3 Sept., 1816. Tuesday 3d.-We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles and le Grand et Petit Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. The gardens are full of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In all that essentially belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily deficient. The orangery is a stupid piece of expense. There was one orange-tree, not apparently so old, sown in 1442. We saw only the gardens and the theatre at the Petit Trianon. The gardens are in the English taste, and extremely pretty. The Grand Trianon was open. It is a summer palace, light, yet magnificent. We were unable to devote the time it deserved to the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait of Madame de la Vallière, the repentant mistress of Louis XIV. She was melancholy, but exceedingly beautiful, and was represented as holding a scull, and sitting before a crucifix, pale, and with downcast eyes. We then went to the great palace. The apartments are unfurnished, but even with this disadvantage, are more magnificent than those of Fontainebleau. They are lined with marble of various colours, whose pedestals and capitals are gilt, and the ceiling is richly gilt with compartments of painting. The arrangement of these materials has in them, it is true, something effeminate and royal. Could a Grecian architect have commanded all the labour and money which was expended on Versailles, he would have produced a fabric which the whole world has never equalled. We saw the hall of Hercules, the balcony where the King and the Queen exhibited themselves to the Parisian mob. The people who showed us through the palace, obstinately refused to say anything about the Revolution. We could not even find out in which chamber the rioters of the We saw the Salle d'Opera, portraits of the kings. There was the race of the house of Orleans, with the exception of Egalité, all extremely handsome. There was Madame de Maintenon, and beside her a beautiful little girl, the daughter of La Vallière. during the Revolution. 10th August found the king. where are now preserved the The pictures had been hidden We saw the Library of Louis some place in the ancient XVI. The librarian had held court near Marie Antoinette. He returned with the Bourbons, and was waiting for some better situation. He showed us a book which he had preserved during the Revolution. It was a book of paintings, representing a Tournament at the Court of Louis XIV.; and it seemed that the present desolation of France, the fury of the injured people, and all the horrors to which they abandoned themselves, stung by their long sufferings, flowed naturally enough from expenditures so immense, as must have been demanded by the magnificence of this tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace imaged well the hollow show of monarchy. After seeing these things we departed toward Havre, and slept at Auxerre. 4 Sept., 1816. Wednesday 4th.-We passed through Rouen, and saw the cathedral, an immense specimen of the most costly and magnificent gothic. The interior of the church disappoints. We saw the burial-place of Richard Cœur de Lion and his brother. The altar of the church is a fine piece of marble. Sleep at Yvetot. Thursday 5th. We arrive at Havre, and wait for the packet-wind contrary. [With The Assassins, apparently, begins the series of uncompleted prose works which Shelley left us. Strange, weird, and unnatural as the few incidents of the Romance, as far as it goes, may seem, the thoughtful student will not fail to discern its importance as a step in the growth of Shelley's style. There are better things in its descriptive passages than can be found in Queen Mab; and we even find a foretaste of the glories of style first made evident in Alastor. Seemingly, The Assassins was begun at Brunen on the 25th of August, 1814, and continued at Marsluys on the 8th and 9th of the following month. (See notes at pages 143 and 156 of this volume.) Mrs. Shelley says in her Preface to the Essays &c., in which collection she first gave The Assassins, that it “ was never touched afterwards," meaning, I imagine, after September, 1814. She says, "The Assassins were known in the eleventh century as a horde of Mahometans living among the recesses of Lebanon,―ruled over by the Old Man of the Mountain; under whose direction various murders were committed on the Crusaders, which caused the name of the people who perpetrated them to be adopted in all European languages, to designate the crime which gave them notoriety." Von Hammer, whose history of this strange tribe may be consulted in English through the translation of Dr. O. C. Wood (London, 1835), derives the name of the tribe (hashishin) from the herb hashishe, which they used; and this derivation appears to be accepted by the highest authorities at the present more scientific time. Richardson gives no instance of the word assassin earlier than the thirteenth century; and M. Littrè (Dictionnaire de la Langue Française) gives the following account of the Etymology of the word assassin: "De l'arabe haschisch, nom de la poudre de feuilles de chanvre, avec laquelle on prépare le haschisché. Le Prince des assassins ou Scheik ou Vieux de la montagne faisait prendre du haschisch à certains hommes qu'on nommait feidawi; ces hommes avaient des visions qui les transportaient et qu'on leur représentait comme un avant-goût du Paradis. A ce point, ils se trouvaient déterminés à tout faire, et le prince les employait à tuer des personnages ennemis. C'est ainsi qu'une plante enivrante a fini par donner son nom à l'assassinat.”—H. B. F.] |