The Alaska daily empire., 1914-11-17
9l 9oe09
EAH
aerlrude , hIaIlelIa.
.l.9.41.

A6out Aeven miles cast of lhe laal capital Of Napoleon's smpilo follow. ing the ropd which orogses Che Loire by meaus Of stone bridge which pro claims itseli the first public work Of Louis Philippe. ia quaint qhambord. wilh ils iamous anochronism of arch, itecure The aDproaoh 70 Chambogd lead through endless gheyords wSh here and there small plaster tower
 he&sog It's slated roof above the low green cluster of che vines. One paes- e through several villages. whore in. habitants seem to have but one care upon their minds iko tho famous Sicily Islanders that of gaining Q rather precarlous liylihood by Taking in each others washine For on ev- cry brinr and every bush iluttefs ihe inevitable household linen and family apparel various in texture, mrlons in the spirit m which they Haunt their cleanliness at Che passorby The util- fly ol them impresses one and the French peasant blouse oi pdcd blue ereets one on every side, blown into
 fantastic shapes even along che rail ings Of the churohyard tomhs.
 In "Old ToUraine Andrea Cook chronicles 9 visit to ohambord as fol-. lows At last one comes to an old moss.grown wall, and through a brok- en gateway enters whnt is called the Park of Chambord. There ia very lit- te Of it to be seen today the trees have been ruthlessly cut down and mutllated, and of the wild boars, which were the favorlte prey os Francois i9 there Is left only the ghostly quarry that Thlbault Of Cbampaigne ehases through the air while the sound ol the phantom horn echoes down through the Autumn night as Che filmy pack sweeps by to Moutfrault.
 1t is next thing to impossible for the mind to grasp the plan or method of this mass of architecturei and yet at the same time it is not pleasant to give up Che task. while Henry James. who pronound it san irrespon- sibie. insolute labyrinth. N. Nioietle-I Due. with sympathetic denial of any extreme and oyer-tochnical admira' don. however. gives us just that in'' teligibie account Of the chateau which is a compromise between the unmem.I Ing adulmuon of It's contemporary critics and Cue ignorance of the cas-. ual traveller.
 "Chambord.9 he remarks, must bel taken for what 1t isi for an attempt in which the architect sought to re- concile the methods of two opposite principle. to unite in ono building the fortified castle of the Middle Ages and the pleasure palace of the sixteenth century Granted that the attempt was on absure one, 1t must be re- membored that the Renaissance was but just Che beginning in France Go thic art seems out of date and yet no other had come to take its place. in literature. in morals as in arehitec- ure. this particular phaso of in Che civilization of the time hos already become evident in the course Of these small wanderings. And even il tne tradition period is realized in ail It's meaning. with all its "monstrous ond inform characteristics that were inc evitable part Of it the mystery of this strange sixteenth century France Is half explained Of this Glorious devil. large in heart and brain that did love beauty only" and would have it somewhere, somehow, at whatever cost.
 Francois l. had passed his early years at cognac. at Amboise, or at and when he first saw Chambord it was only the feudal man or house built by the Counts Of Blois. He transformed it, not by the help of with whose name it isl tempting to associate any building of this kings, for the methods of con- temporary Italian architecture were totally dlfferent but as has been proved by M De Ia Saussaye, by tho skill Of that fertile school of art par. tlcularly one Matre TrinQueau, or Lei and Blois The plan is chat of the true French chateau; in thel center is the habitation of the Frencb seigneau and his family thanked byl four angle towers; on three sides is( a court closed by buildings also with 1 towers at each angle and, like most geudal dwellings the centran donion has one of it's sides on Che exterior or tho whole
 It may well be imagined chat Cham bord is the parody of the old casties,t just as the Abbey of Thelme parodies the abbeys Of the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries. Both heaped 9 fa-I tal ridicule upon the bygone age. but what Rablais could only dream, Fran cois ]. could realize yet not with the perfection that was granted the vision Of Gargantua; for surely there never was spirit of the lime. ! seized and smitten into ineongroue shapes of stone at so unfortunate moment just when the old Renaiss- ance was striving to take upon itselfl the burden which was too heavy for the falling Gothic spirit iusi when success was coming.
 It is only from within che court where the great towers ding their shadows over the space, where pin nacles and gables soar into Che air, and strange gargoyles and projoctures shoot rom ihe darkness into light that lt is possible to realize the admir- ation which Chambord reused when 1t was first dreamed Brantome wax