LONGCHAMPS, a part of the Bois de Boulogne w. of Paris, for centuries the resort of the pleasure-seekers of that city; still one of the most brilliant promenades in the world, and the site of the principal race-ground of France. It has an interesting history. As early as the 13th c. the abbaye of Longchamps was founded by Isabel, sister of Saint Louis. Monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals gathered round it as they AN ere founded and endowed in successive reigns of the kings of France, until the place at one time became the seat of forty religious ommizations. Before the time of Henry IV. they had become the scene of corrupt practices, so that he seems to have had no difficulty in. taking Catherine de Verdun, a 111111 of the age of 22, from the convent to be his mistress. Vincent de Paul, writing to cardinal Mazarin in 1652, says that " this convent for 200. years has been marching towards total depravity of manners to ruin. Its parlors are open to all, even to young gentlemen without parents; the brothers and rectors do not. object. The lady religieuees wear their garments immodestly and carry gold watches. When war forces them to take refuge in the city they lend themselves to scandal, and go alone and in secret where they are desired." A century before out-door preaching had attracted great crowds from Paris to Longchamps, where, under cover of religious fervor, license found a cloak. In 1521 pope Leo X., by a bull, accorded to the religious. organizations of Longchamps the duty of commemoratixto- the miracles of the princess Isabel by services on the last day of Awmst of each year. t'This became a great fete day, attracting multitudes from Paris. en Mt. Valerian there dwelt many hermits and other religious persons. These also attracted crowds of people at all thnes who made Longchamps their meeting-place, going to and fro. Centuries before the revolution of
1789 Longchamps was such a. resort for the people of Paris that a French writer alludes to it as " a fluxion of these people." In the reign of Louis XV. three days of holy-week were devoted by the rank and wealth of the court to pilgrimages to the abbaye of Long champs. A French writer of that time remarks of these occasions: "Pleasures and devo tions first marched abreast, but pleasures soon stepped to the front." Religious singing became the rage, because it brought together the beau monde of Paris, and the beautiful " recluses" of the convent. Crowds went from Paris to hear the delightful singing there, and the training of the church was a school for the opera. Longchamps became the freqiient theater of tumultuous crowds. Before the revolution archbishop Beau mont of Paris ordered the church closed on the days when those pleasures of the holy week had become a scandal to the church; but the gay people from the city found means to continue their reunions elsewhere adjacent to the convent walls.
Such was the character and the popularity of this place of resort when the ordinances of the revolution in 1789-90 confiscated the lands of such religious organizations to the stztte. The Longchamps properties were sold to speculators. The hammer of innova tion destroyed all its monuments of that convent era., of which it had become the most conspicuous shame. There now remain no vestiges of all that history tells us of them. But the same gay throngs that for four hundred years have surged out from Paris to these fields now walk and ride to the race-grounds and park that have taken the place of the buildings and garden of the abbey of Longchaums.