■ m QassJM33_ Book ./A ft fe i FRANCE. jo ©TT &&®TZ £0©2mkSS c ADVERTISEMENT. In the present edition of Lady Morgan's work, care has been taken, to translate all the words and phrases, so plainly and intelligibly, that persons igno- rant of the French language may be enabled to peruse with ease and satisfaction this interesting account of France. An account, more satisfactory than any other that has yet appeared, of eminent persons, and remarkable places — of the present state of manners, customs, society, amusements and literature of Paris — and of the feelings and sentiments of the French na- tion generally, on the subject of the great events that have so much changed the political aspect of that coun- try. Nor will the appendix of sir T. Charles Morgan be read with less interest for the solid information it affords on the topics embraced in it. The copyright embraces the translation only. In dividing the work into two parts (besides the ap- pendix) the plan of the London edition has been fol- lowed. Philadelphia, October 1st, 1817, FRANCE. Chaque jour de ma vie est une feuille mary. POLITICAL revolution, the inevitable result of undue pre- ponderance in some order of the state in which it occurs, pre- sents, in the moral subversion it occasions, an image of those fearful symptoms, by which nature in her great volcanic strug- gles rights herself, and vindicates her violated laws ; and the convulsions of disorganizing matter best typify the throes and efforts of social and political dissolutions. Fermentation works alike in both : destructive particles are forced to the surface : much of what is good is overwhelmed in the impetuosity of the torrent : much of wiiat is bad reigns paramount through its hour of necessary agency. The evil, however, which caused the explosion is at length removed ; and these tumultuous ac> B g PEASANTRY. tions, subsiding into quiescence, terminate by a necessary cau- sation in the re-establishment of harmony and order. A new form of things presents itself ; new arrangements arise out of the elementary wreck of exhausted systems ; and in political, as in natural science, new facts are inscribed on the tables of human experience ; new combinations extend the sphere of hu- man views ; and new lights beam upon the collected mass of liuman knowledge, to correct its theories and to fortify its con- clusions. When the burning floods and frightful explosions of Vesuvi- us poured ruin and desolation on every object within the sphere of its convulsed action, the elder Pliny was seen exposing him- self to its varied forms of danger in the cause of knowledge, and for the benefit of his species : his spirit soaring in sublimity a- bove the wreck of matter, as nature, with all her awful secrets, stood revealed before him. But to the greatest political explo- sion that time has ever witnessed, or history recorded ; to the revolution of France few philosophical Plinys have brought their cool and unbiassed scrutiny. The event which has shaken the greatest dynasties of the earth, torn the creed of the most pow- erful religion, subdued opinions coeval with record, and weak- ened ties twisted with the very instincts of nature, has rarely been viewed through any medium but that of passion, or discus- sed in any language but that of prejudice. It has, indeed, in its progress, been contemplated with well merited horror. It has dazzled the visionary, it has frightened the timid. The oppressor and the oppressed have alike turned its events to their purpose ; to exhibit it as a warning, or to seize upon it as an example. But while history with her impar- tial testimony exposes the causes of the French revolution, in the increasing abuses of the government, and in the consequent demoralization of the people, its effects on the nation, out of whose wrongs it arose, are only to be estimated in the interior of society, and in the detailed minutiae of every-day existence. It is by an intimate acquaintance with the changes impressed upon all the various conditions and classes of the population, that its good and evil can alone be appreciated ; and when prejudice disfigures, and policy misrepresents, philanthropy will exult- ingly point to domestic ameliorations, and philosophy triumph in the justification of her theories. « Liberty and property," says Voltaire, " is the cry of the English ; it is the cry of nature :" and he adds, in his own pe- culiar style, " II vaut mieux que St. George et mon droit; St. Ve- ins, et mont joie" — [Saint George and my right, is better than Saint Denis and my pleasure.] To the oppressed and misera- t PEASANTRY. % Me peasant of France all natural expression was denied. "With every feeling of humanity violated, with every social institute perverted, they had learned by experience that complaint was unavailing, and resistance ruin.* An event, however, occur- red, which, forwarded by their wrongs, was destined to work their redemption ; and the total overthrow of that frightful sys- tem of feudality, which had so long crushed them into slavery, was among the first and best works of the revolution. To form a just idea of the magnitude and proportions of the giant struc- ture, as it stood, frowning over the waste it had occasioned, the production of a few scattered fragments will suffice ; nor is any minute detail of its complicated deformities necessary to excuse or to justify the reaction, which followed evils so harshly inflio ted, and so patiently sustained. The corvee, [day's work exacted by the landlord from the tenant] — (which, in giving France such noble roads, robbed the peasant of his sole possessions, his time and his labour) tore him not unfrequently from his family and home to labour in a distant province ; nor were the direct evils belonging to this system the only means of oppression to its victims. The cor» vec, in the hands of petty tyranny, became a convenient instru- ment to hold out as a threat, or to inflict as a punishment 5 and occasionally it was even applied to remove an uncomplying hus- band or vigilant father from the protection of his family, and the; vindication of his honor. The droit de chasse, [game law] while it ravaged the fields, destroying the full half of their produce, estimated the life of ^ hare above the liberty of a man ; and where want afforded such irresistible impulses to violate its enactments, bound its vic- tims, for a conventional offence, to the oar of a galley.f The droit coutumier, or code of customary law, varied in every province; and by its uncertainty and disagreement with it- self, multiplied the evils of litigation to the poor, and frequent^ ly extinguished even the hope of justice to the wronged. * See LesDictionnaires des Fiefs de M. de Treminville, et de Prenaudon. The resistance made in La Bretagne, under the reign of Louis XIV. to the tyranny and insupportable exactions of the government, was punished with a severity that approached to extermination ! The city of Rennes was nearly de* populated ; and the troops were every where let loose, to commit every spe- cies of violence on the defenceless inhabitants. f " When I had a house at Epinay, sur Seine," said an English friend of mine, who resided in France before the Revolution, " I observed every day a large water cart brought from the river to the house of the Marechal D'Aubterre, who resided near me, and drawn by six men in harness. On enquiry, I found that these yoke mates had killed some of the marshal's game, and that he had thus commuted their sentence, instead of removing them from their femjUes to the gullies at Marseilles." g PEASANTRY. Of the gabelle, [tax on salt] so oppressive in its exactions as to become a spectre to the imaginations of the ignorant and the poor, it is impossible to give an adequate representation. — Whatever was most tyrannical in government, and most absurd in morals, was to be found in the enactments calculated to raise the revenue, and ensure the collection of this detestable tax. — . Every morsel of meat the peasant might possesss was previ- ously estimated, and his consumption of salt, the excised com- modity, regulated by computation. The smallest infringement of the dreadful code was unpityingly punished by confinement, (temporary, or for life) on board the gallies.* Every thing, therefore, that appeared amongst the simple peasantry, either novel or mysterious, goading or insupportable, was placed in their apprehension to the account of the gabelle.j The tithe, that vexatious tax upon the most laborious class of society, for the support and luxury of the most indolent, was rendered more burthensome, from the multitude of other im- posts which fell upon the cultivator. The taille, [land-tax] and indeed the whole direct taxation of the kingdom, fell exclusively upon the people, the estates and persons of the privileged classes being wholly exempt from imposition. The personal slavery of a large portion of the population, especially in Franche Comte, of which the clergy held a considerable portion in main morte, [mortmain] em- braced in itself all that was most odious in the legal, sanctioned outrages upon human reason and human feeling, all the multi- plicity of oppression which filled up the code of feodal rights. The peasantry, thus abandoned to contempt and to neglect, and cultivating a plenteous soil for others, which they could never Lope to reap for themselves, submitted from generation to ge- neration with a debasing acquiescence to their iron destiny $ * Des enfans de trieze ans, condamnes aux galeres, pour avoir tte trouves avec leurs peres, convaincus de contrabande. — Voila le code dn fisc ; voila l'indulgence pour le fisc ; on lui a vendu le sang innocent ! et on se tait ! — I)u- paty Lettres sur V Italie. [Children of thirteen, condemned to the galleys, for being- found with their fathers when detected in smuggling. — This is the fiscal code ; and this is the indulgence allowed to the fiscal code ; innocent blood is sold! and nothing is Said about it ! — Dupaty's Letters on Italy.] j- " Un cure avoit recu, devant ses paroissiens, une peiulule. Us se mirent tous a crier," que e'etoit la gabelle, et qu'ils le voyoient fort bien. " Le cure habile leur dit, et sur le meme ton, point du tout, mes enfans, ce n'est pas la gabelle, e'est lejubile. En memo terns les voila tous a genoux. Que dites- vous dubon esprit de ces gens la ?" — Lettres de Sevignt, vol. iii. [" A rector had received a clock, in presence of his parishioners. They all exclaimed that it was the salt-tax, they knew it well." The adroit rector humouring their ignorance, told them "not at all, my children, it is not the salt-tax, it is the jubilee " " In a moment they were all down on their knees. What do you think of the intellect of these people V'—Sevigu&s Letters.] PEASANTRY. 5 and though they lightened the burthen of a miserable existence by constitutional gaiety ; though they sung in chains and danced in rags ; yet how sensibly they suffered, was marked* in their meagre features and attenuated forms ; how keenly they felt, was evinced in the reaction of their feelings, when circumstances placed the sword of retribution in their hands, and vengeance exceeded her customary horrors, in the ferocious deeds of the Carmagnoles and the Marseillois. It has always been observed by the travellers who visited France before the revolution, and particularly by the English, and by agricultural travellers, that the peasantry of that coun- try were a singularly laborious and pains-taking race, enduring much, and suffering patiently. — Mr. Young gives it as his opinion, that "they would have improved the country, if they had formed any part in a system, the principles of which tended towards national prosperity.'* But no such system appeared, until the occurrence of that great bouleversement 9 [overthrow] out of whose principles of destruction and regeneration the present improved condition of the peasant population of France arose. England, in the sixteenth century, set a great example to the rest of Europe, when she seized upon the overgrown pos- sessions of the church, and converted the unhallowed fruits of * Theii numerous little insurrections in the provinces, and the horrible out- rages which their despair urged them to commit, even against nature, is a suf- ficient proof of their sensibility to their wrongs. " Un pauvre homme passementier dans le fauxbourg St. Marceau, e"toit taxe a dix ecus pourun impot sur les maitrises. II ne les avoit pas ; on le presse et represse, il demand du tems, on le lui refuse — on prend son pauvre lit, et sa pauvre ecuelle — quand il se vit en cet etat, la rage s'empare de son coeur ; il coupe la gorge a trois de ses enfans, qui etoient dans sa chambre — sa femme sauve le quatrieme, ets'enfuit; le pauvre homme est au Chatelet, il sera pendu dans un jour. Il dit que tout son deplaisir, e'est de n' avoir pas tue sa femme, et l'enfant qu'elle a sauve." [" A poor man? a lacemaker in the fauxbourg St. Marceau, was taxed ten crowns, an impost levied on each indi- vidual of the company of lacemakers. He had not the money ; payment was urged and urged again ; he begged for time ; it was refused him. They took his bed and even his porringer — when he found himself reduced to this deplo- rable condition, despair made him frantic — he cut the throats of three of his children, who were in the room with him — his wife saved the fourth, and ran out of the house ; the poor man is in the Chatelet, and will be hanged tomorrow. He says that all his regret is, not having killed his wife, and his infant."] The conclusion of this description is curious, and quite in character both with the times and the writer. — " On devoit partir aujourd'hui pour Fontainbleau, ou les plozsirs devoient devenir ties peines, par leur muliiplicitt ?'." — Lettres de Sevigne, vol. iii. [" To day we set out for Fontainbleau, where pleasures, become pains from their multiplicity." — Sevigne's Letters."] This dreadful system of taxation, which maddened the lower classes into "mirder, only went to supply the expenses of a voluptuous prince, and to mul- tiply the pleasures et hk court, tiU they became t( pai7is* i PEASANTRY. fraud and impiety to the benefit of the state. Men, devoted by their institutions and orders to poverty and humility, engrossed the riches of the country, and preserved a twofold influence, spiritual and temporal, subversive of the interests of society. But, the original abuse destroyed, the undue influence declined, superstition lost ground, and wealth circulated with a more equal and salutary distribution.* What the despotism of Henry VIII. effected in England, the democratic principles of the re- volution accomplished in France ;} and the sale of the national domains was one of the strongest measures of this extraordi- nary event, producing incalculable benefit to the lower and ag- ricultural classes, while the mode in which this measure was executed was eminently constituted to attach the peasantry to the revolutionary cause, and to induce them to give their aid and sanction to a political change, which, in emancipating them from slavery, added property to freedom, and converted five hundred thousand labouring serfs into independent proprietors. In the public sale of the national domains, the government be- came the agent of the peasantry : a certain portion of land, or- dinarily contiguous to his dwelling, was given to each peasant who presented himself as a purchaser ; time was granted him to pay the purchase-money, and a small sum was advanced, to enable the new proprietor to commence the cultivation of his little farm. « Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock/' says a celebrated agriculturalist, " and he will convert it into- * Of the mode of assigning 1 lands to the church in France, many curious in- stances were discovered during the revolution, from the ancient archives of the cathedrals. In 1470, Louis XI. assigned over the whole Comte de Bou- logne to the Virgin Mary, and promised to do her homage for it, in the per- son of the Abbe de Notre Dame de Boulogne: but, says a national writer, " D'abord cet hommage religieux se rendit sur Pautel, et s'ofYrit directement au saint. Bientot l'eveque, l'abbe, le titulaire du benefice se plaga entre Pautel et le pieux vassal, et regut l'hommage, aunom du saint. Insensible- meut on oublia le saint, et I'ecclesiastique s'attribua tout l'honneur, en qualite de beneficier." [" First this religious hommage was paid to the altar, and offered directly to the Virgin. Very soon the bishop, the abbot, or the titulary of the benefice, placed himself between the altar and the pious vassal, ami received the homage in the name of the Virgin. Insensibly the Virgin was forgotten, and the ecclesiastic took all the honour to himself, in character of beneficier." f The inhabitants of Condon, in the department du Gers, gave an eight]., instead of a tenth, in consequence of the clergy of the diocese having pro- raised to liberate annually from purgatory two hundred and fifty souls of their friends and relations, and to conduct them to Paradise straight /.lonsieur Falconet, in his work on the necessity of restoring' all the church lands to the clergy, ascribes all the horrors of the revolution to the violation of their sacred property. He strongly recommends the measure of turning -adrift all the present proprietors, and of restoring* the domains of the rich monasteries, which were bequeathed to heaven by many a pious penitent, "comb- ine fondation pour le remede de son ame." [" As an endowment for the re- lief of his soul."] He mentions Miraibeav. incidentally as nti Mzmbieun This pamphlet has many admirers among 1 the royalist pa* PEASANTRY. y a garden ; give him a few years' lease of a garden, and lie will turn it into a desert." The truth of this position was strongly illustrated in the present proprietors of France; and notwith- standing the evil influence which the spirit of foreign conquest in their late ruler must have had upon the resources and industry of the people, yet when the allies first approached the frontiers of the French territory, they invaded a country whose peasantry were the hest conditioned, and most prosperous of any nation in Europe. In visiting the extensive farm of a per- son of rank and fortune, in the Isle of France, and remarking to him the apparent opulence of his tenantry, and the general prosperity of the country, he made the following observations, which spoke equally in favour of the moral and physical con- dition of the people : « It is impossible to foresee what may be the consequences of the enormous depredations committed by the foreign troops, when added to the losses already sustained by the military systems of Napoleon. The contributions already levied are beyond the resources of the nation ; but with respect to our peasantry, it is quite certain, that, besides the improve- ment of their general condition by the revolution, they have also made a provision of energy and good sense, which, strengthens and enlightens them to meet every attack of ad- versity, and which they did not possess thirty years back." It is, however, neither possible nor true, that, in this general prosperity, all are opulent in a class where so much must de- pend on individual exertion and peculiarity of circumstances, on the nature of the soil, or the character of a province. It would be rather a public evil than a general good, if an order did not exist which had only its daily industry and good-will to depend on : but even the least favoured among the labouring class feel some reflection from the prosperity that surrounds them. No longer " un peuple serf, corveable et tctillahle"* [« an enslaved people, corveable and taillable," — See corvee and taille,] all are alike free to offer their labour for adequate remu- neration ; and all now feel that this newly-possessed power of self-disposal is property, in itself. * The titles of feudality, as M. de Mably observes, are sufficient proofs of "l'asservissement dans lequel le despotisme des seigneurs tenoit le peuple, et qui les rendoit les maitres absolus de sa fortune et de ses forces," [" the servitude in which the despotism of the lords of the manor held the peasants, and which rendered them absolute masters of their powers and their fate."] Among these seignioral titles were the following : " Seigneur haut et puissant, seigneur redoute, et tres redoute," ["Seigneur high and powerful, seigneur awful and most awful/'] The immense surface of France must naturally pro- duce great variety in the characters and conditions of the people. In Bri- tanny they are much less civilized, and in some districts of the west and north much less opulent, than in the other parts of the kingdom. $ PEASANTRY. The peasantry of France may perhaps bo divided into the distinct classes of proprietor, farmer tenant (fermier 9 J and labourer. A French writer has termed the labouring class of a free state « la pepiniere des soldats" [« the nursery of sol- diers."] It was on this class that the law of military con- scription fell with most frequency, though not with most weight ; for the labouring peasant made but little sacrifice, when he flung away the spade for the musket, and left the track of his plough for the march of victory. From the ranks, however, so often supplied by this class of men, arose many of those brave commanders, who planted the eagle-standard of France in almost every country in Europe ; for it was a maxim with the chief who reigned in military supremacy over all, That he who doth i'th* wars More than his captain can, becomes His captain's captain. Shaxspeuie. INlichael Ney, a young hussar, distinguished himself, while yet in the ranks, by unparalleled intrepidity; and, gallantly fighting his way through every subaltern degree of his profes- sion, was presented by his colonel-general with a company, on the sole recommendation of his own merits. The simple hus- sar became in time a marshal of France: his sovereign raised him to the highest rank in the state, by the titles of Duke D'Elchingen and Prince of Moskowa ; and his country con- ferred on him that title, « greater than all," when, in her gra- titude for his services, she named him " le brave des braves" ["the bravest of the brave."] The disbanding of -the veteran troops of France has obliged most of its subaltern members to return to the obscure labours of their youth; and, foregoing "The grappling vigour and rough frown of war," with minds long trained to other objects, and habits long tem- pered to other views, the heroes of Marengo and of Austerlitz again appear following the plough in their native villages, and are of necessity become « hewers of wood and drawers of water." I remember to have met one of these military labourers, these veteran " braves," who had been driven with an army almost frantic behind the Loire, engaged in the inglorious labours of the spade, and working on the estate of a soldier, who had him- self long since turned his « sword into a ploughshare," after having wielded it oidy in the service of virtue and of freedom." I was one morning, in the summer of 1816, walking under PEASANTRY. g the venerable towers of Chateau la Grange, and leaning on the arm of its illustrious master, general the marquis de la Fayette, (and who would not boast of being supported by that arm, which raised the standard of independence in America, and placed her banner above the dungeons of France ?) The figure of a la- bourer, who was working on the moat which nearly surround- ed the chateau, struck me as being both distinguished and sin- gular. He was a tall athletic man, something advanced in life. As we approached, he touched the little embroidered cap, which did not conceal his grey locks, and drawing up into an erect posture, gave the military salute, which M. dela Fayette. most punctiliously returned. As the labourer resumed his spade, I asked the general, in English, whether this was not one of the disbanded soldiers of the Loire. « I should suppose," he repli- ed, "a distinguished one; for I find he is a member of the le- gion of honour, and you may perceive the ensign of his order glittering through the rents in his jacket." The man raised his eyes to us, as we now stood beside him ; and perceiving that the general was looking at his work, he asked with anxie- ty " Vous e?i etes content, mon general, j'espere?" ["General, I hope you are satisfied with it ?"] « Mais oui, mon ami, parfai- tement, cela va Men." [«* Yes, my friend, perfectly, 'tis very well done"] replied the general. « Bon, bon," [»< good, good,"] return- ed the soldier, and resumed his labours with all the vigour of an able pioneer. « That brave fellow," said M. de la Fayette, as we pursued our walks, « has passed twenty years in the ser- vice of his country. He is covered with scars. He had alrea- dy obtained the subaltern distinctions of his profession, and in another year was to have been appointed a commissioned, offi- cer; en attendant, [in the mean time] he received the cross of the legion of honour, and thought himself amply recompensed for all his services. It was thus by a few laurel crowns, that the Romans became masters of the world. This disbanded veteran returned, a few weeks back, to his native village, which is at this moment visible through the trees of that dark wood : he offered his services to my concierge, [keeper] who accepted them. He labou is through the week in his tattered fustian jack- et, and gratifies all that is left of his military pride, by exposing his badge of honour to the admiration of the rustic crowd, with which he mingles at mass on Sundays." ************ But the ranks of the labouring class are not alone filled by the disbanded privates of the army ; for many (and there is a romantic sadness in the idea), many whose brows have recent- ly been shaded by the "panache blanc" [« white plume"] of mili- tary distinctions, whose voice was law, and whose breath was 10 PEASANTRY. command (now expelled to make way for " daintier captains,") are driven by necessity to earn their daily bread by daily la- bour. One of my gallant countrymen, attached to the English army now in France, was stationed with his company in a village at some distance from the bead-quarters : he was returning with his dogs, after a sporting ramble in the neighbourhood, when lie overtook a team, whose driver displayed a costume at once military and civil — his waggoner's frock contrasting with a large cocked hat. As they pursued the same route, the English officer endeavoured to enter into conversation ; but was answered with that brusquerie, [rudeness] which intimates impatience of obtrusion. A few useless questions on the state of the game in that country had nearly finished an intercourse so churlishly supported, when the waggoner, casting his eyes on the undress uniform of the Englishman, asked, in his turn, some questions as to the state of the English army, in terms sufficiently techni- cal to betray his experience on the subject to which he had so abruptly adverted. The conversation became interesting : it turned on the war in Spain. The Englishman alluded to the « hot work" of a particular day. « Were you in that engage- ment V 9 demanded the waggoner eagerly. " I was wounded in it," said the Englishman. H And I," said the Frenchman, « was wounded in it also." « I was attached to such a division." 4S I commanded the battalion opposed to that division." « I am addressing an officer of the French army then ?" said Captain ***, moving his hat. " I had once that honour," answered the Frenchman, return- ing the bow ; then after a moment given to dejected thought- fulness, he rallied from his abstraction, wished his companion a good morning, and springing on the seat of his waggon, cri- ed, « Vif, vjjy* [« quick, quick, 1 '] to his horses and drove ra- pidly on. When captain *** reached his village inn, he per- ceived his military acquaintance leading out his horse to water. He enquired of the uubergiste, [landlord.] who he was : « M pour celui-UiS 9 replied the innkeeper, *• e'est un dc vos licencies, e'est le capitaiue dc li , un brave homme! cent grand dom- mage .' mats voild comme xoni les choses dans notre panrrc France. Cependant, diable! que voulez-rous ?"# [♦« Ah! as to him, lie is * Vne quantity prodigieuse d'efficiera sans moyenssont renvoyea do service, et mis a la demi-aplde; tan lis qu'on forme des corps entiers deajeum a peine echappes du college. Cea jeunea gens, commandes p;\r des vieflarda how d'etat dc supporter lea fatigues militaircs, sont instilula poor remplaeer Cctte terrible garde imperiale, qui toujours dans la bataille decula la vi< Mxaincnrabiilc dugouvtrneinaU des Bourbons. PEASANTRY. £g one of our disbanded officers ; it is captain B— — , a brave man ! 'tis a great pity ! — but this is the way things are going on in our poor France. However, what would you have ?"] The agricultural surface of France is divided into what is called, in the language of the country, " le pays de grande, etde petite culture.'' 9 In the former, the size of the farms has been little affected by the revolution : the only difference that has occurred is, that several farms belonging to one landlord may have been purchased by the farmers who formerly cultivated them, or by a small proprietor, whose exertions are confined to the ground he has bought. The possession of small plots of ground by the day-labourers has .become very frequent ; and it is sometimes usual in these countries to let them to the great fanners who are desirous of having them, to complete the quan- tity of land which the size of their establishment demands. The pays de petite culture is composed of small farms, for the cultivation of which the landlord finds the tenant in horses and ploughs, and divides with him the profits. Upon the large farms the condition of the tenant is very much like that of our own English farmers; and in the pays de petite culture there exists a race, long disappeared from England, of poor but in- dependent yeomen, who rear their families in a degree of com- fort as perfect, as it is remote from luxury. The dwelling of a French farmer presents the same scene of rural bustle, activi- ty, and industry, as is usually found in the English farm-house. The women always appear full of occupation and energy, and share in common with their husbands, fathers, and brothers* the toil and anxiety of their condition.* While we were on a visit in the canton of La Beauce, at the chateau D'Orsonville, the seat of the marquis and marquise de Colbert Chabanais (and it is a delightful link in the chain of association, which leads me back to days so happily passed,} we accompanied la belle chatelaine, the lady of the castle, on a visit to a rural bride, the wife of one of their farmer-tenants. [An immense number of officers without means of support are dismissed from the service and put on half-pay; v^hile new corps are formed, entirely of young people who have scarcely left college. These youths, commanded by old men who are no longer capable of supporting the fatigue of military duty, are instituted in place of that tremendous imperial guard, which in the day of battle always decided the victory. Cursory examination of tlui government of the Bourbons.] * " C'est un avantage multiplie partout, depuis la revolution," said a French farmer to us, speaking of the improved state of the labourers; " que les do- mestiques des fermes et les journaliers pcsseder.t une maison et quelques morceaux de terre, en addition aux gages." [" It is an advantage multiplied every where, since the revolution, that the servants of the farms and the day-labourers possess a house and a piece ©f ground, in addition to their wages."] j£ PEASAlKfTRY, We found her already deeply engaged in all the hustle of house- wifery, standing in the midst of a pile of brown loaves, which she was preparing for the labourers. « Vous voila deja occupee du menage, ma bonne Madelaine, 9 ' [" You are already occupied with the houshold affairs, my good Madelaine,"] said marquise de Colbert, as we entered. « Eh I mais, mon Dien, oui 9 Madame, pourquoi pas ?" [" Oh ! yes, madam — why not?") replied Madelaine, shaking the flour from what Madame de C called « sonlnxe dejupe" — [«* her luxury of petticoat,"] the superfluous quantity of her well-plaited cloth petticoat well meriting the epithet. Madelaine then, with evident pride in her newly acquired opulence, did the honours of her house, by requesting us to walk into the grande chambre, or best parlour, and to leave « la maison, 99 * as she called the kitchen, or place of general reception ; where an immense marrnite, bubbling over the wood fire, sent forth the fume of the savoury ragout preparing for the family supper. La grande chambre exhibited one of those excessively high and excellent beds, which it is the ambition of every French peasant to possess ; and its old brocaded hangings seemed to boast a nobler origin, than the fresh and snowy counterpane which accompanied them. An armoire, [clothes-press] antece- dent (by its structure) to the days of Boule, held the bridal wardrobe, or rustic trousseau,] Madelaine drew our attention also to the high chimney-piece, where ticked a handsome pen- dule, in order to point out to us her taste and her piety, exhibit- ed in a piece of ornamental wax-work, representing two young lovers burning in red worsted flames, fond and devoted as the death-enamoured martyrs of M. Chateaubriand; « Ah, qu'ellc est gentile ! n'est-ce pas, Mesdames ? — c'est vraiement uiie coeffurc charmante/ 99 [" All ! how pretty she is: is not she ladies: — her head is really charming!"] There was in this dwelling of the farmer:): every appearance of competency and comfort; and though it wanted those finishing touches of neatness to be fouYid in an English farm-house, there was no absence of ac- commodation. Good beds, stout furniture, well-sashed win- dows, and spacious hearths, secured to its inhabitants all the prime necessaries of an habitual dwelling, which was never to be exchanged for the chilling misery of a parish poor-house ; * It is customary, in many parts of England, to call this part of a farmer's cottage " the house." -j- " Trousseau," a portion of house-linen and clothes, which brides of all ranks in France bring- as a dowry. + 1 instance this farm-honsc in La Beaucc, as a fair sample of the many farm- houses we visited in France, in Normandy I saw many superior. In Ficcardy nnd Artois they were in general inferior. PEASANTRY. ±% except, indeed, a new order of things should provide such am asylum against that indigence, which the increased taxation, and contributions levied on the savings of industry, for the maintenance of foreign troops, may draw down upon the pros- perous peasantry of the land at some future day. In the course of a morning's walk in the neighbourhood of the chateau D'Orsonville, a sudden shower of rain obliged u» to take shelter in the cottage of a. fermier. We found two young women busied in folding up linen of an excellent quality and colour ; and when we had reckoned twelve pair of sheets, we could not help observing they were rich in house linen. « Mais ee n'est rien, cela" [« But this is. nothing,'*] replied one of the girls, and took some pains to convince us that what we saw would go but a very short way in providing beds for the la- bourers in harvest time. Mentioning this circumstance to Monsieur de C at dinner that day, he assured me that it was not unusual for a fermier to have one hundred and fifty pair of sheets for the use of his family ; for that in general, the French farmers were sufficiently opulent to indulge in a luxury, indispensable in France among all classes, good linen and good beds. Among his own tenantry, he added, there were some who were supposed to be worth two or three thousand pounds, English money ; and that a few days before, one of his fermiers had given a portion of a thousand Napoleons with his daughter in marriage. Such is the condition of these small proprietors of lands, of which their fathers were considered the live stock, when « nulle tare, sans seigneur" [" no land without a lord,"] was the maxim of the times. *********** There is something exquisitely gracious in the contempla- tion of that state of tilings, that true golden age of a country, M where every rood of ground maintains its man," and « les petits propriites," [« the little freeholds"] of France enjoyed by the most numerous class of the peasantry, whether purchas- ed by the savings of the fermier or vigneroiu [farmer or vine- dresser,] or whether obtained in the early part of the Revolu- tion from the sale of the national domains, present a state of rural independence, extremely favourable to the views, and highly gratifying to the feelings of philanthropy. We were travelling to the chateau of one of our hospitahle French friends, v. hen an accident, which happened to our car- riage, obliged us to stop for an hour in the little village, which stands at the entrance of the valley Dorsai. We resolved to turn our misadventure to ac6ount, by visiting the chateau of |4 PEASANTRY. the celebrated Madame Cottin, which, we understood, was but at a walking distance. She, indeed, was no more ! But the dwelling which has once been consecrated by the residence of Genius (be it palace, or hovel,) is a shrine to which the mind and imagination naturally turn with pilgrim devotion; and the valley of Dorsai, amidst whose shades the character of Malek Adel was created, will long preserve an interest, independent of its own loveliness and romantic beauty. Having ordered "une petite collation" [« a little collation"] (as the aubergiste [landlord] called a fillet of veal roasting at the fire for the breakfast of accidental travellers,) we walked down towards the valley. Our steps were soon arrested by the appearance of a very handsome chateau, which hung over a pretty river, and which, as a large placard informed us, was « en vente" [« for sale."] We asked a young peasant (who was eating his goule [luncheon] of raw artichokes and bread and butter at the gates) who had been its late owner. He an- swered, 8 Le Marechal Arrighi, the cousin of the Emperor, now an exile " and the chateau and grounds were to be sold immediately. He could give us no further information, and we proceeded on our ramble. The sultriness of the weather had produced an insupportable thirst, which trees bowed down with fruit on every side tempted us to allay : but as this is a depredation rarely committed in France, and as property of this description is held sacred, in proportion as it lies exposed,. we thought it wisest to offer ourselves as purchasers of the « golden produce" of a verger, [orchard,] which nearly sur- rounded a very neat cottage by the path-way side we had ac- cidentally pursued. To the threshold of a French cottage there is no barrier : it is entered not, indeed, without ceremony, for there are cer- tain forms of courtesy never dispensed with in France by any rank ; but it is entered by the stranger, as by the "neighbour, without hesitation, in the certainty of a civil, if not of a cor- dial reception. We found the interior of the cottage infinitely superior to its external appearance : a clean and lofty bed occupied a little alcove in the outside room ; some articles of old china orna- mented one shelf, and a few books another; while the "pot an feu" [" cooking-pot' 1 ] was bubbling over a clear fire under the special superintendence of an aged dame, who received us very good humoredly. To our question, whether we could get any fruit to purchase, she replied <« mais tres volontiers — taiez;'* [« yes, willingly — come' 1 ] — and she hobbled to a little door which opened into a very small farm yard, where a cow, a mule, and a pig, were lying amicably together under a sort of PEASANTRY. |g shed, on which some flax lay drying in the sun—" tent% Mon- sieur, et Madame !" [*•' see, Monsieur, and Madame !"] — « You will have the goodness to cross that little basse cour, [yard,] you will then find yourselves in the verger, [orchard,] where my son-in-law and pay daughter will have the honour to receive your commands : they are both at work there." We found th* daughter (a middle-aged woman) at her distaff, under a tret laden with green-gages, of which she gave us the plunder for the sum of six sous (three pence,) exhorting us to fill our hand- kerchiefs, with repeated « prenez-en done, ne vous genex> pas?* [«< take more, do not stint yourselves T'] We observed that the little domain of which she was mistress was composed of a potager, [kitchen garden] a vineyard, and a quantity of fruit trees and flowers. It was a delicious spot, and placed in a most delicious situation. We asked her, by what tenure her husband held it. She replied with vivacity, " mais e'est a nous ; e'est un petit propnete ; tene%, void, noire man — il tous racontera iGiit cp, 9 " [•< it is ours : it is our own little proper- ty ; see, here is our husband — he will tell you all about it."'] « Notre Mari" ["our husband"] was a tall robust well-looking man. He approached us with a low bow, and a spade over his shoulder. To our questions, repeated by his wife, he replied with the intelligence and frankness peculiar to the lower clas- ses of France. This little estate of a few " arpens de ierre" [« acres of ground"] had been obtained by his father, on the sale of the na- tional domains.^ He had himself served in all the wars of the republic, and under the Emperor ; but on the death of his fa- ther he had left the army, and took possession of his little pat- rimony, for he had no brothers or sisters to divid? it with, ac- cording to the new law of succession.! He said their chief means of subsistence arose from the cultivation of their vines, which enabled them to have « nn morceau de cochonnaille dans le pot, et nn pen de vin dans le petit caveau ;" [« a bit of bacon itt the pot, and a little wine in the cellar] but he added, it requir- ed great industry to render their vines productive, during a six months' constant cultivation ; and that he had little hopes of deriving much profit from this year, on account of the unparal- * Before the revolution, the peasant, who was not oppressed by feudal ten- ures, and whoever could save by his earnings from the rapacity of taxation a little sum, raised himself tc the dignity of a small proprietor. The pride winch this singular and rare independence awakened was so great, that the dying fa- ther sometimes divided the proprietorship of a single apple-tree among hi? sons. — On this subject, see You?ig , s Travels into France. f There is no primogeniture in France : all property is now equally divi- ded among the children. 46 PEASANTRY. leled humidity of the season. " But what was a bad season," he added, " to the depredation committed by foreign troops ?— Sacre" and he ground his teeth, " les coquins de Prussiens ;" [" those scoundrels the Prussians"] they drank up all the wine wherever they found it. We asked him whether, in some re- spects, the conduct of the Prussians was not a war of reprisals. " Comment done?" ["What.?"] lie replied, almost jumping with a sudden fit of passion, whichMris wife endeavored to reprove with «mais quelle vivacite, mon ami /" [« but what vivacity, my friend !"] « Comment done ! une guerre de represailles ?" [« What ! a war of reprisals ?"] The Prussians were the first aggressors : — * opinion commune /" [<» As to La Mousse, he makes catechisms, festivals and sab- baths; the other day he was interrogating the little children, and after several questions, they confounded the whole togethei ; so that when he asked them, « who was the Virgin," they all * "Dieu m'a fait la grace, madame, (says the feeble Racine to Mad. de Main- tenon,) en quelle compagnie que je me sois trouvc, dc ne jamais rougir de l'- evangile, ni du roi," [" God has given me grace, madam, in whatever company I find myself, never to blush for the gospel, nor for the king."] And yet this divinity died, alike hated and despised, left almost alone for three days on his death-bed, abandoned by his wife and his confessor. — His death was celebra- ted by rejoicings, which reached from the capital to the place of sepulture; and the remains of Louis the Great were carried through bye-way* to their long home, to avoid the indignation of a people, from whom he had only ex- torted blood and tears, and who, long opposing itself to the adulation of a cor- rupt court, had already changed the epithet of "le grand," ["the great"] into that of " maitvais roi," [" bad king "] Racme, who associates the king and the gospel so intimately, in his familiar letters, in his work on the Porte Royal, talks of the great designs of God oh la mrre Agnes. Such was the intellectual calibre of the author of Phcdra. PEASANTRY. 37 answered one after another, "the creator of heaven and earth." He was not startled by the children ; but finding that the men and women, even the old men, said the same, he was convinced at last, and gave way to the common opinion."] If, therefore, in the latter days of Louis XIV . when religion under the king and Madame de Maintenon had become & fashion among all classes, cotemporary writers assert that the peasantry in the provinces, old and young, believed God the Creator, and the Virgiii Mary, to be one and the same person, it may be presumed that the cause of faith was not much bettered, under the reigns of the infidel* regent, and his profligate ward.. It may also be inferred that the Cardinals du Bois, la Faris, de Tencins, and de Fleiiris, those Mascarilles of church and state, who governed botli by such tricks and subtleties, as were worthy only of the valets and buffos of the vicious Italian drama,f did not, by their example and conduct, enlighten the doctrine or improve the lives of the subaltern clergy, over whom they ruled. It is the fashion to declaim, however, against the decline of religion in France, in the present day, and comparing it to its former state under the old regime, to lament it has so little influence over the peasantry, and lower orders. But what was the religion, whose "decline" is thus lamented? >Yhat was its influence on a people, buried in the grossest superstition and darkest ignorance ? While it permitted its ministers to mingle in the intrigues, and foment the disunions of all the courts in Europe, and to countenance the vices of the most licentious of its courts: — while it induced the king of France to compromise matters with his conscience, by sending away his mistresses in Lent, and by taking them back at Easter:): ! ! ! and enabled him to quiet his death-bed fears, by laying his enormities on the shoulders of his confessor^; lending its sanction to any vice * The devout Mad. de Parabtre endeavoured to court the regent's favour, hj affecting- infidelity. " Tu a beau /aire" ["It is all in vain"] said the regent, smiling-, "tu seras sauvee," ["you will be saved."] ■f See the Memoires Secrets cf the reign of Louis XV. \ Between the exhortations of her confessor, and those of Mad. de Mainte- non, Mad. de Montespan was induced to quit the king in the semaine sainte, [holy week.] Bossuet also preached to the king the necessity of giving up his mistress, but the " semaine sainte" being over, Bossuet and Mad. de Main- tenon, who had other views for the royal penitent, beheld with mortification the return of the mistress to Versailles, "plus triomphante et plus eclatante de beaute, qxCon ne Vavoit jamais viie," ["more triumphant and more sparkling* with beauty, than ever."] It was, however, the queen who prevailed upon the fair penitent to return to Versailles, and it was the minister of state Louvois, ' who says Mad. de Maintenon, " a menage une tete-a-tete" [" had managed a tete-a-tete."] What a combination, and what a picture ! § The ferocious confessor of Louis XIV. the Jesuit Le Teliier, the persecu- tor of all that was good and illustrious in that day, and who united in his views and intrigues the Pope and the King of France., stood beside the bed of the 2S PEASANTRY. rich enough to purchase its indulgences*, and forwarding any views that promised to repay the compliance of its ministers, was its influence to he commended, and its corruptions passed over. When the events of the revolution took their re-action upon all the errors of the state, which they overturned, it was natu- ral for the disciples of ignorance and superstition to deny prin- ciples, when they lost sight of forms ; and it belonged to the immediate descendants of those, who declared God and the Vifgpi to be one and the same person, to pronounce in their im- pious folly, that there was no God, to-day, and to vote him int$ existence, to-morrow. For impiety thus daring and extrava- gant, was the natural re-action of superstition thus dark and ludicrous. Amidst all the absurdities, however, which during the revo- lution attended the temporary abolition of Catholicism, it is most certain that it then received a shock, which in France can never, and will never be repaired. Among the peasant class, this shock has been more or less resisted, according to the force on which it had to act. In the west it was remotely felt. In la Vendee, where the three thousand nuns and priests, in their pontificals, had been seen in the rear of the royal army, raising the crucifix with the bayonet, and lighting the torch of civil contention, at the lamp of faith, Catholicism still finds her altars unimpaired. In many parts of the south a simple, and primitive people, who have always substituted habits for prin- ciples, .and presented a rich soil to fanaticism in the ardour of temperament, still cling to the religion, and superstition of dying Icing 1 , who said to him, " Jevous rends responsable devant Dieu, man pere, de toutes les violences que vovs m'avez ordonnees," — ["Father, I make you re- sponsible before- God, for ail the acts of violence you have ordered me to commit."] — Que re. Did he accept the responsibility ? — See Mad. de Mainte- non's Life, &c. &c. * It was the confessor of Mad. de Maintcnon, who quieted her scruples about living with the king's mistresses, receiving the addresses of a married man, and assisting at the orgies, which went under the name of media noche. " Ii falloit que Dieu, (says Mad. de Maintenon) eQt domic des gratifies lumicres a VAbbe Goblin, pour qi/'il pritsur lid de decider, avec tonte Vauiorite (Pun apdtre, que je de~ vois rester d la cour. J'exposai tout d ce saint liovune, qui pevsista d m^ordunncr d'ydemeurer." ["God must have greatly enlightened the Abbe (Joblin, before he could take upon himself to decide, with all the authority of an apostle, that I ought to remain at court. I told every thing to this holy man, who persisted in ordering me to slay."] The immorality of all this is nothing to the odious and canting hypocrisy of the shrewd and strong-minded woman, who never could have believed that God inspired her confessor with the force of an apostle, to order her to join the midnight revels of the king, which assembled all that was roost profligate and parasitical in his court. It was this permission to ass r st at these suppers, that Mad. de Maintenon asked, when she said, "f exposal tont, ire. &c. [" I told every thing, &.c. Sec] , PEASANTRY. 39 their fathers. After the abolition of the priesthood, and when in these provinces there were no ministers to officiate, the pea- santry were seen assembling in the dilapidated churches, and chaunted the office, and celebrated the mass, with as much faith and unction, as if they had heen paid for their services, or looked to being rewarded with the produce of the dime, [tithe.] It is however a singular fact, universally known, that while they thus devoutly clung to the cross, they professed abhor- rence to its ministers, and dreaded the return of the curify or vicars, who long before the revolution had forfeited all claim to their respect, by the undisguised profligacy of their lives. and had rendered themselves eminently obnoxious by their in- creasing exactions, under the sanction of the dime. <* As long as I can remember," said a gentleman to me in Paris, who was a native of the south of France, — " as long as I can remember, enfant de pretre [child of a priest] was a term, of reprohation among us, given only to the most abject and de- graded." In the midland provinces, in the north, and north- east of the kingdom, the catholic religion still retains its forms; and its rites, now severely enforced, are duly performed, though, generally speaking, coldly and partially attended to, while the increase of the priesthood, both in number and influence, is universally looked on with fear and horror. The public mind in France has made a bold and vigorous spring, in proportion to the tension, which had so long re- strained its force : and even the peasantry, generally speaking, are as averse to fanaticism, and as alive to the absurdities of popular superstition, as the most enlightened class of yeomanry in England, while it is obvious to all who converse with them on such topics, that they are infinitely more tolerant. They demand no master-cast in faith and doctrine; they cry not for exclusive distinctions and unshared privileges. « Liberty of con- science for all men" appears the first article in their creed, and safety from sectarian persecution, their prayer for others, and for themselves. This blessed privilege, the birthright of man, they enjoyed to the fullest extent, under the splendid despotism of that singular person, whom they raised to the government of their nation, and whom they never would have abandoned, had not their love of constitutional liberty been keener than their love of national glory. They submitted to change, only because they hoped for amelioration. Buonaparte, who had made his unrestricted power the pio- neer to any despotism which might succeed his own, was well aware that Catholicism was the fit religion for a despot ; and that there was no instance of any country in Europe, where freedom and Catholicism dwelt together. He therefore built up £0 PEASANTRY. her ruined temples, and raised her prostrate standard ; but he made her impotent in her influence, and powerless in her agency*. He held the chief of her church in " durance vile;" he sheathed her blood-stained sword in a scabbard of peace, nor suffered the embers of her martyr-fires to be again rekindled. "Shorn of her beams," this once powerful ruler of the human mind could no longer incarcerate in dungeons, burn at the stake, nor torture on the wheel. Retaining her title of sove- reignty, without one particle of its power, she " held a barren sceptre," and imaged the future destiny of him, who, in his isle of rocks, reigned only over a few willing subjects, by the ties of ancient habitudes, ancient affections, and ancient prejudices. In reviving the order of the priesthood, he rendered them dependent on the state, and thus deprived them of all temporal influence. He restored no oppressive tythes, for their mainte- nance ; he permitted no enormous revenues, for their extrava- gance ; he gave them no special exemptions, nor exclusive pri- vileges; and his estimate of their utility and influence was cu- riously marked, in the well-known circumstance of his having assigned the same revenue to the Archbishop of Paris* as to his own maitre de chapelle, [master of the chapel.] Thus the fruits of that once powerful see, the object of ambition to the illustri- ous Noailles and haughty Harlays, exceeded in nothing the re- venue of the compose r of Elfrida, and the « Zingari en Fiera"* The Catholic religion, therefore, as revived in France, was a state religion, lending its seal to civil forms, and adding the weight of its venerable character to the novelty of political in- stitutes. Alike free from persecution, or disunion, it left each man to the dictates of his own conscience, or the conviction of his own mind. It tolerated all other sects, white to its own faithful adherents it presented all it had ever possessed of be- neficent and good. It had still power to console, but it was no longer capable of persecution. It opened its consecrated tem- ples for the oraisons of the devout ; but it presented no pageant shows for the amusement of the idle, nor was it taught to recall, to the generation of the nineteenth century, all that was ludi- crous and profane, in the barbarous superstitions of the four- teenth. The restoration of the many religious processions, which have taken place since the return of Louis XVIIf. is a subject of universal disgust and derision to all classes in his dominions, with the exception of those, whose interest it is to countenance them; and the sarcasms which I heard levelled against these ceremonies even by the menu peuple, [common people] during * The incomparable Paesiello, maitre ds chatdle to the Emperor. PEASANTRY. 44 two Sundays that I assisted at the fete-dieu, in Paris, were quite sufficient to convince me, that in France, as Scagnerelle says, * on a change tout cela" [« they have changed all that."] The fete-dieu is one of the most solemn and splendid festivals in the Roman church, and its preparations and rehearsals occu- pied and thronged the streets of Paris, for some days before the great performance took place. In every direction crowds of workmen, carpenters, upholsterers, and gardeners, were seen, fitting up the reposoirs, or temporary chapels, before which the procession was to halt, where the host was to be elevated, and a short service performed. These reposoirs were generally placed before the portecochere, or gateway of some public building. There was one before the prison of PAbbaye, and another be- fore the palais de justice. But that which struck roe most for its splendor and its extreme research, was before the portals of the minister of police, M. de Caze ; and, I believe, raised under his own immediate direction. It was a sort of alcove, open to the street, and in its whole arrangement something like one of those decorated recesses, in which Columbine, stand- ing on one leg upon a pedestal, first presents herself to the charmed eyes of Harlequin in our Christmas pantomimes. This hallowed structure was lined and hung with different coloured Telvets and showy silks, trimmed with gold fringe, and artih% cial flowers, decorated with prints and roses, with relics and toys, with crowns of thorns, and Jleurs de lis. The high altar, raised above many richly carpeted steps, was the centre of all that was most precious in piety and taste, covered with baskets of exotics and silver candlesticks, with fruit in «vax-work, and saints in or molu, and exhibiting to the eyes of faith and loyal- ty, a Christ on a crucifix, and a plaster bust of Louis XVIII. both fresh and new, and done expressly for the occasion. When I passed by this reposoir, at a late hour on the eve of the festival, the workmen were finishing it by candle and lamp light. — « Quelle depense," [« What an expense,"] said my hus- band to a gentleman, who was talking to us, at the window of our carriage. ** Et pour quelle bctise .'" ["And for what folly/'] answered the driver of a cabriolet, who had stopped his little vehicle to gaze on the reposoir. As we lived near the Abbaye St. Germain, in which parish one of the first Sunday proces- sions took place, we were awakened with the dawn on the pre- ceding morning, by the noise of hammering, and the tingling of bells ; and on walking out we found the houses of every street, through winch the procession was to pass, bedecked and ornamented according to the ability or taste of the owner : for, « bon gre. mat gre, 19 [« whether they would, or not,"] every one was obliged to contribute to. the show of the day, though few G 4$ PEASANTRY. had any recollection, how the thing was got up upon former oc« casions. During the preceding day, the street-passenger ran the risk of suffocation hy the dust of ages, which was shaken out of car- pets, tapestry, and blankets, at every door; all in preparation for " la derniere repetition" [•< the last representation."] The poverty of some of these decorations, and the incongruity of others ; the brilliant colours of the new Gobelin tapestry, the faded hues of the old; the simple white sheet, ffaute demieuxj [for want of a better,] or thread-bare blanket, ffaute de tout J [for want of any thing else,] gave a sort of rag-fair appearance to the noble fauxbourg St. Germain, which not even the many pictures and busts of the King and the Virgin, profusely distri- buted among the « shreds and patches" of piety, could relieve or dignify. When the procession, with its dramatis personam appeared, all this scenery and machinery lost its attraction, and the actors themselves took exclusive hold of our breathless attention. Of the two processions which I witnessed, what struck me most in the first was the vanguard, a little boy of four years old, dressed in regimentals, who I thought at first was meant to be a caricature of Buonaparte, but who, a pious old lady as- sured me, represented St. John the Baptist. What interested me in the second was, that the rear was composed of the royal family, and M. Chateaubriand ! The procession of the fete-dieu was preceded and announced by a very fine band of music, and passed through the centre of the streets, which on each side were filled wit|| a multitude of people, curious to see a spectacle so long deniedlhem. Then followed, in order, the servants of the house de Montmorenci, in their singular and rich liveries, and some of the domestics* of the royal establishment. The confraternity of the rosary (above an hundred females,) all at- tired in white, crowned with lilies, half veiled, and carrying wax tapers, succeeded to the lackies and valets de chambre, and were followed by the " catechistes" or young females ad- mitted recently to confirmation, all in the same vestal hue, even to their shoes. Among these latter I beheld, to my astonish- ment, the noble daughters of the illustrious house de Montmo- renci, accompanied by their pious femmes de chambre, [waiting- maids.] all chaunting hymns, « avec leurs xoix pnres et virgi- uales,''' [« with their pure and virgin voices,"] like the fair cho- * It is an old custom of state and piety in France, for the noblesse to send their servants to these processions, and thus to show off their liveries and de- votion at the same time. " Que ferons-iwits "de uos dotneetiqnes ce care me . ? " [" What shall we do with our servants this lent?"] said a fair pietist, who was lamenting' that there were no processions. "Nous !cs ferons jetiner" [ M we will make them fast,*'] was the reply of her equally pious friend. PEASANTRY. 4g russet's in " Esther," at St. Cyr. The choir succeeded, consist- ing of a number of stout young priestlings, recently initiated, dressed in white robes; some flinging their massive silver cen- sers in the air, while clouds of frankincense and myrrh rose with loud hosannahs to the skies, and others flung rose-leaves, from ornamented baskets, beneath their feet. This solemn act was performed every ten minutes, the whole corps dramatique stopping short, turning round, and bowing profoundly to the dais, or canopy, which followed close behind, and which contained the holy mystery of the host, lying on a cushion of crimson and gold ! The dais was composed of four short transverse poles, something like a bier, or a child's go-cart, surmounted with a splendid canopy, under which two prelates, in grand pontificals, who carried the host, walked with a motion irregular and slow as the first tottering steps of infancy, an ir- regularity communicated by a want of uniformity in the move- ment of those who carried the poles of the dais. On either side of the sanctum sanctorum walked some of the peers of France and cordons bleus* [blue ribbons,] all bare-headed, and in full costume, accompanied by the moires [mayors] of the arrondis- semens. Immediately behind the tabernacle, with eyes up- turned and elevated head, appeared M. Chateaubriand, the " philosopher of the desert, 9 '' in blue and silver. The whole was closed with a troop of soldiers, and in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame the cortege of the jcte-dieu was ennobled and en- larged by the presence of royalty itself! There the Count d'Artois, the Due and Duchesse d'Angou- leme, and the Due and Duchesse de Berri, joined the pious train, with uncovered heads, and carrying wax tapers. Thrice they thus paced the holy rounds of Notre Dame with royal pil- grim steps, to the delight of the pious, and to the amusement of their less devout subjects, who thus saw the heads of the state lending their powerful sanction to forms and customs, which reason and opinion had long consigned to oblivion ; who thus beheld the days of the vow-making Louis XIII. and of the pious revoker of the edict of Nantz again restored, and the progress of illumination checked by the ordinances and example of the government. As far as my observations went, as I mixed among the pro- miscuous crowd, pretty generally, the feelings excited by this parade of royal piety and fantastic devotion, were not univer- sally those of edification or applause. " On a beaufaire," [" It is all in vain,"] said a woman, as she kneeled down beside me while the host passed by. « Cela ne tiendra pas," [" This will not last,"] hummed a man, who resumed his hat and wiped the dust off his knees, when the -procession was gone. « M ! la 44 PEASANTRY. vilaine femme .'" [" Ah ! the vile woman !"] exclaimed a French lady of my acquaintance, whom I recognized in the crowd, and who, pointing out her forme vfemme de chambre, demurely chaunting in the chorus of the confraternity, whispered me « Ah ! ma chere, cette femme ne m'« pas laisse un morceau de dentelle ; c'est la plus grande voleuse, et la plus grande tracassiere du monde : cependant elle contrcj'ait la devote, dans nos nouveau- tes religieuses. Jlh I la vUaine femme .'" [« Ah ! my dear, this woman has not left me a bit of lace ; she is the greatest thief and the greatest cheat in the world, and now since our religi- ous change she is acting the devotee. Ah ! the vile woman !"] and she repeated her exclamation, as the pious purloiner of lace passed close by her. " Voyez done notre grand imbecille de maire." [" See our great fool of a mayor,"] said a pretty bour- geoise, pinching the arm of the youth she was leaning on, as the maires des arrondissemens passed by ; while a man whose appearance was not much above that of a water-carrier, ob- served aloud, as he stumbled over a kneeling old woman: « Sa- cre ! sHls veulent prier Dieu, quHls prient dans leur eglise" [" If they must say their prayers let them pray in their church,"] While the revival of processions obtains so little popularity among the lower classes in the capital, they are looked on with at least equal indifference by the peasantry; and the attempts made to collect a pious force round the ambulating shrine of a village saint, have been found as abortive, in some places, as the attempts made in favour of the installation of the « royal bust,"* in others. In Boulogne-sur-mer* orders were given for a procession in honour of the Virgin, whose wrath, it was de- clared, had caused that abundance of rain, which threatened ruin to all the vignerons and farmers in France. Some of her festivals had not been duly celebrated, since the restoration of festivals in France, and a well-founded jealousy had discharged itself in torrents of rain, which I had the misfortune to witness, during the greater part of my residence in the land of her dis- pleasure. The priests, however, of Boulogne to their horror, could not find a single Virgin, in that maritime city, to carry in procession, and were at last obliged to send a deputation into * Several noted /Vtes, and of course several processions, took place at Paris while I resided there. The/ete deP Ascension, which was also ihefete de J,ouis Treize, [Louis the Thirteenth,] who made a vow to celebrate that day, was very fine. The vow ot the royal and pious A'imrod of France, was fulfilled by his descendants. The royal family walked upon the occasion ; the princes held up the cords of the canopy. It was a singular circumstance, that this day was also lafrte de Buonaparte. The procession was attended by the corps municipal and state officers, bishops, priests, and royal almoners, and Monsieur Chateaubriand ! who seems to let himself ntt, like Ihe mutes of a funeral, for these loyal and pious exhibitions. PEASANTRY. 45 a neighbouring village, and request the loan of a Virgin, until they could get one of their own. A Virgin was at last procured, a little indeed the worse for wear; but this was not a moment for fastidiousness. The holy brotherhood assembled, and the Madonna was paraded through the streets; but no devout laity followed in her train, and no rainbow of promise spoke the cessation of her wrath. The people would not walk; the rain would not stop; the Virgin was sent back, to pout in her native village ; and the miracle expected to be wrought, was strictly according to Voltaire's heretical definition of all miracles — "une chose qui n'est jamais arrivce." [" a thing which has never hap- pened."] At the commencement of the revolution, a similar procession was madein the neighbourhood of Paris, by the, cure of a village, and while lie was moving solemnly under a canopy with the shrine of St. Genevieve, the rain fell in such torrents, that "sauve qui pent" [•< save himself who can"] was the reigning maxim of the moment ; and the officiating minister, left almost # alone under his canopy, observed to those who carried it, " mes minis, elle croit que c'est la pluie que nous demandons" [" my friends, she thinks it is rain we are asking for."] Whether the Virgin of Boulogne made the same mistake, it is impossible to say ; but certain it is, that the rain continued during the whole summer, a punishment to French sinners, and a disappoint- ment to English travellers. To overload religion with forms and ceremonies, is always to injure its cause. Truth wants no ornament; religion is in itself an abstraction ; « the evidence of things unseen." It is ever to be regretted that the first religious ceremony, mentioned in holy w r rit, caused the first murder, in the first and only family then upon earth. While processions are still but coldly received, images and relics have regained but little of their long-lost importance. And though they are set up, andi ordered to be worshipped, « de par le roi ;" [" by command of the king,"] invested, like the priesthood, the cent Suisses, [the hundred Swiss,] and all the other appendages of legitimacy, in France, with their for- mer dignity and powers ; yet, generally speaking, they exhibit a most forlorn and neglected appearance; and, as they stand or tumble in their niches, are no bad barometers of the state of the rustic piety of the quarter they inhabit. We observed in- deed along the high roads of France Madonnas, who had suffered in the wars of the revolution, and who still exhibited much of the negligence of the republican toilette ; some without a pet- ticoat, and others without a nose, while the head of St. Gene- vieve, recently placed on the figure of St. Peter (distinguished 46 • PEASANTRY. by bis massive key), and afleur de lis stuck under the stump of a broken-armed St. Denis, presented the evidences of days of past sacrilege, together with hopes of returning piety. The fortune of the saints has long, in France, exclusively depended on the rise and fall of the public stock of faith ; and many a one, who twenty years hack would not have given an assignat for a share in " the whole army of martyrs," is now buying up the finger of St. Louis, at any price! Wherever the royal family were expected to pass, on the oc- casion of the two restorations,, or in their respective journies in- to the interior of the kingdom, the via sacra is distinguished by the new setting-up of prostrate images, and neglected crosses. The crucifix, placed at the port of Dieppe when Madame landed, is, I think, for size and colouring, the most formidable image that ever was erected to scare, or to edify. And the Madonna exhibited in the church of St. Jaques, in the same town, and on the same important'occasion, was evidently, in the hurry of the unexpected honour, suddenly transported from the bowsprit of some English trader ; and had doubtless stood many a hard „ gale, as the " lovely Betty" or « sprightly Kitty" before she* was removed to receive divine honours, as notre dame de St. Ja- ques ; where, dressed in English muslin, and in a coeffure a la Chinmse, [ her hair in the Chinese manner,] to show she is above prejudice, she takes her place with Louis the Eigh- teenth,* who shines in all the radiance of plaster of Paris, on an altar beside her. In travelling through Normandy, I asked our postillion, why he did not salute an image of the Virgin, which, new painted and crowned with flowers, stood in a niche by the road side ? — He shrugged his shoulders, and replied : "rnais c*est passe, ma- dame, tout cela" [« but all that is gone by, madam."] Such I believe, generally speaking, is the present state of "graven images" and of the religion supported by "graven images," in France. * Speaking of the peasantry, in the neighbourhood of Ver- sailles, Madame de Maintenon observes, <• quandfai roulu sa- Voir d'eux, qui a fait le Pater, Us iren savent rien. ' Qui a fait le Credo? encore mollis. 8'ils adorent la vierge ? oui: S' its ado- rent les saints ? oiu-iia. Si on peche de mdUquer la messe unjonr ouvrier? Oui, certes," ["when I asked them who made the Lord's prayer, they did not know. Who made the Creed ? — they knew still less. II* they adored the virgin ? yes : if they * This Virgin, as might be expected, warmly embraces the cause of the Bourbon, to whom she owes her elevation, and wears a wreath of lilies, and supports the drapeav blcmc, [the white flap: 1 PEASANTRY. %y adored the saints ? oh, yes. If it was a sin to stay from mass on working-days ? yes, certainly."] Of all the religious grievances, of which the French peasant- ry and the labouring classes now complain, as falling the hea- viest, the necessity they are under of attending mass, on work- ing days, and the strict observance imposed on them, by the maires, or magistrates of many of the communes, to religiously observe all feasts and festivals, and even certain hours, in par- ticular days dedicated to particular saints, on pain of a heavy penalty, is the most oppressive. These agents for the revived claims of the long-forgotten legion of saints, frequently levy their fines, without mercy, on the profane but industrious pea- sant, who takes up his spade during the vigil of St. Didymus 9 ©r who plies the wheel, on the feast of St. Catherine. Under the reign of Napoleon, idleness met no quarter, even though dictated by saints, or enforced by doctrines. Every body worked and prayed, according to their vocation, and in- terests were not crushed, nor indolence encouraged, under the sanction of ceremonies and forms, having no real connexion with either faith or reason. I could perceive that the religious toleration, enjoyed by the peasantry in common with the rest of the population, under his reign, was a subject to them of grate- ful remembrance, and they have more than once led to it with characteristic traits, that gave them point and interest. A peasant woman of some remote province, whom revolu- tionary vicissitude had placed in the neighbourhood of the village of Sevres, (and who, recommending herself to me as « chef d'un-magazinde blanchissage," [" chief of a washing esta- blishment,"] thus spared the dignity of my page from the pollu- tion of a homelier term for her profession) afforded me infinite amusement in her weekly visit to our hotel iii Paris, by the quaintness and naivete of her observations. When I beheld her from the window, driving up the street in her charctte, [cart,] mounted on piles of snowy linen, surrounded by her nymphs, guarded by her great dog, and led by her garcon, [boy] I always hastened to receive this queen of soap-suds myself, in the anti- room, leaving one of her dames de honneur [maids of honour,} to arrange the official duties of her calling with my femme-de- ehambre, [maid,] in the adjoining apartment. She was a little, shrivelled, brown woman, with black petulant eyes and marked countenance; and with her scarlet jacket, striped petticoat of many breadths, high cornette, [cap,] and massy gold cross and ear-rings, she presented a figure and costume, which the very genius of masquerade might safely have adopted, both for its originality and singular effect. She was always in a flurry, always in a passion, always full of news, always full of enriosi- 48 PEASANTRY. ty, and frequently undertook to correct my patois, [bad French,] while I should have lamented much, had any one corrected her's. When the weather was wet, she dried « lesgilletset ju- ponspar artifice, madame /" [•« she dried the waistcoats and pet- ticoats artificially !"] She would pardon the king much lor giving "lunation une princesse, blanche comme la neige; 99 [«fbr giving the nation a princess white as snow ;"] and she called her dog « Cleopatra," because she liked the names of great men ! — " c'est si beau, cela," [« they are so line."] One day, when she was later in her weekly returns than usual, she entered my dressing-room, not in the meekness of excuse, pleading a fault, but in a passion, perfectly dramatic : " £h bien, madame, vous voild pen contente de moi , n'est-ce pas ? Eh bien, c 9 est not 9 religion, morbleu, qui se mele de not 9 blanchissage, voild /" [« Well madam, I suppose you are not pleased with me — But 'tis our religion that has interfered with our washing!"] I could not readily understand what religion had to do with her vocation ; I asked what she meant, « Bien, vous allex voir, ma petite bonne dame, Cest not 9 gobe-mouche de maire, qui nous defend defaire not 9 lavage tel et teijour. C 9 est aujour 9 hut la fete de St. Francois, c 9 est demain la veille de St. Ambrose, Voila un beau chien de plaisir que d 9 avoir des saints et des maires, qui nos dcfendeni de vivre.* Et Men! ma chere dame, on a beau crier. Mais voild ceeui !f jamais il ne se meloit de not 9 lavage ; jamais ne m 9 -a-t-il dlfendu de secher mes jupons et mes gillets tel jour que je voudrois. Cependant, on dit qu 9 il est pendu par les Jlnglais — taut pis; bonjour, madame ! 99 \ [« You shall see, my dear lady, it is our booby of a mayor, who forbids us to Wash on such and such days. To-day is the festival of St. Francis, to-morrow the eve of St. Ambrose. It is a charming thing to have saints and mayors, who prevent us from earning our bread. — But there was he: he never meddled with our wash- ing 5 he never hindered me from drying my petticoats and my * A fine of fifteen francs is demanded, as a penalty for work done on the jvurs tie fete, which are nearly of daily recurrence. Sometimes five fetes occur in one week, and a labouring man, who counted them over to me, deplored this loss of time and gain as a new and severe grievance. f" Celui" ["he, him,"] is the mystic term, by which Buonaparte is now mentioned by all the lower classes. I have frequently seen " celui," written in all manner of ways, on gates and posts, &c. &.c. :(; This reference to my blanchisseuse, resembles the anecdote of the old dame, who cursed Colbert every day she made an omelette, because he had put a tax upon eggs. I believe, however, there is no question, but that the pea. santry have a general preference for Buonaparte. Those of Bourgogne, al- ways inclined to revolutionary principles, believed that he was returning intr Prance at the head of an army of negroes. It was necessary to deny this, for- mally, In that province. PEASANTRY. 49 waistcoats any day I chose. However, they say the English have hanged him — So much the worse,* good day madam!"] And with this conclusion, which she did not wait to heat* af- firmed or denied, she scudded away, indifferent, perhaps, to the fate of « celui" or whether he was hanged or not; but taught by experience how valuable was the toleration he had establish- ed, even to her little interests and comforts, and, like the rest of her class, drawing comparisons, under the influence of her own feelings, more to his benefit, than to the advantage of those who succeeded him. While I was in the district of la Beauce, a farmer solicited the renewal of a lease, or bailie, which it was in the power of go- vernment to grant, through the interest of General de C , whose chateau was in the neighbourhood. As he was a man of most unblemished character, and the father of a family, his ap- plication was attended to. But it having been intimated that the farmer had been married during those days of the revolu- tion, when the civil contract was a sufficient ratification of the marriage vow, it was made a condition for the compliance with his request, that he should be married over again by a priest, as the government would naturally give a preference to a can- didate, who submitted to all the forms and doctrines of the ca- tholic church. The farmer replied, that he had been married two and twenty years to a very faithful and affectionate wife, with whom he had lived in great harmony and happiness; that his sons and daughters were growing up around them, and that he would not stamp their birth with illegitimacy, nor a virtu- ous woman with infamy, by submitting to a second marriage, which would naturally invalidate theirs?, though that marriage had been celebrated according to the laws of his country then existing. " 1 believe, madam," said the ultra-royalist gentle- man, who related to me the anecdote a few days after it occur- red, and who knew all the parties, « I believe it is not neces- sary to give you a stronger instance of the absence of all reli- gion among our peasantry of the present day, or of their de- generacy from the faith of their forefathers." It is curious, however, to observe that some popular super- stitions survive the bigotry which once accompanied them, more especially in the remote provinces, wherever education has not yet made its illuminated progress. An eminent physician in Paris, native of les petites Jlpes, a mountainous district between Lyons and Geneva, assured me, that he had known a young man driven from his village', by the odium of belonging to a family accused « d 9 avoir tin nom" [•« of having a name,"] which is tantamount to the « evil eye" in Ireland. And the conjuror preserving his "magiqut Mane H 50 PEASANTRY. et noir," [black and white magic,"] still retains a portion of respect, when superstition more imposing, and charlatans more dignified, have lost their credit with the people. Of this character, once so high in consideration, Rousseau has made a charming use in his Devin du Village, [Village Conjurer,] and Farquhar a most humourons one, in his Re- cruiting Officer. It is thus that genius, among her splendid fictions, records the characteristic traits of ages and nations ; and registering facts which the chronicler neglects as notori- ous, and the historian overlooks as undignified, preserves em- balmed the most interesting features of humanity, for the con- templation of the philosopher, and the instruction of posterity. The catalogue of popular superstitions is neither very exten- sive nor very various, and presents nearly the same images in all countries. Melancholy sounds breathed at melancholy hours will always be portentous to ignorance ; and fear will ever ex- ert its most harassing dominion over the imagination, in sea- sons of sorrow and affliction. Thus, in France as in England, the howl of a dog at the cottage of the dying peasant, is more certain death than the disease which kills him. And the Irish henshi has her pendant [counterpart] in the French owl, which is always considered " oiseau de manvais augure" [" bird of ill-omen,''] when she sends forth her midnight screams near the chamber of the sick. A goat in the stable is esteemed, in France, a sure protection from contagion to the cattle with which it associates, and ranks most probably with tiie bracket- hen, which, in Ireland, holds so distinguished a place among the lares and penates of the cottage hearth. *********** « Je veux que le moindre paysan mette une poule dans le pot, les dimanches." [" I wish that the poorest peasant may have a fowl to put in the pot, every Sunday,"] is a saying of Henri IV. which has rendered his memory more precious in France than all he has ever said or done beside. And this simple and bene- volent «je veux" [" wish"] will perhaps survive in the memory of the nation, when the pretty "mots de sentiment" ["senti- mental sayings,"] which royal eloquence is now made to utter, shall be forgotten, or remembered only to be reprobated as the jargon of insincerity, dictated by bad taste. Henry IV.* did not live to sec this philanthropic wish accomplished : and whether his great views, and those of his able minister, would finally have produced such an effect among their other happy conse- * When the death of Henry IV. was known to the people of Paris, nothing was heard, on every .side, but cues of " nous avons perdu notre pe're." ["we have lost our father."] PEASANTRY. $± quenees, the spirit of religious fanaticism that cut short the days of France's best king, has left it impossible to ascertain. It must, however, be a source of infinite satisfaction to his descendants, to find, on their return to the government of their kingdom, that the prayer of their great grandsire is accom- plished, and that "le moindre paijsan" not only « met une poule dans lepot, les dimanches," [" the poorest peasant not only puts a fowl in the pot on Sunday,' 1 ] but even puts a little flesh meat into his marmite, [soup-pan,] on week-days. To the enjoy- ment of this luxury, under the reign of Louis XIV. and his im- mediate successors, there were two insurmountable barriers — the taxes of the taille and of the gabelle. The mode of dividing and subdividing the taille, was among its greatest grievances. When the minister of finance demanded a certain sum for the exigences of a war, or the expenses of building or adorning a palace for the king, or his mistresses,* (and these palaces rose like the fairy castles, which the incantations of magic conjure into existence) the tax imposed on the kingdom was subdivided, according to the superior interest of the nobility at court, who were governors of the provinces.! This partial division, by which the impost always fell lightest on those most able to bear its infliction, was again followed by a more partial subdivision, until at last the burthen was thrown almost exclusively upon those unprotected individuals who were at the mercy of the great man, or the great man 9 s great man, in every town or parish. The governors, who imitated in their provincial courts the splendor and extravagance of the king, purchased their magnificence, and preserved their situations, by exactions and extortions which some times drove the people to insurrection. The memory of the Duke de Richelieu is still execrated in the province he governed, in the reign * Beside the continual repairs and decorations made in the palaces of Fon- tainbleau, St. Germain, en Laye, St. Cloud, Meudon, Compiegne, and Cham- bord, the most ancient of the royal palaces, there have been raised, since the reign of Louis XIV. Versailles, Marli, the Great and Little Trianon, Clugny, Maintenon, (upon the aqueducts of which such large sums were expended, as excited a general murmur against its lady), Bellevue, (constructed for Mad. de Pompadour), Luciennes, for Mad du Baity, and Bagatelle, built by the Count d'Artois, (for a wager) within six weeks. To these expensive palaces, meant solely to vary the pleasures of the king and his mistresses, must be added St. Cyr, unquestionably established as a palace of retreat, for the authoress of the dragonades and massacres of the Cevennes. "f" lis examinerent, comment il seroit possible d'augmenter sourdement les aides, la gabelle, et autres impots. Quand tout etoit arrange, dans le secret, avec les sang-sues publiques, les interresses appuyoient les projects au conseil, et les faisoient passer. — Intrig^ie da Cabinet, vol. i. p. 244. [They examined, how it would be possible to increase secretly the excise, the salt-tax and other imposts. When all was arranged, in private, with the public blood-suckers, the interested pressed their plans on the council, and had them carried into effect.] 5g PEASANTRY. of Louis XV. Even the friends of the Duke de Chaulnes have left, in their private correspondences, such testimonies of his atrocious conduct in Bretagne, (under Louis XIV.) as consigns this otherwise obscure and mediocre person to eternal ignominy.* " On a fait une tax: de cent mllle ecus sur les bourgeois ; [«• they have laid a tax of a hundred thousand crowns on the citizens,"] (says Mad. de Sevigne, speaking of the capital of la Bre- tagne, and of the disturbances occasioned by its taxes and the op- pressions of its governor) et si on ne trouve point cette somme dans vingt quatre heures* elle sera doublee, et exigible par les soldats. On a chasse et banni toute une grande rue, et defendu de les recueillir. sur peine de la vie ; de sorte qu'on voyoit tons ces miserables, femmes accouchees, viellards, enjans, errer en pleurs an sortir de cette ville. (Bennes) sans savoir oil alter 9 sans avoir de nourriture, ni de quoi se coucher. On a pris soix- ante bourgeois , on commence demain a pendre. Cette province est un bet exemple pour les autres, et sur tout de respecter les gouverneurs, et les gouvernantes, de ne point leur dire d 9 injures 9 et de ne point leurjeter des pierres dans leur jar dins, Les puni- tions et les taxes ont He cruelles ; il-y-auroit des\ histoires tra~ giques a vous conter, d 9 ici a demain, [and if that sum is not raised in twenty-four hours, it will be doubled, and exacted by the soldiers. The whole inhabitants of a long street have been driven away, and forbidden to return, on pain of death — so that we have seen all these poor creatures, women, old men and chil- dren wandering in tears, about the environs of the city (Rennes) * The duke de Richelieu, speaking" of his government of Guienne, observes that he could do there what he liked, " on personne n'osevuit lid nendire, etant bien avec lemaltre Louis XV," [" where no one dared to oppose him, as he was in favour with the master Louis XV."] His cruelty and exactions nearly pro- duced an insurrection in the province, and finally caused the suppression of the parliament of Bourdeaux. It was upon this occasion, that Louis XV. made profession defoi, [profession of faith,] on the subject of divine right. " Je leur ferai voir (~ks parlemens,J que je ne tiens monpouvoir que de Dieu ; qveje rCiu de compte d rendre qifti lui, el que personne ne doit s'opposer a ma volontc fP* [" I will let them see (the parliaments) that I hold my power from God only; that I am accountable to him alone, and no one shall dare to oppose my will?"] How little he then suspected, that this divine right would not only be questioned, but denied to his unfortunate successor! In 1789, it was proposed in the Nation- al Assembly to give Louis XVI. the title of" Roi dea FraiKjais, par le conseutt- mentde la nation" ["King of the French, by consent of the nation,"] and to suppress the formula, " par la grace de Dieu" ["by the grace of God."] It was upon this occasion that J J etiu» exclaimed, " c'est calomnier Dieu/ Charles IX. etoit-il anss'i roi, par la grace de Dieu ?" [" this is calumniating God ! Charles the IX. was also king by the grace of God !"] -fit was in this moment of national suffering, when vhese cruel exactions •were made on the people, thatMad.de Montespan was raising her superb pa- lace of Clugny. The disturbances of la Bretagpie were perhaps the first throes of the great, convulsions, wiiich followed long* after; they proceeded at least from the same cause. PEASANTRY. 53 without knowing where to go, without food, and without lodg- ing. Sixty citizens have been taken up, and to-morrow they will begin to hang them. This province should be an example to the others, to respect the governors, and the governesses, to say nothing against them, and not to throw stones into their gardens. The taxes and the punishments have been cruel 1 there will be tragical stories to tell you after to-morrow.] Tragical indeed! for twelve men were broken alive upon the wheel, suspected of having conspired against the life of the all- powerful governor, who had thus goaded into madness a sim- ple people, which could scarcely speak any language to be un- derstood. Mad. de Sevigne drops this dreadful topic, to give the history of her pretty dog, « Sylphide, blond commeun blond- in;" [" Sylphide, as white as a flaxen-haired beau;"] for such was the character of the times — cruelty and frivolity — the af- fectation of sentiment, and the absence of sensibility! If the taille was one reason, why the peasant, drained to the last farthing of his earnings, could not conveniently put « his chicken into the pot," the gabelle was another. And it was in such times that the French peasant, like the modern Greeks under the Turkish despotism, concealed any little hoard they might have amassed, and lived in seeming wretchedness, to es- cape those exactions, which would have rendered their poverty real, had it been discovered or suspected. But no taille, no gabelle now exists, and the French peasant is at last enabled to « mettre la poule dans lepot, les dimanches," [" put a chicken in the pot on Sunday."] How long, however, this privilege, this luxury, may be retained, it is for the advo- cates of " le bon vieux terns 9 '' [" the good old time"] to declare. The peasant's table, in France, is of course regulated by his circumstances, and by the nature and soil of his native pro- vince. But from all I could learn, from persons of all ranks and all parties,* plenty, even to abundance, has hitherto been found among this class, and has been interrupted only by the ravages lately made on their property by the armies of almost every nation in Europe. The presence of these armies caused enormous losses to the proprietors of vineyards, parti- cularly in the south, where the vines were wantonly torn up by the roots. In the pasturage districts or provinces, they make, of their laitage 9 [milk,] a principal article of food, under the * I asked a royalist, who has a considerable landed property, whether his tenants could afford to eat meat often in the week ? He answered me with pe- tulance, " and why not?" " But (I said) it was not always so before the revo- lution." "Eh! maisnon" ["Eh! indeed! no."] And he shrugged his should- ers, and hemmed and finished with the usual ; " Mais, que voukz-vous ?" [" But what would you have."] 54j peasantry. form of cheeses, cpeam cakes, and porridges ; but I observed that in France milk was rarely taken in its simple state, as among our peasantry. In Normandy, the farms are all well stocked with cows. In the Isle of France, this useful animal is so scarce, that in many places the goafs milk is exclusively used, and is even occasionally made into cheese. The peasantry, for the most part, take four meals a-day : a very slight breakfast when they rise, which is generally of thin soup ; the grand dejeune [breakfast] at 1 1 o'clock, (which is in fact their dinner ;) their goiite, or sort of luncheon, of raw vegeta- bles and bread and butter ; and their supper, which generally consists of meat and vegetables, (as at their dinners) made into a ragout. Light wine and water is their* general drink : a be- verage produced from chesnuts, and cider is also occasionally used, but are neither of them held in estimation by the "verita- bles Amphytrions" [" true Amphytrions"] of rural savoir vivre- « Une petite goutte de liqueur," [«A little drop of liquor"] is a delicacy to which they are no strangers, while every village guinguette [tavern] supplies an imitation of that foreign luxury, "la bonne double Mere deMars" ["the good double March beer,"] which is of the same quality of that very worst beverage, the w poor creature, small beer," in England. *********** Hospitality is the virtue of semi-civilized nations. It is a resource against the tedium of ignorance and inanity ; and none think it " greater solitude to be alone," than those, who are the least qualified to contribute to social enjoyment. The French peasantry are said to have been more hospitable* in their days of profound ignorance and extreme poverty, than in their present improved condition. It is also certain that there are much fewer calls upon this virtue, (if it be one) than there formerly must have been, when poverty was the vow, and beg- gary the profession of a large class of the people. The cater- ing friar, the mendicant monk, the wandering pilgrim, no longer present themselves at the cottage-door, to cherish a spirit of hospitality, through the medium of a mistaken charity, or un- der the influence of a powerful bigotry. Competency is also so equally distributed, and industry so well rewarded, that few are urged by want or idleness to put their neighbour's genero- sity to the test; and curiosity, that insatiable appetite, which so often makes the stranger's welcome, has been, during the last years, fed to surfeit, by the fluctuating crowds which have pas- sed from all nations before the door of the French cottage. The droits-rkmis have likewise proved a check to the exercise of this primitive virtue; for the hope of selling "le petit pot de rm," PEASANTRY. gg ["the little jug of wine"] under the rose,* no longer secures to the traveller a »• collation" along with it. *********** " Tout pays, oil la mendicite est une profession, estmal-gouvrne,' 7 [«« Every country where mendicity is a profession, must be badly governed,"] says Voltaire. I should suppose, from my own observations, that the country in the world the most infec- ted by mendicity is Ireland ; and the country the least taxed with tiiis disgusting and always vicious branch of community, is France. The whole of this order, now existing there, may be comprised in those little groups of cripples, which neither disgust by filth, nor annoy by importunity ; and which, gather- ing round the traveller's carriage on the high roads, quietly detail the inflictfon, which induces them to interest the benevo- lence of the » tres charitable monsieur" [" most charitable mon- sieur.''] i* C'est une rente incontestable" [" It is an incontesta- ble truth,"] says Chamfort, speaking of the state of France, on the eve of the revolution, "quil-ij-a en France sept millions d 9 hommes 9 qui demandent Uaumone, et denize millions, hors d'etat de la leur faire," [«« that there are in France seven millions of people who ask charity, and twelve millions who are not able to bestow it."] This frightful picture of national poverty is corroborated by Mr. Young, who made his second tour to France at this period, and who observes that the original sin of its institutions struck at the root of national prosperity, and produced a poverty, that "reminded him of Ireland." The improved condition of the lower classes has had an inevitable influence on the evil of mendicity, and the hopes of idleness and imposture were finally crushed by the laudable efforts of the Comte de Pontcoulant.f This gentleman began his salutary reforms upon the class of faiueans, during his prefectship at Brussels, and receiving the sanction and assistance of the imperial government, drove the young and indolent into the workshops and manufactories, and placed the old and infirm in asylums and hospitals. How far the revival of old institutions, the return of the religious orders, and the encouragement of religious houses, may have an effect upon this suppressed class, it is impossible to say; or whether * Passing by a little guinguette, in la Brie, I perceived written over the door in French, as old as the Romance of the Rose, the first line of Rosalind's epilogue, ** Good wine needs no bush." The proverb, therefore, was common to both countries. j- The Comte de P distinguished himself in the revolution. Loaded with honours by Napoleon, he was made count of the empire, peer, senator, and commandant of the legion of hononr. 5g PEASANTRY. some future preacher in the pulpit of St. Leu, or St. Gilles,* may not give a new impulse to his flocks, and again address to them the words humourously attributed to the ancient cure of that parish — « mes chers gueux, qui risque* les galeres 9 en pass- ant votre vie a mendier, entrez dans Pun des quatre ordres men- dians 9 vous sere* riches et honores" [" my dear beggars, who in passing your life in begging run the risque of the gallies — - enter into one of the four orders of mendicant friars, then you will be rich and honoured."] The virtue of charity therefore, like that of hospitality, lies at present latent, for want of objects to call it into action. But if latent, it is not dead. There is no nation more strongly en- dowed with that physical sensibility, which promptly responds to the cry of suffering, and which awakens that ready and un- calculating sympathy, " whose pity gives, ere charity begins." The readiness with which an orphan, or unprovided child (the illustre maiheureux [the illustrious unfortunate] of some village or hamlet) is adopted by a friendly neighbour or benevolent re- lative, is a proof that charity wants neither the means, nor the feeling to bestow its relief, when circumstances call upon its exertion. Country girls and children, without shoes or stockings; things calling themselves women, but in reality " walking dung- hills -" and "ploughmen at. work, without sabots, [shoes.] or feet to their stockings,"f are details given by a liberal English traveller of the state of the French peasant's wardrobe, in the year 1788. Still, however, even then, the French peasant had his « ha,bit-de-fete," [" holiday dress,''] like the Irish cotter, who appears in the tattered garments of misery all the week, to be enabled to exhibit his blue fnze cota-more, and best brogues, at the Sunday ** pattern," or yearly fair. There is an intimate connexion between vanity and poverty. Ostentation is the legitimate offspring of both. The peasant toilette of France now extends itself to the every-day comforts of working apparel. During my residence there, I did not see one instance of a bare-footed, or bare-legged person, not even among the children ; and " etre Men chaussee" [** to be well- drest about the feet,"] seems a passion in France, from the petlte-maitresse in her cob-web " bas de coton" [cotton stock- ings,"] at thirty francs a pair, down to the demoiselle Georgette, who draws her " bas de laine" [" worsted hose"] tightly over the smart ankle she has no objection to exhibit. * Formerly noted, as the parishes of connnihionnaires and beggars. ■j- This partial covering of the leg is universal among" the peasantry of Ire- land, at this day, under the name of " traheens" And " I do at upon your tra- heens," is a phrase of endearment, commonly used as indicating "Idoat upon the most miserable article about you." PEASANTRY. 57 The details of dress, among the peasants, appear to vary in every province, and to rule in each with a precise and unde- viating uniformity. One bright colour may be seen glowing through a whole commune, and one stripe maintains its supre- macy over the petticoats of an entire arrondissement. Thus, « un gros rouge" [" a full red"] is the delight of the dames of Auvergne, and « un bleu celeste" [" celestial blue"] the passion ©f the elegantes of Limousin. In passing through Picardy and Artois, I observed that, while the old women preserved the lofty comette [cornet] of ancient times, the young had adopted the high mitred coeffure [head dress] of the Chinese modes ; a fashion which, though long passe in Paris, the hostess of an auberge where we stopped in Abbeville assured me w r as in her town « une nouveaute la plus nouvelle" [« a novelty the most novel."] In general, however, caps with immense borders, that sweep below the shoulders, and straw hats, are the prevailing head-dresses upon all occa- sions. The petticoat and corset, almost invariably of two dis* tinct colours, relieved with white sleeves, of linen, or woollen web : gold chains round the neck, fastened with a heart, and suspending a large gold cross, are elegancies of the toilette scarcely ever dispensed with upon any occasion, and are fre* quently worn even upon working days. The district of the Couchois is the very foyer of the Normandy fashions, and a fair Couchoise, perfectly « endimanchee" or at- tired in her Sunday finery, exhibits a complexity of costume, to which many centuries must have lent their progressive in- ventions, which probably began under William the Conqueror, and received its last finishing touches on the arrival of Madame* at Dieppe. The cap of the fashionable Cauchoise emulates, in height, the steeple of the church, which is the mart of her finery; her luxe dejupe [profusion of petticoat] is typical of its dimen- sions, and the pendulum of its clock is rivalled in the enormous gold drops, which vibrate in either ear. It is curious to observe, that such nearly was the dress of the better order of dames, in the days of Charles IX. and that the peasantry were, under his cruel and bigoted reign, better clad and better conditioned, than under that of Louis XV. « AH," (says an author, whose researches into the ancient costumes of France are extremely profound) « all the peasantry then wore " des soldiers commodes," [« comfortable shoes $"] but this was * When Mad. d'Angouleme landed a second time in France at Dieppe, all the old poissardes [fisliwomen] and ancient dames of the town, dressed in full costume, went down to the port to receive her royal highness, and insisted ©a drawing- her carriage to the town-house. I 58 PEASANTRY. not the case, under the reign of " le Men aime," [« the beloved."] The taxation, which went in part to supply the toilettes of Du- barry, et de Pompadour, naturally limited the elegancies of the peasant wardrobe, and even obtruded upon its necessaries, as Mr. Young's " moving dunghills/'' at that period, evince. The influence of the toilette is universal in France, and it is far from being exclusively an object of female devotion, even among the peasantry. The young farmer "que se fait brave/ 9 [« who makes himself smart"] is, in his own estimation, as at- tractive as any merveilleux [wonder] of the chaussee D'Jlntin can suppose himself. His well-powdered head and massive queue, his round hat, drawn up at either side, "pour faire le monsieur "["to look like a gentleman"] his large silver buckles, and large silver watch, with his smart white calico jacket and trowsers, present an excellent exhibition of rural coxcombry, while the elders of the village set off their frieze coats with a fine flowered linen waistcoat, whose redundancy of flaps ren- ders the texture of the nether part of their dress very unim- portant. But, however tasteless or coarse, however simple or gro* tesque, the costume of the French peasantry may appear to the stranger's eye, it still is a costume 1 it is a refinement on neces- sity, and not the mere and meagre covering of shivering na- ture. It is always one, among many evidences, that the people are not poor, are not uncivilized, that they require the decen- cies of life, and are competent to purchase them. — When an Irish peasant, with his usual shrewdness, endeavours to drive a hard bargain with his employer, his phrase is frequently : — " Sure, all I ask is just what will get me my bit, and my rag ; n for all his ideas of dress consist in the words " my rag" These .are painful references ! they are perhaps too foreign, and too frequent; but they are irresistible ! Oh ! where is the land so distant, the region so remote, into which I may travel, and not bear Ireland in my memory, and her misery in my heart ! And, oh ! when shall the pen, now employed in tracing the pros- perity and civilization of another country, be devoted to record the improvement, the tranquillity and happiness of my own ! — When shall it leave the fictions, which have been made the medium for exhibiting the causes of her errors and her suf- ferings, to register the facts which shall prove, that the first are removed, and the last are forgotten ! *********** On our way to France, we had taken a very circuitous route, and passed through a great part of England. We found the beautiful peasant population of that country, with its fair trail- PEASANTRY &Q quil Saxon physiognomy, transparent complexion, and rounded muscle, a dangerous preparative for eyes destined to meet a people, whose beauty can scarcely be reckoned among their national perfections. The French face, particularly among the lower orders, struck me forcibly, as having a general re- semblance to the Tartar visage. The high but flattened cheek- bone, small eye, low forehead, with the close concentration of the features, formed a very prevalent cast of countenance, in such of the provinces as I visited. There are, however, even among the lowest classes, some very splendid exceptions to this general line of physiognomy, and I think the two handsomest men I ever saw, were a miller, near Amiens, and a workman, at the manufactory of porcelain at Chantilty, well known in his native town by the distinguishing appellation of "/e bel ouvrier" ["the handsome workman."] It was in vain he showed us the Majesty of France smiling, with his " sourire paternel" [" paternal smile,'*] on a tea cup ; or the royal dukes and duchesses smirking in family amity, on a punch bowl. We still thought the workman superior to his work, and he indeed seemed perfectly of our opinion ; for no " heros d'operd" [*« opera hero"] ever played off the graces of attitude with a more studied or ridiculous effect, than did le bel ouvrier de Chan- titty, [the handsome workman of Chantilly,] for the benefit and admiration of the English visitants of his manufactory. The French physiognomy, however, varies almost in every province, and they themselves class the shades of beauty and ugliness with great precision, even in the neighbouring districts, by the term " beau sang," and " vilain sang," [" handsome blood,'* and " ugly blood."] This singular phraseology assimilates with what may be called the elegant slang of English bon-ton, which by introducing the pedantry of the stable into the jargon of the drawing-room, enables the connoisseur in beauty and horse-flesh equally to compliment "Thunderbolt by Vixen," and Lady Virginia, descended from a Plantagenet duchess, with the common declaration that they are both " thorough- bred," and " show excellent blood." In the pays de Beauce the " vilain sang" is said to prevail ; in its neighbouring district, la Perche, the " beau sang'' 9 is very distinguishable. In Normandy, the land of law, and loveliness, the beauty of some of the women rivals the charms of the witches of Lancashire ; and every where among the girls are to be met charming samples of "lajolie" that indefinite style of prettiness, which the French prefer to every other, and which, by them at least, is deemed "plus belle que la beaute meme" [" more beautiful even than beauty.''] The Bearnois, the native province of Henri IV. is celebrated for the beauty 6Q PEASANTRY. of its inhabitants, and particularly for the elegance, form, ra- pidity of motion, and grace of gesture of its Basques, a race of peasantry in one of its districts, whom it is the pride of the Provengale noblesse to bring into their family, as upper servants, and to exhibit in their saloons, at Paris, as pages, dressed in their own original and beautiful costume. I one day accompanied the Princess de Craon* to the hotel de Biron- G-onteau, and was in the formal act of presentation to the Duchess de Biron, when a figure suddenly appeared in the garden pavilion in which we were received, which cut short my half-finished courtesy, and rendered even the amiable du- chess, with her historical name, an object, for the moment, of secondary consideration. While Madame de Biron was saying the most obliging things in the world, and in the most obliging manner, and while I, "nothing loth," lent " a pleas- ed ear," my eyes pursued though with some difficulty) the flit- ting motion of a light aerial figure, elegant and fanciful as the poet's image of *« a feathered Mercury." This splendid appa- rition, in a costume singular and picturesque, passed through the pavilion into the garden. «* C'est le Basque de maclame la duchesse^ et dans le costume de son pays." [" It is the Basque of the duchess, and in the dress of his country,"] said the Prin- cess de Craon, observing the impression which this "fair page" had made on me. — »< Courir comme un Basque, est un pro- verbe de Provence," ["To run like a Basque is a Provence pro- verb,"] added the princess, " et vous voyez, qu'il ne le dement pas" [« and you see he does not belie it."] He was at that mo- ment tiitting among the trees of the garden, with the arrow-like swiftness attributed to the Hirkahs, or public messengers of Hindostan. We afterwards adjourned to the terrace of the garden, which overlooked the boulevard ltalien, through which the royal cor- tege [train] was passing (for it was the entree of the young Duchess de Berri, into Pai4s,) and the Comte de H — e, who accompanied us, took infinite pains to name to me the distin- guished persons, who preceded, followed, and surrounded the caleche [chariot] of the king, including the marshal Marmont, M. Talleyrand, Pere Eiisee, et tutti quanti. But still the beau- tiful Basque, and his beautiful costume, were to me ohjects of greater attraction than all the grandeurs, which followed in the suite of the royal bride. * To this venerable and excellent lady, whose high birth is among- the least of her merits, and indeed to almost every member of huf illustrious family, I stand indebted for the most flattering- attentions, and for much of the social pleasures I enjoyed, during- my residence at Paris. PEASANTRY. 6i She herself, I thought, looked pale and timid ; and rather stunned than delighted by the loyal acclamations which rent the air from voices, which perhaps had recently given their "vivas" to a very different entree; — while the countenance of the Duchess d'Angouleme, more in distrust than in timidity, seemed such as she might have worn, when evincing her con- tempt of the national instability to her cause, she boldly an- swered to the often prostituted « nous jurons," [« we swear."] « Swear not, but obey." It was. indeed a countenance more in anger, than in "sorrow" or in joy, and the very reverse of that of the *< buried Majesty of Denmark ;" — though that royal per- sonage also evinced rather a « legitimate" taste for retribution, and was not averse to plunging his country in civil dissention, to avenge his own private wrongs, and satisfy his own private feelings. If the peasantry of France are not all Basques, their defect of beauty does not arise from deficiency of nourishment ; for I do not think I ever saw a greater number of persons, who seem- ed sent into the world, «* pour f aire voir jusqu'oii pent alter la peau humaine" ["to shew how far the human skin may be stretched."] w Le bon gros pere" m la bonne grosse-mere" [" The good fat father," » the good fat mother,"] are epithets frequently used and justly applied, and the old phillippics of frogs and soupe- maigre now fall hurtless against ribs, deep in their covering, as any of the best new light prizes exhibited at the Woburn shows. Among this order, indeed, Miss Prescott, the Pytho- ness of English embonpoint, might acquire new hints for her science of anti-phthisis, and apply them for the benefit of mea- gre dowagers and attenuated young ladies, with successful ef- fect. The improved condition of the French peasantry has indeed operated with equal benefit, morally and physically. The de- structions of the feudal system, with all its oppressive train of taxes and imposts, has produced a national regeneration. — Even the despotic laws of the conscription, which peopled the armies of France by means even more odious than the press- gang system of England, has been counteracted in its effects, and repaired in its losses, by the ameliorated state of the peo- ple, by the division of the enormous landed properties, the equal participation in succession, and by the great encourage- ment given to the progress of vaccine innoculation.* * The French army was essentially national, since by the law of the con- scription it was composed of all the citizens, without distinction of class. This was the secret which filled up the fallen ranks of the French legions, and which reconciled the lower classes so patiently to its infliction. It was on fig PEASANTRY. In 1T81 the controlear -general [comptroller general] of France, under Louis XVI. Monsieur My de Fleuri, defined ** the people" of France, to be <* peuple serf* corveable, et tailla- Ue 9 a merci et misericorde" [« a slavish people excisable and taxable, without mercy or pity."] It was the misery of this "peuple serf" that urged the cause of the revolution ; it was this " peuple corveable et taillable. a merci et miscricorde," who showed no mercy for their heartless oppressors. It was this race of slaves, degraded, trodden on, broken down, strangers to liberty, to morals, and to religion, who were urged to com- mit those horrors, for which they are so unjustly upbraided, and whose national mildness and natural goodness of dis- position might well yield to the temptation of satisfying a vengeance, which the wrongs and slavery of ages had ripen- ed, nourished, and fomented into madness. But that long-enduring race have now passed away; their children are proprietors, where they were vassals. The tor- ture no longer exists, to feed a spirit of brutal ferocity by its horrible exhibitions. Bigotry no longer presents to them idle forms for real principles ; they have nothing to fear from the " droit de chasse" the " corvee" the « taille" the " gabelle." They have tasted a practical freedom, not less perhaps than that enjoyed by the people of England ; they are moral as the peo- ple of Scotland; and notwithstanding the recent ravages, they are more prosperous perhaps than either. Oh ! may they long continue so ; and in spite of that « scourge ojjire"* with which the higher classes it fell with the greatest severity, if indeed the gentry of France ever had any profession but that of arms, or any object of ambition but military glory. 1 asked the wife of a farmer in the Isle of France, who had lost a son by the conscription, whether she did not rejoice in the downfall of him, who had instituted that despotic law ? "Pour celui." [" He,"] she replied, " il nous a fait trop de mal, pour que nous disions du bien de lui ; mais il nous a fait trop de bien, pour que nous en disions du mal," [" he has done us so much harm, that we cannot speak well of him ; but he has done us so much good, that we ought not to sp'eak ill of him."] And this, I believe, is the sentiment of the nation. * I copy here a paragraph from a letter, which I have this day received (De- cember 29th, 1816) from Paris, from a gentleman of considerable talent and experience, in the present state of things in France, *' Votre Canning a tenu ici des propos d'un ton, qui n'etoit pas propre a rapprocher lesdeux nations, et qui sont bien inconsideres pour un homrae d'etat. II dit, il-y-a quelque terns, dans un cercle nombreux, ou ctoient beaucoup de militaires nouveaux, que le gouvernement des Bourbons etoit trop doux pourune nation, aussi tur- bulent etaussifactieuse que la notre. Mais que l'Angleterre se chargeoitde nous tenir sous une verge de feu ! Les militaires n'ont rien dit, et Mad. de Stael s'est chargee seule de rcpondre a ccs insolences." [" Your Canning has ex- pressed himself here in a tone which ought not be held between the two na- tions, and which is very inconsiderate for a statesman. A short time since, he said in a numerous circle, where there were a number of the new military, PEASANTRY. (53 an English minister is said lately to have threatened them, may they boldly resent and timely oppose every effort made by do- mestic oppression or foreign invasion, which may tend to bring them back to that state in which they were declared, by the law of the land, to be "unpeupleserf, corveable et taillable, a merci et a misericorde .'" that the government of the Bourbons was too mild for a nation so turbulent and factious as ours. But that England would take care to keep us under a scourge of fire. The military men said nothing, and Madame de Stael alone replied to his insolence."] " Comme M. Canning parloit des victoires, que les Anglais avoient rempor- tees, elle lui dit, que si ces messieurs vouloient une seule fois se detacher des Russes, des Prussiens, des Allemands, &c. &c. &c. et nous honorer d'une tete- fi-tete, elle lui promettoit de n'etre pas refuse ! [" As Mr. Canning spoke of the victories which the English had achieved, she told him that if they would once detach themselves from the Russians, Prussians, Germans, &c. &c. &c. and propose to honour us with a tete-a-tete, she could promise they would not be refused !"] " Notre Canning" made himself extremely popular among the roy- edistes enrages, [furious royalists,] when I was in France, by his speech at Bour- deaux, in which he called that loyal city " le temple de xWadame," [" the temple of Madame"] (the duchess of Angouleme.) For many evenings successively I never entered any of the saloons of my royalist friends, that this " mot de senti- ment" [" piece of sentiment,"] was not echoed about in all sorts of maudlin, whining tones — " Le temple de Madame! ! Ah que c'est joli! Le T-e-m-ple de Madame ! Mais c'est charmant, c'est beau." [" The temple of Madame ! AJi! how pretty ! The temple of Madame — 'tis charming, 'tis beautiful."] " On -voit Men, madame" said a royalist to me, who had repeated this mot de sen- timent upon every change and key of the sentimental gamut, « on voit bien, ma- dame, que voire Canning est un homme a sentiment, avec infiniment d'esprit! Le temple de madame ! Ah que c'est beau /" [" It is easy to see madam that youti Canning is a man of sentiment, with an infinitude of wit ! The temple of Ma- dame—Ah! how fine !"1 FRANCE. BOOK II. Society, " A mesure que la philosophic fait des progre"s, la sottise redouble les ef- forts pour etablir l'enipire des prejuges." National Characteristics. — Sketch of Manners, before the Revolu- tion. — During the Revolution. — Under the Imperial Government. Actual State of Society and Manners, in France. — " The Chil- dren of the Revolution." — Royalists. — Ultra-Royalists. — Consti- tutionalists, and Buonapariists. — Conversation. — Raconteurs. — > Political Vaudevilles. — Tone of the Circles. — French Youth.'-' The EUve of the Polytechnic School.— -Religious Institutions.— School of Ecouen. NATIONAL idiosyncrasy must always receive its first c^ louring from ^ie influence of soil and of climate : and the mo^ characteristics of every people be resolvable into the pecu' r g constitution of their physical structure. Religion and govu 0- ment, indeed, give a powerful direction to the principles a modes of civilized society, and debase or elevate its inherent qualities, by the excellence or defect of their own institutes. But the complexion al features of the race remain fixed and un- changed, the original impression of nature is never effaced. The portrait drawn of the ancient Gauls, by Csesar, preserves its resemblance to the French of the present day, notwithstand- ing the various grafts that have been inserted into the national stock. And Agathias and Machiavel have nearly given the same sketch of the same originals, at periods of very remote distance and with views of very different tendency. Susceptible and ar- K (55 SOCIETY. dent, impetuous and fierce, the most civilized of all the barba- rians, whom Rome subjected to her yoke, are still the most po- lished people of Europe; and the French, through all the vicis- situdes of their political iortunes, through all the horrors of the most sanguinary epoch of their revolution, have exhibited that inherent tendency to social attachment, that capability of ge- nerous devotion, and that fund of bon-hommie (to use a word of their own creation, for a feeling peculiar to themselves), which evince that the worst form of religion and government, could not destroy the happy elements of character, out of which such kindly dispositions arose. The atrocities, which stained the most unfortunate sera oi the revolution, were almost redeemed by the constitutional virtues, which exhibited themselves during its progress. Condorcet, condemned to death, yet refusing the asylum which friendship risked itself to offer him, is but one out of a thousand examples of noble disinterestedness and heroic de- votion.* When humanity snatched one breathing moment from blood and terror, to bestow it on social intercourse; when all the quar- ters of Paris gave that well-remembered civic dinner in the pub- lic streets, to which all wer^ bidden, and to which all were wel- comed; the tide of social affection, long frozen in its channels, suddenly dissolved, and flowed in its wonted genial current. The impulses of joy were universal ; strangers rushed into each other's arms; friends, long severed, clung in close embrace; and the sanguinary tyrant of the hour saw, in this sudden burst of friend- ly communication, the revival of the national " bon-homwie" and the downfall of his own power. A decree was issued against the recurrence of such festivals of the heart; but it was publish- d too late: the avenues of social feeling were again opened, d the civic dinner was the passover of an emancipated people. The frightful system of despotism, laid by the ferocious tyran- / of Louis XI. and accomplished by the ambition and pride of ^ouis XIV. produced an obvious and fatal influence on the cha- racter of the nation. The independence of the nobility, which bent before the open force and and direct hostility of the barba- rian king, moulded into irretrievable ruin before the enfeebling corruption of the more accomplished despot. Against this prime * Condorcet, pursued by the terrorists, received an offer of protection and concealment from a female friend: he peremptorily refused this generous offer, exclaiming 1 , " Vons seriez horslaloi.'" [" You will violate the law !"3 *' Eh! suis-je hove V humanitt?" [" And shall I violate humanity?"] was her answer. This heroic reply did not prevail upon the unfortunate fugitive : lie fied from the asylum of the friend, whose safety was more precious than his own, and survived but a few day?. ascifify. 0y destroyer of the liberties and morals of his devoted people. His- tory appeals to posterity; for the totemporary chroniclers, who undertook their task at royal command, and stained her page in time-serving obsequiousness to the vanity of their employer, were insensible to the national degradation they recorded. When Boileau and Racine recited to the monarch, and to his mistresses, the glories, pomp, and power of his reign,* these courtly poets, but feeble historians, felt not that the annals which flattered the pride of the vain-glorious king, condemned the despot of a ruin- ed people to immortal ignominy. The unprofitable wars, by which the insatiate ambition of Louis XIV. endeavored to ex- tend his dominion; the lavish expenditure of incalculable trea- sures, dissipated in idle amusements, or squandered on gorge- ous palaces, left his people beggared,- and his finance exhausted. His despotic supremacy suffered no trace of political liberty to exist; and the fatal example of his own private life spread the contagion of vice and of hypocrisy through every class, and opened the gates of systematic depravity to his successors, which never closed, till the whole temple of corruption w r as " hurled headlong", With hideous ruin and combustion, down. In the history of civilized society there is, perhaps, no paral- lel for the moral degradation that enveloped France, during the whole of the eighteenth century. It was a demoralization s© perfect, so unrestrained, and finally so unconsciously subsisting, sapping, corrupting, gangrening every social and moral relation of life, that towards the end of the long reign of Louis XV. scarcely one tie, that binds man to man, remained unbroken or undefiled; all was pollution, or degradation, political profligacy, or moral delinquency. Fiction and fact, history and romance, all that described, and all that imitated the morals and manners of these days, reflect their disgusting details with frightful fide- * After a dangerous illness, the king" permitted Boileau and Racine to amuse him, by reading 1 aloud some pages of the history of his reign, which Madame de Montespan had engaged them to write. The king heard them, seated between his two mistresses; the one in the height of her power, the other in her wane. To account for the distinction thus conferred upon his ex-favorite, Louis said ; " II est Hen juste, madame, que vans assisiiez a la lec- ture d'un ouvrage,dont vous meme avez trad le plan." [It is just, madam, that you should assist at the reading of a work, of which you yourself have traced the plan.] The History of Louis le Grand, commandtdby himself, plan- ned by his mistress, and executed by two pensioned poets ! ! ! What a combina- tion! Buonaparte, speaking of Louis XIV., said, " C'etait un pauvre homme; — s'il existait, je n'en voudrais pas pour mon aide-de-camp." [He was a poor creature; if he existed now, I would not have him for my aid-de-camp.] gg SOCIETY. lity. It is the illustrious Bussysf and St. Simons who attest the enormities they so gaily picture. It is the high-born Richelieu, who has immortalized the depravity of that elevated class, whose vices are found epitomized in his own history of his own life. From the careless and spirited details of the brilliant de Se- vign6, down to the imitative and ingenious fictions of the Mari- vaux, Crebillons, Lou vets, and the Duclos, a code of corruption might be drawn, so perfect in vice, so matchless in crime, that not the hardiest champion of the " bon vieux terns" [the good old time] would dare to defend it, or could refrain from astonish- ment, that « such things could be." " And overcome him, like a summer's cloud, Without hi9 special wonder!" When the measure of political abuse was filled to overflowing; when not a ray of freedom was left to the people, not a shadow of representation to the nobility; when venality stalked forth in the stole of sanctity, and simony held an open market; when privileges were substituted for rights, and influence usurped the forms of legitimate power; when exaction and oppression went hand in hand through every enormity, and the poison of moral corruption had worked its level through the whole mass; then the bond of society was rent asunder; and the great and final bouleversement, [overthrow] which followed, was only proportion- ate, in its progress and effects, to its origin and causes. The first explosion, bold, brilliant, and aspiring, as the ascending fires of pyrotechny, was followed by the admiration, and consecrated by the vows of all that was enlightened and liberal in Europe. Even royalty watched its commencement without fear, as its light pierced the gloom of the dungeon, and brightened the mansions of living sepulture; and philosophy gloried in its career, as she uelield the darkness of prejudice dissipated by its blaze, and the frightful edifice of despotism sink under its influence. But, though the revolution was an event devoutly wished by the liberal, and ardently forwarded by the wise; though all the talent and all the genius of the nation concurred in M Mutual league, United thoughts and counsel, equal hope, And hazard in the glorious enterprize," f Comte de Bussy Rabutin, author of " Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules," and of Memoires." It is curious to observe, that the intimate and most ad- mired friend of the amiable Madame de Sevigne was M. Pomenars, a noted coiner, though a man of rank. He was repeatedly tried for his life ; and Mad. de Sevign£ frankly declares her belief, that he was guilty of every crime, but poisoning. sociEir. ^g they could but direct its spirit, and guide its views. It was the physical force of the nation, which could alone carry the design into effect. It was the collected mass of the most political, de- graded people in Europe, which was to bear it on: and the cause of freedom was inevitably committed into the hands of slaves. It was to no race, like the myrmidons of Achilles, swarming forth, and changing their species, that the work of devastation was consigned. Those who gave the revolution its sanguinary character were no miraculous progeny, no spontaneous product of the new order of things, but the home-bred children of des- potism, who, like the « yelling monsters'* of Milton's Sin, turn- ed against their mother, and " HowPd, and gnaw'd her bowels, their repast." Familiar with sights of blood, to which the public executions had inured them,* their own wild deeds were governed by their horrible experience. Sympathy long deadened, and sensibility long blunted, by the very nature of their institutions, they had now none left to exercise or to bestow on those who had thus de- graded them. It was these long passive and thoroughly debased subjects of abused authority, who, creeping from their dens, shadowed by the Bastille, followed in the train of their tiger- leaders; who, glutted with blood, yet thirsting for carnage, taught the dreadful lesson, that those only who are educated in liberty, are capable of forwarding her cause; who evinced that many revolutions must occur, and many systems of government arise and fall, ere the stain of vassalage can be effaced; ere the mark of the chain can be worn from the neck of the captive, and the freeman forget that he had once been a slave! As it is the fashion of the day purposely to mistake constitu- tional principles, for democratic speculations, so it is its policy to revive and bring forwad the horrors of the revolution, as « bugbears dressed to frighten children," into all that can be im- posed or inflicted. Images of long-passed crimes are conjured up, to spread terror, to awaken indignation, to increase preju- dice, and to render the people of two great nations the victims of the old state policy of "divide, and govern." But it should be remembered, that the generation which perpetrated these atrocities, were the legitimate subjects of legitimate monarchs, * In the history of human cruelty, there was nothing so atrocious as the criminal punishments of France. Madame de Sevigne mentions, in the course of her letters, above fifty persons broken alive on the wheel, and two ladies burned by a slow fire ; of whom, one was accused of sorcery. Damien and Ravillac were torn to pieces by horses, after tortures the most horrible : " the question," or torture, was a thing of every -day occurrence. j (j socitfri and were stamped with the character of the government, which produced them. Tlie race, however, have long passed away, which immolated, on the same altar, plebeian worth and royal virtue; who included in the same mighty hecatomb the champi- ons of loyalty and the advocates of freedom, the La Tremouil- les and La Rochefoucaulds, with the Rolands and the Condor- cets, all that was precious in the annals of ancient chivalry, with all that was distinguished in the records of modern philosophy. Mature in life, when the scene of their iniquities opened upon this "horrid crew," it soon closed upon their guilt ; and the Marats, the Dantons, and the Robespierres, who belonged equally to the order of things which preceded the revolution, and to that, which filled up the most frightful of its epochs, can never re-ap- pear, unless a similar corruption in the government, and an equal degradation in the nation, shall prove again the inevitable connection between oppression, in the ruler, and worthlessness, in the people. The nobility of France, including all the higher classes of so- ciety, are distinguished, in the early annals of their country, by a boldness and an energy of character, which not even the iron cages and loathsome dungeons of their determined foe, Louis XL could subdue. But what his oppression could not effect, the vicious court and corrupting despotism of Louis XIV. accom- plished. In the whining sycophants, who shed tears when the monarch frowned;* who canvassed the honour of becoming the husband of his mistress, or of yielding up their daughters to royal concubinage, it is difficult to trace the ancient baronical indepen- dence, the high sense of honour, which produced the Guesclins and the Baijards of earlier days. — Amidst the orange groves and luxurious pavilions of Versailles, among priests and parasites, in childish amusements and in womanship gossip, expired that once brilliant spirit, which gave to the French cavalier his pecu- liar tone of gallant intrepidity. The energy and vivacity, distin- guishable through the political and religious struggles of the League, were no more, and that careless desperation, which in- duced the chiefs of the Fronde to embark in a cause, scarely un- derstood, to please a beauty, scarcely known, *Even "le vertueux Pomponne" [the virtuous Pomponne] is described as weeping, when the king- reproved him; and monsieur kneels at the feet of his royal brother, to thank him for a favour conferred on one of his friends. Mad. de Maintenon's own picture of this " cour iniqve" [iniquitous court] as she calls it, is curious : "Nous y voyons des envies, sans sujet, des rages, des trahi- som, sans resentimeni, des bassesses qu'on couvre du nom de grandeur d'dme." [We see there, envy without cause, fury and treachery without resentment, and meanness dignified With the title of greatness of soul. i SOCIETY. y£ " de faire la guerre aux rois/' [to war with kings,] or, " de faire la guerre aux dieux," [to war with the gods,] this bright etlierial spark of national fire was exchanged for a flame, cold and putrescent as the marshy exhalation, and fit only to light the idolatrous altars, raised by a parasite aristocracy, to the worship of a vain-glorious monarch. — The group of slaves, which the flattery of the sculptor has placed at the feet of the most gorgeous statue of the most georgeous of kings, aptly images the higher classes of society, bv which he was surround- ed.* The courtiers of Louis XV. not less feeble and more depraved, not less abject and more vicious, resolved all human dignity into the maxim of " representer noblement" [to act nobly.] How possible it was to representer noblement, without one noble prin- ciple or manly virtue, the innumerable memoirs of the innume- rable « gay Lotharios" of those days of egotism and vanity best evince. The .transition from the finical refinements and solemn pueri- lities of this age of dramatic representation, to the bold, coarse, republican tone of revolutionary manners, was singularly rapid, and curiously contrasted. To the ennui, exhaustion, and inanity, which characterized the insipid circles of a worn-out race, suc- ceeded an exaltation of head and a glow of heart, productive sometimes of the noblest, sometimes of the most tragical, and sometimes of the most ludicrous effects. The self-immolation of Charlotte Corday, the dauntless heroism of Madame Roland, belong to the best sera of Roman patriotism. The avengeful feelings, which rose almost beyond the tone of human vindictive- ness, pursuing the dying moments of Robespierre, « breathe a browner horror" over deeds of darkness, than the deepest shades of tragic fictionf have ever reached; and there is nothing broader * When this famous statue of Louis XIV. was thrown down, in 1792, the name of the celebrated artist, Girardon was found written on one of the feet of the horse. Chamfort rather harshly defines this hiimility to be " la modeste betise d'un homme de gCnie, qui se croit honor 6 de travailler d la gloire d'un ty~ ran." [The modest stupidity of a man of genius, who thought it an honor to work for the glory of a tyrant.] f When Robespierre stood upon the steps of the tribunal, vainly appealing to a people over whose passions he had now lost all influence (for his last hour was come), a spectral figure, tall, gaunt, and fearful, which had for some time moved closely beside him, now continued to murmur at intervals in his ear in a hollow and monotonous tone/'fw tfesplusrien, tyrant Vechafand *% SOCIETY. in farce, than the vicissitudes of the Abon Hassans of the early part of the revolution ; when the « rabble rout" of Porte St. Antoine assumed the toga of Patrician dignity; when Caius Marius, the cobler, discussed the rights of the people, under the domes of the Capets, and Cornelia, the iishwoman, distributed black bread to her ragged marmotes, [brats,] with the conscious feelings of the mother of the Gracchi. It was during these na- tional Saturnalia, that the Rochefoucaulds, the Talley rands, the Mirabeaus, became immersed in the mud they had raked up from the « lie du people;" [dregs of the people:] and now suing those, so lately the slaves of their legitimate power, humbly craved « the most sweet voices" of the swinish multitude, who thus " Pranked it in authority, against all noble sufferance" In this moment of general subversion, all was transition the most violent, and extremes the most opposite; evincing a people from whom all principles had long been withheld, by arbitrary power ; and who, when released from its restraints, became the slaves of their own unbridled and ill-directed will. Trifles the most puerile, with events the most important, equally occupied the public mind ; and while the government was daily changing its forms und its chiefs, objects the most insignificant became en- veloped in the universal transmutation. Streets changed their names, hotels their distinctions, rooms their furniture. The place Louis Quinze became the " place de la Revolution." Where the Sevignes and the Richeiieus presided over the elegant circles of their day, the Montagnards now howled, or the Chouans vocife- rated; and Brissot and Condorcet opposed to the wild inspira- tions of vulgar anarchy, the bold, fearless eloquence of patriot- ism and genius, where, haply, Voiture had once recited his in- sipid verses to applauding dutchesses, when the " Guirlande de £ attend" [you are no more, tyrant; the scaffold waits for you.] Robespierre in vain endeavoured to frown away this evil genius — his frown had lost its terror, and his voice its command. Another instance of poetical justice attended the death of this sanguinary monster, which marked the frightful vengeance of the times. When his hand missed its aim, and he shot himself through the jaw instead of through the brain, he was carried to the hotel de ville, [town hall] and laid upon the council table from which so many of his horrid decrees had issued. A wo- man, who had walked close beside the bier on which he was carried, with a countenance of fixed despair, took her station at his head, and gazed on. his mangled form with looks of unglutted vengeance, for he had been the murderer of her son. In the agonies of a burning thirst, he called for something to drink. " Bo is ton sang," she replied, pressing his hand, " ty- tan, tu as toujours aime" le sang." [Drink your blood, tyrant, vou have always thir ^dfbr blet>d n SOCIETY. iv £ Julie" [Garland of Julia] was deemed the jwsse-outre [master piece] of the intellect of the nation. All the lumber of aristocracy, material and immaterial, was placed under the ban of popular aversion ; and the armories of Boule, and the tapestry of the Gobelins, submitted alike to revo- lutionary rage, with the fortunes and lives of their noble owners. While the time-honored bergere [elbow-chair] drew down the im- putation of bad citizenship, th© " divin tabouret" [divine tabou- ret, a sort of stool] was a sure stepping-stone « a la lanterne" [to the lamp post] — and Josses and buffets gave way to Etruscan vases, and antique tripods, and the venerable « canape" [cano- py-sofa] denounced and proscribed, yielded to the usurpation of couches, which Praxiteles might have designed for the apart- ments of Aspasia — Even the splendid pendules, [clocks] which had presided in the royal palaces over hours " That danced away ivith doxvn upon their feet* submitted to tM common fate; and while the time-pieces of Ver- sailles and St. Cloud were sold for old brass, Flavius, the hair- dresser, consulted his sun-dial, and asked of Memmius, the cast- clothes' man, "I prithee, citizen, what shadow of the day is it?" ^ Religion too, still struggling for her supremacy under any name or form, adopted •< changeful fashions of the day." — Hea- then altars rose, where holy reposoirs had once held their sta- tions; the scite of mythological rites, long consecrated to Chris- tian devotion, again resumed its original name and purpose; and the venerable church of the thrice-blessed St. Genevieve became the « temple of all the Gods" But, while the people and their demagogue-leaders thus evin- ced the inherent frivolity of a long degenerating people; while modes and manners rapidly changed their form and colouring, with successive constitutions; the principle of regeneration was still slowly working out its way, through the tissue of folly and ferocity that opposed it. The public spirit and good sense of the nation, its genius, and its patriotism, under the names of Fede- ralists, Brissotins, or Girondins, stood opposed alike to the bad taste and bad feeling of a wild democracy, which had ranged it- self under the protection of the deities of Olympus. The regi- me of terrorism threw a mauvaise odeur [taint] over the repub- lican jargon of the modern Bruti. and the tone of society, dur- ing the reign of the Directory, stood much less indebted to the lu - y4 SOCIETY. getting-up of articles from the classical dictionary, than any which had been adopted since the first sera of the revolution. While, however, nanners were tinctured with all the exagge- rated feelings of the day, and partook of that ridicule, to which all exaggerated feeling is liable, the nation was making a silent but sensible progress in morals and illumination. Mothers now gloried, or affected to glory, in that sacred name; infancy no longer drew its sustenance from a hireling bosom; nor was child- hood bereft of all the endearments of home, or driven from the enjoyment of domestic affection to the chilling cells of a convent, and the cold attentions of purchased care. Daughters became members of their own families; sons were taught by their fa- thers that they had a country; and Nature, righting herself even amidst the outrages committed on her, obtained an influence over the feelings and actions of society, to which, in France, she had long been a stranger. It was at this period that a series of glorious conquests abroad, and an anarchical struggle for power, at home, cflted forth a new arrangement in the government of the state. The people were worn out by a rapid succession of constitutions, which had as yet produced little tangible good, and taken no permanent form. They sought a chief, whose influence might compose the still fer- menting mass of public opinion, and throw the tie of unity over contending factions. Military glory, " which grew with what it fed on," had become the object of national enthusiasm; and the people, like the friends of Coriolanus, deeming, that 4 Valour was the chiefest virtue^' ' And did most dignify the wearer," hose for their ruler the greatest captain of the age, and placed Hm by acclamation on the throne of France, who had already laid the thrones of continental Europe at her feet.* * " My brother," said Lucien Buonaparte, " is the most legitimate monarch in Europe; for he is the only one chosen by the voice of the people." Buonaparte had indeed made himself popular by many little acts of gene- rosity and bon-hommie, which, in whatever cause they originated, had their effect on the army and the lower classes. After the battle of Areola, he was walking alone through the camp at night, when he perceived a sentinel asleep upon his arms. He took his fusee gently from him and placing him on the ground, kept watch on his post for nearly two hours. The soldier at last awoke, and perceiving- an officer doing his duty, was panic-struck ; but when the next moment he discovered that his officer was the Commander-in- Chief, he exclaimed, in a tone of despair: " Buonaparte ! Je aids perdu." [Buonaparte! I am lost ] Buonaparte returning him his arms, simply observed, " apres tant de fatigues, il est permis a un brave, comme toi, de s'endormir ; mais une autre fois prends ntieux ton terns." [After so many fatigues, a brave SOCIETY. yg Napoleon Buonaparte, elected emperor of the French, pre- served unsullied, during the first period of his reign, the popu- larity, which had given birth to his elevation. Personal merit had now reached its just standard of appreciation in a country, where all factitious distinctions had long been reduced to their intrinsic value; and talent, still holding its supremacy, became the passport to imperial protection. The arts and sciences ral- lied round the throne of him, whose conquests nad so consider- ably extended their resources,* and whose liberality had lavished such munificent rewards on their numerous profe sors. Heredi- tary rank came forth from its ruined towers, to hail the founder of a new dynasty, who promised remuneration, for a portion at least, of what the revolution had confiscated. The descendants of the ancient defenders of the good kings Raoul and Hugh Capet, lent their time-consecrated support to a fourth race, as their ances- tors had struggled for, and crowned, a second and a third. Many of the most ancient nobility of France had remained in the coun- try, and weathered the storms of its successive revolutions; and the Rohans, the Mortimarts, the La Rochefoucaulds, the Beau- veaus, the Praslins, the Birons, the Brissacs, the Montmoren- cis, the Talleyrands; in a word, the most illustrious names in the historical annals of the nation, filled the anti-chamber, or assisted in the councils of a chief, who courted their representa- tives with deference, received them with kindness, and loaded them with honours. Every day some erasure was made from the list«of emigrant proscription-.f the descendants of the «menins"\ [minions] to the " monsieur 's" of feebler days, became the friends of the reigning sovereign ; and the "guidons of the royal lily"|| ranged themselves under the standard of the imperial eagle. All factions man like you may be permitted to sleep ; but in future choose a more proper time/] * Buonaparte expended thirty millions of francs on objects of art and an- tiquities, besides those he obtained by "conquest. | Napoleon was so anxious to have the ancient nobility about his person, that he left no means untried to bring them over. One day he erased the names of so many emigrants from the list of proscription, that his minister remarked, "Comment done, Sire, vans allez rayer le Comte d'Artois et son frere?" [What Sire, are you going to erase the Count d'Artois and his brother?] To which he replied, " Et poarquoi non? Est-ce quails ont portc les arraes?^ [[And why not? have they borne arms?] % The menins, or minions of the dauphins of France, were ten young* gen- tlemen kept about his person to dissipate his ennui. They had six thousand livres pension, "pouv etre assidus auprh da dauphin." [to be assiduous about the dauphin.] || See the Marquis de Sevigne's complaints at remaining a guidon, at the age of forty. y»6 were now blended in the one 5 and it was reserved for this sin- gular founder of his own fortunes to cement and establish his power, by operating a fusion of all parties in his own favour, thus presenting, in the first and wisest era of his reign, a com- bination of talents, feelings, and principles, which had long been given to the support of opposite and contending systems. The leaders of the several former constitutions now joined in upholding one, and preserved the recollection of their ancient feuds no further, than to lament that they ever existed. It was a dogma in the new political creed of Napoleon, that the ancient noblesse of the country, though essentially allied to the fallen dynasty, might be rendered an equally firm and bril- liant support to his own; and while a sort of romantic passion for historical names§ abetted the policy, which led him to re-es- tablish the families which bore them, the descendants of the an- cient barons of France were nothing loth to receive new digni- ties, and the immense revenues that were given in lieu of their ancient possessions, even from the hands of a parvenu [an up- start] sovereign. "It is astonishing," said M. de Talleyrand, "how many emigrant ladies, of the old court, wish me to force them to become dames d'homieur, [ladies of honour] in the new." And it is a well known fact, that many of the ci-devant " dues et pairs/ 9 [dukes and peers] who now talk in raptures of the " ineffable felicite dont jouisserent leur peres 9 sons la paisible duree de V empire hereditaire, [the ineffable felicity which their father enjoyed, untler the peaceful duration of the hereditary empire,] were then proud to display their grand chambellan's ribbon, in the imperial anti-room; and courted smiles and accepted favours from the munificence of him, whom they now contemptuously mention, in the presence of legitimacy, by the epithet of the usurper! Amongst the ancient nobility, however, Napoleon had many personal friends, who justify their allegiance to him by argu- ments difficult to refute.* TheJP did not give up their hereditary § Napoleon was very proud of being 1 gentil-hammie. [g-entleman.] One day, at Vienna, the emperor of Austria, in reply to his boast on this head, observ- ed that lie had seen in the imperial library an old account of the Buona- parte family. Napoleon eagerly begged the volume as a present from his fa- ther-in-law, who answered, drily, that it had been taken from the library, dur- ing the occupation of Vienna by the French. * Buonaparte's preference of the old nobility went so far, that he ordered the prefets to give the " petites magistratures du village" [petty magistrates of the village] to the poorer gentlemen, for whom no better employments could be made out. This preference was regarded with great jealousy by the rest of the nation, with whom it had long been resolved into a maxim, that all the citizms should be the " enfans de leurs actions ;" [children of their deedsj and in whose eyes all who served the state were equally noble. SClClE I Y lyj- princes, till all Europe Lad likewise abandoned them; till Rus- sia, Prussia, Austria, Spain, nearly all the legitimate authorities of the continent, had deserted the cause of legitimacy. When these potentates had acknowledged the power which the French nation had chosen for itself, the Bourbons became in France what the Stuarts had been in England; and all that it had once been virt'ie to uphold, it then became treason to defend. With such sanction for their tergiversation, the nobility felt at that period, with the rest of the nation, that he, round whom they rallied, " Mote Worthy interest had done the state, M Than those the shadows of succession." The court of the new Charlemagne, filled with the descend- ants of Preux and Paladins, assumed a character of gothic grandeur, wholly destructive to that tone of republican simpli- city, which Brutus Buonaparte had once contributed to estab- lish.! The house of brick became a palace of marble. The fairy splendours of the caliph Aaron-al-Raschid were united to the cumbrous magnificence of the middle ages. The stately formali- ties of the Escurial presided over the circles of the Thuilleries; and the costumes of theYalois and the Medici fell in heavy folds over forms, which had long exhibited their symmetry in the ad- hesive drapery of Grecian sculpture.^ Even the old stage-pro- perties of royal legitimacy came forward, on the scene of impe- rial representation; and the decorations of the legion of honour were distributed from the casque of Guesclin a?id the. heljpet of Bayard; while the chair of Dagobert was furbished up to re- ceive the representative of the western emperors, and the iron crown of Lombardy was cleaned and polished, to encircle the brows of a new king of Italy, the successor of the Csesars. The fastes of France now rivalled those of ancient Rome, in its most splendid days. The government, once defined to be a despotism, « temper e par une chanson" [tempered by a song] was now a despotism, veiled in a halo of splendour. The riches of Europe were poured into the coffers of the state; potentates f Buonaparte and Casti, the author of " gU animali parlanti," had heen known to each other during the fervor of the revolutionary times. When Casti was afterwards presented at the imperial court, the emperor addressed him with " Eh bien, Signor Casti, etes-vous toujours democrat!" [Well, Signor Casti, are you still a democrat ?] " Plus que jamais, Sire" replied the poet. " Je vols que les grands ho?nmes debutent par Id." [More than ever, Sire, repli- ed the poet. That is the character in which great men generally make their first appearance.]) \ The costumes of the two Medicis were assumed by the empresses, at •thei* coronation. ivg SOCIETY were visitants or prisoners in the palaces of its capital, and their territories were included within the boundaries of its dominion. Works of Roman magnitude, beauty, and utility, arose on every side: all that was mean was removed; all that was noble was revived; all that wore the air of improvement received the sanc- tion of authority ; and society, taking its tone from the colossal grandeur of the government, was massive in its forms, splendid in its draperies, energetic in its spirit, and brilliant in its details. The insipidity of the " good old times," and the ferocity of the revolutionary days, were alike denounced by the reigning bon- Un; " and les Muses et les Graces" with their old « cortege les ris et les amours," [The muses and the graces, with their old trains, she smiles and she loves,] were dismissed in company with the phrases and figures of rhetoric, the tropes and images of jacobin oratory. The character of the nation seemed to assimilate itself to that of the chief; and its inherent activity, taking a high direction, was no longer diverted by enfeebling institutes to insignificant objects, nor worked upon by temporary exaltations to frenzied violence. The public deportment and occupied life of the empe- ror, put the exhibition of vice and the appearance of idleness out of fashion. There were no mistresses of state ;|| no Pompa- dour or du Barre to give royal sanction to private profligacy, and to convert female caprices into reasons of state. No games§ were played at court, which in the city were prohibited under pain of death. No elegant swindlers, like the Pomenars and the Grammonts,* played off their fourberies [cheating tricks] with J| Whatever might have been the irregularities of the man, they made no part of the parade of the sovereign-A petite pizce, [little piece,] by Etienne, was re- presented at the theatre of the Thuilleries, in which it was said, that " the la- dies of the court made colonels in the army." The emperor, who was present showed evident signs of disapprobation ; and as he passed through the apart- ments of the palace, where the ladies in waiting were at cards, he stopped and said to some of them from whom I had the anecdote, " Eh bien, mesdmnes? est-cevous done, qui faites les colonels? Voild ce que je-ri'avois jamais soupconne'" [Well, ladies, is it you then, who make the colonels ? This is something I should never have suspected.] § " ffocca." See madame de Sevign6's Letters. * It was the Comte de Grammont himself, who sold for fifteen hundred livres his own manuscript memoirs, in which he is painted as an accomplish- ed swindler. Fontenelle, the censor of the work, refused to approve it, out of feelings of regard to the noble family de Grammont. The count complain- ed of this to the chancellor, to whom Fontenelle explained his reasons. De Grammont, however, would not lose his fifteen hundred livres, and obliged Fontenelle to approve the amusing memoirs of his own fourberies, rendered immortal by the wit and talents of his kinsman. Anthony Hamilton Pome- nars, the intimate friend and guest of Madame de Sevigne was repeatedly tried for his life, as a coiner, and having defeated the law paid his lawyer with his own false mon?v. SOCIETY. JQ their jokes, nor exhibited their dexterity and their wit, at the expense of their honour and their characters. So little were the pleasures of the tahle appreciated by him, who seemed to make all pleasures suhservient to his ambition, that the gastronomic science fell into disrepute, with the other revolutionary tastes; and the chefs de cuisine [chit fs of the kitchen — cooks] might have meditated a conspiracy against the contemner of their art, if Cambaceres and his " camarades de mangerie 99 [comrades in eating] had not kept alive their hopes until the return of those times, in which, as the Due de 1) s lately expressed it, "la mqjeste du trone est placee dans la cuisine, 99 ] [the majesty of the throne is plared in the kitchen.] The society ot Paris had now wholly changed its classifica- tion with its tone. It was no longer composed of " Moderns" and « Montagnards" [moderates and mountaineers,] of jacobin chiefs and republican leaders. These <* rough-headed kerns," in the cos- tume of brigandage, [highwayman,] no longer swarmed in dusky groups in the salons, nor filled the public places with their ruf- fian figures; but they were replaced by a circle of popes, and kings, and potentates, and princes, en grande costume, and habits of ceremony. Where the humble fiacre was once forbidden to roll, by repub- lican severity, the eqmpages of foreign sovereigns now " stop- ped the way,":): and « n.onsieur le cocker, si voire maitre n 9 est pas Jtoi 9 rous n 9 y passercz pas, 99 [mister coachman, if your mas- er is not a king, you cannot pass here,] was a common denun- ciation from the sentinel, who guarded the avenues of the opera; where kings assembled as familiarly and numerously, as at the table de hole of the adventurous candidate.|| « Ne preroyex-vovs pas qnej 9 anrais bientot trois on quatre rois sur le bras? 99 [Do you not see that I shall soon have three or four kings upon me?] was the reply of Lucien Buonaparte to a friend, who reproached him with his economy. And (( il est pass S roi 99 [he has passed king] was the military cant of the soldiers, when Bernadotte retired from the army; just as "ilestpasss Serjeant 99 [he has passed serjeant] was applied to a comrade, who f Napoleon was temperate, even to abstemiousness, at table, and has been. known to rise from it the moment he had dined, without regard to the un- satisfied appetites of the company, who, by etiquette, were obliged to leave the table when he retired. * At one period of the revolution, to be seen in a carriage, was to be sus- pected of royalism. Even hackney coaches did not ply. || The house-maid of our hotel observed, in its commendation, that" when the kings and princes used to visit Paris, we had our share of them, tout coin= me un autrd" [[as well as our neighbours.! gO SOCIETY. had arrived at the dignity of the halbert. To be made a kiag, was, indeed a sort dfr respectable retreat^ for a marshal; and the sceptre was no unfrequent expectation for those, who had wielded the baton [staff] with credit and utility. When James of England sought an asylum at the court of France, the poets of the day sung it as an event of glory in the annals of the nation. " Et la cour de Louis est l'asyle des rois," [And the court of Louis is the asylum of kings,] Was a boast re-echoed with pride. But it was reserved for the emperor of France to sit covered in a congress of bare-headed sovereigns, in his own palace,* and. in halls, where Louis XIV. danced for the amusement of his subjects, to command tributary princes to waltz for his own.f Even the descendant of that branch of the Bourbon family whose succession to the dominions of Spain cost the grand monarqne so much blood and treasure, was now seen quietly abiding in the territory of his ancestors, at the coun- try house of the emperor's grand chambellan; converting the woods of Valency into bon-fires, to celebrate the successive victories of his conqueror; or lighting the casements of his prison to show his devotion to his sovereign:):, who had deposed him; while the successor of St. Peter, whose predecessors had so often shaken the thrones of Europe, now became alternately the guest and prisoner of him, by whom his own had been reversed.l| § When the throne of Portugal became vacant, Jerome Buonaparte, Soult, and Murat, were candidates for the office. * When the monarchs of the confederation of the Rhine, assembled in •Paris, in 1809, Napoleon alone sat covered with a velvet hat and feather, at an entertainment given to the royal guests. f It was a line in Racine's " JVero" that first taught Louis XIV. the ab- surdity of dancing courantes, and performing ballets, for the amusement of his courtiers. t Ferdinand, the beloved, never failed to celebrate the victories of the em. peror, at the expense of the woods of Valency, the beautiful seat of Talley- rand, who complained bitterly of these royal depredations. The king of Spain lived in great privacy during his residence in France, devoting himself chiefly to the society of Brunet, the excellent comic actor of the Varittis, and of a certain agreeable dancing-master. I know not, whether this " dieu do la danse" [god of dancing] accompanied his majesty back to his dominions ; but it is well understood that Ferdinand made some very tempting offers for that purpose. Brunet, however, had no ambition to follow in the steps of his predecessors, Montfleuri and Farinelli, and declined giving up those talents " to a party, which were meant for mankind." It would be curious to specu- late on the probable influence of such a moire du palais [may of the palace] at the Escurial, who would perhaps have in time supplanted the grand in- quisitor, by " Jocvisse pe're" [a character in a French play] and have substi- tuted the amusement of a good comedy for the national recreation of an auto dap. I[ Pope Pins VI Tvas described to me,, by one clee'p-read in human charac- SOCIETY. g£ When the republican forms and revolutionary manners, which had so long; prevailed over French society, yielded to modes of superior refinement; and the " teiniure du ridicule" [tinge of ri- dicule] which characterizes exaggeration, faded into a propriety adapted to all principles, it was the wisdom of the reigning chief to efface the recollection of the horrors, which had marked those days of violence, and to adopt the same merciful policy, by which Henry IV. obliterated the dissentions of the League. Even his personal enemies were forgiven, if they were neglected.^ while not one of his personal friends was forgotten.* Among the first as to whom he sent the legion of honour, were two of .his ter, who had lived in habits of intimacy with the holy father, as blending- in his character the eager curiosity and simplicity of a recluse with great natu- ral shrewdness and intelligence. Paris opened a new scene of observation to "nified monk, and he expressed his wonder and admiration, with all the naivete' and frankness of childhood, " I have seen a great deal," he ob- served to one whom Napoleon had recommended to him as a Ciceroni, " but I have not yet seen the palais-royal .- pray, let us go there." K St. Pire" re- turned the baron, " c'est impossible," [Holy father, it is impossible,] adding, that it would commit the character of his holiness, and compromise the dis- cretion of his guide. " But I would go," replied the pope, eagerly, " traves- tito da curato." This extraordinary masquerade did not, however, take place. While the pope remained in Paris, a number of idle boys made a trade of assembling under his windows, to sell his benediction: which they did fly crying " lea beni dictions du tr^es St. Pere, pour deux sous;" [the benedictions of the most Holy Father, for two-pence.] and when they had collected a crowd, and received the money, they commenced an outcry, calling to the pope to appear and bestow his benediction, in the same manner as the Eng- lish mob called for " Blucher" and " Emperor," when those personages were in London. The pope always complied with their demand, appeared, and gave the required benediction, perfectly unconscious of the trick that was played on him. — His.amiable manners won golden opinions from all who had access to him; and as far as he was known in France, either as guest or pri- soner, he was popular, pitied, and admired. § " H va etre amnestif.6" [He is going to be amnestied] was an expression in vogue, when I was in Paris, for a state prisoner who was about to be exe- cuted. With Napoleon, the word M amnesty" always preserved its original signification. * When it was represented to Napoleon, that Camot was conspiring against him, he replied, " Lui! — it est incapable de truhison" [he' he is incapa- ble of treason.] A remarkable instance of his dislike to the revival of past events occurred, when Chateaubriand was received at the Institute, in the place of the celebrated Chenier. Upon this occasion Chateau Driand, in the eloge of his predecessor, alluded to the part that brilliant wit had taken in the revolution, and revived the recollection of times, which it was so neces- sary to burv in oblivion. The emperor would not hear of this firebrand being thrown; and the illustrious martyr was rejected from the number of the elect, although in the same discourse he had lavished the most boundless homage on the man he h-vous donnS a manger anx cochons?" [" Monsieur Marquis, have you fed the pigs?"] Every body now, who affects loyalty to the reigning dynasty, professes it under the sanction of a title ; and I observed that both the superior and inferior orders of society gave a peculiar emphasis to every revived mark of nobility. Even the valet de chambre, as he flung open the folding-doors of the saloon, vociferated the names of the suc- cessive guests, with a marked and cadenced pronunciation, of madame-la-baronne, madame-la-comtesse, monsieur le due, and monsieur le vicomte ! Meantime the legitimate, or pretended, owners of these titles appear to be wrapt in ecstacy over the long-forgotten distinctions, which, at all times unaccompanied by legislative functions or political influence, are now but sel- dom backed by that opulence, which is in itself a rankj and they are indeed ' full of sound, Signifying" nothing." By a singular contradiction, however, rank, of even the highest orders, takes no precedence in private society. Even among the old noblesse, there is a sort of pete-mele confusion in the ingress and egress from assemblies, dinner-parties, and soirees, [evening parties] which no one endeavours to arrange, by either giving or taking the pas, [precedence.] Speaking on this subject to one, who speaks well upon all, with whom it is always instruction to converse, and to whom it is delightful to listen, the Comtesse Pastoret, she observed : « It is high birth rather than high rank that is estimated in France; but neither are marked in private society by those minute forms of pre- cedence, to which you free-born republican English pay such minute observance. At court, our dukes have their place, and our duchesses their tabourets, [tabouret, a sort of stool] but in the saloon, if any distinction is made, it is in favour of genius, celebrity, or age ; while to be a stranger, is an etat [rank] in itself." Rank is very ill defined in France, even by the most strenu- ous advocates for its privileges. I was informed that a baron is sometimes more noble than a duke ; and on my asking a royalist, whether Mons. D was a "gentU-homme ne?" ["gentleman born"] he replied, "No : he is tVune naissance no- ble, but he is not gentU-homme," [« he is of noble birth, but he is not a gentleman."] J asked what constitutes that rank in the state ; and he made this singular reply : « the privilege of going Society. qj in the king's coach." Thus the rank, which in England gives its possessor a seat in the senate, in France may not entitle him to " a seat in the king's coach." What must have been the geni- us of the old government, when the energy and spirit of the nobility were broken down to such distinctions as these ! To be permitted to accompany Louis le Ghrand, in his drives from Versailles to Marli, and from Marli to Versailles, (the great occupation of his life) was an honour of which all his nobles were proudly ambitious ; and Madame de Sevigne describes one of these royal promenades, en votture, [carriage-parties] in a manner that gives a fair picture of the morals, and spirit of tire times. The king went first, in a caliche [calash] with his mis- tress, her sister, and brothers ; the noble Mortimarts and Thianges ! then followed the queen and princesses, legitimate and illegitimate.* However striking these evidences of social degradation may be, to the eye of moral and political philosophy, to the glance ©f the genuine French royalist they are not perceptible ; or, if observed, are but considered as trifling « egaremens du cozur et de Vesprit" ["wanderings of the heart and mind"] in the royal legislators, who at once modelled and executed their own sys- tem of government. On this subject they will hear no reason- ing : unable to deny, what it is impossible to defend, they cut short all argument with : «« cependant je voudrois que tout cela fusse, comme dans le bon vieux terns," [<« however, I wish all this went on as it did in the good old times."] A very clever and intimate friend of mine at Paris, with con- siderable talent and some wit, had gotten deeply entangled with the royalistes enrages; and was herself indeed enragee, to a point that was sometimes extremely amusing. We were chat- ting one morning, when a royalist acquaintance joined us, and mentioned an ordinance of the king's, which directed the for- mation of a new military school, after the model of that insti- tuted in 1750, for the education of the young nobility. I could not help remarking, that I doubted whether this new school, upon old rules, would assimilate in its systems with the tactics of the military and polytechnic seminaries, formed during the revolution. My little enragee flew into a paroxysm of loyal in- dignation, and interrupted me with : « mais, ma chert ne me parlez pas de vos ecoles poly techniques," ,[" but, my dear, do not talk to me of the polytechnic schools,"] those hot-beds of jacobinism and brigandage^ [robbery.] It is our wish (nous * The Princess de Conti was the natural daughter of the king", by Mad. de la Valiere, and was always of these parties. ■j-The eleves [pupils] of the ecole militaire [military schools] of Mentz received the Duke de Berri, with tbeir arms crossed, in consequence of some obserra- o Qg SOCIETY. autresj [we royalists] that the rising generation should be shut up, and educated in a profound ignorance of all that has hap- pened for these last thirty years ; and that on coming forth into the world, they might find every thing in statu quo, as it was in the beau siecle de Louis XIV," [the brilliant age of Louis 14th.J " And the Bastille ?" I asked. « Eh, mais oui, ma chere ; et la Bastille aussi," ["Oh, yes, my dear; and the Bastile also."] The Bastille, she added, was a sort of maison de plaisance, [pleasant retreat,] when men of rank were sent to it, for hav- ing incurred the displeasure of the king ; as in the instance of the Duke de Richelieu, who was visited there by all the beau- tiful princesses of that day, who were eperdument [distractedly] in love with him. That for the lie du peuple, [the dregs of the people,] it was, if any thing, too stately and too noble a place of confinement ; and as for the iron cages and subterraneous dun- geons, they were only for state criminals, who spoke against the king and his government — « et tout cela, c 9 etoit tres juste," [" and all that was very right."] But I insisted on the facility with which a lettre de cachet might be procured, to shut up such suspected criminals, before any form of justice had pronounced them guilty. She shrugged her shoulders and replied : " Pour les lettres de cachet, on en peut dire antant de Men que de mail tene%, ma chere ! [As to the lettres de cachet they did as much good as evil ! now listen my dear !] Suppose I had a brother whose con^ duct disgraced our family, would you have us expose his shame, and throw an odium on our house, by suffering him to come in- to a court of justice? No, there was a time, when, under such circumstances, the honour and dignity of a noble family was saved ; and a lettre de cachet got rid of the mauvais sujet, [of- fender,] and buried together the criminal and the crime — Eh bien, iljaut toujour s esperer que le bon terns reviendra 111" [Well, let us still hope that those good times will return.] I quote these sentiments, uttered by a woman of rank, talent, and education, as being (I believe very generally) those of the party to which she belonged. While the royalists or personal adherents to the representa- tive of the Capets and the Bourbons take for their device the tions falling from his royal highness, signifying that he deemed these military Schools little better than nests of jacobinism and brigandage. On his enquiring, in rather a rough manner, what was to be learned in these seminaries? the chief master replied: " JMon Prince, c'est une ecole, ou on ap- prendd mourirpour sa patrie" [" Prince, it is a school where we learn to die for Qur country."] SOCIETY. 9fl well-known cry of Vendean loyalty, " vive le roi, qwand meme, 99 ["long live the king, all the same,"] and display upon all oc- casions sentiments worthy of this head-long devotion ; the ultras are by no means equally unreserved in their principles of at- tachment to the person and measures of the king. Louis XVIII. is treated by them as " a good, easy man," whose moderation is weakness ; who, unnecessarily false, and injudiciously arbi- trary, excludes from power those who are most capable of ex- ercising it; and merely contents himself with chopping off a few hands and heads, when hecatombs should bleed, to appease the spirit of unglutted vengeance, and to clear the kingdom of such persons and principles as he now suffers to share his coun- cils, and dictate his ordinances. Upon one occasion, an ultra, speaking of the king in terms of reprobation, that amounted nearly to accusing his most Christian Majesty of jacobinism and infidelity, I could not help asking him ; " le roi done, est-il royaliste P 9 " Voila, madame, ce que nous doutons," [" is not the king, then, a royalist ?" " That, madam, is what we are in doubt of,"] was the reply. In another instance, I was driving through the Bois de Bou- logne, with a lady of the same political sentiments, when the desolated state of that once beautiful spot called forth her lamentations and reproaches. Addressing me in a tone of com- plaint, as though it had been I who had carried off « Birnham wood to Dunsinane, 9 ' she exclaimed, « Voila, madame, voila Vouvrage de vous autres Anglais," [" There madam, that is the work of your English."] I could not help feeling piqued at her ingratitude for the services which, at least, had been ren- dered to her party ; and I answered, « Eh Men, madame, vous ave% un roi, en echange de votre bois, 99 [" Well, madam, you have a king in exchange for your trees."] She shrugged her shoulders, shook her head, and raised her eyebrows ; and replied, in a broken sentence, " pour cela, ma chere dame — eh ! eh! que voulex-vous? 99 ["As to that my dear lady — ah! well, what would you have ?"] as if not quite satisfied with the equi- valent. I indeed observed upon all occasions, that the royalists and ultras showed a perfect insensibility to the services rendered them by the allies in general, and by the English in particular. 1 remember walking with a party of ultras near the spot where Prince Blucher fell from his horse, when an Englishman of the party observed that it was there where the prince had broken some bone : and an ultra replied, apart, " If it had been his neck, it would have been no great matter." It is strange that even the Buonapartists and constitutional- ists, though protesting against the policy and falsehood of the 100 SOCIETY. English government, express themselves more favourably to- wards the nation than the royalists ; who, though pleased with the restoration, cannot altogether brook the discreditable man- ner of their return, nor cease to feel that they have been too much obliged. It is certain, moreover, that the moral and po- litical feelings of the constitutionalists assimilate more closely with those maintained in England, than the notions of the ad- vocates of the old regime in France, who assert unceasingly, that the anglo-mania which prevailed immediately before the revolution, was among the leading causes of that event ; and that Voltaire's letters on England were for his country the most pernicious work he ever wrote.* The gradual alteration in tone and manner of the ultra circles, during my residence at Paris, was extremely obvious, and to an uninterested observer very amusing. They no longer seemed bound to « hint a fault, and hesitate dislike" to the measures of the government; but ventured, even in certain traits of amiable weakness discoverable in the character of his Majesty, to find subjects of pleasantry and sources of censure. Their once loud vociferations, in favour of the divine right of kings, to be absurd without ridicule, and arbitrary without blame, ap- pear now utterly forgotten or wholly recanted. The Buonapartist-ministry, as they term it, is treated with avowed contempt ; the measures of the court publicly reprobated ; and even the private friendships and tender predilections of the king receive but little quarter. The respect paid to le Pere la Chaise, by the courtiers of Louis XIV. is denied, by their de- scendants, to the Fere Elysee of Louis XVIII. And those no- ble dames,^ whose great-grandmothers canvassed a look from the mistress of that king, and were the associates of all her dissipated orgies, refuse their countenance to the innocent and platonic preference of the reigning sovereign. The ultra ladies openly exclaim against the degradation of a place, once so nobly filled, and now occupied by a "petite maitresse de pro- vince" [« a little country gentlewoman."] Although it is un- derstood, that Mad. de V holds her captive only by the de- licate chains of mind, yet this spiritual communion is ridiculed ; * They accuse England of all their misfortunes ; of originating the revolu- tion; of sending the emigrants to be slaughtered at Quiberon ; and of letting loose Buonaparte from Elba. Even still they consider the ex-emperor as a sort of bag-Jox, to be let loose, whenever the English ministry may be inclined to shoiu sport to Europe. f " Toutes les dames de la Reine font la compagnie de Madame de Montespan; On y joue tour a tour ; rien n'est cache, rien n'est secret." Lettres de Sevigne', vol. iii. ["All the queen's ladies associate with Madame de Montespan ; they are with her by turns ; nothing is concealed, nothing is secret." Smugness Letters. ] SOCIETY. 101 and the roturiere Agnes Sorrel [plebeian] falls within the general maxim of the class, as to her intellectual charms, " Nul n'aura de l'esprit, Hors nous, et nos amis."* ["Nobody has any mind, except us and our friends."] But while the king remains firm and true to his sentiments and attachments, no ties less pure disturb the moral propriety of his court ; and the royal family, it is observed, exhibit « un sublime et touchant tableau de toutes les vertus publiques et pri- rees,"f [" a sublime and affecting picture of all the virtues pub- lic and private."] No Madame du Barres now usurp a place "behind the throne, greater than the throne." Even bishops, who have long lived in holy wedlock with their revolutionary wives, have discarded them # and laymen, who for many years have lived without their cliires moites, [dear partners] have been obliged to take them back.§ All " liasons danger euses" [" dan- gerous connections' 9 ] are banished from a court, where piety and politics have usurped the place of gallantry and the graces ; as les petits ramoneurs, [little chimney-sweepers] once showed their sooty faces on the fans of French belles, instead of " the loves" whom they had dethroned. While, however, these two factions are engaged in frivolous discussions and puerile contests, in which their own interests and their own vanities alone hold any concern, the rest of the nation beholds in indignant silence their usurpation of all places of honour, emolument, and importance. It is the ancient no- blesse alone, who are sent into foreign countries to represent the land they have so long abandoned, and with whose existing principles and character their own can never assimilate. It is the adherents of the old regime, who command in the army, who lead in the senate ; and those, who for twenty-five years have been armed against France, now decide her fate, and rule over * A particular friend of Mad. P , in defending her from these malicious' imputations, said to me, " As to the king's visits to Mad. de P , it is not possible. He could not enter the door of her little apartment ; and such is her timidity, that when he addresses her at court, " le rouge lui tombe de lajoue," f_" the colour fades from her cheek."] Perfectly convinced myself of the innocence of the parties, 1 submit these proofs to the consideration of ultra- scepticism. f See Annales Politiques, August 19, 1816. + When Mad. Talleyrand returned to France, to enforce the fulfilment of the conditions which induced her to submit to a separation from her right reve- rend lord, the king was graciously pleased to be jocular on the occasion with his grand chambellan, [grand chamberlain.] " Old, Sire" ["Yes, Sire,"] re- plied Mons. T. et son retour est pour moi tin vingt de JWars" [" his return is to me a twentieth of March."] (The day of Napoleon's return from Elba.) §Mons. Chateaubriand is said to be among the number of these " martyr ss." 102 SOCIETY. lier vigorous population, upon principles and systems, whose aholition she had purchased with her blood, through a long and painful term of suffering, of conflict, and of misery. The society of Paris, after the second restoration of the Bourhons, appearing half in shade and half in relief, is not in- aptly imaged hy that condition of the moon, in which, although her whole orb be visible, the effulgence of her light proceeds only from a part. While the royaliste pur and the royaliste ex- agere, [the pure royalist and the violent royalist] buz, and bus- tle, and flutter on the scene, warmed into animation by the rays of princely protection, or of royal favour ; all who cannot claim these distinguishing epithets, "preserve the noiseless tenor of their way," and (to borrow a phrase of Cowley) "lead a life, as it were, by stealth." This unclassed, but suspected order, generally under the sur- veillance [care] of the police, and often little better than pri- soners to their own porters and valets, have, by some fatal ex- periences, been broken into circumspection ; and, in general, society are cautious not to risk opinions, which might unavail- ingly incur the penalty of exile, or perhaps of death. A cer- tain tone of pleasant equivoque, however, pervades their conver- sation, an ambushed raillery, which well supplies the place of bitter invective, or of whining complaint. How often, and how willingly, have I hastened to one of their « petits comitcs sous la rose," [*< little committees under the rose,"] from some cata- comb circle, where each monumental member spoke in his turn, or was called to order, if he infringed on the prescribed regu- larity of the conversation ! — With what pleasure have I flown to some forbidden ground, where, in the hallowed circle of ami- ty and confidence, wit and genius exercised their proscribed witcheries $* where talents, which were even tiien, under va- * " The world," said one of the most celebrated men of Europe to me, " is divided into five parts ; the four old quarters, and lesgem cV esprit; [people of talents ;] and tins fifth division is now placed on the list of proscription." " Who is that person ?" asked the Due de D s, pointing out a gentleman who had excited his attention by observations, somexohat bold, on a political subject of conversation. " & 'est unhomme d? 'esprit" ["He is a man of talents,"] was the reply. " Bon" [** True,"] added the due. " Je vols bien qu'il n* est pas zious autres." ["I see he is not one of us."] It is to the father of this nobleman, that the following anecdote is attributed. Being appointed to direct the festivities for the marriage of the count d'Artois, it was suggested to him, that an epithalamium was indispensable; and a per- son was recommended, to perform the job. Upon his consenting to this arrange- ment, the poet waited upon him for his directions, in what manner it should be got up. "Jlfa foi," [ "Really"] he replied, "je if en sais rietl : qu , il soit de ve- lours vert, brode d'or, comme les autres meubles /" [" I know nothing about it, let it be of green vclvei. embroidered with gold, like the rest of the furniture."] SOCIETY. £Q3 rious forms, delighting the world, and pursuing their golden course to immortality, reserved some of their brightest beams to illumine the passing moments of private intercourse ; and where names were re-echoed, destined to live for ever, and al- ready traced in the luminous rolls of splendid celebrity ! This, indeed, was a society, often « dream'd of in my philosophy,' 5 but never counted upon in my expectations. These were hours over which weariness held no jurisdiction ; and every sand in the glass turned to gold, as it feljty The society of Paris, taken as a whole, and including all par- ties and factions, is infinitely superior in point of taste, acquire-, ment, and courtesy, to that of the capital of any other nation. Paris, the elysium of men of letters, has always been the resort of foreigners of literary, scientific, and political eminence; and princes and potentates, who have influenced the destinies of na- tions, are seen mingling in her circles with the more valuable characters of Europe, whose works and names are destined ttf reach posterity, when titles of higher sound shall be forgotten, and the Humboldts, the Play fairs, the Davys, the Castis, the Canovas, now succeed, in the Parisian salons, to the Stern es, the Humes, the Walpoles, and Algarottis of other times. The talent for conversation so conspicuous in France among all classes, originating, perhaps, in the rapidity of perception and facility of combination of the people, was early perfected by in- stitutes, which, prohibiting an interference in matters of gov- ernment, determined the powers of national intellect to sub^ jects of social discussion, and tasteful analysis. In the days of the beautiful and unfortunate Marie Antoi- nette, the splendid court which surrounded her, opposing itself to the philosophers, who brought strength and energy into fash- ion, reduced the whole vocabulary of bon-ton, as an elegant courtier of that day assured me, to about twenty or thirty words ; and whoever presumed to exceed the stated boundary, was stig- matised as a bel esprit, and a phUosophe, [wit and aphilosopheri] The revolution has added much to the strength of conversa- tion, without having sacrificed either precision or finesse : [ingenuity :] and « causer Men," [«« to talk well,"] to be a « boi% raconteur" [« to be a good relater,"] is as sure a passport to the best society at this moment, as it was in the days of Louis XV. La Marquise de V , enumerating to me one day the ce- lebrated persons who formed her soirees before the revolution, dwelt with many touches of pathos upon Champfort, who had been amongst the number; and she concluded, in a tone of great emotion, « Ah, madame,fai perdu en lui mon meilleur — V fff Ah, madam, I have lost my best — " She paused for an instant, and I was about to fill up the break, which feeling ha I £04 SOCIETY. made, with the word "ami;" ["friend.;"] but she repeated, « J'ai perdu en lui mon meUleur causeur .'" [" I have lost my best talker !"] Excellent raconteurs are to be met with in every society of Paris ; and I have listened with wonder and admiration to the humour, facility, and point, with which tale after tale has been delivered, anecdotes related, and stories invented, for the amuse- ment of a circle, where every member bore his part, and where all played in their turn a wiMing audience, and all were equal to an amusing exhibition. That « melancholy and gentleman- like" pleasantry, produced in English society under the name of quizzing, is a sort of " maudlin mirth" unknown in the cir- cles of Paris; while ridicule, always dreaded, and ably wield- ed, falls almost exclusively upon unfounded pretension. Taste, as referable to the ordinances of society, is here so deeply stu- died, so well defined in her rules, and so thoroughly under- stood in her principles, that the decisions of temporary modes have but little influence on opinion. As far as I could observe, although a certain light persiflage [jesting] was much the fashion, nothing was ridiculed, but what was strictly ridimlous. The mind, thus permitted to take its utmost stretch, is nei- ther restrained by fashion, nor clouded by ennui, and a licensed discussion of all subjects is granted to those, who are known to be wearisome upon none. Admiration for talent is indeed as universal, as is the intelligence which appreciates it. Not a ray falls unreflected ; not a point drops unfelt ; all is rebound and elasticity. The society, like the climate, is bright and ge- nial ; and it is the peculiar and united influence of both, to set the mind and the blood into rapid circulation, to lighten huma- nity of half the ills of its inheritance, to enhance its pleasures, and multiply its enjoyments. But while private society still preserves its delightful charac- ter, the existing order of things occasionally interferes with its recreations; and the vigilant police sometimes obtrudes itself on the pleasures even of those who have nothing to dread from its discoveries. Leaving, at a late hour, an elegant and bril- liant circle, in the Rue Ville Eveque, in the fresh impression of my admiration, I was lamenting that all my hours were not so passed, that a short time would convey me far from the seen© of such enjoyment, when a number of soldiers, rushing from be- neath the shade of a high wall, surrounded the carriage, and seized the reins. Bastilles, lettres de cachet, mysterious arres- tations, and solitary confinements, started upon my scared im- agination, and 1 had already classed myself with the iron masque, and caged Mazarine ; with the Wilsons, Hutchinsons, and Bruccs, as I rapidly went over my possible peccadillos of SOCIETY. 105 tese-majeste, when the leader of the military vociferated: " Qui sont ces Messieurs?" [« Who are these gentlemen?"] and order- ed the windows of the carriage to be let down. Our French servant, who was probably himself one of the police, immedi- ately entered upon the defensive, and declared that we were English persons returning to their hotel, from the Marquis de C 's ; adding significantly : " vous vous trompez, mes amis," [" you are mistaken my friends."] After a little muttering among the party, they drew back to their station under the wall, and we passed on, with feelings similar to those of the country mouse ; for though I acknowledged that « my lord alone knew how to live," still I could not help exclaiming, " Give me again my hollow tree, " My crust of bread — and liberty." As we drove on, I observed a fiacre pass us, and looking out of the window, perceived that it was stopped and surrounded, as we had been. The next morning we learned that the police had been in search of suspected persons,^ and our servant sug- gested that they were most likely concealed in the quarter where we had visited ; "for it is in the Rue d'Anjou (Jie added) that the two Queens live. 99 ] Amidst all the suspicion and distrust, which the weakness and vigilant jealousy of the present government are so well cal- culated to excite, in private society, each particular circle yields itself up to a freedom of discussion, which an entire confidence in the honour of its members can alone explain, or justify. The royalists abuse the ultras ; the ultras abuse the govern- ment ; the constitutionalists laugh at both, and just stopping short of treason, exercise their wit and their satire against the dominant parties, in songs, epigrams, anecdotes, and bon-mots. It has frequently occurred to me to have witnessed the most opposite discussions, and listened to the most contradictory opi- nions, in the course of the same evening; assisting at a royalist dinner, drinking ultra tea, and supping en repuUicaine. I have thus graduated on the political scale, from the extreme of loyal- ty to the last degree of rebellion. I was at a concert at the house of the charming Mad. de Beaucourt, the very Muse of royalism; and (almost won over to a cause recommended by her elegant compositions) I was joining in the chorus of •< Vive le roi, quand mime 99 ["long live the king, all the same,"] when I was reminded of an engagement I had made with a society of * We have occasionally seen the house of suspected persons guarded by soldiers, while the unfortunate inmates were undergoing" a scrutiny. | The Queen of Spain and her aster, who is queen of— I forget what P 106 SOCIETY. another stamp and metal ; and I departed reluctantly, leaving many a gallant « chevalier de la bonne cause" [« knight of the good cause"] rapturously applauding the following loyal effu- sions, composed, played, and sung, hy their lovely hostess. PREUX CHEVALIER VEUT MOURIR POUR SON ROI. Preux chevalier, la gloire vous appelle, L'honneur vos dit de marcher sous saloi; Vouslejurez, vous lui serezfidele, Preux chevalier veut mourir pour son roi. (bis. J Auloin deja la trompette sonore Dans tous les cceurs a cause grand emoi ; Chant du depart, vous le redit encore : Preux chevaher veut mourir pour son roi. (bis, J Adieu, plaisirs, amour ; adieu, douce amie ; Adieu ces lieux, ou je recusta foi ; Cache tes pleurs, idole de ma vie ! Preux chevalier veut mourir pour son roi. (bis. J Le chevalier, sous la blanche banniere, Brulant d'ardeur, au loin repand l'effroi, En effrontant les hazards de la guerre, Preux chevalier veut mourir pour son roi. (bis. J L'air retentit du cri de la victoire ; Et du vainqueur tout a subi la loi. II fut heureux, par l'amour et la gloire, Le chevalier, qui servit bien son roi. (bis. J £THE BRAVE CHEVALIER WHO WOULD DIE FOR HIS KING."? Brave chevalier, when glory shall call you, (Though love in your path his sweet roses may fling) Will you not swear, though millions enthral you, To fight for your honour and die for your king. Brave chevalier, the war-trumpet sounding, To each gallant heart the remembrance shall bring That the true sons of France, the altar surrounding, Have sworn on their sabres to die for their king. K Farewell to friendship, to love, and to pleasure, "To all the dear ties round my bosom that cling, " Hide thy soft tears, my soul's fondest treasure, ** The brave chevalier must die for his king." Bravely they fought beneath the white banner, While waved in their helmets the lily of spring, Sweet flow'r, may the pinions of victory fan her, As she shades his cold brow who has died for his Icing. .[* This is rather an imitation than a translation. T.l ■ SOCIETY. IQJ But oh ! when the rage of the battle is over, And the clarions of conquest triumphantly ring, — How swells then the heart of the hero and lover, The brave chevalier who has served well his king] With this melodised loyalty, still breathing on my ear, I arrived in the anti-room of the hotel where I was to sup ; and while I was unshawling, I caught the first stanzas of the fol- lowing song, which my presence did not interrupt, and which, given with infinite humour, was received with rapturous plau- dits, warm and sincere as those bestowed on " Freux chevalier vent mourir pour son Roi." Ca v? tiendra pas.* Comme il faut prendre, en philosophe, Les accidens facheux et bons, J'ai supporte la catastrophe, Qui nous ramena les Bourbons. Pour me trouver sous leur passage, J'ai meme fait deux ou trois pas, Mais je me suis dis "e'est dommage" Ca n' tiendra pas, ga n' tiendra pas. ? w' Quand Berri, D'Artois, D'Angouleme De ville en ville ont colporte, Des heritiers du diademe La dilitante Trinite. lis se donnoient pour des grands Princes, Mais bientot chacun dit, tout bas, Pour leurs grandeurs, ils sont trop mi?ices t Ca n* tiendra pas, ca n' tiendra pas. s II voudroit regner sur la France Ce Roi, qui parmi des Francais, Osa dire avec insolence : ' " Je dois ma Couronne aux Anglais."-^ Ah ? puisse encore la France entiere Dire, en la brisant en eclat, Si tu la dois a l'Angleterre, Ca n' tiendra pas, §a n' tiendra pas." [* This is the purport of the first stanza of the above song : — As it is our duty to bear like philosophers the good and evil accidents of life, I have sup- ported the catastrophe which brings us back the Bourbons. To get a sight of them, I have even gone two or three steps out of my way ; but I said to myself, " 'tis a pity." — This will not last, this will not last, &c. &c.] f"Je reconnais, qu' apres Dieu, e'est au Prince Regent, que je dois ma Couronne," [" I know that, next to God, it is the Prince Regent to whom I owe my crown."] , This public declaration was a deep wound to the honour of the nation, and is thus alluded to in one of the best pamphlets of the day. "Horribles paroles ! gravees trop profondement dans le coeur de tous les Francais, et qu'il est inutile de commenter" — [" Horrible words ! engraven too deeply on the hearts of all the French, and which it is useless to comment upon."] |08 SOCIETY"'. Je ris tout haut de la jactance De teas ces faquins d'emigres, Qui, par peur, ont quitte la France, Et qui, par faim,y sont rentres. Pauvre petit-fils de Henri Quatre ! Peux tu comter sur ces pieds-plats ? Pour toi, quand il faudra se battre, Ca n* tiendra pas, ca n' tiendra pas. s. On prodigue avec insolence Ces rubans, ces marques d'honneur, Que l'on arrache de la vaillance, Au vrai merite, a la valeur. De ce tort on peut vous absoudre ; Ces croix, ces rubans, ces crachats ; Messieurs, vous avez beau les coudre, Ca, n' tiendi'a pas, ca n' tiendra pas. The emperor Julian declared that he most admired, in his favourite Gauls, that gravity °f character, which resemhled his own. And though it may appear an affectation of singularity, to agree in this imperial opinion, as applied to the modern French, yet in all circles, among all classes, both in public and in private, I was struck with the tone of quietude and serious- ness, the capability of profound and sustained attention, distin- guishable equally in the parterres of their theatres, and the circles of their saloons. That wild exuberance of gaiety, that boisterous overflowing of animal spirits, found even under the sombre influence of our own less genial clime, is rarely or never seen in France. The gaiety of the French appeared to me, not more a constitutional than an intellectual vivacity ; a sort of moral energy, a prompt, though not a profound sensibility, which gives spirit to their manners, animation to their counte- nances, and force to their gesticulation. I have occasionally joined a circle of persons that looked " like their grandsires, cut in alabaster," until some subject of interesting discussion was accidentally in- troduced; and then every eye lighted up, every countenance brightened, and all became animated in gesture, and forcible in expression. The virtue of temperament most peculiarly French, is that even show of perpetual cheerfulness, which, what- ever may be its cause and origin, is most gracious in its effects and influence; which throws a ray even on their gravity, and is infinitely more delightful than their seemingly automaton vi- vacity. The circles of fashion, in Paris, are characterized by a for- mality in their arrangement, to which their sedentary propen- SOCIETY. 109 sities in all ranks greatly contribute. Nobody is loco-motive, from a love of motion; there are no professed loungers, nor habitual walkers. — Every body sits or reclines, when, where, and as often as he can ; and chairs are provided not only for those who resort to the public gardens, but also in the streets, along the most fashionable Boulevards, and before all the cafes and estaminets, [coffee houses and taverns,] which are farmed ^)ut at a very moderate price. The promenade of persons of fashion is merely a seat in the air. They drive to the gardens of the Thuilleries, alight from their carriages, and immediately take their seat under the shade of the noblest groves of ches- nuts, or in the perfumed atmosphere of roses and orange trees. In the gardens of the Luxembourg!!, swarms ,of the ancient inhabitants of that old-fashioned quarter, come forth with their primitive looks, antiquated costume and pet animals, to take their accustomed seats every evening, and remain in endless cmtserie, [chit-chat,] enjoying their favourite recreation in this lovely spot, until the shades of night send them home to their elevated lodgings, « an quatrieme" [*« in the fourth story."] The circles of the ancient noblesse [nobility] are formal and precise, to a degree that imposes perpetual restraint ; the ladies sre all seated a la ronde ; [in a circle ;] the gentlemen either leaning on the back of their chairs, or separated into small compact groups. Every body rises at the entrance of a new guest, and immediately resumes a seat^ which is never finally quitted until the moment of departure. There is no bustling, no gliding, no shifting of place for purposes of coquetry, or views of flirtation; all is repose and quietude among the most animated .and cheerful people in the world. My restlessness and activity was a source of great astonishment and amuse- ment : my walking constantly in the streets and public gardens, and my having nearly made the tour of Paris, on foot, were cited as unprecedented events in the history of female peram- bulation. Coming in very late one night, to a grand reunion, I made my excuse, by pleading the fatigue I had encountered during the day ; and 1 enumerated the different quarters of the town I had walked over, the public places I had visited, the sights I had seen, and the cards I had dropped. — I perceived my fair auditress listening to me at first with incredulous attention ; then « panting after me in vain," through all my movements, losing breath, changing colour, till at last she exclaimed : — " Tenez, madame, je n 9 en puis plus. Encore un pas f etje n'en reviendrai, de plus de quinze jours?" [" Stop madam, I can bear no more. If you go a step farther, I shall not recover for a fortnight ?"] 110 SOCIETY. This love of sedentary ease struck me most particularly, at court. At one of the receptions of the Duchess de Berri (held at the Elysee Bourbon,) we were detained longer than had heen expected in an anti-roam, waiting the arrival of her royal high- ness from the Thuilleries, where she dined with the king. — There were a great many ladies, and hut few seats. On every side were to he heard. « Ah, seigneur dieu/ que c'est ennuijeux! Comment peut-on se tenir debout, comme ca? Madame, je meurs de fatigue, &c. &c. [** Ah ! how tired I am — How is it possi- ble to remain standing so long? Ah ! madam I am dying with fatigue."] A few nights before, at the play given at the Thuil- leries, several ladies, extremely well accommodated as I thought, left their places, in search of others, where they might be more at their ease ; while English ladies of the highest rank were I pushing and squeezing, and standing, too happy to be admitted, on any terms, to witness the spectacle of a court play, perform- ed in the magnificent theatre, which recalls all the splendour, and much more than the elegance of the famous salle des ma- chines [hall of machines] of Louis XIV. The formality however of those circles, in which it is the fashion to reflect the manners of the ancien regime, is not uni- versal. There are many sets and societies, in the immense range of Parisian company, in which the most perfect ease prevails ; where it is permitted to sit, or stand, or lounge, to put the. feet on the fender, or the elbow on the table, as repose may dictate, or familiarity induce; where the lady of the house does wot positively insist that her guest must occupy the distin- guished bergere, [arm-chair,] nor shudders at the vulgar choice of an humhie *• chaise de paille," ["rush-bottomed, chair;"] where each person is left to consult his own ease, according to the dictates of his own feelings, without reference to rides of etiquette, or to the established " bon-ton de la parfaitement bonne compaguie," [*< bon-ton of perfectly good company."] The great attraction and cement of society, in 1" ranee, is conversation; and, generally speaking, all forms and arrange- ments tend towards its promotion. No rival splendors, no os- tentatious display, no indiscriminate multitude make a part of its scheme. The talents, which lend their charm to social com- munion, are estimated far beyond the rank that might dignify, or the magnificence that might adorn it. In the saloon, " Virgil would take his place with Augustus, and Voltaire with Conde." I have seen Denon and Humboldt received (nth delight, where princes and ministers were beheld with indifference. "Et des hommes tels qu' cux marclicnt a cote des souvcrains." ["Such men as these should walk by the side of sovereigns."] SOCIETY. m The societies of Paris have not yet admitted the necessity of lions, to keep ennui from the door, and to give stimulus to the promptly -exhausted attention of fashionable inanity. The Dehli-Lamas of haut ton, who yawn away their existence in the assemblies of London, are as unknown in Paris, as those intel- lectual jugglers, who play off their « quips and cranks,'' for the amusement of prosperous dulness, or those more manual artists, who "tumble" themselves into fashionable notoriety, and who frequently, without recompense, as without esteem, (i strut their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more." Knowledge indeed is so much diffused, and a taste for sci- entific investigation so strenuously cultivated, in France, that judgment seems to approach the precision of mathematical cer- tainty ; and the natural tact of the people, the quickness of their perception, thus strengthened by cultivation, leaves pretension hopeless of success. There invariably « le savoir dans unfat, de-dent impertinence," [« knowledge in a coxcomb, becomes impertinence."] Many foreign charlatans, who have been for a time countenanced in England, and crowned with complete success in Ireland, have been the public laugh of Paris, the amusement of idlers, and the contempt of the learned. M Engage* vos sujets a se marier le plutot possible, 1 ' [« Induce your subjects to marry as soon as possible,''] is the political ordinance of a French writer, strictly obeyed in France. The youth of both sexes marry now, as formerly, much earlier than in England ; and without pausing to consider the effects of such premature unions, upon moral and political life, it is very ob- vious that the pleasures of private society gain materially by the change. INo manoeuvring mothers, nor candidate daugh- ters, appear upon the scene, bent exclusively on canvassing for a matrimonial election,* herissonees [guarded] with maternal amour-propre, [self-love,] or agitated by fears of rivalry, or hopes of conquest. No cautious heir, suspicious of undue in- fluence, wraps himself up in the safety of silence, and in the affectation of neglect, whispering his "nothings into the ear of his equally cautious companions, and violating every form ef good breeding, by a strict observance of the rules — of pru- dent resei-ce. Young unmarried women, indeed, seldom appear in society, except in the domestic circle, or at the bals-pares, [dress-balls,] which are sufficiently numerous in the gay season of Paris, to afford ample sources of pleasure and dissipation, and which beginning and ending early, and being devoted to • * An heiress by no means makes the same sensation, in France, as amongst us ; because it is generally understood that suitable arrangements have been made for her establishment, before she appears in public. 112 SOCIETY. their graceful and elegant dances, are infinitely more calculated for youthful recreation, than the late hours and unwholesome crowds of London assemblies, where youth so soon loses its spirit and its bloom, and where the often exhibited beauty glows stale on the sickly eye of fashion, before it has accomplished the end of its annual and nightly exhibitions.* Marriages are still pretty generally arranged by the pru- dence and foresight of les bons parens; [the good parents ;] but daughters are no longer shut up in convents, till the day of their nuptials; nor are they condemned to behold for the first time their husband and their lover, almost at the same moment. Educated chiefly at home, they mingle with the customary guests of the maternal circle, from which the companion of their future life is not unfrequently chosen ; and since inclination is never violated, nor repugnance resisted, it must often happen among the young, the pleasing, and the susceptible, that duty and preference may go together, and obedience know that *« il est doux de trouver, dans un amant qu'on aime 9 un epoux que Von doit aimer," [« it is sweet to find in a lover that we love, a hus- band that we ought to love."] To this may be added, that a young French woman, like a young English woman, may for- ward parental ambition, by her own aspiring views, and <* don- ner dans la seignearie" [« look up to rank and fortune,"] with a ready recantation of the romantic drama of « love in a cot- tage," which in the end frequently turns out to be a cottage, without love. The French youth of both sexes, of the present generation, are peculiarly distinguished by all the genuine and delightful characteristics of that most delightful period of human exist- ence. Spirited, energetic, frank, and communicative, they have found the order of things, under which they have been brought up, peculiarly favourable to their moral development. The military and the scientific education of the young men have acted mutually and favourably upon each other; adding to force and activity, a just appreciation of scientific knowledge, and destroying that false estimate of useless and frivolous ac- quirements, which made the merit and the charm of the abbes and petit-maitrcs of the old regime. None of these fluttering in- sects now appear, hovering round the toilette, and swarming at the levees of beauty; lisping their critiques on patches and poe- try, deciding with importance on a tragedy or a cosmetic, and claiming it as an equal distinction, to judge the merits of an epi- * Very young" girls do not, in general, frequent soirees, or mere conversation- al societies, because they do not themselves desire it. To balls and to concerts they go at a much earlier age, thau is usual in England ; and there is no decided period for " coming oxit" No unmarried woman, of any age, can go to court. SOCIETY. H£ gram, or pronounce on the flounce of a petticoat. Of these « unfinished things" not a trace remains; and I have seen the sudden appearance of a London " dandy" make as great a sen- sation in a French assembly) by its novelty and incomprehen- sibility, as when the ornithosynchus paradoxus came to confound the systems, and dislocate the arrangements of the naturalists, at the jardin des plantes, [garden of plants.] I was one evening in the apartment of the Princesse de Vol- konski (a Russian lady,) awaiting the commencement of one of her pretty Italian operas, when one of these « fashion-monger- ing boys,'' as Beatrice calls them, newly arrived in Paris, ap- peared at the door^>f the saloon, flushed with the conscious pride of the toilette, and reconnoitring the company through his glass. I had the honour to be recognized by him ; he approached, and half yawned, half articulated some enquiries, which he did not wait to be answered, but drawled on to somebody else, whom he distinguished with his notice. A very pleasant little French woman, the daughter of the Comte de L-s-ge, was talking to me, when my English mcrveilleux [wonder] joined us. Mad. de Y stared at him with unsated curiosity and evident amusement; and when he had passed on asked, « mais qu'est- ce que cela vent dire?" [« But what is all this?"] I answered, " C'est un dandi !? 9 [" It is a dandy !"] « Un dandi J" ["Adandy"] she repeated, " un dandi ! c'est done un genre parmi vous, qu\m dandi F* .[« a dandy ! it is then a species among you, a dandy ?"] I replied, « no ; rather a variety in the species, 9 '' I endea- voured to describe a dandy to her, as well as it would bear defi- nition : asking her, whether there was no pendant [parallel] for it in French society ? " Mais 9 mon Dieu, out; 99 [" Oh yes,"] she replied ; «* nosjeune's duchesses sont dpeu-pres des dandis,"* [our young duchesses are almost all dandies." A few days after this exhibition of dandyism, I met with an- other of the tribe in the hotel of the Baron Denon. He was a young diplomatist, and added the weight of official solemnity to the usual foppery of a merveilleux. Associating only with his own spy-glass, lie passed with languid indifference from one ob- ject to another, in the splendid collection he had been brought to see ; but without once noticing, by word or look, the eminent * I was told that many of the young duchesses, who now claim the supreme privilege of the " divine tabouret, et qui se traduissent en ridicide, raalgre tear qualite," [" the divine tabouret, and who make themselves ridiculous in spite of their rank,"] assume an air of superiority over the less privileged classes, which I suppose induced a French gentleman to observe to me, as the Duchess de passed by us: '« De toutes nos jeunes duchesses, voila la plus insolent?" [*' Of a ])_ our young duchesses, there is the most insolent."] |J[4 SOCIETY. and celebrated person, who was so much more worthy of atten- tion, than even the treasures he possessed. M. Denon, to© much amused to be hurt by this want of good manners in his guest, followed him, with a look of pleased attention. I could almost trace in his eye a desire to place this modern curiosity among his Chinese josses, and bamboo pagodas. When this rare specimen of " quaint fashions of the times" took his leave, Mons. D exclaimed with a smile, and a shrug of the shoul- ders : « Quel drdle de corps qiCun dandiJ" [<* What a queer fel- low is a dandy !"] 1 was surprised to find that the Egyptian traveller had so far extended his study of the human character, as to discover at once an English dandy, by its generic charac- ter. By those accustomed to the systematic politeness and cere- monious courtesy of the old regime, the military youth of France are accused of a brusqueric, [roughness] a certain force and bluntness of manner, foreign to the national urbanity. It is most certain that « les graces [the graces] do not now receive that homage, which the "pctits marquis, a talons rouges," ["the little marquises with red heels,"] offered on their altars in former times. Boys are no longer studied in the " sad ostent" of idle compliment. Few petits-bons-hommes of eight years old would address their handsome mother, like the little Due de Mairfe, and exclaim, "vous etes belle comme un ange!" ["you are as beautiful as an angel !"] The eleves of the polytechnic schools, and of the Lycees, have more of the careless boldness, which distinguishes the manly pupils of Westminster and Har- row, than the (i petits soins" and "jolies tournures," ["little at- tentions and pretty manners,"] with which the little Richelieus won hearts and ruined reputations, at fifteen. And though these young, and generally ardent votaries of science possess less erudition, and are less grounded in classical lore, than the profound scholars of Cambridge, or the elegant students of Oxford, they are still far more extensively acquainted with every branch of useful knowledge, with history, science, and philosophy, than the best of their predecessors, under the an- cient regime. If fewer Arnauds, Daciers, and La Mottes are to be expected from the rising generation, the schools of science promise abundance of worthy* successors to the D'Alcmberts, the Diderots, the Cabanis, the Bichats, the La Places, the Ber- tholets, and the Cuviers. The belles-lettres of their national literature seem to come to * There is no circumstance, in the appearance of the National Institute, more striking* and more interesting, than ihc v;ist proportion of young' men, who have forced themselves, by superior talent, within its walls. SOCIETY. US the French youth, as reading and writing did to Touchstone, by nature. Persons of all classes quote the popular authors of the last hundred years, as if they had imbibed their effusions with their first nourishment, and no one is ashamed to write like a man of letters ; nor, however high his rank, confines himself to the " style (Van homme de qualite"* [" style of a man of qua- lity."] The law of conscription, and still more the personal influence which Napoleon excited aver the higher ranks, by inducing or by forcing their sons, at an early age, into the army, much in- terrupted the course of education, and checked the progress of elegant acquirement. But in all ages, and under all reigns, the army was the hereditary profession of the young French nobility ; and the elder sons were as invariably guidons [en- signs] and colonels, as the cadets [younger ones] were prelates and aobes. I can, however, on my own experience attest the ardour with which the young men of the highest rank, civil and military, return to their studies, from which they had been forcibly estranged. I have known the young heirs to the most distinguished names in modern celebrity, to the most illustrious titles in historic record, not less regular and assiduous attend- ants on the daily lectures of Cuvier, St. Fond, Fourcroy, Haiiy, than those who have to subsist by the exercise of their acquired talents. It is this attention to scientific and philosophical research, which occupies so generally the mornings of young French- men, and throws an imputation on the capital, that there are few gentleman-like persons to be seen in the streets. It is quite true that the young men in their black stocks and shabby hats, hurrying from lecture to lecture,f hastening to catch the hours of one public library, or to overtake those of another, whether on foot, in their «• Bogeys Anglaises" ["English Bug- gies,"] or in their own ill-appointed cabriolets, are by no means so ornamental to a great city, as those ** neat and trimly dressed' 1 votaries of English fashion, who, for the benefit of the public, and their own gratification, parade their persons and their ennui, at stated [fours, in stated places; who preside, over the folds of a neckcloth, or dictate the varnish which should * A phrase much in fashion, before the revolution, was "e'erire en homme dc tpiaUte," [" to write like a man of quality.] " Cest dommage que la revolu- tion tavisse la source de tons ces bona ridicules" ["It is a pity that the revolution dries up the source of all these good ridiculous phrases,"] says a modern satirist. f The number of public institutions, established and supported by govern- ment for national education, all well attended, are a sufficient proof of the uni- versal diffusion of knowledge, and of the general application to study of the rising generation. Hf3 SOCIETY. illustrate a boot. Street exhibition is, indeed, wholly un- known in Paris; and no man, young or old, founds his cele- brity on rivalling his own coachman, or upon the superior ex- cellence and appointment of his turn-out The extreme on the other side of the question amounts, indeed, too frequently to the ludicrous; and the point of preference must be left to the um- pire of those, who are interested in, and adequate to the dis- cussion. The settlement of the French government, under the impe- rial reign, produced that public calm, which is favourable to the return of the long-scattered lights of science and learning; and public instruction was re-assumed with a vigour and uni- versality, almost unprecedented in any other country. The regime of the Lycees comprehended the study of literature, an- cient and modern, the mathematical and physical sciences, as they apply to general life and to professions. To these branches were added the modern languages ; and six years was the time fixed for the studies of the pupil.* The polytechnic school, devoted to the mathematical, physi- cal, and chemical sciences, and to the graphic arts, was des- tined to form and educate pupils for the service of the nation. f How well, and how willingly the young eleves [pupils] fulfilled the intentions of the legislature, in its foundation, was evinced during the struggle which -France made against the arms of Europe, in 1815; when this little band of boyish heroes de- fended the heights of Mont-Marte, with an energy of spirit, a desperation of courage, and a display of skill, which would have consecrated any cause; and which recalled the youthful bands of Sparta, fighting in honourable and dear alliance for glory and for death. ± I have at this moment before my eyes one of these « veteran youths," as I once beheld him, describing the evacuation of Paris by the French troops; and never did the mind create a finer vision of self-devoted patriotism, with all tiic harmonizing * The number of ecoles, prytane'es, lycees, 4coles epiciales, [schools, prytane- ums, lvceums, special schools,] colleges, academies, and institutes, which succeeded to the ten colleges, " deplane exercise," where the French and La- tin languages were taught, with theology, law, medicine, and the arts, are countless. Theology alone is a sufferer, by the abolition, of the ancient semi- naries. j- Napoleon latterly excited the jealousy of the pupils of the polytechnic school, by the exclusive attention he paid to the military school at St. Cyr. \ Suddenly called from their classes into service, with oily the benefit of a few weeks' exercise and discipline, to prepare them for the arduous conflict, they were appointed to serve the artillery, destined to cover the approach to their positions; and they strewed the spot with the bodies of the enemy, de- fending their post till the barriers could no longer be protected. Great num- bers of them were found dead upon the guns they had so gallantly worked. SOCIETY. Ify attributes of spirit, grace, eloquence, and passion. He spoke of the emperor, merely as a great captain, worthy of the de- votion of his soldiers, by his personal bravery and military genius. — « But," added he, « it was not for him we fought — it was for the fast-eclipsing glory of France that we struggled ; and even, when all seemed lost, to others, hope still remained to us I The troops, afflicted, but not discouraged, even when the barriers of Paris were forced, were still eager to rally, to save the country, or to die upon the bayonets of the enemy. — . But shameful degradation, not glorious death, awaited them : they were hunted out of Paris, and ordered, by the command of foreigners, to retire to the lonely destination of their ignoble retreat. Oh.! then, what passions agitated the breasts of the brave, when the death they supplicated was denied them \" He paused, and added, in a hurried tone, « The march of the troops, through the streets of Paris, was characterized by all the fiercest wildness of despair, and was witnessed by its weeping population with sympathetic emotion. The men flung down their arms, and refused to obey their officers; they tore their hair, they rent their garments — courage unsubdued, spi- rits unbroken, indignation unrestrained, shame unconcealed, all mingled, all betrayed their symptoms in their distracted movements ; and their cries became howls, when, for the last time, they were drawn beyond the barriers of that proud city, which their arms and blood had nearly made the mistress of the world !" " You witnessed, then, the scene V I asked, affected by the emotions of the young narrator. <* Sije Vai vu.'" [« Have I seen it !"] he exclaimed, his eyes flashing fire through the tears that gushed from them. « Ma- dame, je suis moi-meme un brigand de la Loire !" [« Madam, I am myself a brigand of the Loire."] He had, in fact, only returned to his family a few weeks be- fore. Should the high-minded Mad. de B — s — re find in this slight sketch a resemblance to her gallant son, she will judge of the impression made on my mind by the character, spirit, and eloquence of the original. But, while monasteries and convents now rise on every side; while TJrsulines and Carmelites again revive and multiply by royal ordinance, and by princely encouragement, the Polytech- nic School is no more. Nor could the bravery, spirit, and de- votion of its pupils save it from that degradation, with which all institutions, marked by the energy and character of the age, are overwhelmed in the new order of administration. Even the course of female education, so obviously improved within the last thirty years, has received a new direction, and £1§ SOCIETY. assumes the characer of the rules and ordinances of the con- vent of St. Cyr. The accomplished women,* formerly at the head of the national seminaries, for the education of female youth, are now either displaced, to make way for pious ab- besses, or obliged to adopt vows and rules, perfectly mo- nastic. The maison (V education [house of education] at Ecouen, where three hundred daughters of military men, and public functionaries were educated, has recently undergone a change that amounts to its dissolution; and during the time that I was at Paris, a pitched battle was said to have taken place, between the few of its original pupils, who still remained, and the host of young royalist and emigrant ladies, who have recently filled up its ranks. I was assured that their missile contest rivalled, in force and energy, the celebrated conclave battle, when car- dinals laid aside arguments for blows, and ink-horns flew where hypothesis had resounded. Talking over this curious circumstance to an old royalist lady, who had two daughters at Ecouen, she exclaimed, « Pour ccs jeunes JBuonapartisies, ce sont des petiies viperes a etouffer /" ["These young Buonapartists are little vipers that must be strangled !"] The same lady assured me, that having placed her son in a military school immediately after the king's ar- rival in 1814, the conflict of political principles ran so high, between the royalist and Buonapartist boys, that she was ob- liged to withdraw her son, in terror for his limbs or his life. The change in the female seminaries of education, are said to be affected by the pious zeal and active interference of Mad. La Duchesse d'Augouleme, who personally interests herself in the nomination of both pupils and directresses. Other Ma- dame de Glapionsf arc now sought for, zealous and severe as the charming actress of Jlordecai, to restore rules, which she *I believe the former directress en chef [in chief] of the school of the Le- gion of Honour, was Mad. de Campau, widow of the celebrated Geo. Campau. f Mad. de Glaplon, superior of St. Cyr, seems to have owed her distinction and elevation to her performance ofMordecai, the .Tew, in one of the pious tra- gedies acted by the young- novices of that institution, for the amusement of the king and the court. There was a malicious report, when I was at Paris, among- the anti-royalists, that Monsieur Chateaubriand's M. S. tragedy of " Moses" which has been so often read in private society, is to be got i/f> by the young ladies of Ecouen, by permission of Madame, in imitation of the Esther and At Italic of Racine. **Des voix pures et virgin ales" ["Pure and virgin voices,"] as Mad. du Stand calls the singers of St. Cyr, are to chaunt the choruses of Moses, which are said to resemble, in fijjurative ardour, the Songs of Solomon; and the saintly, though laical, author himself 'is to perform the part of Moses, and to lead his fair tribe to the land of promise. SOCIETY. 149 alone could preserve among the rather restive young ladies of St. Cyr, whose wanderings and extasies on divine love* forced the illustrious foundress to declare, « J'aimerois mieux avoir a gouverner un empire" [" I would rather govern an empire."] This union of tent-stitch and faith, of dogmas and doctrines, with nouns and pronouns, excites, on the part of the ultras, boundless admiration for the royal personage, who revives a mode of education long exploded, and which had certainly no influence on female morals, as the conduct of the Chateauroux and de Pries, and the Mancinis evince. But upon all occasions the ultras merit the eulogium, applied to them by the deputy of Rouen, « Messieurs, je vous trouve toujours plus royal que le Roi 9 et plus religieux que le Pape" [" Gentlemen, I find you more royal than the king, and more religious than the pope."] * The divine love of Mad. Guyon had such an effect on the young ladies of St. Cyr, and her K court moyear [" brief method"] exerted so powerful an in- fluence, that, says their elegant historian, on etoit en contemplation, on avait des extases ; le gout pour Voruison devenoit si pirissant, que tons les devoirs etoienf negliges .'" ["they had contemplation, they had extasies; the taste for prayer became so powerful, that all other duties were neglected '"] The result then of tins over-strained piety and religious observance, seems only to have been the neglecting of imperious duties, and the substitution of m for practical virtues. FRANCE. BOOK III. Society. " There ought to be a system of manners in every nation, which a well* formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Bcrke. Woman, — Her former Influence, and actual Position in French So- ciety. — National Characteristics.— Madame D'Houdetot. — Mar- ried Life. — Gallantry, Manners, Education. — Domestic Habits. — The Femme de Chanibre. — La Bonne. — Domestic Servitude.-* The Teilet. — The Royal Trousseau. IN all considerations of society, whether political or moral, the mind habitually directs its views to those relations, which spring from the intellectual and physical forces of man alone. But there is a light and ornamental capital, crowning the mas- sive columns of the social ediiice, upon which, when the mind has estimated the depth of the foundation, and the strength of the base, it rests with pleasure and recreation. Fragile and de- licate, full of grace, and replete with harmony, this last work of the almighty architect seems to typify the benevolent inten- tions, which originated awl planned the whole structure of crea- tion. Women, in all regions, and under all institutions, as wife* and as mother, exercises, through the delightful medium of these sa- cred ties, a direct or an indirect influence on the constitution of society. And it is a curious paradox that in the country, where she has reigned with the most unlimited controul, she has been denied all chartered jurisdiction in its political government. There seems, however, to have been at all times a conventional agree- ment, in French societv, to counteract the severe proscription of 122 - SOCIETY. those Sa]ie laws, which certainly were not established on the pre- sumption of female inability to reign;* since, uu der the title of jregent, women have governed the helm with all the despotism of the most absolute monarchy, and occasionally with a tyranny, which has been justly charged* against them as a reproach, by the satirists of France and of other countries. Women have never been called to the throne of elective mon- archies, nor have taken any share in republican governments. Their genius, tact, and address suit best with the jinesse, which rules the cabinets of hereditary and decspotic monarchies. The fair Gabrielles and the Entragnes had no power in the court of Henry IV. when opposed in his mind to the wisdom of his minis- ter Sully, whose government almost approached to the vigour of republican rule. They had a very different influence upon the affairs of their royal lover, from that exercised in the courts of Louis XIV. and XV. when the women created marshals, displac- ed ministers, intrigued with foreign cabinets, and corresponded with imperial sovereignty.! It was in these two reigns most especially, that love and poli- tics went hand in hand, and the reins of government, became entangled 'with the flowery bands of pleasure. * This is the ungallant supposition of Mezeray Cardinal Mazarin declar- ed that the Salic law was established, because it was always to be dreaded that a queen would be ruled, "par des amants incapables gouverner douu poules!" [by lovers incapable of governing a dozen hens.] f It is pleasant to consider how much the affairs of Europe must have been influenced, by the intrigues of Madame de Pompadour. Her resent- ment against the Due de Richelieu, for refusing to marry his son to her daughter, had nearly proved fatal to France. " Ses tracasseries penserent, com- me on verra, faire e'ehoutr V enterprise sur JMinorque, &c." [We shall see that her tricks will cause the failure of the enterprise against Minorca] Such was her conscious power, that she offered to make Voltaire a cardinal, on condition of\his writing a new version of the Psalms. Her correspondence with Marie Therese, and the homage offered her by that empress, are too will known to need comment. It is curious to observe the coolness with which even philosophy, in those days, considered the influence of a royal mistress. Voltaire was among the flatterers of Mad. de Pompadour; and Roussenu, speaking of the minister de Choiseul, observes: " II gagnoit dans ?non esprit an peu de eas que je faisois de ses pride'cesseiirs, sans excepter Mad. de Pompadour, que je regardois comme une faeon de premier ministre. Et quand le bruit courut que, d'elle ou de lui, Vun des deux expulseroit V autre, je cms faire des'veeux pour la gloire de la France, en en faisant pour que M. de Choiseul triomphat." [He rose in my opinion by com- parison with his predecessors, not excepting Madame de Pompadour, whom I always considered as a sort of prime minister. And when it was reported that either he or siie, one would turn out the other, I believed it for the glory of France that M. de Choiseul should triumph.] Mad. de Pompadour has left behind her, in France, the character of an ignorant, shallow-minded, and vin- die-K- rv 133 During the progress of the revolution, woman gradually be- came circumscribed within her own proper sphere; and when strength succeeded to feebleness, and force to intrigue, the deli- cacy of female perception, and the refinement of female agency, were no longer in demand. Another and a better scene was open- ed to woman's activity. Devoted to and for those, who had claims upon her feelings and her exertions, she confined her sovereignty to a more domestic existence. It would almost appear that this great event occurred for the purpose of demonstrating to what no- ble extremes of heroism female nature was capable of attaining.* The splendid portraits of self-immolation in the cause of the best feelings and affections of humanity, which many of the illustri- ous victims of the reign of terror left behind them, have shed a glory upon the sex, whose disinterested virtues and high capabili- ties they have so signally illustrated. No longer dazzled and debased by the splendor of a corrupt court, so long the fatal cynosure of their sex, the women of France learned to love their country, for whose service they now, for the first time, nurtured a future, citizen at their maternal bosoms. " VoiU deux fits quej'ui eleves* pour servir leur roi" [There are two sons, that I have brought up to serve their king.] said an old royalist lady to me, as she read a letter from her son, on his march to quarters. "And I," said the mother of the gallant genera] — "./'a? consacre mon unique fils an service de sa patrie." [I have consecrated my only child to the service of his country.] In despotic governments all undue influence is exercised and * The courageous attachment and in defati gable perseverance, which the women exhibited, during- the reign of terror, was magnanimous. In the first instance, more than two thousand women of condition presented themselves before the convention, to petition for the proscribed, to whom they had given shelter and protection, at the greatest risk; and in many instances, when they could no longer save or protect, they shared captivity, and even death, with. the objects of their pity or their affections. Antigone and the Grecian daugh- ter afford not examples of filial affection, more heroical, than were evinced in the persevering endurance of -Mademoiselle Cazotte, the lovely daughter of the charming author of " Le diable amoureux ,•" by Mad. de Paysac, and Mad. de ***, the one sacrificing, the other risking, her life for their illus- trious friends, Rabaud St. Ktienne, and Condorcet; by the more than heroic, the almost superhuman de Sombreuil, and by the young and incomparable Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucauld, who saved the life of her aged father in the Vendean wars, by a courage and ingenuity which woman alone knows how to unite. To these may be added the martyr-names of Maille, de Bussy, de Mouchy, Roland, and last, not least, the heroic Elizabeth of France, who died the victim of sisterly affection. She might have saved herself with In r brothers, who fled from France, had she not preferred death, with her un- fortunate relations, who remained. — It is curious to remark, that a Mad. La Valette distinguished herself by her resolute determination :o die with her husband, during the reign of terror. ££4i SOCIETY. admissible; and the influence of women being, to a certain extent, always undue, her powers are particularly called forth in a state, where the will of the sovereign is the law; anil where by his very position he is thrown, for resource against his own ennui, upon female conversation, and allurement. It is thus that mistresses purchase the privilege of political interference, by the labour m amusing some royal satrap, "qui n 9 est plus (unusable; 99 [who is not amusable;] and it was thus that for thirty years de Mainlenon occupied the idleness of the king, and influenced the decisions of his cabinet, when she had no longer beauty to charm, nor he sus- ceptibility to be attracted. This avenue to female ambition has long been closed, in France. No lady now brings her distaff into the council-chamber, nor can hope to be complimented by some obsequious controleur -general [comptroller general] with : "Eh, quoi, madame, le grand Colbert vows a done transmis son dme. ,99 % [What, madam, has the great Colbert transmitted to you his. soul,!] But although the executive power of the sex, is confined to the sway of their domestic regi- mes, the philosophy of legislation is by no means denied to their investigation. The reigning politics of the agitated day, during which I resided in France, were discussed even by young women, with considerable force and precision; while the men listened with indulgence, if not with deference. Feebleness and intrigue * This speech of Dodun, contruleur ginSral, during the regency, was made to Mad. de Prie, who had got up a speech on some state question, under the tuition of the crafty Duverney. This woman, who is described by cotemporary writers, as "femme perdue, intriguante, spiritneile et libertine," [a desperate wo- man, intriguing', witty, and unprincipled,] governed for some time both France and the regent ; and was herself governed by the four intriguing brothers of the name of Paris. She was the cause that the family of her royal lover did not give a queen to France. Offended by the coldness, with which Mad. de Vermandois received her, she left her in a rage, exclaiming: " Va; tu ne seras jamais reine de France:" [Go; you shall never be queen of France:] and she fulfilled her prediction, by preventing the marriage of Louis XV. with one of the most illustrious, amiable, and lovely women of Europe. Mad. la Marquise de Prie gave away, or sold, places of the highest importance. The indolence of the regent, and his devotion to every species of pleasure, and of dissipation, left a boundless scope to abuse; and the same observation might be applied to him, as cardinal du Bois made of Louis XV. when the deputies from the parliament of Paris came with a remonstrance to Versail- les. The cardinal on thi.- occasion dismissed them, saying: " On ne park ja- mais d'affaires au roi" [We never speak of the king's affairs.] This Mad. de Prie once threw int? the fire the remonstrances of the parliaments of Rennes and of Thoulouse, observing gaily, that they were of a " niauvais ton," and " sentoicnt la province///" [that they were vulgar, and smelt of the country/'] When she read some songs made against her conduct and character, she ob- served: " Voila ce que sont les Francois, quand Us sont trop bien." [See how the French go on, when they are too well treated.] Such are the good old times, \yhich the modern loyalty of England and France seek to have restored! seem wholly to have yielded to open and free discussion; roman- ces are laid aside tor "exposes;" the prettiest women in Paris run through all the intricacies oi finance, with the accuracy of a chancellor of the exchequer ; and "lips, which not by words pleased only, 9 ' became eloquent in the discussion of "le Buget." [the budget.] "Nous void, ma chere" said Mad. de R — Ize, as I entered one evening her salon. "Nous void tons, plus enfongees dans les horreurs de la politique, que la chambre des communes et tout le parlement d'Jlngleterre ne pourroient Vetre" [Here we are my dear .Here we are, more deeply immersed in the horrors of politics than the house of commons and the whole British parlia- ment can be.] And she went on with an argument on w,ays and means, which our arrival had for a moment interrupted. Even politics, however, become amusing, when discussed by a well educated and elegant French woman; and I have heard English- men of considerable talent and judgment declare, that the accu- racy, and precision of many fair politicians with whom they had conversed, even on abstract points of government, went far be- yond the level assigned to the mental powers of their sex. It is this wide sphere of discussion, unrestricted by ridicule and unlimited by fashion, which gives the play to their imagination, the force to their intellect, and that charm of facility, elegance, and effect to their language, which habits of general convention can alone confer. It is thus that they are qualified to become the companions and friends of men, as well as their mistresses and wives. The coarseness of exclusive male society is not sought in France, to avoid the insipidity of female circles. Nor is all wit, brilliancy, and talent left behind, with the empty decanters after dinner, to make room for that "infinitive deal of nothings," which with us is presumed to be a necessary qualification for join- ing the maudlin priestesses of the tea-table. There is perhaps no country in the world, where the social position of women is so delectable, as in France. The darling child of society, indulged, not spoiled, presiding over its plea- sures, preserving its refinements, taking nothing from its strength, adding much to its brilliancy, permitted the full exer- cise of all her faculties, retaining the full endowment of all her graces, she pursues the golden round of her honoured existence, limited only in her course by her feebleness and her taste; by her want of power and absence of inclination to "overstep the mo- desty of nature," or to infringe upon privileges, exclusively the attribute of the stronger sex. "To paint the character of woman," says Diderot, "you must use the feather of a butterfly's wing." He must have meant £%Q SOCIETY. the character of a French woman, who unites. to more solid qua- lities many of the peculiar attributes of that lively insect. Light, brilliant, and volatile, she seems to flutter on the surface of life, with endless adaptations to its forms; but quick, shrewd, and rapid, in her perceptions, she appears to reach by intuition, what intellect vainly toils to obtain by inference and combination. More susceptible than sensible, more awakened through her ima- gination than excited through her heart, love is to her almost a jeu d'evfant. [a child's play.] The distrust she inspires in her lov- er, acts favourably for her interests on the natural inconstancy of man; and she secures the durability of her chain, by the care- lessness with which she imposes it. Sharing largely in the national deference for ties of blood, she is peculiarly adapted to the influence of habitual attachments; and in whatever other countries friendship may raise her altars; it is in France, and by French women, perhaps, that she will find them best served. I saw, during my resilience in that country, so many instances of this pure and ennobling principle, that for the first time I comprehend the preference of Rousseau for a people, among whom the Epinays and the Luzembourgs afford- ed in his own instance so many illustrations of his hypothesis; and where the friends he found compensated him for the mistress and the wife, "qu'il n'auroit jamais pris en France.' 9 [whom he woultl^ever have taken in France.] It is no uncommon tiling in that country, to see the most last- ing attachment succeed to the most lively passion; and all that was faulty, in unlicensed love, become all that is respectable, in disinterested friendship. There is nothing more common in France, than to behold long-attached friends parting off from the more prosperous lists of society, to unite their forces against the attacks of adversity, and who suffer with resignation, because they suffer together. These friendships, equally common between individuals of different and of the same sexes, are tacit eulogi- ums on the marriage state in its best aspect, and indicate the ne- cessity of a sympathy of interests and feelings, with some being willing to blend its existence and identity with our own; even when passion no longer animates, nor love cements the tie of the communion. I have at this moment present in my recollection many friends, whom I saw dwelling together in perfect confidence and intimate union; providing for each other's wants, indulgent to each other's infirmities, giving mutual accommodation to each other's weak- nesses, and hand-in-hand stealing down the evening path of life, bereft of all the conflicting passions, which agitated its morning, and retaining enough only of the heart's vital heat, to warm the SOCIETY. | tyj chill atmosphere of age and debility. Oh ! these are the mild lights which gleam along the broken surface of society; when the me- teor blaze of youth and pleasure are extinguished for ever, by na- ture or by time. This determination of the affections towards friendship, so ob- servable among the French of all classes, and most particularly among the women, seems the inherent tendency of the nation, and is by no means, revolutionary virtue. When le bonne homme, [the good man,] la Fontaine, lost his inestimable and faithful friend and protectress, Mad. de la Sabliere, in whose hotel he lived, Mad. de Hervart immediately presented herself to the afflicted poet; and abruptly entering his room, she said: "J'ai avpris le maU heur qui vous est arrive: je viens vous proposer de loger chez moi," [I have just learnt the misfortune which has happened to you; I come to propose to you to lodge with me.] i6 J 9 y allots" [I will go,] was the simple and affecting reply.* * However suited the character and manners of the French women may be to friendship, they by no means engross a virtue, which is to a great de- gree national. While I was at Paris, Voltaire's walking cane was sold for five hundred francs, and purchased by the celebrated surgeon du Bois. His joy at obtaining this relic was excessive. A gentleman present observed that he had paid too dear for his purchase. " Comment" he replied with vivacity, "quand c'est pour I' ami Corvisart?" [How — when it is for my friend Corvisart r] The well-known friendship of these distinguished men, is equally honorable to both parties. Monsieur Corvisart is justly celebrated for his work " on the heart," both on the continent and in England. A young and deVoted friend of the brave Caffarelli, saw that celebrated man fall at St. Jean d\icre, while fighting by his side. The death of his gal- lant friend drove him to despair; and his grief was so touching, his despon- dency so profound, that it became a subject of conversation to the whole ar- my. It at last reached the ears of Buonaparte, who paid a personal visit to the mourner. He is said to have shed tears on the occasion, and endeavoured in vain to console him, by observing: "It is at least a solace to you, that your brave friend died covered with glory." " La glone .'" repeated the young man indignantly, and in all the petulance of grief; " qxCest-ce que la gloire? Eile est faite pour un homme tel que vous." [Glory! what is glory? It is made for men like you.] " Give him some lauda- num," said Buonaparte coldlv ; and when he had seen it administered, silently left the tent. A few days after this interview, the young man distinguished himself by a desperate intrepidity, which evinced his desire to follow his friend, " de mourir, de la mort Roland." [to die the death of Roland] His va- lor became a subject of admiration in common with his friendship, and the army were unwearied in their praises of his spirit and his sensibility. Buona- parte became tired of the subject, and fearful of the example; and observed in the hearing of several of his young companions: "Pour ce jeune * * * *, e'estun brave garcon, mois je I'aurois fusiUe', si cela e(ct continue." [That young * * * *, is a brave fellow, but I should have had him shot if this had conti- nued.] This anecdote, which was given me as a fact affords a. pendant [paral- lel] for the story of the King of Prussia's ordering an officer to be shot, who on the eve of a battle had kept a light in his tent after the prohibited ho'ir, For the purpose of writing to his wife, — Buonaparte's friendship for 18S SjQCLETY. It must certainly have been in some fit of cynicism, that Mon- taigne declares the incapability of women for so elevated a sen- timent as friendship, to which denunciation he adds, in his own quaint way: "La sujjisance ordinaire lies f entities n 9 est pas, your respondre a cette conference et communication, nourisse de cette saincte cousture; ni leur dme ne semble asse% ferme, pour soustenir Pestreinte d'un noeud si presse et si durable." [The ordinary self- sufficiency of women makes them incapable of that disinterested- ness and unlimited confidence which is necessary to this sacred union, and their minds have not sufficient firmness to sustain the pressure of a knot so tight and so durable.] The devoted friend- ship of his own favourite, "Royne Marguerite de Navarre," for the "preux Roi" her brother, is a sufficient refutation of his po- sition. If a lively solicitude for the interest of those recommended to their notice; if acts of kindness may»bc considered as tests of a predisposition to friendship, I can answer, on my own experU ence, for the qualifications with which the French are endowed, for feeling and inspiring that sentiment. I universally observed among them an eagerness to oblige, a promptness to serve, a readiness to sympathize with the little every -day crosses of life of their acquaintance, which proceeding perhaps from quick susceptibility for impression, assumes the character of the most genuine and perfect good-nature, that ever warmed or cheered the common intercourse of society. The charge or insincerity, to winch the high polish of refined manners, under the old regime, subjected the whole nation, now appears to have so little founda- tion, that I am well aware I am not singular in asserting their professions to fall short of the unsuspecting confidence, with which they come forward to oblige, to serve, and to accommodate even strangers, whom chance has presented to their notice. As- sociating with them in their circles, in Paris, and occasionally a resident in their chateaux in the country, I uniformly found their courteous manners accompanied by kindness and attention, and by all those little nameless acts of friendship, which showed them intent upon contributing to the ease and comfort of their guests.* This may be indeed what Sterne calls the »< overflowing the gallant general Desaix is said to have been sincere and ardent. When the news of his death was brought to him, at the battle of Marengo, he was pro- foundly affected, and exclaimed in a tone of great emotion: " Qu> ne puis-je pleurerP" [Why can I not weep ?] One of his first acts, on his return to Paris, Was to raise a statue to his memory. * This kindness and warmth of feeling- did not terminate with our resi- dence in France Having- met with a heavy pecuniary loss, during our absence from home, the circumstance reached the ears of our French friends; and it SOCIETY. 420 of the pancreatic juices;" but who would stop to explore the cause, while benefitting by the effects. A French woman, like a child, requires a strong and rapid series of sensations, to make her feel the value of existence. Her prompt susceptibility changes its emotion with its object; and that cheek, which is now dimpled with smiles, but a few moments hence, will perhaps be humid with a tear. When it was objected that some royalist ladies had attended the trial of those unfortu- nate persons, whose hands and heads were severed, for a conspi- racy, more worthy the correction of the ♦* petites-maisons" {^mi- nor prisons,] than of so barbarous an infiiction, a gentleman un- dertook their defence before a very mixed company, where I was present, by saying, •< Que xoulex-xous? Les Frangaises aiment de pareiHes scenes, parce qu 9 il leur faut toujours des battemens de cceur, et comment /aire hattre It cc&uv, sans une graiide sensation?" [What w r ould you have? The French like such scenes, because they must al- ways have agitations of the heart, and how can the heart be par- ticularly agitated without a great sensation.] "Monsieur," ob- served an old royalist lady, with indignation, "une veritable Fran- caise ivanra jamais une grande sensation, que pour son Roi." [Sir, a true Frenchman never has a great sensation but for his king,] "Qu'ellt delicatesse de penset!" [What delicacy of thought!] was the reply. The sensibility of the present race of French women, however, is by no means exclusively engrossed by the king. Even his ho- liness, the pope was said to inspire those battemens de cceur, [agitations of the heart,] so necessary to their existence. "You will do me the greatest favour," said the beautiful Mad. D*****, "if you will put me in the way of being blessed by the pope." As it was well understood, that Mad. D. had, as yet, no call from « sister-angels" the pious request excited much as- tonishment. The petition was however granted ; and as the pope's apartment can " ne'er by woman's foot be trod," Mad. D ■ crossed him in his garden, and received the wished-for benedic- iien. But this was not sufficient: she intreated permission to kiss his hand. Monsieur #** struggled against the impropriety of this request; but Mad. D- was urgent, and would not be denied. " Et la raison de cet empressement?" [But why this ea- gerness?] asked Monsieur *** « C'est qut cela me donnera un battement de eoeur; et queje suis si heureuse quand le ccsur me batte." produced us many letters of inquiry and condolence, backed, by the most pressing invitation to return and live amongst them, till «mr losses were re* trieved. 3 £30 SUCIETV. [Because it will give me an agitation of the heart: and I am al- ways so happy when my heart is unusually agitated,] was her candid answer. I have known a French lady attend with the most devoted care her sick friend, for weeks together; live at her bed-side, « explain the asking eye," anticipate every wish, and forego every pleasure, to fulfil the duties of friendship; and yet the death of this person, wept for a few hours with bitterness and vehemence, in a few days left no trace of sadness behind it. This happy (though not heroic) facility of character, is purely constitutional; and while it operates graciously upon all the ills of life; while it quickly absorbs the tear, and dissipates the sigh, it neither interferes with the duties, nor chills the affections of existence. And though it would make no figure in tragedy or romance, it supports resignation, cheers adversity, and enhances those transient pleasures, whose flight is scarcely perceived, ere their place is supplied. This light volatile tone of character, this incapacity for durable impression, this sensibility to good, this transient susceptibility to evil, is after all perhaps the secret, sought by philosophers. The views of the Epicurean, and of the sceptic, well understood, seem to meet at that point, which nature has made the basis of the French character; arriving by diffe- rent routs to the same conclusion, that true sensibility is to feel, but not to be overcome. A French woman has no hesitation in acknowledging, that the "besoin de sentir" [necessity of feeling] is the first want of her existence; that a succession of pursuits is necessary to preserve the current of life from that stagnation, which is the death of all vivid and gracious emotions. It appears, indeed, to be the pe- culiar endowment of the French temperament, to preserve, even to the last ebb of life, that unworn sensibility, that vigour, fresh- ness, and facility of sensation, which are usually confined to the earliest periods of human existence, and which ordinarily lose their gloss and energy with the first and earliest impressions. I had one day the good fortune to be seated at dinner next to the celebrated Humboldt, who. observed, incidentally to the sub- ject of conversation, that there was nothing he so much lament- ed as having arrived a few weeks too late at Paris, to make the acquaintance of Rousseau's Mad. d'Houdetot. " I am told," he continued, " that age hold no influence over that charming char- acter, and that she preserved, at eighty, the feelings and fancy of eighteen."* To these observations Mons. Denon, who was present, added, * Mad. d'Houdetot died about the time the allies entered Paris. SOCIETY. , ,jg£ that the last time he hat! seen her (and it was not very long be- fore her death), he could even then trace in her manner, her voice, her look, and her conversation, all that had bewitched Rousseau, and had fixed St. Lambert. Mad. d'Houdetot is a splendid epitome of the female charac- ter in France, even though her intrinsic excellence is shadowed by the manners of the day, in which she lived. To those whom she may have interested in the eloquent pages of Rousseau, where she appears a being, fanciful and ideal as his own Julie, it may not be unpleasing to follow her through her own flower-strowu path of real life. Rousseau has sketched in his happiest man- ner her first visit to the hermitage of Montmorenci, after being overturned near the mill of Clairvaux « Sa mignonne chassure" [her pretty little shoes] exchanged for a pair of boots, " pergant Voir d f eclats de rire" [filling the air with laughter.] full of health, youth, spirits, grace, and gaiety; attacking with all these charms the sensibility of the philosopher, and awakening, in that hith- erto unawakened heart, " V amour dans toute son energie, dans t&utes sesfureurs." [love in all its energy, in all its fury.] It is curious to oppose to this picture of playful youth and fro- lic and animation, Mad. d'Houdetot, in the same valley of Mont- morenci, at a distance of sixty years, seated at her embroidery frame, surrounded by her grand-children; approaching the ad- vanced age of ninety, and yet retaining all the vital warmth of her heart unchilled, all the bloom of her imagination untarnish- ed; cultivating the kindest affections, and reciting, as if by in- spiration, those charming eifusions of taste and fancy,* which * It was by stealth, that the grand -daughters of Mad. d'Houdetot took down the poetry which she composed and recited over her embroidery frame. She would never suffer them to be published, and I believe this is the first time that the two following' little specimens of her talents have appeared in print. On the departure of St. Lambert for the Army. L'amant, que j 'adore, Pret a me quitter, D'un instant encore Voudroit profiler. Feiicite vaine! Qu'on ne peut saisir, Trop pres de la peine, Pour etre un pluisir. .g. On the last Duchesse de la Valli6re. La nature, prudente et sage, Force le terns a respecter Le charme de ce beau visage, Qu'etle n'aurait pu repeter. her modesty would not permit her to transcribe; and which she composed with the same facility, with which she created the flowers that sprung up from under her needle. It was thus that she w-as described to me, in those circles, from which she had been but recently withdrawn; and where every little word and act was still fresh in the memory of friendship. When marriage was, in France, a mere affair of convenance, Sophie de la Briche, the daughter of a fermier general, was forced into a union with the Comte d'Houdetot, an officer of rank in the army, described in the traditions of the circles of Paris, as a good sort of gentleman, who lived much at court, and who had the honour to play « gros jeu" [high play] with Louis XV. By Rousseau he is termed a « chicaneur ires peu amiable, 9 ' [an unamiable wrangler,] whom his wife could never have loved. But the sensible, the susceptible Sophie, was destined to love somebody; and she became the-Vival and successor of Voltaire's Emilie du Chatelct, by fixing the vagrant affections of the gal- lant, the chiva] risque, the poetical St. Lambert.* The husband and the lover were called at the same moment upon military service; and Sophie, recommended to the solace and care of Rousseau, by his friend St. Lambert, retired to her chateau in the valley of Montmorenci, in the neighbourhood of the hermitage of the philosopher of nature. "Elle vinUje la vis; 99 says Rousseau. — " J'etois ivre d' amour, sans objet. Cette ivresse fascina mes yeux, cet objet seficca sur elle,je vis ma Julie en Mad, cPHoudetot; bientot jenevis jilus que Mad. aVJI • mars revihi de toutes les perfections, dont je venois d'orner Vidole de moncmur. Four m^ackever, elle vie parla de St. Lambert, en amanie passionee. Force contagieuse de V amour! en Pecoutant, en me sentant aupres cVelle, j^etois saisi d y un fremissement delicieu.v, que je n^avois ja- mais eprouvS a-npres de personnel [She came, I saw her — I was in- toxicated with love, without an object. This intoxication fasci- nated my eyes, the object was fixed, I saw my Julia in Mad. d'Houdetot ; soon I saw only Mad. d'Houdetot herself; but ar- rayed in all the perfections, with which I had just ornamented the idol of my heart. To complete all, she talked of St. Lam- bert with passionate fondness. How contagious is love! in listen- [Nature, prudent and wise, compelled time to spare the charms of thislovelv face, for she could never have made another like it.] * " S*il fatit pavdonner quelque chose aux mceurs du siecle" saj's Rousseau, " e'ent sans doute tin attacliement, que sa durce 6pure, ses effcts que honorent ; et qui ne s'est clmentc, que par une estime reciproque." [If any thing- may he excused by the manners of the age, it is undoubtedly an attachment refined by its du- ration, honoured by its effects; and which is cemented only by reciprocal es- teem ] ffiXY. i 33 ing to her, in feeling myself near her, I was seized with a deli- cious tremor which I had never felt near any one else.] The defence however made by Rousseau, for a conduct nothing short of treachery, is not admitted by those now living, who have often heard Mad. d'Houdetot and St. Lambert speak of this sin- gular epoch in the life of the philosopher. Rousseau began by soothing the regrets of Mad. d'H , and by undermining her passion for his friend. He failed in both instances; and then sought to alarm her virtue, by painting an unlicensed love in such colours, as it was rarely represented to French women of that day. If the traditionary anecdotes, from which I have gleaned this recital, may be credited, he so far roused her sleeping con- science, as nearly to induce her to write a last farewell to the ab- sent St. Lambert. But St. Lambert, though almost resigned, was always adored; and when Rousseau artfully pleaded his own pas- sion, and to counteract his former doctrines, confessed that^ he was wrong in subduing a sensibility, that made the felicity of the possessor and of all who surrounded her, Mad. d'Houdetot, mis- taking his meaning, joyfully exclaimed, "Ah Dieu! que vous me rendez la vie! Je vais done fair e le bonheur de mon pauvre St. Lambert." [Ah! you bring me back to life! I will then make the felicity of my poor St. Lambert.] The long absent lover was received with rapture, and the trea- cherous friend, maddened by jealousy and apprehension, flew to Diderot to expose his griefs, and to demand his assistance. Di- derot promised to reconcile all parties; and succeeded in his me- diation; and Rousseau, jealous of his influence, swore eternal en- mity to the mediator, and breathed it in a citation from the book of Ecclesiasticus. in his celebrated letter to d'AIcmbert.f The passion of Mad. d'Houdetot and St. Lambert became al- most respectable, hy its duration and constancy. But time, which told in favour of the mistress, turned all that was gold to dross, * It was at this time that lie wrote those passionate letters, of which he says : " On a irouroi br&lantes les lettres de la Julie. Ah Dieu, qu 1 auroif-on dit de celles-ci?^ [They talk of the burning- letters of Julia. Ah! what would they say of these?] When he demanded these letters, Mad. d'H said she had burned them. " JVon, non" he replied, " jamais celle qvi pev.t inspirer une parielle passion, n'aura le courage cfen bruler les preuves." [No, no, he replied, she who could inspire such a passion, would never have courage to burn the proofs of it.] A few years back, when Mad. d'Houdetot was asked what she had really done with them, she answered with her usual naivete, "I gave them all to St. Lambert." I The friends of Mad. d'H express great indignation against Rous- seau, for his conduct on this occasion. His accusation of Diderot, that he had betrayed the secret of his passion to his rival, was utterly without founda- tion. Mad. d'H shortly before her death declared, that all what appeared passion in J. Jacques was imagination; he had no Jt&arl! 434 socmr*. in the character of the lover. St. Lambert lost the virtues of youth, with its graces. In the course of a connexion, which last- ed forty years, all that had once heen fanciful, became capricious; all that was once wit, soured into satire; philosophy became cy- nicism, and vivacity petulance. Severe, and supercilious, St. Lambert treated the charming " Doris" of his " Seasons," with a peevish acrimony, which still retained in its harshness the ex- action of an all-requiring love. If Mad. de Houdetot gave play to that brilliant imagination, which accompanied her to her tomb, he was sure to observe; "voila qui est Men, cela fait effet" [that is very well, that produces effect.] And when watching over his fragile health, she Insisted upon more temperance than he was willing to endure, he named her "IHntendante de ses priva- tions" [the intendant of his privations]. What perhaps was most singular in this connexion, so strongly marked by the manners of the day, is, that Monsieur d'floude- tot was frequently the advocate of a lover, whose tyranny and caprice repeatedly procured his temporary dismissal from the presence of her, whom his insupportable humour had irritated and disgusted. Monsieur d'Houdetot was at last taken to that abode of felicity, said to he reserved as a recompence for such forbearing husbands, and the death of St. Lambert left this wife and mistress doubly widowed. It was then, that feelings of the tenderest association led her back to Montmorenci. The lovely valley had long changed its inhabitants. The Luzembourgs, the Rousseaus, and the d'Epinays, were no more: « Labande noire" [The gloomy band] had ravaged the palace of the prince, and laid low tiie hermitage of the philosopher. All was altered by time and circumstances; but the heart, the imagination of Mad. d'Houdetot were still the same. The throb of the one had not slackened in its beat, the warmth of the other had lost nothing of its glow; and at an age, when even memory fails, in others, feeling was still so anient, and fancy so brilliant, in this extra- ordinary person, that another St. Lambert was found in the soli- tudes of Montmorenci, to engross a friendship, innocent and ten- der as the fondness of childhood; and to which she alludes with a warmth, borrowed from her imagination, in the following lines: Jeune, j'aimai; ce terns de mon bel age, Ce terns si court, comme un Eclair s'entuit; Lotsque arriva la saison d'etre sage, Kncorc j'aimai — 1:. raison me le Hit. Me voici vielle, et le plaisir s'envole: Mais lc bonheur nc me quitte aujourd'lmi; Carj'aime encore, et 1'amour me console, Rien n**uroit pu me consoler de lui. bUUlUTY. 185 [When I was young I loved; the bright period of youth passed away with the rapidity of lightning. — When I attained the period of wisdom, I loved still, for reason told me to do so. I am now old, and pleasure has taken its flight; but happiness still remains with me, for I still love, and love consoles me. J Madame d'lloudetot was eighty, when she produced these charming lines; and the object of this new and tender friendship was, like St. Lambert, a resident in her dear valley of Montmo- renci. The beautiful villa of Monsieur de S*** almost joined the chateau of his aged, but attractive mistress. Every morning brought him his billet and his nosegay, elegant and fresh, as the mind of the donor. When Monsieur de S. was asked, how he was affected by inspiring a passion he could not adequately return? he replied: "her charming conversation, her notes, and her flowers, had become des douces habitudes; [delightfully habitual] and the first day that I missed them was certainly not the hap- piest of my life.* This good-natured sufferance « de se laisser aimer," [letting himself be loved] in a man not half the age of his mistress, is, I believe, the result of a temperament, formed by kindlier suns, and by more genial climes, than preside over the elements of the English character: for the brutality of Horace Walpole to the enamoured Mad. du Deffand stands severely opposed to the gen- tle indulgence of Monsieur de S***. The taint of ridicule hangs, perhaps, on the conduct of both ladies; but the distance between the frigid egotism of Mad. du Deffand, and the generous affec- tions of Mad. de Houdetot, is immeasurable. It was the peculiar felicity of the latter to borrow, from the store of perennial feeling and exhaustless imagination, materials, which formed an ideal world around her, and which replaced before her eyes the actual scenes of life. There was a vein of genuine unaffected romance, governing the course of her pro- tracted existence, which experience did not, and time could not subdue.f * I had the pleasure of being introduced to Monsieur S***, during my re- sidence at Paris. He is an Italian by birth, and was for some time at the head of the Cisalpine republic. His splendid fortune is devoted to the arts, of which he is a passionate lover, and an elegant judge. The taste and accom- plishments of this gentleman merited the esteem and admiration, bestowed upon them by Mad. d'Houdetot. t The picture of Mad. d'Houdetot's person, by Rousseau, is said to be done by a lover's hand ; but it is by no means very attractive. The tout-ensem- ble, however including her manner and air, is quite charming. " Mad. de H approchoit de la trentaine, et tfe'toit point belle. Son visage itoit marque" de la petite virole, son teint manquoit de finesse, elle avoit la vue basse, et les yeux ronds; mais elle avait de grands cheveux ?ioirs, naturcllement boucle's, qui lui torn- bient anjarret, Sa faille 6toit mitnxonne, et elle metiait dans tons ses nrowmtenta £gg SOCIETY. It is a singular circumstance, that this rival of the beautiful Mad. du Chatelet, this immortalized **« Doris" of St. Lambert, this sole object of all that Rousseau ever knew of passion, at once his theme and his inspiration, had not one feature, one tint or trait of personal attraction, which love could exaggerate into beauty, or imagination endow with a charm. The secret of her influence over the hearts of all, whom she sought to interest, was the ardour, the sensibility of her character, the tender, pas- sionate cast of her manners, and the playfulness and redundancy of her all-creative imagination. Retaining, to the last hours of life, the freshness of the first, she inspired the feelings she pre- served. Age grew young, as it listened to her, and youth forgot that she was old, when she spoke. Take her with her frailty and her merit, her faults and her virtues, France only could have produced such a woman; in France only such a woman could have been appreciated. Mad. d'Houdetot, in the possession of all her faculties, and almost of all her graces, died at the age of eighty-eight, surrounded by her friends, and I y her grand-chil- dren, the offspring of her only child, the present general, the Baron d'Houdetot. I have to lament, in common with Monsieur Humboldt, that I arrived too late in Paris to have seen this interesting and ex- traordinary woman. But occasionally associating with those, who once had the happiness to live with her, I delightedly tracked the print of her steps, in those elegant circles, over which she had once presided. May I here be permitted to ack- nowledge the polite attentions I received, while in Paris, from the amiable sister of Mad. d'Houdetot, Mad. de Briche, at whose Sunday evening assemblies I have so often found united, vuliatever Paris contained of rank, talent, beauty, and fashion. de la gmicherie et de la grace, tout-d-la fois. EUe avoit de Pesprit tres naturel et tres agreable; la gaiete, Vetourdcrie, et la na'iveti s'y marioient heureusement. EUe abondoit en sallies charmantes, qu'elle ne cherchoit point, et qui pari oierit quel- que fois, malgre elle. EUe avoit plusieurs talens agr€ables, jouoit du clavecin, dan- fsoit bien,faisoit d'assez jolis vers Pour son caract€re, ilitoit angilique, la dou- ceur d'dme enfaisoit lefond; mais hors la prudence et la force, il rasseftibloit tou- tes le$ vertus." [Madame de H was near thirty, and was not handsome. Her face was marked with the small pox, her complexion wanted delicacy, she was near sighted, and her eyes were round; but she had long black hair curling naturally, which descended below her waist. Her shape was neat, and there was in all her motions a mixture of awkwardness and grace. Her wit was natural and agreeable; gaiety, giddiness, and simplicity, were happily united in her. She was always saying the most charming things, which were never studied, and often inadvertent. She had many agreeable accomplish- ments. She played on the harpsichord, danced well, and made very pretty verses. Her temper was angelic, particularly in its mildness and softness; she had every virtue except prudence and energy. SOCIETY. ±%tf These evenings recalled to my imagination the little court, which surrounded her sister-in-law, Mad. d'Epinay, where statesmen and ministers mingled with tiie Diderots, Rousseaus, the Grims, and the Holbachs,* in the saloons of La Chevrette. *********** I was speaking one day to a royalist lady on the many charming qualities of a mutual friend of ours, and on the excel- lent character of her husband. She replied with a shrug, " quant a lui, le bon homme, c'est une excellente personne ; cependant, machtre,ilneremplitpasl'dmede sa clmrmante femmef [ <4 it must be owned that the good man is a most excellent being ; but still, my dear, he does not fill the soul of his charming wife."] This want of having her soul occupied by a husband, to w r hom she had been twenty-live years married, I thought rather an exaction, on the part of the " charmantefemme" and I could not help ob- serving, that, notwithstanding this singular refinement upon married happiness, I considered Monsieur et Mad. de **** an exemplary couple. My royalist friend agreed with me ; add- ing, that it must be confessed " I'amour conjugal" was much more prevalent since the revolution than before; and that « maintenard, il-ij-a d'excellens menages dans la France." [« that now there is a great deal of domestic happiness in France."] This is indeed an avowal universally made by the French of all parties ; and more consideration is attached to this tie, when respectably maintained, and faithfully observed, than to any other domestic relation of society whatever. It is now supreme mauvais ton [vulgarity] to resort to the old worn-out jests levelled at men, who attend to their own wives, in preference to those of others; and iudeed, I observed, in all public societies, and in the many and various entertainments given at court, on the marriage of the Due de Bern, that the women, and particularly the young women, were always accompanied by their husbands. It would be difficult to ascertain the precise minimum of sentiment, which goes to make up the sum of mar- ried happiness in France, and to draw a scale of comparison between the stock of conjugal affection, which exists in that country, and in England. England, however, has some good old habits in her favour, invariably connected with the laws and government of a free nation, and which, perhaps, already be- * I had the pleasure of knowing the amiable niece of Baron Holbach, Mad. R • In talking 1 over the pretended conspiracy of the Holbach coterie, about which Rousseau so extravagantly raved, this lady assured me that the first cause of his quarrel with her uncle, was a present of four dozen of singularly fine Champaigne, which the baron sent to the philosopher; sm insult that Rous- seau never forgave. The little pour -parlers, to which this gave rise, terminated in a rupture, out of which Rousseau's vivid but hypochondriacal ima^inatieft conjured all his long train of" chimeras <#' hotel, has the same superintendence in a French family, as in England would devolve on its mistress, except she was of the very highest class, and at the head of an establishment, quite unknown in France. No woman of the lowest description meddles with the mysteries of dress-making : their needle-work is all ornamental; and I have overheard coarse, vulgar persons in shops and public places talk of their couturieres, [mantua- makers,] their marchandes de modes, [mil- 'liners,] and their femmes-de-chambre, who had themselves by no means so respectable an appearance, as a second-rate house* maid in the family of an English gentleman. The ability and shrewdness of a French woman, of condition, seem indeed confined to the penetration of character, the deve- lopment of passions, and to subjects of taste and abstraction. She rarely applies the€ull force of her powers to the coarser business of life. She is unequal to those economical calculations, by which English thrift balances means, and regulates expenses. In the distribution of pecuniary matters, the femme comme U faut, the woman of fashion, is, generally speaking, an amiable, but thoughtless child. She gratifies her feelings and her pro- pensities with careless promptitude, gives her money to the x 154l SOCIETY. relief of misery, or to the demands of her milliner, with ua- reflecting readiness ; and lays out her income in dress and cha- rity, trinkets and amusements, with prodigal simplicity. I never heard a French woman say any thing was dear ; and when I have often thought to astonish them, by the exorbitant charges of a tradesman, who I supposed had made me pay « en dame Jlnglaise" [•* like an English lady."] they have always assured me with « mais, ce n'est pas cher" [** but, it is not dear."] Among the middle classes, however, and most particularly among that large class of well-born persons, whom a long train of political vicissitudes have practised in all the extremes of wealth and of indigence, I am told the most rigid economy is united to that decency of appearance, which almost amounts to elegance. By this savoir /aire, [management] of the female heads of families, many are comfortably supported in Paris, and are enabled to enjoy the society of a select circle, on an income, which would scarcely maintain an individual, in & coun- try town in England. Economy, thus thoroughly understood, is still further pro- moted by the consolidation of families : for the breaking up and dividing the common resources, by a multipication of separate establishments, is an event of xtry considerable rarity. This blessed union of family interests and of family affections, which unites so many generations under one roof, and blends the views of the aged and the young, is one of the happiest aspects, in which the character and habits of the nation present themselves. The churlish separation of interests, which with us soon loos- ens the ties of parental and filial tenderness, which makes the aspiring son pant for that majority, which gives him an inde- pendent establishment, and renders the zealous father the sus- picious tenant of his impatient heir, is wholly unknown in France. Their domestic life is purely patriarchal ; every family consists of three or four generations, all gathered under the same roof, all assembling at the same hearth, and ranging round the same table. That cheeriness of spirit, that even flow of temper, which « opens in each heart a little heaven," pre- serves an harmony and order in the social government of every menage, [household] which the morbid humours and bilious af- fections, engendered by less genial climes and temperaqients, so frequently disturb. Among the many charming family pictures, which so ofteM gratified my heart and imagination, by the exhibition of united affections, may I be permitted to select one, which, for its brilliancy and beauty, might claim that preference, which my gratitude for attentions received from all its members unre- flectingly gives. I mean the family of the Prince de Beau* SOCIETY. £5g veau.* Interesting by its historical relations, but doubly in- teresting by its present position, and by combining, In its group of four generations, all that is venerable in age, respectable in maturity, lovely in youth, and charming in infancy. It is a most gracious sight to behold these little patriarchal circles always united, always together, enjoying the delicious freshness of the summer evenings, in all the public gardens of Paris. The grand-children, and sometimes the great grand- children, attended by their •« bonnes, 99 lead the van, with their light, bounding steps, and playful gambols; "les chers parens," [« the dear parents,"] as they are usually called, follow, and « le bon papa et la bonne mamma 99 [•« the grand-papa and grand mamma"] bring up the rear, with well-sustained gravity. Chairs are hired, or seats are taken immediately, for the elders ; while the younger party are permitted, under the vigilant eye of la bonne, to skip their ropes, or dance their "rondes; 99 to form hollow squares, or to mount guard (for all the boys are military,) while « les petites marchandes," or petites bonquetieres, ["the little merchants, or the little flower-girls,"] with well- taught insinuation of manner, offer to "mesamiables demoi- selles,* or « beaux jennes messieurs," [« my amiable young la- dies or fine young gentlemen,"] their confitures [sweet-meats] and nosegays, for a remuneration, left to the generosity of the young purchasers ; with the usual observation of mademoiselle a la figure trop aimable, pour que je ne mefierois pas a sa genero- site, [Mademoiselle looks so amiable that I cannot but trust my- self to her generosity.] The femme-de-chambre is at this moment the same familiar, shrewd, important, and ostensible person, in a French family, as she appears in the Toinettes and Dorines, the inimitable sui- vantes [waiting-women] of Moliere. Sometimes the director- general of the establishment, she is always the cabinet-minister * The family de Beauveau is one of the most ancient houses of Lorraine, and they are princes of the empire. The uncle of the present prince was the celebrated minister of Louis XV; his maternal uncle, the no less celebrated Chevalier de Boufflers, the author of the letters from Switzerland, and the enfant cheri, [beloved pupil] of Voltaire. The Princesse de Beauveau, one of the most amiable women in France, is daughter to the Duke de Mortemart.— • Their eldest son, Prince Charles, is united to the sister of the Duke de Choi- seul Praslin, and co-heiress to the wealth of that rich and illustrious family. — Their second son, Prince Edmond de Beauveau, who, with his brother, attain- ed at a very early age to high military distinction, is at once a fair, and a splendid image of the youth of France, gallant, spirited, and impetuous, inhe- riting " I'esprit de Mortemart" [" the genius of Mortemart,"] as his maternal birth-right, with some of the romantic traits and arch humour, which distin- guished the youth of the author of the " Reine de Golconde" [" Queen of Gol- conda."] The young ladies, Natalie and Gabrielle de Beauveau, are, accord- ing to the standard of English taste, the loveliest persons in Paris. ^55 SOCIETY. of her lady ; who generally brings her into the family, on the wedding-day, and she is not unfrequently the only female ser- vant in the house. As it is less the fashion with French ladies to « courir les bou- tiques," than it is with English ladies " to shop" almost all pur- chases are made by the femme~de-chambre, except matters of mere taste or fancy. And I have generally heard it observed, by women of my acquaintance, that the attachment and fide- lity of these persons rendered them perfectly worthy of the trust reposed in them. The suivante of the young married lady, frequently becomes in time la bonne of the matron ; and to her care the children are entrusted; even the first rudiments of their education are committed. La bonne is a charming character, peculiar to France: something between the Grecian nurse and the Spanish duenna ; with all the affectionate devotion of the one, and all the official dignity of the other. Respected by the servants, beloved by the children, and treated with consideration by her employers, la bonne generally remains in the family, after her young charge is consigned to the care of superior instructors.* Voltaire is said to have submitted to the jurisdiction of his bonne, at the moment that he exercised an absolute authority over the opinions of more than one-half of literary Europe. In one of the many delightful conversations I had with Ma- dame la Marquise de Vilette, on the subject, of Voltaire, her adopted father, she related to me some pleasant anecdotes (if the influence which Barbara, or, as he called her, Baba. his an- cient bonne, held over him. Barbara was an old Savoyard, peevish, irritable, and presuming; but devoted to her illus- trious charge, and watching with maternal solicitude over those infirmities of his age, which her own was exempt from. " One day," said Madame de Vilette, « during my residence at Ferney, while I was making my toilette, I was startled by the violent ringing of Voltaire's bell. I flew to his apartment, while Barbara (who always sat in his anti-chamber) hohbled after me. < Je Sonne mon agonie /' [< I am in an agony !'] vo- ciferated Voltaire, as we entered together. *Je me ??ie?t? , e, 1 — [* I am dying,'] he then explained to us, that he had drank a cup of rose water by mistake, and was almost poisoned. < Com- ment done V exclaimed the provoked Barbara, released from her fears, and restored to her ill-temper. * The establishment of a French family of rank and fortune generally con- sists of a ftmmc-de-chumbre and fetwne-de-charge a maitre d'hotel, and valet-de- chambrc ; [a waiting" woman and house -keeper, a steward and valet de cham- bre ;] two laquais or footmen, one of whom is the frotteur, [scourer,] {the fond de la maison,) performing" all the offices of a house-maid with us. To these are added chef. de-cuisine, and gar go n de* office, [the cook and the pantry-boy .]) society. 15y « Comment done ! II faut etre la bete des bites, pour faire une telle sott se." [« Why ! you must be the fool of fools to make such a blunder."] <• Bete* on non" replied Voltaire, with the subdued tone of a eluded school-boy ; " it n 9 est guerre plaisant d'etre empoisonnc me me par I'esprit de rose !" [" Fool or not — it is scarcely plea- sant to be poisoned even with the essence of roses !"] Moiiere had also his bonne, and Baba, and laForet, belong as much to posterity, as the illustrious geniuses, whom they had the honour to serve, in the responsible character of « la bonne y The state of domestic servitude in France, has, from the earliest times, evinced the inherently amiable and mild dispo- sition of the people ; a disposition which alone ameliorated and rendered durable the severity of the feudal system. The term domestique rarely carried with it any sense of degradation. In the days of Charlemagne, many of the great officers of the crown bore the same epithet as the domestic servants of the court. The ancient nobility placed their children in a sort of domestic servitude in the families of noblemen, more opulent and more powerful than themselves. Bayard, the "chevalier sans tache et sanspeur," [" the knight without fear and without reproach,''] was conducted, while yet a boy, by his father, to the castle of his rich and powerful uncle the bishop of Greno- ble, to enrol him among the youth of the prelates establishment; when, after mass, « On se mit a table, oil derechefchacunfit tres bonne cMre, et y servoit le bon chevalier, tant sagement et honetement, que tout lemonde en disoit du bienS [** they. sat down to table wiiere there was excellent cheer, and the goad chevalier waited on them with so much cleverness and propriety, that every body praised him."] The young Bayard soon learnt the graces of his of- fice, with all the address of the young Cyrus ; and when the Duke of Savoy came to dinner at the bishop's, "Bayard, ,? 'says Theodore Godfroy, " le servoit tres mignonnement, 9 '' [« ser- ved him very prettily."] It is not very long since the Due de Bouillons* paid to the Noailles a pension, "parce qxCelle etoitla recompense desseiroices domestiques rendus par un Noailles a la maison de Turenne ft [*« as a recompence for the domestic services rendered by a Noailles to the house of Turenne ;"] and Louis XIV. talks of sending a "grand seigneur, qui est man domestique," [" a great lord who is my domestic,"] on an embassy to the Pope. * A curious incident took place some years back at Paris. Mons. G- a private gentleman, dressed his servants in the same livery as the Duke de "Villerois. The duke took exception to it. Mons. G e told him, that the livery was his own. and that the Villerois has formerly worn it 158 S0C1ETV. Modern servitude in France, less dignified and respectable than in more primitive times, is still softened by many indul- gences, and rendered more tolerable, by the mutual good will which usually exists between the master and the domestic. The health and comfort of the servants in France are much more attended to than in any part of Great Britain. They are not confined, the greater portion of the day, under ground, in un- w holesome vaults, dignified by the name of kitchen and offices. The French office is on the ground-floor; or, frequently, every etage [story] has its little kitchen, where the chef-de-cuisine and the garcon tf office [the cook and the pantry-boy] only inhabit; all the rest of the domestics occupy the anti-room, which is too near the apartment of the superior of the family, to admit of boisterous mirth, or coarse impropriety. This chamber, generally spacious, looks into the court-yard, and is simply furnished with necessary accommodations : its stove is the foyer [hearth] of domestic sociality in winter, and in summer the open windows are equally attractive. Here the femme-de-chambre 9 always seated at her work-table, glances her shrewd look, from under the eye, at the guest who passes on to the apartment of her lady : here the maitre d'hotel looks over his accounts; and the vcdet-de-chambre reads his novel, or his play, ready to perform his office of groom of the chaviber ; while the more bustling frotteur, [scourer,] who in the evening assists as laquais, or footman, is engaged in all the active ser- vice of the house during the day. Here too are received all the servants who may arrive with the carriages of the guests ; for the lady and her footman walk up together; and each have an equally comfortable apartment to receive them. A poor gen- tleman in boots, or a prince covered with all the insignia of rank and royalty, seem to excite the same sensation in the anti- room. The servants all keep their seats, and no one attemps to rise at the entrance of the most distinguished guest, but the maitre d'hotel or valet, who is to throw open les grands battans, [great folding-doors,] with a theatrical air, and announce, with a most stentorial voice, the rank and name of the stranger. There is no contrast more shocking and violent, in English society, than that presented by the situation of master and ser- vants during the hours of social intercourse of fashionable London. For the one, the air is perfumed with roses, and the chill atmosphere of winter expelled by every artificial contri- vance ; and comfort, enjoyment, and accommodation are stu- diously accumulated. For the other, all is hardship, suffering, and endurance. Exposed for hours to all the inclemency of the season, in listless idleness, or in vicious excess (the neces- sary aud inevitable alleviation of their degraded situation,) this SOCIETY. l$ty large and useless class of persons gratify the ostentation of their masters, at the expense of health, and of every better feeling and higher consideration. In France, the health, comfort, and morals of the servants gain by an arrangement, which good taste, and good feeling, seem alike to have instituted. When the guests of the evening assembly arrive at the porte-cochere, [great gate] the porter as- signs a place, either in a vacant remise, [coach-house] or in the court-yard, for the carriage and horses, which, generally shel- tered from the weather, and shut up under the care of the por- ter, leave no further anxiety on the minds of the masters or servants, who usually ascend together the vast open staircase. While the former pass on to the saloon, the latter join the cir- cle of second-handed high life, in the anti-room, which, well lighted and well warmed, generally presents a card-table, where some round game is playing. Or, perhaps, little groups as- semble, while some one reads aloud the journals of the day, or some novel, tale, or vaudeville, [ballad ;] for every body reads in Paris, and the servants are neither last nor least among the studious.* I believe, indeed, it is peculiar to France, that there exists in. it a branch of literature, which, if not very extensive, is solely appropriated to the use aud benefit of servants. « Le vrai re- gime du gouvernement des Bergers et des Bergeres" [" The true administration of the government of shepherds and shepherd- esses,"] by Le bon Berger, [by the good shepherd,] is a very ancient production, applicable to the rustic menage, « Le. parfait cocher," [" The perfect coachman,"] supposed to have been written by the Duke de Ne vers ; « L'Jluteur laquais ;" " La vie de Jasmin, le bon laquais;" " La maison reglee ;" " Les Devoirs genereiux des domestiques de Pun et V autre sexe envers Bieii> et leur maitres et waitresses, par un domestique f and " Le moym de former un bon domestique;" [«» The footman turned author;" " the life of Jasmin the good footman ;" « the well-regulated house;" "the general duties of servants of both sexes, to God, and to their masters and mistresses, by a servant;" and "the way to make a good servant ;"] are all works of great utility, written with appropriate simplicity ; and making but a small part of the domestic library. * Passing- through the anti-room, at Mad. De Bridie's, one Sunday evenings I was accidentally detained there for a few minutes ; during which time I counted thirty servants engaged in playing round games. Among the showy French liveries, I perceived the liveries of the Hardwick family, of the British ambassador's, and those of some other distinguished British families. The English footmen seemed to assimilate very readily with French modes, and doubtless thought this apleasanter mode of passing their time, than waiting in the streets, or even struggling to get admittance under a temporary shed, in London. |60 SOCIETY. I was one day walking on the quai Voltaire, followed by our laquais de place, when he suddenly stepped up to. me, and, point- ing to a bookseller's shop, " Au grand Voltaire," [« The great Voltaire,"] he observed ; « Voild, Madame, une maison consa- cree au genie J" [« There, madam, is a house consecrated to genius !"] There died Voltaire — in that apartment with the shutters closed. « There," he added emphatically, « died the first of our great men ; perhaps also the lasV Upon all occasions, indeed, this intelligent attendant exhibited a knowledge of French literature, which, from a discovery he once incidentatly made, appeared to me the more surprising. I was one morning writing a note to the Baron Denon, and being a little doubtful of the purity of my French, I was read- ing aloud my billet to my husband, for the benefit of his gram- matical experience; when our valet, Charles, who was arrang- ing some flowers in the room, paused in his work to listen to me. Before I had got half through my note, he interrupted me with, " Mille pardons, mais — Madame — '> [«• A thousand pardons, madam — but — "] and he hesitated. «* This is not French, then," I observed : "is it not so, Charles?" Mais, §ui 9 Madame, e'est Francaise si vous voulez ; mais ce n'est par pur, etpuis, pour le style c'est froid," [« Yes, indeed, madam, it is French if you chuse; but it is not pure, and then the style is cold."] « As for instance, Charles ?" «Eh Men, madame, par exemple, ["Well, madam, for in- stance,] you begin by saying, you regret that you cannot have the pleasure, &c. &c. and you should say, «je suis au desespoir, 9 ' [" I am in despair."] I proposed to Charles to write the letter himself, and that I would copy it. « You may write it, at my dictation, if you please, miladi," said Charles, « but for reading and writing,* 5 he added, " voild une branche de mon education, qu'on a tout afait negligee,* 9 [<« that is a branch of my education, which has been entirely neg- lected."] The note as dictated by Charles, was sent to Mons. Denon, and I believe holds a place among the other curiosities of his collection. The circumstance of this illiterate literatus quoting, and oc- casionally alluding, to works of celebrity,* notwithstanding • Speaking of La Belle Limona.di.ere [The fair Lemonade-seller] of the Palais- lluyal, Charles applied to her a line from Moliere : " EUe ovrre une grayide bouche, pour ne rien dire" [" She opens her mouth wide, to say nothing,"] adding " cur elk est nvw bete que belle," [" for she is as great a fool as she is a beauty.""] SOCIETY. 161 liis having neglected the more vulgar attainment of reading and writing, induced me to make some inquiry as to his mode of study. Charles informed me that it was usual for the lower classes, in his quartier, to assemble at each other's doors in the summer's evenings, for the purpose of listening to some " lec- ture.' 1 All who could read, took the book in turn ; and those who could not, listened, marked, learned, and inwardly di- gested. The number, however, who cannot in tufn contribute to the instruction of their friends, is very small. Nothing is more usual than to see the hackney-coachmen reading on their stands, and even the " commissionnaires, 9i and the jwrteurs d 9 eau, [wa- ter-carriers,] drawing a duodecimo from their pockets, and pe- rusing it with the most profound attention, in the intervals of their labour. It is impossible to visit "les Halles," the Parnas- sus of the comic Vadee, without being struck with the market, opened equally for poetry and potatoes, for philosophy and fish, for herbs and history. There the cries of" Haricots verts" and « voyez, voye%, monsieur, des maqueraux frais," [« kidney- beans, and see, see, sir, here are fresh mackarel,"] are mingled with "voild les fables de la Fontaine, voild le Telemaque de Fe- nelon I voild les contes de Mons. de Voltaire /" [" here are La Fontaine's fables, here is Fenelon's Telemachus! here are Vol- taire's Tales !"] Food for the mind and for the body is here bought with equal facility, and both are adapted to the means of the humble purchasers; for it is certain that these hawkers would not carry their classical ware to the haunts of the lowly and the vulgar, if they did not find a ready market even among fish-wives and marchandes des heroes. The benevolent Mons. Chamousset, the Howard of France, projected a society for servants so early as in 1754, under the name of " ISetablissement pour les domestiques malades, et Vasyle pour les servantes hors de condition,' 1 * [« The establishment for sick servants, and the asylum for servants out of place."] Other similar establishments have arisen since the revolution, to im- prove their condition, and to provide against the inevitable evils of age and infirmity. There is no class, in France, whose manners so strongly re- tain the marks of the short-lived day of « liberty and equality," * " On conte" says the Abbe Gregoire in his excellent work, " De la domes* licite", 3 ' &c. " actuellement dans la capitale quatre vingts corporations de ce genere, qui embrassent au moins six mille families, ce que les / arte a Veconomie, aux bonnes teuvres, d Vassistance rcciproque" f_" We can enumerate as actually existing' in the capital eighty institutions of this kind, which take in at least six thousand families, and which give them habits of economy, * industry, and reciprocal assistance. "} I6g SOCIETY. as the domestic servants* There is indeed a certain line of de- ference and respect which they never pass : but within that boundary, they are communicative, easy, and almost familiar; and with their masters, as with their friends, they consult, ad- vise, forewarn, condole and rejoice, with undisguised sympathy and interest. I have frequently noticed, in the first houses, a servant tap his master on the shoulder, to direct his attention to some guest who stood in need of it. It would be there quite unnecessary to matte exception for a licensed risibility, in favour of « old Grouse, in the gun-room" as Diggory docs with M. Hardcastle. A French laquais feels the merit of a good story, to the full as much as his master ; and is almost as audible, in testifying his approbation. I have sometimes seen the servants almost convulsed with laughter, at the pleasantries and humour- ous stories that circulated among the guests, upon whom they were attending. The familiarity and influence of the servants at a certain period of society, in France, their acuteness, dexterity, and finesse, furnished the old dramatic poets and novel writers with their leading characters and plots. And though the general diffusion of knowledge, occupation of time, and improvement of morals, must naturally lessen the influence of low cunning, and dispense with the agency of unprincipled ability, still great quickness of perception, and shrewdness of observation, may be traced in the successors of the Scapins, and Mascarils, and Scagnarelles, of the older times. Shortly before I left Paris, a friend of mine told me that his valet-de-chambre, one morning while dressing his hair, perceiv- ing that he was reading La Bruyere, observed, « Cet homme la avait grande connoissance dn cozur humain ; mais il lux manqua une chose, e'est d'avoir tte valet-de-chambre.' 9 [« That man had great knowledge of the human heart ; but he was wanting in one thing, that of having been valet-de-chambre."] *********** In the curious epistolary correspondence, carried on for some time between Louis XV. and his friend, the Marechal Due de Richelieu, the king (always speaking of himself in the third person) communicates the following important decision — « Sa majeste a decide V affaire des parasols ; et la decision a He ; que les dames et les duchesses pouvoient en avoir d la procession ; en conse- quence elles en ont" [«* His majesty has decided the affair of the umbrellas ; and the decision has been ; that the ladies and the duchesses may have them in the procession ; consequently they have them.*'] In a country, where the despotic chief of the government thus SOCIETY. £63 interested himself in the complexion of his subjects, and made the affair of the parasols an act of legislation, the toilette could not fail to be an object of national attention, nor escape the inter- ference of royal ordinances and legislative protection. Louis the XIV. the solemn Pope of all frivolities, presided with an infallibity of judgment never disputed, over the ward- robes of his mistresses. He seldom failed to attend the toilette of Madame de Maintenon, even when the graces had ceased to he the handmaid ; and it was in the dressing-room of the dan- phiiie [dauphiness] where Madame de Maintenon officiated as Dame d'dtours, [Tiring-woman] that the king irrecoverably lost his heart, subdued by the dexterity and grace with which she arranged the tresses of the royal head. " // est inconcevable," says that artful person, speaking of this circumstance, « comme Part de Men peigner les cheveux, ait contribu a mon elevation" [" It is inconceivable, how much the art of combing hair has contributed to my elevation."] The toilette, like the Aristotelian philosophy, reigned abso- lute over public opinion in France. — From its dogmas and doc- trines there was no appeal ; and Buffon's maxim of « you may know a man by the sort of coat he wears," was received into general application. All, therefore, who were not « mis noble- ment et avec magnificence," [« nobly and magnificently drest,"] decided at once their own inferiority of qualification and con- dition. Crebillon (himself a man of fashion) makes much of the me- rits and success of his heroes depend upon their being « vetus &uj)erieurement, avec gout et avec noblesse" [" drest in a supe- rior manner, with taste and elegance."] In like manner, his heroine becomes interesting, according to the shades of her rouge, and irresistible from the air of « une coeffure negligee,"* [" a neglected head-dress."] When the virtuous Roland, the republican minister of Louis XVI. first appeared at the court of Versailles, the peculiar homeliness of his toilette excited a universal sensation. In.the minds of those, who held their own existence, from the observ- ance of certain etiquettes, and who believed the safety of the government would be endangered by their violation ; the round hat, and the black shoe-strings of the new minister, awakened the most perfect consciousness of his inability to fill the office lie had obtained. Monsieur de B * *, the master of the cere- monies, the very « glass of fashion and mould of form," express- ed his anxiety on the subject to General Dumourier, who was • See Lex Egarements de caur et de Vesprit. — [The wanderings of the heart and mind. 164 SOCIETY. present, with (i voyea done, mon ami, pas menu des boucles dans ses souliers" [•< you see, my friend, he has not even buckles in his shoes/'] « Jllu Monsieur /" ["Ah, sir,"] exclaimed Dumourier, with well-affected gravity, shrugging his shoulders, " tout est perdu" [« all is lost."] Robespierre, during the most sanguinary period of his reign, w T as distinguished by the delicate and affected recherche [fasti- diousness] of his dress ; and a muslin waistcoat, lined with silk, couhur de rose, [rose colour,] and a coat of " bleu le plus tendre," [« the softest blue,"] was the favourite costume of this monster 5 who, inaccessible to every feeling of humanity, still submitted to the influence of fashion. While modes have recently changed in France, with govern- ments and institutions; while the tunic of Jlspasiah&s succeeded to sacks and hoops, and has been superseded in its turn* by ruffs and farthingales ; while the chignon a la Sevigne, [rurls a la se- vigne] or coeffure de Ninon, [head-dress of Ninon,] now tri- umph over la tele a V Jigrippina, [the head of Agrippina,] or the flowing tresses of the Venus JLnadyomene ; still, under all changes and vicissitudes, the toilette has preserved its empire and its influence unshaken and undiminished. The « cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces" have melted and dissolved away ; the royalists have become rebels, cour- tiers turned republicans, and coquettes become Roman ma- trons : — still the temple of fashion has kept its station of emi- nence unshaken; and it still finds its vestibule crowded with votaries, and its altars smoking with frankincense and myrrh. Napoleon, who scanned with a searching eye all that was * I have occasionally assisted at the toilette of some of my French friends, and been much amused by the questions of their femme-de-chambres, [waiting- women,] or their female coeffeurs, [hair-dressers,] as to the important arrange- ments of the day. " Quelle co'djfure madame a-t-elle choisie P Veut-elle etre coef- fee a la Ninon ? ou d la Grec ? Madame est charmante a la Sevigne. Et superbe d V Agrippina" [" How will madam have her hair drest ? Shall it be a la Ninon ? or a»la Grec ? Madame is charming a la Sevigne. And superb a l'Agrippina."] The humour of the fair person occasionally decides her character and dress for the day, and sends her forth amerce republican, with a Roman head ; or a royal- iste outree, [a furious royalist,] "frisee naturellement, a la .Pompadour /" [" curled naturally a la Pompadour !"] " 1 am very ill to-day," said the excellent and amiable empress Josephine, (who, however, par parenthe'se, [by parenthesis] was an empress and a French woman ;) " give me a cap qui sent la petite sante" £" which looks like delicate health." A cap of delicate health was presented to her. " Mais c' 'est trop malade ! Vous croyez done, que je vais mourir ?" ["But it is too sick ! you think then I am going to die ?"] A head-dress of more healthy appearance was produced by the attendant. " Encore do?ic," [" What then,"] exclaimed the empress with a languid yawn, " vous me trouvez si robuste" [" do you find me so robust."] I had this anecdote from a person of rank, who was at this levee, who admired her virtues, and laughed at her caprices. SOCIETY. 165 strong or feeble in the French character, turning it to the pur- poses oMiis own ambition ; made his due offering to the per- sonal vanity of the French, by consulting with boundless pro- fusion, and unequal splendour, their taste for dress. The cos- tume of his coronation and his court, the draperies of the state an : if the corporate and legislative bodies, were all marked by a richness and magnificence, unknown even in the most osten- tatious days of France. Each order had its livery ; and the dress and the sentiment were frequently dictated by the same power : and were adopted with equal readiness and prompti- tude, at his command. Buonaparte, however, who protected the toilette with one hand, and the altar with the other, as equally efficient agents in his views, was a mere Tartuffe himself in faith and finery ; and secretly indifferent to the external forms of both. His robe of a hundred skins, and his golden toilette, which now obtains the admiration of foreign royalty, and gratifies the curiosity of Europe by its exhibition; these "outward seemings" were all designed for the vulgar multitude. His plain blue coat and little kaU strictly copied from the costume of his idol king of Prussia, were for himself* * This two-fold character of emperor and man was extremely obvious to those "who knew him well He was quite a different personage to the few who had " leu petites entrees," [" the private entrances"] and the many who had only " les grandes" [" the great ones."] One who always enjoyed the privilege of the former, and who long lived with him in habits of intimacy, told me that going into his apartment one afternoon, when he was teie-d-tete with the young em- press, he found him in high spirits, and that having looked into the adjoining anti-room to see that all -was clear, he turned to Monsieur * * *, and said : — > " Dansez-vous encore?''' ["Do you still dance ?"] "Jfais oui, toujours" ["Oh ! yes. still,"] was the reply: " allons done" ["come then,"] said the emperor, " dansons !" [" let us dance !"] " H dansa," said Mons. ***, " tout d trovers, nous de tout son cceur," ["He danced not very well, but with all his heart."] This extraordinary man exacting the most profound respect in public, admitted, in private, the most unbounded familiarity, and thus frequently led those who were intimate with him to risk themselves beyond the boundary of propriety. General Rapp was devotedly attached to the emperor, but extremely care- less in his address and conversation with him. This veteran was standing one morning in the anti-room of Napoleon's private apartment, when he perceived one of the gentlemen in waiting conducting a man of very equivocal character into the imperial cabinet. This person remained a considerable time closeted with the emperor. Rapp grew impatient, and anxious for the safety of Napo- leon, repeatedly thrust his rough head in at the door to see whether all was right ; and as suddenly withdrew it. The suspicious stranger at last took his leave, and Rapp obtained his audience. " Que diable," exclaimed Buonaparte, as Rapp entered, " que diable voulez-vous done, en mettant votre tete a la parte comme cela?" [" What the devil did you mean by putting your head in at the door in that manner ?"] " C'est que je tremblai pour vmis," [" Because I trembled for you,"] replied Rapp, " for perhaps you do not know, that the person with whom you have been closeted is a traitor, a rogue, a swindler, enun mot, e'est tm Corse, vw'ld !" [" in a word, he is a Corsican."] 105 SOCIETY. The toilette, under all governments thus supported in France, " Be par le Roi," by « the united and indivisible republic," and by the « ordonnance imperiale" reigns in the present moment with all its ancient supremacy. Intimately connected, as it now appears to be with legitimacy, in Europe, blending its in- terest, in England, with those of church and state, and occupy- ing the leisure hours of the majesty of Spain, # it assumes in France the same form, influence, and importance, as when her kings presided over tortoise-shell combs, determined, in council, on the re-instatement and restitution of a banished parasol. That « Esprit de systeme ;" that submission to rules and re- gulations to which the French seem to submit, from the neces- sity of giving ballast to their sail, by an artificial weight foreign to their own specific lightness, is observed equally in the ge- nius of their toilette, as in their poetry and their dramas. The regulated observances of both are never violated : both are equally deficient in imagination, and both are cultivated in despite of natural impediments. France has never been the land of poetry nor of beauty, and yet poetry is the passion, and dress the object of the nation. It is on this point that French women are most fallible, and lose all that is most interesting in their characters, or respect- able in their conduct. Here economy ends, and extravagance begins to know no bounds. Here all that is frivolous supersedes all that is essential; and all that is light floats to the surface. — The merits of the divine cachemir ; [India shawl ;] and the "joli mouchoir de poche brode" [" pretty embroidered pocket- handkerchief,"] rapidly succeed to financial discussions, and political arguments ; and, " combien de cachemires avez-votis, ma cherc?" [« how many India-shawls have you, my dear."] is a question, asked with more importance, and considered with more gravity, than would be given to the new political tracts of M. M. Chateaubriand and Fievee, by the many fair disci- ples of those grand vizirs of ultra-stateswomen. The elegant produce of the Indian loom is an indispensable object to every French woman, and from the estimation it is held in, one would suppose there was " magic in the web of it." I shall never forget the mingled emotions of pity and amaze- ment I excited, in one of my French friends, by assuring her, I never had been mistress of a cachemir. « Ah! seigneur Dien, mats e'est inconccvable, ma belle," ["Ah ! but that is inconceivable,"] and she added that I ought to buy * The king of Spain embroiders with great eleg-ance. Hitherto his works have been eonfined to the toilette of the Virgin Maty, whom he has latelv presented with some drapery, embroidered by his own royal hands. SOCIETY. £67 •ne, with the produce of my next work. I replied : " I had ra- ther buy a little estate with it." « Eh, bien 9 ma cliere," [« Well, but my dear,"] she answered quickly, " un cachemir, c'est une terre, n'est-ce pas?" [« a ca- chemir is the same as an estate, is it not ?"J In fact, these valuable and expensive shawls generally do become heir-loams, in a French family. " Voila un trait de toilette pour vous, mon enfant," [« There is an anecdote of the toilette for you, my dear,"] said Mad. de Genlis to me one morning, as I entered her pretty apartment, at her Carmelite convent, to which she has retired. « Here is a trait will amuse you ;" and she related to me the following anecdote. A little before I had paid my visit, a young gentleman had left this celebrated lady, suddenly cured of a passion for a young married woman, against which Mad. de Genlis had long and vainly preached. She had argued the matter with him morally, prudentially, sentimentally ; she had even, like Mad. de Sevigne (in listening to her son's confessions, respecting Ninon,) tried to get in « un petit mot de Dieu :" [« a little word of religion ;"] but it was all in vain, until a shawl " peau de lapin" [" of rabbit-skin"] effected what the charming eloquence of Mad. de Genlis failed to produce. He had the night before attended his « chere belle" to a ball : she sent him to her carriage for her shawl. He flew to be the bearer of the superbe cachemir, breathing its kindred roses; but (death to every finer feeling of fashion, taste, and sentiment) the laquais drew from the pocket of the carriage — a shawl peau de lapin ! I .'" « Plus de prechements done, ma chere comtesse,^ [" No more sermons, my dear countess,"] added the convales- cent lover, " c'est une affaire fine !" [** the affair is over!"] Never can love and rabbit skins be associated in my imagina- tion ; and believe me, my dear madam, quHl n\j a pas oVamour a tenir contre un schall, peau de lupin!'''' [»< no love can stand against a rabbit skin shawl !"] The modern revolutionary mouchoir de poche brode [embroi- dered pocket-handkerchief] is a great refinement upon the roy- alist pocket-handkerchief of other times. This elegant expensive little article is as indispensable to a Parisian fine lady, as the oachemir ; and its effects occasionally seem equal to that of the A charmed handkerchief of Othello ; which did " An Egyptian to his mother give, To make her amiable." A gentleman once accused my charming friend, Mad. la 10g SOCIETY. Comtesse d'H*#le, of having no lace or embroidery on her handkerchief. She laughed at his observation : " You are in the wrong," he replied, « car il rCy a rien 9 qui monte la tete d'un homme 9 comme le joli mouchoid'unejoliefemme," [" for there is nothing which strikes the imagination of a man, more than the pretty handkerchief of a pretty woman."] Every season has its peculiar lace, in France, and the an- nual festivals of the church are not, even now, observed with more punctuality, than the transition from point to Malines, or from Valenciennes to blond de fls, [thread blond] as their res- pective seasons recur. " Comment done, monsieur" [" How sir,"] said one of the gentlemen of the court to Monsieur I>^ # , looking at his ruf- fles; " vous voild en point, au mois de Mai!" [» now remains. The only suppers I saw were very slight and simple refreshments, afters the bats pares [dress-balls]. • The most usual, and indeed the most fashionable evening col- lation, is « le the" which, without being strictly the English tea, or the French gouter, formerly taken between dinner and supper, combines much of what is best in both — the exhilarating beverage of souchong and hyson, with confectionary and ices, found only in France ; and green tea punch, not excelled even in Ireland. I have heard, however, many a veteran disciple of the gay, exciting petit souper, place this substitution among the worst changes effected by the revolution, and lament in pathetic terms, that (t Par un abus coupable, Les soupers sont proscrits — on deserte la table." [It is a shameful abuse that suppers are proscribed and the table desert- ed.] Coming into France with the old impressions of "frogs and soupe maigrcf 9 I was surprised to find that all that has been said of the excellence and substantiality of a Scotch breakfast, was rivalled, if not exceeded, by a French dejeuner. The morning after we arrived at La Grange, the vemrable cha- teau of General La Fayette, we found his family of three gene- rations assembled in the salon*, and the breakfast was announced; as formally, by the mailre-d 9 hotel, as the dinner had been the day before. On descending to the salle-d-manger [eating-room,] we found a long table profusely covered with roasts, ragouts, dressed fish, pastry, salads, fruits, and sweetmeats, with all sorts of wines, while tea and coffee were served round, pour la digestion; and the French breakfast literally ended where the English one be- gins. This style of breakfasting I found universal in every house, where I became an inmate ; and they were not few. It has been adopted within the last twenty years by persons of all par- ties, who have remained in France during the revolution ; many of whom, while they e sec rale the event, adopt and approve the modes and habits of life, which it has originated. |yg PARIS. The dSjeuner a lafourchette [fork-breakfast,] taken in the mid- dle of the day, is among the most fashionable entertainments of Paris, during; he spring season, and is usually given at the maison de plaisance* or villa, which is considered as a sort of half-way house in a half-way season, between the Parisian hotel and the provincial chateau ; w hile the petite maison is now as little known as the petit- souper ; and both have fallen together with the state of morals and manners, which instituted them. It was at one of these charming villas, on the shores of the con- fluence of the Seine and Marne, that 1 assisted for the first time at a dejeuner a lafourchette, as a fete de 9 etiquette. The invited guests, rather select than numerous (which is the case in all French entertainments), assembled in their caleches, berlins, cabriolets, and barouches, in the court-yard of the hotel ..!itv who have rescued a great part of their property from revolu- 1u> afy sdizure. He now hunts on his patrimonial territories, as his father did . him, arid is as keen a spor.sman, and as devoted to the pleasures of the field, as .1) Norfolk squire. He was chamhellan to the late emperor, being oblrged, Ike ninny other of the higher nobility, who remained under his go- v : ein, to accept of office; and he is a peer of France, under the present meni ■j- De Ccenr, her confidential friend and executor, was accused of her death. Tl v , (1 Obi rlea VII faithfully as minister of finance, hut, like the unfortu- nate Maid of Orleans, was abandoned by the king, and sacrificed to the in- . 1p iea of his enemies. \ The first year of Louis XV.'s reign was passed at Vincennes, where he held iiis court, and in the neighbourhood of Plaisance, which he sometimes visited. PARIS. 479 On our return to the house liqueurs and a bouillon [soup] were served; and our carriages being ordered, w ith the addition of Mad. d'Hossonvilie's, who returned with us to Puis, (For she had only left her hotel in town, to preside at hevfete in the coun- try), we went to « promener en voiture" [take a drive] through the forest, and to visit the castle of Vincennes, en chemin faisant [in our way] to the capital. Despoiled as the forest of Vincennes has heen, from time to time, it still presents a very imposing and noble aspect. In that part, which immediately surrounds the castle, and which is call- ed ^ park, Louis Xi. planted a surface of three thousand feet, chiJry with oak;* and the spot is still marked, where the pious king, St. Louis, in the primitive simplicity of those rude days, held his court and presumed in council, under the shade of trees, planted by his predecessors.! The castle of Vincennes rises in the skirts of the forest. It w 7 as once the residence of the kin us of France ; and it has been too often the tomb of the victims of their uncontrolled despotism. We found the village of Vincennesfull of bustle and company ; the drapeuu blanc [white flag] floated over the towers of the for- tress ; a band played " vive Henri Quatre" [long live Henry the Fourth], before a rustic altar, crowned with lilies, and groups of military drank vin ordinaire [common wine], in loyal potations, before the door of every gninguette [tavern]. The royal family had just left the village as we entered it : they had visited it on ffee occasion of a review. It was also some royal holiday, and there was a dinner given hy the officers of the garrison, at the principal auberge [inn], all admittance»to the fortress was at first refused, for it was not open to the public. But an offi. er of rank, who was of our party, having written a noie to the governor, Mons. Puyvert, he immediately sent an order, which unbarred every gloomy portal, and unfolded to our view the dark entrance of that * Louis XI made his barber, Olivier, surnamed le (liable [the devii], the 'concierge o> Vincennes. It was in his rei;;n, that state prisoners were first committed to its dungeons. It is curious to observe that this Louis, one of the greatest monsters that ever lived, was the first who took the title of Moat Christian King, and received the appellation of Majesty, " pen connu jusqu'alors" [till then but little known], says Hainault. f Mamie fois ai vii que le bon saint, apres avoir oui messe en ete, il se alle tsbattre au bois de Vincennes II se seoitau pied d'un chene, et nous fesoit seoir ties aupres de lui; et tous ceux, qui avoient a faire a lui. venaient lui parler, sans qu'aucun huissier, ni autre, leur donnat empechement" Joixville. Collection de Vffistoire de Fiance. [Often have I seen the good saint, in the summer, after hearing mass, go to recreate himself in the wood of Vincennes. He seated himself at the foot of an oak, and we all sat down round him ; and every one who had busjness with the king came and spoke to htm, nobody interfering to prevent them. Joinville.] 180 PARIS. — — — — " Chdteau malheu^eux, Aux beaux e*prits s he'las ! si dangtreux" [Unhappy castle — so dangerous, alas ! to men of wit.] While this little arrangement was making, we had ample time to contemplate the imposing exterior of this anrjent edifice. The draw -bridge, its flanked towers, and above all its donj on [turret]^ so often the prison of worth, talent, and sensibility, seem to have been spared by time, as monuments of the dreary and terrific influence of bigotry and tyranny over human happiness.* Vin- cennes was always a place of strength. Rebuilt in 1337- by Philippe de Valois, and finished by Charles V. it has ^ice merely received some trifling accessions of strength, and it still retains much of its original appearance. On gazing upon the terrific aspect and immense height of its memorable keep, I found it difficult to understand, how pleasure could be so arbitrary in its views, that even kings should have sought it in such a build- ing ; and that the early Charles's and Louis's should have chosen the towers of Vincennes, ^ pour se soulacier, ets'esbattre" [fore- create and amuse themselves], as the old language of the quaint Joinville has it. When we had passed the draw-bridge (so often crossed by the bra\e and the unfortunate, with spirits subdued by oppression, and hearts broken by a sense of injustice and tyranny), we found the first court filled with artillery and ammunition, with all the frightful and formidable apparatus of warfare. Every object upon which our eyes rested was meant for the destruction of m an; for the abridgment of his. liberty, or the annihilation of h s ex- istence. A species of melancholy attraction riveted rm eves upon the donjon. I had so often read of it: so much of that chivalrous spirit of France, which early in life had captivated my imagination, expired here ; sometimes quenched by violent or ignominious death, sometimes wasted away in slow, silent, life-wearing oblivion. So much of the hold, fearless genius of philosophy had here sustained persecution, through the haras- sing medium of promised liberty, protracted imprisonment, and all the wearying alternations of suspense, that it seemed to me a monument of suffering, a «* brief chronicle," of times, dates, and events, suddenly presented to my view, round whirh the as- * " En passant devant Vincennes" says Rousseau, "fai senti, d la vue du don- jon, un d6chirement du caur, dont on remarqva I'effet sur mon visage [In passing Vincennes, says Rousseau, 1 have felt, at the sight of 'he turret, an anguish of heart, which shewed itself" in my countenance]. It is a curious instance of the shortness of popular conceptions, that the citizens of Paris, after destroying" the Bastille, should have suffered this fortress to stand It is a place of con- siderable strength; quite a place de guerre, made -s it were on purpose to overawe the capital, whose faubourgs are within the range of its cannon. PARIS. 181 sociations of youthful study, maturing reason, and long cherished principles, closely rallied. There was not an ivy-twined loop- hole, a time-tinted bastion, belonging to this frowning; dungeon, (so long the terrific instrument of the caprice of tyranny, in- gulfing any victim whom power, thwarted in some darling pas- sion, might hurl into its noisome cells), bul had a specific power to awaken sadness, and to rouse indignation.* Many, indeed, of its features still remain, to recal the sad events which have occurred within its dreary walls. The casement still exists, through the bars of which the great Conde cultivated his pinks, during his long incarceration. His original crimp, and the cause perhaps of all his after errors, was his devotion to a beautiful wife, whom he refused to resign to the romantic passion of a grey-headed king. The chamber is still pointed out, which was occupied by Diderot, when he was sent to Vincennes, for the publication of his letter** Sur les aveugles ; [On the bli?id]" where, goaded by a sense of the injustice, of which he was the victim, his great and luminous mind had nearly sunk under the blow; for his reason was only saved from a total overthrow, by a timely alleviation of his sufferings. f In this fortress also, Mirabeau, during a five years' imprisonment, wrote his beautiful letters to the frail and fair Sophie, and composed his able work against lettres de cachet, of whose abuse he was himself a victim. But while events connected with the scanty portion of civil liberty, enjoyed in France for a thousand years before the revo- lution, crowded upon the memory, association suddenly snapped its chain ; and our own gallant Henry V. dying in the donjon of Vincennes, and resigning his conquered France into the hands of his brother Bedford, occurred to my remembrance. An host of images rose with this interesting recollection, and Hal and Fal- staff cheered for a moment the gloomy reflections, which conjured up their delightful vision. * Mans- de Luxembourg a eVe mene deux fois d Vincennes, pour etre conj route. On ?ie salt point le veritable etat de son affaire — Sevigne. [Monsieur de Lux- embourg- has been twice taken to Vincennes to be confronted. The true slate of his affair is not known. — Sevignc ] The mystery, which for some time hung* over the fate of the brave Marechal de Luxembourg, was so profound, that not only he was himself kept ignorant of his crime, buc his friends were in doubt, whether he was confined at Vincennes, the Bast. lie, or some other state prison The crime of which tins brave man wax accused, who had fought so many battles for Louis XIV"., was sorcery. '- On ne parte plus de Moris- de Luxembourg. J' admire vraiment comment les choses se passent? 1 [No- thing more is sa>d of M. de Luxembourg. 1 am truly amazed 10 see how things go on], says Mad- de. Sevigne; and in fact, a few days after the secret impri- sonment of the Marechal, the oblivion of the grave hung- over the life and fate of a man, who, a short time before, had filled all France with the echo of his feats. f Some personal traits in his work against a Mad. Du Pre de St. Maur, the cause of his detention in this prison. B h 1S2 PARIS. Our party consisted exclusively of ultras and royalists ; and for them, and indeed for us, there still remained an object >f interest and of sadness, within the dreary rounds of Vincemies, which was no phantom of memory, hut had its "Local habitation, and its name," and which struck at once with its melancholy influence on the senses and imagination. We had received permission to visit the « chapelle ardtnte" raised to the mrmory of the ><>ung and gallant Due d'Enghien, by the Duchcsse d'Angouleme. We were -conducted to a wing of the fortress hanging over the fosse [ditch* moat], in which the Due d'Enghien had been shot, and which fronts the forest. The concierge met us at the door of his apartment, and lighting a lamp, conducted us up a dark, narrow, winding staircase, rendered more sombre by the con- trasted brilliancy of the setting sun, in which, a moment before, we had been basking. As we reached a landing-place, considerably elevated, the lamp's flickering light suddenly gleamed on the polished firelock of a sentinel, who guarded the melancholy post, nd who car- ried arms to the military orders and stars of some of our com- pany. To find here, within the compass of a dark and narrow space, so confined, that tired vigilance could scarcely measure its wonted pace, an armed guard, h ad an effect that went at once to my heart; for it had never before throbbed amidst the terrific gloom and imagery of a state prism. It is not impossible that this soldier now guarded the remains of the man. whotn when living he had her<' also guarded in that short moment, which inter- vened between judgment and execution. To him the innocent and the guilty would be a charge of equal moment, and equal in- terest; for the creature of force, its instrument and its victim, the soldier takes every station his trade assigns him. His v< ry nature, broken down to the voice of command, dissolves all the feelings, faculties, and passions of man into the great and para- mount law of obedience — to-night, in the gloom of the castellated ditch, raising his murderous aim, and reaching the life- pulse of the royal d'Enghien; to-morrow, irradiated with the glories of the rising sun, he hears the voice he had haply obeyed in many a nobl r cause, now give the word — « My comrades, to the heart! 1 ' and the gallant Nev falls beneath his arm ; — the theme of every soldier's praise, over the watch-fires of distant fields, lies bleed- ing by the soldier's hand.* Oh, these are views of human con- * The d.iy before my visit to Vincennes, I had stood upon the spot where the unfortunate Ney was shot, at the extremity pf the gardens of the Luxem- bourg. PARIS- 188 duct; these are scenes of human suffering, which sicken the heart and wither up its powers! Here civilised society loses its splendour, and the developement of the human faculties seem but to « multiply the power of doing evil!" The savage, whose joys and sorrows, whose life and death, are governed by the laws and passions of nature only, here, for a moment, stands opposed in proud superiority to that erring, cruel, and vain-glorious creature, to whom civilisation has lent but half its light; who, in his dangerous progress through semi- barbarism, has learned to pervert not to improve his faculties* to tread on the rights of others, not to respect and preserve, his own; and who, substituting power for happiness, and ambition for justice, seeks to become great, without endeavouring to be- come wise. To the right of the narrow landing-place, thus strictly guard- ed, in darkness and in silence, we were shown the little room which the Due d'Enghien occupied during-his short, sad dwell- ing in the fortress of Vincennes. To the left, a larger apart- ment, in which his hasty trial had taken place, exhibited a most gloomy ami imposing spectacle. Daylight was .wholly excluded* an i the room was laid out as for a funeral chamber, unechapelle expiatoire [an expiatory chapel]; it was lighted day and night by a lamp (la lampe ardentej, which hung from the centre of die ceiling. The walls were draped with white cloth, bordered with black; a low ottoman, of the same texture, ran along the floor. In the middle stood a hearse, covered with a velvet pall, richly embossed in gold, with the arms and trophies of the house of Conde. It veiled a small coffin, which contained all that could be collected, from the ditch of Vincennes, of the gallant d'Enghien — a few bones. A stone, on which it is said, his head had fallen, was placed beside it. In the back of this gloomy scene, hung a massive silver cross. Twelve immense wax ta- pers, in large silver branches, burned on each side of the bier. To the right was an altar, a crucifix, the sacramental vessels, and all the imposing paraphernalia of the ceremonies of Catho^ licism. Here is daily celebrated a mass for the soul of the de- ceased. Here, on the preceding day, Madame d'Angouletne had offered up her oraisons, at the shrine of her habitual devo- tion. Here slumbering sorrow might be roused into ceaseless vigilance ; and vengeance brood over images, created and com- bined to give it everlasting force. The recollection of the fate of the unfortunate prince, whose un buried bones were thus placed in melancholy spectacle ; the fatal policy which may, or may not, have necessitated his death ; the fosse pointed out where he had been executed ; the fortress itself, all produced a train of melancholy impressions, which I 181 1 J ARIS. thought not easy to be effaced. We withdrew from the chapelU expiatotrc in sadness and in silence, and the eyes of more tiian one brave and devoted champion of the Bourbons swam in tears, as we quitted the remains of one of its most illustrious and gal- lant defenders. But the sun was still shining brilliantly : it was a French sun ; and we were a French party : we ascended our carriages, and bidding adieu to the gloomy towers of the Chateau de Vincennes, the coachmen cracking their whips soon brought us to Paris, and set us down at the doors of one of its gayest spectacles, the Comic Opera. As we entered Mad. d'Hossonville's box, we found the de- lightful pastoral drama of *» Rose et Colas'" half over; but we were in time to hear Ponrhard in some very pretty vaudevilles; and to witness the first representation of " Phis Heureux que Sage" [More happy than wise], a piece which was condemned beyond all hope of redemption, notwithstanding the fine singing, and the elegant and spirited arting of that most lady -like ac- tress. Mad. Regnaut. We waited to see the first act of the old farre, *< Les Femmes Vengees" [The Wives Avenged], which, by the authority of time, maintains its privilege of wearying the patience of the audience, by a succession of impossibilities, only relieved by traits of coarse humour and vulgar pleasantry. We then adjourned to the first restaurateur in Paris, where, over an excellent supper, we discussed the amusements of the day, and decided on the merits of the salade de volatile and cham- pagne of Mons. Beauvillier. " L'homme machine, l'esprit qui tient du corps, En bien mangeant, remonte ses ressorts." [A good meal winds up the springs of the human machine]. No one seemed exhausted ; all had been amused ; and the de- jeuner a la fourchette, which began so gaily, at midday, finished as gaily at midnight. I was, however, convinced, that i his genuine French entertainment was calculated only fop the elas- ticity of French spirits, for the enjoyment of a people whose re- sources are infinite; and who, more animated than active, de- pend rather upon their mental than upo/i their corporeal ener- gies, and know no weariness but that vvhich springs from inert- ness, and the absence of intellectual occupation. Several dejeuners a la fourchette, given to us by friends resi- dent in Paris, succeeded to the file champilre at Plaisancc, and, like that, they usually occupied the whole day. After one of these entertainments at Mons. Dorion's, we spent the afternoon in visiting the fin«' Library of the celebrated Mons. Langles, md some other private collections, finishing the evening at the The- PARIS. 185 atre Francais. At another, given by Mons. Denon, we found ample and delightful amusement in examining the collection which occupies his apartments. Overall these hospitable feasts great refinement of manners, and an unclouded gaiety, universally prevailed, and banished the tedium so oppressive in the morning amusements of a less mercurial people. The custom in France of introducing conversation into society has a decided and very happy influence on the spirits and faculties of its members, at whatever season of the day they may assemble ; and time rarely passes "flat, stale, and unprofitable," to those, whose intellectual resources engage and diversity its hours, anil <* make to-morrow cheerful as to-day." An English gentleman, resident at Paris, assured me that an Irishman, whom he had known in France many years, left his small fortune to the only Frenchman who had ever offered him a dinner; at on< e to mark his own gratitude, and the rarity of the event. The outcry, indeed, amongst the strangers who now visit Paris, against the want of hospitality in ItJf inhabitants, is much more universal than it is well founded. Thousands have visited and continue to visit France, from every part of Great Britain, who have not even been so fortunate as the Irishman already rited. The particular position, indeed, of the English, with respect to the French nation, is not, at present, extremely favourable to the interchange of the rites and ceremonies of hos- pitality. But at all times, the French are neither so eager after society, nor so much in want of it, as to send « into the high- ways and lanes," to pick up such indiscriminate foreign guests, as may be inclined to accept an eleemosynary invitation, and to satisfy, at the same time, their appetite and their curiosity. No hospitality, and indeed no fortune, could hold out against those legions of the idle and the unoccupied, who, in the ex- uberance of wealth, or of undirected curiosity, leave England, to— Promener leur ennui ailleurs. [To parade their ennui elsewhere] The French, at all times circumspect in their societies, and averse from large and indiscriminate assemblies, have not learn- ed to extend their circles, or to multiply their invitations to strangers, since circumstances have inundated their capital with the people of all nations an I countries. The obscure, the unknown, and the unnoted, have therefore but little chance of obtaining admission into good French houses, of an v party or faction, if not particularly recommended, by letters or personal introduction. And I have known many self-sufficient i86 paris. persons, the centre of their own little domestic circle, the agree- able rattles of some particular coterie [so< iety], wounded in the very life-nerve of their amour-propre [self-love], on finding them- selves lost and confounded among the «* vulgar herd" of stran- gers, who, through the medium of that passe-partout [master- key], money, are allowed a free ingress to all public plac< s; but who go no further. These are the persons, who found a cha- racter for nationality, by exclaiming against every country but their own ; and who fancy themselves patriots, upon the pre- sumption of their preference for home. They feel not that their ennui and distaste, in foreign countries, are seated within them- selves; and they mistake their individual displacement for the dislocation of soriety. Few persons, I imagine, well introduced by letters of recom- mendation, orb) their personal talents, or relebiity, will join in this outcry against French hospitality ; or will deny that the ac- cess to a French house, where the stranger has once been re- ceived, is both easy and gracious. It is, however, quite true, that dinners of ceremony are by no means so general in Paris, as in London or Dublin. In the latter capital, hospitality has long lost its simple character; it is no longer the medium of sorial enjoyment; but the lure to ostentatious competition. Few de- sire to entertain, who cannot dazzle or outvie. Ruin too often treads on the heels of festivity ; the means and the measures rarely meet and are rarely calculated, while the spirit of display is in operation ; and he, who in justice to his children and his creditors, should not even indulge in " humble port," does not hesitate to treat his guests with « imperial tokay." The princely revenues of the English nobility, the immense opulence of the trading (lass of that great commercial country, while they multiply the artificial distinctions of society, permit an expenditure in entertainment, favourable to every competi- tion of vanity, or of pride. In France, w here property is more equally divided, where none are enormously rich, and none (it may almost be said) are absolutely poor, the modes and habits of hospitality are proportionate to the means; and in the ab- sence of display, they are directed exclusively by a taste for social and conversational enjoyment. The publi< and ministerial dinners are like those of the same description in other countries, and the dinners of the arch-chan- cellor Cambaceres, the hierophant of modern gastronomy, were, under the imperial' dynasty, models of elegance and of luxury. Still, however, the French dinner is, generally spe.king, in all its arrangements simple and unpretending. The length of the invitation seldom exceeds a few days, and is s< litnd to the uncer- tainty of all things human. It has frequently happened to us to PARIS. 187 be asked to dinner, from reviews or other morning amusements, by some one or other of the party we accompanied. The addi- tional co\e»s were the onlv difference in the economy of the table, occasioned by our partaking the fortune du pot; and if all was not »* more tban hospitable good and moderately plentiful," the never-failing excellence of the cookery, at least, contradicted the aphorism of Berchoux, that " Un diner sans fagon, est une perfidie.'* [A dinner without form, is a che^t.] It is a maxim borrowed from epicurism, and adopted into the code of French good-breeding, that w un veritable gourmand ne se fait jamais attendre" [a true epicure never suffers himself to be waited for]. To be punctual to the moment, is a point of good-breeding rarely neglected. The guest is received in the anti-room, by all the servants of the family ; and the arrange- ment of the French apartments being generally en suite, the s«//e^| a manger is almost invariably passed in arriving at the salon. It frequently happens that the table is only laid a few minutes before the dinner is served. That ceremony, therefore, which Consumes hours in an English house, and occupies the time of so many persons, is effected with a sort of magical celerity in France. But where all is for mere use, and nothing for dis- play, time and trouble must be necessarily spared. There are no showy sideboards, no rich buffets, in the French dining- room ; and though the table service is always of silver, vet in the first houses, ornamental plate, and articles not immediately necessary to the accommodation of the guest, are nearly un- knot n. As there is rarely head or foot to a French dinner table, the hosts generally occupy the centre. The removes are confined to the middle of the table: there are usually two short courses, with a dessert, and a number of stimulating hors d'eeuvres [side- dishes], almost unknown in the economy of an r nglish table. To those accustomed to *< raisonner principes sucres" [to reason on sugared principles], the French dessert will be found, in the language of Mons. de la Reyniere, « de parler a Vdme % ct surtout aux yeux" [to speak to the soul, and above all to the eyes]. A thin light Burgundy is the diluting beverage, which holds the place of our malt liquor; and the superior wines are not drunk till after the first course, when the domestics* serve them round. Cape wine or Malmsey are taken with the dessert. The art of cookery is supposed to have long reached its utmost point of perfection in France. It is a science, which all have studied, which all understand, but which it has been long deemed man- 188 PARIS. vais ton [vulgar] to expatiate upon, or discuss. All such conver- sations are now reputed to smell of the revolutionary times, when the most roturier [plebeian] persons, raised (Km the shop to the palace, piqued themselves on the friandise [dainties] of a table, to which they had hitherto been strangers ; and were proud to display their superiority over the *< cuisine bourgeoise" [city kitchen], by discussing cbtelettes a la Maintenon, or deriding on the merits of dishes, once confined to the menus [bills of fare] of aristocratic tables. The skill and science, which our young men of fashion display at table, who wish to found a reputation by living en garqon [as bachelors], have descended in France to the gar^ons, or waiters at the restaurateurs; and I remember a certain La Croix.* who occasionally attended our cabinet particulier [private room], at Le Jacques\ whose oracular judgments on the dishes or wines he wished to recommend, were equally amusing and instructive; and in England would entitle him to a professorship, should the *art ever be raised to the dignity of a science. At the end of the dessert, every one rises from table; and cof- fee (such as Mahomet might have drunk, to dream himself into his third keaveii) 9 with liqueurs pures et faetices, [pure and facti- tious cordials,] are ready prepared on a stationary table in a cor- ner of the saloon. This table universally exhibits an English tea- equipage, designed equally for ornament and for use; and the silver tea urn and tea an\(\y are rarely omitted. A conversation of a petit quart d-Jwure [short quarter of an hour] concludes the dinner engagement: the carriages and cabriolets draw up; eve- ry one pursues the pleasures and amusements of the evening as he thinks proper; and no one remains where lie dines, except by particular invitation, or that it happens to be the soiree of the lady of the house. It has occasionally happened, that our dinner invitation has in- cluded an arrangement for a "promenade en voiture;" [an air- ins: in the carriages,] and in the fine evenings of a French sum- mer, nothing can he more delicious than these after-dinner drives, taken by a large party, with which the intemperance of the men * Asking La Croix's opinion, upon the choice of some liqueurs we wished to purchase, he threw himself into the attitude of a declaimer at the Institute, and talked in terms equally scientific. — "Tenez, Madame; on doit consiile'rcr les liqueurs sous deux rupf>orts, pures et faetices. Par example^ ' Le Henri Qua- tre * et * le par fait amour' sont faetices, le curacoa et le kirsh-wnsser sont pines'" [Well, Madam; these cordiais mus. be considered under two separate cha- racters, pure and factitious. For instance, ' Tht Henry the Fourth,' and 'The Perfect Love' arc factitious, the Curacoa and the Kirsh-wasser are pure], Stc. 8cc This dissertation of La Croix, which I took down verbatim, is almost equal to the treatise on " La moutarde considcree philosophiquevient ,> [Mustard considered philosophically.] SOCIETY, *gg never interferes ; and to which pleasure, health, and recreation, equally contribute. One of these pleasant promenades, in which I was a party, had for its object the lovely grounds and gardens of Mousseaux; situate at the extremity of Paris, near the faubourg du Roule. We broke up from dinner at seven o'clock, mounted our carri- ages, and in half an hour were set down at the place of our desti- nation, the once celebrated "petite maison" of the late duke of ^Orleans, the temple of his dissipated orgies, and of his political intrigues. The house or rather the pavilion, is of Grecian archi- tecture, correct and chaste, even to coldness and uniformity ; but still elegant. The "jardins Anglais," [English garden,] once known as " Les folies de Chartres," [the follies of Chartres,] notwithstanding the occasional conceits of gothic ruins and attic temples, cascades without water, and Alpine bridges without pre- cipices, are stiil beautiful, luxuriant, and noble ; and the place, the company, the weather, the climate, all considered, few hours in my life have been more pleasantly enjoyed, than those passed amidst ( * Les folies de Chartres." The moon had risen on our rambles, before we returned to the hotel, from which we had set out. We found the soiree of Madame de C already assem- bled, and English tea at midnight concluded our very agreeable dinner party, with its "promenade en voiture."j The French soiree is literally an evening aP home. Almost every woman of condition in Paris has a soiree once or twice a week. Some ladies are « at home" every night, or rarely go out except to the court, to the opera, or the theatres,:): During the soiree, visits are received and paid, as on other evenings; for the evening is the usual time for paying morning visits in France; and once admitted to their enjoyment, no further invitation is necessary. These little assemblies, given without expense, and resorted to without form, present the state of Parisian society * Mousseaux, or, as it is now spelled Mouceaux, under the imperial regi- me was a maison de plaisance of the arcki-chancelier de V Empire. £villa of the arch-chancellor of the empire.] I know not to whom it now belongs, but its- gardens are opened to the public. f The late hours of neiv France are much reprobated by the primitive old gentry, who exclaim against dinners at half after five, or six o'clock, and who believe that at last " les Parisiens, d force de retarder Vheure de diner, Jiniraient par ne diner quele lendemain" {[The Parisians are constantly making; the dinner hour later and later, till in the end they will not dine till the next day.] * We had above twenty houses open to us, on different nights in the week, during our residence in Paris, where we were always sure of being graciously deceived, and of finding good society. 4Q0 v SOCIETY. in its most favourable aspect. Neither vanity nor ostentation interfere with their ease and simplicity ; there is no gambling, no full dress; the women go in demi-toiiette ; and as in Paris, il- lumination is extremely cheap and the apartments always well lighted, the whole additional expense of the sortie is included in tea, or some very slight refreshment, served a little before midnight. Society is therefore not a point of competition, but a source of genuine enjoyment. It never leads to ruinous extrava- gance; it is supported by no newspaper eulogies; it awakens no rivalry, and gives no heart-burnings; and the lady, who enter- tains, does not estimate the pleasure of her party by the num- ber of titles that fill her rooms, nor by the expensive rarities that crowd her supper-table; for wit, pleasantry, and good con- versation hold an uniform ascendant over peers, and pine-ap- ples, chalked floors, and peas at a guinea per quart! The weekly soiree, at some of the great houses in Paris, amounts to what is termed a grande-reunion, or large assembly; in which the coquettish demi-toilette gives place to full dress; and the society assumes more of the bustle and brilliancy of an Eng- lish rout. A few days after our arrival in Paris a card of invi- tation from the English ambassadress, and another from the princesse Louise de la Trimouille, for the same evening, afforded me an opportunity (as I went to both) of comparing the assem- blies of the two nations. We passed through long files of Eng- lish carriages, which filled the Rue St. Honore, in approaching the hotel of the English embassy: the halls and anti-rooms of that magnificent hotel were filled with domestics, in the splendid liveries of the Stuart family. Lady Elizabeth Stuart stood at the door of the first saloon, to receive her multitudinous congress, which poured forward in endless succession, from all nations, but chiefly from England, Ireland, and Scotland : and her ladyship went through the laborious task of reception (in all the routine of a London assembly), with as much grace and courtesy, as if weariness and exhaustion did not inevitably attend upon such an exertion. Faces with which I had long been familiar, in the cir- cles of London; faces, that I thought I had left behind me in Ire- land, presented themselves on every side. All was the buz, bustle, and motion of an English rout. Every one stared, every one talked, and nobody listened. The refreshments were abundant, exquisite, and various; and an elegant supper was prepared to follow the consumption of orgeates, ices, and ponche glacSe. [iced-punch.] Without waiting, however, to partake of this su- pererogation of hospitality, we passed on at an early hour from the hotel of the British embassy, to the hotel de la Trimouille. SOCIETY. 2.9 1 The hotel, de la Trimouille is situate in the centre of the Rue Bourbon, as it ought to be; for the names have not often been disunited. The Rue Bourbon is a grand, gloomy Patrician street; always the residence of the ancient nobility of France, whose venerable hotels still frown, on either side, like monuments of past gran- deur. Scarcely a sound disturbed its silence, as we entered, and the rsverberes [reverbrating lamps,] but feebly lighted, the high dark walls of the spacious courts which shut in from vulgar view the residence of hereditary grandeur. One single rap announced the arrival of the guests; and the poriecochere [carriage-entrance] without any visible agency, slow- ly opened, as if governed by the wheel of a convent gate. On ei- ther side of the court, carriages and cabriolets were sheltered in the remise, [coach house] or were drawn up in close file; and our own servant conducted us, through the silent lofty hall, up the broad stone stairs to the anti-room, where, consigning our persons and names to the guardianship of the maitre d'hotel, he took his own seat in an arm chair, by the stove. We followed our guide, as he flung open les grands battans, [folding doors,] in proceeding through the suite of rooms. AH the apartments were splendidly lighted : we found the bil- liard-room occupied by players, or by lookers-on at the game, which in France is played so well, and so generally, by both sexes. "We passed on to the grand saloon, and found a large cir- cle, all seated; all conversing, and all animated, yet all at rest. A few men only stood in groups, or, in the French phrase, en petlts peloions. [in little knots.] Some leaned over the backs of the ladies' chairs, with whom they were talking. In passing on to the superb chambre a coucher, [bed-chambers,] I observed Mons. Fieve, the author of the charming novel of the « Dot de Suzette" [Suzette's dowry] receiving the compliments of a little circle, on his new political tracts; and Monsieur de Chateau- briand, whom, having already seen at the opening of the Insti- tute, I instantly recognized, by his folded arms, abstracted look, and air of Arabia deserta. Withdrawn from the crowd, in soli- tary magnificence, he was silently receiving the homage of some dowager-w^ras; while he, who "saluted" every tree, river, and rock, from Paris to Jerusalem, seemed, in society, to hail nothing but his own importance. We found the Princesse de la Trimouille, not bustling through her rooms in endless genuflexions, nor stationed at the entrance- door, the wearied sentinel of her own exhausting pleasures, but quietly lounging in a fautcuil, [easy chair,] in her superb bed- 192 SOCIETY rootii,^ the sanctum-sanctorum of all splendour, taste, and ele- gance, in the suite of French apartments. She was looking on at a game of picquet, played by two venerable dukes, covered with all the insignia of their rank; and this was almost the only card-table I saw, at any of the reunions, or soirees, which I fre- quented, during my residence in France. The manner in which a French woman receives her female guests is extremely courteous and respectful, a little tinctured with formality, but marked by every feature of politeness and of attention. The reception of the male guests is, generally speak- ing, at once, extremely fascinating, and yet sufficiently dignified. She never rises from her seat: she receives their profound bow with a smile, a nod, a "hon soir," or "ban jour" bra "comment va-t-il;" ["good evening,*' or, "good day," or a "how do you do;"] or some little mark of distinction, a tap of the fan, a hand to kiss, or an expression of pleasant surprise at their unexpected appearance. All this however is air and look; it is "something, nothing:" it is quite indescribable, as it is undefinable; and it would be presumption to attempt it. De la Trimouiile! Who that knows any thing of the history of France, could for the first time be in company with the re- presentative of that illustrious family, without feeling some quick- ening throbs of the heart? All that is dignified in the history of the country is associated with the name. The most powerful among the provencal nobility, the La Trimouilles, governed the Charles's, opposed the Louis's, and assisted to place the founder of the house of Bourbon on the throne of France. They suffer- ed martyrdom in its cause, on the revolutionary scaffold, and they now rally round the throne of the family, they have so long fought and died to support. The Trimouilles have, indeed, done more for the house of Bourbon, than the house of Bourbon could do for the Trimouilics.f * Nothing can exceed the splendour and taste of some of the chambres d covchcr, in the private hotels of Paris. The walls are usually draped with rich silk or satin, fastened and decorated with gold or silver ornaments. The cou- rrr.-pled, or counterpane of the bed, which stands in an alcove, is frequently of white satin, richly embroidered, and ti'immed with Brussels luce. ■}■ Many of the families of the French nobility looked upon themselves as more ancient than the reigning 1 dynasties even in the earlier ages. " Qui vous a, fait Cftnte?" [Who made you a count ?] asked Hugh Capet, haughtily, of the Comte de Perigord. " Ceux, qui vous out fait, roi," [The same who made .you a king-,] was the bold reply. Charles VII. weary of the role of Georges Ltle la Trimouiile, suffered him to be arrested and imprisoned by his enemy, I- he con notable de Lorraine. t It was in reference to the conduct of Louis de la Trimouiile, who took Louis XII. prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin, that that wise and excellent SOCIETY im The Prince Louis, the only surviving representative of his ii- 1 lustrious family, has all that distinction of person and air, which indicates birth and high breeding, and is one of three of the handsomest brothers that France ever saw united in one cause. The talents and acquirements of the Princesse de la Trimou- ille give her a very decided influence in the circle and party in which she moves; and I observed, that literature and politics were the leading topics of conversation, in her elegant and re- fined re-unions. The bal-pdre, [drop bell,] a most frequent style of entertain- ment during the winter season (which season, par parentkese, [by the bye] is literally celebrated during the winter, and never put off till summer or autumn,') is a combination of youth, plea- sure, and gaiety, exquisite dancing to exquisite music, splendid dressing, and light collations; while little quadrille parties, sud- denly struck up to the harp and piano-forte, are not unusual in families, where there are many young people, though infinitely less frequent, than such accidental breaks on the card-parties of small English circles. All the modes of society in Paris are sim- ple, inexpensive, rational, and refined ; but they are, generally speaking, less gay, less artificial, and perhaps, at once, more formal, and more easy, than the usual arrangements of society in Great Britain. Its shades, indeed, are infinite, and vary ac- cording to the rank, age, party, and means of the entertainers. Its variety, however, is not its least charm; and the characters of rank, talent, and celebrity, both native and foreign, which are met with in its countless circles, must always render them curious, interesting, and attractive to the stranger, who, without bias or prejudice seeks, in visiting a foreign land, to compare its habits and manners with his own; and who, candid enough to grant to each nation its own peculiar merit, is still willing to cherish that natural and wise preference, leading to the gra- cious conviction, that " The first, best country ever is at home." monarch observed, after he ascended the throne, " Le Roi de France ne venge pas les quirelles du Due d'OrMans." [The king- of France does not revenge the quarrels of the duke of Orleans.] The Due de la Trimouille was one of the secret chiefs of the Hug-onot party, whose demands became so exorbitant on the gratitude of the king-. The influence, spirit, and power of this family ap pear indeed throuprh every pag"e of the history of France. The late Prince de la Trimouille, brother to the present prince, was guillotined in the early part {>f the revolution. END OF PART I. FRANCE. BOOK V Paris. ; Des Champs Elysiens ; le pompeux rivage, De palais, de javelins^ de prodiges borde, Combien vous m'enchantiez !" Voi.TATTtr : Boulevards Italiens.< — General architectural arrangement of Paris. — Banks of the Seine. — •The Hotel Bourbon. — The Louvre. — The Gallery — Modem French artists. — The Place de Carrousel. — - The Thuilleries. — The Sorbonne. — The Pantheon. — BibliothSque du Pantheon. — The Luxembourg. — Bibliotheque du Roi. — De Maaarin. — Librarians. — The Gobelins. — The shop-signs.'— 'Pri- vate hotels. — Historical scites. — Hotel de Beaumarchais. — Hotel de la Regnierc.' — >Mmanach des Gourmands. — Hotel de Someriva, *- -+Works of Canova, — Hotel de Craufurd. — Gallery of the Beau- ties of Louis XlVWs day. — Hotel Borghese. — Hotel and Collec- tion of Baron Denon, MY first flhpressions of Paris, as a great city, were re- ceived from my entering it by the Boulevards Italiens. The rain, which had fallen in torrents as we passed the Barriere de C lie hi, suddenly dispersed, as we reached the Boulevards ; and the bright blue skies of spring, and of France, lent their cloudless lustre to a scene, so unparalleled in my experience, that some one of the rich fantastic cities of Arabian fable seemed conjured up, to cheat the imagination. The « Chronicles of the 8usanians 9 the ancient ICings o/» Persia," could have afforded no gayer scite for the scenes of Scheherazade's invention, and one must have been, like her own •» king of the Black Islands, half marble," not to have yielded up the senses unresistingly to impressions so new, and to images so fanciful. PART II. b g PARIS. The splendid avenue of tlie Boulevards Italiens, so worthy the capital o f a great nation, once a desert, inhabited by brigands and banditti, is now lined with stately hotels, gardens, and flowery teivaces, mingled with structures the most grotesque, and edifices tne most picturesque ; — the Chinese bath, the Turk- ish cafe, the virandas of an Hindu pavilion, and the minarets of an Eastern kiosk, alternately glitter through double rows of noble trees, which line their spacious scite, and which, gemmed with beams and rain-drops, were just bursting into verdure, as I passed for the first time under their shade. It was early in the evening, the moment when, in Paris, the idle and the labo- rious, the rich and the poor, alike forego ennui and work, and all unite in a pursuit, there seldom frustrated or fruitless,— £/*e pursuit of pleasure. The gay multitude, which a spring shower had dispersed in search of temporary shelter, had just rushed forth in an exhila- ration of spirits, which a little contre-tems [disappointment] rather feeds than extinguishes, in the French temperament. The bou- quetiSres [nosegay women] were again presenting their violets and lily of the valley to the pretty grisettes [tradesmen's daugh- ters], who were tottering along with Chinese steps, and Chinese feet, not unconscious of being ** Men chausSes" [not unconscious of neat shoes and stockings], nor wholly unmindful of the glasses pointed from the virandas of Tortoni's or Hardy's cafes. — The petits-marchands [petty shop-keepers] were again displaying their gay sheds, and brilliant baskets, lined with gems and jewels, « a vingt six sous, au juste" [twenty-six sous, exactly].— .The reading-rooms, reinforced by the shower, displayed in their windows heads of every timbre, aching over the politics of Eu- rope, or heating over pamphlets of domestic recrimination. Bobeche had again taken his station on his deserted stage, and Galimafree** with his grave fatuity, was exciting bursts of mer- riment" in his fresh-gathered audience. All seemed gaiety, life, and intelligence, and a more animated scene cpuld not perhaps be found in the capital of any country in Europe, to greet the eye of the newly-arrived stranger, or to impress him with a more favourable opinion of the prosperity and native hilarity of its people. Were these spacious and beautiful boulevards, which surround Paris, a fair specimen of the capital they adorn, it * Bobeche and Galimafvc'e are two celebrated Gillcs, or buffoons, who exhi bit every evening' on ihe boulevards, and are the representatives of those JSaladins, who were anciently brought by the police, t9 exhibit on these boule- vards, in order to draw the population of Paris to that quarter, and thus dis- perse the malefactors and brigaiids, who were wont to take shelter there. The French Gilfes are frequently excellent low comedians — Voltaire calls the cloims of Shakespeare •« Gillcs" — and Touchstone himself is sometimes rivalled in wit and humour, by these extemporising buffos. PARIS. 3 would indeed be the proud city, " that lifteth her head on high, and saith, I am, and there is none other like unto me." But it is far otherwise ; and the boulevards, forming a splen- did belt round the narrow streets of Paris, are the girdle of Ve- nus on- a mortal form. There are peculiar scites (such as the whole line of quais) [quays] unrivalled, perhaps, in beauty, in- terest, and magnificence, in any other metropolis; — but, taken as a whole, Paris wants that uniformity, that propriety, if I may use the expression, which should characterise a great capital. It seems rather a cluster of irregular towns, than one great en- tire whole. Every quartier is a distinct district. The quartier of the Luxembourg has quite the air of a country village, group- ed round the castle of its seigneur ; and the whole of the faux- bourg St. Germain appears like some remote and antiquated town, a thousand leagues distant from the gay modern city of the ChaussSe d'Jlntin. The narrowness of the greater part of the streets is an " original sin" beyond redemption ; and the height of the houses, all of hewn stone, all spacious, all well- built, throws a depth of shadow, which adds to their gloom. It was among the best works of the late Ruler of France, that he spared neither money, labour, nor talent, in the improvement and beautifying of the capital ; and the inhabitants, all unani- mous on this point of his conduct, indicate, with grateful recol- lections, the avenues lie has opened, the spaces he has cleared, the noble streets he had begun, the public buildings he had found- ed, the markets he had built, the fountains he had erected, the great sources of health and accommodation he had opened on every side, for the benefit of the citizens of Paris — When they are asked, where were his own palaces, his Marleijs, his Baga- telles, his Trianons, and Belles-xwes, they point to a baby-house of wood and canvas, raised for his son, in the gardens of the Thuilleries, and talk of the plan of a future palace, for the king of Rome. The enormous size of the houses, in Paris, is an ancient and original error, in its architectural arrangements, arising out of modes and institutions, which kneaded their evil leaven through every particle of the great mass, and substituted power, influ- ence, and ostentation, for rights, privileges, and comforts. A great hotel was, in former times, the indispensible appanage of aristocratic pride ; and the hotel was usually so much too great for its noble owner, that, while their names shone, in golden letters, over the porte-cochere [great gate], they had frequently neither domestics to occupy its apartments, nor furniture to fill them. Thus, ignoble lodgers were taken in, to breathe under the 3ame roof with the inheritors of « six quarterings," and beds £ PARIS. and tapestry were carried back and forward, from the chateau in the remote province, to the hotel in the capital : while the "fier baron" [lofty baron], or noble due et pair [noble duke and peer], travelled like a Tartar chief, or Gipsey captain, with his household furniture, his bag and baggage in his suite. It is curious to see the rich and noble Madame de Sevigne uneasy at not being able to let her lodgings, the very rooms occupied by that dear daughter so fondly adored — " Celogis, (as she herself savs) qui m 9 a fait iant songer d vous ; ce logis que tout le mondc vient voir, que tout le monde admire ; et que personne ne veut louerf 99 * [These apartments which made me so often think of you; these apartments which every body comes to see, and which every body admires; and which nobody will hire]. In another place, she advises Madame de Grignan not to bring up her beds and tapestry from the remote province, where her husband was governor, at a distance of many hundred miles ; not, however, that she was herself very well able to accommo- date her daughter, for she had only one bed, according to her own confession. Still the hotel de Carnavalet, (which even at this moment attests its former grandeur) to which Madame de Grignan was about to carry her beds and tapestry, was cele- brated for its sculptures, by Gougeon ; its facade [front], by Ducereau, and by Mansard ; and its plafonds [ceilings], painted hy the first masters of the day. Such was the mixture of show and splendor with every species of discomfort, and the absence of all accommodations, the sure indices of the ostentation and meanness of a proud and poor nobility. The custom of letting out apartments, even in the hotels of the first nobility in France, is common at this day. — A shoemaker may lodge au sixieme [sixth floor] with a prince ; and i have seen, myself, the high-born and illustrious mistress of a splendid hotel, in the Rue St. Honore, get into the same carriage with her English-commoner-lodger, and both drive together to court. Oli ! who, that " has ever felt the thrilling melody 99 of that little English word « Home, 9 ' and has known and felt its endearing signification, would willingly share it with strangers and passing sojourners ? Who would not prefer the little door that shuts in all that is dearest, and closes on none beside, to the grande porte- cochere [great gates] of a more capacious structure, the caravan- sartj of fortuitous guests ? Who would not prefer the small owx exclusive house, the " Casa-mia, piccolina, che sia" to all the "pomp and circumstance" of the disproportioned structure, to be shared with those, one does not, or, still worse, with those one would not know ? * Letter LII. YoL 1. PARIS. 5 The French nobility, however, in former times, occasionally made a nobler use of their unoccupied apartments, than in hir- ing them out to strangers : for they frequently accommodated indigent talent with a home ; and the entresols [little low rooms between two floors] were occupied by the La Fontaines and Mar- montels, who were also the frequent guests at the tables of the La Sablieres and the Geoffrins.* There is not, perhaps, in the world, so imposing a scene, both for architectural beauty, and for historic recollections, as that through which the full swelling stream of the Seine flows, from the Pont Neuf, to the Pont de Jena; the one With its reversed statue of Henry IV., now slowly reinstating on its long-fallen pedestal, where misery once came to shed her tears, and loyalty to offer her devotions ;j the other marking a very different pe- riod in European history, and daily parting with its imperial eagles. It was thus I saw them both in the same hour. To the right of the Seine rise along its banks, in splendid suc- cession, the ancient and beautiful Louvre, the venerable palace of the Thuilleries. its luxuriant gardens and spacious terrace, and the rich groves of the Champs Elysees [Elysian Fields], termina- ting at the br«,w of Chaillot and of Passy, which swell into am- phitheatres, and close, by their imposing elevation, the whole magnificent scene. On the left the Palais de fyuatre Nations [Palace of the Four Nations], the Palais Bourbon, and a long suite of splendid hotels, whose lovely gardens and plantations of roses sweep down to the river, have each their specific and opposite interest. The Palais Bourbon, one of the most splendid palaces in Europe, was built by Louis XIV. for his natural daughter, the Princesse de Conde, after the design of Girardin. Although the origin of its foundation is now forgotten, the Hotel de Bourbon, or Palais du Corps Legislatif [Palace of the LegislativeBody], what ever name it may bear, must always be a monument of interest, and an object of admiration. Its Corin- thian portico, its Grecian peristyle, its spacious galleries, its elegant pavilions, its vestibules, its colonnades, its theatre, its gardens still remain, under different names or various combina- tions ; (for it has gone through many changes, and been adapted to many purposes, since it was first devoted to royal enjoyment and princely pleasures.) Its state bed-room, with its golden tapestry ; — its salle de billards [billiard room], with its verdant * Marmontel, however, paid for his lodging's at Madame Geoffrin's. — Though men of letters were frequently lodged gratuitously by the great, this custom made a part of their disgraceful dependance. f From the time of the death of the « Grand Dauphin" the inhabitants of Paris were wont to carry their tears and their complaints to the foot of the statue of Henry /p.— What an eulogium I £ PARIS. treillage [trellis], and its nymphs, crowned with flowers, offering' the rules of the game ; its celebrated salle amanger [eating-room], with its painted arcades, reflecting from a hundred mirrors its fairy splendors ; — its far-famed boudoir, with its unrivalled par- quets de marqueterie [inlaid floor], all have inclosed far different groups, and echoed to far different sounds, since the gallant Con- des and Bourbons first trod the golden maze of pleasure in this temple, so appropriate to her orgies. It was here the council of five hundred held their rude republican assemblies. Here, Carnot and La Fayette raised their last voice in the cause of consti- tutional principles ; and here the fate of Bonaparte was finally decided. The Palais Bourbon, long named the Palais du Corps Legislatif, has again resumed its original appellation ; and the venerable Prince de Conde, after an exile of twenty-five years, again holds his court, under the golden domes of his illustrious ancestors.* Among the beautiful hotels, which form a line with the Palais Bourbon, the elegant residence of the late Marshal Ney is con- spicuous. It was, at least, always so to me, as I passed it, from its peculiar air of uninhabited loneliness. The closed shutters of its lofty windows, and grass-grown pathway of its blooming gardens, then rich in full-blown plantations of roses, were strong and melancholy remembrancers. It has been asserted by Mons. Le Breton, that France, more than any other nation in Europe, participates in the glory re- flected from architectural monuments. It would be difficult to meet this sweeping assertion, backed by so high an authority, with the very incompetent knowledge of the art, which is brought to this work. But as far as my own observation went, I saw nothing in France comparable to the specimens of Saxon and Gothic architecture, to be found in almost every part of England. The observation of Heurtier, that a taste for architecture pre- vailed in France, long before the revival of that art in the rest of Europe, seems invalidated by the cathedral of Amiens, which is reckoned one of their finest churches, but which was built by * The Prince de Conde, though he has reached a term of life beyond the ordinary course of human existence, has, I am told, preserved much of the " air de (Seigneur* and manners of the old school of gallantry, and he is parti- cularly polite to the ladies. His senses, however, do not keep pace with his susceptibility. Monsieur Talleyrand being presented to him, his Highness constantly addressed him as JMonsieur le Prince de Tarente, while some of his gentlemen repeatedly whispered him, " JMonseignevr e'est le Prince Talleyrand." [My lord it is Prince Talleyrand]. — " Qu'estce qu'on me pari e done de ce chien de 'Talleyrand?" [Who is it talks to me of that dog T*alleyrand] asked the Prince, of Mons. Talleyrand himself. " JMon Prince " replied M. T. " voild deux ana quejene connais plus cet Iiomme Id." [Prince, for the last two years I have not known that man]. — This little incident was said to have occurred while I was in Paris, and I give it as an anecdote de salon. the English ; and every other great religious structure I saw, Notre Dame and St. Denis included, is infinitely inferior, in point of grandeur, beauty, workmanship, and extent, to Can- terbury, York-Minster, or Westminster xibbey. Of pure Grecian architecture, the specimens in France are few and inferior, both in magnitude and execution ; while the mixed order, which pre- vails over their few public and numerous royal edifices, seemed to me to be sufficiently distinct and specific to take its place with the other five, and to merit the name, of French-Grecian archi- tecture. It may be said to resemble the French-Grecian drama, which presents the incongruity of modern manners blended .with antique story, and the observance of the Aristotelian severities, with an adherence to national peculiarities. France has not, hitherto, shown herself the land of the sublime; she has never produced a Milton, nor possessed a Parthenon : and her highest effort, in the epic of poetry or architecture, is exhibited in the coldest poem, and the most ponderous structure, that modern times have produced, the " Henriade" of Voltaire, and the Palace of Versailles. "Oules Rois furent condamne*s a la magnificence." [Where the kings -were condemned to magnificence, .] Of that mixed architecture, which may be accounted truly and purely French, the Louvre is a perfect and beautiful specimen. Neither grand nor simple, it has every other excellence. Rich, varied, and elegant in its decorations, at once massive and orna- mented, solid and light, it appeared to me such a structure, as the wild fantastic imagination of Ariosto might have originated for one of his own fairy palaces, the magical temple of some enchant- ing Armida.* The Louvre is one of those objects in art, which pleases without any classical authority for pleasing. It is a splen- did variety, out of all ordinary classification, and the lively emo- tions of admiration it excites, are certainly not referable to its observance of any rule, or its conformity to any known model. Philippe de Lorme, and Pierre Lescot threw a brilliant lustre over the architectural genius of France, when, in the early part of the sixteenth century, they sketched those elegant and original * To this melange [medley] the severe taste of Voltaire objects, in his well- known stanzas on the Louvre. " Sous quels debris honteux, sous* quel amas rustique On laisse ensevelir ces chefs d'oeuvres divins ! Quel barbare a meie" la bassesse Gothique A toute la grandeur des Grecs et des Romains /" [Under what shameful rubbish, under how rude a pile, have these divine masterpieces been burried : What barbarous taste has mingled the paltry Gothic with all the grandeur of the Greeks and Romans]. 8 PARIS. designs, which produced a new Louvre on the scite of the ancient edifice. Henry II., Charles IX., and Henry IV., all contributed to the beauty and splendor of this royal residence, and Louis XIV. was the first sovereign of France, who ventured to remove the seat of government from the capital of the kingdom, and perma- nently to desert the venerable Louvre, " Le Palais pompeux, dont la France s'honore," [That pompous palace, the boast of France,'] (the dwelling of the Valois and the Bourbons,) for the pestilen- tial atmosphere of the modern Versailles. The history of the Louvre, a recapitulation of the scenes which have occurred in its chambers, would embrace some of the most curious facts in the history of France, and furnish the tra- gic muse with incidents beyond her own high-wrought concep- tions. It was in the midnight councils of the Louvre, that an event was planned, in cool, calculating, murderous policy, which has thrown a stain upon Catholic zeal, never to be effaced, so long as time shall perpetuate the deed ; which has given the blasted name of its sanguinary perpetrators to eternal ignominy, has painted religious fanaticism in its own true colours, and ex- hibited the armed power of omnipotent despotism, willing, and executing, in a breath, vengeance and massacre, in its darkest form. It was in the secret chambers of the Louvre, that Catha- rine de Medicis and her son Charles IX. planned the murder of all the Hugonots, in the capital and towns of France, a massa- cre projected and executed at the same moment, and with the same merciless ferocity and unsparing cruelty, in the most remote, quarters of the realm. The balcony still exists, from which Charles fired on his subjects, on the night of St. Bartholomew, as they hurried to and fro, in horror and consternation, aulidst the tolling of bells, the thunder of artillery, the shouts of the murderers, and the cries of the dying. The apartment is still visible, where the assassin Mauri vert attempted the life of the brave de Coligny : and the room is still to be seen, from which the immortal Henry IV. was dragged from the arms of his beau- tiful bride to the feet of the King, to hear the dreadful alterna- tive pronounced in the midst of murderers and zealots — « Or ."la messe, ou JjA mort" [Either mass, or death], — Of unlimited power, and religious fanaticism, the massacre of St. Bartholo- mew was the work, result and triumph. The Louvre, since the days of Francis I. the patron of all that was refined and liberal, lias not only been the sanctuary of the arts and sciences, but the focus of letters. It was here the French academy hefd the most far-famed of its sittings, whe. PARIS. g the (;'Alemberts,the Diderots,the Buffons,the Voltaires, theMar- montels, were among its members ; and here all the most cele- brated artists in France were gratuitously lodged, from the time of Henry IV. until the late Emperor dislodged them,* in order to enlarge and repair the edifice, for the reception of his tri- butary kings ! He had already named particular apartments, in his other palaces, Salle des Rois [Saloon of the Kings], in analogy with the Salle des Marechaux, and Salle des Pages [Saloon of the Marshals, and Saloon of the Pages]; but the Lou? re was de- stined to be the residence of those sovereigns, whose peculiar po- sition with respect to the French government obliged them, at any time, to visit the modern Rorae,f — " Where menial Kings ran cow'ring up and down." The Louvre had always been an object of admiration and at- tention to Buonaparte, during the early part of his consulship: its avenues, obstructed by miserable and noisome streets; and the sculptures of Gougeon, the devices and designs of de Lorme, L'Escot, and Perault, defaced or obscured by time and neglect, had not escaped his notice. He saw them, " Though sullied and dishonored, still divine," and he resolved on restoring the building to its original splendor. The arts were rallied round their own temple, to revive its glories. By the removal of many wretched buildings, the palace was in- sulated, and its architectural beauties brought into view ; repair and improvement went hand in hand ; and the Louvre is at this moment one of the most imposing and splendid, if not the most perfect structure, that the genius of sculpture and architecture ever produced. The gallery of the Louvre, " Qui sur tous les beaux arts a fonde sa gloire," presents an object of recent interest, which when I beheld it, absorbed all the remoter associations of historical anecdote, ( * Napoleon assigned the Palais de Quatre Nations [Palace of the Four Na- tions] for the residence of the French artists, and added thirty-six of the cham- bers of the Sorbonne, once the dens of 300 theologians. Here young ariists of both sexes, in the very novitiate of their art, were comfortably lodged, and free of all expense. f The name of the architect of the superb fagade [front] of the Louvre, was for a long time lost to the admiration of posterity, until accident discovered, the MS. and original designs of Perault, and gave the name of their modest author 10 immortality. PART II. C 10 PARIS. which connect this palace with the epochs of the country .. — Com- menced by Charles IX., it was finished by Louis XIV., who also erected the beautiful faqade, the chef-d'oeuvre of the age in which it was raised. I visited this celebrated gallery, when its walls had been de- spoiled of those treasures, which, consecrated by the hallowed touch of genius, had escaped uninjured through the course of ages ; and which by that law, which has disposed of empires and of nations, from time immemorial, by the law of conquest, had become the well-earned spoils of France. I, who had never seen this gallery in the day of its greatest glory, I missed no- thing — I had never before beheld so great a covered space. The brilliant vista, formed by its length, which seems to lose its point of termination in the mists of distance, its splendid roof, the exquisite sculpture and gilding of its architraves, left no room for reflection or regret, or for any feeling but that of sur- prise and admiration. « Vous ave% enriche le Museum de Paris de plus de cinq cents objects, chefs-d'ozuvres de Vancienne et de la nouvelle Italie ; et quHl afallu trente siecles pour produire" [You have enriched the Mu- seum of Paris with more than five hundered objects, master-pieces of ancient and of modern Italy; and which it has taken thirty ages to produce.] Such was the flattering observation of Buonaparte to his soldiers, after the taking of Mantua. Of these five hundred chefs-d'oeuvres, the glory and boast of France, not one remains in the Museum of the capital. The grief, the rage of the Pari- sians, at the moment of resigning these treasures to foreign troops, have already been well and ably painted by strangers and travellers, who were present at the time of their departure. They evince a refinement, a spirit of nationality and a cultiva- tion, which recal all that is read and known of the people of Athens. But the transports, with which these spoils were received on their arriv al in Paris, when the Apollo of Bel v id ere was carried from the Porte aux Thuiles, to the Champ dc Mars, accompa- nied by the whole population of the city, amidst shouts of joy, and of victory, were emotions much more accordant with the French character, than those of despondency and indignation, and are best described by the Frencli themselves.- — I have heard them relate the installation of that perfect, model, which realises all that Homer had conceived of the God of light and genius, with an eloquence and an extasy, which for a moment made them forget that they no longer possessed a treasure, so dearly purchased, so highly prized, and so reluctantly resigned. When the French army, after crossing the burning deserts of Africa, came within view of the mighty ruins of ancient Thcbe$, PARIS, H it halted unbidden, and, by one electric and spontaneous emotion of awe and admiration, the soldiers clapped their hands, as if the conquest of Egypt was completed; as if, to behold the gi- gantic remains of this great city, had been the sole object of their long and painful labours, their glory, and their reward. This is one of the grandest images, which human affections have ever presented to the contemplation of the poet or the philoso- pher. France was then free and covered with glory, she was for a moment susceptible of the sublime, and she was worthy of the spoils her bravery had won, and which taste could thus feel- ingly appreciate.* Notwithstanding the great restitutions which have been made from the Louvre, both of pictures and of statutes, much yet re- mains to excite attention. The purchases of Napoleon abroad, and his encouragement of the arts at home, were munificent. And France, besides the abundance of her own productions, the works of her Claude Lorraine, Poussin, Le Brim, Bourdon, Le Sueur, Vernet, &c. &c. was peculiarly rich in her collections of the Flemish school, and almost monopolised exclusively the chef-d'mivres of Champagne and Rubens. Some of the finest productions of the Italians had long been in her possession ; and though her original treasures bear no sort of proportion to her lately acquired, and still more recently resigned spoils of all that was most precious in the arts, still much remains, even in the gallery of the Louvre, to extort admiration from the judgment of the amateur ; and to present some excellent models of study to the artist. On the several occasions that I visited the Louvre, (for, though it was then closed to the public, I had, through the interest of friends, repeated opportunities of viewing the collections which still remained in its gallery and saloons,) I always found a num- ber of young artists, of both sexes, who had obtained permission to finish works previously begun there, intensely occupied in copying from the Italian and Flemish pictures, which still hung * See Denon's Travels. — The progress of the French army through the wastes and among the ruins of Egypt, was occasionally characterised by traits of great grandeur and sublimity. The soldiers, under the command of Des- saix, spontaneously broke their order of march, and halted before Tentyra, in endless admiration of its grandeur. The enthusiasm, both of officers and of- men, was exhibited in an ever ready assistance to the artists, and the mem- bers of the Egyptian Institute. But history has not, perhaps, an image more magnificent to offer to the contemplation of the painter, or of the moralist, than that of Buonaparte, as yet young, as yet known only by the* glory he had acquired, lost in contemplation before ihe mighty pyramids of Cheops; and, in the presence of the enemy's army, pointing to these gigantic monuments, as he addressed his soldiers in words, sublime as the objects which inspired them — " Jillez, et pensez que, du hunt de ces monument!, quarante siecles nous ob- served" [Go, and think that from the height of these monuments, forty cen^ tunes observe us.1 18 PARIS. on the walls; and with a devotedness of attention, an abstrac- tion, which left them apparently unconscious of the presence of the strangers, who passed their easels with inquisitive glances, or paused to watch the progress of their work. Many of these students were interesting young women, and some had made a considerable progress in the art. The practised eye of the pro- fessed connoisseur could alone detect the superiority of the ori- ginal they copied from. It was thus that lovely, young, and di- ligent, Madame du Barry was found in this gallery, in the days of her innocence, by the Comte de # * # , pursuing, from taste as well as from necessity, this mode of earning a subsistence. She little dreamed, when she abandoned this elegant and honour- able mode of earning an honest subsistence, that she was aban- doning her easal for a throne, and a scaffold. Painting, with its sister arts, are said to have rapidly decli- ned in France, under the reign of Louis XIV. Le Brun, a sort of painter-laureate to the king, basking in his favour, and arm- ed with his authority, ruled with an absolute sway over the school of painting, unfavourable to the freedom and interests of genius. The labours of his own life were chiefly confined to the feats and history of his royal patron, which he illustrated in a series of allegories. His disciples, with almost all the artists of the day, who had no appeal from his power, and no resource against his persecution, worked in his trammels, and under his dictation. The royal palaces were thus the school and object of painting in France. The king and his mistresses, its models and inspiration, and ceilings and portraits, entablatures and frizes, all reflected the same cold monotony of conception. Emi- nence was only to be obtained, and talent rewarded, among the first artists of the day, by permission from Le Brun to partici- pate in the great works of Versailles, or in the apartments of the Thuilleries; and it is there that the servile genius of TLe Brun himself, Mignard, Coypel, de Champagne, and Nocret have immortalised the egregious vanity of the king, and their own dependance. It is there, in colours which time has still spared, that, under a hundred different aspects, as the god of day, Louis Apollo is represented, through a series of fulsome allego- ries, sometimes irradiated with a glory, supreme above the uni- verse, which he only enlightens; sometimes imagining the pun- ishment of those who resist his will, in the fate of Marsyas ; and depicting, in the stories of Hyacinth and Niobe, his goodness or his power; while the enamoured Thetis and the devoted He- lianthus illustrate his bonnes fortunes, and successful triumphs over the frail goddesses of his own Olympus.* * The ICing and his painters having- wholly exhausted the history of Apollo in the royal service, Mignard, a favourite painter, was ordered to begin a ne* PARIS. 13 Sculpture, the art which peculiarly belongs to a free country, and which has rarely flourished among slaves, wholly declined during the reigns of Louis XIII. and XIV. and with the excep- tion of the Porte St. Denis, has left nothing of these times in France, that is not inferior to the works which preceded it. Puget, the most celebrated and eminent statuary of the day, disdained a dictation to his genius, " de par le Roi" [by the King], and pre- ferred, as he himself expresses it, *< d'exercer son genie librement a Marseilles, d Vasservissement de Versailles." [Exercising his genius in freedom at Marseilles, to the slavery of Versailles.] When Louis XV. ascended t!;_e throne, painting in France was in its lowest state of degradation; and it was reserved for the genius and spirited exertions of Vien and Danjevilliersto redeem the art, by recommending the study of nature as the best model. David, by his powerful talent and practical exertion, materially contributed to this revolution and improvement, and may be said to have founded a new school, rather than to have improved an old one. But it is the first effort of change to fly to extremes ; and ♦ tins eminent painter, in his profound disgust for gorgeous dra- peries, affected groupings, and overcharged colouring, fell into an anatomical style of drawing, which gives to so many of his noble figures their harsh and strongly defined outline; and he became sometimes unnatural, by following nature too closely.* David was the first painter, in France, who ventured to banish the eternal round face, turned-up nose, and glance of mingled pertness and licentiousness, which Vateau had made the&eaw ideal of female beauty ; and he first gave to the heads of women, in historical pictures, that Grecian line of feature, and heroic cast of countenance, which distinguish the Italian school. The arrival, in the capital of France, of the chef-d 9 cewvres of the Italian masters, came opportunely to check the progress of the new style, which, under another form of exaggeration, had opposed itself to the extravagancies of the old manner. It was it the gallery of the Louvre that an altar was then raised to taste and to nature, at which all the professors of the art hastened to imbibe their inspirations, and to offer their homage. « We did not" (said M. Gerard, speaking to me on the subject) « we did not go to the Louvre, merely to imitate and multiply copies of pictures, that we deemed inimitable ; but we went to study even series of adulation, on anew theme, and is said to have absolutely died of the fatigue of flattering the King-, before he had got half through his task: leav- ing behind him more sky-blue robes, and full-blown roses, arrows, darts, and garlands, than any of his millinerycotemporaries in the degraded art. * The reliefs in all the pictures of David's, which 1 saw in Paris, and in those of some of his pupils, struck me to be of a strength and tone beyond that of nature, or accident. The much-admired sword, in his magnificent picture of Leonidas, illustrates my observation, which, however, as Being simply my own, may be erroneous. 14» PARIS. the minutest details : a light, a shade, a trait, a tint, in a single picture was an object of study and imitation for days together. The minutest details fascinated our admiration, as the greatest ensemble excited our wonder — nothing in these admirable chef- d'ceuvres was below attention, if much was beyond our praise; and if our progress, while we studied them, was inadequate to our efforts, our deficiency did not arise from a want of just ap- preciation of their excellence, or of perpetual and laborious study of the perfect models they presented to our imitation." It was my good fortune to have known many of the most eminent French artists, resident,. at Paris at the time I visited it ; and, in illustrating my page with names destined for posterity, with the names of Denon, Gerard, Girodet, Guerin, Le Fevre, and Casas, 1 am enabled to observe, on their authority, that the assertions, made by some very recent travellers in France, that the French artists neglected the Italian masters, to form their style and taste in the schools of the Coypels and Mignards, is false, and wholly unfounded. It indeed seems impossible that any one would have ventured on such an assertion, who had visited the atteliers [work-rooms] of the eminent French artists of the present day, or was acquainted with the state of the art in France, and with the utter contempt into which its former vicious -school has fallen. While the best refutation of such defamatory and prejudicial assertions will be found in the Battle of Jluster- lit%, by Gerard ; the Plague of Jaffa, by Gros ; the Deluge, of Girodet ; the Dido, of Guerin ; the Leonidas, of David ; the En- dymion, of Prudhom ; the Portraits of Robert Lefevre, and the exquisite miniatures and cabinet pictures of Saint, Isabey, and Augustin.* * I know not how far it may be justifiable to reveal the mysteries of the attelier [painting-room], or whether foreign spectators can be supposed to hold themselves bound by all the delicate convenance [reserve] of native artists. I should find it difficult to conceal the exquisite pleasure I felt, from along and admiring view of an historical picture of Monsieur Gerard's> which has lain unfinished, in his work-room, since the first entrance of the allies into Paris. — The subject is, Achilles mourning over the BodyofPatroclus, at the moment that his immortal mother comes to console and counsel with him. The principal figures are, the body of Patroclus, Achilles, and Thetis ; but the genius of the picture lies (or seemed to me to lie) in the contrast produced between the inanimate countenance of death, and the passionless traits of divinity : — in the sublime looks of the goddess, not one mortal expression is to be traced — all is the spiritual elevation of superhuman existence. In the livid features of the dead hero, the expression of all human feeling is extinct ; both countenances are equally passionless — but the one is above the influence of motion, the other only beyond its operation. The fine countenance of \chilles forms the best contrast to both ; grief repressed, but not subdued — vengeance delayed, but not resigned, and struggling with the deference p.^id ai once to the counsels of the mother and the goddess, are mingled in his beautiful features. The Portrait of Madame de Recamier, in her Sialic de Bain [bathing-room?, PARIS. 15 When I first visited the Louvre, the spaces on the walls re- mained unoccupied, which had been lately filled with the Ra- phaels, the Guidos, the Corregios, the Parmegianos ; and the few persons who accompanied me alone occupied the vastness of that beautiful and capacious gallery, which had contained thousands, when the nuptial procession of Buonaparte with the daughter of Austria passed, amidst the brilliant multitude that lined its w T alls, and the splendid spoils that hung on them. When I last visited it, it was filled with workmen, altering the position of the pictures which remain, and adding to their number the sea- views of Vernet ; the St. Bruno, series of Le Sueur, and the historical pictures of Rubens, all of which I had seen and admi- red, a few days before, in the gallery of the Luxembourg, their ancient destination. — That Vernet and Le Sueur should have possesses a very different merit from the grand epic of the Tent of Achilles. — The lovely subject of this picture seems so fresh from her bath, that the glow of its tepid vapour flushes her cheek, and mantles to her brow ; and the delicate and naked foot has not yet found the refuge of the little slipper. There is, in the figure of Madame de Recamier, a sort of graceful awkwardness, which is fre- quently found accompanying the unstadied attitudes of a fine form, seeking ease of position, without reference to effect; and there is a sort of gathering up of the arms and shoulders, which adds the spirit of life and motion to the flowing softness of recumbency. — \nother moment, and Madame de Recamier will have lain down on her lit de repos [couch], and have given to a downy slum- ber those charms, » Which, sleeping or awake, shot forth peculiar graces." Three sovereigns sat to M. Gerard, in the same day. — At twelve, he at- tended the King of France, at the Thuilleries; at two, the Emperor of Rus- sia came to him ; and at three, the King of Prussia took the chair vacated by the Emperor. This is a curious incident in the life of the painter, and in the history of the times. Among the pictures, in the gallery of Monsieur Girodet, I was particularly struck by a scene from " Atala" and a picture of its author; the most strik- ing likeness that ever a portrait bore to an original. His Endymion, extremely calculated to fascinate a woman's taste, is, I believe, marked by the approba- tion of all the first judges who have seen it. An air of peculiar classical ele- gance presides over all the works of Girodet 1 s pencil. The modest and ingenious Guerin, of whom all his brother artists speak in the highest terms, has but one obstacle to immediate eminence — his youth. — His picture of *' Phaedra and Hyppolitus" purchased by the late Emperor, and which I saw in owe of the apartments of St. Cloud, laid the foundation of his reputation, which his " Dido" has recently so highly raised. The Miniatures of Saint have a strength and character, that seem almost incompatible with the delicacy of their touch ; David has named Saint, the Rembrandt of miniature, — as Isabey, the soft and graceful Isabey, has been called the Raphael Laurent is, I believe, at the head of what is termed, " tableaux de genre" Among the female artists, (and there are many of considerable talent) Ma- demoiselle Lesiot holds a distinguished rank, for her admirable representa- tions of the interior of churches, &c. &c. &c. The French artists (all, at least, with whom I have had the pleasure of con^ versing) appear to be men of very considerable information, without the least tinge of professional coxcombry. £6 PARIS. been transported from thence to the Louvre, might have been a matter of indifference ; but it appeared to me nothing short of profanation, that the pictures of Rubens should have been re- moved from a spot, which they had occupied for nearly two hundred years — from the palace of his royal patroness, at whose commands they were executed ; and who there, day after day, watched the progress of his task. It was in the very gallery of the Luxembourg, which the pictures of Rubens so long adorned, that they were painted ; — it was under his eye they were ranged ; it was he disposed them where they lately hung ; and not a board, not a nail, in that noble apartment, but taste and sentiment would have held sacred. The pictures thus removed, now nearly fill up all the vacancies on the walls of the gallery of the Louvre, which the late equitable restitutions had left bare. The Place de Carrousel, which intervenes between the palace of the Louvre and the Tiiilleries, was once notable for the tilts and tournaments celebrated within its bounds, and for the court- ly melo-drames exhibited in it, during those days of representa- tion, when all France seemed -A stage ! And all the men and women merely players." In 1622, Louis XIV. gave here his famous fete to Mad. La Valiere, and strove to win her heart by flying Turks, whose sorties, from the angles of the court, are said to have given it its present name, by a forced etymology of « Quarre-aux-ailes" originating the modern application of Carrousel, The Place de Carrousel is now most noticed for the grand tri- umphal arch, raised in honour of the victories of France, chiefly gained by Napoleon Buonaparte, and commemorating in its en- tablatures many of their most striking events. The close approximation of this beautiful arch to the entrance of the palace of the Thuilleries, is its greatest defect. Its greatest glory was once to have supported the far-famed horses of Venice, whose departure from Paris excited such palpable and audible consternation in the inhabitants. The golden car of Triumph to which those horses were harnessed, and which, it was said, was intended to sustain the image of Napoleon, under the form of another Jupiter Tonans, I saw taken down, on the eve of the fete of Louis XVIII. Its descent scarcely fixed the momentary attention of the idlest passenger. The restitution of the horses affected the pride of a nation, which had long learned to esteem the treasures of art confided to its care, as its prime glory, and dearest boast. For the Chariot of the Sun, to whatever purpose it might have been originally devoted, they evinced not the least reverence, nor for its overthrow expressed the least regret. PARIS. £y It was on the entablatures of this arch, that the victories of Napoleon, which so long threatened the liberties of Europe, were represented, under every form, fact, and allegory, that the genius of sculpture or flattery could devise, to meet the eye of the conqueror, and to dazzle the minds of an intoxicated people. These well-executed triumphs lurked in the concave, started from the tympan, and rose on the frieze. The meeting of the Emperor Napoleon with his admirer and disciple, the Emperor Alexander, was among the most striking of its bas-reliefs. But this monument of a friendship, which, like love's frail vow, — ■ Sweet, but not permanent, Bore but the perfume and suppliance of a moment," has, I believe, long been removed ; and if seen by the Emperor of Russia, in his visit to Paris, must have awakened some stifled sympathies, and brought to his recollection — - Til at such things were, And were most dear to him.' * The youthful admiration of the Emperor Alexander for Buonaparte, is, well known. I was told that he imitated him in every thing", and that the re- publican general was very literally «* The mirror, in which he dressed himself.'* In their first meeting, at the ratification of the treaty of Tilsit, they evinced a sort of romantic fondness for each other's society, which seemed to go far beyond the usual ardors of political conferences, and of diplomatic tete-d tetes; and if circumstances rather unfavourable to the romantic friendships of em- perors had not occurred, the Orestes and Pylades of antiquity might have yielded the palm to these imperial friends. To these observations the follow- ing description of the imperial embrassades, during the conferences at the peace of Tilsit, is not altogether irrelevant. After Napoleon and Alexander met on the rafts, thrown between their re- spective boats over the waters of the Niemen, they entered the temporary pa- vilion together, and remained tete-a-tete for two hours, he lendemain, d midi et demi, S M. {Napoleon) s'est rendu au pavilion du Niemen. — L* Empereur Alexandre et le Roi de Prusse y sont arrives, au meme moment; les trois souveruins sont reste's ensemble dans le salon, pendant une detni-heure ! — A cinque heures, V Empereur Alexandre est passe" sur la rive gauche, V Empereur Napoleon Va regu, d sa de'scente du bateau, ils ont monte a cheval, et parcouru la grande rue de la ville, et sont de'scendus au Palais de I* Empereur Napole'on ! — U Empereur Alex- andre y a dine, &c. *Jc. Le 27, I' Empereur s'est rendu chez V Empereur Alex- andre ; les deux princes sont restts ensemble jusqu'd six heures; ils ont alora monte a cheval, et $e sont alle's voir manceuvrer la garde impiriale. A huit heures, les deux souverains sont revenus au Palais de P Empereur Napole'on, oil ils ont dine", comme la veille / ! &c. Uc. &c. Les deux souverains sont ensuite rentres dans le Cabinet de V Empereur Napoleon, ou ils sont restSs seids, jusqu'd onze heures du soir ! ! ! Le 28. A une heure, VEmpereur Alexandre est venu /aire une visite chez VEmpereur Napole'on ! ! A quatre heures V Empereur Napole'on est alls voir V Empereur Alexandre ! ! ! lis ont movte a iheval a cinque heures ! I &c. &c. [The next day, at half past twelve, his Majesty (Napoleon) went to the pa- PA11T II. D |S PARIS. The palace of the Thuilleries, inferior, in every point of view, to the Louvre, to which it is joined by the gallery, is still a very noble and venerable structure, and forms a beautiful and appro- priate termination to its own lovely gardens, and to that grand perspective which opens from the Place Louis Quinze. The palace, as it now stands, was erected in 1564, by Catherine de Medieis, and in its apartments she celebrated that singular fete, on the occasion of the marriage of the King of Navarre with her fair frail daughter, of which Mons. de St. Foix expressly ob- serves :— * «* Peut-on penser, sans jr emir, d unefemme qui compose vilion on the Niemen. The emperor Alexander and the king of Prussia arrived there at the same moment; the three sovereigns remained together in the saloon about half an hoar ! — At five o'clock, the emperor Alexander passed over to the left bank. The emperor Napoleon received him as he landed from the boat; they mounted on horseback, rode along the principal street of the town, and alighted at the palace of the emperor Napoleon J — The emperor Alexander dined there, &c. &c. The 27th, the emperor Napoleon visited the emperor Alexander ; the two princes were together till six o'clock ; they then mounted their horses, and went to see the imperial guard manoeuvre. At eight o'clock, the two sovereigns returned to the palace of the emperor Na- poleon, where they dined, as the day before ! ! &c. &c &c. The two sove- reigns then retired to the cabinet of the emperor Napoleon, where they were alone till eleven o'clock at night ' ! ! The 28th, at one o'clock, the emperor Alexander paid a visit to the emperor Napoleon ! ! At four the emperor Na- poleon went to see the emperor Alexander ! ! ! They were on horseback at five o'clock ! ! &c. &c] The hour of parting at length arrived ; and nothing in the histories of Da- mon and Pythias, or Valentine and Orson, was half so affecting as the impe- rial "farexveV " Les Empereiirs sont resits ensemble pendant irois heures, et ont enswte monti d cheval ; Us se sont rendus au bord du J\\emen> ou V Empereur Alexandre s 1 est embarqut — U Empereur Napoleon est demeure sur le rivage, jusqifd ce que V Empereur Alexandre fdt arrive* d Vautre bord. Les marques d'Jffection que les princes se sent donntes, en se stparant, ont excite' la plus vive Amotion par mi les nombreux £pectateurs h qui s'etaieni r assemble" s> pour voir les plu- grands souverains du tnonde offrir, dans les tfmoignages de leur reimio?i et deleuv ami tie, un solide gar ant du repos de la terre ! ! /"* [The emperors staid together about three hours, and then mounted their horses; they went to the bank of the Niemen, where the emperor Alexander embarked. — The emperor Napoleon staid on the shore, till the emperor Alex- ander hud arrived at the other side. The affectionate manner in which the princes took leave of each other, excited the deepest emotions among the numerous spectators, who had assembled to see the greatest sovereigns in the world offer, in the evidences of their re-union and their friendship, a solid guarantee for the repose of the world.] •• Oh world, thy slippery turns ! friends now fast sworn, Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose meals, whose exercise, are still Together, who twin, as 'twere, in love Inseparable; shall within this hour, On a dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity." * The above is a simple and literal transcript from the journals of the day PARIS. 19 et prepare une fete sur la massacre quelle doit faire, quatre jours apres. d'une partie de la nation sur laquelle elle regnoit i qui sou- rit d ses victimes, qui joue avec le carnage, qui fait danser les nymphes sar les bords d 9 unejleuve de sang, et qui mele les charmes de la musique anx gemissements de cent mille malheureux; quelle egorge .' f J" [Can one think without shuddering, of a woman who composes and prepares a fete, at the same time that she plans a massacre, when four days after, a part of the nation over which she reigns, is to be immolated : who smiles on her victims, who plays with carnage, who makes her nymphs dance on the borders of a river of blood, and who mingles the charms of music with the groans of the hundred thousand \ irtims that she slaughters.] This masque was, in fact, a rehearsal of the horrors of Saint Bartholomew ! It was in the Salle des Machines [the Hall of Machines] of the Thuilleries, that Louis XIV. celebrated many of his formal re- velries, and danced, as chef de ballet [chief of the ballet], for the amusement of his court. It was there, also, that Voltaire was crowned, a short time before his death, at the representation of his own Irene. It was from its truly splendid chambers, that the unfortunate Louis XVI. was dragged to the gloomy cells of the Temple; — there the National Convention hold its assemblies; — there Robespierre resided, during his reign of terror; and there Buonaparte dwelt, during the whole of his consular and imperial government. It is curious to observe, that in the apartments of the re-dc- chaussee [ground-floor], occupied by Catherine de Medicis, Na- poleon Buonaparte, Ex-King of Rome, held his fairy court, at the mature age of five years ; and was taught to ** representer no- blement et avec grace ," [to perform his part with dignity and grace], on each returning sabbath, when he received the ho- mage of prelates and marshals, courtiers and statesmen, yield- ing the sceptre of the Csesars, in the form of a babifs rattle, and sometimes, when thus " Dress'd in a little brief authority, Playing such tricks before high heaven," as made his own obsequious court not, « like angels, weep," but, indulge in a very different propensity; for it occasionally hap- pened, that " not to laugh, exceeded all power of face."* * His Majesty of Rome, though a beautiful and promising personage, soWme- times indulged in caprices incidental to the wantonness of power. One motVn- ing, when his levee was unusually crowded, no arguments could prevail o.n the King to leave some toys, given him by the cher papa [dear papa]. Hit..: amiable governess, the Comtesse de Montesquieu, was obliged to have re- &0 PA *is. While the " baby-king" dispensed smiles and sugar-plumbs , received homage and confitures [sweet- meats], in one of the wings of the palace, and the holy representative of St. Peter lavished demi-trancs and bentdicites [blessings], from the windows of the other,* the grand political Roscius himself went through his several acts of imperial dignity, in the corps delogis [hall], be- tween both. Thus the feverish history of each short-lived hero of the day, who " Struts and frets his hour upon the stage* And then is heard no more," might be compendiously illustrated in the descriptive details of a suite of apartments, as the prim house-keeper of an old En- glish mansion recites, with her history of the blue and the green chambers, the lives and adventures of the Sir Hildebrands and the Sir Walters, who are arranged along their walls in their periwigs and picture-frames, the «< shadows of shades" long passed away into nothing. • The Thuilleries, in its appropriations and names, has shared the fate of all things else in France, for the last twenty- five years. The Chateau des Thuilleries, its ancient royal designa- tion, was exchanged for that of the Palais du GouvernemenU and that again for the Palais Imperial, It is now once more the course to the authority of his imperial mother, who ordered that the rod should not be spared, and the child spoilt, but that the King should be forced into the audience-chamber, to receive his court. A person of rank, present upon this momentous occasion, when royalty kissed the rod, assured me, that no trace of the swoln chtek and tearful eye was to be found in the coun- tenance of the tiny king"; but that he at once recovered himself, and held out his hand to be kissed with so smiling a grace, that no opposition to his royal tvill could be traced, in his most gracious manner. * The pleasure and amusement, which his Holiness found in a " -winter at Paris" are said to be the subject of royal reproach at the present moment. The following " substance" of the pending negotiations, between the Vatican and the Thuilleries, is circulated among the mauvais plaisants [jesters] of the French capital. " Comment avez-vous pu faire un Concordat avec l'usurpateur?" dit le Roi au Pape, qui re"pond : " Sire, je vous ai cherche par tout, et je ne vous ai trouve, nulle part.'* '* Mais, vons savez bien (dit le Roy) qu'avec ma legitimit£, ou je ne suis f>as, fy suis." " Cela est vrai ; (r£pond Sa Sainterd) mais de mon cote, avec mon infailli- bilite. quandfai tort, fat raison." [" How could you make a concordat with the usurper?" said the King to the Pope, who replied: **} Sire, I sought you every where, and I found you no where.'* V Bit you know, (said the King) that with my legitimacy, where I am not, there I am.'' " That is true; (answered his holiness) but for my part, with my infallibili- ty, when I am wrong, I am right."] PARIS. 2 Chateau des Thuilleries, under the revived dynasty of its ancient masters and occupants, who again inhabit, and hold their courts in, its beautiful and splendid apartments. " Here pitch we our tents to-day > But where to-morrow? # # # # •' La docte Antiquity fut tonjours vine'rable; Je ne la trouve pas cepemiant adorable." [Learned Antiquity was always venerable ; however I do not find it adora- ble-] There is an air of gloomy desolation, hanging over the silent grass-grown courts of the Sorbonne, with its dark buildings and dilapidated chapel, which cornmunirated a correspondent sad- ness to my imagination, as I entered it, and which not even the brilliant attelier [painting-room] of Meynier, and of Mademoi- selle de could dispel. As I stood in the great hall of many a theological disputation, the answer of Casaubon to one of the learned doctors, occurred to me with great force; « Voild une salle, oil I'on dispute depuis quatre cents ans" [Here is a hall, where they have disputed for more than four hundred years], — said his solemn Cicerone. " Eh 9 Men! qu'est-ce qu'on y a decide?" [Well, and what have they decided ?] asked Casaubon. The Sorbonne is indeed a singular monument, commemorating the facility with which mankind submit to the influence of opi- nions, imposed on them by dogmatising arrogance. Of all that was taught and disputed by the doctores socii of the Sorbonne, what now remains to benefit the interests of mankind ? Who now occupies himself about the doctrine of grace, supported and argued with so much vehemence, by L'Escot and the disciple of St. Cyrian? W T ho now enlists under the banners of Hubert or Arnauld, in their contests on Jansenism and Jesuitism ? In a little time, even the names of these doughty disputants, who had once so many partisans, and who so long engaged the attention of the public, will be consigned to oblivion. It was of this great thea- tre of theological disputation, and religious sophisms, that Pascal observes, " Qit'il Stoit plus aise d'y trouver des moines, que des argumens" [It was easier to find monks, than arguments]. — But in the silent, solemn courts of the Sorbonne, there are now neither monks nor arguments to be found ; and the once gloomy cells of its doctors are devoted to the most elegant of the arts, and occupied by its professors. Here, in quiet sequestration from the busy haunts of men, young and aspiring talent pursues its way to eminence, and the pencil of genius creates my tholo- %% PARIS. gical loves, and poetical graces,* where theological brawls were once loudly re-echoed; and where the grave Coger vented his bile, in his laborious censures on the <* Belisaire" of Marmonrel, and the " Epoques de la Nature" [jEras of Nature], The church of the Sorbnnne, which cardinal de Richelieu seems to have built for the reception of his own magnificent monument, (now re- moved to the Monumens Francois,} is in a state of ruinous dila- pidation. It is in one of its spacious vaults that moulder the remains of that once « gallant, gay Lothario," the irresistible object of every lady's love, the subject of every courtly poet's song, the Marechal Due de Richelieu. #JL J& 4£ Jfr 4£, J^, , A£ J/. Jf, ^P **T TT W W "VT *flF TP w The Mbaye Royale de Ste. Genevieve, devoted « to all the gods" under the name of the Pantheon, during the revolution ; and destined once more to desert the patronage of the heathen dei- ties, in favor of its old christian mistress, whose golden shrine may again glitter under its magnificent dome, is a ^ery splendid, and a very imposing edifice. From a long contemplation of its noble dome, admirable for the boldness and lightness of its double cupola, the chef-d'oeuvre of the structure, we descended into the gloom of its subterraneous chambers, almost as exten- sive, but much less rude, than the crypt of Canterbury cathe- dral, which we had visited a short time before. Here we found several little chapels and monuments, containing the ashes of the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz : — Here, too, we found the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. — The ashes of the patriarch of Ferney were conveyed hither, with solemn pomp, from the Mbaye de Sellieres, in 1792. — The remains of Rousseau were taken from his own beloved « He des Peupliers" [Isle of Poplars], and some time after were entombed in the Pantheon, f under the special direction of Cambaceres. It cannot be said of these two celebrated philosophers, that, with respect to each other, « they were lovely in their lives," though in " death they are not dis- united ;" for Voltaire would, most probably, have preferred " his snug lying in the Jlbbaye" to this close neighbourhood with Rousseau, even in the « Temple of all the Gods /" Mirabeau was the first of the profane, whose remains were inurned within the hallowed walls of St. Genevieve. Nothing could exceed the pomp and popular grief, which accompanied his funeral, but the popular caprice, which so soon afterwards * I saw here, in the attelier of Monsieur Meynier, some good pictures. f The revolutionary passion for Rousseau is much abated ; while the repu- tation of Voltaire increases with revolving- years. At ihe time his walking cane was sold for so high a price, the MS- of Julie was put up for sale, and did not find one bidder- PARIS. %% deemed his remains unworthy of so distinguished a tomb; and which again removed his ashes to an obscure corner, in the cemetery of St. Erienne du Mont. <* II n 9 y a qu'un pas du Capitol, a la Roche Tarpienne" [It is but a step from the Capitol to (he Tarpeian Rock], was one of the best observations in one of his last eloquent speeches. The Bibliotheque du Pantheon, or the Bibliotheque de Ste. Gene- vieve [The Library of the Pantheon, or the Library of Saint Genevieve], is notable for its cupola, painted by Restaut; for its cabinet of antiquities ; for it curious plan of Rome, en re- lief, and for its treasures of eighty thousand volumes. But the obje; t most interesting to me, in this valuable library, was its venerable and distinguished librarian, Monsieur Chevalier, 3 * the author of so many well known tracts on Greece, and himself an admirable transcript of the independent literary men in France, of the last forty years ; combining, in his manner, a certain im- press of erudition, acquired in the closet, with all the politeness which is attained exclusively in the saloon. He talked much to me, and with great delight, of his residence in England and Scotland ; and made mauy enquiries for his more youthful and very ingenious co-labor ateur, Sir William Gell. The Cabinet de Ste, Genevieve contains a collection, more cu- rious than extensive, of natural history, and antiquities, Etrus- can, Egyptian, Greek and Roman. But I saw nothing among its medals and fossils, nothing among its specimens of nature and art, that had an attraction for me equal to that of two small portraits, which decorated its walls; the one, an original picture of Mary Queen of Scots, presented, by her own beautiful hands, to the monks of St. Genevieve, and in high preservation; — the other, a black Nun ; a natural daughter of Louis XIV., bearing a much stnmjrer resemblance to her negro mother, than to the Roman features of her august father. — Of all the loves of this royal Adonis, which have reached posterity, this passion for a " dingy dear" is the only one, known solely through the evidence of a portrait, and authenticated simply by tradition. When we first entered the library of the Pantheon, we found abo>e two hundred students deeply engaged in their learned pursuits, and insensible to all that was passing around them. They were all very young men, but study had already faded many a blooming cheek, and curved many an ample brow. Some of them, as they sat buried in abstraction, might, for atti- * Monsieur Chevalier was for some time private tutor to Sir F. Burdett. I owe my introduction to Monsieur Chevalier to Mr. Warden, the late American consul, in Pans ; from whom I experienced much kindness and attention. Mr. Warden is well known in the literary circles of Paris, and is the author of an excellent work, on American Statistics' £4* PARIS. tude and expression, have presented splendid models to painting or sculpture, in personifying the first career of genius, or in representing an image of studious youth, in its most picturesque point of view. This noble library is open daily to the public, frcm ten till two ; it is chiefly resorted to by the students of the pays Latin; and Monsieur Chevalier assured me, that there were generally a greater number, but rarely fewer, than I then saw assembled. Take the patient, laborious, but enthusiastic student of the pays Latin** the ardent volunteer, not the constrained conscript of learning and science, supporting every privation, and almost rendered insensible to want, by his devotion to study; behold him working his own way to eminence, undebased by patronage, unassisted by prescribing and scanty liberality, and lie forms a very noble contrast to the frivolous gens de lettres [men of letters] of other times, living in a miserable dependance upon those, whose support they repaid by the prostitution of their talent, the loss of their time, and the sacrifice of their liberty. The Palais du Luxembourg, or Palais Conservateur, less rich that the palaces of the Louvre and the Thuilleries, is not with- out its historical associations. It was erected on the ruins of the hotel of the Due de Luxembourg, by Marie de Medicis, and became the residence of the celebrated princess Mademoiselle de Montpensier. In the apartments, where La Fosse had painted the butterfly -loves of Flora and Zephyr, now so much more beautifully represented, at the French opera, by Albert, and Fanni Bias, the romantic Mademoiselle de Montpensierf re- ceived the clandestine visits of her inconstant Due de Lauzun; and these chambers, sacred to royal loves, to the graces, and the arts, became the prison, it may be said the tomb, of all that France boasted, of virtue or talent, in the year 1793. To its gardens, then a desolate waste, now a paradise, weeping friends resorted, during the reign of terror, to catch a last look from all they held dearest, and to whom the painful indulgence was not alwas granted, of approaching the windows of their prison chamber. The paintings of Rubens no longer enrich the galleries, where they were executed ; but La Baigneuse [the woman bathing], * The pays Latin is the name given to the quartier of the Sorbonne, where the students of the many colleges, lycees, and academies in that neighbour- hood lodge- Here may be found a p>rd to all the purposes of health and exercise. The garden of the Luxembourg is eminently beautiful : — its shaded groves, its luxuriant orange trees, its statues, its fountains, the quantity, loveliness, and variety of its shrubs, and flowers — its noble palace, and its extended views, render it a perfect Eden; while the quaint and primitive popu- lation, which resort to its walks, and occupy its numerous and commodious seats, by the simplicity of their habits, manners, and air, rather increase, than diminish, its attractions, hi a stranger's eye. Less brilliant and cheerful, and infinitely less populous and fashionable, than the gardens of the Thuilleries — less curious and important than the Jardin des Plantes [Garden of Plants], the gardens of the Luxembourg are, I think, more noble, and even more a bel-respiro, than either of these distin- guished resorts of pleasure, fashion, and science. The riches of the public libraries, the liberality with which they are opened to readers, of every class and rank, and the ac- commodation and facilities provided for those who visit them, either as places of study, or curiosity, render Paris the most desirable residence in the world, to the learned, the studious, and the literary. The Bibliotheque du Roi, named successively the Bibliotheque National*, and Bibliotheque Tmperiale, but now once more the Bibliotheque du Roi, is, I believe, deemed one of the most exten- sive and curious public libraries in Europe. Amidst the multitude of books which crowd on the view, it is difficult to circumscribe the imagination to that point, when its original foundation by Charles V. included but twenty volumes. This great emporium of bibliothecal riches fell into neglect, during the agitated pe- riods of the revolution ; but during the imperial regime it was eminently enriched, by the literary spoils of the Belgic and Ita- lian conquests. Among the number of its recent acquisitions were several editions of works, anterior to 1*76; the MS. of Leonardo da Vinci, and the " Herbier" of Haller. Under the auspices of the learned Mons. van Prat, and of Mons. Langles, the celebrated orientalist, we derived all the pleasure and benefit from our visit to this great national library, PART II. E g6 PARIS- which it was possible to obtain from the most profound know- ledge, liberal communication, and flattering attentions. What struck me most, among the many curious MS. works, which were particularly recommended to our notice, was a collection ofletters. by Pope, and some writing of Rousseau's, remarkable for its caligraphy ; a Virgil of Racine, with notes, written by himself in the margin ; a collection of MS. letters from Voltaire to Mad. du Chatelet, written in an excellent hand, the initials of all the proper names in small character, (an error universal in modern French composition, for even Fontainbleau he spelt with a small f) ; a Boccaccio, of the same date with that purchased, at so- large a price, by the present Duke of Devonshire; and a Recneil [collection] of letters from Henry IV. to the Marquise de Verneuil, perfectly legible, and highly preserved. Over this little collection 1 loitered sufficiently long, to put the patience of Mons. van Prat to the test, if indeed it were not a toute epreuve [proof against every thing]. These letters were characterised by that warmth, frankness, and simplicity, which so eminently disiinguished the style and character of the mountain-bred prince, who never seems to have lost the impression of his early habits and education. 1 observed, that there was not one manuscript of any literary woman; of the Scuderis, the Daciers, the Sevignes, the La Fayettes. It is not improbable, the manuscripts of Ma- dame de Stael w ill form the foundation of a new branch, in the curious collection of the Bibliotheque du Roi [King's Library]. Among the antiquities and curiosities of this splendid library, the chair of King Dagobert, in which Buonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French, appeared the most interesting, by its great antiquity and rude structure. The enormous globes, con- structed in 1683, by the Jesuit Coronelli, were the most singu- lar, and the French Parnassus, the most amusing and ludicrous, and peculiarly characteristic of the taste of the times, in which it was made. On the top of this French Parnassus appears Louis XIV. in his old stock character of Apollo, surrounded by the graces, (represented by Madame de Suze, Madame des Houlieres, and Mademoiselle de Scuderi,) and receiving a model of the work he crowns, from I he hands of Monsieur Gamier, who presents it on his knees. This toy, which is scarcely worthy a place in a girl's baby-house, is described in a folio volume, under the title of " Parnasse Franqais" and was presented to the library in 1732, by Monsieur Titon du Tillet. The Biblio- theque du Roi is supposed to contain considerably above three hundred and fifty thousand volumes ! The Bibliotheque Mu%arhu* lately the Bibliotheque de Qnatre- * This library was directed to be sold bj the parliament of Paris, during the Fronde, and fifty thousand francs of the produce were assigned, as a reward to whoever should take its founder, dead or alive. PARIS. %j Nations, was so close to my place of residence, that, fulfilling the old proverb, I visited it less frequently than most of the other libraries. Of its intelligent and very clever librarian, Monsieur Feletz, one of the most able, and indeed, most liberal critics of the day, I saw a great deal ; and I was in the habit of receiving so many gratuitous attentions at his hands, that those he was deputed officially to pay me, are among the least, of which I preserve a grateful recollection. To the Arsenal, and other public libraries at Paris, my visits were so cursory, that it would be presumption to mention them farther than to observe, that all are conducted with great liberality, for the public use, and the encouragement of letters. Nor can I close this very feeble sketch of these noble and splendid institutions, without an observation, to which every stranger who has visited them must subscribe, that the distinguished gentlemen, who preside over them, present a union of urbanity and erudition, a knowledge of Jife and a knowledge of books that leave no evidence, not a sin- gle trace of the dust of the closet, or the smoke of the lamp. To be at once a fine gentleman and a profound scholar, is a privi- lege granted but to few ; but I am certain, that it is a union more frequently existing in France, than in any country what- ever : and that it will always be much easier to find the learning and urbanity of Menage, in the libraries and saloons of Paris, than the learning and brutality of Johnson, even among the most dogmatic and least polished of the members of its schools of science and philosophy. In visiting the ancient and royal manufactory of the Gobelins I w T as struck with the conviction of its intimate connexion with absolute power, and regal expenditure. The produce of its looms, too beautiful for utility, and too costly for private purchase, is exclusively destined by the monarch to decorate the walls of his numerous palaces. Unbeneficial to commerce, and possessing no influence on the national industry, this manufacture, a dead weight upon the public purse, by its peculiar rules of govern- ment, binds the workman, from generation to generation, to an employment both morally and physically enervating ; and at- taches them, like slaves, to the establishment, by rendering them incapable of adopting any other mode of subsistence. The same families have, frmn time immemorial, supplied the successive artists, as if the process were a birth-right inheritance, like the possessions of the Hindoo tribes. It takes the prime of a long life, to become an expert workman, and the best half of a man's existence not unfrequently goes to working the hangings of a bed-room, or ceiebr iting, in worsted, some single incident of a. royal life. To conceive the tediousness of tliis curious art, it is necessary to view the workmen at their labours ; but to judge of • 28 PARIS. its beauty, perfection, and close imitation to painting, some of its recent productions, copying the finest modern pictures of the best modern artists, should be seen. The glow of colouring, fidelity of outline, and delicacy of touch, rival the most masterly touches of the pencil. Some fine pieces, of which the victories of Buonaparte form- ed the subject, copied from the works of Gros ano Gerard, were in the frames, when a change, in the political affairs of Europe, produced a change in the affairs of the Gobelins, and the battles of Jaffa and Austerlitz were hurled into obscurity, to make way for representations of the present royal family of France, pic- tures of Henry IV. and trophies and deuces of loyal sentiment, crowned with lilies. As these subjects were newly put into the frames, nothing was finished ; but the paintings from which they were to be copied, were already rivalled in the little that was commenced. The tapestry of the present day is infinitely su- perior to all that has preceded ; and through the kindness of the director, Monsieur Casas, I had an opportunity of judging by comparison, as he displayed for our inspection all the differ- ent stages of the art, from some of its earliest to its latest pro- ductions. The workmen looked all squalid and unhealthy; they ordinarily rise by seniority in the different degrees of their profession, and as their moderate salaries are fixed, they know the utmost point of competency, to which their most laborious exertions can attain. They occupy small houses in the square of the building, which is usually their cradle and their tomb ; and, upon the whole, the Gobelins and its inhabitants left an im- pression of gloom on my mind, that, without lessening my sen- sibility to the kindness and attentions of Monsieur Casas, took from the pleasure and amusement, derived from its curious and beautiful productions. Among the most splendid specimens of the manufacture which we saw, were a small representation of the death of Dessaix, and a very large piece, copied from the admired picture of Buo- naj .-arte's visit to the plague-hospitals at Cairo, in which he is depicted in the act of touching a plague sore, in order to inspire confidence and to revive hope. The faithful but horrible repre- sentation of disease, in all its tremendous features, and the per- sonal likeness of the principal figures, are accurately preserved in the tapestry copy, which, at some future time, will serve to illustrate the history of the revolution. At present it is, by royal command, consigned to darkness and obscurity ; and can only be visit'd by a special favour, of which foreigners are al- most exclusively the objects. The sole benefit, which the na- tion can be said to derive from this costly manufacture, consists in occasional improvements in the manipulations of dyeing, by PARIS. 29 which the brilliancy of the colours lias been greatly increased ; an improvement that will doubtless influence the national manu- facture of silk. Of the many objects which attracted our attention at the Go- belins, the water-colour drawings of Monsieur Casas himself were not among the least pleasing. The scenery being taken from Greece and from Palestine, excited an interest beyond thai of their picturesque effect, or exquisite finish. This gentleman being adverse to the revolution, experienced very harsh and unjust treatment at the hands of its several governments. He had de- dicated the early part of his life to travels in Italy, Sicily; Greece and Palestine, collecting drawings of ail the principal remains of antiquity ; and he was among the many persons employed by the Duke de Choiseul, during his residence in Asia, in illustrating the classic land of Genius and of Liberty. — From the designs he had thus the opportunity of collecting, at an enormous expense for a person of his moderate fortune, he constructed models of the most celebrated architectural antiquities ; not in their present state of dilapidation, but completed from the remaining fragments, and restored to their original splendor and perfection. Of this costly and beautiful collection, which embraces speci- mens of almost every country and every sera, the republican government are said to have possessed themselves by an almost forcible purchase, ar a price which, though far below its intrinsic value, or even its first cost, uas never faithfully paid to the ven- der. And to add to the mortification, the models remain to this day buried in an obscure chamber of the Palais de VInstitut [Palace of the Institute], at the Qnatre Nations [Four Nations], it is impossible for the person, who has not seen them, and who judges only from his general idea of such works, to conceive the imposing effect produced by their number, by their perfection, or by the associations they inevitably suggest. Let those who have seen the long rows of broken columns, which are exhibited in the pictures of Palmyra, conceive these splendid remains re- stored to their original condition, and connected into one whole, of perfect symmetry and of imposing magnitude. Imagination instantly peoples the long vista of colonnades, and fancy traces there the footsteps of a Zenobia and a Longinus. The theatre near Lampsacus, in a state of equal perfection, and fitted for scenic representation, affords an accurate idea of the ceconomy of the Greek drama, and of the magnificence of its details. The majestic Parthenon frowns beside the superb temple of Paestum, and contrasts in its severe simplicity with the more stupendous and at the same time more florid architecture of the Egyptian temple, at Tentyra. The richness, the variety of this collection, the beauty and minute fidelity of its execution, the instruction it 30 PARIS. is calculated to convey, and the infinity of reflections it must necessarily excite, render it one of the most interesting and curious exhibitions which Paris affords ; and 1 have dvvelt more particularly upon it, from the obscurity in which it is buried, and the general ignorance 1 found among our countrymen at Paris, of the existence of this treasure to the antiquarian, and the artist. W Tr * "Ir tt It is a curious observation of Menage, that "les armoiries des nouvelles maisons sont, pour la plus grande partie, les enseignes de leurs boutiques" [the coats of arms, of new families, are generally the signs of their shops]. If this be generally true, the armo- rial bearings of the future parvenus [upstarts] of France, eleva- ted by acquired opulence from the shop to the peerage, will pre- sent a very curious series of heraldic mysteries, and puzzle the comprehension of posterity. The scutcheon would not be very easily deciphered, even by the garter-king of arms himself, which should bear, on a field argent, a cow dressed in the ex- treme of the fashion of 1816; or •< gules" three Mandarins pro- per, shaking together in aguish fraternity. Still, however, these new chimerical figures, introduced among the cockatrices crested, and griffons segreiants of older coats, have now their due signi- fication ; and intimate that the progenitors of future gentility sell bceuf a -la-mode [beef a-la-mode], at the sign of the well- dress- ed Cow, Rue de Lycee [street of the Lyceum], and that Indian shawls may be purchased aux Trois Magots, Rue de la Seine [at the Three Mandarins, street of the Seine]. Nothing, indeed, in Paris, is more amusing, than the classi- cal allusion and sentimental devices of the signs ; and the ab- surdity of their application adds much to the ridicule of their ef- fect. I observed over a butcher's shop, in the Rue St. Denis, the sign of a bouquet of faded pinks, with the device *< Au tendre souvenir" [to tender remembrance]. The «< Temptation of St. Anthony," in relief, hung next door to the sign of the <* Fille mal- gardee" [The ill-guarded daughter]; and " Les Trois Pucelles" [The Three Maids]" figured over the windows of an army tai- lor, who, to extend his custom, styled himself in large gilt let- ters, " Tailleur civil et militaire" [Tailor, civil and military]. While St. Angustin promises to " reblanchir les vieilles plumes a neuf" [to clean old feathers], " UAnge Gardien" [the Guardian Angel] professes « dejaire des envois pour V Stranger" [to go on errands for strangers], and the « Religieux" [Monk] offers his « Maga%ins des nouveautSs, le tout a juste prix" [Assortment of novelties, at the most reasonable prices]. " Au bien-venu!" " Aurevenant," *< Aux bons enfans," "Aux amis de la paix" [Welcome, Return again, For good children, PARIS. 31 For the friends of peace,] are devices frequently hoisted to se- duce custom ; and •• La belie Helene," and the <» Trois Sultanes" [The fair Helen, and the Three Sultanas], repeat their charms in every quarter to catch the eye, and to interest either the feel- ings or the taste of the unwary passenger. Even ethics are brought in to the aid of sentiment, and the dearest things in Paris are bought, « au petit gain" [at a small profit], or offered for sale, *< a la conscience." To those accustomed only to the « plain, honest, homely, indus- trious, wholesome, brown brick houses" of England, whose ar- chitectural taste has not been formed on the marble splendours of Italian palaces, the great hotels of Paris must, in their ex- terior aspect and interior arrangement, present a very striking picture both of magnitude and magnificence. Apparently built to image the expected durability of the ancient families who were destined to inhabit them, they have, indeed, long survived the grandeur and existence of their original proprietors,* and pre- serve many evidences of the sumptuous and gorgeous taste of the days, in which they were raised. — Painting, sculpture, statuary, carving, gilding, tapestry, were all as indispensibly necessary to ** monter mi grande hotel" [to get up a great house], as the rafts and beams that supported its roof; and Gougeon, Duce- reau, Mansard and Coypel were called in as regularly to the construction of a noble edifice, as the stone-cutters, bricklayers, plasterers, and carpenters who put it together. The hotels de Beauvillers, de Soubise, de Rohan, de Beau- veau, de Turgot, (once de Sully ; names that go so well to- gether) to whose beauties the genius of the Coustous, Brunettis, La Maire and Vandervorts have contributed ; with many others of equally ancient date, still retain something of their «« original splendour," though " shorn of their beams" and more than « half obscured," — It is, indeed, difficult to fix upon a place of residence in Paris, whose scite or neighbourhood is not illustra- ted by some dwelling of former greatness, marked out in those numerous Memoires, with which French literature teems, or distinguished by some higher character of historic interest. On arriving in Paris at the hotel Belgique, 1 found we were close * Many of the tapestry hanging's, in the old chateaux and hotels of France, record the family pride and sense of the high antiquity of the French no- blesse. On the hangings of a room, in the hotel of the Comte de Croy, is re- presented a seen;* from the deluge ; and a mm pursuing Noah, with the words, "Monami, sauvez les papier s des Croys" [My friend, save the papers of the Croysj. On a tapestry, in the chateau of the present Due de Levis, the Vir- gin Mary was represented, saying to one of the family who stood bareheaded before her : " Mon cousin, coitvrez-vous" [Cousin, put on your hat]; who re- plies : '* Ma cousine, c y estpour ma commodit*" [Cousin, it is for my own conve- nience.] 32 PARIS. by the hotel de Rambouillet, where the scholastic gallantries of the Sorbonne, and the beaux esprits of the Port Royal assisted to found those literary coteries, which, though proverbial for their pedantry and bad taste, their Trissotins and Vadius's, still assembled in their formal groups some of the most distin- guished characters, that France ever produced. On removing to the hotel D'Orleans in the fauxbourg St. Germain, we found our apartment hanging over the gardens, and commanding the hotel de La Rochefoucault, where the Encyclopedists so con- stantly assembled; where the Voltaires, D'Alemberts and Di- derots were united in wit and philosophy, and where the first meeting of those Jive friends took place, who formed the subsi- diary society of « Les amis des negres" [Friends of the negroes]. Gregoire, Mirabeau, de La Rochefoucault, Condorcet, and La Fayette. It was among some singular coincidences which occurred du- ring my residence in France, that within view of this memora- ble apartment, I had the honour of receiving in one morning the Abbe Gregoire, M, de La Fayette,* the Count G. de La Roche- foucault, and his most lovely countess, a relative of Condorcet's, and the nephew of Mirabeau, the Count de Lasterie, celebrated for having introduced into Jrance the art of engraving on stone.f ' Besides those vast and magnificent hotels, which may be deemed monuments of faded grandeur and historical glory, many of the modern edifices, which rival th< j m in splendour, and sur- pass them in taste, have the superadded interest of having been raised or inhabited by persons of political eminence, and litera- ry notoriety. The Hotel de Beaumarchais, in the fauxbourg St. Antonie, immediately opposite to the Bastille, was built at a vast expense by the delightful author of one of the most amu- sing, philosophical, and entertaining comedies, which any lan- guage has produced, Le Manage de Figarro, The Hotel de Beaumarchais, erected on the designs of Le Moine, is, I be- lieve, meant to be a perfect rus in urbe: for wildernesses, grot- tos, subterraneous caverns, and gurgling fountains, are all as- sembled in a space, not much larger than that usually assigned to the flower-knot of an English villa, and seem dropped, as if by accident, in the very centre of whatever is most vulgar, bust- * M. G. La Fayette, the only son of General La Fayette, and heir to all his virtues. f For this purpose a smooth compact stone, having a conchoidal fracture, effervescing with acids, hut containing a large portion of argil, is brought from Germany. The subject is drawn at once upon its polished surface, with a crayon composed of materials unaffected by nitric acid, to which acid the uncovered part is afterwards exposed: the process, therefore, is the reverse of etching, and leaves the subject, in relief, above the general surface of the plate- PARIS. 33 ling, noisy and coarse in Paris ; where the silence of its her- mitage is disturbed by the cry of "habits, galon" [clothes, gro- ceries], and a butcher's shop salutes the eye, which emerges (rum the dark recesses of a gloomy cavern. In the garden of this Vaueluse of the Boulevards, is a very pretty temple, raised to the memory of Voltaire ; and under tiie shade of a willow, marked by an urn filled with the golden flowers of /'immorfeZ/e [amaranth], repose the ashes of Beaumarchais him. self. In passing over this little spot of earth, all that is spiritual, buoyant, li.srht and fanciful, in the aerial character of the little Cherubin, the « maudit page" [the cursed page], of the piquante Suzanne, the adroit Figarro, and the feminine countess, occurred to my memory, and formed a melancholy contrast with the as- sociations of the tomb. The Hotel de Beaumarchais, without being very large, con- tains many suites of rooms painted in fresco, but too small and too low for the English standard of handsome apartments. The salon a manger [the dining-room] is remarkable for the double flight of steps, which lead to it from the salon de compagnie [the drawing room], and for the fountain of clear water with which it is refreshed. In one of the windows, which looks immediately over the ruins of the Bastille, stands a perfect model of that formidable prison, formed out of one of the stories of its own foun- dation. The Hotel de Beaumarchais is not open to the public. —•It is occupied by Mad. de Beaumarchais, whose advanced age and infirm state of health do not permit her to receive company ; and I owe the pleasure I derived from my visit to the dwelling of a m:*n, whose talents I had so long admired, to the politeness of his accomplished daughter, Madame de la Rue, who, if I may judge from the eloquence du billet, which accompanied her invi- tation, is tiie legitimate heiress to much of the playful wit, which distinguished the works of her celebrated father. The Hotel de la Reyniere, independent of the splendour of its arrangements, and the elegance of its furniture, will always have a claim to interest among the professors of the science of savoir- vivre [good-eating], as being the house of the author of the cele- brated " Jllmanachdes Gourmands" [Glutton's Almanack]. This beautiful hotel was built by Monsieur de la Reyniere, father of its present owner, a rich fermier- general [farmer general], the rival of the La Foplinieres, and other luxurious and opulent financiers of the Plare-Vendome. The elegance and magnificence of this hotel, its superb furniture and rich gilding, give a tole- rably just idea of the sumptuousness and splendour of that class of men, whose office and wealth arose out of those corrupt insti- tutions, which impoverished thousands, to support a few in wanton extravagance, and inordinate luxury. PART II. F 34 PARIS. It was here old La Reyniere put tlio.se principles into prac- tice, which his son has since so wittily resolved into systems, and of whose suppers it was said, by his aristocratical guests, «• on les mange, mais onne les digere pas" [they are eaten but not di- gested]. An anecdote is told, which places the egotism of these noble convives of the old farmer-general in a very humorous point of view. Monsieur de la Reyniere, after having long united in his own person, the two lucrative places of administra- tes des postes and fermier- general, in which he was supported by the influence of certain friends at court, whom he repaid by his dinners and suppers, found himself suddenly reduced to the alternative of resigning one of those places, and complained to his noble friends of the diminution of his revenue. « Eh! mais, man Dieu!" replied the Due de * * * #, who was present, H cela ne fait pas une grande difference dans votrc fortune. C'est un million a mettre d fonds perdns, et nous nen viendrons pas moins souper che% vous." [Kh ! but my God, that can make no great dif- ference in your fortune. It is but a million to set down as lost, and we will come and sup with you all the same.] Monsieur Grimod de la Reyniere adds to the inheritance of the paternal talent for the gastronomic art,* a peculiar humour, all his own, and as it was said of him by the wits of Paris, some years back, — " II alloit d IHmmortalite par trois routes differentes ; par ses livres, par ses actions, et par ses soupers." [He is going to immortality by three different roads : by his books, by his actions, and by his suppers]. This literary Apicius made his debut, by a pai'ody on a work of Condorcet's ; and established his reputation for wit and cookery, by his « Almanack des Gourmands. 9 * tie, however, soon left the practice of the art in which he excelled, and contented himself with furnishing rules, which he preferred exemplifying at any other person's expense than his own. M. de la Reyniere, therefore, has long resigned one of his paths to immortality; and though he gives new editions of his work, no longer illustrates its theories at his table, for he gives no more suppers; nor holds any more *< JureS de gustateurs" [Juries of tasters]. Mons. de la Reyniere was not in Paris, during my residence there, but many anecdotes of his singular humour and espiegleriej [vivacity] were repeated to me, by those who knew * The grandfather of M. de la Reyniere was also celebrated for his gour- mundise [gluttony], and the Bumptiousness of his table- His death was cha- racteristic as that of Anacreon : he died of a surfeit, got by eating too freely of turkies' livers. f Mad. de la Reyniere, the mother of M. Grimod, is still alive, and occupies a wing of the hotel. She is of the hunte-noblcsse [high nobility], her late hus- band was rather of a fpturier [plebeian] extvacuon It was among ihe amuse- ments of his son to invite, on the same day, to dinner, the noble relatives of his high-born mother, with some of the bourgeois kinsmen [city kinsmen] of PARIS. 35 him well. I had an opportunity of visiting his splendid hotel, under circumstances that highly contributed to its brilliancy and magnificence ; for it is now the temporary town residence of the Duke of Wellington. It was in this hotel that his Grace gave a splendid ball, on the occasion of the marriage of the Due de Berri, which, from the circufhstance of all the guests coming fresh from the grand cou- vert [grand supper] at the Thuilleries, in their splendid court dresses, together with the illuminations of the hotel and gar- dens, in honour of the event, produced an effect of brilliancy and niagnificenee to which description can do no possible justice. In the arrangements of this beautiful fete, in the delicacy* plen- tcousness, and variety of the table, the abundant, genuine hospi- tality of England, the simplicity and chastity of its taste were ne- ver better represented. The melange [mixture] of al! parties, all nations, which appeared in those rooms, closely associated under the eye of the distinguished person, who so materially contributed to effect this moral and political fusion, was a singular picture for philosophy to gaze on, and even for common-place observa- tion to pause over and examine. It was curious to see in this congress of beauty and fashion, to which so many countries lent some of its lovely representatives, the belles of Berlin, Peters- burg, Rome, London, Paris, Edinburgh, and Dublin — -all as- sembled under the*Same roof. Buonapartist-generals, waltzing in close embrace with pretty royalistes enragees [violent royalists], and revolutionary senators linked in a chaine-entiere [a complete chain] with w#m-partners, formed the best illustration of the " Holy Mliance" that could possibly be given. And perhaps it might have been as well for the interests of Europe, if its af- fairs had been thus settled in a country dance in Paris, instead of being gossiped over in council at Vienna; if a quadrille had been substituted for a congress, and pretty women had mingled their entre-chats and demi-courvettes with the solemn motions of young diplomatists, and the slow arrangements of expediency ministers. I remember, that in the bustling and press of this brilliant crowd, I was forced to lean against a table for support, on which rested the historical bust of Buonaparte. Before me stood the conqueror of Waterloo, in conversation with Marshal Marmontj iiis father; presenting them to each other with "Monsieur le Due, this is our cousin, the baker ;" or, "our uncle, the butcher." He also piqued himself on bringing professed enemies together at his table— Talma, with his severe critic Geoffroi; Mad. Mars, with her rival, Mad. Le Vert, 8cc. &c- &c He once hired out coaches to vex his father, who refused him money, and is so far from objecting to the notoriety of his gambols, that he is himself the first to mention and laugh at them. 36 PARIS. on either side the Turkish ambassador, in Eastern costume, and Pozzo di Borgho, in his Russia% orders ! — What a combina- tion ! During the whole night groups equally incongruous and extraordinary were continually repeated. The hotel de Sommariva is enriched by some of the finest pic- tures of the old Italian masters, and some of the most splendid specimens of the genius of modern artists. But it is. the Terpsi- chore and Magdeieine of Canova, that lend the hotel de Sommariva its principal interest, if the taste, politeness, and hospitality of Mons. de Sommariva himself be excepted. The Terpsichore is so highly estimated, even by its unrivalled artist, that it is the only one of. his works to which he has put his name. The charm of this beautiful statue is, its life ! — the mysterious art, by which the Praxiteles of modern days has communicated the appearance of motion to what is motionless, and lent vitality to marble ! Terpsichore, with the form of a Grace and the head of a Hebe, seems almost to illustrate the art over which she presides ; and I should have felt much less surprise to have seen her spring from the pedestal, which her delicate foot Scarcely touches, than I have occasionally experienced from the unexpected agility of some human elephant, moving its ponderous weight by an organic impulsion, in which life and will seemed to have no part.* Still, however, with all her beauty, all her life, all her grace, the love- ly Terpsichore is more than rivalled by the grref-worn form of the penitent Magdeieine, A small apartment, hung with dark silk, enshrines this marble wonder, which expresses in every form, every curve, every fibre, the wasting touch of time and wo; on whose cheek the tear seems lucid, or, at most, but half congeal- ed ; whose eye swims upon the gaze, and whose limbs, symme- trical even in decay, exhibit a beautiful skeleton, to which the delicate musrle seems scarcely to adhere. The rough so'e of the small foot tells of many a dreary step, trod in penitence and hardship, while the still rounded shoulder survives the wreck of other beauties, and the sensibility of the drooping countenain e is the expression of one, who deserved to "be forgiven,-— for she loved much." — Whoever can look upon this splendid specimen of the noblest of the arts without emotion, must have more of mar- ble in their composition, than the statues of Canova! There is nothing M. Sommariva seems to prize so much in his collection, as a head of Christ, by Guido, which is framed in a box, and kept under lock and key. This saintly, sickly head, * The head of Terpsichore is said to be that of the beautiful sister of the ex-Emperor, Pauline, Princess of Borghese, whose charms have afforded a study to most of the celebrated painters and statuaries of the day. As well as 1 remember, Mons. Sommariva told me this was not the case, the whole being a beau-ide'iil of a genius destined to immortality- PARIS. 37 with its livid colouring and melancholy expression, reminded me of a phrase of Poussin's, that he "did not like t<> see Christ always painted as a Pert Douillet." It is, however, reckoned the perfection of the art. — On the subject of the heads of Christ, M. Denon makes a very curious observation, which has added to their interest with me, inducing me to consider them as ge- nuine portraits. Speaking of the Jews in Egypt, he says, « Les beaux, surtout Its jeunes, rappellent le caractere de tele qut la pein- ture a conserve a Jesus Christ; ce qui prouveroit quit est de tradi- tion, et rfa pas pour epoque le qiuitorzieme siecle, et le renouvelle- ment des arts* [the heads of their handsomest young men, have much of the character which painting has transmitted to us for that of Jesus Christ; this may go to prove that the revival of the arts in the fourteenth century is traditionary.] '[lie hotel de Craufurd, one of the handsomest in Paris, is so well known to foreigners, and partirularly to the English, through the hospitality and courteousf attention to all strangers, of its owners, that it might be deemed sufficient, perhaps, merely to mention it, if its elegant saloons were not better known to their passing guests, than its curious and interesting picture-gallery. — Madame Craufurd must, therefore, forgive me, if I pass by her superb chambre a coucher [bed-chamber], with its white and gold draperies, its porcelaine tables, and silver toilette, with all the fairy suite belonging to it, the salle de bain, the boudoir, cabi- net de toilette [the bathing-room, the boudoir, the dressing-room], and lovely orangerie, — and hasten, with all the Memoirs of Louis the XlVtVs day under my arm, to the gallery which contains the portraits of the wits and beauties of his court; the heroines of the Fronde, and even some of the brave friends of Henry IV. and the fair mistresses of his predecessors. Among these, the heroic Jgnes Sorel takes a chronological lead. She is dressed in the simple costume of a peasant, extremely like that worn by the women of Normandy in the present day. La belle des belles [the fairest of the fair] is not beautiful, but her countenance is expressive of the most perfect goodness, and I should rather say she was La bonne des bonnes [the best of the good]. An old por- * Voyage en Egypte. f The Duke of Wellington is a frequent visitant at the hotel de Craufurd, as indeed are almost all the English of note or rank. The first night I visited the hotel tit Craufurd, I sat next to a very lovely and attractive young lady, who talked with so much anxiety of carrying an infant child across the chan- nel, (as she was going to England) that 1 thought her some amiable little mo- ther in private life, who had never before stepped be)ond the domestic circle of a middle rank, until somebody questioned her about "one of the Queens, her awits " — This young and amiable mother was the lovely Princess de Ester- hazy, who has since become so popular in England, by graces, formed to at- tract every where, and by virtues, which it most peculiarly belongs to Eng- land to cherish and to appreciate. 38 PARIS - trait of Diana de Poitiers, is most remarkable for the allusive device prefixed to it, from Psalm xlii. <-As the heart panteth, &c. &c. &r." The French missals, in former times, were usual- ly as much a breviary of love, as devotion ; — and Guernier illus- trated the prayer book of the Duke de Guise, by drawing all the beauties of the court, most famous for their gallantry, as virgin martyrs, and canonised saints. An original portrait of Marie de Beauvilliers, the lovely nun, and afterward abbess, of Montmartre, who was carried off from her convent by Henry IV. and whom he describes, in the poem attributed to him, of I' Jmour Philosophic, by " Son habit blanc, Son scapulaire — et le rang 1 , Qu'tlle tient dedans son cloitre-" [Her white dress, her scapulary, and the rank which she holds in her clois- ter.] This picture, though taken from its celebrated original at the age of eighty, exhibits great remains of personal beauty, not a little set off by the monastic dress. A head of the great, and un- fortunate Due de Biron, who was decapitated by Henry IV. whose cause he had so ably defended. The countenance is very fine, and marked by an air of high distinction. A few da^s be- fore I saw this portrait, I was introduced to his descendant, the Due de Biron Gontaut; but I could trace no other resemblance between him and his illustrious ancestor, than that they both wore very long gold ear-rings! The justly celebrated Madame de Stael, a good, rather than an intelligent, countenance, which gives no indication of the au- thor of one of the most amusing and spirited Memoires that ever were written. Madame de Stael is here painted, as she painted herself, " en buste." Madame des Houlieres, too beautiful by half for an authoress — and looking more lovely things, than she ever wrote, notwith- standing the elegance of her Idylliums. Madame de Ramhouil- let, handsome, but still that sort of precise beauty, one would look for in the foundress of her own bel esprit coteries. The celebrated Hortense Mancini, Dutchess of Mazarine, who died in exile, and in indigence, in England. In the large dark eyes of this lovely person, all the ambition of her restless and in- triguing character is strongly traced. The handsome Duchessc de Sforze, surrounded by a number of those ugly little dogs, of which Madame de Sevigne writes in such raptures, when she receives one dressed in rose-coloured ribands, and curled and perfumed, like a young abbe commen- dataire [commendatory] of the old regime. PARIS. 39 Madame dc Retz, mentioned in the Memoirea of the Cardinal, infinitely more lively than Mademoiselle de Fontange, the " chat gris" [grey cat], who forms a pendant to her ; both by Mig- nard. Tlie Counters d'Armanac, on horseback, with a man's cravat on her neck, and a wreath of flowers on her head: an admirable specimen of the style of portrait painting of the day. Madame de Longueville, a most incomparable beauty, the loveliest of all the heroines of the Fronde; and with e\es that fairly excused the Due de la Rochefoucault's wish to obey their commands, •• a faire la guerre an Rov 9 [to make war oh the king], &x. &c. It was to this splendid beauty that the graver charms of Madame de la Fayette succeeded, in the heart of the author, •• dcsMaximes." An original picture of Mad. de la Yaliere, by Mignard, taken in 1673, very fair, and very insipid; totally deficient in that strong expression of countenance, marked in her picture by Le Brun, taken as a JIagdeleine, which, in making her trample on the •< pomps and vanities of the world," gives her the air of a tragedy actress, in the act of taking off ber ornaments, after her part is over. There is in that famous picture of Le Brim's, a robustness in the figure of the fair Magdeleine, with a force and energy of expression in the features, which indicate resent- ment, rather than repentance, and lead to the conviction that Mad. de la Yaliere did not consent to become « the spouse of God," until she had lost all hopes of remaining mistress to the King. This was, indeed, very near the truth; for to the last moment she U turn'd, and turn'd, and was a woman still," and only remained quiet in her convent, when she was no longer solicited to return to court. A f»ll-Ien.g;th picture of her successor, Madame de Montespan, represents one of the most perfectly beautiful persons, that art ever designed. In the sweet expression of her innocent mouth, nothing of the " esprit de Morttmarte" [the spirit of Montemart] seems to hover; and in her gentle countenance it is impossible to trace that violent and haughty spirit, which royal authority could not govern, and which the art of her shrewd successor- could alone undermine and subdue. Madam de Maintenon, holding the hand of the little Due de Maine, is a perfect Hebe; bearing not the least resemblance to another original portrait, by Mignard, at a more advanced age, in which her sedate but comely countenance expresses all the good sense and ability of her character. Madame de Sevigne, a beautiful woman, and infinitely supe- rior in personal attraction to her daughter, whose picture gives the impression of a cold precise character, which I believe this fair disciple of Descartes really possessed. Q PARIS. Besides the very interesting collection of the Beauties of Louis the Fourteenth's day, the hotel de Craufurd is enriched with a few valuable original pictures ; among which, a head by Tiziano, in bistre; the Judgment of Paris, by Rubens; and an admirable portrait of a Squinting Boy, by Lucca Giordini, are highly estimated. A portrait of Descartes, by F. Hals, gives the impression of an extraordinary character ! The head seems cast out of the common model of nature ; the brows are perfectly angular, and the countenance marked, at, once, by genius and deformity. Philip Poisson, the comic actor and author, laughing and showing his teeth, is not to be viewed with a grave face. — But among all that is most interesting in this valuable collection, may be reckoned the fine portrait of La Bruyere, writing his celebrated maxim of « Lecontraire du bruit qui court" [The con- trary of the current report], &c. He seems just to have raised his head and hand from the paper; the countenance is pale, thoughtful, and full of expression. — A fine picture of the late Emperor, by Robert Le Fevre, painted in 1810, wants only the consecrating touch of time, to give it its full value and consi- deration. .AC ' ■. , 4g» , ", JO* - > ■#■ ' «te, '- ^fc, 4T» 4fr .tfc - Jfc Jfc -jfi *j^ «^» -jf ^ *fc #75* ~ft ^ -^. The hotel de Borghese, the former residence of the lovely Princess Pauline, the ex-Emperor's youngest sister, is now the dwelling of the English ambassador. But, its tenants only ex- cepted, nothing is changed; it preserves entire the original taste and splendor of the magnificent palaces granted to the imperial family, by their singular and munificent chief. It is said, that pride and affection went hand in hand in the riches and splendor lavished by Napoleon on his relatives ; but all that his family vanity and boundless prodigality could do for them, was insuffi- cient to satisfy their demands on his affection and generosity. « Ces coquines ld 9 " he observed to a confidential person, to whom he was complaining of some exorbitant request of one of his sisters, «« Ces coquines Id croicnt, que je les ai prive des Mens du feu Roi notre pcre" [These rogues believe, that I havr de- prived them of the wealth of the late king our father]. Still. however, these requests, though alway the subject of complaint, were rarely refused. ". Each pendant in their ear shall be a province." I was present at the sale of the palace of Cardinal Fcsch. The multiplicity of his collection of statuary, pictures, mosaics, bronzes, marbles, &c. was sufficient to overwhelm the imagina- tion. Relays of furniture, chairs that seemed of massive gold. PARIS. 41 beds that appeared made only to excite wonder, all presented a combination of wealth and splendor, which, I believe, is only to be found in France, and to which the treasures of all the con- tinental nations of Europe once contributed. In the hotel de Borghese, the state chambre-d-coucher [bed- chamber] of the fair princess, is now a sort of audience-chamber for the British embassy. The splendid canopy of crimson vel- vet and gold, which shaded the slumbers of the prettiest woman in France, is now the representative of the English throne; and in the ruelle [at the bedside], where the priestesses of fashion once assembled round their idol at her rSveil [awaken- ing], to decide on the flow of a ringlet, or to obtain the exclusive patent of a cap, diplomacy now unravels its <« many -coloured web of good and ill together," and the gravest heads in Europe are drawn together to balance political relations, where the love- liest once debated on the power and influence ** Of quips, and cranksj and wreathed smiles." I recal with infinite pleasure to my recollection the hotel de Victoire, and the accomplished circle I found collected round its graceful and elegant mistress, the Countess Lefebvre-Desnou- ettes.* This beautiful little pavillion, as it now stands in the midst of its blooming garden, and in the most fashionable quar- ter of Paris, was presented by the French nation to the modest conqueror of Marengo, on his return from the most splendid of his Italian victories.] Here General Buonaparte resided, until he took possession, in his consular dignity, of the royal apart- ments of the Thuilleries; and here he received that decree of the Council of Ancients, which was the " swelling prologue to the imperial theme :" " Glamis and Thane of Cawdor; " The greatest is behind !" The hotel de Victoire had been presented by Napoleon to his fair cousin, the Comtesse Desnouettes, and it retains all the ele- * The Comtesse Desnouettes lived in great retirement, during my residence in Paris, in consequence of the exile of her husband. He has been since re- called by the king, and has resumed his titles, as Marshal of France, and Duke of Dantzic.** t " I saw him,'* says Miss Williams, speaking of his reception at the Direc- tory, on his return from Italy, " I saw him decline placing himself in the chair of state, which had been prepared for him ; and seem as if he wished to escape from the general burst of applause." ** Lady Morgan has confounded Marshal Lefebwe the duke of Dantxic, -with Lieutenant General Count Lefebvre Desnouettes, now in America.— T. PAJRT il. • 4$ PARIS. gant draperies and furniture which belonged to it, when it was presented to himself. Peculiar taste and studied elegance, ra- ther than any effort at splendor and magnificence, characterise this pretty bijou. Draperies of lilac and primrose satin, fasten- ed by his own brilliant and fallacious star, are surmounted by arabesque frizes of great delicacy and beauty, and the furniture is appropriately elegant and simple. The hotel of the Baron Denon contains the most curious, va- ried, and singular < ollections of art and antiquities in the pos- session of any private person in Paris. These treasures, occu- pying a suite of six rooms, are disposed in the superb armoires of Boule, which once belonged to the apartments of Louis XIV. or are placed on pedestals drawn from the ruins of Greece, and on marbles from among the columns of Egypt. Pictures, medals, bronzes, drawings, with Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiqui- ties and curiosities, are all arranged in an order at once philo- sophical and chronological, with the intention of throwing a more steady light upon remote times, and of illustrating, by a few curious specimens, the progress of the human mind. In his collection of pictures, Monsieur Denon seems to have been more guided by taste, than aided by fortune. It contains but few of those pictures to which a series of ages has attached an enormous value, but he pointed out to me a waterfall, by Rhuis- dal ; a portrait of Moliere, by Sebastian Bourdon; a head of Parmegiano, by that great painter himself; as being of singular beauty and value: as also some pieces by Schedoni, and three pictures, by Andrea Schiavone, « Tithon and Aurora ; « Diana discovering the frailty of Calista" and an " Aurora awaking." Besides the rarity of these three little pictures, the elegance of the drawing, strictly resembling the designs of Parmegiano, whom Schiavone imitated and admired, and the richness of colouring peculiar to the Venetian school, render them very precious. A little picture by Callot, painted on lapis-lazuli, is curious and valuable ; and a Madonna, by Guercino, carelessly giving her son to the arms of Joseph, that she may listen to an angel who is playing on a violin, has a character of naivete and originality, quite as interesting as the execution is beautiful and masterly. Among a small, but most valuable collection of the most an- cient pictures extant, is one by Martino di Messina, the first who painted in oil ; the portrait of a bishop, by Giotto ; a Mag- gatio ; a Bellino ; and a composition by Fra. Bartolomi, one of Raphael's first masters. Among the modern pictures are, the head of a Greek lady, by Madame le Brun ;* a picture of Rosalba, by herself; and a sin- * Madame le Brun is still living at Paris, enjoying great reputation for her talents, and the highest esteem for her character- She had the kindness to PARIS. 43 gularly characteristic portrait of M. Denon, by Robert Le Fevre. In presenting to my admiration a small cabinet picture, an holy family by Bourdon, which, he said, might pass for a Ca- racci, and another by Vateau, M. Denon made an observation, which, as coming from the celebrated direeteur du Musee Fran- qais [director of the French Museum], is too valuable not to be cited in his own words — « Ces deux petites pieces montrent qu'il ne faut jamais juger avec prejuge d'un peintre, avant a 9 avoir vu ce qu 9 il a fait de plus beau ; puisque dans ces deux tableaux on trouve, mcme avec le mauvais style du siecle, la couleur sublime de Titien, le Jinis precieux de Leonardi de Vinci* et V elegance de Farmegiano" [These two little pieces shew that we ought never to judge of a painter with prejudice, unless we have seen his best works; since in these two pictures, in spite of the defective style of the age, we find the sublime colouring of Titian, the exquisite finish of Leonardo da Vinci, and the elegance of Parmegiano], It would appear, from this critique of M. Denon's, that the painters of Louis XIV. did not want genius, but liberty — and it is probable, that these two pieces were carelessly thrown off, by r Vateau and Bourdon, in a moment of leisure and freedom snatch- ed from their hired labours at Versailles and the Thuilleries ; when they were relieved from blue silk robes, and full-blown roses — from Apollos and Graces — from Monsieur Le Brun, and Louis le Grand ! In the arrangement of his little collection of pictures, M. Denon has adopted a chronological order, with respect to the ancient masters, which presents a very beautiful history of the progress of the art. He begins with a suite of enamels of the thirteenth century, commencing with La Robier, and finishing with the splendid miniatures of M. Augustin, whom he considers as one of the ablest artists of the day. His collection of medals, engravings, and drawings, is governed by the same spirit of illustration, which adds so much to their interest, and which has always in view the progress of the arts, and the civilisation of man. The medals are divided into classes; those of the Greek cities, of the Grecian kings, of the Roman republic, of the Roman emperors; — the decline of the art, in the middle ages; its revival, in the fifteenth century, in Tuscany, by Pisane ; in France, under Francis I. ; in Spain and in England ; — its degra- dation under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., a period which does not present one medal worth citing, or collecting. invite me, through the Marquise de Vilette, to see her collection, when it should have undergone some new arrangements, for she was then changing her place of residence- But I was obliged to leave Paris, before I could uvail myself of her politeness, and gratify my own cariosity, by seeing so celebrated and distinguished a personage- 44 PARIS. Monsieur Dcnon, himself, may be said to have been the reviver of this splendid art in France, under the iate Emperor; and his own series of medals, which commemorate the extraordinary events of that short, but wondrous career, will one day claim from posterity a still more passionate tribute of admiration, than that, which the cold-blooiied judgment of cotemporary obser- vation does not, even now, withhold from them. It struck me, (but I know not how far I may be right) that the peculiar excel- lence of the designs of M. Denon's own medals, was grace and Jinesse ; a sort of moral elegance, in the conception, and a sin- gular delicacy and harmony, in the composition, which pecu- liarly belong to the tone of genius, and character of the man himself. In any part of the world, that the medal, struck for the marriage of the Empress Maria Louisa, and the passage on grace,* in the description of the Egyptian Mma, had been shown me, 1 should have discovered the particular verve of Denon, though I had never read his works, nor seen his engravings ; but judged of his genius only from his conversation. In looking over M. Denon's rich and extensive collection of medals, which I did frequently, during my residence in Paris, sometimes with the benefit of his own observations, and some- times with that of foreign artists, or English virtuosi, I was most particularly struck by the beauty and excellence of some of the specimens, which I admired, without any rule or autho- rity, save what nature lent. Among the number, which uni- formly possessed a singular attraction for me, was an ancient Syra< usan medal, which, through the staining tints of centuries, presented the figure of the nymph Arethusa. Never did art, or nature, create a more beautiful form ; all the follies of the old river-god, Alpheus, were to be forgotten, or forgiven, in con- templating this graven image of his mistress. The heads of Lysimachus— 4)f Berenice, wife of one of the Ptolemys, and a Nero, struck me also as singularly admirable. The fine head of Antiochus Euergetes is curious, a being a perfect resemblance of all the medals struck of Buonaparte. The collection of bronzes, which M. Denonf brought himself * The passage here alluded to is too beautiful, to need an apology for citing it — " La grace qui nait de la supplesse des mouvemens, de Vac cord harmonieu.i d'un ensemble pur/ait ; la grace, cette portion divine, est la mime dans le monde entier ; C'est la propriety de la nature, fgalement departie a tons les etres, qui jouissent de la plenitude de leur existence, quel soit le climat qui les a vus naitre." Voyage en Egypie. [The grace which springs from the agility of her motions, accords harmo- niously with a perfect whole; grace, that divine gift, is the same throughout the world; it is the property of nature, equally distributed to all beings who enjoy ih< fulness of their existence, whatever may be the climate which has given them birth.] | iVI Denon was received, as a sculptor, in the academy of Florence, for the beautiful little figure of a Uacchuntc, the work of his own chisel. PARIS. 45 from Egypt, some of which he has illustrated in the plates of his great work, are rare and curious, and prove the high and unri- valled perfection, to which the Egyptians had carried the art. Among his Grecian bronzes, he most values a beautiful little figure of Jupiter Stator ; but he considers the specimens he has obtained of the Chinese workmanship, in this art, as equal, if not superior, to every other. Many Roman bronzes, discovered in France, both figures and articles of domestic utility, are to be found in this singular collection; and a bronze image, of the time of Charlemagne, proves how totally the art had then de- clined in Europe, by its hands of or-molv, and eyes of precious stones, no unusual specimen of the taste of those barbarous times, when the arts were worse than lost. All that Japan and China ever produced in its peculiar manufactures, of precious, rare, and curious ; all that could satisfy the exorbitant longings of the china-fancying ladies, of the Spectator's day, turn the head of a petite-maftresse, or out- run the desires of the spoiled child, who, in exhausting every possible form of toy, cried at last for the moon, may be found in the apartments and splendid armoires [cabinets] of M. Denon. Porrelain vases, of every form, size, colour, and age; from the black china, whose antiquity goes beyond date, down to the transparent produce of the present day- — bine cats, that once sold for a thousand crowns a piece, and green bowls, that Confucius might have dipped his long nails in; Mandarin beaux, and Bra- minical gods, josses and pagodas, bamboo magots [monkeys], crackled china toads, flowers that resemble nature, and animals that resemble nothing; with Japanese boxes, vases, and tem- ples; India cabinets and ivory screens, specimens of fill agree, and wax-work curiosities, two thousand years old, and ingenious works of' taste, fresh from the hands of modern artists, — are here all found admirably arranged, and curiously assembled. But in all this various collection, which it must have taken so much time, taste, knowledge, and money to have obtained, and to which chance and circumstances must have favourably contri- buted, there is nothing so much prized, by the enlightened and elegant collector, as his portfolios of the original designs of all the greatest masters— the richest and most valuable collection of this description, supposed to exist. These portfolios are divi- ded into schools .-—the Italian, Flemish, and French ; and, among their immense and various contents, include fifty of the original drawings of Parmegiano, most of which have been engraved, and which have been purchased, at an enormous price ; eighty, by Guercino ; ten, by Raphael ; ten, by Julio Romano ; and a large collection of the drawings of the pupils of the Raphael school, with some more or less of all the great masters of the / 46 PARIS. Italian and Flemish schools. These transcripts of the prima inten&ione of superior genius, struck off in all the fervour of first and ardent inspiration, bearing the impress of its freshness and its force, always appear to me more precious and interest- ing, than the long studi d, long-laboured task, that time and judgment work into fwttltlessness. It is like the sublime com- mand, « Let there be light; and there was light .'" — Touch, tint, and combination might more finely perfect the finished picture ; but in these first conceptions of these bold sketches, the mark divine appears — ther mysterious cause of genius, perceptible, but unguessed at, undefined ! Among this curious collection, I discovered some objects out of ail rule of classification. A small human foot, in perfect preservation, found among the royal tombs of Egypt, and once perhaps numbered among the charms of some lovely Berenice, or Cleopatra. Two thousand years, at least, have passed away, since it pressed the carpet of the divan, or glided amidst the orange-groves of the Delta. This is the delicate little foot which M. Denon describes in his travels, as being, w ithout doubt, from its symmetry, «< le pied d'une jeune femme, d'une princesse, d'un itre charmant, dont la chaussure n'av ait jamais altere les formes , et dont les formes etaient parfaites" [The foot of a young woman, of a princess, of a charming being, a foot whose form had never been altered by a shoe, and whose symmetry was perfect]. The model of the beautiful little hand of the Princ ss Borghese, might form a pendant [counterpart] for this exquisitely formed foot. But from every image of the loveliness and the graces, conjured up far by these samples of female beauty, in times and regions so re- motely distant, is another non-descript relic, which the all-grasp- ing talent of collecting has associated with so much of what is curious and interesting in nature and art; the mask of Robes- pierre, taken off his face ere one bad trace of the mind it indicat- ed, had faded into the inexpressive lividness of death. It is im- possible to look at this faithful model of a frightful original, without shuddering. It is not the countenance of a splendid villain, urged to a crime by an ambition that ennobles it ; it is the face of hireling villany, of vulgar atrocity, of inaccessible brutality, unenlightened even by the intelligence of cunning. It is not even the face of the <* best of cut-throats," but of a bun- gler, whose dulness might have marred the act his cruelty sought to perpetrate. It, was in showing me this disgusting mask, that M. Denon related to me an anecdote illustrative of the day, and the tyrant that ruled it, which struck me as particularly cu- rious. When the French Revolution first broke out, M. Denon was an envoijc at one of the Italian courts, and he remained in Italy paris. 4y until the publication of a decree by the French Republic, which proscribed for ever those emigrants, who did not return within a stated period, Returned to France, he was compelled to de- pend for subsistence upon that talent, he had hitherto cultivated for amusement, and the beauty of his compositions procured him an order from the government, to make some designs f«r les fastes republicains [les fast's — shews, pageants]. He was direct- ed to attend a committee for that purpose, which assembled at the Thuilleries, the seat of government, at two hours after mid- night ; for the hours of darkness and repose were then the chosen periods of council and activity. At this solemn season of the night, M. Denon reached the palace ; it v\as silent and gloomy ; an armed guard straggled though its half-lighted and spacious appartments. The anti-room of the council chamber was occupied by republican officers, fierce and dark as mid- night conspirators ; a huissier [door-keeper] in waiting had or- ders to receive the diplomatic artist, and to conduct him to a particular apartment. Left alone in a large dimly -lighted room, Denon discovered he was occupying a silent space, that once resounded to every tone of gaiety and pleasure. It was the apartment of the beau- tiful Marie Antoinette. Twenty years back, he had himself served there, as gentilhomme ordinaire to Louis XV. While he was " chewing the end of sweet and bitter recollection," a door opened, and was cautiously closed : — a man advanced to the centre of the room. Observing it occupied by a stranger, he started back. — It was Robespierre ! By the light of the lamp on the mantle-piece, Denon could observe the darkening coun- tenance of this king of terrors, who appeared to fumble with his right hand in his breast, as if to claim the safeguard of concealed arms. Denon at once saw the danger of exciting even a momen- tary apprehension in a mind like his, and he dared not pause to parley, but retreated instantly backward towards the anti- room, his eyes fixed on Robespierre, the eyes of Robespierre fixei\ on him. A bell on the table of the apartment he had quitted rang with violence. In a few minutes, the huissier who answered it returned, with a polite apology from the dictator to the designer of the fastes republicains, Denon was again in- troduced, and it was remarkable, that this furious demagogue, with an evident attempt to disguise the feeling he had expe- rienced, from the unexpected presence of a stranger, assumed, in his manners and deportment, an air of high polish and ceremo- nious breeding, as if he wished to impress upon one, who had himself been reared in courts, an idea of his own gentility, and of his superiority over the « woollen vassals" he was associated with. « He was dressed," says Denon, " like a petit-maitre, » PARIS. and his embroidered muslin waistcoat was lined with rose-co- loured silk," Among a few pieces of sculpture, M. Denon possesses a very fine bust of Buonaparte, by Chaude, to whom Buonaparte sat; — a most rare circumstance ! It was, indeed, next to impossible to induce him to sit either for painters or sculptors : « When I was painting this picture at the Thuilleries," (said M. Girodet to me, as I stood admiring his beautiful full-length picture of the Emperor, in his coronation robes,) «* I do not think I ever saw him twice in the same position, or at rest for two minutes toge- ther. He was always in motion, restless, and occupied; and I fixed a trait, or caught a feature, when and how I could." While Chaude was taking his proportions for his bust, Denon was engaging his attention with one of those well-told stories, which charm all who hear them ; and in which Buonaparte (himself a pleasant raconteur [relater]) took infinite delight. When Chaude had finished, and Buonaparte saw the result of his work, he exclaimed, smiling, " Comment m 9 a-t-on ament a cela T y [How have I been brought to this ?] « When Buffon talks to me of the greatest works of Nature," said Madame de B* * *, " I always thought he was himself the greatest;" and when Denon talked to me of his collection, I always thought that one hour of his conversation was wortli all he had amassed, though three thousand years had contributed t» his treasures ! FRANCE. BOOK VI. Paris. « The people are the city!" shakspeare. The street-population of Paris. — Industry. — Beggars.-— Civilisation of the lower orders. — Language. — Morals. — The Bourgeoisie. — The Sunday of a Parisian shopkeeper. — The higher class of citi- zens. THE street-population of a great city, the groups and crowds that hurry to and fro, in perpetual motion, through its avenues, are the first objects of observation to a stranger, who has not yet got « derriere Its coulisses" [behind the scenes] of private so- ciety. To those who arrive, for the first time, at Paris, the moving picture, the moral camera-obscura, which animates itfc streets, appears marked by a vivacity, an energy, and a cheeri- ness, which give the most favourable opinion of the tempera- ment and situation of the lower and middle classes. It is, in- deed, by these classes the streets are chiefly filled ; no half- bred, and over-dressed, gentility ; no professional loungers, nor listless loiterers, parade their new fashions, and old airs, in the " public places of the city," and the quarter most infested by fashionable lounging,* is chiefly filled by English, and other foreign visitants. The streets of Paris have consequently an air, less respecta- ble than the streets of London. The dresses are less showy ; and even the smart grisettes [wives and daughters of tradesmen], who constitute their chief ornament, are infinitely inferior, in * The Chauss£e D'Antin. PART II. M 50 *ARIS. personal attractions, and elegance of appearance, to the same rank of females, whom business, or vanity oblige to exhibit their charms and their finery, in Piccadilly and Pall Mall. All, how- ever, in the streets of Paris, is life, activity, intelligence, and occupation. — Idleness would in vain search there for a niche to slumber in. — 'Industry has seized upon every corner, occupies every angle, fills every little space, and multiplies her efforts in a thousand various forms, to which an exhaustless ingenuity opens countless resources. It was an observation of the great minister Colbert, that u les Franqais changeraient les rockers en or, si on les laisseroit faire" [the French would change the rocks info gold, if we would let them].— -This observation is most strictly illustrated by the in- habitants of Paris, w here the little trades, professions, and oc- cupations carried on along the cause-ways of the bridges and quays, at the corners of the streets, or on its pavements, under the archways and passages, through every quarter of the city, present a sort of bee-hive industry, which indicates a people in- stinctively laborious, and naturally averse from the vices, of which idleness is the mother and the nurse. Whoever may be inclined to pray, witli the pilgrims of Mecca, that they may meet no " melancholy faces in their way" must feel gratified in their cheerful wishes, in passing through the streets of Paris. — There, even mendicity smiles her supplications, and drops her whine, to melodise her wants in a song. But, in Paris, there is little professional, or ostensible mendi- city. — Nobody there dares to beg openly ; and under the sanc- tion of the name of God, or on the credit of the Virgin Mary, to render heaven insolvent, by the accumulation of debts un- worthily incurred. Poverty there makes its claim to com- passion, through the medium of interest; charity is given, and purchases are made, at the same moment: and blessings and tooth-picks — thanks and matches, are a more than adequate re- turn for the additional sous which pity gives, while thrift drives its bargain. No artfully exposed deformity, no squalid image of disgust and filth turns the shocked senses from the misery the heart would relieve. Decency is not shocked by rents, made by imposture, in the garb of wretchedness ; nor does in- fection breathe its pestilence, while humanity pauses to listen to the pleadings of wo. — Even the most indigent are cleanly, and well-clothed ; and the comical little urchin, who runs alter the careless passenger to solicit, not charily, but Attention to the scrapings of his blind father's fiddle, or to the grinding of the little organ of a crippled mother, seldom pursues you hare-foot- ed, and is more apt to excite smiles, by his arch sallies, than to awaken pity by his tale of sadness. PARIS. 51 Oh ! I shall not easily forget the impression made on my heart, when, for a time unused to the mendicity which infests and in- fects the capital of my own country, I returned, with a keener sensibility of the mjsery exhibited in its streets, by the force of the comparison I had been recently able to make ! When, the first day that I crossed the threshold of home, distress and beg- gary met me in every direction — when, at e\e.vy step, the heart bled, the senses sickened, the mind revolted — where groups, marked with the strongest impress of misery and vice, squalid poverty and unconquerable idleness, scarcely covered by rags, which multiplied disease, scarcely distinguished by the traits of the human form, crossed the path-way* or crouded round the carriage ; and mingling the cant of bigotry and superstition, with ribaldry and imprecation, at once degradingly supplit ant, and brutally abusive, obtained, from shame and fear, what charity ought not, and pity could not give ! Weil may it be said — «* that the country must be indeed ill governed, where mendicity becomes a trade" All the laws in France, directed against mendicity, were rigo- rously put in force under the imperial government, and the effect of that wholesome discipline still remained. But the best, and surest law, that militates against its existence, is the universal sobriety, the natural industry, of the people, and the decrease of the fatal influence of a religion, which inculcates the virtue of beggary, as an article of faith, and the maintenance of idleness, as a pious duty. No mendicant friar — no begging monk, "pale, mild, and interesting," now sets the example of idleness and social degradation to the populace of the streets of Paris, nor way-lays the sentimental traveller, with a dramatic air, and representing sanctity. And though it has been asserted by a modern traveller, who spent a few days in the capital of France, visiting the Pa- lais Royal, and walking in the gardens of the Thuilleries, that from the view of society there presented to him, it appeared, « that France was wholly unchanged by the event of the Revo- lution ;" yet even to his impartial observation, it must have ap- peared, that there is less misery, less want, less beggary, in the streets of Paris, than is described by any traveller of former times, to have existed in that capital, before the revolution. In fact, he must have observed, that there is none whatever. Notwithstanding the close contact, into which all the little con- tending passions of self-interest are brought, by the proximity and number of the host of petits-marchands [petty merchants], and little manufacturers, who ply their trades and mysteries in the street, it yet scarcely ever happens, that a single broil, quarrel, or dispute among the rival candidates for popular attention, dis- turbs the quietude, and cheerfulness of the streets, where good 52 PARIS. manners seem to be a sort of conventional policy* no less ade- quate in its influence to preserve order, than that of the civil power. The porteur-d'eau [water-carrier], who accidentally spatters the "tondeur de chiens" [the shearer of dogs], as he passes the pavement, where some little Sijlphide is getting its curly back fantastically cropped, instantly lays his buckets down to ask, " Mille et mitte pardons a Monsieur Jean, le tondeur" [A thou- sand and a thousand pardons of Mr. John, th«- shearer]. While Mon. Jean, It tondeur, gathers up his shearing implements, which obstructed the way of the polite water-carrier, with " Eh! mon Dieu, Monsieur ! c'est d moi a vousfaire mes excuses" [Eh ! my God, Monsieur ! it is I who ought to make my excuses to you]. All the *< small courtesies" are in constant and universal circu- lation in the streets of Paris. Good manners are, in France, what the art of boxing is in England ; with this difference, that the first is inculcated to avoid giving offence, as the latter is taught to avenge it. There are, indeed, no boxing matches in Paris, either scientific or accidental ; « breaking ribs" is not deemed "sport" for any rank or sex ; and whatever may be said in favour of a science which is defended as manly, or eulogised as supporting the spirit of the freest country in Europe, yet it was once found to be possible to conquer nations and overthrow dynasties, without the assistance of pugilism, the theories of Mendoza, or the malleability of Dutch Sam. The philosophy of language has always been applicable to the history of man, and popular idioms and phrases are no bad cri- terion of the state of the government, morals, and religion of any nation. The usual phraseology of the lower classes of the Irish is as different from that of the English, as is their accent. The sternness of conscious independence, with the ungracious bluntness of saturnine temperaments, are distinguishable in the discourse of the one ; the jargon of superstition, the shrewdness and servility which belong to social degradation, mark the lan- guage of the other. The lower classes of the French have not, in their style of conversation and manner of phrase, the slightest resemblance to either. And for the apparent refinement of their language, the peculiar turn of their idioms, and almost elegance of expressions, they are, perhaps, only comparable to the Athenian people, among whom an apple-woman from her stall weighed the phrases of Demosthenes, on his rostrum. The critical acumen of « les tricoteuses dc Robespierre" [knit- ters of Robespierre], as the poissardes [fish- women] were termed, who brought their knitting to the halls of the jacobin declaimcrs, has long been celebrated. When some popular orator was on PARIS. 53 his feet, they dropped their work, and listened with profound attention. If he turned a period with peculiar felicity, or point- ed a phrase with rhetorical effect, they applauded, and cried out, " Id, c y est Men Id" [there, that is very well] ; but, if he was eloquent about nothing, and strewed flowers, where he should produce arguments, they resumed their knitting, shrugged their shoulders, and exclaimed contemptuously, « Bah, ildivague; au fait, citoyen; au fait" [Bah, whither is he rambling; to the point, citizen; to the point]. I was one day buying, at the beautiful and amusing marche auxjkurs [flower market], some early roses, the first of the sea- son: — a French lady, who was with me, observed to the bou- quetiere [nosegay -seller] who was tying them up, (and who sold mackarel on the days she did not sell flowers,) that she asked too much for them. « Comment done, trop? ma chere dame!" (replied the bouque- tiere) •« si I 9 on vent desfieurs precoses, il font Men payer selon J" [But why, my dear lady ; (replied the nosegay- woman) if you want precocious flowers, you must pay accordingly.] « Precocious flowers" would sound rather extraordinary, from the lips of a Covent-garden market-woman. On my arrival at our hotel at Paris, I asked the porter's wife, whether she could make some particular arrangement in our apartments, at such an hour? She replied, *« Je serai toujours aux ordres de madame ; d minuit, comme d midi" [1 shall always be at the command of madame; at midnight, as at noon], I demanded of the porter himself, whether our trunks were safe in the anti-room, he answered, <• Toute id est sacre, je prends tout sur ma tcte" [All that is here is sacred, I take all the risk on my own head]. We were one morning crossing the Pont-Neuf, when we un- expectedly met two Irish friends, whom we greeted with saluta- tions, more cordial than refined. Two women, who carry loads on their backs, in baskets peculiarly constructed, stopped to observe these "greetings in the market-place " by which they were amused beyond all power of restraining their risibility, while one of them exclaimed to the other, in a tone of good- hu- moured ridicule. «« Jlh, Seigneur Dieu! a-t-on jamais vu une pareille amitie ! Comment done ! c 9 est une passion I e'est une rage! 99 [Ah, good Lord! did we ever see friendship like that! Posi- tively ! it is a passion ! it is a rage !] A very excelleut performer on the violin had attracted our at- tention one evening, on the Italian Boulevards, and we stopped to listen to him. He had, however, unfortunately placed him- self directly before a " petite-marchande, d vingt sous" [a little twenty-penny shop-keeper], whose toys and trinkets vainly 54 *AR1S. glittered, while the fidler engrossed all the popular attention. He was in the midst of a very tender passage of Pleyel's, when the enraged petite-marchande seized a child's drum, which form- ed a part of her merchandise, and beat such a reveille, as com- pletely overwhelmed the sweeter tones of the pathetic musician. "Comment done!" [How now], exclaimed an angry street-ama- teur, turning fiercely on her. "Mais oui, mon ami;" — she cool- ly replied, «« chacun s 9 amuse, comme it Ventend" [Oh! yes my friend, let each amuse himself, according to his own taste]. We dropped in one evening accidentally at the Caffe des Muses, a spacious coffee- house theatre, where a play, a farce, and ballet are given in, with the glass of lemonade and dish of coffee, w hicli are purchased for something under ten-pence. We. asked the waiter, who was laying our little white marble table in a side- box, whether this theatre had not once been the church of the Theatins? He replied, with great quickness, "Oui, Madame; on ya toujours donne la comedief" [Yes, Madam; plays have al- ways been performed here]. Obliged, one morning, to take shelter under the door of a res- taurattnr in the Rue Rivoli, from a shower of rain, a figure pass- ed by us, in air, dress, and look, so precisely like the Tartuffe we had seen at the theatre the night before, that I could not help exclaiming to a gentleman who was with us, "encore un Tar- tuffe." 9 [another Tartuffe], One of the garqons, or waiters of the house, who overheard me, observed with a smile and nod of the head, <* Oui madame, e'est le veritable Tartuffe de Moliere; et Vaumdnier de la Duchesse a"An- gouleme" [Yes, madam, he is the exact Tartuffe of Moliere; and the almoner of the Duchess of Angouleme], With this aptitude to well-turned phrases, and elegance of lan- guage, the lower classes of Paris mingle occasionally a sort of scientific slip-slop, extremely amusing, caught from the adver- tisements, pasted at the corner of every street, of « Cours de Me- decine" — «de Chimie" — *< de Hydr antiques" [Courses of Medi- cine, — of Chemistry, — of Hydraulics], &c. tScc. and from the fa- cility with which all the public courses may be attended. A little second-rate couturicre, or work-woman, coming to take my orders, demanded, *« Comment, madame veut-elle que sa robe soil organisee" [How will madam have her gown organised]. While we were on a visit at General La Fayette's, a work- man was arranging a para-tonnerre [a lightning-rod], on the roof of the castle: M. La Fayette made some objection to the manner in which it was fixed: *» Monsieur le general," (said the ironmon- ger, with importance,) *< depuis qn 9 on a invente la science de chi- mie, en France, les botanistes out toujours ainsi arrange les para- tonnerrcs" [General, ever since the science of chemistry was in- PARIS. 55 vented in France, the botanists have always arranged the light- ning-rods in this manner.] There is no circumstance in French manners more highly worth the consideration of the philosopher, the magistrate and the legislator, than the extreme rarity of executions, and the paucity of all sorts of offences militating against the penal code. Frauds of address, and petty thefts of all sorts are less frequent in Paris than in almost any of the best governed towns in cog- land. The streets of Paris at all hours of the night, and 1 do not only speak on the testimony of some veteran Parisians, but on individual experience, (for I have returned from English and French balls at very late hours) are perfectly safe and quiet; and though the extreme vigilanre of the municipal authorities afford a powerful check upon general licentiousness and noctur- nal disorders, the only good point of \iew in which indeed its tyrannical influence can be favourably considered ; — yet to this good order, the temperament of the national character, unload- ed by the necessities of a commercial existence, and unstimulat- ed by habitual inebriety from spirituous potations, must still more effectively contribute. In France, and its capital, the extremes of poverty and wealth are less distant, the habits of life are more regular and abstemi- ous than in England ; and the mildness, equality, and propor- tionate infliction of the penal code, requiring neither tempera- ment from royal clemency, nor forbearance from individual pro- secutors : its punishments fall with certainty upon the offender* and are formidable, because they are not severe. Atrocities against nature, parricide, infanticide, &c. are rarely committed in France ; and that brutal and rapacious violence exercised by those, to whom popular language in England has given the name of *« monsters " w ho stab, with wanton fury, the helpless female exposed to their horrible and unaccountable attacks, is so unknown in France, that when an anecdote of this nature was read before me, in a French society from an English paper, it not only excited emotions of horror and disgust, but was denied credibility by the greater number present, as being out of nature and possibility. The street-population of Paris seemed, indeed, always to me, to be characterised by great temperance, mildness, gaiety, and activity ; and to be peculiarly governed by a spirit of innocent, though luxurious enjoyment, evidently influenced by their cli- mate. They are perpetually buying or selling fruit and flow- ers; zcharbonnier, or coal porter, as he drives along his charette> fixes a bouquet of roses in his large white hat, which he has just purchased for a centime; a petite -mar chande places a pretty gar- land of corn-flowers on the head of her little girl, most ingeni- 56 PARIS. ously wreathed, and sold by a neighbouring bouquetiere for a sons. Lemonade, and eau-de-groseille [g<>oseberry-water] are measured out at every corner of every street, from fantastic ves- sels, jingling with bells, to thirsty tradesmen or wearied messen- gers. Cakes are baking, soup is bubbling, sweatmeats are vend- ing in every quarter, in the open streets, over little stoves, and under temporary sheds. Learned monkies, popular orators, humorous story-tellers, excellent fiddle-players, and tolerable ballad-singers, present continual amusement and recreation to those, who cannot pay for more expensive and luxurious "feasts of reason." And the inimitable Polichinelli [Punchinello], and his dear and admirable friend Gilles, to both of whom 1 make this public acknowledgment for many a laughing five minutes, passed before their rostrum, are always ready with their "gibes and jokes" to catch the passing eye and ear, to cheer the care- worn, to amuse the idle, and to occupy the pauses of laborious indigence, with a true vis-comica, not. ahvavs to be purrhased by larger prices, at places of higher pretensions to genuine comedy. The street- population of Paris have scarcely time, to brood and be wicked; they are working, talking, laughing, listening, re- creating, and enjoying, " From night till morn, " From morn till dewy eve" They may perhaps be deemed frivolous — but they are not vicious — they doubtless commit many follies, but they unquestionably are guilty of few crimes. From the multitudinous population which swarm in the fine evenings of summer, on Sundays and holidays, through the nu- merous public walks and gardens of Paris, an impression is given to the mind of the English stranger of a dissipated and light-headed people, insensible to the sober interests of home, for whom domestic privacy has no enjoyment, and the. rluse- drawn circle of family tics no charm. But it is an error in- herent to the narrowness of the human mind, to make its own habits the standard of excellence, the supreme point of wisdom, to others; and thus overlooking the necessity and fitness which govern different customs in different countries, to forget that climate, soil, and remote institutions produce that variety in manners over the surface of the earth, which diversifies the ex- istence of its various inhabitants. The caprice of the English climate, the rapid alternation of sunshine and clouds, cold and heat, drought and humidity, ex- cludes all dependance of enjoyment from weather, and inevita- PARIS. gy bly makes the fire-side the most central point of attraction to all domestic society. This habit, arising out of necessity, is al- ways quoted as a virtue by national partiality, when opposed to the less domestic habits of other nations. It may, however, be questioned, whether a close room, excluding air and exercise, be more favourable to the social virtues, than open gardens and shaded groves; and whether the sulphureous atmosphere of a sea- coal fire contributes more to the exhaustion of the kinder feel- ings and happier humours, so necessary to cheer and enliven an every-day intercourse, than the fresh breathing air of heaven. Most of the domestic life of England, is passed at the fire-side; most of the domestic life of France, is enjoyed in the open air: the groups which form the circles of both are of the same affi- nity, and linked by the same ties. It is too true, that the peace of the English fire-side is often disturbed by little bickerings and mutual thwartings, the result of abundant bile and saturnine hu- mours, and of the close and constant contact of persons, who have nationally a tendency to tedium and ennui, and who, with the greatest qualities and highest powers, have certainly not the art of being very amusing, either to themselves or others. It is also most certain, that the grove and garden-groupings of France, exhibit, in their intimate intercourse, a genial glow of kindness, which perhaps less deep-seated in the heart than Eng- lish affection, spreads a more brilliant sunshine over the pass- ing hours of domestic life ; softening down all the salient points of selfish humours, and sweetening that ** bitter draught" which all who breathe must quaff. In contemplating, therefore, the English at their fire-side, and the French in their gardens, it may still be said that each adhere to the natural habits suited to their climate and constitutions, while it must be allowed, that if the English are the wisest and greatest nation, the French are incontestibly the happiest, and the most amiuble. God forbid, that I should utter one condemning word against the «« holy fane of the domestic hearth" which / at least have ever found my altar of refuge, against the pursuit of an untoward fortune, which has to me long brightened the gloom of my native « isle of storms" and which now, while I trace the flitting group- ings of a foreign scene, shines cheerily on my labours at home, rich in that good *< the world can neither give nor take away," and which, like the welcome beacon-light of the weary traveller, concentrates within its little circle of radiancy my only hope of rest, and view of happiness. But in enjoying the domestic habits of my own country, I am cautious to make them the infallible standards of merit, by which to judge a nation differently constituted. This is the task of PART II. I 58 PARIS- party writers, paid to foment national prejudice, and to " divide," that their employers may " rule." But they, who write unbi- assed and unpurchased by any sect or faction, will disdain illi- beral representations, which are often false alike to truth and to taste, which check the progress of philosophy and illumination, and deepen the sources of disunion and hatred between nations, never intended by God or nature to be eternally opposed in con- tention and hostility. Nearly the whole of the bourgeoisie, or mere citizens of Paris, may be found on a Sunday distributed among the gardens on the Boulevards, in those of the Luxembourg, Thuilleries, and Champs-Elysees, — and upon a more gracious sight the eyes of patriot royalty never dwelt. A clean, healthy, well-dressed multitude, separated into family groups, partaking of the most innocent amusements, governed by the most perfect temperance, seeking the most h^althl'ii 3 rerreation, and ruled by the most perfect decency and decorum ; — such are the dramatis persoiue, winch exhibit on the gay scenes of the public places of amusement in Paris. The genuine badaud, or Frcnr h cockney, has no idea of pleasure, independent of his wife and children. There are, in Paris, no exclusive clubs for the middle classes, to which the sel- fish husband shrinks off, to doze and grumble over a pipe and tankard, not unconscious, but insensible, to the bickerings and scoldings that await him, on his return home, where all is jea- lousy and discontent at the un-shared enjoyment. The shop once shut in Paris, its master and mistress, with their children — frequently with their apprentices, (except the heroes of the Rue St. Denis, and la Cite prefer going alone, " pour f aire leurs farces" [to have their frolics)]; and invariably with la bonne, or principal female servant, desert for the day the close and noxious street, where they have breathed a virions air during the week, and seek a purer atmosphere in gayer scenes. These family groups, frequently consisting of three genera- tions, proceed to the Thuillerics-gardens « pour voir j oner les eau.x" [to see the water works play], and to amuse the children by showing them the gold and silver fish, which float and sparkle on the surface of the pond in shoals. For it is an indulgence to these little people to be allowed to share their gateaux de JSTan- terre [Nanterre cakes], bought from the *« Belle Magdeleine^ [fair Madelaine], at the garden-gate, with •< les pctites betes" [the lit- tle animals]. — The morning is spent in sauntering through these lovely gardens, and the adjoining Champs-Elysees, until the hour of dinner arrives, and the party then hasten to some of the restaurateurs, whose salons are scented by the orange-trees of the Thuilleries to which they arc contiguous. PARIS. 59 As soon as the salon is entered, la bonne, always important and bustling, collects the bonnets and gloves, and hangs them on the pegs over the table ; pins the napkins before the children, and arranges the hair of the girls. Then, waiting till her mas- ters are seated, takes her own place at the same table, but at a modest distance, and enters into consultation with the rest of the party over the carte, or bill of fare, which the waiter presents. Every one chooses a dish ; la bonne as well as the rest, and the quality of the wine is carried by a plurality of votes. A desert and coffee conclude the dinner; the bonnets and shawls are re- sumed, and the party again sally forth to the Champs Elysees. There the children are treated to the "jeu de bague" [game of the ring]; the petit-bon-homme [the little man — the youngest boy] mounts the wooden horse, with an air of equestrian digni- ty, his sisters, seated in the chairs, endeavour, as the machine turns round, to catch the ring on the little wand ; while the own- er, who presides over the game, cuts his often-reiterated jokes, and the father and mother of the candidates for Olympic honours cry, at every successful effort, « C'est d Marie/ 99 " C'est a Cta- mille!" « C'est a Fanchette!" [It is Mary's — It is Camilla's — It is Fanny's]. La bonne is sure to succeed into the vacated seat of one of her young mistresses, and even the old lady herself can- not always resist the temptation of renewing the amusements of her girlhood. When all have had their turn at the «jeu de bague, 99 the un- wearied party proceed through the twilight groves, to one of those splendidly illuminated temples, which are scattered over the Champs-Elysees, and above whose Corinthian porticos the public are informed, that « Ici on danse tons les jours 99 [There is dancing here every day]. There is nothing at all in the same line in London, as these beautiful 'pavilions, where "on danse tons les jours 99 [they dance every day], at a very cheap rate. They are generally a rotunda; the ample dome is supported by gilt pillars, and the piers, covered with magnificent mirrors, reflect a thousand lights from lustres of crystal. A light gilt balustrade incloses the spot dedicated to quadrilles and French country dances ; while outside its boundaries, the languid waltz- ers pursue their circling maze; and the spectators, the friends, relatives, and parents of the gay performers, are ranged round on ottomans, which form the extreme circle of the ring. Arches between the pillars, at certain intervals, richly draped, open into the gardens, which are lighted up ; and refreshments are distri- buted in different parts of the saloon, which communicate with little offices on the outside. Here the old people repose, the chil- dren are amused, and the young men and women dance their graceful and always well-danced quadrilles, to the same beauti- 60 PARIS. ful ballet music as is given at the opera, and always performed by a numerous and excellent band. The whole of this pleasant recreation is procured for the price paid for the lemonade, " eau de groseille*" [gooseberry-water], and sweet cakes, which serve as a collation or supper to the family, before they return home. This they do at an early hour; and a day, whoSe enjoyments nothing ran disturb but a shower of rain, is thus cheaply finished by the bon badaud [good cockney] of Paris, and his family group. In reading Madame Roland's curious and interesting Me~ moires, I was forcibly struck by the vivid and delightful picture, drawn of the innocent recreations which were taken by her little family, in the woods of Vincennes, and the groves of St. Cloud, on Sundays and holidays ; and I thought them descrip- tive of manners, too purely primitive, to belong, at the present day, to such a city as Paris. These pictures, however, I saw a hundred times repeated, not only in the public gardens of the metropolis, but in all the environs of the capital. Wherever na- ture and art provided an attraction, afforded accommodation to health and pleasure; gaiety, temperance, and decency seemed invariably to preside over these little festivals of domestic en- joyment. The bon bourgeois [good citizen] of Paris, however, though singularly industrious, and primitive in his habits, and moral in his conduct, enjoys but a small portion of respect from his compatriots ; and he holds precisely the same place in public estimation as the second rate cockney of London, whose sphere of existence never extends beyond the sound of Bow bell. The Parisian badaud has no public feeling, and no national spirit. — It is his distinction to be ne natif de Paris [born a native of Pa- ris]; — he knows no other character, connected with his country; and, provided, as a shopkeeper once said to me, in the marche anx Innocents [market of the Innocents], on the subject of the political changes which had taken place, « pourvu que la bou- tique aille son train, qu'est-ce que ca nous regarded" [provided that the shop goes on well, why need we care] seems to be the device of the whole fraternity. The higher classes of citizens, who own the great magazins, or ware-rooms, the marchands of Paris, are of a higher cast, in character, and habits of life, as well as in condition ; and, though they have not that consideration in society, which be- longs to the trading members of a great commercial country; though they have neither the wealth, the consideration, the po- litical talent, nor political consequence of our Harvey Combes, PARIS. Ql and Waithmans*, many of these respectable bourgeois enjoy a yevy agreeable and luxurious existem e. They Wave their mai- son bien montee [well- furnished house], in town, their petite mat- son de plaisance, and pied a terre [their little villa and spot of ground], in the environs, and drive their cabriolet, or demi-for- tune on a Sunday, among the more splendid, though not more commodious, vehicles of the higher classes in the Bois de Bou- logne. Still, however, it would be in vain to look, in the great avenues leading to Paris, for those proofs of the independence and prosperity of the citizens of a great capital, those snug, neat, happy-looking dwellings, which, on all the high roads lead- ing to London, present themselves on every side, at once the retreat and recompense of industry and probity; the cheerful and best monuments of the happy condition of a free people. O surely, if long supported despotism prints deeply its cha- racter on every order of the community which it oppresses, and leaves its trace, long after its pressure is removed, the benefits resulting from a good government, will equally betray them- selves, under a thousand lingering forms, even when the spirit, from which they have arisen, is subdued or quenched. And should circumstances, undreamed of in human philosophy, sub- vert the constitution of England, shade the brilliant lustre of her liberties, and " Fright the isle from her propriety," still the ruin spread over the land, laid waste by despotism and corruption, would long attest her former greatness and pros- perity ; and the effects of her free constitution would continue to preserve the semblance of prosperity and happiness, even when neither virtually exist ; as organic life survives the vital throb, which once gave it force and motion. * Nothing could exceed the surprise of a party of very well educated French persons, on being told that Whi thread was a brewer ; and when, to illustrate the extent of capital and traffic, engaged in England in that business, I in- stanced the destruction lately occasioned by the bursting of the great vat, at Meux's brewhouse, 1 am convinced that the tale far exceeded the limits of their powers of belief, or comprehension. FRANCE, BOOK VII. French Theatre. Qui me delivera des Grecs et des Romains ? Du sein de leurs tombeaux, ces peuples inhumains- Feront assurement le malheur de ma vie. — Quand je fus au theatre, Je n'entendois jamais que Phedre, Cleopatre, Ariadne, Didon, leurs amants, leurs epoux, Tous princes enrages, burlant corarae ies loups. Rodogune, Jocaste, et puis les Pelopides, Et tant d'autres heros, tioblement parricides ; Et toi, triste famille, a qui Dieu fasse paix, - Race d' Agamemnon, qui ne finis jamais ; Dont je voyois partout les querelles antiques, Et les assassinats, mis en vers heroiqaes. Buicuorx, Poesies fugitive*. The French Tragedy Racine.— Theatre Franqais. — Britannicus. — Talma, — St. Prix, — Style of acting. — Of enunciation, — Ma- demoiselle Duchenois, — Mademoiselle George. — Costume, — A first representation, — Charlemagne. — M. Le Mercier — La Fronde, — VAvocat Patelin,< — '-French Comedy, Motif re. Tartnjfe. — Mademoiselle Mars,— Mademoiselle Le Vert,-Fleury.—Michaud. — The Audience. — The Odeon.< — ood English scholars. Voltaire's translations of Shakspeare, made by the help of his dict-onary, are as ill exe- cuted, as the passages he attempts, are injudiciously selected for the illustra- tion of his author. His attempts at a version are, indeed, little more than burlesque parodies. His correspondence with D'Alembert, on his own cele- brated discourse on Shakspeare, given at the Academy in 1776, is extremely curious, " au lieu des grossie'rete's, inlisibles publiquement, que vous cites tie Shakspeare, y substituez quelr/ues autrea passages ridicules et lisibles, qui ne 7>ous tnanqueront pas" [Instead of the coarse phrases and scenes (impossible to read publicly) that you cite from Shakspeare, substitute some ridiculous passages and well-managed jests, for which you are never at a loss]. The idea of sub' utitnting some loell-turned French jokes and ridicuhnts passages, for the bold, strong English humour of Shakspeare, started by D'Alembert, was adopted by Voltaire; — the result may be easily imagined. D'Alembert exclaimed with triumph, U "H faut /aire voir d ces tristes et insolens .Anglais, que nos gens de leltres savent mieux se battre contre eux, qtie nos souluts et nos gdne'raux" [We must shew these insolent melancholy English, that our men of letters can combat them with more surcess than our soldiers and sailors]. The gens dt litres of Paris opposed to Shakspeare ! ! Q£ FRENCH THEATRE. que ce qui rteociste pas" [Except God, there is nothing fine in nature, but thai which docs not exist], seems, with some occa- sional exceptions in the case of Corneille, to have been a maxim admitted, and a rule pursued, by all the tragic poets of France. The modern French critics boast, that their tragedy is the true « beau ideal" of dramatir poetry. But the « beau ideal" though a more splendid combination of Nat lire's finer proportions, most still be true to its original, or it becomes pedantry, man- nerism, and affectation. Whatever has not its prototype in rea- lity, is necessarily conventional ; it is created for an age, a sect, or a party, but has no kindred with immortality. The powerful genius of Corneille was stamped with the hardi- hood of the times in which he flourished, when the conflicts of the Fronde, assuming the character of licentious liberty, had let loose all the passions of society, and energised all its forms. Corneille, even with that bad taste which disfigures his produc- tions, and which was partly referable to the age and state of letters in France, might have given a bold and passionate direc- tion to the French drama, have thrown mannerism aside for Nature, and have presented, in the chivalric story of his own <* Cid" a model to his successors for a national school of tragedy, deviating from the worn-out ancient fable, and superior to it in interest and reference. But the importunate vanity of Louis XIV. found, in the feebleness of Racine's character, and in the elegance of his genius, a fit engine to confirm that esprit de sys- Mme* [spirit of system] which enters into every relation under his government, to dazzle and enslave the dramatic taste of the day ; to conform to the cold severity of the Greek rules ; and, avoiding all references to national history, to liberty, or government, to weave with the religious and historical fables of antiquity, the characters and manners of the French court; to eulogise the feats of ifs gorgeous king ; and to realise the maxims of the modern Aristarchus : " Que Racine enfantant des miracles nouveaux, ** De ses heros, sur hit, forme tous ses tableaux." [That Racine, producing ntw miracles, painted all his heroes upon his model.) Thus writing to the vanity, and under the inspiration of the sovereign, by whose frowns he died, and abiding strictly by the advice o£ Boileau, Racine produced his elegant paraphrases of the Greek dramas ; adhering strictly to their rides and unities, but violating the propriety of action in every scene, by blending the Formal frivolity of the French manners, with the grand solemnity of antique fable. Amidst the palaces of Greece and Rome, the Theseus's and Csesars are all Louis XIV. and the heroines of antiquity, the Hebrew Esther, and Persian Vashli. merely por- traits of the reigning or discarded favourites of Versailles. That FRENCH THEATRE. 05 arrogance must, indeed, be supreme, which would coolly presume to decide on the merits of an author, in a foreign language, without reference to the judgment of those for whom, and to whom he wrote ; or which would lead to the belief, that an ac- quired knowledge of any tongue can give an ;tdequate conception of beauty of style, and poetical composition ; which are not always fully appreciated by those, to whom that tongue is ver- nacular. During my residence in France, and my intimacy with some of its first literary characters, I endeavoured to correct my ori- ginal opinion of Racine, long since formed, by that of his na- tion ; and I deman led, from the judgment of others, what my own had not been able to discover or appreciate. — -My memory, furnished with a hundred splendid poetical images of Shakspeare and Dryden, I demanded of the passionate admirers of Racine, for those effusions of bold and high-wrought imagination, the brilliant metaphor, the fanciful simile, the sublime allusion, which are the generic features of genius, in which Shakspeare is so abundant, and Dryden occasionally so rich. But the pages of Racine scarcely furnish one example — there are there no << cloud-capt towers," no «« feathered Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill," no « dew-drop shook from a lion's mane," not even the " Come purpureo fior languendo more " Che il vomere al passar tagliato lassa,"* &c. &c. of Ariosto, or the « Virginella come la Rosa" of the tender and delicate Metastasio. I asked for some of those philosophical reflections, which teem in every page of Shakspeare, arid speak a knowledge almost in- tuitive of human character; those delicate, scarcely perceptible shades, in human qualities, passions and interests, which escape the vulgar eye of common observation, and are caught and fixed by the omnipotent glance of genius. But Racine, though an histo- rian, was not a philosopher, in any sense of the word : and it would be vain to search, in his correct pages, for one of the thousand citations referable to every point of human conduct and human feeling, which Shakspeare presents as the ready illustrations of every text in the moral existence of man. For original conception of character ; for Hamlets, Lears, Macbeths, and Falstiaffs, J did not ask — >and still less for that higher depart- * See the death of Dardinel, in the " Orlando. 3 * Canto xviii. stanza 143 , PART II. K (56 FRENCH THEATRE. incut of poetical^enius, invention of fable ; because Racine him- self stifles the expectation, when he labours, through many an endless preface, to prove how little he has deviated from the well-known story of antiquity, which he has adopted, or from the characters drawn by cotemporary historians, which he has copied. Still, however, the tragedies of Racine, without one poetical image, without one philosophical observation, — without any originality of character, or invention of fable, must have some singular dramatic excellence, since one of the most enlightened, and, decidedly, the most literary nation in Europe, prefers him to every other, and speaks of him with an admiration beyond bounds, and without reservation. Where, however, this myste- rious charm, this M all in all, and all in every part," lies con- cealed from the apprehension of foreign readers, it is not re- served for me to discover. I only judge of Racine as he affects me, the usual standard of a woman's judgment, and with a taste, perhaps, too highly excited, by the early and continual perusal of Shakspeare, to me the book devoutly read and conned and prized, as that " traced by an angel's hand for Mussulman de- votion, his guide and creed." I may be wholly unqualified to appreciate the merits of mere faultless diction ; and elegant nar- ration, antithesis studiously opposed, points delicately made, inferences artfully hinted, and turns, breaks and inuendos inge- niously contrived, which charm the taste and precision of French criticism, in the smooth and elegant versification of Ra- cine, are flat, cold, and insufficient to warm the imagination, in- terest the judgment, or rouse the feelings, which have received their tone of exaltation from the passionate, energetic, and splendid dramas of the English bard — irregular and wild, in- deed, as the works of nature ; but, like them, stampt with the divine impress of original creation, fresh, sublime, and vigorous, beyond the reach of art, and unsusceptible to imitation. In whatever circle in Paris, I ventured to introduce the sub- ject of Racine, he was not judged, but eubgised. There was no critic ism ; all was panegyric. It is so delightful when the first flush of youthful sensation is over, to acquire a capability for a new pleasure and a new taste, that it was my anxious desire to receive delight from the perusal of Racine, and I reqnested one of his devoted admirers to point me out some instance of his pe- culiar beauty. He read to me the speech of Orestes An Andro- mache, where, in a tone of mingled rage and peevishness, at the cruelty of Hermionc, and the counsels of his friends, he exclaims, FRENCH THEATRE. (5^ v ' Assez,et trop long terns, mon amitie t'accable, Evite un malheureux, abandonne un coupable; Cher Pylade, crois-moi, tapuie t'a seduit, Laisse moi des perils, dont j'attends tout le fruit. Porte aux Grecs cet enfant, que Pyrrhus m'abandonne." Pylade. — " Allons, Seigneur, enlevons Hermione!" [Too long, already, has my friendship troubled you; avoid me for I am wretched, abandon me for I am g'lilty. Dear Pyiades, believe me, compassion blinds you .—Leave me to dangers which I expect and merit. Convey to the "Greeks this child, which Pyrrhus left with me- Pyiades. — Come, my lord, let us carry off Hermione]. This reply of Pyiades, delicately indicating that he perceives the drift of all Orestes' arguments, is deemed one of the finest passages of Racine : it gives also the standard, by which his ge- nius is measured and his talent appreciated. But true loftiness of conception, and a bold range of the imagination, are utterly incompatible with the double despotism of Aristotle, and of the political system under which the French authors wrote. Kings, ministers, and generals, are alone considered worthy to fill the buskin ; but the intrigues of the palace are the sole subjects, the mo- tives, and the means admissible in the conduct of the fable. Even rebellion loses its importance, and opposition its virtue, by exclud- ing all notions of freedom and public good ; and by turning for ever upon the frown of a female, or on the rivalry with a royal lover. The fatal necessity of depicting one paramount passion begets also a poverty in the subject, which can only be relieved by dia- lectic subtlety, and exaggerated diction. Man is never thus in- fluenced ; never thus unique in character, and constant in his af- fections. It is an individual of the human species, not an indi- vidual passion, that forms the genuine object of scenic represen- tation; and the frigid personifications of the ancient mtjsteries are scarcely less tedious, than the abstract and ideal heroes which this false canon of criticism has produced. The buskined princes of the French stage, indeed, resemble humanity in the same de- gree, that an anatomical dissection, or the statue of Condillac, render the life of motion, or the intricacies of volition. The*first tragedy of Racine, which I saw performed in France, was his Britannicus; the piece in which, he himself ob- serves, he took the most pains; « celle de mes tragedies, que je puis dire que j'ai le plus travaillee" [that of my tragedies on which I may say I worked the most]. He, however, confesses that he formed this play so closely on the history of Tacitus, that there is scarcely one «« trait eclatant" [one brilliant stroke] through the whole, which he had not borrowed from his favour- ite historian. Britannicus, thus recommended by its author, and sustained by the whole strength of the company of the Thea- tre Francais; Britannicus, so long the fashion, from the inimita- Qg FRENCH THEATRE. blc performance of Talma, in Nero, awakened my most anxious expectations; and it was not without emotion, that I saw myself, for the first time, in the great national theatre of France, and in a box chosen and procured for me by M. Talma himself. Still, however great my expectation, however lively my impatience for the rising of the curtain, which recalled the long blunted vivacity of feelings of childish solicitude and curiosity, I soon perceived I was cold, languid, and inanimate to the genuine French au- dience that surrounded me. The house was an overflow at an early hour; the orchestra, cleared of all its instruments, was filled to suffocation ; and the parterre [pit], as usual, crowded with men, (chiefly from the public schools and lyeees, whose criticisms not unfrequently decide the fate of ne i pieces, and give weight to the reputation of old ones,) exhibited hundreds of anxious faces marked countenances, and figures and cos- tumes w Inch might answer alike for the bands of brigandage, or the classes of philosophy. Some were reading over the tra- gedy ; others were commenting particular passages : — a low murmur of agitation crept through the house, like the rustling of leaves to a gentle wind, until the rising of the curtain stilled every voice, composed every muscle, and riveted the very exist- ence of the audience, (if I may use the expression) upon the scene. The theatres of other countries assemble spectators, but an audience is only to be found in a French theatre. — Through the whole five acts attention never flagged for a moment; not an eye was averted— not an ear unattending : every one seemed to have the play by heart, and every one attended, as if they had never seen it before. For myself, it was with the greatest difhVulty, and only, I believe, owing to the exquisite acting of Talma, and Mademoiselle George, that I could sit it out. Long and cold re- citals, and a succession of antithesis,* points, and epigrams, were relieved only by a declamation that froze, and by dia- logues, where each interlocutor was permitted to speak alter- nately for half an hour, in all the monotony of recitation, with which some teller ■Of a twice-told tale " Vexes the dull ear of a drowsy hearer." The first act of Britannicus is a series of antithesistical points, which, uttered with great neatness and precision, by the turbu- * These jolies tournures [pretty turns] run through all the tragedies of Racine, '* Mon unique esperancc eat dans mon desespoir" [My only hope is in my despair], is one out of a hundred in JJajazet. FRENCH THEATRE. 69 lent and haughty Jlgrippina, gave her the air and character of one of the literary precieuses of the hotel Rambouillet. " Tout, s'il est genereux, lui present cette loi, Ma,s tout, s'il est ingrat, lui parle contre moi" " Mais crains que l'avenir, detruisant le passe, II ne finisse ainsi, qu' Auguste a commence." " Mis sa feinte bonte" se tournanten fureur, Les delices de Rome en devinrent l'horreur — " " Q 'il choississe, s'il vrut, d'Auguste ou de Tibere, Q 'U lmite, s'il le peut, Germanicus mon pere-" iS Soutenir vos rigueurs, par d'autres cruautes, Et laver dans le sang, vos bras ensanglantes.'* " Vous allumez un feu, qui ne pourra s'eteindre, Craint de tout l'univers, il faudra tout craindre." [Every thing, if he is generous, prescribes to him this law, bat everything, if he is ungrateful, speaks to him against me. B-.t fear that the future, in destroying the past, wiLl not finish thus, as Au- gustus his begun But his feigned goodness turning into fury, the delights of Rome became horrors. Let him choose, if he will, between Augustus and Tiberius, let him imitate, if he can, my father Germanicus. Support your severities by other cruelties, and wash in blood your bloody hands. You light a fire which cannot be extinguished— Fear for all the universe, fear every thing]. While Madame Agrippina indulges in these concetti, Jlonseig- neur Nero is sentimentally in love; Burrhus proses in mono- logues, of a hundred lines, on the good education which he and Seneca gave to their unworthy pupil,* and the tender Junie 9 with that politeness which never forgets itself on any occasion, asks pardon of Agrippina, for leaving her abruptly to seek her lover, who is expiring under the hands of his assasins. Burrhus- " Madame, e'en est fait ; Britannicus expire-" Junie. " Ah ! mon prince !*' Jlgrippinu- "II expire!" Burrhus- " Ou plutot il est mort, Madame-" Junie. "Pardonnez, Madame, a ce transport; * Je vais le secourir, (si je puis) ou le suivre." * A few nights after I had seen Britannicus, I was present at the perform ance of Artaxerxes. When Jirtabanes falls lifeless in the arms of the attend- ants, he gave a little kick with his foot, as the curtain was dropping, to show that be had not violated the rules, by dying on the stage- 70 FRENCH THEATRE. [Burrhus — " Madam, 'tis done ; Britannicus expires. Junta. — Ah ! my prince ! Jigrippina — He expires ! Burrhus — Or rather madam he is dead. Junta — Pardon, madam, my grief; I will go and assist him (if I can) or follow him.] Such is the powerful influence of the esprit de systetne, and of the high authority of Racine's reputation in France, that these absurdities pass now without a censure, as they would have done when the art was in its infancy; while the smallest devia- tion from taste, even from grammar, in a modern tragedy, re- ceives no quarter, and a n&n or a oui 9 placed mal-d~propos 9 is sufficient to ruin a piece even of merit. As the French tragedy is made up of long details and cold declamations, and Racine is little more than Tacitus in French rhyme, the actor is usually a mere declaimer. The transitions of emotion are few and strong; - — it is all a dead calm, or a furious rage, declamatory recita- tion, or angry blustering. The French tragedy is a transcript of the religious mysteries and history of Greece and Rome, copied from their dramas — tied down to their cold facts, and re- gulated by their severe rules. The more delicate developement of feeling, the finer shades of passion, the tints, touches, and bursts and throes of nature, in all her more intimate, more bo- som-felt operations, are unknown to the French drama ; and their exhibition, so favourable to the higher order of genius in the histrionic art, are denied to the actor. There is no by- play on the French stage. »No Othello there becomes the victim of a passion, artfully awakened in an unsus- pecting heart. Its first indication could not there be made per- ceptible, dawning in faint shadows on the tremulous form, and quivering nether lip, struggling with contending evidences in the heaving breast — sickening, agitating the entire frame, glooming on the curved brow, distorting the altered feature, flashing from the rolling eye, and wound up by all the frightful indications of doubt, fear, hope, conviction, rage, and confirmed despair. This wonderous composition, which, in combining the highest pow- ers of dramatic genius, in the author, demands the fullest exer- cise of histrionic ability, in the actor, could have no parallel on the French theatre. A French Othello would hear an account of bis wife's perfidy, perhaps, in a neat and appropriate speech of a hundred and fifty lines ; and no countenance, however flexi- ble and mobile, could shift and change its expression, during a space of a quarter of an hour. The French Othello, therefore, would hear the tale of [ago (who would divide it logically, ac- cording to scholastic rule) fairly and politely out — he would then fall into a violent passion, and shake his head, and clench FRENCH THEATRE. 71 his trembling hands, and recite his rage, and syllogise his fury, according to every classical authority and established rule. In the famous scene of Britannicus, where Agrippina is left tete-a-tete with her son, to enter on her defence, Mademoiselle George, as the Roman empress, went through a long speech of a hundred and ten lines, with great clearness, elegance of enun- ciation, and graceful calmness of action. But as this eternal speech was simply the history of the early life and reign of Nero, taken from Tacitus, the beautiful and expressive countenance of this fine actress was left at perfect rest; and Mrs. Siddons, in one of her readings of Milton, was quite as dramatic and ani- mated, as the restless and ambitious mother of the Roman mon- ster, summing up the benefits she had conferred on her son, and exposing his ingratitude. During the first seventy lines of this speech, Talma, as Nero, sat a patient and tranquil auditor. No abrupt interruption of haughty impatience, disdaining the curb of a long-neglected authority, was furnished by the genius of the author, or gave play to the talents of the admirable actor ; and the little by-play allowed him, or rather that he allowed him- self, was not risked, until towards the Hose of the speech : it was then, however, exquisite; it was Nature. The constraint of forced and half-given attention, the languor of exhaustion, the restlessness of tedium, and the struggle between some little remains of filial deference and habitual respect, blended with the haughty impatience of all dictation, were depicted, not in strong symptoms and broad touches of grimace and action, but with a. keeping! a tact, a fidelity to Nature, indescribably fine. His transition of attitude; his playing with the embroidered scarf, round his neck, and which made a part of his most classical cos- tume, his almost appearing to count its threads, in the inanity of his profound ennui, were all traits of the highest order of act- ing. In London, this acting would have produced a thunder of applause; in Paris it was coldly received, because it was in- novation; and many a black head in the parterre [pit] was searching its classical recesses, for some example from some tradi- tional authority, from Baron, orLe Kain, of an emperor being restless on his chair, or of the incident of playing with the hand- kerchief being at all conformable to the necessity " de represen- ter noblement" [a noble deportment], in all kings, since the time of Louis le Grand. Whether on the stage, at the Theatre Franqais, or in the Thuilleries, Talma is eminently superior to the school, whose rules he ia obliged to obey. His great genius always appeared to me to be struggling against the methodical obstacles presented to its exertions. He is the Gulliver of the French stage tied down by Lilliputian threads. Before talents like his can exert J% FRENCH THEATRE. their full force, and take their uttermost scope, a new order of drama must succeed to the declamatory and rhyming school, which now occupies the French stage. Tal a is a passionate admirer of the English drama, and of Shakspeare. He speaks English fluently, and told me that he had a great desire to play in one of Shakspeare's tragedies. He did not complain, hut he hinted at the restraint under which his talents laboured, from that esprit de systeme [spirit of system,] which the French have banish- ed from every other art; and which keeps it last hold on their ■tage. But he said, "If I attempt the least innovation ; if I frown a shade deeper to night than I frowned last night, in the same character, the parterre are sure to call me to order."* To judge of the strength and originality of Talma's acting, he must be seen with some of the actors of the old school, who still preserve something of the cast and character of the days of Le Kain and Clairon. Of this class is the venerable St. Prix, le doyen du theatre [the senior of the theatre]. This most respectable man is held in high consideration by the Parisian audience : yet, his always being the proser «« en permanence" of every piece, his deep-drawn nasal tones, his psalmodising enun- ciation, his mechanical action, his measured walk, his generally opening the tragedy with some automaton interlocutor, who meets him from the opposite side of the stage, and « imports the argument of the play" as Hamlet says, give such an admirable * The dignity and tragic powers of Talma, on the stage, are curiously but charm- ingly contrasted with the simplicity, playfulness, and gaiety of his mos' un- assuming, unpretending manners off the stage. I (who had never seen Corio- lanus in the drawing room, but as I had seen Coriolanus in the Forum,) ex- pected to meet this great tragedian in private life, in all the pomp and solem- nity of his profession ; the cold address, the measured phrase : in a word, I expected to meet the actor ; but in the simple, unaffected manners of this celebrated person, I fo md only the well-bred and accomplished gentleman. Talma had, in his early life, been intimaie with Buonaparte ; and the ex-Em- peror, (who never forgot the friends of the young engneer officer,) accorded the petites-entries [the private entrances] of the palace to the sovereign of the Thiatre-Frangais. Talma saw him constantly ; not, however, to give him lea- sons, an invention at which Buonaparte and Talma both laughed ; bin to dis- cuss his favourite topic, tragedy, of which he was passionately fond- On this subject, however, the actor frequently differed with the Emperor; while the Emperor as frequently dictated to the actor, greeting him with " Eh bien! Talma, vous rtavez pas use" de vos moyens hier an soir" [Well ! Talma, you did not display your powers last evening]. Napoleon always disputed the merits of comedy, and observed to a gentleman, from whom I had the anecdote, " Si vous pre'fe'rex la comedie, cest parceque vous vieillissez" [If you prefer co- medy it is because you are growing old]. — " Et vous, Sire" replied Monsieur , "vous aimez la trage'diey parceque vous etes tropjeune" [And you. Sire, —you love tragedy besause you are too young]. Buonaparte constantly at- tended the iheatres; and frequently without the least parade, and quite unex- pected by the audience ; who always received these impromptu visits as marks of confidence, and applauded accordingly. FRENCH THEATRE. yg representation of the heroes of Tom Thumb, that Mr. Noodle meeting Mr. Doodle in solemn pomposity of look, word, and mo- tion, could not possibly be more humorously represented, in the mock heroics of that excellent^burlesque on all tragedy. Such, als>, was the acting of La Rive, the immediate successor of Le Kain.* The enunciation of the French actors, like the rhythm of the language, is wholly deficient in emphasis. They have no chro- matic tones of feeling and passion ; their scale of sounds, like the music of the Chinese, has neither sharp nor flat. A kind of nasal psalmodising, alternating with a quick mutter on the top of the voice, includes their whole scale of intonation. Their tragedy, both in composition and in recitation, seems to reveal the whole defect of their language, and proves that it is not the language for poetry or music. The Emperor Julian compared the natural sounds of the Gauls to the howling of wild beasts ; and polished, elegant, and cultivated, as the modern language is, the first language in the world for conversation, it is still so deficient in natural harmony, and abounds so much in the inhar- monic terminations of en, in, oitu un, an, &r. &c, that it wiM not admit of being thrown into blank verse ; and it only ceases to be prose, when it is fettered by rhyme. The dramatic poet is thus tied down to limit his genius to the circumscribed powers of the language. Racine ends his Berenice with an «* hclas ;" and Vol- taire, in his Mahomet, introduces " pent-etre" more than six times, as a rhyme to any thing he can force into the service to rhyme with it.f The r, that harsh, growling, snarling, << disso- nant consonant," the proscribed of other nations, is the enfant cheri of the French alphabet, and their douceur, amour, bonheur 9 the expressions of their tenderest emotions, depend altogether upon this rough auxiliary. " Par quels puissants accords." " Dans ce sejour des morts. ,> " Malgre tous nos efforts" " II calme les fureurs de nos transports," The French language, as pronounced on the stage, especially in tragedy, appeared to me most particularly deficient in accent, * And such also was the style of declamation in ihe days of Clairon and Le Kain, as described by Marmontel. He observes, that Voltaire himself taught Clairon to '* dtclamer avec line lamentation continuelle et monotone" [to declaim with a continual monotonous lamentation]. When she adopted a tone some- thing less pompous and declamatory, and played Electra, -without a hoop, Vol- taire's transports of astonishment and admiration brought tears into his eyes- f It rhymes four times to maitre, and is always introduced for that pur pose. PART II. I, 74* FRENCH THEATRE. and to be made up of syllables, rather than of words. A friend of Diderot, who accompanied him to the theatre one night, per- ceived that h> put his fingers in his ears during a whole act, and yet was affected, evert to tears* at the representation. He naturally expressed his astonishment. "You hear nobbing," said his friend, « and yet you are deeply affected." — «♦ Chacun a sa maniere d'ecouter" [Every one has his own way of hearing], replied Diderot ; ** 1 know this tragedy by heart ; I enter strongly into the fine pathetic conceptions of the author, and my imagi- nation lends an effect to the situations, which the tones of the actors, if T listened to them, couldnot express, and perhaps would even destroy,* 9 * The French actors, though they are generally graceful and stately, do not tread the stage with the same ease and freedom as the English. Their movements are more precise, their steps more measured ; and the rehearsed air of their attitudes con- stantly recals the anecdote of Gardel, the dancer, who cried out to a prince, who was stabbing a princess, "que vous tuez mal! tuez-la done avec grace" [how badly you kill her! kill her grace- fully]. That magnificent tossing of the arms, by which Kemble, in all the grace and variety of his noble and natural action, seems to imitate the agitation of the branches of an oak, thrown into ma- jestic motion by the play of the passing winds, is wholly un- known on the French stage, where the poetical proverb of " Chassez le naturel, il revient en galop," [When you drive away nature, she comes back at full gallop], has, certainly, not yet been illustrated in any instance. In tra- gedy the action of the performers, generally speak ing, seems confined, from the elbows downward, and is frequently made out by striking down the flat of the hand, and pointing the fore- finger. There is very little variety in the action ; — none of the abruptness of nature, her irregularities or incongruities, Iter starts, her graces, or her awkwardnesses j all seems imitative and conventional. * Returning from the representation of a very heavy modern tragedy, one evening, to sup with a very delightful French woman, wl>ose conversation is peculiarly characterised by its naivete* I could not help complaining of the monotonv, coldness, and want of incident and action, in the piece I had seen ; till, impatient of a criticism to which she did not agree, she exclaimed, «' VoilA bien une critique a VJnirlaise ! Tenez, Madame J ollez voir Ulphig'uie en Tauride! Voild unefille de tut pour vous, la" [You are truly an English cri- tic! Well, mad m, go and see Iphigewia at Taurs! There is .1 ^rirl murder- ed for you]; supposing that, accustomed to the ^ monstrous forces'' of my na- tional theatre, a murder or two was quite necessary, to make any piece inter- esting to my ferocious English taste. FRENCH THEATRE. y$ Having seen a French tragedy acted. I cannot find any thing so ridiculous in the request of the man, who, having been pre- sent at the ballet, in which the « quHl mouruV 9 * of Corneille was executed, intreated Noverre to get his troop to dance the Maxi- mes of La Rochefoucault. — Still, however, to observations so cursorily made, exceptions are constantly presented, by the ori- ginality and genius of some of the actors themselves. La Fond is spirited, rapid, and energetic; Mademoiselle Duchenois is exquisitely pathetic, « Vart n'est pas fait pour elle f elle n'cn a pas besoin" [art is not made for her, she has no need of it]. Mis- tress of all the softer passions, I have known even those who did not understand a word she uttered, moved to tears at her per- formance. All that is elegant in diction, dignified in gesture, perfect in grace, majestic in beauty* and symmetrical in form, is combined in the acting and appearance of Mademoiselle George. Her fine countenance, so little aided by art, that her very colour seems to vary in her transparent complexion, is of the true he- roic cast ; and is susceptible of all the stronger passions ; but most of indignation, or of hatred, brooding and suppressed, but ennobled by the passion that awakens it. Her Hermione is one of the finest pieces of acting I saw on the French theatre; dress- ed in her gothic costume, as Regine, in Charlemagne, or in her im- perial robes, as Jlgrippina, 1 think she is one of the finest speci- mens of the human form I ever beheld. The strict adherence to classical authority, which gives such a freezing sameness to the French stage, — the unity of place, always representing one cold scene, the eternal hall of the eternal palace, is alone relieved by the splendour, and above all, by the rigidly characteristic and classical costume, in which I should suppose the French theatre a century in advance with England. Mademoiselle George would no more appear in her corset and shoes, in her Greek and Roman heroines, than she would adopt the hoop, formerly worn by the mourning widow of Pompey, or the double ruffles carried by Berenice into her Eastern drapery. The reform began byLe Kain and Clairon, at the instigation of Voltaire and Marmontel, and dramatic costume has been carried to the utmost point of perfection by Talma, who has made it his peculiar study. In the Roman coins, under the reign of the Em- perors and those of the latter ages, which I saw at the hotel de Monnaie, I could trace, almost to a fold, the robes and draperies of Caesar, Nero, and Charlemagne. This strict adherence to costume, is not confined to the superior characters of the piece; — it descends to the servants who remove the, chair, or place the * This, probably, alludes to "the Horatii"— '* What could he do, my lord, when three opposed him ?"-—«* Die !" T. 70 FRENCH THEATRE. throne, and whose dress is not one year in advance with the his- toric al personages, on whom they attend. I had so long and so often heard of the interest excited in Paris, by the first representation of a new tragedy, that I consi- dered it a piece of unusual good fortune, that Monsieur Le Mer- rier brought out his long expected Charlemagne, during my resi- dence in that capital. Notwithstanding the political agitations of the day, Charlemagne had become an object of the most in- tense and universal interest ; it was even discussed in the sa- loons, as being a sort of pierre de touche [touchstone] of political sentiment; and its failure or success was a point of solicitude, beyond the mere triumph or fall of an ordinary tragedy. Its author, Le Merrier, had already almost become an histo- rical character; — the brilliant success of his tragedy of Aga- memnon — his filling so ably the professor's chair at the Jlthenee, as successor to La Harpe, the part he had taken in the revolu- tion, but above all, his relations with the late Emperor of France, under whose eye Charlemagne was written, together with the well known bold and independent prinriples of the au- thor, and the eccentricity of his genius and character, combined to excite an interest for the first representation of Charlemagne, which perhaps had not been felt in Paris, since the Irene of Voltaire. On the night of the representation, although I took possession of my box at half after six o'clock, I found the house already overflowing. Even the orchestra was full ; and the murmurs, the commotions, gradually swelling into tumult, like the sullen rising of a storm, the agitation of the many -waving heads, the impatience and energy of the strong marked countenances, gave me an impression of the vivacity of a French multitude, wound up to its utmost capability of emotion, almost frightful. Long before the play began, it was easy to discover the drawing-upof the different political parties, as if the " cote du Roi" and " cote de la Reine" [the king's side, and the queen's side] were still in being — powdered heads, co'effnre aile -de -pigeon [with pigeon-wing curls], and stars and crosses, were not the only insignia of one pact) ; nor the rough black crops, and black silk handkerchiefs of the other; for all external distinction was rather avoided, and I was obliged to the gentleman who accompanied me to the thea- tre, and who knew all parties, for pointing out to me the differ- ent factions, as they ranged themselves in the parterre [pit], or appeared in their /o^vs [boxes]. The play at length began, and the emotion, far from having subsided, was now so intense, that the first scene was very im- perfectly heard, and was loudly encored by one party, and hissed by another, without being listened to by either. It was FRENCH THEATRE, 77 repeated, and several sentences spiritedly uttered by La Fond, as Charlemagne, were called for over again, with the usual « his, bis, bis" [again — encore], Buonaparte had been so often likened to Charlemagne, that the two Emperors were confounded on the scene, and the pours and the contres distributed their hisses and applauses, as their party feelings directed. The plot of the piece is a conspiracy against the life of Charlemagne, by the brother and friends of his beautiful mistress Regine, the mother of his son Ungues, whom he had promised to marry, but whom he is about to abandon for a political alliance with Irene, the Empress of Constantinople. The mere plot was, however, of little mo- ment ,* the sentiments incidentally uttered by the characters, and the peculiarity of their situations, were every thing. Occasional glimpses of the Empress Josephine were caught, in the charac- ter of the devoted, hut abandoned Regine. The imperial Irene was not without her type. The traitor jistrate, conspiring against the man who had raised him, had too manv parallels in France; the situation of the little Ungues was not without its original, and Charlemagne and Napoleon were every where the same. A number of sentiments for and against military despotism, thl interference of meddling priests, the influence of bigotry, the etfects of conspiracy, and characters of conspirators, all drew forth the various and contending passions of the audience, and produced an endless uproar and contest ; while every word was so guarded, and every personality so delicately avoided, that even the minister of the police could not have passed a censure on the piece ; and in this management the tact and talent of the author chiefly lay. At the lines, 'Ces furieux Vouloient vous arracher la couronne, et les yeux." [These furious men would tear from you both your crown and your eyes] and " II tient le juste en paix, le mechant en effroi, Ou diroit a ces traits, que vous peignez le Roi" [He keeps the good in peace, the wicked in terror — They will know by these ' touches thai you paint the king]. the emotion of the royalist party expressed itself almost in shouts. But when Charlemagne recounts the benefits of his long and able administration, the brilliancy of his conquests, the glory with which he had covered his empire, his devotion to the nation, and, above all, when he prophecies the place he is to hold with posterity in the history of his own times, when all cotemporary prejudice shall be laid at rest ; the emotion of the majority of the yg FRENCH THEATRE. audience became so great, the cries of *» bis, bis" [encore, encore,] so violently reiterated, the uproar so wild, so insupportable, that I think a more terrible image of popular commotion could scarcely beconceived. I saw them in the pit, springing several inches high, frantic — wild ! These people, with all their prompt sensibility and strong passions thus readily rising to thesurfa e, must make the most formidable multitude, when congregated for violent purposes, in the world. In all this wild contention, however, not the slightest personal offence was given ; no riot, no brutality, no rude language ; and one party hissed and the otherclapped, and all stamped, jumped, grimaced, and shouted, in the most perfect abstraction of prin- ciples; — not as enemies, but as partisans; — not as men .hating each other, but as enthusiasts, in different causes. While faction, liowever, was deciding the merits of a political tragedy, criticism, never slumbering in a French pit, frequently united both parties in her decisions. At the tautological expressions, " La passion, qui m'anime," and a "meurtre irreparable" [The passion which animates me, and an irreparable murder], all parties joined in shouts of laughter ; — an unfortunate *< non" [no], misplaced, nearly damned the piece in the third act. But an eternal dia- logue between two conspirators, who illustrated the maxim that " I'art d'ennuyer est Part de tout dire" [the art of being tedious is the art of saying every thing], — and above all, a long prosing monologue, of a sentimental murderer, had such an effect on the audience, that convulsions of laughter from every part of the house were only interrupted by those fearful sounds to the ear of author and actor, — »«* d bas! d bas /" — «• d laporte ! a la porte !*" [down ! down ! — to the door ! to the door !] The friends of the author, who were numerous, opposed this fatal decision with such force, that the fifth act was permitted to go on. But the tumults of party, criticism, and friendship, were now so great, that not a word that was uttered on the stage could be heard, even in the stage box. La Fond, as Charlemagne, which he performed hitherto with infinite spirit, and with a brilliant rapidity of declamation, that took from the insupportable length . of the speeches, was now wholly confounded ; a deadlv paleness covered his face, and he stopt abruptly in the middle of his speech. Mademoiselle George, as Regine, retaining more pre- sence of mind, seemed either to support him by some word, whis- pered in his ear, or to give him his caw, — but it was in vain; the " bis," and the ** d bas," wholly overpowered him. He ad- vanced in great agitation to the front of the stage. The whole * " A bas la toile" down with the curtain, — and " a la parte" commanding" the exit of the actor, are generally decisive of the fate of the condemned piece. TRENCH THEATRE. 79 house was now standing up ; he declared that " il avait perdu la tete," — flint not only his head but his memory was gone. The pr inpter presented him the book, ami he looked over iiis part ; while Mademoiselle George recommenced her own speech, and the piece, amidst hisses and applauses, was thus suffered to proceed, and to be finished. Of course it holds its place; for the curtain not being dropped during the performance, it was saved from failure, if not crowned with success, and was given several nights afterwards, with various corrections and omis- sions. The uproar did not finish with the tragedy ; but I had suffer- ed so much from fear, agitation, heat, and noise, that the mo- ment the curtain dropt 1 left the box, and accompanied my party to the foyer [lobby], to take some refreshments, while the hurri- cane t) f the house still assailed our ears. We had all felt infi- nite sympathy for the author, whose head we had from time to time seen in an opposite box ; and some of my party, who knew him intimately, and felt great anxiety about the fate of Charlemagne, were going to seek him, to cheer, rather than console him, when M. Le Merrier appeared himself, walking up and down the foyer, with the beautiful Madame de B * * * # de, talkiug with great earnestness and gaiety ; and, at every fresh burst of up- roar that reached him from the theatre, stopping to indulge in violent fits of laughter, in which he was joined by his fair com- panion. Observing the author thus gay r and composed, and finding the noise gradually subsiding, we finished our ice and capillaire, and returned to our box, contrary to our first inten- tion, to see the oldest French play extant, as we had just seen the newest ; for " UJixocat Patelin" was the petite piece,* given after the first awful representation of Charlemagne, " Who is the greatest man that has illustrated my reign V 9 demanded Louis XIV. of Boilean. « Sire, c'est Moliere" [Sire, it it Moliere], was the candid and just reply; — Corneille and Ra- cine are allowed to have rivals among their successors; Moliere stands alone. Corneille imitated, and Racine paraphrased the drama of other nations; Moliere invented; and if France has a national theatre, she owes it to Moliere. This great writer, stampt with all the original characteristics of genius, is alone, of all the dramatists France has produced, comparable to Shakspeare. He has not, indeed, his sublimity ; he is defi- cient in his pathos ; he wants those powerful touches, which an * * VAvocat Patelin" given on our stage, under the title of the " Village La-wyer," was played in France for half a century, before it was written down ; and it varied according to the talent and humour of the acto v s. — About a hundred years back, it was committed to paper, and arranged in its present form for the stage. The English farce is a most literal translation 80 FRENCH THEATRE. imagination « that exhausted old worlds, and created new," flung in splendid prodigality over pages that breathe of inspi- ration, lie wants the fairy powers of his aerial fancy; the high-wrought character, and incidents, and stories of Ma( betti, Othello, Hamlet, &r. &< . &c. are far beyond the reach of Mo- liere's conception* Wholly destitute *of those brilliant concep- tions, which glance from ** earth to heaven," and take within the range of their combination all that material and immaterial worlds present to their view, Moliere was yet like Shakspeare, a wit, a humourist, a philosopher, a deep searcher into human character, a shrewd detector of the follies and vices that disfigure it, and he held up to life and manners a mirror, so faithful to their reflection, that his dramas were more calculated to benefit the morals, improve the taste, extend the philosophy, correct the manners, and benefit the various relations of society of his day, than all that ever was written and said by Corneille, Ra- cine, Boileau, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Boudaloue, or all the combined talents of the age he adorned, — one simple, modest exception only admitted, in favour of the delightful ** philosophe, sans s*en donter" [philosopher who never doubted], the admirable La Fontaine. Amidst the false glare, which has been flung over the reign of Louis XIV., the ascribing a more than proportionate share of talent to the day he flourished, and the attributing its exis- tence to the munificent patronage of the sovereign ; are positions equally false and unfounded. A state, just rising out of semi- barbarism, presents a strong relief to the lustre of genius, draw- ing from the unworked mine of fancy and imagination. But there has been in France, as in all nations, a floating capital of superior ability, to which the circumstances of the time and state of society give their particular character and direction. The national stork of talent, which went to make poets and preachers under the reign of Louis XIV., directed by interest to conse- crate al! their powers in flattering the vanity, or frightening the conscience of a superstitious despot ;; in the reigns of his suc- cessors, and under the developement of time and circumstances, produced a school of moral and political philosophy. And it would be impossible to deny the wreath of genius granted to Racine, Boileau, and Massillon ; to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Turgot, D'Alembert, Diderot, and Lavoisier ; or to exclude from this legion of honour Condorcet, Cuvier, La Place, Jussieu, anrl Dessaix, men, whose powers for legislation, science, and war, belonged to the age and country in which they lived, when preaching and poetry no longer found a market for their pro- ductions, and were abandoned for pursuits more consonant to public utility, and public opinion. FRENCH THEATRE. St The encouragement of literary men was first urged to Louis XIV. by Cardinal Mazarin, who always held before his royal pupil's eyes the example of Augustus Csesar. The vanity of the sovereign followed up the suggestion of the minister, and all poets were pensioned, who flattered the king, and who « de leurs hews, sur lui, formerent tous leurs tableaux" [formed all their heroes upon his model]. La Fontaine, however, the exquisite, the admirable La Fon- taine, was suffered to live in obscurity, and to die almost in want. He would not, or he could not flatter ; and without the talent of sycophancy, he soon found, as he himself observes, that " Ce n'est pas pres da Roi, q'-'.e l'on fait sa fortune" [It is not near the king that a man can make his fortune.] And Saint Real, whose works have since been so highly esteemed, lived and died in indigent obscurity, under the same reign of ostentatious patronage. La Bruyere, though in the suite of the Due the Bourgogne, was scarcely known to his royal grandsire ; and Moliere had already nearly ran his great career of glory, and was crowned with fame and opulence beyond his desires, before his pieces formed the amusement of the court, before he received a salary of forty pounds a year, (1000 francs) as manager of the ** troupe de Monsieur" [Monsieur's Company]. Unknown to courtly fa- vour, during the greater part of his arduous life, he was denied Christian burial, after his death, in the Augustan age of France ! For, though the King condescended to solicit the archbishop of Paris, the profligate Harlay, to permit the rites of sepulture to the remains of the greatest genius his reign produced, the haughty prelate refused the request of this despotic monarch, of this tyrant of the people, and slave of the church-. In Eng- land, the remains of Moliere would have been inurned amidst the ashes of her kings, and his tomb would have arisen between the monuments of her Shakspeare and her Garrick. Oh ! long may that land preserve her liberty, whose free government alone is favourable to the high career of genius, which could alone have produced a Shakspeare, and organised a people, capable of appreciating his genius, and revering his memory. Moliere was the creator of the French comedy, and, it may be said, the founder of a national theatre. It was, as the stroll- ing leader of a little itinerant band, rambling from province to province, that he composed and acted his «* Etourdi ;" his » Depit Amourenx ;" his inimitable « Precienses Ridicules ;" his « Me- decin Malgre lui," and many other of his best comedies; and his PAltT II. M 8% FRENCH THEATRE. debut in Paris was a complete failure. It was not till after many Struggles, that the force of his genius bore all before it. It was long after he had banished the gross farces of Grros- Guiltaume and Turlupin from the stage, and had founded, with his own company, and his >\vn pieces, a French comedy as it is represented in the present day. by the name of the Troupe de la Comedie Franqaise, that he grew into favour with the people, or attracted the attention of the court. He was already entertain- ing the marshals of France at his villa, near Paris, when the sun of royal favour first turned its rays on him. When he first arrived with his troupe in Paris, in 1635, he played at the sign of La Croix Blanche, in the faubourg St. Germain. He did not receive his patent from the king for his theatre, in the Palais Royal, till the year 1660. Among the expectations which accompanied me to Paris, that of seeing a comedy of Moliere's played at the Theatre Franqais was certainly not the faintest; and the first of his pieces I saw performed was his inimitable *< Tartuffe." It was a great dis- appointment to be disappointed with Moliere, on his own stage, and vyith Tartuffe, cast with all the strength of the company of the Comedie Franqaise; but not a scene, not a situation, not a character answered my expectation. I had already been de- lighted with the pure and excellent comedy of some of their mo- dern pieces, and their exquisite comic actors; I could ha>e at- tended-the representation of the Mariage de Figaro every night it was played, and could have seen Michaud, Brunet, and Potier for ever. And yet the inimitable Tartuffe, inimitably acted, (as I was assured by some first-rate French critics) almost put me to sleep. The grand comedies of Moliere, and particularly his Tartuffe, are nearly as classical in rule and arangement, as the tragedies of Racine. The dialogues are almost as cold, and the mono- logues as long. Nothing can be more just, more philosophic, than the disquisition of Cleante upon the true character of reli- gious hypocrisy. -" Ces francs charlatans, ces de"vots de place, De qui le sacrilege est trompeuse grimace." [These vile quacks, these hireling devotees, with whom sacrilege is hypo- critical grimace]. And this speech is read in the closet, with all the admiration merited by the satires of Donne, Pope, or Juvenal. But this ad- mirable treatise given in rhyme, and in little less than seventy lines, while the person to whom it is addressed, is obliged to listen in cold attention, is at least foreign to our English ideas of genuine comedy; and fails to amuse on the stage, though it FRENCH THEATRE. 83 cannot fail of delighting in the study. Rhyme, too, (to an En- glish ear, at least) seems so inapplicable to the free, unfettered genius of comedy, which, being the reflection of life and man- ners, should partake of their native and incidental irregulari- ties, that the serious rhyming comedies of Moliere always ap- peared to me poetical satires, sententiously recited ; and scarce- ly more dramatic tlian Johnson's London, or Churchill's Ros- ciad.% There was no instance in which the esprit de systeme, omnipo- tent in its influence over the French stage, struck me so forci- bly as in the performance of Moliere's comedies. The style of acting them is evidently traditional and conventional ; and has descended to each successive « troupe," with the periwigs and ruffles of Louis XIYth's day. For it is curious to observe, that while the Elmires and Mariannes are dressed like modern fine ladies, the young ValSre makes love in a toupet, et ailes de pigeon [a toupee, and pigeon- wings], an embroidered coat, and long sword: that Cleante is ready dressed for a levee of Madame de Maintenon, and Orgou ready habited to await the orders of Pere-de-la-Chaise. The business of the stage appears very evi- dently traditional. In the little quarrel between Valere and Ma- rianne, certain evolutions are performed that seem, by their for- mality, to have descended from the original representation at Versailles; and when Dorine at last effects a reconciliation be- tween the pouting lovers, the manner in which they advanced to each other, with measured step and calculated movements, and then suddenly embraced, had all the automaton air of two puppets, moved with much less ingenuity than that, with which I have seen Punch embrace his adversary, the Devil, in one of their celebrated rencontres, when Gilles, with his usual admira- ble sang-froid, leaves them to fight it out, with <« Jlrrangez-vous ensemble. Messieurs" [Arrange yourselves together, gentlemen]. From the scene, where Elmire undertakes to discover the per- fidy of Tarhiffe to her husband, I expected much; even after I had been disappointed through four successive acts. But, af- fecting as it is in perusal, it was in action, flat, cold and inef- fective. Mademoiselle Mars, as Elmire, received the declaration of Tartuffe, and reached the most interesting and piquant point of the denouement, with the most freezing inanimation. Her beautiful eyes, generally so rapid and so shifting in their bril- * The most humorous and amusing of Moliere's comedies are in prose. While 1 was in Paris, a Monsieur Demontbrun versified the " Medecin J\[al- gre lui" [The Physician in spite of himself— adapted to the English sape by Fielding, under the title of The Mock Doctor]: it was only played russes I ever heard n the Italian opera of London ; the French opera being entirely sup- plied, even in its most subordinate parts, from the Conserva- toire de Mnsique, where four hundred pupils receive their musi- cal education, and furnish the choirs of the cathedrals and the FRENCH THEATRE. 93 national oppra, with well-taught and scientific singers: the cho- russes, therefore, at the opera are always Well got up, but some of the principal singers, most particularly the women, belong only io the French school, and could be heard out only by a French audience. It would be in vain to look for, in the French opera, " E'l cantar che nell' anima si sente." The despair of Ariadne, the tenderness of Antigone, all are screamed on the top of the voice, without flexibility, execution, taste or expression; nothing seems necessary to form the prima donna, but those « eclats de vows" [flashes of voices — bursts of voice], which the French fifty years back preferred to every other style of vocal exertion; and to which they are still so in- dulgent, that it often struck me, the more their principal female singers sung out of tune, the more they gave loose to their en- ailleries [screams], the more the audience applauded. Paris, however, has an audience, as it has a public, for every thing. The worst style, the most untunable voices are not only tolerated, but applauded, at the French opera to-night. To-mor- row the most rigid, the severest criticism governs the public judgment, at the Italian opera : the most delicate division of a semi-tone is there appreciated, and the audience appear composed of a colony from Naples or Palermo. Still, however, the French opera, the Academie Royale de Musique, is the national opera of France. The costume, the acting, and the machinery are all superior in splendour and arrangement to the opera of London. The dancing, which seems to constitute the most material part of both exhibitions, as it is executed in Paris, has no parallel in the world. The proscenium is more elegant, brilliant, and attractive in the London Opera House— the audience looks there more distinguished and better dressed — and the beauty of the fe- male pari so superior to that of every other nation, that it makes* perhaps, the most brilliant and attractive part of the represen- tation. I saw nothing, indeed, in Paris, that approached to the gene- ral eclat, splendor, and elegance of the Opera House of London, but the court theatre of the Thuilleries, at which each company from the great theatres performed in turn, during the festivities given on the occasion of the marriage of the Due de Berri. The arrangements of this comparatively small theatre, combine all that is chaste, elegant, li^ht, and splendid, in architecture and decoration. Illuminated with its thousand lights reflected from their crystal branches, it appears some fairy palace of Parian 94< FRENCH THEATRE. marble, and burnished gold, at onre noble and simple, magnifi- cent and tasteful. To this splendid theatre no one was admit- ted, who had not been presented at court, and received a special invitation through the premier gentilhomme da la chambre [first gentleman of the chamber], or through their own ambassador. Every one appeared in full court dress, and the boxes, or ra- ther the gallery, which was round the theatre, is so constructed, that every individual is distinctly seen. The king and the roy- al family occupy a centre box on one side, the ministers and ambassadors occupied a box on the left hand of the King, the French duchesses on the right; for the men do not mingle with the women under the present regime, in the court of the most gallant country in the world. The parterre was exclusively oc- cupied by the male part of the audience. The first night I received my billet for one of these court plays, went particularly early to observe the etiquette of arrange- ment. The halls, the corridors, and anti-rooms were guarded by files of soldiers. The Cent Suisses [Hundred Swiss], in their ancient and most picturesque dress, which has not been changed since the days of Henry IV. were on duty. The noblemen in waiting, the huissiers, the officers of the court, appeared every where officiously attentive and polite. The ladies were con- ducted to their seats without any precedence or order, and were presented with books of the entertainment. But it was very obvious that the Duchesses took their tabourets, in their own ex- clusive box, with a certain little air of triumph, and conscious- ness of superiority very excusable in those, who for twenty years had lamented over this forfeited distinction, the precious object of hereditary ambition. — I observed among them one of my own beautiful countrywomen, who has lately wreathed her fair brows with the ducal coronet of France, " Though last, not least." On the arrival of the royal family, a huissier came to the front of the royal box, and announced " Le Roi." Every one arose to receive him, and to return his always very gracious and smiling salute. The royal family ranged themselves on either side of his majesty :— the Duchesse d'Angouleme and Due de Berri on one side. — The Duchesse de Berri and Monsieur d'Ar- tois and Angouleme on the other, Monsieur Talleyrand, in his official costume, as grand chambellan, took his wonted station be- hind the king's chair. I had frequently seen this celebrated personage, and future historical character, at court, upon other public occasions, in the bustle of processions, at the nuptial pomp of royalty, under FRENCH THEATRE. 95 the holy dome of Notre Dame, at the deepest tragedy, at the liveliest comedy, amidst the solemnity of the royal chapel, and the revelry of the feasting court — .hut I saw him always the same; cold, motionless; not abstracted, but unoccupied; not absent, but unmoved ; — no tint varying the colourless hue of his livid complexion, no expression marking its character on his passive countenance. His figure seemed the shell of a human frame, despoiled of its organic arrangements, or, if the heart beat, or the brain vibrated, no power of penetration could reach the recesses of the one, or guess at the workings of the other. From the mind of this man the world seemed contemptuously shut out — and if this most impassable form and face indicated character or pinion, one would have thought, at the first glance, this is surely the being who has said : " speech was given to man, to conceal his thoughts." It seemed as if the intimacy of love, the confidence of friendship, the community of counsel, could never draw the mind to that countenance, which amidst all the vicis- tudes, versatility, changes, and contrasts in the life of its owner, had never been " A book, in which men read strange things* It was indeed a book, written in a dead language. On the two occasions that I was present at the court play, the company of the comic opera performed, on one night, the drama of La fete du village voisin, and a «* piece de cir Constance," where the King and the royal family were eulogised, till even they could hold out no longer. The King fell asleep in the midst of his own praises ; the ambassadors yawned without instructions; the duchesses winked their pretty eyes, until they could no longer contemplate their own greatness ; and a gentle doze oc- casionally seized the senses of all the French marchionesses, and English peeresses that surrounded me ; while the beaux in the pit no longer ogled the « sleeping beauties," in the boxes. Never did «« Nature's sweet restorer his ready visit pay, where fortune smiled," with a more importunate influence. The per- formance lasted many hours ; and, as it is against the etiquette of the court to applaud when the King is present, the opera, ballet, and piece de circonstance. all passed on in melancholy si- lence : an encore would have looked like treason, and a laugh been leze majeste. On the other night, the company of the Theatre Fran^ais gave the Adelaide de Guesclin, of Voltaire; a strange selection, consi- dering that the Duke of Wellington, the English ambassador, and half the house of lords were present. FRENCH THEATRE. " Je prdvois que bientdt cette guerre fatalc, Ces troubles intestines de la maison royale, Ces tnstes factions cederont au danger, D'abandonner la France au fils de l'e'tranger.'' Je vois que de V Anglais la race est peu ch&rie, Que leur joug est pe'sant ! qv'on rfaime pas leur palrie.' * N'acceptera, pour maitre L'ullie des Anglais, quelque grand qu'il puisse etre." " Je ne venx que l'Anglais en ces lie x, Protccteur insoient, commande sous mes yeu-x. Leg Anglais uvec moi pourraient mal s accorder, Jusqu'au dernier moment, je veux seul commander." [I foresee that soon this fatal war, these furious factions, and the intestine troubles of the royal house, must accelerate the crisis which will give up Fran, e to the son of the stranger. 1 see that the English are but little liked, that their yoke is heavy ; and that their country is not esteemed- Accept not an alliance with England, however great she may be- I see nothing here but English — Insolent protector, commanding before my eyes. The English and I never can accord. To the last moment, I alone will be commander here]. Such were the sentiments of a play, selected for representation for the court, and at which so many of the heroes of Waterloo were present, but whose "joug" [yoke] it is most certain had become rather « pesant" [heavy] to those, for whom, as well as those, against whom, they had fought. ############ The Theatres du Vaudeville, and des Varietes rank after the comic opera, and are most genuinely French. It is to Le Sage, the inimitable author of Gil Bias, that Franre owes the origin of La Comedie en Vaudeville, one of the most delightful of her amusements. Rousseau, in his musical dictionary, defines a Vaudeville to be ** Sorte de chanson a couplets, qui route ordinairement sur des sujets badins ou sahjriques" [a sort of song in couplets, which generally runs on some playful or satirical subject]. He adds that, though the air is little more than a recitative, to give ac- centuation to the words, and not always very musical, they are yet very piquant [smart] and spirited. The Vaudeville is exclusively French. It is said to be as an- cient as the time of Charlemagne, and every body in France seems to have ear enough to learn them, and voice enough to sing them. Of five hundred airs de Vaudeville, which I have brought over with me from France, I never mentioned one to a French person, that was not instantly hummed for me. To these well known and popular airs, new words are almost daily FRF.NCEI THEATRE. QJ composed, both for the petites pieces [after-pieces] of the thea- tres, and as the medium of political opinion, personal satire, or personal eulogium. The French have at ail times vented their spleen and their good humour in a song. Mazarin trembled when there were no Vaudevilles; and Menage observes, that t( Un recited de Vaudevilles est une piece des plus necessaires a tin historien, qui veut ecrire sincerement" [A collection of Vaude- villes is very necessary to a historian who wishes to write with truth.] All the actors and actresses on the smaller theatres of Paris sing tant bien que mat [either well or ill]; for all their pieces are operutiral, or rather a compilation of popular Vaudevilles, and short dialogues; and, going from one theatre to another, as is usual in Paris, I have not only found them singing the air I had just heard at the Vaudeville, repeated at the *« Varietes," but found the audiences of both spectacles delighted with their repetition, and humming them over, as I left the theatres, at the conclusion of the piece. If the Freneh have a national music, it is undoubtedly the Vaudeville, which is perfectly consonant to the genius of their language, and almost as epigrammatic. The pretty little pieces brought out at the Theatre du Vaudeville, are thickly sprinkled with madrigals, and epigrams, extremely ingenious and well turned, and admirably adapted to the popular airs for which they are composed, while the pure taste of Parisian criticism justly reprobates the eternal puns and jeux de mots [play upon words], which constitute the chief wit of their dramas. The Theatre du Vaudeville is rich in parodies, which follow rapidly upon every new piece given at the Opera, or at the Theatre Fran- cais. Their parody upon Hamlet is too ludicrous for descrip- tion, but irresistibly laughable; and the elegant light ballet of La Colombe Retrouvee [The Dove found again], I saw parodied at the Vaudeville, as « La Maison Retrouvee" [The House found again], with a breadth of faree quite beyond the genius of Sad- ler's Wells. Some of the acting here, particularly that of the men, is exquisite ; and the orchestra, like all the orchestras in Paris, is full and excellent. The Theatre des Varietes has obtained its present fashion, from the inimitable acting of Brunct and Poitier, notwithstanding its eternal puns and false conceits, infinitely less delicate and point- ed than those of the Vaudeville. The pieces usually given at the Varietes are what the French call <* pieces de caricature;" — hut which are, generally speaking, (at least those that we saw) not more broad than the usual cast of farces on the English stage. If fidelity to nature be the test of fine acting, whatever line of representation he assumed, Brunet is one of the finest actors I PART II. O gg FRENCH THEATRE. ever saw. It is not effort, it is not acting, it is nature itself, ill all its truth and simplicity. There is nothing like it tin the English stage ; Emery alone approaches Brunet. And if act- ing is not all conventional, all mannerism, this is the true ge- nius of acting. There may be a thousand readings and conceptions of trage- dy, according to the times and tastes of mankind ; but true ge- nuine comedy has always her standard of reference before her, in real life. By that she can be always tried, judged, and esti- mated ; and Garrick doubtlessly displayed more genius, when he succeeded in Scrub, than when he excelled in Richard. Co- medy is founded on the truth of nature, tragedy on her violation and extravagance, and it lias no infallible standard, by which it can he appreciated. — Voltaire observes that the French language, rich in terms burlesques et na'tves. est tres sterile, en termes nobles et harmonieux [burlesque and original, is barren in noble and harmonious expressions], and in their rhyming dictionaries twenty terms may be found suited to comic poetry, for one ap- plicable to a higher subject I should suppose that comedy is the true genius of the French drama, and that the French come- dians are the finest in the world. The Theatres des Boulevards, de la Porte Saint Martin, dc VJlmbigu Comique, de La Gaiete, and some of inferior notoriety, divide among them dramas, melo-dramas, pantomime, dancing, and petites pieces of exevy description. And, though it is a sort of ton for persons of fashion to go in large parties to these most amusing theatres, two or three times in a season, yet the audience, generally speaking, appeared to me to be extremely coarse, and so loud and vivacious in their disapprobation, or applause, and so curious and varied in their costume and appearance, as to form almost as entertaining a part of the spectacle, as the representations on the stage. One of the most fashionable melo-dramas, brought out at the Porte St. Martin, was Sampson, very literally taken from the Bible, except that, out of moral decency, the treacherous mis- tress was represented as a feeble wife, whose affection was over- ruled by the interests of her country, and the influence of her father. Notwithstanding, however, this purification, if any mo- ral could be insisted on from a melo-drama, it would not have been found in Sampson, which indeed formed a sort of dancing satire on this sacred text. The superior merit of physical force, the success of treachery, and the pleasures of vengeance, were all ably sustained and illustrated through this brilliant ballet d 9 ac- tion; but, like other human comments on holy writ, rather took from, than added to its edification. The tragedy of Joseph had been brought out some time before, FRENCH THEATRE. 99 with great success aux Franqais. Voltaire had long recommend- ed tiiis sacred story, as being eminently dramatic, and equally rich in interest as the story of Phedra and Hippolytus, which it re- sembles. The acting of Mademoiselle Mars, in this tragedy, who rarelv plays out of her line ; and the able personification of Joseph, by La Fond, gave it a certain fashion for a certain time. But the French critics having declared that the story was tun familiar for the dignity of tragedy, thai, in their own words, "Madame Putiphar" was "ignoble autant que mechante" [contemptible as well as \\ irked], and Joseph, though *♦ un charmant garqon n'ctoit qiCun esclave" [though a charming youth, was nothing but a slave], the piece, all consecrated as it was, lost much of its eclat. Political interest also brought its share of censure, and the advice which Joseph gives to the Egyptian king, to profit by the famine of his subjects, to take possession of their property, and reduce them to slavery, was thought rather a dangerous hint to the imperial Pharaoh of the day, backed by an authority of such high influence. The Bible, while I was in France, supplied the " Sacrifice d' Abraham" to the Theatre de la Gaiete, and furnished M. Chateaubriand with his *< J\Io't'se" While the theatres thus abound in sacred dramas, they were, during my residence in Paris, the very focus of loyalty ; and, on the occasion of the Due de Berrfs marriage, Racine and Mo- liere, C orneille and Voltaire, were wholly laid aside, for those «« pieces de circonstance" which, all in praise of the royal family, are founded not only on historical facts in the history of the Bourbons, but on the bon mots, mots de cocur, and mots de sentiment [words from the heart, and words of sentiment] daily uttered, or composed for the king, princes, and princesses.. For-this illustrious family, whose intellectual splendors lay so long veiled amidst the shades of Hartwell, now blaze forth in all the brilliant scintillations of propos and impromptus; and, like FalstnAT, they appear not only eminently witty them- selves, but are the cause of wit in others. Those dramatists and poets, who, under the imperial regime, in praising the Emperor, were "not touched 9 but wrapt; 99 are now, under the influence of royalty, in praising the king, " Not awakened — but inspired" The King, however, who is a person of literary taste, and in the words of his eulogists, " passionne pour les lettres" [passion- ately fond of letters], must occasionally not only revolt from the matter, but the manner of his panegyrics, which do infiniteljr more credit to the loyalty of his eulogists, than to their talents. And, though it may make a part of his divine right, to hear the 100 TRENCH THEATRE. inordinate, base flattery levied on his judgment with patient re- signation ; yet his legitimacy cannot always he proof against so. h a tiresome farrago of fulsome homage. For, as tbe Cheva- lier de Bouflers s.-.ys, with more levity than becomes the subject, « II n'y a que Dien, qui ait un assez grand fond de gaiete, pour ne pas s'e?inuyer de tons les hommages q\Con lui rend 9 * [There is only God who has a sufficient fund of gaiety, not to be wearied with all the homage that is paid to him]. 0f these pieces de circonstance 9 I saw about twenty performed, all on the subject of royal virtue and royal wit, under different titles and fictions: — besides the thousand and one Henrys the Fourth, even incident of whose life was dramatised. There was ** Charles de France ;" — the " Chemin de Fontainebleau," « line journee d Versailles," " Tine Soiree aux Thuilleries ;" « Les Filles a marier ;" " La Pensee d'un bon Roi ;"— « Le Bon- heur d"un bon Roi ;" " Le Roi et la Ligue" «* Vimpromptu de Provence" [The road to Fontainbleau — A day at Versailles — An evening at the Thuilleries — The daughters to be married—* The thought of a good king — The happiness of a good king — > The King and the League — The extempore of Provence], and a hundred others of the *< self-same cast and mould." A little piece at the Vaudeville particularly amused me, by its loyal ingenuity. The characters were composed of flowers; the presiding deity was Flora, I expected, from the opening of the piece, that the author had dramatised the "Loves of the Plants" and when 1 saw the heroines of the Vaudeville appear upon the scene, as the modest snow-drop, pale primrose* bashful violet, play- ful tulip, and young carnation, with its blushing cheek, — 1 natu- rally expected that Zephyr, with his attendant aides-de-camp of fluttering gales, who « crowd the gaudy grove" would " Woo, and win their vegetable loves," and — "Love out their hour, and live in air," as I had seen them do a few nights before at the Opera. This piece de circonstance, however, represented not the loves, but the loyalty of the plants. It is needless to say, that the lily was par- ticularly distinguished by Flora, who crowns her as queen of the garden, and who relates to her odorous subjects, that having made a tour through the world, in search of virtue, — vegetable, animal, or moral, for she was not particular, she was returning to her native bowers, when accidentally passing by the gardens of the Thuilleries, she was attracted, not, as might be expected, by one of its beautiful parterres, but by the King in one of the win- FRENCH THEATRE. 1Q1 dows, and she winds up her speech iu a solemn declamatory tone, with " Je cherchai la vertu — et je trouvai Louis." [I sought virtue — and I found Louis !] The flowers are all delighted at this rencontre, particularly the Uly, as making a part of the royal establishment; but their ex- pressions of joy are interrupted, by Flora observing, on a re- mote part of the stage, one of her fragrant train covered with a dark veil of " Purple and cobaltic blue-" She inquires who is that sulky flower that stands in a « morne silence" [sullen silence], pouting in the corner, and, after some delirate hesitation, the sister blossoms reply, that it is the guilty, proscribed, usurping violet, who alone, of all the flowers, had re- fused obedience to the *« crowned lily," in the absence of the god- dess. — The violet is instantly called into court, reprobated, and condemned ; but, as clemency is the order of the day, the violet is to be "amnestifie," and by this term I thought we should have seen her pretty head cut off. But her dark veil was only remov- ed, and she was permitted to take her place in the parterre of loyalty, which surrounded the goddess, and who all sung a finale, in praise of Flora, and Louis XVIII. Notwithstanding, however, that the loyalty of the audience seemed equal to any claims made on it, upon this occasion, the scene of the guilty violet, her condemnation, and reprieve, was a little too strong for the critical acumen of the parterre; and as in a piece expressly written in praise of the royal marriage, it would have been impossible to have cried « a la parte," or com- manded the dropping of the curtain, — a man in the pit evinced at once his loyalty, taste, and ingenuity, by jumping up and cry- ing out, "Mes amis, crions: vive le Roi!" [My friends call out: long live the king], and amidst shouts of laughter, clapping, and Vive le Roi! the piece was dismissed from the stage. The flow- ers drooped their fair heads, as if a sharp north-east wind had suddenly blasted their beauties, and the curtain dropped, but dropped only to rise again, for the representation of " La Pensee tfun bon Roi." [The thought of a good king-]. This Pensee d 9 un bon Roi, was, that the money usually laid out on fire-works, on the occasion of royal marriages, should now be expended in portioning a certain number of young girls in mar- 103 FRENCH THEATRE. riage ; and every verse in the finale, which consists of fifty, ends with — " Cest ainsi que pense le Roi" [Thus thinks the king]. A few nights before, the * finale of one of these occasional pieces had ended with the « mot sublime' 9 [sublime words] of the Due D'Angouleme, " Mon amiy fai la vue basse.'" [My friend, I am near-sighted]. and as bis royal highness was present, with glass to his eye, he seemed a personal comment on the text, and added considerably to its effect. Such is the miserable, tasteless, injudicious, and fulsome stuff, administered, as exciting draughts of loyalty, to the people of Paris, and which, purchased at stated prices from the hireling poetasters and scribblers of the day, disgrace their theatres, shame the public taste, and render those who praise, those who are praised, and those who applaud such praises, equally ludicrous in the eyes of all foreigners. FRANCE. BOOK VIII. Eminent and Literary Characters. ■ On veut essayer de peindre a la posterity non les actions d'un seul homrae, mais l'es- prit des hommes dans le siecle le plus eclaire qui fut jamais." Steele de Louis XIV. Academies of France. — The Institut Imperial. — First sitting of the Jnstitut Royal. — Notices of Eminent and Literary Characters. — VAbbe Morellet. — Due de Brancas. — Suard. — Lally Toll-ended. > — La Fayette.— -Ginguene.' — >Gregoire. — Le Mercier.—Volney. — Segur. — Denon. — Due de Levis. — Chdteaubriant. — Pastoret. — A. Pastoret. — Pigault Le Brun — Picard. — Mesdames de Stael, — de Genlis, — de Sou&a,—~de Villette. — Conclusion. « qU 9 EST-CE que VAcademie Franqaise ?—a quoi sert-elle ?" [What is the French Academy. — of what use is it ?] This was a question often propounded, but never satisfactorily answered, even under the ancient regime. — The object of this body was, however, clearly analogous to that of the « Academie des belles lettres, 99 as defined by Mabillon, who laid it down that « L 9 occu- pation de I 9 Academie des belles lettres doit etre la gloire du Roi 99 [The occupation of the Academy of Belles Lettres ought to be the glory of the King.] It was in the same spirit, that the Academie Franqaise gave as a prize subject to its members, « Laquelle des vertus du Roi est la plus digne de I 9 admiration? 99 [Which of the King's virtues is most worthy of admiration?] When this programme was pre- 104 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. sented to Louis XIII. he changed colour. The flattery of nearly fifty years had not prepared him for the disgusting homage of this servile body. The French Academy originated with the Cardinal de Riche- lieu, who made it an instrument of that system of despotism, the extension of which he pursued through every direct and indirect engine of influence or corruption. — A few men, of distinguished talents and independent principles, assembled at each others' houses, in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. for the purpose of a free discussion of subjects of taste, literature, and philosophy. — There was a taint of liberty in this little knot of Literati, thus congregating without patent or ordinance from the government, that alarmed the cardinal-minister; and those, whom lie could not punish, he resolved to degrade, by forcing on them his protection, and converting their voluntary communion into a corporate and authorised body. From the ruin of this small, but free society, arose the stupendous and pretending edifice of the Jlcademie Franqaise. Confined, restricted, and debased by its institution, v became a mere theatre of exhibition, a Grotto del Cane to aspiring genius, stifling its breathings, corrupting the source of its existence, enfeebling the main-springs of its energy, and compensating its degradation, by one of those fulsome eloges, which came too late to repay the sacrifices made to obtain it.* Tlie first object of the French academy seems to have been, to oppose and crush the aspiration of superior and original genius; and when royal authority did not interfere to favour the election of those, who with talents of higher direction, devoted their powers to flattery and adulation, the first men in France both for ability and celebrity were passed over and neglected. Racine had written most of his finest tragedies, and Boilcau his best satires, when they were proposed, and rejected by the Academy. It was the « je le vcux" [it is my will] of the king, that, like a lettre de cachet, obtained the admission of these two geniuses into this state prison of intellect and ability ; whose members bowed to the regal fiat, and accorded to power, what they had refused to merit Moliere never was admitted to the honour of thvfauteuil [arm- chair]. Dufresny and Le Sage never sought the distinction. La * In this school of flattery and servility, all were panegyrised with indiscri- minate admiration. Every man was eulogised in his presence by another, whom he had himself just eulogised according to statute; and while thus " One was be-Roscius'd, the other be-praised," the public, who were always called in to assist at these ludicrous solemnities <->f bad taste and vanity, laughed at both. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. 105 Fontaine was nearly seventy, when It is name was reluctantly admitted among the " quarante" [forty], who were said to have had « V esprit comme quatre" [wit enough for four]. Corneille first learned the existence of this body, by their outcry against his tragedies! and he then wittily exclaimed : « JHmite I'un des mes trois Horaces ; fen appelle an peuple" [I will imitate one of my three tloratii ; I will appeal to the people]. The appeal was admitted ; and the French people, at all times, have crowned him their poet.-^-The gates of the Academy were closed against Montesquieu, by roijal authority : and he forfeited his indepen- dence, and he denied his own words, to obtain an indispensible, but degrading dignity, which he had so ably ridiculed in his « Persian letters, 9 ' Voltaire satirised the Academy through the whole of a corres- pondence of fifty years ; and when after almost as many years* unavailing struggle, he was at last received, he found this lumi- nous body wholly incapableof managing the interestsofhis * ^ ne p Sor( ]jd profit, to the purposes of knowledge and illumination, t*. , io Choiseul is also eminently respectable by his adherence to the family of the Bourbons, from principle and sentiment : when in- ter est and ambition might have pointed out to him a more cer- tain path to wealth and honours. The discours on Homer, a subject by no means pregnant with novelty, was followed by « Reflexions sur la Marche actuelle des Sciences, et sur leurs Rapports avecla Societe" [Reflections on the actual progress of the sciences, and their relations with society], pr mounced with an unusual degree of vivacity b\ Cuvier. This luminous and able discourse was irradiated with brilliant points, and delivered with great animation. The ladies, by far the most audible part of the assembly, in their manifestations of ap- probation, applauded almost every word — ** C'est charmant! — " Cest beau- 9 [It is charming, — It is fine], — with repeated «« bra- tos," followed every sentence; and when M. Cuvier observed of steam, in iris ardent eulogium on its qualities, that it had one superiority over the human mind itself; — namely, that it was not « susceptible ni de fatigue ni de distraction" [not susceptible either of fatigue or of absence], a hundred pretty lips were heard to echo « Ah! que c'est juste, et Jin et ingenicux !" [Ah ! how just, how fine, how ingenious] and one lady, observing that I admired the energy of enunciation of this great naturalist, re- marked to me, " Madame, voild comme on park dans votre chain- bre des communes? N'est ce pas /" [Madame, it is in that man- ner they speak in your douse of Commons ! Is it not ?] A short time after this my first view of M. Cuvier, I had the pleasure of joining his Saturday-evening circle, at his own house in the Jardin des Plantes [Garden of Plants], — and I confess, I admired the amiable man in the bosom of a charming happy fa- mily, all smiling round him, as much as 1 had done the cele- brated philosopher, in the public sittings of the Institute. M. Cuvier gave place to M. Quatremere de Quiney, perpetu- al secretary of the class des beaux arts [fine arts], who pronoun- ced a discourse on the monuments of art, « dus d la Restaura- tion! 1 !" [fruits of the Restoration] and the sitting was termi- nated by a poetical epistle from the late M. Ducis, the transla- tor of Shakspeare, to the Chevalier de Boufflers, and read by Mons. Campenon, member of the classe des belles lettres. Something wearied by the discordant and declamatory tones I had so long listened to, and not particularly edified or enter- tained by the subjects or compositions of the various discourses, I felt both my ear and spirits relieved by the breaking up of the Institute, which upon the whole gave me an impression little favourable to incorporated bodies of learning, or confraternities PART II. q 114/ of taste. EMINENT AND LITfiftARY CHARACTERS. Such skiffles, more adapted, perhaps, to the subtlety id v»~ ; V ot naediocrit) and pretension, may present an object and give a direction to inferior ability. But Homer and Ossian, and Milton and Shakspeare, were of no Academy ; and Aris- totle, who gave rules to others, received the principles of his own from nature only. Learned academies and literary re- views belong, perhaps, to the decline of national literature. — They are at least never found existing in its infancy, rarely in its prime* Engines to prejudice public taste, or to bias its judgment, they may give currency to second rate talent, or afford temporary opposition to superior genius; — but their fiats be- longing to their own day, and governed by its passions may amuse, but will scarcely influence posterity. The •« one Milton" will still reach the immortality which nature meant to be his birth-right ; when the name of his critical reviewer, now rescued from obscurity by the ridicule attached to it, shall be forgotten, even with that < laim to preservation. While the Institute thus presented a sort of bird 9 £-eye view of the talent of France, it did not concentrate all that was estima- ble in its genius and its worth ; and I counted it among the proudest privileges enjoyed during my residence in that country, that I was occasionally permitted to behold those, on whom the world's eye had been so long fixed, but who had now withdrawn in weariness or indignation, in sorrow or infirmity from its gaze. Too often, however, this valuable privilege was over- shadowed by sadness ; too often the hope it held forth was frus- trated, by the prerariousness of malady, or the suddenness of dissolution. Chenier, De Lille, Le Brun, Bouffiers, Ducis, St. Pierre, had but recently paid the debt of nature, when I arrived in France; and she too, whose name is never there pronounced but with eyes that glisten, and tones that melt, the sublime, the tender Madame Cottin, with her true woman's genius, was likewise no more; and where 1 sought for traces of her life, I found but the history of her virtues.f Of that brilliant constellation of genius and philosophy, which shed a lustre upon the reign of Louis XV., a few even still lin- ger on the horizon of literature. The Abbe Morillet, the doyen * These observations do not extend to scientific academies, but are hazard- ed, as applying exclusively to arts, governed in their own nature by taste and opinion- ■J- Madame Cottin was one of the most popular writers in France. She united all suffrages in her favour; and the modest simplicity and blameless excel- lence of her life have contributed grea ly o her popularity Without beauty, almost without those graces which supply its place, Madame de Cottin in- spired two ardem and fatal passions, which ceased only with the lives of her lovers. Her young kinsman, Monsieur D***, shot himself in her garden ; his unsuccessful and sex penary rival, Monsieur **** poisoned himself, ashamed, it is said, of a passion equally hopeless and unbecoming his years. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. aft de la literature [the senior of literature], still lives, (at least I hope lie li\es) maintaining to the last something of that ethereal glow, which Marmontel describes as brightening every sphere in which he shone. 1 was honoured In an invitation and most kind message, through his excellent and amiable niece, a true •Antigone, saving, that the moment he was able to sit up in his bed, he would be glad to rer eive me : for it is long since even that privilege had been granted him, by age and infirmity. — To find the Abbe Morillet still living, was to me a subject of. plea- surable astonishment. The friend of Voltaire, of Rousseau, Diderot, and Marmontel, whose name is to be found in every page of the history of the last sixty years of the French lite- rature I Marmontel* compares the humour of the Abbe Morillet to that of Srtiff, who, he observes, alone surpassed him in les tours de plaisanterie Jinement ironiques [turns of wit finely ironical]. •• II se monlrait" says Marmontel, *< a nos diners avec nne dine on- verte et ferme, et dans le cceur autant de justice que dans I 9 esprit" [He showed himself at our dinners with a soul open and firm, and a heart as correct as his mind]. To this charming charac- ter he adds, that his conversation was une source d'iaees saines, pures, profondes quu sans jamais tarir, ne dsbordoit jamais*'' [a spring of ideas salutary, pure and deep, which was never ex- hausted and never overflowed]. — Toe Abbe Morillet was the intimate friend of Diderot ; and when the 1 arte/ was attacked by Palissot, in his comedy of « Les Philosophcs" — Morillet be- came the champion of the god of hi*! idolatry, in a little work called <• the Vision" It was in this work, that some lines, of- fensive to Madame de Robeck, the protectress of Palissot, caused a lettre de cachet to be issued against the Abbe, who for an idle pleasantry Was thrown into the Bastille; and his imprisonment would have terminated in banishment, but for the timely inter- cession of Madame La Duchesse de Luxembourg, who, at the instigation of Rousseau, went in person to Versailles to solicit the minister St. Florenttn ; and finally obtained the release of the captive, whose imprisonment and emancipation were equal- ly the result of undue influence, strongly characteristic of the times. The Abbe Morillet, the dear friend of Diderot, who had nearly lost his reason in the donjon of Vincennes; — of Marmontel, who had been thrown into the Bastille for reciting a humourous sa- tire ; — of Rousseau, banished for the novelty of his paradoxes; — of Voltaire, to whom, the night before his death, the court sent * Marmontel was married to a niece of the Abbe" Morillet, whose charms and virtues he has celebrated in his own delightful Mtmrires HQ EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. a lettre de cachet, and the parliament a writ of prise de corps, himself. the victim of the abuse of power, delegated to so many corrupt hands ; — the Abbe Morillet was naturally led to favour a revolution, which promised the annihilation of evils so fatal to the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind. He was among its early and strenuous advocates; and had previously distin- guished himself among the economists of the ministry of Tor- got. His <* Manuel des Inquisiteurs" — «• Mcmoires contre la Compagnie des hides;" — bis •* Traite des D Slices et des Peines" [Manual of Inquisitors — Memoirs against the India Company— his Treatise on Pleasure and Pains], and his writings on public economy, and general theories of commerce, &c. &c. obtained his reception into the Academie Franqaise, in the place of PAbbe MiM.* A short time before I arrived in Paris, at the advanced age of ninety, Up had fractured a limb, which had increased his general infirmities, and confined him perpetually to his bed. But he talked of recovery, — receiving visits, — at times exhibited his faculties in full force, — and still emitted some of those sparks of Rabelaisian humour, attributed to him by cotemporary wits. But he never rose from his pillow during my residence at Pa- ris, and when I left it, he was, I understood, at the last extre- mity. The once gay, gallant, eccentric Due de Brancas assured me, through the medium of his friend and physician, the excellent and ingenious Doctor Montcgre, that if 1 would venture to see a cross old man, as soon as his health would permit, he would be happy to receive me. In a ♦< cross old man" verging on eighty, it is difficult to rc- cal the brilliant, witty, eccentric Comte de Lauraguais; the lover of Sophie Arnoult,f the author of a Memoire, interesting by the pleasantry, humour, and wit, of its compositions, if not by its subject ; and once among the leaders of those in France who, to the fear and horror of the court of Versailles, first be- came infected with the disease then called the Anglomanie. The Due de Brancas was among the earliest and most passionate ad- mirers of the government of England, where he resided in 1773, and brought back to France those principles, in favour of a free constitution, which, for twenty years before the Revolution, * The Abbe" Morillet was among the veterans of literature, whom Buona- parte liberally pensioned. A short time before 1 left Paris, it was understood lhat the kin}? also had granted him an annuity. f The Due de Brancas demanded of his physicians, whether ennui could kill? being answered " lhat it -was possible" he nnmediately flew to Sophie Arnoult, .mil urged her to commence . suit against the Prince D'Henin, who was at that time wearying her with his addresses. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. ±ij were universally received and discussed among the thinking part of a nation, to whom they were only known as Utopian theo- ries. When the Due de Brancas (then Comte de Lauragais,) first appeared at court, after his return from England, Louis XVI. asked in an ironical tone, « what he had learned there ?" A penser. Sire" [To think, Sire!] replied the Duke bowing; ■— " a panser les chevaux" [to look after horses!] replied the King disdainfully, and turned on Ins heel. I believe Maupertuis has observed that, " le corps hnmain est un fruit qui est vcrtjusque d la vicillesse; le moment de la mort est la maturite" [the human body is a fruit which is green till old age ; the moment of death is its maturity]. This curious hy- pothesis seems strictly applicable to the French temperament. Time rather mellows than withers its powers, and the last hours of life are neither the most feeble, nor the least precious of prolonged existence. With a constitution greatly impaired, and almost a confirmed valetudinarian, the Duke de Brancas still retains great brilliancy and force of mind ; and, after hav- ing run the rounds of pleasure, politics and literature, he is involved, in the decline of life, in studies adapted to the vigour, it may be almost said, the illusions of its dawn. Engaged in metaphysical pursuits, and studies of the most profound abstraction, the once gay, gallant de Lauragais, the votary of the graces, is found surrounded by volumes of philoso- phy and metaphysics, still giving his decided preference to every thing that is English ; the works of our best metaphysicians are his constant study and delight; and Lot ke, Priestly, and Stuart are now usurping the place of the «* Gentil Bernard," « Des Muses Qallantes" and the Memoires, and light literature, which once formed the library of a frenchman of rank and fashion. «M? Al* At* Atr 46* 4-'-* At* At* Air »4Er w Parmi mes connoissances" says Marmontel, « il y avoit a Paris unjeune homme, appelle Suard, d'un esprit Jin, delie, juste 9 et sage ; d'un caractere aimable* d'un commerce doux et liant ; as- sea imbu de belles lettres 9 parlant Men, ecrivant d'un style pur, aise 9 naturel, et du meilleure gout; discret surtout 9 et reserve, avec des sentimens honnetes*' [Among my acquaintances, says Marmontel, there was at Paris a young man named Suard, whose mind was delicate, acute, correct and sensible; his disposition was amiable, his manners mild and affable ; he was well versed in the belles lettres, he talked well, he wrote with taste, and in a style pure, easy, and natural ; above all, he was discreet, prudent, and had the best principles]. When the original of this amiable picture, at the distance of nearly sixty years from the moment in which it was drawn, was announced to me in my own apartments in 1 18 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. Paris, the name of Suard was not heard without emotions of pleasure and interest. The youth excepted, the resemblance to the picture was still perfect. The < haracter, the manners of Monsieur Suard, possess, at this moment, all the mildness, sua- vity, and amiability, attributed to them by his friend Marmontel: but he is no longer a young* debutant in the world of literature, « asse% imbu tie belles lettres" [well versed in the belles leu res]; he has for more than twenty years filled the place of secretaire perpetuel to the French Academy, and succeeding immediately to his friend Marmontel, in that high office, occupies the first ma- gisterial chair of the literarv empire, once solicited with such warmth and anxiety by contending wils. Monsieur Suard was received into the French academy in 1774, with his friend the Abbe de Lille : and, as he himself re- lated to me, in spite of the intrigues of the celebrated Marerhal Due de Richelieu, who presented these two elegant writers, and excellent men, to Louis XV. as «* Encyclopedistes /" a term which, at that time, was the m >st fearful and offensive to royal ears. In his discours de reception, M. Suard made many strong allusions to the resistance offered to the progress of philosophy, and illu- mination ; and ingeniously observed, ** que l* esprit est comme unc plante, donton ne saurait arreter la vegetation, sans la f aire perir" [The mind is like a plant, if its growth is stopped, it perishes]. When the Due de Richelieu learned the election of the two « En- cyclopedistes," he forswore Hie Academy ; exclaiming with great violence : « C'est un despotisme intolerable, cliacun yfait ce qiCit veut" [It is an intolerable despotism, every one does what he pleases]. It was in this « discours de reception," that M. Suard made an enthusiastic eloge on Voltaire, which was the foundation of their friendship, and the origin of their intimacy ; *• and never," (ob- served M. Suard, speaking on the subject of his illustrious friend) « never was his name mentioned in the stf;rg of the Academy, that it was not followed with shouts of applause."-— The friend of Turgot, of Condorret, and of Voltaire, and stig- matised himself as an Encyclopedists, M. Suard could scare v\y fail to be among the advocates of the first revolution, for it uas a cause that then embraced all the genius and worth of tin- na- tion, with much of its rank and much of its opulence. When the reign of terror arose out of the frightful fermentation of his extraordinary and unparalleled event, M. Suard was among the many whose principles of moderation marked them nut as victims of persecution, to the infuriate and the anti-revolutionary faction ; and he was among the number of the deportes [tr ported] to Cayenne. After his return to France, and the eleva- tion of Buonaparte to the imperial throne, Suard was made EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. ag member of the Legion of Honor, and preserved his distinguish- ed place in the academy, though Napoleon, v\ ith his wonted naivete and impatience was heard to say, «« Monsieur Suard, est- il toujours Secretaire perpetuel de VAcademie" [Is Monsieur Suard always perpetual secretary of the Academy?] M. Suard is considered as well affected to the reigning go- vernment; for though ** rebellion lay in his way," as Falstaff says, yet eighty is not an age, in which a man would be likely « 'to find it." The King, in 1814, created M. Suard officer of the Legion of Honor, and Censeur Royal honor aire! I was indebted to the lovely, the pleasant Countess G. de la Ruchefautault, for toy acquaint- ance with Monsieur and Madame Suard, to whose soirees I had a Tery kind and frequent invitation. Madame de Suard, the friend of Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse, and of many other distinguished women of that day, was once celebrated for her beauty, and is still distinguished by her literary acquirements. The guest of Voltaire, at Ferney, and on the list of his female favourites, when it was observed to him that if all his works were lost, they would be found in the head of Madame Suard, he replied : ^Ilsdoivent done ctre Men corriges" [They ought then to be well corrected], Madame Suard always spoke to me of Voltaire, with a vene- ration the most profound and filial. To judge of the amiability of his character, she said it was necessary to live under the same roof with him. She asked him one day, why he kept the melan- choly picture of the Calas' family, which hung at the foot of his bed, always before his eyes ; he replied that he bad become identified with them and their misfortunes ; and that, until he had redeemed all that was then redeemable of their wrongs, he should never laugh, without feeling self reproach. When he gave up his time, his talents, his peace, in the cause of this unfortu- nate family, (added Mademoiselle Suard,) his efforts caused a general emotion in society, « e'etoit un soulevement du coeur uni- versel" [it was an universal rising of the heart], Madame Suard is author of ** Madame de Maintenon 9 piente p&r elle-meme" [painted by herself,] and some other literary productions, to which her modesty has declined lending her name. I was one evening at the Princess de Henin's, once so cele- brated for her beauty, and always so distinguished for the ex- cellence of a disposition, to which her fine countenance is << a fair index" and conversing witii the venerable Princesse de Poix, to whom 1 had been just introduced, when a gentleman was presented to me by the almost startling name of the Comte Lally Tollendal. Ireland should be proud to know that a cha- racter, so marked by worth and talent, and particularly distin- guished by those virtues which, belonging to nature, honour ±20 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. every country in which they appear, that Lally Tollendal claims her as his native land. « At least," said Monsieur Tol-. lendal, ** it is so by sentiment, as it was by birth-right to my ancestors." He added, that his family belonged to the county of Galw y ; and he made me repeat the word Connanght to him, tiii he mastered the pronunciation. It is well known that the last line traced by that hand, which had traced so many for immortality, — the last line ever written by Voltaire, was ad- dressed to Lally Tollendal, the virtuous and successful champion of the honour of a legally murdered father, who placed on the criminal seat, bared his breast, and asked whether that was the recompense bestowed on fifty years' service ?* The fare of this wronged father determined the cast of the cha- racter of the son ; and the influence of a first and powerful im- pression betrayed itself through the course of his life and actions, —former! his eloquence, and decided his principles. — He found* or fancied he found, in the history and life of Stafford, an allego- rical model of injured and condemned virtue, which associated with all the feelings of his heart and genius, and made the death of this tyrannical minister, but ill-requited friend, the subject of a tragedy. When this production was read to Gibbon, at Lau- sanne, he observed, ** I know now, how Tacitus would have com- posed a tragedy." In 1795, the Comte Lally Tollendal published in London an « Essai historique sur la Vie de Thomas Wentwortlu Comte de Staf- ford" [Historical Essay on the Life of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stafford]. This work, reprinted in 1814, as applicable to the times, is supposed to exhibit a confession of his political princi- ples, and a defence against a charge of political apostacy ; to which something like tergiversation in his conduct, had sub- jected him. He had already m?de it in his tragedy, on the same subject : — " Ah ! pour ces droits du peuple et pour la liberte, Nul n'a fait plus que moi, tonner la veYite- Par des f re ins plus puissans, nul n'a voulu restreindre Ce pouvoir, qu'il nous faut et respecter, et craindre ; Mais quand j'ai vu de loin, dans tons ces zelateurs, Bien moms des citoyens, que des conspiratenrs, L'un mettant a prixd'or ses passions fact ices, Ne parlant de vertu, que pour teindre tes vices, I /autre avide d'honneurs, indigned'y monter, Voulant punir la main, qui dut s'en ^carter-" Et ce peuple 6guv6, qui d'abime en abtme, On conduit an malheur, par les sentiers du crime, I let :ette in the tri- bune ! !" while a spoon, with which he was trifling, fell from his hand ; and his altered countenance proclaimed his convu tion, that ** all was over." Tiie conduct of La Fayette during this most eventful period, when lie invoked the representatives of the people ** to rnlly round the national standard of 1789 ;" when he asserted that * ( it belonged to them to defend the honour and independence of France against the pretensions of the enemy ;" is fresh in every recollection. But it may not be uninteresting to those, who have admired him only in public life, to follow this brave warrior and real patriot, from the scene of unequal contention, to that re- treat of peace where the milder excellencies of the man are call- ed into full existence, and even now appear fresh and unadul- terated by time and suffering, in all the unpretending simplicity of genuine intrinsic virtue. General La Fayette has not appeared in Paris, since the re- turn of the Bourbon dynasty to France. — And I should have left that country, without having seen one of its greatest ornaments, had not a flattering invitation from the Chateau La Grange ena- bled me to gratify a wish, long and devoutly cherished, of knowing, or at least of beholding, its illustrious masters.— In- troduced by proxy to the family of La Fayette, by the young and amiable Princess Charles de B * * # , we undertook our journey to La Grange with the same pleasure, as the pilgrim begins his first unwearied steps to the shrine of sainted excel- lent e. The Chateau of La Grange-BIessneau lies in the fertile dis- trict of La Brie; so remote from any high road, so lonely, so wood embosomed, that a spot more sequestered, more apparent- ly distant from the bustling world, and all its scenes of conflict and activity, can scarcely be imagined.— Having left the public road about thirty miles from Paris, and struck into an almost impassable chemin-de-tr avers [cross-road], we trusted to the hints and guidance of shepherds, wood-cutters and gardes-chain- petres for a clue to the labyrinth we were pursuing. They all knew the chateau la Grange; and by their directions, we pro- ceeded from one « deep-entangled glen" to another ; jolting over stony brooks, floundering through rapid mill-streams ; sometimes buried in forests of fruit-trees, and sometimes driving through farm-yards, to the dismay of the poultry, and the amuse- ment of their owners ; while our coachman and a French ser- vant, who accompanied us, had always some question to ask, or some courtesy to offer and receive. In crossing a chemin-pave [paved road], as it was called, we l%g EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. were pointed out the remains of a Roman road ; and the spot was marked where a battle was fought, in March, 1814, between Buonaparte and the Austrians, called the Battle of Mormans, in which the French arms wore victorious. This skirmish prefaced the great engagement of Montreau. In the midst of this fertile and luxuriant wilderness, rising above prolific orchards and antiquated woods, appeared the five towers of La Grange-Blessneau, tinged with the golden ra>s of the setting sun. Through the boles of the trees, appeared the pretty village of Aubepierre, once, perhaps, the dependency of the castle, and clustering near the protection of its walls. A re- moter view of the village of D'Hieres, with its gleaming river and romantic valley, was caught and lost, alternately, in the serpentine mazes of the rugged road; which, accommodated to the groupings of the trees, wound amidst branches laden with ripening fruit, till its rudeness sullenly subsided in the velvet lawn that immediately surrounded the castle. The deep moat, the draw-bridge, the ivied tower, and arched portals, opening into the square court, had a feudal and picturesque character; and, combined with the reserved tints and fine repose of •even- ing, associated with that exaltation of feeling which belonged to the moment preceding a first interview with those, on whom the mind has long dwelt with admiration or interest. We found General La Fayette surrounded by his patriarchal family ; — his excellent s >n and daughter-in-law, his two daugh- ters (the sharers of lis dungeon in Olmutz) and their husbands; eleven grand-children, and a venerable grand-uncle, the ex- grand prior of Malta, with hair as white as snow, and his cross and his order worn, as proudly as when he had issued forth at the head of his pious troops, against the "paynimfoe" or Christian enemy. Such was the group that received us in the salon kf La Grange , such was the close-knit circle that made our breakfast and our dinner party; accompanied us in our de- lightful rambles through the grounds and woods of La Grange, and constantly presented the most perfect unity of family inter- esis, habits, taste, and affections. We naturally expect to find strong traces of time in the form of those, with whose name and deeds we have been long acquaint- ed ; inter essent. Enjin tons mes momens sont remplis, et rien ne manquerait a mon bonheur, sans ce voisinage affrenx, qui vient quelqntfois porter le trouble etla desolation dans moncozur" [1 live like Laertes, cultivating my fields, and regretting nothing that I have left behind me. This retirement satisfies both my heart and my vanity ; I compare myself to those famous exiles of Athens and of Rome, w horn their virtue had rendered formidable to their fellow-citizens. — I see myself in the midst of a numerous * At the chateau D'Orsonville, the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness de Colbert Chabanais, I observed great attention was paid to procuring innocent recreation for their tenancy and peasantry. In the lawn before the castle windows there was a "jeu de bagxie" (a sort of merry go-round) a swing, a spot cleared for them to dance on, and many little sources of amusement, in- vented and multiplied, to preserve them from the temptation of the village. On Sundays, they crowded on the lawn with a confidence in their welcome, tha was quite delightful'. In the good old times, when the " manie de der- gerie" [p storal mania] peopled the grounds of the chateau, for a few weeks in the summer, with shepherds a iovpet fuse [with frizzed toupees], and shepherdesses in court-hoops, (the originals of the figures which ornament chimney-pieces in Sevres china, and biscuit,) it was the fashion to talk in rap- tures of the couniry, but to stipulate, at the same time, in the marriage arti- cles, that it should only be visited for a certain period in the year. Then, as now , the peasants were occasionally invited to rural festivities on the box-lined lawns of the chateau, but a dance, d la ronde, was liable to be interrupted by its members being sent to the gullies, for some recent violation of the droits de chasse [game I *ws], and the gay candidates for the "jeu de bagve" to be dis- patched, 6 ^impromptu, to fulfil the duties of the corvee, in some distant dis- trict. There were then no rights, no securities for the people, and there could be no confidence, and but little enjoyment. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. 43^ family whom I love. I rend, I write. ! meditate. 1 tike pleasure even in the sports of my grand-child ppn : their most simple oc- cupations interest me. — In short, even moment of my time is filial up, and nothing would be wanting to my happiness, v. ere it not for this dreadful neighbourhood, which so etimes brings trouble and desolation to my heart]. This letter of de I'Eiopi- tal. might form the journal of La Fayette, in all its details and spirit. In accompanying this, « last of the Romans" through his ex- tensive farms, visiting his sheep-folds, bis row-stalls, his dairies, (of all of which he was justly proud, and occasionally asking me, whether it was not something in the English style,) I was sir nek with his gracious manner to the peasantry, and to the workmen engaged in the various rustic offices of his domains. He almost always addressed them with « mon ami" — monbonami." — "mini cher garqon ;" while " ma bonne mere" and ••' ma cherefiUe" [<• my friend,'* — •• my good friend," — k * my dear bo\ f 9 while •• my good mother," and, " my dear girl,"] were invited to display the delicacies of the cream- pans and cheese- presses, or to parade their turkeys and ducklings for our observation and amusement. And this condescending kindness seems repaid by boundless af- fection, and respect amounting to veneration. What was once the verger [orchard] of the chateau, where anciently the feudal seigneur regaled himself in the evening, with the officers of his household, and played chess with his chaplain, is now extended behind the castle, into a noble park, cut out of the luxuriant woods ; the trees being so cleared away, and disposed of, as to sprinkle its green and velvet lawn with innumerable clumps of lofty oaks, and fantastic elms. *< This is rather English, too," said General La Fa\ette; "but it owes the greater part of its beauty to the taste of our celebrated landscape-painter, Robert, who assisted me in laying out the grounds, and disposing of my wood scenery." It was whilst walking by a bright moon-light, in these lovely grounds, that I have listened to their illustrious master, conver- sing upon almost every >ubject worthy to engage the mind of a great and good man ; sometimes in French, sometimes in Eng- lish ; always with eloquence, fluency, and spirit. Our mid-day ramble was of a less serious character; for, as the young people were let loose from their studies to accompany us, we issued forth a party of twenty strong. Upon these occasions the Grand Prior took a very distinguished part. He was evidently a popular leader upon such expeditions, and having given orders to a party to go in search of some peculiarly beautiful corn flow- ers, which were destined to assist the dinner toilette, the 1 • reran knight marshalled his divisions, and commanded the expedition, 132 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. with an earnestness and a gravity, which very evidently showed him as much interested in this predatory warfare upon blooms and odours, as his well disciplined little troops. S<>me error, however, in their evolutions, just as the word of command was given, struck the General La Fayette himself, who commanded a halt, and suggested the experience of his counsel to the science of the Maltese tactics. It was curious to observe the represen- tative of the Grand Masters of the Knights of St. John of Jeru- salem, and the General-commandant of the national army of France; mavoeuvering this little rifle corps, and turning powers that had once their influence over the fate of Europe, against corn-flowers and May-sweets. 1 was desirous to learn how Buonaparte seemed affected at the moment that General La Fayette, at the head of the deputa- tion who came to thank him in the name of the chamber for his voluntary abdication, appeared before him. « We found him," said General La Fayette, " upon this occasion, as upon many others, acting out of the ordinary rules of calculation ; neither affecting the pathetic dignity of fallen greatness, nor evincing the uncontrollable dejection of disappointed ambition, of hopes crushed, never to revive, and of splendor quenched, never to re- kindle. We found him calm and serene — he received us with a faint, but gracious smile — .he spoke with firmness and preci- sion. I think the parallel for this moment was that, when he presented his breast to the troops drawn out against him, on his return from Elba, exlaiming, " I am your emperor, strike if you will." There have been splendid traits in the life of this man. not to be reconciled to his other modes of conduct : — his character is out of all ordinary keeping, and to him the doctrine of probabilities could never, in any instance, be applied." A few days before this memorable interview, La Fayette had said in the assembly, in answer to Lucien Buonaparte's re- proaches, who accused the nation of levity in its conduct to- wards the Emperor, " Go, tell your brother, that we will trust him no longer ; we will ourselves undertake the solvation of our country." And Napoleon had learnt that, if Ins abdication was not sent to the chamber within one hour, M. La Fayette had re- solved to move for his expulsion. Yet Buonaparte received this firm opposer of all his views with graciousness and serenity; and it was this resolute and determined foe to his power, who, after this interview, demanded that the liberty and life of Napo- leon should be put under the protection of the French people. But Napoleon, always greater in adversity than in prosperity, chose to trust to the generosity of the English nation, and to seek safety and protection amidst what he deemed a great and a free people. This voluntary trust, so confidingly placed, so sa- EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. 133 credly reposed, was a splendid event in the history of England's greatness — it was a bright reflection on the records of her vir- tues ! It illuminated a page in her chronicles, on which the eye of posterity might have dwelt with transport ! It placed her pre-eminent among cotemporary nations! Her powerful ene- my, against whom she had successfully armed and coalesced the civilised world, chose his place of refuge, in the hour of adver- sity, in her bosom, because he knew her brave, and believed her magnanimous ! Alone, in his desolate dwelling; deprived of every solace of humanity ; torn from those ties, which alone throw a ray of brightness over the darkest shades of misfortune; wanting all the comforts, and many of the necessaries of life ; the victim of the caprice of perty delegated power; harassed by every-day op- pression ; mortified by mean, reiterated, hourly privation; chained to a solitary and inaccessible rock, with no object on which to fix his attention, but the sky, to whose inclemency he is exposed ; or that little spot of earth, within whose narrow' bounds he is destined to wear away the dreary hours of unva- ried captivity, in hopeless, cheerless, life-consuming misery! Where now is his faith in the magnanimity of England? his trust in her generosity ? his hopes in her beneficence ? The regret we felt in leaving La Grange, was proportioned to the expectations, with which we arrived before its gates, to the pleasure we enjoyed under its roof. It is a memorable event in the life of ordinary beings, to be permitted a proximate view of a great and good man ! It is refreshment to the feel- ings, which the world may have withered !— * it is expansion to the mind, which the world may have harrowed ! It chases from the memory the traces of all the littlenesses, the low, mean, and sordid passions, bv which the multitudes of society are actuated; the successes of plodding mediocrity; the triumphs of time- serving obsequiousness ; and the selfish views of power and am- bition, for the destruction of the many, and the debasement of all ! To have lived under the roof of La Fayette ; to have con- versed with hiin, and listened to him, was opening a splendid page in the history of man. It was perused with edification and delight, and its impression can only fade with memory and life. In the brief history of the French republic, the name of Gin- guene holds a place among those, whose pure intentions, and patriotic views, stand nobly opposed to the selfish and sangui- nary democrjc;, that succeeded to, and overwhelmed them. — His character has been said to have been of that true antique mould, which the best pages of Greek and Roman history present, for J34* EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. the example and admiration of mankind, and his works have long had a distinguished place allotted them, in the classical literature of his country. — With many claims to poetical repu- tation, on the continent, which hate been long admitted, Mon- sieur Ginguene is best known, in England, by his able and ele- gant work on Italian literature. — He made his debut in Paris in 1772, then scarcely twenty, and fresh from his province. His pretty poem of ** La Confession de Zulmt" obtained him the uni- versal suffrage of the higher circles; and the severe republican of future times was then only known, as a charming poet, and as, " un homme de bonne compagnie" [a man who kept good com- pany]. The friend of the celebrated and unfortunate Chamfort, Gin- guene participated in his political principles; and distinguished himself among the writers of the "feuille villageoise." — During the early part of the revolution, he was sole manager of the com- 1 *' mittee of public instruction, and was soon elected member of the Institute of France. Having refused the plate of minister to the Hanseatic cities, he was sent ambassador to Sardinia; and in 1798, concluded an arrangement with the then reigning sove- reign, who placed the citadel of Turin in the power of France. After the revolution of the 18th of Brumaire. Monsieur Ginguene was elected tribune ; — but retiring from public life in 1802, he gave up his talents and time to the exclusive pursuits of litera- ture, and produced works, which have reflected equal credit on his genius and his heart. The republican spirit of Ginguene forbad his bending the knee before the imperial power; and though he remained member ot the Institute, and professor of Italian literature, at the Mlienee, he neither sought, nor was offered any place under the govern- ment. His well known hostility to despotism deprived him of the favour of the sovereign, but drew down no persecution, and he was passed over in silence, and distinguished only by ne- glect, — after he rejected offers, and refused solicitations, which might have drawn down a heavier penalty from mortified great- ness. On the second abdication of Napoleon, a proposal was made to Ginguene, to celebrate the event in verse, by enumerating the crimes of the "usurper." — "Qui? moil" [Who? I!] replied Ginguene, with indignation, to the courtier who made the pro- posal, « addresse%>-vous pour cela a ceux, qui I'ont louel" [address yourself to those who have flattered him!] This hint was not suffered to lie idle. Of the many who lived by flattering the Emperor, nearly all were found willing to owe their subsistence to the abuse they lavished on him. On the second restoration of the Bourbons it was rumoured. EMINENT ANP LITERARY CHARACTERS. l%& a and perhaps idly, that Ginguene had become an object of state aversion, out of compliment to Sardinia ; the part he had played there, during the abdication of the present sovereign, being still fresh in remembrance. A letter too had been recently brought to light, written by Ginguene to a French friend, at that period, in which he boasted, that »» Madame Ginguine, in the true cos- tume of a republican ambassadress, had appeared at the court of Turin, in cotton stockings" — «* What a triumph for republicanism.' 99 added M. Ginguene, with more gaite-de-cozur, than became a minister. It was vainly urged, that cotton stockings were now admitted into the royalist toilette; that the prettiest ultra ancles in France had adopted them, in preference to the silken hose of the old regime ; and that even the least decided female politician in Paris, might appear in silk on one day, or cotton on another, without incurring the odium of tergiversation, or being added to the list of girouettes [weather-cocks]. The cotton stockings were 4( damning proofs" of inveterate republicanism, not to he gotten over ; and M. Ginguene consulted his peace, as well as his health, by retiring from Paris, where he might no longer be permitted to « rest on roses" and to abandon, for" the solitude of the country, those enlightened circles, in which his distinguished name is never mentioned, hut with the endearing epithet of " le bon Ginguene" [the good Ginguene]. It was in the beginning of the year 1816, that M. Ginguene sought a permanent and peaceful retreat in his cottage, at Eau- bonne, accompanied by his excellent, his inestimable wife, and an adopted son, a young English boy, the object of their mutual care and instruction.* It was to this cottage we received an invitation from Monsieur and Madame Ginguene ; and few invi- tations, during our residence in France, were received with more pleasure, or accepted with more willingness. Eaubonne, the residence of St. Lambert, of Madame d'Houdetot, the shrine of so many of the enamoured pilgrimages of Rousseau, has many claims to celebrity. It is a retired and romantic little village, hanging over the valley of Montmorency, and adding much to the picturesque beauty of that delicious scene. We approached Eaubonne through a wood of cherry-trees and vine-yards, the one in full fruit, the other in full blossom; and by a path-way, so wild and intricate, and so steep in its ascent, that we were obliged to walk for more than the distance of half a mile, while our carriage followed us, with difficulty, up the ascent. The sweet dwelling of Monsieur Ginguene lay immediately under the heights of Montmorenci, on the brow of a steep accli- * A son of the once celebrated P , the quondam editor of a London even- ing paper, now no longer remarkable for its love of liberty. 136 EMINENT AND LITERARY. CHARACTERS. vity, and in the midst of a beautiful garden, then rich in all the blooms and odours of the season, whose emanations were rolled forth by the ardours of a brilliant, but almost insupportable sun. We found the excellent and distinguished master of this delicious scene, drooping, and fading, in the midst of all that breathed of animation ; M. Ginguene, even then, appeared to us fast ap- proaching to the last stage of a consumption. But the first flut- ter over, with wbloh a confirmed invalid ret eives tne stranger's first visit; and all bodily infirmity disappeared before the bril- liant vigour <>f a mind, which flowed through endless pleasant- ries, and which, by its pointed turns and happy allusions, gave to the conversation of a philosopher the epigrammatic vein, that makes a reputation for wit in the mere man of the world. M. Ginguene had come down from his study to receive us ; and, in spite of our remonstrances, he would accompany us to the gar- de-', and would even have attempted the heights of Montmoren- ci, to point out to us some peculiarly fine views of the valley be- neath, if we had not almost forcibly obliged him to relinquish an attempt, to which he must have found himself unequal. M. Ginguene is a passionate lover of rural life ; and when the talked to me of the peace and happiness of his retreat; when he pointed out the variety of his roses ; when he sp< ke of the grafts he intended to make for the future seasons, it was at once plea- sant and melancholy to listen to him. Death was imprinted on his brow, and he talked only of the renovated life of a future spring ! As I was assisting him in gathering some flowers, the gardener, a fat, good-humoured looking peasant, rolled his bar- row closely by us. M. Ginguene asked him for a string to tie up our nosegays, by the endearing appellation of " Man bon Charles," I repeated, from his own charming fable of the "Peach Tree," • Mon bon Charles, Qui plus et mieux qu'un oiseau parte." [My good Charles, who chatters more and better than the birds]. " Yes," said M. Ginguene, "you are quite right; that is " Mon bon Charles," the hero of ** Le vieux Pecker" which you have the goodness to remember. The whole of this pretty fable is so indicative of the character and pursuits of the amiable fabulist, and so peculiarly illustrative of the simplicity of his manners, and the peculiar pleasantry of his conversation, that I may perhaps be pardoned, if from an elegant little work, as yet I believe scarcely known in England, I cite here, as the best comment on a text, otherwise unworthy of its distinguished subject, the fable I have alluded to. — SMIXENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. \%+ LE VIEUX PECHER. u Depuis que la muse naive, Qu; remit so-s mes doig sma lyre fugitive, De nioi, tant bien que mal, a fait un Fablier, Je suis pl-is que jamais, en ma saison tardive, Amateur des jardins, si ce n'est jardinier. Souvt-nt j'y passe un jour entier : A quoi ? Je ne sais trop, mais heureux de n'entendre D s bruits, ni vrais, ni faux, point de devoirs a rendre, Point de bavards, pour m'ennu\er, Point d'ceil nialin, pour m'epier, Et toujours des lecons a prendre; Lecons de langue desoiseaux, Et des fltrurs, et me me des iirbres, Je les entends ; j'entends les moindres arbrisseaux, J'entendi ais, je crois, j usqu'aux marbres, Si marbres habitaient sous mes humbles berceaux. Dans ce jardin, cheYi de Pales et de Flore, Est un antique et beau pecher, V \\ les frmts, qu'en naissant le Dieu du jour colore, T - tent Foci, l'odorat, le gout et le toucher. Afais ce favori de Poraone Vieillit : deja son front porte cette couronne, Q'ti marque a ses pareils I'instant du noir nocher; Sa feuille tombe avant l'automne, On voit son tronc se dess£cher, Et bientot la Nature, et si dure et si bonne, Qai des arbres. de nous, egalement ordonne, Lui trace le chemin du jardin au bucher. Pres de lui, d'une main pradente, Charles, mon jardinier, mit par precaution, % Un pecher jeune encore, mais d'une belle atfente, Et dont une greffe savante A fini I'education. De ce nouveau venu, le vieux pecher se fache, " Pourquoi," dit il, m'associer Un blanc-bec — un mince ecolier, Je ne le puis souffrir — je pretends qu'on l'arrache, Ou je fais Fan prochain banqueroute au fruitier I A ce dur propos mon bon Charles, Qui pi is et mieux, qu'un oiseau parle, Et souvent adoucit l'ennui de travailler, Par leplaisir de babiiler, Concis pour cette fois, autant qu'un Spartiate, Repond — " S'il faut choisir, crains que jene t'abatte, J'aurai de lui des biens, qu'avec toi j'ai perdus, II plaira par ses fruits, quand tu n'en auras plus." Mes chers amis, moi, qui vous fais ce conte» Je pretends, pour mon propre compte, En profiler. Toujours j'aimai les jeunes gens, Jc veux de pi s en plus, en fuveurde leur age, • Ex^ust-r leur details, accuedler leurs talents, E' bri>e d<-s ecemls, mais bientot an rivage De Forageux Neptune, ou. je les vois flottants, FART II. T 13S EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. Des mains et de la voix animer leur courage. Aidons nos successeurs ; c'est le conseil du sage, Ainsi de mon Pecher quinteux, Je sais meitre a profii la leeon pour moi-m€me. Tel vieillard savant et hargneux, Qui me traite en jeune homme, et fait le dedaigneux, En profitera-t-il de meme?" THE OLD PEACH TREE. [Since the rural muse has again put into my hands my fugitive lyre, and made me for better and worse a fabulist, late as my season is, I am more than ever an amateur of gardens. I often pass there a whole day, in doing 1 know not what, but happy to be relieved from irksome duties, from false and rue reports, from chatterers that tire me, and from malicious eyes thai watch me. There 1 take lessons in the language of birds, of flowers, i>nd even of trees. I can hear even the smallest shrubs. I think I could evtn hear the marbles, if marbles inhabited my humble territory. In this garden, sacred to Pales and to Flora, is a fine ancient peach-tree, whose fruit, coloured by the god of day, once delighted the eye, the smell, and the taste. But this favourite of Pomona grew old; already i^^hibited symptoms of decay ; its leaves fell before autumn, its trunk dried up, and so'»n Nature, (at once so cruel and so good), who disposes equally of trees and of men, indicated the road from the garden to the wood-pile. Near him, the prudent hand of Charles, my gardener, had carefully planted, a young peach-tree, of the fairest promise, and of which a skilful graft had finished the education; The old peach-tree grew angry at the young stranger — " Wh\," said he, "must I associate with a novice — a stripling beginner — I cannot endure it — pull him up by the roots, or n xt year 1 will not give you a single peach." At ihis harsh proposal, my good Charles, who chatters more and better than the birds, and often beguiles his working-time, by the amuse- ment of talkng, wasjFor once as concise as a Spartan, and replied— '* If I must choose between you, you may tremble for yourself — I shall have fruit from him, when you can produce no more." My dear friends, I have related my tale, and I will endeavour myself to pro- fit by the moral. 1 have always loved young people, and now 1 will more than ever excuse their faults in favour of their age ; bring out their talents, and When 1 see them embarking on the stormy ocean of the world, with hands and voice I will animate their courage. Let us assist our successors; it is the ad- vice of Wisdom. Thus, from my whimsical peach-tree, I have drawn a lesson for myself. Let every learned and morose old man do the same]. This day at Eubonne, the first and the last of my acquaint- ance with Monsieur Ginguene, passed but too rapidly away. We were kindly pressed, and willingly promised, to renew our visit, and to renew it often. — Imperious circumsfanrcs, howoer, interfered with our wishes and our intentions. AVe saw the en- lightened, the excellent Ginguene no more; but we carried from Lis retreat impressions of human excellence, and human wisdom, which raised our estimation of the species to which he belonged ; EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. £3§ and vvp left this amiable sage with sentiments of admiration and regret, which would have been still more profound, had we known we were taking leave of him for ever.* Madame Ginguene, the model of devoted wives, is a woman of talent and considerable acquirement ; and, though plain in her person and dress, and simple and unpretending in her manners, the moment she enters into conversation she gives that impres- sion of mind never to be mistaken, which a sentence is sufficient to disclose, and a word sometimes betrays. It was impossible, however, to trace the gay ambassadress of Sardinia, in the watchful and worn-out nurse-tender of the valetudinarian hus- band. #4* ^L. *U, *\L, J*. ^V, 4P 4U vU. There is scarcely an era in the political transactions of France, for the last eight and twenty years, in which the name of Gregoire, bishop of Blois, has not had a place ; — while his nu- merous works, his « Histoire des Sectes" his <* de la Traite, de VEsclavage des JSToirs et des Blancs," his Discours sur la Liberie des Cultes" and " sur la DomesticiU" [History of the Sects, his Treatise on the Slavery of the Blacks and Whites, his Discourse on the Liberty of Worship], have made him known to Europe, by sentiments the most philanthropic, and by views the most philosophical. Of the many political tracts of the ex-bishop of Blois, his » De la Constitution Franyiise, de VJln 1814," is, per- haps, the most c« lebrated, and it is esteemed in France, by the unprejudiced and unbiassed, as one of the best pamphlets that appeared among the multitude of brochures, which issued from the French press, at that momentous period. The abbe Gregoire, a native of Luneville, was a simple cure at Embermesnil, when, already distinguished by his virtues, and his talents, he was elected deputy of the clergy of the bailliage of Nancy to the etats-genereux, in 1789. He was among the first of the ecclesiastiral order, who joined the national assem- bly, and took the constitutional oath, and his first effort was, to interest the humanity of that assembly in favour of the Jews, then undergoing persecution in Alsace. Preferred to the bishop- rick of Blois, and made president of the « Society of the Friends of' the Negroes" he solicited, in 1791, the rights of denization for people of colour. Always the active friend, the steady cham- pion, and able, apologist of this unhappy and oppressed race; — ■ desirous only that France should have a free constitution, he was equally strenuous in his opposition to the ancient regime, and the influence of the terroristes: — always preaching universal * Since che- faucalt and others were to join us." The character and talents of Mirabeau naturally became the' subject of discussion. The Bishop said, ** he had splendid ta- lents, and great vices ; but his talents were necessary to the cause in which we then had all so sanguinely embarked, and his vices were those of the state of society of that day in France, and of the class to which he peculiarly belonged." The Abbe, however, with this charitabh' preface to the errors he condemn- ed, spoke with vehemence of the immorality of Mirabeau ; but it was more in the language and tone of reprehension of a religious recluse, than in the manner, or with the experience, of a man of the world. The fact was, that the immorality of Mirabeau was neither more nor less than what constituted an " aimable roue" l£2 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. in the days of the Regent, or of Louis XV. His vices had nei- ther the systematic coldness, nor the formal developement of the Duke de Ri helieu's enormities ; and his morals would never ha\e been called in question in old France, had not his political principles subjected him to the hatred and aversion of those, who upheld its institutions, and drew their existence from its errors. The Abbe Gregoire showed us with great pride a glass case, filled with the literary works of negro authors; many of whom he had himself redeemed and brought forward. <• I look upon this little book-case," he observed, «• as a refutation of all that has been said against the intellect of blacks; that unhappy race, like the wild plants of some neglected soil, want only care and culture to bear in due time both flowers and fruit." Wf talked to him of a work he was then engaged in, on the moral education of servants. ** The French press," he said, *' is unwearied in issuing forth calumnies against me: I shall only reply to my enemies, by doing all the little good I can for my fellow-creatures. I have done with public life ; the few days that may be spared me, shall be devoted to domestic amelioration, and to the cause of humanity." From the period of this first visit, our intercourse with the ex-bishop of Blois was frequent. There was in his appearance, his manner, his very mode of expression, an originality, a some- thing out of the ordinary rule of character, irresistibly attractive to a mind something wearied by the common places of society. He speaks with great rapidity, as if thought came too fast for utterance ; and there is a freshness, a simplicity, in his man- ner, that mingles the eager curiosity of a recluse with the pro- found reflections of a philosopher; and leaves it difficult to un- derstand how such a character could have passed through the world's hands, and yet have retained the original gloss of nature in its first lustre. A sort of restless benevolence, always anx- ious to relieve or to save, to alleviate or to improve, is extreme- ly obvious in his conversation, as it is illustrated by his life ; and I found it so difficult to reconcile the profound humanity of his character, with his supposed vote when the life of the unfortu- nate Louis XVI. was at stake, that I one day ventured to touch on the subject : — »* / never instigated the death of any human being ;" was his reply. <* I voted that Louis the XVlth should be the first to benefit by the law, which abolished capita/ punish- ment; in a word — I condemned him to Kue/"* There has been in all ages and countries so intimate a con- nexion between church and state, that it is difficult to break up * Gregoire had long advocated the abolition of capital punishment. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. !£§ the associations thus formed in the mind ; and a dignified pre- late talking the language of a Brutus or a Hampden, is a sole- cism in principles, not easily reconciled with modern modes of action. When Gregoiie has praised to me the freedom of the English constitution, as established at the revolution, and pray- ed devoutly for its continuance — when he spoke of the misery of the political and moral corruption of France, which urged on the revolution, with the pious horror of a minister of the reli- gion of peace and beneficence, I have more than once asked him, by what early impressions the bishop of Blois had become ani- mated with the spirit of a Cato or a Rtssel ?— He always an- swered me with the simplicity of a religious recluse, ** my guides have always been my heart and the scriptures; the one taught me to sympathise with the oppressed, and 1 found all mv ideas and principles of liberty in the other." Tne bishop of Blois, however, as he himself assured me, was not the only catholic prelate who had advocated the cause of li- berty, and drawn his arguments in its favor from the same source where he had sought them. " Here," he said, one morn- ing, taking a pamphlet from the drawer of Ids writing-desk, « here is a singular and interesting sermon, in favor of civil liber- ty, as intimately united with Christian faith; composed by citizen Cardinal Chi aramonti, bishop of Imola; and addressed tn the people of his diocese, in the Cisalpine government, in the year 1797. Speaking, however, of the union of Christianity and civil liberty, I allow that he goes beyond the line of mere constitu- tional principles, when he observes — «< oui 9 mes chers freres 9 soyez, tous Chretiens, et vous serez, (Pexcellens democrates" [yes, my dear brethren, he all Christians and you will be excellent democrats]. It was impossible not to smile at the simpli< ity and gravity, with which this was uttered ; and I observed, « your citizen Cardi- nal has, I suppose, long since paid the forfeit of this imprudent profession of faith." — " No," replied the bishop gravely, ** the sentiments of Christian faith, and paternal tenderness, which breathe through the whole of this excellent homily (some exag- geration in terms and principles which belonged inevitably to that day of exaltation excepted,) have been carried by the ex- cellent bishop of Imola, from his see in Cisalpine Gaul, to the throne of the Christian world ; and the present surcessor of St. Peter is worthy of the high place he fills. The citizen Cardi- nal Chiaramonti is now the venerable Pope Pius VI I. " # * This most enrious homily is now in my possession. It has for its title- pa: c : — " Home lie du citoyev Cardinal Chiaramonti, Eveque D'lmofa, actueliement Sonve* ain Pontiffe, Pie V1L; 'id'essee <.it ttcnple de son Diocese, dans la Repub- liyue Cisalpine, le jour de lanaissance de Jesus Christ, I' an 1797 '-—Imola, deVim- 144 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. The bishop of Blois, though fast verging on seventy, exhibits little trace of age in his appearance. His fresh am) aniinaied manner, his vigorous and active mind, his interesting and < liar- acteristir countenance and person, all seem to throw time at a distance, and to remain unassailable by the shoe ks of adversi- ty. Wholly retired from the world, devout, studious, tempe- rate ; many days may vet he reserved for him: — may he enjoy them in safety, and resign them in peace ! The little intercourse which necessarily subsisted between England and France, prior to the year 1814, has left the two countries reciprocally strangers to some of the most popular primirie de la nation, an 6 de la liberte. — R4 ' impHmee d Come, chez Charles Jin- ioine Ostmelli, an 8. Et d Par's, chez Adrian Ergon, Imprimeur, 1814" [Homily of citizen Cardinal Chiaramomi, Bishop of lmola, now Sovereign Pontiff, Pi; s VII- ; addressrd to the people of his diocese in the Cisalpine Republic, the day of the b>rth of Jesus Christ, .he year 1797 — Fro in ihe na- tional press — Imola, the s.xth year of liberty. — Re printed a* Con. o, ! »\ Charles Antony Ostintlli, year 8. And at Pans, by Adrian Ergou, Printer, 1814]. The following- passages are fair specimens ot the style, in which tins ser- mon is composed : " Je ne vous parlerai, ni de Sparte, ni d'Athenes Je garderai le silence sur la fameuse legislation de Lycurgue e. de Solon — et mime sur cette Carthage, la rwale de Rome JVos rejl-xions et nos souvenirs le reportent plus convenublement sur Vantique republ-qne Romuine Conside ez, met freres, les illustres citoyeus, dont elle s'honora, et les moyens par lesquels it's s\tssurerent des droits a l y admiration; Rupfrellerai-je le courage de Mutius dee'vole ? de Curtius? des dtux Sapions? de To-quatus ? .de Cumille ? et de tant d'aut>es, qui jleurirent d ces tpoque* me'- morables? Lews eloges, traces pur une joule d'ecrivuins, sont encore C instruction de la post e rite . C titan d'Utique, dont on a dU, que lu gloire le poursuivoit, d'au- tant plus qu'il s'ob&tinoitd la fmr ,• Cat on vous upprendra comment Rome etendit sa renomtnee, et reculu les limites de sa repuolique," HJc. &c. '.' Que la Religion Catholique soit Vobjet le plus cher de votre cceur, de votre piele, tie toutes vos affections- jYe croyez pus qiCelle choque la fo' me du gouverne- ment democratique. En y ViVant uius d votre divin Suuveur, vous pourr< z con- cevoir une juste esptrunce de votre sulut e'ternel ; vous pourvez, en operant votre bonheur temporel et cehu de vos freres, ope'rer la gloire de la rtpublique et ties au- torites qui la regisse/it" [I will not talk to you of Sparta or of Athens. I will be silent on the fa- mous legislation of Lycurgus and of Solon — and even on that of Carthage, the rival of Rome Our thoughts and our memories remind us more propel ly of the ancient It; man Republic Consider, my bro hers, the illustrious citizens whom she honoured, and the actions on which thry founded their claims to admiration. Recollect the courage ot Mutius Scaevota I of Curtius? of the two Scipios ? of Torquatus ? of Camillas ? and of s many others who flourish- ed in these memorable ages ? Their eulogiums traced by a crowd of writers, are still lessons for posterity. Cato of U ica, of whom it was said, that the more he fled from glory the more she pursued him ; Cto will teach you how Rome extended her renown beyond the boundaries other republic, 8tc.&t.&c. Let the Cadiolic religion be the object most dear to your hearts, your pie- ty, and your affections. Do not believe that it is at variance with the demo- cratic form of government. In living united to your divine Saviour, you may entertain a just hope of your eternal salvaCon ; you may, in improving your temporal happiness and that of your brothers, contribute to the glory of the republic and of the authorities which preside over it]. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. £%$ l writers in their respective languages. Of our modern English poets, France knows little ; and it is a singular fact, that be- fore the first entry of the allies into Paris, even the works of Moore, Byron, and Scott, were almost unheard of in its litera- ry circles. Of the innumerable poets good and bad, in which France abounds, England even still remains ignorant, with a very few exceptions. — Even the superior effusions of Parney,* Le Gouve,f Berchoux,^ Le Brun,§ and Chenier,jj are but lit- * Parny, author of bl shed a translation of I'ope's Essay on Man, and his " Verger" — He wrote, during the revolution, for vari- ous journals, and composed and pronounced a funeral eloge on Washington, in the Temple of Mars! M- de Fontanes was distinguished h\ Buonaparte, after his elevation to the imperial throne, who created him successively Count of the Empire, Commandant of the Legion of Honour, and Grand Master of the In p. rial University. The king has created M. de Fontanes, Peer of France, and Officer of the Legion of Honour- f| M Arnault, the author of the tragedies " Metritis & Minterne" " Lucrece" «' Cincinnatus" &c- kc. ; was among the literary men of France, who were most distinguished by Napoleon. Arnault accompanied him into Eg\pt, and both under the consulate and imperial government, held many high offices of trust and emolument. In 1815, he was included in the ordonnance oi the 24th of July, and ordered to quit Fans within three days, and to re ire to the place of exile indicated by the minister of police. He is still in banishment. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. £4# " Camille;" — « Philippe Auguste ;" — " St. Louis, en Egypte ;" — •• Clovis;"—-** Lefaux bon Homme," — and « Charlemagne." M. Le Merrier has relieved his dramatic productions with some pieces of lighter poetry; and among these fugitive works, " Les ages Franqais," and " VHomme Renouvelle," [The French ag«s, ami The Man Renewed], have, I believe, obtained popu- larity. His *« Mantiade." which yet remains to be finished, and whirl) has only been partly published, and partly read in society, calls for a more distinguished notice, as being more out .of the beaten track of ordinary composition, than either his tragedies or lyric poems. While Monsieur Chateaubriand has endeavoured to prove, and to illustrate, in his prose poem of " Les Martyrs" that the Christian mythology is more favourable « au jeu des passions" [to the play of the passions], (to use his own words) and to the developement of character in the epopee [epir poem], than the pagan theogony, and that saints and martyrs are more inter- esting personages, than gods and heroes ; — M. Le Mercier has substituted, in his « Mantiade" physical and geometrical divi- nities, for those of the Pantheon, and equally neglecting ** ar- mies of martyrs ," and legions of saints, with the presiding dei- ties of Olympus and Parnassus, he has plunged at once into new systems of poetical machinery, and rests his claims to poetiral originality, upon seeking his heroes and heroines in the laws of gravitation and repulsion, and upon following the system of Newton, and drawing his personages from « les forces virtuelles du mande" [the virtual powers of the world]. Thus, leaving far behind the intrigues of the plants, and the loves of the triangles, M. Le Mercier introduces at once upon the scene his centripetal and centrifugal forces, under the names of Barythee and Probal- lane, as the leading personages of his epic;— -while Curgire, (the curvilinear motion) Pyrophese, (caloric) Sulphydre, (brimstone) Electrone (electricity) assist in carrying on the main plot, and produce many interesting episodes. The poles, with some other mute personages, seem merely called in as figurantes, to fill up the pauses of the deeper interest, and to perform a subordinate part in this splendid melo-drame of the elements. The author himself assures his reader, that even the episodes afforded by the loves and jealousies of the lady Electricity and Magnesiene, (the load-stone) and Sider, (the iron) are not less terrible and gracious, or sublime or beautiful — «• que les in- trigue sfabuleuses des Dienx et des Deeses de VOlympe" [than the fabulous intrigues of the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus]— while the. caprices of the nymph Sulphydre, *« etendue snr une coucht defer avec Pyrotone" [extended on a couch of iron with Pyrotone], become the cause of those volcanic shocks, which 14S eminent and literary characters. finally overwhelm the island Mantis, the fancied scene of the main action of the poem. Her sighs, indeed, breathe brimstone; her vows are thunder; and her curtain-lecture to the hen-perk- ed Pyrotone, produces a volcano. The tragical ardors, how- ever, of these violent personages are relieved by the quarrels of Barythee and Proballane; while Psijcolee, or universal intelligence, a sort of Kitty Pry, or •< Norah in white dimity," reconciles all parties, and finally makes up the little disputes between these choleric young men, the centripetal and centrifugal forces, though the Sun himself is described as creeping out of the way of their broils, resolved never more to return to his old track, merely that he may avoid so disagreeable a neighbourhood. A little** despotism on the part of Barythee, and a little rebellion on that of Proballane, seem to be the leading cause of their dispute — " Un jour que Barythee au centre, son empire, Fier de son ascendant, sur tout ce qw'il attire, Accusau Proballane> esclave de sa cour, De gemir, en guidant les spheres a I'entour, Proballane en son vol, qui traverse I'espace, Las d'etre contenu dans les circles, qu'il trace," &c. 8cc. [One day, when Barythee was in the centre of his empire, proud of his in- fluence on all th A he attracts, he accused his slave Proballane of groaning while he guided the spheres around, Proballane in his flight which traverses spaces weary of being held in the circles, &c- &c] M. Le Mercier opens this extraordinary and very original poem with the following lines : " Au-dessus des humains existent des Gdnies, Non encore Celebris dans les Theog^nies- Etres, qui sous Paspect d'allegoriques traits, Offrent de l'univers les prinopes secrets; Nouveaux Dieux, que le tems me revele et me nomme, Pour mieux etre entendus par la raison de l'homme, Qui saisit mieux l'objet, que l'on presente a ses sens, Que Vabstrait ide'al, dont les corps sont absens." &c. 8cc. &c- [Above the human race exist the Genii, not yet celebrated in theTheoge fiies ; beings who, under an allegorical aspect, preside over the secret princi- ples of the world- New deities* which time reveals and names to me, to be better understood by the reason of man, which seizes the object better when presented to his senses, than an ideal abstract, of which the body is absent, Some detached pieces only of the " Mantiade" had been pub- lished, during my residence in Paris; hut while it remains with the French public to decide on the merits of this new and ec- centric effusion of a poet, who has already obtained its suffrages upon other occasions, it is permitted me to bear testimony to the amiable manners, and peculiarly interesting conversation of the man. I had the pleasure of being introduced to M. Le Mcr- EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. 149 cier a few nights after the first representation of his " Charle- magne," and when the town was yet full of its undecided failure or success. He spoke of it with a sort of unaffected indiffer- ence that was extremely amusing. " I have delivered it up/' he said, " to the political factions of the day, and they will de- cide its fate, independent of its merits or its faults : — I read it several times to Napoleon, he approved of it, and he was no bad judge." I asked him, why he had not brought it forward, during. the time of the late Emperor? — "Because," replied M. Le Mer- rier, " he would have applied the character of Charlemagne to himself; and the whole would have had the "air of th^ most consummate flattery. Now, indeed, no such personal allusion can be made." M. Le Merrier was an early friend of Buonaparte's, and though his constitutional principles, bordering on republicanism, rendered him adverse to the measures of the imperial despotism, it has been always understood, that he was attached to his per- son. Of Buonaparte's style of conversation, he observed to me, that when lie was obliged to make conversation it was neither marked by sallies, nor originality ; that to talk, for talking sake, was to him the most insupportable ennui. But when something struck with force on his imagination, when some latent passion was unexpectedly touched on, some chord of favourite associa- tion accidentally awakened, then, all force, energy, and origi- nality ; there was something irresistibly fascinating in every- thing he uttered.* He had a powerful imagination, and of a romantic cast ; he was fond of heroic poetry, and particularly * I heard it frequently said in France, by those who knew Buonaparte through all the strange vicissitudes of his most checquered life, that he was " un charmant causeur" [a charming talker], as they expressed it; and ex- tremely interesting and amusing in intimate and familiar conversation. " I have often written under his dictation," (said a man of great celebrity and talent to me,) "I have frequently been startled by his idiom and turn of phrase, and even ventured to tell him that it xvasnot French. But when I at- tempted to change or improve, I found I only enfeebled ; and that his bad French -was powerful language. He dicta ed with great rapidity; wrote fre- quently for the journals ; and was the author of the greater part of his own manifestoes and bulletins to the army. His passion for Ossian continued una- bated from his boyhood- He was fond of novels, and read them frequently; but (said my informant) " d la devobie" [in secret]- He was extremely fear- ful " de se donner un ridicule" [of giving cause for ridicule]. One Ray, in his private apartments, he was talking on the subject of air-balloons. One of his courtiers observed, that he had heard, that the fearless spirit of the emperor, «ven in childhood, had led him to ascend in an air-balloon Napoleon saw- something ludicrous in this anecdote, which he declared was wholly unfound- ed- •«! appeal to you," (he said with great natvete [simplicity], turning t* tbe Baron de ****, who was present,) "ivhether that is in my -wai>." £00 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. fond of historical tragedy, a subject on which he spoke well, and loved to speak much. The strenuous favourer of the revolution, and the personal friend of Buonaparte, it may be supposed M. Le Merrier finds it most suitable to the actual position of things to live, if not in retirement, at least less in the world, than his rank, fortune and reputation might entitle him to do. I found, however, that he had admirers and friends, even among the most determined Bour- bonists, and my first knowledge of his works and most amiable character, was obtained from a devoted ultra-royaliste, who al- ways spoke of him with affection and admiration ; and who lamented his principles, as errors of judgment, which held no influence over his heart and feelings, «« which," said our mutual friend, « are always in the right." While Monsieur Le Merrier gives up his talents to the pursuit and illustration of the loves of the elements, and produces moral combinations from physical facts, Volney, the sublime Volney, withdraws his high born genius from its elevated career, and descends from the grand and philosophical mood, which led his spirit to hover over the *« Ruins of Empires" to the cold, tame pursuit of chronological calculation ; — and he, whose intellect, noble in its observation, and just, even when fanciful in its infe- rences, once drew a political moral from fallen columns, and taught lessons from stones, now confines his powers to arithmeti- cal conclusions, and geometrical results. Some friends of the Comte de Volney ronfirmed to me, what public report had already circulated, that he was deeply engaged in a very recondite and singular work, "VHistoire de la Chrono- logie" undertaken in a very philosophical, and from some pas- sages I heard cited, what *vill be deemed, a xqvy sceptical mood. It is said, that this celebrated person attempts, by most ingenious inductions, to prove that the history of Moses is a compilation of astronomical facts: that Abraham was a brilliant constella- tion, and Moses himself Bacchus, or the sun. Thus to disturb the genealogical tree of patriarchal nobility, though it be to « translate it to the skies" is a most perilous and venturous un- dertaking; — even, with all the sanction of M. VolmVs acknow- ledged genius, and high reputation, it will require testimonies, " strong as truths of hnly writ," and backed by the corrobora- ting proofs of antediluvian rabbins, and pre-adamite professors, to obtain, for this "new reading" a patient hearing from a worid, who, at the present moment, seems but little inclined to countenance innovation, on subjects of far less influence and importance. The Comte de Volney was already celebrated by his travels into Egypt and Syria, when he was elected, in 1789, deputy of EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. £5£ the tiers-etat [third estate] of Anjou to the etats -generalise [states- general], ami distinguished himself by the boldness of his elo- quence, in favour of the rights of the people; and on the confis- cation of the estates of the church, for the benefit of the nation. Retiring before the sanguinary conflicts of the reign of terrorism, he was received by General Washington, in the United States, with that high distinction due to his talents, his character, and reputation ; and when the hurricane of an overwhelming demo- cracy was exhausted, and the friends of rational liberty again hope : to range themselves under her long trampled banner, Vol- ney returned to France, was elected member of the conservative senate; alter having been placed among the candidates for counsellor of state, and even of consul. He sat in the senate, during the whole of the imperial reign, and in 1814, voted the expulsion of Napoleon Buonaparte from the throne of France. Since that period, he has, like almost all the genius of the country, retired from the scene of public life, and rarely visited Paris, during my residence in that capital. — Living at his seat, which he has recently adorned with a young and amiable wife, he leaves political conflicts '* To mean ambition, and the pride of Kings," and in domestic enjoyment, and philosophical seclusion, it may be hoped, finds that happiness which the « world can neither give nor take away." Poetry and diplomacy form a rare and strange union in the pursuits of the same mind ; and he, who early receives his first instructions from a Muse, may scarcely be supposed qualified to act under the influence of a cabinet. There have been, how- ever, instances in the history of modern politics, in which nego- tiations have been effected by the charm of metre, and treaties bound in poetic wreaths;* — and the most fortunate negotiation which France ever made with Russia, was supposed to have been effected, while the imperial Catherine listened to the lyre of Segur. The Comte de Segur, one of the ablest ministers of royal France, and one of the most elegant poets of the revolutionary * From among- the number, I have great pride in instancing- my own dis- tinguished countryman, Lord Viscount Strangford, late ambassador at the Brazils, and the elegant translator of Camoens. The world has already stamp- ed his poetical version of the Portuguese bard, with its suffrages. But the friends of Lord Strangford only are aware, how much the original composi- tions of his maturer genius surpass the happy imitations and g-lo wing effusions of his juvenile talents. 15% EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. regime ; the author of « La Politique de tous les Cabinets dc V Europe; 99 — of * ration on Louis the Sixteenth, and Marie Antoi- nette, was published in London, and was followed by many lite- rary and political tracts. The Duke de Levis was among the many of the ancient noblesse, who availed themselves of Napo- leon's permission to return to France, and he continued to write and to publish, under the imperial rule, with the same freedom, that he had done under the protection of a foreign government. Since the return of the Bourbons, the Duke de Levis has shared in the honours and emoluments distributed by royal favour; and he holds a distinguished place in the establishment of the Du- Italian. When we were alone, I asked him the secret of his acquirements ; — whether he had not been very studious in his youth ? He replied carelessly, •' Tout an contraire ; je n*ai jamais rien eiudie, parceque cela m\t ton jours en- nuye ; j'ai beaucoup observe", parceque cela m'amusait Ceux qui en savant pins que moi me conseillent, ce qui fait que ma vie a etc" remplie, et que fai beaucoup joui" [Qiite the contrary; I never studied, because that always tired me; I observed a great deal, for that amused me- Those who were more learned than myself, advised me to do so ; therefore my life has been always filled up, and I have had much enjoyment]. EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. |5 ete tres facile et etegante, mais il n'y a rien de naturel dans ses rowans, que h-s en- fans!" [The purity of her style is easy and elegant, yet the>e is nothing na- tural in her novels but the children] The " Buttue'cas'' , of Madame de < - i.lis, rnus< . however, by this, hive re. onr>h-d her to the most inveterate friends of legitimacy, church, state, and the king of Spain ! EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. ±Q§ by a low wall, and it admits at its extremity the melancholy view of a small chapel or oratory, fatally distinguished by the murder of the bishops and priests, imprisoned there during the reign of Robespierre. Madame de Genlis received me with a kindness, a cordiality, that had all the naivete and freshness of youthful feeling, and youthful vivacity. There was nothing of age in her address or conversation ; and vigour, animation, a tone of decision, a rapidity of utterance, spoke the full posses- sion of every feeling and every faculty : and t found her in the midst of occupations and pursuits, which might startle the in- dustry of youth to undertake or to accomplish. When I entered her apartment she was painting flowers in a book, which she called her <« herbier sacre" [sacred herbal], in which she was copying all the plants mentioned in the Bible. She showed me another volume, which she had just finished, full of trophies and tasteful devices, which she called Vherbier de re- connaissance [the herbal of gratitude]. <* But I have but little time for such idle amusements," said Madame de Genlis. She "Was, in fact, then engaged in abridging some ponderous tomes of French Mem ores, in writing her « Journal de la Jeunesse" [Journal of Youth,] and in preparing for the press her new novel " Les Battuecas" which she has since given to the world. Her harp was nevertheless well strung and tuned ; her piano- forte covered with new music, and when 1 gave her her lute, to play for me, it did not require the drawing up a single string. All was energy and occupation. — It was impossible not to make some observation on such versatility of talent and variety of pursuits. — « Oh ! this is nothing" (said Madame de Genlis) « what I pride myself on, is knowing twenty trades, by all of which I could earn my bread." She conversed with great earnestness, but with great simpli- city, without effort, as without pretension, and laughed heartily at some anecdotes [ repeated to her, which were then in circula- tion in Paris. — When 1 mentioned the story of her receiving a mysterious pupil, who came veiled to her apartments, whose face had never been seen even by her attendants, she rvplied — that there was no mystery in the case ; that she recie\ed two or three unfortunate young people, who had no means of support- ing themselves; and to whom she taught the harp, as a mode of Subsistence, as s!ie had done, to Casemir, now one of the finest harpist«\s in the world. — I could not help telling her, I believed she had a passion for educating; she replied, «< au contraire, cela m'a toujours ennuye" [on the contrary it always wearied me,] and added, it was the only m ans now left her of doing good. I had been told in Paris, mat Madame de Genlis had carried on a secret correspondence with the late Emperor ; which is an- I6g EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. other term for the higher walks of espionage, I ventured one day to talk to her on the subject; ami she entered on it with great promptitude and frankness. *» Buonaparte," she said, « was extremely liberal to literary people — a pension of four thousand francs, per annum, was assigned to all authors and gens-de-lettres, whose circumstances admitted of their acceptance of such a gratuity. — He gave me, however, six thousand, and a suite of apartments at the Arsenal, As I had never spoken to him, never had any intercourse with him whatever, I was struck with this liberality, and asked him, what he expected i should do to merit it ? When the question was put to Napoleon, he replied carelessly, ♦* Let Madame de Genlis write me a letter once a month." As no subject was dictated, 1 chose literature, but I always abstained from politics?" Madame de Genlis added, that though she never had any interview with him, yet on her recommendation, he had pensioned five indigent persons of literary talent. One of these persons was a mere UUraire de societe [literary amateur], and it was suggested to Buonaparte, that if he grant- ed four thousand francs per annum to a man, who was not an author, and was therefore destitute of the usual claims on such stated bounty, that there were two friendsHU that person, equally clever, literary, and distressed, who would expect, or at least ask, for a similar provision. « Eh Men" (said Buonaparte,) « cela fait douze mille francs" [Well (said Buonaparte) that makes twelve thousand francs] ; ami he ordered the other two distress- ed literati to be put on the annuity list with their friend. It was said to me in Paris, that Madame de Genlis had retir- ed to the Carmelites, " desabusee des vanites de ce monde, et des chimeres de m la celebrite" [undeceived as to the vanities of the world and the chimeras of celebrity], I know not how far this may be true, but it is certain, that if she has done with the va- nities of the world, she has by no means relinquished its refine- ments and tastes, even amidst the coldness and austerity of a convent. Her apartment might have answered equally for the oratory of a saint, or the boudoir of a coquette. Her blue silk draperies, her alabaster vases, her fresh-gathered flowers, and elegant Grecian couch, breathed still of this world: but the large crucifix, that image of suffering and humility, which hung at the foot of that couch ; the devotional books that lay mingled witli lay works, and the chaplets and rosaries which hung sus- pended from a wall, where her lute vibrated, and which her paintings adorned, indicated a vocation before which genius lay subdued, and the graces forgotten. On showing me the pious relics which enriched this prett) cell, Madame de Genlis point- ed out to my admiration a Christ on the Cross, which hung at the EMINENT* AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. ±$J foot of her bed. It was so celebrated for the beauty of its exe- cution, that the Pope had sent for it, when he was in Paris, and blessed it, ere he returned the sad and holy representation to its distinguished owner. And she naturally placed great value on a beautiful rosary, which had belonged to Fenelon ; and which that elegant saint had worn and prayed over, till a few days be- fore his death. If years could be taken into the account of a lady's age, Ma- dame de Genlis must be far advanced in life ; for it is some time ba< k since the Baron de Grimm speaks of her, as a demoiselle de qualite, quin'etait connue alors, que par sajolie voix, et son talent pour la harpe" [a young lady of quality who was then only dis- tinguished for her fine voice, and her talent for the harp]. In- firmity, however, seems to have spared her slight and emaciated figure ; her dark eye is still full of life and expression ; and though her features are thin, worn and sharply marked, and her complexion wan and pale, the traces of age are neither deep nor multiplied. If her person is infinitely less fresh and vigorous than her mind, still it exhibits few of those sad impressions, which time slowlv and imperceptibly prints, with his withering and silent touch, on the firmest muscle and the brightest bloom. My visits to the cloisters of the Carmelites were as frequent as the duties of Madame de Genlis, and my own engagements in the world would admit: and if I met this distinguished and high- ly endowed person with the high-beating throb of expectation, I parted from her with admiration and regret.* Literary works, even of the greatest merit, do not always ex- tend their interest to their author. There are many whom we are pleased to read, and yet whom we are not desirous to know. Books are so rarely the transcript of those who compose them, that a few experiments soon teach us the probability of disap- pointment, in a personal intercourse with their authors. To this observation, however, there are many delightful ex- ceptions. Who, that ever read Adele de Senange* or Eugenie et Mathilde, and did not wish to know Madame de Souza? Who, that had passed an hour in the society of Madame de Souza, and * With all Madame de Genlis' works on education full in my memory, I naturally occasionally reverted to those high characters, for whose use they had been chiefly composed. Oi Mademoiselle d'Orleans, she spoke with ma- ternal affection ; as one in whom every feminine excellence was united. Of the Duke d'Orleans, she spoke not only with admiration, but with evident pride,— and well she might! A character, which has carried off the esteem of every country he has honoured by his residence ; and whose intrinsic vir- tues, superior to the influence of all faction and party, have obtained the uni- versal suffrages and respect of his own, reflects a splendid credit on her, whose precepts had so great a share in his education. "But," said Madame de Genlis, " his inherent dispositions were so happy, that he owed almost every thing to nature-'* £6g EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. did not hastily recur to Mete de Senange, and Eugenie et Mathil- de? The works and the author are, indeed, fair nd lovih re- flections of each other. Whatever is admirable in tiie pa, es of the former, will be found equally fascinating in the manner and conversation of the latter. Madame de Souza is not only "known to fame ," as the author of some of the prettiest novels in the French language; she had long made a higiier claim to distinction, as the devoted and incomparable mother of one of the bravest and most gallant young otlicers in the armies of Eu- rope, General the Count Flahaut.* Educated chiefly in England, by his mother, who, it seems, in him only, has "Liv'd, and breath'd, and had her being !" the young Flahaut followed the profession of arms, in which his father died; and by his singular valour, romantic intrepidity, and military talent, attained, without influence or i uteres t, to the rank of chef a" escadron du 13 e regiment de chasseurs- a cheval. It was his merits that forced themselves on the observation of Buonaparte, whose notice he had not courted, and was some time without attracting; and having been made colonel aide-de- camp to the Prince de Neufchatel, bis conduct at the battle of Moiiilow procured him a brilliant and rapid promotion. Sig- nalised at the battles of Dresden, Leipsick, ami Hanau, his va- lour in the field of Waterloo was followed by other strenuous efforts, in favour of the falling monarch, to whom he had attach- ed himself with a devotion, which had its origin in gratitude, and generously grew with the misfortunes of its objects. With tins excellent son and gallant soldier, the existence of Madame de Souza has become so identified, that it would be dif- ficult to mention the one, without alluding to the other. And when I asked her, which was the work of all her productions which she herself the most esteemed, she replied, ** here at least is the passage that came warmest from the heart!" She turned over the pages of "Eugenie et Jlathilde" and pointed to that affecting paragraph, which begins «• Fauvres Meres." Monsieur Moreau de La Sarthej was our Cicerone to the hotel de Souza, and he is himself a very interesting link in the chain of association, which often leads back the imagination to hours * Many years after the death of General Flahaut, Madame de F- married the Portuguese ambassador, M. de Souza; a gentleman, whose conversation is marked by very extensive reading and high acquirement. f Monsieur le Docteur Moreau de la Sarthe, professor of medical literature in lh%Bcole de la Medicine, is an accomplished and elegant scholar, and one of the mosv distinguished physicians in Paris- He is author of a well-known work. " on Women" EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. £(5g so pleasant to recollec*. Madame dp Souza'is still a very love- ly woman, — and her works, though popular throughout Europe, and translated into most modern languages, must always luse something of their charm, by being transferred into any lan- guage from her own. In her exquisite little novel of "Eugenie et Mathilde," — there is a delicacy of perception, a tenderness and depth of feeling which is, or ought to be, the true characteristic of a woman's ge- nius; and the manner in which she has traced the subtleties, the prejudices, the illusive hopes and w 7 ell sustained sufferings of the French emigrants, in the Memoirs of the Family of the Comte de Revel, is directed by a spirit at once philosophical and just, and drawn with a fidelity which experience as well as observation must have inspired and guided. — «* I wrote Adele de SSnange*" (said Madame de Souza to me) « merely for my own amusement, and to distract my mind from the horrors of the early part of the revolution, in which I was then plunged." — Adele de Senange, with all its merits, is in fact evidently the work of a very young person, it is, however, 1 think (in France at least) the most popular of any of Madame de Souza's productions.^ The writ- ings of Madame de Souza may perhaps take their place on the same shelf with those of Madame Cottin. «• Je m 9 occupe actuellement" (says Voltaire, in one of his letters to D'Alembert,) "je m'occupe actuellement de la conversion de Monsieur de Villette; a qui fai fait fair e le meilleur mnrche, qu'on puisse jamais conclure; — it a Spouse dans ma chaumiere de Femey 9 une file, qui n'a pas un sous, et dont la dot est, de la vertu, de la philosophie, de la candeur, de la sensibilite, une extreme beautS, Cair le plus noble, et tout d dix-nenf ans" [I am seriously occupie I with the conversion of Monsieur de Villette; and he has turned out better than could possibly have been supposed ; — he has mar- ried in my cottage of Ferney, a^young girl who has not a far- thing, and whose portion is virtue, philosophy, candour, sensi- * Many ladies of distinguished literary merit now reside in Paris. Among others, Madame Elizabeth de Bon, (author of " Les Aveux de VAmitie','") to whose polite attentions I stand much indebted- Mademoiselle de T , air. hor of Marie Balden, and Cecile de Renneville. Mademoiselle Alexandrine Gottis, who has lately produced " Frangois Premier" and Madame de Chd- teaubriand. While the translation of many of our best literary productions, and those of Germany, are given by women, I owe too much to the Viscoun- tess de ltoulz, for her beautiful translation of one of my earliest and most im- perfect productions, the Novice of St. Dominick, hot to avail myself of this opportunity to offer my acknowledgments. The celebrated Helen Marie Wil- liams has long been a resident in Paris, surrounded by a large circle of distin- guished friends, who meet every Sunday evening at her hotel. At one of the soirees of Miss Williams, I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Monsieur Marron, whom Buonaparte styled the " Protestant Pope" and who is esteemed the most eminent Hugonot preacher in France. PART II. Z 170 EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. bility, extreme beauty, a noble deportment, and whose age is only nineteen.] It would be difficult to say, with what lively pleasure I receiv- ed a visit from the original of this splendid picture, and heard the name of the Marchioness de Villette, the celebrated «♦ belle et bonne" [fair and good], of Voltaire, announced in my apartments. The passing flight of many years, the loss of a lovely daughter, and other cin uinstanres unfavourable to the preservation of per- sonal charms, may have somewhat lessened the claims of Ma- dame de Villette to that extreme beaute, which procured her the first part of the pretty sobriquet [nickname], given her by Vol- taire. But to judge by her gratuitous kindness and attentions to myself, during my residence in Paris, she still maintains un- disputed claims to the latter epithet. Her perfect and inexhaus- tible good nature provided me with many sources of high enjoy- ment to which her numerous and curious recollections of her il- lustrious adopted father most materially contributed. The mind, the memory, the conversation, the very house of Madame de Villette, is full of Voltaire. He has become the rul- ing thought of her existence ; and to revere his genius, and to admire his works, is a short and sore passage to her heart. Though born of a noble family, she proudly boasts herself among the number of those, whom his beneficence rescued from obs urity, and rendered completely happy. The family de Vari- court, of the Paysde Gex, near Geneva, had early distinguished itself in the French armies ; and seven younger brothers of Mon- sieur de Varicourt, the father of Madame de Villette, had enter- ed the French service, and obtained the order of St. Louis. The fate of her own and youngest brother, has long become an inte- resting and historical fact. Mons. de Varicourt had some time held a commission in the garde royale, under Louis XVI. He was on duty at the palace of Versailles, on the fatal 6th of Octo- ber, when the lives of the royal family were near falling a sacri- fice to (he infuriate rage of the Parisian mob. As the sanguinary multitude were rushing up the grand stairs of the palace, the young de Varicourt threw himself before the door of the Queen's apartment, and hopeless of any effectual resistance, suffered him- self to be cut to pieces, while, by a desperate sacrifice, he afforded time to the Queen to escape. His post and his life were thus onlv gallantly resigned together. Mademoiselle de Varicourt was one of the very large family of a high born hut indigent gentleman, the friend and neighbour of Voltaire, who adopted "belle et bonne" shortly after he had so happily provided for 'he great grand-niece of Corncillc. Some time after this adoption, he married Mademoiselle de Varicourt to his devoted, witty, but somewhat roue friend, the EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. \y± Marquis de Villette, in whose arms and hotrl Voltaire died,* and who (though of the ancient noblesse, and extreme!)' rich,) distin- guished himself among the constitutionalists of the early part of the revolution. From the moment Madame de Villette arrived in Paris, her house became one of the most distinguished for its brilliant assem-, blage of talent and rank ; and the hotel de Villette is still pointed out to the stranger's observation, among the classical and me- morable topography of that great capital. The apartment habitually occupied by Madame de Villette, is a sort of reliquary, dedicated t«> the remains of Voltaire. Her book-cases are filled vvith his works ; her secretaire with his MS. letters. The arm chair, which he always occupied, stands by her hearth. On the reading and writing desk, ingeniously fastened to one of its arms, he wrote for the last twenty years of his life. TheSevre bust, to which he alludesf in his letters to D'AIembert, and which was originally done for the King of Prussia* lies on her chimney-piece, in one cornerof the room, stands the model of the celebrated statue, by Pigal ;% and his picture, by Largil- * " C'est dans I* hotel de M. le Marquis de Villette, quHl est discendu avec Ma- dame Denis, pour ne point se sepurer de Belle et JBonne, qu'il cherit avec une ten- dresse extreme. Ily occupe un cabinet qui ressemble beaucoup plus au boudoir de la volupte', qiCau sanctuaire des Muses'' Memoires Historiques, par le Baron de Grimm. [It is in the hotel of the Marquis de Villette, where he h^s come with Ma- dam Denis, that he may not be separated from Fair and Good, whom he loves with extreme teudejness. He there occupies a cabine |, which rather resem- bles the boudoir of a voluptuary, than ;he sanctuary of the Muses. Historical Memoirs, by the Baron de Grimm.] On the death of her husband, the marchioness gave up this hotel, and has since resided partly at her hotel in 'he Rue Vungirard, and at the chateau de Villette, a few leagues from Paris. She has now, however, resigned the chateau to ihe present marquis, her only child, who is just come of age, and inherits a great paat of the family property, a portion having been lost in the re- volution. f " Le vieux magot que Pigal vent sadpter, sous vos auspices, n'est point du tout sculptable : Dites je vous en pJr C qid defendit « Voltaire de revenir d Paris avi.it £te leve" [whether the order had been revoked which forbade Voltaire to return to Paris]. It was the in- fluence and intercession of the Comtesse Jules de Polignac, and even of the queen herself, which prevented this decree of exile being renewed against the author of the Henriade, at eighty-four. After the death of Voltaire while the people of France were paying almost divine honours 'o tbifl man, 'he. Government and Church refused him burial in consecrated ground; and the archbishop and curates of Pans denied an asylum even U> his shes. The theatres were ordered not to play any of his tragedies — the journalists not to sp ak of his death — and ihe professors of the universities not to teach his verses to the students! Where are the names and the deeds of those, uho issued these barbarous decrees ? and where is the genius, where the memory of h,m, against whom they were fulminated? They arc now rising with time, and brightening 'he horizon of posterity— to Btnk and be forgo'ten only, with the language awl the nation, which they improved, enlightened, and glorified. With respect to the accounts, fabricated in the works of the Abbe B**, EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. 173 dress in which he appeared at the theatre, the night when he was crowned by a wreath of laurel placed on the brow .f his statue, by Clairon, amidst the applause and shouts of the assembled spectators. 1 have often been permitted to examine all these relics in de- tail, and not only to read, but to ropy some of Voltaire's manu- script letters, which had not been printed;* and rhe pleasure I obviously derived from this interesting privilege, induced Ma- dame de Villette to make a sort of Voltaire commemoration, at winch she not only displayed all her treasures, but invited al- most all who still remained of the friends and cotemporaries of the patriarch of Ferney. This entertainment (a dejeuner a la fourchette [a fork-breakfast]) was, indeed, thoroughly Voltairian? and by the enemies of Voltaire, of his death-bed scene, Madame de Villette adds her testimony to many others given of their malignity and falsehood. She never left him for a moment- " To the last," she says, " all breathed the beneficence and kindness of his character ; and, except the little peevishness which he exhibited to the Cure of St. Sulpice, when he beckoned him away; and said, " Luissez moi mourir tranquWe" [Let me die quietly], all was tranquillity, and peace, and resignation." * Among the number of unpublished letters, the two following struck me to be curious ; the first as a picture of Voltaire's domestic character and per- fect bonhommie ; — the other, as being (Madame de Villette believes,) the last he -wrote; for she was not certain, whether it preceded or followed the cele- brated billet to the Comte Lally Tollendal. No. I. — Lettre au Sieur Carbo, Intendant de Monsieur de Voltaire. u Je recommande instammtrnt au Sieur Carbo, de mettre ordre au menage de Phomme Mayen, qui travaille pour moi au Chattelar, en menuisier. — 11 lui rer ommandera de ne plus s'enivrer, de ne point battre sa femme, et de travail- ler. — II recevra de la justice, s'il ne fait pas son devoir — II ira a. son loisr a l'hermitage. — 11 visitera les champs et les pres du domaine. II verra ce qu'on en peut faire, en quel etat sont les moutons, et il me rendra compte de tout. Je lui serai tras oblige." Voltaire. [Letter to the Sieur Carbo, Steward of Monsieur de Voltaire. I recommend to the Sieur Carbo, immediately to send an order to the man Mayen, that he may work for me at Chatelar, as a joiner. — To recommend to him not to ^et drunk, not to beat his wife, and to work industriously — It will be the worse for him, if he does not do his duty. — He may go at his leis'u-e to the hermitage. — He must visit the fields and the pastures of the estate — He must see what is to be done, and in what condition are the sheep, and send me an account of all. — I shall be much obliged to him. Voltaire.] No. U.—-A Madame St. Julien. A Paris, 1776. " Je sais bien ce que je desire ; mais je ne sais pas ce que je ferai ; je souffre dela tete aux pieds. — II n'y a q,e mon cceur de sain — Et cela n'est bon a rien." Voltaire. [To Madame St. Julien. I know well what I wish ; but I know not what I shall do ; I suffer from head to foot — My heart alone is healthy— and that is good for nothing. Voltaire ] IJ% EMINENT AND LITERARY CHARACTERS. and perhaps, a little French. The books, the wardrobes, the manuscripts of Voltaire, were all displayed ; inrense was burned in an encerisoir [censer] before his bust, w Inch was crowned hy the identical wreath, which he had modestly withdrawn from his own brow, when the admirati< n of a whole people had placed it there : and the sublime ode addressed to him by Chenier, was read alou and heard with an emotion, to be felt and to be un- derstood alone by this enthusiastic and ardent people; to whom genius is but another word for divinity ; and who, next to the great spirit, venerate those whom he has most informed with the rays of his own intelligence. Almost every object in the apartment where this « high solem- nity 99 was celebrated, produced, as it attracted attention, some anecdote relative to him, with whose memory it was connected. In placing the laurel wreath on the bust of Voltaire, Madame de Villette observed, ** When this wreath was offered to him at the theatre, he modestly laid it aside, whispering me, *< Je meurs sur les roses 99 [I am dying, on roses]. The audience, however, all stood up, and cried to me, »» Ramassex-le* ramassez>-le 99 [take it up, take it up], and I again placed it on his brow, amidst a thunder of applause." In his beautiful picture by Largilliere, done in his twenty- fourth year, it is extremely obvious that the world had not then passed over a countenance, in which no trait of the caustic sati- rist of future times is visible. There is a playfulness, a finesse [slyness] in the fine dark eyes, which resembles the espieglerie [vivacity] of arch boyhood; but the sharp lines, the abrupt an- gles, which mark the picture of his riper manhood, and give almost a wizard intetligence to his features, are no where to be found in this semblance of unworn, untried, and confiding youth. " Voltaire," said the Marquis de * * *, one o# his friends, who was present, « Voltaire lost sight of that picture a few years after it was done, and recovered it a few weeks before his death. It was painted for the object of one of his earliest and most ardent passions, the beautiful Phillis, afterwards Madame de Gouverne, to whom he addressed one of the prettiest epistles that ever was written, known under the name of " Des Vous et ties fu**? [You and Thou]. * A Madame de G- Phillis, qu'cst devenu ce terns, Oil, dans un fiacre promenee, Sans laquais, sans ajwstemens, De tes graces seules ornee, Contente d'un manvais souper, Que t'u chan^eais en ambrosie, Tn te livr.iis, dans ta f'olie, A l'amant heureux et trompej EMINENT AND I**ERARY CHARACTERS. 1J5 Sixty years after the period in which he had sat for, and pre- sented her with that portrait, he learnt, on his arrival in Paris, that Phillis was stilt living. He immediately begged permission to wait (Mi her; but v\hen they met, they hoth remained for a considerable time speechless; and Phillis, once " de ses graces miles ornee" [adorned only by her graces], was now, at the age of ninety, a witch of Endor! In contemplating the ravages, which time bad made on the wrinkled visage of her lover, she remained almost insensible to the change which had taken place in her own person. When he had recovered from his first emotion, the eyes of Voltaire rested on the picture of a \oung and handsome man, to which the looks of Madame de G also occasionally rerurred *« It is the picture of the 3 oung Arouet," said Madamede G , »< who has immortalised me in his poem of the Vbus et Tu." Voltaire in- stantly begged this picture for Madame de Villette. — ♦« It can- not much longer be mine," said Madame de G ; and the picture was sent that evening to the dear « belle et bonne." — ** I remember," said the Marquis de * * *, <* having seen Voltaire in the evening of the day he had paid this melancholy visit. It had" considerably affected his spirits. — ** It was getting on the other side of the t Styx" he observed; but added, >\ ith a faint smile, « cependant nous n 9 avons pas beaucoup radote" [however we have not doted much]. As a pendant to this little anecdote of the picture of Largilliere, the Abbe de * * * related one of a more humorous cast of the miniature, which Voltaire had presented to Madame de Chate- let, and which was only rendered visible to the fair possessor by a spring, of which she alone had the secret. On the death of Madame de Chatelet, and in the first burst of his grief, Voltaire had an interview with the widowed husband, extremely affecting to both parties. Voltaire, on this occasion, Qui t'avait consacre" sa vie ? Le cic'l ne te donnait aiors, Pour tout rang et pom* tons tresors, Que les agr£mens de ton age, Un roeur tendre, un esprit volage, Un sem d'albarre, et des beaux yeux. Avec tant d'att raits precieux, H€las! qui n'eut e'e" triponne ? T<> le fus, oi jet gracieux, Et que l'amour me le pa-donne, Tu sais que je t'en aimais mieux. Ah ! Madame, que votre vie, D'honneurs aujourd'hui si remplie, DiffeVe de ces doux instants ! Ce large Suisse, ache-eux blancs, Qui meurt sans cease, a votre porte, Phillis, est l'image du terns, &c< he. &x. 176 EMINENT AND LITEH^RY CHARACTERS. ventured to beg bark the ring, which Madame de Chatelet had always worn. «* You are not ignorant of the friendship which, existed between us," said the afflicted lover to the afflicted hus- band ; *< and that rin^, so constantly worn, you are perhaps already aware, contains my picture." « 1 have witnessed your friendship," said the Marquis de Chatelet, *< and 1 know the ring you allude to. As you observe, she never parted with it; hut, to confess the truth, it is not your picture that it contains ! — that picture was instantly replaced by mine/" The tears of Voltaire ceased to flow! lie demanded proofs of this treason to friendship and to love. The ring was sent for, the secret spring was touched, the enamel flew open, and the picture of the young, the chivalresque St. Lambert stood confessed, in all the imposing superiority of youth and military glory. The philosopher closed the spring, and returned the ring to the mourning husband.* This little commemoration of Voltaire was among the most interesting and amusing morning entertainments I enjoyed at Paris: it united, by very intimate links, the present with the past : it exhibited the French character in one of its happiest as- pects, exquisitely alive to the supremacy of genius, devotedly true to the claims, as to the recollection of friendship ; highly endowed with a brilliant gaiety and profound sensibility ; foil of national glory for national worth ; and by its illumination and re- finement, its love of letters and of arts, wanting only a free government, to render the country that produces and combines such Itappy elements of moral and physical existence, not, I trust, the greatest, but one of the greatest nations of the earth. * The lovely Madame Jerome Buonaparte (Mrs. Patterson) and ourselves, were the only foreigners present at (his literary dejeuner [breakfast] The so- ciety of Paris, by its variety, frequently presents the most singular combina- tions and unlooked-ftitution into disrepute. But notwithstanding every effort, the functions which remain for the jurymen to execute are still discharged with great probity, humanity, and patriotism. During the progress of the revolution, the people gradually formed themselves to their duties as citizens. The code criminel directs, that none shall be appointed to administrative and judicial functions, but such as have satisfactorily discharged their duties as jurymen. A report was also directed to be made annually to the emperor of the manner in which this branch of administiation was conducted; an enactment apparently calculated to purify the justice of the country, but too probably concealing the atriere pensee of imperial interference with the juryman in the discharge of his office. * See the work against juries of Mods. Gach, president of the tribunal de premiere instance, in the department of Lol, cum multis aliis. With every deduction to be made for the oppressions of the latter times, the French criminal jurisprudence remains infinitely superior to that of the ancient regime. The early revolutionists, whose theo- retical notions of government approached nearly to those of the British constitution, well understood the defects of the old law; and thus commenced the new edifice of their jurisprudence upon such sound bases, that it has survived the storms of political change, with but little comparative injury, affording ample justificatian of the views and principles of those who commenced the struggle for liberty. It is still however objected, that the judges, influenced by old prejudices, continue to harrass the prisoner with captious ques- tions, tending to entrap him into self-inculpations. But a few years* experience, and the succession of a fresh generation, will beget a different sentiment in the bench, and direct its efforts to the pri- mary objects of all trial — the protection ©f innocence. While any portion of ihe benefits, thus obtained, are secured to the nation, whatever may be the dynasty or government which time and circumstances may impose upon it, France will still be a gain- er by the revolution, and posterity will lookback with gratitude on the courage, devotion and illumination of the national assembly, notwithstanding every calamity which uncontrollable circumstances, and the opposition of enemies, have entailed on their efforts. It was proposed to Lord Erskine, during the peace of Amiens, to write a comparative essay on the jurisprudence of England and France; and every friend of his species must regret that a man so gifted for the task, so enlightened in principle, and so qualified to disseminate truth by the beauties of style, should have neglected the opportunity of benefitting both nations, and of exalting his own reputation. It is not now too late; nor was there ever a period when eloquence, like his, was more wanting to illustrate first principles, and to recall the people to a sense of those blessings, which free- dom infuses even into the minutest details of daily transactions. The code civil, or, as it has been called, the code Napoleon, is a digest of all the laws, respecting civil procedure, which have been passed since the revolution, and forms the standing law of the land. In simplicity and equity, it more than rivals the laws of most other European states and whenever the arms of France have carried their jurisprudence into foreign nations, the inhabitants have very uniformly considered themselves as benefitted by the change. Besides the alterations already mentioned, Napoleon re-establish- ed the tribunals of the arrondissement, and created superior courts of appeal, thus forming two degrees of jurisdiction, besides the ju.^es de paix,and the courde cassation [The justices of peace and the court of cassation.] He re-established also those fiscal tribu- nals to try smuggling offences, and other matters relative to the perception of the customs, which were among the worst abuses of the old regime. In the royal charter of June 4th, 1814, which Louis XVIII substituted for the more liberal provisions already voted by the XX APPENDIX I. senate, it has been contrived to slide* the infamous principle of se- cret deliberations, which has recently been applied in two proces- ses, instituted against persons accused of having provoked the spo- liation of the present proprietors of ci-devant church property. Napoleon has been justly accused of making too frequent an use of that convenient instrument of judicial violence, the council ofwarj, but since the second restoration, it has been still more frequently employed; and the regulations respectingthe equitable choice of offi- cers have been altogether neglected. Another scandal also has been introduced by the Bourbons, in multiplying the charges brought against the accused; and on their conviction, upon those of the least importance, of inflicting the punishment awarded to the most hein- ous. This practice was noticed in the chamber of peers by the young Due de Brogiic; one of the best and most distinguished pa- triots of France. In proof of this abuse, may be quoted the case of Marshal Ney, who was accused of having conspired with Buona- parte, — of having solicited a command, in order to betray the king, of having demanded supplies of money, which he stoic, and of sav- ing persuaded the army to go over to the emperor. All these charges were fully and entirely rebutted. The only offence brought home to him WoS that of having yielded to example, and of having been drawn over in the general movement; and for this offence he was condemned to death. In like manner La Valette was accused of conspiracy, and cor- respondence with Napoleon: and was condemned for having too soon taken possession of the post-office; for a letter written after that epoch; and for a signature, solicited from, him by one of the kind's ministers, Monsieur Ferrand; which signature they had the cruelty to uv%e against him, as matter of crimination. It is a task at once melancholy and revolting, to recapitulate these numerous ana aggravated injustices, and to dive into the details of error and mistaken policy, which have signalized the re-establish- ment of the old dynasty. But the tale is instructive, and its moral cannot be placed too frequently nor too prominently before the eyes of that nation, which has so powerfully contributed towards placing France in its present forced and unnatural position. It has been too much, and too long, the habit of Englishmen, to look with an envious and jealous eye upon the prosperity of foreign nations, to consider every advance made by others, in commerce or in civili- zation, as so much lost to ourselves; and blood and treasure have been profusely shed, in support of this churlish and most unphi- losophical principle. As a commercial nation, our welfare is inti- * Art. 64. f It is reputable to the French character, that even with this engine it was not possible to bring Morcau to the sca/lbld; and that the utmost extent ot imperial influence produced only a sentence of two years* imprisonment. It is said, however, that the judge, Le Courbc, was subsequently displaced for non-compliance in the instance of this trie ! raately connected with the prosperity of other nations; for the spirit of trade is necessarily ceciprocity; and as a free nation, we are in- comroverubly interested in the universal diffusion of the principles and practice of liberty. Every link that is added to the chain of despotism in Europe shakes the security of our own constitution; and both directly, and indirectly, endangers the permanence of our liberties. It was against the tyrannical government of Louis XIV, against his interference with our infant revolution, that the long wars of queen Anne were undertaken and prosecuted: and nothing but the most gross delusion, or the most perfect indifference to the interests of liberty, can have induced that complacency, with which the n?.lion at present regards the revival of principles so inimical to human happiness, and of practices so dangerous to its own inde- pendence The re-establishment of prevotal courts by Louis XVIII, may be considered as embracing all that was objectionable in the old government, and as placing the seal of tyranny upon criminal pro- ceedings. Whatever the despotism of Napoleon had inflicted upon the judicature, whatever the tremendous system of police had con- trived, was msuflftcie«t for the purposes of the new authorities. The sp-c . f the emperor were merciful and just, in corn- par: ic prevotal mode of trial; and the manner in which it was introduced into the charte is no less singular than cruel. " Nui ik pourra etre distrait de ses juges naturels," says this in- strument. "II ne pourra en consequence etres cree des commis- a et des tribunaux extraordinaires." [No one can be deprived of his proper judges — in consequence, extraordinary commissions and tribunals cannot be created.] Who would expect after this to read, " ne sont pas comprises sous cette denomination les juris- dictions prevotales, si leur retablissement est juge necessaire!" [Under this denomination the prevotal jurisdictions are not included, if their re-establishment is judged necessary.] The establishment of such arbitrary courts being the express object, to guard against which the article itself was framed, the whole paragraph is a mock- ery. Weak and desperate indeed, must be the condition of that government, for whose protection the regular courts of justice are really insufficient, and whose measures require to be propped by violence, and shadowed by concealment. And it may fairly be taken as the certain symptom of a foregone corruption, and perversity in the administration of public affairs, when such concessions can be deemed necessary for the security of the people. The law of habeas corpus had been established by the constitu- ent assembly, Avith as much precision as in America or in Britain. It was suspended during the reign of terror, but was restored by the constitution of the year III, and continued to form a part of the consular and imperial regime.* * See code d ? Insrrucrion Criminelle. Page 134. Chap. hi. The co-ex- istence of such a code, and of such a police, is a convincing proof of the \m- XX11 APPENBIX I. With this institution, it is difficult to conciliate the system of police, which has been the subject of so much, and of such just obioquy. At the outset of the revolution, the constituent assembly had committees of inquiry, to detect conspirators against the new order of things, but they bounded their efforts to bringing offenders before the regular courts; and of these, one individual only was condemned to death. In the reign of terror, arbitrary arrestations, and massacres in prison, were numerous, and have become matter of dreadful history. Similar events were likewise brought about, by the re-action of the royalists. The arrests which took place under the Directory were chiefly of priests and of emigrants; but to this epoch must be referred the nomination of a specific minister of police. The complete establishment of the existing system was the joint work of Napoleon, Fouche, and Savary; and they gave the detestable institution a perfection, by which the royalists have abundantly profitted. To explain the existence of this system un- der any revolutionary dispensation, it must be recollected, that the liberty of the press was first annihilated — that the jurisdiction of juries was abridged— the people deprived of the nomination of mu- nicipal officers — the legislative body of the privilege of discussion; and that the sittings of the senate were secret. Every thing was thus placed at the mercy of a military chief, whose authority rested not so much upon the submission of the people, as upon the con- duct of the sovereigns of Europe; who, by their policy in provoking hostilities, and their subsequent errors in conducting the contest, rendered him at once a necessary and an uncontrollable master of the destinies of the country. Arbitrary arrets were not however acknowledged officially, until the ordinance was made by Napole- on's council of state, respecting prisons and state prisoners. During the epoch of the first restoration, the force of opinion, preliminary caution, and the weakness of the government, gave a greater degree of liberty to the subject, than had been enjoyed during the last part of the reign of Napoleon. But the evident tendency of the court towards arbitrary measures, to a complete counter-revolution, and the re-establishment of every ancient abuse, utterly disgusted the people; and was the real cause of the favourable reception, which the emperor experienced on his return from Elba. The habitual tendency of Napoleon towards despotic measures, was evinced on many occasions, during the celebrated hundred days; but his necessity for popularity, together with the patriotism of the chamber of representatives, imposed a considerable restraint upon tins predilection. Upon the second restoration, the project of police presented by the minister to the chambers, and by them passed into a law, comparable alone with the conventional decree against suspected persons, exceeds every other measure that has yet been ventured for the subjugation of the people. potence of the dead letter of the law, where the vivifying spirit of resistance to oppression does not animate the people. The law of confiscation of property, enacted by the convention, against the emigrants, was abolished by the articles presented by the senate to Louis XVIII, and confirmed by that prince. The emperor on his return refused to admit this new enactment into his " acte constitutionel;" but the chamber of representatives in their first sittings declared that confiscation was abolished; and a law to that effect, proposed on the twenty-first of June, would have passed on the same day, if the news of the battle of Waterloo had not ar- rived, which, with the return of Napoleon, with the intent to dissolve the chambers, and to declare himself dictator, turned the attention of the assembly to other subjects. It is a consolatory reflection for humanity, that where liberty has impressed her footstep, however transient may have been her pas- sage, its print is with difficulty effaced: and however absolutely despotism may have afterwards been established, the forms of jus- tice will remain sufficiently prominent to produce an easy regene- ration, whenever the favourable moment arrives for re-establishing a free constitution. Should such a moment return in France, should the habitual tendencies of the reigning dynasty be compelled to give way before the spirit of the age, a very few alterations would be sufficient to restore the judicial rights, which were vindicated during the first pure moments of the revolution of 1789. All that would be required in a well-organized government, would be to restore to the people the nomination of the juges de jiaix, [justices of peace,] and municipal officers; from the latter of these, to choose by lot three or more persons, destined to form the jury lists; to restore the grand jury; to give the judges a more inde- pendent existence; to soften still further the severity of the penal code; to suppress the place of minister of police; to confirm the liberty of the press; abolish all special commissions; and give the existing laws in favour of personal liberty a free course and execu- tion; and the nation would then enjoy every advantage necessary for an independent people. Notwithstanding that the constituent assembly abolished the venality of judicial offices, another abuse has been suffered to re- main, which might also have been removed with advantage, — the permission, or rather compulsion, of the parties engaged in a law- suit, to visit their judges, and give an explanation of the particulars of their case. This explanation they are in fact seldom able to give; nor would the judge pay much attention to such ex jiarte statements It does not, however, appear that either before or since the revolution, this practice gave rise to pecuniary abuses. How far the influence of female persuasion or of personal vanity might prevail, it is not easy to determine. The judges were often young men; and the most handsome and highly born women that could be procured to solicit, were usually selected to pay the cus- tomary visit; and every person of rank or consequence, connected with the party, left his tickets with the judge, prior to the com- mencement of the trial X*1V APPENDIX I. It has been commonly imagined that in popular assemblies, the members of the bar would have a great advantage; that accustomed to business, and habituated to public speaking, they would naturally wrest all authority from persons of more retired manners. This does not, however, seem to have been the case in France; for though a very great proportion of lawyers found a place in the re- presentative assemblies, they were far from exclusively occupying the tribune. Thus, in the constituent assembly, on the same bench with Thou re, le Chepalier, or Barnave, who were lawyers pf most distinguished eloquence, might be seen Mirabeau, Cler- mont, Tonnere, Cazales, who did not belong to the bar. Indeed, those who were most eminent in the courts, were far from being the most distinguished in the senate; and the same remark has been made of many English barristers, who have obtained seats in the house of commons. Target, who was at the head of the French advocates, figured but as a very secondary character in the consti- tuent assembly; nor does it appear that the legal corps exercised the least undue influence in any of the popular assemblies of the revolution. If, indeed, the peculiar cast of pursuit, and the narrow point of view, to which a lawyer is obliged to confine himself, be considered, it will appear that his habits are the reverse of those requisite for the deliberation of legislative discussion. The inquiry of the law- yer is confined to the consideration of what is established, and his ingenuity is exerted in bending the existing laws to particular in- terests; while the legislator is compelled to extend his view to what ought to be; and from an enlarged and philosophical view of man- kind, to convert the general reasons of the social bond into rules of practical application. Perhaps the most prevailing cause of the incongruity of our English law, is the confiding to lawyers the bu- siness of forming draughts of the proposed acts of parliament; by which, in the subtlety of special pleading, general principles may easily be placed out of sight. At the time of the author's residence in Paris, two changes were spoken of as likely to be made in the French jurisprudence. The one was the abolition of the cour de cassation, the other that of the jury. How far such expectations depended upon the known dislike of the emigrants and court to every thing originating from the re- volution, or how far upon particular reasons arising out of the insti- tutions themselves, it is impossible to say. The cour de cassation, exercising functions formerly discharged by the king's council, may perhaps be considered as an usurpation, tending to curtail the power of the court over judicial proceedings. It seems, therefore, not im- probable that the existence of so obnoxious an institution may be precarious. But no plausible reason can be found for attacking the jury; since the power of appointing special and prevotal courts, to try any ca^e between Uvt king and his subjects, precludes all risk of an eveit (in England so unpleasant to ministerial feelings), the difference of opinion between a jury and an attorney-general Should the abolition of the revolutionary forms of justice be de- creed; and the assize courts exchanged for the ancient institutions, the allied conquerors of France, by imposing the paternal govern- ment on that country, will have done the greatest injury to mankind, that the page of modern history has yet recorded. Still, however, it is to be hoped, that the French ministry have neither the ^ ish nor the courage to attempt so nefarious an act: but that the trial by jury, that plant, indigenous to England, may in foreign countries lose the sickly character of an exotic, and taking firm root in the soil, afford the protection of its shadow to all the nations of civilized Europe. APPENDIX. No. II. OF THE FINANCE OF FRANCE Atf7'S e7reil* Trefrov fa xvXtvfaro. Sic omnia fatis In pejus, mere, ac retro relapsa refcrri. Virgil. The affairs of nations have become so immediately regulated by the condition of their finances, and their power so closely circum- scribed by their fiscal embarrassments, that a short sketch of the present state of France, in this particular, cannot fail to afford man) interesting and important considerations. To the eye of the philo- sopher, there is a necessary and immediate connexion between the fiscal and the moral condition of the people; and the patriot deplores, in an extravagant and lavish expenditure, the decay of industry, the corruption of manners, and the degradation of the physical ener- gies of the nation. In a country where wealth, population, morals, liberty, are but secondary and subaltern considerations to the leading- interest of multiplying taxation, and of wringing the last possible shilling for the support of the government, the financial regulations of foreign states are peculiarly instructive. For though such pic- tures for the most part afford very nearly a reflected image of do- mestic distresses and privations, yet ista commemoratio quasi exfiro- batio est, the bare narration of the facts is their condemnation, and leads to salutary reflection upon the analogous condition of circum- stances at home. The direct taxes, which form the basis of French finance, are four — a land tax, a personal tax, a tax on doors and windows, and a tax upon the exercise of trades and professions. Imfiot Fancier, or Land Tax. When the national assembly abolished the then existing system of taxation, they introduced the land tax, as a permanent source of revenue; and fixed its amount at one fifth of the net produce of the soil. This tax bears upon land of all descriptions, except that which is national property. In its assessment parks and chateaux pay according to the extent of ground they occupy, valued as land of the first quality. Houses are taxed upon the scale of their actual rent, one-fourth being deducted for repairs: but buildings occupied in the storing and manipulation of agricultural produce, pay only upon the value of the land on which they stand. Mills, manufac- tories, and other similar buildings (usines), arc allowed a more con- FINANCE. 3LXVH siderable deduction, and they pay only upon two-thirds of the gross rent, on account of the great wear and tear of their materials. In these cases the ground landlord pays for the soil, and the occupant the assessment on the building. Woods pay according to the value of their annual cuttings, which, in France, are universally regulated by law, for the purpose cf ensuring a constant and perpetual supply of the national fuel. Meadows and vineyards are assessed on their actual products, as are arable land, pasturage, heaths, &c Mines are valued according to the superficies which covers them — a most extraordinary and unequal valuation. For the purpose of collecting this tax, there is constructed in every commune a schedule of the different parcels, into which the land is divided, with their respective values. From this a second roil is formed, in which all the articles in the same section, belong- ing to one proprietor, are thrown together; and the different items, when summed up, determine the proportion in which that proprietor is to be taxed. When the budget is settled for the year, the aggregate produce of the land tax of the whole kingdom is laid at a fixed sum, and this sum is divided among the several departments, according to a permanent scale. The quota, thus ascertained, of each department, is by a similar arrangement divided amongst its several arrondis- sements, and the contingent, of each arrondissement among its com- ponent communes. And lastly, the tax to be levied on the com- mune is assessed upon the different proprietors, according to the net value of the articles, which stand opposite their name in the second schedule. This mode of collection, though at first sight sufficiently equitable, is, in fact, very inadequate to the equal partition of the public bur- den. In order to effect a just distribution, it would be necessary to found it upon a general survey of the kingdom, drawn up with fidelity and skill, and renewed from time to time, to accommodate it to the actual state of the country, which must be constantly changing. Instead of this, the ratio in which the department pays is formed upon the schedules of its arrondissements; these are form- ed from those of their several cummunes; and in forming the com- munal schedules, it is manifest that interest, intrigue, and cunning, must incessantly operate to falsify the returns. In fact, every step of the process is vitiated with the same result, as each commune, arrondissement, and department, is alike interested to shift the bur- den, as much as possible, from themselves, and place it upon others. A still greater source of inequality will be found in the varying na- ture of the soil, and consequent expense of working it, and in the comparative facility of land and water carriage for the transport of its products. The land tax, originally laid at two hundred and forty millions, was then estimated at one-fifth of the net rent of the kingdom. After the cessation of the irregularities, which the fluctuation in the value of the paper currency had produced, in the year between XXV1U APPENDIX II. 1797-8, (an. 6) the fonder tax was laid at two hundred and twenty- eight millions, and in the year 98-9 (an. 7) at two hundred and ten millions, exclusive of ten millions charged on the provinces newly united to the empire. During the reign of Napoleon it was not increased, except by the increase of territory, and by the imposition of what are called " centimes additionnelles," (a per-centage upon the original assessment) which however has eventually amounted to nearly a fifth of the principal. For the year 1816, the principal (on account of the loss of territory) was reduced to oBe hundred and seventy-two millions, with an imposition of centimes, amounting to sixty per cent. Of these centimes, thirty-eight are levied for the extraordinary service of the year, seventeen for communal and de- partmental expenses (analogous to our county rates), and five cen- times are applicable to the incidental expenses and local necessities of the several communes. The whole amount of this tax, exclusive of the expense of collec- tion, &c. is 275,412,200 francs for the ordinary and extraordinary service of the year. Ulmfiot Mobilier^ or Personal Tax. This tax, which was imposed at the same time as the land tax, was designed to be a supplement to it, and was calculated to affect all descriptions of property, exempt from the operation of the other. It consists of four separate portions; the first of which is a species of capitation, founded on an enrolment of all persons having a domi- cile, as well of those who from poverty are exempt, as of those who pay their quota of taxation; and the sum demanded is equal to three days' labour of the whole population. The second portion consists of a tax on male and female servants, according to a graduated scale of numbers: the third is a tax on pleasure horses and mules: and the fourth is a house-tax, in which, the habitation being taken as a ground of presumption, respecting the personal property of the occu- pant, his real property is admitted as a cause of deduction in form- ing the calculation. The extreme uncertainty of thesetaxes, which afford such inaccurate bases for collection, has caused it to be di- minished one half, soon after its first imposition, at which rate (with the exception of the centimes additionnelles) it has remained ever since. Its produce for 1816 is taken at 27,289,000 fr. The mode of assessing this tax is to the last degree complex; and it is calculated to cover great vexations. The sum laid in the budget is first distributed amoug the several departments; and to meet this demand, the average value of three days' labour in each department is multiplied by one-sixth of the total of its population: this sum is first levied as the " cotte personelle," and its produce is deducted from the gross contingent. Next, the actual amount of the sumptuary taxes on servants and horses, chargeable on the department, is levied and deducted, as also are certain other sums stopped on account of taxation from the salaries of public officers; and the remainder is assessed on the rent of houses, subject to deductions on account of the real property of their respective inhabitants. In levying this last portion, the whole remainder is charged upon the whole rental of the houses in the department, and the contingent of each proprietor is fixed, according to a graduated scale, on the rent of his abode. In this scale, houses of less than 150 fr. per annum are exempt; above that value the tax is a per-centage heavier, in proportion as the rent amounts to larger sums: about five francs 10 centimes is the ordinary assessment on 150 francs of rent; but in some departments, that rate being insufficient to complete the contingent, the tax falls a little more severely. With respect to the stoppages on salaries, they must never exceed one-twentieth; nor can the per- sonal taxes exceed one-eighteenth of the sum on which they are charged;, it should seem, however, that they have never reached this proportion. From this scheme it is evident, that the personal tax, though nominally three days' labour upon the whole population, is in fact but one-sixth of the sum, and that the remaining five-sixths is in reality a tax upon houses: in fact, the whole is a species of pro- perty tax, since the exemptions of the poor are made good by the rich. Both the u cotisation personelle," and the duty on houses, are assessed by a board of commissioners in an arbitrary manner, ac- cording to the more or less of " swelling port," which the house- holder exhibits — that is, according to the size of his house, the splen- dor of his equipage, and the number of his domestics. In Paris, and some other great cities, the mode of collection dif- fers; and instead of the operose process above described, the whole contingent is assessed at once upon the houses; the total amount however is determined upon the same principles, as in the rest of the kingdom. The centimes additionnelles for the year 1816 amount to 70; 48 for the extraordinary service of the year; 12 for departmental expenses; 5 to the communes; and 5 to be levied incidentally. The whole amounts to 46,39 1,300 francs, or, without the centimes additionnelles, 27,289,000 francs. Tax on Doors and Windows, This tax also is in some measure a supplement to the land tax, being intended to meet the inequality of its bearing upon the habita- tions of the rich and of the poor. It is levied according to a tariff. In the year 1789, in Paris, fr. cents. Every porte-cochere paid 17 69 Every street door and window on the ground floor, entre sol. 1st and 2nd story 170 For the door and window of a house, not having- more than two opening's -----.--- 57 Every window above the 2nd floor 71 XXX APPENDIX II. This tax, originally fixed at 12,892,000 francs, bears for the year 1816 an addition of 60 cents, additionneiies, which makes the amount 19,662,400 francs. Ulmjiot dea Patentes^ or Tax on Industry. A tax upon industry existed before the revolution; and notwith- standing its impolitic and odious character, it was not rejected from the financial schemes of the national assembly; so slowly do sound notions, respecting even the dearest interests of humanity, find their way among large bodies of men. The amount being fixed by the legislature, the assessment is made partly by a fixed rate, assigned according to a certain classification of tcades, which varies in dif- ferent places, and partly by a proportionate tax, levied on the rent of the buildings occupied in conducting the business, and generally amounting to one-tenth. The sums thus raised seem very arbitrarily and unequally pro- portioned. According to a little pamphlet of instructions, published for the use of the inhabitants of Paris, in the year 1789 (the nearest document I could procure on the subject), the droit fixe [fixed taxj paid by bankers was 500 francs, by coach-masters 200 francs. Pub- lic exhibitions paid one night's performance, calculated upon the capacity of the house and the prices of admission: pedlars paid half the tax of stationary merchants occupied in the same business. The other trades are divided into seven classes, arranged according to a principle, which it would be very difficult to divine. The following is a specimen of some few of the trades included in each class. 1st Class. — Agents, timber merchants, wholesale traders, See. pay 300 fr. 2d Class. — Apothecaries, architects, jewellers, brewers, drapers, clockmakers, &c. pay 100 fr. 3d Class. — Starchmakers, innkeepers, shoemakers, butchers, billiard-table keepers, coach and cartmakers, lace merchants, drug- gists, keepers of hotels garnis [furnished lodging houses] (besides one-fortieth of rent), tennis-court keepers, Sec. pay 75 fr. 4th Class. — Hardware-sellers, accoucheurs, public bath keepers, retail wood merchants, brick-makers, keepers of circulating libra- ries, hatters, surgeons, milliners, curiosity dealers, artificial florists, booksellers (second-hand booksellers one half only), physicians, sur- veyors, Sec. pay 50 fr. 5th Class. — Barometer-makers, boat-builders, stocking weavers (having more than five looms), gold-beaters, lime-burners, chocolate- sellers, musical instrument sellers, Sec. 40 fr. It is unnecessary to give further examples of the extreme oddity and apparent caprice, with which the different trades are arranged; it is sufficient to add, that the sixth class pay 30 fr. the seventh 20 fr. Various modifications have, from time to time, been made in this tax, for the sake of rendering it less oppressive. In some instances the fixed portion is alone paid, in others the proportionate tax is merely lessened. Sometimes also the individual is taxed, according to the schedule of the class below that of his actual occupation. The original assessment of the tax on patents was 15,460,000 francs: it is more than doubled by the imposition of 1 1 5 centimes additionnelles, which raises it to 33,144,400 fr. The sum total of the revenue from the direct taxes then is Francs 2SETT : : : : : *2#ffl ™>™>™ ?= d Widows- - . 19,662,400 j ^^ 374,610,300 From this sum is to be deducted one-fif- } tieth on the score of expenses, non-pro- > 7,492,206 ductiveness, &c. ) And the net produce will be Fr. 367,1 18,094 Throughout the whole part of this taxation, there are manifested a great inexpertness and complexity of system. The money granted not being an estimated but a fixed sum, necessitates its distribution by a fixed ratio among the departments, communes, and sections, which never can be done with any thing like an approximation towards equality or justice; since the value either of land or money cannot be equal in all parts of so large an empire. The personal tax also beingcomposedofa fluctuating and of a fixed quota, must be collected with an enormous delay and expense; and the house is any thing but an adequate representative of the wealth of the inhabitants. The tax on patents, or licenses for carrying on trades, is every way objection- able; the denomination of the trade being no test of the value of the concern, even when modified by the proportional part of the rate, or what may be considered as the shop tax. A working jeweller, in a miserable garret, may earn more than a carpenter, who occupies a spacious work shop A milliner in the Rue Vivienne, the Bond street of Paris, will gain an hundred times more, than if she lived in an obscure quarter of the town; and under these circumstances, if she pays five times more rent for her house in the first than in the second situation, her tax will still be twenty times less than is propor- tionate on her capital and returns. But the principle itself is most ruinous, in as much as it cramps the industry of the poor, and pre- vents them from undertaking enterprizes, which, while they raise the individual, enrich the state. Of the indirect T&xes. The indirect taxesof France are under the control of a director-gene- ral; they are of three different species, monopolies, licenses, and duties. XXXI! APPENDIX II. The manufacture of tobacco is almost the only considerable mo- nopoly at present in the hands of the government; and they would do well to abandon it to the people, as they would infallibly gain more by the simple excise, than they can by its manufacture. A company of individuals, having competition to support, will always produce a cheaper commodity, and consequently create more abundant con- sumption, than the government, w*hose servants have no direct inte- rest in being diligent or economical. Tobacco in France is a detes- table commodity; and though at present more universally used than in England, would meet with a much greater consumption, if the merchant were allowed to make his own market. Under the exist- ing laws, the culture of the plant is made a considerable artricle of agricultural produce; and the importation of foreign tobacco is pro- hibited, except in such quantities as the royal works require, for the manufactory of their superior snuffs, &c. But since the soil and cli- mate of France are not so well adapted to the nature of the plant, as those of America, the result of this prohibition is to deprive the sub- ject the use of a good article, to diminish the total consumption, and to annihilate the importation duty, which could be made a fruitful source of revenue; while the farmer is encouraged to direct his in- dustry in a channel ill-adapted to the soil, and his movements are embarrassed, by a multiplicity of restrictive and penal laws. Before a single plant of tobacco can be raised, an express permis- sion must be obtained from the controller of indirect taxes, and this permission is not given for a smaller quantity than twenty " ares" [about half an English acre.] The contravention of this law is punishable by the destruction of the crop, at the expense of the cultivator, together with a line of fifty francs for every hundred feet of plantation, if in an open country, or of one hundred and fifty francs, when the ground is inclosed with walls. The calculated produce must also be registered. The number of acres to be cultivated for home consumption, is regulated by the prefect of the department, at the suit of the direc- tor-general of indirect taxes; and this quantity is divided among the respective applicants. The growers for exportation are obliged to find sureties of the exportation of the crop, before they can obtain a license, if they are not themselves known to be solvent. The crop also cannot be removed, without a permit. The tendency of these odious restrictions is to increase, beyond measure, the price of the produce, by the increased expense of cul- ture, to multiply temptations to smuggling, to check improvements, and to corrupt morals. The answer to all these objections is, that the monopoly with its licences, permits, &c, produces 35 000,000 fr. Salt is another commodity, whose manufacture is subject to a li- cense, but the abominable abuses of the gabelle no longer subsist, which formerly subverted every principle of morality and of feel- ing, in order to punish the offences of smugglers. This impost is valued at 38,000,000 francs, without reckoning the royal salt-works termed salines a" est, [salt-works of the east,] which are under an especial government. FINANCE. XXXlli Wines, distilled spirits, and beer, or a very considerable arti- cle of revenue, consisting in licenses to fabricate, licenses for sale, and in duties levied at the entrance of large cities, communes, &c. The licenses vary, ac curding to the size of the town or district, in which the business is conducted. The following extract will exhi- bit both the mode and extent of this variation. f In communes of - - - - - 4,000 souls - - - - from 4 to 6,000 from 6 to 10,000 .... from 10 to 15,000 (^ And so on, increasing- to 50,000 - - - - C In certain populous departments, specifically named •? In others, less profitable ----__. ( And in all the rest •• Distillers universally pay ---------.. Wholesale liquor merchants universally pay - - - - ■ Cardmakers are also subject to a license of - ----- Retailers of excised liquors. Brewers. francs. 10 12 20 50 30 20 10 50 50 The duty on the entry of wine in barrels varies in different depart- ments, for which purpose the departments are arranged in a tabu- lar form into four classes. The following is the tariff of the duties on wines, spirits, &c. OS'S — 13 "o T3"o c H g as 00 • .a -3 JS £> S o — .a M °£ li THE HECTOLITRE OF £5 £~ ■°-a POPULATION OF *J WINE IN BARRELS. if COMMUNES. S as a. £ s> e" In Departments of the "3 £_: u 1st 2nd 3d 4th *£ Class Class Class Class X&% U co bcH a In communes containing- — from fr. ct fr. Ct tr.ct fr.ct fr. ct fr.ct fr.ct fr.ct 2 to 4,000 souls 55 70 85 1 1 15 35 1 40 2 10 4— 6,000 85 1 1 15 I 30 1 70 45 2 10 3 15 6—10,000 1 15 1 35 1 55 1 75 2 25 65 2 50 3 80 10—15,000 1 40 1 70 2 2 25 2 85 85 3 40 5 10 15—20,000 2 2 25 > 45 2 80 4 1 15 4 90 7 35 20—30,000 2 80 3 10 3 40 3 80 5 60 1 55 7 10 50 30—50,000 3 70 4 10 4 60 5 10 7 30 2 10 9 30 13 90 50,000 & upwards 4 60 5 1C 5 50 6 3CJ 9 301 2 80 11 80 17 60 ^:s°s acS^- a fe-J It 1.1 "£,"3 3"S 5 t. o ^:r rtS2£S fr.ct 2 80 4 20 5 10 6 80 9 80 14 18 60 23 60 Note. — The hectolitre contains 107,375 Paris pints, each pint containing 4,695 cubic inches. :.f the English pint contain 28,875 cubic inches, the hectolitre is nearly equal to twenty-two gallons. e APPENDIX II. Besides the above duties, spirituous and fermented liquors are subject to an additional duty on each removal, called the droit de circulation, of which the following is the tariff on each hectolitre. Wine in wood. & £ O Q en 0) a '-3 i the De- the border- it only. O o 3 o 00 ~d e bo Q CD 3 c5 m DEPART- 5 to a CQ 0H X! . ° be 3* © » - 2 o MENTS. .2 a o a c O) o a IS **• 4) q §•3 T3 0) O o +3 C Q ri £ *> O °C '5 0) S-H.-J i^ 2 5^ S 1 o s C^ ti GO s Q fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. fr. ct. Of the 1st Class 40 o 6o : } 2nd do. 3rd do. 50 60 75 f 90 ( > 5 20 1 80 2 50 3 20 8 4th do 1 1 20 ' I The droit d'entre is collected at the entrance of towns, along with the duties, on all articles of consumption, which are termed octroi. The perception of internal customs having been abolished at the re- volution, their revival, like that of all other abuses, took place insi- diously. The charitable and other institutions of the several com- munes, which were supported by the communal lands, being left without resources, by the sale of those lands, the people were insti- gated to request the imposition of a duty, or octori, de beneficence. These collections were placed under the government of the com- mune, and applied strictly to local uses. But when the people had been sufficiently tampered with, and this system was carried as far as it would go, the who*e produce was transferred to the controllers of the droits re unis (or, as they are called at present, of the impots indirects), with the exception of a small sum to be applied to the original purpose; and thus they have been converted into a part of the ordinary revenue of the state. Besides the above taxes, the government of the impots indirects have the administration of some others, such as navigation dues, and tolls, stamp duties on various manufactured goods, especially that on playing-cards. The state also enjoys a monopoly of the paper em- ployed in the manufacture of cards. These united duties, exclusive of tobacco and salt, amount to 67,350,000 fr., so that the whole indi- rect taxes amount to 140,350,000 fr. Of the Domaine, and other Revenues of the State. The real property of the state may be divided into that which be- longs to the king, and which is attached to the state in particular. The crown property is of two kinds, ordinary and extraordinary; the first consists of lands attached to the king or his family, under the title of appanage. Of all the princes of the blood, the duke of O -'leans alone has preserved any portion of this description of pro- perty, the fortune of the others being derived from money paid from the civil list, Sec. &c. The king's domain consists of the palaces, chateaux, parks, gardens, and all other grounds and buildings sub- servient to his necessities cr pleasures. The extraordinary domain includes such possessions as the crown holds in trust, accidentally or transitorily, for public purposes, for endowments of institutions, Sec. The domain of the state is real or constructive. The real estate consists of woods, forests, the ground upon which stand fortresses, magazines, canals and nayagable rivers paying duties, public build- ings, mines, worked at the public expense (such are particularly the saltmines called de Test). The woods and forests (under an especial board of controul) pro- duce annually ~0.000,u00 francs. The constructive domain consists of those duties, which are levied upon the administration of justice, the registering of deeds, the suc- cession of property, the preservation of mortgaged property, upon receipts and bills of exchange, and generally upon all stamped paper. The whole amounting to 1 14,000,000 francs. Under this head also are included all establishments of public utility, calculated and ar- ranged tc produce a revenue. The customs or duties on import, export, bonding and transit, to- gether with confiscations and seizures, in the whole form the very small sum of 40,000,000 francs. Under the head of miscellanies in the budget, are included. 1st. The salt mines of the east, which vary from one to one and a half, and two million francs per annum. 2d. The profits of the mint never exceed two or three hundred thousand francs. 3d Tne manufacture of powder and salt-petre, and the exclusive sale of gunpowder for sporting, may be estimated at the same sum. 4th. The administration of post-office, posting, and stagecoach- es, amounts from twelve to fifteen million francs. 5th. The lottery produces twelve million francs. This abomina- ble tax upon industry and morality is constantly in action, in the different cities of the empire; and it is raised from the tears and blood of its deluded victims and their families. It is supposed to act a very principal part among the causes of suicide, a crime re- markably frequent in France. APPENDIX II. The whole ordinary revenue of the state then amounts to, Direct taxes * Twelve centimes additionnelles Domaines and registrations Woods and Forests Salt Miscellanies Indirect taxes Tobacco Customs The ordinary expenses are Which leaves a surplus of Francs. 223,174,420 23,930,520 114,000,000 20,000,000 35,000,000 29,000,000 67,350,000 38,000,000 20,000,000 570,454,940 548,252,520 22,202,420 Among the ordinary expenses may be noticed the following sums: Francs. Debt, annuities, and pensions - - 125,500,000 Civil list - - - 25,000,000 Royal family, including- one million voted March, 1816 9,000,000 Chamber of peers - - - 2,000,000 — Deputies - - 700,000 War department - - - 180,000,000 Marine (and invalids, 1 ,900,000) - - 48,000,000 f Police - - - 1,000,000 Such is then the budget for the year 1816, as far as regards its ordinary expenses and means: it remains to give a short statement of the extraordinary part. The charges of the state, arranged under this head, consist of 140,000,000 francs, of contributions to the allies, the support of one hundred and fifty thousand foreign troops, 1 30,000,000 francs; mo- ney paid to the departments for advances for clothing and equip ment of the foreign soldiers, and money distributed among the dis- tricts which had suffered by the war, 8cc. 8cc. making a total of 290,800,000 francs! "les allies sont vraiment de tres chers amis!" [The allies are really our dear friends ] To meet this enormous ex- pense, which lays an additional burden of more than one-half upon the people, the centimes additionnelles are continued from 1815. * Levied on the fifty centimes additionnelles to the land and property taxes of 181 5, and destined to departmental expenses. f About forty thousand sterling; very little, indeed, for the conduct of so complex a machine. The subaltern agents must be ill-paid, according- to this estimate, even if not very numerous. It may therefore be doubted, whether the system of espionage really be brought very generally into the bosoms of families, as it is pretended. FINANCE. XXXVI First. — 38 centimes additionnelles on the land-tax, Cents, personal and moveable taxes; 10 cents on doors and windows; and 5 cents on patents, deduction being first made for deficiencies . - - 76,283,181 Rxtra Resources. 110 cents on patents, 50 cents on doors and windows, and 10 cents on personal and moveable taxes - 24,282,540 Additional caution money, advanced by persons holding- official situations, as security for their good conduct, and for which they receive interest. This sum, therefore, is in the nature of a loan - - 50,633,000 Additional stoppages on salaries - - 13,000,000 A reduction made by the king- on the civil list, for the suf- fering departments - - 10,000,000 Increased custom duties - - 20,000,000 Increased stamp and register duties - - 26,000,000 Claims for the sale of communal lands out-standing 22,992,000 Ditto on account of wood sold - - 12,950,000 Ditto on national property - - 8,000,000 An account of a supplementary vote of credit of six mil- lions - 5,000,000 Excess of ordinary receipts - - 22,202,420 291,343,141 Extra expenses - - - 290,800,000 Balance - - - 543,141 A very cursory and rapid view of the system of French finance is sufficient to convince the reader of two facts; first, that the amount of circulating property is small; and secondly, that the taxes raised upon it are at once oppressive and unproductive. Tne situation of this great kingdom is not indeed easily comprehended by English in- tellect, accustomed to the parade of commercial wealth, and habitu- ated to confound a large circulating medium with vast public re- sources and great individual happiness. In France, the soil, emi- nently productive, returns to a very moderate cultivation an abun- dance of all those articles which form the essential support of life; and the quantity of the produce compensates the farmer for the low price, which he has been accustomed to receive for it The property, likewise, being subdivided among many hands, by the operation of the republican codes, primitive habits are engender- ed; and wealth, instead of being accumulated for the gratification of individual vanity and ostentation, flows in streams and in runlets a- mong the mass of population. Here, indeed, it may be truly said, that nature has given fiarca quod satis est manu. An hunter in the stable, and a bottle of port or of claret upon the table, and the frippery education of a country boarding-school for his chil- dren, form no part of the necessities of a French farmer; but the xXxviii APPENDIX ti. peasantry are well clothed and well fed, and crowded workhouses and parochial donations make no supplen lentary compensations for scanty wages and dependant servility. It results from this state of society, tha t while excessive misery is scarcely known, and mendicity compan itively trifling, there is ve- ry little disposable property, which, in circulation from hand to hand, can come within the grasp of the financier; very little luxury, very little parade of equipage and establishment, a scanty internal com- merce, and of course, no great quantity of circulating medium. In the exfwse of the state of the nation, which Napoleon caused to be drawn up in the year 18! 3, the population of the departments of ancient France was found to be 28,700,0 00 souls; that of the en- tire empire, 42,705,000. The average quantity of corn grown in Impe rial France, deducting the seed for the next year, us taken at Francs. 230,000,000 of quintals, which, on anavera ge of fifteen years, is in value - - 2,300,000,000 The produce in wine amounts to 40,000,000 of hectoli- tres; of which 3,300,000 are consumed in tb e manufac- ture of 650,000 hectolitres of brandy; the Whole com- puted to be worth - - 800,000,000 This article was considered as doubled since the revolu- tion, while the empire was increased but bj a third. The annual value of the woods - 100,000,000 1,200,000 quintals of hemp, and 500,000 of flaj c, together make - - - 80,000,000 In oil, the empire raises to the amount of - 250,000,000 Tobacco produces - - 12,000,000 Hay and straw not reckoned, because they ar e included in the value of stock. Raw silk grown in France - - 30,000,000 (22,000,000 of pounds weight of cocons. ) The wool of 35,000,000 of sheep - " 129,000,000 The carcases of 8,000,000 slaughtered annually 56,000,000 The annual increase of stock of 3,500,000 horses is 280,000, of which 250,000 arrive at the a;ge of four years, anJ are worth - - - 75,000,000 12,000,000 of black cattle admit of an annual slaughter of 1,250.000 head of oxen and cows, and 2,500,0 '00 calves, amounting to - - - 161,000,000 The butter and milk of 6,300,000 cows 1 50,000,000 Haw hides - - - 36,000,000 4,900,000 pigs annually slain - - 274,000,000 The produce of the metallic mines - 50,000,000 Ditto of coals - - - 50,000,000 Salt .... 28,000,000 Sundries, incapable of separate appreciation, fro lit, honey, g-oats, asses, mules, garden stuff, orchards, pulse, Jt.c.kc. - - - 450,000,000 T> otal Fr. 5,031 ,000,000 or 7209,625,000 sterling. But if we take the population as a guide, and consider the reve- nue of royal France as one-third less than that of the empire, its an- nual produce may be estimated as / 139,750,000 sterling. The fir o due e of manufactory is thus stated, Thirty millions of home produce, and 10 millions of silk im- Francs. ported from Italy, yield in manufactory a profit of - 84,000,000 Woollen manufactory - 220,000,000 Tan pits ...... 53,000,000" Hat manufactory - .... 23,000,000 Hemp and liuen ditto - ... 139,000,000 Cotton ditto ...... 235,000,000 Paper ditto - ... - - - 36,000,000 Printing- ..---. 62,000,000 Soap making- ------ 30,000,000 Manufacture of tobacco - 60,000,000 Breweries - - - - - - 40,000.000 Cider manufactory - 50,000,000 Cabinet and coach-making .... 30,000,000 Wroug-ht and cast iron manufactory, by the first processes 70,000,000 Other mineral works, alum, gypsum, marble, copper, &c. &c. 12,000,000 Cutlery, arms, gilding-, and brass manufactory, Szc. &c. - 67,000,000 Gold and jewellery works - 32,000,000 Watch-making .--.._ 20,000,000 Glass and pottery ..... 82,000,000 Dying .-.-... 15,000.000 Total Fr. 1,36 0,000,000 To these sums an addition is made in the expose, for certain new products of industry, such as beet-root sugar, scarlet from madder, indigo, and soda, amounting to 65,000,000 francs; but this revenue seems more than problematic, at least for the present. The whole amount of French industry, in the year thirteen, stood thus y Francs. Produce of the soil - 5,031,000,000 Manufacture of raw materials ... 1,300,000,000 Products of new manufactures ... 65,000,000 6,396,000,000 To these sums must be added the value of the last opera- tions, such as those of bakers, tailors, &c. persons em- ployed in making up manufactured goods for sale. One- tenth of the whole .... 639,600,000 In 1812, the year fireceeding the date of the expose, The exportations were - - - 383,000,000 The importations - - - 257,000,000* The balance in favour of France - - - ~ 126,000,000 Fr. 7,161,600,000 * Before the revolution, the imports were 230,000,000 francs, and the ex- ports 300,000,000 francs. Xl APPENDIX II. It would perhaps be impossible to obtain, at the present moment, any satisfactory documents respecting the annual income of royal France; but if one-third be deducted tor the loss of territory includ- ed in the expose of Napoleon, then the income is 4,774,400,000 francs, or / 198,933,333 sterling. The taxes for the present year amount to 730,020,661 francs, or * J, 30,417,527 sterling nearly; be- ing something less than one-sixth of the whole produce: when this tax is paid, there remains (admitting the population to be twenty- eight millions), in round numbers, just six pounds per head for the annual support of the inhabitants. Without, therefore, laying much stress upon the accuracy of these details, there cannot remain a doubt that the people are taxed to the full extent of possibility, and that a continuation of the present imposts is nearly impossible. On the other hand, a large proportion of the present year's budget con- sists of loan, and of the caution money, which is in fact, a forced loan, subject to four per cent, interest, which cannot be renewed hereafter. We have further to observe, that both the war and marine^ establishments will requae a subsequent increase of ex- pense, and the additional sums demanded for the clergy must be added to the burdens of the ensuing years, together with a deficit upon the present budget, which public rumour states to be enor- mous. The condition of the exchequer must therefore be taken into consideration, as one of the many causes which are hostile to a continuance of the Bourbon dynasty, and affording a powerful ele- ment of discontent among the people, and of embarrassment and feebleness in the government. The severity with which the allies have pressed on the nation, as a retribution for its political offences, contributes to render insecure all the arrangements they have so industriously made, for preserving the stupor (it cannot be called peace) of Europe; and it will be placed by historians in the catalogue of faults committed by the congress of sovereigns. The state, however, of their several do- mestic exchequers, it may be said, made this plunder of the enemy a matter of necessity. Europe could not maintain its armies of oc- cupation, but at the expense of the soil on which they are quartered; and the unfortunate Louis had only to choose between abandonment to the uncontrolled sentiments of his subject, or an overwhelming and ruinous taxation. The total destruction of the ways and means of France, is a pro- ject more dangerous than that of its dismemberment; yet nothing short ot this extreme can result from the continuance of the system * The revenue of the year preceding- the revolution was .20,500,000 francs, and its ordinary expenditure 26,000,000 francs. The budget for the year 18 17, at 1,069,000,000 francs, or about / 45,000,000 sterling. f The marine has, in the budget for 1817, been from necessity decreased. In fact, Franco, under, the present system, can neither have an efficient navy nor army r , and it must be at the absolute mercy of those nations, that can support the expence of such estabhsliments. FINANCE, XU of occupation. To rely upon an increase in the commercial powers of the country, as a source of revenue, is absurd. Years of real and secure peace must pass, bofore the national industry can be ren- dered more subservient to fiscal purposes; while on the other hand, it is to be feared, that agriculture (which, though it has made gi- gantic strides during the revolution, has yet fallen off, since the in- troduction of old abuses) will still suffer a greater degree of degra- dation, under the benumbing influence of the ancien regime. [The old government.] Population likewise, which has formed its in- crease upon the drain of an incessantly recruiting army, will soon become superabundant, and afford increasing materials for mendi- city, in the increasing number of the useless and unemployed. APPENDIX NO. HI. OF THE STATE OF MEDICINE, &c. &c. IN FRANCE. Ne apud hos quidem, a primS. origine, Sed paucis ante nos seculis. Celsus. A comparative view of the progress and condition of medicine, in England and in France, if executed on an enlarged or compre- hensive scale, would form a work of no mean interest. In the hands of the professor, it would become a means of enlarging the bounds, and rectifying the classification of the healing arts, while, to the philosopher, it would reflect a strong light on the general march of science, and would furnish a good practical chapter on the mechan- ism of the human intellect. For purposes, however, like these, the subject would require a development incompatible with the space. to which these observations must be confined, and with the still more limited research and abilities, which are brought to the dis- cussion. The same marked opposition, which the two nations have ever exhibited in their modes of thinking, on points of taste, literature* and politics, may be traced also in their pursuit of science, and iu their manner of handling (if the metaphor be allowable) a philoso- phical question. Perhaps there is no particular, in the history of human nature, sufficiently remote from the influence of political institutions, to remain altogether unaffected by the good or evil they entail upon society. In surgery, the French are confessedly our predecessors and mas- ters The long wars of Louis XiV rendered the improvement of this art an object of vast political importance, at the same time that they afforded abundant opportunity for observation and instruction; and royal favour, and individual industry, went hand in hand in the cultivation of this branch of scientific investigation. The visible and palpable nature of the subjects of surgical inquiry has given to that science a more decidedly experimental character; and the contempt which physicians affected to throw upon its prac- titioners, by emancipating it from the trammels in which the learned professions in France were held, became the fortunate means of an happier mode of investigation, and a more vigorous research. In England, however, the impulse towards improvement once given, MEDICAL SCIENCES. xHtt was followed up with that ardent love of knowledge, and daring boldness of inquiry, which Tor a long while characterised almost ex- clusively the British nation: and while the English surgeons bor- rowed and improved the mechanical inventions of their rivals and neighbours, they brought to the science itself a peculiar fund of physiological knowledge, derived from the advanced condition of general philosophy and of medicine, in their own country. At the period of the French revolution, there seems good ground for believ- ing that the English surgeons were in advance of the French. But since that epoch, there have been unfor'.unately such ample means of investigation afforded, Iliacos intra muros et extra; and there has been so great a demand for surgical talent, that in both countries the science has advanced nearly pari passu; and it would be difficult for an unbiassed umpire to determine, on which side the palm of merit should be adjudged. In those particular instances of improvement, which have been commenced in England, the French surgeons are, for the most part, in arrear; and some prejudices, derived from obso- lete medical doctrines, still obscure the field of their intellectual vision. But, in the general conduct of their profession, in prompti- tude and decision during operations, in ingenuity and facility in the adaptation of means to ends, they have obtained to a degree of ex- cellence, not easily to be surpassed With respect to medicine, circumstances are altogether different. There is not only much room for comparison, as to its progress in England and in France, but there exists in the two countries a total and a fundamental difference in the modes of considering the sub- ject, and consequently in the curative intentions of their respective physicians. To the establishment of this difference many circum- stances have contributed. The natural variations of the English climate, the still greater extremes of temperature, to which a large part of its inhabitants are, by their mercantile pursuits, exposed, and their comparative intemperance as to food and drink, have necessa- rily rendered them the victims of a variety and a severity of disease, to which the French, from their geographical position, and agricul- tural pursuits, are to a great degree exempted. This fact is exem- plified not less in the happy constitution of the people, than in the advanced age at which the majority of those persons in France die, whose influence on society renders it an object to record in history the period of their decease.* But a still more influential source of difference lies in the independent and manly tone, which philosophy in general assumed at an early period in England; and which, while it circumscribed the domination of authority, gave confidence to * II n'avoit que cinquante six, on que soixante ans, [he was only fifty-six or sixty] is a common formula of French biography. The Cardinal de Fleuri died at ninety; the President d'Henault at. ninety-six; Crebillon Fils at se- venty; Condamire at seventy-four; Voltaire at eighty-four; the Marquise du DefFant at eighty-four. Men of seventy and eighty have usually as much life and playfulness in France, as their grandchildren Xliv APPENDIX III. individual exertion, and multiplied and invigorated our methods of cure. From the earliest times there have subsisted two methods of contemplating disease, which have each had their supporters and panegyrists. The one considers its symptoms, as produced by a constitutional effort to expel or to overcome a noxious cause; and consequently as indicating a natural tendency towards recovery: the other views them as the necessary consequences of the injury re- ceived, and believes them to be regulated in their tendency towards - death or recovery by the ratio which the violence done to the system bears to its powers of resistance. The first theory sees in the morbid movements the result of an inherent principle of preserva- tion, and regards them as the most natural and best means of cure. The second considers them as essentially diseased; as the conse- quences, rather than the causes, of the progress of the malady; and as being neither the best means of recovery, nor even, in many cases, at all connected with convalescence. The duty of the physician, according to the first system, is to watch the progress of the symp- toms, to predict their consequences, and occasionally to interfere, when circumstances occur, which exaggerate, or suspend the cura- tive actions. According to the opposite hypothesis, it is his business to interfere from the beginning, to remove if possible the noxious cause, and to cut short at once the actions which it has occasioned; and which, however likely to terminate in a spontaneous cure, are still accompanied by a waste of the powers of life, and by a strain on the constitution. The former, or expectant plan, which relies so confidently on the powers of nature, and which presumes so seldom to interfere, belongs to the infancy of art, and manifestly tends to impede its amplification; while the operative or active plan pre- sumes a considerable knowledge of the laws of organized existence, and of the agency of foreign substances upon the living machine. The expectant theory prevails very generally among the French physicians, and is taught in their schools: the operative influences universally the methods of the English practitioners. If a judgment could be formed ot the state of medicine in France, from its several medical institutions, we should be compelled to be- lieve that it had reached to perfection, or that the French physicians were at least on a par with the best and most learned of their Euro- pean brethren. All the subordinate and associated sciences, anato- my, both human and comparative, physiology, botany, chemistry, &c. are cultivated with enthusiasm and success; and in their schools of medicine, besides the ordinary routine of instruction, courses of lectures are delivered gratis, on subjects, which, in England, are conceived to be but remotely connected with the pursuits of mere students, as the ornaments, rather than necessary acquirements, of active practitioners. Such, particularly, is the erudite course on medical literature, by Moreau de la Sarthe, in which sound criticism is mingled with profound philosophical views, and delivered with MEDICAL SCIENCES. xlv an elegance and polish of style, that partakes more of belles lettres than of dry medical disquisition. If to these considerations it be added, that surgery and medicine are taught in common, that the hospitals for clinical instruction are immense, well ordered, well attended, well ventilated, clean, and abundantly supplied with whatever is necessary to the health and comfort of the patients, the system of medical education will appear little short of absolute perfection. There seems, however, to exist an intrinsic and fundamental difference in the bent of the French and English intellect, which, if an ex parte judgment may be trusted, has given a superiority to the English in the pursuit oi science; or at least has driven the two nations into opposite roads of investiga- tion. The restraint, which the peculiar character of the French government had imposed upon political and theological discussion, from the earliest periods of inquiry, extended, by a natural conse- quence, to general philosophy; and while, by its abhorrence of in- novation, it imposed a chain on the inventive faculty, it directed the national intellect towards a dialectic subtlety. The operation also of this cause, by depressing whatever was not attached to the court, drove the sciences under the paralysing protection of patronage; and introduced the formation of corporate bodies, whose un ted in- fluence was calculated to raise their members to an etat in society, and to give them a consequence, to which, singly? they would in vain have attempted to reach; and the influence of these bodies was always paramount in the professions. The French, therefore, with the greatest aptitude for persevering and protracted study, can boast of but few inventors; and for the most part rest their claims of superiority upon order and analysis in scientific works, and upon pushing to their remotest consequences the discoveries of others. The same subserviency to established forms, the same dread of departure from ancient usage, which tie down their theatre to a cold and unnatural declamation, and fill their poetry and the.r paintings with the mythology of Greece, confining them to the few hacknied images which fall within the compass of the national idea of a the noble" has operated in the sciences, to confine their efforts to the improvement of already acquired knowledge, and has diverted them from the path of original inquiry. Of the numberiess inventions, which distinguish the modern from the ancient world, few, if any, are derived from France. Gunpowder, printing, drill-husbandry, the air-pump, the electric machine, pneumatic chemistry, the tele- scope, the Galvanic apparatus, are all vindicated by foreign nations, and to the names of Gaiiieo, Harvey, Newton, Franklin, and Jenner, they have not any thing, aut simile, aut secundum, to oppose. There is, on the contrary, impressed upon the philosophical esprit of the nation a marked love of system, and a disposition to contem- plate things, as they ought to be, rather than as they exist, to con- sider them in their abstract, rather than in their practical points of view. Hence their numerous perfect but inapplicable theories of XIW APPENDIX III. government, their treatises on agriculture, written and eonceived within the walls of Paris* In applying these remarks to the French medicine, we are na- turally led to recal the low ebb from which it has been raise-*, and the obstinacy with which its practitioners clung, for centuries, to Galen and the schools, thereby justly meriting the poignant ridicule, with which Moliere covered their studies and profession. The con- trast between these men, and the French faculty of the present day, is extreme; and the improvement which has been given to the art, within the last hundred years, is highly creditable to the talents and perseverance of the nation. The peculiar merits and defects of the French medical writers, may easily be anticipated from the pre- liminary remarks already hazarded. Obedient to the dictates of the expectant plan, and abstaining from active interference with the natural processes of disease, the whole powers and application of the French physician are concentrated in an accurate observation of its phenomena. Their works, therefore, on the art of Hippocrates and of Sydenham are among their happiest productions. The writings of Sauvages, Lieutaud, and, in modern times, of Pinel, Corvissat, &c. are replete with close observation and accurate discrimination. In the " nosographical arrangement" of Pinel, however, these me- rits are largely mixed with the vice of system. The analysis of diseases, according to the texture of parts, in which they occur, though a beautiful generalization, and pregnant with important results, is far from being sufficiently practical, to become the basis of nosology; and it necessarily embraces views altogether hypothetical. Thus, in internal inflammations, it rarely happens that the disease is confined to one order of parts; that the pleura, for instance, is inflamed, without some affection of the parenchyma, or mucous membrane of the lungs. Notwithstanding this defect, the work has obtained an almost exclusive pre-eminence in the French medical schools, and ranks very highly among the continental practitioners. In physiology, the works of Bichatf upon which Pinel's system is founded, are oi inestimable value; not more for the new and important remarks with winch they abound, and for the merit of his peculiar analysis of the animal structure, than for that true spirit of experimental investigation, which, both by precept and by example, they perpetually inculcate. Wherever * The invigorating- stimulation, which accompanied the revolution, has given a vast increase of energy to scientific pursuit. The establishment of the Institute has concentrated the talent of the country, and caused a prolific co-operation of the different sciences. The taste for experimental investi- gation has rapiiiy spread itself through every branch of inquiry; and medi- cine, though at all times destined to follow in the traiu of the other arts, al- ready begins to partake of the beneficial influence. f As the present observations are confined chiefly to medieine, any de- tailed account of the anatomical writers of France would be to a certain degree displaced; and their known and acknowledged excellence renders the attempt wholly unnecessary. MEDICAL SCIENCES. xlvii indeed the French surgeons have crossed the path of physic, they have largely contributed to its advancement; and the most consi- derable steps that have been made in the art were taken, since the branches have been taught in common. In profound and comprehensive views the French must be con- sidered as superior to ourselves: we have absolutely no work in the genre of the " anatomie generate" of Bichat, of his treatise " on life and death," or of the writings of Cabanis, if we except the Zoono- mia cf Darwin, which, maugre its originality, and many valuable practical hints, is inferior in patient investigation, and in luminous arrangement of idea, to the writings of the former of these authors. The spirit of the French philosophy, which dictated the logic of Condillac, and presided over their works of mathematical analysis, has diffused itself into many of the later medical productions of this nation, and has given them a decided excellence in those parts of the science, which are purely ideal. In all that is more particular and practical, the works of tne English physicians are by very many degrees superior and more valuable. To those who are not aware of the great extent to which the practice of medicine, even in the present advanced state of the na- tural sciences, is empirical, and are ignorant of the small connexion which subsists between our knowledge of the phenomena of disease, and our acquaintance with sound curative intentions, it will appear strange that the French, thus distinguished as physiologists, would not be esteemed by their professional breihren in England as good physicians it is, however, in physic, as in the other natural sci- ences; theory, however ornamental, however calculated to impose, by the air which it gives of connected and perfect knowledge, has done, and will do, little towards the enlargement of its domain. Very few, indeed, of the successful modes of combating disease are deductions, made, a priori, from scientific data, but have been struck off by hazard, or delivered down by tradition. Mercury, bark, and sulphur, the remedies best entitled to the appellation of specifics, are, in their discoveries and application, the most independent of pre-conceived notions, and of theoretical science. In theory, the French are, for the most part attached to the Bru- nonian doctrines, which they mix up and assimilate with no incon- siderable relics of the humoral pathology. They are either wholly ignorant, or eminently fearful, of the modern practice introduced by Dr. Hamilton. It occurred to the author of these observations, to see two patients of one of the most celebrated of the Parisian phy- sicians, who were labouring under serious and alarming symptoms of low fevers, De alvi statu nulla fuit inquisitio, ne enema quidem, consuetissimum alias remedium, hisce aegrotis adhibitum. Purgantibus uti, quae alvum acrius movent, Parisiis, religio est; nee in officinis pharmacopclarum servatur medicamentum quod Extractum Colocynthidis audit; usque adeo in despectu est apud medicos. Quae verj alvum lenius ducunt, nee temere nee sine apparatu quodam adjuvantium, vel in re minime ancipiti dantur. xlviii APPENDIX III. Jusculum, mane sumptum, causa fuit, quo minus meridie adhibe- rentur aegroto, quem ipse curavi. With respect to calomel, the practice of England is ridiculed by the French, as to the last degree empirical: no authority can induce them to administer it as a cathartic in fever, nor as an alterative in many of the diseases, in which it is advantageously employed with us In this respect, however, it would not be just to place their dislike wholly to the account of prejudice and obstinacy. The very trifling abuse of spirituous liquors, which occurs in France, and the little intercourse which subsists between that country and the East and West Indies, very much exempt the inhabitants from that class of hver complaints, which are so abundant in England; and which, masked under various insidious forms, extend the effi- cacy of mercurials to a vast many different complications of disease. The same cause also operates to simplify fever; and to render its connexion with visceral obstruction less common and less violent. Possibly it may also contribute to preserve a greater sensibility of the intestinal canal, which may render the employment of drastic medicines less safe and less necessary. But with every possible deduction on these accounts, it must be confessed, that the apprehensions thus entertained are excessive and unwarranted. The cutting short of fever, by the administration of a dose of calomel, followed by sepna, &c. &c. forms no part of their practice, nor enters apparently into their minds as a desideratum. The theory of expectoration, indeed, which considers the febrile movements as essential to the return of health, forbids such an in- terference, as disturbing the course of nature, and (by a strange pre- judice) as originating those visceral congestions, which we find to be averted by the practice in question. The prevalence of this doctrine, conspiring with the currency of the Brunonian theory, leads also to a more sparing employment of the lancet, than is usual with us. The temperance of the natives, the facility of perspiration which their climate produces, will doubt- less enable them to throw off inflammation, with much less depletion than is necessary in treating the same cases in England But from the frequency of consumption among the French, there seems to be great danger in their suffering even slight pleurisies and peripneu- monies to run their natural career, when they can be cut short at once by a slight blood-letting: not to mention the protraction of the disease, and the fatigue of a long continued expectoration. By the dread which prevails of powerful remedies, and by a strong remaining tincture of Galenical practice, there exists among the French physicians considerable confidence in drugs, which English practice has consigner 1 to oblivion, as insignificant and inert. Their patients are still drenched with pint draughts, " pour adoucir, leni- fier temperer et rafraichir le sang," and " pour amollir, humecter et rafraichir les en» rallies;" [to sweeten, lenify, temper and refresh ♦he blood, and to soften, moisten and refresh the bowels;] in the effi- MEDICAL SCIENCES. xllX cacy of all which, both physician and patient " most potently be- lieve. " It is no very flattering result for the art; but it is most unques- tionably true, that the proportion of deaths to recoveries in disease, is, with a very few exceptions, the same under every plan of treat- ment. The number of those, who must inevitably die from the vio- lence of the malady, and of those, who, from the opposite cause, must necessarily recover, is so great, in comparison with that of the persons who owe their life or death to the skill or ignorance of the physician, that it is rarely possible to appreciate the merit of ^erne- dial treatment, by this test. It was not, therefore, without much surprise, that the author of these pages found the average loss, in the Parisian hospitals, to be much greater than usually occurs in those of the British metropolis. In the report made to the French government on the charitable in- stitutions of Paris, in the year 1808, it appears that there were re- ceived, during the year 1806, into the hospital called " La Charite" the best, though not the most extensive in Paris, three thousand two hundred sick, Of these were Discharged - - 25 71 Died 385 Remained in the hospital 244 3200 The mortality, therefore, was as one to. 6,67. The Hotel Dieu^ on the first of January, 1806, contained one thou- sand two hundred and seventy-four sick. The mortality on the whole number taken in during the year, was, for the men, as one in 5,38, and for the women, as one in 4,36. But, in order to arrive at a greater degree of accuracy, the re- porters take into consideration that many patients die on the first days of admission, whose decease is not chargeable against the prac- tice of the hospital. On this account they state, that of one thou- sand and eighty-seven males deceased, five hundred and thirty-six died in the first ten days; and these being deducted, the mortality becomes reduced to one in seven; and the same rule being applied to the deaths among the women, the average is rendered one in 5,46. By the applications of this method to the deaths and recoveries at La Charite, the mortality of the men becomes one in 8,38, and that 8 38-4- 'S 82 of the women one in 5,82, giving a total average of — - — ~S—1 — =7,10. The average duration of the cases, excluding those who died or left the hospital during the first ten days, was at V Hotel Dieu, thirty- seven days; and at La Charite thirty days; the female cases being in both the most protracted. g I APPENDIX III. The vast number of desperate accidents and of severe disease, which such a city as Paris must produce, renders some deduction from the sum total of mortalities absolutely necessary, for the justi- fication of the medical practice; but in taking so long a time as ten days for the standard, in distinguishing curable from incurable ma- ladies, there must necessarily be excluded the great majority of deaths by fever; and the physician must consequently be relieved from a greater onus than he is entitled to. The mortality which re- mains seems therefore enormous, and it greatly exceeds the aver- age number of deaths in those even of our hospitals, which are des- tined exclusively to the reception of fever cases The average mor- tality in that fatal endemic, the Walcheren fever, where the pa- tients had to struggle under every disadvantage of military vicissi- tudes and privations, did not much exceed one-tenth. The great difference observable between the institutions of France and England, subsists also in their public charities. In England, these are the fruits of individual benevolence, and are separately go- verned, according to the will of tneir respective founders and con- tributors. In France, ihey are under the management of the go- vernment, and are all regulated by a common police. It is not easy to state, with becoming accuracy, all the consequen- ces resulting from each of these methods. It appears, however, that a more comprehensive view is taken of the wants of the French metropolis, and that considerable advantage results in the arrangement and distribution of the sick. On the other hand, there is a manifest inconvenience, if not danger, in bringing the sick from the remotest part of the city to a central bureau, for the purposes of preliminary inspection. The largest hospital in Paris is the Hotel Dieu, which was de- signed to contain two thousand beds for constant occupation, and two hundred, kept as a reserve for accidents. It does not, however, contain at present so great a number. Its situation is by no means well chosen, being in the very centre of the city; but as it is placed on an island in the middle of the river, the current of air occasioned by the stream must be favourable to ventilation. The wards are spacious and perfectly well aired; and the patients are attended by a society of nuns of the order ol St. Augustin, with the utmost hu- manity, and with a zeal that passed the fiery ordeal of the revolu- tion unabated and unsullied. JL,a Charite contains only two hundred and thirty beds of which one hundred and twenty are set apart for medical cases, and one hundred and four for those requiring surgical treatment. The hospital of St. Antoine contained on the 1st of January, 1806, one hundred and seventy-two, and it received during the year two thousand two hundred and sixteen. Total mortality one in 5,74, or, with the former abatement, one in 7,42. L'Hjfrital Beaujon contained on the 1st of January, 1806, ninety- eight sick, and received during the year one thousand four hundred and forty-six. MEDICAL SCIENCES. ii Gross mortality one in 5,96. L.'Hofiital JVecker contained, at the commencement of the year, one hundred and thirty sick: received during twelve months one thousand and thirty-nine. Mortality one in 5,59. U HCfiitul Cochin has provision for one hundred sick. Mortality in 1806, one in 6,96. V Hofiital de St. Louis contains nine hundred beds, and was de- signed to receive infectious cutaneous diseases, also scrophula and scurvy. U Hofiital des Veneriens has five hundred beds. It received in 1806, two thousand six hundred and sixty sick, of whom one thou- sand three hundred and forty were men, and one thousand three hun- dred and twenty women; an equality of numbers that appears wor- thy of remark, if moral causes be taken into consideration. The mean duration of the cases was sixty-two days, and the mortality as one in 22,54. Before the revolution such cases were principally taken to the Bicetre; but the whole number received there amounted only to six hundred annually, while that of the applicants was more than two thousand; and these are said to have formed scarcely a fourth of the number requiring assistance: for the majority were withheld by their hopelessness of obtaining admission, and by the horrible condition of the sick when admitted. Each ward contained several ranges of beds; the floors also were strewed with them; yet notwithstanding that three or four sick were sometimes placed in each bed, they were obliged to rise in the middle of the night, to make room for others to take a turn of repose. If to these considerations it be ad- ded, that the names of the applicants were often placed on the list for admission eighteen months before they could be received, some notion may be formed of the sort of disease, and of the treatment which that hospital exhibited. L' Hopital des Enfans Malades [The Hospital for sick children] contains five hundred beds. In 1806, two thousand one hundred and sixty-one sick were admitted. The mean duration of the cases was seventy days. The mortality of the boys was one in 3,81; that of the girls one in four. They were admitted from two years to fifteen. The lunatic hospitals are, one at Charenton, in which forty beds for men and twenty for women are maintained, at the charge of the hospitals of Paris. The Bicetre has accommodation for above one hundred persons: at la Salpetrie there are from seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred females: some of these are incurables; others, deemed curable, are selected from such as have not obtained admis- sion at Charenton. They are placed in five separate departments or wards: one an hospital for incidental disease, one for incurables, one for furious maniacs, a fourth for those not dangerous, and a fifth for convalescents. The two last contain a spacious walk, shaded with trees. In the practice of this hospital, which is under the su- perintendence of Pinel, great stress is laid upon the tepid bath, as a Ill APPENDIX III. remedy for mania, to which is added when the patient is riotous, a douche [a pumping of cold water] of cold water, falling several feet on the head: this practice seems to operate, not less as a moral, than as a physical remedy. Various local means are also occasionally ap- plied, such as cauteries, leeches, blisters; but in general little reli- ance is placed upon the exhibition of drugs, while much confidence is placed in morai means, especially in occupation. In the physi- cians' private room, there are accumulated numerous casts of the heads of lunatics, forming a most hideous and fearful portrait of hu- manity. The sum total of information which they afforded, was de- cidedly unfavourable to the physiognomical doctrines of Gall. Such at least was the opinion of Mons. Pinel on the subject, to whose po- liteness and urbanity the philosophic traveller, who visits this hospi- tal, will always find himself largely indebted. To those, who are unacquainted with the writings of this eminent physician, it will be consoling to know, that the utmost humanity and skill prevail in the treatment of maniacs in France: chains and whips are absolutely for- bidden; and the most furious maniacs are restrained by a well-applied waistcoat. Another point also, in which morality and good feeling are cultivated, is in the seclusion of these unhappy patients. In no hospital are they made a public exhibition, to gratify the curiosity or the malignity of idle holiday-makers. Besides these hospitals, there are very many others, of a miscellaneous description. The found- ling hospital, hospitals for incurable diseases, for the blind, several military hospitals, and an excellent one attached to the ecole de la medicine, [the medical school,] &c. &c; and the bureau de benefi- cence [the benevolent office] distributes advice and releif to poor room-keepers at home. The funds for this charity are drawn, by an happy association, from a tax on the places of public amuse- ment. Besides the hospitals in which persons are gratuitously received, the delicacy of moral tact among Frenchmen has given birth to es- tablishments, termed " maisons de sante," [houses of health], in which those, whose fortunes have not reduced them to the necessity of receiving charity, but who are yet unequal to the expense of home attendance, may procure an apartment, the services of a nurse, physician, surgeon, and apothecary, upon the extraordinarily moder- ate terms of three francs per day, paid a fortnight in advance, or of two francs only, when the invalid chooses to sleep in a common dor- mitory. Besides the establishment in the Rue du Faubourg St. Martin, which belongs to the government of the bureau de benefi- cence, there are others belonging to individuals, who apparently render these institutions a means of introduction to general practice. It may very well be doubted, whether establishments like these could be introduced into England, where provisions are so expensive, and where civility, and the numberles inexpressible attentions which the sick require, must be purchased of the nurse by clandestine gratuities, and where there subsists so large a portion of petty pride and ostentation, to prevent small tradesmen and room-keepers from MEDICAL SCIENCES. liU accepting an advantage, which would so publicly mark their circum- stances in iife. The spirit however in which the maisons de sante are conceived, might be adopted at home with benefit to the national character, to counteract the depressing influence of that system, which has placed nearly a quarter of the male population upon the parish lists, and bowed dow n the " bold peasantry, their country's pride," topaupeiism and servility. In the general management of the French hospitals, all the ad- vantages of order and arrangement are attained, which might be expected from the military precision that the revolution has intro- duced into every branch of the public service. By six o'clock in the morning, nurse, physicians, surgeons, and pupils, are assembled; and before twelve, every patient is visited; half a dozen or more great operations, perhaps, performed, clinical lectures given, and advice administered to a crowd of external patients. The advanta- ges resulting from these early hours, are, first, that the diet for the day is directed according to the actual wants of the patients; while in hospitals where this regulation does not subsist, any changes which the physician may make in the food and drink of the sick, can only be put into execuiion on the following day, when their situa- tion and necessities may become very different. There is, besides, a great increase of comfort to those, whose wounds, Sec. require dressing, and who are thus at an earlier hour put at rest for the re- mainder of the day. But the principal benefit which ensues from this practice, is in the case of great operations. Very often in the English hospitals, a patient knows that he is condemned to an am- putation, &c. &c. for some days before it is to take place: by opera- ting every day, this interval is, in France, not extended beyond four- and-twenty hours; and by the early attendance of the surgeons, the immediate expectation is much diminished. It is in human nature sc contrived, that those events which are separated by the death of each day's life, do not impress the mind so strongly, as those which are to be performed in the current day: the agony of expectation, therefore, in these cases, is the most distressing, from the period of waking in the morning, until the hour at which the operation is to be performed. During this time, every moment is counted; and the arrival of the surgeon is alternately desired and deprecated, as patience or apprehension assume the control; and thus, much of that courage which should be reserved for the moment of suffering, is expended in horrible anticipations, and unavailing regret. There can be no hesitation as to the propriety of adopting, in our English hospitals, this merciful custom of early attendance. In the conduct of their operations^ and, indeed, in their general intercourse with the sick, the French medical men are tender and kind-hearted; and at once an honour to their profession and to hu- man nature. Their address is soothing, consolatory, eminently cal- culated to win confidence, and to quiet alarm. In action, they are prompt, dexterous, and alert. Every thing is previously calculated, and every step of the process clearly foreseen and arranged in the Hv APPENDIX III. mind, before any part of it is commenced. No time is thus spent in previous handling of the part; no interval is allowed to elapse be- tween the different stages of the operation After a moment's self- concentration, the surgeon approaches the patient with some cheer- ing and encouraging observation: he takes the knife; the incisions are mace; the saw is instantly handed; the assistant is ready with his ligatures; the arteries are tied; and the wound closed in the short- est possible interval. The utmost silence and decorum are observ- ed by the pupils during the whole time; and thus, both the moral and physical suffering attendant upon these horrible necessities of humanity, are reduced nearly to an absolute mininum. In all these particulars, the constitutional kindness of the French character, the activity of their sympathies, and the warmth of their feelings, display themselves to the greatest advantage. There is no cant of senti- mentality, no insincerity of compliment; their virtues are exhibited in positive result; and let those who are virulent in their abuse of the national character, blush, when they talk of degraded morals and egotistical indifference. Of the medical education in France, there has been already occa- sion to speak with praise: the subject is peculiarly interesting at the present moment, from the disputes to which it has given occasion in our country. There are in France three universities, having power to confer medical degrees; that of Paris, of Montpellier, and of Strasbourg; and the graduates of these places are at liberty to practise in Paris, or elsewhere in France, upon registering their name at the munici- pality of the arrondissement; a formality which is, however, often ne- glected, without drawing any serious consequences on the offender. The different ranks acknowledged in practice, are those of doc- tor of medicine, doctor of surgery, and officier de sante (a rank an- swering somewhat to that of surgeon apothecary in London,) and lastly that of apothecary, whose functions are strictly confined to the compounding of drugs. Before the establishment of this order, the practice of physic, like every other institution, had fallen into excessive abuses. The picture, which the reporters of the new law have drawn, is suffi- ciently similar to that which might be sketched of the present state of practice in England, to warrant a short extract. They state that, "in spite of the apparent order which subsisted, time had in- troduced abuses and irregularities, against which all persons of in- telligence had exclaimed for the last thirty years. Such particular- ly were the difference of qualifications for doctors, intra muros ct extra muros; the differences of privileges of bachelors, licentiates, regent and non-regent doctors. Opposed to some advantages, were to be peen the passions and jealousies assuming the pretext of order, and the dignity of the profession, to torment those, who, either by novelty of doctrine or successful practice, had arisen to distinction and notoriety. Its two universities (those of Paris and of Montpel- lier) preserved the severity and dignity of their examinations, all the MEDICAL SCIENCES. Iv others nearly had become culpably facile in their admissions, so that the title of doctor was conferred on absentees, and letters of recep- tion were expedited by the post." To remedy these evils, the three universities were, by a law, equalized both as to privileges and to qualifications; and a degree from either is now alike available in all parts of the empire. There exists, therefore, in France, no corporate bodies, independent of the universities, to regulate locally, or generally, the practice of physic; and infringements of the law are pursued, like any other penal offences, by the officers of the police. The time of study requisite for obtaining a doctor's degree in physic or surgery is four years; the examinations to be passed are one in anatomy and physiology, a second in pathology and nosology, a third in materia medica, chemistry and pharmacy, a fourth in I* hygiene and forensic medicine, and a fifth on internal or external clinical ex- amination, according as the candidate determines for physic or sur- gery. These examinations are public, and two of them are directed to be held in Latin. After they have passed, the candidate has yet to write and to maintain others, either in French or Latin. The whole expense of study and for the degree is fixed at a maximum of one thousand francs, about forty pounds. The qualifications for an officier de sante are six years' study un- der a doctor, or five years' attendance on the practice of a civil or military hospital; or lastly, three years passed in a school of medi- cine. He is examined by a jury composed of two physicians, do- miciliated in the department, and a commissaire, who is taken from among the professors of the several schools of medicine: this jury as- sembles once a year. The examinations are three; one in anatomy, one on the elements of medicine, and the third in surgery and the most common parts of pharmacy. The whole expense is limited to two hundred francs. The duty of these persons is defined, by the reporters of the law to be the general care of the sick, in remote country places, and the superintendence every where of such slight diseases as do not require the advice of the physician, or surgeon. Very particular pains seem to have been taken, respecting the education of apothecaries. Courses of botany, natural history, chy- mistry, Sec. are directed to be given in the schools of pharmacy; and no one is suffered to practise, without being first examined, either in the schools, or before a departmental jury. The examinations are, one on natural history, one on the theory of pharmacy, and ano- ther on its manipulations and processes. The last of these exami- nations must last for four days, and must consist of, at least, nine chemical or pharmaceutic operations, in which the candidate is to describe his materials, to explain his method of procedure, and de- clare the nature of their expected results. The candidate must be twenty-five years of age. The expense of his examination, in the schools, is fixed at nine hundred, francs; or before the jury, at two hundred. Ivi APPENDIX III. Officiers de sante, where there are no apothecaries, may supply their own patients with medicine, but they are not permitted to keep open shop. Apothecaries' shops are subject to visitation; by the professors of the schools of medicine, within a circuit often leagues from the place in which they are held. In all other places, this du- ty is performed by the jury of physicians. The sale of quack medicines is utterly forbidden; and druggists are subject to a penalty of five hundred francs, if they presume to compound medicines. Both druggists and apothecaries are bound, under a heavy penalty, to keep a book, in which the names, resi- dence; &c. are inserted of all persons, to whom they shall sell poi- sonous drugs; as also the nature of the drug, and the usage for which it is intended. In the instruction of midwifes, it is directed that an annual and gratuitous course of midwifery be given, in the largest hospital of the department. Before any person can be admitted to an exami- nation, she must have attended two courses of lectures, have been present for nine months at deliveries, or have operated herself in the hospital, for six months. Women are not allowed to deliver with instruments, unless sanctioned by the presence of a physician, 6r surgeon. Such are the principal enactments of the law, which regulates the practice of physic. As far as could be gathered from general inquiries, it appears that the doctors in the two faculties practise in- differently in each, without jealousy and without disagreement; and that even persons, having no legal title, practise in Paris, &c. with- out drawing upon themselves the infliction of the appointed pen- alty. Apothecaries universally prescribe for the poor, and for such per- sons as ask their advice in their shops. The advertisements of quacks also figure upon the columns of the Palais Royal, no less than upon the walls of the Royal Exchange, in London. The new institutions of medical police in France are not therefore more effec- tual in regulating the practice of physic, tjian the obsolete enact- ments of the English law. It should seem that the most which can be effected by such legislative interference, is a general influence upon the profession; and that great forbearance and indulgence must ever be granted to individuals. For it is in the natural or- der of things, that society should break through the artificial dis- tinction of ranks created in colleges and academies; and that hav- ing the purse in its own hands, it should distribute its favours, wherever caprice or judgment directs. There ever must exist some few apothecaries, better skilled to practise physic, than the ordinary mass of routine physicians; for genius is not confined to any rank: surgeons likewise will often be found, the bent of whose ability lies rather towards physic than surgery, and it is a manifest injury to society, and an injustice towards individuals, to deprive such persons of the exercise of their peculiar talent. It is be- MEDICAL SCIENCES. lvU sides a natural and an inevitable consequence, that mothers, in- debted for their own and their childrens' lives, to the skill of an accoucheur, should extend their confidence in him through the other branches of the art, and call upon him to attend in the general dis- eases of the family; nor can any penal statute prevent her from preferring a tried friend, to making a confidence of the secrets of htr family to a stranger. The poorer class of persons also will al- ways apply for the cheapest advice, and will seek it among the com- pounders of medicine; notwithstanding any statute that may be made to the contrary. The apothecary will, indeed, be the small shop- keeper's physician, not more on the score of expense, than on ac- count of the distance, which education and habits of life place be- tween such persons, and the graduated doctors. Two great difficulties oppose themselves to any regulation, sus- ceptible of a rigid practical adoption. Either other qualifications must be expected, than mere examinations, or that test must be ta- ken alone. In the first case, individuals entitled by their knowledge to practise, will be excluded, when their fortunes huve placed them out of tue reach of university instruction; a decision, with which the public will never comply. In the second, the entire object of legis- lative interference will be defeated, since no test is more undecisive or more capable of evasion, than the power of answering a few questions; a power which may be acquired by the short and sum- mary method, well known to those whom it may concern, under the technical appellation of grinding. It should therefore become an established principle with all corporate bodies, to administer their powers according to the spirit of their institution, and not in the dead letter of monoiopy; for, in proportion as their utility is circum- scribed, individual oppression becomes offensive and intolerable. From the whole that could be gathered from inquiries, not al- ways very directly answered, the medical police, as far as it concerns the regulation of practice, seems to have become, in Paris, a dead letter, without producing many cases of flagrant imposition, or ex- citing any jealousies or ill-will amongst the practitioners. The school of physic in Paris is numerously attended. The fa- culty are in possession of a building of great convenience, and of beautiful architecture. Bu r . its amphitheatres, though of immense size, are not larger than is necessary for containing the crowded au- diences, which consists not only of medical students, but persons at- tracted by the general love of knowledge. During the continuance of war, the demand for surgeons alone maintained a numerous class in the schools. Cuvier, in a desultory conversation with which he honoured the author of these sheets, stated the annual consumption of medical officers, under Napoleon, at an average of five hundred. The faculty of physic possess an extensive and valuable library, like all other Parisian libraries, of most easy access and much fre- quented. They have also a collection oi preparations, inferior in many respects to those- of the anatomy schools in London; a collec- h iviii APPENDIX 111. tion of surgical instruments, and another of models. These last are beautifuiJy executed, and represent recent dissections with a perfection, which no art can preserve in the parts themselves. The faculty assemble at certain intervals, to read papers and to discuss practical points; for which purpose the members also bring patients for illustration and for example. At the sitting at which the author was present, a member exhibited some cases of very ex- tensive suppurating tumours, which were absorbed and dissipated by the repeated application of the moxa. One of these tumours had occupied the whole of one side ol the back, and must, from the appearance of the part, have contained nearly half a gallon of fluid. In the same sitting, a paper was read, recommending the exhibi- tion of large doses of opium in cholera: the difference in the state of French physic and of surgery could scarcely be better illustrated. Though abounding in scientific journals, France is not possessed of any periodical work on the healing arts, comparable with the Edinburgh Medical Journal, or the transactions of the London Me- dico-Chirurgical society. The practice of giving detached obser- vations to the public has not yet commenced in France, or is confined exclusively to the verbal communications made at the Institute, and other learned societies. Individual vanity has not taken this route to gratification, and authorship in general is not made a professional stepping stone, but is confined to a few individuals, who rarely deign to make their appearance in a less imposing manner, than by an en- tire system, or in a smaller shape, than a series of comely octavos. The practice also of the country offLciers de sante, &c. is in all pro- bability, too closely subjected to the law and the gospel of authority, to admit of thobe novelties, which pour in from all parts of the British dominions, upon the editors of periodical works; and which, if they subject the reader to the task of wading through much non- sense, still contain, among the chaff, a considerable portion of valu- able grain, which, if not thus gleaned, would be lost to the service of humanity. The " Bibliotheque Medicale" [the Medical Library,] consists entirely of extracts from published works and criticism. The " Journal General de Medicine," [the Journal General of Medicine,] commenced by Corvisart, Boyer, and Roux, has passed into other, hands The " Journal Universel des Sciences Medicales" [the Journal Universal of the Medical Sciences,] is an entire new work, and has yet its reputation to establish. " La Gazette de Sante" [the Gazette of Health,] is a single sheet, published every ten days, containing principally facts, with but a small portion of critical matter. It is valuable for its list of the cases, which are from time to time admitted into the hospitals of Paris; and it contains also a series of articles upon the history of medical opinions. This work is edited by Dr. Montegre, a gen- tleman of great talent, information, and zeal for science; and it is conducted in a spirit purely philosophical. Of these works, some MEDICAL S0IENCE5. lix have been recently silenced, by the operation of the new stamp du- ty, Usque adeo obtusa, &x. Such is the spirit of the present go- vernment. It has been the fate of physic, from the very first revival of let- ters, to creep slowly behind the other sciences, and to adopt their methods only at considerable intervals after their establishment and success. This has arisen partly perhaps from the culpable influ- ence of authority, and partly also from a laudable hesitation at inno- vating, where so great an interest is at stake. This remark will explain the present state of the science in France, which is still very greatly in arrear of its associate arts; and is commencing only that career, in which the other natural sciences have made such considerable progress. There is, however, good cause to believe, that the impetus which it has received, will lead to speedy and im- portant improvements, and that the spirit of Bichat, Gaulois, and Majendie, will be carried to practical discussions. To the habit of observation, on which the French physicians so justly pride them- selves, there will then be added a greater degree of enterprize in the employment of curative means, and thus they will become enti- tled to take a lead in forming the medical opinions of Europe; and will have weight enough to induce our own countrymen to set bounds to their empirical tendencies, if, as the French suppose they are indeed verging to a vicious excess, and tend to a partial degradation of the science itself. At the time when the father of physic wrote, the observation of symptoms was the only road open to investigation- ' Chemistry, anatomy, physiology, did not exist, nor had natural philosophy ex- plained any of the external causes w r hich generate disease. But the leading reason which impelled Hippocrates into his peculiar line of inquiry, was the almost entire want of all really powerful remedies. Without bark, mercury, antimony, and opium, his means ot operating upon disease were limited within very narrow bounds. His functions, as a physician, were reduced nearly to a vain and use- less augury, while his views, as a philosopher, were necessarily di- rected to the subject itself, for the means of curing disease, by his ignorance of the resources of the external world. The present state of knowledge justifies and demands a different line of inquiry. It is no longer sufficient to know disease; the physician must cure it. He must wield with courage and dexterity the weighty wea- pons, which modern discoveries have placed in his hands; and in this branch the French have yet much to learn. Their literature is emi- nently deficient in those monographic works, which in England have so powerfully contributed to the progress of medicine; and it is ab- solutely without names, to place in the same line of those of Ha- milton, Currie, Saunders, Pemberton, Blackall, and Watts. They have, however, but a small barrier to pass, a few prejudices to cast aside, and the zeal with which natural science is so universally pur- , sued, will lead them rapidly forward in the right path. In the mean while it is to be hoped, that the horrible and barbarous system of in- IX APPENDIX III. sulation and seclusion, which for thirty years has cramped the ener* gies and checked the progress of tiie sciences, will give place to a peaceful intercourse between nations: or, at least, that war will be conducted upon a more humanized plan. Whatever may be the political relations of independent states, it belongs to the illumina- tion of the present age to determine, that the lettered and scientific world shall be considered as universally at peace; that it shall at all times be permitted by a freedom of intercourse and a liberal inter- change of knowledge, to promote the great work of human happi- ness; and, like pity, following in the train of slaughter, to heal up those wounds, which the madness of ambition inflicts on the pros- perity and civilization of the European republic. APPENDIX. NO. IV. SUMMARY VIEW OF THE STATE OF POLITICAL OPINION, IN FRANCE. Talor si scuote, Sorter tenta, ricade, et torna schiavo, E trar dal ceppo antico il pie lion puote, Qual domestico aug-el, per poco ch' abbia Svolazzato al difuor, ritorna in gabbia. Casti. The French revolution, while it has found no apology in the vices and mismanagement of the oid government, has been made charge- able with those consequences, which have exclusively resulted from the opposition of its enemies. At every epoch of its appalling history, the march of events has been turned aside, and driven into new courses, by an external force of compression; which, exaggerating all the passions incident to political change, has given a new character to the people, and hur- ried them into situations, the least consonant with their interests and intentions. It is now very generally admitted, that the crimes and misfor- tunes of the reign of terror (as it is emphatically termed) were fo- mented and exasperated, if not commenced, by the ill-judged resis- tance of the Bourbon princes, and by the hostile coalition of the European sovereigns. Nor can it reasonably be doubted, that the dominion of Napoleon rested upon the same foundation. At the period of his return from Egypt, the French nation, encompassed with foreign enemies, had lost nearly the whole of its earlier con- quests; and agitated by internal suspicions and jealousies, was una- ble to repress faction, or to preserve its independence and integrity, under a popular form of government. A short campaign, under the command of Bonaparte, sufficed to remove the danger of invasion from the frontiers, and enabled him to dictate terms to the invading armies. The snake, however, thus " scotched," but " not killed," would soon have " closed and been herself," and France more than ever would have been " in danger of her former tooth." It became, therefore, inevitably necessary, to place the national strength in the hands of some individual, more capable of wielding it than the feeble and disjointed directory. This lxii APPENDIX IV. proceeding, felt as a necessity, was not admitted as a desideratum. The people were not blind to the probable consequences of the step they took; but they had no choice between the sacrifice of their ex- istence, as a nation, and the establishment of a more consolidated authority in the republic. At the epoch of the consular govern- ment (as it has again happened in the year 1815,) there was no middle term between the reign of a military chieftian, and that of the Bourbons and their allies; and the nation cannot be considered as deviating, in either instance, from their original sentiments, in the choice which they adopted. The motives indeed by which they were actuated have since been fully justified by events; for, though during a reign of fourteen years, the scope of ^poleon's govern- ment was to establish arbitrary power in the imperial dynasty; yet he was necessarily interested to repress many abuses, which have since been brought back with the royal domination. The preten- sions of the ancient clergy, nobility, and parliaments, were incom- patible with his political existence; and he had a direct interest in the preservation of as many of the benefits of the revolution, as Were not absolutely inconsistent with his power and views, in order to attach the people to his government, and to form a contrast be- tween the imperial and the royal regime. Arbitrary and harsh as was the conduct of the emperor in those points, in which his personal interests were concerned, his government still preserved a conside- rable conformity to the spirit of the age: though he both hated and feared the republicans, he respected their notions, even when he most opposed their wishes. The legion of honour, the new nobili- ty, and the constitutional clergy, though anti-revolutionary institu- tions, which in the event have proved the stepping stones for the return of the old privileged classes, were still essentially orders of merit; and the principle of equality was preserved, both in civil and military promotion. The objects of Napoleon's government, also, where they were most hostile to liberty, were favourable to the mili- tary glory of the nation, the s/ies altera, the second idol of na- tional worship * By habit, by prejudice, and by necessity, the French had become a military nation; and they fully sympathised in- all his schemes for extending the empire, and revenging the inj u ries they had sustained from the sovereigns of Europe. The pros- perity which the revolution had impressed upon the agriculture of the country, by the suppression of feudal and ecclesiastical rights, not only enabled it to sustain, without material detriment, the bur- den of war, but supplied even a sentiment of gratitude to the go- vernment, by which these advantages were confirmed. The admi- nistration of the laws, though in some instances corrupted by the * L'nom non e forse da' tiranni suoi Spinto a crudel carnificina anch' esso? Ed ei (che creder lo potria) 1'infame Giogo non soffre sol, ma par che l'ame. Gli animali parlanti, Canto xix. stanza 37. POLITICAL SUMMARY. lxiii emperor, was in the aggregate rendered secure, equal, and respect- able, by the labours of his ministers: who, profiting by the exertions of the preceding governments, produced that simple, comprehen- sive code, which now passes under his name. Although the circumstances of the times, and Napoleon's pecu- liar situation, gave a decidedly despotic character to the imperial government, yet in its general features it was marked by the absence of unnecessary crimes, and of useless and unprofitable vexations. The emperor rarely indulged in wanton outrages upon the puolie feeling, but strove rather to heal the national wounds, by abridging the lists of proscription, and restoring the forfeited properties, which remained unsold, to nearly all, who were not absolutely and decid- edly hostile to his government, while in the magnificence of his public works, utility and general convenience were consulted, even where the largest sacrifices were made to personal aggrandizement, and individual ostentation. It should not, however, be imagined that the nation had sunk into an insensible acquiescence in his abuses of authority, or were seduc- ed by the splendour of his achievements, into an oblivion of their suspended rights, Repeated conspiracies had been formed against his person and authority, during the short course of his prosperity, and the moment of his adversity was eagerly seized, for a renewed declaration of rights, (consonant, and almost identical with the first breathings of liberty in the year 1789,) and for an attempted revival of republican forms, which was rendered abortive by the interpo- sition of a military force, against which there remained nothing to oppose. In frequent and confidential conversation with individuals most attached to his person, with his private intimates, and with the com- panions of his military glory I never met with any attempt to dis- guise or to soften the errors of his reign. Amongst the nation at large there existed a manifest coldness with respect to his return to France, except when his government was contrasted with that of the old dynasty . Then, indeed the comparative mildness of his sway, the absence of childish and unmeaning persecution, and the gran- deur of his military enterprizes, were themes of warm panegyric and fond regret. Compared with the effects of the restoration, with the absolute renunciation of the revolutionary principle, with the spirit of the emigrants, and the prospective renewal of every antiquated custom, the tyranny of Napoleon is esteemed light, and, what is more important, evanescent. The imperial throne, established on the sovereignty of the people, sanctified and kept in remem- brance that fundamental principle of liberty; and held up to the nation a prospect of future freedom, and a precedent, which they might follow, whenever circumstances should be more favourable to their exertions. It is a manifest injustice to accuse the French of indifference to liberty, and of political fickleness, upon the demonstration of the populace during the rapid changes of the last three years. Every 1X1V APPENDIX IV. thing upon these occasions was forced and unnatural. With a foreign army in their streets, and with a vigilant and tyrannical police in the bosom of society, the exhibition of the orthodox colours, and the ejaculation of the proper cry, became matters of dire necessity. Yet if the display of national feeling was not more lively at those periods, than the childish and feminine trebles which cheered the king under the windows of the palace, during l he summer of 1816, the royalist faction had little reason to boast of popular acclamations. Admitting, however, to the fullest extent, the enthusiasm which might have been manifested upon the return of the Bourbons, by the populace of Paris, it would be gross delusion lo trust to such an exhibition, and it would be idle and unjust to cast it in the face of the nation. Without dwelling upon the trite maxim of popular in- stability, it is sufficient to ask how far the English nation would be content to rest its character for sense and political sagacity, upon the disgusting and degrading avidity, with which a well-dressed mob pursued the allied monarchs, during their triumphal visit to London. With respect to the restoration of the royal family, there is not the slightest shadow of pretence for attributing it to the will of the people. The nation was compelled to submit lo the government of the Bourbons, in the same manner as they had been forced to adopt Napoleon, by the violence of their external enemies; and if the election of this family by the senate, at the first restoration, had less the semblance of restraint, than their forcible return on the se- cond (when the gates of the corps legislatif were* closed by a for- eign soldiery,) the difference rests wholly in appearances, the vio- lence being the same in both instance's. Worn out as was the nation by repeated changes, and disabused respecting the connexion of liberty with forms purely democratic, i: is highly probable that they would still have been contented to sub- mit to the constitutional government, under the old dynasty, had such a combination in the nature of things been possible: but the sentiments of the king and of his family were too well known, to admit of confidence. As long back as the year 1795, he had him- self protested, * that both duty and honour forbade his relaxing from the authority transmitted to him by his predecessors, and that he looked to nothing but the restoration of the catholic religion, and the ancient constitution.' So long igo also as the first revolution, a specific offer had been made to the emigrant princes, to unite their return to France, with the re-establishment of Louis XVI, and to grant them each a million per annum (forty thousand pound ster- ling), besides the payment of their debts. Their reply was « tout ou rien/ [all or nothing.] But perhaps the most extraordinary in- stance of the views, which have uniformly governed, the royal house of France, is to be found in the instance of Pichegru, who, when he offered to negociate the return of the expeiied family, was, by the prince de Conde, refused the 4 cordon bleu,' [the blue ribbon] because he was not sprung from a family sufficiently exalted to POLITICAL SUMMARY. 1XV merit the honour of that order. Charles II of England knew better how to treat with Albemarle. The people of France were not, however, long left in dependence upon insulated anecdotes, for their knowledge of the reyal inten- tions. The wishes of their triumphant (though not conquering) mas- ters were soon too plainly spoken. The charter drawn up by the senate, and forwarded to the king for his acceptance, as a prelimina- ry to his admission to the throne, and by his brother freely and un- conditionally accepted in his name, was in a few weeks contemned and violated; and a form of government, in every particular differ- ent, was granted to the people, of his benevolence, and by his ab- solute authority. The throne, accepted as the gift of the nation, but maintained as of divine right; the king's reign, dated from the decease of his predecessors in the royal line, and his style changed by the omission of the phrase * by the constitution of the empire/ gave abundant indication of what was to come, and at one blow rescinded the whole transactions of the revolution; and rendered every act, upon which the national pretence to liberty was founded, null and illegal. In the same spirit with these changes was conceived the altera- tion of the national cockade, a circumstance indifferent in itself, but infinitely important by the impression it was calculated to make on the nation. The influence which habit confers upon signs inde- pendently of their intrinsic value is among the very elements of po- litical wisdom; and it required no great experience to have felt that in every change, which is attempted in the insignia of national feel- ing, the people and not the government should have the initiative. The tri-coloured cockade, and the eagle, would as effectually have rallied the people under a Louis, as under Napoleon to march against the enemies of the country. It was therefore the merest political driveling, to change the ensign, connected with so many recollections of national glory, for another, which, to say the least, was remem- bered only by disagreeable associations. The tri-coloured cockade led to no conclusions, and pledged to no particular measures, for it had been adopted and worn by Louis XVIII; but the change made, in defiance of the reiterated acclamations of the senate, gave at once too plain a manifestation of the spirit and tendency of the new government, and showed such an excess of weakness and of preju- dice, as shocked the most moderate, and cooled many of those friends whom a love of peace had attached to the royal succession. Nor was the disclosure of the royal sentiments confined to these measures. Every act of the government spoke hostility to the revolution. The refusal of the Due d'Angouleme to accept the charter; the total silence of the royal princes on the subject, during their tour through France, in which they repeatedly harangued the municipalities; the shadow of representation which the new model- ed corfis legislatif afforded, the dismissal of senators of good repute, the disbanding of the imperial guard, and formation of the Swiss corps (detested for the recollection which it was calculated to renew. ixvi APPENDIX IV. no less than for the distrust the measure exhibited of the native soldiery,) the general tenor of the language held by the princes,* and their exclusive attachment to emigrants and anti-revolutionists; the surrender of the frontier fortresses to the allies; the threatened attack upon the purchasers of national property, in the speech of M. le Compte Farrand, one of the king's ministers; the writings of the AvocatS) Dard and Faiconet, on the same subjects, scarcely disavowed by the government; innumerable articles of a (similar description in the ministerial journals, sent gratis by the ministers to known royalists, spread universal dismay, and left not a hope to bind the people to the royal line, or to justify their obedience to the sceptre of the Bourbons. If the conduct of the royal family was little calculated to concili- ate the people, that of the emigrants was, if possible, more openly- hostile to freedom and to reason « These persons," says a popu- lar French author, kt who have returned to France, without having learned experience from misfortune, or forgotten the least ot their ancient pretensions, have not scrupled to erect themselves into public accusers, although ev-ry thing conspired to accuse them- selves. Their awkward and insensible egotism and vanity, their ignorance ot the situation of affairs, and of the temper of the times, their impatient and insatiate desire to recover their possessions, sold under the guarantee of the laws, and which could not be re- stored but by unsettling the fortunes of the great mass of society, will not fail to be regarded as the principal causes of the hist vicis- situdes of the royal family, for whom they refused to make the slightest sacrifices. Deaf to the voice of their country, and to the interests of their king, they will be held answerable by posterity for the consequences of their extravagance and of their obstinacy. "f The absurd pretensions of the emigrants, and their total forget- fulness ot the possibility of re-action, led them into the wildest and most impolitic measures. Imagining their cause to be gained, the nation to be chained at their feet, and to be incapable of resistance to any punishment they might inflict, they disdained the smallest disguise of their sentiments and expectations. Thus, in one of their inflammatory pamphlets, addressing the people, their organ exclaims, " all the families you have butchered and plundered, those who have escaped your fury, and whom you affect to despise; those, upon whom you have exercised for six-and-twenty years all sorts of vexations and injustices, and for whom you entertain a sovereign hatred, are no longer disposed to submit to your domi- nation The time is passed for these things: the king, for whom we have suffered every thing, is restored; the monarchy will be re- established, and so shall we, and you will return to the insignificance * The comte d'Artois, in reply to an aristocratic deputation, committed himself so far as to say " Jouissons du present, je vous reponds de l'avenir." [Le -i us enjoy the present, I will answer for the future.] f Le Conciliateur. i POLITICAL SUMMABY. IXVU from which you arose."* It was upon these grounds that the French exclaimed, " The Bourbons and their friends have returned chcz tux, and not chez nous.'.'!" [home, but not to «.ante a Pegard de l'empereur Napoleon? Elle Pa suivi dans les sables d'Egypte, et dans les deserts de Kussie, sur cinquante champs '•le bataille, dans ses desastres, comme dans ses victoires; et c'st pour l'avoir POLITICAL SUMMARY. lxiX then, for a second time, the kings of Europe placed Napoleon on the throne by forcing the people to a measure which had only comparative recommendations; and thus again they impeded the natural course of the nation towards freedom, and gave a new and destructive tendency to the march of the revolution. During the whole of the hundred days, and up to the closing of the chamber of representatives against the members, the will of the nation was as sirongly expressed in favour of a rational freedom, as the circumstances would admit; and it may be doubted whether Napoleon, notwithstanding his arbitrary measures, would have con- tinued more than an instrument in the hands of the national repre- sentation, had he even gained the battle of Waterloo. The boastful way in which he acknowledged his popular title to the throne; the change in his manner; his mixing among the common people; and his continual anxiety to captivate good opinion, all marked the vast increase and influence of liberal opinions, and the decisive change which had taken place in the public spirit, since the period of ins former authority. Nor can it be believed that such men as Carnot would have continued in his ministry, without some better object than the re-establishment of his accustomed despotism. The defeat of Napoleon, however, gave another turn to affairs; and the moment was seized (perhaps not very judiciously) for the re-establishment of a republican government. The declaration of rights, promulgated %y the representatives, affords another proof of the steadiness of the thinking classes, to the original principles of the revolution, for it is nearly identical with that, made by the con stituent assembly in 1789.* suivi, que nous avons a regretter le sang- ele trois millions de Franqais." [The assertion which has just been made is a calumny. — Who dares accuse the nation of levity and want of perseverance with respect to the emperor Napoleon? — We have followed him to the sands of Egypt, and to the deserts of Russia, to fifty fields of battle, in his disasters, as in his victories; and we have followed him to regret the blood of three millions of Frenchmen.] This speech has been somewhat misrepresented: it is now given as com- municated to the author by the general himself. * Declaration of rights, made by the national assembly, July, 1789. Nature^has made all men equal and free. The distinctions necessary to social order are founded solely in public utility. Every man is born with rights, inalienable and imprescriptible. These are liberty of all sects and opinions, the right to preserve life and honour, the right of property; the free disposition of person, faculties, and industry; free communication of thought by every means; the pursuit of happiness; the resistance to oppression. The exercise of national rights has no other bounds, than those necessary for their common enjoyment. No man can be bound by laws, other than those made by himself, or his representatives; and which are already promulgated, and legally applied The sovereignty lies imprescriptibly in the nation; and no individual, or body of persons, is entitled to authority, which does not emanate expressly from that source. The end of all government is public 1XX APPENDIX IV. The principles promulgated in -these declarations, were approved by a majority of the representatives, and form the bais of the cr; ed professed, by the greater part of the nation. It may seem extraor- dinary, that, actuated by such sentiments, the French did not afford a more effectual opposition to the career of their enemies. But under circumstances so unfavourable to resistance; when a beaten and dispersed army, without the materials of war, were opposed to a million of men in arms; when doubt and distraction prevailed in the senate, and no rallying point was open for public spirit, it is dif- ficult to find grounds for effort, or encouragement for hope. The enslaved condition of the press also had rendered the promulgation of a natural sentiment slow and uncertain; and there was little con- fidence among individuals, respecting the real feeling of the country; the obstacles therefore to a guerilla war were apparently insurmountable. With respect to the propriety of fighting another pitched battle under the walls of Paris, great difference of opinion subsisted at the time in council, and still subsists among the people. The judgment of Carnot, Vandamme, and the majority of the as- sembly, ail against the risk, is entitled to considerable weight. The danger of delivering Paris to pillage, the universal and well-found- ed distrust of Fouche, and of other leaders; the apparent hopeless- ness of the cause, even in the result of a victory, are all available excuses for not fighting. How far a confidence in the declarations of the allies, and of the pledge given to the hduse of commons by the British ministry, may be entitled to the same claim, is more than problematical. good; and this requires that the legislative, executive, and judiciary authori- ties, should be separate and defined; and that their organization ensure a free representation of the citizens, the responsibility of ministers, and the impar- tiality of judges. The laws should be clear and precise, and uniformly appli- cable to every citizen. The taxes should be freely voted, and equally as- sessed. And as the abuses which, in the course of successive generations, creep into all human institutions, necessitate the occasional revision of the laws, legal and peaceable means should be indicated, to ens-ure, in certain cases, an extra- ordinary meeting of national deputies, for the express purpose of examining and correcting the vices of the constitution. Declaration of rights, made by the representative corps, in 1815. Liberty of citizens — equality in civil and political rights — liberty of the press — liberty of worship — the representative system — the necessary consent of the people to levy troops and taxes — responsibility of Ministers. N. B. To these articles were added others, arising out of the circum- stances of the times. Such are — Irrevocability of sales of national property — irrevocability of existing pro- prietorships — abolition of tithes, of nobility, ancient and modern, hereditary and feudal — abolition of confiscation, in all cases — oblivion of past political acts and votes*— institution of the legion of honour — continuance of rewards to officers and soldiers, and of pensions to their widows — institution of juries — immoveability of judges— guarantee of the national Debt. POLITICAL SUMMARY. lxxi The engagements of the allies with Louis XVIII were evident, and the whole tenor of their court conduct, in congress, exhibited a decided hostility to the revolutionary principle. To hope that they wouiu tolerate in France a republican, or even a really repre- sentative system of government, to expect at their hands any dis- pensation which wouicl leave France an unshackled and preponde- rating power in the European balance, was a stretch of credulity, which can only be jus lfied as the last clinging effort of drowning despair. On tne otner hand, if the people were earnest in their love of liberty, there was no desperation equal to an unconditional surrender. The army which retreated behind the Loire was consi- derable; many chiefs were eager to fight, and all would have obey- ed, had the order for battle been given: every house in Paris would have formed a citadel, and the siege might ha\ e been protracted* like that of Sarragossa. Had the defence of Paris been under- taken, merely as a means oi obtaining terms, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the effect would have been considerable. The allies must nave felt p;reat hesitation in committing themselves in the eyes of Europe, and of posterity, by the destruction of the finest city of the Christian continent, the centre of civilization, the home of nearly half a million of human beings, the depot of the principal remains of antiquity, and of the fine arts. The common voice of mankind would have exclaimed against the violation. At all events, the ex- istence of France was not dependant on that of Paris; and the sacri- fice of Moscow afforaed a recent example. Still, however, he must be a bold and confident judge, who shall presume unhesitatingly to condemn the French for a tame submission, under such circum- stances. The Bourbons had received a fresh lesson, apparently, sufficient to instruct the slowest intellects in the conduct they ought to pursue. The eyes of Europe were open to the necessity for a liberal government in France; and the finances of its most invete- rate enemy were rapidly exhausting. Every thing, therefore, pro- mised, that the coalition would in a lew years spontaneously melt and fall asunder, and would leave the nation to its own exertions. Much then, was to be expected from a Fabian policy: and when hu- man life, and the accumulated comforts of an immense metropolis were at stake, there might be reason in ceasing from a desperate struggle, and in preserving the national strength for a period of brighter auspices, and more rational expectation. It has been a customary attack upon the revolution, to assert that the French are at once unworthy and incapable of liberty; and that a forcible reinstatement of tne Bourbons would be a benefit confer- red upon a thoughtless and inconsiderate people. This position is certainly convenient. By an easy generalization, it follows, that some despotisms are necessary; and the necessity may, in its turn, be applied to every particular instance. It would, however, be dif- ficult to show that there exists any cause latent in the climate, diet, or other physical conditions of the nation, which .infits them for that liberty, which is the common right of all mankind; and with respect IXXU APVENDIX IV. to moral causes, they have not yet had that fair trial which is ad- equate to decide the question. The enjoyment of rights is connected with the perfoamance of duties; and the habits of freemen cannot be suddenly, impressed upon a generation nourished in slavery. But the progress which the nation, under every disadvantage, has made in political know- ledge, is by no means inconsiderable. The fidelity with which the office of juryman is discharged in France has been mentioned in another part of this volume: and in the worst epochs of the revolution, corruption in the exercise of the elective franchise was unknown; a decisive proof that the people are neither insensible to the blessings of liberty, nor ignorant of the basis on which it is founded.* The leading defect in the political character of the French, is the want of a proper jealousy of the minutest infringement of popular rights; it is an insensibility to in- dividual outrages on the liberty of the subject, where private inter- ests are not concerned; and the secret is betrayed in the co-exis- tence of an habeas corpus law, with Fouche's system of police. There are, and there necessarily must be, in such a capital as Paris, a large body of persons prone to submission, and ready to purchase ease and riches by compliance and flattery. The inferior writers (more especially tne canaille [rabble] of literature) have ex- hibited a disgraceful want of public spirit and character; but the numerous examples of stern and inflexible seduction, which the re- peated revoluiionsof the last thirty years have called into evidence, are amply sufficient to redeem the national reputation: it is enough to cite the names of La Fayette, Carnot, and Gregoire. If reliance, however, can be placed upon individual observation, a devotion to the interests of the country, and a readiness to make every sacrifice for the recovery of its liberties, are much more common than ego- tism and apathy, among the more respectabie classes. In France, as elsewhere, there is less patriotism among the trading part of the community, which is chiefly occupied with the returns of the shop; but with the cultivator of the soil, whose attachment to his country springs from an expansion of his domestic feelings, the sentiment is warm, animated, and enterprizing. Nor can it be doubted that the agricultural population would rise in amass, should the interference of foreigners be pushed too far, and the sense of national degradation be brought too closely home to the bosoms of the community. Situated as France has been (itcannot too often be repeated,) some contradiction in the popular feelings was inevitable. With necessi- ties the most opposite, with desires the most incompatible, now * The consequence has been, that policy, despairing- to manage the elec- tors, has curtailed their rights, both by open attacks, and by insidious compli- cation in the mode of election. " Trovata la legge" says the Italian pro- verb, " travato Vinganno." POLITICAL SUMMARY. Ixxtil struggling for liberty, and now contending for political existence, the nation has been compelled to vibrate between constitutional security and external strength; and it has been led to embrace forms of go- vernment the most opposite in character, and contradictory in prin- ciple. Still, however, like Proteus in the arms of Hercuies, the revolution, in all its metamorphoses, has preserved its individuality; it has tended uniformly to the same ends, and has pursued its course with a steady, if not an undeviating regularity. To judge of the political sentiments of the French, at the present day, it is sufficient to inquire, what has been the scope of the revo- lution. If its tendency has been to take from the few, and to give to the many, there can not be a doubt, that the majority are favour- able to i f s continuance, and dread the establishment of any power tending to deprive them of the benefits they have obtained The division of the national property into an infinity of small possessions, is in itself sufficient to attach a great mass of the people to the re- volution. The vast multitudes of peasants, masters of a little tene- ment, a garden well stocked and cultivated, and teeming with vege- table life; proprietors of a small plot of land, a cow, a pig, and poultry, with good clothes, and an abundance of excellent bedding, while they bear testimony to the benefits which France has derived from its first political change, afford an overwhelming mass of implacable hostility to whatever tends to shake the security of the national sales. Another interest most decidedly opposed to the restoration, is that which arises from the abolition of tithes. The immense bene- fit, which the cultivators of the soil derive from that revolutionary measure, keeps alive an hatred and a jealousy of the ancient system, whose spirit is bigotry, and whose supporters are known to consider the clergy, not only as religious guides, but as the pillars of the throne, as advocates of divine right, and as ready and useful assis- tants in the craft and mystery of government. Neither can the French farmer be deceived by the sophistry, so constantly played off in England, that the tithe falls exclusively on the landlord; for they ha.\e felt the difference. They have compared the opposite condition of a tithed and untithed cultivator: they practically know that the tax is not so much levied on the soil, as upon the industry and capital which render it productive. Another class of persons, bound by the same tie ot interest to the revolution, is that of the younger children of wealthy families. By a law, whose wisdom is equalled only by its humanity, the van- ity of the parent is prevented fiom reducing his family to beg- gary, in order to enrich the elder branch. By this law the bounds of caprice are regulated, by the number of children. The man who has one child only, may alienate one-half of his property, at pleasure. If he have two children, he is compelled to reserve two- thirds to divide between them; if he have three, his power of ali- enation extends only to one-fourth of his property.* A law like * Code Napoleon, 913. k IXxlv APPEN1UX IV. this, which provides tor the comfort of all the members of a family, which gives value to property, by its diffusion and circulation, and protects the state from the danger and corruption of overgrown fortunes, manifestly strikes at the very root of the feudal system, and is incompatible with the principles of the restoration. The an- cient regime is in its essence privilege, favour, and distinction. The subserviency of the younger children to the hereditary sup- porters of the family dignity and splendour, is no less a part of the system, than the existence itself of such representatives; the law therefore must be repealed or modified in a way unfavourable to the mass of the population, who will not easily forget the benefits they have enjoyed, for five-and-twenty years, under the protection of the revolutionary principle. Another description of persons, whose interests are injured by the restoration, is that of the private soldiers and subaltern officers of the army; who, without being, as their enemies assert, eager after plunder, and discontented with any settled order of society, may regret the competency to succeed to the highest military ho- nours, and the certainty which merit enjoyed of finding its level, independently of birth or court favour. The French government have thought it good policy to disband the remains of the imperial army, in order to disarm and separate men, whose habits of mutu- al confidence and of trust in their commanders gave them a dan- gerous advantage over their employers. But it is difficult to im- agine that the fresh levies will be less national, or less prejudiced against the new government, than their predecessors. They are equally alive to the recollection of the revolutionary principle of pro- motion; — they are the natural successors to the glory, to the re- grets, and to the wishes of the disbanded army; and they are fully as much awake to the ridicule of superannuated generals, and holiday colonels. The imperial soldiery, on the other hand, re- turned to their original occupations, exhibited the extraordinary picture of lieutenants at the plough, and captains in waggoners' frocks. Very many of these mer, promoted from the ranks, and acquainted with the charms of comparative idleness and wealth, while they are conscious of the services by which they rose to com- mand, cannot repress the disdain and disgust with which they re- turn to servile habits, nor conceal their hatred to the new order of government, which occasions their present obscurity. In the bo- som of their native villages, they become the centres of complaint -—the foci of sedition; and they will long preserve alive in the coun- try the existing feelings, respecting the restoration. This descrip- tion of men might perhaps have been conciliated by kindness, and won by protection; for it is the nature of soldiers to attach them- selves to those by whom they are paid: at present, they are at once monuments of faded glory, and ready instrumei ts for the first chief, who may start in opposition to the reigning dynasty. POLITICAL SUMMARY. 1XXV But if there be any class of society more fervent in its attachment to the revolu.ion, and thoroughly disgusted with the annihilation of constitutional rights, it is that of the literary and scientific men. Under this appeiiation it is not intended to include the official scrib- blers, who, divested alike of literary, as of moral character, remain steadily attached to the minister of police for the time being; and who, in consideration of a few hundred francs, are prepared with essays, odes, and epithalamiums, tragedies, operas, and farces, to adulate, or. satirize, to prove, or disprove, according to the reigning politics of the day Tne constantly increasing influence of public opinion has given importance to the labours of these men, in the estimation of the minister; while the meanness of their employ- ment, and their facility of tergiversation, have secured them from persecution. The same persons, therefore, have eulogized in suc- cession the republic, the emperor, and the king; and they remain, like the feline tribe, attached to the house, while they equally and in turns caress all its various and successive inhabitants. The genuine literati, and more especially the men of science, both by interest and principle, must be attached to tne revolution, which had raised the dignity of talent, by opening every employ- ment in the state to general competition, and had removed the va- rious impediments, with which bigotry and a mistaken policy had circumscribed and controlled the freedom of inquiry. Unembarras- sed in their functions, and raised in the scale of society, not more by the degradation of the honours of aristocratic distinction, than by their own positive increase in utility and importance, it is natural that they should be hostile to an event, which plunges them in their ancient roture, by raising to the surface a description of persons, whose eminence has no necessary connexion either with knowledge or morals; and it is just that they should distrust a family and a go- vernment, which for centuries had persecuted, with unrelenting se- verity, all opinions which did not coincide with the prescribed scale of fanaticism and subserviency The scientific classes are besides well aw are that the king entertains a personal dislike to them, from the share they have had, or have been supposed to have had, in the conduct of the revolution, while his exclusive affection for belles lettres, and his distate for the sciences, make but few claims on their admiration or esteem. In Napoleon, on the Contrary, the men of science found a warm friend, and a co-operating protector. That he possessed all the acquirements to which he pretended, is not proba- ble The life of a scldier is but little favourable to such various and extensive pursuits. But that he was a good mathematician, a com- petent chemist, an admirer (at least) of the fine arts, and posses- sed all the outli ;es of natural and physiological science, is beyond doubt, or contradiction. He enjoyed aiso a faculty, of which all kings are desirous, from its imposing and useful results, that of a good natural tact for inquiry, for adopting the ideas of others in conversation, and giving them the air of originating with himself. 1XXV1 APPENDIX IV. By this faculty, he was enabled to dictate to artists on sculpture and painting, to criticise composition with musicians, and in conver- sation with the different professors, to draw them out, and dismiss them, contented with themselves, and impressed with an high idea of his own talents and accomplishments.* Well aware of the im- portance of the sciences in improving manufactures, advancing agriculture, and increasing the means of defence in war, he was equaily alive to the absurdity of that false and sophistical metaphysic, which had been the boast and triumph of schoolmen; and which had so largely contributed to plunge Europe in ignorance and su- perstition. While, therefore, knowledge had every thing to hope from him, as a protector, it had the less to fear from his craft, as an emperor. It will ever remain as a testimony of his enlarged views and liberal respect for science, that the first article of the treaty he imposed upon Naples, after the battle of Marengo, stipulated for the release of Dolomieu, the naturalist, who had been made prisoner on his return from Egypt, and had been treated with every indignity, which barbarilv and pusillanimous vengeance could in- flict. It is not then wonderful, that Napoleon in a great measure suc- ceeded to captivate many of that class of his subjects, and to blind them to the fatal consequences of his despotic character. The ha- bits which the revolution has occasioned of substituting practical no- tions of expediency, for theoretical ideas of government, have also induced many to give their support, or at least their tacit consent to his government, who were intrinsically democratic, and who looked forward impatiently to the epoch, which should emancipate science from patronage, and the republic from domination; esteeming the then existing order of things to be transitory, and to be necessitated by circumstances, which at no very distant day might cease to be influential. Upon the whole it may be concluded, that the majority of the most respectable members of this body are in sentiment repub- lican, and that those who escaped from the personal influence (it might almost be called fascination) of the emperor, have never de- viated from that political principle. But whether they have resisted imperial solicitation, or have yielded up the noble independence which should always accompany genius, the whole body seem at heart united in a love of rational liberty and a free government, which is more or less openly exhibited, according to the varying energy and candour of individual character. It is but justice however to state, that since the return of the Bourbons, hostilities were com- menced by the court, who, in violation of their solemn promise, that none should be pursued for political opinions or acts, dismissed from the national institute its most efficient members; and in order to di- * It is thus that he is said to have for a moment seduced Benjamin Cons- tant, and to have tamed the republican, by a mixture of admiration for his ability, and of coincidence with his opinions. Political summary, lxxvii minish still further the influence of this body, broke it up into sepa- rate academies. The enterprising and scientific Carnot, who had in the most difficult times preserved the integrity of his principles, who, sacrificing to his country all personal feelings, had stepped forward to protect the national independence, was among the first struck off the list, although his candour and simplicity of faith might have afforded a far surer pledge of security to the reigning dynasty, than can be found in the sycophancy of that host of temporizers, who have deserted the imperial for the royal court, and are again ready to pass over to any other cause, which promises an increase of emolu- ments or honours to the seceder. In the same proscription stands also Gregoire, the advocate of ne- gro emancipation, the unsubdued supporter of religious freedom, the upholder of the Christian religion, and the protector of its priests, at a moment when all, who valued safety above honour and conscience, were eager to renounce their faith, and to attest their sincerity, by persecuting the clergy. In this barbarous sacrifice of science to vengeance, even Monge, the projector of the institution itself, and one of the best geometers of France, was not spared. Where at that moment were the firmness and dignity which should belong to elevated pursuits? Where the courage, which science and virtue should inspire? Had a body, so respectable, and so weighty in public opinion, as the institute, have opposed but a passive resistance (if the phrase be allowable) to this preliminary persecution; had they either resigned their seats, or re- fused to fill up the places of the ejected members, how different a character might they have impressed upon the government! What a torrent of blood might they have saved! What a tremendous re- action possibly prevented! The only set of men decidedly favourable to the restoration, if the emigrants and privileged persons be excepted, are the lawyers, who find in the simple enactments, and equal jurisprudence of the Code Napoleon, an obstacle to litigation, highly unfavourable to their eco- nomic and ambitious views. The elder members of the law, es- pecially the remains of the ancient parliaments, obliged to re-com- mence their studies, yet averse from the labour of learning, look back with regret to those forms, without which their original stock of acquired knowledge is useless and antiquated. The gens de robe [gownmen] also, holding under the old regime a middle place in society, and enjoying a sort of secondary nobility, inherit many of the prejudices of the higher classes, and consider themselves a9 degraded by the revolution. It is a circumstance most unfortunate for humanity, that the lawyers, whose interests, well understood, should universally attach them to the cause of liberty, are, in fact, extremely prone to lend themselves to arbitrary power; and prefer the honours and emoluments which a monarch can bestow, to the elevation and distinction that free forms of government hold out to talent and to public services. No situation in civilized life is more IXXVIII APPENDIX IV. dignified than that of the lawyer in a free state, administering justice without bias or partiality; no condition is more abject than that of a slavish and complying bar, distorting the laws to oppress the subject, and known only by the injuries it inflicts on society. It is, however, but justice to state, that the French lawyers are not unanimous in their hostility to liberty; that many of them, disgusted at the recol- lection of revolutionary violence, and influenced by their habitual love of established order, regard the reigning dynasty as the instru- ments of peace, and that many more are anxious to establish a real representative system, and look rather to that end than to the quali- ties of the governor, or to the peculiar form, under which the gov- ernment shall be administered. To this moral view of the state of popular opinion may be append- ed the geographical estimate of Fouche, whose situation, as minister of police, entitles him to considerable credit, upon a point like the present. His views, likewise, will afford a necessary correction of propositions, which are inevitably somewhat too general, and will aid in a further approximation towards truth. The north of France, according to his statement, is in general mo- derate. The wesi, especially La Vendee, is royalist; but the great cities do not always partake in the enthusiasm, which the country people feel in favour of the ancient regime. Auvergne is constitution- ally disposed, while in Lyons there are two parties. In the south, royalism is of a more fanatical and inflammable character, and ma- nifests itself by a degree of outrage and violence, which serves only to generate disgust, and to aggravate hostility to the royal cause in other quarters. In the great towns also of this part of France, and amongst the labouring poor, loyalty is by no means so general, or active, and the entire protestant population is unfavourable to the new government, from a dread of re-action, and an apprehension of persecution. In the east, Alsace, Lorraine, the three bishoprics, the Ardennes, Champaigne, Burgundy, Franche Comte, and Dauphiny, are opposed to the royal dynasty. With respect to Paris, the capital contains within its precincts a sufficient number of all factions, to give a temporary and alternate triumph to each party, as circum- stances become favourable to its domination. At the epoch of the return of Napoleon, in the course of a few hours, the white cockade disappeared from the streets, and was superseded by the tri-coloured ribband; and this did not so much arise from the tergiversation of in- dividuals, as from the retreat of one party, and the renewed confi- dence Of the other; yet the public places were always crowded. In case of civil war, Fouche calculates that the royalists would prevail in ten departments, that parties would be balanced in fifteen, and that in the rest a few royalists would be opposed to the mass of the peo- ple. It is usually imagined that the French take but little interest in the political events, which are passing before them; but the reverse is most certainlv the truth. POLITICAL SUMMARY. Ixx'lX Independently of the diffusion of education, the return of so many veterans from the army disseminates, among- the common people, a spirit of observation and reflection; and the inhabitants of the departments hold the Parisians in contempt, for their apparent fickleness arid absence of determined spirit. During our residence in Paris, we were assured by a gentleman, recently returned from a considerable tour, that this sentiment was universal; and that in one instance, in which the municipality thought proper to parade the royal bust through the streets of the town, to form what they term an inauguration, the mayor and his officers could not find an individual to join the procession, and that the groups in the street turned their backs as it passed, affecting not to be aware of the transaction. At the commencement of the revolution, the interest taken in politics was universal, and pamphlets and gazettes, adapted to all comprehensions, appeared in varied and rapid profusion. The violence of the jacobin faction for a time repressed all pub- lic demonstrations, and the political agitation was confined to the terrorist chiefs of the revolutionary committees. The spirit of the people, however, continued to show itself in the zeal and purity of the elections. The reign of Napoleon was likewise successful in repressing the manifestation of opinion, as utterly inconsistent with the nature of his police, or with military government. But the re- storation of 1814, brought the public mind once more to bear upon politics, and the reign of the hundred days renewed all the neglected notions of republican liberty. At the present moment, if deprived of their rights as citizens, the people are closely occu- pied with public interests. With less outward expression than at the commencement of the revolution, there reigns a greater degree of political good sense. Public discussions in taverns, and petitions for redress of grievances, of course cannot take place, as they were wont to do in this country. Both the genius of the government, and the momentary lassitude of the nation, fatigued by the immen- sity of its sacrifices, are adverse to such public acts. The abuse also which the Jacobins made of clubs, and the certain death which former signatures to petitions, hostile to their principles, entailed on the wretched victims of their reign, contributed to bring these mea- sures into disrepute. But a national and an individual sentiment of patriotism, an entire conviction of the equality of rights among all orders of the state, and an attachment to the basis of the constitu- tion, pervade private conversations, and give a very general tone to French society. Compressed by domestic tyranny and by foreign invasion, public spirit has had only the short intervals of the revolution of 1789, and that of the hundred days, for its free manifestation; and these make too short a period for the formation of civic habits. But there has been abundant opportunity for developing and confirming in the great majority of the people a knowledge of their rights, and a feeling of the necessity for those advantages; which result from 1XXX APPENDIX IV. a free government. In whatever point of view the nation be re- garded, it is evident that the king and nobiiity have to contend against a fearful opposition; and it is admitted by all parties, that the throne is for the present, secured solely by the bayonets of fo- reigners. To consider the revolution then as at an end, and to imagine that the allied sovereigns have conquered the absolute pos- session of despotic power, either for themselves or for the French monarch, would be the excess of folly. The dislocation of society has been too complete, and the shock given to prejudces and opin- ions too violent, to admit of a quiet resumption of old habits and ideas. The constitution of the ancient monarchy of France, con- sisting of usages rather than that of rights, of maxims rather than of laws, rested fundamentally upon conventional notions and tacit agreements, now for ever buried " in the tomb of the Capulets." A complete counter-revolution is impossible; and any despotism which can be substituted for it, must be composed of such jarring and ill-assorted materials, as never can dove-tail and consolidate into harmony and stability. Rudis indig-estaque moles Nee quidquam, nisi pondus iners; congestaque eodem Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. To meet the exigencies of the times, it is absolutely necessary to abandon those temporising andjournatier schemes of policy, which, looking only to instant emergencies, and to present obstacles, pro- ceed from expedient to expedient, and add the uncertainty of chance to a Machiavellian contempt for right.* Between the high prerogative doctrines, and the reveries of ab- stract democracy, there exists a mezzo-t ermine ', in which alone the nations of Europe can settle into permanent tranquillity: but to attain this point requires much more of philosophy, and a more general- izing perception, than has hitherto guided the councils either of the restored king, or of the congress of Vienna. Sottise des deux parts, [folly on both sides,] the motto of abstract discussions in general, may be applied with great aptitude to the revolutionary contest It is by a frank avowal of mutual errors, that a permanent reconciliation can alone be effected. Is it not then the excess of presumption to demand that concessions should only be made on one side, and those by the party, which in every stage have been the sufferers by the misconduct of its opponents? The objection usu- ally offered to this mode of reasoning, that the government is too feeble, and that the rebellious spirits are too bold to allow of a mo- derated liberty, is weak and despairing. * It is true, that the wisdom of all these latter times in princes' affairs, is rather fine deliveries and shifting^ of dangers and mischiefs, when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof: but this is but to try masteries with fortune. — Bacon. POLITICAL SUMMARY. lxxxi Of what use is the temporary occupation of France by the allied armies, but to give that weight to the government, which will ena- ble it to adopt a generous and liberal line of policy? If that end be not obtained; if the people of France be not satisfied, any des- potism that five years can organize, may be overthrown in a mo- ment; and the king, to retain his power, must be content to remain for the rest of his life in statu fiu/iillari, and to hold his sceptre in a feudal subjection to the allies, who placed it in his hands. To add to the distraction that naturally belongs to a forcible and unnatural resto- ration, the same fatality which has attended the privileged ciasses through all the successive stages of the revolution, has urged them to that schism amongst themselves, which has surrounded the throne with new difficulties and dangers, has increased the agitation of so- ciety, and threatens to bury both parties in a common destruction, It has happened in recent events, nearly as in the restoration of Charles II of England, that the pretensions of those, who followed the fortunes of the king in his adversity, have by far outstripped all possibility of compliance or benevolence in the monarch. The ruined condition of the finances, the extensive drain established by the victorious foreigners, and the necessity of purchasing friends amongst the most powerful adherents of the imperial government, have prevented him from bestowing either honours or emoluments with that liberality, or in that exclusive direction, which would meet the wants and wishes of the emigrant nobility The impos- sibility of restoring the forfeited estates, and of re-establishing the totality of feudal rights, has naturally formed another source of dis- agreement and complaint. The monarchy and the aristocracy fell together; and the noblesse cannot understand, why the restoration should not be equally simultaneous. From this starting-post of dis- content, the ultra-royalists, in separating from their king, have hur- ried almost into rebellion against his authority; and have acted with an intemperance, of which they have so harshly accused the people, in the earlier periods of the revolution. Not satisfied with the ri- gorous measures adopted by the king, and as if conscious that force alone can uphold their obsolete pretensions, they sought to push the government into such extremes of violence, as would infallibly have produced a new insurrection. To gratify their notions of govern- ment, every trace of the revolution must be obliterated, the clergy reinstated in their property, every leading character of the former governments executed or exiled. Confiding in the strength of their foreign allies, they set no bounds to the rigour of their projected punishments, but considered the people as delivered into their hands, for the completion of vengeance. To this overweening and shortsighted policy, it is unnecessary to add, that the princes of the royai house are attached; and the anti- cipation of a future reign decides many against the present govern- ment, whom more moderate measures and brighter promises might have bound to the throne. 1 lXXXU APPENDIX IV. To conciliate his family, and to quiet the clamours of the emi- grants, the king had in vain sacrificed his own interests, and endan- gered his reputation with posterity. The unrelenting persecution of men, the most eminent for talents and courage: the execution of many subaltern and insignificant characters, put to death for the sole purpose of exciting terror; the superseding of the usual jurisdictions of the kingdom, by more arbitrary courts; and the violation, on the slightest pretences, of amnesties, granted merely for begetting a false security; were insufficient to gratify the emigrant spirit. A most flagrant instance of this last violence occurred at Rheims, in the case of general Travot, for the institution of whose trial telegraphic or- ders were dispatched from Paris, after the proclamation of a gene- ral amnesty for ail whose processes had not already commenced, in order that he might not be included in that predicament, when the amnesty should arrive by the ordinary post, to be proclaimed in the department where he was confined. The continuance, and even ag- gravation of the infamous system of police, the entire thraldom of the press, the crowding of the prisons with persons of the lowest ranks, the practised schemes of false conspiracies, formed by subal- tern agents of the government to ensnare the people, and the subse- quent execution of the victims; these, and many other outrages up- on the people, as they were the deeds of the ministers, will be de- nied by the ultra-royalist faction. But if that party are not satisfied with such acts of rigour, if they are not willing to stop short at that point, beyond which the king did not think it safe to proceed, their case will be but little benefitted by the denial. From a variety of circumstances, from accidental remarks drop- ped in society, and from the general tone of criticism adopted by in- dividuals of the ultra- royalist faction, an opinion might be inferred, that some hope existed among them of changing the head of the go- vernment; of either persuading, or forcing, the king to resign, and of placing the daughter of Louis XVI on the throne. Such an in- tention is easily denied; and it may perhaps be too loose a conjec- ture to hazard upon individual opinion: but the masculine and de- cided tone of character of the dutchesse d'Angouleme, the unpun- ished attempt to proclaim her and her husband in the west, th<; adop- tion in that part of the country of their colours,* the discussions respecting: the Salic law, introduced into the English journals, all tend to confirm the suspicion. The unwonted firmness and decision of the king in the instance of the ordonnance, by which, in dismis- sing the chambers, and proceeding to a new election, he deprived the princes of their presidencies in the electoral colleges; and the se- cresy which he observed respecting the whole measure to them, while they dined daily at his table, evince the pressure of reasons of atate, more than usually urgent, and personally applicable to the members of his family. * The green ribbon is now worn publicly by the Angouleme faction, as a badge of party. POLITICAL SUMMARY. lxXXM A story was some time back confidantly circulated in Paris amongst persons of the higher classes, that the minister of police had intercepted, and shown to the king, the correspondence of some members of his family, in which, reports were fabricated and sent to Flanders, to be there thrown into circulation, whose object was to lead the king into a suspicion of his ministers, and to induce him to throw himself into the arms of the uitra-royalists. Another anec- dote, which was related about the same time, stated that some arti- cles, personally disrespectful to the king, having appeared in a London paper, it had been deemed expedient to buy over the editor; but that, when the attempt was made, it was discovered that he was already in the pay of the ultra-royalist chiefs. How far such anec- dotes are worthy of credit, it is difficult to determine, the want of a free channel for intelligence giving an unnatural currency to all sorts of fabrication at Paris; but the total abandonment with which the king has thrown himself into the guidance of his ministers, and his opposition to the wishes of his family, give a great colour and plausibility to such relations. Without, however, attributing to the ultra-royalists designs of such excessive hostility towards the king, their separation from his interests, and their clamorous opposition to his measures, betray a degree of blindness and of selfishness perfectly incomprehensible. In the old times, when the thrones of Europe rested on the firmest basin, it was esteemed but ill policy in the heirs of the kingdom, to set an example of insubordination. But at the present moment, to disturb the march of government, to agitate the nation with party disputes, and to ridicule the person and character of the king, is to fight the battles of the revolution, and to shake the monarchy to its centre. The dilemma in which the king is placed, is difficult and embarrassing. Concession to the ultras is pregnant with certain, with inevitable destruction. The measures of this party, as they are founded in passion, so are they dependant solely upon physical force. The contempt the ultras entertain for the people, blinds them to the remotest sense of danger, and places the possibility of re-action perfectly beyond their calculations. The sang froid and indifference, with which propositions the most violent were discus- sed, at Paris, in the salons of the emigrants, excited in our minds the most painful emotions. Nothing could be more distressing than to behold individuals, who, politics apart, are gentle, amiable, po- lished, and hospitable, thus casting themselves headlong upon ob- vious destruction. The axe seemed to vibrate over their heads, as they talked; and the most terrific images of revolutionary horror were excited, by the desperate intemperance of their wishes and ex- pectations. The king, on the other hand, in throwing himself into the hands of his ministers, has to encounter the whole force of re- sistance of the ultra-royalists; and to balance their intrigues, he must associate himself with persons whom he dare not trust, and who have little trust in him. Without energy of character to adopt a line of conduct altogether popular, and coincident with the spirit of lxxxiv APPENDIX iV. the day; without any accurate notions, as to what should be granted and what withheld; his difficulties serve only to throw him upon ar- bitrary and violent measures; and the ultra-royalists have the un- blushing hypocrisy to profit by them, and to assume the mask of moderation. In the meantime, the people, deprived of the virtual exercise of the elective franchise> and perfectly sensible of the hos- tility of both parties to liberty, remain quiet and indifferent. Satis- fied that the division must in the end prove beneficial to themselves, they await a better opportunity for exertion and enterprise. In this condition of the country, it is impossible to speculate upon futurity, with any hope of precision. The line at present pursued by the ministry, favourable neither to the noblesse nor to the people, wants unity of design, and firmness of execution, to lead to impor- tant results, while the age and infirmities of the king prevent any extended calculation on the effects of his measures The conduct, which can alone terminate in order and harmony, is obvious. A manly recognition of constitutional principles, the establishment of an entire representation of the people, a real responsibility of minis- ters, and an unshackled press, absolute indifference between sects of religion, and a perfect oblivion of the past, would lay the foundation of a powerful and prosperous monarchy; and with these advantages the peopie would be reconciled to continue under the government of the reigning dynasty. To hope, however, for such a government, cither from the king, or the princes of his house, seems almost ro- mantic. Measures of temporary expediency, independent of all principle, except that of the re-consolidation of the ancient regime, are alone to be expected from either party. To set the nation at ease respecting property, the claims of the priesthood should, above all things, be silenced and put to rest; yet both moderes and ultras phce their hope in maintaining the cause of royalty, in the agency of religion. Absurd and superstitious ceremonies are revived: pro- cessions, funeral services for the victims of the revolution, endow- ments of convents, every species of bigotry, is put into action among a nation of free thinkers, or at least of enemies to clerical pretension. In matters of religious form, whatever is not sacred is ridiculous. A cat or an onion were respectable objects of worship, in " the good old times" of Egypt; while the Jupiter of Phidias could procure but an equivocal respect from the enlightened Greeks. In this particu- lar, the taste of the people must be gratified, or they reject the whole. The ridicule, which the very populace attached to the pup- pet-show procession of the fete dieu, is highly dangerous to the authority, from which the celebration of that ceremony emanated; and it attaches itself by a natural association with every other func- tion of the crown, and still more with the person of its possessor. On this point there cannot be two opinions. The churches in France are universally empty, or occupied exclusively by the infirm, by females, and by children. Of the many churches we visited, that of Dieppe was the only one, in which we saw a decent congregation- FOLITICAL SUMMARY. lxXXV And in this the females abounded in a ratio of nearly ten to one. In Paris, the very lowest classes cannot conceal their disrespect for priests, and their public ceremonies. To attempt the regeneration of clerical authority in France, is obviously vain. In spite of Jesuits, inquisitions, and all other estab- lishments, Catholicism lies prostrate before the revolution. If the government desire to re-establish religion in France, it must be effected by a greater conformity to reason, and by the abolition of mummeries, which have no longer any effect, but to afford an ob- vious butt for the ridicule of the dullest apprehensions. To sum up the particulars of the political state of France, in a few words (for the subject in detail is nearly inexhaustible), the na- tion may be at present considered as an aggregate of two distinct races, the representatives of the ninth and of the nineteenth centu- ries, between whom there is neither community of interests, feelings, nor opinions. And however formidable the one party may seem, by the weight of a despotic government and an armed alliance, the other possesses the whole influence of numbers, wealth, public opi- nion, and the character and tendency of the age. After the numerous and extraordinary changes which have taken place in Europe, it would be ridiculous to affect a prophetic insight into the revolutions that are immediately to ensue. The reigning family may continue on the throne for many years; for there is neither confidence among individuals, nor concentration enough of the means of opposition to depose them, without the concurrence of some accidental shock. They may, on the other hand, be swept off from power in a moment; for the discontent is general, and public opinion decidedly against them. The single circumstance of the domination of foreigners might drive the whole nation to arms, should a leader appear possessed of the confidence and affections of the people. Upon the whole, however, the chances in favour of the perma- nence of the existing order of things are few: the probabilities of its speedy dissolution are numerous and weighty. The fatal division of the royalists amongst themselves; the violence, and at the some time the weakness, of the measures of government; the increasing difficulties of the finance; seem to promise little from the influence of time. If the attention be turned, from the internal condition of France, to the state of Europe at large, the causes of mutation will appear more numerous, and influential. The condition of England, the centre and very soul of the coalition against the revolution, is critical. Its poverty alone will for many years prevent a further interference with the affairs of the continent: it is likewise more than doubtful, whether the nation itself would permit a longer continuance of that policy, by which it has so mate- rially suffered; and there seems every reason for supposing that one or both of these causes may produce a speedy recall of the army of ' occupation, if, indeed, the French government itself be not anxious to remove such expensive friends. ixxxvi APPENDIX IV. If, from England, the attention be turned to continental affairs, it meets with an assemblage of heterogeneous and hostile elements, held together by the operation of force, and in compliance with the interests of a few individuals, not united by the cementing bond of public utility, and the common good. In Italy> the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland, the natural boun- daries of kingdoms violated, the interest and feelings of nations des- pised, there remain aggregates, rather than masses; collections of individuals, rather than communities or states. By the contradic- tion of prejudices and opinions, by the- abrupt subversion of customs and habits, the relations of sovereign and people are exchanged for those of the task-master and slaves. The European republic thus disjointed, the christian population thus dissatisfied, all settied and established notions of right are sacri- ficed to the ambition and avarice of a few military chieftains. In circumstances thus unnatural and perverted, it is not surprising that revolutionary principles have disseminated themselves from the Tagus to the Neva: and that a spirit of liberty, the eldest born off- spring of the art of printing, continues to impress indelible changes upon every nation of the civilized world. Before this influence, ex- isting institutions must bend; before this illumination, abuses and absurd combinations must disappear; or society will eventually dis- solve and founder; to be re-cast in a mould more adapted to existing feelings, co-ordinate with the interests, and commensurate with the necessities of the great mass of mankind. ■^c^£__ /^J- i w C\ ? LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 010 231 737 3