e Florentine front
of the Luxembourg Palace. All those houses that were built at a later
period, even those which affect a certain severe luxury (the Sorbonne,
for example), are occasionally great, but never grand. With their
lofty pointed roofs, and stiff straight lines, they have always a dry,
dull, and monotonous appearance, a _priestly_ or _old-maidenish_ look.
In this they scarcely belie themselves, the greater part of them having
been built to accommodate the numberless females belonging to the
nobility and upper class of citizens, who, in order to enrich a son,
condemned their unfortunate daughters to a sad, but decent death.

The monuments of the middle ages have a melancholy, but not a
dispiriting look; we feel, on looking at them, the vigour and sincerity
of the sentiment that inspired their builders. They are not, generally
speaking, official monuments, but living works of the people, the
offspring of their faith. But these, on the contrary, are nothing else
than the creation of a class,--that class of newly-created nobles that
swarmed into life in the seventeenth century by subserviency, the
ante-chamber, and ministerial offices. They are hospitals opened for
the daughters of these families. Their great number might almost
deceive us as to the strength and extent of the religious re-action of
that time. Look at them well, and tell me, I pray you, whether you can
discern the least trace about them of the ascetic character--are they
religious houses, hospitals, barracks, or colleges? There is nothing
to prove what they are. They would be perfectly fit for any civil
purpose. They have but one character, but it is a very decided one:
serious uniformity, decent mediocrity, and _ennui_.--It is _ennui_
itself, personified in an architectural form--a palpable, tangible, and
visible _ennui_.

The reason of these houses being indefinitely multiplied is, that the
austerity of the ancient rules having been then much modified, parents
had less hesitation in making their daughters take the veil; for it was
no longer burying them alive. The parlours were saloons frequented by
crowds, under the pretext of being edified. Fine ladies came there to
confide their secrets, filling the minds of the nuns with intrigues and
vexations, and troubling them with useless regrets.

These worldly cares caused the interior of the convents to appear to
them still more dismal; for there they had nothing but trifling insipid
ce