Paris, June 1843

Paris, 19 June 1843
[Jacob Burckhardt to Willibald Beyschlag]

"As for Paris, it is far from making the historic impression which one expects of it. In spite of the foolish love which French art and Paris society show for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, everyone is anxiously on the look-out for what is most modern, and a hundred life-size advertisements cry down every memory of the past at all the classical spots in the town. One only gets a mythical notion of the first Revolution; on the whole, Paris is far more absorbed in an anxious care for the future than in recollections of its past, although the individual memorials are legion. I do not think it can be very long before there is another explosion. In the meantime everyone is living from day to day, that is the predominating impression."

-- The Letters of Jacob Burckhardt, ed. Alexander Dru, 1955, p. 81-82.