The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1874-09-15
letter from Dr. Goldsmith.

GUM, Paris is in many things disappoint-
ment. The whole place looks modern.
You feel as if you were getting back into
the near ncighborhood of New York and
Philadelphia. The churches or cathedrals,
except perhaps the Notre Dame, have
nothing of the simple solemn grandeur of
the great gothic cdifccs of central Europe.
If you were TO remove from the cathedrals
here the choirs and the affairs you could
hardly divine the purposes of the building.
They are loaded with what appears to be
homogeneous ornamentation, and the orna-
mcntaton is exquistely French theatrical
There is but little of that momential awe
produced which seems to be the effect APP
propriate to the temples of the ever living
| God.
The shops in the Boulevards, of which
you hear so much, are brilliant, and they
fairly flash in the gaslight, and as you look
at them they are all ablaze with pretty
things; but all there is in the window, and
that which across the street looked SO full,
so large, is but the delusion of mirrors,
multiplying to grand proportions, what on
nearer search Is scanty s&orc. When you
go in you pass from promised faiyland to
a meagrc shabeen, with a very gorgeous
head and very shabby tail. The shops
are small and have but small stocks of
wares, q write in general terms). When
you think of Sewtarts or 1iffany's you feel
that it would take Il whole street of French
shops TO make one Stewards and that if you
were TO buy out all the shops of the Palas
Royale you couldn't more than half fill
Tiffany's cases and shelves.
To Il casual observer the great aim of
Paris is to make itself attractive to visitors
| so that everything seems designed to he Il
spectacle; something that people will
come to Paris to see. The soft cocn stone,
the plaster of Paris of which the city Is
built, is carved when fresh quarricd almost
as easily as chalk, and this makes possible
here which is not possible with us, profuse
enumeration of buildings Hence you
, see carved fronts almost everywhere; and
hence, too, the uniformity of the house
fronts in color as well as in decoration.
The palaces and other public buildings i'm
press you rather by their extent and pro-
fuse ornamentatiOn than by their height or
imposing grandeur. You wonder most
what can be the possible use of such long
lines OF building until you enter and find
that these long, almost intcrminahle lines
of rooms are the store houses of great
numbers of objects of art or science, ar
ranged after all more as great shows than
schools. You ere impressed more by
quantity than quality. They strike you
more as great show places for holiday
amusement than for the begettng, fasten-
ing, and clevating of art culture That
there are among them great pictures one
who knows as little about them as do can
can readily see. But these are not of the
French school. The French pictures are
mostly Venuses, portraits anc futile pieces.
The Venus is Frenchman's Venus, q
pretty naked woman There is in none
the mystic beauty of the Venus of Milo
WHICH, sNctt,
pure and entrancingly beautiful. The
French idea is not that of the possible
mother as much as of the possible mistress.
The battle pieces look theatrical, great
groups of generals dressed for show par
ade, astride of magnificent chargers stand
ing on their hind legs in the most i'm
probable of dramatic postures, bombs
bursting in their midst, the dead and
wounded under their horses heels, cool,
impassive officers, unruffled by the carnage
about them, or with drawn scimiters flash
ing the ambient air, just such GOODNESS as
the French do most admire and least fire.
piece-especialy if, somewhere to the
fore, you see in it one great bearded fellow
hugging and kissing another bearded fell
low. both with very red noses to illustrate
the fearful joy they feel There is a GER
tain great beauty in them-these battle
pieces Of Vernets-but they are not true,
and | doubt the excellence OF any picture
or school of painting of which the first
anu tnC last 10 thtl IL 10 Iot u NC
to life.
Mostly you are disappointed in the re-
lgious pictures. They come so far short
of ones ideal. In all those OF Christ cruel
fled there is only the face of human agony,
no hint or touch or shadowing of sef-sac-
rifice or of Godship. In the pictures of
the Madonna the most you see is the head
and figure of q sweet-faced woman, but no
glimmering of the sacred joy of her sancti-
fled motherhood, and in the presence of
none of them can you rid yourself of the
feeling that the picture you look upon is
that of some one standing as a model for
it. OF technical excellence know moth
ing in music or painting, but in music OF in
painting the rudest may be moved by the
melody of the one and the truth or natural
ness of the other. Just as out of the be-
wildering clangor of Instrumentation the
sweetest melody steals to stir or lull you.
So out of the incomprehensible mysteries
of technical excellence in painting there
comes to you nameless grace and beauty
which grows upon your Deholding ana Is
expressed best in, "this is real this is life!'
This overaction, this melodramatic, this
theatrical quality shown in their pictures is
in some sense the belonging of the typical
Frenchman, at least in his relations tC
others. If he gets drunk in public hi
browns himself in sentimental tears--hug'
the lamp post with the tenderest utterancei
of "egalite, frationilc, liberte," or beats hi
breast in tune to the profoundest utterancel
of patriotic pathos. Or, il at home, kicks
his wife or Grisette and raises Cain gener
| nllu Nhnn aohnr which lie nlnnnsi L. Lii