Over the Ocean; or, Sights and Scenes in Foreign Lands by Curtis Guild

Author:Curtis Guild [Guild, Curtis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781511494052
Google: LUYyAQAAIAAJ
Publisher: Lee and Shepard
Published: 1871-01-15T16:05:28+00:00

One can easily imagine that Louis XIV. nearly bankrupted the French nation in his magnificent expenditures on the palace and parks of Versailles, everything about them is upon such a prodigal and princely style. The vast halls of paintings, magnificent chapels, theatres, great gardens, statuary, hot-houses, parks, fountains, and artificial basins, the water to supply which was brought about four miles, the little park of twelve miles in extent, and great park of forty. When the visitor looks about him, he is amazed at the prodigal display of wealth on every side. He ceases to wonder that over two hundred millions of dollars have been expended upon this great permanent French exposition and historical museum of the French nation.

Passing through the town, we entered the Place d'Armes, approaching the palace. This is a great open space eight hundred feet broad, from which we enter the grand court, or Cour d'Honneur, a space about four hundred feet wide, leading up to the palace buildings, which are various, irregular, and splendid piles, ornamented with pavilions, plain, or decorated with Corinthian columns, and statues. In the centre of the upper part of this great court stands a colossal equestrian statue of Louis XIV., and upon either side, as the visitor walks up, he observes fine marble statues of distinguished Frenchmen, such as Colbert, Jourdan, Masséna, Conde, Richelieu, Bayard, &c. Entering the palace, which appears from this court a confused mass of buildings, one is overwhelmed with its vastness and magnificence. Some idea of the former may be obtained by passing through, and taking a survey of the western, or garden front, which is one continuous pile of building a quarter of a mile in extent, elegantly adorned with richly-cut columns, statues, and porticos, and, when viewed from the park, with the broad, very broad flights of marble steps leading to it, adorned with vases, countless statues, ornamental balustrades, &c., strikingly reminding one of the pictorial representations he has seen of Solomon's Temple, or perhaps more strikingly realizing what he may have pictured in his imagination to have been the real appearance of that wonderful edifice.

The collection of pictures and statuary in the Historical Museum is so overwhelming, and the series of rooms apparently so interminable, that a single visit is inadequate to do more than give the visitor a sort of confused general idea of the whole. Guides, if desired, were furnished, who, at a charge of a franc an hour, will accompany a small party of visitors, and greatly facilitate their progress in making the best use of time, and in seeking out the most celebrated objects of interest. Attendants in livery were stationed at different points through the buildings, to direct visitors and indicate the route.

Here, in the great Historical Museum, are eleven spacious rooms, elegantly decorated, and containing pictures on historical subjects from the time of King Clovis to Louis XVI. Here is Charlemagne dictating his Code of Laws, Henry IV. entering Paris, the Siege of Lille, Coronation of Louis XIV.

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