And is it not chiefly because, either by accident or by instinctive
good taste, her treasures of beauty and art are so disposed along the
Seine as to be visible at a glance to the best effect? As the instinct
of the true Parisienne teaches her the mystery of setting off the
graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of
the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and
embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine
is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either
side, called _quais,_ lined with her stateliest palaces and
gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, and is enveloped in dense smoke
and fog. London lowers; the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the
Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama.
Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye
from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like
an arrow, casting its shadow on every thing of beauty or grandeur
Paris possesses.
Rapidly now I sped onward, paying brief visits to the Palais de
Justice, the Hotel de Ville, and spending a cool half hour in Notre
Dame. I love to sit in these majestic fanes, abstracting them from the
superstition which does but desecrate them, and gaze upward to their
lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual
sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express.
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