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Z.gaea）.. . . ' ∞ √≠ √≠ √≠ √≠ ≤ ∞, ∞; ∞ √∞ √° ſ√≠√∞a ſ√≠∞i√∞ √∞ √∞i√∞ √° √ · ;’ſ · · · ·, ; ， , ,j¿¿.*;#######}} IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]]|[[[[lſ]]|lll|lll||lllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!！!!!!！!}\, Œ praeſ） z::::：:: ~~~~ : ~~~~）;|È;----· ·.&&{; }|J Tț¢ £§yſe:,，,,|\ X_1 \,.` | | | ¡ ¿ † }}&}} ? （'',） + ' {' + !ķi.*$/，）;|| %·- ·Ķº, ！·· ：Èy ·№ſ ſzae º'） ?>į ją，2%$@!!! ！!¿šº.' *: ***， . :：::：: * · · · · №--, , ș-~~-3，4‰ și$\*\\?\}à\！- |r-\ ... ' ’ . .（~~~~）; J. №Ē%%}- ----2（3(ſ）\， . . . . . ; * *- - -·, '. ' , ' ' .?º· ·:→ №！ſae& №w，• “,. . »;*----- -' ~~~~. :) ----…º.„…№// ±%،ßAffae..……&&&&i • • •! [=}， -- ------ - - - - - - ----**írčitā 23，2%īřárc！ º.-; } } { 5Lºſ Tr • . ， .-ſimá%ſ%ſ\ſſ\ſſmūſtījiſmiſſiſ L’.șiříſſiſſiſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ L' ） ） ） * · * * * *'*' + · · · · · · （, ， ， ， , , ， , ， . . . . . . . . . . ， .º.º.º， ， ， ， ， ， ·} --~~~~（_）~~~~ （º.ſ.º.º.º. （…） : ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ， ，，，，,，，，，，，，，，（º.ſ.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º， №.º.º.º...:.，，，.，,，.，,，,，,，,，,，，.:.，,，. 3, 6 C , c. 24- THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD WZZ'H ZAVTRO/DUCT/OAW A Y H. D. TRAILL PROFUSELY |LLUSTRATED N E W Y O R. K. H A R P E R & B R O T H E R S P U B L I S H E R S I 894 Copyright, I893, by HARPER & BROTHERs. All rights reserved. .- - . .>sºs INTRODUCTION . WASHINGTON LONDON PARIS ST. PETERSBURG CONSTANTINOPLE ROME GENEVA ATHENS . PEKIN CAIRO BERLIN . VIENNA . TOKIO LISBON ALGIERS AMSTERDAM A CONTENTS H. D. TRAILL HENRY LOOMIS NELSON . CHARLEs W. Dilké FRANÇols Coppée . E. MELCHIOR DE vocif e PIERRE LOTI . GASTON BOISSIER . EDOUARD ROD COMTE DE MOUY . GENERAL TCHENG-KI-TONG CAMILLE PELLETAYE ANTONIN PROUST JULIETTE ADAM JUDITH GAUTIER ARMAND DAYOT MAURICE WAHL HENRY HAWARD PAGE xiii 35 61 9 I I27 I97 229 26i 293 325 35 381 4 II 445 461 iv CONTENTS CALCUTTA BUCHAREST . STOCKHOLM . BRUSSELS MADRID RIO DE JANEIRO . COPENHAGEN CHRISTIANIA MEXICO JAMES DARMESTETER CARMEN SYLVA MAURICE BARREs . CAMILLE LEMONNIER EMILIO CASTELAR . F. J. DE SANTA ANNA NERY ANDRE MICHEL HARALD HANSEN AUGUSTE GENIN PAGE 49 I 525 555 573 603 635 65 I 667 685 ILLUSTRATIONS WASHINGTON The Porter † te On a Fashionable Thoroughfare The Old and the New . Warehouses, Georgetown At a Reception The Shopkeeper Played-out Humanity Bride and Groom . The South-westerner The Middle-westerner . { } Flower-sellers in the Market - place The Smartly-dressed Yankee g “My Friend the Colonel, from Virginia, sah P’ The Political Secret The Office - seeker LONDON Horse-guards 35 The Houses of Parliament A Yeoman of the Tower of London London Bridge . g & e º The Thames and the Tower of London Westminster Abbey St. Paul's Cathedral The Tower of London & e e ſº te tº In a London Fog at Two o’Clock on a January Afternoon Highlander e e & tº The Prayer of the Cornet - player Salvation Army Types ë Hyde Park . © & Old Houses in Holborn • . Royal Exchange and Bank of England Poverty . * 37 39 4. I 44 45 47 5o 5 I 52 52 53 55 56 57 I65395 vi ILLUSTRATIONS PARIS Notre Dame e A Fête at the Trocadéro A Boulevardier A Rastaqouere A Parisian º g © g º º Notre Dame and Part of the City of Paris The Place de l’Institut At the Central Market, Paris Demolition of Old Paris e The Flower-market on the Quay The Place de l'Opera . The Place de la Concorde . A Grisette A Passing Regiment Flitting The Drum-major ST. PETERSBURG The Standard of the Empire—Prince Menschikoff The Egotist . Quays on the Neva The Neva Perspective A Pope e º º The Cathedral of St. Izak . Notre Dame de Kazan c º The Citadel of St. Peter and St. Paul The Winter Palace • se A Court Ball at the Winter Palace “Good-morning, children l’’ e º A Member of the Infantry of the Guard A Chasseur of the Guard Review of the Guard at Peterhof A Beggar “Why faster " ſº - The Coronation of the Czar Peter the Great CONSTANTINOPLE Turkish Woman and Child in a Cemetery A Kaik on the Bosporus - The Tower of the Seraskierat Stamboul º e A Stamboul Equipage . St. Sophia º º & to © Bridge between Constantinople and Stamboul The Dogs of Stamboul PAGE 6I 62 63 65 66 67 73 75 77 79 8I 82 83 86 87 9 I 92 93 95 96 97 99 IOO IOI IO3 Ioé Io8 Io9 II.3 II 5 II 7 II9 I 2.2 127 I29 I3 I I33 136 I39 I4.I I43 ILLUSTRATIONS vii CONSTANTINOPLE–Continued The Mosque of Sultan Ahmed . e e e © e º es “Nothing more than . . . a Group of Women belonging to a Harem" Turkish Women A Turkish Barber At the Door of the Harem A Fountain at Constantinople ROME Peasants of the Campagna o tº º º * º © e The Tiber with St. Peter's and the Mole Hadriani, known as the Castello S. Angelo º º e º e The Forum © -> º º º o e º * Mount Aventine . The Arch of Constantine The Colosseum Women of Trastevere . St. Peter’s c e His Holiness Leo XIII. Course de Chars tº “Moses,” by Michael Angelo GENEVA National Monument Geneva o e e e o The Quay of Mont Blanc, Geneva La Place Neuve, Geneva . { } G º The Monument to the Duke of Brunswick º º ſº e Calvin and the Four Syndics in the Court-yard of the College of Geneva The Island of Jean Jacques Rousseau The University of Geneva . • A Woman of Old Geneva . A Genevese of the Present Day Types of the Men of Geneva e The Statue of Jean Jacques Rousseau ATHENS The Varvakeion Statuette : Athene Parthenos * & The Acropolis—View taken from the Olympieion—Evening Effect An Athenian º e . e o º e Scene in a Church PAGE I 44 I47 I5 I I53 I57 I61 I97 I99 2O2 2O5 2O7 209 2 I 2 2 I5 217 22 O 223 225 229 Statuette from Tanagra A Suburb of Athens Ruins of the Olympieion The Theseion © © º º º The Acropolis and the Wall of Themistokles The Acropolis and the Asklepieion A* 23I 233 235 237 238 24I 243 245 246 viii ILLUSTRATIONS ATHENS-Continued The Parthenon . e ge e g * & G. g © The Erectheion . {º tº tº Country in the Vicinity of Athens. Demeter and Persephone PEKIN Fac-simile of a Chinese Painting Gates of Pekin Plan of Pekin Bridal Procession Funeral Procession * & e e g ſº ſº g “The Gate of Heaven,” between the Tartar and Chinese Towns The Temple of Confucius º A Bonze Refectory º te On the Observatory Tower . tº e ſº e e g ſe The Beggar’s Bridge and Central Avenue of the Chinese Town An Omnibus of Pekin CAIRO Arab Woman tº tº tº ſº * © gº o G The Citadel of Cairo . & & A Cairo Donkey and Donkey-boy The Mokattam Mountain The Nile at Boulak e g & A Street in the Toulon Quarter of Cairo . A Water-seller Old Street of Cairo A Woman of Cairo . e e {} A Fellah Woman Bathing Her Child. The Bazaar of Cairo ſº ſº The Pyramids . º g The Tombs of thc Caliphs . The Great Sphinx * BERLIN A Ziethern Hussar Q e te e ſe º The Entrance to the Avenue of Unter den Linden . The Brandenburg Gate. L'Enseigne de Guersaint The Spree at Berlin Review at Tempelhof . The Emperor Frederick III. A Uhlan Trumpeter An Officer Students A Workman . PAGE 249 25 I 253 257 261 263 265 268 269 271 275 277 281 284 293 295 297 299 3OI 3O4. 306 307 309 3II 3I4. 3I 7 3 IQ 32 I 325 326 327 329 33 I 333 335 336 337 338 339 ILLUSTRATIONS ix BERLIN–Continued A Cook e ſº L'Enseigne de Guersaint . e º - e º se e * The Emperor William and Prince Bismarck at Fredricksruhe on October 30, 1888 A Habitué of the Greenroom * VIENNA The Monument to Maria Theresa View of Vienna The Graben te The Empero o © G º º A Uhlan Officer in Undress Uniform A Washer-woman . . © A Viennese Cab-driver. The Hofburg (the Library). A Café Concert e Skating in Vienna & A Viennese Lady. o o The New Theatre for Comedy The Cathedral of St. Stephen & The Parliament Buildings—The Franzensring Prince Eugene of Savoy . º The Prater on the First of May TOKIO Entrance to the Mikado's Palace In a Garden of Tokio -> A Bridge Over the Soumida-Gava A Gale of Wind . o © e © e º e © The Fête of the Close of the Year in the Temple of Asakusa A Guecha A Samurai © © Within the Asakusa Enceinte After an Engraving by Outamaro LISBON A Varina, or Seller of Fish The Belem Tower º © e e © o º On the Quays by the Tagus (Return of the Fishing-boats The Praço do Principe Real & & O e © º A Funeral at Lisbon Praço de Dom Pedro IV. e º The Fountain of the Hieronymite Convent “I still see the poor woman with her arms extended ” The Forcados Statue of Dom José I. PAGE 34I 343 345 347 35I 353 355 357 358 359 360 361 363 364 365 367 369 372 374 375 385 387 39 I 394 397 4OO 4O3 405 4O7 4 II 4I3 4I5 418 42 I 425 427 43O 433 436 ILLUSTRATIONS LISBON.—Continued Gateway of the Castle of Cintra The Palacio da Penha ALGIERS Mosque of Sidi-Abder-Rahman View from the Kasba . Jewish Girls of Algiers The Rue de la Kasba Moorish Fountain Rue de la Mer Rouge AMSTERDAM A Dutch Woman . ſº g e The New Railway Station at Amsterdam Amsterdam e e tº º e The Oude Schans and the Zuyder Kerk A Dutch Woman . * * ſº & A Quay in the Jews' Quarte A Dutch Woman . A Jewish Broker . View on the Amstel The Montalbaan Tower The Paleis Voor Volksvlyt . A Servant-girl of Amsterdam CALCUTTA Serpent Charmers The Port of Calcutta . ge Temple of Ramnath, or Kali-Ghaut The Black Hole of Calcutta A Bayadère . Market at Calcutta The Supreme Court of Justice An Indian Cart e Part of the Black Town A Religious Procession in Calcutta An Indian Woman - BUCHAREST A Roumanian Postilion A Street of Old Bucharest . A Roumanian Lady A Roumanian Cottage e & Portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Roumania Peasant and Fruit-seller The Stavropoleos Church PAGE 437 439 445 447 449 452 45.5 457 461 463 465 467 47o 472 474. 477 48o 483 486 487 49 I 493 494 497 5oo 503 506 509 5I2 5 I5 5.I.9 525 527. 529 53I 533 537 54O ILLUSTRATIONS xi , BUCHAREST-Continued Panorama of Bucharest Tziganes ſº Roumanian Soldiers STOCKHOLM Statue of Charles XII. Stockholm from Skeppsholmen Entrance to the Port of Stockholm Stockholm : View from Lake Mäleren . The Royal Palace & te Stockholm : The City Quay . The Port of Stockholm in Winter Entrance to the Port of Stockholm Statue of Bernadotte BRUSSELS The Cathedral Roofs of Old Brussels . Old Swiss Cathedral Verger The Porte de Hal º The Place de l’Hôtel de Ville The Bourse . tº The Bois de la Cambre * g The March Past of the School-children The Park ſº The Palais de Justice . A Brussels Milk-seller . º Soldiers of a Regiment of the Line PAGE , 543 547 550 555 556 557 559 560 561 563 566 568 573 575 577 579 581 584 587 589 MADRID A Spanish Peasant e El Jaleo (a Spanish Dance) . The Royal Palace . tº The Toledo Bridge tº º { } Fête for the Benefit of a Charity At the Flamenco Café . A Wine-shop at Madrid The Cybele Fountain A Lady of Madrid The Plaza Mayor . The Puerta del Sol Scene at a Bull-fight º g * > At the Wine-shop . tº tº © * º 592 594 597 599 603 605 607 609 6II 613 616 618 62o 622 625 627 63o xii ILLUSTRATIONS sº- RIO DE JANEIRO PAGE A Mina Negress . gº tº * tº wº e º º † e 635 The Bay of Rio de Janeiro . & tº gº gº e e e e 637 In the Botanical Gardens . tº e & de e g wº o 638 A Street in Rio . e ge & g tº º g © º ſº 64o On the Way to the Botanical Gardens, Rio tº tº * * 643 The Palace of St. Christopher . * tº wº * ſe © º 646 A Fruit-seller gº e g de * ſº © tº iº o . . 647 COPENHAGEN Hussar of the Danish Guards . tº º º * tº * & 651 Entrance to the Port of Copenhagen . tº tº tº gº g & 652 The Dike . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654 The Vor Frelser's Kirke º Ç © e * & * o ſº 655 The Exchange . & & & i.e. e o * * e { } 656 The Rosenborg Castle . e & & tº e º * © te 658 The New Town . ſº * e º © e tº © & te 660 A Friendly Breakfast-party . g ſº tº tº g o ſº ſº 662 Thorwaldsen's Statue of Mercury º tº ſº e e º º 663 CHRISTIANIA The Game of Ski * ſº & te ſº C. º e . . 667 Karl-Johans-Gade e © gº tº {} e © © {º & 669 The Fiord of Christiania . tº º e & tº e © & 67.1 The Petersburg Quarter . e * © ſº e e e © 675 The Karl-Johans-Gade in Winter º e e tº * o & 677 A Norwegian Girl * tº dººr © * © ſº e & . . 68o MEXICO Flower-seller of Mexico e e © e te . e ºf e tº 685 View from the Zocalo we © * e gº te tº © & 687 A Cactus Hedge in Mexico . . . {e © tº tº e 689 The Fortress of Chapultepec tº ſº g º ſº tº ge º 692 Statue of Cuatimotzin t tº & * e e © e { } 694 A Seller of Iced Drinks and a Cargador or Porter . e * & 697 A Village in the Valley of Mexico . tº tº e c e {e 699 The Goddess of Death ſº & e g & e e e Q 7oo INTRODUCTION º 33 ºf HE description of a capital city as the “brain" or as the §: f jº “heart” of the country to which it belongs is one of the gº § Yſg § most familiar commonplaces of metaphor, and, like many £2-jºº § § other commonplaces, it expresses a portion, without con- §º £9 ſº veying the whole, of the truth. A capital, it is true, is º 3) as a rule the most important centre of a nation's activity & sº and of its thought; sometimes—more often perhaps than were to be wished—it is the too assailable centre of its life. Thither converge all the intellectual impressions of its people; thence radiate the mandates of their collective will; thither continually returns, to be thence con- tinually propelled again, the ever-moving life-blood of their trade. But with our conception of it as the brain or heart of a country we do not so commonly associate the thought that the capital is in some sense its countenance as well. Yet this too is an aspect in which it should be regarded. All is not said when the political physiologist has determined its place and function in the body politic; there remains something to be reported of it by the physiognomist also. For upon it, as upon the lineaments of a human visage, we may often not obscurely trace the story of an underlying life. In it the genius and the temperament of the people who have built and who inhabit it are almost always vividly reflected; it bears in many cases the indelible marks of their historic experiences and the unbroken chroni- cle of their growth; it is the enduring monument of their labors and achievements; here and there it may reveal to us, as by the lines of care on the faces of the aged, the sombre vestiges of their calamities and crimes. But in very few instances— among the older capitals I believe it may be said in no instance—is it wanting in the prime attraction of individuality. The capital city, whatever else it may be or may not be, is almost always “characteristic.” Its parentage and affinities are writ- xiv - INTRODUCTION ten upon it too plainly to be misread. Large or little, fair or foggy, gay or grave, one is generally conscious that it is what it is because its people are what they are—that it fits them like their features, and that it would fit none other. Perhaps, as has been already hinted, it is not of every capital that this can be said; but assuredly it is true of all those cities in which the older nations of the world have for long centuries fixed the centre of their national life. Assuredly it is as true of Paris as it is of London; with equal certainty can it be affirmed of Vienna, of Berlin, of Lisbon, of Amsterdam ; and, if we may compute the life of nations by the years of their moral unity rather than that from the date of their political recognition, it is of course pre-eminently true of Athens and of Rome. Of all these capitals, and of many others, it may, with substantial truth, though no doubt with varying degrees of emphasis, be said that they illustrate the historic past and epitomize the living present of their peoples with a force of appeal to the imagination which no by-gone chronicler or contemporary analyst could hope to rival; and it was undoubtedly, therefore, a happy inspiration of the Messrs. Hachette to prepare and issue that magnificent series of illustrated monographs on Les Capitales du Monde, the translation of which, from the pen of Mrs. Bell, it is my privilege to introduce to the English reading public. - To secure the adequate execution of so many-sided a task was, it is needless to say, no light undertaking. For, under a superficial layer of resemblance, the several heads of the subject are in fact bewildering in their variety. The most subtle of Pla- tonists would find it impossible to frame the typical Idea of the capital city; it is as multiform and Protean as life itself. To the casual observer of its outward features —to the preoccupied man of business who uses it as a mart or a counting-house, to the breathless “globe-trotter” who treats it like a fair—the capital of one country seems very much like the capital of another. He notes only the hurrying throng of foot-passengers, the endless procession of vehicles, the uniform monotony of shop- fronts, and in some cases the monotonous uniformity of “residential” streets. He does not suspect, or he does not care to remember, that it is beneath the surface of all this undistinctive and featureless civilization that one must seek the true ethos of a people—that it is to the subsoil of racial instinct, of immemorial tradition, of ineradi. cable habit, that one must penetrate to find the essential, the individual, in one word the “national” as distinguished from the cosmopolitan element in the life of a mod- ern nation. Nor is it till that element in its life has been found and grasped that one can hope to arrive at what may be called the “true inwardness” of its capital. But this secret is no prize of “the first comer.” It yields itself to no man who INTRODUCTION - XV does not bring to the pursuit of it the two indispensable aids of imagination and sym- pathy. He need not be a native of the city that he has made his study, nor even of the country to which it belongs. In some cases it is perhaps even better that he should be by nationality a stranger. But he must be a citizen of it, spiritually natu- ralized; and, however rare may have been his visits to it, however short his sojourns in it, his heart must retain perpetual “domicile ” within its walls. Such qualifications, associated with a sufficient gift of literary expression, are of course by no means common, and the publishers of Les Capitales du Monde have looked high up in the ranks of literature, of scholarship, and of public life to find them. “We have appealed,” they say in their Preface, “to poets, to philosophers, to statesmen, to foreign writers, no less than to writers of our own country,” for assistance in the work; and a list which is headed with the names of François Cop- pée, and includes the names of such accomplished littérateurs and literary critics as “Pierre Loti,” Camille Lemonnier, Juliet Adam, Édouard Rod ; of scholars so approved and well equipped as Gaston Boissier, James Darmesteter, Maurice Wahl; of art connoisseurs so trained and competent as Armand Dayot, Henri Havard, André Michel, Antonin Proust; of diplomatists, travellers, and politicians so widely known as the Comte de Moûy, the Vicomte de Vogüé, and Sir Charles Dilke, attests the gratifying success of their appeal. Nor have the illustrations of the work been a subject of any less careful or less successful provision. The aim of the French publishers has been to make them genuinely “illustrative,” in the sense of elucidation as well as in that of adornment. They desired, as they have informed their public, to satisfy the claim of utility, no less than that of beauty, in the matter, and to arrange for the enrichment of the volume with sketches which shall not merely delight the eye of the reader, but contribute substantially to the information to be derived from the text. Sometimes these designs will give him a general view of a capital, framed within the lines of its encircling landscape; sometimes it will be “some characteristic incident of its daily life” that has employed the artist's pencil, or “some charming female figure, in which is personified the native beauty or the refined elegance of the race.” But all the sketches are from nature, all taken with the object before the eyes. The artist, like the writer, has brought “a direct vision, a personal impression,” to bear upon his share of the work. Often it is his own home that he depicts, his own city whose inner life and familiar lineaments he reproduces. * Among French artists who have contributed illustrations to the volume will be found the names of Becker, Béraud, Besnard, Bethune, Bonnat, Chéret, Benjamin xvi INTRODUCTION Constant, Curzon, Dawant Detaille, Forain, Friant, Gaeneutte, Jeanniot, Lhermitte, Lunois, Aimé Morot, Pille, Renouard, Rochegrosse, Zuber, and others; while among the designs for which the work is indebted to foreign talent it may suffice to men- tion those of Bridgman, Charlemont, Checa, Dannat, Edelfeldt, Giallina, Krogh, Kroyer, Mélida, Menzel, Humphrey Moore, Ralli, Rizo, Wahlberg, Wauters, Weeks, Yamamoto, and Zorn. All together, they make up a goodly list. It is time, however, to acquaint the English reader with the authorship of some of the forthcoming monographs, and to add a word on the “records" of the various distinguished writers among whom the work has been distributed. Such an introduction will be in many cases superfluous, and in none more so than in that of the accomplished writer of the monograph on Paris. No Eng- lishman or American who pretends to any familiarity with contemporary French literature can require to be made acquainted with M. François Coppée, poet, dramatist, and member of the French Academy—author, as poet, of La Grève des Forgerons, La Bénédiction, and many other admired pieces, and as dramatist per- haps best known by his Le Luthier de Cremone and by that exquisite little stage idyll Le Passant. Nor will any one to whom the last work is familiar dispute the felicity of the selection of its author to describe that scene of grace and gayety, yet touched so tenderly with the pathos of all bright and fleeting things, which M. Coppée presents to us in this picture of his much-loved city. Scarcely more need is there to introduce the author of the monograph on St. Petersburg—that city “born of the winter,” as he well calls it, and which, though it contains “not a single ancient monument, supplies us at every turn with a vivid historical lesson.” M. Le Vicomte de Vogüé is well known to have qualified for his subject in more ways than one. He studied the life of the Russian capital for years with all the social advantages possessed by a high diplomatic official, while a sympa- thetic insight into Russian character may safely indeed be ascribed to the essayist and critic who was virtually the first to introduce the romances of Tolstoſ and Dos- toieffsky to the Western reader. To describe Great Britain's gigantic capital — that mighty city whose many points of stately beauty are almost hidden by the very vastness of its bulk, and the voice of whose great and glorious historic memories is never more than barely audible through the murmur of its ever-growing millions—would, under any con- ditions, be a stupendous task. But to compress an adequate description of it into a score of quarto pages were a feat which might well embolden its performer to face that question which confounded Job—“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an INTRODUCTION - xvii hook?" It is to Sir Charles Dilke that this heroic undertaking has been intrusted; and to a work to which no human powers could, in a strict sense, perhaps, be equal, he has at least brought the qualifications of a writer of force, accuracy, and ele- gance, of a politician who has closely studied the political and social conditions of English metropolitan life, and of a Londoner born and bred. After the Illimitable, the Eternal, City. Rome, the immemorial centre of the Christian world, the birthplace of European law and administration, as is Athens of European art, philosophy, and culture, is for other reasons as nearly indescrib- able as London. But M. Gaston Boissier, member of the French Academy, and Professor of Latin Oratory at the Collège de France, has made its ancient monu- ments and literature the study of half a lifetime. It is nearly thirty years since the publication of his Ciceron et ses Amis and less than six since the appearance of his Nouvelles Promenades Archéologiques. Athens, sister of Rome in immor- tality, and mother of her, as of us all, in the higher civilization, has fallen to the share of Comte de Moûy, sometime Plenipotentiary at the capital which he de- scribes, and author, among many other works, of Lettres Athéniemmes, published a few years ago. Vienna, that city of piquant contrasts, where a magnificent ring of broad, palace- lined, aggressively modern boulevards engirdles a picturesque enclave of Old World German life, finds thoroughly sympathetic delineation from the pen of Madame Edmond Adam, the well-known editress of the Mouvelle Revue, and M. Antonin Proust, an expert in art matters, does justice to the somewhat austere and formal beauties of Berlin. * Amsterdam, the Northern Venice, “wide-watered " Copenhagen, and Lisbon in its amphitheatre of hills, have fallen, as was fitting, into the hands of the art critics also. Their monographs are from the pens respectively of M. Henri Havard, M. André Michel, and M. Armand Dayot. Stockholm has been allotted to M. Maurice Barrès, Christiania to M. Harald Hansen, Geneva to M. Édouard Rod, the well-known novelist and professor in its University. The clever Belgian romancer and journalist, M. Camille Lemonnier, writes of Brussels, and “Carmen Silva,” by the double right of queen and poetess, portrays for us her own light-hearted City of Bucharest. Two of the most interesting monographs of European capitals remain still to be noticed—those, namely, of Madrid, in the west of Europe, and of Constantinople, in its farthest east. An account of the Spanish capital from the hand of the once prominent politician and still eminent orator Emilio Castelar, Ca1] hardly fail to arouse high expectations; and no reader, fresh from the exquisite word-pictures xviii INTRODUCTION of Fantôme d'Orient, but will learn with pleasure that that distinguished littérateur who has “doubled ” the rarely associated parts of academician and naval lieutenant, M. Julien Viaud, better known as “Pierre Loti,” has dealt for the forthcoming vol- ume with his adored Stamboul. & The Asiatic and Transatlantic capitals must perforce be dismissed in fewer words. Mr. Henry L. Nelson, a name well known in American journalism, writes the opening monograph on Washington, which is accompanied by illustrations drawn by another American, Mr. Charles S. Reinhart; M. August Génin, the novelist, of Mexico; General Tcheng-ki-tong, author of Les Chinois peints par eur-mêmes, of Pekin; M. James Darmesteter, the eminent Orientalist, of Calcutta. Algiers has been allotted to his brother professor M. Maurice Wahl, and Rio de Janeiro to M. de Santa Anna Nery. Camille Pelletan, the owner of a name distinguished for two generations, writes on Cairo, and Madame Judith Gauthier, the accomplished daughter of a famous father, on the capital of Japan. No educated reader will need to be told how rich is the variety of gifts and of attainments which this list represents; and with the assurance that the literary and artistic performance of the work is worthy of the names subscribed to it, let me now leave Mrs. Bell's bright and spirited translation to speak for itself. H. D. TRAILL. -rº […] wº- - eºſ ºf -7 - º º - - ºt- jūsºiºſº §NBusº - WASHINGTON ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES S. REINHART “P-a-a-a-s-s-s-2-n-g-e-r-r-s f-u-r d-e-e ASHINGTON may not be a great B-a-a-a-l-f-2-m-o-o-r-e a-n-d O-h-z-o city, but it is assuredly a great cap- A’-a-2-4-r-o-a-d//” ital. Above all else, it is a city of men and women; no longer a city of magnifi- cent distances, it was never a city of great buildings. Only the long, white, dome- crowned Capitol, standing far up above the . clustering houses that timidly approach the edge of the green embowered hill that sweeps down from the great marble stair- way, with all its architectural vices and its incongruities of material, and the simple, dignified White House are the public build- ings worthy of a pilgrimage to the shrine of the republic's power. This stately Capitol, a shining pile, stands almost alone. The preténtious dwell- ings of the rich and great crowd about the residence of the President, while the smaller and meaner shops and houses of the town approach the place where law is made, as the children and ignorant and : poor of the multitude venture nearer than the knowing ones to a power that is in any degree mysterious. - The charms of the city unfold themselves slowly to those who surren- der to its influences, for they are the charms of the never-ending varieties of human nature, of the men and women who go to Washington or who dwell there. But there must be surrender. The man who rushes to the transaction of business with the Government, and who vibrates between a ſº * Z. º º 4 - - ſ d | º A . 2. º ſ zº . ſ % ". . /* % & º ºf w * A z º," "ſº ſ | ‘. A. -* ºf * …,’ \' 7. º º ſ / |\ \ (4 NWºlſº ſºlº }% º \ WºW º > ill º N | º N º N º É ºn * A A d THE PORTER 4. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD stuffy room in a hotel to the public offices, wearing out his nerves, and souring his kindly disposition in combating official indifference and lazi. ness, will never love Washington. He will detest it with the bitter loath- ing of one who has been foiled. He will tell of dyspepsia, of insolence, of inadequate ventilation, of rude men and disagreeable women. The smooth. ness of the asphalt will vanish from his memory, and there will remain only the recollection of an unpleasant smell. The soft air and the golden sun- shine will mean nothing to him, for he will bury the enchantments of the Southern climate in what seems to him its intolerable heat. Time was when the stranger in Washington could see only the very worst of its many-sided life, for then there were no hotels that were not the temporary abodes of the vulgar hordes of grasping men whose patri. otism is never thrilled into sentiency except by money favors begged, bought, or wrested from the Government. Around the places where these creatures congregate, sober gentlemen and gentlewomen breathe an at- mosphere that shocks their sensibilities and wounds their pride of country. It is no wonder that Washington once bore a reputation that was any- thing but good, when there was no inspiration to patriotism in a visit to the habitat to which the nation condemned its statesmen. But a change has come over the capital, and one may go there a stranger, and even on business, and may live in quiet, even in luxury, and may escape everything that is offensive, except the exasperating obsta- cles to the speedy accomplishment of his purpose. The straggling village, whose magnificent distances were the bare and unsightly spaces between the buildings, mostly mean, whose hostleries were country inns, whose cooks stewed terrapin and roasted canvas-back ducks to perfection, but who fried beefsteaks—this long, unkempt village, with its muddy roads, undrained swamps, and Open sewer, has grown into a city, some of which is beautiful, and all of which takes hold of the heart of one who yields to its lauguid charms and to its almost inexplicable interests. 4. Why is Washington so lovely P Why does the memory of its pleasant places haunt one who has dwelt among them, and who has drained its joys 2 It is not really beautiful. There is not a single street within its borders that is not disfigured by uncouth architecture or squalor or some roughness that is wellnigh repulsive. You may see, not so much now as you might have seen ten years ago, but you may still see the whitewashed shed of a negro leaning trustfully against the ambitious wall of a large family man- sion that may possibly be leased to a cabinet officer for an annual rental ON A FASHIONABLE THOROUGHFARE WASHINGTON - - 7 | that is greater than his salary. In the more fashionable as in the less pretentious parts of the city there are reminiscences of the great levelling and grading which bred a saturnalia of municipal vice. You may see on one side of the street the high clay cliff crowned with the huddling huts of the poorest, and on the other what is known to city folk as the “march of improvement,” meaning the gradual uprearing of blocks of houses of more or less uniform ugliness. x In one long avenue, that which is named from the State of Con- necticut, there is a brief epitome of the outward semblance of Washington. This avenue is referred to usually as the fashionable promenade—although the fashionable people of the town do never promenade—and it owes that distinction to the fact that it is the diagonal street that cuts the fashionable north-west quarter of the town. Whatever there is of gay equipage or gay attire in the capital is to be met here, but what a travesty is the street itself on the glories of fashion | - It struts out bravely enough, as to one side of it, from a charming little green shrub-crowded square, which, however, is, defaced by an awkward effigy of the great Farragut. On its proud and haughty side, at the corner nearest the little shrubbery, which is musical all day with the voices of children too innocent as yet to be oppressed by the bronze image that looks down upon them, stands the big yellowish-green stone house built by “Boss” Shepard, once occupied by the Chinese Legation, and now for many years the home of M. de Struve, the genial, kindly minister from Russia. It is an ugly house; but there is nothing to say against it from the point of view of fashion, for it looks as though a rich man built it, and as if it were only a rich man who could pay the rent. On the other side is a little shop or two. Behind the big pile stretches a row of houses, long known as “Diplomatic Row.”— houses that have cheapness written all over them. They have been inhabited by the, small powers that send their representatives to the great republic. One of them is or has been a board- ing house; one of them is a lodging-house kept by a most worthy ex-coach- man of a great philanthropist, who, dying, manifested his good-will for his faithful servant by bequeathing him this property. Across the way there is a high board fence covered with the artistic show-bills of theatrical companies—show-bills that shift and vary in the darkness of every Satur- day night, for Washington, although the capital of a nation of people who love the theatre, is, in the slang of the profession, only “a one -week stand.” Not long ago this fence extended well up the block, but now a few one- storied shops of a kind characteristic of other watering-places have re- 8 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD placed part of it. And this board fence hid buried hopes and blasted ambi- tions and wasted dollars, for, if it had been pulled down, there would have been revealed the time-stained foundations of a projected Casino, the per- spective view of which painted in allur. ing colors once persuaded capitalists, large and small, to invest their money in the stock of the corporation that was to draw dividends from the gayety of nations. Then, again, on the qual- ity side of the street, is a great staring red-brick Roman Catholic academy, and on the other side a modest brick church of the negro Methodists, out of whose opened windows on warm Sunday evenings issue the stentorian tones of religious song and sermon. Beyond the great red academy are more cheap houses that are neverthe- less in the first society of the capital, and next to the little negro church are shops and dwellings that are meaner far than the meanest of their opposite neighbors. And this goes on until the avenue reaches and crosses the street THE OLD AND THE NEW that at its start was a block away from it, and there manifold riches begin to assert themselves. Chief among the substantial dwellings, and at the head of the line on what thus far has been the poor and needy side of this strange promenade for fashion, stands the home of the British Legation, built and owned by the empire of Great Britain—solid, expensive, and repulsive. And yet there is no true Washingtonian who does not love to tread these pavements, and to saunter slowly by these houses, worthy and un- worthy of the pretensions that are made in behalf of the uncomely street; for he breathes here the atmosphere of the capital, and meets the men and women who fill his daily life with the spirit of friendliness—the men and women whom he loves and likes. And here is the secret of the city's charm, this constant meeting of friends between whom inter- course is almost wholly social. WASHINGTON 9 Washington, with the exception of a dozen or so beautiful specimens of domestic architecture, some of them the creations of Richardson, is given over to much that is bad in house-building, yet possessing the attraction of individuality. Of domestic virtues there is any quantity, while of social delights there is an overflowing abundance. There has been so much written of the capital of the country, so much that is contradictory, and so much more that is in direct antagonism to what I shall write, that a good many worthy people who have been enjoying the outpourings of the literary purlieus may possibly be surprised at the absence from this paper of all hortatory, admonitory, and objugatory warning, wailing, and lamentation concerning the large sins and the small vices of the country's politics and politicians. There is vice in Washington. Where does it not exist? But you need not find it and roll your mind in its mud if you do not choose to. If you are inquiring into the capac- ity of a great city, into the delights it has for those who dwell within its borders, you do not take your moral microscope and go peering through the slums. You cannot learn the true worth of the capital of your country by studying the manners of those who frequent the most pop- ulous of the hotels. The man in a frayed coat and a hat that has rubbed too much against the cor- ners of shifty adversity is not Wash- ington. The Congressman, happily growing more and more infrequent, who sells himself for money, or who besots himself with the dissipations of the town, is not all there is in American public life. The girl of nau. seous fiction who gives her honor for a place in a department is so far from typifying the public service that you may live for years on familiar WAREHOUSES, GEORGETOWN IO THE CAPITALS OF THE world terms with the departments and never meet her nor even hear of her. Vice is in the minority everywhere, and in Washington as elsewhere. It seems to one who knows Washington as though it ought to be unnecessary to say these self-evident things, to lumber up the page with these ethical axioms. But the truth cannot be winked out of existence, and the truth is that Washington has been vilified for many years in one way or another; sometimes in newspaper letters, and at other times in wretched fiction as nearly kin to literature as is a chromo to a great painting, suggestive both of the need of the writer for a penny, well or ill earned, and of the most offensive exhalations of the great English preacher in fiction, who, in his time, took his malicious pleasure out of the long-suffering capital of the republic. - The harpies who have perpetrated these libels have made an audience for themselves, and as the joy of the gossips in taking away and utterly destroying the reputations of places which are happy in not possessing them and their household imps is only less than their pleasure in decrying their human neighbors, there are many thousands of American citizens, some of them worthy though misguided people, who believe that Washington is a city wholly given over to sinfulness, that its public haunts are filled with men who rob the people, and that the private lives of those who make and execute the nation's laws are full of shame. It seems necessary, then, in saying anything at all of the city, especially anything that appears to be general and comprehensive, to deny the current rumors that obtain among the vast army of people who are governed by opinions that would be dear at any price, and who pity their rural member of Congress, who, as likely as not, is a deacon in their church and the trusted counsellor of the whole country-side, for the horrible temptations with which he is surrounded. And if all the carpers in all the village homes and in the farm-houses from one end of the country to the other might come together and “round up.” the various deacons, lawyers, and leading merchants whom they had sent to Congress, they would be surprised by the large sum of good character they would find in the herd. - : There are so many and agreeable things to say of the capital of the country that it is annoying to be compelled to make this disagreeable digression. It is wonderful the number of people who know nothing of literature, who cannot write, whose figures of speech are as stamped plush to the finest product of the Lyons looms, whose turbulent superheated prod- uct is to the outgivings of the poetic imagination as is gin to the richest Burgundy, who yet feel themselves called upon to preach in the form of AT A RECEPTION WASHINGTON I3 fiction; and it is a strong indictment of our newspapers that they, in their turn, feel called upon to stamp the nauseous stuff with their approval. Washington is an American city—no city in the country is more American — without the one characteristic that is supposed to be most American. It has no business. There will not be lacking those who will say that nowhere is the dollar pursued more energetically; and there may be truth in this; but this pursuit is quite apart from the real life of the city, and those whom you will meet at the club or in their homes will not be the strugglers for gain in the market-places of the town. There is no commerce nor trade in the city at all commensurate with its population and impor- tance. It is like the quiet centre of a raging storm. Its streets are not filled with drays'; its shores are not lined with warehouses. And yet one may see commerce at its doors softened with the poetic mist of antiquity and ruin. The searcher after all there is to be seen at the capital, or the dweller within its walls, who loves the place and longs to know the inmost recesses of its heart, finds his way to the red-brick sidewalks of old tumbling-down George- town, and the decrepit warehouses from which issue the rich odors of the masterful product that is charged with the task of wresting fertility from the unpromising soil of adjoining Maryland. It is a kind of commerce that car- ries on its business in infrequent boats that are occasionally tied up to the untrustworthy wharves of the ancient place which is so Southern that a few years ago, when the memory of war was stronger upon our people than it is to-day, its people declined to recognize on any terms whatever the capital which the North had retained. They did not know that the old War, Navy, and State Departments buildings had disappeared, and that their places had been taken by an enormous pile of granite from which modesty shrinks and in which ignorance glories. Many a day passed before the hauteur of the conquered “Southrons” was overcome by the genial hospitality of the North- ern people whom exacting constituents sent to Washington. These old Southern people, born and bred in Washington when the city was a Southern town, when slaves were the domestic servants, are among the new delights that make a Northerner love the city. If you can escape from the bustle of Broadway to the calmness of Pennsylvania Avenue, you will understand how pleasant it is to make part of a moving throng that has no business in its eye. Recently the man of energy and enterprise has in- vaded Washington, and has lured the people into the belief that a bazaar of “notions” is a fine feature in the town wherein they once dwelt contented- ly with shops whose trade was carried on in a manner entirely in keeping with the pleasant, drawling speech of the amiable native. But Washington - 14 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD THE SHOPKEEPER is doubtless changing, and the infu- sion of the Northern and metropol. itan shopper has naturally brought the Northern and metropolitan shop- keeper, or at least a very good imi- tation of him. And yet there con- tinues to be a welcome absence of commerce in the streets, and of com- mercial talk in society. Somehow or other I do not yet seem to have told why Wash- ington is dear to the hearts of its votaries, and yet I hope that a sympathetic chord has been struck in some hearts by the reflection that the capital affords an escape from the endless jargon of the ex- changes that often weary the ear in the larger cities of the country. But there are really substantial rea- sons for liking Washington. Very few people visit it in May and June, the season when the birds come home, and when the brides adorn the squares and avenues and public buildings with their happy faces and their new clothes without gaining an impression of great beauty. And it is a beautiful city. The houses may not be all that they try to be or think that they are; but in the days of foliage there is a won- drous sea of green leaves overhead in every street; for Washington, among other things, has been blessed by a ring of plunderers that gave to it level. streets, and planted them with thousands upon thousands of elms, maples, ash-trees, and lindens; and now, in the day when the head of the plunderer is low, and when his sins and crimes have been visited upon him, these trees rise up in their stateliness and declare that the rascal had some good in him, after all. Added to this are the greenswards and the flowering trees of the parks, and the great expanse of wooded grounds about the WASHINGTON I5 Capitol, the Smithsonian, and the National Museum. There is, also, the river above Georgetown to the Little Falls, with its steep wooded banks, merry with boating parties, best seen from the grounds of the Jesuit Col- lege. The quiet, shaded streets, so clean that one of the hundreds of little dirt heaps that remain untouched in New York for days would cause an outburst of popular indignation, are flooded with a golden sunshine. On a perfect Washington January day the robins have come back, and some of the shrubs in the parks and the vines on the southern walls of old houses have struggled into bloom. The calmness and comfort, the absence of hurry, the repose of the . place, fill the heart with glad- ness until the hour comes for the real business of society to begin, when the picture is graced by the presence in the fashionable thoroughfares of much - preoccupied women, on foot or in their carriages, whose evident determination to do their stern duty, even to the uttermost, cannot make them the less beautiful and agreeable objects of contem- plation. It is undoubtedly the be- lief of people who have a su- perficial acquaintance with the city, who visit friends who are bent upon showing them their own intimacy with greatness, or who gain their knowledge of life at the capital from the newspapers, that the real, and perhaps the only, charm of the place is the movement of so- ciety — that the soul of the place lies in its teas, its recep- tions, its dinners, luncheons, balls. º FRAYED-OUT HUMANITY I6 THE CAPITALS. OF THE WORLD But to you who know, what hollow mockery is this There are some of you, men chiefly, who dine and Sup, and occasionally dance, but who never go to a tea or an afternoon reception except in, a spirit of charity, or in obedience to a domestic rule which few have the hardihood to disregard, and yet whose winter existence at the capital, so long as it does not rain, is one long beautiful panorama of highly prized human life. There are men whose first thought on rising is of their morning walk on Pennsylvania Avenue. There is no street like it in all the world. Let the crowds dis- appear from its sidewalks, and it becomes almost unsurpassed for every- thing that a street should not be. It is so wide that only fifteen-story buildings on both sides could give it anything like a sky line, or do away with the feeling that one is out on a brick and asphalt prairie decorated here and there with cottonwood-trees, whose feathery spring blossoms fly into the eyes, doing their painful work of inflammation. And yet, from Fifteenth Street to Ninth Street, on a bright morning it affords a most enchanting promenade. - & You should come down to it out of the quiet part of the city a little after nine o'clock in the morning. Care should be taken to avoid an earlier hour, for at nine o'clock the slaves who work, the heads of depart- ments and their clerks, the unfortunate dependents upon Government favor and public employment, must be at their desks. After nine o'clock the quiet streets are empty of the throng of men and women hurrying to their daily tasks, and you can have the street almost to yourself. Go down through the leafy shadows of Lafayette Square. You will see that the man who planted the park knew what he was doing, and you will rejoice and be glad in the noble beeches and the dark leaves of the Southern ash. From these pleasant paths you will pass through the fringe of the public busi- ness, and you will see knots of men in such numbers and possessing such eyes and noses that you are not astonished by the presence of an extraor- dinary number of “studios,” “cafés,” “sample-rooms,” and eke plain liquor- shops; nor can you longer wonder at the scandals that are inspired by the propinquity to the Treasury across the way of this frayed-out lot of human- ity, who are so steeped in the arts of cunning, mostly ineffective, that they eye their simple daily bread furtively, while their crooked fingers seem always looking for a button-hole, and their voices have become incapable of much more than the whisper of conspiracy. If you know any of this crowd you hurry through it, and when you turn the corner into Pennsylvania Avenue life takes on a different hue. Here are men and women whom you know, others of whom you have sim- ---- ： （Z z · 7， - - - |× BRIDE AND GROOM WASHINGTON 4. I9 ply heard, and others still who are strange to the civilization of the East. It is almost always a very great, a very picturesque, and a very interesting crowd that moves slowly up and down before the little shops. There are Indians in their blankets, and the women who lead the fashion, these latter snatching a few hasty moments from what they are pleased to regard as their “social duties,” meaning thereby their social vocations and pleasures, for the shopping that is made necessary by the wear and tear of the rush in which they take part, and upon which many of them will no doubt look back, when they shall have reached a calm old age, in regretful astonish- ment. And you will see, besides the Indians and the women of fashion, the South-westerner, who wears his large-brimmed soft hat and his loose clothes, and has the chewing habit strong upon him, and whose every movement is supple and indicative of the freedom and independence of the frontier, of a familiarity with the saddle, and a contempt for forms. There is a vast difference between him and his fellow from the middle West, upon whom the formalities and conventionalities are beginning to lay their heavy hand, who binds himself up tightly in a frock-coat that clasps him snugly, while he really prefers to sit through his working hours in his shirt-sleeves, and still insists upon wearing the heavy boots essential in virgin countries, and the soft hat that has the virtue of comfort—narrower as to the brim, perhaps, than his of the South-west. There is very little homogeneity in the throng. There is the smartly-dressed Yankee or New York Congress- man, with the pert air of business so suggestive of the lasting influence of the legend of the industrious apprentice, and of the depressing fact that in certain parts of the country an alert and smart air is often the accepted sign of mind and conscience, and of the development of the deeper attri- butes of the soul. A tall hat, well-brushed clothes, early hours, and a brisk step have often made a fool's fortune in a God-fearing community. And you will meet this man stepping out with his business stride on Pennsyl- vania Avenue, and, besides, you will meet the gentleman with a boutonnière, whose first task of the day is to flash his dazzling manliness into the pleased -eyes of whatever beautiful woman may happen to have an errand on the avenue on that particular morning. And along with these will move groups of slouching, round-shouldered, soft-hatted men, wearing their overcoats as if they were cloaks, the wearers themselves finding much dressing incom- patible with a proper devotion of their time to nothing in particular. And you will see many women with the high color that is believed by no one but she who thus decorates herself to bear the slightest resemblance to the hue of health. But you must not mistake the character of these foolish 2O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD virgins and matrons. In some parts of this beloved land of ours, strange as it may seem to those of us who have such a high regard for smartness, the women have been carefully trained in the art of painting, and she who neglects the rouge-pot would lose caste. Some of them will learn better soon, and all of them will in time. In the doors of some of the shops stand pleasant gentlemen, who so thoroughly enjoy the endless processions that move up and down before them, standing there hat- less, smiling, with hands in pockets, that he who would ask them to turn their backs upon the bright scene for the mere purpose of selling wares must have a very slight sympathy with the pleasures of his fellow. But all the shopkeepers are not so interest- ed in the life that flows outside their doors, but, like all who trade and prosper abun- dantly, only in the eddies and currents that set towards their own counters. And then there are the abundance of negroes, the old flower-sellers in the market- place, and not far off the tumble-down rook- eries of places where modern Mr. Krooks sell impracticable goods to people who ap- parently buy useless things, because they have very little money for the purchase of N sº anything that is useful. There are good- - natured black porters and draymen who THE SOUTH-WESTERNER mark the difference between themselves and their white brethren by indulging in playful gibes and mirthful jests instead of profanity, objurgation, and blows. There are old “mammies,” the most beautiful and touching sur- vivals of the patriarchal system of slavery, with their Madras head-dresses, the free nurses of the children of those to whose young lives they min- istered as slaves. Some of these, it is true, are only to be found on the unfashionable side of the avenue, where you must go if you would enjoy the full flavor of the city, and where is situated the Old Curiosity Shop, a famous place for punches, established so long ago that Henry Clay and Daniel Webster partook of its cheer, concocted for them by the venerable WASHINGTON “Dick,” a fine old specimen of the aristocratic colored man—sober, dignified, polite. It was not so long ago that a famous Senator, appreciative of “Dick” and his talents, tore him ruthlessly from the place in which he had won fame and laid by a goodly sum of money, and placed him in command of the Senate restaurant. The terra- pin for the Senators was doubtless better cooked than it had been, but the visitors to the Old Curiosity Shop missed the old man's pleasant remi- niscences, which were not at all the worse for a faint suspicion of imag- ination, and missed also the occasional punch which, as a great favor, he made from a little dusty flask that contained the last drop of the partic- ular brandy which delighted the pal- ates of the giants from Massachusetts and Kentucky. It is true that many, many punches were made from that last drop, and that the cellars of the queer old place, around whose walls are printed and more substantial me- mentos of great events, especially of the great war and the terrible assas- sination with which it closed, that these cellars and perhaps the shed must have actually groaned under the original stock of this really exquisite distillation; but you could not doubt the historic character of the beverage when the old man informed you, with a grave and dignified benevolence, that he would charge you only fifty cents for the punch. And now let him who is eager for the social crush prepare for its va- MIDDLE-WESTERNER rious forms of dissipation. Every one who has any position whatever, or who is acquainted with a friend who has any position, goes into general society if he wants to. The rush and whirl of it are tremendous and dis- 2% 22 THE CAPITALs OF THE WORLD heartening until you come to know that there are quiet pools in the midst of the most turbulent waters, and that even the smallest house has cun- ning nooks, where one may spend an hour with a near and dear friend, without disturbing the general current of the chatterers. The man or woman who is not happy in the possession of a near and dear friend will inevitably find that mingling in the social whirl is a most stupendous bore, and not to be compared for real happiness with a comfortable chair, a good cigar, and an agreeable friend in the club — the most delightful club in the broad world of clubdom. Who has not tried to snatch mor- sels of conversation with passing acquaintances in a crowded room, inter- rupted by rivals, bitter enemies, bores that had no regard for the strug- gling speaker's desire to shine, if only for a second P Suddenly an old friend, man or woman, is projected upon you, and even as your mouth opens for the phrase of greeting, a simpering maid, or a stupid dowager, or a blundering man, begs to be taken somewhere for tea, or repairs, or kindly presents you to some one whom you always hate from that time on, and who is fortunately instantly swirled away in the rushing flood of humanity; but meanwhile the real friend, the friend you have found, who mayhap has awakened the most tender and beautiful recollections, and sug- gests a promise of one more glimpse of paradise in a weary world—she, too (or perhaps he) has been taken up and carried off just beyond your reach possibly, just far enough to permit you to hear the happy tones with which he (or is it she P) responds to the whispered jest of a rival who is utterly strange, a rival who has been brought to Washington by the changing events of politics, or by the modern movement that is making the capital the most popular winter resort of the rich and idle of fashion. Fashionable methods and customs and the manner of entertaining do not greatly differ in Washington from those obtaining elsewhere. There are the breakfasts or luncheons for women only, or for men only, or for mixed companies, the teas, receptions, crushes, balls, and outings to the country. The spice of variety to the mid-day meals that are usually fol- lowed by uncomfortable somnolency and a serious and regrettable loss of appetite for dinner, is added by breakfasts in the committee-rooms of the Senate. Here the woman of fashion treads softly, coyly, sometimes tim- idly, on the threshold of public life, and listens excitedly, if she is a novice, to the distant echoes of debate that mingle agreeably with the clatter of dishes and the whispered confidences of the man who sits next to her; and if an attendant of the Senate Chamber comes to announce that a roll-call is about to take place, and that the votes of the statesmen are needed by % FLOWER-SELLERS IN THE MARKET - PLACE WASHINGTON 25 their respective parties—for there are no rigid party lines in society, none, at least, that prevent the comradeship of political opponents—there is a delightful flutter in the breakfast-party; the men take up the affairs of state as an ancient warrior, who had been dallying in the smiles of beauty with his ambrosial locks unbound, lifted up his helmet and buckled on his sword at the sound of the trumpet that called him to the stern duties of battle. If any men are left behind, their quarter of an hour may not be wholly pleasant, unless their fair convives are accustomed to the business of Government, and understand that the statesmen are probably doing nothing that is of any serious moment or that is at all likely to overtax their minds. Still, if they are fledglings in the peculiar world of the cap- ital, they may be more interesting to the philosopher than their experienced sisters, and their chattering guesses as to the momentous errand on which their chevaliers have been called away may be readily excused by the neglected men who remain, unless, indeed, as sometimes strangely happens, there is among these men one of sufficient vanity to count a Senator no better than himself. Not that there are not some Senators who sorely tax the faith of American citizens in their intellectual, and moral superiority; but it is best for one's comfort to assume that a Senator who flirts as dili- gently as a boy of sixteen is not wholly as frivolous as he always appears to be. One will thus be a more frequent guest at the quiet lunches, where the talk is almost always clever, and where the service and the food and wines are good enough to suggest the unaccustomed pleasures of a well- sheltered picnic, where the opportunities are excellent for gétting on a little further with what may have promised at last night's crush to be an exceptionally charming acquaintance. And there are suppers, too, in these Senate committee-rooms when night sessions are on, and the walls that were construćted for the shelter of law-makers look down upon well-dressed and daintily-fed women, and listen to the low tones and sweet laughter of divinities that are perfectly contented not only with the quality of the worship they receive, but with the multitude of their worshippers. The intimacies of a society composed of people who see one another several times a day during the season are very great, and the cleverest peo- ple in the country go to Washington officially for a few years, or make pil- grimages there. Naturally the public service gathers men of talent and even of genius about its centre of administration. There are scientific men, and officers of the army and navy, and lawyers, both those who are on the bench and those who are at the bar. The politicians and states- 26 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD men are not the only attrac- tions of the capital, although they are potent, and the topics of their trade are uppermost in the minds of women and men. One of the compensa- tions of statecraft is the pleas- ure of explaining large ques- tions to intelligent women who make a serious effort to be well informed on the hard prob- lems of Government, but who are really much more interest- ed in the personal and polit- ical fortunes of the men who master and control them; so that it is easy for an accom- plished public man to glide from politics to poetry by the time he has finished his first cup of tea, or when he en- joys the calm satisfaction that makes the interval that follows the entrée the happiest point of the dinner. Present and future Presidents are talked about most lightly, most clev- erly, most delightfully, at the dinner and tea tables of the capital; and on a genial evening at a White House reception, on the circular back porch, there have been many confes- sions of ambitions made by black-coated politicians to sympathetic ears, and there have been many betrayals of confidences too, and men with purposes and objects have listened with smiling face and beating heart to the thoughtless and careless tattling of one who has received one more secret than she can hold, or who is in the companionship of one to whom her in- most soul is as an open page. Then may tumble out into the light of pub- licity aspirations of a great man, who would hardly speak them aloud outside the stillness of his own chamber, but whose wife has poured them into the ear of her bosom friend, who, in turn, reveals them to the statesman's dearest foe. -- - -- THE SMARTLY-DRESSED YANKEE WASHINGTON 27 It is true enough that the chat of other capitals is not very different in character from that which enlivens Washington, but there is an infusion of freshness here that is lacking in the Old World, and that may therefore be said to be essentially American. New faces are constantly coming in, new minds with new points of view, new forms of awkwardness to be tamed and trained. And it is a wonderful illustration of the adaptability of our countrymen and countrywomen that in an exceedingly short time they fit themselves to their new surroundings, with all their follies and virtues, and “My FRIEND THE colonel, FRom virginia, sah " 28 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD add to them a charm of freshness that is very agreeable to palates that are somewhat in danger of becoming jaded. This infusion of new people, this rapid changing of the personnel of Society, has its pleasant and its disa- greeable side. It is discouraging, except to one who enjoys the pursuit of new friendships, to find, after a four years' absence from the capital, that the acquaintance of a completely new set of Cabinet families must be made, and that there are a great many new permanent citizens of Wash- ington, new Senators and Representatives, and new members of the diplo- matic corps. And new people in Washington do not mean simply new people constructed on the set pattern of the place, for there is no regular pattern for a Washingtonian. This is the centre into which all the coun- try tumbles its various patterns, so that it is a human kaleidoscope, and the men and women who take the places of those who go away are not only new in name and face and fortune and manner, but are very likely to be new kinds of men and women, who have new thoughts born on the Western prairies or in the mines, and that will startle and revive the flag- ging minds that are holding by notions that are obliged to do such con- stant and wearing duty in the conservative and comparatively stagnant cities of the seaboard. But when once your bark is fairly afloat in this tide, you swim along with many friends, any one of whom you may see almost any day some- where at Some hospitable house, if you only have the determination and the patience. And the soft atmosphere disposes you to indulge yourself in the loitering life that regards a ten-mile tramp as a serious effort, but that loves a saunter on the pavement that may last all of a golden after- In OOI). - The impression that is left by the few weeks known as the season, however, is not wholly pleasant. There is a rush of people and a tumult about it that suggest a hurry to see it all before they go. There is an important number of the people whom you meet and against whom you jostle, some of whom you would take a strong fancy to, if you were not deterred by the feeling that they are very far from being like the poor, and will be with you only for a little while. Sometimes it is difficult to pick out your friends in the great crushes — the people who will remain after the law-makers fill up their annual volume and go home to expand from a small fraction of a large assemblage into the large man of the vil- lage. Every one goes into the official society in Washington. If you go to an afternoon tea at a Cabinet or Senator's house, you will see modest, plain women standing against the walls, unknown and unknowing, except - THE POLITICAL SECRET WASHINGTON 31 as they recognize the faces of the great people whose photographs have appeared in the shop-windows, or who have been caricatured in the daily press. They may be the wives of new members, or, more likely still, the wives and sisters of department clerks, who live in humble lodgings, and go to the after- noon gatherings for the purpose of securing cards which will be left at their doors by a footman, one of which will bear the legend, “The Secretary of State,” and the other the name of his perhaps equally distinguished wife or daughters. What a glory these cards will give their possessors when they take them up to their village homes in the summer vacation, and leave them about where they may catch the eye of the dear old envious friend, or of the aunt whose chief delight is the proclamation of the re- flected social glories of her kindred, of the nephew who is struggling for bread on $1200 a year, of the niece whose annual bit of sunshine comes to her when she turns her back on the ill-smelling boarding-house and her face towards a dusty village where there are people who really believe that she and the wife of the Secretary are the dear. est of friends. It is different about the President and the White House. Every one can see the one and tramp through the oth- er, and there is no post-visitation testimony of the fact in pasteboard. The people own the White House, or a large part of it at all events, and they exercise the privileges of their ownership in their free and independ- ent manner. THE OFFICE-SEEKER We have not wandered entirely through Washington in this discursive ramble. We have seen nothing of that large community which retains the spirit and habits of old New England, especially that part of it whose peo- ple are descendants of those who emigrated from New England in the first half of the century. There are Friday evening prayer-meetings and Sun- 32 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD day-school concerts and small evening parties in this community, and they who dwell in it live in Washington after the simple, wholesome fashion to which they were born and bred. The women of the family when they go, excitedly and with trepidation often, into the larger and more brilliant world of fashion are clad in seemly gowns with high neck and long sleeves; and the young men stop at home and attend to the business by which they are to fail or prosper. We have not seen much either of the free-man- nered, hearty Westerner, nor of the simple, hospitable Southerner. They do not always change their manners when they go to Washington, and those of them who are not hovering around the candle of society make their homes with people of their own kind, who talk and think like themselves. You will see them all sooner or later, if you linger long enough in Washington to understand and love it; and then you will be glad when the great throng is through with its annual visit, when even more tempo- rary visitors cease to run down for a day or a week, and when you once more dwell on quiet and familiar terms with the men and women who give the city its interest. It is then that you will most thoroughly enjoy the strange capital, where neither art nor letters nor commerce hold sway, but which owes its social charm to the great human tide that, ebbs and flows through it, some of the best of which gathers in pleasant recesses and eddies, and refreshes the seekers of rest who have been tossed to weariness in the tumbling waters. *~32 ~~~~ Wººl, N HORSE- GUARDS Engraved by Rousseau, after a photograph by Mr. Louis, of London LO N DO N HEN the editors asked me to write on “London " I was appalled at the magnitude of the task; but when they added “in twenty pages,” I shrank, not so much from a difficult, as from an impossible un- dertaking. I ventured also to question their choice of person. If any one was to at- tempt a “London in twenty pages,” why should I be that one They told me that, on the one hand, I had shown some ac- quaintance with the antiquities and history of my own parish—the village of palaces of the West End from Henry VIII. to Queen Anne–and, on the other hand, had, in the capacity of chairman of a Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, had to conduct a personal investigation into the condition of the centre — Clerkenwell—of the south side, and of the East End. “Lon. don—city of contrasts,” said the editors; “so we want a writer who has some acquaintance with East and West, with rich and poor.” “But a London in twenty pages ſ” I replied. “Give me rather the simpler contrasts of St. Petersburg—the gloomy fortress and the brill- iant Nevsky. Give me Constantinople, with the glowing Bosporus, and, on its branch, the Golden Horn, the crape-robed bishops of the churches of Asia in the twilight of their Council-chamber at the mouldering Phanar. Give me Tokio; give me anything but London, a London in twenty pages, or let me off.” The editors were inexorable, and I must try. If one must be confined within close limits it is better not to attempt a mere list of names, 36 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD such as guide-books give, but to sketch, in even fewer than the twenty pages, one or two salient features of our great town. There is a walk which well exhibits mediaeval London. It starts, as every tour through London ought to start, from the Tower. To French- THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.-Engraved by Ruffe, after a water-color by Béthune men I may say that the Tower is our Bastille, but our revolutions have spared, or used, it. In English early history the Tower played a far greater part than its Parisian rival in that of France. Tradition as well as Shakes. peare tell us that Julius Caesar built it; but its great square keep was un- doubtedly built by William the Conqueror, and is still a perfect specimen of the fortress architecture of the eleventh century. The world does not possess a spot or building historically of more interest than the Tower of London—the personal castle of the British Crown. Foreigners are most concerned in these days, perhaps, with staring at the Beefeaters (whose name is only by popular confusion connected with their food)—the Yeo- men, whose costumes are the most interesting, the most truly beautiful in the world — and with the crown of England, and the Kohinoor in the Jewel-house. But in the Tower kings held their courts, and in the Tower those who were or should have been the rulers of the country, and those who have been her greatest citizens, have been confined. Stories of the LONDON 37 murdered princes, of Queen Elizabeth before her accession to the throne, of the Duke of Clarence and the malmsey butt, of Henry VI., of Lady Jane Grey, of the Duke of Norfolk, of Queen Anne Boleyn, of Queen Catherine Howard, of the Lord Protector Somerset, of the Duke of Northumberland, of the Earl of Essex, of the Great Oyer of Poisoning, of Baliol (King of Scotland), of William Wallace, of King John of France (the prisoner of Poitiers), of Charles, Duke of Orleans (the prisoner of Agincourt), all the histories and romances woven round the throne, are not of greater inter- est than the more private reminiscences connected with the Tower of Sir Thomas More, of Lord Southampton and his cat, of Archbishop Cranmer, of Sir Walter Raleigh, of Algernon Sidney, of William Russell. It is not only Roman Cath- olics who in these days think Sir Thomas More the great- est of all Englishmen in no- bility and loveliness of life and superiority to the preju- dices of his time. The Tow- er throughout its history, Con- sidered as a prison, has been as impartial as was Queen Elizabeth when she held so even the balance between her Puritan and her Jesuit oppo- nents that she used to lock them up together in the Tow- er, and even find the prac- tice useful, inasmuch as they spied upon each other. But we came to this great solid square-built Tow- A YEOMAN OF THE TOWER OF LONDON er to start upon a walk, and From a drawing by Vogel, after a photograph by Mr. Louis, of London we have lingered long. The - Tower stands in view of London Pool, which in my boyhood I remember densely thronged by the shipping of the world. The Port of London is a far greater resort of trade, although not proportionately greater, than 38 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD in those days. But the shipping is not now in sight. As we come to London along the Essex or the Kentish shores forests of masts seen among the houses proclaim the presence of the Docks in which almost all the ships are now confined. Near the Tower we visit a fragment of the Roman wall of the second London—that which followed a British London which was but an in- trenched camp. Close here we find the Church of Allhallows, Barking, meaning the Church of All Saints belonging to the Convent of Barking, Essex; the church at which the Fire of London stopped, and the church where lie many of those prisoners of the Tower who were not buried with- in its precincts—Archbishop Laud, the poet Earl of Surrey, and many others whose heads fell on Tower Hill. Thence we go to Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate Street, once Crosby Place, Sir John Crosby's private house, built by him in the fifteenth century, and described at the time by himself, as I find from Payne Collier's manuscript notes on Peter Cunningham's own copy of his Hand-book to Zondon in my possession. From this fine specimen of an old house we visit in the same street St. Helen's, full of interesting monuments, including those to Sir John and Lady Crosby, the founders of the Hall; to Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange; and to Sir Julius Caesar, one day perhaps likely to be confused by the great-grandchildren of our colonists with the Roman alleged builder of the Tower. London Stone, whatever its memories, is but a stone, which will be found in the wall of St. Swithin's Church, in Cannon Street; but as in Stow's time the trace of what it meant was already lost, its fame must rest upon Shakespeare's scene where Jack Cade strikes it, or upon tradi- tions of Whittington and his cat. The Guildhall next attracts us—the Town-hall of London, although the Lord Mayor's residence and the courts are in a different place—the Mansion House. This hall, however, should be seen when thronged with Aldermen and Common Councillors in their robes, and guests in uniform, at the Lord Mayor's banquet on the 9th of November of each year. In its empty week-day state the City giants, Gog and Magog (the totems of the City, as the Tarasque is the totem of Tarascon), are more interesting to the foreigner than the Wellington and Chatham monuments. - . Then we visit St. Giles's, Cripplegate, containing the grave of Milton, the monument to Fox, the author of the Book of Martyrs, and the Parish Register with the entry of Oliver Cromwell's marriage. Next comes St. Bartholomew, and thus we journey to St. John's Gate, once the portal of the Priory Hospital of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and in late LONDON BRIDGE.-From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph times the meeting-place of many distinguished men; and so to St. Sepul. chre's, where also the Great Fire stopped—the church of the condemned of Newgate. The Roman Bath of London is very inferior in interest to the Thermes of Paris; but the Temple, to which we cross, is unmatched, unless at Oxford or Cambridge. This home of lawyers, with its almost painful silence in the middle of the busy town, the ancient habitation of the Knights Templars, bearing still their badges as its arms, contains the Middle Temple Hall, and the Temple Church, a round church of the twelfth century, full of the effigies of the cross-legged crusading Templars. The whole Liberty is full of memories of great men. From the Temple we pass, by the Strand, and the memorable statue of King Charles I. at Charing Cross, along Parliament Street to the Abbey at Westminster; or by the Embankment and the Houses of Parliament to Westminster Hall. Few churches are finer as regards their interior, or more interesting in their monuments, than Westminster Abbey—no hall in the world so grand as that of William Rufus. One word for foreigners about the connection of Westminster and London. The City of London is a small place of enormous wealth, with some 50,000 people alone sleeping in it at night, and recorded as inhabit. ants by the census, with 500,000 people using it for their business by day, and with a separate government of an ancient type, presided over 4O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD by the Lord Mayor, with its own police. West of it lay the City of Westminster, an ecclesiastical corporation. In times wholly modern, round these two have been grouped the vast metropolis. The official London of the present day is the London of the London County Council, the same in area as its predecessor, the London of the Metropolitan Board of Works. For all purposes this London includes Westminster. For some purposes it includes, and for others does not include, the City. In Westminster Abbey the kings are crowned. In Westminster Abbey most of them are buried: Edward the Confessor; Edwards I. and III., and their Queens, Eleanor and Philippa; Henry V.; Henry VII.; Queen Elizabeth; Charles II.; William III., and his wife, Queen Mary; Queen Anne, and many others. And besides these royal hosts, Mary, Queen of Scots; that almost equally famous “Queen of Hearts,” the Queen of Bohemia; Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Castlereagh, Canning, Monk, Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, Garrick, Handel, Cam- den, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (chiefly known, perhaps, abroad through Dumas), La belle Stuart of the Hamilton Memoirs, Newton, Dr. Johnson, St. Evremond, and hundreds of other famous men and women. Here, too, are the banners and stalls of Knights of the Bath, and on Sun- days the Dean may be seen wearing the order when he officiates at serv- ice: the shrine of Edward the Confessor; the altar tomb of Edward I., in which the King still lies, with the crown upon his head and the sceptre in his hand; the state sword and shield carried before Edward III. in France as King of France; the helmet, shield, and saddle of Henry V., from Agincourt; the coronation chairs of England and of Scotland, the latter containing the Scotch coronation stone carried off by Edward I. to England. These, indeed, bring back to us the past more than anything that in any other country can be found. Through Westminster Hall—full of memories of the Great Oyer of Poisoning; of the condemnation of Strafford, and beginning of the Civil Wars; of the trial of the King; of the acquittal of the seven bishops; of Warren Hastings' and Burke's speeches; of the Coronation feasts, and riding in of the Champions in full armor, throwing the gauntlet on the floor—we pass, if we will, to the Houses of Parliament, which are modern, or to the crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel, more in keeping with the char. acter of our antiquarian walk. If time remains to us we can strike west- ward to St. James's Palace, passing the clubs, which form, by their num- bers and their stateliness, the finest feature of the London of the day; Orº crossing by the Mall, if we desire to prolong our antiquarian tour, so as - THE THAMES AND THE TOWER OF LONDON.-Engraved by Bodier, after a photograph by Messrs. W. Wilson & Co., of Aberdeen LONDON - . . 43 to visit the historic suburbs, nothing better deserves visit than Chelsea Hospital, still standing exactly as it was left by Wren, who designed it even to its fittings; and Chelsea old church upon the river-shore, where the Dacre tomb forms one of the finest of known monuments, and where memories of Sir Thomas More, leading the choir while he was Lord Chan- cellor, are revived by the touching words of his own inscription on the slab which commemorates his services to the State. Of More's house, where Holbein lived and worked, nothing now remains but the garden wall. But, through the late Cardinal Manning's interest in the memory of the beati- fied hero of English Catholicism, a Roman Catholic religious house now occupies a portion of the site. ſ To deal with modern London in twenty pages would be as difficult as to treat the history of the old City adequately in a similar space. Since Sir Benjamin Hall's Act, passed in our own times, London has included, north of the Thames, an area larger than that of Paris and twice as popu- lous; while south of the Thames it includes an area twice as large again as that of London north of the Thames, but far less densely peopled, except in parts which lie round the interesting Church of St. Saviour's, or extend up the riverfront towards the beautiful old Palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury at Lambeth, or downward towards the stately Naval Hospital at Greenwich with its famous banqueting-hall and collection of naval portraits. Of intermediate London—the London which begins with the reign of Queen Anne, and runs into our own times—on the whole the most striking monument is St. Paul's, the metropolitan cathedral—to my mind far finer than St. Peter's at Rome, which it imitates, but has surpassed. St. Peter's gains reflected glory from the neighborhood of the Vatican and its treas- ures, and from the work of Michael Angelo and adornment by Raphael of adjoining buildings. From such men to the greatest of English artists is a fall; but there is artistic work of the present reign about St. Paul's which is not undeserving of notice even by those who are acquainted with the finest things abroad. - - Of modern London the greatest attraction to foreigners is to be found in the parks and the Thames Embankment between the House of Com- mons and Blackfriars, but perhaps ought to be found in the pictures of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. Our picture-gallery does not yield in interest even to the British Museum, with its Elgin Marbles and its Reading-room. Our picture collection is too little known upon the Con- tinent, and too little visited; for it is perhaps on the whole the finest in the 44 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD world, except as regards modern work. In sculpture we are weak com- pared with France. For old pictures, although Raphael is badly repre- sented, the English national collection is, in the opinion of many, unsur- passed. The show of the Dutch School is equal to that at the Hermitage, and superior to any other. Although the Madrid collection of Velasquez cannot be touched, Velasquez himself is now adequately represented in London; and the early Italians and the Flemings have their genius better illustrated in London than in any single gallery elsewhere. While there is no one Rubens in London equal to the “Descent” at Antwerp, while Ru- - bens is far less largely represented than at the Louvre, while there are at The Hague and Am- sterdam pictures by Rem- brandt, and by the other greatest of the Dutch masters which are not equalled by any in the English collection, yet the latter, perhaps, better deserves a visit than any other gallery, and its rep- utation is not equal with its deserts. M. Frédéric Reiset, a former director of the Louvre, has well described our pictures in his “Une Visite à la Na- tional Gallery,” which ap- peared in the Gazette des Beaua Arts, from 1877 to 1878. WESTMINSTER ABBEY When we name the From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by Mr. Louis, of London London parks, it is of Hyde Park and Kensing- ton Gardens that we chiefly think; for the others, although large and nu- merous, are not equally remarkable. The Serpentine and Long Water form the largest sheets of artificial water within the limits of a great European city, although they are perhaps not so striking as is the Alster; but Ken- LONDON 45 sington Gardens and Rotten Row are without rivals when their situation within the town is taken into account. No prettier sight in its way can be found than the passing from Knightsbridge Barracks to Hyde Park Corner of a regiment of Household Cavalry, with the band and trumpeters in their state uniforms of gold, on a Drawing-room Day in late May or early June, St. PAUL's CATHEDRAL From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by Messrs. Wilson & Co., of London when the trees have their brightest livery of tender green, when the beds are filled with glorious tulips and other flowers of brilliant color, or the rhododendrons are in bloom in dense masses of crimson, white, and lilac rising from the sward, and riders in hundreds gather from the Row to see pass one of the showiest heavy-cavalries of the world. The contrast is as great between such a scene and the fog which sometimes in winter lies upon this very spot, making it impossible to see from tree to tree, as that between the Guards and the Salvation Army, or between the “ dockers” (as we now call the dock laborers of East London) and the ladies in their basket carriages who have come out to see their friends riding in the park. In winter, fogs are sometimes so thick that broughams taking people to theatres or to dinner, although they have the footmen walking at the horses' heads, get on to the pavement or catch the lamp-posts with the wheels, or 46 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD lock with another carriage, and the occupants are forced to get out and walk home. - The London which perhaps most interests the foreign observer of the day is the London of Whitechapel, and thieves' suppers, and Salvation Army shelters—the London of the poor—the London of the misery which accompanies, at London, as at Liverpool, and Glasgow, and New York, enormous commercial wealth. To deal with these awful masses of wretchedness we make in London far more effort—both by spending vastly more money upon charity, and by supplying from among us far more good men and women who devote the personal service of their lives—than is done elsewhere, but with ill-success so nearly complete that we cannot plume ourselves much on what we do. The charities of London are somewhat wasteful in the amount of their ex- penditure upon management. Much good is done by church and chapel congregations, through visiting-ladies; but it is not easy to spread this work evenly throughout the town. In the East End and south side, in Clerken- well and Holborn, in St. Giles's and the neighborhood of Drury Lane, and in the poorest parts of Fulham and of Notting Hill, there are a good many High Church missions scattered about which also are doing much, and the priests of the Roman Catholic Church devote their lives to looking after the poor Irish of London. But with all these efforts, and those of the Salvation Army and similar bodies, only the fringe of the question has as yet been touched. The poor-law system, which is one peculiar to England, and is seen at its best in London, involves the election for the whole country of Boards of Guardians of the Poor, who in London administer districts which have an average population of over IOO,OOO souls. These Boards form themselves into Relief Committees for sub-districts, and for each. such di- vision there is a poor-law medical officer, and a relieving officer. For the whole district there is a Workhouse and an Infirmary, as well as a system of poor-law schools outside London, where the pauper children are main- tained. The Relief Committees, meeting generally once a week, see those applicants for relief who are not wholly willing to go straight into the Work- house or Infirmary, according as they are well or ill. The Relieving Officer attends the meetings of the committee, and reports upon the cases. Where a workman is in temporary distress, where the bread-winner of the family is sick, or is in jail, or has run away, out-door assistance is given to the family; and in the case of desertion a warrant is issued for the apprehension of the offender, with a reward to the police for finding him. Old women who have some small source of income, and old couples in a similar case, are helped LONDON 49 from the public funds, raised by the rating of the locality. Where it is nec- essary to bring the applicants into the Workhouse, the children go to the poor-law schools. In cases where children are orphan or deserted, there is power to send them across the seas on their personal consent given before two magistrates, and the system of thus sending them to Canada is extend- ing, and is popular with the children, and beneficial to their interests. Where the children are not orphan or deserted, they are taught a trade, and passed from the Workhouse schools—girls into domestic service—the boys into the army bands, as apprentices to shoemakers, to tailors, and the like. Each London Workhouse contains on an average 1000 people; mostly old, most- ly feeble—a depressing sight. The able-bodied poor are put to work, but they are not numerous. A new system has lately been devised for profes- sional tramps, which virtually imprisons them for a period of two days in ex- change for a night's rest and food. In some Unions the orders of the Local Government Board, by which the Guardians are supervised, checking by severe regulations the giving of out-door relief, are set at naught by the sen- timentality or the decided opinion of the local guardians. By a union of the Boards of Guardians of the Metropolis under statute, a sick asylum board for the whole metropolis, composed of members chiefly elected by the Boards of Guardians, has been created, and this body manages infectious disease—strictly speaking, as regards the pauper class, but in practice as gards all classes whose homes are such that isolation cannot be secured. In smallpox epidemics, in the less difficult cases of a sudden spread of typhoid or scarlet fever, the patients are carried off to a hospital at once, and those who are able to contribute towards their own support, or whose friends can pay, are made to do so through the Relief Committees. Typhus has been driven out of London, and no longer exists within the capital, although it is still known at Liverpool, as well as at Leith, and in some other towns of Scotland, London has become the healthiest of great cities, but there are extraordinary differences between part and part— the mortality in Bloomsbury falling to 12 in the Iooo for the whole parish, and rising in some of the foulest courts of other parts of London to 40 in the IOOO. - Smallpox patients are treated in floating hospitals upon the Thames, between which and a neighboring hill there is a private smallpox road, and on the hill a hospital and room for camps in time of epidemic, the convales- cents being driven in ambulances from the ships to the hill some miles away, and kept there till there is no danger of contagion. The smallpox patients are conveyed to the ships by special smallpox steamers from special 4 IN A LoNDoN Foo At Two o'clock on A JANUARY AFTERNOON Engraved by Florian, after a water-color by Besuard smallpox wharves; and smallpox patients are not treated in the ordinary fever hospitals. The only hitch about the system occurs when we have to face at the same moment a smallpox epidemic and a prolonged fog, which prevents all traffic upon the Thames. There is another poor-law purpose for which London is also one, and which also has its ship upon the Thames— the Exmouth man-of-war, manned entirely by poor-law boys, whose drill is equal to that of any sailors in the world. The strong prejudice which exists among the poor against the Workhouse does not extend to the poor-law in- firmaries, or to the poor-law hospitals, or to the poor-law schools, or to the Armouth, and the public hospital and infirmary system is gaining ground, and ordinary hospitals, supported by voluntary contributions (and partly by large endowments), are declining. The contrasts of London are sharper even than those of Paris. The town which contains Grosvenor House and Devonshire House—the homes of dukes with hundreds of thousands a year each from land, which can show its miles of houses, each one inhabited by persons having over £5000 a year income—contains also the courts of the Judd Street district, near St. Pancras and Euston Stations; contains the house-knacker parts of Clerk- LONDON 5 I enwell; contains the worst districts of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, and the miserable poverty of St. George's-in-the-East. The worst parts of London are those in which miserable courts of tiny cottages have been built upon what were the gardens of good houses, and where the fine houses them- selves of Queen Anne's day have come to be inhabited, room by room, by many families, without being built in a manner suited to such occupancy, or provided with any of the conveniences which the tenement system presup- poses. Still the London poor prefer to inhabit such miserable dwellings rather than live in the Peabody blocks, or other barrack dwellings, largely because they carry on wretched trades, such as fur-pulling, and small coster- monger work, and match-box making, and hat-box making, which involve processes which would be forbidden by the by-laws of the block dwellings. The trade-unionist operatives of London belonging to such guilds of arti- sans as the Amalgamat- ed Society of Engineers, - * : - ... * * *. the Carpenters and Join- ‘. . . . ---. - - - ers, the Bricklayers, are the aristocracy of labor, better off on the whole than the other workmen of Europe; as well off as the best of those working in the United States or Canada, infe- rior in their social posi- tion among the work- men of the world only to those of the Australian colonies. The problems which we cannot solve in London concern the un- skilled laborers and the women workers, for even skilled or half-skilled women are ground down by competition to wretch- ed wage. There are skilled needle - women ~3 -- t HIGHLANDER 35 employed On “ fancy From a drawing by Vogel, after a photograph by Mr. Louis * 52 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD apron-making paid 2s. 6d. for twelve dozen, able to make four dozen in a day by good work. The match-box makers, receive 2; d. for 144 boxes, they finding the tow and paste, and fuel for the drying that is needed in damp weather. They work hard for twelve to fourteen hours daily, and their earnings average 6s. to 7s. a week. Sack-making, tobacco - Sorting, paper-bag mak- ing, book-folding, rag-sorting, are on the aver- age no better paid, and there are in London, in these and similar employments and in confec- tionery factories, large numbers of women earn- ing but from IOd, to Is. a day, although they some skill. are required to display In 1883 the atten- called to the condition people in London, and then ministry, calling deplorable condition of as she wished “to learn contemplate the introduc- propose to take any steps formation as to the true in consequence of this ac- tion of the Queen was of the housing of the her Majesty wrote to her their attention to “the the houses of the poor,” whether the Government tion of any measures, or to obtain more precise in- state of affairs.” It was tion on the part of her Majesty that I was direct- ber, 1883, to make myself with the condition of the of London. My object, as I stated it at the time, was “to test admin- istrative powers under the present law;” but as we had to show that the local authority had “made default,” it was necessary for me to take cases as to which medical officers of the districts had reported to their Vestries or District Boards and nothing had been done. At this time I met all the medical officers of health of the poor parts of London with the surveyors of the parishes, each man in his own dis- trict, and visited with them all those places on which they had reported without success. Making my own notes, I picked out the worst cases, and, when certain that I was on ed, in Octo- acquainted THE PRAYER OF THE worst parts CORNET-PLAYER SALVATION ARMY TYPES Engraved by Rousseau, from sketches by Renouard - LONDON 55 firm ground, took occasion to mention them in public, so as to put press- ure on the local authorities. I found the worst districts to be in St. George the Martyr, Newington, and St. Saviour's on the south side of the Thames; for these were worse than even the worst parts of St. Pancras, than the worst neigh- borhood of Holborn near Mount Pleasant and Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill, than the worst parts of Maryle- bone near Lisson Grove, than the worst parts of St. George's-in-the-East, of Shoreditch, of Lime- house, of Bermondsey, and of Whitechapel, bad though all these were. The neighborhood in which there was the most evil connection be- tween bad local govern- ment and bad housing was Clerkenwell, a par- ish in which at that time the local author- ity was in the hands of “house-farmers,” or “house-knackers,” as the men are called who buy the ends of leases and let the houses in infa- mous condition at high rents by breaking them up into single rooms. OLD HOUSES IN HOLBORN From a drawing by Lancelot, after a photograph by Messrs. Wilson & Co., of Aberdeen After all, however, the greatest peculiarity of London, that which most distinguishes it from all other towns, is its overwhelming size. It contains many open spaces, parks, and even metropolitan commons, which are fast 56 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD becoming parks in fact, but now virtually no unbuilt-on ground; and be. yond the London of the County Council and of the census, on many sides we are still in town. The borough of West Ham, in itself an enormous town, returning two members to Parliament, and under-represented with its two; the borough of Croydon, the district of Chiswick, and many others are indistinguishable from London, although outside London. Without them, London proper is so vast as to make the crossing of it on the out- side of an omnibus, from Chiswick through Hammersmith, and Kensington, and Knightsbridge, and Piccadilly, the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, Cornhill, Leadenhall Street, Aldgate, Whitechapel High Street, ROYAL EXCHANGE AND BANK OF ENGLAND From a drawing by Boudier, after a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company and the Mile End Road, or Commercial Road East, one of the great sights of the world; especially when we remember that in London this is not a single line of length, but that London from north to south is as wide as from east to west it is long. London is a labyrinth and a beehive, both on an enormous scale, and the manner in which London contrives to feed it- self, to live and grow, constitutes the chief wonder of the world. + LONDON - 57 Here, then, is a London in fewer than “twenty pages” — an incomplete and perfunctory London, as must needs be, we shall see, when we institute a Comparison between its area or its pop- ulation and those of the other cities de- scribed in this volume at much greater relative length. I have aimed only at giving a mere picture in three panels— old central London, the new rich west, and the poor districts — rather than a catalogue of names, a guide-book, or a map. My reward will be if I succeed in tempting foreign tourists to visit still POVERTY more freely than in the past that city, Engraved by Ruffe, after a photograph by Mr. Joseph Thompson full of interest, in which I and my fa- thers back to the Commonwealth were born, and which I love well. zºº # A- -. Kº % z1|\ºſ/º % as at ſº ſº 22 - - - - - PARIS HAVE been asked to write twenty pages about Paris. This does not, I suppose, mean that I am to give in those twenty pages a gen- eral impression, however vague, of the monster city. I might as well be asked to put the ocean in a bottle. I might, it is true, imitate Horace in the Acole des Femmes of Molière, who, when asked “What do you think of this town 2" replied, with touching simplicity: “Numerous in citizens, su- perb in monuments, and marvellous in amuse- ments.” NOTRE DAME But it is only classic genius which has the Engraved by Tynaire, after a copper- right to be thus brief. - - plate engraving by Goeneutte - - - Shall I be more romantic? Iºke Rastignac at Père la Chaise, with his feet in the mud of the humble grave in which Balzac's Père Goriot had just been buried, may not I also, as the towers, spires, and domes of the vast city emerge from the mists of the twilight, hurl forth the famous defiance: “A nous deur maintenant." What prevents me from whistling, like Quasimodo on the towers of Notre Dame, or from leaning over some gurgoyle and indulging in a kind of bird's-eye reverie, as I gaze upon the roofs whitened by the moonlight? This would give me a pretext for fine phrases and an opportunity for saying all there is to say, whether about inspiring or com- monplace things. But this, again, is certainly not what is expected of me. As every one knows, I am but an old Parisian lounger—a dreamer, who chooses for his solitary strolls the quietest quarters and the most melancholy suburbs. The perpetual rolling of carriages on the boulevards deafens me; the A F#TE At THE TRocADERO Engraved by Ruffe, after a water-color by Zuber hubbub of voices issuing from the entrance to the Bourse paralyzes me. You may find it difficult to believe, but, although I have nearly reached my half-century, and have seldom left Paris before July, I never went to see the competition for the Grand Prix. To the noise and confusion of the great boulevards I prefer the extreme quiet of certain streets on the left bank of the Seine, where I can hear the caged canaries sing; and however lovely the Bois de Boulogne may be in its spring verdure, you are more likely to meet me in the winding paths of the old Jardin des Plantes, with its melancholy Judas-trees planted by Buffon. You must not, therefore, hope that I shall describe to you the monu- ments or the luxuries of Paris. Artists of rare power are to strew these few pages of mine with illustrations, but they must not be supposed to have reference to my text. It is for them to represent some of the most thrilling incidents of life in the great city—such as the crowding of the speculators on the Bourse about the corbeille,” which resembles the rush of the hounds on the quarry, or of the Sunday crowds to the race-course. As for me, I have none but bitter and hostile criticism for either speculators or book-makers. In Parisian slang, the word boulevardier means the young swell of the * The corbeille is the reserved enclosure on the Bourse for the use of the brokers who meet there and fix the price of securities.—TRANS. PARIS 63 boulevards—a characteristic figure, of which the less I see the better I like it. His absence from the winding quays of the other side of the Seine is an additional reason for my preference for that unfashionable quarter, and it is a matter of great regret to me that this boulevardier should be so much in evidence among the crowds who flock to Paris from all quarters of the world. I would rather see foreigners congregating anywhere else than on our boulevards; but, alas! it is there we meet visitors from Russia and from Brazil, from the Great Sahara or from India, who, when they are back on the frozen steppes, the arid pampas, the dreary wastes of sand, or the torrid plains of their native lands, will yearn for Paris with a wasting nostalgia more destructive even than homesickness. Yes, that handsome sheik, strolling along in his majestically draped burnous; that rajah, with eyes like black diamonds; that Celestial, dec- orated with the badge of a mandarin of the highest class, to whom petitioners dare not ad- dress a word without having first prostrated themselves before him — will, one and all, re- member our boulevards with longing, convinced that Paris is the marvel of marvels, though of that marvel they know nothing but the res- taurants and those who frequent them. As a case in point, I may relate that last winter, in a café of Algiers, I met a sherif, a direct descendant from Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet, who had but to speak one word to bring together eight or ten thousand warriors, and the one ambition of this Arab of the close of the nineteenth century was to drink his ab- sinthe in defiance of the Koran, and to recall his happy days in Paris No, I am no lover of this side of Paris life—a side only too much encouraged by the Great Exhibition of a year or two ago. I am no -i. advocate for these periodical fairs, which bring ſ in large sums of money to the caterers for a A BOULEVARDIER vitiated appetite. I am not, perhaps, much of a After a drawing by Forain 64 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD judge in such matters, but I cannot see how the progress of civilization is marked by the bestowing of the same decoration on great artists and great grocers I bow to superior judgment on this point; but, for all that, Paris in 1889 made me sad, sad at heart. Excuse a nervous man I suffered— yes, I really suffered—when I saw delegates from all parts of the universe attracted to the Eiffel Tower, pausing before a stupid iron structure 3OO metres high, and crowds of peasants, each with his umbrella, pouring forth from excursion trains to gloat over the Oriental dances. Paris thus trans- formed into a kind of fairy-land became uninhabitable to me, and I simply ran away to spend the whole summer in the pretty wooded country near it. Fortunately, however, there are other things than those I have referred to in Paris; there are other Parisians than the idlers of the boulevards. There is the Paris of home life—a life full of charm to those who live it or are privileged to share it—and it is of this life that I shall do my best to speak. s II Who was it said—at this moment I cannot remember—that Paris was the one town in the world which makes one love it as one does a woman 2 It is a pretty fancy, and well expresses a truth; but it applies only to for. eigners. I feel pretty sure that it was not said by a Parisian by birth—the child of Parisian parents, who had passed his childhood and youth in Paris, and had there grown up, lived, loved, and suffered. Such Parisians—and I am one—love Paris as their native country; but I am at once going to add a reproach—they do not love each other enough. - In spite of centralization carried to an extreme, provincialism — or, rather, the exclusive love of one particular corner of France—is rampant even in the capital itself. Friendly meetings, dinners, and periodical fêtes are held by the provincials who come to Paris to seek their fortune, or, as some audaciously put it, to conquer it. Those from Auvergne fraternize over the fumes of vegetable soup; Normans drink to their orchards and their cider in the wine of Champagne; Bretons sing their Celtic and Gallic airs at the love-feasts which wind up with some improvisation in the style of Ernest Renan; Provençals play their tambourines and dance round De Florian's bust at Sceaux, doubtless much to the astonishment of the knight there commemorated. We must hasten to add that we see nothing in this but what is perfectly legitimate, even touching. To meet those belonging PARIS 65 to the same province regularly, to talk of the dear home country, to rejoice over the triumphs of illustrious or fortunate compatriots, and to help those less lucky than one's self, is all excellent. But why does not this good custom prevail, or, at least, why is it not more common among the Pari- sians of Paris P - - Truth to tell, there was once upon a time a dinner for Parisians of the Parisians, at which I had the good-fortune to preside. It was charming: we were all most cordial to each other, and, as an amusing bit of fun, we took to imitating at dessert the cries of the ancient fau- bourgs of Paris, such as “Tonneaux tonneaux ſ” “Ciseaux à r"passer I" “Chand d'habits l’ “ Ha- reng qui glace ſ” and so on. These were recollections of the earliest days of the childhood of us /*abitués of Vaugirard or Ménilmon- tant. With all my heart I drank long life and suc- cess to this Association of the Parisians of Paris; but it was then only of recent origin, and has not thriven since as I should wish to see it. It is impossible for any one to deny that we true Parisians neither - know each other nor seek each other enough. It may be said that it is because we are so entirely at home in our town; but that town really is a world in itself, and we are sometimes months, or even a year, without meet- ing a single fellow-townsman on familiar terms, although if such a meeting were to come about, there is no doubt that the two would be in thorough A RASTAQOUžRE.*—After a drawing by Forain * Raszagouére is a slang word meaning a foreigner who makes a great show of his wealth, and about whom no one knows anything.—TRANs. 5 66 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD sympathy with each other, that each would often dream of the other, and think of him as of an absent friend. No, no; the fact is we adore Paris— we enjoy it to the full; but we do not do justice enough to our fellow- citizens; we are wanting in local patriotism. As a proof of this, I need only quote our indif. ference to some of our greatest distinctions. How often has it not happened to Parisians — to some of my readers, perhaps — to stop on their way through a provincial town opposite to the statue of some great º' unknown, and inquire, “Who was he P What did he do P” We in Paris go to the other extreme; and, to quote but one ex- ample, Alfred de Musset, one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth centu- ry, was born in Paris, yet thirty-three years after his death — to our dis- grace be it spoken—he is still uncommemorated by any public monument. Is any further proof needed of what I have been saying? Suppose some young man belonging to the lower middle class of Paris, with no connections but those of his immedi- ate neighborhood, wishes to better himself. I know that young man well; not so very long ago I was as like him as his own brother. There are thousands such at the present day. Let him follow the trade of his father, as every one did in ancient Egypt, and all will be well; but suppose his parents are ambitious for him, and have given him a better education than they had themselves, to whom can they turn ? What letters of introduction will be any good to him 2 How is he A PARISIAN Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Béraud .* PARIS 67 to carry on or even to begin true study, in which no master is of much avail? Of what good to him is his Parisian birth No one can bring him under the notice of a man in power who will be a protector to him as a matter of course, simply because he is a fellow-citizen. On the other hand, that young fellow from the provinces, who de- scended but yesterday from a third-class carriage, though he is as poor and ignorant as the Parisian just described, as wanting in money, and as well supplied with illusions and hopes, has in his pockets several recom- mendations to people from his native place—two or three fellow-country- men who have already made their fortunes, or who are going to make them. He may make his mind easy; some one will help him; and if his father—who is perhaps a chemist or a veterinary surgeon—has the least influence in his remote country home, the new arrival in Paris will at once NOTRE DAME AND PART OF THE CITY OF PARIS.—After a drawing by Boudier make his way to his “deputy,” who will rise to the occasion; not a doubt of it, for we do not bandy words with our electors! Give me an example, if you can, of a Parisian for whom the representative of his arrondissement has ever got a situation. 68 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD As in big so in small matters. The very peasant or bricklayer's assist- ant who comes from his village with nothing but a pair of shoes and a couple of shirts tied up in a pocket-handkerchief has got the address of some little inn or wine-shop where he will be sure of a welcome for the sake of auld lang-syne, and will hear of work to be had. Oh, Parisians, Parisians—dear but too light-hearted fellow-citizens, confess that I am right! You are egotists. Insensible of the claims of your comrades, you do not help each other as do the people of Picardy or of the Morvan Mountains. And what is the result P. The great capital of Paris is gradually becoming crowded with provincials. In some of the petty trades, it is true, natives are still to be found; and some house-painter, the son of a father who did the marbling or the lettering before him, or some humble grocer descended from ancestors who sold candles or Gruyère cheese from time immemorial, may be a native of the Faubourg Saint-Denis or the Rue Saint-Jacques; but among the higher classes there are no true- born Parisians, and everybody speaks with a provincial, mostly a southern, accent. The other day, when I was waiting in the crowded antechamber of a minister, and listened to the conversation, the voices really sounded like the rolling of flints, and I might have fancied myself beside a Pyrenean water-fall. These reflections affect me to the heart; and, dear Parisians, now that I have a chance of a little free-and-easy talk with you, I seize the opportu- nity to give you some advice. Beware; close up your ranks; do not let them be too much invaded by outsiders; defend yourselves, for the evil is already great, and, on my faith, if I were the father of a family, I would have my sons naturalized as children of the south. III I will now, in favor of my fellow-citizens, contest an opinion which is very widely spread. There are, it is said, very few true Parisian fami- lies. Many children are born in Paris, but it is already rare to find any whose father and mother are also natives of that city, and yet rarer are those whose grandparents were Parisian. Go back to the second or third generation, and you will find rural or foreign ancestors. The population of the capital is but a mixture of different bloods—a conglomeration of T2C62S. | | ** Fº | | | º | | - THE PLACE DE L'INSTITUT.—Engraved by Florian, after the picture by Béraud PARIS 71 In other words, there are no Parisians, properly so called ! But this is altogether wrong. Under the ancien régime, I do not know how many quarterings were not required of high-born damsels before they could be. come canonesses of Rémiremont, and the daughters of the house of Bour- bon itself who were not able—on account of the marriage of Henri IV. with Marie de Medicis—to give such proof of noble birth, were not admit- ted to the Chapter except in obedience to the formal command of the King. I admit that most of my fellow-citizens could not prove their thirty or forty quarterings of Parisianism, and are no more true Parisians than were the daughters of France of truly noble birth. But I have heard of a certain M. Charmolue—a superb name, betraying in its nasal ring its me. diaeval origin—who can trace his genealogy, from father and son, from the reign of St. Louis, and prove that all his ancestors were Parisian. Without dwelling on this exceptional case, we may assert that Pari- sians of pure Parisian blood are much more numerous than is generally supposed. Let us put the aristocracy entirely aside. There are, of course, many nobly born Parisians of provincial origin who came to Paris in the first place to be nearer the sun–that is to say, the reigning monarch. At the present time a good many nobles have houses in Paris, and keep up grand establishments there, but very few are what we may call legal residents. A sentence we often hear from those whom we may character- ize as thoroughly boulevardian in their ways is, “I am off for home.” This “home” is in Normandy, Franche Comté, or Périgord, and is the old feudal fief—the birthplace of the family. There is no longer a king, it is true, but Paris is still to aristocrats the centre of delight, the place where they will meet their equals; it is still the Louvre and Versailles—in other words, the Court. They may live in Paris, but they are still not Parisian. It is a different thing among the bourgeoisie and the lower classes. If you wander some day into the heart of old Paris, and lose yourselves among the few ancient streets which have escaped the pick of the de- stroyer—in the Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin, and Marais quarters—you will be surprised at the number of shops you will see bearing, not without pride, the legend, after the sign of the owner, “founded in 1690" or “in 17oo.” And very often the occupiers have succeeded each other, father and son, like royal personages. I know something about this. My grandfather on the maternal side established himself before the Revolution as a master locksmith near the Place de la Grève. His great-grandson, and of course my cousingerman, the fourth head of the family, is still a master locksmith in Paris And there are many similar cases. 72 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD But this bourgeoisie, this absolutely Parisian race, is known but to few, and that imperfectly. It must be admitted, too, that it is very exclusive, only hospitable to relations and intimate friends. It is less difficult to gain admission, I will not say to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but to the upper ten thousand, for instance, than to sit down at the table—a very well served table, too—of one of the old Öourgeoisie stock where there are still cordons ôleus.* A stranger is not invited unless he is known to be going to ask the hand of a daughter of the house in marriage. New faces are dis- trusted, and yet there is nothing to conceal. In this circle you will doubt- less meet with some very narrow, even absurd notions; but you will also find simplicity and a great fund of honor and probity. Nearly everything written about this hidden corner of Parisian society is an unfair caricature, the result of want of careful observation. Balzac alone, who knew or guessed everything, has done justice to it in his admirable César Birotteau. Among the lower classes, too, there are pure Parisians of very an- cient stock. They are swamped, it is true, among the ever-increasing waves of immigration attracted to the big town by a force as strong as that exercised on a lover by the object of his affections, but they are still pretty numerous in some professions and in petty commerce. A celebrated his- torian of our own day, who had had in his possession the lists of the butchers of September, including those of the wretches who were bribed to carry out the horrible massacre of the Abbaye, told me that among the net-work of small streets still existing behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés he had recognized the signs of several of the assassins. It is evident that the worker in ebony of the Rue de l'Échaudé or the cobbler of the Rue de Buci knows nothing of the crimes of his grandparents, for in this poverty- stricken world people are very indifferent to the origin of their families. But is not this a striking proof that the Parisian remains attached to his native soil—not merely to his town, but to his own quarter, his own street of that town Do you remember, in the Assommoir of Zola, the house in the Rue de la Goutte d'Or 2 Coupeau, the Parisian artisan, was born in that house, passed his youth in it, was married from it, scarcely ever left it, and died in it, unless he finished his vicious course among other evil- doers at Saint-Anne. This is a life-like picture. It is impossible to ex- aggerate the devotion of the Parisian artisan to his home, or his horror of change. When you see him passing by between the shafts of his little * The cordon bleu was the sign of the “Order of the Holy Ghost,” the knights of which were famed for the good tables they kept. A good cook came to be called a cordon bleu, or one able to cook for these knights.--TRANs. - - PARIS 73 cart, with all his worldly goods with him, you will know he has grave reasons for the step he is taking; for nothing would uproot him but im- perative necessity, such as the loss of his employment, the absolute need of being near his work, or the impossibility of paying his rent. When I was a little boy, my mother, who was not rich, and was very much occupied with her lodgers, sent me out walking with a very poor and very old woman wearing a linen bon- net, who remembered perfectly the Empire, the Revolution, and the last years of the reign of Louis XVI. For the whole of that time she had lived in the quarter of the Rue de Sèvres. I have spoken else- where of this good soul, whom I only men- tion now as a case in point. About 1846 or 1847, when she bought me cakes and pink sticks of sweetmeat from the basket of a woman hawking her goods on a bench in an alley of the Boulevard des Invalides, Mother Bernu – that was my attendant's name—still lived in the same cor- ner of Paris. It WaS AT THE CENTRAL MARKET, PARIS there that she had seen the Maréchal de Rich- - elieu, now decrepit and devout, kneeling in the chapels at the Fête Dieu: it was there that she had eaten from tables set out in the open air in patriotic fêtes; it was there that she had given her farewell kisses to all her sons, who left her one after the other to die beneath the eagles of Engraved by Derbier, after the picture by Gilbert 74 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the great Emperor. Mother Bernu lived in an attic of the Rue Rousselet, and there she died. Yes, in spite of railways—which, after all, are but of very recent origin —in spite of the invasion of the capital by foreigners of all kinds, there are still not a few Parisians the origin of whose ancestors is lost in the mists of time, and who have never lost sight of their own street or fau- bourg. If palaeographers and the keepers of charters had not something better to do, I feel sure they might discover that the ancestors of the grocer at the corner were cabochiens” under Charles VI., leaguers under Henri III., or sans-culottes in the Reign of Terror, and make out for some such poor fellow, with the help of the parish registers of Paris, a genealogy as long as those of the De Montmorencys and De Rohans. IV The true Parisian, I have said, loves his native town, and this affection with him is no mere abstract or intellectual sentiment. No ; he loves his Paris by instinct with his whole heart, as the Breton loves his heaths, the Burgundian his vine-clad hills, the Norman his deep pastures, the Proven- çal his olive groves, and the men of Bearn their green sunlit mountains. It may seem strange that crowded, noisy streets are as much loved as quiet landscapes, and that the soul can be touched by the outlines of a group of houses as well as by those of a clump of trees, that arid pave. ments may be loved as are flowery meadows, but it really is so. To a Parisian in exile the sharp cry of a marchand de robinets or seller of tapsi produces as melancholy a feeling as does the sound of the “Ranz des Vaches.” - - And why not ? We pour out our love and tenderness on what is familiar to us. Here we have one who cannot walk along that humble bit of pavement without tears filling his eyes, for it was there he trotted along clinging to his mother's dress when he was quite a little fellow. The first love of another lived near that tobacco-shop, and he can never see its sign without a quickened beating of the heart. Another says, “Here * Cabochzens were party men in the time of Charles VI., named after Simon Caboche, a butcher, and their leader.—TRANS. § # The cry of the marchand de robinets has outlived many others in Paris, and is still occa- sionally heard.—TRANS. PARIS 75 comes the old chestnut-seller,” as Jean Jacques exclaimed, “Here are periwinkles in flower!” And I who am talking to you—laugh if you will —when I smell the peculiar odor of damp earth produced by the fall of water from a water-cart, live once more certain hours of my youth, and those hours are so sweet and so sad that I quite forget where I am. This kind of thing is the source of a number of small vexations to the Pari- sian such as are unknown to those fortunate enough to be born in the country, and there have laid up in the bright days of early youth a store of memories which can always be happily recalled even after the first gray hairs have appeared. For nature is unchangeable, or nearly so. Time may pass away, but those water-lilies near the side of the river will flower again next June; the warbler, which makes its nest in that little wood by the side of the road, sings the same song as the warblers of other days; that forest of lofty oaks and beeches will, no doubt, be where it is thir- DEMOLITION OF OLD PARIS Engraved by Paillard, after a drawing by Lepère ty years hence. The man of country birth is pretty sure to find in their old places the scenes of his youth, scarcely changed from what they were when he left them, and ready to awake in him the emo- tions of days long gone by. And it is much the same with villages and small towns; for summer after summer the same house-leeks and wild poppies will wave in the wind on the top of the old wall, and for century - - 76 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD after century the same old Gothic inn will look down from the same old COrner. - In great capitals, on the other hand, everything is being constantly changed and renewed. In two lines of profound melancholy Baudelaire has expressed this: “Old Paris is no more. The form of a town Changes quicker, alas ! than the heart of a mortal.” At the Luxembourg, on the site of the flowering cytherean avenues of the old horticultural gardens, where were seen the last of the grisettes, you will now find an English park, very correct, very dull, given over to mammas and nurses with their charges. In the city the tramways pass over the site of the old alleys of mediaeval times, the hoofs of the horses drawing the cars echoing with a dull leaden sound. I am not yet an old man, but I can remember kitchen gardens and cucumber frames a hundred metres from the Montparnasse railway, and alongside of the scaffolding of the unfinished Louvre, where the pompous monument of Gambetta now seems to hurl defiance at the little triumphal arch of Marengo. I have seen tumble-down shanties in which, among other horrors, were sold stuffed crocodiles, which may have belonged to the usurers of the time of Molière. No doubt the Aſalles Centrales (Central Markets) of Paris are one of the wonders of modern Paris, but among the ant-like crowd beneath the vast domes of glass and iron I can remember seeing the old squat, square pillars near to which Molière played. Where are the saddle-backed bridges, and the primitive omnibuses called hirondelles (swallows), or the fricycles, the old-fashioned cafés with palm-shaped stove-pipes, where the only place to smoke was the tap-room, and where the small cheap cakes called échaudés were served as a matter of course with the beer? - All this now seems as old as the Pyrenees, and is as completely forgotten as the oaths and protestations of politicians. What is left of the Paris prior to the time of Haussmann, which was, it must be confessed, somewhat dirty and unsavory, but in which, at every turn, one came upon some pict- uresque bit, some unexpected corner with something bright and home-like about it 2 - I have nothing to say against those who have transformed it. They have but obeyed a mysterious law, and carried out the decrees of fate. Progress could not do with the narrow, irregular streets of ancient France, with the upper stories of the houses with projecting cranes and pulleys PARIS 77 overhanging the low, dark shops. The effects of chiaro-oscuro on moon- light nights were charming, but they were detestable to those who dread epidemics. Lovers of the picturesque have had to make way for hygienic science. Modern progress brooked no delay, and took the shortest cut to success, demolishing everything to make way for its straight rows of boulevards lined with barracks as wide as rivers and as unpleasant as rain. The ef- fect is supposed to be superb. But must I confess that I am just a little doubtful about this famous progress, the sound of which, when I hear the word used by commercial travellers, reminds me of gargling. It looks THE FLOWER-MARKET ON THE QUAY.—After a drawing by Boudier well, too, when painted on the signs of provincial cafés, but I really do not know that a single person is less miserable for all this boasted progress. The worst of all misery—moral misery—does not seem to be in the very smallest degree diminished. But I am only an old fogy, and it is the gen- eral conviction that steam and gas develop virtue, and that the telephone promotes peace of mind. Hold thy peace, old fellow! Art thou really 78 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD longing for the return of stage-coaches and tallow-dips that want snuffing every quarter of an hour? Admire the Eiffel Tower! It is 300 metres high—just 8539 less than the highest peak of the Himalayas; and I am told that it has excited the envy of the Yankees, who mean to erect one twice as high Next year we are promised an aerial railway which will pass over the towers of Notre Dame, and Paris will be as nearly as pos- sible like Chicago. Will it not be delightful? - So be it. I bow my head. I find fault with nothing. It is not my fault that I was born in old Paris, and that I feel a little of an exile in the new Paris, which is being made as American as possible. That cross-road, dangerously crowded with vehicles, called up old dreams for me, and that many-storied, tumble-down old house, encumbering the very foot path, awoke great sentiments in me. But what do I see now in the ancient, almost country-like faubourg, lit by the lamps which had looked down on the scenes of the Reign of Terror, from the lamp-posts on which the aris- tocracy had been hung P All is now noise and confusion. A railway sta- tion is close by; brilliantly-lighted shops line the pavements; crowds are hurrying in every direction; the shrill whistles of engines rend the air. In the olden days my father used to take me for a walk there beneath the elms, holding my hand in his; and it is all I can do now when I shut my eyes to call up the old scene and his dear, sweet face. Pity the poor old Parisians! One of their worst miseries is to see the demolition of the quarters which were the scene of the most solemn moments of their life. The blows of the destroying mason fall not only on the rotten stone and wood, but on the hearts of many of the passers-by. The hearts of the old houses in course of demolition are laid bare—the crumbling staircases, the black marks made by soot from the chimneys, the bedrooms with their torn curtains. One day—I shall never forget it—I dreamed of the viola- tion, in broad daylight, of one particular room. “Holloa, you man up there with a pick! Stop! You are destroying the nest I made in early spring. There I lived with her I loved. Here were spent the golden hours of first love. Have pity. Stop! This was the very room. I know the flowers of the wall-paper.” - - But enough of retrospective elegies. The old quarters may be laid low, new boulevards may be erected, the whole face of Paris may be changed and rendered ugly, yet it will never lose its singular, its nameless charm. I have swallowed, to my cost—eh, and digested, too—in the form of powdered plaster, many an ancient and characteristic gable end, and I have seen rise up in the place of the ancient mansions to which those THE PLACE DE L'oper A.—After a drawing by Boudier gables belonged great houses as stupid-looking as geese, and buildings like pastry moulds in shape; and yet, in spite of all this, I still find Paris ad- mirable. Ah! Paris is still beautiful in its general, its geographical aspect. However much we may love uniformity, however great the passion for plane surfaces and perpendicular lines, the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève and the Butte Montmartre will never be levelled, the Seine will never be taken prisoner or converted into a canal as straight as the Rue de Rivoli. Paris will ever retain its fine characteristic landscape. On this point all has been said that can be said. Make your mind easy; I am not going to take you to the Bridge of Austerlitz to show you the sun setting in classic style behind Notre Dame, nor make you climb, as night is falling, to the top of the Church of the Sacré Coeur to give you, as you look down upon the lit-up city, an impression of a phosphorescent sea. I am only chatting away, that is all—wandering about over my vast subject. Let us saunter on together just a little longer. - And while we are on the subject of the charm of Paris, let us add that it owes that charm, above all, to its infinite variety, which is such that it may be looked upon as a kind of microcosm. The true Parisian may really — I speak from experience – dispense with travelling altogether. “For want of money”—to quote Panurge—I scarcely left my native town 8o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD till I was twenty-seven. Since then I have made many a tour, visited many countries, many capitals, and—dare I say it?—I have often been moved to admiration, very rarely to surprise. Everywhere I had a sort of feeling of having seen what I was looking at before; and it was a true feeling. I had seen, or at least imagined, everything when I was in my dear old Paris. Do you want instances? I will give you plenty. Go and lean, on a foggy day, over the railing of the Bridge des Saints-Pères, and look down at the quay below, moored to which there are always one or two sea-going vessels—clumsy, gloomy-looking English ships, with low masts, and a short, squat chimney. They are laden with merchandise from afar—very often with bullocks' horns from South America. The witty sculptor Préault said, apropos of all the animals who had been deprived of their horns, “Why, look the National Guard has been disarmed.” Now, no chaffing, you young gamin of Paris; be sensible for once, and let your natural feel- ings have full play. Is this not really a corner of a seaport? Look at the vessels moored to the quay, the Custom-house, the rows of barrels, the piles of packages, the English sailors in their red shirts open at the neck, and coal-dust in their tawny beards. Can't you smell the tar, the pitch, and other exotic odors 2 The background of the picture does not matter. If only there is a fog the illusion is perfect, and you might go to Havre or Hamburg without seeing anything better. Or take another example. Venice is a lovely city, but it is a long way off. Come with me on a clear night behind the Gobelins manufactory to the series of narrow channels formed by the Bièvre. Of course there is nothing to compare here with the Grand Canal or the Rialto; but pause for a moment on a foot-bridge—I was just going to say on a traghetto. On either side are lofty, gloomy-looking buildings with but few lamps, the sul- len water lit only by a flickering moon-beam here and there. I assure you Venice is full of such corners. True, the smell from the neighboring tan- neries is rather strong, but if you think the scents of the Queen of the Adriatic are always pleasant you are very much mistaken. Behind the Gobelins—of course only at night— I repeat that you have a little bit of the city of the Doges. Take a turn some evening, and if you have a scrap of imagination about you, you will presently fancy you see the indented prow of a gondola appearing at the corner of the canal. . “Come, now,” I hear you exclaim, “this is really too far-fetched. A this rate it will be enough to have offered a rye-cake to the elephant in the Jardin des Plantes to imagine that one has crossed the jungles of PARIS 81 India.” Well, so it is very much the same, and one advantage is that one escapes the mosquitoes. Would you like to be saved the fatigue of a journey to London? You need only go on a rainy autumn evening, when the gas is not yet lit in the streets, to a corner of the Faubourg Montmartre. You know which I mean—the Carrefour des Écrasés." Horses splashing through the mud, foot-passengers trudging drearily along under dripping umbrel- las, a smoky, leaden atmosphere. London is often like this in the height of summer. Look, there is a cab in the file of carriages—the illusion is f E. º º |- THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.-After a drawing by Boudier complete. You are in the Strand or Oxford Street. Why, then, should you put yourself about at all, and risk all the horrors of sea-sickness in a passage from Calais to Dover ? But let me confess everything to you. Paris is to me so suggestive —I must use the fashionable word—that it not only often recalls to my memory countries I have visited; it also calls up before my imagination others I have never seen. I know a little square, for instance, on the * So called because of the number of persons killed in crossing the street.—TRANS, 6 82 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD other side of the Champs de Mars, near the Boulevard de Grenelle, which in ordinary weather is a dreary solitude, with nothing to distinguish it but dirty walls and the low gateway of a cavalry barrack. But in the great heat and under the blue sky of July the little square assumes quite an Oriental appearance; the stones become golden in the sunshine; the shadows are violet; the grated windows of the stables look like those of Mushrebiyehs. I fancy myself in Cairo—in the old Cairo of the time of the Egyptian expedition; and presently the dragoon who mounts guard, leaning on his carbine, will present arms to General Kléber, who is about to issue from that Moorish arch, followed by his staff, a grand, heroic- looking figure, with a long sabre trailing almost to the ground, a tri- - colored sash round his waist, a very high cravat which almost chokes him, and three feathers in his cap. - However much we may like Russia, you really need not go such a distance to see it; but next time the snow falls, hasten before it thaws to the Esplanade des Invalides. Are not the vast white stretches, and the golden, rime-clad dome exactly like what you would see in Moscow t Do not say to me: “Nonsense ! All this is mere fancy.” I know too well the illusions of travelling not to bless the happy gift of imagina- tion, which enables me to go round the world without putting myself about at all. Last April I did go to Naples, and spent a few days there. The sky was gray, and it did nothing but rain. I was numbed with cold — numbed, I tell you, when I was visiting the ruins of Pompeii; and at night the flaming crater of Vesuvius looked beneath the clouded sky just like the lamp of a police - station. Next summer I shall go to the banks of the Seine at the Point du Jour; you get a very fine view from there, and who knows but what in the dog-days, as I loiter about there among the brilliant lights of the cafés and gardens, I shall get the very sensation of a deliriously lovely Neapolitan night. º Who shall dare to reproach a Parisian for giving himself up to all the caprices of his imagination ? Does he not live in the midst of the A GRISETTE After a sketch by Chéret - - PARIS - 85 most intellectual environment in the world? The very air he breathes is instinct with thought; and really, the mocking words of Molière, “He knows all without having learned anything,” can be applied in earnest to the native of Paris. But, alas ! there is a reverse side to this picture. There is no doubt that the people of Paris have been guilty of many acts of insane folly. I was in Paris at the time of the Commune, when the drivers of hackney- coaches were colonels. It was anything but pleasant, I can tell you. The dust in which those young girls dance in popular quarters of the town is historic dust — the dust instinct with the spirit of revolution, and when this dust is whirled up in a blast of revolt, woe betide Paris!—it turns every one's hair gray. Alas! that I should have to say it — few great cities have witnessed so much bloodshed, so many massacres, as Paris | But when Paris is in its normal calm condition, who could be more gentle and courteous, more obliging, than the populace of Paris Ask the first passer-by any question you like—but ask it politely, as of an equal, for the Parisian is proud. What an eager response you get ! With what a good grace he endeavors to serve you ! The fiercest frequenter of clubs who applauds the orator demanding the blood of the bourgeosie will cut off his right hand to oblige a stranger who stops him in the street, raises his hat to him, and addresses him as monsieur. And, again, Paris is the home of good taste. There is a soupgon of art feeling in everything. I do like that expression of the studios—“good work.” It is the ideal of every workman in Paris to produce good work, done in a loving, conscientious manner. A little while ago the markets of the whole world were inundated with German rubbish at a ridiculous price. I remember especially some corduroy velvet, with which the women were quite in love. But this fancy for German work did not last; there was soon a reaction in favor of the Parisian “article,” which was dearer, certainly, but which has that nameless nothing which is everything, which the French call “grace.” Even as far away as Valparaiso the question is asked, “Is this from Paris?” and if the answer is yes, Valparaiso decides in favor of it. Who shall say that Valparaiso is not right 2 This natural, this innate grace can be recognized in the pretty, cheap hat and daintily-worn dress of the humblest grisette when she goes forth dressed in her best on fête days. This hat is nothing but a couple of flowers and two or three bits of ribbon; the stuff for the dress was not more than nineteen sous a metre, but the effect of the whole is charming. 86 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Poor daughters of Paris, whose only beauty is your freshness—a freshness as of early dawn, and which lasts but three springs at the most—how hard you work, what self-denial you practise, what ingenuity you display for the sake of what you call “un peu de toilette/" You will often breakfast off a bit of sausage, eaten at the pork-butcher's, but you have gloves too FLITTING tight for you, and an umbrella with a handle in the latest fashion, “like a lady.” Who shall blame you? Certainly not I, poor children that you are. I could write page after page on the same subject, for never, never can I repeat too often how much I love you, dear fellow-Parisians. You are, after all, the French par excellence. You may have their faults, but you also have their characteristic virtue, their gay enthusiasm, their coura- geous good-humor. How often I have seen this in my wanderings to and fro, and I cannot better close this chat than by quoting a touching case in point. It was in the time of the siege, in the winter of 1870–horrible mem- PARIS 87 ory ! The battalion of the National Guard to which I belonged was on duty at the Porte d'Italie, and my comrades and I were watching some companies of soldiers of the line who were retreating upon Paris. They had that morning made a sortie, and had been repulsed by the Prussians. This was what always happened, and we were sure to read in the papers of the next day the stereotyped phrase, “Our troops retired in good order.” The truth was, their return was gloomy enough, poor fellows ' Beneath the leaden sky they plunged through the black November mud, splashed to the shoulders, looking worn and harassed. They came in in a regular stampede, like fugitives, and we watched them pass, our hearts full of the bitterest sorrow. Then across the drawbridge came a company of drummers, preceded by their drum-major. Alas! no more plumes, no more laced uniforms; the very leader was in rags like his men, and beneath his battered helmet his forehead was bleeding. Of all his old splendor he retained nothing but his cane, with its golden knob and its tricolor streamers. But he did not walk with lowered crest—not he ; he had none of the appearance of a vanquished fugitive. No ; he held him- self up at his full height; he was as bright and martial-looking as ever, every inch a drum-major still, as he flourished his cane, balancing it in the air and twirling it round his head, as in the old happy parade days at the reviews of the inspector-general. He had the true military swagger still, and the same thought passed through the minds of us all —“There goes a true Frenchman ſ” Just then there was some obstruction in front of the returning drummers, and the troop halted opposite us, the drum- major leaning on his cane. We approached to talk to the soldiers, and to ask about THE DRUM-MAJOR the engagement in the morning, and, full From a watercolor by Jeanniot Engraved by Ruffe of sympathy for the only one of the troop who still retained his heroic martial bearing, reminding us of the con- querors of Rocroi or Austerlitz, one of our officers asked him about his wound. - “It's nothing — nothing of the slightest consequence,” replied the 88 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD sergeant, in lingering tones, which betrayed him at once to me as a native of a Paris faubourg. And my self-love as a son of Paris was gratified, I can tell you, when, in answer to a question of our officer, “Where do you hail from, my brave fellow P” the hero of the cane replied: “Where do I come from, lieutenant P Why, from the Rue Mouffe- tard.” - 2. 2 al/ 12.J (/? Ǻ ~) S- , ST. PETERSBURG HÉOPHILE GAUTIER thinks that every country should be visited in its most charac- teristic season–Spain when it is broiling hot be. neath the burning sun; Russia when it is wrapt in its shroud of snow. This opinion is open to discussion with regard to the provinces of Russia, which present one dreary monotony from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. But, as far as St. Peters- burg is concerned, Gautier's aphorism needs no con- tradiction, for it is a jewel, the whole value of which is not seen except when it is set in its rim of dull THE STANDARD OF THE © e Q EMPIRE — PRINCE silver. Empty and lifeless in the summer, the town MENSCHIKOFF wakes to life with the first snows, when sledging Engraved by Barbant, after a study painted by George Becker makes traffic easy, and the ice has made bridges un- necessary, the Neva and its canals being for six months one solid mass of ice. In the streets, the shops, and the drawing-rooms of St. Petersburg men of every degree are roused to fresh activity just when, in the natural course of things, they would sink into torpor. Life seems to increase in activity as a direct re- sult of the rigors of the climate. From the German frontier the traveller has rolled over one monoto- nous undulating plain, between marshes and pine forests, with here and there a lonely poverty-stricken village, with low thatched houses breaking the long white lines with a black patch. Nothing else meets the weary eye; on every side is a lifeless country, without light, without form or color, beneath a dull leaden sky that oppresses the soul with a feeling of gloom. Not until the last moment is there anything in these vast solitary districts to warn the traveller of his approach to the capital. All of a sud- den, before the train, as it flings aside the snow, rises the Palmyra of the 92 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD North, with its golden cupolas and gleaming churches. Beneath the light of a pale copper-colored sun, which is above the horizon but for a few hours a day, we get into sledges and glide rapidly over the hard snow car- pet in the streets. We pass first through the industrial quarters, between lofty houses with hermetically sealed double windows. These wide suburbs are not particularly clean, and we might fancy ourselves still in Berlin but for the type of artisans we see going in and out of the shops in their sheep- skin garments. Our equipage crosses the three concentric canals connect- ed with the Neva, which Peter the Great had made when he was fresh from Amsterdam. He wanted his new capital to rival that of Holland, and he built it, as Amsterdam was built, upon a forest of piles in the midst of the marshes of Finland, where he wished to concentrate the commerce of the North. Here we are in the heart of the city, in the Nevski Prospekt, or Neva Perspec- tive, the great Triumphal Road, which takes its name from the monastery from which it starts, the Lavra of St. Alexander Nevski, which is a sanctuary consecrated to relics of heroes of Russia, and the burial-place of the chief families. From this point the Perspective extends for three miles, as far as the buildings of the Admiral- ty, which intercept the view of the river. All the way along, the thorough. fare presents a most animated and characteristic scene. The horses dash along, crossing each other like flashes of lightning, and sprinkling with the powdered snow from their steel shoes the occupants of the long, narrow sledges called egotists, which have no backs, and in which one sees now an officer, now some young girl balancing the body in a crouching position with the knees imprisoned beneath a bear's skin. When two drive to- gether in a sledge, the gentleman holds the lady in her place in a chival- rous manner by passing his right arm lightly round her waist. On the tiny little coach-box sits a huge driver with a long beard in a vast great- **-*. AN EGOTIST After a drawing by Chelmonsky ST. PETERSBURG 93 coat, and wearing a square red or blue velvet cap. He guides his trotting horse with the majestic air of a pope, his arms rounded, his elbows sticking out, and the reins, which are as thin as mere threads, held tightly in his hands. The harness, which is made of a few strips of leather, is scarcely visible, and this gives a wonderful look of elegance to the steed, which seems to run without any restraint beneath the donga, as the great arched piece of wood above the collar is called. Sometimes a second horse, called a “fool”* (that is to say, a leader), is used, harnessed to the first by a single strap, and this second steed frisks and gambols about like a mad thing. When a third horse is harnessed, the carriage is known as a troika; this is the classic equipage, in which the horse harnessed to the sledge trots between his two galloping companions. On either side of the road more ***** QUAY'S ON THE NEVA.—After a drawing by Myrbach humble vehicles ply for hire, such as sledges drawn by thick-set cart-horses, driven by rough-coated peasants—tillers of the soil, who have flocked in from the neighboring districts to earn a little money in the capital in the winter. * This fool is a horse harnessed by traces, who canters alongside of the trotter in the shafts. - 94 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD On the pavements crowds of foot-passengers are hastening in the di- rection of the Gostinnor Dvor, a bazaar with an Oriental-looking domed roof, beneath the arcades of which are the low shops of jewellers and dealers in the images of Saints. A group of mujiks pauses in front of a chapel bright with the glow of light; they sign themselves piously, and prostrate themselves to the ground before they light their tapers beneath the silver-gilt Madonna shining forth from a kind of encircling aureole. Following the Perspective from the Lavra to the Neva, one passes on the left the little Annitohkoff Palace, where the Emperor Alexander III. resides when ceremonies do not claim his presence at the Winter Palace; the Imperial Library, formed at immense expense by Catherine, which boasts the manuscripts of Diderot, the archives of the Bastille, the library of Voltaire, and the celebrated statue of that French philosopher reproduced by Houdon for the lobby of the Comédie Française. A little farther on rises from the centre of a square Notre Dame de Kazan, with a colonnade in imitation of that of St. Peter's, Rome; except the cathedral of St. Izak, the largest and most richly decorated church of St. Petersburg, containing on the marble facings of its walls numerous flags, the spoils of the French Grande Armée, while the baton of the Maréchal de Davoust is fastened to a pillar opposite the High Altar. Continuing our walk along the Neva Perspective, we are stopped by the Admiralty. The sledge turns to the right into the wide Morskaia, or Great Marine Street, the rendezvous of well-dressed walkers, corresponding with the Regent Street of London or the Rue de la Paix of Paris, lined as it is with fine shops, fashionable restaurants, and private hotels. It leads to the cathedral of St. Izak, with its golden cupolas surmounting a huge square mass of granite that seems to be gradually sinking into the ground. A risky thing it was truly to set a mass like this upon a foundation of piles Eternal night reigns inside beneath the domes, tempered, however, by the light of hundreds of little candles constantly renewed by the faithful in front of the shrines, their flames touching with light the gold of the mosaics and the silver-gilt saints carved on the walls of the sacred building. The light of day only penetrates through the great north window, and it seems to come from the sad eyes of the Saviour painted upon the glass. Like Notre Dame de Kazan, the cathedral of St. Izak impresses the vis- itor by its size and the Oriental richness of its decorations, but both are wanting in that which makes the charm of the little churches of the Kremlin, and, indeed, of all places for prayer—that antiquity which is the accumulated soul of generations of worshippers. |. THE NEWA PERSPECTIVE.-After a drawing by Boudier Passing round the cathedral, one comes to the Neva, glancing en pas- sant at the fine bronze statue of Peter the Great by Falconnet, beside the river. The Czar is on horseback, in the costume of a Roman Emperor, and seems by an effort of his Imperial will to be calling up from the desert marshes the city of his dream. We come out upon the long line of quays, and before us is the chief marvel of St. Petersburg—the dike of red Fin- land granite, which hems in for a length of more than three miles the river Neva, which is here as wide as an arm of the sea. The stream is arrested beneath its thick crust of ice, and foot-passengers and equipages of all kinds are passing to and fro on it, while in the middle sportsmen are thronging round the course marked out for the races, and in the distance we see the tents of skins of some wandering Laplanders, in front of which pace reindeer with children riding on their backs. Opposite, on the north- ern bank, the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul overlooks the bastions of the citadel. The twilight sky is cleft open by what looks like a fixed flash of lightning, gleaming as would a bar of fire; this is the slim but lofty pin- nacle of the belfry; a ray of light from the invisible sun has struck it as it 96 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD rises above the fog and mist. The luminous sign marks the last resting. place of the Romanoffs, where they have all been laid near the founder of their dynasty. On the northern bank the river gives off several arms which flow tow- ards the sea, breaking the land up into islands. From the first of these islands rises the citadel; on the second, that known as Vassili-Ostroff, are the University and other educational establishments, as well as the offices of the great German merchants, and of the harbor officials. Beyond Vassili-Ostroff is a forest of masts—those of the vessels imprisoned for months in the ice where the winter overtook them. * As we walk along the quay we pass an uninterrupted series of palaces belonging to the Grand Dukes and other families of note. Of recent years many of these families have had to give up their hereditary residences to more fortunate new-comers, or they have let them to the ambassadors of the great Powers. But the fashionable world still lives as much as possible on the Court Quay, so as to be near the palace par excellence, which may in- deed be called the mother palace—the Winter Palace. This colossal building, connected by a covered bridge with the Hermitage, seems to look down from above upon all its subjects, and to gather them beneath its wings. Built in the Rococo style by the architect Rastrelli, in the reign of Catherine, it has been constantly restored and add- ed to, to accommodate the crowd of attendants of every rank. These form a regular world apart, as do those in the Sultan's palace of Constantino- ple. The resemblance between the two . . A POPE.—After a drawing by Levy buildings is very striking, and illus- trates well the identity of the origin and manners of the masters of the Ori- ent and of the North. A single incident will give an idea of the com- bined pomp and disorder which at one time prevailed in this huge cara- vamserie. When a strict and searching inventory was made of all the contents of the various apartments, after a fire which took place in the * yº º Zºº º - * ...” &º * … tº º º ºg sº -> --> 3 * & % sº & Žº w sº º ºf . , , :ºs - °º º ex," *es. *: tº-e Bº: ST. PETERSBURG 97 reign of Nicholas, several cows were found in the ruins which had belonged to an old servant, who had kept them for his own private use. Since then the surveillance of the police, necessitated by certain sad events, has put a restraint on this liberty. But the Winter Palace is still the centre, the very embodiment of the life of St. Petersburg. Paris and THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. IZAK.-After a drawing by Boudier London are but agglomerations of private houses; St. Petersburg is before all things a Court, as was the Versailles of Louis XIV. Every manifesta- tion of life not connected with that of the Court has but a secondary and, so to speak, accidental interest. In official language, the capital is always spoken of as “The Residence.” The theatres, the Italian Opera, and the Comédie Française, and collections of every kind, are but annexes of the Imperial house. The Hermitage, that gallery of paintings and art objects which rivals the richest collections of Europe, is but the sovereign's study, to which the public are graciously admitted. Until after the death of Nicholas, visitors were admitted in full dress only. Every one of the pecu- 7 98 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD liarities we might mention would but intensify our sense of what makes the originality of the Russian capital—the absorption of the general life into that of a single master. We must therefore pause at the Winter Palace to make acquaintance with St. Petersburg as a whole, on a day when society is bidden to a great Court ball. From the first thing in the morning the furred messengers of the Im- perial household have been going to and fro in the town, leaving invitations on those selected to appear in the evening. An invitation to Court is a command issued on the day on which it is to be obeyed, and etiquette de- mands that it takes precedence of all other previous engagements to private individuals; even the duty to the dead must be set aside, for mourning does not release the mourner from appearing at a Court ceremony, and black ap- parel must be changed for colors, before the palace is entered. A woman is not allowed to appear before her sovereign in black garments unless she is in mourning for one of her nearest relations. On the night of a ball, din- ner is hurried through ; the fête opens at nine, and long before that the invited must be in the reception-rooms awaiting the arrival of the Emperor. Hundreds of sledges and carriages file along and discharge their loads of formless packages of furs at the Winter Palace, to make room for others succeeding them. The empty vehicles go back and form in a line on the square; their coachmen, who have to spend part of the night in the snow, gather about huge fires burning in furnaces provided for these occasions. A picturesque bivouac it is, too, the men looking like gnomes gathered together in the darkness on a sheet of ice to guard the enchanted palace, where a magician calls up sweet visions of spring-time. The doors of the palace close on the packages of furs, and these are no sooner in the vestibule than they are transformed by a touch of the magi- cian's wand, and the fairy scene begins. The heavy pelisses fall from fair bare shoulders, and bright butterflies come forth from the chrysalides among the rare flowers lining the marble steps in the soft, warm June-like air. A procession from the “Thousand and One Nights” ascends the long staircase, lace trains sweep past the porphyry pillars, gems and dia- monds gleam in the light of the lustres, many-colored uniforms flash here and there, sabres and spurs clank on the floors. The invited guests defile between pickets of the Imperial Guard chosen from among the handsomest men of the regiment—grand-looking giants, who stand motionless in their burnished armor. The crowd gathers in the White or Throne Room. There, in the first row, we see personages of note, such as the great ladies à portrait, so called because they wear at their breasts, set in brill- ST. PETERSBURG 99 - iants, a miniature portrait of their sovereign. Severe guardians of ancient etiquette, lively chroniclers of all that goes on at Court, they pass on its traditions to the young aspirants under their care, the maids of honor, who can be recognized by the cipher in diamonds of the reigning Empress, which they wear fastened into a bunch of white ribbons on the left shoul- der. The celebrated beauties of St. Petersburg are one and all in presence, and they cross the room with a nameless suppleness and indolent grace in their carriage and in the pose of their heads; there is something lingering in the way they look at you and in their way of speaking, as if they were but half awakened from a long dream of some far-distant part of their in- terminable country. Among the courtiers who gather about them we note first men well advanced in life and of great dignity, old followers of the Czar, who have been at Court since the days of Nicholas, and have grown white in the service of the Emperor, aides-de-camp of his Majesty, ministers, NOTRE DAME DE KAZAN.-After a drawing by Boudier ambassadors, chamberlains with the gold key on their uniforms, one and all wearing across their brave breasts grand cordons of honor, and with the fronts of their coats completely covered with decorations. Then come young officers of every corps, most of them belonging to the two picked regiments—the Chevalier-gardes, or Knights of the Guard, and the Gardes a Cheval, or Cavalry Guard—carrying in their hands the massive helmet sur- : : . : THE CITADEL OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL After a drawing by Marcelle Lancelot mounted by a silver eagle with out-spread wings. Beside them are Lancers with red breastplates, Grodno Hussars in green, Cossacks wrapped in their long tunics, bristling with their cartridge-cases of silver, inlaid with darker metal, on their breasts; Hussars of the Guard, with their picturesque short white dolmans slashed with gold, and trimmed with a border of sable hang- ing loosely about their shoulders. Among the crowd the pages of the Em- press pass quietly to and fro, and lastly come the servants of the palace- couriers wearing the hats with big feathers of the time of Catherine, and negroes in Oriental costumes. The melancholy note of the black coat is banished from this grand symphony of color; we see but one dress-coat—it is that of his Excellency the Minister of the United States. Nine o'clock! The double doors of the inner apartments are flung open, and immediately the silence of death reigns around. A voice an- nounces “The Emperor!" The Czar approaches, followed by the mem- bers of his family, each in the order of his relationship to his Majesty. If one would understand at one glance the secret of the social life of the em- pire, one should stand with one's back to the door from which the Emper- or has just issued, and watch the effect of his entry on the faces of those taking part in the scene. Every countenance assumes at the same instant, as if it were a uniform, the same solemn expression, at once serious and : : ST. PETERSBURG IOI smiling; all the vital force alike of the men and of the women is concen- trated in their eyes, which seek those of their master. I never contem- plated this scene without thinking of sunrise on the mountains when the first rays of light appear. There is no need to look behind one to know that the orb of day has appeared; we know it by the prismatic glow upon the opposite heights. In the same way, by looking into the faces of the courtiers, we can say, “The Emperor is coming; the Emperor comes; the Emperor has come!" And his coming is truly a rising of the sun, which brings favor and dispenses life to all around. The first chords of the polonaise are heard, the Grand Marshal and the Grand Mistress lead the way, and generally this venerable couple repre- sents within a year or two the revolution of two centuries. The Emperor gives his hand to one of the Grand Duchesses, the Empress gives hers to one of the foreign ambassadors, the other couples follow them, and make the tour of the room. After this ceremony, which is obligatory, quadrilles and waltzes, danced with great animation, succeed each other, but the true zest of the ball does not begin until the first measures of the mazurka, the passionate military and national dance far excellence. The cavalier beats time to the music with the sole of his spurred boot; he takes his partner THE WINTER PALACE.-After a drawing by Marcelle Lancelot into his arms like a trembling bird, flings himself forward, and in three bounds crosses the room, deposits his burden at the farther end, and falls on his knees before her. This dance is a survival of the old days of gal- lantry, and is full of suggestions of passionate and romantic love. I O2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Court balls are perhaps more imposing, but private fêtes, such as the palace balls, are even more magnificent. Any one who wishes to see St. Petersburg Society as it was in the old days should lose no time in assist. ing at a so-called “palace ball.” There is nothing to compare with the fairy-like Scene in any other European Court. When one o'clock strikes, the Grand Marshal opens the doors of a long gallery transformed into a tropical hot-house. Among palms, myrtles, and camellias in full flower are set little tables, where 500 persons can sit down to supper. In the midst of this African forest, brought in the morning on sledges from the Imperial conservatories, the picturesque crowds we have just described stroll about, or sit down and listen to music, which is produced by a band hidden behind the foliage. Beneath the dome of greenery a scene of ex- treme beauty is spread out—flowers here, there, and everywhere, on the trees and plants, on the dresses of the women, vying in beauty with the vivid Colors of the costumes and the gleaming brightness of the armor, the helmets, the swords, the costly decorations, the rivers of diamonds, Such as are seen nowhere else but in Russia. It is a unique sight for those who take part in it, but still more for the looker-on, bringing as it does into striking relief the perpetual strug- gle after a life of ease and refinement in a rigid, rigorous climate, the achievement of the impossible, to which St. Petersburg owes its very birth and its continued existence so near to the north pole. The women in low-necked dresses sitting there beneath the camellias have come over frozen streets through twenty degrees of frost, and between the branches of the palm-trees can be seen the motionless river covered with equipages, the carpet of snow encircling the palace, and in thought one follows this snow far beyond the limits of vision across thousands of versts, covering as far as the borders of Asia the dreary solitudes in which the Russian people sleep the long sleep of winter. As one gazes and reflects, the con- trast, the miracle of this defiance of nature is borne forcibly in upon the mind—a defiance which is heard in the sounds of merrymaking breaking the awful silence, and seen in the supreme luxury of civilization which has risen up at the orders of the all-powerful Orient. v. - When this omniscience is tired of tropical verdure it can at will change the scene for another, made up of marvels produced by European genius, the treasures of Flemish and Italian art. When, according to cus- tom dating from the time of the great Catherine, the scene of festivity is changed to the contiguous Museum of the Hermitage, the mazurka is danced in the presence of spectators painted by Veronese, Rubens, Rem- A COURT BALL AT THE WINTER PALACE.-After a drawing by Myrbach ST. PETERSBURG - IO5 . brandt, and Vandyck. The living actors in the pageant are as graceful and as noble as those represented upon the panels, and to the stranger un- accustomed to the transformation scenes of St. Petersburg the present ap- pears as unreal as the past of the patricians of Veronese. The Winter Palace is opened to the circles of Court society on the 1st of January, at Easter, on the anniversary of the accession to the throne, when a foreign prince is received, and at the baptism or the marriage of a member of the Imperial family, as well as at the gala balls. On the 6th of January, also, the aristocracy meet for what is known as the Fête of the Jordan, or the blessing of the waters of the Neva, which is one of the most characteristic of Russian ceremonies. A tent is set up upon the frozen river, in which a hole is made for the submersion of the cross, liturgical hymns are sung by the choirs of the Imperial chapel with inimitable per- fection, while the Metropolitan is offering up his prayer. This prelate, followed by his clergy, comes to bless the waters in order that they may be merciful to man, and give fecundity to the earth in the year which has just begun. Formerly at St. Petersburg, and quite recently among the pious dwellers on the Volga and the Don, this solemn ceremony was accom- panied by outbreaks of religious zeal, which sometimes led to martyrdom. As soon as the priest had plunged the crucifix into the river, mujiks flung themselves to the bottom of the sanctified waters, convinced that they had a curative virtue such as that of the Pool of Bethesda. The natural result of this icy bath would be inflammation of the lungs. At the Fête of the Jordan religious zeal was not alone in claiming martyrs; the etiquette of the Court also had its victims. Until the end of the reign of Nicholas traditional custom required the Emperor to follow the procession bare- headed and without his cloak, and of course the members of his household had to follow his example. It is difficult to believe it, yet it is a fact that the ladies of the palace came out into the Snow in low-necked dresses, ex- posing their delicate throats and chests to the intense cold that prevails at this time of the year. Now ancient customs are modified, and cloaks are tolerated. It is a curious sight to see an assembly in full ball toilette at eleven o'clock in the morning on the occasions when the Court meets to congratulate the Czar. The maids of honor wear their robes of state, red dresses with long trains, and their hair is confined beneath the hakochnik, the national head-dress borrowed from the ancient bayarin” women, con- sisting of a half-diadem, a crescent of ruby velvet set with pearls, from * Bayarin is the old name for noble. - - Iod THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD which hangs a long white veil—this archaic parure giving a strange character to the beauty of the fair daughters of the North. Outside the Winter Palace it is in military ceremonies that the Czar can most often be seen and approached. For the last century Russian sovereigns have rivalled those of Prussia in their strictness on this point; they have pressed the whole male population into the army and into the observ- ance of the minute rules of the service, and society is deep- ly imbued with the military spirit. For nothing in the world would the late Emperor Alexander II. have missed the grand manoeuvres of the Sun- day parade in the St. Michael's Riding-school; he went there on the 13th of March, in spite of the entreaties of his minis- ter, Count Loris-Melikoff, and it was at the end of the cere- mony on the Catherine Canal that he was struck down by the assassins. When the Czar - receives the Sunday report in “GooD-MoRNING, CHILDREN ''' front of the two battalions, who From an instantaneous photograph take the service of the week in turn, he is surrounded by his numerous military escort, old generals take their places once more at the head of the regiments of the Guard in which they began their career, and think it an honor to file past their chief. Foreign ambassadors, with a numerous suite in uniform, follow the exercises with earnest scrutiny, and on these occasions can approach the Emperor with ease. The diplomatic soldier rides for a moment shoulder to shoulder with the Czar, and can exchange a few words with him on the events of the day. The words which have influenced contemporary history more than any other fell from the Imperial lips in the St. Michael's Riding- school, whispered to an attentive ear between two orders to “present arms!" ST. PETERSBURG Io'7 These manoeuvres of the Guard take place in a vast covered enclosure, completely closed and heated, where a whole regiment of cavalry can de- ploy with ease in the depth of winter. After the churches these enclosures are the first thing to attract the attention of the visitor in this capital of a religious and military nation. The officers give brilliant entertainments in them, organizing equestrian quadrilles with hardy Amazons as partners, in the presence of crowds of well-dressed spectators. Scarcely a week passes but what the Emperor assists, in addition to the Sunday parade, at one of these entertainments, in honor, perhaps, of the patron saint of the regi- ment, or of one of the many jubilees celebrated with a view to cultivating the military spirit, or on the anniversary of a victory, or on the fiftieth birthday of a chief illustrious for his long and faithful service in the army. The manoeuvres of the Guard are to the people of St. Petersburg what the meetings of the Legislative Assembly are to the Parisians: the occa- sions on which the very genius of the nation is revealed with all its ear- nest and its frivolous prepossessions. These fêtes present a unique opportunity for seeing military Russia in all its glory and all its epic luxury. Let us take our places, in the early days of April, on one of the stands on either side of the royal Pavil- ion at the farther end of the Champs de Mars. The great world is col- lecting to assist at the grand spring review. The Champs de Mars is situated in the heart of the city, between the Court Quay, the Summer Garden, and the dreary-looking Castle of St. Michael, abandoned behind its moats and drawbridges, deserted as it was forever by the Romanoffs - after the night on which Paul I. was found dead, victim of a mysterious tragedy. The whole of the Guard is massed before us, numbering at least 25,OOO men, Sometimes more. Other States can boast a military force equal to this, but no other can show its army under conditions so magnifi- cent or so picturesque. Every race and every arm of this vast and varied empire is about to defile before us, from the noble mounted Guards, who seem to have stepped forth from the romantic Middle Ages to the still hea. then Khirgiz from the Asiatic steppes. Attention! Millions of voices trans- mit this word of command. “The Emperor ſ” There he is, coming round the corner of the Champs de Mars. At sight of him all the flags seem to tremble, all the bands unite in one formidable volume of sound to send up to heaven the grand petition of the national hymn, “God save the Czar!” He rides at a slow gallop. Behind him is his escort riding in a pell-mell sort of fashion, uniforms of every color and variety worn by the most illustrious representatives of the Russian nobility alternating with 108 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD those of ambassadors and military attachés of all the European Powers. The master passes in front of his troops, the Empress following him in an open carriage. At the approach of their Majesties the bands of each regiment thunder forth with almost diabolical fury the national hymn; a perfect hurricane of sound accompanies and seems to wrap about the Im- perial cavalcade; greetings consecrated by immemorial custom are ex- changed between the Czar and his soldiers. “Good-morning, children!” says the Emperor. “We are happy to do well for your Imperial Majesty.” The Sovereign pauses opposite to the group of Grand Duchesses, and the march past begins. A platoon of Asiatics leads the way, from the wilds of Oriental Russia, Mussulmans from Khiva and Bokhara, Georgian princes, Tcherkesses, Persians, sturdy-looking Mongols, and Caucasians. These primitive - looking warriors, armed with spears and bristling with steel, wear long coats of mail over robes of gleaming silk, costly furs, and damascened helmets or Tartar caps. This is the advance-guard of the hordes of Attila as they are pictured in tradition and in popular fancy; they are succeeded by the compact masses of the regular army: first the infantry, Preobrajensky, chasseurs from Finland, soldiers of the Paul Regiment with their mitre-shaped copper helmets, such as those worn by the grenadiers of Frederick the Great. In accordance with an old tradition, all the men with snub-noses are recruit- ed for this regiment. The foot-soldiers are succeeded by troops of cavalry, living walls of iron and silver vibrat- ing on great war-horses, Knights of the Guard, or mount- ed guardsmen, followed in their turn by light cavalry, red hussars, mounted grenadiers, and lancers. Then clouds of Cossacks, galloping on their little steeds, pour in from every side of the Champs de Mars, to draw rein, pause, A MEMBER OF THE and turn short round in front of the Imperial stand. º, ºr They put their horses through the exercises of an Arab After a drawing by P. Bord fantasia; bending low in the saddle, they almost touch the ground, without taking foot from stirrup, to pick up the spear or pistol they have flung down. The artillery brings up the rear, admirably appointed batteries, which dash rapidly along, drawn by six black horses as handsome as any owned by the nobility. * The Russian word used in this historic salutation is blagodezst-vovah, meaning to work well and efficiently.—TRANs. - - º - ... ." ----- *:::::::::: ***** - - - - *** Wºº- - lºº * * - - -* - - A CHASSEUR OF THE GUARD.—After a water-color drawing by Detaille ST. PETERSBURG III We have lingered long with the Court and the Army, but it was necessary to do so to accentuate the preponderant position they occupy in life at St. Petersburg. This life seems to have lost its object when the Czar retires with his family to the solitude of Gatchina, which is a kind of Russian Escorial, a dark and gloomy castle hidden in a pine forest, a few leagues from the capital. There the Imperial couple lead a quiet regular life, devoted entirely to the education of their children and the conduct of business. - - To find again the society we made acquaintance with in the Winter Palace, we must obtain an entrée into the best mansions on the Court and English quays. In them, as in the lodging of the humblest functionary, there is none of the feverish haste so characteristic of other great capitals. No one at St. Petersburg is pressed for time. Every one, like the winter sun, gets up late, and traffic does not begin in the streets before ten o'clock in the morning, at which time shopkeepers have not yet taken down their shutters. Directly after breakfast one goes out in a sledge for a drive on the Palace Quay or the Neva Perspective, and already the daylight is be- ginning to wane. One visit now succeeds another until dinner-time, and people go from house to house to talk over the news, generally Court news, which has been issued in the morning in the St. Petersburg journal, or more private information which has been dropped from the lips of some official of high position. Lately all fashionable people with any self-respect have passed the early part of the evening at a fashionable theatre—now at the Italian Opera, where Patti or Christine Nilsson perform their most wonderful roulades; now at the Michael Theatre, where the best actors of Paris act their comedies. At the present day the Russian theatre, long deserted by the upper classes, is regaining favor. The opening of the present reign gave the signal for a return to national life, and it is now quite the thing to go and applaud the plays of Gribojedoff, Gogol, and Os- trowsky, interpreted by Madame Savina, the star of Russian dramatic art. On leaving the theatre, every one goes to the drawing-rooms open to him. Evening parties begin very late. On arriving, at eleven o'clock, at the house to which you are invited, it is no uncommon thing to hear that your hostess is not yet dressed; she has been lying down since dinner for the sake of her complexion. To make up for this, some hospitable doors are open till past two o'clock in the morning. No one will be surprised to see you, and a cover will be set for you at supper, the favorite meal of the Russians. Whether by rich or poor, a supper is always served to intimate friends, and no one goes to bed in St. Petersburg before three o'clock in II 2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the morning. These children of the night are only truly at ease when it is dark, and the only light is artificial. There really are some delicate women whom no one remembers to have seen by daylight. Sport, as understood in western Europe, is almost unknown in the long Russian winters, and a well-born Russian has a horror of physical ex- ercise of which he does not feel the need. On Sundays you do not see peasants playing games of skill, as in France, but sitting immovable in their own homes, or in the inns, looking straight before them. Among the well-to-do classes, all who are not hunters by profession solve the problem of living almost without moving their limbs. Some old men are known who have never walked farther than from their arm-chairs to their car- riages. Riding exercise is not liked, even by cavalry officers; and even skating, in a country affording such unrivalled facilities for it, is only prac- tised in an intermittent manner. On the other hand, life in the Russian mountains is very much in vogue, chiefly because the beautiful Taurida Gardens, there situated, are frequented by members of the Imperial family. In fact, violent exercise to which the body submits passively satisfies one of the most characteristic instincts of the Russian race. It may be justly said that the Russians are a sedentary people; for though they will pass their lives in carriages, sledges, or on the railway, and are never weary of being rapidly whirled through space, they do all their locomotion sitting down. The women, frail hot-house flowers, care for nothing but a cosey in-door life among the hyacinths and azaleas sur- rounding them, and are content with conversation and playing cards, the sole recreations indulged in. For all this, however, Russian women also have the Slav passion for rapid motion for its own sake, and like to dash aimlessly across the frozen steppes in their sledges. Often, when they are all seated of an evening about the tea-table, on which the silver Samovar is singing, and some one proposes a drive in a troika, the idea is hailed with enthusiasm. It is the favorite amusement of winter nights, and that which impresses a foreigner most by its originality. Large sledges, to hold four each, are sent for from one of the livery- stable keepers most noted for the speed of his horses and the skill of his drivers. The bells of the teams are heard ringing outside the door, and those going out wrap themselves in furs from head to foot, the women cov- ering their faces with Orenburg shawls. Two couples take their places in each sledge, and one often feels that a certain little god no wiser than chance presides at the pairing off. The driver gathers up the reins in his hands, and addresses his animals in tender tones: “Forward, my little REVIEW OF THE GUARD AT PETERHOF.—From an instantaneous photograph pigeons !” The three “pigeons" dash through the deserted streets in twenty degrees of frost, in a motionless atmosphere, beneath a steely black sky dotted with golden stars, reflected on the gleaming whiteness below. The intense cold freezes the breath as it leaves the lips, and in a few moments the steeds are draped with stalactites of ice. The Russian heart beats quickly with excitement. “Faster! faster!” cry the women, who are al- ready wild with delight, in voices choked with happy laughter. The au- tomaton on the box, who has probably already fortified himself with several glasses of brandy, brings the knout down on the haunches of his horses, who dash on with yet greater speed, seeming, like their masters, to be in- toxicated with joy as they gallop along. The sledges make a tortuous course, first along the quay, then over the river, through the suburbs, with their badly-built, dimly-lighted houses, the lamps looking like trembling little souls in Hades; on among the islands, the trees getting thicker as the houses become fewer. The open country is reached now, and absolute night reigns around; the silence is unbroken, save for the tinkling of the bells. When the iron of the sledge 8 - - II.4. g THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD grates against the pavement under the snow, or bumps over a projecting mass of ice on some arm of the Neva, the passengers are all but thrown out. But the intoxication produced by the intense cold and rapid motion is at its height, and cries are heard of “Onward | Faster! faster!” echoed in the trembling voices of the women, while perhaps a grave voice whis- pers: “Why faster? Would that we might never end this journey !” But the journey does come to an end. The team, white with foam and ice, stops at an isolated tavern. It is Samarkand or Tachkent, one of the outlying inns of St. Petersburg, famous for the number of Bohemians who put up at it. The visitors engage an anything but luxurious room— four smoky walls, a few chairs, and table; that is all. Champagne is ordered, and with it appear the Tsiganes: four men, perhaps, and from eight to ten women, who will sing something. The men, with their swarthy faces, eagle-like profiles, and large, deep-set, sad-looking eyes, have all the quiet dignity of their race, and might be dispossessed Asiatic mon- archs. One would gladly describe the women as clad in picturesque Oriental costumes, but, alas! truth compels me to add that they wear ragged silks, the cast-off finery of some fashionable dame, bought at a second-hand shop in the Gostiny Dvor.” The olive tint, showing through the paint on the cheeks, and the fire of the pupils of the eyes beneath the stained lashes, alone reveal the Hindoo origin of these pariah girls. The leader of the band tunes his guitar and strikes up an accompaniment, at first very slow, but gradually increasing in rapidity, and the women, seated in a semicircle, with bodies and faces motionless, sing together. They, too, begin slowly, and with apparent indifference to the sentiments they are expressing, looking like Sibyls possessed by a god of which they are unconscious. But gradually the voices become more animated and pas- sionate, until with a guttural shake, such as can never be imitated by any other race, the demon seems to overcome the singers; they quicken the rhythm with a kind of furious ardor, abrupt pauses alternating with words and melodies, all breathing the same exaltation, the languors, the despairs, and ardors of a savage passion. In these melodies is concentrated all the madness, all the melancholy, of the spirit of the ancient Aryans. And this spirit finds an echo in the soul of the Slav. Watch those patrician ladies listening to the daughters of Bohemia. In spite of all the differences of education and social position, they are the true sisters of the Tsiganes. Beneath their apparent disdainful reserve, they vibrate in unison * The bazaar of St. Petersburg. ST. PETERSBURG II5 ; with the same natural passion, and would remain here all night magnetized by these airs of their true native land. The men make no attempt to disguise their delight, and a Russian would spend his last ruble to pur- chase a pleasure he values above every other. Some monomaniacs come here evening after evening, spending their nights listening to these songs, glued to this table by a tyranny as irresistible as that under which is sub- ject the smoker of opium. Most of the officers of the Guard are on a very friendly footing with the Bohemian women. To-night the presence of ladies holds them in check, but when they are alone, champagne flows like water, and the strings of the purses are unloosed. Sometimes a scuffle occurs with merchants, who get tired of waiting for the room, and intrude on the officers and the singers. They, too, like to hear the music; they, too, are willing to pay for the pleasure. For & all this, however, no doubt must be thrown upon the virtue of the Tsigane women. They are as celebrated for this as for their charms; and even if they themselves were open to temptation, their men would jealously protect them from harm. Many a beautiful Tsigane may end her career by marry- ing a general, and bringing up his family in the seclusion of the country where her husband com- mands a district. Though the inns frequented by the Tsiganes are the usual resort of the aristocracy of St. Pe- tersburg, there is yet another excursion often un- dertaken, and that is to the Pulkowa Observatory, halfway between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoč.Sélo, on a little pine-clad hill, the one prominent height of the low marshy districts surrounding the capital. There lives a little German col- ony; for the Germans superintend the affairs of heaven in Russia. Nearly all the astron- omers of Pulkowa come from the Dorpat University in Cronstadt, and are very jeal- A BEGGAR ous of their celestial office. On entering After a drawing by Chelmonsky Pulkowa one is transported into another world, and one might fancy one's self in some institution of Göttingen or Jena. Wrapt up in the mysteries of space and time, these modest pro- fessors work under the direction of their chief, leading a kind of patri- I IG THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD archal life—an honest German existence, as subject to rule as are the motions of the heavenly bodies. Strangers to the excitements and rumors that trouble the great city, and to the interests and passions of the people about them, the horizon of the astronomers is bounded by their pine woods, with the huts protecting their household goods and books. They watch no revolutions but those in the firmament of heaven. Their journals are the almanacs of the sun and of the planets; their conversa- tion alternates between the theories of Kepler and the excellent recipes owned by the wife of their chief for smoking geese—quaint combination of simple domestic interests and the great secrets of eternity. It is in the winter that the sphere of the astronomers becomes alike wider and more isolated, during the long nights of sixteen hours, so favorable for the study of the heavens. The recluses of science go up into their glass palace, wrapped in warm furs and with fur caps on their heads, like the astrologers of old. The venerable savants take their pupils to the top of the tower in the vast revolving rotunda turning upon its own axis, which looks like the poop of a vessel, with its mast, its rigging, its pol- ished copper instruments, and its ports, in which the telescopes are pointed. The lamplight falls on open books, the compass flies to and fro on the maps, the telescope searchingly sweeps the polar sky, calcula- tions affecting centuries of time are made, and the observers add a page to the annals of the heavens. At this solemn hour of silence, raised above the noises and illusions of the earth, these men are true masters of the uni- verse; they can foresee its destinies; they know whence it comes, whither it is going, and what it weighs. Grave of mien, and proud of their re- sponsibility, as are their brothers on the ocean in the watches of the night, they keep guard for the whole human race, and mark the course of our planet in unknown space among the formidable fleet of which she is a part. When some benighted traveller passes perchance through the solitudes about Pulkowa, and sees the lights of the Observatory gleaming through the darkness, and its dome revolving in the night sky, he wonders if it be not some fantastic vessel lost in the sea of snow; or, perhaps, if he be of a religious turn of mind, the wanderer may think he sees a party of worship- pers assembled in their oratory to perform their orisons, and chant by night the praises of their God and Saviour. The solitudes are, however, liable to frequent invasion; for if an eclipse or other phenomenon is announced, the ladies of St. Petersburg make up a party to go to Pulkowa. They come from Court, and take care to have with them some official of rank. The Imperial Observatory will not be able to ST. PETERSBURG - 117 refuse to humor their fancy, and troikas bring crowds of noisy visitors, who take possession of the telescopes, and appropriate to themselves the corner of the sky where anything is going on. They have all the mysterious machines explained to them; they turn over the albums full of lunar photo- graphs, and ply the old sorcerers with eager questions. The evening is “WHY FASTERP” Engraved by Rousseau, after a design by Paris wound up by supping off the ham and sauerkraut provided by the wife of the chief astronomer, and in listening to young German ladies playing on the piano one of Schumann's sonatas. Another day troikas are ordered early in the morning for a longer expedition to visit the forts of Cronstadt on the other side of the causeway of ice connecting that island with St. Petersburg. These forts are some twenty-five versts off, and it takes two hours to gallop to them across the frozen sea. The only thing to break the monotony of the view are a few black patches, the outlines of the forests bordering the gulf. Posts mark the road on this deceptive plain, and here and there are houses of refuge, the bells of which are rung during snow-storms, reminding us that this I 18 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD desert too has its dangerous sirocco. Here and there the mast of some vessel stands out against the sky—a prize caught in the ice. Some have their sails spread out to dry, presenting a very quaint appearance in their arrested motion. It is, however, coming back when night is falling that the horror of the landscape becomes most marked. At one moment of the twi- light it is impossible to distinguish where the horizon ends and the sky or earth begins. One is imprisoned in a vast milky-white crystal, and when one looks fixedly at the horses they seem to be suspended in the ether like those of chariots painted on ceilings. To enable the eye to gain some sense of reality one must look at something living—a flight of crows, the wretchéd sledge of some unlucky mujik struggling along in the dreary waste, or one of the ice-held vessels, which, though immovable in the morn- ing, now seems in the transparency of the twilight to be moving backward. Words cannot describe the awful gloom of this polar region—darkness, horror, and cold are tangible realities. A nightmare of memories of catas- trophes on the road weighs down one's spirit. Yet the true Russian revels in a wild rush through the desolate tracts. He feels all but disembodied, and seems to be flying about in a living dream. “Zºroika,” says Gogol, in a celebrated address to dead souls, “bird-like troika, who invented thee? Thou couldst not have arisen anywhere but among a bold people. But art not thou thyself, O Russia, the brave troika, whom none can excel? Where art thou going? Answer! She answers not, she flies along, and surmounts all obstacles ſ” The end of the winter brings about a complete metamorphosis of the capital, which has now another beauty—the beauty of the “white nights,” when her palaces and quays are mirrored in the blue waters of the Neva set free by the thaw. The late and sudden summer of St. Petersburg bursts upon us like a thunder-clap. But yesterday there were no buds upon the trees, and yet in a few days one literally sees the leaves pushing forth. This renovation coincides with the time of the so-called white nights at the end of May. The sun scarcely disappears for two or three hours, and even when not seen, its presence below the horizon is fully felt —the red glow of its rising immediately succeeding that of its setting. This diffused radiance, filling the whole atmosphere, is neither day nor night, and the fairy-like ethereal light, in which nothing casts any shadow, makes every one look spectral. Nervous people are unable to sleep during these hours of thrilling beauty when twilight is merged in dawn. * This is the time for long excursions to the islands. In the early days of spring nothing could be more fresh and charming than this labyrinth of THE CORONATION OF THE CZAR ST. PETERSBURG I2 I *}. forests intersected by the numerous arms of the Neva, which wind about among the masses of verdure to flow into the gulf in which they are merged about the so-called Point. The Point is to St. Petersburg what the Bois de Boulogne is to Paris, and Hyde Park to London. Carriages and droskys replace sledges now, and every one of any position goes for a drive on the Point every evening. The equipages drive along the sea- shore. In the crowd of promenaders, in which the majority are officers, each awaits the vehicle containing those in whom he is interested; the expected carriage arrives, groups gather about the doors, the events of the day or private affairs are discussed, while in the distance the sails of fishing-boats are seen flying rapidly towards Finland, while the sun slowly sinks into the sea behind Oranienbaum. It is a sweet restful time, and nothing marks that it is fleeting, for darkness does not fall. On the drive back, the mists which rise from the surrounding marshes float like a silver canopy above the meadows and forests sleeping in the calm quiet of the white nights. The carriages wind through the lanes intersecting the islands, stopping at the gates of the villas opening on to the road, the country-houses of nobles or wealthy merchants, with fronts facing the canals, and steps leading down into the water, against which boats are resting ready to take their owners from one place to another in this forest Venice. In a few days the families still detained in the capital by business will come to take up their abode here for the summer months, and on every side the walker will hear the music of orchestras playing at coffee concerts; and on every side he will see bright pictures formed by the groups taking their meals out-of-doors on the banks of the canals, or in the gardens; the whole scene bathed in such brilliant brightness that one might almost fancy one's self in Italy. Those who are connected with the Court spend the summer either at Tsarskoë-Sélo or at Peterhof, according to the whim of the soverſign, who sometimes prefers one and sometimes the other. The little towfīš'grouped about the two castles rise in opposite directions, but each is about one hour by rail from St. Petersburg. In the first instance, Peterhof was the Russian Versailles, and Peter the Great endeavored to reproduce there the splendors which had dazzled him when he visited Louis XIV., and saw the park with its far-stretching views, its avenues of clipped yews, and its fountains springing from the mouths of bronze Tritons. The neigh- borhood of the sea added to Peterhof yet another decorative element, and a fine walk between the beach and the oak forest leads to the dock where the Imperial yachts are moored. Peterhof has been rather neglected in I 2.2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD recent reigns; Tsarskoč-Sélo is more lively and fuller of memories. In the huge castle built by Rastrelli among the larch woods bordering the lake, one seems to see again the shade of the great Catherine, for it was here she led a life of simple and intellectual pleasures, surrounded by her favorite philosophers and poets. There, too, one may fancy, wanders the shade of the more recent Alexander II., who loved in the summer to collect his courtiers about him here in the intimacy of rural festivities. Near the palace is the Lyceum, recalling the chief glories of Russian literature. This institution long enjoyed a monopoly of the education of the children of the chief nobility of Russia, and the lists of its students contain the - names of nearly all those who have distinguished themselves in politics, or who belonged to the romantic galaxy of the first half of the present century. Gortchakoff and Pouchkine were fellow-pupils there, and in his verses the poet has often described the charms of Tsarskoë. The park, which is skilfully laid out with roads leading to triumphal arches, and little buildings in the Greek Renaissance style so much in vogue in the eighteenth century, is connected with the neighboring park of Pavlosk, a castle built for Paul I., and now the property of the Grand Duke Constantine. There is perpetual coming and going be- tween the two castles, and carriages PETER THE GREAT are incessantly driving in and out By Falconet of the gardens of the villas dotted about among the trees. The Hus- sars of the Guard stationed at Tsarskoë keep the whole place gay and free from ennui. & In August of every year, when the Emperor holds a grand review in the camp of Krasnoé-Sélo, there is a great deal of excitement all about, and one fête succeeds another. The days are filled with marches, sham- fights, and improvised encampments, breakfast is taken in tents, and in the evening victors and vanquished go together to the Tsarskoč theatre. ST. PETERSBURG 123 No civilians are admitted, and the scene is unique, with its tier upon tier of gleaming helmets, epaulets, and decorations, beneath a double row of boxes, in which the ladies vie with each other in the beauty and elegance of their costumes. From these Krasnoé manoeuvres, with the combats watched by ladies from their carriages, one gets an idea of what the campaign of the Grand Monarque was like when he besieged the towns of Flanders to the music of violins. Here, as in the Winter Palace, and indeed everywhere in the Russian capital, the curious student of manners may flatter himself that he has a life-like picture of scenes and manners such as he can find nowhere else but in books. It is in this respect that St. Petersburg, the city born of the winter, in which we find not a single ancient monument, Supplies us at every turn with a vivid historical lesson. From the mo. ment of one's entry into the capital of Russia, one may feel that one is living once more in the midst of the life of one's ancestors. 4-4, 3. 22.” ey CONSTANTINOPLE” T is with hesitation and considerable sadness that I undertake to write a chapter on Constantinople. When I was first asked to do so, I was disposed to decline ; but I felt that refusal would be a kind of treason to the Turks; so here I am about to begin. To write an impersonal description with the unbiassed mind of an artist is altogether impossible to me—more so than ever, in fact, in the present case. Once more, then, those who follow me must resign themselves to see with my eyes, for it will be, so to speak, through Turkish woman AND CHILD in a my very soul that they will look at CEMETERY - mighty Stamboul. Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph & Oh, Stamboul! name of all names . ever appealing with fresh magic force to me! So soon as it is pronounced there rise before me, but far up above my head, the gigantic, incomparably beautiful outlines of a town dimly defined against the distant sky. The sea is at the feet of this ethereal city—a sea dotted with thousands of ships and boats, skimming about in ceaseless agitation, and from which issues a babel of sound in every language of the Levant. The smoke — a veil never completely lifted—floats like a long horizontal cloud above the crowds of black steam- boats, the gilded kaiks, and the motley groups on the quays, shouting 33.3-3. * In translating this chapter and that on Tokio, I have been fortunate enough to secure the help of Douglas Sladen, the well-known poet, who has just returned from a visit to Constantino- ple, and has supplied me with much valuable local information.—TRANS. .” * Q I 28 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD out their avocations, or hawking their various wares. And beyond it all . rises the huge town, looking as if it were suspended in the air above the dust-begrimed mists. There, pointing up into the pure blue sky, are the minarets with their sharp, lance-like points; there are the round domes beyond, rising in endless masses, some of a grayish color, others of a dead white, piled up tier above tier, like pyramids of stone bells. There are the never-changing mosques, unaltered by the lapse of centuries, though, per- chance, they were a little whiter ere the steamers from the West tarnished the air with their exhalations, and when none but sailing-vessels anchored beneath their shade, but ever radically the same, crowning Stamboul gen- eration after generation with the same huge cupolas, giving to it its unique appearance, grander than that of any other town in the world. They are the very essence of the past, these unvarying mosques; and in their stones and marbles they enshrine the old Mussulman spirit which is still in the ascendant on the heights from which they rise. Whether Stamboul is ap- proached from the Sea of Marmora, or from the Asiatic side of the Black Sea, these mosques are the first things to emerge from the shifting mists of the horizon; rising in quiet dignity above all that is petty and modern on the quays and in the harbor, they thrill us with old memories, calling up the grand mystic dream of Islam, with the thought of Allah the Ter- rible and of death. - It was at the foot of these mosques that I passed that part of my life which is most indelibly imprinted on my memory. They looked down upon my adventurous career when the happy days of long ago flitted by all too fast. I saw them everywhere, their grand domes rising above me, now of a dull white beneath the summer sun, when I went to seek for shade beneath the plane-trees of some old deserted square; now black and indistinct beneath the midnight sky of December, when my kaik glided furtively along the quays of sleeping Stamboul; ever present, apparently eternal, they were always with me, as I drifted from one day to another as chance dictated. From each one seemed to emanate a melancholy all its own; each one seemed charged with a special mission, the solemnity of which radiated from it upon all around. Gradually, as my life became more and more that of a Turk, I grew to love them with a strange love, and to be more and more enamoured of the proud and dreamy race to which they belonged; in fact, my soul, which was then in a kind of tran- sition state, and altogether absorbed by a passionate love, was thoroughly attuned to Oriental mysticism. And then, when the time came for me to leave them . . . Oh, how CONSTANTINOPLE 129 terribly sad I felt as, one dull evening in March, I floated along the Sea of Marmora, watching the town gradually getting smaller—gradually be. coming blotted out.... When all else was vague, all but gone, the grand domes and minarets still rose above the cold white sea fog, the superb and lofty outlines of Stamboul still stood out against the darkening sky. º º A KAIK ON THE BOSPORUS Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Bridgman And then, in that last now fading sight, was symbolized, so to speak, all that I was leaving behind me with such bitter regret—all my happy Turk- ish life—and the whole scene became engraved upon my mind in an abso- lutely indelible manner. During all the years of wandering life which suc- ceeded that evening, during all my exiles on seas, however distant, I saw again, night after night in my dreams, the city of domes and minarets, and felt again, as it rose up against the gray horizon of the imaginary scene, the old homesickness as for a native land. I could draw Stamboul from memory without a mistake; and whenever I return to it I feel the same half-painful, half-delighted emotion—an emotion which time has never lessened. I do not think, however, that the glamour of my personal recollections at all exaggerates the real grandeur of the aspect of Stamboul. It is de- nied by none, and is, in fact, traditional. All travellers, no matter who, even Q I3O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD those whose ignorance is absolutely unfathomable, are affected in a singu- lar manner when the imposing outlines gradually emerge in the distance. And as long as Stamboul—vulgarized, alas ! though it is, and profaned by tourists from all parts of the world—retains this approach and these noble outlines, it will remain, in spite of everything, the wonderful city of the Caliphs, the Queen of the Orient. - Round about Stamboul are grouped other quarters, and the series of palaces and mosques which together form Constantinople. First comes Pera, where the Christians congregate; then along the Bosporus, from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea, an almost uninterrupted series of suburbs, the whole being in constant communication by means of countless steamers and a whole fleet of kaiks. The traffic of the great town, scat- tered as are its houses along the shore, is mostly carried on by water, and there is a perpetual coming and going upon the Sea of vessels laden with a motley crowd. The various quarters of Constantinople are totally distinct, with in- habitants of different race, different religion, and different customs. These quarters will never amalgamate. Some are dark and gloomy, with lofty houses warped out of shape by old age, huddled together in deep depres- sions, almost without Sunshine, and white with lime, stone, and marble. Some parts of the city, again, are filled day and night with a noisy, restless, often grotesque-looking crowd; while others are deserted and solemn, the spirit of the past seeming to have taken refuge among the kiosks and tombs. Some houses perched upon hills overlook the distant fairy-like view; others are hidden in quiet nooks, beneath ancient trees grouped around some antique mosque, the inhabitants living just such a quiet country-like life as their ancestors before them for many generations. No capital varies more in its internal details, or in its general aspect from hour to hour, according to the condition of the sky and clouds, and the direction of the wind. Burning summers and brilliant sunshine are succeeded by gloomy, rainy winters, with now and then a sudden snow- storm flinging its white mantle over the thousands of black roofs. And these streets, squares, and outlying districts of Constantinople seem in some sense to belong to me and I to them. When I watch the idle crowds disgorged from the steamers I grudge them their freedom to wander about the town, and look upon them as intruders desecrating my own domain, without a proper feeling of admiration and respect for ancient CONSTANTINOPLE I31 Stamboul. All these quarters which they stare at with idle curiosity I know as I know no other town in the world; I have traversed every yard of them by day and by night, mixing familiarly, as the fancy took me, in the life of the humblest of the people. But how am I to speak in this book of all these things with the necessary impartiality, when at every turn I am met by memories of youth and of love—how can I truly judge that which I adore ? Before beginning to write this account, I thought I would go to Con- stantinople once more, as a mere tourist myself this time, and take an impartial look round the town—where, alas! I have now no connections but among the dead; where the only visits I have to pay are to tombs. I went from Rouma- nia this time, in the spring of 1890, in the lovely month of May, by the old rapid route via Rustchuk, Varna, and the Black Sea. At daybreak on Monday, May 12, 1890, all the passengers on board my steamer were on deck, eager not to miss the first sight of the entrance to the Bosporus, now quite a classic site much lauded of guide- books. As for me, my many memories of other journeys altogether blunt- ed any special feeling of excitement in this arrival, and I was able to look about me with an unbi- assed mind very much as did the rest of the world. THE TOWER OF THE SERASKIERAT Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Weber - - - I32 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Constantinople may be said to begin here, for the shores of the long strait, alike on the European and Asiatic side, are lined with one long series of villages, kiosks, palaces, and mosques, getting closer and closer together as the town itself, at the entrance to the Sea of Marmora, is approached. The European side is the more fashionable, and has more modern villas than the other. The Asiatic shore is more shady, and there is a greater mystery about it, with its old Turkish houses and their grated windows, its ancient minarets and Oriental-looking fountains, beneath the shade of plane trees and cypresses. - Truth to tell, however, there are many grander sights than this, with a finer vegetation and loftier mountains. It is in the minor details that the unique charm of the Bosporus consists — a charm which is very real and not at all the result of my own peculiar experiences, but is felt by every one who goes to Constantinople. Here we are at Tcheragan, Dolma-Batché, a line of palaces as white as snow, rising from marble quays at the very edge of the sea. The view is now incomparably fine, for in the early morning mists the three towns appear together, gazing as it were at each other: the amphitheatre of Scutari on the Asiatic side, with Pera on the right, tiers of houses and palaces completely covering the European shore; and in the centre, on a tongue of land projecting between Scutari and Pera, above the crowd of sailing-vessels and steamers, looking proudly down on all at its feet, the stately minarets and grand domes of Stamboul. I disembarked in idle mood at Pera, and took a room in a hotel crowded with English people, commanding a grand view of the Golden Horn, the Old Seraglio, and the distant blue sea dotted with the islands of Asia. It is one of the special charms of this part of the world that no matter in which of the three towns you are, you look down upon the other two with the sea at their feet, and you are always sure of a view beyond the foreground and above the roofs and trees of fairy-like objects standing out against the sky. Nowhere else in the world is the scene spread out be- fore the sight more varied or more extended. It is six o'clock on the evening of my arrival, and may I be forgiven for confessing that I have passed the day in pilgrimages to cemeteries, and visits to nooks and corners of no interest to any one but myself? Sunset found me on the quay of Tophané, seated in the open air out- STAMBOUL.-Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Weber CONSTANTINOPLE I35 side a café, which is the fashion in the Orient, watching the people pass and the night fall. Tophané is a kind of epitome of other parts of the city, a point of transition where meet many thoroughfares from totally dif- ferent quarters. - On fine evenings like the present, half the road is encumbered with red or many-colored divans, on which recline men who are smoking and meditating. One sits there as in a vast theatre, and watches the ceaseless movement of Oriental life with the perpetual going to and fro of vessels on the Bosporus. Between the spectator and the blue depths of the sea, with the hills of Asia beyond, rises a lofty mosque with its domes, its minarets, and galleries. It is one glow of vivid white and yellow, two characteristic Turkish colors which are used in all the comparatively modern houses of Constantinople; the greater number of the new mosques, palaces, and large houses are also parti-colored, the effect being good against the blue of the distance and of the sea; forming, too, a very fine background for the crowds in variegated costumes, the red fez predominating, which are forever hurry- ing backward and forward. To the white and yellow of the public build- ings must be added the crude green of the large shields with inscriptions in gold, above all the porticos, entrances, and fountains. White, yellow, and green streaked with gold are the colors of the graceful mosque opposite, and also of the neighboring kiosks—in a word, of all the Oriental buildings standing out against the deep blue of the Bosporus and the distant shore. of Asia, which is already becoming intensified in the twilight. The rows of divans in the open air gradually become filled with idlers of every race, and wearing every costume of the Levant. The busy waiters hurry about carrying microscopic cups of coffee, raki sweetmeats, and burn- ing embers in little copper vessels; the grand fascinating evening lounge of the Orient begins, the margileńs are lit, and their odor with that of ciga- rettes fills the air. On the road still left vacant all manner of carriages and foot-passengers are still passing along; well-mounted, gayly-dressed military cavaliers of noble mien on their way to or from the palace of the Sultan; men with horses for hire (for which Tophané is the chief quarter) lead ready-saddled steeds by the bridle; sailors of every nationality, just landed at the end of their day's work; peddlers ringing their little bells and shouting out, in deafening voices, their cakes, their sherbets, or their fruits. Galata, the chief street which ends at this crossway, is always noisy, and though a little deadened by distance, the ever-increasing roar from it reaches the dreamers lounging on the divans. Galata is the very Babel of the Levant, the haunt of women of the demi-monde of every nationality I36 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD except Turkish, the quarter of the greatest medley of lower orders of every race, of taverns of ill-fame, and, strange to say, of alcazars. All night long a clamor as of the infernal regions goes up all along the shores of the Bosporus from this quarter. At this corner also abuts the Jenitchirché, the widest of the steep streets leading up to Pera, the Christian quarter, which is perched up far above our heads. And beneath the vines on either side of the way, in front of the succes- Sion of Turkish cafés, with their little stools and tables blocking up the path, may be seen every evening hundreds of weary porters who have toiled all day carrying up the luggage of travellers and bales of merchandise from the ships' quays and custom-houses. Glad of rest in the even-tide, these Sturdy fellows, who, with their broad shoulders and iron muscles, take the place of the draught-horses which are unknown in Constantinople, arrive one after the other and call for a margileh, until quite a crowd is assembled, all dressed alike in brown frieze dashed with black and red, the vest open low at the neck, showing the brawny chests blackened with exposure to the sun. Group beyond group is seen in perspective as we look up the street from below, and the murmur of their talk is mingled with the peculiar gurgling sound of a number of margilehs puffed together, the smoke from them gradually thickening as the night wears on. These various scenes at the close of the day have been repeated night after night A STAMBOUL EQUIPAGE After a drawing by Vogel CONSTANTINOPLE I37 without change all the years I have known Constantinople, and I can tell well exactly what is going on at the same time in all the different quarters of this vast city. - Following the wide road along the shore on the north, we come to the Sultan's quarters, with palaces closed to all comers, walled-in parks, barracks, and seraglios. Here the night brings but added tranquillity be- neath the avenues of acacias now white with flower. Above our heads, on the heights overlooking us, the cosmopolitan Pera is beginning to light up the big European-looking shops, with great windows copied from those of Paris and of London, and nearly all night carriages will be driving to and fro by artificial light as in the towns of the West. Instead of evening bringing calm after the agitation of the day, that agitation is only intensified by gaslight up there. Detachments of tourists returning from their day's excursion are hastening before night falls to regain the safe haven of an English hotel, with its table d'hôte, in a street where they feel as if they were in Europe, and can indulge in ex- travagances of costume, copied, alas! by Levantines with great dark eyes, who would look so lovely in Greek, Armenian, or Jewish garments. And in this amusing medley of nationalities the Oriental note is supplied by the red fez seen here and there, and by the gangs of porters in their many-colored raiment from the streets of the more strictly Eastern lower town; while far below us in the distance we catch a glimpse between the commonplace many-storied houses of a bit of the dark blue Sea of Mar. mora, or of the coast of Asia, gradually dying away in the twilight. But to return to our corner of Tophané. Behind and below us, be- yond the hill of Pera overshadowing us, are Turkish, Armenian, and Jew- ish suburbs following the natural slopes of the valleys all along the Golden Horn opposite, mighty Stamboul crowning the other bank and looking down upon them. The traffic between these suburbs is mostly carried on by sea, in the light, picturesque kaiks which ply until not a ray of light is left in the sky. It is strange how the vicinity of things long lost sight of calls them all back to the mind in which they have lain latent. It is some fifteen years since I lived in Constantinople, and yet I have but to sit down anywhere in the town, and at once a vision, as clear as if I had seen it but yesterday, rises up before me of the exact appearance of every other part, however far away. - - First appears the distinctively Turkish suburb of Kassim Pasha, with its ancient Oriental houses, shops, and cafés sheltered beneath plane-trees, all alike on a small scale. It was one of my familiar haunts in olden 138 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD times, and I was there every day. I see it now, with all its characteristic evening life. A crowd of sailors of the navy have just arrived either from the Arsenal or from some of the big black iron-clads anchored opposite in the Golden Horn. Happy-hearted and laughing, they go about in groups, shaking hands here and there, and filling all the streets and squares. In- stead of hats they wear the fez, and their collars are red instead of blue, otherwise they might be French or English. Women are with them— only mothers and sisters, you must know—wearing their long white, blue, or pink veils. The naval officers are there, too, not too proud to smoke in the humblest of the cafés among the people. It is a custom quite pe- culiar to Turkey, this democratic mixture of ranks, pashas and beys sitting among poor people in the cafés, chatting with them and telling them the news, without any loss of dignity, either; for the Mussulman never gets tipsy. Other suburbs succeed that of Kassim Pasha, becoming more and more like villages as the open country is neared, and beyond the last stretches a dreary, arid, pathless desert encumbered with tombs, and yet not without a certain weird charm of its own. The Golden Horn separates all these quarters from mighty Stamboul, where a kind of religious silence falls upon everything as the darkness gathers. At the hour of twilight the large vessels seem to become mo- tionless upon the waters, which are swept by cool breezes, while the smaller craft, such as the slim kaiks, seem to become feverishly active, hastening to finish their skimming to and fro before night has completely fallen. The passengers on the kaiks are mostly Jews, of melancholy mien, in long Oriental robes, going back from the bazaars to Balata, their headquarters, after the business of the day is over, with all its hard-driven bargains, its deceptions, and its thefts. I met them so often at this time in the old days on these same waters on my way from my lodgings at Eyoob. Without leaving my seat I see them again in my imagination, and seem to hear them, after greeting each other, discussing the rates of ex- change of paper, silver, and copper money. It is at the foot of Stamboul that all these Jews are gliding to and fro—Stamboul, behind which the sun has just set, its grand outlines standing out against the still, yellow sky; the beautiful town that rises up before me when I close my eyes, casting its mighty shadow upon the laden kaiks; and the Golden Horn, with its re- versed reflection in the walled-in waters, as unchanging as the town itself, though generation after generation of men have gazed down upon it as the years have rolled by. - - - g And at the end of this gulf, wedged in, so to speak, in a town beneath CONSTANTINOPLE - I39 ancient cypresses and plane-trees, is the holy suburb of Eyoob, the heart of European Islam, buried within a kind of funereal grove enclosing vast cemeteries, and surrounded by tombs, wrapped in an awful silence, broken only now and then by the sound of chanting from some mosque. In all the º - ST. SOPHIA.-Aſter a drawing by Boudier kiosks of the dead, in front of lofty catafalques surmounted by turbans, the little guardian lamps are being lit; and as one goes through the long ave- nues, one sees them shining through the grated windows like yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness. All Stamboul, too, is sinking to sleep almost as peacefully as in centu- ries gone by, while the uproar of the west is beginning in the quarters given up to unbelievers. Here and there in the new streets near St. Sophia a few shops will be lighted up, and the gleam of lanterns will shine from a café, and everywhere else the huge town will be wrapped in heavy slumber and mysterious gloom. Instead of being a mere arm of the sea separating the two parts of Constantinople, the Golden Horn would seem to place an interval of two or three centuries between the noisy agitation of one side of the water and the deep sleep of the other. I4O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD As I recline upon my red divan and indulge in a dreamy reverie, I see far above the clouds of smoke from the margilehs and the crowds strolling to and fro, a crown of fire suddenly appears like a signal about the pointed spire of a minaret of Tophané. I had forgotten the Ramadan; this is the beginning of the religious illuminations of that sacred fast; yes, we are in the lunar month, when the Turks turn night into day. How can I talk about the calm of Stamboul? Very soon it will be as noisy as Pera and Galata put together, and the noise will last till morning. I will go and join these strange revelries, that weird-looking crowd - It is time to go back to the hotel to dinner. Instead of returning to Pera by the direct road, I make a sign to one of the men always waiting with ready-saddled horses, and set off to make a complete tour of the dis- trict, passing through all the tumult of Galata to go up by way of the cemetery. . * Galata in the last gleam of twilight, and by the light of lanterns ! My horse, a little bewildered among the countless passers-by in their red fezzes and fustian clothes, frisks about a good deal on the pavement. Other riders are there, bending low in the saddle, and there is a perpetual coming and going of carriages and heavy tram-cars, preceded by couriers, who an- nounce their approach by blowing trumpets. The air is heavy with the scent of alcohol, absinthe, and aniseed. The big taverns of ill-repute are opened; the fronts of the large alcazars, which are draped with flags, are lit up—those in which the Italian pantomime is given, side by side with those in which Hungarian ladies interpret the repertory of Strauss. Al- ready the crowd is thickening, the narrow path is encumbered with people sitting outside the cafés, who are jostled by the horses of the riders. A deafening noise is going on, a confusion of every language under heaven, mixed with the sound of cymbals, bells, and big drums. I amuse myself with cantering rapidly through all this motley crowd, shouting, as of old, in a loud voice, “Bestour ! Bestour !” (Look out ! Look out !), which is the Turkish cry of warning, as “Balek | Balek I" is the Arab. At the hotel up at Pera I go through the stupid triviality of a table d'hôte dinner. A tourist recently cast ashore by one of the Orient Express steamers condescends to ask me for a little information. “There is nothing to do at Stamboul in the evening, is there 2" he begins. This is the stereotyped formula of all the guides at the hotels, that there is nothing to see at Stamboul in the evening, and that it is dangerous to walk about there after dark. CONSTANTINOPLE I41 To give my questioner an answer suited to his capacity, I reply: “Oh no, nothing whatever at Stamboul. But here at Pera—any one will tell you the way—there are two or three delightful entertainments.” And directly dinner was over I hired another horse and fled away. Beneath the beautiful starlit sky I went down by way of the smaller cemetery, passing through Galata, now in full fête, and leaving the noisy street, I paused at the edge of the water at the entrance to a bridge, the beginning of which alone could be seen, the rest dying away in the con- fusing darkness of the distance. Here all was changed as suddenly as the shifting fairy-like scenes at a theatre at the sound of the signal-bell. No more clouds, no more lights, no more noise. Before me is the dark silent night, wrapping about the empty stillness of the deep waters between the restless noisy quarters I have just left and another great city of fan- tastic appearance which rises up beyond, its minarets and domes outlined in black against the dark star-spangled sky. So lofty are the cupolas of the mosques, so exaggerated the deceptive mists about them, that they look --~~~~ ºftº - III. - - - --- --ºº-º-º-º: BRIDGE BETWEEN CONSTANTINOPLE AND STAMBOUL After a drawing by Boudier I42 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD like mountains. It is an evening of the Ramadan, when at every story of the minarets round about the festooned galleries burn crown-like circlets of fire, while in the vacant spaces between the stone spires pointing up into the vault of heaven appear numerous inscriptions suspended by in- visible threads, and startling us like apocalyptic signs traced in the air in fire. - I am eager to be there. Deeply moved by a memory which can never be effaced, I press on, through the darkness of the apparently interminable bridge leading across this great arm of the sea, to the black city on the other side. There are few passengers, long stretches are untenanted, and the deep silence is only now and then broken by the trotting of a horse or the rumbling noise of some heavy carriage which thunders by, making all the old rafts forming the bridge tremble, together with a rattling of their ancient iron chains. Then all is still again, and the sounds from Galata, now left farther and farther behind, gradually become more and more in- distinct. All this I note as I go along, with the noises from Stamboul increasing, the character of which is so exactly the same as in olden days that they seem but echoes out of the past recalling impressions long since apparently effaced. As I approach, the cupolas and minarets, with their crowns of fire, appear to grow loftier and loftier. . . . Now I am at their feet, I leave the shifting boats of the bridge for the stones and quagmire of a dark Square overlooked by the grand mass of a mosque. I am at Stamboul | - I mean to turn my back on the new quarters about St. Sophia and the Sublime Porte, now, alas! lighted by gas, and through which drive grand carriages, including those of the embassies, containing adventurous travellers. It is for old Stamboul—still, God be thanked a big place—that I am making, climbing up little streets as black and mysterious as ever, and with as many yellow dogs, rolled up like balls on the path, who growl as the unwary walker stumbles over them. May no zealous aedile ever do away with these dogs! I feel a kind of sad delight, almost amounting to intox- ication, when I penetrate once more into this labyrinth, where nobody knows me now, but where I know everything and everybody as if I had lived with them all in some previous, long-ago existence. It is a sweet and lovely night of May. There is a certain trans- parency in the darkness, enabling me just to see my way, and high up above my head, as I wander about, is the light, no less dim than that of the stars, of the circles of fire about the minarets of the mosques, and of the CONSTANTINOPLE - I43 flaming inscriptions suspended in the air. The dark narrow streets I have been following open all of a sudden into the vast square of the Seraskier, or Tower of the Venetians, which is full of light and life, of music and brilliant costumes. I merely cross this bright space, however, to plunge THE DOGS OF STAMBOUL.-After a drawing by Gélibert beyond it into the heart of the old city, the beautiful and not yet desecrated quarters of Suleimaniyeh and Sultan Selim. First, the obscurity of little gloomy streets, then a blaze of light, with crowds passing to and fro. In the cafés we hear the music of the Orient—melancholy-sounding violins sighing forth melodies which melt the very soul; shrill wind instruments, wailing plaintive old airs; while rustic Asiatics dance together, men only, holding each other by the hands, forming long chains. Of all the wonders which go to make up a night of the Ramadan at Stamboul this is what charmed me most: nothing more than the passing by, about midnight, in a lonely street, of a group of women belonging to a harem. This street was very narrow, very dark, overshadowed by lofty houses with grated windows, and against a bit of star-strewn sky rose up the gigantic black minarets of the Suleimaniyeh, all diaphanous now with their series of circlets of dull fire. . . . There is a deep silence, no one in sight; but now a group arrives, a group of five or six women shod with the Turkish slippers that make no noise—blue, red, or pink phantoms, wrapped to the eyes in the silks spangled with gold, which are manufactured in Asia. Two eunuchs precede them, armed with staves and bearing grand I44 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD antique lanterns. . . . They are gone, fairy-like and charming; gone no one knows where, to be shut up one cannot tell in what corner of the mysteri- ous labyrinth; and when the light of their lanterns, which made their shadows dance upon the ancient walls and pavements, has died away, the darkness seems deeper, the silence more profound. Tuesday, May 13, 1890–I take up my account of this second day at Stamboul at five o'clock in the afternoon, to close it before night. At five o'clock, then, turning my back on the new quarters, I go up in my kaik towards the lower end of the Golden Horn, on my way to the suburb of Eyoob. For the benefit of those who do not know Constanti- nople, I may add here that kaiks are long narrow boats with a crescent- THE MOSQUE OF SULTAN AHMED shaped bow, in which the pas- senger reclines, there being no seat. There are hundreds of such kaiks waiting for hire along the quays, as do the gondolas in Venice. - The Golden Horn becomes calmer as the distance from the entrance becomes greater, and the part of Stamboul along which I am now scudding gets older and older, more and more dilapidated and deserted; these are CONSTANTINOPLE I 45 the most ancient quarters of all, and life has drifted away from them to congregate on the other shore. Never before did they seem to me so ruined, so antique, among the trees in which they are buried, their black roofs almost hidden beneath the fresh verdure of May; and beyond is Eyoob, touching the screen of black cypresses at the edge of the mighty funereal-looking woods. - A fresh, almost cold wind is rising, as it does every evening at sunset, and the surface of the water is broken into ripples which gradually grow into small waves. Eyoob, the holy suburb, is the one spot still left for quiet meditation and prayer. At the entrance to the exquisite avenue between the lines of tombs, I set foot upon flag-stones grown green in the lapse of centuries; the path before me, dying away in the distance, looks white among the sacred groves encircling the turbehs or tombs—white with the same green- ish whiteness as is always assumed by very old marble in shadow, the ave. nue ending at the mosque into which no one may enter, and of which one can dimly make out the dome rising from beneath a clump of plane-trees and wide-spreading cypresses. This avenue is bordered on either side by kiosks of white, richly-sculptured marble, filled with the biers of the dead, or with walls pierced with arched openings through which can be seen a vista of quaint-looking tombs, some decorated with faded gilding, stand- ing out from the masses of green verdure, and the tangle of wild grasses, roses, and bramble-bushes. - There are not many frequenters of this avenue of the dead—a few dervishes returning from prayer, a few beggars crouching at the doors of the mosque — that is generally all. This evening there are, however, three Turkish maidens from five to ten years old, very pretty little creat- ures in robes of shining green and red, gambolling about together. It seemed incongruous to see them playing happily among the marbles and beneath the funereal-looking trees. But then I had never been here before in the glorious month of May, and the fresh verdure, the flowers here, there, and everywhere, were as much out of character with the place as the three little girls. The spring did not seem to brighten the intense, the essential melancholy of the place; far from that, the tender tones of color in the sky, the bunches of roses, the jasmine draping the walls which have for centuries, at the same season, flung their ephemeral and deceptive beauty over the time-honored tombs, do but add to the feeling of the noth- ingness of everything human, which is the prevailing impression left by the holy place of Eyoob. IO I46 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Wednesday, May 14, 1890–This morning, at the French Embassy, there were at least thirty of us at breakfast at a table, one blaze of yellow roses, and we were all tourists. - Formerly the crossing of the Black Sea checked the tide of travellers, but since the opening of the new line of railway terminating at the foot of the Old Seraglio, the number of idlers from Europe who swarm every- where is truly appalling. - I cannot remember without a smile the naïve remark of our very charming hostess, the wife of the ambassador, as she glanced down her long table, “Oh, nowadays, one tourist more or less makes no difference to me.” This would seem to be not very flattering to her guests, but it was said with a nameless something in the tone which made the little sentence infinitely amusing. All picked guests, present by invitation, very good company, only too many, too much like an invading Corps, and not picturesque enough. That is all I have against them, and I mean no more harm than did our hostess. On the same day, about four o'clock in the afternoon, a storm of rain broke over Stamboul. The atmosphere had been charged with disturb. ance the whole day, and now the downpour was one steady prolonged torrent. .** Leaving the Sublime Porte, I took shelter till the end of the day in the Grand Bazaar; for Stamboul, following the usage of the Orient, has its bazaar, which, like a town within a town, is surrounded with walls, and closes its huge gates every evening. It was dark and gloomy enough to-day, with the storm-clouds above it, and the wooden roofs, through which leaked the rain, covering all the little streets, so that it was through a kind of mist, a twilight fog, that one saw the gleam of the embroidered stuffs and the thousands of knick-knacks spread out on the stalls, the ant-like crowd swaying to and fro, the women all veiled in white, the men in their red caps. Heaven be praised, this bazaar is still unchanged In the old familiar nooks I still find the same dark little cafés, with the same tiles of Persian porcelain with quaint floral designs—cafés in which coffee is still served in the same ancient little cups. Here one may indulge in the same reveries as of old, gazing out through the open door at the Turkish crowd, looking fantastic in the half-light of the narrow avenues. From the depths of these shadowy retreats, as one puffs forth the light-colored tobacco, the smoke of which turns everything gray, the movement and noise outside have a phantom-like effect. “Nothing MoRE THAN . . . A group of women BELONGING To A HAREM" Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Benjamin Constant CONSTANTINOPLE I49 But, alas! even here there are a few attempts at European shops with glass fronts, and a few personally-conducted tourists are hurried past by their brazen-faced guides, jostling each other as they go. The English tourists are the most in earnest, and, in spite of their air of taking posses. sion of a conquered country, I prefer them to the French, who grumble at the badly-paved streets, and notice nothing but the few things from Paris scattered here and there, seeming to think that the old turbaned merchants crouching in niches in the background got their wares from the Louvre or the Bon Marché. And these tourists will leave after having seen Con- stantinople, proclaiming aloud the dishonesty of the Mussulman because they have been fleeced, as they deserved to be, by their guides and inter- preters, who are Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Maltese, anything you like, but certainly never Turks. The Turks of the lower orders make boatmen, journeymen, or porters, but they never condescend to act as guides to visitors. I linger about, bargaining and buying some old silver knick-knacks, while outside the daylight dies and the rain still pours down. The bazaar is gradually becoming more and more deserted, business is over for the time; the shops are being shut up on either side of the ancient streets; sellers and buyers are alike leaving; the gray darkness is deepening in the vast labyrinth, and when night falls the bazaar will be merely a black desert. - I must certainly be going, too. I mount my wretched hired hack, all dripping wet, that has been waiting for me at one of the entrances of the bazaar, and wend my way towards Pera. The rain has ceased, but the sky is still gray, and the roofs are gleam- ing with rain. As I go down through the narrow streets to the Golden Horn, my horse splashes through rivulets of mud and water. The town has suddenly assumed quite a wintry aspect—an aspect, by-the-way, which is specially familiar to me, and which appeals to me in a peculiar manner. It is now that recollections personal to myself crowd upon me. Stamboul is ugly and sad-looking now, but I love it better than ever. Oh, how full of regrets for the past is my heart as I ride slowly along ! In spite of the drippings from the roofs, how vividly the past rises up on this damp, almost cold, rainy evening ! Arrived at the hotel, I slowly proceeded to my room, regardless of my soaked garments, to find there a message from his Excellency the Grand Vizier, informing me that his Majesty the Sultan did me the honor of inviting me to go that evening to the Palace of Yildiz, to see the illumi- I 5o - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD nations of the Kadir-Guidjeci. A cavasse, he informed me, and a carriage would come for me at eight o'clock. This Yildiz Palace is a long way off, almost in the country on the other side of the Golden Horn, opposite to Stamboul, on which we turned our backs in our hurried drive. The Bosporus, of which we caught a glimpse now and then, and Scutari beyond it, are alike illuminated, as is the shore on the European side; in fact, the whole scene, far as the eye could reach in every direction, was most fairy-like. Before us, hurrying in the opposite direction, we could see a crowd of people, a mass of human beings rushing furiously along, with half-naked men on horses, galloping, and shouting the ominous order, “Vaugun-varſ” reaching me from the distance. Fire! Fire! An alarm of fire—a common thing in this city of wooden houses. A whole quarter is burning down there, the sky above is one glow of red, adding to the fête an impromptu illumination. Those lumbering objects dragged so rapidly along are pumps fastened to wild- looking men, running as fast as their legs can carry them. They catch hold of my carriage; Screams and gesticulations follow, but recognizing the cavasse of the palace, they draw back, and we proceed. Now we pass through rows of suburbs—wide, straight, and almost empty—where we can ride rapidly along. At last we see before us a blaze of green and white light—not this time from a fire, but from Bengal lamps. We are nearing the gardens of Yildiz. We cross the barriers, and a sudden silence falls—no more noise, no more crowds; we gallop through empty, quiet alleys brilliantly illu- minated, and bordered on either side by myriads of lights, forming gar. lands and festoons. Nothing but white light here—white globes gleaming through the green verdure; while above, the sky is everywhere dotted with the blue or red stars of rockets, which burst in a shower of many-colored fire. - - We ascend the slopes of the avenues, still untenanted, but gradually growing lighter with a gleaming white light, contrasting with the red glow on the horizon from the conflagration going on in the city. We pass through another grated gate. Battalions of cavalry and in- fantry, forming a closely-packed hedge, bar our passage, all bearing torches or lanterns as if for a torchlight procession. There, too, are hundreds of officers, most of them wearing the Oriental dolman with flowing sleeves. Oh, what an imposing and picturesque-looking army they are These thousands of motionless warriors seemed absorbed in religious CONSTANTINOPLE - I5 I meditation in the clear dazzling white light beneath, the rain of ever-chang- ing colors from the fireworks bursting in the sky above. The cavasse who is escorting me has the password, and the ranks Open to let us through. He takes me to a pavilion of the palace on the first story, completely deserted, but the rooms of which are marvellously lit up by the combined light of the lamps inside and the illuminations without, which can be clearly seen from the great windows, now thrown wide open. The wood-work and the furniture are alike white and gold, all is luminous and bright. There is something, I know not what, peculiar in the intense si- lence of the mass of men under arms, scarcely breathing in the dread presence of their Sover- eign. And now exquisite sacred music is heard from without, a choir of men's voices, fresh and limpid, chanting psalms in high- pitched voices, producing a su- pernatural, or, if I may coin a word, an extra-terrestrial effect. An aide-de-camp receives me at the entrance to the pa- vilion; the Sultan, he tells me, is still in the Imperial mosque, whence issue the beautiful mel- odies I hear. But the prayers are nearly over, and if I go to a window I shall soon see his Majesty come out. Some fifty paces from me, a little below the window at which I stand, I can see this mosque. It is of fresh and gleaming whiteness, richly decorated with arabesques in the style of the Alhambra. Illuminated from within and from without, it is as transparent as a thin piece of alabaster, and the music issuing from it gives it something of unreality; it looks like : the centre piece of the huge artificial fire burning everywhere to-night. Round about its strangely luminous dome are the avenues and gardens with their myriad lamps through which I had passed on my way hither. Bengal fires render confused the outlines of the distance, which are already somewhat indistinct from the height at which I stand. A gigantic TURKISH WOMEN.—After a drawing by Vogel I 52 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD transparency, hung one knows not how, in mid-air, bears an Arab inscrip- tion, standing out in gleaming characters against a background of night, and in the midst of the dazzling and confusing phantasmagoria around, it is impossible to form any idea of the distance of this aerial apparition; it seems to preside over the whole fête, the whole sea of lights giving to it its distinctly Mussulman, its religious character. . . . And far away in the unmistakable distance, on a vague stretch of black sea, which must be the Bosporus, gleam other brilliant objects of a form peculiar to themselves; these are the vessels at anchor, illuminated from stem to stern, from deck to mast-head. Immediately below me stands the superb army, still wrapt in silent, motionless meditation, following in spirit the prayers being chanted in the luminous mosque opposite. It would seem as if the very soul of Islam were concentrated for the moment in the pure white sanctuary. Oh, those chants which vibrate beneath that cupola, monotonous as the incantations of magic, and so rarely, so exquisitely Sonorous, are they sung by the voices of children or of angels? One scarcely knows. There is something emi- nently Oriental about this music, in which the high notes are long sus- tained, as on the hautboy, with unvarying freshness and without any appearance of fatigue; it is one long, long chant, ever taken up anew, very sweet, very touching, and yet expressing with infinite sadness the nothing- ness of human life, producing something of the giddiness felt on looking into a deep abyss from a great height. . . . But the Sultan is coming out, and a thrill of expectation passes through the waiting troops. A landau, drawn by richly caparisoned horses rearing in their harness as they dash proudly along, stops at the foot of the marble steps of the mosque, on which red carpets have been laid down, and at the same instant some thirty attendants hasten up, each bearing one of the huge white silk lanterns, some three feet high, which it has been from time immemorial etiquette to use on the occasions of the Caliph's nocturnal expeditions; while beneath the cupola the chanting of the choir becomes quicker and more impassioned in a kind of final culminating exaltation. “Allah Allah | Here is the Sultan " The palace, the gardens, the very heavens, glow with fresh splendor. The cannon roars like some sudden tempest, and all the warriors, bending to the ground, shout with one voice, one long, deep resounding voice, “Allah! Allah [" The landau bearing the Sultan is drawn at full gallop across the few yards between the mosque and the palace gates; behind it dash other CONSTANTINOPLE I53 magnificent equipages, the horses all at highest speed, bringing the veiled princesses, who have also been to prayer; the attendants run wildly along- side, swinging their great white lanterns, the troops close up behind with a clashing of weapons. It is over! Following an aide-de-camp, I am led through the apartments with walls and pillars of tender tones of color slightly dashed with gold. This palace of Yildiz is remarkable for great sobriety of ornamentation and absence of luxury; the Sovereign, who owns on the Bosporus a series of fairy-like palaces on sites of incomparable beauty, prefers for work and rest the comparative simplic- ity of this residence, which he himself caused to be built in the midst of a shady park. Here I am at last in a kind of vast ante- chamber to the court itself—simple enough, too, its only luxury con- sisting in magnificent carpets deadening the sound of footsteps. This evening it is crowded with generals, aides-de- camp of every branch of the service in full uni- form, some wearing the long straight tunic, oth- ers the Oriental dol- man with long flowing sleeves, some in the red fez, others in black as- trakhan caps. They have all a very martial appear. ance, and the tout en- semble they form on the - - A TURKISH BARBER threshold of the Imperial Engraved by Barbant, after the picture by Bonnai I 54 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD apartments is more imposing than all the Oriental magnificence. Among them I note the heroic figure of Osman, the Ghazi, the grand defender of Plevna. All stand, all speak in whispers; it would seem that the sovereign is very near. - And, in fact, in a little side room to which I am conducted by the grand-master of ceremonies, his Majesty the Sultan is seated alone on a sofa. He wears the uniform of a general, over which is a military cloak of brown cloth; there is nothing in his costume to distinguish him from any of the officers of his army. It was a very long time since I had had the honor of seeing his Majesty, and as I bent in the prescribed Court salutation, I suddenly remembered, with a touch of melancholy, a previous unpremeditated inter- view, of which the sovereign had evidently not the slightest recollection. It was fifteen years ago, on the Bosporus, on the morning of his accession to the throne—one of those brilliant sunshiny mornings which always seem brighter to our memories than any of those of the present time. The grand Imperial kaiks, with golden prows, had come to fetch the sovereign to the point of the Old Seraglio, to conduct him to the palace of Dolma-Bagtohé. It was very early, and there was no crowd on the sea, nor any guard about the Imperial vessel, and my kaik, on which I was Scudding along without knowing whom I was near, ran against that of the Sultan-elect through the clumsiness of my boatmen. The young prince, who was a few hours later to become supreme Caliph, came forward and looked at me with dark unseeing eyes, full of absorbed thought, as he pondered anxiously on all that the future held for him. Alas ! the future of that day has become the past of the present, and the image called up before my mind of that meeting made me suddenly realize what a gulf of time, gone beyond recall, lay between that sunny morning and the prime of youth alike for me and for the Sultan His Majesty's reception of his guests is always marked by extreme benevolence, simple dignity, and natural grace. I shall never forget the few minutes of that evening, when I had the honor of talking with the Sultan in the almost strange calm of the little soberly-furnished room, but the threshold of which was so gloriously guarded by military chiefs talking in hushed voices, and from the windows of which could be seen the distant tumultuous life of the great city in fête, beneath a sky bright with artificial light, and glowing with the red reflection of a devastating fire. Secure of being understood, and excused with the usual charming courtesy of the Caliph, I ventured to express my great and melancholy CONSTANTINOPLE I55. regret at the disappearance of the ancient element in Stamboul, and of the transformation of that mighty city. I paused there, limiting my plaint to that of a lover of the picturesque. What I should have liked to add, it would not have been fitting for a pass- ing visitor like myself to say in a chat with the Sovereign, however gracious. that Sovereign might be. - Poor, once mighty, Turkey, so justly proud in the days when faith, sublime aspirations, and personal courage made up the strength of nations. —where will you be when you are drawn into the idle vortex of modern thought, a prey to countless petty practical utilitarian motives, on which you would have looked down with disdain not so very long ago? How will it be with you when your sons have lost the old beliefs which made them what they were 2 While expressing my profound affection for the brave people over whom he reigned, I was greatly tempted to allow a little of my profound anxiety to appear, and to try and find out whether the Caliph, whose vision perhaps was clearer than mine, could distinguish anything of the dawn of a brighter future beyond the transitional time through which his country is passing . . . Thursday, May 15, 1890.-It is early morning, and all is fresh and pure. I wake, not in my hired lodging at Pera, but in the heart of Stam- boul, in one of the little inns where one sleeps on a white mattress on the ground. I left the Imperial palace very late the previous evening, and having quickly changed my Court clothes at the hotel as I went by, I came over here to the other side of the Golden Horn to see a little more of the nocturnal fête in the streets. . Then, when the last fires of the Ramadan were dying out upon the minarets, I went into the first lodging I came to to get a little sleep. No clock strikes at night in this part of Stamboul, and I was a little uneasy about the time, as an aide-de-camp of his Majesty was to fetch me from my official quarters to take me to see the treasures of the Sultans. Outside the door of the inn all was delightfully fresh, making the mere act of breathing a delight—almost an intoxication. The narrow ancient streets were quite untenanted, but seemed radiant with youth and beauty in the bright early and, apparently, never-fading sunshine. Truly the purity of an Oriental May is of rare charm; the freshness of the air and light revives as nothing else can. 156 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Going down towards the Golden Horn, I come to the old Square shaded by time-honored plane-trees, overlooked on one side by the lofty gray mass of the Valideh mosque, with its minarets and arabesques, while the other three-quarters are occupied by ivy-clad arbors, little cafés, and little barber-shops, or shops where Turkish slippers are sold—all very ancient and Oriental, looking exactly as they might at Ispahan or Bagdad. In this square, still more in the adjacent streets, it is very lovely on this early May morning. The rising sun touches with gold the mosque, and the fresh green of the plane-trees, and there is a white mist hanging about which might be the virginal veil of the young morning. The little Turkish cafés are beginning to open, and two or three countrymen are already being shaved in the open air beneath the trees. It is evidently still very early, and I have time to linger a little before returning to Pera. I sit down beneath the vine-clad trellis-work and call for a cup of coffee, with some of the nice little hot bonbons which are sold to the peasants on their way to their work, and which I enjoy better than the daintiest breakfast. I seem myself to imbibe something of the renewed youth which is touching with beauty all the ancient things around. About two hours afterwards—that is to say, a little before eight o'clock —I have donned a very different costume, and a carriage takes me back to Stamboul in the company of an aide-de-camp of his Majesty, and in a solemn-looking deserted quarter, with the grass growing between the stones, our coachman draws up in front of a formidable emceinte, remind- ing one of a mediaeval fortress. These walls enclose an absolutely unique little corner of the earth, the farthest point of eastern Europe, a promontory jutting out towards the neighboring continent of Asia, and which, moreover, was for many centuries the residence of the Caliphs, in which they were surrounded by incomparable splendor and luxury. With the holy suburb of Eyoob, it embodies all that is most lovely, most exquisite, in Constantinople. In a word, it is the Old Seraglio, a name which calls up a whole world of dreams and visions. A little gate is opened for us in the outer walls, and as soon as we have passed the enciente a sudden revelation of beauty bursts upon us; the dead past lives again and wraps us about with its shroud. All is at first silence and shade; empty desolate courts, where grass is growing between the disused flagstones, overshadowed by great trees centuries old, contemporaries of the mighty Sultans of other days; black cypresses as lofty as towers, plane-trees which have assumed weird forms, CONSTANTINOPLE I57 all distorted as they are with age, are still upheld merely by huge fragments of bark, and stoop forward like old men. Then come the galleries; colonnades in the antique Turkish style; the verandas, still retaining their quaint frescos, in which the Sultan deigned to receive the ambassadors of Europe. . . . And this spot fortunately is not opened to profane visitors, it is not yet haunted by idle tourists; and behind its lofty walls it retains a mysterious peace, it is still stamped with the impress of by-gone glories. Crossing the first courts, we leave on the right impenetrably closed gardens, from which emerge, among groves of cypress, ancient kiosks with closed windows, the residences of Imperial widows, of aged princesses, who are to end their days in a secluded retreat on one of the most beautiful sites in the whole world. It is one blaze of sunshine here, everything is gleaming in the Orient light; we are now at the end of the walled-in space, we are at the extreme point of the Old Seraglio, and also of Europe. This advanced guard of the West is a very lofty, very white, very solitary promenade, overlooking the blue distances of the sea and of Asia. The bright morning sun- shine floods the wide-spreading scene, in which towns, islets, and mountains stand out in tender tones above the motionless sheet of water known as the Sea of Mar- AT THE DOOR OF THE HAREM In Ora. - - Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Charlemont All round about us are ancient white buildings, which contain all the rarest, the most valuable treasures of Tur- key: first the kiosk, closed even to the faithful, in which the mantle of the Prophet is preserved in a case studded with precious stones; then the kiosk of Bagdad, lined with Persian porcelains, now of priceless value, in which the branches of the red flowers represented were made of coral liquefied and used as a paint by a process now lost; then the Imperial Treasury, also of gleaming whiteness, with grated windows like those of a prison, the iron gates of which will presently be opened to allow me to enter. I58 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD And lastly, an inhabited palace, ruled by strictest etiquette, into which we are admitted, and where we are allowed to sit down. White marble steps lead up to the apartments on the ground-floor, which seem to have been furnished about the middle of last century in the then prevalent European taste. They are in the Louis XV. style, but modified by an indescribable something of Oriental quaintness, which gives them a charm all their own; white and gold wainscots, old-fashioned cerise or lilac bro- cades, with white flowers, the light colors. all further toned down by age. Plenty of space, plenty of air, plenty of light—a symmetrical tranquillity everywhere, giving one a sense of abandonment and immobility. $ And from this sumptuous solitude, seated on sofas of a delicate faded rose-color, at the wide open windows, we have spread out before us from this, the last promontory of Europe, the view which delighted the Sultans of yore. On the left, far down beneath our feet, is spread out the Bos- porus, dotted with ships and kaiks, while from its shores rise the new Imperial palaces of Dolma-Bagtehé and Tcheragan, with a whole series of stately-looking older buildings and mosques, their inverted images forming a gleaming line in the waters below them. Opposite lies Asia, still blue with the mists of early morning; there is Scutari, with its domes and minarets, its vast cemetery, its gloomy cypress forests. On the right are the wide-stretching distances of the Sea of Marmora, on which we can make out steamboats going to and fro, dimly outlined on the diaphanous blue—gray objects with trails of white smoke. - Truly well chosen is the site of this stronghold, built as it is on two great continents of the world, and dominating Turkey, lying at its feet. And how great is the peace, how great the melancholy splendor of its complete isolation, far away from the turmoil of modern life, in the abso- lute silence of abandonment, beneath the clear, yet in a sense, the dreary sunshine ! * - When the guardian of the treasures, an old man with a white beard, prepared to open the iron gate with his great keys, twenty sworn-in sub- ordinates, ten on the right and ten on the left, formed, in accordance with invariable etiquette, two hedges, with a lane between, guarding the approach. We passed between this double file, and entered the rooms, which were rather dark, followed by the ten keepers. No cave of Ali Baba ever contained such riches! For eight centuries matchless precious stones and priceless marvels of art have been hoarded up here. When our eyes, still dazzled with the outside sunshine, became accustomed to the obscurity, the diamonds began to scintillate on every CONSTANTINOPLE I59 side. A profusion of objects of unknown age and of inestimable value are classed according to species in different stories. Here are weapons of every period, from that of Yenghis Khan to that of Mahomet, weap. ons of silver and weapons of gold, loaded with precious stones; collections of golden chests of every size and every style, some covered with rubies, others with diamonds or Sapphires, some actually cut out of a single great emerald resembling an Ostrich's egg; coffee services, flagons, and ewers of antique forms of exquisite beauty. Fairy-like tissues, saddles, harness, saddle-cloths embroidered with silver and gold, and bordered with flowers in precious stones; great chairs of state made to sit cross-legged on, some one blaze of rubies and pearls, giving the whole a pinkish hue, others again completely covered with emeralds, and shining with a green light like the ripples of sea-water. In the last room, behind glass, a motionless and terrible-looking com. pany awaits us; twenty-eight puppets of the size of life, standing erect in military style in a long row shoulder to shoulder. They all wear the lofty pear-shaped turban, which has been out of use for more than a century, and is now only seen on the catafalques of great defunct dignitaries, in the half-light of funereal kiosks or turbehs, or carved on tombs . . . in fact, this form of turban is always associated in my mind with death. Until the beginning of this century, whenever a Sultan died, a puppet dressed in the monarch's robes of state was brought to the Treasury, wearing wonderful weapons in its sash, and on its head a grand turban with a magnificent aigrette of jewels. And here this puppet was to remain forever, covered with wealth lost for all eternity to mankind. The twenty-eight Sultans, who succeeded each other between the taking of Constantinople and the end of the eighteenth century, has each his dummy here, standing erect in Court costume; slowly the solemn, richly-dressed party has increased in numbers, the new funereal figures arriving one by one to take their places in the long line of ancient Sultans, who have waited for them for hundreds of years, sure of their coming sooner or later. . . . They touch shoulders now, all these phantoms of those who reigned at wide intervals of each other, brought together by death in the same dreary non-existence. Their long robes are made of wonderful brocades, embroidered with mysterious designs in colors dulled by age; priceless daggers, the hilts made of a single precious stone, are rusting in spite of all care in the silk sashes, and it seems as if the lustre of the great diamonds of the aigrettes in the turbans was dimmed with age, for they gleam with a yellow and exhausted kind of light. I6o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD And this extraordinary luxury, sprinkled with the dust of ages, is most melancholy to contemplate. Of fabulous magnificence, these figures in their lofty turbans, the object of the covetousness of so many human creatures, guarded so zealously behind double iron doors, alike useless and dangerous, see seasons, years, reigns, and centuries pass by, revolutions accomplished, in the same immobility, the same silence; scarcely lighted even in the daytime behind the ancient grated windows, and in total obscurity as soon as the sun sets. Each one bears his name, now but an empty sound, but once illustrious and terrible. Murad the Conqueror, Soli- man the Magnificent, Mahomet and Mahmud. I think these figures gave me a more awful sense of the fragility and nothingness of human life than anything I ever saw. At the “water-gate” of the Old Seraglio a large Imperial kaik, or light skiff with eight pairs of oars, awaited us, and we went down into it to stretch ourselves out upon its cushions, as is the fashion in Turkey, where one glides along in a half-reclining position with the eyes on a level with the water. The rowers all wear the traditional shirt of white silk gauze, open at the brawny chest; blackened by the sun, and impassible of mien, they look as if they were cast in bronze, with teeth made of porcelain. The Bosporus is as calm as a mirror beneath the glowing sky. We give a wide berth to the steamboats with their smoke, and to everything which disfigures and sullies the purity of the sea. At two or three places, such as Dolma-Bagtehé on the European shore, and Belerbey on that of Asia, we touch at quays of spotless marble in front of solitary palaces with white and gilded gratings. The snowy whiteness of these palaces of the Sultan rising from beside the blue waters, is what gives them their unique charm. Within the inhabited palaces, the guardians of which open the gates to us, we find much magnificence: forests of pillars of all manner of colors, masses of tall candelabra and chandeliers, ceilings richly arabesqued in the Oriental style, brocades with looking-glass spangles, and silks from Broussa; but not a human creature in any of these grand apartments, in the midst of all this fresh and luxurious decoration kept up with so much care. The Sultan and his Court come to these palaces no more. It was about noon when we returned to the palace of Yildiz after this rapid visit to the Imperial palaces. At Yildiz all is extremely quiet, absolute silence and calm prevailing. (Collection Donatis) A FOUNTAIN AT CONSTANTINOPLE.-Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Pasini. CONSTANTINOPLE I63 The fast of the Ramadan is not yet over, the time for retreat and prayer; and in the house of his Majesty the Sultan, more than anywhere else, the fast is rigorously maintained—a fast which must not be broken until after sunset. For me alone, not bound by the Mahometan law, a breakfast is served; but I feel very much embarrassed at sitting down to table in this palace where nobody eats, and for the first time in my life I felt that eating breakfast is an impropriety—a gross Western custom. Moreover, I have something much better to do. On the gilded leaves of a writing-pad, brought to me by an interpreter, I am permitted to write down a few of my thoughts to be transmitted to the Sultan, whose pres- ence, though he is invisible to-day, can be felt. And I am full of admira- tion for his Majesty, who in the midst of the thousand absorbing occupa- tions of the owner of a throne, is yet ignorant of nothing that is being done in literature or in art. - : Through the open windows floats the light in a silence that may be felt; the May sunbeams scintillate upon the white walls and the light bro- cades of the furniture. In the foreground we see gardens bright with flowers, while far away in the distance are the charming vistas of the sea and of Asia, which are commanded from every point of the terrace-built city—the projecting balcony of Europe. Close at hand, too, is the Imperial mosque, with its perforated dome. And while smoking the most dainty cigarettes, I chat about the sacred chants of yesterday with his Excellency the Grand Vizier, who, when he chooses, can be as courteous and as refined as the most polished French- man. - “Come to the window,” he said, “and listen to the incomparable voice which will presently chant a prayer.” And in the midst of the tranquil silence a voice suddenly rang out, a gloriously sonorous voice, combining the clearness of a hautboy with the celestial purity of a church organ, yet with a peculiar aloofness of its own as of a voice heard in a dream. This rare voice suddenly flung forth to the four quarters of the blue heaven the Mussulman prayer . . . Then once more my whole being was thrilled to the depths with an intense realization of the very spirit of Islam; and in this gay, bright room, which might be that of some French château, I felt once more what I had partially lost for a time: that deep melancholy impression, alike soothing and agonizing, which, deeply real as it is to me, I have never been able to define. More beautiful than the priceless voice, now vibrating with youthful power, but which to-morrow will pass away, is the all but immortal chant I64 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD which has gone up for centuries five times a day from the towns and vil- lages of Turkey. It symbolizes a whole religion, a whole dignified, restful mysticism. It is the embodiment of that aspiration, that appeal to the Most High, which our brothers of the Orient have known better how to guard than we of the West our consolatory beliefs. Walking onward with eyes closed to the whirlpool of dust about them, the followers of the Prophet sleep in peace in the midst of their magnificent delusions. As long as the sound of that prayer is followed by the prostration of the faith- ful around the mosques, so long will Turkey retain her noble soldiers indifferent to death ! CT Co-º-º-º- *; vº. ºrmſ. Inſtitulliſ Hillſ initiºn ºf T w Nº. milliºs %lº º RO ME O town in the world owns more an- cient monuments than Rome. It is this which is her distinctive characteristic among all the capitals of the world; and not only are the relics of the past in Rome more numerous, they are also better pre- served than anywhere else. Among many vicissitudes Rome has had this one piece of good-fortune: she has had no owner but herself. No doubt she has been more than once besieged, subjugated, made to obey her enemies, but no foreign occupation ever lasted long. Rome soon became again in- dependent, and we may say that, on the whole, since the time of Romulus she has ever remained Roman. This may perhaps explain the fact that the monuments she re- tains have suffered less than those in other countries which have often changed masters. Another advantage which greatly increases her value is that different portions of Rome belong to very different ages. As a general rule, other towns only flourished at one time; we find fine relics in them, but they all date from one epoch of civ- ilization. Rome has again and again risen up from her ashes; she has had in her long life many renewals of youth, and each one of them has left glorious traces. One may say that in Rome nearly all the grand epochs of art are represented. I think it will be charming to wander through Rome, not in the usual hurried tourist fashion from one quarter to another, but from one century to another. We will visit together the mon- uments dating from the same age, which will explain and throw light upon PEASANTS OF THE CAMPAGNA Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Bonnat I68 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD each other, so that each epoch will live again for us. In this way we might almost write the history of humanity without leaving one town. Let us endeavor, then, to give a rapid sketch of the Rome of the past. We will begin by going back to a somewhat remote time when Rome did not yet exist. Let us in imagination suppress all the houses and pal- aces covering the ground, and see the country once more as it was when the first inhabitants began to build their little round huts with pointed, thatched roofs. On the shores of the Tiber, about five or six leagues from the sea, rises a group of little hills forming a kind of circle round about a long narrow valley. These are the Palatine, the Capitoline, and the Esqui- line Hills. The last named, of greater size than its neighbors, consists of several separate heights; on the right the Viminal and Quirinal Hills, on the left that known as Caelian. Behind the Palatine Hill, on the shores of the Tiber, rises the plebeian mountain of the Aventine. These are the seven hills the names of which occur so often in Roman history. The val- leys separating them are not less celebrated. At the foot of the Capitoline and Palatine Hills stretches the plain which was to become the Forum; the strip of land between the Palatine and Aventine Hills was to become the Circus Maximus; and beyond the Capitoline Hill was to stretch some day the Campus Martius. But at the time we are considering, this great space was deserted ; the lower portions of the valleys were occupied by marshes, the heights bris. tled with wild brushwood (silvestribus horrida dumis), and everywhere shot up a short pale grass such as that which still covers the Roman Campagna. This damp and tepid district is the home of fever—that curse of Italy which rules her like a master. In the legends told about the founding of the earliest Italian towns, a demon often comes in who devours the inhab- itants, and claims from them a tribute of human victims until the day when some hero triumphs over him and kills him. This monster is Malaria, who decimates the first settlers on the plague-stricken soil, and tries to displace them all. But in the end this demon will be conquered by the draining of the marshes and the purification of the water supply. He is not, however, yet quite dead, and on the very slightest relaxation in the struggle against him he revives in full strength. In these beautiful but terrible climates Nature never yields to man unless he wages against her perpetual war. No doubt it was this which Virgil meant when he compared the toil of a laborer with that of a mariner in his boat going up a rapid stream against the cur- rent: he must row perpetually; let him pause but an instant, and the stream carries him back, and he loses in a moment all the results of his past toil. ROME 169 There must have been some advantages in this unhealthy, gloomy- looking district without drinkable water, or people would never have left the delightful shores of the Alban Lake and Lake Nemi, or the heights of Tibur, Tusculum, or Praeneste, to settle in it. The site of Rome is, in fact, very happily chosen; it is near the sea, and connected with it by one of the most important rivers of Italy, the Tiber, a stream which is always navigable. It is at the point of juncture of Latium, Sabium, and Etruria, where natural products and manufactured goods could easily be exchanged. “Rome,” says Mommsen, “was at the outset a market." It was also a refuge. There were some day to meet the dis- contented, the ambitious, the seekers after adventures, the unfortunates who could not find all they required in the neighboring countries. The most ancient legends represent these early inhabitants as a mixture of all races; and yet, for all that, out of this very mixture proceeded a people more im- bued than any other with the sentiment of nationality, and who have done more than any other for their country. Can we, wandering about Rome at the present time, find any trace of those remote days when, from a union of diverse races, the Roman nation was first founded ? It will readily be understood that the monuments which have come down to us from this remote age are not numerous; there are, however, a few, and those very curious ones. Of course the THE TIBER WITH ST. PETER’s AND THE MoLE HADRIANI, KNOWN AS THE CASTELLO S. ANGELO Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Corot 17o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD newly-arrived emigrants attended at first to their most pressing needs, and their first care was to defend themselves against their enemies and to guard against fever. They began by trying to make the land they were going to live in healthy. To drain the poisonous stagnant water of the Velabrum into the Tiber, they constructed a great sewer, which was at- tributed to Tarquin. About the same time we are told the infant town was surrounded by a wall built under Servius Tullius. Our examination of the antiquities of Rome must begin, then, with the Cloaca Maxima and the wall of Servius. It will be an easy excursion, for the entrance to the Cloaca is near to the Forum, and at no great distance from the station is an important fragment of the wall of Servius. The workmen who constructed the Via Nazionale came upon it by the way, and the new road made a double détour so as reverently to encircle the old remains. If our first taste of the antique has given us a relish for further acquaintance with this venerable wall, we must go as far as the Church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine, opposite to which we shall find a large por. tion of this old wall, thirty metres long by ten high. It is in admirable preservation, and strikes one alike with surprise and admiration. I think that in looking at these monuments one gets a sort of idea of what the people who erected them were like. To begin with, they built well, or their work could not have lasted as it has ; when they laid one solid course of stones upon another, when they domed their roofs to give them more resisting power, they were thinking of the future; they felt sure—and this is an instinct of great nations—that their race was to live on for generations; from the earliest days they knew that they were building the Eternal City. Moreover, rugged and untutored though they were, they had a certain feel- ing for art; they were no barbarians. Their works, however imperfect they may appear when we compare them with those of the Greeks, yet reveal a certain sentiment of proportion, a taste for grandeur, and for that kind of beauty which is the outcome of strength. To the last this will be the characteristic of Roman art. - * - Next come the glorious days of the Republic. Of this grand epoch, the Golden Age of Rome, we have but few monuments; the Empire, which was perhaps anxious to efface all memory of a past which rendered it uneasy, destroyed and replaced them nearly all. This is an additional reason for making a point of seeing what is left. We must go from the Piazza di Venetia to that of the Forum of Trajan, and turning to the right, climb the Salita di Marforio. This street is worth a visit, for it is one of the corners of Rome which has changed the least during three or four - - - THE FORUM.–Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Friant centuries. Here we shall find the tomb of the old plebeian aedile, Publicius Bibulus; there is not much of it left—a piece of a wall forming part of a modern house, with an inscription of a few words in capital letters (SENATvs consvlto Popvliqve Jvssv). There are no pompous phrases, no useless ornaments; all is grave, simple, and grand, realizing our idea of what the monuments of the Republic must have been. Memories of that great time ever cling to the Forum. I know that it was restored several times under the Empire, that sumptuous basilicas were built, that the site was encum- bered with columns and statues; but for all that Imperial Rome never really took root there. As we wander about in the rectangular space full of the magnificent ruins restored to us by the recent excavations, it is ever of the Republican Forum that we dream. - True the Rostrum” from which Cato, the Gracchi, or Cicero addressed the people is no longer there, but it is * The platform from which orators spoke in Rome was called the Rostrum, because it was in ancient times decorated with metal beakheads taken from captured vessels-TRANS. - 172 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD still the ancient Tribune; we can still see the grooves in which had been inserted the iron beaks, or rostra, of the galleys of Antium. The old tem. ples have been many times rebuilt, but always on the old sites, and they have kept their ancient name. That mass of ruins piled up behind the Rostrum is the Temple of Concord, founded by Camillus after he had re-established peace between the citizens by throwing his influence onto the side of the Plebs; those three marvellous columns, masterpieces of an- tique art, which still stand up erect and graceful, are all that remain of the Temple of Castor, which Cicero calls, “The most illustrious of the monu- ments, witness of the whole political life of the Romans.” The road we are following, paved with great slabs, is the Sacra Via, or Sacred Way, over which so many triumphant generals marched; unrivalled in the glory of its memories; over no other highway have so many illustrious persons passed. As we gaze upon all these ruins memories crowd upon us, and a very little imagination enables us to see once more the grand scenes witnessed by the Forum during the Republic. - - With regard to the time of the Empire, on the other hand, imagina- tion is nearly useless, for there are plenty of monuments still standing, and some of them are very well preserved. Augustus boasted that he had rebuilt Rome. “I found it of brick, and I leave it of marble.” He wished, doubtless, to make the Romans forget the system of government under which they had lived so long, and which he had just destroyed. He well knew that the Romans had many different reasons for discontent. Some of them found it difficult to reconcile themselves to being no long- er free; they missed the sense of manliness resulting from being under no master, and feeling that they could dispose of themselves, and need obey no laws but those of their own making. These were the minority; the general population of Rome, consisting in a great measure of foreigners, and recruited from the ranks of slaves, were altogether unaffected by these noble sentiments. But at the same time for the worst citizens the Repub- lic offered certain attractions; not only did the elections give them a certain importance, and when their votes were paid for provided them with necessaries, the tumults of popular assemblies, the seditious ha- rangues of tribunes, and the street conflicts, which towards the close of that period were of daily occurrence, brought a sort of animation and interest into the lives of these lazy people to which they became accus- tomed and missed when they were wanting. To the first class, the lovers of liberty, whom he could not but admire, though he had to oppose them, Augustus offered, as compensation for their lost freedom, the spectacle ROME I73 of the grandeur of Rome, which had never been more striking than under his rule. As for the others—the idlers—he kept them occupied with the games of the arena and circus, religious and patriotic fêtes, solemn repre- sentations; and, best of all, by building for them temples, theatres, and Colonnades, and setting up everywhere statues, triumphal arches, and columns. He knew well that all this gaudy display would flatter the vanity and win the gratitude of the inhabitants of the great city. His successors followed his example, and from this time forward magnificence became one of the guiding principles of the Imperial policy. For three centuries every emperor who reigned made a point of leaving his name connected with some grand building. Some of the monuments erected under these conditions, and these the grandest and most durable, are built of that beautiful stone called travertime, which gleams like gold in the sunshine. As, however, it was a long and costly business to fetch travertime from the few quarries in which it was found, to cut it into large blocks and bring it to Rome—moreover, those princes who did not feel very sure of their continued power were eager to finish the works they had begun—they resorted to more expeditious means, building walls some- times with stones of irregular size connected with cement, forming a kind of open work known as opus reticulatum, sometimes of piled-up bricks with a facing of marble. And it was in this way that with none but ordinary workmen, and with no materials but lime, brick, and flints, they managed to construct those colossal arches which have withstood the ravages of centuries. g - One of the greatest pleasures a traveller can enjoy is a walk through Imperial Rome. It would take a very long time if we attempted to see everything, for there is not a corner of the town without some relic of the Caesars; but we will only pause at the more important and better preserved of the buildings. Suppose we begin with the Palatine; it was the resi- dence of the emperors, and it will be quite the thing to pay our respects to them in their home before we go to admire their works. The Palatine may justly be said to be the discovery and the prize of archaeologists of our time. Until 1860 the hill was occupied by the Farnese Gardens, and the visitor would wander about beneath the great trees or sit down in the groves of boxwood without a suspicion that these groves covered over the palace of the Caesars. Now the trees are on the ground, the hill is laid bare, and the palaces have been brought to light. Among enormous foundations, dating from every century, and piles of ruins astonishing to the sight and bewildering to the mind, some few parts stand out in special 174 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD prominence. Here, for instance, are the public apartments of the prince— a large room, of which some parts of the wall are still standing, all covered with marble, with niches which had held eight colossal statues, and had an apse in which doubtless was placed the curule or magisterial chair of the prince. It was here that he received the ambassadors of foreign kings and deputies from the provinces. Behind this room, at the end of a vast court, surrounded by colonnades, was the triclinium,” which still retains MOUNT AVENTINE,-Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by A. de Curzon part of its pavement of porphyry, serpentine, and gºallo antico, and of which Martialis said, when it was still new, that “it was as beautiful as the dining-hall of Olympus, and that in it the gods might drink nectar, and receive from the hands of Ganymedes the sacred cup." A little farther on is the stadium, from which the Emperor enjoyed the pleasure of witnessing at his ease with a few friends the contests of celebrated ath- letes or wrestlers; and, lastly, the Imperial balcony on the Circus Maxi- mus, from which he watched popular entertainments, giving the signal for chariot races, and applauding the victorious driver. We must not forget to note the so-called House of Germanicus, also called the House of Livia, * The triclinium was a hall containing a three-sided couch enclosing a dining-table-TRANS: ROME I75 which is a more simple and less pretentious building than the grand palaces around, to which perhaps the princes retired when weary of entertainments, and which they caused to be adorned with the finest paintings which have been found in Rome. Our visit over (and I am afraid it has been rather a long one), we will leave the Palatine by the grand antique staircase, which goes straight down to the Forum. The old Forum contained a great many monuments, which were built or rebuilt by the emperors—notably the Basilica Julia; but, as I have already said, it really belongs to the Republic, and the Empire, recognizing that it was useless to dispute the possession of this classic ground, decided to make other fora which should bear the names and preserve the memory of the princes under whom they were constructed, Thus beyond the ancient Forum, and forming a sort of continuation of it, were successively built the Forum of Julius Caesar, the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Nerva, and, most beautiful of all, the Forum of Trajan, forming together a marvellous whole which could not fail to awaken the wondering admiration of foreigners. As, however, there are but a few ruins left of all these fora, we will pass rapidly through them, for other better-preserved buildings await us. From the Forum of Trajan, after an admiring glance at the memorial columns and the ruins of basil- icas and libraries which fill the square, let us turn towards the Corso, which is the old Flaminian Way ascending to the Capitol. This was the road by which the people of ancient Rome went to the Campus Martius. Now the space between the Corso and the Tiber is the most densely popu- lated of the town, and is covered by a net-work of streets, the houses of which are closely crowded together. Formerly it was a large open plain reserved for the games and exercises of the young folks of Rome. Here went on racing, jumping, riding, playing at ball,” throwing of the discus or the javelin, etc.; after indulging in which pastimes, the young Romans would fling themselves all perspiring. into the Tiber, winning thus refresh- ment and rest. Such were the amusements of the youthful Republicans. Under the Empire very different diversions were indulged in. Horace reproached the younger men of his time “for being no longer able to * Among the many games of ball played at Rome were two which the Greeks called Uraina and Aporraris. In the former, which meant sky-high, the ball was thrown as high as possible; in the latter (bounce ball), the ball was thrown obliquely to the ground, its several rebounds being scored up, until it was caught by another player with the flat of his hand and thrown back; some- times it was kept up as long as possible with the open palm. The Trºgon, or three corner, a game needing special skill with the left hand, was also a very favorite game at Rome.—TRANS. 176 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD endure the heat and dust of the Campus Martius, and for shrinking from the oil with which the body was anointed before wrestling as if it were the blood of a viper.” When the vast plain became less frequented its limits could be reduced, and part of it used for other purposes without inconvenience. The emperors filled it with buildings which they did not know where else to erect. Augustus began the encroachments, and the plain retains three of the finest monuments dating from his age— namely, the Pantheon of Agrippa, the Portico of Octavia, and the theatre of Marcellus. The Pantheon is still intact, and remains as a complete model of Roman art in its most brilliant period. The other two buildings have suffered more; but if they could be isolated, part of their ancient beauty could be restored to them; the theatre especially, though sur- rounded by houses, is really almost complete. Truly it is a grievous pity that the municipality of Rome, which has spent so much money in making new streets, could not spare a little to keep in better preservation the ancient monuments which are the glory of their city. - To complete our study of Roman art under the Empire, let us con- tinue our walk. Leaving the theatre of Marcellus, we will take next the ancient quarter of Velabrum, and climb the slopes of the Palatine Hill till we come to the Arch of Titus. Here we are in the very heart of the do- main of the Flavian family, who succeeded the Caesars. Opposite to us rises the grandest work left to us by them—the huge mass of the Colosseum, the monument which gives us the best idea of Roman grandeur. It must be remembered that its height originally exceeded fifty-two metres, and it was capable of holding more than IOO,OOO spectators. In the course of centu- ries everything which could be done to destroy it has been done. The iron staples keeping the stones together have been sacrilegiously torn away; outer barbarians have assaulted it" again and again, breaking down the walls; architects have unskilfully restored it; during the Middle Ages it was turned into a fortress, and sustained I do not know how many sieges and conflagrations; later, a quarter of the inhabitants of Rome lodged in its porticos; in the fourteenth century it was turned into a quarry, and supplied the materials for building churches and palaces; yet it is still there, and when, standing at the foot of those portions still intact, we look up at the formidable wall, we cannot help agreeing with Martialis, who declared that the Pyramids had been surpassed. It is evident that a cen- tury after Augustus, when Vespasian began to build his amphitheatre, Roman architecture was at its zenith. Moreover, it had declined but little fifty years later, at the time of the Emperor Severus, when Caracalla had ROME 177 the baths built of which such beautiful ruins remain near the gate of S. Se- bastiano. Some of the finest qualities of Roman architecture are also seen in the baths of Diocletian, which are near the railway station, and in the large Basilica at the entrance to the Forum which bears the name of Con- stantine, although it was really the work of his predecessor Maxentius. THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.-Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph The decadence had, however, set in ; and although Roman architecture still retains an imposing grandeur, the more delicate arts, such as sculpture, are dying out. We see this all too plainly when we look at the Arch of Constantine near the Colosseum. It looks well enough at a distance, but when you get near, you see that the upper bass-reliefs, representing inci- dents from the life of the prince, are of quite clumsy execution; those placed at the greatest height have been taken in a happy-go-lucky man- ner from an Arch of Trajan, and their grace and beauty bring out more forcibly the inferiority of the others. The day of barbarism has dawned. Our walk through Imperial Rome is over. We are now at one of those turning-points of Roman history to I2 178 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD which I referred at the beginning of this essay. It would have seemed likely that, the Empire being dead, the great destinies of Rome were over; far from that, they were to be carried on with greater glory than ever. It is a characteristic of Rome, as we have seen, to be able to renew her life, to become young again, to make yet another fortune when the first is exhausted. Christianity survived the Empire, and became its heir. Rome was converted into the capital of Christendom, as she had been of the Latin world, and the new religion restored to her the supremacy she had lost. These things, however, do not happen in a day, and to bring them about much time, with a concurrence of fortunate circumstances, was necessary. When I examined, in a chapel of the Santi Quattro Coronati, the frescos representing the apotheosis of Constantine, I felt that the Roman Church had very good reason for honoring that Emperor as she did. He served her wonderfully in two different ways: first, by embracing Christianity; and, secondly, by living at Constantinople. The presence in Rome of the Imperial authority had checked the progress of the Church; whereas, when left alone, she developed freely, and drew “all men unto her.” From the fifth century the new state of things began to be very evident. A Gallic poet, St. Prosper, says in precise terms that, in becoming the See of St. Peter and of his successors, Rome once more led the world, and that the races taken from her by her defeat were given back to her by her religion: - “Facta Caput mundi, quidquid non possidet armis Religione tenet.” The monuments of Christian Rome are more interesting for us than those of Imperial Rome, for we are all the children of Christianity; whether we be submissive or rebellious sons we cannot deny our Mother, and her history is our own. Our study of the relics in Rome, which ap- peared to be closed, must then begin again. Our walk will be neither shorter nor less curious than that we have just ended among the monu- ments of the Caesars. Rome has the unique advantage of possessing the most ancient relics remaining to us of the early days of Christianity. The dawning religion, poor and menaced, dreamed not of building grand edifices, such as time would respect. Moreover, the simplicity of the Christian creed would not then have permitted anything of the kind. “We have no altars, no tem- ples,” said one of the earliest Christian apologists, Menucius Felix. The first meetings were held in private houses, which were doubtless often ROME ^ - I79 changed to elude the vigilance of enemies; and though a little later, at the time of Alexander Severus and his successors, a few oratories were erected, they are sure to have been of a very humble description, as was fitting for a sect that was barely tolerated, and did not wish to attract too much attention from the authorities. Moreover, all these early places of worship were destroyed under Diocletian. But the dead had to be bur. ied, and buried side by side with their kindred. The little community wished to keep together in death as in life, and in this we have the origin of the Catacombs. At what time were they first used ? Some of them seem to date from the second century; several, certainly, belong to the third. In the catacomb of Callixtus, De Rossi discovered the tombs of the Popes of the third century, which are of a touching simplicity. The body is covered over by a stone without ornament, the epitaph contains no eulogy, no expressions of regret; it reads simply: “Anteros, bishop; Eutychiamus, bishop.” On that of Fabianus another hand has added later the word martyr. This simplicity forms a strange contrast with the fan- tastic tombs of modern bishops, such as we meet with in the churches of Rome. g We must visit the Catacombs. It will be an excursion offering nothing attractive, and which at first sight does not appear to be very useful either. One soon gets tired of wandering through these endless galleries, the walls of which are pierced with parallel niches, not unlike the openings in chests of drawers, arranged in tiers one above the other, in which the bodies were placed ; one soon finds it difficult to endure the clammy dampness and sickly smell emitted from them. But if we can get over this first disagreeable impression, and examine the Catacombs more closely, we find that these long, monotonous passages have much to teach us. To begin with, their very immensity, which seems to us so fatiguing, will give us an idea of the great number of the faithful in the third century. It is probable that each tomb originally consisted of a small crypt which some Christian richer than his comrades had had hewn out as a grave for himself beneath land belonging to him. As among the heathen a place was given in funeral monuments to the closest friends and the most faithful freedmen of the deceased, so did the Christian collect about him those who shared his faith. But the number of those to be interred was ever on the increase; first, the tombs were packed more closely together, then the crypt was enlarged. Later, other parallel crypts were added, and when they too were full the ground was hollowed out beneath them till the houses of the dead were several stories high. As we wander in the - 18o - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD labyrinth of galleries intersecting each other at right angles, or springing from a common centre, and climb or descend the narrow staircases leading from one story to another, we note with what care every inch of ground was turned to account, and we realize vividly with what rapidity the new religion spread. The Catacombs teach us other more important lessons if we have pa- tience to examine the tombs in detail. Let us glance for a moment at the inscriptions which time has not yet ren- dered illegible. Most of them consist but of one or two lines: the name and age of the defunct, the date of his death—just enough to guide those who came to pray on an- niversaries at his grave. Was he a slave or a free man? Was he rich or poor? Was he a magistrate or a private citizen? What are these earthly distinctions when the soul is . about to appear before its Saviour? Nor need we seek for the compliments with which epitaphs are generally overladen. At the most we have now and then the cry of some mother unable to contain her grief, who tells us of the child she has just lost—that it was a sweet and innocent little soul. Now and then, too, we come across one of those symbols which remind the faithful of their common belief: the anchor, the fish, the dove, and some pious formula which expresses in a brief sentence the hopes of those who survive, such as: “God be with thee,” or “Rest in peace.” How many things are brought vividly before us by this simplicity, this repressed sorrow, THE COLOSSEUM.–Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph ROME - 181 this faith which seems too deep for words ! Nothing brings us into closer rapport with primitive Christianity than do these tombs. Some few of the Catacombs contain paintings which have suffered greatly from time. These paintings deserve careful study; they are the very earliest outcome of Christian art, and we see in them that from the very first art had to solve the problem which decided its ultimate development. To what extent was she justified in availing herself of antique art? Was it necessary to find new modes of representation for the new belief ? Or might Christian art without scruple borrow what suited her from the artists of the past 2 There was no need to hesitate with regard to decorative painting; there could not possibly be any harm in covering the walls with a series of charming arabesques, or even of introducing wonderful birds and winged genii among garlands of flowers. It was in this way that Christian artists reproduced ancient patterns without modification, so that we find in the homes of the dead elegant ceilings, reminding us of the pretty fancies of those of Pompeii. But when it came to regular pictures the question was more difficult to decide, and the artists betrayed their embarrassment by always choosing the same subjects. The Bible supplied them with a few, which they reproduced perpetually in almost the same manner. We have Moses making the rock bring forth water; the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace, whose example was an exhortation to martyr- dom; Jonas coming out alive from the mouth of the whale, which was to the Christian an allegory of the resurrection of the dead. In dealing with the New Testament the painters were less at their ease, and to evade their difficulties they sometimes had recourse to imitation of the antique. In this way they represented Christ, now as a shepherd carrying a lamb on His shoulder, now as Orpheus taming the beasts with His lyre; and although Christian artists certainly did modify the figures a little, so as the better to express their thought, it is impossible to deny that they borrowed most of the attitudes direct from the work of heathen artists. In this we have an example of the path Christian art followed from the beginning to the end; her aim was ever to accommodate antique art to the faith of the Church. We see the crude early efforts in this direction in the Cata- combs. We find their final outcome in the Vatican. We can examine alike the beginning and the end of this movement, and trace its whole progress without leaving Rome. It was at Rome that the new churches were built after the conversion of Constantine, and it is Rome who has preserved for us the most ancient monuments of Christianity. Perhaps I am wrong, though, to say that she I82 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD has preserved them for us, for it is rather their memory than the actual structures that she retains. True, there are churches at the present day named after St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John Lateran; but they are not those built by Constantine — they have been so often restored and rebuilt that they retain nothing but their name that belongs to the past. This is in- tensely irritating, and one would like to take sig- nal vengeance upon the Popes for the money they have spent in de- stroying the venerable antiquity of these build- ings. But they had not the faintest suspicion of the sin they were com- mitting; on the contrary, we find by their inscrip- tions that they gloried in what we condemn as a crime. Scrupulous archae- ologists are but of yes- terday, and it is all they can do to get admission to Rome. Pius IX. cov- ered the old Liberian Ba- silica, now known as that of Santa Maria Maggi- - ore, with colored decora- tions; and as I write the restoration of the Lateran Basilica is near- ing completion, and there was but little of the old building left before it began. So it is no use deceiving ourselves. We have none of Constan- tine's basilicas left; and yet the buildings representing them will repay careful study, and a close examination is sure to reward us by some valuable discovery. For instance, let us take one of the most curious of all—that of S. Agnese fuori le mura, which is in a subterranean cave reached by a wide WOMEN OF TRASTEVERE.-After a drawing by Vogel |ROME 183 staircase of forty-five steps, at the bottom of which we find ourselves, to our Surprise, in a church with three naves upheld by antique columns. The church evidently replaces one of the primitive chapels which mark the site of the catacomb tomb of a martyr. S. Agnese takes us back to the very beginning of the worship of saints. The basilica of San Lorenzo, which probably dates from the same period, was built under somewhat different conditions. Instead of going down into the depths of the Catacombs to reach the church, as we do in S. Agnese, we find it built on the upper soil, the altar rising just above the tomb of the martyrs, which can be seen through an opening, and to which a staircase leads down. This opening is called a Confessio, and we find similar ones in nearly all the old churches of Rome. In spite of the modifications and mutilations to which these churches have been subjected, they have still retained a few relics of the past, so that taking them one by one, and putting together all that those who restored them in such a very unsatisfactory manner have left, as it were, against their will, we shall be able to piece together a kind of picture of what they were when they were built. Imagine a huge square court, such as we find at S. Clemente, with a fountain in the centre. This was the atrium, or fore-court, which deadened the sounds from the street. At the end of this atrium rises the façade—a large, bare, undecorated wall pierced with three doors. Although the Christians had now no longer anything to fear, they still retained the old customs, avoiding fine exteriors which might attract the angry attention of their enemies. The interior of the building is a vast space, generally divided into three naves by marble columns; these columns are mostly taken from more ancient monuments, and the most ornate were chosen. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of those which surround the choir of S. Lorenzo. The building ends in a semi- circular apse, in which are the bishop's throne and the seats of the priests. In the centre rises the altar, where the bishop officiated facing the worship- pers. This altar is generally surmounted by the cióorium, a sort of marble canopy supported by columns. The choir is separated from the rest of the building by a finely-worked marble balustrade. The beautiful Church of S. Clemente has retained its balustrade, as well as the two exquisite lecterns from which the Epistle and Gospel were read, and which are called ambones. Lastly, the apsis and colonnade connecting it with the nave are generally decorated with mosaics, which, although often restored, retain more traces of antiquity than any other part. The most curious are those of San Pruden- tiana, San Maria Maggiore, and SS. Cosmo and Damiano. By this means we are able to gain at Rome an idea of the basilica, which was the earliest 184 A. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD type of a Christian church. It is a style of building which those used to the magnificence and daring grandeur of Gothic buildings do not at first sight appreciate; but when they become accustomed to it they find it really better proportioned, more suitable, more touching in its simplicity, and per- haps, from another point of view, more truly religious. However this may be, for six hundred years no other Christian style of architecture arose, and Rome is the only place where a true idea can be formed of what that architecture was. We now come to a gap of eight or nine centuries. Not that Rome did not play a grand part in the Middle Ages in the affairs of the Chris- tian world, but because she retains very few monuments dating from that time. The Gothic style never suited Rome; her instincts and her memo- ries alike are classic, and she has remained faithful to ancient tradition. Thus she waited for the Renaissance to reawake the love of the past before she began again to produce architects, sculptors, and painters of eminence. The great movement of the Renaissance began late at Rome, and closed early; it is generally said to have lasted from the time of Pope Nicholas V. (1447 to 1527), when the town was sacked by the army of Charles V. This represents less than a century, but in this short time marvels were produced. The course pursued by men of genius in the revival of letters and of the arts has ever been the same. Antique master- pieces have, in the first place, been exhumed; then an attempt has been made to imitate them, and this attempt has succeeded. . - - Ancient books were the first to be brought to light again. Drawn from the obscurity of convents, where they were read without being under- stood, collected together and explaining each other, placed at the service of all students, these books disseminated throughout the world a passion for knowledge which transformed society. In this revival of literature and of the ancient sciences Rome played a grand part. If we want to get an idea of the work of the Renaissance, when the treasures of Greece and Rome were so eagerly sought after, we must go to the library of the Vatican. It may be said to have been founded by Nicholas V., who was the first to give it any importance. He sent Enoch of Ascoli, and many others, to search the convents of Germany, and take from them all they could find; at the same time Greek savants, flying before the Turks, brought to him Homer and Plato. Before his death, Nicholas V. had added 50oo valuable manu- scripts to those owned by his predecessors. Since then the number has been greatly increased, and there are now more than 25,000. No library ROME - 187 in the world is as rich in this respect as the Vatican. As we enter it we cannot but feel a sense of veneration when we remember all that has been done by its means to aid the progress of thought, and to promote the good of humanity. And as a matter of fact, these precious works, which embody all the genius of antiquity, are treated with the greatest deference. They are housed in magnificent rooms, which are paved with marble and adorned with frescos, and some of the more precious of the manuscripts are exhibited to the reverent gaze of visitors in glass cases. But there is no doubt that all these honors are fully merited. After the books came the masterpieces of ancient art. No other coun- try possessed more than Rome. Her legions brought them from every country when she was mistress of the world. During the barbarian ages these works of art had been hidden beneath the ruins of the houses and temples they had adorned. It would not have been much trouble to find them again; but they were not sought for until people were able to under- stand them. It was towards the close of the fifteenth century that the lovely statues which had been lost for nearly 1000 years came forth from the earth. Julius II. took with him to the palace of the Popes the victorious “Apollo,” now in the court of the Belvedere, the name of which this famous statue bears. This “Apollo” was joined later by the “Laocoon,” found in the Baths of Titus, then by the “Ariadne.” Thus began the admirable collections of the Vatican, the Capitol, and the Lateran, which have not their equals in the world. Not only ancient Italy, but Greece is represented there by glorious works; in fact, nearly all that is best in antique art is there. Wealthy Romans were eager to possess the originals, or good copies of the principal works of the masters of antiquity, and we must give them the credit of knowing how to choose them when we find in the ruins of their houses the “Meleager,” the “Athlete" of Lysippus, the “Faun” of Praxiteles, the “Athene Polias,” the “Venus of Gnidus,” the “Menander,” the “Sophocles,” and the “Dying Gladiator” of the school of Pergamus. Thanks to the men of taste who collected these beautiful works about them, we find ourselves, as it were, in Greece, as we wander about in the museums of Rome. One of the greatest charms of this incomparable city is that the visitor finds in it much more than he comes to seek—a rare pleasure indeed when one is on one's travels. . And these masterpieces gain yet an added value in that they have inspired others. They served as models to the artists of the Renaissance. At Rome the glory of the Renaissance is concentrated in three names, I88 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD greatest among the great in this grand epoch: Bramante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. It is remarkable that not one of them was of Roman birth, but at no period did Rome produce many great men. Those who have made her illustrious by their productions in literature or in the arts came to her from the neighboring countries. She attracted them to her; she profited by their genius; but she also set on them her seal. By their aid Rome renewed her youth for the third time. It would indeed de- lay us long if we attempted to study in detail all their works, and to examine all the buildings they either erected or decorated, for truly their genius was pro- lific. Fearing that the reader may already be tired of the num- ber of expeditions we have taken together, I will content myself with mentioning what I think the finest work of each. To see Bra- mante at his best we must go to the Palazzo della Cancelleria, which is certainly the finest in Rome; Raphael's genius is best displayed in the Loggie and Stanze of the Vatican ; Michael Angelo's in the Sistine Chapel. Above all, we must not neglect HIS HOLINESS LEO XIII. to visit St. Peter's, which may be **ºº said to be an epitome of the Renaissance at Rome. I have often heard it said that it takes a long time to appreciate this cathedral, that its beauty and grandeur do not strike one at first sight; as for me, I have never entered it with- out emotion. Perhaps, indeed, the first visit made on me a more vivid im- pression than any of the others, for I saw it at first as a whole, and it is St. Peter's as a whole which is such a marvel. One has to look at it closely and in detail to note the inferior and shabby portions displaying shocking faults of taste; but when you look at it in its entirety, it melts into one har- monious structure. Quite contrary to what is generally said, one seems to ROME 189 have at once a vivid impression of the immensity of the building, but all is so well proportioned that this vastness seems natural, and does not surprise us in the least. It is sometimes spoken of as a fault; but to my mind it is a perfect triumph of art. It is also often said that there is nothing relig- ious about St. Peter's, and there is no doubt that it is not one of those mys. terious oratories made for prayer and solitary self-examination. It is more a place for praising God in triumphal hymns. The magnificent temple built to meet the needs of Christianity has been placed near the cradle of that religion. The growth of that religion can be traced in it. It is filled with relics of the past; in it are displayed the treasures which are a pride to all true believers. Every art has been called into requisition to celebrate the victory of faith. To a Christian convinced that his belief is to dominate the world, it is a grand spectacle. When at one of the Jubilee fêtes which attract to Rome the whole of Christendom, in that vast building containing thousands of men, in the midst of the gleaming marbles and glowing mosaics, amid the statues of Saints and the tombs of popes, the sovereign Pontiff rose to bless the prostrate throng, surely more than one of those present felt as if he were assisting at some scene in the Heavenly Jeru- salem described in the sacred books, and to which suffering and pious souls look forward, where all the faithful, after the trials of this life, will gather together from every part of the world to join in the joy and triumph of the last day. And even now does not religious feeling still show itself in a similar manner * - Gladly would I stop here. We have now arrived at the middle of the sixteenth century, when the glory of the Renaissance suddenly began to fade. Bramante and Raphael were dead, Michael Angelo was about to follow them. St. Peter's was finished somehow or another under the direction of second-rate artists, who altered the plans of the masters; the days were past when Michael Angelo sculptured his “Moses” and Raph- ael painted his “Transfiguration.” The decadence had already begun. But in this decadence much activity and intelligence was still displayed, and a great deal of work was done—though work of an inferior quality. The popes and cardinals retained that taste for magnificence which was to them an heirloom from ancient Rome. They prided themselves on building or decorating churches, much as the great lords of the time of Augustus and Trajan did in erecting public buildings. Of course these churches are in the fashion of the day, and that fashion was not good. The “Gesu” of Vignola became the model which every architect wished to reproduce. Simple outlines were avoided, straight lines were held in I9o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD horror; architects revelled in the picturesque and the brilliant; they indulged in mannerisms, in grandiose effects; they piled on ornaments— they were ever striving after something new. A typical example of this whimsical, fantastic, and over-decorated art is the Fontana di Trevi, built in 1735 after the designs of Nicolo Salvi. It must be admitted, however, that these huge structures have their good qualities. They display spirit, fertility of resource and invention, with great manual dexterity, and they produce a decorative effect which explains the success they achieved at the time of their erection. We must guard against condemning them en masse, and refusing, as is sometimes done, to look at them or to take them into account; to do so would be to get a distaste for Rome, which is full of such buildings. We ought, indeed, to make an attempt to understand them, and I have no doubt that it could be done. In matters of art Rome teaches tolerance. In a country of past experiences so varied, owning monuments all alike admirable, dating from two or three differ- ent epochs of antiquity, a comprehensive taste and breadth of mental vision must be cultivated. We must remember, moreover, that this art of the decline has its historic importance; it represents two centuries of Roman life which cannot be suppressed, and it introduces us to a society in which we should have been very glad to move. This, then, is how I propose getting some pleasure out of looking at the contorted statues of Bernini and the uncouth façades of Borromini, even when we are fresh from admiring the masterpieces of antiquity and of the Renaissance. Let us bear in mind the society for which these monuments were erected. The artists worked for the age in which they lived, and the study of that age will enable us to understand them. We have, in fact, a very charming work to consult to help us in understand- ing this period, at least when it was about to close—a work which is the most delicate, the most piquant, and the truest ever inspired by a visit to Rome. I allude to the Letters of De Brosses. - De Brosses was a very learned magistrate, well versed in the knowl. edge of Latin antiquity, which won for him a place in the Gallery of Inscriptions. But he was more than that—he was a man of wide culture, who understood art well and loved it passionately. Of course, with this enlightened taste and versatility, he was enchanted with Italy. He went to visit that country, he remained there a year, and returned penetrated with an intense and sincere admiration for her, unspoiled by any of the trammels of convention. Nowadays, when Italy has been so often described, it is known without being seen, and one is involuntarily swayed COURSE DE CHARS.–Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Checa ROME f I93 by the influence of one's predecessors. In the enthusiasm felt for Rome there is always something of imitation and association; but in the time of De Brosses people travelled about less, and he was able to give free scope to his personal feelings, and the emotion he felt was altogether his own. He only tells us what he really felt as he felt it; and this merit has become so rare among the travellers of the present day that it is altogether charming. The chief element of our delight in reading his book is that he describes a very curious state of society which has now passed away. The Italy he saw, and saw so well, resembles in nothing that of the present day. It is the Italy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and he gives us a vivid picture of the mode of life between the end of the Renaissance and the French Revolution. When he visited Italy there were no longer any great writers or great artists; with the excep- tion of music, all the arts were rapidly declining; but the people of the country took little notice of that. They were resting in a kind of happy inaction after a long period of fecundity, and that passion for work and invention which had been so exhausting ever since the time of Dante and Giotto. Italy had not yet begun to dream of regaining her independence nor of achieving political unity. Satisfied with the present, happy in the mere fact of living, she gave herself up entirely to light-hearted gayety and pleasure. The petty princes among whom her lands were divided were ruining themselves with dissipation, and the Republic still in exist- ence had no more pressing cares of state than the invention of new amusements. It was thus that Ch. de Brosses saw and described it; and Stendhal, who knew Italy so well, says that no foreigner, either before or after him, saw or judged it better than the magistrate. He photographed it just as it was; he brought it vividly before our eyes, with its strange customs and striking contrasts: its abbés, in their red-heeled shoes, who allowed themselves to be tapped on the nose with fans by celebrated courte- sans in the presence of 4000 spectators; its abbesses who would draw a dagger in the cause of a lover; its ladies always accompanied by their beaus; those podestas in huge perukes, those well-dressed, dainty officers, who had seen no other fire but that of St. John; those theatres in which more monks were seen than in processions, and where between the acts great ladies went round collecting money; those convents where the nuns did their best to enhance their beauty, wearing charming little coiffures and bodices differing but little from those of actresses. In his pages we see the Papal Rome during the agitations and intrigues of a conclave; Naples, with its lazzarielli, most degraded of lower classes; Venice, with I3 I94 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the follies of its carnival, which lasts for weeks, and during which no one, not even the Nuncio or the Superior of the Capuchins, goes about without a mask. The whole of this grotesque world passes before us like an extraor- dinary apparition when we read the Letters of De Brosses. The better “MOSES,” By MICHAEL ANGELO Engraved by Rousseau streets are being opened out, to understand this apparition we must im- agine it to appear in the palaces and the churches, near the fountains and among the statues erected by the disciples of Ber- nini. They form the environment suited to it; there it will appear more vivid, and, at the same time, it will give some life to these monuments of a day gone by. All is indeed changed at the present day, and Rome is about to be restored Once more. Will this restoration be for her honor? This question cannot be an- swered yet; we see her now torn by polit- ical agitation. The town of the Caesars and the Popes has become the capital of a great modern State, and she will have to submit to the consequences. To meet the necessities of the new state of things, the old quarters are being pulled down, new huge vulgar mansions are being erected. It is already becoming difficult to find the quiet seclusion which was once the great charm of Rome. Every day something fresh is lost of her original character, and it is only too certain that the evil will increase as time goes on. Those who would wish to breathe the aroma of the past, and to visit Rome before she has become a great modern capital, exactly like every other, must indeed beware of delay. \ \ | e * - \ \ \ | TENEEKAS A / ſº | | | y | GENEVA VERY one knows that the official cap- ital of Switzerland is Bern; but the federal city, in spite of its arcaded streets, its ancient fountains, and its Bears' Den on the banks of the Aar, where bears still live as in olden days, supported by the municipal- ity, has a history nothing like as important as that of Geneva, the name of which calls up a past of conflict and glory, and which, since the Reformation, has been one of the intellectual centres of the civilized world. True, the ancient Republic of Bern can also boast of her hours of heroism and days of - grandeur, and her history, though of com- NATIONAL MONUMENT paratively local interest, is rich in examples Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph of courage, energy, and love of independence. But for all that, we cannot say of her, as it has been said of Geneva, that she is the “grain of musk which perfumes Europe,” still less that she is the “world in a nutshell.” The first stroll taken by a stranger on arrival in Geneva will reveal to him the existence of two towns united in one or entangled together. On leaving the station he will pass on the right the quite modern church which the patient efforts of Catholicism have succeeded in erecting in “Protestant Rome,” and in which the zeal of the Kulturkampf has installed Père Hyacinthe, and follow the broad thoroughfare known as the Rue du Mont Blanc, which is lined with shops and presents a most animated scene. After crossing the Rhone, which issues from the lake as a wide, limpid, and transparent stream, the visitor, if the weather be favorable, will admire the magnificent panorama of the Alps spread out before him 198 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Opposite to him, among the mountains of the middle distance, rise the white mass of Mont Blanc, the snow-clad Buet, the gleaming ridges of the Aiguille Verte, forming together an accumulation of vaporous snow which sometimes seems to be floating in the sky. Fogs often completely envelop this chain of mountains, and their disappearance entirely changes the character of the landscape; it is then the lesser heights of the foreground which arrest the attention, not swallowed up in the dazzling whiteness of perpetual snow, but standing out as rocky heights, like the Vergys or the Brezon, or as grass-clad slopes like the less savage-looking pyramid of the Mole, or even bright with verdure like the sides of the Voirons. The near- est of these mountains, the Salève, overlooking the town, has a very marked individuality of its own : a nameless sadness and severity, a strange aggres- sive sullenness, with its arid slopes, on which stunted bushes cling to the bare rocks, and its few trees on the upper ridges a little below the dome- like summit, which is sparsely clad with grass. But the visitor crosses the bridge among flights of gulls, as tame here in the winter as are the spar- rows of the Luxembourg, and finds himself on the left bank of the Rhone, where the two towns meet—the old and the new. The old town, built on a hill, is cramped and gloomy. In the lower part, congregating especially about the little Gothic Church of La Made- leine, are numerous narrow, damp, unhealthy streets. The houses, some of which date from the fifteenth or even the fourteenth century, are tumbling to pieces. The better ones have central courts, on to which open rooms without air or light, the low windows being further darkened by galleries. These large houses, with one gloomy story above another, and tumble- down hovels in which the damp oozes from the walls, are densely popu- lated, and resemble the poor quarters of large cities. In the upper part of the town, with the Cathedral of St. Pierre, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Arse- nal, are the hotels of the oldest families of Geneva (the De Saussures, the De la Rives, the Neckers, etc.). This quarter was and still is the aristo- cratic quarter—the quarter of the “upper ten thousand,” as the Radicals call them—and these upper ten thousand still prefer it to the elegance of the new quarters, partly because they are used to it, and partly out of respect for the traditions of the past. For all that, the streets are monoto- nous and nearly as narrow, nearly as dark, as those of the low town, and there is absolutely nothing beautiful about the buildings. The Cathedral of St. Pierre, for instance, the original building of which dates from the tenth century, has been at different periods added to, cut about, decorated and restored until it has a composite character of a most unpleasing kind; it is GENEVA - I99 gray, gloomy, forbidding, and the crowded details spoil the general effect. The Hôtel de Ville, more curious and of more personal interest, if I may so express myself, is specially remarkable for the inclined plane which serves as a staircase and leads to the council-chambers.” To sum up, the only advantage of the upper town is the very fine view obtained from some of GENEVA.-Engraved by Ruffe, after the water-color by Bethune its hotels, and from the Promenade de la Treille, of the lake and of the Jura Mountains. Going down the Promenade de la Treille, the visitor finds himself in the new part of Geneva, which is as spacious, elegant, and comfortable as the old town is the reverse. The promenade leads on to the Place Neuve, nearly all of the buildings on which are of quite recent construction. If he has a taste for ornate and insignificant modern architecture, he will not fail to admire the theatre built on the model of the Opéra-house of Paris. He will go into the Musée Rath, where a few good pictures may interest him, and in obedience to his Baedeker he will look at the equestrian statue of * Councillors could ride up or down this inclined plane, or be carried to the halls in litters.-TRANS. 2 OO THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD General Dufour, the Conservatoire de Musique, from which issues a con- fused sound of several pianos, violins, and other instruments, and the so- called Bâtiment Electoral, surnamed the Boite aux Gifles, in memory of scenes of which this sobriquet sufficiently indicates the character. Our traveller will note that these several buildings are well planned and suita. ble for their various purposes, but he will find but little to gratify his aesthetic faculty. Then he will pass into the fine avenue of chestnuts known as the Promenade des Bastions, pass between the borders of the Botanic Garden and the massive and spacious buildings of the University and the Public Library, and catching sight among the trees of the gleam of bronze, he will pause before a group which will, I think, altogether stupefy him with amazement. This group is called “Le Temps Découvrant la Vérité" (Time Discovering Truth). It is symbolic, and represents an old man about to remove the last pieces of clothing veiling a young woman, who holds up a torch to throw light upon the operation, which does not ap- pear to surprise her in the least. The visitor will very quickly turn away from this symbolic group, and walking straight on, he will pass between several elegant villas till he comes to the Champel quarter, which is the most pleasing, the brightest, freshest, most smiling part of New Geneva. Strictly speaking, Champel is not a quarter, but a kind of little suburb backed on to the metropolis, which it gayly gazes down on from its hill. It is a miniature watering-place, with its hydropathic establishment on the banks of the Arve, its green thickets of Beau Séjour, its pretty little houses surrounded by gardens, its fine open country, and last, not least, its tower— its surprising tower— built a few years ago in the style bords du Rhin, which tourists visit as conscientiously as if it were a true antique. The streets of Champel all run down to the Arve, which is spanned by no bridge, so that the place retains a rare quiet and seclusion, where one may fancy one's self far away from the town, when one really is beneath old trees with a peaceful, almost level landscape before one, for here the Jura sinks down to join the last slopes of the Salève chain. In taking the walk we have just described, the traveller has passed by many of the “curiosities” mentioned in guide-books: the monument to the Duke of Brunswick, immortalized by the Republicans on account of his munificence towards them; the English garden, where one never fails to admire the view of Mont Blanc, with several others; but he will have got an impression of Geneva which, I think, will be a very true one, and I feel that if he were asked to define the town he has just passed through, he would reply in something like these words: GENEVA 2 OI “Geneva is a very ancient town which has been much modernized and brightened up, but which for all that has retained its old foundations.” He will have made a very true answer, and at the same time he will have defined alike the external appearance of the town, and what, for want of a better term, I will call its moral character. - In the time of Caesar, Geneva, which he refers to in the first book of his Gallic War, was “a small market-town situated on the borders of the territories of the Allobroges, and the nearest to those of the Hel- vetii.” As is justly observed by Eugène Ritter, one of those who best know and understand their native land at the present day, the whole problem of the history of the town is aptly summed up in the few words, “Shall Geneva remain Allobrogean—that is to say, Savoyard—or shall she join the Helvetii?” This was the one question for her in the first century of our era, and it is not yet a hundred years since it was defini- tively settled. If Geneva had been ruled on geographical considerations, or if the attempts directed against her by the Counts of Savoy had suc- ceeded, she would now be a town like Chambéry or Lyons, more or less important, more or less decayed, the chief town of a more or less exten- sive district. But Geneva was not sufficiently Allobrogean to become Savoyard, and for many centuries she was not sufficiently Helvetian to be willing to become Swiss. She clung to her individual existence as long as ever she could. She remained a free city, jealous of her independence, and maintaining that independence with rare energy. In the eleventh century, when the kingdom of Burgundy fell to pieces, Geneva had the good-fortune to be elevated into an autonomous ecclesi- astical principality; governed by a bishop, who held the rank of a prince of the Holy Empire, she herself became an Imperial city; and from that moment the little State of but one league in diameter had to contend with the menacing ambition of her neighbors. Her first enemies were the Counts of Geneva, lords of the territory on the south of the town, who owned a patrimonial palace in the city itself, which city they strove in vain to subjugate to their authority. On the extinction of the family of the Counts of Geneva in 1401, the House of Savoy, which inherited their rights, endeavored in its turn to annex to its possessions the obstinate little town. For a century and a half the Counts of Savoy employed now force, now strategy, to get possession of Geneva, sometimes addressing the citizens as friends, and trying to estab. lish their suzerainty by demanding, on the plea of urgent necessity, aid in men or money. The aid was given, but always as a free gift. Or again, 2O2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the counts would try to ruin the trade of their neighbors, who, suffering from these intrigues, would say that they “preferred to live in poverty crowned with freedom than to be rich and fall into servitude.” At last actual force was resorted to, and skirmishes took place all round the town. Thus were the people of Ge- neva forced to choose be- tween their neighbors, and they elected those who inspired them with most confi- dence, the confeder- ated cantons, with whom they ended by signing a treaty of co-citizenship. Allied to the Swiss, Geneva was still no less an object of covetousness to the Dukes of Savoy, who in 1602 tried for the last time to take posses- sion of it by a bold coup de main, known under the name of the Escalade. After this Geneva had a long period of rest from attacks from without; but she was torn by internal factions, to which we shall refer again pres- ently. Then, after the wars of the Revolution, she was annexed to France. The Genevese cared too much for their autonomy to resign them- selves to annexation. Under the new regime, which she did not acknowl- edge, her population diminished by one-third. Those who could do so THE QUAY OF MonT BLANC, GENEVA After a drawing by Boudier GENEVA 2O3 emigrated, and population and commerce were at a stand-still. The emi- grants, however, took with them the hope of return when their country should regain her liberty; and they did, in fact, rush back in crowds when, in 1813, at the approach of the allied armies, a provisional government proclaimed the restoration of the Republic. No one, however, hoped now that the old autonomy could be got back. Modern Europe does not allow races to dispose of their own future; and if the Congress of Vienna con- sented to take Geneva away from France, it was only to annex her defi- nitely to the Swiss Confederation, not as an independent ally, but as the 22d Canton. With the same blow they enlarged the territory of the old free city by annexing to it, whether they would or no, certain communes taken from the borders of France and Savoy. Apropos of this, a clear- sighted contemporary said, “Messieurs de Genève desenclavent leur terri- toire et enclavent leur religion” (the Genevese enfranchise their territory and enslave their religion.) The history of Geneva, then, with regard to the outside world, is one of suspicion and struggle. No less tempest-tossed is that of its inner life, for when the little town was by chance at peace with the Savoyards and the French, her inhabitants seized the opportunity of quarrelling among themselves. - - We have seen that, on the dissolution of the Burgundian monarchy, Geneva was created an ecclesiastical principality. At that time the au- thority of a prince-bishop was absolute. Two years later, about 1290, the citizens rose in revolt, and obtained certain privileges, among others the creation of four syndics, who held office for one year, and were nominated by the people themselves sitting in general council. There was, then, among these people, who were so attached to their autonomy, a universal love of liberty, a something resembling a demo- cratic leaven which was to increase in strength in the succeeding centuries. To combine the solidity essential to her autonomy with her growing liberal and democratic aspirations was the chief problem of the internal history of Geneva. This problem was already taking shape when the citizens revolted, in the fourteenth century, against their absolute rulers, and wrenched from them the concession of the four syndics. A prince- bishop of the following century—Adhemar Fabri by name—tried to solve it by granting a regular charter,” in which a recent historian, Jules Vuy, is pleased to see the origin of the political ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau. * See Les Constitutions et la République de Genève. By Henri Fazy. Geneva and Bâle. & 2O4. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The long struggles through which Geneva had to pass to win her inde- pendence, the rigid discipline of Calvin, with the absolutist spirit of the seventeenth century, arrested for a time the growth of the democratic germ; but it began to sprout again in the early part of the eighteenth century. At that time Geneva was, in fact, an oligarchic Republic. There were as many as eight members of one family in the councils, and the office of magistrate was so fully believed to be hereditary that of two brothers the elder would be chosen as a matter of course, quite irrespective of fitness. The demands of citizens excluded from the administration of affairs, long repressed and unheard, found voice at last. Troublous times ensued; blood was freely shed for thirty years; disorder prevailed, one quarrel succeeding another. The situation became so strained be- tween the rival factions, who were both equally tenacious of their rights, that the neighboring States became alarmed. The King of France and the allied Republics of Bern and Zürich sent mediators, who succeeded in reconciling the parties. But, as a matter of fact, the Act of Mediation of 1738 sacrificed the aristocratic to the democratic element, and half a century before the French Revolution consecrated the principle of the sovereignty of the people. - - Thanks to this Act of Mediation, Geneva at last realized some of her ancient aspirations, and affirmed her tendency to become a democratic State. The Act of 1738, however, did not suppress either the distinctions of rank or the preponderating influence that a certain number of old families continued to exercise in the councils. Public peace was, it is true, restored, but the problem of the antagonism between the aristocratic and popular parties still remained unsolved. Political equality was no longer discussed, but social equality was already beginning to be talked of. The citizens were still divided into three classes, which were unequally treated, and were all alike hostile to each other. These three classes were known as the bourgeois, the habitants, and the sujets. The bourgeois, or citizens, who held a monopoly of power and commerce, really constituted the repre- sentative people of Geneva, and exercised their sovereignty under the name of the General Council. The efforts of the democracy were, there- fore, mainly directed to enlarging the ranks of the representatives—that is to say, to admit to the councils, side by side with the citizens, the habitants and the sujets.” Beneath the apparent calm, though with decreasing * The translator has thought it best to retain these names of habitants and sujets, as the Eng- lish words “inhabitants” and “subjects” fail altogether to convey the same idea as the French. * GENEVA 205 virulence, the struggle continued, the animosity between the two factions remained the same, as shown by the storms aroused by the writings of Rousseau, who suddenly and with great eloquence constituted himself the interpreter of long-stifled claims. We see this antagonism yet again in the tolerance which the reigning families, in spite of their religious austerity, never ceased to extend to the unbelieving Voltaire, who, unlike his great rival, was no true revolutionary, and remained attached to nearly all the traditions of the past. The last vestiges of political and social inequality LA PLACE NEUVE, GENEVA.—Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph were not, however, to disappear entirely until much later, when Geneva, whose most illustrious citizen had contributed so much to prepare the way for the French Revolution, herself suffered from the reaction. It was in 1841 that a clever agitator, also endowed with the grand qualities of a statesman, one James Fazy, succeeded in achieving a victory for democ- racy, and the revolution in which he was the leader, which did away with all distinctions between the citizens of Geneva, and practically substituted the government of new men for that of the old families, at the same time 206 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD brought to the front the problem which seems destined to replace that solved by past generations, and which is still the most pressing question of the day—the social problem. “Our true nationality,” he says, in one of the reports in which he clearly defines the scope of his revolution and marks out the programme of his party, “is to be forever in the front. It is this which has distinguished Geneva in the past; it is this which is to distinguish her again. We have ever been of those who knew how to turn to account the great events of a century, and to make them fruitful of results in a small territory by the establishing of a good precedent. That which has won us success on more difficult points, and against greater antagonism, will enable us to succeed in a case in which every one goes beyond prece- dent. What we have to do is to prove to the world that the highest degree of practical liberty for a people is in the present time the best means of solving certain embarrassing social questions; of providing solu- tions for all the problems of organization and of the distribution of wealth ; to increase prosperity by well-directed efforts on these lines, so as the better to insure order and peace.” * Since the Revolution of 1841, Geneva has been divided into two great parties, which succeed each other in power at irregular intervals; the Radicals, who call themselves Radical Liberals, and the Conservatives, who call themselves Democrats. These two parties are not really as much divided as one would suppose from the heat of their discussions. As a matter of fact, the Democrats mostly belong to the old Genevese families, and form, in spite of the title of their party, a kind of aristocracy. They answer to what in the time of the divisions of classes were the citizens. The Radicals are the old habitants, the new men belonging to the social stratum which, until the present century, was excluded entirely from par- ticipation in public affairs, and which now strives to monopolize them entirely. In political and administrative matters the difference is much less marked, the Democrats are no longer blind reactionaries, nor do they dream of restoring a past they know to be dead. The Radicals seem to incline towards State socialism; but they are moderate in their aspira- tions, and cause no real anxiety—at least not at present—to capitalists and land-owners. The Radicals, who remained in power for some ten years, governed without arousing any serious discontent, except at the time of the Kulturkampf. The Democrats, who succeeded them a few months ago, in their turn manage public affairs in a liberal and just spirit. The time has gone by when at every election the rival factions came to blows. On the contrary, they have made reciprocal concessions. Of the GENEVA 207 seven members of which the Council of State (the administrative power) consists, there are always two or three who belong to the minority, and the representatives of the opposite parties live on good terms with each other, working together to the best of their ability for the good govern- ment of the Republic. Doubtless there are still malcontents, but they do them- selves no - - good by - complain- ing, and those who rise above the petty passions of the mo- ment cannot but recognize that all goes well. It must also be said, to explain this THE MONUMENT TO THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK - - - - Drawn by Boudier, f hotograph peaceful condition of affairs, rawn by Boudier, from a photograp that Geneva is no longer - the free city of former times, but merely a Swiss canton; her particular politics are therefore not of the importance they were. She is partially absorbed in the Federal policy, which tends more and more to encroach upon the autonomy of the cantons. This is, indeed, the danger of the hour for Geneva, who has everything to lose and nothing to gain by a more com- plete centralization; and to whom it is essential, whether in view of her own interests or the traditions of the past, to live her own individual life. Democrats and Radicals alike understand this thoroughly, and the most recent historian of the institutions of Geneva, Henry Fazy, has expressed the sentiments of all in the phrase, alike confident and anxious, in which he 208 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD concludes his last work: “In the midst of the varied preoccupations of our democratic life let us strive to maintain the sentiment of our national individuality, and to this end preserve with the greatest care that inde- pendence of spirit and conduct which has been for four centuries one of the distinctive features of the Genevese character.” The history of Geneva, then, may be summed up thus: struggles with foreigners to maintain her autonomy, internal dissensions to realize in the course of centuries her democratic aspirations. Moreover, she has had to suffer more than any other town from religious animosities. It is well known how Farel and Calvin introduced their reforms in Geneva, and made that city the bulwark of French Protestantism. The theocratic organization, which the energy and fanaticism of Calvin suc- ceeded in establishing, was destined soon to disappear, but not without leaving behind it deep and durable results. Looking through the edicts of 1543, one feels as if one must be dreaming. Fancy to yourself a relig- ious Utopia, an evangelical Arcadia—without, of course, any poetry or any shepherdesses—the realized ideal of an apostle imbued with a spirit of an asceticism that subjected a whole people to the insatiable requirements of his ferocious virtue. In this strangely constituted State ecclesiastical authority is paramount. The pastors, with the twelve councillors who were associated with them to form the Consistory, were commissioned to watch over the life of each member of the community—that is to say, they had the right, which they used, to inquire into the convictions, the doc- trines, the faith, the mode of life, of private individuals. Laws forbade all manner of luxury, gambling, dancing, music. The Council examined fash- ions before modistes were allowed to introduce them; a thoughtless song was a misdemeanor; a blasphemy, a crime; immorality was punished by imprisonment, adultery by death. Carried away by the religious zeal which Calvin had succeeded in letting loose among them, the Genevese, hitherto so jealous of their liberties, sacrificed them to the most pitiless tyranny conceivable — that tyranny which claims to rule even the con- science, to impose faith, and to control the very thoughts. N Nevertheless, the success of the Reformation was so complete, so absolute, that the Catholic element disappeared entirely from Geneva, and was absent for a long time. In 1759, two centuries after the time of Calvin, there were still but 2.27 Catholics, including, said the registries of the day, “the House of Voltaire.” The Catholic religion was, however, re-established by the French occupation, and the annexation of the Savoy. ard communes after the Treaty of Vienna suddenly changed the propor- - ***** CALVIN AND THE FOUR SYNDICS IN THE COURT-YARD OF THE COLLEGE of GENEVA.—From the picture by Hodler GENEVA 2 II tions of the professors of the rival faiths. Nearly as numerous now as the Protestants, the Catholics, whose position had been minutely defined by a special treaty, that of Turin, had their own worship, their own church, their own curé–a bold, enterprising, and combative curé, too: the Abbé Vuarin, who tried to bring over to Rome the ancient capital of the Reformation. The Catholics of the annexed communes were included in the bish- opric of Annecy, which was a kind of last link with Savoy that the Gen- evese Government endeavored to break. In this it succeeded in 1829, and in spite of the opposition of the Abbé Vuarin, the bishopric of Geneva was attached to that of Lausanne and Freiberg. The number of Catholics, however, continued to increase, and in 1860 they were 2000 stronger than the Protestants. The idea of making Geneva an independ- ent bishopric was naturally entertained, and a very enterprising and clever young priest, the Abbé Mermillod, attempted to realize it. In 1864 the then Curé of Geneva was named bishop in partibus of Hebron. This hurt nobody, and was tolerated. But at the same time Monseigneur Marilley, Bishop of Lausanne and Freiberg, allowed him to fulfil in Ge- neva the functions of Vicar-general. He even gave him the title, and the Pope in his turn named him auxiliary bishop for Geneva. The Gen- evese Government saw the danger, but by declining to legislate in the matter they tolerated this state of things for some time. The accession to power of a Genevese of the old school, Antoine Carteret, who was incited by the hereditary animosity against Catholics of the Calvinists of the sixteenth century, aroused the conflict which led to the Abbé Mermillod being conducted to the French frontier. This measure was, to a certain extent, justified, inasmuch as the attempt on the part of Rome to found a bishopric of Geneva was a manifest usurpation. But it let loose those religious passions ever ready to take fire in a town where doctrine occupies so much of the thoughts of the people, and provoked dissensions which it took a long time to allay. One of the results was to attract Père Hyacinthe Loyson to Geneva, and to substitute for Roman Catholicism, as the religion of the State, the creed known as that of the Old Catholics. This second reformation resembled the first in nothing, and Père Hya- cinthe, in spite of his brilliant talents as an orator, is not of the stuff of which Calvin was made. Crowds hastened to his meetings, but he con- vinced few, and the church which he somehow managed to found did not survive his departure. That church still exists, it is true; she still occupies premises previously reserved to Roman Catholics, and burdens the State 2 I 2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Budget with the stipends of her curés, but they officiate to all but 'empty benches, on which they can count on their fingers their three or four listeners. The mistake of the Genevese Government has been to imagine it possible that there should be a schism in Catholicism, and to speculate on the sectarian spirit which Rome has succeeded in suppressing or ban- ishing, while it rages beyond measure in the Reformed Church. Sects in fact, with their narrowness, their bigotry, and their absurdities are still a plague to the Geneva of the present day. The Salvation Army found here a field admirably prepared for it, and the town has had to tolerate it out of regard for that religious liberty which, it is true, allowed the conduct- ing of the Abbé Mermillod to the frontier, and the closing of the convents, but does not permit the rescue of the foolish victims of General Booth. N The power of expansion of sects, condemned to split up into factions, is fortunately very limited, and the different varieties of mémiers” they engen- der exercise but little influence even on the manners of their converts. The day of religious struggles seems to be coming to an end in Geneva, a.S everywhere else, and we may well believe that when the last Old Catholic has said his last mass to his last hearer, which will probably be before very long, there will remain no trace of the conflicts with which the names of Antoine Carteret and Cardinal Mermillod will ever remain associated. - Here, then, we have a town which presents the spectacle of an almost entirely original development, the history of which neither resembles nor belongs to that of any country; which for centuries has had its national independence, its own political existence, its peculiar religious life, which for a long time has made up by itself an individuality, a complete whole. It is natural that Geneva should have characteristics met with nowhere else. And, as a matter of fact, visitors to Geneva have always been struck with her originality even when—and this has sometimes been the case— they have judged that originality severely without being able to under- stand it. - - At the beginning of the sixteenth century the geographer Davity, who was the recluse of his time, devoted to Geneva a brief, incomplete, but very accurate notice. The Genevese astonished him. He was struck with their poverty, with their eager efforts to remedy that poverty, with their taste for economy, and the simplicity of their mode of life, which was carried to such a point that, instead of themselves eating the salmon- * Mómiers is a term of contempt applied to very strict Calvinists.-TRANS. GENEVA 213 - - trout of their lake, they sent them to Lyons ! The rigid decorum of man- ners was in accord with the extreme modesty of deportment of the Gen- evese. “All the world takes pride in gravity and reserve,” says Davity— sterling qualities enough, but with nothing lovable about them; and the geographer, who was a gentleman of the King's bedchamber, only half approved of them. A little more gayety and a little more sociability would have suited him better. Indeed, he himself adds: “The inhabitants of Geneva are clumsy enough in their manners and customs, but they have good brains, and know well enough how to manage their affairs. They don't care about seeing strangers in their town, especially if they have the faintest suspicion that they are Catholics. They pluck them, too, in the hostleries as well as ever they can.”” This notice seems incomplete, and in the next edition of Davity's book, which was revised and added to by an editor of Genevese birth, further details are given about the appearance of the town. The editor THE ISLAND of JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU After a drawing by Boudier * Les États, Empires, et Principautés du Monde, represente's far la description des ſays, mours des habitants, richesses des provinces, les fiscs, le gouvernement, la religion, et as Prº** gui ont gouverné chague État. Par le S. D. F. V. Y. Paris, 1613. 2 I4. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD goes into raptures over the monuments and the fine stone walls. He describes the view without, it is true, any more sense of the picturesque than was the fashion of the time, but with a certain taste, a latent admira- tion. His analysis of the Genevese character, far more elaborate than that of Davity, is also more sympathetic. He dwells on the same peculiarities, but defines them differently. As a true citizen of his native town, and unlike his predecessor, he cares more for seriousness than gayety, and his admiration for the solid qualities of his countrymen prevents him from reproaching them for their want of grace and ease of manner. “The Genevese,” he says, “are modest, frank, and intelligent; they succeed in the arts they cultivate. They love liberty more than do men of the world, and would rather die than lose it. They are ever gracious and courteous to strangers of whatever religion they be, and they are so respectful to those little distinguished in appearance that when they do not know them they salute them and give place to them when they meet them in the streets. They are very good-natured, not weakly so but praiseworthily, which does not prevent them from being very courteous in their affairs and negotiations. They are dangerous when irritated, and most cautious in the government of their Republic; indeed, this quality, combined with their courage, has kept their town free among a thousand attacks. They are also diligent and laborious, but very distrustful even among themselves; for they are persuaded that, humanly speaking, this is one of the means of their maintenance: not to trust one another, so great is their fear of being reduced to servitude They were once very rough, both in language and manner, but they are more civilized through the fre- quenting of other countries, seeing that when they are twelve or fifteen years old they travel all about the world, gaining polish, and then on their return home they keep shop, where they are employed aux charges publiques.”” To complete the picture, the editor gives a few instances of customs; among others he describes the following, which appears to me charming: The betrothal took place—as did all the acts of life—before a minister. This minister offered the lovers wine in different glasses, and when they had drunk he mixed the wine left in each together, after which he gave the young girl's glass to the young man, and vice versa. “Then,” adds * The translator has endeavored to give a close rendering of the quaint old French of this quotation; but it must be remembered that its spirit is altogether unlike that of our own lan- guage, and it resists translation into modern English. * …" | *iº i - | THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA.—After a drawing by Vogel our author, “the bridegroom gave a ring to his bride.” This graceful little ceremony astonishes us in a town where the austere doctrines of Calvin still prevailed. The account of Geneva concludes with a description of the tortures inflicted alike on convicted criminals and those accused of crime. The executioner must have had plenty to do. Husbands who had com- mitted adultery had their heads cut off, and as for the wives, they were taken out on the Rhone in boats and plunged into the river, with “a rope under the armpits, and a stone to make sure of their going to the bottom.” About the same time another and more illustrious traveller, John Milton,” gives an enthusiastic account of his visit to Geneva, in which town he spent a short time with one of his old Oxford fellow-students, Diodati, on his way home from Italy, where he had been very indignant at the laxity of manners and Catholicism generally. Everything charmed him in the little Calvinist Republic; there he found completely realized his ideal of theocratic government. The laws, customs, and manners con- trasted vividly with those he had just been studying, and Geneva was on a small scale the Puritan society England was shortly to become. One very remarkable thing about Geneva was that she remained obsti- * Pro me contra meorum Defensio, 2 I6 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD nately the same; the world about her changed, she was still what Calvin made her; retaining the sumptuary laws which even limited the outlay at funerals; her pastors still meddled in everything; she was still of an austere, rigid, and religious character. The famous article of Alembert in the En- cyclopædia shows us the same aspect of Geneva, and he speaks of that city with a singular mixture of admiration and repulsion. A man such as he was could not but admire the strength of solid institutions capable of assur- ing independence to a tiny republic isolated in the midst of powerful neigh- bors, and to imbue her citizens with the Spartan spirit; but the philoso- pher and atheist could not resist the temptation of railing at the religious practices, on which he could exercise his wit with impunity. Among other remarks he says: “Divine service consists of two things, preaching and singing. The sermons are almost entirely limited to the subject of mo- rality, and are of merit not worth speaking of; the singing is in very bad taste, and the French verses they sing are still worse. It is to be hoped that Geneva will reform in these two particulars, and perhaps succeed in praising God in better language and to better music.” This passage was anything but pleasing to Jacob Vernet, who had given a long memorandum to Alembert to help him with his article on Geneva. - To the philosophers of the day Geneva appeared a neo-Spartan, neo- Roman city—a kind of modern Lacedaemon. Did not Rousseau, in the dedication of his Discours sur l'inégalité, represent his country as a kind of ideal State, realizing the exceptional conditions which alone could promote liberty, good manners, peace, work, and intelligence P He even, far as he was from being a Calvinist, made an apology for the ministers, their in- fluence, and their character. “Every one,” he says, “knows with what suc- cess the great art of the pulpit is cultivated at Geneva. But too much accustomed to say one thing and do another, few people know to what an extent the spirit of Christianity, sanctity of manners, self-discipline, and charity towards others prevail among our ministers. Perhaps Geneva is the only town which presents the edifying example of perfect union be- tween a society of theologians and of men of letters.” Alas! he was soon to find that the liberalism of ecclesiastics, and, indeed, of laymen also, had its limits when he found himself driven out of the country he had loved so well and so much lauded—a country which had the books burned into which he had put his very soul. Yet it was the theologians of whom he had spoken in terms so flattering who rose against him. It was the Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard which raised the storm already prepared by the Mouvelle Héloïse and the Contrat Social. The free expression of his revo- GENEVA - 217 lutionary ideas had been tolerated when he touched nothing but society and morality; they were found dangerous when he threatened dogma. “Our people are wise,” wrote his most devoted defender, Father Moultou, “they are well-informed; but where the interests of God are concerned, like all our nations, they are easily deceived.” Profound words, truer perhaps of Geneva than of any other place at the time when Calvin's theocratic organ- ization was still almost intact, and partly true even now when there is no longer anything Calvinis- tic in public institutions, but much in private life. It was after the fall of Napoleon, with the return of the emigrants and the definite annexa- tion to Switzerland, that Genevese manners be- gan to be modified. The Geneva described by Stendhal in 1837 was al- ready very unlike that of Davity and Alembert. Stendhal found about him many opportunities for his habitual imper- tinence. Doubtless some aspects of Geneva pleased him; a spirit so free and frank as his could not but admire its independ- ence and originality. The severity of the struggle for existence which he deplores does not exactly - displease him ; he de- A WOMAN OF OLD GENEVA.—After a drawing by Estoppey lights in the fact that a - merchant with whom you are negotiating some big transaction claims a few pence from you for postage; he admires the skill with which some | | | | | *Unpublished letter to Reverdil. 2 I8 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD watch-maker with the very smallest talent for writing turns that talent to the best account for his own interests. One thing alone displeases him altogether, dilettamte as he is, wandering about the world just as a distrac- tion and to amuse himself, and that one thing is the total absence of gayety. “I like the Genevese very much,” he says, “till they reach the age of forty; by that time they will generally have put away a little money or made a large fortune, but then comes out the chief fault in their education. They do not know how to play; they have not learned how to live in prosperous circumstances; they become severe and puritanic; they get out of humor with all those who amuse themselves, or seem to do so; they dub them im- moral people. . . . No one,” he adds, “can excel a beautiful Genevese girl of eighteen years old; but in a face so pure, from which all gayety is banished, mémierism (ultra-Calvinism) makes fearful ravages.” . . . He then goes on to make fun of a grand household for which a serious cook from England had been engaged. “Don’t suppose that this means a cook who would not cook carelessly. What are gastronomic sensations to a family bent on restoring to Europe great monarchical and religious interests 2 What is meant is a cook who never laughs.” If Stendhal revisited Geneva he would find some changes, for the revolution in manners which began with the present century has gone on through the events alluded to above, and is now accentuated and completed. Geneva is now no longer the unique town described by the observers of the past; but just as she retains a few of her old streets and the foundations of some of her old buildings, she preserves beneath her modern varnish certain of her early characteristics. - The Genevese of to-day—I mean the true Genevese, one whose ances- tors were citizens, not habitants—is very much attached to the traditions of the past. He knows his native town to the very smallest details; every year he celebrates the anniversary of the Escalade either by eating a trout, a goose, or some shrimps, with the rest of his family, or by sharing one of the banquets got up by all the societies of the town for the occasion. According to his age and his position in society, he will either go to the masquerade or reverently sing the old Huguenot hymn composed for the day in a Savoyard patois. In religious matters he may have broken with all definite belief, but he will retain, handed down to him through many gener- ations, an hereditary respect for Calvinism and hatred of Roman Cathol- icism; he will frequent a church where his ministers, as in the time of Alembert, will dwell rather on morality than dogma, in a style which, though certainly improved, is not yet perfect. Moreover, the Genevese think GENEVA - 219 nothing of style, they care for no language but the correct, terse, academic, somewhat declamatory form of speech with certain affectations of purism. They were very much exercised in their minds about the so-called déca- deurs; nowhere was more fuss made about them; they were bantered in the papers, railed at at meetings, and sometimes even anathematized. It is not merely theoretical and practical morality which interests the Genevese; he is also very particular about les convenances; always correct, he often appears ceremonious; cold, solemn, and stilted, he stands, so to speak, upon his dig- nity. I think this is what Victor Cherbuliez calls “being perched up;” this weighty gravity of demeanor seems to the author of Paule Méré a symp- tom of vanity, but perhaps it really is merely the want of versatility which the era of Calvinism quite sufficiently explains. It is, in fact, in the history of Geneva–that history so full of struggle and suspicion of which we have been giving a sketch—that we must look for the origin of the most strik- ingly characteristic features of the combat-loving Genevese of the present day. His physical appearance, his marked features, express before all things energy and tenacity; and, truth to tell, he is energetic and tenacious in defending what he has and acquiring what he has not, often without any aim in view, but just for the pleasure of being what he is. Whether as lawyer or as merchant, inventor or financier, he always displays rare, patient, intelligent, and laborious activity in attaining the end he has in view ; he knows what he wants, he gets it, and he keeps it. Davity was astonished at the extreme poverty of the inhabitants of Geneva; two centuries after he wrote, Stendhal said, “The Genevese are the chief moneyed men of the Continent,” and at the present day Geneva numbers some hundred million- aires among her citizens. Although there are no longer any sumptuary laws, although the taste for elegance is spreading, economy is still held in honor—a little less is always spent than might be; very rich men eschew the use of carriages. But economy as understood by the true Genevese is as far removed from avarice as from prodigality; it permits no useless luxury, but it allows every- thing that augments comfort, well-being, and enjoyment of life. Nowhere is charity more practised. It might, perhaps, be exercised with more grace, but is it not a fact that in every country good works seem a kind of tax to which the rich condemn themselves with crabbed looks, more out of duty than goodness 2 This combativity, which is a valuable quality in business, may become a fault in social life. And, truth to tell, the Genevese is some- times very difficult to approach, and he has often not inaptly been compared to the chestnut—the fruit is excellent, but to get it you must prick your - - I Žovšºv- fingers. Now and then he is not content with standing suspiciously on his guard; he easily be- comes aggressive and launches out into bitter invective about trifles. He knows this so well that he has invented a word to describe this tendency in his character. This is avenaire; to be avemaire is to be rude, rough, touchy, punctil- ious, sulky, and gruff—in a word, to have every A GENEVESE OF THE PRESENT DAY possible fault of manner After a drawing by Estoppey not destructive of real goodness of heart, but detracting from its charm. In the same way the bise, or bitter north wind, does not destroy the beautiful landscape of the shores of the lake, but it spoils the enjoyment of them. The word avenaire is capable of many shades of expression; one may be more or less avenaire, and when this quality is - - GENEVA 22 I not in excess its owner is bearable. You must not conclude from all that has been said that the Genevese is an unsociable being; far from that; there is at Geneva a very elegant and polite society made up of open-hearted people who have travelled a great deal, seen and read much, and with whom, when once one is admitted to their gatherings, intercourse is very pleasant. Professional men of the world or snobs would doubtless charge them with want of buoyancy; but is this really a fault? are the pleasures of society less because they are taken seriously Or does conversation at a well-served table really lose by dwelling a little too deeply on the subjects discussed With his accurate mind and solid judgment, a Genevese would always pre- fer discussion to mere chat; he is more at ease in it, and is often very inter- esting when arguing. The characteristics I have been describing are common to all classes, though in different degrees. In the upper classes education, reading, and travelling have modified them; but among the people it is intensified, and is characterized by a sort of half-credulous simplicity which is not without its charm. The Genevese workmen, whether watch - makers or cabinet- makers, are of very individual types. Stendhal, who admired them after a fashion, characterizes them in a few words of remarkable justice. “The workmen of Geneva,” he says, “understand arguments which would in France be considered far beyond their class, but, on the other hand, they would not be delighted with the gamin de Paris and the admirable Bouffé, as are the young workmen who fill the pit of the Gymnasium. The work- men of Geneva shock strangers, especially strangers of noble birth—they are never obsequious.” Well-educated, and having in their libraries a Vol. taire and a Rousseau, which they have read, the cabinet-makers of the pres- ent day would, I believe, enjoy comic actors such as Bouffé. They are original, too, and if a little heavy, still amusing and incisive in their wit. It is impossible to travel in England without noticing the difference of character between the woman and the man; they do not seem to belong to the same race; the man is the strong combatant with his hand on the helm, going straight to his aim, while the woman seems charged with the task of making amends by her charm and grace for all that is too ener- getic and tenacious, too abrupt and rough, about her husband. Well, in Geneva you find very much the same kind of difference between the sexes. The Genevese women have gained much since the days of Stendhal. As in his day, they are pretty, but not because they cannot help it; they can now, on the contrary, enjoy their good looks. They dress simply and well. Their serious manner is neither pedantic nor sulky. They are still 222 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD rather given to preaching, but it is not at all disagreeable to be lectured by a pretty mouth. Moreover, except when they fall into mómierism— which, alas, still sometimes happens—there is nothing rigid about their devotion, and it does not prevent their performing with grace their duties as women of the world. They are intelligent and well read; they always know one or two foreign languages; they read and understand all contem- porary literature worth knowing, and therefore their conversation is rarely commonplace. Education is the chief danger to which they are subjected; it is abused, and too many teachers are turned out from the schools. Geneva has inherited from the past a taste for intellectual culture. We know how many remarkable men of every kind she has produced, and what a very large proportion of men of genius there have ever been in her population. In this respect she has remained faithful to her traditions; we must, however, remark that science has been cultivated rather than litera- ture, and the young men who devote themselves to liberal studies prefer science, and at the present moment it is scientific men who render Geneva illustrious. We must add that of late years literature seems to have become more esteemed; some young writers have arisen, a few of whom seem already to have succeeded in winning a position among men of letters. Stendhal severely reproached the Genevese writers for their “instinctive and fierce antipathy to the French spirit,” their labored style, and the heaviness of their literature. The leaning of the present day tow- ards French literature, which is becoming more and more accentuated, seems to tend to the toning down of some of the defects of the Genevese style. Certainly the antipathy to which Stendhal refers no longer exists; perhaps, some may say, because the French spirit has, during the last quar. ter of a century, become strangely tinged with cosmopolitanism. However that may be, and although their language is still a little heavy and dull, the young writers of Geneva follow pretty closely the Parisian movement, and some few of them have completely thrown in their lot with it. The so- called traditionalists never cease to reproach them for this tendency. The interest taken in the arts is also very keen. Thanks to the gen- erosity of certain wealthy and enlightened amateurs, Geneva has an orches- tºa and an opera company very superior to anything the resources of the town or the receipts at the theatre could pay for. The repertory is essen- tially French, although in 1890 “Lohengrin" was very successfully ren- dered. Gounod, Massenet, Lalo, and Delibes are much better liked by the Genevese public than the Italian composers. As everywhere else, music is almost too much cultivated. To the Conservatoire, which is town prop- || || || | TYPES OF THE MEN OF GENEVA.—After a drawing by Estoppey . GENEVA 225 erty, was added a few years ago a free academy, and these two establish- ments, which are really excellent institutions, fill every story of every house with a host of little amateur performers. In the summer, what with the orchestras of the cafés, the barrel-organs in full swing, the sound of pianos and violins, and the voices of singers heard from every open win- dow, Geneva is like one huge musical-box, resembling on a large scale the little instruments which are one of the specialties made in the town. Painting, too, has made great strides in Geneva, and its development has greatly resembled that of literature. This art also suffered from the heaviness and monoto- ny of the refugée style; in the hands of the Calames and Didays it was dull, heavy, and academic, but with the introduction of fresh blood it has become more independent, more fresh, more individual, and has even admitted the feel- ing for color. No doubt the Municipal Exhibitions THE STATUE OF JEAN JACQUES RousseAU held annually and the per- After a drawing by Vogel manent exhibition in the rooms of the Athenaeum leave much still to be desired; and the visitor who spends any time in them will note a good many canvases which would gain by not being shown, but he will also find, especially among the landscapes, a few showing true feeling for Nature and an honest effort to represent her. In every direction, as we have seen, there is a tendency to change, and the Geneva of the past is becoming superseded. In our first saunter round the quays and streets we made acquaintance with her old historic monuments, her ancient hotels and tumble-down houses, which are now surrounded by new quarters, with spruce, coquettish-looking houses, wide boulevards laid down with tramways, elegant villas in the midst of groves I5 226 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of young trees. In a similar manner the old foundations of the national character—rigid, austere, harsh, and obstinate—are still there, but toned down, softened, modified, open to new developments. From the Geneva of Calvin, which remained pretty much the same for more than two centuries, issues a new Geneva which, without breaking entirely with the traditions of her past, modifies them sufficiently to avoid being crushed, as were so many other historic cities which are now numbered among the dead. Re- juvenated, supported on one side by Switzerland, which has absorbed her without taking from her her individuality, and on the other side by France, to which she is bound by ties material and spiritual, Geneva is still the active, bustling, hard-working, and intelligent city she has ever been, know- ing how to attract to her the best elements of her neighbors and to give to them her own in exchange—a town of little importance if judged by the number of her inhabitants, but great by reason of her intellectual and moral value. - ^. ~...~2% ATHE NS T a turn of the avenue leading from the Piraeus to Athens, the traveller suddenly comes in sight of a pile of reddish rocks, rising from a plain overlooked by lofty hills. How- ever indifferent that traveller may be, or how- ever weary of visiting buildings and landscapes, I do not think he can fail to be overtaken by some little emotion; for this view of the Acropolis and Parthenon appeals alike to the eye and to the mind with irresistible force. On the right and left of the vast district of Attica rise the giant outlines of the summits of Hymettos and Parnes; while opposite, at the farther extremity of the amphitheatre, Pen- telikon rears its mighty crest like the ped- iment of a temple, the space between these mountain monarchs being filled in with a forest of olives, their masses of tender : , , ” | "...…. } Prºf… THE WARVAKEION STATUETTE: ATHENE PARTHENOS verdure contrasting well with the yellow- Engraved by Bazin, after the statuette in Pentelic e º : 4- 3 -. e º marble discovered at Athens in December, 1880, ish tºº brown soil. But it is only with diffi- and now in the Central Museum of that city culty that the eye turn.S away from the sanctuary of Athens; it is the focus tow- ards which converge all the beauties of nature with which it is surrounded. In vain beside it rise the pointed pyramid of Mount Lykabettos, and the rounded contours of the hill of the Muses; the brilliant sunshine seems to shine upon the resplendent lustre of the Acropolis alone. . This first impression can never be effaced; it is not merely imag- ination and the memories it calls up, it is the actual beauty of the scene itself which fascinates us; and if it be true that the prestige of the history 230 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of Athens has its share in the feelings which agitate us, it is no less certain that the rock hewn into the form of an altar, with the columns still standing - erect upon its platform and gleaming beneath the blue canopy of heaven, form, quite apart from all associations, a thrilling and startling revelation of beauty. A celestial glory bathes this mighty eminence and its ruined peristyles, the lines of which blend so well with the height from which they rise that they seem from a distance to form but one monument—one grand work created by the single effort of a sculptor of supreme genius. The town of Athens gathers about the foot of the Acropolis, and in the space dividing it from Mount Lykabettos rise groups of low white houses, divided by clumps of trees, scattered gardens, and wide avenues, the inhabitants seeming, so to speak, to rest secure at the foot of the sacred rock, confident that they are under the protection of a god. II About thirty years ago Athens was quite a small, thinly-peopled place. Two long streets forming a cross, know as the Rue d'Hermes and the Rue d'Éole, into which opened a number of narrow alleys, the Boulevard de l’Université, and the avenue known as the Rue du Stade, the Place de la Constitution, or Palace Square, containing the residence of the King, with a few thoroughfares in course of construction, and the Agora, or mercan- tile quarter, made up the whole of modern Athens. Since then, however, the town has grown with extraordinary rapidity. The increase of the pop- ulation, which has poured in from the provinces and the various Greek colonies of the East, drawn to Athens by that irresistible attraction ever exercised by a political and intellectual centre, gave an immense impulse to building, and as the town became bigger, its increased importance led to the influx of yet more inhabitants. Speculators in land and houses accelerated the natural growth, and now we see new quarters rapidly springing up all around the original emceinte; the approaches to Mount Lykabettos, especially the roads from the Piraeus, Patisia, and Kephisia, are lined with well-built, even elegant villas; the Rue du Stade now reaches the spacious Place de la Concorde, the wide Boulevard de l'Aca- démie has been built parallel with that of l’Université. Numerous minor streets connect these various thoroughfares, and a few rich citizens have had fine mansions of good style built for themselves. In fact, Athens has THE ACROPOLIS-VIEW TAKEN FROM THE OLYMPIEION.—EVENING EFFECT Engraved by Ruffe, after the water-color by Giallina now become a very beautiful town, occupying a considerably larger area than did the ancient city, even in its most prosperous days. Then, indeed, the wooden, or pisé,” houses were crowded together in narrow spaces, as can be seen by the traces still remaining on the rocky heights, now deserted, on which they were built, round about the Pnyx, the Areopagus, and the Hill of the Nymphs, and on the banks of the Ilissus; the public buildings and temples, the palaces of some few wealthy families, such as that described by Xenophon in his work on Domestic Economy, alone being at all spacious. Modern Athenians, on the other hand, understand home life, and know as well as anybody how to appreciate the material advantages of civilization, and even of luxury. They choose sites of a suitable size for their houses, and, as a result, the town has invaded the country; and already far away from the heart of the city, on various parts of the plain, we see groups of houses gradually rising; groups which are still isolated, but which will soon be joined by others, thus sensibly widen- ing the boundaries of the City of Minerva. I must add that these buildings, which have, perhaps, in the interests of the financial world, been erected rather too hastily, do not at all interfere with those of archaeology, which, at * Pisé is a kind of wall made of clay or earth, pressed between moulds, which were carried up as the wall increased in height—TRANs. 232 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Athens, it does not do to ignore; it is not on the site of the ancient city that the new houses are springing up; they are only monopolizing country sites hitherto completely unoccupied, so that there is no risk of their encroaching on or covering over valuable ruins. III I shall speak presently of the ruins of Athens, which are the visible heart and soul of the modern city, which, though a pleasant place enough, would be but a second-rate European capital if its famous relics of antiq- uity did not place it in the first rank. The Greeks know this well, and justly pride themselves upon it; these ruins, in fact, form an intrinsic part of their daily life. They represent all that is dearest and most sacred to a nation—its primitive religion, its art, and its history. We must add, moreover, that the buildings recently erected, if they have not the grandeur of those of the past, have yet a value of their own; because they bear witness to a feeling among the citizens of the present day for national art, and a legitimate desire to give to their capital an appearance and dignity in harmony with the undying ambitions of a noble race. The new University, which is of considerable size, is of a style alike grand and simple, and the pillars of its façade rise from a fine well-lighted square; the gardens facing it, the statues placed at the approaches to its handsome peristyle, its pediment, and the skilful arrangement of its side wings form an architectural whole which would not have been unworthy of the best age of antiquity. The Academy, built entirely of white marble, reminds us of the delicate beauty of antique temples; its elegant propor- tions, its fine Ionic columns, the graceful ornamentation of the capitals, the Sombre coloring and gilding of the volutes and ovolos, the bass-reliefs with an azure background, the well-built walls, solid yet light, are a happy imitation of certain remains of the Erechtheion. Looking at it, one dreams' of heathen ceremonials, of grand processions of virgins in front of the many-colored building in which predominates the gleaming milky white- ness of the marble of Pentelikon, and which looks—not like a copy, but an original work faithful to the antique traditions of purity of line. It would seem as though this Academy had been produced in the very spirit of the times of the great masters; it is a very sanctuary of the Muses, the work no doubt of a disciple, but of a disciple of rare skill thoroughly im: ATHENS 233 bued with the Attic spirit, which is that of grace and harmony combined. This Academy still awaits its students, but they will not be long to seek among the many poets, men of science, and artists in Greece, who long and strive to revive the intellectual supremacy of their country. The home of the new Hellenic ideal is built, and Apollo and Athene, whose statues occupy two lofty columns in front of the entrance, rise up like symbolic guardians of a future coenaculum, seeming to invite all to a persevering culture of beauty and wisdom. May those who study in the future within these walls never throw aside for pernicious doc- trines those grand tradi. tions which are the honor of their race and the gift of the gods. The King's Palace, built in the early days of the new monarchy, before the Greek Renaissance had taken root as it has now, is well situated on the Place de la Consti- tution, and has a large square in front of it. The fine gardens are laid out with much taste, and are full of well-grown trees. How often have I enjoyed walking about beneath their cool shade and among the well- stocked flower-beds, and the orange, laurel, and rose thickets | But the palace is clumsily built, and too wanting in orna- mentation. It is true it has the rare claim to the respect of the Greeks of being the residence of a prince whose noble and lofty character, skill, AN ATHENIAN Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Ralli 234. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD prudence, and loyalty have secured for twenty-eight years the prosperity of Greece, who represents the unity of the country, and who has gone through very trying experiences with courage and foresight—who has under all cir- cumstances proved himself the best of leaders, and whose reign has con- solidated the independence of his kingdom. Called by a happy disposition of Providence to direct the destinies of a people, whom his very genius and aspirations, his youthful vigor, and his pride of race made it often difficult to lead, on the very morrow of a revolution, and in the midst of the many crises of the Eastern question, King George ever has been and still remains, through the nobility of his sentiments and his patriotism, as much as through his self-control, his wisdom, and his political acumen, equal to the grand task he has to perform. And the Queen, fitting consort of the prince, whose beauty is worthy of Greece, and a faithful reflection of her noble spirit, adds by her exalted virtue and her gracious manners a yet further lustre to the Hellenic Court. The Cathedral of Athens is a very imposing modern building in the Byzantine style, to which the orthodox Oriental remains everywhere faith- ful. There are also several old churches in the town in the same style, but altogether differently interpreted, and really quite touching in their solemn, almost melancholy grace. Mean and stunted, but solidly built for a poor and limited congregation in the time of a foreign domination, they bear the character of a protestation alike timid and obstinate. Little bells crouch, so to speak, beneath a low belfry on the summit of these churches; semicircular chapels project but slightly from the main walls of the build- ing; the interior is as dark as a cave; the walls are all but bare; but shining in the darkness, like an invisible hope, the sacred lamp can be made out hanging before the shrine. The new cathedral is spacious and well lighted; there is plenty of room for the performance of the sacred ceremonies; it is a public building worthy of a capital city. The old Metropolitan Cathedral, which is alongside of the new, and is in perfect preservation, looks like a little house next door to a palace, but of what great value is it as a national memorial Here was once the centre of Greek nationality; and within its narrow archaic walls, with here and there some relics of heathen days, I see once more down-trodden Greece assert. ing her faith and her nationality. Very eloquent is the contrast offered by the juxtaposition of these two buildings; one is the poem of a time of sadness and oppression, the other the symbol of the victory of faith and of modern liberty. On the Boulevard de l’Université the Greek Catholics have a good. SCENE IN A CHURCH.-Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Ralli sized church, built on the model of the Roman basilicas. An imposing peristyle surmounts the fine flight of steps leading up to it. The appear. ance of the interior is severe, almost cold; it ought to be brightened up with pictures and statues, but that will be the work of the future. The limited means at the command of the builders compelled them to build it without ornaments or superfluities of any kind; even the peristyle was - 236 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD only erected four or five years ago. Fortunately magnificent columns of green marble from Tinos, at the entrance to the choir, relieve with a touch of brilliancy the monotonous whiteness of the general effect. If some master, ambitious of associating his name with an Athenian building, should some day cover the pale walls with frescos, the Catholic church would be really finished. There is nothing for it but to wait for time and successive donations to give to this Greek church that character, alike historic and antique, which is the secret of the imposing majesty of so many sanctuaries of Rome which are even smaller than that under notice. Among the chief buildings of modern Athens, I ought also to mention the two museums on the road to the village of Patisia—the one containing the statues and stelae found in successive excavations in Attica; the other, the vases and terra-cottas from Tanagra, Myrina, or the Athenian schools, and the golden treasures, cups, masks, and jewels exhumed by Schliemann at Mycenae. The last-named relics, as they are of prehistoric times, are doubtless of great value. They bear witness to the marvellous skill of Greek sculptors in Homer's time; but the exquisite paintings on vases, and more especially the marvellous fragments in the sculpture museum, leave a yet deeper impression on the mind. They are a revelation, even to those familiar with the fine marbles of the Vatican and of the Louvre, of a new feature of Hellenic art. The delicate naivete, the simplicity of the well- defined outlines, the ineffable, often homely grace, the natural majesty of these relics stamp them as original works of the Golden Age of Attic art. There are but a few statues, and all are more or less mutilated; but there are no reproductions, no imitations; they are all first hand, all exclusively Greek, and of that primitive purity of style the divine grace of which the artists of the Graeco-Roman Periods, more learned though they were, never succeeded in reproducing. - I do not care much for the Observatory built by Baron Sina, a wealthy Greek, on the Hill of the Nymphs, a little way out of the town. It over- looks the plain, and a grand panorama extending to the sea is spread out beneath it. It can be seen from afar on its little hill of grayish rocks covered with shrubs, and is approached through an avenue of aloes which encircle it with bright green. But it occupies rather too conspicuous a place in ground near the Parthenon, and one has some trouble to avoid seeing it when looking at the Acropolis. Its style of architecture—almost necessitated, it is true, by its scientific purpose—is startling near ruins of immortal renown; its cupola, its coloring, and all the glass about it are not in harmony with the serene beauty of the landscape surrounding it. ATHENS 237 I must also say a word or two in memory of a small chapel but a few metres square—a miserable little whitewashed hovel, with no pretensions to style of any kind, but which pleases me infinitely. I mean the little Her. mitage on Mount Lykabettos. This sugar-loaf hill, loftier than that on which the Acropolis was built, spoils, truth to tell, the general view of the plain. It is but a rock, valuable neither * from the picturesque nor the historic point of view. It is surrounded at the base by pines, and a good many houses have crept up its sides; but it is very pointed, and quite out of character with the surrounding hills and mountains; the rounded summits and gentle slopes, with ravines of greater or less depth which run into and blend with each other in an easy, graceful style, producing a general effect which is always dignified and almost severe. But, for all that, the Her- mitage, built on the very point of the sterile rock of Lykabettos, gives to it a mystic charm. It is, so to speak, the life of its des- olate solitude; it represents a steadfast de- sign, a popular faith, a soul that dreams and prays upon the heights. There, when the twilight begins to gather, the star of the sacred lamp appears quivering against the gloomy background of the sky, looking like a guardian star, watching from above over STATUETTE FROM TANAGRA e º e A figurine of the best epoch. After a design by the town and the plain, and diffusing com- M. Fancher-Gudin fort and peace with its sacred beams. Symbol of the ideal set above the wastes of earth, permanent symbol of the religion and the country the glory of which dominates every event and every age, it seems as though this golden star, sister of the heavenly constellations, had come down as a friend to the chapel on the hill. How many times in the dreary days of servitude have not the Athenians, seeing it shining forth through the dark upon their city, looked upon it with joy as the symbol of their hopes, the witness of their undying faith, the prophecy of their future liberty! May it not also be considered a figure of the genius of antiquity which neither time nor barbarians have ever been able to quench, and which still remains like a sacred spark within our hearts 2 238 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Gazing at it with emotion, I send to it a reverent greeting through the darkness. It is at the flame of the Athenian torch that all our lights have been kindled; for do we not feel that a god still dwells in the ruined Acropolis And does not the little lamp, fed by an obscure caloyer (Greek monk), at the foot of the Panagia also burn in honor of the Athene of the Parthenon, as though before a sanctuary IV Now let us go through ancient Athens, many of the relics of which are, however, scattered about in the modern town. These sites and build. ings have suffered greatly from the ravages of time and the hand of man. In the Agora quarter have recently been discovered the remains of porticos, the foundations of temples and gymnasia, or academies, covering a pretty considerable area. It is difficult to fix the exact date of the build- ings they represent, with nothing to guide us but the fragmentary remains of long foundations, such as a few walls on a level with the ground, and a A SUBURB OF ATHENS.-Engraved by Ruffe, after a picture by Rizo ATHENS 239 few scattered shafts and capitals. Did they belong to the Golden Age of Greece or to the Roman epoch, or, which appears more probable than either, was the Agora the site of a mixture of buildings dating from differ- ent times 2 Not far from them, in a large square, is an octagonal building, the Tower of the Winds, so called because on the upper part of each of its eight sides is a bass-relief of one of the sons of AEolus balancing him- self in the air. Here, for instance, is Boreas, or the storm wind, there the Zephyr, while the remaining bass-reliefs illustrate the other attributes of the winds. One shows, in addition to its winged figure, a profusion of flowers and fruit, another the falling of a soft fecundating shower from the pitcher of Notus, the south wind. The sculptor of these bass-reliefs was no master, and I do not think the tower is of later date than the time of Augustus. The tower was originally surmounted by a bronze weather- cock, and there was a water-clock inside. It was connected by porticos, of which a few traces remain, with a whole series of buildings, the character of which it is difficult to make out. A little behind it, in a small circus, are several columns surmounted by the remains of a pediment, which may perhaps have been part of a gateway of the Agora, or of a temple of Athene. In the same quarter are two spaces overgrown with a tangle of brushwood, tall grasses, and wild shrubs, among which are strewn frag- ments of marble, overturned columns, while the long bases of monuments peep out from beneath a thick veil of clambering vines, of aloes, and of briers. One of these monuments has nothing precise about it to guide the archaeologist; while another, still retaining some high walls, some marble benches, the shafts of fluted columns, and some traces of an emceinte, is supposed to have been the Poecile, once, alas! so magnificently peopled by antique statues, and the panels of which, described by Pausanias, were covered with bass-reliefs and fine frescos. This was the place of meeting of peaceful citizens, artists, philosophers, the circle of men of letters, the centre of the cultivated, leisured civilian classes, the rendezvous of free citizens, who formed a minority among the servile population, and who, when politics did not demand their presence at the Pnyx, or commerce at the Agora, loved to indulge in long conversations or discussions of the latest news as they strolled about the marble colonnades and among the statues of this popular palace. There remain but a few indications of rooms and galleries, in which the imagination of modern architects, which sometimes runs away with them a little, can with difficulty piece together the elements of an ideal restoration. These ruins have, however, retained something of the stamp of their original grandeur, and, which is still better, 24O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of their original beauty. The fragments that remain of their desecrated walls bear witness to art of a noble character, and there is still an ineffable and pathetic grace in these marble relics. The sunbeams touch their whiteness here and there with a golden light, and profound as is the melancholy induced by the contemplation of these scattered ruins, dim as are the outlines of that which has passed away forever, yet through the gloom shines forth the ideal of a master imbued with a passion for purity of line, and that combined grandeur and grace which are the chief attri. butes of every true monument of Attic art. Crossing a confusing labyrinth of narrow streets leading to what was once the bed of the Ilissus, but is now nothing more than a ravine encum- bered with stones, through which dribble a few streaks of water, one reaches a little square, the swelling ground of which would appear to indicate buried ruins. Here was once the ancient street of the Tripods, which is now covered with houses and huts.” One monument alone, of small dimensions but exquisite style, has survived of the numerous votive build- ings which lined this grand thoroughfare of the past. This monument is a kind of round chapel enclosed within graceful little columns surmounted by a delicately sculptured frieze. Erected by a choragus named Lysi- krates, in memory of his one year of administration, it dates from the fourth century B.C. Time has slightly touched the angles of the base and the details of the architecture. It was restored as well as possible a few years ago at the cost of the French Government, which is the nominal owner, but in order to support the roof, which is a simple masterpiece, the space between it and the columns had to be walled in, and the monument of Lysikrates has lost its ancient airy grace; moreover, the bronze tripod which originally surmounted it has long since disappeared. The building is, therefore, altogether incomplete, but its form and the bass-reliefs of its frieze are still charming. If we could but separate it from the circle of houses hemming it in, and if beneath the swelling ground around it we were lucky enough to come upon more contemporary remains, its archaeo- logical value would be brought into full relief. One might almost picture a corner of ancient Athens, a bit of the road lined with monuments leading to the foot of the Acropolis. Unfortunately, all the nondescript buildings making up a popular quarter have long since taken root upon this classic ground, and it would be a serious matter to destroy them. * This street was once lined with pedestals on which were exhibited the tripods won in the Dionysiac games.—TRANS. ATHENS 241 Beyond, rising from the wide open plain stretching away to the Ilissus, is a small triumphal arch two stories high, the lower consisting of three arches and the upper of a straight attica, or frieze, pierced with bays of a long square shape, and ornamented with Corinthian columns and a trian- RUINS OF THE OLYMPIEION.-Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph gular pediment with the name of Hadrian inscribed at the top. This gate- way is not a masterpiece, but the harmonious lines of the lofty openings, flanked by marbles gleaming in the sunshine, form a fitting framework to a vast expanse of the blue vault of heaven. The arch itself is scarcely noticed, for it sinks altogether into insignificance beside the magnificent ruins of the temple of the Olympian Zeus, or, as it is generally called, the Olympieion. Picture to yourself thirteen colossal columns connected by their archi- traves, two isolated columns still erect and one overturned, and you have a group grand alike in height and mass. Situated in the midst of a plain, bounded on one side by the large tufted trees of the royal gardens and on the other by the rounded hills marking the course of the Ilissus, and over- looked from the distance by the sombre outlines of Hymettos, these gigantic relics seem to be bathed in a sea of light. The building of the 16 242 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD temple which was to be sacred to the God of Gods, was carried on with various vicissitudes during 600 years. Perpetually interrupted, perpetually resumed, it was not until the reign of Hadrian that the Olympieion assumed its distinctive form. But it was too late. Heathen hymns re- sounded through the great sanctuary but for a couple of centuries, for when it was completed Christianity had dawned, and the great Zeus was left without his worshippers. z Thus deserted, sacked by invaders, pillaged by sacrilegious robbers, some from Rome, some from Constantinople, and some even of Athenian birth, it disappeared piece by piece; and of its vast enclosure, its two hundred columns, the multitude of statues erected in its courts and porti- cos, there remains nothing but the end of one of the corners of the peri- style. A few years ago the soil covering over this fragment was excavated, but nothing was found beyond a few insignificant foundations. All hope must be abandoned of finding any of the works of art accumulated by the piety of the Roman Caesars and the prodigality of their courtiers, and it is difficult to understand how the vast accumulation of marble can have been dispersed without leaving any traces. At least, however, the columns which have been preserved, so to speak, by accident, retain a truly admira- ble grandeur; Solitary and solemn they gleam in the mid-day Sunshine as in an apotheosis, while at night the moon, which rises above Hymettos, bathes them in her silvery beams, and they look like mournful phantoms. In Roman days there were many villas about the Olympieion. The royal park, which occupies part of the plain, encloses among its shady groves the remains of one of these houses, with its mosaic pavement, in which dwelt some of the young patricians who were sent by their parents to the schools of Athens and loved to dwell upon the banks of the Ilissus. It is in this quarter, less arid than the rest of the city, through which then flowed the plentiful stream now shrunk in such a melancholy manner through the destruction of the woods on the mountains, that we must picture to our- Selves the homes first of Cicero and of Atticus, and later of the Christian philosophers and neophytes of the time of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, who came to study wisdom and elocution in the august city where Demos- thenes had delivered his orations and Plato had taught. Then all the world-famous monuments were erect; one could still see the plane-trees beneath which paced Socrates during his immortal dialogue with Phaedon, and the gymnasia where Theophrastus and Carneades declaimed on phi- losophy. Later the struggle between heathen tradition and evangelical dogma ATHENS 243 was carried on within the same walls in which Socrates had argued with the Sophists and Aristotle had laid down the principles of science; and within their classic boundaries were evolved in all their prolific diversity the various theories which then as now exercise the conscience of the human race. The whole of this side of Athens, the aspect of which is now com- pletely changed, teems with grand memories of the moral, psychological, and religious progress which has been carried on under forms so different from the time of the teaching of Anaxagoras to that of the controversies of Libanius and of the young Christians of the fourth century, a progress in which took part all the noblest spirits of antiquity. The court of some Roman house, the dried-up bed of the Ilissus, the well of Callirrhoe (later known as Enneacrunus, or the Nine Springs) within its shady grotto, and the solemn columns of the Olympieion, these are the sole remaining relics, and they are indeed but a little remnant of all - - º º! =ºss sº - - - º I ** | | THE THESEION.- Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph the life and intellectual activity of this once frequented scene. We must draw upon our ever-present memories of history and philosophy to supple- ment with all their eloquence the few monuments still extant. It is strange that of the ancient quarters of the city, that dedicated to 244 THE CAPITALS OF THE world the dead, the cemetery of Kerameikos, has retained more buildings than any of the districts which were occupied by the living. Excavations carried on in this cemetery thirty years ago were singu- larly rich in results. Outside the Dipylon Gate, beneath piles of earth, which looked as if they were part of the natural soil, was found a complete avenue lined with tombs, and some of the sepulchral stelae are of the highest value. There were discovered a great many columns of bluish marble bearing the names of the dead, flat stelae ornamented with chasings, palm-leaves, antefixes, rose-work, etc., all carved with rare delicacy, while several tombs bore bass-reliefs, evidently dating from the Golden Age of art, and the work of true masters in Sculpture. The little monument dedi- cated to Dexileos, a hero killed at the age of twenty, soon after the war of the Peloponnesus, is, for instance, a fine example of Greek statuary: the ephebus is represented on horseback, striking with his lance an adversary, who is sinking under the blow. The combined vigor and grace character- istic of the Attic style is seen in this life-like group, in which there is no striving for effect; but all is natural and noble, truth not being sacrificed to purity of line. Dexileos must have belonged to the family of the young knights of the Parthenon, and the sculptor to the school of Pheidias. Near his tomb rises the stela to the memory of a woman whose name, the in- scription tells us, was Korallion, the wife of Agathon. This tomb is of the traditional type of Athenian funereal monuments. Korallion is represented seated, and draped in long veils; her faultless profile expresses the ten- derest melancholy, while before her is her husband, who would appear to have come to visit her in her tomb, and gazes at her with an expression of the deepest grief: this scene, so simple and yet so dramatic, is rendered with a sobriety of tone and a natural dignity alike fascinating and thrilling, although the artist has attempted to do no more than represent an actual feeling in a truly artistic manner. On the other side of the avenue, we note, with respectful admiration, a celebrated stela, the tomb of Hegeso, the daughter of Proxenus, in which she is represented in bass-relief, seated, and holding on her knees a casket brought to her by a female slave. Greek art has produced no more delicate type of beauty than this female figure. The light and supple draperies veil the slightly drooping form of the chaste Athenian girl, and her bent head expresses the greatest gentleness of char- acter. The melancholy poem of youth and death takes living form in this marble elegy. Wrapt in thought, and scarcely conscious of the jewels she once loved, Hegeso ponders on her sad fate, on her more fortunate com- panions, on the life she has left behind her. The artist, inspired as was THE ACROPOLIS AND THE WALL OF THEMISTOKLES Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph André Chenier, weeping for the loss of the young Tarentine, has given to this ideal figure a visible and touching melancholy; the very low relief, the flowing lines, the ethereal, all but immaterial, character of the form of the fair Hegeso, make her appear almost a shade; but, for all that, there is a whole poem of love and grief in the mysterious abstraction of her smile. As we wander over the vast area which has now been excavated, let us note en passant the little marble chapel containing the statues of the sisters Pamphile and Demetria, of a somewhat massive type of beauty, and passing among a long series of ruined buildings, temples, or civil monuments, of which nothing but a few substructures or walls are now left, forming the inner part of the cemetery of Kerameikos—a vast quarter where the thoroughfares must have been very narrow, and the original arrangements of which it is difficult to make out—we bear to the right, and come upon a large platform from which rises the one Athenian tem- ple still nearly intact, dedicated, according to tradition, to Theseus, whose grand tomb it is supposed to have been. However this may be, it is more ancient than the Parthenon; it is of the finest Doric style; it has retained all its columns, its empty pediments, and the bass-reliefs of its metopes. 246 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Of medium size, but of admirable proportions, the Theseion is one of the purest models of sacred architecture in Greece. True, the altars and statues which gave life to the cella have long since disappeared, and the inside of the sanctuary is cold and gloomy; but from the outside, rising, as it does, above three marble steps, sur. rounded as it is by grand aloes, and completely enclosed within its peri- style, standing alone in an arid landscape, this temple, which centuries and revolutions have respected, seems to radiate with severe majesty. It has not, however, the charm of the half-destroyed masterpieces of the Acropo- lis, and we are not overwhelmed by the correct solemnity of its surround- ings. It is the strange destiny of antique marbles that the ravages of barbarians, or the deep impress made on them by centuries of time, give to them a dramatic beauty which appeals to us, perhaps, more than does their actual perfection. Nothing breaks the harmony of the lines of the - - - ſº THE ACROPOLIS AND THE ASKLEPIEION Drawn by Dosso, after a photograph Theseion. It has been fortunate, it is saved from destruction, the eye wanders unchecked among its stately peristyles; but how much deeper, how much more melancholy, is the impression made on us by the Propylaea and the Parthenon With what an almost divine lustre do they shine! Ruined and surrounded by ATHENS 247 débris though they be, mutilated yet victorious, they occupy a battle-field sanctified by the presence of their fragments | Let us now approach the sacred rock, which, with the hills about its base, the ruins at its feet, and the sanctuaries, which are a crown of glory on its summit, is the very focus of the genius of Athens. V The Acropolis is bounded on the south by the fortifications built at the expense of Kimon; on the north by the walls hastily built up of all manner of materials by Themistokles, as a defence against an invasion of Spartans. e Gentle slopes lead up to reddish and gray rock, from which rise the temples. These slopes were once covered with monuments, which have met with different fates in the course of the centuries that have elapsed since their erection. Some, like the Theatre of Dionysos, the Stoa of Asclepius, the Stoa Eumenia, and the Odeion of Herodes Atticus, have left masses of ruins, some portions still almost entire; others, like the little sanctuaries of Isis and Demeter, are nothing more than confused heaps of blocks and scattered fragments; while others again, on the opposite slope, are hidden beneath lofty grass-clad mounds, as are the foundations and remains of the temple of Castor and Pollux, and of the Prytaneion. These sites form the emceinte of the Acropolis, and have shared its fate; ravaged like the sublime mount they encircle, they complete the poem of the ruins. The Theatre of Dionysos is the first building to appear as we ascend through the avenue of trees encircling the rock of Athene; the space in front of it is strewn with broken and overturned columns, empty pedestals, and mutilated statues. The temple, which once stood beside the theatre, the altars which bore witness to the religious character of Athenian dra- matic representations, the foundations of the stage, and the buildings neces- sary to the grandiose mise en scène of Greek tragedy, are now nothing more than heaps of broken marble; some pieces the height of a man are still erect, but stripped of their ornaments, and without the upper part; others lie at full length upon the turf, half hidden among the tall grass. To make up for this, the concentric tiers of seats reserved to spectators, the row of chairs in which sat the priests of the gods, and, best of all, the 248 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD central chair of Pentelic marble reserved for the high-priest of Dionysos, have survived the destruction of the theatre. The Emperor Hadrian restored the building in which had been per- formed the masterpieces of Sophokles and Aristophanes, and of his work remain a few bass-reliefs on the estrade of the orchestra; but, to own the truth, it is not in this case the work of the architects and sculptors which interests us, but the grandeur of the memories connected with this stage, for we are now on the very site where the great dramas of antiquity were acted. It was here that shouts of applause greeted the representation of the “Orestes,” the “Antigone,” the “Iphigenia,” and the “Andromache;” and here were sung those epic and lyric poems with the immortal rhythm of which the air about us still seems to vibrate. The marvels of the Greek drama seem to be once more before our eyes, its masterpieces enchanting our fascinated gaze and thrilling us with fresh emotions, while in our imagination the ruined theatre is once more complete. Seated upon those steps, with the plain of Attica spread out at our feet, and beyond it the wide blue expanse of the ocean, we understand the prestige of classic drama, the influence of powerful comedy; we see once more the actors in the epics, the groups of the chorus, the grand whole of those ceremonies in which Greek genius took the world by storm. The remains of the Asklepieion, or sanctuary of AEsculapius, separated by a massive wall from the Temple of Dionysos, were not discovered till about thirty years ago, when the earth encumbering the northern slope was being removed. Then were brought to light along the face of the rock the cells in which the sick were laid, the grotto of Halirothios, from which still flows the mystic spring, the bases of the pillars of a long portico, those of several narrow sanctuaries, a great many columns piled up on the ground, several ex-votos, small stelae, bass-reliefs of the best style, all evi- dently relics of a building of medium height, which, when, at its best had been a shelter for the cradle of medical science. Aristophanes lays one scene of his comedy of “Plutus” in this edifice, where the sick came to seek the consolations of superstition rather than efficacious remedies. The medical treatment of these times has become extinct, but an immortal art has survived in these scattered ruins; if we more easily recover from illness nowadays, we should find it difficult to quote a more graceful bit of archi- tecture than the Asklepieion must have been. So wags the world: we lose on one side what we gain on the other; science has developed, art has decayed. This, perhaps, is the one monument of Athens in looking at which we feel inclined to do justice to the genius of modern times. ATHENS 249 The Asklepieion is on a terrace supported by a row of arcades, built at the expense of Eumenes, King of Pergamus. This colonnade was at one time covered with marble plaques, and, I fancy, contained statues; the masonry alone remains now, with traces of the columns which preceded the arcades. The whole must have formed a long and noble promenade, THE PARTHENON.—After a drawing by Boudier but the little that is left at the present day looks bare and gloomy. Origi- nally at the base of the Asklepieion, it connected the Theatre of Dionysos with that which the wealthy Herodes Atticus presented to his fellow- citizens. From this last-named building the grand façade, with the cir- cular-headed windows, is still standing, and behind it a vast semicircle of steps leads up to the rock of the Acropolis. This building presents a grand appearance, but no memories gather about it. It is in the Theatre of Dionysos that Greek drama lives again, and that we see the shade of AEschylus rising once more in all his grandeur. We are, perhaps, unjust, but in the Odeion of Herodes Atticus we see nothing but empty benches. We are now at the foot of the path which leads up to the Propylaea; but before ascending to that Olympus let us make our salutations to two 25o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD rocks separated from the hill of Athene by a narrow valley; they bear illustrious names, for the one is the Areopagus, the other the Pnyx. All trace of buildings has disappeared from the platform where the Athenians held the tribunal founded by the gods, and where St. Paul proclaimed the unknown God. The Areopagus is reached by steps cut in the rock, and on the summit nothing is to be seen but brushwood. In default of any precise information, archaeology is mute, and we must have recourse to legend, and more especially to the scene in the “Eumenides” of AEschylus, in which Orestes appears defended before his judges by Apollo and Athene; but even then we cannot help asking ourselves if these deserted rocks really were the site of the Areopagus ! There is, however, it seems to me, no doubt about the Pnyx, which consists of a semicircular terrace supported by huge blocks of stone laid one on another in the style known as Cyclopean. A much mutilated but still recognizable staircase, skirting the archaic base, leads up to it. . The terrace, which is of consid- erable extent, seems admirably suited to the meeting of popular assemblies. It is shut off at the end by a perpendicular wall, against the middle of which rests a huge cube of rock flanked on either side by several steps. We can easily fancy Demosthenes standing on this pedestal, and pointing out to the citizens, as the safeguard of Greek liberty, the Propylaea which, rising as they did on the right of the orator, were eloquent marble wit- nesses of the truth of his assertions. - Not far from the Pnyx, which long retained the name of Museion, a poet of prehistoric time, a Syrian prince, who had taken refuge in Athens, Philopappos by name, built a tomb for himself, of which nothing remains but a bass-relief of no value. The view from this height, however, stretches beyond the panorama of the plain to the Strait of Salamis, the wide horizon of the sea, the heights of AEgina, and the blue line of the Peloponnesus. At the foot of this little rocky hill two chambers hewn in the living rock are said by tradition to have been the prison of Sokrates. I merely note this idea en passant to preserve the memory of an opinion which seems to me of very doubtful authority, as it is confirmed by no contemporary witness, and modern archaeologists reject it, though they are not agreed as to the use of this gloomy retreat, some thinking it was a chapel, others merely a guard-room. Let us leave in obscurity, perhaps with regret, the delightful legend connecting it with Sokrates, for as the temples of the Acropolis are approached one would fain be able to prepare one's spirit by a sight of the actual cell in which the victim of the Sophists bore witness by his death to the eternal wisdom we worship in the Parthenon ATHENS 25 I VI We have wandered through the town of Athens, gradually ascending, step by step, as it were, to sanctuaries of ideal beauty. Let us enter, like the initiated, with reverent emotion; we are at the foot of the Propylaea, and the columns of the grand peristyle, standing out white beneath the blue dome of heaven, look like hospitable divinities on the threshold of the platform, the extent of which is distinguished by their gleaming shafts. THE ERECTHEION.—After a drawing by Boudier On the right of the Propylaea, on a large pedestal, rises the little temple of Niké Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, surrounded by fine Ionic columns, surmounted by a mutilated frieze, on which we see heroes or gods passing by like shades, their delicate outlines standing out clearly against the light. 252 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD On the left, the gilded wall of the Pinakotheca stands out upon the per- pendicular rock, from which opens the grotto of Pan, sung by Euripides, and from which once issued the spring of Klepsydra. The marble steps in the centre, added in Roman, or perhaps even in mediaeval times, sug. gested to Beulé his brilliant hypothesis of a monumental staircase having led to the stylobate of the portico in the time of Perikles. In spite of the ingenious arguments of the learned archaeologist, of which one can only speak with respect when treating of the Acropolis, the marvels of which he has so eloquently described, I still think that the Greeks went up by a narrow path cut across the unequal masses of rock supporting the build- ing. However this may be, whether the stylobate of the Propylaea was or was not once approached by a flight of steps, we cannot enter it without a feeling of religious awe. The columns have, no doubt, lost their architraves and pediment, as well as the statues that once gave life to the emceinte, but they still retain in their arrangement, if I may so speak, a superhuman expression. No roof protects the stately columns, their discrowned heads and fine fluted shafts stand out clearly against the azure sky; they hold themselves erect like a very incarnation of power and majesty. We vener. ate as much as we admire them, and surrounded by this noble group, we become capable of apprehending an art at once realistic and mystic, the direct, the inevitable outcome of an immortal genius! And yet this is but the peristyle of the Acropolis. We gaze long at it, penetrated by a sense of its austere beauty; but when we have left it behind us, we find ourselves suddenly raised to a yet higher spiritual level, for the revelation is now complete; the vast platform is bathed in light, and we pause, dazzled with the sight that meets our eyes. The Parthenon is before us, looking magnificently solitary in the wide-spread space; con- centrating upon itself every thought, and radiating forth splendor in spite of its broken colonnade, its despoiled pediment, and the gaping cracks in its walls. Everything else is forgotten in its presence—the ruins strewn upon the ground, the empty pedestals, the stelae, the capitals of the sanct- uary of Artemis Brauronia half buried among the grass—we go straight to the Parthenon, for it is a spiritual ideal made visible, and it dominates it as does truth itself. Human through its wounds, divine in its beauty, wrapped about by the splendor of heaven, the well-defined outlines of its marbles and the touching contours of its imposing ruins stand out as it were from the depths of infinity. - The scorched columns are bruised by the Venetian bullets; on the western pediment, destroyed by Morosini, there remains but the torso of country IN THE VICINITY OF ATHENS.–Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by A. de Curzon ATHENS * 255 Kekrops and Aglaurus; the eastern pediment, pillaged by Lord Elgin, has retained nothing but the triangular tympanum, against which stood out the marvels known as the Parcae or Moirae, Ceres or Demeter, and Proser- pina or Persephone, Theseus and the heads of the horses doing homage to the rising sun. It is in London that we must seek them now, cast down from their high estate; wan and changed in the gloomy atmosphere, they look like captive and exiled gods. The central portions of the colonnades of the north and south sides were overturned by the explosion of powder which, in 1685, mutilated the whole of the interior of the temple. The Panathenaic frieze which once surmounted the wall of the emceinte on all four sides has only remained intact on the west; part has disappeared altogether, a few fragments have been collected and placed in the Acrop- olis museum, a good many others are in London, the Louvre possesses one complete scene, and there is another fragment in the Vatican. The marble poem of Pheidias can no longer be admired in its magnificent unity, but its remains are an honor to human genius; the knights on horseback, the processions of young girls, the sacrificial oxen and sheep, with their priestly leaders, the Athenian family, the groups of citizens, scattered and mutilated pages though they be of the sacred volume in which was inculcated anew the worship of eternal wisdom and of patriot- ism, remain the noblest possible education in all that is most beautiful and most true, the perfect and simple outward expression of the myste- rious types of which the Parthenon was the sanctuary. The statues which lined the interior, the galleries above, the chryselephantine Athene, all the art treasures accumulated in the Golden Age of Athens, are now but mem- ories; the nave is deserted, and in the wide gaps in the sides lie confused masses of columns, architraves, and crumbling stones. It would seem as if these courts must be gloomy, but this is one of the miracles of the Par- thenon—it is ever young and ever triumphant; its soul, instinct with joy, is always present, and a hymn, a jubilant ode of praise, is ever ascending from among its broken colonnades. Material beauty survives disaster, and this beauty remains unchangeable in the relics of the Parthenon—nay, the very ruins are beautiful in themselves, and the whole grand enceinte is bathed, as it were, in the imperishable eternity of the ideal which lights it up as with a smile of joy. - Not far from the Parthenon rise the half-destroyed walls of the tem- ple of Athene Polias, also known as the Erechtheion, still retaining a few columns with capitals, which are marvels of delicate Sculpture, as are also, in an even more marked degree, the fine caryatides of its portico of airy 256 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD lightness. One is charmed as one stands at the feet of these marble virgins, bearing on their heads the basket-like ornaments of mystic mean- ing, and upholding, apparently without effort—so admirable is the harmo- ny and rhythm of their pose—the weight of the entablature. The Erech- theion was an exquisite building, planned, ornamented, and executed with loving care, with the most intense feeling for grace and harmony; but these courts were but the home of the goddess of Athens, the protecting deity of the city alone was worshipped among these graceful colonnades. The Parthenon, on the other hand, was the centre of a cosmopolitan relig- ion—the sanctuary of that one god felt after by Greek sages and artists, that creative wisdom in which was gathered up all metaphysical and moral law, the order and splendor of the whole universe. It was this god whom the Greek genius worshipped under the form of Athene, the loftiest con- ception of pure reason, of substance uncreate and immaterial, and it is this superior inspiration, alike philosophical and aesthetic, which gives to the sovereign temple that mystic beauty which neither the ravages of centu- ries of time nor of sacrilegious man have been able to efface—a beauty which will survive as long as one relic remains to preserve it. - Greek art did not receive this supreme revelation until the time of Perikles, that golden age when the human mind, having attained to the plenitude of its power, still had all the grace, the spirit, and the enthusi- asm of youth. The ancient Parthenon, destroyed by the Persians, and of which not long ago some curious traces were discovered, was a purely mythological sanctuary, in which primitive traditions were embodied in time-hallowed conventional, sometimes enigmatical, and often clumsy forms, evidently of earlier date than the time of the Revelation of the Ideal. The statues belonging to this period which have lately been dug up in the neighborhood of the Erechtheion indicate an art alike hieratic and real- istic; their attitudes are rigid and monotonous, a sphynx-like smile is fixed upon their quaint faces, the painted pupils of their prominent eyes seem to gaze forth vacantly into empty space. In the Archaic period the soul was, so to speak, in limbo, waiting to be set free from the fetters and dark- ness by which it was trammelled; the sculptors and architects of the new Parthenon, the descendants of Anaxagoras, and the forerunners of So- krates, were the liberators of this imprisoned soul; they flung open to it the realm of space, and gave to it wings, and the very first effort of the rescuffed spirit raised it to the loftiest heights attainable to humanity in the regions of the beautiful and the true. The marvellous temple of the Parthenon, with its statue of Athene, the frieze of Pheidias, the colonnade ATHENS 257 of Iktinos, the pediments of Alkamenes and Poenios, and, above all, the Divine Ideal enshrined within its precincts, has been the symbol of one of the most glorious enfranchisements of the human race, and its venerable ruins are still one of the tabernacles of philosophy and art, as well as the first monument to their victory. When, after a day passed on the Acropolis, one gazes at sunset, or a little after it, when twilight is gathering, on the one side at the solemn summits of Pentelikon and Parnes, and on the other at the silent undulating plain, the forest of olive- trees stretching away to the Sea, and in the oppo- site direction at the white houses of the town, the wooded heights about the Ilissus, the majestic ruins of the Olympieion, and the barren crest of Hymettos, tinted for the moment with violet and rose-color, one seems to be wrapped about with the serenity of the scene, and penetrated with DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE a Sen Se of the harmony Group from the Eastern * of º: *: now in the British Museum. ngraved by Ko 4\tº 2.É.3 w" ºf ºº º * . . . . * * * *º **, º º º between the austere land- scape, the statuesque - mountains, the horizon bounding the distant bays and islands, and the beauty of the sanctuary. The grand whole spread out beneath the gaze is consecrated by the lapse of centuries, sacred memories, and the gran- deur of nature as it now is, are blended in thought with the ideals realized by the masters of antiquity. In the midst of the profound calm, the utter silence of the magnificent space around us, the awe-struck spirit is insen- sibly imbued with a sense of the immutability of beauty rising superior to earthly vicissitudes, and of the oneness of art and nature. Nowhere else in the world are the external forms of creation, the work of man, and the - eternal verities in more admirable accord. Elsewhere we may meet with more surprising effects of color, more striking natural scenery, but nowhere else is the impression made on us so penetrating or so peaceful; nowhere 17 258 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD else do we feel such a sense of spiritual elevation, or a moral satisfaction so complete or so pure. All the great capitals of the world have their own special glory, their public buildings, and their masterpieces; some have magnificent views of vast extent, others their witnesses to the past surrounded by the splendors of the present, their radiant shores, their wealth, their sovereign power, the grand prestige of their advanced civilization, of their industries, their victories, their creative genius—each one is an illustration of some one aspect of humanity. Modern Athens—free, active, and preserving within her the elements of the future success of a people who, with the fiery spirit of their ancestors, have retained their ambitions, and the inborn con- viction of the superiority of their race over all other people of the Orient— retains at the same time a sacred character. The mystic star ever shines upon her Acropolis of marble, and in fulfilment of a glorious destiny, the genius of a time gone by—embodied in works which, though mutilated, still in their very ruins reveal that genius—dominates the moral world with a power unweakened by all the trials it has gone through. The frag. mentary ancient city does not impress us with any idea of old age; one cannot realize that 2000 years of history separate us from the time that produced it, and if it be venerable, it is not because of its decay, but because it represents an idea that cannot be touched by time—that is invulnerable, and rises superior to ruin. This is why Athens leaves on the mind an indelible impression which neither the distractions of daily life, the sorrows one has to endure, nor the other countries one visits can efface. 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E. º & & PE KIN O ROM very remote antiquity—twelve centuries before the Christian era—there existed a town on the site of the present Pekin.” It was a little outlying fort on the remote northern coast of China, which was again and again attacked by in- vaders. Very tardy, however, was the fulfilment of the destiny which might even then have been pre- dicted for it, for it was not until A.D. 936 that Pekin became the capital of the empire. Three centuries later, when the Mongols had invaded China, the Emperor Kublai-Khan, grand- - son of Ghengis-Khan, laid the foundations of a respºnsºr new town a little to the north of the old, and thus Engraved by Bazin the city of the conquerors rose proudly opposite the conquered town, at once dominating and de- fending it. The earliest testimony from a foreigner of the existence of Pekin dates from this moment of its history, and is that of the Venetian Marco Polo, who, in the thirteenth century, visited Asia Minor, Tartary, and China, and who, indeed, lived for seventeen years at the Court of Kublai-Khan before he continued his journey by way of Burmah, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Persia, reaching his own country again at last after twenty-six years' absence, bringing with him such wonderful memories of his long * Pekin has often changed its name in the course of its long history, having been called in turn : Ki, Yeou-toheou, Tchong-tou, etc. When, in the fourteenth century, the empire had two capitals, one of them was called Nanking, or the southern city, and the other Peking, or the northern city; and although these names had no longer any meaning after the abandonment of Nanking in 1409, the Jesuit missionaries found the capital still called Pekin at the end of the sixteenth century. They transmitted this name to Europe, and foreigners still speak of Pekin; but to the Chinese themselves the name of the present metropolis is King-tcheng, or the Capital. 262 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD wanderings that his countrymen were quite unable to believe his accounts of what he had seen. This is how the illustrious explorer describes the marvels of the town of Cambuluc, or the Town of the Khan, which his master, Kublai-Khan, had had built, at an immense cost, to the north of the old town : - “It is as big as I will tell you, for it is twenty-four miles round; it is six miles on each side, for it is quite Square; and each side is the same size as every other. - - “It is all walled in with earthen towers . . . it has twelve gates, and at each gate is a great palace, a very beautiful palace. . . . “And the streets are so straight that you can see right along them. . . . There are in the city many fine and big palaces, many fine hostleries, and a great abundance of beautiful houses. . . . And in the middle of the city there is a magnificent palace. . . . “And I tell you that in this city there are more costly things and of greater value than in any other city in the world,” etc. - In many respects this quaint description is still applicable. Peking, or Pekin, as it is generally spelled, consists of two cities side by side—the Northern, Interior, or Tartar city, known as Nei-tching; and the Southern, Exterior, or Chinese city, called Wai-tching. - The Tartar city is surrounded by a wall some forty-five feet high and several miles in circumference, pierced by nine colossal gateways, each of which gives access to an avenue about 140 feet wide and about four miles long. These avenues run in straight lines through the town from north to south and from east to west. All the streets and alleys cross each other at equal distances, so that in a bird's-eye view from the ramparts the town looks like a huge chess-board. The regularity of the plan, and the exactness with which it was carried out in every detail, prove that it was evolved by a superior intelligence, which was able to compel the respect of those who carried it out, and also of later generations. In Pekin no liberties were ever taken by builders; there was no scope what- ever for their imagination, and as a result we have none of the picturesque disorder which makes up so much of the charm of the old cities of Europe, and tells so eloquently the story of their past. All the natural laws of the gradual development of the vast aggregates of living organisms which grow into densely populated cities have been violated here. - The geometrical regularity of the general plan is rendered the more apparent by the uniformity of style of the buildings. In China, in fact, there is but one type of edifice, whether secular or ecclesiastical, recalling PEKIN 263 in the preponderance of horizontal lines and vertical supports, and the im- portance attached to the incurvation of the roof, the ancient model of the Tartar tent. Not a palace, a temple, a private house, a town gateway, nor a triumphal arch—not, in fact, a single ancient or modern building, except perhaps here and there a Buddhist pagoda—which does not conform to the universal type; not a single work of architecture in which there is any sign of original imagination or of spontaneous invention. This architectural monotony is, however, very natural among a peo- ple who, having arrived very rapidly at a certain stage of development, remained stationary for some thirty or forty centuries, and in the long period of their existence never developed the glaring vivid coloring or the contrasts so often characteristic of Western civilizations, where the sombre grandeur of a barbaric race has so often been combined with truly brilliant culture. Yet another and perhaps more direct cause of this phenomenon is the extraordinary force exercised in China by tradition in every branch of moral or intellectual activity, whether aesthetic, literary, or philosophical. In fact, the exaggerated right of the State has stifled in the germ all local - - - - -º- - - - º º -- - * - - ---------> - T. it wº - º º - - º - º - - | - - GATES OF PEKIN.—Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph 264 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD life in China, and architects have ever been condemned to copy servilely the classic models of official statutes. And here has been once more illus- trated the fact so well brought out in the history of the Greek cities, the Guilds of the Middle Ages, and the Republics of the Italian Renaissance —that original architectural works are never produced except where there is a free and natural development of municipal life. On the other hand, perhaps, while a town loses in poetry and charm by too much official supervision, it may gain in a certain appearance of grandeur. And there really is something majestic and imposing about Pekin, and we may justly say that there is nothing petty or vulgar about this vast city, which is the political and moral centre of the largest empire of the world. Moreover, there actually is a certain picturesqueness about it, but rather in its open-air life than in the city itself. Out-of-doors, in fact, all is color and movement, for nowhere is there a more active or more mixed population. It is difficult to estimate the number of the inhabitants of Pekin, for there are no reliable statistics to refer to; but we may say roughly that there are about 900,000, showing a considerable decrease if the estimate of last century of 1,500,000 can be relied on. In any case, the town is always most animated. At certain hours of the day the streets are as crowded with foot-passengers, riders on horseback, and carriages as those of London or of Paris. There is plenty to interest and amuse the spec- tator: Tartar carts and Chinese chaises, blue or green sedan-chairs, the color varying according to the rank and importance of the owner; grooms of the Palace in yellow livery, couriers of the Emperor in yellow and black uniforms, long strings of camels belonging to Mongol caravans, condemned prisoners wearing or carrying their cangues,” etc.; and on either side of the carriage-way, under shelters or in the open air, musicians and jug- glers, mountebanks and necromancers, public scribes, second-hand book- sellers, old - clothesmen, furniture brokers, cobblers and harness-makers, barbers and chiropodists, cooks and pastry-cooks, sellers of fruit and tea- merchants—in a word, every variety of itinerant dealer, resulting in an in- finite variety of bright and picturesque scenes. Or a wedding procession marches down the street, with its band, its lanterns, its banners, its parasols, the attendant servants in gala costumes, and the bride carried beneath a red canopy; or perhaps a funeral Cortege, of apparently endless length, with its flute-players and gong-beaters, its incense-burners, its Buddhist * The camgue is a kind of square wooden halter worn by prisoners convicted of certain crimes.—TRANS. º | º/ - - º/*.* º ---------------------- --- - ſ º Fº THE “GATE OF HEAVEN,” BETWEEN THE TARTAR AND CHINESE Towns.—Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph - PEKIN º 267 priests chanting litanies, its mourners making grimaces and howling, suc- ceeded by a long string of vehicles laden with all the things supposed to be necessary to the defunct in the life beyond the tomb; behind which come , the relations and friends of the deceased, clad in white hair-cloth ; and, last of all, borne bn the shoulders of sixteen, twenty, or thirty hired assistants, the huge catafalque itself, loaded with gilded sculpture, and hung with beautifully embroidered blue silk hangings. The filth of the streets is yet another element of the picturesque. No description could possibly give an idea of it. Dust two feet deep, or lakes of mud, and at every turn heaps of refuse, for which half-naked beggars are fighting with mangy dogs; every conceivable smell and every conceivable variety of rubbish, no police and no drainage Moreover, water is scarce, and the people have only their wells for drinking and every other purpose. In fact, Pekin has no river. At one time the little stream of Yu-ko, rising in the hills of the Summer Palace, partially watered the town, filling the moats of the fortifications and flow. ing into the Peiho about fifteen miles away on the east. But now the bed has been all but filled up with débris from the banks, and the thin stream of water is barely sufficient to feed the great lake of the Imperial gardens. Pekin formerly owned a very extensive system of sewers; but the in- difference of the municipal authorities has permitted them to be choked up to such an extent that they now scarcely even carry away the liquids which are emptied into them. In the best-preserved portions the flag-stones, laid side by side, which form the upper prop, are all loose, and in most cases they are either broken or have been taken away altogether, the sewerage being thus laid bare, poisoning the air with its fetid emanations. In many places, the streets not being paved, the soil, worn to dust by the constant traffic and swept by the winds of winter, has sunk to the level of the sewer, so that the liquid refuse filters through, and during the heavy rains, torren- tial rains of summer, the stagnant mud rushes out of gaping fissures, and surges onto the foot-path. Hence the terrible periodical epidemics which occur every year, and decimate the population of Pekin. The chief ornaments of the streets are the fronts of the shops. Large panels of carved wood, sometimes gilded, frame the façades, the carvings representing dragons, phoenixes, or other fantastic animals framed in com- plicated arabesques. The effect is very decorative; and I have seen some wonderful examples of wood-carving among these shop decorations. Be- sides the name of the owner of the shop written on the door, the con- tents of his store are announced in many-colored letters, and in attractive tº 268 • THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD descriptions in panels hung out perpendicularly so as to face the passers-by. In fact, in the chief commercial quarters, the sign-boards encroach upon the foot-path and impede traffic. On the other hand, the private as they all have an outer wall and trance courts, contribute nothing to the beauty of the street. We must note, §º & en passant, that each fam- ily has its private resi- fºliº § dence, proving the love of home so great lºlº-rº fºr hº among the Chinese. The humblest arti- san wishes to live alone with his family, and nothing would tempt him to complex establishments now becom- so common in Europe. Nowhere, in fact, is the home more sacred than in China—no- where are the ties of blood stronger, or the respon- sibilities they involve more fully recognized; in fact, they are no less binding, no less sacred, than those which hold the body-politic together. One other characteristic feature of the streets of Pekin is the sculptured portico—a sort of arch in wood or stone called Pai-leou, which is about thirty feet high, and is pierced with three to five bays. object of such arches is to commemo- great men and the great actions They are generally in honor of brated Sage, a poet, or a perhaps a great State offi- we find one to the women—to some they worked that, how- houses, several en- rate the º of the past. G a hero, a cele- 3.7 in thinker of genius, or cer; but now and then memory of private men or of those noble souls who, though in a narrow sphere, yet realized ever humble the lot, it could be nobly and who have left behind them an aroma virtue, courage, and devotion. The same considerations of policy and pru- dence which led the emperors to build, side by side, the two cities known as the Chinese and Tartar towns, inspired them with the idea of building yet a third city, * *ocession - After a Chinese drawing PEKIN 269 also immured in an encircling wall, and which they reserved for the private residence of their own families and the great dignitaries of the State. This is the Imperial or Yellow hibited City, or the Hwang-Ching. within a wall some two miles in and more than fifty feet high, rough casting, and covered with a yellow glaze. Be- the Son of Heaven, of the princes, headed nails houses, hill City—the Pro- It is enclosed circumference, cased in a pink with tiles varnished - sides the residence of Ah this wall encloses the palaces which can be identified by the big- - on the outer gates, the ministers' &# temples, convents, parks, an artificial . planted with cypresses and loaded with altars and pagodas, and, lastly, a great lake called the Golden Lake, covered with lotus plants, bordered with gardens, and spanned by the celebrated Marble Bridge. As time has gone on, and one dynasty has suc- ceeded another, however, this secluded district has lost something of its strictly official character. The people of Pekin are now allowed to enter it, a few pri- houses have even been erected, and of the narrower streets been opened. The part of the Yellow residence, which antique splendor palace in the term, but Vate . in some shops have most important City is the Imperial has lost nothing of its and majesty. It is not a Western acceptation of the a collection of Ioo buildings, each in the midst of courts and gardens, ar- ranged with perfect symmetry, and each de- voted to some special purpose; one, for instance, is the home of the Emperor himself; another, of the Empress; another, of the secondary wives, the concu- bines, the princes and princesses of the Imperial fam- FUNERAL PROCESSION ily; in others live the State functionaries, the guards, isolated After a Chinese drawing * 27,o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the eunuchs, the servants. Others, again, are sacred to the celebration of religious ceremonies and rites, to the meeting of great State Councils; another is a Library, another a Treasury; yet another a storehouse or a stable. In a word, the Prohibited City, or the Hwang-Chºng, is a whole town encircled by ramparts, as are the other two. The chief entrance is on the south, by way of what is known as the “Gate of the Great Purity,” guarded by two granite lions. Beyond stretches a vast quadrangular space, succeeded by a trench full of water, which encircles the ramparts of the palace, and is spanned by seven marble bridges. Five of these bridges correspond with the five outlets of a second colossal gateway, a kind of two-storied tower, known as the “Gate of Celes- tial Repose.” Then come other courts, then more gates, each with three, five, seven, or nine outlets, the central one of which is opened for the Emperor alone. - - - - On the east and west, among masses of greenery, rise two temples, dedicated, one to the ancestors of the reigning dynasty, the other to the spirits of earth and of heaven. - A little on the north, actually within the “Prohibited City,” are nine huge palaces, separated by courts, one succeeding the other, and each as spacious as that of the Louvre. This is the most private portion of the palace—the Ta-mei, or “great enclosure,” which is grand and imposing, but at the same time simple, and with nothing theatrical about it. Here is lived out the mysterious existence, the strange destiny, imposed by tradition for some thirty centuries on the sovereigns of China. As the Son of the Earth and of Heaven, the Emperor owes his supreme au- thority to his divine origin. His titles, which remind us of those in use at the Byzantine Court, are “The Infinite in Virtue and in Science,” the “Eternal and Solitary One,” the “Unique,” the “Sublime,” and so on. None dare utter or write his name during his lifetime, and it is reserved to posterity to sing his praises. Accustomed from babyhood to being adored and to the prostration of every one in his presence, he is solemnly initiated at five years old in the knowledge of the canonical books, the celebration of religious rites, and the history of his ancestors. On the approach of his seventeenth year a bride is chosen for him from among the most noble and beautiful young girls of Mantchu origin, as well as two secondary princess wives and fifteen concubines. Interminable are the marriage ceremonies, in which take part 6000 persons of different rank, and in which everything—insignia and costumes, gestures and attitudes, speech and silence, processions and banquets, sacrifices and prayers, the N #A WE =º º º º ; Fº º § º } s # | ſº =*= tº fº Edºlºmºlºt: ### #;º: Hººrºº | L.Thuillier, del} Imperial Palace Tai-tsing-men (Gate of Great Purity) Buddhist Monastery Monastery of Eternal Repose Marble Bridge The Golden Lake The Gate of Heaven Academy of Han-Lin PLAN OF PEKIN.—From a French Engraving 9 The Legations Io Temple of Glorious Devotion II Examining College 12 Observatory Tower I3 Monastery of Lung-fu-tse I4 Great Buddhist Monastery o I5 Temple of Confucius I6 Imperial University f Yung-ho-kung 17 Clock Tower I8 Drum Tower 19 Temple of Ancient Dynasties 2O Pe-ta-tse 2I Catholic Church 22 Temple of Heaven 23 Altar of the Earth 24 Buddhist Monastery PEKIN 273 most important and the most trivial details, are regulated with hieratic precision, the very mysteries of the bridal bed being subjected to the authority of inviolable religious rites. And the whole life of the man, who is absolute master of 450,000,000 of people, is but one long ceremony, divided into some hundreds of different acts, now religious, now political, but always grand and solemn. Even death does not free him from his sacred position, and in the majestic necropolis of Tsun-houa his soul is sup- posed to be still performing, among funereal rites, the same superhuman duties as in his life on earth. On the east and west of the central mass of palaces are two even larger groups of buildings and gardens symmetri- cally arranged. The western portion is sacred to the Court officers, whose business it is to control the palace ceremonial and to look after the Imperial Treasury, which contains in six separate magazines gold and silver money, precious stones, furs, silks, the clothes, and the stores of tea belonging to the Emperor. Quite near to them, behind the palace reserved for the Empress, the concubines, and the Imperial family, is the Lao-kong- £chou, or house of the eunuchs. Of these there are some 3OOO, the chief of whom wears in his hat the crystal button of the mandarins of the fifth class. Set apart as personal attendants of the Emperor, they are the only men who share with him the right of appearing in the presence of the ladies of the Imperial household. A European, better acquainted than any other foreigner with China, and who has long resided there — M. Deveria, the first Minister of Foreign Affairs accredited to the Court of Pekin—gives us a curious detail of the very private functions performed by the eunuchs for their master: “In a room of the Aïen-tsang-Aong (the Palace of Celestial Purity) there are as many jade labels as there are women in the Imperial household. On each label is engraved the name of a woman, and when the Sovereign has turned over one of them, a eunuch goes the same evening and hangs a lantern at the door of the apartment of the woman thus indicated. She understands the signal, and awaits the coming of a eunuch, who carries her on his back wrapped in nothing but a large red sleeveless mantle. It is the business of the same eunuch to draw up a report the next morning, which he gives to a special delegate of the Court of Censors.” - It often happens at Pekin, as it did at the Byzantine and Mussulman Courts, that, owing to the caprice of a prince or a favorite, some eunuch usurps a great deal of power in the State. The history of China is full of the record of palace intrigues directed against the overweening power of the eunuchs. In the eighth and ninth centuries of our era, towards the I8 - - 274 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD close of the Thang dynasty, their insolence and wealth led to popular revolts in several parts of the empire. Now their political influence is almost mil; but their cupidity has not diminished. Charged, in virtue of their functions, with making all purchases on behalf of the Court, their only aim is to enrich themselves. Most of them, when they grow old, leave the palace service, take a wife on their own account, and lead a lazy life as retired officials. In one of the quietest quarters of the north-west of the town a beautiful park has been set aside as a cemetery for the eunuchs, where they are left in peace to a repose they do not deserve. In the eastern portion of the “Prohibited City,” the last we have still to describe, are the stables and coach-houses of the Court, the provision- shops, the arsenal, the reserve stores of Imperial garments, the drug and perfume store, a Hippodrome, where, in accordance with certain rites, the Emperor rides or practises shooting; and, lastly, the celebrated Palace Library. This building, which may be recognized from outside by the dull green tiles of the roof, contains an infinitely valuable collection, in spite of the devastations which fire and pillage have again and again brought about. Every one knows how devoted the Chinese have ever been to the study of history. In marked contrast to India, where, dreams alone being supposed to be real, it was not worth while to record the incidents of actual life, the Chinese have felt from the first a need of transmitting to the future an authentic account of the past. Twenty-six hundred years before the Christian era there was in the capital of the Empire a Historical Tribunal, the function of which was to register all meteorological phe- nomena and the chief political and social events of the day. . The Chinese race was thus the first to own a National Chronicle; and its annals, as ancient as those of Egypt, and, moreover, continuously enriched during the course of some forty centuries, are now the most important historical monument of humanity. - - Such, with its palaces, temples, gardens, official residences, and store- houses, is the residence of the Son of Heaven. - A town, justly called the “Prohibited City;” for though it has a resi- dent population of more than 8000, it is forbidden to any one, under pain of death, to enter its gates, except those whose rank, race, or duties author- ize them to do so. Even the representatives of foreign countries have ever been refused the right of entry; and when, in 1873, the members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Pekin were admitted, for the first time, to salute the Emperor of China, it was outside the palace, in a pavilion of the PEKIN 275 western gardens, set apart for embassies from tributary countries, that they were received, and their audience only lasted five minutes. It was under similar conditions that they last year had to present their letters of cre- dence to the young Emperor Kwang-Siu. In the Tartar city, outside the Imperial residences, there are many interesting buildings, such as the Academy of Ham-Zān; the Astronomical THE TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS.-Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph Tribunal; the dreaded Tribunal of Censors; the Observatory Tower; the College in which examinations are held, where, as in the cells of a vast hive, 11oooo candidates are housed for the great annual competition for certificates as teachers; the University Palace, with its groves of venerable cypresses; the Clock Tower, Tchoung-leou, built in 1270, and restored in 1745, the Drum Tower, Kou-ſeou, dating from the thirteenth century, both described by Marco Polo; the Temple of Tchao-soung, a kind of Pantheon, erected in memory of deeds of glory and devotion, the ancient Temple of Zi-tai-ti-wang, where incense is ever kept burning in honor of the dynas- ties which have made China what it is; numerous Buddhist convents, the wealthiest and most venerated, that known as Young-ho-Koung, serving as a residence for one of the Grand Lamas of Thibet, a living incarnation of 276 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Buddha; and, to pause for a moment in this rush through Pekin, two of its most curious buildings, the great Temple of Confucius and the pagoda of A "e-ſa-fse. . The great Temple of Confucius, built in 1300 by the Emperor Tching- wang, is at the northern extremity of the town, a few steps from Han-ting. men, the Gate of Eternal Repose. - A grand portico of sculptured stone, pierced with three semicircular bays, gives access to a court, in which grow venerable trees, perhaps the most beautiful in Pekin. At the end, above three marble terraces, rises a temple of simple but most majestic appearance. Even less pretentious than the exterior is the interior of the sanctuary, with its altar bearing censers and two torches, and above it a panel on which are engraved four characters in gold; while below is a tablet, also bearing an inscription, which typifies the moral character of Confucius; and that is all. This excessive simplicity, this cold symbolism, suits well the system of the great philosopher, who, six centuries before the Christian era, set for- ever, on the conscience of the Chinese race, the seal of his powerful influ- ence. A healthy if not very elevated morality, a free if not very enlight- ened rationalism, a wide intellectual culture, altogether wanting in poetry, with an absence of mysticism or metaphysical pretension—these are the most noteworthy characteristics of the precepts he bequeathed to China, and by which a nation of 450,000,000 inhabitants has been guided for some 24OO years. By what strange fortune has this doctrine—but a profane doctrine, after all—sufficed for twenty-four centuries to the moral needs of so many millions and millions of people, while the races of the West have adopted and rejected, one after another, so many inspired dogmas P Could the problem of humanity be solved by the common-sense and intellectual acumen of the individual spirit, Confucius would have solved it. Better, however, is it to believe that the yearning aspiration of the human heart after something higher and better than itself, and the sublime madness of heroes and saints, have a value of their own, and that the great crises of conscience, which are the agony of the idealist races of the West, are not the mere morbid and sterile fancies of unhinged minds. - The pagoda of Pe-ta-tse is at the western extremity of the town near the gate of Feou-tching-men. It is a sanctuary of a very pronounced Ind- ian character, loaded with delicately-carved sculptures, and destined, as are the many buildings of the kind in Buddhist countries, to enshrine the relics of Cakya-Mouni, such as a bone, some hair, a bit of the robe or sash, s | º | A BONZE REFECTORY..—Engraved by Barbant, after the picture by F. Régamey PEKIN - 279 or, even less than that, some object touched by the hand of the divine reformer. This building, with the Tower of the Observatory and the Temple of Confucius, call up before the imagination the memory of the brilliant days of Mongol supremacy in Pekin. - During the reigns of Kublai-Khan and of the Yng-Tsungs, Pekin attained to a position unique in its long history. For a whole century, from about 1260 to 1368, the Chinese capital was the centre of Asia, a focus of literary and scientific culture, and perhaps the spot, of all the world, in which the human intellect was most unfettered and most daring in its flights. - But the Mongols were wanting in political acumen. Pre-eminent in making conquests, they were, like the Arabs, incapable of founding a dura- ble government. After reigning for more than a century in China they disappeared from history, leaving scarcely any trace. After, as before their domination, the Chinese people remained intact, retaining its own peculiar genius, its rites, its traditions, and its individual conscience. The com- bined exclusive and nomad instincts of the Mongols were too ineradicable for them to amalgamate with the conquered races. One pretty anecdote illustrating this has been preserved to us by the historians of the Mongol dynasty. When Kublai-Khan had the Palace of Pekin built, he sent to the deserts of Mongolia for a little plant which grows there in abundance, and is called the tsing-tsao, or blue-grass, and had it planted in the courts and gardens of his new home, that his descendants might be ever kept in mind of their primitive origin. The idea is touching, but the precaution was quite unneeded. No country in the world — not India, in all its beauty, not Persia, with all its marvels, not China, with all its wealth— could make the Mongols forget the melancholy plains of their native coun- try, and their hearts were ever oppressed in their exile with a yearning nostalgia—a homesickness for their wandering life and the wild poetry of the steppes. º, ºr We must not leave Pekin without mentioning the Foreign Legations. It must not be forgotten that, according to treaty, Pekin is not open to foreign trade. Diplomatists, missionaries, and the few Europeans in the service of the Central Custom-house of China are the only outsiders allowed to reside in the country. The Legations are all grouped together in the same quarter, on the south-east of the town, in one of the wide transverse. avenues, and consist of old Chinese palaces converted as best may be to their new purpose. The French Legation is in the midst of a fine park, 28o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD { and is the largest if not the most comfortable. Formerly the residence of a Tartar prince, it was ceded to the French Government after the signature of the treaty of peace on October 25, 1860. º The “Chinese Town,” which nestles against the southern rampart of the “Tartar City,” is far from presenting the same picturesque appearance or inspiring the same architectural interest. The streets are narrow and tortuous, dirty, and more evil-smelling if possible than those of the other town; the police are even more negligent, the beggars more numerous and more insolent. It is true that an attempt has been made to achieve a more symmetrical appearance for this net-work of lanes and alleys, and two wide thoroughfares, intersecting each other at right angles, have been pierced from north to south and from east to west, but the general aspect of the quarters they pass through is not modified. It is the quarter for trade and industries, shops and workshops, theatres and restaurants, opium dens and places of amusement. We meet with the same uniformity in the buildings here as elsewhere in Pekin. There is nothing on the outside to distinguish theatres from ordinary houses. The entrance is generally no more than a low door giv. ing access to a court, at the end of which rises a building of no architect. ural style. The inside is merely an open parterre for spectators, a stage without curtains, and one gallery, the whole of the utmost simplicity. In the gallery and on the parterre are set out a number of little tables, at which during the acting, which generally begins about five o'clock in the afternoon, the spectators regale themselves with drinking tea, eating, and smoking. On the stage, to the accompaniment of a deafening orchestra, is represented some historical or mythological drama, some comedy, or perhaps one of those long domestic plays which so delight the Chinese imagination. - Nor does anything distinguish the restaurants from any other houses, unless perhaps the front, which is ingeniously contrived to serve as kitchen and office, so that before going in the customer can judge of the appear. ance of the food and the skill and care of the cooks preparing it. The same with the opium dens; there is nothing about them to attract the attention of the passers-by except a few scraps of yellow paper stuck onto the doors. If the traveller has any curiosity to penetrate into the interior of the establishment, he will see two or more rooms divided into cabins by thin partitions, and in each cabin three wooden or marble couches arranged as in a triclinium. The smoker settles himself down on one of these couches, lying on his left side, with a mat to rest on and a PEKIN 281 cushion for his neck. A pipe is then brought to him, consisting of a reed tube and a small metal jade or porcelain brazier, a little lighted lamp, and a tin bowl in which are three or four grammes of liquid extract of opium. He takes a little drop of the narcotic on the point of a needle, places it daintily in the brazier, and bringing his pipe thus filled to the flame of the lamp, he inhales at a single breath the smoke of the burning opium. The air becomes impregnated with a thick and acrid vapor and pervaded by a heavy enervating smell, and the corners of the room are shrouded in a dim mist. No sound of voices is heard, only now and then an indistinct sigh. The smokers are wrapped in a dream-laden atmosphere of lethargy. The Chinese town contains but two monuments of importance, the “Temple of Heaven” and the “Altar of the Earth.” Surrounded by a wall a league in circumference, the Temple of Heaven rises up abruptly without roof and without walls. It consists of three circular terraces enclosed within marble balustrades, and rising one above the other to support a stone sacrificial table. The lowest terrace is ON THE OBSERVATORY TOWER.-Engraved by Privat, after a photograph 282 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD 120 feet in diameter, and the highest rises twenty-five feet above the level of the soil. Round about the sacred building is a thicket of venerable trees, shutting out the view on every side, and compelling, so to speak, the concentration of the attention upon the canopy of heaven. There are few monuments in the world which are at once so simple and so grand. It is here that the Emperor comes three times a year, at the winter and summer solstices, and at the beginning of spring, to sacrifice to that heaven of which he is supposed to be the Emanation upon earth. - This building was erected in 1421, under the Emperor Ywang-lo, third Sovereign of the Ming dynasty. Until 1531, the sacrifices due from the Emperor to the earth were also offered up here, but from that date a special altar was set aside for them on the other side of the Esplanade, near the principal entrance to the temple. These two monuments, sacred to a special religious service in which the Emperor is the sole officiating priest, are altogether unique of their kind, and are the sole exceptions to the uniformity of all other buildings in China. Doubtless they represent the primitive type of Chinese temples, the altar in the open air in a sacred enclosure, the ſemenos of the Aryans. The Chinese of the olden time were unable to conceive the idea of in any way shutting up the Divinity and building for Him a house with roof and walls; they never personified their gods, and though they offered sacrifices to the powers of nature they adored them in symbols, not in actual real- ities. It was not until, as time went on and worship became more com- plicated, the naïve and simple customs of archaic times were supplemented by a system of philosophy, that the Chinese dreamed of restricting the rites connected with their religion to the narrow bounds of an enclosure with roofs and walls. And it was even later when, in the eleventh century of the Christian era, Buddhism, with its copious imagery and liturgy, was introduced into China, that the plan of the temple was modified and expanded, till it assumed the form and the architectural importance retained to the present day. - - - Besides these two sacred buildings, and a temple dedicated to Kwang- yin, goddess of grace and pity, there is next to nothing to see in the “Chinese City,” except, perhaps, near the old porcelain manufactory of Zeao-ti-fchang, the beautiful mosque of Lêpai-tse, the most important in Pekin. In fact, it is well known that Mahometanism, introduced into China in the seventh century, now owns some 20,000,000 votaries, dwelling in the midst of the professors of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. As with the Buddhist temples, there is nothing about the outside PEKIN & 283 of Chinese mosques to indicate to the stranger to what religion they belong. - The number of Mussulmans living at Pekin is about 25,000. They enjoy a monopoly of the trade of butchers, and also of the management of the public baths. Their sign-boards are generally surmounted by a CreSCent. Their manners and customs differ greatly from those of the other in- habitants of China, though there is nothing to indicate this about their physiognomies or their costumes. They keep themselves to themselves, intermarry, and have the reputation of being very charitable to their fellow- believers, so that there is a saying in the town that “there are no poor among the Mussulmans.” This last peculiarity is the more noteworthy when we remember that Pekin, great town though it be, owns not a single public or private asylum for the indigent, the sick, the infirm, or for foreigners. Now and then in the wealthy quarters a few distributions are made to the poor of alms or medicaments, but these individual gifts, which have no official or social char. acter, are nearly always the outcome of a love of ostentation rather than of true charity. As a result, beggars are the curse, the most crying and shameful evil of Pekin. Numbering some 80,000, they form a kind of caste, a fraternity, with their own traditions and privileges, such as those of the mendicants of the Middle Ages in Western Europe, and, like them, having their “Emperor of Galilee, Duke of Egypt, or King of Thunes"—that is to say, an elected chief to whom they all yield obedience. The most curious feature of the whole institution is that the chief, whose headquarters are on the Bridge of the Gate of Heaven, is recognized by the police of Pekin, who deal directly with him in matters relating to the corporation of the town. As for the misery of these beggars, no description could give any idea of it. But for a rag about their loins, they are stark naked. Even in the severest winter, when the bitter wind sweeps across from the Mongolian steppes, and the thermometer is far below zero, the poor wretches have, most of them, not a shred of clothing to wrap about their shoulders, and they succumb to the cold every night by hundreds. Gaunt and wan, covered with vermin and sores, they wander about the town, harrowing the feelings of the passers-by with their piteous lamentations, and fighting with dogs for a share in the refuse of the streets; or for hours together they crouch outside a shop, driving purchasers away by their mere presence, 284 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD till the owner gets out of patience and flings them a few coins in self- defence. When night comes, they seek shelter under a bridge beneath the gates of the town, or in some tumble-down house, lying down helter- skelter, men, women, young girls, and children, in a promiscuous heap. THE BEGGARs' BRIDGE AND CENTRAL AVENUE OF THE CHINESE TOWN Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph Their physical misery is such that their moral degradation is overlooked. From their faces all traces of an inner life are wiped out; like the beasts, they can only endure, and seem, to some extent, to have lost the capacity for suffering. In stating above that Pekin owns no public charitable institution, I forgot the celebrated Foundling Asylum, Ou-ying-fan, which was founded in the seventeenth century by the great Emperor Kwang-ti. In fact, on the south-west of the Chinese town, near the gate of Cha-hoa-men, is a good- sized hospital for the reception, care, and instruction of orphans and aban- doned children. But although the establishment exists, one cannot say that it is in operation; for the money devoted to it by law is hardly ever paid, and the small amount collected barely suffices to support the direc- tor. The buildings are tumbling to pieces. There are no inmates, and perhaps not ten children get any help from it. The only genuine cases PEKIN - 285 relieved are the poor dead children picked up in the streets every morning. Two carts, drawn by oxen, pass slowly along the streets, stopping at the cross-roads to receive the corpses brought by the relations, or which have been exposed at night in the public thoroughfares. These bodies are all taken to the Ou-ying-tan, and laid together in a building set apart for them; and at the end of every week they are buried en masse in a common grave. The number of corpses thus collected varies from thirty to fifty a day, and in times of epidemic rises to more than IOO: and this is the result of misery and illness alone. Crime has but an infinitesimal share in the appalling total, in spite of its having been said that infanticide is a custom, indeed an institution, in China. The only guilty people in the matter are not individuals, but society and the Government, which leave unaided poor women about to become mothers, and allow hundreds of beggars, like wandering bitches, to bring forth their young in the streets. To wind up this grewsome catalogue of the horrors of Pekin, we must mention yet one more. In the Chinese town, at the junction of the avenue of Tich-wang-ſche-men and the great transversal artery, is the place where, as a general rule, is held the fruit and vegetable market. But once a year, after the great autumn assizes, it is the scene of the execution of criminals, who are generally strangled or beheaded. At nine o'clock in the morning the condemned, who usually number about thirty, are brought down in a cart, naked to the waist, with their hands tied behind them, and their pig- tails coiled up on the top of their heads. They get out at one of the corners of the cross-roads, and crouch on the ground among their keep- ers. There is neither platform, scaffold, nor gallows; in a word, nothing indicates the approaching tragedy except, at the opening of the main thor- oughfare, the seats for the magistrates and police-officers, the latter in full uniform. In one corner the executioner, wearing a yellow apron, arranges on the ground the instruments of justice, which are like very large knives. But the time for the executions is not yet come; the magistrates sit quietly smoking; the spectators stare listlessly about them; and the condemned men talk to each other, betraying in their faces none of the anguish of this terrible waiting. - Half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, pass thus. At last there is a stir in the crowd; the magistrates rise, the condemned lift up their heads. A horseman, escorted by foot-guards, appears in the distance, carrying in his hand a small chest covered with yellow stuff. The chest is ceremoniously placed on the table, and one of the magistrates takes from it a carefully- folded paper. This is the Imperial edict ordering the execution. On the 286 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD sº list of names some are marked with a red circle, made by the august hand of the Emperor himself. These are the ones that are to perish; the rest are pardoned, and are not told, until this late moment, of the grace accorded to them, that they may share with their less fortunate compan- ions the horrors of apprehension of this last hour. But the doom is even now often only deferred, the pardon only a respite; and the next year these same poor wretches are brought back to the place of mourning and handed over to the executioner. At last the horrible scene commences. The criminal who is to be beheaded is taken to the middle of the square; he kneels upon the ground; an assistant standing by seizes him by the pigtail, the executioner raises his knife, and with one blow cuts off his head. Another condemned man kneels beside the corpse lying in the dust; the executioner takes another knife, and the operation is repeated. If the victim is to be strangled, he is made to lie flat on his face on the ground, with a rope round his neck; the executioner places his foot upon the nape of his victim, and while the assistants hold his legs, pulls the rope till suffo- cation ensues. All the Europeans who have witnessed executions in China testify to the courage, or rather the indifference, shown by the condemned in meeting their fate. They await the supreme moment without any out- ward sign of emotion; and when the butchery begins, they do not even turn their eyes away from the sight of their companions' agony, and when their own turn comes they voluntarily place themselves in the hands of the executioner. Nothing can explain this perfect indifference, this apathy with death close at hand, unless it be feelings less sensitive and an imagina. tion less vivid than ours. The execution over, the corpses are taken away on a tumbrel; the executioner sprinkles a little dust over the blood in the ruts of the roads, and while the sellers of fruit and vegetables are setting out their wares again, the executioner puts the heads that have been cut off in a wicker cage and hangs it on a post, where it remains until the decay of the flesh leaves the skulls bare. We have still one district to visit in the “Chinese Town”—a vast tract stretching all along the southern rampart, consisting of nothing but ruins and deserted thoroughfares, the very streets having become obliterated among the accumulated rubbish. Not a cart, not a passer-by, to be seen. Only, perhaps, here and there a hovel still standing, a beggar of ghastly visage, a few half-naked children grovelling in the nameless débris, or some old, yellow, wrinkled hag, who looks at you with dull eyes from which all expression is gone. Very striking is the contrast with the animation of the neighboring quarters. It is as though one were Sud- PEKIN 287 denly transported to a dead city retaining but a few vestiges of a life gone by. The outskirts of large towns are always ugly and dreary, but I think those of Pekin are worse than any others, consisting as they do of ill- smelling slums, mud villages, ill-kept market-gardens, and tracts of deserted country. And yet there is a certain poetry about them, a poetry they owe to their tombs. In China, in fact, the dead are not crowded together, nor is space grudged for graves, as in Europe. Tombs are scattered about in the fields, the woods, and the parks, set down in shady solitudes, for the living wish to secure to the dead peace in the mysterious life beyond the tomb. In fact, the Chinese hold the departed in special reverence, they feel for them an infinitely tender pity, they lavish prayers and offerings such as flowers and fruit upon them, and nowhere else are so many memorials taken to the grave or so many tears shed at the tomb as in China. - The neighborhood of Pekin is therefore dotted with tombs—generally mere grass-clad mounds, often an altar with a shrub at each corner, more rarely a cedar-wood temple. And among all these funereal monuments there are three which - have a special place in the veneration of the European. These are the little ceme- teries where the mis- sionaries are buried. The oldest and most important is on the west of the town, near the gate of Ping-ăse. men, and in it there are eighty-eight pyr- amidal tombs adorn- ed with interlaced dragons. There rest Fathers Ricci, Schall, | Régis, Castiglione, and Verbiest, who, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, knew how to win the favor of the Emperors, and hoped some day to win for the Christian religion official recognition. But where are the remains of the first apostles of Christianity in China, of John of Monte. AN OMNIBUS OF PEKIN Engraved by Bazin, after a Chinese picture 288 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD corvino, who died Archbishop of Pekin in 1333, of Father Benoist de Goes, and of many others who came forth to die in a sacred cause 4ooo leagues from their native country? Last time I was at the cemetery two Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, who have a little orphanage near by, were reciting their orisons there. Unlike the priests of the Missions, who have all adopted the Chinese costume, and plait their hair in Tartar style, these ladies, in the midst of a hostile population, still wear the traditional dress of their order. Their white caps and bluish-gray dresses produce a very singular effect here. Simple-hearted and gentle, with peaceful faces, they seemed to me in the quiet secluded enclosure the very living embodiment of poetry, feminine charity, and self-sacrificing religious devotion. Such are the general appearance and character of the capital of the Chinese empire. The town is truly unique alike in the intense interest it inspires and the indelible impression it leaves on the mind. It perfectly represents the country of which it is the chief town, and in its walls and its monuments it sums up, so to speak, the strange and wonderful destinies of the Chinese race. How marvellous is the phenomenon of that extraor. dinary empire | There is nothing in the least resembling it in the West. We are acquainted with many civilizations, but they all had an origin, a gradual development, and a decline; they seem only to have enjoyed pros- perity for a short time before they began to waste away and crumble into dust. But China, after forty centuries of existence, remains the same— unchangeable, sufficient to itself. More than 2000 years before the Chris- tian era the great outlines of its history were traced, and its individuality was already established. Truly this is a fact without parallel, and far more marvellous than anything in the antique civilizations of the West. But why does it not stir us more deeply P Why do we give to China the recognition of our minds, but not of our hearts? Because it has ever held itself aloof, as a family apart from every other branch of the human race. For twenty-five centuries it has ignored the West, and when at last it recognized its exist- ence, it was but to despise it. No other nation has maintained an exclu- siveness so superb or an isolation alike so egotistic and so obstinate. Alone, for itself and by itself, it has solved all the problems of civilization; it has never ceased to be Chinese in order to be human; no moral affinity, no sentiment of humanity, binds it to us, and its past of 4000 years holds not a memory in common with us. What sympathy, then, can we be expected to feel for it * - .# It is all this which Pekin interprets so faithfully. This is why the PEKIN 289 ancient Chinese city interests and astonishes us without being able to charm us. This is why, in spite of the wonderful visions of remote antiquity it calls up for us, it will never inspire our imaginations with the noble and melancholy dreams which come to us as a matter of course elsewhere, whenever we are able to inhale the aroma of days long gone by, and to recall to life the spirit of the past. I9 O £2, § 2&ſº ſº N § | º W lº & N W º º -A. 2 C zºº º | i S--§§ sº sº ! Q f c. º º | h Ø 3. § ź. N s: W W -wº [N * > º -- ºf sº zºº A wº S - §§§º - ==== & TT.IIITTº TITIII] * * Nùù N ū T w à º % º à | | | | E-3 = % % ºil. ~~~~ intº º F. - | |º | -2 N --º --- - - I'llºutºº º ºill ºº::: * * * * * * *** *** * * * * ~ * ***** E-3 ſ º/ º/ º º £º / A & Ø CAIRO I N leaving the station at Cairo the traveller enters the Esbekiyeh, once a vast open space as wide as the Place de la Concorde in Paris, before it was enclosed by palisades for the making of the square, which now occupies a con- siderable portion of it. In olden times a marvellous sight greeted the visitor to the Esbekiyeh, for it was occupied by an Arab market; and Marilhat's masterpiece, brought from the East in the noble days of Romanticism, was a perfect revelation of the beauties of the Orient. But when I first made acquaintance with this same Esbekiyeh-now, alas! a good twenty ARAB WOMAN years ago—the European quarter had long since Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph invaded it. The venerable mimosas of Marilhat's picture now cast their light shadows upon what are always the first innovations introduced to Africa by the civilization of the West—houses in the Italian style, painted rose-color, yellow, or sky- blue; English hotels, with flights of steps and verandas; wine-shops, cafés, and café chantants, with other characteristic features of the Euro- pean Levant; haunted by motley crowds of every race, and strange-look- ing hybrids wearing the red fez of the East, with a collarless coat, jostling each other on the roads and foot-paths, with here and there, in startling contrast to them, a true bit of the old Orient—grand-looking figures in flowing robes, veiled women, serpent-charmers, exhibitors of cynocephalic apes, or huge camels of fantastic appearance, recalling the grave and som- bre figures of Arab tales or Egyptian bass-reliefs. To enter the true Cairo, the Cairo of the East, one has but to go to the first stand for donkeys and hire a steed. Such stands are to be seen 294 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD outside every hotel on the Esbekiyeh; and it is not necessary to have been to Egypt to be familiar with the appearance of Oriental donkeys, for numbers of their owners flocked with them to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower at the time of the Exhibition. The European knows well that the ass of the East is very unlike the hairless, ill-tempered, obstinate, broken- down beast of the West. Descendants of the fleet coursers of the desert, the donkey of Cairo can emulate the feats of the ancestors whose portraits adorn tombs 6000 years old. Homer compared them to Ajax; a member of their family harangued the prophet Balaam; another served as palfry to Christ Himself. How many families enumerated in the Almanach de Gotha can claim a lineage as distinguished 2 Quick, full of nervous force, and, though small, with well-knit frames and dainty feet, they have a won- derfully intelligent and spirited appearance, and give themselves the airs of a pretty woman. There is not a heavy Bedouin between Assouan and Alexandria that they could not carry and trot about with all day long. The French soldiers of 1797 nicknamed them the “Savants,” after the members of the Institute who accompanied the expedition. But the donkey is not complete without the donkey-boy. This “boy” wears a long blue blouse and a felt-hat. He directs and urges on his beast, follows it about like its shadow, can, if need be, run for ten hours at a stretch, and for all this receives but a few sous. Full of fun, cynic humor, and tricks, he is the very counterpart of the street Arab of Europe. For foreigners he pours out a jargon made up of some twenty words of Italian, with as many of French and English, garnished with a few guttural Arab expressions, and supplemented by an energetic pantomime of signs. Another peculiarity is that his name is always Ahmed or Mahomet. Directly you approach a station for donkeys you are besieged by the donkey-boys, who seize upon you, and, after a brief struggle, you find yourself the captive of one, when you have nothing more to do than to mount your steed. Unfortunately, the Arab saddle not only has a bump in front, covered with bright red leather by way of a bit of local color, which bump throws the rider onto the crupper, but the stirrups are fastened to one strap, which works like a pulley; so that directly you set foot in one stirrup, down it goes, while the other flies up. The Cairo donkey, who is a born trickster, generally chooses this moment to start, and the rider is in dan- ger of measuring his length upon the sacred soil of Egypt. This is, how- ever, a necessary training for donkey-riding, as the Cairo asses have as many ways of throwing you as Rabelais's Panurge had of making money. CAIRO 295 Once off, you are at the mercy of the donkey and his driver, the latter never ceasing to excite the former with blows from his stick, guttural cries, harsh exclamations, and, above all, a kind of strange, long-prolonged, half-whispered modulation. Don't attempt to moderate your pace at all; you will only waste your time. The donkey has two paces—a trot which bumps you about like a shower of blows, and a gallop which is compara- tively delightful. But it changes from one to the other perpetually; and the transition shakes you up and nearly pitches you off, you feel you don't care where. Moreover, when at the height of its speed, your eccentric steed is sometimes seized with an excess of piety, and suddenly flops down on its knees, sending you over its ears to follow its example a little farther on. Then there is not an obstacle in his path, whether it be a wall or another donkey, that he does not take care to rub you against. One would imagine that he wished to relieve himself, by rubbing, of the pressure of your legs against his body, or that, like the camel of the Gospels, he has THE CITADEL OF CAIRO.-After a drawing by Boudier a fancy for going through the eye of a needle. After all, however, one ends by adoring these swift and willing little beasts, in spite of, perhaps on account of their very faults. They are friends of a nature a little too facetious, but still they are friends. 296 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD But now we are in the saddle ! We are off at a gallop ! We turn the corner of a street, we pass the last European buildings, and we are at once in the very heart of the Orient, clinging, with the help of two stirrups, to a mad donkey dashing with lowered head into the very scene of the Arabian Mights. We are in a labyrinth of tortuous and quaint-looking lanes, turning, twisting, ending abruptly, or unravelling in an interminable perspective; lanes blocked up with houses, the irregular façades jutting out, with one story projecting beyond another, and here and there meeting those on the other side so as to form a regular roof, succeeded by gaps through which pours blinding sunshine; alleys crowded with passers-by, in which you rub shoulders with negroes, Nubians, fellahs, Arabs, etc., and are every now and then nearly swept down by fresh currents of traffic, rushing like tributaries into the main stream—a bewildering turmoil, fresh groups loom- ing suddenly into sight, a series of visions of fantastic apparitions from the Zhousand and One AWights, in which we seem to recognize the old beliefs of our childhood. The first impression is positively overwhelming as we pass through the covered passages, and see the hurrying, weird-looking, shadowy crowds in the dim light, succeeded by a blaze of light and color, a noise of many - voices, and a series of gleaming, shining bazaars, full of life and motion; then silence, and deserted houses crumbling into ruins, with here and there an arched gateway blocking up the street, and minarets rising up from each story of terraced buildings—an endless labyrinth, in which we seem to be going round and round, and from which there is apparently no way out. But at last, at the end of a tortuous and shadowed alley, we come into a wide, sunlit square, with a grand mass of buildings before us—a regular Acropolis, one group of fortifications rising above another in pict- uresque irregularity. We have reached the Citadel of Cairo. A pile of crumbling, scorched, and gloomy-looking masonry rests against the ram- part wall closing the square, and a wide gate opens for our passage, flanked by two large, round, crenellated, and machicolated towers. The whole is crowned, as with a tiara, by a soaring white alabaster mosque, rising from a pedestal more than 900 feet high, and with its majestic dome set between two lofty but delicate alabaster minarets, which rise with airy grace to twice the height of the cupola. The Citadel is reached by a gentle gradient, accessible to carriages, and the buildings occupy the platform at the top and part of the slopes, - CAIRO 297 being divided by walls into different quarters and into something like dis- tricts at different levels. They include mosques, palaces, cannon founderies, powder manufactories, coining rooms, etc. The Citadel is, in fact, a town in itself; and to supply the garrison with water, and save it from dying of thirst, Saladin sunk a well fed from the Nile. I have myself seen the wa- ter brought up by a proc- ess in use at the time of the Crusades. In the narrow space where the mouth of the well opens, and which is enclosed by walls made of huge blocks of stone, two buffaloes fas- tened to horizontal beams turned and set in mo- tion the grating machin- ery which brought the water from the depths of the well. It was not ex actly the latest scientific method, but Decamps would have made a curi- ous picture of the Cyclo- pean masonry, the patches of sunshine and shadow, the rude and primitive apparatus, and the grand black quadrupeds with lowered crests working it. It is from a fine esplanade at the summit of the Citadel that the ter- raced mosque rises. It was here that the famous massacre of the Mame- lukes took place on May 1, 1811, by order of Mahomet Ali. It is said that one of them escaped by leaping, or making his horse leap, from the terrace into the moat; but equally incredible legends are connected with nearly all terraces above precipices. It was Mahomet Ali, who owed some atone- ment to the God of the Koran, who had the mosque built on the scene of his crime; and this act of piety seems to have propitiated Heaven for the A CAIRO DON KEY AND DONKEY - BOY - Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Bridgman - 298 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD butchery, for it had the best results for the illustrious despot, who died loaded with prosperity. - From the edge of the terrace a splendid bird's-eye view can be obtained. Immediately beneath us is the terraced town, too shut in for the streets to be distinguishable, with its hundreds of minarets forming a compact, grayish-yellow mass, as indistinct as a great crowd of people, and melting gradually into the country. Beyond the city, stretching into the distance as far as the eye can reach, is the low plain, the black mud of Egypt, dotted with microscopic objects, tiny swellings representing villages, and patches of shadow which are groves of dates—the whole framed by the discolored line of the hori- zon, where the earth melts into the pallid sky. - On the right is a wall of scorched rock riddled with fissures, connect- ed behind us with the mountains, on the last declivity of which we stand. A gleaming belt of white sand skirts the base of the rocks on one side, and on the other is merged in the plain, widening on the east towards Suez into the Yast stretch of the Asiatic deserts. A series of little brick-colored monuments, looking as if they were toy jewels set in the sand, succeed each other like a procession of pilgrims on the way to Mecca. On the left, beyond the Nile, which is hidden by its banks, its pres- ence only betrayed by their outlines, a slim yellow streak reveals the other desert—that of Africa. From its clear-cut line rise the three - cornered tapering Pyramids, those weird and awful monuments, which are such a distinctive feature of the view from Cairo. From this point the whole town can be seen at a glance. The nucleus of Egypt has ever been the three-sided delta where the vessels from Alexandria meet the caravans from Damascus. Here, almost before the dawn of history, rose up Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. On the other bank, a little behind us, the Pyramids mark on the horizon the extreme limit of the Necropolis of the Pharaohs. A bridge of boats led to this abode of the dead, and a fortress guarded the entrance to that bridge. The conqueror, who soon after the death of Mahomet besieged and took this fortress, built a mosque on the site of his camp, and a capi- tal round about the mosque. This capital was the ancient Cairo. The present Cairo is the capital of Amr, the general of Khalif 'Omar, which capital may be said to have taken a few steps to meet the caravans from Asia. * So that at one glance one may gaze at the two great Egypts of the past, presenting a most striking contrast to each other. First, we have CAIRO 299 the mysterious and indestructible Egypt of the Pharaohs, which has left upon the soil of the valley of the Nile an indelible impress. Ten con- quests, twenty centuries, and four or five successive civilizations, have passed over this Egypt without corroding its granite. Vainly has one race after another heaped up upon the primitive soil the tokens of its ephem- eral existence. The fragile buildings have fallen down in a heap of con- fused ruins, and from beneath their débris reappears the native rock en- graved with the cartouche of Ramses; while against the horizon of the Egypt of the English domination still rise up the mighty Pyramids, pre- serving the memory of the people who, to quote from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, implanted in the soil these “eternal stones.” THE MOKATTAM MOUNTAIN.—After a drawing by Gotorbe Then we have Mahometan Egypt, which is set upon the surface of the soil alone. The vast city, built on dry mud, the site of which has been several times changed by the caprice of its masters, with its rapidly built fairy-like architecture, though but three centuries old, already crum- bling into ruins, was never much more than a large Asiatic encampment, removed from the neighboring desert to the fertile soil of the Nile valley, 3oo THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD recently conquered by the wandering followers of the Prophet. At least half of its gates open on to prolific crops of cereals beneath thick cano- pies of foliage, or on to impenetrable thickets of cactus and of trees which have encroached upon the cultivated fields, while the others lead to the wide boundless tracts of gleaming sands which are the true native land of the Arab. This native land does but just touch Egypt. Islam took no deeper root here than did the Greece of the Ptolemies, or the Rome of the Caesars. What, then, will our European civilization effect? That is the secret of the future. - r II Those who have dreamed of a many-colored Orient will be surprised when they penetrate into the old quarters of Cairo. The capital of Sala- din is of the time of the rest of Egypt—that of the earth brought down by the Nile, and of which towns and villages are made. This earth is gray, resembling gray felt, and if it were not seen in the loveliest light in the world it would look very gloomy. Never were houses huddled together in a more inexplicable confu- sion. The narrow fissures which serve as thoroughfares in the town, and beside which the alleys of Venice would appear boulevards, follow an altogether hap-hazard course. The flight of an idle butterfly is straight in comparison to it. One may follow the same street for eight days in succession and not recognize it on the ninth. - The houses in these fantastic alleys are as irregular, rickety, and quaint as possible. The wall of the ground-floor, once nearly white, but now blackened with age, upholds—not, however, without bending beneath them—a series of stories echeloned on horizontal beams So as to project one beyond the other, and looking from below like the inside of a stair- case. On the fronts of the upper stories are square balconies known as mushrebiyehs,” with lattice-work railings, some of exquisite workmanship. As the climate is so dry that it is not necessary to paint the wood, its light brown color harmonizes well with the gray of the walls, and produces a peculiarly subdued effect. Windows are tabooed among Mahometans, * The meaning of this word is “drinking-vessel,” and the name is given to the balconies, which are perforated at the bottom, because they are used for cooling water.—TRANS. T ** º | THE NILE AT BOULAK.—Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Bridgman CAIRO 3O3 and are replaced by square openings, which are generally grated. The low door is never opened except in cases of necessity. Arabs are fond of immuring themselves, and their houses, so to speak, half close their eyes, only peeping at the street through the gratings of the mushrebiyehs. Every Arab dwelling is surmounted by a straight terrace. Imagine a medley of such houses—differing ad infinitum in minor details, jutting out, receding, tottering forward, or tilted sideways—flanking a narrow tortuous street, which they render almost impassable; the soil of this street, the black mud of the delta, differing scarcely at all in color from the houses, the projections, overhanging stories, and balconies of which look like drawers pulled out with their contents all in confusion. Not an acute angle, not a crooked curve anywhere, in this medley of right angles. The houses look as if they had been drawn on the square, while above the whole is a streak of bright blue sky indented by a broken line of terraces of unequal length. The end of the street is bathed in a kind of transparent shade, on one side of which the reflections of the opposite houses are clearly defined by the brilliant sunshine. Such is the theme supplied by the streets of Old Cairo, worked up at every turn into a hun- dred capricious variations. - - - To complete the picture we have but to add that here and there the terraces meet above one's head, or beams supporting ceilings of planks are thrown across from house to house; or, more rarely, a canopy is formed with stuffs hung by cords, and drooping with its own weight. For the sun of Africa is very strong, and some streets are roofed in in a kind of inter- mittent manner, so that streaks of shade and light alternate quaintly with each other on the ground below. - Almost every moment one comes to some relic of olden times among the dwelling-houses. Now it is a huge gateway flanked with towers, hidden half-way up by ruins, and adorned with a superabundant mass of decoration in the florid Arab style. A little farther on we come, among a lot of non- descript buildings, upon an imposing-looking wall built in alternate red and white courses, with a single row of arched windows, eight or ten feet from the ground, which, though quite inaccessible, are carefully grated. This wall ends in a finely moulded crenellation. Behind it a lofty minaret, sur- mounted by a delicately carved spire, shoots up into the sky, while in a corner we catch sight of an exterior staircase leading up to the entrance of a mosque. * . Or, again, we pass a round stone or marble pavilion, standing out from among the houses, the walls of the ground-floor pierced with arched win. 3o4 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD dows, while above are light arcades covered with arabesques and crowned with a pointed roof. Although not a drop of water oozes out, this is a fountain; but water is a precious thing here, which dreads the sunlight, and the Arabs hide it in a well-secluded retreat. The ground-floor of the pavilion contains a reservoir, while the upper floor is sacred to what is known as a mosque school, where all the scholars quench their thirst at one source. These pretty pavilions, or pub- lic fountains, are nearly all the gift of some wealthy person, whose name is engraved in the arabesques of the decorations. The crowds jostling each other in these streets and al- leys are of a most motley de- scription. Europeans, accus- tomed as they are to find in every country they visit a pop- ulation of its own, are aston- ished when they arrive in some great thoroughfare of the Orient. This is not mere- ly the case at the seaports, A STREET IN THE TOULoN QUARTER OF CAIRO where, in spite of the pres- After a drawing by Boudier ence of representatives of the most different races, one na- tionality is always predominant. People in Cairo have been so roughly shaken up together that there is not a corner in which every branch of the human family is not represented by one or more specimens. Every color of the skin, from opaque black to red, scarcely touched with brown, and all the gradations of bronze, are seen in the faces of the passers-by. The family of this one came from the Caucasus, or the table-lands of Central Asia; that one had his origin on the Upper Nile, or in Greece, and each has retained his distinctive physiognomy. Half the world has been laid under contribution to people a cross-road of Cairo ! CAIRO 305 The costumes are like the houses, and one seeks in vain in the streets of Cairo for the gleaming colors supposed to be preferred by the Oriental. The ordinary garment of the people is a sort of long flowing blouse of a dark blue color, the severity of which does not clash with the sober aspect of the town. In addition to this blouse the women wear a kind of veil, so arranged as to cover the head like a hood, coming down as far as the eye- brows, where it meets a long piece of stuff fastened beneath the lower eyelids so as to leave an opening for the eyes, this second drapery com- pletely hiding the lower portion of the face and falling down to the knees. The general effect of this costume is grand. The tall, delicately made figures, the outlines of which are defined by the long vertical pleats of the clinging stuff, impress one as full of grace, vigor, and dignity. One sees nothing but a mass of falling draperies from which the hands and feet, which are of a pale brick color, peep out; but this mass is instinct with life, and the play of the muscles beneath it is suggested if not actu- ally revealed. Many of the women carry astride on their shoulders a small child, who with perfect unconcern allows clusters of black flies to settle about its eyes. - All the women of the better classes have not, of course, this beautiful figure; some of them, indeed, are wrapped up in a most unpleasing fash- ion; but they all wear the inevitable Mahometan veil, which is anything but accommodating at Cairo. Every one who has visited Mussulman towns knows this veil, and it is even with a feeling of fresh surprise that the foreigner finds himself face to face with all these veiled figures. There is an irritating and disquieting mystery about this perpetual disguise, and one cannot help finding something fantastic in the expression of the black eyes gleaming from the drapery masking the rest of the face, these eyes alone revealing the presence of a human Soul within all this mass of stuff. Cairo is, perhaps, the most lively town in all the world, and the solemn phlegm of the Arab is altogether absent in the Egyptian temperament, for every one is on the move, and that with an eager haste which reminds us of the scenes in the streets of Naples. Here and there we feel as if we had set our feet in a human ant-hill, as the sun-tanned children of the des. ert, fellahs of pure Egyptian rule, Nubians, Turks, and Abyssinians hurry by, jostling plump, well-fed towns-people, trotting along on their donkeys with their legs trailing on the ground. Here comes a Rawa, all gleaming with gilding, his wide sash full of shining weapons, his white robe falling in Greek pleats to his knees, while the harness of his steed is of the splen- did character which gives to these gendarmes of the Orient the appearance 2O 306 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of princes of some fantastic country. If by chance the road is much crowded when a Rawa wishes to pass, two couriers armed with sticks dash forward at a brisk trot, and with loud shouts drive the people back against the walls on either side. Behind this party comes the equipage of some great dignity, in which are seated the women of the harem escorted by their eunuchs. We have only time to catch a glimpse of the burly white figures, the veils perhaps of a more accommodating character than usual, before they too have passed by. The appearance of Oriental shops is well known. A square cavity hollowed out of a wall two feet above the ground—that is a shop at Cairo. Strictly speaking, it is nothing more than a large rectangular niche open- ing on to the street, with no way out either at the back or the sides, in which, instead of a statue, is a merchant squatting among his wares, or a workman at his task. These shops, instead of being scattered about in dif- ferent streets, as in Europe, are all together at certain corners; and when these corners are roofed in, they become a bazaar. For there is not at Cairo a special structure for protect- ing these shops, as there is at Constantinople or at Tunis. All these shops make curious pictures. There be- hind a mass of pots and pans, dishes and plates of red and yellow copper—some black and rusty with age, others spick and span with newness, with here and there gleams of the red or straw-colored gold so dear to painters of still-life subjects — an Arab is busy at repoussé-work, his hammering making a deafen- - ing noise which is heard afar A WATER-SELLER off. Egyptian metal-work is Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph very fine, with a dignity all its own, and the common ewer in use among the poorest is of really extraordinary beauty of style. Farther on we come to a collection of red, black, or gray earthen-ware: - - - - _ cheap stoves, pipes, and vases, engraved with ornaments in intaglio, painted blue or red. This common Egyptian pot- tery—disdained, I know not why, by dealers in Oriental ware—is extremely interesting. Its shape is often grand, and the forms found in Egyptian tombs have been preserved. Next, gleaming like a bor- der of jonquils and poppies with its masses of red and yel- low, is a shoe-shop—a regular flower-bed for color. And in the midst of a confusion of Turkish slippers in scarlet or saffron leather, crouches the cobbler stitching away or drill- ing holes with his awl. The bazaar, par excellence, is broken up in an extraordi- nary manner. Fancy an alley so short that it is barely 200 paces long; so twisted that you can only see a scrap of it at a time; so narrow that the houses seem to be scowling at and ready to fall upon their opposite neighbors; and be- neath the dull-hued lean-to walls, in every nook and cor- ner, are shops full of dazzling objects: many-colored Orient. al stuffs, figured brocades, dainty Arab jewelry, gleaming 307 OLD STREET OF CAIRO Engraved by Ruffe, after a study by Riou daggers and sabres, ancient damascened helmets, silver wine-bottles, spread out or piled up for sale. And amid this confusion of stuffs, weapons, and jewels in glass-cases, or of unfolded silks, is the merchant, squatting in the - 308 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD shadow and smoking with absolute indifference, his dreamy eyes gazing forth in a kind of ecstasy of melancholy, while before him, in the trans- parent bowl of his nargileh, at each breath he draws, floats a regular flotilla of rose leaves, dancing, whirling round, and suffering shipwreck among the big bubbles on the surface. These shrewd old merchants really look like poets lost in the third heaven of blissful contemplation. Immediately after sunset the life and motion of Cairo cease, and it is a rare thing to meet a native returning home on a dark night with a white paper lantern in his hand, or to see an Arab café still lit up, and with the candles hung up round the door, making a brightness in the deserted street. If we want something to do for another hour, the only resource is to pay a visit to the almehs. Leaving the French quarter, you turn into a gloomy passage among tottering houses, and find yourself opposite to a long straight street of a somewhat sinister aspect. The same solitude every- where, not a ghost of a passenger, absolute silence; but above each door flickers the flame of a little watch-light floating in a vessel of oil, and cast- ing a ray of light upon the ground and upon the mud houses opposite. As we advance and pass a door, a rustling and twittering as from an aviary begins in the mushrebiyehs above, yet no one is to be seen; we might fancy ourselves in the region of frozen words discovered by Panurge, so great is the whispering which falls from these well-closed walls. It is, however, merely the a/mehs inviting you to enter. :: . You have but to knock; the door opens, and a few minutes afterwards you are perhaps watching the famous danse du ventre, which appears a little out of its element when performed at the Champs de Mars in Paris, but is quite in character on an Egyptian terrace, when seen by the light of a lamp quivering in the open air, beneath the vast dome of the all but tropical sky thickly strewn with stars. Nearly as many nationalities are represented among the dancers as in the crowds on the streets—from the Syrian, as white as a dove of Astarte, to the negress of the Upper Nile, with the well-developed muscles and the restlessness of a wild animal. Add to these some Nubian of a delicately defined African type, with a supple, graceful figure and a complexion the color of Florentine bronze, and side by side with it a face of which the high cheek-bones, short nose, and thick lips remind one of the profiles sculpt- ured on the granite monuments of the Pharaohs. A head such as this might, if surmounted by the mural crown of Hathor, bear up the entabla- ture of the Temple of Denderah; or girt with the fillet, from either side of which spring the triangular wings of the royal head-dress, it might rise CAIRO 309 from the lion-like neck of a sphinx crouching in the stone avenues of Karnak. Truly it is a thrilling experience to gaze, in the quiet watches of the night, on a form the aspect of which calls up the solemn mystery of ancient Egypt, and to listen to the tinkling of the coins with which the costume of the almeſ, is adorned, with an accompaniment of the strange rhythm of Arab music. III This is Cairo! But, alas! the Cairo of twenty years ago. Old towns are disappearing, and modern parks and boulevards are everywhere spring- ing up from the ruins of cities which bore the impress of the past ages of humanity. It must be owned that the modern town is a grand look- ing place, but who shall reproach us for pre- ferring that which is gone? Some few monu- ments of the past, how- ever, remain, and the capital of Egypt has preserved an incom- parable collection of mosques. There is no doubt that it is at Cairo and in Southern Europe that the best Arab architecture is to be seen. There is per- haps nothing at Cairo equal to the fairy-like columns and arches of the Alhambra, or to the bewildering forest of pillars of the mosque of Cordova. But Cairo has one inestimable A WOMAN OF CAIRO.-Engraved by Barbant, after the picture by Bridgman 3 Io THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD advantage, and that is, it possesses monuments dating from a succession of centuries, beginning with the origin of Mahometan art, and going down to its complete decadence. These monuments form the scattered leaves of a complete history of Arab architecture. e It is on the depopulated slopes which witnessed the birth of Cairo, but were afterwards abandoned by it among the sterile gray rubbish-heaps marking the site of the old town, that we must seek what is probably the most ancient mosque in the world; that is to say, after those places of worship which belonged to earlier religions and were taken possession of by Islam. This mosque dates from a few years after the death of Ma- homet, and was built by Amr, the lieutenant of Omar, as a thank-offering to God for the conquest of Egypt, and on the actual site where the victori. ous leader had encamped. The settling of some pigeons on his tent are said to have suggested to Amr the building of the city here, and, according to tradition, a column still standing among the ruins went and set itself up all alone in the most obliging manner in obedience to an order given to it, in the name of Allah, by the Mussulman chief. There is, however, nothing miraculous about the building except its origin. Arab art did not, of course, exist when it was erected, and it was not likely to spring into being among the burnt stones of Hedjaz. Nothing could be more primitive than this first attempt at a mosque. A long red wall, pierced at the top by small grated windows, rises from a vast and dusty tract of sand. From behind this wall emerges a round tower, with clumsy embryonic minarets. The mosque itself is at the end of a vast court, and is upheld by rows of arcades, with columns taken from the ruins of Memphis, and great square pillars, the number of columns willing to obey the orders of Amr having probably been insufficient. The general aspect is very meagre; the remaining pillars, a great many having been taken away, are of all manner of shapes and sizes, and of an almost rude simplicity, while the wooden roofing is entirely without ornament. Thin beams flung across from one capital to another seem to uphold the totter- ing colonnade, and give to the mosque the appearance of a building from which the workmen were afraid to remove the temporary scaffolding. The mosque has an aspect alike of primitive crudity and of crumbling decay; the improvised temple of a temporary encampment, it is a fitting monu- ment of an uncultured, conquering tribe from the desert. It was not, however, long before a more ornate ornamentation was given to Arab buildings. But Islam had still no architecture of its own, and knew of no style but the Byzantine, then in a decadence not yet com- CAIRO 3II plete. At this period the Old World was relapsing into barbarism, and no- where was the art of carving stone or marble known. At Rome and Con- stantinople, as at Cairo, buildings were erected which were senile and tottering even in their infancy, made up of relics stolen from the huge ruins of antiquity, or of more fragile materials, which were all that the architects knew how to work. Arab art at first followed the models which happened to be at hand, as can be seen in the vast and sumptuous mosque of Toulon, which dates from the ninth century. The building is a decep- A FELLAH WOMAN BATHING HER CHILD Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Bridgman tive structure made of bricks, faced with stucco. Bands of ornamentation, in the most pronounced Byzantine style, cross strips of interlaced letters, with fine mosaics on a black ground, all thoroughly Byzantine, combined at the entrance to the Mehrab, with marbles of all manner of colors, the whole roofed in by a timber-work ceiling of great beauty, relieving the general effect of the ancient edifice. The new style of architecture is, however, beginning to assert itself, peeping through, so to speak, the forms 3I 2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD borrowed from Constantinople. The pointed and horseshoe forms of arch are clearly indicated in the arcades, and the minaret begins to separate itself from the great tower from which it first sprang, and to become an independent octagonal structure. At last Saracen art, properly so called, was developed, and further radical change arrested. Byzantine ornamentation, with its roughly carved and fantastic mouldings and its quaint floral designs, was transformed by the genius of the Mussulman into a style all his own. This race from the desert, who for so long a period had had nothing to feed its fancy but vast stretches of sterile stones, was imbued with an indescribable super. stitious dread of representing any of the teeming life of nature. Very soon all trace disappeared of the stem of the plant through which flows the sap in the stone traceries with which the Arab covered his buildings. Among the most characteristic and effective of the ornaments of Oriental architecture are its numerous stone stalactites. We note their germs in ancient mosques, some of the details—the pendentives, for instance—being carved into ogives or concave lozenges, which break the monotony of the surface. Later these designs become more complicated, and are developed into an efflorescence of crystals, or into regular honey-combs of stone, now falling in long pendants from the roof, now shrinking into a small com- pass and filling up all the niches, nestling beneath the cornice and the vaulting, or spreading out in the wide spandrels of the arches. Beneath the vast cupola the effect is magnificent, and one seems to be looking up into the roof of an enchanted cave. The Oriental arch, universally employed in Egypt, where the horseshoe arch of Cordova is almost unknown, is less pointed and of wider span than the Gothic. Massive pillars have disappeared, and the arcades are all upheld by slender Arab columns. The minaret is at its fullest development, and who would rec- ognize, in this airy spire of carved stone, the heavy primitive tower from which it first sprung P It is no longer the round smooth pole, with an extinguisher roof, of the mosques of Constantinople. All the Arab passion for geometrical forms is mirrored in the infinite variety and caprice of the ornamentation of the Egyptian minaret. As it tapers heavenward it changes its form again and again, now square, now round, now octagonal, but everywhere covered with stone traceries, and at each transition it bears, like a ring of great price, a light projecting balcony. It would be an endless task to trace the various developments of this marvellous style of architecture, as illustrated in the forty mosques of Cairo. One of them, the celebrated Gäm'a-el-Azhar, has an exceptional CAIRO 3I3 - religious importance, as it is the headquarters of Mussulman fanaticism. The finest monument, however, of this or of any other period at Cairo is the magnificent Gâm'a-el-Hasanen, most severe and dignified in style, most rich in ornamentation. - On the outside this mosque is like nearly all buildings of the kind— merely a block of massive closed walls, without decoration. But the porch, situated, as is usual, in a corner at the top of a flight of steps, is the most sumptuous imaginable, and the finest etching-needle would fail to give an idea of its colonnades, carved like Chinese ivory, and its arabesques, beside which the finest lace would appear coarse, its stalactites, like carbuncles, with a hundred facets. This porch opens on to a square vestibule worthy of its gateway. A vast pointed arch surmounts each wall, and frames a design in gleaming many-colored marbles. The vestibule, in its turn, leads to a passage from which one obtains, through half-open doors, a vista of a court, corridors, and various buildings, with the mosque, properly so called, beyond. This mosque is of a structure not met with elsewhere, consisting not of an open space with a roof upheld by rows of columns, but of a vast central court, each of the four sides opening into a vast nave roofed with arched vaulting, and resembling deep, wide-stretching, lofty caves. The walls of the central court are bare, but in the centre the fountain for ablutions is roofed in by a kind of octagonal kiosk in the Indian style, with a smaller kiosk beside it, the two looking rather like a parent and a child. Both are of the most fairy-like appearance, with their variegated colors, their slender columns of delicately carved wood, and their roofs with corners turning inward and surmounted by egg-shaped cupolas. Three of the four side rooms are empty, and appear to be disused. The fourth alone is used as a mosque. Its wall and roof are of a grand simplicity, the ground is covered with mats, and lamps for illumination and ostrich eggs hang low down, suspended by silken cords from the vaulting. The pulpit of marble marqueterie is a marvellous piece of work. Buildings of later date than the close of the Middle Age are of no interest whatever. The vigor of Mahometan art was already sapped at the time of the European Renaissance, and that period of revival passed over the degenerate descendants of the founders of Islam without awaking a spark of genius. - 3I4 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD IV The gates of the town must be passed, for the country is very beauti. ful in the immediate neighborhood of Cairo. Nothing could differ more from the ordinary Egyptian landscape, and the solemn melancholy of its grand outlines, than does the exuberant vegetation on every side. Huge trees, so rare everywhere else on the shores of the Nile, where one gen- erally sees nothing but the invariable clump of date-trees rising above the houses, here form masses of thick verdure. The rough yet supple stems of the date-palms, fed from a better soil, shoot up more vigorously and have more luxuriant crowns of leaves, with heavier bunches of fruit, the gleaming colors of which vary from yellow to red and violet. The tall succulent plants of the South, such as the aloe, with its upright flower- THE BAZAAR OF CAIRO.-Engraved by Ruffe, after a study by Riou bearing stem springing from a cluster of sword-like leaves; the cactus, with its thick fleshy stems branching like corals and studded with excres- cences as large as pheasants' eggs—all these weird vegetable forms, with their dull coloring, and a kind of metallic lustre about them making them CAIRO 3I 5 look like candelabra or suits of armor, abound on every side, covering whole districts with their thorny thickets, and springing forth with even greater vigor where the soil is encumbered with ruins or with deserted buildings. We have still to turn to the desert on the other side. We begin our wanderings by passing through a series of suburbs with much to interest and divert us, the exuberant foliage of the country already mingling with the tumble-down houses of the lanes. The streets swarm with passengers, bursts of music are heard from the cafés, and the whole is bathed in the finest light in the world. Gradually the houses become more thinly scat. tered, and at wider intervals the vegetation becomes sparser, and the void begins, until, at last, neither habitation nor tree is to be seen—nothing but the undulations of the gray dusty plain, without so much as a blade of the grass which everywhere in Egypt marks the site of villages, towns, or hamlets that have now disappeared. Then the horizon widens, the dust changes in color. It is sand now; we are in the desert, and this is the scene spread out before us: In the distance a lofty chain of rocks, gleaming like gold in the sun- shine, with sharply defined oblique ridges seamed with long belts of lime- stone, the deeply serrated crests standing out against the sky like the skeleton of a huge mountain. At our feet is the vast sheet of grayish- yellow sand, its wide undulations spreading out on every side, and seeming to dash against the base of the rocks in dusty spray. This stretch of sand is dotted with a series of little monuments, mosques, chapels, and sanctuaries, bristling with minarets, domes, and cupolas, or with pointed roofs, their red stone outlines standing out against the clear background of the sand and rocks. The whole of this district is of mineral formation, without vegetation and without shade. Parched and burnt by the fiery sunshine, its mount. ains, plains, and buildings display every gradation of the scale of warm coloring—golden, russet brown, and lurid red—peculiar to rock in tropical heat. The whole is lit up by a blinding blaze of light—the incomparable light of Egypt, so clear, so vivid, and so powerful that when you see it for the first time you feel as if a veil had fallen from your eyes. Here and there, about a mile apart, are two or three buildings with solemn-looking walls surmounted by finials with sculptured domes, mina- rets, and doors, round about which are grouped some half-dozen little edifices, kiosks, and chapels, which may be characterized as the small change of more important monuments, all belonging to one style, and, as it 316 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD were, to one family. Imagine little cubes of masonry with projecting cells at the bottom, from which issue, like the different pieces of a telescope, square stages with the four low triangular corners succeeded by round or octagonal towers, the whole surmounted by an extinguisher roof, pointed eight-sided pyramids, or pointed cupolas, resembling damascened helmets. Walls, minarets, domes, finials, are all loaded with ornaments, columns, string-courses, and key-stones of different shades of color, sham denticulated arcades framing circular-headed or round windows, projecting balconies, from the corners of which hang bunches of stalactites, empty arched niches with the inner surface covered with decoration, square, triangular, and round sunk panels, one within the other; stars overlapping, crossing, and entangled in each other, intersecting traceries forming lattice-work, rosettes, and endless intricate patterns; while here and there at certain breaks in the scheme of ornamentation, in angles or other openings, are small chis- elled geometrical figures, in the production of which the playful humor of the architect seems to have culminated. - Luxuriant and bewildering, but lifeless fancy! No face of man or of chimera gazes forth on us with stony eyes; no foliage entwines its stems and tendrils. Not a sprig in these festooned arabesques, in this erratic vegetation, bears leaf or bud. One might imagine it to have been evolved in some other planet, all of rock, where no plant ever sprouts, so algebraic is this decoration with its combinations of cubes, prisms, and cones, its octagons, stars, and zigzags; and one is overwhelmed with astonishment at this exuberant mathematical vegetation, which weaves its intersections, and multiplies in accordance with an equational system. The stone-work of these buildings is broken; it has been cracked and defaced; its ornaments have been tampered with or removed. There are breaks in the string-courses, the outlines are scratched, the arabesques are crumbling away as if from the blows of a hammer, and the walls, fragments of which are strewn on the sand beneath, are haunted by lizards. - If you would know what are the contents of these magnificent shrines, one glance within will suffice. The door opens into a single room, empty but for the sand, which is gradually filling it up, and altogether useless. It cannot be called a chamber; it is but a little gloomy enclosure, rather like the inside of a sculpture in relief. And all about these monuments the desert—nothing but the desert! Not one of the houses of Cairo, though it is close at hand, can be seen, nor a tree of the country just left behind. We are in a depression of the ocean of sand which extends from here to Mecca and to Bagdad. Wind- THE PYRAMIDS.–Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Riou ing along at the base of the buildings, are strings of camels, looking as if they were all fastened by their flat muzzles to a single cord, the bells about their harness giving forth a shrill and jangled sound. It is here that cara- vans start; and the sight of the huge, quaintly formed beasts, with their prominent knees, jogging along, jerking their necks from side to side at every step, as they disappear in the wide yellow waste, gives one an idea of the strange journeys across the flaming desert, the wide dim track marked by bleaching bones, which journeys make up the life and inspire the dreams of nomad tribes. And one wonders who gave to the desert the magnificent yet ridicu- lous gift of all the wonderful but empty caskets described above, as if the accursed city of Arab legend, condemned to wander forever among the clouds, had dropped, as it passed, some of its palaces, chapels, and domes into the desolate waste. We have now reached one of the two or three monuments about which cluster little supplementary buildings. It looks like a square strong- hold, the white central part protected by massive crenellated walls, bristling with buttresses. From within these walls rise two domes, of no particular 318 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD beauty, but completely covered with ornaments, and two minarets, carved from top to bottom. No openings are to be seen but a few narrow win- dows quite at the top, and at one corner an insignificant little porch, quite out of proportion with the building, of which it is the entrance, this porch draped with stalactites, and enclosing a door to which lead up a few steps. At the opposite corner, high up in the massive wall, is a pretty loggia, its three-pointed arches springing from dainty marble columns. If one were not so near to the seat of a British Protectorate occupied in converting the national debt at 5 per cent, one might imagine one's self at the gate of one of the mysterious castles met with in the most remote districts by the one-eyed dervishes of Scheherezade's tales. We enter. All is empty and deserted A court strewn with ruins and skirted by arcades; an enormous wooden pulpit, with a staircase and a canopy, all elaborately carved and perforated; such a monument as one might have expected to be the work of the gimlet, plane, drill, and chisel of a gnome of genius commissioned to sculpture a cathedral for Queen Mab. We pass through yet another door, and find ourselves in a wonderful place. Our first impression is of a variegated but cold, polished, metallic splendor, lit up by the quiet daylight, which, coming from above, makes the colors gleam as with the reflection of some hidden treasure. A square, lofty room, the walls faced and the floor paved with marble, in the centre of which is a marble platform surrounded by a balustrade; red, green, violet, orange, black, yellow, and white marbles are worked into marqueterie and mosaic designs of the greatest beauty, while above a row of little windows is the cavity of the cupola, draped with pendants, the crystal facets of which are dashed with all manner of colors. Everything is, however, in a state of the greatest dilapidation; the marbles are warped, or bulge out here and there, and the bits of the wooden framework of the roof fall to the ground every now and then. The platform mentioned above is a tomb—that of Sultan Barkuk; in fact, all the monuments noticed are tombs of members of the extraordi- nary monarchy, that of the Mamelukes, the turbulent militia, first slaves, then kings, who for two centuries and a half, from the middle of the thir- teenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, elected their chiefs to the supreme power one day only to overthrow them the next. Everything in the history of the Mamelukes is fantastic and unnatural. They did not form a caste; living in the midst of their harems, they had no legal suc- cessors in their sons; they chose their heirs by adoption from among their slaves, recruiting their numbers by the kidnapping of children. Could this CAIRO 319 be called a monarchy, where every member was as much a king as any other? In sixty years forty-four caliphs were elected and overthrown. The true masters of Egypt, even after the Turkish Conquest until the time of Mehemet Ali, they remained impregnable, without race, without cohesion, without continuity of government or of family, in a perpetual tumult of revolt and usurped authority. The Mamelukes were to Egypt an ever-threatening storm, with no more attachment to the soil than the clouds of a gathering tempest, which in their fiery instability they resem- bled. The royal power was to these despots, who were liable to be butch- ered the next day, like a debauch, for which they paid with their lives. It is to those who enjoyed an hour of domination in this empire, founded on chance, ever burning with the fever, now of famine, now of THE TOMBS OF THE CALIPHS After a drawing by Boudier rage, or of satiety, that we owe these fragile and fairy-like marvels of Arab architecture, which resemble the gala decorations for a fête lasting but a day. It is not necessary to leave the neighborhood of Cairo to begin our acquaintance with ancient Egypt. Millions of years before there were any dwellings on the sites since 32O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD occupied by Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens, at the very dawn of human history, when all the rest of the world was still wrapped in the thick gloom of prehistoric barbarism, a vast town of huge buildings rose not far from the present city, on the other side of the Nile, which was dotted with the boats of the ancient inhabitants. A forest of venerable date-trees casts its shadows upon the black soil, beneath which lie buried the build- ers of this city of a world gone by, of which nothing remains but the vast cemeteries, their position marked by an avenue of monuments. The famous Pyramids of Gizeh, opposite Cairo, on the borders of the desert, form the last of these necropoli. Every one is familiar with the appearance of these strange pyramids, these huge paradoxes of strictly geometrical form, so vast and so lofty that it was not until after fifty-eight centuries of development that the human race succeeded in erecting a building of greater height, while the loftiest pinnacle of the most aspiring Gothic belfry, however light and airy it be, did not soar higher than the point of the Pyramid of Cheops before it was blunted by time. Nothing could be more confusing to the eye than the general appearance of these heaps of stones, in which no artistic con- ception plays the slightest part. The effects of perspective in these lines of mathematical regularity are most bizarre—huge bare triangles, the out. lines shortened or lengthened, marked out like a diagram by the sun into flat bands of light and shade, the reflections in the sand of the four mighty angles varying according to the time of day. The sloping sides, which at a distance appear absolutely plain, are, when approached more nearly, discovered to be broken up into a series of projecting stones, like a huge staircase worn with age. It is somewhat difficult to judge at first sight of the size of the pyramid, and the best way is to measure the height by climbing it! It is at a corner where the stages, which seem to have been made for a race of giants, are divided into smaller steps, either for the sake of mortals of lesser stature or by the action of time, that the ascent of the great Pyramid of Cheops is made. We start, pushed from behind by one Arab guide, and dragged from above by another, with our eyes fully occu- pied with the dangers of the climb. Completely exhausted, altogether out of breath, and with knees too stiff to move, we pause at last, feeling as if we had scaled all three pyramids at once | But looking round, we find we are scarcely one-third of the distance up, and see our fellow-climbers look- ing like scattered ants upon the huge triangular mass. It is not until the platform at the top is reached, and the lungs are filled with the pure air of the heights, that any real idea is obtained of the monument of Cheops. CAIRO 32 I And what does this huge edifice contain * We must go down again to find out. The entrance, which was walled up, is at a considerable height from the ground, in one of the faces of the pyramid, and looks like the porch of a cave cut in the living rock. A dark, gloomy-looking door opens on to a low narrow passage, with floor, walls, and ceiling all lined with gran- ite, polished till it is like ice. An Arab guide, with a candle in his hand, hoists you onto his shoulders and plunges with you into the slippery corridor, which descends rapidly to a hole in the rock on a level with the soil, going up again at the same an- gle. This opening gives access to a bare room, in which is a square hole, once the resting- place of the mummy of one of - the Pharaohs. The rest of the THE GREAT SPHINX.—After a drawing by Malteste interior consists of two or three - - narrow passages, resembling cav- ities made in oak timber by the teredo, with two other chambers sim- ilar to that known as the King's, all faced with granite, without a mould- ing or ornament of any kind; airless enclosures, where no chink admits a ray of light or sunshine; huge masses of compact limestone, wrapped in utter night and silence. Such is the strange monument, to build up which Cheops caused mountains of stone to be removed by whole nations of people, who perished at their task beneath the whips of the convict guards. * - Stretched out at the base of the great pyramid is a terrible appari- tion: the mighty Sphinx, the head of which alone is of the height of a man. Beside this ancient monument the masses of stone above it are young, for an inscription speaks of the Pharaoh Chephren having had it repaired, because it had fallen into ruin in his time. The colossal Sphinx is hewn out of a mass of living rock rising from the sand, and is therefore of a piece with the desert. Centuries have dealt hardly with its crouching lion-like body, of which nothing now remains but a roughly outlined slab of rock. The layers of limestone on its scarred and emaciated neck look like collars; its flat face, from which the nose is gone, is covered with 2I * - 322 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD wounds, and, framed in its mystic head-dress, it has assumed an awful ex- pression. What secrets of the origin of the world, we wonder, are kept by the closed lips and the severe fathomless eyes of this phantom-like figure, this ghost from remote days prior to the dawn of history ~ 2- \ º º minº *iº § º' M ). - tº: C º F-s - tº Nº | º lº 2 “, § º, §§ littitutſ: Quº BERLIN OCTORS have invented a pleasant-sounding word to describe a wide-spread evil, the microbe of which I strongly suspect will be found in politics. This word is neurasthenia, or irritation of the nervous system. Neurasthenia manifests itself in very different ways: there is placid neurasthe- nia and excited neurasthenia. With myself neuras- thenia shows itself in an imperative necessity for change of scene, and it was under stress of one of the most violent crises of the complaint I have been through that I went to Berlin for the first time. It was in the spring of 1882. In Novem- ber, 1881, Gambetta had chosen his ministry; at the end of January, 1882, the Chamber of Deputies *º had turned that ministry out of office. For the in the Duez collection brief period of our existence we had one and all struggled to do something useful, and to a cer- tain extent we had succeeded. I say to a certain extent, because none but those who have exercised the ministerial functions under the French parliamentary system have any idea how much one is at the mercy of futile daily routine, and how difficult is action in the true sense of the word. I had then, on January 31, 1882, laid aside those much coveted but anything but enviable functions with feelings of inexhaustible indul- gence for our successors, but with a firm determination to go at once to a sufficient distance to be able to judge things truly. I started with one of my friends on the Northern Railway, crossing Belgium on the eve of March 1st, and reaching Berlin on the 2d. The impression made on me when I entered that town on a foggy morning was not favorable. Heavy brooding clouds hung over the Brandenburg Gate, which, I have since been A ZIETHERN HUSSAR & 326 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD told, was built on the model of the Propylaea. The quadriga of the Mon- ument of Victory was swallowed up by the fog. We crossed the Pariser Platz, with its London-like buildings, and it was only with difficulty that I could make out the celebrated avenue of Unter den Linden. The carriage THE ENTRANCE TO THE AVENUE OF UNTER DEN LINDEN After a drawing by Boudier - stopped at the corner of that avenue and the Wilhelmstrasse, in front of the Hôtel Royal. The double gates were opened, not for us, but for the porter preceding us, who was very stout. This functionary in uniform instructed other functionaries of lower rank to install us in rooms over- looking the Wilhelmstrasse, opposite the British Embassy, and there we Soon laid down our weary heads upon the narrow German pillows. When the sun appeared—for it did do us the honor of shining for once—we went down to see the town. Baedeker's Guide says that “the handsomest part of Berlin is the long line of streets extending from the Brandenburg Gate to the Royal Palace, consisting of Unter den Lin- den, the Platz am Opernhaus, and the Lustgarten.” “The Linden,” he adds, “derives its name from the avenues of lime-trees interspersed with chestnuts . . . and is flanked with handsome palaces, spacious hotels, and attractive shops, between which the long vistas of a number of side streets are visible at intervals. The length of the street from the Brandenburg BERLIN - 327 Gate to the Monument is about two-thirds of a mile, and it is some 150 feet wide.” Baedeker also says that the avenue Unter den Linden is only exceeded in length by the boulevards of Paris. I do not wish to say any- thing to wound the amour propre of the Berliners, but this avenue is but a provincial one after all, and walking along it there is nothing to attract one's notice but the Café Bauer, the Hill Restaurant, and the uninterest- ing, lifeless passage called the Kaisergallerie, which connects it with the Friedrichstrasse, and in which at an expense of 50 pfennigs you can see a representation in wax of a séance of the Berlin Congress. Now and then the gates of one of the “handsome palaces” open, and a fantastic equipage issues forth, from the top of which a plumed footman peremp- torily orders about the drivers of the shabby vehicles plying for hire along the sides of the street. The only people who really look at all imposing are the riders, from the mounted police, who dash about from one crossing to another, controlling the traffic pouring in from the side streets, to the officer who curvets from the Thiergarten to the Monument with an air of complete contempt for civilians and civilian life. I may add that the Unter den Linden has no foot-pavements, or next THE BRANDENBURG GATE.-After a drawing by Berteault 328 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD to none, so that it cannot have been the scene of the legend of the Good Knight Tannhäuser, and Jean de Meung would not throughout its entire length have found material for another chapter of his Roman de la Rose. One of the most noteworthy peculiarities of Berlin is its silence. Not even in the Friedrichstrasse, where there is a great deal of traffic, and where the shops are most numerous, are there any street cries or noises. The hurrying crowds do not seem to be alive in any true sense of the word, and there is, so to speak, no centre of activity in Berlin. This, however, must not be considered a reproach, for the town is in a transition state, the number of its inhabitants daily increasing, and its boundaries widening as new buildings arise on the side of the Potsdam station and in the avenues along the Thiergarten, which form a kind of connecting link between Berlin and Charlottenburg. These houses, too, are in a better style than the Greco-Gothic buildings of most of the mod- ern quarters of the town. But individual character is still wanting, even in them. Rubble and freestone were both unknown in Berlin, and recourse was had to cement, which, lending itself as it does to every form, was used, or rather abused, to make all manner of bizarre combinations and imita- tions. In this connection the architect Schenkel, who built the Old Museum, and his pupil Stüler, under whom the New Museum was erected, have been censured for misinterpreting that antiquity which both claimed as their inspiration. This is perhaps a little unfair, as Schenkel and Stüler only did as was the fashion of their time. At the present day, although we cannot claim to have absolutely mastered the science of building, we do know a little more about it, and are at least aware of the elementary fact that the material employed should be, so to speak, en rapport with the style adopted; that that which should be done in marble cannot be done in stone, and that it is folly to use certain materials for purposes to which they are utterly unsuited. We must submit to the conditions of matter, and, alas ! is not this the case in everything concerning our poor humanity ? I know that it seems hard in a town with the Imperial pretensions of Berlin to show the bare bricks; but it is the characteristic of genius to be able to turn to account the materials at hand, and to draw from the well of its own inspiration, as Perrault, Mansard, Gabriel, and others have done in Paris, and Merling and Schlüter in Berlin. The Arsenal and the Old Palace are an honor to the city owning them, because they are dignified, simple, and suitable to their purpose; while the University, the Library, the Emperor's Palace, and the bridge over the Spree might be removed without any sense of loss of beauty. On the other hand, the monument to Frederick the Great L'ENSEIGNE DE GUERsAINT Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Watteau in the Alte Schloss is really of ideal character, the equestrian statue rising from its pedestal in grand simplicity, its fine lines standing out distinctly and impressively. The traveller in foreign countries ought to be very careful what he admires, and seriously take himself to task as to why he admires what he sees at a distance from home. Foreigners often say to Frenchmen: “Don’t you admire this? it is made in imitation of the same thing in Paris.” Now nothing is really more to be deprecated than the senseless imitation of a thing the only value of which is its originality. Frederick II. once took it into his head to have a French secretary, and a young man 33O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD named Thibault was sent to him. After a few preliminary questions, the King said to him, “So, sir, you do not know German P” “No, sire,” was the reply, “but I will soon learn it.” “I beg you will never learn it,” said Frederick; “if you once try to speak it, you will soon get into the way of using the same Germanisms as we do. It will not be enough for you never to speak German, you will run similar risks if you ever hear us speak French, and if you adopt our manners you will no longer be fit for the duty for which I have sent for you. I am set on your retaining the pure taste and the delicate tact of the beauties, refinements, character, and genius of your language; and I ask you as a gallant gentleman to give me your word of honor that you will not learn German, and that you will not speak French as we do.” Unfortunately, Frederick II. did not always act upon the excellent theories he laid down for Thibault. He was altogether imbued with admiration for Versailles, and tormented by a desire to do things in French style. It must, however, be admitted that though he availed himself at Potsdam and at Sans Souci of the help of the Legers, the Adams, with many less well-known French artists, he managed to give to the buildings he had erected the stamp of his own individuality. He was less fortunate at Berlin, where, with the help of Baumann and Knolels- dorf, he built the Opera-house, the University, the Academy, the Libraries, St. Hedwig's Church, and the two-domed towers of the Gensdarmen-Markt, with the numerous minor buildings in which he lodged members of the Civil Service, etc. It was the ancestress of Frederick II., the Queen Sophia Charlotte, of the House of Hanover, the protectress of Leibnitz, whose French taste decided the style of the gardens of Charlottenburg, which she committed to the care of Le Nôtre, whose plans, however, preserved among the archives of the Palace of Charlottenburg, were not fully carried out. The French landscape-gardener took the River Spree as the centre of his plan, laid out green lawns framed in trees on the right and on the left, in a series of esplanades, which were to extend as far as the mill overlooking Spandau. With regard to French influence at Berlin, it has often been said that it dated from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But this is an error; it prevailed long before that. As early as 1637, Calvinists, under fear of persecution, had fled from the western districts of France to take refuge in Brandenburg. These refugees, it is true, were but few in number, but there is no doubt that from their arrival in Berlin, which then numbered scarcely 20,000 inhabitants, all of them more or less attached to the Court of the Great Elector, either in a civil or a military capacity, they took an BERLIN 331 important place alike in industry, commerce, and art. Frederick II. does not hesitate to admit this in his Annals of Brandenburg. When, in 1685, persecution became general, and the Great Elector promulgated the cele- brated Edict of Potsdam, which threw open his dominions to all Protestant fugitives, and when special emissaries were sent to Frankfort, Amsterdam, and Hamburg to offer lands to the refugees, the colony acquired consid- erable importance. “The Huguenots,” says Frederick II., “then con- tributed to the repeopling of our depopulated town, they created the manufactories we needed. Our commerce had previously consisted of the sale of our corn, wine, and wool, and the few manufactories we had were unimportant, being nearly all ruined by English competition. When THE SPREE AT BERLIN.—After a drawing by Berteault Frederick William I. ascended the throne, not a hat, not a stocking was worn which was not made by the French. They made all kinds of cloths, they knitted caps, they worked felt, and made all kinds of dyes. Some were merchants, and sold the products of the workshops of others. At Berlin were goldsmiths, jewellers, clock-makers, sculptors; in the country, 332 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD cultivators of tobacco and vegetables. Thus it was that the March of Brandenburg was in the most flourishing condition it had ever known at the end of the reign of Frederick William I. As for the children of the nobles, they were at their studies, and the superintendence of those studies was nearly everywhere in the hands of Frenchmen, to whom we owe more cordiality in social relations and more civilized manners.” The French refugees lived in the north-west of the town, in the suburb of Moabit, now very nearly the heart of Berlin. It was they who introduced to Brandenburg what we may call kitchen-gardens, and their modes of culture were the astonishment of the Berliners. But nothing now remains of this French colony. The refugees of 1637 and 1638 became so thoroughly Germanized that, as has been very justly observed, their de- scendants think in German even when they speak French; and this is but natural, for individuals, not to speak of their children, are necessarily influ- enced by their environment, so that Frederick II. was but deluding himself when he thought that a secretary could live at Berlin without being influ- enced by the Germanism all around him. At the present time Berlin has 1,600,000 inhabitants. During the last twenty years there has been a steady influx of population to the capital from all quarters of Germany, and that capital is growing with astonishing rapidity, and assimilation is so complete that all the provincials quickly acquire a certain look common to all the people of Berlin, in spite of there being nothing particularly distinctive about the houses of that city. In fact, Berlin really has a character all its own. When some German from Bavaria, or from the Saar, arrives at Berlin, he brings with him his sense of humor; but he very soon loses it, for the true Berlinese do not understand jokes, and cannot stand raillery. The Berlinese are great professors of appreciation for everything, but they do not really care for anything much. On Sunday, when the father takes his family to the Thiergarten, he is making a kind of profession of his love of walking, and students on their velocipedes making their way to the race-course are professors of another sort. If you cross the Schlossbrücke, and watch the passers-by, you will see the military element of Berlin: Victory teaching children the history of heroes, Pallas teaching young men the use of weapons; but whether it is Pallas or Iris who is addressing young aspirants, the teacher has ever an eye to the military auditors. You turn to the left to go to the Royal Museums and National Gallery, where are housed the marvellous collections of art treasures, including the friezes from the altar of Jupiter, at Pergamus, and the valuable series of drawings, and you meet again the Berlin pro- BERLIN - 335 fessors, this time young, ardent, eager, proud of belonging to the capital, and anxious that all the world should know how proud they are In this respect Munich contrasts very favorably with Berlin, and impresses you as the home of treasures of simplicity, grace, and good-humor. What mas- terpieces, however, are contained in the Royal Museums of Berlin! What glorious relics of antiqui- ty, what gems of Mediae- val Renaissance and mod- ern art | And to do them justice, what patience the Berliners have with the visitors to their collec- || tions, a patience unknown | to the French. This con- trast between the French and German character is admirably summed up in two royal speeches. Fred- erick II. said, “The King should be the first serv- ant of his people.” Louis XIV. said, “L’Etat, c'est moi" (I am the State). The result of this peculi- arity is that every French- man to whom is delegated the smallestiota of author- ity thinks himself invested with all the power so tersely defined by Louis XIV. Put into the hand of a child a little switch with which to warn passers-by from going too near a house under repair, and that child will keep watch over the imprudent with a sense that he is keeping back the whole force of the public. What makes the French so rebellious against customs implying the exercise of liberty is that they cannot bring themselves to practise toleration. Frenchmen sub- mit with extraordinary resignation to authority, and when authority falls THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 336 * THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD into their own hands they exercise it in exactly the same way as they found so irksome themselves when they were under it. In Berlin, on the contrary, the deference shown by officials to those they are controlling softens the sense of being controlled; and though this deference may be only ap- parent, appearances count for much in human affairs. - “There are but few walks in Berlin,” said De Gaussin, “but the one good one there is makes up for the absence of others. This one walk is in a park at the gate of the town—known as the Thiergarten. The central avenue leads to Charlottenburg, and on either side of it are smaller avenues, some straight, Some winding, . . . open spaces surrounded by statues, all—if the truth be told—bad, but clean; lawns cut up into com- partments, a few badly kept sheets of water—such is the arrangement of a place which might be charming if it only received the care it deserves. One would, perhaps, suppose that these fine and beautiful walks would be well kept, but it would be a mistake. It is true that everybody is busy. The military are under arms in fine weather in the morning, and in the afternoon they love to forget their fatigues in a smoking- room, where beer-drinking and smoking often detain them far into the night. Civilians are no less occupied in the morning, and the evenings are spent in a manner differing but little. Women here, as in every other country of the world, get up very late, never appearing in dishabille, and the fatigue and length of their toilet does not permit them to be ready before the time of assembling for supper. - “During the fine days of summer, when the thick verdure of the trees affords a shel- ter from the heat, one would imagine that many people would avail themselves of such occasions, rare in these countries; but one A UHLAN TRUMPETER Engraved by Bazin, after the sketch by Detaille may SOmetimeS walk through the whole park - without meeting any one. The promenade here seems to be reserved for the day of the clean shirt. In fact, after being between four walls the whole week, a great effort is made on Sunday to go out in a carriage, and either make a tour of the Unter den Linden or in the roads open in the park, and BERLIN 337 people actually stop in their vehicles for four or five whole hours without setting foot on the ground.” • This picture of the Thiergarten more than a hundred years ago differs in no essential respect from a description that might be given of it to-day. Statues are more numerous, but not much * better than their predecessors; the wood and the sheets of water are not much better kept. Walkers are, however, less rare, and riders are numerous in the morning; but the habit of shutting themselves up in car- riages before the evening meal is still re- tained by the Berliners, who exchange bows of varying solemnity according to the so- cial, or, I should rather say, military, posi- tion of the occupants of the vehicles, the civilian element being of very small ac- count in Berlin, and the President of the Prussian Chamber of Representatives is not invited to Court as President, but only as an officer of the reserves or land-forces. One day I heard a painter spoken of as a good colorist—apropos of this, I had the good-fortune to meet, in 1882, in one of my first walks in the Unter den Linden, an artist who is a great honor to Ger- many. Near the Wilhelmstrasse there was at this time a picture-dealer, who, by the way, soon became bankrupt. I went in at AN OFFICER this dealer's office, and he pointed out to me, After a drawing by Vogel in the obscurity of the back of his shop, a little man with a lofty forehead and very bright eyes; this man was Adolf Menzel. Two days later I was in his studio. His reception of me was cold, and the conversation at first forced—he evidently felt no con- fidence in me; but I left him in the evening, after a free and animated discussion of all questions connected with art, full of admiration for the genius of the man. In the course of this interview I had seen every phase of Berlin society represented to the life in various sketch-books. Menzel can paint, but it is his draughtsmanship which is his forte, and his draw- ings, most of them in gouache, are never unfaithful to nature. One of his \ º- * 22 338 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD latest pictures is the “Market of Verona.” “Have you lived in Italy "I inquired. “No, I went as far as Verona,” was the answer; “but I hastened to return, for I felt myself attacked by Italianism.” This reply, more than anything Menzel showed me, made me feel that I was in the presence— to use a much-abused expression of our day—of “some one.” As a rule, we meet nobody with anything original about him. The true sign of individuality is the distrust of anything ready made. On this point, alas! our boasted civilization has prepared some rude shocks for us. We get ready-made clothes, ready-made art, science, and politics, and the monotony oppresses us. For my part, when I meet any one who is natural, who does not behave and talk exactly like everybody else, I feel a sense of intense respect for this poetic rarity. To have to listen to the so-called rules of art, the set homilies of scientific pedantry, the honeyed words of stereotyped politicians, is the martyrdom of the present day. I really, therefore, felt indescribable joy when I heard Menzel express a pious horror of the Italian microbe, and my visit to his studio remains one of my pleasantest memories of Berlin. It must, however, be admitted that great efforts are being made in Berlin to promote a feeling for true art — a difficult task, as the Berliners are weighted with the traditions of the German Renaissance and Rococo styles, as are the French with the senile copying of the styles of the past. Moreover, the Germans are somewhat wanting in sense of proportion, and their illustrated journals have, side by side with remarkable drawings, designs of extreme heaviness, and their paint- ing and sculpture are of very unequal merit. Yet Prussia has had the advan- tage of the presence of a woman—the Empress Frederick—who has exercised a great and good influence upon art, though she has never been admitted into the hearts of the people, and is not STUDENTS.— After a drawing by Vogel - popular. The daughter of Prince Al- BERLIN - 339 bert, who was the true inaugurator of the Renaissance of English art in 1851, the Empress Frederick, when Princess Imperial, set to work to reform Prussian taste, and to spread wide the doctrine that every nation in which art is successfully cultivated increases alike in material prosperity and in influence on the outside - world. The Kunstgewerbe Museum of Berlin is the creation of the Empress Frederick, as the South Kensington Museum was that of her father. In 1882 the Princess Imperial was living in the palace of the heir-apparent, a modest- looking but unique home on the Unter den Linden, in which she had gradually got together a number of art objects, which she ar- ranged according to a very happy method. Neither large nor intrinsically very valuable, her collection was remarkable for the taste shown in its selection, evi- dencing a finished educa- tion on her part, as well as a knowledge of how to educate others. This was the nucleus of the Kunst- gewerbe Museum, which was inaugurated in Decem- A WORKMAN ber, 188 2. On the occasion Engraved by Bollanger, after a drawing by Menzel of the inauguration I sent to Berlin one of the officials of the Louvre, who returned to Paris very much impressed with the nascent wealth of the Kunstgewerbe, and much touched by the words spoken by the Prince Imperial at the official opening of the new museum. His Highness had announced his firm resolve to urge Ger- many to aim at Superiority, such as other countries had won, in the arts, 34O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD in industry, and in commerce. When the Baron de Courcel and I were visiting the collection of the Princess Imperial, and she was doing the honors with simple and touching grace, the Prince Imperial came in. His first words showed that he wished rather to lessen the force of the official speech he had made a few months before; he spoke with affected modesty of Prussia being poor in art riches, and he dwelt upon the necessity, on that account, of learning about them. He dwelt on the fact that France had long shown herself without a rival in the arts; that she had still retained the first place in the Universal Exhibitions, although great efforts had been made in England; that all the nations, following the example of England, were providing themselves with institutions for developing or awakening art instincts, and that he had set himself the task of seconding Germany in her efforts in this direction. The enterprise was not without its difficulties. What prejudices had to be overcome ! how much the spread of culture was needed ! He remembered how easily he was him. self deceived in his first acquisitions, and he recognized that if he had gained some experience as a collector, he owed that experience to the Prin- cess Imperial. The Princess spoke with enthusiasm of the French artists invited to Berlin by Frederick II., and who there accumulated so many masterpieces—an admirable epoch, when the greatest artists did not scorn to stamp with their genius the commonest objects of daily use. Her Imperial Highness also expressed her great admiration for several contem- porary French artists, on whose work she set great store, being herself a painter. - I saw the Prince and Princess Imperial again at Potsdam in August, 1886, when they did me the honor of inviting me to supper. We talked a good deal about art on this occasion also. We also spoke a little about politics. The Prince had just returned from Heidelberg, where he had presided at the University fêtes. He had been much impressed by the language of the delegates from the University of France, who had been specially remarked, on account of the reserve and dignity which their posi- tion had compelled them to maintain. During his short reign as a voice- less Emperor, Frederick III. only spoke through his proclamations; he did not act. The Chancellor, however, taking advantage of the situation, took care to make the acts of the Sovereign contradict his words. The Emperor Frederick III. has been very diversely judged in France, but the general feeling was that he was a soldier who had made war with some unwilling- ness, and a politician who dreamed of seeing his country under the parlia- mentary system of England; but this may all be a mistake. There is no BERLIN - 34 I doubt that Prince Frederick Charles was the soldier par excellence of Prussia, but it is no less certain that Frederick III. had no repugnance to war. As for his opinions on the government of his country, it is very doubtful whether he went so far as to wish to introduce English institu- tions in their entirety into Germany; his acumen was far too great for him to indulge in any such delusions. Prince Frederick was an energetic parti- san for the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, although I believe he recog: nized that that annexation was morally wrong . . . but it is useless to dwell on that now. I pass on to my journey through Europe in 1886 to negoti- ate matters for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, when I found all those interested in the matter eager enough, while the officials in authority were anything but willing to aid me. An offi- . cial request would evidently be met with an official refusal, and of this I had felt convinced before I started. An idea occurred to me, however, which I think was really marvellous, though its in- trinsic value was nil, and that was to look upon the Exhibition as a benefit to individuals. Under other circumstances this fiction would readily have been ad- mitted, but in 1889 it would have de- ceived nobody. All attempt, therefore, to introduce the subject being aban- doned, conversation, when it did crop up, became especially interesting. At Potsdam, of course, I did nothing to lead it to crop up; but, for all that, my visit was not wanting in interest, be. cause it was always curious to see the opponents of the revolution doing it indirect homage, and going so far as to express regret not to be able to serve it, or at least not to be able to make it serve them. For, at bottom, the taste a prince may have for parliamentary government only goes as far as to the point at which parliamentary govern- ment makes his task easier. The old Emperor William had no predilection for those who went too far in that direction. It is said that having com. A COOK.-After a drawing by Vogel | 342 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD •r missioned Von Piloty to paint a huge canvas representing his coronation, he went a few months afterwards to the artist's studio. Piloty had repre- sented the Prince Imperial standing in the foreground, with one foot on the steps of the throne. William, making a sign with his walking-stick to his son to go out of hearing, said to Von Piloty: “Alter that; it is too soon.” When I came back from Potsdam I said to myself, “It is too late;” but, after all, who can tell ? It was at Copenhagen in 1888 that I heard the news of the death of Frederick III. I had gone to the Danish capital with the French artists who organized the Jacobsen Exhibition. We were in the French depart- ment when the death of the Emperor was announced. I will copy the notes I took in my journey from Copenhagen to Berlin, and in Berlin itself at this interesting time. - Monday, June 18, 1888.-We left Copenhagen to-day. This evening we shall be at Berlin. The train took us rapidly in three hours to Stege, after stopping at Röskilde, at Kjöge, the town of tapestries, and at Vording- borg; a barge-like steamer, such as all those on the great and little Belts, took us in a few minutes to Masnedsund. Thence we went to Nykjoling, where we embarked for Warnemünde, on the coast of Pomerania, the cross- ing taking an hour and a half. We made the passage in a dense fog, the siren (whistle) of the steamer crying out without intermission. Another siren quickly replied to ours, but one with a stronger, more masculine voice, from a vessel of war, a German iron-clad, which passed us on the right, gliding through the fog like some phantom ship, its size magnified by the effect of the mirage. A cry of surprise and admiration went up from the deck, so fairy-like was the sight. We steamed slowly, for fear of col- lisions. Suddenly the little town of Warnemünde emerged in front of us, the fog was torn asunder by the warning volley fired by its cannon, and the dull gleam of its unique light-house looked down upon us. The steamer entered the channel lined with bathing villas. Warnemünde is a whaling station, and the fishing-vessels, driven in from the offing by the fog, are huddled together, forming a great black mass. A red-keeled vessel hove in sight in a cloud of smoke; it was the steamer for Nyksborg. Soon we heard the gay tones of a waltz, played on violins, with occasional sharp tones from a flute or soft accompaniment from a clarinet. We were at the casino. We landed, and after a few minutes' rest we were in the train which was to take us from Warnemünde to Berlin. We passed Rostock, the birthplace of Blücher; Gustron, a manufacturing town; Neu-Branden- burg and Neu-Wülitz, both with old castles; and Oranienburg, on the L’ENSEIGNE DE GUERsAINT Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Watteau in the Alte Schloss Havel. Everywhere we saw quantities of game, herds of deer starting up and bounding away as the train passed, and terrified hares dashed madly along the furrows of the fields. We reach Berlin. The station is hung with black, the officials rush forward with the steps and carpet sacred to the feet of distinguished travellers. A prince gets out; it is one of the Savoy royalties. We are detained some time at the station, as our baggage 344 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD tickets are mislaid. At last we are in a carriage, but the town is so full that our progress is slow. Every one is dressed in mourning, the shops are draped in black, and equipages are buried beneath crape draperies—even the butchers' shops weep well-paid tears. It is difficult to get any supper. We take a turn on the Unter den Linden, where crowds are collecting at every corner to hear read the Proclamation of William III. to the people of Prussia. The obsequies had taken place in the morning at Potsdam. Madame de R , whom we met on the threshold of the hotel, asks us to tea, and gives us an account of the last few days. It is true that the Emperor Frederick III. placed the hand of Prince Bismarck in that of the Empress. From the accession of Frederick III. all official discipline had been relaxed, for no one thought his reign would last long. He had known how to win real and deep sympathy, and his noble, stately figure had been to the people an embodiment of triumphant Germany. He was loved by men of letters; he had a true appreciation for noble and beautiful productions of every kind. Among those who do not know him well, William II. is sup- posed to be eager for war. There are in Europe two Houses which have ever been distinguished for their combined audacity and prudence; these are the Houses of Hohenzollern and of Savoy. William II. is a true Hohenzollern. Madame de R gave us her views on the political situa- tion. Women have strange ideas about politics: a master appears to them indispensable. In the eyes of the female sex all nations are made to be led, and happy in being led. Madame de R is English, and the bad news had brought her from London; she was going the next day to the Em- press Frederick at Potsdam. We took leave of her, and I retired to my room pondering over the dramatic circumstances which had attended the sad close of what might have been a great career. Tuesday, June 19, 1888.-This morning we went to Potsdam. At the station the footstools and carpets of ceremonial usage were in full use, and the number of yards of cloth prescribed by etiquette were being unrolled for the benefit of Princes and Envoys Extraordinary. At Potsdam a very obliging little coachman offered to be our cicerone, and took us to the Hager restaurant at Glienicke. This little coachman would make a first-rate introducer of ambassadors, for the protocol had no secrets from him. I was astonished when I saw him take a high place at the table among people of some importance—the couriers, outriders, coachmen, and footmen of great personages. He told me he was an officer of the Land- wehr, and that he did but take the rank belonging to him. Montaigne said of the Germans that their aim was not to taste but to swallow, and BERLIN 345 on this occasion the Hager restaurant was a very fair illustration of this criticism. After breakfast we went for a walk in the Sans-Souci Park. The weather was beautiful, the birds were singing merrily, and at every turn we met a guide who faithfully repeated his lesson: “Look, gentlemen, there is the Triumphal Arch of Brandenburg, built in 1770; it is now draped with black. Would the gentlemen like to see the cloister?” At the cost of a few kreutzers this tiresome guide can, however, be got rid of. We lingered a long time about the Great Fountain, admiring Pigalle’s “Venus,” and look- ing with curiosity at the numerous groups by the Adams. The Palace of Sans-Souci is at the top of a grand flight of steps, sixty-six feet high, with a THE EMPEROR WILLIAM AND PRINCE BISMARCK AT FREDRICKSRUHE ON October 30, 1888 Engraved by Thiriot, after a photograph by Ziezler, of Berlin terrace breaking the ascent here and there. It is in the pretty style of so much eighteenth century architecture, and is provided with the large bay. windows which testify to the love of nature of our ancestors. Frederick II. was fond of this residence. There was nothing very luxurious in its _ - _ - - - _ 22–2 346 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD internal arrangements, but everything was bright. His successors have done their best to spoil it and introduce ennui, but they have not altogether succeeded. As in some pictures, the background is repelling, and it is not difficult to recall the past. In the gallery running along the lower terrace there are a number of works by Watteau, Lancret, and Pater which are truly remarkable, but what a state they are in These luckless canvases are most of them cracked and yellow, covered with coats of varnish which the heat of the Sun has broken up in a most unfortunate manner. Our main object in going to Potsdam was to see the official mourning proces- sion file past the palace; but here, as elsewhere, in spite of the claims of the present, we were dominated, as one is everywhere in Prussia, by the spirit of Frederick II. Truly he was an extraordinary man, for he had to struggle against the influence of three women. He was, in fact, a philoso- pher first and then a king, rather than a philosophic monarch. At differ. ent times he was first one, then the other; a king in his maintenance of his personal rights and in his arbitrary control of military and administrative matters, a philosopher when once in his library. When Sieyes was sent to Berlin as ambassador, he prided himself on his acumen in lauding Fred- erick II. as a man of letters enamoured of one style, a sceptic railing against religious prejudice, a reformer developing a system of popular education; but Sieyes met with no response. In his simplicity he failed to perceive that Frederick II. owed his popularity in Prussia to the fact that his ambition was exclusively Prussian, and that his sole aim in coveting Silesia, a third of Poland, and half of Bohemia was to pursue the aim of the Hohenzollerns. Though there are in Prussia many noble institutions on which Frederick II. set the stamp of his individuality, Prussia herself does not take much pride in them; it is, above all, as a conqueror that she admires her great king. When, in 1775, on the occasion of the consecra- tion of Louis XVI., Frederick II. laughed at “the bizarre ceremonies of the consecration of St. Ampulius, the history of which is worthy of the Laplanders;” when he exercised his wit on the healing of the king's-evil and on the French bigotry which condemned young men to death who had failed to make due reverence before the image of a poor Jewish carpenter; when he said, “the more one examines the absurd follies on which all religions are founded, the more one pities those who are enamoured of these trifles,” he was posing as a sceptic, and as such he was not much approved of by his fellow-countrymen. So that, when Sieyes alluded to this kind of thing in conversation at Berlin, his re- marks were so badly received that he did not hesitate in his letters to BERLIN 347 friends in Paris to speak of the Berlinese in anything but flattering terms. We dined at the Hiller restaurant in the evening. At the table next to ours were Prince Hohenlohe, Governor of Alsace, formerly ambassador at Paris, and General Avenleben, commander of the Schleswig corps d’armée, and accredited as Envoy Extraordi- nary to France on the occasion of the begin- ning of the new reign. We exchanged a few remarks, necessarily of no particular meaning, on the events of the day. Before dinner I had been for a drive with the French ambas- sador, M. Herbette, to the Thiergarten. All that could be said of the new Emperor was that we are with regard to him in the pres- ence of the unknown. I myself have only once seen William II., and that was in 1882 at Potsdam, where he was then in command. I wanted to obtain from him permission to visit the chapel connected with the military church at Potsdam, where is placed the coffin of Frederick II. I was most anxious to see with my own eyes the last resting-place of that great man. I had been told that while waiting for the mausoleum to Frederick II., promised by one Prussian monarch after an- other, the remains of the monarch were alto- gether overlooked among the various acces- Saries of worship. This is an exaggeration; the coffin is in a small place, it is true, but _ — - not an unsuitable one, bearing in mind that * HABITUf OF THE GREENROOM it is only provisional. The tradition of Be- nevolence and Gratitude, though seated side by side, requiring an introduction because they are unknown to each other, is appropriate all the world over. Who rendered more services to Prussia than Frederick II.? But where is the Prussian who accords to him the honors which are justly his due 2 Wednesday, June 20, 1888.-I shall leave Berlin this evening. This is my second visit since 1882. Could a race of exceptional genius convert this town into an attractive capital 2 I doubt it. Berlin is badly situated After a drawing by Vogel 348 THE CAPITALS OF THE world on a bad soil, and though its extent is imposing, a miracle of art would be required to make it beautiful. There are however, a great many art treasures within its walls, but the general effect leaves you unmoved. How many lovely little towns, with the stamp of death upon their pale features, charm you in a manner this healthy capital fails to do. . . . . 24.7, © 2. ” VIENNA IENNA is one of the few towns in which a Parisian could say, “After all, if I had to inhabit this place I need not die l’ Vienna presents an appearance alike graceful and dignified. An in- comparable river, the beautiful blue Danube, encircles it as if to lead it forth in an endless waltz. The Dan- ube gives it life and light, and the glimpses of the Orient obtained from it make it one of the most attractive of Western cities. The framework of mountains surrounding Vienna is also f - * . § 2. º, ... t . . Tº "º | . . * Tº ºf l f : * : ( ſº ſº V. * † Sº, º 4 º' # , . gº very fine, and I know nothing grander or more brilliant than a sunset seen from the villas on the summit of the Kahlenberg. - At such times Vienna gradually becomes suffused with a pale rose- color, while the plain of the March, which was shaken in the terrible bat. ties of Essling and Wagram, remains of a dark green, witnessing to its marvellous fertility. The blue of the Danube deepens into black towards Hungary, as if its wide-stretching Puzta swallowed up all the light in the sky; the buttresses of the Carpathians turn violet, and the Styrian Alps glow with a red as vivid as that of the patches on the heads of the heath- Cocks which abound among them. The Viennese say that the view is even finer from the Leopoldsberg, the last spur of the Wienerwald, and it may perhaps be more unique, as the Danube lies some 900 feet below; but the landscape composes better from the Kahlenberg, the foreground and middle distance being more distinct. THE MONUMENT TO MARIA THERESA 352 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Set down in scenery so lovely and poetic, a town cannot be melan- choly or its inhabitants dull. All is bright above and below, and the brightness is reflected in the disposition of the people, who are more like Parisians than any other inhabitants of Europe. A Celtic origin, too, is claimed for them. Good-hearted, brave, and of proverbial gayety, the peo- ple of Vienna love excitement, fêtes, and shows. They must have variety, and they seek it everywhere, at no matter what cost. Monotony, of which ennui is the offspring, is the dread of a true Viennese. Everything is sacrificed for the sake of amusement, and he will laugh at a caricature of himself if it be but a good one. He spares neither his idols nor his ene- mies, for novelty is as necessary to him as his daily bread. Vienna, with its newly annexed suburbs, has about 1,500,000 inhabit- ants. Two years ago, when the municipal council of Vienna considered the question of the annexation of the suburban communes, and the forma- tion of the vast Viennese agglomeration, they proudly voted for the aggran- dizement of the capital, but energetically opposed the abandonment of the communal autonomy, yielding to the wish of the entire population, which could not accept a burgomaster nominated by the Government. At the present day there is an extraordinary amount of traffic in the streets of Vienna, a perpetual going to and fro, the passengers jostling each other with a vivacity of gesture and a good-humor which favorably impresses the stranger at once. There are a good many idlers here, as in Paris, and among them certain distinct types, very interesting to watch, and which I will describe presently, when I have given a brief summary of the history of Vienna. Of Celtic origin, Vienna was once in the possession of the Romans. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died there in A.D. 18O. Inhabited succes- sively by the Slavs, the Rugii, the Huns, and the Goths, etc., the history of Vienna is of no particular interest until the twelfth century, although the first crusades had some influence on its development, and drew down on it the hatred of the Mussulmans—a hatred which revived later, and at one time threatened the very existence of the town. A Margrave of Babenberg took up his residence at Vienna, built a castle there, and fortified the town. His descendants defended it gloriously until one of them allowed it to be taken from him in the thirteenth century by Ottocar, King of Bohemia. Rudolf of Hapsburg took it in his turn from Ottocar, and gave it to one of his sons, who fixed his residence there. The dukes of the House of Hapsburg having deprived the burgesses of Vienna of their privileges, these burgesses revolted several times, and VIENNA 353 by a strange turn of the wheel of fortune a king of Bohemia came to the rescue of Frederick of Hapsburg when he was blockaded in his castle. Later, Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, took Vienna by assault and resided in it. Mathias was worthy of his new possession, for he was VIEW OF VIENNA Engraved by Rousseau, after a water-color by Myrbach a skilful ruler, a great leader, and, moreover, a man of culture, with a taste for literature. He died at Vienna in 1496, and Maximilian of Hapsburg returned to his capital amid the rejoicing of his people. - The great event which succeeded the return of the national dynasty was the first siege of Vienna. In 1529 Soliman III. besieged it with 200,000 men, but he could not gain an entrance, though it was defended by only 25,000 men. The Turks returned in 1682 with 400,000 men, sent by Mahomet IV. In spite of the heroism of the inhabitants, who between the two attacks of the Turks had had to defend themselves from the Bohe- mians, the town would have succumbed but for the aid of John Sobieski, King of Poland, who with his allies defeated the forces of Kara Mus- tapha, and so saved Christendom. It was on September 15, 1683, that Count Staremberg saw appear in the distance the banners of John Sobieski and of Duke Charles V. of Lorraine. The bench from which the besieged ruler, whose strength and resources were alike exhausted, saw 23 354 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the deliverers of his town approaching, is still shown in the tower of the cathedral. - In the winter of 1805 Murat took Vienna, and Napoleon I. won it again in the spring of 1809. - - On March 13, 1848, the people demanded a constitution of Ferdinand I. Feeling himself too weak to cope with the growing needs of his people, the Emperor soon afterwards abdicated in favor of Francis Joseph, and it was thus that one of the most aristocratic members of the House of Haps. burg was gradually compelled to take into account the spread of democracy in his dominions. The Court of the Emperor of Austria is very Olympian, and the most exclusive in Europe. Personally, Francis Joseph does not care to receive any but nobles with sixteen quarterings, or the officers of his army. In his palace and elsewhere he is altogether the Sovereign. What the Emperor likes best are the pomp, the rapid motion, and the excitement of the chase; he is fond, too, of shooting grouse, the birds being surprised in the night by single shooters, and killed early in the morning as they begin their first song, for it is quite impossible to get at them in the daytime. * - - Francis Joseph's activity is extraordinary, and he would have been perfectly happy as an absolute monarch. It has been very painful to him to have to share his power with parliamentary institutions, and he looks upon responsible ministers as a fifth wheel in a chariot. He would have preferred an imperial to a constitutional government, but he has with loyalty and resignation abandoned the grand policy of Maria Theresa, which the defeat at Sadowa rendered impossible to him. When provincial opinion makes demands too distinct to be ignored, he takes them duly into account; but he withdraws himself from his people because they have refused to accept him with his traditions. He lives a family life, avoiding crowds as much as he can, and content to be looked upon as a monarch hedged about with restrictions. Francis Joseph is, however, very generous, and the unfortunate never appeal to him in vain. - The Empress Elizabeth, a princess of Bavaria, seems to take more pleasure in being Queen of Hungary than Empress of Austria. The magnates of Hungary have an esteem for her which nothing has lessened. She has learned their language, she wears their national costume, and is happy among them. All the Magyars know her, while many Viennese have never seen her. * - Democracy does not please her at all; she has retained at Court the VIENNA 355 - traditions of the most rigid etiquette, and will not allow modern ideas to penetrate into her circle. If Francis Joseph had remained an absolute monarch she would have loved popularity, but as for popularity with those who dare to claim to dictate to sovereigns, and to choose their own form of government, she altogether scorns it. If the Empress were sure of find- ing in the people of Vienna the respect she was accustomed to in the past, she would appear in the theatre of which the Viennese are so enamoured; but she knows that nowadays the people venture to judge and criticise their rulers, and therefore she refuses every year to appear at the fêtes of the Resurrection and of Corpus Christi. Former empresses walked on foot in these processions, followed by the ladies of their Court, with pages bearing the trains of their robes. One can guess what a privation it is to the Viennese no longer to be allowed to witness such an imposing sight as this must have been. The Empress is passionately fond of riding, and is the first Amazon of the world. Aristocratic as she is, and altogether averse to democracy, THE GRABEN After a drawing by Boudier 356 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD she admits riding-masters to her friendship. The English have dubbed her the “Queen of Amazons,” and she could give lessons in horsemanship to the first professors of the art. The poor young Prince Rudolf was a true Viennese of democratic opinions, and very popular. - Though Vienna is cosmopolitan, and all races jostle each other in its streets, the old Viennese remain thoroughly Viennese, and seem to have absorbed into one unique type all the mixtures and cross-breeds. The Viennese types are very curious. The first to arrest the atten- tion of the visitor is the hackney-coachman. None but those who have seen him can have any idea of the elegance of his get-up. No one in Vienna is better dressed than he, and Heaven only knows if any one else is as well dressed. The cut of his garments, which are of fine cloth, is per- fect; his aristocratic feet are shod with good boots; his linen is irre- proachable. He drives horses, as brilliant and as well cared for as his carriage itself, with consummate skill and address. The old Viennese detests the Ringstrasse and the new monuments. He is broken-hearted over the embellishment of Vienna, which ought to fill him with pride. The names of the new streets irritate him. “The old town,” he says, “belonged to the Viennese, the new town is the property of the Jews.” I don't know whether Vienna really does belong to the Jews, but it must be admitted that since the battle of Sadowa she has to a great extent submitted to the taste of her conqueror, and that many clumsy decorations are of Berlin rather than of Viennese origin. There is, however, among the new buildings the most beautiful of all modern churches: the Votiv-Kirche, a church founded by Maximilian in memory of the miraculous escape of Francis Joseph from attempted assas- sination in 1853. - ..a This church was designed by a man of genius, the architect Ferstel. It is purely Gothic in style, and nothing is needed but the lapse of cen- turies to make it a perfect work. The Cathedral of St. Stephen, built by Master Wenzld, of Klosterneu- burg, was well calculated to inspire a modern architect, and it was near to this marvel of beauty that Fertsel erected his masterpiece. St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was partly rebuilt between 1300 and 15 IO, occupies the site of a Roman church, of which some portions still remain. It is one of the finest Gothic monuments of the world, and is of the form of a Latin cross, with a nave and two aisles. Its massive vaulting is supported on eighteen huge pillars. Numerous sketches adorn this fine building, and, of VIENNA - 357 the minor details, those which longest detain the visitor are the Chapel of St. Barbara, though of modern date, and the Frauenchor on the north side, in which is the monument to Duke Rudolf of Hapsburg, the founder of St. Stephen's. When the setting sun plays upon the delicate stone traceries, touching them with a rosy golden glow, the effect is most beautiful and impressive. Equally incomparable are the Riesenthor, or Giant's Gate, and the Heidenthurm, or Heathen Tower. In fact, a whole day is required to see St. Stephen's properly, for one beauty succeeds another at every turn. I paused one evening at the entrance to one of the choirs, and looked at the exquisite bass-reliefs with which it is surrounded. Those representing Christ bidding farewell to the holy women were marvellously lit up, and the figures seemed to live and move. The figure of Jesus seemed to me more beautiful, and His expression more tender, than ever, as - He pronounced in His divine * voice those never-to-be-forgotten words of peace and comfort. The sar- cophagus of Frederick III. in red marble is a very original work. Another great curiosity of St. Stephen's is the pulpit from which John of Campis- tran preached a crusade in the fifteenth century. From the summit of the tower of St. Stephen's a magnificent view of Vienna and its surroundings is obtained. º The Augustiner Kirche, or Church of the Augustines, is connected with the Hofburg, or Imperial castle, by an arcade, and it is in this church that the Court performs its devotions. Here is to be seen the tomb of THE EMPEROR Engraved by Bazin, after a water-color by Myrbach - 358 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Maria Christina, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, of beautiful white marble, one of Canova's finest works, and the monument erected by Maria Theresa to the memory of Marshal Daun, the “liberator of his country.” The Capuchin Church, built in the seventeenth century, is very gloomy. It contains ninety-two tombs of members of the Imperial family, but it is only the empty shells of the august deceased which these tombs enclose, the intestines being buried at St. Stephen's, and the hearts at the Church of the Augustines. There, among others, rest the bodies of Maria Theresa, Francis I., Maria Louisa, the wife of Napoleon I., the Duke of Reichstadt, Matthias, and the unfortunate Maximilian. The Church of Maria-Stiegen, the national place of worship of the Bohemians, dates from the golden age of Gothic art, and we must also mention the Church of the Minorites, St. Michael's, to which flock all the members of the fashionable world. - Of the noticeable buildings of Vienna other than churches the chief is the Imperial Palace known as the Hofburg, which is without character, and has nothing remarkable about it but the treasures it contains, including a library of 4oo,OOO volumes, and 20,000 MSS., with a fine collec- tion of engravings and wood-cuts to the number of about 3OO,OOO. The Library is a vast building, its principal room being more than 225 feet long by some 51 broad. Seen from the centre of the room the perspective of the ceil- ing is very remarkable, and the effect produced quite ex- traordinary; one wonders whether it is the accidental re- sult of the way the light comes in, or whether the artist intended to produce it. The Hofburg Library contains the most celebrated collection of Oriental MSS. in Europe, given about half a century ago by Baron von Hammer- Purgstall, together with a great many Greek, Latin, and German MSS., and the chief ancient works of German literature, all of the utmost value to students and schol- a UHLAN officer in ars. Among the most noticeable rarities are various UNIDRESS UNIFORM books dating from the fourteenth century, including the oldest edition of the Biblia Pauperum, or Bible of the Poor, a Koran of 1545, the Prayer-book of Charles V., bearing signs of much usage, and in which, it is said, the place where the Emperor put his spectacles can be made out, some Mexican MSS., and some very fine antique bindings, probably unique. After a drawing by Myrbach VIENNA 359 The Treasury of the Hofburg deserves a separate visit. The most remarkable objects contained in it are a beautiful goblet of inestimable value, incrusted with precious stones, which belonged to Charles the Bold; the salt-cellar made for Francis I. by Benvenuto Cellini; an Order of the Golden Fleece with the so-called Frankfort solitaire, a & brilliant of forty-two and a half carats, in the centre, surrounded by 150 smaller gems; the horoscope or talisman of Wallenstein; the Insignia of the Holy Roman Empire; and lastly, to end a list which might be spun out to the length of the Thousand and One Mights, the sabre of Haroun-al-Raschid. The Maria Theresa monument on the Platz named after it, dating from 1888, is a grand work in bronze, representing the Empress seated on her throne, surrounded by the generals and statesmen who aided her in the reconstruction of Austria. On the Franzensring, one of the finest of the new streets of Vienna, opposite the Votiv - Kirche, are the buildings of the University, a vast building with a portico decorated with sculptures; and a lit- tle farther on is the new Rathhaus, a fine structure in the Gothic style, richly decorated with statues, A WASHER-WOMAN and with a tower 320 feet high, which cost 15,000- After a drawing by Myrbach Ooo florins. The Rathhaus is divided into seven courts and a number of handsome rooms. The new Exchange may also be mentioned here. It is in the Renaissance style, and was completed in 1877. Opposite the Volksgarten on the Burgplatz is a fine palace, the Reichsrathgebäude, or Houses of Parliament, divided into two parts, the Chamber of Deputies on one side, and the Upper House on the other The peristyle of this palace has twenty-four marble columns, and the walls of the rooms are hung with very fine historic paintings. Near the Parlia- ment buildings are the Justiz Palatz, or Palace of Justice, and the Natural History Museum, all fine buildings in the modern German Renaissance style. The Academy of Art is a grand building, with windows alternating with niches, in which are placed terra-cotta reproductions of the master. pieces of antique sculpture. On the right of the Opera-house is the Kärtner-Strasse, leading to 360 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the Elizabeth Brücke, or Elizabeth's Bridge, on which are eight statues of distinguished Viennese. On the Ringstrasse should also be noted the Handel's Academy, or Academy of Commerce, the Künstlers' Haus, or Artists' House, the Musikvereingebatide, or Academy of Music, and the Museum and School of Art and Industry—all fine modern buildings, the two last-named containing collections of great interest to the student. The Barracks on the Franz Josef's quay, connected with the Ring. strasse by the Aspern Brücke, are well built, and from them we may pass to the Belvedere, a museum worthy of a great capital. Begun in the seventeenth century, this fine building was completed in the eighteenth century by Prince Eugene of Savoy. It is divided into the Lower Belve- dere, containing the finest collection of armor in the world, with the weap- ons of all the emperors and cele- brated heroes of Austria; and the Upper Belvedere, the treasures of which defy description, and include well - selected masterpieces by Ti- tian, Tintoretto, Giulio Romano- Paolo Veronese, Perugino, Caravag, gio, Fra Bartolommeo, and others. The Rembrandts are only equalled by those in the Hermitage, St. Pe. tersburg, and the examples of the Dutch schools are simply inval- uable. Side by side with the Belve- dere is the huge Imperial Arsenal, with its quaint collection of weap- ons, including cannons and guns of every period. There are several very fine private collections in Vienna, nota- bly those of the Archduke Albert, more than 200,000 engravings and 24,000 original drawings, the Lichtenstein Gallery, entered by way of a beautiful garden, the Czernin Gallery, and that of Count Schönborn. One of the buildings I consider the most interesting and instructive to the stranger in Vienna is the Civic Arsenal, to visit which the authori- zation must be obtained of the captain of the Fire Brigade. The Civic A VIENNESE CAB-DRIVER Engraved by Bazin, after a water-color by Myrbach VIENNA 361 Arsenal contains also a good many French flags, trophies of war; but there are even more Prussian ones. The weapons, including those of the Rustand War, are particularly noteworthy.” Here too may be seen the skull of the Grand-Vizier Kara-Mustapha. Truth to tell, the cause of THE HOFBURG (THE LIBRARY). After a drawing by Boudier Vienna, when John Sobieski saved her, was that of all Christendom, and if the Turks had not been arrested by the courage of the towns-people, the whole of Western Europe would have fallen under the yoke beneath which the Greeks and Slavs groaned so long, and from which the races of the Balkan Peninsula are not yet free. Among the ten public parks are the Volksgarten (in which from early spring one formerly heard three times a week the orchestra of the celebrated Edward Strauss), the Hofgarten, and the Stadtpark, with shady trees and beds bright with a succession of flowers, lakes with ducks swim- ming about on them, and other attractions. The Stadtpark is the favorite * In the last edition of Baedecker's Guide to South Germany we read: “The Civic Arsenal has yielded its collection of weapons to the new Rathhaus."—TRANS, 362 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD rendezvous of young people, and the good citizens of Vienna are fond of going out to take breakfast or dinner in the Cursalon. The chief note of color and interest in these parks is given by the military element. Since the conclusion of the Triple Alliance the army has played a much more important part in Vienna than it previously did. Every year the Austrian Government adds 20,000,000 to its war budget, and creates new regiments in all the garrisons of its vast empire. The infantry, once so brilliantly picturesque in the white helmets and blue trousers, are now a little less noticeable, the new uniform being dark blue and brown. The old cavalry looked superb in the long white cloaks, but only the hussars now retain the ancient costume, which is modified for all the other corps. All these changes, however, do not affect the wonder-, ful horsemanship either of the Austrians or the Hungarians. , sº The white uniform is still worn by two Hungarian regiments of infan- try. No other army is made up of so many nationalities as the Austrian, and an officer is expected to know German, Hungarian, and Bohemian for teaching recruits and issuing orders. It is interesting to watch the drill of the Austrian army in the courts of the barracks, especially in that known as the Cavalry Court. I was once present at the review of the garrison of Vienna, held once a year by the Emperor, on the vast plain known as the Schmelz, near the cemetery of the same name. - The enthusiasm of the pretty Viennese girls was delightful; and how charming they looked with their large blue eyes and fresh cheeks, set off by dainty toilets, as they stood up in the carriages to get a better view How their color deepened, and how softly the blue eyes gleamed, when the figure of some young officer was recognized parading past on foot or on horseback The Emperor is also always present at the grand review of the army at the head of his staff of marshals and generals, and with his escort of grand-dukes. All the regiments of infantry defile past at a good pace, the cavalry and artillery at a trot, and the sight is worth seeing. - I have said that the Viennese are fond of pleasure, and this taste is especially displayed at Christmas and at Easter. The poorest house has its tree at the former, and its egg at the latter season. The patron of Vienna is St. Leopold, and on the day of his fête a grand procession, including all the magistrates, ministers, and clergy, marches round the town. Formerly even the Emperor took part in it, following it on foot. Psalms are chanted, VIENNA 363 - and flowers are strewn in the streets as on Corpus Christi Day. If it be fine, the true Viennese always goes out into the country, for the last time in the season, on St. Leopold's Day, to take his dinner on Mount Leopold; and though the fête falls in November, it is often still quite warm and sunshiny. Good Friday is the great day of the fashionable world, when all the churches—especially St. Stephen's and St. Michael's—are crowded, and the altars are completely hidden with flowers. Popular festivities take place in the Prater, which is the Bois de Boulogne of Vienna, and in which there is a kind of reserved place for the people, known as the Wurstel-Prater, and it is here that the Viennese are seen at their best, so frank and simple-hearted are their manners when they are happily amused. A CAF; concert Engraved by Rousseau, after a water-color by Myrbach The Haupt Allée, or Chief Avenue, is lovely in the spring, with the horse-chestnuts all in flower. On May 1st the great world meets to open the summer season, an old custom dating from the time of Maria Theresa. Splendid equipages, fine horses, grand toilets abound, and the scene resem- bles what was so often to be seen in Acacia Avenue before the Prussian War. This ceremony is known as the Corso, and the Emperor opens the fête, attended by the archdukes and all the aristocracy. 364 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The people form lines from the Praterstern, or Star of the Prater, to the Lusthaus, and between these lines the procession passes. In 1891 the fête of May 1st was rather spoiled by the fear of a Socialist manifestation, the people hesitating to go to the Prater; but when they saw the workmen hurrying to the Wurstel-Prater, they ran to the Praterstern, and the fête SKATING IN VIENNA Engraved by Rousseau, after a water-color by Myrbach - took place without any hitch, but it was wanting in its usual brilliancy, and it is feared that if May 1st is chosen for the Socialists' meeting, that the Corso will disappear altogether. - During the last thirty years Vienna has changed a great deal; every day the old Viennese lose something, yet they still retain their individual character, and remain a distinct type. One extraordinary aberration of the jeunesse dorée of Vienna must be noted, and that is their habit of speaking a language incomprehensible to any one but themselves, which is neither German, Viennese, nor Austrian. VIENNA 365 The fault is in the teachers, who try to suppress what they call the horrible language of Vienna. Their pupils, introduced to “pure German,” have created for themselves a jargon only spoken by the aristocracy. It is a relief after listening to it to turn to the people, and hear their fresh, bright, and simple diction. The washer-woman who brings home your linen is a pretty young girl, wearing a short petticoat, displaying well-made and well-kept boots. Her head-dress is a tasty bow of silk, and a black velvet bodice defines clearly her dainty figure. She carries her basket of linen with the easy grace of a ballet-girl at the Opera Comique. The man about town presents a very original appearance, with a small narrow-brimmed hat stuck at the back of his head, and two corkscrew ringlets hanging from his temples, meeting the curled mustaches, giving him a look of reckless gayety which is by no means unpleasing. - Very different are the market-women, who are as ugly, as dirty, as vulgar in speech and man- ner as the washer-women are charming, dainty, and graceful. It is said that these ladies, unlike the sellers of vegetables in Athens, take a pride in re- taining unchanged the old language, which, far from being the best chosen, is the very coarsest possible, resembling the Billingsgate of London. No soldier in the world wears his military cos- tume or dons his cap with more distinguished grace than the Viennese. On the other hand, the petty tradesmen of Vienna are altogether without any special character. They love jewelry, such as scarf- pins, huge rings, watch-chains, and charms. A sim- ple-hearted fellow, with honest eyes, and a smile on his mouth, he may be seen on Sunday with his wife beside him, who is dressed in black silk, an embroidered white shawl, and a little hat trimmed with feathers and with a turned-up brim. Behind the happy pair generally troop a number of little children. - The Viennese, though they are of a type peculiarly their own, are yet of a very complex character, revealing their mixed origin, the result of a series of influxes from without. Alike Oriental and Occidental, they have the indifference of the Arab and mobility of the Slav; they are as supple A VIENN ESE LADY After a drawing by Myrbach 366 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD as the Italians and as brave as the Magyars. Fond of talking, and adoring an open-air life, the people of Vienna congregate outside the cafés, where there is always something going on to amuse them; and no matter what entertainment they go to, they always wind up with an hour or two at a café, for does not one meet every one there, and hear the news, or make some up if there be none P For gossip is the unfailing delight of the Viennese. The Viennese are also very fond of impromptu theatricals at a wine- shop or a café. Travelling actors, with those who have promised to treat them, suddenly dash in as they arrive for a few days' stay. They act little scenes or sing little songs in which the Viennese people are made fun of, their sallies being greeted with shouts of laughter and applause. The morality of the scenes represented and the songs sung is sometimes rather doubtful, but who would inquire too strictly into that, when the whole is seasoned with the proverbs the Viennese delight in - - The one great flaw in the Viennese character is the want of economy, the absence of forethought, and the dislike of steady work. A Viennese never thinks of old age, but spends all he gets without a thought of the future. On Sunday the poorest workman spends his whole week's earn- ings; he goes to the country, either alone or with his family, to taste the new vintage, or to breakfast and to pass the day in the Wurstel-Prater, where the circus, the wine-shops, the Tziganes, and the barrel-organs delight him. He is noisy but never vulgar when he is taking his pleasure. The Viennese is always polite, especially to ladies. In a crowd he shouts and jostles his neighbors, but always in a good-natured way. He is fonder of talking than of drinking, and tipsy men in Vienna are rarely natives. One may almost say that the Viennese undergo a special popular education. Fond of chaffing, the true Viennese is rarely cruel; his bark is far worse than his bite, and he works off all his ferocity in raillery. He is wonderfully patient in big things, but, strange to say, very impatient about trifles; any interference with him in his usual amusements, for instance, makes him lose all his good qualities in a moment; but the Viennese understand each other so well that an ebullition of temper on the part of one or another of them rarely embroils him with his fellow-citizens. So that, with rare exceptions, the good side only of the bourgeoisie is seen by the visitor to Vienna. The upper middle classes of Vienna, including all those in the liberal professions, are exceptionally honest, active, hard-working, and cultivated. VIENNA 367 All the artists and authors spring from them, and they are wonderfully appreciative and sympathetic; the women are beautiful, and the men courteous and chivalrous. These upper middle classes are extremely influ- ential and rich—in fact, they really govern Austria. The capital of Austria is not German, though it is generally supposed to be so. Czechs and Hungarians and Italians have intermarried in it, THE NEW THEATRE FOR COMEDY.—After a drawing by Berteault and out of this mixture of races has grown the most accomplished citizen imaginable; amiable and well-educated—so well, indeed, that over-refine- ment and mannerism are sometimes the result. The Viennese bourgeois is witty, sensitive, and has extremely good manners. He dresses with the greatest taste; fond of teasing, he is yet very good-natured. He is faithful in his affections and to the cause he espouses. In a word, he is gay, chiv- alrous, and hospitable. One exception must, however, be made in this eulogy, and that is, the men of Vienna have to be au fait of so many complications, the result of the number of nationalities represented in the town, they have to know so many dialects and languages, that they sometimes get quite confused, so much so as to appear almost stupid. The upper middle classes of Vienna are as fond of amusement as are 368 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the lower. Dancing is the fashion everywhere, and any excuse is seized to indulge in it, all meetings being marked by the good-humor, grace, and light-hearted happiness of those who attend them. - It is to the good taste of the middle classes that is due the recent transformation of Vienna; the new and luxurious mansions, which replace the old houses in the modern quarters, having been built and decorated under their auspices. Vienna is the pride of an enlightened bourgeoisie, and in it are found all the modern scientific improvements. The aristocracy, even before the Empress encouraged their disdain of the middle classes, always formed a class apart. They visit none but their own order, and on that order is concentrated all their affection, all their interest. The middle classes may rise as high as they like, but they can never attain to the haughty level of the grand Austrian nobility. Some few great lords have, it is true, tried to bridge over the gulf between them and the bourgeoisie, but with very transient and partial success. The great ladies of Vienna are all very witty, and have great powers of repartee. The Princess Metternich was a very good example of an intellectual aristocrat of Vienna, and was well appreciated in Paris. On the return of the Emperor to the Hofburg begins an endless suc- cession of balls at Vienna. All the members of the aristocracy rejoicing in sixteen quarterings are so nearly related to each other that they might be said to form but one family. This will explain the fact that the aristoc- racy is sufficient to itself, in spite of its rigid exclusiveness, and also the cruel condemnation of anything like a mésal/iance, which affects and humil- iates the whole society. Once admitted into the circle of the Viennese aristocracy, one finds such a charm in the gayety and wit, and in the security of position of the favored few, that one would gladly become a naturalized Viennese. And, as a matter of fact, a great many diplomatists, when they retire, do take up their residence in Vienna. - All the members of an aristocratic Viennese family are princes, and the lists of their names would occupy some twenty volumes. Many are poor, but the army utilizes them all. The young girls lead a most seques- tered life, and their marriages are arranged entirely by their parents. Domestic dramas are, however, perhaps more frequent than formerly among the Viennese nobility. Young ladies of families with sixteen quarterings are brought up to believe that they will be guilty of an unpardonable crime by Berteault THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. STEPHEN.—After a drawing VIENNA 37 I if they love the most illustrious commoner, and worse than a crime if they marry with a view to regilding the family coat of arms. A few instances have been known in France of girls having made mésalliances, but at Vi- enna, if we are to believe members of the nobility, there is not an instance of such a thing in ten years, and hands are lifted to Heaven in pious horror at the mere mention of such a possibility. With men, marrying beneath them is less fatal, though it closes the Court to them. Financiers occupy a very important position in Vienna. Formerly they were all barons, for the iron coronet ennobled them, but since a scan- dal known to all the world this decoration no longer confers the title of baron on its owner. ſ The aristocracy do not mix with the financiers. Now and then a scion of an impoverished House marries the daughter of a Jewish banker, who adopts the religion of her husband, but the number of such alliances is very few compared to those among the poor nobles. I have just said that the aristocracy do not mix with the financiers, but they do meddle with finance, for a great many nobles become mana- gers of banks. The Rothschilds occupy a unique position in the financial world, and are accepted by the aristocracy. Their good taste is proverbial; they receive, help, and encourage artists. Their manners and mode of life are imitated as much as may be by their coreligionists, but their generosity is rarely copied except by Baron von Hirsch, who now and then flings his money about very freely. - - It is not easy to get to know Viennese ladies well, although they frequent the streets and balls in elegant costumes, and are to be constantly seen in the winter at the Schlittschuhlauf-verein, or Skaters' meeting. It is only at this meeting that the aristocracy mix at all with the middle classes, so that the gathering is like a scene from the Aračian AWights' Antertainments. Beauty and grace abound. All the spirit, the go, the ele. gance of the waltz is reproduced on the ice by the fair skaters, combined with a skill and play of fancy which quite turns the head of the other sex. Wonderful, too, is the promenade on the Ringstrasse on Sunday from eleven to two o'clock. The coming and going gives one a chance of having a good look at the beautiful women, some of whom are exquisitely lovely; the young girls walking together with the easy grace peculiar to the Viennese, and which makes them so altogether irresistible. The young girl of the upper middle classes of Vienna is of a type 372 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD altogether unique. She is not quite like an English or quite like a French maiden; she has less self-possession than the former, less timidity than the - latter. Whether walking alone or with her friends she is always correct in her deportment, always free from anything like affectation. The num- ber of superior schools has long been great in Vienna; they are well attended, and have turned out generation after generation of young girls who may really be looked upon as perfect types of well-educated European women. They have a charming ease and assurance of manner; their opin- ions are altogether their own, without being paradoxical; they are melan- choly without being sad; they are delightful talkers, and tell you naïvely, without any coquetry, that they seek the poetry of existence. Do not sup- pose from this that they require the impossible, that they aim at an ideal that can never be realized. No; they have that wisdom which we may characterize as sapient—that is to say, a mixture of the wisdom that comes of reason and knowledge combined. The peculiarity of the Viennese THE FRANZENSRING After a drawing by Dosso woman is that she is prac. tical without being prosy, reasonable without being worldly, and that she is grace personified without being frivolous. The young men—that is to say, the students—are less headstrong and less pedantic than those of Berlin. There are a great many students at THE PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS - VIENNA • 373 Vienna, and masters and pupils — especially the former — are all superior men. They are not so devoted to details, and to the infinitely little, as are the Berlin professors; their aims are less petty, less microbic; they leave scope for 'soaring above the needs of the moment. If they do not turn out poets, at least their scholars have poetic aspirations and liberal views of the work in life for which they are preparing. The least pretext is enough for the students to get up a banquet, and a commers, or students' fête, is a curious sight. At these meetings the young fellows sing, drink, and hold forth with an air of conviction which recalls other days. There is a wonderful feeling of good-fellowship be. tween the professors and their pupils, but this does not lessen at all the respect felt for the former; etiquette is laid aside for a moment at the fêtes, but the next day the old superiority is resumed. The University of Vienna is very ancient, and was founded in 1365. There are nearly 400 instructors, 6OOO students, and a large number of free scholars. There is not much literary society at Vienna, and no salons in which men and women of letters meet each other. On the other hand, the studies at the University are very severe, and the students form a society of their own. Whether Austrians or Germans, the writers of Vienna have their works printed at Leipsic or Berlin, while Poles send their MSS. to Warsaw, and Hungarians to Budapest. No Viennese house ever pub- lished the works of a living author. Vienna has great poets, but they are never honored until after their death. It is a great pity that the capital of Austria, which is a natural intellectual centre, cannot become also a literary centre. This causes a great void, the consequences of which are very serious for the political world. Austria will never have a national litera- ture. In spite of her authors of various nationalities—and some of them are remarkable, in fact incomparable—she has no great literary and artistic capital, such as is owned in every other country in Europe; and foreign authors, unlike all other visitors to Vienna, find themselves isolated. A native play is scarcely known in Vienna, and even at the Hofburg Theatre nothing but German pieces are given. In spite of State support, plays are borrowed entire from abroad, and classic or modern pieces are produced under the direction of Adolphus Sonnenthal, who is as great an interpreter of tragedy as is Madame Walter. This lady is now the greatest of all actresses; her voice and gestures are absolutely incomparable. Though a woman of the very highest character, on whose good name no breath of scandal has ever cast the slightest slur, she plays Messalina with appalling 24+ - ºš 㺠* * *y-, revºr ºvºvº * m ºn, - ſ t M. º. º § }% º '7. W | ſ º | PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY.—Engraved by Margaret Jacob truth. She is as powerful as she is graceful, as full of feeling as she is of dignity; the compass of her voice is complete, and her representation of a character is always so life-like that the spectator can never, how- ever vivid his imagination, disassociate her rendering from his idea of the original. The Emperor goes direct to the theatre from his apartments without passing through any street or square, so that he runs no risk of assas- sination. * In the greenroom one meets a number of the chief actors who have played at the Hofburg Theatre. In former times, pieces were given in this building written in the different dialects of the Empire; but on account of the many disputes about languages they have been given up, which is a pity, as they were the embodiment of a great variety of talent, and en- couraged an esprit de corps in the people of Vienna. - The favorite theatre of the aristocracy is the Imperial Opera-house, at which are given classic pieces or the works of the best modern composers. It is quite the finest theatre in Vienna, and was built between 1861 and THE PRATER ON THE FIRST OF MAY. – Engraved by Rousseau, after a water-color by Myrbach VIENNA - 377 1869 after the plans of Van der Nüll and Siccardsburg. The representa- tions begin at six or seven o'clock, and end between nine and ten. The staircase, which is in the Moorish style, is very fine, and the lobby is a grand gallery adorned with busts and statues of dramatic authors. All the modern improvements have been introduced into this theatre, in which the temperature is kept always the same. The building is capable of holding 3OOO spectators. The curtain, on which Rahl has represented the legend of Orpheus, is so beautiful that it enchains the attention at once, even when it falls on the most thrilling scene. One day, when I was admiring it, I suddenly caught sight of Count Julius Andrassy, who had just entered his box, and I was quite struck by his worn appearance; in spite of his care- ful toilet he looked old and broken down. At the Theatre an der Wien are given nothing but operettas by Viennese composers, such as Strauss and Millöcker, with a few French pieces. It is here that the idol of the Viennese, Alexander Girardi, per- forms, and his comic singing and acting are both so natural and so full of spirit that one really does not know which to admire most. A new theatre, known as the Volk's Theatre, has lately been opened under the direction of Emeric Bucovics, at which are given popular plays of different nationalities, chiefly Austrian; in fact, there are really a great many good actors and talented singers in Austria, even in the second-rate theatres. The people, without being exacting, are all good judges, for they are most of them themselves musicians and artists. I may also mention the Josephstadt Theatre in an outlying suburb, where comedies, farces, and characteristic Viennese pieces are given. - - The environs of Vienna are not all of equal beauty. The left bank of the Danube, though very fertile, and, as I have already said in speaking of the March, rich in historic interest, is wanting in picturesqueness. On the other hand, we have on the right bank the beautiful castle and gardens of Schönbrunn, where, as all the world knows, Napoleon took up his residence as a conqueror in 1805 and 1809, and where his son, the King of Rome (or, rather, the Duke of Reichstadt) by a strong irony of fate, which should afford food for reflection to invaders, died in 1832, in the very room occu- pied by his father. The duke is buried near his mother, Maria Louisa, in the Capuchin Church. The gardens of Schönbrunn are laid out in the best French style, and the beds and fountains are adorned with fine statues by Boyer. From a platform known as the Gloriette, on a hill, a very fine view of Vienna is R 378 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD obtained. The rooms in the castle are decorated with perfect taste, in the best style of the eighteenth century. They were furnished by Maria Theresa, and are alike simple and grand. Not far from Schönbrunn, on the river Wien, is the pretty and pictu- resque country town of Hietzing, where are many fine seats of the aris- tocracy, and numerous celebrated restaurants and villas. The valley of Brühl should be visited by all who wish to see the most picturesque district within reach of Vienna. The Brühl is a deep valley, the beauty of which has been artificially increased, to which many interest- ing paths and roads lead. The rock-cut approaches are admirably chosen, and afford beautiful views as the visitor descends them. The ancient abbey of the Heiligen Kreuz, or Holy Cross, must not be forgotten, in which is a fine Roman chapel, with the tombs of the Babenbergs, the first Austrian dukes. Yet more interesting than that of Schönbrunn is the Laxemburg Castle, dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, with a char- acter of its own in spite of the mixture of styles. The Gothic chapel and some fine tombs should be specially noticed. - Other characteristic features of the environs of Vienna are the famous springs at Baden, and the Helenenthal, with its old ruins, while a little farther away are the Kahlenberg and the Leopoldsberg. It is on the Kahlenberg that I should like to stay. I ascend this mountain in a carriage, and watch the play of light and shade, the beautiful undulating lines of the wide-stretched horizon, and go back to Vienna in the little tramcar, on the model of that of the Righi. It is a pleasure that can never be forgotten. oyºte dºors = —’ ſiit，—№ *~~ ~~==========：：======= - ， -， -: #ĒS ----- ſ !Mae’ëſā№ ae） ~№ ———— &}： - ~ •K.¿<< < < z 2 zae ae → a，|-№ ſae ſi į №ā （---- TO KIO HERE is perhaps nothing more dur- able in the world than the names of countries and towns. They are re- tained for centuries with scarcely any alteration, often surviving even ru- ins. How many times, indeed, has the name of a site, on which absolutely nothing is left, revealed 382 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD archaeologist the local position of a celebrated spot, or of some great city which has long since disappeared. This is, however, not the case in Japan; here districts and towns as well as their inhabitants change their names with the greatest facility. A new name is assumed in commemoration of some political event, some remarkable adventure, or some change of fortune. Like its people, the empire itself changes its name continually. At first it was Akitsusima, or the Island of the Dragon Fly, the first Emperor, Jimmu Tenno, hav- ing looked at it from the summit of a high mountain, thought it resem- bled that insect in form; then it was called Yamato, or the mountainous country; and, lastly, Hino-Moto; in Chinese, Nipon or Ji-pon-kouoe, of which Europeans have made Japan, pronounced at first Cºpango, and sig- nifying the kingdom of the rising sun, or, to be more strictly accurate, the place of the origin of the sun.” Yeddo, which had been the capital of Japan for some 1600 years, became Tokio in 1868. Before that date its supremacy was shared by Kioto, the peaceful and mysterious residence of the Mikado; but now Tokio reigns alone. - - In 1603 the supreme power was usurped under the title of Shogun by a celebrated statesman, Tokugawa- Hieyas, of Minamoto, who was at first called Taketsio, Jro-Saburo-Moto-Nobo, Moto-Yeyasu-Kourande; and after his death one Gongen-Tosogu transferred the capital of the Shoguns from Osaka to Yeddo, establishing the seat of government in the last- named place. - Before 1600 the shores of the Bay of Yeddo were uncultivated and all but deserted, a few scattered fishing-villages at wide distances from each other being the only signs of life. A fortified castle, however, old even at this remote date, rose from the centre of the site of the present Yeddo, and still, in fact, forms part of the Imperial palace there. This castle was built in 1355 by a celebrated warrior named Hota-do-Kan. The illustrious Shogun Taiko-Sama, after the complete defeat of the great feudal prince Hojo, gave to his minister Hieyas the eight provinces which formed the Kanto-Hassio, and advised him to build a town at the end of the wide bay almost closed by a narrow inlet easy to defend. Hieyas followed his advice, but at the same time he usurped the royal authority and founded the dynasty of the Tokogavas, who were in power until 1868, at which date the Son of the Gods, the hitherto remote and * }z, Sun ; fon, origin; £oué, kingdom. TOKIO 383 invisible Mikado, who was said to be too holy to reign himself, weary of being an inaccessible idol hidden beneath veils of ever-increasing thick- 'ness, suddenly stepped down from his pedestal, tore his veils into a thou- sand fragments, and abruptly, as one snuffs out a candle, put an end to the power of the Shoguns, which had lasted without break for centuries. The Mikado Mitsu - Hito, or the “man of conciliation,” who is sup- posed to descend from the gods, and whose dynasty, according to the official formula, has reigned and shall reign in Japan “from everlasting to everlasting,” resumed the sceptre which his ancestors had let slip from their hands, determining to reign alone, and, alas ! to reign like a mere mortal. The new era he inaugurated he called the Me-dgi, or “luminous reign,” and Yeddo when it became his residence was renamed Tokio. Only twenty-two years ago Japan was so closed to the outside world, and so little was known about it, that scarcely any notice was taken in Europe of what was going on in its islands. So great, indeed, was the prevailing ignorance of all things Japanese, that eight years after the res- toration of the Mikado the official journal of the French Republic still spoke of the Tycoon as Sovereign of Japan. What had happened in that country was, for all that, positively extraordinary—I might almost say unique–in the history of the world. The French Revolution was not a greater one than that effected in Japan almost without bloodshed. Imag- ine the feudal system in full force; as master, a supreme pontiff too divine to occupy himself with the affairs of the earth, and allowing to govern in his stead an officer who had become a king and whose dynasty had remained in power for centuries, with vassal princes, absolute masters in their own principalities; then suddenly, with no more shock to the coun- try than is felt by a vessel when its course is changed, the princes with unprecedented disinterestedness themselves renounced their fiefs, the Tycoon resigned his power, and the son of the gods became a constitu- tional sovereign, modern civilization taking the place without a break of the venerable customs of a people fanatically conservative. Volumes might be written on this incredible event, during the prog. ress of which the whole Japanese people showed themselves admirably disciplined; but this is not the place for further dwelling upon it. Tokio is prettily situated on the shores of a charming bay, in a plain dotted with little hills. The town has neither walls nor apparent bounda. ries, and it is difficult to say where it begins or ends. One supposes, however, that there are more than 1,000,000 inhabitants in all the little houses with their little gardens, scattered about in a free-and-easy kind of 384 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD way, not always forming a road, with wide spaces between them belonging to nobody in particular; or cultivated fields intersected by rivers and canals, spanned by countless bridges, with here and there a temple rising up from its sacred grove, or some seigniorial residence surrounded by a vast park, the whole enclosing, as it were, the fortified emceinte of the Imperial Palace, which is a town in itself. Formerly, when the vassal princes were compelled to reside there with their followers, Yeddo owned a population of 2,OOO,OOO souls. To give but one instance of the num- bers, every seignior had in his train some 300 firemen, so that at the time of the burning of the Temple of Shiba a chain two leagues long could be formed. - - A railway now connects Yokohama with Tokio, and it is by it that most visitors from Europe now arrive. - A railway in Japan | Is not that an extraordinary thing? When one hears of it, one at once jumps to the conclusion that this artistic peo- ple, who give such an interest and beauty to everything they touch, and make an ornament of the commonest utensil of daily use, would have known how to modify to suit their taste even the horribly hideous though marvellous steam-engines of Europe. They would surely turn locomo- tives into bronze dragons vomiting forth fire and smoke, and dragging behind them chariots of gold and lacquer-work. Not a bit of it! This railway is exactly like every other, the stations are like all other stations, and the little Japanese who work the trains are dressed like European navvies. The only things at all distinctive, and a little amusing still, are the tickets, which are printed in several languages, the decorative Chinese characters giving them quite a picturesque look; but the official who sells them to you is dressed like a French naval officer. - The train stops in the capital at Shimbashi, which might be the Pont "Neuf quarter of Paris; and the first view of Tokio from the station is any- thing but pleasant, and is just like that of any commonplace town of Europe or America. Opposite the station is a great stone structure, the Daimio's bank. It is true that on the right one catches sight of an antique castle standing out against the beautiful azure blue waters of the bay, but on the left is a wide road lined with foot-pavements and gas-lamps, with brick houses several stories high succeeding each other as far as the eye can reach. Fancy tramways and telegraph posts in Japan | And the name of this fine avenue is the Ginza, or the money street. Fortunately, however, one soon gets away from it, and the Japan of to-day everywhere else touches the Japan of yesterday. We quickly find ourselves in little TOKIO 385 streets lined with little wooden houses, their wide roofs forming pent- houses, with glazed paper windows in movable frames, opening, on occa- sion, out onto the street to form a shop or a veranda. These houses, dif- fering but little from each other, are very well put together; but most ENTRANCE to THE MIKADo's PALACE After a drawing by Boudier of them are shabby with time, and have become a dull gray, relieved, however, by the sign-boards, which give a bright note of color here and there. Most of the streets are straight and of a good width; now and then, however, jut out porticos surmounted by roofs of bamboo railings, which are survivals of the ancient enclosures, which were shut up at night. Of the thirty quarters into which the town was once divided, no other traces remain but the names, such as the Honjo, Shiba, Asakusa, Shimbassi, Sakurada, Meguro, etc. There is plenty of noise and animation in all the streets, but there are fewer carriages than in European towns, and those there are are of a singular character: there is the Ba-sha, a vehicle drawn by a horse; there are the Kosika-bha-sha, or beggar's carriages, miserable- looking carts; and the Žin-riki-sha, a carriage drawn by one man or by 25 386 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD several men, reminding us of the little two-wheeled vehicles drawn by the Annamites at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, except that the Annamites walked along with them, while the Japanese run as fast as their legs will carry them. The Japanese are the inventors of this quaint carriage, which they have introduced in Hong-Kong, in Shanghai, and in Tonquin. The AVorimono, that charming lacquer palanquin padded with silk, the arched pole of which rested on several shoulders, and the light A ago, or public palanquin, plying for hire, carried by two men, have all but completely dis- appeared; but then tramways and cabs are beginning to appear. In fine weather numbers of women are seen about, and their beautiful profiles and light tasty costumes charm the visitor, for it is only the excep- tions who adopt American or European toilets. The dresses are made in the style with which pictures have rendered us familiar, but the more elegant the costume the simpler the stuff. All the dainty textures em- broidered with such a happy fancy are no longer considered good form, and are gradually disappearing. No more feast of color, no more gleam- ing silks! One must, above all, be distinguished-looking, and everything is eschewed but stuffs of uniform color or of neutral sombre tints—gray, dark blue, violet, brown or olive crapes, checked or striped, but without embroidery. Many of the men are in a melancholy state of indecision about their toilets, and come out in the most extraordinary combination of garments, some national, others foreign. One sees a man sometimes wearing European boots, a Japanese robe, a loose overcoat, and an English hat, while he holds above it all a paper umbrella. For officials, military men, and police-agents, complete disguise is obligatory, and in official balls the black coat for men and a Parisian costume for women are compulsory. This obligation led, especially when first in force, to some ridiculous effects; one among many others has become historic. One evening at Kioto, the now abandoned capital, a very noble seignior appeared, accord- ing to etiquette, in a black dress-coat, waistcoat, and trousers, but he also wore socks without shoes, and the waistcoat, cut very low, left the hairy chest of the Daimio exposed to view. The great man knew nothing about shirts or patent-leather shoes, and thought he was in a very correct French get-up. It was only those Japanese who had travelled in Europe and were altogether chic who noted the irregularities of the costume and had much ado to stifle their laughter. Many Japanese have confided to me with what difficulty they accus. tomed themselves to our costume, especially to the high collars and boots, which put them to a perfect martyrdom. They would start off on an IN A GARDEN OF TOKIO Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Humphrey Moore TOKIO 389 excursion sometimes, very proud of their exotic boots, but how often they returned looking pitiable objects, with bleeding feet and their boots in their hands ! A little while ago the wife of a general went to see the chrysanthemum show, and wishing to be in quite the latest fashion, she laced herself into a pair of European stays; but she could not endure the pressure, fainted away in the middle of the fête, and nearly died. But what of that? one must do it; 'tis the fashion It is impossible to understand by what ridiculous fascination the Japanese are carried away, altogether losing their judgment. Very soon the gloomy-looking European costume, which cramps them, dwarfs them, makes them ridicu- lous, and destroys their character, will everywhere replace, at least in the towns, the ample, supple national dress of noble style which gave such dignity to its wearers and suited the Japanese type so well. Fortunately the lower orders still remain purely Japanese in every- thing. They wear a short tunic, loosely fitting the figure, or very scanty trousers and a vest with wide sleeves, made of blue or black cotton stuff. On the back and chest a large Chinese letter is worked in relief in white, indicating the profession of the wearer. On the head is worn a handker- chief, knotted in various ways, or a big hat of mushroom shape. Peddlers go about with a long bamboo over the right shoulder, on which is sus- pended a pair of panniers or boxes, or a set of shelves with all manner of knick-knacks and food for sale. They cry their wares in words of which one soon learns the meaning: Houdon / Houdon / (Hot maccaroni.) - Hédamame / Hédamame/ (Ready-cooked peas in the pod.) Sometimes a man strides along, making every one flee before him, as he flings water about from two pails pierced with holes, to lay the dust. This primitive mode of watering the streets is, however, becoming rare; still rarer now are the blind masseurs or shampooers, extraordinary-looking objects, wearing light blue robes with a white disk on the shoulder, who go about of an evening, groping with their long oak staffs. It is only in the suburbs now that one hears the sound of their double whistle and the guttural chant in which they offer their services, swallowing the last word in a peculiar manner. - Amma-Hari / (Acupuncture.) The lower classes in Japan perform all manner of hard work, such as is generally done in other countries by beasts of burden. They carry immense weights, and nearly everywhere take the place of horses. As a result their muscles are splendidly developed beneath their bronzed skins; 390 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD they are agile and supple, wonderfully strong, and it is really an artistic pleasure to watch them running between the shafts of a carriage, arching their backs to support the weight as they go down the steep bridges, or stopping suddenly with characteristic cries to avoid a collision, all with the most graceful and assured movements. What a contrast are these sturdy fellows to the little bourgeois Japanese, the puny, stunted, thin, bloodless creatures, walking alongside of those who act as horses and porters! Enfeebled by a sedentary life and undue absorption in business, they seem grotesquely ugly to us Europeans, who are blind to those faults in the appearance of our fellow-countrymen which are so patent to the Japanese. Truth to tell, our big noses, which they think huge, our leg-of-mutton whiskers, our rosy cheeks, our goggle eyes, and our bald heads make very much the same impression on them as do on us their flat faces, low-bridged noses, yellow skins, thick hanging lips, and small deep-sunk eyes beneath overhanging eyebrows. For all that there are charming young girls and handsome young men in Japan; but there, as elsewhere, beauty is rare—though not more so than any- where else. - There are two totally distinct types in Japan, which may almost be said to be each other's opposites. The first, which the Japanese them- selves call the Chinese or Corean, is the more common. Those belonging to it have round faces, flat noses, full cheeks, rather thick lips, very pretty ones often, and very good white teeth. Those belonging to the second, or true Japanese type, have long and comparatively pale faces, noses arched like the beak of a bird, thin lips, large eyes with not very strongly marked eyebrows, teeth mostly good, always very white, but often long and irreg. ular. This is the aristocratic type, which, when at its best, is really wor- thy of admiration. To be called handsome a Japanese must belong to it, while those of the Chinese cast of countenance are never more than pretty. Strange to say, the moral character of the sections of the community differs as much as does their appearance. I have noticed that as a general rule those with Chinese faces are gay, laughing, and restless, full of careless good-humor, while the others are silent, indifferent, melancholy—sometimes even dismal. A large river, the Soumida-Gava, runs through the town, which is also intersected by numerous canals, spanned by an immense number of bridges, which are one of the most characteristic features of Tokio; one comes, in fact, at almost every corner to a bridge, flat or arched, in cross- ing which one gets peeps into picturesque corners of the city. Many of TOKIO 39 I the bridges are very wide, handsome structures; the Nipono-Bashi, cross- ing one of the larger canals in the heart of the town, is celebrated, and from it all distances are measured in Japan. From the centre a very fine view is obtained, stretching far away beyond the gray roofs of the low houses, the masses of verdure, the towers of the temples, and those of the Imperial Fortress, with Fujiyama in the distance. The foreground is, however, spoiled by the incombustible shops, built on piles along the shores on either side of the canal. Their roofs, all exactly alike, form long monotonous rows, the effect of which is very uninteresting. The canal is dotted here with a great many fishing-boats from Awa or Kadousa, bringing in still living fish. The fish-market, which is close to the bridge, is open every day, and before making a selection for the larder one can admire a great variety of grotesque-looking monsters of the & # = } * R. x. $. #3; -& - a 3: , avº § ºr -- tº Wi. $';* 3: ; # * : * : *. 3; # & ; ºf . ºšŠsº º SS . … . .” ºštěº - -- >> * *-----" ==--> -** tº-Yº s: . jº ºsº # tºpºgº §IFLRS ! { sº ºf A * *ś 4'ſ } Uº S$ºš . - §§§ SS-S *ś A BRIDGE OVER THE SOUMIDA-GAVA.—After a drawing by Hasegawa Settan deep, such as the Katsuwo, which is a very large species of mackerel; the susuk, rather like a trout; the tai, or dorado; the ayu, a kind of salmon streaked with gold and with a big head; the shira-uvo, which looks like a mass of silver; huge carps, horrible-looking devil-fishes, crabs, lobsters, and countless shell-fish. The stalls, tastily arranged, form scales of color 392 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of marvellous richness, ruby-like purples, metallic blues, tender-gleaming mother-of-pearl-like shades shining among the pale emerald green of the edible algae, of which the Japanese are very fond. There are several kinds of these algae, and of them the most liked are the amamori, which is col- lected in the Gulf of Yeddo by sticking branches of trees in the sea, which branches catch the floating sea-weed, and retain it till it ripens; the aramé, which comes from the South Seas, and is like black Chinese crape; and, lastly, the famous Kočou, the wrack resembling light bronze- colored ribbons, which Europeans despise, but which is eaten in quanti- ties in Japan as a vegetable, forming an important export to China. Fish is the chief article of diet of the Japanese; dried and salted, it is, with rice, the only food of the lower classes, but every one is very fond of fish, and there are a thousand ways of dressing it daintily. Crabs are killed by making them swallow a bumper of saké, which is probably any. thing but pleasant to them, but gives them a very delicate taste. The spirit called shoyn, which is made of the fermented juices of several differ- ent kinds of grain, and which tastes like Liebig's extract diluted with brandy, seasons large fishes admirably, but generally the Japanese prefer to eat them raw, and they are not altogether in the wrong. No hors- d'aeuvre can beat that obtained from the following recipe: “Take out the bones of a very fresh dorado or sole; cut the flesh into very small pieces— almost mince it, in fact; cut into thin slices a few fresh gherkins; put in a pickle-dish a series of layers of chopped fish and gherkins, add salt and pepper to each layer, sprinkle over the whole a little vinegar and the juice of a lemon; let the dish stand for a few hours before serving.” Try this recipe and you will see - On the left bank of the canal near the bridge of Japan, in a little wooden kiosk decked with streamers and signs and covered with Chinese characters, is installed a very celebrated teller of legends and tales, who always has a crowd about him. He declaims with volubility, making a great many grimaces, rolling his eyes and frowning. Those who listen take care not to lose a word, and roar with laughter. Near to the story-teller's booth beside the Tokio bridge, which is the next to that of Japan, the flower and bamboo market is held, which is one of the prettiest sights of the town. - The circus in which wrestling-matches are held must not be forgotten by the visitor to Tokio, for it is an extremely characteristic sight. For- merly the Japanese had the greatest admiration for physical strength. The tasks performed at military drill were at one time terrible, and the first TOKIO - 393 lesson often left the pupil lying almost dead upon the ground, for there was no graduation in the achievements required of him, and he had to begin again the next day without having had time to recover from the first stiffness. By this means some warriors attained extraordinary prowess and accomplished fabulous feats. This did not prevent them from being also men of letters and polished gentlemen, for the education of young men was not considered complete until they could write in an elegant manner the short poems of thirty-one feet called outas, and the Chinese verses called shi, go through all the minutiae of the solemn ceremony of tea-drink- ing, and make up bouquets skilfully, an art very much esteemed in Japan. Now the Samurai no longer have the right to wear sabres; the profession of arms is laid aside for a frenzied devotion to commerce; but the passion for wrestling is still strong, and the arena of E-Ro-/ne, where athletic con- tests are carried on, is much frequented. It is situated within the emceinte of the Temple of the Safe Deliverance, near the Bridge of the Two Coun- tries, one of the longest in the town. The circular arena has no walls but Straw mats fastened to stakes, and against these mats rest two tiers of boxes reached by ladders. The common people stand at the foot of these boxes or sit on the ground near the centre, in which a space is reserved for the wrestlers. Two rows of sacks of oval shape filled with earth mark out this space, which is finely sanded and protected from the sun or the rain by a roof resting on four posts. The arrival of the wrestlers by way of a lane between the spectators is a very amusing sight. They advance in single file, a dozen at least of them, huge giants compared to the audi- ence; fat, coarse, obese-looking fellows, marvellous to behold. Their hair, plaited in a knot, forms a little tuft on their heads, and they wear nothing but an apron with a fringe reaching to the feet. These aprons are, how- ever, wonderful garments of silk, satin, or velvet; some embroidered with - dragons, eagles, tigers, and all manner of other objects in gold, and these embroideries are many of them masterpieces. It is a sight indeed to watch the blissful faces of the spectators as they gaze open-mouthed in absorbed admiration of all this strength, all this fat! The crowd sways backward and forward against the reserved seats, their whispered com- ments making a buzz of noise, while the more dignified occupants of the boxes gaze down calmly, looking for all the world like rows of prettily decked-out monkeys. The performance lasts from ten in the morning to five o'clock in the evening. The beginning and end are announced by a drum beaten by a man perched on the top of a scaffolding of the shape of a tower. - A GALE OF WIND Engraved by Ruffe, after a painting on silk by Yamamoto With the exception of the temples and the royal tombs, there are no monuments to see in the town. To the ordinary visitor the Palace of the Mikado is nothing but an endless series of thick walls, overshadowed by ancient trees behind wide moats, on which float water-lilies. A few tow- ers at the corners, a few jealously-closed gates guarded by modern-looking soldiers with bayonets, a few light and graceful-looking bridges spanning the moat; that is all that can be seen. As for the new buildings in Euro- pean style, such as the Exhibition and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they have absolutely no interest for us. But the splendor of the temples altogether fascinates the spectator; their strange majesty, their antique beauty, is untouched by all the eccen- tricities born of the fever for progress which has taken possession of the town. The true Japan, the Japan of other days, is here—peaceful, immu- table beneath the shade of its sacred cryptomeria;* it is still there in its entirety, but soon perhaps, alas! it will be there no more. * The cryptomeria are peculiar to Japan, and are a kind of fir of conventional shape, con- sidered sacred by the natives.—TRANS, - TOKIO 395 The first time one finds one's self opposite to a Zorj-ž one receives a very vivid, almost a religious impression; but when one has seen a great many, this impression altogether wears off. A Zori-à is a very peculiar kind of portico, always placed at the approach to a Shinto temple or chapel. It consists of two upright beams or two tree-trunks slightly bending towards each other, with a third beam laid across them at the top; on this is another larger beam which projects a little, and forms a kind of roof. Very simple, but wonderfully effective, one feels that these Tori-2 are primitive monuments which have survived in unaltered form for centuries. The word Tori- means Bird-rest, and the idea seems to have been to give the birds a sacred perch, from which they, by their songs, announced to the gods the dawn of another day. The meaning of the symbol became lost, but the symbol itself was retained and put up everywhere to indicate the approach to a temple or a sacred site. Buddhists, who have adopted a good many Shinto precepts and symbols, make Tori-2 of bronze, stone, or wood painted red, and place them in the gardens of their temples, while pure Shintos only use them of natural wood. To a Shinto, when once the Tori-2 is passed, the ground is sacred. There are a great many temples in Tokio, and the people flock to them all. Shiba, situated in a perfect park, in which are the royal tombs, is the grandest of them all; in fact, it is one of the marvels of Japan, and its only rival is Ueno, on a lofty flower-clad plateau. Next comes Atagoyama, from which is obtained a grand view of the town and the bay; Sengakuji, the Temple of the Spring, on the hill of Takanawa, where are buried the forty-seven Ronin, the heroic vassals who laid down their lives to avenge an insult to their lord; Meguro, the Temple of the Black Eyes; Zempo- kuji, the Pagoda of Increasing Virtue; Sho-kon-sha, or the Repose of Souls;* Kameido, or the Well of the Tortoise, erected in honor of the Sagawaru no Michizane, a great scholar and writer of the ninth century; the great temple of Hongwangi, on the hill of Kanda. But the pagoda of Asakusa is the most popular, and as it is impossible to describe them all we will pause at it as a typical example. The pagoda of Asakusa is dedicated to Kwannon, the Chinese and Japanese Madonna, the charming goddess of mercy, who went down into hell and delivered the damned by the fervor of her compassion, flinging Over them showers of flowers. Stone votive lanterns of a peculiar form are placed in front of the * Erected in honor of the men killed on the Mikado's side in the Civil War of 1868.—TRANS. 396 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD monumental portico surmounted by wide roofs, and giving access to the emceinte of the temple. In crossing this emceinte you pass beneath a huge round lantern hanging between two lanterns of cylindrical shape. On the right and left beneath the portico, in filagree cages, are the erect images of the two guardian kings, colossal statues of menacing aspect, with white eyes in red faces glaring down on the intruder. They are not so evil as they look, these sentinel deities, but very good genii who are ready to receive and welcome sinners as soon as they repent of their misdeeds. They are very powerful, too, and can preserve the feet of mortals from accidents or from taking false steps; they can heal wounded feet if the sufferers pray earnestly to them, and, above all, if they present them with a fine pair of straw sandals. It would appear that the Japanese suffer a good deal from bad feet, for the gratings surrounding the cages of the Ni-o, or Two Kings, are hung with straw sandals offered up by worshippers. - Outside the portico are wide avenues of cryptomeria, centuries old, and several rows deep, the path between them paved with stones and lined with booths, bright with many-colored signs, decked with lanterns and banners, and filled with all manner of charming knick-knacks, ingenious toys, dolls in grand toilets, etc.; it is a very carnival for animation, with its mounte- banks and jesters, its theatres and conjurers, and sports of all kinds. And among the booths and performers a gay laughing crowd in gala dress cir- culates and buzzes to and fro. The female element predominates, and one sees charming Japanese women, for all the world like the images and the figures on Japanese screens. They walk daintily, with their feet a little turned in, in consequence of their having been tightly swathed in bandages from infancy to make them narrow, slim feet being considered a beauty. Their large and complicated coiffures gleam as if they were varnished, and flowers of all manner of colors intermixed with silver and gold ornaments, and with tassels and tufts mounted on pins, are stuck about the hair in all manner of different ways. The dresses are mostly made in one piece, but great latitude to fancy is allowed in the long pieces of stuff which form the Sashes; shining silks of the most exquisite shades of color, satins, velvets, and brocades, are used with first-rate effect. The tying of the sash is the culminating point of the female toilet, and it is by no means easy to achieve the fine spreading bows at the back. There are fashions which are laws, and nothing is of greater importance than the way in which a pleat is folded. Young girls arrange their sashes differently from women, servants must not tie them as their mistresses do, widows make a tight knot at the TOKIO 397 waist in front, and members of the demi-monde let the sash fall negligently down below the bust. 2 - Mothers are always preceded by their little ones, who toddle gravely along holding each other's hands; they look wonderfully amusing and pretty in their beautiful long dresses, exactly like those of grown-up people, except that they are even brighter and more covered with flowers. The little maidens wear large coiffures decked with flowers, but the heads of the little boys are already treated in the most grotesque fashion, being com- ſº * @Y: N. S. yś Y!' ºf SV. WW º º º & "tº º º W i: / * ſº § § # , , ºğº'Y º Sº §§ ; º Hº! | - §§ §§ ſ & º § THE F#TE OF THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR IN THE TEMPLE OF ASAKUSA After a drawing by Hasegawa Settan pletely shaved, but for a few wisps of hair left here and there, producing a very comic effect. Sometimes behind the mothers appear nurses carrying the babies. gº." The perpetual fête going on about the temple” would not seem to be very favorable to meditation on sacred things, but as he advances and sees the imposing deep red mass of the temple rising up from among the cryp. * Since this was written the booths outside the temple have been suppressed for fear of fire. 398 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD tomeria, with its pyramidal roofs, and its mighty tower, five stories high, the whole effect is so novel, so extraordinary, that the visitor cannot fail to feel something like reverent emotion. $ - The peculiar effect produced by the pyramidal form of architecture, borrowed by the Japanese from the Chinese, is the result of the strange mode of roofing; the building consisting almost entirely of series of stories piled up in recurrent recession above walls which are but one-third of the total height of the structure. This huge compound roof, supplemented by a perfect forest of support- ing joists, beams, and girders, intersecting each other, projects beyond them all, and spreading itself out seems almost to lift its corners like the points of wings. Heavy yet light, overwhelming yet protecting, the wonderful structure is like a sure refuge to the faithful, alike from the wrath of Heaven and the threats of Fate. - Before entering the temple the hands and mouth must be washed in a large stone trough, with the help of a wooden goblet with a long handle floating on the water. The threshold of the vestibule crossed, one finds one's self in a restful, subdued, and mysterious light, in the midst of a hubbub of voices, and a rustling of wings from the countless pigeons who dwell in the temple. One must pause at the entrance and make a few pious purchases from the traders installed there; first, a packet of thin sticks of sweet-smelling paste to be burned in honor of the gods; then, from sellers crouching on their heels, little saucers of earthen-ware full of rice for the sacred pigeons. On the left in a box with lacquer walls one notes, a dwarf white horse with pale colored eyes; this is an Albino horse dedicated to Kwannon. A silk band binds on his back a paper of symbolic white cut into something like the form of a cross. You can also buy food to offer to the gentle little Albino, such as cooked pease on earthen-ware plates. The interior of the temple is one vast lofty hall, with a forest of round pillars painted red, the capitals fading away into the ceiling in the half light. At the end, however, the altar gleams golden from a warm glow of color. Three idols of gilded wood, with half-closed eyes and a dreamy smile, are dimly seen through the trellis-work wire screen protecting them from the public, while between them is a blaze of banners, lanterns, lamps, and flowers of gilded metal. Into a huge bronze censer, the perforated cover of which is adorned with the signs of the zodiac, every faithful worshipper throws his sweet- smelling sticks. From the openings ascend thin jets of blue smoke, rising, TOKIO - - 399 ever rising, and quivering as they spread into a diaphanous cloud, forming a pale fog against the mysterious shadows above. This mist of perfume makes it more difficult than ever to tell one strange object from another, suspended and quivering at different heights; here are great round cano- pies with magnificent silk fringes, there loom fantastic creatures embroid- ered on banners, their golden scales brightly gleaming; here are lanterns of all manner of shapes, on which are painted black dragons and Chinese characters, there are silk streamers decked with lace and tassels, inscriptions, painted or embroidered maxims, and all manner of other quaint objects. The walls from the bottom far up beyond the range of vision are covered with pictorial representations of all manner of different kinds, Some painted on silk gauze or paper, others cut on wood, marble, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, or splendidly embroidered on silk or velvet. They repre- sent scenes from the lives of saints, celebrated legends, terrible examples of the torments of hell, or simple images of the gods and goddesses, especially of Kwannon, the gentle patroness of the temple. There are also beautiful sabres with richly decorated hilts, carved wooden swords, and even swords with hilts made of threaded coins. Chinese characters are also sometimes made with copper coins or with Chinese letters, the name of Amida occurring most frequently. - Priests circulate among the crowd or sit on the ground in front of the shrines or beside the relics. All have their heads completely shaved, and wear very loose garments with wide sleeves. They give the faithful the information they require, or guide them to the saint they wish to honor. Sometimes, at a given signal, they all gather at the altar about one old priest in official robes, and chant prayers, accompanying themselves on shrill musical instruments. . - On every side the devout kneel on the stones before their favorite shrines, praying in whispers, and every now and then clapping their hands as if in applause. On the right of the central altar is the statue of a saint, who is much venerated as able to cure all maladies, and attracts a great many worshippers. This is Benzuru, one of the sixteen first disciples of Buddha, and he is represented as a doll of red lacquered wood of the size of a little boy. He is certainly not pretty, and has now neither form nor features, he has been so much rubbed by the faithful, for if the cure is to be effectual you must rub the statue first on the part where you are afflicted and then touch yourself. Poor saint, he must have healed many sufferers! He has not been spared himself, and he looks very ill, like a chocolate man who has been half sucked away. A continuous noise is 4OO THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD heard above the murmur of the crowd, the falling of coins into the great square money-box, which is nine feet long by three broad, and has an open trellis-work bamboo cover. In the midst of all the crowd and confusion pretty children run about on the echoing stones with happy laughter, or stopping suddenly, as if in an ecstasy of delight, they throw rice to the sacred pigeons. Outside the temple there are a thousand things to see still. Every variety of amusement can be had in this emceinte, which contains a circus, a theatre, shooting-galleries, and numerous tea-houses in which the young exquisites of the town organize charming little parties. They hire jesters, musicians, and singers, or if they are very refined they send for a Guecha. It is very difficult to define what a Guecha is, as there is nothing at all resembling her in our Western civilization. A Guecha is a dancer, but her slow, dignified, graceful dance, like that of the Japanese women, is the least of her talents—or, rather, of her merits. Chosen from among the most beautiful women, brought up with the greatest care by an old Guecha who has become a professor, these dancers, like the Greek vestals, are the very ideal of purity, beauty, and grace. Absolute- ly chaste, of perfectly correct deport- ment, supremely elegant, a Guecha is the model, the example, the rare flower cultivated with loving care. A princess may consult her on the laws of good-breeding and etiquette; if a poet composes a madrigal in her honor she will reply to him in the language of the gods, with as much modesty as spirit, and if she inspire passion in a man, marriage is the only possible denouement. The amusements of the young men of the world at Tokio are, then, A GUIECHA often of a very refined character. Engraved by Rousseau, after the study by Humphrey Moore If the dancer consents to come at TOKIO 4OI their invitation, it is that they may enjoy the charm of her exquisite conver- sation, the grace of her toilet, her beauty, the song she sings to the accom- paniment of the chamisan, and her plastic dancing, which will carry her spectators back to the world of the gods and heroes. In former days, if a Guecha sinned against chastity, the chief Shogun himself punished her by condemning her to pass several years among the fallen women of the Yoshiwara. - But the Guecha is beginning, like everything else, to degenerate, and before long she will disappear. Within the emceinſe of Asakusa is a museum containing some forty pictorial representations, displayed in a covered gallery on the left of the great temple. This is called Z-ki-mine.gino, or the living dolls, and these wax figures are really so perfectly made, and their faces are so full of expression, that they look like tableaux vivants. All the scenes are culled from the extraordinary legends of the miracles due to the inexhaustible goodness of Kwannon. The goddess is shown to her fervent worshippers under different aspects: here she is in the form of a lovely woman, in a beautiful costume, advancing towards a priest kneeling before her in an ecstasy of adoration, for which there is considerable excuse. Farther on we see her again as a little peasant woman chatting to a prince of the Court of the Mikado, but the Daimio is so wonderful that one forgets to look at the goddess. He is in one of those marvellous Court costumes, now never seen, as superb as it is grotesque and incomprehensible. This courtier is of gigantic stature, and his form is rather like that of a pyramid, dressed as he is in stiff silks in wide pleats, the colors of which are very bright and are dotted with golden wheels, the arms of the wearer; trousers wider than petticoats, and much longer than the legs they are made for, train behind the figure, after passing beneath the feet, which they wrap about; the sleeves are even wider and longer, with a border of silk gauze and a tassel at each end, looking as if they were meant to draw up and be converted on occasion into great bags. From these sleeves proceed others of different colors, and the space between the shoulders and neck is filled in with a series of collars, showing that four or five robes are worn one over the other. A great sabre is fastened so as to look rather like a girdle, and in the midst of all this finery one is rather surprised to see a tiny little hand holding a fan. The head-dress is also very extraordinary, forming a kind of cylinder bulging out a little in front, and made of black velvet and gold cloth. It covers the top of the head only, and is fastened under the chin with a golden loop or buckle. Very unlike this costume is the horri- 26 - 4O2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD bly complex get-up of some of the sons of the Empire of the Rising Sun. at the present day, but it must be owned that, however magnificent the ancient garments looked, they must have been trying to wear. There is another prince in array as fabulous as that first described, who, with the aid of Kwannon, overthrows and throttles Raiden, the God of Thunder. This hero has confiscated the row of gongs on which the god thumps with his arm in storms, and he has wrung the neck of the dragon of Typhon, who is, so to speak, the attendant dog of Raiden. The horned griffin-like god writhes and wriggles with horrible grimaces. The scene numbered IO is perhaps the most grotesque of any. In it countless crabs are attacking a monster with a human head, pinching him in a merciless manner, while a young girl, kneeling in prayer, seems to be offering thanks to Heaven. It would appear that this young person once saved the life of a crab, and as a reward Kwannon sent her a whole army of crabs to rescue her when she in her turn was in danger. Fish, too, seem to be able to be heroic on occasion, for here are some skates struggling with a wolf who was going to devour the child of a woman dedicated to Kwannon. º No. 34 is one of the finest groups. It shows a lovely princess in her boudoir, graciously saluting her lord and master who has come to visit her. She is as splendidly dressed as the princes already noticed, in yet more gleaming, more ample, more magnificent stuffs. She is as white as milk, with a tiny little purple-red mouth; her eyebrows have been shaved and repainted quite high up on her forehead, her thin but wonderfully long hair is lost in the folds of her robes. Near her, beside the gor- geous screen and arm - rest, is placed the gold-dotted lacquer box with smoking materials; the little damascened pipe and pale tobacco like fine hair, which is known as Stork's down. - All the scenes here exhibited are curious and interesting, the work of true artists, giving us many piquant details of Japanese life in high circles in the olden days. They are all well worthy of description, but there are many other things to be seen in the grounds of Asakusa, includ- ing the gardens and seed-plots. All manner of dwarf trees.are seen here, produced by one knows not what process: cryptomeria in Chinese vases, doll firs, miniature peach-trees, bamboos as thin as knitting-needles, grasses resembling green feathers, great plants bristling with prickles (looking like evil beasts), a magnificent variety of rare flowers, pink, purple, and white peonies as big as cabbages, chrysanthemums as large as plates. And the fruit-trees—the marvellous spring blossoms of which are the delight of TOKIO 4O3 poets: every variety of lemons, peaches, cherries, and above all the incom- parable plum - tree of undescribable beauty which flowers in midwinter beneath the snow, and the blossom of which gives a more delicious scent than do roses. It would seem as if the tree exhausted its strength on the poetry and grandeur of its flowers, for the fruit is by no means equal to their promise. One of the best liked, the Áakz, has a very peculiar taste like the yolk of an egg kneaded into a tomato with a pinch of sugar; if this Áaki is not a very good one, it contains a res- inous juice which sets one's teeth on edge in a very disagreeable Iſlan ner. There is not yet a lift in the five-storied tower, and it is a hard climb to get to the top by means of the ill-lighted zigzag staircase; but the ascent once made, one is well rewarded by the grand view from the platform. A sea of un- dulating gray roofs extends far away to the horizon, dotted by isl- ands of verdure and wide open spaces, blue as the sky above and reflecting everything in a bewilder- ing manner; rivers, canals, ponds seeming to succeed each other in endless perspective. But suddenly the gaze is arrested, fascinated by the mighty mountain of which I A SAMURAI - Engraved by Rousseau, after the study by Humphrey Moore have not yet spoken enough — the surprising, the marvellous, the unique Fujiyama! It rises up in the south-west, a gigantic solitary cone, very lofty, of a pale rose color, with blue shadows looking like furrows on its sides. The base is wrapped in mist, and it looks as if it hung suspended in the air upheld by clouds alone. For centuries the Japanese have been accustomed to gaze with ecstasy 4O4 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD upon their volcano from the earliest days of their infancy. We are all familiar with the outlines of this sacred mountain, which is perpetually represented in lacquer work, in embroidery, and in painting. The great Hokusai alone has drawn it hundreds of times in his series of illustrated books, and it has inspired poets with countless stanzas. This peak, which is 12,000 feet high, is said to have risen out of the earth all of a sudden in 285 B.C., and at the same time a vast lake was formed in a depression of the soil far away near Kioto. Fujiyama was then a terrible mountain, vomiting forth flames, red-hot rock, showers of sulphur and streams of lava, the ground trembled all about the base, and the whole country was devas- tated; but gradually the convulsions ceased, the volcano became extinct, its orifice closed, and the crater is now a lake of water. The districts around have again become peopled and fertile, and Fujiyama is now a sacred place, the goal of many a pilgrimage. The genius of the storm dwells on the summit far above the snow, and he who can reach it in spite of the continuous whirlwind, laden with fine snow dust, considers his hap- piness secured. Three days are needed to make the ascent; but it is said that it is possible in summer to go down in three hours on light bamboo rafts which glide rapidly over the snow of the smooth slopes. The sudden ringing of a bell, followed by the shrill sound of a whis- tle, made me turn my eyes from the grand mountain and look down at the scene beneath my feet. A tramcar was just starting, its number of passen- gers complete, making its way with difficulty through the crowds by which it was besieged. Quite close to the office a great iron bridge, just finished, the Asouma-bassi, crosses the river Soumida-Gava. On the farther shore are several priests' houses, and a little distance from them is an empty space surrounded by a few fir-trees and mortuary chapels; this is a fear- ful and horrible spot, above which crows ever hover—the place where cap. ital punishments are inflicted. On the same side of the water, but quite in the distance among plains and rice fields, can be made out a vast emceinte surrounded by ditches. This is Yoshiwara, the field of rushes, where dwell many of the famous beauties of Japan, and to which flock all the young gallants of the town. On the festivals known as the cherry and lantern fêtes whole families go of an evening to look at these women, who show themselves in a bright light behind gilded bamboo bars; as pale and motionless as the Z-ki-mine.gino described above, but far more dangerous, for what says the proverb, “Woman is the destroyer of the stronghold.” A different view is obtained from each of the four sides of the tower. I can now see the Palace of the Mikado, that silent and mysterious city TOKIO 405 in the midst of the great noisy town. Even from this height nothing can be made out of the palace itself but towers several stories high, and scat- tered roofs rising from a sea of greenery, the whole enclosed within walls, in their turn girdled by a gleaming ribbon of moats. You remember the pilgrim's cross which flowered miraculously in the last act of “Tannhäuser?" Well, the legend comes from a more remote distance than is generally supposed, and the proof of this is to be found within the ancient pagoda of Zempukuji, the outer walls and buildings of which can be very dis- tinctly seen from the top of the tower on which I stand. Some hundreds of years ago a godly man, named Shinran, founder of a Buddhist sect, was travelling in the Kantoplain, and stopped the night in a little house belong- ing to a priest. He tried to convert this priest to his doctrine, and, not succeeding, he stuck his travelling-staff in the ground, and exclaimed, angrily, “If what I have said be true, let it take root.” The staff did take root, and brought forth leaves and flowers, becoming a fine tree. The pagoda of Zempukuji was built round it, and the tree is still robust, in spite of its WITHIN THE ASAKUSA ENCEINTE After a drawing by Boudier 4O6 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD having been struck by lightning, which is not able to recognize miracu- lous trees On the other side one can make out a famous Shinto temple, for there are several religions at Tokio, and the State creed, or at least that of the Emperor, is the Shinto, which consists in the worship of Truth and Light. The Temple of Kameido, or the “Wells of the Tortoise,” is peculiarly inter. esting, as it is dedicated to the patron saint of literature. An illustrious poet, who lived at Kioto in the ninth century, was exiled for expressing in his poems a truth hard to accept, and died far from his native soil. The poets avenged him; he was deified under the name of Ten-ran, and tem- ples were erected in his honor. In the one under notice students gather to commemorate him on the 25th of each lunar month. It is the ren- dezvous of literary men and poets, and especially fitted for quiet thought and contemplation of the beauties of nature. There are special ceremo- nies at full moon; moonlight suppers in the beautiful summer nights. The ex-votos in this pagoda are the old worn-out brushes” which have been used to write charming verses or sublime conceptions. Some are relics of very celebrated people. There is one, for instance, which belonged to Kito-Marou, the Victor Hugo of Japan; another of the beautiful Mura- saki, the genial woman who wrote such beautiful romances; another that belonged to Komati, the poetess; one once owned by Nari-Hira, the poetic Don Juan; and many others, once the property of those whose names, though great, would convey no meaning to European ears. Behind the pagoda of Asakusa rises the theatre of Itimuraza, where dramas are performed. There are other theatres at Tokio: Sento-Miza, near Shinbassi; Storeza ; Nakasimasa, where Danjuro, Narikoma, Sa- dandi, Kikumoro, and others, all artists of first rank, are passionately applauded. 3. - While I am trying to make out in the distance, and in the clouds of dust nearer at hand, the various noble buildings of ancient Japan, the lofty towers of the pagodas, which alone are enough to give a character all its own to the vast panorama of the town, the natives beside me are leaning over the balustrades anxious only to look at the new structures in foreign style, which make white dashes here and there. They point to the station of Shinbassi, connected with that of Uyeno by a semicircular railway; the Bank, the Military Academy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Law Courts, the Parliament House, which was burned when scarcely opened, * The Japanese use fine brushes for writing instead of papers or pencils.-TRANS. TOKIO 4O7 and the buildings under the roof dedicated to the study of law, medicine, literature, and science. One is surprised at caring more than the people themselves for the Japan that is passing away; for the mysterious and splendid long ago; for all those things which one never knew and never can know, for they fade away even as the veil falls from them. Strange indeed was it to feel one's own heart ache for all this, while the natives were laughing lightly, proud of the incomprehensible laying aside of their own originality. Suddenly a bell in the pagoda begins to ring out the hour in deep, long-drawn-out tones. It is the same hour that has rung out for the Japanese so often, for the ancestors of those of the present day, and which, erelong, will cease to mark the modern time; for we shall have here, as elsewhere, written hours and pneumatic clocks, which will everywhere replace the sweet-smelling sticks, the burning of which measured time, and perfumed it as it passed. Very quaint and very complicated is the Japanese mode of counting the hours, but how picturesque, how beautiful! Nine is the perfect number, marking the middle of the day and night, the hour of the rat and the hour of the horse. Counting, therefore, begins at nine and goes backward. Twice nine are eighteen; the first figure is suppressed and eight is ob- tained, the hour of the cow. Three times nine are twenty-seven; the first figure taken away seven remains, the hour of the tiger; and so on, till the six watches of the day and the six of the night, each two hours long, are passed: the hour of the rabbit, the hour of the dragon, the hour of the cock, the hour of the boar, and so on. - I have now come away from the side of the great mountain, and I look at it again. There it rises up into the sky, majestic, motionless, and grand, while the sun is turning it first purple, then red, making it look fierce and threatening. Thin jets of smoke ascend from its sides. Often terrible convulsions shake the ground, and in the town all the buildings are thrown down, burying thousands of victims beneath their ruins. Earthquakes are the curse of this lovely country, and the reason why all the houses are built low, of flexible wood, and with thick walls sloping inward. I cannot help After an engraving by Outamaro 408 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD thinking that Fujiyama will some day punish the Japanese for their dis- dain of the past and their imprudent innovations by flinging down the lofty stone buildings, and sweeping away in one fit of anger all the foreign innovations which disfigure his glorious robe of beauty. w Ö r->s º º ſº §º tº S 8 - LIS BON AS it not ever been upon the banks of rivers that poets have culled the themes of their most hyperbolic fancies 2 Where are now the grand woods which covered the shores of the Ilis- sus? What has become of the myrtle groves of the “Stream of Eden" which once screened the baptism of a god 2 Were there ever waters more troubled than those of the “limpid Arno,” in which even the heavy gloomy façades of the old Pisan palaces are not now reflected And in the yellow loathsome-smelling waters of the Tiber, in the slug- * * gish stream of which we seem still to see the rot- --- ting wood of Roman gibbets, where are now the - copses immortalized by Virgil and the fresh mur- muring streams in which were once mirrored the charms of the fair Amaryllis P I have followed the banks of the Rhone to the blue ocean without seeing the orange and citron groves sung of by Petrarch, and beneath the shade of which he walked with the lovely object of his passionate adoration. •. Very suggestive to the thinker are the melancholy changes which have come over rivers sacred to the songs of poets, and to which those songs seem to have brought nothing but misfortune. Thus did I muse as I rolled along the road between Abrantes and Lisbon, which road skirts the Tagus, and is almost parallel with its course. Here and there, in fact, the wheels of my carriage were actually on its banks, and I saw before me, among the gathering shades of night, a dreary landscape of perpendicular rocks and sandy hillocks, looking like great heaps of cinders, among which tumultuously flowed the muddy waters of A VARINA, OR SELLER OF FISH After a drawing by Myrbach 4I 2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD that enchanted stream, “the gold-spangled waves of which,” according to Camoens, “ever flow between two forests of flowers.” I must, however, admit that just before I arrived at the important station of Entrocamento, the point of junction with the northern railway, I saw, emerging from the Tagus, the width of which varies perpetually, an island bright with flowers and verdure. On this island rose a group of grand ruins, in which, in spite of the rapidity with which I passed them, I think I could make out the remains of an imposing Moorish building which may have been the summer palace of a powerful emir intrusted with the government of Alemtejo by the Caliph of Cordova. * I was just yielding to these historic hypotheses called up by the sud- den apparition of the old castle, and my imagination was revelling for a moment in a vision of all the voluptuous seductions of an enchanted harem, when I fell asleep, and did not wake again until I was at Lisbon. Although in writing these lines I have a kind of nostalgic feeling—a poignant regret for a past already remote, and from which emerges vaguely a vision of a great town on a mighty river, through the streets of which town I wandered gayly with the happy heart of a young fellow of twenty— I must also confess that my first impression of Lisbon when I alighted at the station was anything but a favorable one. The air all around me was poisoned with horrible exhalations from the mouths of the sewers which had been prevented from discharging their contents for some days by the great height of the waters of the Tagus. The inhabitants, who ought to have remembered the plague of 1568, did not seem to trouble themselves about the terrible results which might ensue. And yet that fearful epi- demic had carried off more than 60,000 victims in the town alone. The Government as well as the municipality of Lisbon, whose resources would barely suffice for the reconstruction of the sewers, no doubt secretly encour- aged the popular stoicism, or rather indifference, in spite of the complaints and warnings of the doctors. It was pouring with rain, and in the foul air beneath the leaden sky as I plunged across the muddy streets, which appeared not to have been paved since the earthquake of 1755, I felt pretty miserable, and found myself re- gretting having crossed the Spanish frontier, and having left the fresh, sweet-smelling valley of the Guadalquiver, when suddenly a beautiful sight met my gaze, and dispelled the frown from my brow. This sight was neither more nor less than a funeral! In her interest- LISBON 4 IS ing volume on Portugal, Madame Rattazzi tells us that nothing strikes the visitor to Lisbon more than meeting in the streets a funeral procession escorting the dead to their last resting-places. As in France and England, there are several classes of hearses; but in Portugal the poorest makes this THE BELEM TOWER.— After a drawing by Boudier last trip in a vehicle completely covered with gilding. For an ordinary funeral a two-wheeled cabriolet is used with very long shafts, between which is harnessed a mule with a postilion on its back, who wears riding- boots, a coat of French style, and a hat bigger at the top than at the brim. On the front part of this cabriolet, between it and the back of the mule, are two pieces of iron to which the coffin is fastened. The coffins are long cases with semicircular lids covered with a yellow stuff striped with silver. Inside the carriage sit the priest and a choir boy. This obsolete vehicle is gilded and adorned with appropriate symbols, such as the scythe of Time, an hour-glass, angels' heads, etc. - The wealthy, as is but natural, make their final journey with greater pomp. They have massive four-wheeled chariots with canopies embroid. ered with gold and silver, while above them hovers an angel with out- spread wings. The effect is really very fine. The grand machine is drawn by four horses, on each of which is perched a jockey wearing a short jacket and a laced cap, while on the box sits a pompous coachman 4. I4. THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD with powdered hair wearing a three-cornered hat striped with red and green. All this has a look of gayety which is very pleasant to see, and the first time I met such a procession on its way back without its burden, I thought it was a masquerade of the Boeuf gras, or some similar farce. There are no mourning-coaches for invited guests, who follow in their own or in hired carriages. The cemetery is called Prazeres, which means pleasure. & When any one dies the family do not write letters with the news, but announce it in the newspapers, and all is said in the invariable concluding phrase: “No special invitations will be sent out, as the family is in a state of unutterable consternation.” - I could not say to what order of society the deceased, who rolled past me in this bright-looking equipage, had belonged, but from the bottom of my heart I wish him eternal happiness in the other life, in return for the moment of pleasure he has given me in this. "Quite cheered up, though soaked to the skin, I turned towards my hotel full of admiration for the lazy, happy stoicism of a people who inhale pestilential odors from morning till night with as much good-humor as if they were the perfume of roses; break their legs in the dirty, ill-paved streets without grumbling; take their dead to their last resting-places in gala carriages driven by coachmen dressed like learned monkeys, and call their cemeteries abodes of pleasure. Who, after that, can doubt the gayety of the Portuguese ? Never was the origin of any place more discussed than that of Lisbon, to which, in fact, popular sentiment assigns as initial date the time of a prolonged stay of Ulysses and his companions on the banks of the Tagus. Moreover, etymologists can very easily prove that, frequently as, for reasons unexplained, they have been modified in the course of centuries, the names of the ancient Lusitanian city all seem to have been derived from that of the heroic traveller whom the people claim as the founder; for before it was called Lisbon it was successively known as Elisea, Ulisea, Ulisipolis, Ulisipo, Olisipo, Olisipona, Olisipoa, Uixiponna, and Exupona. But all this belongs to the very remote past. According to an old German legend, a knight, having wished when at Jerusalem to see in a magic mirror the most beautiful city of Europe, that of Lisbon the Great, as it was then called, at once rose up before his dazzled sight. - - Truth to tell, if one is to believe the assertions of very trustworthy writers, such as Fernando Lopez (Agioſogio Lusitana), Lisbon enjoyed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a reputation for great magnifi. LISBON - 4 IS cence. It must, however, be added that other Portuguese historians have thrown some doubt on the supposed splendor of feudal Lisbon. We re- frain from any endeavor to form an opinion on this subject, as it would be beyond the scope of our modest task. Let us leave the old town in peace in the bosom of the earth, where it was swallowed up almost completely with its palaces and treasures, and content ourselves with giving as faithful a sketch as we can of that modern Lisbon which, by the mere force, so to speak, of his genius, the Marquis de Pombal caused to spring from the ground on a new plan. The general aspect of the town is most picturesque. It is no less than two leagues long, and rises in the form of an amphitheatre, on the right bank of the Tagus. At the end of the seventeenth century it still deserved the name of Urðs sep- £ico//is ; but, thanks to its rapid de- velopment, it has gradually climbed up several new eminences, and the topographical resemblance to an- cient Rome, of which the Portu- guese were so proud, is now de- stroyed. The view of Lisbon from the Tagus on a fine sunny spring even- ing is really grand. A poet has likened it at different times to a beautiful coquette wearing a white robe decked with roses leaning over a mirror, and to a vast outspread fan decked with bunches of flowers. These two similes, different though they be, are very true metaphors; and we must own that our admi- ration was great when, from the cen- tre of the river we were crossing, OI). ON THE QUAYS BY THE TAGUS (RETURN OF THE our way to Evora, on the other FISHING-BOATs) bank, we saw Lisbon in the bright After a drawing by Myrbach | % % l, § º % | * { %|}| a ". . . % 416 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD light of a May mid-day, its wide quays stretching away indefinitely along the beautiful curve of the bay, and its white houses seeming to be advanc- ing to the assault of heaven by way of the gigantic steps of an unfin- ished Babel. Here and there in the midst of this forest of houses appears a garden full of verdure and roses, which is like a smile on the face of Nature, relieving the marble coldness of the city, and giving to it that look of feminine coquetry without which it would appear to the traveller but the white phantom of the old city of a time gone by. Hardly, however, have you landed before your admiration is changed into a pained surprise. The charm is broken. All around is common- place and ugly. Huge brick buildings, erected by contractors—who, with some faint idea of the application of art to industry, have endeavored to give them a classic style—rise along the banks of the river, and from their arched windows, instead of the fumes of incense, escape the acrid odors of stale sardines and hot oil, which, when mixed with the smells from the fetid sewers opening onto the Tagus, drive every one not compelled to remain below to the upper town. These wide quays, which an intelligent municipality might convert into a beautiful promenade, are frequented by none but gallegos, varinas, and sailors of the merchant vessels anchored in the river, which is here not more than two leagues wide. The people of Lisbon generally designate under the name of gallegos all porters, commissionnaires, and water-carriers. Those who perform these functions, which the poorest Portuguese would scorn, are nearly all natives of Galicia. They are strong, hard-working, and thrifty. Their physiog- nomy resembles that of the mountaineers of Savoy and Auvergne, who, like them, are attracted to the great town by their preference for rough and arduous toil. The gallegos do not flock to Lisbon only, but are met with at Madrid and in other important towns of Spain. Their predilection for menial tasks brings upon them the contempt of the Spanish as well as of the Portuguese; and the most dilapidated native of Castile or Andalusia, if addressed in terms which seem to him wanting in due respect for his noble rags, will reply: “Me trafa V.S. como si fuera Gallego” (You treat me as if I were a gallego). For all that, the gallegos, like the Savoyards, are justly famed for their probity. Their general appearance is much the same as that of the street porters of Paris. Broad-shouldered, with red, smiling faces, and stubby whiskers, they wear short velvet jackets, and instead of the little caps of Paris and London, big green hats. The varinas, or sellers of fish, form, with the gallegos, the most pictu- resque, I had almost said the most interesting, population of the town. LISBON 417 While their fathers, mothers, and brothers are engaged in the sardine fishery in the dangerous waters at the bar of the river, they trot about the streets selling the harvest of the sea in huge flat baskets, which they carry skilfully and gracefully on their heads. The costume of the varina is so original that it merits a few words of description. It consists of a felt-hat with a wide, turned-up brim, on which rests the basket of fish. The bust and shoulders of the varina are hidden beneath the folds of a light shawl of some delicate color, and a wide linen sash is wound tightly several times round the waist and hips. From beneath the short petticoats peep out often extremely well-formed legs and feet. - - The varina, who toils from the first thing in the morning till the fall of night, carrying her heavy basket of fish and tearing her feet in climbing the steep, badly-paved alleys of the old town, has a perfect passion for jewelry; and her one ambition is to be able on fête days to wear great golden ear-rings with anchors in blue enamel let into them, and to display upon her ample breast crosses or enormous hearts in filigree-work. The brisk ways of the varina, her zeal in her work, her ceaseless activity, contrast strangely with the indolence of the Portuguese women, who loll at their windows from morning to night half asleep, and oppressed with ennui of having nothing whatever to do. A Portuguese wife never helps her husband in his work. I think I may even say that the idea of doing so never enters her head; and you may go the round of all the shops of Lisbon without finding one woman behind a counter. One might almost believe, as some ethnographers assert, that the sturdy daughters of the fisher folk of the Tagus belong to a different race from the incorrigible idlers who let the useless hours of their life glide by mechanically in the dead silence of their comfortless and tasteless homes. The big hat of the varina seems to be the last relic of the national costume of Portugal. Ladies in society, tempted continually by the goods spread out in the windows of modistes and French needle-women of fourth- rate skill, who have triumphantly established themselves in the chief streets of the town, have long since adopted Parisian fashions. We consider this a matter to be regretted; but, at least, the traveller is no longer free to make such remarks as were sent by a Venetian ambassador to Lisbon in the reign of Joao III., in an official report to his Government. “Portu- guese women,” he says, “are remarkable for their beauty and the grace of their proportions; their carriage is dignified, and their expression is pleas- ant. Their black and sparkling eyes add to their beauty. . . . The costume 27 THE PRACO DO PRINCIPE REAL.-After a drawing by Dosso of the women of Lisbon consists of a large linen or silk cloak (the material varying according to their position), in which they wrap up the whole body, even hiding the face. They go about just where the humor takes them, so completely disguised that their own husbands could not recognize them, a privilege which they turn to account more than is quite fitting for well-born and well-educated women.” How has it come about that since the journey of the Venetian ambas- sador the features of the Portuguese have undergone changes as little to their advantage as those in their costumes? I have, however, sometimes seen old peasant women draped in long mantles of some sober color, and wearing on their heads a stiffly-starched handkerchief of very fine lawn. May not these long mantles, with heavy plaits, be a relic of the great linen cloak referred to by the Venetian ambas- sador, the last stage of the transformation of the graceful lenco of last century, which was fastened with a gold or silver brooch 2 The men of Portugal are as fond of show as are the women. Their fingers are nearly always loaded with rings, and about their bodies, which LISBON 4 IQ are often as round as the bowls of their tobacco pipes, hang chains as thick as ropes, from which are suspended bunches of trinkets. - The Portuguese dandy is very fond of anything that will attract public attention to his much-esteemed person. Above his snowy vest he wears a cravat of gleaming colors, while in his buttonhole is stuck a full- blown rose of inordinate size. I think I am pretty safe in saying that most of the promenaders I have seen strutting about in the chief thorough- fares on Sunday, with a riding-whip in their hands and handsome spurs on their heels, have never set foot in stirrup. The spur is to them a sort of sign of nobility, which they arrogate to themselves, a relic of the privileges of the old chivalry. Where is the Portuguese, be he a/mocreve or calafate (muleteer or calker), whose ancestors did not wear golden spurs at the battle of Ourique or of Aljubarrota ? I have noticed that a good many State officials work in spurs, as if about to go to battle; and when these knights of the quill, these ſcados with silk braces, peacefully render up their fine bureaucratic souls to God, I have no doubt that their spurs will be laid upon their tombs. - But have we any right to dwell so long, in a half-mocking spirit, on a people of such numerous and trustworthy moral qualities, and who, but for their unfortunate indolence and their exaggerated egotism, might be held up as a model to other nations For the Portuguese are naturally good, hospitable, honest in their dealings, generous, and brave; and we are very certain that in the event of any threatening of the independence of their country, we should once more see this heroic little nation, among whom slumbers a powerful national spirit, rise as one man against the invader, even as in 1388 and 1809. The painful impression received on landing on the quay is gradually lessened as one penetrates into the upper town, climbing, not without fatigue, the steep streets, nearly all as horribly badly paved as the callecitas of Andalusian towns. The gardens have disappeared behind high walls, but here and there are little squares, bordered by dusty and sickly-looking trees, and adorned with statues, poor alike in design and execution, set up in honor of João I., Camoens, the Duke of Terceira, or Pedro IV. There is no true public promenade at Lisbon, for we can hardly give this name to a few squares (well kept, it is true), such as the Rocio, the Praça de Camoens, the Estrella Garden, and the Passeio Publico, which are alto- gether inadequate for a population numbering 3OO,OOO. Having seen one house at Lisbon, one may be said to have seen them all. It is rare in the Lusitanian capital to meet with one of the pretty 42O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD little dwellings with shady inside galleries, the bright patios full of roses, jasmine, and lilies, in which one listens half asleep to the murmur “Of the everlasting plaint . . .” sobbed forth by splashing fountains. - Though the Spanish, in spite of their hereditary hatred of the Moro odioso, have had the good taste to respect the practical and artistic archi- tectural skill of the fortunate conqueror of his country, the Portuguese, with their ferocious hispanophagy—at least, so I have been told, by way of a hoax, probably—have been obliged, rather than run any risk of being supposed to share the taste of their hated neighbors, to shut themselves up in the absurd boxes they call houses, without inner courts, and the greater part of which are deprived of air and light. I would rather, how- ever, adopt the opinion that the Marquis de Pombal evolved the Lisbon style of building, so commonplace in its flat uniformity, as a precaution against a danger threatening his fellow-countrymen. The great minister, anxious to save Lisbon, so subject to earthquakes, from a catastrophe such as that of 1755, thought it necessary to adopt a fixed style of architecture, in which, in case of an earthquake, the masonry alone would fall, while the wood-work, kept in place by tenons and other accessories, would remain standing beneath its protecting roof. For the same reason, doubtless, two houses were always built together, instead of separately, these houses being imprisoned in stone-walls as soon as the timber-work was finished, each retaining a sort of relative individuality. The houses of Lisbon are only lighted from the back and front, so that the middle part of the inside is quite dark, and is but a kind of thoroughfare into which the apartments open. From this description it will be seen that the unfortunate Lisbon architects are seldom allowed to give any scope to their imaginations, and the clumsy designs of master-masons are all that are required in the quasi-mechanical development of modern Lisbon. - We are, therefore, obliged to confess that nothing could equal the monotony of a walk in the steep streets of the capital of Portugal, if it were not that here and there the eye of the visitor is arrested by the rich facings of old tiles, which relieve the commonplace façades of the houses. Azulejos, or tiles, are very much used in Portugal, and in some of the houses the inside walls have a dado of them three feet high. In a few instances the facing of tiles goes right up to the ceiling. I have even seen A FUNERAL AT LISBON.-Engaved by Ruffe, after a water-color drawing by Laurent Desrousseaux LISBON 423 in a narrow street in a suburb of Lisbon a house with the façade com- pletely covered with azulejos. These tiles are squares of fine clay, one side of which is enamelled. The largest are not more than thirty centimetres square. There are two kinds of azulejos : those with flat surfaces, which were the first to be used, and are still generally employed, and those with designs in relief, representing arabesques, flowers, and fruit. The tiles dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are especially sought after. The designs are nearly always of an azure blue color, and stand out distinctly from a white ground. The churches of Lisbon nearly all resemble the unsatisfactory eccle- siastical Italian buildings of the seventeenth century, being in a similar rococo style, with the same gaudy interior decoration. Not one, not even the Basilica of Santa Maria, deserves so much as a few lines of descrip- tion. As for the three royal palaces known as Da Ajuda, Das Necessi- dades, and De Belem, they are of distressing mediocrity of style. The appearance of the new barracks in Paris is more pleasing. It must be owned that in this fine country of Portugal the Divine and Royal Majes- ties are alike very poorly lodged. - The churches and convents of Lisbon contain a good many paint. ings, which are of but little general interest, although they are nearly all attributed to the famous Gran Vasco, whose artistic glory is unrivalled, in the opinion of the Portuguese, except by Camoens, the great poet of the sixteenth century, the author of “As Lusiades.” The pictures attributed to Gran Vasco are numbered by hundreds, and are distributed among churches, museums, and private galleries belonging to the royal family. The Acad- *- emy of Fine Arts at Lisbon alone has more than fifty. Every badly- painted, faintly-lighted panel is by Gran Vasco, whether that panel repre- sents the “Marriage of the Virgin,” the “Adoration of the Magi,” or the “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian.” Oh, what a number of old fogies of saints I have heard mercilessly attributed to this unfortunate artist || I must, however, add a few words about this Gran Vasco, who has been raised by popular tradition to such great honor, so that it is impos. sible to take a step in Portugal without hearing his work lauded and his praises sung. * - I therefore determined to set seriously about making acquaintance with the work of the great national artist. By way of roads more pictu- resque than passable for carriages I reached Vizeu, the sacred town of Portuguese art, the native place of Vasco Fernandez, surnamed Gran Vasco. There I saw a great many worm-eaten Gothic panels, and mostly quite 424 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD unworthy of a reputation so universally acknowledged, from the banks of the Minho to the mountains of Algarve—heavy works, without character, the coloring lifeless, and the drawing without vigor; the productions, no doubt, of the inexperienced brushes of some Portuguese pupils of Lucas Van Leyden and Goltzius, who founded a school in Spain in the sixteenth century. I was also fortunate enough to learn, in searching in the dusty archives of the Church of Vizeu, that Vasco Fernandez was born in 1552, and was the son of the painter Francisco Fernandez; but I was unable to ascertain the date or the scene of his death. No detail of his artistic career has come down to posterity, and the legendary existence of this illustrious painter, although unknown beyond his own land, was not offi- cially established until the end of last century. Add to this that it is impossible to discover, on the works attributed to Gran Vasco, any letter, inscription, or sign, and you will readily understand the absolute silence of writers on art with regard to the bewildering impersonality of the works bearing his name.* - - - And now, after my art pilgrimage to Vizeu, if I am asked my opinion of Gran Vasco and the old Portuguese school, I reply that this artist ap- pears to me more than ever a quasi-mythical personage, and that the Por- tuguese school of painting appears to be represented merely by a series of old pictures, most of them without artistic value, and all belonging to one and the same period, viz., the reigns of Emmanuele and João III., the old patrons of the old illuminadores. - - It would be altogether beyond the modest scope of this account of Lisbon, in which psychological subjects can only be touched en passant, if I were to attempt a comparison between the Portuguese and Spanish tem- peraments, so different in spite of the juxtaposition of their two countries. I must, however, be permitted to say how much I was struck with the profound contrast between the religious customs of the two nations of the Iberian peninsula. During my long wanderings in the churches and clois- * The translator ventures to add, in this connection, the following quotation from page 206 of her Elementary History of Art, published by Messrs. S. Low & Co.: “Vasco Fernandez, commonly called Gran Vasco, painted in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but only one painting exists which can be assigned to him. It consists of three panels, representing the “Descent from the Cross,’ ‘St. Francis in Ecstasy,' and ‘St. Anthony of Lisbon preaching to the Fishes,’ and is now in the collection of the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts at Lisbon. . . . Gran Vasco has by various writers been confused with another Vasco, who was miniature painter to Alfonso in 1455, and also with Francisco Fernandez, living in 1522, and Vasco Fernandez, his son. It must be added, however, that some critics, including Oswald Crawfurd, deny the existence of any such artist as Gran Vasco.” LISBON 425 ters of Lisbon and other Portuguese towns, my attention was scarcely ever arrested by the fervent manifestations of religious faith so frequent and often so touching in Spain. Oh, those prolonged, ecstatic prostrations in Spain, beneath the long black mantles, and under the shadow of the mas- sive humid pillars PRAGo DE DOM PEDRO Iv.—After a drawing by Dosso But a few days ago, in one of the most curious, though least known of the churches of Cordova, Nostra Senora de la Fuentesanta, I witnessed one of those acts of Christian zeal still so common among the people of Spain, and to which they instinctively give an appearance of exaltation which is most striking. The ancient gilded church, baked by the suns of many centuries, corroded by the gusts of scorching wind and almost tottering with old age, rises far from the town in a steep suburb at the end of a garden enclosed within lofty moss-grown walls and full of grand orange and citron - 426 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD trees, sheltering lilacs in full flower and blue irises, in the midst of which splashed the limpid waters of the Fuentesanta or Holy Fountain. I entered the building, and around me, on the walls, the ceiling, and the pillars, was the long series of quaint ex-voto offerings and images commem- orative of some miraculous cure. Nostra Senora de la Fuentesanta Con- tains no less than 30OO touchingly simple illuminated designs, all repre- senting the patron Saint appearing on a cloud in a poorly-furnished room to some dying sufferer, over whom she extends her healing hands, while the doctor gazes with sad face and dejected mien at his powerless mixtures set out on the night-table. Then there are plaits of hair, and even masses of flowing hair, looking like scalps, hanging among embroidered stockings, silk dresses, ostrich eggs, stuffed crocodiles and lizards, and wax babies and bulls. I was making my pious inventory when I heard a deep sigh in the shadows near me. A woman in mourning, with her head draped in a long mantilla, was dragging herself on her knees across the church, pausing before each image of the Passion. She was pale, very emaciated, and seemed to be with difficulty performing a painful pilgrimage. The sac- ristan who was with me came up to me and whispered in my ear, “Ala povre muger ora for su chico, gue se esta morenado" (The poor woman is praying for her child who is dying). After this I could not take my eyes off this poor woman, who, with bleeding heart, was of her own free-will bruising her knees upon the stones of the church. Willingly would I have knelt beside her and joined my prayers with those of this desolate mother at the feet of Nostra Senora de la Fuentesanta, who gazed coldly down, looking upon this immense despair like a coquettish doll, wearing a silk dress trimmed with beads, her shoulders covered with a long white mantle embroidered with gold, on her head a pompous-looking pink hat, decked with ostrich feathers, dainty satin slippers on her feet, light violet gloves on her hands, and rings on her fingers. For a long time the poor mother dragged herself painfully along before the symbols of the Passion, pausing at last at the foot of a quaint figure of Christ roughly carved in wood by the inexperienced hand of some predecessor of Alonzo Cano or Berruguete. This statue was half hidden beneath an antique toreador costume of the heroic days of Pedro Romero; a long lock of real hair hung over the pale face of the “Christus,” in which were two inordinately large sockets full of blood. I can still see the un- fortunate woman with her arms extended before this sinister-looking object. Aloud, but in a voice choked with tears, she addressed a passionate prayer to the impassive crucified one, not pausing in her piteous appeal until her | | || --- - º - **** -After a drawing by Boudier - NVENT THE FOUNTAIN OF THE HIERONYMITE CO LISBON 429 arms dropped heavily to her sides like two branches beneath the axe. Then she staggered to her feet and escaped, almost running from the church, her hands still clasped in prayer. I never met with such touching instances of piety in Portugal, where the churches, much less frequented than in Spain, look more like open-air promenades than mystic sanctuaries. The faithful—influenced no doubt by the conduct of the Portuguese clergy, who are only too ready to let the public know their powerlessness to overcome human frailty—merely pause in the churches en passant, and it would appear that their very mundane devotion springs merely from a wish not to break through an ancient and respectable tradition. There are, however, some few monuments at Lisbon worthy of the attention of the visitor—notably the Tower of Belem, which is a perfect marvel; and the Monastery of the Hieronymites, or Hermits of St. Jerome. The Tower of Belem dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and was originally designed by Dom Joao II., though the actual execution took place in the reign of Dom Emmanuele. According to Garcia de Resende, the architect of this remarkable monument, “The King understood the desirability of building a tower on the right bank of the Tagus a little above Lisbon, so that the fire from it might cross that of the Torre Velha.” Like a skilful architect, Resende combined in his design the curves of the purest form of Gothic architecture with the bristling angles of military buildings. The ancient Tower of Belem, which no earthquake has suc- ceeded in shaking, and which is as solid to-day as on the morrow of its erection, rises from a little promontory jutting out into the Tagus. The general style of the building is pure Gothic. The platform on which it stands is fortified and casemated. Its shape is square and perhaps a little too massive; but the graceful pepper-castor towers which adorn the corners, and the pretty windows with sculptured balconies relieve and brighten up its general appearance as a smile does a stern face. The tower is under the charge of a few artillerymen, who are provided with twelve huge cannons which peacefully repose beneath long tarpaulins, and beside which the guns of the Spanish are, according to the people of Lisbon, mere pocket-pistols. I have always thought that the chief object of this imposing array of artillery is to moderate the insatiable curiosity of the English tourist, lest he should be tempted to carry off the dainty fortress of Belem under his arm. And perhaps some day this bijou of architectural skill which the worst earthquakes have spared will be crushed by the bullets of a Lord Elgin 430 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Quite near to this monument rises the celebrated Convent of the Hieronymites, the foundations of which were laid in 15oo, under the direction of the architects João Castilho and Boitaka. Its completion, however, required many years, and many architects successively super- intended its erection. There is no originality about it, thanks to the predominantly bizarre style in which it is built—a style essen- tially composite, which was very much in vogue in the reign of Dom Manoel, and is con- stantly met with in buildings of his time. Its chief peculiarity is its wonderful richness of ornamentation, the re- sult of the welding into the Gothic style of the Moresque trefoil, the Indian Arabesque, and the delicately-worked pilasters of the Renais- Salm CC. The façade of the monument, which faces south, may be divided into five distinct parts, i. - - - I STILL SEE THE POOR WOMAN WITH HER ARMS ExTENDED" one of which, the princi- Engraved by Ruffe, after the water-color drawing by Desrousseaux pal entrance, is adorned with finials and statues, and is a regular masterpiece of Gothic architecture. It is built of the limestone so abundant in the neighborhood of Lisbon, and which, on exposure to the sun, acquires a beautiful reddish golden color. The church is not more than about thirty-six feet wide by some 120 feet long; it contains the tombs of many monarchs and celebrated personages, including, among others, those of Dom Manoel João III., Dom Sebastian, LISBON 43 I Doña Catharina, the children of Dom Luis and Dom Carlos, and of Alphonso VI. Some of these monuments are adorned with quaint and very well preserved sculptures. Unfortunately, one cannot say as much for those of the magnificent mausoleums of Dom Pedro and Ignez de Castro, in the convent of Alcobaça, which were—as our guide told us, making us blush for our nationality—mutilated by the soldiers of Junot. These barbarous heroes, insensible to the poetic memories connected with the monuments, knocked them about with their bayonets; and very few of the figures of the bass-reliefs are intact. One of the soldiers, having suc- ceeded in hoisting himself onto the tomb on which lies the recumbent statue of Ignez, with hands folded on her breast, and upheld by four crouching lions, cut off with one fell back stroke of his sabre the nose of the fair martyr, who was thus pursued by implacable fate even in the calm sleep of death, and after the lapse of centuries. The most interesting part of the Monastery of Belem is undoubtedly the cloister, although, from an architectural point of view, nothing could be more grotesque than the heavy arches resting on frail little columns, cut out like lace, the capitals of which, after bifurcating at a little distance from the arch, join it by means of a series of quaint convolutions, from which, in their turn, spring rosettes and other mouldings of all manner of sizes which cluster against the mass of the wall. This claustral decoration, about which there is nothing austere, must have contrasted quaintly with the solemn monks who paced beneath it, and, curious as it doubtless is, there is nothing grand about it. Since 1833 the Monastery has been converted into a kind of public asylum, in which deserted children are received. This ultilitarian purpose necessitated, in 1878, additions, the clumsy execution of which led to the fall of part of the building and the death of twenty workmen. The ruins, beneath which so many bodies were buried, were still visible when I was in Portugal, and doubtless for many years yet, when the traveller, pausing in astonishment before this gloomy mound of rubbish, asks if they will soon be removed, he will receive the same answer as I did, given with the careless indifference characteristic of the people of Portugal: “Palvez amanha, semhor, se Deux quixer” (To-morrow, perhaps, sir, if it please God.) And yet, in spite of the generally commonplace character of these modern buildings, and the bad condition of the roads, in spite of the Scanty open spaces, those few containing statues, as second-rate as those constantly being set up in Paris and London, Lisbon presents the appearance of a 432 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD noble city; but it owes this to its picturesque mountain surroundings, and yet more to its situation on the shores of the Tagus, which itself presents the appearance of a moving town, with the countless merchant vessels from every part of the world anchored side by side in it, and from which daily goes up from among the black smoke from the engines the sound of many men at work. - The streets of the upper town are not much frequented, and their claustral silence contrasts strangely with the animation of the quays, which are intersected by numerous tramways, and constantly crowded with galle. gos and varinas. - At the end of the day a good many people promenade in the wide streets known as do Ouro (the Golden), do Prato (the Silver), Augusta, and Chiado. These are the Lisbonian alamedas, or public walks, and there is plenty to please idlers, for the show in the shop-windows is brilliant and constantly renewed. Side by side with the gaudy display of French modistes, who boldly offer for sale, on the banks of the Tagus, a truly mar- vellous collection-of hats and bonnets, some of which appear to date from the time of the Princesse de Polignac, or the Queen Marie Amélie, we see especially in the streets do Oura and Augusta windows full of filigree jewelry which might have been made by fairy fingers, with exquisitely fine laces from Peniche and Setubal, of very pure and original designs. In the capital of Portugal, as at Madrid, however, it is to the Plaza de Toros, the arena of Santa Anna, that the traveller should go on the day of a bull-fight if he wishes to get at one glance a notion of the general appear. ance of the Portuguese people. There, huddled together on the steps of the ancient arena, which is put together as lightly as the stage of a travel- ling circus, doubtless as a precaution in case of earthquakes, are gallegos in green hats, fishermen in red Tam-o'-Shanter caps, peasants in many-colored vests and broad-brimmed hats, and the great body of the varinas, all, whether young or old, decked out like idols. On their ample breasts huge hearts, made of filigree gold, shine like Suns, attracting the most enrapt. ured olhadas.” Nothing can be more amusing than these olhadas, which resemble, in nothing but the musical sound of their names, the rapid aeillades of the French, the burning offeada of the Spanish, and the languish- ing occhiate of the Italians, one and all of which are, however, comparatively discreet. In Portugal, love, even when not verbally expressed, is mani- fested in so undisguised a fashion that a woman can never long remain * The English equivalent to the olhada is “casting sheep's eyes."—TRANs. Tº ſº THE FORCADOS.-Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Ch. Jouas LISBON - - 435 ignorant of the passion she has inspired. There is something So labo- rious, and at the same time so melancholy, in the Portuguese olhada, with the perpetual turning up of the eyes involved in it, that one cannot help being reminded of the grimaces made by some unlucky fellow with a fish- bone stuck in his throat. A woman who could remain insensible to such tokens of the tender passion would be made of marble, and such indifference is rare in Portugal. It must not be supposed that the olhada is peculiar to the lower orders. The man of the world makes known his passion in exactly the same way; and a pretty woman (also a rare thing in Portugal) who passes the Casa Havaneza on the Chiado between four and six o'clock in the afternoon will cause a great rolling of the eyes among all the idlers gathered there. Although she may walk along with eyes demurely cast down before this rolling fire of mute declarations, each one of the artillerists of love will fancy he has hit the mark and won the victory. - It was in the reign of José L-the bullfighting Philip IV of Portugal —that the last bull was killed in the arena of Lisbon. The King was pres- ent at nearly all the contests, surrounded by the most charming women of his Court, and Portuguese gentlemen considered it an honor to fight the bull in the presence of their sovereign and his fair companions. It was in one of the matches presided over by the King in person that the Duke of Arcos fell, mortally wounded by a thrust from the bull's horn in the abdomen. His father, the Marquis of Mirialva, Master of the Horse to his Majesty, flung himself into the arena, and seizing the sword dropped by his son, plunged it between the shoulders of the bull and killed it at a single blow. After this catastrophe the Marquis de Pombal declared it was time to put an end to such trials of skill, “Portugal not being suffi- ciently well peopled to be able to spare a man for a bull.” .- José I, accustomed to yield to the imperious advice of his minister, gave way, though with regret, and from this time the bull-fights lost their dramatic character, becoming what they are now. - In Portugal the bull, always with its horns tipped, is chased from the moment of its appearance on the scene by a cavalier in the costume of Louis XV., who, armed with long darts adorned with flags, and mounted on an excellent horse, tries to tire out the bull by flitting round him, and to arouse his anger by fixing in his shoulders as many of his fareas, or darts, as possible. The cavalier in plaza, as he is called, is succeeded by the forcados, colossal fellows with huge limbs, recruited from among the quay porters, whose business it is to render the bull powerless by hang- 9 436 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD ing onto its ears, its tail, or its limbs, like a pack of hounds. This result attained, the bull is taken back to the toril by a troop of cačestros, and his conquerors go round like professional beggars to the audience, holding out their green hats, into which pour a shower of 6atacos.” This is the coarse pastime which replaces, in Portugal, in the ancient theatre of Santa Anna, as celebrated at the end of the eighteenth century as were the arenas of Seville and Arunda, the noble, graceful and skilful blow from the sword of the Spanish espada. If we had not made up our minds to the difficult task of closing our brief account of Lisbon by endeavoring to give some idea of the never. to-be-forgotten Cintra, we would gladly pause to give some detailed descrip- tion of the charming scenery around, dotted with elegant quintas, or coun- try-houses, which form a kind of verdant belt to the town. As it is, we must be content merely to mention Cacilhas and the Casa de Piedade, little - châteaus embowered in orange - trees, from which can be seen the gleaming white houses opposite the town on the other side of the Tagus; Bellas, with its fresh, green valley; Queluz, a royal residence surrounded by lovely gardens, where the Queen - mother, Maria Pia, generally passes the summer; Algès, on a pretty, much-frequented beach, close to Lis- bon; Cascaes, the chief whaling station of Port. ugal, at the mouth of the Tagus, with a fine beach, commanding a good view of the sea and the bar of the river, but greatly wanting in vegetation, the stunted trees on the drives, distorted as they are by the winds from the offing, presenting a sickly and distressing ap- pearance. For all this, Cascaes is the fashion- able watering-place; and it is quite the thing to spend a few weeks there when the Court is in residence. STATUE OF DOM JOSE I. After a drawing by Vogel But here is Cintra, the gleaming mount. ain, the glorious Eden, the throne of Spring, the eighth wonder of the world, as it has been successively called in one of the finest cantos of Lord Byron's “Don Juan.” * Small Portuguese coin. LISBON 437 Cintra is about fourteen miles from Lisbon, on the western slope of a chain of volcanic mountains. It is approached by a wide, white, dusty road, bordered by stunted trees, sickly plane-trees and huge aloes, which seem to threaten you with their sword-like spines. Over this road pass wag- ons with massive wheels, drawn leisurely along by oxen with very long horns, and laden with exquisite fruits picked at Collares, the garden of Portugal. On either side of the road stretch fields of thinly-sown maize, strewn with flints, which have the metallic lus- tre of lava scoriae. Until the foot of the mountain, against which nestles the little town of Cintra, is reached, the coun- try is dreary and monot- onous; and the traveller passes suddenly, without transition, from a parched, desolate plain to the fresh, cool shade of the finest trees in the world. Cork- trees, with crooked branch- es and thick foliage; plane- trees and gigantic eucalypti, the trunks of some of which, stripped of their bark, stand out in the darkness of night in the declivities of the road like the shafts of old Doric columns; pines, with bark burned golden by the sunshine; elms centuries old; and cypresses garlanded with honeysuckle and full of singing-birds. GATEWAY OF THE CASTLE OF CINTRA After a drawing by Boudier Beneath the shade of these trees rise pretty quintas, or country-houses, surrounded by beautiful gardens. One of these villas, Monseratte, also known as the English House, owned by the wealthy Sir Francis Cook, is a perfect marvel. It is a fairy-like, white marble palace, adorned with delicate - 438 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD lace-like carving, and furnished with exquisite taste with everything most costly and most rare that could be obtained in the remote Orient. The mountain is overlooked by the Penha Castle which, originally built by the Moors, was later inhabited by monks, who let it fall into decay. It was, however, restored by King Fernando, who made it his favorite resi- dence. We had the honor of being received in it by the old King, who led us about for several hours, which seemed to us like a dream, among the priceless art treasures hoarded up by him in his aerial home. He spent millions on the restoration of the outside alone of this wonderful building, and succeeded in saving from certain ruin this masterpiece of fantastic architecture, with its donjons and posterns, its battlements and machicola- tion, its delicate trefoil decorations, its gates with their quaint inscriptions, its walls covered with marvellously interlaced arabesques, its yellow cupolas gilded by the sunshine, which look, in the distance, like huge Cimmerian helmets—the whole forming a fitting crown to this unique mountain, the slopes of which are clothed with all the luxuriance of Oriental vegetation. We wandered happily about among the woods of camellias as large as oaks, superb azaleas, citron-trees laden with pale gold fruit, araucariae as lofty as towers, eucalypti with leathery leaves, and fuchsias with blood-red flowers; then, after having walked for a long time in the cool shade, listen- ing to the gurgling and splashing of fountains, hidden behind curtains of hydrangeae and gentians, which filled the air with their strong, almost over- powering scent, we entered the forest of cryptogams. Imagine a pile of cyclopean rocks surrounded by black prolific soil, from which goes up the peculiar smell of virgin earth, in which grow lofty ferns with velvet-like stems, beneath which houses might be built—quaint ancient denizens of luxuriant groves of flowerless plants, which flourished here, perhaps, before the dawn of history. - The narrow paths leading to the Penha Palace are so steep that we were often compelled to pause to take breath. Then we stretched our- selves out at the foot of great rocks covered with ficoideae, which hung from them like long green hair, decked with red star-like flowers, and looked around us.... Beneath our feet stretched vast plains, baked by the sun, without trees or verdure, dotted here and there with a few white vil- lages; on the right, against the clear azure blue horizon, rose the famous lines of Torres Vedras and the valley of Vimiero, where Junot defeated the English army, while beyond we could make out the sandy desert which begins at the foot of the low mountains of Roliça, where General Dela- borde, at the head of 3000 Frenchmen, checked the march of 15,000 Eng. THE PALACIO DA PENHA After a drawing by Boudier LISBON 44 I lishmen.” In the midst of these desolated plains, so white that the few clouds in the sky are reflected on them, rises the sad and gloomy, though sunlit, Mafra, the huge Escorial of the Portuguese monarchs. . . . 1. When, in imagination, I see once more the divine mountain of Cintra, with its fairy-like palace and its mantle of flowers bathed in light and full of sweet perfumes, I feel as if I were mourning a lost Paradise, scarce seen in one brief hour of bliss, to be lost for evermore. To enraptured Italians, who say that the greatest bliss is to see Naples and die, the Portuguese might well reply that the greatest joy would be to see Cintra and live there for evermore. Yes, it is there, and there alone on that enchanted mountain, where spring, an eternal spring, has set her flowery throne, that mortal man can have the purest, freshest vision of an earthly paradise, of “a glorious Eden.” . . * This seems scarcely a fair way of stating the fact that, in the Peninsular War, Wel- lington, after the great victory of Talavera, in July, 1809, retired behind the lines of Torres Vedras to gather up strength for the march which resulted in the driving of the French from Spain and Portugal in 1811. 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N \º Sº § N N §§§ §§ WN 2. º º ſº N N 3°3 NSS º *...º. §§§ & Nº &Sºº -ºf-flic S.Š t *\SY \,\ \S- nº SS N º º g ºr ºx º º sists sº \"", § §§sº, SNN, ºr \\ *N Yºyº-º-º-º: ** *** > N º ALGIERS Is she worthy of the name of a capital, the white El-Djezair No, perhaps not, in the strict sense of the term, for she is not like Cettinje or San Marino, the chief town of an independent State. But how can we refuse to her the title of capital if it indicate the mistress city, the sover- eign town in which, for centuries, the history of a whole country has been concentrated, in which one glance is enough to call up the history of the past, to note the features of the pres- ent, and to foresee the vague possi- bilities of the future ? In popular parlance, vibrating, as it does, with echoes from the long ago, to go to M OSQUE OF SIDI-A BDE R - R A H MAN Africa is always spoken of as “to go Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Boudier to Algiers.” Algiers, three syllables of sonorous softness, was equivalent, not so very long ago in the memory of Latin races, with a vision of quite a formidable array of galleys skimming over the waters like birds of prey, of fleets attacked in the open sea, of coast villages sacked, of vessels board- ed, of kidnappings, conflagrations, and the carrying away of captives on the “shores of Mauritania.” It was from Algiers that the Barbarossas and their successors, the corsairs of Taiffe and the janissaries of Odjak, made Mediterranean Europe tremble for some three centuries, and held in check the whole of Christendom. It was at Algiers in 1830 that oc- curred one of the most decisive events of French history in the nineteenth 446 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD century, when the French, with one blow, overthrew the barbarian State, and founded that African Empire, the vast extent of which, ever on the increase as it is, opens to Frenchmen an all but inexhaustible field of na- tional expansion. Who knows but what the day may come when, from the Gulf of Gabes to the Gulf of Guinea, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger, millions and millions of men, of every color and of every race, will speak, think, and feel in French May not Algiers, rising from the edge of the waves opposite what was once Gaul, and on the threshold of new France, become the heart of a new French dominion ? A wide bay, all but forming a regular crescent, with an emceinte of wooded hills, with white houses gleaming among the dark-green verdure, is bounded on the right by masses of wave-worn rock, while on the left, beyond the hills, which gradually decrease in height, stretch the shining sands of a vast plain, with a distant background of mountains, the outlines standing out distinctly in the clear, vibrating atmosphere, which seems to bathe the whole scene in light. Such is the appearance presented, at first sight, by the Bay of Algiers. The town is built in the north-west corner of the bay, on the farther slopes of the Sahel. Cooped up in a narrow space, it bursts upon the sight all at once, its entrance port at its feet, its fine boulevard bordered with arcades, its steep streets and Moorish terraces. And the scene is full of charm, though of charm of a different kind, whether it be seen from the sea or the heights above the town; in the brill- iant glow of noonday, or sleeping beneath the stars. - Once a Roman town, then a Berber stronghold, then Arab, the history of Algiers does not really begin until the sixteenth century. On the rocky islet from which Algiers derives its name of El-Djezair, or Al-jesira (the island), the Spaniards had set up their Fort Peñon, which was “a thorn in its side.” The first Barbarossa failed to extract this thorn; but his broth- er, Khair - Eddin, renewed the attack, took the fortress, razed it to the ground, and used the materials to connect the island with the mainland. Thenceforth, Algiers had a port, a small harbor some six acres in extent, protected, after a fashion, from storms and hostile fleets. The Mussulman pirates, delighted to find a shelter on the African coast at the very gate of the grand Mediterranean routes, and close to the shores of Christendom, swooped down in crowds. The Sultan, assumed the protectorate, and sent some of his janissaries. The towns and tribes, full of joy at escaping from the Spanish yoke, submitted to the representative of the Padishah. The Regency of Algeria was founded. The Algiers of the Turks was much smaller than the town of the ALGIERS 447." present day. On the south it did not extend beyond what are now the Boulevard de la Republique, the Theatre, the Place de la Lyre, and the Boulevard Gambetta. It is surrounded by an unbroken emceinte of fortifi- cations, bristling with batteries, towers, bastions, and embrasures, flanked by citadels and forts. Of the appearance of the inside, an idea is best obtained by walking round the upper town, which is still comparatively unaltered, retaining the ancient low, flat-roofed houses, from which no sound issues, leaning against each other as if for mutual support and shelter, the domes and minarets of some mosque, or the large trees of some jealously-closed garden rising here and there, making patches of shade in. the midst of the flood of sunshine. Here, too, the population has changed but little. Now, as before, there are Moors, Baldi, citizens of peaceful record; Jews, hated as infidels, but useful as traders; Arab and Kabyle peasants; Berranis, Biskris, and Mozabites, who are negroes practising petty trades, and carrying on barter on a small scale. From 20,000 to 25,000 slaves, from Io,000 to 20,000 renegades, with a few consuls, mission- VIEW FROM THE KASBA.-After a drawing by Boudier aries, and merchants, whose arrival is of later date, constitute the European element in the population. The yolalachs, or Turkish janissaries, alone have entirely disappeared. Recruited in Constantinople and the ports of the Levant, they formed the Odjak, or military power, and were the real 448 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Government. This turbulent soldiery very soon had enough of the pachas sent from Stamboul. They named their own deys, or chiefs, who trembled before their subjects. The dey who attempted to exercise his authority, or who even ceased to give satisfaction, was murdered at once. - The founders of the Regency were not really, strictly speaking, pirates. They waged a holy war at Sea, falling upon all Christians, much as the Knights of St. John fell upon all Mussulmans. But adventurers soon began to flock to Algiers, for they knew that there every resolute and brave man would be welcome, provided he was not hampered by scruples and did not object to assuming the turban; no one would ask him who he was or whence he came. One lucky coup-de-main was enough to give him wealth and fame. He took rank in the Corporation of the Taiffe among the reis, or captains; he had his fine house near the sea in the eastern quarter of the town, his haouchs, villas, or farms out in the country, his fleets, which he sent forth to win spoil, his slaves who toiled for him, or who formed part of his merchandise. Nowhere could he have enjoyed a happier or a freer life. We can well understand how such a life tempted those who had lost caste in European society, or those brave spirits ever ready to take fortune by storm. In the seventeenth century most of the - great reis, or captains, were renegades from Christianity. They came chiefly from the south—from Spain, Italy, Greece, Corsica, Provence; but there were also Northmen among them, such as Soliman from La Rochelle, Dansa the Fleming, and the English Edward. One Piccinino, a Venetian, became Ali-Bitchin, High Admiral of Algeria, owner of a whole fleet, with vast inland territories, and 3OOO or 40OO slaves. He never went forth without a following of fifty pages in silk costumes gleaming with gold, and a guard of Kabyles armed to the teeth. He cared not a rap for Mahomet or Islam. One day one of his slaves declared that he wished to become a Mussulman. Piccinino had him bastinadoed, and the poor fellow confessed that all he had wanted was a little change from working among the galley-slaves. “Thus,” says the captive Fleming Aranda, “could Pegelin,” as he calls Ali-Bitchin, “boast of having reconverted a renegade Christian by a good flogging.” These men, who have flung aside all restraint, do not wish to subject themselves to that of religious hypocrisy; and the people of Algiers, fanatic though they were, dazzled by the State, maintained by the adventurers, tolerated their insolence, which was dis. guised no more than their scepticism. s It was the renegade Simon Dansa who taught the Algerians the use of decked vessels in which they could venture far out upon the ocean. ALGIERS 449 But in the Mediterranean the galley was still preferred. This was a nar- row vessel, lying very low in the water, with scarcely any rigging, with none of the castle-like, imposing, but awkward structures in which Chris- tian mariners delighted. The guns, ammunition, and provisions were only what was absolutely necessary; one or two cannons, some shot and pow- der, biscuits enough for fifty days, a few jars of olive oil or of vinegar, and some barrels of water, which served as ballast. Only one cabin in the stern, to which the reis could retire. Two hundred rowers and about Ioo soldiers took their places on the plank seats. If the wind were favorable out at sea, full sail was set; but when land or another vessel came in sight, the sails were in- stantly furled, and the skill of the rowers came into play. Noth- ing was to be heard on board but the brief or- ders of the reis and the keeping time with the baton of the overseer of the galley-slaves, with the musical rhythm of 1oo pairs of oars strik- ing the water at regular intervals. The galley seemed to fly. Before a vessel of war it would flee at full speed, for not battle but pillage was the aim of the captain. Merchant vessels were what he sought: Spanish galleons, Italian tartans, Provençal barks. When the threatened vessel perceived the enemy, it was generally too late to escape. If it tried to flee, a volley of artillery would bring it to a stand, and the well-known cry, “Mena perros /" (Yield, dogs') would soon ring out. Bold, indeed, was he who dared resist. In most cases sailors and JEWISH GIRLS OF ALGIERS Engraved by Derbier, after the picture by Bridgman 20 450 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD passengers, paralyzed by terror, did not even attempt to defend themselves. A few moments were given by the captors to overhaul the prize, rapidly to estimate the value of the cargo, transship the prisoners, and the galley turned its prow towards Algiers. A few salvoes of artillery announced its return ; from the masts, dressed with silken streamers, waved the green pennants, strewn with crescents and stars. The cannons of the forts and batteries replied; the good news quickly spread through the town, and the sailors' quarter was quickly filled with a rejoicing crowd. The robbers returning from their raid were hailed as conquerors. Piracy was, in fact, the fundamental institution of Algiers; it was the one industry, the one trade, the daily bread of the town. The State's very existence depended on the share it deducted from the profits of piracy. Private speculators invested their money in privateering vessels, bought and sold the captured cargoes, and trafficked with special eagerness in human flesh. , The chief centre of commercial activity was at the Badistan, now the Place Mahon, where slaves were put up for sale. Those dressed in fine linen, with white hands, gentlemen, well-to-do citizens, or priests, fetched a good price, as they would probably be ransomed for large sums. As for common people, who were good for nothing but working slaves, their price varied according to their appearance, strength, and age. Once bought, the fate of the captives was not so very hard if they could bear patiently the sorrows of exile and servitude. They did not really suffer much until they were embarked as rowers. Chained to their seats, half naked and half starved, ever in terror of the stick or the sword, the most robust pined away. But this rough experience was only gone through once or twice a year. On land many of the slaves were only employed in light domestic work, and spent much of their time loitering about in the streets. Even in the bagnes, or convict prisons, which were half barracks, half places of confinement, where the pachas and chief captains kept, their prisoners, they sometimes found merry companions, who infected others with their gayety; or large-hearted men, who forgot their own sorrows in an endeavor to lighten the common misery. The religious Redemption- ists, the Trinitarians, founded by St. John of Matha, the Fathers of Mercy, the Lazarites, founded by St. Vincent de Paul, brought salvation to some, and to all a certain amount of the consolation of hope. The golden age of piracy was the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, when the power of the Spanish navy was broken and that of France was still of no account. In thirty years: the Algerians took 20,000 merchant vessels and captured 1,000,000 ALGIERS 45 I slaves, worth at least £500 each. After this, however, times became harder, and grand strokes of luck rarer. In the eighteenth century the decadence began, and in 1830, when the French at last entered Algiers as conquerors, the wet-docks were nearly empty, the convict prisons de- serted, and they found but 4oo captives to set free. From 1830 the scene changed rapidly, a new town growing up in the midst of the old, enclosing it, overflowing its boundaries, cramping it, and in the end destroying it. It is very much to be regretted that no 'one thought of respecting and preserving the old town of Algiers, and building quite a new city in the adjoining plain of Mustapha, where the vast circum- ference of the bay would have allowed of its natural and free development. But how could any one then, or in the immediately succeeding years, work out the grand lines of an harmonious plan, or foresee the far future, when all was uncertain for the morrow 2 Meanwhile the troops had to be lodged, officials to be installed, emigrants poured in and took up their quarters here, there, and everywhere; buying, selling, building began, and interests were established which had to be taken into account later. Thus, then, the modern town of Algiers grew up day by day under the changing impulses of the moment, according to the growing needs, speculations, and caprices of its inhabitants. Such as it is, in spite of the errors of taste and the shocking disparities it displays, it still remains one of the most attractive corners of the world, with an originality all its own, set, as it is, in the unique framework of the wonderful landscape of which it forms part. The Place du Gouvernement is the heart of modern Algiers. Imagine a long triangle, the three sides of which are formed by lofty houses, with arcades bright with shops, cafés, and stalls, cut across here and there by passages and side streets. The fourth side breaks the symmetry of the whole; it consists of a white mosque, the Djema El-Djedid, its battle- mented walls surmounted by domes and a cupola, above which rise the delicate outlines of the minarets, while beyond we catch sight of a wide vista disclosing the port and the sea, with the summits of Djurjura rising up into the deep blue vault of heaven. - In the streets leading from the Square, the Bab-Azoun, the Bab-el- Oued, and the Boulevard de la Republique, carriages dash, and heavily laden diligences and omnibuses jolt along with deafening noise. The terraces outside the cafés are crowded; street cries resound above the babble of conversation in many tongues, with an accompaniment of vivacious Southern gestures. In the long avenue of plane-trees opposite 452 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the mosque, groups promenade slowly to and fro, following or crossing each other, and now and then mixing together. The day's papers are out, the latest gossip or commercial news is discussed, the despatches from France are commented on or local questions talked over; trade contracts THE RUE DE LA KASBA.-Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Bridgman - are made; the Square is alike the Exchange and the Forum. A few yards from this busy scene, seated among the thicket of palms by the Regency, women chat together, old men and invalids inhale the soft air, idlers indulge in solitary reveries; and down there at the base of the bronze statue of the Duke of Orleans, little Biskri shoeblacks and sellers of Jewish matches; in a word, all the juvenile population of the place gambol and squabble with shrill cries, while full-grown Arab vagabonds carelessly expose their rags for sale in the sunshine. From each corner of the Place du Gouvernement leads an important ALGIERS 453 street; on the north and east the Rue Bab-el-Oued, or river gate, and the Rue de la Marine; on the west the Rue de la Kasba; on the south the Rue Bab-Azoun. The Rues Bab-el-Oued and de la Marine are the Algiers of the conquest; in the Rues Philippe D'Orleans, de la Charte, and Des Trois- Couleurs we are in the midst of the Monarchy of July. With the excep- tion of these large thoroughfares, the streets are a mere labyrinth of nar. row, tortuous, irregular alleys and lanes. The houses of the European quarter, hastily built of bad materials, are already crumbling to pieces, and are crowded together in ugly, unhealthy groups. But it is among them that we find, in dark corners, where they have been overlooked by the destroyer with his hammer, the most charming Moorish houses. The fronts of such houses are unpretending enough; bare walls, with but a few windows masked with gratings, a marble portico with a carved cedar pent- house. But the door opens, and one finds one's self in the skiffa, a long vestibule, in which one makes out dimly benches against the walls, divided into stalls, with delicate columns and capitals supporting the light arches so characteristic of Moorish work. Beyond this vestibule is a square court, surrounded by an arcade consisting of graceful pillars, and horse- shoe arches supporting galleries of similar style, but with variations in the form of the pillars, the carvings of the capitals, and the shapes of the arches. The rooms are set back round the central court, and are narrow, badly lighted, and only intended to sleep or doze in. In the half light the delicate carvings of the wainscots and the fine mouldings of the walls and ceilings entice one to examine them, and to trace in the arabesques the delicate workings of Moorish fancy. At the top of the house the white surfaces of the terraces stretch out like screens, impenetrable to the sun- light, and gleam beneath the harsh daylight. From the bottom of the house to the top we see everywhere carved wood, marble, varnished pottery, wonderful linen draperies, marvels of color. From the centre of the court comes the sound of the refreshing splash of a fountain; everything com- bines to produce an impression of sombre richness, without any discordant effort at show, without any of the paraphernalia of display. This is no decorated palace in which to hold receptions; it is the private, secluded, Oriental home, arranged with a view to pleasing the senses and resting the mind. Such were, such are indeed still—with the perhaps to some extent necessary though excessive alterations made by their new owners—the houses of Hassan-Pacha, of the daughter of the Sultan, and of Mustapha Pacha, which are now the Governor's Palace, the Episcopal Palace, and the 29* - \ 454 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Museum and Library—all more open to the daylight, more full of life than previously, but in which their ancient masters, if they could return, would doubtless miss with regret the voluptuous solitude so fitted for silent meditation. - Two mosques have survived intact in this quarter of the town. The Djama-el-Kebir, or Grand Mosque, very vast, very ancient, but of historic interest alone. The sixty-two pillars dividing the nave and supporting the semicircular arches remind us of the general arrangement of the interior of the Mosque of Cordova, but only as a rough sketch resembles a masterpiece. The Zaonia of Sidi Abd-er-Rahman-eth-Thalebi is situated half-way up the hill, its graceful minarets, with rows of little columns, and the gleaming painted tiles rising from the midst of the greenery of the Jardin de Marengo. - - There is a tide in the affairs of towns as of men. There was a day when every arrival or every departure of a vessel filled the inhabitants of the marine quarter with tumultuous joy. Now the floating dock is no longer the scene of disembarkation; gone is the Gate of France, through which filed the old African regiments with lofty shakos gleaming in the sunlight; only a few scattered peasants, and at the hour of prayer a few devout Mussulmans, now pass through the deserted arcades on their way to the Grand Mosque. There is more life in the Rue Bab-el-Oued; on fête days especially there are crowds of country folk, the men in round shirts and felt-hats, the women in thin cloth petticoats and brilliantly- colored shawls, with a white silk handkerchief on their black hair. Just within and outside the Gates is the Faubourg de la Canteire, which is the Spanish quarter where congregate carriers, masons, navvies from Valencia, washer-women and cigarette-makers. Often the silence of the sleeping streets is broken in the darkness of the night by the noise of nocturnal revellers, or the sound of the guitar is mixed with the nasal notes of a serenade by some Andalusian movio or bridegroom-elect. - - In the quarter of the Kasba, or Citadel, the inhabitants are chiefly native Mussulmans and Jews, with a sprinkling of French artisans. The Citadel, rising from a height of 120 metres above the sea, originally con- sisted of an emceinte of lofty brick walls enclosing a palace, a mosque, a powder - magazine, a park of artillery, shops, stables, gardens, even a menagerie. Here alone was the Dey in safety, with his 200 cannons pointing, some seaward, some onto the town, some inland. A road was cut right through the Kasba after the siege, and its character thus com- pletely destroyed; now the fortifications, degraded from their original MOORISH FOUNTAIN.- Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Bridgman use, are rapidly losing their distinctive, features. The famous pavilion in which the last Dey, Hussein, struck the French Consul Deval with his fan and ruined his own cause, is still known as the Pavilion de l'Eventail; but it is rapidly falling into decay, though it has suffered less than many other portions of the Kasba. Steep streets, parts of them rising in actual steps, known as the Rues de la Kasba, Porte Neuve, and Medee, lead from the lower town to the 456 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD plateau on which the Citadel was built. If one climbs half-way up any one of them and turns to the right or the left, one finds one's self in a perfect labyrinth of extraordinary alleys, not one of which is level or straight. These alleys run into each other at every turn, now leading up an ascent so steep that one can hardly climb it, then plunging down an all but per- pendicular slope. Moorish houses, all of one style, all small, badly built, and wretched looking, line these passages. With grave mien and meas- ured steps the Moors go up and down the alleys, in full trousers, wide sashes, and light vests, leading by the hand little brown boys in costumes fit for masquerades; then Come, perhaps, some native chiefs dressed in ample white garments, setting off their fine bronzed faces and flowing black beards, and relieved by the red ribbon of some decoration and the short morocco-leather boots; then Arabs or Kabyles in filthy burnouses which are never taken off and never washed, hanging in ragged fringes about their long bare legs. Here in his stall, or with his flat basket on his back, is the hawker of sweetmeats, oil cakes, and fried fish, or of oranges, watermelons, and bananas; the Arab shoemaker, making his heelless shoes; the currier, cutting out saddle-bags and purses in red leather; the Mozabite grocer, with his many-colored gamdoura and his black face with its long beard and two little shining eyes; the Biskri coal-heaver, wearing nothing but an old sack; the caouadji, looking after his store—all these men of many races, many occupations, are quiet, grave, and rarely indulge in words. Now and then a travelling peddler gives vent to his professional cry, some passers-by pause to greet each other, exchanging a few guttural remarks and ceremonious Salaams, or a quarrel arises, when voices are raised, and the rich repertory of Arab curses is supplemented by oaths in patois and in French. In the distance we hear a ripple of laughter and snatches of song resembling the chirping of birds, which proceed from a party of women on their way to a Moorish bath enveloped in the haik, which allows nothing to be seen but the upper part of the face lighted up by large soft eyes, and the tiny feet coquettishly shod in fine stockings and patent-leather shoes. If one wishes to see the upper town at its best, when it teems with life and animation, one must visit it during the Mussulman fêtes, at the Molid au Meðee or Birthday of the Prophet, the Beyram, or the nights of the Ramadan. When one can no longer distinguish a white from a black thread, the fast is broken and the nocturnal fete commences. The air seems full of a tumultuous joy which mounts to the brain, quickens the pace, loosens the tongue, and increases the compass of the voice. The ALGIERS 457 Moorish cafés, in which every available candle and lamp is alight, are crowded; the flames flicker on painted shelves, cut-out paper, illuminators, little looking-glasses, and fluttering tinsel. The whole quarter is instinct with merriment. Fresh-shaved and wearing their brightest finery, a tuft of jasmine stuck behind the ear, the musicians beat the derbouka, blow sharp notes upon their shrill little flutes, or drone forth melancholy ditties in nasal tones. There is nothing of this kind about Bab-Azoun. With its new blocks of buildings, its lofty houses four or five stories high, its shops on the model of those in Paris or Lyons, a theatre where the proprietors are rigid in their scrutiny of singers, accepting or declining their services according to merit alone, with processions of prome- naders who walk at the same pace at the same time every day, one might be tempted to compare this quarter with the most commonplace provincial towns of Europe. But this first impression does not last. A powerful interest soon enchains the attention. Look attentive- ly at the people who pass; they belong to every race, and yet there are, so to speak, no strangers among them. All are parts of the life here, all share in the society of Algiers, all have adopted French manners, all are impregnated with French ideas. You are no longer in an Arab, a Turkish, or a Spanish town; you are in a French city. This Algiers is a living, thinking, working, RUE DE LA MER ROUGE growing entity. In fact, it is on this Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Boudier side alone that Algiers has developed, scaling the heights and creeping up by way of the slopes of Rovigo to the foot of the Kasba, spreading beyond the old ramparts on the south, the Faubourgs of its merchants rising along the shores of the bay. If in search of the picturesque in scenery, Bab-Azoun, with its gates opening onto the country and its Boulévard de la Republic suspended, so to speak, above the sea, will meet our need. Down below are the green slopes and the winding roads where each turn reveals a new horizon, 458 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD bounding a wide view, and little shady paths, or old Roman highways buried among the trees, fresh valleys, and wild ravines overgrown with luxuriant vegetation. Here, spread out beneath the balustrade of the vast balcony, we see the wide ocean with the long line of docks, quays, and warehouses, with great wagons on their way to unload, and crowds of mer- chants, commissionnaires, and messengers hurrying to and fro. Beyond lies the port with steamers coming in and out, passengers hailing them, boats threading their way in and out, the rattling of windlasses, the blowing-off of steam, and now and then above all these other noises the mighty voices of the sea and the wind. Far away in the north gleams the limitless dis- tance, dotted here and there with white sails or the smoke of steamers. Sometimes when the sun sets behind the town the bay glows as with the reflection of a conflagration, for a few moments the whole ocean is of a rose color; but the sky soon pales, its glowing tints fade and die away, swallowed up by the twilight. - .* - TºlliſiºWilſº ::::. Öğ | §§ N N º º SW R; Qºg) Sºlſº - | t {} | | . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zº //ºllº º, º * * , . º, º: 2. “ - A ſº - ! 2. ſº } | tºº. -- T - ~~Y-- sº C . ... " - a *- º º * ºš AMSTE RDAM F all the capitals of Europe there is not one which arouses greater astonishment or leaves a more enduring impression upon the mind of the traveller than Amsterdam; nor is there one more interesting or quaint to the wanderer, or of which the study is more fas- cinating. And this is not surprising, for one might seek in vain in Europe for a town offer- ing in an equal degree that quality so valued in the present day, and which is appreciated by our own generation beyond any other—Origi- nality. In fact, the scene presented by this unique A DUTCH. WOMAN capital has nothing in common with anything Engraved by Floriº, after a lithograph by to be seen elsewhere, and the only comparison Lunois any one has dared to make between it and any other place has been to liken it to the Queen of the Adriatic, and call it the Venice of the North. Nor can it be denied that the history of these two celebrated towns presents certain analogies. Situated, as both are, on a bay at the edge of a promontory, they both owe their unrivalled prosperity to their maritime commerce. Governed by a patrician bourgeoisie, or middle class, jealous of its power and impatient-of the slightest control, they enjoyed the privilege of Republican institutions for several centuries, when Republicanism was altogether banished from the rest of the world. Practising, too, religious tolerance, they could, thanks to the independence of their spirit, traffic openly with heretics, and the northern and southern cities alike became emporiums of the costly merchandise of Asia. Relying entirely for their supremacy upon their naval forces, most of their military glory accrued to 462 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD them through the valor of their crews and the efficiency of their vessels of war. Dreading the ambition of victorious generals, and distrusting the passive obedience of the soldiery, they generally trusted the defence of their territory to mercenaries; but this apparent disinterestedness never jeopardized their confidence of victory, or prevented them from confronting the most powerful princes, or resisting the most formidable coalitions. Truly these two great and noble cities had ever many points in common And if from politics we pass to literature and art, the analogy is still striking. European connoisseurs think as highly of Amsterdam as of Venetian first editions, and the development of art has been almost identi. cal in both places. Architecture in Amsterdam, though totally different from architecture in Venice, has yet the same marked individuality. Sculpture, on the other hand, was only produced by outsiders in either town. Then, again, Amsterdam and Venice have both ever been devoted to music, yet have neither given birth to one musical genius. To make up for this, however, each city has produced about an equal number of great painters, who, in spite of certain special qualities in the work of every indi- vidual, have all won about the same glory, and have all been criticised in very much the same way. This would appear enough to justify a com- parison between the two ports; but, as a matter of fact, none of these sin- gular coincidences had anything to do with the surname alluded to above as having been given to Amsterdam. In the sixteenth century, when the coming grandeur of Amsterdam, groaning as it was beneath a foreign yoke, was but in embryo, Guicciar- dini, and all the writers who succeeded him, gave to it the title of the “Venice of the North,” although at the time in which they lived there was nothing either in the political situation or the art of Amsterdam to justify the surname. What, then, was their reason for such a glorious comparison? Simply that the physical construction of the two towns was singularly alike, and that they resembled each other in a way much more easily noticed than could have been the subtle analogies which are now matters of history. Both were built on piles, both were intersected by numerous canals, and the houses of both rose from islands connected by hundreds of bridges. This, and this alone, was the reason that the apologists of Am- sterdam gave to it the beautiful name of the “Venice of the North.” Must we add that, after all, the similarity of construction and general arrangement is really not great enough to justify this definition. Truth to tell, in spite of their canals and bridges, few towns could really be more unlike. To begin with, sun and sky differ greatly in the north and south, AMSTERDAM 463 and there is nothing in the greenish waters of the Zuyder-Zee at all resem- bling the blue waves of the Adriatic. This alone is enough to make a marked difference between the two. In what, then, does the gleaming city, with the clearly-defined outlines of its façades and the rosy contours of its palaces, rising up with calm dignity from its lagoons, resemble the brown THE NEW RAILWAY STATION AT AMSTERDAM Engraved by Ruffe, after the water-color drawing by Béthune and melancholy town of the north, its narrow, pointed houses standing sharply out with jagged, rugged distinctness against the colorless though silvery sky? The one seems to radiate with sunshine, the other to have absorbed all the light. As a matter of fact, then, the first impression of the two places is really quite different, and the difference becomes more marked on a closer acquaintance. The very canals, which are dwelt upon so much and origi- nally gave rise to a surname now hackneyed, are very far from resembling each other, and each has a character all its own, the quaint effects of per- spective resulting from a vast diversity of causes, which never exactly repeat themselves. In 452, when Attila was devastating Italy, the Veneti, who had estab- lished themselves on the shores of the Adriatic, in their turn fled before the 464 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD invader and took refuge on the neighboring islands, which they hastily fortified. In 568, after an invasion of Lombards, having thus received a new contingent of emigrants, they succeeded in founding their aquatic city upon uncertain and shifting soil; and to this accidental origin, supple- mented by equally accidental additions, Venice owes the unique irregu- larity, the touchingly ephemeral appearance, which makes up half her charms. - - It was very unlike this on the shores of the Amstel, and things came about in a fashion altogether different. The fishermen, who had built their primitive huts in the midst of the vast marshes of Holland, were driven from them in the thirteenth century by the Kennemers; their dikes were cut, their embankments thrown down, and their houses demolished. But hardly had the rush of invaders ceased than, with thoroughly Batavian obstinacy, they hastened back to take possession of the ungrateful soil, set up a new dike, that Dam, now so famous, which in course of time became the heart of their celebrated city, and which could, on an emergency, serve as a refuge to the whole population, the rest of the land being laid under water. Then, making this the nucleus of their future operations, these hard-working, persevering, and indomitable men sent forth, like rays, a series of other dikes, on which they erected houses flanked with quays. Thus, by degrees, the new quarters sprung apparently from the water, grad. ually assuming the form of a huge fan, of which the gulf formed the base and innumerable canals the spread, these canals all leading to the harbor. It is to this ingenious plan, religiously carried out by ten generations, that Amsterdam owes its characteristic appearance, and to this sensible combination of land and water it also owes its position alike as the best- managed maritime town and one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe. Thanks to its peculiar construction, the vessels which have gone forth from the docks to the conquest of the world during two centuries have been able to load and unload their rich cargoes at the very gates, so to speak, of their owners. And later, when, to meet the needs of modern navigation, huge vessels supplanted the old, low-lying craft, merchants were so unwilling to sacrifice the advantages of a position so unique that they did not shrink from the expense of cutting two waterways right through the promontory jutting out into the Y, now so celebrated all the world over, thus enabling homeward-bound vessels from the Indies and Japan to enter the port. And here comes in the difference between Amsterdam and Venice; the former has never ceased to endeavor to retain and improve the original AMSTERDAM 465 advantages of its situation, thus retaining much of its wealth, commercial activity, and renown, while the latter has been content to slumber on, dreaming of grandeur past. So for the future we will lay aside this time- honored comparison, which is more quaint than just; for it really has noth- ing to do with giving to Amsterdam its character as the most original city in the world. By a strange anomaly, however, although we should expect it to be the residence of all the officials, this quaint capital is not the seat of the AMSTERDAM.–Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Laurent Desrousseaux Government to which it owes its rank and title; and neither members of the Executive, legislators, nor lawyers, live at Amsterdam; King, Court, and Diplomatic Corps all reside at La Haye; and it is at La Haye that the 30 466 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD ministers meet, and the sessions alike of the minor and the supreme courts are held. Nor does Amsterdam even secure the presence of the Governor of the Province, or of the members of the Provincial Council, for they all live at Haarlem; so that, judging from appearance, I really might jokingly assert that the capital is like a huge head without any brains. For all that, however, there is nothing in this strange seclusion—which - may be explained by the jealous and defiant love of independence, which is a marked feature of the national character—to prevent Amsterdam from exercising, on every occasion of any importance, a preponderant influence on the destinies of a country in which local autonomy, or self-government, is carried further than anywhere else. As a matter of fact, as early as the sixteenth century, Amsterdam was so rich, so powerful, so densely populated, that when the other towns had got rid of the Spanish and won their emancipation from foreign domina- tion, they at once began to be afraid that their own capital would abuse its authority, subordinating their interests to its own, and tyrannizing over them. So they insisted that the central power should have its headquar- ters, not in a fortified town which could easily be transformed into a for- tress, and from which laws could be dictated to the rest of the State, but in a huge village open to all comers. For this reason La Haye was chosen, first for the meeting of the States-General, and later as the resi- dence of the Stadtholder, or Chief Magistrate. Amsterdam accepted this decision without opposition. By a desertion only apparent, she gained the rare and precious privilege of being absolute mistress of her own destinies; and little did she care for the outward signs of power when her vast resources insured to her the reality. Of course, the Province of Holland, like her six sister provinces, had but one repre- sentative in the Chamber of Deputies, and could speak but once; and in the counting of votes, the voice of her member was worth no more than that of the deputy from Guelderland or Over-Yssel; but when it came to a question of ways and means, and each province was free to give or withhold effective aid, it was quite enough for Holland, who could give 58 per cent. in the general contributions, to withdraw, to render all action impossible. And, just as Holland exercised a determinating influence in a States- General, so did Amsterdam, by similar means, hold the casting vote in pro- vincial matters. And thus did this strangely-constituted community, hav- ing within her boundaries neither princes, Court, nor legislators, remain for three centuries the arbiter of the destinies of the Low Countries. AMSTERDAM 467 Amsterdam, in fact, managed so well every- thing connected with the Government; she was so wise in the conduct of foreign affairs; her au- thority at home was so absolute, and so complete- ly held in check that of the other provinces, that the only coup d'états, or insurrections, recorded in the history of the Low Countries were aimed di- rectly at her, and only twice did her Grand Pen- sionaries, as her Prime- ministers are called, pay with their lives for the excess of their power. The influence and authority of Holland was so universally recognized abroad that from the sev- enteenth century it be. came customary to merge under that title the whole of the Low Countries, al- though as a matter of fact it could only be prop- erly applied to one of the seven provinces. More- over, the position of the municipality of Amsterdam was so little questioned in Holland itself, that when, at the beginning of this century, the Monarchy replaced the time-honored Republic, the new king did not dream of any other palace than the Stadthuis, from which the Communal Council had so long dic- tated laws to the whole country. This supremacy of a commune deserves special notice in a century THE OUDE SCHANS AND THE ZUYDER. KERK Engraved by Ruffe, after a pastel by George Hugo 468 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD during which the claims of the French Communists have led to the shed. ding of so much blood and of so many tears. - The old Town-hall of Amsterdam, now the residence of the King, rises in the very heart of the city from the Dam, which, as already stated, became the centre of the town, after having been its nucleus, and, indeed, its very raison d'être. The Palace is well known to and much admired by architects; and its massive grandeur, its somewhat heavy regularity with its noble proportions, have led to its being ranked among the most re- markable of modern buildings; and although with Quatremère de Quincy we are compelled to admit that “the use of the two orders, one above the other, in the façade,” give to the whole structure a certain monotony of appearance, its undoubted majesty and the imposing solemnity of its pro- portions aptly represent the proud Municipality which made the Low Countries so rich and Amsterdam so powerful. Unfortunately, the site is not altogether suited to the noble size and sturdy magnificence of this giant in stone. The form of the square known as the Dam is irregular, and there is no symmetry about the houses adjoin- ing the Palace; indeed, they are altogether wanting in the dignity, the grace—in a word, the air of distinction—so characteristic of other buildings in Amsterdam, notably of those on the Heerengracht, or Canal of the Nobles; but the absence of grandeur does not prevent the Dam from remaining, as ever, the centre, the very heart of the city. From it spring all the chief thoroughfares: the Warmoestraat, cele- brated ever since the sixteenth century, and the Nieuwe Dijk, which leads to the port; the Damstraat, and the Kalverstraat, which runs through the most densely populated portions of the city; and, lastly, the widest of the canals, that known as the Rokin, which takes the waters of the Amstel to the sea. It is on the Dam, about the Metal Cross and the Exchange, that merchants and others congregate all day long, especially when the signal- bell rings; and here start the gay-looking tramcars, which circulate all over the town. And of all the thoroughfares leading from the Dam, the busiest, brightest, gayest is the Kalverstraat; it has been called the Rue Vivienne of Amsterdam, and it might also be aptly dubbed the Boulevard des Ital- iens. It is, in fact, the rendezvous of foreigners, visitors from the prov- inces, and idlers, and the favorite route of bankers on their way to the Exchange, as well as of young ladies on the lookout for a beau. It is in the wonderful shop-fronts of the Kalverstraat, with plate-glass windows like huge looking-glasses, that are displayed all the costly luxuries imported AMSTERDAM 469 from Paris or London. There, too, are the tasty cafés and restaurants, dear to idlers and gourmands; and here, too, is the quaint Dutch fish-shop, familiarly called the oesterhuis, where, in the long winter evenings, the juicy oysters of Zeeland are washed down with sparkling champagne, pale ale, or Rhine wine. - At whatever hour one passes through it, the Kalverstraat is sure to be full of life and traffic. It is scarcely quiet even between three and five o'clock in the morning; and for the rest of the twenty-four hours it is fuller than any other thoroughfare I know of. It is, however, liveliest at the time of business meetings at the Exchange, and between eight and eleven o'clock in the evening. In summer, when the weather is fine, the pavement is so crowded that it is almost impossible to turn round; and the café overflows into the street, the street into the café. The crowd sways and surges to and fro in an aimless manner, and the scene in this thoroughfare alone is enough to prove that Amsterdam is the capital of a rich and industrious nation. All this wonderful activity is, however, displayed in a rather restricted space, for the Kalverstraat is relatively narrow. At the widest parts it is not more than from eight to ten metres across, and here and there the width is still further diminished by the granite posts and massive iron chains, protecting some house in Dutch fashion, or a flight of the little gray steps, so characteristic of the domestic architecture of Amsterdam, takes up the whole of the pavement. Nor is the Kalverstraat very regular or well laid down; in fact, here and there it describes quite serpentine curves; and there is nothing digni- fied about the houses, most of which are narrow. There are plenty of wider, straighter, and better built streets in Amsterdam; but it is to this the public have given their preference—a preference retained for a century and a half. And the foreigner should beware of despising it, for it is a regular epitome of the whole town, a sketch which has caught the very spirit of the mighty city. Here, for instance, to begin with, flourish the best circles of society— the circles, or, as they say in Holland, the societeiten, which play so impor- tant a part in the social life of Amsterdam. There are the Patrician Circle, and the Middle Class Circle; yes, even the Shopkeepers' Circle; and without this Circle each set of people would be like a body without a soul. The Kalverstraat, where it starts from the Dam, is between the headquarters of two Circles, which are, so to speak, its frontispiece, giving character to its commencement. Then as we go down it we come in due 30% - 47 O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD course to other Circles, notably that known as the Doctrina et Amicitize Circle, in the salons of which the elite of the commercial world have been in the habit of meeting ever since 1788. Beyond the Circles come numerous shops, hotels, and cafés, then a Catholic church—not rising proudly up from the street with grand portal and bell-tower, but shrinking timidly back, as in the time when liberty of -- :*:::::::::::-...-: † -º-º: 2-ºxº: 32: gº .*.* * ...” - 3. tº # “ . . . ; | | | | || º \\ º § | º WWWW \\ § ...”. A DUTCH WOMAN.—After a drawing by Vuillier, AMSTERDAM * 47 I conscience was a thing unknown, hiding itself in a house set well back, and disguised with a shop-front which bears the quaint sign of the parrot (Papegaai). . A few steps farther we reach the Municipal Orphanage (Burgerwees. Auis), the young inmates of which are often met in the town, wearing the quaint black and red costumes of tradition, which are rather becoming to the girls, the old-fashioned style contrasting well with their fresh, rosy, and often very pretty faces. No long study of the history of the United Netherlands is necessary for us to learn how large a part enlightened benevolence has ever played among the sensible Dutch people, and the Municipal Orphanage may be looked upon as a typical institution. As we advance down the street we presently perceive, on the other side, some wide ogival-headed bay-windows, a long row, and a little spire pointing up to heaven. This is to Protestants the Nieuwezijds Kapel, or chapel, on the new side of the town, and to Catholics the Heiligstede, or Holy Spot. Originally a Roman Catholic church, erected, as were so many others, on a site sanctified by miracles, this ancient structure has shared the fate of its compeers, changing name and use alike in the sev- enteenth century. The new creed has displaced the old, and an austere service is substituted for the brilliant and imposing ceremonies of the past. Nearly all the Protestant places of worship have a similar history, especially the largest and handsomest, such as the Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk (old and new churches), and the Walloon church, which was origi- nally a dependency of a Pauline monastery, with many others. This proof of the mutability of all things, human and divine, would supply material for many a high-sounding and philosophical dissertation, and might lead us to discuss the religious question, still the cause of so much controversy in the Low Countries; but we will steer clear of that rock. - A few steps farther on we cross the Spui. Once over the bridge, we are in the second part of the Kalverstraat, which ends on this side at the Tower of the Exchange, the carillon of which rings out every quarter of an hour, answering the challenge of its colleague from the King's Palace on the other side of the road. The carillon has been a perfect passion with the people of Amsterdam for the last three centuries. This second portion of the Kalverstraat is not so lively as the first. It is more serious and proper looking, for it is not so much frequented by women of the lower classes, whom the Dutch quaintly call the light cavalry. On Saturday and Sunday, however, it is very bright and full of animation. Saturday is, of course, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Jewish * \ - 472 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD girls avail themselves of it to display all their most ravishing costumes, the street echoing with their happy chattering and merry laughter; while on Sunday the Christian population pass through it on their way to take their traditional walk in the Vondelspark. This park, moreover, is a beautiful garden, laid out under the direction and kept up by the patronage of the greatest poet Holland ever produced. True, it is rather wanting in natural diversities of level, but mount- ains—nay, even hills—are quite unknown on the shores of the Amstel; and if the umbrageous | trees are not very lofty, their re- | º | cent origin must not be forgot- | ten, for a forest is the last thing that can be made in a short time. In fact, only twenty-five | years ago this park, with its |*|| marsh, surrounded, as far as the winding avenues, was but a eye could reach, with a vast polder. Now the neighboring districts are covered with houses, | | * of the bricks gleaming among the green foliage; gardens sur- A QUAY IN THE JEws' QUARTER rounded with open trellis-work, or by a ditch kept full of water, delight the passer-by with their gay flower-beds, while luxuriant creepers cover the fronts of the houses, drooping from the balconies, and draping the very gables of the quaint façades. and bright little villas stand out against the sky, the warm tints Engraved by Bellanger, after a picture by Ph. Zilken In less than a quarter of a century a new suburb, almost a town, has risen up from this swampy tract—a suburb of delicious freshness and originality of character, which may be looked upon as the tribute paid by AMSTERIDAM - 473 the present generation to the old Batavian capital. And every Sunday a crowd pours forth to this beautiful Eden, which is truly worthy of the love it receives. This Dutch Bois de Boulogne is reached by way of the Heiligensteeg, the Place Royale, the long Leydenstraat, and the Leidsche-Barrière, passing on the left the House of Detention and Correction, the gloomy character of which would not be suspected but for the statues above the door, repre- senting Justice unmoved among a crowd of chained criminals; and on the right the Grand Theatre, which was recently burned, after enjoying for a century the reputation of being the best house for sound in Europe. In this rather long walk we pass through half the town, crossing the three canals which, in their triple circuit, form a semicircular enclosure to Amsterdam. Protestants and Catholics alike, on certain days of the week, go in crowds to the Vondelspark, to breathe the pure air and listen to the music beneath the shady trees; and the Saturday visitors seem to have but one aim, and that is, to get away from the smells peculiar to their own quarter, which, in spite of every effort of the authorities, remain badly kept and odorous, forming a complete contrast to the rest of the town. For in justice to Holland it must be added that all her cities are of marvellous cleanliness; and Amsterdam excels even her sister towns in this respect. The women servants of the capital are, in fact, absolutely unrivalled. “They rub, they wash, they scrub The walls, the doors, the floor, The attics, the courts, the kitchen.” Strong and fresh, with bare arms and necks, and wearing a little white cap or a kind of yellow helmet on their heads, they seem to have a perfect passion for cleaning the fronts of the houses and the pavements. Bright, courteous, and merry, they brush the walls, scour the tiles, polish the brass ornaments, clean the windows, and rub up the wood-work with unflagging zeal. Every day they spend hours washing the insides of the houses, and once a week, on Saturday, they deluge them from top to bottom, polish them up thoroughly, and sometimes even whitewash them. A perfect arsenal of cloths, brushes, and sponges is sacred to this grand function; and nothing amuses the foreigner more than to see these fair young girls perched on ladders or leaning out of windows, apparently suspended in the air, sacrificing everything to what Maxime du Camp has justly called "hysté. zze de la propreté, which may perhaps be translated the mania for cleanliness. 474 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD % % %* º* %%ź % %-- º / % £ . º % Ø § % % % A.% ſ i | *&º -Fº§ %º §%- % % $% It will readily be understood that this cleanliness brings into vivid relief the chronic dirtiness which unfortunately distinguishes the Jewish quarter, which is alike the most densely populated and the quaintest in Amsterdam. For it is one of the peculiarities of this great city that, having accorded to the Israelites civil equality when they were persecuted everywhere else, it still retains, even in the nineteenth century, a kind of ghetto. These noisy Israelites, with their crooked fingers and hooked noses, number, in fact, some 20,000, and are cooped up in the same restricted quarter they have in- habited for some ten \ \ . ºtſ T º W \\\\\\\\ WW t F: it. t; # i | # # t ; : % r generations—a quarter W \ W. % | º o º cy its denizens have most sacred possession, owners, but by actual bor of refuge to which | º º the sunny native land %fift |] % % |ºll}}|…}} ºWAll!) bitter wind, the frost Fº - * * ** - tº º Cº- Sºº-y =º - W \\ \\ | s: e º te © º º º which is specially inter- \\ W º/// ; ſº º e * y º º i esting and picturesque \ \º º for living in the open air. Whereas, with the and is defended from intrusion, not only by chains and posts, grat- ings, spring blinds, and the father retires in the bosom of his family; . ſº #,. '' . - : '''', 1 - Nº. ºft, . º º ſ ſ % sº % º of their forefathers, pass # % %\\\\\\\ all their time in the s #### t;-- - rtº ... - F----- • * , A* I - #:////// W ' ', º wº and snow, the fog, the drizzling rain, and the \ W º º ſº º on account of the fan- º º "Tº A ſº º *::. º ſ" % - Dutch, the home is the the cold reserve of its screens, fencing the har- ſº se ſº º||M|. the Jews, exiled from ºft\{ºff ſº º \º streets in spite of the ' | A DUTCH woMAN.—After a drawing by Marold gales and storms of the AMSTERIDAM - 475 dreary north. They encumber the foot-path, they sit on their door-steps, and as they are all tradesmen, their stalls set out in the open air convert their quarter into a kind of perpetual fair. - And what a display their goods make Just Heaven l No human eye ever beheld a more curious collection of wares, a more wonderful assortment of old-fashioned utensils, or of many-colored, uninviting comesti- bles, the faded colors rendered still more indistinct by the steam and fumes ever ascending from the cook-shops below. Here are stained, crumpled, frayed-out ball dresses side by side with old boots with down-trodden heels, battered helmets, and moth-eaten uniforms. Broken, cracked, and chipped china is mixed up with seatless chairs, torn books, and the silkless ribs of umbrellas. Mutilated plaster statuettes hobnob with dried fish, dirty tulle caps with pickled cucumbers, while broken fans, shakos with visors gone, and bullocks' livers, form a revolting mixture, more horrible, more unex- pected than the worst imaginings of a disordered brain on a sleepless night. To all this must be added a perpetual hurrying to and fro, a continual jostling with an accompaniment of strident cries and angry discussions about a cent, or even less, of price for some coveted object. While to com- plete the picture, at every story of the houses appear the heads of women with dishevelled hair, or false fronts made of horsehair and silk, stout vira- goes, who gesticulate and shout in piercing voices at the crowd of ragged, unwashed, squalid children, grovelling in the gutter and breathing the foul emanations from it. Look, too, at the name of the street opening on your left: Vlooijen- burgerstraat. This long word has a terrible meaning, all its own, and may be translated “Lice Lane.” At the end of this alley, on the other side of the canal, is a block of houses called the Vloijenburg, “Flea Castle.” At Amsterdam no one dreams of taking exception to these personalities, and at La Haye there is a Rue aux Poux, or Vermin Street. The name is in fact borrowed from the East, and there are few towns of the Levant where the old clothes market has not some such title. We must add that the streets we have just been through are by no means the most densely popu- lated or the most neglected of the strange and quaint Jewish quarter. Turning to the right, we find ourselves in a net-work of even dirtier alleys, with houses covered with cracks, and slums decorated with squalid rags hung out to dry on poles, in which houses live a degraded, filthy set of people, wallowing in their own mire, and seeming the more wretched, the more unnatural, from the contrast their quarter presents with the immacu- 476 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD late Dutch cleanliness of the rest of Amsterdam, a cleanliness which is indeed ranked next to godliness, if not higher than it. As we leave these scenes behind, their distinctive character and color are gradually effaced, and we can already breathe more freely by the time we reach the Meyersplein, from which rise the two synagogues that divide between them the care of the spiritual interests of the motley crowds in the Jewish quarter. The green foliage of the trees harmonizes well with the grand lines of the architecture, although the two buildings are more like huge shops than temples dedicated to the worship of God, and seem to be glaring at each other with the defiant air of two china dogs. But this, too, is one of the quaint characteristics of Amsterdam. Every one knows what a wonderfully united people the Jews are, and what great results have ensued from this fraternal solidarity. But on the banks of the Y it is different; rich or poor, well educated or ignorant, clean or dirty, the Jews of Amsterdam are divided into two great branches—I might almost say into two distinct nations—who not only live side by side without mixing, but are jealous of each other and hate each other cordially. The Portuguese Jews and the German Jews form two totally separate communities, and although their synagogues face each other on the same plein, the quarter we have just passed through is completely occupied by German Jews, whom their Portuguese coreligionists designate by the con- temptuous name of Smouseme. - As we leave this malodorous but picturesque district yet farther behind us, we come to the broad Amstel, flanked on either side by factories with lofty chimneys and façades, pierced with hundreds of windows, the bases washed by the waters of the flowing stream. These buildings form a kind of rampart to the Jewish quarter, and we remember that it is here that the art of cutting diamonds with wonderful skill has been handed down from father to son for many generations. The dexterity of the artisans engaged in this occupation is justly celebrated, and this valuable industry, which requires an eye so true, a hand so expert, and a training so unique, is exclusively concentrated among a few families who enjoy a sort of monopoly of practising it. But many other things claim our attention here, for this is one of the most wonderful quarters, not only of Amsterdam, but of any European town. We must not leave it without a glance at the grand Catholic church, which, perhaps, on account of the near neighborhood of the Meyers- plein, has been dedicated to Moses and Aaron, or at the Zuyder Kerk, or Church in the South, the lofty minaret of which is reflected in the tranquil | A JEWISH BROKER Engraved by Florian, after the picture by Israels AMSTERDAM 479 waters of the Groen-Burgwal, or at the Saint-Antoine Gate, the pointed towers of which rise so effectively beyond the Kloveniers Burgwal, or Arquebusier's Moat. Nor, above all, must we forget that it was in one of these picturesque streets that Rembrandt passed the most prolific years of his hard-working life. The day after his marriage with Saskia van Uylenburgh, he took up his residence with his bride in a pretty little house, partly of stone, partly of brick, which is still to be seen in the Jodenbreestraat, and is marked by a memorial tablet. At this time fortune smiled on him. His new home was moreover well chosen. He had but to raise his eyes to see the denticulated tower of the Zuyder Kerk, and from his window he could see the Oude Schans, overlooked by the Tower of Montalbaan, while at his feet constantly passed to and fro a motley crowd of the people, so many of whom will live forever in his pictures, and are typical examples of the great master's contemporaries. • - How many finished pictures, how many drawings, how many incom- parable engravings were the outcome of these daily opportunities for study! The “Pancake Woman,” the “Leper,” the “Synagogue,” the “Jew with the Large Cap,” the “Woman with a Leathern Bottle,” and a hundred other genial works prove with what zeal he explored this inexhaustible mine. He lived in this happily situated house for twenty years, and only left it when he had lost everything; his wife dead, his fortune dissipated, he took refuge from his remorseless creditors, by a strange irony of fate, on the Canal des Roses. Strange to say, it was on this very spot, near his old home, that what we may call the apotheosis of Rembrandt began, for this Kloveniers- Burgwal for three-quarters of a century owned on its quays the two best museums of Amsterdam: the Trippenhuis, or Royal Museum, and the Van der Hoop Museum, one of the finest galleries known.' It was to the Trippenhuis that we used to go to admire those wonders of wonders, the “Night Watch,” and the “Syndics of the Staalhof,” which would have been enough to render the name of Rembrandt immortal without any of the other wonderful creations of his genius. And round about this glorious nucleus cluster a number of great if lesser lights, all the masters of Holland being well represented here, including Franz Hals, Van der Helst, Bol, Flink, Terburg, Gerard Dov, the two Ostades, * The “Night Watch" is an erroneous title, as the scene is in daylight. The right name is the “Sortie of the Franz Banning Cock Company.”—TRANs. 48o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Paul Potter, the two Boths, Cuyp, Van Goyen, Hobbema, Ruysdael, Jan Steen, Karel, Dujardin, the three Van de Veldes, Nicolas Maas, and a hundred others, all well worthy of the great schools to which they belong. On the ground-floor of this celebrated museum was the room con- taining the engravings, and here the eyes, weary with the blaze of color in VIEW ON THE AMSTEL Engraved by Bellanger, after a picture by Ph. Zilken the galleries of painting, were able to rest in looking at those line engrav- ings and etchings which are the most exquisite poem in chiaroscuro ever produced. Now all these priceless art-treasures have been removed to another quarter of the town near the Vondelspark, through which we passed a little time ago, half-way between that bright pleasure resort and the Volksvlyt, or People's Palace. This flitting was, moreover, of urgent necessity, and eagerly hoped for by all true lovers of art. “The beautiful house of the Merchant Trip,” which enshrined so many masterpieces, was the most unsatisfactory, museum imaginable. The pictures were badly hung in low, narrow rooms, where it was impossible to get far enough away from them to see them, the only light coming from leaded lattice-windows AMSTERDAM 481 at the side, this light altering the tones of the colors, and destroying their relative values. Now Dutch art has absolutely nothing to complain of. Its master- pieces are housed in a palace worthy of them, in which are collected all the art-treasures owned by the wealthy City of Amsterdam. The new museum is, in fact, the Louvre, the Cluny Museum, and the Cabinet of Engravings of Amsterdam, and all the collections are spread out to advan- tage in a good light. The imposing façade of the beautiful building, known as the Ryks Museum, is an earnest of what we may expect inside, and once within its walls we feel that here, at least, true justice is done to art. We must remind our readers that it is not only the pictures of the old Trippenhuis which are contained in these grand rooms. In it are also housed the collections from the Van der Hoop Museum and the New Town-hall, for it must be remembered that the Municipality of Amsterdam did not remain homeless after it was moved out of the fine Palace on the Dam. - Rising from beside the moat of the old town is a huge building, the growth of many centuries, with a plain, undecorated, but dignified-looking façade, and with shady trees and ancient houses on either side; these houses, modest and humble-looking enough, are of marvellous cleanliness. Here once sat the august Court of the Admiralty; here, too, disembarked the Princes of Orange, when they came to visit the capital; and it was here that Marie de Médicis was hospitably entertained during her brief Sojourn in the Low Countries. “It is true enough,” says a contemporary chronicler, in quaint phraseology, “that a more superb and royal palace was due to so great a queen, but in so far as the memories connected with it were concerned, the town of Amsterdam could not have given her a more suitable residence.” - There can still be seen the room in which the Burgomasters came to welcome and pay their respects to the exiled queen, driven from France by her own son. On the evening of her arrival, they sent to ask her to choose the watchword for the night-guard, to show that they considered the town under her protection. Little did these brave Burgomasters and the Pen- sionary, William Boreel, sieur de Duynbeke, who accompanied them, dream that a century and a half later their successors would receive a polite notice to quit from a French monarch, and in their turn come to take up their residence in the gloomy building in which the exiled Queen of France had taken refuge. 3 I 482 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Now, robbed of its old art-treasures, and without its priceless pictures, there is little about the Stadhuis to attract the attention of the ordinary foreign visitor. On the other hand, the archaeologist finds much to study, for many of the archives, which are kept in excellent order, afford an alto- gether unexplored mine, and doubtless enshrine many secrets which would greatly surprise the historical student. If on leaving the Stadhuis we continue our walk, bearing a little to the right, we shall soon come again to the Amstel, or, rather, to “the Water,” as the people of Amsterdam call their beloved river. And, as a matter of fact, is not the Amstel the Water par excellence to the inhabit- ants of this grand and beautiful city ? Was it not from its waters that the little hamlet of fishing-huts arose that was one day to grow into one of the richest capitals of Europe P Does not this capital still owe its name to that stream 2 Amstederdam, contracted into Amsterdam, the original meaning of which is the dike or dam of the dwellers on the banks of the Amstel. What could more touchingly express the feelings of a people who have never been known to be ungrateful for the benefits they have received? In its course through the town the Water takes three names in succession: first, the Binnen-Amstel, or Lower Amstel, which is generally abbreviated into Binnen; a little farther, between the old walls of the town and the Dam, it is called the Rokin; and, lastly, after going under the Dam, it becomes the Damrak, which means the bend of the Dam. The last portion, however, has really ceased to exist, for it has been filled up and transformed into a boulevard. From a picturesque point of view, this so-called improvement is very much to be regretted, for the mill-stream was at one time certainly among the most wonderful corners of the old town, crowded as it was with big barges and great sailing-vessels, their masts draped with flags, and their reddish sails contrasting with the quaint, irregular, gabled, warmly-tinted brick houses, which rose up on either side, their bases actually washed by the greenish water, and the whole dominated by the bulging spire of the Oude Kerk. But the inhabitants of a city rarely care exclusively for the pictu- resque; what is daily before the eyes is seldom much appreciated, and a fine view generally has to yield in the long-run to the demand for the comforts of life. So the Damrak has been converted into a wide roadway, and it is not the only beauty of Amsterdam which has undergone a similar fate. Even earlier the Spui was filled in, and the tranquil waters of the THE MONTALBAAN TOWER Engraved by Bellanger, after a picture by Ph. Zilken AMSTERDAM - 485 port became intersected by lines of railway, with a huge terminus rising from a forest of piles. Now the air is rent by the shrieking of whistles, as the huge steam-engines drag a long line of heavily-laden trucks to the place where once the mighty ja/*s ran in before the wind, and steamers sent up their columns of smoke into the clear sky. The Rokin, however, is still almost as picturesque as was the Damrak ten or fifteen years ago. Here the quaint, sombre-hued houses still rise up side by side, with their entablatures painted light gray, their little blu- ish-gray granite steps, their posts and their chains, the almost too monoto- nous rows only broken here and there by some public institution, such as the building belonging to the Society of the Arti et Amicitize, or the Bank of Holland. At the end of the Rokin we come upon the Binnen again; and the Amstel suddenly widens, losing all resemblance to a canal, and assuming the grand appearance of a mighty river, with clear, deep waters. One wide-spanned bridge succeeds another, opening now and then to admit the passage of large vessels, while right and left the main stream is supple. mented by lateral canals. Cutting the Amstel at right angles on either side, these openings afford magnificent views of the Heerengracht, the Keizersgracht, and the Prinsengracht, which, as we cross the entrances to their canals, assume a dignity and an air of melancholy but most aristo- cratic reserve, which harmonize well with all that we know of their past grandeur. Of the three canals, the grandest, the best constructed, and the most beautiful is, without doubt, the Heerengracht, or Canal of the Nobles. It is well named, for from its banks rise the handsomest houses of the town—regular patrician dwellings in every sense. Nearly all the aristo- cratic families live on it; it is, in fact, the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Amsterdam. But there is no pretence, no bluster about this beautiful water thoroughfare; it has no ornate sculptures, no decorated façades, but all is simple and modest; the size alone of the houses indicating the importance of their residents. The Keizersgracht, the beautiful windings of which run parallel with those of its aristocratic neighbor, is as wide as the Heerengracht; and many of its houses are as well built as those just described. When Marie de Médicis went across it on her way to the residence prepared for her by the Municipality, “she was astonished,” says a contemporary writer, “at the long and continuous rows of houses, at their elegance, beauty, and commo- diousness.” Such was it in the seventeenth century, such it is to-day; 31* - 486 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD and if its huge, substantial-looking mansions are less affected by patrician families than those of its aristocratic neighbors, it yet has the honor of housing some of the most distinguished of the merchant princes and bank- THE PALEIS WOOR WOLKSWLYT Engraved by Bellanger, after a picture by Ph. Zilken ers of Amsterdam. We have now reached the third great circular artery of Amsterdam, the Prinsengracht, or Canal of the Princes, the name of which, if it was ever appropriate, is so no lon- ger; for it is now the res- idence of none but art- ists, petty traders, artisans, clerks, watermen, and fish- ermen, a population full of character, and often wonderfully picturesque, but without much cult- ure. On the other hand, it is far more animated than its sister waterways. Flanked as it is by wine- shops, well provided with gleaming barrels, and bris- tling with glistening flag- ons, its windings are the same as those of the older Heerengracht and Kei- zersgracht, and, like them, it is cut into two almost equal portions by the Bin- nen-Amstel. The last named, between the wide quays of which we now wend our way, ends at a great bridge known as the Great Dam. From this bridge a view is obtained of the whole of the southern side of the city, just as in olden times the whole of the open port could be seen. Never was there a quainter, a more richly colored, or a more fascinating scene than that presented by this stream some 200 metres wide, with its bridges and flotilla AMSTERDAM 487 of boats, its banks lined with venerable trees, and a double border of brownish-red houses, relieved by their wainscotings of lighter colors. Nothing could be more brilliant or more variegated than the mosaic of color presented by these houses, the straight lines of which are broken by the many gables, overlooked here and there by the great black belfries of the churches. Add to all these at- tractions a constant, animated, yet quiet traffic, the slow gliding to and fro of boats, the passing of foot-passengers on the bridges, the long line of carriages on the quays, the chief sounds the low murmur of the voices of the crowd, the rolling of the wheels of the vehicles, with now and then a whistle from the stoomboten, the strains of an organ, or the carillon from some belfry, softened by the distance. Or if we turn and gaze in the op- posite direction, we still see the same Amstel; but now it winds between flow- er-bordered meadows, framed by mighty trees, with here and there a wind or water mill, with sails revolving slowly, and cattle browsing near the quiet and utter repose of the field, contrasting with the buzzing of the great hive of A SERVANT – GIRL OF AMSTERIDAM Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph human beings on which we have turned our backs, while, as if to make the difference yet more marked, two huge buildings, the Amstel Hotel and the Volksvlyt, rise up in dignified solemnity, one on either side of the pict- ure. 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Ç º Wºls Ş \ ºur º CALCUTTA IN the year of grace 1636, when the Honorable East India Company had already been estab- Iished for some twenty-five years as humble traders in the town of Surat, then the chief western port of India, the daughter of the Great Mogul was taken ill, and the na- tive doctors, after trying in vain to cure her, had ended by saying, “Allah alone can restore her to health.” The fa- ther of the princess—that Shah Jehan who raised the Taj Mahal to the memory of his beloved queen, Mumtaz Mahal—adored his SERPENT CHARMERS daughter also, and bethought him of the *saved by Rousseau, after the painting by Week, Feringees, whose doctors had remedies for * all ills. So he sent an express messenger to Surat, and this messenger returned with a doctor from one of the English vessels, a Mr. Boughton, who saved the life of the princess. The Emperor told Boughton to name his own reward, and the doctor, with the commer- cial patriotism of his nation, asked for the Company the right to trade, without paying customs, in the rich district of Bengal. This was how the East India Company came to found a factory at Hoogly, on the river of the same name, which is one of the branches of the Ganges, forming its delta. There the English merchants made large profits, becoming so wealthy that they assumed the airs of conquerors, and claimed to treat on equal terms with the Great Mogul himself. Unfortunately for them, the Great Mogul at this time was the mighty Aurungzebe, or “Ornament of the 492 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Throne,” the Louis XIV. of India, who was no more tolerant of encroach- ments on his dignity than his contemporary of France, and he drove off the insolent traders, confiscated their goods, and only allowed them to remain after they had humbly begged pardon for the crimes they had committed against him. But they did not go back to Hoogly. When the situation was becoming strained, the agent of the Company, Job Charnock, had evacuated the first settlement, and gone down the river to seek some other asylum. Passing the small village of Chutanutty, a little above the river, he noticed a wide-spreading fig-tree overshadowing the houses. The scene pleased him. He ordered a halt, and made his people build their tents in the shade of the colossal growth, and from this encampment, originally intended for one night's shelter only, rose the capital of the Eastern Empire. Charnock died six years later, convinced that he had been the Romu- lus of a new Rome. It is said that he died a convert to the religion of the Bengali, after having rescued from the funeral pyre and married a young widow, who was about to be burned by her parents in honor of her de- ceased husband. The Church evidently disbelieved this story, for it has given to the founder of Calcutta several feet of ground in the old cathedral, and on the marble tomb above his remains is recorded in Latin how Job Charnock, Esq., the worthy agent of England in the Kingdom of Bengal, after long wanderings in a foreign land, returned to his eternal home on January IO, 1692; or, to quote the actual inscription, “Qui, postguam in solo mom suo peregrinatus esset dºu, reversus est domum suae atermitatis decimo die ſamuarii, 1692.” This is the oldest engraved stone in Calcutta. The name of Chutanutty is still retained in the northern quarter of Calcutta, and the original settlement gradually spread to the neighboring villages of Govindpur, where is now the Esplanade, and Kali-Kutta, or the village of the goddess Kali, which has given its name to the whole capital. This latter village itself derived its name from a celebrated temple to Kali, three or four miles away, known as the Kali-Ghaut, which was corrupted by the English into Calcutta. Kali, or The Black, is one of the names of the formidable spouse of Siva Mahadevi, the great goddess of a thousand names and a thousand forms, who is adored, now as the embodiment of creative thought, now as the destroyer, and who is the object of mystic rites, some obscene, some sanguinary. The following myth is the explana- tion given by the natives of the establishment of the worship of Kali in Bengal: Dakcha had given his daughter Parvati in marriage to Siva, but being CALCUTTA 493 soon after raised by Brahma to the rank of chief of the Frajapatis, this same Dakcha grew proud and made preparations for a great-sacrifice, to which he neglected to invite Siva. In fact, he set but little store on the son-in-law, who, like some madman, attended by spectres and spirits, THE PORT OF CALCUTTA Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Ch. Jouaz - spent his time prowling about in graveyards, with dishevelled hair, gar- ments sprinkled with the ashes of the dead, and wearing a necklace of skulls. Parvati saw all the gods passing by in their chariots, decked out as if for a fête, and asked her husband where they were going. Siva replied that they were the guests of her father, but that he, Siva, had not been asked to take part in the sacrifices about to be offered. Wounded at the affront offered to her spouse, Parvati went to seek her father, whom she abjured, and, in order to get rid of the body of which he was the author, she gave up the ghost. Siva, inconsolable for her loss, seized her corpse, and, flinging it upon his shoulders, he ran to and fro upon the earth, which trembled beneath the weight of his sorrow. Men, in terror, appealed to Vishnu for help, and Vishnu, rushing to their assistance, flung forth his 494 | THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD wonder-working disk, which cut the body of Parvati into fifty-two pieces. The spots where each of these fifty-two pieces fell became the goals of pil- grimages, and the objects of the veneration of the faithful, who erected temples upon them. That of Kali-Ghaut was built where fell the second toe of the left foot of Parvati. This temple rises from the banks of a little stream called the Tolli, after a brave English colonel who once had a villa there. This humble little dried-up mullah is, according to popular tradition, the old bed of the Ganges, the original Ganges, or Adi-Ganga, and hence its sacred character. The wide Hoogly, say the natives, was dug out by human and irreverent hands. The only traces now remaining of the original stream are a few depressions of the soil and one or two stagnant pools. Archaeologists rec- ognize its original course by the ruins of the sanct. uaries and remains of the ghauſs, or steps leading down to the water, in which the faithful made their ab- lutions, and beside which they burned their dead be. fore sending them to Para- dise by way of the sacred stream. Of all these ghauſs, that of the Temple of Kali is still the most celebrated and the most frequented. People flock to it from ev- ery part of Bengal, and a royal road once led to it from Moorshedabad, which was the capital a hundred years ago, across the jun- gles and marshes then oc- cupying the site of Calcut- ta. The grand Chowring- hee, the Oxford Street or Rue de Rivoli of Calcutta, follows the route taken by the pilgrims; the course is exactly the same; the borders alone have changed, the Corinthian porticos of the Graeco- • TEMPLE OF RAMNATH, or KALI-GHAUT After a drawing by Berteault - CALCUTTA 495 Saxon palaces replacing the palm-trees and peepuls” of the past, while ayahs and their charges, and strings of carriages, occupy the roadway down which once hastened half-naked men and women from the Himalayas and other remote districts of India, leaning on their staffs as they pressed forward to the sacred goal. - What all these poor wretches came to see was the image of Kali, which is still in its place. As her name implies, she is black, but she is so covered with offerings and her shrine is so dark that nothing is really visible but her tongue, which is of gold, and hangs down to her breasts— rather surprising at first in a lady and a goddess, but which is explained when we learn the rest of the history of Parvati. She had generously undertaken the task of delivering the earth from the demons and monsters with which it was infested. This work accomplished, she danced upon the corpses in her joy so heavily that the earth shook and fell to pieces. See- ing this, her husband flung himself, in self-abandonment, among the dead bodies, and Parvati, suddenly perceiving her lord and master at her feet, was seized with shame and put out her tongue, that being among the Hindoos the most expressive sign of confusion. It is in this edifying atti- tude that art and religion have immortalized the goddess. Pilgrims still flock to Calcutta every day, but especially on the fête- days sacred to Siva, such as that called Charak-Puja, when fanatics cut and slash themselves about as they whirl madly round in wild dances in honor of the goddess. The grandest festival of all is that known as the Kali-Pudja, or Kali worship, which lasts one whole night, and that the darkest night of the waning moon of the month called Kartika.f On that night the temple is inundated with the blood of goats, sheep, and buffaloes, and is the scene of a heart-rending and sickening butchery. The wor- shipper leads his victim in, the priest pours a little blood on its head, in sign of consecration, and the butcher seizes the animal, places its head in a . vice, and cuts it off. The priest dips his finger in the warm blood, smears the idol with it, pockets his fees—he gets a few cents for each sacrifice— and the pilgrim goes off with the decapitated corpse, happy at having held intercourse with his goddess, and confident that his petition, whatever it may be, will be granted. “I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats,” saith the Lord. But the Hindoos still await their Isaiah * The fee/ºu/ is the Ficus religiosa, or sacred fig-tree, of the Buddhists, popularly known as the bo-tree.—TRANS. -- # Kartikeya is the Hindoo Mars, the offspring of Siva and the Ganges.—TRANS. 496 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD At one time it was with human blood that Kali was smeared. The more man is raised above the brute, the more worthy a beverage for a god is his blood; and the greater the value of the victim, the more the virtue of the sacrifice. Even at the beginning of the present century, when the . English power was fully established, some devotee of Kali would replace the goat by a child, and Kali sent no angel to turn aside the knife of the sacrificer. A whole caste, that of the famous assassins known as Thugs, dedicated themselves to Kali. Kneeling at the feet of her image before they started on their expeditions, they offered up some of their unholy gains in her temple, sanctifying murder by committing it in her name. The present temple was built about three centuries ago by a member of a wealthy family of Bengal, called Sàbarna, who devoted to its main- tenance the income from some 200 acres. A Brahman named Chandibar was the first priest, and his descendants, who rejoice in the title of Haldar, are the present owners. The revenues of the temple are immense. The right of exacting 60 centimes per victim would alone be enough to sup- port it, for on certain days hundreds, perhaps even thousands, are butch- ered. The Haldar family is now divided into several branches, each of which receives the offerings in rotation for eight days, but at great festivals and on other special occasions every branch is represented, and the profits are divided. There are few sanctuaries in the world where keeping the accounts is so simple a matter. When Job Charnock set up his factories at Chutanutty, Govindpur, and Kali-Kutta, the Kali-Ghaut was as much frequented as it is to-day, but pilgrims did not go to it in tramcars. The three villages, now welded into one huge metropolis, were buried in a forest—a far-stretching forest, haunted by wild beasts and banditti, with nothing to break its monotony but pestilential marshes. The English town rose up in a spasmodic man- ner, without any particular plan or attention to the laws of hygiene. Some parts, indeed, were below the level of the river. Jungle and rice-fields, with here and there a clearing and a few native tents, came close up to the European houses, which were thus in the very grip of malaria. The mor- tality was terrible, and to face the horrors of the situation courage was required of the heroic merchant who took as his motto “100 per cent. or death.” It is said that in one year a quarter of the Europeans were swept away, and the sailors, playing upon words, said that Calcutta stood for Golgotha, or the place of skulls. . Meanwhile, however, the Mogul Empire was falling to pieces. From the other side of the peninsula, from the shores of the Indian Ocean, a THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTT.A.- Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Ch. Jouaz CALCUTTA 499 new people, the Mahrattas, who owed their consolidation to the genius of the freebooter Sivaji, were overrunning the country and advancing upon Delhi and the Ganges. In 1742 their scouts were noticed within sight of the Hoogly. The East India Company set to work to dig a trench round their territory, which can still be made out, and under the name of the Circular Road forms part of the nominal emceinte of Calcutta. At the close of the preceding century the English had built a fort of the Vauban type, on the site of the present Post-office, which was called Fort William, in honor of the then reigning King of England, William of Orange. The Mahratta incursion, however, passed along the horizon with- out bearing down upon Calcutta, and the English merchants once more concentrated their attention on their business, and continued their quarrels with their French, Danish, and Dutch rivals of Chandernagore, Serampore, and Chinsoora. te It was not until fourteen years later, in 1756, that the storm broke, and when it did it was in quite an unexpected quarter. The young Nabob of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, offended by a letter from the Governor, a Mr. Drake, who refused to demolish the fortifications erected during the war with the French, advanced upon Calcutta at the head of an army. The Governor fled with his staff and his treasures; the military commandant followed his example, and deserted Fort William. The abandoned garri- son chose a chief, Holwell by name, and under him held out for forty-eight hours; but half of the defenders were killed, while many took refuge in the cellars, and there drank themselves to death. Holwell saw that all was lost, and attempted a parley with the enemy. While the negotiations were going on the enemy entered the fort. Night was approaching, and what was to be done with the 146 English prisoners? A safe place to confine them in was for some time sought in vain, when the Nabob bethought him - of a room twenty feet square, with but one window, behind the arched veranda in which the English had been waiting since the capture of the fort. It was a June night, and the heat was terrible; but the unfortunate English were driven at the point of the sword into the confined space, which has ever since been known as the Black Hole. A tragedy ensued, unrivalled even by anything described in Dante's “Inferno.” All through the night were heard the cries of the doomed men, grow- ing fainter and fainter hour by hour; and in the morning, when the natives opened the door of the dungeon, but twenty-three spectres issued forth, leaving 123 dead, some prostrate on the floor, others still standing, though the sun of India had already begun the work of putrefaction. The twenty- 5oo THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD three survivors had escaped by climbing on the bodies of the dying and the dead, so as to clutch at the window-frame and get a little air. The Mussulmans remained for seven months at Calcutta, which they named Alinagar, or the town of Ali, thus triumphing over the Hindoos and Eng- lish alike. But out of the Black Hole was to spring the British Empire A BAyADERF.—Engraved by Bazin, after a painting by Weeks in India. The seven months were scarcely over when Clive won back the ruins of Calcutta, and on June 23, 1757, a year and two days after the tragedy of the Black Hole, he destroyed the army of the Nabob in the battle of Plassey. When the great blow fell there were seventy houses in Calcutta, all inhabited by English people. Modern Calcutta may be said to date from 1757. The old factory was given up to the Custom-house and other offices, and a new fort, the present Fort William, begun a little lower down than its predecessor, on the banks of the river. And gradually the forest surrounding Calcutta was attacked, and replaced by the modern town. CALCUTTA 5o I Where the Cathedral now rises Warren Hastings hunted the tiger a century ago, and servants engaged in the neighboring houses were in the habit of taking off all their clothes when they went home from their work in the evening, that there might be nothing about them to tempt robbers. Since 1757 the history of Calcutta has been that of the rapid increase in prosperity of the English, as that of India has been of the progress of British domination. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Calcutta was still a dependency of Madras; in 1707 it had become independent, and the three presidencies of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta were on an equal footing—that is to say, on a similar footing of anarchy. After the depart- ure of Clive, whose clear brain foresaw that the wealthy but weak Bengal merely awaited the hand of the conqueror, Calcutta was the headquarters of British power. In 1773 it became the actual capital; in 1834 the Governor-general of Bengal became the Governor of India; in 1858 India. was annexed by the British crown, and a little later the Governor took the title of Viceroy.” The splendor of the town was worthy of its lofty politi- cal destiny. One man especially set his seal upon the capital, and gave to it its Imperial character. This man was the Marquis of Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington, less illustrious, perhaps, but greater— one of those proconsuls of genius which it has been reserved to Rome in the past and England in the present to produce. He struck the right key- note in 18OO, when he built the Government House. “India,” he said, “should be governed from a palace, not from an office; with the ideas of a prince, not those of a retail seller of muslin or indigo.” He it was who really founded the City of Palaces. I Calcutta is a regular English town, though it is surrounded by a vast Indian village of some 600,000 inhabitants. It is not, like Delhi, Benares, or Lahore, an old Indian city as ancient as the earliest records of the country, with its own art, its own native life, its own characteristic appear- ance, onto which European conquest has tacked, generally at a little dis- tance off, a wealthy foreign suburb of villas, gardens, and avenues. In this case the Indian village is itself the outcome of the English city, and has * In 1877 the Queen was proclaimed Empress.-TRANS. 32% 5O2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD sprung up to supply the needs of its inhabitants. Hence Calcutta, the largest though it be of Indian communities, is yet the most uninteresting from an art point of view. You go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal; to Delhi to see the Jumma Musjid, or Pearl Mosque, begun by the great Aurungzebe, or the Cyclopean ruins of the ancient city; to Benares to look at the tiers of temples rising up above the river; but you only go to Cal- cutta out of respect for the fact that it is the capital, and everybody ought to go and see the capital. Calcutta, then, is not a town of any individual character; it is just a capital. Now very little is needed to make a capital—nothing more, in fact, than good - will and a few bricklayers; but to make a town, a living entity, throbbing with life and motion, the stones must be piled up by the genius of a whole people. There must be associated with its growth tra. ditions and memories, hopes and fears, love and aspirations after something higher, better, nobler than anything yet achieved, a something which stirs the masses to ambition; and, before all this, a certain fitness in the site chosen, a response to a silent appeal from nature. There are but few town capitals in Europe—only three or four: Paris, Rome, and Constantinople.” Calcutta is where it is just because one Job Charnock happened to make a halt on its site. - The English of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries do not know much about art; they do not care much for it at home, and still less do they trouble their heads on the subject in a country where their stay is only temporary, and where they remain but long enough to make their fortunes. So they did not draw much on their imaginations in the designs for their public buildings—Pseudo-Greek for secular buildings, Pseudo- Gothic for ecclesiastical ones. Anglo-Greek and Indo-Gothic styles have a quaint effect beneath a tropical sky; but the architect has at least any amount of space at his command, and though vastness of proportion is not necessarily an element of beauty, there is something striking about it. On the Chowringhee Road, opposite the wide Maidan Esplanade, sixty palaces alone occupy a frontage a mile long. Commonplace, cold-looking, and monotonous, these great buildings have nothing attractive about them but their size; they are the one tropical emanation of an art which may be characterized as doubly spurious, in that it was alien to the soil from * It seems unfair to leave out of this category London, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Christiania, and many another beautiful and interesting city, which are, without doubt, the nat- ural outcome of the growth of a community on a site “chosen in response to an appeal from nature.”—TRANS. CALCUTTA 503 which it was borrowed. Travellers who have seen St. Petersburg are reminded of it at Calcutta, which is also not unlike the new Vienna which has sprung up in the last ten years, or perhaps Buda-Pesth, but without its glorious background of mountains. Nowhere is the passionless strength of the British genius better illustrated than at Calcutta. “Let there be palaces,” said the Wellesleys, and there were palaces. They forgot to add, “let there be artists;” and had they said it, the powers even of a Governor- general are limited in all that relates to the spirit. - Nevertheless, these palaces, which are all exactly alike, are not alto- gether without interest, for nearly every one of them has some historical memory connected with their columns or hidden beneath their founda- tions. In them, after all, is centred all the interest of Calcutta–all that makes it worth while to visit the city; for the merchants of the East India Company, least poetic of men though they were, lived, as did Napoleon I., MARKET AT CALCUTTA.—Engraved by Bazin, after a picture by Weeks through one of the most wonderful romances of the century, and, more fortunate than the Emperor of the French, their romance has outlived them. We will, then, with our reader's permission, trace this romance as we go up the course of the river. I will take it for granted that we have, without accident, passed the 504 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD mouth of the Hoogly, threading our way among the reefs and changing shallows encumbering it, and which would puzzle any but a Calcutta pilot. There are some forty of these Calcutta pilots; men of marvellously keen vision, who, by the color of the water or by the corrugation of some pass- ing wave, detect a hidden danger which has sprung up but the night before, and who follow day by day the ever-changing caprices of the estuary. We skirt along the island of Sagara,” that classic ground of the Bengal tiger, which island disappears for three-quarters of the year beneath the waves of the gulf flung over it by the prevalent south-west winds. In spite of this long submergence, Sagara is the most frequented resort in India of pilgrims from every quarter; for here it is that the bride of the terrible Siva, to whom, under the name of Kali, so many victims have been offered, the fair Ganga, f finds rest at last in the bosom of the ocean after her furious rush across the whole world from her mountain home in the Himalayas, where, under the name of Parvati, or the mountaineer, she had passed her girlhood, and whence she was summoned by the prayers of Bhagirutha. As she swept across the island her touch restored to life the 60,000 sons of Sagara, who had been burned to ashes by an outraged Saint.j: The waters of the Ganges, sacred everywhere, are doubly holy and power- ful here, and he who bathes in them is cleansed from all his sins, as were the sons of Sagara, and, like them, he is born anew to everlasting life. In January of every year some IOO,OOO pilgrims flock to the island, bringing with them fevers and cholera, and setting up their flimsy calico tents. Many of these pilgrims are quite old men, invalids at the last gasp; but it is supreme felicity to die bathing in the sacred stream, for it is to die purified from all sin, free from all dread of penalty for evil-doing, and fresh temptations await ready to pounce upon you if you return to life after your submersion in the holy river. After laboring for some fifteen hours on the sea of mud which has formed the Delta of the Ganges, and after having passed Tamluk, which was the chief entrance port of the river 2000 years ago, you at last approach Calcutta, the towers, spires, and masts of the shipping of which, * This island is named after a mythical king of Ayodhya, or Oude, who figures in the Ramayana.-TRANS. ‘. . . f Ganga signifies the female element of nature, and many are the poetic myths connected with the life-story of the mother of all things. Of these myths, the most beautiful is given in the grand epic poem of the Ramayana.—TRANS. f This is a somewhat mutilated résumé of the story of Ganga as told in the Ramayana. The “outraged saint” was no other than Vishnu himself, whose touch was destruction—TRANS. CALCUTTA - 505 thanks to the windings of the river, you see long before you reach them. On your left stretch what were still a few months back the gardens of the King of Oude. In 1856 the then Governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, on pretext of the young king's misconduct and inexperience, declared his dominions annexed to the British crown, and sent him to live at Calcutta, with a pension of fifteen lacs of rupees a year—“a seventh part of the revenues of the country.” The people of Lucknow rose in arms in defence of their prince, and his mother, the venerable Begum, went to England to try, in vain, to rouse the sympathy of Parliament and people in the cause of her son. Disappointed, she retired to Paris, where she died from cold on a bitter January day. Meanwhile the young monarch, finding it impos- sible to govern any longer with the help of his buffoons, musicians, and dancers,” consoled himself for his lost crown by making a splendid collec- tion of wild animals, which was long the greatest delight of the children of Calcutta. Fifty thousand pigeons flew about in his aviaries; whole armies of monkeys, some of them trained to dance to order; panthers, lions, etc., lived in his menagerie; flocks of geese and ducks swam about on his ponds; while in a subterranean chamber were thousands of snakes, including mighty venomous serpents and tiny harmless creatures, the strong preying on the weak, and affording the king, if in meditative mood, an opportunity of seeing there a picture of the rivalries, the hypocrisies, and the follies of life at Court. Later the ex-king of Oude left India with the consent of the Government, and went, for the good of his soul, to the holy Mussulman City of Bagdad—doubtless in order to be nearer to the sacred soil of Kerbela; and there, two years later, he died, childless, leaving no heir but the British Government. In his will he requested that all his animals and worldly goods should be sold at a fair price, but not by auc- tion. “I do not wish,” he said, “to have them advertised, or to have auc- tioneers making jokes, good or bad, about them, or buffoons making fun of them.” f On the other side of the river the Botanical Garden forms a worthy vis-à-vis to the menagerie of the late king. Founded in 1786 by General * The author of this account, after saying that Lord Dalhousie annexed Oude on pretext of the young king's misconduct and incapacity, himself indorses the indictment against the dethroned monarch by this and the following sentences.—TRANS. # This is an extremely jaundiced résumé of Lord Dalhousie's masterly policy in Oude resulting in the redress of terrible and long-standing evils. The British in India have much to answer for, but in the case of Oude there is no doubt that their action was productive of the best results to the natives.—TRANS. ' 506 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Kyd, and enlarged by a series of able botanists, from Roxburgh to Hook- er, whose names are well known to science, this garden has become the nursery from which nearly every horticultural society of Europe has received its best examples of tropical vegetation, whether useful or orna- mental. Jacquemont, on the eve of his botanical pilgrimage across Hin- dostan, was able in six weeks to make acquaintance in the Calcutta Botan- ical Garden with every vegetable growth of India. And not only is the flora of Hindostan represented here, but of the rest of the tropics: that of Africa, of Oceania, and America flourishes in the open air as in its native soil. From time to time, alas! the cyclone, that great enemy of vegetation, works havoc among the cosmopolitan giants of the beautiful grounds. That of 1864 laid low a whole avenue of mahogany-trees, planted at the THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE. –After a drawing by Gotorbe end of the last century by the naturalist who gave his name to the Ror. &urghiaceae, and denuded of its crest the mighty baobab of Senegal, the trunk of which is some thirty feet in diameter; but it was powerless against the great banyan-tree, which is a forest in itself, or rather a temple, for the CALCUTTA 507 heavy branches, weary of their own weight, sink to the ground only to imbibe fresh life from it as they take root, and in their turn become stems rising upward to the sky. On the other hand, the plants from northern regions, exiled beneath the torrid sky of the tropics, struggle feverishly, so to speak, to express themselves, in the language they do not understand, of the country of their banishment. Among the banana, palm, and mahog- any trees struggle a few wretched, stunted, homesick oaks, unable to under- stand a climate which allows them no time for rest, and will not permit them to shed their leaves in the autumn and recoup their forces in the winter sleep to which they have been accustomed. The garden stretches for a mile along the river-bank and is on a level with it; the alluvial soil is altogether innocent of hills, and does not admit of anything that can be called a view in this Eden of vegetation. Near the palace of the King of Oude the vessel skirts the so-called Garden Reach, a series of gardens and villas stretching away to Calcutta, and really forming its one beauty. This Garden Reach is the Passy or Richmond of British India, and here, too, begins the maritime city, the floating town, with its sails and masts draped with flags, gleaming and quivering in the brilliant sunshine on every side. This fluttering drapery is the poetry of Calcutta, as it is of every sunny sea-girt city. No lines of architecture, not even of the architecture of Pheidias, could excel in loveli- ness the wing-like sails and arm-like masts which stand out against the azure sky in the scintillating light, for they have alike symmetry of form, the beauty of quivering motion, and the nameless prestige which attaches to a destination far removed from the present scene; they are exiled from a distant home, or they are bound for some remote goal, perhaps even doomed to disappear entirely, leaving no trace behind them. Enveloped in a shroud of mystery and danger, and laden with fabulous treasures, they are here to-day; but who can tell where they will be to-morrow P Here it is that the French merchant-vessels anchor, and a little higher up are the fleets of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, the richest and most pow- erful maritime association in the world. - - º The port of Calcutta extends for ten miles along the Hoogly, with moorings for 170 vessels. The river is nearly a mile in width, but the channel itself is not 300 yards across, scant measure for the 2000 vessels of different kinds and 250 ocean steamers, which come and go in the course of the year, and for the 4ooo river craft plying constantly to and fro. We pass the docks, leaving on our right the mouth of the Tolly, which leads to the temple of Kali, and we land at the Prinseps. Ghaut, the steps 508 THE CAPITALS OF THE world of which go down to the river close to Fort William. Prinseps was an employé of the East India Company, who, with no particular education and no scientific training, deciphered the old alphabets of India in his leisure hours, and was, in fact, the pioneer of discovery in Sanscrit litera- ture. He belonged to a period already becoming remote, when the agents of the Company were free to study the history and moral life of India, and were not forbidden to use their scientific acumen; that acumen was, indeed, more than once turned to very good account. But an official who should take such a liberty nowadays would be sharply reprimanded by her Majes- ty's Government. Fort William abuts on the river on one side, while the other three overlook the wide open space known as the Maidan, or plain, which is bounded on the west by the Hoogly, on the east by the lofty aristocratic- looking houses of the Chowringhee Road, and on the north by the Espla- nade, on which are the palatial Government House and the best residential mansions of Calcutta. The fort, which is the most important stronghold of India, forms, with its outworks, an eight-rayed star, three rays stretching down to the river, while the other five are on the Maidan. It is altogether more than half a mile in diameter, and can easily mount 600 cannon. Its size and strength are significant of the time of its erection, for Clive laid its foundations in 1757, the very year in which the battle of Plassey had made him master of India. The English were new to power then, and the victorious young officer had no wish for a repetition of the stampede under Charnock, or of the tragedy when the Great Mogul took possession of Calcutta. Clive meant to have a fort in which a whole army could take refuge, and, as a matter of fact, the stronghold can conveniently receive 15,000 men. Within its impregnable walls he felt that he and his follow- ers could, in the event of a reverse, safely await succor from England. Fort William occupied 16 years in building; it cost £2,OOO,OOO, and IO,OOO men would be required to man its defences. So far, however, not a shot has been fired from any of its 600 cannon, and it was not needed even in the great Mutiny. For years 2000 men and one battery of artillery have formed its whole complement of defenders. At the entrance commanding the river rises the Gwalior monument, erected by Lord Ellenborough when Governor-general, in memory of the officers and soldiers who fell in the campaign of 1843, when Sinde was conquered and annexed. It is a mon- ument of very ill-omen for the officers of Fort William, for the victory of Maharajpur was one of those in which the generals had more cause to be proud of their soldiers than of themselves. Lord Ellenborough and his CALCUTTA 509 Court—officers, ladies, and all—had come in grand state, mounted on ele- phants, to assist at the defeat of the enemy. The first charge of the Mah- rattas altered the character of the fête; the English officers lost their heads; but their sepoys, without troubling themselves about their leaders, rushed upon the enemy. The Mahrattas, as badly led as the invaders, but quite as energetic, went on firing as long as there was a gunner left. At AN INDIAN CART.- Engraved by Rousseau, after a picture by Weeks the end of the day it was found that the sepoys were victorious, and Lord Ellenborough, to quote Marsham's History of /ndia, vol. iii., p. 265, “won his spurs on the field, and was seen moving about with the greatest intre- pidity amid a shower of bullets, distributing money and oranges among the wounded.” On the east and south of the Esplanade is the race-course. Take care you are not surprised on it, either by the mid-day sun or the cyclone, which now and then devastates Calcutta. The traffic of the Maidan is concentrated at the entrance to the Chowringhee Road, and between the fort and Esplanade Row. Here are situated the various monuments, which dot the vast open space, set up in memory of one or another of the high 5 IO THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD functionaries who have from time to time administered the Government of India, and who have been converted into great men by the very simple artifice of the erection of statues in their honor, a device worn as thread- bare here as in Paris. Some inscriptions in the Macaulay style, though, alas! they were not written by Macaulay, complete the transformation. India is a country where it is not at all necessary to do great things in order to become a great man, for circumstances are there so malleable that good-will is all that is needed to turn them to account. You need not stop to look at the statues of Lord Auckland, Lord Hardinge, the Earl of Mayo, and Sir William Peel, who were highly-born gentlemen, but nothing more. Outram, the Bayard of the East, is more interesting, for he was a man of the highest honor. The men who made British India, from Clive to Lord Dalhousie, were rarely troubled with any delicate scru- ples, and even those of the most Christian, nay, even of the most Puritan sentiments—perhaps, indeed, these more than any—followed the simple rule, the rule of a Napoleon or a Bismarck: “Might makes right.” But Outram was an exception; he refused to help in the spoliation of the Ameers of Sinde, the treatment of whom is one of the worst blots in the British administration in India; and, rare instance in the military annals of the country, he would not touch his share of the booty. Foley, the artist of the statue of Outram, inspired by his recognition of a true hero, has pro- duced a life-like work of art, contrasting forcibly with the tame productions among which it is seen. Outram is represented on horseback, dashing forward sword in hand, but looking back towards his men, whom he is cheering on to the assault. A little distance off is the solitary column, crowned by a tower, dwarfed in appearance by the desert surrounding it, but from which a fine view is to be obtained, tardily erected in grateful memory of Sir David Ochterlony. This hero, the pacificator of the Goork- has, who were such indomitable adversaries of the British, died of grief, after fifty years of faithful service, which began almost with the first years of British power in India, in disgrace with the Government of Calcutta because he cherished a loftier idea of what the honor of his nation required than did the officials of his time. Along the quay, between the fort and the Esplanade Avenue, are the Eden Gårdens, named, not after Paradise, but after the sisters of Lord Auckland, whose family name was Eden, and who was Governor-general half a century ago. A band plays here every evening, and not far off is the inevitable cricket-ground, for the English must play cricket wherever they are. In the evening light the Esplanade resembles the Champs- CALCUTTA 5 II Elysées, or perhaps, rather, Hyde Park, with the picturesque addition of the brilliant coloring in the costumes of the native servants, and the palan- quins, the turbaned sirdars, the baboos in their white robes, their napkins on their arms, or humble bahisties, who fling the contents of their leathern bottles upon the many-hued flower-beds, and lastly the bald-headed arghalis or vultures, perched with solemn mien upon the tops of the buildings. There they remain with the grave air of herons, or of Marabouts absorbed in meditation on the follies of the world, till all of a sudden they swoop down in furious flight upon some offal they have detected with their keen little red eyes, and which they gobble down into the bags hanging beneath their chins, that are capable of indefinite expansion. The arghals are the unpaid scavengers of Calcutta, and enjoy a monopoly of their horrid trade; they are, moreover, an example of the high teachings of practical morality, showing that the most profound philosophy is compatible with a decided appetite, a lesson confirmed by the example of their brother argha/is of the Anglican Church, or, to mention others of inferior degree, the Munchis, the Baboos, or the Kulins, who are priests, and the Kayaths, who are scribes. The arghals are particularly fond of perching in numbers on the walls of Government House, the palace of the man who for five years was the incarnation of the terrible and irresistible power which the natives designate as the Sarkar. The Sarkar is, in fact, the Government, with the addition in the native mind of the indefinable something so mysterious and so fatal, which the word calls up in the mind of French peasants, intensi- fied in India by the native belief in the avatar, or incarnation of the deity in some material form. The Saréar, in providing for itself a habitation, did not erect a classic building, although Government House was built by Lord Wellesley, a man of powerful intellect and a taste for the magnificent. His architect, a Captain Wyatt, merely followed the plan of Kedleston Hall, in Derbyshire, a beautiful country-house built for Lord Scarsdale by Robert Adam, who, with his brother James, achieved a distinguished reputa- tion at the beginning of the present century, and were the architects of the Adelphi Terrace, the screen of the Admiralty, London, and the Register House, Edinburgh, in which they endeavored, not very successfully, to revive Greek forms. Government House has four wings, and the central build- ing, to which a grand double staircase leads up, is crowned by a fine dome. Here live the Viceroy and his Court; here sits the legislative body; hence are issued the decrees which annex kingdoms, set up and dethrone princes, ruin or enrich provinces, alter the administration of districts occupied by millions of human beings; but, above all, it is here that balls are held, here 512 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD that evening dress is worn, champagne is drunk, and all those scenes of the social comedy are enacted which have such an irresistible fascination for the multitude all the world over, and are, perhaps, more keenly interesting here than anywhere else beneath the sun. The Viceroy's palace contains PART OF THE BLACK TOWN.—After a drawing by Gotorbe more tame and lifeless statues than there are even on the Esplanade, and all the Governor-generals are there, from Lord Wellesley to Mr. John Adam, from the Marquis of Hastings to Lord Teignmouth. It is rather startling to find among the statues of the Viceroys portraits of Louis XV. and Maria Leczinska, with the busts of some dozen Roman emperors; but perhaps these were trophies of war brought over by some French vessel a century ago. West of Government House, and nearer the river, are the Law Courts, housed in a Gothic building erected between 1870 and 1872, on the model, it is said, of the Town-hall at Ypres. There are statues of all the Chief- iustices of India, including one of Sir Elijah Impey, who saved his com- CALCUTTA - - 5 I 3 rade, Warren Hastings, and assured the triumph of the policy of action by so lightly permitting, in spite of Junius,” the hanging of the great Brahman Nuncomar. Fortunately, his successors thought more of the administration of justice than of accepting bribes for their services, and have most of them been worthy of the high office they have held, but they have not won for themselves the immortality of Sir Elijah. Round about the viceregal palace are grouped all the important Gov- ernment offices, the Doric Town-hall, the Bengal Bank, and the Mint, all rising from the side of the river. In Dalhousie Square, on the site of the original Fort William, is the huge Post-office, in front of which is a slab marking the scene of the Black Hole tragedy. Opposite to the Post is the Telegraph Office. There is nothing to tempt us to go through all these imposing buildings, which are all exactly alike; nor are the Anglo- Gothic cathedral and the lofty churches much more attractive. Their value is purely historical, and the monuments and epitaphs in them will become important some day, when the student is anxious to get at the truth about the origin of British India. A drive along the Chowringhee Road and the neighboring streets will be enough to give you a good idea of the City of Palaces. The private houses, in spite of their being all so much alike, are not without charm, the charm always attaching to an Anglo- Indian bungalow, with its wide airy verandas, its long low wings, and, above all, the masses of verdure in which it is buried. When you remember that but a century ago all these wealthy quarters were virgin forests, the home of the wood-nymph, Aranyani, wearing a mantle of fever, and followed by her court of tigers, you will be compelled to do homage to the wonderful energy of the Anglo-Saxon race. In spite of its inevitable harshness and egotism, a strength of will so triumphant and so pregnant of results almost amounts to genius, and is near akin to a virtue. * The author evidently adopts the theory that Junius was Sir Philip Francis, the colleague and bitter opponent of Hastings. The Junius period in the Memoirs of Sir Philºſ Francis has not yet been thoroughly investigated, but in a recent number of the Athenaeum we are told that the unsorted MSS., now in the possession of Sir Philip's great-granddaughter, Beata Francis, will shortly be given to the world, when possibly the long mystery with regard to the authorship of the “Letters of Junius” will be solved, and the truth finally elicited respecting the trial of Nun- comar.—TRANS. - 33 5 I4 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD II Great indeed is the contrast between the White Town and the Black Town. Calcutta has been defined as a foreground of palaces with a back- ground of pigsties. The Black Town stretches away on the north and east of the White, and is an accumulation of bastis, or villages of mud huts. If the White Town of Calcutta is wanting in character, still more is this the case with the Black, for the latter is but the outcome of the former, and it has therefore no scope for originality. This is the same with all the huge agglomerations which spring up about the European set- tlements in India, and is as true of Madras and Bombay as of Calcutta. No doubt many mandars and many musſia’s” are needed to meet the relig- ious requirements of 400,000 Hindoos and 200,000 Mussulmans, but not one can be called a work of art except, perhaps, the Mosque in Dharmtola Street, built by Prince Ghulam Mahomet, son of Sultan Tippoo-Sahib, as an inscription records, in gratitude to God and in memory of the Honor- able Court of Directors, who gave him the arrears of his pension in 1840. What would the tiger of Mysore think of this mosque and its inscription if he could look down upon it from the Paradise where brave men go after death P Fever and cholera were at one time chronic at Calcutta, but the Municipality have done wonders for the sanitation of the Black Town, opening out wide avenues, and excavating a perfect net-work of sewers, extending over a distance of 150 miles, which, with the help of pumps and even of railways, convey all the refuse of the metropolis to the Salt Lake. The gradient on which Calcutta is built is altogether bad, and the town was originally exposed to all the malaria and foul emanations from the river. The police will not now permit the flinging into the sacred stream of the bodies of the dying or the dead, and entrance to Paradise is made more difficult to their souls, while travellers going up the Ganges lose all the picturesque horrors which were once to be seen on its banks. Corpses are now only burned at certain of the ghauts. Hindoos are no longer free to die where they like and to poison the air for the living, and they per- haps regret the loss of this privilege more than that of any other. The Calcutta Bazaar has none of the beauty or magnificence of that of * Mandar signifies temple, and musſia! mosque.—TRANs. A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION IN CALCUTTA.—Engraved by Bazin, after the picture by Weeks CALCUTTA 5 I 7 Stamboul or of Benares. The capital has no art of its own, and is but a mart for foreign produce. Its one manufactory is of thoroughly European character, and the industry it represents has increased so rapidly that a suburb, known as Howrah, containing 200,000 inhabitants, has already sprung up on the other side of the river. The hideous chimneys of this factory are already making a kind of Manchester on the banks of the Ganges. It is here that the jute fibre is prepared for making sacks for the export of cereals, and the machinery is kept at high pressure to supply the Io,000,000 hundredweight required for the foreign market. At Kosipur, above Calcutta, is a cannon foundery. - It is in its intellectual and political activity that the interest of the Black Town is concentrated. The Hindoo of Calcutta does not represent an ancient tradition, for he is but a thing of yesterday, called into being by the foreigner, and he represents an altogether novel phase of thought, which is gradually making itself felt, and is the chief characteristic of what has been dubbed Young India. Young India is the more or less Euro- peanized Hindoo. The supple mind of the Bengali could not long remain impervious to the influence of daily contact with the European cast of thought, and all Hindoos are more or less affected by that contact. A European education, the study of the classics and of contemporaneous lit. erature, of ancient and modern history and of the natural sciences, could not fail to have results on every stratum of society, and culture has filtered down from the University to every class, awaking aspirations and ambi. tions previously unknown. A new society has sprung up of what may be termed Anglicized Indians, which society, alas! is not always recruited from the elite of the native population; the highest castes, who cling to their traditions and retain their pride of race, are generally faithful to the culture of the past. The masses who make up Young India are not attached to European civilization by any sense of its superiority or by intellectual curiosity, but in search of remunerative appointments. To get one of the inferior situations under Government which are open to native baboos it is necessary to be able to speak and write English, and every one anxious to secure 30 rupees a month in some office rushes to the universities and public schools. Three hundred candidates for a place worth some £2 Ios. a month ! And what becomes of the 299 who fail, and can no longer live the simple, natural life of their forefathers ? They must die of hunger or swell the ranks of politicians, and they choose the latter alternative. Proud of the superficial knowledge they have acquired, and primed with European catchwords, the meaning of which has long since 33 * m - 518 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD faded away, they form a huge unclassed mass uncommonly like the lower middle class of Europe; as noisy, as unreasonable, as narrow minded, and in some rare instances as disinterested as those with which we are all familiar, with the difference that the formulas they are so proud of are borrowed from the traditions of an exotic civilization, and that for them there is a wider gulf than ever between the letter and the spirit. What they aim at is, in truth, neither national independence nor local autonomy under the English protectorate; it is simply access to the higher adminis- trative functions and political domination over other castes, with the Eng. lish Army at their backs. But a generation should be judged, not by the average, but by the elite. The average is always egotistical and mediocre ; the elite alone show us of what a race is capable, and many glorious examples prove that the result of the fusion of the European and Indian spirit is not always necessarily an inferior product, reproducing the faults of both races, but is now and then a creation of noble originality. Although thus far the fusion has produced almost exclusively politicians, journalists, and advo- cates, who are mere parodies of their third-class European congeners, it has in some few instances aroused the purest, noblest, most disinterested ambition in some noble soul, and resulted in the going forth of apostles of a new religion, whose aim is to purify Hindooism of its cruel practices and superstitions, and to unite in one common faith Hindoos, Mussulmans, and Europeans. These apostles belong to the noble body known as the Brahmo-Somaj, or assemblage of Brahmists; and the founder of the new, or, to be more strictly accurate, the reformer of the old Brahmanism, was the Brahman Ram Mohun Roy (Rāma Mohana Rāi), who, looking upon Brahmanism as a corruption of the primitive monotheism revealed in the Vedas, and forgotten or ignored by the faithless interpreters of those sacred books, endeavored to found, or, as he himself thought, to re-estab- lish theism in India.” His disciple and successor, Devendra - Nath, in obedience to the master, sought in the Vedas for the confirmation of the theist doctrine, and, to his horror and dismay, failed to find it there ! He had to choose between reason and the Vedas; he elected for reason, and flung the Vedas overboard, founding the so-called Brahma-Dharma, a purely natural religion, and opening the doors of the Church to every one without distinction of caste. - * To quote Collet's Brahmo Year-book, page 5: “The Brahmo-Somaj, or Theistic Church of India, is an experiment hitherto unique in religious history.”—TRANS. - CALCUTTA 519 An apostle was now urgently called for, and one appeared in the per- son of Keshub Chander Sen, of fascinating eloquence, thoroughly imbued with European culture, and with all the fervid imagination of an Oriental, who converted into a religious body what had been before but a philo- sophical sect. He broke with Devendra - Nath, who was too timid, and though he repudiated the doctrines of Brahmanism, was yet conservative of many of its practices, and struck a blow at the two most crying evils of Hindoo society: the marriage of children, and the perpetual widowhood of girls who had lost their husbands in early youth. For the first time in India a religious movement was marked, not by lifeless mysticism or by debauchery, but by a re- form of manners and by a new reverence for human- ity. Missionaries went forth to spread the good news throughout India, and in 1876 there were already 128 communities which had adopted the new creed. Unfortunately, Keshub Chander Sen was unfaithful to his mission. His success turned his head. From en- thusiasm he launched into the troubled waters of ecstasy, thought himself inspired, and, as is the fatal tendency in India, from an apostle he became a god. Abandoned by the more sober-minded of his followers, he founded the new dispensation, the so-called Navavidhana, the believers in which reconciled the claims of Vishnu and of Christ, not, as did the Brahmists, by showing that the moral teaching of both was the same, but by a mystic union in one incar- nation. The founder of the Navavidhana died in 1886, at the age of forty, AN INDIAN WOMAN Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Weeks 52O THE CAPITALS OF THE world just as he was entering on this new phase of his career. Its powerful leader gone, Brahmanism relapsed into a purely negative condition, and now, even in Calcutta, its cradle and headquarters, it counts no more than' 500 adherents. But the strength of a religion is shown less in the num- ber of its actual professors than in its influence on the masses, and on movements not apparently within the actual sphere of its influence. The reform of the marriage customs, and through it the reform of family life and the whole of Indian society which originated with Brahmanism, has extended beyond the ranks of the members of that sect. It was a Parsee, one Malabori, who was the true successor of Keshub Chander Sen, and his enthusiastic and obstinate crusade has brought about a very unex- pected result, for not only has the religious question been brought before the general public in England, it has also been forced upon the consider- ation of English statesmen, who are always unwilling to interfere in any way with matters of conscience and belief. . Before leaving Calcutta, and with a view to taking away with us a fresh and favorable impression, we must make a pilgrimage to the suburb of Maniktola, on the Bhagmari Road, where died, at the early age of twenty-two, the poor little Toru Dutt, the only poetess India has produced in the present century. She belonged, to some extent, to France, for she lived in that country for some years when quite a young girl, translated the French poets, wrote a romance in French, and loved France with all her heart. Perhaps at Bhagmari you will be able to identify her favorite casuarina, or cassowary-tree, as it is popularly called, to the wind in the branches of which she loved to listen. “Along the trunk,” she says, “to the summit lost in the sky, like a monstrous python, coils a parasite, the embrace of which would be death to any other plant. . . . But the giant bears its burden bravely, flowers hang in crimson clusters from every branch, birds and bees haunt it all day long, and often at nightfall the “Whole garden overflows With one sweet Song that seems to have no close, Sung darkling from our tree while we repose.” But it is time to quit Calcutta, and it is not one of those towns from which one tears one's self with regret, as the Viceroys of India know well, for they stop in it as little as possible, only remaining for the four months of the rainy season, when the weather is cool and dancing is going on. For six months of the year the Government is in retreat at Simla, on the heights of the Himalayas, some 200 miles from the capital. The trades- CALCUTTA 52 I men of Calcutta protest in vain against this exodus, which is their ruin. There is nothing about the stifling heat and fevers of Lower Bengal to attract the Viceroy or his suite, and if the agitation on the subject should succeed in destroying the prosperity of Simla, it will not benefit Calcutta, but some other younger and better situated town, such as Bombay, which is on the coast opposite to Europe, or fresh and breezy Poonah, the town on the seven hills. Calcutta has been the capital for more than a century, which is a long time on an alluvial soil such as that of Bengal, where every- thing changes at the humor of the waves. The English were unable to set up a monument on the field of Plassey, where Clive founded the British Empire in India, for the Ganges has swept into the sea the scene of the victory, and it now aids in obstructing the estuary of the capital. Trade struggles in vain to open out new fields of enterprise here, and before 100 years have gone by the huge capital will, perhaps, have swelled the ranks of the dead cities, and be numbered with Goa, Parmija, and Moorshedabad. The exodus to Simla does but predate the justice to be dealt out by the river. I know a traveller who, after passing three days at Calcutta, had nothing to put in his note-book but “CALCUTTA, former capital of British India. In accordance with an ancient custom, the Viceroy returns to it every winter for the dancing.”.” - * Lemerre, “Lettres sur l'Inde.” I 888. 27/ne/ 92.2/2a- ºf J ſºlº Hºº ºit （, BUCHAREST * OR three long days, on a vessel dressed with flags, I had been floating down the wide, brown waters of the Danube, which rap- idly increased in volume like the final move- ment of a symphony. Everywhere, whether in town or village, a brilliant reception was accorded me; and yet my eye was not satiated with the richness of coloring beneath the Oriental sky, which in the daytime was of a turquoise blue, melting at sunset, when the orb of day was magnified to double its ordinary size, into a gleaming yellow, strewn with golden dust. In the pure A R O U MAN IAN POSTI L ION * The reader of this charming account of Bucharest Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph will remember that the writer is the Queen of Roumania, the poetess, now, alas, suffering from serious illness, who took the nom de plume of Carmen Sylva, in memory of her birthplace, the wood-encircled castle of Mon Repos. The daughter of Hermann, Prince of Wied, and Maria, Princess of Nassau, Carmen Sylva was brought up in a refined and sheltered home. Married on November 15, 1869, to the lover of her choice, Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, who had been elected ruler of the united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1866, Princess Elizabeth made the entry into the capital she so graphically describes when she had been a bride but a few days. Since then she was long the very centre and heart alike of the popular and in- tellectual life of her adopted country, founding clubs for the poor, herself teaching in the schools, translating books into the Roumanian language, gathering about her at Court all that is best and noblest in Eastern Europe. During the bloody campaign of 1877 her palace was converted into a hospital, and many a life was saved by her unwearying care. For love of their Regina, as they affectionately call her, the people of Roumania would gladly die, or, which is more difficult for an imaginative people, they would forego their hereditary prejudices for her sake. As we write, Prince, now King, Charles's jubilee is going on, and the future of the Roumanian monarchy seems assured, though, in default of a direct heir, the crown will pass at the death of the present monarch to his nephew, Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern.—TRANS. 526 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD light of the end of November, on the lovely undulating fields, on the black soil which had yielded riches without effort, and was prepared, on demand, to give yet more; on the thick white dust of the wide roads, marked out by the reckless driving of chariots, the bright colors of the costumes of the peasants trooping forth to receive me stood out in vivid relief; bodices of dazzling whiteness, richly embroidered with red, black, and gold; floating veils of white linen, or of ivory white, or sulphur-colored silk, and petticoats of peony red or claret color. Men were galloping on their small and thin but swift horses, their goat-skin cloaks floating behind them, and looking like a second mane on the necks of their steeds. An embroidered sayom, or outer coat, covered their chests, resembling a many-colored tattooing above the sash, which was twelve inches wide, and held a perfect arsenal of pistols and knives. The shirt, also embroidered, fell over their white felt pantaloons; and on their heads were large caps, looking like white furs, beneath which curls of raven black hair hung down to their shoulders. As I approached these picturesque groups I noticed some men of noble stature, with faces of rare beauty, whose grave expression was but seldom varied by a smile, showing rows of pearly white teeth. And these faces, of a type so new to me, with the aquiline noses, the delicate quiver- ing nostrils, the marvellously large black or greenish-gray eyes gleaming with a sombre fire, deep-sunk within their sockets, and overshadowed by thick, straight eyebrows, the bronzed complexions, the Sonorous language, sounding now harsh, now almost guttural, spoken with such ease—indeed, with such extraordinary eloquence—by these grave Roumanian men and matrons, and by children whose expression was as soft as the gleam of a star, all combined to produce on me an impression of an intensity and passion unknown in our north-western climate. And then I noted with admiration that the handsome face of Southern type of my young consort was in perfect harmony alike with the men and with the country he has conquered for himself by his own unaided effort. This, then, was my new country ! This was Roumania, of which, so far, I had seen nothing but the vast, melancholy plains, the shores of the wide river, and the all but uninhabitable marshes in which the frogs croak among the reeds and the wild hemp. Every now and then a picket of Dorobanț22 presented arms, or sounded a flourish of trumpets which was heard on the other side of the water and died away among the opposite mountains of Servia and Bul- garia, districts less fertile, it is true, but of brighter aspect and with more inhabitants than Roumania. On a daughter of the Rhine, that Rhine BUCHAREST 527 which leaps happily along like a flash of lightning between bright villages nestling among trees, the wide, silent, mighty river flowing through unin- terrupted solitudes produced an impression of melancholy, and added to that serrement du caeur with which I approached the unknown possibilities of my new destiny. If there be a difficult position in this world it is surely that of a young foreign princess making her entry into her capital. The faces about you - A STREET of old BUCHAREST.-After a drawing by Boudier express nothing but a cold curiosity, whereas but a few days before every eye that looked on you was dim with tears, and every lip trembled, in spite of the shouts of “ Hurrah!” and “God bless you, our dear child; our little princess!” You are no longer a child to any one, and you are astonished to find yourself married; you are afraid of displeasing, and convinced of your inca- pacity to cope with the grandeur of the mission which will weigh upon your shoulders like a too heavy mantle. I carried with me, however, one consolation, which I concealed with a kind of shame, and that was my pen. But I should have been as much astonished at being called a poet as a bird would at being called a singer. Can the soul of your soul have a name * 528 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD In those days I realized, painfully, that it is not enough to have a soul, however big, full of love, rich in good intentions, and overflowing with affec- tion that soul may be. One must seem everywhere—for everywhere it is one's duty to please. Now, for the first time in my life, I thought of my appearance. I had never had time to do so before, for my youth had been passed by the bedsides of the dying, or in the midst of most intellectual society; and my eyes had wept too much to see anything in life but its sad- ness. With profound melancholy, then, I gazed on the ever-increasing crowds which bore witness to our approach to the capital; and I wondered how often I should find myself powerless to assuage the misery doubtless hidden among those gathered here. With my heart beating against my side, as an imprisoned butterfly beats against a glass, with dry lips, cold hands and trembling knees, with a roar in my ears louder than the boom of the cannon, the clash of the bells, and the military bands playing the national hymn, I tried to smile at my husband, who was explaining what I saw about me, and was rejoicing at the thought of taking his young wife over the first part of the railway he had laid down himself to connect his capital with the Danube. I had to wrestle with the anguish which made my throat contract, the inexplicable uneasiness which had oppressed me for several days, as I descended from the train to speak to all the people grouped upon the quays. But as I left the station to get into the carriage a cry of admiration escaped me; above the waving plumes, the glittering uniforms, the horses and the flags, beyond the sea of human heads, I had caught sight of the town nestling between the hills and among the green valleys. With its gleaming roofs, its hundreds of little churches, its green, yellow, and blue houses all bathed in the dazzling sunshine, which made even the wood scintillate like zinc, it reminded me vaguely of Moscow. - - Once in the carriage I had to bow perpetually, which is too exhausting to allow one to look about at one's ease, especially when the faintest smile becomes an effort, and every movement of the eyes causes a pain to shoot right through one's head. However, in the long drive from the station to the capital, and then from the capital to the Palace, I saw some houses which seemed too small for their inhabitants, men who seemed to touch the roofs of their dwellings with their foreheads, and women wearing green and blue petticoats, and bodices as white as snow, with white handkerchiefs bordered with lace fastened on their heads, and a carnation stuck behind one ear. On first arrival, this prevalence of white in country and in town strikes one with surprise; but one soon learns to wear it one's self in pref- BUCHAREST 529 erence to anything else, as it is the only thing which stands the sun and dust. It seems astonishing that each church should have but two bells, and that the effect of a carillon is only produced by the ringing of the bells of a great number of churches; on the day of my arrival, especially, these churches of Bucharest appeared simply innumerable. . . . The court of the capital where I was to alight was completely covered with a red dais, which seemed to cast a fantastic light upon the people assembled to meet me, on the red togas of the lawyers, and on the sac- erdotal robes of the Metropolitan and the bishops, all of whom had long gray or white beards. Forty couples were married on this occa- sion, the brides wearing a veil of gold net. . . . “There is the Pal- ace,” said the King to 1T). C. “Where P’’ I in- quired. “We are entering it now,” he answered, with a smile. Then I understood that it is “the Sover- eign who makes the palace, as a stone in a field may become an altar.” - The Palace of Bu- a Roumanian Lady charest is an old man- Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Bridgman sion that had belonged to a Boyar," hastily got ready for our reception. The young Sovereign had not had time to think of making it comfortable, for his nights were passed * A Boyar is a member of a privileged class in Roumania. 34 53O THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD in preparing the overwhelming work of the day; and on the very day of our arrival I found on his writing-table the first plan of the bridge over the Danube, which is to be built at last, after twenty years of patient waiting. Not a window would shut in this Palace, and the damp ascended to the first floor. Even now, twenty years afterwards, I suffer from the fever I contracted in it, and we lost many servants and many horses from the damp with which the walls were saturated. There is no resemblance between the Bucharest of to-day and that at which we were now arriving. Since that time Iooo houses are built, on an average, every year, and slabs of pavement are now laid down in the streets, taking the place of the old flag-stones and ruts. The Palace, too, has gone through a complete transformation. The original building has, it is true, been utilized, giving to the exterior a certain appearance of patchwork; but the inside has a look of home about it, and an altogether individual character. A sculptor, a true cinque-cento master, named Stohr, who has worked for us for twenty-five years, presided at this transformation, and has decorated our rooms with wainscots and furniture of rare beauty. The throne-room has become a library in the German Renaissance style. The King's private study is a little museum, while my apartments contain several valuable old pictures of first rank, on which the light falls from above as in a gallery of paintings. What was my astonishment on receiving the ladies of Bucharest the day after my arrival at discovering that there was no resemblance what- ever between the members of the upper classes and the peasant women No more matrons of solemn mien and sober veils, but dainty and graceful creatures, reminding me at once of the society of St. Petersburg and Naples. As for the men, they had a French air—at least that is how they struck me when I saw them the next day in the Chamber of Legislature, whither I was conducted in grand state. On that occasion I was very much amused at the contrast between the elegance of our equipage and the streets we passed through, bordered by little houses irregularly built, and paved with huge stones of different sizes, causing me and my diadem to make a good many involuntary bows. On the evening of the same day there was a general illumination. . . . Never in my life had I seen anything like it: in the very streets where now one big hotel touches another, and gas and electric light struggle for the mastery, nothing was then known but petroleum lamps and candles; and as none of the houses were more than one story high between the court and the garden, there was often a BUCHAREST 531 break in the continuity of the illuminations, and more shadow than light. . . . I could hardly help smiling, but I soon found this mode of lighting up, this true lucus a non lucendo, very characteristic; and then the pathetic side of it all also struck me, for each one had done his best in his little house, however humble his means. I learned, moreover, that every Roumanian makes a point of living in his own house, even if it be but of mud with no floor, with the four walls falling apart, and a thatched roof. Ask the humblest petitioner where she lives, and she will reply, “In casele mele /" (In my houses!) The day after this entry into my capital I had fever. To be ill with- out knowing any one, neither my husband, nor my maids of honor, nor A ROUMANIAN COTTAGE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe the doctors, nor even my chamber-maid, was really rather hard. It seemed, too, particularly trying to hear myself spoken of as nervous by people who knew nothing of my past, after the Spartan education I had had, too; nervous and badly brought up appear to me synonymous expressions. Many proud but silent tears did I shed in secret on my pillow at that time. 532 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD My first excursions were one series of surprises. In the town there were some picturesque streets, where all the doorways were encumbered with many-colored stuffs, old iron, and green and brown pottery. Other quarters resembled a medley of dolls' houses, so singularly small were the dwellings, hidden beneath the trees, those luckless willows which are being more thoroughly despoiled of their branches every year, or the acacias, which fill the whole town with their perfume in the spring. Open to the street were the shops of bakers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, with innumerable wine-shops, where brandy made from plums, called £2uzca, was sold—dingy little places, from the gloomy depths of which looked out men with brigand-like figures, but mild eyes, and a melancholy smile. The nearer we approached the River Dimbovitza, whose name signifies oak-leaf, the more closely packed were the houses, with their projecting balconies and small pierced columns surmounted by carved trefoils, giving them something of a Moorish appearance. And then the Dimbovitza itself, now reduced to subjection, supplemented by canals lined with quays, markets, slaughter-houses, schools, hospitals, barracks, and beautiful churches (too beautiful, perhaps, because too new), was very different in those days, and presented animated scenes on its banks, such as would have delighted poets and artists. People bathed in the beautiful mud in pell-mell fashion; the children splashed about with shouts of delight; the water-carriers led their animals into the stream, wading knee-deep themselves as they filled their barrels. And in the deepest part of the ooze you could see huge forms moving about in confusion; grayish bodies with patches bald of hair, looking like hippopotami in the distance, though the massive horns, curv- ing near the nape of the neck, and the black muzzles shining in the sun, proved them to be buffaloes. - As time went on I was to make close acquaintance with this clumsy, sluggish antediluvian beast, so common in Roumania. The cow yields quantities of rich milk, from which excellent cream is obtained, and of which very white but tasteless butter is made. For the buffalo to thrive it must be fed on the dried leaves of maize, and have a bed of mud to wallow in. It would die in the summer without marshes, and in winter if it did not have a subterranean retreat and a woollen covering. In the streets of the town, and in the open country, you see numerous buffaloes harnessed in single file to countless heavily-laden vehicles, the animals' hoofs sinking deep in the dust in dry weather, and in the mud when it rains. . . . Speaking of mud, what was my amusement the first time I was splashed with it, and that was in one of the principal roads, at finding that PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ROUMANIA after a photograph t, alrla Engraved by V BUCHAREST 535 it made grease spots on my clothes. And when I saw ploughing! A plough, drawn by from four to six oxen, just scratching over the earth, with the branch of a tree serving as harrow. . . . This is what they call plough- ing here ! More than that, the soil is so fertile that it is really all that is needed. Roumanian carriages are often drawn by horses, eight, twelve, or even sixteen little horses being yoked together in a helter-skelter manner, with a kind of packthread. A boy astride on one of them guides them all with one hand, and in the other brandishes a long whip with a short han- dle. Thus do they cross the wide plains, standing out larger than life against the wide-stretching horizon. The driver, as he goes, sings a melan- choly melody, and now and then he halts beside some well to water his cattle. The structures protecting the wells look rather like gallows rising solitary from the midst of the fields. Every man who has sunk a well is blessed, and many are the sins forgiven him. Whosoever drinks, after blowing in the water to drive away evil spirits, is bound to say, “May God pardon him.” Sometimes the charioteer falls asleep among the maize, his limbs relaxed, and abandoned to careless repose. . . . If we suddenly hear in the distance the ringing of small bells and long-sustained cries like the whistles on the railways, we know we may expect to see appear eight horses and two postilions, belonging to some wealthy man going to his country-seat at a rate of twenty kilometres an hour. The postilions wear embroidered leather garments, moccasins like those of Indians, hats with long fluttering ribbons, and shirts with wide sleeves that swell out like sails in the wind as they go. Like demons, they double themselves up, scream, crack their whips, talk to their horses, or fling you a greeting as they dash by, disappearing in a cloud of dust. In the streets of Bucharest there is a perpetual going and coming of carriages, countless hackney-coaches, all open, with just a hood to protect the hirer from the cold, the sun, or the rain. The coachmen are extraor- dinary-looking creatures, beardless Russians of the Lipovan sect, wearing long black velvet robes, pulled in at the waist with a colored sash. They drive very rapidly, with the arm stretched out as in St. Petersburg. They are clean, steady, and honest. I amused myself sometimes by counting them; no matter what the weather, from 120 to 150 carriages passed the windows of the Palace; only between two and four o'clock in the morning was there comparative quiet. - - In addition to the noise of the carriages, peddlers and porters on foot make the street reverberate with their long, melancholy cries. These 536 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD sº s walkers are mostly Bulgarians, wearing long white mantles with wide red woollen sashes, and a red or white fez on the head. They hawk milk, oranges, bonbons, a horrible drink of fermented millet, and sheep, from which the skins have been taken, the still bleeding bodies hung upon poles. To our streets, which are an imitation of those of Paris, they give a quaint touch of the Oriental. - - There is a good deal of amusement going on in Bucharest, and the people are very sociable and hospitable. No one would sit down to table without two or three extra covers, in case of unexpected guests arriving. The peasant invites you to share his meal, if it be but a couple of onions, a few boiled beans, and half a melon. But for all that there is no real gayety, or, rather, no joy. Never did I see people so sad at heart as are the Roumanians. The very children have a gravity about them unnatural to their years. Their little faces are pinched and pale, their great eyes, fringed with long curling lashes, gleam with intelligence, but their ex- pression is so melancholy that it breaks one's heart to look at them. The Roumanian is never surprised at anything. The mil admi. rari is in his blood; he is born blasé. Enthusiasm is to him a thing unknown. The Moldavian peasants who had been bitten by mad wolves, and were sent to Pasteur in Paris, were no more surprised at what they saw in that city than if it had been their native village. Death has no terrors for them. The Roumanian peasant dies with his taper in his hand with perfect indifference, and with a dignity which is quite Oriental. . At the ball given at the Palace on New-year's Day, I asked a peasant deputy, “Does this please you?” “Well enough,” he replied; “but I have seen it before. Here is my wife, though, who sees it now for the first time.” - I turned to her. “You think it beautiful, do you not?” I said. “It's not bad,” was her reply, which she gave without a smile. Neither the floods of electric light, nor the jewels, nor the size of the room impressed them; it was the peasant woman who looked like a queen —cold and disdainful, wrapped to the chin in the severe folds of her veil, gazing with contempt upon all the Parisian costumes and bare shoulders. On my arrival in the country no lady ever set her foot in the streets. It was not only indecorous to do so, it was impossible, the middle of the thoroughfare being occupied by the drain. Now all the women walk-on pavements bordered by shops and cafés, where people eat strawberries with BUCHAREST g 537 champagne and ices, seated at little tables, and trying to imitate Parisian ways. Now nothing is spoken in the town but French, whereas forty years ago Greek was the only language. We know now what will be playe to-morrow at the Porte Saint-Martin; we - criticise the new books and the latest fash- º, s ions; we cut the reviews as if we lived in º. tº: one of the faubourgs of Paris, and yet we * . * are divided from Paris by the whole of , \tº Europe. Mothers of families retire from the world, and de- prive themselves of everything for the sake of being able to send their children to Paris, and the wealthier parents, after having had some little experi- ence of the deplora- ble results of the absence of surveil- lance, now accompa- ny their daughters. Great fortunes have dis- appeared in Roumania; the large houses where IOO sat down to table every day, and as many poor were fed, are closed, and those bearing the grand old names are trying to make al living. A few a Il- PEASANT AND FRUIT-SELLER cien t dames alone S till ITC- Engraved by Bazin, after a drawing by Myrbach member the old days, and tell you tales of the time when the Boyar received at his levée, seated on his divan, while his shaved head and long beard were washed (an operation which took at least an hour), his sons and his whole Court standing motion- less before him, waiting to know if he would deign to address them | Not even a son ever dared to sit down or to smoke in the presence of his father. Now we are more democratic than the freest of republics, and can take very high rank in setting good manners at defiance 538 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Education abroad is fatal to family life, and young people do not know that confession to the mother at the end of each day is a better thing than either the École Centrale or the Lycée Louis le Grand of Paris can give. But nowadays everybody must study, and every young girl, whether rich or poor, must take her bachelor's degree. No mother is fuller of solicitude than the Roumanian; she is a perfect slave to her children. During the war, the devotion of the women of our country greatly astonished the foreign doctors. Some of these women never left the hospital, not even at night; they cared for the poor young soldiers as if they had been their own children, saying to themselves that perhaps to-morrow their own boys might be wrestling with the horrors of death among strangers. Unfortunately, the sudden changes of climate, and the pestilential marshes which surround Bucharest, are a cause of perpetual anxiety to mothers. Words are powerless to describe the time of the epidemic of diph- theria, when as many as three children were buried in one coffin, when whole streets were depopulated, the inhabitants all dead; families of five or seven children swept away in one week—the poor mothers going out of their minds. It was like the last plague of Egypt, and the people called this scourge the white pest. Not one house was spared.*... It was after this terrible time that taking the dead through the streets in open coffins was put a stop to. Previously a funeral was a kind of pub- lic fête; on a funereal car covered with gilded angels, garlands, and ribbons, the dead maiden was carried forth in her last ball-dress, with hair dressed by the barber, and decked with flowers, and often even with her face rouged so as to look better! A military band playing Chopin's funeral march followed the corpse. It was like looking on at a “Dance of Death,” to see the head of the deceased rolling from one side to the other of the satin pillow, while women shrieked, tore their hair, and smote upon their breasts. Now the loss of all this is made up for by crowds assem- bling in the churches, where the dead lie in state, the people jostling each other in their struggles to look on the face of the corpse, or to kiss its hand. In the country the dead are still buried in accordance with the ancient rites: the obolus for Charon, the ferryman of hell, is placed in the mouth of the corpse, corn is put into the coffin, and the body is drenched * Pathos is added to this account by the fact that the writer herself lost her only child, a lovely girl of four years old, from diphtheria.-TRANS. BUCHAREST - 539 with wine before it is lowered into the earth. On All-Saints' Day the so- called colivo, a kind of cake made of corn and sugar, is placed on the graves of the departed. “I shall eat of thy colivo,” is an ordinary form of oath, an imprecation often heard. - - On Sundays and fête-days the people of Bulgaria take their rest in a very peculiar manner: they dance from morning till evening with a per- fectly solemn air, holding each others' hands, and shaking a handkerchief; they turn round slowly of course, as they keep up the dance for twelve hours. Gypsies so dark that they look almost like negroes stand in the middle of the circle, scraping in melancholy fashion on their violins or mandolins, beating their dulcimers, and blowing on their shepherds' flutes till their lungs are quite exhausted. Round and round and round again go the dancers to the monotonous sound of this sad but exquisite music, the steps only changing with the rhythm of the melody, which is of Arabic character. At the end of the long monotonous day the performers are quite giddy and stupefied, and sink into a kind of dreamy, confused state of mind. & The people of Bucharest are very fond of flowers; there is not a win- dow in the town without a few pots of geraniums, carnations, or migno- nette. On the other hand, trees have anything but a good time of it here; the summer heat parches them up, and the winter kills them; men strip them of branches or chop them down, so that there is not a beautiful park, scarcely even a shady garden, to be seen. The difference of tempera- ture between winter and summer is 70° Centigrade; the plants from the north succumb beneath the torrid sunshine of August, those from the south to the snow-storms of January. The quantity of snow that falls, however, protects the soil from the intense cold, and makes Roumania a country of vineyards par excellence. There are three seasons in Rou- mania, of which one only—autumn—is fine. There is no such thing as spring. The two sledging months are a rest to the ears. As soon as the first snow falls, nothing but sledges are seen in the town; even the carriages are mounted on skates, and the houses are no longer shaken by the per- petual passing of traffic. Sometimes a snow-storm buries the low houses of the faubourgs, and eleven people once perished in a single night at the gates of Bucharest. It is no rare thing for wolves to come into the town. At such times the snow no longer seems to fall, but to be performing a tumultuous whirling up-and-down dance, so that men and beasts are blinded, and merely go round and round when they think they are advancing. º 54o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The great cemetery of Bucharest is worthy of a visit. It commands a view of the whole town—a view which is especially grand in the evening, when the sunset bathes houses, churches, clouds, and dust in a glow of purple and violet tints, with here and there gleaming, scintillating points of light from the roofs and windows. Very touching, very naïve, too, are the inscriptions on the picturesque tombs, which are adorned with photo- º, , , , º ºfºº THE STAVROPOLEOS CHURCH.-After a drawing by Berteault graphs and locks of hair framed in the marble of the crosses. Food is even sometimes placed on the graves, as in the days of the Romans. In fact, the dead are never abandoned, never forgotten. One feels that they are constantly visited; and as night falls, the little lamps which shine out on every side give one an impression of restless, wandering, floating souls, over which one must keep watch. I once passed half a night with an orphan at the grave of her father, who had just been buried among the strange scents peculiar to a cemetery after the great heat of the day, in the silence eloquent with the presence of the countless sleepers beneath the soil. In the distance the town shone BUCHAREST 54I as if illuminated, and its sounds came muffled by the distance like waves breaking behind the dunes. One's tears are stanched in the solemnity of the immutable peace— at least this is generally the case; but I remember once seeing an official of high rank, generally cold and impassible enough, fling himself upon the grave of his children, and tear up the ground with his fingers, calling his lost dear ones by name. - - One poetic time at Bucharest is Easter week, when nearly 200 churches are illuminated every evening. The bells are all clashing together, the people are crowding to offer fresh flowers to the images of the saints. On Good Friday processions carrying torches walk round all the churches, and then take tapers from them to the cemetery with which to deck the graves, even the most neglected receiving each a little light placed on it by a charitable hand. On Easter Eve the King kisses the manuscript gospel while it is being read aloud. Then he takes the crucifix and the taper, and every one comes to kiss the cross, and to light his taper at that of the King. When it strikes midnight all leave the church to celebrate the resurrec- tion in the open air. Some of these churches are scarcely larger than a room; they are surmounted by a mushroom-shaped bell-tower, and painted inside in the most fantastic manner. There are some “Last Judgments,” with a kind of red serpent, in which struggle devils and condemned souls, while the redeemed look on with serene and unmoved countenances. There, too, we see founders holding up a church on the points of their fingers, and with their numerous progeny grouped about them, the sons on one side, the daughters on the other, all exactly alike in face, and differing only in height. Every church has its own tradition, and special facilities for granting certain petitions. In one you can secure the marriage of your daughter, in another the death of your enemy; in this you can bring dis- cord into the house of your neighbor, in that you can secure the cure of a malady; in yet another the detection of thieves. There are men who are slowly killed by the offering in certain churches of tapers exactly their height; as these tapers burn, the persons indicated feel themselves wasting away, and when the tapers go out they die. One of our old servants imag- ined himself doomed to death in this manner. I said to myself, “To chil- dren we must offer the consolations of children,” and I sent another taper of his height to another church, persuading him that the prayer of the just is more efficacious than that of the wicked. What was my horror when the 542 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD person who had wished for his death died herself three days afterwards; . . . he himself, however, has been very well ever since, and is now quite plump. A certain church was built by three young girls who loved the same man. They agreed that the one who still loved him when the building was finished should be the one to marry him; but, alas! when the whole thing was done, the girls all loved him as much as on the first day. Then they all went into a convent together. - Another chapel was built by a woman who had lifted her hand against her husband. (It is considered quite natural that a husband should beat his wife; a young wife, indeed, once wished for a divorce because her hus- band did not beat her, and she thought it proved he did not love her. But for a woman to beat her husband is considered such an enormity that the guilty one is accursed, and condemned for life to spin at her distaff day and night without rest or break.) The woman who had struck her husband had long been walking about in road and field, never ceasing to ply her spindle; at last she vowed that where the spindle fell, exhausted from fatigue, she would build a church. It fell at last for the first time, but a plum - tree immediately sprang up on the spot. She did not think she ought to pull it up to build, so she went on her way. A second time the spindle fell, but up sprang an apple-tree, so on she went with her ceaseless toil. When the spindle fell a third time a spring of water gushed forth from the ground, and the girl said, “There must I build beside the living water,” and from that day she had rest. Another woman had been visited by every possible misfortune; she had lost her husband and all her children, and yet her hair had not turned white. Now, the Roumanians are afraid of women whose hair does not turn white, and they looked upon her as accursed and uncanny. She prayed day and night, but her hair remained black. Then she thought she would build a church; but it did no good—her hair was as black as ever. At last, one night, she dreamed that a voice told her to climb on the roof of her church when the first snow fell, to catch the falling flakes and cover her head with them. So she climbed on the roof and covered her head with undriven snow. One by one the hairs turned white. When the poor creature came down she was all white, but tired—so tired that she laid her down and died & - A barren woman had prayed for a child in all the churches. She dreamed that if she stole a stone from every church already built, and with the collected stones erected yet another, she would become a mother; so one by one she carried the stones, making pilgrimages all over the country. BUCHAREST --- 545 When she had a good big pile she began to build, and the day the new church was finished she found a deserted child upon her threshold ! This child she adopted. The large church of Sarindar (the name of which comes from the Neo-Greek word signifying “fortieth ") was built by Prince Mathieu Bas- Sarabi to atone for the assassination of his brother-in-law. He had gone to Constantinople to ask for the absolution of the patriarch who had ordered him to build forty churches. This, the finest of all, was the fortieth. The same prince introduced the Roumanian language into public worship and into schools in place of the Slavonian, which he did not understand. The exercise of benevolence is fraught with great difficulties in Rou- mania; work must be found for the poor to do at home, for no one will go out to service; the cooks are Tziganes, the domestic servants Transylva- nians or Hungarians, and every one must have State employment. There is one society for distributing wood in winter, another for giving work, yet another to protect the village industry of making embroideries, which are as fine as any Oriental work, and have a character all their own. I have seen poems written, I have seen painting done, compositions made, lives lived, but never did I see real embroidery produced till I came to Rou- mania. On the bodice of a young peasant girl I one day noticed that the embroidery on one of the sleeves on one side only crossed the embroidery of the shoulder-piece. I asked the girl the reason of this, and she replied, “That is called a wandering stream.” The language of our peasants is as flowery as Nature herself; they never speak but in fanciful images. “How are you getting on at home?” I asked, one day. “Like a racking cough,” was the reply. “How are you to-day ?” “Like a dog in a cart.” “You have a son P” “I have had two pines, but the storm has laid them low.” Now hear the cry from a mother's heart to her daughter: “Thy child is crying, thou hast let it fall; dost thou not know that thou should hold it like a little carnation ?” “How is thy sweetheart?” “Like the young corn in a field of maize.” 2 No Roumanian will ever admit that he is quite well. “Deh!” he cries, “not so bad.” Nor will he acknowledge that things are at the worst. Another peculiarity is that a Roumanian will never assent fully to anything, or make a positive assertion. You tell him something of which you are absolutely convinced, and, after listening to you in silence, he says, “It is possible, perhaps.” Or you ask him where he is going, and he says, “I am about to go to the fields;” and for centuries past the peasants never knew, when they went to the fields, whether they would return alive. 35 sº THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD When, during the war, I asked the wounded how they were, they invariably replied, “Well enough, but I have a pain in my chest, and in the bone of my wounded leg, and in my arm.” . . . And perhaps the next day the poor fellow who had thus answered me was dead. Many were the heart-rending and touching scenes I witnessed during the war which were, to me, a revelation of the strange nature of the Roumanian people; with their superstitions, their childlike piety, they combined melancholy and fun. I have seen a devoted wife, after seeking her husband all along the shores of the Danube and in all the hospitals, finding him at last, broken down and disfigured, to greet him with a mere nod of the head, before taking up her post at his bedside, there to nurse him day and night. I have heard some brave hero crying out, in his agony, for his mother, and covering the hands of that mother with kisses. - One poor wounded fellow, with the lower jaw destroyed, and hideous to look upon, wanted to dictate a letter to one of my ladies-in-waiting. This letter was to his wife; and he began with the usual formula: “I hope this letter will reach you in the happiest moment of your life. As for me,” he went on, “I wish to tell you that I am very well off here, and that I am wounded in the chest.” - - * At this the young girl who was writing paused in astonishment. “But, Nicolas,” she exclaimed, “that is not true !” . . . “Do you think,” he answered, “that she would remain faithful to me if she saw me looking so dreadful ?” he answered. - Once I was sent for to the town to a young man whose leg had been amputated, and who was in inconsolable despair. Not having been present at the operation, I did not know which leg had been taken off. I sat down on the side of the bed, and remained talk- ing to the poor fellow for a quarter of an hour, he smiling sweetly at me all the time. - - When I arose, my ladies-of-honor discovered that I had been sitting on the stump of the lost leg. I still shudder whenever I think of my stupidity. * * “You poor fellow !” I cried; “it must have hurt you terribly.” “I would have borne it many hours for the sake of listening to your voice,” he replied. - A handsome young man had died in a tent opposite to mine; and the next morning dawned cold and dreary, for it was November. The fog shut us in like a wall, and the ground was like an oozy bog. All of a Sud- den a man and a woman came forth from the fog like spectres. The woman wore nothing but an old gray chemise, scarce- ly reaching to her knees, and about her worn old face hung the rags of what had once been a white linen wrap. She came for- ward on her bare feet, through the deep mud, her arms clasping a bundle of linen for her son. She asked for him, and before I could get to her she fell on her knees with a heart- TZIGANES Engraved by Ruffe, after a drawing by Myrbach rending cry. A soldier, with brutal haste, had said to her, “Your son died in that tent yesterday.” The clean white shirts she had so lovingly brought for him slipped from her hands into the mud; and tearing her hair and smiting her breast, she cried again and again, “Radoul, my 548 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD son | Radoul, Radoul, Radoul ſ” She would listen to no comfort, accept no food, no shelter, but rose at last and went away through the fog, turning back at every step to cry again the name of her lost son. Her figure assumed immense proportions in the heavy air, and her voice rang out strangely through the damp gloom; and when she was out of sight we could still hear the cry of “Radoul, Radoul!” The scene haunts me often now. For four months I had been trying—alas! in vain—to save the life of a young man. About a quarter of an hour before his death some one spoke to me in rather a loud voice near his bed. I leaned over him and said: “We are making too much noise, are we not?” “What does that matter,” he replied, “if only I can look at you?” When the end came his mother began to sob and cry; but the people about asked her to be quiet, as they did not want me to know of his death till the next day. And she had the self-control and grandeur of soul to be silent. - - On Christmas Eve, after a long severe frost, a thaw rendered the streets of Bucharest impassable. I was to go and meet the King, who was returning as a victorious hero, after five months' absence. I thought it would have been a delirium of joy to me. But I had suffered too much; I had lost the power of rejoicing; I did not know how to be glad. The last days before Plevna had all but destroyed all three armies at once. After a terrible snow-storm the cold had been 20° below zero. The Danube was so encumbered with ice that not a loaf of bread could be sent over it. If Osman Pasha had held out three days longer, every soul would have perished. And now the road between Plevna and Nicopolis was covered with famished crowds. I know not how many left Plevna, but only 10,000 arrived at Nicopolis - The King started the next day on the same road on his way home to his capital. He had to leave his sledge, for it jolted over corpses. Horror. struck, he mounted a horse and pressed on along this pathway of death, the horse starting and rearing at every step. There were groups of the dead sitting round the last fire they had lit in some deep rut, carts overturned, driver and buffaloes alike frozen in their places, standing up still, stiff as statues. There were the dying, their arms upraised to heaven in a final petition before they sank back with a last sigh and expired. At the battle of Grivitza 16,000 men had fallen; one battalion of BUCHAREST - 549 cavalry had lost one-half its numbers, and for three days the enemy's fire made it impossible to pause for a moment for food or to bury the dead in the trenches. But all these horrors sank into insignificance before those of the journey from Plevna to Nicopolis. By paths as slippery as glass, the King climbed up to the fortress amid the terrible clamor of the voices of Io,000 prisoners lying in the ditches, for whom not a scrap of food could be obtained. But as he gained the stronghold, the perils of the ice-path passed, the sun lit up Roumania with a rosy light; and the heart of the young monarch was warmed within him at seeing his native land once more. - The next day the King seemed to be exposed to such peril among the raging prisoners, who numbered many more than our troops, that the bold scheme was decided on of sending him away in a little iron-clad vessel, which cut its way through the ice, breaking it where it was thin, and literally springing over it where it was impassable, returning safely in port at last, and bringing bread to starving Nicopolis. When at Turno-Magomelli the King found himself, for the first time for five months, in a warmed and furnished room, with a bed to sleep on, he thought he was in an enchanted palace. Another snow-storm endangered his life between Magomelli and Craiova, when the train awaited him to take him to his capital, draped with flags, decorated with garlands, to welcome back the hero and conqueror, and to his wife, whose hair had turned white with the anguish through which she had passed, and whose joy resembled grief, so weary was her heart. Could one but go among them, the Tziganes would be a most inter- esting and curious study. They are still, and ever will be, pariahs, beg- gars and thieves, musicians and poets, cowards and complainers, wanderers and heathen, but oh, so picturesque ! Their camp, no matter where it is pitched in the wide plain, is always in charming disorder, and of a marvel- lous color, especially in the evening, when the huge red sun of Roumania, sets upon the violet horizon beneath the mighty green dome of heaven. The women of the camp wear garments of every imaginable hue, from tender green to brick red and orange yellow. Their nut-brown children run about half naked, their little shirts just covering their shoulders and a bit of their necks. There sit the men, with tangled hair and soft, velvety eyes, grouped about the fire, their naked feet against the copper kettles they are tinkering; or we see them gathered about the timber yards or buildings where they are employed, running about the scaffoldings with 55o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the suppleness of Indians, in attitudes and positions that are always charm- ing. Their language is as sonorous as beaten brass, and their songs are most beautiful, but it is only with reluctance that they will let any one hear them. One of the most interesting sights of Bucharest is the great Fair, to which all flock to buy, among other things, everything that is needed to celebrate the Fête of the Dead. This week is one long delight to chil- dren. In spite of the broiling sun, in spite of the smothering dust, thou- sands of carriages succeed each other in the long street (Calea Mochilor) leading to the Fair, which is held in a place called Mo- chi, in memory of a great battle fought on this spot between Mathieu Bassarabi and Radou, who tried to take Bucharest with an army of Moldavians and Tartars. “And the women and chil- dren,” says the chronicler, “climbed upon the flower- ing hedges to see the war wage.” . . . Tramway cars and carriages overflow with people, every window is packed with gayly - decked heads, some very pretty faces among them, and, once at the Fair, one wanders round in a labyrinth of little stalls, where terra-cotta pots, wood- en pitchers, and glass neck- laces are sold. ‘ One sees wagon-loads of handsome ROUMANIAN SOLDIERS peasant women and pretty Engraved by Ruffe, after a photograph children driving off laden - with purchases, and in the midst of the noise and confusion, the shouts, the brilliant colors, the bears and the giants, and the ever-thickening clouds of dust, you suddenly see the calonchar dance begin. This is an old Roumanian dance, derived from |BUCHAREST 55 I the ancient Saturnalia, or dance of Saturn, in which the herdsmen tried to hide that they had stolen away Jupiter to prevent Saturn from devour- ing him, as he had his other children. The dancers, dressed in white, with little bells on their legs, behave in the wildest way. They are in training long before, so as to be able to bear the fatigue of dancing in this way from Easter to Pentecost. They are led by a violinist, and one of them, his finger on his lips, maintains silence among the rest, threatening them with his staff if they speak. Saturn must not know from them where to find his son. - - The Roumanians express everything by dancing; men dance to- gether, and women together. The soldiers in the barracks always manage to get a violin, a flute, or a bagpipe, on which Some one plays a dance of some kind for them. On a campaign, in war, after the most fatiguing marches, in showers of shot and shell, they still dance, defying the projec-, tiles, until one of the dancers is struck down. Then good-humor never fails, even in the hospital. The wounded amuse themselves by composing comedies to make those still in bed laugh, and act them with an animation, spirit, and power of imitation which is perfectly marvellous. Among the finest institutions of Bucharest are the hospitals. They have been so liberally endowed by former rulers that they have at the present time an income of three or four millions, and every one is received and cared for gratis as long as he remains in bed. They have been partly rebuilt, and the new military hospital is constructed in accordance with all the latest scientific principles. - * ** A circle of military hospitals and barracks now surrounds the series of heights overlooking the royal country-seat, the old Cotroceni convent and the cupola of the large orphanage sheltering 400 orphans. Farther off is a second emceinte, that of the fortifications, for from time immemo- rial Bucharest has always been a citadel, a strategic post of great impor- tance. - . The transformation of Bucharest into a fine modern town in the style of modern taste is now complete; it is now a town intersected with canals, well irrigated, adorned with grand buildings, such as the Athenaeum, the new Ministries, the Bank, the State Printing - press, the Town - hall, the Houses of Parliament, etc. The foundation of the Bacteriological Insti- tute raises us to the level of the other scientific centres of Europe. But the picturesque Oriental Bucharest, the Bucharest, as big as Vienna, but with only 220,000 inhabitants, made up of little houses nestling in verdure, the Bucharest in which one could point out the houses of Monsieur this 552 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD and Madame that (giving the moms de guerre of the persons indicated), has disappeared to give place to a town just like any other. It only ap- pears Oriental to those who come from the West. Those who come from Asia give a sigh of satisfaction as they cross the Danube. “Ah!” they say to themselves, “here we are in Europe.” Truly, we are remarkable Sovereigns, for we have managed to accom. plish in twenty-five years what it has taken others several centuries to achieve. - We have created an army: on the arrival of the King there was but one battery of artillery; now we have 700 cannons. Our first cruiser is the nucleus of a fleet. The State Budget, which before the arrival of the King was 38,000,000, is now I 50,000,000. Political life has become com- paratively calm and serious, and long periods elapse without changes in the Ministry or the dissolution of the Chambers. Railways intersect the country in every direction, taking grain to the sea, cattle to Italy, wood to Panama. There are schools everywhere, and we seem likely to suffer from having hastened our development so much, the upsetting of the equi- librium being especially felt in family life. We even make an attempt at Socialism, so as to be quite abreast with modern civilization. But Socialism takes root with difficulty in a country purely agricultural, where there are no industries, and where the farmers come quite naturally to consult their landlord, asking him whether it would be well for them to revolt; if they would really get more land by doing so, as the agitators tell them they would. Roumania bids fair to become what King Charles dreamed she might —a living artery of Europe. When the crown of the country, of the very existence of which he was ignorant, was offered to a young Hohenzollern prince, he opened the atlas, took a pencil, and seeing that a line drawn from London to Bombay passed through the principality which called him to be its head, he accepted the crown with the words: “This is a country of the futureſ” º º ºWN* liNº §i§ # alſº | . | ſ' t i W | f G º - W i. St NWWA º §§SQNYºº ºl §§sº N | A/ SSSR - - a wº ščº WW/ - --- $24.22222222222222222222222222222 ºzºf --~~ * : T = Tº = - "T- - - -- - wº- -- | E=-E-E- ..º- == Fººl º' R º a - E Re-E-E --- º - == − = W º:= ~ :...I - F = E = -wº- = . . E-- . ." E - Rºse- ------- -- - =------------- -- " - ſirº- ----------> - - - Pºº-º-m-e-e--- *-*-*m-e-º-myº-º-º: --> #: Rºž//.4%W ºf Ż 7: Nº!/2 % º/ . |||} A. º /* -- £ \ N A:.. M "/ -- ~~~~ Nºë", / / §N\º STOCKHOLM HE modern taste for simplifying criti- cism and condensing it into a single sen- tence has led people to call Stockholm the Venice of the North, and the Swedes the French of the North. The truth is, if we must express that truth in two lines, that in- tellectual culture is more widely spread in the Scandinavian States than anywhere else, and that Stockholm may take rank among the most picturesque cities of the world. Situated as it is, partly on islands, partly on a plain, and partly on hills, the general ap- pearance of Stockholm is extremely diversified and beautiful. The quays and bridges are a very fine feature; but the wooden houses, so often and so easily burned down, are now re- placed by stone buildings, many of which are absolute palaces. It is when the sun is setting on a summer evening that a trip by sea to the deep fiord of the Baltic, known as Lake Mälaren, is most charming. All the islands and peninsulas are dotted with pretty villas, and the wide stretch of water forming the Archipelago is bright with little steam-yachts scud- ding about among the large steamers which also put in here. The orig- inal City of Stockholm, of which the great docks are the most noteworthy feature, has altogether outgrown its mother-island. The oaks of Djurgår. den and the rocky heights on the horizon form a fitting framework to the fascinating panorama, which, the very first time I saw it, made an indelible impression upon my memory. I went to the Moselocke Garden, where there is a steam-lift, and in the STATUE OF CHARLEs XII. Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph 556 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD vast sea of houses, bridges, viaducts, roads, quays, and jetties, connecting the scattered islands, two buildings especially arrested my attention: the Royal Palace and the National Museum, significant monuments bringing into marked prominence the chief characteristic of this city of the north, STOCKHOLM FROM SKEPPSHOLMEN.—Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Born which has been idly compared to similar cities in the south of Europe. Stockholm really is the outcome of the slow growth of a nation, the result of a prolonged effort, the history of which is epitomized in the huge mass of the Royal Palace overlooking the Amphitheatre. As for the National Museum, it reminds us of what the religion of Sweden is—indeed, of the whole of Scandinavia—a religion of love, a love which even affects the treatment of her national antiquities. If you are fortunate enough on your arrival at Stockholm to be present at one of the numerous concerts, and hear the exquisite popular melodies of which Sweden possesses so fine a collection, and which are loved so passionately by her people, and you note the melancholy music, the light gayety and patriotism of the words, you will get a very fair impression to begin with of the charming and pictu. resque town set in its lovely framework, and rich in national memories alike prehistoric and historic. STOCKHOLM 557 - The whole of Stockholm is overlooked by the majestic residence of the Royal Family, the Palace about which gather the most valuable and noble historic memories. This great mass of stone occupies the site on which, in 1235, Birger Jarl built a fortress, which may be looked upon as the origin of Stockholm. Close beside it is the Storkyrka, or Great Church, which an inscription and many historians date from that remote epoch, and claim as the most ancient edifice in the town, though it has been so much re- stored that the visitor is more likely to take it for a building of the last century, more especially as there are but few relics of ancient art even in the interior. - The Royal Palace was built by Nicholas Tessin in the style of the Renaissance at the end of the seventeenth century. It is a huge building, and is said to contain 8oo rooms, wandering through which many and many a dramatic scene rises up before our mind's eye, in spite of the usual ignorance of southern races of Scandinavian history, imbued though they # ENTRANCE TO THE PORT OF STOCKHOLM After a drawing by Boudier be with a certain amount of legendary lore relating to the North. Was it not in the very earliest years of its existence associated with a terrible acci- dent worthy of the fifth act of a tragedy? King Charles XI. had just died before the completion of the monument which he had prided himself on 558 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD making as magnificent as possible. His corpse had but just been laid out in state when a fire broke out, and the flames raged so furiously that it was only with the greatest risk to life that the dead monarch's body was flung out of the window. May we be allowed to remark, en passant, that the objection to cremation at that period appears to have been carried to an extreme, and that after all it would have been preferable to this flinging out of the window? Fires have been more frequent and fatal in Stock- holm than in any other town, and it has been so often badly injured, and more than once completely destroyed by them, that stone has at last been used for building instead of the resinous wood so long exclu- sively used. - The Royal Palace is rich in fine easel pictures, painted ceilings, sculpt. ures, and stucco decorations; but it is in its tapestries that it excels all other collections: even the private galleries of France have not so fine a series of Gobelins. Gustavus III., who was such a great admirer of France until the Revolution, brought a number of fine tapestries from that coun- try. He was a generous prince, fond of display, and not caring very much where the means for it were obtained. He did not much respect the Con- stitution, but as he violated it to make a war which flattered the national sentiment, the masses of the people remained true to him when his nobles abandoned him, and after his death the burghers put up a monument to him, which is a fine example of the work of Sergel, who is generally con- sidered the best Swedish sculptor of that time. It may not be unnecessary to remind our readers that Gustavus III. was assassinated at a masked ball, though we are familiar enough with the gallant figures of Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII., so ably criticised by Voltaire, and, above all, Charles John Bernadotte, who was of French birth. The whole Palace is full of memories of the last-named monarch, and his rooms are still shown, though now converted into reception halls. A mere cadet in the army of Napoleon, he quarrelled with that great general, and after various vicissitudes, he was elected, in 1810, Crown Prince of Sweden, and on the death of Charles XIII. became King, founding a dynasty which is now one of the most respected in Europe. Benjamin Constant, who knew him well, gives a very good portrait of him: “There was something chivalrous in his appearance, his manners were noble, his mind was very refined, his mode of conversing declamatory; in a word, he was a remark- able man, courageous in battle, bold in scheming, but timid in any but mili- tary action, irresolute in carrying out all his projects. One thing which made him very attractive at first sight, but at the same time formed an STOCKHOLM 559 obstacle to the working out of any plan with him, was his habit of harang- uing, a relic of his revolutionary education which never left him.” It was in the salon of Madame Récamier that Constant saw Berna- dotte on the eve of the eighteenth Brumaire, and it is to the pen of Mon- sieur Amédée Clausade that we owe a portrait of him when he had been on ºº:::::::::: º | =r, - STOCKHOLM : VIEW FROM LAKE MALEREN–After a drawing by Boudier the throne of Sweden for some time. “When I was introduced,” he says, “Charles XIV. was standing in the centre of his salon, wearing a coat of blue cloth, with collar and trimmings of velvet and gold braid; on his boots were silver spurs. Of a good height ... not too stout, his hair was already white; but the expression of his face was full of youth and vivacity, and his conversation always fluent and rich in grand memories, of the actions of which he could say: ‘A’t quorum Żars magna ſui /’” In spite of the dif- ference of time at which these portraits were taken, the original of both can be easily recognized; it is the artist, not the model, who is different. Clausade had a long chat with the old monarch, who seemed very anx- ious not to have his name mixed up with those of Moreau and others who had fought against their country in the ranks of the foreigner. He dwelt long on this point, and made his visitor sit down beside him in an embra- sure of the window lined with purple satin, looking out upon the Lejon- bocken and the Norrbro. Bernadotte declared that he was altogether devoted to Sweden, and served her interests loyally. As for the difficulties 56o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD in which he found himself involved with regard to France, he explained them away by arguments which seem to me very well summed up in the Proclamation to the German Army of the North in 1812, when he was generalissimo. “Soldiers,” he said, “the same sentiment which guided the French in 1792, and which led them to unite against the armies invading their territory, should to-day direct your valor against those who, after hav- ing invaded the soil on which you were born, still enslave your brothers, your wives, and your children." As King of Sweden, Bernadotte wished to prove himself still consist- ent with the feelings of the Adjutant who sang the “Marseillaise” on the eve of fighting Ney. However that may be, Charles XIV., though he never learned the language of his people, died King of Sweden in his beautiful Royal Palace, beloved by the whole of Sweden, and even of Nor- way, and his successors have been worthy of him—highly cultivated them- selves, and eager to promote the culture of their subjects. The son of Ber- nadotte, King Oscar I., composed some fairly satisfactory music, and wrote a good book, Des Peines et des Prisons; and the present King, Oscar II., has inherited his gifts, and has published volumes of different kinds: Traduction de Poesies Espagnoles et Portugaises; Souvenirs de la Flotte - Fº THE ROYAL PALACE.-After a drawing by Boudier STOCKHOLM 561 - - - Suédoise, the latter being his impressions when he was a young naval offi- cer. Some of his historical essays, notably his Dissertation sur Charles X/Z, are also very good, inculcating good political economy. To complete our survey of the political history of Stockholm we must visit several other monuments. The fine Knight's House, or Riddarhus, contains a beautiful room adorned with armorial bearings in which the Swedish nobles met, and the Church of Riddarholm is a regular Pantheon, STOCKHOLM : THE CITY QUAY.—After a drawing by Boudier in which are the tombs of the kings and chief great men of Sweden. There are also a number of statues commemorating the past in various parts of the town. - All these stone relics, however, sink into insignificance before those which we may characterize as the outcome of the intellectual progress of the Scandinavian race, which are collected in the various museums of Stockholm. The National Museum, with its galleries of painting and sculpture, might more aptly be called the Museum of Gustavus III., that prince hav- ing bought, at the end of the last century, a number of fine French pictures 36 562 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD by Chardin, Lancret, Oudry, Desportes, and Boucher, with others of the Flemish and Dutch schools. Of these the Rembrandts appear to us the finest. Gustavus was certainly a man of taste, as proved by the fact that he brought a number of remarkable antiques from Italy, which it is truly surprising to find at Stockholm, when we remember how eagerly Swedish patriots protested, in the name of the whole of Scandinavia, against the Greek and Latin civilizations. . Did not the distinguished Dane, Grundtvig, wage against them an eloquent, almost religious, campaign, in which he wound up by suggesting the substitution of the Sagas and Eddas for the works of Homer and Virgil, as models for young students 2 Great is contemporary Sweden's zeal for archaeology, and many a happy and profitable hour may be spent in that part of the National Collec- tion which is called the Historic Museum, in which Herr Hildebrand has admirably classified thousands of objects found in Sweden, including in- scriptions, weapons, personal ornaments, ceramic ware, etc., giving us an insight alike into prehistoric and historic times. - To complete this notice of a collection unique in Europe we must go to the Ethnographical Museum, founded in 1873 by Dr. Hazelius, which contains everything connected with the life, costumes, industry, and art of Scandinavia and Lapland, all most interesting to the foreigner, but at which he finds it difficult not to smile, with such minute care is everything classified and sorted. It is a fact that there are very severe laws forbid. ding the private appropriation of a flint implement or a rusted weapon of the slightest archaeological interest; it must neither be sold nor kept, but handed over to be placed in these vast museums, and with the aid of all these relics the Swedes have been able to put together a complete picture of the mode of life of their most remote ancestors. Competent authorities are of opinion that prehistoric studies cannot be pushed too far, especially as there is no written history of Scandinavia going back further than twenty generations. Early chronicles, dating from the end of the eleventh century, have been almost completely lost, and nothing but vague traditions, embodied in the Sagas, remain relating either to that time or to earlier ages; so that except the relics left beneath the soil by prehistoric peoples, we have scarcely anything left to aid us in the study of the remote past. Truly valuable to the student are the objects displayed to him in the glass cases of the Archaeological Museum of Stockholm, which awoke the admiration of the Anthropological and Archaeological Congress of 1874. Interpreted by Nilsson, of Lund, in his fine work, and confirmed by the laborious decipherment of Runic inscriptions, they | THE PORT OF STOCKHOLM IN WINTER.—Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Wahlberg STOCKHOLM - 565 have thrown a very unexpected light upon the origin of the Scandina- vian race. º While speaking of contemporary Scandinavians of eminence, we may also mention the historian Munk, of Christiania, who died a few years ago, and the philologist Madvig, of Copenhagen. In fact, in the two Swedish universities of Upsal and Lund we find in every branch of human knowl- edge worthy successors of Berzélius. - The National Library contains manuscripts and archives which have already been utilized by several scholars. Most of these documents come from convents, and were taken from them by Gustavus Vasa at the time of the secularization of religious houses. We must add, however, that a good many volumes have disappeared, having been given to the libraries of uni- versities or burned; while others, amounting to several thousands of books and manuscripts, were carried off by that eccentric lady Queen Christina, when she deserted her kingdom for Rome, and are now in the Vatican. Among the manuscripts of Stockholm, the “Devil's Bible” is the most famous, and is said to be the largest manuscript known. It consists of 3oo asses' skins, and includes the Bible, the works of Joseph, several writ- ings of St. Isidor, a Chronicle of Bohemia, and several Magic Formulae. The devil, with an enormous head and emaciated limbs, is represented on the last leaf, and has given the name to the book. Another famous work is the Codex aureus, whether printed or manuscript is a matter of dispute. One thing is certain: that it has foretold events for many years. It is made up of alternate red and white leaves. Those who consult it will have their wish if they open it at a white leaf, but will be disappointed if they light upon a red one. If, however, the consulter of the oracle were very powerful, or paid well, he might still cherish hope, even if he did open the book at a red leaf, as it is always possible to get a propitious oracle out of an unlucky page. A magic book, truly; but it has of late lost its prestige among ama- teurs, who would rather turn to the library of the Academy of Sciences, which contains the complete manuscript works of that strange and power- ful genius Swedenborg. We long to trace here the interesting biography of this great Spirit, but our readers would, perhaps, not share our enthu- siasm, and would rather that we turned to pay our respects to the Her- barium of Linnaeus, which is indeed a precious relic. Cogordan has given a very good picture of Swedish intellectual development which it may be well to quote: - “It was in the reigns of Gustavus Adolphus and Christina that 566 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Swedish savants began to attract attention; at the same time that the University of Upsala, which had been under a cloud throughout the sixteenth century, was reorganized, and took the first steps in the brill- iant career before it. It was at this period that Messenius published his Scandia illustra, and the brothers Petrus and Olaiis Magni composed ENTRANCE TO THE PORT OF STOCKHOLM --- After a drawing by Boudier their vast works on ancient Scandinavian history. A little later, Rudbeck, extending the field of his myth- ological and historical researches, produced his great Atlanticó. While protecting native-born men of note, the Sovereigns of Sweden also at- tracted to their Court illustrious foreigners; Descartes died at Stock- holm; Saumaise and Naudé, two French scholars, were invited by Queen Christina; under Charles XI. the German Puffendorf, the rival of Gro- tius, and one of the founders of the science of the Rights of Humanity, occupied a chair at the then infant University of Lund. In the eigh- teenth century one grand intelligence seems to have concentrated in himself all the scientific genius of Sweden; we allude to Linnaeus, the Father of Botany. At the same time, French influence became more and more apparent; Stockholm already had an Academy of Sciences, as well as one corresponding with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of Paris. Gustavus III., an enlightened prince, an enthu- STOCKHOLM 567 siastic lover of all things French, although he became a declared enemy of the Revolution, founded, in 1786, a Swedish Academy, in imitation of that already existing in France. For all that, however, this period, perhaps because of its very infatuation for French taste, left no durable literature : behind it; and of the writers contemporary with Gustavus III. we need only mention Bellman, the light-hearted singer of Stockholm. A powerful reaction marked the commencement of the present century, the signal for which was given by a professor of Upsala, Atterbom. The Phosphorists, so called from the name of their journal, the Phosphorus, went for their inspiration to the then but little explored sources of Scandinavian an- tiquity. They gave life once more to Swedish literature, hitherto con- demned to sterility; and their influence was great, as they spread among the people a taste for national history, which nourishes patriotism better than any other aliment. The great writers of this time were Tegner, Bishop of Vexió, and long professor at Lund University; Franzen, Bishop of Hernåsand, in Norrland; and lastly, Runeberg, of Finland, the greatest poet of Sweden, author of the national song of the sad Suomi. All are now dead, and have not been replaced; some romances, most of them in the true and temperate style of Madame Bremer, with a few dramatic pieces, are all that Swedish literature has produced at the present time. It is the Norwegians, a young people, full of youth and vigor, who now carry off the palm in literature. In science, on the other hand, Sweden has no cause to envy any one. To complete this picture of the intellectual life of Sweden, we may add that the young University of Stockholm has taken first rank in mathematics.” - Cogordan adds: “This would seem to be the place to notice those national rivalries which are matter of common knowledge, and a very important element in public feeling. True, all Scandinavians agree in the cultivation of national Archaeology, but they remain very suspicious of each other in other matters. Scandinavism, a dream, copied from Pan- slavism, and Pan-germanism, is still a thing of literature only. In 1869, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian scholars met at Stockholm with a view to the adoption of a common orthography for Scandinavian languages; but they could not make absolutely indispensable concessions. Talk to a Norwegian, and his suspicious patriotism could rank nothing above ‘old Norway;' with a Swede, and he would dwell with emotion upon the time when Gustavus Adolphus, with 6000 men, made the holy Roman Empire tremble; with a Dane, and the burden of his discourse would be the time of Valdemar the Great, when the Baltic was a Danish lake, and the con- 568 | THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD clusion was inevitable that no Scandinavian will ever accept the union of the three kingdoms except on the condition that his own country takes first place in the confederation.” ” - The best time to live in Stockholm is the winter, which is the Season; it can only be compared with that of St. Petersburg, when Sledge and Skating Fêtes and balls are the order of the day. Balls and skating are everywhere looked upon as the best possible opportunities for flirting; and we may add that in Sweden the young girls are generally pretty and refined. I wish I had by me, that I might quote them, the verses of Paul Bourget, the theme of which is the love of a Parisian for a young Swedish girl passing through Paris. They would give a very good idea of the - impression made on the French by these charming Scandinavians. The people of Stockholm are ex- tremely sociable; and some people say that the town is second only to New York in its culture of the telephone, adding that it is used there more to indulge the people's passion for conver- sation than for business. As for myself, I shall merely observe that living at Stockholm costs about half what it does at Paris. There is a good deal that is very delightful at Stockholm in the sum- mer, and there are plenty of pleasant excursions to be made in its environs. Naturalists say that the forests of Swe- den are more silent than the woods of Germany, which is probably the result STATUE of BERNADoTTE of two-thirds of the country being occu- After a drawing by H. Vogel pied by forests. Unfortunately, recently there has been so much cutting down of - trees, which is to be regretted on other grounds, that singing-birds have had to take refuge in the woods that are left. Three excursions certainly ought to be made, and would be thoroughly enjoyed by the visitor to Stockholm. He must go for a walk in the park * L'Instruction supérieure en Russie, by Georges Cogordan. Revue des deux Mondes, May 15, 1875. The whole article is excellent. - ( STOCKHOLM - 569 of Djurgården, outside the gates of the town; he must visit the huge palace of Drottningholm, and the historic palace of Gripsholm. Djurgår. den is of a natural beauty, and peculiarly fitted for the embellishments of art. It consists of a rocky peninsula, covered with a mass of oaks, pines, and hawthorns, such as can only be produced in a northern climate. Like sensible people, the Swedes thoroughly enjoy their park, and have set up beneath the plantains a statue of the most popular of their poets, the song. writer Bellman. Pretty and elegant houses are dotted about among the trees. - - The palace of Drottningholm, which is built after the model of that of Marseilles, occupies one of the 1300 isles of Lake Mälaren. Many are the pictures contained in this palace; and some of them are certainly very piquant, if nothing else. I am not sure whether there is very much to admire from the point of view of art, but it would not be fair to pass over without a word these Swedish landscapes, made up of green trees and water, and bathed in a soft and tender light which can never be forgotten. The Castle of Gripsholm is generally called the Swedish Versailles; its chief claim to this title is its Historical Museum, which is much richer in national relics than is the French palace. Many a good drama has been produced in the round towers of Gripsholm which has been adapted for the French Odéon Theatre. - - To sum up, lovers of nature will find near Stockholm much that is most picturesque, perhaps even grand. In the long winters, the clearness of the twilight especially produces grand effects. Swedish tales are essen- tially dramatic, and remind us of those of Spain and Italy, introduced to us by Stendal and Mérimée. Education is and has long been universal in Sweden. Every peasant can read, and the communal schools are regular palaces. Archaeological studies are more eagerly pursued and held in higher esteem in Sweden than in any other country. As a seaboard and commercial city, as well as the owner of great art treasures, Stockholm, in the opinion of competent judges, takes high rank; and the natural courtesy and tact of the Swedes makes a visit to their country very pleasant for the foreigner. X-->==ºs --> -->rº Tºº * - sº ...A. ' t º THE CATHEDRAL After a drawing by Henry Pille BRUSSELS ROM the memories of my childhood stands out an ancient town with tortuous lanes and projecting houses with crooked fronts, loom- ing forth from reeking mists with dripping eaves; a town with an appearance all its own, quite dis- tinct from that of other capitals, homely yet fas- cinating, with no self-consciousness about it; a sleepy town with Beguine nunneries clustering about the apses of crumbling churches, but wak- ing into life again with the noise of traffic, the clamor of markets, the hubbub of wine-shops; a town which went tumbling down steep declivities, forming a perfect net-work of lanes and blind alleys crowding about the outlets of cross-roads, spreading across bridges, sending forth offshoots of masonry with tottering gables adorned with barge-board mouldings resembling pikes' jaws, the teeth of saws, or the prows of vessels, pediments surmounted by urns, lamps, or astrolabes, fes- tooned with sculptured wreaths and embossed with bass-reliefs; a town the traditional boundaries of which were very restricted, descending in a series of irregularly-built houses towards the Hôtel de Ville, the palpitating heart of the city, which had not as yet spread into the suburbs, but was girdled with counterscarps where its boulevards now are; a town taken by assault by the windings of a rapid muddy river meandering among the closely-packed houses of the lower town, wearing away the bases of the façades, making breaches in the foundations of decorticated walls eaten away by the friction of the water, tattooed with patches of mould and draped with wallwort, or the 574 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD flanks of buildings mellow with age and altogether out of the perpen- dicular, with wart-like wooden balconies, glazed brattices, and parasitical excrescences; mill-weirs, mill-wheels, moss-grown arches, stagnant sewers with choked outlets flaked with ochreous foam, dashed with gelatinous streaks, rainbowed with the waste of dye-works, coagulated with the refuse of breweries—that putrid Senne, which having assumed the office of public depository, became choked with the swollen bodies of drowned dogs and rubbish of all kinds, redolent of the charnel-house and the morass, and in a perpetual state of fermentation beneath a cloud of mosquitoes and black flies, a vast alembic bubbling forth hot exhalations and giving out poisonous gases; but with it all there was yet the bright activity of a com- mercial waterway with paddle-wheels churning up the scum, ducks splash- ing about beneath the drooping willows, while at midnight the reflections of lanterns and candles dashed here and there with light, the black pathway of the water with its tributary gutters and sewers, its affluents of refuse from manufactories, its rivulets sadly merging their existence in that of the main stream. The whole scene was in fact thoroughly characteristic of the easy-going provincial capital in its decadence, imbued with traditions and respected ancient customs never ignored, with thoroughly domesticated and intensely commonplace manners, handed down from one generation to another. - r From these far distant days echo dull voices, the muffled sound of parish chimes, the tinkling of cracked bronze and sonorous brass, with the booming of the great bells on Solemn occasions. Once more I see peace. ful, unfashionable households, silent chapels, weeping tears of warm wax over the genuflections of good women in hoods and mantles of print; I watch whole families strolling towards the tea-gardens of Pannenhuys, Pachterziel, and Petit Paris, by way of paths bordered with cabbages beside little babbling streams. In streets as shady as woods, beneath the waving of Oriflammes and banners fanning the countless illuminations in the win- dows, pass religious processions, with gleaming chasubles, dalmatica, and flashing jewels, the sign of benediction made by the priest to an accom- paniment of liturgical psalmody, the clashing of bells, and the crash of military music. The wild revelry of the Kirmess, or open-air fair, is going on with its motley crowds, its feasting, and its gluttony. The air is full of the musty fumes of the kitchen, and here come the good giants, Janneke and Mieke, Ommegancks of clumsy gestures, athletes dragging along sym- bolic buildings, guilds defiling to the clinking of medals encircling the staves of standards. - BRUSSELS 575 Brussels is now a showy, geometrically-built city, with endless straight avenues, cubic perspectives, and well-ordered suburbs; a young and laugh. ing capital vulgarized by its imitation of every other capital, and which an immoderate love of stucco has led to the imitation of Paris in particular; a modernized town laid out by rule, scraped clean with pumice-stone, 3. & f º . : | º ROOFS OF OLD BRUSSELS.—After a drawing by Vogel deprived of all the bric-à-brac of its antiquities, rebuilt without any of its primitive originality; a town which has sprung forth from the vitals of its ancient quarters with ready-made squares, symmetrical thoroughfares, straight streets, stucco and bastard-stucco buildings, five-storied houses, all the usual topographical peculiarities of Europeanism; a town which has laid aside its ancient robes, crumbled to dust its antique plaster-work, pulverized its venerable relics, cleaned out its sewers, aerified its sinks, des- quamated its ulcers, to make itself like other towns; a town of palaces, barracks, academies, and official buildings, in which is concentrated all the machinery of Government, and which is the very heart of the body politic; a town which, with its sparse population altogether insufficient to people its wide thoroughfares, and with its somewhat paralyzing condition of well- 576 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD being, its Ostentatious luxury and wealth, calls up a vision of another La Haye, a purring, self-satisfied, quiet, satiated, much-envied place; a town which has retained its bourgeois character with all its pomp, a matter-of- fact, home-like, punctilious city; a town inhabited by men of simple man- ners and moderate intellectual power, combined with a weakness for trivial amusements and military pomp and show; yet, with it all, still remaining a very paradise to those who like to lead an easy, careless life. The rapid building of houses has done away with the old boundaries. The rich fermenting mould of the market-gardens of the past is now degraded to serve as manure, and is shut in by brick and mortar. The humid earth, so suitable for the growth of cabbages and turnips, has been baked into bricks for the building of faubourgs, which, stretching beyond the old suburbs, have in their turn become, important cells in the big Brus- sels hive. Ceaseless building has encroached on the country; mortar, plaster, and stucco have replaced the fertile lands which so amply repaid the labor of the tiller of the soil. One must now tramp over miles of pavement between compact tetragons of houses before one can once more reach the country and inhale the aroma of freshly-turned earth; at last the green zone comes in sight, and we see before us the undulations of the agricultural districts of Brabant, encircled by low hills, a pastoral land with valleys rich in cereals, avenues of poplars, woods, and grass lands, hamlets of houses with whitewashed walls and red roofs, looking like straw- berries in a bowl of cream. One thing must, however, be added to this account: the transition from the old to the new is not rendered melancholy in Brussels by the necessity, such as was formerly usual on entering a town, of passing through sickly, putrid, devastated quarters, waste places fit only for gibbets and encumbered with rubbish. The townsman on his way to the open country is spared the usual dreary stretch of wretched suburbs strewn with dust-heaps and cinders, fetid deserts haunted by mangy dogs, gloomy cem- eteries overcrowded with many generations of the dead, frequented by tramps, fugitives from the law, and other homeless wanderers. In Brussels we are in the country lanes as soon as the last houses are passed, inhaling the scent of hay and of manure, among the trees and run- ning streams of fair landscape scenes. The avenues and principal thoroughfares of the town are the lungs through which it pumps fresh bracing air, full of strengthening oxygen and iodine. All round about the outskirts of Brussels are villages, flowering meadows, farms noisy with lowing cattle, and the arbors of little Flemish BRUSSELS 57.7 inns, from which issue the sounds of skittle-playing. The low-thatched cottages, the leafy groves, the weathercocks pointing to the sky, the thick- set, brown-skinned drinkers round the tables remind one of a landscape by Teniers; while in the distance is the grand framework of a district which gradually becomes more rocky: the Walloon country, with its oozy soil, so thoroughly Flemish in character, inhabited by a sturdy, squat, and active race, speaking a rough, unchanging patois. As a matter of course, an exodus en masse of citizens suc- ceeded the extension of the suburbs. The peo- ple who had been crowd- ed almost to suffocation in the narrow, tortuous alleys and lanes, the well-to-do middle class- es, the clerks with fixed salaries, in a word the whole bourgeoisie, tempt- ed by the thought of owning gardens of their own, rushed country- wards. At Ixelles, Saint- Josse, Schoerbeck, and Saint-Gilles the relative comfort of a house big enough to hold a fam- ily could be had at a low rent. The love of an open-air life and the horror of living on one story, so natural to the natives of Brussels, OLD SWISS CATHEDRAL VERGER goaded On their hasty Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Wauters 37 578 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD departure. Out there in small though private houses with six or seven stories, and a bit of lawn shut in between four walls with the inevit- able greenhouse projecting from the ground-floor, it was at least possible to have a home—a home of one's very own, in which the little ones could play about freely and grow naturally, the wife could busy herself with her household cares, and the husband plant out his borders of pansies, petunias, and mignonette, overfeed his rabbits, and rear his canaries. The result of all this was a very material happiness made up of many little pleasures, which added to the fame of the Capua of Brabant. This type of Brussels house, more or less decorated, has been multi- plied to such an extent that even those families with fluctuating precarious incomes can each have its own private dwelling, go up its own staircase, live between walls papered at four sous the piece, and blissfully inhale the scents of a little garden shared with no one else. This is one of the pecu- liarities of Brussels life. From the upper stories one looks down upon tiny, geometrically-shaped, rectangular spaces with green trees and beds of varie- gated tulips, marked out perhaps with little nails, among which, his prun- ing scissors in his hand, walks the owner in a nankeen jacket. A shady path, a cloister-like seclusion, a tonic soothing freshness in the air in these little spaces open to the sky, relieves the monotony of the dreary cubes of masonry with something of the brightness of the country. Then, again, while the masses of the new boulevards were rising three or four stories high in imitation of Paris, though the tenants were still to come, new arrivals were crowding into the faubourgs and suburbs, hastening to quit Brussels, where the concierge was firmly established, in their turn building houses like barracks, substituting for the old customs a life in lodgings with its many little family groups under one roof. Hitherto this kind of thing had been all but unknown; none but bachelors and journeymen put up with the risks of these little apartments with their happy-go-lucky style of house-keeping. Squares of yellow paper stuck in the windows still announce, in local fashion, which part of the house is to let. “Apartments furnished ” is one of the clumsy barbarisms which always rouse the mockery of the French. With a view to keep down expenses, the needy citizen would let out a few of the apartments of his house in which there was hardly room to turn round. To live in lodg- ings is, however, still to lose caste in Brussels, where the people love to have plenty of room, and, like the rest of the world, judge very much from externals. On the other hand, the modern division of the houses into flats and stories, the casemated rooms giving the whole building the BRUSSELS 579 appearance of a commercial caravansary, and the sets of apartments on one floor having different entrance doors give the owners a certain sense of real estate. - I remember for what a length of time remained unlet the huge houses run up by speculative builders on the ruins of the tenements which once crowded together on the banks of the sluggish and slimy Senne. This primitive receiver of river-side filth is now bridged over with aqueducts, and winds its way out of the city through dark and gloomy catacombs. The old so-called Renaissance buildings have been exhumed and pillaged to be used up as sham pediments, pseudo-colonnades, and minor symmetrical and rectilinear but pet- ty decorations, such as endives, cabbages, artichokes, acanthi, crucibles, astra- gals, cupids, and allegorical fig- ures—a debased bric-à-brac orna- mentation which has become the very base and foundation of a cer. tain style of architectural decora- tion, and is piled up as if on a set of shelves. Well, none of these houses were taken, the huge carcases remained empty, their ground - floors yawning wide; no industries came to give life to the cavernous solitudes; the lordly buildings became defaced by the peeling off of their plaster decora- tions and the growth of a leprous mould. In vain did the concierge, that imported creature, that exotic biped struggling to become natu- ralized in Brussels, exhaust his - blandishments, stooping even to accosting the passers-by; the list of houses to let was not diminished. To every one here, accustomed to owning the key of his own house, the thraldom of having a porter appeared quite insup- portably repugnant. Neither did it suit the legs of the people of Brus- sels to have to climb up five stories, their alpine feats having been hitherto THE PORTE DE HAL.-After a drawing by Boudier 58o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD limited to the ascent of the seven hills on which their town is built. Then, again, the number of rooms in the houses prevented their being suitable for shops, offices, studios, or workshops. The natives prefer less rigorous conditions of life, where there is some scope for individuality, and where the house does not look quite so much like a syndicate of households and of composite communities. Men who remember 1830 still speak with pride of a Brussels in which, after leaving the theatre on the Place de la Monnaie, the aristocracy of the time met at the so-called Au Doux, a simple tavern used as a kind of club, where members of the most distinguished noble families of Belgium, such as the Hooghvorsts, the Chasteleers, the Andelots, and the De Mérodes, might be seen drinking Louvain beer and playing écarté by candlelight for stakes of 50 centimes (Souvenirs du Vieux Bruxelles, by J. Diericx de Ten Hamme); a Brussels owning but three newspapers, the Oracle, the Petit Courrier des Pays Bas, and the Lynx; where the bourgeoisie flocked to the celebrated Café des Mille-Colonnes to see the owner of that albam. bra himself light the gas, then an almost unknown luxury; a Brussels with- out carts, without cabs or Vigilantes, as they are called, and in which the first omnibus, under the name of Velocifere, did not appear until 1836; a Brussels where, on May 5, 1853, the English Stephenson, inventor of the British steam-engine, came to start a train of Čerlins,” diligences, cars, and wagons, forcing a smoking passage through crowds of people rushing to see the strange sight; a Brussels from which started twice a week a car- riage which made the journey from that town via Mons to Valenciennes in thirty-six hours; lastly, a Brussels where the political manoeuvres of a reign, which opened with noble traditions and brilliant prospects, admitted to the ranks of the aristocracy many low-born but ardent supporters of the young monarchy.f The hastily constituted Court of Leopold I., recruited as it was from among merchants and masters of finance, was not at first characterized by * An old-fashioned four-wheeled carriage, named after the town of Berlin, where it was invented.—TRANS. # The translator has toned down a little, as repugnant to English feeling, the asperities of this reference to the great political struggle which took place beween 1830 and 1838, when the Belgian monarchy became separated from that of Holland, and the people of Belgium won for themselves, with a moderation that cannot be too highly praised, a constitutional form of govern- ment resulting in liberty of the press, of religion, and of education—a revolution in which the democracy itself suppressed the first signs of anarchy, and which was succeeded by years of quiet and unostentatious progress, scarcely checked even during the upheaval in France when the Re- public was proclaimed. THE PLACE DE L’Hôtel DE ville.—After a drawing by Boudier BRUSSELS 583 the severe etiquette which was later enforced by the Belgian Nestor. The hatred between the old noblesse and the democracy was inveterate, and it was necessary to conciliate the ambitions and predilections of both parties. This Court was one of gilding and of plumes, of tinsel and embroidery, where plebeian dames blazed resplendent with jewels, and every one was decked with gold from head to foot; where tradesmen jostled civic guards in the anterooms of officials, and newly-created nobles gathered in the pres- ence chamber. There was something quaint, almost comic, in the position of the newly-elected monarch, whose difficult task it was to pilot with tact and dignity the ship of the young Constitution through the political Storm. - - On looking out of the window of his palace the first thing to meet the eyes of Leopold I. was the Tree of Liberty, which increased in growth with every spring. Standing alone in the midst of the paving stones used to make the barricades of 1830, this tree seemed like an advanced sentinel of the neighboring Park, a popular gendarme, a guardian of the rights of the nation at the very door of the residence of the King. Old age and death at last relieved it of its task. But at the time of which we are writing it was still in its prime, and at every returning spring the good citizens of Brussels loved to climb the heights of the Montagne de la Cour, and to gaze at the fresh shoots of the old tree as they hummed a couplet of the Brabantine song, “Sous l'arbre de Liberté.” In this tree and the park they had an historic monument of the most recent chapter of their country's experience. Scarcely dry, indeed, was the blood of the Dutch who had fallen beneath the luxuriant trees of the Park, shot down by the mitrail- leuses from the windows of the Rue Royale. In this connection the account should be read of the so-called four Glorieuses if one would understand the people of Brabant revelling in their revolution as if it were a mere fair, shooting down their enemies between .draughts from their hogsheads of beer, with an air alike heroic and jovial, noble and merry. This extraordinary spirit, this truculent bravado, this proud boasting of contempt for tyranny, this superb good-humor, this blustering love of battle, this passionate, almost insolent worship of freedom, this jealous love, ready to die gayly in defence of popular privileges, was the modern expression of the spirit of ancestors, who, like the members of the French Fronde, leagued themselves together against masters who attempted to infringe their liberties. One brave fellow alone—called La Jamäe de Bois on account of his wooden leg—with a single cannon pointed on the Place Royale kept back the advance of the enemy. In some streets 584 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD where an attempt at a cavalry charge was made every house was converted into a fort, women flinging down an avalanche of kitchen utensils, stoves, tables, etc., tearing out bricks to dash them onto horses and knights, who, shattered, wounded, scalded, and decimated, turned bridle and fled. Boys, young men and old, went to their death as to a play, and at last, at the end THE BOURSE.-After a drawing by Boudier of four days of powder, struggle, and fever, the Constitutional Government was formed, Nassau packed up his baggage, and the people of Belgium looked about for a king. Leopold of Coburg arrived, his portmanteau in his hand, that traditional portmanteau which he offered to fasten up again when a seditious mob was howling in front of his palace.* Brussels yearly celebrated the heroes of this time for more than half a century. The great struggle took place in September, and for four days in * This refers to Leopold's offer to abdicate if the nation wished it when Louis Philippe resigned his throne. The offer was refused by the whole nation, and the Belgian monarchy became more firmly established than ever.—TRANS, BRUSSELS - 585 that month salvos of artillery were fired the first thing in the morning in commemoration of the great event. The survivors of the brothers in arms, buried in the vaults of the little mortuary of the Beguine Chapel on the Place des Martyrs, were escorted there and to the Cathedral; poor mutilated old men for whom, alas ! no Hôtel des Invalides had provided an honorable refuge for their declining years. The streets were draped in flags, there was dancing in front of the Hôtel de Ville; guilds, clubs, and other associations unfurled their banners and marched through the town to the sound of music. There was a general holiday. It was the great national fair when all manner of pranks were played and beer flowed like water, when feasts degenerated into debauches, bands played in every square, and rival processions met at every corner. Gradually, however, as years rolled by, the fêtes were discontinued, and now all the feasting and revelry is concentrated into the one month of July, when the Great Kirmess or Church Fair of Brussels is held. . . Meanwhile the capital was growing, but the population was being gradually broken up into sets. Petty traders, such as grocers who from father to son sold treacle and candles; primitive shopkeepers who meas- ured out cord by the ell, and weighed out nails in scales on counters behind narrow windows with green glass admitting the daylight jealously, still frequented old inns with rows of oaken tables shaded by smoke-dried olive-trees; the old well-fed, well-to-do bourgeoisie, absorbed in business, still congregated in the parishes of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, Saint- Nicholas, Riches-Claires, Notre Dame de la Chapelle, and the Béguinage; while clerks and others with small fixed incomes climbed the hills and became dispersed in the suburbs and green outlying districts. With the new reign, too, a third element was developed: financiers, wealthy trades- men, and the nobility all gathering about the Royal Palace, the Legislative Chambers, and the houses of the ministers and ambassadors. - On Sundays whole families went forth to watch the progress of the laying out of sandy esplanades on the east of the town, where were being set up on piles stately patrician-looking houses adorned with Sculptured foliage and wreaths. This modern work, often of very ambiguous style, which seemed to hurl defiance at the old-fashioned gables and rows of houses in the ancient part of the town, was alike astounding and bewilder- ing. It served, however, as a kind of introduction to the wild vagaries of the Haussmann period; the medley of styles which inaugurated that modern architecture, the decoration of which is like nothing so much as the masterpieces of the pastry-cook. 586 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Whole districts, from Bons Secours to Saint-Grévy, fell beneath the pick of the destroyer; gaping wounds were made in the very heart of old Brussels, which, tottering, trembling, gasping for breath, was for some time but a waste of ruins. Then a breach was made in another quarter, that of Notre Dame aux Neiges, which in its turn was levelled with the ground. A brutal surgery, imbued, as it were, with a kind of murderous fury, pierced the very arteries of the town, cut away the gangrened flesh, laying bare the very bones of the historic skeleton, converting the district into a sort of slaughter-house strewn with the limbs of dismembered houses and with the broken decorations which had once been their pride; while in place of these houses, on sites which had been properly levelled, with parallel streets and avenues, rose up rows of houses of a wonderful variety of ap- pearance; some with Gothic, others with Renaissance roofs, a hotchpotch of Italian, French, and Flemish details, a fricassee of all the hackneyed vagaries of every school. Hotels, private houses, offices, banks, theatres, cafés, and shops with huge glass windows; arcades and Squares succeeding each other with marvellous rapidity, till at last the Brussels of to-day was finally evolved. - Taken as a whole, Brussels, with its varied and well-kept decorations, relieved by somewhat startling contrasts—such as one would naturally expect from an imaginative people so fond of color and of broad effects— with its variegated houses, pink bricks, blue mouldings, festooned balconies, adorned with embossments, brackets, caryatides, glazed tiles shining like looking glasses; with the fresh air and cool shade of its tree-planted boule- vards, and of its wide main thoroughfares; with its green Park adorned with fountains, statues, and groups by Grupello set about among its prim groves of equidistant trees; with its woods and lakes, its landscape gar- dens, which are the very lungs of its suburbs, its grand avenue leading to the Bois de la Cambre with its shady country-like walks, its streams and its deceptive background of apparent forest; with the lofty dome and propylaea of the almost Babylonian Palais de Justice, and beyond the net- work of old streets still remaining: the soaring of the miraculously beauti- ful spire of the Hôtel de Ville, the marvellous gables carved into the sem- blance of rostra or beaks of vessels of the ancient Hôtel des Serments. Brussels is a picturesque and fascinating capital where people of means, whether small or large, may live comfortably, neither too noisy nor too monotonous, retaining its quiet bºguinage corners among all the uproar of its chief thoroughfares; a town suited alike to dreamers, to those weary of the tumult of modern civilization, to dyspeptics seeking pure air and un- BRUSSELS 587 adulterated food, or to those who crave for a secluded retreat away from the din of traffic. In spite of the gaps in the old buildings, a very good general notion may still be obtained from certain elevated points of what Brussels was before its mutilation. Climb, for instance, into the tower of the old Muse- um of Painting and look down upon the closely-packed blocks of houses, overlapping each other at various levels, with pink, orange-red, and blood- red roofs, checkered with irregular moss-grown tiles; a medley of chimneys and gables, of uneven strips of river beach strewn with nondescript rubbish, and with a background of undefined projecting angles standing out against the shrouded horizon, the whole canopied by a cloudy northern sky towards THE BOIS DE LA CAMBRE.—After a drawing by Boudier which are ever rising opalescent mists and pale humid effluent vapors. First we see a foreground of courts and gardens, of belfries flecked with houseleeks, and wallflowers of needy homes from which issue the sounds of sewing-machines or the click, click of bobbins beneath the fingers of the skilful lace-maker. Beyond the immediate foreground the houses become mixed confusedly together; they are yet more closely packed, and from them rise a yet greater medley of cones, gable points, skylights, dormer. windows, and remains of turrets. Seen through the smoke, the fumes of 588 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD gas, and the palpitating breath of the thousands in this human hive, Brus- sels resembles a whirligig in the neck of a bottle, or a tumultuous eddy twirling ever more and more rapidly round as the bottom of the gulf is neared; and, as a matter of fact, the effects of perspective are grander than ever about the Hôtel de Ville, from which looms out the exquisitely grace- ful spire surmounted by the gilded bronze figure of St. Michael, whose Sword is raised to heaven and gleams golden in the sunshine. And among the other closely-packed buildings, with the apses, domes, square towers, and pointed belfries of churches rising with comparative heaviness here and there, we make out the Gothic pillars of the Cathedral, the low out- lines of Notre Dame du Sablon, the buttresses of the Chapelle, with the outlines of the churches of the Minim Friars, St. Catherine and St. Joseph, etc. In the distance, through a veil of smoke and soot, can be seen the chimneys of the factories of Anderlecht, Saint-Gilles, and Molenbeek Saint- Jean, set in a gleaming framework of undulating country, with fields of pale-colored cereals, purple lucerne, and saffron-hued colza. Here and there, too, open vistas of luminous horizons. The terrace of the Botanical Gardens and the Place du Congrés, with the steps of the Palais de Justice and the high ground of the Park of Saint-Gilles, are natural observatories, from which the town can be seen from different points of view, those points of view again being infinitely varied according to the position of the observer. From the heights of Saint-Gilles—with the checkered mass of houses on the right, and beyond them the cupola of the Palais de Justice standing clearly out against the sky—you obtain a grand outlook onto stretches of open meadow-lands intersected by hills and lined with rows of poplars, above which floats the smoke of passing trains; while here and there are the dark-looking buildings of factories and mills, the advance guard of the suburbs in districts still thoroughly agrarian. From the upper town the lower is reached by steep break-neck thor. oughfares which are dreadfully trying for horses. In this rough-and- ready topography some houses seem to go tumbling downhill in a helter- skelter manner, while others climb up in a similar style. The escarpment, for such it is along which are echeloned the shops of the Montagne de la Cour, is connected by steep alleys like broken-down staircases, with the lower passages skirting the sides of the Butte (or, to be more precise, the archaic Rue Terarken), which is, so to speak, almost strangled between lofty gables and projecting façades. A whole quarter of the town is buried here in a hollow, in perpetual shade between moss-grown walls, and in a kind of twilight of decrepitude, suited only to the silent meditations of 2--- º THE MARCH PAST OF THE SCHOOL-CHILDREN.—Engraved by Derbier, after the picture by J. Verbis BRUSSELS 59 I ecclesiastics, or the closing days of a long life, while just above it surges all the busy traffic of a crowded city. This steep, tortuous Montagne de la Cour, with its broken pavement, its abrupt turns, its many cross-roads and alleys, narrowing here, widening out there, to narrow again a little farther on, is the main thoroughfare of the city, and leads to the centres of commerce and of trade. It is a reg. ular Kalverstraat, only longer and more tortuous than that of Amsterdam, through which flows an incessant traffic; the fashionable world, the women chiefly, gathering about the windows of the shops. On Thursday, espe- cially, the narrow street becomes the rendezvous of idlers, mothers leading in tow a whole troop of eligible daughters. There is bowing and hand- shaking and taking off of hats. Substantial-looking matrons decked out like shrines and gleaming like reliquaries, sweep along in velvet and satin in the style of the beauties of the canvases of Rubens. Marvellously and ridiculously dressed young dandies in close-fitting trousers, loose sack- coats, and shoes of the shape of an ace of clubs, walking like ducks, their elbows stuck out and toes turned in; stiff, starched, mechanical-look- ing figures with a blasé expression in their faces, resembling badly-oiled creaking automata. The slow, dignified pacing of correctly got - up old gentlemen, wearing coats of English cut, and with that quiet, solemn man- ner characteristic of well-educated men of the north of Europe, is suc- ceeded by the tripping past of a troop of flounced and furbelowed young ladies with rounded figures, who are already women at fifteen years old. Then come, perhaps, a lot of errand-boys, rollicking along with faces full of fun and mischief, and heads well in the air. Close on their heels are countrymen with heavy tread in rustic clothes, while behind them again are officers looking as if they came out of bandboxes, so spick and span is their get-up, and so stiffly, as if on parade, do they hold themselves in their gleaming accoutrements. And last, not least, the Brabantine women par excellence, fresh-colored and plump, with straight shoulders and supple limbs, the result of vigorous health, hopeful augury for the well-being of future generations. Towards five o'clock in the afternoon a closely-packed crowd defiles, in accordance with time-honored tradition, past the shops of the Montagne de la Cour, the Rue de la Madeleine, and the Poultry Market, fluctuating be- tween the Place Royale and the new boulevards, and now and then surging through the galleries of Saint-Hubert, usually sacred to people of modest incomes, clerks, old pensioners, etc. In the summer the promenade is gen- erally preceded by a visit to the Park, a saunter in the avenues, or a rest on 592 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the chairs, the toilets of the women vying in brilliancy with the flower-beds, while from some parlor near comes the music of a band performing the works of Flotow, Meyerbeer, or Donizetti. All this makes up a somewhat monotonous and spiritless life ruled by invariable custom. On Sundays the bourgeoisie take their meals with their families in the open air outside the cafés, going to eat honey-comb in the arbors of Laeken, or fried fish in the tea-gardens of Anderlecht, varying the programme sometimes by sit- ting on the grass under the trees, or even now and then venturing on a picnic as far away as Boitsfort or Groenendael. Any suburban fair is sure to draw a crowd of admiring visitors who are never weary of gazing at the feats of acrobats, tournaments, peddlers' THE PARK.- After a drawing by Vogel wares, etc., and of regaling themselves with spicy cakes, greasy omelets, and great bumpers of Diest or Louvain beer. The saturnalia of fêtes opens in early spring with the Kirmess of Diegen and closes with the autumnal Ducasse de la Hulpe. The former is famed for its mountebanks, - - - - - - BRUSSELS ...” 593 shooting-galleries, panopticons, human and animal monstrosities, Somnam- bulists, booths full of curiosities, etc. The interval between these two chief fairs is filled up by a long series of Sunday fêtes with music, dancing, and merrymaking, now in the woods, now in the meadows, now near one, now near another village. To these must be added the minor fairs of the suburbs, which again are subdivided into great fêtes and small fêtes, and the district fêtes, or fêtes des quartiers, the people seeming to be never sur- feited with noise, frolic, and revelry. In fact, in all the ancient quarters the name day is observed as a holiday, and there are the kirmesses of Notre Dame au Rouge, of Saint-Laurent, of the Minim friars, and of the Riches-Claires. Even outside these main districts there are little streets, courts, and blind alleys, each with its own poor little image to honor, its own humble Madonna in her shrine to deck with flowers and present with tapers. Ragged flags, green garlands, transparencies, Venetian lanterns, etc., are hung out from the crumbling old tenements, and the miserable tenants make merry, forgetting their poverty for a few brief hours of enjoy- ment. The ingenious decorations have been paid for by little savings of a sou at a time scraped together out of the hard-earned pittances, and every one gives either a coin or his time, the fun lasting till past midnight, the people tramping merrily to and fro to the chinking of glasses, oblivious of the inevitable famine in store for them on the morrow. - - Those who have not assisted at one of these popular fêtes, or who have not been present at one of the chief kirmesses of Brussels, know nothing of the passion of the people for drinking-bouts, wedding-feasts, and festivities of all kinds. There are certain ancient traditions about games and prize competitions which must not be passed over. For instance, a five-franc piece must be picked out of a bowl of syrup with the teeth; eggs suspended on a string must be taken down, with the eyes band- aged, with the help of a stick, the breaking of the eggs splashing every- thing and everybody near with their contents; there are races in sacks, and eager competitors for prizes climb up greasy poles, or creep along soapy bowsprits to plunge from them into deep water. Processions are organized, circus-riders and conjurers exhibit their prowess, and there are shooting-matches with the bow and the cross-bow, games at quoits and skittles, buffoonery matches, and dancing in the open air. When these fêtes are over, the flags furled, and the illuminations put out, an excuse is found for further revelry to celebrate the jubilee of some old married couple, or to serenade the winners of prizes to the light of flaming torches. All work is stopped on pretext of some unimportant 38 - 594 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD anniversary, such as that known as Verlorene maandag (lost Monday), and pilgrimages are made to Notre Dame de Hal, whence the pilgrims return reeling along, blowing on harsh-sounding wooden trumpets; or, again, crowds flock forth together to the fairs of the neighboring villages and towns. On the occasion of the fair at Louvain, for instance, the fish-wives, THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.-After a drawing by Boudier young and old, of the Rue Haute quarter, the sellers of oranges and apples, with little flat curls gummed on their foreheads and looking like commas, with pink stockings showing beneath their ample petticoats, with the venders of crabben en mastellen, circulate among the tables of the inns, their baskets on their arms, while the factory girls, redolent of machine- oil, flaunt in finery hired for the occasion, the whole incongruous crowd shouting, laughing, singing, and chaffing, troop along towards the tea-gar- dens, where they sell the loads of goods which have been prematurely deteriorated in transit. By the time Louvain is reached all the finery is crushed and spoiled, the merrymakers have already had too much to eat BRUSSELS 595 and drink, but they go on gorging themselves throughout the day, and return in the evening completely satiated and worn out. - In every rank of life in Brussels we find the same love of association— of doing everything in crowds. When five people have got into the way of drinking their glass of wine or beer at the same time, they feel ripe to become a society, draw up a code of rules, and adopt a banner of their own. There are as many Brussels societies, or chochetés, as they are locally called, as there are industries, trades, costumes, and entertainments. Besides the guilds, the historical corporations, the shooting and fishing societies, the skittle, quoit, tennis, and hockey societies, there are fraternities of handi- craftsmen, saving and benefit workmen's clubs, sporting and entertainment Societies, debating-rooms, choral Societies, societies of professional wits, dining societies, an endless ramification of groups and bodies of men real- izing the national motto, “L’ Union fait la force.” I assure you there is even a society of Chasseurs de Hannetons, who march in military style in companies, shouldering their guns and wearing helmets and gaiters like those of infantry soldiers. Two drummers and a standard-bearer lead the way down the street, and the members of this quaint society, most of them stout, well-grown fellows, march along with all the solemnity of members of the terrible Wehmgericht endued with occult powers. On the death of one of the brotherhood the body is escorted to the grave to the sound of mar- tial music and muffled drums. There is no artisan so humble but what his bier is followed by a brass-band. Later come processions in which the cross is borne aloft. Almost every day the quiet of the suburbs is dis- turbed by the sound of funereal music to the accompaniment of which huge crosses, the symbols of inconsolable grief, are carried with lowered crest to the cemetery by four of the members of the society to which the deceased belonged, the rest of the fraternity following in solemn procession, carrying arms as tokens of mourning. These men feel that, federated beneath their flag, each one is some one. Slowly and solemnly the cortege files along the streets and out into the country, arriving at last at the entrance to the cemetery. The mortuary emblem deposited at last, the mourners turn back, and at a double-quick pace make their way to a wine- shop, and console themselves with copious draughts of beer or wine. The Brussels wine-shop is an institution of itself. With the qualified Electorate which predominates in Belgium it is the focus of the political organism. Mine host, plump, spruce, and unctuous, presiding over his beer-taps, is an important factor in the working of the machine. Stand- ing behind the gleaming pewter pots, he controls the consumption of 596 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD liquor with the air of a benevolent master; unbending but rarely, he main- tains the correct deportment of an officer intrusted with the control of a system of irrigation. The establishment ruled by him varies according to circumstances; in the modern quarters of the town, for instance, the wine- shop has been modified, and somewhat resembles the German tavern with its looking-glasses, gilding, and mouldings, but in the lower town the old hieratic wine-shop is retained with all its original peculiarities. As if to mark its superiority, the primordial cabaret is generally found close to municipal buildings, beneath the shadow of the spire of the church dedi- cated to St. Michael, the patron of Brussels, for instance, or round about the approaches to the Hôtel de Ville, and in the lanes and alleys radiating from them and tenanted mainly by natives of the soil. In the Brussels cabaret par excellence no gaudy decorations distract the attention from the important function going on around its massive oak tables. A dim religious light filters through the coarse glazed windows, faintly illuminating the plain walls, and mysteriously indicating an ancient clock ticking in its case in one corner. With their feet upon sanded flag. stones, a crowd of tipplers drink sour ſaro and lamóic, smoke, and discuss politics. There is a droning buzzing in the heavy atmosphere, reeking as it is with tobacco and the fumes of drink, which predisposes to the semi- Somnolent condition, in which the beer absorbed will work with the great- est efficacy. In houses of good repute no uproar is tolerated, but fermen- tation goes on in a subdued and peaceful manner. Such quiet sanctuaries are frequented by bourgeois clients who are averse to noise, and allow no singing or swearing. Any one infringing these rules is at once turned out. Even when the gas is lighted the room is still in semi-obscurity, for the jets are only half turned on, a subdued chiaro-oscuro being considered desirable for keeping the mind in harmony with its surroundings. Now and then the door opens to admit some good simple old souls in jackets, frilled caps, and white aprons, all scrupulously clean, pushing before them baskets laden with eggs, crabs, prawns, etc., which they gently press upon the company as desirable additions to the refreshments they are taking. Sometimes, too, an old fellow with white hair and tottering steps, sent out by one of the hospitals of the town, gets up from the table where he has consumed the two cutlets allowed him by the owner of the house, and goes round to col- lect contributions for his place of refuge, holding out a wooden bowl with his shaking hand. * This, to those at least of the generation now about to pass away, was an essential feature of Brussels life. Important personages, such as burgo- BRUSSELS 597 masters or ministers of the King, have been known to frequent their own particular cook-shop with the regularity of petty dealers enriched by trade, and who did not think it beneath them, after dining at the palace, to sit down opposite to a glass of foaming Zambic. This was the time of small houses, savory and juicy cook-shops, which sprang up like mushrooms near the gardens of the Hôtel de Ville, among the medley of gables which dark- ened the still remaining but crumbling façades of the Broot-huys, now restored. Here, on the stoves of the little cook-shops, were turned out menus worthy of kitchens of Pantagruelic size.” Gourmands came to A BRUSSELS MILK-SELLER.-After a drawing by Vogel these little inns to glut themselves with crisp slices of grilled beef, served in tin dishes on a checked cloth, by girls with bare arms; brisk mesſes in frilled jackets, and with little caps stuck at the back of their heads. The * Pantagruel, the hero of one of Rabelais's romances, was a man of gigantic stature, under whose tongue an army could take shelter, and who was able to swallow whole cities—TRANS, 598 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD master of the eating-house never failed towards the end of the meal to come forward, and, resting his open palms upon the table, ask if you had enjoyed your food. Alas! this simple honest fellow has now been replaced by a sullen-looking waiter with a face almost hidden by whiskers, and the checked table-cloth is represented by cheap damask, set out with damaged electro-plated spoons and forks, to give something of the appearance of a second-rate table d'hôte. The raised tariff now secures a select set of clients, who are always sure of a good brand of wine and fresh fish. Brussels, though it has lost its Quartier des Marollés, with its crowded tumble-down buildings, its wretched hovels splashed with dirt, in which congregated beggars, wandering minstrels, and vagabonds with wooden legs and wounds of every description, has yet retained its so-called Manne- Áempiss, who may be considered the most ancient denizen of Brussels. This Mammeéempiss is a little nude male figure, crouching down and fling- ing a thin stream of water into a basin, at a street corner behind an iron- monger's shop. A popular idol, this brazen-faced little fetish has his valet, who on fête days decks him out, now in clothes fit for a marquis, now in the uniform of the National Guard. Then sometimes the water is changed to beer or wine, with which the people refresh themselves largely, and which flows onto the pavement in a pale purple stream. Another relic of old Brussels is a group of six basket-work giants, representing three generations—the grandfather and grandmother, Janneke, Mieke, and Claeske their child, with the addition of an enigmatical Turk in a turban. The performances of these ridiculous puppets in their bundles of rags, beneath which is hidden the clumsy machinery working them, are watched with as much eager interest by the people as if they were the good geniuses of the city. The solemn-looking Hotel de Ville shelters them in one of its rooms, and on fête days they have an escort in plumed shakos. They are fitting companions for the other huge monstrosities of Belgium, such as the Antigones of Antwerp and the Goliaths of Ath. Nieuport and Valenciennes, which are found scattered about the country as far as French Flanders. Not very long ago, on the occasion of some historical anniversary, a whole troop of these anachronisms was promenaded through Brussels. Some huge figures, poised at a giddy height on great old-fashioned cars, to which they were fastened with rusty iron bars, looked like the idols of a by-gone time, once held in supreme awe-an awe represented by their escort of dragoons and their accompaniment of grotesque figures on foot and on horseback. Wild beasts, too, formed part of the heterogeneous show, and BRUSSELS 599 the whole scene recalled the ridiculous merrymakings of the Court of Philippe le Bon. - Every public ceremonial, moreover, is concluded in Brussels by he- raldic processions, the marching past of militia, and the representation of historic scenes. No other people are so fond as the Belgians of the revival of days long gone by. This atavism, if we may so call it, is perennially manifested in the pas- sion for the erection of porticos and colon- nades, or, indeed, of whole buildings, in one or more of the old styles, and in the invention of chimer- ical designs for ban- ners. But the Bel- gians as a nation are fond of ornament, and delight in the color and show of brilliant parades—in a word, in all that can call up in the actual present the glories of what they look upon as their past millennium. But the Brussels type of character is gradually becoming modified, and the members of the young rising generation are more serious than their parents; their brains are more active, they mature earlier than their ancestors did, and are im- patient of the senseless merrymaking of the past. The men of action of 1830—the well-fed, sturdy artisans of the time of the making of the Constitution—are replaced by a generation out of conceit with civic traditions, a generation of thinkers and dreamers, who are not content with the gratification of merely material necessities. The efforts of these men have unexpectedly resulted in the springing up, in what would naturally have been considered the hostile soil of Belgium, of a literature of prose and poetry worthy to rank with that of France. Baude- laire, bitter author of a bitter pamphlet, a man soured by exile in a gloomy SOLDIERS OF A REGIMENT OF THE LINE Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph 6oo THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD country, which he characterized as without horizons, a man of noble birth, with shattered nerves, condemned to residence among homely burghers, would still find much to condemn in the “general and complete absence of intelligence, the general hatred of literature, and the spirit of conformity,” the people taking their very amusements in sets only; but he would spare those of his followers who refused to think with the majority, and rebelled against anything like mob rule. *. - - Čaa-a-a-N • *... <<<>. - º 4 º tº §º º º § º § § (lº §º sº .# ... Fºl º } £º Nº. W Nº. \!\!6NA || [\til Engraved by Rousseau, after a water-color by D. Vierge MAD RID A LTHOUGH the town I am about to describe has 500,000 inhabitants, it is called a villa, or borough; the name of ciu- dad, or town, being reserved for centres which enjoy an importance of first rank, on account of the number of their residents, their history, or their thrilling memories. All the rest are villas, or even aldeas and pueblos, which may be translated villages and hamlets. By a strange persistency of tradition, Madrid, capital though she certainly is of the nation, the official resi- dence of the Government, and the nat- ural political leader of all other Span- sºns, ish towns, yet retains her humble title *A : of villa, which would seem to place her in altogether second rank. And there is no doubt that Madrid is surround- - ed by other historic and art centres, before the glory of which her own must necessarily pale. Shall I quote, for instance, Toledo, the Rome of Spain, where, as in some vast museum, are collected masterpieces of every age, from relics of Roman and Roman- esque times, the unique value of which is known to all the world, to master- pieces of the Renaissance, and where may be studied the three chief phases of Gothic architecture in Spain, side by side with the Byzantine, with its pure, yet floral ornamentation, and the Arab, which was developed simul- taneously with it from the Syrian to the Cordovan, and from the Cordovan to the Granadan styles, all alike enriched by the brilliant, the fantastic, the apparently inexhaustible imagination of the Moors, who, thanks to alto- gether exceptional circumstances, left to the land of their adoption, the 3 8 A SPANISH PEASANT 6O4 THE CAPITALS OF THE world poetic country of Spain, a series of grandly beautiful buildings, the orna- mentation of which is justly acknowledged to excel anything known else. where. Or setting aside Toledo, there are Alcala, with its Gothic Cathe- dral, its fine University, with walls enriched with lace-like decorations, its patios, in which Moorish ornamentation runs riot; Avila, with its Roman temples and its feudal ramparts; Segovia, with an aqueduct worthy of the Eternal City, before each and all of which the capital may well lower her haughty crest, and veil her escutcheon, all worthy of honor though she be. In a word, Madrid is like a queen humbled before the more fortunate rivals, who have stripped her of all her ornaments. In a country where the monuments of antiquity resemble in their solemn grandeur the geological strata of the soil, Madrid owns but a few relics of ancient architecture, such as the San Pedro Tower, at the entrance to the town, the little chapel known as that of l'Obispo, celebrated for its tombs and tapestries, the Church of San Geronimo, which resembles, with its restorations, some old woman who tries to make herself look young with paint and furbelows, the humble gateway of the unpretending Latina, unworthy of the glorious time recalled by that illustrious name, contem- porary with the golden age of art and the discovery of America. Madrid has had two misfortunes: it was not of sufficient importance in the Middle Ages for the erection of a palace, like that of the Infantado at Guadalajara, and when its time of grandeur began the art of architecture was already in rapid decadence, unlike that of painting or of sculpture, then both in the height of their beauty and splendor. The Royal Alcazar, or Castle of Madrid, is big, but it has little artistic merit; of great dimensions, too, is the Church of San Francisco, but it is in a thoroughly bombastic style; and other important buildings, such as the Casa de los Ministerios, are but copies of the Versailles Palace, with absolutely no Spanish char. acter about them. In the Prado Museum alone do we find beauty of design combined with vast proportions, and a general artistic appearance worthy Óf the masterpieces enshrined within its walls. - Very different, and probably far more artistic, would have been the appearance of the capital of Spain if, after the welding into one great kingdom of the whole peninsula, the great monarchs of the sixteenth century had not chosen it as a residence, but had preferred the outlying Lisbon, Barcelona, or Seville, with their grand monuments of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance, the more central Toledo, Valladolid, or Burgos, or even Leon, so rich in glorious memories and so full of magnifi- cent buildings. - - MADRID 605 But the pure mountain air of Madrid, the grand span of the wide- stretching horizons it commanded, the number of the sheets of water, the excellence of the breeds of dogs (all Spanish monarchs are eager lovers of sport), the solitude of the forests in the neighborhood, and perhaps, above all, its position in the very middle of his kingdom, equidistant from each of the four corners of his dominions, led Philip II. to set up his Court in it. At Madrid he felt himself a monarch indeed, and nowhere was he so thoroughly his own master as when he lost himself in the silence and seclusion of the thick forests of Guadarrama and Mançanares. Here, far away from the noise and bustle of great towns, he could maintain his semi- regal, semi-monastic state, and without fear that some other monument would ever be erected beside it, build, at the deserted base of a lonely and lofty cordillera, a pharaonic pantheon, a funeral monument, of dimensions EL JALEO (A SPANISH DANCE).-Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Sargent as colossal as those of the Pyramids, by which his dynasty might be dis- tinguished from the common herd of men, even after it had passed into the realm of all levelling and implacable death.* * This, of course, refers to the Escorial—begun in 1563 and completed in 1584—built by 606 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Neither Philip II., Philip III., nor even Charles V, who each lived so long in Madrid, and liked it better than any other city, ever dreamed of making it a town, or, indeed, anything more than a royal residence. All monarchs have the feeling, of which this was an example. Not being suffi- ciently alone and free from interruption on the heights they alone can occupy, they imitate the Balthazars and Sardanapali of Asia, building pal- aces like those of Babylon, in which, behind the walls of far-stretching gar- dens, they can gather about them an army of courtiers and of soldiers who protect them from the intrusion of their other subjects, whose near ap- proach they dread, probably because the sight of them would bring too vividly before their eyes the misery and the social evils on which the thrones of kings are built. The petty kings of German principalities transform nearly the whole of their dominions into plots for flowers and vegetable gardens; the monarchs of Great Britain, though they had a palace in London in the very heart of their capital, erected a regular town for their own private use in Windsor Castle. Louis XIV. shut himself up at Versailles like some Oriental monarch of old, to get away from the mighty teeming populace of Paris, who seemed to dwarf the importance of the King; and in our own day the Czars of Russia, strangers to St. Peters- burg and Moscow, where they appear but at rare intervals, live in the greatest retirement at Gatchina. All this explains the preference of the monarch of days gone by for some beautiful solitude, where the boundless landscape was his kingdom, where the very birds of heaven seemed to be. long to him, and to him alone, rather than for towns infected with the double fever of action and of thought, in which the people, what with their native independence and their instinctive pride, were constantly tempted to demand of the King an account of how he administered public affairs, and looked after the interests of the masses. It was certainly very much more agreeable to live in some gilded sanctuary, hedged about with all the accumulated traditions of the past, among the ever rising incense of flattery and adulation. - - Madrid, then, was a Court, not a capital, and dreary as are its surround- ings at the present day, it was at one time a charming retreat. Without going very far back we find it, as recently as 1868, surrounded by a kind of wood, which was the Royal Park, dotted here and there with pretty Philip II. to serve as palace, monastery, and mausoleum. Once one of the eight wonders of the world, it is now in ruins, though some idea can still be obtained of the original magnificence of the solitary pile of granite.—TRANS. MADRID 607 little gardens and parterres of flowers belonging to the Crown. The Casa de Campo, which, if cultivated in allotments, could have fed a whole peo- ple; the orchards of La Moncloa, parallel with the Casa de Campo, so beau- tifully laid out in terraces and with a vegetation so rich; the incompara- THE ROYAL PALACE.-After a drawing by Berteault ble hunting-grounds formed by the oak groves of the Prado extending league beyond league between the entrance to the oasis just mentioned and the base of the violet-hued sierras; the Casino opposite the tobacco manufactory, a kind of kiosk facing due south, to which members of the royal family, hidden from the vulgar gaze, and shrouded in stately seclusion, retired in the winter for the sake of the sunshine; the Zarzuela, shut in by groves of yew-trees, evergreen oaks, and thorn-bushes, a country-box which would be considered a palace in any other country; the woods extending from Vacia to Madrid on both sides of the Jarama, in which graze the fierce bulls who figure in the celebrated contests in the bull-rings of Spain, the emceinte of the Retiro, set aside for the exclusive use of the King—in a word, all these woods, gardens, promenades, etc., the inalienable property 608 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of the Crown, bring forcibly before us how it is that Madrid cannot extend in any direction, and explain the absence of industrial enterprise—an enter- prise which would be checked at every turn, as is agricultural progress, by the royal prerogative. Hence the two dominant characteristics cropping up again and again in the history of Madrid. It is merely a Court with a fringe of employés, or, as it would be called in the common parlance of France, a bureaucracy. The first thing you notice when you enter it is the Royal Palace towering over everything, a peculiarity you never see elsewhere, whether in London, where nothing is equal to the Houses of Parliament; in Paris, which so justly prides itself on having dedicated to art and aestheticism the palace built by Henri II. and enlarged by Louis XIV. for their own private use; at Lisbon, where the royal residences are quite insignificant, or at Brussels, where the magnificent art galleries, the huge law-courts, and the Legisla- tive Chambers are all far more important-looking than the King's Palace. To find a parallel case to that of Madrid we must go to the Rome of the Popes, with its Quirinal and Vatican, its metropolitan basilicas, its galleries belonging to the princes and the families of the Popes, when all museums and art collections were but offshoots of the palace of the Papal Court. In fact, before it became imbued with the spirit of modern times, which transformed it into a Constitutional Government, the semi- theocratic and inquisitorial monarchy of Spain converted Madrid into a kind of huge Ver- sailles for the exclusive use of the royal family. The Museo, or picture-gallery, which is richer in masterpieces than any other European collection, Madrid owes to the munificence of Queen Isabella II. alone. The Palace Chapel resembled a cathedral in the splen- dor of its services and the number of its chaplains, the chief of whom was always an Eminence in the Cardinal's purple. The coach-houses and stables belonging to the royal family occupied whole streets, and formed quite a quarter of the town. The barracks reserved to the royal body- guard were of vast proportions, and covered an immense area. The Public Library was known as the Royal Library; the Opera, supported as it is by the State, is still called the Royal Opera, and the academies, too, which the kings chiefly distinguish by their absence, are royal. Every part of Madrid was invaded by houses for the pages, orphan- ages, and colleges for the children of the palace officials. The frequent levees, the weekly visits to the Church of Atocha, the gala processions on the occasion of Some royal baptism or wedding, the palace balls and con- certs, occupied such a considerable place in the general life of the people MADRID 609 that the monarchy became everything, absorbing into itself all social life, and reducing to absolute insignificance everything outside the Court circle. Now and then, when the Court of Madrid is compelled by the laws of etiquette to perform in full state some public ceremony, such as the open- ing of the democratic—I had almost said republican–Parliament, we feel, hostile as are present institutions to the spirit of the past, as if we were assisting at a function of the old absolute monarchy. Here are timbal- THE TOLEDO BRIDGE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe players on ambling white nags, brilliant-looking trumpeters giving forth sweet sounds; pages in brocaded tunics and velvet caps, a whole army of lackeys in laced jackets, halberdiers with helmets gleaming in the sun- shine, golden crowns resting on two balls representing the two worlds over which the Spanish monarch ruled as in the time of Charles V., trappings embroidered in Oriental style, many-colored plumes waving here and there; chariots with windows made of painted mother-of-pearl or steel, drawn by superb horses with magnificent harness, and in the car- - 39 6 Io THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD riages officers in brilliant uniforms, and ladies-of-honor in silks and laces, succeeded at last by the nucleus of the whole, like the host in the proces: sion of the Fête Dieu, the monarch and his family, who—sheltered beneath delicate awnings and in a cloud of fine dust, the scintillation of the pre: cious stones they wear making them look like idols—pass between two files of troops, before balconies draped with flags, and crowded with specta. tors in gala dresses. The people cheer the royal party as they go by, not because of any enthusiasm for their monarchy, for the attachment to that form of government is much weakened at the present day; but just because they are enjoying themselves—the people of Madrid are always ready for amusement—and cheering is a good way of expressing their pleasure. By a fortunate combination of tastes and instincts naturally opposed to each other, this love of amusement is quite compatible with the unalterable grav- ity, the solemn time-honored gravity of the Castilian which, on occasion, gives way to a fresh and buoyant light-hearted gayety. But in the midst of what we may call the magic resurrection of things gone by, carefully preserved beneath a layer of ancient beliefs, as Hercu- laneum and Pompeii were beneath a mass of lava, we find, contrasting strangely with these relics of the past, a suggestion of liberty, the germs of ideas to be compared only with those entertained in cities long since enfranchised, and altogether republican in their institutions and in the manners of their inhabitants. Imagine a semi-Asiatic Court of the Germanic Empire in feudal times, set down in the midst of the United States of America, and you have an idea of Madrid as it is at the present time. In its thoroughfares the mon- archy and the republic jostle each other at every step, the two forces balancing each other exactly; the former is enshrined in customs which have been handed down through many generations—the latter is the out. come of the earnest aspirations of a people thoroughly imbued with liberal ideas. This contrast between, this strange admixture of, two principles so hostile to each other, this retention of the institutions of a former age, this culture of the most retrograde absolutism in the presence of the ever-rising tide of the fullest republican liberty, and in the midst of a democracy exceeding every other in its eagerness for absolute equality, make up the most striking social characteristic of the modern capital of Spain. Paris, in spite of its relics of the old monarchy, its many royal palaces, its girdle of princely residences, such as stately Versailles and artistic Fon- tainebleau, is the capital of a republic altogether out of sympathy with the principles and the representatives of the ancien régime, and no trace of MADRID 61 I these principles, or of belief in these representatives is found, except in the hearts of a few disheartened men, who still dream of a Messiah, or in all but effaced memories of a history already ancient. In England the sor- rows of the widowed Queen have withdrawn her from public life, and saved as by a miracle from the shock of revolution, she leads a life of retirement in historic Windsor, in her ocean home at Osborne, or among the wild hills and mountains of Scotland at Balmoral. Twenty years of parliamentary government have not sufficed to efface from Rome the 4. w tº ºr ; * - - - % *2. - • 2.x º %e2.4% % % - :=QI ' , º, #2:3: # tº ſº ºn tºº.º.º. ſº º * ". ... ?: , º, ø, /4.2% */ Žº. 2.2% * ~ - %3 ººzer. 2 . rº. %. ^ ’,‘A’. * 2% - $% % ( A R D A D * '• *-*-*-* 1. A $ ſpRūyl N, 1A Sº --~~t: * “...} : * ... .....” -“x F#TE FOR THE BENEFIT OF A CHARITY..—After a drawing by D. Vierge 61.2 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD imprint of the Papacy left by twenty centuries of Caesarism and the- Ocracy. e - Berlin and Vienna, as well as Constantinople and St. Petersburg, have the style and air of great imperial cities, while Brussels and Antwerp, Amsterdam and Ghent, although modern diplomatic buildings have con- verted them into something like royal capitals, remain as thoroughly mu- nicipal and republican as any Hanseatic or Swiss town. In fact, Europe has its imperial, its republican, and its parliamentary cities. But there is but one town in the world in which the extremes of monarchical and republican principles exist side by side, which in one part resembles Wei- mar or Munich, and in another Geneva or Boston, which has a dynasty of long descent, yet enjoys complete liberty of thought and speech—and that town is Madrid. Truly astonishing is the mental activity, the fertility of ideas in this hive-like capital, the intellectual life of which must not be judged by the books issued in it, still less by those its people read. The Spanish never care much for reading, but they love to listen, and the thinkers of Spain do not put their thoughts into print, but give them out in lectures and in conversation. Born orators, the sons of this Southern land, in their institutes, their academies, their athenaeums, their numerous educational Societies, their high-schools, their elementary science schools, have professorships and classes for so many subjects, discuss every question with such eager inter- est, and follow the general progress of scientific discovery so closely, that the atmosphere of Madrid is ever, so to speak, teeming with ideas—now as serene and luminous as pure Science, now charged with revolutionary electricity. The most remarkable thing about Madrid is not so much its intellect- ual activity as the absolute liberty with which scientific inquiry is carried on. This liberty is not merely the result of the vigorous democratic laws which insure it, but also of the deeply-rooted customs of every grade of Spanish society. There are free nations, such as the English, among whom belief in the ancient liturgy and the respect for time-honored social conventions exercise so great a restraint that any new ideas are altogether inadmissible, especially if they trench at all either on the Anglican faith or on the constitutional monarchy, and no one can give expression to them without losing caste. It is really piteous to note all the precautions with which the worthy Max Müller has to hedge himself about in order to develop his notions on the philosophy of religions without wounding the religious susceptibilities of the English. And yet greater is the disfavor MADRID 613 with which an able orator and statesman such as Sir Charles Dilke has had to contend on account of his brilliant speeches with regard to the British Civil List, and his advanced opinions as to the best and most suitable form of government. Whereas, in Spain, in the classic land of the Inquisition, AT THE FLAMENCO CAF#–Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Dannat no one is thought the worse of whatever his new and progressive ideas, whether on the subject of religious dogma, philosophy, or politics. Even more than for its wide tolerance in intellectual matters is Madrid distinguished for the natural, sincere, and constant respect shown 614 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD among its citizens for the principle of equality. Never could an inhabitant of Madrid be induced to entertain for a moment the notion prevalent among so many other people of a privileged class, enjoying a lofty and solitary social position, or of aristocratic quarters, resembling Cemeteries in their dreary seclusion, set apart for the exclusive use of what may be char- acterized as the mere ghosts of ancient royal chimeras. At Madrid there are no distinctions of class, or, if there are, every one meets on equal terms. When the Duchess of Medinaceli, or the Duke of Fernan himself, hold a reception, the first person to be invited is the alcalde of their quarter, and he is always an artisan. Beneath gilded ceilings, and among the portraits of kings and viceroys related to the illustrious owners of the house, and blazoned coats of arms, surmounted by crowns of gleaming gold, on the soft carpets of splendid salons and galleries, you meet the noble and the ple- beian, the Catholic and the materialist, the actor and the general, the nuncio and the archbishop besprinkled with holy-water, and the atheist, whose lips are vibrating with the assertion that infinite space, void of intelligence, is abandoned to the forces of Nature. Nothing, in fact, can exceed the politi- cal, religious, and social tolerance, or the absolute social equality of Spain. This does not mean that the Spanish are strangers to religious exultation, that they cannot be moved to a noble zeal for goodness and truth, or roused energetically to defend what they consider their just rights. One thing is certain: in the strange city of Madrid, side by side with a Court petrified in the traditions of its ancient history, dwells a democracy thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit. To learn to know all that is most worthy of honor and admiration in Madrid we must go to the Museo, or picture-gallery. We consider the Escorial of Philip II. a marvellous structure, and rank it with the great buildings designated in olden times as wonders; but the true wonder is in the unrivalled collection of masterpieces on the Prado. Place the Museo of Madrid beside the vast courts of the huge Louvre and, although it is finely proportioned, it cannot bear comparison, in size or material grandeur, with that Titanic building. Compare it with the British Museum, or the Uffizzi Gallery of Florence, and we find it inferior to the former in the rich variety of its art treasures, and to the latter in its series of historical paintings. Nor has it many such masterpieces of sculpture as the Capitol or the Vatican; such relics of ancient painting as the galleries of Rome, Vienna, or Perugia. I even prefer the arrangement of the Brussels and Antwerp museums, and the richness of ornamentation of the Pinacothecas of Munich, Vienna, and Berlin. But the Madrid Museum carries off the palm from MADRID 615 all of these, and its good-fortune can never be too highly estimated, in that it owns, housed beneath one roof as by a miracle, an absolutely unique col- lection of masterpieces such as can nowhere else be seen together or in so short a time. The passages, the garrets, and the cellars of the Madrid Museo con- tain canvases which in other museums would be reserved for the chief rooms. Sixty Titians, nearly a hundred of Tenier, Rubens, and Van Dyck's best works; the “Madonna dello Spasimo,” the “Virgin with the Pearl,” known as the “Perla,” and the “Virgin with the Fish,” by the divine Raphael; numerous Pantojas, Riberas, and Coelhos scattered about the walls; fine Zurbarans, Canos, and Murillos, dazzling and charming us with their resplendent beauty; Moros, in which the characters seem actually alive; such Dürers as are to be seen nowhere else but in Germany; the grand series representing the “Martyrdom of St. Stephen,” by Juan de Juanes; as many examples of Holbein as at Basel; gems by Andrea del Sarto, equal to those at Florence; several Flemish masterpieces, which the very Belgians covet; three scenes of the time of Luther, by Cranach ; Vero- neses and Tintorettos equal to those at Venice; many admirable Goyas, and nearly everything Velasquez produced, combine to form a whole so beautiful, so entrancing, so altogether unprecedented, we might almost Say so impossible, that it resembles nothing so much as a magic scene realized . for a moment in a dream of fairy-land. What journeys the artist or the art-lover would have to take, what weary miles he would have to traverse, before he could see elsewhere such a wealth of exquisite masterpieces as have been brought together in Madrid by a combination of fortunate circumstances such as are never likely to occur again in this world ! - It is here that Velasquez, the painter par excellence of life, who never had and never can have an equal; he who knew how to catch the ideal expression in such a manner that his models are to us actual living char- acters, who was able to separate the specific from the general, in whose hands the individual became a prototype; who brought into vivid relief the physiological and the psychic characteristics of every man or woman he painted, who seem to breathe from his canvases, who are positively instinct with life, apparently actually moving in the environment in which the artist has placed them, and looking out upon us with eyes full of thought—true. windows of their souls. When, therefore, we have gazed our fill upon religious subjects, such as Murillo’s “Ecstasies,” his “Ecce Homo,” and “Immaculate Conception,” 616 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD which resemble in their delicate harmony the music of the heavenly spheres, and when, with eye and ear duly trained in accordance with the teaching of contemporary science, we have recognized the correlation of their scale of color with musical notation, we turn to the works of Velas. quez, flooded as they are with actual daylight, full of atmosphere and with true horizons, in which real men and women live and move and have their being, it is as if we had come back from the delusions of an hypnotic sleep to revel in the scents, the sounds, the life, the glory of a May morning, with all its dew-besprinkled wealth of tender tones of color. A Russian who should transport to St. Petersburg the portrait of Philip IV. on horseback, on that steed in whose eyes are reflected the blue A WINE-SHOP AT MADRID Engraved by Bellarger, after a drawing by D. Vierge of the sky of Madrid, and whose nostrils are quivering as they inhale the air of Guadarrama, would take with that world-famous picture the Moncloa and the Prado, the blue distances, the mountains, with their lapis lazuli tints, and the fresh, yet warm, transparent mists, touched now with violet and MADRID 617 silvery reflections from the virgin snow, gleaming now with almost metallic green from the young grass, the whole bathed in light so clear, so vivid, that we are reminded at once of the reverberating effects of strong sunshine on the desert and the ocean. - So true to life is Velasquez that at the first forge you recognize the blacksmiths; those weavers belong to the carpet manufactory, which was transferred from the old Saladero to the Atocha promenade; you know those old topers in the wine-shops, that comedian on the boards, that sculp- tor in his studio, those soldiers in camp, those kings at Court, even those dogs in the kennel. You are constantly tempted to look behind the can- vas, to make sure that the models themselves are not there; you fancy that by some optical illusion you can see them actually posing to be drawn or painted. - You can see Rembrandt at Amsterdam, Ghent, Brussels, and Paris; Michael Angelo at Rome and Florence; Correggio at Parma and Dresden; Rubens at Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and St. Petersburg; Murillo at Seville, Cadiz, and Madrid; Raphael in every important collection, but Velasquez at Madrid only.” Velasquez occupies the very highest rank among artists, and rich as it is in masterpieces from other hands, it is the fine collection of his immortal works which constitutes the chief glory of the Madrid Museum. To the historian yet another delight is added to the aesthetic enjoyment of the contemplation of works of art, and that is the opportunity they afford him of being brought face to face with the great characters of the past in the Prado galleries. Any one with a good memory and a little imagination can call up scene after scene from days gone by. It would not do to liken the Museum, with all its wealth of costly stuffs, its jewels, brocades, plumes, and lace, to a valley of Jehoshaphat; but the brush of the master really does spread out before us a kind of resurrection feast such as that the holy influence of which, with the ringing of church bells, the pealing of organs, and the music of allelujahs, dashed from the lips of Faust the cup of deadly poison he had mixed for himself. Here is Queen Isabella I. in prayer, surrounded by the stately sons she loved so well, little dreaming, as she gazed on them in all their apparent health and strength, of the doom which was so soon to overtake * This is not quite correct. The National Gallery owns several admirable works by Velasquez, and the private collections of England have also many masterpieces from his hand, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, in his Annals of the Artists of Spazm, vol. iv., mentioning more than sixty.—TRANS. 618 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD them. A little farther on is the Elector of Saxony, with the promoters of the League of Schmalkald, on their way to seek Luther and snatch him from the Emperor and his hired assassins, to transport him to the Patmos where, in spite of all the machinations of the evil one, the great reformer º ſº. Tº THE CYBELE FOUNTAIN.—After a drawing by Gotorbe was to write his new gospel. That handsome young fellow in the blue velvet doublet embroidered with gold, with a damascened sword in his belt, caressing a spaniel with his dainty hand, and seeming to look out at you with an inquiry in his black eyes, is the fourth husband of Lucrezia Borgia, immortalized by Hugo and Donizetti, the Duke Alfonso, whose life-like portrait by Titian you will now seek in vain in the feudal castle of Ferrara: and here is Don Carlos, whom we cannot but condemn, in spite of the immortal apologies of Schiller and Quintana, when we look at the portrait in which Sanchez Coelho has represented him with the livid complexion and dull eyes of a man who has never felt within him the promptings of a soul. MADRID 619 Or if you care to see the sun of Spanish prosperity setting amid clouds of gloom, look at Charles V. when his misfortunes had begun; accompany him in his flight from Innsbruck to the Monastery of Yuste; study him when he is brooding over the treason of his pupil Maurice of Saxony, on whose arm he leaned when he entered Bologna on the day of his coronation, and when he foresees the desertion of his other pupil, Will- iam of Orange; his face full of the bitterness of disenchantment, thinking neither of the verdict of posterity nor of the eternity before him; about to disappear from the world in lightnings and thunderings, in convulsions of nature such as are described in the sinister prophecies of the Apocalypse. Near to Charles V. is the portrait of his son Philip, painted by the melancholy artist Pantoja—that Philip who tasted of the bitterness of death in his own palace of the Escorial, that son with the false and insolent face, fit index of his treacherous, hypocritical soul, with the sallow complexion of the debauchee, robed in black, as in a shroud, and holding a rosary in his spider-like fingers. - And here, illustrating still further the endless tragedies of history, is Bloody Mary of England, the unhappy wife of Philip, looking like some sorceress of old, and holding in her hand a blood-red carnation; here is Dom Sebastien, dreaming of the sands of the African desert, in which he was eventually to be ingulfed; here is Doña Juana, ruler of Castille, who received the ambassadors at Valladolid, wearing a mask; here is Charles Stuart, defeated but resigned, gazing sadly at the coast of France, where his wife is watching for him and oppressed with presentiments of the death on the scaffold awaiting him; and here is the unchaste Maria Louisa, of Bourbon, who, absorbed in her intrigues with her favorite godson, was ready, in exchange for a throne in Portugal for him, to cede the country of her forefathers to the foreign invader, and, as a result, filled Spain with fire and sword, covering its soil with corpses, and poisoning its air with the smell of blood. And if all this saddens and oppresses you too much, you can turn for rest and refreshment to the Flemish families of Pourbus, with their plump, fresh-colored faces; the laughing maids-of-honor, surrounded by jesters, playing tricks in the salons of Buen Retiro to amuse the pretty, happy little Infanta; the Flemish kirmess, with its clash of instruments of different kinds; the Garden of Love, in which Rubens, with attendant pink-fleshed cupids, dances with his beloved wife; the happy, healthy children of Murillo hugging sheep in the meadows, and drinking water from the stream in oyster-shells; Vandyck, bright, charming, and mischievous, peep- 62o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD ing at the Duchess of Oxford over the shoulder of her accommodating husband; the Venetian houses and gondolas of Canaletto; the cattle, the inns, the forges, the castanet-players, the sausage-eaters, the gallants and country wenches; the fairs and fêtes of Goya, in which are combined with a grace thoroughly Aragonese the freshness, the truth to life, and the humor of a farce by Don Ramon de la Cruz, with the boldness and origi- A LADY OF MADRID Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Melida nality of an ode by Quin- tana. But we shall never leave the Museum if we indulge our love of art any further, so we must tear ourselves away and see something of the rest of Madrid. We are now in the middle of the Pra- do, and behind us is the Botanical Garden, once a beautiful but now desolate place, a cyclone having laid low the cedars of Leb- anon as if they had been but a field of grass. On the right are the Buen Retiro Gardens, the favor- ite resort of the people of Madrid, who flock to them in the spring to enjoy the scent of the lilies and the song of the nightingales, in the summer for the sake of the shade, in the winter for the sunshine, and at every time of year for the delight of seeing and being seen, of exchanging hearty greetings with friends, rejoicing with them in their happiness and weeping with them in their woes. On the left, where the San Geronimo Avenue abuts on the Prado, are two his- toric palaces—that belonging to the Medinacelli, who are descended in a MADRID 62 I direct line from King Alfonso X., the other the property of the Dukes of Villa Hermosa, who are the indirect descendants of John II. of Aragon. Both are at present tenanted by noble and beautiful ladies worthy of their illustrious lineage. # We must not leave the Prado without a glance at the fountains, which are very good examples of architecture as applied to hydraulic science in Spain, or without noting the stream of passers-by where meet the ancient street of Alcala and the modern thoroughfares known as Los Recoletos. Here are the National Bank, the Ministry of War, and, stand. ing out conspicuously, the Fountain, noted for the purity of its water, with the magnificent groups of sculpture representing Cybele in her chariot drawn by lions. Let us pass on to the Paseo de Castellana, and, however indifferent to beauty we may be, we cannot fail to be struck with the grandeur of its avenues of trees, and the brightness and gayety of the crowds passing to and fro in their many-colored garments, nodding to each other with happy smiling faces, or pausing for a chat as they perform their daily promenade. - On either side of the Castellana now stretch the new quarters of Madrid, divided by dreary tracts of arid sand, once part of a parched, tree- less plain. Whatever street we elect to follow in the Chamberi quarter we soon come to the Plaza San Gil, and if we go a few steps farther before turning up by the Palace Stables, we shall find ourselves opposite to the Hermitage of Padre San Antonio de la Florida, decorated with paintings by Goya. Do not expect to find in these works of art a scrap of religious sentiment; the encyclopedist painter was a Liberal born in a century of revolutions, of struggles between old and new institutions and beliefs. Obliged to paint religious scenes for which he had no sympathy, he chose the most beautiful and abandoned women of the day, treating them in his usual bold and nervous style, and converting them into angels by the sim. ple addition of many-colored wings. But if we can get over the irreverence of the thing, what life, what truth, what color, what “go” there is in his revo- lutionary blacksmiths, eager to take up arms in defence of liberty; in his monks, ready to leave their cells, expelled and dispersed by the storm of new ideas | The characters to whom we are introduced at San Francisco and San Antonio really represent the first popular manifestation of the tendencies of the day; they were, so to speak, the first democratic club of the Liberal revolution in Spain. - From San Antonio de la Florida, with its revolutionary frescos, let us go up to the Royal Palace, that huge and lofty structure which has a cer. 622 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD tain beauty, the beauty of all vast well-proportioned buildings, but is alto- gether wanting in character. It is neither Spanish nor anything else, but there is something imposing about it in spite of the meretricious statues with which the exterior is adorned, and there is no doubt as to the great value of its contents, even without the recent art additions of the Royal Armory. We must also glance at the Casa de los Ministeros, the Casa de los Consejos, the Congreso de los Deputades, the Madrid House of Commons, ºn ºf ººº-º- - º Lºgº.º.º. - Tº THE PLAZA MAYOR.—After a drawing by Berteault in which are delivered so many eloquent speeches by Spanish orators, the Academy of History, with its fine collections of MSS., missals, etc.; the Spanish Academy, the Academy of Natural and Moral Science, and other educational establishments, in which literature and science are eagerly studied; at the churches of San Francisco, converted by the contemporary artists Amerigo, Contreras, and others, into a regular museum of modern art; San Andrea, with its costly little Chapel of San Isidro, in the most pronounced rococo style, and the church known as San Isidro el Real, MADRID 623. which has been converted into a cathedral, but still retains the stamp of the decadence into which ecclesiastical architecture fell under the Jesuits. The three chief plazas of Madrid, known as Del Oriente, Mayor, and Puerta del Sol, are worthy of examination for the historical memories connected with them. The first owns, with numerous colossal but inar- tistic stone statues of kings and queens, a grand equestrian statue of Philip IV., cast in Florence from the wooden model by Montanes, and a noteworthy example of the influence of Italian art in Spain, even in the time of Velasquez. The Plaza Mayor, with its quaint old houses with nar- row porches, projecting balconies, and fresco decorations, is a survival of mediaeval Madrid, and was long the scene of autos-da-fé and bull-fights, the residents being compelled by law to give up the front portion of their houses to spectators of these horrible tragedies; and the Plaza Puerta del Sol where, though this plaza is now in the very heart of the capital, the beautiful entrance gateway once stood which caught the first rays of the morning sun. All traces of the gate are now gone, and the plaza teems with life, the main thoroughfares meeting in it; it is the rendezvous alike of the busy and the idle, the brain from which radiate all the throbbing nerves of the mighty, restless city. The noise in the Puerta del Sol must be heard to be appreciated. Every Sunday, or every other Sunday, until far on in the summer, the bull-fights, which are the time-honored national fêtes of Spain, are held in it. I loathe these bull-fights, and loathing them, of course I very seldom go to them, so that I am not just the right person to describe them; but not to mention these Fiestas reales, as they are called, would be to leave out the most characteristic feature not only of Madrid, but of the whole of Spain, for from time immemorial they have been held on every grand occasion, whether for the delight of the natives themselves, or for the enter- tainment of foreign visitors in it. As has been ably pointed out by Richard Ford:* “The past is linked with the present, and Spanish nationality is. revealed. . . . The principle was the exhibition of horsemanship, courage, and dexterity with the lance, for in the early bull-fight the animal was at- tacked by gentlemen armed only with the rejon, a short spear about four feet long . . . to be a good rider and lancer was essential to the Spanish caballero . . . this original form of bull-fight . . . is called a Fiesta reale, and such an one Philip IV. exhibited on the Plaza Mayor of Madrid before: our Charles I.” * Murray's Hand-book for Spain, p. 67 of Introduction to vol. i. 624 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD There are few more romantic and curious episodes in the history of Spain than the unexpected and mysterious visit of Charles, then only Prince of Wales, in the early part of the reign of Philip IV. He came as suitor for the hand of the Infanta Henrietta Maria, who was to share with him the tottering throne he was to inherit from his father, James I., son of the ill-fated Mary Stuart. Charles had crossed France secretly, disguised by a mask and with his hair dyed, accompanied by his friend and the sharer of his misfortunes—the Duke of Buckingham. They were not recognized, and were present as spectators at a dinner and masked ball at the Louvre. At midnight, in the middle of March, when it was as dark as pitch at Madrid, there was a loud knocking at the door of the British Embassy, and, on its being opened, two unknown knights were discovered, who demanded to see the English Ambassador. His Excellency sent word that they were to come up to him; but they replied that he must come down to them, for their legs would carry them no farther. Down came the Ambassador then, and his surprise may be imagined when he found his visitors to be the Prince of Wales and Buckingham, acting as equerry to his royal master. No imagination could conjure up, no pen could do justice to the fêtes held by the people of Madrid to do honor to their guest. The Count of Gondomar gave him a banquet of Babylonian magnificence. The Brother. hood of San Geronimo erected in his honor a dais covered with cloth of silver, with a throne and table covered with ruby-colored velvet, such as had never before been seen in Madrid. The Municipality gave his attend- ants a tent of white damask fringed with gold, with supports of solid silver. The Queen sent him costly Dutch stuffs in coffers of amber, with locks and keys of massive gold. In his honor religious processions through the streets were multiplied, the regular clergy redoubled their penances, and scourged themselves till the blood flowed in streams; to amuse the Prince high-born nobles paraded the streets at night in masquerade costumes, recalling the saturnalia of olden times; crowds of ladies in gala dresses rushed to the Jotillo to organize fêtes champêtres as a relief from Court fes- tivals, city banquets, and Church ceremonies. Charles was escorted here and there in procession like the Host in the Fête Dieu, with a guard of Castilians and Burgundians, who wore in his honor their most gleaming armor. In movable two-storied theatres, with costly decorations and prop- erties, were performed beneath his windows the saintliest religious mys- teries, full of the loftiest theological conceptions. When the Prince at last took leave, the King presented him with 2 chariots, 200 buttons made of MADRID 625 precious stones, 12 Spanish and 2 Arab horses, 12 colts in crimson trap- pings braided with gold, 25 muskets, 25 swords, 50,000 ducats' worth of jewelry, a silver fountain suitable for a garden, 24 mules, and 150 goat- skins prepared with amber; while the town of Santander, for use on his - - - - | - º- | lº ... º º …º.º.º. º i. ºlº - THE PUERTA DEL SOL.-After a drawing by Berteault return journey, presented him with 2000 chickens, 3ooo pullets, 2000 pairs of pigeons, 5oo capons, Ioo sheep, 200 kids, 20 cows, 5o pots of preserves, 1oo bottles of wine, and Iooo loaves of bread fresh from the oven. The most wonderful, most magnificent, most imposing of all the spec- tacles witnessed by Charles on this visit to Spain was the bull-fight, in which the picadores, etc., were all high-born gentlemen, who went through the whole struggle in the presence of 50,000 spectators. The gilded bal. cony of the Panaderia, containing the royal family and their guests, was draped with cloth of gold, and protected from the sun by an awning of satin from Florence and velvet from Milan. The platform of the repre- sentatives of Castile was draped with blue, enriched with silver shields and 40 626 THE CAPITALS OF THE world embroidery; that of the representatives of Aragon with red and gold; that of those from Italy and America with costly symbols of every variety of vessel; while the stands of the Grand Inquisitors, the knights of high and low degree, the great legal functionaries, the deputies to the Cortes, the ambassadors, courtiers, grandees, bishops, etc., vied with each other in the richness, variety, and brilliancy of their many-colored trappings, their ban- ners, their garlands, and their weapons. - All these people, and the crowds beneath whose weight some of the roofs nearly gave way, witnessed the arrival of the Queen and Infanta, wearing costumes of dark gray and gold, plentifully strewn with jewels; the infant Don Carlos in black, the Cardinal in purple robes and scarlet hat; the King in walnut-brown velvet and plumed helmet; the English prince distinguished by his white feathers. When the whole Court had taken their places, the Duke of Cea, mounted on a gray horse, appeared in the arena, preceded by fifty lackeys in German uniforms, and accompa- nied by two famous foreadores wearing fawn-colored cloaks, followed by the Duke of Maqueda, escorted by a squadron of knights, and surrounded by pages with spears decked with ribbon streamers; the Marquis of Velada, whose suite resembled an army in their gleaming black armor; the Count of Villamar, surrounded by followers, who, with their feather head-dresses, looked like a battalion of Indians; the two celebrated espadas, Cristobal Bonifaz, with six attendants in purple, and Cristobal Gavina, with six at- tendants whose dresses were covered with steel ornaments. All advanced with light hearts, and plied the rejon so skilfully that the hides of the bulls were riddled with darts. Many of the assistants were flung to the ground like poppies before the mowers in a field of wheat; stirrups were snapped in two by the horns of the bulls; horses were ripped up; lances were broken like reeds in a hurricane; many were slightly, and some few dangerously, wounded. Much blood was shed and many bulls were killed, with a ceaseless accompaniment of applause from the audience, for the Spanish can never control their delight in their favorite pastime. I have dwelt thus long on this bull-fight of the seventeenth century with a view to showing how hereditary is the love of the people for these horrible spectacles. They really are not responsible for their apparent cruelty, for atavism is a well-recognized scientific law; or, if their respon- sibility cannot be altogether done away with, it is considerably lessened, for it is spread over some hundred generations. When we mark the grad. ual piling up of mountains by the agglomeration of infinitesimal molecules, we realize how natural is the acquisition of fixed habits when the tendency SCENE AT A BULL - FIGHT-Engraved by Rousseau, after the picture by Marot MADRID 629 to them is passed on century after century, till these habits become part and parcel of a national character. There is no doubt that if we restored absolutism, founding a dynasty of all-powerful kings, with innumerable armies to support their authority, and supplemented that authority by the most inquisitorial of Inquisitions, with a view to the suppression of the bull-fight in Spain, we should inevitably fail, for love of the Piesta reale is ingrain in the Spanish nature. -- This is why, as rivulets and mountain torrents rush to the main stream of some mighty watercourse, the whole population of Madrid flocks to the Alcala, laying aside, as they settle themselves down in the tiers of seats in the circus, the gravity for which the Castilians are noted elsewhere, to give themselves up, as the spectacle begins, to noisy and boisterous delight. Above are the gayly-decorated private boxes, in which sway to and fro the white cloaks and red fans of the richly-dressed occupants, while below are the masses of citizens, who, though generally sober enough, are now intox- icated, so to speak, with the smell of blood and the sight of the alguazils, or police, in their old-fashioned costumes; the chulos, or foot attendants, in their many-colored capas de durancillo, or silk cloaks; the picadores, or mounted spearmen; the banderilleros, or dart-throwers; the espadas, or slay- ers, and the mule team, or el tiro. . The spectators gloat on the skill with which the picadores fling their spears and the banderilleros their darts; the agile suertes, or tricks of the chulos and foreros as they goad the bull to madness; and the excitement and tension are immense in the final act of the drama, when death is dealt by the espada to the bull, who has strewn the arena with the corpses of horses. Then, no doubt, the people of Madrid lose their heads; their self-control is gone, and they really seem cruel and inhuman. For all this, however, he who condemns them does them injustice, for there are no better-hearted folk in the world than these same people of Madrid. Set against their conduct at the bull-fights their behavior in times of revolution, or when some epidemic is raging, and no one can help admiring as I admire, and loving as I love them. Never can I forget their noble charity during the visitation of cholera in 1865, when I saw poor work-people carrying the stricken in their arms, pressing to their hearts those all but dead, reviving them with their own breath, never thinking that in so doing they were risking their own lives. Truly, a people who could act in a manner so heroic, so sublime, must have a grand reserve of vital force, a generous nature which radiates forth goodness as the sun radiates forth heat. 63o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD I need not dwell more on what Madrid has been in times of revolu- tion or of war, for every one remembers her behavior on May 2d; her firm- ness in the insurrection led by Don Carlos; her unwavering fidelity to Lib- eral ideas in every convulsion; her patriotism in the stormy days of the Spanish republic; her cultivation of liberty without anarchy; her self-control in every popular demonstration; the wisdom and moderation of her club orators; the innate dignity which never forsakes her; her calm and prudent attitude in the midst of revolutions, which have combined to win for her the respect of an emancipated people—a people worthy to wear the noblest of all crowns, the full enjoyment of their in- alienable rights. There are but three blots upon the char- acter of Madrid, and these three are bull- fights, lotteries, and beggars, and the num- ber of the last-named can scarcely be quoted against the people of the capital, for it is really merely the result of the careless- ness of the authorities in allowing vagrants of every nationality to flock to Madrid, in- stead of enforcing the regulations of the civil and penal code against vagabondage. But even as their conduct in critical moments of their history compels you to admit that the people of Madrid are honest among the honest, so, when you see them listening in entranced attention to one of their great orators, or applauding some fine drama at the theatre, must you own that they are also civilized among the civilized. The town in which Lope de Vega and Calderon were born, in which Cervantes and Quevedo wrote, and Gongora and Quintana sang, and in AT THE WINE - SHOP Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by L'Hermite MADRID 631 which Velasquez and Goya wielded the brush; which gave to so many previously unknown nations the knowledge of the Gospel, and dictated laws to two hemispheres; which has produced a drama scarcely surpassed by that of any other nation; which has founded academies alike of art and of literature, and, thanks to her poets and prose writers, long led the way in intellectual culture; which did much for the prosperity of Naples, Sicily, and America, and, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, owned a school of painting worthy to rank with that of Italy in its Golden Age, may without vanity claim to have made its mark in history, and to have added lustre to the planet to which it belongs. RIO DE JANEIRO MAGINE a town rising from the shores of a bay, enclosing an anchorage of fifty square miles, and with a coast-line of some sixty miles round, indented with creeks, coves, and larger inlets, while its waters are dotted with isles and islets, among which ply great ocean steamers, merchant-vessels, yachts, barges, and all manner of other crafts laden with passengers; a safe and sheltered port on the main route for travellers, whether bound for the south or the north, the east or the west; a coaling-station for vessels on their A MINA. NEGRESS way to La Plata or the Pacific shores of Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph America, to Australia, or to New Zealand; a tropical site, overlooked by mountain be- yond mountain, now rugged, now forest-clad, but all alike picturesque; a commercial emporium, full of life and motion, with a highly-civilized population, although it is but a few miles from virgin forests; a mart from which millions of bags of coffee are exported, yet one in which the arts and literature are cultivated, and politics are eagerly studied; a town not unlike Byzantium, as irregular as some city of antiquity, as noisy as a Yankee settlement; now thronged with busy crowds, now apparently wrapped in torpor; in a word, Rio de Janeiro is New York, San Francisco, and Paris in one. Such is the heroic and loyal city of São Sebastião de Rio Janeiro, federal capital of the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and but yes- terday the seat of the Court of Dom Pedro II. Let us land and look about us. - We come from Paris, having embarked at Bordeaux, or, rather, at - 636 § THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Pauillac, on one of the new steamers of the Messageries Maritimes Com- pany, a floating palace, one blaze of gilding, and provided throughout with electric light. We touched at Lisbon, en route, and that has made us even better able to appreciate Rio. Here we are on shore. We have landed, as must all who come from the sea, in the most uninteresting and malodorous part, the commercial quarter, which has a very disillusioning effect upon any one who expected an American town. Narrow, tortuous streets, uninviting alleys, low, pov- erty-stricken looking houses, crowded together without character or archi- tectural style; the whole suggestive of some old Portuguese town removed to another hemisphere. º - Among the noise of the whistles of the drivers, and rumbling of the tramcars, and jostled as you are by shouting porters laden with merchan- dise, you wonder how a people, full of the vigor of youth, and enamoured of progress, can put up with a state of things so little in accord with their own temperament or the climate of their country; with the absence of all the comforts of modern science, an absence but little atoned for by the busy traffic; everywhere the constant hurrying to and fro of eager men of business, and the medley of coloring in the complexions of the passers-by ; every variety of complexion occurring, from ebony black to purest white, with intermediate shades of red, bistre, light and dark brown. An effort of memory is required for us to realize that we are in what was once a Portuguese colony, which, in spite of the lapse of time and the changes it has brought about, still retains a certain pronounced resem- blance to its parent, the former metropolis. And this effort made, you will hear that Portuguese is being spoken about you, a softened, languorous variety of Portuguese, and you will at last realize how much difference of latitude necessarily affects European manners and customs. But let us penetrate farther into the town. Let us go to the new quarters, to Cattele, to Botafogo, where Darwin lived for a time, to Laran- gerias, and to all the pretty outlying suburbs. Here we can breathe more freely, and are among evidences of quite a different stage of civilization. Here are bright, snow-white villas, with gardens, in which, without any care bestowed on them, grow a luxuriance of wide-girthed, stately palms, prickly cacti, and slim bamboos—in a word, of all the grand and beautiful flora peculiar to a tropic zone. Whether we go to the Botanical Gardens, with its world-famous avenue of palms, or climb the height of Tijuca, the primeval forests and cascades of which are, perhaps, even more beautiful than the view from the top, or whether we risk the perils of the zigzag railway on RIO DE JANEIRO 637 the steep sides of Corcovado, up which the train is literally pushed, with the engine behind,” or ascend the heights of Santa Theresa, by way of the inclined plane, one enchanting scene succeeds another, and we return in love once more with Rio, and admitting the originality, if not the utility, of | THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO.-After a drawing by Boudier the division of the town into two parts, one given up entirely to business and trade, a true capital of the coffee country, the other admirably fitted for the dolce far miente of life in the tropics. There is no doubt that in its beautiful bay Rio de Janeiro owns one altogether unrivalled attraction; for this bay is larger than that of Naples, and grander than the Bosporus. It was discovered on January 1, 1502, by the Portuguese navigator Andréa Gonçales and the great Amerigo Vespucci himself. * Apropos of this railway, Ch. A. Atchison, in A Winter Cruise in Summer Seas, p. 246, says: “It is of somewhat peculiar construction. Between the wheel-rails is a barred eight-inch ratchet, into which a cogged wheel beneath the engine fits. In this way a grip is got sufficient to push the train up the steep incline. . . . The road is circuitous, making a two-mile journey of the distance, which measured as height is but 2400 feet. Some 600 feet from the bottom you cross the first bridge, a red, slender-looking iron thing bridging a chasm of 6oo feet.... At Paneiras you change trains; a second train takes you to the summit . . . the line traverses the very edge of a precipice 17oo feet sheer down.” 638 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The celebrated Florentine pilot who had the honor of giving his name to the new world was the first of a long series of explorers who have vied with each other in singing the praises of the beautiful districts of South America. In 1504, at an epoch when, to quote a once famous bone moſ, “Every one, even tailors, must go forth to the discovery of new lands,” Vespucci, dazzled with the glorious scenes he had witnessed, wrote a letter in which occurs a sentence revealing the enthusiasm with which he was imbued. “If,” he said, “there be such a thing as a terrestrial paradise, it cannot be far from these scenes.” And if we could have asked the opinion of Paulmier de Gonneville, who touched at Rio in the same year (1504), no doubt the mariner from Honfleur would have confirmed the high praises of Ves- pucci. The Bay of Rio de Janeiro is protect- ed by two outpost sentinels, the Fort of Santa Cruz and the celebrated Sugar-loaf Mountain, a mass of granite more than I Ioo feet above the sea-level, which the French, however, called the Pot de Beurre, “because,” as Jean de Léry quaintly says, “ of its roundness and its resemblance to a tower.” This Sugar-loaf Mountain is the first of a chain of Serrated heights, some rug- ged and bare, some clothed with tropical vegetation, en- circling the town, and forming a background to the varied scene. If we arrive on one of the clear, bright days, of #|| o Fº these latitudes, we first per- ceive, of a deeper blue than the sky itself, against which it rises up in strong relief, the IN THE BOTANICAL GARDENs mighty chain of the Organ After a drawing by Boudier Range, so called on account RIO DE JANEIRO 639 of the resemblance of its peaks to the pipes of an organ. Among these peaks the most remarkable is that called the “Finger of God,” from its likeness to a gigantic finger. On the left rises the Corcovado, or Hunch- back, some 2140 feet high, from the summit of which, reached by the railway described above, a magnificent view is obtained; while beyond it is the Parrot's Beak, overlooking the Tijuca Chain, a romantic retreat of the people of Rio, dotted with poetic-looking villas. The Tijuca Mount- ains serve yet another purpose, for, like the summit of the Superga, at Turin, they are the barometer of sailors and of the common people of Rio. When the peaks of Tijuca are covered with clouds, it is an almost certain sign of rain; and Admiral Mouchez himself, who has done so much good hydrographical work on the shores of Brazil, does not hesitate to call attention to this phenomenon. e * The Bay of Rio de Janeiro extends seventeen miles inland. It has a coast-line of sixty miles, and its greatest breadth is twelve miles; but it does not look as large as it really is on account of its being cut in half by the reef known as The Lage, on which a fortress has been erected. Vessels from Europe enter the bay by the wider of the two channels, which is some 6oo feet across and 160 feet deep. The bay is dotted with about eighty islands and islets, which look like so many bunches of flowers flung down by the caprice of an artist. Some of these islands are celebrated, notably that of the Governador, or Governor, which is about six miles long by three across, where John VI. of Portugal performed his devotions and Dom Pedro I. sought recreation from the cares of state; and the much smaller, but prettiest and brightest of all, Paqueta, scarce two miles in extent, which has been so often sung by Brazilian poets: “A linda Paqueta, delicia, orgulho De tua capital, do Brazi todoſ” On the so-called Fiscal Island is the station of the Custom-house offi- cers, a Gothic building, looking just like a chapel, which has been fitted up for their use; and on another of the group, known as the Isle of Flowers, is an admirable establishment, now being enlarged, for the reception of emigrants. When completed, 3500 can be received in it at a time. It has been remarked that the general shape of the Bay of Rio, which is that of a triangle of unequal sides, resembles the configuration of the whole country of Brazil. Its geographical position, moreover—it is in S. lat. 22°54' 24"—enables the observer to see the sun in its daily course 64o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD describe arcs in planes perpendicular to the major axis of the bay in such a manner that, thanks to the usual transparency and purity of the atmos- phere, the most marvellous combinations of color are produced at sunrise and sunset, in which every prismatic hue is reflected from shore to shore in the waters of the bay, while the Sugar-loaf Mountain at the southern A STREET IN RIO,-After a drawing by Boudier extremity, and but little removed as it is from the austral tropic, marks the limit beyond which, as one of the writers on this part of the world has observed, the sun cannot advance in his march southward. There are two totally distinct seasons at Rio, when the town presents an altogether different appearance—the summer, which lasts from October to April, and the winter, from May to September. In the summer, which is the autumn and winter in Europe, when the sun pours down into the narrow streets, Rio is anything but an agreeable place. The heat has driven away the rich and leisured classes, the great merchants, the diplo- matic corps; in fact, all of any position or fancied position, hasten to the suburbs on the breezy heights overlooking the city, or to the little coun- RIO DE JANEIRO 641 try towns in the neighborhood, such as Petropolis and Theresopolis, while others take refuge on the islands of the bay. The town becomes a per- fect caldron; but this does not prevent a great excitement over the Carni- val, which is an institution to which the Fluminenses, or river folk,” are particularly devoted. This relic of the old heathen Saturnalia is fast dis- appearing from Europe; and now that Italy is a united kingdom, it is no longer properly kept up, even in its former headquarters, Rome and Venice. - - - At Rio, however, Carnival time is livelier than ever, and there are societies for celebrating it in grand style. Shrove Tuesday is kept in a most characteristic manner, and is distinguished not only by the richness of the costumes and the originality of the vehicles in the processions, but by the absurdity of the caricatures in what may justly be termed an open- air review of the chief events of the preceding year. In the time of the Empire the ministers of Dom Pedro defrayed the expenses of the Carni- val; and, though a Republic has now been established, the old customs are kept up, and the men of the revolution are spared no more than were their predecessors; moreover, like them, they are the first to laugh at the ridicu- lous caricatures of themselves and their actions in these witty exhibitions, in which full scope is afforded to the imaginations of the popular poets of Rio. - - In the winter—the European spring and summer—Rio de Janeiro is a charming place of residence. At the principal theatres good pieces are played by troupes of native or foreign artists—now Sarah Bernhardt and Coquelin, now Giovanni Emanuel, and the Duse-Checchi or Tamagno, and the Borghi-Mamo, with other celebrities, appear, being greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and applauded as eagerly as on this side of the ocean, perhaps even with a spice of tropical fervor unknown in our more temper- ate zone. The balls at the Casino, managed by a club to which all the hidalgos and chief citizens of Rio once belonged, are very select, and alter- nate with parties in private houses and concerts. º Few people love melody more than the Brazilians, and music, poetry, and elocution are all alike eagerly cultivated. Some few Brazilian com posers and executants have, indeed, become celebrated beyond their own country; and very proudly do the people of the new Republic boast of * Rio de Janeiro means literally the river of January, hence the name Flumzºnenses as applied to its inhabitants. The bay was discovered on January 1st, and was at first taken for a river, running up as it does so far into the land.—TRANS. - 4 I 642 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD 53 Carlos Gomez, author of “Il Guarany,”“Salvator Rosa,” “Fosca,” “Maria Tudor,” “Lo Schiavo,” and other operas, which have most of them been produced at La Scala, Milan, and elsewhere, and of other native artists of lesser note. - - - - The Rua d'Ouvidor is the most celebrated street of Rio. It is very narrow, but the passage of vehicles is prohibited, so that the beaux and belles have plenty of room to promenade, showing off their fashionable costumes or pausing for a friendly chat, forming brilliant animated groups which no sergent de ville breaks up with the familiar “Circulez, Messieurs,” of Paris. This Bond Street of Rio is lined with handsome shops; in it are a few of the most fashionable cafés, and from it are issued the chief newspapers.” - Like all seaports Rio de Janeiro has a large foreign population. The town, properly so called, certainly has in a total of 500,000 inhabitants 100,000 strangers, of whom 70,000 are Portuguese. There are now per- haps 2000 or 3000 French, but at one time their numbers were far higher, and the French colony monopolized nearly all the trade in luxuries. The competition of Portuguese and Italians has of late years lessened this pro- portion, but in walking through the town it is still easy to recognize the shops kept by Frenchmen, so much more tastily arranged than elsewhere are the goods displayed for sale in the windows. - French influence is also considerable in more important matters. The educated Brazilian reads and speaks French, follows French fashions, wants to know all that is going on in France, applauds Portuguese translations of * James W. Wells, in Three Thousand Miles through Brazil, pp. 14 and 15, thus describes the frequenters of this street: “The Rua d’Ouvidor varies in its frequenters during the different hours of the day. In the early morning there are few to be seen; the shops open, shop boys and men are busy spreading their wares for the day, a few laborers pass, or maybe a milch cow and calf accompanied by a man, who milks the cow at the door of his customer, and perhaps at the same time surreptitiously milks a bag of water he may have stowed away under his coat. “From early morning the tramcars quickly arrive, three at a time, but from eight to ten they commence to disgorge their loads of clerks and merchants coming from the suburbs, then the street fills with the hurrying crowd, with perhaps a very few ladies; from ten to eleven arrive the black coats and top-hats of Brazilian officials and employés in the public offices. After that hour ladies principally have their turn, coming in for shopping, All day the cars arrive and go away filled. About three the black coats and hats congregate about “Casteloes’ (the confection- er's), at the tramcar corner, and in various shop doors, and discuss with many a lively gesticu- lation and excited manner the day's politics — the nearly always absorbing topic. At four the crowds of merchants and clerks return, they in their turn stopping for a chat or an inquiry for the latest European telegrams, or an abuse of Mr. Gladstone, or maybe a visit to No. 105 to try to quench their insatiable thirst, the married men being easily recognized by their loads of bun- dles and packages.” - - RIO DE JANEIRO 645 French plays at the theatre, and is well up in every detail of French poli. tics. Really, in Rio one seems nearer to Paris than when in Brittany, and the Republic has carried enthusiasm so far as to make July 14th a national fête, and perhaps when the worthy Fluminense citizen hears the “ Marseil. laise” he fancies that his ancestors took part in the taking of the Bastille Saint-Antoine. - - - One of the first things to strike a new arrival at Rio is the immense number of tramways, the cars on which are called bonds, because the open- ing of the first line coincided with an issue of bonds. These áomas, which are mostly open cars, are drawn by mules, and start from nearly every cor- ner of the Rua d’Ouvidor. They are all crowded with passengers, and take up a great many more than there are seats for, others clustering on the foot-boards, clinging to straps, as the car dashes along to the noise of the conductor's whistle. It is estimated that some I2O,OOO passengers daily use the tramways. On many of the lines the cars run all night, and you can go from end to end of the city at any time you like. Everybody uses the bonds, and it is no rare thing to see ladies in them in full evening dress on their way to some ball or soirée. On some lines there are special cars for luggage, in which respect Rio is in advance of London and Paris. Every one who stops at Rio, if only for a few hours, is bound to go by tramcar from the Rua Gonçalves-Diaz to the Botanical Gardens by way of Botafogo, and no trip could be more interesting or better calculated to give a stranger an idea of the ways of the country. Itinerant venders storm the cars, pressing their wares on the passengers. Some, chiefly lively little Italians, shriek out the names of the daily papers—A Gazeta de AVoticias, o /ornal do Brazil, o Paiz, a Gazeta da Zarde, a Cidade do Rio, o Brazil, o Diario do Commercio, etc.; others, usually men of color, offer bonbons and cakes to the ladies in a hopelessly incomprehensible jargon: Balas, simha / while flower-sellers march solemnly along with cut flowers for sale fastened to little sticks. - s g Railways connect Rio with the neighboring States of Minas Geraes and San Paulo, and steamers, like the Čateaux-mouches and hirondelles of the Seine, ply between the city and Praia Grande or Netherohy, which is the real capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Rio itself being only the federal capital belonging to no State in particular, and in this respect resembling Washington in the United States. Moreover, the new Repub- lican Constitution, inaugurated on February 24, 1891, as it has added to the union a vast district on the central plateau of Brazil, will probably lead to 646 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the foundation of a new inland federal capital. But it will be some time before this comes about; and, even if Rio de Janeiro loses its crown as a capital, it will ever remain the first maritime emporium of South America. Rio is not only well supplied with tramways, it has also an admirable system of telephones, which have been in full working order since 1880, before this new mode of communication was introduced even in Paris. THE PALACE OF ST. CHRISTOPHER After a drawing by Boudier Some idea will be formed of the amount of traffic in Rio when it is stated that it is a harbor of the first class, and that on an average 5ooo steamers and other vessels touch at it every year. In its small stuffy warehouses millions of sacks of coffee are ac- cumulated in the course of every twelve months—in fact, Rio is the chief coffee mart in the whole world. There are several well-edited daily papers which have a wide circula. tion. Chief of these is the Jormal do Commercio, founded in 1821 by a Frenchman, and carried on by a group of his fellow-countrymen and their descendants. This paper has now become the largest issued in any coun- try occupied by Latin races. It was recently sold to a new company for the trifling sum of 9,000,ooo francs. Two French periodical publications are also issued at Rio, the Etoile du Sud and the Brésil Républicain. In describing Rio it will not do to omit all reference to the yellow- RIO DE JANEIRO 647 fever, which is the great dread of all foreign visitors. It is a malady im- ported from abroad, and first appeared in Brazil in 1849, having been intro- duced by a vessel hailing from New Orleans. Since then, as is the case in all endemic affections, its periodic appearances have been marked by less and less virulence, and Dr. Domingos Freire claims to have discovered a mode of inoculation with the attenuated virus of the disease, which is a preservative against its attacks. It really seems to have been beneficial in many cases. According to official statistics the yellow-fever has carried off nearly 28,000 persons in thirty-five years, being an average of 8oo per an- num, which seems to prove that it is not so much a terrible malady as a malady with a terrible reputation.” The climate of Rio is far from deserving the bad reputation given to it by some travellers—birds of passage, who, though they incurred no dan- ger, like to pose as martyrs on their return home. “Every night and morning,” says Rear- admiral Mouchez,t “Rio is visited by variable winds which sweep down from the neigh- boring mountains, and extend three or four leagues along the coast. These winds vary ac- cording to the locality from north-east to north-west, and are sometimes very fresh; they abate in the morning, and about ten o'clock there maybe a calm; then about eleven or half-past the wind from the offing comes gently into the bay, at first a A FRUIT - SELLER soft breeze, its course marked Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph by gentle ripples on the sur- ... " face of the sea, but gradually gaining force as the day advances, to fall again at sunset. This is what is known as the Viragao, and it never fails * The translator feels bound to give the author's own words here; but surely the relations of the 8oo persons needlessly sacrificed per annum were justified in considering yellow-fever a terrible malady! # Instructions nautigues sur les cétes de Brazil. Paris, 1890. 648 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD to come except in bad weather. Bad weather and high winds are ex- tremely rare at Rio, and hurricanes are quite unknown.” But in spite of all that can be said, there are still some people who think that yellow-fever lurks in every creek of the Bay of Rio, and that rattlesnakes watch for the passer-by at every street corner. Not many years ago a celebrated French surgeon landed at Rio with his family, and put up in one of the aristocratic quarters of the town. On the day of his arrival a friend of ours went to invite the son of this surgeon to go for a drive with him, and when the carriage drove up we heard the mother of the young fellow cry to him in tender anxiety, “Keep out of the way of the rattlesnakes, dear boy!” No matter what they say, however, if you are in the mood for a trip, and are tired with a commonplace excursion into Switzerland; if in the height of summer you long for the breezes of the open sea, think of Rio de Janeiro. With 3000 francs to spare you can take the most delightful voyage imaginable. You will reach Rio from Bordeaux in two months and a half; you can live in the capital of Brazil for one long delightful month; you will return home happy with the knowledge that you have made acquaintance with the most beautiful town of South America, and may exclaim, with the old French traveller of the sixteenth century: “O Seigneur Dieu, que vos oeuvres divers Sont merveilleux dans le monde univers l’” * Was not the Old French traveller in his turn quoting from the Psalms of David: “O Lord God, how wonderful are Thy works in all the world !”—TRANS. - §) º % tº º * * D ſº * º | N f º % % §§ {{\ § |Wººlſ N RSSS ^ = < sº S. Sº COPENHAGEN To Armand Dayot : OU ask me, dear friend and fellow- traveller, to call up again, as I sit in my easy-chair, the experiences of our charming trip in the bright days of June, 1888, days which sped by all too quickly, thanks to the interest and variety of the scenes we witnessed, the number and rapidity of the impressions we received, and the gentle courtesies and cordial hospitality of the people we visited. You do not, of course, expect me to describe - all the sights we saw at Copenhagen, Hussar of the pass guards or, like Asmodeus, to lift up the roofs Engraved by Rousseau, after a drawing by A. Paris of the houses; but merely to give, for the benefit of your readers, a résumé of the ideas and impressions I brought back with me from our visit to the Country of Denmark, and the streets and museums of its capital. So I will look through my travelling note-book, and try to call up the memories already hidden and half effaced beneath the dusty accumulations of daily life, but which gradually, as I muse, wake up to reality, and resume, at Some touch of association, their natural proportions and coloring. And first, I see the sea in the early morning—a vast, pearly-gray gleaming sheet of water, dotted with long islets of pale green verdure drift- ing with the tide. The ocean is ever the fundamental feature of a Danish Scene, forming as it does three-quarters of every landscape, gently encir- cling in its embrace the whole country, and cutting it up into an infinite number of bays and islands. In the days of the heroes of Eld, the sea was the undisputed domain of the Northmen, bearing on its wide bosom the L.R. 652 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD ships of the Vikings, who followed the flight of the wild swan, and boasted in their warlike songs that they had never slept beneath a roof and never drained a cup beside a sheltered hearth. They steered their dragon-prowed vessels towards the lands occupied by the Anglo-Saxons and Franks, plant- ed their pikes in the invaded districts, pillaged on every side, plundering with special zest, as pleasing to Odin, the churches of the Christians, and little dreaming that out of the ruins of those very churches was to spring up a new, better, and more wonderful style of art—a style to the develop- ment of which the Vikings were themselves in some measure to contribute, for to Northern influence we owe much of the quaint and confused, yet ENTRANCE TO THE PORT OF COPENHAGEN Engraved by Ruffe, after the picture by Edelfelt rich and effective, ornamentation characteristic of Romanesque architect- ure; an architecture thoroughly imbued with the spirit of its originators, which peeps out at us, so to speak, from many a sculptured capital in the grand cloisters, aisles, and naves of our cathedrals. As we speed along between Korsør and Copenhagen, across the moors and heaths of Sjælland, we look out from the window of our carriage on to low-lying silent districts, dotted here and there with farm-houses, the roofs standing out clearly against the wide horizon, and catch glimpses of the * - COPENHAGEN - • 653 white oxen with short legs but mighty lyre-shaped horns, yoked together in pairs, and of peasants bending over their ploughs. The scene is per- haps a little monotonous, but very peaceful and restful. One is reminded of some outlying tract of North Holland, only everything here is in a lower key of color, and the atmosphere is even more transparent; the light seeming to have been filtered through the ice of the nearer Arctic Regions. But as the town is approached the scenery becomes more diversified and fuller of interesting detail. The fields and pasture-lands now alternate with the scattered hamlets of the fisher-folk, and all along the Strandvei are villas embowered in trees, which are reflected in the blue waters of the Sound; we pass Klampenborg and Skovsborg with their belts of fine woods; Charlottenhund, and a little farther north Dyrehaven with their châteaus and hunting-boxes, their celebrated old oaks and their gigantic beeches, the finest I ever saw, venerable grandsires of a race peaceful yet powerful, in which the mighty hidden work of nature is silently carried on century after century, and who enjoy a charmed, all but immortal life, sus- tained by the flowing of the inexhaustible sap in their veins, and mani- fested in the gentle mysterious rustling of their masses of sombre foliage. Truly they live indeed; we almost fancy they think, and as we look at them we recall without any of the scepticism of doubt Holberg's account of the wonderful country in which wandered the student Niels-Klim, where the trees are men, true masters of the earth and monarchs of the country, de- positaries of the grand primitive forces of nature, the sources of authority, forming a natural and all-powerful aristocracy, the chiefs of which, distin- guished by the greater number of their branches and the superior girth of their trunks, solemnly salute each other by slowly drooping their branches. Yet one other peculiarity must be noted here; a peculiarity which will specially arouse the interest of the traveller on his first visit to Den- mark, and that is the beauty of the lingering twilight, the magic charm of the long-drawn-out summer evenings, the soft light lingering in the trans- parent atmosphere through which gleam the tender turquoise tints of the cloudless sky sinking so slowly from piano to pianissimo that the changes are scarcely perceptible. Gladly would one catch each fleeting effect in some ideal water-color sketch or embody in the dreamy music of a lullaby the ineffable impression of peace and mystery produced by the sacred charm of this quiet evening hour, as the dying day in a delirious dream and in almost stealthy silence gives to the earth his parting kiss.... Copenhagen, or, as its inhabitants call it, Kjöbenhavn, the port of the merchants, is situated in an admirable position on the shores of the - 654 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Sound, partly on Zeeland and partly on Amager. Like a northern Con- stantinople, it guards the Baltic Straits, and is a point of transition between central and northern Europe, watching over the fragments, much parcelled out, alas! of an ancient empire. But for the old citadel of Frederikshavn and its advanced batteries of Trekroner and Lynethen, it has no fortifica- tions to speak of.” The ancient ram- parts have been replaced by a girdle of promenades and wide boulevards. The authorities do not deceive themselves about the defences of their city, and if an invasion were threatened they would THE DIKE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe not be able to contemplate without uneasiness the terraces and avenues of the Lange-Linie, that beautiful esplanade on the side next the sea, the deep blue waters of which are fringed in the bright days of June with a line of silvery foam, reminding one of the lustrous violet-hued waves described by poets. . . . In spite of the want of batteries, however, the cour. age and patriotism of the Danes are alike undoubted, and relying on them, and on the justice of their cause, the people of Copenhagen earnestly culti- vate those arts of peace which have aided in the rapid development of the resources of their country, and assure to it a grand future. Although the history of Copenhagen can be traced back to the twelfth century, the city retains but few relics of the past, and it is wanting in what has been called the historic air of a town with many memories. At * Many outlying forts are, however, now in course of construction.—TRANS. COPENHAGEN 655 various times conflagrations and bombardments have razed to the ground its ancient monuments. To note but the most terrible: in 1728, more than 16oo houses were burned at one time; in 1795, whole quarters were consumed by the flames; in 1807, more than 300 buildings and monu- ments fell beneath the cannonade of the English. Nothing remain to day of earlier date than the time of Christian IV. (1588–1648), who, like Charles V. of France, was fond of “beaux maçonnages, saige artiste, vray architecteur, deviseur certain et prudent ordonneur, et belles fondacions fit faire en maintes places, notables édifices beaulx et nobles;” and in spite of all the troubles which befell his country during his reign, has ever been the most popular monarch of Denmark. The oldest portion of Kjöbenhavn is the southern, bounded on the north by the long Gothersgade Street, and cut across by the Ostergade, Amagertorv, Vimmelskaft, Nygade, Nytorv, and Frederiksberggade. There is the Kongens Nytorv, or New King's Square, with its fine trees, its theatre, the Charlotten- berg Palace, and the equestrian statue of Christian V., while farther on we come to the Fruekirke, or Church of Our Lady, with the “Christ and Twelve Apostles,” by Thorwaldsen, the University Buildings, and lastly to the eminently characteristic Slotsholm, cut across by numerous canals spanned by little bridges, with the ruins of the Christiansborg Palace, of which the fire = sº of 1884 left but the walls. On the same ſº . " islet is the Thorwaldsen Museum, to which º º we shall return presently. Here, too, in º º the very heart of the old city, not far from the Prindsens Palace, is the Exchange built under Christian IV., above which rises a very quaint and unusual kind of spire made of the uplifted and interlaced tails of four dragons, the bodies of which rest on the roof, bearing witness in the midst of the triumphs of classicism to the survival among the Danes of a faithful love for the primitive fancies which inspired the art of their ancestors. North of Slotsholm stretch the new quarters of the town: Jammel- | Hºmº º º º - – ºf THE voR FRELSER's KIRKE After a drawing by Gotorbe * The translator has left this passage in the original, as its whole charm consists in the quaintness of the old French phrasing and spelling. - 656 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD holm, Frederiksstadt, and Amalienborg, the last named the West End of Copenhagen, where are situated the royal residence and the houses of the aristocracy. On the west of this quarter is Kongenshave, the one park of the town, in which rises the little Rosenborg Château built by Christian in THE EXCHANGE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe a mixed Gothic and Renaissance style, and containing the collection of Danish antiquities arranged by the celebrated archaeologist Worsaie. In this pretty park, which, like that of the Luxembourg in Paris, is the favorite resort of children and their attendants, is a statue of Andersen, the famous teller of fairy tales, who looks down as if ever relating fresh wonders to the charming groups playing at his feet. Lastly, outside the town beyond the Botanical Gardens are the cele- brated Tivoli Gardens, where, on the smooth sward beneath the fine old trees, all manner of innocent amusements are provided for the good people of Copenhagen, washed down by excellent beer. . . . - We have now given a rough description of Copenhagen as a whole, COPENHAGEN 657 and, truth to tell, there is with one or two slight exceptions nothing partic. ularly Scandinavian or unlike other towns about it. In fact, there remains nothing national about the style inaugurated under Christian, one of whose favorite artists was the son of Karel von Mander, the Dutch romanticist, who was thoroughly imbued with admiration for what may be called the ultramontane style, and who aided in the introduction to the extreme north of Europe of that international classicism which was to become an article of faith in Stockholm and Copenhagen in the following century. How Academism invaded Scandinavian art, and was afterwards grad- ually eliminated by the return of scholars and artists to national traditions, resulting in the stamping out of all that was conventional and Outworn, can be studied in the museums and private collections of Copenhagen. It was very well illustrated also in the interesting Exhibition of 1888; and in this article I propose, with the help of the art treasures preserved in the city, if not exactly to give a history of the movement, yet to indicate its course. In creating the admirable Museum of Northern Antiquities, Ramsus Nyerup, and his successor, C. J. Thomsen, aided much in directing atten- tion to the fine monuments of the past in Denmark. The illustrious Worsaäe, who classified the contents of the Museum, threw a flood of light upon the origin of Danish art and civilization, and reduced to a science what had previously been a mere collection of half-fabulous traditions. Thanks to the zeal of inquirers and the scientific methods of the erudite, Denmark may be said to have learned to know herself. She has fathomed the secrets of her own origin, and, as is the case with every nation whose independence is threatened, she has sought for Something outside her political position on which to build up her individual character and her existence as a nation. This knowledge of what she has achieved in the past is to her alike a renewal of her youth and an earnest of her future progress. In the collections of the Prindsens and Rosenborg Palaces the most remote ancestors of the Danes of the present day live again, and their very spirit is revealed to their descendants. Every stage of Danish pre- historic civilization and of history can be traced in chronological order in the Rosenborg Museum from the time of the kitchen-middens, in which are preserved bits of broken pottery and fragments of the food of the men of the Stone Age, to that of the kings of the historic periods, who have left behind them their jewels, their weapons, their robes, their table decorations, etc. There, lying in their oaken coffins, are the warriors of the Bronze Age, the chief still wearing his hairy skin cap, his short petticoat, his woollen mantle fastened on the shoulder with a wooden pin, and his upper 42 658 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD garment of bullock's hide. Never can one forget the first impression made by the sight of these witnesses to the past, recalled from long oblivion, with their household goods, their jewels of gold and amber, their weapons and harness still about them; these various relics exhibiting characteristics now purely local, now common to the Bronze Age, whether among the Celtic and Scandinavian races or the people of the Caucasus. Gradually the influence of the South begins to become apparent, and here and there we find a Roman form side by side with some purely bar- baric ornament. But the basin of the Baltic, far removed as it was from THE ROSEN BORG CASTLE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe the great routes of immigration and the currents of classic civilization, long retained the primitive customs of prehistoric times, and remained a home sacred to the unsophisticated heroes of the North. And now the hour had come when heathen Scandinavia, conqueror of Christian Europe, was to enter on an era of incomparable grandeur. The Vikings, on their return from their warlike expeditions to England, Ireland, COPENHAGEN - 659 and France, brought with them many costly treasures. Valuable objects— such as beautiful weapons, swords with jewelled hilts, weights for testing gold, gilded bronze harness and bridles, etc.—abound in the tombs, and in the more recent are found with these earlier relics coins from Russia and the shores of the Caspian Sea,imported towards the end of the age of heathen domination. - At last, however, Christianity reached even the sons of Odin, and we witness the flight of their idols before the supreme God. But their resist- ance was long and bloody. When the stone churches of Southern Europe were already crowded with worshippers prostrate before the Saviour, pagan traditions were still held sacred in Denmark, and missionaries had to com- pound with them. The only true natural Scandinavian architecture is that in wood, and even the first Christian churches were built of materials from the great native forests. According to Saxo Grammaticus, the Church of Odensee, where St. Knut was assassinated, had ſigneas parietes. It was, says another chronicler, magnum ſigneum templum, plurióus et magni's ſemestris instructum. When, in the twelfth century, the Bishop Otto of Bamberg went to evangelize Denmark, he was struck at finding castles and towns still built of wood; and it is with a very evident touch of native pride that the clerkly historian of the Röskilde Cathedral, who was to become the St. Denis of Denmark, notes that it was rebuilt insign; lapideo taðulata. Henceforth Danish art was to become, so to speak, tributary to that of foreigners, and it followed, at a somewhat later period, the successive stages of development in the rest of Europe. This is how it is that in Copenhagen we find, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, under Christian IV., the Dutch and German Renaissance style tempered by certain Gothic features. - - The history of the classic reaction of last century, and of the im- portant share taken in it by Winckelman, is well known. The theories of the great German critic were early propagated in Copenhagen by his friend and correspondent Wiedevelt, who founded in 1754 the Academy in which they were to be so eagerly adopted. Nicolas Abraham Abildgaard (1744– 1809) was one of the first to put them in practice, and he painted Greek heroes in the taste of the time. I do not know what his fellow-countrymen thought of his work, but to my French eyes it seems to belong to the very worst phase of the school of David, with lifeless figures rigid with the extra cold of the North, in what I may perhaps characterize as a frozen pompier style. But the impulse was given, and though students still • flocked to Paris, it was only to follow the Parisians to Rome, so that when 66o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD the young Thorwaldsen distinguished himself in the competitions at the Copenhagen Academy, it was to Rome he was sent. There he remained, and I must not say any more about his stay there now, as my business is to trace to its origin the truly National School which has lately sprung up in the North. And here I have to touch a very delicate question. The memory of Thorwaldsen and the work he left behind him are doubly sacred to every Dane, and his fellow-countrymen have rendered to him in the museum bearing his name the most reverent homage ever accorded to a great artist. It is impossible not to be struck with admiring respect in walking through this unique collection, where every statue has its cella, every bass-relief its right position in the best possible light; while beneath a single block of granite, in the midst of this select and secluded Campo Santo, full of his own masterpieces, sleeps the great artist himself. Truly it is more than a museum—it is a temple, sacred to the religion alike of art and of patriotism. But having said all this, it still remains a fact that the man who is the object of all this fervid admiration spent his life far from his native country, never drew from it his inspiration, but served THE NEW TOWN.—After a drawing by Gotorbe - - - - - COPENHAGEN 661 foreign gods, even signing his name Alberto Thorwaldsen, like the man in one of Holberg's comedies, who converted the berg (mountain) he inherited from his father into Montanus. No ; Thorwaldsen did not—indeed, he could not—leave behind him a native school; and not from him have Danish artists imbibed any of their special characteristics. The day came when the people of Scandinavia realized that they were on the wrong track when they sought so far afield for the subjects of their work. The “Views of Italy,” “Rapes of the Sabines,” “Temples of Vesta,” and “Destructions of Pompeii” became less and less intelligible to the fellow-countrymen of the two or three generations of Danish artists who painted such scenes as these, and it was realized at last that it was high time to give some attention to the home country, so long considered un- worthy to inspire a genius. And just as, after their passing passion for Romanticism, the worthy Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, cured of their love for ultramontane fashions, set quietly to work to portray scenes in their own country, so did the Danes begin to open their eyes and their hearts to the familiar beauty of well-known horizons—suddenly, so to speak, discovering their native land. One of the first to turn this discovery to practical account was Eckersberg, who died in 1853. Following the example of all his fellow- artists, he made the sacred pilgrimage, worked under David, and brought from Italy views of the Roman Campagna with its ruins, etc., treated in the conventional manner. But he had always been inspired by an honest desire to do good work, and when he had no longer the wish, or perhaps the means, to travel, and was back in his own land, he made up his mind to give his whole attention to the scenes about him, henceforth taking all his subjects from the Sound, with its interesting shipping and seafaring population. Of course I do not mean to say Eckersberg was a great painter; he was neither the William van der Velde nor the Backhuysen of Denmark, but he set an example of the right kind, and he was very soon imitated and surpassed. There is no doubt that the members of the young Scandinavian school of art have all been to study in the Paris studios, and are all, moreover, ready gratefully to acknowledge what they owe to French masters; but, unlike their predecessors, they always meant to return home, and had no idea of being content with merely working up the collections of sketches made abroad. No ; their aim was but to widen their experience by the study of other methods of painting, and they were fully determined to devote all their talent, all their enthusiasm, to their native land. And it is 662 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD just this cordial sincerity, this open-hearted candor, which so fascinates us in their work. The mind is inthralled and the heart is touched by a nameless sense of freshness, youth, and loyalty—a certain moral force, a naïve and tender sympathy, such as is one of the chief elements of the | | | || A FRIENDLY BREAKFAST-PARTY Engraved by Florian, after the picture by Kröyer realism characteristic of Northern races. We feel we are among honest fellows who love to study and to paint the familiar scenes of their native land, not so much with a view to introducing those scenes to us as from sheer delight in getting to know them more intimately themselves. Need we mention any names? There are plenty to choose from—Niels-Petersen Mols, Viggo Pedersen, Theodore Philippsen, Michael Therkildsen, and Brendekilde, Jharvald Kiss, Christian Zacao, Nils-Christian, Skovgaard, Julius Paülsen, Henningsen, Engelstedt, Jerndorff, Middelboe, Hansen, H. Tegner, Michael and Anna Anker, and, above all, Viggo Johansen and Peters S. Kröyer. I know nothing more true, more full of faithful observa- COPENHAGEN 663 tion, or more skilfully executed than the “Interiors” of Johansen; they are instinct with life and with sincerity; the artist is thoroughly en rapport with his subjects; we get a glimpse of the very innermost selves of the people who figure in these noble, virile, yet tender renderings of scenes of familiar every-day life. - - And Kröyer catches with marvellous rapidity the fleeting but most characteristic and self-betraying attitudes and gestures of his fishermen and of the artists who meet in the pleasant little reunions at Skagen, which is to Danes what Barbizon was to French and Newlyn is to English artists. It is no use trying to make any one who has not heard it understand what the triple “Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!” is to the people of Scandinavia; but Kröyer almost makes us hear it in the masterly—may we say the viðrating 3–picture which was exhibited at the Champs de Mars Salon in 1889; while in his “Departure of the Fishing - boats” he called up visibly all the soft religious mystery, all the solemn, tender beauty of night in the North. - - Truly well do Scandinavian artists merit the sympathy and the gratitude of the rest of Europe for having lavished all this love, . all this filial reverence and devotion, on their THORWALDSEN'S STATUE OF native land, and for having dedicated to it MERCURY all the best efforts of their imaginations. To Engraved by Mme. Bazin the old effete schools, given over to a sterile dilettanteism, they are alike a lesson and an example; for, after many and varied experiences, they have returned advisedly to the spontaneous in- stincts of nature, and are worthy of the honor of giving to their much- loved native land a school which may justly be characterized as grand. * % º |W § | W hiſſºl |W. z. \ | *# ...}}} tº #: | | || N "lº'i | º § ) º ºëNº|| \ §e" | |/|| | | º %2% 4% | }\})\ , º: \º . º | d i s ſº º: N Nº Nº Nº sº º N Z/. º | S F. |). sº CHRISTIANIA HOUGH an official capital, Christiania is far from being able to take rank with her Scandinavian sisters, Stockholm and Copenha- gen. It is painful for us to ad- mit this, but we are pretty certain that the inferiority will not be eternal. In any case, the reader will realize a little what Christiania and Nor- way are if he will join me in a rapid survey of the past. The town was founded in the —ºrd fºr ºur THE GAME OF SKI Engraved by Rousseau, after a drawing by A. Paris 668 - THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD Middle Ages, and was originally called Oslo, when, without being ex- actly the chief city of the kingdom, it was several times the residence of the Norwegian monarchs. One king would prefer Oslo, another Ber- gen, which was then the most densely populated town of Norway; yet another would like Drontheim, which was generally considered the very heart of the nation. All the towns of Norway prospered, and for a very long time that country was in the front rank alike in power and in civilization. Before any European country, Norway had a firmly estab- lished hereditary monarchy, and many of her rulers were great men, even heroes. She had a literature, too: the immortal composers of sagas, natives of Iceland, a dependency of Norway, lived at the Court of the Norwegian kings, and sought in the history of their mother-country, so fertile in dramatic incident, the subjects of their poems. There, too, art, developing rapidly, produced grand monuments, such as the fine Cathedral of St. Olaf at Drontheim, in the extreme north of Norway, the grandest of all the Scandinavian churches, which is now being restored under very great difficulties, as it is almost impossible in the heaps of ruins to make out the harmonious lines of the original structure, and tradition is so mea- gre as to aid us but little. Towards the end of the Middle Ages a Danish queen was elected in Sweden to reign over Scandinavia. Sweden soon withdrew her support from the foreigner and sought for native princes to rule over her, but the Norwegians remained faithful to the Danish princess. Norway, powerful when in the hands of the great kings of the past, was helpless alone; she lost the habit of managing her own affairs, and failed utterly in self-govern- ment. The members of the great aristocratic families, once so influential, now became mere courtiers, and with the disappearance of the national monarchy the aristocrats sank to the level of the peasants. Norway became an easy prey to Denmark, which soon conquered the inert mass of her unresisting population, and for two centuries the country ceased to have any individuality at all. The minor towns were involved in the general decadence; they fell into ruins, they were burned and they were pillaged during the war, when the Danes or the Swedes snatched at fragments of Norway. The Norwe- gians themselves, with the indifference of barbarians, destroyed monuments left uninjured by the foreigner, and at Oslo everything beautiful disappeared. About 1500 something of a renaissance set in, but the nation which then awoke to life was altogether a new people, knowing nothing of the past, and the Danish masters adroitly maintained this ignorance, accustom- CHRISTIANIA 669 ing the Norwegians to look to Copenhagen for everything, and to employ all their forces, their resources, their genius for the Danish monarch and State. The Norwegians have forgotten their old literary language, which has been broken up into dialects, and now only lives in the patois of the peasants. Danish began to be spoken in the towns, it became the lan- KARL-JOHANS-GADE.-After a drawing by Gotorbe guage of the Church, of government, and of literature, and it is taught in the schools as if it were the native idiom of the children. Yet, for all that, those children are true Norwegians. - Denmark was never rich enough in population to send to Norway any but officials or soldiers, mere passing visitors, who never took root; on the other hand, Norwegians poured into Denmark, and a great many of the Danish families, especially at Copenhagen, have the blood of ancient Nor- wegians in their veins. 67o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The Norwegians soon recovered their native powers, but they used them all for the benefit of Copenhagen. The Danish-Norwegian theatre, so brilliant in the eighteenth century, owed nearly all its prestige to Nor- wegians, who were obliged to seek for work and fame at Copenhagen. Oslo, which in 1624 became Christiania, so named after its second founder, the remarkable King Christian IV., was called a capital; but this title was not justified by any monuments of importance, or scientific or literary establishments, for the town merely vegetated in the dreary monotony of provincial existence. All talent, all skill, drifted, as a matter of course, to Copenhagen; witness, for instance, the great Holberg, admired not only by Scandinavia, but whose writings profoundly influenced the literature of the neighboring countries: Germany and Russia. The French theatre alone owns classic comedies equal to those left by this great dramatic author; he was the Molière of the North, a supple and versatile genius, author of philosophic essays, a satirical romance, and several books of history. He was, by birth and education alike, a pure Norwegian, of whom Norway may be justly proud. - But the Norwegians could not forever ignore their origin and their ancient history; in the end they became aware that they were only bound to Denmark by artificial ties. In 1814 these ties were broken when the European Powers proposed giving Norway to Sweden, which was alike her hereditary enemy and that of Denmark. Norway saw her opportunity, and proclaimed herself a sovereign State. The treaty made with Sweden a few months afterwards did not destroy the newly recovered independence; for though one king reigns over both countries, when he sets foot in Norway he speaks a different language, he is surrounded by a different Court, he commands a different army, and shares his power with a Parliament of very different strength from that of his Kingdom of Sweden. Christiania, in fact, maintains her dignity as capital, and now that dignity is real, not only apparent. There is but one analogy between the Scandinavian peninsula and that of Italy. Stockholm represents Venice; Bergen, Genoa; Christiania, Florence; and if we include Denmark in the comparison, Copenhagen may be compared to Milan. Christiania, moreover, occupies in the North a central position; she is admirably situated at the north end of a fiord opening upon the sea, at the entrance of a fertile and populated district. What might she not have been had the glorious promise of the Middle Ages had their natural fulfilment in the following centuries P A magnifi- cent city, doubtless; but perhaps Bergen or Drontheim might have dis- CHRISTIANIA 673 puted with her the position of capital. In 1814 Bergen was much larger and more wealthy, while Drontheim had the same number of inhabitants; in fact, Christiania's only advantage over her rivals was that she was a little nearer to Stockholm. Since the time of which we are speaking she has grown rapidly. In spite of the immense number of emigrants to America, the Io,000 inhabit- ants of 1814 have now become I 50,000. Bergen, the second town of the kingdom, has but 50,000, while the capitals of Sweden and Denmark, which are both several centuries older, and enjoy exceptionally favorable condi. tions, have one 250,000 and the other 375,000 inhabitants. And, doubtless, Christiania will continue to increase rapidly. In fact, the whole of Norway is making immense progress in industry, commerce, and navigation. Her children are now less willing to leave her, as they can make a good liveli- hood in their native country. The birth rate is higher and the death rate lower than in any other part of Europe. Buildings of importance did not keep pace with the growth of the pop- ulation, and Christiania has but few of those stone or marble monuments so numerous in most ancient capitals. Norway has been a nation for a short time only, but her natural beauties compensate for artificial ornaments. Though there is nothing overwhelming about the wild grandeur of the fiord, there is a charming beauty and variety, an indefinable freshness about the amphitheatre of beautiful scenery on its shores. The port is a vast harbor, animated yet peaceful; steamboats, merchant-vessels, fishing- smacks, and yachts, with all sails spread, skim about upon its tranquil waters. Norwegians have ever been hardy mariners; their merchant-ves. sels fly the national flag here, there, and everywhere; their fishing-boats venture among the ice of the Arctic Ocean; and it was the Norwegian Nordenskiöld, on the Norwegian bark Vega, who was the first to circum- navigate the north of Asia. Out in the offing a series of islands rise from the waves, too far off ever to become connected with the town, as are those of Venice, but near enough to form a girdle of bright villages, the maritime Šuburb of a marine capital. At the end of the fiord the town is gradually creeping towards the wooded heights surrounding it. - These hills are not very lofty; the highest is scarcely 500 metres above the sea-level. Instead of crushing the town below them, they are something for it to lean against, and seem to invite it to ascend them. Wandering about in the woods and parks clothing the slopes, we come here and there to a break in the trees, whence a beautiful view is obtained 43 674 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of the town, the port, and its islands, with the receding shores of the gulf, while far away in the distance on the north and the west rise grand snow. clad heights, standing out distinctly against the pale sky. With a forethought which does honor to the taste of the authorities, the municipality of Christiania has bought these charming hills, and the most picturesque parts of the woods are becoming dotted with sanatoria, hotels, and large villas, built in the national style, so that before long Chris- tiania will be encircled with a diadem of wooden palaces. The shores of the gulf outside the town are already lined with houses, all, however, sur- rounded by woods and half hidden among trees. The general effect is grand when the sun, as it sets, bathes the whole scene in light, the beauti- ful outlines of the Norwegian villas standing out against the dark masses of verdure. Ten years hence we may expect to see immense progress in this direction, and the view from the fiord will be even finer than it is now. The site of the town, which is in the form of an amphitheatre, lends itself to the finest architectural effects. Nor are materials wanting: mar- ble, granite, felspar, and porphyry abound. All that is wanted is a people imbued with artistic feeling, a love and sense of the beautiful. The gen- eration immediately succeeding the great date of 1814 had everything to learn; money, too, was wanting, as was also faith in the future of the town, which, however, already numbered Io,000 inhabitants. Their successors, it is true, were a little less poor, a little less uncultivated; but they were as wanting in confidence and in enterprise. Progress was not really inaugu- rated until contemporary days; but so great has been the impulse given that the lost time will very soon be made up, and we may hope that our children's children will find themselves owners of a really grand town, full of great models to emulate, perhaps to surpass. The main street of Christiania, the artery uniting the east and west, about which circulates all the intellectual life of the capital, is the Karl- Johans-Gade, so called in honor of the first Bernadotte, which was opened about forty years ago. Here the grandfathers of the present Norwegians hunted game, the avenue starting from the central station and coming out at the Royal Château. It is lined with the most important buildings of the town—the Vor Frelsers Kirke (or Church of our Saviour), the Post and Telegraph Offices, the Storthings-Bygning, or Parliament-house, the Uni. versity, the Museums, the Libraries, the Theatres and Concert-room, and, of course, the chief hotels and restaurants. The libraries are large and wel) furnished. The scientific collections are fairly good; the Museum of Art, with a few fine examples of foreign work, contains part of that national col- CHRISTIANIA - 675 lection of paintings by members of the Norwegian school, the vigorous originality of which is appreciated by the whole art world of Europe. In spite of this, however, there is nothing grand about the Karl-Johans-Gade; but for the fine view it commands on every side it would strike one as | - - | * - | | | | - | | | º f - sº º - | | ºnji Tſiliiliº All ºſſº . |- º - THE PETERSBURG QUARTER.—After a drawing by Gotorbe rather poor; there is something incomplete and unfinished about it, and it is easy to see that it has been built a little too soon—before the town has become an important city or the country prosperous. Such as it is, it is the one large street of Christiania, its Boulevard des Italiens, and it is full of passers-by day and night, hurrying to and fro between the Storthings-Bygning and the Palace, that portion of the avenue skirting the principal square of the town. A grand square it is, too, in which the whole of fashionable Christiania meets in fine weather, giving to it the animation of a regular capital. In the salons, it is true, there is a kind of provincial stiffness and rigidity; but all this is thrown aside in the open air, where everything is fresh, bright, gay, and lively. Foreigners 676 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD accuse the N orwegians of being rather like the Yankees, and perhaps they are not far wrong. * Christiania is one of those towns in which nothing belonging to the past can be retained. The old and new quarters do not represent a regu- lar and continuous development, but abrupt transition from little wooden houses to huge stone buildings. The old and the new can still be easily compared, but it is no great pleasure to do so, for the old part does not represent the picturesque and venerable mediaeval town; it only recalls provincial Christiania of times gone by, with all its ugliness and poverty. The ancient picturesque town, if it ever existed, has completely disap. peared, and it is as much as we can do to find any traces of typical char- acters or local costumes. The most picturesque people in the place are the drovers of the cattle-market, with their short blue blouses and yellow leather pantaloons—true sons of the town: rough and ready, acting on impulse, thorough types of an uncultivated people. We meet them at every turn, they meddle in everything, and are interested in all that goes on. The daily papers are full of accounts of their vagaries, which are not always of the most innocent description; but how ingenious their tricks often are, and how amusing ! They hold at Christiania very much the same position as the lazzaroni of Naples, and the people are beginning to call them lazzaroni, too. -- The amusements of Christiania are those of all cold countries. One special delight is skating on the frozen snow; it may, in fact, be called the national sport of Norway in the cold white months. For the peasants, however, it is no mere sport, but a necessity of existence, whereas in the towns it is a recreation, which every one loves to share in or to watch. The snow-shoes are long, flat, and pointed, made of light, elastic, but solid wood. When wearing these snow-shoes a balancing-stick is necessary, but the most skilful skaters only need a little branch. The rest of the equip- ment is very much the same as for ordinary skating, except that very long stockings and very thick mufflers are worn to break the force of concus- sions, for skating on Snow in Norway is really a mad rush from the top to the bottom of hills, with sudden leaps in the air, where the ground, becoming suddenly vertical, disappears from beneath your feet. It is an intoxicating sensation to speed through the air as quickly as lightning, as lightly as a bird, the lungs inflated with the pure air, the blood rushing through one's veins, making one feel strong, vigorous, supple, and as if one's limbs were elastic. This salutary and delightful exercise, violent as it appears, is not really at all exhausting, and delicately-bred, high-born | | | | | | º | | || | Hº T. THE KARL-JOHANS-GADE IN WINTER Engraved by Dertier, after the picture by Christian Kragh CHRISTIANIA - 679 young ladies can take part in it. Truly, it is a beautiful sight, and thor- oughly Scandinavian—a sort of glimpse into the heroic age of the sagas, to watch a beautiful fair girl in her short gray dress, with bright eyes and glowing cheeks, shoot like an apparition from another world across the whiteness of the untrodden snow. The races on the snow are among the greatest fêtes of the capital, and all the world, headed by the Court, goes to see them. The most cele- brated Norwegian skaters compete; but of late years it has always been the young people of Christiania who have carried off the prizes. This sport is becoming every day more and more of a national institution, and it is not unusual for young nobles to spend a long time up in the mount- ains practising skating. Alpine hotels and inns, which used to close at the beginning of the cold season, are now kept open for some weeks in the depths of winter. Very soon all those who value their reputation in society will go up to greet the New Year at a height of 2000 metres above the sea, flying about all day, as the saga tells us Frithiof and Ingeborg did across the snow-fields, and at night, throwing aside the costume of the skater, dance in full evening toilet in the brilliantly-lighted rooms of the Kursaal. Those who are blessed with vivid imaginations already see the heights dotted with a whole series of winter stations, a sort of white Riviera, for we no longer dread the cold; we have already begun to send those who have anything the matter with their lungs to winter among the snow, where, after a few weeks' training, the most delicate will write their letters with their windows open. Skating on the snow does not prevent the Norwegians from successfully practising ordinary skating on ice, and among the crowds on the Karl-Johans-Gade we are sure to recognize one or two champion Norwegian skaters who have carried off prizes in both hemispheres. - - - The great fête of the year, that of the Constitution, falls on May 17th, at the beginning of the Norwegian spring. It somewhat resembles nation- al fêtes in every other part of the world; but I do not think that anywhere else can be seen anything at all like the procession of children, founded by the Norwegian Victor Hugo, Björstjerne Björnsen, in which all the schools march in order, each child holding in his hand a little national flag. Nothing could be prettier than this procession, a stream of red, white, and blue, which flows along with a murmur of youthful gayety and the music of fresh voices and silvery laughter. For the last few years little girls have been allowed to take part in the fête; they must of course be admit. ted in a country where the proposal to give the suffrage to women was 68o THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD voted for by the imposing minority of 44 out of 140, and that in a Con- servative Parliament. It is worthy of note that it was the peasant who voted in favor of woman suffrage. - As I am enumerating the pleasures of Christiania, this would be the place to speak of the theatre, and of artistic and literary life, but, alas ! there is not much to say of either, and the subject will soon be exhausted. While Norway was united to Denmark, the complete absence of a theatre prevented the former from producing any actors, and, indeed, until 1850, none but Danish troupes acted. At that date, however, Bergen, the native town of Holberg, succeeded in producing a thoroughly Norwegian piece. All the artists who took part in it were from Bergen, even Ole Bull, who is called the Paganini of the North, was the very soul of the enterprise, and, of course, the piece given on the opening night was one of Holberg's comedies. The actors soon won their spurs, and really formed quite a remarkable cast; the capital hastened to attract to herself these the first-born of the dramatic authors of Nor- way; but Bergen soon replaced them with others of equal skill. Things went on very much in the same way for a consid- erable length of time; the provincial towns continued to send men of talent to the capital, which produced no genius of her own. And Bergen is still prosperous, still full of life, the home of men with ideas; and the language spoken there is spirited and vigorous — the language of the theatre; while that of Christiania has remained heavy and dull. About 1850 there is no doubt that many men of talent were arising in Nor- way, but the Government showed no spe- cial recognition of this fact. In the coun- try of Holberg, which is now also that of Ibsen and Björnsen, Parliament never granted, and probably never will grant, a sou towards the maintenance of a theatre. The King, with his modest revenues, cannot do much more than pay for his own box. It is as much as the towns, with their straitlaced, pharisaical Puritanism, can do to rec- ognize their duty to art; and if the Norwegian theatre is worth anything, A NORWEGIAN GIRL Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph CHRISTIANIA - 68I and it really is worth a great deal, it is due to the classic repertory, and to Norwegian artists, many of whom take first rank. . It goes without saying that Christiania has not shown more tender- ness to authors than she has to actors; for a long time she neither cared for nor understood them. They all, of course, represented new ideas, something alike—more Norwegian than Norway, more European than Europe. How could any one hope to please a conservative and clerical town, a stranger to all literary and all art feeling? There was nothing for authors to do but to accept exile and seek a less frigid atmosphere. Christiania, young as she still is, has been fractious and unjust; but her sins are those of youth and ignorance, and, like many untractable children, who afterwards become delightfully intelligent and well-educated men, she will do very well if only she is allowed to develop freely. Among the authors who have emigrated, residing abroad or in the provinces, none are natives of the capital, and, as a rule, it is not the life of Christiania which they describe. During the last ten years there have been signs of change, and Christiania, after having repulsed authors, now begins to produce them; and a few men of great but undeveloped talent are arising, who are, however, somewhat of enfants terribles, for they choose subjects for their works which it is impossible to discuss. All that I have said of authors I may also say of painters, sculptors, and musicians. There are a great number of Norwegian artists, but many live abroad, and it is in the galleries of Germany and Austria that the best paintings of the Norwegian school are to be seen. There is little to say of the art of the two generations previous to our own; but at last, in the present day, there seems likely to be a true native Norwegian school. The illustrious Norwegian musicians, composers, singers, and pianists were most of them born at Christiania, where they have obtained recognition enough to give them a feeling of affection for their native place. If Christiania misses their actual presence, it is for the same reason that Swedish night- ingales sing everywhere except in Sweden. We may add that the two most noteworthy characteristics of the artistic and literary work pro- duced in Christiania itself are supple grace and delicate penetration. The capital, too, exercises an irresistible fascination over the rest of Norway, and it is becoming the tendency of all talent to drift to that capital, even as small streams flow into the main river. Bergen sends her imagi- native lyric poets; Drontheim supplies grandeur of style and humor; the Danes and Swedes, in their turn, bring their special characteristics; and from this strange medley will issue something homogeneous and 682 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD complete, which will be the supreme expression of the Scandinavian genius. º Yes; we may hope, and hope confidently, that Norway will yet regain her old position among the nations. She has now that great need of every country—a capital, without which she would be a body without a head, and her union with Sweden has not taken from her her royal dynasty or her diplomatic corps. There seems to be every hope of the development in Norway of a school of diplomacy purely Norwegian, and there is no doubt that the royal family are becoming attached to Christiania as a residence. M º º | l | | | l : MEXICO T the beginning of the fourteenth cen- tury several hundred Mexis or Aztecs arrived on one of the heights overlooking the valley of Anahuac, or the Country of the Wa- ters, the present valley of Mexico, and gazed down in astonishment at the beautiful pano- rama spread out before them. On the right and left two snow-crowned heights, like white- haired giants, reared their mighty crests heav- enwards, seeming to watch over the valley and to guard the entrance to it. At their feet stretched a carpet of flower-clad plains and woods, while in the distance, girt about by an amphitheatre of mountains, slept vast lakes of gleaming water, looking like silver shields flung down and left forgotten in the herbage. It was in obedience to a mandate from their god Huitzilopochtli that the Aztecs left their native country of Aztlan to seek a marvellous land where a mighty des- tiny awaited them. They started confident in the fulfilment of the divine promise, and wandered about for 200 years, during which they were again and again conquered, decimated, and enslaved by other nations. But set free again, they resumed their pilgrimage, their course marked by the bleaching bones of their dead, until at last one day the survivors, after hav- ing crossed half Mexico from north to south, arrived in sight of the coun- try of Anahuac. Was this at last the promised land? The valley looked as if it were still virgin soil;” and baked as it was by the sunbeams, it FLOWER - SELLER OF MEXICO Engraved by Bazin, after a photograph * It was, however, inhabited by the Chichimecs, who had arrived not long before, and by the last of the Toltecs. 686 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD seemed so beautiful that the Aztecs, prostrating themselves upon the ground, entreated their god to permit them here to arrest their wander- ing steps. It had been foretold by Huitzilopochtli that a sign from heaven would be given when the end of the long journey had come, but the worshippers waited for some time in vain. Sad and dispirited, they were about to resume their wanderings, when one morning they saw a mighty eagle with a serpent in its claws circling round and round above a nopal or cactus tree, on an islet near the western shore of the largest of the lakes. The eagle alighted on the nopal, and poised on it with wings out-spread; it tore the serpent to pieces. The Aztecs gave a cry of joy; it was the sign from heaven for which they had waited so long. • A few years later a mighty city, built on piles and known as Mexico- Tenochtitlan,” had risen from the waters of the lake, while from the sacred rock on which the eagle had alighted uprose a colossal temple, the grand Teo-calli of Huitzilopochtli. Wide causeways connected the town with the shores of the lake, and these causeways being easily cut, Mexico was ren- dered almost impregnable to invasion; an important precaution for the Aztecs, for their immigration had been succeeded by that of other tribes, and there were constant quarrels between the different settlers in the valley. Under its fifth chief, Montezuma - Ilhuicamma, generally known as Montezuma I., the Kingdom of Tenochtitlan, either reduced to subjection or entered into alliance with all the neighboring nations, penetrating beyond the limits of Anahuac, and, everywhere victorious, becoming the Rome of the New World. - In 1471 Montezuma I. died, and was succeeded by Montezuma II., who consolidated the conquests of his predecessor, amended the laws, and brought the United Kingdom to the zenith of its power and glory. Even before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519, however, the subject races were beginning to rebel against the central authority, there had been predictions of coming disorder, celestial portents had troubled the mind of the King, and when the rumor reached him of the sudden appearance on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico of a number of strangers who brought the thunder- bolt with them, and could cleave the waters of the sea on great white- winged birds, he saw in their arrival the fulfilment of a prophecy, and was ready to fall an easy prey to the invaders. * The name Mexico is derived from Meritli, the second name of Huitzilopochtli; and Tenochtitlan, from tenochtle, nopal, and tian, country. MEXICO 687 On landing, Cortes and his troops struck terror into the hearts of the tribes subject to the Aztecs, and adroitly turning to account this terror and the discontent with the heavy yoke of Montezuma's administration, the Spanish general put himself at the head of the insurgents, led them against | --- ºlºl. **** == VIEW FROM THE ZOCALO.-After a drawing by Boudier their oppressors, and with them besieged the Aztec capital, which, though heroically defended by the last of its rulers, was captured after a siege last- ing seventy-five days. The conqueror, Hernan Cortes, soon transformed into slaves the hum- ble native allies with whose aid he had achieved his victory, and by his orders they razed to the ground all that was left of Tenochtitlan, filling in with the rubbish the canals which had made Mexico a kind of Venice. He then had the causeways connecting the ancient city with the shores of the lake widened, and thus joined the site onto the main-land. Modern Mexico soon rose up from the ruins of the old town, and the lake, which had little depth, disappeared altogether, and the only traces of its former presence left now are a few salt patches, like spots of white leprosy on the soil here and there; but a digger soon reaches the water beneath, and this subterranean water is one of the causes of the frequent inundations of the town during the rainy season. 688 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD The traveller from Europe may reach Mexico by way of the United States, or by the port of Vera Cruz.” Whether, however, he arrive from the North with eyes weary of the monotony of the lofty plateaus, grassy plains, and bare deserts bordered by interminable blue mountains, or whether, coming from Vera Cruz,f he has enjoyed the glorious vision of tropical Mexico, he cannot fail to be profoundly impressed, when he enters the valley of Mexico, with the grand beauty of the mountains by which it is shut in, and the lovely landscapes, of which a glimpse is caught between their lofty crests. - Woods of fir and pine clothe the loftier heights, while below them are thickets of cypress, with branches laden with the nests of birds. There are undulating fields of waving green maize, then masses of yellow corn, uncul- tivated tracts clothed with cacti, which here and there frame the clear waters of a lake such as Texoco, Chalco, or Xochimilco; while in the dis- tance, above a circle of hills and mountains, which appear to be prostrate before them, rise the two great extinct volcanoes of Popocatepetl, or the smoking mountain, and Istaccihuatl, or the white woman, covered with per- petual snow. They rise up into the blue sky, pink in the early morning, gleaming white at noon, and red in the evening, when the sun seems to fling them a parting greeting with its crimson rays. - In the wonderfully clear and transparent atmosphere of the lofty uplands of Mexico # everything stands out in bold and startling relief, and the capital itself, set as it is in a beautiful yet quaint landscape, with its tiers of houses and numerous cupolas, presents from a distance a peculiarly grand appearance. It resembles, in fact, a bright little Oriental town, rather than anything in the West to which it belongs. The roads leading to Mexico are straight and broad, but deeply cut, and the traveller sinks in the dust or mud according to the season. Noth- ing indicates the approach to a great town except, perhaps, a series of tramways, on which, as on all the thoroughfares of the city, run every five minutes comfortable little cars drawn by frisky mules. As we advance, * Two railways, the Central and the National, linked together by a branch line known as the International, connect Mexico with the United States. It takes sixty hours to go to Mexico by way of the Central from the frontier station of Paso del Norte, and 120 hours are required to reach Paso from New York. The route by the National is much shorter. t Mexico is connected with Vera Cruz by a railway which is a marvel of engineering enter- prise. The distance traversed is some 250 miles, and the time occupied eleven hours. f Mexico is in N. latitude 19° 20' and W. longitude 99° 5'. It is about 7000 feet above the level of the sea; the mean temperature is 16° Centigrade; and it contains some 400,000 inhabitants. - MEXICO - 691 however, one street succeeds another, cutting the main artery at right angles. Large houses standing in their own grounds become numerous, and rows of modest little shops are passed. We have now reached the quarter known as San Cosmo, which is the healthiest part of the town. On the right we have the pretty little cottage sanatorium of the French colony, the French Legation, the station for Vera Cruz, and the terminus of the Central Railway. Beyond the massive buildings of the Lunatic Asylum is the Church of San Hipolito, one of the oldest in Mexico, with a dome of porcelain mosaic, and passing it we come to the Alameda, which is the Parc Monceau of the capital. Seated beneath its beautiful trees, between four and six in the afternoon, we can see the whole fashionable world of Mexico pass in their carriages down the so-called Avenida Juarez. Leaving on the left the now abandoned Paseo de Bucareli, a dusty little sahara leading to the French cemetery, we come to the head of the main paseo, known as the Paseo de la Reforma, a noble drive extending some three miles from the Alameda to Chapultepec, and wide enough for five or six carriages to drive abreast. There, where this paseo and other thoroughfares abut, is the fine statue of Carlos IV. of Spain, the work of the Spanish sculptor Tolsa, but cast in Mexico. A little farther off is a monument to Christopher Colum- bus, one of the very rare memorials of the great explorer in the country he discovered, and between it and the Park of Chapultepec is a beauti- ful statue of Cuatimotzin II., or Montezuma, the last of the Aztec kings, the defender of Tenochtitlan against the Spaniards. The hero is repre- sented standing, clothed in martial garb, and with a javelin in his up- lifted hand. The statue is placed on a pyramidal pedestal of extraordi- nary design, adorned with Greek bass-reliefs and scenes copied from the ruins of old historical Mexican buildings. The general effect, in spite of this quaint juxtaposition of subjects, is, however, alike imposing and original. | . . . Carriages coming from the Park of Chapultepec drive round this mon- ument on their way to the Alameda, returning by the same route, and when the whole Mexican world has slowly made the tour of the Champs-Élysées some five or six times, and pedestrians, riders on horseback, and drivers have stared at each other enough,” they return to the town by way of the * In her Face to Face with the Merzcans, p. 165, Mrs. F. C. Gooch says, apropos of this drive: “Carriages are usually driven in line, while the gayly-equipped caballeros curvet in the opposite direction.”—TRANS. - - - - - 692 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD streets known as San Francisco and Plateros, which, with that of Cinco de Mayo, are the finest in the capital. Many Mexican gentlemen still resist English and French fashions, wearing their own picturesque national costumes, and are seen in park and paseo in almost close-fitting jackets, waistcoats, and pantaloons of leather or black cloth, set off with buttons and silver or steel chains, a wide felt-hat embroidered with silver, a loose scarf, and spurs with large rowels complet- ing their get-up. The Mexican saddle resembles that used by the Arabs; it is covered with leather embroidered with silver thread, and adorned with numerous THE FORTRESS OF CHAPULTEPEC After a drawing by Boudier little plaques of the same metal. The large flat pommel serves a double purpose, as round it is twisted one end of the lasso when the other has sped forth to check in mid-career some mad bull or wild horse of the prairie. The seat of the saddle is deep and comfortable, sloping up a little at the back; the stirrups, which are of wood garnished with leather, cover the whole foot, and serve to protect it from rain and briers, while from the saddle-bow hangs a sabre with blade of tempered Toledo steel. ~ MEXICO 693 \ Mexican señoras and caballeros have a mode of salutation peculiar to themselves. The English bow and shake of the hand is not enough for them. But when quite at a distance from each other, they make a pretty motion of the hand,” by shaking the fingers of the left hand. Gentlemen at the same time take off their hats with the right hand. This shaking of the fingers is very effective, and shows off to advantage the pretty hand of a. WOIIla.I]. It is six o'clock, and carriages are turning back with horses at full trot for the town; but here is one simple enough in appearance, yet drawn by superb horses, going in the opposite direction, towards the country. As it passes we salute its occupant, the President of the Republic, General Por- firio Diaz, who with his family resides during the fine season in the Cha- pultepec Palace, where is also the Military Academy.f Suddenly the whole scene is suffused with a rosy light—twilight has fallen in the valley; for one brief moment the paling light struggles against the darkness, and then night has come; the shops begin to close their shut. ters, gas and electric lights gleam yellow and blue through the gloom. In Mexico—except when there is a play at the theatre, and there is seldom one worth taking the trouble to see—every one goes to bed at nightfall. At nine o'clock all noises cease, and the streets are all but deserted. The only life is at the cafés, where billiards are played; at the National Theatre, which is a handsome structure; and at the principal thea- tre, which is a very ugly building. In the pretty central square known as the Zocalo, however, an excellent military band plays for the benefit of a few belated promenaders. ~ * By day the town of Mexico presents a very unique appearance, for from whatever point of view chosen the avenues are shut in by the ser. rated mountains surrounding the whole valley. The straight wide streets running in parallel lines from north to south and from east to west make it look modern enough, but for all that the * Mrs. F. C. Gooch, in Face to Face with the Mexicans, p. 210 (S. Low & Co.), thus describes this salutation: “One of the prettiest and most cunning of the hand motions is called Besospolado, throwing kisses by gathering the fingers of the right hand in a close group, touching the lips, then throwing them out fan-like, at the same time blowing on the hand as it is out-stretched towards the object for whom the demonstration is intended, thus indicating that five kisses are given at once.” + On the hill of Chapultepec is a fine monument to the memory of the young scholars of from fourteen to eighteen years of age who “died like heroes in the North American, invasion, September 13, 1847,” and not far from it is a second monument to the Americans who fell in the same sanguinary conflict.—TRANS, 694 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD old whitewashed houses, the only architectural beauties of which are the numerous windows with projecting balconies, give the whole place a super- - annuated appearance. These houses are always built in four blocks, with one or two patios or Jº spacious courtyards. On two sides of this patio º there is generally a narrow veranda, or some pro- º jecting masonry, which serves as a protection from the rain, and enables the occupant to reach 㺠dry-shod the wide staircase with high stone steps #|_B : 1: leading to the upper rooms. These rooms, which are mostly paved with tiles” in- stead of planks, open onto a gal- lery running round the court, with a balustrade at a convenient height for leaning against, which balustrade is decked with numer- ous pots of flowers and shrubs. - tº The first story alone is used to ===º live in, the ground-floor being * Occupied by shops, magazines, or stables. The better houses are built of freestone, while the poorer tenements consist of a material known as amygdaloid, which is a variety of porous trap or basaltic - rock of a reddish color, the blocks STATUE OF CUATIMOTZIN.—After a drawing by Boudier being bound together with cement or sand. Some buildings have walls of great thickness—three feet or more. The foundations of most of the houses being laid in water, or in marshy flats, they have no cellars, and are really great cubes of masonry kept in place by their own weight.f From the first thing in the morning the streets are full of traffic; º ~ º' ...; ; ºr sº - ºr º sº '... . . . . * Mrs. Gooch gives an interesting account of the making of a floor in Mexico, in which She says mortar, fine gravel, and a red earthy deposit known as tipichal or almagra, are used, the final glaze-like polish being obtained by weeks of rubbing.—TRANS. # In her Face to Face with the Mexicans, p. 104, Mrs. Gooch says: “I have often seen a loaded wagon, carriage, or cart perceptibly shake a two-story house.” MEXICO 695 richly-dressed horsemen, hired carriages, noisy carts, with unoiled wheels, drawn by four, six, or eight mules, troops of donkeys and mules loaded with all manner of packages, jostle each other in the roadway.” Water-carriers, or aguadors, completely clad in leather, and wearing a kind of jockey-cap also of leather, besiege the public fountains, carrying two huge amphorae, kept in place by straps which cross on the head over a palm-leaf cap with leather visor.f - Indian men and women pass to and fro screaming out in ear-splitting tones the names of what they have to sell: fruits, vegetables, chickens, etc., carrying everything on their backs in wicker-work baskets, fastened onto their shoulders like soldiers’ knapsacks, but supported by a leather thong passed across the forehead beneath the broad-brimmed straw sombreros, or worn just under the arms across the chest. - Street boys follow the passers-by, breathlessly shouting out the names of the daily papers, and the numbers of the last tickets of the Lotteria Macional, or National Lottery. You pause an instant, you give a silver coin . . . horror of horrors, you have been noticed, and you are immediately surrounded by some twenty beggars of all ages, followed by dozens of mangy yellow dogs, which appear from every side, and in piteous tones you are implored, “For the sake of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, señor, do give a dole—a little dole 2 Oh, dear little friend (amito), God and your sweet- heart will reward you!” - The little dole received, the street arabs disperse, and if you follow them you will see them go to a pulqueria, and invest in some pulque, which they will drink to the health of Vuestra Señora. This pulque, which is the juice of a Mexican agave, or aloe, is a very alcoholic white beverage, with a strong smell, and a taste disagreeable enough to European palates. It is, however, not at all bad, when served as it is on Mexican tables as a relish to turkey, with pimento sauce (el mole), a plate of frijoles, which are black or red haricot beans, half-a-dozen esaladas, or salads, of which the Mexicans prepare a great variety of different delightful and pungent flavors, flanked by a pile of hot tortillas, or of tamalitos, which are both fried preparations * The donkeys and mules, known as burros, are very typical features of street life in Mexico, fifty often passing at a time one behind another, laden with every conceivable variety Of goods, from sheaves of green corn to pots, kettles, chairs, or even bedsteads. If the first of the fifty strikes and stops to lie down, all the others follow his example; but, as a rule, they plod steadily and silently on with wonderful patience and resignation.—TRANS. f For full description of the aguador, his dress, etc., see Face to Face with the Mericans, pp. 432-434. 696 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of corn-meal, or rather of macerated corn, in the making of which great skill is required.* r - The pulquerias, or pulque shops of Mexico, decorated with extraordi- nary signs outside, and with marvellous pictures adorning the walls inside, are well worth a visit. Against the wall, behind a massive counter facing the street, are ranged rows of open barrels containing the pulque, and paint- ed green, white, and red, which are the national colors. The pulquero, or seller of pulque, dips out the liquid in a wooden measure or horn, and thence pours it into tall, thin colored glasses. The pulqueria is the gen- eral rendezvous of the workmen and lower classes of Mexico, who drink their pulque standing, toasting each other in grand speeches. The poor- est vagrant has his high-sounding phrases; but, alas ! they get tipsy, they begin to quarrel, they draw knives on each other, and a general mêlée ensues.... Some one calls for the police, and a policeman arrives, his baton in his hand, his revolver at his side, and without much difficulty—for the /peros, or lazzaroni of Mexico, are generally very well-behaved—he takes the culprits to the police-station. - - - The central police-station, known as La Disputacion, was, until quite recently, in the lower part of the Town-hall, but has lately been transferred to the Belem prison. A dreary place is the Town-hall of Mexico, for, like the Palacio Nacional, it is just a great barrack, pierced with numerous win. - dows, and containing many sparsely furnished rooms and passages. There is no architectural beauty about either of them—only a series of straight lines of majestic ugliness. Equally uninteresting are the Law-courts behind the Seminary, not far from the Cathedral. But the arcades beneath the façade of the Town-hall and in the two adjoining streets are not otherwise than picturesque, and form covered galleries in which meet all the itinerant venders of the capital who, in league as they are with the pickpockets, are a perfect nuisance to the respectable classes. - - The principal square, with its shady garden provided with seats, its fountains, and its flower-market, is known as the Zocalo. It is some 600 feet square, and is framed by the Town-hall, the Cathedral, the Palacio Nacional, the Portal de Mercaderos, and the Calle del Empedradillo. The Cathedral, which is in the Spanish taste of the seventeenth century, is heavy and massive rather than majestic. It is of the form of a Latin cross, the intersection marked by a cupola upheld by four pillars. The façade, * See Face to Face with the Mexicans, pp. 71 and 73. MEXICO -* - 697 with its two towers of unequal height, is not unpleasing, in spite of its mixture of styles. - . . . . . . . . - The interior, though its general appearance remains cold, is richly dec. orated, the walls and columns toned down and beautified by the incrusta- tions of time; but, alas ! they have lately been coated over with horrible white paint. The altars of carved wood are loaded with gilding and little statuettes of various col- - - - ors, while the massive sil- º ver railings and lamps, which were so much ad- mired in the time of the supremacy of the Church in Mexico, have disap- peared. There remain, however, a few good paint- ings, mostly modern. On one side of the Cathedral is the Sagrario, of later date, sacred to parochial functions, which has a cu- riously sculptured façade. There are, besides the Cathedral, several fine churches in Mexico, of which the best are per- haps those of Santo Do- mingo, La Profesa, La Santissima, and Loreto. Thanks to the clear- ness of the atmosphere and the limpidity of the air, the moonlight nights of Mexico are very beau- tiful, and in them the Cathedral, as seen from the Zocalo, presents a fairy- like appearance, resembling a building of silver lace-work lit up by blue Bengal-lights. Behind the Palacio Nacional are the Post-office, the Museum, the Academy, and the Conservatory. In the last-named instruction is given in French, as in all the best schools of the country. In good society every A SELLER OF ICED DRINKS AND A CARGADOR OR PORTER After a drawing by Vogel º 698 THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD one speaks and understands French; Dumas, Maupassant, Feuillet, and other French authors, are read and appreciated as thoroughly as if they had been written in the language of Cervantes, and Parisian fashions are becoming de rigueur. Moreover, most of the commerce of Mexico is in the hands of Frenchmen, who own the best shops in the best quarters alike of the capital and the other towns of the country.* • * On the way back to the Zocalo we cross the Central Market, where we find a great crowd of people and plenty of mud, and where we hear a confusion of cries. There are eggs piled up in crates, mountains of pats of butter, each rolled up in three leaves of maize to keep it cool, pyramids of Toluca cheeses flanked by all manner of groceries or fiendas, and great joints of bleeding meat exposed for sale by dirty butchers, who have no idea of setting out their goods to advantage; here, too, are pork-butchers with strings of red sausages garnished with pimentos, salted hams, and piles of meat dried in the sun, and known as tasajo, while among the crowd cir- culate the fortilleras, or venders of tortillas, who have just bought their stock of little cakes of macerated maize in the open-air kitchens kept by the padromas.f - - Arranged on rush mats on the ground, under booths made of other rushes hung on three sticks stuck in the ground, and kept in place by a fourth in the middle like the handle of a parasol, are piles of vegetables and fruits, such as radishes, cabbages, pimentos, oranges and lemons, zapotillas: of all manner of colors, ananas or custard-apples, huge bunches of bananas, watermelons, sweet-potatoes, mixed together in picturesque confusion, the many tints harmonizing happily, while the air is filled with their strong tropical aroma, tempering the atmosphere laden with the smell of tainted meat, the fumes of cooking, etc. - - Buyers and sellers, porters, house-keepers, and beggars jostle and ges- ticulate at each other. Let us make haste to get out of the hubbub. § * We hear nothing of this supremacy of the French in Mrs. Gooch's exhaustive survey of the Mexicans, but she tells us how much Americans and their ways are everywhere appreci- ated.—TRANs. - - - - + Mrs. Gooch, in the book so often referred to, tells us that the padrona is quite a person- age in Mexico, ruling with a rod of iron the tortilleras who grind the corn and make the cakes. The women who sell them in the markets, as well as those who work in the kitchens, have their own rules and regulations for conducting the business, which are never infringed.—TRANS. † The fruit of the sweet sapota-tree, or 2apotey mamey.—TRANS. - § Another quaint feature of a Mexican market is that the homeless poor take their meals squatting all round its border, and a minor detail worth noting is that everything is sold retail, and it is almost impossible to buy things by the dozen or the pound; three or four lumps of sugar, a few pinches of pepper, and so on, must be bought separately to make up the total required.—TRANS. MEXICO 699 A couple of steps, and here we are in the Monterilla, where all the latest novelties are sold; another few paces and we reach the Plateros, where live the chief jewellers of Mexico. But it is now mid-day, and all the world is rushing to the canteens and bars to secure a gin cocktail or an iced sherry-cobbler. Let us go into the Casa Plaisant, where we shall find nearly all the men of mark in Mexico–senators, deputies, journalists and other writers, officers, and merchants—standing shoulder to shoulder, drinking together and clinking their glasses; while outside, leaning against the windows of the shops, young Mexico ogles the pretty women passing on their way home from mass, and the dainty demoiselles who are tripping along to get their luncheon, and to whom the beaux fling many a silly compliment A VILLAGE IN THE WALLEY OF MEXICO.-After a drawing by Boudier as they go by; while carriages drive along the road in which sit brightly- clad dames of note, chiefly of Spanish birth, who bow here and there to the acquaintances they see in the crowd, and all the time beggars, sellers 7oo THE CAPITALS OF THE WORLD of fruit, peddlers of all kinds, and, above all, hawkers of lottery-tickets, bawl at the top of their voices, trying to out-shout each other. It is the thing to pass Sunday afternoon in Mexico on the Plaza de Toros, but what is one to do on week-days? ... We can go to the Public Library, which is well worth a visit, and owns 160,000 volumes, or to the Medical Institute, the School of Jurisprudence, and the Mineria Palace—a - - beautiful building, which is unfortunately sinking gradually into the yielding soil on which it is built; in fact, one may make a regular tour of the principal paseo, and after dinner cheat time, as the Mexicans express it, by losing a few pias- tres at roulette. Mexico rejoices in a very fine climate; it is neither too hot nor too cold—like a perpetual June, except on the few rare occasions when a gale of wind sweeps down from the north, and the sudden lowering of the temperature is felt the more through the fact that the houses have no chimneys, the use of stoves being quite un- known in this all but uninterrupted spring. The wet season lasts three months, and it then rains every day almost at the same time, but never for more than three or six hours at a THE GODDESS OF DEATH stretch. Before and after the storm the sun In the Museum of Mexico, after a draw. Shines brightly, and the sky is clear and blue. ing by Malteste If, however, by any chance there is more rain than usual, and the wet season is prolonged, the capital becomes nearly uninhabitable, and resembles the Aztec Venice destroyed by Cortes. The levels of the lakes in the valley rise, the low- lying districts are flooded, and the town once more looks as if it were in a lagoon, so entirely is it surrounded by ditches, or acequias, full to overflowing of water. w The streets are converted into rivers of mud, through which splash commissionnaires, their trousers rolled up to their thighs, carrying on their backs the unfortunate people who are obliged to go and attend to their business, while melancholy horsemen pass hidden beneath their huge white mackintosh cloaks, and coachmen with loud cries urge on the horses of their vehicles—I very nearly said, of their gondolas ! When seen from the neighboring heights, the flooded valley looks MEXICO - 7o I very lovely; the woods of schinus * are clothed with pink clusters; the meadows are carpeted with many-colored flowers, the lakes have a greenish lustre, and the reflections of the purple irises on their banks assume a blood-red hue, while on the plains the pools of water resemble little steel looking-glasses framed in green plush. When the sun is setting, everything is blended into a soft, tender, flesh-colored tint. . . . The sky, intensely blue at the zenith, is suffused with warm tones in the west, coral, yellow, orange melting into each other; the mountains glow like reefs of amethysts in a sea of molten copper. . . . The glory deepens. and spreads till the whole heaven is one throbbing blaze of beauty. All is crimson—a crimson that dazzles the eyes; the sun seems to palpitate in agony in a sea of blood, and then suddenly, quite suddenly, he is gone. One moment the twilight is hovering about us like a bird resting on quiv- ering wings; the next it is gone, and darkness has fallen. The night has come, and quickly spreads her sombre star-strewn velvet mantle over the whole of the sleeping sky. * The schinus belongs to the natural order of Anacardiaceae, native to South America, the leaves of which are filled with resinous fluid, which fills the air with a delicate aroma after rain.-TRANS. º