If good materials and excellent workmanship can make a building interesting, assuredly the Madeleine ought to be so. Commenced in 1764 as a church, its fate was somewhat similar to that of S. GeneviÈve, for, in 1806, Napoleon, then busy in Posen, sent his orders that it should be finished as a Temple of Glory. The pediment was to bear the following inscription:—"L'empereur NapolÉon aux soldats de la grande armÉe;" and the 5th article of the decree was thus composed: "Tous les ans, aux anniversaires des batailles d'Austerlitz et d'IÉna, le monument sera illuminÉ, et il y sera donnÉ un concert prÉcÉdÉ d'un discours sur les vertus necessaires au soldat, et d'un Éloge de ceux qui pÉrirent sur le champ de bataille dans ces journÉes memorables.... Dans les discours et odes, il est expressÉment dÉfendu de faire mention de l'empereur."

Pierre Vignon carried on the work, and the building grew into a magnificent temple, planned upon the Maison CarrÉe of Nismes. The results of Waterloo turned it again church ways, but it was not finished until 1842. The bronze doors are perhaps the best work of Baron de Triqueti; and the group of the Magdalen over the altar may be no more mundane and meretricious than is usual in Marochetti's performances. The picture in the vault over the altar is a jumble by Ziegler of sacred and secular personages, from the Magdalen and her Master down to Napoleon the arrogant. It is supposed to be an allegory of the history of Christianity, which Clovis introduced to France, and Napoleon patted on the back by means of the Concordat. The most important position in the picture is occupied by the last-named brigand—the poor Pope even being in a secondary place, somewhat inferior to the imperial eagle. The group in the baptistry is by Rude; the one opposite, in a chapel dedicated to marriage, by Pradier. It was in the Madeleine that some of the Communards were massacred in 1871. At the end of the struggle, about 300 of them were driven into the church; and there, before the altar where their victim, the abbÉ Duguerry had officiated, they were mown down in terrible retribution, with no more mercy shown them than they had accorded to the hostages.

In the interior fittings of the church, no expense has been spared, and what it lacks in beauty as regards sculpture and painting it possesses in its marble walls and its carved woodwork. The pulpit is an excellent piece of modern wood-carving; the details of the ornament are in the best style; and so are most of the worshippers; for it is one of the fashionable churches of Paris. There, especially at the lazy mass (as the old writer has it, "la messe des paresseux," which was said at "la plus haute heure du matin," at "unze heures,") you see "des mondaines" by the dozen; only the lazy eleven o'clock has become one in the afternoon. What in the world would the old chronicler have said to the swarms of fashionables who just save their souls by hurrying off after a comfortable dÉjeuner to those one o'clock masses? But there is a mixture at the Madeleine; old ladies of the noblesse; nouveaux riches; a few soldiers who like the music; half-a-dozen husbands who go as a duty to their wives; an old Bretonne gorgeous in chains and muslin, and velvet bodice; and two or three black women, charming in the yellow silk handkerchiefs which swathe their heads. It is a mixture, and what brings them? Probably the music, for at no church in Paris, and few elsewhere, do you hear such refined, soft, emotional strains as there. Sometimes the boys' voices are not of the best; but the artistic taste with which they sing is always there. S. Roch has a reputation for its choir, gained many years ago by its execution of the masses of Mozart and Haydn; but it no longer deserves it. S. Eustache also is celebrated for its music. But there is a special tone about that of the Madeleine one meets with nowhere else; it aims at raising one's soul from the earth upon which it is supposed to grovel; it certainly never interrupts prayer or disturbs thought. Even on Good Friday, when the old Passione by Haydn, or the new one by Dubois, is performed, refinement, not clatter, is the distinguishing characteristic. If only some of our London organists would take a leaf out of the Madeleine music-book! Just think of the noise at a certain West-end church, which is the model of all that ritual should be. From its foundation, what we all loved was the refinement of its music; it was the exponent of Gregorian chants and Plain song. Now the most elaborate compositions are performed for the edification and vanity of the choir. Church music ought certainly to be an aid to prayer, not a disturbing force; but what else can it be, when organ and choir are all shrieking Haydn's Imperial Mass, or Beethoven in C, and each man or boy is trying to get the mastery? It is a bitter duel between organ and voices. All the great masters' masses are sung at the Madeleine; but you can devote yourself to your own prayers all through them without being disturbed, if you so wish. Moreover, one hour suffices in Paris for what in London endures an hour and a half, or more. And is not the long, elaborate credo answerable for the objectionable Roman practice of sitting through the greater part of it? Of course church music should be of the most perfect kind; but perfection is sure to be greater where less is attempted; and the mere repetitions of words, and the placing of the accent upon the wrong note in the English translation, make these elaborate masses unsuitable in our churches.

The ceremonial at the Madeleine always gives strangers the impression of having been over-rehearsed. The black-clothed beadles walk about with measured steps, particularly the frog faced one; the Suisses in their cocked hats leisurely saunter about with their halberds looking the essence of flunkeyism, and never issue from their stereotyped expression of importance and unmixed boredom, except upon occasions when a foreigner fails to kneel at solemn moments. Why need the good Protestant remain sitting when the bell rings, feigning a kneeling posture by a sort of zigzag attitude? Up comes the Suisse, and shaking the back of his chair, tries to jerk him out of it. Why not stand, if rags of popery and scarlet women prevent you kneeling? Or why go at all, if you cannot do at Rome as Rome does? I confess to feeling a sensation of distress, and am much upset when that chair-tipping begins. And the worst of if is that, although the victim is innocent of what lies in store for him, we, who know the ways of the Suisses, anxiously anticipate the fatal moment. Sometimes, too, the British-born struggles to look pious, while he furtively reads his Baedeker, never dreaming that the benighted foreigner knows that Classic by its blood-red exterior. We are a great people, and are justly proud of our institutions; but we should be no less great if we had a little more respect for other folks, and other folks' manners and customs.

It is curious how the church beadle varies. At the Madeleine he is pure flunkey. His cocked hat is high and broad, like the old Bumble of our childhood; he is whiskered, but not bearded; he has an arrogant way with him as he precedes the priest who makes the collection; and as he carries the bag into which the alms are emptied from time to time, he looks the essence of important officialism. Likewise, when he demands, in a commanding voice, "Pour les pauvres, s'il vous plait!" few persons would say him nay. Not so the Suisses of S. Eustache; they have the military air; the cocked hat is low, and worn as by the Marshals of France. Such are they also at S. Roch, and at both churches they salute at the Elevation, À la militaire.

It has always seemed to me that the author of Monsieur, Madame et BÉbÉ, pictured the Madeleine in his scenes of Madame at church; at all events I have often seen the like. She kneels on her velvet-covered prie-Dieu, and tells her beads; and then, between a Pater Noster and a new batch of Ave Marias, she turns round to a neighbour, "Ah! chÈre madame, comment allez vous? et monsieur votre mari? Et la chÈre petite BÉbÉ?" "Merci, chÈre baronne, mon mari ne va pas trop mal; il a la migraine, voilÀ tout. Et BÉbÉ, c'est un ange; elle est ravissante, le petit chou. Mais moi, je souffre, oh, comme je souffre! je suis tellement ÉreintÉe que.... Je vous salue Marie, pleine de grÂce.".... "How adorable is the Madeleine," said Dibden; but he meant its exterior at twilight, when the lights spring up on the neighbouring boulevards. And so it is in its way; but its way is to some of us not the most beautiful way.

Many are the functions which take place there; marriages and funerals by the score. At the latter, it affords ample room under its portico for that terrible French custom which forces all the family of the deceased to stand by the door and receive the condolences of their friends and acquaintances. How do they ever survive it? And why do they not rebel against the conventionality, and give it up? Because they are at once the most conventional of nations, added to the most revolutionary. The funeral terror is greater in France that here at home; it is one of the few things in which we are ahead of our neighbours. We do not waste quite so much upon putting our friends underground, although we too are compelled to pay twice as much as we ought. But in some respects the French are far more decent. Men raise their hats at passing funerals, and I have never seen the undertakers sitting in the open car when returning from the cemetery; an indecent proceeding like the one immortalized in Figaro. "Mon Dieu! What strange people, ces Anglais! When they return from a funeral, the friends of the deceased ride upon the top of the hearse with their legs hanging over it!"

One of the beauties of the Madeleine is the flower-garden at its feet, and the tree-planted boulevards which surround it. How pleasant it is to be able to sit down in the air upon a warm evening; would that we could do likewise! Here, sunset is the last moment when we can breathe the air of most of the parks, without perpetually tramping round and round upon our weary legs. But in Paris we may sit and gaze upon the buildings by moonlight if we like; and certainly, that is the most flattering time for the Madeleine. Its portico, lighted up by the moon with the dark shadows thrown behind it, has a decidedly grand appearance.