s been that the fabric has not
been quite stout enough to bear the weight of the dome, and that it
has required to be tied and propped and strengthened in various ways
from time to time. The plan of the Pantheon is a Greek cross, with a
short vestibule, and a noble portico at the west, and a choir
corresponding to the vestibule on the east. It has a fine central
dome, which is excellently seen from many points of view externally,
and forms the principal feature of the very effective interior. Each
arm of the building is covered by a flat domical vault; a single order
of pilasters and columns runs quite round the interior of the church
occupying the entire height of the walls; and the light is admitted in
a most successful manner by large semicircular windows at the upper
part of the church, starting above the cornice of the order.

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--L'EGLISE DES INVALIDES, PARIS. BY J. H.
MANSARD. (BEGUN A.D. 1645.)]

One other work of the eighteenth century challenges the admiration
of every visitor to Paris and must not be overlooked, because it is at
once a specimen of architecture and of that skilful if formal
arrangement of streets and public places in combination with buildings
which the French have carried so far in the present century. We allude
to the two blocks of buildings, occupied as government offices, which
front to the Place de la Concorde and stand at the corner of the Rue
Royale. They are the work of Gabriel (1710-1782), and are justly
admired as dignified if a little heavy and uninteresting. As specimens
of architecture these buildings, with the Pantheon, are enough to
establish a high character for French art at a time when in most other
European countries the standard of taste had fallen to a very low
level.

The hotels (_i.e._ town mansions) and chateaux of the French nobility
furnish a series of examples, showing the successive styles of almost
every part of the Renaissance period. The phases of the style,
subsequent to that of Francis the First, can however, be so well
illustrated by public buildings in Paris, that it will be hardly
necessary to go through a list of private residences however
commanding; but the Chateau of Maisons, and the Royal Chateau of
Fontainebleau, may be named as specimens of a class of building which
shows the capacity of the Renaissance style when freely treated.

Renaissance buildings in France are distinguished by their large
extent and the ample sp