Selections from the papers and speeches of John Chalmers DaCosta.

  • John Chalmers DaCosta
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Selections from the papers and speeches of John Chalmers DaCosta. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mous prison, but the Revolution of July, 1830. The Obelisk of Luxor was being put up in the Place de la Concorde, and the Arc de l’Etoile had just been completed. It was in this reign that the body of Napoleon was brought from St. Helena and laid to rest beneath the golden dome of the Invalides, “in the heart of that people” he had “loved so well.” Many historic build¬ ings, since destroyed, were then standing. Among them may be mentioned the following: the palace of the Tuileries, which was built of variegated marble. In this building Louis XVI played the last moves in his poor game of royalty; the Tuileries was burnt by the Communists in 1870; the prison of the Abbaye, where Charlotte Corday was incarcerated, and where one of the most fearful massacres of the Revolution took place; and the prison of La Force, where the Princesse de Lamballe was im¬ prisoned, tried, and murdered. The Latin Quarter was still the real Latin Quarter so graph¬ ically depicted in Life in Bohemia. It had not yet been in¬ vaded by the tourist, and was not even touched by the kid- gloved hand of respectability. Its inhabitants were almost slighted by the law. It was populated by persons that, in the words of an observer of that period, had fled to this region to escape the contaminating touch of civilization. It was the home of unconventionalism, of idle good-fellowship, of light-hearted gaiety, of laughter and of song, of wild debauchery, and of pic¬ turesque poverty; and in this student’s world the grisette presided as the mistress of the house, and the songs of Beranger consti¬ tuted the staple music. The Latin Quarter of this time is spoken of by a former distinguished Professor of Surgery in the Uni¬ versity of Pennsylvania, Doctor Gibson,* who says it is a quarter “where the streets are so narrow and filthy and without pave¬ ments or sidewalks as to endanger life at every corner; where the houses are so high, old-fashioned, and gloomy as to resemble jails or penitentiaries, and nearly shut out the light of Heaven; where the Catacombs, those vast depositories of human bones, the ac¬ cumulated collection of ages, lie beneath the feet, extend unknown * See the “Memoir of J. Mason Warren,” by Howard Payson Arnold.