Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

[232] to all who chose to attend. To-day I spent several hours in another place presenting interests of a different kind, but open gratis to the citizen and stranger. This was at the Museums of the Louvre,—a royal palace, and truly royal it is, converted into a receptacle for collections of paintings, antiquities, and curiosities. I had not been there before, as my time had been so much occupied by some necessary arrangements for my sojourn in Paris. I had often read and heard of the Louvre, but I had no adequate idea of its vastness, or of the extent of its collections. Here were upwards of three thousand pictures, of the French, Dutch, German, and Italian schools,—with a Spanish gallery also, which was just opened.—containing numerous productions of the first masters, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Caracci, Murillo, &c. A portion of these galleries was open to all, both citizens and strangers, without question of any kind. At what is called the long gallery, however, containing the principal collection of paintings, strangers were required to exhibit their passports and sign their names in a book preserved at the porter's lodge. In this gallery numerous artists, many of them women, were employed in making copies of the paintings, liberty being always given for this purpose on proper application. I will not here record the impressions produced on my mind by the sight of this magnificent palace and its numerous apartments devoted to such purposes. I passed through all the rooms,— those of painting, antiquity, designs, and of the marine,—taking merely a hasty coup d'oeil of the varied scene, and reserving for subsequent visits a more minute examination.

Jan. 12. Went again to the scene of lectures. At the Sorbonne, heard Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire¹ on natural history; he appeared to be considering the subject of comparative anatomy. He was a man apparently about thirty-five years of age, not over-careful in dress; in manner earnest and apparently interesting. The room in which he lectured was similar in size and shape to the old Circuit-Court room² at Boston, and the professor's tribune not unlike the bench of the judge. He sat during his lecture, as have all the professors whom I have heard; and his audience (the greater part of them) kept their hats on. Many of them were men considerably advanced, certainly beyond the age of students. At the Sorbonne I also heard Constant Prevost³ on geology, and Lenormant on ancient history. The former lectured in the same room that had been occupied by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. He appeared to be about forty-five years old, and was a pleasant lecturer. The room was full, and many were taking notes. I forgot to mention that when Saint-Hilaire closed his lecture there was applause by stamping the feet. Lenormant⁴ lectured instead of Guizot, who has become absorbed