were on their way to mass and a regiment was on parade—­the one illustrating the blind exaction of bigoted authority, the other the machinery of brute force—­the church and the army, the mitre, and the sword, superstition and violence; with these, in all ages, have the multitude been subdued; and between these two representations of elemental despotism, clustered on a high wall, stood a crowd to watch the meek procession of worshippers, and the exactitude of the manual, or admire the spirited, yet controlled, evolutions of the officer on his noble charger.  The whole scene typified France as she is; uneducated devotees, a military organization at the beck of its chief, and a surplus of curious, intimidated or acquiescent spectators.

To pass from St. Cloud to Versailles is like turning from the last to the first chapters of French history.  The vast court of the palace is lined with colossal statues; and thus we enter the vestibule through a file of pale and majestic sentinels, summoned, as it were, from the tomb to guard the trophies of nationality.  Our pilgrimage through such a world of effigies begins with Clovis and Charlemagne, and ends with Louis Philippe:  the place itself is the ancient home of royalty; the gardens, visible from every window, have been trod by generations of monarchs and courtiers; the ceilings bear the arms of the noble families of the kingdom; while around are the faces and figures of the men of valor and of genius that consecrate her history.  Through this panorama move peasants, workmen, citizens, and foreigners, gazing unrestricted, as upon a procession evoked from the inexorable past, in which are all those of whom they have heard or read as illustrious in France; they see the battles, the leaders, the kings, the poets, the human material of history.  This grand conception, which has of late years been mainly realized by the last king, is certainly one of the most grand and significant of modern times.  Even in this, our one day’s observation, how many ideas are revived, how many characters brought into view; what events, associations and people throng upon our consciousness, as slowly gazing, we tread the interminable halls and scan the countless memorials of Versailles!

Taking up the thread of reminiscence when looking at the old moldy mortar that belonged to the knights of St. John when at Rhodes, the expiring chivalry of Europe gleams fitfully upon us, once more, to provoke a mortifying comparison with the not yet completed pictures of the capture of Abd-el-Kader and the last siege of Rome; thence turn to the “Jeu de Paume,” where the ardent figure of Mirabeau represents the genius of the Revolution, and from it to “Louis XVIII. and the Charter,” emblematic of the Restoration; how shines on this canvas the “helmet of Navarre” in the “Battle of Ivry,” as in Macaulay’s spirited lyric, and chastely beautiful in its stainless marble, stands the heroic Maid of Orleans; while, appropriately in the midst of these historic characters,