_Hôtel des Invalides._--The depository of all that remains of Napoleon, the monument of almost two hundred years of war, and the burial-place of a whole host of celebrated names, is well worth the visit of strangers; and I entered the esplanade of the famous _hôtel_ with due veneration, and some slight curiosity to see the changes of time. I had visited this noble pile immediately after the fall of Napoleon, and while it still retained the honours of an imperial edifice. Its courts now appeared to me comparatively desolate; this, however, may be accounted for by the cessation of those wars which peopled them with military mutilation. The establishment was calculated to provide for five thousand men; and, at that period, probably, it was always full. At present, scarcely more than half the number are under its roof; and, as even the Algerine war is reduced to skirmishes with the mountaineers of the Atlas, that number must be further diminishing from year to year.
The Cupola then shone with gilding. This was the work of Napoleon, who had a stately eye for the ornament of his imperial city. The cupola of the Invalides thus glittered above all the roofs of Paris, and was seen glittering to an immense distance. It might be taken for the dedication of the French capital to the genius of War. This gilding is now worn off practically, as well as metaphorically, and the _prestige_ is lost.
The celebrated Edmund Burke, all whose ideas were grand, is said to have proposed gilding the cupola of St Paul's, which certainly would have been a splendid sight, and would have thrown a look of stateliness over that city to which the ends of the earth turn their eyes. But the civic spirit was not equal to the idea, and it has since gone on lavishing ten times the money on the embellishment of _lanes_.
The Chapel of the Invalides looked gloomy, and even neglected; the great Magician was gone. Some service was performing, as it is in the Romish chapels at most hours of the day: some poor people were kneeling in different parts of the area; and some strangers were, like myself, wandering along the nave, looking at the monuments to the fallen military names of France. On the pillars in the nave are inscriptions to the memory of Jourdan, Lobau, and Oudinot. There is a bronze tablet to the memory of Marshal Mortier, who was killed by Fieschi's infernal machine, beside Louis Philippe; and to Damremont, who fell in Algiers.