The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-09 00:00:00

THE

SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY _ EVENING, MAY 9, 1848.

As a spectacle the Colosseum in the Regent's
Park continues to be unrivalled. We say this without
in any manner depreciating the scientific advantages
afforded by that more pretentious establishment,
the Polytechnic Institution, or the architectural
and panoramic illusions of the Diorama, or the
ingenious modellings of Madame Tussaud's Ex-
hibition, or any other, in fact, of the p Ipu!ar
sights of the metropolis. As a spectacle, the Colos-
seum remains, we assert, unrivalled—whether as to
grandeur, variety, or cheapness.
Instead of the gigantic panorama of London as
viewed from the tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, we
have, this year, spread out before the eye a very ex-
traordinary work of art—a bird's eye view of the
great city of Pans' beheld, as it were, from the car of
a balloon suspended over the garden of the Tuileries.
Altogether the illusion is matchless. Looking down
from your apparent elevation you can almost deceive
yourself into the belief; that you are veritably gazing
upon that famous spot which one half of Christendom
regards as the capital of pleasure, and the other half
as the capital of civilization. In every direction your
glance is arrested by the delineation of that most
remarkable metropolis. Here you see the prolonged
front of the Louvre, in whose vast galleries are stored
so many productions of genius. There you perceive
the famous Arc d'Etoile, under the span of which,
only a few days since, the Provisional Government of
the Republic stood to receive the homage of the armed
citizens. On one hand is the Palais Royale where
Egalite schemed against the Bourbon dynasty, where
Louis Philippe received the blessing of Voltaire, and
where the young Camille Desmoulins first mounted
the tri-color. On the other hand is the Madeleine, the
fane raised at the mandate of the Emperor, and over
the grand altar of which is represesented the apo-
theosis of Napoleon. Now your eye wanders along
the parapets of the different bridges on the Seine, now
it travels along the brilliant line of the Boulevards,
now it rests upon the Rue de la Paix, now upon the
Hotel de Ville, now upon Notre Dame, now upon
the National institute, now upon the Place de la
Concorde, and now upon the Place Vendome, with
its superb pillar of commemoration. You gaze on in
breatlalEss admiration, you breathe the very atmo-
sphere of Paris, you listen in imagination to the cries
in its streets, to the rumbling of its carriages, to the
striking of its church clocks, you watch the flickering
of its thousand lamps, and the lights which glitter in
its
windows—for the city is revealed to you as it
appears by moonlight,
and the beams of that beautiful
fishingare
vividness tharyou forget for the moment that
ou are not beh lding a reality . has never
before, to our knowledge, been a more marvellous
deception of a pictorial kind
vraisembla
nce, it—it seems more than a
seems the very thing itself. You
are transported in
an instant across the Channel to the
scene of revolutions and
pentacle republicanism, and you
admiration.
retire from the sacle breathless, dizzy, and full of
Among the
other attractions of the
Colosseum must be mentionedthose so long familiar
a
to the public—the glyptothee
ture, the stalactite caverns, the' or museum of sculp-
Swiss cottage, the Gothic aviarrner de glace with the
the conservatories. Of minorye, Mountcuriosities
Blanc, and
abundance—foremost among
owwhich
arsities there are
two bunches of artificial flers va
eceedrtainly the
lu
guineas. They are of inimitable deli at
forty
have all the bloom of nature. You almost expect
and
perfume from the petals while you stoop over
th aem.
With all the cordiality of delight we commend
the
holiday million to the Colosseum.