Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home
Excerpt from the book "Burton Holmes Travelogues"
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France: The charm of Paris
Of all European capitals perhaps Paris is the one best known to Americans. Everyone has heard the saying that "good Americans when they die go to Paris," but fewer have heard the flippant remarks of one of our younger wits that "the bad ones get there while they are alive!" Good Americans - and bad - adore Paris. Paris becomes to them a sweetheart. London, a little repellent at first sight in its dingy, unlovely dignity, becomes in time a friend. One loves Paris. One admires London. I remember vividly all the incidents of my first visit to Paris. Of the London of that year, I have only a foggy souvenir. Who can resist the city's charm? I confess that I cannot. To me it is a pleasure simply to be in Paris.With every recurring visit, I find that I gaze on it with a sense of novelty and interest and pleasure for which I can find no expression in words. I, too, exclaim,"Paris, Paris, Paris!" The very name is evocative, whether we think of it as a mere sound on the lips and in the ear, or as a magical written or printed word for the eye.
Whoever celebrates the famous things of Paris cannot but repeat what has been said a thousand times in praise of her museums and her monuments, her treasures of art, her incomparable avenues, and her splendid decorative spaces. There is no place in all the world like it. No city fascinates like the City by the Seine. None of the world's great capitals is so truly the capital of the great world.
Whoever you may be, whatever things attract you, you will be at home in Paris; you will find there the very thing you seek. In a word, Paris is everything to everybody; but, above all, Paris is Paris, and whichever sight of Paris pleases you, I hope you may find a little of your Paris here.
In 1900 Paris the capital was rearing the gorgeous modern palaces of the Exposition Universelle, which was to mark the close of the glorious and never-to-be-forgetten nineteenth century. The Exposition Universelle captured the attention of the entire modern world. The French had transformed a muddy wasteland into a vision of green lawns, flowers, and thousands of exhibits from nearly every nation on earth.While the wonders of the present were displayed, the main idea was to show mankind's future. Visitors saw a moving pavement, wireless telegraphy, the first escalator, and the most powerful telescope ever built.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
France: The charm of Paris
Of all European capitals perhaps Paris is the one best known to Americans. Everyone has heard the saying that "good Americans when they die go to Paris," but fewer have heard the flippant remarks of one of our younger wits that "the bad ones get there while they are alive!" Good Americans - and bad - adore Paris. Paris becomes to them a sweetheart. London, a little repellent at first sight in its dingy, unlovely dignity, becomes in time a friend. One loves Paris. One admires London. I remember vividly all the incidents of my first visit to Paris. Of the London of that year, I have only a foggy souvenir. Who can resist the city's charm? I confess that I cannot. To me it is a pleasure simply to be in Paris.With every recurring visit, I find that I gaze on it with a sense of novelty and interest and pleasure for which I can find no expression in words. I, too, exclaim,"Paris, Paris, Paris!" The very name is evocative, whether we think of it as a mere sound on the lips and in the ear, or as a magical written or printed word for the eye.
Whoever celebrates the famous things of Paris cannot but repeat what has been said a thousand times in praise of her museums and her monuments, her treasures of art, her incomparable avenues, and her splendid decorative spaces. There is no place in all the world like it. No city fascinates like the City by the Seine. None of the world's great capitals is so truly the capital of the great world.
Whoever you may be, whatever things attract you, you will be at home in Paris; you will find there the very thing you seek. In a word, Paris is everything to everybody; but, above all, Paris is Paris, and whichever sight of Paris pleases you, I hope you may find a little of your Paris here.
In 1900 Paris the capital was rearing the gorgeous modern palaces of the Exposition Universelle, which was to mark the close of the glorious and never-to-be-forgetten nineteenth century. The Exposition Universelle captured the attention of the entire modern world. The French had transformed a muddy wasteland into a vision of green lawns, flowers, and thousands of exhibits from nearly every nation on earth.While the wonders of the present were displayed, the main idea was to show mankind's future. Visitors saw a moving pavement, wireless telegraphy, the first escalator, and the most powerful telescope ever built.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Burton Holmes Travelogues, The Greatest Traveler of His Time
Hardcover, 30.5 x 26 cm (12 x 10.2 in.), 368 pages
$ 59.99
$ 59.99
Wanderlust: Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home
Henri Giffard's captive steam balloon, Tuileries Palace, Paris, 1878 (photographer unidentified)