LETTER XVI. Sens. MY DEAR WE left Paris on Tuesday morning, and are thus far on our way to Geneva. Our last day in the capital, like most last days, the last day of life not excepted, was one of hurry and fatigue. Too much was crowded into it, and, therefore, with all our diligence, some things were left undone. We were glad, however, to escape from the tumult of the city, and have exceedingly enjoyed ourjourney to this place. But before I take you finally from Paris, suffer me to tell you how much I was gratified with a visit to the Museum of French Monuments, and the Catacombs. These should certainly be viewed last of all the exhibitions in that metropolis, as they have a tendency to sober the mind, after the more gay and dissipated scenes which have engaged it. Here you converse with the dead, and the associations awakened, are immediately connected with eternity. In the Museum of French Monuments, you are surrounded by the affecting memorials of departed greatness. Here, the monuments, rich in sculpture and in eulogy, reared to the memory of the illustrious dead, are collected, from the various cathedrals and churches throughout the empire, and arranged according to their respective centuries. The hazardous enterprize of rescuing these sublime efforts of sculpture from the hand of revolutionary fury, was undertaken by M. Lenoir, in 1790, at the peril of his life. But for his intrepidity, diligence, and zeal, very few of them, in all probability, would have survived that era of desolation, and France would have lost this most interesting and impressive monumental record of her monarchy. Itembraces a period from Clovis I. whence their first connected records proceed, in 481, to the time of Louis XVI. The building appropriated to the reception of the monuments was formerly the convent of the Augustins; and the garden is converted into a terrestrial elysium, where, beneath the shade of cypress and of poplar, the ashes of Boileau, La Fontaine, Descartes, and many other illustrious men, repose.* • Alexander Lenoir was born in Paris in 1762. He studied in the college of Mazarin, and cultivated the art of painting under GabrielFrancoise Doyen, painter to the king. In 1790, when the property of the church was declared the property of the nation, he formed the idea of collecting all the sepulchral monuments into one depôt. The project having been submitted to M. Bailly, mayor of Paris, was The Catacombs present a different scene. There, underneath the ground, you pass through innumerable streets and lanes, whose buildings, if one may so speak, are composed of human bones, collected from the different cemeteries of Paris, and arranged according to the receptacles whence they were collected. It is, indeed, a golgatha--a place of sculls! You pass through parishes of the dead. It is Paris in the grave. Here its once gay and busy people lie ranged in their last house, according to the houses they occupied whilst living.It is an affecting sight-it is like going down into the very heart of the empire of death, and intruding into the capital of the king of terrors. One pile alone, contains two millions four hundred thousand human sculls, and the different heaps extend for a mile in length. Nothing can be conceived more solemn and affecting than a visit to these dreary abodes. The indistinctness with which objects are seen by approved by the National Assembly; and a special decree was granted for the accomplishment of the proposed collection,-constituting M. Lenoir, at the same time, keeper of the monuments. In the prosecution of his object, his life was continually in danger. Once he was wounded in the hand by a bayonet, while endeavouring to preserve the tomb of Cardinal Richelieu from the fury of the revolutionary army, by whom it was attacked. But he has lived to see his labours abundantly recompensed, by a collection of more than five hundred monuments, rescued by his intrepidity, arranged by his skill, and committed to his care;-the admiration of all enlightened foreigners, and the theme of his grateful country's praise. the feeble light of the tapers you carry in your hand-the intricacy and uncertainty of the path you traverse, and which is only indicated as the right one, by a black line drawn along the roof of the cavern, the loss of which clue might be fatal to the party-the thick and palpable darkness into which the innumerable passages branch out-the ghastly and affecting materials of which the walls that on every side enclose you are composed-the appropriate mottos and sentiments engraven upon rude stones, with various sepulchral devices, interspersed throughout the melancholy piles-the deep silence that reigns around, broken only by the voices of the visitors, in curiosity or terror,-conspire to render this the most interesting and instructive of all the exhibitions I have ever seen. There the gay and volatile spirit of the French seems to have sunk into something like seriousness; and thoughts and words that refer to the supreme being, and an eternal world, are recorded. I give you a specimen. In à recess cut in the rock, and under an arch that rests upon a wall of sculls, is placed a sarcophagus, upon which is a tablet, with this inscription: Silence mortels et vous vaines grandeurs le séjour de la mort. 8 Returning from the Catacombs we attended a meeting of the Institute, and were much interested in seeing and hearing Baron Humbolt, the famous traveller of the Andes. He presented, on that day, the last part of his work on equinoctial plants, and also read a paper on the comparative temperature of the different regions of the globe. He is a plain man, mild and amiable in his appearance, with more of the English farmer about him, than of the traveller, or the peer. There might be from seventy to eighty members present. It was to me an interesting, but affecting scene. Perhaps I had never witnessed a greater concentration of talent than appeared in that room: but, alas! to what was it all devoted, and to what results had the cultivation and employment of it in the various departments of literature and science conducted its possessors? Most, may be, all of them, had discovered that the bible was a forgery, and some, that creation was the work of chance! Here are the wise and the learned, thought I; but what pitiable beings they are, without a revelation, and without a God. The village sabbathschool is a nobler scene by far. I could imagine, that if angels wept, their tears would flow in pity for the one, while they gaze upon the other with smiles of joy for in the sabbath-school, that knowledge is pursued which makes its humblest possessor wise unto salvation; but in the Institute of France, their pride of learning makes them fools, and by their wisdom they know not God! |