Royal Palaces and Parks of France

of chronologies; the sidelights and the co-related incidents, though indeed many of them may be but hearsay, are quite as interesting, quite as necessary, in fact, for the prop

plained, and a very seamy block of marble may be chiselled into a very a

nviting, is perhaps more interesting than one laid out on conventional lines. A shadowy something, which for a better name may be called sentiment, if given ful

nown names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no more than the best glimpses o

and leave them less hurriedly. As for those architectural monuments of kings, which were tuned in a minor key, they, at all events, need to be hunted down on the spot, the enthusiast being forearmed wi

sance. This applies as well to palaces as to churches. In all cases one goes back into the past to make a start, and o

ying out of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and embellishment of a public edifice-at least with due regard for the best traditions. When the monarchs of old c

mpire drawing and dining-rooms are everywhere advertised as the attractions of the great palace hotels, and some of them are very good copies of their predecessors, though one cannot help but feel that the clientele as a whole is more insistent on telephones in the bedrooms and auto-taxis always on tap than with

m being a mere dull chronology of dates and résumé of facts by its obligatory references to the architects

s apart from, and far ahead of, most of the contemporary work of its kind in other lands. Castles and keeps were of one sort in England and Scotland, of still another along

lden time with the arts of the architect, the landscape gardener and the painter; it is so

ar as their conscience or conditions dictated; but they loved, too, the open country and the open road at home; they loved also la chasse, as they did tournaments, fêtes-champêtres and outdoor spectacles of all kinds. Add these stage settings to the splendid costumi

f tame foxes (a sport which has been imported from across the channel), "sport" means a prize fight, and a garden party or a fête-cham

like the two famous meetings by the Bidassoa, Napoleon's first sight of Marie Louise on the highroad leading o

so appealing to those who might otherwise let it rema

s of state were often promulgated and consummated en voyage that a royal stamp came to be acquired b

e nobility where royalties were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One cannot attempt to c

force come to be temporary abiding places of royalties en tour to-day. The writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring table at a roadside trattoria in Piedmont which would have no class distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-h

ave contributed much to the records of the life of medi?val France. All history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal of it was born of the gentler passions, and a chap-book mak

r, made of literature-at least the written and spoken chronicle of some sort-a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or official patronage given these medi?

or ladies, was their chief return in many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by me

as usually so much truth about their work that the very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France, as in England, were their golden days.

ing in France. No one here penned bitter jibes and lascivious verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England. In short,

each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambi

under which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful repetition of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for

ces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occas

this magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of cons

a visit made to the Hotel de Beauvais in 16

notre augu

rmante so

Madame de

son amia

erveilles

retés sur

hair and the coach have given way to the automobile and the engi

large

stion as to this; but it is by contrast tha

first and second races) to the modern installations of the Louvre is a matter of twelve centuries. The record is by no means a consecutive one, but a rec

ed them to keep up to the traditions of the art-loving Francis I, but almost all of the

autifier of Paris since Philippe Auguste. Privately his taste in art and architecture was rath

o way neglected the embellishments of the capital, and added a new wing to the Louvre, and filled Musées wi

ing that he was, had the perspicacity to give the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not d