Daily Kennebec journal., 1870-09-23
#iseellany.
ST. DENIS.
The sepulchre Of the French Monsrchs.

1t is to be regretted that at nearly all the
spots where the great contending armies
in Europe have met, the most noble
churches of France are built. The cathe-
lrals of Strasburg, Metz and Rheims are
known to every tourist, and admired, al
most yenerated, wherever men have hearts
to love beauty of form consecrated to the
spirit of religion. And St. Denis, adds the
Louisville Courier Journal, is no excep-
ton to the list. The beautiful facade, the
portals emblematic of the coronation of
the Virgin and the Passion, the rose win
dow imaging the baptism of Clovis, and
the six hundred statues of the cathedral at
Rheims are happily uninjured, but the fine
old Gothic Church of St. Martin, at Metz,
with its towers. its apses and paintings OF
the Lorraine school, are undoubtedly like
the spires, the cock and the high altar of
ruins. Its defencelessness
saved Rheims !; but the fortifications which
have necessitated the terrible destruction
and loss of life at Metz and Strasburg will,
we are afraid, be equally fatal to the Abbey
of St. Denis. While the bells here in hun
dreds of churches are summoning wor-
shippers to praise and prayer, another peal
may be heard in one of the most ancient
fanes of France-the peal of the cannon
With the exception of the brie, period of
insanity when, at the commencement of
the great Revolution, the Parisians Install
ed the Goddess of Reason in the altars of
Jehovah, until Robespierre, with strange
mixture of impiety and compunction, de-
clared that the new republic recognised
God, the tower of the abbey of St. Denis
had for twelve hundred and thirty-two
years been memorial and a sanctuary of
worship.
But Independent of its beauty and sancti-
ty, the old abbey is venerable from histor-
ic associations. Since the days of Dagobeit
it has been the burial place Of the mon
srchs of France, and despite the lapse of
time and the assaults of the revolution. its
aisles and transcpt and crypt TEEN with
monuments of the past. Napoleon re-
stored it, the Bourbons, the Orleanists
and the late empire repaired it; and again
the long range of royal tombs. vacant of
their dust, scattered by decree Of the
Convention in 1893, decorate the upper
church. There were terrible weeks in '93.
In the course of three days fifty-one tombs
were rihed, and the ashes of queens and
kings and marshals torn up in every stage
of decay, and after subsection to every
species of indignity, thrown in heap into
two trenches hastily dug without the walls
of the church. A soldier with his sabre
cut the beard from the lip of Henry of
Navarro. and the body of Turenne, so
little injured by time that the likeness, still
recognised, was placed in a glass case
and exhibited as a show to crafty idle
curiosity.
For twelve years after this sacrilege the
Abbey Church of st. Denis remained roof
less.
"By ruin was its shrine profaned,
BY smoke each holy image stained.r
But Napoleon refitted the desecrated sep
ulchral vaults of the Bourbons as q mau-
soleum for the new regime. To the vaults
below the high altar have again been car
ried the burnt remains of Louis XVI. and
XVIII. and others of his family But
the long roll of French kings, here rest,
in rarely visited corner, all that is NOR
tai of the last Conde, the father of the
Due d'Enghien, who died at St. Leu.
Between 1906 and 1847 more than ST.
of ST. Denis, and now, in all probability, a
bombardment will again destroy the grand
old church. The column erected to the
iiCLOiy vi pSS"oSAheseSN AA
1889; the monument of Francis H.,
husband of the beautiful Queen of Scots,
surrounded at its base by weeping angels.
like Promethus by sea-nymphs on the rock
of Caucasus, may be destroyed, and the
effiey of Duguesclin in the transept be
as powerless to protect as the renown Of
Turenne beneath the tower. But if the
towers of the abbey be leyeled to the
dust, and Prussians march where Paris is
since Lufetia was, the fame of st. Denis
will never fade from the memory of man.
1t was at st. Denis, in the time OF Charles
VII, that the oriflamme was raised beneath
whose conquering folds the Maid of DOM
remi led the beaten hosts of France to yic-
tory from Orleans to Paris. What the
Parthenon was to Athens, the Grotto of
Egeria to Rome and Numa, the cave where
Mahomet concealed himself when the re-
ligion of the Koran was confined to his
Uncle Ali, his wife, and few determin.
ed followers-what the ark was to David,
the holy of holies to Israel-that is st.
Denis to France. e tes.
Historically speaking. Paris itself is but
an outgrowth, a complement of the towns
which Dagobert built. All over France,
in the wlds of Brittany, in the plains of
Normandy, in the fertile levels of Cham
pagne--whereve the real thought and
strength of the people hold sway-St,
Denis is like the burial place of Mohammed
in Mecca, the high place and altar of Gaul.
The town is protected by a fort upon the
southeast, but is scarcely capable of q pro-
longed defence. Its 2G,542 inhabitants
must suffer the horrors of siege or yield
Ito the first summons of the advancing ar
my. The memorials of the past are not
easily obliterated, but as the chivaly of
the middle ages becomes more nearly
crushed with the materialistio spirit of the
nineteenth century, SO the monuments of
the past grow in grandeur, and exert a
more powerful influence upon the destin-
les OF mankind. t*
| "NIan," said Sir Thomas Browne in the
Religio Medici, ''is splendid in ashes.
pompous in the grave, covering himself in
halo of Immortality, and. god-like, ris-
ing again and covering himself with glory
even in the infirmity of his nature II st,
Denis falls and France is q republic, the
ruin and destruction of the historic town
Il. l. s.s..s