Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878. Various
uniformity is broken by great boldness and variety in the structural form of the building, and by its pillars, deep colonnades and heavy cornices, giving shadows which prevent monotony of tint.
While artists and architects disagree like the proverbial doctors, and purists shudder at the jumble of orders, periods and nationalities, a tyro may well hesitate. An opinion of the building will no more suit everybody than does the building itself; but one cannot entirely forfeit one's reputation for taste, for each will find some agreeing judgments. All must acknowledge that it has a gala air. Its central dome, tall minarets and wings widespread toward the river crown the height and seem to foster the beauties they partly enclose.
The circular corridor of the rotunda is surmounted by the Muses and other figures typical of the future purposes of the building. The rotunda-walls are themselves castellated, the towers being interplaced with windows of Saracenic arched form. The béton pavement of the corridors and balcony is made of annular fragments, facets upward, of black, red, white and slate-colored marbles, feldspar and other stones. It is as hard as natural rock and as smooth as half-polished marble. A tessellated fret pattern is made along the borders of the corridor floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth cubes of marble inserted in the cement. The square balusters are of red-mottled marble, with base and entablature of dull rose. The square corner pillars support figures allegorizing the six divisions of the earth.
The vestibules at the sides of the tower are open east and west for the passage to and from the garden, and at the sides have doors which admit to the Grande Salle and the flanking galleries respectively. The interior red scagliola columns of the vestibule are in pairs, with white bases and capitals, the latter combining the lotus-leaf with the volute. The soffits of the ceiling have panels of yellow with orange border, contrasting with iron beams painted a chocolate brown.
The uniformity of the long and curved colonnades which form the wings of the building is broken by square porticoes, which have entrances to the galleries and small terraces in front, with steps leading to the garden. The wall back of the white pillars of this long promenade is painted of a warm but not glaring red. The roof is of tile and skylight. The base of the colonnade beneath the balustrade and pillars is a rough concrete wall hidden by a sloping bank of evergreens, upon which the eye rests pleasantly amid so much wall-space and architectural decoration.
In front of the corridor of the rotunda is a projecting balcony, with six gigantic female figures on the corners of its balustrade representing Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. These statues are of metal gilt, and typify by countenance and accompanying emblems the portions of the globe they represent. Europe is an armed figure with sword: at her side are the caduceus, olive-branch, books and easel. Asia has a spear and a couch with elephant heads. Africa is a negress, with the characteristic grass-rope basket containing dates. North America is an Indian, but the civilization of the land is indicated by an anchor, beehive and cog-wheel. Australia is a gin, with a waddy, boomerang and kangaroo. South America sits on a cotton-bale, has a condor by her side, and at her feet are tropical fruits—pineapples, bananas and brazil-nuts.
The balustrade of the balcony is of a light marble with faint red mottling, and in front of it is a boiling pool of water at the level of the hand-rail. A large volume of water overflows the curved edge of this pool and falls twenty feet into a basin beneath, the first of a series of nine whose overflows in successive steps form the cascade technically known as a "château d'eau," the finest of which description of ornamental waterworks is at the Château St. Cloud, one of the mementos of the fatal luxury which precipitated the Revolution of 1789. The cascade of St. Cloud plays once a month for half an hour—that at the Exposition during the whole day. From one jet at St. Cloud issue five thousand gallons per minute: the supply at the Exposition is twenty-four thousand cubic feet per hour. Most of this water runs over the edge of the balcony-pool, and the fall of fifty-six cubic feet per second a distance of twenty feet creates no mean roar and mist in the archway beneath the balcony, where visitors walk behind the falls and look through the sheet of water. It is not fair to compare at all points the cascades of the Exposition and St. Cloud. The amount of water may probably not be greatly different, but the fantastic profusion of spiratory objects and long succession of overflow basins and urns in the works at the château has no parallel in those of the Trocadéro. The cascades of St. Cloud are disappointing: the object should be to add to landscape effect by water in motion, and the principle is entirely missed when the water is made a mere accessory to a series of stone steps, jars and monsters. Steps are made to walk upon, jars to hold water. An interminable series of either with water poured over them is not the work of a genius. If the first suggestion to the mind be that a thing is a stairway, the fact that it is made too wet to walk upon does not constitute it a beautiful cascade. A row of jars on pedestals around a grass-plat has a pretty effect, because they do or may hold flowers, but to set several rows of them on a hillside and turn on the water is not art. As an admirable illustration of fantasy well wrought out the Fountain of Latona at Versailles may be cited. There Latona, having appealed to Jupiter against the inhabitants of Argos, who had deprived her of water, is deluged by jets from the unfortunates, who appear in various degrees of transformation into frogs.
THE ENGLISH QUARTER, ON INTERNATIONAL AVENUE.
The cascade of the Trocadéro has nothing meretricious about it. It is, like the building of which it is the finest ornament, of Jura marble, while much of the adjacent work is of artificial stone so admirably made that one cannot tell the difference, and is disposed to give the preference to the latter as evincing greater ingenuity than the mere patient chiselling of the quarry-stone. The pools are symmetrical, in conformity to the style of their surroundings, their overflows curved, the successive falls being about two feet after the first dash nine hundred and twenty feet from the balcony level. Each side of the cascade is flanked by six small pools in which are spouting and spray jets. The course ends in a pool which may be described as square, with circular bays on three of its sides. In this are one large jet and two smaller ones, which are themselves beautiful and keep the surface in a pleasant ripple. The corner pillars are crowned by colossal gilt figures of animals, supposed to represent what we were used to call the "four quarters of the earth"—Europe, Asia, Africa and America, as the books had it before America had attained any prominence in public estimation. These are typified by a horse, an elephant, a rhinoceros and a bull, the latter probably a tribute to our bison, but not much like him. These face the four winds, so to speak, and do indeed more nearly, as they are set obliquely, than do the grounds and buildings, the length of which runs north-west and south-east. Each animal has his back to the pool, and with one exception is in a rampant attitude.
Many thousands of cubic mètres of stone were quarried away to afford a site for the cascade, for the system of water-pipes which supply the various pools and jets and conduct off the surplus. The size of the site occupied by these hydraulic works is 360 by 75 feet.
The balcony of the Trocadéro facing toward the river and the Champ de Mars affords the most extensive view obtainable in the grounds. Beneath is the cascade with its basins and fountains, and spreading away on each side is the garden with its various national buildings, neat, gaudy or grotesque. Spanning the invisible roads and river is the broad Pont d'Iéna, and then comes a repetition of the garden, the sward dotted with parterres and buildings. A broad terrace, crowned with the splendid façade of the main building, does not quite terminate the view, for from the height of the lower corridor of the rotunda the buildings of Paris are seen to stretch away in the distance. The hill of Montmartre on the north and the heights of Chatillon and Clamart on the south terminate the view in those directions.
The cascade immediately beneath us has been already described, but how shall we give an impression of the appearance of the buildings collected in groups on each side of the main avenue? So great is the variety of objects to be presented that any very large unbroken surface of sward is impossible. The general plan is geometrical, and the absence of large trees on the newly-made ground has prevented any attempt at woodland scenery.
The French make great use of common flowers in obtaining effects of color. Some square beds of large size have centres of purple and white stocks, giving a mottled appearance, with a border of the tender blue forget-me-nots and a fringe of double daisies. Other beds are full of purple,