f PAKIS IN '67; OB, THE GREAT EXPOSITION, SIDE-SHOWS AND EXCURSIONS. BY HENEY MORFOKD, ("The Governor,") AUTHOR OF " OVKR-SBA," " SHOtTLDER-STKAPS," " DAYS OF SHODDY," " COUEAaB A-ND OOWAEDICE," " UTTEULY WKECKED," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK: GEO. W. CARLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS. LONDOX: S. LOW, SON & CO. MDCOCLXVII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year ISGT, by GEO. W. CARLETON & CO. In the Clerk's Office of the District Conrt of the United States for the Southern District of New York. fHEr;rTTV ) c,vT-.< EESPECTPULLT DEDICATED TO o. bai:n"beidge smith, esq., COTOTSELLOB-AT-LAW, OF KEW TOBK CITY, AXD OF " ■vrHILEA'n-AT," STATEX ISLA>'D ; OLD FRIEND AS WELL AS OLD EUROPEAN TRAVELER, AXD SHARER ^nTH THE WETTER DT THE GATETIES OP PARIS IN 1867. Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 witii funding from Researcii Library, Tine Getty Researcii Institute http://www.archive.org/details/parisin67orgreat00morf TABLE OF CO]^TENTS. About Things iit General, and Things Iittroductort in Parti- cular. — A Beginning at Interlaken — Partial Friends, and the Governor's Promise — The Serious Error of Presence — Not Too Much of Paris, and All the Countries in their Glory — The Aids of Other People Page 15 n. "What " Paris in '67 " is Destined to Be. — The Blessed Privilege of Indefiniteness and Indolence — "What is Not "Wanted in Books of Travel — How to Neutralize all Faults hj Mixing Plenty of Them — Glimpses to Come, of the Lake Country, the Shakspeare Neighbor- hoods, Switzerland, the Black Forest and Killamey 21 ni. About the Emperor of the French, and His Work op 1867. — The Governor's Missing Cross of the Legion — Peace-triumphs in- augurated by "War-nations — The late Prince Consort and Napoleon the Third — Has the Latter Done "Well and Deserved "Well in the Great Exposition ? 26 IV. "Whereabouts of the Great Exposition — The Champ de Mars. — "Where is It ? — A little Definite Information — The Meaning of the Name and Origin of the Grounds — Historical Glimpse of the Champ de Mars from Louis XV. to Napoleon III. — "What it "Was and Is 32 yi CONTENTS. V. How Paris "Prepared to Eeceite Boarders." — Paris "V^ashing Its Face — French Houses and French Living — Every Thing to Let — Lodging-Houses — The Episode of Madame W. and lost Celestine — The Grab Pattern set by the Exposition — How all Paris followed it — The Old Corporal's Horse-and-Cart Story — Scenes in the Maisons Meublees — How the G-overnor and Anna Maria went to the Exposition in State Page 40 The Eagle's Brood in Europe. — Something about National Eagles and the Gray Forest Eagle of the "West — Who are the " Eagle's Brood" — Infinite Variety of Americans Visiting Europe — The Curiosity and Respect Paid to the Land of the West in 1867 — American Peculiarities Abroad 59 vn. Thb Cat-nival of Crowned Heads. — The Gathering of Royalty at Paris — -How the Parisians and their Visitors Hunted the Crowned Heads — Reminiscences of Previous Visits — How the Royal Hosts Cover up Awkward Marks and Ugly Scars — Classification of the Notables — Who were Not Present, from the Pope to the Xing of tho Cannibal Islands ; and Why — The Reception of the Czar. — The Opera and Attempted Assassination 69 THr. The Opening op the Exposition, as Seen bt " Our Bot Tommy." — The Governor's Corps of Reliable Correspondents — Tommy, briefly Sketched — How Tommy has "Studied" in Paris — How it had Rained, preceding the Opening ; and How Nappy and Baron Haussmann had a Little Interview and Arranged about aa Um- brella. 83 COITTEN-TS. yii IX. Opbning op the Exposition — "Tommt's"Yersion— (Second Paper). — The Scene of the Opening Morning, from the Trocadero Hill — The Scene and Gathering before the Grande Porte — The Emperor's Ar- rival, with Glimpses of Those who Accompanied — The Opening Exercises, including Bad French and Botheration — Some Doubtful Stories of Fred. Raikes Page 93 X. The Great Exposition Building, Principallt "Without. — Attempt- ing the Impossible — How the Great Building differs from its Predecessors — "What Others have Said of it — "Who are Responsible for it — The Building, its Transverse Galleries, Circles, and En- trances Ill XL The Great Exposition Building, Inside and Arrangement. — How the National Divisions are Arranged ; and the Comparative Space allotted to Each — Refreshment-Room and Shop — "What is likely to be the Destiny of the Great Building 121 XII. The Park and Grounds of the Exposition. — Extent and Character of the Park — Comparative Space allotted to Each Nation — Magnifi- cent Incongruity — The Infinite Variety gathered from all the "World — Sights and Sensations of the Tour of the Globe made around the Champ de Mars — The First Half. 130 xni. Pabk and Grounds of the Exposition (Concluded). — Continuing the Promenade — The Second Half — The Old and the New ; Ameri- can School-houses and Oriental Mosques — Mohammedanism in the Ascendant — A Glimpse that is only a Ghmpse, lacking Sight, Sound, and Sensation 138 viii CONTENTS. XIY. BEAtTTiES OF THE Paeo Franqais. — The Holy of Holies of the Expo- sition — Landscape Gardening in its Perfection — The Stroll of the Captain and the Governor — Martial Music, and the Governor's httle Story of John Best — The Serre Monumentalo and the Statue of the Empress — The Salt-Water Aquarium and its Oddities — One Ad- vantage of Despotism Page 148 XV. The Imperial Balls — Ball of the Sovereigns at the Hotel db ViLLE. — The Counselor's Lady — Her Introduction and Apology — Copies of Hotel de VUle Invitations — The Hotel and the Gathering — The Royal Fireflies — Lights, Flowers, Music, and Perfume — The Embodiment of the " Arabian Nights " — The Little Adventure that befell the Counselor's Lady, and her Ghmpse of 1793 and the Place de Greve , 157 XVL The Czar's Ball at the Tutleries. — The Counselor's Lady Once More — A " Private Ball " of Eight Hundred — One more Glimpse of 1793, in a Parisian Crowd — The Illumination of the Tuileries Gar- dens — The Palace, the Cent Gardes, and the Master of Ceremonies — Glimpses of the Sovereigns, on the Throne, among the People, and at Supper — Royalty Inspected under an Hundred Thousand "Wax-lights 172 XYII. The World's Jewels m the Big Casket. — ^How Elihu Burritt Apostrophized Labor, at the New Tork Crystal Palace — Wealth of the World in National and International Exhibitions — Cannon and Calico, Leather, Lingerie, and Locomotives — A mere Glimpse through the Exposition and the Picture-Gallery 194 CONTENTS. ix XYHI. America's Share m the Divided Honors. — American Disadvantages in Preparing for the Exposition — Arrangements and Misarrange- ments — Commissioners and Committee-men — The American Fourth of July, and the Dinner at tho Grand Hotel — American Pictures and Sculpture at the Exposition Page 211 XIX. America's Share 'dt the Dfvtded Honors — (Second Paper). — A Hasty Glance at American Articles generally — Honors "Won at tlie "Distribution des Recompenses," and among the Jury of Visitors — Honors not "Won ; Honors claimed to be "Won ; and Honors that might have been "Won Very Easily — Regretted Ab- sences, and the Moral against another Opportunity 224 XX The SroE-Snows op Paris. — Parisian Theatres and Performances — The Cafes Chantants, with, some Reflections on Pleasant "Wicked- ness — About the Great Gardens of Paris — Mabille, and an Evening there, with more than Glimpses of the Cancan and its Dancers — Lawless' little Adventure— Other Side-Shows ; in Paris, at Yersailles, St. Cloud, St. Denis, Pere la Chaise, &c. — The Bon Marche ... 234 XXI. English Lake Glimpses. — "What Mr. "W. Suggested — How the Captain, Anna Maria and the Governor went to "Windermere — The Road that was Long and the Sun that didn't Set — A Spell at Spelling — "Windermere at Night and the Lake Country by Day — Langdale and HelveUyn — Grasmere, Grasmere Church, and the Grave of "Wordsworth — Rydal Mount and Ambleside 250 1* X . CONTENTS. XXIL "Sent to Cotkntrt," with Peeps at KE^^x■woRT^ and "Wartticic. — How I was " Sent to Coventry " — "Wolverhampton and Birming- ham — Tennyson and the "Three Tall Spires" of Coventry — St. Michael's, St. Mary's Hall, and Old Houses — Peeping Tom and the Godiva Stories and Processions — Kenilworth Castle, its Ruins and Eoses— Guy's Cliff and "Warwick Castle Page 264 XXTTT. Two Days at Stratford and Charlecote. — How we came to Strat- ford-on-Avon — "Warwickshire Markets — The Red Horse, and another demanded — Shakspeare's Birthplace and Anne Hathaway's Cottage— The Tomb, and the Church of the Holy Trinity— Charle cote Park and Charlecote Hall, with an ending at Leamington. 278 XXIY. Htde Park and PARLiAirENT. — The London Houses of Parliament, to Americans — Accommodations in the Lords and Commons — Per- sonnel of the Two Houses — Behavior and Oratory — "Waiting for the M. P.'s — Hyde Park at the " Evening Hour," with its Carriage- Riders, its Equestrians, and the Reflections Incident to Both. . 294 XXV. Between France and England. — Another Crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe — Making the Acquaintance of Young Hawesby — Sea- Sickness and Anna Maria, with some Peeps at the Secrets of that Lady's Career — The Battle-field of the Slain Amazons — Brute Nar- rowood and poor little Lizzie ; Avith a Sermon following — Over from Calais to Dover, with the pleasant Episode of Joe and his Um- brella , . 304 CONTENTS. xi XXVI. Bikd-Flight ts Switzerland — Paris to Geneva and Chillon. — About Lady Eleanor and the Gipsy Queen — Down the Seine, the Tvonne and the Saone, to Macon — Up the Valley of the Rhone — First Glimpse of Mont Blanc — Geneva and the Hotel de la Cou- ronne — The Old Town and the Cathedral — Up the Lake to Chillon and the Castle thereof. Page 316 XX vn. Bied-Flight in Switzerland — (II.) — Through the Oberland. — Genev^a to Berne, by Fribourg — Berne and the Bears — By Thun from Berne to Interlaken — Interlaken and the Jungfrau — The Glacier of Grindelwald and the Falls of Giessbach — Giessbach on Brienz — Over the Brunig Pass to Lucerne — The Rigs of the Rhigi — A Painful Doubt about the Bridge of Bale ' 333 xxvm. Strasbourg Pates and Baden-Baden Pin-Holes. — Bale to Stras- bourg — A Truant Steeple which turned out to be Strasbourg Cathe- dral — The City and the Clock — The Cathedral, a Wonder in Archi- tecture — Old Houses, and the Church of St. Thomas — Badeu- Baden and its Situation — The Conversation-House, the Drink-Hall, and the Promenade-Grounds — The Briefest of Peeps at Baden- Baden Gamblmg, with a Cool-Oflf in the Black Forest 349 XXIX. The Sun-Burst Over Ireland. — How I first Saw the Sun-Burst — Liverpool to DubUn — Irish Cabins and Character — About Dublin, Glasnevin Cemetery, and O'Connell's Tomb — To Killarney by Kil- dare, the Bog of Allen, and Mallow — The Lakes of Killarney, by Boat and Jaunting-Car, with the Story of the "One Fenian in Kerry " — KUlamey to Cork and Queenstown 366 xii CONTENTS. XXX. Shivekings Oil Shipboard. — Once More on the Inman Steamships — A Glance at the National Line — Commodore Kennedy, and what ho wanted of the Governor — Company on Board — A Bit of Iceland — The Commodore's Smoked Herring — The Return-Run, Captain Brooks, and Rough Weather — How they used the Governor — Death and Burial at Sea — Conclusion. Pagk 385 PREFACE. There is a certain often-quoted work, of which " Chap- ter XI., on the Snakes of Ireland," contains only a single sentence : " There are no snakes in Ireland ;" and the prin- cipal employment of this preface is to say that: 1st. No preface is necessary ; 2d. The writer is not going to supply any; 3d. He has put it in the body of the work; 4th. What follows here is not a preface, but an appendix ; 5th. The reader, after perusal, is at liberty to doubt whether this is here at all, as it is written under serious intention of omitting it altogether. But if it should not chance to be omitted (and that may be considered pos- sible, in the event of perusal), only tbis is to be said: That the writer has considered certain books on the French Exposition, by American writers, inevitable. That most of them will be very bad, and even an atrociously bad one Tuaj pass in the doubtful muster ; while he will have the advantage as to originahty, and the disadvantage as to opportunity of " appropriation," of being among the first in the field. That he may also hope to escape condem- nation, under the smoke of people being less tired of the xiv PBEFA CE. subject when they read his work than when they peruse some of the later and better. That he has found the task a difficult onCy but pursued it faithfully, even if oddly and fragmentarily and by no means so thoroughly as the grav- ity of the subject may have demanded. That he has not stolen the title, " Paris in '67," from any of the English books using it during the summer as a catch-word ; as the records in the District Court of Southern New York will show that he announced the work and copyrighted the title something more than seven months ago. That, a part of the work having been written at midsummer, and the balance in autumn, a slight incongruity in tenses may be discovered, for which an apology might be necessary from one of apologetic habit. That the opinions expressed are individual, and generally as honest as the present vitiated state of society will permit. And that, after being de- layed much beyond original intention, the work is at last issued somewhat hurriedly, with the praiseworthy inten- tion of getting it out of the way (as the trundler of a wheelbarrow might choose to be with a railroad train ap- proaching) of that necessarily-valuable official report on the Exposition, which it is understood that Mr. Commis- sioner Charles B. Seymour will submit to the American public at an early period. New York City, Oct., 1867. PARIS IN '67. I ABOUT THINGS IN GENERAL, AND THINGS INTRO- DUCTORY IN PARTICULAR. At Interlaken, heart of the Bernese Oberland, the first words of this book. At Interlaken, where the magnificent snowy brow of the Jungfrau is flung skyward, as if to type human energy and audacity, and where the clouds that ever and anon vail her presence serve to type correspondingly human error, ignorance, and vacillation, — at Interlaken, most glorious goal of a pilgrimage gemmed with notable sights and pleasant recollections, — the commencement at once of work and apology. I have promised — I, the Governor — to write of the great French Exposition of 1867, of its surroundings, and of some of the many excursions induced and made possible by it. The most natural of promises, in the light of kindness so lately bestowed upon a kindred work (" Over Sea ; or, England, France, and Scotland, as seen by a Live American ") ; and yet the rashest, when the scope of the undertaking is considered. Never has a year dawned upon the world, more fertile of temptations to the venture- some pen ; never has one induced more bad writing, or 1* 16 PA HIS jy 'C7. offered better excuse for failure to rise to tlie level of a given subject. Those dangerous advisers, Partial Friends, kind enough to express satisfaction "with the previous venture, and especially gratified with the freedom of remark therein indulged, hazarded this incitement : " Of course you will see the great French Exposition, and give us the results of your obseiwation, "with the same freedom." So sug- gested, rather than inquired. Partial Friends, by no means the easiest of tempters to be resisted. "Paris in '67" is destined to be the result — a bit of patchwork, in the gathering of materials for which, and commencing to place them in more or less evident relation to each other, there have been trouble, toil, weariness, anxiety, discouragement, and yet interest and amusement sufficient to compensate ten times the outlay in either direction. I have committed one serious error, and am well aware of the fact. I should have heeded Brinsley Sheridan and Sydney Smith, the former of whom suggested to his son Tom, that "he could have told about going do"wn into a coal-pit, quite as well without doing any thing of the kind," while the latter reasonably proclaimed the folly of reading a book before reviewing it, because such a proceeding was sure to create a prejudice. With the aid of Galignnni, a map of Paris, the plentiful pictures of the Exposition, the innumerable catchpenny guide-books of the English for the present season, and the really brilliant descriptive epistles from the pens of American correspondents resi- dent abroad during the current summer, I might have emulated the able French author who wrote the best of books on America (" Paris en Am^rique ") without ever crossing the Atlantic, and produced a better book on the contemplated subject than is possible under present cir- cumstances. But I am unfortunately a sharer in that THIXOS IN GFyERAL. lY antiquated jircjudice, leading writers uncultivated beyond a given point to dare the perils of acquainting themselves to a certain degree with their o^m topics, instead of trav- eling the safe and easy path of " adapting from the French." To a certain degree only, with most writers, especially with reference to the Exposition. It is safe to say that no man, commissioner or non-official, resident in the gay capital, and frequenting the Champ de Mars from the opening in April till the close in October or November, has made himself, or will make himself, acquainted with all the details of the wonderful gatheiing in and around the " great gasometer " (as the master-spirit has face- tiously designated it) ; and it is equally certain that nine- tenths of the body of visitors, among whom most of the writers may be reckoned, have caught no more compre- hensive view of it than could be obtained of any given town by sailing slowly over it in a balloon. To master the great event has been well-nigh impossible, even to the most diligent : most of us are not diligent, especially in Paris, and malgre the example of the *' Industrious Fleas." But here comes my advantage. If I have erred in going to Paris at all, I have stumbled upon wisdom in finding the right time and the correct quantity of it. I have not taken Paris alone, or too much of it. I am not among the bored — as bored people there are, in con- nection with the Exposition : quite as thoroughly ennuied as ever men have been with harmless inanity, overgushing ^ tenderness, or tot/jours perdrix. To more than a few (the ' observant visitor to Paris, of June or July, could read it in their faces), the passage over the Pont de Jena has become a terror, the Grande Porte a horror, and the great building itself a fiendish fascination that could no more be endured than escaped. The labyrinths of products and 18 PARIS ly '67 ameliorations of Tmman labor, instead of becoming clearer to the eye by habit, have simply grown more tangled and confused as the eye grew wearier, just as Last night the full moon of midsummer was hanging over the Bernese Oberland — a cloudless full moon, such as the dwellers up Lauterbrunnen and the Grindelwald say comes but seldom even to the luckiest. The silver light fell full on the white brow of the Jungfrau, making its piled snow a glory, and even bringing out the dark ravines below and eastward. But the eye was not content ; it must gaze longer and glass-assisted, to try if the fine out- lines of the day could not be duplicated. It did so, too eagerly and too long ; and directly that point was reached at which the visual organ gave way, and the imprudent gazer, stricken with sudden blindness, saw nothing what- ever. There are moonlight and snoAV-blinded Expositionists, I fancy, as I know that there are and have long been thoroughly tired ones, especially Americans, listening enviously to the j^lans of those who were " going home," and wishing that they too were under " sailing orders." The lucky are those who have swooped down upon the scene of France's gathering-in the products of a world, late enough to find the unsightly beams and packing-boxes of opening cleared away, and yet early enough to escape the yawns, weariness, and indescribably fade aspect of impending close. Happy the gatherers to a ball, always, who come after the music has assumed its place, and go away again before the lights have begun to burn low and the pallor of fatigue to assert itself on lovely faces ; and something like this, of the midsummer visitor to the Great Exposition. For during the June and July of ISC'/, England, Franco, and half Europe have been all a-bloom with roses; the golden grain has been just temptingly ripe on the harvest- fields of English Warwickshire and French Normandy ; TEiyGS IN GENERAL. 19 not a leaf has hung withered on the clustering shrubbery of either land ; Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne have both answered back hiiman beauty and elegance to the yet matchless luxuriance of nature, in what the fashionable world designates as the "height of the season;" kings and emperors and corresponding Oriental potentates, their glory only for a moment shadowed by the cruel death of one of their number in a far-away Western land, have dazzled the public eye with their magnificence, ridden amid plumed squadrons, given receptions from velvet-carpeted daises, and distributed rewards yet richer than the smiles of jeweled beauty that accompanied them. Nature and humanity have been matching if not rivaling splendors ; the center of all this, for the time, as never before or elsewhere since the first gathering of men, has been Paris; and thus, and only thus, ha^■e the great event and its sur- roundings flitted before the eye of the Governor, commis- sioner self-appointed and very much unpaid — thus, with no tint lost of its color, no leaf faded from its chaplet. I should have seen it as women (they say) love to be seen — at. the best: it remains to be found whether I have the fatal faculty of distilling poisoil from delicacies and showing it at the icorst. Meanwhile comes this apparently-awkward question from one of those methodical souls : — " The wonderful man with mechanical eyes, Who counts you the plumes on the wing of a midge, And who, passing over the Bridge of Sighs, Only thinks of the sUe of the bridge .•" " Governor, if you were only in Pai'is during so brief a period, how is it possible that you can have caught any glimpse of each of several difierent events of peculiar interest which occurred with so much lapse of time be- tween ? How shall you tell us of these ?" 20 PARIS /iY '6 7. To which I reply that,^r5?, potentates are fai* less in- teresting objects than the scenes amid which they move, and that I am the slowest of tuft and lion hunters ; that, second, some of my dear little familiars, handsomer and with better opportunities for entree than myself, may have been present at the most notable of all the royal pageants, and able to whisper into my ears the most interesting of accounts thereof, all the more satisfactory because not too often repeated ; and that, third, I have the liberty of extract (and shall use it) from some of those " best things " that have fallen at intervals from the pens of newspaper correspondents. Shall not all these suffice ? n. WHAT "PARIS m '67" IS DESTINED TO BE. The great charm of book-writing, at the present day, consists in the blessed privilege of not knowing at the commencement what is to be the end of the literary journey. Burns struck the key-note of this privilege, long ago and inimitably, in his notification with reference to a certain poem then only half elaborated — that " Perhaps it might turn out a sang, Perhaps turn out a sermon •" and there are those living who well remember the recipe of a certain popular female novelist for arranging the plot of a romance: "Take a couple of lovers, a suffering saint, and a villain or two ; start them out, and allow them to go their own way. Depend upon it that they will get into worse scrapes than you could devise for them, and awaken interest enough before they are through !" The good lady has more followers than would like to acknowl- edge the obligation ; and the Governor is one of them — one of the " unattached cadets," a species of eclectic camp- follower. Any attempted abridgment of this liberty of literary laziness would create a rebellion more threatening in its consequences than any past eraeute of the century. Let us have our little privilege of trifling along the road to Nowhere or Anywhere, and we may be content with slender fare and even endure the toi'ture of worn feet: narrow us to a certain line, and we shall be discontented 22 PARIS I2T '67. with the most velvety of paths and sicken with the most savory of wayside lunches. Perhaps the nearest guess of what "Paris in '67" is intended to be, may be caught by noting what it must not be. Who wants a dry book of travel, principally made up of bald description, catalogues of inanimate objects, and com- ments upon things familiar to the eye of the veriest tyro among tourists ? And who is anxious for extended relations of personal adventure, when the adventure is likely to be either a pure invention or even more insignificant than the writer, about whom nobody cares the value of a brass fai'- thing? Can any thing be less ajipetizing than the lugubrious and the sentimental, as applied to the works of nature and their feebler rival, the works of art ? And yet is not the sublime of impropriety more effectually reached in over- strained wit and far-drawn humor, striving to impart vitality to that which has no spark of its own ? Decidedly the field is narrowed from those days when the few traveled and the still fewer wrote ; and in the latter half of the nine- teenth century, however patient the cycles preceding — the dry matter-of-fact traveler, who counts and measures every thing ; the egotistical traveler, who meets with an astounding mole-hill adventure every day; the traveler with a high moral purpose, who preaches volumes of sermons from a falling leaf or the chipped nose of a statue ; the practical traveler, who calculates the water- power of every cataract, and measures the area of wheat that might have been grown on the site of an unnecessary church ; and the smart traveler, who goes abroad to dis- cover new fields for a wit exhausted at home, and extracts guffaws from gravestones and bad puns from belfries — all these are voted nuisances, with better reason than usually attaches to such wholesale condemnation. What then? Shall the scribbler be debarred from WffAT IT IS TO BE. 23 rambling ? — or shall he only be allowed to ramble, under bonds to keep the peace toward society by preserving silence as to his observations or adventures ? No ; the favorite resource of the century, brought into use when Sara Slick presented his twelve jurymen with twelve pieces of chalk, that they might add up their verdicts and divide by twelve for the result — this comes into use at such a juncture. Let us compromise. What if a little of each of the blemishes before indicated should be involved, so that in each instance another hides it from view or tones down the general effect ? So let us be dryly descriptive, here; didactic and ponderous, there; anon as egotistical as if the world cared for our welfare or whereabouts; again lugubrious enough to disgust the most sublimated, descendant of defunct Laura Matilda ; and yet again so atrocious in perversions of wit and humor, that the ghosts of poor Tom Hood and our own lately-lost Artemus will shudder together from their opposite sides of the world. The one may palliate the other, if not excuse it : the dish may be made appetizing (who knows ?) through the very incongruousness of its ingredients. The rambles of 1867, involving the Paris Exposition and the excursions incited and made possible by it, have been by no means impersonal, as aching head, wearied limbs, and depleted purse, have all first or last borne witness : at times the personalities must protrude themselves, especially when other interest fails; again, they wiU sink away and be forgotten, when the historical, the grandly-natural, or the beautifully-artistic arises to dwarf all single identities. A trifle of information ; something of amusement ; a little relation of personal adventure ; a modicum of reflection and comment ; — all this is intended to be briefly conveyed, as indefinite in compounding and as irresponsible in final direction, as are the floating clouds at this moment vaUing and unvailing that queenly brow of the Virgin Mountain. 24 PARTS IK 'or. As for tliat portion of the work dealing exclusively with the exhibition which gives it name : The official catalogue of the Exposition makes a thou- sand octavo pages, with only a line or two devoted to the contributions of each exhibitor ; the Exposition itself gathers something from each of nearly all the countries of the globe, and stretches over a farm-space of more than an hundred acres; half a world has "assisted" at it, first or last, in one way or another ; the very list of awards sup- plies a volume of formidable dimensions ; the descriptions and comments rendered necessary by it have half-monopo- lized the press of civilized nations for the better jDortion of a year. What, then, shall be done with such a subject, in the thin compass of such a volume ? What the practical housewife does with the lacteal product of her dairy-pans — skim it ; with the comforting reflection that when the process is accomplished, the more precious portion of the whole will have been secured. Even the problem of ho^o to sJcim might have seemed a more formidable one, but for the publication of a certain "Practical Guide," during the current season convulsing European travelers, and in which explicit directions are given for seeing Paris thoroughly in one day, on the j^rin- ciple of devoting five minutes to the Louvre, two to the Madeleine, half an hour of fist trotting to the Champs Elypees and the Bois de Boulogne, and " driving by " most of the notable buildings, so as to be able to record having " seen " them ! After that, what cannot be done in a mo- ment of time and an atom of space ? And after that, what cramped traveler shnll despair of leisure or what ham- pered scribbler fear the printer ? A portion of this volume, limited in space but notable in interest, will be found specially devoted to certain Ameri- can contributions to the Great Exposition, which have struck the e^e of careful research as most fitly typifying WEAT IT IS TO BE. 25 our great material progress, and best showing how and why we, as a nation, have commanded the very highest respect of the world, and borne away a marked proportion of the official awards, with one of the very smallest contributions, in point of scope and variety, supplied by any great people of the civilized globe/ Of this, at length, in its proper place : attention is called to it, here, more by way of direct- ing that attention than as any apology for what is so obviously proper, even if out of the line of ordinary remark. But that melancholy comment over the grave of a cer- tain deceased savan whose foiling body still out-lasted the over-wrought brain, is to be avoided : " Died of pursuing one idea." Too much of Paris and the Exposition might be as fatal to peace of mind, as the single study proved to the savan. Ninety-nine hundredths of visitors to the Ex- position, especially Americans, did not make it a single pilgrimage. Some loitered on the way over ; others have dallied, or are preparing to dally, on their return ; and it is worthy of note that even grave and responsible com- missioners, and gentlemen especially intrusted with some of the most important interests involved, suddenly de- camped Switzerland-and-Germany-ward within a few hours after the declaration of awards, leaving the delicately- varied music of the Tunisian cafe to delight other ears. That self-appointed commissioner, the Governor, has like- wise had his " little runaways " from the great event ; and no inconsiderable portion of this volume has the duty of recording what he saw and felt, suffered and enjoyed, through the Lake Country of Western England, Coventry and the Shakespeare neighborhoods of Warwickshire, Switzerland and the Black Forest of Germany, London in the full " season," Killarney and the South of Ireland, in company and out of company with the Captain, Anna Maria, Young Ilawesby, Lady Eleanor, and the Gipsy Queen. III. ABOUT THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, AND HIS WORK OF 1867. His Majesty the Emperor of the French has not given me the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, albeit I was in Paris at the time when such decorations were flying about at an alarming rate ; nor do I know that if he had. done so, covered as I am with other orders (from em- ployers), I should have found room to wear the desirable bauble once enjoyed by Lopez. But that strange neglect shall not prevent my prefacing the account of the creation of the world with some mention of its creator. It is a favorite theory, at the present day, that the tri- umphs of peace are more enduring than those of war, and that he builds best who builds with the hammers and spades of his people, rather than with their bayonets. A favorite theory, but only those seem to practice upon it who possess the best of excuses for holding the opposite faith. England has been the bull-dog of nations, always in arms, and winning and retaining more through the use of arms than all other nations combined ; yet England, ope- rated upon by the splendidly-practical and humanitarian mind of the late Prince Consort, opened to the nations, in 1851, the world- wedding and humanizing system of inter- national industrial exhibitions, followed with a second, and supplemented with that magnificent private pendant, the Sydenham Crystal Palace. No ruler of the century has been held to need Mars as his right hand, to such an extent THE EMPEROR AND HIS WORK. 27 as the present Emperor of the French ; none has been so long and constantly suspected of hostile designs in every direction ; none has been so watched and reprobated on that single score ; yet he it is who has taken the second great step in this international industrial progress, by originating and carrying out an exhibition to which the English was but a shadow. An anomaly, certainly; but what great event of this transition period is not an ano- maly ? Here follows a brief but decided expression of a delibe- rate opinion : Tlie Emperor of the French., in the Exposition o/*1867, has done a great work for his people., for the world., and for his oxen enduring repntation. This position is either denied, or so modified that no personal credit remains, on many hands: is either the denial or the modification warranted ? Let the under- valuations be briefly taken up in succession. What if, as alleged, the design of the Exposition, on the part of the Emperor, may have been the wish to pre- serve, for the time being, the threatened peace of Europe? Shall not that motive be held most creditable, the supposed opposite of which, on his part, has been continually repro- bated and feared as the most fxtal of personal foibles ? What if, even, that anxiety was only a thing of the pre- sent, because France lacked readiness for the impending conflict ? Has a ruler a more sacred duty than to look to it that his nation fights only when prepared, if it fights at all ? What if, again, absolute apjirehension of a rebellion against his personal rule, may have induced his presenta- tion of this temporary employment to the French mind and hand ? Granted the fact of the present possession of power, and the supposed fear of its loss, what more laudable characteristic could be shown by a ruler, than the wish to still sedition with industrial employment and profit, rather 2* 28 PARIS IN 'cr. than to repress it with the sword and the prison-holt? What if, again, his predominant motive may have been the enriching of the p'lirses of Parisian dealers, and the amelio- ration of the momentary financial condition of all France, through the atti'actiiig thither of the purses of all the world ? Since when has monetary providence for his people been held a weakness or a vice on the part of a governing mind ? What if, yet again, the desire to make other monarehs visit his capital and revolve like satellites in the dazzling sphere of his hospitality, may have largely influenced the enterprise ? "What else than this feeling, in one development or another, induces every brilliant re- union in the fashionable world, or even leads to the hum- blest of tea-drinkings — affairs that the world is as yet by no means ready to decry as corrupt or vicious ? And what, finally, if a doubt of permanent position yet achieved, and a lust for enduring name in the future history of the time, may have principally moved the monarch who saw a late and perhaps a last opportunity ? Since when have the great names of history been specially faulted, or even under- valued, for the indulgence of that noblest of all the weak- nesses of human nature, when no reprobation, but rather applause, was due to the means which they employed for indulging that lust of fame? Decidedly, to the cosmopolitan mind of any nation, the indictment against the originator and promoter of the great enterprise falls to the ground ; while the magnificent re- sult remains to take its trial as to success or failure, perfec- tion or weakness of detail. " The Exposition is a total failure !" was the cry princi- pally conveyetl to the public ear through the adcaptandum utterances of newspaper correspondents, when the hurried opening of the First of April was just taking place, and when the collection and visitors (the writers included) were alike in confusion. No nation — so they said — had sent THE EMPEROR AFD HIS WORK. 20 forward any representation of its industry or art, worthy of the name ; no such body of people as had been expected •would visit Paris during the season ; every thing was costly discomfort ; the building was a disgrace to au architectural age, besides being certain to be untenable during the ap- proaching hot weather; the wrong men had hold of the affair in every direction ; the Emperor had again over- reached himself and made another immense blunder, and all would be found a disgraceful muddle, " The Exposition is a perfect and magnificent success !" has been the current cry, from corresponding quarters, at anytime since the First of May, when order began to emerge from chaos ; when visitors began to flock from all quarters of the globe, and when the expected titled satellites really commenced to revolve around the imperial orb. And " the Exposition is a perfect and magnificent success !" has since been echoed by a large proportion of visitors, espe- cially the fortunate winners of prizes, golden, silvern, bra- zen, scriptive and decorative ; while the principal counter- echo has come from non-visitors, from those gentlemen who " didn't care about the Frenchman who was exposing himself, and wouldn't send any thing !" and from that un- fortunate small minority overlooked in the distribution. Both cries, meanwhile, and in point of fact, may well have been taken with a grain of allowance : the Exposi- tion has never been a failure, or any thing approaching that appellation, from the opening day ; and there have cer- tainly been spots enough on the sun of even its noonday splendor, to make that word " perfect " scarcely allowable. One more generalization, and only one, seems to be in place here, and at this moment. The Exjyosition, with all its faults and short-coinings, is incomparably the greatest and grandest gathering of the works of human hands, that the world has so far ever 30 PARIS IN '67. beheld ; and the possibilities which it opens to that world, seem almost unlimited. The added position it gives to Napoleon the Third can scarcely be set down in words, or calculated in figures. As a sovereign, it has shown him in corresponding glory as magnificent monarch and caterer for the interests of his people ; as an executive superintendent, it has given him proud place, even in this day when executive ability is the ambition of so many leading minds of all the world ; even as a mere skillful advertiser of his own greatness, the splendor of his capital and the variety of his people's wares, he has achieved a pre-eminence quite as profitable, if less high-sounding. What he has himself managed in the affair, has evidently been well managed ; what he has in- trusted to others has shown that rarest of abilities which lies in skillful selection of agents. A wonderful, incongruous, harmonious, unsatisfactory, pleasing, involved and yet significant whole, the Great Exposition has spread over the Champ de Mars, and will spread in shadow over the pages of history, quite as im- perishable, in fact as well as in effect, as either Austerlitz or Waterloo, and capable of obscuriug if not excusing the tragic criminal mistake of Mexico. It has brouoht the nations neai*er totjether ; it has opened wider the eyes of knowledge as well as those of speculation ; it has gone at least one step towards fusing languages, the dissimilarity of which had been the worst of foes to human intercourse ; it has narrowed the seas by increasing the numbers crossing, and the facilities for over- leaping them ; it has shown all nations as well as the works of all nations, and the very habitations of all nations, to the eyes of all who would look upon the gathered wonder ; it has marked another era in human progress, and carried us all nearer to that goal of the future of a great age, which no man can measure, but to which all men look for- THE EMPEROR AFD HIS WORK. 31 ward confidently as blindly. This tlie Great Exposition has done ; and this (errors excepted, as say some of the mercantile people in their balance-sheets) — this is the round result of the Emperor's work of 1867. But something more of this and of its efiects on the near future, in the papers following. ly. WHEREABOUTS OF THE GREAT EXPOSITION.— THE CHAMP DE MARS. None of the innumerable visitors of the season to Paris, it is to be hoped, need to be informed of the whereabouts of the great gathering ; though it is not quite certain that a proportion of them, geographically inquired of by anxious absentees, would be too capable of explaining the location of its site, its bearing by compass from what might be called the heart of the city, or even the name borne by the immense quadrangle thus honored. I think that he was not a dunce beyond, parallel, whom I heard inquired of the other day on some of these points, at one of the stations down the Valley of the Rhone, after he had been spending a month in Paris, and half of it within the Exposition grounds, and who replied thus lucidly : " In what part of Paris is it ? Oh, I can tell that easy enough, you know. You know where all the stunning big hotels are — no, you have never been in Paris, so that you can't know that. Well, you take a carriage at any of the big hotels, and ride about twenty minutes or half an hour — maybe not quite so much ; sometimes you cross the what's-its-name river — the Seine, you see a thundering big building, with lots of flags and fountains, and a beastly crowd of people around it, and there you are." At all events, stay-at-home travelers, even those who THE CHAMP DE MARS. 83 have visited Paris in former years, may need to be re- minded if not informed on some of these points. The Champ de Mars, site of the Great Exposition, lies on the southern or less populous side of the Seine, and at the western or down-stream end of its course through Paris, directly opposite the suburb of Passy (embracing the great entrance to the Bois de Boulogne), on the northwest, and diagonally opposite the Champs Elysees, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries, &c,, on the northeast. On the point of being out of town, it bears about the same relation to the city that would be held by a New York pleasure- ground laid out on the upper edge of Murray Hill — say about the site of the Reservoir and the old Crystal Palace ; and the gentleman just quoted was right in giving the time by carriage, from the great hotel center around the Madeleine and the Palais Royal, as from fifteen to thirty minutes. On the northwest the Champ is bounded by the Seine, with the Pont or Bridge of Jena crossing at its exact center ; on the northeast its length stretches down the Avenue de la Bourdonnaye ; on the southeast the other end is covered by the Avenue de la Mothe Piquet and the immense build- ings (its whole width) of theEcole Imperiale Militaire, once the West Point of France, now more barrack than school ; and on the southwest the boundary of the second long side is the Avenue Suffren. Only a few hundreds of yards away, diagonally, at the southeastern corner, rises the great Dome of the Hotel des Invalides (of course under repair — possibly regilding — and disfigured by scafiblding, duiing this particular summer of 1867, when all eyes were to see it) ; the Civil and Military Normal Gymnasium almost touches the southwestern side of the quadrangle ; while the Military Hospital (entirely distinct from the Invalides, as many do not suppose) holds corresponding position opposite the northeastern. 2* 34 PARIS IN '67. Standing at the Pont de Jena, and sweeping the eye over Paris proper, the great architectural points presenting themselves are the Arc d'Etoile rising high over all, a mile due northward ; the long and low, but magnificent Palais d'Industrie (place of the Exposition of 18GS) thrusting up its tortoise back in the midst of the Champs Elysees, northeastward ; farther eastward the long fa5ade of the Tuileries and the Louvre, seeming to gird the whole thither side of the Seine with stonework ; yet farther eastward and up the river, the two unrivaled square towers of Notre Dame rising out of the confused mass of two or three miles of lower edifices ; and half behind, southeastward, the Dome of the Invalides. A memorable view from a nota- ble position ; and yet one sinking into insignificance in the recollections of those who have paused on the other side of the Seine, on the heights descending to the Pont de Jena, and caught all these glories from that much higher level, with the Exposition building itself added as a crown- ing feature. Tliat is a picture not easily forgotten. Such is the site of the Champ de Mars : now a few words of its origin and that of its name — the latter, very generally misunderstood. No trap is more specious or more difficult to be avoided than that which the French language sets for the super- ficial English reader of it (as does the English for the Frenchman), in the resemblance of words which really mean something very difi'erent ; and of all the captures made by this trap, a thousand to one have been baited by that compound word — " Champ de Mars," " Mars," in the Latin derivations and in English, means the God of War ; the Champ de Mars has been almost exclusively used, within general knowledge, as a place of review for armies ; ergo, in the public mind, and without pausing to consider another meaning for the word, the " Champ de Mars " has been the Field of the God Mars— the "Field of War." THE CHAMP DE MARS. 35 So far has this idea gone, that the Emperor, in a late decla- ration with reference to the past and future uses of the field, was understood by thousands to be making especial allusion to the name^ and to the propriety of changing it to the " Champ de la Paix," the "Field of Peace," while such a lingual idea in his mind was purely impossible. Tl^e Champ de Mars is simply the Field of March (no military pun intended on the latter word), just as it might have been the Champ de Janvier or Aout — Field of January or August. And the name seems to have been derived from the great gatherings of the early French (or Frankish) warriors, under the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynas- ties, always held in March or May, and named as " Fields " accordingly. The Champ de Mars has made its wonderful record rapidly, for it has no place in antiquity. Less than two hundred years ago it seems to have been a collection of dust-heaps — a sort of " dumping-ground" beyond the Seine from what was then "Paris" at all its western portion. Its existence as a public ground seems to have been de- rived from the Ecole Militaire at its southeastern end, founded by virtuous Louis XV. about 1750, as a place of military training for those noble but not too brilliant youths who were thenceforth (by his edict) to crowd all plebeians out of the higher grades of the French armies. For this nascent West Point, the Champ was graded as a riding- school and place of parade. But the shadow of the Revolution loomed, and France was too wise (England never has been) to allow that edict to remain in force. The brawn and brains of the plebeians were wanted in the commissions as well as the ranks of the armies. The Ecole Royale Militaire became a cavalry barrack, and the Champ de Mars a Hounslow or Fifteen Acres for general military evolutions and public gatber- 3 36 PARIS IK '67. ings. Very soon after it began to be grandly historical, as the great convulsion ripened and bore bloody fruit. On the 14th of July, 1790, the Champ witnessed the most magnificent of all spectacles preceding the present, and one excelling it in many particulars, but more fruitless for good than this can possibly be under the most unfor- tunate of circumstances. The monarchy was fallings and there was an effort to be made for its preservation. The Champ de Mars was selected as the scene of the effort. (Malicious tongues, before referred to, have hinted that the effort of tlie cuiTent year was made for a like purpose, again by a falling dynasty ; but that is the merest specu- lation.) The Feast of the Federation, in which all France swore to be brethren, with the king as an elder brother, was called then in the Champ de Mars. The field was con- verted into a vast amphitheater, capable of containing half a million within the possibilities of sight ; and to accom- plish its remodeling, not only twelve thousand men labored for weeks, but, as the time approached and much remained to be done, priests, nobles, and even women, handled shovels and trundled wheelbarrows, while parties of relief from the suburbs marched in with flags and ban- ners. And when the great day came, Louis XVL and his court occupied a lofty platform in front of the Military School (this season forming the Belgian Park), four hun- dred thousand people filled the raised sides of the amphi- theater, and sixty thousand armed federals surrounded the altar on which Lafayette laid the civic oath just re- ceived from the king, to be sworn to by the whole assem- bly with one shout, after Talleyrand (then Bishop of Autun, and unsuspicious of ministerial fame) had concluded a grand mass, served by no less than three hundred priests. A glo lions fraternization — to close in the blood of king and people, how soon J THE CHAMP DH MAES. 37 For on the same spot, a year and two days thereafter (16th of July, 1791), in the tumult following the unfortu- nate foiled flight of the king to Varennes, Lafayette and Bailly, striving to dispei'se the crowd clamoring for depo- sition, fired (no doubt necessarily enough) on the crowd, after they had murdered two invalid soldiers under the yet- standing " National Altar," — and some hundreds of lives were sacrificed, giving the human wolf his taste of blood. There, two years later, Bailly paid with his blameless life for the crime of living in such an age. Then, with some minor events intervening, came the great days of the First Empire, and the Champ de Mars played a prominent part in the pageantry of those days when " Europe would have pomp and tinsel, and Napoleon gave them to her," as well says that splendid verbal mad- man who supplied us with the " Napoleon Dynasty." In the Champ it was that, in conjunction with innumerable reviews of the veterans who had won and were winning Europe, — three days after his coronation at Notre Dame, and on the verge of that wonderful campaign which pro- duced Ulm and Austerlitz, and made suppliants of two emperors, — Napoleon with his own hands distributed to the different corps the eagles which they were to bear to victory above their banners — some of the very eagles, alas ! which now stand tarnished beside his tomb in the Invalides. Another and a later pageant of the great Emperor — sadder, in the light of its broken promises. The Champ de Mars was then a " Champ de Mai," when on the first of June, 1815, during the Hundred Days, Napoleon pro- claimed the Acfe Additionnel before marching to Waterloo, again distributed his eagles and received fealty. Another magnificent spectacle, this, and seemingly enthusiastic ; but it was hollow and melancholy ; for, to quote the irreverent Victor Hugo, " God was tired of Napoleon." 38 PARIS IN '67. The Champ de Mars knew him no more, except as, in that weirdly-beautiful poem of Baron Teidlitz, before quoted by the same writer in another connection (" Over-Sea"), the ghost-emperor has ever since been holding there the " midnight review " of his shadowy cohimns. It was here that Charles X. dissolved the National Guard, when he could no longer trust them, a few days before the revolution of July, 1830; and it was here that Louis Philippe (who could trust them for a time) dis- tributed the colors to the same Guard, re-constituted, soon after his accession. And here, passing by the fetes and reviews, and even the occasional horse-races which occu- pied it during the comparatively quiet days of the Citizen King, — here it was that yet another eagle distribution took place, when Napoleon the Third proclaimed the Second Empire, in 1851, and became the special heir of his great uncle's strengths, weaknesses and traditions. Here it was that, in the summer of 1865, 1, the Gov- ernor, saw the most uninteresting, ill-shaded, ill-swarded, dusty, hot and uncomfortable parade-ground that had ever fallen under my notice — so blindiugly and chokingly dusty that, as my cab rolled over it, I was obliged to close eyes and mouth against the rising cloud of chalky loam ; so tasteless, and without any redeeming point except immense size, that I could not avoid exclaiming as I left it : " Well, the Lord help any Frenchman who calls that a public ground, and is not ashamed of it!" Here it is that during this current season of 1 867, 1 have seen the greatest collection of the industries and arts of all nations, that the world ever saw; a central wonder in architecture, more than matched by its surroundings of minor buildings showing the architecture and taste in dwellings, of all lands ; even these excelled by the taste in floriculture and arboriculture, which has made the whole little else than a dream of fairy land; and the THE CHAMP DE MARS. 39 French Park, especially, the rival if not the superior of Versailles and the Royal Gardens of Kew. But of this latter feature, the filling and adornment of the groimds, something more at length in its due order and in another paper. I V. HOW PARIS "PREPARED TO RECEIVE BOARDERS." Importani' events have their petty details as well as their glittering generalities ; even the grandest army does not move without its ragged, dirty and disorganized camp- followers (unless, like Sherman's "bummers," they go in advance!). Paris, destined to be the scene of the great gathering, had a duty foreshadowed, and proceeded to fulfill it with desperate energy — the duty of receiving a visiting world, supplying it (a la Mugby Junction) with the least possible of comfort at the greatest possible price, aud gen- erally combining the " profitable " with the " pleasant." Superficially, under the emperor's command, Paris washed its face and put on its Sunday raiment, very early in the event. Half-finished boulevards were pushed for- ward with even exceptional rapidity ; Baron Haussmann, it is probable, tore down fewer houses, and left fewer ragged chinmey-ways exposed to sun and sight, than at any corresponding period, since his assumption of the Pre- fecture ; obstructing piles of stone aud mortar became even unusually rare, and local deformities, generally, were cov- ered with a skill which would have excited the envy of the most accomplished female chamber-diplomatist; the dust commanded to lie still, and not offend the eyes and nostrils ; the trees to leaf (not leave) at their very earliest ; and thus, and in a thousand, other nameless modes, was the great city garnished for the rush of new comers — as when the minis- ter's lady and a few other ^ illage notables are expected .it ''PREPARING FOR BOARDERSy 41 a country abode, on some pleasant afternoon " to tea," and swept door-ways, tidied-up rooms, white aprons, clean caps for the elders, and the washed faces 6f children, becoma the most easily distinguishable features of the occasion. But all this comprised only a tithe of the labor of prepa- ration. In a local romance of not many years ago, the morn- ing exordium of a certain general-dealer in a small way, to his second in command, was said to be: "John, sand the sugar, plaster the flour, water the liquors, mark up all the dry goods twenty per cent, and then come in to prayers!" Paris, as a careful and prudent city should have done, per- formed all the other requirements without going in to prayers. Everybody, who has ever been to Paris, knows that there are no "houses" in it — indeed none in France, the English and American (and even the German) acceptiitinn of the word being taken as the standard. The French "lodge" — no more; it is doubtful whether all of them even do so much, of what is generally considered "living." They have no privacy, comparatively, and seem to desire none. Their food is eaten on the sidewalk, in front of some cafe, or in the cafe itself, with the doors and windows open, and laughter, rattling of spoons and plates and clink- ing of glasses, not only attracting but seeming to invite observation. A consequence of this, or perhaps a part of it, is that the Frenchman does not desire much special privacy in even the household details of living, outside of the food ques- tion. The idea that one should prefer to have an outer door into which no other family than his own should come, except as visitors, is not half so likely to enter his head as that of a new frippery in fl\shion, a new war, or a new barricade. Except in the mansions of the very rich, there are few " separate houses " in the Fi'ench territories. Wealth and comparative poverty — often great wealth and 42 PARIS IN '6 7. abject poverty — assured position, and position worse than doubtful, enter at the same outer door, are served by the same co;iae/*^e ^porter), ascend the same lower escalier (stair-way), and have theii* household smoke make exit by the same chimney ; the only perceptible difference being (to an outsider, and supposing a very possible case), that '•'•milord'''' lodges au deuxieme, and pays a round pric;e for his accommodation ; that Mons. Pinchot, the small mer- chant, has his tenement aic troisieme, and pays a rent con- siderably diminished ; that Parbleu, the mechanic, is loca- ted au quatrieme, and still foils in rent as he rises in alti- tude ; that possibly Mile. Florine, of the demi-monde, but comfortable therein, comes au cinquietne, paying still a shade less than her next lower neighbor (though the fact may be that she and Parbleu change place?) ; that Xanine comes next, au sixieme — a grisette of the actual type, still struggling for labor and respectability, and making the pot boil on very, very little, in rent, dietetically and sarto- rially; and that au sej)tleme, up among the chimney-pots, the swallows, the tiles, moss, and occasional sunshine, old mother Gringoire, the chiffoniere, crawls to her garret, crust and rags. Mons. Le Fran^ais and Madatfie sa femme, if they chance to be so located that a small house is all their own, for business or other purposes, have correspondingly small objection to breaking the privacy of what we call a "floor," and they an " etage^ What is it to them who enters or who departs, or what (short of murder or coining — amena- ble to police discipline, and therefore troublesome to land- lords) goes on in the very next room to that in which they themselves repose, so that rent is duly paid, no proprieties ai-e openly outraged, doors are kept locked, and no awk- ward peep holes achieved? They are not "their brothers' keepers," or eke those of their " sisters," in the detail of morals ; woidd the world be better or worse (the doubt ''PREPARINa FOR BOARDERS:' 43 arises) if there were more persons like them in this par- ticular ? To what does all this tend ? To one of the points indi- cated in the opening of this paper — the readiness of Paris, individually and collectively, to receive lodgers, during the Exposition, and to make the most of them ! To " lick " into " receptivity " anything in the shape of an unoccu- pied or half-occupied room, boudoir or pig-stye, from au- dessoKs to the very tiles, capable of taking in a bed and a wash-stand (not necessarily a carpet — carpets are not indis- pensable in the land of wooden " parquetrie ;" but woe to the wight, male or female, who forgets the necessary slip- pers and wanders thereon while dressing and undressing !) — capable of taking in those details, I say, and then and thence- forth " taking in," more or less in two senses, a certain number of the " outside barbarians " clamoring for admis- sion to the Parisian paradise. Do not let me be understood as intending to apply these terms of undervaluation to all Parisian lodging-houses, supplied during the current year or previously. Benevo- lent shades of Madame S and Mrs. D , respected furnishers of appartements meublees^ in the past, the com- pleteness of which must have mollified the tempers of the most exigeant of icell-posted travelers (nothing could mol- lify the green-horn — he knows nothing, and so exjjects everything !) ; and yet more certainly forbid such an asper- sion, substantial but very pleasant matronly shade of dear Madame W , at whose cozy au quatrieme in the Rue Mazagran, under the round arch that looked so welcome when we came home late at night, tired and sleepy, from long rambles on the boulevards — the Captain and Anna Maria and the Governor passed some pleasant and memora- ble days and nights ! Were not your " appartements " clean and well-fiu-nished and comibrtable, dear Madame W ? Did not the waxed parquetrie shine like a sideboard, all 44 PARIS IN '6 7. the while ? — and were there not towels and napkins and water in abundance ? — and did you scruple to afford us that un-French commodity of supply, du savon, when we chanced to lack it for a day ? (some of us ha\ e lacked the other kind of " soap " many a day) — and were there any " bougies " charged for that we did not fairly con- sume? — and did Etienne (who fell in love with Anna Maria, and wanted to learn to talk a few words of English, so that he could express his admiration othe^^vise than by upturned eyes, so much) ever fail to bring us rolls that were flaky and eggs that were nascent, tea and coffee retaining their orientalism, and fruit that had not yet lost its memory of nature, for those savory, qniet little breakfasts and suppers ? — and was there ever a failure to meet a cheerful word from the old concierge at the gate below, or to find those keys on the proper hook of the key-board, and sometimes, what was better still, your own calm, benevolent, matronly face, and a good-will greet- ing not paid for or expected to be paid for, within the lit- tle double door of frosted glass, of the entresol f — and when one day we honored the moderate addition in the quiet parlor, and prepared to come away, was it not with, a regret and a promise to come again, on the one side, and a warm invitation to do so on the other ? Were not all these things as I have stated them, good, considerate Madame W ? — and if they Avere so, are Parisian lodging-houses to be indiscriminately voted " nuisances " and their keepers "harpies?" Not "while this right hand retains" — not its "cunning," for it never had any — but its propensity for scribbling personalities ! Nay, was there not something more (and this with sad reverence) — something more, that invested that tidy white cap and the modest mourning symbols of your attire with a light like that which may have shone on the mourning Madonna ? — a romance of the bleeding heart of the mother, ''PREPARING FOR BOARDERS:' 45 sacred in a Parisian lodging-house as if it had been woven in a palace or conceived in a boudoir ? Did you not tell us of dear lost Celestine, whose face wt never saw, but imaged it thenceforth — how she clung to you and to herself, refusing marriage-offers that sought her " dot " and not her womanhood, until the master came and she wedded and went regretfully away from you? Then how she named the buildings and walks of her lit- tle German home, the "Louvre" and the "Madeleine" and the " Champs Elysees " of the Paris she had loved so well; and how she wrote you home such sweet, modest letters of regretful happiness ; and then how she was to visit you in the mingled glory of bride and mother, and you waited and watched for her so fondly; and how then the letter came with its black seal, to tell you that the dar- ling daughter would visit you no more on earth, forever ! Ah, dear jMadame W ! these, alas ! are real like the others ; the mourning, I know, will never go out from that fiithful mother's heart, any more than the sombre hue from that garb or the tears from your eyes when you speak of her! It is only a "chance-boarder" speaking poor words of comfort to a lodging-house keeper; but the orison will work you no evil : God comfort and bless you, and in his own good time give you a happy and an eternal meeting with lost Celestine ! But they were not all Madame TV 's ; were they, good people from every land, making your temporary home in Paris during the summer of 1867? — and cannot you, as well as I, imagine how the individual desire for the rapid accumulation of wealth (something about which, of course, Americans know nothing, especially since the rebellion !) — how this must have been stimulated, at the opening of the Exposition, by the conduct of those in charge of that "show," letting out to the highest bidder, or the most subservient tool, the privilege of doing anything, 46 PARIS IN '67. selling anything, or letting anything be done, in or around the building or park — from the retailing of soda-water or newspapers, to the blacking of boots, the carrying away of the likeness of any object through the aid of the photo- graph, or even the luxury of sitting down in a chair or on a bench, to rest the over-wearied limbs for a single moment ! Lest these latter details should seem like exaggeration to absentees, let me say, here, that more than one arrest was made of unfortunates who dared to be caught taking pho- tographic sketches of any particular object, without pay- ing roundly for the privilege (a proceeding unknown to Americans before or since the lately-decapitated and immensely-regretted War-Secretary Stanton " snapped " ray good friends, the Gurneys, with a file of soldiers, for* photographing the Lincoln obsequy decorations, in the New York City Hall), and that so conclusive and servile was the " farming out " of everything in and about the Palace, that even the right of the management to retain a single seat for visitors was disputed by those who had bought the "sitting privilege," and two or three hun- dred long settees originally provided and erected for free use in various parts of the building, taken up by force and pitched out into a waste corner of the Park, where they lay rotting during the balance of the summer, that — well, I will not mention and so advertise the contempti- ble name of the contracting firm — might manufacture dis- eases of the abdomen and coin money at their own sweet will.* ♦During the printing of this work another pleasant development has been made in thi! aftair of seats at the Exposition, thus detailed in one of the foreign newspapers reaching America in September; — " An extraordinary scene was witnessed at the Exhibition on Friday, the 23d. At 8 o'clock in tne morning the Imperial (Joinmission made its appearance with a pro- cession of carts and a few dozen crowbars, and without any warning carried off the chairs and tables which the proprietors of the cafes and restaurants had placed out- ''PREPABING FOR BOARDERS^ 47 There are some other details of the " farming out " sys- tem that I have no idea of giving, out of respect at once to the moral and physical senses of readers ; but how long after this before we shall hear the next echo of abuse from European organs of opinion against the " disgusting Amer- ican worship of the almighty dollar ?" '' Grab " (to use an expressive modernism, not in the dictionaries as a substantive) — " grab " was the official " game " — why should it not be that of the private indi- vidual ? Such another opportunity might not again occur during a lifetime ; and there were no doubt many Parisi- ans who remembered what King William of Holland was charged for eggs during one of his royal progresses — a dollar each, not because eggs were peculiarly scarce, but because kings wej'e ! " Hit him again, he has no friends !" and " Skin him, he is away from home and in our power, and we may never catch him again!" — the two mottoes sprung from the same source, and reflected equal credit on their originators. But here I have local aid, and let me use it — the aid of my friend the Old Corporal, a New Orleanian by birth, but a uon-commissioned officer in the French army through- side their premises for the accommodation of the public since the opening of the Exhibition. Several violent tableaux took place. Immediately after the seizure the English restaurant-keepers stuck up outside a notice, which, not being to the taste of the Commission, was torn down by the police. They then closed their doors and stuck up another notice inside. This, however, was doomed to the same fate ; the police broke open the doors, and again tore down the objectionable placard. The re- sult of all this was that the majority of the cafes and restaurants shut up shop for the day and the unforiunate public had to walk about athirstand hungry. And now for the cause of this remarkable proceeding: The Commission, which are deter- mined to make money anyhow, had given to M. D the right to place chairs round the building, notwithstanding that they had previously let to these same res- taurant and cafe keepers at an exorbitant sum the places they occupy. M. D complained that they had no right to place chairs outside their shops, the proprie- tors replied that they had paid for their space and ought to have it. A lawsuit was the consequence, and M. D gained the day. Such is one of the good results of the system of monopoly invented by M Le Play." 48 PARIS IX '67. out both the Crimean and Italian campaigns, and for many of the intervening and succeeding years resident at Paris, ■with little to do and a wandering propensity which leads him through all kinds of doubtful streets and by-places. He supplies me with a little picture of what he saw and heard at about the opening of the Exposition, in the way of calculations and arrangements among the humbler indi- Tiduak who were to purvey transit for the host of new- comers, and especially for the expected rush of Anaerican " savages :" — " I was going," says the Old Corporal, " down one of the narrow but important streets just below the Bourse, and not far from the Rue Coq-Heron and the Poste Res- t;inte, one morning late in March, when I chanced to have occasion to stop and rub a fusee for my cigar at a blank, white wall with double and single doors cutting it, and a little cart standing without, looking like one of those employed by a baker in a small way. Just as I rubbed the fusee the little door partially opened and a man stuck out his head, then left it half closed and went on with a conversation which had apparently been only for a moment interrupted. " Now I had no occasion whatever of listening to the words of this baker, for such his whitey cap and light clothes, as well as the cart without, proclaimed him to be ; and I certainly should not have done so, had I not caught the word ' Araericaine !' pronounced with that hissing sound only known to a Frenchman when he is endeavoring to express the extremity of scorn and disgust. But 1 hap- pen to be an American to the backbone, in spite of all my years of French service, and, in ppite of the fact, too, that I believe I belong to a section not recognized as ' part of the United States.' So I listened, and what I heard in guttural French you shall have in the best idiomatic Franco-English that I can furnish, except here and thore a ''PREPARING FOR BOARDERS:' 49 word that is untranslatable. I think you will recognize it as a fair indication of the rods that Johnny Crapaud was pickling for you, whether you have by this time received the benefit of his good intentions or not. '" Amt^ricans? why not ?' spoke the baker with a repe- tition of the hiss. *They are putting to the sale their log- cabins, to arrive at this civilized France ; and they come in vessels of the small cost, so as to have much money for their occasions here. It is for us of Paris — that money remaining in their pouches ; and it is the duty of that noble Mirabeau to cause to reach my pockets much of it.' " ' But there may not be so many of them,' I heard the other voice reply; 'and then they may have horses in America, since to them visited the adventurous Lafayette — who knows?' " ' Not many of them ? Parhleu P hissed back the baker. 'They will be like the locusts of the Egypt in number ; and those savages are so ignorant that they do not recognize between a horse and an ass. What Avould you have ? I reassure you that they will ride at all times — these people of show and indolence — when once they arrive at a country of civilization, and that ray horses that are not matched, of the Arabian breed ' '•'•'• Mille Tonner res P the other broke out, impntiently. ' They are skeletons, they are collections of bones ! They would create the good fortunes of a doctor who physicked that animal, because he would know the place of disposi- tion of every bone in their bodies ! I offer to you, as a great favor, the purchase of these fragments, at eight francs each, to boil thera into glue and dog-sustenance, and you refuse ! You are most thick-headed, my friend the baker !' This hissed out nearly as contemptuously as the words of the other had been, and informing me of what I had before suspected — that the baker's interlocutor was a 50 PARIS IK '67. knacker or buyer-up of Trorn-out animals for the glue fac- tories and dog-and-cat-meat shops, making overtures to relieve the other of what he did not feel inclined to sell. But the fury of the baker, after this outburst, was terrifi- cally French : — " ' Coquin of a horse-destroyer, you would devour me without holding^ pity for me afterward ! Behold in the day-light one of the steeds of value that you defame ! Though I throw away my words of importance on an asin- ine person, yet see what shall carry the American savages and other islanders, by the thousand at many times, at a franc and two francs each for the small distances, and many francs when they receive transportation to Versailles and St. Denis ! AUcz, Mu-abeau ! ray noble I come out here and be visible to those eyes that deserve you not !' " Suddenly, and before I, horribly fascinated by the inter- esting conversation, could retreat so as to avoid being seen, the larger door dashed open, and the baker, little, weazen- faced and grimacing, emerged, dragging by the bridle his Rosinante, while the irate and disappointed knacker yet stood within what I now saw to be part barn, part stable, and the remainder wagon and lumber room, "But what language shall describe this bit of horse- flesh, intended for transatlantic delectation otherwise than through the medium of the table ? Fully of age, to all appearance (i.e., twenty-one years and over) ; a color that had once been bay but was now dirty yellow where the lead-colored weals did not supply a * neutral tint ;' one eye gone and the other 'cocked,' as if strabismus had suddenly invaded the equine family ; the head long as a flour-barrel and ' sprung' like the double curve of a scythe handle ; the hips protuberant and each ' knocked,' sore, and ghastly ; the ribs convenient for counting, but the galls too numerous for that exercise ; both fore-knees sprung, and one fore- foot 'clubbed' to the dimensions of elephantiasis — such, ''PREPARIXG FOR BOARDERS:' 51 feebly depicted, was the remarkable equine production — certainly something that could have been sent to the zoo- logical department of the Exposition without doubt of receiving one of the prizes for ' extreme rarity and unique qualities !' You have some gallant steeds in New York, harnessed to the classical clam-cart and alleged to cost fifty cents to two-fifty each at the Second Avenue and Fifty- Fourth Street Tattersalls ; exaggerate the worst of them that can stand erect without propping, by say fifty per cent., and then you may form some idea of ray discovery in natural history, though a slight one. " The knacker was confounded — I could see that he was, though I do not presume to say whether he was vanquished by the splendid points of the animal and the shame of having offered to devote such a marvel of equine beauty to the shambles of his trade, or bj'.the horrifying reflection that he had risked being obliged to pay eight francs there- for ! At all events he was silent, only uttering a single ' Humph,' which may mean anything, with a Frenchman ; and, ignoring my presence, the baker grew more voluble as the other ' subsided :'•— "'Delay yet for some moments!' he rather squealed than spoke. ' You have imagination that I shall be com- pelled to the purchase of a voiture for the conveyance of those foreign canaille. Behold, with complete prepara- tion !' And with the native celerity of a Frenchman, one moment sufficed him to hitch the end of the halter in the wheel of the cart, to dash through the door and emerge again, shoving out a vehicle which went far beyond the horse in the way of ' beggaring description.' " This wonder in vehicular architecture had been a cart, in or about the days of Charles the Tenth (I do not think that it could have seen the First Empire), and no doubt at that early period it had enjoyed the distinction of paint ; but any such disguise had long ago been worn away by 52 PARIS IN '67. rain, and cracked away by sun, and powdered away by the cream-colored dust of French roads, until the original hue was undiscoverable. It had high sides, with open upper rails ; and 'raking' end-boards, like those of a Vir- ginia market-wagon ; and the ' near ' rail had been broken but neatly mended with a wrapping of fishermen's twine. The wheels were clumsy enough to have done duty under a twenty-four pounder, and dingy enough to have gone through McClc'Uan's campaign on the Chickahominy. For top, it had four bows, or hoops, with dirty white canvas loosely suspended over them ; one of the side-curtains slitted, but ' repaired,' apparently with rope-yarns ; and I was pleased to see that uniformity had been kept up by the mendingofabroken thill with a bit ofirou hoop wrapped and nailed around it For seats there were two boards run along the sides, lengthwise, with a strip of dirty carpet over each ; and from the place whe're had once been a tail-board, now removed, depended a small step-ladder, lashed fast with a rope, at the bottom step of which the female 'guard' was intended to stand, do the screaming for fares and receive the ' argent.' " Ornament, specially so designed, this stupendous ve- hicle had none ; but its absence was atoned by a legend in dauby black on a dirty white board hanging along the rolled-up centre cui'tain : "Service Special de 1' Exposition." And then, to my thinking, as evidently to that of its own- er, the affair was complete. "'"Pb?7cr.^ pig! coquin! mechant P squealed the baker, after allowing a moment's inspection of the wonder, con- joined with the animal fated to draw it. ' You would venture to suggest having me make disposal of my noble horses, would you, after seeing this voiture of preparation which shall comfort the savages of Americans and cause to arrive to me much wealth ! Sacr-r-r ! I could do my- self a violence, to think that I have been insulted thus ! ''PREPARIXG FOR BOARDERS:' 53 Go, pig of a glue-maker, and remember that I shall be dangerous when reaches me the next insult to the dignity of my tnenage /' " The knacker did go, I am of opinion, without further interlocution. 7" did, at all events, while the irate baker was dragging back ' Mirabeau ' and running back his cart — myself pondering, the while, on the pleasant prospects opening to the ' American savages and other islanders ' in the way of transportation and probably of many other de- tails of ' life in Paris.' " It must have been, I think, from some such actual ob- server as the Old Corporal, that a graphic New Torh Tri- bune correspondent (probably the ubiquitous " G. A. T.") who described the Opening in that journal, derived the data for his capital imaginary scene in a Parisian lodging- house, at about the same period — which must be quoted as a (better) companion-piece to the reality just sup- plied : — " How flushed and expectant grew the light and vola- tile Parisians, as the day of dedication drew near ! Taxes were heavy and trade was little. The strangers should make money plentiful. They were mere savages, indeed, who spoke gutturally, like hogs and horses, but France was too polite to show the disdain she felt, and so the price of lodgings went up one hundred per cent. You could hear your true Frenchman — who has no notion of geography — talking thus in the gate-keeper's rooni of his maison 7neublee, any evening. '^' Ma folf Nina, we must give all our boarders the conge. These English and other Kamschatkans are coming to Pai-is by droves. Hoav much did I say that the entresol should let for?' " ' A thousand francs,' says Xina, ' we got two hundred for it.' " ' JVbm de Dieu f — it shall be fifteen hundred. Behold, 54 PARIS IN '67. is it not the most spacious of its kind, barring the seven elbows, the defective flue, and the rats ? Yes, Nina, it shall be fifteen hundred. These Americans and Siberians know nothing of [the value of] money !' " ' How do they get so much, I wonder ?' says Nina. "' Oh, ^?arWe« / they dig it. Cochones P ^ " ' It would be a good place to marry our little daugh- ter, Cocotte !' " ' Jamais V cries the gate-keeper, ' what ! to an Amer- icaine — a savage like that — that she may wear a ring in her nose, ride a camel, and keep house in an iceberg ! The entresol shall be set down at fifteen hundred, and after to- day the price of the table dliote shall be ten instead of three francs.' " I am happy to assure the Old Corporal, as well as the Tribune correspondent, that the best (!) anticipations of both were realized. From the highest to the lowest (with a few honorable exceptions of which there has been or will be occasion to speak) — from the dealer in diamonds at the Palais Royal to the huckster of small wares along the dead- walls and blind-alleys — from the tnarchand des soies on the boulevards to the old woman who peddled porte-raonnaies and paper in the back streets leading off from the lie de la Cite — from Hawse, of the splendid livery turn-outs of the Rue Marignan, to the merest " one-horse " liveryman outside the " remise " regulations of the police — from the proprietors of the Grand Hotels d' Overcharge, on the boulevard, and De Graball, on the Rue Rivoli, — all and every one of the Parisian dealers, with the few honorable exceptions, took warning from the supposed brevity of the season and the prudential example set them at the Exposition, and made immense quantities of hay while their little sun was shining. I saw fifteen francs each paid by two persons per day, for mere lodsfinors in the same little room in the Hotel ''PREPARIXG FOR BOARDERS:' 55 d'Overcbarge, au quaf>-ieme, foi' which St. Edward and the GoA'ernor paid four francs each during the Exposition- less, but much more coinfortable, Parisian summer of 1865 — an advance of only about three hundred per cent. I saw the Hotel de Gripemclose, on the Rue de Fuss-and- feathers, obliged to keep to old prices for the sake of re- taining custom, set such meagre tables that the habitues would have become Calvin Edsons if they had not resorted to restaurants between meals already paid for. I saw '■'■ appartements meuhle'es'''' raised to from twice to three times their former price — no luxury or comfort added, and the attendance not so good as of old; I saw thousand upon thousand of American dollars spent for silks, stuffs, bijouterie and gimcracks, because such thii;igs used to be " cheap at Paris," and orders had been given or promises made, when so high had the temporary extortion reached that they could have been bought cheaper (duty and freight out of the calculation) in New York of the lost conscience ; and I saw so many other things of the same character, and so Avearying to the public patience, that, call Paris in '67 an unexceptionable Paradise who will, I claim the privilege of adding to the picture a small corner of Purgatory, And I have an especial word of comfort to the Old Corporal. His cart was out in service, and I rode in it — at least I rode in what might have been his special " rattle- trap," with the " noble horse;" while there were plenty of similar ones to keep it in countenance, in the midst of the really excellent conveyances provided for transit between the Bourse and the Exposition, the Palais Royal and the Exposition, the costly cari'iages of wealth and nobility, and the handy cabs that were sometimes to be found when wanted, in going to or coming from the " great show." Anna Maria, I think, will remember that particular 66 PARIS I2T '67. *' voiture." Hot was the afternoon, and weary with much exercise were the legs (at least the male ones — I have no license to speak authoritatively of the others), when one day we strolled Exposition-ward up the right bank of the Seine from the Palais d'Industrie. Anna Maria eventually sug- gested "a carriage." Carriage or cab, there was none in the neighborhood. Anna Maria suggested " an omnibus " — omnibus passing in that direction came not within the line of vision. The hot sun of July was beating upon the head, and despair and incipient sunstroke began to appal the heart. At length came into view the Old Corporal's cart, or some one of its kidney — wheels, top, curtains, thills, " Exposition '' placard, all as that graphic artist has painted them — creeping along at the pace of two miles the hour, and horse-destroying even at that speed. A frowsy, unbonneted termagant held place on the lower step, and screamed : "^ V Exposition! Venez, messieurs et mesdames ! A V Exposition! Cinquante centimes settlement !^^ On the front, supplying the necessary and no small modicum of belaboring, rode what I now religiously believe to have been the weazen-faced baker ; and on the seats were ranged half a dozen, more or less, of the capped and bloused denizens of the Faubourg St. Antoine, their faces half dirt, and the other half eager expectation of the great treat in store. (It is worthy of note, if my suspicion of the identity should be correct, that monsieur le hou- langer had come down a shade in his anticipated prices, and that the "American savages" were not plentiful in his load, however tliey were going to be.) "There," suggested the Governor, "there is a chance to ride, now." To him Anna Maria indignantly, and with a curl of her slightly-retrousse nose : " That ? Catch me riding in that, at an early period !" To her the Gover- nor, more determinedly : " Now I think, then, that we icill ride in that, or not go at all !" To him Anna Maria, ''PREPARING FOR BOARDERSy 57 energetically: "Humph! You think so — do yon? Then Z shall go if I like, and walk if I like, and ride in any- thing I please, if I like ! " To her the Governor, more subtly: "Well, now, I think that the joke Avould be a good one; but, of course, if you are afraid to go in it " Whereupon the spirits of all the ancestors who could, Avould or should have fought at Bunker-hill or Brandy- wine (whether they did so or not), blazed up in the face of Anna Maria, pointed by a fierce ejaculation : " Afraid ? Who said that I was afraid? Here, arretez vous, cocker !'''' and an imperious beckon and that shout arrested the vehicle and its concomitants in their mad career. Within half a minute thereafter the united efforts of the Governor and the virago " guard " hoisted substantial Anna Maria up the steps and into the cart, the gubernatorial purse dis- bursed a franc (borrowed), and the onward progress was pleasantly resumed. Within a second half-minute Anna Maria's pronovmced weight and the unstable character of the seat combined to produce a fracture and downfall of the latter, leading to Anna Maria's achieving Avhat is kno-wn to the disciples of Ward and Hamill as " catching a crab," the body being temporarily deposited at the bot- tom of the vehicle, and the pedal extremities extended airward in a manner more edifying to others, and in- structive as to the qualities of hosiery, than pleasing to the unintentional gymnast. We went on to the Exposition in the dilapidated rattle- trap, however — did we not, Anna Maria ? — and enjoyed the ride better than any other during the Parisian cam- paign. And how we looked around, during that some- what extended progress of less than a mile achieved in less than an hour, pityingly on the poor wretches who had only ordinary vehicles at command, and wished that Murray Hill and the Central Park could catch a glimpse 3* 58 PARIS IN '67. of us, then ; and dashed up to the Porte Rapp and disem- barked with an air that kings and queens might have envied, alighting at palace-steps ; and were altogether jolly and jubilant when once we had fairly taken posses- sion of one of the " conveniences " especially prepared by Paris for the " American savages and other islanders," YI. THE EAGLE'S BROOD IN" EUROPE. The national eagles are numerous ; and it may be neces- sary to premise that in speaking of the " eagle's brood " I do not refer to the progeny of either the Russian, Aus- trian or Prussian birds, all sprawled with erect head and dangling legs, as the farmers used to gibbet predatory crows and hen-hawks, — nor yet to the one with folded wings, bearing an " N " on his breast and popularly supposed to be derived from Rome as Napoleon the Third is from Julius Csesar, — but to John Neal's "Fierce gray bird, with a sharpened beak And a blazing eye and an angry shriek " — the Gray Forest Eagle of the West, fit symbol of a land more boundless in extent than even the flight of the eagle itself, and of a nation which alternately seems to possess all the nobilities and all the meannesses of that Jovian bird — a bird, let it be remembered, which looks unflinch- ingly at the sun in its midday glory, finds no rock too high for its eyrie and no ether too perilous for its wing, and — robs the poor fish-hawk of the paltry spoil it is bear- ing homeward for supper ! In short, that in writing of the " eagle's brood " in France and the other countries of Europe, during 1867, I am alluding to America/is abroad. What a "raft" of them there has been, to be sure! — what a representation of all that is best, worst, and most 60 PARIS IK '67. common-place in American society ! How every eastward- bound steamer has been loaded with them, destined for as indefinite a port in the pleasuring-voyage as some of the old mercliant-ships used to be for " Cowes and a market ;" plethoric pocket-booked and the reverse ; lettered and unlettered ; fit and unfit for travel ; old and young ; sick and well ; male and female ; misers and spendthrifts ; peo- ple with an errand and people without an errand ; objects of pride and objects of shame, to be met abroad ; some eager to set foot among the scenes of familiar history, and others asking on the verge of departure : " What was the most important things that ever happened in England and France and a few of them other countries — so that a body can know what he is seein' ?" ; fashionables going to show themselves, and unfashionables too slovenly to take even due thought for clean linen ; habitual sneerers going to undervalue everything, and habitual enthusiasts to overrate everything ; radicals to spy out past " rebels " abroad, and past rebels to escape for a season the fatal pressure of radicals; patriots beanng with them the whole of a native land in their hearts, and indifferents incapable of bearing the welfare of a township ; freemen familiar with the ballot for half a century, and freedmen just admit- ted to the exercise of the misunderstood privilege ; actors and tract-society men ; reporters and fugitives ; million- aires and bankrupts; swindlers and their victims; mer- chants in the dull season and lawyers in vacation ; clergy- men on their leave, and courtesans on their chase ; book-makers and book-murderers ; diamonded dirt-cart- men and needy scions of " first fiimilies ;" Madame to be able to boast of " seeing Europe," and Miss in the faint hope of finding a husband somewhere in the melee; all these and those thousand other classes and contradictions embraced in the common phrase : " Everybody and his wife." EAGLE'S BROOD IN' EUROPE. 61 All Europe has been literally alive with this " brood " of the American eagle ; and, let the truth be told, all Europe has been expecting them as anxiously as they have been anxiously arriving. They have supplied no small proportion of the gold minted from discounted greenbacks, by which the " season " has been made " pro- fitable " to London hotel-keepers and Parisian boiitiqmers ; the verdancy of some of them has made greener the green fields of Old England, the brightness of others has added a new flash to the glaciers of Switzerland. I have seen them button-holing a chance-met friend in the stable- yard of the Red Horse at Stratford-on-Avon, and inquir- ing, confidentially : " Who teas Skakspeare, that they talk so much about, and what did he do ? — tell a fellow, won't you?" I have caught them driving a company of literal Englishmen wild with merry exaggerative " chaff " that would not have puzzled a knot of American school- boys, and setting French academicians rampant with bril- liantly-nonsensical new propositions in science and phil- osophy, I have seen the beauty of American girls bowing whole assemblages as if in the presence of a new and more glorious human race ; and I have seen the miserable ignor- ances, affectations and false modesties of would-be Ameri- can ladies awakening well-bred sneers at the country that could give birth to such travesties on mind and manners, I have seen them climbing the Kliigi on foot, when others rode ; and dragged about in carriages when all others walked ; and haggling with a hotel-keeper over the price of a bougie that had not been burned ; and astounding even reckless Baden-Baden with the flash of their uncon- sidered handfuls of gambling gold. I have seen, in short, what might have astonished the First Napoleon, who prophesied that Europe would, at an early day, become either " republican or Cossack " — I have seen it literally American I 62 PARIS 1 11 '67. But of course, amid all the outside attractions and excur- sions, the great gathering-place of the eagle's brood, as of all the rest of the world, has been Paris, Where have they not been visible, there? What one of the royal receptions has not been watched by them with that double eagerness proper for republicans ? — which one of the worst cajicam- danced at Mabille or the Chateau des Fleurs has not been beheld by them with that horrified admira- tion proper for people of a nation which never tolerates such exhibitions ? What grand-opera night has been deficient in the flash of American diamonds, whether the brow or bosom on which they glowed was lovely or the reverse ? What midnight promenade on the brilliant Bou- levard has failed to reveal the natty rig of the Bostonian, the jaunty swagger of the New Yorker, the trim whisker of the Philadelphian, the short trousers and thin cheeks of the speculative country Yankee, the broad- bottomed coat and astonishing antiquated hat of the man from " only a hundred miles west of Chicawgo ?" And where and when, outside the cafe, along the walks of the Avenue des Champs Elysees, or in the cour cVhonneur of the Grand Hotel, has that spectacle so dear to all Americans been missing — a few tilted chairs and the pro^Dcr quantity of boot-soles elevated for exhibition ? Which of the great hotels has not found the more liberal- handed of them among its best customers ? and at what maison meublee have they not at first threatened madness to Madame the proprietress, and afterwards supplied- con- tent to all ? What shopkeeper of the Boulevards or the Palais Royal has not aided in depleting their pockets ? What restaurant keeper has failed to hear their French of all varieties, to supply them with English of correspond- ing excellence, and to serve them eventually what he pleased at his own prices ? Into what corner of the Expo- sition have they not peeped, at once proud and ashamed EAGLE'S BROOD IN EUROPE. 63 of their ovm. country and its department, and diligently studying what other countries could teach, while loudly boasting that their own was incapable of improvement ? Through what gallery of Versailles or the Louvre have they not minced or stridden, some of them really observ- ing the pictures and statuary, and the balance believing that they did so ? Up what monument have they not climbed, to be able to say that they " had the view from such and such a point," if for no higher (but how could there have been a " higher ?") ambition ? Have they not eaten at the American Restaurant of the Exposition? — drank at the American Bar ? — inscribed their names at the American Registry ? — drawn money and read American newspapers at the American Bankers' ? "Verily, not to carry out this line of inquiry to any greater tediousness, the brood of the American eagle have "seen Paris" during the summer of '67, and Paris and all Europe have seen them. Shall not a few words follow of their peculiarities as a people abroad, and the estimation in which they have been held, especially during this mem- orable summer ? At Paris, and measurably over Europe, this year, Amer- icans have gratified nearly as much curiosity as they have manifested. Never before, so much as since the rebellion, have America, American events, and the American people, been so much in the whole world's mouths and minds. The rebellion, with its promise of our destruction — our astounding innovations in engines of warfare, our sudden fleets by the hundred and armies by the million — our emer- gence from the great struggle, not only victorious but apparently stronger than ever, and walking without evi- dent staggering under a financial load capable of crushing to the earth any nation on the globe except one or possibly two — our sudden abolition of slavery, for our own pur- poses, when we had adhered to it in defiance of the opia- 64 PARIS I2T '67. ion of a railing world — our late great Western develop- ments of railroad enterprise — our rivers flowing with oil, following our mountains teeming with gold and silver — our audacious crossings of the Atlantic in river-yachts and cock-boats — all these have wrought together to awaken the world's curiosity to an extent unparalleled and almost undreamed of even by ourselves. And, at the great Paris gathering and in those portions of Europe more exten- sively this year than ever before visited by Americans, it is but fair to say that the eagle's brood have been stared at as much as they have stared — that the men who could do all these things at once have been quite as great objects of curiosity as any scenes or any people among which they have moved. Americans, too, have been holding the world's respect, this year, as never before. Not — as my first radical friend may exclaim with a triumphant " Aha !" — on account of the moral eiFect of emancipation ; for I have no doubt that the lamented Abraham Lincoln might have affixed his name to a document enslaving a new race instead of freeing one, and had the operation added to the power of the nation, the effect upon the world at large would have been quite as decided. But that, first, the personal push and energy, and, second, the material power of the American people, have been lately shown in an imwonted degree in the points before mentioned and in many others; — and that Europe is the continent, above all others, where power is deferred to and success treated with unbounded respect. The Euroi)eans understand, now, that we can raise armies, erect navies, and crush rebellions, to an ex- tent and with a rapidity fabulous elsewhere ; they un- derstand that our mineral resources approach if they do not exceed those of all the rest of the globe put together ; they believe (whether truly or not) that we have the purse of Fortunatus hidden away somewhere, nationally, and EAGLE'S BROOD 7^V EUROPE. 65 are thus capable of sheltering all the world's outcasts, enriching all the world's shopkeepers, girdling all the world with the chains and bonds of our commercial enterprise ; they see in us one of the Great Powers of the earth, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and begin to mark our ex- ceptional position as the undisputed arbiters of the destinies of one whole continent ; and these incitements to respect, if no others existed, would be quite sufficient to induce that feeling, not to say compel it. But candor obliges the statement that to one of the features named in the previous paragraph, we have owed more of the almost awe-struck temporary admiration of the European world, than to almost any other if not to all the others combined. I refer to the enterprise shown, the engineering audacity manifested, and the progress achieved, in that crowning venture of an adventurous age, the great Pacific Railroad. To hear of the two great agencies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Com- panies, marching hand in hand though far apart, and tramp- ing steadily onward to a success as stupendous as assured — to hear of the Central crossing eastward the whole gold country of California, and climbing the wild Sierra Nevada to its very top, with almost the sjieed that would once have been thought necessary to lay a mule-track — to hear of the Union marching westward across the plains and approaching the foot of the Rocky Mountains, its trains moving cities and its operators armies — to hear of a gov- ernment assisting both enterprises by scores of millions and yet allowing private capitalists to take liens in advance of itself, so assured that any lien upon such roads must be a safe one — to hear of uncompleted portions of such roads paying interest on three or four times the investment, nine per cent, on bonds, and even favorite " Governments" sold out to secure them — these things have been simply astound- ing to short-railway and three-per-cent. interest Europeans ; 66 PARIS IN '67. it has been to inquire of the truth of these marvelous statements that more Americans have been button-holed in Europe during 1867, than for any other purpose; and it has been to the nation capable, at the very close of a great war, of thus proving its hold upon the centre as well as the borders of a continent, and laying substantial railways at the rate of miles per day — it has been to a nation so shown abroad, that some of the very highest honors of the season liave naturally accrued. Again, Americans have been keeping up the reputation, this year, of spending more money when traveling, than the people of any other nation on the globe. To spend money is to have money, at least among superficial think- ers — to be extravagant is to be rich — to belong to a nation of rich men is to belong to one of great power — to belong to a powerful nation is to command respect uni- versally. I do not insist upon this as a legitimate ground of respect : some of the worst fools have been spending the most money. But the fact remains that while this national lavish personal expenditure goes on, the flunkey world (and much of Europe is flunkey) will scarcely stop to in- quire whether the means for such an expenditure have been inherited, earned, or swindled ; couriers and valets will lie in wait, hotels will be kept open, carriages will stand, flags will wave, as they have done this season, more than half for American patronage. This whole reckless- ness of money is a national vice as well as a national folly ; but as each one of us catches a reflection from the last flash of the departing dollar, why should the country com- plain ? Then, and as the last ingredient in this respect, neces- sary to be noticed here, we have astounded all the world by our success at the Exposition and compelled recogni- tion in that success. Of the special articles on exhibition, covering us wdth this legitimate honor, other mention will EAGLE'S BROOD IN' EUROPE. 67 be made in due place : here only the general fact demands note. We had a cramped space, few articles, a mean-look- ing department — to the superficial eye, a department mean beyond comparison, in the midst of oriental splendor in decoration, and the profusion of articles contributed by countries of nearer location. We have taken more grand prizes than any nation on the globe except two — more grand prizes per cent of articles exhibited, than any other nation ever took at any exhibition. We have ruled and conquered in the practical, throughout — in an instance or two, hereafter to be noted, in the so-called higher depart- ment of the ornamental. This — the awards declared so early in the season as the first of July — ^has capped and crowned the respect paid to the eagle's brood — a brood by no means slow to perceive when they are honored or when they ought to he ! In one respect America has signally failed, in Europe and during the summer. With a few exceptions (and I hope that every American lady who chances to be or have been abroad will consider herself one of them) we have not shown, this year, a fair representation of our female beauty. There have been too many dowagers, too many dowdy parvenues, too many acidulous spinsters, too few of those best tyjies of American girlhood and American wifehood who had before won us the well-deserved name of produc- ing the handsomest and most lovely race of women on the globe. Far too many of the best whom we have sent, have been habitually overdressed — overdressed on shipboard, in railway carriages, on promenade, everywhere except at great festivals, where excess in any line was almost impos- sible. Taken as a whole, the French Exposition, a triumph for American manufacturers, has scarcely raised their repu- tation for the one production dwarfing all others in its appeal to the eye and the heart. The fault, I take it, does not lie in any deterioration at home, or in any unwillingness of 68 PARIS IN '67. our loveliest to have tempted the Atlantic waves, would Papa but have opened his purse-strings wide enough, or Charles not been too jealous or too selfish to take his pretty wife, or Adolphus not been too slow in arranging for those " bridal favors." Three or four additional features remain to be noticed. The females of the brood have been especially reckless in their " shoppings " along the Boulevards and around the Palais Royal ; and they have insisted upon Mabille and Asnieres with an urgency showing that we are "progress- ing." All, male and female, with few and notable excep- tions, have gabbled such atrocious French, as to paralyze their victims with horror ; while in nine instances out of ten they could have found enough English on the other side, however correspondingly atrocious, to save self-re- spect, I think that beyond this, the two strongest natural characteristics shown by the eagle's brood in Europe have been the bewilderment of the females as to the best ar- rangement of their chirjnons, in the midst of a variety ranging from a knob at the back of the neck to a knot at the exact center of the top-head, — and the agonizing ef- forts of the males to avoid being imposed upon with horse- beef, in lands where they are so shameless as to announce " hors cP oeuvres " on their bills-of-fare ! YII. THE CAKNIVAL OF CROWDED HEADS. Notable as has been the Paris Exposition in many other regards, its splendor as a " show " and its power of attract- ing the masses would both have been found sadly deficient in comparison, but for the concourse of Eraperors, Kings, Oriental Sultans, Pachas, Beys, and other governing pow- ers, and the scions of governing houses, for so many weeks supplying Parisians and their visitors with a new sensation in eyesight, almost every day, and presenting a suspicion, for the time, that there had been a general " throne-deliv- ery," and that all the fugitive monarchs had fled to Paris as their common refuge. Alas, no ! — the second glance and the second thought showed that no such series of royal calamities had overflowed France with the kingly element. They brought with them too many evidences of their state, and they were too pronouncedly received, for the suspicion to linger more than a moment that they were monarchs discrowned ! Not even France, now-a-days, and in spite of the example set by Louis in the reception and mainte- nance of fugitive English James the Second at St. Ger- main — ^not even France, now-a-days, can afibrd to set up mimic courts for the royal unfortunates ; else would she have found plenty of employment for courtesy and cash, following the events of the first Italian war, and again after Sadowa. No ! — these all, in contradistinction, were monarchs who had not yet lost their crowns, or budding monarchs who 70 PARIS IN '67. had not yet received the banWes in waiting. And not even many of the Parisians, it is probable, have taken the pains to make such a list of the sovereigns and scions of sovereignty who have pa<;sed before them in review, that they could designate either their names or succession. As, indeed, how could they, when one princely celebrity after another came so rapidly, and moved about so ceaselessly, that one graphic writer designated Paris as " a parterre of kings, and of half and quarter kings," with " the people at the Tuileries and the Etat-Major — that is to say, the mas- ters of ceremonies and officers in command of the city — not knowing whether they stand on their heads or their heels," " the town barricaded as in time of revolution" (to becure uninterrupted passage to the royal guests), " and the monarch s scattered about town in the various palaces, in so promiscuous a manner as almost to suggest the idea that they want to shut off the circulation ;" while of the propensity to " do " them, pedally and visually, another pleasantly summed the whole matter in saying that: "The presence of so many sovereigns or to-be sovereigns in Paris, has literally turned the heads of a large class of peo- ple, who station themselves all day long at the doors of the Exhibition, or on certain corners of the streets, and refuse to be comforted till they have seen a dozen crowned heads. The Exhibition is the great trap to catch the unfortunate monarchs in, and people go there and hunt through its lab}Tinthine windings just as hunters do the forests after game ; and then they come home, radiant and happy, and boast of having seen their half-a-dozen, just as an Indian warrior would boast of his half-a-dozen scalps, or a hun- ter of his pairs of game. None of the innocent weak- nesses of poor human nature are so seductive as flunkey- ism." For sovereigns to visit Paris, without the special in- citement of an International Exposition, is not quite the CARNIVAL OF CROWNED HEADS. 71 rarity, however, which the same event would present in any other capital than the English — Paris heing consider- ed, even more than London, one of the " world's sights " that cannot be ignored or neglected; and no small number of ci'owned heads have nodded beside the Seine during the past half-centnry — the list of whom, here, would be only wearisome if attainable. Sometimes, too, they have come as little else than captives, long since the day when Fran- cis the First supplied the opposite vicissitude to Charles the Fifth after Pavia, as was the case with that temporo- spiritual sovereign, Pope Pius the Seventh, ostensibly a guest of the First Napoleon, but really a prisoner. Then they have come as conquerors, as Avhen the Allied Sovereigns held high revel in the forfeit capital of Napo- leon, after ^Yaterloo, in revenge for the humiliation to which he had subjected them when both Alexander of Russia and Francis of Austria went to him as suppliants, the one personally and the other by deputy, on the night following Austeiiitz. The visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to the Emperor at Paris, and their entertainment there, is, of course, well-remembered, as also the return visit of the Emperor to the queen at Windsor ; and it is to note a fea- ture originating in true courtesy, though almost laughably overstrained, common to that date and the present, that the double event is here alluded to. When Napoleon III. visited Windsor, the name of " Waterloo Chamber " was taken down from above the door of that celebrated apart- ment in Windsor Castle, that the eyes of the imperial guest might not be pained by resting upon the objection- able word ; and the Emperor, this year, gave special orders that no soldier wearing the Crimean medal should be placed on guard at or around the palace occupied by the Czar, or at any point where he could be mortified by that similar reminder of defeat ! Just as if Napoleon long for- 72 PARIS IN '&1 . got Waterloo when on English soil, or Alexander Sebas- topol when on French, from the lack of verbal or tangible reminders ! It may be a matter of interest to others than Parisians, as it is certainly part of tlie record of the Exposition, to recall who really were the imperial, royal, and royally- expectant personages sojourning in Paris for a longer or briefer period during the summer of 1867 ; and that want of dtsposition to run after notable 2Jeople, which led me, not long ago, to make musical choice between five opening minutes of the Concert in the English Garden at Geneva, or a near view of the arriving King and Queen of Portu- gal, just then coming to my hotel — this, and the want of familiarity with royal precedence which flows from it, must be my excuse if I do not happen to place them pre- cisely as Monsieur the Grand Chamberlain would do in arranging their seats at table. The list seems to have comprised nearly sixty members of blood imperial or royal, grouped as follows : Hussian — the Czar, Hereditary Grand Duke, Grand Duke Constan- tine. Grand Duchess Mary (sister of the Czar) ; English — Prince of Wales, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Arthur, Princess Alice (Princess Louis of Hesse) ; Prussian — King and Queen of Prussia, Crown Prince and Princess Royal, Prince Albert, Prince and Princess Charles ; JBel- gian — King and Queen of Belgium, Count and Countess of Flanders ; Italian — Prince Humbert, Duke and Duchess d'Aosta ; Sioedish — King of Sweden, Prince Oscar ; JBavarian — Kings Louis I. and IL, Prince and Princess Adalberg ; JETollandische — Prince of Orange ; Saxon — Prince and Princess Royal of Saxony, Duke and Duchess of Saxony ; Portuguese — King and Queen of Portugal, Duke de Coimbre ; Turkish — Sultan, his son, brother, and the Hereditary Prince of Turkey ; Grecian — King of Greece j Egyptian — Viceroy (now king) ; Wurtemburgian VARNIVAL OP CROWiTED HEADS. 73 »— King of Wurtemburg, Duke William, Count de \Yur- temburg ; German — Duke of Leuchtenberg, Princess Eugenie of Leuchtenberg, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Duke of Mechlenburg-Strelitz, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, three Princes of Oldenberg, Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, Prince of Hohen- zollern, and his son, Prince Leopold, Grand Duke of Mech- lenberg-Schwerin, Prince of Reuss; Tunisian — the Bey of Tunis ; Japanese — Brother of the Tycoon. Of this number there are two emperors (the Czar and Sultan), nine kings (including the new king of Egypt), nine heirs-presump- tive to royal power, one oriental sovereign below kingly power (the Bey of Tunis), three queens, and a dozen prin- cesses — certainly a number and variety unparalleled in the annals of regal hospitality for a single year, and unlikely soon to be duplicated by any single festivity. There was probably more royalty and quasi-royalty present at Paris, during the season (especially that of the nearer and less notable German type), than .either the Emperor or his most enthusiastic chamberlain had antici- pated ; and yet there were many absences of those who had been more or less definitely expected, and whose pres- ence would have added materially to the perfection of the concourse and the eclat of the great occasion. A few of these, and the reasons for their absence, may be worth a paragraph each. 1st. His Holiness the Pope. Slightly expected at one time or another during the season. Reasons for declining : First, the grand convocation of bishops from all the world,, and great festival of the church held at St. Peter's, on Sat- urday, the 29th of June. Second, some doubt whether, if he set foot in France, he would not be called upon to con- summate the long-deferred crowning of the emperor, and thus enrage all his supporting monarchs of the "right divine." 4 74 PARIS IN '67. 2d. Queen Victoria of England. Ardently expected and desired at the time of the Czar's visit. Sent her re- grets, and declined to come in state, on the groimd of her non-participation in public ceremonials ; but held out the hope that she might possibly visit Paris incognito. Sur- mised that she would come incognito, not only to oblige the Emperor, but to look a little after the Prince of Wales, vehose " goings on," in the way of saying soft things to countesses, and going to Chantilly races on Sunday, were alleged to be terrible. Failed to come at all, however — possibly detained by the Reform Bill, the late session of Parliament, and the publication of her memoirs of the " Early Days of the Prince Consort." 3d. President Andrew Johnson^ of the Waited States. Very much desired, on the double ground of his being a " Republican king " and the worst badgered man living ; but scarcely expected. Reasons for remaining at home : First, no expressed desire whatever to visit Paris. Second, precisely so many conglomerate reasons as represented by the Congressional Districts. 4th. T/ie Shah of Persia. Fully expected at about the time of the Sultan's visit. Rumored reasons for declining : domestic political troubles of a character rendering it likely that if he left Persia, he would not enter it again except dethroned and shorter by a head. 5th, The Emperor of Austria. Among the most ar- dently desired and fully expected, in the early days of the Exposition; afterwards not expected at all. Detaining causes : at first, the preparations for and crowning as King of Hungary, which took place at Pesth on the same day with the grand ball at the Hotel de Ville, Saturday, June 8th. Afterward the melancholy fate of his brother Maxi- milian, in Mexico, and the mourning and depression inci- dent to that event.* 6th. The King of Italy. Desired and hoped for by • Finally reached Paris, however, and was imperially entertained, in October. CARNIVAL OF CROWNED HEADS. 75 every lover of gallant men ; but perhaps a trifle afiaid of meeting Austria and getting into a "complication" Avith liim, and engaged at home in watching the Roman reac- tionists on one side, and the " Party of Action" on the other. 7th. The Emperor of China. Not much expected, though much desired by the sudden admirers of oriental- ism in every shape, who thought that he would at least come to "tea" at the Tuileries. Keason for declining, humor- ously said to have been " the discovery of a hole in the Chinese wall, that needed mending," and " his early age of only twelve years, which made him too brittle a piece of ' China ' to bear such long transportation." 8th. Queen Isabella of Spain. Certainly expected at one time. Kept at home by jealousy of the Empress, who was handsomer than she, and had once been her subject ; little domestic events not necessary to enlarge upon ; and General Prim. 9th. TJie King of DenmarJc. Not sei-iously expected, and detained by the fact that there might be " too much Prussia " at Paris, and he would have nothing whatever left of his little when he returned. 10th. His sahle Majesty of Dahomey. Very much de- sired by the Exeter Hall people and the American rad- icals. Supposed to be detained by the dullness of his executioners' knives, rendering it impossible to get his aimual forty thousand beheaded and chopped up iu time. 11th. The King of the Mosquitos. Looked for "uith eagerness, but kept at home by a temporary deficiency in broad-cloth, of no consequence there^ but likely to be awkward at Paris. 12th. Brigham Yoxing^ Sovereig?i of Utah. Positively promised at one time ; but departure from Salt Lake City rendered impossible by the arrival of several new emigrants with handsome wives, all of whom required to be "added." 76 PARIS IN '67. Sent one of his sons, however, who unaccountably failed to be recognized among the princes. 13th. Juar,ez^ Dictator {called I*resident) of 3fexico. Very anxiously expected, accompanied by Lopez, Chevalier de la Legion d'' IIonnexu\ but detained by the necessity of killing and salting away enough of the Imperialists for a year's provisions. 14th. Kinrj Theodore of Abyssinia. Specially invited, on English account, but without the tender of the royal alliance which his Majesty had so long coveted. Conse- quent sullen shutting of himself up, which may need an " expedition " to overcome. 15tli (and the last, so far as remembered). The King of the Cannibal Islands. Of course, the arrival of the Czar of Russia, and his brief stay in Paris, formed the crowning event of the season; as the mad attempt upon his life by the Pole Bergouski, when returning from the grand review at Longcharaps, on the 6th of June, supplied the one regret which marred the whole succession. " Tommy," who was present at all the out-door events of the Czar's reception, says of the arrival, that " all the troops in Paris were at the Northern Rail- way station and in the Place du Carrousel ; all the people of Paris were in the streets ; all the Russian flags that could be bought, made, or stolen, were on the houses ; and yet Nappy went to the station after the t'other big-wig, with not much more state than the Banker would have shown if he had been coming down to the Harlem rail- road station after me — with only a hundred or two of guards fluttering their lance-pennons; and it was worth something to see the two shaking hands when they met, like jolly old codgers that hadn't a crown between them, let alone a crown apiece!" Tommy records, too, Avith something like a chuckle at the weaknesses of gray-headed people who call others " youngsters," that " the Russian CARNIVAL OF OR OWNED HEADS. 77 Bear went to the theater the very first night — didn't he, thougli ! — just as if he had come all the way from Petero- polis to see pretty Mile. Schneider, and do the ' Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein.'" A little more at length, but indispensable, is the brief account which he supplies of the grand review in the Bois de Boulogne, and the attempted regicide : — " Of course you know where the review took place, when they say that it was in the ' Bois.' Where else could it be than on the course at Longchamps ? — quite as well fitted for reviewing, it seems to me, as for horse-racing. It was a gay old show, and I didn't wonder that my friend Nappy's eyes — very dull ones sometimes, now-a-days — flashed a little when he looked on those columns and squadrons, and thought that they were all his — when he had the privilege, too, of showing them to the Czar, and thus giving a polite hint to that opposition house on the other side of the street. ' Do you see them,, old boy ? They belong to me! I manage them! Look at them well, and see if you fancy that you could ride into Paris a conqueror, as your namesake did. Not if this imperial Court knows hei'self, and she think she do!' This was what Nappy was saying, under his breath, to the Czar, as the two looked at the fifty battalions of infantry, fifty- squadrons of cavalry, and eighteen or twenty batteries of artillery — really the best trained troops in the world : the men in good condition, the cavalry powerfully mounted, the artillery riding guns that the Emperor has made per- fection, and the whole such a mass of splendid uniforms, bright weapons, glittering brass and silver, plumes, flags, and perpetual motion, that the eye was kept steadily whirling from one point to another, and a fellow came nearer to being drunk than he usually does without a tod. Then the bands and the music they made ! — but you know about French bands ; and when I tell vou that there must 78 PARIS IX '6 7. hare been a hundied of them, with thirty or forty in- struments to each, and thnt they ^^/ayec? — not squealed or screamed, but plai/fd — you can form some idea of the ■way that the ' music of the spheres,' boiled down to quiet thunder, was dinned into our ears. But while Nappy was seeing and hearing all this, and saying so much to the Czar without being heard, I was saying something that has not been heard until now. And this was my little address to my friend Xappy : ' Old fel., they are a nice body of troops, horse, foot and dragoons, and they would do to tie to under ordinary cii'cumstances, such as a scrim- mage with the Russian Bear yonder, or any little trifle of that sort. But do you know what I saw a couple of years ago, when Grant and Sherman marched the remnants of their armies through Washington ? — A body of men in faded uniforms, no shirts, and scarcely a shoe; the flags tatters, the horses half skeletons, and the poor fellows looking as if they needed early foraging for a dinner ; not a flash of splendor anywhere about them, not a suggestion of beauty or a thought of even comfort ; and yet befoi-e the same number of that body of men, your gingerbread battalions, that day or this day, w^ould be scattered like chaff blowTi away before an American nortliAvester. That is about the style and size of it, my imperial friend and brother!' This is what I was saying, just then. What do you think of it as a specimen of spread-eagle that will wash ? " Xow a word about something else that occurred the same day — the attempt to shoot the Czar. I do not like regicides — like them less than ever, since April 1865 ; so I do not know why I should have been selected to see Bertezowski, or Bergerowski, or Bergouski, or whatever is his confounded name, make a fool and a scoundrel of him- self at tlie same time. But so I was, perliaps because (as the Banker would say) I was ' foreordained ' to tell you GARXIVAL OF CF.OWXED HEADS. 79 about it. I shall not tell you much, though, for I may be- fore have remarked that I don't approve of anythmg mur- derous, from a hanging-match to a bout at fisticuffs. Well, the review was over, the troops were filing away, part of them Parisward, through the Avenue de Longchamps, and the rest westward toward Yallerien, It may have been about five o'clock, I should think ; and Count Bob and I, in our open fiacre, were just turning into the ave- nue from the Cascade, where we had been watching — I suppose that I may as well tell the whole truth while I am about it — watching a couple of ' pieces of calico ' that seemed to want 'pressing out.' Suddenly a sergent de ville took our horse by the head and forced him back, the crowd opened way by falling back against the borders, and away came an open carriage and four at a smart trot, with a sprinkling of ofiicers ahead and half around it, and a squadron of lancers close behind ; and we saw that it was the two emperors, riding together, and their heads very near, as if in conversation. Just then Count Bob grasped my arm with a half-cry : ' Look there ! See that dog with a pistol ! Where is he pointing it ? He is mad !' I saw by that time, that a thin, starved-looking fellow, with wild eyes and old clothes, had stej^ped from behind a tree, and that he really had a pistol pointed to- ward the carriage of the emperors. Before I could see anything more, distinctly, there was another cry, a rush ; and it seemed to me that at the same instant when I heard the bang of the pistol, I saw a man spur his horse almost against the carriage, and thought that he must be another conspirator, and that there was really going to be murder by the Avholesale. But it seemed that he was only a lucky fellow, who chanced to be in the way of making his for- tune, and that he had seen the movement and pushed his horse in the way so rapidly that the bullet hit the horse instead of either of the emperors, though part of the 80 PARIS IN '67. blood went over them. The man who had fired was down (they said that the pistol had burst and half blown off his han.cQ ; about twenty people wei'e on top of him or grab- bing at him ; mounted police and officers were spurring every which way and getting nowhere ; everybody seemed to be shouting and getting arrested ; and there was a lively time generally. Count Bob said that all that was wanted was a barricade. The only calm people, I think, were the two emperors, each one of whom seemed to be looking whether the other was hurt, without much apparent thought for himself, or whether there might not be another bullet where that came from. " That is nearly all that I know of the affair, except that I saw Nappy and his friend acknowledging the felicita- tions of the crowd, and thought better of monarchy at that moment than I had ever done before ; that I saw them bundle up the pistol man, after nearly pounding him to a jelly, throw him into a close carriage, and drive him away ; and that then the guards came closer around the imperial carriage (just when they were less wanted), and it trotted rapidly up the avenue. My opinion is that the Parisians, who don't like anybody to be killed by others than themselves, would have hung the drunken or crazy Pole if they had caught him and understood what he had done ; and another of my opinions is that the man who had his horse shot will make a good thing out of the little operation, while I, who saw it as well as he, and would have prevented the shot if I could, haven't made anything out of it — not even a readable paragraph." I am indebted to " JMonadnock," of the New York Daily Times., an excellent descriptive correspondent, for the brief word which follows, with reference to the appearance of the Grand Opera on Wednesday evening, the 5th June, and tlw6 arrangement of the party in the Imperial box — a scene which the " Comiselor's Lady " joins with him in consid- CARNIVAL OF CROWNED HEADS. 81 ering unparalleled in play-house annals, whether for the distinction of the company present, or the splendor of de- tail in costumes, lights, and general scenic effect : — "The splendor of the Imperial box at the opera," says this correspondent, " in the midst of all the blaze of liglit and beauty, of riches and magnificence around it, may be imagined from the following plan, which will show you the arrangement of the imperial and royal assemblage; each of the following illustrious personages, be it ob- served, having his or her attendants, suitable to their rank, and all with appropriate costumes and decorations, THE IMPERIAL BOX. Prince Mubat. Duke of Leuchtenbebg. Princess Eugenie. Grand Duke "Waldimhi. Princess Louis of Hesse. Hereditary Grand Duke. Princess Royal of Prussia. EMPEROR NAPOLEOK EMPEROR ALEXANDER. EMPRESS EUGENIE. Prince Royal of Prussia. Grand Duchess Mary of Russia. Prince Louis of Hesse. Princess Mathilde. Prince Ferdinand of Hesse. Princess Murat. Prince of Saxe- Weimar. Brother op the Tycoon. " Arrange these in the dress circle of the most brilliant theatre you can conceive, with their attendant celebrities grouped behind them, in a house filled with the cream of the most brilliant ca])ital in the world, and you have a spectacle, compared to which that of the stage offered but slight attractions to the curious or thoughtful 4* 82 PARIS IF '67. visitor. The two emperors and the sons of the Czar were dressed in "brilliant uniforms, as well as many others, while the imperial and royal ladies, among whom the Empress shines supreme in beauty as in power, all wore their dia- dems, and all blazed and glittered with most precious gems." The reception of the Czar, and the festivities which fol- lowed that event, have been thus dwelt upon, a little at length, because they may be regarded as having been the culmination of this apotheosis of royalty during the Expo- sition. Only less imperial attention, meanwhile, was paid to the King of Prussia, the mutual embrace of whom with the Emperor may or may not have been accompanied (as maliciously alleged) with deadly hatred on either side and a desire for speedy immolation of the " brother." Per- hajjs the Sultan, with his oriental luxury and attendance, produced more effect on the minds of the volatile Paris- ians than either of his more j^owerful rivals ; and the eagerness with which the mercantile classes of the city are always ready to seize ujion local or momentary advertising advantages, has been amusingly shown by the numbei's of establishments decorating their fronts with flags of what chanced for the moment to be the predominating foreign nation in the public mind, and to pull up those character- istic signs pandering to the madness of the hour : " Au Sultan," " A la Reiue de Prusse," " Au Czar," " Au Bey de Tunis," &c. But this episodical paper on the royal visitors to Paris must come to a close. This is not a history, as readers may before this time have discovered ; and it is not a por- trait-gallery, even for royal personages, except as here and there " Our Boy Tommy," the " Counselor's Lady," or some other member of my " reliable corps " of resident Parisian correspondents, may supply a few daguerreotypes caught in the midst of current ceremonials. vm. THE OPENING OF THE EXPOSITION— AS SEEN BY "OUR BOY TOMMY." m The Governor, as already indicated, was not present at tbe Opening of the Great Exposition, from causes too numerous, too uninteresting (and some of them too deli- cate) for public mention. That official ceremony took place on Monday, the first of April ; and the gubernatorial arrival (on the way to the Exposition, Switzerland, and a summer spree generally) occurred at or about the period when the prizes had just been declared, and the jubilant Americans, who had received them in the proportion of over sixty per cent., were purchasing their lemon kids and white cravats for the Hail Columbia Fom'th of July dinner at the Grand Hotel. But.at the Opening, as well as on other notable occa- sions during the Great Exposition, the Governor, though absent himself, rejoiced in the presence of what the leading dailies designate as "a full and efficient stafi" of corres- pondents." Various accounts of each have accordingly been supplied to the " directing mind," affording a per- fect embarrasse de richesse of materials for choice ; and it need scarcely be said that the most reliable, if not the moat classic account of each, has been selected with Draconian impartiality. Of the Opening, by far the most trenchant account was supplied by " Our Boy Tommy " (before spoken of) ; and he has accordingly been made the medium of description, his own Avords being used throughout, 84 PARIS IF '67. except in a few instances in which the originals would have been found — not to put too fine a poiut upon it — strong in expression. Tommy is of New York — New-Torky, with enough of country blood on one side to give him breadth if it takes away a shade of delicacy. No matter how Tommy's father amassed the five hundred thousand which enables liim to hold place on Murray Hill and send Tommy to be educated in Europe : enough to say that he acquired it honorably, as mercantile life goes, before the days of bogus railways, shoddy, lead, or oil. He was not originally well- educated ; and remembering the toil through which he acquii-ed, in later years, a part of the lore which should have been his at the commencement of manhood, he resolved that his son should never tread the same weary road. He should be educated — educated thoroughly ; but where ? Not at home, where there would always be too many " entangling alliances " for his thorough grounding ; not in any distant American city, for one reason and another, charmingly incongruous ; not in Germany, for if there was anything that Tommy's father hated, that object of hatred was what he designated as " Dutch " — the cause of dislike being supposed to be that he had once been over- reached by a German Jew dealer, in an early mercantile transaction. AYhere, then ? A thoughtful friend sug- gested — Paris. The very place ! His boy could learn his books and the world at the same time ; and as for any of the dangers of what were called the " dissipations of Paris " — fudge ! — if his son had not brains enough to withstand them^ be was not worth educating anywhere ! So Tommy's father brought Tommy to Paris, in the latr ter part of 1865, and left hira in pleasant lodgings not far from the Boulevard des Poissonieres, with a liberal allowance of pocket-money, and a slight permission tQ i^' dra\v " in case of absolute necessity (only) ; an abbe as i. OP EN' IN a OF TEE EXPOSITION. 85 a tutor, and piles of injunctions to " be a good boy, take care of himself, learn like all the sages of old rolled up into one, and not disgrace America." In his something less than two years. Tommy has not "disgraced America" in any of the senses common to those words. He has " drawn " perhaps a little oftener than the paternal purse at first contemplated; he has " taken care of himself" in that definite manner only known to Parisians and merely suspected by the rest of mankind ; and if he has not learned " like all the sages of old rolled up into one," he has certainly acquired some information very likely to astonish those grave and reverend pundits if they could come back to take a peep into it. Tominy will return to America, some day, and astonish his father, who did not visit the Exposition — not even to " see how his boy got along." " Our Boy Tommy " is verging on seventeen, with the beauty of an archangel in his handsomely-cut face, blue eyes, and curly brown hair ; and the spirit of what some people call a " young devil " in the braiu behind the eyes and under the hair ; while there are those who believe that when he has "sown his wild oats" (juvenile adventure of that costly cereal) he will be " as steady as a church clock " — whatever may be the reliability of that paragon in horology. " Bet your boots that I'm going to see all that is to be seen; and that. I can tell you what I see, about as well as any old foo-foo you can send over !" So wrote " Our Boy Tommy," in those early days of the spring when piled lumber, heaps of iron, packing-boxes and bloused workmen were about equally plenty in the great building ; and he kept his promise, as has before been said, to the discomfiture of all ojiponents, and in manner and form fol- lowing — a few ameliorations being blended with a few in- terpolations : — 86 PARIS /xV '67. " You kno-vr, Gov." thus irreverently commences the youngster, " that I am no chicken around Paris, as the Banker" (supposed to mean his respected parent) "brought me here in the latter part of '65, just after you had been here, you know, making such a guy of yourself in trying to talk French, and really gabbling something much more like Calmuck-Tartar. Some of the greenbacks have got away since then ; and may be there is any part of this small village that I don't know ; but if there is, you'd better find somebody to take me there ! Stupid and dingy old boxes of theatres they have here, alongside of what we have in New York, you know — cross between a bar- room aud an undertaker's shop, with a dash of ladies' dress- ing-room ; but I've been to all of 'em, until most of the old CO vies at the gates know me Uke a book, and don't even ask me for the ' beyea daduiisyong, Mossoo !' when I hap- pen to forget to hand it over. " Some ballet at the opera, generally, though I think that you may have seen a little of it here, as well as in your own town. Les joUes jamhes, 'poetry of motion' and all that sort of thing ; rather spicy, but good after supper and before going to the ' virtuous couch,' besides supply- ing a capital study in geometry (shapes of things) and natural history (structure of the human animal). As for music — except Patti (that we gave them), they have'nt had much in the way of throats since I have been in Paris — plenty of squalling, but Pve learned to '•look out for squalls,' and they only affect me with the^ear-ache. Cut the opera, all but a finish up that it has sometimes ; aud about that — a page or two nearer the end of the book. " Had high old times at the Gaite, while the Menken has been here doing her little Mazeppa. Is n't the Menken a peeler, though ? (don't go to making any bad puns on that word, for I don't mean it in that light — ^not even gas- light), aud didn't I fall in love with her just a little, one OPEN'I^fa OF THE EXP0SITI02T. 87 night when Count Bob (you don't know Count Bob, but he is one of the boys, even if he is a Frenchman) took me behind the scenes and into her dressing-room, just when the lady was being curried off. No, I don't mean the horse., but the lady, stupid ! Her maid-of-honor was just wiping off the little spots of dust from the silk thingamys that didn't hide the shape a bit, and hardly the red blood un- der the gauzy skin ; and ma foi! (as they make us swear here, in French) what a shape that was ! Seemed as if all the physicalities of perfect womanhood (aren't they big words, for a youngster ?) were rolled up into one thing, and there it was ! Where are yow, Phidias and the other old foo-foos that used to make women of marble ! Then La Menken has an eye — two of 'em, besides a pair of lijis ; and what is it that makes a fellow, merely looking at the eyes, think of the lips ? See if I don't cypher out that problem some day, before I do the fifth of Euclid ! But, fudge ! — you will not pay me for telling you all this ; and yet I must tell you one thing more : they say awful things about the Menken sometimes, and they have had an Al- exandre Dumas scandal here, for which somebody's head should have been punched ; and yet, though I have no doubt that the lady has beep a little 'off color,' and though Mazeppa and T;he French Spy may not be . exactly the thing in which we should like our sisters to 'show them- selves' — yet, do you know, I am not only in love, just a little, with La Menken, but believe that she has been ' as good as they make 'em,' and that she is now, and always has been, no light papers in the way of brains, and kind, benevolent, and warm-hearted to a fault. There — now you have my opinion ; and laugh at it, or make a mock of it in the American newspapers, if you dare !" There is no intention of doing so, Thomas ; your esti- mate of one of the most erratic and best-abused women in the world — perhaps one of the most imj^rudent, and in some ^ 88 PARIS IN '67. regards reprehensible — is very nearly correct; and the Governor would be the last man to gainsay a word of it. But don't fall in love with her, Thomas. As a friend of mine once remarked when asked to give up his whole sum- mer's plans of recreation at the whim of a coquette : " It might be pleasant enough, but it woulchi't pay P^ " INIay be I've been to Mabille," pursues Tommy, " and may be I haven't — ask the abbe, who wouldn't let me go where I oughtn't to be, you know ; and ask Count Bob, and Fred Raikes, a jolly little London swell that has no end of tin, and likes to go out with me, though I shall some day subject him to amputation of the caput if he don't stop calling me 'Yankee Doodle.' I have been to the Chateau des Fleurs, at all events, and that is not far off Mabille, either way. And don't they do their little cancan THEBE, sometimes ! If they don't, they do at Asnieres, and I've been there ! It is ' high,' the cancan is, anywhere ; and they don't let it down just about here. And they don't much, at the Balls of the Opera, which it takes a Parisian to know occur on the ten last Saturdays and the one last Tuesday before Ash- Wednesday (overhaul your English Church Ritual and make a note of when that day is, if you don't happen to know). Everybody goes to the Ball of the Opera ; everybody does what he pleases there ; and I don't know but I like it better than any of the other places, becaiise a fellow can get himself up into anything he likes and nobody can tell how old he is and snub him about 'beards' and other things that nobody wants. And then they ' don't go home till morning,' and when they do go home it isn't always exactly pious — do you think it is ? But there I go ! — you will not want to pay me for every- tliing else than the Exposition, and have nothing of that ; so I must get on to it. " Wasn't Paris full, at just before the first of April ? Full wasn't any name for it, as some of your New York OPENIN^G OF THE EXPOSITION'. 89 boys used to say of a Broadway stage wlien it had eight- een inside and twelve on the roof. It was jammed — that's the word ! Not so many big-wigs and big-bugs as have already been here since ; but more people than you ever saw here at any one time, except old Nappy's fifteenth of August. Everybody had crowded in, from everywhere, to get what I suppose they thought would be the best of the thing, because it was the first. Didn't they hit it, though ! The big building w^as just about as ready to open, for any kind of use, as — as — well, say as ready as a big pie to take out and eat before it has got warm in the oven. (That makes me think of American pies, that I can't get here, and the result isn't comfortable — so cut it ! not the pie : I wish I could !) " The abbe and I went there only two days before (he has ' influence ' — don't those priests have it, of course only for ' beneficial purposes ' — nothing else — oh, no, we never mention it ! — but if they did happen to like the women, now, wouldn't there be a gay old time) ! There were some things to be seen even then ; but they had a bordering of w^heelbarrows and a coating of mallets and iron bars, with a few screw-drivers and spikes ; everything was half-dry paint, except what was half-put-up machinery ; packing- boxes and cases enough stood in the way to have made Stewart, Lord & Taylor, and Claflin, happy for life (bless the old New York dry -goods nobs ! — ^the Banker was in trade once, and we're not ashamed of it). Heaps of things to stumble over, and lots of chalky workmen to run against, so that the abbe had those dear black-stockinged shins of his barked like a birch tree, and I knocked oflE"the end of my precious nose on an iron bracket that had not yet been screwed up into its place, besides getting so deaf with the banging and pounding that I have not been able to hear my tailor when he dunned me, ever since. Men at work everywhere (a little), and gabbling (a good deal), 90 PARIS IX '67. and what the Banker used to say that Joseph Bonaparte, when he lived at Bordentown, once kicked up at a Jersey City hotel when he was on his way to New York — ' a de\il of a fuss generally.' Pretty thing to open, that — wasn't it ? " May be it hadn't rained in and about Paris for the week or two before the Opening ; then again may be it had ! Maybe the map of Paris didn't need to be changed, so that what had been streets could be set down as rivers, and the boulevards mai-ked as oceans ! May be the big obelisk in the Place de la Concorde didn't get beaten all one- sided by the rain knocking on it all one way, and that the marble horses of Marly didn't get so water-soaked tliat they were obliged to put India-rubber blankets on them to prevent their taking cold and going off in a galloping consumption ! May be they didn't have to stop the foun- tains playing, to prevent a general deluge ; and that all the fish in the Seine didn't crowd, in under the bridges to escape the rain pounding in the river, until the ragged boys scooped them up by the bushel in baskets, to find them so soaked that they wouldn't fry! May be all the glazing didn't wash off the shiny hats of the red-waist- coated cab-drivers, and that umbrellas didn't go up {up in the shops as well as the streets), till the Compagnie Lyon- naise shut up their windows, and all the old silk and ging- ham skirts were ripped up and made into ^xur by five, with the corners widely rounded off, and the general effect that of a very wide oval, which it is not, owing to the flattening of the extreme circumferences. The length of the building is something over fifteen hun- dred feet (seven and a-half ordinary blocks of a New York street — say from Tompkins Market, upper side, to the upper end of the Academy of Music) ; and its ^vidth is about twelve hundred and fifty feet (or from Broadway to First Avenue, at the same portion of the city) ; the area occupied being about thirty-five acres of the whole one hundred. If this immense space was covered by a building^ prop- erly so called, all the erections of ancient and modern times would be dwarfed into absolute insignificance — for St. Peter's, St. Paul's, the Duorao of Milan, and the Stras- bourg Cathedral, could all be hidden away in it. But, tmfortunately for the cause of architectural art,, though fortunately for the practical and the useful, the iitile has been more consulted than the didce in planning and ar- ranging this building that is not a building — this magni- ficent covered yard or shed. In all previous international exhibitions, the building has been almost as much, and quite as much considered, as the collection. In the English one of 1851, while Prince Albert and his coadjutors arranged the one, Mr. Paxton (afterwards and for that very service Sir Joseph), looked after the other quite as successfully; and the "Great Exhibition Building in Hyde Park " had nearly as many columns of admiring comment bestowed upon it as all the industrial and art treasures there gathered. Glass and iron were just being apotheosized in connection, and the TEE EXPOSITION- BUILDING. 113 really great architectural genius of Chats-worth came near to overshadowing even McCormick's reaper and the yacht America, And in connection with the building the English have retained the same fact and idea; for to-day, marred as it is by the fire which a year and a-half ago destroyed one entire end, the Crystal Palace at Syden- ham — enlargement of that in Hyde Park — is more of a wonder of beauty, and a subject of conversational interest to visitors, than all the marvels of nature and art gathered within its mammoth compass. The same feature marked the American Exhibition of 1853, second on the list, however inconsiderable beside that of 1851. Beauty in building was quite as much con- sidered as size or convenience ; and when, after the rejec- tion of the plans of Sir Joseph Paxton, Mr. Downing, and others, Messrs. Carstensen and Gildemeister laid their plans for the work, they were quite as evidently arranging for a " thing of beauty " as for what Elihu Burritt called it — " the manger-cradle of labor." They succeeded better in that regard than did the managers in arranging an exhibition; and till the day of its unfortunate destruction, the Xew York Crystal Palace stood like a colossal soap- bubble that had suddenly alighted on the earth, not too convenient and always unsubstantial, but an advance even upon Paxton — one of the loveliest creations in airy archi- tecture that ever sprung from human brain and hand. The first French Exposition, again, had many of the same features. In portions far more solid than its prede- cessors, the Palais d'Industrie in the Champs Elysees has the same inconveniences for the sake of height and dignity, observable in both the English and American. Far more costly than the Hyde Park Sydenham Palace, and only second to it in outer effect, the Palais d'Industrie stands to-day, and will no doubt long remain, a glorious reminder of the earlier days of international exhibitions, and the lU PARIS IS '67. theatre of some of the most splendid spectacles of that of the current year, — but as the central scene and figure of an Exposition like that of 1867, as antiquated as one of the pyramids — so fast do we travel, lately, not only in achieving the new, but in setting aside the old ! It has already been suggested that the Exposition Build- ing is more a covered yard than a building proper. This involves, of course, the entire absence of any pretence to architectural dignity or proportion ; and so much wUl be conceded, with reference to the structure itself, on all hands. Some of the epithets bestowed by those thoroughly familiar with it will illustrate this fact, and possibly convey a little idea in addition. The Emperor, as alleged, looked upon the affair, when nearly finished, very much as Frankenstein may have gazed upon the monster he had created, or as the child believed that God must have contemplated the first elephant — with a shade of tremor ; and forestalled after-ridicule by naming it " the great gasometer " — a structure to which it cer- tainly bears some resemblance, in its circular form, the thinness and superior height of the outer circle to anything within, and the consequent appearance of a mere wall or shell. Says St. Edward (of my French experiences of 1865), in a warning letter of May : " The Exposition Build- ing is as flat as a pancake, as sprawling as a fellow just under the table with three bottles, and about July will be as hot and xmcomfortable as an oven." (Except once or twice, for an hour or two, the prophecy lacked fulfillment ; the building was rarely hot to discomfort.) One of the very best of the American Parisian corres- pondents (" C. B. S.," of the New York Daily Times, whom I may again have more than one occasion to quote) hits it ludicrously off, more in effects than in shape, imme- diately after the opening: "The building itself * * is a combination of railroad-station and bazaar — what is not THE EXPOSITION BUILDING. 115 refreshment-room being shop. You lose your way with great facility, and recover bearings by going in any given direction and then working out of it. The advantages for taking cold are remarkable. At every corner there is an east wind and a i^oliceman. Both are attentive." There is real description, however, in what follows: " There is an outside garden and an inside garden. The various depart- ments radiate from the latter, expanding fan-like for each nationality. The part allotted to the United States is somewhat more than a sandwich and not quite a slice. Where the oval is smallest, it looks like a passage ; then it assumes the proportions of a closet, and so slips easily to the size of a workshop, where we [" C. B. S." is a U. S. Commissioner] hope to make some striking effects." A droll contributor to Harper'' s WeeJcly comes nearer to the truth than he knows, in the following bit of atrocity : " The shaj^e of the building is, as you are aware, round ; except the square part, which is oblong. For fear some of your readers may not fully understand its construction, I will be more explicit. Thus : take an ordinary link of sausage and lay it flat on a table ; then take another link large enough to enclose the first link ; then take another still larger ; and keep on taking them until you have sausages enough — and there it is, simple enough. The space between each of the links as they are laid in a nest, one inside the other, is the aisles ; and all the curious things and stuff you see in walking through the aisles is your sausage. The avenues cut the sausage up into pieces, the inside ones into mouthfuls, so to speak, and of course they get larger as you go out to the circumference." Allow the outside link to be of much stouter proportions than the others — say a Bologna beside the ordinary canine and feline mixture known in American markets as " co;j)ond- ing grasp and oddity, could have devised such a grouping of things pole-wide in their origin ? And what would inevitably be the sensations of a traveler through many lands, uninformed as to the object of such a conglomera- tion, and finding himself stumbling over a Turkish m-osque and a Chinese pagoda, the moment after he had steered painfully clear of an American school-house and disentan- gled himself from an English light-house, an Egyptian temple of the days of Thothmes III., and a Swiss chalet ? Would he not inevitably imagine that some new e;irth- quake throe had shaken the world, jumbling climes into TEE PARK AND GROUNDS. 133 hopeless confusion, and coming nearer to the dream of the wild fellow who attempted to scatter the bones of his enemy " so that they could never be got together again for the Day of Judgment," than would be well consistent with human sanity ? Men travel world-wide to see in painful weeks what is here shown in the walk of a few hours — quite as much as to survey the beauties of nature amid which the varied habitations are located ; and yet thousands of visitors to the Exposition during the current summer, have left it, believing its marvels exhausted after days and weeks spent in its circles and transverse passages, and without having made connectedly the " tour of the world " thus opened to them in a single inclosure, and embodying art as well as the detail of ordinary living in distant lands ! Thous- ands, and yet only a small proportion of the great crowd ; for the declaration has been general, that " the outside is quite as interesting as the inside," and the alleys of the park have been filled with delightful crowds, not only during the time of exhibition, but during those long hours elapsing between the inexorable closing of the building at seven, and that of the grounds at eleven, which otherwise would have been all restaurant-life instead of compound. Art as well as the detail of ordinary living, it has been said, for no small share of the isolated buildings are gemmed with the best and finest productions of the coun- tries to which they are accredited. Not only in the long barrack-like buildings studding the outer walls are clus- tered many of the heavier manufactures of all the nations (including nearly all that have won us medals and applausa in the United States Department, and the admirable agri- cultural and equine inventions of England, France, and Germany) ; but some of the very finest specimens of what our French cousins persist in calling the " beaux arts " (why not " belles arts" as well as " belles lettres .^") are to be found 131 PARIS IN '67. either stowed or scattered through these detached build- ipgs and " annexes." The task is no light one, but the object is worthy of the labor. Let us stroll in thought, as only a part of us have done in reality, among the buildings forming the most notable features of these notable grounds. The first toast, in any land, should be to the I'uler of that land : let the same compliment be paid in a prome- nade. Entering at the Grand Porte, let us turn to the left again, as in marking out the allotments ; and if we only note a few of the most prominent objects, let them be such as to convey a faint idea of the whole. The Quart Fran9ais (French one-quarter), of course. The Emperor's Pavilion stands at the immediate left of the walk, and near the Grand Porte — a gilded Persian mosque or temple, rich with rare shrubberies without, and yet rarer shrubberies showing within. Three flights of steps, one from the front, and one at either end, with silks, satins, and the art of tapestry-working — Lyons, Au- busson and the Gobelins — all exhausted in the small centre- room, that nearly always stands so invitingly open (though the groom at the steps and the silken cord across them might make entrance inconvenient), and the two still smaller half-curtained recesses which spring like wings from the centre of this very bijou of an oriental building. Nothing gaudy, nothing glaring, but everything ratiier low-toned than otherwise, and yet the sum of luxury offered in adulation to one of the most luxurious raonarchs of any age. The upholsteries are inviting, the flowers are rare and odorous, and the taste is unimpeachable ; and yet pass on and pass on without envy — there have been those who grew used to such luxuries, and missed them much more when they passed beyond their reach, than can we whose limbs have never pressed the couches, nor our fin- gers toyed with the bijouterie ! THE PARK A2TD GROUNDS. 135 A little on, to the left, and we are npon (figuratively, not literally) the tall chimney of one of the steam generators wtich supply power to the immense machines within the building-, and of which some twenty suiTomid it on differ- ent sides; then upon a handsome little Grecian temple, filled with the richest and the rarest of photo sculpture — an art some day destined to make Phidias a nobody ; then upon a tall tower, which seems a shot-tower, and is really a windmill, though, oddly enough, without wings or sails ; then upon a little ruined round-tower, on a raised rocky knoll, with the crumbling stones and the climbiug ivy BO natural as to deceive many of the unsophisticated ; then upon a building of open frame-work, which seems to be as literally "hung with bells," inside, as ever was oriental bride or team in sleighing time, without, and from which, at the hours, such loud and melodious chimes go out and ring merrily over the Champ, that, for the moment, all other pursuits are suspended, and the whole body of visitors fall to chasing the flying melody through the air; then upon an immense church of the diminutive cathedral species, in which different denominations join in worship during the Exposition — no guaranty of anything beyond ; then upon a fifty-foot lake, with a tall light-house rock-throned in the centre, and a Fresnel light (at night) at top, big enough and bright enough to suggest that the dangers of Paris to human vessels have been foreseen, and this beacon erected to warn them off; then upon a cluster of beautiful nothings in the way of lap-roofed towers, which proves to be a chalet (Franco-Suisse) ; and a plain build- ing which turns out to be a military bakery, and makes people hungry by the warm-bready smell continually eman- ating from it ; then upon a building of three flights and a protruding front, which is discovered to be an Interna- tional Theatre, where performances (by no means inter- national) are given, afternoon and evening, and where 136 PARIS IN '67. people guilty of going to theatres in summer may enter if they like. Down in the corner, near the Porte de I'Uni- versite (or Porte d'Orsay), stands a large Grecian building "with Turkish dome and Chinese stair-cased front, which we suspect to he a new model chateau or state prison, but discover to be a photographer's shop. Here a model Parisian workman's house, rather American-looking ; there a model blanchisserie (wash-house), which looks like a Swiss cottage above, but straddles below like a wide- legged boy with rolled-up trousers ; and plenty of other objects, but none of especial interest remain, until we have passed the three grand entrances of the southeast (Rapp, De la Bourdonnaye, and St. Dominique), having thus made one quarter the circuit of the building. Beyond these portes we enter upon the Quart Beige ; but within this lies the French Park proper, and a brief description of that reserve must be kept for a separate article. There is nothing (outside of that park) to attract special attention until reaching the Belgian Park proper, except an immense plain three-storied building on the Avenue Boiardonnaye, and immediately above the portes, known as the Pavilion of the Imperial Commission and Jury — already dear to the exhibitors who have succeeded, and execrated by the others ; because there the delibera- tions (more or less earnest) have been held which awarded or denied them their " rights." It is beyond the French Park and near the Grand Porte de I'Ecole Militaire, that the Belgian buildings have place, few, but notable, as the Belgian collections are the third, if not the second, in interest of the whole. The first in importance is a handsome plain Grecian building with false front, but commanding attention from being filled with a most extensive collection of pictures, embracing many of the gems of Flemish art, and second only to the grand array within the Exposition building. Yet another TEE PARK AND OROUNDS. 137 structure, an exact diminutive copy of Castle Garden, with a Greenwich Street boarding-house added as a front, supplies room to the immense Flemish collection of car- riages — so many and so luxurious, that the lymphatic character of the people is recalled, and one also remembers how they have been provided with animals to draw them, ever since the time of Henry VIII., in the shape of "Flan- ders mares." This, with some minor buildings of the Flemings, brings us to the Grand Porte de I'Ecole Militaire, and completes the circuit (except the French Park) of the second quarter of the building and the Champ. xm. PARK AND GROUNDS OF THE EXPOSITION. SECOND PAPEE. RETURJaNG, then, in our continued promenade of tLe park, to the grand entrance at the Pont de Jena, and turn- ing to the right as before to the left, we enter the Quart Anglais, where, as in the Beige and the Allemand (Ger- man), French buildings of art and convenience are to be found interspersed. Some of the more important of them are located here — an immense erection, something like a town-hall or state-house, at the very edge of the Champ, and fronting both there and riverward, being the Cercle International, a blending of club-house and restaurant, specially intended for visitors, to which very nearly the same remarks will apply, before used with reference to the Theatre. Near it, and with the same frontage, far- ther to the right, a handsome, but singular building, which seems to be an enlarged article of cabinet-furni- ture and bears the carved eagles and wooden urns of the prevalent manufactures in walnut, is the Salle des Conferences, or hall in which the officials may (again more or less) deliberate on the details of the Exposition. Beyond and around it, filling half the extreme corner towards the Portes de la Gare and Grenelle, heavy erec- tions in mechanics meet the eye, and Archimedes seems to have his share of the collection. A little beyond, yet near the corner, but toward the building, comes TEE PARK AND GROUNDS. 139 the one structure within the grounds, vieing with the Emperor's Pavilion in richness of oriental taste, and far excelling it in size — the palace of the Bey of Tunis, whose tum-turaing cafe, within, has been the btte noir of visitors. Light, airy, and exceedingly beautiful in architecture, is this markedly Saracen erection, its central mosque dome-spired, crescented and bannerolled, while two smaller domes of the same shape relieve the square- ness of the ornamented eaves, and tall, large windows seem to cut it into an upright lattice, and curved high stairs add to the lightness of appearance and the difficulty of entrance, if the Bey (I did not see him) should chance to be fat and waddle. ■" Tommy," who has been the guest of the Bey, alleges that " the palace is finished, inside, with ]\loorish filagree ceilings and gingerbread hangings, very much like that confounded Tunisian cafe where they bang and jingle the thingamys in the big building ; and they lounge on piles of thick red cushions all round the walls, and smoke long pipes that make a fellow sick, and drink what they call sherbet, that tastes like honey, water, and rum, and talk about its being cooled with ' snow from the Mountains of the Moon,' though bet your boots that it is nothing but common ice from Nor- way or Xew England, and not the cleanest at that, either !" " Tommy " adds that the Tunisians, and other Oriental nations whom he has visited in their special privacies, are "bag-breeched, squatty, miserable sort o' old foo-foos, anyway, and he wouldn't give shooks for them !" But all this by the way. The Tunisian Palace is hand- some and picturesque, and gives character to that portion of the English Park, not a little disfigured, just above, by the long and shapeless ''annexe" buildings, filled with the homely and practical, which commence at the Porte de Grenelle and skirt the Avenue Sufii-en all the way up to the head of the Champ, except where broken by the 140 PARIS IN '67. three north-western portes. Not far from the Tunisian Palace, left of it, is a plain building with raised centre roof and Grecian entrance, of peculiar interest to the lovers of missionary enterprise ; for in it are the records and results, in books and printing, of all the Protestant missions which have wrought such marvelous changes, beneficial and the reverse, but always intended for the best, in far Asia and Africa, and the " Islands of the Sea." Still nearer to the grand entrance stand two buildings of importance — the one long, plain and cumbersome, the otlier of two heights and some pretension — the first an interesting model French military hospital (of which Americans know quite enough, just now, practically, without instruction), and the second (with two lesser buildings at no great distance) containing the unex- plainable details for warming and gas-lighting the great building. Then another striking orientalism, between the last- named group and the Tunisian Palace — the summer palace (just as if he intended to remain during the lointer !) of the Viceroy (since King) of Egypt. Lower than the Tunisian Palace, and more broken-up in the character of its architecture, but aiiy, wide-doored and many-windowed, and crowned with the inevitable mosque-dome, without which an Eastern mansion could no more be complete than an European one without a chimney. Next, an Egyptian temple, that of Edfou in miniature, massive, ponderous, and Tombs-like, containing the smallest and least-interesting collection of Egytian antiquities, that had far better been kept at home. Near it a Turkish mosque, major and minor domed, draped and carpeted, but cheerless and empty of conveniences, with a pulpit at the side, from which the moollah may be supposed to discourse, with the requisite- number of "Allah's," " Bismillah's," allusions to the "Pro- phet" and the "Hourii," and anathemas against the TEE PARK AND GROUNDS. 141 " dogs of infidels, whose graves may beasts defile !" — to the " followers of the Faithful." At which point comes in a reminder that, what with the Sultan, his brother and son, the Viceroy of Egypt, and the Bey of Tunis, orientalism has been the feature of the season, and the Koran a thing rather honored than the re- verse, all the way from Paris to London — so that one might have doubted whether under its shadow Christians had ever been persecuted, and especially whether there ever could have been such an event as cruelty in Crete, need- ing the remonstrance of the Christian world ! So that there might have been difficulty in recalling, with any feel- ing of their applicability to the present crisis, the words of Ilalleck, away back in the days of Byron and Marco Bozzaris, when the Crimean complications were as yet more than thirty years in the future : — " To day the tiirbaned Turk — Sleep, Richard of the Lion Heart ! Sleep on, nor from your cerements start ! — Is England's firm and fast ally ; The Moslem tramples on the Greek, And Christendom looks calmly on. And hears the Christian maiden shriek, And sees the Christian father die. And not a sabre-blow is given For Greece and fame, for God and heaven, By Europe's craven chivalry I" Judging from some of the addresses in French and Eng- lish reception-ceremonials of these oriental potentates, nothing could be finer than the religion and practice of the august gentlemen, and any efl^ort to change their opinions and customs would be worse than wasted ! Anna Maria (of whom also by-and-by), interrogated upon this point, suggested that the English and French admiration show- ered upon the Turks was real ; that their institutions of more than one wife, now so extensively though privately copied in London and Paris (certainly not iu New York !), 142 PARIS IN '67. rendered them special objects of interest to their proselytes — i. (?., every third male monster ! However much this may be of libel, one thing is certain — compensations are univer- sal and inevitable. If the Sultan was extolled as the first of lawgivers and rulers, before he left Western Europe he " had his gruel." Once upon a time a certain Turkish Pasha, transacting government business with the United States authorities, was entertained at the New York City Hall on ham-sandwiches and wine, the two forbidden un- cleannesses of the Koran ; but what was that to the "flea in his ear " with which the Sultan left England — a Bible flung at him — just as Luther used to hurl the same weapon at the devil in his paroxysms — by the British and Foreign Bible Society ! Near the Turkish mosque and at the edge of the main building, a Turkish school-house raises its clumsy square Bides and clumsier round dome ; what it may be within, the horror of personal school-days forfend our making any inquiry ! And here a tall Chinese pagoda lifts its height, broken by the graceful curved horns of the order ; and there a theatre, of the same architecture, gives perform- ances every hour [d la Barnum), and periodically sends out on the air bursts of wild barbaric music in which the shrill scream of the reeds is grandly broken in upon by the solemn undertone of the great gong ; and near beside, in a veritable Chinese dwelling, one may see (for half a franc additional) tea, uni-boiled by one Chinaman, and drank without milk and scalding hot by another, and the pig- sties where these people sleep behind matting curtains, and the desolate-looking, furnitureless apartments where i'xt beauties of girls, with little feet, almond eyes, Mephistophe- lean eyebrows, inch-thick-enameled baby faces, and gowns tight at the bottom and sticking out with stiff wings at the w%iist, squat on the floor, gabble, ogle, and do nothing with lazy vigor. Then the same research may be made TEE PARK AND GROUNDS. 143 into a Japanese mansion, where all the cobwebby lumber of an old garret seems to have been gathered ; where parch- ment skin and paucity of head-hair seem to be the char- acteristics of the occupants; and where one old codger eternally occujjies himself with a Japano-French book and a pencil, pricking out a word when he happens to under- stand it — a little wearily to the looker-on, who finds noth- ing of interest in the whole race, already overdone on both continents. It is at near this point that three very plain buildings meet the American eye and suggest uncovered heads and low speech, though no doubt they excite widely-different feelinirs in those who fail to understand their relation to a great race. A simple American farmer's dwelling, of wood, and with no elaboration of ornament ; but one in the likes of which the men and women of America are country-bom and country-reared, and a far more indispen- sable part of the land and its power than can well be real- ized even by the American who is altogether and exclu- sively " citizen." The second is a Boston cracker-bakery, whence arise appetizing smells that more than compensate for the ungracefulness of the architecture. And yet the third is more suggestive and entitled to precedence ; for it is an American school-house, with the master's desk, the benches, and the black-board, among and around the coun- terparts of which the foundations of American practical knowledge, and consequently American /"yecfZom, have been laid ; and one almost seems to hear the hum of young voices on the summer aii", looking in at tne door — and al- most to expect, turning away, to be overrun by the rush of released yoimgsters, crammed with enough of juvenile education for one day, and grasping books and lunch-bas- kets to hurry home to kisses, scoldings, and tbeir play. This is all " bosh " and " shibboleth " to the dwellers in other lands, of course. Pass on into the things of the old 144 PARIS IN '67. ■world, once more. For very near, in another unpretentious building, is the Pompeian gallery, where the faded relics of two thousand years ago are gathered, and where, in the crumbling mosaics, the fragments of corroding jewelry and decaying furniture, one may visit the neighborhood of Vesuvius without crossing the Alps, and learn something of the modes of living of those days when the Saviour's foot had as yet scarcely quitted the earth — when Sallust wrote and Diomedes scattered wealth. And, passing, the thought comes inevitably up: Could any juxtaposition be more strikingly suggestive than this of the Old and the New — of Italy and Western America — of the plain where almost literally fell that " fire from heaven," and the wide prairies where falls heaven's dew to create bread for half a world ? And as if to afford even more diversity here, after this reminder of the effeminate South, followed by a Mexican temple of the days when a better race ruled Mexico (the natives) than it supplies at present — a building odd, lum- bering, but not uncomely, — and by a Portuguese pavilion of really exquisite Moorish beauty, with its finely swelled domes and elaborate ornamentation, — here come the hang- ing-roofed buildings of Sweden and Norway, queer, pic- turesque, and full of a half-barbarous beauty — one of the Swedish, a marvel in the work bestowed on its inclosure and the curve of its outside stair-way, and said to be an exact model of one once built and occupied by Gustavus Yasa; and beyond them the Swiss chalets rise, as I saw them yesterday up the valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Grin- delwald, their roofs nearly twice the size of the houses themselves, their outside galleries a feature of winter-con- venience, and on some of them the laboriously round- pointed little shingles seeming to remind one of scale- armor. And yet beyond, a Russian country-house presents its perfect apotheosis of chiseled wood and front gables, TEE PARE AND GROUNDS. 145 and contains within it a collection of the household uten- sils and furniture of that northern people, and a shop where their manufactures may be seen and their nick- nackeries bought. And there . a Swiss " annexe " shows that the mountains give birth to skillful mechanics in the heavy and practical ; and near it a skin-and-bark pole-sup- ported conical tent displays the wild living of the Tartar Kirghis ; and here flashes one of the Spanish houses, light, airy, and tasteful, that must have been borrowed from the Moors, and might stand under the orange-groves of Gre- nada ; and yet beyond comes a Prussian school-house, little different from the ordinary English and American, though smaller and more temple-like ; and there is one of the mountain cabins, little more than a hut, of the Tyrolese, who drove out the First Napoleon from their mountain fastnesses, and come down, now-a-days, cross-boddiced and sharp-hatted, from their gathering-capital at Innspruck, to sing echo-songs for us on dull evenings, all over Europe and America; and another Swiss " annexe " gives promi- nence to Alpine pictures made in the land that inspired them ; and in the extreme corner, at the Porte Dupleix, a double-towered small Alhambra of the Spaniards gives place to some of the finer specimens of the art that once employed Murillo; and a Hungarian mansion, strong, convenient, and substantial, recalls the late crowing of Francis Joseph at Pesth, and makes us wonder whether there are to be any more Kossuths ; and yet beyond, a whole handsome building is devoted to the agricultural products of the Department of the North (France) — one of the completest and most creditable ever gathered in corresponding space ; and a long building, near the en- trance, and at the edge of the Avenue de la Mothe Piquet, called the " Grand Restaurant for Workmen Delegates " (" Grand restaurant pour les ouvriers delegues — commis- sion d'encouragement "), indicates that the humbler classes 1 146 PARIS I IT '67. have really been sometimes thought of while ministering especially to the tastes of the rich and the royal ; and then ■we come upon a group of array-tents, French, tasteful, and convenient, with the marquee of the chef cPescadron tow- ering nobly in the centre, and the array guarded as if in I actual warfare (so fond this people are of " playing at sol- diers " everywhere !) ; and this, with only a tithe of the features noticed, and the general aspects only indicated in the faintest manner by types that specially strike the eye — this brings us once more to the Grand Porte de I'Ecole Militaire, and completes the circuit of the great park, the Pare Frangais again excepted, and retained as a bonne houchc after a banquet that has been (or should have been) all appetizing. Indicated in the faintest manner — perhaps not indicated at all — for what is all this infinite variety, even, without the Chinese that eat fire and swallow swords in their theatre ; the mock hareem of Circassian girls that peep from the Turkish pavilion ; the French miniature bal d'opera, where the girls (mildly) throw their feet in one's face, in the diluted cayican ; the clinking castanets and trampling feet of the Spanish girls dancing in their Moresco habita- tion ; the railways that carry little cars loaded with ice cream, in the Italian quarter; the little bells that tinkle and rills that ripple, and walks that lead astray to sweet Burprises ; the trees that wave; the flowers that bloom; the shrubberies that encircle ; the flags and bannerols that flaunt; the fountains that spout and spirt bright water; the statues that stud every avenue and tower in colossal size at every entrance and approach ; the moving crowd that everywhere and at every hour lend it additional vari- ety by the diversity of costume the continuity of motion, the speech of lip and expression of face ; the great bells that ring ; the children that laugh ; the lovely women that smile ; the idiots that strut and simper ; the force of well-regulated THE PARK ARD OROUKDS. 147 and unobtrusive authority that shows itself at every turn in the quiet men with the cocked hats and swords, and. the silver ships on the long tails of their coats ; the music that ever and anon breaks forth from outbuilding or encir- cling restaurant ; the new-comers that flock in ; the wearied who saunter slowly away; the thousand-and-one sights and sounds and influences, which pencil cannot catch or word convey, and which after all supply the life when hu- man art and arrangement can only bring forth the inani- mate body ? What is all without these ? Nothing, The intelligent and observant stroller through the wonderful grounds of the Exposition, during the summer of 1867, will have felt, seen and understood the indescribable en- chantment : the absentee, even if instructed by more faithful and facile pens than that of the Governor, will never come nearer than a fancy, an echo, a shadow I XIV. BEAUTIES OF THE PARC EEANgAIS. Often, in speaking of the Bois de Boulogne, the expres- Bion has been used of the Pre Catelan hidden away in its midst, tliat it is an inner glory within a glory — a holy of holies in the priesthood of beauty, to be approached last, if at all, because after it the less-perfect would seem flat and insignificant. Something like this may be said of the French Park proper, which is by no means hidden away even from outsiders who have never entered the Exposition grounds (it being in plain view from dilFerent portions of the Avenue de la Bourdonnaye on the east, and the Avenue de la Mothe Piquet on the south); but an additional franc is necessary to enter within and fully enjoy it, whether paid on first entrance by the Porte de Tourville, which opens upon it at the southeast corner, or in the attempt to pass into it from other portions of the grounds. It forms the crown and perfection of the Champ de Mars, even as the Pre Catelan crowns and completes the Bois de Bou- logne. It supplies a ground of agreement even for those who deny and those who indorse the excellence of the other details of the Exposition. Here it is that the science of delicate landscape garden- ing {i.e., landscape gardening in a close way and for near view), for which the French are deservedly applauded by all the rest of the world, comes into play and supplies a rival to the wonders of Versailles, Here it is that the great conservatories stand, evidently unlimited cost and TEE PARC FRAITCAIS. 149 labor bestowed upon tbeir heating, arrangement and ven- tilation, and half hidden behind the glasses of each, such rows and groups and masses of the loveliest plants and flowers to which temperate zone or tropics give birth, that the botanist may well go half insane over the display, and the unlearned observer thank heaven that he has been gifted with tlie power of seeing and enjoying, without the labor of classification — just as an old codger once thanked a pompous du^e for wearing diamonds for him, so that he could see and enjoy them without the cost of biiying or the risk of keeping. Here it is, too, that the verdure, well kept throughout the whole Champ de Mars, is made a perfection of neat finish — the little spots of plain lawn, close emerald velvet ; the walks edged with iron-bowed borderings skillfully made into the semblance of wooden withes ; the shrubbery judi- ciously placed as well kept, and often of the rarest and costliest exotic materials ; and that peculiar French and German science of embroidering in the colors of flowers, carried to the extreme of care and taste in borderings, beds, and intersections, which really seem to have been sown with the fragments of a thousand shivered rainbows. I have said it before, and I repeat it — Versailles, Kew, and the grounds of the Sydenham Crystal Palace are all rivaled here. The Captain (of whom, too, something more definite by-and-by) — the Cai^tain, who has a practiced eye in all that belongs to the fruits and flowers of the earth, places the Pare Frangais before all in this regard, and literally surrenders at discretion to a series of bewildering flower-hemmed rambles that are too much for his available vacuum of enjoyment. Perhaps the Captain grows even more enthusiastic (and eke the Governor), when a golden but by no means hot afternoon throws its Italian atmosphere over the Exposi- tion palace, over the St-ine and its opposite heights and 150 PARIS I2T '67. buildings, and, better than all, over the French Park, to which we retire for absolute rest Avhen the more practical features of the exhibition have wearied us. Yonder is a little lake, or fresh-water aquarium {eau douce — soft water, the Frenchmen call it), where we stand at the brink and Avatch the tiny ripples made by tlie tinier deni- zens within, and find the sense of the beautiful filled by the green-and-silver supplied in border and water, and muse over great oceans which some of us have crossed, where mighty whales were as nothing, in comparison, be- side these atoms of fish-life to their " inland sea." And then we peep into conservatory after conservatory, and stroll by beds of soft flower-embroidery, and come at last to a spot where hundreds are gathered, and where five sous each, placed in the hand of the buxom, short-petti- coated and bare-headed female commissionaire des chaises, with the tell-tale wheel at her girdle, supplies a chair to each for the needed rest, and enables us to lounge indo- lently back and listen to the music. The music — ay, that is the attraction, after all. For near us there is an elegant colored and gilded open pa^T-lion, or music-stand, like that which New Yorkers so well know in the Central Park, but larger and less graceful; and around it and down the winding walks in the immediate neighborhood the chair-occupiers are grouped ; and in the pavilion a band in green — one of the pet bands of the Emperor's "household ti'oops" — are discoursing such soft music, from Sebastirm Bach and Abt and Mendelssohn, as thrills the ear with quiet satisfaction and makes the drowsy lounger think of sleeping a little while in his chair, " lapped in " scenic as well as musical " elysium." Another and then another, with applause and bravos at the close of nearly every piece ; and then there comes a change in the programme. There is a stir and bustle among the loungers, the measured tramp of feet is heard THE PARC FRAI^gAIS. 151 in the pause of the music ; and two by two, filing up from the palace, comes another of the Emperor's bands, larger than the other, in blue, shakoed, sworded and fierce, and loaded with such bulky instruments in brass that they seem in anything else than " light marching order." They approach the steps of the pavilion ; the band within salutes ; that without answers ; and then the first file down the steps at the left, and the latter enter and take their places. Green has given place to blue, and the repertoire changes with the personnel. Was there a thought of sleep before ? And did the softer and gentler emotions of humanity find momentary encouragement — love, and moonlight rambles, and grief over the graves of dear friends ? Something very diifer- ent, now : the sentimental in French character has been indulged quite long enough; let the vigorous and warlike take its place. Grand marches thunder from the ponder- ous brazen throats, and fierce onslaughts seem to rise in the magic of sound, till Rouget de Lisle comes back with the "Marseillaise," and John of Leyden with the triumphal progress of the " Prophet," and the days of the Little Corporal seem to live again, and the most lamb-like of us seem to be " conquerors striding over ruined walls " and dictating the destinies of nations. "When and whereupon, in a longer pause than usual of the music, the Governor tells the Captain one of his brief but inevitable stories, having for its foundation that very turning lambs into lions consequent upon warlike music. The Captain laughs appreciatively ; and thereupon the Gov- ernor is encouraged to detail it to a more extensive audi- tory, without the just-ended martial melody to give it point. There may have been more arrant cowards in his gener- ation than a certain Middle State American of a late age, who rejoiced in a name something like that of John Best; 152 PARIS IN '67. but they had not been made manifest to the outer world. At forty he had never been known to remain outside of his own garden alone after dusk ; sharp thunder shook him with fancies of the Day of Doom, and the apparition of a small dog from behind a road-side bush in broad daylight, would set his knees knocking together like a pair of casta- nets. He was said to have denied "popping the question " to the woman of his heart, and left her to fall into the hands of his rival, after forming an engagement of mar- riage, on that rival pulling his nose as a preliminary, and threatening to use a subsequent cowhide if he did not at once retire from the field. "Well, one evening Best, then in the flower of his inglorious manhood, chanced to find, himself for an hour in the company of a dozen rural sere- naders, armed with violins, clarionets, drums and cym- bals, preparing for an excursion. They were " practising " and heaven help the music they made, except in the way of noise ! They played various then-popular airs, and Best (who seldom heard music beyond that of a jewsharp) listened with interest. They broadened their repertoire, bringing in " Yankee Doodle," " Hail Columbia," and other national melodies, and Best's eyes began to flash and his cheek to redden as no man had ever before seen them. They played " Washington's March, " and he commenced promenading, with something approaching a martial step, and an occasional snort which might have been mistaken for that of an awakening war-horse. They changed to that now unfashionable yet fine old air, once popularly called "Bony Over the Alps," the grand rolling sweep of which always seemed to suggest the days of Areola and Marengo ; and the loud thud of the heel of the promenader almost vied with the thunder of the drums. Eyes flashing, chest heaving, breath drawn sonorously, who could have believed that metamorphosed man to be the John Best of any pre- vious day ? One of the party went up to him. " What THE PARC FRAKQAIS. 153 ails you, Best ?" " What ails me ? Nothiug !" " What are yon raviug in that way for, then ?" " Raving ! I'm not raving — I'm marching ! Any man that is a man, could march through h — 11 to that tune !" " You ? — why you couldn't march through a sheep-pnsture, if there was a cat in the path!" At which moment, »H>aJ<7e cUctu, John Best's right fist hit the doubter between the eyes, and he measured his length on the floor, Best showing no incon- siderable prowess, moreover, in the " free-fight " which fol- lowed — a fight rendered somewhat mixed and prolonged by the fact that all parties doubted their own eyes. The rattsic died out, and Best, once more a coward, " begged ofi","' called for liquor, abjectly apologized, and slunk away ; but there was a wondering tradition in the neighborhood for many years after of the power of music, and especially of " Bony Over the Alps," that on a certain occasion, within the personal knowledge of some of the relators, had "actually induced John Best, the biggest coward between Casco Bay and Currituck, to strike a man ! " But the Governor's story has happily an end, and it ends as the musical hour expires and the gubernatorial and naval heroes leave their chairs and move onward down the slope toward the Serre Monumental, on the opposite rise or knoll — pausing midway, however, to catch the crown- ing triumph with which the band carries all French hearts captive, and recalls another of the First Napoleonic eras than that just alluded to — that sweet, sad, characteristic air with which poor Josephine made sacred the campaign in Egypt — " Partant Pour le Syrie.^'' It is a beautiful water-bijou — a lake in miniature — that lies below the music pavilion and is passed by a neat little rustic bridge on the way to the Serre Monumental, standing on the opposite rise with full front to the Poite de Tourville (southeast corner of the Park), and of the name of which all explanation must be waived, excepting 7* 154 PARIS I IT '6 7. that "serre" is French for "green-house" or "conserva- tory," and that there seems to he no " monument" what- ever, except of taste, attached to the building. It forms one of the rarest glories of the whole, presenting a square, open-sided, i-oofed pavilion, first on entering, with Venetian draperies of striped cloth depending, and the resources of a w'orld apparently exhausted in the floral glories which surround it on every hand. This square is only the vestibule to the larger division of the building, rounded at the opposite end, and with the glass roof shaded by a full covering of the same striped Venetian material, fami- liar to us all in window awnings. The architect of the Serre has evidently seen that finest feature in the English Royal Gardens at Kew, the Palm-IIouse ; for the general character of the building is not only the same, but the same sharp-arched orientahsm is shown in the shape of the roof. Within, too, is a diminutive Kew — for not only Paris, but Brussels and other Eui'opean capitals have been ransacked for rare tropical plants of peculiar size and magnificence, to give it tone and completeness ; and deli- cate feathery palms thrust up their graceful branches, as if feeling for the balmy southern air ; and giant cacti sug- gest the succulent South American lands ; and century- plants give their promise of bloom of a hundred years ; and the orange-tree of Spain and the spice and gum trees of 'the far East stand lovingly together; and the naturalist probably has a "good time" in understanding what he sees, as the non-scientific observer ("present company not excepted") finds one in his happy ignorance. There is a single statue in the Palm-House of the Serre Monumental, of more than average merit and interest — a life-size full-length of the Empress Eugenie on the day of her mai-riage, and in the robes of that occasion, in which the sculptor seems to have caught face and form with as happy efiect as "Winterhalter in painting. The popular TEE PARC FRANQAIS. 155 Empress will always live as she was (alas! as she is not now), while this excellent statue remains; and on the square pedestal a bas-relief of the marriage ceremony com- memorates that occasion with far less than the average inelegance of that branch of sculpture. One other special feature in the French Park, and then we must pass away from it imaginarUy, as it is not too easy to do in reality. An hundred or two of yards from the Serre, and on either side, stand the Aquarium d'Eau Douce (before spoken of) and the Aquarium Maritime ; and in the won- derful expanse of the latter, with water-filled glass rus- tically set, above and below, all the monsters and all the minnows of the sea — always excepting whales and sea- serpents — seem ta be swimming; while in the caverns below, which might skirt some wild northern coast, the science of laborious illusion seems to have been carried even farther than in that ruined tower with its ivy skirting the grand entrance. Beneath rough crags, that seem to have been corroded and hollowed by the tide- wash of centuries, the Captain (old salt in his element then) and his land-lubber companion stumble down into a succession of subterranean caverns, in the very midst of which the aquarium dimly shows its scaly denizens, and where the rough sides, encrusted with artificial spar, and hardened by the real drip of water artistically supplied, the whole just enough torch-lighted to make the sense of reality perfect, give evidence of the fact that when the Emperor and his satellites resolve to carry out a project, however insignificant or unnecessary, they do it as Sambo "got up" his "har" for the visit to Susannah — " 'gardless of 'spense." But this fact, and the correlative one of the advantages for lavish display which des^Dotic government supplies to a ruler, over a system ordinarily called "constitutional" — 156 PARIS IN- '67. these may well have been suspected at an earlier day, before the inspection of the bewildering beauties of the Pare Franyais — even before the inauguration of the great Expo- sition, to which it forms a pendant as costly and appro- priate as the diamond drop in the pearliest ear in the world. The royal visitors to Paris having been sufficiently indi- cated, with the features of scenery amid which they moved, and the crowd who waited on their motions — it now becomes necessary to interpolate a few somewhat import- ant descriptions of leading imperial festivities, before pro- ceeding to notice briefly the contents of the Building and the Park, of more or less special interest to American readers. XV. THE IMPERIAL BALLS— BALL OF THE SOVEREIGNS AT THE HOTEL DE YILLE. The presence of a " numerous and reliable corps of cor- respondents " at the great events not under gubernatorial notice, has already been announced, in introducing the expansive " Tommy," the historian of the Opening. Lucky is it for both editor and reader, probably, that Master Thomas was not depended upon to supply accounts of the great balls given at the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville; as that young and ardent person, with his strong language and ad captandum utterances, might have made nearly as fatal work of the royal personages and their appointments as the proverbial " bull " is said to accomplish " in a china- shop," or as one of our far-western. Apaches would be likely to pei-petrate, if left unrestrained among the costly fittings and bijouterie of a fashionable up-town residence. Fortunately the grand balls of the Exposition have fallen into more fitting hands — abler (in their Avay) as well as much fairer ones ; hands that (if a bad pun may be per- mitted on a gi'ave subject) handle them as deftly as the Eastern juggler deals with those very difierent globules of the same name. The account of the great state balls, in short, is supplied by "The Counselor's Lady," an old (young) habitue, of Parisian society, as well as of "society " in her own land, resident in the capital during all the lead- ing events of the season, and possessing the entree wher- ever entrance was desirable, from the Emperor's box at the opera to the reserved seats at the royal receptions. It is 158 PARIS IJ^ '67. with the balls, however, that she principally deals in her somewhat extended communication ; and to lier own recital they may be safely left, without other introduction. " I have promised," writes the " Counselor's Lady," " to supply you mth a brief account of the most notable of the Parisian balls of the season, at which I have been present. I confess that 1 tremble a little at the thought of assuming such a responsibility ; but one reflection reassures me — not many of my countrywomen Avere present at tbeni, and those who were may have been as dazzled as myself, and not much more capable of close observation. To my task, then, with what courage I may. Some of my Pennsyl- vanian ancestors are said not to have been seriously afraid of bullets — why should their descendants be of b^u^ls ? " Royal and imperial balls, as you are well avrare, have been so prevalent in Paris since my advent here in March, that to those who have the entree, not to have been present has become more of a distinction than presence itself. But there have been some of those events, as you are also well aware, so raised above all the others by the unlimited cost bestowed upon them, the halo of highest fashion that sur- rounded them, and the presence at them of half the crowned heads of Europe, that beside them all the minor occasions, however brilliant, sink into comparative insig- nificance. " There have been two of even the most notable, embodying so many of the most extraordinary features of all the others, that when I have supplied you with the best glimpse in my power of them, writing of the others would be but the weariest repetition. I refer to what will no doubt be historically called the ' Ball of the Sovereigns,' given by the City of Paris, under the auspices of Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of the Seine, to the Emperor and his guest the Czar of Russia, King of Prussia, and other royal and noble visitors, at the Hotel de Ville, on Satur- TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 159 day evening, the 8th of June; and the Grand Ball at the Palace of the Tuileries, given by the Emperor himself to the same royal guests and a more select body of other visi- tors, on the Monday night following, the 10th of June — which will probably be known as the ' Czar's Ball,' in con- tradistinction to the other. " Of the first of these, again, I shall supply you little more than a glimpse, avoiding detail and any attempt at personal description, and occupying something more than half my space with a relation of very singular character, which will ever make that ball most memorable to me. In the later event I shall attempt to give you personal glimpses of some of the notables, and to convey at least a feeble impression of the movements incidental to what was, no doubt, the most brilliant assemblage of the century. To the event of the 8th at the Hotel de Ville, then, without further preface or promise, except the insertion of a copy of the municipal invitations of the season, and the instruc- tions as to dress for gentlemen, accompanying — not issued for this special occasion, it is true, but supplying some idea of the strict though unpretending form used in such instances : — No. 1. LE SENATEUR, PREFET DE LA SEINE, au nom du Corps Municipal de Paris, a Vhonneur d'inviter Madame cL la Ftte qui aura lieu d V Hotel de Ville le Samedi 6 Juillet 1867, ^9 heures. Ce Billet, rigoureusement personnel, aura etre remis aux huissiers charge d'annoncer. 160 PARIS IN- '67. No. 2. Leurs Majestes VEmpereur et VImperairice d les Souverains eirangers alors a Paris dcvant konorer la Fete di la Ville de leur presence, le Corps Municipal sera en grand wii/orme avec la culotte blanche. Les Invites sjnl pries de vouloir Men etre egalcment en uniforme, ou, a defaut de costume official, en frac avec la culotte courte ou le pantalon coh lant. " Neither you nor most of your readers need be told that the ' City Hall' of Paris is almost or quite the equal of the Tuileries and the Louvre in its arcliitecture, and that it has a history quite as extensive and interesting as either ; but some need to be told that there are apart- ments in the Hotel de Ville more richly decorated and showing the evidence of a costlier taste from floor to ceil- ing, than any of the other palaces of France ! Yet so it is. Here, as sometimes it used to be in London, the ' City ' occasionally asserts itself, and shows that when it will it can come near to overtopping the ' State' — the civic above the national — money above the political sinews which it strengthens if it does not create them. " There was even more rarity in the ball at the Hotel de Ville than in the grandest at the Tuileries. For the Im- perial palace is often ablaze, and in the ' season ' so many fetes are given, that gaieties there seem to be things of course. But it is different at the civic palace. It has not before been entirely opened for any festivity, since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were entertained there, ten or fifteen years ago — I do not remember how many ; and I suppose that nothing less than a congress of sover- eigns, like that which has lately seemed in perpetual ses- sion in Paris, could again have brought the pet palace of the city into entire requisition. For, apart from the costly splendor, it is no trifle of space that is surrendered to fes- tivity when the Hotel de Ville is given up to it — they say TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 161 the salons, placed in a line, would extend something like fifteen hundred yards or little less than a mile ! They tell me, too, in spite of my woman's horror of any other ' fig- ures ' than those of beauty or a cotillion — that the Grand Hall is nearly two hundred feet in length by half that dis- tance in width, and that very few less than one hundred thousand wax-lights are necessary to bring out all the rooms of the immense building in their full glory ! You can imagine that they must be ''occasions,' indeed, on which this space is occupied, and all this outlay in chandlery jus- tified ! But justified they were, then, if ever ; for did not the number of regular invitations reach beyond six thou- sand ? — and are there not plenty who believe that the num- ber present, besides a perfect assembly of notabilities form- ing part of it, must have reached nearer to ten thousand than six? We have seen two or three thousand persons, on rare occasions, at our old New York Academy of Mu- sic ; but multiply that number by three, or possibly five, and the splendor of each particular group by fifty or one hundred, and some faint idea may be formed of the guests of Baron Haussraann on that Saturday evening ! " You are aware what magnificent open spaces surround the Hotel de Ville, with the Rue Rivoli on one side of it, and the Seine with its bridges and quays on the other — with the great Caserne Napoleon behind it, but at a considerable interval, and the shops and houses in front standing at a corresponding shy distance. Well, can you imagine what a crowd it was that filled that wide open space? — the Czar only just arrived in Paris, everybody on tiptoe to see him, and the additional incitement of standing in the glare of that line of gas-lights stretching across the palace front, and seeing hundred upon hundred of the showiest peo- ple in Europe, and many of the handsomest women, going by in the handsomest of equipages, and to the most magnifi- cent of balls? An orderly crowd, I must admit — though I 162 PARIS IN '67. do not bglieve in the good order or harmlessness of Parisian populace, as I may have after-occasion to tell you ; but still a crowd of the densest and most eager description, making the passage of that wilderness of vehicles almost im- possible. " "Were you ever a fire-fly ? — a will-o'-the-wisp ? — a fire- balloon ? or a comet ? I suppose not, and yet I saw some- thing of one or the other, or of all of them, that night, with humanity supplying the material ! Think of one fea- ture of the arrival of the Imperial party through that crowd, in so many carriages that I do not like to hazard a guess at the number — perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty, or forty; all guarded down the side by squadrons of the splendidly-uniformed and dashing lancers of the guard ; and every carriage, with its gorgeously appointed occu- pants, lit up inside, as if it had been a ball-room on its own account! Think what a line of magnificent will-o'the- wisps that must have made; and how that light must have flashed and glittered to the eyes of the crowd, on face and figure that they wished to recognize — on dress and jewel and decoration ! It Avas a case of distinguished people 'making a show of themselves,' to please the public eye — a case odd enough to deserve mention, and I think a little commendation. I could only see that part of the pageant for a few moments, glancing back from my carriage as I made an arrival almost late enough to have been 'royal' in ray ou^n right; but I am not likely soon to forget the general efiect, even in that which followed. '■^ Light is to be the glory of the other spectacle, to be spoken of by-and-by. Music and flowers were the fea- tures of this, as if something ugly in the past needed to be covered up and danced merrily over. Ugh ! — I wontler if there was not? 3Ia foif as my French hosts say, I thought so before I left the building ; but I must tell you that in its proper place. Music and flowers — flowers and TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 163 music — probably the order should be changed, for there "were even more floral glories than witcheries of sound. " There is one portion of the Hotel de Ville with whioh I know you are familiar, for I have heard you speak enthu- siastically of it — ^the grand entrance from the Place de la Hotel de Yille, with its costliest hangings of cloth and silk, gold-fringed and gold-emblemed, sweeping down aronnd columns that seem to have been shaped and gold-incrusted during some one of the many dreams of the ' Arabian Nights.' There is nothing like it, I think, in the world ; as there is certainly nothing else that I have ever seen, comparable in costly splendor to its elaborately-decorated saloons, with their frescoes from the ablest pencils, their pauelings in which cost seems to have been entirely ignored, and their pictures, which have certainly been derived from the unscrupulous ' appropriations' of centur- ies, as well as from the ' liberalities ' of one of the richest cities on the globe. " There may be more glorious sensations of being in another world while yet breathing the breath of this life, than those supplied on entering the civic palace ; but I have no hope of ever sharing them, and it is not too sure that any accession would be desirable, even if one could arrive at it. Imagine that more than regally-splendid ves- tibule, with its gorgeous hangings and decorations, with so many and such rare flowers decking it at every point, that all else seemed to be but unreal exhalations sprung up in the midst of the most rich and varied garden of the generous tropics — with a great fountain of exquisite shape and detail in the centre, flashing out its wealth of water, every drop a gem in the soft blaz3 of the innumerable wax- lights that made doubly beautiful everything upon which it radiated ; with all that could be devised of most gor- geous in attendance and reception, scattered among all that could be selected of royal, rich, queenly, and fair — pearls 164 PARIS IN '6 7. and diamoncls on brow and bosom of beauty, answered by the flasbing of the like rare gems on the starred and crossed and decorated breasts of manbood — silks, satins, and velvets, little less than a sea in wbicb the gazer seemed to be floating, swimming, almost drowning ; and then add to this the most voluptuous music that ever floated from horn or rang from string, seeming to drip from that mar- vellous baton waved by white-gloved Strauss himself — Strauss, to whose notes, even when others gave them feeble utterance through picked-up orchestras that had never known the master-hand, our senses have thrilled and our feet bounded so often — add all this, and throw over it all that glamour which only comparative youth and full hap- piness can bestow, from that fairy-land in which we have all believed since childhood — then and only then will some dim light creep into the eyes and some suspicion into the brain, from that moment of moments enjoyed on enter- ing the ' Ball of the Sovereigns ' at the Hotel de Ville. "But do not suppose that either the splendor or the in- terest was exhausted at this mere first glimpse — neither was further entered into than the building — the vestibule only in each. For, the great esealier once ascended, in the midst of that human, musical and floral bewilderment, no less than a dozen of those great halls, an deuxieme, opened into each other, all devoted to the purposes of the fete, and each, as it seemed, more ravishing than the others in the rarity of its pictures, the talent employed upon its frescoes, the richness of its hangings, the softened blaze of its wax- lights, and the sense of passing into some new and charmed existence, inevitable on entering ; while the very ingenuity of taste had been employed in creating little passages, at the end of which came sweet new surju-ises, in the way of rare flowers, more ingenious arrangements of light, and temptations to lose one's self away from the present and waudar into the charmed past and rainbow future of ro- THE IMPERIAL BALLS. 165 mance, history, and — let me be honest on the dangerous theme — the intoxicating whispers of love-making, that might not have been indulged in a more matter-of-fact ex- istence ! "I have omitted, so far, one of the rarest elements of pleasant intoxication, of the whole. It has appeared to me that it should crown all, and have no mention while any rivalry remained. Does the thought strike you what other sense must have been ministered to than even the sight, the sound, the pride, the vanity, and the sense of the romantic ? "What must have been the perfume, think you, of all the sweetest flowers of all lands, thus grouped and gathered, and flung broadcast with lavish wastefulness ? "What else than the very drunkenness of delight must have ravished the sense, when all the sources from which Lubin and Violet have extracted their thousand odors, were blended in one wealth offrngrance, carrying the weight of sweetness to the very verge of oppression ? We have all heard of the lady who ' died of a rose, in aromatic pain,' and 1 beg you to believe that I could have easily fainted from the same influences, under slight additional strain of the over-delighted olfactories. " Let me recnpitulate — something which they say is a woman's custom, especially in detailing grievances — and see whether I have succeeded in conveying any idea what- ever of that wonderful scene. The grand halls of the Ho- tel de Ville ; music under Strauss's own hand, and by the orchestra brought by Strauss himself from Vienna ; wax- lights by the ten thousand ; flowers by the literal cart-load, and perfume with no measurement but its own volume ; ornamentation; pictures ; statues ; five or six thousand well- dressed ' nobodies,' half of them fair women, and all be- decked and bejeweled in the utmost splendor of a waste- ful age ; hundreds of celebrities, noble if not royal, and each the cynosure of many eyes ; and, to crown all, emp(}- 166 PARIS IN '67. rors, kings and royal highnesses enough to have revohi- tionized a republican world, each more or less resplendent in court blazonry and gemmed orders, while on brow and bosom of their ladies blazed diamonds and rubies and pearls and sapphires, of such size and cost that they seemed seas of light in which kingdoms had been melted. This is what I saw, quite as much with my mind as my eyes : this is where I was — that part of me which had not floated away in the enchantment of luxurious novelty. " And here it was that my peculiar adventure occurred, or seems to me to have occurred. Something so rare and strange that in it all the other events of that more than regal night sink away into mere shadowy recollection. A glimpse of tJicit, to which I almost dread to allude, on account of the opinions which may be formed of the rela- tion, and the feeling which even the recapitulation neces- sarily involves, and then I shall have done with the ' Ball of the Sovereigns.' " You are aware that I am an enthusiastic reader and lover of history, and that I have a weakness for finding historical personages, and imagining historical events, ou the spots where the former moved and the latter occurred. Attribute to this, if you like, the peculiar incident which follows, and the truth of which I could asseverate with my dying breath ; or take the alternative, if you please, of believing that there are influences beyond ourselves, shaping peculiar appearances, or that around certain spots there hang, like the perfume around IMoore's vase, an aro- ma of the past, impossible to exorcise through any lapse of years, and liable to be actively invoked at any moment. "It was perhaps an hour past midnight, and the dancing begun by the royal party at shortly after ten, and contin- ued in nearly all the grand salons, amid that delicious blending of waltz-music and flower perfume, had tempo- rarily slackened in its intensity. Only a few ' sets ' kept TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 1G7 the floor in any of the rooms, and the music was for the time light, delicate, and somewhat weirdly German. I remember so much, and not much more, of the moment when I left the seat to which my last partner had led me after our charming whirl in a waltz that had at least one accomjilished performer. I happened not to have become engaged in any conversation; and a little warmed and breathing short from the rapid exercise, I approached an open window, looking out upon the Place de la Hotel de Ville, and passed into the deep embrasure, where the heavy hangings left me nearly as much alone as I would have been behind closed doors. "I looked out listlessly upon the Place, dimly lighted from without, but the broad stone esplanade and bordering circles plainly visible under the blaze that streamed from the gas-lighted front. This space had been kept clear by the police, from the first ; and now the tired crowd had fallen entirely back from the palace, though they were still dimly visible along the Rue Rivoli and eastward. 1 remember noticing this, and that there did not seem to be even any of the sergens de ville on guard in the centre of the broad Place. Then I remember being recalled by the music, and thinking that I was too weary to join the next ' set ;' and then it seemed to become fainter, and I found myself thinking of my dear ones beyond the sea — possibly at that moment on it. Then, so fur as I can remember, thought, as thought, became rather a blank abstraction than a reality. I seemed to be not only shut within the window-embrasure, but in a little world of my own. Let it be understood that I was standing, and that I was no nearer to physical sleep than I am at the moment of writ- ing. It is necessary to understand and believe this, which I solemnly aver, in order to appreciate what followed. " Suddenly I found myself rubbing my eyes, with a sort 168 PARIS IX '67. of fancy that I must be asleep or elemented. For, without my haviug heard any sound which could have justified Buch an appearance, there was something in the very midst of the Place, where the moment before I had seen bare stones dimly showing under the light from the front and the windows. The 'something' was dusky and tall, appearing like a great post or low column, and, heaven help my senses, I thought, as the second consciousness came to me — it was growing taller and wider momentarily, and something much broader, like a platform, rising be- neath it. " To say that I was terrified would be to say very little — I was nearer horrified, under one dread thought com- pounded of the physical and the supernatural I gripped the side of the window-embrasure, and tried to call out to attract the attention of others to this singular phenomenon, occurring immediately in front of the civic palace. I could not utter a word, and knew that for the first time in my life I understood the meaning of ' the tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth.' Thenceforth, for any purpose of life I might as well have been a post myself, or part of the draped window. I was fi-ozen, statue-like, immovable. Had I been frightened before? — horror of horrors I what _was I when a red hght seemed to stream from the Place beyond, on that fearful * something,' and when I saw that it was the guillotine on its platform — the knife shining with a dull glare, with here and there a gout of rust that might have been formed from coagulated blood? The guillotine there, and the palace full of the royal, the fair, the distinguished! For whom was it set, and by whom? Ah, I had half the answer, though I could not understand the continued silence, so unusual for Parisian mobs ; for, as if they had sprung from the ground like so many mushrooms, the whole Place seemed filled with a dim, shadowy, gesticulating crowd, uttering no audible TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 169 word, but seething and moving in wild commotion. Ah, how I tried once more to call out, then ! — with no more effect than had been produced in my past effort. No I the guillotine was th^re, the mad crowd was there — who might not be a victim ? — and yet I could give no sign of warning ! Why did tbey not shout as well as gesticulate, so that others might become aware of the awful preparations, and succor arrive before some murder should be accomplished ? " How long this endured, I do not know ; it seemed long — it may have been but a moment. There came more than one new feature into the dreadful scene. There were forms on the platform — the horrible knife rose and fell as if in trial of its readiness. Still no sound. Then there was a movement in the crowd, and it seemed to part into two waves, gesticulating yet more wildly. Then through between the waves rolled in a fearful vehicle, half cart and half coffin. Soldiers of an antique uniform guarded it ; and men and women, with wringing hands, were huddled into it like so many sheep going to the butcher. It was the tumbril — I knew it at once — one more of the bygone horrors was being revived ! What next was I to witness, on that night which had seemed to me so splendid in imagination ? " What next ? This question again was answered but too soon, while all the powers of my body and my mind seemed struggling but vanquished in the unequal combat for expression. Out of the tumbril stepped, or rather was dragged, a woman in white — young, handsome, but oh, with such dreadful despair and horror on her white face ! I saw them force her up the steps of the platform ; I saw the executioner grasp her with brutal violence ; I saw the mad crowd waving arms and caps in fiendish exultation ; I saw the victim's last struggle as she was strapped to the fatal plank and it fell horizontal ; I saw — 170 PARIS IN 'Ql. " No, thank God, I did not see the descent of the knife, the fall of the severed head, and the spouting of the red blood : I think I should have gone mad indeed if I had Been that I For my struggle for expression grew fiercer, and either life or bond must have given way. Heaven be praised, I could scream ! — I did so — the scream subsid- ing into a moan as my eyes closed and I fell backward, half out of the window-embrasure, my fall broken by the ever i-eady arm of Count , who had heard my first cry and rushed forward to discover whence it proceeded. *' I did not faint entirely, nor, I think, did the incident produce much commotion in the salons, where each was so occupied with some special thought or feeling as to be naturally oblivious to the mere cry of a nervous woman. Only a moment later, with the Count still at my side, I was again looking from the same window, but upon how differ- ent a scene ! There was no dark ' something ' there — no crowd of fierce and excited sans culottes — guillotine, tum- bril and victims had all disappeared ; and behind me the Bweet Strauss music, the floating perfume, and the chiming steps of the waltzers told me that it was 1867, and the apotheosis of Baron Haussmann, who would not be likely to tolerate any violent proceedings of that character in the very faces-of his imperial, royal and noble guests ! But I remembered then, even better than before, that on the very spot where I had just seen that spectral horror — there, in the middle of the Place de la Hotel de Ville, then the fatal Place de Greve, stood the guillotine and rolled the tumbril loaded with its doomed, through all the Eeign of Terror, when more than twenty thousand fell beneath the knife ! " I think that the world has not wealth enough to tempt me volimtarily to look on that sight again; but it is worth something, even through that horror, to have seen, as I know that I saw with my waking eyes, though without knowing why or how, the veritable guillotine and tumbril TEE IMPERIAL BALLS. 171 of the days of blood ! Can yoii explain the mystery to me ? No ? — neither can I to you ; the wonder remains as I found it. But you can imagine that I have a special recol- lection of the ' Ball of the Sovereigns ' at the Hotel de Ville, more sacred as more terrible than all else in mem- ory, and that the imperial and royal occupants of the car- riages did not absorb me quite so closely as they had done, ■when we rolled away and the great pageant faded, at some- thing near daylight on Sunday morning." XVI. THE CZAR'S BALL AT THE TUILERIES. As already intimated, the " Counselor's Lady " is also the chronicler of the second and yet more important, if less numerously-attended, of the imperial balls ; and as her own language supplies sufficient comment upon the difference of the two in scope and intention, let her be heard with- out further introduction. " If I have given yon a somewhat fearful picture at the end of ray account of the ball at the Hotel de Ville," resumes the lady, " I have something of a different sort to inflict upon you, in attempting to give you some faint idea of the great event which crowned all — something as select and recherche as the other had been extensive and all-admit- ting — the ball especially given to the Czar of Russia, and attended by the King of Prussia and the immense con- course of sovereigns and scions of royal houses, then in Paris, on the following Monday evening, the 10th of June. The same overwhelming magnificence of arrangement and attendance which makes description nearly impossible, renders the occasion the best worth describing of its kind in all the annals of festivity. No monarch upon earth, past or present, ever before so gathered around hira the royal and noble — even if another has supplied, as I can scarcely believe, a corresponding glory of arena and lavish luxury of detail. In the history of the festivities of a splendid age, it will beyond doubt supply a most memor- able part, for reasons as numerous as easily apparent. I THE CZAR'S BALL. 173 can but wish, now more than ever, that my task had fallen into the hands of a more practiced chronicler. " Of all events, this should be described most sensation- ally, and with least intrusion of dry details and descrip- tions ; meanwhile, it unfortunately happens that what the body of readers will most eagerly desire to know, with reference to it, can only be conveyed by those details of ceremony and descriptions of personal appearance. What can I do, then, except try to be instructive to the great world of absentees, even at the risk of failing to be picturesque ? " And now for that feeble glimpse of the Grand Ball, as it lingers in brief memory and the note-book to which I com- mitted some of my impressions on — I wish that I could say the following morning, but candor compels me to write afternoon. But this should be premised with the fact that in the place of the six to ten thousand invitations issued to the festivity at the Hotel de Ville, not more than six to eight hundred had been issued to that at the Tuileries, while the command had been given that evening instead of court-dress should be assumed by the gentlemen, and that something of the air and exclusiveness of the 'private ball ' should be imparted to it in all its details. Xot the easiest of things to do, either in the ' toning down ' of splendor, or the imparting of confidence to guests, as may easily be imagined. " That particular part of the line of carriages bearing guests, in which I happened to be ensconced, must have reached the Gardens of the Tuileries about half-past nine, coming across from the Rue St. Honore to the great gate leading in from the Rue Rivoliat the Place desPyramides. The Gardens themselves were entirely cleared ; but without the gate, and in the wide Rue, sitting in my open carriage, I found the sensation of the very worst fright I ever ex- perienced — a real human one, and so nearer tangible than 174 PARIS IN '67. that at the Hotel de Yille ; in other words, I came face to face with a Parisian mob, in what seemed to be its most ferocious aspect before breaking into open violence and the inevitable murder following. Far as the eye could see in the comparatively dim light of the lamps and the young moon hanging in the west — for the illumination directly to be spoken of had not yet commenced, — a densely-packed crowd surrounded the gardens, stretched away into the distance, pressed close against gate and railings, hemmed in the carriages so that with all the efforts of the police they could scarcely move two steps forward without a check. Workmen, many of them, from their blouses ; something worse than workmen, probably, some of those who wore costlier material than the blue chambray; no small proportion of women of the blanchisseuse and wine- seller condition, capped and ferocious. But oh, those visages of the male mob of Paris ! Oh, the thin cheeks, the lowering brows, the shock heads, the wild, bad eyes that scowled half-hungry defiance as the owners thrust them into the very faces of the shuddering occupants of the open carriages ! Oh, the clenching hands, the mutter- ing lips, the sneering and yet too-earnest tones, the evi- dence that only a spark was wanting to explode the mag- azine of temporarily-indolent hate — that never tiger tore to pieces its prey with more demoniac joy than those ' dear children' of the Emperor, the hand of power for one moment lifted from their necks, would have shown in mur- dering the whole array of guests, from the host down- ward, slaying the male members of the cortege, butcher- like, with quick and sudden blows, and making a horrible feast of rapine and twice-terrible slaughter among the dainty flesh of the weak women who accompanied tliem ! Ugh, I shudder to think of dozens of threatening, glaring, frightful faces, thrust into my own in the few moments of pause at the gate, in spite of the efforts of the police to TEE CZAR'S BALL. 175 prevent the outrage, and creating the same pleasant im- l^ression of security as if a wliole menagerie of ferocious beasts had been present, uncaged, and each held by only a cord of pack-thread that might snap at any instant ! Yes, thank you ! — I was quite near enough to 1793 at that par- ticular crisis, or at least I felt that I was ; and I have no wish to make the nearer acquaintance of those most polite, subservient and lamb-like people. I wonder if the Em- peror himself, bravely as he goes among them, almost or quite unattended, does not some day expect to see the tiger spring and feel the hot breath on his cheek and the fangs snapping at his throat ? A pleasant remembrance and a cheering fancy, truly ! Possibly we have had enough of this, as certainly I had enough of it in thirty seconds ! " At all events we passed the gates, after a brief delay, and were in the Tuileries Gardens, set down at the grand entrance, which, as you will remember, is in the centre of the garden-width as well as of the Palace front. But just then, with the recollection of my late fright fresh upon me, and with the magnificent ' novelty of the scene as alighting royalty and celebrity surrounded me like an overflowing wave in which I was nothing — just then there sprung up a wonder so overwhelming that I think every foot paused in the spot where it had been resting, and scarcely a breath was drawn for many seconds. Whether the lights had before existed but kept low, and were at that instant flung into full blaze — or whether by some elec- tric arrangement all tlie lighting took place then and at once, I cannot pretend to say. I only know that in an in- stant sprung into full glory, from mere ordinary evening light, the illumination of the Tuileries Gardens, the re- collection of which still flashes in my eyes whenever I think of that evening, as if some Genie from the Lnnd of Fire had temporarily introduced me to all the blazing wonders of his kingdom, dazzled me to his heart's content. 176 PARIS ly '6 7. and then sent me away again into the darkness of the ordinnry world. " I have been present at ordinary ' illuminations ' for victories, in cities ; and I have been no stranger to the mimic or real glories of the most magnificently-lighted gardens in the world ; but in the subtle shapes and over- mastering brilliancy of this, all else seems to be dim and shadowy. Do not expect me to describe the exact pro- cess by which all this effect was accomplished. Have I not before told you that I was dazzled and bhnded? And yet a little attempt must be made, to ' save my credit,' as we used to say when I was a school-girl. " You know the Gardens of the Tuileries — that portion of them, especially, which lie immediately in front of the grand entrance of the Palace — the wealth of fine trees which make just enough of shade, in the daytime, to sup- ply the loveliest of walks ; the shrubs from every clime, with flowers of every form and color, which make the whole nearer portion of the Gardens one wonderful piece of floral embroidery. Then you know, too, some of the fire- witcheries of the Jardin Mabille and the Chateau des Fleurs — the skill with which great rows of lily-bells, which would seem entirely natural if they were not so gigantic, are made to burst, at a given moment, into lily- bells with tongues of flame ; and how the globes of fire are so disposed there as to dazzle anew at every turn and present continual new groupings of brilliancy. Multiply all this by an hundred or two if you can ; then add to it little lines of globed colored lights creeping around the roots of trees and shrubs, as if an endless menagerie of fiery serpents had been let out to twine and circle every- where ; and hang from every bough, and apparently from every cluster of leaves, a colored globe or lantern, with such a variety in shade that they seem to mock the hues of the very flowers they rival. Extend this up from TEE CZAR'S BALL. 177 shrubs to trees, until there seems to be a line of light half- way skyward, brighter than the Milky Way, and almost as countless as the orbs composing it ; and throw over walk after walk arches of delicate pipe, the agency invisible in the absence of daylight, but little jets of light shooting and radiating from them with the soft freedom of so many issues of bright water; then, when the extreme of beauty in fire and artificial light seems to have been reached, let great broad flames of calcium blaze stream down from airy distances, continually varying in color, and fading and glowing as if high over all a comet of ever-changing ray was shedding down portions of the 'light which no mortal may know.' Let this all reflect upon the glory of Avhite statues and sparkling fountains, and the noble front of that wilderness of separate palaces, the Tuileries, and flash far away upon the great column of the Place de la Con- corde, and seem to light up the scene and its farther banks on the one hand, and to touch the great city with a broad belt of flame on the other. Do all this, and bring into play, in addition, an imagination of at least respectable power, and you will form some idea, which I know that my words cannot convey, of the most magnificent and overwhelming of all fire spectacles yet seen by the people of this century — the illumination of the Tuileries Gardens at the Grand Ball to the Czar and the King of Prussia — to the latter of whom, by the way, I believe that the courtesy was among the hollowest paid during the entire summer, only that possibly the light was intended to blind him and to dazzle the eyes of Count Bismarck as to the real merits of tha Luxembourg question ! " But there was something upon which the blaze of that illumination shone, a part of the Tuileries and yet not of it, which made the second notable feature of that imperial magnificence. This was a platform built especially for the occasion, outside one of the great drawing-room windows, 8* 178 PARIS IN '6 7. approached from without by thirty or forty lo\7 stepS, and from within from the ball-room floor by the full-length window ; with a canopy of green silk and gold, the Empe- ror's golden bees studding it, and the whole so richly draped and ornamented w'ith the rarest flowers and costly gems of art, that it seemed a part of Aladdin's palace left behind when the rest of the structure vanished. It was here that the imperial and royal party sunned themselves, so to speak, in that wonderful light, and added to the bril- liancy of the scene, to near spectators, by the reflections on gem and order and decoration. The structure seemed to belong to the light, and the light to the structure. Both were wonderful, unrivaled, magnificent in their way. Had I not better stop before I exhaust all my adjectives, especially as I have no ordinary scene to deal with, from my limited vocabulary, in the events of the evening within the palace ? " But this reminds me that the vestibule was as far as I had progressed. Let us go on, for it is ill keeping a crowd of royal notabilities waiting. " I thought that I had before been ' received ' — more than once in the course of my life ; but all that I had ever before seen of this detail of ' society ' seemed to me at the moment mere neglect and rudeness beside that highest development of a science in which the French excel all other nations as if they belonged to a diffierent race. Siich clouds of rich-liveried attendants, each seeming to blend the obsequiousness of the servant with the suave dignity of the gentleman, chanced to be in exactly the right place at the moment when every lady stepped from her carriage and passed within the vestibule, and so deftly and quickly relieved her of cloaks and wraps and dropped into her hand the little ivory check that was to redeeui them, that not one but appeared to be the object of special attention, and to have precisely the proper servant at her exclusive THE CZAR'S BALL. 179 command. And then such a Master of Ceremonies raet every lady in the vestibule, just at the entrance of the music-flower atmosphere, at precisely the moment when her wraps had fallen, her robes settled into graceful fold, and she was ready to do fashionable battle to the death — met each as if she alone, of all that assembly, was the object for which his unimpeachable evening-dress had been assumed, and seemed rather to sweep than conduct her up the grand escalier and toward the salons of festivity — that he seemed to be multiplied into at least an hundred, all possessing the same rare qualifications. " But I must pause again, as I did pause, a little in defi- ance of etiquette, at the escalier. You have seen that noble central staircase of the Tnileries, and know what it is at ordinary times ; what must it have been, think you, when the rarest flowers from all the world seemed to have twined around it as if the hundred years of a ' Sleeping Beauty' had overgrown the whole palace with glory to hide decay ! But ah, there were other and terribly-hand- some flowers there — flowers that had grown in no garden, — nothing less than a line of the Emperor's splendid, richly- uniformed six-feet Ce7it Gardes, crowned with the silver helmet and long drooping white plume, and filling each end of every second step with magnificent and immovable human statuary ! "Statuary, indeed! for I believe that the palace might have burned or fallen under the shock of an earthquake, and not one would have moved without orders — just as the stout old Roman guards at Herculaneum are said to have stood motionless while the shower of hot ashes from Ve- suvius gathered up to their chins and then smothered out their lives. " Those splendid fellows not only seemed immovable, but were so, as I happen to know ; for a pleasant but very laughable contretemps occured just when I was on one of 180 PARIS IN '67. the lowest steps of the escalier, some hint of wbicli has already crept, as I see, into the French newspapers. It created, for a moment, quite a buzz among those who observed and understood it, and would have forced a smile, I think, even from the grave lips of the Emperor, Miss H , one of our pretty little American belles par excel- lence, finding her slipper loosened when half-way up the stair, stopped and stooped to fasten it, leaning against what, from its immovability, she took to be one of many statues of military personages lining the steps. It was the form of a Cent Garde against which she supported herself by one hand and her snowy left shoulder ; and that form remained as stony and motionless, outwardly, as the statue could have been — whatever the sensations that may have surged through the pulses of the soldier at being thus brought within touch of a warm breathing beauty so far beyond his ordinary reach. The silent figure breathed, however, even if lightly ; and the lady's absorbed senses finally took the alarm at feeling a trembling motion under her hand ; so that, with a pretty scream, half fright and half apology, she drew herself suddenly away, forced on the refractory slij^per, and tripped up the escalier a little more nimbly than she liad intended. " But what a spectacle met the unaccustomed eye and even dazzled one used to festive splendors, when we had been marshaled by the courteous Master of Ceremonies through two magnificent salons, au deuxieme, each per- fect in frescoes and decorations, regal in its appointments and furniture, blooming with flowers and ablaze with a thousand lights, into the grand salle da trone of the even- ing — the great ball-room of the Tuileries! You know the wonderful size of that room, though I suppose, like myself, you could not render the result in feet and inches — only say ' one of the largest in the woi'ld,' and certainly * one of the most gorgeous.' Frescoes, gilded ornamenta- TEE CZAR'S BALL. 181 tion, rare flowers in matchless profusion in raised vases, a great candelabra radiating softest and yet most brilliant light from so many points that it seemed to be a blending of sun and moon just overhead — I do not see how you can do otherwise than receive these little descriptive items in the gross, and apply and elaborate them at your leisure. " And here a word of the lights. I have used the phrase 'candelabra' instead of 'chandelier,' which really means the same thing — because the first conveys a more nearly correct idea. Do you suppose that the Tuileries is lighted with gas for festive occasions ? — that female beauty, which I must own to be sometimes a trifle delicate and in need of nursing, is at such times subjected to the searching influ- ences of that inflammable discovery of the nineteenth cen- tury ? If you do, you err seriously : the same description of light which shone iipon Marguerite de Yalois and Marie de Medicis, radiates upon Eugenie de Montijo and her attendant luminaries. Wax-candles — nothing else through- out ; wax-candles in such unlimited profusion that the pro- duction of a world would seem to be consumed in a single evening ; but nothing more glaring on the female cheek, on such occasions, than this soft kiss of warm golden splendor, which takes away pallor where it exists, and does not deal too harshly with rouge and enamel. There ! I have let you into one of the secrets of my sex ; let me catch you making undue use of the admission if you think it advisable ! " But now I know that you are impatient, or at least your readers will be, to see more closely some of the royal and other celebrities occupying their position in the grand salon^ and to hear of the action of the ball proper. Know, then, that at the end of the room right from the entrance there was a raised dais or platform, richly-carpeted, and with two carpeted steps leading up to it ; that on the dais were precisely twenty-five chairs — I think that for some 1S2 PARIS IN' '67. reason or other I counted them a dozen times over ; and that on and around that dais, during the evening, shone the great luminaries in whose blaze we were all basking — republicans quite as much as any of the others. " I should say, however, that the imperial party entered the salon after the most of the company had assembled — perhaps at about ten or half-past ; and I cannot find a more appropriate place than the present to tell you of a little incident connected with their entrance, which the news- paper people are quite likely to omit, intentionally or other- wise, and which seemed to me to display one of two things in the Empress — wonderful chUdish naivete, or wonderful artful mannerism of a peculiar character. The Empress entered on the arm of the Czar of Russia as the special guest of the evening, the Emperor and other notabilities immediately before, behind, and around. Of course she was at the moment engaged in the very highest exercise of hospitality — introducing a guest and endeavouring to place him at ease ; and yet can you imagine what she did ? I do not think it at all probable that six hours could have elapsed since her last sight of the Duchess Anna Murat de ^louchy, who has been for some time one of her pets ; but at all events she left the arm of the Czar, without a word of apology, rushed one-third of the way across the room, with the air of a mother flying to a beloved child not met for a twelve-month, seized and kissed the young Duchess in a way that I can only describe as devouring — leaving the Czar in what I could see was a very awkward position, stopping the whole progress of the imperial party, and causing the Emperor to look at her in a manner which would not have been pleasant if Z had been the subject of the glance and the gazer my husband! This may have been quite ' the thing to do ' — probably it was ; at all events it was what we call ' stagey,' and I should not have liked to risk the impression of my being underbred, had I TEE CZAR'S BALL. 183 performed the same evolution under similar circum- stances. "The dais found its occupants at last, and I shall en- deavor to give you a brief descriptive word of a few who then and later filled the chairs on it, as I saw them then and to a better advantage afterward, when dancing or moving among the guests. " First, the Czar of Russia, the special guest of the even- ing — a tall, large man, moustached, broad-faced, inclined to be blonde and northern-looking as well as fine-looking — older than most of his pictures, and beginning to remind one of his imperial and imperious father, Nicholas. He would have looked much better, I thiak, in anythrog else than his complete suit of white cloth covered with orders — the genei'al effect so unusual to our 'evening' eyes. " The Empress entered with the Czar, leaned on his arm, and sat beside him on the dais ; and she is well entitled to a place as early as the second. She is certainly very hand- some yet, and wears her dignity proudly ; though not even my regard for my o wn sex can prevent my noticing that she is losing something of her fine outline of form as she grows a shade stouter, and that the once clear skin is thickening so that the veins on the temples need to be sup- plied artificially instead of showing through as they used to do. I should do very little violence to my impressions, in applying to herthe well-known alliteration, 'fair, fat and forty' — somehow that is her atmosphere. She was heavily enameled, very decollete, and a little sad-faced when in repose, as she may well have been, even in the midst of these splendors. Her outer adornings certainly won my eyes, if I could speculate upon her physique. She wore a robe of some while Algerian silk material, with a thread of silver running through it, and bias-flounced ; a ribbon bow of diamonds on the right shoulder, fiistening a broad tri- colored ribbon which crossed the breast and ended in a 184: PARIS IIT '67. jeweled order at the left hip; a necklace of black velvet, closely studded with solitaire diamonds of great size and beauty, with depending stvijDS of strung solitaires falling fern-like down bosom and back, until they almost formed a covering for what otherwise had none ; a bouquet of lilies- of-the valley in her hand, and a heavy diamond circlet or demi-crown spanning her front head, which she had removed during the course of the evening, because it either was, or ought to have been thougJit, too heavy for comfort. If the Anna de Mouchy demonstration was real, so was this, probably ; if otherwise, this may have been a strip of the same pattern. " But I must pause here again to make an explanation, covering — or perhaps the opposite — others than the Em- press. I have spoken of her as being ' very decollete,' and ' heavily enameled.' There is no occasion of repeating the terras for each of the female notabilities present, though I might do so with propriety for most of them — all, certainly, except the very young. ' Very decollete ' does not express the whole fact, at all, with the Empress. She had about four inches of waist above the belt. She was, to use plain words, half-naked. So were her guests; so were her maids-of-honor ; we were all more or less half-naked. Either I should not much have cared to have my husband see me at that juncture, or I should have prefei-red to have him see me only ! "Then as to the enameling! The Empress could no more have shown her natural face than changed the length of her D'Alba nose. Nor could any of the rest of us — we were enameled, rouged, daubed, plastered — artistically, of course, but nevertheless daubed and plastered. Felix, the wonderful 'artist' of the Rue St. Honore, made me up, coated me, finished me off, as if I had been a building and he a stone-mason. I was very handsome, when he had done with me, but I was not myaelf by any manner of THE CZAR'S BALL. 185 means; I looked in the mirror, and fell in love with the girlish face that I saw there — something that I am not vain enough to do habitually. So let it be understood that we all more or less wore masks that evening ; and if any of my linrried descriptions fliil to convey an idea of the actual people, the fault will not be mine, but Felix's or that of some brother ' artist.' The descriptions will be of ichat I saw. "And now to the Emperor and his special companion of the evening, the sister of the Czar — Grand Duchess Marie something, if I do not misremember the name. " The Emperor was among the best-dressed men pres- ent ; certainly among the most modest, in his plain black evening suit, with no startling ornament whatever, except the broad red ribbon of Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor, which crossed his breast, and the great star of the Order, one side of which showed from under his lapel. But oh, his face ! that took away all thought from his gar- ments ! He looked so listless, so lifeless, so distrait, so broken ! — so impossible to be amused even by the pleas- ant attentions of the Grand Duchess, so much as if his thoughts were upon a distracted kingdom, a hostile Europe, a sick boy, and Maximilian in peril of his making ! And yet the face seemed nobler then than I had ever before seen it ; and more than once, yes, more than twice, when be folded his arms a little wearily and seemed to say : 'Ah me I — I wish all this mockery was over ! ' the resemblance in face and figure to the pictures of the First Napoleon was startingly marked and suggestive. 'I caught myself asking, when the likeness struck me once and again — What does this mean? Is it family, all? — or position? or some- thing else about which people do not care to talk, and about which a mere guest at one of his balls had probably as well avoid gossipping ? "There was nothing special about the Russian Grand 186 PARIS IN '67. Duchess, a tall, dark-haired woman of forty or fifty, with a pleasing manner, nothing marked except her diamonds, which were of wonderful size, profusion and lustre. The Emperor was evidently pleased with her, and as attentive as a distrait man could be, whose heart and brain were absorbed. " Next, by right of power if for no other cause, came the King of Prussia, a tall man, young-looking for his advancing years, moustached and side-whiskered, scarcely seeming to have strength and stamina to command the success so literally showered upon him within the past two years. But perhaps — ah, here was the answer to my doubt, in the very tall man, plainly-dressed and with few decorations, who approached and took me by the hand in recognition of a previous presentation. " Bismarck ! sharp ringing Sclavonic-sounding name of a strange man, who is certainly one of the ' men of the day.' Very tall, as I have before said ; rather angular in figure ; blonde; bald; small-headed; moustached; with large pro- truding blueish-gray eyes ; his whole manner something that cannot be described, while it does not appear to be anything seriously difterent from the common — a mnnner urbane and courteous at will, but evidently capable of being something very different when the other side of the will is aroused. I found time and opportunity for a chat with the man who has given the first effectual check to the world's worst tyrant, Austria ; told him the ti-uth, that I had rather made his acquaintance than that of any other man in Europe, and had the pleasure of being assured that such words from American lips were always welcome, as he felt fully convinced of the sympathy of the best Amer- ican statesman with his efforts and policy; and then the ' man of the day ' passed away into the whirl of other conversationists. " Here my eyes again catch the sweet azure orbs of Anna TEE CZAR'S BALL. 187 Murat de Mouchy, an American girl by birth and early residence, as you are aware ; and I half forgive the Empress her aiFectation — if it was one — of being hungry to kiss her ! A perfect blue-eyed, sweet-faced blonde, of medium height, or perhaps a line less, looking twenty or twenty- two, with splendid neck and arms, altogether fine plump figure, and a manner so sunshiny and genial that no won- der the Parisians sometimes call her 'Xa Petite Chaton^ literally, ' the Pet Kitten,' She wore ablue tarlatane, with all her jewelry in large blue turquoises — a combination Avhich would have been fearfully trying to most complexions ; but to hers — Rubens might have come back, specially to paint that exquisite propriety of form and adornment. " The Prince of Wales, in black evening dress, with the jeweled Star of the Garter his only decoration — looking manlier, and handsomer, and yet less lovable than as we saw him when yet a mere boy. He has evidently more talent of a certain kind than we, or England, thought : it is sad to fear that the son of a noble father, and a good, even if crotchety mother, may be found to have less prin- ciple than had been hoped. The Prince of Wales has filled too many mouths in Paris, during the season ; let us turn to his sister — "'Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland,' as she is designated in royal ceremonials ; a modestly-dressed and most lovable-looking girl, blonde, sweet-faced, and radiating the veiy soul of goodness in her smiles. Queen Victoria is at least happy in her daughters. " Let me present a foil to the sweet young English prin- cess, in one whom I saw standing near her at a certain moment — the Princess Metternich, twenty-five or six, tall and angular, with an apish face, ' dressed to death '— as our mothers used to say — gaudily, and with too many dia- monds ; in the habit of driving a yellow chariot, and reputed to be *fast' and shameless as she is hideously 188 PARIS IR '67. ugly. Ugh ! it is no trouble to turn away from her, in spite of the flash of her hereditary diamonds and that grand ball of her own, in which she succeeded in vieing with the Russian embassy, rivaling the Emperor as to cost and splendor, and making herself conspicuous to her fullest desire. Mem. — I did not go to that ball. I should like to have been caught putting myself under obligations to such a hostess ! " Prince Napoleon, fat and quiet — they say he has been a good deal crushed, lately, though he may be only ' biding his time ' — his face a heavy First Xapoleon, and his brow sombre. The Princess Clothilde, his wife, and as you remember, a daughter of the King of Italy — looking as homely and as much like a short-nosed brownie as ever, though good beyond a doubt, and beginning to show tafade suspicion. " Count de la Ferriere, First Chamberlain to the Emperor, Master of Cei*emonies by right of his office, and by that far better right of being the very Admirable Crich- ton of all accomplishments. The Count must be fifty or fifty-five, but looks younger — gray, with a fine profile, the courtliest manners imaginable, and considered the hand- somest gentleman at court. He has the reputation of having been the most successful in his attentions to Ameri- can ladies, of any living Frenchman ; and as a pendant to tliis it is also reported that he is under engagement of mar- riage to an American belle, Miss X , who will thus enter permanently into the charmed inner circle of Paris- ian court-life. "One more hasty portrait of a Parisian celebrity, before passing to another detail that may prove of more interest \i America. My presentation to Count Bismarck had been originally made by the gentleman of whom I am about to say a word — Colonel O'Gorman-Mahon, once a rival of O'Connell in populai'ity and power in the feritish THE CZAR'S BALL. 189 Parliament — friend of "Bismarck and many other leading European statesmen, and a man of markedly-fine, tall per- sonal appearance, in spite of his age — as well as the very highest type of the Irish gentleman. I need scarcely say that he is a cousin of Mr. Richard O'Gorman, the distin- guished Irish- American member of the New York bar, who is well known to he a scion of that proud old Hiber- nian family. The gallant and courteous old gentleman has not forgotten his native land, by the way; for, after much friendly conference, pointed by not a few favors at court, he spoke warmly of his kinsman on the American side of the Atlantic, and kindly gave me letters to Mr. Richard O'Gorman's parents, still living in Ireland, which I shall some day be but too happy to present and avail myself of their prestige.* " And now a few words of the Americans present ; for I am by no means disposed to run through the catalogue of royal and princely nobodies. I think that there were not more than thirty or forty of our country-people, alto- gether, at the Tuileries that night, though the country was far from being ii! represented ; and in the midst of other surroundings, I only saw and recognized a few — only four, I think — of male Americans : Commissioners Charles B. Seymour and Frank Leslie, both of Xew York, looking blythe and debonair, as is the wont of both ; Senator Sherman, who seemed to be abstractedly thinking about the Capitol at "Washington ; and General Dix, military- looking, in spite of the years and white hairs which seem to stamp him as almost too old for his arduous position. " By right of justice, Mrs. General Dix and her daughter should come first among the ladies, as they accompanied the ambassador. Mrs. Dix, gray but energetic-looking, and creating an impression of supplying much of the vigor of the family — to give it no stronger name ; Miss Kate Dix, a pet in Paris ever since her advent here, tall, blonde ♦ Since the above was in type, the regretted death of Mr. Eichsrd O'Gonnan, 8r., has been anaounced. 190 PARIS I2T '6 7. and handsome, but with a face somewhat too severe and reticent for her years. But here I must fall into the Jen- kinsian initials, for I have done with public names. Mrs. R , a pretty and well-figured blonde, attracting very marked attention among people whose attention is distinc- tion. Mrs. P , strikingly well dressed, very attractive without being strictly handsome, and quite dividing atten- tion with the lady last named. Mrs. M S , of Fifth Avenue, carrying much of the atmosphere of Murray Hill in her rich robes, fine jewelry and proud bearing. Mrs. B S , of New York and Staten Island, plumply handsome, with fine dark eyes, unimpeachably well dressed, and apparently as much at home at the Tuileries as she could have been in her own drawing-room. Miss B V , of Kentucky, blonde and sweet-looking, and con- sidered one of the handsomest women present, chaperoned by the lady last named, and pleasingly representing the * Border States.' " There was one other American lady present, the last I can name, and worthy of separate mention — Madame E , a small, wiry woman, approaching middle age, and at the first glance not attractive, but with a world of man- aging intellect under her brown hair and flashing out of her brown eyes — a smart, active, diplomatic woman, said to have more influence at court than any other American lady at Pai'is, and certainly one of the most valuable friends that American society-seekers have found during the imperial festivities. " And now enough of personal glimpses, few and imper- fect as they have been. A little time and space must suffice me for the action of the ball, which did not wait, in reality, so long as I have kept it waiting in description. " The Emperor and Empress did not dance. The latter was no doubt prevented by the ill health of the Prince Imperial, and the former by his own ill health and the THE CZAR'S BALL. 191 unfortunate Mexican perils just then — though we did not know how nearly — closing around poor Maximilian. Of course no one else danced before or at the same time with the royal party, for Avhich two quadrilles of eight com- menced at about eleven o'clock, led by the Prince of Wales and other youthful potentates in embryo. There was nothing peculiar in these quadrilles, for monarchy 'kicks up its heels ' very much like common humanity — except that the many gems and jeweled orders produced a bril- liant effect when in motion, and that the lovely Princess Metternich tripped during the course of it, fell sprawling, and raised another of those general commotions from which I would always prefer to be excused, even if I had more grace than she to make the operation less embarrass- ing! " The opening quadrilles over, as if there had been some arduous labor demanding recompense, came the distribu- tion of presents to the favored participators — elegant little bouquets of the rarest and costliest flowers, shaped into Bymbols of various orders and held together by gemmed ribbons. Then, ' the King of Persia having dined, the rest of the world might go to dinner ;' the royal party returned to their dais, to the Aladdin balcony or the reserved gar- dens, where living flowers, fountains, concealed music, and all the other other appliances of luxury, made up the most perfect dream of enchantment — or mingled with guests on the floor, and dancing became as general as the severe rules of etiquette and the limited number allowed to take the floor at once, could well permit. But the truth is — and you may print this in smaller type, as a secret, if you like — that flirting is quite as much the business of a Parisian ball, as dancing ; so that the rules did not press with undue severity. " I have said that the dancing began at about eleven. It was about one when the company moved from the 192 PARIS IN '6 7. grand salon to the great dining-hall, ushered with the same ceremonies which had marked their entrance. " Scarcely the ' company ' however — only a part of it ; not more than two or three hundred fonnd place in that magnificent banqueting-hall of the Tuileries,with its reple- tion of frescoes, gilding, flowers, and waxen illuminations. After the guests were seated with the due order of prece- dence, at tables radiant with every variety of costly service, and loaded with (hot) soups, meats, and costly confections — the imperial party were announced and passed through in a body to the separate dining-hall provided for them nt one side of the great hall — the guests rising and cheer- ing with much enthusiasm as they passed, whether in honor of royalty or at the near prospect of supper I con- fess that I did not stop to inquire, though I gave my little woman's cheer with the rest ! "This -imperial dining-hall, at the left, was raised a little above the main hall, and full glimpses could be caught of it through the open doors, while the supper was in progress. It was splendidly decorated with flowers, fountains over which gauze prevented undue dampness from filling the atmosphere, the flags of the difierent nations etc. ; while it was worth something to see, for once, what are the meanings of the phrases ' plate ' and' table Bervice,' when they apply to gold, silver-gilt, gem-incrusta- tions and lavish splendor generally, devoted to the satis- fying of royal palates. But I said that monarchs danced like other mortals : so they ate and drank, as we observed them through the open doors — with no more of dignity than the occupants of the great hall, and I fancy without keener appetite; for there is nothing better calculated to sharpen the taste than dancing, fatigue, and supper at half-past one ! "My rambling story of the Grand Ball to the Czar — and I fear it has been a dry one — is nearly over. It only TEE CZAR'S BALL. 193 remains to say that the large number of other guests, who failed to reach the great hall, were otherwise accommo- dated ; that after supper we were ushered into another apartment, where ices, jellies, and the most delicate of cooling confections awaited us ; that dancing was resumed on return from supper, and continued until half-past three — the royal party leaving somewhat earlier, perhaps at half past two ; that again, on leaving, came the Master of Ceremonies, the accurate and yet not disagreeable formalities, the wonderful attendance, the lights, flowers, and music of entrance, the regulated crush of carriages without, ,even a few of the glaring and defiant faces staring into the carriages as we rolled away up the Rue Rivoli or through the Place des Pyramides. " There ! Strauss' wonderful music of that night has already ceased ; the flowers of the Tuileries have faded, the crowned heads have gone home ; the flirtations then begun have borne fruit or ended ; the enamel is ofl" my lace, and I wear a robe with moi*e than four inches of waist ! You have only a woman's relation of the afiair, and of the aflfair of the same character preceding ; but I have tried to satisfy a little of the natural curiosity of my comitry- women who did not chance to be present; and neither to you nor to them have I any apology to offer for having possibly failed in doing my very best." 9 xvn. THE WORLD'S JEWELS IN THE BIG CASKET. The most sublime thing said at any or all of the ceremo- nies connected with the American Exhibition of 1853, was the utterance of Elihu Burritt, at the great oratorical re- opening, in wliich he spoke of the beautiful building as being " worthy to furnish a manger-cradle to the divine infant. Labor," and all the triumphs of art surrounding, as " gems brought from far, to bind upon its baby-brow." And pei-haps it is more to that utterance than any other, that I owe the feeling, in any great industrial exhibition, that I am standing amid something sacred, because so much of the best of the human heart and brain and hand has entered into the production of its various components — that these are, indeed, the royal gems and glories of a world. He who has visited the Great Exposition of 1867, and experienced no such feeling when looking down one of the broad circles and marking how labor has been immortal- ized in the very eflbrts made for its amelioration — has caught but a faint reflection of the lesson intended to be conveyed. To him who has learned the lesson, I think it is quite permissible that he may have indulged in another, on his own account — the thought how much is constantly wasted, of what might supply human comfort to individ- uals by the million, in the effort to supply a few hundreds, or at least a few thousands, with rare and unnecessary THE WORLD'S JEWELS. 195 luxuries. The world is richer for every one of the whir- ring spindles and revolving wheels which make possible production without the racking of so many nerves and the consumption of so mucli valuable time ; it is the richer, too, for most of the solid products of labor, in wood, and iron, and brass, and leather, and stufis, and mixed mate- rials, which render so much labor unnecessary because so much has been already done ; and the fund of wealth is certainly added to, the mind as well as the body needing to be supplied, by the efforts of art which enliven the brain and make the material M'orld more beautiful — whatever may be the final verdict on those costly nothings destined to deck limb and add unnatural radiance to brow and hand. Of most of the articles in this long array, that may be said which cannot be uttered over the personality of quite all the men on earth, without a far-seeing deference to the creative will: " It is better that they exist"; and the pride of being part ofaxoorld capable of such productions has been no mean ingredient in the pleasure of gazing down the transverse galleries and around the great circles of the Exposition. Of course it will not be expected that in this connection any list can be made of even the most notable objects on exhibition, — or that even the most notable of the most notable can be indicated by a mere word. The intelligent man who had spent the whole summer within the building and park, moving about briskly and making notes con- tinually, might have done the latter, in the dry mode of a catalogue, but very little more. If a few observations find place, here, of what a single pair of eyes, not super- naturally observant, saw and noted within a few days — all possibility (and let us hope all expectation) will have been supplied. Desultory glimpses, grouped so far as con- venient, but having only one settled feature — that they altogether ignore the American contributions, they being 196 PARIS IN '67. entitled, in deference to American readers, to the justice of a separate paper. Naturally enough, an impractical man, who scarcely knows a lever from a connecting-rod, turns at once to ma- chinery (because it is one of his great ico?iders), — and a "peace" man of the most declared character, to warlike weapons,- simply because he is not in the habit of handling, them. Oddly enough, too, the two nations toward whom France is well known to have been looking most jealously — England and Prussia — have chosen to thrust into her face, in the present instance, nearly all the "big-guns" and improved warlike machinery of the collection. Prus- sia's improved fire-arms, the perfection of neatness and ap- parently of force, have attracted much attention in the main building ; and a cannon of hers, about the size of an ordinary Croton-main, has pointed toward the centre of the building and only needed loading to be dangerous to the whole affair. Her needle-guns and other weapons have correspondingly dazzled all eyes with the complete- ness of their finish and the suggestions of the use which a practically/ military nation could make of them on occasion. England, meanwhile (principally in the great annexe), has shown Armstrongs, Whitworths and other iron monsters in profusion, with suggestive splintered tar- gets and hints of what has been accomplished and can be ac- complished again in case of necessity. Belgium, however, does not fall off from the old prestige of Liege, especially in the display of somewhat heavy but eflective-looking fire-arms and army-cutlery ; and France, as if daring all that other countries can send her, in peace as in war, fills up every atom of available space with such monstrosities in founding, and such an infinite variety of death-dealing implements, facile and keen-looking as the German are clumsy, (the Chassepot rifle not forgotten), that the day of THE WORLD'S JEWELS. 197 "beating spears into pruning-hooks" does not seem ap- preciably near. The artilleric display has lain principally between the three nations already mentioned ; though Turkey has matched either, if not over-matched all, in the display of gims, pistols, sabres, and other warlike cutlery, somewhat oriental-looking, but evidently effective, even if not many of them have the glitter of Damascus. It is in machinery and machines, probably, that the most wonderful of all the collections has been accomplished. As might be expected, France, having the advantage of proximity, leads in this heavy detail, with mighty engines siipplying motive-power to the building, with locomotives and railway-novelties of interest, with cotton and silk machines, opening the whole arcana of manufacture to the looker-on, and displaying her wealth of resources in a most profitable manner. But she has been closely followed by England, sending over many of the best heavy works of the great manufactories at London, Birmingham, Leeds, (fee, and fully rivaling France in machinery devoted to cloth manufactures and the preparation of materials. In heavy and railway machineries, Belgium excels England, and in some respects even France — her locomotives and traction-engines being ponderously-powerful-looking, her railway-carriages models of taste and beauty (the Euro- pean compartment system taken as the standard), and no mean rivalry established in machines specially devoted to the preparation of materials and the manufacture of silks, cottons and woolens. Austria has some excellent traction-engines, and promising railway-novelties; Bavaria, Baden and Switzerland, all make creditable railway dis- plays; and Austria, Prussia and Sweden principally divide the credit (England being literally " nowhere," and France scarcely clutching for the palm) of exhibiting sewing-ma- chines that look like more-or-less successful operation, all modeled, of course, on thefts from well-known American 198 PARIS IN '67. patents, and all founded on one of the two cardinal Ameri- can principles. In one regard, ■which may be entirely a matter of local advantage, and may depend not a little on accorded or withheld permission, France has all the while been at an immeasurable distance ahead of competi- tion — her smaller manufacturing machinery put and kept in operation, and visitors enjoying the privilege, profitable enough to the exhibitor, as well as instructive to the looker-on, of seeing hats, coats, shoes, combs, artificial flowers, buttons, and the inevitable chocolate, manufac- tured from the raw material ; while a fully-appointed working printing-press has supplied another of the peeps behind the curtain of labor, not quite so rare in industrial exhibitions. In some of the buildings in the Park, by the way, the orientals have been allowed to infringe the French monopoly, and greasy Egyptians have woven mats, made silver finger-rings from wire, and otherwise instructed eyes and depleted pockets. In jewelry and fine ornamental work (to make a leap which suggests the packing of a carpet-bag by first putting in the boots, and then the watches) France leads, again and pronouncedly — one whole chamber (well-policed, " you bet !" as " Tommy" would say) hung in green (the best color for jewel-relief), and devoted to such a display of diamond, pearl, and other costly bijouterie, as the Count of Monte Cristo might have gazed upon in despair — such as has kept the "sea of tempestuous petticoats" (to use a favorite expression of the season) dashing dangerously around it — -every device of flower, or insect, or reptile, ever shaped in gems, here so modeled and incrusted, of the rarest and costliest, with the serpents' eyes of fire, rubies and emeralds, the drop of dew on an enameled rose- leaf a diamond, and the sprays of delicate flowers, pearls and opals and sapphires diamond-blended, that it has seemed almost impossible to avoid pausing to speculate TEE WORLD'S JEWELS. 199 how much the material ixniverse would have cost in francs, dollars, or pounds-sterling, had the Great Architect formed his world of insect life and floral beauty in the same lavish manner ! France certainly exhausts the graceful in shape, and the skilful in manipulation, as she " tops the infinite of" cost; though England presses her hard, in some of the collections of the great London jewelers, in one of which (I forget the name, though I think it was Jewish) I saw diamond sprays of such luxurionsness that they seemed to radiate the atmosphere of Hyde Park in the season, or the Queen's Drawing Room ; while in one jewel a single yellow diamond, of immense size, was surrounded by others, so set as to quiver and shimmer continually, with a most dazzling effect ; and some of the English peeresses (the Countess Dudley among others) did what no French lady had thought of doing, and sent over her ancestral diamonds in a body, to keep up the national reputation ! As to the other continental nations — Berlin and Vienna have only been behind London and Pai'is in the extent of their jewelry contributions ; though the truth must be told that the Prussians and Austrians both lack the art of setting to perfection, however rare the gems at their disposal, and that the Austrians, at least, seem more at home in the extensive collection of " Brummagem," or mock jewels, which have blinded uninstructed eyes nearly as much as the costly realities. Italy, meanwhile, has not forgotten Benvenuto Cellini, or the Etruscans, as evidenced by some of her works in gold, silver, and precious stones. Russia has astonished those who only thought of her as a land of snows, furs, and the knout, by showing some exquisite productions in the precious metals, and some novelties in gem-incrusted furniture, from her own semi-precious stones, defying competition in their way ; and sleepy old Holland, seldom too much admired of the fair sex, has carried them all captive by establishing a diamond-cutting laboratory in 200 PARIS IX '6 7. an annexe, showing the whole process of shaping the gem on wheels through the friction of its own powder, and making more feminine mouths water, and more masculine pockets empty in anticipation, than almost any of the more pretentious nations. From jewels to statuary, bronzes and carvings, is not quite so extended a leap. In marble statuary, as might have been expected, Italy has stood unrivaled and unap- proachable, the different sections of the Italian depart- ment having been literally heart-aching (to the poor and covetous), with the number and excellence of products of the chisel. This paper has no mission to particularize, else might it be entirely filled with the naming of some of my own particular heart-aches that have not even the distant prospect of a cure. France has supplied many fine rival works in marble, and shamed competition by the wealth of her display of photo-sculpture (moulding in clay by a new process, about which Americans will be better instructed by and by), and she has furnished many noble specimens of the colossal in art, adorning the grounds and entrances, closely followed, and in some instances, excelled, by Belgium, to which the collection has owed some of the most striking of its ultra-colosf^al figures. Much of the Russian cutting in poplar-wood (for house decoration) can scarcely be named as carving, any more than as sculpture, though it has a certain rude and odd charm, undeniable when its use is considered ; and that the great Northern Bear can work in other matei-ials is evident in one chimney-piece of contrasted native marbles, excelling all others in its line and commanding universal admiration. Switzerland and Central Germany, possessors at once of the woods especially appropriate for carving, and of the contented, plodding, low-paid people requisite for the work — excel the world in their carvings in walnut and oak, from the colossal to the liliputian — from great THE WORLD'S JEWELS. 201 bears and stalwart -warriorp, to wondrous match-boxes and distracting paper-folders — that branch of art rapidly rising, now, to recognition among the most creditable, rare and costly. In bronzes the great German kingdoms display very excellent specimens ; but there is not even a com- parison to be made between them, or the works in the same material from any other country, and the matchless beauties and delicacies of the French department, in which richness of material answers to chastity of design, and tlie art of working in bronze, at its present height of per- fection, seems literally to have reached its apotheosis. Pausing in this department and foiling in love, continually, with some new object of grace and beauty — the most graceful thing in nature, the form of woman, continually renewed in the richest of material — it has been easier, I think, than ever before, to understand how much the divine ordinance debarred, when it commanded : " Thou shalt not worship any graven image." Swiss Geneva and Locle, English Birmingham and Liverpool, German Nuremberg, Prussian Berlin, and Aus- trian Vienna and Prague, all run riot, of course, in a mad competition of watches, the costliest to the cheapest, dia- mond-studded and enamelel(i<^& than a Fourth of July dinner at the Grand Hotel ; how Curtin thrilled us with patriotic recollections, and Forney made us look twice to see if that gray-headed and calm- spoken man could be the hot-brain of old, and Dan Dougherty " set the table in a roar," with his account of the facilities enjoyed by Americans for buying hats in Paris. But how over all and through all, the old flag seemed to be waving and the eagle looking down with his smile of fierce approval, and the Saloon of the Zodiac, for the time, as much a part of America as ever had been Independence Hall or the old "Cradle of Liberty." This "national event" thus briefly referred to, let the more legitimate business of the present paper be pursued, in hastily noting the features in American art, invention and manufacture, conferring honor on the nation, whether or not they won the recognition of cross or medal. And something of a very negative character in the latter regard naturally comes first in order. In hastily glancing at the picture-gallery of the Exposi- tion, the American pictures were purposely left unmen- tioned, because they demanded the justice of mention at greater length than was there possible. Had a jury of the Exposition been writing, there is every probability that the later as well as the earlier mention would have been avoided ; for certainly so much of collective merit was AMERICA' S SHARE. 219 never before met with such total toant of appreciation by any j)'>'€'te7idedly-judieial body 07i earth. The American contribution of pictures has reflected the very highest credit upon the country whence it emanated, and not even the stupidity or unfairness of a jury can invali- date the fact in the public mind. Let us see what were the works by favorite artists forming leading features, and inquire what other nation could be entitled to sweep cdl the honors away from it. Something, of course, must be allowed for local feeling and local knowledge of sulvjects treated ; but even making allowance for that prejudice, if we are not a nation of ignoramuses in all that pertains to art — worshippers of daubs because they chance to be our own — it cannot be possible that we have built entirely without foundation when we reared a structure of national pride, on — Beard's " Dancing Bears," Bierstadt's *' Rocky Moun- tains," Casilear's "Plains of Genesee," Church's "Nia- gara" and " Rainy Season in the Tropics," Durand's "In the Wood," Elliott's "Fletcher Harper," Gignoux's " Mount Washington," Henry Peters Gray's " Apple of Discord," Hubbard's " Adirondacks," Huntington's "Re- publican Court," Eastman Johnson's " Old Kentucky Home," " Violin Player," and " Sunday Morning ;" Ken- sett's " Lake George in Autumn," " Opening in the White Mountains," and "Morning on the Coast of Massachu- setts ;" Leutze's " Mary Stuart Hearing Mass," AYeir's " Gun Foundi-y," Edwin White's "Recollections of Siberia," MacEntee's "End of October " and "Autumn in the Woods of Asshokau," Mignot's " Sources of the Susquehanna," James M. Hart's "Connecticut River," Gifford's "Twi- light on ]\Iount Hunter," Healy's " General Sherman," Winslow Homer's " Confederate Prisoners," W. M. Hunt's " Italian Boys," Geo. Inness's " Sunset in America," Lamb- din's " Last Sleep," May's " Lear and, Cordelia," Morau's 220 PARIS IN '67. " Autumn in Pennsylvania," W. F. Richards's " Foggy Day at Nantucket," Whittridge's "Coast of Rhode Island," and Geo. A, Baker's two "Portraits." Thirty-six pictures are named in the foregoing selection from the seventy-five oil paintings exhibited ; and to them may be added, under the head of " drawings," a spirited "Cavalry Charge at Fredericksburg," by Darley, and a characteristic " Wounded Drummer," by Eastman John- son. Of the remaining works in oil, if few or none rise to the level of the pictures named, there is, at least, not one absolutely discreditable, and scarcely one that would not command warm admiration if removed into less dangerous neighborhood. And of that thirty-six — how many hearts have they filled with pleasure equally warm and intelli- gent — how have some of them become synonyms for excellence in their line, with sterner critics than com- patriots may always choose to be. How has Beard's "Dancing Bears" joined with his "March of Silenus" and his " Grimalkin's Dream," to stamp him as the first deline- ator of humanity in animals, of any age ? and Church's "Niagara" literally thrown all other renderings of the Great Fall out of memory, from its blended excellence of points of view, color and management ? and Bierstadt's " Rocky Mountains " absolutely opened a new world in art, fascinating beyond comparison, even if a little reckless and unreal? and Eastman Johnson's "Old Kentucky Home " become a housebold word as the very best type of the picturesque slave-decline, now finally passed away ? and Weir's "Gun Foundry" taken rank with the very finest efforts of the Dusseldorf school in its wonderful management of varying lights, besides displaying intense realism and most accurate observation ? and Gifford's " Twilight," with that star seeming to burn like living fire in the intense blue, been owned the very idealization of nightfall on the romantic Catskills? and Kensett's AMERI CA' S SHARE. 221 " Lake George " won the palm as the purest of all delinea- tions of oft-painted Horicon in its sweetest hour of Antumn repose? and Huntington's "Republican Court" been held a historical painting of marked value, as well as an artistic triumph under serious difficulties, in grouping and cos- tume? and Durand in landscape and Elliott in portraiture long ago been admitted to that eclectic pantheon from which the worthily-welcomed " go no more out forever ?" It was not — (perish the tongue and pen that would make such an assertion) — national prejudice alone, or even prin- cipally, making the thousands of intelligent Americans who walked through the crowded galleries of the Exposition, well content with the works of their own artists — ay, proud of them, in the face of all Europe, and when they saw them brought into comparison with many of the best works of the age in all lands. It was cultui*ed pride in the talent as well as the nationality of the painters which made the breath come a little thick, and the throat swell a trifle chokingly, so often, when these recalled the lanpretending and comparatively nameless galleries of the New World. And let it be said, once for all, that whatever may be the fact in historical, figure and genre painting — branches of art to which too few of our native artists have yet been wise enough to turn their keen faculty of observation — nothing in the Exposition has invalidated the claim some time since made by the country, and more than half ad- mitted by the world — that in the field of contemporary landscape-painting, America is at the present moment pre- eininent among the nations, and with a fair prospect of soon becoming unapproachable. There have been seriously-regretted absences, of course, in the American art department, as in all others. Some- thing of Sonntag's, showing his wonderful management of mist on river scenery, should have found place. So of Nast, some of whose battle-sketches and caricatures, at 222 PARIS IN '67. least, should have shown the work of our very hest de- signer, after Darley if not beside him. So of J. G. Brown, confessedly the very best of our pure genre painters. So of George L. Brown, some of whose coast-scenes would make him national, or even cosmopolitan, if he had not become exclusively wedded to Boston. So of Addison Richards, some of whose pieces of charming elaboration in foliage are worth the study even of Europe. So of Constant Mayer, whose " Love's Melancholy " should have gone over, at any sacrifice, to show Frenchmen how deftly their coun- trymen paint in a purer and better atmosphere, retaining, meanwhile, their best recollections of home. Yet of ■what use, indeed, would all this have been, in the face of the evident determination to prove that the pictorial art of all the world centred on the European continent — that "American savages " daubed instead of painting ? It is almost idle, in conclusion of this branch of national examination, to say a word of our exhibition of sculpture — a mere drop in the widest of oceans, in the midst of the overwhehning collections of the older nations, and not re- markably creditable even in comparison with its extent. Ward's forcible " Indian Hunter " has been the best as well as the largest work in the trifling array ; Avhile Rogers's groups of statuettes have been almost too local for cosmo- politan understanding; Miss Hosmer's " Fawns " have given little indication of the power really existing in the sculptor of " Zenobia;" Launt Thompson long ago promised better things than he has fulfilled in either his " Napoleon " or his '' bust of Bryant " — both creditable and nothing more ; and Volk, representative of the "West, if he has faithfully moulded our late lamented Chief Magistrate has certainly not caught him in the happiest of moments. The best of our sculptors (and we are not rich, nationally, in the array) too much lack scope and purpose, are too busy and too much European at Rome or Florence, or too intent on finishing AMERICA'S SEARE. 223 fat-jobs of public-ground monuments, to make much of a figure in the midst of sculpture-gemmed and sculpture- growing Europe. But enough of American art abroad — meritorious or the reverse — appreciated or unappreciated: a much more varied review of objects contributing to the "honors" we have won or deserved, must have place in a concluding paper. XIX. AMERICA'S SHARE IN THE DIVIDED HONORS. SECOXD PAPER. In speaking, with unavoidable brevity, of so many of the quarter-of-a-thousand prizes achieved by America at the Exposition as seem to bear most strongly on the national honor — some attempt at classification is necessary, and yet by no means that of the Commission in the official catalogue and report of awards. And it is only fair to premise that the list would have been much largei", but for hindrances which left many articles at Havre when they should have been safely housed in the Exposition Building and enrolled in the catalogue. NATIONAL AND STATE COLLECTIONS. Sanitary Commission of the United States, for collection of material, used in service during the war of 1861 — grand prize. EemarJcs. — An honor well deserved, as the collection reflected credit upon every American, and awoke much national pride, in spite of the fact that we had suffered something too much of the Sanitary Commission business before the close of the struggle. In connection with this, it should be remarked that there was also an interestiug exhibition of ambulances, &c., by the Quartermaster's Department, but for some cause placed "ho)-s concours,^^ and not reckoned as in competition. State of Illinois, for primary school-house, silver medal. Remarks. — With reference to this building, in the park, enough has been already said in another connection. AMEBIC A' S SHARE. 225 Bureau of Agriculture, Washington, for collection of grains and seeds — bronze medal. State of California, for collection of grains — silver medal. State of Wisconsin, for do. — bronze medal. State of Kansas, for do. — bronze medal. State of Illinois, for do. — bronze medal. State of Ohio, for do. — bronze medal. State of Minnesota, for do — honorable mention. State of Iowa, for do. — honorable mention. Eema.rks. — For the second, if not the first, grain-growing country in the world, America did not cover herself with honor in her cereals, in the face of the immense and most excellent collections of France, Russia, Belgium, Italy, &c. Our collections were neither large in extent nor arranged for favorable view. One exception, however, is to be made : the California wheat demanded attention for its size, plumpness, and fine color, — and received it. State of Alabama, for short staple cotton — honorable mention. State of Pennsylvania, for anthracite coal — bronze medal. State of Wisconsin, for collection of minerals — bronze medal. State of Illinois, for collection of minerals — silver medal. FemaTks. — In that detail which only a few years ago was believed powerful enough to rule the world, — cotton, — the feeble exhibition made this season was a melancholy mark of our decadence. A little from Alabama, under State patronage ; less from Louisiana, through private enterprise; and that was alL "Cotton" may be "king" again, but not for us — the truth is painfully evident. Of coal, the Pennsylvania collection was about one-tenth ^^'hat it should have been, and received no justice in the award. There were some fine leads in the Illinois collection, and some fine leads and coppers in that of Wisconsin. And no more appropriate place than this could be found to say that in minerals, generally, America martyred her wonderful chances — that the gold and silver specimens from California, Colorado, Idaho, &c., sent by private parties, though meritorious enough in quality, have rather damaged than benefited" us in the minds of Europeans, by failing to convey any idea of our wonderful resources in minerals, or any suspicion what we could and should have done if making an earnest competition for a palm worth winning. 10* PARIS IX '67. FIXE ARTS. Frederick E. Church, New York (second prize), for oil painting — silver medal. Remarks. — The general injustice done to American artists has before been spoken of. The medal to Mr. Churcli, for "Niagara," which should have been a first instead of a second class, was no better de- served than corresponding recognition would have been by Bierstadt, for the "Rocky Mountains;" Elliot, for his portraits; Beard, for his "Dancing Bears;" Eastman Johnson, for his "Old Kentucky Home;" and others whose names will be recalled from the list previously given. PEOMOTIOX OF HUMAIf GOOD. Cyrus W. Field, New York, as promoter of the system of ocean telegraphy, and in connection "with the Anglo- American companies — gold medal. Dr. F. W. Evans, Paris, for articles connected with the American Sanitary Commission, and in conjunction with that commission — gold medal. Prof. Hiaghes, Kentucky, for printing telegraph — gold medal. Dr. Jackson, for discovery of emery in America — bronze medal. Dr. J. K. Barnes, Surgeon-General, U. S. A., for material of the military hospitals of the United States — silver medal. RemarTcs. — With reference to the propriety of the first two awards named there can be no question, Mr. Field having actually bridged the gulf between the impossible and the possible, by forcing forward an enterprise which might have lingered for a quarter of a century longer without him ; and Dr. Evans beiug entitled to the highest credit for his Sanitary Commission labors, and the preparalion of a collection reflecting pride upon every American. Opinions differ widely as to the actual advance in telegraphic knowledge and practicality, consequent upon the ideas of Prof. Hughes. If the "Dr. Jackson," as supposed, is Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the geologist, of Boston, the bronze medal is but a small addition to the Cross of the Legion already for many years worn by him. Dr. Barnes's surgical services to the army are too well known to make even a reminder of the propriety of his award necessary. AMERICA' S SHARE. 227 MUSICiX IXSTRmiENTS, Stein way & Sons, New York, for grand, square, and upright pianos — first gold medal. Eemarks. — If America has failed to embrace some of her best oppor- tunities, and been unjustly treated in others, she has certainly both won and deserved honor in a detail in which Europe might have been sup- posed to possess all the advantages of age and higher luxury. That American musical-instrument manufacturers should sweep away the first prizes for the construction of the most diCScult of instruments, with all Europe in competition, may well have astonished that large section of the world known as "outsiders;" but it can scarcely have produced a similar effect either upon those who haunted the Great Exposition Build- ing very closely during the summer, or those who have been familiar with the course of piano-manufacture in this country. For many years, as is well known, the lucky winners of this first prize have been adding invention after invention to the previous knowledge of the craft, the greatest of the great problems being, always, improvement of materials with reference to the trying American chmate, and improvement of appli- cation for the production of round, resonant, and well-sustained sound. Probably it was quite as much owing to the former as the latter, that the Steinway grands, unimpaired by removal, sea-air, or change of climate, constantly rolled such volumes of melodious souud through the Exposi- tion Building, that crowds pressed around them as if they had supphed an entirely new feature in musical construction — that Felicien David (who can forget the mctatro David's playing his owTi " Desert" more than half through, one afternoon, to an enraptured crowd?) and Marmontel, and Mortier de Fontaine, and Alfred Jaell, and Wieniawski, and a hundred other musical lights went half-mad over them — and that they swept the jury off their feet as if their waves of sound had been literal waves of water. No prize, of all the distribution, was better deserved than that of the Messrs. Steinway ; and none, probably, excites less jealousy, even if it should happen to be true that one of the two only medals of the same rank awarded to o^j European house, was awarded by special order of the Emperor, and xvithout the piano contributed by that hofu-se being either tried or even unlocked I Chickering & Sons, New York and Boston, for pianos — gold medal. F. C. Chickering, Boston, Cross of the Legion of Honor, as distinguished foreign citizen and mechanician. 228 PARIS ly '67. Mason & Hamlin, New York, for cabinet organs and harmoniums — silver medah Remarks. — Another honor most richly deserved, though the medal might have been gold without injury to the cause of justice. Mason & Hamlin, in whose favor, as receivers of first honors at home, all the other American manufacturers withdrew, sent over their ordinary instruments, without extra finish or preparation, and won one of the three grand prizes awarded to this class of instruments, — the two others being taken by Miistel, of Paris, and Trayser, of Stuttgart. It is a well-understood fact, in Paris, that the Alexandre prize was awarded to him as a pet of the Emperor's in the Mngasin Reunis, and really without any reference to his organs. The Mason & Hamlin organs were a marked feature in the Exposition, winning European acknowledgment of the roundness and fullness of their tone, and the compact beauty and excel- lence of their model, — reflecting honor on the country, and well deserv- ing their first-class recognition. J. Gemunder, New York, for stringed instruments — bronze medal. L. Schrieber, New York, for brass wind-instruments — bronze medal. STEAM ENGINES AND MACHINERY. Grant Locomotive Works, Paterson, New Jersey, for locomotive " America " — gold raedaL Remarks. — An award eminently satisfactory, especially to the thou- Bands of Americans who gathered round the splendid engine, on the Fourth of July and so many other days, and marked its massive weight, matchless grace, perfect finish, and evidence of wonderful power. It ennobled the shabby American annexe, from the moment of entering; it completed the triumph of American rolling-stock over European ; and the American people owe Grant another medal, if he is not satisfied with the present one, for giving them so fair an object of legitimate pride and boast. It would be pleasant to believe that the European engine-builders may have learned something from it, in the way of combining power and beauty ; but that might be too much to hope ! Corliss Steam-Engine Company, Providence, for station- ary engine — gold medal. Remarks, — An elaborately finished engine, attracting much attention throughout all the exhibition, for the quiet force of its movement, which some one designated as " working as gentlj' as an infant's breathing. AMEBIC A' S SHARE. 229 while it carried a power mighty enough to unsettle a pyramid;" and the award only indorses the previous standing of the engine-builders, hte- raUy at the head of that important branch of motor-construction. J. B. Root, New York, for rotary (trunk) engine — bronze medal. Remarks. — The story of this award is somewhat curious. Mr. Bacon, of the Boston cracker-bakery, carried over an ordinary Root Trunk Engine, of small size, to run his machinery, its entire want of ornamenta- tion makiog it literally more ordinary-looking than those commonly in store. It was not thought of as in competition; but its obvious light- ness, compactness, economy of space and fuel, and matchless fitness for manufacturing purposes, carried the visitors captive, and forced the jury into awarding a medal that had never been asked for I In some regards this testimonial to the Root Engine is the very highest of all the awards of the Exposition ; but the hundreds of houses in New York and elsewhere, that employ this motor, will feel no surprise at the event. There is a regret, however, connected with the presence of this engine. The Root Tubular Boiler should have been with it, and there is no question whatever that a gold medal would have been the result. For really a boiler that cannot explode ; that can be made larger at will, using all the previous material; that can be taken apart and packed in hundred-pound pieces, to carry over a plain or up a mountain ; that takes little space, and can be examined as to any place of defect in a moment — such an anomaly as this (and all this is the Root Boiler) might have astonished even Johnny Crapaud, who does not astonish easily. Awards also in this department to W. B. Douglas, Conn,, for pumps ; to L. H. Olmsted, Conn,, for pulleys ; to Pickering & Davis, New York, for spring steam-engine governor ; to Howe Scale Co., Vt., for scales ; to Andrews & Bros,, New York, for oscillating engine ; to H. C. Dart, for rotary engine ; to Clark Fire-Damper Company, and American Steam-Gauge Company, for steam-registers; to J. Dwight & Co., for steam-pump ; to Hicks Engine Company, New York, for engine ; to F, S. Pease, Buifalo, for petroleum-pump ; to J. A. Robinson, New York, for Ericsson hot-air engine ; to Sellers & Co., Phila., for tool- 230 PARIS IN '67. machine ; to Brown & Sharpe, Providence, for spinning- machine; to Wickersham & Co., for nail-machine; to I. Gregg, Philadelphia, for brick-machine ; to Harris & Co., Springfield, for lathes, &c., &c. ; and to Fairbanks & Co., New York, and St. Johnsbury, Vt., for scales and railway scales — silver medal and bronze medal. Remarks. — Apart from the standard character of the Fairbanks scales, and the attention which they attracted in the American annexe^ this award would have been well made, if only to mark apprewation of a firm who have raised the business of scale-manufacture from compara- tive nothing to one of the largest in the Union or elsewhere — at the same time that they have contributed so largely to that great desidera- tum for tlie wliole mercantile world : Reliable weights and measures. C. H. McCormick, Chicago, for reaping and mowing machines — gold medal. Walter A. Wood, Hoosic Falls, New York, for mowing and reaping machines — gold medal. J. G. Perry, Kingston, for Mowing-Machines — bronze medal. SEWIXG AND BUTTON-HOLE MACHINES. Howe Machine Company, New York, for sewing- machines — gold medal. To Elias Howe, Jr., as promoter of manufacture of sewing-machines — Cross of the Legion of Honor. Remarks. — This double-first honor to the Howe machine and its proprietor, not only tallied with the universal indorsement at the Exposition, for its perfection of work and action, but came with a peculiar appropriateness to the last days of Mr. Howe, who, since that award, has already laid aside the red ribbon and gone to his rest, after nearly a quarter of a century of later life devoted to the invention and perfection of the machine bearing his name, and thus leading the list of American sewing-machines, at home and abroad. Florence Sewing-Machine Company, New York, for family sewing-machines — silver medal. Remarks. — Another award eminently well deserved, all observation at the Exposition and elsewhere demonstrating that, as a reliable, effective family sewing-maehine, the Florence is destined to take con- tinually higher rank, and fill a place otherwise left vacant. AMERICA' S SHARE. 231 Weed Sewing-Machine Company, New York, for sew- ing-machines — silver medal. Empire Sewing-Machine Company, New York, for sew- ing-machines — honorable mention. A. B. Howe, New York, for sewing-machines — bronze medal. Wheeler & Wilson, New York, for button-hole machines — gold medal. A. J. House, New York (house of Wheeler & Wilson), as co-operator in button-hole machine invention — bronze medal. A. H. House, New York (house of Wheeler & Wilson), as do., do. Bemarks. — Very high appreciation of the "Wheeler & "Wilson button- hole machine (which is understood to owe much of its success to one of the working-proprietors, Mr. A. G. Seaman, formerly connected with the Superintendeucy of Public Printing, at "Washington) was shown by the jury in conferring upon both the Brothers House, the sole inventors, medals of honor as co-operators. The truth is, that if aristocratic Europe is "above buttons," it is not above buUon-hoks ; and that this little American invention, whicli does so well what most persons so much dislike to do by hand, and what so large a proportion do so badly, still retains its charm of novelty to the mechanicians of the Old "World, who have not yet found time to "appropriate" it in so-called "inventions" of their own, as they have unscrupulously done with every form and pattern of the American sewing-machine — with the most ludicrous of artistic effects, however. American Button-Hole Company, Philadelphia, for button-hole machines — silver medal. Union Button-Hole and Embroidery Company, Boston, for button-hole machines — bronze medal. Bartram & Fenton Company, Danbury, for button-hole macliines — bronze medal. Hinkley Knitting-Machine Company, Bath, Maine, for knitting-machines — bronze medal. Remarks. — A very ingenious little machine, with a single needle, great 232 PARIS ly '67. simplicity and rapidity, and a prospect that it will at no distant day drive tlie old grandmother from her needles, and revolutionize the whole system of "knitting sale-socks." MISCEIXANEOrS, John Stephenson, New York, for street-railway carriage (car) — honorable mention. Remarks. — There is a brief story attached to the Stephenson car, too. One of the handsomest things of its class ever built, even by this manu- facturer, who supphes America, Europe, Asia and the islands of the sea, — designed for the Calcutta Railway and stranded in the wreck of the Calcutta Bank, — it attracted wonderful attention in the American annexe, and reminded more people of the missing loves and delights of home than almost any thing else in the exhibition. It would have taken a gold medal, beyond a doubt, in recognition of its own perfection, and the claims of by far the best builder of street-cars and omnibuses on either continent — but for the little difficulty that half the people of Europe, from whom the juries came, know nothing of what a streetcar is, and the other half hate and fear the whole idea of laying rails in city streets. Wood Brothers, New York, for phaeton — silver medal. Hall & Sons, Boston, for carriages — silver medal. Remarks. — More scope for fault-finding. Two or three carriages, well- enough in their way, but such an apology for a " display " as seemed little less than a farce. We have a carriage-maker in America, whose splendid vehicles whirl almost as continuously through the parks of London, Paris, and Vienna, as through our own at home. The ques- tion is for Brewster of Broome Street (now just occupying his magnifi- cent new repository at Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street) — Why were not a cloud of those light, elegant and perfectly-appointed carriages, the very ideal of combined strength, taste, and finish, sent over to add to the national prestige, and show Europeans that we know how to ride as well as walk? Mr. Brewster, son and scion of the Brewster, and admit- tedly first of American carriage-builders, must do better next time, or explain the reason why he does not I Farrell