New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-05-26
views OF THINGS, ETC, IN Paris.
THE HOTEL DROUOT

THE HOTEL DROUOT
Is behind the Grand Opera geographically speaking
regarded from higher standpoint than the boulevard
de Gaud it is in respects before it. AT the Grand
OTcra large portions OF the audience for large parts OF
the hours between and II o'clock oppressed with
| teduIn. The main elements of pastme then are the
vocal music the instrumental music the scenery, the
ballet high and low dressngehtce aetes for the lor-
gneng thereof for making calls from box to box for
conversation in tie foyer, for slipping ont into the
oTen air There is something, indeed, TO suit each Of
several tastes in turn; no continuous common thing to
suit them all When Tweedle yibrates with pleasure
Twaddle yawns; where young Greene is greedily
a-gaze with admiration saated old Brown gapes from
drowsness; what is jenkins disgust is Didsburys
delight All escape from the rksome seats of the Grand
Opera at midnight fundamentally tagged. The per-
fomanees the Hotel Drouot of sustained interest
They combine instruction with amusement to degree
unequaled by any game Of cards, popular lectures
Emo. literary dilution destined to make easy Biblical
exegesis and astronomical science, or i'll the gap in
every gentleman's uncompleed library. Entrance is
gratis; and every spectator may at will become an
actor. In the last he is liable TO pay and even
dearishly sometimes, but has for the price, beside
material result and valuable experience to take away
with him. a fine excitement 30 that performance at
this institution sustans ordinary, public, so-called
entertainments superiority analogous to that which
my Jolly English friend Ii. L., is wont to accord
tea 10 punch: " II cheers and also inebrates." The
Hotel Drouot takes this from of the streets
which it faces. II is rarely but more properly
styled Hotel dcS COmmiSsGirCS; C0mmissaiTCs Prs
curs, Auctioneers Hall, might translate II
contains sixteen saes-rooms and incloses courtyard,
that often serves for seventeenth; into which and
ont of which, from early autumn to late spring French
movable secondhand property of all sorts is without
ceasing coming and going, going. There all house.
hold things, from lowlest pots and pans, and coarse
kitchen clout and grossest earthen vessels of dshonor
to scuptured in bronze and alabaster, and Au-
bnssOn carpets aud the fragile elegance OF Sevres por
celan. This il filed with cheap ships and buds,
povertys unredeemed pledges sent in by the Mont de
Pete; the next is gay
with slken coats and caps and Golden rings
With ruhs and cuffs and iaTthingaes and things:
WIN scaris, ard fans, end double charge of bravery
And amber bracelets beads, and ali this klayery"
The op,na spoiio Of dead Duchess or hghAying To-
rette. Here the ancestral furnishings Of the last
Count Methusalem dc Montararat; there the hashy
splendors of VI. Paryenu-Cichy, victim of late fall
at the Bourse. Rchetty white-wood and ram
shacklier walnut-wood, to-day, out to make
way tomorrow for invisibly ointed ebony and
wood, and costly buhl and marqueterie. Huddled
now together in common room, the social distnc-
tions all Knocked at AS in the prisons of the Revolution
awaiting in the decision of their fate from the
eyeling hammer of the auctioneer are the late occu
pants Of kitchen garnet, cellar parlor and bedroom
1t is quite picture of Paris lfestil life-s mp and
down stairs phases and it's strange vicissudes Rush.
boomed chairs and thin matted beds Of Woodworking
servants now crowd and jose masters fauteuis and
touches, richly, lazily luxurious with plush and
'ken damask and frizzIed capillary attraction to re-
Pose, if sent in from the state of the Castle of
lrdoenoe rather than from The apartment Of Monsieur
X, banker, deceased, in the Chausste dAnn.
And not only does the assembage of household
goods and rainent at the Hotel Drouot, thcughtfully
considered, represent, in sort, modern Partisan
Getty in all its diversity being made up of deputies us
were, from tho Faubourg st. German and the Fau-
hourg St. Antoine from the salons and the mansardes
hut longsde Of the last modes of c.binet-work, up
lnlstery and even maniua-nakng, are frequent dis
Plays Of the ncogrec ugnesses of the first Empire and
Of tic various styles Of all the Louis. The municipal
government employs connoisseur whose business it
is TO bid oil, with wise selection such objects as may
properly enrich the historical museum illustrative of
old French manners and customs, which the city il
oing but lie has less do in the ordinary furniture
sales than nj the numerous rentcs de cgriosites et
d'oljGs ddrt," of which have not hero time nor
sIace 10 speak.
Not that purpose TO give AT any future date on any
exIanse of Ialer full eoordnated description of tho
Hotel Drouoi its contents and characteristics Such
work would be nearly unreasonable, and quite i'm.
measur.bly dull not easy to write, and very hard to
read Itwould besides be peculiarly inappropriate to
the subject which is of its nature infinitely various
and irregular, mixed, complex, and incongruous--
" one intertanged knot Of heterogeneous ramileaon,
which, though sometimes beautiful, has almost "a
" little radical egnnectedness as a nosegay, and but the
tie Of name to keep it together" or necessity,
then, as much us Of purpose venture only few