_November 1789._ _La Place des Victoires._--If Rowlandson's visits to Paris had produced no other memorial than his inimitable picture _La Place des Victoires, Paris_, we should be satisfied with the result of his familiarity with Parisian life at the period immediately antecedent to the Revolutionary era.
The study, as a whole, is one of the most memorable we can ascribe to his skilful hand and his remarkable powers of profitable observation. The Circus, built by Mansard, one of the features of Paris under the Grand Monarque, remains in all its freshness to the present day; but it has shared the fate a similar monument would have suffered had it remained in the busy precincts of the East of London. Finding itself in the heart, as it were, of the trading centre of the city, near the Bourse, and hedged and elbowed around by the warehouses and industries of the busy commercial population, it has undergone an indignity which would vex the spirit of its founder and make the shade of the little monarch, in honour of whose victories it was erected and christened, exclaim against the degeneracy which the taste of his countrymen has undergone, and he would probably deplore the concession to utilitarianism which has transmogrified the well-known spot. _La Place des Victoires_ in its present aspect is curiously disguised by hideous placards; between each of the columns appear two or more humorous advertising boards, filling up the intermediate spaces, and inscribed with recommendations to purchasers to secure their wardrobe _au bon Diable_, and notices of a similar inviting character. Rowlandson has given a further indication of the Parisian centre--at the expense of topographical accuracy, it must be admitted--by introducing the towers of Notre Dame in a proximity somewhat closer than is legitimately warranted by the actual position of the mother church.
The monument, as seen in Rowlandson's veracious representation, is a splendid example of exaggerated glorification. The statue of a warrior--surely not intended to resemble the stout little monarch to whose glory it is dedicated--is trampling on an allegorical personage typifying the conquered enemies of France; while the figure of Fame, holding her trumpet ready to sound the victor's praises, is crowning the hero with a wreath. Four chained slaves, cast in bronze, indicative of Louis' triumphs, are shown at the base; these figures may now be seen in the Louvre. A courtier, or a disabled general, is pushed along in a ramshackle carriage, a sort of wheeled sedan, drawn by an old soldier, with two footmen to follow; the Frenchman is regarding the stupendous monument raised to the glories of the Grand Nation with rapturous devotion. An _abbé_, with his hands in an enormous muff, is passing, with his nose in the air; a _coquette à la mode_ is leaning on his arm and raising her hood to shoot forth glances of fascination; a handsome young officer, wearing a monstrous _queue_, is launching an admiring look towards the fair beguiler; but her attention is engaged elsewhere, and the Parthian shot falls harmless. A shoeblack in the foreground is teaching a poodle to dance; the comical animal's head is decorated with an old peruke. A pair of extensive beaux of the period are seen saluting each other with elaborate bows which would have filled the late Mr. Simpson, M.C., with despair. In the right-hand corner is shown a monk (Sterne's original _Brother Lorenzo_), shrinking away from recollections of the past. A downright English John Bull, in huge riding-boots, and a pretty English girl, his companion, in a habit, lacking the surrounding enthusiasm, are looking at the monument with the indifference of travellers who are in duty bound to take note of all the sights, but who, beyond the principle involved, find small gratification in the ordeal; an English mastiff, the property of the strangers, is curiously regarding another exotic, an Italian greyhound. In the distance is shown a female porter and her donkey, followed by a procession of friars; a French nobleman and his lady are driving by in gallant state, with a _Suisse_ and a whole string of genteel footmen clinging like flies behind their chariot.