Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/143

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Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. 113 and similar public buildings in such cities as Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen, and Marseilles may be cited as good examples of the style when employed for edifices of a secondary class. The street architecture of Paris was largely improved under the Second Empire. The modern houses of Paris are especially remarkable for the happy arrangement of the windows, and for the general appropriateness of all the details, though wearisome in the monotony of their endless repetition. Our limits will not permit us to do more than make a brief allusion to the trophies of Paris, which, how- ever, deserve separate study, alike for their historical and artistic value. The Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, built after the design of Chalgrin, and decorated with grand groups of sculpture by Rude and many other artists, — commemorating the triumphs of the first Napoleon, — is the finest triumphal arch of Modern Europe. The Colonne Vendome, the Colonne de Juillet, the Fontaine St. Michel, and the Palais du Trocadero, are among the other con- spicuous public works of the present century. In Italy the classic revival was carried out with much purity of taste and refinement of detail, but nothing has been produced of sufficient novelty to call for special remark, with the exception perhaps of the Arco della Pace ("arch of peace") at Milan, commenced by Napoleon I., and finished by the Emperor of Austria. Russia has of late years shown considerable architectural activity. Many handsome marble palaces have been erected in St. Petersburg — all of them, however, from designs by foreign artists. The palace of the Archduke eha i