Lambeth, though lately built, is a complete failure; many of the other courts are held in small private houses; and in those of Marlborough-street and Hammersmith, the business is transacted upstairs. In the latter court it is a common thing to hear it said of persons who have been taken before the magistrates- he has been up the forty steps.' With the common people, with whom these institutions have mainly to deal, justice should be dispensed with a regard to appearances; there should be the formality of the superior courts, and somewhat of their show. A magistrate sitting in a plain black dress like an ordinary gentleman, and a lawyer dispensing justice in his wig and gown, are two very different things to the lower classes, whatever they may be to educated persons; and the want of all official costume, and the huddled style of doing business inseparable from the present confined space, is not calculated to inspire the people with much respect. The police should at least be put upon a level with the county courts. The latter have to deal with less momentous interests. Questions of paltry debt cannot be put in comparison with questions involving the liberty of the subject; the power of committing to prison for six months with hard labour is far more important than that of adjudicating in money disputes under five pounds. It is not enough that justice is administered; it is the opinion which the people have of it that produces the effect, and until the judgment seat is rendered dignified, and those who sit on it are clothed with the habiliments which distinguish the magistrate from the man, the law, by losing most of its impressiveness, will lose its moral power over delinquents. The vulgar terror of punishment may remain, but the lesson which is conveyed to the feelings by the solemn stateliness of the tribunal is entirely gone.

ART. V.-1. Mémoire présenté par M. le Préfet de la Seine à la Commission Municipale. Paris, 1854.

2. Résidences des Souverains. Par C. Percier et P. Fontaine, Paris, 1833.

3. Rapport sur les Marchés Publics en Angleterre, en Belgique, &c. Paris, 1846.

[O sovereign ever reigned who, in the same space of time, has rivalled Napoleon III. in the combined magnificence, utility, and extent of his public works. Of the great undertakings in progress, the most vast is the junction of the two royal or imperial palaces, the Tuileries and the Louvre, and the consequent completion of an edifice which will surpass

The old

in size and splendour every other of its kind. Louvre, or Louveterie, a quadrangular building, with its conical capped towers, similar to those which still crown the opposite Conciergerie, was demolished by Francis I. in 1528. The social change in a court where for the first time dames and damsels freely mingled, created the necessity for a princely residence far different from the old cooped-up and dimlylighted castle. A wide staircase, a vast reception-hall, and an atmosphere uncontaminated by the stagnant waters of a fosse, became the wants of the day. The architect, Pierre Lescot, Abbot of Clugny, accordingly erected on the site of the old Louvre half that portion of the new which fronts westward and joins the Musée. The king's mother, Louise of Savoy, caught up the new taste, and emigrated from the unhealthy air of the palace of the Tournelles in the midst of the city, to the site of the present Tuileries. The centre however of the existing edifice was built by Catherine of Medici, while Henry II. had previously completed the west side of the court of the Louvre. The fancy of the age was for large square masses, which resembled towers, but were called pavillons, with lines of galleries or receptionrooms connecting them. The lower part of this pavillon was devoted to the great staircase, leading to the chief apartment, such as the Hall of the Caryatides in the Louvre, which Jean Goujon ornamented for Henry II.

Henry IV. was the first to conceive the splendid project of uniting the Louvre and Tuileries by a long gallery, to be appropriated to works of art. The completion of the Louvre itself was retarded by the rivalry between the architects of the French and Italian schools. Perrault, a physician, through the patronage of Colbert, secured the adoption of his famous colonnade, which forms the east front of the Louvre, facing the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. The beauty of the façade scarcely sufficed to preserve it afterwards, owing to the difficulty of harmonising it with the rest of the quadrangle. Fortunately it was allowed to remain, and the contrast arising from the irregularity is now admitted to be one of the beauties of the structure. Versailles during the next century and a half was the principal object of royal care, and the palaces of the metropolis were comparatively neglected. The dependents of the court did as they pleased with the interior and precincts of the kingly residences of Paris; and they at last built themselves, at the expense no doubt of the state, a kind of rookery of apartments, which choked up the court of the Tuileries until it was almost unapproachable. The revolutionary cannon next battered the front of the royal structure, and the Convention, having installed itself in the galleries which

extended

extended between the northern and the central pavillons, threw them into one, and increased the devastation.

The first care of Napoleon I. was to clear away the buildings which encumbered the immediate court of the Tuileries. To recover the ground that extended between them and the Louvre, was a more serious task; for the vast hotel of the Dukes of Longueville, that of the family of Elboeuf, the stables of the Duke of Orleans, together with a whole line of streets and houses, filled the space. The project of Napoleon was to connect the Louvre and Tuileries by a long gallery corresponding to that of the picture gallery or Musée. He at the same time resolved to open the garden of the Tuileries on the north side, and unite it with the city, with which it then only communicated by lanes and alleys. The site of the present Rue de Rivoli was chiefly occupied by convents and their gardens, which had been sold indeed, but were not yet disturbed; and here he constructed the noble street which has just been extended through the very heart of Paris as far as the Place de la Bastille. Even the Place Vendôme was shut in both on the side of the Boulevards and on that of the Tuileries, and the Rue de la Paix, which now runs up in either direction, was the work of the Emperor. Without this channel of communication an habitué of the present capital would scarcely recognise the gay and splendid city.

The clearing of the district which bordered the garden of the Tuileries retarded the completion of the palace in the opposite direction, and its junction with the Louvre. After the new wing had been extended a certain distance the architects represented the extreme difficutly of amalgamating edifices of such different styles, different parallels, and different levels. To obviate the evil it was determined to run a transverse building across the Carrousel, about half way between the Tuileries and the Louvre. The façades of this dividing line would have been parallel to both, and would have masked all discrepancies except such as might have been visible through the central arch, where the view for this reason would have been broken by fountains. lower portion of the transverse building was to be a covered colonnade; and as the line of the Museum Gallery along the river was to be similarly adorned, the promenaders through a considerable portion of the city would have been protected from sun and rain.

The

The fifteen years which succeeded the reign of Napoleon I. were years of debt and of financial difficulty. To complete a few of the imperial designs, such as the canals and abattoirs, and the erection of some churches and colleges, absorbed all the disposable funds of the Restoration. Louis Philippe, who as Duke of Or

leans

leans had involved himself to complete and embellish the Palais Royal, arrived at the Tuileries in 1830 with vast schemes for its extension to the Louvre. His first idea, however, was of comfort; and the narrow line of almost transparent galleries, thrown up by Francis I. and Catherine de Medicis, afforded neither accommodation for a family, nor privacy for a sovereign. It was the king's intention to remedy the inconvenience by doubling the depth of the Tuileries facing the gardens. Orders were given to commence the works, and a large portion of the garden was fenced off, which narrowed the space previously enjoyed by the public. The populace just then was peculiarly susceptible, and full of its sovereign rights. Murmurs arose which were re-echoed by the press. The bitter and sarcastic criticisms of the newspapers found adherents in the Chamber of Deputies. A citizen king, it was urged, might rest contented with that palace which Louis XIV. and Napoleon had successively inhabited, and had not required to enlarge. Louis Philippe grew alarmed. The orders for sinking the foundation were revoked; but the planks, which shut out the public, remained. The enclosed ground was converted into a private garden, which still exists; the people did not attain the object of their agitation, and the monarch was baulked of his improved palace.

No sooner had the Revolution of 1848 been consummated than the Provisional Government saw the necessity of employing the labouring classes who were thrown out of work by the suspension of private enterprise. Again the project was revived of joining the Tuileries and the Louvre. A decree was issued to authorise the government to take the houses of proprietors in adjoining streets, and this unlimited power was afterwards grasped and turned to account by the imperial hand. The Provisional Government had not time to illustrate its reign by the erection of architectural monuments, and when Louis Napoleon became President of the Republic, a jealous Assembly closed the purse-strings of the nation. The proclamation of the Empire put an end to this restraint, and, in March 1852, a decree appeared allotting upwards of a million sterling to the completion and junction of the Tuileries and the Louvre. The Emperor resolved to leave the space between the two palaces unbroken by any transverse building. The front of the Louvre being much narrower than that of the Tuileries, a double line of edifices was necessary to connect the two. These wings are now completed. The second lines advance more than half the distance to the Tuileries, and contain the Allée Napoléon between them. The rule observed in the junction of the palaces is that each part shall harmonize with the older portion to which it is immediately united. The attempt has proved

eminently

eminently successful, as will be admitted by any one who surveys in succession the part of the palace in the Rue de Rivoli adjoining the Louvre, and the two pavillons which follow in the neighbourhood of the Tuileries. In the new buildings which inclose the square of the Carrousel, the original style of architecture which prevailed in the erection of the Tuileries has been observed, though with some modifications, and a great increase of ornament.* The merit of the external design is due to M. Visconti. Since his death the works have been conducted by M. Lefuel, who has devised the whole of the interior arrangements, which are thought to display great architectural genius. The new staircase conducting to the gallery of the Louvre is especially noted for its grandeur and beauty.

The Bourbons of both branches divided the Tuileries into sets of apartments for the different members of the royal family. The Emperor Napoleon III. has distributed the vast superfluity of space amongst the great officers and dignitaries of his court. In the new portion already completed along the Rue Rivoli the Ministère d'Etat has been installed. Farther down, towards the Louvre, rises the handsome Pavillon de Rohan, which faces the old street of that name. This pavillon, with the building immediately adjacent, is occupied by the commandant and a regiment of a thousand soldiers, in addition to the Cent Gardes, who are also to be lodged beneath the same roof with the sovereign. From the graceful watch-tower which crowns the Pavillon de Rohan there is an uninterrupted view of the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, and the distant quays. The Rue Richelieu is visible in its whole length; but a much vaster opening is meditated in the shape of a wide street with trees—a boulevard in short-which is to run northward through the Rue de Grammont to Montmartre. On the east, the view at present extends to the Place de la Bastille, and will reach the extremity of Paris in that direction. There can no longer be any Mysteries of Paris. An insurrection which begins to muster in a distant quarter will at once be under the field of the telegraph and the range of the gun. When we add that the great lateral sewer, which runs under this vast street from one end of Paris to the other, is traversed above the channel of its waters by an iron railroad, and that any number of troops can thus be conveyed in secrecy and safety to any quarter where they may be required, it will be seen what advantages the government

There have been one hundred and fifty-five artists in sculpture employed, at a cost of nearly 70,000l. This will give some idea of the patronage extended to art. The decoration of the interior of the palaces offers still more ample means of employing artists of every description.