Paris July 1st 1860
My dear Mlle Amélina
I have been taking a ramble in the gallery of the Louvre being Sunday, there was a great crowd – Paris is now become a very beautiful city – The Tuileries are now united to the Louvre, by the new buildings of the place Napoleon III – The effect is extremely fine – All the rubbishy old buildings have been pulled down & swept away, and a simple vast palace is now seen. In the place Nap. III are two octagonal gardens, each of which has 4 large gates always open at the 4 corners – These gardens relieve the vast area of the place – One of the things I most admire in the Paris shops are the large plate glass windows which are the largest & most perfect I ever saw, nor do I think that they can be surpassed in future – There is now a city telegraph in Paris curved over the roofs of the houses – You see the wires high above your head – Formerly one might not walk in the end of the Tuileries garden next the place, wch was reserved for the Royal Family now it is all open to the public – <1>
An extremely small gold coin now circulates in Paris, it is worth only 5 francs, & it is too small for a coin. This is the result of the Californian discoveries, wch have also abolished the difference in value between gold and silver coin of the same amount. Formerly travellers were obliged to load themselves with heavy sacks of dollars, or else to pay a heavy agio if they asked for gold. Now the banker offers gold. Such elegance reigns in my hotel that they serve the lumps of sugar accurately cut into the shape of little bricks, instead of the uncouth forms prevalent in England. I went to see some Experiments in Optics which were very pretty One is a new invention by M. Becquerel <2> member de l’Institut on phosphorescence – Some diamonds & many other substances if held for a moment in the Sun, and then brought [illegible deletion] into a dark room, shine for some minutes. M. Becquerel has found that all substances do so, but that they only shine for a fraction of a second. To show this, the spectators are placed in a dark room, and by help of an apparatus, the diamond or other body, is taken into a bright electric light (to imitate the sun) placed behind a screen & then brought round into the dark where the spectators see it shine – So it is whirled round & round rapidly & you then see it shine constantly – The colours are different. Rubies shine red other substances yellow, orange, bluish &c
Addio – Yours afftly
H. F. Talbot
address Poste Restante
Bayonne
Notes:
1. WHFT was marvelling at the initial results of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann's (1809-1891) transformation of Paris. Commissioned by Napoleon III, most of the modernisations were effected from 1852-1870, although work continued through the end of the 19thcentury.
2.Alexandre-Edmond Bequerel (1820-1891) invented the phosphoroscope in 1859 as part of his pioneering experiments measuring the decay of light in phosphorescent compounds. A round metal chamber had a pair of rotating disks inside, each of which had cut-out windows spaced equally at regular angular distances. A sample of the compound was strongly illuminated and a hand crank rotated the disks. The experimenter viewed the sample through the front aperture. By varying the speed of shutter rotation, the duration of the afterglow could be determined.