260 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



it SO well), that a second glance is carefully avoided. 

 The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past 

 description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked 

 glaring assertion. From about old Notre Dame they 

 have removed every mediseval outwork which had 

 grown up around and rendered it lifelike ; it now 

 rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface 

 of the square. Unless you had been told that it was 

 the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look 

 at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter. 

 In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into com- 

 petition with Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des 

 Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon — was ever a tomb so 

 miserably lacking in all that should inspire a reveren- 

 tial feeling ? • 



The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the 

 gilded chapel, and the yellow windows — could any- 

 thing be more artificial and less appropriate ? They 

 jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which 

 were carried by the veterans at Austerlitz, and 

 which now droop, never again to be unfurled to the 

 wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in 

 a tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but 

 the Arc de Triomphe, the only piece of architecture in 

 all modern Paris worth a second look. Even this is 

 spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The 

 ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing 

 trumpets, and, above all, the group on the summit, 

 which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly 

 hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, 

 if any one is so imprudent as to approach near 

 it. Receding down the Avenue Friedland — some- 



