted Corinthian columns, 60 feet in height and 6 in diameter, sustain the portico, and 32 the great dome, above which is a lantern terminated by a figure in bronze 17 feet high. There is a great deal of sculpture about the building, some allegorical, others portraiture; its total height is 282 feet. The exterior is in the form of a Grecian cross. The paintings are by the Barons Gros, and Gerard; although a most n.o.ble structure, yet it is not consistently grand in all its bearings. Monuments of the great men of France are now erected here; and amongst the rest the immortal Lafayette. The stranger is recommended to ascend the dome, from which a most amusing view is afforded. The vaults beneath are extremely curious and interesting; whatever the faults of this edifice may be, there is a solemnity about it which takes great possession of the mind, particularly when there is a funeral and the light of the torches are seen glimmering amongst the priests in the ”long drawn aisle,” as they slowly and solemnly wend their way.
In the Rue des Postes, No. 26, is the seminary for young men destined for missionaries to the colonies; a bas relief representing a missionary preaching, above the pediment of the church, is the only striking object. At No. 3, Rue de Fourcy, is the Irish college, rather a handsome building, with some trees about it which add to the effect. Many Irish of distinction are buried here and it is still kept up, there being about 100 students; the regulations are the same as in the English Universities, about 25 priests are sent out from here to their own country every year. In the rue des Fosses St. Victor is the Scotch College (vide page 78), it is now a sort of school, but the tablet over the door with College des Ecossais inscribed still remains, and there are many interesting monuments of Scotch n.o.bility. Next door is the Convent of English Augustin Nuns, the only religious house never molested during the Revolution; it contains a small chapel with some English tombs, the inmates now occupy themselves with the education of their young countrywomen. At the back of the Pantheon, rather to the south-east, is the very curious and interesting church of St.
Etienne-du-Mont; it is an odd mixture of styles of architecture, a tower and circular turret which are detached from the church, are supposed to be of the date 1222; a staircase of most singular construction and of peculiar lightness is the first object which strikes the spectator on entering; there is a great deal of richness and scroll work, with some Arabic, Greek and Gothic styles intermingled. Some of the pictures in this church are exceedingly good, and are by Lebrun and Lesueur. The pulpit is supported by Sampson, and there are other smaller figures, the whole having a beautiful effect; the design is by La Hire, and executed by Lestocard, it is altogether a church of high interest, often the subject of the modern artists' pencils. There is a tomb which was found in the vaults beneath, which is said to be that of St. Genevieve, and bears the date of 511.
The library of St. Genevieve is close by, and besides containing 200,000 volumes, and 2,500 ma.n.u.scripts, it possesses other objects of interest, being a series of portraits from Philippe the Bold to Louis the XV, and one of Mary Queen of Scots. This library belongs to the College Henry IV, which on the side towards the Rue Clovis is very modern, but the lower part of the curious old tower is supposed to have been built in the reign of Clovis. The young princes of the reigning family in France were educated at this College, there are 907 pupils, of whom 500 are boarders. The ecole de Droit which stands in front of the Pantheon was also erected in the reign of Louis XV, and Souflot, the architect. At No.
123, is the College de Louis-le-Grand, formerly the College de Clermont, founded in 1560, but the present building was erected in 1618; it contains 1,180 pupils, of whom 520 are boarders. It possesses a large library, and a good collection of philosophical instruments.
Behind this College, in the Rue de Rheims, at the corner of the Rue des Chollets, a gateway and building of the time of Francis I. is worth attention, supposed to belong to the old College des Chollets. The Royal College of France, situated No. 1, Place Cambrai, was founded in 1529, by Francis I, but the present edifice was erected in 1774. It is a s.p.a.cious building and very commodious, 23 professors attend and give gratuitous lectures upon almost every subject, whether scientific or literary, and particularly upon languages, both ancient and modern, Oriental and European. In a court opposite the college is a very curious square tower of the 12th century, called la Tour b.i.+.c.hat, or la Tour de St.
Jean-de-Latran; it is all that is remaining of the Hall of Knights Hospitaliers, established in 1171, afterwards called Chevaliers de Malte.
The remains of a chapel of very ancient date will be found in the adjoining Cour de la Vacherie, in the far corner to the right, now occupied as a charcoal depot. We will next proceed to the rue de la Montagne St. Genevieve, and view the Polytechnic School, formerly the College de Navarre, and where still remain a hall and chapel of the 14th century; a new facade much less interesting has been recently added, and the establishment is altogether badly situated. There are many emblematical bas-reliefs which possess no extraordinary merit. But the inst.i.tution itself is one that deserves the highest encomiums, the young men are received at from 17 to 20, after they have pa.s.sed the ordeal of a very severe examination in Paris or their respective departments. They are instructed in every branch of education connected with military science, and are afterwards admissible in the engineers, artillery, pontooners, miners, inspectors of highways, public works, etc; they pay 1,000 francs a year, find their own uniforms, and whatever may be requisite for their studies; they remain two or three years, as circ.u.mstances may demand. Strangers wis.h.i.+ng to view this establishment must have a permission from the Minister of War.
The Rue des Carmes has an interesting appearance as containing some of the old colleges, now otherwise appropriated. One was the College de Lisieux; the buildings remain with a curious chapel, which fronts the Marche des Carmes, but its entrance is at No. 5, Rue St.
Jean-de-Beauvais. In the Market there is a fountain in the middle built in 1818; this Market is now designated la Place Maubert, and occupies the site of the Convent des Carmes. Mounting a few steps in the Rue St.
Victor, we arrive at the church of St. Nicholas-du-Chardonnet; the body of the building was completed in 1709, but the lower is of the 16th century. The general effect of the interior is fine, but the paintings in different chapels, on either side, are highly interesting; some of them are extremely good, of the schools of Lesueur, Moise Valentin, and Mignard, the ceiling of the chapel of St. Charles is painted by Lebrun; there is also a monument of himself and his mother. At No. 68, Rue St-Victor is the Royal Inst.i.tution for the juvenile Blind, founded by M.
Hauy in 1791. There are here maintained 60 boys and 30 girls, at the expense of the State, and as boarders, any blind children may be admitted, either French or foreign; they are taught reading, music, arithmetic, and writing, by means of characters raised in relief.
Admittance is freely accorded to strangers, but the establishment is about to be removed to the corner of the Rue de Sevres, on the Boulevard des Invalides, where 250 pupils will be accommodated. At No. 18, Rue de Pontoise, is the seminary of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, and at No. 76, the ancient College of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1300; some parts of the original building exist, and on the doors are still seen a cardinal's hat and arms, and numerous iron spear-heads. Close by, in the Marche aux Veaux, is still one of the dormitories of the Convent of the Bernardins, which must be of the 13th century, as also some remains of their chapel, in a house adjoining the Market. On the Quai de la Tournelle, No. 35, is the Hotel de Nesmond, of the reign of Henry IV, and at No. 5, the Pharmacie Centrale, for keeping all the drugs and chemical preparations for the hospitals of Paris.
The Rue de Fouarre, by which we will pa.s.s, is one of the meanest and filthiest in Paris, but has been cited by Petrarch, Dante and Rabelais, as in it were several of the schools where public disputations were held; the Rue Galande, the Rue des Rats, and many other dirty streets of the same description is the quarter where existed the old University, and still known by the name of the Quartier Latin.
Thus having completed our survey, which I shall call the south-east division, we will proceed to the south-west, and begin by the church of St. Severin at No. 3, in the street of the same name, called after a hermit who died in the year 530, but had on this spot an oratory and cells, where he conferred the monastic habit on St. Cloud. The present building was erected in 1210, in the reign of Philippe Auguste, has been repaired and enlarged at several different periods, which is perceptible by the different styles displayed in the architecture; there is a great deal of elaborate workmans.h.i.+p about this church that is exceedingly beautiful and interesting, the lower part of the tower is coeval with its first erection; a few good pictures of the old French school are amongst the attractive objects contained within this edifice.
Ascending the little unseemly streets des Pretres and Boutebrie, we find ourselves in the Rue du Foin, No. 18, being called the Hotel de la Reine Blanche; she was living about the year 1210, when the church of St.
Severin close by was founded in the reign of her father-in-law, and very probably resided in the neighbourhood, perhaps on the very spot where the house stands which is now called after her, but evidently not in the same building which is now shown as such, although the staircase is of a very ancient appearance.
In the same street, at the corner of the Rue Boutebrie, is the old College de Maitre Gervais, founded in 1370, at present appropriated as a barrack for infantry. The visiter now must prepare for a grand treat, as we turn round into the Rue de la Harpe, and at No. 63, we find the venerable and crumbling remains of the Palais des Thermes (vide page 55). Julian, who was born in 332, inhabited it for some time, and many imagine it was built by his grandfather, but others state that it was alluded to at a still earlier period. Of what now remains there is princ.i.p.ally a large hall and a smaller, forming together one room; the architecture is simple but n.o.ble, the walls are adorned by three grand arcades, the middle being the loftiest. The vaulting of the roof rests upon supports, representing the sterns of s.h.i.+ps; human figures may be distinguished in one of them. Beneath the hall are vaulted apartments extending under most of the neighbouring houses. An aqueduct is traced as having been brought from some leagues, for the purpose it is supposed princ.i.p.ally of supplying the baths. The masonry is alternately of stone and brick, in parts covered with a thick stucco. It seems almost incredible that a monument so ancient, and of such high interest should have been for so long a period totally disregarded by the government, and suffered to be occupied by a printer, a traiteur, and a cooper. The Munic.i.p.ality of Paris have now however purchased it, and intend to convert it into a museum for the reception of antiquities that can be collected of the ancient Gauls. After the overthrow of the Roman yoke, the Palais des Thermes was inhabited by the earliest kings of France. To view these ruins the stranger must apply to the concierge, No. 68, Rue de la Harpe, directly opposite, and a trifle should be given to the party showing them.
The Hotel de Cluny which is almost adjoining, is also an object highly meriting the attention of the observer. It is one of those edifices of the middle ages, of which there are so few remaining. In 1505, in the reign of Louis the Twelfth, this curious building was erected by Jacques d'Amboise, Abbot of Cluny, on the site and with a part of the ruins of the Palais des Thermes. There is a richness about the architecture and the ornaments around the windows, that is particularly striking; the chapel is most highly interesting, and in it was married Princess Mary, the widow of Louis the Twelfth, and sister of Henry VIII, to the duke of Suffolk, as also James V of Scotland to Magdalen, daughter of Francis I.
Having at length become the property of M. Sommerard, all the value of his acquisition is duly appreciated, and he has formed within this curious and beautiful edifice, a collection of specimens of the middle ages, which are arranged chronologically; he is the author of a most interesting work on the subject which may be procured upon the premises.
The stranger will find a visit to the Hotel de Cluny one of the most gratifying of any he can bestow, and on writing to M. Sommerard, he may be certain of procuring admission. Following the Rue St. Benoit, we arrive at the Theatre du Pantheon, Rue St. Jacques, opened in 1832; it is partly formed by the church St. Benoit anciently that of St. Benedict built in 1517, much famed during the ligue, where the a.s.sa.s.sination of Henri III was applauded by Jean Boucher in his sermons. The performances are vaudevilles and melodramas. Highest price two s.h.i.+llings, lowest six-pence.
We now re-enter the Rue de la Harpe, and notice the Royal College St.
Louis, originally founded by Raoul Harcourt in 1280; the present building was erected in 1675, but part of the ancient edifice exists, the greater portion of the structure was built in 1814; and the college opened in 1820. There is a chapel attached, and at the lower end a gateway, formerly the entrance to the College de Bayeux, founded in 1308, which bears an inscription to that effect, and probably of the same date. A very few steps bring us to the College de la Sorbonne, built on the site of a school founded by Robert Sorbon in 1253; it is filled with historical a.s.sociations, the church and all about it has a very gloomy appearance, it is cruciform and of the corinthian order, surmounted by a dome the interior of which is painted by Philippe de Champagne. The tomb of Cardinal de Richelieu, in the southern transept, is the chef-d'oeuvre of Gerardon. The college is a plain building of sombre aspect, but the accommodation for the professors is on a handsome scale; the lectures delivered are all gratuitous.
We will now proceed to the School of Medicine in the street bearing the same name. The first stone was laid by Louis XV, in 1769, it is a truly elegant building, a peristyle of the ionic order with a quadruple range of columns unite the two wings and support the library, and a fine cabinet of anatomy. The grand court is 66 feet in length by 96 in breadth, the amphitheatre which is opposite the entrance is capable of containing 1,400 people; there are several allegorical and emblematical bas-reliefs, and on the whole it is a building which excites much admiration both in an ornamental and in a useful point of view, there not being a single object that can in any manner facilitate the study of medicine that is not to be found within this inst.i.tution. At No. 5, in the same street, is a gratuitous school of drawing, established in the ancient amphitheatre of surgery, chiefly intended for artisans, to instruct them in the principles of drawings and architecture, and lectures are given on geometry, mensuration, etc. Opposite to the ecole de Medecine, is the Hopital clinique de la Faculte de Medecine, established in the cloister of the Cordeliers, of which there are some remains still visible; it is rather a handsome building and contains 140 beds. The body of the building is in the Rue de l'Observance. In the same street as the ecole de Medecine; is the Musee Dupuytren, being the valuable pathological collection of that celebrated anatomist, bought by the University of his heirs, and placed in the refectory of the Cordeliers which has been fitted up in the style of the 15th century, the date of its erection.
Adjoining to this Museum is the School of practical Anatomy, being a set of dissecting rooms for the use of the students. As we are so near I must conduct the visiter to the Rue Hautefeuille; on the west side is a house of the 16th century, which once belonged to a society of Premonstratensian monks. In the same street, Nos. 23, 13, 9 and 5, and at the corner of the Rue du Paon and Rue de l'ecole de Medecine, the houses have ancient turrets, and are stated to have been built in the reign of Charles VII. In the house, No. 18, of the latter street, in a dirty backroom, Charlotte Corday stabbed that beau ideal of monsters, Marat. We will now make our way to the Rue d'Enfer, and at No. 34 is the Hotel de Vendome, at present the royal School of Mines; this n.o.ble mansion was erected in 1707 by the Carthusian monks, but being purchased by the d.u.c.h.ess of Vendome was called after her. Every description of tool or instrument used in mining will here be found, and perhaps the extensive mineralogical collection is unrivalled anywhere in Europe, and arranged in the most scientific manner by M. Hauy, with a ticket attached to each explanatory of their quality and locality. The geological specimens have been collected by Messrs. Cuvier and Bronguiart; weeks might be pa.s.sed in this museum by those partial to studying mineralogy, geology, and conchology, and subjects for examination and meditation would still not be exhausted. We will now turn into the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace; they are in the true French stiff style, but look at them in a slanting direction and all the formality is lost; the statues are seen intermingled with the trees, shrubs, flowers, parterres, walks, vases, fountains, etc. and the coup-d'oeil has a most beautiful effect, and some of the retired walks amongst the high trees have a very inviting though solitary appearance.
The Palace (vide page 98) was erected by Marie de Medicis, and is now with the recent additions a very extensive building, and taken in a general sense is decidedly a very fine monument, but I certainly think the pillars being in such bad taste with large square k.n.o.bs sticking out all the way up the columns, in a degree spoil the effect of the whole edifice, still there is a heavy grandeur in the ensemble which has an imposing appearance. After having been occupied by various royal personages, it was given by Louis the Sixteenth to his brother afterwards Louis XVIII, who resided in it until he quitted France in 1791; it has since been appropriated to many different purposes, and is now used as the Chamber of Peers; for their discussions a new apartment has been constructed 92 feet in diameter, the form is semi-circular. In the middle of the axis is a recess in which the president's and secretaries' seats are placed; above are a range of statues in recesses, the chairs of the peers are arranged in an amphitheatrical manner and occupy the s.p.a.ce in front of the president; the peer who speaks takes his place below the president's desk.
There are altogether in this palace so many statues, apartments, sculpture and galleries to describe, that it would monopolise far too much s.p.a.ce in my little volume if I were to attempt to do it justice. I must therefore content myself with advising the reader to take the first opportunity of viewing it with its beautiful gallery of pictures, many of which are the chefs-d'oeuvre of the best living French artists. In the new divisions which have been lately constructed there are some fine specimens of painting from the pencils of Messrs. Delaroche, Scheffer, Boulanger, Roqueplan, etc., and the chambers voted 800,000 fr.
(32,000_l._) for the artistical decorations of the recent erections added to the original building.
Le Pet.i.t Luxembourg is a large hotel contiguous and may be considered as a dependency of the great palace, it was built by Cardinal Richelieu who made it his residence whilst the Palais Royal was building, when he afterwards gave it to his niece the d.u.c.h.ess d'Aiguillon. It is now occupied by the Chancellor of France, as President of the House of Peers; it also contains a small prison for persons committed for political offences, and tried by the Court of Peers: the ministers of Charles X were here confined in 1830. In the same street, No. 70, is the Convent of the Carmelite Sisters, already mentioned, a portion of the building is still devoted to sacred purposes, the chapel is dedicated to St. Joseph, and of the Tuscan order, it was founded by Marie de Medicis.
Here first began the ma.s.sacres in Paris of the 2nd of September, 1792, when a number of priests here imprisoned were murdered. This is the convent which has long been famed for the _Eau de Melisse_ and _Blanc des Carmes_, which are still sold here.
At the southern gate of the Garden of the Luxembourg is the _Jardin botanique de l'ecole de Medecine_, where every medicinal plant agreeing with the climate is raised, and ticketed as cla.s.sified by Jussieu.
The Odeon Theatre which is near the Luxembourg has been twice burnt down, but was finally restored in 1820; it is situated fronting the street, and in the _place_ of the same name; it is certainly a very handsome building both as to the exterior and the interior, which is fitted up in a most superior style, but all exertions to render it successful seem in vain, although the present director has it rent free from the government; dramatic pieces in general are here represented, but its situation prevents its ever being much frequented; the princ.i.p.al front having a portico of eight doric columns ascended by nine steps has a fine effect; it is capable of containing 1,600 persons.