MIS 



VERSAILLES VERSE. 



VERSAILLES, one of the most beautiful cities 

 of France, about ten miles from Puris, lies in an 

 .\U-MM\V, and, in part, barren plain. Until the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, it was an in- 

 considerable village, with a hunting castle. Louis 

 XIV. determined to erect, on this solitary spot, a 

 royal residence worthy of his age and his grandeur. 

 Seven years (1678 1680) were employed in corn- 

 plot ing the palace, park and gardens, around which 

 u city, with regular streets and handsome buildings, 

 and a population of 100,000 souls, soon grew up. 

 The palace, erected after the plans and under the 

 inspection of Mansard, is more than 800 feet in 

 length, consisting of a first story and the attic, de- 

 corated with Ionic pilasters, with fifteen projecting 

 buildings, supported by isolated columns of the same 

 order. It contains eight magnificent saloons, 

 adorned with statuary, paintings and architectural 

 embellishments, and the great gallery, 232 feet 

 long, thirty broad, and thirty-seven high, and 

 lighted by seventeen great windows. The gallery 

 is indebted to Lebrun for its architecture and paint- 

 ings, and is not surpassed by any in Europe for 

 magnificence, taste or arrangement. The chapel is 

 one of the most superb monuments of the magnifi- 

 cence of Louis XIV. : its external decoration con- 

 sists of Corinthian pilasters, ornamented with 

 numerous statues ; the interior, of the same order, 

 presents twelve fluted pillars, richly ornamented, 

 and sustaining the dome. The banqueting room, 

 the opera-house, &c., are also splendidly finished. 

 The gardens of this sumptuous palace are equal in 

 splendour to the fabric to which they belong. In- 

 numerable statues, temples and pavilions greet the 

 view in every direction, while shrubberies, par- 

 terres, sheets of water, and jets d'eau, diversify the 

 scenery. Within the circuit of the park lie the 

 two palaces called the Great and Little Trianon. 

 Versailles was the residence of Louis XIV. XV. 

 and XVI. and of all the chief officers of state until 

 the 6th of October, 1789, when Louis was com- 

 pelled, by the Paris mob, to take up his residence 

 in the Tuileries. The national assembly also opened 

 its sessions here, and was transferred, at the same 

 time, to Paris. In consequence of this removal of 

 the court and government, Versailles declined as 

 rapidly as it had risen. Napoleon did something 

 towards restoring it, and also caused the palace to 

 be repaired. The treaty of Versailles was signed 

 here, September 3, 1783, between Great Britain, 

 France and Spain, on the same day that the treaty 

 between Great Britain and the United States of 

 America was signed at Paris. The French court, 

 during the three reigns above mentioned, was styled 

 the court of Versailles. The city of Versailles has, 

 at present, a population of 28,000, and is a bishop's 

 see. It contains a town-house, a public library of 

 30,000 volumes, three churches, and several other 

 public buildings and institutions. 



VERSE (from the Latin vertere, to turn ; hence 

 versus, a furrow, line, series, verse). The con- 

 nexion of several metres or rhythms forms a rhyth- 

 mical series a verse which contains as many me- 

 trical members or bars as there are uniform arsises 

 in the verse. Verse may also be defined as that 

 form which sounds assume by means of a regular 

 motion and measure, or a series, a whole of 

 rhythms metrically divided. The word is also used 

 for a series of verses, connected according to 

 some rule; but strophe is the better expression 

 for this. (See Strophe.) Versification is the art 

 of applying the rules according to which verses are 



formed. Rhythm is not imaginable without time ; 

 and as there is even and uneven time (see Time), 

 there are three different kinds of metra ? 1. the 



2 4 



spondaic, equal to -r- or -7- time; 2. the molossir, 



3 4 4 



equal to the heavy j- time; 3. the trochaic, equal to 



6 9 

 the easy JT or TT- time. Verses in uneven time are 



more conformable to the spirit of the ancient lan- 

 guages ; those in even time to that of the modern. 

 Formerly verses were measured according to feet, 

 in the Roman fashion (the Greeks measured verses 

 more correctly according to the time or bars), which 

 led to various mistakes. Because a foot is but the 

 form of a single part of the metrical period, the 

 proportionate value of it is the very thing which 

 must be determined by the rhythm or metre, and 

 therefore is to be measured by this, but is not its 

 measure. The grammarians, with whom the foot 

 was only an aggregate of syllables, sought, in order 

 to determine the measure, for a fundamental foot, 

 prevailing in the whole verse. As they knew only 

 the difference between long and short syllables, but 

 not the different degrees of length and shortness 

 (which different proportions produce variety of 

 movement), a number of arbitrary and confused no- 

 tions originated, which were elevated to rules ; and 

 thus the rhythm became only the more obscure. If 

 we measure verse, however, as the ear requires, 

 musically and according to time, we shall find re- 

 gularly returning metrical periods, and thus deter- 

 mine the melody of the verse, or the metrical music 

 of it ; and the prosodic value of syllables is elevated 

 to rhythmical and metrical. Verses have been 

 measured according to feet or double feet (dipodies). 



9 

 The tripodic, above indicated as ^, was unknown ; the 



dactylic, cretic, choriambic, ionic, peeonic and antis- 

 pastic verses were measured according to feet, so that 

 each was a metre : the anapaestic, trochaic and iam- 

 bic verses, however, in which a dipody made a metre, 

 were measured by dipodies. If a metre is contained 

 in a verse once, twice, three times, &c., the verse 

 is called manometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, 

 pentameter, hexameter, &c. As many bars are filled 

 out by the imagination, and not in reality, the division 

 of catalectic, or incomplete, and acatalectic, or com- 

 plete, verses has arisen. If the verse is concluded in 

 the middle of the period, it is called brachycatalectic, 

 or half-complete ; if it is one syllable too long, it is 

 called hypercatalectic. According to the theory of 

 time, these divisions appear unnecessary and errone- 

 ous, as every one, who can divide a verse musically, 

 will easily find. In the same way the division of 

 the, so called, poll/schematic or many-formed verses 

 verses capable of several forms or changes ap- 

 pears superfluous ; also that of the unconnected 

 verses, which, as is said, cannot be united, and the 

 invention of which is ascribed to Archilochus. 

 These can be measured rhythmically perfectly well. 

 A consistent theory of time reduces all the sorts ot 

 verses to one fundamental form, of which there are 

 a variety of modifications. Mr Apel, a German, 

 has done much to promote a better understanding 

 of the character of verses. 



Blank verse is a species of verse disencumbered 

 of rhyme, and allowing the lines to run into each 

 other with nearly as much freedom as the Latin 

 hexameter. As it is naturally read with less cad- 

 ence than rhyme, the pauses in it and the effect of 

 them are not always so sensible to the ear as in 

 rhyme. It is constructed, however, upon the 



