Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/504

 they had been the scene. When the eager and curious crowd of sight-seers was finally allowed to enter, the disappointment was general. The newspaper accounts had been so horrible, that many expected to see but the blackened ruins of a once beautiful city. The bustle and activity in the streets were surprising to all, few being able to understand that finest trait of the French character, which enables the nation to rise superior to misfortune, and thus the sooner to conquer it.

Ruins, however, there were in quantities; France's finest palaces, the scenes of her oldest associations, had been ruthlessly destroyed, and amidst their charred and blackened masses the fire still smouldered angrily.

Foremost among these stood the Louvre and Tuileries—the former happily but little injured, if we except the destruction of its magnificent library; but the latter almost entirely destroyed.

These two piles of buildings were completed and harmonized under the second Empire. With their inclosures, they occupy an area of sixty acres, and may be said to have formed a single palace of unequaled splendor and magnitude.

The Louvre consists of the old and new Louvre. The old Louvre is nearly square, being 576 feet long by 538 wide, and contains a vast collection of sculpture, paintings, and other works of art. The eastern façade is one of the finest architectural works of any age or country; it is a colonnade of twenty-eight coupled Corinthian columns.

The new Louvre, inaugurated in 1857, consists of two piles of buildings projecting from two galleries, which join the old Louvre to the Tuileries, and forming the eastern boundary of the Place du Carousel. The Louvre was originally a hunting lodge, and was converted into a feudal fortress, about the year 1200, by Philip Augustus. It was enlarged by his successors, more particularly by Henry II