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 2 <£
 
 THE AMEEICAN 
 
 PARIS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SANDERSON 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CAREY & HART. 
 1847.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S39, by E. L. Caret &■ A. 
 Hart, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS.
 
 DC 
 733 
 
 IT* I 
 
 PUBLISHERS NOTICE. 
 
 A new Edition of " The American in Paris," by the 
 late John Sanderson, having been repeatedly called for, 
 the publishers have the pleasure to state that they have 
 arranged with his administrator for the publication of 
 this Edition. 
 
 
 s:
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 London, August 10th, 1836. 
 ***** You have no sooner a guinea in 
 London than you have none. In addition to the ways 
 and means I pointed out in my last, gather together the 
 letters I wrote you from Paris, and offer them to the 
 booksellers. There are enough, if you have preserved 
 them, for a volume. Those from London reserve until 
 time has made the necessary additions for volume the 
 second. I had partly the intention, in writing these let- 
 ters, to dress them up one day into some kind of shape 
 for the Public. I am not certain they are fit to be seen 
 in their present dishabille — but leave that to the pur- 
 chaser. A pretty woman slip-shod is a pretty woman still, 
 and she is not so much improved as you think by her 
 court dress. Tell the Public I do not mean them for 
 great things: I am no critic, no politician, no political 
 economist; but only, as Shakspeare would say, "a snap- 
 per up of inconsiderate trifles." — Under this title I have 
 the honor to be, with the most perfect consideration, the 
 Public's very obedient, humble servant.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Havre — Description of ihe town — The map seller — Manners of the 
 people — Law of inheritance — State of agriculture — Town and 
 country poverty — Foreign trade — The custom house, a school for 
 perjury — System of passports — The French diligence — Rouen — 
 The cathedral — Joan of Arc 13—30 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Paris — Street cries — St. Roch — The Boulevards — Parisian lodgings 
 — Manner of living — The grand opera — Taglioni — The public gar- 
 dens — The Guinguettes — Dancing, the characteristic amusement of 
 the French — Sunday dances — Dancing defended, from classical 
 authority - 30—49 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 The Boulevards — Boulevard Madelaine — Boulevard des Capucines — 
 Boulevard Italien — Monsieur Careme — Splendid cafes — The baths 
 — Boulevard Montmartre — The shoe-black — The chiffonnier — The 
 gratteur — The commissionnaire— Boulevard du Temple — Scene at 
 the Ambigtt Comique— Sir Sydney Smith— Monsieur de Paris —
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 The Cafe Turc— The fountains— Recollections of the Bastille— The 
 Halle aux Bles— The Bicetre— Boulevard du Mont Parnasse 
 
 50—76 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 The Palais Royal— French courtesy— Rue Vivienne— Pleasures of 
 walking in the streets— Cafes in the Palais Royal— Mille Colonnes 
 — Very'6— French dinners— Past history of the Palais Royal — 
 Galerie d'Orleans — Gambling — The unhappy Colton— Hells of the 
 Palais Royal— Prince Puckler Muskau — Lord Brougham — The 
 king and queen -------- 76—98 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 The Tuileries — The gardens— The statues— The Cabinets de lecture 
 — The king's band — Regulations of the gardens — Yankee modesty 
 — the English parks — Proper estimate of riches — Policy of culti- 
 vating a taste for innocent pleasures — Advantages of gardens — 
 Should be made ornamental -Cause of the French Revolution — 
 Mr. Burke's notion of the English parks— Climate of France 
 
 98—110 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 The Three Glorious Days— The plump little widow— Marriage of 
 fifteen young girls — Shrines of the martyrs — Louis Philippe — 
 Dukes of Orleans and Nemours — The National Guards— Fieschi — 
 The Infernal Machine — Marshal Mortier and twelve persons killed 
 — Dismissal of the troops — The queen and her daughters — Dis- 
 turbed state of France — The Chamber of Deputies — Elements of 
 support to the present dynasty — Private character of the king — 
 The daily journals— The Chamber of Peers — Bonaparte 
 
 110—125
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 The Garden of Plants — The omnibus — The Museum of Natural His- 
 tory — American birds — The naturalist — Study of entomology — The 
 Botanic Garden — Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy — The mena- 
 gerie — The giraffe — Notions of America — The cedar of Lebanon — 
 Effects of French cookery — French gastronomy — Goose liver pie — 
 Mode of procuring the repletion of the liver - • 125 — 139 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Burial of the victims — St. Cloud — The chateau — The cicerone — The 
 Chevalier-d'Industrie — Grave of Mrs. Jordan — The Bois de Bou- 
 logne — Amusements on fete days — Place Louis XV. — The king at 
 the'Tuileries — The American address — His majesty's reply — The 
 Princess Amelia — The queen and her daughters — The Dukes of 
 Orleans and Nemours — Madame Adelaide — Splendor of ancient 
 courts — Manner of governing the French — William the Fourth — 
 Exhibition of the students at the University - - 139 — 154 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Tour of Paris— The Seine — The Garden of Plants — The animals — 
 Island of St. Louis — The Halle aux Vins — The police — Palais de 
 Justice— The Morgue — Number of suicides — M. Perrin — The Hotel 
 de Ville — Place de Greve — The Pont Neuf— Quai des Augustins — 
 The Institute — Isabeau de Baviere — The Bains Vigiers — The Pont 
 des Arts — The washerwomen's fete — Swimming-schools for both 
 sexes — The Chamber of Deputies — Place de la Revolution — Obe- 
 lisk of Luxor — Hospital of the Invalids— Ecole Militaire — The 
 Champ de Mars— Talleyrand 155—182
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Faubourg St. Germain — Quartier Latin — The book-stalls — Phrenolo- 
 gists — Dupuytren's room — Medical students— Lodgings — Bill at the 
 Sorbonne — French cookery — A gentleman's boarding-house — The 
 locomotive cook — Fruit — The pension — The landlady — Pleasure 
 in being duped — Smile of a French landlady — The boarding-house 
 — Amiable ladies — The Luxembourg gardens — The grisettes — 
 Their naivete and simplicity — Americans sent to Paris — Parisian 
 morals — Advantages in visiting old countries — American society 
 in Paris 182—206 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 The Observatory — The astronomers — Val de Grace — Anne of Austria 
 — Hospice des Enfans Trouves — Rows of cradles — Sisters of Cha- 
 rity—Vincent de Paul— Maisons d'Accouchement— Place St. Jacques 
 — The Catacombs — Skull of Ninon de l'Enclos — the poet Gilbert — 
 Julian's Bath — Hotel de Cluny — Ancient furniture — Francis the 
 First's bed — Charlotte Corday — Danton — Marat — Robespierre — 
 Rue des Postes — Convents of former times — Faubourg St. Marceau 
 
 207—219
 
 THE AMERICAN IN PARIS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Havre— Description of the town— The map seller— Manners of the 
 people— Law of inheritance— State of agriculture— Town and 
 country poverty — Foreign trade — The custom house, a school 
 for perjury— System of passports — The French diligence — Rouen 
 — The cathedral — Joan of Arc. 
 
 Havre, June 29th, 1835. 
 
 We arrived here late on Saturday, so that Sunday and j 
 a festival on Monday compel us to await the custom \ 
 house till Tuesday evening. 
 
 Do not detain your husband ; I expect him for the 
 latest in October. You don't know how much absence 
 from home and loneliness in a foreign country try the 
 consistency of one's courage.— And tell him to listen to 
 my advice in preparing his voyage. His first step is to 
 obtain, by a few lines to the secretary of war, a passport 
 describing his features, dimensions, titles, (nose straight, 
 eyes hazel, &c.,) and if he can add " Major," or " Colo- 
 nel," or some cheap American dignity, he will have a 
 great many bows in this country he otherwise cannot 
 aspire to. I was foolish enough to come over nothing 
 but simple " John." If he brings the wife along, tell 
 him to include her in the same document — (a little black 
 vol. i. — 2
 
 14 CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 girl, four feet and something, having a sharp tongue, 
 pretty enough mouth and teeth, and eyes too good for 
 her nose.) I don't ask pardon ; a nose is only an im- 
 portant feature on a passport ; faces can be pretty in 
 spite of their noses. You don't kiss the book, so he may 
 put down any age your ladyship pleases. 
 
 It is important to choose a good ship. The " Sylvie 
 de Grace " left eight clays after and arrived two days 
 before us. The berth having least motion is nearest the 
 middle of the vessel. Your fare to Havre is one hundred 
 and forty dollars, with a guinea for services. 
 
 If any lady of your village has a disobedient husband, 
 or a son who has beaten his mother, bid her send him 
 to sea. — But for particulars on this head I refer you to 
 my letter of yesterday, in which I have given you all 
 that Sebastian Cabot and other eminent navigators had 
 left out. " Travelers by sea" are certainly fit subjects 
 for church prayers. I love the clergyman who put us in 
 with the ladies in the litany. Your consolation is that 
 the evil endures but thirty days, often less, and it puri- 
 fies the blood for the better enjoyments of land. Chil- 
 dren, especially sucking babies, are rarely sick, and wo- 
 men bear the sea better than men. Some of your sex 
 having been born from this element accounts for the 
 partiality. 
 
 Let us then skip over the sea. On touching land your 
 passport is sent on immediately to Pa ris to tell them you 
 have come, and is restored to you there in exchange for 
 a ticket you must ask at the police office at Havre. In 
 the mean time your two shirts and a half are paraded 
 under military escort to the custom house, and, unless 
 some saint is in the way, are forthwith examined. If 
 you arrive the day before the Millenium you have to 
 stay for your portmanteau until it is over. This exami- 
 
 «#
 
 HAVRE. 15 
 
 nation might be made on board, but multiplying duties 
 multiplies perquisites ; portage, entrance at the customs, 
 and portage again to your lodgings, enable them to levy 
 a contribution of five or six francs on each of your pack- 
 ages. All effects, except your wardrobe, are subject to 
 duties and delays, and sealed letters to a fine. The pas- 
 sengers, too, are sometimes a little examined ; so beware 
 of suspicious appearances. 
 
 June 30th. 
 
 I have half a mind to describe this town to you. It 
 has twenty thousand inhabitants ; is at the mouth of the 
 Seine, and twenty-four hours from Paris. The houses 
 are high, mostly of black slate, and patched often till 
 nothing is seen but the patches, and mushrooms and 
 other vegetables grow through the cracks. Villages in 
 America have an air of youth and freshness harmonizing 
 with their dimensions. Small things should never look 
 old. This town presents you with the ungracious image 
 of a wrinkled and gray-headed baby. The streets, ex- 
 cept one, have no sidewalks ; they are paved with rough 
 stone, and are without gutters and common sewers; the 
 march of intellect not having arrived at these luxuries. 
 The exception is the " Rue de Paris ;" it has " trottoirs," 
 a theatre, a public square, a market house, a library with 
 six thousand volumes, and a church very richly fur- 
 nished : the organ presented by Cardinal Richelieu. I 
 have been to this church this morning to pay the Virgin 
 Mary the pound of candles I owed for my preservation 
 at sea. The prettiest improvement I have seen (and it 
 is no miracle for a town of so much commercial im- 
 portance) is a dock, cut in from the bay along the chan- 
 nel of an old creek, which contains three or four hundred 
 ships, a goodly number of which wear the American
 
 Hi T1IK SUBUKBS. 
 
 flag ; it runs through the thick of the town and brings 
 the vessels into a pleasant sociability with the houses. 
 When the tide is high these vessels ride in their own 
 clement ; when low, you see a whole fleet, wallowing in 
 the mud ; and passengers, to get to sea, have to wait the 
 complaisance both of wind and tide, often a whole week. 
 
 A little to the north you will see a compensation for 
 all this ugliness, in a hill, running boldly up to the water's 
 edge, whose south side, several hundred feet high, is 
 smothered with houses. They seem to be scrambling 
 up the acclivity to look at the town ; and the entire sum- 
 mit is covered with beautiful villas, and gardens rich 
 with trees and shrubbery, and hedges, which at this sea- 
 son are a most luxurious ornament. Many American 
 families, having grown rich here by commerce, are 
 perched magnificently upon this hill. The view from 
 the top is charming ! The old town, in its motley livery 
 of houses, ships, and fortifications, spreads itself out at 
 your feet ; on the west there is an open view of the chan- 
 nel, and all the pretty images of a commercial port, such 
 as vessels in the near and distant prospect, coming into 
 harbor and going out upon their voyages ; and on the 
 south, and beyond the bay into which the Seine flows, 
 is a fine romantic country, of field and woodland, which 
 runs gradually up, undulating like the sea, till it meets 
 the blue sky. It is charming, too, in the night ; for as soon 
 as Mercury has hung out his lamps above, these Hav- 
 rians light up theirs in the town, and set up a little op- 
 position to the heavens ; and there you are between two 
 firmaments ; which of a fine evening is a fantastic and 
 gorgeous spectacle. This is the Havre. It is the first 
 thing I ever described, and I am out of breath. 
 
 And now the customs and manners. I have had deal- 
 ings with hackney coachmen, porters, peddlers and pick-
 
 MAP SELLERS. 17 
 
 pockets, and have found (hem eminently qualified in 
 their several departments. In strolling last evening 
 through the streets— going only to frank a letter at the 
 post-office, I remarked a person crying maps by a wall 
 side. He walked up and down with arms folded, and 
 had a grave and respectable face : " JL trente sous 
 settlement ! — C'est incroyable ! —A trente sous /" I 
 wished to look after a place in Normandy, called Helle- 
 ville; the very place where Guiscard, and that other 
 choicest of all ladies' heroes, Tancred, were born.— Only 
 think of Tancred being born in the department of Cou- 
 tance, and being nothing but a Frenchman ; and only 
 think, too, of the possibility of taking a piece of gold out 
 of a man's waistcoat pocket at mid-day, the owner being 
 wide awake, and in full enjoyment of his senses. I had 
 no sooner made my wants known to this polite auctioneer 
 than, with a civilite toute Fruncaise, he placed the map 
 before my eyes— that is, between the eyes and the waist- 
 coat pocket, and himself just behind the left shoulder, 
 assisting me in the search — " Hell— Hell — Hell—Helle- 
 ville /" He then resumed his walk and looked out for 
 new customers; and 1 with a return of his bow and 
 smile, and a grateful sense of his politeness, took leave, 
 and pursued my way contentedly, " not missing what 
 was stolen," to the post-office. Here I took out my let- 
 ter, had it stamped, and put my hand complacently in my 
 pocket — I went home very much disgusted with the 
 French nation. To be robbed at the Havre brings no 
 excuse for one's wit or understanding ; in Paris it is 
 what one expects from the civilization of the capital. 
 
 The porters, coachmen, draymen, boatmen, and such 
 like, about the Havre, are wrangling and noisy to excess. 
 They burst into an idle fury every few minutes ; remind- 
 ing one of our militia musketry ; there is a preliminary, 
 
 2*
 
 18 MANNERS AND CUbXOMS. 
 
 and then a general explosion, and then a few scattering 
 cartridges, and all ends in smoke. They seldom resort 
 to duelling, and boxing is considered vulgar ; and as for 
 oaths, they make no sort of figure in French. In the 
 article of swearing we are ahead of all other nations. 
 In their common intercourse, however, these people are 
 much more respectful than we are to their betters and 
 to one another. Mr. Boots, for no other reason than 
 bringing your shoes in well polished, insists on your 
 " pardon for having deranged you," and the beggar takes 
 leave of his fellow beggar with his " respects to madam." 
 But these respects I have heard do not bear the test of 
 any twopenny interest. There is no civility that stands 
 against sixpence. This common world is more social, 
 and in appearance more joyous than with us. It hud- 
 dles together in public places, with wonderful conversa- 
 tion and merriment till a late hour of the night. What 
 a quantity of green old age ! grandmothers of sixty with 
 their hair en jjapillotte, are playing hide and go-seek 
 with twenty-five. After all, what signifies the degree of 
 poverty or age, if one is happy ? Another thing remark- 
 able, is the respect paid to property. Benches on the 
 public squares are handed down to posterity with no 
 other marks than the natural wear and tear of sitting on 
 them ; vegetables grow by the wayside untrodden, and 
 gardens and fields offer their fruit without hedge or fence, 
 or any visible protection. I have talked these matters 
 with a Frenchman, who says, that it is the last genera- 
 tion only that lives at this rate, and that the present one 
 dies off at a very reasonable age. The truth I believe 
 is that we, in our country, keep old persons inside the 
 house ; we wrap them up and lay them on the shelf, 
 and ennui and neglect, no doubt, abridge a little their 
 duration. As for the security of property he ascribes it
 
 MAKKE'l JPEOPLE. 19 
 
 entirely to a certain shepherdly swain, very common 
 here, who wears red breeches, and is coiffed in a cocked 
 hat, with one of the cocks exactly over his nose, called 
 a Garde Champetre, who watches day and night over 
 the safety of the fields. A curiosity of the place is the 
 peasant women whom you will see mixed fantastically 
 with the citizens in the market, and flocking in and out 
 in great numbers at the town gate. Labor and the sun 
 have worn all the feminine charms out of their faces, and 
 they have mounted up over these ugly faces starched 
 and white caps two stories high, in which they encoun- 
 ter all sorts of weather; they are seated on little asses, 
 a large basket at each side, in which they carry vege- 
 tables to market, and carry back manure for the crops 
 of the next year. 
 
 The antiquities. I visited this morning a trumpery 
 old palace of Charles V. ; also a round tower built, they 
 say, by that great tower builder, Julius Caesar ; and 
 returning through a solitary alley I stumbled accidentally 
 upon a monument of more precious memory, the birth- 
 place of the author of Paul and Virginia. It is a scrubby 
 old hut with a bit of marble in front containing his name 
 and day of nativity. Genius seems to have but mean 
 notions of the dignity of birth; Pindar was born among 
 the vapors of Boeotia, and St. Pierre in this filthy alley 
 of the Havre. 
 
 The politics. The children here are apportioned 
 equally and cannot be disinherited. All the father can 
 dispose of by will is a half, third, or fourth of the estate, 
 according as he has one, two, or more heirs. This kind 
 of succession cuts up the land into small patches, and 
 thus brings poverty on both town and country; all the 
 families being without capital to improve their agricul- 
 tural resources. They have but little to spare to the
 
 20 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 town, and can, therefore, buy but little of its stores and 
 manufactures; and from inability to supply the raw 
 materials and provisions cheap, buy this little at an 
 enhanced price. In this way the two parties mutually 
 beggar each other. Besides, under this system of minute 
 divisions, the farming population increases enormously, 
 poverty increasing in the same ratio. Two-thirds of 
 the French are already fanners ; and in England, where 
 farming is in so much greater perfection, the ratio is 
 one-third. This law, too, in rendering the children 
 independent of the father, destroys his authority and 
 check upon their conduct ; it weakens the motives to 
 exertion, which arise from fear of want or prospects of 
 future good, and is consequently unfavorable to intellect 
 and morals. The English system makes one son only 
 a fool, the French besots the whole family. A redun- 
 dant population is the great curse of all these old coun- 
 tries, and under this system of subdivision a nation, 
 unless the blessings of war or the plague intervene, 
 becomes as multitudinous as the Chinese, eating dogs 
 and cats, and potatoes, and hunting with cows and pigs; 
 a plough as in Ireland, becoming a joint stock possession, 
 and a horse belonging to a whole neighborhood. The 
 French, in spite of the Moscows and Waterloos, have 
 added between five and six millions to their population 
 of 1789. Agriculture, to be sure, was improved by the 
 Revolution — by the divisions amongst the peasantry of 
 the national domains, and confiscated property of the 
 nobles— by the abolition of tithes and game laws, and 
 ^by bringing the waste land into cultivation; but this 
 condition is or must soon be on the reverse. In America 
 the abundance of idle and cheap land prevents this 
 calamity for the present. I have traveled a few miles 
 in the country, and have squeezed what sense I could
 
 AGK1CU1/1UKE. 21 
 
 out of the peasants. I find that in all branches of hus- 
 bandry, a laborer here performs a fourth less work 
 daily than in America; and in ploughing and reaping, 
 nearly a third. The French implements, too, are clumsy 
 and bungling; oxen are yoked by the horns; harrows 
 have wooden teeth, and the plough, mostly of wood, 
 scratches up the earth instead of turning a furrow. 
 
 Another great evil in French politics is the centraliza- 
 tion of everything in the metropolis. In our country 
 each borough or township is an independent community, 
 and manages its concerns with scarce a sense of any 
 foreign superintendence. An individual recommends 
 himself to favor first in his village, then in his county, 
 next in his state, and finally in the United States; and 
 none glimmer in the last sphere who have not shone in 
 the first. Here this condition is reversed— there is a 
 converging of all the rays into one general focus. Paris 
 is the centre, and there is none but delegated authority 
 anywhere else. So the French provinces are out at the 
 heels and elbows, and Paris wears its elegant and 
 fashionable wardrobe. Your Pottsville has a hundred 
 miles of railroad, whilst the Havre transports the whole 
 trade of the capital by a two wheeled operation she 
 calls the " roulage," and her boats upon the channel 
 carrying on the intercourse between the two greatest; 
 cities of the world, are about ecmal to yours, in which 
 you cross over into Jersey to eat creams with mother 
 Heyle. 
 
 A third reason of village and country poverty is the 
 neglect of machinery by which production may be 
 increased with a diminution of labor. Not a railroad 
 has yet shown its nose in this place, though it is the 
 outlet to the foreign trade of one-third of the French 
 territory, including the" capital with its almost a million
 
 22 NEGLECT 01' MACHINERY. 
 
 of inhabitants. They arc cleaning their great dock to- 
 day with a hundred or two of men armed with spades, 
 whilst a machine is doing the same work upon the 
 Delaware with three or four negroes. The economists 
 of the French school reason thus: if this clumsy appa- 
 ratus is superseded, our workmen will be out of employ; 
 besides, it is known that the increase of consumers 
 always keeps pace with the increase of production, and 
 you end where you began. — But you increase also your 
 strength. Yes, and the difficulties of government. 
 You give life to a greater number of human beings, and 
 little obligations have they for the gift if they are to run 
 the risk of being corrupted in this world and punished 
 in the next; and the means of corruption are greater in 
 a crowded than a sparse population; greater amongst an 
 idle and luxurious than a simple and laborious people. 
 The American public was more happy and virtuous 
 with its three millions than with its ten millions and its 
 railroads. If this is all true, then the country which has 
 least fertility of soil and least skill in the arts of agricul- 
 ture is the most favored by Providence; and the best 
 system of economy is that which teaches us to procure 
 the least possible produce with the greatest possible 
 labor. The best employment, too, for the laborers, 
 would be to plant cucumbers in summer, and extract 
 the sunbeams out of them to keep themselves warm in 
 winter. I like the system which teaches us to increase 
 the sum of human comforts. I think it is better to live 
 in an improved country with clean streets and neat 
 dwellings, than to have the same means of living witji 
 a destitution of such conveniences. I like even to starve 
 with decent accommodations. 
 
 A fourth great cause of poverty is the restriction 
 which these nations have imposed upon their mutual
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 23 
 
 intercourse, and the produce of each other's industry. 
 There is a total disagreement between natural reason 
 and the custom of all countries on this subject. Nature, 
 by giving us a diversity of soils, climates and products, 
 has pointed out the right objects of industry, and laid all 
 nations under obligations of dependence and intimacy 
 upon each other, and there is a general struggle amongst 
 all to counteract this benevolent design. France, for 
 example, has a natural fitness for wines, and the land 
 producing this wine is uusuited to any other culture, yet 
 she has so managed as to keep her wine trade stationary 
 for the last fifty years. England buys her wine, of 
 inferior quality, from Portugal and Spain, and carries on 
 a greater trade with the Chinese, her antipodes, than with 
 France, her next door neighbor. All proclaim the 
 benefits of foreign trade, and all legislate directly, to get 
 rid of their foreign customers. In what more direct 
 way could France prevent the sale of her wines to 
 Russia, Sweden and England, than by refusing their 
 coal, iron, woolen manufactures, and other products for 
 which they have a natural advantage, in return ? But 
 the great struggle of all is to become independent ; and 
 yet the very word implies the extinction of all foreign 
 commerce. The greatest of all national blessings is 
 assuredly that very dependence we are so eager to 
 avoid. We cannot become dependent upon a foreign 
 nation without laying it, at the same time, under a 
 similar dependence. — But in case of a war? This is 
 the very way to make a war impossible. Men do 
 not war against their own interests. We are dependent 
 upon Lyons for her silks, and her petitions are now 
 pouring in daily against the impending war with America; 
 and many think they will go nigh to prevent it. Would 
 not this war be more remote if the dependence were
 
 24 THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 increased ? If I wished to prevent all future wars with 
 France and England, I would begin by building a rail- 
 road from Paris to London, and removing their com- 
 mercial restrictions. Each country would then improve 
 to the uttermost that industry to which it is most fitted. 
 Intimacies, too, would be improved, prejudices effaced, 
 and they would become, at length, so dependent upon 
 each other, that even should a mad or silly government 
 involve them in a war, their mutual interests would 
 force them to discontinue it. 
 
 Of all methods of gathering taxes that of the custom 
 house seems to me the worst. What an expensive ap- 
 paratus of buildings ; what a fleet of vessels ; what an 
 army of spies ! what courts of admiralty ; and what an 
 array of new crimes upon the statute book ! A custom 
 house is a school for perjury and other vices, and where 
 the first lessons are made easy for beginners. There is 
 nothing one robs with so little compunction as one's 
 country. It is at worst only robbing thirty millions of 
 people. A sin loses its criminality by diffusion, and may 
 be so expanded as to be no sin at all. All the functions 
 of a custom house are in their nature odious and vexa- 
 tious. The first injunction is to refuse the traveler, 
 wearied of the sea, the common rites of hospitality on 
 setting his foot upon the land ; to ransack even honest 
 women by impudent police officers, and subject honor- 
 able men to a scrutiny practised elsewhere only upon 
 thieves. I piqued a Frenchman on aboard our ship on 
 the venality, which I had heard of, of the French ports. 
 He replied that he had been in the American trade for 
 ten years, and accompanied each of his cargoes to our 
 ports for the express purpose of not paying the duties. 
 Why nothing is more easy. "There is an officer who 
 examines ; we know each other ; he knocks off the top
 
 PASSPORTS. 25 
 
 of the boxes, rummages the calico with great fuss and 
 ceremony, and the silks and jewelry sleep quiet at the 
 bottom. — Whoever, he says, pays more than ten per 
 cent, of his duties in any country, is unacquainted with 
 his business." 
 
 There is another item in European policy, the require- 
 ment of passports — the cost, the delays and vexatious 
 ceremony attending it— that has incurred abundant re- 
 prehension, especially from American travelers; and 
 there certainly is no other use in such a regulation than 
 that a set of the most despicable creatures that creep 
 upon the earth may get a living by it. But when one 
 is used for a long time to see things done in a certain 
 way, one does not conceive the possibility of their being 
 done in any other way. When I informed an intelligent 
 Frenchman of forty years, that even a stranger did not 
 carry a passport about with him in America, and that 
 we dispensed with all this array of police officers and 
 spies, and other such impediments to traveling and the 
 intercourse of nations, he inferred that there could be no 
 personal security. That alone, he said, would determine 
 him from residing in the United States. When I cited 
 against him the example of England, he remained incre- 
 dulous: and required the confirmation of a better au- 
 thority. 
 
 Don't you imagine that I am going to treat you here- 
 after to politics. Events have not yet thickened upon 
 my observation, and I am obliged to make use of all my 
 resources. If I could afford to send you blank paper 
 all the way across the Atlantic, I would have omitted 
 these last pages : hand them over to your husband. 
 
 The living here is about equal in the quality of food 
 and price to your 'best houses of Philadelphia. The 
 hotels are shabby in comparison with ours ; the one I 
 vol. i. — 3
 
 26 THE FRENCH DILIGENCE. 
 
 lodge in has not been washed since the year of the world 
 1G5G; but the cookery and service are altogether in 
 favor of the French. A breakfast is two francs, a dinner 
 three, and a chamber two. You may count your daily 
 expenses at. a dollar and a half in the best houses. The 
 Havre is our first acquaintance coming into the conti- 
 nent, and its history cannot be without some interest, 
 especially to ladies who are just sighing to go to Paris. 
 
 Rouen, July 3d, 1835. 
 What a curiosity of ugliness is a French diligence . It 
 exceeds in this quality even our American stages. But 
 the sacrifice of beauty is to convenience : it carries three 
 tons of passengers and baggage, with a speed of seven 
 miles an hour. The covpe, in front, has three seats, the 
 inth'ieur six,^md the rolonde as many in the rear; the 
 price decreasing in the same direction from the whole to 
 about the half of our American prices. There are, also, 
 three seats aloft. These divisions are invisible to each 
 other, and represent the world outside, the rich, the mid- 
 dling, and the poor. If you feel very aristocratic, you 
 take the whole coupe to yourself, or yourself and lady, 
 and you can be as private as you please. Each seat is 
 numbered, and the traveler has his number on the way- 
 bill and in his pocket. A conductenr superintends bag- 
 gage, &c, and is paid extra. The team has three horses 
 abreast in front and two in their rear, and upon one of 
 the latter is mounted a postillion. This personage de- 
 serves a particular notice. He is immersed to his mid- 
 dle in a huge pair of boots, making each leg the diameter 
 of his body ; and his body, too, is squeezed into a narrow 
 coat, which, being buttoned to the chin, props his woeful 
 countenance towards the firmament, so that he corre- 
 sponds exactly with Ovid's description of a man, or
 
 RUAD TO KUUKN. 27 
 
 rather he looks like the letter Y upside down. Cracking 
 a whip he does not regard as an acquirement but a 
 virtue. He can crack several tunes ; and in a calm 
 night serenades a whole village. 
 
 The road to Rouen, in the diligence, has nothing in it 
 agreeable. The land has the ordinary crops, but it is a 
 wide waste of cultivation, without hedges, or barns, or 
 cottages. The only relief is now and then a comfortless 
 village, or a solitary and neglected chateau. You swal- 
 low a mouthful of dust at each breath, and you are dis- 
 gusted at all the stopping places by the wailing voices of 
 beggars, old men and women recommending themselves 
 by decrepitude, and children by rags and nakedness. 
 The children often run down the diligence a quarter of 
 a mile in quest of the charitable sou. I soon got out of 
 change, and then reasoned myself into a fit of unchari- 
 tableness. They may be unworthy, and I shall encou- 
 rage vice; besides, charity only increases the breed. 
 What I give to these vagabonds I take from somebody 
 else ; I should otherwise lay it out in some article of 
 trade, and, if all do so, we shall only make a new set of 
 beggars by relieving the old — reduce the industrious to 
 mendicity by encouraging the idlers. Moreover I can't 
 help all, and I won't help any, or, if I do help any, I 
 will give to my own countrymen, and not to these raga- 
 muffin Frenchmen. In this way you get along without 
 much affecting the tranquillity of your conscience. My 
 advice is that you come by the Seine and the steamboat. 
 It is a passage of only eight hours, and every one extols 
 its beautiful and romantic scenery. 
 
 Rouen is the birth-place of Racine, and Fontenelle, 
 and of Boildieu. It deserves a passing notice on their 
 account, as also on its own. The residence of those 
 truculent old Norman dukes, who made the world shake
 
 28 ROUEN. 
 
 with fear, and gave sovereigns to some of the best na- 
 tions of Europe, cannot be an indifferent spot upon the 
 globe. Indeed, we may trace to it many of our own 
 institutions, as well as a good part of our language. Our 
 terms of law, the very cries of our courts in Schuylkill 
 county, are imported from this Old Normandy, of which 
 Rouen is the capital. It is a fantastic old town, with 
 earthenware tiles, and enclosed between two mountains, 
 having a mixture of art and nature, which bring each 
 other out finely into relief. One is delighted to see town 
 in the country, and country in the town. Here is a 
 large factory or hotel, and there a set of gray and tawny- 
 looking hovels, like a village of the Potawattomies. 
 The peasants are seen amongst the tops and chimneys 
 of the houses, cultivating their fields on the sides and 
 upon the summits of the hills, which are arrayed in tufts 
 of woodland, hedges and pasturage ; and all the ave- 
 nues leading to the town are beautifully over-shaded 
 with chestnuts and elms. The Seine, too, has its fairy 
 islands and weeping willows on its banks, and winds 
 along through the middle of the town ; and now and 
 then a steamboat comes up the valleys with a puffing 
 and fuss that would have made stare even the iron 
 features of old Rollo. One can see such a town but 
 once, and no one can see it so well as he who has been 
 used to the fresh and glaring villages of our country. 
 Rouen has ninety thousand inhabitants, a library of four 
 thousand volumes, a gallery of paintings, and manufac- 
 tures of all sorts of calico and other cotton stuffs, also 
 of linen, bombasins and velvet shawls. More than half 
 the population is engaged directly in these manufactures. 
 My advice is that you sleep here one night instead'of in 
 the diligence in running post to Paris. In your evening's
 
 THE CATHEDRAL. 
 
 29 
 
 walk I invite you to step out and see Napoleon's bridge, 
 which has in the centre of it a fine statue of Corneille. 
 
 I went to see that famous piece of venerable antiquity, 
 the Cathedral. You have its picture in all the "Penny 
 Magazines." Our guide, who knows it by heart, told 
 us his tale as follows : " Gentlemen, this is the tomb of 
 Rollo, first duke of Normandy ; no horse could carry 
 him; had to walk on foot; died 917.— Gentlemen, this 
 is William Longsword, his son and successor ; was on 
 the point of taking the frock to be a monk, but was 
 basely assassinated by Araund, Count of Flanders." 
 (And the devil a monk was he.)— " Gentlemen, this is 
 Pierre de Breze, Grand Seneschal of Anjou and Nor- 
 mandy; fell in the battle of Montlherry, 1467; and 
 this is John, Duke of Bedford, Viceroy of Normandy, 
 who died in 1438. In this tomb, gentlemen, (come a 
 little nearer,) in this tomb is deposited the Heart of Rich- 
 ard Cosiir de Lion ! (a tremor ran through our bones.) 
 His heart is in this tomb ; his brains are in Poictiers, and 
 the other parts of him in Kent, in Great Britain. The 
 man who took out his brains died of it. This is the last 
 man Richard killed, and he had killed more than one." 
 Here our cicerone ran down, and his features, just now 
 so animated, were suddenly decomposed and collapsed, 
 the natural effect of inspiration. We looked then at the 
 great bell, and the organs, and the statues of saints, 
 most of them mutilated in the Revolution. One, with- 
 out a nose, they told us was St. Dunstan ; the devil and 
 the Jacobins having retaliated. There is a headless 
 trunk, too, they might very well pass for St. Denis. One 
 of the remarkable features of this church is the paint- 
 ing on glass, representing scriptural scenes, of which 
 the colors seem to have grown more vivid by time, 
 though time has destroyed the secret of their compo- 
 se
 
 30 JOAN OF ARC. — PARIS. 
 
 sition. The architecture is Gothic, and the grandest 
 specimen of this order in France. Its immense fluted 
 columns, near a hundred feet high, and ten or twelve 
 in diameter ; its images of Christ and the Virgin, and 
 the pictures of the Apostles and Saints, are awful and 
 beautiful. The lightning has thought it worthy of a 
 visit, and has overturned one of its huge towers. 
 
 Poor Joan of Arc ! Here is her monument in the 
 midst of the market square, where she was burnt. — It is 
 a pedestal of twenty feet surmounted by her statue. 
 Alongside of this trophy of French and English barba- 
 rism, instead of blushing for shame, they show you for 
 sixpence the room in which she was imprisoned. It is 
 damp, and has only glimmerings of light, and is altogether 
 a horrid remnant of antiquity. Farewell to Rouen. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Paris— Street cries— St. Roch — The Boulevards— Parisian lodgings 
 — Manner of living — The grand opera— Taglioni — The public gar- 
 dens — The Guinguettes — Dancing, the characteristic amusement of 
 the French— Sunday dances— Dancing defended, from classical 
 authority. 
 
 Paris, July 4th 1835. 
 When one has traveled all night in a French diligence 
 in the dog-days, and is set down next morning in the 
 " Place Notre Dame des Victoires," three thousand miles 
 from one's home— oh dear ! one has much less pleasure 
 in the aspect of the great city than one expected. Voilb,
 
 MOTIVE FOR REFLECTION. 31 
 
 Paris ! said the "conducteur," announcing onr approach; 
 each one half opening his eyes, and then closing them 
 suddenly. Four gentlemen and two ladies in a diligence 
 bobbing their heads at each other about six of the morn- 
 ing, the hour in which sleep creeps so agreeably upon 
 one's senses, is an interesting spectacle. It was cruel to 
 be interrupted in so tender an interview. Voila Paris ! 
 was echoed a second time, so we awoke and looked out, 
 except a lady who reposed gently upon my left shoulder ; 
 who had seen Paris a thousand times, and never slept 
 with four gentlemen perhaps in her life ; she lay still, I 
 attentive not to awake her, until the ill-omened raven 
 croaked a third time Paris ! A French gentleman now 
 did the honors of the city to us strangers. " That, sir, 
 is the < Invalides ;" see how the morning rays glitter from 
 its gilded dome. And this, which peers so proudly over 
 the Barriere de l'Etoile, is the grand Triumphal Arch of 
 Napoleon ;" and he read over the trophies — Marengo ! 
 Jena ! Austerlitz ! praised the sculpture and bas-reliefs, 
 and burst out into a great many tropes about French 
 victories. We now passed down through the Champs 
 Elysees, rolled along the beautiful Rue Rivoli, and ar- 
 rived fast asleep upon the " Place Notre Dame des Vic- 
 toires." I advise you to sleep at St. Germains, where 
 the steamboat will leave you, and come to Paris next 
 morning with the imagination fresh for the enjoyment. 
 To be wide awake improves wonderfully one's capacity 
 for admiration. 
 
 I stood and looked about, and I felt the spirit of man- 
 hood die away within me ; and every other spirit, even 
 curiosity. I would rather have seen one of your hay- 
 cocks than the Queen. But, fortunately, here is no time 
 for reflection. You are immediately surrounded by a 
 score of individuals, who greet you with hats in their
 
 32 PARIS. 
 
 hands and with great officiousness, offering you all at 
 once their services. Some are exceeding anxious you 
 should lodge in their hotels : La plus jolie location de 
 tout Paris — des chambres de toute beauii ! and others 
 are dying to carry your baggage ; others again are eager 
 to sell you their wares, and thrust a bit of soap, or a cane, 
 or a pair of spectacles in your face suddenly. I mistook 
 this for an attempt at assassination. Next I had to bow to 
 my toes for a lodging. With the address of three hotels 
 a mile apart, I had to pick one out of the street. I ad- 
 vise you not to run about town till your porter's charges 
 are of greater amount than the value of your baggage, 
 but to put yourself and your trunks in a hack, and you 
 will have at least a ride for your money; besides, the 
 driver is limited in his charges, and the porter is a discre- 
 tion, and discretion is one of the dearest of the French 
 virtues. 
 
 Who do you think I had for a fellow traveler ? Your 
 
 old acquaintance , who has lost his wife and 
 
 travels to dissipate his grief. He has not left off saying 
 good things. He remarked that it was a bad day to go 
 into Paris — the 4th of July; there would be such a 
 crowd. Recollecting with what jubilee we celebrate 
 this day at New York, he imagined how much greater 
 must be the confusion in Paris. He feared we should 
 have our brains knocked out by the mob. You can't 
 think what advantage it is, for one having little of this 
 commodity of brains, to travel into foreign countries ; 
 one grows into the reputation of a wit by not being un- 
 derstood. I do not mean to be arrogant in saying I am 
 better versed, at least in our foreign relations, than my 
 companion, and yet I was noticed on the way only as 
 being of his suite, which I ascribe entirely to my capa- 
 city to express myself in a known tongue. As he spoke
 
 THE HOUSES. STREET CRIES. 33 
 
 no French, I was mistaken for the interpreter to some 
 foreign ambassador. 
 
 Paris is a wilderness of tall, scraggy, and dingy houses, 
 of irregular heights and sizes, starting out impudently 
 into the street, or retiring modestly, and without sym- 
 metry : a palace often the counterpart of a pig-sty ; and 
 a cathedral next neighbor to a henroost. The streets 
 run zig-zag, and abut against each other as if they did 
 not know which way to run. They are paved with 
 cubical stones of eight and ten inches, convex on the 
 upper surface like the shell of a terrapin ; few have room 
 for sidewalks, and where not bounded by stores, they are 
 dark as they were under King Pepin. Some of them 
 seem to be water tight. St. Anne, my first acquaint- 
 ance, is yet clammy with mud after a week's drought, 
 and early in the morning when she gets up she is filthy 
 to a degree that is indecent. The etymology of Paris is 
 mud ; the etymology of the Bourbons is mud, and mud 
 to the last note of time will be Paris and the Bourbons. 
 
 As for the noise of the streets, I need not attempt to 
 describe it. What idea can ears, used only to the ordi- 
 nary and human noises, conceive of this unceasing racket 
 — this rattling of the cabs and other vehicles over the 
 rough stones, this rumbling of the omnibuses. For the 
 street cries — one might have relief from them by a file 
 and handsaw. — First, the prima donna of the fish mar- 
 ket opens the morning : Carpes toutes fraiches ; voilii 
 des carpes ! And then stand out of the way for the 
 glazier : Au vilriere ! quavering down the chromatic to 
 the lowest flat upon the scale. Next the iron-monger 
 with his rasps, and files and augurs, which no human 
 ears could withstand, but that his notes are happily mel- 
 lowed by the seller of old clothes : Marchand de drap ! 
 in a monotone so low and spondaic, and so loud as to
 
 34 ST. KOCH. 
 
 make Lab I ache die of envy.. About nine is full chorus, 
 headed by the old women and their proclamations : 
 Horrible attentat contre la vie clu roi Louis Philippe 
 — at la petite chienne de Madame la Marquise — tgaree 
 a dix heures — L 'JJrcht'veque de Paris — Le Sieur La- 
 cenaire — Louis Philippe, le Prochs monstre — et tout 
 cela pour quatre sous ! being set loose all at the same 
 time, tuned to different keys. All things of this earth 
 seek, at one time or another, repose — all but the noise 
 of Paris. The waves of the sea are sometimes still, but 
 the chaos of these streets is perpetual from generation to 
 generation ; it is the noise that never dies. Many new 
 comers have been its victims. In time, however — such 
 is the complaisance of human nature — we become re- 
 conciled even to this never-ending hubbub. It becomes 
 even necessary, it is said, to one's comforts. There are 
 persons here who get a night-mare in a place of tran- 
 quillity and can sleep only upon the Boulevards. 
 
 Paris and I are yet on ceremonious terms. I venture 
 upon her acquaintance as one who walks upon ice : it is 
 the boy's first lesson of skating. I am not much versed 
 in towns any way, and this one is ahead of my expe- 
 rience. In my case one is ignorant and afraid to ask 
 information. 1 did venture this morning to ask what 
 general that was — a fat, decent-looking gentleman, in 
 silk stockings, and accoutred in regimentals. That gene- 
 ral, sir, is Prince Talleyrand's lacquey. Soon after I 
 inquired what house was that barn of a place. That 
 house, sir, is the Louvre. So I must feel the ground 
 under me. Yesterday being Sunday, (which I found out 
 by the almanac,) I went to St. Roch's. I had the luck 
 to hit upon the fashionable church; but the preacher 
 was the god of dulness. The world, he says, is grow- 
 ing worse and worse ; we being greater rogues than our
 
 THE BOULEVARDS. 35 
 
 ancestors, and about to produce a worse set of rogues 
 than ourselves. " The antichrist is already come." If 
 he had said the antichrist of wit, anybody would have 
 believed him— and yet this is the very pulpit from which 
 the Bossuets and Bourdaloues used to preach. The house 
 was filled almost entirely with women. One might think 
 that none go to heaven in this country but the fair sex. 
 The worshipers seem intent enough upon their devo- 
 tions, but the wide avenues at the sides are filled with a 
 crowd of idle, curious and disorderly spectators. Give 
 me a French church ; one walks in here booted and 
 spurred, looks at the pretty women and the pictures, 
 whistles a tune, if one chooses, and then walks out 
 again. 
 
 They have not spoiled the architectural beauty of St. 
 Roch's by pews and galleries. The walls are adorned 
 splendidly with paintings, and here and there are 
 groups of statuary; and the altar being finely gilt and 
 illuminated looks, magnificently. When I build a church 
 I will decorate it somewhat in this manner. It is good 
 to imitate nature as much as one can in all things, and 
 she has set us the example in this. She has adorned 
 her great temple, the world, with green fields and 
 fragrant flowers, and its superb dome, the firmament, 
 with stars. I walked in the Tuileries after church, 
 where I saw a great number of naked statues and pretty 
 women. The pretty women were not naked. I sat 
 down awhile by the goddess of wisdom : This is the sum 
 of my adventures. 
 
 Oh, no! I ventured also a walk last night upon the 
 Boulevards, about twilight. How adorable is the 
 Madelaine! While staring at this church, (for staring 
 is the only expression of countenance one pretends to 
 the first week of Paris,) a little girl, but not a little
 
 db SULTANAS OF THE BOULEVARDS. 
 
 graceful and pretty, presented me a bouquet. But, my 
 dear, I have no change. " Mais, qu'est ce que cela 
 fait?" and she turned it about with her taper fingers, 
 and fixed it and unfixed it, though there were but two 
 leaves and a rose bud, and then arranged it in a button 
 hole, showing all the while her pearly teeth and laugh- 
 ing black eyes. She had the finesse to gain admiration 
 for her charms without seeming to court it. We now 
 walked on a few steps, when we met other women of a 
 richer attire, and of very easy, unembarrassed manners, 
 who also said very obliging things to us, walking along 
 side. 
 
 There is a kind of men in New England, who cannot 
 be beaten out of the dignity of a walk; who would 
 rather die than be seen running, which is perhaps the 
 reason they won the battle of Bunker's Hill. Nowjf 
 you would represent to yourself something very comi- 
 cal, you must imagine my companion, straight-laced in 
 his gravity, escorted by one of these Sultanas of the 
 Boulevards, all betawdried and rustling in her silks — 
 Man petit coeur ! — Mon petit ami! — Venez done! 
 At last turning suddenly upon her, with a look and air 
 of menace and expostulation, he invoked her in a most 
 solemn manner to depart ; though she understood not 
 a word of the exorcism, she obeyed instantly; the ges- 
 ture and tone being significant enough; and she went 
 off, as evil spirits do usually in such cases, murmuring : 
 " Pourquoi me tenir done a causer, ce diable d'homme ? 
 11 m 'a fait perdre au moins deux messieurs." 
 
 We now descended by the Rue St. Anne towards 
 our lodgings, talking as we went to prevent thinking 
 —for we are both very tender-hearted, so far from 
 home — he of his Yankee wife, how industrious, how 
 economical, and how she has resigned all the intercourse
 
 PARISIAN LODGINGS. .', I 
 
 and pleasures of the world, to teach the little children 
 their catechism and their astronomy ; and I of our dear 
 little wives of Schuylkill, so amiable, so cheerful, tem- 
 pering their duties with amusements, and not forgetting 
 the claims of society — when suddenly we observed in a 
 dark corner, reached only by a few rays of a distant 
 lamp, a queer old woman, seated, her knees and chin 
 together, and rocking herself on a chair. She rose up 
 in the face of my companion, who knows no French, 
 with an immense gabble : Des demoiselles Ires distin- 
 guees f—jolies comme des anges ! and instantly we 
 were hemmed round with a fluttering troupe of the 
 angels; but we escaped into the Hotel des Jlmbassa- 
 deurs, and locked our doors for the night. Please 
 direct your letters to this house, No. 64 Rue St. Jinne. 
 
 Hotel des Ambassadeurs, July 6th, 1S35. 
 
 I must tell you how one lodges in Paris. A hotel 
 is a huge edifice mostly in form of a parallelogram, 
 and built around a paved court yard, which serves as 
 a landing for carriages as well as for persons on foot, 
 and leads up to the apartments by one or more stair- 
 cases. In the centre of the front wall is a wide door 
 (a porte cochlre) opening from the street; and just 
 inside a lodge (a concierge) and a porter, who wakes 
 night and day over the concerns of the establishment. 
 This porter is an important individual, holding about 
 the same place in a Paris hotel that Cerberus holds — 
 (I leave you a place for the rhyme.) He is usually 
 a great rogue, a spy of the government, and a shoe- 
 maker ; cobbles the holes he makes in your boots, and 
 his wife darns those she makes in your stockings. He 
 is always a bad enemy and a useful friend, and you 
 purchase his good will by money and condescensions. 
 vol. t. — 4
 
 38 THE PORTER. 
 
 as a first minister's. He lets your rooms, he attends 
 them, receives parcels, letters, messages, runs errands, 
 answers your visits, and fines you a shilling if you stay 
 out after twelve; and his relation with many lodgers 
 enables him to give you these services, I am ashamed 
 to tell you how cheap. By proper attentions, also, to his 
 wife, there will come to your bed every morning, at the 
 hour you appoint, a cup of coffee or tea, and the enter- 
 tainment of the lady's conversation while you sip it. 
 Each story of a hotel is divided into apartments and 
 rooms; that is, accommodation for whole families or 
 individuals; distinction, and of course price, decreasing 
 upwards. For example, he who lives a story lower 
 down thinks himself above you, and you in return 
 consider him overhead below you. A third story in 
 the Rue Castiglione or Rivoli is equal in rank to a 
 second story anywhere else. 
 
 The porter's Lodge is a little niche about eight feet 
 square. It pays no rent, but receives a salary, usually 
 of sixty dollars a year, from the proprietor. Our por- 
 ter is a man of several talents. He tunes pianos for 
 ten sous, and plays at the " Petit Lazari" of a night 
 for two francs. Indeed his whole family plays ; his 
 grandmother plays the " Mother of the Gracchi.-" He 
 takes care, too, of his wife's father, but he dresses him 
 up as a Pair de France, or a Doge, and makes a good 
 deal out of him also. Besides he has a dog, which he 
 expects soon to play the " Chien de Montargis," he is 
 studying ; and a magpie which plays already in the 
 "Pie Voleuse." It is by these several industries that 
 he is enabled to clean my boots once a day, take care 
 of my room, and do all the domestic services required 
 by a bachelor, at six francs a month; and he has grown 
 into good circumstances. But, alas! impartial fate, that
 
 MONSIEUR SMIT. 39 
 
 knocks at the Porter's Lodge, as at the gates of the 
 Louvre !— His only son, in playing Collin last winter, 
 a shepherd's part in a vaudeville, had to wear a pair 
 of white muslin breeches in the middle of the incle- 
 ment season ; he took cold and died of a fluxion de 
 poitrine ! ' The mother wept in telling this story, and. 
 then, some one coming in, she smiled. 
 
 One is usually a little shy of these hotels at first sight ; 
 especially if one comes from the Broad Mountain. You 
 take hold of an unwieldy knocker, you lift it up cau- 
 tiously, and open flies the door six inches; you then 
 push yourself through, and look about with a kind of a 
 suspicious and sheepish look, and you see no one. At 
 length you discover an individual, who will not seem 
 to take the least notice of you, till you intrude rather 
 far; then he will accost you: Que demandez-vous, 
 Monsieur? — I wish to see Mr. Smith. Monsieur? — 
 Monsieur, il ne demure pas ici — Que tu es bete! 
 exclaims the wife, c'est Monsieur Smit. Qui, oui, out 
 — au quatrieme, Monsieur, audessus de V entresol ; 
 and with this information, of which you understand not 
 a syllable, you proceed up stairs, and there you ring all 
 the bells to the garret ; but. no one knows Mr. Smith. 
 
 The houses here are by no means simple and uni- 
 form as with us. The American houses are built, as 
 ladies are dressed, all one way. First, there is a pair of 
 rival saloons, which give themselves the air of parlors; 
 and then there is a dining-room, and corresponding 
 chambers above to the third or fourth story; and an 
 entry runs through the middle or alongside without 
 stopping ; at the farthest end of which is the kitchen ; so 
 that one always stands upon the marble of the front 
 door in December until Kitty has traveled this distance 
 to let one in. How many dinners frozen in their own
 
 40 HABITS OF CLIMBING. 
 
 sauces, how many lovers chilled, hy this refrigeratory 
 process! — Here, if you just look at the knocker, the 
 door, as if by some invisible hand, flies open ; and when 
 you descend, if you say " Cordon" just as AH Baba 
 said " Sesame," the door opens and delivers you to the 
 street. The houses, too, have private rooms and secret 
 doors, and intricate passages ; and one can be said to be 
 at home in one's own house. A thief designing to rob 
 has to study beforehand the topography of each one, 
 without which he can no more unravel it than the 
 Apocalypse. There are closets, too, and doors in many 
 of the rooms unseen by the naked eye. Is a gentleman 
 likely to be intruded on by the bailiff'? he sinks into the 
 earth; and a lady, if surprised in her dishabille or any 
 such emergency, just disappears into the wall. 
 
 No private dwellings are known in Paris. A style 
 which gives entire families and individuals, at a price 
 that would procure them very mean separate lodgings, 
 the air of living in a great castle ; and they escape by it, 
 all that emulation about houses, and door servants, and 
 street display, which brings so much fuss and expense 
 in our cities. To climb up to the second or third story 
 is, to be sure, inconvenient ; but once there your climb- 
 ing ends. Parlors, bed-rooms, kitchen and all the rest 
 are on the same level. Moreover, climbing is a dispo- 
 sition of our nature. " In our proper motion we ascend." 
 See with what avidity we climb when we are boys ; and 
 we climb when we are old, because it reminds us of our 
 boyhood. I have no doubt that the daily habit of 
 climbing, too, has a good moral influence ; it gives one 
 dispositions to rise in the world. I ought to remark 
 here that persons in honest circumstances do not have 
 kitchens in their own houses. 
 
 It is in favor of the French style not a little that it
 
 MANNER OF LIVING. 41 
 
 improves the quality at least of one class of lodgers. 
 Mean houses degrade men's habits, and lower their 
 opinions of living. As for me, I like this Paris way, 
 but I don't know why. I like to see myself under the 
 same roof with my neighbors. One of them is a pretty 
 woman with the prettiest little foot imaginable ; and 
 only think of meeting this little foot, with which one has 
 no personal acquaintance, three or four times a day on 
 the staircase ! Indeed, the solitude of a private dwell- 
 ing begins to seem quite distressing. To be always 
 with people one knows ! It paralyzes activity, breeds 
 selfishness and other disagreeable qualities. Solitary 
 life has its vices, too, as well as any other. 
 
 On the other hand a comriiunity of living expands 
 one's benevolent affections, begets hospitality, mutual 
 forbearance, politeness, respect for public opinion, and 
 keeps cross husbands from beating their wives, and 
 vice versa. If Xantippe had lived in a French hotel, 
 she would not have kept throwing things out of the 
 window upon her husband's head. The domestic 
 virtues are, to be sure, well enough in their way; but 
 they are dull, and unless kept in countenance by good 
 company, they go too soon to bed. Indeed, that word 
 " home," so sacred in the mouths of Englishmen, often 
 means little else than dozing in an arm-chair, listening 
 to the squeaking of children, or dying of the vapors; at 
 all events the English are the people of the world most 
 inclined to leave these sanctities of home. Here they 
 are by hundreds, running in quest of happiness all 
 about Europe. 
 
 But to return. My object, in setting out, was to show 
 you as nearly as possible my manner of living in the 
 street of St. Anne. I have a chambre de garqon au 
 second ; this means a bachelor's room in the third story. 
 
 4*
 
 42 FRENCH CLEANLINESS. 
 
 As companions I have General Kellerman,and a naked 
 Mars over the chimney (not Mademoiselle), and a little 
 Bonaparte about three inches long; and on a round 
 table, with a marble cover , there are an old Rabelais 
 and a Seneca's Maxims, with manuscript notes on the 
 margin, and a Bible open at Jeremiah. The floor is a 
 kind of brick pavement, upon which a servant performs 
 a series of rubbings, every morning with a brush at- 
 tached to his right foot ; which gives it a slippery and 
 mahogany surface. We have a livery stable also in the 
 yard, and several persons lodge here for the benefit of 
 the smell; it being good against the consumption. Of 
 the staircase I say nothing now, as I intend some day 
 to write a treatise upon French Staircases. This one 
 has not been washed ever, unless by some accident such 
 as Noah's flood. Indeed the less one says of French 
 cleanliness in the way of houses, the better. Our land- 
 lady appears no more delighted with a clean floor, than 
 an antiquary would be with a scoured shield ; and there 
 is none of the middling hotels of Paris that presumes to 
 be better than this. I ought to remark here that ser- 
 vants do not run about from one garret to another as 
 they do in America. A French servant is transmitted 
 to posterity. Our coachman says he has been in this 
 family several hundred years. 
 
 When one cannot travel in the highway of life with 
 a fashionable equipage, it is pleasant to steal along its 
 secret path unnoticed. A great man is so jostled by 
 the throng that either he cannot think at all, or in 
 gathering its silly admiration, so occupied with in- 
 trigues and mere personal vanities, that the good quali- 
 ties of his understanding are perverted, and he loses 
 at length his taste for innocent enjoyments. But tra- 
 veling in this sober unambitious way, one may gather
 
 THE GKAND UPERA. 
 
 43 
 
 flowers by the road side ; one has leisure for the con- 
 templation of useful and agreeable things ; and is not 
 obliged to follow absurd fashion, or keep up trouble- 
 some appearances; and one can get into low company 
 when one pleases, without being suspected. Now I 
 can wander "on my short -tailed nag" all over the 
 country ; I can get sometimes into a coucou, and ride 
 out to St. Germains, or stroll unconcerned through the 
 markets and ask the price of fruits ; of cassolettes, mus- 
 cats and jargonelles, and of grapes ; and I can eat a 
 bunch or two upon the pavement, just fresh from Fon- 
 tainbleau ; and do a great many innocent things which 
 persons of distinction dare not do. This is the life of 
 those who lodge at the "Hotel des Ambassadeurs." 
 
 Here are two sheets filled, with what meagre events ! 
 and how much below the dignity of history ! But I 
 console myself that trifles, like domestic anecdotes, are 
 often the most characteristic. I will be your Boswell to 
 the city of Paris. Who knows but I may fancy to make 
 some sort of a book from these letters at my return home ? 
 If you think such a design excusable, pray, save them 
 from the flames. I write them as notes upon the field 
 of battle. They are Caesar's Commentaries with the 
 exception of the wit. 
 
 July 7th. 
 I went with my Yankee companion last night to the 
 Grand Opera ; and at the risk of being enormously long, 
 I am going to add a postscript ; for it is a wet day, and 
 I have no better way to beguile the lazy twenty-four 
 hours. They admit the spectators to a French the- 
 atre in files of two between high railings, and under the 
 grim and bearded authority of the police, which pre- 
 vents crowding and disorder; and whoever wishes to
 
 44 TAGLIONI. 
 
 go in, not having a seat provided, " makes tail," as they 
 call it, by entering the file in the rear. A number of 
 speculators also stand in the ranks at an early hour, and 
 sell out their places at an advance to the more tardy, so 
 that you have always this resort to obtain a good enough 
 seat. In approaching the house persons will offer you 
 tickets with great importunity in the streets. With one 
 of these which, by cheapening a little, I got at double 
 price, I procured admission to the pit. 
 
 Uanalise de la Piece ; voild le programme! These 
 are two phrases — meaning only the analysis and bill of 
 the play, at two sous — which you will hear croaked with 
 the most obstreperous discord through the house, in the 
 intervals of the performance, to bring out Monsieur 
 Auber and Scribe, and the Donnas. It is probably for 
 the same reason the owls are permitted to sing in the 
 night, to bring out the nightingales. — The opera last 
 night was " Robert le Diable," — void Panalise de la 
 piece. 
 
 There was the representation of a grave-yard and a 
 resurrection ; and the ghosts, at least two hundred, flocked 
 out of the ground in white frocks and silk stockings, and 
 they squeaked and gibbered all over the stage. Then 
 they asked one another out to dance, and performed the 
 most fashionable ballets of their country, certainly, in a 
 manner very creditable to the other world. And while 
 these waltzed and quadrilled, another set were entertain- 
 ing themselves with elegant and fashionable amuse- 
 ments; some were turning summersets upon a new 
 grave; others playing at whist upon a tombstone, and 
 others again were jumping the rope over a winding 
 sheet; when suddenly they all gave a screech and 
 skulked into their graves ; there was a flutter through 
 the house, the music announcing some great event, and
 
 TAGLIONI. 45 
 
 at length, amidst a burst of acclamations, Mademoiselle 
 Taglioni stood upon the margin of the scene. She 
 seemed to have alighted there from some other sphere. 
 
 I expected to be little pleased with this lady, I had 
 heard such frequent praises of her accomplishments, but 
 was disappointed. Her exceeding beauty surpasses the 
 most excessive eulogy. Her dance is the whole rheto- 
 ric of pantomime ; its movements, pauses and attitudes 
 in their purest Attic simplicity, chastity and urbanity. 
 She has a power over the feelings which you will be 
 unwilling to concede to her art. She will make your 
 heart beat with joy : she will make you weep by the sole 
 eloquence of her limbs. What inimitable grace ! In all 
 she attempts you will love her, and best in that which 
 she attempts last. If she stands still you will wish her 
 a statue, that she may stand still always ; or if she 
 moves you will wish her a wave of the sea that she may 
 do nothing but that — " move still, still so, and own no 
 other function." — To me she appeared last night to have 
 filled up entirely the illusion of the play — to have shuf- 
 fled off this gross and clumsy humanity, and to belong 
 to some more airy and spiritual world. 
 
 But my companion, who is a professor, and a little 
 ecclesiastical, and bred in that most undancing country, 
 New England, was scandalized at the whole perform- 
 ance. He is of the old school, and has ancient notions 
 of the stage, and does not approve this modern way of 
 "holding the mirror up to nature." He was displeased 
 especially at the scantiness of the lady's wardrobe. I 
 was born farther south, and could better bear it. 
 
 The art of dressing has been carried often by the ladies 
 to a blameable excess of quantity ; so much so, that a 
 great wit said in his day, a woman was " the least part 
 of herself." Taglioni's sins, it is true, do not lie on this
 
 46 THE GRAND OPKKA. 
 
 side of the category ; she produced last evening nothing 
 but herself — Mademoiselle Taglioni in the abstract. 
 Ovid would not have complained of her. Her lower 
 limbs wore a light silk, imitating nature with undistin- 
 guishable nicety, and her bosom a thin gauze which just 
 relieved the eye, as you have seen a fine fleecy cloud 
 hang upon the dazzling sun. But there is no gentleman 
 out of New England who would not have grieved to 
 see her spoilt by villainous mantua-makers. She did not, 
 moreover, exceed what the courtesy of nations has per- 
 mitted, and what is necessary to the proper exhibition of 
 her art. 
 
 They call this French opera the " Academie Royale 
 de Musique" also the " Franc-ais" in contradistinction 
 with the " Italien ;" finally the " Grand Opera ;" this 
 latter name because it has a greater quantity of thunder 
 and lightning, of pasteboard seas, of paper snow storms, 
 and dragons that spit fire ; also a gorgeousness of ward- 
 robe and scenery not equaled upon any theatre of Eu- 
 rope. It is certain its " corps de ballet" can outdance 
 all the world put together. 
 
 Mercy ! how deficient we are in our country in these 
 elegant accomplishments. In many things we are still 
 in our infancy, in dancing we are not yet born. We 
 have, it is true, our " balances," and " chasses," and 
 back-tu-backs, and our women do throw a great deal of 
 soul into their little feet — as on a " birth-night," or an 
 "Eighth of January," or the like; — but the Grand 
 Opera, the Opera Franpais, the Academie Royale de 
 Musique! J2h, via foi, e'est lit tine autre affaire! 
 You have read, and so has everybody, of the " dancing 
 Greeks;" of Thespis, so described by Herodotus, who 
 used to dance on his head, his feet all the while dan- 
 gling in the air ; of the " Gaditanian girls," so sung by
 
 THE GU1NGUETTES. 47 
 
 Anacreon ; of Hylas, who danced before Augustus; of 
 the "dancing Dervishes," who danced their religion 
 like our Shakers ; of the pantomimic dances, described 
 by Raynal,and the Turkish Almas, by the " sweet Mary 
 Montague ;" and finally, every one lias heard of the 
 " Age of Voltaire, the King of Prussia and Vestris " — 
 well, all this is outdanced by Taglioni and the Grand 
 Opera. 
 
 This opera has seats for two thousand spectators, 
 besides an immense saloon (two hundred feet by fifty) 
 where a great number of fashionables, to relieve their 
 ears from the noise of the singing, promenade themselves 
 magnificently during the whole evening, under the light 
 of brilliant lustres, and where the walls, wainscotled 
 with mirrors, multiply their numbers and charms to 
 infinity. — I may as well continue dancing through the 
 rest of this page. 
 
 Dancing, you know, is a characteristic amusement of 
 the French, and you may suppose they have accommo- 
 dations to gratify their taste to its fullest extent. There 
 are elegant rotundas for dancing in nearly all the public 
 gardens, as at " Tivoli," « Waxhal d'Ete," and the 
 " Chaumiere de Mont Parnasse." Besides there are 
 " Guinguettes" at every Barriere ; and in the " Village 
 Fetes," which endure the whole summer, dancing is 
 the chief amusement ; and public ball-rooms are distri- 
 buted through every quarter of Paris, suited to every 
 one's rank and fortune. The best society of Paris go to 
 the balls of Uanelah, Auteuil and St. Cloud. The thea- 
 tres, too, are converted into ball-rooms, especially for the 
 masquerades, from the beginning to the end of the Car- 
 nival. 
 
 I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and, 
 went with a lady from New Orleans, to see the most
 
 48 ANTIQUITY OF DANCING. 
 
 famous of the " Guinguettes." Here all the little world 
 seemed to me completely and reasonably happy; be- 
 having with all the decency, and dancing with almost 
 the grace of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying 
 only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell 
 you it was Sunday night; it is so difficult to keep Sunday 
 all alone, and without any one to help you ; the clergy 
 find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, 
 there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only these 
 places are seen to advantage. I am very far from ap- 
 proving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but 
 I have no doubt that in a city like Paris, the dancers are 
 more taken from the tavern and ginshops than from the 
 churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute de- 
 nunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of 
 our religious classes in America. If human virtues are 
 put up at too high a price, no one will bid for them. Not 
 a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Tes- 
 tament, and a great deal in favor. Miriam danced, you 
 know how prettily; and David danced " before the Lord 
 with all his might ;" to be sure the manner of his danc- 
 ing was not quite so commendable, according to the 
 fashion of our climates. If you will accept classical 
 authority, I will give you pedantry pardessus la tete. 
 The Greeks ascribe to dancing a celestial origin, and they 
 admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and 
 amusements of their divinities. The graces are repre- 
 sented almost always, in the attitude of dancing ; and 
 Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of 
 wisdom, too, is called by Pindar the " dancer." Indeed, 
 I could show you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself some- 
 times took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced 
 a gavot.
 
 ANTIQUITY OF DANCING. 49 
 
 There it is proved to yon from an ancient Greek poet. 
 1 could show you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his 
 rare qualities, is praised by Cornelius Nepos for his skill 
 in dancing ; and that Themistocles, in an evening party 
 at Athens, passed for a clown for refusing to take a share 
 in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek and to 
 be talking to women about the ancients. Don't say 
 that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all 
 the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains ; and I don't 
 know how many of the dumb animals — especially the 
 bears, who even on the South Sea Islands, where they 
 could not have any relations with the Academie Royale 
 de Musique, always express their extreme joy, Captain 
 Cook says, by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And if 
 you won't believe all this, I will take you to see a negro 
 holiday on the Mississippi. — Now this is enough about 
 dancing ; it is very late, and I must dance off to bed. 
 
 It is necessary to be as much in love with dancing as 
 I am to preach so pedantically about it as I have in this 
 postscript. — Its enormous length, when you have seen 
 Mademoiselle Taglioni, wants no apology. When you 
 do see her, take care her legs don't get into your head ; 
 they kept capering in mine all last night. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 50 THE BOULEVARDS. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 The Boulevards — Boulevard Madelaine — Boulevard des Capacities — 
 Boulevard Italien— Monsieur Careme — Splendid cafes — The baths 
 — Boulevard Montmartre — The shoe-black — The chiffonnier — The 
 gratteur — The commissionnaire — Boulevard du Temple — Scene 
 at the Ambigu Comique — Sir Sydney Smith — Monsieur de Paris — 
 The Cafe Turc — The fountains — Recollections of the Bastille — 
 The Halle aux Bles — The Bicetre— Boulevard du Mont Parnasse. 
 
 Paris, July, 1835. 
 The main street of Paris, and one of the most re- 
 markable streets of the whole world, is the Boulevard. 
 It runs from near the centre towards the east, and coils 
 around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent houses 
 are large, black and irregular in height, resembling at a 
 distance battlements or turreted castles. Its course is 
 zig-zag, and each section has a different name and dif- 
 ferent pursuits; so that it presents you a new face and 
 character ; a new and picturesque scene, at every quarter 
 of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye 
 formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but 
 it is approved by the general taste. Our Broadways 
 and Chestnut streets and Regent streets are exhausted at 
 a single view ; the Boulevard entertains all day. Its 
 sidewalks are delightfully wide, and overshaded with 
 elms. Before the visits of the allies it had eight miles 
 of trees ; a kind of ornament that is held in better esteem 
 in European than in American cities. Our ancestors 
 took a dislike to trees, from having so much grubbing at 
 their original forests, and their enmity has been infused
 
 THE MADELAINE. 51 
 
 into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a hereditary- 
 passion ; I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous 
 indulgence. A squatter of the back woods begins by- 
 felling the trees indiscriminately ; and he is most honored, 
 as those first Germans we read of in Ceesar, who has 
 made the widest devastation around his dwelling. Your 
 Pottsville, which ten years ago was a forest, has to-day 
 not a fig leaf to cover its nakedness. 
 
 Here is a gentleman just going to Philadelphia, who 
 will hand you this letter; I send also a map of Paris, 
 that I may have your company on such rambles as 1 
 may chance to take through the capital. To-day I in- 
 vite you to walk upon the Boulevards. 
 
 On the west end is the Madelaine in full view of 
 the street. While the other monuments of Paris are 
 "dim with the mist of years," this stands like a new 
 dressed bride in white and glowing marble ; its archi- 
 tecture fresh from the age of Pericles. This church 
 became pagan in the Revolution ; it was for a while 
 the " Temple of Glory," and has returned to the true 
 Catholic faith. Three mornings of the week, you will 
 find at its feet half an acre in urns, baskets and hedges, 
 of all that nature has prettiest in her magazine of flow- 
 ers; delighting the eye by their tasteful combination 
 of colors, and embalming the air with their fragrance. 
 I am sorry you are not a gentleman, I could describe 
 to you so feelingly the flower girl— her fichu too nar- 
 row by an inch ; her frock rumpled and disordered, and 
 hung upon her as if by the graces. Her laughing eyes 
 emulate the diamond ; and love has pressed his two 
 fingers upon her brunette cheeks. This is the Boule- 
 vard Madelaine. On the south side a sad looking 
 garden occupies its whole length. I asked of a French- 
 man whose it was ; he says " it is the Minister of Strange
 
 DZ M. THIERS. 
 
 Affairs." It is the hotel of Monsieur Thiers, who wrote 
 a book about the Revolution, and a " Treatise upon 
 Wigs," and is now Minister des affaires etrangtres. 
 I do not like him, this Mr. Thiers. 1 experienced yes- 
 terday some impudence and pertness from one of the 
 clerks of his office ; and these underlings, you know, re- 
 present usually the qualifications of their masters in such 
 particulars. 
 
 To leave Paris for London requires your passport 
 to be signed at the Police Office, at the American and 
 English Ambassadors, and at the French Minister's. 
 At the first office you are set down with a motley crew 
 upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those Vir- 
 tues in front of the " Palais Bourbon," often an hour 
 or two, until your name is called ; and when it is called 
 you don't recognize it, and you keep sitting on unless 
 provided with an interpreter. There is not anything 
 in nature so unlike itself as one's name Frenchified — 
 even a monosyllable. As for "John," it changes gen- 
 ders altogether, and becomes " Jean" To the last three 
 officers you pay the valedictory compliment of thirty 
 francs, and get their impudence into the bargain. You 
 will always find persons about your lodgings, called 
 "fucteurs" (they should be called benefactors,) who 
 will do all this for you, for a small consideration, much 
 better than you can do it yourself. 
 
 You are now on the Boulevard des Capucines. It 
 is raised about thirty feet, and the houses on the left 
 side for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. All 
 the high life here is below stairs. On the right side, 
 you see apparently one of the happiest of human beings, 
 the "marchand des chiens," who sells little dogs and 
 parrots. "«# six francs tna canichel" — " Mar got tt 
 dice francs /" — with a gentle voice, half afraid some one 

 
 MONSIEUR DE CAREME. 
 
 53 
 
 might hear him ; he has become attached to his animals, 
 and feels a sorrow to part with them. He feels as you 
 for your chickens yon have fed every day, when you 
 must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zemire ! 
 Only think of seeing them no more ! He sells them a 
 few francs cheaper, when the purchaser is rich and 
 likely to treat them well. The French, especially the 
 women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all 
 other nations, and yet have the nastiest race of curs upon 
 the earth. A dog, they say, loves his master the more 
 he is a vagabond, and the French, in return, love their 
 dogs the more they are shabby. What I would give 
 for a few of those eloquent bow woivs, which resound in 
 the night from an American barn-yard, and which pro- 
 tect so securely one's little wife from the thieves and 
 the lovers while the husband is wandering in foreign 
 lands ! 
 
 Take off your hat ; this is one of the choice and pre- 
 eminent spots of the French capital ; the very seat al- 
 most of the pleasures and amusements of Europe ; it is 
 the Boulevard Italian. It is here that gentlemen 
 and ladies, when the labors of the day have closed, and 
 not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great 
 business of deglutition and digestion, assemble of an 
 evening to discuss the immense importance of a good 
 dinner. Men make splendid reputations here which 
 live after them by the invention of a single soup. It is 
 here they make the sauces in which one might eat his 
 own grandfather. This place was respected by the 
 Holy Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched 
 his Marquee upon the Boulevard Italien. 
 
 It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless 
 we honor those who exercise its functions. Monsieur 
 Careme, (whom I mention for the sake of honor, and 
 
 5*
 
 54 IMPORTANCE OF COOKERY. 
 
 who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook 
 to the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of 
 Wales, is one of the most considerable persons of this 
 age ; holding a high gentlemanly rank, and living in an 
 enviable condition of opulence and splendor. He keeps 
 his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his 
 country seat, and his box at the opera; and has, indeed, 
 every attribute requisite to make a gentleman in almost 
 any country. The number of officers attached to his 
 staff is greater than of any general of the present regime; 
 his assistant roaster has a salary above our President 
 of the United States. It is by this honorable recom- 
 pense of merit that through all the vicissitudes of her 
 various fortunes, France has still maintained unimpaired 
 her great prerogative of teaching the nations how.to cook. 
 Monsieur de Careme is worthy a particular notice. 
 He had an ancestor who was « chef de cuisine" of the 
 Vatican, and invented a soupe maigre for his Holiness; 
 and another, who was cook to the Autocratrixof all the 
 Russias. How talents do run in some families! Him- 
 self, having served an apprenticeship under an eminent 
 artist of the Boulevard Italien, he invented a sauce 
 piquanle, when quite a young man; and by a regular 
 cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a 
 degree of perfection in his art, which has long since set 
 envy and rivalship at defiance. The truth is that a 
 great cook is as rare a miracle as a great poet. It is 
 well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in 
 pastry with all his genius. 
 
 " Et Balzac et Malherbe, si savans en bon mots, 
 En cuisine peut-etre n'aurait ete que des sots." 
 
 To whom, think you, does the British nation owe 
 those Attic suppers, those feasts of the gods, which so
 
 EVENING PROMENADES. 55 
 
 surprised the allied monarchs, and brought so much 
 glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Careme ; 
 and to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes 
 those clear and unclouded faculties with which he out- 
 financiers all Europe and America ? Certes, to Mon- 
 sieur de Careme. All the Baron has to do is to dine ; 
 digestion is done by his cook. Careme has refused 
 invitations to nearly every European court; and it was 
 only upon the most urgent solicitations that he consented 
 to reside eight months at Carlton House; a portion of 
 his life upon which he looks back with much displeasure 
 and repentance, and the remnant of his dayt he designs 
 to consecrate with the greater zeal on this account to 
 the honor and interests of his native country. He is 
 now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of 
 the Code Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he 
 has communicated his work, pronounce it excellent both 
 for its literary and culinary merits. 
 
 To this Boulevard, also, the sweetmeat part of the cre- 
 ation resort about twilight to their creams and lemon- 
 ades and eau sucree. They seat themselves upon both 
 margins of the trottoir upon chairs, leaving an interval 
 between for the successive waves of pedestrians, who 
 are also attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of 
 the place. How charming, of a summer evening, to sit 
 you down here upon one chair and put your feet upon 
 another, and look whole hours away upon this little 
 world; or to walk up and down and eye the double row 
 of belles seated amidst the splendor of the gas-lamps, 
 and who seem very sorry not to have lived at the Rape 
 of the Sabines. In this group are examples of nearly 
 all that is extant of the human species. I have seen a 
 Bedouin of the Mer Rouge stumble upon a great 
 ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of the
 
 56 TORTONl's. 
 
 Loo-koo run foul of an ex-schoolmaster of the Mahan- 
 tongo. If any one is missing from your mines of 
 Shamoken, come hither, and you will find him seated on 
 a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien. 
 
 These splendid cafes are multiplied by mirrors, and 
 being open, or separated only by panels of glass, ap- 
 pear to form but a single tableau with the street, and 
 those outside and in, seem parts of the same company. 
 I recommend you the Cafe de Paris, the Cafe Hardi, 
 the Cafe Veron, if you wish to mix with the fashion- 
 able and merry world. If with the business world; with 
 the great bankers, the millionaires, the noblesse de la 
 Bourse, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and 
 good wines, where else in the world should you go but 
 to Toy^tonVs? There are not two Tortonis upon the 
 earth. A dinner you may get at the Rocher Cancale, 
 but a breakfast ! — it is to be had nowhere in all Europe 
 out of Tortoni's. The ladies of high and fashionable 
 life stop here before the door, and are served with ices 
 by liveried waiters elegantly in their barouches; they 
 cannot think of venturing in, there are so many more 
 gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, 
 the most egregious cockneys of Europe, the beaux 
 Brummels and the beaux Nashes, the "Flashes," and 
 " Full-Swells" of London town, and in elegant apposi- 
 tion, the Parisian exquisites. Was there ever anything 
 so beautiful ! — No, d'Aonnewr. His boots are of Evrat, 
 his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, 
 and hat Bandoni ; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwo- 
 man ! You will please give the superiority to the 
 French. To make an elegant fop is more than the 
 barber's business; nature herself must have a finger in 
 the composition. Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is
 
 PARISIAN BATHS. 57 
 
 a greater fool in Paris than elsewhere, there are such 
 opportunities for acquirement. 
 
 These are the French people. Don't you hate to see 
 so many ninnies in mustaches ? If I had not the great 
 Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and Apollo, on my side, 
 all three un whiskered, I would go home in the next 
 packet. The moment one has made one's debut here 
 in the world of beards, one is a man, and there is no 
 manhood, founded on any other pretensions, that can 
 dispense with this main qualification. It is the one emi- 
 nent criterion of all merit ; it is a diploma ; a bill of 
 credit as current as in the days of Albuquerque ; it is pro- 
 motion in the army, in the diplomacy, even in the church ; 
 you cannot be a saint without this grisly recommenda- 
 tion. One loves the women just because they have no 
 beards on their faces. 
 
 Otherwise — a la barbe prhs — the French are well 
 enough. It is the same kind of population, nearly, that 
 one meets by the gross in New York and everywhere 
 else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but 
 could see nothing of him. In a foreign country a man 
 is always a caricature of himself. The French are here 
 in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is 
 always awkward from the very sense of not knowing 
 foreign customs ; and always ridiculous abroad because 
 every thing is ridiculous which departs from common and 
 inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms 
 with it. In a nation of apes it is becoming to be an ape. 
 If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is 
 the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. 
 If one traveled into Timbuctoo I presume one would 
 feel very foolish for being white. 
 
 But this is not all that is worth your attention on the 
 Boulevard Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury,
 
 58 PRETTY SHOP WOMEN. 
 
 here are the Bains Chinois just opposite. Personal 
 cleanliness is the French virtue par excellence. Bathing 
 in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. 
 Hot baths as good as yours at Swaim's are at fifteen 
 sous. The Bains Vigiers, at twenty sous a bath, made 
 their proprietor a count. You can have baths here sim- 
 ple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or 
 warm, or clarified or Seine water ; and you have them 
 with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all 
 the luxury of tapestry and lounges; baths double and 
 single, with and without attendance, with a whole skin, 
 or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths 
 ordinary and extraordinary — Russian, Turkish, and Chi- 
 nese — you have baths specific against all human infirm- 
 ities; baths alcalic, sulphurous, fumigatory, oleaginous, 
 and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of Europe 
 pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa, 
 Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle and Ginsnack ; manu- 
 factured, every one of them, in the street of the Univer- 
 sity, Gros Caillou, No. 21. And this is not all; there is 
 the "ambulatory bath," which walks into your bedside, 
 and embracing you, walks out again at thirty sous. 
 C'est tin vraipays de Cocagne, que ce Paris. 
 
 And if you love gewgaws, gingumbobs, and pretty 
 shop girls, why, here they are at the Bazaar. The 
 French take care, as no other people, to furnish such 
 places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, 
 as women, to the account of the shop. The English, I 
 have heard, put all their deformities into their bazaars, 
 that customers, they say, may attend to the other mer- 
 chandise. The French way is the more sensible. I 
 have been ruined already several times by the same shop 
 girl — caressing and caressing each of one's fingers, as 
 she tries on a pair of gloves one don't want.
 
 ARTICLES OF MERCHANDIZE. 59 
 
 Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print- 
 shops of Paris ? Why, here. You can buy here Calyp- 
 sos and Cleopatras all naked, with little French faces ; 
 and Scipios and Caesars, and other marshals of the Em- 
 pire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Fi- 
 nally, if you love the best pates in this world, we will 
 just step over into the Passage Panorama to Madame 
 Felix's — Sweet Passage Panorama ! How often have 
 I walked up and down beneath the crystal roof as the 
 dusky evening came on, with arms folded, and in the 
 narcotic influence of a choice Havana, forgotten all — all 
 but that a yawning gulf lies between me and my friends 
 and native country. 
 
 Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling 
 face, who sweeps the crossings. " Jlh, Madame, re- 
 gardez dans votre petite poche si vons n'avez pas tin 
 petit sou a me donner /" How can you refuse him ? 
 If you do, he will make you just the same thankful bow 
 in the best forms of French courtesy. 
 
 We are now on the Boulevard Montmartre. Here 
 are cashmeres and silks from Arabia ; merinos veritable 
 barbe de Pacha, chalys, a mousseline Thibet, Pondi- 
 cherry, unis et broche, and pocket handkerchiefs at two 
 sous. — Ah, come along ! And here are six pairs of 
 ladies' legs, showing at the window the silk stocking. 
 How gracefully gartered ! And from above how the 
 white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the 
 knee. Don't be in such a hurry ! — they are twice as 
 natural as living legs ! And here are dolls brevetted by 
 the king, and milliners aprix fixe, at a fixed price, and 
 here is M. J)ulosq,fabricant de sac en papier, manu- 
 facturer of little paper-bags-to-put-pepper-in to his ma- 
 jesty ; and Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and 
 other goddesses to the drawing-schools, at two sous an
 
 60 THE MODERN SHOPKEEPER. 
 
 hour. And look at this shop of women's ready-made 
 articles. Here one can be dressed cap-a-pie for four 
 francs and eleven centimes — (three-quarters of a dollar,) 
 — frock, petticoat, fichu, bonnet, stockings and chemise ! 
 — I should like to see any woman go naked in Paris. 
 A student, also, can buy here a library on the street.from 
 a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a volume. I 
 have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous ! 
 
 Since the last Revolution commerce has taken a new 
 spirit ; the bourgeois blood lias got uppermost. The 
 greatest barons now are the Rothschilds, and the great- 
 est ministers the Lafittes. The style, too, has risen to 
 the level of the new bureaucratic nobility. The shop- 
 keeper of these times is at your service, a commere,ant, 
 his " boutique" is a magazin, his " contoir" his bureau, 
 and his " pratique" his clientelle. Even the signs, as 
 you see, speak a magnificent language. It is the "Maga- 
 zin du Doge de Venise" or " Magazin du Zodiaque" 
 — " des Vepres Siciliennes," or " Grand Magazin de 
 Nouveaute." And if the Doge of Venice is " selling out 
 cheap," the language is of course worthy of a Doge ; it 
 is u au rabais par cessation de commerce." The 
 Bourse is now a monument of the capital, and disputes 
 rank with the Louvre. The " petit Marquis" is the 
 banker's son, and the marshals of the empire are sold 
 "second hand !" in the frippery market. 
 
 I intended to write you in English ; but the French 
 creeps in in spite of me ; I shall be as hermaphrodite as 
 my Lady Morgan. 
 
 This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you 
 will see here a great many fine women en promenade 
 of a morning, about twelve. When a French lady walks 
 out, she always takes at one side her caniche by a string, 
 and at the other, sometimes, a beau without a string.
 
 MORNING WALKS. Gl 
 
 In either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you 
 are continually getting between her and the pnppy very 
 much to your inconvenience ; for if you offend the dog, 
 the mistress is of course implacable, and yon very likely 
 have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy, next 
 morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to ad- 
 vantage. If you see, for instance, a pretty woman 
 alone, with her curry companion, you can just walk on, 
 " commercing with the skies" till the lady gets one side 
 of you and the dog the other ; this will give you the op- 
 portunity of begging her pardon, of patting and stroking 
 the dog a little; it may break the ice toward^ an ac- 
 quaintance ; or, if the place be convenient to fall, you had 
 better let her trip you up, and then she will be very 
 sorry. — If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty 
 woman's pity on your side, you are very much mistaken. 
 Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as 
 you see, a little box, a brush or two in it, and blacking, 
 and a fixture on top for a foot ; this is his fond de bou- 
 tique, his stock in trade. He brushes off the mud to the 
 soles of your feet, and shows you your own features in 
 your boots for three sous. This one has -just dissolved 
 an ancient firm, and his advertisement, which he calls a 
 " prospectus," standing here so prim upon a board, an- 
 nounces the event. The partnership is dissolved, but 
 the whole " personnel," he says, of the establishment 
 remains with the present proprietor ; and M. Baradaque, 
 ex-partner, has also the honor to inform us that he has 
 transported the " appareil de son etablissenienV to the 
 " Place de la Bourse, une desphtsjolies locations de la 
 ville." • The " Decrotteur en chef," at the Palais Royal, 
 and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves 
 a dozen or two of customers at a time. He has a shop 
 furnished with cloth-covered benches in amphitheatre, as 
 vol. i. — 6
 
 G2 THE CIIIFF0NN1F.R. 
 
 at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long horizontal iron 
 support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the 
 walls. " On (lit, monsieur, que e'est d'aprcs Teniers — 
 celui, monsieur?, c'esl aprhs Vandyke" and there are 
 newspapers and reviews ; so that to polish a gentleman's 
 boots and his understanding are parts of the same pro- 
 cess. 
 
 There is a variety of other little trades, and industries, 
 which derive their chief means of life from the wants 
 and luxuries of this street ; which I may as well call to 
 your notice en passant. I mean trades that are "lout 
 Parisiennes, ,, that is to say, unknown in any other 
 country than Paris. You will see an individual moving 
 about at all hours of the night, silent and active, and 
 seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark, where you 
 can see nothing ; and with a hook in the end of a stick, 
 picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity 
 into a basket tied to his left shoulder ; with a cat-like 
 walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, 
 stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the 
 street, under your very nose; — this is the chiffonnier. 
 He is a very important individual. He is in matter 
 what Pythagoras was in mind ; and his transforma- 
 tions are scarcely less curious than those of the Samian 
 sage. The beau, by his pains, peruses once again his 
 dicky or cravat, of a morning, in the " Magazin des 
 Modes," whilst the politician has his breeches repro- 
 duced in the " Journal des Deliats ;" and many a fine lady 
 pours out her soul upon a billet-doux that once was the 
 dishclout. The chiffonnier stands at the head of the little 
 trades, and is looked up to with envy by the others. He 
 has two coats, and wears on holidays a chain and quiz- 
 zing-glass, and washes his hands with pale d'amand. 
 He rises, too, like the Paris gentry, when the chickens
 
 THE GRATTEUR. 63 
 
 roost, and when the lark cjieers the morning, goes to bed. 
 All the city is divided into districts and let out to these 
 chifFonniers by the hour ; to one from ten to eleven, and 
 from eleven to twelve to another, and so on through the 
 night ; so that several get a living and consideration from 
 the same district. This individual does justice to the 
 literary compositions of the day ; he crams into his cliif- 
 fonnerie indiscriminately the last Vaudeville, the last 
 sermon of the Archbishop, and the last eloge of the Aca- 
 demy. 
 
 Just below him is the Gratteur. This artist scratches 
 the live long day between the stones of the pavement 
 for old nails from horses' shoes and other bits of iron — 
 always in hopes of a bit of silver, and even, perhaps, a bit 
 of gold ; more happy in his hope than a hundred others 
 in the possession. He has a store in the Faubourgs, 
 where he deposits his ferruginous treasure ; his wife 
 keeps this store, and is a " Marchande de Fer." He main- 
 tains a family like another man ; one or two of his sons 
 he brings up to scratch for a living, and the other he 
 sends to a college ; and he has a lot " in perpetuity," in 
 Pere la Chaise. His rank is, however, inferior to the 
 Chiffonnier, who will not give him his daughter in mar- 
 riage, and he don't ask him to his soirees. 
 
 In all places of much resort, you will see an indivi- 
 dual, broad shouldered, and whiskered, looking very affa- 
 ble and officious, especially upon strangers, mostly about 
 grocetvstores, and street corners. Let me introduce you 
 to him, also. He wants to carry your letters, and run 
 errands for you from one end of Paris to the other. He 
 will carry also your wood to your room, a billet-doux to 
 your mistress, and your boots to the cobbler's, and, for 
 a modest compensation, perform any service that one 
 person may require of another — also, as you see, a very 
 important individual. Indeed, he holds amongst men
 
 64 THE COMMISSIONAIRE. 
 
 nearly the same place that Mercury holds amongst the 
 gods. About his neck he wears a brass medal, polished 
 bright as honor ; at once his badge of office, and pledge of 
 fidelity. If you seem to doubt his honesty, he points to 
 his medal, and holds up his head; that's enough. — If 
 only the Peers could point to their decorations with the 
 same confidence ! If you walk out in the bright day, 
 not being a Parisian, you are of course overtaken by 
 the rain : for a Paris sunshine and shower are as close 
 together as a babe's smiles and tears : and then you just 
 step into a " Cabinet de lecture," and you have not read 
 the half worth of your sou, when your coat has em- 
 braced you, and your umbrella is between you and the 
 merciless Heavens. — This is the commissionnaire. I 
 should have noticed among the little industries the 
 " Broker of theatrical pleasures ;" he sells the pass of A, 
 who retires early, to B, who goes in late ; and the Clac- 
 queur, who, for two or three francs a night, applauds or 
 hisses the new plays. But we must get on with our 
 journey. 
 
 Here on the Boulevard Poissonnilre, or near it, re- 
 sides Mr. of New Jersey ; he has been sent over 
 
 (hapless errand !) to convert these French people to 
 Christianity. He is a very clever man, and we will ask 
 if he is yet alive ; the journals of this morning say three 
 or four missionaries have been eaten up by the Sumatras. 
 
 This is the famous Arch of Triumph of the Porte St. 
 Denis. It compliments Louis XIV. on his passage of 
 the Rhine in 1672, and is the counterpart of the Napo- 
 leon Arch at the Barriere de l'Etoile. It is seventy-two 
 feet high, and has at each side an obelisk supported by 
 a lion, and decorated with trophies. That fat Dutch 
 woman at the left base stands for Holland, and that 
 vigorous, muscular-looking man on the right is deputy
 
 BOULEVARD DU TEMPLE. 65 
 
 to the Rhine : and that overhead on horseback is great 
 " baby Louis." 
 
 We have now left the fashionable world at our heels 
 — this is the Boulevard du Temple. This Boulevard, a 
 few years ago, was a delightful and romantic walk of an 
 evening. But noise and business have now violated all 
 the secret retreats, one after another, of Paris, and there 
 is no spot left of the great capital, in which you can hear 
 your own voice. There were here, before the Revolution, 
 five theatres, and the lists of fame are crowded with the 
 theatrical celebrities which drew the homage of the whole 
 city to this street. This is the only spot in the world that 
 has furnished clowns for posterity ; Baron and Lekain 
 are hardly more fresh in the memory of man than Gali- 
 raafre and Bobeche. This was the theatre of their 
 triumphs. It was here, too, that the world came to see 
 a living skeleton of eight pounds, and his wife of eight 
 hundred; that men, to the great astonishment of our an- 
 cestors, swallowed carving knives, and boiling oil, that 
 turkeys danced quadrilles, and fleas drove their coaches 
 and six ; and it was here that Mademoiselle Rose stood 
 on her head on a candlestick. There are yet six theatres 
 here, but the street, once so adorned with gardens and 
 equipages and fashionable ladies, and an infinity of other 
 attractions, is now, alas ! built up with gaunt houses, and 
 differs scarcely from the other Boulevard. 
 
 The simplicity of original manners is, however, won- 
 derfully preserved in this district. The more fashionable 
 parts are so filled with strangers — with parasite plants, 
 that you can scarcely distinguish the indigenous popula- 
 tion. This is the true classical and traditional district ; the 
 only place you can find unadulterated Frenchmen. The 
 inhabitant of this quarter has rather more than a French 
 share of embonpoint, and aims at dignity, and his whis- 
 
 6*
 
 till I NADULTKHMKI) FRENCHMEN. 
 
 kers leave a part of his chin uncovered ; his clothes are 
 large and line in texture; he carries an umbrella, and on 
 fete days, a cane to give him an important air, and keep 
 off the dogs. If it rains, he takes a fiacre ; he keeps by 
 him his certificate of marriage and "extrait de bateme," 
 and has not got over the prejudice of beiiig'born in law- 
 ful wedlock. His wife is pretty, but not handsome ; her 
 features are regular and face plump ; indeed she is plump 
 all over. He loves this wife by instinct ; she keeps his 
 books, and he asks her advice in all his business ; she 
 suckles his children and gives him tisane when he is sick. 
 I saw this individual and his wife together a few 
 evenings ago at the Ambigu Comique. I sometimes go 
 to this theatre and the Gaite and the Cirque Olimpique. 
 A vicious student was tempted every now and then to 
 pinch Madame behind. She bore it impatiently, indeed, 
 but silently for some time. " Qu'est-ce que iu as ? — t 
 Qu'astu done, ma fern me . ? " At last she communi- 
 cated to her husband the fact. He immediately grew a 
 foot taller upon his seat ; and then he looked at the young 
 man from head to foot with one of those looks which 
 mean so much more than words. Not wishing, how- 
 ever, to disturb the play, he contained himself, only^rig- 
 gling on his seat, and eyeing him occasionally, to the 
 end of the act, and then he got up. " Quoi, monsieur," 
 said he, "vous avez V impertinence de pincer lesf esses de 
 Madame . ? " and then thrusting his tongue into the lower 
 lip, he put on an expression such as you will never meet 
 outside the Boulevard du Temple. You would go a mile 
 any time barefooted to see it. " I would have you to 
 know, sir, that I am a rentier, (a freeholder,) quejepaye 
 rente h la ville de Paris; that I am called Grigou, mon- 
 sieur ; and that I live in the Rue d' Angouleme, No. 22 :" 
 and he sat down. The little wife now tried to appease
 
 MARKET FOR FRIPPERY. 67 
 
 him, which made him the more pugnacious; she remind- 
 ed him he was a father of a family, had children, and 
 finally that he had a wife ; and then she sat close up by 
 him, and then she came over to the other side, just front 
 of me, for security. — The bourgeois of this district lives 
 in a larger house than he could get for the same rent in 
 any other part of Paris ; he is usually independent in his 
 circumstances, and has a certain ti plomb, or confidence 
 in himself, and a liberty in all his movements, which 
 give a full relief to his natural feelings, and traits of cha- 
 racter. 
 
 Some distance towards the right you will find the great 
 market of frippery — one of the curiosities of this district. 
 Every old thing upon the earth is sold there for new. 
 There are 1S00 shops. Nothing ever was so restored 
 from raggedness to apparent green youth and integrity 
 as an old coat in the hands of these Israelites, unless it be 
 the conscience of those who sell. A garment that has 
 served at least two generations, and been worn last by 
 a beggar, you will buy in this market for new in spite 
 of your teeth. It is a good study of human nature to 
 see here how far the human face may be modified by 
 its pursuits and meditations. 
 
 This building in the Rue du Temple, with superb 
 portico, and Ionic columns, and two colossal statues in 
 front, is one of great historical importance; and ladies 
 who love knights would not pardon me for passing it 
 unnoticed. The ancient edifice was built seven hundred 
 years ago, and was occupied by one of the most power- 
 ful orders of Christianity — the Knights Templars. Here 
 it was that Philip le Bel tortured and burnt alive these 
 soldier monks; seizing their treasures, and bestowing 
 their other possessions upon his new favorites, the 
 Knights of Malta. Who has not heard of the war-cry
 
 68 KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 
 
 of Beauceant, which chilled the blood of the Saracens 
 on the plains of Syria, and has since made many a 
 woman tremble in her slippers at midnight. This was 
 his lodging. Lord ! how wide you open yonr eyes ! 
 Yes, here lodged the Knights of the Red Cross; and 
 Richard Coeur de Lion used to put up in this temple in 
 going to the Holy Land. It became national property 
 in the Revolution, and was given at the Restoration 
 (1814) to the Princesse de Corxle, who established the 
 present « Convent of the Temple." The ladies who 
 now occupy it are called the Dames Benedictines, and, 
 like the other nuns, of whom there are at present more 
 than twenty orders in France, they devote themselves 
 to education and other benevolent employments. It 
 was in this old building that Louis XVI. and his queen 
 were imprisoned in 1792. The king was taken out 
 from here the 20th of January, 1793, to the scaffold, 
 the queen about eleven months after, and Madame 
 Elizabeth, his sister, in the following year, leaving his 
 daughter here alone at thirteen years of age. Sir Syd- 
 ney Smith was confined in the same room in 179S. 
 Bonaparte, in 1811, demolished the old edifice to the 
 last stone — from what motive? and in 1812, it was 
 fenced round, and the grass grew upon the guilty place. 
 The religious ladies who now reside here are purifying 
 it by prayers and other acts of devotion. Apropos of 
 Sydney Smith ; I met him at an evening party lately. 
 He looks like the history of the last half century. He 
 is a venerable old man, and very sociable with the 
 young girls, who were climbing his knees, and hanging 
 about his neck, and getting his name albnmhxed in 
 their little books to carry to America. 
 
 I will now show you a house in this street, (Rue des 
 Marais du Temple, No. 31,) a house that, once seen,
 
 MONSIEUR DE PARIS. 69 
 
 will never depart from your memory. Its closed door 
 and windows, as if no one lived there; its iron railing 
 without entrance, and the interstices condemned with 
 wood, in front ; and the slit in the centre of the door to 
 receive the correspondence of its horrible master, who 
 sits within as a spider in its web, you will, see all the 
 rest of your life. It is the house of Monsieur de Paris. 
 Oh dear ! and who is Monsieur de Paris ? He is a civil 
 magistrate, and belongs to the executive department. 
 No one living is, perhaps, so great a terror to evil doers 
 as this Monsieur de Paris. "Monsieur," you must 
 recollect, has its particular, and its general meanings. 
 Monsieur, means anybody; un monsieur, is a gentle- 
 man of some breeding and education ; La maison de 
 Monsieur, is the family of the king's eldest son ; Mon- 
 sieur de Meaux, means the Archbishop, and Monsieur 
 de Pai^is, means the Hangman ! He is also called the 
 " Executeur de la haute justice," or " Executeur des 
 hautes ceuvres," and vulgarly, the Boureau. This 
 is his Hotel. The name of the present incumbent is 
 Mr. Henry Sanson. His family consists of a son, a 
 person of mild and gentle manners, who is now serving 
 his apprenticeship to the business under his eminent 
 parent; and two daughters. The elder, about fifteen, is 
 remarkable for beauty and accomplishment. The father 
 is rich; his salary being above that of the President of 
 the Royal Court, and he has spared no expense in the 
 education of the girls. They will be sumptuously 
 endowed. 
 
 The two ends of society are affected sometimes in 
 nearly the same way. A princess, being obliged to se- 
 lect her husband from her own rank and religion, runs 
 the hazard of a perpetual virginity ; and Mademoiselle 
 de Paris experiences exactly the same inconvenience;
 
 70 THE MARQUIS DE LALY. 
 
 she can marry but a hangman. There is no one of all 
 Europe, who has performed the same eminent functions 
 as Mr. Henry Sanson, or to whom, without loss of dig- 
 nity, he can offer the hand of his fair daughter. Ye 
 lords and gentlemen, if you think you have all the pride 
 to yourselves, you are mistaken ; the hangman has his 
 share like another man. 
 
 Mr. Sanson has appropriated one or two rooms of this 
 building to a Museum of ancient instruments, used in 
 judicial torture— Luke's iron bed, Ravaillac's boots, and 
 such like relics ; and is quite a dilettante in this department 
 of science. We expect a course of gratuitous lectures, 
 as at the " Musee des Artset Metiers," when the season 
 begins. Amongst other objects, you will see the sword 
 with which was beheaded the Marquis de Laly. I am 
 going to tell you an anecdote I have read of this too 
 famous execution, which is curious. About the year 
 1750, in the middle of the night, three young men of the 
 high class of nobility, after breaking windows, and the 
 heads of street passengers, and beating the guard, (which 
 was the privilege of the higher classes in those times,) 
 strolling down the Faubourg St. Martin, laughing and. 
 talking, and well fuddled with champagne^ arrived at 
 the door of this house. They heard the sound of 
 instruments, and music so lively seemed to indicate a 
 hearty bourgeois dance. How fortunate ! they could 
 now pass the night pleasantly. One of them knocked, 
 and a polite well-dressed person opened. A young lord 
 explained the motive of their visit, and was refused. 
 " You are wrong," said the nobleman ; " we are of the 
 court, and do you honor in sharing your amusements." 
 " I am obliged, nevertheless, to refuse," replied the 
 stranger; "neither of you know the person you are ad- 
 dressing, or you would be as anxious to withdraw, as
 
 THE CAFE TURC. 71 
 
 now to be admitted." "Excellent, upon honor! and 
 who the devil are you?" — "The executioner of Paris." 
 " Ha, ha, ha, what you ? you the gentleman who breaks 
 limbs, cuts off heads, and tortures poor devils so agree- 
 ably ?" " Such, indeed, are the duties of my office ; I 
 leave, however, the details you speak of to my deputies, 
 and it is only when a lord like either of you is subject to 
 the penalties of the law, that I do execution on him with 
 my own hands." The individual who held this dialogue 
 with the executioner was the Marquis de Laly. Twen- 
 ty years after he died by the hands of this man, upon 
 whose office he was now exercising his raillery. 
 
 One of the ornaments of this Boulevard is the Cafe 
 Tare, fitted up with a furniture of two hundred thousand 
 francs. It would do honor to the Italien. What a 
 display of belles and beaux, about seven of an evening, 
 through its spacious rooms, and gardens, and galleries ! 
 — one lends his ear to the concert, another, retired in a 
 grotto at the side of his bonnie amie, drinks large 
 draughts of love, and another drinks eau sveree. 
 
 And here is the largest elephant upon the earth, 
 which bears the same relation to all other elephants 
 that the Trajan horse did to all other horses. This mon- 
 ster was to be cast in bronze, and surmounted by a 
 tower, forming a figure of about eighty feet in height. 
 That which you see here is only the model in plaster of 
 Paris. The stairway leads up through one of the legs, 
 six and a quarter feet in the ankle. There were to be 
 twenty-four bas-reliefs in marble, representing the Arts 
 and Sciences; and the bronze was to be obtained from 
 the fusion of the cannon, captured by the imperial army 
 in Spain. Louis Philippe, who is charged with the 
 public works began by Bonaparte, will be puzzled to 
 finish this elephant.
 
 72 THE FOUNTAINS. 
 
 Paris contains one hundred and eighty-nine great 
 fountains, of which about twenty are of beautiful 
 architecture, adorned with sculpture and statuary, and 
 enlivened by jets d'eaux, and forma principal ornament 
 of the city. This elephant was intended to add one to 
 the number. That so imposing and picturesque, which 
 we just now passed on the Boulevard du Temple, is 
 called the Chateau. The building with the jet on the 
 top forms a cone. The water falls from its summit into 
 vases, which overflow in cascades that tumble down 
 from story to story into a large basin at the base, where 
 eight lions of bronze spout torrents in jets d'eaux from 
 their mouths. Its cost was one hundred thousand francs. 
 It would be too long to particularize the others. On 
 one you will see Leda caressing her swan, Cupid 
 lurking on the watch ; on another Tantalus gaping 
 in vain for the liquid, which passes by his lips into 
 the pail of the waterman ; on another, Hygeia giving 
 drink to a fatigued soldier; and on another, Charity 
 suckling one of her children, wrapping another from the 
 cold in the folds of her frock, and quenching the parched 
 lips of a third with the pure stream. I have just bought 
 you a clock representing the " Fountain of the Inno- 
 cents," with all its waters in motion. It was the 
 Duchess of Bern's, and is of delicate workmanship. 
 Please have the proper respect to its dignity, and indulg- 
 ence for its frailty. I will send it by the next packet. 
 
 The turning of wickets, the jingling of keys, and 
 grating of bolts were the sounds heard here forty-six 
 years ago. What recollections rise out of the ground 
 to meet you at every step as you tread upon this un- 
 hallowed spot. One hears almost the chains clank, and 
 the prisoner groan in his cell ! It was here, where the 
 charcoal now floats so peacefully on the lake, and where
 
 THE BASTILLE. 73 
 
 the boatman sings his absent mistress so joyously, that 
 stood, in horrid majesty — 
 
 " With many a foul and midnight murder fed," • 
 
 the " high altar and castle of Despotism," the Bastille! 
 Where are now the damp and secret cells, the sombre 
 corridors, and the grim countenances of the jailers, and 
 where the mob of '89, and the mad passions that leveled 
 its .towers and battlements? Quiet as the Seine that 
 sleeps upon its dungeons! The present substitutes for 
 the Bastille, are', the Depot at the Prefecture of Police; 
 St. Pelagie for state crimes, and La Force for civil ; the 
 Conciergerie for those awaiting trial, and the Salpetriere 
 for those awaiting the execution of their sentence. 
 
 Bonaparte built here an immense granary, containing 
 always corn enough for the consumption of the capital 
 for two months. This, with the Halle aux bleds in the 
 centre of the city, supplies the whole population. Paris 
 has six hundred bakers, who are obliged to keep always 
 in this granary, one hundred thousand sacks of flour, 
 worth thirty shillings sterling per sack ; and therefore it 
 is called the Grenier de Reserve. Here lived the witty 
 and profligate Beaumarchais ; his castle is rased ; all but 
 Figaro are dead. You have in sight the Hospital of the 
 Quinze-vingts, which contains three hundred blind, who 
 have twenty-four sous a day each for a living, with the 
 produce of their industry, which is wonderfully ingenious. 
 Now we have passed the Garden of Plants, and the 
 Bridge of Austerlitz. For this latter favor we owe 
 something to the Russians, who saved this bridge from 
 its bad name, and Blucher's gunpowder. 
 
 That upon the hill is the Salpetriere, the Insane Hos- 
 pital for women. What a huge pile ! One to put the 
 sane ones in would not be half the size. This front on 
 vol. i. — 7
 
 74 THE HOSPITAL FOR WIDOWERS. 
 
 the Boulevard, is six hundred feet. The building in the 
 rear is of similar dimensions, and the Rotonde between, 
 with the octagon dome, is the chapel. It contains now 
 four thousand live hundred poor aged above seventy ; 
 one thousand five hundred crazy; all women. I went in 
 on Sunday. What immense conversation ! There is a 
 similar institution for the other sex called Bicelre. Paris 
 has twenty hospitals, affording thirty thousand beds, and 
 classed by the several diseases and infirmities. It has 
 no poor-houses, but each of its twelve arondissements, or 
 municipal divisions, has a " Bureau de Bienfesance," 
 which distributes provisions to the indigent, and provides 
 labor for the idle, and there is a plenty of benevolent 
 societies with specific objects. Nor do they want cus- 
 tomers, for the number of paupers is near fifty thousand. 
 I forgot to tell you there is a hospital here (the Hospice 
 des Menages), for widowers. What an object of charity 
 is a man without a wife ! They have made, however, 
 the terms hard ; one has to stay married twenty years to 
 be admitted. The institution is under the care of the 
 Sisters of Charity. This of Val de Grace is for the mili- 
 tary, and that of the Rue d'Enfer for the Foundlings; 
 not an unnatural association, but emblematic of the two 
 chief concerns of the capital; killing off the people by 
 war, and making up the loss by adultery. And this is 
 the Rue St. Jaccpaes, one of the classical streets of the 
 city. The great rogues pay their last visit to this end of 
 it, and the great men to the other : if you kill ten thou- 
 sand of your fellow-creatures, you go to the Pantheon 
 at the west end ; if one only, you come here to the Place 
 St. Jacques, now the seat of the Guillotine, and the 
 public executions.— At length we are on the Boulevard 
 du Mont Parnasse, at the end of our journey. Yet 
 could you not get a drop of Helicon here, though pe-
 
 SMUGGLERS. 75 
 
 rishing with thirst. All one can offer you is a little sour 
 Burgundy, which is cheaper than inside the wall. This 
 is the reason you see all this rabble, five hundred at a 
 view, carousing and dancing in their sabots, drinking 
 and caressing tour-a-tour, the necks of their bottles, and 
 their belles; it is the reason why, thousands are crowd- 
 ing here to drink, who are not dry, and Paris is losing 
 daily her sober reputation, and learning to get drunk 
 like her neighbors. 
 
 The bad system of the ports in France is transferred 
 to all the petty towns. A couple of sergeants, musk- 
 eted and whiskered, walk with grim dignity at each 
 side of the gates. They stop and examine all vehicles, 
 public and private, and all such persons as carry in pro- 
 visions to the market ; forcing them to pay an octroi or 
 duty to the city of Paris ; which prevent those rogues, the 
 poor people, from getting a dinner untaxed. They even 
 stop sometimes the foot passengers ; especially those no- 
 torious smugglers, the women. If any one chance to be 
 half gone, she is not allowed to go any farther, unless 
 with the certificate of the parish priest, or some equally 
 good authority. Quantities of lace and silks have passed 
 in under such pretexts. The best commentary I know 
 upon the wisdom of this policy, is the Boulevard du 
 Mont Parnasse. 
 
 When Paris was surrounded by this wall, the people 
 murmured, and made a riot, and hung up several of the 
 ringleaders, on those principles of law recently laid down 
 by our chief justice Lynch. They entered suits too 
 against the city — to put her in the Bastille ; but a com- 
 promise ended the strife, and the wall was built. Here 
 is a line from an old book relating to these times : 
 
 "Les murs murant Paris rendent Paris murmnrant."
 
 76 THE PALAIS ROYAL. 
 
 I could not think of descending from Parnassus without 
 a line of poetry. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 The Palais Royal — French courtesy — Rue Vivienne — Pleasures of 
 walking in the streets — Cafes in the Palais Royal — Mille Colonnes 
 — Very's — French dinners — Past history of the Palais Royal — 
 Galerie d'Orleans — Gambling — The unhappy Colton — Hells of the 
 Palais Royal — Prince Puckler Muskau — Lord Brougham — The 
 king and queen. 
 
 Paris, July, 1835. 
 
 You wish to see the Palais Royal? Then you must 
 step from the Boulevard Italien a quarter of a mile to 
 the southwest. If you hate Philadelphia sameness and 
 symmetry, you will be gratified here to your heart's con- 
 tent. In Paris there are ten hundred and eighty streets, 
 besides lanes and alleys, all recommending themselves 
 by the most charming irregularities. That which you 
 will now pass through — the " Rue Vivienne," is among 
 the most bustling; it is a leading avenue, is alive with 
 business, and has pretensions far above its capacity. I 
 must tell you a word about the etiquette of these streets 
 before you set out. 
 
 If a lady meets a gentleman upon the little side-walk, 
 which French courtesy calls a " trottoir" it is the lady 
 always who trols into the mud. The French women 
 seem used to tl>is submission and yield to it instinctively; 
 and indeed all who feel their weakness, as children and
 
 FRENCH COURTESY. 77 
 
 old men, being subject to the same necessity, show the 
 same resignation. Also, if a number of gentlemen are 
 coteried, even across the broad walk of the Boulevards, 
 the lady walks round not to incommode them ; and it is 
 not expected of a French gentleman in a public place or 
 vehicle, that he should give his seat to anyone, of what- 
 ever age, sex or condition, or that he should deviate 
 from his straight line on the street for anything less 
 than an omnibus. The French have been a polite peo- 
 ple, and they continue to trade on the credit of their an- 
 cestors. What is curious to observe, is the complaisance 
 with which human nature follows a general example. 
 A Russian wife, when the husband neglects to beat her 
 for a month or two, is alarmed at his indifference, and I 
 have remarked that the French women are the warmest 
 defenders of this French incivility. 
 
 Recollect that as soon as you will put your little foot 
 upon this Rue Vivienne, fifty wagons, a wedding 
 coach, and three funerals, with I don't know how many 
 mallepostes, cabs, coucous, and bell-eared diligences — 
 all but the fiacres, with their gaunt and fleshless horses, 
 which plead inability — will set themselves to run over 
 yon, without the smallest respect for your Greek nose, 
 your inky brows, and black eyes. The danger is 
 imminent, and it won't do to have your two feet in one 
 sock. I have written home to your mother to have 
 prayers performed in the churches for women's husbands 
 sojourning in Paris. — And by escaping from one danger, 
 you are sure to run full butt against another; Scylla and 
 Charybdis, too, are so close together that the " prudent 
 middle" is precisely the course that no prudent lady 
 will think of pursuing. To make it worse, the natives 
 will have not the least sympathy in your dangers; they 
 
 have been used to get run over themselves, from time 
 
 17*
 
 78 DANGERS OF THE STREETS. 
 
 immemorial, and when we staring Yankees come over to 
 see the "Tooleries and the Penny Royal," they are not 
 aware that any allowance is to he made for our igno- 
 rance. Besides, the driver knows a stranger as far as 
 he can see him, and takes aim accordingly; he gets 
 twenty-five francs for his body at the Morgue. It is 
 known that secret companies for " running over people," 
 exist all over Paris, and that the drivers are the princi- 
 pal jobbers. The truth is that it is reckoned amongst 
 the natural deaths of the place, and two hundred and 
 fifty are marked upon the bills of the last year. Under the 
 old regime, When the nobility put out a greater train of 
 vehicles, and had a kind of monopoly of running over the 
 common people, I have heard it was still worse. Then 
 if any one walked about the streets unmashed for twen- 
 ty years, he was entitled to the cross of St. Louis. I 
 have escaped till now, but I set it down entirely to the 
 efficacy of your innocent prayers, which have reversed the 
 fates in my favor. 
 
 Your best way is to watch and imitate the address 
 of the native women. Here they are now, in front of 
 my window, sprinkled over the whole street, in their 
 white stockings and prunellas, and in the very filthiest 
 of the French weather, without, a spot to their garters. 
 The little things just pull up all the petticoats in the 
 world more than half leg, and then tip-toe, they step 
 from the convex surface of one paving stone to another, 
 with a dexterity and grace that go to one's heart. 
 
 A lady must expect, also, other embarrassments here, 
 to which the delicate pusillanimity of the sex is but 
 slightly exposed yet in our country — besides the cat and 
 nine kittens that she must jump over, and the defunct 
 lap-dogs that lie putrid in the gutters. The truth is, that 
 these streets are very often (I say it with great respect
 
 PLEASURES OF WALKING. 79 
 
 for Madame de Rambouillet) so in dishabille, they are 
 not fit to be seen. A Parisian lady, therefore, (and she 
 is to be imitated also in this,) when she ventures out a- 
 foot, is sharp-sighted as a lynx, and blind as an owl ; she 
 has eyes to see and not to see, like those bad Christians 
 in the Testament, and she runs the gauntlet through* the 
 midst of all these slippery and perilous obstructions, in 
 as careless a good humor as you upon the smooth trot- 
 toirs of your Chestnut and Broadways. It is true the 
 ladies of the haut ton do not much exercise their ambu- 
 latory functions — their " vertu camirtante i} — upon these 
 unsavory promenades. 
 
 A French gentleman, who has resided a week and a 
 half at New York, (just long enough to know the man- 
 ners and customs of a country,) told me this very morn- 
 ing that you American ladies stare upon the streets at 
 the gentlemen — he ventured to say, " even to im- 
 modesty;" and I have heard other foreigners make 
 similar remarks, I presume without a proper attention 
 to the peculiar circumstances of different countries. — 
 On a Philadelphia street a lady can give herself up to 
 her thoughts; her soul has the free use of its wings; she 
 can get into a romance, or a reverie ; she can study her 
 lesson, or read a love-letter, and she can stare at a 
 French gentleman without the least apprehension of 
 danger. Our streets are clean and decent, and are ex- 
 cellent places of parade ; and gentlemen and ladies may 
 go out expressly of fine evenings to stare at one another. 
 Indeed, Chestnut Street is so trim and neat that some- 
 times one is almost obliged, like Diogenes, to spit in 
 somebody's face not to soil its prettiness. Not so in 
 Paris. You are here quite at your ease in all such 
 matters. A French lady, therefore, and very properly, 
 sees no one on the street — not even her husband. To
 
 80 THE PALAIS ROVAL. 
 
 get her to look at you, you are obliged to take hold of 
 her, shake her, and turn her about three or four times; 
 but when once upon the Boulevard Italien of an even- 
 ing, or upon the broad walk of the elegant Tuileries, 
 when she has no longer need of her faculties of eyes and 
 ears, and nose, too, to anticipate and obviate danger — 
 ah, mafoi ! her diamond eyes are no more chary of their 
 amorous glances, than the ha^)>and bugle eyes of 
 Chestnut or Broadway of theirs. I tried to persuade 
 this French gentleman, who is a baron, has a bel air 
 and large mustaches, that this happened only to him ; I 
 told him (and it is true, too) of others who could not get 
 the dear little girls of New York to look at them suffi- 
 ciently. But I must show you the Palais Royal. 
 
 It is a third less than your Washington Square. Its 
 trees are in two regular rows along each margin. In 
 the centre is an enclosure, containing shrubbery and 
 flowers; and also an Apollo and a Diana, in bronze, and 
 a jet d'eau that separates in the air, and falls in a "fleur 
 de lys" — the only emblem of royalty that deceived the 
 Revolution and the Jacobins; and a lake, where the 
 little fishes " wave their wings of gold." There is no 
 access to vehicles, or street noise to disturb the quiet of 
 this fairy retreat. It is in the centre, too, of the city, in 
 the vicinity of all the other chief places of diversion ; 
 and here all the world meets after dinner to take coffee, 
 to smoke, and concert measures for the rest of the even- 
 ing. You will see them creeping in from the neigh- 
 boring streets as you have seen the ants into a sugar- 
 house. 
 
 If you wish to know where is the centre of the earth, 
 it is the Palais Royal. Ask a stranger, when he ar- 
 rives, " whither will you go first?" he will answer, "to 
 the Palais Royal ;" or ask a Frenchman, on the top of
 
 THE PALAIS ROYAL. 81 
 
 Caucasus, " where shall I meet you again?" he will 
 give you rendezvous at the Palais Royal ; and no spot, 
 they say, on the earth, has witnessed, so many tender 
 recognitions. Just do you ask Mademoiselle Celeste, at 
 New York, « where did you get that superb robe de 
 chambre ?" and, I will lay you six to one, she will say, 
 " at the Palais Royal." 
 
 Let us sit down beneath these pretty elms. Those 
 upper rooms, which you see so adorned with Ionic 
 columns, with galleries, and. vases, and little Virtues, 
 and other ornaments in sculpture— those are not his 
 majesty's apartments: not the salles des marichaux, 
 nor the salle du trone, nor the chambre a coucher de la 
 reine ; they are the cafes and restaurants of the Palais 
 Royal. And those multitudes you see circulating about 
 the galleries, and looking down from the windows — 
 those are not the royal family, nor the garde du corps, 
 nor the "hundred Swiss," nor the chambellans, the 
 ecuyers, the aumoniers, the maitres de ciremonies, the 
 introducteurs des ambassadeurs, nor the historiogra- 
 phers, nor even the chavf-cire, or the capitaines des 
 levrettes — they are the cooks, and the garcons, in their 
 white aprons, of the cafes and restaurants; the only 
 order that has suffered no loss of dignity or corruption 
 of blood by the Revolution ; the veritable noblesse of 
 these times, the " cordons bleus" of the order of the 
 gridiron. 
 
 Louis Philippe, our citizen king, and proprietor of 
 this garden, gets thirty-two thousand francs, annually, 
 of sitting, out of these chairs. Sit you down. It being 
 after dinner, I will treat you to a H 'gal ; which is a 
 cup of pure coffee, with a small glass of liqueur, eau de 
 vie, or rum, or qtweeh. You can take them separate or 
 together; in the latter case, it is called "gloria;" or you
 
 S2 THE CAFES AND RESTAURANTS. 
 
 may put your cognlac into a cup, with a largo, lump of 
 sugar iu the middle, and set it on fire, to destroy the 
 cli'ects of the alcohol > upon your nerves. See how the 
 area of the garden is already covered with its smoking, 
 drinking, and promenading community; and how the 
 smoke, as if loth to quit us, still lingers, until the whole 
 atmosphere is narcotic with its incense. At a later 
 hour, we shall find in the rotunda, at the north end, and 
 upon tables under these trees, ices in pyramids, and 
 orgeat and eau sucree, and all the other luxurious 
 refreshments. Those two oriental pavilions, with the 
 gilded roofs, in front of the rotonde, will distribute news- 
 papers to the studious, and the whole garden will buzz 
 with conversation and merriment, until the long twilight 
 has faded into night. 
 
 Of the inside of the cafes and restaurants I must give 
 you a few particulars. In each, there is a woman of 
 choice beauty, mounted on a kind of throne. She is 
 present always, and may be considered as one of the 
 fixtures of the shop. When you enter any of these 
 cafes, you will see, standing here and there through the 
 rooms, an individual in a white apron ; he has mus- 
 taches, he holds a coffee-pot in his left hand, and 
 leaning gracefully over the right, reads his favorite 
 journal — this is the waiter ! When you have cried three 
 times " Garcon !" the lady at the bureau will vibrate 
 a little bell, and bring you instantly this waiter from his 
 studies. If you are a very decent-looking man, she will 
 let you cry only twice ; and if you have an embroidered 
 waistcoat, and look like a lord, and have whiskers, she 
 will not let you cry at all. The chair occupied by this 
 she secretary, at the Milk Colonnes, cost ten thousand 
 francs; and she who sat, some years ago, upon that of 
 the "cafe des Aveugles," the "belle Limonadiere,"
 
 THE KITCHEN CABINET. 83 
 
 charmed all who had eyes, and amongst the rest, a 
 brother of the greatest emperor of the world. 
 
 There are above a thousand of these cafes in Paris, 
 and several of the most sumptuous, overlook the gar- 
 dens of the Palais Royal. Ceres has unlocked her 
 richest treasures here, and has poured them out with 
 a prodigality that is unknown elsewhere. Fish of fresh, 
 and of salt water; rare wines of home and foreign pro- 
 duction ; and as for the confectionaries, sucreries, fruit* 
 eries, charcuiteries, the senses are bewildered by the 
 infinite variety. And the artists here have a higher 
 niche in the temple of Fame, than even those of the 
 Boulevard Italien. Monsieur Very ^supplied the allied 
 monarchs, at three thousand francs per day. The " Pur- 
 veyor of Fish," to his Majesty, who is of this school, 
 is salaried a thousand dollars above our chief justice 
 of the Union ; and Monsieur Dodat, who is immortal 
 for making sausages and the " Passage Vero-Dodat," 
 has at Pere la Chaise a monument towering like that 
 of Cheops. This is the true " Kitchen Cabinet," to 
 which ours is no more to be compared than the dish 
 water to the dinner. Very is in the kitchen, what the 
 Emperor was in the camp; he is the Napoleon of gas- 
 tronomy. All flesh is nothing in his sight. Why, he 
 will transform you a rabbit to a harej or an eel to a 
 lamprey, as easily as you a Jackson-man to a Whig ; 
 and he turns cocks into capons, and vice versa, by the 
 simple artifice of a sauce. You, indeed, condense the 
 sense of a whole community into a single head of a 
 senator, or a President; and he just as easily a whole 
 flock of geese into a single goose. You, it is true, pos- 
 sess the wonderful art, all know in what excellence, 
 of puffing a man up beyond the natural measure of his 
 merits, and just so Monsieur Very will puff you a
 
 84 THE BILL OF FARE. 
 
 goose's liver, however unmathematical it may seem, 
 beyond the size of the whole goose. 
 
 Now in the midst of all this skill and profusion, "the 
 devil's in it if yon cannot dine;" yet have I perished 
 myself several times of hunger in the very midst of this 
 Palais Royal. It is not enough that a table be loaded 
 with its dishes, there must be science to call them by 
 their names, and taste to discriminate their uses. What 
 can you do with an Iroquois from the " Sharp Mountain," 
 who does not know that sauce for a gander is not sauce 
 for a goose. Unless you have studied the nomenclature, 
 which is about equal to a first course of anatomy, you 
 are no more fit to enjoy a dinner at Very's than Tantalus 
 in his lake. For example, the gargon will present you 
 a bill of fare as big as your prayer-book ; you open it ; the 
 first page presents you thirty soups, (classically polages,) 
 and there you are to choose between a " pure'," a 
 " consomme"" " a la Julicn, a la Beauvais, a la Bonne 
 Femme" &c. &c. I prefer the " consomme," and I will 
 tell you how it is made. It is a piece of choice beef 
 and capon boiled many hours Over a slow fire to a jelly, 
 and the juices concentrated and served without any 
 extraneous mixture. The " Julien" is a pot pourri 
 of all that is edible or potable in the list of human 
 aliments. It is a soup for which, if rightly made, an 
 epicure would give away his birthright : it was in- 
 vented, not by Julian the Apostate, but by Monsieur 
 Julien of the Palais Royal. The fluids being settled, you 
 will turn then to the following page for the solids: 
 " Papillottes de Levreaud" "filet a la Neapolitaine" 
 " vol-au-vent" " scolope de saumon" " ozufau miroir" 
 " riz saute a la glace" " pique aux truffles" &c. &c. 
 Alas, my poor roasting, and frying countrymen ! There 
 is not a day but I see some poor Yankee scratching his
 
 THE MILLE COLONNES. 85 
 
 head in despair over this crabbed vocabulary of French 
 dishes. Your best way in this emergency is to call the 
 gargon; and leave all to him, and sit still like a good 
 child, and take what is given to you. I have known 
 many a one to run all over Paris for a beaf-steak, and/ 
 when he has got it, it was a horse's rump. My advice' 
 is that no one come to Paris to dine in mean houses on 
 cheap dinners; to eat cats for hares, and have snails 
 and chalk for his cream. You are no more sure of the 
 ingredients of a dish under the disguises of k French 
 cookery, than of men's sentiments from their faces or 
 professions. You can get, to begin with, olives, and 
 eggs boiled, and poached ; all that remains of old sim- 
 plicity ; if you know how to ask for them; if not, carry 
 the shells about with you in your pocket. 
 
 We will dine to-morrow at the " Mille Co/on?ies." 
 Ladies often step into this cafe to be reflected ; you can 
 see here all your faces, and behind and before yon, as 
 conveniently as Janus. One always enters this thres- 
 hold with reverence. It has dined the Holy Alliance. 
 Besides the usual officers and attendants, you will 
 sometimes see here a little man, grave, distrait and 
 meditative; do not disturb him: he is, perhaps, busy 
 about the projet of some new sauce. He will often 
 start abruptly, and leave you in a phrase; it is not in- 
 civility; he has just conceived a dish, and is going out 
 to execute it, or write it upon his tablets. You must 
 not expect to see him before one ; for no one is allowed 
 to intrude upon the freshness of his morning studies. 
 " Where is your master ?" said a person lately, inquiring 
 of the waiter, who replied, with the air of one feeling the 
 importance of his functions, " Monsieur, il ?i'est pas 
 visible; il compose." The French are not copyists in 
 cookery, no more than in fashions. They are invent- 
 vol. i. — 8
 
 86 RULES FOR DINING. 
 
 ors, and this keeps the imagination on the rack. Yon 
 will remark that people always excel in those things 
 which they invent, and ate always mediocre in those 
 things which they imitate. After yonr potnge, which 
 yon must cat sparingly, and without bread, (lor bread 
 will satiate, and spoil the rest of your dinner,) you will 
 take a little "vin ordinaire," or pure burgundy, waiting 
 for your first course; and you will just cast a look over 
 the official part of the Moniteur, for there is no knowing 
 when one may be made a peer of France; and on re- 
 ceiving one dish, always command the next. After the 
 dessert you will read the news all around ; the Message?', 
 Gazette, Constitutionnel, Ddbats, Quutidienne, Na- 
 tional and the Charivari ; and after coffee you may 
 amuse yourself at checkers; improve your intellects at 
 domino, or yonr morals by a game of chess. In looking 
 about the room, you will see a great number of guests, 
 perhaps a hundred, not in stalls, as in our eating-houses, 
 and the stables, but seated at white marble tables, in an 
 open and elegant saloon, the wall tapestried with mir- 
 rors. If it be a serious gentleman reading deliberately 
 the newspaper over his dessert, careless or contemptuous 
 of what is going on around him, and drinking his bottle 
 of champagne alone, that is an Englishman. If a 
 Parlie carrf, that is, a couple of ladies and their cava- 
 liers, dining with much noise and claret, observing a 
 succession and analogy of dishes, swallowing their wine 
 drop by drop, as I read your letters, fearing lest it 
 should come too soon to an end ; and prolonging ex- 
 pressly the enjoyments of the repast; these are French 
 people ; or if you see a couple of lads, hurried and impa- 
 tient, and rating the waiters in no gentle terms: " D n 
 
 your eyes, why don't you bring in the dinner? and take 
 away that broth ; and your black bottle: who the devil
 
 STORES OF JEWELRY. 87 
 
 wants your vinegar, and your dishwater, and your bibs 
 too? And bring us, if you can, a whole chicken's leg at 
 once, and not at seven different times," — these are from 
 the " Far West," and a week old in Paris. How should 
 these little snacks of a French table not seem egre 
 giously mean to an American, who is used to dine in 
 fifteen minutes, even on a holiday, and to see a whole 
 hog barbecued? The French dine to gratify, we to 
 appease appetite : we demolish a dinner ; they eat it. 
 The guests who frequent these cafes are regular or 
 flying visitors; some are accidental, others occasional, 
 dining by agreement to enjoy each other's company; 
 others again are families who dine out for a change, or 
 to give a respite to their servants: and others live here, 
 a kind of stereotype customers, altogether ; and these 
 houses serve, in addition to their province of eating and 
 drinking, as places of conference or clubs ; it is here that 
 men communicate on political subjects ; that news is 
 circulated; and public opinion formed; and that kings 
 are expelled, and others are set up on their thrones. 
 
 On a range with the restaurants, and over them, you 
 will see lodged many of the fine arts; painters, engrav- 
 ers, dentists, barbers ; and beautiful sultanas look out 
 from the highest windows upon these fair dominions, 
 to which the severity of French morals has forbidden 
 them access. In the lower rooms, on a level with the 
 area of the garden, and peeping through the colonnade, 
 west and east, are riches almost immeasurable, in ex- 
 quisite and fashionable apparel for both sexes, and in 
 jewelry, trinkets and perfumery. This trade, which in 
 other cities is peddling and huckstering, assumes here 
 the dignity of a great commercial interest, and its pro- 
 ductions are reckoned at upwards of a hundred millions 
 of francs. The stores themselves are so little, and yet
 
 88 WORKS OF ART. 
 
 so pretty, that I have thoughts of sending you one of 
 them over hy the packet. Their arrangements are 
 changed every hour, so as to keep up a continuous 
 emotion, and a scries of agreeable excitements, and so 
 as to present yon a new set of temptations twelve times 
 a day. Everything that human industry, sharpened 
 by necessity, or competition can effect; everything 
 which can excite an appetite, can heighten a beauty, or 
 hide a deformity, is here — I begin to love art almost as 
 well as nature; I begin to love mother Eve in her 
 fig leaves, as well as in her unaproned innocence. 
 After all what is nature to us without art? Education 
 is art. Indeed, rightly considered, art itself is nature; 
 she has but left a part of her work unfinished to urge 
 the industry and whet the ingenuity of man. In these 
 stores, everything is sacrificed to the shop; there is no 
 accommodation for the household gods. Persons with 
 their families — indeed, I have heard that even persons 
 in the family way, are not allowed to inhabit here. A 
 man hoards space, as a miser hoards money. It is a 
 qualification indispensable in a clerk, to be of a slender 
 capacity. You would think you were in Lilliput, served 
 by the fairies. The shop-girls, especially, are of such 
 exquisite exility of figure, you can almost take one of 
 them between your thumb and finger, and set her on 
 the counter. 
 
 In our country, we have nothing yet to show in the 
 way of great works of art. We have nature, indeed 
 wild and beautiful, but without historic associations; 
 tradition is dumb, and the " memory of man" runs back 
 to the Eden of our race. It is a mighty advantage these 
 old countries have over us; their reminiscences, their 
 traditions, and their antiquities. What would be the 
 Tower, but for hump-back Richard and the babes? or,
 
 THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU. 89 
 
 what Hounslow Heath, but for the ghosts of those who 
 have been murdered there? and in these countries, 
 which have no beginning, Ihey can supply the vacant 
 space into which authentic history does not venture, by 
 legends and romances ; and no matter how obscure may 
 be one of their mountains and lakes, they can lie it into 
 a reputation. Some things are beautiful from their 
 accessories alone ; as lords are sometimes lords only from 
 their equipages. — What is there beautiful in a ruin? 
 We have plains as desolate as Babylon, and no one 
 looks at them. 
 
 The Palais Royal, however magnificent as a bazaar, 
 has still higher and better merits. It is the history of 
 some of the most remarkable personages and events of 
 the last two ages. Some day when we have a ticket 
 from the " Intendant de sa Majest6," I will show you 
 them all ; and first, that very celebrated old fop the Car- 
 dinal de Richelieu, who used to strut, with his train of 
 a monarch, through this very garden, and these very 
 halls. You shall see the very theatre upon which he 
 represented his woful tragedies; his flatterers crowding 
 around with wonderful grimace, and Corneille's Muse 
 cowering her timid wings in silence. As you are a 
 lady and love trinkets, I will show you, if it yet exists, 
 that great miracle of massive gold and diamonds, the 
 Cardinal's Chapel; the two candlesticks valued at a 
 hundred thousand livres ; the cross, twenty-two inches 
 high, and of pure gold ; the Christ of the same metal, 
 and the crown and drapery all glittering in diamonds. 
 -And you shall see the prayer-book, too, encased in 
 laminae of gold ; in the centre, the cardinal holding up 
 the globe; and from the four corners, four angels 
 placing a crown upon his head. If you like, I will show 
 you, also, that other smooth-faced rogue, scarcely his 
 
 8*
 
 90 THE CARDINAL'S CHAPEL. 
 
 inferior in political ability, the Cardinal Mazarin, who 
 put the king's money in his pocket, and stinted his little 
 majesty in shirts. And if you love more Cardinals, I will 
 show you yet another, more witty, and not less profli- 
 gate and debauched than the other two, the Cardinal de 
 Retz. When we read his memoirs together, little did 
 we foresee that, one day, we should look into the very 
 chambers in which he held his nightly councils, with 
 his fellow conspirators, plotting his rabble Revolution 
 of the Fronde. You shall see also Turenne and the 
 great Conde. That gentleman gathering maxims — 
 maxims of life, at the court of Mazarin! — that is M. le 
 due de Rochefaucauld : and I will introduce you to 
 Madame de Motteville, and other famous wits and 
 beauties of those times. In the room just opposite, 
 where one dines upon soup, three courses and a dessert, 
 at forty sous, I will show you the little " Grand Mo- 
 narque" in his cradle. The dear little thing! It was 
 here the great man first began ; it was here he crept, 
 I presume very unwillingly, to school ; here he began to 
 seek the bubble reputation, and to sigh at the feet 
 (worthy a better devotion) of the " humble violet," 
 Madame la Valliere. Just over head, used to sup, with 
 the Duke of Orleans and his family, Doctor Franklin ; 
 and here Madame de Genlis gave lessons to the little 
 Louis Philippe, causing his most Christian Majesty to 
 walk fifteen miles a day, in shoes with leaden soles. 
 The Spartans did better, who, to make their kings hardy 
 and robust, had them flogged daily at the shrine of 
 some pagan goddess. In one of these rooms, the mob 
 Republic held, for awhile, its meetings ; and in this very 
 garden, the tri-colored cockade was adopted, at a great 
 meeting in '89, as the Revolutionary emblem. On the 
 south end, is a gallery of paintings, they say, very
 
 THE GARDENS. ' 91 
 
 splendid. It was plundered hi the Revolution, and 
 since restored by the present proprietor, the king. If 
 any one steals a picture or a book in Paris, and can 
 prove quiet possession for a certain time, it is a vested 
 right, and the owner is obliged to buy back his goods 
 from the thief. 
 
 I sometimes walk in this garden with the scholars 
 and the bonnes, of a morning, but it is disagreeable ; it 
 is not yet aired, and has a stale stupefactive smell from 
 the preceding night's banquet. It is by degrees venti- 
 lated and life begins to flow into it about ten. Then 
 the readers of news begin to gravitate around Monsieur 
 Perussault's pavilion. There is a dial here which 
 announces, with a loud detonation, twelve ; and as the 
 important hour approaches, every one having a watch 
 takes it out, and looks up with compressed lips, and 
 waits in uno oblntu until Apollo has fired off his can- 
 non ; then quick he twirls about the hands, and replaces 
 it complacently in his fob, and walks away very happy 
 to have the official hour in his pocket. You will see, 
 also, a few badeaitx, who always arrive just afterwards, 
 and stand the same way looking up for half an hour or 
 so, till informed that the time has already gone off. 
 
 It is of a hot summer evening that this garden is 
 unrivaled in beauty. You swim in a glare of light; the 
 gas flashes from under the arcades ; lamps innumerable 
 shine through the interior, and look down from five 
 hundred windows above. It is not night, it is "but the 
 daylight sick." It is haunted by its company, and is 
 full of life to the latest hours, and revelry holds her 
 gambols here, when Paris everywhere over the im- 
 mense city is lulled into its midnight slumbers. When 
 summer has turned round upon its axis and the first 
 chills of autumn frighten joy from her court, she retires
 
 92 GAMBLING HOUSES. 
 
 then tolier last hold, the " Galerie (V Orleans." This 
 delightful promenade extends across the south end of 
 the garden ; it is three hundred feet long by thirty wide ; 
 its roof is of glass and its pavement of tesselated marble ; 
 it is bounded on both sides by stores and cafes, and 
 reading-rooms, eighteen feet square; renting annually 
 at four thousand francs each. It is kept warm enough 
 for its company in winter and is a fashionable resort 
 during that season. It is a pleasant walk, also, in the 
 twilight of a summer evening. I know an ex-professor, 
 by dining with him at the same ordinary, and we walk 
 often under the crystal vaults of this gallery, and reason 
 whole evenings away — now we stop, and then walk on, 
 and then take snuff, and then make a whole round arm 
 in arm, in great gravity and silence ; at other times 
 being seated at a marble table, we calmly unfold the 
 intricate mazes of the human mind and systems of 
 human policy; and then we take coffee, with a little 
 glass of cjuirsh. Last night we reasoned warmly upon 
 the nature of slavery till I got mad, and while I sipped 
 and read the newspaper, he amused himself with a 
 drawing, (for he is skilled in this art,) which he presented 
 me. It was a Liberty, of a healthy and robust com- 
 plexion, her foot upon a negro slave. The negro 
 sympathies have waxed very warm in this country. 
 
 Four of the houses just over us are consecrated to 
 gambling. They are frequented, however, by rather 
 the lower class and rabble of the profession. They who 
 have some regard to reputation go to Frascati's, to the 
 Rue Richelieu ; the more select to the " Ccrcle," or to 
 the " Club Anglais" upon the Boulevard and the Rue 
 de Grammont; and the "Jockey Club" receives the 
 dandies and flash gentlemen of the turf. The three last 
 are of English origin, and the " Club Anglais" is in the
 
 PUBLIC GAMING HOUSES. 93 
 
 best English style. It receives only the high function- 
 aries of the state, princes of the blood, ambassadors and 
 other eminent persons, and even these are- not admitted 
 to pick one another's pockets here unless known to be 
 of good moral character. Games of hazard are prohi- 
 bited, and the bets correspondent to the dignity of the 
 company. The " Cercle," also, is frequented by the 
 upper sort of folk; it is tres distingue; and the eating 
 and service are of no common rate. The public gam- 
 bling houses here are authorized by government, and 
 pay for their charter annually six and a half millions of 
 francs. The government has not thought it fit that the 
 blacklegs and courtesans should worship in the same 
 temple. The ladies have therefore been turned out, 
 poor things ! to get a living as they can on the Boule- 
 vards and elsewhere, and the gamblers have the Pa- 
 lais Royal all to themselves. But why do not "the 
 Chambers" extend this system of financial economy 
 to other moral offences, as stealing, drunkenness, and 
 adultery? I would charter them every one, and enrich 
 the state. If we can succeed in making a vice respecta- 
 ble, it is no vice at all; and why should not a proper 
 protection of government and general custom render 
 gambling or any vice as respectable as thieving or 
 infanticide was at Sparta, or as duelling and privateer- 
 ing are amongst the modern civilized nations? The 
 matter is now under discussion, but there are members 
 of both houses who oppose these doctrines; they say 
 that the government, by such license, becomes accessory 
 to the crimes of its subjects, and that bad passions, 
 already rank enough in human nature, should not be 
 made a direct object of education ; moreover, they find 
 it awkward that legislators, after having given the whole 
 community a public license to pick one another's pock-
 
 94 THE REV'. C. COLTON. 
 
 ets, should stand up in the national tribune and talk 
 about honesty. — There are persons who have absurd 
 prejudices. 
 
 But to be serious ; indeed, I am very well disposed 
 to such a feeling; I have just fallen accidentally upon 
 the story,* which every one knows, of the unhappy 
 Colton. He wrote books in recommendation of virtue, 
 and critiques in reprobation of vice, with admirable 
 talent. He was a clergyman by profession, and yet 
 became a victim to this detestable passion. He sub- 
 sisted by play several years amongst these dens of the 
 Palais Royal, and at length falling into irretrievable 
 misery, ended his life here by suicide. One feels a 
 sadness of heart in looking upon the scene of so horrible 
 an occurrence ; one owes a tear to the errors of genius ; 
 to the weakness of our common humanity. 
 
 Gambling seems to be the universal passion ; the two 
 extremes of human society are equally subject to it. 
 The savage of Columbia river gambles his rifle, and his 
 squaw, and like any gentleman of the " Cercle," commits 
 suicide in his despair. Billiards, cards, Pharo and 
 other games of hazard, are to be found at every hundred 
 steps, in every street and alley of Paris; haunted by 
 blacklegs in waiting for your purse ; and there is scarce 
 a private ball or soiree, even to those of the court, in 
 which immense sums are not lost and won, by gambling. 
 The shuffling of cards or rattling of dice is a part of the 
 music of every Parisian saloon, and many fathers of 
 families of the first rank get a living by it. To know 
 how much better it is in London, one has only to read the 
 London books. And how much better is it in America? 
 To know this, you have only to visit our Virginia 
 Springs and other places of fashionable resort. You 
 will hear there the instruments of gambling at every
 
 HELLS OF THE PALAIS ROYAL. 95 
 
 hour of the night; and yon will see tables, covered with 
 the infamous gold, set out in the shade during the day ; 
 and you will see sealed around these tables those who 
 make the laws for " the only Republic upon the earth," 
 the members of the American Congress — with the same 
 solemn gravity as if holding counsel upon the destinies 
 of the nation. I have seen the highest officer of the 
 House of Representatives step from the loo-table to the 
 Speaker's chair! The vices of the higher orders have 
 this to aggravate their enormity, that the lower world 
 is formed and encouraged by their example. Gambling 
 in Virginia is a penitentiary offence. 
 
 I have visited these " Hells" of the Palais Royal. 
 Their numbers are 113, 129, and 154 on the eastern 
 gallery, and number 36, on the western; and from the 
 looks of the company, I presume one could get here 
 very soon all the acquirements by which a man may be 
 put in the way of being hanged. Bars are placed 
 before the windows by the humanity of the government, 
 to prevent his Majesty's subjects and others from throw- 
 ing away their precious lives in their fits of despair. 
 
 That tall and robust, and stern-looking man between 
 fifty and sixty, in an old tattered great coat, and walk- 
 ing in the gait of a conspirator, is Chodruc Duclos. He 
 was once the friend of Count Peyronnet as they say : he 
 lavished his fortune on him, and fought his duels. The 
 Count became minister and Duclos poor; he claimed his 
 protection, and was rejected by the ungrateful minister. 
 He now walks here daily at the same hour, like some 
 mysterious, unearthly being. He never speaks ; and 
 the last smile has died upon his lips. 
 
 I have a mind to tell you a queer anecdote of myself, 
 which will fill the rest of this page without much chang- 
 ing the subject. In a walk through the Rue Richelieu
 
 96 PEEP INTO A FASHIONABLE SALOON. 
 
 a few evenings ago with a wag of an Englishman, a 
 fellow-lodger, he proposed to gratify me with a peep 
 into one of the evening rendezvous, as he said, of the 
 nobility. I entered with becoming reverence through a 
 hall, where servants in livery attended taking our hats 
 and canes, with a princely ceremony, and bringing us 
 refreshments. Tables in the several rooms were covered 
 with gold, at which gentlemen and ladies were playing, 
 and others were looking on intently and silently. Around 
 about, some were coteried in corners, others were stroll- 
 ing in groups or pairs through the rooms; and others 
 again were rambling carelessly through the walks of 
 an adjacent garden of flowers and shrubbery, illumi- 
 nated, or were seated in secret conversation amongst 
 its arbors. 
 
 "That gentleman," said my companion, "on the 
 right, with the Adonis neck, with myrrhed and glossy 
 ringlets, is the Prince Puckler Muskau." And when 
 I had looked at him sufficiently, "That gentleman on 
 the left, in conversation with Don — Don — Don — I forget 
 his name — that is Prince Carrimanico, of Rome; and 
 that just in front is the Baron Blowminossoff, from 
 Petersburg." I stared particularly at my Lord Brough- 
 am, who had just come over to make a tour upon the 
 continent for his health. He was attenuated by sickness 
 and the cares of business, but I could discern distinctly 
 the great traits of his character — the lowering indigna- 
 tion on his brow, the bitter curl and sarcasm on his lip, 
 and the impetuous and overwhelming energy which 
 distinguish this great statesman, upon his strongly 
 marked features; and if I had not been informed of his 
 name, I should have marked him out at once as some 
 eminent personage ; and from a certain abrupt and 
 fidgety manner, " a hasty scratch at the back of his
 
 LADIES AT FRASCATl's. 97 
 
 head, accompanied with two or three twitches of the 
 nose," I should have suspected him for nobody else 
 than the greatest statesman and orator of Europe, my 
 Lord Brougham. Among the ladies, also, several were 
 highly distinguished. There were Madame la Con- 
 tesse de Trotteville, and her beautiful cousin Mademoi- 
 selle Trottini, from Naples, with several of the French 
 nobility ; and there was the Countess of Crumple, and a 
 fat lady Madam Von Swellemburg, and others of the 
 Dutch and English gentry. I fancied that a duchess 
 on my left (I forget her name) had a haughty and 
 supercilious air, as if she felt the dignity of her blood, 
 and the length of her genealogy. She seemed as if not 
 pleased that everybody should be introduced, and 
 wished some place more exclusive. But there was one 
 young and beautiful creature — but so beautiful that I 
 could not with all my efforts keep my eyes off her — 
 who, I observed, more than once reciprocated my inqui- 
 sitive looks. I felt flattered at being the object of her 
 attention. The elegant creature! thought I; what a 
 simplicity and sweetness of expression ! and how strange, 
 that, brought up amidst the art and refinement of a 
 court, she should retain all the innocence of the dove 
 upon her countenance. In the midst of this admira- 
 tion, and when I had just got myself almost bowed to 
 by another countess, my companion let in the light 
 upon the magic lantern. "These," said he, "are 
 women of the town, and these are gamblers and pick_ 
 pockets, who come hither to Monsieur Frascati's to rob 
 and ruin one another." I give you this for your pri- 
 vate ear ; if you tell it, mercy on me, I shall never hear 
 the last of it. I shall be sung all over the village. 
 There are persons there, of half my years, who would 
 hove detected such company at once. As I was going 
 
 VOL. T. — 9
 
 98 TIIK TUILERIKS. 
 
 away, Miss Emeline, Miss Adelaide, and Madame 
 Rosalie, gave me their cards. 
 
 I saw this morning the queen and the king's most 
 excellent majesty. They passed through the Champs 
 Elysees to their country habitation at Neuilly. The 
 equipage was a plain carriage with six horses; a pos- 
 tillion on a front and one on a rear horse ; two other 
 carriages and four, and guards. To see a king for the 
 first .time is an event. ^A'm't you mad? — you who 
 never saw anything over there bigger than his most 
 unchristian Majesty Black Hawk, and Higgle wiggin 
 his squaw? I have now come to the interesting part 
 of this letter. I am yours. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 The Tuileries — The gardens — The statues — The Cabinets de lec- 
 ture — The king's band — Regulations of the gardens — Yankee 
 modesty — ihe English parks — Proper estimate of riches — Policy 
 of cultivating a taste for innocent pleasures — Advantages of gar- 
 dens — Should be made ornamental — Cause of the French Revolu- 
 tion — Mr. Burke's notion of the English parks — Climate of France. 
 
 Paris, July 24th, 1835. 
 I am going now to escort you to the Tuileries, for 
 which you must scramble through a few filthy lanes a 
 quarter of a mile towards the southwest. Who would 
 live in this rank old Paris if it was not for its gardens? 
 This garden is in the midst of the city, and contains 
 near a hundred acres of ground. It has the Seine on
 
 THE GARDENS. 99 
 
 the south side, the Palace of the Tuileries on the east, 
 and on the north the beautiful houses of the Rue Rivoli, 
 the street intervening, and on the west the Place Louis 
 XV. between it and the Champs Elysees. The whole 
 is enclosed with an iron railing tipped with gold near 
 the Palace, and terraces having a double row of tile 
 trees are raised along the north and south sides. A 
 beautiful parterre is spread out in front of the Palace, 
 of oranges, red rosed laurels, and other shrubbery, with 
 a reservoir, jets d'eaux, vases and statues. The chief 
 walks also have orange trees on both margins during 
 the summer, and one of these as wide as Chestnut street, 
 •runs from the centre Pavilion of the Palace through the 
 middle of the garden, and continuing up through the 
 Champs Elysees to the Barriere de PEtoile, terminates 
 in a full view of the great triumphal arch of Napoleon. 
 In the interior are plots of woodland, and chairs upon 
 which, at two sous the sitting, you may repose or read 
 in the shade, and little cabinets, which offer you for a 
 sou your choice of the newspapers. The area is of 
 hard earth and gravel, relieved here and there by en- 
 closures of verdure, and on the west end an octagonal 
 lake is inhabited by swans, and fishes and river gods, 
 and a fountain is jetting its silvery streams in the air. 
 This is the garden of the Tuileries. — The whole surface 
 is sprinkled with heathen mythology. Hercules stran- 
 gles the Hydra, Theseus deals blows to the Minotaur. 
 Prometheus sits sullen on his rock, and Antinous is mad 
 to see his own gardens outdone, and the Pius iEneas, 
 little Jule by the hand, bears off his aged parent upon 
 his shoulders. Venus too looks beautiful a straddle of 
 a tortoise, and Ceres is beautiful, tier head coiffed in the 
 latest fashion with sheaves of wheat. On the side next 
 the Palace you will see a knife-grinder, whom every-
 
 100 BKAUTIbUL WALKS. 
 
 I 
 
 body admires, and statues of ancient heroes and states- 
 men majestic on their pedestals, Pericles, Cincinnatus, 
 Scipio, Ccesar and Spartacus. You may imagine what life 
 these images, set out alone and in groups through the 
 garden, give to the perspective.— The whole scene is as 
 beautiful as my description of it is detestable. The 
 French are justly proud of this garden and are every 
 year increasing the quantity of its statuary; it will 
 become at length one of the splendid galleries of the 
 capital; its silent lessons improving the puhlic taste in 
 the arts and elegancies of life, how much better thau the 
 lessons of the schools ! I like to see, in spite of English 
 authority, a good deal of art in a city garden ; a rude 
 and uncivilized field seems to me no more appropriate 
 there than a savage and unpolished community. 
 
 In this garden there is no drinking, no smoking, no 
 long faces waiting the preliminary soups, or turning 
 up of noses over the relics of a departed dinner. It is 
 •a spot sacred to the elegant and intellectual enjoyments. 
 The great walks are filled every fine evening with a full 
 stream of fashionable company, and that near the Rue 
 Rivoli has always a hedge of ladies extending along 
 each margin the third of a mile. In another section a 
 thousand or two of children are engaged in their infan- 
 tile sports, and their army of nurses are gathering also 
 a share of the health and amusements. Here are the 
 most graceful little mothers, and children and nurses 
 of the world; I will send you over one of each some of 
 these days for a pattern. 
 
 How delightful to walk of an early morning amidst 
 the silent congregation of statues of eminent men, of 
 heroes, and mythological deities. I often rise with the 
 first dawn for the sole luxury of this enjoyment. Very 
 early the Cabinet de lecture opens its treasures to the
 
 .THE LONELY STRANGER. 101 
 
 anxious politicians, who sit retired here and there 
 through the shady elms. One with a doctrinal air 
 spreads open the " Journal des Debate ;" he reads, ru- 
 minates, ponders, and now and then writes down an 
 idea on his tablets ; another pours out his whole spirit 
 through his tangled hair and grisly mustaches, devouring 
 the "National;" he rises sometimes, clenches his two 
 fists, and sits down again ; and a third, in a neat and 
 venerable garb, a snuff-colored coat and tie-wig, his 
 handkerchief and snuff-box at his side (from the Fau- 
 bourg St. Germain), lays deliberately upon his lap the 
 "Quotidienne." And here and there you will see a 
 diligent schoolboy preparing his college recitations ; 
 perusing his Ovid at the side of a Daphne and Apollo, 
 or by a group of Dryads skulking behind an oak, or of 
 Naiads plunging into a fountain. You will see one 
 individual upon the southern terrace, his hands clasped, 
 walking lonely, or standing still, his eyes stretched to- 
 wards the west, till a tear steals down his cheeks. He 
 is a stranger, and a thousand leagues of ocean yawn 
 between him and his native country ! 1 love this 
 terrace of all things : it has a look towards home. When 
 I receive your letters I come here to read them — and to 
 read them ; and when a pretty woman honors me with 
 her company, why we come hither together, and in this 
 shady hpwer, I tell her of our squaw wives and the 
 little pappooses, until the sun fades away in the west. 
 
 All day long this elegant saloon has its society, and 
 a lady can walk in it, unaccompanied, when and whither 
 she pleases. Every day is fashionable, but some more 
 than others; and from four till six, are the fashionable 
 hours. The crowd by degrees thickens, the several 
 groups are formed, and towards four, the panorama is 
 complete. This is the time that one stands gaping at 
 
 9*
 
 102 A SCENE OF ENCHANTMENT. 
 
 the long file of ladies upon each side of the wide walk, 
 or that one strolls up and down eyeing them along the 
 ^intervening avenue, or airs or fans one's idle minutes 
 upon the terrace overlooking this scene of enchantment. 
 I never venture in here, without saying that part of the 
 Lord's prayer about temptation, which I used to leave 
 out in the Coal Region. At length the day is subdued, 
 and the long glimmering twilight, peculiar to these 
 northern climates, wanes away gently into night. Then 
 the king's band strikes up its concert from the front of 
 the palace, and then you 'will see the graveled walk 
 leading to the steps of the royal residence, and the 
 transversal alley, filled with ten thousand listeners, 
 bound in the spell of Rosiui and Mozart for an hour ; an 
 hour too, in which the air has a more balmy fragrance, 
 and the music a more delicious harmony. Innumerable 
 lights in the meantime shine out from the Palace 
 windows and the Rue Rivoli, and glimmer through the 
 tufted trees of the garden. The plantation of elms has 
 also at this hour its little enchantments. Lovers using 
 the sweet opportunities of the night, and seated apart 
 from the crowd, breathe their soft whisperings into each 
 other's ears, in a better music than the king's, and you 
 can see visions of men and women, just flit by you now 
 and then in the doubtful light, and fade away into the 
 thin air. But I am venturing upon the poetical point 
 of my description, which I had better leave to your 
 fancy. Alas, I squandered away all my poetry last 
 week upon the Palais Royal, and have left myself* 
 nothing but mere prose to describe to you the exquisite 
 and incomparable Tuileries. 
 
 The regulations of this garden are simple. The 
 world is admitted, if trim and dressed decently, with the 
 morning dawn, and is dispersed about nine in the even-
 
 THE MODEST YANKEE. 103 
 
 ing by the beating of a drum. One is not permitted 
 to enter with anything of a large bundle. The minister 
 of finance was stopped the other day ; he was attempt- 
 ing to enter with the budget for this year ! The rules 
 are enforced by an individual accoutred in a beard, 
 mustaches, red breeches and a carbine, who walks 
 gravely up and down at the entrance of each gate. 
 
 The statues (Lucretia and ail) are exposed in a state 
 of the most unsophisticated nakedness. If mother Eve 
 should come back, she would find things here just as she 
 left them, with the exception of the aprons. This to us 
 green Americans, at our arrival, is a subject of great 
 scandal. 1 had with me a modest Yankee (please excuse 
 the tautology) on my first visit here, and we stumbled 
 first on a Venus de Medici, which was passable, for she 
 apologized manibus passis for her deshabille as well as 
 she could ; then a Hercules, and at length we fell in with 
 a Venus just leaving her bath. " Come," said he, inter- 
 rupting my curiosity, and drawing me aside, " let us go 
 out; 1 don't think this is a decent place." You must 
 not imagine, however, my dear, that you Americans are 
 essentially more *******. Things of every day's 
 occurrence are never a subject of remark ; and if our 
 first mother had not begun these modesties of the toilette, 
 the world might have gone on, as in her time, and no 
 one would have taken notice of it. Americans (I pre- 
 sume I may mention it to their credit) are more easily 
 reconciled to the customs of foreign nations than any 
 other people ; they are more plastic and easily fitted to 
 every condition of life. Talk to any one of your ac- 
 quaintance, of a community of lodging in her mansion 
 in Chestnut street, and she will have a fit of hysterics at 
 least, and six months after, you will find her climbing up 
 a long Parisian staircase as long as Jacob's ladder, in
 
 104 SQUARES OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 common with half a dozen of families, and delighted 
 with her apartments. An Englishman or Frenchman in 
 foreign countries can no more change his habits than the 
 /Ethiop his skin. 
 
 I may as well go on gardening through the whole of 
 this letter. Oar little squares and squaroids of Philadel- 
 phia have 4heir little advantages ; I do not mean to dis- 
 parage them, but from want of extent they are not sus- 
 ceptible of any elegant improvement, nor do they furnish 
 a promiscuous multitude with the necessary accommo- 
 dations ; they lose, therefore, their rank in society, and 
 become unfashionable. All your pretty squarettes, and 
 I believe those of New York too, could be put into the 
 Tuilerics alone. I have not yet seen the English parks, 
 but report says they would swallow up our whole city. 
 And I have known even these little spots of ours to be 
 looked at with a suspicious eye. I have heard men cal- 
 culate the value of the houses and other things which 
 might be built upon them. The " Independence Square" 
 is worth a thousand dollars a foot, every inch of it ; 
 why don't the New Yorkquois sell their Battery ? Oh, 
 the magnificent wharves, and the warehouses and hotels 
 that might grow upon it ! Besides, who but the cater- 
 pillars, and they half starved, venture into it? With 
 all its breezes from the sea, its port more beautiful than 
 Naples, its fleets laden with India, Persia and Arabia, a 
 fashionable woman will not look through the fence. 
 
 Railroads and spinning-jennies, are to be sure excel- 
 lent things, but they lead us too much to measure value 
 by its capacity to supply some physical necessity, and to 
 forget that the moral condition of man has also its wants. 
 If riches only were necessary to the prosperity of a na- 
 tion, I should to-day perhaps, instead of the Boulevards, 
 be strolling through the fashionable streets of Babylon.
 
 THE ESTIMATE OF RICHES. 105 
 
 If a painting, or a statue, by perpetuating the memory 
 of virtuous and religious men, and the glorious events 
 of history, as the power of elevating the mind and in- 
 spiring it with emulous feelings, as Scipio Africanus and 
 other great men used to testify ; if it has the power of im- 
 proving taste, which is improving virtue, or affording 
 pleasure, which is a part of our natural wants, or even 
 of employing time innocently, which might be otherwise 
 employed wickedly — perhaps in getting drunk at the 
 tavern — why then a statue, or a painting, is not only 
 more ornamental, but as useful as a steam-engine or a 
 spinning-jenny. The Scythian who preferred the neigh- 
 ing of a horse to a fine air of Timotheus, no doubt was 
 a good Scythian, but we are not, in our present relations 
 with the world, to remain long in a state of Scythian 
 simplicity, but it is worth while to consider what is about 
 to be the condition of a people, who have grown luxu- 
 rious, consequently vicious, without the refinements and 
 distractions of the fine arts and liberal amusements. 
 Utility with all her arithmetic very often miscalculates. 
 By keeping vacant spaces open in the midst of a town, 
 an equivalent value is given to other localities. A gar- 
 den would bring many, who now waste their time in 
 traveling into airy situations, to the neighborhood of the 
 Exchange and other places of business, and it would 
 drive many out from such places who may as well be 
 anywhere else — whose time at least is of less value. 
 
 Since human nature will have her diversion, the busi- 
 ness of the statesman is to amuse her innocently ; that is, 
 to multiply pleasures which are cheap and accessible to 
 all — pleasures which are healthy, and especially those 
 which are public. Men never take bad habits under 
 the eye of the world ; but secret amusements are seden- 
 tary, unhealthy, and all lead to disreputable and dan-
 
 106 SOCIAL PLEASURES. 
 
 serous excesses. Every one knows the social dis- 
 position of our race ; it is a disposition founded upon 
 both our good and bad passions —upon our love of kin- 
 dred, and other loves — upon a sense of weakness and 
 dependence ; and curiosity, vanity, and even malevo- 
 lence find their gratification in social intercourse. It is, 
 therefore, the duty of statesmen to study that our crowds 
 and meetings of pleasure, which they cannot prevent, 
 should not be in gin-shops and taverns. Let us have 
 gardens, then, and other public places where we may 
 see our friends, and parade our vanities, if you will, be- 
 fore the eyes of the world.— Did you ever know any 
 one who was not delighted with a garden ? What are 
 the best descriptions of the best poets ? Their gardens. 
 It is the original taste ; it is transmitted from Paradise ; 
 and is almost the only gratification of the rich that does 
 not cloy in the possession. I know an English gentle- 
 man here, who has worn out all the pleasures that money 
 can buy, at twenty-eight; he is peevish, ill-natured, and 
 insupportable ; we sometimes walk together into the 
 Luxembourg, where he suddenly brightens up, and is 
 agreeable, and as happy for a while as if he was no 
 lord. 
 
 To know the advantages of these places to the poor, 
 one must visit the close alleys, crowded courts, and over- 
 peopled habitations of an overgrown city ; where vices 
 and diseases are festering in secret in the heart Of the 
 community. Why send missionaries to the South Seas, 
 while these infected districts are unreclaimed ? or why 
 talk of popular religion, and morals, and education ? — 
 the people who would employ about half the care and 
 expense in preventing a disposition to vice, that they 
 now employ in correcting it, would be the people the 
 most happy and innocent of the earth. The best speci-
 
 ADVANTAGES OF GARDENS. 107 
 
 fics, I can conceive, against the vagabond population of 
 a city, are gardens, airy streets, and neat houses. Men's 
 habits of life are degraded always to the meanness of 
 their lodgings: if we build "beggars' nests," we must 
 expect beggars to breed in them. 
 
 Gardens give a taste for out-door exercises, and 
 thereby promote health and physical development ; and 
 they aid in keeping up the energy of a nation, which 
 city life, in depriving the women and children of air and 
 exercise, tends perpetually to destroy. To the children 
 they give not only habits of health, cheerfulness and 
 gracefulness, but an emulation of neatness and good 
 manners, which they would surely not acquire under 
 the sober stimulus of home and the nursery ; to the 
 nurses, too, they impart a valuable share of the same 
 benefits. Finally, by gardens and other embellishments 
 of a city we induce strangers to reside there. About 
 fifty thousand English are now residents in France, and 
 their necessary expense is rated at half a million of 
 pounds sterling annually. It is perhaps no exaggeration 
 to say that no property pays so abundant a revenue to 
 a city as its gardens. What is it that produces to # city 
 the same reputation ? Who speaks of Madrid without 
 its Prado, of London without its parks? And why 
 should Paris be the choice residence of Europe, but for 
 its galleries, and public gardens; its Tuileries, its Palais 
 Royal, its Luxembourg, Tivoli, its Champs Elysees and 
 Bois de Boulogne ? 
 
 But to make gardens is not enough ; you must cul- 
 tivate the public taste for them. For this it is necessary, 
 that they be made ornamental, kept by a vigilant 
 police, and that fashionable women should frequent 
 them. The French women have better sense of their 
 advantages than to suffer their fine gardens to become
 
 108 MANNERS OF THE LOWER CLASSES. 
 
 vulgar. They have to be sure days and hours that are 
 more genteel than others; but they are to be seen there 
 every day, and there is room for all classes without 
 incommoding each other. Even the poorer classes will 
 not frequent a garden that only poor devils visit. They 
 are flattered to be seen within the sphere of good com- 
 pany, and are encouraged to appear there with becoming 
 decency. It is not to be denied that the poorer people 
 of Paris are decent in their manners and dress, and 
 graceful beyond the example of all other nations. In 
 what more serviceable manner can a lady of fortune 
 benefit her country and humanity, than by improving 
 the manners and elevating the character of the lower 
 classes? she is taking care of her own interest in taking 
 care of the poor. If. was the pride of the French nobility, 
 and not the Jacobins, that set loose the many-headed 
 tyranny of the Revolution ; it was not Robespierre, but 
 Louis XIV, and Louis XV, who put the axe to the 
 throat of their unhappy successor. 
 
 Much intercourse of mind or society is not indeed to 
 be expected between two classes of a different education 
 and fortune ; nor can it be desired by either ; but there 
 is nothing in our code of morals or religion, which can 
 justify either one in treating the other with unkindness or 
 incivility. True dignity has no need to stand on the 
 defensive. A lady who has little of this quality, will 
 always be most afraid to compromise it by vulgar 
 associations ; it is right to be economical of what one 
 has little. The contempt of the rabble, which we hear 
 of so much, where not sheer ignorance, is three-fourths 
 of it, parade and affectation. She, who abroad hangs 
 the common world with so much scorn upon her nose, 
 lives at home, under the same roof, almost at the same 
 table, with the veriest rabble of the whole community,
 
 MR. burke's opinion. 109 
 
 her own servants and slaves. Why should we abandon 
 the Tuileries more than the Boulevards, and why the 
 Washington Square more than Chestnut Street, because 
 the common people walk in it? — I have written upon 
 this subject, more at length and more earnestly than 
 perhaps I ought, from the mortification, the almost 
 indignation I feel after witnessing the utility and orna- 
 ment of gardens in other countries, at the immense 
 defect occasioned by their stupid omission in the face of 
 European experience, in the beauty and comfort of our 
 American cities. 
 
 But without more scolding, let us see how far the evil 
 may admit of a remedy. Mr. Burke, in pleading for 
 the English parks, which the utilitarians of the day pro- 
 posed to sacrifice to some temporary convenience, or 
 miserly policy, called them the " lungs of the city," 
 and supplicated the government not to obstruct the pub- 
 lic health in one of its most vital and necessary functions. 
 The question here is with our Philadelphia, which never 
 had any other lungs than the graveyards, to supply 
 these respiratory organs. I propose that some one of 
 your old bachelors, as rich as Girard, shall die, as soon 
 as he can conveniently be spared, and leave us a second 
 legacy to be appropriated as follows : to buy two lots of 
 fifty acres each .upon the west bank of the Schuylkill; 
 (they ought to be in the centre of the city, but time will 
 place them there ;) the one for the parade of equipages, 
 display of horsemanship and military training, and for 
 the games and ceremonies of our public festivals; the 
 other to be sacred to the arts, and to refined and intel- 
 lectual pleasures. I know of no benefaction by which 
 he could impose upon his posterity so sacred a debt of 
 gratitude ; there is none, surely, which should confer 
 upon its author so lasting and glorious a reputation. 
 
 VOL. I. — 10
 
 HO THE GLORIOUS DAYS. 
 
 1 have not a word of news; only that my health has 
 improved very much, to the credit of this French cli- 
 mate ; you would think it was a Spartacus who had 
 stepped from his pedestal in the Tuileries. The French 
 summer is delightful ; only think of reading at three in 
 the morning without a candle, and stepping about in 
 the daylight till ten o'clock at night. Adieu. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 The Three Glorious Days — The plump little widow — Marriage of 
 fifteen young girls— Shrines of the martyrs— Louis Philippe — 
 Dukes of Orleans and Nemours— The National Guards— Fieschi — 
 The Infernal Machine— Marshal Mortierand twelve persons killed 
 —Dismissal of the troops— The queen and her daughters— Dis- 
 turbed state of France— The Chamber of Deputies— Elements of 
 support to the present dynasty— Private character of the king — 
 The daily journals— The Chamber of Peers— Bonaparte. 
 
 Paris, August 1st, 1835. 
 The Parisians have set apart three days annually, to 
 commemorate their Revolution of 1S30— the 27th, 28th 
 and 29th of July ; they call them the " Three Glorious 
 Days." On the 27th, are showers of sermons all over 
 town in the churches, and fastings over good dinners in 
 the cafes; pious visits, too, are paid to the graves of 
 those, who had the glory of being killed on the original 
 " three days," who are called " the martyrs," and are 
 buried on or near the spot upon which they were killed. 
 The military parade is the 28th, and the gala or jubilee 
 day is the 29th.
 
 LITTLE WIDOW. Ill 
 
 As the time approaches, the town is big with visit- 
 ors, and all is noise and preparation. Yew trees are 
 planted by the graves of the " martyrs," where the dogs 
 and other obscene animals, the rest of the year, wallow; 
 and willows are set a-weeping several days before. 
 Theatres are erected, at the same time, and orchestras, 
 and platforms for the buffoons ; and the illuminations, 
 which they keep ready made from year to year, are 
 brought out upon the Champs Elysees. Every evening 
 the whole of Paris comes out to see these works, and 
 says : this is for the mourning of the 27th, and this is for 
 the dancing of the 29th. On the present occasion, a 
 rain had turned the streets into mud ; but the French 
 turn out on their fete days, mud or no mud, and in 
 numbers far exceeding our notions of arithmetic. 
 
 The 27th arrived, and every street and avenue 
 poured their waves into the Boulevards and Champs 
 Elysees, as so many rivers their waters to the ocean. 
 A plump little widow of our hotel offered to guide my 
 inexperience in the crowd, which I accepted. I took 
 her for her skill in the town, and she me for my man- 
 hood, as a blind person takes a lame one for the use of 
 his eyes. — I should have profited by her services, but 
 she was no sooner on the street, than she ran right off 
 in a hurry, each of her little feet doing its uttermost to 
 get before the other, and kept me running after her all 
 day long; — you have sometimes seen a colt running 
 after its mother, now falling behind, and now catching 
 up with her ; and there were just in front of me, I verily 
 believe, five thousand French women, each exhibiting 
 a pair of pretty ankles. A stranger has a great many 
 things to see that are no curiosities to the natives. 
 Never take a native with you as a guide, but always 
 some one who knows no more than yourself. On these
 
 112 MARRIAGE OF THE MARTYRS. 
 
 muddy occasions, a French woman just places her hand 
 upon the right hip, gathering up her lower gear on the 
 nether side to the level of the knee, and then whips 
 along, totally regardless of that part of the world that is 
 behind her ; as in a chariot race yon see the charioteer 
 bending over the lash, and striving after the one just 
 before him, not caring a straw for those he has passed 
 by. — You might have seen my guide and me, one while 
 walking slowly and solemnly in a file of Sisters of 
 Charity, and then looking down upon an awful proces- 
 sion from a gallery of the Boulevards; next you might 
 have seen us behind a bottle of u . vin ordinaire," at the 
 cafe Turc; and then seated snugly together at the church 
 of St. Roch. Here we witnessed an interesting cere- 
 mony — a marriage. Fifteen young girls, and the same 
 number of young men, children of the martyrs, were 
 intermarried. They are apportioned by the govern- 
 ment; and the marrying is to continue till the whole 
 stock is married off as encouragement to new " martyrs." 
 We stayed one hour here, and had a great deal of inno- 
 cent squeezing, with prayers and sacred music, and then 
 we went home, and had capons for dinner. 
 
 After this repast, I sallied out again, under the segis 
 of my same guide, who now led me through weary and 
 intricate passages, and through thickets of men and 
 women, all getting along in the slime of each other's 
 tracks, towards the Hotel de Ville. Here, in the midst 
 of an immense crowd, were the shrines of the martyrs, 
 and over them a chapel of crape, with all the other 
 mournful emblems. The relatives of the deceased were 
 hanging up chaplets, and reverend men were saying 
 prayers, and sprinkling holy water upon the graves. I 
 thought, of the dog whose master lies buried here — the 
 dog so pathetically sung by Beranger.
 
 THE NATIONAL GUARDS. 113 
 By the Louvre gate 
 
 Where buried lie the men of July, 
 And flowers are flung by the passer-by, 
 The dog howls desolate. 
 
 Dreaming on the grave he hears his master's whistle 
 in the night. 
 
 "II l'entend qui siffle dans l'ombre, 
 Se leve et saute apres son ombre 
 En gemissant." 
 
 July 28th. 
 This day was given to the general parade. More 
 than a hundred thousand of the National Guards were 
 arrayed upon the Boulevards ; and the side walks were 
 choked up, and running over with the crowd, which 
 was pushed back now and then, in great fright and con- 
 fusion, by the gens d'armes, and the tails of the horses ; 
 and all the rest of Paris looked on from the windows, 
 balconies, and roofs of the adjoining houses— I as much 
 noticed as a leaf of the Alleghany, upon a verandah of 
 the Boulevard du Temple. Great was the noise, and 
 long and patient the expectation. At length there was 
 a sudden flustering and bustle among the multitude, and 
 I sat up closer to Madame Dodu— it was the king! 
 He was accompanied by the Duke of Orleans and the 
 Duke of Nemours, his sons, and passed along the line, 
 followed by officers on horseback, very grim. He was 
 received with not very ardent acclamations. Compared 
 to " General Jackson's visit," it was a fifth rate thing. 
 Not a bird, though many flew over us, fell dead. But 
 how shall I describe to you the magnificence of the 
 pomp? since in our country there is no comparison. 
 How should we— toe, who can hardly contain the 
 Washington Greys, or Blues — which is it ? with John- 
 
 10*
 
 114 EXHIBITION OF HUMAN STRENGTH. 
 
 son's band, and twenty little boys who run after them — 
 how should we be able to conceive of a regular infantry 
 of more than a hundred thousand men, with their ten 
 thousand drums, and trumpets, and clarions, and accou- 
 tred in uniform, and trained to the last grace and dex- 
 terity of discipline ? But, alas ! what avails to indivi- 
 dual power this exhibition of human strength, since we 
 see its haughtiest pretensions, every day, the sport of 
 some ignominious chance? Achilles, they say, was 
 killed by the most effeminate roui of all Troy ; and his 
 great descendant, Pyrrhus, by an old woman, who lived 
 «au troisilme," and pitched, the Lord knows what, 
 upon his head through her window. What signifies 
 the strength of Hercules, if it may be outwrestled by a 
 vapor ?— It is vexatious, too, to see how much events are 
 under the control of accident, and how little Providence 
 seems to trouble itself about them ; and to think how 
 vain a thing is that boast of the world— human wisdom! 
 I knew a man who missed his fortune, and was ruined 
 by his prudence ; and another, who saved his house 
 from being burnt by his foolishness ! Who has not 
 heard of no less an emperor than Bonaparte being saved 
 by some vanity of his wife?— the Infernal Machine 
 blowing up, she fixing her tournure, or something in her 
 chamber ; and he fretting at the delay, and churning his 
 spite through his teeth? Why, I have read of a lady, 
 who preserved her life by staying home at loo, on a 
 Sunday, instead of going to prayers, where the church 
 fell in, and killed the whole congregation. Yet, with all 
 this experience, men still continue to be haughty of their 
 strength, self-sufficient of their wisdom, and to throw 
 Providence in each other's teeth, when anything hap- 
 pens. — But this morality is interrupting the thread of my 
 story. As the king and his escort approached the east
 
 THE INFERNAL MACHINE. 115 
 
 end of the Boulevards, a deadly machine, prepared by 
 a man named Fieschi, (Infernal Machine maker to his 
 Majesty,) was discharged from the window of a small 
 wine store, and made havoc of the crowd ; the king, 
 with his two sons, by a special Providence, standing un- 
 hurt amidst the slaughter; not a hair was singed, not a 
 garment was rent ! — He continued to the end of the line, 
 and returned over the scene of the murder. His cool 
 and undaunted countenance gave a favorable opinion of 
 his courage ; and his danger, accompanied by such cruel 
 circumstances, has turned the sympathies of a great 
 many in his favor, who cared not a straw for him yes- 
 terday. Of the twelve persons killed, Marshal Mortier, 
 Duke of Treviso, is the most distinguished. Eighteen 
 persons were wounded. I was so near as to smell the 
 gunpowder ; which was quite near enough for a foreigner. 
 I have since visited the battle-ground— what an atro- 
 cious spectacle ! 
 
 The author of this murder is a Corsican who has 
 served a long time his apprenticeship to villany in the 
 French army. I have seen his machine ; it is composed 
 of a series of gun-barrels, and is a bungling contrivance. 
 The French, with all their experience, don't shine in this 
 kind of manufacture. It would seem a most contemptible 
 thing in the eyes of a Kentucky rifleman. This fellow's 
 fame, however, is assured; he will stand conspicuous in 
 the catalogue of the regicide villains. The others have 
 all aimed at a single bird, but he at the whole flock. 
 One is almost tempted to regret that Ravaillac's boots are 
 out of fashion. He attempted to escape through a back 
 window, but the bursting of one of his guns disabled 
 him. His head is fractured and mangled ; they expect, 
 however, that by the care of his physician he may get 
 well enough to be hanged.
 
 116 THE ROYAL FAMILY. 
 
 The last scene, the dismissal of the troops, was in the 
 Tlace Vendome, where I procured a convenient view of 
 the ceremony.— I must not forget that in this place 1 lost 
 my faithful guide, who had borne the fatigues and ad- 
 ventures of the day with me. Whether she had wan- 
 dered from the way, or wearied had sat down, or had 
 stopped to garter up her stockings, is uncertain— certain 
 it is that she was lost here in the crowd, nee post oculis 
 est reddita nostris. On the west of the great column, 
 the statue of Bonaparte all the while peering over him, 
 sat the king on horseback, saluting the brigades as they 
 passed by. His three sons attended him, and some of 
 his generals and foreign ambassadors ; and the queen 
 and her daughters, and Madame Adelaide, the sister, and 
 such like fine people, were on a gallery overhead, fanned 
 by the national flags. As the queen descended there was 
 a shout from the multitude more animated than any of 
 the whole day. The king sat here several hours, and re- 
 ceived the affection of his troops bare-headed, bow fol- 
 lowing bow in perpetual succession, and each bow ac- 
 companied by a smile — just such a smile as one is obliged 
 to put on, when one meets an amiable and pretty woman 
 whom one loves, in a fit of the colic. 
 
 July 29th. 
 All Paris was so overwhelmed with grief for the death 
 of General Mortier, and the "narrow escape of the king," 
 that it blighted entirely the immense enjoyment we had 
 expected for this day— the last and best of the « three 
 glorious days." Ball rooms and theatres were erected 
 with extraordinary preparation all over the Champs 
 Elysees, and the fire works were designed to be the most 
 brilliant ever exhibited in Europe. Multitudes had come 
 from distant countries to see them. I say nothing of the
 
 DEATH OF MARSHAL MORTIER. 1 17 
 
 private losses and disappointments ; of the booths and 
 fixtures put up and now to be removed, and the conse- 
 quent ruin of individuals ; or of the sugar plums, can- 
 dies, gingerbread nuts, barley sugar, and all the rancid 
 butter of Paris bought up to make short cakes— all 
 broken up by this one man ; and the full cup of plea- 
 sure dashed from our very lips to the ground. We 
 were to have such an infinite feast, too, furnished by the 
 government. As for me, I was delighted a whole week 
 in advance, and now — I am very sorry. 
 
 Under the Empire, and before, and long after, it was 
 a common part of a great festival here to have thrown 
 to the people bread and meat, and wine, and to set them 
 to scramble for the possession, as they do ravens, or 
 hounds in a kennel, or the beasts at the Menagerie. To 
 put the half starved population up as an amusement for 
 their better fed neighbors ; to pelt them with pound 
 loaves and little pies; to set a hurricane of sausages to 
 rain over their heads; and to see the hungry clowns 
 gape with enormous mouths, and scramble for these eat- 
 ables ; and to see the officers, facetious fellows, employed 
 to heave out these provisions, deceive the expectant 
 mouths, by feints and tricks, by throwing sometimes a 
 loaf of leather, or of cork, to leap from one skull to an- 
 other — what infinite amusement! One of the benefits 
 of the last Revolution was to put an end to this dis- 
 honor of the French nation. This is all I have to say 
 of the " three glorious days." I must trust to-morrow 
 to furnish me something for this blank space. Good- 
 night. 
 
 Rue St. Anne, August 2d. 
 Louis Philippe has had nothing but trouble with these 
 French people, ever since he undertook their govern-
 
 118 TURBULENCE OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 Blent. He has about the same enjoyment of his royally, 
 as one sea-sick has of the majesty of the ocean. He is 
 lampooned in the newspapers, caricatured in the print- 
 shops, hawked about town, placarded upon the walls of 
 every street, and gibbeted upon every gateway and 
 lamp-post of the city. In 1831, a revolt was suppressed 
 by Marshal Soult at Lyons ; another was got up in the 
 same place in 1834, in which there were six days' fight- 
 ing, six thousand slain, and eighteen hundred crammed 
 into the prisons. In Paris there were three days' skir- 
 mishing at the Cloister St. Merri, in which were five 
 hundred arrests in one night ; and one hundred and fifty 
 are on trial (the " Proces Monstre," so much talked of), 
 in the Chamber of Peers ; and now we have superadd- 
 ed this affair of Fieschi, with great expectations for the 
 future. 
 
 The foreigners here are full of ill-bodings, and I hear 
 nothing but revolutions in every rustling leaf. We shall 
 have our brains knocked out by the mob someone of these 
 days. It rains nothing but Damiens and Ravaillacs, and 
 Jacques Clements, all over town. Every one is pro- 
 phetic ; and I am going after the general example to 
 cast the king's horoscope quietly in my corner, and cal- 
 culate for you his chances. It will be a pretty thing if 
 I can't eke out a letter from so important an event, and 
 the only one of any kind that has happened since I have 
 been in Paris. 
 
 The main strength of the government is the Chamber 
 of Deputies ; which is chosen by less than two hundred 
 thousand electors. It represents, then, not the mass of 
 the people, who are thirty-two millions, but property* 
 which has a natural interest in peace and quietude upon 
 any reasonable terms. Besides, the voters being divided 
 into small electoral colleges, are tangible, and easily
 
 THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. 119 
 
 bribed by offices, and local interests; and the members 
 of the chamber also are allowed to hold other offices, 
 and are very eager to possess them ; and if the king does 
 not bind both these parties about his neck, he has less 
 policy than the world gives him credit for. He has with 
 his ministry, one hundred and fifty thousand of these 
 bribes at his disposal. So, also, has he a large majority 
 of this chamber in his favor. Freeholders paying less 
 than two hundred francs annual tax are not entitled to 
 a vote. These are murmuring, and struggling for an 
 extension of suffrage ; but this they do not expect from 
 a change, and are therefore in favor of the present 
 dynasty. This class, from the great division of property 
 in the Revolution, is by far the most numerous. Not 
 more than fifteen hundred landed proprietors of the 
 kingdom have a revenue above twelve thousand pounds. 
 The king has also his means of popularity with the 
 poorer classes ; amongst which I may mention the 
 "Saving Banks," established on the responsibility of the 
 government; one hundred of these are in Paris alone. 
 They not only encourage the economy, industry, and 
 orderly habits of the lower classes, but biud them by 
 the strongest of all interests to the government. For 
 the active support of this power, there is a national 
 guard of eight hundred thousand men, all proprietors, 
 and having interests to hazard in a revolution. There 
 is an immense regular army of near five hundred thou- 
 sand men, and disaffection in this body would indeed be 
 dangerous; but who is the master spirit, who can hope, 
 of a force so dispersed, and with a continual change of 
 position and officers, to concert a general plan of revolt? 
 Finally, the chief learning and talent of the nation are on 
 the side of the king. In his councils you find such men 
 as Thiers, Guizot, Royer Collard, Villemain, Barrante,
 
 120 STABILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Keratry, and a number of others of the same caste, who 
 were the main instruments in setting up the present 
 government, and have of course a personal interest in its 
 support. 
 
 The elements of the opposition are the Liberals, in 
 favor of a constitutional monarchy, with an extension of 
 suffrage and other popular rights : unwilling to endure 
 under the present rulers what they resisted under their 
 predecessors ; secondly, the Republicans, downright ene- 
 mies of all sorts of monarchy, and in favor of an elective 
 government, as that of the United States. This party 
 is numerous, but without any concentration of strength ; 
 and finally, the Carlists, the partisans of the ancient 
 monarchy, and its legitimate sovereigns. These parties 
 all abut against each other, and have scarce a common 
 interest ; and I do not see from what quarter any one 
 of them can set up a rival dangerous to the existing au- 
 thority. 
 
 The present king has industry and capacity in a high 
 degree, and he exerts both diligently in improving the 
 condition of the people. He favors agriculture, com- 
 merce and the arts of peace ; he thrives by his own wit, 
 as well as by the silliness of his predecessors. New 
 streets and houses are rising up to bless him all over 
 Paris. The nation was dragooned into Louis XVIII. 
 and Charles X. by foreign bayonets ; Louis Philippe 
 is its own choice. He took part also in the Revolution, 
 and cannot be feared as the partisan of anti-revolution- 
 ary doctrines ; the peasants need not dread under his 
 reign a restitution of the spoils of the nobility. He is 
 also exemplary in private life ; he rises early and sees 
 after his business ; knocks up his boys and packs them 
 off to school with the other urchins of the city, and 
 thinks there is no royal way to mathematics. For his
 
 PACIFIC POLICY OF LOUIS PHILIPPE. 121 
 
 pacific policy alone he deserves to go to heaven. It can- 
 not be doubtful that war is one of the most aggravating 
 miseries that afflict our wretched human nature this side 
 the grave. For the essential cause of their revolutions 
 and national calamities the French need not reason be- 
 yond a simple statistical view of their wars for the last 
 five centuries. They had in this period thirty-five years 
 of civil, and forty of religious wars, and of foreign wars 
 seventy-six on, and one hundred and seventy-six off the 
 French territory ; and their great battles are one hundred 
 and eighty-four. One does not comprehend why the [ 
 judgments of heaven should not fall upon a nation, 
 which consumes a half nearly of its existence in carry- 
 ing on offensive wars. And moreover (a new virtue in a 
 French king), Louis Philippe keeps no left-handed wives 
 — no " Belles Feronieres," no " Gabrielle d'Estrees," or 
 " Madame Lavallieres ;" he sticks to his rib of Sicily, 
 with whom he has nine children living all in <a fresh and 
 vigorous health. Why, then, seek to kill a king recom- 
 mendable by so many excellent qualities ? Attempts at 
 regicide are not always proofs of disloyalty in a nation. 
 A great number of desperate men, mostly the refuse of 
 the army, have been turned loose upon the community, 
 and these, in disposing of their own worthless lives, seek 
 that of the king in order to die gloriously upon the 
 Place St. Jacques. I have no doubt that the majority of 
 the nation desire ardently his safety. France has tried 
 alternately the two extremes of human government, or 
 rather misgovernment. She has rushed from an unli- 
 mited monarchy to a crazy democracy, and back into a 
 military despotism. She has tilted the vessel on one 
 side, then run to the other, and at length is taking her 
 station in the middle. The general temper of the pub- 
 lic mind now favors a moderate government, and this 
 vol. i. — 11
 
 122 PRESENT TONE OF FEELING. 
 
 is wisdom bought at so dear a rate that it would be un- 
 derrating the common sense of the nation to suppose it 
 will be lightly regarded. 
 
 Here is a copy of each of the Paris newspapers. You 
 will see something of the spirit in which they are con- 
 ducted, and one of the chief engines by which the nation 
 is governed. There is certainly no country in which a 
 newspaper has so great an influence, and none in which 
 the editor is so considerable a man as in Paris. 
 
 The Constitution?iel opposes and defends all parties, 
 and is pleased and displeased with all systems of gov- 
 ernment. It courts the favor of the " Petite Bourgeoisie," 
 the shopkeepers, who are always restless and displeased, 
 but their interests require a quiet pursuit of business. 
 This is the most gossiping gazette of them all, and gos- 
 sips very agreeably. 
 
 The Journal des Debats represents the "haute Bour- 
 geoisie," the rich industrial classes, whose great interests 
 are order and security of property, and the maintenance 
 of peace with foreign countries. The " Partie Doctrin- 
 aire," the chief supporters of this paper, are a kind of 
 genteel liberals, holding the balance between confirmed 
 royalists and democrats, and ultra liberals. They have 
 supported their doctrines with a great display of scho- 
 lastic learning, which has given them their appellation 
 of " Doctrinaires." Their leaders are mostly from the 
 schools, as Royer Collard, Guizot, and Villemain, Kera- 
 try and Barrante. This paper has a leaning towards 
 a vigorous monarchy and the Orleans dynasty ; it is now 
 doing what it can, in its moderate way, to discredit the 
 republicanism of the United States. 
 
 The Gazette de France and the Quotidienne are op- 
 posed directly to the present government, and in favor 
 of the legitimate monarchy in the person of Henry V.
 
 THE JOURNALS. 123 
 
 The former advocates royalty with extended suffrage, 
 the increase of power in the provinces, and decrease of 
 the influence of the capital ; the latter insists upon the 
 re-establishment^ in its fullest extent, of the ancient 
 monarchy. 
 
 The National asserts republicanism outright, on the 
 system of the United States. It is conducted with spirit 
 and ability, at present, by M. Carel. In assuming his 
 office he announced himself in his address as follows: 
 " La responsibility du National ptee en entier des ce 
 jour sur ma seule tele ; si quelqhin s'oublidt en invec- 
 tive an sujet de cettefeuille, il trouverait a quiparler." 
 With this the paper called the " Tribune," edited also 
 with ability, co-operates. 
 
 The Moniteur reports the speeches of the Chambers, 
 and official documents, and is the ostensible organ of the 
 government. The Temps, the Courier, the Messager, 
 and Journal du Commerce, all advocate reform on con- 
 stitutional principles. There are smaller papers, too, 
 conducted with ability. These, with Galignani, and 
 some other English prints, make up the newsmongrie of 
 Paris. The price of Galignani, and the principal French 
 papers, is twenty dollars a year, and their number of 
 regular subscribers about 20,000. In Paris they are 
 generally read by the hour, and transferred from one 
 individual to another, and disposed of in the evening to 
 the public establishments, or sent off to the country. In 
 this manner they are read by an immense number of 
 persons daily. The price of advertising in the best pa- 
 pers is about thirty sous per line. 
 
 The first men of the nation are amongst the constant 
 contributors to these papers, both as correspondents and 
 editors. The editorial corps around each discuss the 
 leading topics, and form a board to admit or reject com-
 
 124 THE CHAMBER OF PEERS. 
 
 munications. These have their daily meetings with the 
 functionaries of the state, and their correspondents in 
 every foreign country. Argus, with his hundred eyes, 
 and Briareus with lhs hundred hands, preside over the 
 preparation of the daily meal. In our country, where 
 the same man caters, cooks and does the honors, it would 
 be unfair to make any comparison of ability. There is 
 one point, however, in which there is no good reason 
 why we should allow the French or any other people 
 the superiority. It is the decency of language in which 
 animated debates are conducted. To be eloquent, or 
 even vituperative, it is not necessary to be abusive, or 
 transgress the rules of good breeding; polish neither 
 dulls the edge nor enervates the vigor of the weapon. 
 The existence of agencies between the owners and 
 readers of newspapers is an immense gain to the liberty 
 of the press. There can be very little freedom of opin- 
 ion, where the editor and proprietor, as in the United 
 States, stand in immediate relation with their patrons. 
 
 In speaking of the powers of the government, I have 
 said nothing of the Chamber of Peers. It is but a feather 
 in either scale. It wants the hereditary influence, and great 
 estates necessary to command popular respect. The title 
 of peer is for life only, and is the reward of prescribed 
 services in all the chief employments of the state. It is 
 a cheap dignity which pleases grown up children, and 
 consists of a ribbon in the button-hole. I have said 
 nothing either of Bonapartism, which has gasped its last. 
 The most violent enmities against the emperor seem to 
 have burnt out. No danger is now apprehended either 
 from his family or his partisans, and the mind is open to 
 a full sense of the glory he has conferred upon the na- 
 tion ; and there is mixed up with admiration of his 
 talents a sentiment of affection, from the recollection of
 
 NAPOLEON. 125 
 
 his great reverses of fortune, and his patient sufferings. 
 I have heard all parties speak of him with great respect 
 or praise. It is a good policy of the present government 
 to have taken into favor all his plans for the improve- 
 ment of the country, and to have placed him in his 
 citizen's coat, and cocked hat, stripped of its military 
 plumes, upon his column. 
 
 "When I write politics to ladies, Apollo keeps twitch- 
 ing me all the while by the ear ; but I thought any other 
 subject to-day would be impertinent.— Yet why should 
 ladies be ignorant of what enters so largely into the 
 conversation of society; and makes so important a part 
 of the learning of their children? 
 
 I am meditating a journey to Rome, and expect to 
 set out next week with a gentleman of Kentucky. His 
 Holiness, I presume, will be delighted to see some one 
 all the way from the Sharp Mountain. Direct your 
 letters as usual. Very tenderly yours. 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 The Garden of Plants— The omnibus— The Museum of Natural 
 History — American birds — The naturalist — Study of entomology 
 — The Botanic Garden— Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy— The 
 menagerie— The giraffe— Notions of America — The cedar of Leba- 
 non—Effects of French cookery— French gastronomy — Goose 
 liver pie — Mode of procuring the repletion of the liver. 
 
 Paris, August 14th, 1835. 
 
 Here is an Englishman who has interrupted me 
 at the very outset of this letter, and says I must dine 
 
 11*
 
 126 GARDEN OF PLANTS. 
 
 with him at the " Garden of Plants." He is a kind 
 of public informer, and does the honors of Paris to 
 us raw Yankees, just come over. He has on his left 
 arm a basket of provisions, a couple of claret-bottles 
 exhibiting their slender necks over the margin of the 
 basket: and on his right, a lady, his sister, who is to 
 accompany us. She is exceeding pretty, with a com- 
 plexion of drifted snow, and a rosiness of cheeks — 
 I have no comparison only strawberries and cream. 
 She is not slow neither, as English women generally, 
 to show her parts of speech. " Sir, it is a delightful and 
 romantic little spot as there is in the whole city. Only 
 two centuries ago it was an open field, and the physi- 
 cian of Louis XIII. laid out on it a Botanic Garden; it 
 now covers eighty-four acres, partly with wood. Wood 
 is so delightful at this hot season ! And there is now a 
 botanic garden besides immense conservatories: also a 
 splendid gallery of anatomy, of botany, and a mena- 
 gerie ; a library, too, of natural history, and laboratories, 
 and an amphitheatre, in which there are annually 
 thirteen courses of lectures. And then there is the 
 School of Drawing and Painting, of Natural History, all 
 gratuitous. We will just step into an omnibus on the 
 Boulevards, and for six sous we shall be set down at 
 the very gate. Oh, it is quite near, only two steps." 
 I resign myself to the lady. The excursion will per- 
 haps furnish me, what I have great need of, a. subject 
 for this letter. — Parisian civility never allows one place 
 to be far from another. The French women, if the 
 place should be at any considerable distance, cannot for 
 their little souls tell you. It is always "two steps," 
 and under this temptation of" two steps," you are often 
 induced into a walk of several miles. If there is any 
 one virtue in Paris more developed than another, it is
 
 PARISIAN DRIVERS. 127 
 
 that of showing strangers the way. A French lady 
 asked me the way to-day on the street, and though 
 I did not know it, I ran all about showing her, out of 
 gratitude. The strangers who reside here soon fall, 
 by imitation, into the same kind of civility. The 
 Garden of Plants is distant from my lodging about three 
 miles. Till to-morrow, adieu. 
 
 /"/^/^ /-S August 15ih. /§"3 
 The driver of a cab takes his seat at the side of his 
 customer, and is therefore very civil, amiable, talkative, 
 and a great rogue. The coachman, on the contrary, is 
 a straight up, selfish, and sulky brute, who has no com- 
 plaisance for any one born of a woman ; he is not even 
 a rogue, for being seated outside, he has no communi- 
 cation with the passengers. He gives you back your 
 purse if you drop it in his coach : he is the type of the 
 omnibus driver. You have your choice of the ".Cita- 
 dine," which does not stop for way passengers, but at 
 its stations at half a mile, or the omnibus, w hich picks 
 you up anywhere on the way. It sets off always at 
 the minute, not waiting for a load ; and then you have 
 a "correspondence;" that is, you have a ticket from the 
 conducteur at the end of one course, which gives you a 
 passage without additional charge for the next. You 
 go all around the world for six sous. You change your 
 omnibus three times from the Barriere du Trone, to the 
 Barriere de I'Etoile, which are at the east and west ex- 
 tremities of the city. 
 
 In Paris everybody rides in an omnibus. The Cham- 
 ber of Peers rides in an omnibus. I often go out 
 in the one the king, before he got up in the world, used 
 to ride in. I rode this morning between a grisette with 
 a bandbox, and a knight with a decoration. Some of
 
 128 PLEASURES OF AN OMNIBUS. 
 
 the plcasantest evenings I have spent here were in an 
 omnibus, wedged in between the easy embonpoint of a 
 healthy pair of Frenchwomen. If yon get into melan- 
 choly, an omnibus is the best remedy you can imagine. 
 Whether it is the queer shaking over the rough pave- 
 ment, I cannot say, but you have always an irresistible 
 inclination to laugh. It is so laughable to see your face 
 bobbing into the face of somebody else; it is so interest- 
 ing, too, to know that one's neighbors may be thinking 
 about one; and then the strange people, and the strange 
 rencontres. I often give six sous just for the comic 
 effect of an omnibus. Precipitate jolts against a neigh- 
 bor one never saw, as the ponderous vehicle rolls over 
 the stones, gives agitation to the blood and brains, and 
 sets one a-thinking. And not the least part of the 
 amusement is the getting in, especially if all the places 
 but the back seat are filled. This back seat is always 
 the last to have a tenant. It is a circular board of about 
 six inches in diameter at the very farthest end, and to 
 reach it, you have to run the gauntlet between two rows 
 of knees almost in contact; — you set out, the omnibus 
 setting out at the same time, and you get along sitting 
 on a lady's lap, now on this side, and now on that, 
 until you arrive at your destination ; and there you are 
 set up on a kind of pivot to be stared at by seventeen 
 pair of black eyes, ranged along the two sides of the 
 omnibus. The only evil I know of these vehicles is, 
 that the seat being occupied by seven fat gentlemen, it 
 may leave only six inches of space to a lady of two feet in 
 diameter, so that she comes out compressed to such a 
 degree, as to require a whole day of the enlarging and 
 tightening capacities of- Madame Palmyre, to get her 
 back to her shapes: a worse evil is that you often take
 
 COLLECTIONS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 129 
 
 an interest in a fellow traveler, from whom you are in a 
 few minutes to be separated, perhaps forever! 
 
 We arrived at the garden just time enough before 
 our repast to expatiate lightly upon its beauties. We 
 visited first the Museum of Natural History, which oc- 
 cupies two stories of a building three hundred feet long. 
 On the first floor are six rooms of geological and mine- 
 ralogical collections; on the second are quadrupeds, 
 birds, insects, and all the family of the apes— two hun- 
 dred specimens — and groups of crystals, porphyry, na- 
 tive gold and silver, rough and cut diamonds. Over- 
 looking this whole animal creation is a beautiful statue 
 of Venus Urania — hominum diviimque voluptas ! In 
 one apartment is a group of six thousand birds in all 
 their gay and glittering plumage; and there are busts 
 about the room in bronze, of Linnams, Foureroy, Petit, 
 Winslow, Tournfort and Daubenton. Our American 
 birds here have all got to be members of the Academy. 
 You can know them only by their feathers. There would 
 be no objection to call our noisy and stupid whip-poor- 
 will, "caprimulgus vociferus," but what do you think 
 of calling our plain and simple Carolina wren " troglo- 
 dytus ludovicianus ?" 
 
 The insects have a room also to themselves, very snug 
 and beautiful in cases, and sparkling like gems in all 
 their variety of vivid and fantastic colors. We met here 
 a naturalist, an acquaintance, who has lived the chief 
 part of his life among spiders' legs, and he explained to 
 us the properties of the insects. He conversed upon 
 their tenacity of life. He showed us a mite that had 
 lived three months glazed to a bit of glass, and a beetle 
 which had been above three years without eating, and 
 seemed not particular how long it lived ; a spider also 
 which had been kept one year on the same abstemious
 
 130 A NATURALIST. 
 
 regimen, and yet was going on living as usual. Are you 
 not ashamed, you miserable mortals, to be outlived by a 
 beetle ? He showed us also flies and spiders sepulchred 
 in amber, perhaps since the days of Ninus — how much 
 better preserved than the mummied ladies and gentle- 
 men who have been handed down to us from the same 
 antiquity. And 
 
 " Cages for gnats and chains to yoke a flea, 
 Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry." 
 
 This professor has been so long in the world of insects 
 that he has taken a distaste to big things. I baited him 
 with a whale and an elephant, but he would not bite. I 
 knew once a botanist in America, who had turned en- 
 tirely into a flower, and I accompanied an entomologist 
 of this kind to the brow of one of those cliffs, which 
 frown over the floods of the Susquehanna, where one 
 could not read Milton, and there he turned up rotten 
 logs for grubs and snails for his museum. It seems that 
 even the study of nature, when confined to its minute 
 particles, does not tend to enlarge or elevate the mind. 
 I have observed that the practice even of hunting little 
 birds, or fishing for minnows, gives little thoughts and 
 appetites ; so to harpoon whales, chase deer, bears, 
 wolves and panthers, give a disdain of what is trifling, 
 and raise the mind to vast and perilous enterprises. 
 The study of entomology, I mean the exclusive study, 
 leaves, 1 presume, to the artist about as big a soul as the 
 beetle, 
 
 " or the wood-louse 
 That folds itself in itself for a house." 
 
 There is a building apart also for the " Botanic 
 Garden." It has an herbal of twenty-five thousand 
 species of plants. You will see here a very pretty col-
 
 BOTANIC GARDEN. 131 
 
 lection of the mushrooms in wax — it is delightful to see 
 the whole family together. The Cabinet of" Compara- 
 tive Anatomy" has also separate lodgings. It contains 
 skeletons of all animals compared with man and with 
 one another, about twelve thousand preparations. It is 
 a population of anatomies ; it looks like nature's labo- 
 ratory, or like the beginnings of creation, about the 
 second or third day. Here are all the races which 
 claim kindred with us, Tartar, Chinese, New Zealander, 
 Negro, Hottentot, and several of our Indian tribes. 
 Here is a lady wrapped in perpetual virginity and 
 handed down to us from Sesostris and the mummy of 
 somebody's majesty, that, divested of its wrappings, 
 weighs eight pounds, that used to " walk about in 
 Thebes' streets three thousand years ago." We de- 
 scanted much upon this wonderful school of nature — 
 upon the varieties, analogies, and differences of the 
 animal creation. " How strange that the Chinese should 
 wear their cues on the top in that way !" said the lady. 
 "How differently from us Europeans," said the gentle- 
 man. "Only look at this dear little fish!" "Sister, 
 don't you think it is time to dine?" — And so we left the 
 anatomical preparations for this more grateful prepara- 
 tion, the dinner. The great genius of this place, the 
 Baron Cuvier, is defunct. He has now a place, for 
 aught I know, among his own collections. Alas, the 
 skeleton of a baron ! how undistinguishable is a Cabinet 
 of Comparative Anatomy ! 
 
 In roaming about we examined superficially the 
 garden ; the largest part of which is occupied by the 
 menagerie — This is not the reason it is called the 
 " Garden of Plants." There are seventeen different 
 inclosures, and in each a committee of the several races 
 of animals; in one are the huge and pacific, as the
 
 132 THE MENAGERIE. 
 
 elephants and bisons, in another the domestic, as goats, 
 sheep, and deer. The camels are turning a machine 
 to supply water — they who were bom to dispense with 
 this element. In one you will see the wild and fero- 
 cious beasts and their dens ; as bears, tigars, hyenas, 
 and wolves; and there is a volery containing the vul- 
 tures, and eagles, &c. The monkeys are a beautiful 
 family, about two hundred in number— their expression 
 such as becomes sisters. The remainder of the garden, 
 also, is divided into various apartments; one is a botanic 
 garden, with six thousand five hundred species of plants; 
 another is a collection of different soils, and manures ; 
 another contains a specimen of every kind of hedge, 
 fence or ditch ; another every culinary vegetable used 
 for the food of man ; and another is a piece of water 
 appropriated to aquatic plants. 
 
 The whole establishment contains five hundred and 
 twenty-six thousand species of plants, minerals and ani- 
 mals. In the hot-houses and conservatories are ten 
 thousand different species of vegetables. In the midst 
 of the birds you see the eagle ; of the quadrupeds, his 
 shaggy majesty the king of the beasts, and I observed 
 that sober cacique the lama reclining amongst his na- 
 tive trees. The most extraordinary of these animals 
 (though nothing is extraordinary in Paris for a long 
 time) is the giraffe. On her arrival the professors and 
 high dignitaries of the state went out to meet her at 
 many days' journey from the capital, and deputations 
 from all the departments. She was attended by grooms 
 and footmen, and "gentlemen of the bed chamber," 
 from her native country, and an African cow supplied 
 her with African milk. An antelope and three goats 
 followed in an open barouche. She was formally in- 
 vited to visit the Archbishop at his country seat near
 
 THE GIRAFFE. 
 
 133 
 
 Lyons, but refused ; whereupon his eminence, yielding 
 to her claims of respect, went out to meet her, and was 
 upset, his coach taking fright at the strange animal, et 
 voilh son arislocratie par terre! A military escort 
 also proceeded from Paris, with members of the Insti- 
 tute and other learned bodies, which met her at Fon- 
 tainbleau, and her entrance to the g*arden was a trium- 
 phal procession. The curiosity of the public had now 
 risen to its height (and there is no place where it can 
 rise higher than in Paris). From ten to twenty thou- 
 sand persons poured into this garden daily. Fresh 
 portraits, by eminent artists, and bulletins of everything 
 she did remarkable, were published weekly. All the 
 bonnets and shoes and gloves and gowns— every species 
 of apparel was made a la giraffe; quadrilles were 
 danced " a la giraffe." She has large black eyes and 
 pretty eyelashes, and the mouth is very expressive. 
 In philosophy she is a Pythagorean, and eats maize and 
 barley, and is very fond of roses; in religion she is a St. 
 Simonian. She takes an airing every morning in the 
 park, in fine weather, and wears flannel next her skin 
 in winter. 
 
 Our guide now mounted up, we following, by a spiral 
 walk to the summit of a hill, where there is a fine pano- 
 ramic view of the city. In the centre of the spire is a 
 little open kiosque, where we found seats, and a girl en- 
 tertained us with choice sights through a telescope, at 
 two sous a look. At length, after several little searches 
 for a convenient place, we sat ourselves down under- 
 neath a hospitable tree, which, from its solemn and vene- 
 rable aspect, and from my biblical recollections alone, I 
 knew to be the cedar of Lebanon. Here our dinner was 
 spread upon the earth. At the bottom of a hill is a 
 dairy, which supplied milk, honey, eggs, fruit, and cof- 
 vol. i. — 12
 
 134 AMERICAN RIOTS. 
 
 fee, with the services of the dairy maid ; and, like our 
 great ancestor, being seated amidst creation, we partook 
 with grateful hearts, our excellent repast — the enjoyment 
 being enhanced by occasional conversation. 
 
 " How I should like to pay a visit to your country !" 
 "It would give us great pleasure, madam, if you 
 would come over." 
 
 " And I also ; the truth is I have a hearty contempt for 
 these d — d monkey French people; I can't tell why I 
 ever came amongst them." 
 
 " How long have you been here, sir?" 
 " Twenty years — But what terrible accounts are 
 coming over about your riots !— why you hang people 
 up there, I see, without a trial !" 
 
 « No ; we try them after they are hung." 
 " Oh dear! I should never be able to sleep quiet in 
 my bed !" 
 
 "The fact is a republic won't do." 
 " Oh dear, no ; why cousin writes us from New York 
 that he is coming back ; and he says, if things go on so, 
 Europeans will leave off emigrating; that will be bad, 
 won't it? (Do let me help you to a little tongue.) 
 But perhaps things will get better, America's so young 
 yet ; isn't she ? And then your Temperate Societies are 
 doing a deal of good ; I read about them this morning. 
 1 am very particular about temperance; (You have no- 
 thing in your glass)— and then what Fanny Kemble says 
 about the bugs—" 
 
 " Yes ; and the fleas and mosquitoes too ; why it 
 seems to me you can't have need of any other kind of 
 ^ea-bottomy." 
 
 " Oh fie, brother! — I declare I like the Americans 
 very much ; they are so good-natured. — Only look at 
 that dear little hen !— Have you any muffled hens in your 

 
 THE CEDAR OF LEBANON. 13-5 
 
 country— any bantams ?"— Thus a whole hour rolled 
 by, unheeded in this delightful interchange of sentiment; 
 and the universe was created in vain, for any notice we 
 took of it, till the end of the dinner. I now turned up 
 my eyes upon the hospitable branches, which had af- 
 forded us protection during this repast. 
 
 The verdure of this tree is perpetual, and its branches, 
 which are fashioned like the goose-quill, are spread out 
 horizontally to cover an immense space. It pushes them 
 from the trunk gradually upwards, and their outward 
 extremity is bent gently towards the earth, so that the 
 shelter is complete ; the rain running down the trunk or 
 from the tip of these branches. You would easily know 
 it was intended as a shelter for some chosen creatures of 
 God. From its connection with sacred history, its vene- 
 rable appearance, and extraordinary qualities, it is the 
 most remarkable tree that grows upon the earth, and 
 there is scarce any relic of the Holy Land more sacred. 
 It is sung by Isaiah and Solomon ; « Justus florebit sicut 
 cedrus Liba?ii."—" The glory of Lebanon, the beauty 
 of Carmel, and the abundance of Sarron." It does not 
 suffer the presence of any other tree, nor does the small- 
 est blade of grass presume to vegetate in its presence. 
 It served to build the splendid temples of David and 
 Solomon, also Diana's Temple at Ephesus, Apollo's at 
 Utica, and the rich citizens of Babylon employed it in 
 the construction of their private dwellings. Its wood is 
 the least corruptible substance of the vegetable world. 
 In the temple at Utica, it has been found pure and sound, 
 after two thousand years. Its sawdust was one of the 
 ingredients used to embalm the dead in Egypt, and an 
 oil was extracted from it for the preservation of books. 
 Its gum, too, is a specific for several diseases. — Since this 
 cedar lives in cold climates, as all the cedar breed, and
 
 136 ORNAMENTAL GARDENS. 
 
 in unholy as well as holy lands, why does not some one 
 induce it to come and live amongst us ? This one was 
 brought to this garden by Jussieu in 1734. 
 
 It is a pity such gardens as this are not the growth of 
 republics. What an ornament to a city ! At the same 
 time what a sublime and pathetic lesson of religious and 
 virtuous sentiment ! What more can all the records, and 
 commentaries, and polemics of theology teach us than 
 this ? — My next visit here shall be alone. Alone, I 
 could have fancied myself a patriarch reclining under 
 this tree. These camels, on their tread-mill, I could 
 have turned into caravans, rich with spices of Araby ; 1 
 could have seen Laban's flock in these buffaloes of the 
 Missouri, and Rachel herself in the dairy-maid. If you 
 take a woman with you, you must neglect the whole 
 three kingdoms for her, and she will awake you in your 
 most agreeable dreams ; whilst you are admiring the 
 order and beauty which reign throughout creation, she 
 will stick you down to a muffled hen, or a johnny-jump- 
 up ; and while you are seated at the side of Jacob, or 
 of some winged angel, she will make you admire the 
 " goldfinches, the chaffinches, the bulfinches and the 
 greenfinches" * * * We will now adjourn from the 
 " King's Garden" to my apartments in the Rue St. 
 Anne, where I must leave you, you know how reluc- 
 tantly, till to-morrow. I am invited out by Mr. P , 
 
 one of the bravest men of the world from the Missis- 
 sippi, who is just going home, and in the grief of sepa- 
 ration, has called his friends around him at the " Hotel 
 des Princes," to dine. I must trust to the events of a 
 new day to fill this remaining sheet.
 
 a traveler's dinner. 137 
 
 Rue St. Anne, August 15th. 
 
 I have not the courage to describe our gorgeous ban- 
 quet; I have an excessive headache. Though I ate of 
 nothing but the soup and the fish, and game, and of the 
 roasts and ragouts and side dishes, and then the dessert, 
 drank scarcely anything but burgundy, medoc and cham- 
 pagne, and some coffee, and liqueur, yet I feel quite ill 
 this morning. If one should die of the stomach-ache by 
 eating a gooseberry pie, I wonder if it is suicide? — 
 However, if you want to eat the best dinners in the 
 world, I recommend you to the Hotel des Princes, and 
 the acquaintance of Mr. P. of the Mississippi. 
 
 It is very much to be feared that in cookery, especially 
 the transcendent branches, we shall long remain inferior 
 to these refined French people. We have no class of per- 
 sons who devote their whole minds to the art, and there 
 is nothing to bring talents out into exercise and improve- 
 ment. If any one does by force of nature get " out of 
 the frying pan," who is there to appreciate his genius ? 
 He lives like Bacon, in advance of his age, and even 
 runs the risk of dying of hunger in the midst of his own 
 dishes. Besides, in America, in cooking, as all things 
 else, we weaken our skill by expansion. The chief cook 
 in this " Hotel of the Princes," has spent a long life 
 upon a single dish, and by this speciality, has not only 
 ripened his talent into perfection, but has brought a 
 general reputation to the house ; — as you have seen 
 persons, by practicing a single virtue, get up a name for 
 all the rest. — The English, too, are mere dabblers in this 
 science. A French artist, to prepare and improve his 
 palate, takes physic every morning, whereas an English- 
 man never sees the necessity of taking medicine unless 
 he is sick ("que lorsqu' il est malade /") and his palate 
 becomes indurated. In this country if a dish miss, or is 
 
 12*
 
 138 SCIENCE OF FRENCH COOKERY. 
 
 underdone, do you believe that the cook survives it? 
 No, he despises the ignominious boon of life without 
 reputation — he dies! — The death of Vatel is certainly- 
 one of the most pathetic, as well as most heroic events, 
 recorded in history. No epicure can read it without 
 tears. — " Voire bonte" he said to the prince, who sought 
 to console him, "Votre bonte" m'acheve ! — je sais . . je 
 sais que le roti a manque" a deux tables!" — He then 
 retired to his room! — I cannot go on. Madame Se- 
 vigne has given a full account of the tragical man's end. 
 I do not, however, approve of French gastronomy in 
 everything. The cruelty exercised upon the goose is 
 most barbarous. They recollect that a goose once 
 brought ruin upon their ancestors in the Capitol, and 
 they have no humanity for geese ever since. They for- 
 merly nailed the wretch by the feet to a plank, then 
 crammed it, and deprived it of water, and exposed it to 
 a hot fire {ou elle passait tine vie assez malheureuse), 
 until the liver became nearly as large as the goose ; 
 which, being larded with truffles, and covered with a 
 broad paste, bore the name of the inventor with distinc- 
 tion through the whole earth. A " Pate de foil gras" 
 used to be a monopoly of diplomatic dinners, and it is 
 known that a great national congress always assembled 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle, on account of the number of geese 
 resident in that city ; but they have now spread every- 
 where, from the Palais Royal to the very cabins of the 
 Alleghany. I saw the whole village of Pottsville hav- 
 ing an indigestion of one that was brought in there last 
 year. Pray do not touch them unless with the veritable 
 brand upon the crust; some make them of gum elastic. 
 When genuine they are wholesome, they are intelligen- 
 tial ; the ancients used to say proverbially, alienojecore 
 sapit. I am glad to see that humanity, in the general
 
 THE VICTIMS OF JULY. 139 
 
 march of civilization, has interfered in behalf of the 
 goose. It is now enclosed immovably in a box, where 
 it is crammed with maize and poppy oil, and other suc- 
 culent food, and its eyes put out, so that it may give the 
 whole of its powers to digestion — as that old Greek phi- 
 losopher, who put out his eyes to give the whole mind 
 to reflection — and a dropsical repletion of the liver being 
 produced by the atony of the absorbents, the liver (the 
 only part of a goose that is now of any account in Eu- 
 rope) is ready for the market. I received this informa- 
 tion over a slice of goose liver pie yesterday, from our 
 host, and 1 was anxious to write it down, while yet 
 fresh in memory. — A single idea, you see, may be in- 
 flated, by nearly the same process as one of these livers, 
 and made to cover a whole page ; I have room only to 
 say, I am entirely yours. 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Burial of the victims— St. Cloud— The chateau— The cicerone— The 
 Chevalier-d'Industrie— Grave of Mrs. Jordan— The Bois de Bou- 
 logne—Amusements on f§ie days— Place Louis XV. — The king at 
 the Tuileries— The American address— His majesty's reply— The 
 Princess Amelia— The queen and her daughters — The Dukes of 
 Orleans and Nemours— Madame Adelaide — Splendor of ancient 
 courts — Manner of governing the French — William the Fourth — 
 Exhibition of the students at the University. 
 
 Paris, August 24th, 1835. 
 1 believe I have not described to you the burial of 
 the " victims," which is no great matter, since you will
 
 140 MARSHAL MORTIER'S COFFIN. 
 
 see it all in the newspapers. I fell in, the other day, with 
 an immense crowd passing in a long file through the 
 door of a church, and became one of its number. Here 
 was a furnace, or chambre ardente, as they call it, into 
 which a concealed flame threw a red and lurid light, and 
 exhibited the corpses of those who were murdered. 
 From this place they were brought out, and carried 
 about the streets, in the most gorgeous of all funeral pro- 
 cessions. It would have done credit to the best times of 
 Babylon. No people of the world can get up a thea- 
 trical display of this kind so prettily as the French; and 
 on this occasion they outdid themselves. The day was 
 appointed, four days ahead, when the general grief was 
 to explode, and it did explode exactly as the Prefecture 
 of Police had predicted. — We all ran about the streets 
 the whole day, and cried, " long live" Louis Philippe, 
 and General Mortier, who was killed ! 
 
 The duke's coffin was carried in front, by six horses, 
 in all the solemnity of crape. The spokes of the wheels 
 were silvered, and the rims glittered with a more pre- 
 cious metal. Over head were flags, I presume, taken 
 from the enemy, and groups of emblematical figures. 
 France with her tresses loose and streaming, and the 
 departments all dressed in black frocks, mopping their 
 eyes, and pouring out their little souls over the coffin. 
 The others of the train, seven or eight, followed at long 
 intervals, arrayed in nearly the same style, more or less 
 elegant, according to the dignity of the corpses carried 
 in them. In the midst was a chariot, as rich as the 
 others in decoration, and forming a splendid contrast, of 
 dazzling white, and young girls in raiment whiter than 
 the snow, following in a long train, chanted hymns to 
 their departed sister. — This procession had everything 
 but funeral solemnity. I had expected muffled drums
 
 BEAUTY OF ST. CLOUD. 141 
 
 and dead marches ; and all, but the bell-clappers, silent 
 over the face of Paris. The music, on the contrary, was 
 thrilling and military; and all the emblems, but the 
 crape and coffin, would have served as well for an 
 elegant jubilee. The last scene— the entrance into the 
 Chapel of the Invalids, and the ceremony there— was 
 the most solemn. The church was hung in its blackest 
 mourning weeds, and priests, in a long row, said masses 
 upon the dead, holding black torches in their hands. 
 The floor opened, and the deceased were laid by the 
 side of each other in a vault, which closed its marble 
 jaws. All Paris spent the day in the procession, and 
 in the evening went to the Opera Comique. But I don't 
 like funerals : I will write of something else. 
 
 I will tell you of my first excursion to the country. 
 Every one who loves eating and drinking and dancing, 
 went out yesterday to the fete at St. Cloud— c'est sijolie 
 une fete de village! and 1 went along. The situation 
 of this village is very picturesque on the banks of the 
 Seine, and commands a delightful prospect of the city 
 and environs of Paris. If St. Cloud would not take it 
 ill, I should like to stay here a month.— There are the 
 sweetest little hills, and glades, and cascades imaginable; 
 not, indeed, beautiful and poetical as your wild and 
 native scenery of Pottsville — one does not wander by 
 the mountain torrent, or by the clear stream, such as 
 gushes from the flanks of your craggy hills ; nor by the 
 "Tumbling Run" that winds its course through the 
 intricate valley till it mingles, and murmurs no more, in 
 the wizard Schuylkill; nor does one stray through 
 forests of fragrant honeysuckles, or gather the wild 
 flower from the solitary rock ; but it is sweet, also, to 
 see the little fishes cut with their golden oars the silvery 
 lake, and to walk upon the fresh-mown turf, and scent
 
 ^ 
 
 142 \-<^ S - FAVORITE RETREAT OF BONAPARTE. 
 
 the edor from the neighboring hedge; the rose and / 
 woodbine, too, are sweet, when nourished by the ag*i- . * 
 cultural ingenuity and care of man. All that kind of 
 beauty, which the fertile earth can receive from the 
 hand of a skillful cultivator, is possessed by these little 
 hills of St. Cloud, in its most adorable perfection. I 
 have listened here to the music of the bees, and in the 
 calm and balmy evening, to the last serenade of the 
 thrush retiring to its rest. One forgets, in hearing this 
 language of his native country, that he is wandering in 
 a foreign land ! St. Cloud has, also, an interest in its 
 historical recollections. It was burnt once by the 
 English ; it was besieged and taken by Conde, in the 
 religious wars ; and Henry III. was assassinated here 
 by Jacques Clement. It was the favorite of Bonaparte. 
 If he resided anywhere, (for ambition has no home,) it 
 was at St. Cloud. It was here he put himself at the 
 head of the government, overthrowing the Directory, in 
 1799. — The neighborhood is adorned with magnificent 
 villas. The French do not, like the English, plunge from 
 the bustle and animation of their city into a lifeless 
 solitude; or carry a multitude of guests with them to 
 their country seats, to eat them out of house and home, 
 as an antidote to the vapors. They select the vicinity 
 of some frequented spot, as St. Cloud or Versailles, and 
 secure the pleasures of society to their summer resi- 
 dences. I believe it is well for one, who wishes to 
 make the best of life in all its circumstances, to study the 
 French. I am glad that in imitating England in many 
 things, (as we ought,) we have not copied her absurd 
 whim of living in the country at Christmas. 
 
 The chateau at St. Cloud is an irregular building ; it has 
 on its principal front four Corinthian columns, and Jus- 
 tice and Prudence and a naked Truth, and some other
 
 THE CHATEAU. 143 
 
 hieroglyphic ladies are looking down from the balus- 
 trade. I had myself conducted through its apartments : 
 the salle de compagnie — d' audience — de toilet, and the 
 queen's bed-chamber. Only to think, here she used to 
 sleep, the little queeny ! They have made her bed just 
 two feet high, lest she might fall out and break her ma- 
 jesty's neck in the night. The king's apartments are in 
 a similar range. The salon de Diane is fine with the 
 tapestry of the gobelins, and the grand salon with 
 Sevres' China vases. Its crimson velvet hangings cost 
 twenty thousand dollars, and its four candelabra six 
 thousand. The galerie d'Jipollon has paintings by the 
 best masters. I admired all these things excessively. 
 Every one knows the genealogy of admiration. They 
 certainly exceed very far our usual republican notions 
 of magnificence. — Thou most unclassical Blucher ! Why 
 the fellow slept here, booted and spurred, in the Empe- 
 ror's bed, and kenneled his hounds upon the sofa — 
 both with an equal sense, I presume, of the sumptuous- 
 ness of their lodgings. If, at least, he had put his hounds 
 into Diana's saloon, the stupid Goth, he might have had 
 some credit for his wit— he can have none for his bru- 
 tality. 
 
 I was puzzled about the reward to be given to our 
 cicerone. To have all this service for nothing was un- 
 reasonable ; and how to offer money to a man with a 
 cocked hat, and black velvet breeches— I was in a situa- 
 tion exactly the reverse of Alexander the Great towards 
 his schoolmaster. What was enough for such a respect- 
 able gentleman to receive, was foo much for me to give. 
 I consulted a French lady; for French ladies know 
 everything, and they don't knock you down when you 
 ask them a question. — She told me a franc would be as 
 much as he would expect. Think of giving a franc for
 
 144 THE CHEVALIER D'iNDUSTRIE. 
 
 an hour's service, to as good a looking gentleman as 
 General Washington ! 
 
 Coming out from the castle, I wandered through the 
 park, which contains some hundred acres, diversified 
 with hills and valleys, and presenting from an eminence, 
 a delightful view of the surrounding country, including 
 Paris. On this spot is a " Lantern of Demosthenes," 
 copied from the monument of that name at Athens. 
 A great part of the park is a public promenade, and is 
 chiefly remarkable for its jets d'eaux, which, on a fete 
 day, throw up the water sportively in the air, and for its 
 numerous cascades, one of which is one hundred and 
 twenty-five feet above the level of the basin. I next 
 went with a guide into the " Petit Pare," made for 
 Marie Antoinette. She bought this chateau (one of her 
 sins) just before the Revolution. This park is beautiful 
 with bowers, groves, pieces of water, statuary, and every 
 imaginable embellishment. In wandering about here, 
 1 got acquainted with a nobleman. He is of that order 
 of knighthood, which the French call "Chevaliers dTn- 
 dustrie." — "This, sir, I think, is by Pigale,and this Cupid 
 by Depautre. Look especially at this Venus by Cous- 
 tan." — "Point du tout, Monsieur, I make it a duty, as 
 you are a stranger." He liked the Americans exces- 
 sively. — " To be the countryman of Franklin, e'est un 
 litre!" I seldom ever met a more polite and accom- 
 plished gentleman, and fashionable. I had a purse con- 
 taining in silver twenty francs, which, being incommo- 
 dious to a waistcoat, I had put into an outside coat 
 pocket. — Late in the evening, you might have seen me 
 returning homewards on foot, (the distance two leagues,) 
 not having wherewith to hire a coach, and no money at 
 my lodgings. If the devil had not been invented, I should 
 have found him out on this occasion.
 
 MRS. JORDAN. 145 
 
 The verdure of this country is more fresh than ours 
 under the dog star. There is a hazy atmosphere, which 
 intercepts the rays of the sun and mitigates the heat. I 
 don't say a word here in favor of our summer climate 
 from conscientious scruples. Indeed 1 have gained such 
 a victory over my patriotism that I never find fault with 
 these foreigners for having anything better than we have 
 it ourselves; nor do I take any merit to myself because 
 the Mississippi is two miles wide, or because the Nia- 
 gara falls with such sublimity into Lake Ontario. 
 
 I was introduced by a mere accident to a Scotch lady 
 of this village, who prevailed on my modesty to dine 
 with her. She is a lady of experience and great affa- 
 bility who has resided here and in Paris eleven years. 
 She is on a furlough from her husband, an Englishman 
 She showed me the cathedral, the cemetery, and the 
 grave of one, who won princes by her smile, Mrs. Jor- 
 dan. She asks a repetition of the visit, and is too ami- 
 able and accomplished to be refused. She is at least 
 forty-five ; in the " ambush of her younger days" the 
 invitation would not have been safe for the visitor. 
 
 On my return I walked through the Bois de Bou- 
 logne, where you and romantic Mary have so often as- 
 sisted at a duel. It was in the glimmerings of the twi- 
 light, and now and then looking through a vista of the 
 tangled forest, I could see distinctly a ghost pulling a 
 trigger at another ghost, or pushing carte and tierce at 
 his ribs. This forest flanks the west side of the Fau- 
 bourgs of Paris, and contains seventeen hundred acres 
 of ground ; in some parts an open wood, in others an 
 intricate and impenetrable thicket. It is the fashionable 
 drive for those who have coaches in the morning, and 
 a solitary enough walk for one who has no coach of an 
 evening. Young girls always find saddled at the east 
 vol. i. — 13
 
 146 GIRLS LEARNING TO RIDE. 
 
 end a number of donkeys, upon which they take a 
 wholesome exercise, and acquire the elements of equita- 
 tion at three sous a ride. Some who have " witched 
 the world with noble horsemanship," have begun upon 
 these little asses. 
 
 I had the light only of the gentle moonbeam to direct 
 my footsteps through the latter part of this forest ; and 
 I walked speedily, recollecting I should not be the first 
 man who was murdered here, by a great many. I 
 feared to meet some rogue ignorant that I was robbed 
 already, so 1 went whistling along, (for men who have 
 money don't whistle,) till I arrived at the Champs Ely- 
 sees — its lamps sparkling like the starry firmament. An 
 hour sooner I should have found it alive with all sorts of 
 equipages ; with all the landaus, tilburys, and bogueys, 
 and other private vehicles, and footmen glittering in 
 golden coats, with feathers waving on their empty heads, 
 whilst the edges of the road would have been fringed 
 with ten thousand pedestrians on their evening walks. 
 Now there were a few only in attendance upon Fran- 
 coni's, or the concert. In the former of these places they 
 exhibit melo-dramas, and equestrian feats, in which the 
 riding ladies only outstrip what we see in our own coun- 
 try. In the latter there is a band of near a hundred 
 musicians, who charm all the world at twenty sous a 
 piece, playing the fashionable airs from six till nine every 
 evening. Innumerable cafes around pour out the fra- 
 grant nectar to their guests. 
 
 For an image of this place you need not read Virgil's 
 sixth book, or refer to any of your classical associations. 
 Fancy only, without a single inequality, a horizontal 
 plain of an hundred or more acres, or rather a barren 
 moor, a ball-alley, a baked and turfless common, or any 
 most trodden spot upon the earth, and that is the French
 
 THE CHAMPS ELYSEES. 147 
 
 Elysium. Not a blade of grass, or shrub or flower 
 dares grow upon its surface. The trees are straining 
 and trying to grow, but cannot. Yet it is precisely to this 
 barren field that all the world comes, especially on fete 
 days, to be perfectly delighted. It is surrounded by the 
 city and has an air of country in town. It is a kind of 
 republican turn-out, where one may go as one pleases, 
 without toilet or any troublesome respect to etiquette. 
 It is a refuge always at hand from an uncomfortable 
 home— from a scold or a creditor; it cures husbands of 
 their wives, old bachelors of the vapors, and sometimes 
 lovers of their sweethearts. On Sundays and holidays 
 you will find here, of foolishness, all that you have ever 
 seen, all that you have ever fancied, and if there is any- 
 thing of this kind you have never seen or fancied, it is 
 here. Besides the concert and the circus, and fresco 
 dances, here are all the jugglers and their tricks, mounte- 
 banks and their medicines, clowns and their fooleries, 
 all the family of the Punches, and all the apes in regi- 
 mentals; not counting the voltigeurs without legs, and 
 the blind girls, who see to walk over eggs without 
 breaking them. You may have a stage if you love to 
 play harlequin, or a greasy pole if you wish to climb for 
 a prize at the top of it. You may sit down on a swing 
 like a water-wheel, which will toss you fifty feet in the 
 air, where you may run from yourself and after yourself 
 by the hour ; or on another which will whirl you about 
 horizontally on hobby horses till you become invisible. 
 If thirsty you may have an ice cream, if studious a 
 chair and a newspaper, and if nervous a shock of elec- 
 tricity worth two sous. Moreover, you can buy cakes 
 reeking hot that were baked a week ago, and a stick of 
 barley sugar, only a little sucked by the woman's baby, 
 at half its value.
 
 148 ADDRESS TO THE KING. 
 
 On the outskirts towards night yoa may find also an 
 opportunity of exercising your charity and other bene- 
 volent affections. One poor woman is getting a living 
 here by the dropsy, and another by nine orphan children 
 and such like advantages; one has lost the use of her 
 limbs and is running about with a certificate; and there 
 is one, who has been eight months gone since eleven 
 years. In coming out by the side next the city you are 
 at once upon the Place Louis XV., where you will see 
 on their pedestals two superb and restive coursers, which 
 tread on air held in with difficulty by their two marble 
 grooms. We are again upon St. Anne's street, and 
 under the protection of her sainted wings I repose till 
 to-morrow, bidding you an affectionate good night. 
 
 August 25th. 
 
 I called a few days ago upon the king. We Yankees 
 went to congratulate his majesty for not being killed on 
 the 2Sth. We were overwhelmed with sympathy — and 
 the staircase which leads up to the royal apartments, is 
 very beautiful, and has two Ionic columns just on the 
 summit. You first enter through a room of white and 
 plain ground, then through a second hung round with 
 awful field marshals, and then you go through a room 
 very large, and splendid with lustres, and other elegant 
 furniture, which conducts into a fourth with a throne and 
 velvet canopy. The king was very grateful, at least he 
 made a great many bows, and we too were very grate- 
 ful to Providence for more than a couple of hours. — 
 There was the queen, and the two little princesses — but 
 I will write this so that by embroidering it a little you 
 may put it in the newspapers. 
 
 The chamber of Peers and Deputies and other func- 
 tionaries of the State were pouring in to place, at the
 
 THE AMERICAN CONSUL. 149 
 
 foot of the throne, the expression of their loyalty. This 
 killing of the king has turned out very much to his ad- 
 vantage. There was nothing anywhere but laudatory 
 speeches, and protestations of affection— foreigners from 
 all the countries of Europe uniting in sympathy with 
 the natives. So we got ashamed of ourselves, we Ame- 
 ricans, and held a meeting in the Rue Rivoli, where we 
 got up a procession, too, and waited upon his majesty for 
 the purpose above stated, and were received into the 
 presence — the royal family being ranged around the 
 room to get a sight of us. Modesty forbids me to speak 
 of the very eloquent manner in which we pronounced 
 our address; to which the king made a very appropriate 
 reply. " Gentlemen, you can better guess," said he, " than 
 I can express to you the gratification," &c— I missed 
 all the rest by looking at the Princess Caroline's most 
 beautiful of all faces, except the conclusion, which was 
 as follows: " And I am happy to embrace this occasion 
 of expressing to you ail, and through you, to your coun- 
 trymen, the deep gratitude I have ever felt for the kind- 
 ness and hospitality I experienced in America during my 
 misfortunes." The king spoke in English, and with an 
 affectionate and animated expression, and we were 
 pleased_«// to pieces. So was Louis Philippe, and so 
 was Marie Jlmelie, princess of the two Sicilies, his wife ; 
 and so was Marie-Ckristine-Caroline-JIdelaidc-Fran- 
 goise-Leopoldi?ie,a.nd Marie-Clemenline-Caroline-Leo- 
 poldine-ClolildCi her two daughters, and the rest of the 
 family. 
 
 A note from the king's aid-de-camp required the 
 presence of our consul at the head of the deputation, 
 which our consul refused. He did not choose, he said, 
 to see the Republic make a fool of herself, running 
 about town, and tossing up her cap because the king 
 
 13*
 
 150 DESCRIPTION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE. 
 
 was not killed, and he would not go. "Then," said the 
 king (a demur being made by his officers), " I will re- 
 ceive the Americans, as they received me, without fuss 
 or ceremony." So we got in without any head, but not 
 without a long attendance in the ante-chamber, very 
 inconvenient to our legs. How we strolled about during 
 this time, looking over the nick-nacks, and how some of 
 us took out our handkerchiefs, and knocked the dust off 
 our boots in the salle dcs marechcntx, and how we re- 
 clined upon the royal cushions, and set one leg to ride 
 impatiently on the other, I leave to be described by 
 Major Downing, who was one of our party. I will bring 
 up the rear of this paragraph with an anecdote, which 
 will make you laugh. One of our deputation had 
 brought along a chubby little son of his, about sixteen. 
 He returned, (for he had gone ahead to explore,) and 
 said in a soft voice, "Tommy, you can go in to the 
 throne, but don't go too near." And then Tommy set 
 off with velvet steps, and approached, as you have seen 
 timid old ladies to a blunderbuss; — he feared it might 
 go off. 
 
 The king is a bluff old man with more firmness of 
 character, sense and activity, than is indicated by his 
 plump and rubicund features. The queen has a very 
 unexceptionable face : her features are prominent, and 
 have a sensible, benevolent expression — a face not of 
 the French cut, but such as you often meet amongst the 
 best New England faces. Any gentleman would like 
 to have such a woman for his mother. The eldest 
 daughter is married to the King of Belgium ; the second 
 and third are grown up to manhood, but not yet mar- 
 ried. They would be thought pretty girls even by your 
 village beaux, and with you ladies, except two or three, 
 (how many are you?) they would be "stuck up things, 
 no prettier than their neighbors." The Duke of Orleans
 
 ANCIENT REGAL SPLENDOR. 151 
 
 is a handsome young man, and so spare and delicate as 
 almost to call into question his mother's reputation. 
 He assumes more dignity of manner than is natural to a 
 Frenchman at his age ; he is not awkward, but a little 
 stiff; his smile seems compulsory and more akin to the 
 lips than to the heart. Anybody else would have 
 laughed out on this occasion. He has been with the 
 army in Africa, and has returned moderately covered, 
 with laurels. The Duke of Nemours is just struggling 
 into manhood, and is shaving to get a beard as assidu- 
 ously as his father to get rid of it. He also has fought 
 valiantly somewhere — I believe in Holland. Among 
 the ladies there is one who pleases me exceedingly; it 
 is Madame Adelaide, the king's sister. She has little 
 txauty, but a most affable and happy expression of 
 countenance. She was a pupil of Madame Genlis, who 
 used to call her " celte belle el bonne Princesses She 
 was married secretly to General Athelin, her brother's 
 secretary, during their residence in England. She 
 revealed this marriage, with great fear of his displeasure, 
 to her brother, after his accession to the throne, throwing 
 herself on her knees. — After some pause he said, em- 
 bracing her tenderly: "Domestic happiness is the 
 main thing after all; and now that he is the king's 
 brother-in-law we must make him a duke." Madame 
 Adelaide is in the Indian summer of her charms. 
 
 One who knows royalty only from the old books, 
 necessarily looks about for that motley gentleman the 
 king's fool. The city of Troyes used to have a mono- 
 poly of supplying this article, but the other towns, I have 
 heard, grew jealous of the privilege, and they have them 
 now from all parts of the kingdom. Seriously the 
 splendor of ancient courts has faded away wonderfully 
 in every respect. When Sully went to Eng'and, says
 
 152 POLICY OF LOUIS PHILIPPE. 
 
 the history, he was attended by two hundred gentlemen, 
 and three hundred guns saluted him at the Tower. 
 The pomp and luxury of drawing rooms, and levees, 
 were then most gorgeous. The eye was dazzled with 
 the glittering display, nothing but yeomen of the guards 
 with halberds, and wearing hats of rich velvet, plumed 
 like the peacock, with wreaths and rosettes in their 
 shoes; and functionaries of the law, iu black gowns 
 and full wigs, and bishops, and other church dignitaries, 
 in aprons of black silk; and there were knights of the 
 garter, the lord steward, the lord chancellor, and the 
 Lord knows who. And the same grandeur and bril- 
 liancy in the French courts — chambellans, and ecuyers, 
 and aumoniers, all the way down to the chauf-cire, and 
 keeper of the royal hounds ; and one swam in a sea of 
 gems and plumes, and sweet and honeyed ladies. Re- 
 publicanism has set her irreverent foot upon all this 
 regal splendor. I wish I had come over a hundred 
 years ago. The king's salary before the Revolution, 
 though provisions were at half their present rate, was 
 thirty millions, that of Charles X. was twenty-five ; and 
 the present king's is only twelve millions, with one mil- 
 lion to the Duke of Orleans. 
 
 / and Louis Philippe do not agree altogether about 
 the manner in which the French people ought to be 
 governed. The censorship of the press, the espionage, 
 the violation of private correspondence, the jail and the 
 gibbet, will not arrest the hand of the regicide. I have 
 read in a journal to day, that 2746 persons have already 
 been imprisoned for having censured the acts of the 
 present government, in the person of the king. The 
 devil will get his Most Christian Majesty if he goes on 
 at this rate. Why don't he learn that the strength of 
 kings, in these days, is in their weakness? Why don't
 
 REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 153 
 
 he set np Mr. Thiers, and then Mr. Guizot, and then 
 Mr. Thiers again, as they do in England? Look at 
 King William — does anybody shoot him? and yet he 
 rides out with four cream-colored horses, with blue 
 eyes, every day, and sometimes he walks into the 
 Hungerford Market, and asks the price of shrimps. 
 Louis plays a principal part in all his measures, even 
 his high-handed measures. If he makes himself a target, 
 he must expect to be shot at. In the beginning of his 
 reign, he played the liberal too loosely. " Why talk of 
 censorship?" said he — "il tfy aura plus de deli ts de 
 la presse." — " I am but a bridge to arrive at the Re- 
 public." With his present acts, this language is in 
 almost ludicrous contrast. He is a Jacobin turned king, 
 say his enemies ; and we must expect he will run the 
 career of all renegades. I have not described his 
 disasters and dangers in a lamentable tone, because I 
 don't choose to affect a sympathy I do not feel. He 
 had a quiet and delightful habitation at Neuilly ; and 
 since he has not preferred it to this " bare picket bone 
 of majesty" at the Tuileries, let him abide the conse-* 
 quences. However, I shall be one of those who will 
 deplore his loss, from the good will I bear the French 
 people, for I have not the least doubt that, with twenty 
 years' possession of the throne, he will bring them, in 
 all that constitutes real comfort and rational liberty, to a 
 degree of prosperity unknown to their history. — Remem- 
 ber lam talking French, not American politics. To 
 infer from the example of America, that the institutions 
 of a Republic may be introduced into these old govern- 
 ments of Europe, requires yet the "experiment" of 
 another century. If we can retain our democracy when 
 our back woodlands are filled up, when New York and 
 Philadelphia have become a London and Paris ; when
 
 ] 54 UNIVERSITY EXHIBITIONS. 
 
 the land shall be covered with its multitudes, struggling 
 for a scanty living, with passions excited by luxurious 
 habits and appetites ; if we can then maintain our uni- 
 versal suffrage, and our liberty, it will be fair and 
 reasonable enough in us to set ourselves up for the imi- 
 tation of others, Liberty, as far as we yet know her, 
 is not fitted to the condition of these populous and 
 luxurious countries. Her household gods are of clay, 
 and her dwelling where the icy gales of Alleghany sing 
 through the crevices of her hut. 
 
 I have spent a day at the exhibition of the students 
 of the University, which was conducted with great 
 pomp. There was a concour for prizes, and speeches 
 in the learned languages— nothing but clarissimi and 
 eruditissimi Thiers and Guizots. Don't you love 
 modern Latin ? I read, the other day, an ode to "Han- 
 nse Morae ;" and I intend to write one, some of these 
 days, to Miss Kittne and Nellae, of Pine Hill. Apropos — 
 what of the Girard College ? when are they to choose 
 the professors? and who are the trustees ? I must be 
 recommended toioi, av6ga!tot,<u ntyaxoist. Good-night.
 
 TOUR OF PARIS. 155 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Tour of Paris— The Seine — The Garden of Plants — The animals — 
 Island of St. Louis — The Halle aux Vins — The police — Palais de 
 Justice — The Morgue — Number of suicides — M. Perrin — The Hotel 
 de Ville — Place de Greve — The Pont Neuf — Quai des Augustins — 
 The Institute — Isabeau de Baviere — The Bains Vigiers — The Pont 
 des Arts — The washerwomen's fete — Swimming-schools for both 
 sexes — The Chamber of Deputies — Place de la Revolution — Obe- 
 lisk of Luxor — Hospital of the Invalids — Ecole militaire — The 
 Champ de Mars — Talleyrand. 
 
 September 14th, 1835. 
 
 After the nonsense of my last letter I almost de- 
 spair of putting you in a humor to enjoy the serious 
 matter likely to he contained in this. I have just re- 
 turned from an excursion on foot from the one end to 
 the other of Paris; making, as a sensible traveler ought 
 to do, remarks upon the customs, institutions, and monu- 
 ments of the place ; and here I am with a sheet of 
 double post to write you down these remarks. I would 
 call it a classical tour, but I have some doubts whether 
 walking in a straight line is a tour, and therefore I have 
 called it simply a journal. 
 
 I had for my companion the Seine — he was going for 
 sea-bathing to the Havre. His destination thence no 
 more known than ours, when we float into eternity. 
 Some little wave may, however, roll till it reach the 
 banks of the Delaware, and who knows, that lifted into 
 vapor by the sun, it may not spread in rains upon the 
 Broad Mountain, and at last del'ght your tea tables at
 
 156 THE SEINE. 
 
 Pine Hill. I send yon a kiss; and in recommending 
 the river to your notice, I must make you acquainted 
 with his history. 
 
 Most rivers except the Seine, and perhaps the Nile, 
 have a high and noble descent — this, as 1 have read in 
 a French author, runs out of a hole in the ground in the 
 flat and dirty country of the C6te d'Or ; it was contained 
 once in a monk's kitchen near Dijon, and began the 
 world like Russian Kate, by washing the dishes. At 
 Paris it is called by the polite French the Fleuve royale. 
 Any stream in this country which is able to run down a 
 hill is called a river — this, of course, is a royal river. It 
 receives a pretty large share of its bigness from the 
 Marne and Yonne, and some other streams, (for rivers, 
 like great men, are not only great of their own merits, 
 but by appropriating that of others,) and is itself again 
 lost in the great ocean. It is the most beneficent river 
 on the Continent — it distributes water, one of the ele- 
 ments of life, to near a million of people, and it gives 
 some to the milk-woman, who furnishes me with cafe 
 
 au lait No. , in the Faubourg St. Germain, (where 
 
 you will direct your letters from this date.) It is re- 
 ceived in its debut into Paris magnificently — the Garden 
 of Plants being on the left, and the great avenue of the 
 Bastille and the elephant on its right, and overhead, five 
 triumphal arches, which were erected for its reception 
 by Bonaparte, sustaining the superb bridge of Austerlitz. 
 And here commences my journal. 
 
 At twelve I left the Garden of Plants, with only a 
 peep through the railings. One cannot go inside here 
 without stumbling against all creation. The whole of 
 the three kingdoms — animal, vegetable, and mineral — 
 are gathered into this garden from the four corners of 
 the earth, as they were when Adam baptized them. I
 
 THE AMERICAN ACACIA. 157 
 
 observed a great number of plants growing out of the 
 ground as fast as they could, and little posts standing 
 prim and stiff along side of them, to tell you their names 
 in Apothecaries' Latin — I mean their modern names — 
 those they got at the great christening have been entirely 
 lost, and Monsieur de Buffon and some others have been 
 obliged to hunt them new ones out of the dictionary. I 
 did go in a little and stood along side of an American 
 acacia — conceiting, for a moment, I was on my native 
 earth again, and so I was — for the tree was transplanted 
 from the Susquehanna, and the soil was brought with it. 
 It would not otherwise grow out of its native country. 
 — Alas, do you expect that one's affections, so much 
 more delicate, will not pine and wither away, where 
 there is not a particle of their native aliments to support 
 them ! I looked a long time upon a cedar of Lebanon 
 — it stands like a patriarch in the midst of his family, 
 its broad branches expanded hospitably, inviting the 
 traveler to repose. Along the skirts of the garden, one 
 sees lions, and tigers, and jackals, and an elephant — a 
 prisoner from Moscara, lately burnt by the Grand Army. 
 Several elephants fought and bled for their country on 
 that occasion, and this is one of them. And finally, I 
 saw what you have never seen in America, a giraffe, a 
 sort of quadruped imitation of an ostrich, its head twenty 
 feet in the air ; and there were a great number of chil- 
 dren and their dear little mammas giving it gingerbread. 
 Deer// were also stalking through the park — but in gra- 
 cility and sleekness how inferior to ours of the Maho- 
 noy ! and several bears were chained to posts, but not a 
 whit less bearish, nor better licked, though brought up in 
 Paris, than ours of the Sharp Mountain. I could not 
 help looking compassionately at 'a buffalo, who stood 
 thoughtful and melancholy under an American poplar ; 
 vol. i. — 14
 
 158 ISLANDS OF ST. MARTIN AND ST. LOUIS. 
 
 his head hanging down, and gazing upon the earth. He 
 had perhaps left a wife and children, and the rest of the 
 family on the hanks of the Missouri ! Wherever the 
 eye strayed, new objects of interest were developed. 
 Goats afar off were hanging upon cliffs, as high as a 
 man's head ; and sheep from foreign countries (poor 
 things !) were bleating through valleys — six feet wide ! 
 All the parrots in the world were here prating; and 
 ■whole nations of monkeys, imitating the spectators. 
 Nothing in all this Academy of Nature, seemed to draw 
 such general admiration as these monkeys, and these 
 parrots. What a concourse of observers ! It is so strange 
 in Paris to hear words articulated without meaning, and 
 see grimaces that have no communication with the heart. 
 
 Just in leaving the Garden, the Seine has lent some 
 of its water to St. Martin, to make an island — saints not 
 being able to make islands without this accommodation. 
 This island of St. Martin is covered, during summer, 
 with huge piles of wood, ingeniously arranged into py- 
 ramids and conic sections. Some of the piles are built into 
 dwellings, and let out for the warm season; so you can 
 procure here a very snug little summer retreat, and burn 
 your house to warm your toes in the winter. I ought to 
 tell you, (for acute travelers never let anything of this 
 kind slip,) that wood is here two sous a pound. That 
 old woman, the government, is very expensive in her 
 way of living, and the moment she finds any article of 
 first necessity, as salt or fuel, &c, she claps a tax upon 
 it. Besides, all that money, which your rail-road fana- 
 tics about Schuylkill, lay out in contrivances to carry 
 your coal to market, she lays out in new frocks — and 
 this is the reason wood is two cents a pound. 
 
 A little onward I stepped upon the quiet and peaceful 
 island of St. Louis — quiet ! and yet it is inhabited by
 
 l'isle de la cite. 159 
 
 nearly all the lawyers of Paris. St. Louis is the only 
 saint that has not left off doing miracles. The noisy 
 arts will not venture on it, though four bridges have 
 been made for their accommodation. It reminds one of 
 that world of Ovid's where everything went off to 
 Heaven except Justice. — Astrsea ultima. Like all other 
 places of Paris this island has its curiosities and monu- 
 ments. You will find here the ancient Hotel de Mimes, 
 its ceilings painted by Lebrun and Lesueur, now a lum- 
 ber-house for soldiers and their iron beds, and if you 
 give a franc to the cicerone (the porter and his wife) you 
 can get him to tell you that Bonaparte was hid here for 
 two days after the battle of Waterloo. He will show 
 you, if you seem to doubt, the very paillasse, upon which 
 the Emperor, whilst the allies were marching into Paris, 
 slept. You will find here also some imperishable ruins 
 of Lebrun and Lesueur, in the once famous Hotel de 
 Bretonvilliers, now venerable for its dirt, as well as its 
 antiquity. 
 
 I admired awhile the " Halle aux Vins," one of the 
 curiosities of the left bank, enclosed on three sides by 
 a wall, and on the side of the Seine, by an iron railing 889 
 yards. It contains 800,000 casks of wine and spirits, from 
 which are drawn annually for the use of Paris, twenty 
 millions of gallons. France, by a cunning legislation, 
 prevents this natural produce of her soil escaping from 
 the country, by laying a prohibitory duty upon the in- 
 dustry of other nations, which would enable them to 
 purchase it ; so we have the whole drinking of it to our- 
 selves, and we oblige John Bull to stick to his inflam- 
 matory Port and Madeira. 
 
 L'isle de la Cite* comes next; the last but not the least 
 remarkable of the three sister islands, called the Island 
 of the Cite, because once all Paris was here, and there
 
 160 NOTRE DAME. 
 
 was no Paris anywhere else. Antony used to quaff old 
 Palernian on this island with Caesar, and run after the 
 grisettc girls and milliners, whilst they sent Labienus to 
 look after Dumnorix ; and here in a later age came the 
 gay and gartered earls ; knights in full panoply ; fashion- 
 able belles -in rustling silks, and the winds brought deli- 
 cate perfumes on their wings. At present no Arabic 
 incense is wasted upon the air of this island. Filth has 
 set up her tavern here, and keeps the dirtiest house of 
 all Paris. But in the midst of this beggary of comfort 
 and decency, are glorious monuments which the rust of 
 ages has not yet consumed ; the Hotel Diea, Palais de 
 Justice, and Prefect urate of Police ; and I had like to 
 have forgotten that majestic old pile with fretted roofs 
 and towers pinnacled in the clouds, with Gothic win- 
 dows, and grizzly saints painted on them, 
 
 "So old, as if she had forever stood, 
 So strong as if she would forever stand," 
 
 whose bells at this moment are tolling over the dead, 
 the venerable, the time-honored Notre Dame de Paris. 
 This old lady is the queen of the cite. Her corner-stone 
 was laid by Pope Alexander III., upon the ruins of an 
 old Roman temple of Jupiter, in 1 163. So you see she is 
 a very reverend old lady. Her bell is eight feet in dia- 
 meter, and requires sixteen men to set its clapper in mo- 
 tion. On entering this church, the work of so many 
 generations, in contemplating its size, the immense height 
 of its dome and roofs, and the huge pillars which sustain 
 them, with the happy disposition and harmony of all 
 these masses, one is seized with a very sudden reverence, 
 and a very modest sense of one's own littleness; and 
 yet a minute before one looked upon the glorious sun, 
 and walked under " this most excellent canopy" almost
 
 THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE. 161 
 
 without astonishment. You will see here, at all hours 
 o[ the day, persons devoutly at their beads, intent on 
 their prayer-books, or kneeling at the cross. Except on 
 days of parade, you will see almost six women to one 
 man; and these rather old. Women must love some- 
 thing. When the day of their terrestrial affections has 
 faded, their loves become celestial. When they can't love 
 anything else, why they love God. " Aime Dieu, Sainte 
 Thertse, c'est toujour aimer." The Emperor Julian 
 stayed a winter on this island, at which time the river 
 washed (not the Emperor,* but) the base of the walls 
 of the city ; and Paris was accessible only by two wooden 
 bridges. He called it his Lutetia, i^v ^>atjv Aevxsttav, 
 his beloved city of mud. 
 
 The Palais de Justice, or Lit de Justice, as the 
 French appropriately call it, (for the old lady does some- 
 times take a nap,) is a next door neighbor. This palace 
 lodged, long ago, the old Roman Prsefects ; the kings of 
 the first race, the counts of Paris under the second, and 
 twelve kings of the third. The great Hotel Dieu, or 
 Hospital, counts all the years between us and King 
 Pepin, about twelve hundred. It is a manly, solid and 
 majestic building; its facade is adorned with Doric 
 columns, and beneath the entablature, are Force, Pru- 
 dence and Justice, and several other virtues " stupe- 
 
 • We learn from tradition that Julian never washed hands or face, 
 or suffered any kind of ablution, unless, perhaps, at his christening. 
 In a word he was a very dirty emperor. Is it not strange that his 
 " Baths" should be the only monument remaining of him in Paris 1 
 I presume they are named ironically, or from the old rule of non la- 
 vando. The following anecdote is apropos to this subject. "His 
 steward one day brought him a beautiful maid, lathed and richly per- 
 fumed, and his majesty, having discovered \\,quando tetigisaet, et digit- 
 os suos odoralus essel, he exclaimed : " Diabli .' Us m'ontgate cetlefemme 
 Id!" You will find this in the French notes to Julian's Misopogon. 
 
 14*
 
 162 THE POLICE. 
 
 fied in stone." But I will give you a more particular 
 account of it, as well as of the right worshipful Notre 
 Dame, and the Palace, when I write my book about 
 Churches, Hospitals, and the Courts of Justice. I will 
 only remark now that I visited this great hospital a few 
 days ago, and that I saw in it a thousand beds, and a 
 poor devil stretched out on each bed, waiting his turn to 
 be dispatched; that the doctor came along about six, 
 and prescribed a bouillon et un lavement to them all 
 round; a hundred or two of students following after, of 
 whom about a dozen could approach the beds, and when 
 symptoms were examined, and legs cut off, or some sur- 
 gical operation performed, the others listened. 
 
 But it would be ungrateful in me to pass without a 
 special notice, the Prsefecturate of Police. If I now 
 
 lodge in the Rue D'Enfer, No. , looking down upon 
 
 the garden of Luxembourg, and having my conduct 
 registered once a week in the king's books ; if I have 
 permission to abide in Paris ; and above all, if ever I 
 shall have the permission to go out of it ; whither am I to 
 refer these inestimable privileges, but to the never-sleep- 
 ing eye of the Prssfecturate of Police? But the merits of 
 this institution are founded upon a much wider scheme 
 of benefits; for which I am going to look into my Guide 
 de Paris. It "discourages pauperism" by sending most 
 of the beggars out of Paris, to besiege the Diligence on 
 the highways ; and gives aid to dead people by fishing 
 them out of the Seine at 25 francs a piece into the 
 Morgue. It protects personal safety by entering private 
 houses in the night, and commits all persons taken in the 
 fact (flagrant delit) ; it preserves public decency by 
 removing courtesans from the Palais Royal to the Boule- 
 vards, and other convenient places; and protects his 
 most Christian Majesty by seizing upon "Infernal Ma-
 
 THE MORGUE. 163 
 
 chines," just after the explosion. In a word, this Pra> 
 fecturate of Police, with only 500,000 troops of the line 
 and the National Guard, encourages all sorts of public 
 morals at the rate of seven hundred million francs per 
 annum, besides protecting commerce by taking gentle- 
 men's cigars out of their pockets at Havre. 
 
 Towards the south and west of the island you will 
 see a little building distinguished from its dingy neigh- 
 bors by its gentility and freshness. It stands retired by 
 the river side modestly, giving a picturesque appear- 
 ance to the whole prospect, and a relief to the giant 
 monuments which I have just described. This building 
 is the Morgue. If any gentleman, having lost his money 
 at Frascati's — or his health and his money too at the 
 pretty Flora's — or if any melancholy stranger lodging 
 in the Rue D'Enfer, absent from his native home and the 
 sweet affections of his friends, should find life insup- 
 portable, (there are no disappointed loves in this coun- 
 try,) he will lie in state next morning at the Morgue. 
 Upon a black marble table he will be stretched out, and 
 his clothes, bloody or wet, will be hung over him, and 
 there he will be kept (except in August, when he won't 
 keep) for three whole days and as many nights ; and if 
 no one claims him, why then the King of the French sells 
 him for ten francs to the doctors ; and his clothes, after 
 six months, belong to Francois the steward, who has 
 them altered for his dear little children, or sells them for 
 second hand finery in the market. 
 
 One of these suicides, as I have read in the Revue de 
 Paris, was claimed the other day by his affectionate 
 uncle, as follows. A youth wrote to his uncle that he 
 had lost at gambling certain sums entrusted to him, in 
 his province, to pay a debt in Paris, and that he was 
 unwilling to survive the disgrace. The uncle recognized
 
 164 NUMDER OF SUICIDES. 
 
 him, and buried him with becoming ceremony at Pere la 
 Chaise. In returning home from this solemn duly, the 
 youth rushed into his uncle's arms, and they hugged and 
 kissed, and hugged each other to the astonishment of tho 
 spectators. It is so agreeable to see one's nephews after 
 one has buried them, jump about one's neck ! 
 
 The annual number of persons who commit suicide 
 in all France I have seen stated at two thousand. Those 
 who came to the Morgue in 1822, were 2G0. Is it not 
 strange that the French character, so flexible and fruit- 
 ful of resources in all circumstances of fortune, should 
 be subject to this excess? And that they should kill 
 themselves, too, for the most absurd and frivolous 
 causes. — One, as I have read in the journals, from dis- 
 gust at putting on his breeches in the cold winter morn- 
 ings — and two lately (Ecousse and Lebrun) because a 
 farce they had written did not succeed at the play house. 
 The authors chose to incur the same penalty in the 
 other world that was inflicted on their vaudeville in 
 this. And these Catos of Utica are brought here to the 
 Morgue. The greater part are caught in the Seine, by 
 a net stretched across the river at St. Cloud. Formerly 
 twenty-five francs were given for a man saved, and 
 twenty if drowned; and the rogues cheated the govern- 
 ment of its humanity by getting up a company, who 
 saved each other time about by collusion. The sum is 
 now reversed, so that they always allow one time, and 
 even assist one a little sometimes, for the additional five 
 francs. The building, by the advance of civilization, 
 has required, this season, to be repaired, and a new 
 story is added. Multitudes, male and female, are seen 
 going in and out at every hour of the day. You can 
 stop in on your way as you go to the flower market, 
 which is just opposite. There is a lady at the bureau
 
 M. PERRIN. 
 
 165 
 
 who attends in her father's absence the sale and recog- 
 nition of the corpses, and who plays the piano and 
 excels in several of the ornamental branches. 
 
 She was crowned at the last distribution of prizes, 
 and is the daughter of the keeper, Mr. Perrin. He has 
 four other daughters, who also give the same promise 
 of accomplishment. Their morals do not run the same 
 risk as most other children's, of being spoilt by a bad 
 intercourse from without. Indeed they are so little used 
 to associate abroad, that, getting into a neighbor's the 
 other day, they asked their playmates, running about 
 through the house, " Where does your papa keep his 
 dead people?" Innocent little creatures! Mr. Perrin 
 is a man of excellent instruction himself, and entertains 
 his visitors with conversations literary and scientific, and 
 he writes a fine round text hand. When a new corpse 
 arrives he puts himself at his desk, and with a graceful 
 flourish enters it on the book ; and when not claimed at 
 the end of three days, he writes down in German text, 
 " mconnu;" if known," conna." The exhibition room 
 is, since its enlargement, sufficient for the ordinary 
 wants of society ; but on emergencies, as on the " three 
 glorious days," and the like, they are obliged to accom- 
 modate a part of the corpses elsewhere. They have 
 been strewed, on these occasions, over the garden ; and 
 Miss Perrin has to take some in her room.— Alas, that 
 no state of life should be exempt from its miseries! 
 You who think to have propitiated fortune by the 
 humility of your condition, come hither and contem- 
 plate Mr. Perrin. Only a few years ago, when quietly 
 engaged in his official duties, his own wife came in with 
 the other customers. He was struck with horror; and 
 he went to his bureau and wrote down " connu /" 
 The notorious Hotel de Ville is well placed in a
 
 1G6 PLACE DE GREVE. 
 
 group with these obscene images. It is the seat of the 
 administration of justice for all Paris, a gray and grief- 
 worn-castle ; with the Place de Greve by the side of it. 
 There it stands by the great thermometer of Monsieur 
 Chevalier, where the French people come twice a day 
 to see if they ought to shiver or sweat. There is not a 
 more abominable place in all Paris than this Place de 
 Grhve. It holds about the same rank in the city that 
 the hangman does in the community. There flowed the 
 blood of the ferocious Republic, of the grim Empire, 
 and the avenging Restoration. Lally's ghost haunts the 
 guilty place. Cartouche was burnt there, and the hor- 
 rible Marchioness Brinvilliers ; Damiens and Ravaillac 
 were tortured there; the beautiful Princess de Lam- 
 balle assassinated there, and the martyrs of 1830 buried 
 there. To complete your horror, there is yet the lamp- 
 post — the Revolutionary gibbet, and the window through 
 which Robespierre leaped out, and broke — if I were not 
 writing to a lady I would say — his damned neck ! No 
 accusing spirit would fly to Heaven's chancery with 
 the oath. 
 
 I began to breathe as I stepped upon the Pont Nenf. 
 — The atmosphere brightened, the prospect suddenly 
 opened, and the noble river exhibited its twenty bridges, 
 and its banks, turreted, towered and castellated, as far 
 as the eye could pierce. There is a romantic interest in 
 the very name of this bridge, as in the "Bridge of 
 Sighs," though not a great deal richer in architecture 
 than yours of Fair Mount. And what is the reason ? 
 Why is the Rialto more noble than your Exchange of 
 Dock Street? You see Pierre and Jaffier, and the Jew, 
 standing on it. The Pont Nenf has arched the Seine 
 since 200 years and more. It was once the centre of 
 gayety and fashion, and business. Here was displayed
 
 THE BIBLIOPOLIST. 167 
 
 the barbaric luxury of Marie de Medicis, and the pom- 
 pous Richelieu ; glittering equipages paraded here in 
 their evening airings, and fair ladies in masks — better 
 disguised in their own faces — crowded here to the 
 midnight routs of the Carnival. A company in 1709 
 had an exclusive privilege of a depot of umbrellas at each 
 end, that ladies and gentlemen paying a sous might 
 cross without injury to their complexions. The fine 
 arts, formerly natives of this place, have since emigrated 
 to the Palais Royal — ripse ulterior is amentes — and 
 despair now comes hither at midnight — and the horrid 
 suicide, by the silent statue of the great Henry, plunges 
 into eternity. 
 
 On the left is the Quai des Augustins, where the pa- 
 tient bibliopolist sits over his odd volumes, and where 
 the cheapest of all human commodities is human wit. 
 A black and ancient building gives an imposing front to 
 the Quai Conti; it is the Hotel des Monnaies. Com- 
 merce, Prudence, and several other allegorical grand- 
 mothers are looking down from the balustrade. Next 
 to it, (for the Muses, too, love the mint,) with a horse-shoe 
 kind of face, is the Royal " Institute de France" 
 This court has supreme jurisdiction in 'the French Re- 
 public of letters; it regulates the public judgment in 
 matters of science, fine arts, language, and literary 
 composition : it proposes questions, and rewards the least 
 stupid, if discovered, with a premium, and gives its ap- 
 probation of ingenious inventors, who, like Fulton, do 
 not die of hunger in waiting for it. You may attend the 
 sittings of the Jlcademie des Sciences, which are public, 
 on Mondays. You will meet Pascal and Moliere in 
 the antechamber — as far as they dared venture in their 
 lives. The members you will see in front of broad 
 tables in the interior, and the President eminent above
 
 168 ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES. 
 
 the rest, who ever and anon will ring a little bell by way 
 of keeping less noise 1 : the spectators, with busts of Sully, 
 Bossnet, Fenelon, and Descartes, sitting gravely tier over 
 tier, around the extremities of the room. The Secretary 
 will then run over a programme of the subjects, not 
 without frequent tinklings of the admonitory bell ; at the 
 end of which, debates will probably arise on general 
 subjects or matters of form. For example, Mr. Arago 
 will call in question the veracity of that eminent man, 
 Mr., Herschel, of New York, and his selenelogical dis- 
 coveries ; which have a great credit here ; no one sees 
 the moon for the fogs, and you may tell as many lies 
 about her as you please. Afterwards a little man of 
 solemn mien, being seated upon a chair, will read you, 
 alas, one of his own compositions. He will talk of no- 
 thing but the geognosie des couches atmospheriqucs ; the 
 isomorphism of the mineralogical substances, and the 
 "Myfitotes of the Parabola," for an hour. You will 
 then have an episode from Baron Lary (no one listening) 
 upon a bag of dry bones, displayed h la Johassaphat, 
 upon a wide table, followed by another reader, and then 
 by another to the end of the sitting— You will think the 
 empire of dnlness has come upon the earth. 
 
 The Institute was once the College des Quatre 
 Nations, and was founded by Mazarin upon the ruins 
 of the famous Tour de Nesle. I need not tell you the 
 history of this Tour. Who does not know all about 
 Qneen Isabeau de Baviere ? Of her window from the 
 heights of the Tour, from which she overlooked the 
 Seine, before the baths of Count Vigier (what made him 
 a count?) were invented ? She was a great admirer of 
 the fine forms of the human figure ; and she was the 
 first woman in Europe, as I have read in the old chroni- 
 cles, who had two chemises. The French have always
 
 PONT DES ARTS. 169 
 
 been fond of much linen. I have no wish to find fault 
 with her for this latter piece of extravagance ; but I 
 cannot speak with the same indulgence of other parti- 
 culars of her history. Her ill treatment of her lovers — 
 her sewing them up, to prevent their telling tales, in 
 sacks, and then tossing them before daylight into the 
 river, was, to say the least of it — very wrong ! In 
 crossing the Pont des Arts towards midnight I have 
 often heard something very like the voices of lamenta- 
 tion and violence. Sometimes I thought I could hear 
 distinctly Isabeau ! in the murmuring of the waters. 
 
 All the world runs to the Bains Vigiers, which 
 are -anchored along this Quai, to bathe at four sous; 
 but the water is exceedingly foul. It is here the Seine, 
 
 " With disemboguing streams, 
 Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs." 
 
 And what is worst, when done bathing here, you have 
 no place to go to wash yourself. 
 
 The Pont des Arts is a light and airy bridge from 
 the door of the Institute to the Quai dn Louvre ; upon 
 which no equipages are admitted. The Arts use their 
 legs — cruribus non curribus utuntur. Between this 
 and the " Pont Royal," (a bridge of solid iron,) the 
 antiquarians have got together for sale all the curious 
 remains of the last century, Chineseries, Sevreries, and 
 chimney pieces of Madame Pompadour. Next is the 
 Quai Voltaire, in the east corner of which is the last 
 earthly habitation of the illustrious individual whose 
 name it bears. The apartment in which he died has 
 been kept shut for the last forty years, and has been 
 lately thrown open. On the opposite side you see 
 stretched out huge in length, the heavy and monotonous 
 Louvre, which, with the Tuileries adjoining, is, they 
 vol. i. — 15
 
 170 THE WASHERWOMEN. 
 
 say, the most spacious and beautiful palace in the world. 
 I have not experienced what the artists call a percep- 
 tion of its beauties. There is a little pet corner, the 
 eastern colonnade raised by Louis XIV., which is called 
 the great 'triumph of French architecture. It consists of 
 a long series of apartments decorated with superb co- 
 lumns, with sculpture and mosaics, and a profusion of 
 gilding, and fanciful ornaments.* From the middle 
 gallery it was that Charles IX., one summer's evening, 
 amused himself shooting Huguenots, flying the St. Bar- 
 tholomew, with his arquebuss. Nero was a mere fiddler 
 to this fellow. This is the gallery of Philip Augustus, 
 so full of romance. It was from here that Charles X. 
 "cut and ran," and Louis Philippe quietly sat down on 
 his stool. See how the Palais des Beaux Arts is pep- 
 pered with the Swiss bullets ! 
 
 The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered 
 with washerwomen ; and baths, and boats of charcoal 
 cover its whole surface. One cannot drown himself 
 here, but at the risk of knocking out his brains. One of the 
 curiosities of this place, is the/e/e des Blanchissevses, 
 celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the 
 river was covered with dances; floors being strewed 
 upon the boats; and the boats adorned with flags and 
 streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant washer- 
 women, just from the froth, like so many Venuses — 
 now dissolving in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. 
 You ought to have seen how they chose out the most 
 beautiful of these washerwomen — the Queen of the 
 
 * Louis, by a royal edict, ordered that no other building should be 
 constructed in Paris until this work was complete, under a penalty 
 of imprisonment, and ten thousand francs fine. It was something in 
 those days to be a king. One has now to ask the Deputies every 
 thing, even to gilding the ceilings of the Madelaine.
 
 SWIMMING SCHOOLS. 171 
 
 Suds— and rowed her in a triumphal gondola through 
 the stream, with music that untwisted all the chains of 
 harmony. 
 
 "Not Cleopatra, on her galley's deck, 
 Displayed so much of leg, or more of neck." 
 
 This array of washing-boats relieves the French from 
 that confusion, and misery of the American kitchen, the 
 " washing-day ;" but to give us the water to drink, after 
 all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite. I have 
 bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say, will in- 
 tercept, at least, the petticoats and other such articles, 
 as I might have swallowed. The Seine here suffers 
 the same want as one of his brother rivers, sung by the 
 poets: 
 
 "The river Rhine, it is well known, 
 Doth wash the city of Cologne, 
 But tell me, Nymphs, what power diyine, 
 Shall henceforth Wash the river Rhine." 
 
 Just opposite the Quai, I observed " Schools of Nata- 
 tion," for both sexes, kept entirely separate. An ad- 
 monition is placed over the ladies' school to this effect, 
 in large letters; besides it is hermetically secured against 
 any impertinent intrusion, by a piece of linen. The 
 ladies, however, were put to their last shifts, last summer, 
 in maintaining this establishment. Such rigid notions 
 do some persons here entertain of feminine decorum ! 
 But opposition has now died away ; and the reports 
 about gentlemen of the " other house" becoming love- 
 sick, from swimming in the waters from the ladies' 
 bath, have been proved malicious: for the gentlemen's 
 house is further up the stream, " et par consequence.'''' — •„ 
 The truth is, that a lady has as much right, and, unfor-' 
 tunately, in these shipwrecking times, as much neces-
 
 172 THE TELESCOPE MAKKH. 
 
 sity often, lo swim as a gentleman ; and it is ascertained 
 that, with the same chance, the woman is the belter 
 swimmer of the two. (I have this from the lady who 
 keeps the bureau.) Her head is always above the water. 
 All of them, and especially those who have the vapors, 
 can swim without cork. The process of instruction is 
 easy. All that the swimming master has to do, is just 
 to thrust the little creatures into a pair of gum-elastic 
 trousers, and a cravat, inflated, and then pitch them in, 
 one after another — only taking care not to put on the 
 trousers without the cravat.— I will finish this paragraph, 
 already too long, by an anecdote. I will show you that 
 ladies, who swim, cannot use too much circumspection. 
 I mean, by circumspection, looking up, as well as round 
 about them. The ever vigilant police about the Tui- 
 leries, had observed a young gentleman very busy with 
 tools, at an opposite garret window, for whole weeks 
 together. Sometimes, till the latest hour of the night, 
 his lamp was seen glimmering at the said window. At 
 length, by the dint of looking, and looking they disco- 
 vered something like an " Infernal Machine," placed 
 directly towards the apartment of the king and queen, 
 and the bedchamber of the dear little princesses and 
 Madame Adelaide. It was just after the July review, 
 and General Mortier's disaster; and suspicion lay all 
 night wide awake. What needs many words? They 
 burst into the room — the " Garde Municipale" and 
 the "police centrale" the "pompiers ," and the " sa- 
 peurs" and the Serjeants clad in blue, with buttons to 
 their arms, and swords to their sides, and coifed in cha- 
 peaux, three feet in diameter — breaking down all oppo- 
 sition of doors, and dragged forth the terrified young 
 man. The tongues of all Paris were now set loose, as 
 usual, and proclamations were read through the streets,
 
 THE GARDENS OF THE TUILERIES. 173 
 
 de V horrible assassinal tente contre la vie du roi,et de la 
 famille royale, &c. &c, and all that for four sous ! It was 
 even said, that he had made important revelations to 
 the minister of the Interior; and that some of the most 
 distinguished Carlists were implicated in his guilt. At 
 length, he was brought up before the Chamber of 
 Peers, with his machine; where it was examined, and 
 discovered to be — what do you think? — a telescope! 
 The young man alleged that he was getting it up for 
 astronomical purposes; but the president, a shrewd man 
 about machines, observed that its obliquity was in an 
 opposite direction to the stars. 
 
 The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, 
 both from the pleasure it has had in bathing the royal 
 family, and the delight of listening to the king's band, 
 which plays here every evening, and from this onwards, 
 the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries 
 and Champs Elysees. If you wish to know how more 
 beautiful than the gardens of Armida is this garden of 
 the Tuileries, I refer you to my former letters ; especially 
 to that one which I wrote you when I had just fallen 
 from the clouds. I admired, then, everything with sen- 
 sibility, and a good many things with ecstacy. Some- 
 body has said, that every one who is born, is as much a 
 first man as Adam, which I do not quite believe. Adam 
 came straight into the world, " all made up." He came 
 into the midst of a creation, which rushed, with the 
 freshness of novelty upon his senses, and was not intro- 
 duced to him by gradual acquaintance. How many 
 things did this first man see in Eden, which you and I 
 could never have seen in it ; and which he himself had 
 never seen in it, if he had been put out to nurse or had 
 been brought up at the " College Rolein." I wish it had. 
 pleased Providence to people this world with men and 
 
 15*
 
 174 THE MARQUIS DE MEILLERAYE. 
 
 women of his own making, and not left us to be made 
 by bungling nurses, and still more bungling schoolmas- 
 ters. How often have I since wandered through this 
 garden, without even glancing at the white and snowy 
 bosom of the Queen of Love — how often walked upon 
 this goodly terrace, strolling all the while, the pretty 
 Miss Smith at one arm, and thy incomparable self at the 
 other, by the wizard Schuylkill, or the silent woods of 
 the Mahontongo. 
 
 Opposite this garden, on the Quai d'Orsay, is the 
 Hotel, not finished, of the Minister of the Interieur ; the 
 most enormous building of all Paris. It has turned all 
 the houses near it into huts. That, just under its huge 
 flanks, with a meek and prostrate aspect, as if making 
 an apology, for intruding into the presence of its pro- 
 digious neighbor, that is the Hotel of the Legion of 
 Honor. Alas, what signifies it to have bullied all Eu- 
 rope for half a century ! Close by is a little chateau, 
 formerly of the Marquis de Meilleraye, which I notice only 
 to tell you an anecdote of his wife. The prince Philip 
 came to Paris, and died very suddenly — under Louis 
 XIV. He was a great roue and libertine, and some one 
 moralizing, expressed before the Marchioness, doubts 
 about his salvation. " Je vons assure," said she, very 
 seriously, " qu' ct des gens de cette quallte la Dieu y 
 regarde, bien a deux fois pour les damner." Ladies 
 bred in high life don't think that kings may be damned 
 like thee and me. 
 
 The next object of importance, and the object of most 
 importance of all Paris, is the Chamber of Deputies. I 
 wished to go in, but four churlish and bearded men dis- 
 puted me this privilege. I sat down, therefore, upon 
 the steps, having Justice, Temperance, and Prudence, 
 and anotherelderly lady, on each side of me ; and I con-
 
 A FAIR VISITANT. 175 
 
 soled myself and said : In this House the Virtues arc 
 shut out of doors. 1 had also in the same group, Sully, 
 Hopital, D'Aguesseau, and Colbert. What superhuman 
 figures! And I had in front the Bridge of Concord, 
 upon which are placed twelve statues in marble, also of 
 the Colossal breed. A deputy, as he waddles through 
 the midst of them, seems no bigger than Lemuel Gulli- 
 ver, just arrived at Brobdignag. Four are of men dis- 
 tinguished in war; Cond6, who looks ridiculously grim, 
 and Turenne, Duguesclin, and Bayard; and four emi- 
 nent statesmen, Suger, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert; and 
 four of men famous on the sea, Tourville, Suffren, Du- 
 quesne, and who was the other? — He whose name 
 would shame an epic poem, or the Paris Directory, 
 Duguay-Trouin. I took off my hat to Suffren, for he 
 helped us with our Independence. 
 
 On the back ground of this Palace, is a delightful 
 woodland, where the members often seek refreshment 
 from the fatigues of business in the open air. Here 
 you will see a Lycurgus seated apart, and ruminating 
 upon the fate of empires; and there a pair of Solons, 
 unfolding the mazes of human policy, straying arm in 
 
 arm through its solitary gravel walks. M. Q , a 
 
 member of this chamber and sometimes minister, was 
 seen walking here assiduously during the last summer 
 evenings; and often when the twilight had just faded 
 into night, a beautiful female figure was seen walking 
 with him. It did not seem to be of mortal race, but a spirit 
 of some brighter sphere, which had consented awhile 
 
 to walk upon this earth with Monsieur Q . It was, 
 
 however, the wife of Monsieur , another member 
 
 of this chamber. — One essential difference, you may re- 
 mark between Numa Pompilius and Deputy Q is, 
 
 that the one met ladies in the woods, for the making of
 
 176 PLACE DE LA KEVOLUTION. 
 
 laws— and the other for the breaking of them. Mon- 
 sieur , informed of the fact, took a signal revenge 
 
 upon the seducer of his wife. And what do you think 
 it was ? — lie called him out, to be sure, and blew out 
 his brains. Not a bit of it. — He waylaid him then, and 
 dispatched him secretly ? Much less. I will tell you 
 what he did. He took Monsieur Q 's wife in ex- 
 change. — In telling this tale, which I had on pretty good 
 authority, I do not mean to say — Heaven preserve me — 
 that there are not honest wives in Paris. 
 
 " II en est jusqu'a trois que je pourrais nommer." 
 
 I have now before me one of the most execrable 
 spots upon this earth; — a "damned spot," which all the 
 perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten — the " Place de la 
 Revolution"* — where the Queen of France suffered 
 death with her husband, to propitiate the horrible Re- 
 public. I saw once my mother in agitation, upon read- 
 ing a newspaper — sobbing, and even weeping aloud; — 
 she read, (and set me to weeping too,) the account of 
 the execution of this queen. It is the farthest remem- 
 brance of my life, and I am now standing on the spot — 
 on the very spot on which this deed was perpetrated-— 
 which made women weep in their huts beyond the Alle- 
 ghany ! With the manifold faults of this queen, one can- 
 not, at the age of sober reason, look upon the place of 
 her execution, and think over her hapless fate, without 
 feeling all that one has of human nature melting into 
 compassion. She was a woman whom anything of a 
 gentleman would love with all her faults. Moreover, 
 no one expects queens, in the intoxication of their for- 
 tunes, to behave like sober people. Not even the sound 
 
 * II is called also the Place de la Concord, and the Place Louis XV.
 
 FINE VIEW OF PARIS. 177 
 
 and temperate head of Csesar preserved its prudence in 
 this kind of prosperity. The Guillotine was erected 
 permanently on the centre of this Place, and was fed 
 with cart loads at a time. The most illustrious of its 
 victims, were the queen, Louis XVI., his sister Made- 
 moiselle Elizabeth, and the father of the present king. 
 The grass does not grow upon the guilty place, and the 
 Seine flows quickly by it. 
 
 If you wish to have the finest view of all Paris — the 
 finest, perhaps, of all Europe, of a similar kind— you 
 must stand upon the centre of this place ; and you must 
 hurry, as the Obelisk of Luxor has just arrived from 
 Egypt, and will occupy it shortly. Towards the east, 
 you have spread out before you the gardens of the 
 Tuileries, bordered by the noble colonnade of the Rue 
 Rivoli and the Seine ; — towards the west the Champs 
 Elysees, and the broad walk leading gently up to Napo- 
 leon's arch, which stands proudly on the summit, and 
 « helps the ambitious hills the heavens to scale." On 
 the north, you have in full view, through the Rue Royale, 
 the superb Madelaine, on the side of its most brilliant 
 sculpture; and in symmetry with it, the noble front of 
 the Palais Bourbon on the south. On fine evenings, 
 and days of parade, you will see from the Arch to the 
 Palace, about two miles, a moving column of human 
 beings upon the side- walks; and innumerable equipages, 
 with horses proud of their trappings, and lacqueys of their 
 feathers, meeting and crossing each other upon the inter- 
 vening roads ; and upon the area of the Tuileries, all 
 that which animated life has most amiable and beauti- 
 ful. You will see, amidst the parterres of flowers, and 
 groups of oranges, and its marble divinities, swans swim- 
 ming upon the silvery lakes ; multitudes of children at 
 their sports, and everywhere ladies and their cavaliers,
 
 178 OliKLISK OF LUXOU. 
 
 in all the colors of the toilette, sitting or standing, or 
 sauntering about, and appearing through the trees, upon 
 the distant terraces, as if walking upon the air. All this 
 will present you a rich and variegated tableau, of which 
 prose like mine can give you no reasonable perception. 
 The great obelisk, which is to stand here, is now lying 
 upon the adjacent wharf. It is 72 feet high, and is to 
 be raised higher, by a pedestal of 20 feet. It is a single 
 block of granite, with four faces, and each face has almost 
 an equal share of the magnificent prospect I have just 
 tried to describe. It tapers towards the top, and its sides, 
 older than the alphabet, are embossed with a variety of 
 curious images. Birds are singing, rustics laboring, or 
 playing on their pipes, sheep are bleating, and lambs 
 skipping. A slave is on his knees, and a Theban gen- 
 tleman recumbent in his fauteuil ; and one is at his wine 
 — he who "hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 
 3000 years ago." — The men are in caps, a third their 
 size ; and the women in low hoods, like a chancellor's 
 wig. Little did the miner think, who dug it from the 
 quarry, little did the sculptor think, as he carved these 
 images on it, and how little did Sesostris think, in read- 
 ing over his history of Paris, that it would, one day, 
 make the tour of Europe, and establish itself here in the 
 Place de la Concorde. An expensive and wearisome 
 journey it has had of it. It is nine years since it stepped 
 from its pedestal at Luxor. It was a good notion of 
 Charles X., but not original. The Emperor Constantius 
 brought one, the largest ever known, (150 feet high,) to 
 Rome. Two magnificent ones, set up by the Doge 
 Ziana, adorn the Piazelta of St. Mark's, brought from 
 some island of the Archipelago. The French army, 
 captured at Alexandria in 1801, had two young ones on 
 their way to Paris, which fell, poor things ! into the ra-
 
 ANCIENT REGALIA. 179 
 
 pacious hands of the British Museum. And now the 
 English, jealous of this Luxoriqne magnificence, are 
 going to bring over Cleopatra's needle, to be up with 
 them; and we are going to put something in our Wash- 
 ington Square; and then the French, some of these days, 
 will bring over the Pyramids. 
 
 At the corner of the Rue Royale you will see two 
 palaces, one the depot of fine furniture and jewels, the 
 other of the armor of the crown. Here are shields that 
 were burnished for Cressy and Agincourt. Here is the 
 armor of Francis when made prisoner at Pavia, of Henry 
 ■when mortally wounded by Montgomery ; complete sets 
 of armor of Godfrey de Bouillon and Joan of Arc, the 
 sword of King Cassimer, and that of the holy father 
 Paul V. Spiders are now weaving their webs in casques 
 that went to Jerusalem. The diamonds of the crown 
 deposited here before the Revolution in rubies, topaz, 
 emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, &c, were 7432 in num- 
 ber, amongst which were the famous jewels called the 
 Sanci and the Regent, so notorious in the history of 
 jewels ; the latter has figured about the world in the 
 king's hats, and Napoleon's sword. An antiquarian 
 would find extreme delight in this room; as for me I 
 scarce know which is Mambrino's helmet, and which 
 the barber's basin. 
 
 I had no sooner quit the deputies than I found myself 
 under the great Hospital of the Invalids, whose lofty 
 and gilded dome was blazing in the setting sun. Napo- 
 leon put up this gilding to amuse gossiping Paris in his 
 Russian defeats, as Alcibiades to divert Athens from his 
 worse tricks cut off his dog's tail ; and as Miss Kitty to 
 withdraw a more dangerous weapon from her baby's 
 hand, gives it a rattle. 3,800 soldiers are now lodged in 
 this Hospital, or rather pieces of soldiers; for one has an
 
 ISO HOSPITAL OF THE INVALIDS. 
 
 arm at Moscow, another a leg at Algiers, needing no 
 nourishment from the state. Here is one whose lower 
 limbs were both lost at the taking of Paris. He seems 
 very happy. He saves the shoemaker's, hosier's, and half 
 the tailor's bill. He is fat, too, and healthy, for he has 
 the same rations as if he were all there. If I 'were ex- 
 pert at logic, I would prove to yon that this piece of an 
 individual might partly eat himself up; his legs being 
 buried in the suburbs, and he dining on the potatoes 
 which grow there ; and I could prove, if I was put to it, 
 that with a proper assistance from cork, he might be run- 
 ning about town with his legs in his cheeks. There are 
 two sorts of historians, one confining themselves to a sim- 
 ple narrative of facts and descriptions; the other searching 
 after causes and effects, and accompanying the narrative 
 with moral reflections. I belong to the latter class. This 
 hospital was planned by the great Henry; the great 
 Louis built it, and it was furnished with lodgers by the 
 great Napoleon. It has all the air of a hospital ; long 
 ranges of rooms and chilling corridors ; and this reunion 
 of mutilated beings is a horrid spectacle ! They lead 
 a kind of inactive, lounging, alms-house existence. How 
 much better had the munificence of government given 
 to each his allowance, with the privilege of remaining 
 with his friends and relations, than to be thus cut off 
 from all the charities and consolations of domestic life, 
 and without the last, best consolation of afflicted hu- 
 manity, a woman. The dome is magnificent with paint- 
 ings, gildings, carvings, and such like decorations. The 
 chapel, the most splendid part, is tapestried with flags 
 taken in war from the enemy. What an emblem in a 
 Christian church ! There are several hundreds yet re- 
 maining, notwithstanding the great numbers burnt, to 
 save them from their owners, the allies. " There are
 
 THE CHAMP DE MARS. 181 
 
 some here from all countries," said my guide, growing 
 a foot taller. " Those are from Africa ; those from Bel- 
 gium ; and those three from England." When I asked 
 him to show me those from America, he replied with a 
 shrug — "cela viendra, monsieur" 
 
 The immense plain to the west of the Invalids and 
 in front of the Ecole Militaire, is the Champ de Mars, 
 the rendezvous of horses fleet in the race, and cavalry 
 to be trained for the battle. I am quite vexed that I 
 have not space to tell you of the great Revolutionary 
 fete which was once celebrated in this very place; 
 how the ladies of the first rank volunteered and worked 
 with their own dear little hands to put up the scaffold- 
 ing ; and how the king was brought out here with his 
 white and venerable locks and air of a martyr, and the 
 queen her eyes swollen with weeping ; their last appear- 
 ance. but one ! before the people. And it would be very 
 gratifying to take a look at that good old Revolutionary 
 patriarch, Talleyrand. How he officiated at the im- 
 mense ceremony, at the head of two hundred priests, all 
 habited in immaculate white surplices, and all adorned 
 with tri-colored scarfs, and then how the holy man 
 blessed the new standards of France, and consecrated 
 the eighty-three banners of the Departments. I wish 
 to write all this, but winged time will not wait upon my 
 desires; besides, this letter is already the longest that 
 was ever written except Paul's to the Romans; it has 
 as many curiosities, too, as the shield of Achilles. - The 
 bridge just opposite is the Pont de Jena. The allies 
 were about to destroy it on account of its name, and 
 put gunpowder under it, but Louis XVII]. would not 
 allow it. Le jour oil vous fercz sauter le Pont de 
 Jena, je me mctte dessus ! and Bluclier was moved. 
 vol. i. — 16
 
 182 FAUBOURG ST. GERMAIN. 
 
 This bridge is the end of my letter and journey; finis 
 chartxquc viseque. 
 
 The cholera, the devil take it, has got into Italy, and 
 I shall perhaps lose altogether the opportunity of a visit 
 to that country. I shall not kiss the feet of his Holiness, 
 nor see the Rialto, nor the Bridge of Sighs ; nor Venice 
 and her gondolas, nor look upon the venerable Palace 
 of her Doges. Alas, I shall not linger at Virgil's tomb ! 
 nor swim in the Tiber, nor taste one drop of thy pure 
 fountain, Egeria 'nor thine, Fons Blandusive splcndi- 
 dior vitreo. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Faubourg St. Germain — Quartier Latin — The book-stalls — Phrenolo- 
 gists — Dupuytren's room — Medical students— Lodgings — Bill at the 
 Sorbonne — French cookery — A gentleman's boarding-house — The 
 locomotive cook — Fruit — The pension — The landlady — Pleasure 
 in being duped — Smile of a French landlady — The boarding-house 
 — Amiable ladies — The Luxembourg gardens — The grisettes — 
 Their naivete and simplicity — Americans sent to Paris — Parisian 
 morals — Advantages in visiting old countries — American society 
 in Paris. 
 
 Paris, November 24th, 1835. 
 
 Nearly all who love to woo the silent muses are 
 
 assembled in this region, the Faubourg St. Germain. 
 
 Here are the libraries bending under their ponderous 
 
 loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all the 
 
 * . 
 
 establishments devoted to science and letters; for which 
 
 reason no doubt it is dignified by the name of the Quar- 
 tier Latin. When the west of the river was yet over-
 
 THE BOOKSHOP. 183 
 
 spread with its forests, this quarter was covered with 
 houses and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, 
 baths, an aqueduct, and a " Field of Mars" for the 
 parade of the Roman troops — where Julius Ceesar used 
 to make them shoulder their firelocks. But now, though 
 it contains a fourth of the population of the town, and 
 retains its literary character, so far has luxury got ahead 
 of Philosophy, it has no greater dignity of name than 
 the "Faubourgs." It stands apart as if the city of 
 some other people. Some few, indeed, from the fashion- 
 able districts, in a desperate Captain Ross kind of expedi- 
 tion, do sometimes come over here, and have got back 
 safe, but having found nothing but books and such things 
 of little interest, it remains unexplored. The population 
 has become new, by retaining its old customs. By 
 standing still, it shows the " march of intellect" through 
 the rest of the city. Here you see yet that venerable 
 old man who wears a cue and powder, and buckles his 
 shoes, and calls his shop a boutique; who garters up 
 his stockings over his knees, goes to bed at eight, and 
 snuffs the candle with his fingers ; and you see every- 
 where the innumerable people, clattering through the 
 muddy and narrow lanes in their sabots. Poverty, not 
 being able to get lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, the Palais 
 Royal, and, though she tried hard, in the Boulevards, 
 has been obliged, on account of the cheap rents, to come 
 over here and to strike up a sort of partnership with 
 science, and they now carry on various kinds of indus- 
 try, under the firm of Misere et Compagnie. 
 
 In the central section of this Latin country, the staple 
 is the bookshop. Everywhere you will see the little 
 store embossed with its innumerable volumes inside out, 
 on the ceilings, on the floor, and on the screens through- 
 out the room, leaving just a space for a little bookseller ;
 
 1S4 ANATOMICAL APPEARANCES. 
 
 and stalls are covered with the same article in the open 
 air, in all those positions, where, in other towns, yon find 
 mutton and fat beef. When you see a long file of Insti- 
 tutes, and Bartholos, and Cnjasses, wrapped in their yel- 
 low parchment, you are near the Temple of Themis — 
 the Ecole des Lois. When you see, in descending St. 
 Jacques, a morose, surly, bibliomaniacal little man, en- 
 trenched behind a Homer, a Horace, and a Euclid's Ele- 
 ments, that is the College de France; and when you 
 stumble over a pile of the Martyrs, it is the Sorbonne; 
 as you approach the Ecole Medecine, five hundred Bi- 
 chats and Richerands beckon you to its threshold. — 
 Besides, you will see ladies and gentlemen looking out 
 from the neighboring windows, and recommending them- 
 selves in their various anatomical appearances ; en sqnel- 
 lette, or half dissected, or turned wrong side out. There 
 is a shop, too, of phrenological skulls, and a lady who 
 will explain you the bumps; and if you like, you can 
 get yourself felt for a franc or two, and she will tell you 
 where is your P hi lo-pro— what do you call it ? She 
 told me our intellectual qualities were placed in front, 
 and the sensual in the back part of the skull, very hap- 
 pily, because the former could look out ahead, and keep 
 the latter in order. And next door is a shop of all the 
 wax preparations of human forms, and diseases, and 
 here is another lady who will point you out their resem- 
 blances with originals, who will analyze you a man into 
 all his component parts, and put him up again ; and she 
 puts up, also, " magnificent skeletons," and mannikins 
 for foreign countries. Now and then you will see arrive 
 a cart, which pours out a dozen or so of naked men and 
 women, as you do a cord of wood upon the pavement, 
 which are distributed into the dissecting rooms, after the 
 ladies and gentlemen standing about have sufficiently
 
 CAFE AU LAIT. 185 
 
 entertained themselves with the spectacle. And just 
 step into " Dupuytren's Room," and you will see all the 
 human diseases, arranged beautifully in families ; here 
 is the plague, and there is the cholera morbus ; here is 
 the gout, and there is the palsy staring you in the face ; 
 and there are whole cabinets of sprained ankles, broken 
 legs, dislocated shoulders, and cracked skulls. In a word, 
 everything is literary in this quarter. One evening you 
 are invited to a party for squaring the circle, another for 
 finding out the longitude ; and another : " My dear sir, 
 come this evening ; we have just got in a subject. The 
 autopsis will begin at six." 
 
 The medical students are about four thousand; those 
 of law and theology about the same number; and many 
 a one of these students lodges, eats and clothes himself, 
 and keeps his sweetheart all for twelve dollars per 
 month. With the exception of the last named article, I 
 am living a kind of student's life. I have a room twenty 
 feet square, overlooking from the second story, the beau- 
 tiful garden of Luxembourg, and the great gate opening 
 from the Rue d'Enfer. This is my parlor during the 
 day, and a cabinet having a bed, and opening into it, 
 converts the two into a bed-chamber for the night ; and 
 the price including services, is eight dollars per month. 
 I find at ten a small table covered with white porcelain, 
 and a very neat little Frenchwoman comes smiling in 
 with a coffee-pot in one hand and a pitcher of boiling 
 milk in the other, and pours me out with her rosy fingers 
 a large cup of the best ca/6 an lait in the world, and sits 
 down herself, and descants fluently on the manners and 
 customs of the capital, and improves my facilities in 
 French. If you wish bad coffee, it is not to be had in 
 this country. The accompaniments are two eggs, or 
 some equivalent relish, a piece of fresh butter, and a 
 
 16*
 
 186 DINNER AT THE SORBONNE. 
 
 small loaf of bread — all this for eighteen sous, (a sous is 
 a twentieth less than our cent.) 1 dine out wherever I 
 may chance to be, and according to the voracity or tem- 
 perance of my appetites, from one and a half to five 
 francs at six o'clock. A French dinner comes at the 
 most sociable hour, when the cares and labors of the 
 day are past, and the mind can give itself up entirely to 
 its enjoyments, or its repose. 
 
 I have dined sometimes at the illustrious Flicoteau's, 
 on the Place Sorbonne, with the medical students, and 
 have looked upon the rooms once occupied by J. Jacques 
 Rousseau, and upon the very dial on which he could 
 not teach Therese, his grisette wife, to count the hours. 
 I have dined, too, at Viot's, with the law students, and 
 have taken coffee, with Moliere, and Fontinelle, and 
 Voltaire, at the Procope. The following is a bill at the 
 Sorbonne. 
 
 A service of Soup, 
 
 3 sous, 
 
 Vegetables, 
 
 3 « 
 
 Meat, 
 
 6 " 
 
 Fish, 
 
 6 " 
 
 Bread, 
 
 2 " 
 
 20 
 
 You have, also, which serves at once for vinegar and 
 wine, a half bottle of claret, at six sous; and a dessert, 
 a bunch of grapes or three cherries, for two ; or of sweet- 
 meats, a most delicate portion — one of those infinitesi- 
 mals of a dose, such as the Homceopathists administer 
 in desperate cases. Yet this — if a dish were only what 
 it professes to be on its face, the soup, not the rinsings 
 of the dishcloth, the fricassee not poached upon the swill- 
 tub — this would still be supportable— if a macaroni were
 
 FRENCH COOKERY. 187 
 
 only a macaroni; which, in a cheap Paris fare, I under- 
 stand, is not to be presumed. In sober sadness, this is 
 very bad. We have a right to expect that a thing which 
 calls itself a hare, should not be a cat. But, alas ! it is the 
 end of all human refinement, that hypocrisy should take 
 the place of truth. You can discern no better the com- 
 ponent parts of a French dish, in a French cookery, than 
 you can a virtue in a condiment of -French affability. 
 
 But . It is an homage which a horse's rump 
 
 renders to a beefsteak. At my last dinner here I had 
 two little ribs, held together in indissoluble matrimony, of 
 mutton. I tried to divorce them, but to no purpose, till 
 the perspiration began to flow abundantly. I called the 
 " gargon," and exhibited to him their toughness. — " Ce- 
 pendant, Monsieur, le mouton it ait v^agniJique! ,, I 
 offered him five francs if he would sit down and eat it; 
 he refused. He had, perhaps, a mother or some poor re- 
 lation depending on him. I did not insist. M. Flicoteau 
 belongs to the romantic school. I prefer the classical. I 
 need hardly say, that the French students who dine 
 here, have an unhealthy and shriveled appearance — you 
 recollect the^last run of the shad on the Juniata. It is 
 the very spot in which the Sorbonne used to starve its 
 monks for the sake of the Lord, and M. Flicoteau, for 
 his own sake, keeps starving people here ever since ? 
 Sixteen sous is a student's ordinary dinner. His com- 
 mon allowance for clothing, and other expenses by the 
 year, is three hundred dollars. He eats for a hundred, 
 lodges for fifty, and has the remainder for his wardrobe, 
 and amusements. The students of medicine are mostly 
 poor and laborious, and being obliged to follow their 
 filthy occupation of dissecting, are negligent of dress and 
 manners. The disciples of the law are more of the rich 
 classes, have idle time, keep better company, and have
 
 188 THE GARGOTTE. 
 
 an air plus distingue. The doctors of law in all coun- 
 tries take rank above medicine. The question of prece- 
 dence, I recollect, was determined by the Dnke of Man- 
 tua's fool, who observed that the "rogue always walks 
 ahead of the executioner." — Theology, alas ! hides her 
 head in a peaceful corner of the Sorbonne, where once 
 she domineered, and begs to be unnoticed in her humble 
 and abject fortunes. A student of Divinity eats a soup 
 maigre, a riz-au-lait, flanked by a dessert of sour grapes. 
 His meals would take him to Heaven if he had no other 
 merits. 
 
 The other resorts of eating, besides the restaurants, 
 are as follows : the Gargotte, the Cuisine Bourgeoise, 
 and, of a higher grade, the Pension Bourgeoise. In 
 the Gargotte you don't get partridges. — Your dinner 
 costs seven sous. You have a little meat, dry and some- 
 what stringy, veal or mutton, whichever Monsieur 
 pleases. — Whether it died the natural way, or a violent 
 death by the hands of the butcher, it is impossible to 
 know. You have, besides, a thick soup, a loaf of bread 
 three feet long, standing in the corner by the broom, and 
 fried potatoes ; also water and the servant girl h discre- 
 tion. At seventeen sous, you have all the aforesaid 
 delicacies, with a table cloth into the bargain ; and at 
 twenty, the luxurious addition of a napkin, and a fork 
 of Algiers metal. — This is the Gargotte. When you 
 have got to twenty-five sous, you are in the Cuisine 
 Bourgeoise. Here your " convert" consists of a spoon, 
 a fork, a knife, a napkin, a glass, and a small bottle, 
 called a caraffon ; your plate is changed — already a step 
 towards civilization ; and you have a cucumber a foot 
 long, radishes a little withered, asparagus just getting 
 to seed, and salt and pepper, artistically arranged ; and 
 a horse's rump cooked into a beefsteak, and washed
 
 RESORTS OF EATING. 189 
 
 clown with " veritable macon" — that is, the best sort 
 of logwood alcoholized. You have, also, a little dessert 
 here of sour grapes, wrinkled apricots, or green figs, 
 which are exhibited for sale, at the window, between 
 meals. The flaps of mutton and the drum-sticks of 
 turkeys, which you get so tender, have been served up, 
 once or twice, at the Hotel Ordinary;, but they are pre- 
 ferred much to the original dishes. One likes sometimes 
 better Ephraim's gleanings, than Abiezer's vintage. 
 The French have a knack of letting nothing go to loss. 
 Why they make more of a dead horse or cow than 
 others of the living ones. They do not even waste the 
 putrid offals of the butcheries ; they sell the maggots to 
 feed chickens.— But when you pay forty sous, that's 
 quite another affair. You are now in the monde goar- 
 mande. Spinage has butter in it; custards have sugar 
 in them; soup is called potage ; — everything now has 
 an honest name ; bouilli is boenf a la mode ; fried pota- 
 toes, pomme de terre a la mentre d'hbtel ; and a baked 
 cat is, lapin saute a Vestragon. — This is the gentle- 
 man's boarding-house. I mean by gentleman, a youth, 
 who has just come over from England or America, to 
 the lectures, or a French clerk of the corps bureau-cra- 
 tique, or an apprentice philosopher, who calls himself a 
 " man of letters." It is one of the advantages of this 
 place, that you are not often oppressed by the intelli- 
 gence and gravity of your convives, and have a chance 
 of shining. It is in the power of any man to have wit, 
 if he but knows how to select his company. In this 
 pension the dishes succeed one another, and are not 
 crammed, as in our tables roti fricandeau, salade, vol 
 au vent — all into the same service, to distract and pall 
 the appetite, or get cold waiting on each other. The 
 coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation,
 
 190 SUCCESSION OF DISI1KS. 
 
 and enhances enjoyment by surprise. You have here, 
 too, the advantage of a male cook; the kitchen prefers 
 the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars; and, 
 besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If 
 you ask a dish at Flicoteau's, the waiter balls it down 
 to the kitchen, and as they are continually asking, he 
 is continually bawling. At the end of the feast, you 
 will see, standing before you, a tumbler full of tooth 
 picks, one of which you will keep fumbling in your 
 mouth, the whole afternoon, as an evidence you have 
 dined, and especially if you have not dined — for then 
 you must keep up appearances; — some grease their 
 mouths with a candle, and then you think they have 
 been eating pate defoie gras. 
 
 I am sorry to have forgotten the locomotive cook; 
 I mean a woman with an appareil de cuisine about 
 her neck, having meat and fish hung, by hooks, on 
 both her haunches, and sausages, or fish, or potatoes 
 hissing in a frying-pan ; and diffusing, for twenty 
 yards around, a most appetizing flavor. — She haunts 
 usually the Pont Neuf, and its vicinity, and looks like 
 gastronomy personified. She will give you for four 
 sous, of potatoes, with yesterday's gazette, and reclin- 
 ing under the parapet of the Quai — the king, perhaps, 
 all the while, envying you from the heights of the 
 Louvre — you eat a wholesomer dinner, at ten sous, than 
 the Place Sorbonne at twenty-four. 
 
 All the common world of Paris buys its provisions 
 second handed. The farmer arrives about two in the 
 morning — he sells out to the hucksters, and these latter to 
 the public: mixing in the leavings of the preceding day, 
 a rotten egg with a fresh one, &c. A patient old woman, 
 having nothing else to do, speculates over a bushel of 
 potatoes, or a botte of onions, twice twenty-four hours;
 
 SOLITUDE OF A POPULOUS CITY. 191 
 
 and your milk woman, perhaps, never saw a cow ; cows 
 are expensive in slops and provender ; and snails and 
 plaster of Paris are to be had almost for nothing. The 
 French eat greater quantities of bread than their neigh- 
 bors — and why at a cheaper rate ? — The price is fixed, 
 by police, every fortnight, and its average is two and a 
 half cents — sixty per cent, lower than in London ; and 
 how much lower than with us? 450 millions of lbs. are 
 consumed in Paris annually ; each man eating twelve 
 dollars worth. If you establish a Frenchman's expense 
 at 100 you will find 19 parts for bread, 22 for meat, 
 27 for wine and spirits. Peaches and apples, and 
 melons are not to be spoken of, in comparison with ours : 
 but cherries, plums, and especially pears, are in great 
 variety and abundance ; and the fine grapes of Fontain- 
 bleau are eight cents per pound. In England, they 
 have all the fruits of the Indies in the nobleman's hot 
 houses ; but who can buy them ? There are men there 
 who have the conscience to pay £150 for the fruits of 
 a breakfast. " The strawberries at my Lady Stormont's, 
 last Saturday, cost £150," says Hannah More. But I 
 must bridle in my muse ; she is getting a fit of statistics. 
 If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when 
 his countrymen are spread over Europe, at watering 
 places, and elsewhere, and when every soul of a French- 
 man is out of town — if he is used to love his friends at 
 home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather 
 around him in the evenings — let him not set a foot in 
 that unnatural thing, a bachelor's apartment in a fur- 
 nished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep 
 alone ! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and 
 children and settle up his affairs. Nor let him seek 
 company at the Tavern Ordinary ; here the guest arrives 
 just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual
 
 192 FAMILY REUNIONS. 
 
 place, crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, 
 dines, and then disappears, all the year round, without 
 farther acquaintance. But let him look out a " Pension," 
 having an amiable landlady, or, which is the same, 
 amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here 
 after some time, and find some relief from one of the 
 trying situations of life. You know nothing yet, hap- 
 pily, of the solitude, the desolation of a populous city to 
 a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three 
 months, for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the 
 Mahonoy. Go to a " Pension," especially if you are a 
 sucking child, like me, in the ways of the world ; and 
 the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will feel 
 it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect 
 you, and comfort you, or she will manage an acquaint- 
 ance between you and some countess or baroness, who 
 lodges with her, or at some neighbor's. I live now 
 with a most spiritual little creature ; she tells me so 
 many obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I 
 take to be the perfection of politeness in a landlady ; and 
 she admits me'to her private parties — little family " re- 
 unions" — where I play at loto with Madame Thomas, 
 and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, 
 cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; 
 and then we have a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, 
 and then a dance ; and finally, we play at little games, 
 which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such penalties. 
 French people are always so merry, whatever be the 
 amusement ; they never let conversation flag, and I 
 don't see any reason it should. One, for example, be- 
 gins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then 
 of Mrs. Alexander's fine cakes, and then the pretty girl 
 that sits behind the counter, and then of pretty girls that 
 sit anywhere ; and so one, just lets one's self run with
 
 THE FRENCH LANDLADY. 193 
 
 the association of ideas, or one makes a digression 
 from the main story, and returns or not, just as one 
 pleases. A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor ; 
 and all that nonsense which we suffer to go to waste in 
 our country, he economizes for the enjoyment of society. 
 I am settled down in the family; I am adopted ; the 
 lady gives me, to he sure, now and then " a chance," as 
 she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery (" the only one left") 
 of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some lady 
 who has had three children, and is likely for the fourth, 
 where one never draws anything ; or "a chance" of con- 
 ducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken 
 a fancy to me, who adores the innocency of American 
 manners, and hates the dissipation of the French, to the 
 play. Have you never felt the pleasure of letting your- 
 self be duped ? Have you never felt the pleasure of let- 
 ting your little bark float clown the stream when you 
 knew the port lay the other way ? 1 look upon all this 
 as a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much 
 need off; I am anxious to be cheated, and the truth is, 
 if you do not let a French landlady cheat you now and 
 then, she will drop your acquaintance. Never dispute 
 any small items overcharged in her monthly bill ; or she 
 that was smooth as the ermine will be suddenly bristled 
 as the porcupine ; and why, for the sake of limiting 
 some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you 
 turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurri- 
 cane ? Your actions should always leave a suspicion 
 you are rich, and then you are sure she will anticipate 
 every want and wish you may have with the liveliest 
 affection ; she will be all ravishment at your successes ; 
 she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappoint- 
 ments. " Helas! oh, mon Dieu!" and if you cry, she will 
 cry with you ! We love money well enough in Ame- 
 vol. i.— 17
 
 194 MANNER OF GAINING ATTENTIONS. 
 
 rica, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness, 
 and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiable- 
 ness, for those who have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy ; 
 a French woman really does love you if you have a long 
 purse ; and if you have not, (I do not say it is hypocrisy 
 neither,) she really does hate you. 
 
 A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweet- 
 ness and variety of her smile ; a quality in which French 
 women excel universally. Our Madame Gibou keeps 
 her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner 
 time, and has brought her smile under such a discipline 
 as to suit it exactly to the passion to be represented, or 
 the dignity of the person with whom she exchanges 
 looks. You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you 
 were her private secretary, or the wealth and liberality 
 of a guest better than his banker, by her smile. If it be 
 a surly knave, who counts the pennies with her, the lit- 
 tle thing is strangled in its birth, and if one who owes 
 his meals, it miscarries altogether ; and for a mere visitor 
 she lets off one worth only three francs and a half; but 
 if a favorite, who never looks into the particulars of her 
 bill and takes her lottery tickets, then you will see the 
 whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not 
 expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer 
 evening, dies away gently on her lips. Sometimes I have 
 seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in 
 the dark ; it had lit on the wrong person ; and at other 
 times I have seen one struggling long for its life ; I have 
 watched it while it was gasping its last ; she has a way 
 too of knocking a smile on the head ; I observed one at 
 dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health 
 fall down and die without a kick. 
 
 It is strange (that I may praise myself) — but I have a 
 share of attention in this little circle even greater than
 
 AFFABILITY. 195 
 
 they who are amiable. If 1 say not a word, I am witty, 
 and I am excessively agreeable by sitting still. " The 
 silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking 
 fails." My acquaintance with life and wickedness puts 
 me in immediate rapport with women, and removes 
 many of the little obstacles which suspicious etiquette 
 has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they say, never 
 blush when talking to a blind man. While a man of 
 address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain 
 Ross, hunting the Northwest Passage, I am looked upon 
 either as a ship in distress and claiming a generous sym- 
 pathy and protection, or a prize which belongs to the 
 wreckers, and am towed at once into harbor. Some- 
 times, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways, is 
 taken for affectation, and they suspect me for behaving 
 as great ambassadors, who affect simplicity to hide their 
 diplomatic rogueries ; but he cannot long pass himself 
 for a rogue, who is really honest. It is perhaps mere 
 complexion or physiognomy. I see, every day, faces 
 which remind one of those doors which have written on 
 them " No Admission," and others, "Walk in without 
 knocking." It is certain that what we call dignity, 
 however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. 
 " Dignitas et amor" — I forget what Ovid says about it. 
 And women too are more familiar and easy of access to 
 modesty of rank. Jupiter, you know, when he made 
 love to Antiope with all his rays about him, was rejected, 
 and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a 
 pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her 
 stockings in the garden, was reminded that the gardener 
 was looking: " Well ! he is only a working man," she 
 replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would 
 have been frightened to death had it been a lord. I 
 make these remarks because other travelers would be
 
 196 THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 
 
 likely to leave them out, and because it is good to know 
 how to live to advantage in all the various circumstances 
 of life. 
 
 In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is 
 my duty at the same time to warn you of some of its 
 dangers, which are as follows: Your landlady will be 
 in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to you 
 her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorable pro- 
 prietaire, and getting into an emergency, she will at 
 length ask you with many blushes and amiable scruples 
 the loan of the said money ; and her gratitude, poor 
 thing ! at the very expectation of getting it, will over- 
 come her so — she will offer you, her arms about your 
 neck, her pretty self, as security for the debt. This is 
 not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Mos- 
 cow or anywhere else) will invite you to a supper. She 
 will live in a fine parlor, chambers adjoining, and will 
 entertain you with sprightly and sensible conversation 
 and all the delicacies of the table until the stars have 
 climbed halfway up the heavens; and you will find your- 
 self tete-h-tele with the lady at midnight, the third bot- 
 tle of champagne sparkling on the board. I am glad 1 
 did not leave my virtue in America ; I should have had 
 such need of it in this country ! Indeed if it had been 
 anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine 
 lustrums ; — not fortified, like me, by other affections — if 
 it had been anybody else in the world, he would have 
 been ruined by Madame la Bardnne. Nor when you 
 have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On 
 a fine summer's morning, when all joyous and good- 
 humored, your landlady will present you the following 
 cards, with notes and explanations. " This is from the 
 belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and 
 is quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such
 
 GARDEN OF THE LUXEMBOURG. 197 
 
 cross things !— This is from one of my acquaintances, 
 Flora — oh, beautiful au possible! She paints birds and 
 other objects for the print shops, but she finds the confine- 
 ment injurious to her health. Both these young ladies 
 have signified in great confidence — I never would have 
 guessed it ! — that they would be willing to form an in- 
 timacy (a liaison) with some American gentleman, 
 whom I might recommend. Here are their cards. You 
 must call and see them, especially Flora ; she has such a 
 variety of talents besides painting; and she will give you 
 the most convincing proofs of good character and con- 
 nections. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young 
 and innocent creature, and her education, especially her 
 music, not so far advanced." 
 
 The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It con- 
 tains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this 
 classical district. It is not so gayly ornamented as the 
 Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It 
 has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north 
 end the noble edifice constructed by Marie de Medicis, 
 the palace of Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of 
 paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities ; 
 and the Observatory, a stately builing, is in symmetry 
 with this palace on the south. In the interior there are 
 groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower 
 beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen 
 better days ; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of 
 water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming 
 about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front 
 of the palace. All these objects I have in view from my 
 windows. The garden has altogether an air of philo- 
 sophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. 
 Many persons are seated about in reading or conversa- 
 tion, or strolling with books through its groves, and 
 
 17*
 
 198 VETERANS OF THE WAR. 
 
 squads of students arc now and then traversing it to 
 their college recitations. On benches overlooking the 
 parterre is seated all day long, the veteran of the war, 
 the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a com- 
 panion laid beside him on the bench ; he finds a repose 
 here for his old age amidst the recreations of childhood ; 
 and five or six hundred little men in red breeches, whose 
 profession it is to have their brains knocked out for their 
 country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every 
 morning early, to keep step and to handle their fire- 
 locks. There is one corner in which there is a fountain 
 surmounted by a nymph, and which has a gloomy and 
 tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity which makes 
 it respected by the common world, and by the sun. One 
 man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring 
 out of respect for his devotions. Since a week it is 
 frequented daily by a poet. He recites with appropriate 
 action his verses, heedless of the profane crowd. He 
 appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles often, 
 no doubt, in anticipation of their immortality. I often 
 sit an hour of an evening at my window, and look down 
 upon the stream of people which flows in and out, and 
 the sentinel who walks up and down by the gate ridi- 
 culously grim. 1 love to read the views and disposi- 
 tions of men in their faces. I witness some pleasant 
 flirtations, too, under the adjacent lime trees, and many 
 gratified and disappointed assignations. Now a lady 
 wrapped in her cloak walks up and down the most 
 secret avenue, upon the anxious watch ; the lover comes 
 at length and she hastens to his embraces, and they 
 vanish ; and next in his turn a gentleman walks sentinel, 
 until his lady comes, or impatient and disappointed, 
 goes off in a rage, or night covers him with her hoary 
 mantle. — Were I not bound by so many endearing
 
 THE GRISETTES, 199 
 
 affections of kindred and friendship to my native coun- 
 try, there is not one spot upon the earth I would prefer 
 to the sweet tranquillity of this delicious retirement. 
 
 When you visit the Luxembourg, you will see multi- 
 tudes everywhere of bouncing demoiselles, with nymph- 
 looking faces, caps without bonnets, and baskets in their 
 hands, traversing the garden from all quarters, running 
 briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling 
 slowly homewards towards evening. — These are the 
 grisettes. They are very pretty, and have the laudable 
 little custom of falling deeply in love with one for five 
 or six francs a piece. They are common enough all 
 over Paris, but in this classical region they are as the 
 leaves in Valambrosa. They are in the train of the 
 muses, and love the groves of the Academy. A grisette, 
 in this Latin Quarter, is a branch of education. If a 
 student is ill, his faithful grisette nurses him and cures 
 him ; if he is destitute, she works for him ; and if he falls 
 into irretrievable misfortune, she dies with him. Thus a 
 mutual dependence endears them to each other ; he 
 defends her with his life, and sure of his protection, she 
 feels her consequence, and struts in her new starched 
 cap the reigning monarch of the Luxembourg. 
 
 A grisette never obtrudes her acquaintance, but 
 question her and you will find her circumstantially 
 communicative. Such information as she possesses, and 
 a great deal more, she will retail to you with a naivete 
 and simplicity, you would swear she was brought up 
 amongst your innocent lambs and turtle doves of the 
 Shamoken. She is the most ingenious imitation of an 
 innocent woman that is in the world ; and never was 
 language employed more happily for the concealment 
 of thought (I ask pardon of Prince Talleyrand) than in 
 the mouth of a grisette. The devil is called the father
 
 -'00 GRISETTES — THEIR ARTIFICES. 
 
 of lies (I ask pardon again of the Prince), but there is 
 not one of these little imps but can outdo her papa in 
 this particular. When sent with goods from shop-keep- 
 ers to their customers — the common practice of this 
 place — she will lie and wrestle for her patron, and per- 
 jure herself like a Greek ; when accused, she will listen 
 to reproaches, insults, even abuse, as long as there is 
 any point of defence, with the resignation of Saint 
 Michael; and there is no trick of the stage, no artifice 
 of rhetoric recommended by Cicero that she leaves out 
 in her pleadings; if at last overcome — why, she sur- 
 renders. She remains awhile mute, and then sets her- 
 self to look sorry with all her might ; at last she bursts 
 into tears, with sobs and sighs, until she disarms yon. 
 " Well, let me see what you have got." She will now 
 wipe away gracefully the briny drops with the corner 
 of her apron; brighten up again, show you her goods 
 again, and cheat you once more by way of reparation 
 for her former rogueries. 
 
 There is a modiste, lodged in the adjoining room, of 
 New Orleans, who entertains about twenty of these 
 every morning at her levee. I make sometimes one of 
 the group, and from this opportunity and from the lady's 
 information, I am thus learned about grisettes. 
 
 Let us moralize a little on this subject. Paris is six 
 times more populous than Philadelphia, and, for the 
 same reason that the black sheep eat less than the white 
 ones, we are six times less vicious than the Parisians. 
 Again, circumstances make the same things less criminal 
 at one time, and in one country, than another. We are 
 not censorious of the Turk who has three wives ; we 
 say it is the religion of his country; when we would dis- 
 own any one of our own citizens for half that number; 
 nor do we blame very heartily Solomon for his excess
 
 CONJUGAL FIDELITY. 201 
 
 of concubines, for we say it was the fashion of the times ; 
 nor even Adam that his daughters married with their 
 brothers ; we say it was a case of necessity. In Philadel- 
 phia, every woman has before her the prospect of a mar- 
 riage, and she would be not only vicious, but very im- 
 prudent to forfeit her advantages ; necessity will not 
 stand up in her defence. In Paris, there are twenty 
 thousand, at least, of the sex, who have not the faintest 
 hope or opportunity of marriage ; and if they, some- 
 times, make the next good bargain they can, and vindi- 
 cate the rights of nature over imperious circumstances, 
 upon what propriety is their offence to be weighed in 
 our American scale of religion and morals ? It is to be 
 remarked, too, that the debasement of mind, produced 
 by any vice, is influenced materially by the degree of 
 odium and censure attached to it by the public opinion. 
 Concubinage, so intolerable in our communities in both 
 sexes, is here scarce a subject of remark in either. It 
 prejudices no reputation ; it does not throw a woman 
 out of society ; she, therefore, cultivates agreeable talents, 
 and preserves many of the excellent qualities of a ma- 
 tron. In many instances, indeed, a Parisian woman is 
 less corrupted, and much less exposed to corruption by 
 being a mistress, than being a wife. The ancient Athe- 
 nian society had partly the same character; that pro- 
 duced the Aspasias, the Phrynes and Sapphos, and this 
 the Ninon de l'Enclos. 
 
 If you will but bear in mind that I am not defending 
 the state of Paris society, but showing only how far the 
 faults of individuals, who do not create but are subject 
 to its laws, may be extenuated, I will venture to say 
 also, that the gallantries of married women are much 
 less pernicious, and much less wicked in Paris, than they 
 would be in our American cities. You make your own
 
 '202 POLICY OF SENDING YOUTH TO PARIS. 
 
 marriages, which are generally well enough assorted; 
 and your husbands, for several obvious reasons, are 
 rather faithful; but in Paris, where eighteen is tied to 
 fifty, (the common condition,) and fifty too, worn out 
 with libertinism and debauch, and where the husband 
 keeps his mistress under the very nose of his wife, are 
 you allowed injustice to exact the same conjugal faith 
 from wives, or measure an act of infidelity, which pro- 
 duces no scandal or ruin of families, by the same stand- 
 ard of criminality as in our country? I do not mean to 
 say, by all this, that ladies faithful to their lords are not 
 very common in this city ; they are certainly not the less 
 entitled to praise for being honest in a place where pub- 
 lic opinion does not deter them from being the contrary. 
 There are some French husbands so amiable, that even 
 their wives cannot help loving them. 
 
 It is important for one's mamma to know whether it 
 is a good or bad fashion, that so common now-a-days, of 
 sending a young gentleman, just stepping from youth 
 into manhood, to Europe, especially to Paris. I will 
 venture some remarks, for your information, though I 
 have no very settled opinion on the subject. I know 
 several Americans here, some engaged in medical and 
 scientific schools, and some in painting and other arts, 
 who appear to me to be exceedingly diligent, and to 
 make as profitable a use of their time, as they would 
 anywhere else. I know some who mix pleasure with 
 business, and a little folly with their wisdom; and some 
 "(you will please put me iti this class) who do not taste 
 dissipation with their " extremest lips." But I know 
 some also, who, under pretext of law and medicines, 
 study mischief only, and return home worse, if possible, 
 than when they came out. I know one now, who, 
 having too much health, overruns his revenues occa-
 
 AMERICANS IN PARIS. 203 
 
 sionally, and draws upon home for a doctor's and 
 apothecary's bill; and another poor devil, who has 
 gone to Mount Piete with his last trinket. There came 
 one from the Mississippi lately, who, being very young, 
 and rich and unmarried, set up a kind of seraglio, and 
 died of love, yesterday ; they are burying him to-day, at 
 Pere la Chaise. I know one, also, who has lived here 
 nine years, who reads Voltaire, keeps a French cook, 
 and his principles are as French as his stomach ; and 
 another, who entertains the French noblesse with fetes 
 and soirees, to the tune of a hundred thousand per an- 
 num — f r om his stable thirty-six horses, full bred, better 
 than many of his majesty's subjects, come prancing 
 out on days of jubilee upon the Boulevards. 
 
 If a young man's morals should get out of order at 
 home, Paris is not exactly the place to which I would send 
 him to be cured. It is true, if drunkenness be the com 
 plaint, it is not a vice of the place ; and, if curable at all, 
 which I do not believe, Paris, from its common use of 
 light wines, and variety of amusements, is perhaps the 
 best place to make the attempt. It is certainly not the 
 most dangerous place of falling into this vice. If he be 
 fond of gambling, here it is a genteel accomplishment, 
 and brought out under the patronage of the government. 
 And to keep a mistress is not only not disgraceful in 
 French society, but is always mentioned to one's credit. 
 It is a part of a gentleman's equipage, and adds to his 
 gentility, for it implies that he possesses that most 
 considerable merit, that a gentleman can aspire to in 
 this country, and most others — money. " 11 a la plus 
 jolie maitresse cle Paris/" you cannot say anything 
 more complimentary, if it were of the prime minister; 
 and it would scarce be an injurious imputation if said of 
 one's father confessor. If you send, then, your son to
 
 204 PARISIAN MORALS. 
 
 Paris, am I uncharitable in surmising that he may, 
 sometimes, use the privilege. of the place ? It is, indeed, 
 a question for philosophy to determine, (and not for me,) 
 which of the two may be the less injurious to his health 
 and morals, the gross intercourse he is exposed to in 
 some other towns, or the more refined gallantries of the 
 French capital. If you can preserve him, by religious 
 and other influences from either, as well as from the 
 dangers of an ascetic and solitary abstinence — for soli- 
 tude has its vices as well as dissipation — so much the 
 better. He will be a better husband, a better citizen, 
 and a better man. But let me tell you that to educate 
 a young man of fortune and leisure to live through a 
 youth of honesty, has become excessively difficult even 
 in any country ; and to expect that, with money and 
 address, he will live entirely honest in Paris, where 
 women of a good quality are thrown in his face — 
 women of art, of beauty, and refined education — it is to 
 attribute virtues to human nature she is no way enti- 
 tled to. The Greeks used to indulge their sons, waiting 
 a fit marriage, with mistresses of "decent and respecta- 
 ble character;" and entertained them, even, sometimes, 
 under the paternal roof; this they thought necessary to 
 the preservation of their morals and health. If you 
 love the Greeks, then, send your son over by the next 
 packet. He may have some trouble with his conscience, 
 perhaps, the first month or two, but, by degrees, he 
 will become reconciled, and get along well enough. If 
 he comes over, with some refinement of taste, and moral 
 inclinations and habits, or only on a transient visit, or 
 without French, he will be secure from all the dangers 
 (except, perhaps, gambling) to which I have alluded ; 
 he will live only in American society, which is quite as 
 good and pure here as at home ; he will have no ac-
 
 VICES OF THE CAPITAL. 205 
 
 quaintance with the natives, but of that class in which a 
 gentleman's morals run less risk of temptation than even 
 from the vulgar intercourse of American towns. All 
 that part of a city like Paris, that comes into relation 
 with strangers, and lives by deceiving and plundering 
 them, is of course gross and corrupt ; and as the best 
 things are the worst when spoilt, the women are de- 
 testable ; even when there is youth or beauty, its natural 
 feelings are perverted and worn out by use ; it is flat 
 beer, stale without being ripe. I do not know any 
 community in which the honesty of a gentleman is so 
 safe from contamination. 
 
 It is certainly of much value in the life of an Ame- 
 rican gentleman to visit these old countries; if it were 
 only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is 
 continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate 
 without objects of comparison ; " nimium se ass timet 
 necesse est, qui se nemini compared." He will always 
 think himself wise, who sees nobody wiser; and to 
 know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, 
 which one cannot know well without residing there, is 
 certainly the complement of a good education. The 
 American society at Paris, taken altogether, is of a good 
 composition. It consists of several hundred persons, of 
 families of fortune, and young men of liberal instruc- 
 tion. Here are lords of cotton from Carolina, and of 
 sugar-cane from the Mississippi, millionaires from all 
 the Canadas, and pursers from all the navies ; and their 
 social qualities, from a sense of mutual dependence or 
 partnership in absence, or some such causes, are more 
 active abroad than at home. The benevolent affections 
 act in a contrary way from gravitation; they increase as 
 the square of the distance from the centre. The plain 
 fact is, that Americans at Paris are hospitable in a very 
 vol. i. — 18
 
 206 AMERICAN SOCIETY IN PARIS. 
 
 high degree; ihey have no fear of being dogged with 
 company, and have leisure here which they have no- 
 where else, to be amiable; the new comer, too, is more 
 tender and thankful, and has a higher relish of hospita- 
 lity and kindness; and the general example of the place 
 lias its effect on their animal spirits. They form a little 
 republic apart, and when a stranger arrives, he finds 
 himself at home ; he finds himself also under the cen- 
 sorial inspection of a public opinion, a salutary restraint 
 not always the luck of those who travel into foreign 
 countries. One thing only is to be blamed. It becomes 
 every day more the fashion for the Mite of our cities to 
 settle themselves here permanently. We cannot but 
 deplore this exportation of the precious metals, since 
 our country is drained of what the supply is not too 
 abundant. They who have resided here a few years, 
 having fortune and leisure, do not choose, as I perceive, 
 to reside anywhere else. 
 
 It is now midnight and more. I have said so much 
 in this letter about grisettes, that I shall have a night- 
 mare of them before morning. This " Latin Quarter" 
 is one of the most instructing volumes of Paris, but all 1 
 can do is just open you here and there some of its pages 
 and show you the pictures — pictures in this country, 
 recollect, are more cl decouvert than in America. Please 
 make the allowance. Good night.
 
 THE OBSERVATORY. 207 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 The Observatory — The astronomers — Val de Grace — Anne of Austria 
 — Hospice des Enfans Trouves — Rows of cradles - Sisters of 
 Charity — Vincent de Paul — Maisons d'Accouchement — Place St. 
 Jacques — The Catacombs — Skull of Ninon de 1'Enclos — The poet 
 Gilbert — Julian's Bath — Hotel de Cluny — Ancient furniture — 
 Francis the First's bed — Charlotte Corday — Danton — Marat — 
 Robespierre — Rue des Postes — Convents of former times — Fau- 
 bourg St. Marceau. 
 
 Paris, Oct. 25th. 
 I rose this morning and refreshed myself from the 
 repose of the night, by running boyishly up the broad 
 and elegant walk which leads to the south end of the 
 garden, to the Observatory ; the place where they make 
 almanacks ; I went and saw great piles of astronomical 
 books and instruments, an anemometer to measure the 
 winds, and another affair baptized also in Greek, to 
 measure the rain ; also a thing in the cellar, which in 
 this Latin Quarter, they call an " acoustic phenomenon" 
 By this you can talk aloud all day to any individual 
 standing in a particular place, and not another of the 
 company will be any the wiser for it. There are a 
 number of men here whom they call Astronomers, who, 
 while we are asleep, look after the stars, and observe 
 what is going on in the moon ; and who go to bed with 
 Venus and the heavenly bodies towards morning. I 
 must tell you what 1 saw in coming out. I saw a 
 woman, and a very decent woman too, astride of the 
 Meridian. She had one foot in East, and the other all
 
 208 VAL DE GRACE. 
 
 the way in West longitude. This was her way of 
 straddling a pole. 
 
 There was an old woman here in a little stall, upon a 
 broad and paved place in front of the Observatory, who 
 sells tobacco and butter, belly-guts and epic poems, who 
 showed me the very stone upon which Marshal Ney 
 stood to be shot. " There stood the wretches that shot 
 him. Yes, sir, I saw him murdered, and I never wish to 
 see the like again." 
 
 Just east I visited another remarkable building, which 
 young girls read about in their romances, called Val de 
 Grace. Anne of Austria had been married twenty-two 
 years, without having, as they say in London, any hair 
 to her crown, and she did not know what to do about 
 it. She first prayed to the Lord as Rachel had done in 
 a similar torment, and the Lord was deaf unto her pray- 
 ers. She then applied to certain Benedictine monks of 
 St. Jacques. She promised to build them a temple, and 
 they interceded for her, and she had a fine son ; you 
 have perhaps heard of Louis XIV. Now this church 
 which she built, was Val de Grace. If you wish to 
 see the prettiest fresco paintings of all Paris, you must 
 go in here and look up at the dome ; the chapels, too, 
 are full of virgins and musty little angels. She came 
 here in 1624, and laid the corner stone with, her own 
 little hands— Anne of Austria did. And she bestowed 
 some special privileges upon the monastery ; amongst 
 others, the right of burying in this church the hearts 
 of all the defunct princesses, beginning with herself; 
 and at the Revolution " one counted even to twenty-six 
 royal hearts." The convent of Val de Grace is now 
 turned into a military hospital, and greasy soldiers are 
 stabled where once lived and breathed the pretty nuns 
 you read of in your novels.
 
 FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 209 
 
 Just in the neighborhood is the Hospice des Enfans 
 Trouvh, to which I paid a hasty visit. If a child takes 
 it into its head to be born out of lawful wedlock, which 
 now and then occurs, it is carried to this hospital for 
 nourishment and education. The average number ad- 
 mitted here, is 6000 annually ; 161 per day. They are 
 received day and night, and no questions asked. All you 
 have to do is, place the little human being in a box com 
 municating with an apartment in the interior, which on 
 ringing a bell, is taken in, and gets on afterwards well 
 enough, often better than we who think ourselves legiti- 
 mate. It sucks no diseases from its mother's milk; and 
 from its father's example no vices ; and it has a good 
 many virtues incident to its condition. It has amongst 
 these a great reverence for old age, not knowing but 
 that every old gentleman it meets might be a little its 
 papa. 
 
 On entering this hospital you will see two long rows 
 of cradles running over with babies, and a group of sis- 
 ters in gowns of black serge, making and mending up 
 the baby wardrobe, or extending to the little destitute 
 creatures the offices of maternity ; and indeed they take 
 such care of them as almost to discourage poor peo- 
 ple from having legitimate children altogether. I have 
 no doubt that many an excellent mother in passing by 
 repents sincerely that her poor children are not misbe- 
 gotten; and that the little rogues too themselves, as they 
 toddle along outside in their sabots, to their day's work, 
 without their breakfast, wish to the Lord such, things 
 had never been born as honest mammies to forestall their 
 advantages. But what praise can be equal to the merits 
 of these Sisters of Charity? You see them everywhere 
 that suffering humanity needs their assistance ; their de- 
 votion has no parallel in the history of the world. They 
 
 18*
 
 210 VINCENT DE PAUL. 
 
 are very often, too, of rich and distinguished families, 
 women who leave all enjoyments of gay society, to pur- 
 sue these humble and laborious duties, to practice in these 
 silent walls, prudence, patience, fortitude, and all those 
 domestic virtues and peaceful moralities, which, in this 
 naughty world of ours, obtain neither admiration nor 
 distinction. Think only of relinquishing fashion, and 
 rank, and pleasure to be granny to an almshouse! 
 
 This hospital was founded by one of the most re- 
 spectable saints of all Paris, Vincent de Paul. His statue 
 is placed in the vestibule. It would do your heart good 
 to see the babies go down on their bits of knees every 
 evening and bless the memory of this Saint. A cradle 
 used to be hung up as a sign to draw customers here, 
 but the reputation of the house is now made, and it is 
 taken down. Formerly the ringing of a bell, too, or the 
 wailings of the infant, the mother giving it a pinch, was 
 enough to announce a new comer, but lately so many 
 dead children have been put in the box to avoid the 
 expense of burying them, that they have been obliged to 
 stop up the hole. I am sorry for this ; it was so con- 
 venient. You just put in a baby as you put in a letter in 
 the post-office; now you are obliged to carry it into a 
 room inside, where the names, dress, the words and 
 behavior of those who bring it, as also its death, are 
 entered in a register ; this register is kept a profound 
 secret; never revealed to any one, unless one pays twenty 
 francs. 
 
 I visited the school-rooms, where those of proper age 
 are taught to read and write. They seem very merry 
 and happy, and, having no communication with the 
 world, are unconscious of any inferiority of birth; they 
 think we all come the same way. When very young 
 or sickly, they are put out to nurse through the country,
 
 MAISONS d'aCCOUCHEMENT. 211 
 
 and at twelve are apprenticed to a trade. The sisters 
 will point you out a mother who has placed her infant 
 here and got herself employed as child's nurse to the 
 hospital to give it nourishment and care. I forgot to 
 mention that mothers are not allowed to see their babies, 
 or receive their bodies if they die; they are reserved for 
 the improvement of anatomical science. 
 
 A useful appendage to this establishment are the 
 numerous Maisons d? Accouchement, distributed every- 
 where over the city, in which persons find accommoda- 
 tions, as secretly as they please, and at all prices to suit 
 their circumstances. The evils of all these establish- 
 ments are manifest ; the good is, the prevention of in- 
 fanticide, often of suicide, and of the perjuries innume- 
 rable, and impositions practised in some other countries. 
 I doubt whether a city like Paris could safely adopt any 
 other system. The tables of the last year's birth stand 
 thus : seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine 
 legitimate; nine thousand seven hundred and Iwenty- 
 one illegitimate. So you see that every second man you 
 meet in Paris wants but a trifle of being no bastard. 
 Expense above a million and a half of francs. 
 
 Here is the Place St. Jacques; the place of public 
 execution. It is the present station of the Guillotine, 
 which has already made several spots of the city classi- 
 cal. And here is appropriately the Barriere d'Enfer. 
 These barriers are found at all the great issues from 
 the city through the walls. They are amongst the 
 curiosities of Paris; often beautiful with sculpture, and 
 other ornaments. 
 
 Whilst I was surveying this district, in my usual 
 solitary way, I met two gentlemen and a lady, ac- 
 quaintances, who were descending into the Catacombs, 
 whose opening is just here ; and I went down with
 
 212 THE CATACOMBS. NINON DE l'eNCLOS. 
 
 them. This nether world bears upon its vaults three 
 fourths of the Quarter St. Germain, with its superin- 
 cumbent mass of churches and palaces. The light of 
 Heaven is shut out, and so deep a silence reigns in its 
 recesses, that one hears his own footsteps walking after 
 him, and is so vast that several visitors, 'straying away 
 a i'ew years ago, have not yet returned. The bones 
 of fifty generations are emptied here from ancient grave- 
 yards of Paris, now only known to history. What 
 a hideous deformity of skulls ! After entering half 
 a mile we saw various constructions, all made out of 
 these remnants of mortality ; sepulchral monuments, 
 an entire church, with its pulpit, confessional, altars, 
 tombs, and coffins; and the victims of several Revolu- 
 tionary massacres are laid out here chronologically. 
 How unjacobinical they look ! 
 
 On entering you are confronted with the following 
 inscription : " Jirrete, c'e.st ici V empire de la Mort /" 
 and various other inscriptions are put up in the dead 
 languages, and names often written upon skulls, to 
 designate their owners. " Fix your eyes here," said 
 our lady; "this is the skull of Ninon de l'Euclos," 
 with verses. 
 
 " L'indulgente et sage Nature 
 
 A forme 1'ame de Ninon 
 De la volupte d'Epicure, 
 
 Et de la vertu de Canton." 
 
 And this is her skull ! Every one knows her history, 
 but I will tell a little of it over again. I will give you 
 a list of her court. Moliere, Corneille, Scarron, St. 
 Evermond, Chapelle, Desmarets, Mignard, Chateauneuf, 
 Chaulieu, Conde, Vendome, Villeroi, Villars, D'Estrees, 
 La Rochefoucauld, Choiseuil, Sevigne and Fontenelle. 
 She was honored with the confidence of Madame Scar-
 
 THE POET GILBERT. 213 
 
 ron, and the homage, through her ambassadors, of the 
 Queen of Sweden. She made conquests at sixty, one 
 at seventy,, and died at ninety. Her own son, the Che- 
 valier de Villiers, fell in love with her at fifty, and fell 
 upon his sword, when she revealed to him the se- 
 cret of his birth. The Chevalier de Gourville confided 
 to her twenty thousand crowns, when driven to exile, 
 and a like sum to the Grand Penitencier; the priest 
 denied the deposit, and the courtezan restored it, un- 
 asked. I visited, a month ago, her chateau, and saw 
 the rooms in which she used to give her famous supper 
 "£ lous les Despreaux, et tons les JRacines." And 
 this is her skull ! While my doctor companions were 
 turning it about, and explaining the bumps— how big 
 was her ideality, how developed her amativeness, I 
 turned her about in my mind, until I had turned her into 
 shapes again — into that incomparable beauty and grace, 
 which no rival was able to equal, and which sensuality 
 itself was not able to degrade. I hung back the lips 
 upon those grinning teeth, I gave her her smile again, 
 her wit, and her eloquence. I assisted at her little court 
 of Cyprus, in the Rue de Tournelle, where philosophers 
 came to gather wisdom, and courtiers grace from her 
 conversation ; I assisted at her toilet, and witnessed the 
 hopes, the jealousies, the agonies, and ecstacies of her 
 lovers. And so we took leave of the exquisite Ninon's 
 skull — if it was hers. 
 
 The poet Gilbert, who died of want, has here an 
 apartment to himself, which he had not above ground. 
 It is inscribed with his own mournful epitaph : 
 
 " Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, 
 J'apparus un jour, et je meurs. 
 Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, oh lentement j'arrive, 
 Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs !" 
 
 I could not help contradicting him for the life of me.
 
 214 JULIAN BATHS. 
 
 In the very interior of the cavern are collections of 
 water which have classical names. Herer is the Styx 
 jnst under the Ecole Medecine, and the river Lethe 
 flows hard hy the Institute. We came at length to the 
 cabinet of skulls, arranged upon shelves, some for phre- 
 nology, and some for pathology, exhibiting in classes 
 the several diseases; which our doctors explained with 
 nice circumstantiality, to their Sibyl conductor; rows 
 of toes, of fingers, and jaws, and legs which used 
 to cut pigeon-wings, and pirouettes, alas ! how grace- 
 fully. In the mean time I saw a couple of ghosts, (I 
 supposed them to be Cuvier, and Dr. Gall,) skulking 
 away as soon as they caught a glimpse of our tapers, 
 and -I saw a great many other things, not interesting to 
 people above ground. We began now to be apprehen- 
 sive of taking cold, and being sent hither to enrich these 
 cabinets; and so we deposited at the door our golden 
 branch, and having mounted a strait stairway one hun- 
 dred feet were purified in open air. 
 
 The two doctors now left me their Eurydice, and 
 she and I, being inspired alike with the spirit of sight- 
 seeing, went a few hundred yards westward and saw 
 Julian's Baths. Though he is said to have been 
 little addicted to bathing, here are his baths, the only 
 relic of his sojourn in Paris. This old building is an 
 oblong with very thick walls, which are crumbling to 
 decay. One of them is entirely dilapidated. The vaults, 
 rising forty-two feet above the soil, and furnaces under 
 ground, and parts of the bathing-rooms, are exposed to 
 view, in all the naked majesty of a ruin ; a ruin, too, of 
 fifteen centuries. This is but a single hall of an im- 
 mense palace — the Palais des Thermes — which once 
 covered the present site of the University. It was the 
 scene of licentious revelings and crime, "latebra scele-
 
 ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 215 
 
 rum, Venerisque accommoda furtis," afterwards of 
 the theological disputes of the Sorborme, and now of the 
 quiet lectures of the University; and Virgin Maries are 
 now made out of the old Venuses. I am a goose of 
 an antiquary, all I could see was Mrs. Julien jumping 
 into her bath and coming dribbling out again ; but my 
 companion was very different. She had a taste for 
 putting her nose in every musty corner, and cracking 
 off pieces of a bath, and the Roman mortar, of which 
 posterity has lost the secret, to put in her cabinet. She 
 has overrun all Europe, and has now got, she says, near 
 a ton of antiquities. She has a stone from Kenil- 
 worth, and a birch from Virgil's tomb, plenty of mo- 
 saics from the Coliseum, and of « auld nick-nackets," 
 from Stirling castle. She has promised me a leaf from 
 Tasso's lemon tree, and one from Rousseau's rose bush, 
 also a twig of William Tell's tree of liberty, and Shaks- 
 peare's mulberry, and a little chip of Doctor John- 
 son's cedar at Streatham. And nearly all our traveling 
 Yankee ladies are bringing over a similar collection ; 
 after a while the commonest thing in the world will be 
 a curiosity. 
 
 Close in this neighborhood is the Hotel de Cluny, to 
 which we paid also a visit — I having a ticket from Mr. 
 Sommerand, the proprietor. In this hotel used to lodge 
 Roman generals and emperors, and the first French 
 kings. A suit of seven or eight rooms are crammed 
 with furniture, the remains of the last age ; some of it 
 magnificently decayed; commodes, chests, boxes, se- 
 cond-hand tootn-brushes, pots de chambre as good as 
 new, and other national relics. Nothing cotemporary 
 enters here; there was nothing, but the lady who ac- 
 companied me, under a hundred years old. First, we
 
 216 BED OF FRANCIS FIRST. 
 
 entered the dining-room, and saw a knight in full armor 
 placed by a table ; and the ghost of a mahogany side- 
 board at the opposite end — without date, and there is no 
 knowing whether it was made before or since the flood — 
 with its knives and spoons and earthenware tea-cups of 
 the same antiquity ; next a bed-chamber, hung in gilt 
 leather — whose, do you think? Why Francis the First's, 
 with all the implements thereunto belonging. An entire 
 suit of steel armor, cap-a-pie, reposes upon the bed, with 
 a vizor of the knight's, which had gained victories in 
 jousts and tournaments; also an old coat out at the el- 
 bows, worn last, 1 presume, by his footman. Every little 
 rag of his is preserved here. Here, too, are girdles and 
 bracelets, caskets, and other valuables", and a necklace 
 with its pedigree labeled on a bit of parchment ; the Belle 
 Feroniere's, I suppose. Here is the very glass he looked 
 into, with a Venus holding a garland in front, and a cross 
 and altar behind, by way of symmetry; and here are the 
 very spurs (I held them in my hand) which he wore at 
 Pavia ; finally, the very bed, the very sheets his Majesty 
 slept in. This bed was hawked about all Paris in the 
 Revolution — Mrs. Griggou had twins on it— at last it 
 was sold at auction in the public streets, a dix francs 
 settlement, and was knocked down to Monsieur Som- 
 merand— bed, comfortable, and the little pillow about as 
 big as a sausage. I was much gratified with this collec- 
 tion, which is certainly unique in the world ; and you 
 are not hurried through by a Cicerone, but by the com- 
 plaisance of M. Sommerand, you can rummage and ran- 
 sack things at your leisure. In the other rooms are 
 vases and caskets, and precious cabinets, a spinette of 
 Marie de Medicis, and other furniture of noble dames; 
 one gets tired looking at their trinkets ; and in other
 
 CttARLOTfE CORDAY. 217 
 
 iroDms ate castings, and inlayings, and carvings, and so 
 forth. 
 
 I now took madam under my arm, and descending 
 through one of the thousand and eighty streets of Paris 
 into the Rue de VEcole Medecine, deposited her at her 
 home. You should never pass into this street without 
 stopping awhile to contemplate a very memorable dwell- 
 ing in it— that in which Charlotte Corday assassinated 
 Marat. One owes to this generous maid and disinterested 
 martyr to humanity, a tribute in approaching its thresh- 
 old. The house is also otherwise remarkable. Danton 
 used to call here of a morning from the bottom of the 
 stairs upon Marat, and then they went arm in arm to 
 the Convention ; and Collet d'Herbois, the actor — what 
 memorable names ! and Chabot the Capuchin, Legendre 
 the butcher, Chaumette the Atheist, and St. Just and 
 Robespierre — used to hold here their nightly councils. It 
 would puz2le Beelzebub to get up such another club. 
 Under the outer doorway are remaining the letters 
 * * or D * *, a part of the inscription effaced, " Li- 
 berty, Indivisibility, or Death !" 
 
 I now dined and traversed leisurely the Place du 
 Panthion homewards, passing through the Rue de V Es- 
 trapade into the Rue des Posies, once famous for its 
 convents. This is to a pious man, and one who lives a 
 little back into the past, a holy region ; it is consecrated 
 by religious recollections beyond all the other spots of 
 Paris. Here, in this single " Rue des Posies," was the 
 old " Convent des Dames de St. Jlugustin"—" des 
 Dames St. Thomas,"— "des Dames Ursulines,"—" des 
 Dames de la Visitation!"— "de V Adoration Perpe- 
 tuelle," — « du St. Sacrament." — Alas! how many 
 pretty women, born to fulfil a better destiny, mewed up 
 vol. I. — 19
 
 218 CONVENTS. 
 
 in perpetual youth, within those dismal cloisters ! Here, 
 too, were the convents of the " Filles de /' Immaculie 
 Conception"— ■" de la St. Providence" and finally, 
 « les Filles de Bonne VolontL" It is the very region 
 of repentant lovers, of heart-sick maids, and of all the 
 friars and holy nuns of the romances. Towards the 
 close of a summer's evening, one's fancy sees nothing 
 here but visions and spectres. You will descend, in spite 
 of your reason, with Madam Radcliff, into the subterra- 
 nean chambers of the convent, and into the solitary 
 prisons, where you will see poor Ellena and her iron 
 table, her dead lantern, her black bread, her cruche of 
 water, and her crucifix; and you will see the wretch 
 Schedoni bare the bosom of the sleeping maid, and hang- 
 ing over the dagger. It is his own miniature ! — his own 
 daughter ! And then you will walk through the long 
 row of silent monks, and smoky tapers in the funeral of 
 a broken-hearted sister, the sullen bell of the chapel 
 giving news that a soul has fled. 
 
 The evening was still and solemn; and the sun just 
 descending on your side of the globe ; and lured by the 
 novelty of the place, I traveled slowly onwards through 
 a narrow lane to the Faubourg St. Marceau. This 
 street is different from all that I had seen in Paris ; it is 
 perhaps different from anything that is to be seen upon 
 the earth. The houses are so immensely high that not 
 a ray even in the brightest mid-day reaches the pave- 
 ment, which is covered with a slimy mud. The dark- 
 ened and grated windows give to the houses the look 
 of so many prisons. A chilling damp, and horrid gloom 
 invest you around ; you feel stifled for want of air. 
 Now and then the whine of a dog, or the wailing of a 
 beggar, interrupts the silence, and sometimes a Sister of
 
 GLOOMY STREET. 219 
 
 Charity, wrapped in her hood and mantle, passes quick 
 from one house to another. I went out willingly of this 
 street, growing more horrible by the coming night, into 
 the purer atmosphere of the Seine. And thus ended 
 my adventure for the day. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
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