Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851

Fond as the French are of decoration, the architecture of this building possesses no peculiar beauty, and would answer equally well for a substantial public hospital, a workhouse, or a barrack, if the latter were not the more readily suggested by the gendarmerie loitering about the doors, and the mounted dragoons at either end of the street.

The passages of the interior are of the same character – spacious and substantial; but the door of the salle opens, and the stranger, at a single step, enters from those murky passages into all the magic of a crowded theatre. The French have, within these few years, borrowed from us the art of lighting theatres. I recollect the French theatre lighted only by a few lamps scattered round the house, or a chandelier in the middle, which might have figured in the crypt of a cathedral. This they excused, as giving greater effect to the stage; but it threw the audience into utter gloom. They have now made the audience a part of the picture, and an indispensable part. The opera-house now shows the audience; and if not very dressy, or rather as dowdy, odd, and dishevelled a crowd as I ever recollect to have seen within theatrical walls, yet they are evidently human beings, which is much more picturesque than masses of spectres, seen only by an occasional flash from the stage.

The French architects certainly have not made this national edifice grand; but they have made it a much better thing, – lively, showy, and rich. Neither majestic and monotonous, nor grand and Gothic, they have made it riant and racy, like a place where men and women come to be happy, where beautiful dancers are to be seen, and where sweet songs are to be heard, and where the mind is for three or four hours to forget all its cares, and to carry away pleasant recollections for the time being. From pit to ceiling it is covered with paintings – all sorts of cupids, nymphs, and flower-garlands, and Greek urns – none of them wonders of the pencil, but all exhibiting that showy mediocrity of which every Frenchman is capable, and with which every Frenchman is in raptures. All looks rich, warm, and operatic.

One characteristic change has struck me everywhere in Paris – the men dress better, and the women worse. When I was last here, the men dressed half bandit and half Hottentot. The revolutionary mystery was at work, and the hatred of the Bourbons was emblematised in a conical hat, a loose neckcloth, tremendous trousers, and the scowl of a stage conspirator. The Parisian men have since learned the decencies of dress.

As I entered the house before the rising of the curtain, I had leisure to look about me, and I found even in the audience a strong contrast to those of London. By that kind of contradiction to everything rational and English which governs the Parisian, the women seem to choose dishabille for the Opera.

As the house was crowded, and the boxes are let high, and the performance of the night was popular, I might presume that some of the élite were present, yet I never saw so many ill-dressed women under one roof. Bonnets, shawls, muffles of all kinds, were the costume. How different from the finish, the splendour, and the fashion of the English opera-box. I saw hundreds of women who appeared, by their dress, scarcely above the rank of shopkeepers, yet, who probably were among the Parisian leaders of fashion, if in republican Paris there are any leaders of fashion.

But I came to be interested, to enjoy, to indulge in a feast of music and acting; with no fastidiousness of criticism, and with every inclination to be gratified. In the opera itself I was utterly disappointed. The Opera was Zerline, or, The Basket of Oranges. The composer was the first living musician of France, Auber; the writer was the most popular dramatist of his day, Scribe; the Prima Donna was Alboni, to whom the manager of the Opera in London had not thought it too much to give £4000 for a single season. I never paid my francs with more willing expectation: and I never saw a performance of which I so soon got weary.

The plot is singularly trifling. Zerline, an orange-girl of Palermo, has had a daughter by Boccanera, a man of rank, who afterwards becomes Viceroy of Sicily. Zerline is captured by pirates, and carried to Algiers. The opera opens with her return to Palermo, after so many years that her daughter is grown up to womanhood; and Boccanera is emerged into public life, and has gradually became an officer of state.

The commencing scene has all the animation of the French picturesque. The Port of Palermo is before the spectator; the location is the Fruit Market. Masses of fruits, with smart peasantry to take care of them, cover the front of the stage. The background is filled up with Lazzaroni lying on the ground, sleeping, or eating macaroni. The Prince Boccanera comes from the palace; the crowd observe 'Son air sombre;' the Prince sings —

"On a most unlucky day,Satan threw her in my way;I the princess took to wife,Now the torture of my life," &c.

After this matrimonial confession, which extends to details, the prime minister tells us of his love still existing for Zerline, whose daughter he has educated under the name of niece, and who is now the Princess Gemma, and about to be married to a court noble.

A ship approaches the harbour; Boccanera disappears; the Lazzaroni hasten to discharge the cargo. Zerline lands from the vessel, and sings a cavatina in praise of Palermo: —

"O Palerme! O Sicile!Beau ciel, plaine fertile!"

Zerline is a dealer in oranges, and she lands her cargo, placing it in the market. The original tenants of the place dispute her right to come among them, and are about to expel her by force, when a marine officer, Rodolf, takes her part, and, drawing his sword, puts the whole crowd to flight. Zerline, moved by this instance of heroism, tells him her story, that she was coming "un beau matin" to the city to sell oranges, when a pitiless corsair captured her, and carried her to Africa, separating her from her child, whom she had not seen for fifteen years; that she escaped to Malta, laid in a stock of oranges there; – and thus the events of the day occurred. Rodolf, this young hero, is costumed in a tie-wig with powder, stiff skirts, and the dress of a century ago. What tempted the author to put not merely his hero, but all his court characters, into the costume of Queen Anne, is not easily conceivable, as there is nothing in the story which limits it in point of time.

Zerline looks after him with sudden sympathy, says that she heard him sigh, that he must be unhappy, and that, if her daughter lives, he is just the husband for her, – Zerline not having been particular as to marriage herself. She then rambles about the streets, singing,

"Achetez mes belles oranges,Des fruits divins, des fruits exquis;Des oranges comme les angesN'en goutent pas en Paradis."

After this "hommage aux oranges!" to the discredit of Paradise, on which turns the plot of the play, a succession of maids of honour appear, clad in the same unfortunate livery of fardingales, enormous flat hats, powdered wigs, and stomachers. The Princess follows them, apparently armed by her costume against all the assaults of Cupid. But she, too, has an "affaire du cœur" upon her hands. In fact, from the Orangewoman up to the Throne, Cupid is the Lord of Palermo, with its "beau ciel, plaine fertile." The object of the Princess's love is the Marquis de Buttura, the suitor of her husband's supposed niece. Here is a complication! The enamoured wife receives a billet-doux from the suitor, proposing a meeting on his return from hunting. She tears the billet for the purpose of concealment, and in her emotion drops the fragments on the floor. That billet performs all important part in the end. The enamoured lady buys an orange, and gives a gold piece for it. Zerline, not accustomed to be so well paid for her fruit, begins to suspect this outrageous liberality; and having had experience in these matters, picks up the fragments of the letter, and gets into the whole secret.

The plot proceeds: the daughter of the orangewoman now appears. She is clad in the same preposterous habiliments. As the niece of the minister, she is created a princess, (those things are cheap in Italy,) and she, too, is in love with the officer in the tie-wig. She recognises the song of Zerline, "Achetez mes belles oranges," and sings the half of it. On this, the mother and daughter now recognise each other. It is impossible to go further in such a denouement. If Italian operas are proverbially silly, we are to recollect that this is not an Italian, but a French one; and that it is by the most popular comic writer of France.

The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf is forbidden by the pride of the King's sister, the wife of Boccanera, but Zerline interposes, reminds her of the orange affair, threatens her with the discovery of the billet-doux, and finally makes her give her consent: and thus the curtain drops. I grew tired of all this insipidity, and left the theatre before the catastrophe. The music seemed to me fitting for the plot – neither better nor worse; and I made my escape with right good-will from the clamour and crash of the orchestra, and from the loves and faux pas of the belles of Palermo.

The Obelisk.– I strayed into the Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison the finest space in Paris. I cannot call it a square, nor does it equal in animation the Boulevard; but in the profusion of noble architecture it has no rival in Paris, nor in Europe. Vive la Despotisme! every inch of it is owing to Monarchy. Republics build nothing, if we except prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially squalid, bitter, and beggarly. What has America, with all her boasting, ever built, but a warehouse or a conventicle? The Roman Republic, after seven hundred years' existence, remained a collection hovels till an Emperor faced them with marble. If Athens exhibited her universal talents in the splendour of her architecture, we must recollect that Pericles was her master through life – as substantially despotic, by the aid of the populace, as an Asiatic king by his guards; and recollect, also, that an action of damages was brought against him for "wasting the public money on the Parthenon," the glory of Athens in every succeeding age. Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe – two openly, and the third secretly, as despotic as the Sultan – were the true builders of Paris.

As I stood in the centre of this vast enclosure, I was fully struck with the effect of scene. The sun was sinking into a bed of gold and crimson clouds, that threw their hue over the long line of the Champs Elysées. Before me were the two great fountains, and the Obelisk of Luxor. The fountains had ceased to play, from the lateness of the hour, but still looked massive and gigantic; the obelisk looked shapely and superb. The gardens of the Tuilleries were on my left – deep dense masses of foliage, surmounted in the distance by the tall roofs of the old Palace; on my right, the verdure of the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de l'Etoile rising above it, at the end of its long and noble avenue; in my front the Palace of the Legislature, a chaste and elegant structure; and behind me, glowing in the sunbeams, the Madeleine, the noblest church – I think the noblest edifice, in Paris, and perhaps not surpassed in beauty and grandeur, for its size, by any place of worship in Europe. The air cool and sweet from the foliage, the vast place almost solitary, and undisturbed by the cries which are incessant in this babel during the day, yet with that gentle confusion of sounds which makes the murmur and the music of a great city. All was calm, noble, and soothing.

The obelisk of Luxor which stands in the centre of the "Place," is one of two Monoliths, or pillars of a single stone, which, with Cleopatra's Needle, were given by Mehemet Ali to the French, at the time when, by their alliance, he expected to have made himself independent. All the dates of Egyptian antiquities are uncertain – notwithstanding Young and his imitator Champollion – but the date assigned to this pillar is 1550 years before the Christian era. The two obelisks stood in front of the great temple of Thebes, now named Luxor, and the hieroglyphics which cover this one, from top to bottom, are supposed to relate the exploits and incidents of the reign of Sesostris.

It is of red Syenite; but, from time and weather, it is almost the colour of limestone. It has an original flaw up a third of its height, for which the Egyptian masons provided a remedy by wedges, and the summit is slightly broken. The height of the monolith is seventy-two feet three inches, which would look insignificant, fixed as it is in the centre of lofty buildings, but for its being raised on a plinth of granite, and that again raised on a pedestal of immense blocks of granite – the height of the plinth and the pedestal together being twenty-seven feet, making the entire height nearly one hundred. The weight of the monolith is five hundred thousand pounds; the weight of the pedestal is half that amount, and the weight of the blocks probably makes the whole amount to nine hundred thousand, which is the weight of the obelisk at Rome. It was erected in 1836, by drawing it up an inclined plane of masonry, and then raising it by cables and capstans to the perpendicular. The operation was tedious, difficult, and expensive; but it was worth the labour; and the monolith now forms a remarkable monument of the zeal of the king, and of the liberality of his government.

There is, I understand, an obelisk remaining in Egypt, which was given by the Turkish government to the British army, on the expulsion of the French from Egypt, but which has been unclaimed, from the difficulty of carrying it to England.

That difficulty, it must be acknowledged, is considerable. In transporting and erecting the obelisk of Luxor six years were employed. I have not heard the expense, but it must have been large. A vessel was especially constructed at Toulon, for its conveyance down the Nile. A long road was to be made from the Nile to the Temple. Then the obelisk required to be protected from the accidents of carriage, which was done by enclosing it in a wooden case. It was then drawn by manual force to the river – and this employed three months. Then came the trouble of embarking it, for which the vessel had to be nearly sawn through; then came the crossing of the bar at Rosetta – a most difficult operation at the season of the year; then the voyage down the Mediterranean, the vessel being towed by a steamer; then the landing at Cherbourg, in 1833; and, lastly, the passage up the Seine, which occupied nearly four months, reaching Paris in December; thenceforth its finishing and erection, which was completed only in three years after.

This detail may have some interest, as we have a similar project before us. But the whole question is, whether the transport of the obelisk which remains in Egypt for us is worth the expense. We, without hesitation, say that it is. The French have shown that it is practicable, and it is a matter of rational desire to show that we are not behind the French either in power, in ability, or in zeal, to adorn our cities. The obelisk transported to England would be a proud monument, without being an offensive one, of a great achievement of our armies; it would present to our eyes, and those of our children, a relic of the most civilised kingdom of the early ages; it would sustain the recollections of the scholar by its record, and might kindle the energy of the people by the sight of what had been accomplished by the prowess of Englishmen.

If it be replied that such views are Utopian, may we not ask, what is the use of all antiquity, since we can eat and drink as well without it? But we cannot feel as loftily without it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality, and virtue would be lost to us without it; we should lose the noblest examples of the arts, some of the finest displays of human genius in architecture, a large portion of the teaching of the public mind in all things great, and an equally large portion of the incentives to public virtue in all things self-denying. The labour, it is true, of conveying the obelisk would be serious, the expense considerable, and we might not see it erected before the gate of Buckingham Palace these ten years. But it would be erected at last. It would be a trophy – it would be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary country from which civilisation spread to the whole world.

But the two grand fountains ought especially to stimulate our emulation. Those we can have without a voyage from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a six years' delay.

The fountains of the Place de la Concorde would deserve praise if it were only for their beauty. At a distance sufficient for the picturesque, and with the sun shining on them, they actually look like domes and cataracts of molten silver; and a nearer view does not diminish their right to admiration. They are both lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both consisting of three basins, lessening in size in proportion to their height, and all pouring out sheets of water from the trumpets of Tritons, from the mouths of dolphins, and from allegorical figures. One of those fountains is in honour of Maritime Navigation, and the other of the Navigation of Rivers. In the former the figures represent the Ocean and the Mediterranean, with the Genii of the fisheries; and in the upper basin are Commerce, Astronomy, Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes, and all spouting out floods of water. The fountain of River Navigation is not behind its rival in bronze or water. It exhibits the Rhine and the Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and flowers, of the vintage and the harvest, with the usual attendance of Tritons. Why the artist had no room for the Seine and the Garonne, while he introduced the Rhine, which is not a French river in any part of its course, must be left for his explanation; but the whole constitutes a beautiful and magnificent object, and, with the sister fountain, perhaps forms the finest display of the kind in Europe. I did not venture, while looking at those stately monuments of French art, to turn my thoughts to our own unhappy performances in Trafalgar Square – the rival of a soda-water bottle, yet the work of a people of boundless wealth, and the first machinists in the world.

The Jardin des Plantes.– I found this fine establishment crowded with the lower orders – fathers and mothers, nurses, old women, and soldiers. As it includes the popular attractions of a zoological garden, as well as a botanical, every day sees its visitants, and every holiday its crowds. The plants are for science, and for that I had no time, even had I possessed other qualifications; but the zoological collection were for curiosity, and of that the spectators had abundance. Yet the animals of pasture appeared to be languid, possibly tired of the perpetual bustle round them – for all animals love quiet at certain times, and escape from the eye of man, when escape is in their power. Possibly the heat of the weather, for the day was remarkably sultry, might have contributed to their exhaustion. But if they have memory – and why should they not? – they must have strangely felt the contrast of their free pastures, shady woods, and fresh streams, with the little patch of ground, the parched soil, and the clamour of ten thousand tongues round them. I could imagine the antelope's intelligent eye, as he lay panting before us on his brown patch of soil, comparing it with the ravines of the Cape, or the eternal forests clothing the hills of his native Abyssinia.

But the object of all popular interest was the pit of the bears; there the crowd was incessant and delighted. But the bears, three or four huge brown beasts, by no means reciprocated the popular feeling. They sat quietly on their hind-quarters, gazing grimly at the groups which lined their rails, and tossed cakes and apples to them from above. They had probably been saturated with sweets, for they scarcely noticed anything but by a growl. They were insensible to apples – even oranges could not make them move, and cakes they seemed to treat with scorn. It was difficult to conceive that those heavy and unwieldy-looking animals could be ferocious; but the Alpine hunter knows that they are as fierce as the tiger, and nearly as quick and dangerous in their spring.

The carnivorous beasts were few, and, except in the instance of one lion, of no remarkable size or beauty. As they naturally doze during the day, their languor was no proof of their weariness; but I have never seen an exhibition of this kind without some degree of regret. The plea of the promotion of science is nothing. Even if it were important to science to be acquainted with the habits of the lion and tiger, which it is not, their native habits are not to be learned from the animal shut up in a cage. The chief exertion of their sagacity and their strength in the native state is in the pursuit of prey; yet what of these can be learned from the condition in which the animal dines as regularly as his keeper, and divides his time between feeding and sleep? Half-a-dozen lions let loose in the Bois de Boulogne would let the naturalist into more knowledge of their nature than a menagerie for fifty years.

The present system is merely cruel; and the animals, without exercise, without air, without the common excitement of free motion, which all animals enjoy so highly – perhaps much more highly than the human race – fall into disease and die, no doubt miserably, though they cannot draw up a rationale of their sufferings. I have been told that the lions in confinement die chiefly of consumption – a singularly sentimental disease for this proud ravager of the desert. But the whole purpose of display would be answered as effectually by exhibiting half-a-dozen lions' skins stuffed, in the different attitudes of seizing their prey, or ranging the forest, or feeding. At present nothing is seen but a great beast asleep, or restlessly moving in a space of half-a-dozen square feet, and pining away in his confinement. An eagle on his perch and with a chain on his leg, in a menagerie, always appears to me like a dethroned monarch; and I have never seen him thus cast down from his "high estate" without longing to break his chain, and let him spread his wing, and delight his splendid eye with the full view of his kingdom of the Air.

The Jardin dates its origin as far back as Louis XIII., when the king's physician recommended its foundation for science. The French are fond of gardening, and are good gardeners; and the climate is peculiarly favourable to flowers, as is evident from the market held every morning in summer by the side of the Madeleine, where the greatest abundance of the richest flowers I ever saw is laid out for the luxury of the Parisians.

The Jardin, patronised by kings and nobles, flourished through successive reigns; but the appointment of Buffon, about the middle of the eighteenth century, suddenly raised it to the pinnacle of European celebrity. The most eloquent writer of his time, (in the style which the French call eloquence,) a man of family, and a man of opulence, he made Natural History the fashion, and in France that word is magic. It accomplishes everything – it includes everything. All France was frantic with the study of plants, animals, poultry-yards, and projects for driving tigers in cabriolets, and harnessing lions à la Cybele.

But Buffon mixed good sense with his inevitable charlatanrie– he selected the ablest men whom he could find for his professors; and in France there is an extraordinary quantity of "ordinary" cleverness – they gave amusing lectures, and they won the hearts of the nation.

But the Revolution came, and crushed all institutions alike. Buffon, fortunate in every way, had died in the year before, in 1788, and was thus spared the sight of the general ruin. The Jardin escaped, through some plea of its being national property; but the professors had fled, and were starving, or starved.

The Consulate, and still more the Empire, restored the establishment. Napoleon was ambitious of the character of a man of science, he was a member of the Institute, he knew the French character, and he flattered the national vanity, by indulging it with the prospect of being at the head of human knowledge.