A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two | Page 6

with farmers,
who, like our own, assemble to make the best bargain. Yet let me
observe that, owing to the height of the neighbouring houses, this
building loses almost the whole of its appropriate effect.
Nor should the EXCHANGE, in the _Rue des Filles St. Thomas_, be
dismissed without slight notice and commendation. It is equally simple,
magnificent, and striking: composed of a single row, or peristyle, of
Corinthian pillars, flanking a square of no mean dimensions, and
presenting fourteen pillars in its principal front. At this present moment,
it is not quite finished; but when completed, it promises to be among
the most splendid and the most perfect specimens of public architecture
in Paris.[5] Beautiful as many may think our Exchange, in my humble
opinion it has no pretensions to compete with that at Paris. The HÔTEL
DE VILLE, near the _Place de Grève_, is rather in the character of the
more ancient buildings in France: it is exceedingly picturesque, and
presents a noble façade. Being situated amidst the older streets of Paris,
nothing can harmonise better with the surrounding objects. Compared
with the metropolis, on its present extended scale, it is hardly of
sufficient importance for the consequence usually attached to this kind
of building; but you must remember that the greater part of it was built
in the sixteenth century, when the capital had scarcely attained half its
present size. The _Place de Grève_ during the Revolution, was the spot
in which the guillotine performed almost all its butcheries. I walked
over it with a hurrying step: fancying the earth to be yet moist with the
blood of so many immolated victims. Of other HÔTELS, I shall
mention only those of DE SENS and DE SOUBISE. The entrance into
the former yet exhibits a most picturesque specimen of the architecture
of the early part of the XVIth century. Its interior is devoted to every

thing ... which it ought not to be. The Hôtel de Soubise is still a
consequential building. It was sufficiently notorious during the reigns
of Charles V. and VI.: and it owes its present form to the enterprising
spirit of Cardinal Rohan, who purchased it of the Guise family towards
the end of the XVIIth century. There is now, neither pomp nor
splendour, nor revelry, within this vast building. All its aristocratic
magnificence is fled; but the antiquary and the man of curious research
console themselves on its possessing treasures of a more substantial
and covetable kind. You are to know that it contains the Archives of
State and the Royal Printing Office.
Paris has doubtless good reason to be proud of her public buildings; for
they are numerous, splendid, and commodious; and have the
extraordinary advantage over our own of not being tinted with soot and
smoke. Indeed, when one thinks of the sure invasion of every new
stone or brick building in London, by these enemies of external beauty,
one is almost sick at heart during the work of erection. The lower tier of
windows and columns round St. Paul's have been covered with the dirt
and smoke of upwards of a century: and the fillagree-like
embellishments which distinguish the recent restorations of Henry the
VIIth's chapel, in Westminster Abbey, are already beginning to lose
their delicacy of appearance from a similar cause. But I check myself. I
am at Paris--and not in the metropolis of our own country.
A word now for STREET SCENERY. Paris is perhaps here unrivalled:
still I speak under correction--having never seen Edinburgh. But,
although portions of that northern capital, from its undulating or hilly
site, must necessarily present more picturesque appearances, yet, upon
the whole, from the superior size of Paris, there must be more
numerous examples of the kind of scenery of which I am speaking. The
specimens are endless. I select only a few--the more familiar to me. In
turning to the left, from the Boulevard Montmartre or _Poissonière_,
and going towards the _Rue St. Marc_, or _Rue des Filles St. Thomas_
(as I have been in the habit of doing, almost every morning, for the last
ten days--in my way to the Royal Library) you leave the Rue
Montmartre obliquely to the left. The houses here seem to run up to the
sky; and appear to have been constructed with the same ease and

facility as children build houses of cards. In every direction about this
spot, the houses, built of stone, as they generally are, assume the most
imposing and picturesque forms; and if a Canaletti resided here, who
would condescend to paint without water and wherries, some really
magnificent specimens of this species of composition might be
executed--equally to the credit of the artist and the place.
If you want old fashioned houses, you must lounge in the long and
parallel streets