ificent art of architecture.

Unlike the unwieldy and ponderous classic or Italian systems, whose
pride cannot stoop to anything beneath the haughtiest uses of life
without being broken into the whims of the grotesque and _Rococo_, the
_Romantique_ has already exhibited the graceful ease with which it may
be applied to the most playful as well as the most serious employments
of Art. It has decorated the perfumer's shop on the Boulevards with the
most delicate fancies woven out of the odor of flowers and the finest
fabrics of Nature, and, in the hands of Labrouste, has built the great
Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, the most important work with pure Greek
lines, and perhaps the most exquisite, while it is one of the most
serious, of modern buildings. The lore of the classics and the knowledge
of the natural world, idealized and harmonized by affectionate study,
are built up in its walls, and, internally and externally, it is a work
of the highest Art. The _Romantique_ has also been used with especial
success in funereal monuments. Structures of this character, demanding
earnestly in their composition the expression of human sentiment, have
hitherto been in most cases unsatisfactory, as they have been built
out of a narrow range of Renaissance, Egyptian and Gothic _motives_,
originally invented for far different purposes, and, since then,
_classified_, as it were, for use, and reduced to that inflexible system
out of which have come the formal restrictions of modern architecture.
Hence these _motives_ have never come near enough to human life, in its
individual characteristics, to be plastic for the expression of those
emotions to which we desire to give the immortality of stone in memory
of departed friends. The _Romantique_, however, confined to no rigid
types of external form, out of its noble freedom is capable of giving
"a local habitation and a name" to a thousand affections which hitherto
have wandered unseen from heart to heart, or been palpable only in words
and gestures which disturb our sympathies for a while and then die.
Probably the most remarkable indication of this capacity, as yet shown,
is contained in a tomb erected by Constant Dufeux in the Cimetiere du
Sud, near Paris, for the late Admiral Dumont d'Urville. This structure
contains in its outlines a symbolic expression of human life, death,
and immortality, and in its details an architectural version of the
character and public services of the distinguishe