MR. HARE'S "PARIS," AND "DAYS NEAR PARIS."* A very modest

preface to a book of great merit is apt to render the reader doubly anxious to do full justice to such a work. It is when people have best realised how difficult is the task they have undertaken that they are least satisfied with the result of their efforts ; and when they consider that what they have accomplished is inadequate, that they have achieved more than their predecessors. Anything more complete than Mr. Hare's knowledge and information concerning the places he describes, or better selected and executed than the numerous illustrations he gives us, we can scarcely imagine. It is not so much of the author's personal style that we have to speak, as of the manner in which he has chosen extracts and quota- tions from different works, describing the various places of interest in Paris. And of this there can be little but praise. Mere guide-book information is the kind of reading that can only be tolerated while one is visiting the places it refers to. Mr. Hare's Paris, although fulfilling all the requirements of a guide-book, is so rich in varied and telling episodes of great intrinsic interest, that it may be read with considerable pleasure apart from the particular end it has in view,—namely, to familiarise the visitor to Paris with the historical and picturesque interest which it possesses in such a remarkable degree.

In the opening chapter of his work, Mr. Hare observes that

• Paris ; sad, Days Naar Path. By Augustus J. O. Hare. London: Smith, Rider, and 0o.

Englishmen who visit Paris generally describe it as "a charming modern city, from which the picturesqueness of an historic past

has been utterly obliterated." To any one at all acquainted with the vast historic interest of Paris, this view, formulated by persons for whom the French capital consists of the Champs Elys6es, central Boulevards, and the streets in their immediate neighbourhood, is peculiarly irritating. But such a remark as the following, from so well-informed and competent an authority as Mr. Hare, fairly astonishes us :—" Absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure—setting the fashions of ladies' dress to the universe —Paris has probably had less influence upon literature or art than any of the other great capitals." No one would deny that the French are fond of pleasure, and that they have the peculiar faculty of carrying it to an extreme degree. For this very reason they probably gauge its resources, and arrive at the conviction of its vanity sooner than other people, and it is perhaps foreigners who mostly profit by the pleasures of Parisian life. But who can be ignorant of the almost universal influence exercised by Paris on modern art ? This influence, which is apparent in almost every art exhibition opened in the present day, has become a universally recognised fact, and. people have ceased to wonder at the number of different nationalities which may be found congregated in any repre- sentative Paris studio. It is not the moment to discuss whether the influence of French literature of the present age is of the best kind ; but that it exists is undeniable, and we believe that the realistic school originated in France is, and will be, more worthily represented in England than by such works as those of Mr. George Moore.

Without deploring the fact, Mr. Hare remarks that the spirit of religion seems to have died in France. The laicisation of the Paris hospitals is one of the countless evidences of the truth of this assertion. The Hotel Dieu and the Hopital St. Louis are now the only institutions of the kind where religious nurses are allowed to tend the sick, and that they will be suffered to continue. their disinterested services many months longer, is more than doubtful. The Conseil Municipal of Paris, composed for the most part of men who have obtained the votes of the populace by loud professions of democratic principles, and still louder abase of those occupying a higher stand than themselves,. are actively sweeping away all emblems or symbols of religions feeling, believing—according to their lights—that nothing can continue to exist where there is no material evidence of it. The following enlightened remark, made by one of their body in an address on the centenary of General Hoche, delivered last year at Versailles, is worth recording, as admirably illustrating the spirit by which they are animated :—" Antrefois on croyait l'existence de Dieu ;. maintenant qu'on sail que Dieu n'existe pas," Sco. It is not,. therefore, surprising that those who continue to believe in a Divine Being in spite of the teachings of their superiors, should be among the first victims of the carious form of progress in. France, which consists in suppressing every tendency towards reverence for something that human wisdom or calculation cannot. explain. But atheistic bigotry is no less relentless than religious bigotry, and at an earlier period of civilisation its forms of perse- cution might have been no less terrible. But although this anti-religious crusade cannot fail to produce certain disastrous. results, these can be but transitory. Religion is not a fashion, nor yet a custom that may be forbidden, and so disappear ; and efforts to treat it as such, proceeding from minds incapable of realising by what subtle power it takes a hold on the human soul, will no more destroy religion than the ass which was accused of drinking up the moon, and which Carlyle tells us "did, not drink up the moon, but only the reflection of the moon in its own poor water-pail." But we are wandering from our task,. which is to show how vastly interesting a few days in Paris may be made with such guidance as is afforded us by Mr. Hare's work..

From the Tuileries and Louvre he leads us to the Faubourg- du Temple and the Marais, which is especially rich in relics of the past. In the heart of the Marais is the Rae des France Bourgeois, still containing the hotel of Madame de Sevign6, and leading into the Square des Vosges, one of the most repre- sentative remains of a past age. Planned by Sully, and carrie& out by the orders of Henri IV. (who did not, however, live to see it terminated), the Place Royale, as it was then called, was- the residence of many celebrated personages. Marion de Lorme lived here, and her house was inhabited later by Victor- Hugo, where he probably composed his tragedy on the famous courtioane. Preserving as it does its ancient aspect,

with its high-roofed houses, faced with faded red brick and pale yellow stone, and supported by solid colonnades, the Place des Vosges has a picturesque and somewhat quaint character, curiously in contrast with the "wide streets and featureless houses" of the present day, which doubtless are cheerful in their general effect, but endlessly monotonous and wanting in variety of detail. Anything more unquaint than the aspect of modern Paris, we cannot imagine ; but then, quaintness is not a French characteristic, as is proved by their having no word to express it, the nearest equivalent being bizarre, which means rather queer than quaint. After visiting Pere la Chaise and the Place de In Bastille, with its confusion of hideous and heroic associations, we are brought to the islands in the Seine, which form matter for a very interesting chapter. Amongst the various features of interest in the Ile de la Cit6, perhaps none is more popular with a certain class of the Paris population than the Morgue. The following passage, extracted from Zola's ThoWse .Raquin, though possessing a certain

grotesque humour, is -perhaps the best and truest description that has been given of this dreary spectacle :— " La Morgue est un spectacle 4 la port& de toutes lea bourses, clue /38 payent gratuitement le s passants, pauvres ou riches. La porte eat onverte, entre qui vent. Ii y a des amateurs qui font ma detour pour ne pas manquer une de ces reptesentations de la mort. Lorsque lee dalles scant Imes, les gene sortent, desappointes, vole, marmurant entre !ears dents. Loraque le s &dies sent bien garnies, lorsqu'il y a un bel &siege de chair humaine, lee visitenrs se pressent, se donnent des emotions a bon marohe, s'epouvantent, plaisantent, applaudissent on aiffient comma an theatre, et se retirent satisfaits, en declarant qua la Morgue eat reassie ce jour-lis."

Zola might have added that there are " amateurs " who (like a poor little Palais-Royal actress we know of) choose their residence in the vicinity of the Morgue, in order to be on the spot when anything more than usually attractive is on view. The Rue St. Jacques, which runs southward from the Ile de

la Cit6, contains the Church of Saint Jacques da Haut Pea,

built in the seventeenth century, partly at the expense of the Duchesse de Longueville, who died "dans tine grande devotion," but lived the best years of her life in quite a different spirit. Having to accompanylier husband to Normandy in his capacity of Governor of that province, she was "fort chagrin° de quitter la cons; elle y avait laiss6 des gens qu'elle amait miens quo son man, sine personne surtout, de sorte quo le temps lui dam hien." Refusing to join in any of the pursuits or pleasures offered by her new surroundings, she remained indifferent to every form of entertainment. It being finally asked of her, " Qu'aimez-vons, done ?" " Que voulez-vons quo je vous dise ?" she answered ; "e n'aime point le plaisir innocent."

Many people's troubles arise from the same cause as those of the Duchesse de Longueville, but few realise their origin

B) clearly or could formulate it so tritely. It is difficult to associate tragic events of a past age with a place of so cheerful and, modern an aspect as the Place de la Concorde. And yet it was here that Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were guillotined, and that more than 2,800 persons were put to death between 1793 and 1795 for the part they had taken, or had failed to take, in the Revolution, which Vergniaud likens, in the former case, to "Saturn devouring his own children."

Taken altogether, the historic records of Paris seem to ring the changes on one long series of human injustice and suffering, relieved in many instances by examples of human heroism and devotion. Nearly every political disturbance seems to have been made the pretext of endless bloodshed (in which nearly every one seems to have had a hand), to such an extent, indeed, that we wonder at length how a nation that can record such a series of wanton and wholesale butcheries should sentimentalise over the life of the most depraved criminals until we are made to feel that we should reserve our sympathy for the murderer, and not his victim, and should have too much humanity to let simple justice take its course. But the French nation always reminds us of certain men of genii's who will produce a sublime conception one day, and on the next will participate in the most degrading orgy, their mission being rather to originate than to accomplish. But by their conceptions they have called

into life latent impulses in those incapable of originating them, but capable of carrying them out, and by some subtle secret—

the exclusive possession of genius—have amalgamated the human and divine.

Mr. Hare's second volume, entitled Days Near Paris, is no less complete than his work on Paris, and if the historic asso- ciations of its environs are not of such thrilling interest as those of Paris itself, they leave a pleasanter impression on the mind. In describing the Bois de Vincennes, Mr. Hare dwells upon a pleasing side of French character which few who have lived among the people can have failed to observe :—

"Under every tree, along the edge of every lawn, by the bank of every stream, are family picnic parties, easily satisfied, and intensely happy. Stolid Englishmen are astonished at the eagerness with which grown-up people are playing at ball or battledore. Nowhere is the light-hearted, kindly, cheery character of the French middle classes seen to greater advantage. In England, such a scene would be an orgy ; here, all is quiet enjoyment,—coarseness, drunkeaness, rough- ness are unknown."