REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
W. M. THACKERAY. 
 
 THE 
 NEW SKETCH BOOK 
 
 BEING ESSAYS NOW FIRST COLLECTED FROM 
 "THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW," 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 
 
 ROBERT S. GARNETT, 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE AUTHORS CRITICISED. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ALSTON RIVERS, Ltd., ARUNDEL STREET, W.C. 
 
 1906. 
 
REESE 
 
 BRADBUItV, AGNKW, & CO. Ll>., PRrNTIRS, 
 LONDON AND TONBRIUaB* 
 
 [All rights reserved.} 
 
 < 
 
CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 / VI. 
 
 I.X. 
 X. 
 XI. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION VU 
 
 THE RHINE, BY VICTOR HUGO I 
 
 THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND 38 
 
 CELEBRATED CRIMES, BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS . . 56 
 
 LETTERS FROM PARIS, BY CHARLES GUT2KOW . . 89 
 
 GEORGE HERWEGH's POEMS . . . . . . lOQ 
 
 BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF PARIS . . . I30 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY AND CHARACTER ON THE FRENCH 
 
 STAGE 139 
 
 SUE's MYSTERIES OF PARIS 179 
 
 FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND .... 203 
 
 NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS 230 
 
 ANGLETERRE 257 
 
 APPENDIX 271 
 
 Note. — Prefixed to the Appendix will be found the full titles of the 
 various works criticised in the Essays. 
 
 
 ■11 
 
 158541 
 
^ OF THE ' 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Some time ago I took up a volume of the Quarterly Review 
 for 1836, containing a long notice of novels by Victor Hugo, 
 Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, George Sand and others. The 
 reviewer had received "Le Dernier jour d' un Condamnd" by 
 Hugo. He finds that there are many blank leaves and open 
 spaces in the volume, and states that he would have liked it 
 better if the printer's ink had not spoiled any of the pages. 
 He considers " Notre Dame de Paris " to resemble Sir Walter 
 Scott's works, as Goose Gibbie in his helmet and buff coat 
 might resemble the noble chivalry of Lord Evandale. He 
 prefers Balzac's " CEuvres de Jeunesse " for the most part to 
 the " Com^die Humaine ; " " La Peau de Chagrin " being only 
 worth mentioning for its evidence of the general demoralization 
 of the society described. He stigmatizes another novel as 
 " vulgar stuff ; " " Le Pere Goriot " as a clumsy tissue of odious 
 exaggeration, and the " CEuvres Philosophiques " as nothing 
 else but demoralizing maxims impersonated in licentious exam- 
 ples, but fortunately so stupid and so obscure that even the 
 curiosity of vice must be blunted at their aspect. With George 
 Sand he deals as follows : — 
 
 " We now arrive at an author from a variety of circumstances the 
 most remarkable of all. Not less clever than Balzac, not less wicked 
 than Raymond, George Sand by the union of impassioned rhetoric and 
 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sensual ideas carries to its most pernicious excess this species of 
 demoralizing novel. But how much is our surprise and disgust in- 
 creased, when we find that George Sand is a pseudonym, and that 
 these lascivious tales — disgusting enough if written by a man, however 
 young or however vicious — are really the production of a woman — a 
 lady — a lady if not of rank, at least of title, of Madame la Baronne du 
 Devant. . . . The choice of the pseudonym itself is not unimpor- 
 tant, and deserves a passing observation. George Sand.' A German 
 name can hardly have been chosen at random by a French writer. In 
 honour, we believe, or at least in remembrance, of Sand, that young 
 German fanatic who in the year 1819 astounded the world with that 
 practical scene of enthusiastic and bloody romance — the assassination 
 of Kotzebue. We have had, and we still have, some conscientious 
 doubts whether we should mention this author at all, but we have been 
 determined to do so by having found his works in our London circu- 
 lating libraries. Whether we shall have sufficient influence to put them 
 into the Index Expurgatoritis we know not ; but at least we may be per- 
 mitted to mention in Albemarle Street what is sold and circulated in 
 Piccadilly and Bond Street." 
 
 It seemed to me that such a virulent attack as this upon 
 writers of the fame and reputation of Hugo, Dumas, Balzac 
 and George Sand would scarcely have remained unchallenged 
 in this country, even in 1836. I was curious to know what was 
 answered on their behalf, and I looked into some other reviews. 
 Naturally I did not omit the Foreign Quarterly, and in it I 
 found an article in which the cudgels were gallantly and effec- 
 tively taken up on behalf of George Sand. From the Foreign 
 Quarterly I passed on to Thackeray's Paris Sketch Book, in 
 which I remembered to have read an essay entitled " Madame 
 Sand and the New Apocalypse." Having done so I turned to 
 a review in the Foreign Quarterly of Sue's novel " Mathilde," 
 which I had not read, but in which a few words about George 
 Sand had caught my eye. I was struck by the resemblance of 
 the observations upon her in this review to those in the Sketch 
 Book. I saw that the latter was published in 1840, and that 
 the author stated in his preface that " about half of the sketches 
 in these volumes have already appeared in print in various 
 periodical works." Acting on the hint which seemed to be 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thus given, and on what had struck me in connection with 
 George Sand, I took up another volume of the Foreign 
 Quarterly. I soon came across an important article entitled 
 " English History and Character on the French Stage," con- 
 cerning the authorship of which I could have little hesitation. 
 I was familiar with Thackeray's criticisms in the Paris Sketch 
 Book of a couple of Dumas' plays — " Kean " and " Don Juan 
 de Marana," and I could not doubt that I had before me an 
 essay, by the same hand, upon plays of Hugo, Souli^, Dumas, 
 Balzac and others. What struck me most forcibly were the 
 following paragraphs : — 
 
 "When we saw announced 'Halifax,' by Alexandre Dumas, here, 
 we said, is Dumas smitten too with the new Scribe fashion, and about 
 to deal with Lord Halifax, as his master has dealt with Lord Boling- 
 broke. We were mistaken. This Halifax turned out to be a low, 
 fighting, brawling ruffian, who kills or wounds a man per Hem. It was 
 at the Theatre des Vari^tes, where vaudevilles alone are performed, 
 that during the month of December last this comedy of Dumas' was 
 presented, melee it chant, to bring it within the proper designation. 
 The appearance of Alexandre Dumas, one of the leaders of the romantic 
 school, in the humble walk of vaudeville, excited some curiosity among 
 the literary public of Paris. Was it to be regarded as a specimen of 
 the relaxation and bonhomie of a great man, attired in night gown 
 and pantoufles ? or the vanity of a versatile genius, determined to 
 conquer in every walk of literature, without leaving a nook untrodden ? 
 And the question took divers crowds to see it solved. Now heartily do 
 we wish that Dumas had not intruded his foot within this smiling 
 garden of the vaudeville. He who opened a melodrama with heaven, 
 and the angels, and the Virgin, and an ascending soul (let the doubters 
 of so monstrous a tale refer to ' Don Juan de Marana ') had no business 
 with that genuine, sparkling, essentially French thing, the vaudeville. 
 
 " As no capital in Europe contains any class resembling the grisetle, 
 so is the vaudeville exclusively Parisian. How the dialogue, studded 
 with song, runs on like a merry stream, broken every moment by 
 apparent obstacles, which only serve to make it musical ! The classic 
 drama may pale before the romantic, and the romantic, after assuming 
 a thousand extravagant shapes, may go down in brimstone and red and 
 blue lights; but the vaudeville will mount up, light as a champagne 
 bubble, coloured with the gay rays of wit and animal spirits, and 
 immortal as France, its own sunny land. Oh ! Scribe, why did'st thou 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 abandon so happy a realm, where thou wert supreme, to take to history 
 and politics, and the legitimate five-act comedy forsooth, where thou 
 art last among the great ? Better dost thou think it, to serve at the 
 feet of Moliere's statue, than to reign in a paradise of repartee and 
 chansonette ? See how Dumas steals in and occupies the vacant 
 ground ! And how does he signalize his seizure of your charming 
 little Marquesas ? Why, by a fatal duel. Blood upon the boards of the 
 Varietes ! ! Oh ! Come back. Scribe, and wash out the foul stains 
 with a flood of repartee ! ' ' 
 
 Who after reading " French Dramas and Melodramas " 
 in the Sketch Book could question that Thackeray wrote 
 this? 
 
 The next article which I identified as by Thackeray was, I 
 think, one upon Georg Herwegh's Poems. Before long I had 
 reviews of books by Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and 
 Fr^d^ric Souli6 to add to my list, and some delightfully 
 humorous and characteristic articles on " The German in 
 England," " Angleterre," &c., &c. I was greatly surprised, 
 having supposed that every scrap of Thackeray's work had 
 been already gathered up and reprinted ; yet here in an 
 important review were several long articles showing on every 
 page evident trace of Thackeray's individuality, while no 
 mention of these was to be found in a bibliography of his works 
 which lay at hand. I made enquiries for a set of the review. 
 This was long in coming ; but when it did arrive I asked the 
 opinion of an expert in Thackerayana. He pounced on the 
 volumes, devoured the articles which I pointed out, and 
 returned them with the advice " Publish them." It appeared 
 that although many articles from Eraser's Magazine (for which 
 Thackeray wrote extensively) and elsewhere had been collected, 
 not a single one* had been gleaned from the Foreign Quarterly, 
 
 • Note. — Since the above was written I find that Mr. Lewis Melville, 
 on the indication of a correspondent, has reprinted an essay on Dumas' 
 "Excursions sur les bords du Rhin " in the Macmillan edition of 
 Thackeray's works. This essay has therefore been omitted from the 
 present volume. 
 
 X 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and that in none of the biographies was there an allusion to his 
 having written for it. 
 
 11. 
 
 It becomes interesting to enquire when and under what 
 circumstances Thackeray began to write for the ^Review ? 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray, born in 1811, was educated 
 at the Charterhouse School, and at seventeen went to Cam- 
 bridge, leaving two years later without a degree. His first visit 
 to Paris was a stolen one, made in his college days, when he 
 was nineteen. On leaving Cambridge shortly afterwards he 
 went to Weimar. There he attended various court ceremonies 
 as well as balls and dinners. Those guests who had uniforms 
 wore them ; those who had not improvised wonderful attire. 
 Thackeray seems to glance at his life at Weimar and Paris in 
 the essay here reprinted on " The German in England." He 
 writes : " We need only purchase a fancy volunteer's uniform 
 from some fashionable tailor in Holywell Street, and may in 
 our turn figure in foreign courts, dancing quadrilles with the 
 last duchesses at the Tuileries or eating sauer-kraut by the side 
 of German counts and dukes of thirty descents." At Weimar 
 Thackeray's taste for art developed very much, and after 
 visitmg Rome he settled in Paris, where he was often to be seen 
 in the Louvre copying pictures. 
 
 His first literary work is believed to have been done for 
 Fraser's Magazine as early as 1832, when he was living for a 
 short time with his mother in London; but he was better 
 known in Paris in the Latin Quarter, and he seems to refer to 
 his experiences there in " The Adventures of Philip." He 
 ^vrites thus : — 
 
 " That period, Philip vows, was the happiest of his life. He liked 
 to tell in after days of the choice acquaintance of Bohemians which he 
 had formed. Their jug, he said, though it contained but small beer 
 was always full. Their tobacco, though it bore no higher rank than 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that of caporal, was plentiful and fragrant. He knew some admirable 
 medical students ; some artists, who only wanted talent and industry 
 to be at the height of their profession ; and one or two of the magnates 
 of his own calling, the newspaper correspondents, whose houses and 
 tables were open to him. It was wonderful what secrets of politics he 
 learned and transmitted to his own paper. He pursued French states- 
 men of those days with prodigious eloquence and vigour. At the 
 expense of that old king he was wonderfully witty and sarcastical." 
 
 In 1833 Thackeray became financially interested in a critical 
 journal called The National Standard. A caricature-portrait 
 of Louis Philippe, which appeared in the number for May 4th, 
 1833, seems to be his first contribution. In June he went to 
 Paris as foreign correspondent. The National Standard, how- 
 ever, failed to please the public, and its last number is dated 
 February ist, 1834. Thackeray, who began life with a private^^ 
 fortune of about ^20,000, no doubt lost money in this venture. 
 In 1836 he issued a folio of drawings called "Flore et Zephyr, 
 Ballet Mythologique," by Theophile Wagstaff. By this time he 
 was slowly becoming known. Maclise's picture of the con- 
 tributors to Eraser, dated January, 1835, had included 
 Thackeray, though it was not until January, 1838, that the first 
 " Yello\vplush Paper ' ' appeared in it. In the meantime he helped 
 to float the Company which was responsible for the Constitu- 
 tional, went as its correspondent to Paris and married there. 
 His salary seems to have been /400 a year, but was probably 
 not paid for longer than six months. By July, 1837, the paper 
 had failed, and Thackeray, who had already lost much money 
 in various ways — loans to friends seem to have formed an 
 important item — became a poor man. 
 
 At this time he was living in Great Coram Street, Russell 
 Square, or, if the house was not actually taken on his marriage, 
 he soon after came to live there. His eldest daughter, Mrs. 
 Ritchie, speaking of Great Coram Street, says :— " In those days 
 my father was working for the Times and the Morning Chronicle 
 and for Cruikshank's Annual and for Bentley, for Eraser, 
 and other periodicals." His best work was sent to Eraser. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 By 1840 three daughters had been born — the first became Mrs. 
 Ritchie, the second Mrs. Leslie Stephen, the third died in 
 infancy. It was then that Mrs. Thackeray's heaUh gave way, 
 the result being that she had to be placed under medical care. 
 The home had to be broken up : and, in the same year, 
 Thackeray appears to have taken the two little girls to his 
 mother in Paris. He kept the Great Coram Street house for 
 some time longer, perhaps until 1842 ; moving afterwards 
 to bachelor quarters in St. James' Street. By 1842, therefore, 
 Thackeray had been in Paris as correspondent to two London 
 journals ; he had written " Elizabeth Brownrigge," " The 
 Yellowplush Papers," " Catherine," " A Shabby Genteel Story," 
 and " The Great Hoggarty Diamond," all for Fraser ; " Some 
 Passages in the Life of Major Gahagan " and " The Bedford 
 Row Conspiracy " for the New Monthly; the whole of the 
 Paris Skelch Book; and "Barber Cox," for the Comic 
 Almanack; he had reviewed for the Times and extensively 
 for the Morning Chronicle and was beginning to write for 
 Punch. In the same year we find him working for Chapman 
 & Hall. In April appeared his first contribution to their 
 review. The Foreign Quarterly. In June he went to Dublin 
 to write the Irish Sketch Book, which Chapman & Hall 
 published in 1843. It seems apparent to me that the Paris 
 Sketch Book had attracted ithe attention of the Editor of the 
 Foreign Quarterly. The Review had just passed into the 
 hands of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who issued the following 
 advertisement, the last paragraph of which, I think, points to 
 the fact that the editor had already secured Thackeray's 
 services* : — 
 
 "The Publishers, in announcing a change in the editorship of the 
 Foreign Quarterly Review, invite attention to some features in the 
 
 * I am not sure whether the advertisement was issued with the April 
 or with the July number. Thackeray's first contribution that I have 
 been able to identify appeared in the former number. 
 
 xiii 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 present number, the object of which has been to realize, more completely 
 than heretofore, advantages originally proposed by the establishment of 
 this journal. . . . But the chief endeavour in the new management of the 
 Review will be to givea« English interest to its treatment of general foreign 
 literature, and on every possible occaision to introduce into its pages 
 that popular character, wherein, notwithstanding high literary claims 
 and acknowledged services since the period of its establishment, the 
 Foreign Qcartbrlv Review has been always felt to be defective." 
 
 The Review was started in 1827 by Messrs. Treuttel & WOrtz, 
 a large foreign bookselling house, the first editor being Mr. R. 
 P. Gillies and the second Mr. Cochrane. This gentleman, 
 afterwards librarian to the London Library, was the active 
 manager of Messrs. Treuttel & Wurtz. Their business passed 
 to Adolphus Richter & Co., and the name of Black & Arm- 
 strong began to be associated with this firm in the publication 
 of the Review in 1836, when it passed into the hands of 
 Messrs. Black & Armstrong. In 1841 the copyright and stock 
 of the Review were acquired by Messrs. Chapman & Hall. 
 
 Thackeray, who knew Paris as well or better than London, 
 was full of its authors and dramatists. When dining with 
 Charles Lever and a party of Irishmen in Dublin (in June, 
 1842) French authors of the day were discussed — Dumas, 
 Alphonse Karr, Balzac, and George Sand especially, and after 
 criticizing the French stage with some severity, Thackeray 
 delighted his audience with a burlesque reproduction of a 
 certain scene from a popular drama. This scene was chronicled 
 by a Major D., who had never heard of Thackeray before, but 
 who wrote an account of what took place. It is interesting to 
 observe that the Major's description of Thackeray's impromptu 
 performance ■■'■ agrees exactly with his own account in the 
 
 • " Thackeray criticized the French theatre very sharply and came out 
 with a strong bit of humorous representation, which convulsed us with 
 laughter. It had reference to some drama, or opera, I forget what, in 
 which the principal male character comes on the stage with a pirouette 
 and waving his hand in a majestic manner to a chorus, representing 
 Jews in exile in Babylon, says ' Chantez nous une chanson de Jerusalem.' 
 
 xiv 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Paris Sketch Book and elsewhere of the scene in the play from 
 which he took it. 
 
 III. 
 
 We thus see that Thackeray was keenly interested in 
 the very topics which were first treated (and with a 
 Thackerayan pen) in the Foreign Quarterly at the time of the 
 issue of Chapman & Hall's advertisement ; at the time, that is, 
 when the editor had already secured him, or was searching for 
 just such a writer. We come now to a stronger point. In 
 April, 1842, there appeared in the Foreign Quarterly an 
 article upon Victor Hugo's " Letters from the Rhine." In 
 1842 Thackeray wrote to Edward FitzGerald that he had read 
 no good books or novels worth mentioning, but scores of 
 volumes of history, and by way of amusement Victor Hugo's 
 new book on the Rhine. "He is very great and writes like a 
 God Almighty," continues Thackeray, and he explains that he 
 has been trying to write about Hugo's letters that day, only 
 squeezing out one page. A remark of Hugo's about looking at 
 the stars — that night is as it were the normal colour of heaven 
 — struck him, and he says that to him there is something awful 
 in it, and that he is certain that time and space are dark blue. 
 
 The tone of the letter and of the review are so strikingly 
 similar as to admit no doubt of the identity of the writer. 
 
 Thackeray rose from his seat and did the thing, pirouette and all, most 
 inimitably." (" Life of Thackeray," by Herman Merivale and Frank T. 
 Marzials, chap. 8, p. 119.) Compare with the following passage : — 
 "In the ' Festin de Balthazar' we are introduced to Daniel, and the 
 first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of 
 captive Jews is seated in melancholy postures ; a Babylonian officer 
 enters, exclaiming, ' Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem,' 
 and the request is refused in the language of the Psalms." (Paris 
 Sketch Booh, "French Dramas and Melodramas.") 
 
 XV 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " He is very great and writes like a God Almighty," says the 
 letter writer : and on the first page of the review — that page 
 which Thackeray squeezed out so laboriously — we find him 
 parodying Victor Hugo, who is very great ; and on the third 
 page he shows him posed precisely as a divinity. And a little 
 further on we find him quoting and admiring — with a touch of 
 generosity which is charming in the contrast — a passage of 
 description of the night sky, such another passage as that 
 which had so moved Edward FitzGerald's correspondent. But 
 what about the other essays I says the reader. I will deal with 
 them in the order in which they appeared and are here re- 
 printed. 
 
 The next paper, " The German in England," reveals 
 Thackeray in every line. His reference to his enemy, Mr. N. 
 P. Willis, and his friend Mr. Samuel Rogers, neither of whom 
 he can resist bringing in, and his allusion to his review of 
 Victor Hugo's " Rhine " in the preceding number of the 
 Review, are not needed to assist in the identification of an article 
 which is so unmistakably his work. 
 
 The paper on Dumas' " Celebrated Crimes " is written with 
 more restraint than is common with Thackeray, but the author- 
 ship of the opening pages presents no difficulty to the attentive 
 reader, particularly if he be familiar with the Paris Sketch 
 Book. Thackeray finds the " Crimes " highly interesting, 
 but he reproaches their author with dwelling unnecessarily on 
 "the horrors and indecencies of histor}-." Shortly after the 
 appearance of the paper in the Foreign Quarterly its publishers 
 issued an expurgated translation of the " Crimes." The next 
 essay — that on Gutzkow's " Letters from Paris," — seems to me 
 to have been revised and enlarged after it left Thackeray's 
 desk, probably by the editor of the Review. The first paragraph 
 with its references to Prince Puckler Muskau, Heine and Paul 
 Pry is Thackerayan, but not so the glances at Guizot, Cousin 
 and Villemain in 1822, which indeed do not fit over well, and 
 read like an interpolation. The description, however, of 
 
 .\vi 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Thiers, which immediately follows, seems to be exactly in 
 Thackeray's style. Let the reader judge. 
 
 "As to Thiers, his eloquence is unlike anything that ever existed, or was 
 ever imagined. Fancy abronze statuette, gifted with thepower of motion 
 and the power of speech. If cracked, so much the better; the tingling sounds 
 which it may be supposed to emit will only be the truer. His features 
 are as unmoved, as much bronze as those of the statuette. Dantan could 
 make a Thiers in three hours — if any one else would but find the organs, 
 the senses and the intellect. The first time this statuette gets up to 
 speak, or to squeak, there is a universal desire to put him down with a 
 universal laugh. But the little Punch is not to be put down. He fixes 
 his spectacles (his eyes not being visible) upon his audience. He 
 addresses them in a how d'ye do vein of eloquence and soon captivates 
 their attention, just as if he had taken each person present by the 
 button-hole. There is no warmth, no apostrophe, no rhetoric, no 
 figure of speech, no bathos, no pathos, but a wonderful tumbling forth 
 of ideas, as if they came from a cornucopia, and that without any effort, 
 any aim at originality, any desire to excite surprise. It is sensible and 
 cold eloquence of most unassuming and irresistible superiority. In his 
 own home, and from one of his own armchairs, it is the same, except 
 that he blends the genuine French esprit with his natural quiet oratory. 
 In a word, Thiers is the most wonderful man in Europe." 
 
 Towards the end of the essay the writer indulges in a little 
 outburst : — 
 
 " Gutzkow says that he is indiscreet, that he is not of the Talleyrand 
 school, that he betrays his sentiments, and so forth. It is merely 
 evident from this that Herr Gutzkow is an honest Hamburger, whose 
 worldly sagacity, as Ruge says of him, must have been developed in 
 the raw cotton of that trading city. Louis Philippe indiscreet ! Louis 
 Philippe betray his sentiments ! God help the simple German ! 
 Another month spent in Paris would have convinced him that truth 
 and indiscretion were qualities quite unknown in the political latitude 
 which he pretends to describe." 
 
 We may be sure that there is none of the editor's blue pencil 
 here. 
 
 The notice of an English translation of Janin's " American 
 in Paris " must also be by Thackeray, whose dislike for the 
 author of " The Dead Ass and the Guillotined Woman " is so 
 well known and was so frequently manifested. 
 
 N.s.B. xvii b 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The review of Georg Herwegh's poems is another indisputable 
 Thackeray. The quotation of a sentence or two from it will 
 probably convince everybody. 
 
 " But it is absurd to place this young man forward as a master. His 
 poetry is a convulsion, not an effort of strength ; he does not sing, but 
 he roars ; his dislike amounts to fury ; and we must confess that it 
 seems to us, in many instances, that his hatred and heroism are quite 
 factitious, and that his enthusiasm has a very calculating look with it. 
 Fury, to be effective either in life or in print, should, surely, only be 
 occasional. People become quite indifferent to wrath which is roaring 
 and exploding all day, as gunners go to sleep upon batteries. Think 
 of the prodigious number of appeals to arms that our young poet has 
 made in the course of these pages ; what a waving and clatter of flash- 
 ing thoughts ; what a loading and firing of double-barrelled words ; and, 
 when the smoke rolls off, nobody killed ! And a great mercy it is too 
 for that cause of liberty which, no doubt, the young man has at hejirt, 
 that the working out of it is not intrusted to persons of his flighty 
 temperament. No man was made to be hated ; no doctrines of peace 
 and goodwill can be very satisfactorily advocated by violence and 
 murder; nor can good come out of evil, as is taught in those old- 
 fashioned ■ temples ' which our young bard says he cannot frequent. 
 Is he much better or happier where he is ? 
 
 "But the wonder is, what could the public want with a half-score of 
 editions of his works? If we were disposed to take an angry or mis- 
 anthropical turn, the anger should vent itself, not so much on the 
 young man as on the large portion of the human race which has 
 encouraged him by purchasing his poems. Will they encourage him 
 equally when he does something infinitely better? The blessed chance 
 lies entirely open to both parties." 
 
 - I feel less sure about the article upon Balzac's " Mono- 
 graphic de la Presse Parisienne." The allusions to Janin 
 point indeed to Thackeray, and I am assured by a good 
 authority that the observations upon the wood-cut illustrations 
 could have been written by no one else. Of this let the reader 
 judge :— 
 
 "Observe the agitated frenzy of M. Pierre Leroux, with divorce, 
 dissolution, disruption, George Sandism, in every part of his aspect 
 and attire ; hair, nose, mouth and dressing-gown ; to say nothing of 
 the awful chasm which yawns between the waistcoat and the portion of 
 dress which may not be named. Contrast it with the sleek satisfaction 
 
 xviii 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of M. Hyppolite Lucas, who in the garb of an ' epicier ' is mildly 
 serving out inexhaustible lees of sugar ; a thing he is currently said to 
 do to every author excepting M. de Balzac. Turn from the stolid, 
 innocent looking, antediluvian figure which does nothing but praise the 
 past (M. Gustave Planche) to the snarling, snapping, bearded poodle 
 which only bites and walks on its hind legs ! &c., &c." 
 
 I have decided finally to include the article, hoping that 
 something may be found in it which will enable it to be un- 
 reservedly accepted as Thackeray's or as freely rejected. It 
 may be observed that its author, whoever he may be, finds 
 translation of Janin's criticism in the Jour7ial des Dehats quite 
 out of the question, just as Thackeray finds it impossible to 
 translate Janin's quips and cranks in "The American in Paris." 
 It will be singular should this article, or at all events the portion 
 dealing with the illustrations, prove not to be Thackeray's. 
 
 That the review of a number of French plays which follows 
 is by Thackeray has already been demonstrated by the citation 
 of the passage upon Alexandre Dumas. No better proof could 
 be given, but admirers of " Esmond " will perhaps be as readily 
 convinced by the long notice of Souli^'s play of the days of 
 Queen Anne. 
 
 The next essay — that upon Sue's " Mysteries of Paris " — opens 
 with so delightful a specimen of the Thackerayan humour that 
 I need adduce no argument in favour of its title to appear here. 
 
 " The royal personages who figure in the Scott romances are among 
 the most charming, if not real, of the characters which the delightful 
 novelist has introduced to us. He was, if we mistake not, the first 
 romantic author who dealt with kings and princes familiarly. Charles 
 and Louis are made to laugh before us as unconcernedly as schoolboys ; 
 Richard takes his share of canary out of the cup of Friar Tuck ; and the 
 last words we hear from James are, that the cockaleeky is growing cold. 
 What is it that pleases us in the contemplation of these royal people so 
 employed ? Why are we more amused with the notion of a king on 
 the broad grin, than with the hilariousness of a commoner? That 
 minghng of grandeur and simplicity, that ticklish conjunction of awe 
 and frivolity, are wonderfully agreeable to the reader ; and we are all 
 charmed to know how heroes appear in the eyes of their valets de 
 chambre. " 
 
 xix b 2 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Nor can there be any doubt about the authorship of the 
 following paper, the notice of Souli^'s "Bananier." After 
 alluding to the six columns of feuilletons in the French journals 
 filled by Sue, Dumas, Reybaud, Madame Gay, &c., &c., 
 Thackeray proceeds : 
 
 " A part of this astonishing luxury of composition on the part of the 
 famous authors, is accounted for, however, in the following way. The 
 public demand upon them is so immense, that the authors, great as 
 their talents may he, are not able to supply it, and are compelled to 
 take other less famous writers into their pay. And as the famous wine 
 merchants at Frankfort who purchased the Johannisberg vintage of i8i i , 
 have Ijcen selling it ever since, by simply mixing a very little of the 
 wine of that famous year with an immense quantity of more modern 
 liquor ; so do these great writers employ smaller scribes, whose works 
 they amend and prepare for press. Soulie and Dumas can thus give 
 the Soulie or Dumas flavour to any article of tolerable strength in itself ; 
 and so prepared, it is sent into the world with the Soulie or Dumas seal 
 and signature, and eagerly bought and swallowed by the public as 
 genuine. The retailers are quite aware of the mixture, of which indeed 
 the authors make no secret ; but if the public must have Johannisberg 
 of 1811 and no other, of course the dealers will supply it, and hence 
 the vast quantity of the article in the market. Have we not seen in 
 the same way how, to meet the demands of devotion, the relics of the 
 saints have multiplied themselves ; how Shakespeare's mulberry-tree 
 has b)een cut down in whole forests, and planed and carved by regi- 
 ments of turners and upholsterers ; and how, in the plains of Waterloo, 
 crosses, eagles, and grapeshot are still endlessly growing ? 
 
 " We are not sufficient connoisseurs in Soulie to say whether the 
 novel before us is of the real original produce, or whether it has simply 
 been flavoured, like the Johannisberger achi:ehnh(ndtrtcljer before men- 
 tioned. "The Bananier'' may be entirely original; or, like many of 
 Rubens's originals, a work of a pupil with a few touches of the master. 
 The story is cleverly put together, the style is very like the real Soulie ; 
 and seeing the author's signature, of course we are bound to credit. 
 The tale has been manufactured, we take it, not merely for a literary, 
 but also for a political purpose. There is a colonial-slavery party in 
 France ; and the book before us is written to show the beauties of 
 slavery in the French colonies, and the infernal intrigues of the English 
 there and in the Spanish islands, in order to overthrow the present 
 excellent state of things. The subjects are two fine themes for a 
 romantic writer. To paint negro slavery as a happy condition of being ; 
 to invent fictions for the purpose of inculcating hatred and ill-will ; are 
 
 1 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 noble tasks for the man of genius. We heartily congratulate Monsieur 
 Souli(S upon his appearance as a writer of political fictions." 
 
 I come now to an important essay which I suppose no one 
 who knows Thackeray's Lectures on the English Humorists 
 could mistake for the work of any other writer. I cite the 
 opening paragraphs : 
 
 " Of the myriads of books now yearly appearing which time shall 
 swallow up, so that they or their memory be no more seen, we hope 
 this little work of Madame de Girardin's will not be one. Not that it 
 is more innocent or intrinsically worthy of life than many others of its 
 companions which will be handed over to the inevitable Destroyer ; but 
 it deserves to have a corner in a historical library, where even much 
 more natural and meritorious publications might be excluded ; just as 
 a two-headed child will get a place in a museum-bottle, when an ordi- 
 nary creature, with the usual complement of skull, will only go the 
 way the sexton shows it. The ' Lettres Parisiennes' give a strange 
 picture of a society, of an age, and of an individual. One or the other 
 Madame Girardin exposes with admirable unconscious satire ; and this 
 is satire of the best and wholesomest sort. One is apt to suspect the 
 moralist whose indignation makes his verse or points his wit ; one 
 cannot tell how much of personal pique mars the truth of his descrip- 
 tions, or how many vices or passions are painted after the happy ever- 
 present model himself; and while we read Swift's satires of a sordid, 
 brutal, and wicked age, or Churchill's truculent descriptions of the 
 daring profligates of his time, we know the first to be black-hearted, 
 wicked, and envious, as any monster he represents, and have good 
 reason to suspect the latter to be the dissolute ruffian whom he describes 
 as characteristic of his times. 
 
 " But the world could never be what the dean painted as he looked 
 at it with his furious, mad, glaring eyes ; nor was it the wild drunken 
 place which Churchill, reeling from a tavern, fancied he saw reeling 
 round about him. We might as well take the word of a sot, who sees 
 four candles on the table when the sober man can only perceive two ; 
 or of a madman who peoples a room with devils that are quite 
 invisible to the doctor." 
 
 Compare this, reader, with the following words from the 
 lecture on Swift in the " English Humorists " : 
 
 " What had this man [i.e.. Swift] done ? What secret remorse was 
 rankling at his heart ? What fever was boiling in him, that he should 
 see all the world blood-shot ? We view the world with our own eyes, 
 
 xxi 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 each of us ; and we make from within us the world we see. A weary 
 heart gets no gladness out of sunshine ; a selfish man is sceptical about 
 friendship, as a man with no ear doesn't care for music. A frightful 
 self-consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind so 
 darkly through those keen eyes of Swift." 
 
 This should be sufticient proof ; but any lingering doubt 
 must vanish when the notice of Grant's " Paris and its 
 People," with which the essay closes, is read. Thackeray 
 quotes the remarks of the Morning Herald twice over, for 
 they appear in one of his identified contributions to Punch, 
 as well as in this essay. 
 
 I am now just at the end of my rapid survey of the essays 
 which I have gathered together. The last one is a scathing 
 notice of a preposterous book on England by Alfred Michiels. 
 Were it desired to choose a representative article by Thackeray 
 for a volume of essays by nineteenth century authors, I believe 
 that none more thoroughly typical of his mature talent could 
 be found. Its severity surpasses anything written by him upon 
 James Grant, Jules Janin, or N. P. Willis, and the only 
 article with which it can well be compared is the famous one 
 upon " Thunder and Small Beer " which forms a preface to 
 the second edition of " The Kickleburys on the Rhine." 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the vague language of Chapman & Hall's advertisement, 
 the Foreign Quarterly in the hands of its former owners had 
 failed " to give an English interest to the treatment of general 
 foreign literature." In other words, it had failed to interest 
 the English reader in French literature, which necessarily 
 supplied the bulk of its contents. About 184 1 there was a 
 recrudescence of ill-feeling betwixt Great Britain and France. 
 Neither country, therefore, was precisely in the mood to hail 
 as a genius any person standing on the other shore ; indeed, 
 mutual jealousy, suspicion, and uneasiness had aroused on 
 both sides a disposition to depreciate the talent of the foreigner. 
 
 xxii 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In Paris Dickens was chiefly known by the stage travesty of 
 " Oliver Twist," which Thackeray witnessed and wrote about / 
 in 1842. In London the works of Hugo, Balzac, and 
 George Sand were denounced as immoral by people who 
 enjoyed more or less secretly the works of Paul de Kock. 
 Greatly would it have mortified such critics to be told that 
 French readers of taste considered " Mon voisin Raymond" 
 and the rest hanal and vulgar. Londoners who knew through 
 the medium of the newspapers that the hero of Dumas' 
 notorious play " Antony " was supposed to be a portrait of 
 himself, were shocked to read that on the appearance of its 
 author, the handsome quadroon, at a Parisian concert-hall, the 
 whole audience rose as if he had been a king. Parisians read 
 translations of G. W. M. Reynolds' novels, and thought them 
 singular, but more refined than the adventures of Mr. Pickwick and 
 his friends. Clearly there was the greatest need of a new series 
 of the Foreign Quarterly Review, conducted on more popular 
 if less scholarly lines. The new editor had an opportunity greater 
 even than this. He had the opportunity of substituting the 
 cosmopolitan for the insular point of view. Did he mean to 
 do so when he looked around him and chose Thackeray .' 
 
 Of Thackeray's qualifications he must have been well aware. 
 Did he know of his limitations ? Did he know that, in spite of 
 his familiarity with the continent, his hearty liking for life in 
 Paris and in the Latin Quarter especially, and his considerable 
 knowledge of current French literature and drama, that he was 
 by no means without in.su}ar_pre;udices.? The editor must 
 have known this if he had read, as he surely had, the Paris 
 Sketch Book. 
 
 It was not, perhaps, the cosmopolitan critic whom the 
 publishers wanted. The Review must if possible be made to 
 pay, and in England, if not on the continent, a sturdy Briton's 
 views were the most acceptable. Thackeray set to work. He 
 first took a book by Hugo, next one by Dumas, later one 
 by Soulie, and the result, though very entertaining, was not so 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 much to throw any special illumination on those authors 
 as to exhibit their effect upon a highly intelligent Briton. 
 An open-minded foreigner, anxious to study our national 
 characteristics and temperament, could scarcely do better than 
 read the essays. The sturdy devotion to his own scheme of 
 morals, the honesty and singleness of purpose, the forceful 
 condemnation and vigour of satire exhibited when occasion 
 demands, and the broad and simple distinction between 
 right and wrong, are all typically English as they are typically 
 Thackeray. And even more nationally characteristic is a sort 
 of puzzled, hesitating note of aversion as of one who says, " It 
 may be all very well, but I don't understand it, and I don't 
 like it." 
 
 Thackeray, then, was no ideal critic of the new school of 
 French fiction, or even of miscellaneous books by romanticists. 
 Certainly it was from no impulse born of his pen that shortly 
 after he commenced to write in the Foreign Quarterly transla- 
 tions of French novels swarmed forth in this country. Thackeray 
 represented only too well the opinions of the influential critics, 
 and the consequence was that the leading publishers, except in 
 a few instances, did not venture to bring out the new French 
 novels. It was the obscure ones who were sufficiently daring, 
 and they, aiming at large sales rather than the praise of the 
 critics, issued poor translations at a low price, ill written, ill 
 printed and ill bound. Had the reviewers been clearer-sighted 
 and given more encouragement, a better class of readers would 
 have been reached ; and Leech's cut in Punch of two dustmen 
 discussing the respective merits of Eugfene Sue and Alexandre 
 Dumas would not have suggested itself to him. 
 
 Fortunately, Thackeray's remarkable talents were not restricted 
 to reviews of books by members of the French Romantic School. 
 Georg Herwegh, a poet of " young Germany " ; James Grant, 
 the frothy and curiously blundering author of a book about 
 Paris; Alfred Michiels, a versatile and amusing hack writer 
 who produced an extraordinary work on per fide Albion ; 
 
 xxiv 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Charles Gutzkow, another " young German " ; an anonymous 
 naturalist, a visitor to these shores, who succeeded in delighting 
 our critic ; the entertaining " Vicomte de Launay," whose 
 Letters in la Presse were one of the amenities of a residence 
 in Paris; and other authors, besides a string of dramatists, 
 successively engaged his pen. Furthermore, he showed his 
 powers as a translator, rendering several of Herwegh's poems 
 and a lengthy passage from the " Mysteries of Paris " most 
 successfully. 
 
 That Thackeray's earlier work lacks the rhythmic flow, the 
 easy euphonious balance of his later work, will be expected, and 
 may have been already noticed by careful readers of the two 
 passages on Swift which I have quoted. But his style, then 
 very good, was never to change ; it was only to be perfected — ■ 
 perfected, as one feels, by much reading of eighteenth century 
 writers. Addison's and Fielding's works were continually in 
 his hands, and Thackeray alone among modern writers learnt 
 their methods and caught the secret of their graces. 
 
 These essays of his, we may be sure, were the result of much 
 thought and labour. Thackeray, always a slow writer, was 
 much better suited to be a Quarterly Reviewer than a daily or 
 a weekly critic. Certainly he gave the best that was in him to 
 give in his endeavours to increase the popularity of the Foreign 
 Quarterly. 
 
 I cannot help regretting that so many friends and admirers 
 of Thackeray have parsed away without reading these unsigned 
 Essays. How some of them would have delighted, for instance. 
 Dr. John Brown, who particularly loved his early work ! I can 
 picture the Doctor gloating over the following passage from the 
 review of Sue's " Mysteries of Paris " : — 
 
 " It will be seen, then, that contrast and action are the merits of this 
 novel. It is a work indeed of no slight muscular force. Murder and 
 innocence have each other by the throat incessantly, and are plunging, 
 and shrieking and writhing, through the numberless volumes. Now 
 crime is throttling virtue, and now again virtue has the uppermost, and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 points her bright dagger at the heart of crime. It is that exciting 
 contest between the white-robed angel of good, and the black principle 
 of evil, which, as children, we have seen awfully delineated in the 
 galanty-show, under the personifications of the devil and the baker. 
 And the subject is interesting, let us say what we will : if galanty- 
 shows are now what they were some scores of years since, that is : still 
 is it a stirring and exciting theme. Sometimes it is the devil who dis- 
 appears conquered, out of the shining disk, leaving the baker victorious : 
 sometimes it is the baker, who is hurled vanquished into the universal 
 blackness, leaving the fiend to shout his hideous song of triumph. Last 
 Christmas, no doubt, many hundred children sat in dark drawing-rooms, 
 and witnessed that allegorical combat, and clapped hands for the baker, 
 their favourite : and looked wistfully at each other when the fight was 
 over, and the whole room was awful and dark." 
 
 Is not this the true Thackeray, and in reading it do we not 
 seem to be listening to the voice of a departed friend ? 
 
 ROBERT S. GARNETT. 
 
 XXVI 
 
THE NEW SKETCH 
 BOOK. 
 
 THE RHINE. 
 
 By victor HUGO. 
 
 It has been rather the fashion of late in France for the poet 
 to take upon himself the profession of statesman in addition to 
 his own peculiar one ; as any body knows who has read the 
 memoirs of the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, or the speeches 
 which M. de Lamartine is continually in the habit of delivering 
 in the Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 And, as might be expected from persons of their genius, it is 
 not on subjects of mean detail or dry domestic economy, that 
 they waste what the French papers call their parole riche et 
 puissanle, but they look to vaster themes on which their 
 eloquence may dissert, and especially delight to speak on ques- 
 tions of foreign policy. On Turkey, on Poland, on the designs 
 of Russia, on the noble and touching reminiscences which 
 make Greece a sacred country; on Spain, storm-stricken 
 endeavouring to right itself in the tempest; on Egypt and 
 Palestine, especially, this sort of statesmen love to discourse : 
 when such countries are in distress they font entendre words of 
 sympathy and consolation, and no doubt the countries so apostro- 
 phized must be very much flattered and relieved by thinking 
 
 N.S.B. I B 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 that R^n^ has a word in their favour, and Jocelyn a tearful eye 
 fixed upon them. 
 
 The above-named nations being patronised by MM. de 
 Lamartine and Chateaubriand, crowded as it were already. 
 Monsieur Victor Hugo has looked to other lands where his vast 
 genius might find room to reign, and has discovered the River 
 Rhine. Over this large and fertile district, from Cologne to 
 Strasburg (nay possibly on the Dutch banks too, for why should 
 anything less than the ocean stop him .?), Victor Hugo, then, 
 has established his sway, and he has chosen his ground with 
 some adroitness too, for it is clear that the other two Rois de la 
 Pensee, Lamartine and Chateaubriand before mentioned, can 
 have no business in this territory, which both, in their quality 
 of legitimate statesmen, have consented to sign away. It is all 
 Victor Hugo's, he may do with it as he likes. He looks at it 
 from some towering pinnacle of thought, and says — It is a fair 
 country and good to conquer — it has stately towns and castles, 
 meadows and goodly vineyards, the people look happy, but they 
 are not — I see they are not — they are pining to become 
 Frenchmen, — I will go among them and conquer them, with 
 the mild sword of genius I will penetrate them. I will appear 
 before their strong places, and by blowing a little on my 
 trumpet, behold ! their walls shall fall down : I will ride into 
 my cities preceded by loud-shouting metaphors clad in rich 
 attire and scattering smiles for largesse among the people. If 
 they must rebel I will hammer them down with historic facts, 
 and crush them with such battering-rams of argument, that they 
 must needs fall down and obey ! And so he has gone and 
 taken possession of the Rhine, the two volumes of Lettres a un 
 Ami are like bulletins of the campaign, and a strange production 
 at the close of them entitled " Conclusion," may be likened to 
 a huge windy castle in the air, which he has erected and 
 garrisoned, and which commands the conquered country. 
 
 It must be confessed that our lively neighbours across the 
 channel are not chary of their praises to one another, and if we 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 have occasion to wonder sometimes at the extraordinary opinion 
 which M. Hugo entertains of himself, at least there are others 
 who profess a still higher admiration of him. " During three 
 days," writes one critic of the book, " three days of solitude and 
 retirement he has been living and thinking in Victor Hugo's 
 new work. Three days is but little time to understand it, not 
 enough to appreciate it. And the article he publishes must not 
 be considered as an account of the book, still less, grand Di'eu I 
 as a criticism, but simply as a first impression rapid but pro- 
 found, felt rather than reasoned, of a journey made into a 
 magnificent nature, into a fruitful history, into a noble poetry." 
 
 The literal translation of such fine words is always unfortunate 
 in English, where words are used with somewhat more precision, 
 and where such sounding phrases as une magnifique nature, 
 une noble po'isie, une /econde hisloire, appear very bald indeed. 
 Perhaps it would be a good precaution for imaginative writers 
 to take in general, and whenever they have produced a sentence 
 peculiarly dignified and sonorous, to try how it would look in 
 another language, and whether the sense will still bear the 
 transplantation. But our purpose here is not to instruct authors, 
 so much as to apologize for not being able to render their 
 thoughts properly. Both M. Hugo and his critics must suffer 
 very greatly at the hands of a translator who has no means of 
 expressing many of their beauties. The critic says that Hugo 
 is one of the glories of the age, and that the age itself is so 
 glorious that he wonders people do not glory in belonging 
 to it, and nobly asks " Why one has not one's country in time 
 as in space, why one is not a contemporary as one is a con- 
 citoyen } " Indeed there is no reason, and why not add to one's 
 harmless sum of pleasures by being proud of one's century, or 
 anything else ? 
 
 "As for M. Hugo," continues the critic, "his works are /^e 
 great street [again the powers of translation fail] — the great 
 street, which traverses the ideas, the interests, and the passions 
 of our age. Henceforth we shall await with impatience, and 
 
 3 B 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 receive with gratitude, every one of the manifestations of his 
 thoughts. * * • Let us speak of the Rhine at our ease, 
 with faith and with joy ; let us descend this royal river, this 
 sovereign intellect. But how to begin ! — how to recall all our 
 reminiscences, sad or charming, smiling or severe ! Shall we 
 follow the thinker, the artist, or the archaeologian ? — for the 
 Rhine has a triple aspect : it is true, it is beautiful, it is useful. 
 It goes from the past to the present ; from the present to the 
 future : it relates, it recals, and it divines. Science in it trans- 
 lates itself into poetry — poetry into prophecy : history comments 
 nature ; and nature stammers destiny. Very often, when people 
 have talked before us of Ndtre Dame, it has been asked, 
 ' Which N6tre Dame — the poet's or the architect's ? ' Now, 
 when friends of an evening talk to each other about the Rhine, 
 it will be said, ' Which Rhine — that of the poet, or that of 
 God?'" 
 
 We have, then, two volumes of new revelation ; neither more 
 nor less. M. Hugo is a poet, a prophet, a divinity, according 
 to the critic's opinion ; and indeed, to judge him by his own, 
 his critic is not very far wrong. A poet, cela va sans dire — a 
 prophet he has been three or four times ; and if not a divinity 
 as yet, he has certainly a divine mission, and a series of qualities 
 that are pretty nigh celestial. He says of himself and book, 
 
 " Some years since, a writer — he who pens these lines — was travelling 
 for no other purpose, than to see the trees and the sky, two things that 
 one cannot see at Paris. 
 
 " This was his only object, as those of his readers will acknowledge 
 who may please to look through the first pages of his first volume. 
 
 " Wandering thus, on chance, as it were, he arrived on the banks of 
 the Rhine. 
 
 "The sight of this grand river produced on him an effect with which 
 as yet, no other incident of his journey had inspired him — a wish to see 
 and to observe for a fixed purpose : it settled the wandering train of his 
 ideas, impressed almost a certainty of signification to an excursion which 
 at first had been but capricious, gave a centre to his studies ; made him 
 pass, in a word, from reverie to thought. 
 
 '• The Rhine is the river of which every one speaks, and which no 
 
 4 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 one studies ; which every one visits and no one knows ; which one sees 
 in passing, and forgets as one travels on ; which every eye has looked 
 upon, and no intellect as yet has sounded. And yet its ruins afford 
 food to imagination, and its destinies to serious reflection ; and to the 
 eye of the poet, as to the eye of the publicist, this admirable river, 
 under the transparence of its water, gives glimpses both of the future 
 and the past. 
 
 " Under this double aspect, the writer could not resist the temptation 
 of examining the Rhine. To contemplate the past in monuments fast 
 dying away — to calculate the future in the probable results of facts at 
 present existing, was pleasant to his instinct as an antiquary, and his 
 instinct as a dreamer. Besides, one day infallibly, perhaps very soon, 
 the Rhine will be the great question of Europe. Why not look before- 
 hand a little, and turn one's attention to the point ? Even supposing 
 that for the moment one were occupied with studies not less lofty or 
 fruitful, but fair as regarded space and time, one must nevertheless 
 accept, where they present themselves, certain severe tasks of the brain. 
 If he but live in one of the decisive epochs of civilization, the mind of 
 the man whom we call poet must naturally mingle with every thing, 
 with men and events, with history, philosophy, and nature, He must 
 be able to examine practical questions as well as others, to render direct 
 service, and to put his hand to the work if need be. There are days 
 when every citizen ought to become a soldier, every passenger a sailor. 
 In the grand and illustrious age in which we live, the man who has 
 never drawn back before the laborious missive of the author, has 
 imposed upon himself the law never to draw back : to speak to the 
 intellect is to assume an intellect of one's own ; and the honest man, be 
 he ever so humble, directly he has taken a duty upon himself, pursues 
 it seriously. To gather facts, and visit things, with his own eyes ; to 
 appreciate difficulties, and, if possible, to point out their solution, such 
 are the conditions of his mission to every one who will sincerely com- 
 prehend it. He does not spare himself ; he tries, and he labours : he 
 does his utmost to understand ; and when he has understood, he does 
 his utmost to explain. Perseverance he knows is power : this power 
 he can always bring in aid of his weakness ; and as the drop of water 
 which falls from the rock, at length pierces the mountain, why should 
 not the drop of water falling from a spirit, pierce the great problems of 
 history ? 
 
 "The writer then, who at present speaks, gave up his utmost devo- 
 tion and energy to the grave task that rose before him ; and after three 
 months of studies, in truth very various of their kind, it appeared to 
 him, that out of the voyage which he had made as an antiquary and an 
 inquirer, in the midst of this harvest of poetry and reminiscences, he 
 
 5 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 possibly brought back with him a thought which might be directly useful 
 to his country." — vol. i., p. 6. 
 
 It is a hard lot for prophets, and persons in that exalted rank 
 which Monsieur Victor Hugo holds, that they are not allowed 
 to do things like other people, and must be great and mysterious 
 whether they will or not. Witness the well-known story of the 
 prophet Mahomet: after tumbling down in a fit of epilepsy, 
 which he did pretty frequently, he was obliged to say that his 
 spirit was in heaven all the while his body was sprawling, 
 hundreds of billions of miles off, in colloquy with angels. The 
 prophet Hugo, in like manner, cannot perform any ordinary 
 function of life, but he must find an extraordinary reason for it. 
 He goes out to see the fields and the sky, and lo ! the Rhine 
 flashes upon him like an apocalypse — it impresses a " certainty 
 of signification to his wanderings," and speak about the Rhine 
 he must. For three months he wanders upon the banks, 
 impelled hither and thither by the divine afflatus puffing within 
 him, up rocks and towers, on board steamers, and in ruins, at 
 ordinaries, where they serve a pudding in the middle of dinner, 
 and make you eat sweetmeats with your roast mutton ; no 
 hardship nor danger stops him ; on he must go till the season 
 comes for him to speak. 
 
 Take it for all in all, it is a hard life, a very hard, thankless 
 life, that of a prophet. Rank you have, it is true ; but you are 
 never your own master. You go to take a quiet walk in the 
 fields, and who knows but there is an angel waiting behind the 
 hedge and brings your travelling orders.' One advantage a 
 prophet has, it is true, over other men, that whereas these before 
 they " study " a people, must waste much time over diction- 
 aries, learning the language,— the prophetic missionary masters 
 the tongue at once, and by intuition. Hugo comprehends 
 German, though he cannot read it or speak it any more than 
 Chinese. If he did not comprehend German, how should he 
 find out that the Rhinelanders are really most friendly to 
 France, and that the left bank is French in fact ? The people 
 
 6 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 don't speak French — not even the waiters — but he penetrated at 
 once into the soul of their language, and resolved the riddle of 
 that barbaric jargon as well as if he had studied Mr. Ollendorff 
 for a year. " To see the past on the Rhine," says he, " one has 
 but to open one's window on the river : to see the future, — let me 
 be pardoned this expression — one must open a window in one- 
 self." A gentleman who has such gifts as these, can see more 
 than most people, certainly ; and has no need to employ the 
 ordinary way of observation. 
 
 Thus impelled and endowed the honest poet wanders along 
 pursuing what he calls " his studies," which are neither more 
 nor less than remarks made from coaches or steamboats, and 
 taken down of a night, and despatched in letters to a friend. 
 Strange letters they are too, and strangely their author speaks 
 about them. They are so genuine, he says, that he will not 
 alter a single letter of the text, not even to change the word 
 metal to metail : and presently you arrive upon whole pages of 
 the most manifest interpolations ; large robberies made from 
 guide-books and history-books, laborious catalogues of dates, 
 names, and parallels which no man could have made upon a 
 voyage, nor kept in his memory, no not if he had ever so much 
 of a window " to look into himself." 
 
 Every now and then the fancy seizes him to be particularly 
 bashful and retiring, and we have him apologizing for the moi 
 which intrudes itself so often in confidential correspondence, and 
 which in these genuine letters he has felt it was his duty to retain. 
 Fatal mot, how it offends a man of his modesty, one who thinks 
 so little of himself, to be so continually saluted by the /, his 
 own image and representative ! He makes the most violent, 
 amusing efforts to blush when he meets it, or dodges off into 
 corners, or rushes to the other side of the way not to be obliged 
 to look / as it were in the face. l/n poete qui passait, or 
 celui qui ecrit ces lignes, or I'ecrivain qui park, the timid 
 creature will go any way round about, rather than say / at 
 once. 
 
 7 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Well, different men have different ways of being modest, but 
 we are thankful, that in spite of all his efforts M. Hugo is still 
 M. Hugo, alive and in the flesh. Not the least bit of a prophet, 
 we make bold to say, and with nothing extra-divine about him. 
 His works, in spite of the critic, will never be taken for celles de 
 Dieu : he is not as yet a mere essence, celestial intelligence that 
 floats over the world invisible and can penetrate to the Absolute 
 Truth of Things. At present he has a most undeniable moi : 
 every man's vwi is in truth a strange mixture of good and bad, 
 and quite worth the examining, and M. Hugo's is perhaps more 
 curious than many others. At least it is more amusing : though 
 probably the poet in his own case is not aware of the amusement 
 he brings, and that it is not merely his story which interests us, 
 but the wonderful contortions and strange physiognomy and 
 admirable pomposity of the story-teller. 
 
 Is not individuality the great charm of most works of art? 
 Let any two painters make a picture of the same landscape, and 
 the performances of each will differ of course. The distance 
 appears purple to one pair of eyes which is gray to the other's, 
 one man's fields are brown and his neighbour's green, one 
 insists upon a particular feature, and details it, while his comrade 
 slurs it over. Fancy Cuyp and Rubens with the same scene of 
 fields and sky before them, and one can imagine something of 
 the manner in which each would represent it. Monsieur Hugo 
 has a gallant Rubens-like pencil of his own, and sometimes 
 dashes off a noble scene. One might carry such a comparison 
 a good way, and fancy a number of similitudes in the very faults 
 and mannerisms of each artist — a certain coarseness of detail, 
 and swagger, as it were, of the brush — a gross and vulgar, 
 grotesque figure placed in the midst of a fine poetic scene — -we 
 light upon such in the works of both continually ; but very little 
 is gained by making such comparisons, which are not true after 
 all, and only sometimes ingenious. Every man has a manner 
 of painting or seeing, or thinking, of his own ; and lucky it is for 
 us too, for in this manner every one's work is a new one, and 
 
 8 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 books are fresh and agreeable, though written upon subjects 
 however stale. If a company of authors chose to write down 
 the circumstances of a voyage from the Bank to Clapham, 
 no doubt they would each make a pleasant, novel, and instruc- 
 tive history; — pleasant at least to such persons who like to 
 speculate not only on the subject but on the artist ; and this 
 latter is always new, at least he never lasts for more than three- 
 score and ten years, and is perfectly different from all who 
 follow or precede him. 
 
 Thus there are very few people who read the Foreign Quar- 
 terly Review, who have not gone over every inch of the ground 
 which M. Hugo describes, who have not seen Champagne with 
 their own eyes, Epernay and Rheims, Li^ge and Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 Cologne and Deutz, Frankfort, Mayence, and the rest. But a 
 man of such pains and such oddity becomes a very interesting 
 travelling-companion, and keeps one's curiosity perpetually 
 awake. If the road and the scenery is tiresome, at any rate the 
 traveller examining them is always amusing; — that strange, 
 grotesque, violent, pompous, noble figure of a poet, with his 
 braggart modesty, and wonderful simplicity of conceit, his kind 
 heart yearning towards all small things and beauties of nature, 
 small children, birds, flowers, &c., his rich, flowing, large 
 eloquence, and his grim humour. We have read his descrip- 
 tion of the multifarious duties and accomplishments imposed 
 upon celui qu'on appelle poiie. He is "to put his hand to 
 the work," he is " never to draw back," he is a part of " his 
 decisive century," a light for mankind, feeling all their wants 
 and their passions ; labouring, striving, struggling to under- 
 stand, " and, when he has understood, to explain." — With this 
 vast load of imaginary duties and perceptions on his back, our 
 poet mounts the cabriolet or the coach-box, and sits there 
 scowling incognito, wrapped up in the most majestic remarkable 
 modesty. What a curious figure it is! — An Atlas bearing a 
 bladder. 
 
 Having quitted Paris his adventures begin, and he tells you, 
 
 9 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in his simple way, not only what road he took, but why he did 
 not take another road. 
 
 " J'ai done pris par Meaux." 
 
 This oracular little sentence, stands quite isolated in the 
 midst of a great page, a blank ocean of paper (if we may 
 be allowed so to speak) flowing on either side. 
 
 He went, then, by Meaux. He went in a cab — he likes " to 
 travel in that way, to take long journeys by easy stages." 
 Between Claye and Meaux, under the finest sky, and on the 
 finest road in the world, the wheel of his cab broke. " But you 
 know," says he to his friend in italics, " that I am one of those 
 men who continue their journey. Justement a diligence passed 
 — a little diligence — the diligence Touchard. — It had only one 
 vacant place (strange play of destiny !) — I took it, and ten 
 minutes after the accident ' continued my journey,' perched on 
 the imperial between a hunchback and a gendarme." 
 
 There is no talking with such fellows, and so our author 
 begins to prattle to himself. 
 
 " You know my friend that when I travel, it is not events I seek, but 
 ideas and sensations, and for these a little novelty in objects suffices. 
 For the rest a small matter contents me. Give me trees and grass and 
 air, a road before me and a road behind me, every thing suits me. If 
 the country is flat, I love a large horizon. If the country is mountain- 
 ous I love unexpected landscapes, and with one of these, the summit of 
 every hill presents me. Just now I saw a charming valley. Right and 
 left were pretty caprices of landscape : — large hills cut into various 
 shapes by cultivation, and squares and plots amusing to see. — Here and 
 there were low cottages of which the thatches seemed to touch the 
 ground ; at the bottom of the valley a course of water marked to the 
 eye by a long line of verdure, and traversed by a little old bridge 
 of crumbling rusty stone at the point where the two ends of the road 
 met. As I was looking a cart passed the bridge, an enormous German 
 cart, swollen, packed, and corded. It looked like Gargantua's belly 
 dragged by eight horses and four wheels. The road before me, follow- 
 ing the undulations of the hill, was shining in the sun, and on it the 
 shadow of a row of trees designed the black figure of a comb which had 
 lost some of its teeth. Well, these trees, this shadow of a comb (which 
 will make you laugh, perhaps), this waggon, this old road, this old 
 
 lO 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 bridge, these old cottages — all this pleases me and makes me happy. I 
 am quite content with such a valley as this, with the sky above it. 
 I was the only person in the diligence who cared for it or enjoyed it. 
 The travellers yawned horridly." 
 
 The only man in the coach who cared for the combs, &c. — 
 What a parcel of callous rascals they must have been in that 
 diligence — that little diligence — in the diligence Touchard, 
 in a word ! They all yawned horridly, rotonde, interieur, 
 coupe and all, and no doubt that cursed hunchback well-nigh 
 gaped his head off his little crooked shoulders. What? were 
 these people not to be amused by a thing which amused a 
 Victor Hugo .' — The rogues, little did they think that a Victor 
 Hugo was there, that though seated on the roof he could 
 see every sleepy ignoramus inside, thirteen of them at the very 
 smallest calculation — perhaps seventeen, and that " the poet's 
 eye," " in a fine frenzy rolling," no doubt would roll round 
 every one of them, and so fix them —there they are in his book, 
 — ^yawning horridly to the end of time. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will perceive in the description some 
 traces of what we have called the artist's Rubens-manner. 
 Here, as in many other places, we find the little landscape 
 beautifully coloured and brilliant, and disfigured by something 
 brutal, such as we should take the broken comb, and the 
 Ventre de Gargantua, to be. A little further on we have 
 another such picture — an Alsatian family of emigrants passes the 
 poet in his wanderings. He describes brilliantly the Alsatian 
 family with its waggon strangely loaded. 
 
 " It had for a team a donkey and a horse On the cart were sauce- 
 pans, caldrons, old trunks, straw chairs, a heap of furniture. In front, 
 in a sort of basket, three little children almost naked, and behind, in 
 another basket, some hens. The conductor of the troup marched 
 ahead, with a child on his back ; a little way behind was a woman 
 carrying a child too— wai's dans son ventre. * * Vv. resit, these 
 worthy people went on caring for nothing. The man was making a 
 new lash to his whip, the children playing, the woman humming a 
 song. Only the furniture seemed to have a strange out-of-place look 
 
 II 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 whicb was dismal to see. The hens, too, appeared to me to have a 
 proper sentiment of their misfortune. 
 
 " This indifference astonished me. Indeed I thought that country 
 was more strongly engraven upon men. Cela leiir est done egal a cis 
 gens de ne plus voir les memes arbres ?" 
 
 A couple of passages in this little extract are untranslatable. 
 The grossness of the first, and the impertinence of the latter. 
 It is all one, is it, to ces gens, not to have fine feelings as 
 Monsieur Victor Hugo of the French Academy has, not to care 
 for their native country, as Monsieur Hugo does for his. If 
 they are hungry and can't get bread, good heavens ! Why can't 
 they eat cakes, ces gens i' Monsieur Victor Hugo can — ah. 
 Monsieur Hugo — be careful of your jocularity — you are at best 
 but a poor hand at wit — ^your pleasantries are for the most part 
 old — very old, and weak, and stale. If joke you will, gibe at 
 the rich as a philosopher may, but do not sneer at the poor ; 
 keep your hand from such sorts of blows, giant as you are, 
 and think of your sacred calling. — However, it is unfair to 
 grow angry with celui qui a ecn't ces lignes ; to do him justice 
 his heart is humane and tender, it is only his taste which is 
 bad ; and his insolence not partial and confined to the poor, 
 but general and systematic. He speaks of princes and citizens 
 with quite as many airs as he has shown to the wretched 
 Alsatian beggars, and the poor little hunchback on the 
 coach-top. 
 
 Revenons d. noire bossu — the author's sketch of him is grim 
 and amusing, and after telling us how much taxes the hunch- 
 back pays, he goes off to a study of the character of his other 
 companion, the gendarme, and gives some particulars of his 
 history. 
 
 " In 1814, at Montmirjrfl, he fought like a lion : he was a conscript. 
 In 1830, in the days of July, he was a coward and ran away,: he was 
 a gendarme. This seems to astonish him, and does not astonish me 
 in the least. A conscript, he possessed nothing, but his twenty years, 
 and was a brave man. A gendarme, he had a wife and children, a 
 horse of his own he said, and he was a coward. It was the same man, 
 
 12 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 but not Hie same life ; for life is a meat which depends upon the sauce 
 of it. There is no man in the world so intrepid as a galley-slave : one 
 does not hold by one's skin but by one's coat. The galley-slave is 
 naked and has nothing whereon to hang. 
 
 " Let us allow, likewise, that the epochs were very different. The 
 atmosphere of the time affects the soldier like any other man. 
 Whatever idea is blowing abroad chills or warms him as it does the 
 rest. In 1S30, it was a revolution that was blowing. He felt him- 
 self cowering and bending before this force of ideas, which is, as it 
 were, the soul of the force of things — (cette force des idees, qui est 
 comme I'dme de la force des choses). Was there anything more likely 
 to oppress him and weigh him down ? — to fight for a set of strange 
 ordinances, for shadows that had passed across a troubled brain, for 
 a dream, for a folly, to fight brother against brother, soldier against 
 workman. Frenchmen against Parisian ! In 1814, on the contrary, the 
 conscript was fighting against the foreign invaders, against the enemy, 
 for things which were perfectly clear and simple to him, — for himself, 
 for everybody, — for his father, his mother and sisters ; for the plough 
 which he had just left, the old-home chimney smoking yonder above 
 the thatch, for his land which he had under the very nails of his 
 shoes, for his country still living and bleeding. In 1830, the soldier 
 did not know what he was fighting for. In 1814, he did more than 
 know it, he understood it : he did more than understand it : he felt 
 it : he did more than feel it, he saw it." — vol. vi., pp. 11, 12. 
 
 Remark the grave sententious grimaces which our poet 
 assumes, when he commences what he considers, no doubt, 
 a process of reasoning. In mere description his sentences 
 are large, liberal, and diffuse : when he begins to doctrinize, 
 they dwindle away into a wonderful sham conciseness, which 
 apes all the forms of logic. In these neat, well-cut paragraphs 
 he proves to you, first that the gendarme on the coach-box 
 was a coward in 1830, because he had a coat and property, 
 and a brave man in 18 13, because he had no property but 
 his skin. Thus, by a beautiful reverse of the argument, he 
 shows you, that the conscript of 18 14 -was brave because he 
 had a property, and that the gendarme was cowardly from 
 no personal considerations, but because he was bound down 
 by the tempest of popular opinion, and knew not how to 
 make head against it. This is very likely close reasoning, — 
 
 13 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 so astonishingly close and serre, that one sentence absolutely 
 knocks down and destroys the other— which is the conqueror ? 
 This is a point perfectly undetermined ; but one might have 
 been perfectly happy with either, were t'other dear sentence 
 away. And since one can't take them together • * • but it 
 is indecent to quote such a vulgar ballad-monger as Gay, a 
 propos of the great lyric poet of the French Academy. 
 
 Thus reasoning and describing, Celui (as we had better call 
 him at once) pursues his course. He stops to change horses, 
 and you have a picture much more lively and faithful than that 
 silly, fantastic, historical sketch above given. 
 
 " At a relay every thing amuses me. We stop at the gate of a little 
 inn, and the horses arrive with a jingling noise of iron. There is a 
 white hen in the midst of the road, a black one in the hedge yonder, 
 an old broken wheel lies in a corner, and some dirty children are 
 playing on a heap of sand. Above my head, Charles V., or Joseph II., 
 or Napoleon, are hanging up on an old iron gallows by way of sign — 
 great emperors, no longer good for any thing but to brmg custom to 
 an inn. The house is full of authoritative voices; in the threshold, 
 kitchen-wenches and stable-boys are performing idyls, le fumicr cajole 
 I'eau de vaisselle, and I take advantage of my lofty position on the 
 imperial— to listen to the hunchback and the gendarme talking, or to 
 admire some pretty little colonies of dwarf poppies, that form an oasis 
 upon an old roof opposite." 
 
 At Epernay he encountered some more coquelicots in a field 
 of turnips, which prevented him from seeing the great curiosity 
 of the place, a cellar containing fifteen hundred thousand bottles 
 of champagne. It is a pity we lost the description of that huge 
 army of flasks, long-necked, with shining silver helmets, each 
 with a devil within him — our poet in his love of personification 
 might have made a brilliant history of the cellar. Three churches 
 have been built at Epernay, M. Hugo says, " one in 1037, by 
 Thibaut, count of Champagne — (of course he did not look in 
 the guide-book for this remarkable fact, but had come prepared 
 with the date in his brain), the second in 1540, by Pierre Strozzi, 
 marshal of France, and Seigneur of Epernay, killed at Thion- 
 ville in 1558 : and the third, the present church, gives one the 
 
 14 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 notion of having been built upon the designs of Monsieur 
 Poterlet Galichet, a worthy merchant, whose shop and name 
 are close by the church. The three churches appear to me to 
 be admirably resumed and depicted by the three names, Thibaut, 
 count of Champagne, Pierre Strozzi, marshal of France, Poterlet 
 Galichet, grocer." 
 
 What a genius at finding similitudes M. Hugo's is!— only one 
 of these churches has he seen, because, indeed, the others are 
 out of sight, and yet he can find how each admirably depicts a 
 man whom he never saw. He has but to open the window in 
 himself, and so to look inside and see the whole history. In 
 the same manner, in travelling, he discovers all sorts of "singular 
 symbolisms." Passing over the plains of Montmirail, he saw 
 certain stones strewn over the ground, and casting huge shadows 
 — these stones he compared to gigantic chessmen, typifying the 
 game played by Napoleon against Blucher in 1814 : at Varennes, 
 where Louis XVI. was stopped in his flight, Victor Hugo found 
 that the plan of the town was triangular. And strange to say, 
 the axe of the guillotine is triangular — a singular symbolism, 
 indeed, — and the poet might have increased it by remarking 
 that the flying monarch had a triangular hat on his head. 
 
 And so our author rambles on — discoursing upon all that he 
 sees in his queer braggart way — producing now and then a noble 
 description of a scene or a landscape, a pretty, fantastical, 
 exaggerated sketch of a building, a rich and happy poetical 
 expression, such as the following, of a storm. 
 
 Here is a piece which strikes us to be in his very best 
 manner. 
 
 " Le soir approchait, le soleil declinait, le ciel etoit magnifique. Je 
 regardais les coUines au bout de la plaine qu'une immense bruyere 
 violette recouvrait i. moitie. Tout a coup, je vis un cantonnier redresser 
 sa claie couchfie a terre, et la disposer pour s'abriter dessous. Puis la 
 voiture passa pres d'un troupeau d'oies qui bavardait joyeusement. 
 Nous allons avoir de I'eau, dit le cocher. En effet je tournai la tSte, 
 la moitie du ciel derriere nous ^toit envahie par un gros nuage noir, le 
 vent etoit violent, les cigues en fleur se courbaient jusqu'a terre, les 
 
 15 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 arbres semblaient se parler avec terreur, de petits chardons, dess^chis 
 couraient sur la route plus vite que la voiture, au-dessus de nous volaient 
 de grandes nu^es. Un moment apres ficlata un des plus beaux orages 
 que j'aie vus. La pluie tombait a verse, mais la nuage n'emplissait pas 
 tout le ciel. Une immense arche de lumiere restait visible au couchant. 
 De grands rayons noirs qui tombaient du nuage se croisaient avec les 
 rayons dor qui venaient du soleil. II n'y avait plus un 6tre vivant 
 dans le paysage, ni un homme sur la route, ni un oiseau dans le ciel ; il 
 tonnait affreusement, et de larges eclairs s'abattaient par moment sur 
 la campagne. Les feuillages se tordaient de cent fa^ons. Cette tour- 
 mente dura un quart d'heure, puis un coup de vent emporta la trombe, 
 la nuee allait tomber en brume diffuse sur les c6teaux d'orient, et le 
 ciel redevint pur et calme. Seulement dans I'intervalle le cr^puscule 
 ^tait survenu. Le soleil semblait s'6tre dessous vers I'occident en trois 
 ou quartre grandes barres de fer rouge, que la nuit iteignait lentement 
 a rhorizon," — vol. L, pp. 48, 49. 
 
 We have not ventured to translate the above noble descrip- 
 tion into English ; for it would be a shame, as we fancy, to 
 alter a single word in it ; so complete does it seem to be. It 
 bursts into the narrative, and is over in a page, like the event it 
 describes. Several more such powerful descriptions will be 
 found in M. Hugo's thousand pages. Here is one of a 
 night-scene at Soissons : 
 
 " As I returned to the inn midnight struck. The whole town was 
 as black as a furnace, perfectly silent too, and, to all appearances, quite 
 incapable of making any disturbance of a night, when all of a sudden 
 a stormy clatter was heard at the end of a narrow street. It was the 
 mail coming in. It stopped close to my inn, and I took the only empty 
 place in the vehicle. Just as I was going to take my place, behold, in 
 another little dark street arose such a strange noise, of voices crying, 
 wheels clattering, horses stamping, that I asked for five minutes law, 
 and ran to the spot. Entering into the little street, this is what I saw. 
 In the first place, a great wall, with that horrible chilling aspect that a 
 prison wall always has — there was a little low door in the wall, which 
 was open now, and armed with enormous bolts, as you could see. A 
 few steps from the door, between a couple of mounted gendarmes, 
 was a sort of dismal carriole, only half visible in the obscurity. Between 
 the carriole and the door was a struggling group of four or five men, 
 dragging towards the carriage a woman who was screaming frightfully. 
 A dark lantern, carried by a man who himself disappeared in the 
 
 16 
 
>E Liu, 
 
 -'' OFTHl-' 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE RHINE. 
 
 shadow of it, threw a light upon this scene. The woman, a stout 
 countrywoman of thirty, resisted with all her might against the men, 
 screamed, struggled, scratched, bit, and every now and then the light 
 fell upon her wild sinister face, which was the very figure of despair. 
 She had seized hold of one of the bars of the wicket, and clutched on 
 to it with all her force. As I came up the men had made a violent 
 effort, took her away from the wicket, and carried her at one bound to 
 the carriage. The light of the lantern was full upon the vehicle, which 
 seemed to have no other opening than some little round holes bored 
 along the side-panels, and a door at the back, shutting outside with 
 great bolts. The man with the lantern drew back the bolts, the door 
 opened, and the interior of the carriole appeared all at once. It was a 
 kind of box, without light and almost without air, and separated into 
 two compartments by a thick board running down the middle. The 
 outside door was so managed, that when closed it shut close upon the 
 edge of this partition-board, and so rendered all communication impos- 
 sible between the occupants of the two cells in the carriage. Their 
 only furniture was a seat with a hole bored in it. The left box was 
 empty, but that to the right was occupied ; and there sate, half doubled 
 up like a wild beast, and lying along the seat for want of room for his 
 knees, a man — if you can call such an animal a man — a sort of spectre, 
 with a square visage and a flat head, large temples and grey hair ; his 
 little, short, thick-set limbs, were half covered by an old torn pair of 
 trousers, and a tattered cloth. The wretch's legs were bound tight 
 with a rope, which was tied knot upon knot : he had got a sabot upon 
 his right foot, and the left was bound with bloody rags, from which 
 you saw the toes protruding, horribly crushed and sore. This hideous 
 being was eating quietly a piece of black bread. He paid no attention 
 to what was passing before him : he did not stop even to see who was 
 the woman they were bringing him for companion. Meanwhile, with 
 her head flung back, struggling and writhing in the arms of the gaolers, 
 she kept crying out, ' No, no ; I won't, I won't — kill me first — I won't 
 go in ! ' As yet she had not seen the other man ; — all of a sudden, in 
 one of her convulsions, her eyes fell upon the carriage and upon the 
 horrible prisoner sitting in the shade. Then her cries stopped at once ; 
 her knees fell under her ; she turned away shuddering in every limb, 
 and had hardly the strength to say, as she did in a tone of anguish that 
 in my life I shall never forget, ' Oh that man ! ' " 
 
 This is very clever ; but, as the reader will no doubt perceive, 
 not quite so true as the former magnificent passage of the storm. 
 It is too circumstantial for truth ; and it is quite impossible that 
 a man, by the light of the dark lantern, should see some of the 
 
 N.S.B. 17 Q 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 ornaments which are introduced into the piece : for instance the 
 seat percie d'un Irou, and the horribles doigts mutilis of the 
 prisoner lying in the shade. 
 
 The adventure finishes characteristically. At the screams of 
 the woman the poet went up to ask what her crime was ; where- 
 upon one of the gendarmes, not the least knowing the tremen- 
 dous author of Notre Dame de Paris, demanded his passport. 
 Great heavens ! a gendarme demanding the passport of Victor 
 Hugo! 
 
 The letters about France are, to our taste, by far more lively 
 and amusing than the correspondence regarding the Rhine. 
 But in spite of his vows of the sincerity and genuineness of the 
 work, there are interpolations in it so evident, that all the oaths 
 and vows possible would never bring one to credit them. Thus, 
 for instance, d propos of Champagne, which he is quitting, the 
 poet is seized with a sort of remorse for having alluded to the 
 old proverb of the moutons and the Champenois, which reflects 
 considerably upon the intellectual capacity of the latter. So M. 
 Hugo, having hurt the feelings of that great province, proceeds 
 to make an apology, and gives us ten pages of closely-packed 
 names and dates, showing how many heroes and great person- 
 ages have had Champagne for a birthplace. " Champagne," 
 says he, " has produced Amyot and La Fontaine, Thibaut IV., 
 a poet who was almost a king, Robert de Gorbon, founder of 
 the Sorbonne, Charlier de Gerson, who was chancellor of the 
 university of Paris ; Amadis Samin, the commandeur de Ville- 
 gagnon ; two painters, Lautard and Valentin ; two sculptors, 
 Girardon and Bourchardon ; two historians, Flodoard and 
 Mabillon ; two cardinals, full of genius, Henri de Lorraine and 
 Paul de Gondi; two popes, full of virtue, Martin IV. and 
 Urban IV. ; a king, full of glory, Philip Augustus." 
 
 Will anybody tell us that a gentleman who professes to travel 
 with no other books but Virgil and Tacitus, could sit down at 
 an inn-table, and write to a friend such a series of names .' 
 Ten pages of such he dashes off in one letter, concluding with 
 
 x8 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 the population of Champagne in 1814 and fifteen years after- 
 wards. M. Hugo's friend has not only a poet for a correspondent, 
 but a regular travelling encyclopedia. 
 
 In another place, our unconscionable poet absolutely tells us 
 what he didn't see. Thus : 
 
 "I left the town of Agrippa behind me, and did not see the old 
 pictures of St. Mary-of-the-CapitoI, nor the paved mosaic crypt of St. 
 Gereon, nor the Crucifixion of St. Peter, painted by Rubens for the 
 old half-Roman church of St. Peter, where he was baptized, nor the 
 bones of the eleven thousand virgins in the Ursuline convent, nor the 
 incorruptible body of the martyr Albinus, nor the silver sarcophagus 
 of St. Cunibert, nor the tomb of Duns Scotus in the church of the 
 Minorites, nor the sepulchre of the Empress Theophania, wife of Otho 
 III., in the church of St. Pantaleon, nor the Maternus Gruft in the 
 church of Lisolph, nor the two golden chambers of the church of 
 St. Ursula, and the dome (the cathedral, probably), nor the Hall of 
 Diets, nor " — &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Is this all in Virgil or Tacitus .' or are we to believe that 
 Monsieur Victor Hugo comes into countries ready provided 
 with all these facts concerning their history and topography ? 
 or, finally, that he purchases guide-books, like other people, 
 and robs them like other authors do ? In the face of such 
 extracts as these. Monsieur Hugo declares that " these letters 
 were written au hazard de la plume, without books, and that 
 the historic facts, or literary texts quoted in them, are cited from 
 memory'' (Preface, xx.) What a prodigious swallow the poet's 
 memory must have ! 
 
 Before we come to the " conclusion " of the work let us seek 
 one or two specimens more of the poet's descriptive powers, 
 and humour. A pretty story is that in the twentieth letter, 
 of the three pretty young ladies whom, hearing them speak 
 English, he addressed in that language as follows, " Beautiful 
 wiew ! " and the young ladies began to laugh at his bad English, 
 and discovered him at once to be a Frenchman. Ah ! in what 
 disguise can a Frenchman hide himself, and is there any comer 
 of the world in which we cannot detect him and laugh at him .' 
 
 19 c 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 The bard falls in love with one of the laughing young ladies, 
 and addresses to her some pretty fantastic lines, and, by the 
 way, for a grave man of a grave age is of decidedly a warm 
 complexion. What, for instance, are those descriptions of 
 young ladies' dressing themselves, and of " vague desires " to 
 be standing at the foot of a ladder when — when we are sorry to 
 say — when a pretty girl is at the top. (See, or rather do not 
 see, vol. i. p. 124). Here is another of his loves, much more 
 questionable than his admiration for pretty girls. 
 
 " One of the curiosities of Frankfort, one that will soon disappear, 
 I fear, is the butcher's market. It occupies two ancient streets. It is 
 impossible to see older or blacker houses, or to Itan over (se pencher) a 
 more splendid mass 0/ fresh flesh. I can't tell what an air of gluttonous 
 joviality these quaint old carved houses wear — the ground floor of which 
 look like enormous jaws always open and gulping down innumerable 
 quarters of mutton and beef. Butchers all bloody, and rosy butcher- 
 girls, chat under garlands 0/ legs of mutton. A red stream, the colour of 
 which a couple of fountains scarcely serves to alter, flows smoking 
 down the street. At the moment I passed, the place was full of fright- 
 ful cries. Some inexorable slaughter-house men, with Howdian 
 countenances, were performing a massacre of sucking pigs. Servant- 
 girls with their baskets were standing by and laughing. There are cer- 
 tain ridiculous emotions which a man ought never to betray, but I 
 confess that had I known what to do with one little pig, which a 
 butcher was dragging by its hind legs, and which went quietly, not 
 knowing what was going to happen, I would have bought him and 
 rescued him. A pretty little child, four years old, who saw me, was 
 looking at the animal with compassion, gave me a look which seemed 
 to encourage me in my plan. I did not do what that charming eye 
 told me to do, I did not obey that gentle glance, and reproach myself for 
 it now. A magnificent ensign with the butcher's arms, surmounted by 
 an imperial crown, presides over and completes this butchery — a place 
 worthy of the middle ages, and before which I am sure Calatagirone 
 in the fifteenth century, and Rabelais in the sixteenth, would have 
 passed with wonder." 
 
 We quote this elegant extract, not so much for its intrinsic 
 merit, and polite gentlemanlike style, but because it really offers 
 a very good characteristic of M. Hugo's works of fiction, and 
 the secret as it were of his plan in constructing his romances 
 
 20 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 and novels. Butcher's meat, over which il se penche with an 
 air of " gluttonous joviality," — a little architecture of the middle 
 ages — bloody butchers chatting with red-cheeked butcheresses 
 under garlands of legs of mutton — sweet innocents ! sweet 
 mixture of love and raw meat ! sweet flowers of poetry ! — put in 
 a massacre in the midst — children killed like pigs, or pigs like 
 children, the antithesis is equally tickling, and set off the whole 
 by something innocent; — a little speck of white that shows 
 wonderfully in the midst of the ocean of red. — Esmeralda is 
 constructed exactly upon the plan of the butchery of Frankfort. 
 
 And yet the man is kind, although he talks like an ogre. It 
 is only his art which is bloody-minded ; we dare swear he was 
 sick, and shuddered at the disgusting sight as he should, and 
 that he can eat no greater quantity of beefsteaks than another 
 man. But thus it is to be obliged to keep up a character for 
 being a giant. You must never speak but roar, you must put 
 your emphasis upon stilts, swell your jokes to the most pre- 
 posterous size — who the deuce was Calatagirone in the fifteenth 
 century ? One of M. Hugo's roars in the character of giant — 
 Calatagirone ! — fee, faw, fum ; we never should have heard of 
 the fellow had not his name been so loud and frightful. 
 
 We had marked the poet's lamentations regarding the pour 
 boire as a good specimen of his natural humour, and a famous 
 description of a country-inn kitchen, which is as rich and gro- 
 tesque as the opening of the very best pantomime. But we have 
 as yet the vast " Conclusion" before us ; and so must take leave 
 of the traveller in order to listen to the politician. Say what one 
 will against the former, and quarrel with him as one must — 
 with his bad taste and egotism, his pompous airs and dogmatiz- 
 ing, and his constant tendency to exaggeration, — indeed he is 
 still a very delightful companion. In the midst of his vagaries 
 a man of genius always, and perhaps his company is only the 
 more amusing because he mingles the noble and absurd 
 together, and keeps his auditors always passing from laughter 
 to admiration. 
 
 21 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 This " Conclusion," says the French critic before mentioned, 
 who intends for the future to confound the Rhine of Victor Hugo 
 with celui de Dieu, is to the work what the ocean is to the river. 
 " L'Oc^an (says he), voila I'ocdan ! car ce beau Rhin que nous 
 venons de parcourir et d'admirer ensemble, n'etait qu'un chemin 
 qui marche et qui nous mfene a la mer. La mer c'est la Con- 
 clusion." 
 
 The conclusion of the Conclusion may be stated in half-a- 
 dozen words. Walking one night near Andernach, absorbed in 
 a reverie, " the full moon red and round like the eye of a 
 Cyclops," looking down upon him, M. Hugo, the great French 
 poet, marked the vineyards and the tobacco-fields, the bergero- 
 nettes (he would have passed over the bergeronettes had 
 they had the unromantic English name), coming to drink 
 at the pools and flying away to the willow beds, the barges with 
 triangular sails drawn by thirteen horses slowly lugging up the 
 stream. He listened to the measured tramp of the steeds, the 
 noise of the whips and bells : and one particular barge he 
 remarked had inscribed upon the poop, the austere et doux 
 nom, Pius. 
 
 It had not much to do with the subject ; but it entered into 
 his soul. He walked and walked, " absorbed in the reverie in 
 which all nature was plunged ; " but as for how long a time 
 he walked, he does not know. He may have walked for a 
 hundred years, like Pdcopin (see vol. ii.) ; he may have walked 
 round the whole world and so come back again ; but the shining 
 moon was in its zenith, the country was deserted, and of a 
 sudden he found himself at the foot of an eminence, " crowned 
 with a little obscure block," and he mounted the eminence, 
 wading through heaps of beans freshly cut. 
 
 It is not too much to say, that Monsieur Victor Hugo on that 
 day and by straddling across those beans, settled the fate of 
 Europe. 
 
 The block of stone was the tomb of Hoche. " Hoche was, 
 like JMarceau, one of those great incomplete young men, in 
 
 22 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 whom Providence, who wished that the revolution should con- 
 quer and France should dominate, made a prelude to Bonaparte. 
 Incomplete proofs, attempts only half successful, that destiny 
 flung away so soon as it had drawn out of the shade, the finished 
 and severe profile of the definitive man!' 
 
 Dieu sfait ce qu'il fait. We have Victor Hugo's word for it. 
 He alludes to Providence on fifty occasions, and shows a most 
 intimate acquaintance with its mysteries and designs. He is not 
 jealous of heaven, but speaks of it familiarly and on a footing 
 of equality, though respectfully, as one great power would of 
 another. It may be remarked indeed that almost all French 
 writers are admitted to this privilege, — the Divine name is always 
 in their mouths, and used on the very commonest and meanest 
 occasions of life. They have divine missions too, most of them 
 — Lamartine has had celestial things revealed to him, and has 
 seen heaven through his tears — Madam Dudevant intimates that 
 she is a martyr (and we dare not say what more) — Laroux and 
 Lamennais each come forward with revelations and prophecies 
 to supersede old gospels ; even such a man as Alexandre Dumas 
 prefaces some filthy story of blood and lust, by hinting that it 
 contains a holy mystery of which he is the heaven-sent expounder. 
 Oh ! sacred awful name of Providence * * * but we are 
 keeping Monsieur Hugo still gazing at the stone, still pompously 
 explaining the designs of Providence, as he stands there moon- 
 stricken on the hill. 
 
 He says that after looking for a while at the stone, and peer- 
 ing into the vault, he heard a voice coming from it, which 
 uttered these words, " il faux que la France reprenne le 
 RHiN," — that is what the voice said to Monsieur Victor Hugo of 
 the French Academy. What can one answer in reply to a 
 message from heaven .? 
 
 Let us hope, however, for the interest of humanity, and of at 
 least five hundred thousand human creatures who must bloodily 
 perish by gun and bayonet, in case this voice that M. Hugo 
 heard out of the hole really were a celestial one — let us hope 
 
 23 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 that there is some mistake on the poet's part, and that there was 
 no such intimation conveyed to him. Du reste it is an old plan, 
 that of hearing voices and having visions ; and most of our 
 readers remember the story recorded, we believe, by " a writer 
 of the 17th century." Signer Guiseppe Molinaro (the Meunier 
 of the French, the /xv\(d^/)os of the Greeks, the Molitor of the 
 Romans, the Miihler of the Saxon nations), and quite as 
 celebrated as M. Hugo's friend Calatagirone — Mr. Joseph 
 Miller tells a story of an Indian Cacique, who, taking a fancy 
 to a very handsome red coat and epaulets, or a pair of laced 
 breeches (it matters not what), worn by an European settler, 
 came to the settler, and said, " Brother, I have had a dream. I 
 walked yesterday by the banks of the Ohio, and marked the 
 wagtails dipping in the pools, and flying off to the willow-beds. 
 The moon, round as the eye of a Cyclops, was glancing down 
 upon me. I walked, I know not how long, plunged in the 
 universal reverie of nature, when a spirit came to me and 
 said, ' Tomahee Tereboo, lo, I come from heaven ; and, as a 
 sign, I bring you the Englishman's breeches, for which your 
 soul longeth.' " 
 
 Molinaro relates that the Englishman ceded the garment in 
 question : but on the next night he had a vision. An angel 
 told him that Tomahee Tereboo had given him a hundred 
 thousand acres of land on the banks of the river, which the 
 savage did ; but perceiving the inutility of such visions, for the 
 future Tomahee took care to sleep very soundly and quietly, 
 and to have no manner of dreams. But to return to Monsieur 
 Hugo's voice. The only wonder is that when the ghost of 
 Hoche was heard shouting, France must retake the Rhine, the 
 echoes in the neighbourhood did not reply. Let France come 
 and try. 
 
 To be sure M. Hugo would not have understood them. He 
 does not know a single syllable of German — of German 
 politics, of German feelings, he is perfectly ignorant. He has 
 been for two months on the Rhine, and fancies he has made 
 
 24 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 discoveries — he says the people of the left bank arc French, 
 and how can he tell? If he had lighted on the ten tribes 
 talking Hebrew by the river Sabbatikon, he would have 
 interpreted their feelings just as well. He might hear the 
 Rhinelanders, big and little, as every traveller in the country 
 has heard them within the last two years, shouting down the 
 streets of every town on the left bank, Sie sollen ihn nicht 
 haben; and the French academician is a sort of man who 
 would turn round and say, " Harken to that melody ; 'tis sung 
 by patriots. All patriots are poets. Sie sollen ihn nicht haben 
 means, the Rhinelanders of the left bank await their brethren 
 of France." 
 
 The only argument that he has for declaring that the men of 
 the left bank are Frenchmen — will it be believed, the only 
 argument .? — is, that in the inns of the left bank you see pictures 
 of Napoleon everywhere, whereas on the right bank you see 
 Frederick. " The people," says he, " have still la liberie de la 
 muraille I " 
 
 To which wise argument it may be replied that the liberty of 
 the wall proves nothing : that pictures of Napoleon are to be 
 found at Moscow and St. Petersburg, that there is hardly a 
 gentleman's house in England where a print of Napoleon is 
 not to be found, and it will be absurd to argue that because the 
 people admire Napoleon who was not a Frenchman, they must 
 be Frenchmen — and finally, it may be said simply that the 
 poet's statement is quite untrue, and that you will find quite as 
 many Fredericks and Napoleons on one bank of the stream as 
 on the other. To be sure we have not counted — no more has 
 Victor Hugo, but the great bard has thought it convenient 
 on looking down the river, and examining the different wine- 
 shops on its banks, and the pictures on the walls of the 
 wine-shops, to shut his right eye. 
 
 He sets out then, with the dictum that France must have 
 the Rhine, and the conclusion is an historical disquisition 
 embracing all the history of mankind since Charlemagne ; and 
 
 25 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 tending to show, as we imagine, that this arrangement must 
 come about. It is intended by Providence, M. Hugo says, 
 and then he begins to chop and to change countries and histories 
 according to his system, to establish similitudes, parallels, 
 symbols, types — heaven knows what. If he finds a queer old 
 book that has, perchance, escaped the pastrycooks of former 
 ages, he seizes upon a passage and thrusts it into the midst of 
 a disquisition ; a little scrap in any author that strikes his mind 
 as mysterious or picturesque, he carries it off to his huge 
 receptacle of phrases, and decks himself with it as a savage 
 does with a bead or a button. 
 
 Here are specimens of his style of declamation and 
 argument. He begins, in the simplicity of his heart, by gravely 
 apologizing to the nations about whom he is going to treat, 
 for being obliged to say some unpleasant truths concerning 
 them. A morning paper has taken the trouble of translation 
 off our hands. 
 
 " Before we proceed further, it behoves us to declare that this is but 
 a cold and grave study of history. He that writes these lines under- 
 stands the hatreds of nation to nation, the antipathies of races, the 
 blindness of nationalities ; he excuses them, but shares not in them. 
 Nothing, in what has just been read, nothing in what has still to be 
 read, contains a reprobation that can fall upon the nations themselves, 
 of which the author speaks. The author sometimes censures govern- 
 ments, but never censures nations. In general, nations are what they 
 ought to be ; the root of good is in them ; God develops it and 
 makes it yield its fruit The four nations themselves of which the 
 picture is here drawn, will render notable service to civilization the 
 day they acknowledge the common object of mankind as their special 
 object. Spain is illustrious, England great ; Russia, and Turkey 
 herself, contain several of the best elements of futurity. 
 
 " We also consider it a duty to declare, with the profound indepen- 
 dence of our mind, that we do not extend to princes what we say 
 to governments. Nothing is easier nowadays than to insult kings. 
 Insult to kings is flattery addressed to another quarter. Now, to 
 flatter anybody in such fashion, whether upwards or downwards, is an 
 idea that he who speaks here need not reject ; he feels himself free, 
 and is free because he knows he has spirit enough to praise, whenever 
 there is occasion for it, who ever seems to him deserving of praise, were 
 
 26 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 it even a king. He therefore says it openly and from a full conviction 
 never, at any period, and whatever epoch of history may be confronted 
 with ours, never have princes and nations been worth what they are 
 now worth. 
 
 " Let, therefore, no applications, wounding either to the honour of 
 royalties, or to the dignity of nations, be sought for in this historical 
 examination. It is, before all, a philosophic and speculative work. It 
 exhibits general facts, and nothing more ; general ideas, and nothing 
 more. The author has no bitterness in his soul. He candidly awaits 
 the serene futurity of humanity. He has hope in princes, and faith in 
 nations. 
 
 " Let us now continue to examine the points of resemblance between 
 the two empires which have alarmed the past, and the two empires 
 which alarm the present. 
 
 " A first resemblance. There is something of the Tartar in the Turk, 
 as well as in the Russian. The genius of nations always retains 
 something of their source. 
 
 " The Turks, offspring of the Tartars, are men of the North, who 
 descended through Asia, and entered Europe by the South. 
 
 " Napoleon said at St. Helena, ' Scratch the Russian and you will 
 find the Tartar.' What he said of the Russian may be said of the 
 Turk. 
 
 "The Man of the North, properly so called, is always the same. At 
 certain climateric and fatal periods he descends from the Pole and 
 exhibits himself to the southern nations, then goes away, and returns 
 two thousand years after, and history find him again such as it had 
 left him. 
 
 " Here is an historical painting which we have at this moment under 
 our eyes, ' that is truly the Barbarian. His limbs, thick and short, his 
 neck the same, a something hideous in all his body, made him resemble 
 a monster with two feet, or those balustres coarsely carved into human 
 figures which support the steps of our staircases. He is quite a savage. 
 He does without fire when he must, even to prepare his food. He eats 
 roots and flesh cooked, or rather putrefied, under his horse saddle. He 
 enters beneath a roof only when he cannot do otherwise. He has a horror 
 of houses as if they were tombs. He crosses valleys and mountains ; he 
 runs before him ; he has learned from infancy to endure hunger, thirst, 
 and cold. He wears a large fur-cap on his head, a woollen petticoat on 
 his stomach, two goat-skins on his thighs, and on his back a mantle of 
 rat-skins. He cannot combat on foot. His legs made heavy by large 
 boots, cannot walk, but nail him to his saddle so that he makes but 
 one animal with his horse, which is always nimble and vigorous, but 
 small and ugly. He lives on horseback, makes treaties on horseback, 
 
 27 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 buys and sell on horseback, drinks on horseback, sleeps and dreams on 
 horseback. 
 
 " ' He ploughs not the earth, he cultivates not fields ; he knows not 
 what a plough is. He wanders for ever, as if in quest of a country 
 and home. If you ask him of what place he is, he knows not what to 
 reply. He is here to-day, but yesterday he was there ; he was bred 
 yonder, but was born further on. 
 
 " ' When the battle commences he roars tremendously ; arrives, 
 strikes, disappears, and returns like lightning. In a moment he 
 carries and plunders the assailed camp. He fights close with the sabre, 
 and from afar with a long lance, the point of which is ingeniously 
 contrived.' 
 
 " This is the Man of the North ? By whom was he sketched ? — at 
 what period, and after whom ? No doubt in 1814, by some frightened 
 writer of the Moniteur, after the Cossack, at the time France yielded? 
 No ; this picture was taken after the Hun, in the year 375, by Ammianus 
 Marcellinus and Jordanis, at the time Rome was falling. Fifteen 
 hundred years have elapsed since, and the figure has reappeared, and 
 the portrait still resembles. 
 
 " Let us note that the Huns of 375, like the Cossacks of 1814, came 
 from the frontiers of China. 
 
 " The Man of the South changes, transforms, and develops himself 
 — flourishes and fructifies — dies and revives again, like vegetation ; — the 
 Man of the North is eternal, like snow. 
 
 " A second resemblance. In Russia, as in Turkey, nothing is finally 
 acquired by anybody, nothing is quite possessed, nothing is necessarily 
 hereditary. The Russian, like the Turk, may, according to the pleasure, 
 or caprice of a higher power, lose his occupation, grade, rank, liberty, 
 property, nobility, and even his name. All belongs to the monarch, 
 just as in certain theories, still more insane than dangerous, which it 
 will be vainly attempted to adapt to the French, everything would 
 belong to the community. It is important to remark, and we submit 
 the fact, to the meditation of absolute democrats, that the characteristic 
 of despotism is to level. Despotism establishes equality under it. The 
 more complete the despotism, the more complete the equality. In 
 Russia, as well as Turkey, saving rebellion, which is not a regular fact, 
 there is no existence decidedly and virtually resisting. A Russian 
 Prince is shattered just as a Pacha ; the Prince, like the Pacha, may 
 become a private soldier, and be in the army no more than a cypher, 
 whose figure a corporal is. A Russian Prince is created like a Pacha ; 
 a pedlar becomes a Mehemet Ali ; a pastrycook's boy becomes a 
 Menzikofif. This equality which we record here without pronouncing 
 an opinion on it, ascends even to the throne, and always in Turkey, 
 
 28 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 and at times in Russia, couples with it. A slave is a Sultana, a servant 
 has been a Czarine. 
 
 "Despotism, like demagogy, hates natural superiorities and social 
 superiorities. In the war it wages against them, the former shrinks not 
 more than the latter from the deeds which behead society itself. To it 
 there are no men of genius. Thomas More weighs not more in the 
 scales of Henry Tudor than Bailly in the scales of Marat. To despotism 
 there are no crowned heads ; Mary Stuart weighs not more in the scales 
 of Elizabeth than Louis XVI. in the scales of Robespierre. 
 
 " The first thing that strikes one, when one compares Russia with 
 Turkey, is a likeness ; the first thing that strikes one, when one com- 
 pares England with Spain, is an unlikeness. In Spain, royalty is 
 absdlute ; in England, it is limited. 
 
 " On reflecting on it, one comes to this singular result : this unlike- 
 ness gives rise to a likeness. The excess of monarchism produces, as 
 regards royal authority, and in considering it only under that special 
 point of view, the same result as the excess of constitutionalism. In 
 either case the king is annulled. 
 
 "The King of England, served on bended knees, is a nominal 
 king ; the King of Spain, also served on bended knees, is likewise a 
 nominal king. Both are impeccable. A remarkable thing is that the 
 fundamental axiom of the most absolute monarchy is equally the 
 fundamental axiom of the most constitutional monarchy. El rey no cal, 
 the king falls not, says the old Spanish law ; The king can do no wrong, 
 says the old English law. What is there more striking, when one 
 explores history, than to find, beneath facts seemingly the most different, 
 pure monarchism and rigorous constitutionalism established on the 
 same basis, and rising from the same root. 
 
 "The King of Spain could be, without danger, just as the King of 
 England, a child, a minor, an ignorant man, or an idiot. The Par- 
 liament governed for the one, the Despacho Universal for the other. 
 The day the news of the capture of Mons reached Madrid, Philip IV. 
 rejoiced much ; pitying aloud that poor King of France (est pobrecito rey 
 de Francia). Nobody ventured to tell him that it was to him the King 
 of Spain that Mons belonged. Spinola, whilst investing Breda, which 
 the Dutch admirably defended, detailed in a long letter to Philip III. 
 the innumerable impossibilities of the siege. Philip returned him 
 his letter, after inserting in the margin with his own hand the mere 
 words ' Marquis, take Breda.' Stupidity or genius only can write this. 
 One must either know nothing or will everything — be a Philip III. 
 or a Bonaparte. To such insignificance could a King of Spain fall, 
 isolated as he was from all thought and action by the very form 
 of his authority. The grand charter isolates the King of England 
 
 29 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in about the same way. Spain struggled against Louis XIV. with 
 a silly king ; England struggled against Napoleon with an insane king. 
 
 " Does not this prove that, in the two cases, the king is purely nomi- 
 nal ? Is it a good, or is it an evil ? This we also record, without 
 pronouncing upon it. 
 
 " Nothing is less free than a King of England, unless it be a King 
 of Spain. To both is said — ' Vous pouvtz tout, a la condition de ne nen 
 vouloir.' Parliament binds the first ; etiquette binds the second. Such 
 is the irony of history. Those two obstacles, so different, produce, in 
 certain cases, the same effects. Sometimes the Parliament rebels, and 
 kills the King of England ; sometimes etiquette rebels, and kills the 
 King of Spain— a strange parallel, but an undeniable one, wherein the 
 scaffold of Charles I. has for its pendant the furnace of Philip III. 
 
 " One of the main results of this annullation of royal authority, 
 through causes almost contrary, is, that the Salic law becomes useless. 
 In Spain, as in England, women may reign. 
 
 " There still exists more than one other point of resemblance 
 between the two people which an attentive comparison teaches us. 
 In England, as in Spain, pride and patience form the basis of the 
 national character. That is, considering all, and saving the restrictions 
 we shall point out elsewhere, an admirable temper which urges nations 
 to great deeds. Pride is a virtue in a nation, patience is a virtue in an 
 individual. 
 
 " With pride one rules, with patience one colonises. Now, what do 
 we find at the bottom of the history of Spain as well as the history of 
 England? Ruling, and colonising. 
 
 " Just now we drew a picture, with our eyes fixed upon history, of 
 the Castilian infantry. If you read it over again, you will find it is also 
 a picture of the English infantry. 
 
 "Just now we pointed out some features of the Spanish clergy. In 
 England there is also an Archbishop of Toledo ; he is called the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. 
 
 "If we descend into the slightest particulars, we see that as regards 
 those minute imperious details of domestic and material life, which 
 are, as it were, the second nature of a people, the two nations, strange 
 to say, are in the same way tributary to the ocean. Tea is to 
 England, what cocoa was to Spain — the habit of the nation ; and 
 consequently, according to circumstcinces, an occasion of alliance, or a 
 cause of war. 
 
 " Let us pass to another order of ideas. 
 
 " There has been, and still exists among certain nations, a horrible 
 dogma, contrary to the internal feeling of the human conscience, and 
 contrary to the public sense, which is the very life of states. It is that 
 
 30 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 fatal religious aberration, erected into law in some countries, which 
 establishes it as a principle and believes that in burning the body one 
 saves the soul — that the tortures of this world preserve a human being 
 from the tortures of the other — that Heaven is to be won by physical 
 sufferings — and that God is but a great executioner, smiling from the 
 height of the eternity of his hell, at all the hideous little punishments 
 that man can invent. If ever a dogma was contrary to the development 
 of human sociability it is that one. It is it that harnesses itself to the 
 car of Juggernaut : it is it that presided a century ago at the annual 
 exterminations of Dahomey. Whoever feels and reasons rejects it with 
 horror. In vain have the religions of the East transmitted it to the 
 religions of the West. No philosophy has adopted it. For three 
 thousand years past the pale light of those sepulchral doctrines, without 
 attracting a single thinker, has vaguely reddened the foot of the 
 monstrous porch of the agonies of India — a sombre and gigantic edifice 
 which loses itself, half perceived by terrified humanity, through the 
 bottomless darkness of infinite mystery. 
 
 ' ' That doctrine kindled in Europe in the sixteenth century the funeral 
 piles of the Jews and heretics. The Inquisition raised them — Spain 
 stirred the fire. That doctrine still kindles in Asia, at the present day, 
 the funeral piles of widows. England neither raises them nor stirs the 
 fire, but she looks on as they burn. 
 
 " We wish not to draw from those rapprochemens more than they 
 contain. And yet, it is impossible for us not to remark that a people 
 that were fully in the path of civilisation could not tolerate, even from 
 policy, those mournful, atrocious, and infamous follies. France, in 
 the sixteenth century, rejected the Inquisition. In the nineteenth, were 
 India a French colony, France would long ago have extinguished the 
 Suttee. 
 
 " Since, whilst noting here and there the unperceived, but real points 
 of contact of Spain and England, we have spoken of France, let us 
 observe that some are to be found in events apparently purely 
 accidental. Spain had had the captivity of Francis I. England 
 has shared in that glory or opprobrium — she has had the captivity of 
 Napoleon. 
 
 " There are characteristic and memorable things which revert, and 
 are repeated, for the instruction of attentive minds, in the deep echoes 
 of history. The words of Waterloo — La garde meurt et ne se rend pas ! 
 —are but the heroic translation of the words of Pavia^Towi est perdu, 
 jors I'honneur ! " 
 
 See what it is to be a poet with a genius for similes ! The 
 reader of this long extract may amuse himself with studying 
 
 3' 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 likenesses and unlikenesses, unlikenesses that are like and 
 likenesses that are unlike; parallels that show a wondrous 
 disposition to meet and to diverge. And in the name of all the 
 Muses, for what purpose ? Is the permission of the Suttee in 
 British India in the least like the inquisition in Spain .? Has 
 the captivity of Napoleon the slightest likeness to the captivity 
 of Francis the First.? Have Francis's words at Pavia any 
 resemblance to the words which were noi uttered at 
 Waterloo .' And suppose they have, what then ? 
 
 And now we come to the very greatest discovery that has 
 been made by a modem poet. 
 
 " In short, besides the direct rapprochemens that history reveals 
 between the four nations which are the subject of this paragraph, 
 there exist I know not what strange and, as it were, diagonal relations ! 
 which seem to connect them mysteriously, and point out to the 
 thinker a secret similitude of conformation, and consequently, perhaps, of 
 destination. Let us mark two only here. The first is between England 
 and Turkey : Henry VIII. killed his wives, as did Mahomet II. The 
 second is between Russia and Spain: Peter I. killed his son, as did 
 Philip II." 
 
 Diagonal similarities ! Let us thank the bard for teaching us 
 that word : if it were but to have discovered diagonal simi- 
 larities, M. Hugo has not laboured on the Rhine in vain. It 
 is a great and noble method of argument, as thus — 
 
 Henry VIII. killed his wives, 
 
 Mahomet II. killed his wives ; 
 
 Therefore Russia devoured Turkey. 
 
 Peter I. killed his son, 
 
 Philip II. killed his son ; 
 
 Therefore England devoured Spain. 
 The great immutable laws of zigzag are thus established; 
 and the discoverer cries, in delighted enthusiasm, 
 
 " Russia has devoured Turkey. 
 
 " England has devoured Spain. 
 
 "This is, according to our way of thinking, a last and definite 
 assimilation. A state devours another on condition only of repro- 
 ducing it." 
 
 32 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 Pshaw ! — any one who wants to know how the last and 
 definitive assimilation is contradicted, need only look to the 
 author's own account of the Turkish seizure of Greece. It 
 did not reproduce it, says he, " A I'instant meme, au seul 
 contact des Turcs, la Grfece etait devenu barbare. Le Grec en 
 passant par la bouche des Turcs, en etoit retombe patois : — 
 derision amfere des mots et des choses, degradation et parodie, 
 &c." Greece disappeared, how did Turkey reproduce it ? 
 Then as to the assertion that England has devoured Spain, 
 the author immediately and in the very next paragraph magni- 
 ficently contradicts himself, by showing that every other nation 
 has had a much greater share of the spoil. 
 
 " It suffices to look over two maps of Europe, drawn at an interval 
 of fifty years, to see in what an irresistible, slow, and fatal manner the 
 Muscovite frontier invades the Ottoman Empire. It is the gloomy and 
 formidable aspect of an immense rising tide. At every moment and 
 on all sides the waves advance, and the shores disappear. The waves 
 are Russia; the shore Turkey. Sometimes the billows recede, but 
 they rise again, the moment after, and this time they go farther. 
 A large part of Turkey is already covered, and it is still vaguely 
 perceived, beneath the Russian overflowing. On the 2oth of August, 
 1828, a billow rolled as far as Adrianople. It retired, but when it 
 returns it will reach Constantinople. 
 
 "As for Spain, the dislocations of the Roman empire, and of the 
 Carlovingian empire, can alone give an idea of that prodigious dismem- 
 berment, without reckoning the Milanese which Austria has taken — 
 without reckoning Roussillon, Franche-Comt^, the Ardennes, the 
 Cambasis, and Artois, which have reverted to France — of the frag- 
 ments of the ancient Spanish monarchy four kingdoms have been 
 formed in Europe, even leaving out the kingdom of Spain properly so 
 called, Portugal, Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, and Belgium ; in Asia a 
 viceroyalty, India, equal to an empire ; in America nine republics 
 —Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, 
 La Plata, and Chili. Either by influence, or by direct sovereignty, 
 Great Britain now possesses the largest portion of that enormous 
 Inheritance. She has almost all the islands that Spain had, and 
 which almost, literally speaking, were innumerable. As we said in 
 the beginning, she has devoured Spain just as Spain had devoured 
 Portugal ; and now, in casting the eye over the British dominions, one 
 sees but Portuguese and Castilian names— Gibraltar, Sierra Leone, 
 
 N.S.B. 33 D 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Ascension, Fernando Po, Las Mascarenhas, El Cabo Delgado, El Cabo 
 Guardafu, Honduras, I^as Lucaias, Las Bermudas, La Barbada, La 
 Trinidad, Tobago, Santa Margarita, La Granada, San Christoforo, 
 Antigoa. Everywhere Spain is visible, everywhere Spain reappears. 
 Even under the pression of England, the fragments of the empire of 
 Charles the Fifth have not yet lost their shape ; and let us be permitted 
 a comparison which expresses our thought — one recognises the whole 
 Spanish monarchy in the possessions of Great Britain as one finds again 
 the half-digested jaguar in the belly of the boa." 
 
 The whole Spanish monarchy! what the Milanese, Roussillon, 
 Franche-Comt^, Cambasis, Artois, Portugal, Sardinia, Sicily, 
 and Belgium, are all these in the boa's belly, along with the 
 South American republics.? 
 
 By the way Spain itself is not included, which somehow in 
 the flurry of the declamation has passed out of the poor writer's 
 brain. It can't hold many things together, or remember its own 
 creations too long, that rambling, wool-gathering, big-browed 
 poet's head. Brilliant images, and fine colours, and loud 
 sounds pass through it, and dazzle and confound it ; one 
 thought follows another so brightly and quickly, that by the 
 time he has done spouting a sentence he has forgotten its 
 predecessor, and is already on a wild look-out for some new 
 fancy. There is something almost affecting, in the way in 
 which the simple creature produces his catalogue of names of 
 the West India islands, that indeed are almost as long to count 
 as the kingdoms and provinces which he has reckoned before. 
 Ascension, Las Bermudas, El Cabo Delgado! — indeed they 
 sound quite as fine as Sardinia, or Sicily, or South America. 
 He gives the population of the islands somewhere else, but by 
 this time they are quite whisked out of his brain. What does 
 he care for a few figures .' he has caught his simile at the end of 
 the sentence, his jaguar in the boa's belly, and sits down, for 
 two or three seconds or so, quite happy. 
 
 As for the Rhine, he has discovered that at the end of the 
 war Russia and England, out of profound dissimulation, gave 
 the left bank to Germany. And though to be sure it cannot 
 
 34 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 be denied, that this Rhine bank so given to Germany has been 
 actually German for a thousand years : yet, says he, Charle- 
 magne, Louis XIV. and Napoleon wanted to have it for France; 
 in the old Carlovingian maps it is written Francia Rhenana, 
 and therefore it is France. (569.) The handing it over to 
 Germany in 18 15 was a "chef-d'oeuvre of hatred, of deceit, 
 of discord, and calamity if you will, but a chef-d'oeuvre — la 
 politique en a comme cela." (570.) "The kings said to one 
 another. Here is the robe of Joseph." (France is Joseph— 
 Bon Dieu ! would any man but Victor Hugo have lighted upon 
 the simile, or can we forget that this new Joseph had gone out 
 pistol in hand and robbed the garment in question), " Here is 
 the robe of Joseph, let each man take his share." (579.) 
 
 Joseph must have back his robe ; and M. Hugo thinks that 
 the matter may be arranged peaceably between France and 
 Prussia, thus — " Hanover," says he, " to Prussia, and the 
 Rhine to France ! France and Germany will thus form 
 Europe. France will take under her protectorate the smaller 
 kingdoms of the south; Germany, the inferior states of the 
 north ; Russia will be pushed back into his snows ; and 
 England remain isolated in her seas." 
 
 If you want to know what France is (besides being Joseph) 
 — " France is, in /act, the thought, the intelligence, the publicity, 
 the book, the press, the tribune, the speech, the tongue of the 
 whole world. (587.) Germany y^^/j — Yr&nc^ thinks. There 
 were old republics, but they have gone, because they were 
 limited and special. France, for her part, stipulates for the 
 people and all people : she has that which saves nations, unity ; 
 not that which destroys them, egotism. For her to conquer 
 provinces is well ; to conquer minds is better still. (603.) 
 Charles I. died in his island, Europe took no notice : Louis XVI. 
 perished, and the whole world was in a flame. (613.) The 
 ancient republics have passed away : — in the day when France 
 shall be extinguished, there will be twilight on the face of the 
 earth. (606.) But no, there is no such danger. France will 
 
 35 D 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 have her natural boundary, and be content. The highest 
 intelligences, which at the present moment represent the 
 politics, literature, science, and art of the whole universe, 
 France possesses them, and France gives them to civilization. 
 Satisfy her, then ; and above all, reflect upon this, Europe can 
 never be tranquil while France is not content." (625.) 
 
 Here we have, in the poet's own modest words, the character 
 and demands of his nation. And while he was making the 
 latter, it must be confessed that the world ought to be some- 
 what grateful to him, for he only asks for a few hundred miles 
 of extra territory, and might just as well have asked for Moscow 
 and Cairo, for Spain and Canada, for every town or country 
 which French robbers have overrun, or which have been sacked 
 and ravaged by French fire and sword. The descendants of 
 the Black Prince and Henry V., by exactly the same argument, 
 might ask for their ancient inheritances, Gascony, Acquitaine, 
 Normandy, and the kingdom itself. Did not Henry VI. possess 
 it once? Nay, how long is it since General Muffling was 
 governor of the capital, and the Germans masters of it ? The 
 Cossacks have just as good a claim to Paris as the French to 
 Cologne. Seeing, then, the endless quarrels and inconvenience 
 to which such discussions might give rise, would not it be better 
 for Monsieur Hugo to exert his gigantic influence among his 
 countrymen, and induce them to be contented at once, and with 
 things as they are. Surely, according to his own showing, his 
 country is pretty well provided for. He has his intellectual 
 superiority : " his Pascal for a Pope ; and what a pope !— his 
 Voltaire for an Antichrist ; and what an Antichrist ! " His gods 
 — his devils are better than those of any other nation : he has 
 his religion and his irreligion to be proud of. Before the fame 
 of his people all other reputations are futile : " it took Shakspeare 
 150 years to be known in France," as he says; and the reason 
 was, not because French people are absurdly ignorant, and 
 proud of their ignorance, but because they have really such a 
 superiority of their own, that they are satisfied with it, and 
 
 36 
 
THE RHINE. 
 
 naturally must be careless regarding humbler fame. All the 
 world is instructed by them. " The politics, the literature, the 
 art, the science of the whole universe," belongs to them. 
 
 A.h, Joseph (we love the appropriate name), be content with 
 this peaceful monarchy — fly from vainglory as from Potiphar's 
 wife. Be modest, Joseph, according to your nature, and you 
 shall rule over the land ; the other children of Jacob shall come 
 bowing before you, and you shall receive them with meekness 
 and kindness; laying up granaries of wisdom to feed the 
 nations in times of want, and being the chosen and upright 
 friend of all. 
 
 There is a great deal in M. Hugo's conclusion which we have 
 been forced to pass over — the history of all the empires and 
 republics of Europe— of the Spanish Armada, the Czar of 
 Muscovy, the great Cham of Tartary, and Prester John ; for all 
 these things the reader is referred to the book itself, of which, 
 unless it were transferred bodily to our pages, no one could 
 form an accurate idea — perhaps not even then. 
 
 But the great discovery of the book is decidedly Joseph. 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 The German naturalist made a pleasant excursion in England, 
 and having been very hospitably received, not only by his scien- 
 tific brethren (one of whose meetings at Birmingham he came to 
 this country to witness), but also by many of the gentry, posses- 
 sors of handsome houses and parks, kind dispensers of good 
 cheer, he has seen the country in its most agreeable aspect, 
 and writes of it with grateful good nature. And so simple, 
 kind-hearted, and unassuming seems the German man of 
 science to be, that his reader cannot fail to be pleased with his 
 companionship, and to share his good humour. It is a fine 
 thing to travel, even in imagination, through the rich inland 
 counties of England in the cheerful summer-time ; to go from 
 one fine house to another, where welcome, plenty, elegance, 
 and kindness await you; where all the men are hearty and 
 kind, all the ladies handsome and smiling ; where the claret is 
 of the very best, the lordly parks in full leaf, and the best 
 of venison in season. There is scarcely any foreign traveller 
 that we know of who has not been duly affected by such things ; 
 and whose records of them are not, by reflection, pleasant. We 
 have had many harmless Barmecide feasts in the company 
 of Dukes and Earls to whom we have been presented by 
 his Highness Furst Puckler, that thoughtful dandy chronicler. 
 Who has not spent a month in the Highlands, in the castle of 
 the Duke of G-rd-n, and cheek-by-jowl with his Excellency the 
 Earl of Ab-rd-n (M-n-st-r of State for F-r-gn Affairs), being 
 introduced to those great personages by the incomparable 
 Mr. N. P. Willis .' And with Miss Sedgwick, or Mr. Fenimore 
 Cooper for a conductor, have we not had the honour to dance 
 
 38 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 at Devonshire-house, to dine with Lord S-fton or Sir George 
 W-rr-nder, to breakfast with Mr. Samuel R-gers, — in fact to 
 enjoy all the delights of the best company of the greatest city of 
 the greatest country in the world ! Of all these modern travel- 
 lers in genteel English society, only one has been discontented 
 with what he saw or ate — and if Mr. Fenimore Cooper's notions 
 of equality are such that he cannot brook superiority in his 
 neighbours, and his stomach so delicate that hospitality and 
 kindness makes him sick, at least it may be said of the others 
 that they were pleased with the attention shown to them ; and 
 expressed their sense of the good things enjoyed by them each 
 in his way. Sometimes, perhaps, in perusing their descriptions 
 of feasts given, and great and beautiful personages seen, the 
 English reader may feel a little pang of mortification that he, 
 being an Englishman and no foreigner, may live to be a 
 thousand years old, and never have a chance of figuring at 
 Almack's, or hobnobbing with a Duke at dinner : but such 
 little outbreaks of envy are soon suppressed in the well-regulated 
 mind ; and the next best thing to enjoying a good thing one's 
 self, is to see another honest fellow heartily and kindly enjoying 
 it. Besides, we have in our turns this consolation, that we 
 bakers' sons, or retired linendrapers, or erratic lawyers'-clerks, 
 with a sufficient sum of money to carry us genteelly through a 
 six-months' continental tour, we need only purchase a fancy 
 volunteer's uniform from some fashionable tailor in Holywell- 
 street, and may in our turn figure in foreign courts, dancing 
 quadrilles with the best duchesses at the Tuileries, or eating 
 sauer-kraut by the side of German counts and dukes of thirty 
 descents. Let all English persons excluded from the fashion- 
 able world and envious that foreigners should so easily be 
 admitted to it, take the above remark into consideration, and 
 remember that if genteel England is shut to them, all Europe 
 on the other hand is their own. 
 
 Our honest " Naturforscher " (who as we conjecture from 
 certain very pertinent though severe remarks which he makes 
 
 39 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 concerning the German " adel " has not himself the privilege of 
 writing "von " before his respectable name) is not in the least 
 degree blinded or puffed up into vanity by the attentions paid 
 him by great people, and instead of taking advantage of their 
 kindness to fancy himself a dandy and an aristocratic personage, 
 as some of the travellers before mentioned have done, his 
 sense of the hospitality he has received only takes the shape of 
 perfect good humour and contentment with things about him ; 
 and we would almost venture to assert, that the friends whom 
 this simple, shrewd, kindly German traveller has visited, would 
 be glad to see him again. 
 
 He writes of all he has seen without the least affectation, and 
 with so much pleasantry and liveliness, that the reader at the 
 end of the volume comes to have a warm personal liking for 
 the author — the English reader certainly ; for he is in love with 
 our country, its men and its women, its manliness, and straight- 
 forward simplicity : somewhat of a tory, perhaps, he still 
 modestly avoids all political discussions, which do not even 
 I interest him, he says : he thinks port wine capital (accounting 
 I excellently for our partialities that way) : we find him coolly 
 taking his share of ''einigen bouteillen double stout" on the 
 very first day of his arrival : add to this, he hates a Frenchman 
 heartily, having a most thorough contempt for his braggadocio 
 and his disposition to chatter, and his absurd pretensions to be 
 the leader of civilization. In these opinions upon French and 
 English manners, and the beer of the latter country, Monsieur 
 Victor Hugo and others may not agree ; but perhaps it is one 
 of the reasons why, as an Englishman, one cannot help having 
 a sympathy with the honest, jovial Natur/orscher. He begins 
 with saying : 
 
 " In a former period of my life, I passed many years in Great Britain 
 and France : to the last-named country I brought a great number of 
 letters of recommendation, — to the former, but one. In both countries, 
 especially in the capitals, of each, I made many acquaintances — those 
 made in Frajice have long since ceased, and did not indeed survive my 
 
 40 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 stay in Paris ; while those contracted in England still exist, with all 
 the old intimacy, although, since first they were formed, almost a score 
 of years have passed away. For close private friendship, the chief 
 part of Frenchmen do not seem to be formed ; their personal inter- 
 course is generally pleasing and obliging, though it must be presumed 
 that these social virtues exhibit themselves in words rather than in ac- 
 tions. Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be the Frenchman s motto, 
 and the foundation of this sort of forgetfulness lies in the heartlessness 
 of his character. How different is the Briton! In outward appear- 
 ance cold, haughty, selfish, unsympathising, — inwardly he is warm, 
 highminded, accommodating, and ready to make personal sacrifices : 
 these and other virtues will be found to develop themselves in the Eng- 
 lishman, by those who know the right way to move him. 
 
 " This preface will enable my readers to understand the reason 
 which led me (it is now some short time back) to cross the channel 
 for the third time. 
 
 "For this end two routes were before me. The one lay through 
 La belle France and its capital, the other by the great water-road, 
 the Rhine. The charms of a journey through beautiful France, I had 
 already sufiiciently experienced. The comforts of a dirty diligence, 
 and the exquisite society to be found in it, the bad roads of the pat- 
 tern land of Europe, the ennui of the journey, and of a sojourn in 
 some of those dismal provincial towns, pitiful reflexes of the capital, 
 were already so well known to me, that I did not hesitate a moment as 
 to the road I should take. 
 
 " One Saturday morning, then, in the month of August, I bade fare- 
 well to my home. How different are the feelings with which a lad leaves 
 it on his travels, to those which fill the heart of a husband and father, 
 who is separating himself for a while from all that in earth is most dear 
 to him ! The one goes omnia sua secum porlans, the other leaves a 
 part of himself behind him. I was obliged to put some restraint upon 
 my feelings as I pressed a last kiss upon the cheek of the little one still 
 sleeping, and said the last word to its mother, and I do not care to con- 
 fess that my eyes were not dry, as the ' Stadt Strasburg,' the steamer 
 in which I was, shaped its course northward down the stream, and I 
 had a last glimpse of the wife waving a handkerchief on the bridge. ' ' 
 
 On board the " Stadt Strasburg " our author finds himself 
 almost in England, and passes away the voyage from Strasburg 
 to Cologne in a pleasant gossip, with much about his fellow- 
 passengers. There was a lord on board, and he does not fail to 
 remark how eager all our beloved countrywomen were to get a 
 
 41 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 sight of this great man, and what a noble interesting-looking 
 creature they thought him. What a strange simple adulation it 
 is that we pay to that picture of an English coronet ; — we who 
 look down with such a grand contempt upon all foreign titles ; 
 talking of swindling French counts, beggarly German barons, 
 shabby Italian princes, with lofty indifference and scorn ! And 
 yet is there any single person of the middle classes who reads 
 this but would not be pleased to walk down Regent-street with 
 a lord ? or any lady who will not confess that at the very minute 
 of reading this she has a Peerage upon her drawing-room table ? 
 There is no other country but ours where such a work is known; 
 and it would be curious to call for a return of the number of 
 such books which have been sold to the middle classes for the 
 last fifty years — to people who have not the slightest connexion 
 with any one of the august families whose names and arms figure 
 in that great bodk of reference — to people who never see a lord 
 except in the park, or at the opera, and will die and never speak 
 to one. The writer of this once asked the servant of an eminent 
 Paris surgeon, who has much practice amongst the English 
 there, to bring him a dictionary from the library. The man 
 immediately brought back the Peerage. " That's the book," 
 said he, " which Messieurs les Anglais always call for." And 
 there it was, the last edition of Mr. Burke's national work, — not 
 a year old, — but bearing strong evidences of having been well 
 and frequently read. Is it not a fact that respectable families 
 in the country have interleaved Peerages ? that they strike off 
 the deaths and births of the aristocracy, and insert their 
 marriages or other accidents in neat crowquill manuscripts ? 
 Shakspeare, Debrett, and Mrs. Rundell, may be said to be the 
 first books of the British genteel library : and, taken as a rule, 
 the former is never read ; the latter often ; the second always. 
 But let us hear the German tourist's description of the lord who 
 has given rise to this unwarrantable disquisition. His lordship 
 is young it appears, and married to a ladyship, much older 
 than himself, and evidently doting on him, and the noble pair 
 
 42 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 are in the habit of travelling about with Italian greyhounds. 
 From this description, and from their own intimate knowledge 
 of the aristocracy, perhaps some of our readers can discover 
 who really this nameless lord is. 
 
 •" Dear me,' said a somewhat ancient British spinster, 'is it indeed. 
 
 Lord , what a fine and noble-looking man he is/ ' Yes,' answered her 
 
 neighbour, ' after all there goes nothing beyond an English nobleman. ' If his 
 lordship and his companions had before been the subject of general 
 conversation, now that his title was ascertained, he was still more 
 watched. . . . Towards evening, the young lord presented himself 
 once more upon the common show-place of our ship, but this time in 
 a costume so different, that he could scarcely be recognised. His 
 elegant travelling-dress of the morning had been exchanged for a sort 
 of robe or talar, which almost swept the ground, and which was 
 brilliantly illuminated with all the colours of the rainbow. The noble- 
 man's hips were bound by a girdle of brown silk, at the end whereof 
 hung a couple of gigantic tassels ; on his head was a cap which had a 
 tolerable resemblance to a turban ; and his lordship's fair white hands 
 glittered with rings, formed of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, which, no 
 doubt, were more valuable than the estates of many a German count. The 
 chief ornament of our lord, however, consisted of a pipe, of which the 
 head was of finest meerschaum, the pipe-stick being decorated with the 
 richest amber, likewise from this depended a pair of tassels, wonderful 
 in size and variety of colour. So accoutred, his lordship trod the deck 
 with a measured step, blowing right and left from his pipe portentous 
 clouds of tobacco into air, with a look of godlike ease, and an Oriental 
 indifference, which, I am sure, Ali-Pacha himself cannot excel, as he sits 
 cross-legged on his ottoman and smokes and sips his Moka. With the 
 greatest pleasure did I watch the movements of the British nobleman, 
 and could not but admire that grandeur of nonchalance, the true test of 
 gentility, which his lordship had attained. But more delightful even 
 than this sight, was it to behold the astonishment which was depicted 
 on the countenances of the worthy English gentlemen and ladies on their 
 stools and benches around— an astonishment occasioned not so much 
 by the quasi-Turkish appearance which my lord now wore, as by the 
 fact that that noble and beautiful mouth of his should be so polluted as 
 to become a chimney for foul tobacco-smoke. As soon as my lord 
 turned his back upon one of his countrywomen, the lady drew forth 
 her handkerchief, and turning upon her nose in disgust, began flapping 
 the kerchief to and fro, to drive the odious smoke from her. As may 
 be imagined, the flapping was endless ; and had not the smoker been 
 Lord , the whole British society on board would have risen at once, 
 
 43 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and called upon the captain instantaneously to remove the individual 
 who sinned so against good manners. 
 
 " His lordship's appearance as a smoker was to me the cause of 
 especial satisfaction. Some short time before his arrival, certain 
 gentlemen had been amusing themselves with their pipes, although 
 they did not in the least offend the English noses by so doing, having 
 for the purposes of their enjoyment modestly betaken themselves to the 
 lower deck, which, as it is known, none but low people frequent. This 
 circumstance gave occasion to some English ladies, and my Insigni- 
 ficance, to hold a discourse upon smoking ; in which dispute it was 
 advanced on the British side that this habit was exceedingly vulgar, and 
 that in England a person pretending to the title of a gentleman never 
 would dare to indulge in it. Much also was discoursed regarding 
 Germany and its love for the ' horrid weed,' in which epithet I could 
 not myself concur, from patriotism in the first place, and also because 
 to a good Havanna cigar I am not altogether unfriendly. But my fair 
 islanders, who, be it remarked, were somewhat blue, and deep in 
 German metaphysics — declared that tobacco smoke had had as much 
 effect upon the modern philosophy of Germany, of late years, as steam 
 had had upon the trade and manufactures of Great Britain ; which 
 reasoning, finding my patriotism growing too hot, I cut short by 
 presently pointing out my lord as he came towards us puffing into our 
 noses aromatic clouds from Kanaster of the best sort, and asking if his 
 lordship was considered in Englamd a gentleman ? " 
 
 From the lord, our good-natured German goes to examine a 
 dark, downcast, austere-looking personage in black, who, after 
 sitting down in various parts of the ship, is observed in rising 
 to leave little biichelchen behind him — tractdtchen in a word (in 
 English, tractikins); treating oifluch and HdlUnstra/en,\i\)\ch 
 words cannot be translated into polite English. The tractarian 
 and the philosopher have a dispute together, in which the 
 former as usual talked of the vanity of earthly pursuits, while 
 the other insisted that the earth was divine and beautiful, good 
 to study and dwell in; but it does not appear that either 
 disputant was convinced by the other's argument, though to do 
 the Englishman justice, he was ready to continue the fight, long 
 after his opponent had given in. We have more amusing 
 sketches on board, those for instance of two old maids, who 
 have been making a continental tour for the first time in their 
 
 44 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 lives, and of course measure all things by their " English or 
 rather Yorkshirish" rule. These worthy dames were of opinion 
 that the castles on the Rhine were merely Sham Ruins, that 
 " no noblemen " could ever have inhabited such queer places, 
 and that they were merely built for picturesque effect. 
 
 As in the last number of this periodical, it was related how 
 Monsieur Victor Hugo travelling on the banks of the Rhine 
 heard (besides the voices of his own proper reason), other 
 celestial voices, which informed him that the left bank of the 
 Rhine must inevitably be restored to France, it may be curious 
 to know what conclusion a German draws from the sight of the 
 self-same towns and provinces, which the Frenchman visited at 
 about the same period. 
 
 " I had not seen the Rhine bank from Mainz to Cologne for fourteen 
 years, and was curious to note the difference which time had 
 occasioned : and indeed everywhere were to be seen marks of 
 increasing prosperity, beauty, and progress. How much pleasanter 
 have Mayence and Coblentz, Bonn and Cologne, become since the 
 year 1825. The last city, especially, when I first saw it, gave me a by 
 no means favourable impression : it appeared to me then to be dark, 
 dirty, and ruinous; and I found it now exceedingly altered for the 
 better. Many of the streets were now airy and light, which previously 
 had been dismal and dark ; many open squares and places stood now 
 upon ground which formerly was covered with labyrinths of narrow 
 lanes and alleys ; there were handsome shops where poor booths stood 
 formerly ; and the people, as well as the houses, wore a more agreeable 
 aspect, and seemed better clothed. In a word, a long peace had 
 produced its beneficial consequences, and the effect of increased trade 
 and careful government were visible everywhere. 
 
 " The Rhinelanders should thank Heaven daily, that it has once 
 more in its grace united them to Germany, and released them from the 
 yoke of France. What would their cities have been at the present 
 moment had the Great Nation still governed them ? No doubt, as 
 other towns in France are, poor imitations of the capital — dull, empty, 
 robbed of all characteristics of their own, dirty and neglected. And 
 what would the Rhinelanders themselves be with the French to make 
 sport of them, as they now do of the Alsacian, who, in spite of his 
 attempts to imitate the Frenchman in speech and manners, passes only 
 with the latter for a dullard, a butt for his jokes and his wit. I think th« 
 
 45 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Rhinelanders know their own interest too well, have too much political 
 foresight and patriotic feeling ever to think of separating from Germany, 
 and reuniting with our hereditary enemy. I know them too well to 
 believe what the journalists on the banks of the Seine are in the habit 
 of presenting to their credulous vain countrymen, viz. that all German 
 hearts on the banks of the Rhine are ripe for treason, and are only 
 waiting the first opportunity to fling themselves into the arms of the 
 French and to break through a union which is of a thousand years' 
 duration. Can the Rhinelanders be more shamefully calumniated, or 
 more deeply disgraced in the eyes of the world, than by attributing 
 such designs to them ? " 
 
 French journalists, poets, and the like, who are in the habit 
 of demanding their " natural frontier of the Rhine," would do 
 well to reflect upon this passage, and upon a thousand similar 
 ones, that the angry German press puts forth upon the question. 
 Our German naturalist is not very just certainly — he speaks of 
 France with contempt much too savage and bitter ; but it 
 seems to be the genius of France of late years to raise such 
 feelings against itself throughout Europe. It insults every country 
 with which it has to deal, by absurd assumptions of superiority; 
 it threatens all with war, or discord, or invasion ; it shuts up its 
 ports to foreign commerce ; and distrusting everyone, cheating 
 where it can, bullying where it dares, and insolent always, it 
 bewails the unfriendliness of Europe, and complains of unjust 
 isolation. However, the French have the ingenuous habit of 
 never listening to one single word that may be unfavourable to 
 their own opinions ; and it is probable, that the protest of 
 our friend, the Naturforscher, and his innumerable German 
 brethren, will pass among them for mere outbreaks of individual 
 spleen ; and that they will still think the Rhine is pining to be 
 French again. 
 
 We must not, however, detain the reader too long upon the 
 left bank of the Rhine, or with the author's hatred against the 
 " Great Nation," but must follow the German naturalist to 
 England ; in which country it becomes the reviewer's stern 
 duty to say, that the naturalist is disposed to praise everything 
 
 46 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 too much, as in France he was determined to blame. Suppose, 
 for instance, that he has embarked from Rotterdam ; that he 
 has been very ill upon the voyage (which calamity is described 
 with much good-humour) ; that he has fallen asleep after his 
 illness, and wakes next morning in a calmer sea, and with a 
 great sea appetite. He forthwith breaks out into the following 
 outrageous eulogium, which we doubt whether the most 
 delicate meal at Tortonis would have elicited from him. 
 
 ' ' The surest sign of returning health was the strength of the appetite 
 now awakened within us. With great pleasure we beheld preparations 
 made for breakfast, and with still greater joy did we sit down to take a 
 share of the same. And certainly for a hungry stomach, there is nothing 
 more inviting and exciting, than an English ship breakfast. That he 
 who enjoys it, truly breaks his fast, no one can deny. Juicy beefsteaks 
 an inch thick, and half a foot long, plates of well-smacking mutton- 
 chops, gigantic cold roast-beef, soft-boiled eggs, snow-white bread, 
 brown-golden roasted toast, gold-yellow butter, white and red radishes, 
 and tea and coffee in immeasurable supplies : such are the usual ingre- 
 dients of a breakfast given on board an English ship. I need hardly 
 say that we did the fullest justice to this admirable meal, and amply 
 made up the losses of the previous day. . . , 
 
 A man must be very grateful, and have a very good natural 
 appetite, or be a very strong Anglomaniac indeed (both of 
 which qualities and defects our author possesses), to speak 
 in such terms of that abominable meal, a steam-boat break- 
 fast. Could the naturalist have been seriously unwell the 
 night before .' We doubt it : otherwise the very sight of the 
 " zoUdicke und halbfusslange saftige beefsteake " would never 
 have delighted him as they did, and the " wohlschmeckende 
 mutton-chops" would have affected him as they would every 
 other refined mind first rising from the horrible couch of 
 sea-sickness. We give this passage up to the French, as a 
 proof of the blind and unjust admiration which the German 
 Naturforscher exhibits for our country. 
 
 At any rate, if by chance there be any truth in the above 
 description ; if there be any steam-boat sailing to and from 
 
 47 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Rotterdam, where the mutton-chops do smell well, where the 
 snow-white bread is not stale, and the gold-yellow butter not 
 rancid, where the immeasurable tea and coffee are not muddy 
 and detestable and where they are supplied (as they should 
 be) with a corresponding measure of milk, the Naturforscher 
 ought to have told the name of the ship for the benefit of 
 future travellers. Many a reader of this review is doubtless 
 thinking of a tour Rhinewards at this very season, and would 
 be thankful for the information. 
 
 Here, however, we have the name of an inn, which very few 
 of our readers have probably frequented, and which they may 
 try if so inclined, as it lies on the direct road between Grosvenor- 
 square and Rotterdam. 
 
 " In the Ship Tavern in Water Lane then, we abused the Custom 
 House at our leisure (I mean my original Englishmen and my own 
 Insignificance), and there we spoke out our anathemas against douanes 
 and duties, and all such accursed modern inventions. We did not, 
 however, in our enthusiasm for free trade, and our anger against all 
 bar to commerce, allow our appetite to go uncared for ; but commenced 
 a frightful attack upon a capital shoulder of mutton and an incom- 
 parable bcefiteak pic, and were equally pitiless towards the potatoes, 
 vegetables, and rice-pudding, which Mr. Bussy, who seemed to take 
 great pleasure at the enormity of our appetites, laid on our table. 
 With some bottles of double-stout, and a pint of particular port, we 
 accompanied our substantial meal, and so restored our spirits after the 
 voyage. 
 
 " My excellent companion, — who had in the course of a long stay 
 upon the continent, contracted a love for certain foreign habits, and in 
 the course of our voyage had not t)een a little satirical upon various 
 customs of his own country, — felt, as he took his first meal upon 
 English ground, all his John-Bullism and love of fatherland return, and 
 in the height of his enthusiasm held out his glass towards mine, in 
 continental fashion, clattered the two glasses together so hard that I 
 thought they would break, and cried out ' Old England for ever!' 
 
 " As I am by no means ill-disposed towards a country that has been 
 so wrongly hated, I drank willingly enough to the health of the 
 remarkable island; and with the more goodwill, because in two 
 previous visits to the country I had gained an attachment for it, and 
 made connections, to the renewal of which I warmly looked forward. 
 
 48 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Now English inn-rooms are generally very quiet, even when full of 
 guests, who take their places between two partition-walls, separated 
 from one another by some five or six feet, and containing two benches 
 and a little table. This unsocial arrangement is called, I believe, by 
 the English a box ; a box can, if necessary, hold four persons, but is 
 commonly only occupied by one. As soon as an Englishman enters 
 the room, he examines the boxes before him, and chooses that one in 
 which there may be no company. Here solitary, and unseen by his 
 neighbours, he devours his beefsteak and potatoes, reading at the same 
 time, very likely the gigantic Times, or some other English journal. 
 The reigning silence is only broken by the clatter of knives and forks, 
 the rustling of a newspaper, or the occasional cry of ' Waiter.' Such 
 axihamber was Mr. Bussy's, in Water-lane, and afforded a f^r specimen 
 of Old-English tavern-rooms. 
 
 ' ' We, who were new comers, did not, however, conduct ourselves in 
 our cell as the English are accustomed to behave. We talked, and 
 perhaps more loudly than was quite requisite for the mere purposes of 
 hearing; we laughed, and so loud that our laughter might be heard 
 outside our box ; nay, we clinked glasses after the German fashion : 
 all which behaviour was so different to the customary English manners, 
 that the frequenters of the room could not but pay attention to us; 
 and some of them, in going out or entering, actually went out of their 
 way in order to look into our box, and stare at the wonderful foreign 
 wild-beasts that were there sitting and brawling. 
 
 " I must say, though, that in the behaviour of both of us there was on 
 our parts a certain design. We both knew English customs too well 
 not to have easily accommodated ourselves to them, so as not to sin 
 against them if we thought proper. But it was pleasant to shock a little 
 the score of beef-steak-devouring city Philistines round about, and at 
 the same time to afford them the pleasure of contrasting their own 
 superior elegance and gentility with our foreign rudeness ; and I doubt 
 not but that our end was fully attained, and that at tea-time that 
 evening many a shopkeeper's family was entertained with an account of 
 tbe parcel of foreigners in the Ship Tavern, and that we were flatteringly 
 called vulgar and low. 
 
 " Being upon the subject of the Ship Tavern in Water-lane, let me 
 here recommend that inn unreservedly to such of my readers as shall 
 ever have occasion to visit the custom-house of London. The landlord, 
 Mr. Bussy, is a most civil and honest host, taking every pains to make 
 his guests comfortable. The house itself is by no means of the elegant 
 sort, and the entrance to it is not particularly favourable. The situa- 
 tion, too, is dismal, and a ray of sunshine seldom visits the Ship : the 
 rooms are small, and certainly not luxuriously furnished. I stayed 
 
 N.S.B. 49 E 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 several days in the house before I was familiar with the complicated 
 architecture thereof ; for little steps and narrow passages join and cross 
 each other in the most extraordinary fashion, mailing quite a labyrinth 
 of the place. Spite, however, of the thick atmosphere of fog and coal- 
 smoke under which the house lies the whole year through, the house 
 is cleanly kept; and I found myself as well treated there as it is 
 possible to be in the neighbourhood of the Custom-house and the 
 Thames. 
 
 " • Rost-beef, bee/steaks, rost mutton, imutton-chofs, veal,' and fish, those 
 cardinal dishes of the English kitchen, are here excellent, and iht 
 bottledaU and double stout are of classic perfection. You may have, too, 
 a good glass of port-wine ; and even the coffee, in the confection of 
 which the English as yet have attained no great skill, is here tolerable 
 to a continental palate. And the reckoning which Herr Bussy demands 
 from his guests must likewise be considered cheap for England : two 
 shillings for a bed, one shilling and sixpence for a plentiful breakfast, 
 two or at most three shillings for a dinner which at least suits my taste 
 and satisfies my appetite better than a five-franc diner in the Palais 
 Royal, axe not prices of which one can complain ; and there is many a 
 Swiss landlord would wonder that they should be so low." 
 
 Is any one tired or annoyed that beer, whether strong or 
 small, should be chronicled in this way ? There are some, 
 perhaps, who would expect a German natural philosopher to 
 talk to them of much loftier subjects than Ship-taverns and 
 steam-boat breakfasts, but such persons must be warned that 
 the philosopher has kept his science for a scientific work (to 
 which they can refer), and that he here wishes to unbend and 
 talk like any simpleton. Other readers again, of a genteel 
 taste, may object to descriptions of low society in Thames- 
 street, of beef-steaks, bottled stout, and such vulgar articles 
 of food. For the latter class of persons we have in store a 
 circumstantial account of a repast served at the house of no 
 less a man than the Right Hon. Baronet at present Prime 
 Minister of England, and if this be not a respectable matter 
 to speak of, what is .? Being with the other sages of Europe 
 at Birmingham, the Naturforscher received an invitation to 
 Drayton Manor-house, whither he went in the company of 
 several distinguished scientific men. There had been riots 
 
 50 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 in Birmingham, and some question of pelting Sir Robert if 
 he attended the association ; he wisely sacrificed any intention 
 which he might have had of visiting this illustrious society, 
 and contented himself with begging a few of the most celebrated 
 Naturforschers to dinner at Drayton. 
 
 " Your humble servant had the honour to be of the number of invited 
 guests, and I scarcely need say that the invitation was not declined, for 
 it gave me an opportunity of becoming personally acquainted with a 
 man whose name is closely united with the modern history of his 
 country, and who may with justice be considered as one of the leading 
 statesmen of Great Britain or of Europe. At the end of our sitting, that 
 is at a very late hour in the afternoon, our little society, consisting of 
 about twelve persons, took their places in one of the coaches of the 
 Derby railroad, and though this road was ten miles longer than the 
 ordinary one, yet it brought us more quickly to our goal. It was quite 
 night, however, by the time we reached the Tamworth station, which 
 is about two miles from Sir Robert's estate. Here we found waiting 
 for us the elegant coaches of the Baronet, with a number of his 
 brilliantly-clad domestics, and so after a brief pause the learned 
 caravan moved forward to Drayton Manor-house. We reached our 
 place of destination at about half-past eight, and Sir Robert received 
 us at the door with the most friendly politeness. He led us through 
 the large hall brilliantly lighted and covered with costly carpets, in 
 which a great number of powdered red-cheeked serving-men, in short 
 scarlet breeches, with silk stockings, buckles to their shoes and coats 
 whereof the nature I forget, stood waiting in rank and file. Although 
 dinner in England is taken at a very late hour, yet the time of our 
 arrival was later even than the fashion, and the first thing we had to do 
 in the Peelish house was to wash away the coal-dust from hand and 
 face, and put on such a garment as was suitable to the table of our 
 host. At 9 o'clock the dinner-bell rang, and our little society was soon 
 assembled in the stately drawing-room, where collectively and indi- 
 vidually we had the honour to be presented to Lady Peel by her 
 husband. We were not long kept waiting for our meal ; our host, 
 indeed, might imagine that we were in want of it ; and the glad 
 summons ' dinner is ready ' was speedily heard. Dr. Buckland offered 
 his arm to our amiable, polished, and still beautiful hostess, and we 
 followed after him in measured footsteps, taking our places at table as 
 chance directed. However hungry our long fast might have made us. 
 Sir Robert's board offered wherewithal to satisfy the most implacable 
 appetite : it was only the choice of the dainties that could confuse us in 
 
 51 E 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 any way. I am really grieved not to be able to give my gastronomic 
 readers a full account of all the delicacies which were set before us. It 
 would make their mouths water to hear of all that we ate of, especially 
 when I say that every thing was dressed in the very best way possible, 
 leaving to the most fastidious palate nothing to desire. Let the gourmand, 
 however, be informed that all the natural kingdom, and all zones, had 
 brought their richest tribute to the feast of which we that day partook 
 in Drayton Manor-house." 
 
 For our part we honestly confess a regret that the Natur- 
 forscher did not give us the bill of fare. He must remember 
 it, that is quite clear ; no man ever spoke in such terms of a 
 dinner without recollecting every dish he ate of ; and why this 
 squeamishness as to naming them ? 'Tis not unworthy of a 
 Naturforscher to like his dinner, and we can fancy a dozen of 
 them, great stalwart hungry philosophers : — these from Trinity 
 College, Cambridge (where the art of eating is not neglected) ; 
 these, fellows from Oxford, where likewise the magisler artis 
 ingenique largitor is allowed the honour of his degree ; yonder 
 a lean and famished Yankee; and finally the Jolly German 
 himself, who comes from a country where appetite enormously 
 flourishes in spite of cookery : — indeed it must have been a 
 great sight 1 As for the conversation, our friend says justly 
 enough, in his waggish simple way, that, " at first it was not 
 sonderlich belebt, not particularly lively ; for who," says he, 
 " could think about being witty or entertaining when he was 
 perishing of hunger?" And as for the philosophers, "since 
 9 o'clock that morning they had brought nothing over their 
 tongues" and their voracity may be imagined. " When the 
 first attack upon beef, venison, grouse, and other good things, 
 had been concluded, our tongues were loosed, and we thought 
 about " — 
 
 About what does the reader suppose that the twelve sages 
 thought, when their tongues were loosed and they had done 
 eating.' Why, when they had done eating they thought 
 about — drinking : — and long life to all such philosophers, 
 say we. 
 
 52 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 " Then right and left you heard challenges to drink. Will you do me 
 the honour of taking a glass of wine with me ? Will you drink a glass of 
 urine with me ? May I have the pleasure to take some wine with you ? and 
 similar invitations were heard on all sides, followed naturally by an 
 affirmative reply. Sir Robert's cellar was, it need scarcely be said, 
 as well cared for as his kitchen ; the finest Spanish, Portuguese, and 
 Italian wines were here in abundance, as well as the choicest French 
 wines, and Germany's best drink, the noble Johannisberger. The 
 latter was no doubt from the best source, for Sir Robert and the 
 possessor of the crown of all vineyards are old friends, and would 
 willingly do each other a favour. 
 
 " Most people from the continent find the English habit of having a 
 bottle for individual consumption, and the obligation to ask or to be 
 asked by another to take wine, a disagreeable restraint. I for my part 
 do not share this opinion, and consider the British custom as more social 
 and less egotistic than ours, which gives no opportunity to friendly 
 attentions as the former plan does. It gives the person who is 
 challenged to drink the opportunity of selecting his wine (as other 
 persons when challenged are free to choose their weapons), and so in 
 the course of an English dinner one has the opportunity of tasting a 
 considerable number of different wines. Port-wine and Madeira, 
 Bourdeaux and Champagne, Rhine wine and Constantia, are all drunk 
 indifferently, in n.oderate measures, of course, and not in pint glasses. It is 
 superfluous to observe that ladies at table are not called upon to 
 maintain the point (of honour) in drinking ; you ask them to drink as 
 well as the men, but naturally the lady is not bound to empty the filled 
 goblet to the dregs ; as soon as the rim of the bowl has touched the 
 beautiful lip, and when the latter has sipped a drop or two of the 
 liquid within, the woman's drink-duty is fulfilled, and so may every 
 lady accept invitations to drink a dozen times and even of tener, without 
 having any fear lest she should do too much of the good thing." 
 
 Here the honest professor goes off into a dissertation upon the 
 absurd custom prevailing among continental ladies, who fancy 
 it is an insult if at table you offer to fill their glasses: the 
 English dames, he says, "in respect of drinking, are not so over- 
 squeamish, having the reasonable notion that heaven made 
 wine for women as well as for men ; they will not therefore 
 shrink from publicly drinking a little glass of port-wine or 
 claret." And why should they, when philosophers as we see 
 set them the example? How exquisite is that outbreak of 
 
 53 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 natural philosophic eloquence which occurs, when the sages 
 have done eating and begin to think of drinking. ' Sir, a glass of 
 wine ! Will you drink a glass of wine .' Will you take a glass 
 of wine ? Will you do me the honour to take some wine ? — 
 Noble variety of phrase ! We know that Socrates and Plato 
 were not averse to a cup, and can see in imagination Dr. 
 Whewell and Dr. Buckland hobnobbing together. His Very 
 Reverence Herr Peacock aus Ely calls on the Naturforscher to 
 try a glass of the real Metternich Johannisberger ; round 
 about pass noiselessly " dienstbarer geister in scharlachenen 
 kurzen Beinkleidern ; " and in the midst of the sages. Sir 
 Robert, like a gallant Alcibiades urging Socrates to a bumper 
 of champagne, or Plato to improve the sweet flow of his 
 eloquence by a draught of the honeyed Constantia. " Portwein 
 und Bordeaux, Madera, und Champagner, Rhein-wein und 
 Constantia alles wird untereinander hineingetrunken ; " and 
 properly grateful is our philosopher for the chance which the 
 English custom gives him of mixing these delightful liquors — 
 " of course in moderate glasses and not in pint-tumblers " — 
 no, no, there is no philosophy, however deep, that can bear to 
 be drunk out of schoppenglaser. 
 
 The room which we could afford to devote to the German 
 naturalist's description of English society was but small, and we 
 find that we have filled it completely with accounts of the 
 eating and drinking which prevail in our happy country. The 
 subject, however, is one that is not ungrateful to men of the 
 world and the mere general reader ; and we have pretty clear 
 proof, from the above extracts, that men of science are likewise 
 partial to it : where is the need then of an apology for having 
 enlarged on it at some length ? But it must not be supposed 
 that the Naturforscher treats of eating alone : no, we have under 
 our eyes, chapters headed — Faraday's Laboratory — the Electric 
 Cell — Buckland and Geology — On the Causes of the Beauty 
 of the English Nation — the Progress of Catholicism in England 
 — Wheatstone's Voltaic Telegraph — Peeping Tom — Davy's 
 
 54 
 
THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Journal — and five hundred other subjects, on which the good- 
 natured German prattles in a kindly, shrewd, simple way. If 
 he paints English society in a manner somewhat too flattering ; 
 if, in speaking of the condition of the people, he says that 
 there is somewhere a little distress ! — at least we cannot quarrel 
 with him for being good-humoured, or for not describing what 
 he has not seen. Many a traveller cannot be accused of the 
 latter kind of neglect : and the German's trip to England was a 
 holiday excursion, passed in sunshine and pleasure, amidst all 
 sorts of feasts and recreations, scientific and bodily — Who shall 
 be angry with him for speaking thus out of the mere fulness of 
 the heart .' 
 
 55 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 By ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 
 
 The most voluminous literary workman we know — out of our 
 own happy country — is Monsieur Alexandre Dumas. We have 
 notwithstanding the rare good fortune, here, to congratulate 
 him on having laboured skilfully and to some purpose. We 
 cannot but grieve that it will occur to us, before even our present 
 number closes, to throw some less flattering light on his 
 remarkably prolific style : but we are all the more anxious just 
 now to do full justice to a book, in which the writer seems to 
 have taken greater pains than on any former occasion to do 
 justice to himself. 
 
 Monsieur Dumas has two elements in his nature — that of the 
 dramatist, and that of the minute historian. By the union of 
 these, in his more successful efforts, he has hoped to infuse a 
 new spirit both into history and romance, vivifying the former, 
 while he gives veracity to the latter. The union, however, has 
 not been always complete : indeed he seems to assume either 
 character alternately : and instead of being completely the 
 historical romancist or the romantic historian, he exhibits him- 
 self by turns, as the thorough dramatic romancist and the 
 thorough historian, not only in one and the same work, but in 
 one and the same volume, in one and the same chapter. In 
 spite of this peculiarity, or rather perhaps in consequence of 
 this peculiarity, M. Dumas, when at his best, is capable of. 
 doing much in the way of rendering the general reader ac- 
 quainted with a wide range of history. Not a mere artist, he 
 has nevertheless in his historical tales been able at once to seize 
 
 56 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. ' 
 
 on those dramatic " effects" which have so much distinguished 
 his theatrical career, and to give those sharp and distinct repro- 
 ductions of character which alone can present to the reader the 
 mind and spirit of an age ; — not a mere historian, he has never- 
 theless carefully consulted the original sources of information, 
 has weighed testimonies, elicited theories, and, at the risk of 
 tediousness, has interpolated the poetry of history, with its most 
 thorough prose. Had he been more of the artist, he would 
 have paused ere he interrupted the chain of his narrative with 
 the detailed history of a period, and we should have lost much 
 of the curious and well- arranged information of the careful 
 compiler. Had he been more of the historian, the vivid touches 
 which impart such a charm to his writings, and give them a 
 deeper truth than that which is conveyed by the mere record of 
 names and dates, would have been wanting. Those who only 
 know Dumas by his inaccuracies when treating of English sub- 
 jects in a dramatic form, as for instance in his play of " Kean," 
 may smile incredulously at this mention of his carefulness; 
 but let any impartial reader take his Crimes Celebres, and 
 observe his careful reference to authority, his skilful records of 
 history, his scrupulous adherence to the chain of events, and it 
 will be found that praise in this respect is not wrongly bestowed. 
 Under the head of Crimes Celebres, M. Dumas has collected 
 a remarkable race of heroes and heroines. He has not confined 
 himself to age or country. It is enough for him that an indi- 
 vidual has been criminal, and has been celebrated, to find a,! 
 nook in his four volumes. The ambitious criminal of the middle 
 ages, who sweeps away the human obstacles in his path by doses 
 of mysterious poison ; the profligate criminal of the time of 
 Louis XIV., who stabs a lady that will be virtuous, or steals an 
 heir to come into possession of an estate ; the high-souled 
 German criminal, who from a mistaken notion rids the world 
 of a contemptible politician; and the cold-blooded Russian 
 criminal, who sees her lover lifeless before her, yet refuses to 
 utter a sound of grief aloud, lest it may compromise her honour 
 
 57 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 — all these are subjects of M. Dumas's very interesting work. 
 Each of these forms the nucleus of a short tale, or history : 
 either of which it may be called, accordingly as the character of 
 the author as an artist or a chronicler (and in every tale he 
 appears in both these characters distinctly) is taken into con- 
 sideration. In all these narratives there is a similarity of form ; 
 in all of them the author darts at first in medias res, and forms 
 a striking dramatical group : and in all of them likewise does 
 he soon drop into the orderly narrator. It is a peculiarity of 
 M. Dumas that his strongest " effect " is invariably at the 
 opening of his story. 
 
 In respect to dates, the first of his criminals is the unfortunate 
 Queen Giovanna of Naples — the Mary Queen of Scots of the 
 fourteenth century, charged with a similar crime, and about 
 whose character there are as many conflicting opinions. Dumas 
 boasts of his accuracy in the history of this sovereign, having 
 consulted all the Italian chroniclers of the dreadful events of 
 her reign, particularly Domenico Gravina ; and though he 
 makes her guilty of the death of her husband, he represents 
 her rather as misled than of a depraved disposition ; and while 
 admitting her crime, keeps it in the background. Our own 
 conviction, based upon the testimonies of Boccacio, Petrarch, 
 and Giannone, is that the Queen of Naples was innocent ; but 
 as we do not wish to enter upon a long and perhaps profitless 
 discussion at present, we will take the narrative of M. Dumas as 
 he has given it. 
 
 Poor Giovanna, living in a most unconscientious period, had 
 the misfortune to possess a most conscientious grandfather. 
 The voluptuousness and violence of an age of semi-civilization 
 — the age of Petrarch and Boccacio, and of racks and red-hot 
 pincers — imbued the atmosphere which she breathed. Evil 
 advisers and evil companions had laid the train which was to 
 ruin the lovely victim, but it was the virtuous grandfather that 
 fired it. On the death of Charles II. of Naples, in the beginning 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 of the fourteenth century, Caribert, son of the eldest son of 
 Charles, who had died king of Hungary, and Robert, the eldest 
 living son, contested the crown. The Pope decided in favour 
 of Robert : but though his decision was not only given with that 
 spiritual authority which had such weight in a superstitious age, 
 but also with the temporal authority of feudal lord of Naples, the 
 conscience of the scrupulous Robert, called the " Wise," was 
 not satisfied ; and he felt he was fulfilling an imperative duty 
 by turning the Angevin succession again into that direct line 
 from which, in his person, it had deviated. The plan he fixed 
 upon was the marriage of Giovanna, his granddaughter and 
 heiress, with Andreas of Hungary, youngest son of Caribert. 
 Never did good intentions produce a more disastrous result. 
 The spoiled child of the south, and the uncouth son of the 
 north, detested each other from the depths of their hearts : one 
 joyed in the luxuries of a court life, the other revelled only in 
 the delights of the chase, and mutual contempt was all that 
 could be expected from the nature of the two characters. 
 
 It is with the deathbed of Robert that M. Dumas opens his 
 narrative, and with a masterly hand groups round it all the 
 characters who are to take a part in the tremendous tragedy that 
 follows in which all the Neapolitan branch of the House of 
 Anjou seem as if they had gathered there for the sole purpose 
 of destroying each other. Giovanna is described with large 
 black eyes, with glossy raven locks, with a delicate mouth and 
 open brow, the ensemble conveying an impression of gentleness 
 and melancholy. She was so beautiful, says M. Dumas, that her 
 dying grandfather took her for an angel sent by God to console 
 him in his agonies. Near her is her sister Mary, attended by 
 a clique of persons, who, though not of the royal family, 
 become frightfully prominent, both for their crimes and their 
 terrible end. These are Filippa, the grand seneschal and 
 governess of the princesses ; with her son Robert, the count 
 of Terlizzi ; and Dona Cancia, a profligate lady of the court. 
 The uncouth husband of poor Giovanna, Andreas of Hungary ; 
 
 59 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and Brother Robert, his priestly tutor; form the second 
 group. The third consists of the Tarentine branch of the royal 
 family. The deceased prince of Tarento was brother to Robert 
 of Naples ; and the family he has left consists of Catherine, 
 his widow, granddaughter of the Greek emperor, Baldwin 11. ; 
 and her three sons, Robert, Philip, and Louis. The Durazzo 
 branch forms the fourth group : consisting of Agnes, widow of 
 Charles, duke of Durazzo and Albania, another brother of 
 Robert of Naples ; and her sons, Charles, Louis of Gravina, 
 and Robert, prince of Morea. The counts of Artois, Charles 
 and his son Bertrand, and the wife of King Robert, complete 
 the assemblage. The " wise " king died proclaiming Giovanna 
 and Andreas heirs to the throne of Naples ; but no sooner was 
 the breath out of his body, than the kingdom began to divide 
 itself into a Neapolitan and Hungarian faction. From various 
 motives every branch of the royal family, besides the family 
 of the governess Filippa, had regarded Giovanna with a wist- 
 ful eye, whether from motives of love or of ambition; and 
 all, however opposed to each other, united in showing dis- 
 respect to the young Hungarian, who had to contend with the 
 designs of his ambitious kinsmen, and with the antipathy of a 
 nation. To her son Robert had the governess, according to 
 M. Dumas' authorities, already betrayed the virtue of her pupil 
 Giovanna, who soon became disgusted with the insolence of this 
 juvenile paramour, and sought for solace in the more tender 
 devotion of Bertrand of Artois. Charles of Durazzo, one of 
 those specimens of unscrupulous policy and cruelty which one 
 marvels to find out of the Borgia family, was another candidate 
 for the affections, and also for the hand of Giovanna : since as 
 for Andreas, he was only regarded as a troublesome incum- 
 brance, who might be removed at pleasure. Circumstances, 
 however, marshalled out the heads of the two contending 
 factions in a way which had not been at first anticipated : for 
 Charles of Durazzo, disgusted with the indifference of Giovanna, 
 courted an intimacy with Andreas and became one of the 
 
 60 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 heads of the Hungarian party; while the Neapolitans were 
 headed by the princes of Tarento. The dislike which had long 
 been fostered by the two sovereigns of Naples now produced an 
 open rupture. Giovanna and Andreas both performed acts as if 
 possessed each of sole power, and at last the Neapolitan party, 
 whom Giovanna had joined, resolved on the death of Andreas. 
 Charles of Durazzo was, as Dumas says, not one to whom the 
 love of a woman or the life of a man would appear of any moment, 
 when placed in the career of his ambition ; nor was he one on 
 whose conscience the dying injunctions of an old king would 
 make any particular impression. The old king Robert had 
 declared Mary, the sister of Giovanna, the heiress of several of his 
 demesnes ; and had ordered that she should marry either Louis, 
 King of Hungary, or the grandson of the King of France : but 
 Charles of Durazzo, having failed in obtaining Giovanna, had 
 resolved on possessing Mary; and accordingly, on the 28th of 
 March, 1343, the young lad}', to the alarm of her sister, was 
 missing. The mystery continued for about a month, and the 
 court could only suspect and mourn, when everybody was 
 astonished by the reappearance of Mary, from the palace of 
 Durazzo, and she was married to Charles at the church of 
 San Giovanni at Naples, amid the greatest splendour. The 
 permission of the Pope, Clement VI., had been obtained for 
 this extraordinary marriage ; and much as it might be disliked, 
 it could only be opposed in suppressed murmurs. Party feel- 
 ing in the meanwhile became more violent. It was a sort of 
 chivalry on the part of the Neapolitan nobility to sympathise 
 with Giovanna, and Bertrand of Artois was too successful a 
 lover not to declare for the party of his royal mistress, and to 
 offer himself as an instrument of vengeance against the origin 
 of all her calamities, the unfortunate and doomed Andreas. 
 The Neapolitan people also hated the soldiers of the Hun- 
 garian, and the quarrels in the low resorts of debauchery were 
 the echoes of the bickerings of the court. Each of the con- 
 tending powers, that is, Giovanna and her husband, seemed to 
 
 61 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 be promised exclusive sway: and, in short, all seemed ripening 
 for some desperate act. The Counts of Artois, the terrible 
 governess with all her family, the Empress of Constantinople, 
 and the Queen herself (if this version of the tale is to be 
 credited), had conspired to murder Andreas ; and Charles of 
 Durazzo, apparently his friend, had secretly promoted the 
 scheme. A hunting expedition was selected for the occasion, 
 and a convent at Aversa was the scene where the great crime, 
 that was to entail such misery on all concerned in it, was 
 perpetrated. At this convent Andreas and all the court, 
 chiefly composed of the conspirators against his life, passed 
 the night which was to precede several days spent in the 
 pleasures of the chase. Early in the morning that followed 
 this fatal night, Andreas was aroused by repeated knocks at 
 the door of his chamber, and no sooner, according to Gravina's 
 account, did he show himself, than all the conspirators darted 
 upon him at once and attempted to strangle him. The reason 
 they did not adopt a more expeditious method of ridding 
 themselves of a noxious rival, seems to have been, that they 
 supposed he was in possession of a charm which protected him 
 against the effects of steel and poison. With tremendous courage 
 did he defend himself against the attempts of his assassins. He 
 endeavoured to regain his chamber, but a creature of Durazzo's 
 prevented his retreat by thrusting his dagger as a bolt into the 
 staples of the door. Bertrand of Artois dragged him to a 
 balcony, which overlooked a garden, and from that he was 
 hung by a cord, which, according to Dumas' narrative, was 
 made by his wife of silk and gold. 
 
 No sooner was this murder accomplished, than Charles of 
 Durazzo, who had acted in it by secret agents alone and was 
 left at liberty to espouse what party he pleased, placed himself 
 at the head of the Hungarians ; to excite the indignation of 
 whom he kept exposed for two entire days the body of poor 
 Andreas. The semi-savages, devoted to their master, could 
 utter but one cry, and that was a cry for vengeance : while 
 
 62 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 Charles, availing himself of his power, and being, in right of 
 his wife Mary, heir to the throne of Naples in case Giovanna 
 should die without issue, attempted to exercise an absolute 
 sway over the Queen, exacting from her that she should not 
 marry again without his consent, and should make him Duke 
 of Calabria, the title which had been borne by her father. 
 Giovanna writhed beneath the insolence of her haughty rela- 
 tion, and the Empress Catherine, by a detestable scheme, 
 offered to avenge her wrongs. Charles of Durazzo was made 
 to believe that his mother, long since a widow, was pregnant, 
 and to remove the stain from the family honour, he became a 
 matricide, murdering the only virtuous woman that existed in 
 one of the most profligate courts that the world has ever known. 
 But Charles, though cast down, was not crushed; and the 
 revenge he took on those of his enemies of the court who fell 
 within his reach, was attended with all that refinement of 
 cruelty which would lead us to believe that the tyrants of the 
 middle ages were epicures in their vindictiveness. Taking 
 upon himself the character of avenger of Andreas, he found 
 an easy ally in the Pope, and a bull was addressed to the 
 justiciary of Sicily, ordering him to proceed with the utmost 
 severity against the murderers. At the same time the Pope 
 was not so thorough an abettor as Charles could have desired ; 
 for he gave secret directions to the justiciary, perfectly in 
 accordance with the principles of the time, to reserve his 
 tortures for the more humble participators in the crime, while 
 those of the blood-royal were to pass unnoticed. 
 
 Then began the series of horrors to which the murder 
 of Andreas was the horrible introduction. The unfortunate 
 criminals — that is to say, those whom the justiciary was 
 alone allowed to touch — were tortured against the mast 
 of a galley, to the great diversion of the people in general, 
 and of Charles of Durazzo in particular, who was in all 
 his glory, and wore a black garment to feign sorrow for the 
 murdered Hungarian. Joyfully would he have heard the 
 
 63 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 denunciation of the royal assassins from the humbler culprits ; 
 every moment was to him a moment of vindictive expecta- 
 tion ; but the cunning justiciary had attached a fish-hook to 
 the tongue (!) of each of the victims, and no matter how their 
 fortitude might quail beneath the tortures which were inflicted 
 upon them, they were at least prevented from doing any mischief 
 by their confessions. The governess and all her family, — the 
 son to whom she had betrayed Giovanna, her two daughters, 
 the eldest not above nineteen, and their husbands, — were all 
 executed ; and as they had before been tortured on the pretext 
 of extorting a confession, so were they now, in mere wanton- 
 ness, tortured on their way to the burning pile, amid the savage 
 exultations of the populace, who at last dragged their bones from 
 the blazing heap to make trinkets in memory of the occasion. 
 
 But the great culprits did not escape with impunity. Provi- 
 dence seems to have marked out destruction for all who were 
 concerned in the death of the uncouth, and unpolished, but 
 innocent Andreas. Bertrand and Giovanna at once became 
 disgusted with each other, from their participation in the 
 horrible crime, and the affections of the queen were transferred 
 to Louis of Tarento, the younger son of the Empress Catherine. 
 Again was Naples torn into two factions, at the head of one of 
 which was Charles of Durazzo, while Louis led the other. 
 Louis himself was unconnected with the murder of Andreas ; 
 but his mother had been one of the leaders of the conspiracy, 
 nor did she show any inclination to recede from her career of 
 guilt. Her son needing money to resist his formidable opponent, 
 the readiest expedient was to plunder the old Count of Artois, 
 Charles, who on the first outbreak of vengeance against the 
 murderers of Andreas had fled to the fortress of St. Agatha. 
 Catherine undertook the delicate mission; visited the fortress 
 at the head of a party of soldiers ; robbed the wealthy old man 
 of the whole of his vast property, at the loss of which he died 
 of a broken heart ; while his son Bertrand, the former paramour 
 of Giovanna, hanged himself. 
 
 64 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 Though by this audacious proceeding the court party 
 suddenly found themselves possessed of immense wealth, their 
 difficulties were not over yet. Charles of Durazzo, acting as 
 Ludovico of Milan did in a subsequent age, and with equal 
 want of foresight, invited Louis King of Hungary, the elder 
 brother of Andreas, into Naples, hoping that he had secured 
 an ally, whereas he had only attained a destroyer. The entrance 
 of Louis of Hungary was one of those events which have been 
 considered as scourges for the punishment of a guilty race. 
 The court of Naples trembled at his approach : Giovanna pre- 
 sented Louis of Tarento to her barons as her husband, and 
 made them take the oath of fidelity to him ; but the army of 
 Hungary progressed, and was not to be retarded in the work of 
 vengeance. No sooner had the Hungarian reached Benevento, 
 than envoys from Naples waited upon him to swear their allegi- 
 ance, and the unhappy Giovanna and her husband Louis fled 
 for Provence. At Aversa, the scene of the murder of Andreas, 
 did Charles of Durazzo and Robert of Tarento, as the eldest 
 representatives of two branches of the royal family, meet Louis 
 of Hungary, with all the desire of further conciliating him by 
 the most implicit obedience. They were received with the 
 greatest civility and kindness, and Charles of Durazzo was 
 completely blinded to the fate that was prepared for him. In 
 vain had he been as secret as possible in furthering the designs 
 of the conspirators against Andreas ; in vain had he most 
 forcibly disclaimed connexion with them, by inflicting tortures 
 on all that he could reach : the King of Hungary regarded him 
 as his brother's murderer, and, entrapped at Aversa, he was 
 beheaded by Hungarian soldiers under circumstances which 
 would call for pity, were not the sentiment utterly unfitted for 
 this disgrace to the human species. On went the King of 
 Hungary like an Atilla in miniature. His entry into Naples 
 was a triumph, and the most wholesale vengeance on the 
 enemies of his brother attended it. Razors, wheels, and red- 
 hot pincers, the curse of the middle ages and the delight of 
 
 N.s.B. 65 r 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 M. Dumas, were again in requisition; and the means which 
 Durazzo had used partly as a feint, were adopted with a thorough 
 sense of enjoyment by the avenger of the north. 
 
 During this time, Provence was the scene of a triumph of 
 another kind. The beauty, the misfortunes of Giovanna, had 
 conspired to give her an interest in this native land of poetry 
 and romance. At Avignon the reception of her and her husband 
 was magnificent : songs to her praise were chanted in her path ; 
 the bells rang as at a solemn festival of the church ; the Pope, 
 Clement VI., gave the warmest welcome: and in short the 
 reception was such as should have been offered to a spirit 
 descended from a purer region, rather than to one on whom 
 suspicion, at least, had fixed a murder, which even in an age 
 used to horrors had been regarded as an act of unparalleled 
 atrocity. As if these honours were not enough, a still greater 
 triumph awaited her : and the endeavour of her terrible enemy 
 of Hungary to destroy, only made her shine forth with greater 
 lustre. King Louis sent ambassadors to Avignon to demand 
 the condemnation of the queen ; and the heroine, for so she 
 must be called, pleaded her own cause. The Pope was the 
 judge, the ambassadors from Hungary were the accusers, and 
 all the ambassadors from Europe were present at this wonderful 
 trial. 
 
 " Her gait," says Dumas, •' was at once so modest and so proud, her 
 brow so melancholy and so pure, her look so full of abandon and of 
 confidence, that all hearts were on her side before she spoke. Giovanna 
 was then twenty years of age, was in the full bloom of her magnificent 
 beauty ; but the brilliancy of her transparent satin skin was tempered 
 by extreme paleness, and her sunken cheeks bore the marks of suffer- 
 ing and remorse. She spoke with a voice trembling with emotion, 
 stopping from time to time to dry her moistened and brilliant eyes, or 
 to heave one of those sighs which go directly to the heart. With such 
 a lively grief did she recount the death of her husband, with such 
 frightful truth did she depict the utter confusion with which she had 
 been seized, and with such energy of despair did she clasp her hands 
 to her forehead as if distracted at the terrible event, that the whole 
 assembly trembled with horror and compassion. And indeed, at this 
 
 66 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 moment, if her recital was false, her anger was real and terrible. An 
 angel blasted by crime, she lied like Satan, but also, like Satan, she was 
 torn by the infinite tortures of pride and of remorse." 
 
 The result of the affair was that Giovanna was declared 
 innocent; that her marriage, which had been a very doubtful 
 union, was confirnied by the Pope ; and that the Hungarian 
 ambassadors retired in confusion. The plague, of which 
 Boccacio has left us so complete a description, was a new ally 
 in the cause of Giovanna ; as it frightened the King of Hungary 
 out of Naples, where already the execrations of an oppressed 
 people had reached to such a height that he had cause to 
 tremble for his safety. The affection of the Neapolitans for 
 their beautiful queen now ripened into an open declaration in 
 her favour, and Naples echoed with the cry of " Long live 
 Giovanna 1 Down with the Hungarians ! " Yet these favours 
 of fortune were but temporary ; the King of Hungary again 
 triumphed ; he returned to attack his rival, and Giovanna was 
 once more in peril. Louis of Tarento, who had much of that 
 chivalrous generosity which was the only virtue of this detest- 
 able age, challenged the rival Louis to single combat, hoping 
 thus to save the life of his subjects. The Hungarian, as a 
 preux chevalier, could not refuse the challenge, but he con- 
 trived to make it a nullity by starting difficulties as to the 
 judges before whom the combat should take place. His army 
 continued victorious ; he entered Naples as a conqueror ; but 
 he again found his most formidable opponent in the devotion 
 of the people to their sovereign, and with dominion apparently 
 in his grasp, he was driven to make a peace with Giovanna, on 
 no other condition than that she should pay the expenses of 
 the war. 
 
 But Giovanna, though she survived the unfortunate Andreas 
 many years, was not to find a time of repose. The rebellion 
 of Louis of Durazzo occupied Louis of Tarento, who no sooner 
 triumphed over him, and made him a prisoner for life, than he 
 himself fell a victim to a life of indulgence. Jaime of Aragon, 
 
 67 F 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 son of the king of Majorca, and Otho of Branswick, were then 
 successively husbands of Giovanna, who, in the lifetime of the 
 latter, lost all her influence by supporting the anti-pope 
 Clement VII. against Urban VI. The people were now against 
 her. Urban declared that her crown was forfeited, and assigned 
 it to a younger Charles of Durazzo, the son of Louis, whom she 
 had preserved when his father perished miserably in a dungeon. 
 Gratitude was as nothing when ambition prompted. Charles 
 being now the conqueror, wrote to the King of Hungary to 
 know what was to be done with Queen Giovanna, and the 
 result was, according to the common account, that she was 
 smothered by a feather-bed, and according to the more arti- 
 ficial narrative of Dumas, that she was strangled with the silken 
 cord which she had made for Andreas. 
 
 This mass of crimes, connected with the death of Andreas ; 
 this complication of deceit, cruelty, and lust ; is viewed through 
 a dim medium : it is a horrible drama that is acted in the far 
 distance : but on the next heroes of Dumas — that is next in 
 point of date, for they are the first in the order of his work — 
 the infamous Borgia Family, the light of history shines clearly. 
 
 The period at which this viperine brood played its fantastic 
 tricks is as nearly as possible the transition between the middle 
 ages and modem history: and certainly, if there be any one 
 who talks of " good old times " under the impression that by 
 retrograding a few centuries he will find virtue advancing in a 
 proportionate degree, he will do well to ponder over the history 
 of the Borgias, whose villainies were not transacted in secret, 
 but in an arena round which sat the whole civilized world, who 
 regarded the frightful exploits with more or less applause. A 
 king of France (Louis XII.) could be found living to patronize 
 a wretch like Cesar Borgia; and the historian of Florence, 
 though he shuddered with pious horror at the deeds of Aga- 
 thocles and Vitelli Vitellozzo, mentioned, in the chapter of his 
 " Principe " immediately preceding, the Duke of Valentinois 
 
 68 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 as a perfectly wise prince : unlucky to be sure, and on one 
 occasion committing a blunder, which with Machiavelli, as 
 with Fouche, was worse than a crime: but still on the 
 whole highly to be commended. The unholy trio — Pope 
 Alexander VI. who had gained the chair of St. Peter by the 
 most unblushing simony, his daughter Lucrezia, and his son 
 Cesar — were a choice assemblage, who had assumed a right to 
 indulge in all the odious want of faith of miserable modern 
 intriguers, as well as in all the odious excesses and nameless 
 vices of a Nero and a Tiberius : indeed, it is doubtful whether 
 the worst character in Suetonius would not have paused awhile 
 before he associated with Cesar Borgia. 
 
 In vain it is to look for a single oasis in the desert of vice per- 
 petrated by this monster, whose private and public life was 
 equally detestable, but who unfortunately possessed an affable 
 exterior, capable of gaining upon all whom he accosted. 
 Strange to say, historians have differed as to the appearance of 
 this remarkable personage ; some considering him as a prodigy 
 of ugliness, while others have bestowed the highest laudations 
 of his beauty. M. Dumas has hit upon a method of reconcil- 
 ing accounts so opposite, by supposing that in the spring he 
 was covered with disgusting pimples, while, during the rest of 
 the year, the absence of this disfigurement left him handsome. 
 To his eyes, all are agreed in giving a most formidable appear- 
 ance : describing them as shining with a constant lustre, in 
 which there was something of the infernal. Acting on the 
 principle of his motto, by which he declared that he would be 
 " Aui Ccesar aui nihil," he was the very man to effect all that 
 could be effected, supposing an utter absence of virtue and 
 conscience. He was well exercised in feats of arms, he was a 
 capital horseman, he even possessed the accomplishment of 
 cutting off a bull's head with a single stroke : in short, he had 
 all the physical virtues of chivalry. His deficiency in its softer 
 virtues may be gathered from the circumstances that when he 
 became tired of a mistress, he was in the habit of flinging her, 
 
 69 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 with her hands tied behind her, into the Tiber ; and that in the 
 pillage of Capua, out of three hundred of the most noble ladies 
 of the city, he selected forty (!) for himself, and delivered the 
 rest to his army. 
 
 The time when the Borgias flourished was an important 
 period in the history of Europe. Alexander profited by the 
 state of affairs that attended the early campaigns of the French 
 in Italy : those campaigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., 
 which formed a sort of prelude to the wars of the Emperor 
 Charles V. and King Francis I., at a subsequent epoch. By a 
 rapid series of intrigues carried on during the two abortive 
 attempts of the French Kings to possess Naples ; by plotting 
 with Bajazet, the Emperor of Turkey, to destroy his brother 
 Djem, and with Charles VIII. to preserve the same Djem, as a 
 pretext for making war on Bajazet ; the head of the Church 
 contrived to keep himself and his children in a constant career 
 of aggrandizement : and however Fortune might use contend- 
 ing parties, the Borgias were at least pretty sure to pick up 
 something in the bustle. Cesar, already infamous by his 
 amours with his sister Lucrezia, and by the murder of his 
 brother, the Duke of Gandia, who was a rival in her affections, 
 first rose to decided eminence in the time of Louis XII. ; who 
 having a deformed wife, of whom he wished to be freed, was 
 ready to pay the Pope any price, reasonable or unreasonable, 
 for a divorce. Cesar was appointed negotiator in this delicate 
 affair, and proceeded to France with an apparel " worthy," says 
 Dumas, " of the son of a pope who goes to marry the daughter 
 of a king : " meaning Carlotta, daughter of the King of Naples, 
 the intended wife of Cesar, who had laid aside the ecclesiastical 
 habit he wore in his youth, and was created, by the King of 
 France, Duke of Valentinois. On this occasion, however, the 
 king had reckoned too much on the consent of Carlotta to a 
 marriage of mere policy, for nothing could induce the lady to 
 wed the hateful Cesar Borgia. She vowed that she would never 
 take for a husband one who was not only a priest, but the son 
 
 70 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 of a priest ; not only an assassin, but a fratricide ; not only 
 infamous by birth, but still more infamous from his actions. 
 Fortunately for Cesar all other ladies were not equally scrupu- 
 lous, and in about four months after the commencement of his 
 visit he was married with great pomp to the daughter of the 
 King of Navarre, and received the order of St. Michael. He 
 was, moreover, promised assistance in vanquishing the "vicars 
 of the Church," as a number of petty tyrants in Romagna were 
 called, who had usurped their different cities and fortresses 
 during the sojourn of the popes at Avignon, and had received 
 an investiture from the emperor, and subsequently by the Pope, 
 so that a possession originally a wrong was converted into a 
 right. This right was however not such as to prevent the long- 
 ings of the pontiff, who continued to find out breaches of the 
 treaty between vassal and suzerain, sufficient to warrant a for- 
 feiture of the fiefs ; and it was with the office of receiving these 
 for himself that the Duke of Valentinois was charged. 
 
 His career through Romagna was one of conquest and atrocity. 
 The different strongholds fell one by one before him, and the 
 victories that he obtained by the assistance of France and 
 his own unscrupulous valour, acquired a sanctity from his 
 father the Pope, who resolved that his entrance into Rome, 
 which took place in the course of his achievements, should 
 be a triumph. Keeping up the character of Csesar which his 
 own vanity and the coincidence of his name had induced 
 him to assume, he entered the ancient imperial city clad in 
 the old Roman costume : his hair was crowned with laurel, 
 lictors surrounded him, and his banners glittered with the 
 inscription, Aui CcBsar aut nihil, which with him warranted 
 the perpetration of every species of enormity. Though 
 it would be beyond the limits of an article like this to 
 follow the abominable conqueror through all his petty victories, 
 there is one stroke of policy, highly characteristic of the man, 
 which is well worth recording, especially as it is looked upon 
 by Machiavelli, in his " Principe," as an extraordinary display 
 
 71 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 of talent. At Cesena, which was one of his new possessions, 
 he found his subjects so turbulent that he selected Ramiro 
 d' Oreo, a remarkably severe governor, to keep them in order. 
 Honest Ramiro fulfilled his duty to the very letter, and being 
 a conscientious man was cruel enough even to satisfy the 
 cravings of a Borgia, for he executed a sixth part of the 
 inhabitants. It was no fault of his that the system did not 
 work well ; but so it was ; and the murmurs of the people of 
 Cesena seemed to prognosticate danger. Cesar therefore, 
 wishing to reap all the advantage of his governor's tyranny, 
 was equally anxious that that gentleman should bear all the 
 unpopularity, and he had accordingly only to sacrifice the 
 governor to become the favourite of the populace. Accord- 
 ingly when the inhabitants of Cesena rose one morning, the 
 first thing they beheld was Ramiro cut into quarters and placed 
 on a scaffold, while his head on a pike formed a crown to the 
 whole. 
 
 The lieutenants of Cesar, in Romag^a, became at length too 
 strong to remain in submission to him, and a conspiracy was 
 formed, the results of which Machiavelli has described in a 
 small treatise* devoted to that subject alone. Vitellozzo 
 Vitelli, who had formerly been Cesar's right hand, was at the 
 head of the plot ; in which Paul Orsino and five others were 
 concerned ; and all pledged themselves to resist the progress 
 of the duke. He, on the other hand, resolved not only to 
 suppress the movement, but to exterminate its authors : and 
 finding, even with the fresh assistance he had obtained from 
 his constant ally the King of France, that he was not strong 
 enough to pull them down by force, he had recourse to dis- 
 simulation, in which he was so great a master; feigned a 
 reconciliation ; made a treaty with the conspirators ; and 
 seemed to pass over the affair so lightly, that all were anxious 
 
 * " Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nell' amazzare 
 Vitellozzo Vitelli," &c. 
 
 72 
 
 I 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 to rush into his arms excepting his old acquaintance Vitelli, 
 who knew him too well to believe that he could forget an 
 injury, or that he would lack the means to avenge one. The 
 whole plan of Cesar was to decoy his enemies into an inter- 
 view, and when they met him at the place appointed, which 
 was Sinigaglia, they were surrounded by his soldiers and 
 strangled. 
 
 But the stroke of misfortune which was to sweep Cesar from 
 the surface of the earth — the misfortune which the kind-hearted 
 Machiavelli sees so much reason to lament — was now nearly at 
 hand, and he who had successfully pursued the career of his am- 
 bition, was now doomed to fall a victim to his father's financial 
 schemes. The Borgia System of Finance was at once simple and 
 expedite : the mind had not to toil in weighing the advantages of 
 direct and indirect taxation; to trouble itself about high and low 
 tariff : without a single maximum of political economy the papal 
 coffers could be filled to repletion. The great instrument in this 
 financial policy was a certain poison, the secret of which remained 
 in the Borgia family, and which, it is said, existed in two forms, 
 the solid and the liquid. The art of making the first is unluckily 
 lost, but the recipe of the second is on record, probably preserved 
 by some Mrs. Glasse of the art. " Give a boar a strong dose of 
 arsenic, and at the moment when the poison begins to act, hang up 
 the animal by the hind-feet; he will now be convulsed, and an 
 abundance of foam will run from his throat. This foam collected 
 in a silver plate, and decanted in a bottle hermetically sealed, will 
 form the liquid poison." Thus armed with twokindsof venom, the 
 Borgias had all their own way, as far as the removal of obnoxious 
 personages was concerned; and an unlucky wight had only to 
 render himself an object of suspicion, when a genteel invitation to 
 supper finished his mortal career. But to return to the financial 
 scheme. Pope Alexander, with his poisons, had a constant power 
 of creating vacancies among his cardinals, and it was in filling 
 up these that he found such a splendid source of profit. In the 
 first place, the priest nominated to the office of cardinal left 
 
 73 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 his former charges vacant, and these reverted to the Pope, who 
 sold them. This was item the first. Item the second, being 
 the round sum which the happy priest paid for the cardinalate. 
 Enough was not yet gained. An advantage was taken of the 
 law according to which no cardinal could bequeath his property, 
 and the Pope had only to pick out the richest of the college, 
 and treat him with a Borgfia supper, when the third sum found 
 its way into the treasury. Thus did the great financier, whose 
 head is offered as a study in every treatise on phrenology, make 
 three distinct gains out of one single operation. Nevertheless, 
 simple as the plan was in a financial point of view, it required 
 care in the execution : and one fatal day, when the Pope had 
 fixed upon Cardinal Casanova, Melchior Copis, and Adrian de 
 Corneto, as the guests who were to enrich the public purse, and 
 pay the expenses of private orgies, the " home-brewed " was 
 taken, by mistake, by Alexander himself and his worthy son. 
 The aged sinner, loaded with every crime that even a depraved 
 imagination could create, was soon lodged in his grave : but 
 Cesar had a tremendous constitution, and the infernal com- 
 position which had destroyed numbers, though it impaired 
 his energies, was not mortal. Never did limpet stick more 
 tightly to a rock, than this valuable member of society clung to 
 the world. It is said that a " bath of blood " was adopted that 
 Cesar might still exist. A bull, according to this record, was 
 suspended by its legs to four posts ; a large gash was cut in its 
 belly, from which its entrails were taken while it was yet living ; 
 and into the cavity thus left the patient stepped to bathe ! 
 
 But though Cesar lived, his fortunes were shattered, as well 
 as his constitution. The papal influence had sustained him, 
 and that gone, nothing could save him from a precipice. No 
 sooner was the breath out of Alexander's body, than the hatred 
 against the family broke out everywhere with the greatest 
 violence. Not a Borgia ventured to show his face but one, and 
 that one was recognised by Fabio Orsino, who well remembering 
 the affair of Sinigaglia, stabbed him, and exhibited his savage 
 
 74 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 exultation by washing his hands and mouth in his blood. 
 Cesar was mighty in his downfall : he could still give away a 
 popedom ; he still bound close to him his old ally Louis, by 
 promising to aid him in conquering Naples : but the King of 
 Spain at once weakened his force, by declaring guilty of high 
 treason every one of his subjects who should aid the duke. 
 Alexander's successor, Pius IIL, was a mere creature in the 
 hands of Cesar ; but the Orsini, who were industrious in the 
 pursuit of vengeance, removed him after a reign of twenty-six 
 days, by telling a physician to put a poisoned plaster on a wound 
 In his leg. Again did Cesar, by his weight in the college of 
 cardinals, give away the popedom ; and it was by his will that 
 Julian della Rovera, the ancient enemy of the Borgias, became 
 Pope Julius IL But his career was over. First a prisoner in 
 Italy, he became a prisoner in Spain ; being entrapped by the 
 "great Captain," Gonzalvo of Cordova; and having escaped 
 from confinement, he was killed in a miserable skirmish in 
 Navarre, where he had espoused the arms of the king against a 
 rebellious vassal. — Such was the obscure end of the celebrated 
 Cesar Borgia. 
 
 In those days the art of poisoning was in its lustihood. The 
 destroyers of human life scarcely made a secret of their work. 
 The victims died, and it was generally suspected how they died 
 but the criminals sat in too high places to care for the opinion 
 of the people. Afterwards the performers of poisoning were 
 more humble. The splendid secrets of the Borgias and the 
 Medici, which could kill with all the refinement of science : the 
 drug playing with the victim, as a cat with a mouse : now allow- 
 ing him to recover, now giving him a fresh paroxysm, till he 
 breathed his last : these secrets descended to lowly individuals 
 who worked in obscurity, and struck in the dark ; who hugged 
 their frightful arcana with the same devotion that rivets an 
 alchemist to his crucible ; who to the malignity of the fiend, 
 joined the scientific curiosity of the experimentalist; and 
 
 75 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 exulted while they saw a life wasted, to observe a theory 
 realized. 
 
 Such a depository of the art of death was the Italian Exili, 
 who found proselytes in Paris towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century, and whose pupil was the Chevalier Sainte Croix, the 
 hero of the romance of which the notorious Marchioness St. 
 Brinvilliers is the heroine. Chance had introduced the poisoner 
 of Italy to the gallant of France, who in the secrets of his pre- 
 ceptor found a ready mode of making a fortune, while the 
 teacher seems to have thought himself sufficiently rewarded the 
 finding one who could turn his theories to a practical account. 
 The chevalier could sell death as a physician offers to sell life, 
 and he had this advantage, that he could always be true to his 
 bargain. Did unrewarded merit sigh for a vacancy, the 
 chevalier, on payment of a fee, would undertake to remove the 
 incumbent. This was with him a matter of business. But then 
 he was a man of science also. The chevalier was attached to 
 his profession ; he would have enlarged the sphere of his know- 
 ledge : he had read in ancient chronicles of poisoned napkins 
 and poisoned gloves, which killed by mere contact, and, learned 
 as he was, he regretted that he had not reached this point yet. 
 But he did not despair. Renewed experiments might supply a 
 deficiency which his preceptor, Exili, had left. To work he 
 went at his furnace, a mask of glass covering his face, while he 
 stooped over a fuming vessel of which every exhalation was 
 death. Why is not Sainte Croix recorded among the " martyrs 
 of science " ? The mask dropped from his face, and he fell 
 dead, as if struck by a thunderbolt. This was an act of provi- 
 dential justice, similar to that which about a century and a half 
 before had cut ofE the two Borgias. 
 
 With the Marchioness Brinvilliers, this votary of science had 
 formed a liaison. The lady had a husband, it was true ; but he 
 was one of those convenient French husbands, of whom we read 
 so many, and he offered no serious obstacle to the amour. Not 
 so M. D' Aubray, the father of the marchioness, who was so much 
 
 76 
 
 I 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 out of the fashion of the age, as to feel annoyed that a daughter of 
 his could form an illicit attachment. With the assistance of the 
 chevalier the marchioness determined to remove him. She would 
 not, however, trust too much to the first chance ; she would 
 not stake all on a single cast : so she first poisoned her servant 
 with some preserved gooseberries. The maid felt as if " her 
 heart were stuck with pins;" but nevertheless she recovered j 
 and the marchioness consequently bespoke a stronger dose 
 from her lover. It should be observed that the appearance of 
 this lady was such as to disarm suspicion. We copy her portrait 
 from Dumas. " At the age of twenty-eight, she was in all the 
 splendour of her beauty. The figure was small, but perfectly 
 formed. The rounded face was charmingly delicate. Her 
 features, so much the more regular that they were never altered 
 by any internal affection, were as those of a statue, which, by 
 some magic power, might have received life for a moment; and 
 the cold and cruel impassibility, which was but a mask to cover 
 remorse, might easily have been taken for the reflected serenity 
 of a pure soul." In her design upon her father, this command 
 of her features gave her an incalculable advantage. It was 
 with the playfulness of an affectionate child that she petulantly 
 insisted that none should wait on her beloved parent but herself ; 
 it was with a smiling countenance that she handed him the 
 poisoned broth ; it was with an agony of pretended grief that 
 she perceived the paroxysms which herself had caused : but it 
 was with the calmness of science, that she triumphantly watched 
 the gradual victory of death over life. The crime did not 
 produce the desired effect. The father died, blessing his 
 murderess ; but he left two sons, who were equally nice in their 
 notions of honour, and equally ready to check the marchioness 
 in her career of vice. It was necessary to supply by a fresh 
 crime what the first had left undone : the brothers were marked 
 out for death, and soon perished, through the machinations of 
 their sister and her paramour. The sudden death of the latter 
 in his laboratory, the discoveries that were then made, and the 
 
 n 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 confessions of his servants, who had been accomplices, revealed 
 the whole mystery : and, indeed, the frequent occurrence of 
 singular deaths had already begun to attract the notice of the 
 people. The marchioness, when taken by the officers of justice, 
 used the same art in attempting to destroy herself, which she 
 had formerly employed in destroying others. First she endea- 
 voured to swallow a pin but an " archer " perceived her design 
 and forced her to eject it. Next, when she was left to take her 
 meal without knife or fork, she attempted to effect suicide by 
 biting a piece out of her drinking-glass, though with no better 
 success. Once in prison, she became a perfect devotee, and the 
 conversations between her and the priest that attended her are 
 worked up by Dumas with much quiet pathos. When con- 
 demned to death, she had to undergo the question ordinaire and 
 extraordinaire: miserable tortures given for the purpose of 
 extorting confession, and more disgraceful to the age in which 
 they were inflicted than to the criminal that endured them. The 
 wretched woman, when her own guilt was known, had nothing 
 further to confess ; and therefore had to endure, for no purpose, 
 the whole course of pain which the law prescribed, and which was 
 executed with barbarous exactness. The sentence was, that she 
 should be carried in a tumbril to the Place de Grave with bare 
 feet, and a cord about her neck, making full declaration of her 
 g^ilt, and holding in her hands a burning torch weighing two 
 pounds. She was then to be beheaded, her body was to be 
 burned, and the ashes were to be scattered to the wind. It was 
 with the meekness of the most complete resignation, that the 
 marchioness endured the degradations required by this sentence : 
 that is, during the chief part of her progress : for when she first 
 beheld the crowd that had come to witness her exposure, the 
 native disposition, which she had so often concealed, broke 
 forth in all its fury ; and the painter Lebrun, who was a spec- 
 tator of the scene, lost no time in catching the expression which 
 is still preserved in the Louvre. But the meekness returned 
 and the populace admired, and Madame de Sevigne records, 
 
 78 
 

 I UNIVERSITY 
 
 CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 that the day after the execution her bones were sought for, as 
 it was thought she was a saint ! 
 
 The roues of the time of Louis XIV. of whom the Marquis 
 Sante Croix is a specimen, formed a kind of link between the 
 polished profligate of modern times, and the vindictive noble of 
 the middle ages. The murderers of this stamp were gay men 
 of the world, with a thousand affairs of gallantry on their hands, 
 but with designs worthy alone of a captain of banditti. Such a 
 man was the Marquis de St. Maximent, who having formed a 
 Itasion with the presumptive heiress to the estate of the Count of 
 Saint-Geran, broke every tie of gratitude, and though the count 
 had protected him from the pursuit of justice, watched the birth 
 of his child, that he might make away with it, and thus preserve 
 the pretensions of his mistress. This man is the hero of one 
 of the Crimes Celebres but the Kbhi de Ganges is a more 
 terrible [specimen of the time, and the events connected with 
 him, events which at the time spread a gloom over the court of 
 the " Grand Monarque," are far more interesting. 
 
 The Marchioness de Ganges was a prodigy of her time, 
 a prodigy of beauty and of virtue : and though the latter qualifi- 
 cation, in that profligate age, drew upon her more contempt 
 than admiration, yet was the contempt invariably dissipated in 
 her presence, such influence had her charms on all that beheld 
 her. The pamphlet published at Rouen in 1667, which gave 
 the particulars of her murder, and furnished M. Dumas with the 
 materials for his narrative, describes her person as follows : 
 
 " The complexion, which was a dazzling white, was adorned by the 
 red tint, which was not in the least too vivid, and which, by a nuanci 
 that art could not have more dexterously produced, blended with the 
 whiteness of her complexion. This brilliancy of her face was set off 
 by the decided blackness of her hair, which was arranged about a well- 
 proportioned forehead, as if a painter of the most exquisite taste had 
 designed it. The eyes, which were large and full, were of the colour 
 of her hair, and the soft yet piercing fire with which they shone 
 prevented any one from regarding her fixedly. The shape, the turn, 
 
 79 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the smallness of her mouth, and the beauty of her teeth, were beyond 
 comparison. The position and the regular proportion of her nose 
 gave to her beauty an air of dignity which inspired as much respect 
 for her, as her beauty could inspire love. The roundness of her 
 face, produced by an embonpoint bien menage, presented all the vigour 
 and freshness of health. To complete her charm, the Graces 
 seemed to direct her looks, the movement of her lips, and of her 
 head ; her figure corresponded to the beauty of her face ; indeed 
 her arms, her hands, her carriage, and her deportment, left nothing 
 to desire if we would have the most agreeable image of a beautiful 
 person." 
 
 Such was Marie de Rossan, who at the age of thirteen 
 married the Marquis de Castellane, and who at the age of 
 twenty-two, on the death of her first husband, married the 
 Marquis de Ganges : thus forming a union with which all her 
 misfortunes commenced. At first they were much attached, 
 and their life passed happily enough ; but the marquis, who 
 had formerly led rather a loose life, now fell back into the 
 society of his old friends, while he had just feeling enough to 
 be jealous at the conquests which the beauty of his wife, with 
 perfect innocence on her part, continually made. A mutual 
 coolness arose, but the unhappiness of the lady was not at its 
 height, till her husband had invited his two brothers to stay at 
 his house, the Ahh6 and the Chevalier de Ganges. The first 
 was a profligate bel esprit, who merely assumed the ecclesiastical 
 name for fashion's sake, without belonging to the Church ; the 
 second was naturally a mere log, yet perfectly capable of being 
 warmed up into a malicious brute under the genial influence of 
 the abb^. Both these notable gentlemen fell in love with their 
 brother's lovely wife, and both endeavoured to seduce her ; 
 when finding themselves repelled by her virtue, they both 
 decided that she should be an object for their malice, and the 
 removal of the whole family from Avignon, which had been 
 their residence, to Ganges, a small town distant nine leagues, 
 where the family chateau of the marquis was situated, seemed 
 to favour their designs. A presage of ill accompanied the 
 
 80 
 
 \ 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 marchioness in her journey to this lonely place. Dumas, who 
 as we have said invariably opens his narrative with a dramatic 
 scene, describes an interview of the marchioness with a sorceress 
 of the period, who predicts that she will die young and by 
 violent means ; and this prediction, uttered a year before her 
 marriage with the marquis, is made the foundation of a 
 superstitious feeling which constantly weighs upon her, and 
 gives a character of fatality to the tale. So impressed was she 
 with the belief that she would never return from Ganges, that 
 before she left Avignon she made a will declaring her mother 
 her sole legatee, with a power of appointment in favour of 
 either of her two children. Even this precaution did not satisfy 
 her ; for expecting that some new disposition would be wrung 
 from her, she assembled the magistrates of Avignon, and 
 solemnly declared to them that this was her only genuine will, 
 and that any subsequent one she might sign, would only be 
 extorted from her by violence. The gloomy presentiments now 
 gave way to more substantial fears ; for when she had reached 
 Ganges her husband returned to Avignon on the plea of pressing 
 business, and she was left alone with the hateful brothers, who 
 had already made attempts upon her honour. The connexion 
 which the marquis had with the dreadful event that followed ; 
 whether he was really a participator in the villainy of his brothers, 
 or whether by his absence he undesignedly assisted them ; 
 seems a matter of doubt. Certain it is, that the first policy of 
 the brothers was to induce their sister-in-law to make a new 
 will in favour of her husband, to which she consented partly out 
 of fear, and partly because she was aware that the appeal she 
 had made to the magistrates of Avignon — an appeal which had 
 remained perfectly unknown to the De Ganges family — would 
 render the subsequent testament of no effect. She therefore 
 signed the new will. 
 
 It was in the month of May, 1667, a few days after the 
 execution of the second will, that the marchioness, feeling 
 somewhat ill, was confined to her chamber, whither she invited 
 
 N.S.B. 81 G 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the two brothers and some ladies of the neighbourhood to 
 partake of a collation. After all this company had retired, and 
 the chevalier was left alone with the marchioness, the abbe, 
 who had conducted the ladies from the apartment, returned, 
 and presenting to her a pistol and a glass, while the chevalier 
 drew his sword, offered her the choice of three deaths. The poor 
 marchioness, after in vain endeavouring to soften the execrable 
 miscreants, at last chose the poison. She swallowed the liquor, 
 a portion of which falling on her bosom, burned it like fire, and 
 she dropped the glass. But the abbe would not allow a 
 chance of escape. He discovered that much of the poison was 
 precipitated to the bottom of the glass, and this he collected on 
 the point of a silver bodkin, and presented it to the marchioness. 
 She had, however, sufficient presence of mind to retain it in 
 her mouth without swallowing it, and contrived to get rid of it 
 unperceived. She asked for her confessor, and the ruffians left 
 her ; and with a courage which never seems to have forsaken 
 her, she determined on escaping. She looked at the window, 
 but saw that it afforded no hope : when the sudden appearance 
 in her room of the chaplain, who was an accomplice of the 
 brothers, gave her desperate energy. She sprang from the 
 window, while the chaplain seized her garments to detain her. 
 This act on the part of the enemy really preserved her life, for 
 while she would otherwise had fallen on her head from a height 
 of two and twenty feet, the grasp which tore her clothes, broke 
 the violence of the descent, and she reached the ground in 
 safety. The wretch dashed a water-jug after her, in the hope 
 of destroying her, but it shivered at her feet. 
 
 She had thus escaped from her apartment, and with some 
 difiBcuIty she escaped from the court into which she had 
 descended : but she found the brothers in pursuit of her, and 
 she darted along exclaiming that she was poisoned, while her 
 persecutors shouted that she was mad. The chevalier overtook 
 the marchioness, and they entered the nearest house, struggling 
 as they entered, and found there the wife of the owner, with a 
 
 83 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 number of female friends. These had been acquaintances of 
 the marchioness, and while she was protesting that she was 
 poisoned, and her brother-in-law still affirmed her madness, 
 one of the ladies slipped an antidote into her hand, part of 
 which she swallowed, while another gave her a glass of water. 
 As soon as she attempted to taste this, the savage chevalier, in 
 the presence of the company, broke the glass between her 
 teeth, so that the pieces cut her lips. The women exasperated, 
 flew at the miscreant, but the marchioness entreated that she 
 might be left with him alone. The wish was obeyed, and she 
 attempted to soften the assassin, but he only took advantage of 
 her situation, by stabbing her repeatedly with his rapier, which 
 he used as a dagger. Believing that she was dead he rejoined 
 his brother, who, armed with a pistol, was waiting at the 
 threshold. The women had rushed to her assistance, attracted 
 by her cries, and found her senseless, with a piece of the rapier, 
 which had been broken, sticking in her shoulder. They called 
 for help, and the brothers, who still were near the house, 
 believing that the marchioness was not dead after all, re-entered, 
 and the abbe attempted to shoot her, when he was prevented by 
 the same lady who had given her the antidote, and who raising 
 his hand, made him discharge the contents of his pistol into 
 the ceiling. He stunned this new enemy with a blow from the 
 butt end of the weapon, but the ladies at last contrived to 
 thrust the two wretches from the house and closed the door 
 behind them. The marchioness never recovered. On her 
 dying bed she saw her husband, who returned apparently in an 
 agony of grief — which it is difficult to believe sincere — and she 
 took the sacrament from the hands of the vile priest who had 
 been the accomplice of her brothers, and whom she from a 
 principle of charity would not betray. When she was dead, the 
 physicians declared that it was the poison that had killed her, 
 for none of the wounds inflicted by the sword were mortal. 
 The draught she had taken would, according to the proces 
 verbal, have killed a lion in a few hours, but she lingered for 
 
 83 G 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 more than a fortnight. The account from which M. Dumas 
 has chiefly taken his narrative, prettily says, " Nature lovingly 
 defended the beautiful body she had taken such pains to form." 
 
 The fate of the marchioness, so celebrated as a beauty, was 
 not a matter to be thought lightly of at the court of Louis XIV. 
 There, when Marchioness de Castillane, had she danced twice 
 in one evening with the king himself ; there had Christina of 
 Sweden declared, that of all she had seen, nothing was equal 
 to the belle Provengale, the name which thenceforth attached to 
 this amiable and unfortunate woman. The poets of the time 
 set their wits to work, and M. Dumas has for the edification of 
 the world selected two sonnets written to bouls rimes, which he 
 modestly declares are the " least bad " of any he has been able 
 to find. The murderers did not meet with the judicial fate they 
 deserved : the two brothers, though condemned to be broken 
 alive on the wheel, had escaped beyond the reach of the law ; 
 while the marquis was banished from the kingdom, his property 
 was confiscated, and he was deprived of his nobility. This last 
 sentence will either appear too harsh or too lenient accordingly 
 as we regard the participation of the marquis in the affair. 
 That such a sentence could have been perfectly just seems 
 impossible. 
 
 The history of the Marchioness de Ganges is generally known 
 in France ; but the supplementary history, namely, that of the 
 persons connected with the murder, and also that of the lady's 
 children, M. Dumas takes some pride in having collected. The 
 chevalier, it seems, mixing in the troops of Venice against the 
 Turks, was killed by a bomb-shell, which exploded for his 
 especial benefit, as it destroyed him and did not injure those 
 near him. The abbe passed a most unhappy life abroad, and 
 died a pious protestant at Amsterdam. The Marquis de Ganges 
 sneaked back again to his chateau, taking advantage of the 
 persecution of the reformed religion that was going on, and en- 
 joying the favour of the Catholics of the place from his zeal in 
 the cause of their faith. There he might have remained in 
 
 84 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 safety, but he endeavoured to seduce the wife of his own son, 
 who immediately requested the king again to banish his father. 
 This revealed the return of De Ganges, which had been hitherto 
 unknown to Louis, and he would have been prosecuted with 
 the greatest rigour, had he not fled, and escaped not only the 
 vengeance of the king, but after a while even the penetrating 
 
 search of M. Dumas. The daughter of the Marchioness de 
 
 Ganges was also the heroine of a little romance, which we for- 
 bear to repeat, and contributed her mite towards confirming the 
 belief that a fatality hung over the family. 
 
 These are the " Crimes Celebres," arising from the ferocity, 
 unchecked by law, of one period, and the corroding profligacy 
 of another. But the crime of bigotry and priestly intolerance ; 
 the fall of innocence, amid the yells of ignorance and petty 
 spite, while the secret policy of a superior though unprincipled 
 mind was working in the background, was committed in the 
 execution of Urbain Grandier, the pious and enlightened curate 
 of Loudun, in the reign of Louis XIIL The murderers here 
 were merely judicial murderers : the crime of which the intended 
 victim was accused was not only an absurdity in itself, but was 
 known to be an absurdity by all the intelligent people of the 
 place. Urbain having offended some of his influential neigh- 
 bours, and being unfortunately of too proud a nature to seek to 
 mollify them, it was resolved he should die somehow or other ; 
 and no better expedient could be hit on than to fasten upon 
 him the crime of witchcraft. A convent-full of Ursuline nuns 
 were converted into demoniacs for the express purpose of burn- 
 ing poor Urbain for the crime of possessing them. The impo- 
 sition was not well managed ; it was a bungle from beginning 
 to end ; it was completely evident that the ignorant nuns had 
 been trained for the occasion by the enemies of Urbain : and 
 to the questions put by unprejudiced investigators, the demons 
 that answered by their lips indulged in such miserable Latinity, 
 that roars of laughter instead of thrills of horror were the 
 
 85 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 invariable result of the interrogation. In defiance of the doc- 
 trine then entertained that demons were masters of all languages, 
 these audacious fiends substituted ablatives for accusatives, and 
 accusatives for ablatives ; if they could not exert their malice in 
 any other form, they at least demolished Priscian's head with 
 inconceivable ferocity ; in short, if they were demons at all, 
 they were the demons of the old play " Bellum Grammaticale " 
 — Solecismus, Barbarismus, and Cacotonus. The miserable de- 
 vice was failing as fast as it could, but the persecutors drew 
 Richelieu into their cause, and then Urbain's fate was certain. 
 A commission was sent down, not to try but to find guilty ; and 
 the Ciceronians who had formerly laughed so loudly now 
 ceased their mirth, and heard the verbum transitivum govern a 
 nominative case with demure countenances, as they clearly saw 
 that a smile might bring them into the same predicament as 
 the culprit. Urbain, who had committed a more substantial 
 offence than that with which he was principally charged, by 
 writing a book against the celibacy of the clergy, was cruelly 
 tortured, and finally burned alive : giving Richelieu one more 
 of those stains of blood, which, as De Vigny says in his admir- 
 able novel of Cinq Mars, the red of his costume served so well 
 to conceal. 
 
 The narratives of the Cenci and of Karl Ludwig Sand we 
 pass over as being already familiar to our readers : and with 
 more regret the powerfully melodramatic tale of Vaninka, 
 because it has lately been presented in an English form. But 
 before we take leave of a book, which we have read with great 
 interest — we can scarcely say pleasure — we cannot help remark- 
 ing on one fault of M. Dumas : a fault which he has in common 
 with many of his brother writers of modern France, and which 
 is a kind of reaction against the old delicacy, when a murder 
 on the Parisian stage would have thrown an audience into con- 
 vulsions. It runs riot through all his performances : and even 
 in the clever book we have been noticing, there is hardly an 
 effort to subdue it. He is constantly anxious to produce an 
 
 86 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 effect ; and often the talent which he displays in concentrating 
 to this end the means that history affords him, is beyond praise ; 
 but he too frequently attempts to excite a powerful sensation 
 by physical horror only, forgetting that it is one thing to touch 
 the imagination of his readers, and another to attack the stomach. 
 We are quite willing to learn that the different unfortunate 
 people who figure in his book were tortured in various ways ; 
 but surely he need not tell us how every joint of Beatrice Cenci, 
 of Madame Brinvilliers, of Urbain Grandier cracked after its 
 own peculiar fashion : surely we need not be initiated into all 
 the horrid details of the question ordinaire and the question 
 extraordinaire, and the question du/eu, and the question de la 
 veille, and the question de la corde. Having united the 
 character of the artist with that of the historian, to give his 
 narrative a more attractive form, M. Dumas might have softened 
 the dry records of the chronicler, when they happened to be 
 disgusting. But, on the contrary, he has used his art to heighten 
 the horrors which history has given him : dwelling with peculiar 
 satisfaction on the limb that starts upon the rack, on the flesh 
 that quivers in the pincers. In the same spirit we regret that 
 he should needlessly have dwelled on the indecencies of history. 
 There was no necessity to transcribe the beastly orgies of the 
 Borgia family, especially when he assumed that he should have 
 lectrices — lady-readers. Those who will only know the " Crimes 
 C61febres " through the medium of this article — terrible as the 
 crimes are in themselves — will have no notion of the sediment 
 of filth and horror that has been cast aside. 
 
 And these blemishes are the more to be regretted because 
 the few disgusting pages will limit the circle of the readers of a 
 book, which from the research to which it owes its origin, and 
 the power with which it is written, well deserves to be generally 
 known. For it is not a mere history of cut-throats and house- 
 breakers ; of the common criminals of their day, who were the 
 mere excrescences of society ; but of personages who forcibly 
 reflect their period, and are connected with its leading features. 
 
 87 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 The same praise that was given by Hegel to Gothe for connect- 
 ing his idyll of " Hermann and Dorothea " with the great events 
 of the French revolution, is due to M. Dumas, who has invari- 
 ably shown the link that binds his " criminals " to the fortunes 
 of Europe. And as these " criminals " thus represent various 
 phases of society, surely a wholesome moral may be drawn 
 from his book — or rather from those events which his book 
 brings before us — namely, that at the present time, when an 
 Abbe de Ganges and a Chevalier Sainte Croix could scarcely 
 exist, when the crimes of a Borgia and the execution of a 
 Grandier would be utterly impossible, it would be vain to say 
 that human nature has not progressed, and that, however bigotry 
 and prejudice may point to bygone periods, it is not a real 
 blessing to be born in the nineteenth century. 
 
 88 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 By CHARLES GUTZKOW. 
 
 We must have made some mistake in our old estimation of 
 the Germans, finding them as we do so much the reverse of all 
 previous conception. The two qualities which we should have 
 least thought of attributing to them, are certainly vivacity and 
 impertinence. Yet never did we see these developed to a 
 greater degree than in the writings of recent German travellers, 
 critics, and controversial writers. Prince Puckler Muskau was 
 a personification of both. But the prince, we learned, was 
 doubly an exception : first, as a prince and a scapegrace ; 
 secondly, as a Prussian. For the air of the Spree was said to 
 generate a certain self-conceit, unknown and foreign to the rest 
 of the Germans. Nevertheless we find both developed to a 
 very satisfactory pitch amongst the honest burghers of 
 Hamburg, and in the clime of fat and cloudy Holstein. Of 
 Heine it might be said, that the air of Paris had given sharp- 
 ness to his wit, and half Frenchified the German. But here is 
 another Hamburger, Gutzkow, a German all over, as utterly 
 uninoculated with the ideas as with the language of France, 
 and yet he is as lively as a Frenchman of the last century, 
 petulant as a child, and impertinent as Paul Pry : that is, if 
 Paul Pry were to publish memoirs and tours. Herr Gutzkow 
 enters every celebrated house in the French metropolis, at least 
 those owned by men eminent in either politics or literature. 
 And he sets forth to the public the entire conversation, manner, 
 personal appearance, and habits, of every one of his receivers 
 or his hosts. However reprehensible this, we are yet perhaps 
 
 89 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 wrong to style it as an impertinence in Gutzkow, who with all 
 his wit is as simple as a child, and tells all he saw and heard 
 as innocently and naturally, as if it was a thing of course. And 
 so perhaps it was. Parisian eminencies are very apt to poser, 
 or give sittings to, curious strangers, in order to allow the 
 daguerreotypist or the moral portrait-painter to carry off what 
 he can, and make the most of it. Gutzkow seems to have felt 
 this. For he avows that amidst all the persons he saw and 
 talked with, he penetrated but to one family circle during his 
 residence in Paris. 
 
 It is not, however, a six weeks' tourist, no matter what his 
 sagacity or his country, who can give fitting portraiture of the 
 men holding first rank in France. It is necessary to have seen 
 them in past and in present, and to have observed them in the 
 very different positions into which the fortune of a few years 
 has flung them. 
 
 In order to depict M. Guizot, for example, we must have 
 seen, twenty, nay thirty years ago, the ardent young consti- 
 tutionalist, full of that protestant hatred for Napoleon's regime, 
 so universally felt in his native town of Nismes ; a feeling 
 which nearly caused Napoleon himself to be stoned at Orogon 
 on his journey to Elba. Ten years later, the same person 
 should have remarked Guizot in the historical professor's chair 
 of the Sorbonne, attended not by a numerous but by a most 
 attached band of hearers, to whom he expounded the mysteries 
 of English history. We recollect him well. It was not yet the 
 period of the historic mania, when Guizot grew more popular. 
 At that time, in 1822, Cousin's vague philosophy and Ville- 
 main's shallow criticism drew crowds to their lectures, muddy- 
 thoughted as were the one, empty-thoughted the other, whilst 
 the really solid and useful information offered by Guizot was 
 comparatively neglected. But the man was not to be put down 
 either as man of letters or statesman. He and his wife set to 
 work, each writing a score of books in a twelvemonth : and 
 thus he kept his name fixed before the public eye for years. 
 
 90 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 Perseverance, and an imperturbable determination to occupy 
 first place, have been and are the first characteristics of 
 M. Guizot: a desire not compounded of a wish for wealth 
 or luxury, or the adjuncts of eminence ; but a love of 
 eminence for itself, for its activity, for its satisfying the 
 cravings of a spirit, purely and naturally ambitious. 
 
 Our first glance at Guizot was when in his home at Nismes, 
 under a mother's brow : a mother, too, who had lost her 
 husband on a revolutionary scaffold. That must have been a 
 grave, a solemn, a religious home ; whose gayest pastime was 
 severe study ; whose every feeling partook somewhat of the 
 depth of devotion. 
 
 About a day's journey from Nismes, in the same region of 
 ardent and eloquent spirits, a youth ten years younger than 
 Guizot was at school. Even at that time the strongest 
 antagonism, though unknown one to the other, existed between 
 the feelings of both. Young Guizot's ideas were those of 
 protestant and constitutional liberalism, such as the Feuillans 
 had preached and fallen with in the great revolution. Thiers 
 was bred in quite another school. Like the majority of his 
 college, he was liberal in a revolutionary and Napoleonite sense ; 
 that is, more urgent on the transformation of France from 
 monarchism and aristocracy to pure democracy, than caring 
 either how this was to be effected, or what was to be the result. 
 Each rose with the tide that suited him : Guizot with that of 
 1 8 14 and 181 5, Thiers with the swell which preceded and pro- 
 duced 1830. Guizot, a young universitarian, was placed by 
 the Abb^ de Montesqueiu in the office of the French Chancellerie, 
 or Ministry of Justice, in which he must have seen and done 
 dirty work, such as the preparation of categories of exile and 
 proscription, and edicts of censorship. Yet a liberal might 
 have thought these necessary, against the scum of imperialists 
 and jacobins united. Whatever M. Guizot thought, however, 
 his employers intended the despotic reaction not merely 
 against ultra-liberals, but against the whole class even of 
 
 91 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 constitutionalists. When Guizot saw this, he withdrew from 
 politics — indeed his protestantism became itself a bar to his 
 advancement — and took refuge in his professorial chair. By 
 this he raised himself to an eminence more certain and less 
 dangerous than that which the Chamber of Deputies bestowed in 
 those days. The ecclesiastical minister of public instruction 
 now stopped his lectures ; on which Guizot joined the writing 
 of political pamphlets to the graver task of historic editing. 
 Attached to the party of the Doctrinaires, to that of Royer 
 CoUard and Camille Jordan, Guizot rose with his party, and 
 with it was on the point of coming into power and place under 
 M. de Martignac, when Charles the Tenth madly flung himself, 
 in horror of a moderate ministry, into the arms of Polignac, and 
 with Polignac into exile. The day after the revolution Guizot 
 was minister. 
 
 What a cabinet was that 1 It was composed of thirteen or 
 fourteen persons, not one of whoiii had ever acted with the 
 other, and all most opposed in habits, temper, and political 
 ideas. Imagine Count Mold and M. Laffitte, Dupont de I'Eure 
 and the Due de Broglie, sitting together in council ! Laffitte 
 and Dupont talked as if they were in a conciliabule of opposi- 
 tion, and the Due de Broglie politely told them, that they had 
 no idea of how a government was to be carried on. All were 
 in a panic, Louis Philippe himself included. But each had 
 his own object of terror, and each set about combating his 
 phantom, caring little for his neighbours. Louis Philippe and 
 M. Guizot agreed in dreading the potentates and powers of 
 Europe, from whom they expected an Immediate onslaught : 
 but each prepared for resistance in his own way. Louis Philippe 
 took an honest and respected legitimist, the Due de Mortemart ; 
 bamboozled him by saying, that he would merely keep the 
 throne warm for the Duke of Bourdeaux; and sent him to 
 deliver this message to the Czar of Russia in order to keep 
 him quiet. This tremendous lie had its effect ; but neither the 
 Due de Mortemart, nor the Czar of Russia, ever forgave Louis 
 
 92 
 
 I 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 Philippe. M. Guizot, on his part, thought the best mode of 
 resistance was to excite revolution. He gathered together the 
 emigrant Spaniards, gave them money, directions, and ordered 
 Mina into Spain. Similar manoeuvres were put in practice on 
 the side of Belgium. M. Guizot during this was minister of 
 public instruction : Count Mold was the foreign minister. But 
 when M0I6 saw that the king, and M. Guizot, and M. de Talley- 
 rand, and ten others, were more foreign minister than himself, 
 he resigned. 
 
 Had Gutzkow visited Paris then, in 1830, he would have seen 
 her heroes in new lights : not standing in composed or graceful 
 attitudes for his portraiture, but making, most of them, very 
 uncouth struggles for political pre-eminence. Gutzkow might 
 at that time, on any evening of the week, have presented himself 
 in the antechamber of the Palais Royal or the Tuileries, had 
 himself announced, and have joined the royal and ministerial 
 circle (in which all Paris joined) without difficulty or impedi- 
 ment. M. Guizot he might have found at the office of public 
 instruction, then in the Rue des Saints Peres, in close confabula- 
 tion with conspirators, such as Mina and Toreno, and as anxious 
 to revolutionize his neighbours, as he is now to pacify them. 
 Then was the Duchess of Broglie's the great rendezvous of the 
 Doctrinaires. The Duke himself, small, orderly, and amiable 
 gentleman as he was, was still excited by the revolutionary 
 movement. And no one will ever forget the memorable scene, 
 which occurred some months later, in which the little duke, 
 obstinate and choleric, fairly bullied Louis Philippe into a re- 
 cognition of Isabella of Spain, and packed off Mignet to Madrid 
 with it, as soon as he had wrung it from the king. Cousin, 
 Remusat, Count St. Aulaire, and all the Globists, were the great 
 men of the Due de Broglie's circle : Cousin, an excellent talker, 
 and one who, extravagant all his life, chose at that moment to be 
 original, by preserving calmness and common sense when every- 
 one else was getting rid of them. But this was the Aristocracy 
 of the revolution. 
 
 93 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Thiers belonged to quite another group. For many years the 
 little man had been, as is said, " pulling his Satanic Majesty by 
 the tail," and clinging to such poor creatures as Etienne and 
 Felix Bodin for employment and patronage. His History, 
 however, and some financial pamphlets written for Laffitte, had 
 raised his head above water. And some folks, jealous of the 
 exclusive pedantry of the Doctrinaires, enabled Thiers, with 
 Mignet and Carrel, to set up the National. Here was another 
 scene wherein Thiers ought to have been visited. Fussy, 
 breathless, despotic, no one could have had to do with a more 
 uncomfortable editor than Thiers. As to Mignet, he made no 
 resistance, took the articles to do that were given him, and was 
 more devoted to keeping his hair in curl-papers, than to be- 
 coming First Consul. Carrel alone bullied Thiers from time 
 to time. And yet three abler men, nor more united, never 
 perhaps presided over the editing of a great political organ. 
 During the revolution the Globe expired : the boat of the 
 Doctrinaires could not live in such a sea. The National lived 
 on and mainly aided the carrjing through of the revolution. 
 Thiers became Under Secretary of State. 
 
 There was at that time a man in much greater estimation 
 than either Guizot or Thiers, although, like Thiers, he had not 
 yet reached the Chamber of Deputies. This was Odillon 
 Barrot. If Thiers and Guizot are men of the south, small in 
 stature and in form, bright of eye, mercurial and quick, Odillon 
 Barrot is a true son of the north, fair, full, and florid, with an 
 eye that might as well be out of the head as in it, for all the 
 expression it gives. His character suited his physique, being 
 slow, pompous, inflated, soft, and wavering, but honest of 
 purpose, and frank in expression. Barrot's face does not belie 
 the O that begins his name. It is a potato face, with far more 
 of the Irishman than the Frenchman. But it is the Irishman 
 tamed down to the Frenchman, with but a small portion of that 
 mingled impudence and humour, which form the Irish character. 
 M. Barrot had another Irish quality, that of getting up a row, as 
 
 94 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 July testified. Unfortunately, after the row had become a 
 revolution, he became Prefect of the Seine, and he was quite 
 unskilled in putting down or calming a row. When Barrot was 
 Prefect, the Archbishop's palace was plundered, and St. Germain 
 I'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre, gutted by the mob. 
 The new King of the French thought this to be too debonnaire 
 on the part of a Prefect, and he dismissed Monsieur Barrot. 
 Thus Barrot had put himself, or allowed himself to be put, the 
 day after the revolution, in a post where he came in contact with 
 a, mob, and in which he was at once called upon to tolerate or 
 to repress its violence : a dangerous alternative. Thiers laughed 
 at Barrot's simplicity, and declaring that he would have nothing 
 to do with politics for the present, ensconced himself in the 
 figures and accounts of the Under Secretaryship of Finance. 
 
 A better contrast to Barrot than either Thiers or Guizot, is 
 M. Berryer, an atrabilious, black-muzzled personage, with a 
 sinister likeness to Mr. John Wilson Croker ; but a gay, jovial, 
 round-stomached fellow, with a pate as bald as Barrot. We 
 can fancy to ourselves both of them singing in a monastic choir, 
 with good bass voices, both doing honour to the vocal and 
 physical powers of the fraternity. But Barrot's voice is like 
 the sound emitted by the wooden horn of the mountain cantons, 
 whilst Berryer's has the sharpness and force of the bugle. 
 Berryer is considered the most powerful actor, but there is no 
 sincerity in his tone as there is in Barrot's. Even Berryer's 
 warmth is factitious; it is that of the lawyer or the trading 
 politician. Whereas Barrot's, though full of pretension, is 
 honest, and if his eloquence does not proceed from the heart, 
 it has at least a great deal to do with the conscience. 
 
 We are not old enough to recollect Fox, but Barrot, of all 
 the French Chamber, ought most to resemble him. There is 
 no one to liken to Pitt, academic and argumentative. For 
 Guizot's eloquence holds the medium of that spoken from the 
 protestant pulpit and the professor's chair, full of solemnity and 
 of emphasis, but those of the preacher, not the statesman. 
 
 95 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 One always expects to hear from say, Mes frlres. Where 
 Guizot is happiest, is in reply. For when he commences and 
 pours forth a premeditated speech, he is too doctrinal, too 
 mystic, too remote from the reality of things. Whereas, in 
 reply, he is forced to be personal, pointed, logical ; whilst his 
 appeal to his own good intentions from the exaggerated attacks 
 of his enemies, is in general at once plausible and touching. 
 
 As to Thiers, his eloquence is unlike any thing that ever 
 existed, or was ever imagined. Fancy a bronze statuette, gifted 
 with the power of motion and the power of speech. If cracked, 
 so much the better : the tingling sounds which it may be sup- 
 posed to emit, will only be the truer. His features are as 
 unmoved, as much bronze as those of the statuette. Dantan 
 could make a Thiers in three hours — if anyone else would but 
 find the organs, the senses, and the intellect. The first time 
 this statuette gets up to speak, or to squeak, there is a universal 
 desire to put him down with a universal laugh. But the little 
 Punch is not to be put down. He fixes his spectacles (his eyes 
 not being visible) upon his audience. He addresses them in a 
 how dye do vein of eloquence, and soon captivates their atten- 
 tion just as if he had taken each person present by the button- 
 hole. There is no warmth, no apostrophe, no rhetoric, no figure 
 of speech, no bathos, no pathos, but a wonderful tumbling 
 forth of ideas, as if they came from a cornucopia, and that 
 without any effort, any aim at originality, any desire to excite 
 surprise. It is sensible and cold eloquence of most unassuming 
 and irresistible superiority. In his own home, and from one 
 of his own armchairs, it is the same, except that he blends the 
 genuine French esprit with his natural quiet oratory. In a 
 word, Thiers is the most wonderful man in Europe. 
 
 After Thiers, the most powerful speaker in the French 
 Chamber is, in our opinion, Dupin. He effects by violence 
 and energy what Thiers does by insinuation. Very coarse, with 
 the voice, gesture, and aspect of a peasant, no one can faire 
 vibrer le fibre national, like Dupin. He seldom speaks : never 
 
 96 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 unless when provoked or excited. And he is never either pro- 
 voked or excited except by the absurdities or extravagances of 
 either extreme. When the priestly or the ultra-Tory party have 
 gone too far in severity or illegality or unconstitutionalism, and 
 when the liberal opposition attack in vain on such a point, 
 Dupin starts up to the aid of the latter, and gives court and 
 minister so keen and ironical a castigation, that the tenants of 
 the ministerial benches shrink into them. When, on the other 
 hand, the Left fondles some remarkable absurdity, and cries at 
 the top of its lungs against some trifle, which it represents as 
 the very destruction of all freedom and of the French name, 
 Dupin rises to chastise his liberal neighbours (for he sits near 
 them), and to declare, that liberal as he thinks himself, he has 
 no idea of going the length of such absurdity as that. As a 
 social man, Dupin is delightful amongst his legal comrades of 
 the bar, full of fun, and of good sense. He is sadly ignorant 
 of the more solid elements of policy. Political economy is his 
 horror; and capitalists, fond as he is himself of money, are 
 objects of his avowed aversion. 
 
 Lamartine has forced himself into eminence as an orator ; we 
 say forced himself, for there was great reluctance to listen to a 
 poet talking politics. Lamartine, however, had been a diplo- 
 matist before he became a poet, and his notions of foreign 
 policy are far less crude than those of his colleagues in general. 
 Lamartine has the honour of having foreseen and foretold the 
 treaty of July and the breach with England, full eighteen 
 months before they took place. In a memorable speech he 
 pointed out the quarrel into which both countries were blindly 
 flinging themselves, and vainly begged of his countrymen to 
 stop. The speech was then laughed at as the most absurd of 
 prophecies. He had afterwards the greater honour of standing 
 almost alone in his opposition to the Fortification of Paris. 
 
 Mauguin is as good an orator as any man can be who wants 
 common sense, and another common quality generally cited 
 with it. Tocqueville has utterly failed both as a speaker and 
 
 N.S.B. 97 H 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 politician. Saiizet is whipped cream. Villemain is a remark- 
 able and indeed the last surviving specimen, of the mode of 
 thinking and speaking of the last century. His French is 
 classic, his style epigrammatic, his tone ironical, and his argu- 
 ments veiled Voltairianism. Cousin is an awkward schoolboy, 
 who has purloined some eloquence and mysticism from German 
 philosophers. But we have already come to the second-rate 
 men, and may close the series of sketches into which we have 
 digressed. 
 
 We return to the opinions of Gutzkow. What he says 
 respecting Louis Philippe is too remarkable to be passed over 
 in silence. 
 
 " No correct view has been taken of Louis Philippe," says Her 
 Gutzkow. " He is depicted as a sincere and reserved personage, 
 following up fixed aims with the utmost prudence and management. 
 He is considered as half Louis the Eleventh, half Cromwell. The 
 nice balance and varying fortunes of political parties is all considered 
 the work of his political cleverness. There is not a word of truth in 
 all this. Louis Philippe is the most talkative, unquiet, uncertain 
 person in all France. The King of the French is good-natured, well- 
 informed, sharp-sighted, but without any real power or firm will. The 
 ever fermenting anxiety of his heart vents itself in words. To talk is 
 his first necessity. France has been ruled by such ignorant monarchs, 
 that it is its present honour to have for king a man of extensive know- 
 ledge, reading, and observation. Louis Philippe fascinates those pre- 
 sented to him : speaks English to English, German to German. No 
 books, no names, no ideas, have escaped his observation. He reads 
 all, even to scientific and statistical ones, and is better acquainted with 
 the rising talent of the country than his minister. He can con- 
 verse with every one on his own subject, and talks on without suffering 
 rejoinder or interruption. Louis Philippe is not of the Talleyrand 
 school, which considers speech as given to disguise thought On the 
 contrary, he thinks speech given in order to excite thought. He thinks 
 aloud, and lives externally. He cannot bear to be alone, but seeks for 
 applause and echo. Intellectual cultivation, good nature, and indis- 
 cretion are so mixed up in him, that one does not know which pre- 
 dominates. But far from being reserved, he is open ; far from h>eing 
 silent, he is talkative ; and far from being independent, he leans upon 
 every one for support." 
 
 98 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 In order to escape the charge of impertinence, this contradic- 
 tion of every preconceived opinion ought to have been written 
 by some intimate of his French Majesty, and not by a young 
 foreign traveller, who spends a month in Paris, and never sets 
 his foot at court. Gutzkow is, however, not all wrong. He 
 has heard people talk, who evidently knew Louis Philippe well. 
 But he has jumbled up and exaggerated their remarks and 
 information into a mass of incongruities that no one could 
 recognise as King of the French. That personage is indeed 
 talkative, especially to those on whom he wants to impress any 
 idea, and from whom he knows that he has none to get. But 
 when Gutzkow says that he is a man of great observation, but 
 cannot listen, he talks nonsense. There was a time when 
 Louis Philippe was all ear, and no tongue, and that was when 
 he was Duke of Orleans. He has little left to learn now in 
 men or in things, except what his secret spies and corre- 
 spondence tell him. And therefore he talks. 
 
 Gutzkow says that he is indiscreet, that he is not of the 
 Talleyrand school, that he betrays his sentiments, and so forth. 
 It is merely evident from this that Herr Gutzkow is an honest 
 Hamburger, whose worldly sagacity, as Ruge says of him, 
 must have been developed in the raw cotton of that trading 
 city. Louis Philippe indiscreet ! Louis Philippe betray his 
 sentiments ! God help the simple German ! Another month 
 spent in Paris would have convinced him that truth and indis- 
 cretion were qualities quite unknown in the political latitude 
 which he pretends to describe. 
 
 But still Herr Gutzkow has his fraction of truth. Louis 
 Philippe is talkative, and loves to dominate with the tongue. 
 Moreover the king is unquiet. He is restless, always revolving 
 some scheme. And the great complaint that his ministers 
 have of him is, that he will not let well alone. But his activity 
 seldom ascends to the higher region of politics : being generally 
 the anxiety of a good father of a family to better his condition, 
 increase his estate, and swell his purse. Heaven help the 
 
 99 H 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Intendant of his Civil List ! none but a man so patient and 
 devoted as he that now holds it, could stand the worry of that 
 office. Appanage, dotations, forests to cut or to buy, the 
 marriage of his children — all family points make the king as 
 active as if he had just made the family fortune in trade, and 
 as if he had to found and regulate the future prospects and 
 honours of the family for centuries. Such is the restlessness 
 of the King of the French. 
 
 Another quality that Gutzkow attributes to him, is want of 
 independence, and a leaning on others' opinions. This is 
 altogether a mistake. One characteristic of his will suffice to 
 prove it. And this is, that Louis Philippe never made friend 
 or intimate of a man of talent. He detested Perier, he detests 
 De Broglie, Thiers, Guizot, every one that could pretend to 
 impose an opinion on him. His favourites are such men as 
 Montalivet : men incapable of either having systems of their 
 own, or of even divining the king's. No: Louis Philippe 
 mentally never leaned upon any one. And he has had most 
 able men as cabinet ministers, as ministers of foreign affairs, 
 for years, who do not yet know what exactly were his aims or 
 his wishes. So much for the indiscretion of his majesty, 
 Louis Philippe. 
 
 It is difficult to say whether Gutzkow was more stricken 
 with M. Thiers or George Sand. He called on the latter 
 personage in the evening, at her lodsfings in the Rue Pigale, 
 and was received in a little room ten feet square, called the 
 Little Chapel. The " nearer the church," says the proverb. 
 
 There was little or no light ; Madame Sand and her daughter 
 in that light ; and two gentlemen altogether in the background 
 and in silence, which they preserved. Madame Sand com- 
 plained of being engaged in law, divers people menacing her 
 with contrainte par corps, unless she wrote them a novel. They 
 talked of the drama. Gutzkow said they had as much dramatic 
 talent in Germany, but not such accomplished specialties. The 
 German added, that he had been to a French tragedy once, but 
 
 lOO 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 never should go again. George Sand admitted that French 
 tragedy was antiquated, and all its present writers, except Scribe, 
 commonplace. 
 
 " Here," says Gutzkow, "she left her work, lit a cigarette, in which 
 there was more paper than tobacco, and more coquetterie than emanci- 
 pation of the female sex. ' Who is my translator into German ? ' asked 
 she. ' Fanny Tarnow,' I said. ' I suppose she leaves out the immoral 
 passages ?' said Madame Sand, with irony. I did not reply, but looked 
 at her daughter, who held down her head. A pause ensued of a second, 
 but there was a great deal in that second." 
 
 " So much for George Sand and " Young Germany." We 
 will now collect what he says of Thiers. 
 
 "It surprised me much to find that Thiers did not owe his rise either 
 to fortune or to his own genius, but merely to his talent for speaking. 
 The external physiognomy of the chamber evinces lightness and super- 
 ficiality. I could not at first believe that this betokened true; but 
 Thiers himself told me that the surest mode of ruling the chamber 
 was to amuse it, and that what members dreaded most was ennui. 
 This is the secret of Thiers's eloquence : he amuses. It is not the 
 fiery power of eloquence, nor the genius of the statesman, that have 
 thrust Thiers up into his palace of the Place St. Georges. It is his 
 talent, which in France is ever more fortunate than genius. Thiers 
 receives every evening. Mignet is always there. Madame Dosne and 
 her daughter do the honours. Whether Thiers got from his historic 
 studies the trick of imitating Napoleon or not, I do not know; but 
 there is certainly a resemblance in figure and manner. Thiers's is a 
 Corsican nature. The form of the head and chin are Napoleonite, as 
 are the sharp eyes and thin grey hairs. Small of stature, Thiers must 
 look up to every one he addresses, and so he likes to throw himself 
 back in an armchair, and address those who gather round him. He 
 has no ministerial solemnity, but remains natural and good-natured in 
 manner." 
 
 The argument turned on languages. Gutzkow mentioned 
 the unfitness of the German for either political eloquence or 
 history. " It will become fit for both," said Thiers, " as soon 
 as Germany has free political institutions. Machiavel and 
 De Thou have both historical styles, and would have had in 
 any language simply because they were statesmen." Gutzkow 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 here instanced Justus Moeser, as a German who had a genuine 
 historical style. " You have been but a short time in Germany," 
 said Gutzkow to Thiers. " I only wanted to visit the celebrated 
 battle-fields," was the reply. 
 
 "Ay, thought I, it is these thoughts that made you set Europe in 
 commotion, and stir up the French to revenge 1815, and Moscow, and 
 Leipsic, and Waterloo. And I added aloud to Thiers, ' What we 
 Germans could not do for ourselves — what neither our princes nor our 
 chambers could effect — that you have done for us. You have awakened 
 the Germans to political unity.' " 
 
 Thiers replied to Gutzkow, that he respected the indepen- 
 dence of the Germans. " Napoleon's wars were forced on him 
 from within and from without. Neither of these necessities 
 pressed now. All that France wanted was to be independent 
 and influential, and neither Russia nor England were prepared 
 to allow her the due quantum of both. There was the Turkish 
 empire dying, and when it went, France must have her finger 
 in the pie as well as Russia and England. If Prussia held to 
 Russia in that crisis, and Austria to England, then France was 
 their enemy, and would turn the world upside down." Upon 
 this, Gutzkow says, he immediately assured M. Thiers, 
 
 "That the present movement of the Germans was more national 
 than liberal. We want unity, and will have it. We want not to 
 quarrel with England or with Russia, but we want to do without any 
 alliance. Prussia and Austria must make good, what the thirty years' 
 war and the seven years' war broke up. Prussia and Austria separated 
 in Ratisbon, but must come together in Frankfort. Let them unite, 
 and we want neither Russia nor England. And your Napoleons had 
 better don the civic mantle thnn the military riding-coat. The French 
 would then have neither need nor excuse to cry out, ' Let us set the 
 world upside down.' " 
 
 Gutzkow, however, is much more at home with poets, critics, 
 and dramatists, than with politicians. And he has sketched 
 his French brethren of the pen with equal freedom : from 
 George Sand in her chapel twelve feet square, to Jules Janin, 
 in his splendid garret overlooking the Luxembourg, making 
 love to his wife. The German has crayoned all. He is like 
 
 JO? 
 
 t 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 the Enfant Terrible of the caricature : speaking out all he 
 sees and knows and guesses, with infantine malice, and trund- 
 ling his hoop against the shins of all his acquaintance. We 
 are glad he did not visit England, for this representative of 
 Young Germany has a monstrous love of sunshine and summer, 
 of the gay, the pleasurable, and the social. Now in England 
 an idle visitor does not find these easily ; and a few weeks on 
 the banks of the Thames is apt to send the solitary wanderer 
 back with aversion and disgust to us insulars. Thus Henry 
 yeine, the other day, went to enjoy sea-breezes and study 
 English character at Boulogne. He found a gay, proud set of 
 demi-fashionables, who had never heard of Henry Heine, who 
 took him in consequence for a commonplace personage without 
 livery servants and coach and pair, and treated him de haul en 
 has. Poor Henry Heine was so susceptible and so indignant 
 at all this, that he has become a decided foe to England and 
 her inhabitants ! He is a writer for the Augsburg Gazette, and 
 therein has just published the most violent diatribes against 
 our grasping, haughty, mercantile, intolerant, and abominable 
 spirit. In short, he joins the French cry of Delenda est 
 Carthago, setting us down for Carthage. For these reasons 
 we sincerely hope that Young Germany may stay away from 
 us, till he acquires less susceptibility, with more years, sense, 
 and discretion. 
 
 Gutzkow is very severe upon Rachel, but seems to have 
 taken his opinions respecting her solely from Janin. He 
 bitterly complains of her never laughing. No one is human 
 or has a heart, says Gutzkow, who does not laugh or betray 
 feeling by a smile. The tragedian might reply, that the parts 
 of Corneille's and Racine's heroines are no laughing matter. 
 But the German critic calls the French actress (in our opinion, 
 a woman of decided genius), stiff, made of pale bronze, without 
 feminine softness, passion, or gemuth. He goes further than 
 Janin taught him, however. For he extends this sweeping 
 censure to the French in general. 
 
 103 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 He asks, how is it, that there are so few children in the 
 streets of Paris ? The population of French towns, he says, 
 consists of full-grown persons, whereas in Germany half the 
 population consists of children. The explanation of this does 
 not improve the French in the German estimation : it being, 
 that French, and especially Parisian women, universally pack 
 off their children to nurse, and often to starve and perish. 
 This is the habit, not merely of the higher, but of the middle 
 and poorer classes. Gutzkow attributes it to want of heart : 
 but the real cause is, that French women take as much part in 
 the business of life, especially of retail trade, as men; and 
 consequently have not time to devote exclusively to a mother's 
 task. 
 
 But French character, habits, and eminent men in letters 
 and politics, form an ample field, not to be comprised in 
 a tour or a book, nor exhausted in an article. Herr Gutzkow 
 has but sketched superficialities, and we have followed his bee- 
 like flutter through the Parisian world: bee-like, indeed, for 
 while he culled sweets, he has left stings. When we meet with 
 a more profound or more conscientious tourist, we shall be 
 glad ourselves to return more seriously to the subject. 
 
 Since this was written, we have received, to place by the 
 side of the German Gutzkow, another description of Paris, by 
 a combination of one of the liveliest pens and the best pencil 
 in it.* And the best pencil has done its duty well. Lami's 
 sketches are admirable : as they were no doubt intended, the 
 chief attraction of the work. We cannot say as much of 
 M. Janin's prose : written in the character of an American : 
 though a greater contrast to Jonathan than Jules Janin could 
 not well be found. We dare say that in its original French his 
 descriptive work was lively and interesting, and well-written. 
 
 * "The American in Paris." By Jules Janin. Illustrated by Eugene 
 Lami. London, 1843. 
 
 104 
 
LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 But most certainly in its translation it is dull, commonplace, 
 awkward, and altogether illegible. Nor do we blame the 
 translator ; for Jules Janin's quips and cranks are completely- 
 untranslatable. And though certainly knowing Paris intimately, 
 Janin knows no tongue or train of ideas at all capable of trans- 
 lation into sober English. Even his anecdotes are stale, his 
 points flat, and the moral of his tale, if he has one, is sure to 
 evaporate and disappear before it has been told. M. Janin 
 had heard, no doubt, of English humour, and thought it 
 necessary to write humorously for the British public. But the 
 attempt is ludicrous, not humorous. Thus he begins by 
 talking of that rascal, Sterne, and thinks the word most happily 
 applied. 
 
 In order not to seem a Frenchman, Janin falls to abusing 
 cafe au lait : maligning one of the best things in Paris, whilst 
 he falls on his knees in adoration of some of the worst. After 
 puffing the west hotels and the west restaurants, adulating 
 every thing fine and courtly, M. Janin visits the Chamber of 
 Deputies, and bursts into a panegyric of M. Berryer, not 
 undeserved. He also dwells on Dupin, by no means ill 
 depicting him. 
 
 The account of Louis Philippe is not uninteresting, as it 
 gives plain facts and circumstances, however small. It dwells 
 on his majesty's horror of tobacco and love of wax-lights. It 
 might have dwelt on his love of English comforts, and on the 
 quarrel between him and the old Bourbons on the subject of 
 certain matters of domestic convenience. Neither Louis XVIII. 
 nor Charles X. would admit any vulgar innovations of building 
 into the royal palaces ; whilst Louis Philippe would inhabit no 
 palace on the old system, refusing to enter the Tuileries till 
 arranged with comforts and innovations. This is considered 
 by the old court one of Louis Philippe's revolutionary crimes. 
 
 Where Jules Janin is most at home, however, is behind and 
 before the scenes of a theatre. He is the sublime impertinent 
 of dramatic criticism, and rules over the coulisses with a 
 
 105 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 despotism that makes even poor Rachel tremble. The best 
 portion of his book is his account of Scribe, the great comic 
 writer. This we shall at once transfer to our page. 
 
 "Just before reaching the Porte St. Denis, is the Gymnase Drama- 
 tique ; a delightful little theatre, which M. Scribe and the Duchess De 
 Bern raised between them. In this small enclosure are performed 
 comedies which represent the slightest accidents of every-day life. 
 When M. Scribe, the greatest amuser of the age, commenced this 
 undertaking, there seemed no scope for comedy anywhere. Moliere, 
 like a sovereign master, had taken possession of all the great characters; 
 he had worked the whole of humanity for his own benefit ; there was 
 not a vice nor an absurdity which had not been submitted to the censure 
 and the rod of this illustrious genius. After him others had arisen : 
 Lachaussde, for example, who had made comedy weep ; Beaumarchais, 
 who had taken it on to political ground ; Marivaux, the comic poet of 
 the ruelles and the boudoirs : these passed — Comedy had become 
 silent, like all the rest. Inventors were contented with imitating 
 masters. The Emperor Napoleon did not encourage this method of 
 spejiking to the crowd, and of saying very often, by means of a 
 representation, severe truths, which the audience alone discovers, and 
 which escapes all the sagacity of the censors. Then came M. Scribe. 
 He had all the wit and invention necessary for the new enterprise ; he 
 at once understood that he could not carry his comedy back into 
 former times, and yet that he could not leave it among the people. 
 He therefore chose an intermediate world, a neutral ground, the 
 Chaussee d'Antin, and finance ; for, after all, every body stands a 
 chance of becoming as rich as M. Rothschild. The marquis of ancient 
 date and the grocer of depised family may make their fortunes in 
 twenty-four hours, so that each could say, while beholding this new 
 dominion of comedy, ' I shall perhaps enter there some day ! ' Placed 
 on this rich territory, of which he was the Christopher Columbus, 
 M. Scribe gave himself up at his ease to this parodox, which has suited 
 his purpose admirably. The simple secret of his success has consisted 
 in taking exactly the opposite of the comedies written before him. 
 There was a comedy of Voltaire's, called ' Nanine.' This Nanine, a 
 girl of no birth, marries a great lord, and is happy. M. Scribe takes in 
 hand the defence of the opposite opinion, and writes the ' Mariage de 
 Raison,' to prove that the son of a general would be very foolish to 
 marry the daughter of a soldier. In the ' Premieres Amours,' M. Scribe 
 ridicules all the fine, sweet sentiments of youth, with which so many 
 pretty comedies have been composed. The Demoiselle a marier is never 
 so charming, as when she has no thought of marriage. Le plus bean 
 
 1 06 
 
LETIERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 Jour dt la Vie is full of torments and miseries. And it is always thus. 
 When he has a comedy to write, this original man takes up the side of 
 long-established truth. In case of need, he would undertake to defend, 
 not the Misanthrope, which Fabre d' Eglantine has done before him, but 
 even the Tartuffe. Thanks to this ingenious subversion of the action, 
 the story, and the persons of his comedy, M. Scribe has discovered the 
 art of making his audience attentive. And as, besides, he writes quite 
 simply, without knowing how to write ; as his dialogues are full of 
 ordinary genius ; as, with all his wit, he is not more witty than the rest 
 of the world ; the most complete success has attended this happy man. 
 He has at once attained that popularity which is least contested and 
 least contestable in France ; he has been, at the same time, celebrated 
 and rich. The Duchess de Berri adopted him as her poet, and the 
 Gymnase, sustained by clever comedians, made expressly for this 
 comedy, finished by replacing the Theatre Fran^ais. The success of 
 M. Scribe lasted as long as the Restoration. But the Revolution of 
 July came : immediately the Theatre de Madame was nothing more 
 than the Gymnase Dramatique. The box in which the amiable 
 princess so often appeared, that royal box into which it was a great 
 honour to be admitted, was empty. Then M. Scribe, faithless as the 
 bird whose nest is destroyed, fled elsewhere. The Theatre Fran9ais, 
 which he had so roughly opposed, eagerly opened its doors to the 
 Cald^ron of 1830. Then M. Scribe composed vaudevilles in five acts, 
 and without couplets, which the Theatre Fran^ais calls comedies. At 
 the same time the Op^ra and the Opera Comique secured the illustrious 
 inventor : Meyerbeer and Auber would have no poetry but his : to the 
 former he gave ' Robert le Diable,' to the latter the ' Domino Noir.' As 
 for the Gymnase, when it found itself left to its own strength, it dispensed 
 most easily with its poet. The spirit of the masters had remained 
 everywhere, within the walls, and on the outside of the walls. Bouffe, 
 that excellent comedian, who had never been in the school of Scribe, 
 set himself seriously to work, to play comedies which were almost 
 serious. Thus every one went on : the Gymnase without M. Scribe,— 
 M. Scribe without the Gymnase : only, as it is not right that every 
 thing should succeed with ungrateful men, M. Scribe was obliged to 
 enter the French Academy, where he pronounced a discourse in M. de 
 Bouffon's style. Thus was her Royal Highness the Duchess de Berri 
 avenged ! Assuredly M. Scribe would not be in the Academy, if his 
 first protectress was not at Goritz." 
 
 And here we have done with Jules Janin. It is all very well 
 to employ foreign writers to draw up histories of their own 
 country, to sketch the state of politics, of letters, of the nrts, 
 
 107 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 But merely to give a view of the exterior appearance and sights 
 of Paris, or any foreign capital, with sketches of its society, — 
 for this any English writer would have been much preferable. 
 For not only has M. Janin been unable to discern round his 
 own home what is commonplace and what is not ; but he has 
 written in a current and capricious style which defies transla- 
 tion, and which, however good in French, is downright trash in 
 English. And a letterpress thus disgraces, instead of explaining 
 or illustrating, the very beautiful prints which accompany it. 
 We have never seen a happier specimen than in this book, of 
 French design expressed by the English graver. 
 
 |o3 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 George Herwegh comes of humble parents in Wurtemberg, 
 and received his first education at one of the state schools, in 
 Stuttgart, where Strauss, Idewald, and others, got their first 
 rudiments of learning. Subsequently, he studied at Tubingen, 
 and on the conclusion of his University course was thrown upon 
 his own resources for subsistence. He became sub-editor of 
 a literary journal of no great mark — the Europe — of which 
 A. Lewald is director, and further occupied himself with trans- 
 lating the poems of Lamartine, which he rendered in the 
 author's metre. These translations are said to have merit. 
 
 In the midst of these avocations he was called upon to serve 
 his time in the army ; and it is evident that his literary labours 
 could not have been very profitable to him, for he had not 
 wherewithal to purchase a substitute, and his parents were too 
 poor to buy his exemption. He was, moreover, too proud, or 
 too timid, to address himself to his friends ; and the conse- 
 quence was, that the poet was seized upon, one unlucky 
 morning, by a squad of police, and carried off — not to prison — 
 but to the regimental barracks, where he was bidden to share 
 a bed with a brother recruit : some big countryman, fresh from 
 the Schwartzwald. 
 
 The young republican wrote off, in the bitterness of his heart, 
 to his friend Lewald, assuring the latter that he would infallibly 
 hang himself, unless he was released from prison within the 
 four-and-twenty hours. On this, the editor of the Europe 
 put all his wits to work in behalf of the imprisoned bard ; and, 
 in the first place, got a physician's certificate, by which Herwegh 
 was respited from the barrack to the hospital ; and, finally, was 
 lucky enough to procure from the war minister an unlimited 
 
 109 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 leave of absence for this gifted and refractory recruit, who was 
 thus enabled to return to the peaceful exercise of the pen. 
 
 Some short time afterwards, as ill-luck would have it, 
 Herwegh was at a public ball, where he quarrelled with an 
 officer present, and a challenge was the consequence of their 
 dispute. But the officer, as it happened, was a lieutenant in 
 that very regiment of which George Herwegh was a private on 
 leave of absence: his leave was immediately withdrawn, and 
 he was ordered to join his regiment the very next day. 
 
 But one night, and half a bed with the big Schwartzwalder, 
 had been enough for the poet, and he preferred to sleep in 
 some free republican solitude, rather than in that odious com- 
 pany and barrack. The Swiss frontier is not more than four- 
 and-twenty hours distance from Stuttgart ; so the young man 
 quitted the fines patriae and dulcia arva of Wurtemberg, and 
 was in Switzerland on the very day when they were looking out 
 for him at his regiment. No doubt the lieutenant was much 
 disappointed, and that Herwegh's name still figures on the 
 regimenul lists, with a " D " before it. 
 
 He got work upon a journal, called the VolkshalU, pub- 
 lished by Dr. Wirth, at Belveue, near Constance, but soon quitted 
 that paper, and established himself at Zurich, where he devoted 
 himself exclusively to poetical composition, and where the first 
 edition of his Gedichte tines Lebendigen was published. 
 
 The book met with the most extraordinary success: two 
 editions were sold in the course of the first year, and his 
 publisher then made him editor of a newspaper, published by 
 the former with indifferent success up to that period, and called 
 the Deutsche Bothe in der Schweiz (The German Messenger 
 in Switzerland). Herwegh, accepting this post, determined to 
 go into Germany, to seek for contributors and subscribers. 
 
 Then commenced for the young poet such a series of 
 triumphs and successess, as never young poet enjoyed before. 
 Toasts, meetings, balls, banquets, saluted him everywhere ; and 
 in Berlin, especially, the applause with which he was greeted 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 was unbounded. All Berlin vfas/ou about him, as it had been 
 of Liszt three months before, and of Borne and Madlle. Sontag 
 a dozen years ago. Nor were the triumphs of George Herwegh 
 altogether so unsubstantial as those of some other literary 
 lions have been : for, our informant states, a young, rich, and 
 handsome Berlinerinn became desperately enamoured of the 
 republican bard, and is now a rich, handsome, and happy 
 republican bard's wife. Royalty itself condescended to catch 
 the infection of enthusiasm, and hence took place that famous 
 interview between the king and the poet, whereof the German 
 papers have talked so much. His majesty probably expected 
 to convert the disciple of republicanism, as his well-known dis- 
 course indicates ; for, likening the young missionary to Saul of 
 Tarsus (indeed we know not why) he said he would find his 
 Damascus somewhere : meaning that his conversion would one 
 day happen, when no doubt his name would be changed from 
 Herwegh to Von Herwegh. 
 
 But Herwegh still remains unconverted, although the courtiers 
 say that his presence before Majesty had a prodigious effect 
 upon him, and that the republican lion became exceedingly 
 mild and abashed in presence of the awful royal animal. 
 
 To disprove in a manner this charge against his courage and 
 constancy, Herwegh wrote the famous letter, which appeared in 
 the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung ; whereof the King of 
 Prussia instantly interdicted the sale in his majesty's dominions. 
 But it is probable that that well-conducted paper, which is 
 liberal in its tendency, and manly in its tone, had already 
 awakened the royal solicitude, before Herwegh's missive 
 appeared in it: at least, other journals, Ruge's Jahrbuch, 
 for instance, and the Rheinische Zeitung, have been abolished 
 and interdicted, although Herwegh's name does not appear 
 among their contributors. 
 
 Such, we are given to understand (by a countryman and 
 very warm admirer of the author who neither knows, nor, we 
 fear, will approve of our criticisms on his friend), have been 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 our young author's antecedens. His opinions cannot, of course, 
 be very precisely formalized in verse ; but we gather, from a 
 perusal of his volume, that they are of the strongest republican 
 kind. His hatred of priests is intense. He says, " their temples 
 are shut for him," and falls on them, whenever they come in 
 his way, with bitter epithets of scorn. Kings he has in similar 
 abhorrence, and, finally, he detests Frenchmen and Cossacks, 
 as, perhaps, a hearty German should. " Woe to him," cries 
 the young bard, " who trusts prematurely the son of the Frank. 
 He brings our bride back, but it is when he is tired of kissing 
 her." By which the poet means, no doubt, that the Germans 
 are to work out their own freedom. 
 
 The general rising against priests and monarchs he foretells 
 to be very close at hand, and his verses abound with number- 
 less allusions to that event. " Tear the crosses from the earth 
 (says he, in pursuance of his double purpose)* — tear up the 
 crosses; they shall all be turned into swords, and God in 
 Heaven will pardon the deed. Cease, ye bards, to sweat at 
 verses ; on the anvil lay the iron ; Saviour shall the iron be." 
 He, for his part, will no longer remain as of old, " and pass the 
 hours midst idle flowers, with beauty near him — to battle ranks a 
 charger's flanks, henceforth shall bear himf .... Henceforth 
 
 • Reiss die Kreuze aus der Erden, 
 Alle sollen Schwerter werden, 
 Gott im Himmel wird's verzeihn. 
 Lasst oh lasst das Verseschweissen, 
 Auf den Ambos legt das Eisen, 
 Heiland soil das Eisen seyn ! 
 
 t Nicht mehr in Blumenhiigeln mocht 
 Ich liegen auf der Wacht, 
 In eines Streithengst's Bugeln mocht 
 
 Ich wiegen mich zur Schlacht. 
 
 • • * 
 
 Lasst endlich das Geleier seyn 
 Und ruhrt die Trommel nur ; 
 Der Deutscher muss erst freier seyn, 
 Dann sey er Troubadour. 
 
 112 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 he'll have no music save the trumpet's ringing. Be ye 
 free men, O bards, and then resume your singing." He will 
 write no more : he will go into the throng of the bravest, where 
 action calls him. " Ho ! bring me banners here ! " concludes 
 the poet, in the verses from which we quote. 
 
 It will be seen that, though Herwegh, the man, is disinclined 
 to military service, Herwegh, the poet, has a great appetite for 
 war ; and indeed it is not once, nor twice, nor twenty times, 
 that the sentiment is uttered in the course of his songs : but 
 the shout " To arms ! " is repeated almost ad nauseam, and 
 the poets are ceaselessly enjoined to give up their guitars for 
 battle-axes. 
 
 One may, in the first place, quarrel with the doctrine — from 
 a firm belief that throat-cutting never advanced the cause of 
 freedom much, that leaden types are better than leaden bullets, 
 and that five hundred tons of iron hammered into swords will 
 not farther liberty so much as the same quantity of metal laid 
 out into railroads — but it is not of M. Herwegh's politics that we 
 are anxious to speak, so much as of the quality of his poetry, 
 and of his turn of mind. He is very young yet, very much 
 intoxicated by his success; and the egotism, consequent on it, 
 is quite ludicrously manifested in his book. In those visionary 
 combats which he foretells, he himself is made to bear a very 
 considerable share. He warns his love (what poet is without 
 one ?) that he must leave her, and that a dubious fate awaits 
 him. He prophesies a " Thermopylae, and many a grave in 
 the shade," for himself and his brother warriors ; he calls him- 
 self an eagle (he is very fond of instituting comparisons between 
 himself and that royal bird*) ; he says the eagle will be 
 captured, nay, that its fate may be still more summary and 
 pathetic, and that he may fall under some tyrant's arrow, as 
 well as be imprisoned in his cage. 
 
 * Du traumst vom Schmetterlinge, ich von Aar. 
 Vom hohen Thurme schauet ein Aar, etc. 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 /Wonderful indeed is the German capacity for belief. Go to 
 /a theatre to a dismal comedy of Kotzebue, and you will see the 
 whole house in tears : the noble ladies in their exclusive tier of 
 boxes, the citizens' wives opposite, the officers sobbing in the 
 orchestra, the bourgeois and students whimpering in the pit. 
 The faith is marvellous ; and for all sorts of imaginary woes 
 the easy tears are ever ready to gush. All the romances of all 
 languages are read and wept over : Esmeralda, Smike, the 
 Flower-girl of Pompeii : nay, heroines who have discoursed 
 originally in Chinese or Sanskrit find ready translators to 
 verdcutschen (bedutch) their histories, and in the German fons 
 lacrymarum an abundant measure of sympathy. 
 
 There is a literary paper published at Berlin (we believe 
 the Morgenblatl), which was mentioned some time ago, by a 
 Quarterly reviewer, as having prefixed to a notice upon the 
 work of an English author, the author's name inscribed in a 
 wreath of laurel. The Quarterly reviewer cried out against the 
 propriety of such a distinction for the writer in question ; but 
 the fact is, it was no distinction at all. It is a stereotype wreath 
 in which every writer's name is enclosed. And so with the 
 German public, there is a crown of laurel for everybody. The 
 plentiful growth of that German evergreen must be borne in 
 mind, when we consider how it has come to adorn so many 
 heads so profusely ; and we fear it is not by his crowns that 
 we must judge of M. Herwegh's merits. 
 
 Let this most easy and catholic charity too be kept in view, 
 when we consider the undeniable popularity which the poet has 
 had ; for if such fame as he has undeniably won, were only 
 sparingly dealt out, and awarded in a few rare cases, one might 
 be led to think that the opinions advocated in his five editions, 
 had a corresponding number of believers in the country, and 
 that Germany was on the eve of republicanism. But if we con- 
 sider what other popularities there have been in the country ; 
 r and how they have risen and fallen ; and round what sort 
 \ of brows, republican, monarchical, destructive, conservative, 
 
 114 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 sceptic, angelic, satyric, mystic, that easy laurel wreath will fit ; 
 we need not alarm ourselves prematurely with regard to a 
 German revolution. The public has discovered a wild young 
 man who sings in what is (happily) a new style ; and if they 
 flock to listen to him, it is not, let us hope, so much on account 
 of his opinions, as on account of their strangeness. They have 
 been listening hitherto to artists, speculators, philosophers : 
 here appears an author of quite a different nature, and they 
 rush to the new exhibiter. There was — (this is a very uncom- 
 plimentary and familiar illustration)— there was a man hanged 
 when the writer of this was at college, and that morning all the 
 lecture-rooms were deserted. 
 
 Indeed, we must, then, think that it is the coarsest and worst 
 part of M. Herwegh's genius which has occasioned his 
 popularity, and that but for his ferocious descriptions of blood 
 and slaughter, he might have written twice as well and been 
 twice as much a republican, and yet scarcely found an admirer. 
 And, for our parts, these dark prophecies and sanguinary 
 images have excited in our minds anything but a feeling of 
 terror. The man is not in the slightest degree, as we take it, a 
 hero or a martyr, or an eagle, or a Spartan ; nor is his violence 
 as likely to make such an impression in this phlegmatic 
 country as it may have caused to our neighbours, who are 
 more easily moved. There is scarce so much sedition in his 
 poems as can be bought for fourpence in a Chartist newspaper ; 
 and not more irreligion than might have been read the other 
 day in Holywell-street, until Mr. Bruce (" turning his cross into 
 a sword," as our poet has it) assaulted the obnoxious printshop. 
 It may be true, that one day, as Herwegh sings, mankind shall 
 be so pure as to form an universal priesthood ; and twenty years 
 ago a lad rising at an university debating club, and proclaiming 
 that event as imminent, might possibly have been applauded 
 by some young philosophers present. But the razor crops off 
 a number of those fancies which beset " the growing boy." Do 
 we travel " further from the East " as we grow old ? Please 
 
 115 I 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Heaven, not a jot. In youth or in age, an honest man is no 
 nearer or farther from the sun : but he is not so restless after a 
 time : and finding the world not altogether so bad, nor himself 
 so gifted, leaves off abusing the one too much, and admiring 
 the other, and so stays quiet, and hopes calmly for better 
 things. 
 
 This is what our fiery young bard calls indifference, and it 
 provokes greatly his restless, generous, eager spirit. He opens 
 his book with an onslaught on Prince Puckler,the"Verstorbene," 
 and lashes him gallantly for his weariness of life, his selfishness, 
 and his affectation of rouerie. The satire applies to a school of 
 German poets, who, it is said, have profited by it ; and the intel- 
 ligent friend, from whom we had our account of Herwegh's 
 private life, says, that his poetic influence has been of use in 
 checking the sickly " Semilasso " style ; and that the young 
 Germans are now following a heartier and healthier mode of 
 thought. 
 
 He may be the destroyer of a prevalent cant or affectation, 
 but can it be that Herwegh is the founder and father of a 
 school ? Surely a young man of six-and-twenty, who is no 
 great scholar, no great poet, can hardly be a chef-d'icole in a 
 country where learning and poetic genius are both so remark- 
 able. We would hardly set Tom Dibdin to preside over a 
 British poetic academy, although, perhaps, during the wartime, 
 no man's songs were more generally sung and rapturously 
 encored. "The British Grenadiers" is as exciting to an 
 Englishman as any war-song in our language : but we should 
 hardly have made a laureat of the writer. 
 
 There is this, however, to be remembered in M. Herwegh's 
 favour. That as " The British Grenadiers," a very humble and 
 ordinary piece of poetry, does undeniably excite warlike and 
 delightful emotions in the English mind : and if handed over 
 to a foreigner, although the latter were quite conversant with 
 our tongue, would probably call forth from him no enthusiasm 
 whatever : so we may lose a great deal of the local allusions 
 
 ii6 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 which make Herwegh's ballads precious, and cause them to 
 ring in the souls of his German admirers. 
 
 Here is one of his ballads, which forms a sort of his key to 
 his politics and poetry. 
 
 DAS LIED VOM HASSE. 
 
 Wohlauf ! wohlauf ! uber Berg und 
 FIuss 
 
 Dem Morgenrot entgegen ! 
 Dein treuen Weib den letzten Kuss 
 
 Und dann zum treuen Degen ! 
 Bis unsre Hand in Asche stiebt 
 
 Soil sie vom Schwert nicht 
 lassen : 
 Wir haben lang genug geliebt 
 
 Und wollen endlich hassen ! 
 
 Die Liebe kann uns helfen nicht, 
 
 Die Liebe nicht erretten, 
 Halt' du, O Hass ! dein jiingst 
 Gericht, 
 
 Erich du, O Hass, die Ketten ! 
 Uud wo es noch Tyrannen giebt 
 
 Da lasst' uns keck erfassen : 
 Wir haben lang genug geliebt 
 
 Und wollen endlich hassen ! 
 
 Wer noch ein Herz besitz, dem 
 soil's 
 
 Im Hasse nur sich ruhren ; 
 AUuberall ist diirres Holz 
 
 Um unsre Glut zu schiiren ; 
 Die ihr die Freiheit noch verbliebt 
 
 Singt durch die Deutschen 
 Strassen. 
 Wir haben lang genug geliebt 
 
 Und wollen endlich hassen ! 
 
 THE SONG OF HATRED. 
 
 Brave soldier, kiss the trusty wife, 
 
 And draw the trusty blade ! 
 Then turn ye to the reddening 
 east, 
 In freedom's cause arrayed ; 
 Till death shall part the blade and 
 hand. 
 They may not separate : 
 We've practised loving long 
 enough. 
 And come at length to hate I 
 
 To right us and to rescue us 
 
 Hath Love essayed in vain ; 
 O Hate ! proclaim thy judgment- 
 day 
 
 And break our bonds in twain. 
 As long as ever tyrants last 
 
 Our task shall not abate : 
 We've practised loving long 
 enough. 
 
 And come at length to hate ! 
 
 Henceforth let every heart that 
 beats 
 With hate alone be beating — 
 Look round ! what piles of rotten 
 sticks 
 Will keep the flame a heating — 
 As many as are free and dare 
 
 From street to street go say 't : 
 We've practised loving long 
 enough, 
 And come at length to hate ! 
 
 [17 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Bekampfet sie ohn Unterlass 
 
 Des Tyrannei auf Erden ; 
 Und heiliger wird unsre Hass 
 
 Als unsre Liebe werden ! 
 Bis unsre Hand, in Asche stiebt 
 
 Soil sie vom Schwert nicht 
 lassen. 
 Wir haben lang genug geliebt 
 
 Und wollen endlich hassen ! 
 
 Fight tyranny, while tyranny 
 
 The trampled earth above is 
 And holier will our hatred be, 
 
 Far holier than our love is. 
 Till death shall part the blade and 
 hand, 
 
 They may not separate : 
 We've practised loving long 
 enough. 
 
 Let's come at last to hate I 
 
 The German reader has no need to be told that the 
 spirit of this rude hearty song has evaporated in the accom- 
 panying English version. " Wir haben lang genug geliebt 
 und wollen endlich hassen " are gallant fierce lines of 
 obloquy ; and the hissing of the word hassen, as well as the 
 rattle and spirit of the double rhyme, are not to be had in 
 English, where the versifier has but a poor stock of dissyllabic 
 rhymes. 
 
 But with the exception of the words " fiber Berg und Fluss," 
 which mean over mount and stream, but which for the rhyme's 
 sake have been perverted into " in freedom's cause arrayed," the 
 sense is pretty similar ; and the public will no doubt allow that 
 there is no great portion of this quality in the ballad. Nor is 
 there any variety of thought. " Love cannot help us ; love 
 cannot rescue us ; down with tyrants." Many a set of con- 
 spirators have sung such a ditty on the theatrical boards, and 
 so shouting " Death ! " have marched off with tin battle-axes to 
 drink small beer in the slips. 
 
 The re/rain, however, is admirable. The song was written 
 upon it evidently. Other men have written songs in the world 
 besides George Herwegh, and know the value of those dashing 
 sounding rhymes. But though such may pass muster on the 
 boards aforesaid, great Poets are in the habit of producing 
 different kind of wares. The very first poem, with its antithetic 
 title, "From the living to the dead," contrasting the "Lebendige" 
 Herwegh with the " Verstorbene " Muskau, had a touch of the 
 
 ii8 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 theatre and the rivals, which led one to be suspicious as to the 
 quality of the book. 
 
 We now come to another poem, in which martyrdom, repub- 
 licanism, destruction of priesthood, and other favourite doctrines 
 of the young bard, are given. 
 
 , Schaut der Sonne auferstehn ! 
 Strahlend blickt sie in die 
 
 Runde — 
 Strahlend, wie zur ersten Stunde 
 Und hat viele Jahre Leid gesehn. 
 
 Wie's auch Stiirme, haltet 
 Stand 
 Junge Herzen unverdrossen, 
 Der ihn einstens angegossen 
 Hat den Geist uns abermal gesandt. 
 
 Bald erschallt nach Ost and 
 West 
 Jubel Millionentonig, 
 Freiheit heisst der letzte Konig. 
 Und sein Reich bleibt ewig 
 Felsenfest. 
 
 * Nimmer schwingt in unsrem 
 
 Haus 
 Der Kosake seine Knute, 
 Unsre Deutsche Zauberruthe 
 Schlagt noch manchen goldnen 
 Friihling aus. 
 
 APPEAL, 
 
 I. 
 
 Behold, when the red sun appears. 
 He shineth as bright in his 
 
 station. 
 As he shone on his day of 
 creation, 
 Ere he looked on the woes of long 
 years. 
 
 Young hearts be ye steady and 
 bold, 
 Confront ye the tempest un- 
 daunted, 
 For he who the Spirit has granted 
 Is with us to-day as of old. 
 
 For the last of all kings, make ye 
 way, 
 A million glad voices proclaim 
 
 his 
 Avatar, and Freedom his name 
 is, 
 And boundless and endless his 
 sway. 
 
 * This stanza is quite beyond 
 the powers of the translator, and 
 indeed has been shown to a 
 German friend, who confesses that 
 he is at a loss regarding the mean- 
 ing of the last line. 
 
 119 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Junge Herzen unverzagt ! 
 Bald erscheint der neue Taufer 
 Der Messias, der die Kaiifer, 
 Und Verkaufer aus den Tempel 
 jagt. 
 
 Und die Gotter nicht allein — 
 Schon der mensch wird heilig 
 
 leben ; 
 Priester nur wirds furdtr geben, 
 Und kein Late mehr auf Erdt seyn. 
 
 Doch wie Donner est sein 
 Gang 
 Und er nabt nicht unter Psal- 
 
 men, 
 Und man streut ihm heine Pal- 
 men, 
 Der Messias kommtmit Schwerter- 
 klang. 
 
 Darum legt die Harfen ab ! 
 Lasst darin die Windsbraut 
 
 spielen, 
 Unser wartet Thermopylen, 
 Perser — und in Schatten manchen 
 Grab. 
 
 Have courage, young hearts, never 
 falter ! 
 He comes to the temple's high 
 
 places, 
 The mighty Messiah who chases 
 The sellers and buyers from the 
 altar. 
 
 And not only heaven as of yore. 
 But earth shall be pure and 
 
 divine. 
 One priesthood man's sanctified 
 line, 
 And laymen among us no more I 
 
 6. 
 
 Make way for our Saviour and 
 Lord; 
 It is not with hymns that we 
 
 greet him. 
 It is not with palms that we 
 meet him. 
 But he comes with the clang of 
 the sword. 
 
 Then bards, lay aside for the blade, 
 The harp and its idle diversions, 
 Thermopylae waits for our Per- 
 sians, 
 
 And many a grave in the shade ! 
 
 If after having translated the above poem to the best of our 
 ability, we may venture upon still further cruelties to it, and 
 criticise it, we think the reader will agree with us, that though 
 there is considerable energy of words and figures in the ode, — 
 much blue lights and fierce grouping, — the thoughts are here, 
 too, exceedingly rare, and the construction of the poem very 
 careless. The new Divinitv, who is to end the woes of the 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 world, is compared to the Baptist, and to another character still 
 more sacred, in the same sentence. Man's similarity to the 
 gods, the abolition of the laity, the approach of the new Saviour, 
 and Thermopylae, — image upon image come crowding together; 
 nor surely are they arranged with the precision of a master. 
 Taken by itself, the last line is a fine one ; but it has clearly no 
 business in such a place as that where it is found. We shall 
 be understood as desirous to speak only of the manner of the 
 poem here, not to quarrel with the matter of it, which is open 
 to a just, but a different line of censure. 
 
 When the French actor in the times of the revolution, and of 
 the atheistic rage which characterized a part of that period, came 
 to the footlights and defied Heaven, calling upon the Divinity, 
 if Divinity there were, to prove His existence by striking the 
 player dead there before the lamps : the unhappy wretch no 
 doubt thought he was entering a very energetic protest against 
 superstition, and that his action was a courageous and a sublime 
 one. Before ten years are over, M. Herwegh will know that 
 such coarse blasphemies are not in the least sublime or poetical ; 
 and (merely as a point of art) that this furious and mad kind of 
 yelling is by no means a proof of superior energy or power. 
 Even the Semilasso school, which he attacks, is a wholesomer 
 one than his : for scepticism is much more humble than hatred ; 
 and a man whose unlucky temperament or course of thought 
 has led him to doubt and be unhappy, is at least not so culpable 
 as another, who sets himself up to propound new creeds, and to 
 act as a prophet on his own account. This is the line which 
 some silly French speculators have taken of late; such, for 
 instance, as Leroux, Lamennais, and that questionable moral 
 philosopher, George Sand. Not one of these but hints in his 
 disquisitions, that he or she has a special mission from Heaven, 
 and delivers oracles with an air of inspiration. 
 
 Our young poet, who, if we mistake not, in spite of his hatred 
 for French politics, has drunk not a little at that extremely pol- 
 luted well of French speculation (it were absurd to call it a 
 
 121 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 science or a philosophy), labours too under a great consciousness 
 of the tremendous importance of his own calling, and talks of 
 the " himmlisch"or heavenly, as if he were urged by a direct 
 afflatus from that quarter. Here is a sonnet in which he 
 announces the existence of some such preternatural influences 
 within him. 
 
 Trug ich ein Schwert als Krieger 
 
 urn die Lenden, 
 Ging ich als Landmann hinter 
 
 einem Pfluge, 
 Dann sass' ich Abendsfroh bei 
 
 meinem Kruge 
 Um mit dem Tag mein Tagewerk 
 
 zu enden. 
 
 So aber, wenn sie sich zur Ruhe 
 
 wenden, 
 Schweift mein Geist noch auf irrem 
 
 Wanderzuge, 
 Und meine Seele kreist in stetem 
 
 Fluge, 
 Ihr will kein Abend seinen Frieden 
 
 spenden. 
 
 Dem Hiramlischen erbaun wir 
 
 keine Schranken, 
 Es folgt uns nach im laute Weltge- 
 
 triebe, 
 Und wird im Schlummer auch 
 
 nicht von uns wanken. 
 Kein Ort — dass ich vor ihnen 
 
 sicher bliebe ! 
 Gleich Blitzen zficken um mich 
 
 die Gedanken, 
 Und treffen mich selbst in dem 
 
 Arm der Liebe. 
 
 Wore I a soldier's weapon on my 
 
 thigh. 
 Drove I a rustic's plough upon the 
 
 lea, 
 At early eve I'd fling my labours 
 
 by. 
 And drink my homely cup and so 
 
 be free. 
 
 Such calm for spirits like mine 
 
 may never be, 
 My soul hath restless pinions and 
 
 will fly. 
 Still eager soaring higher and 
 
 more high, 
 And the kind evening brings no 
 
 rest for me. 
 
 We raise not barriers to the 
 
 Heavenly thus. 
 Thought tracks us on the wide 
 
 world's busy ways. 
 It watches when we sleep — there 
 
 is no place, 
 To shelter from that constant 
 
 genius ! 
 Its lightnings round about us ever 
 
 blaze. 
 And even in love's arms it reaches 
 
 us. 
 
 The last line is surely of French origin. That mixture of 
 earth and heaven, that vast celestial genius, and the quarter in 
 which it is sometimes discoverable, are worthy of the peculiar 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 philosophy which always takes such an occasion to manifest its 
 claims to divinity. Depend upon it that some years hence, when M. 
 Herwegh,the worshipped of silly Berliners no more (ere then they 
 will have consecrated and pulled down a dozen other altars) — 
 when M. Herwegh shall be a quiet family man, with his rich wife, 
 and comfortable house and family he will find out his mistake 
 respecting the superhuman origin of his poems. It is not on every 
 occasion, or in behalf of every young poet, that Heaven is called 
 on to inspire. Nee Deus inter sit, &c. We cannot do better than 
 abide by the safe old maxim; and in solving the small 
 question why this or that bard is induced to write, we cannot 
 decently ask the gods to interfere. 
 
 In the following pretty lines our author gives some advice to 
 a lady who is tempted to publish her verses : 
 
 Du willst den Lorber auf den 
 
 Locken drucken 
 Nicht einsam mehr in stillen 
 
 Nachten beten ; 
 Hin auf den Markt mit Deinen 
 
 Thranen treten, 
 Ein miissig Volk mit Deinem 
 
 Schmerz begliicken. 
 
 Nur Rosen soUten Deine Stime 
 
 schmucken 
 Und nicht die Martyrkrone des 
 
 Poeten, 
 Das ist furwahr der Mund nicht 
 
 zum Profeten 
 Und wurd mit Kiissen leichter uns 
 
 entzucken. 
 
 Dass meine Nachtigall im Dun- 
 
 keln bliebe 
 Schwer wird die Hoh' nach der 
 
 Du Strebst, erklommen 
 
 On humble knees of silent nights 
 
 No more my lady prays ; 
 But now in glory she delights, 
 
 And pines to wear the bays. 
 The gentle secrets of her heart 
 
 She'd tell to idle ears, 
 And fain would carry to the mart 
 
 The treasure of her tears ! 
 
 When there are roses freshly 
 blown 
 That forehead to adorn, 
 Why ask the Poet's martyr- 
 crown, — 
 The bitter wreath of thorn ? 
 That lip which all so ruddy is. 
 
 With freshest roses vying, 
 Believe me, sweet, was made to 
 kiss, 
 Not formed for prophesying. 
 
 Remain, my nightingale, remain. 
 And warble in your shade ! 
 
 The heights of glory were in vain 
 By wings like yours essayed ; 
 
 123 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 And while at Glory's shrine the 
 Priest 
 A hecatomb must proffer, 
 There's Love — oh, Love I will 
 take the least 
 Small mite the heart can offer. 
 
 War's auch dass Dich ein starker 
 
 Genius triebe. 
 Nur Hekatomben worden ange- 
 
 nommen 
 Auf dem Altar des Ruhms ; auf 
 
 dem der Liebe — 
 O Liebe I ist ein Scharflein auch 
 
 willkommen. 
 
 Are they hecatombs exactly which M. Her^vegh has offered at 
 the shrine of the muses ? If we may judge of German o.xen (and 
 Sir Robert Peel has given us an opportunity since the new tariff), 
 our Poet has not slaughtered a vast number of them, although 
 his knife is as large, and his air as solemn, and the drapery of 
 his robe as princely arranged, as that of many other sacrificers. 
 No, no, most of these we take to be French animals : of that 
 four-legged sort, which, as we read in the story, once tried to 
 puff themselves out, and to look as large as oxen, but failed in 
 their swelling endeavour, and disappeared with a most lament- 
 able and pathetic explosion. 
 
 Perhaps it is from hearing that the young poet was at one 
 period of his life occupied in translating Lamartine's verses, that 
 we are led to fancy his manner has been formed not a little on 
 French models. Some of his epigrammatic turns in this 
 manner are very neat and happy : as, for instance : 
 
 Wieder weil ein Jahr verging 
 Sprudelt man Sonette, 
 Singt von einem neuen Ring 
 An der alten Kette.* 
 
 And the song to Stranger, written with a refrain, quite in the 
 French way, contains something far better, and has some 
 passages of exceeding tenderness and beauty. 
 
 Er kiisste jede Freiheit in der Wiege, 
 
 Er weinte jeder in der Grabe nach ; 
 Er war der zweiter Held bei jedem Siege, 
 
 Er rief den Donner fur Tyrannen wach. 
 
 * "Once more because the year is done, they are clinking their 
 sonnets, singing of a new link added to the old chain." 
 
 124 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 Wer lag am Boden den Er nicht erhoben ? 
 
 Und wessen Herz ist seinem Lied zu klein ? 
 Wo ist die Hiitte drum Er nicht gewoben 
 
 Hatt' einen Paradieses-heiligenschein ? * 
 
 Here are some fine lines of hearty satire : 
 
 Der Fischer Petrus breitet aus 
 Aufs neue seine falschen Netze. 
 Wohlauf ! beginn mit ihm den Strauss, 
 Damit nicht einst im Deutschen Haus 
 Noch gelten romische Gesetze. 
 Bei jenem grossen Frederich nein. 
 Das soil doch nun und nimmer seyn, 
 Dem Pfaffen bleibe nicht der Stein 
 An dem er sein Dolche wetze ! f 
 
 And we have marked out a couple more ballads, of which the 
 first is serious, and with a wild sadness in the metre, which lies 
 beyond our humble powers of translation. 
 
 Was soli der Becher 
 
 Ihr tobenden Zecher, 
 Was soil die funkelnde Flasche 
 
 In eurer Hand ? 
 Es trauert in Sack und Asche 
 
 Das Vaterland. 
 
 Was soli ihr Braute 
 
 Das Jubelgelaute ? 
 O heisst die Rosen erblassen 
 
 Am Deutschen Strand, 
 Vom Brautigam ist verlassen 
 
 Das Vaterland. 
 
 * " He kissed each Freedom in its cradle and followed it weeping to 
 its grave. He was the second hero at every victory. He called down 
 thunder on all tyrants. Who was ever cast down but B^ranger uplifted 
 him ; and what sorrow was too humble for his song to pity ? What hut 
 is there, but he has surrounded it with a halo borrowed from Heaven ? " 
 
 f ' ' The Fisher Petrus spreads his false nets abroad once more — 
 Come on ! begin the strife with him, that it never may be said that 
 Roman law passed in a German house. No ! by the name of Frederick, 
 no ! We swear that it never shall be so ; and that the priest shall not 
 have a stone left to him whereon to whet his dagger." 
 
 125 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Was soil ihr Fursten 
 
 Nach Kronen das Dursten ? 
 Zerreisst die goldenen Schnure, 
 
 Das Prunkgewand I 
 Es frieret vor eurer Thure 
 
 Das Vaterland. 
 
 Was mach, ihr Pfaffen, 
 
 Euch also zu schaffen, 
 Was soli uns jetzo das Beten, 
 
 O eitler Tand, 
 So lang in den Staub getreten 
 
 Das Vaterland ! 
 
 Weh euch ihr Reichen, 
 
 Die nicht zu erweichen, 
 Ihr zahit die Rubel die Runden, 
 
 Im Sonnenbrand, 
 Der Lazarus seine Wunden, 
 
 Das Vaterland. 
 
 Weh euch, ihr Armen, 
 
 Was heischt ihr Erbarmen ? 
 Es liegen viel Edelsteine 
 
 Vor euch ira Sand, 
 Auch meine Thrane auch meine 
 
 Ums Vaterland. 
 
 Doch du, O Dichter. 
 
 Bist nimmer der Richter, 
 Gebeut der fertigen Zungen, 
 
 Gebeut ihr Stand, 
 Dein Schwanenlied ist gesungen 
 
 Dem Vaterland. 
 
 To the reader unfamiliar with German, we can only offer the 
 following bare version of the lines. 
 
 Comrade, why the song so joyous — why the goblet in your hand ? 
 While, in sackcloth and in ashes, yonder weeps our Fatherland. 
 Still the bells, and bid the roses — wither, girls, on German strand ; 
 For deserted by her bridegroom, yonder sits our Fatherland. 
 
 Wherefore strive for crowns, ye princes? — quit your state, your 
 
 jewels grand. 
 See where at your palace portal, shivering sits our Fatherland. 
 
 Idle priestlings, what avails us — prayer and pulpit, cowl and band ? 
 Trodden in the dust and groaning, yonder lies our Fatherland. 
 
 126 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 Counting out his red round rubles, yon sits Dives smiling bland — 
 Reckoning his poor wounds and sores, Lazarus, our Fatherland. 
 
 Wo, ye poor ! for priceless jewels lie before ye in the sand, 
 Even my tears, my best and brightest ! lie there, wept for Father- 
 land ! 
 
 But, O poet, cease thy descant — 'tis not thine as judge to stand, 
 Silence now — the swan hath sung his death-song for our Fatherland. 
 
 This is the second— and last. 
 
 PROTEST. 
 
 Sp lang ich noch ein Protestant, 
 Will ich auch protestiren, 
 
 Und Jeder deutscher Musikant 
 Soil's weiter musikiren. 
 
 Singt alle Welt der freie Rhine, 
 
 So sing doch ich, ihr Herren nein ! 
 
 Der Rhein der Rhein konnt' freier 
 seyn, 
 So will ich Protestiren. 
 
 Kaum war die Taufe abgethan 
 Ich kroch noch auf den vieren, 
 
 Da fing ich schon voll Glauben's an 
 Mit Macht zu protestiren. 
 
 Und protestirte fort und fort, 
 
 O wort und wind, O wind und 
 wort, 
 
 O selig sind, die hier und dort 
 Auf ewig Protestiren. 
 
 Nur eins ist Not, dran halt' ich 
 fest, 
 
 Und will es nit verlieren. 
 Das ist mein christlicher Protest, 
 
 Mein christlich Protestiren. 
 Was geht mich all das Wasser an 
 Vom Rheine bis zum Ocean ? 
 Sind keine freie Manner dran, 
 
 So will ich Protestiren. 
 
 THE PROTEST. 
 
 As long as I'm a Protestant 
 
 I'm bounden to protest, 
 Come every German musicant 
 
 And fiddle me his best. 
 You're singing of " the Free old 
 
 Rhine," 
 But I say no, good comrades, mine, 
 
 The Rhine could be 
 
 Greatly more free. 
 And that I do protest. 
 
 I scarce had got my christening 
 
 o'er, 
 Or was in breeches drest. 
 But I began to shout and roar, 
 
 And mightily protest. 
 And since that time I've never 
 
 stopt. 
 My protestations never dropped ; 
 
 And blest be they 
 
 Who every way 
 And everywhere protest. 
 
 There's one thing certain in my 
 creed, 
 And schism is all the rest. 
 That who's a Protestant indeed, 
 
 For ever must protest. 
 What is the river Rhine to me ? 
 For from its source unto the sea 
 Men are not free, 
 What e'er they be. 
 And that I do protest. 
 27 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Von nun an bis zum Ewigkeit 
 Soil eucb der Name zieren, 
 
 So lang ihr Protestanten seyt, 
 Musst ihr auch Protestiren. 
 
 Und singt die Welt der Freie 
 Rhein, 
 
 So singet ach ihr Herren nein ! 
 
 Der Rhein der Rhein konnt freier 
 seyn 
 Wir mussen Protestiren. 
 
 And every man in reason grants. 
 What always was confest, 
 
 As long as we are Protestants, 
 We sternly must protest. 
 
 And when they sing "the Free 
 old Rhine," 
 
 Answer them, "No," good com- 
 rades, mine. 
 The Rhine could be 
 Greatly more free, 
 
 And that you shall protest. 
 
 The satire here is an honest and fair one : nor indeed is it 
 easy, amidst the vast multitude of German songs, to fix upon a 
 poorer effusion than that pompous ballad of Becker's which 
 obtained, and possibly still possesses, such a wonderful popu- 
 larity. National songs must be made of better and simpler 
 stuff if they are to endure for more than a day ; and the only 
 excuse for the German public in admiring Becker's ditty as 
 they unquestionably did, is that the song expresses a national 
 feeling which was exceedingly strong at the time, and was sung, 
 not as a poetical composition, but as a protest against the 
 insults of the French. 
 
 A far cleverer person than Becker is M. Herwegh ; for the 
 performances of the former are characterized, as far as we have 
 seen them, by an irredeemable dulness and pomposity, which 
 never deviates into poetry or sense. Herwegh, on the contrary, 
 has fancy, wit, and strong words at command. He has a keen 
 eye for cant, too, at times ; and in the Sonnet to the Poetess 
 which we have quoted, and in another on German mystical 
 Painting for which we have not space, shows himself to be a 
 pretty sharp and clear-headed critic of art. But it is absurd to 
 place this young man forward as a master. His poetry is a 
 convulsion, not an effort of strength ; he does not sing, but he 
 roars, his dislike amounts to fury ; and we must confess that it 
 seems to us, in many instances that his hatred, and heroism, 
 are quite factitious, and that his enthusiasm has a very 
 
 128 
 
GEORGE HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 calculating look with it. Fury, tobe effective either in life qrjn 
 printj^hould, surely,,only be occasional. People become quite 
 indifferent to wrath which is roaring, and exploding all day : as 
 gunners go to sleep upon batteries. Think of the prodigious 
 number of appeals to arms that our young poet has made 
 in the course of these pages ; what a waving and clatter of 
 flashing thoughts ; what a loading and firing of double-barrelled 
 words ; and, when the smoke rolls off, nobody killed ! And a 
 great mercy it is too for that cause of liberty which, no doubt, 
 the young man has at heart, that the working out of it is not 
 intrusted to persons of his flighty temperament. No man was 
 made to be hated ; no doctrines of peace and good- will can be very 
 satisfactorily advocated by violence and murder ; nor can good 
 come out of evil, as is taught in those old-fashioned " temples " 
 which our young bard says he cannot frequent. Is he much 
 better or happier where he is ? 
 
 But the wonder is, what could the public want with a half- 
 score of editions of his works .' If we were disposed to take an 
 angry or misanthropical turn, the anger should vent itself, not so 
 much on the young man, as on the large portion of the human 
 race which has encouraged him by purchasing his poems. 
 Will they encourage him equally when he does something 
 infinitely better ? The blessed chance lies entirely open to 
 both parties. 
 
 N.s.B. 129 
 
BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS 
 OF PARIS. 
 
 " With whom is M. de Balzac angry ? " exclaimed Jules 
 Janin, on reading this odd production, and forthwith seized his 
 critical pen, to show that Balzac is the most ungrateful of 
 authors. For ten years, it would seem, this Balzac plodded his 
 weary way, under the unnoticed pseudonyme of Saint Aubin, 
 one failure following another, until, by chance, the " Enfant 
 Maudit," in the pages of a Review, attracted general attention : 
 the newspapers praised, the masque fell, and the name of 
 Balzac became known to fame. This is Janin's ground for a 
 charge of bitter ingratitude against Balzac. But with due 
 respect to M. Janin, we cannot in this discover the extent of 
 obligation, asserted by the champion of the press. Ten long 
 years of persevering toil, ten years of uncheered, unmarked 
 exertion, would have broken down many a man of less resolute 
 will : and when, at last, the public is struck by one of those 
 tales which glide into the traditions of a people, the press, 
 following the movement of admiration, turns suddenly round, 
 and affects the right, first to take the hitherto neglected novelist 
 under its own supreme protection, and then, on the first show 
 of difference between them, to charge him with base ingrati- 
 tude to his self-elected protector ! 
 
 We are nevertheless inclined to echo 'Janin's question. We 
 have failed to discover with whom exactly Balzac is angry. 
 His object in his brochure would seem to be to describe in no 
 very poetic terms the machinery of the Paris press, and so to 
 strip it of the effect produced by mystery. His motive we have 
 
 130 
 
BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF PARIS. 
 
 yet to learn. Janin, in his bitter feuilleton, sets it down as 
 compounded of enormous self-conceit, jealousy of writers who 
 have become more popular than himself, and hatred of critics 
 who have contributed to make them so. He more than hints, 
 too, that Balzac's failure in a journal he started for himself has 
 had not a little to do with it. But perhaps, after all, Balzac 
 had no motive. He may have been actuated simply by whim. 
 Without at any rate further troubling ourselves as to the author's 
 motive, or the critic's wrath, we shall endeavour to follow 
 M. de Balzac, supplying facts where he deals but in allusions, 
 and giving names which, familiar to the Parisian public, would 
 not be easily recognizable on this side the channel, through 
 the delicate take-for-granted touches of the celebrated novelist. 
 
 The " Monographic " is a paper supplied to a work in course 
 of publication, entitled La Grande Ville : Nouveau Tableau 
 de Paris, in which are associated several celebrated names. 
 The work is illustrated by Gavarni, a masterly caricaturist, and 
 other artists of extraordinary talent. 
 
 M. de Balzac's paper is preceded by a synoptical table, 
 marking every shade of the order " Gendelettre : " the hint of 
 which name he professes to have borrowed from Gendarme, 
 implying that he respects one as much as the other : which, by 
 the way, is rather a dull joke. He divides his order into two 
 species — the publicist and the critic ; and from these he traces 
 several supposed kinds, as if he were a Cuvier, dealing with 
 some newly-discovered races of animals. For these he invents 
 names arbitrarily, which, as they do not carry with them any 
 very striking sense or humour, we spare our readers the trouble 
 of spelling over. 
 
 M. de Balzac tells us, that when the director of the journal 
 is at the same time the chief editor, and responsible proprietor, 
 he is the person with whom each cabinet deals : while, at the 
 same time, the secret influence which absolutely regulates the 
 journal may be that of an actress, or a legitimate wife. To 
 furnish the key to the first allusion would be to deal in a piece 
 
 131 K 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 of unnecessary scandal ; but all the world will easily recognise 
 in the second, Madame de Girardin, the Vicomte de Launay of 
 La Presse ; for Madame Dudevant is not the only lady who 
 writes under a masculine name. 
 
 Balzac next proceeds to the second variety of the same 
 species, which he calls the tenor — or, to drop the metaphorical 
 name, the editor, simply. With him he thus deals : " At this 
 trade it is difficult for a man not to pervert his mind and sink 
 into mediocrity. Because there are but two moulds, into which 
 are cast the leading articles : the opposition mould, and the 
 ministerial mould. There is a third, but it is rarely used. Let 
 the government act as it will, the writer of the opposition leaders 
 must blame, scold, and advise. The ministerial writer is equally 
 bound to defend. The one is a constant negative — the other a 
 constant affirmative." This is no doubt true enough, and 
 there was no particular necessity to announce it as a discovery. 
 Balzac is better where he describes the part played by the public. 
 
 At each event the subscriber goes asleep, saying to himself, 
 " I will see to-morrow what says my journal upon the subject." 
 But there being facts for the public which cannot be told, and 
 a necessity for twisting and distorting those which can, the 
 satirist's conclusion is, that the press is by no means the master 
 of that " liberty" which it is supposed to enjoy. To its shame, 
 says Balzac, it is only "free" against weak and isolated classes. 
 And then we have told, by an exquisitely humorous pencil, 
 what M. de Balzac's pen hesitates to give: M.Thiers com- 
 manding batteries which are easily recognisable, as the Siicle, 
 Courier Frangais, and Constitutionnel. 
 
 Balzac gives a pleasant example of the machinery by which 
 the public mind is kept irritated against England. In a dead 
 calm of the political ocean, this news arrives from Ausburg 
 (Ausburg being for journalism, what Nuremberg is for children, 
 a factory of playthings) : 
 
 " On dit that the English Legation gave a dinner to Lord Willgoud, 
 on his way to Galucho (Brdsil), at which assisted all the corps 
 
 132 
 
BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF PARIS. 
 
 diplomatique, except the French Consul. Such an omission, under 
 present circumstances, is not without meaning." 
 
 Upon this piece of news the opposition papers lash them- 
 selves into well-acted indignation, ignorant that there is no 
 such admiral as Willgoud, and no such place as Galucho ; and 
 here the reader is presented with admirable imitations of all 
 the leading journals, done with real wit. Balzac adds to his 
 own satirical remarks on this part of his subject, the following 
 very amusing commentary : " One phrase combined thus, after 
 three forms, suffices to enable the majority of the French every 
 morning to form an opinion upon all possible events. After 
 the triumph of July, an old tenor acknowledged that for twelve 
 years he never wrote but the same article. This frank fellow 
 is dead." We believe the author of this whimsical confession 
 was M. Chatelain, editor of the Courier Frangais, an extreme 
 liberal. 
 
 In his parody of the Debals, Balzac adds, in a parenthesis to 
 each high-flown passage — " (price 5000 francs per month) " — 
 the supposed " subvention " paid to M. Bertin by the govern- 
 ment. The ministerialists do not, however, enjoy a monopoly 
 of corruption, for the puritans of the opposition, who cannot 
 accept favours for themselves, harass the government with 
 demands for places for their relatives. The family Barrot, 
 according to Balzac, enjoy among them 130,000 francs of 
 government pay ! Before we leave the " publicist " division, we 
 must say, that the attacks are made far too indiscriminately ; 
 that the editorial talents are rated obviously too low ; and that 
 the whole division on the system of reporting the debates in 
 the Chambers (" Les Camarillistes "), is a violent exaggeration. 
 
 There is an amusing page upon what the French call 
 " canards " (ducks), which appear to be the very poetry of 
 penny-a-lining. Napoleon had pensioned a man, who for five 
 years published in the Moniteur, fictitious bulletins of a war of 
 the Affghans against the English ; the fraud was discovered, 
 
 133 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and Napoleon, instead of punishing the fellow, is said to have 
 increased his pension — the cheat " etait si bien congue dans les 
 int6rets de Napoleon." These bulletins were "canards," The 
 story of Gaspard Hauser was a " canard ; " so was that of Clara 
 Wendel, and the brigand Schubry. As M. de Balzac does not 
 give names, we may take upon ourselves to state, that the 
 makers of these " canards " were authors of repute, M. M^ry 
 and M. Nestor Roqueplan. M. Etienne, of the Constitutionnel, 
 was, under the restoration, a famous inventor of " canards." 
 (He seems meditating one at p. 145 1) His line lay in the 
 fabrication of refusals by priests of the rights of burial, and 
 of persecutions of liberal " cures." But he was obliged to 
 give these up, for truth overtook him. 
 
 In the division on the critics, M. de Balzac exhausts every 
 form of severity. He sets no bounds to his anger with them, 
 more especially for the neglect with which they treat works 
 deserving of attention, while they reserve their exclusive and 
 fulsome notice for trashy vaudevilles. He assigns for these 
 degrading preferences the most degraded motives: contrasting 
 the pleasurable " quid pro quo " of theatres, with the cold 
 comfort of libraries and booksellers. And he goes so far as to 
 say, that the conduct of the critics, in this respect, has caused 
 of late years a sensible diminution in the sale of good books of 
 every class. Upon Janin he deals the severest ridicule, by an 
 admirable mimicry of that writer's torrent of volubility on every 
 kind of subject, while he never once touches the single special 
 subject, which he pretends to be treating. Of this redoubtable 
 feuilletonist, he also takes another occasion to mention (the 
 allusion, at p. 170, is plainly levelled at Janin), that what he 
 thinks the most eminently droll thing in the world, and in the 
 very highest taste, is to be shaking hands with you, and passing 
 for your friend, when he is all the while stinging you with the 
 poisoned needles of his feuilletons. If, indeed, he has happened 
 to praise you in a Paris journal, you are then quite sure, that in 
 some London journal he has "assassinated" you. M. de Balzac 
 
 134 
 
BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF PARIS. 
 
 fails to add, which particular London journal it is that is 
 honoured by Jules Janin's contributions. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the paper there are some remarks 
 on the professed dealers in bon mots and witty sayings, unin- 
 spired by whose gaiety and mirthfulness, Balzac can only heave 
 a sigh. " Helas, la France est colossale jusque dans ses 
 petitesses, jusque dans ses vices, jusque dans ses fautes ! " 
 Yet at the Charivari, " le Matador des petits journaux," he finds 
 himself relax a little. Three thousand subscribers, he says, 
 -support this " delit perp^tuel," and he admits its exhaustless 
 flow of wit and humour. The writers in this class of journals 
 he collects under the term " le pecheur a la ligne : " because 
 the wits, like the fishermen, live by their " line." The great 
 characteristic of the trade, Balzac adds, is that the most vigorous 
 mind, once engaged in it, is soon incapable of the sentiment of 
 any thing great. Making every thing little in mockery, it finds 
 in time, as far as itself is concerned, every thing little in reality. 
 
 The conclusion will probably interest our readers, by the 
 comparison introduced between the press of Paris and London. 
 
 " The press of London has not upon the world the same action as 
 that of Paris : it is in some degree confined to England, which carries 
 its egotism into everything ; such egotism merits being called patriotism, 
 for what is patriotism, but the egotism of a whole country? Thus 
 ought to be observed the wide difference which exists between English 
 journalists and French journalists. An English journalist is an English- 
 man first, a journalist after. The French journalist is above all things 
 a journalist, Thus the English journalist would never commit the 
 fault of publishing cabinet secrets, if such were calculated to mar a 
 public advantage ; while for sake of a few subscribers, a French 
 journal would blab anything. Abd-el-Kader said his best spies were 
 the French journals. Yesterday a paper advocated the prior right of 
 England to the Marquesas ; and that paper calls itself the National. 
 Between the chances of an overthrow and the liberty of the press 
 Napoleon did not hesitate." 
 
 Here M. de Balzac falls into the spirit of exaggeration, of 
 which he accuses the press ; and indeed it must be said of the 
 whole expose, that it is rather curious than edifying. 
 
 135 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 But we cannot leave it without a more explicit mention of the 
 wood-cut illustrations. These have a genius in them, which in 
 the paper itself is certainly not discoverable. The likenesses of 
 the various editors and writers are caught in the most perfect 
 manner of this department of the art. No names are given, no 
 clues are given ; but the brethren of the press will recognise 
 each other. There never was such hitting " between wind and 
 water ! " Observe the agitated frenzy of M. Pierre Leroux 
 (p. 165), with divorce, dissolution, disruption, George Sandism, 
 in every part of his aspect and attire ; hair, nose, mouth, and 
 dressing-gown ; to say nothing of the awful chasm which yawns 
 between the waistcoat and the portion of dress which may not 
 be named. Contrast it with the sleek satisfaction of M. Hyp- 
 polite Lucas, who in the garb of an " Spicier" is mildly serving 
 out inexhaustible lees of sugar ; a thing he is currently said to 
 do to every author excepting M. de Balzac. Turn from the 
 stolid, innocent-looking, antediluvian figure (p. 179), which 
 does nothing but praise the past (M. Gustave Planche), to the 
 snarling, snapping, bearded poodle (p. 185 : significant tail- 
 piece to a parody on Janin's " Feuilletons "), • which only bites 
 
 * The conclusion of Janin's criticism of this " Monographic," in the 
 Journal des Debats of a few days since, is so extremely characteristic 
 of the writer, and contains such a pithy summary of the abusive phrases 
 used against the press by Balzac, that we think we shall contribute not 
 a little to the reader's amusement, by appending it here. Translation 
 is, of course, quite out of the question. It contains, it will be seen, 
 the allusion to Balzac's own experiment in journalism to which reference 
 has been made: — "Eh quoi ! cet homme, a qui nous avons reconnu 
 tant d'esprit a tant de reprises diff erentes, vit du journal, et m6me d'une 
 foule du journaux; il n'eut jamais v^cu sans le journal; il a ^t^ 
 directeur-r^-dacteur-en - chef-g^rant-tenor-maltre- Jacques-camarilliste- 
 premier-Paris-fait - Paris-faiseur - darticles - de - fond - maitre - Jacques- 
 marchand-de-canards - camarilliste homme - politique - attach^-attach^- 
 d^tach^-politique-4 brochures - pamphletaire-traducteur-critique blond- 
 grand critique - euphuiste -prosateur -farceur -universitaire - mondain- 
 thurif6raire-ex^cuteur-bravo-gueriIlero-pScheur k la ligne-blagueur, et 
 mfime, ce qui est plus grave, banquier d'un journal dont il ^tait ainsi le 
 seul, unique et perp^tuel-gendelettre ; ce journal si bien administre, si 
 
BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF PARIS. 
 
 and walks on its hind legs. Then contemplate " dans I'int^- 
 rieur" (p. 173), the gentleman extended, smoking on the sofa, 
 and the young lady in easy dishabille in possession of the 
 hearth-rug ; the young lady reading the book aloud, concerning 
 which the gentleman (whom his friends will recognise) means 
 to be terribly moral, and to cry from the roofs of the houses, 
 " Oil allons nous ? " Others of these inimitable pieces of 
 graphic humour we have noticed before, but a whole article 
 might be written upon them. What a fine satire is that (p. 152) 
 where the Rhine, a jovial old reedy deity, is in an uplifted state 
 of exaggerated admiration at the great man, who has come all 
 the way from Paris, not to see the good old river, but that the 
 good old river may see him. Wonderful and impenetrable is 
 the collection (p. 137) of heads, constituting the readers of a 
 large circulation " une masse." Of another style is the laborious 
 abstraction of the old scholar (p. 171), which may not impossibly 
 be thought somewhat affecting. As for the very elegent sketch 
 (p. 207), in which George Sand so affably receives Lamennais, 
 we defy that lady's admirers (of whom with due reservation, 
 we profess ourselves), to be other than grateful and contented 
 therewith. And to conclude, for the very whimsical parley on 
 the closing page, between the press (a very excited and un- 
 reasonable old woman), and M. de Balzac (himself a quiet, 
 
 admirablement r^dig^, si habilement conduit, si admirablement ecrit, 
 et signs par un si grand nom, n'as pas vScu six mois ; et maintenant 
 ce journaliste, le plus impuissant, le plus maladroit et le plus dSnigrant 
 des journalistes, viendrait, de gaite de cceur, accabler de ses injures 
 ceux dont il n'a pas pu se maintenir le confrere ; ill pourrait leur dire 
 impunement : Vous etes tous des voleurs, des menteurs, des imbScilles, 
 des universitaires, des marquis de Tuffieres et des blagueurs ; vous etes 
 laids, vous etes vieux, vous etes mal peignSs, vous avez de faux toupets, 
 vous ^tes d'ignobles bourgeois; il pourrait les dSnoncer dans leurs 
 travaux passes, dans leurs travaux it venir, dans leur position prSsente ; 
 et le pamphlet de cet homme passerait sans exaraen, sans critique, sans 
 rSponse ! VSritablement la chose serait trop facile et trop commode ; 
 a ce compte-U ce serait pousser trop loin les privileges du gendcUitre, — 
 rienologue, — faiseur de tariines — gutrillero et nigateur." 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 reasonable, very stout, long-haired, somewhat stooping little 
 man), we cannot but think that the editor or critic who has felt 
 himself most deeply insulted and aggrieved through the other 
 seventy-nine pages of this curious production will, when he 
 arrives at that eightieth page, lay it down with a burst of 
 good-humoured laughter. 
 
 138 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY AND 
 
 CHARACTER ON THE 
 
 FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 The atmosphere of the French Academy, which has always 
 had an unhappy influence upon the genius of dramatic writers, 
 has lately transformed Eugene Scribe, the Vaudevilliste, into a 
 Professor of English History. In the pursuit of this new 
 vocation, the learned lecturer has discovered to his exceeding 
 mirth, that the historical trophies of England are in general but 
 the result of some mean accident, which entirely strips them of 
 their ideal glory ; and his success has, as usual, called a host of 
 imitators into the field. The Sorbonne is transferred to the 
 Thd^tre Fran^ais, and Scribe takes the place of Guizot. The 
 dramatic doctrinaire, with his " Verre d'Eau " before him, with- 
 out which French professors cannot speak, broaches his leading 
 doctrine, worthy of the attempt and of the occasion, in the 
 words of his second tide : " Great Effects from little Causes." 
 Having illustrated this from the reign of Queen Anne, he 
 plunges half a century deeper into our annals, and, side by side, 
 with the " Fils de Cromwell," brings up General Monk, to make 
 him relate to a Parisian audience, how love of a gentle fair one, 
 of whose name the uninquiring English had never heard, con- 
 verted the old Roundhead into a cavalier, and so brought about 
 the restoration. No longer let us wonder, then, why our second 
 Charles devoted himself to the fair. Eugene Scribe has for ever 
 silenced the wicked satirists or dull moralists, who expose or 
 reflect upon the gallantries of the Merry Monarch. 
 
 139 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 The " Verre d'Eau " is founded upon an anecdote to the effect, 
 be it fabulous or true, that the Duchess of Marlborough, during 
 the period of her ascendency over Queen Anne, in a fit of anger 
 allowed a glass of water to spill upon the robe of her royal mis- 
 tress. To this circumstance, designed or accidental, is attributed, 
 by our French professor, the fall of the favourite : the overthrow 
 of the Whigs : the Duke of Marlborough's deprivation of com- 
 mand : and that peace with France, which probably saved the 
 last days of the once great Louis the Fourteenth some deeper 
 disasters and humiliations. M. Scribe seizes upon the anec- 
 dote for the purpose of illustrating his favourite maxim, that the 
 most important public events turn frequently, if not always, 
 upon accidents of a contemptible character. But M. Scribe is as 
 wrong in his general principle, as he is mistaken in the bearing of 
 the present particular fact, assuming it to be true. Trivial cir- 
 cumstances are in this life pretexts, not causes, for breaches of 
 long-established connexions. They are the ready available 
 facts which discover the depth of an existing difference ; they 
 are seized to decide an already established rupture. Such an 
 occurrence as the falling of a glass of water could, if an 
 accident, have been apologized for and explained, unless 
 indeed, as a pretext, it had been wanted and watched for. If, 
 on the other hand, as M. Scribe assumes, the Duchess did 
 insolently commit an outrage upon the queen, by purposely 
 letting fall a glass of water, then the cause ceases to be petty ; 
 for as human society is constituted, an insult, no matter how 
 followed by important consequences, is held to be adequate to 
 any result. But this principle of mean causes and mighty 
 effects runs throughout the whole of this politico-philosophical 
 comedy. Comedy, indeed ! The victorious progress of Marl- 
 borough and Prince Eugene stopped ; the fortunes of England 
 in the balance ; the fate of France, too, as a nation ; all 
 depending upon the tremor of a hand which offered a glass of 
 water. That, a comedy ! Shakspeare felt not so, when he 
 described in his inspired, and because inspired, profoundly 
 
 140 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 human lines, "the tricks of man, dressed in a little brief 
 authority," as " making angels weep." Accidents arising even 
 from the infirmities of human temper, when they affect human 
 destinies, are no longer subjects for laughter ; and the levity 
 with which historical circumstances of great political import are 
 treated in these comedies, is assuredly no very gratifying 
 evidence of the spirit of the time. It is the antagonist of 
 reverence : not only of reverence for things sacred, but of 
 reverence for historical and traditional associations — for great 
 names and great characters. We quarrel with it as an unwise 
 and unmannerly invasion of the comic drama. We have already 
 had enough of it in the sombre melodramas of the Porte Saint 
 Martin, and it is with pain we see it take the ground occupied 
 hitherto by the pleasant spirit of Moliere. 
 
 The political hero, so to speak, of the " Verre d'Eau," is 
 Bolingbroke, reduced, in M. Scribe's hands, to a small intriguer. 
 The romantic hero is a young protege of the statesman, named 
 Masham. The heroine, Abigail, afterwards the famous Mrs. 
 Masham, is the daughter of Mr. Tomwood, a jeweller in the 
 city. Bolingbroke, like Archimedes, wants only a place on 
 which to rest his foot, to disturb the course of the whole 
 political world ; and true to his leading maxim of great effects 
 from little causes, he discovers in this pair of simple beings, the 
 very tools for his purpose. The manner in which Miss Abigail 
 Tomwood is introduced at court, shows M. Scribe's ready 
 method of inventing expedients. Queen Anne, according to 
 our dramatic historian, loved to lay aside the oppressive state of 
 royalty ; but far from seeking her pleasure, as Pope would have 
 it, on the " bosom of the silver Thames," she loved better, like 
 Charles Lamb, the streets of London, where she could look at 
 the shops, gossip with her trusty subjects the shopkeepers' 
 wives and daughters, and make little purchases. Among shops 
 distinguished thus by the royal favour, was that of Mr. Tom- 
 wood ; in which, one day, the Queen having bought a trinket 
 (a trifle of only thirty guineas' worth), she found she had forgot 
 
 141 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 her purse, and was blushing before Abigail, when Miss A. put 
 an end to the embarrassment by requesting the unknown lady 
 to put the trinket in her pocket, and pay for it the next fine day 
 she happened to be passing in the neighbourhood. The Queen 
 hereupon followed up her first act of simplicity by a second. 
 She gave the jeweller's daughter her address, and a pressing 
 invitation to call upon her, with a view of providing for Abigail 
 a place in the household of the Duchess of Northumberland ; 
 for her majesty had learned, in the course of confidential com- 
 munications in the shop, that old Tomwood was on the eve of 
 bankruptcy. When Abigail calls the next morning, she to her 
 surprise meets Masham, who at that moment is talking politics 
 with Lord Bolingbroke; while his lordship, so far from feeling 
 himself interrupted, at once takes Miss Tomwood into the con- 
 versation. Bolingbroke recognises the handwriting, giving the 
 unknown lady's address, to be that of the Queen ; and his 
 fertile brain, upon this frail ground, proceeds without delay to 
 build up a magnificent scheme. Abigail shall be the favourite 
 of the Queen ; Masham shall rule Abigail ; he rules Masham. 
 Taking for granted, then, on the spot, that the whole plan is 
 settled according to his wishes, he opens to the eyes of the city 
 girl, the state of relations between France and England, and 
 informs her that she is to play a great part in the affairs of the 
 two nations. His immediate object is to have a letter from the 
 French ambassador secretly presented to the Queen. The new 
 political pupil of Bolingbroke naturally doubts her power of 
 presenting an ambassador. She is si peu de chose. We shall 
 give what follows, because it contain the whole doctrine of 
 Bolingbroke and M. Scribe, as to great effects and little causes. 
 
 Bolingbroke. — You must not despise petty things — they produce great 
 effects. You perhaps think, like all the world, that revolutions, 
 political catastrophes, the fall of empires, proceed from grave, pro- 
 found, and important causes. What a mistake ! States, it is true, are 
 subdued or led by heroes, by great men ; but these great men are 
 themselves led by their passions, their caprices, their vanities ; that is 
 to say, by all that in this world is most mean and miserable. You are 
 
 142 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 not aware that a dispute about a window at Trianon, condemned by 
 Louis XIV. and defended by Louvois, caused the very war which now 
 inflames Europe. To the wounded vanity of a courtier, the kingdom 
 owes its disasters ; to some more trifling cause, it shall, perhaps, yet 
 owe its preservation; and, without going farther, I, who speak to you, 
 I, Henry St. John, who, to the age of 26 years, was looked upon as a 
 dandy, incapable of serious occupations — do you know how I became 
 a statesman, a member of parliament, and a minister ? 
 
 Abigail. — No, really. 
 
 Bolingbrohe. — Eh bien, my dear girl; I was made minister because I 
 danced the sarabande ; and I lost power by a cold. 
 
 Abigail. — Is it possible ? 
 
 Bolingbrohe (Looking towards the Queen's apartment). — I will tell you 
 all about it another time — and how, without allowing myself to be 
 depressed, I fight at my post in the ranks of the conquered. 
 
 A bigail. — And what can you do ? 
 
 Bolingbrohe. — Wait and hope. 
 
 Abigail. Some great revolution ? 
 
 Bolingbrohe. — Not at all— a chance, a caprice of fate, a grain of sand, 
 to overturn the car of triumph. 
 
 Abigail. — But you cannot create this grain of sand. 
 
 Bolingbrohe. — True ; but finding it, I can push it under the wheel. 
 'Tis not for talent to thrust itself in the way of providence, and create 
 events — but to profit by them as they come. The more trifling in 
 appearance, the greater their effect. Great effects from Little causes: 
 such is my doctrine. I rely upon it, and you shall see proof of my 
 being right. 
 
 Here the Duchess of Marlborough enters, and between the 
 politician and her grace are exchanged some sharp sarcasms, 
 which are interrupted by Bolingbroke presenting Abigail, and 
 stating her claims. So backed, these are of course treated with 
 scorn; but Bolingbroke has the means of carrying his point. 
 "Abigail is a Churchill I" upon hearing which, the duchess 
 exclaims " del!" and Bolingbroke follows up the effect with 
 the following singular threat : 
 
 "You understand, madam, that for me, who am a faded author, 
 there lies, in the narration of this adventure, the means of establishing 
 myself once more with my readers : and the Examiner will be delighted 
 to amuse the public at the expense of the noble duchess, cousin of 
 the shop girl." 
 
 143 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 But the noble duchess is not without her resources. Her 
 grace, having bought up the debts of Bolingbroke, she is his sole 
 creditor I " and if the pleasant anecdote, with which he threatens 
 her, appear in the morning journal, the evening paper shall 
 announce that the witty author, Mr. St. John, is at that moment 
 in Newgate ! engaged on a treatise upon the art of going in 
 debt." Here is tit for tat with a vengeance ! And worthy of 
 observation is the vulgar coarseness of the threats, to say 
 nothing of the improbabilities they involve. The buying up of 
 debts upon the one hand, and the supposition, on the other, 
 that the mere fact of there being a poor relation would over- 
 whelm an English lady with ridicule 1 But the plot waits. 
 Masham, at this moment of the interview, rushes in, to tell 
 Abigail (aside) that he has just killed an unknown gentleman 
 in a duel, who had insulted him. This event turns out to be 
 of the greatest importance to Bolingbroke, for the unfortunate 
 defunct is his lordship's cousin, whose fortune and title now 
 devolve upon Mr. Henry St. John (so, speaking correctly, we ought 
 to have called his lordship up to this point). This relation had 
 behaved ill to his heir ; for he it was who first purchased up 
 Mr. St. John's debts, and then assigned them to his enemy, the 
 duchess; Bolingbroke does not, therefore, much regret the 
 event ; yet still, it being his interest to feign sorrow, he craftily 
 bethinks him of mournfully accusing the queen's ministers with 
 having contrived Lord Richard's assassination, " because he was 
 one of the opposition, and a defender of the people's liberties." 
 A likely imputation ! The duchess, on the other hand, is now 
 in the very thick of a busy intrigue against Abigail ; and in order 
 to induce the queen to withdraw her interest in her favour, 
 confers an obligation upon her majesty by procuring from the 
 duke a captaincy for the young favourite, Masham, who has 
 ingratiated himself with his royal mistress by reading for her 
 every morning, the Journal des Modes 1 1 Bolingbroke is by 
 this time authorised to pursue the murderers of his cousin, 
 when he learns from poor Abigail the name of the real author of 
 
 U4 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 his death. " What will you do .' " asks Abigail, imploringly. 
 To which Bolingbroke gaily replies, " Parbleu ! I shall not do 
 any thing. Some noise— some newspaper articles and speeches 
 — until he (Masham) be out of the way. Then I will show my- 
 self, and pretend to pursue him with fury, such as becomes 
 a cousin." And Abigail rewards the agreeable cool hypocrite, 
 with the following naive expression of admiration and grati- 
 tude : " Ah, you are so good ! so amiable ! 'tis well designed, 
 wonderfully well. As he fled yesterday, he must already be 
 far away." Masham, however, had not gone far away. He is 
 overtaken on the road by an officer, who, so far from being 
 charged to arrest him, presents the fugitive with a captaincy 
 in the Guards, in a box bearing the identical diamonds 
 purchased by the fair incognita in Tomwood's shop 1 and 
 accompanied by an anonymous note, in a lady's hand, 
 commanding his instant attendance at court. Abigail having 
 heard all this, becomes straightway jealous : of whom she 
 knows not, and dares not whisper her suspicions. But 
 now, through the persevering Bolingbroke, the perplexed 
 Miss Abigail finds herself already on a high road to the 
 post of favourite; and the power of the duchess begins to 
 wane. The moment at length arrives, which is to put the 
 influence of all parties to the test. The passports of the 
 French ambassador are ready; for in those days, according 
 to M. Scribe, passports were as necessary in England as 
 in France. Are they to be delivered to his excellency, and 
 all accommodation broken off? or is he to be received at 
 court, and peace proclaimed ? Who is to win the prize, 
 of war or peace? the Duchess of Marlborough, or Miss 
 Abigail Tomwood ? These are the momentous questions. 
 The duchess has prepared a letter for the queen's signature : 
 it is to be submitted at a certain hour. In the meantime, 
 Bolingbroke rushes to the queen, and addresses to her 
 majesty the most urgent remonstrances. They fail. But 
 though to the politician the queen is deaf, to a calumny the 
 N.6.B. 145 I. 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 ear of the woman is open. Bolingbroke hints that the proud 
 duchess is carrying on an intrigue with Masham, and that 
 her object in urging on the war, is to find employment for her 
 husband abroad, that she may pursue at ease her guilty 
 career at home. Whereupon the queen, having herself a 
 foiblesse for this lucky young gentleman, e.tclaims : " I will 
 never believe it." 
 
 Bolingbroke. — 'Tis the truth, however ! And this young officer, Arthur 
 Masham, could, if he pleased, furnish your majesty with proofs 
 sufficiently exact. 
 
 The Queen {with emotion). — Masham ! What do you say ? 
 
 Bolingbroke. — That he is beloved by the duchess. 
 
 The Queen {trembling"). — He ! Masham ! 
 
 Bolingbroke {going). — He ! or somebody else : what matter ! 
 
 The Queen (with rage). — What matter, do you say? {Starting from her 
 seat.) If I am abused ! If I am deceived ! If, under pretext of state 
 interests private interests are advanced— No ! no ! all must be 
 explained. Remain, my lord, remain. I will — I, the queen, must 
 know all. {She retires to the side gallery, looks out, and returns.) 
 
 Bolingbroke {aside). — Can it be ? the little Masham ! O destinies of 
 England, upon what do ye depend ! 
 
 Queen Anne jealous of the Duchess of Marlborough upon 
 account of little Masham ! ! But let us proceed : 
 
 The Duchess enters, advances proudly. Seeing Bolingbroke she stands 
 stupefied and exclaims, "Bolingbroke!" and the latter bows. The Queen, 
 endeavouring to conceal her anger, says coldly, "What do you want, 
 milady ? ' ' 
 
 The Duchess — Here are the passports of the Marquis de Torcy, and 
 the letter which accompanies them. 
 
 The Queen. — Very well. {She throws the papers on the table.') I will 
 read them. 
 
 The Duchess {aside).— O Ciel ! {aloud.) Your majesty had, however, 
 decided that it should be this very day. 
 
 The Queen. — Yes— but other considerations oblige me to postpone 
 
 The Duchess {with rage, and looking at Bolingbroke). — It is not difficult 
 to see to what influence your majesty yields at this moment. 
 
 The Queen {endeavouring to control herself). — What do you mean? 
 What influence ? I know of none — I yield but to the voice of reason, 
 pf justice, and of the public good. 
 
 146 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Bolingbroke. — We all know that. 
 
 The Queen. — The truth may for a time be hidden from me — but once 
 it is known, once the interests of the state are in question, I hesitate 
 no longer ! 
 
 And so the queen proceeds in this declamatory strain, which 
 is intended to be very satirical, her majesty having before 
 turned a deaf ear to the very reasons she now urges. But as, 
 by this time, the hour is come for the queen to go to chapel, 
 Abigail enters with her Bible and her gloves, and observing 
 the emotion of her royal mistress, the latter tells her there is a 
 mystery which must be solved. She must see the person of 
 whom they have been speaking, in order to interrogate him. 
 And " Here he comes ! " she cries, as Masham enters, and 
 Abigail utters the usual exclamation of " O Ciell" 
 
 We are now led to the famous glass of water scene, by the 
 same labyrinth through which we have been treading, of mean 
 motive and pretty intrigue, unredeemed by a fine thought, a 
 happy expression, or a kindly characteristic of human feeling. 
 At the queen's salon in the evening, Masham is to meet the 
 duchess. At the same time, and in the same place, he is to 
 receive from his unknown protectress a signal, which shall at 
 once point her out; and convey, moreover, that she cannot 
 that evening give him reception. The signal is to be a call for 
 a glass of water. Bolingbroke has determined that the French 
 ambassador shall be invited ; and as it is Lady Marlborough's 
 duty to address letters of invitation, he calls upon her to write 
 him a note for the Marquis de Torcy. The duchess is astounded 
 at his impudence, but Lord Bolingbroke once more sinks the 
 nobleman, in the more formidable character of editor of the 
 Examiner. He exhibits the anonymous billet addressed by 
 a fair lady to Masham, with his commission in the Guards, and 
 once more threatens a ludicrous expose, in his mirth-moving 
 journal. The duchess feels that appearances are against her : 
 quite enough, at any rate, for a wit and a wicked public. But 
 she does not give in without a struggle. As she once bought 
 
 147 J- 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 up his debts, she has now procured some letters of his wife's, 
 addressed to Lord Evandale. " For value received, no doubt" 
 — is the dry and delicate retort ; and the shocked and frightened 
 lady puts an end to the coarse combat, by writing the letter of 
 invitation for the ambassador. In the latter's presence takes 
 place the great scene. The queen is playing at backgammon 
 with his excellency, when suddenly complaining of heat and 
 oppression, she calls for "a glass of water." The duchess, 
 who had herself previously learned the expected signal which 
 was to discover the unknown inamorata of Masham, utters a 
 cry of irrepressible astonishment; but on the instant recovering 
 her self-possession, pretends that she was jealous of her right 
 of serving her majesty being thus conferred upon another. 
 The queen, with a sneer, commands her to perform the desired 
 duty. The duchess obeys; but is either so troubled, or so 
 angry, that, in the act of presenting the glass of water, she 
 allows it to fall upon the queen's robe, and is at once dismissed 
 before the whole court. 
 
 More secret history remains yet, to be revealed for ignorant 
 posterity. The queen relents. And why ? She has heard of 
 the scandalous report in connexion with Lord Evandale ; and 
 as her own heart is upon the point of capitulation, she feels a 
 sudden sympathy, and perhaps the want of a frail companion 
 with whom to exchange some certain confidences. She resolves 
 upon the recall of the duchess. Bolingbroke, alarmed, flies 
 once more to the queen, and adroitly turns the suspicion from 
 Lord Evandale to young Masham. The duchess's object, 
 according to him, is to get back to the palace, only that she 
 may be near Masham. An interview between the royal lover 
 and the favourite succeeds, and they are nearly surprised in it 
 by the sudden entry of the duchess : so nearly, that no place 
 of concealment is at hand but the queen's bedroom. The 
 duchess, peeping through a window, sees him, and the queen 
 is in her power. But no ! the devoted Abigail advances; takes 
 upon herself the blame of having concealed her lover; and 
 
 148 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 thus, to save the queen, compromises her own reputation. The 
 queen, struck with gratitude, abandons her designs against 
 " le petit Masham," and Abigail becomes the celebrated lady 
 of that celebrated name. 
 
 In giving an outline of this popular comedy, we have not 
 paused to correct such palpable misstatements of the real facts 
 of history as those of Masham's relationship with Abigail, and 
 the duchess's horror at the discovery of a kinswoman in the 
 jeweller's daughter. It was for a Mr. Hill, the brother of 
 Mrs. Masham, that the duchess obtained the commission which 
 'gave such offence at the time; while the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough's complaint against Mrs. Masham was, that the 
 latter had behaved to her with ingratitude, she being a poor 
 relation whom the duchess had placed beside the queen. Such 
 secondary facts merge in the odiously false colouring given to 
 the whole reign and time. We are willing enough to allow 
 a very wide licence to writers of fiction, when they take up 
 incidents of history not clearly determined, or motives of 
 character not positively ascertained. But M. Scribe trans- 
 gresses all ordinary bounds, when he puts Queen Anne and 
 the Viscount Bolingbroke in such agreeable relations as those 
 of Prince Potemkin and Catherine of Russia. The character 
 of Bolingbroke is ridiculously travestied. M. Scribe, led away 
 by the previous success of "Bertrand and Raton," evidently 
 tried his hand at a second Bertrand (a character said to have 
 been drawn from Talleyrand), and on that cold and crafty proto- 
 type unwisely built his view of the fiery, accomplished, impatient, 
 passionate St. John. The play of "Bertrand and Raton" was 
 positively good. It contained excellent purpose, approached 
 through well-sustained action, and enlivened by very happy 
 language. The manner in which the minister Bertrand holds 
 an emeute in leash, until, having achieved his object, he turns 
 contemptuously round upon his poor cowering tool, presents a 
 chef d'oeuvre of skill. Not so the " Verre d'Eau." In its con- 
 ception, it is vulgar, and, in its incidents, outrageously unnatural 
 
 149 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and absurd. It is a lie against history, as it is a lie against 
 morals. The story of the window at Versailles may be true, for 
 it is told by the Due de St. Simon : but a man of exalted views 
 could surely have drawn a wiser lesson from such an example 
 of the caprices of reckless despotism : a lesson against bad 
 monarchs, and the vile selfishness of such viziers as Louvois, 
 not against all humanity. The window beginning the war, and 
 the glass of water extinguishing it — after it had shed a blaze of 
 glory upon England, and consumed the energies of France, 
 and hung a cloud over the last days of her greatest king — 
 presents one of those antitheses which dazzle a superficial mind, 
 but from which a great one would turn as a mere littleness of 
 speech. When M. Scribe endeavours to show that in a consti- 
 tutional country like England, the caprice or fancy of a queen 
 might produce effects as disastrous as the squabble about the 
 window at Trianon, he at least sacrifices the moral derivable 
 from the fact, that popular opinion in such a country includes 
 within its control the highest as well as the humblest. It may 
 be answered, that the first object of a dramatic writer is to 
 amuse. True, perhaps, of a writer of vaudevilles. But when 
 M. Scribe aspires to be the successor of Molifere, he subjects 
 himself to some higher obligations. Molifere never sacrificed 
 truth. He cared little, it may be, for the regular progress of a 
 story: sometimes, as in " L'Avare," winding up a series of 
 delightful scenes by an improbable conjuncture of circum- 
 stances, as though, his purpose being accomplished, it concerned 
 him little how he disposed of his personages. Having dressed 
 up truth in the robes of satire, he might love, too, to place her 
 in a whimsical frame, but it was one as rich and curious as the 
 Gothic friezes. Your modern dramatists are mechanics, not 
 artists ; cobblers, not creators ; wanting in imagination, and 
 destitute of nice perceptions. How hearty, and kind, and 
 natural, and generous is Molifere, even in his occasional 
 extravagance ! How coldly quick, how smartly pretty, how 
 shallow in the fulness of pretension, is his successor ! But the 
 
 150 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 age has always much to do with the creation of its oracles./ 
 Molifere lived in an age of great men and brilliant deeds. 
 Scribe lives in a time of commonplace actions and common- 
 place men. It has been justly said that it takes a good people 
 to nourish a good and great man, and Scribe is the poet laureate 
 of the Financiers of the Chauss^e d' Antin. His " Verre d'Eau " 
 had, therefore, much success. Its philosophy was up to the low 
 current mark ; its morality was appreciable by those whose 
 best maxim is "take care of the pence and the pounds will take 
 care of themselves." Great effects from little causes — to be 
 sure ! who could doubt it ? What great effects spring from the 
 husbanding of centimes ! What strokes of fortune depend 
 upon a card, a turn of the dice, a fib at the Bourse ! Then 
 there was the depreciation of virtue, talent, charactar, which the 
 man of money, who deals in money, and sways with money, is 
 sure at last to feel. And, finally, there were cuts at the English, 
 and small claptraps about the glory of France, suitable to the 
 time and season. So the " Verre d'Eau " was and is enormously 
 successful. 
 
 Naturally encouraged by this essay into the field of history 
 and politics, M. Scribe has lately presented his " Fils de 
 Cromwell." This comedy was not so warmly received. The 
 subject was not at all suited to Scribe. He makes the son of 
 Cromwell a sort of Timon. Take, for example, the following 
 opening passage of a soliloquy of Richard, in the fifth act : 
 
 " Yes, I understand how those who govern mankind hold them in 
 contempt. A few days' possession of power suffice to teach their 
 value. They are worth so little, and sell themselves so dear. As to 
 Monk, it is dififerent. He is more frank, or has more address. He 
 confessed all to me — ' a blind love of Lady Helen induced him to take 
 this part, &c.' " 
 
 The real character of Richard Cromwell, and the motives by 
 which he was actuated, are left most happily undetermined for 
 every purpose of the dramatist. Upon the French stage, where 
 so much latitude is allowed to language, an author, anxious to 
 
 151 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 make a person develop his own character by reasoning and 
 the expression of his thoughts, rather than by external action, 
 could, were he equal to such a task, have done much with 
 Richard Cromwell. But M. Scribe is not the man for an 
 analysis of inward action. Many have theorized about Richard 
 Cromwell, no one has satisfactorily solved the problem of his 
 conduct. Perhaps the solution lies in early religious impres- 
 sions, acting upon a naturally amiable nature. Perhaps the 
 inward agony of Cromwell, to say nothing of the more palpable 
 terrors of his external failure, may have been revealed to the 
 son, and taught him a terrible lesson. But this is not for 
 comedy: certainly not for comedy as understood by M. Scribe. 
 What shall we say, then, of the love motives and the love tale of 
 Monk ? M. Scribe turns history into a sad farce. His licences 
 bring art itself into contempt. If any subject might thus 
 be trifled with, fictitious writing would cease to be regarded 
 as a medium of truth of any kind. Fiction should assume 
 the cap and bells, and Imagination go out as a pantomime 
 clown. 
 
 Let us descend into history more modern, guided by 
 Frederic Souli6. The author of the "Devil's Memoirs" 
 (Memoires du Diable) — a book worthy of its hero for its 
 hideous licentiousness — is assuredly not the best of historical 
 guides. But as one of the collaborateurs of the Journal des 
 Debats, M. Souli^'s views of the English historical people are 
 worth having, for the reason that, in the eyes of some of his 
 countrymen, he who could so well paint the devil, ought to 
 draw an Englishman or Englishwoman to perfection. 
 
 The scene of " Gaetan, II Mammone " lies at Naples, which 
 city is threatened by the French, but protected by an English 
 fleet under Lord Merton. Between the English admiral and 
 the wife of the British ambassador. Lady Melton, there appears 
 to be a perfect understanding ; and she it is who by petticoat 
 interference rules king, council, ambassador, and all. As at 
 the close of the play, Lord Merton brings off his fleet in 
 
 152 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 expectation of meeting Napoleon at the Nile, we may be 
 allowed perhaps, with no great violence of conjecture, to take 
 this circumstance in connection with the place, and the period, 
 and the personages, and conclude that the author meant Lady 
 Hamilton for the ambassador's wife, and Lord Nelson for the 
 British admiral. M. Soulie might possibly say that he meant 
 nothing of the kind, and that his satire is of a general character, 
 for to be sure he represents his British admiral as a cold-hearted 
 man, who has abandoned two children, the offspring of two 
 betrayed women, and who are, in fact, Gaetan and Leonora, 
 the hero and heroine of the piece. It being very easy to 
 penetrate the plots of such writers as M. Souli6 through all the 
 machinery of trap-doors and shallow surprises, we think we do 
 not cheat our readers of any agreeable astonishment, by telling 
 the main mystery at once. This Gaetan is a second Masaniello, 
 and his sister, whom he does not know to be such, and with 
 whom he is in love, a second Corinne. " With the genius of a 
 Sappho, and the courage of a Madame Roland," she sits in 
 moonlight upon a ruined pillar, dressed in a white muslin tunic, 
 and improvises for the benefit of moon-struck amateurs. This 
 Leonora enjoys great influence with the republican and French 
 party in Naples, and the admiral, who feels (see The Critic) 
 some strange undefined interest about her, induces Lady 
 Melton to include the Amazonian heroine among her guests at 
 a fete she is about to give. While conversing with Lady 
 Melton, the admiral calls his English servant Job, to take the 
 letter of invitation to Leonora. On seeing her ladyship. Job 
 becomes so troubled, that the letter falls from his hand, for he 
 recognises, in Lady Melton, his old fellow-servant, Betty 
 Stacke. Thus, here again is an instance of the world being 
 governed by mean causes ; for the quondam Betty it is who 
 rules the ambassador, directs the affairs of Naples, manages the 
 republican party, and, through Lord Merton, commands the 
 British fleet. Is Betty worthy of her greatness ? You shall 
 see. Betty, upon seeing Job, whispers the Marquis Ruffo, who, 
 
 153 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in turn, whispers a bravo ! But we had better let this choice 
 morceau speak for itself. 
 
 Lord Merton. — Carry this letter to its address. 
 
 Job {muttering). — Ah ! mon Dieu — mon Dieu — mon Dieu — 'tis she — 
 'tis she — 'tis really herself — 'tis Betty. 
 
 Lady Melton. — Grand Dieu ! this man, Job — 
 
 Lord Merton. — What are you staring at, fool ? 
 
 Job (letting the letter fall).— Mi\3.Ay— 
 
 Lord Merton. — Take up the letter and bring it to its address. 
 
 Lady Melton. — Ruffo — (she whispers him). 
 
 Job (going away). — Yes, milord — yes, milady — I dream — 'tis not 
 possible ! Betty become milady — perhaps 'tis the climate of Naples. 
 
 Ruffo (whispers Stephen, while Job knocks at Leonora's door). — See'st thou 
 this man ? At any price, and before evening, he must be got rid of. 
 Such is the order of milady. 
 
 Stephen.— Bah ! I must (laying his hand upon a dagger). 
 
 JRuffo.— Yes. 
 
 Lady Melton. — Eh bien, my lord, do you not go to the council to 
 announce how England sends her fleet to the defence of Naples. 
 
 Lord Merton, — Yes — yes, milady, I go. 
 
 Lady Melton. — And I ask leave to accompany you, milord, as the 
 health of Lord Melton does not permit of his attendance. The 
 Neapolitans must hear how the English are animated with the same 
 spirit in defence of their cause. 
 
 Ruffo. — You hear that, brave Neapolitans ? 
 
 The people. — Yes, yes. 
 
 Lord Merton. — Come milady, come. 
 
 Lady Melton. — Forget not, Ru£fo ! 
 
 Now the bravo Stephen turns out to be a man of some sense • 
 and reflection in the way of his calling. For, left alone with 
 Job, he is puzzled to understand what can be the object of a 
 great lady in ordering the assassination of such an idiot as he 
 takes Job to be. So he accosts him. And then come these 
 happy strokes of national character : 
 
 Stephen. — I salute you, signor. 
 
 Job. — I am very happy to meet you, who have the look of an honest 
 man. 
 Stephen. — You do me too much honour. Do you like macaroni ? 
 Job.— Ho I I prefer bifteek. 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Stephen. —Might not a glass of lemonade tempt you ? 
 
 Job. — I like porter better. 
 
 Stephen.— Then I have nothing to offer you. 
 
 The conversation proceeds : 
 
 Stephen. — And so you know Lady Melton ? 
 
 Job.— Do I know her ! May be not ! When I was groom to the Duke 
 of Newcastle, was she not lady's maid to the duchess? 
 
 Stephen. — Lady Melton ? 
 
 Job. — That is to say Betty Stacke — and the duchess turned her off 
 because the duke — (whisperi) — and then she was put on board a ship 
 of war one fine night, which left for — you know. 
 
 Stephen {aside). — Kill this fellow indeed ! not such a fool ! Oh no, I 
 would rather preserve him in sugar like a confiture ! 
 
 How the ship took a different course, and carried Betty 
 Stacke to the height of dignity and power, has been already 
 intimated. We may simply remark that the whole idea of this 
 Englishwoman, with her glib messages of assassination, is 
 highly worthy of the author of the Memoires du Diable. 
 
 We should not attempt to take our readers through the whole 
 bewildering plot of this egregious rubbish. It abounds, of 
 course, with fighting, shooting, and murdering, and is sprinkled 
 with such an abundance of ah's ! eh's ! oh's ! saluting each 
 surprise, that had the printer thrown them in at random they 
 could have hardly fallen, even haphazard, upon an inappro- 
 priate place. As for character, there is a total absence of it. 
 Nor, indeed, is there the least necessary connexion between 
 the conduct of the personages, and the incidents of the piece. 
 Any body might have filled the place of Lord Merton. He is 
 an English admiral, without one marked feature or character- 
 istic : a singular evidence of the author's dulness in the 
 appreciation of force of soul, or determination, or humour, or 
 whim of manner. Lady Melton's orders for murder lead to 
 nothing, not even to a self-exposure ; and Job, upon whose 
 appearance so much threatens to turn, does no more than 
 show a very red nose, which is supposed to be English, and 
 
 155 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 run about in a sort of national quest after bi/teek and porter. 
 As Job introduces an English couplet, however, we may 
 preserve the rarity : 
 
 Yes, my cry is a figue (fig) for fame. 
 Better is woman, wine, and game. 
 Gaming and drinking and loving, 
 Is the best manner of moving. 
 
 \AjUr the couplet he dances. 
 
 As a key to M. Souli^'s " History " we offer the following short 
 scene : the 5th of the 5th Act. 
 
 Ruffo. — Milord ! Here is an order of your ambassador. 
 
 Lord Merton (reading). — " Milord, immediately upon receipt of this, 
 you will quit Naples for Malta, where you shall find the despatches 
 which will inform you the destination of your fleet." 
 
 Lady Melton. — Without delay. 
 
 Lord Merton. — Ah, milady, 'tis you once more. 
 
 Lady Melton. — You deceive yourself, milord. 'Tis not I who have 
 caused General Bonaparte to land in Egypt, 
 
 Lord Merton. — Bonaparte ? And am I destined to combat him ? Ah, 
 fortune be thanked, 'tis an honour of which I will show myself worthy. 
 Tell Lord Melton this order shall lie executed instantly. 
 
 As for Lord Merton's children, the heroine, Leonora, is con- 
 demned to death as a rebel, but is rescued by a body of English 
 sailors, who bear her off to an English ship. Her brother 
 Gaetan, about to follow, suddenly changes his mind and stays 
 at home. 
 
 When we saw announced " Halifax," by Alexandre Dumas, 
 here, we said, is Dumas smitten too, with the new Scribe 
 fashion, and about to deal with Lord Halifax, as his master 
 has dealt with Lord Bolingbroke. We were mistaken. This 
 Halifax turned out to be a low, fighting, brawling ruffian, who 
 kills or wounds a man per diem. It was at the Theatre des 
 Vari^t^s, where vaudevilles alone are performed, that during 
 the month of December last this comedy of Dumas' was 
 presented, " melee de chant," to bring it within the proper 
 designation. The appearance of Alexandre Dumas, one of 
 
 156 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 the leaders of the romantic school, in the humble walk of 
 vaudeville, excited some curiosity among the literary public 
 of Paris. Was it to be regarded as a specimen of the relax- 
 ation and bonhommie of a great man, attired in nightgown and 
 pantoufles ? or the vanity of a versatile genius, determined to 
 conquer in every walk of literature, without leaving a nook 
 untrodden ? And the question took divers crowds to see it 
 solved. Now heartily do we wish that Dumas had not intruded 
 his foot within this smiling garden of the vaudeville. He who 
 opened a melodrama with heaven, and the angels, and the 
 virgin, and an ascending soul (let the doubters of so monstrous 
 a tale refer to Don Juan de Marana), had no business with 
 that genuine, sparkling, essentially French thing, the Vaude- 
 ville. 
 
 As no capital in Europe contains any class resembling the 
 grisette, so is the vaudeville exclusively Parisian. How the 
 dialogue, studded with song, runs on like a merry stream, 
 broken every moment by apparent obstacles, which only serve 
 to make it musical! The classic drama may pale before the 
 romantic, and the romantic, after assuming a thousand extrava- 
 gant shapes, may go down in brimstone and red and blue 
 lights ; but the vaudeville will mount up, light as a champagne 
 bubble, coloured with the gay rays of wit and animal spirits, 
 and immortal as France, its own sunny land. Oh ! Scribe, 
 why didst thou abandon so happy a realm, where thou wert 
 supreme, to take to history and politics, and the legitimate 
 five-act comedy forsooth, where thou art last among the great ? 
 Better dost thou think it, to serve at the feet of Molifere's statue, 
 than to reign in a paradise of repartee and chansonette ^ See 
 how Dumas steals in and occupies the vacant ground ! And 
 how does he signalize his seizure of your charming little 
 Marquesas .' Why, by a fatal duel. Blood upon the boards of 
 the Vari^t^s ! ! Oh ! come back, Scribe, and wash out the foul 
 stains with a flood of repartee ! 
 
 Dumas transferred his vaudeville to England, laying the 
 
 157 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 scene at the period of Charles II. It opens with a tavern. 
 The host is preparing to receive his guests. " Make haste ! in 
 a quarter of an hour our guests will be here. Prepare the 
 tables, so that every thing be found in its proper place. Here, 
 Thomas Dickson, a pot of ale and the Holland Gazette. Here 
 John Burleigh and Charles Smith, a bottle of porter and a 
 pack of cards. There for Seigneur Halifax, a bottle of claret 
 and dice." The host is interrupted by news of the arrival of a 
 young lady, who waits in expectation of the coming of a Rev. 
 Mr. Simpson. She is unaccompanied, and is to leave in two 
 hours. Lord Dudley next enters, in pursuit of the fair, and 
 bribes the innkeeper to be allowed an already occupied 
 chamber, adjoining that now held by the young lady. Dudley, 
 in the meantime, seats himself at a table, when Halifax arrives, 
 and, casting a contemptuous glance at the habitues of the 
 tavern, walks up, in the custom which will at once be recog- 
 nised as thoroughly English, straight to Lord Dudley, whom 
 he has never seen before, and proposes to play at dice with 
 him, as the only gentleman in company. Dudley accepts the 
 offer. They play, and Halifax cheats. Lord Dudley accuses 
 him of foul play, and Halifax replies by throwing the dice in 
 his lordship's face, which outrage he follows up by a challenge 
 to fight with pistols, in the very room where they are, and 
 before the company assembled. They accordingly take their 
 stand at the corners of the stage most remote, and advance in 
 the present continental fashion. Lord Dudley's pistol misses 
 fire, and then Halifax, who might have advanced and shot the 
 nobleman, coolly invites his Lordship to a parley. "Monsieur," 
 he begins, " my opinion is that the ball in this pistol is worth 
 ;^200, and even at that price is not dear." Lord Dudley takes 
 the hint, and at the proffered sum purchases his life, no doubt 
 believing he had struck a good bargain. And here all differ- 
 ence might have ended, but for the young lady still waiting the 
 Rev. Mr. Simpson, and into whose room Lord Dudley now 
 intrudes himself. Her screams bring Halifax to her aid; 
 
 158 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Halifax, without more scruple, draws upon his lordship ; and 
 the curtain falls to conceal the shedding of blood. So ends 
 the first act, or, as it is called, the prologue ; a convenient 
 name, by which the unities seem to be preserved, when any 
 interval of time is supposed to elapse between the first act and 
 the rest of the performance. In the next act we are introduced 
 to a certain Sir John Dunbar, who is seeking to seduce a simple 
 young girl named Jenny. She is repulsing his advances, at 
 the moment when a letter is put into his hands, written by the 
 late Lord Dudley when dying. In this highly characteristic 
 letter, accompanied with Sir John's comments and reflexions, 
 we have Halifax's true position and character, as well as an 
 explanation of what the reader will discover to be a somewhat 
 strange mission. 
 
 " ' My dear Dunbar, — In a duel without seconds, I have been 
 mortally wounded by a fellow named Halifax, who ran me through the 
 body with a sword, which he was not entitled to wear : as this man is 
 in your service, I address myself to you, my best of friends, and call 
 upon you to obtain vengeance from his Majesty. And now I die more 
 tranquilly, in the hope that this fellow will receive the punishment he 
 merits. I beg you, then, to have him hanged as soon as you lay your 
 hands upon him. Such is the last request of your friend, Dudley.' 
 Dudley killed in a duel ! and by Halifax ! The rogue, then, pretends 
 to play the gentleman, and is spending in taverns the money which I 
 gave him to employ in the discovery of my lost daughter ! " 
 
 It will appear rather strange, to any one expecting illustra- 
 tions of human nature in the drama, that a father should 
 employ an atrocious blackguard for the performance of so 
 delicate a mission as that of seeking for a lost child ; but as 
 Sir John detests his nephew, for no better reason than that 
 the nephew is virtuous, perhaps it is not so strange that he 
 should repose his confidence in Halifax. Well — this old 
 reprobate. Sir John, finding that he has Halifax in his power, 
 confides to him the nature of his passion for the poor girl 
 Jenny ; and proposes, under fear of the gallows, that he shall 
 marry her, in trust for his master. Halifax, villain as he is, 
 
 159 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 recoils from the proposition. Sir John allows ten minutes' 
 time for consideration. The time is employed by Halifax in 
 inquiry concerning Jenny, whose affections, he rejoices to 
 learn, are already devoted to some unknown. Halifax 
 consents, therefore, to ask Jenny in marriage, calculating 
 upon her refusal ; but Jenny, to his horror, and the intended 
 amusement of the spectator, accepts his proposal with un- 
 bounded delight ; and their immediate marriage is commanded 
 by the impatient Sir John. A scene soon afterwards takes 
 place, which bids defiance even to the French probabilities. 
 Halifax reproaches Jenny for her abandonment of the 
 unknown, whom she had loved, for him. Jenny replies, 
 that the unknown was Halifax himself ; and she proceeds to 
 call to mind that Halifax, during their childhood, had been 
 her playfellow in the same village where they were both born, 
 and which Halifax left six years ago. Yet after six years 
 had he been utterly unable to recognise that faithful Jenny, 
 who had never forgotten him ; and who, at first sight, hailed 
 him for her old friend. However, Halifax makes up for lost 
 time, and, on the instant, talks like a fond and innocent 
 swain. Jenny reminds him, that at his departure she 
 accompanied him two leagues : " we quitted each other ; I 
 wept abundantly; and you, too, wept a little also." 
 
 Halifax. — And then I clambered up the mountain, waving to thee my 
 handkerchief. Thou didst follow me from the valley. Arrived at the 
 summit, at the spot where a sudden turning of the pathway was about 
 to hide thee from my view, I looked back, for the last time ; and 
 approaching the extremity of the rock, I saw thee upon thy knees 
 beneath, sending me a last adieu — a last kiss. Then I plucked a 
 marguerite (daisy), and cast it to thee. 
 
 Very pretty this from a cheating, drinking, killing, aban- 
 doned scamp ; and after so extraordinary a lapse of memory ! 
 But he now finds that he loves that Jenny passionately, whom 
 he had completely forgotten : in fact, he had always passion- 
 ately loved her : and, in proof, he resolves not to marry her, 
 
 160 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 but to prefer being hanged. Heroic as may be his deter- 
 mination, however, sorry we are to confess that he does not 
 support it heroically. Instead of boldly announcing it to Sir 
 John, he merely tries to shuffle out of the dilemma in which 
 his master has placed him: creating delays, and trusting to 
 some lucky turn of fortune. Sir John orders the immediate 
 solemnization of the marriage. " Oh ! " says Halifax, " there 
 must first be publication of the banns." 
 
 Sir John. — I have bought a dispensation. 
 
 Mali/ax.— Oh \ much obhged— thank you, Monseigneur, but I am a 
 Protestant, and Jenny is a Catholic. 
 
 Sir John. — Ah ! thou art a Protestant. 
 
 Halifax. — Mon Dieu ! yes. I am somewhat Protestant. 
 
 Sir John. — I always suspected as much. I always thought you were 
 a Roundhead. 
 
 Halifax. — And I cannot abjure. 
 
 Sir John.— Oh \ thou art too honest for that; so I found a way of 
 settling the difficulty. While at breakfast with the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, I hinted to him his majesty's desire to see mixed marriages encouraged 
 amongst his subjects, hoping thereby to bring about a blending of parties. 
 His lordship understood me, and I hold his authority signed with his hand and 
 staled with his seal {.'.') 
 
 More tricks and doublings follow upon the part of Halifax, 
 but Sir John literally and metaphorically holds the noose 
 about his neck. The marriage is inevitable, as well as the 
 dishonour; when lo ! Sir John discovers Jenny to be his own 
 daughter. It was Jenny, too, whom Lord Dudley assailed; 
 and it was in Jenny's cause that Halifax's sword was dyed 
 with the unfortunate nobleman's blood. Thus every thing 
 happily ends; the archbishop very likely, provided with his 
 English majesty's dispensation for all the worthy gentleman's 
 crimes, officiating at Mr. Halifax's nuptials. And this is a 
 vaudeville, or, by the book, a comedy, mixed with couplets; 
 and this is the lugubrious mirth, not to speak of the morality, 
 of the romantic school. Oh ! Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 The play entitled, " La Main Droit et la Main Gauche," 
 although presented for the first time with in this present year, is, 
 
 N.S.B. l6l M 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in fact, an alteration of a comedy whose appearance was 
 interdicted by the French authorities about two years ago. 
 The comedy so condemned by the dramatic censor, bore 
 the quaint title, " II ^tait une fois un Roi et une Reine " 
 (There was once upon a time a King and a Queen), and 
 was supposed to convey a more marked allusion to the 
 Queen of England, and her illustrious consort, than was 
 consistent with propriety. An attempt was made to beget an 
 interest in the author and his play, on this account, by an 
 abundant use of the puff oblique. It was circulated in 
 whispers, that Lord Granville having been consulted thereon, 
 his excellency declined to interfere : that, in a proper English 
 spirit, he threw back upon the authorities the care of their 
 own public character, and that of their countrymen : upon 
 their own heads should rest the responsibility of an 
 unworthy attack upon a young married lady, exposed to 
 observation and the shafts of dull malice, by her position 
 as head of the greatest country in the world. In justice to 
 Monsieur Leon Gozlan, we must acknowledge that he denied, 
 in the public papers, the imputation of having sought to prop 
 up his literary repute, by any speculation upon the prejudices 
 excited at the time through political differences. But whatever 
 may have been his intentions, certain it is, that repeated altera- 
 tions and amendments failed, in the eyes of the censor, to 
 remove a vice too thoroughly planted in the whole of the 
 production. M. Gozlan was not only obliged to remodel 
 his play, but to change the scene of action from England 
 to Sweden. And notwithstanding a corresponding alteration 
 of names in the dramatis persona, we find retained such 
 English designations as Major Palmer (and he is the chief 
 character), as well as Drake and Donald ; while in one part 
 a gallant homage is paid to the charms of the daughters of 
 the Emerald Isle. Were it not, however, that the Queen of 
 Sweden's prime minister, like the Lord Bolingbroke of Scribe, 
 owes his position to his dancing, as well as to other 
 
 162 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 accomplishments deemed pleasing in the eyes of ladies, there 
 could hardly be found a trace of personal allusion recognisable 
 in this play, whose effect was supposed to have depended 
 altogether upon portraitures, if not caricatures, of English 
 political personages. 
 
 The Queen of Sweden, before her union with Prince 
 Hermann, had been married by the main gauche, that is to 
 say clandeslinely, to Major Palmer, who was sometime after- 
 wards conveyed away to the West Indies. Prince Hermann, 
 too, had contracted left-handed matrimony with a German 
 lady, Rodolphine. The one has a son, and the other a 
 daughter, and as the Major returns, and Rodolphine takes 
 up her abode in the neighbourhood of the palace, and as 
 the son and daughter are unaware of their relationship to 
 each other, the terms of which we do not undertake to settle 
 according to the canons, there is an embroglio enough to 
 occupy the utmost curiosity of the most eager unraveller of 
 dramatic puzzles. Perhaps, however, as the story occurred 
 since the very late period of Charles X., the truth thereof is 
 easily ascertainable. The young gentleman, Master Prince 
 Hermann, had saved Miss Princess Palmer's life, a foundation 
 for love and gratitude familiar to most readers of romance ; 
 and she in return, when her lover gets into a scrape for 
 which he is condemned to be hanged, commits perjury to 
 save him, deliberately lisping one of those dainty sentimen- 
 talisms which any where but on the French stage would be 
 deemed indecent, immoral, and blasphemous. " You risked 
 your life, Monsieur Wilfrid, to save mine, and I for you have 
 lost my soul." If this was in the English version, the author 
 may have meant it as a satire on a certain Jennie Deans, 
 who, in the Scotch sense of religion, is understood to have 
 objected to imperil her soul, even to save a sister. The 
 lady, however, instead of, like Juan in the pantomime, going 
 to a certain ugly place before her time, finds a father, of 
 whom, according to the description drawn by himself, she 
 
 163 M 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 has no great reason to be proud ; for he carries about him 
 the portraits of three ladies whom he has betrayed — a book 
 for learning how to play tricks at hazard, that is, to cheat — 
 and to crown all, is an inveterate drunkard. This amiable 
 and veteran rou^ is suddenly converted from his evil ways 
 by the discovery of his daughter. He resolves to absolve the 
 queen from his claims by the left hand, tearing with the 
 other an act of abdication which, in her fright at his return, 
 she had signed ; while Rodolphine, contented with having 
 through her exertions saved her son from the gallows, and 
 witnessed his marriage with Miss Palmer, agrees to leave 
 Prince Hermann equally undisturbed. And so to conclude, 
 after the old fashion, " If they do not all live happy, may 
 we ! " 
 
 We have given the story of this drama, lest, by avoiding 
 to do so, we might be suspected of shrinking from the 
 revelation of a still lurking mystery. If the author did, as 
 was once surmised, stitch a little newspaper gossip upon 
 some trifle of scandal dropped Heaven knows how, or where, 
 he has certainly untwisted it from his web. The play as it 
 stands is as tiresome a production as it was ever our mis- 
 fortune to have waded through. Had it even contained in 
 its original shape any personal allusions, they must have 
 been very coarse and clumsy, for the author is utterly devoid 
 of inventive power, and quite incapable, we imagine, of 
 embellishing a story, or giving it in any other form than 
 that in which he found it. The most striking effort at stage 
 effect attempted, is by means of a ding-dong bell, which the 
 hero. Master Prince Palmer, hears, as a man is about to suffer 
 innocently for the outrage by himself committed upon the 
 person of Prince Hermann, and interprets its sound into an 
 address of reproach to himself, as if the bell would say, 
 " Coward, go hang ! " But even this is not original, being 
 stolen from a book which may probably exemplify the nature 
 and extent of the author's English reading, the story of 
 
 164 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Whittington and his Cat. In the language of the drama, 
 there is at times a certain languishing prettiness, as if " writ 
 on satin ; " but, take it all in all, it is extremely feeble. We 
 can afford to be well pleased that the lion's skin has been 
 doffed, and that the long-eared animal who swelled in it so 
 pompously, with the eyes of ministers and ambassadors fixed 
 upon him, has been allowed to bray to his heart's content. 
 
 Among the writers of what we call political comedy, appears 
 Madame Ancelot, and she alone to advantage. " Les Deux 
 Imp^ratrices, ou une petite Guerre " (" The Two Empresses ; 
 or, A Little War "), is an adoption of M. Scribe's principle of 
 great effects and little causes, and maybe joined to our English 
 list by a long story therein of Queen Elizabeth, and one Edgar 
 Walton, who loved her, and whose audacity she pardoned. The 
 two empresses are Catherine of Russia and Maria Theresa; 
 the " little war " is about a young Hungarian, painted in more 
 romantic colours than little Masham ; while the great effect 
 flowing altogether from this love battle is no less than a treaty 
 by which the troops of Catherine are prevented from marching 
 to the dismemberment of Turkey and the subjugation of Poland. 
 Madame Ancelot enters the lists with Monsieur Scribe. Her 
 play is not so much an imitation as a piece of rivalry. The 
 leading characters resemble those in the " Verre d'Eau," but 
 the resemblance is more elevated in expression ; and it was 
 probably Madame Ancelot's ambition to suggest to her master 
 a lesson in his own art. What in his hands is often hard out- 
 line, is often by her filled up with warm and genuine feeling. 
 In place of Bolingbroke and his poor pretension to knowledge 
 of nature, expressed in little frosted-sugar aphorisms, we have 
 the copious j'eux d'esprit of the Prince de Ligne. For Abigail 
 Tomwood, we have Am^lie de Rosay, a charming young 
 French lady, in attendance upon Maria Theresa ; while between 
 Masham and the Hungarian we have indicated sufficient com- 
 parison. The scene is laid at Vissgrade, upon the frontiers 
 of Hungary, where arrangements are made for an interview 
 
 165 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 between the tTv-o empresses, at which are to be present the 
 ambassadors of Frederick the Great and Louis XV. At this 
 period, France, Prussia, and Austria, are disposed to force 
 peace upon Catherine, whose ambitious prospects they are 
 anxious to check ; and Catherine, who is well described as a 
 mixture of the Parisienne and the Tartar, half-coquette, half- 
 savage, has resolved upon adopting weapons of diplomacy very 
 different from those commonly in use. Calculating upon the 
 staid severity of her rival's deportment, she concludes, that if 
 she can only get possession of a little scandal or a little weak- 
 ness, Maria Theresa would, from dread of exposure, be placed 
 at her mercy. The occasion offers itself quite apropos. A 
 young Hungarian, the Count Wladimir, is smitten with a 
 desperate love of the empress, whose footsteps he follows. At 
 the opening of the comedy he has pushed his audacity so far, 
 as to force his way to her carriage. In the confusion caused by 
 such an occurrence he is allowed to escape, but orders are 
 afterwards given for his arrest. The empress is alone, awaiting 
 the arrival of Catherine, when the undaunted Wladimir pushes 
 aside a secret door and enters. He pleads his disinterested 
 love so touchingly, that the empress is moved to forgiveness. 
 It is in this scene that the story of Queen Elizabeth and Edgar 
 Walton is told : Maria Theresa citing English Bess as a worthy 
 model of imitation for an Empress of Austria, and the Hungarian 
 acting the English lover. As both are blending together so 
 agreeably history and the tender passion, Catherineisannounced. 
 What is Wladimir to do ? Why, as queens must have secre- 
 taries, he coolly seats himself at a writing-desk ; just at the 
 moment Catherine makes her appearance; and a charming 
 scene of female diplomacy follows. First, there is elaborate 
 compliment; and then, in a beautifully shaded gradation, 
 ceremony softens into cordiality. "Let us forget we are 
 queens," says the artful Catherine, " and chat like women." 
 "Like sisters," rejoins Maria Theresa; and she continues, 
 rather sententiously, "Attacked from my childhood by 
 
 1 66 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 numerous enemies, I had no resource left but the fidelity 
 of my faithful Hungarians." Catherine utters an impatient 
 " Oh ! " adding, in the most insinuating tone, " She knows the 
 life of the empress, the actions of the queen — what she now 
 wants to learn are the thoughts of the woman." Maria Theresa 
 cannot be made to comprehend. Still does she declaim about 
 disastrous wars, and duty, and founding of churches and 
 colleges, right nobly ; and again Catherine interrupts her with 
 a question now more explicit. What she wants to hear about 
 are her royal sister's pleasures : of what nature are her affec- 
 tions, intimes du ccBur. Still no answer: still the declamation 
 goes on : until at last Catherine becomes nettled at the 
 suspicion that her rival is indulging in a display of superior 
 virtue, expressly for her mortification. Nevertheless she returns 
 to the charge, shaping her questions so as to meet every case 
 of love for a queen, and including among her examples one so 
 like that of Wladimir, that he starts from his chair, and Maria 
 Theresa utters an exclamation. Catherine, upon this, divines 
 a secret, which she proceeds to hunt with the sagacity of a 
 feminine half-savage. We shall not follow her through her 
 skilful tracking of the young man, for whom she affects 
 friendship ; nor describe how it is she discovers what it is to 
 humble Maria Theresa, and give the signal to her Cossacks to 
 lay waste the Morea, and desolate gallant Poland. Meanwhile 
 the able Prince de Eigne has pledged himself to outwit her 
 majesty. This prince says things sometimes worthy of Roche- 
 foucauld. " There is nothing, in his opinion, more dangerous 
 than the simplicity of people of talent — it almost always covers 
 some finesse." He, consequently, is not imposed upon by 
 Catherine's affected bonhommie. A love-letter, at this crisis 
 of affairs, is found by Prince Orloff, with which the latter, 
 believing it to be addressed to Catherine, in a fit of jealousy 
 reproaches her. Catherine joyfully seizes the letter, which she 
 guesses to have been intended for Maria Theresa, and exhibits 
 it to the whole court. The Prince de Eigne comes to the 
 
 167 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 empress's aid. He protests that it was written at his dictation 
 to one of the many " Queens of his soul " who reside at 
 Versailles. But with difficulty does he preserve a grave face, 
 as he reads aloud for the two empresses — the one laughing, 
 the other confounded — the extravagant ravings of Wladimir. 
 The pretended secretary, in the meantime, advances, snatches 
 the letter, which Catherine has stretched out her hand to receive, 
 and tears it. The Calmuck blood is up, and the Parisian 
 graces dissolve like frostwork in the fury of the offended 
 woman. Wladimir is secretly seized by Orloff, and his person 
 held as a hostage for the signature of the desired treaty. And 
 now womanly feeling assumes ascendency over the sterner 
 purposes of the hitherto unbending Maria Theresa. Catherine 
 then mocks her in the toils, and plays and sports with her, and 
 still probes her to the quick, with merciless insinuations that a 
 young man who loves her should fall a victim thus : and the 
 resolution of Maria Theresa grows faint. But the indefatigable 
 Prince de Ligne has procured the escape of Wladimir — the 
 secret door opens, unobserved by Catherine — a sign from 
 Wladimir sets Maria Theresa at liberty to act — when, to the 
 astonishment of Catherine, she renounces the modifications to 
 which she had all but assented, and signs the treaty tel qu'il est, 
 in company with the ambassadors of France and Prussia. The 
 fate of Turkey is postponed ; Poland breathes ; Maria Theresa 
 registers a vow against love ; and Catherine ceases to be 
 Tartar and resumes the Parisienne. 
 
 In this comedy of little causes, and they are very little, all is 
 yet in a kindly spirit : real mirth and lively portraiture. We 
 carry away no unworthy impression of Maria Theresa, with a 
 half-fearful, half-humorous notion of Catherine. We see an 
 able and polished courtier in the Prince de Ligne, whose 
 correspondence was once the delight of all the eminent people 
 of his time ; and we make acquaintance with a charming 
 French girl in Amelia. If we are to have nonsense about 
 history, let us have it at least in an agreeable shape. Let 
 
 1 68 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 it come from a clever woman like Madame Ancelot, and we 
 shall be spared its nauseous dogmas and abominable attempts 
 at philosophy. 
 
 Having thus briefly noticed some of the lately-represented 
 French plays, which we conceive to be stamped with certain 
 purposes and peculiarities, worthy of observation, we propose, 
 still more briefly, to consider an inroad of the French drama 
 upon the domain of general morals more serious than that which 
 has been carried into the particular region of English history 
 and character. And here again we shall take M. Scribe for our 
 guide. The comedy called " Une Chaine " is an evidence that 
 the flagrant immorality of modern novels has begun to affect 
 the classic atmosphere of the, Theatre Fran^ais. There is no 
 worse symptom of a diseased public morality than a polluted 
 drama, which, as old Doctor Johnson has it, living to please, 
 must please to live. But it is still a disputed theory whether 
 the literature of the time speak the feeling of the time. 
 M. Saint Marc Girardin has examined the question. As a 
 witness of domestic virtue coming within the sphere of his 
 own observation, and fortified, it is to be presumed, by strong 
 concurrent testimony, he, looking at the light literature of the 
 day, so opposite in every sense to his own experience of what 
 society is, decides directly in the negative. And, strange to 
 say, M. Scribe himself, in the play before us, with an uncon- 
 sciousness of the immoral tendency of his own production, 
 puts the very question, and answers it in the same way. To a 
 provincial merchant embued with prejudice against the capital 
 because of its vices, the hero thus addresses himself : " Our 
 manners are more decorous than our writings; and if you 
 remain some time longer among us, you will find that decency 
 and hon ton are not yet quite banished from our salons ; that 
 there is virtue in families, domestic happiness in the world, and 
 good fellows everywhere." We are inclined to accept this 
 estimate of Parisian society taken by M. Scribe, not only 
 
 169 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 because it accords with our own experience, but because its 
 author is one of those acute-minded judges not apt to be 
 swayed by prejudice, or misled by enthusiasm. But if the 
 closet literature of the day be an unfaithful mirror, the stage 
 must be held to give more truly " the body of the time." 
 Shakspeare's adage, indeed, has itself been questioned latterly, 
 because of a still unexplained phenomenon which presented 
 itself at the period of the French Revolution. While the reign 
 of terror brooded over the city, with the guillotine at full work, 
 and spies everywhere ferreting out victims, Daphnis and 
 Phillis, with the shepherd's pipe, and the pastoral ballad, held 
 possession of the theatres. M. Villemain sees in it a consistent 
 trait of the manners of the times ; a part of the same social 
 lie, which mingled the jargon of humanity with deeds of 
 ferocity. But those who are at all acquainted with the stage 
 know well, how sedulously it obeys its routine habits and 
 traditions. The stage but slowly adapts itself to sudden 
 changes in society. Such changes must have assumed some- 
 thing of a permanent form before they tell upon the acted 
 drama. The revolution, at the period spoken of, had not 
 changed the habits and character of the people. A whole 
 people's taste is not quickly altered ; and so the audiences, 
 who flocked to the theatres, were still simply attracted by their old 
 habitual enjoyments. As to the points we are about to notice 
 in the modern French stage, our conclusion will not, perhaps, 
 be uncharitably worded, if we express it thus : The modern 
 plays acting upon the Boulevards, bespeak immorality cer- 
 tainly, but of the kind naturally engendered by a revolution, 
 followed by years of military success. A generation, whose 
 mind was nurtured upon tales of domestic horror, and of battles 
 abroad, would naturally seek for entertainments highly wrought 
 highly coloured, highly impassioned. It could have little taste 
 for gentle exhibitions of domestic virtue. It could hardly have 
 refined taste in any way. An Alexandre Dumas, or a Frdd^ric 
 Melchior Souli^, would for a time please such a people ; and, 
 
 170 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 doing so, would further debauch their taste. Stronger and 
 coarser food would be sought, and even the ruffian Antony be 
 thrust aside for Robert Macaire. This latter creation merits a 
 word of notice here. 
 
 Robert Macaire is the name of the hero of a poor melodrama, 
 entitled, " L'Auberge des Adrets." It was played, many years 
 ago, at one of the Boulevard theatres, and revived at the Porte 
 St. Martin after the revolution of 1830, when there was a rage 
 for romantic melodramas ; notwithstanding which, the Porte 
 St. Martin public coldly received the revived play, and it was 
 about to be withdrawn. The day following the first unfortunate 
 representation, the principal actor, Frederic Lemaitre, chanced 
 to be walking along the Boulevards, when he was struck with 
 the appearance and costume of a round, fat, shabby, half 
 fashionable, and, although poverty stricken, most pompous 
 individual, who, with the air of a gourmet examining the carte 
 of Verey, selected from an open stall a slice of cake, for which 
 he paid two sols, but paid them with a royal air. What a 
 glorious r61e, thought Frederic Lemaitre ! and immediately the 
 idea occurred to him to play the poor vulgar convict, Robert 
 Macaire, as a comic part, moulded upon the dignified purchaser 
 of the slice for two sols. The piece was repeated a second 
 night ; and when Robert Macaire, arriving at the Auberge des 
 Adrets, questions the gar9on as to the capabilities of his larder, 
 concluding with the magnificent command to bring him a 
 pennyworth of cheese, the house shouted with delight, and 
 " Robert Macaire" became so much the rage of the day, as to 
 supplant the " Tartuffe," in the designation of hypocrites. 
 This Robert Macaire is a convict escaped from the Bagnes. 
 He laughs at sensibility, and thinks remorse and regret 
 excellent jokes. When about to commit murder, and unsus- 
 piciously asked where he was going, he replies, with an air of 
 sentimental pathos, that " he is about to stroll into the fields, to 
 breathe the fresh air of the morning, and listen to the warbling 
 of the birds." In fact, while his heart is of steel, and his 
 
 171 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 conscience seared as with a hot iron, his face is radiant with 
 mirth, his step elastic, his eye joyously working, his lip sneering, 
 and his tongue dropping pleasantries, too oily to be caustic. 
 He is Mephistopheles and Grimaldi. And all this the v/ork of 
 an actor— an actor, we say, of real genius — upon most dry and 
 vulgar materials. The French public, accustomed to moody 
 villains, and ranting villains, and even to cold and sneering 
 villains, had never yet seen the devil incarnate, and they 
 welcomed his appearance with rapture. People then exclaimed, 
 " Oh, how profoundly immoral is the Parisian public ! " As 
 Miss Edgeworth's Scotch steward so often repeats, " It may be 
 doubted." Robert was a parody and a reality : a parody upon 
 the villains of Dumas, and a reality in his selfishness, his 
 egotism, his subtlety, his hypocrisy, his superb manner, and his 
 pretension to pastoral sensibility. Hence it is that the name, 
 Robert Macaire, sticks to the modern rascal. He is Tartuffe 
 no longer. For the depths of modern villainy, a greater villain 
 was wanted ; and why continue to stigmatise the sacerdotal 
 form of hypocrisy, at a time when with influence the means of 
 hypocrisy were gone ? But there remained the hard usurer, 
 the unscrupulous man of the world, who debauches and ruins, 
 and gilds over the sepulchre. What name for him ? Why 
 Robert Macaire ! 
 
 Successful novelty once more called forth imitators, and even 
 Balzac essayed to rival the creation of Frederic Lemaitre. He 
 produced " Vautrin." In this r61e Frederic had several changes 
 of dress, and in one he Macaired a high personage. The 
 police interfered, and " Vautrin " was stopped, nor has 
 " Robert Macaire " himself been since permitted to appear. 
 There yet remains another phase of the feeling which called 
 for that sort of entertainment whose history we are endeavouring 
 to give, and that is the weariness succeeding excitement in all 
 its moods. It cannot be called reaction. The time, it may be, 
 is not yet arrived for that. It is the complete possession 
 of the citadel by the enemy, and the silent acceptance of the 
 
 172 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 subjugation, We come now to this ; and we take " Une 
 Chaine " as a startling proof, that in this state of indifference 
 the distinctions between moral right and wrong have already 
 so far disappeared, as to confound the sharp observation of even 
 such a man as M. Scribe. 
 
 The Chain which gives its title to the comedy, is the bond 
 in which the hero of the piece is held by a married woman. 
 Emmeric d'Albret is a young musical composer who — bred 
 up in the provinces, and full of genius and love's influence, 
 the latter inspired by a fair cousin, the daughter of a wine 
 merchant — comes to Paris to seek his fortune. He is in 
 want of the aid of an author, who will undertake to adapt a 
 libretto to his music ; but not one of eminence can be 
 induced to risk the required labour. One evening he finds 
 himself in an elegant salon on the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 to which his powers as a pianist have introduced him, 
 and where he has the good fortune to attract the notice 
 of the young and beautiful Countess de St. Geran, the idol 
 of the fashionable world. He relates to her his difficulties about 
 the libretto, when she immediately beckons to an author, who 
 is none other, as the reader is given to understand, than 
 M. Scribe himself, and who draws the following really modest 
 outline of his own career. " He was a mere man of letters, who 
 had learned to make by his pen an independence with which he 
 was reproached ! He had not, moreover, an appearance of 
 genius, in an age when all the world lays claim to it ; he had 
 hardly talent ; but good fortune, and chance, willed his con- 
 tinued success through twenty years." From this author the 
 lady commands an opera, in which he is to think more of the 
 composer than of himself. He executes his task so well that 
 the opera is crowned with success, and the young composer, by 
 his music, wins his way to the heart of his patroness. But, 
 alas ! when the comedy opens, he is already weary of his chain, 
 of which she who holds it cannot afford to undo one link, for 
 attachment has grown to perfect fondness. Admiral St. Geran, 
 
 173 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the husband of the lady, is her senior by some twenty years, 
 and, as the marriage was not one of love, he for a time treated 
 her with coldness : a coldness which is made her excuse, and is 
 by a French audience accepted as such, notwithstanding sub- 
 sequent endeavours on the poor admiral's part, earnestly to 
 atone for his former indifference. The admiral is a kind of 
 French Sir Lucius O'Trigger, and the author, through the 
 excellence of the French style of comic acting, has the pleasure 
 to see his own idea verified ; a thing which rarely occurs in the 
 case of Sheridan's hero. With certain eccentricities not un- 
 becoming a seaman, and a disposition to fight duels, the 
 admiral is still a polished gentleman. According to his own 
 account, he is "one of the jus/e milieu, a peer of France, and 
 a married man, all in our time held equally ridiculous." In 
 the management of this character Scribe displays more than his 
 usual tact and dexterity, for while he is placed in the usually 
 half-ludicrous position of a betrayed husband, blind to a dis- 
 grace which is clear to every one about him, he is yet kept 
 respectable in the eyes of the audience. At this time the cousin 
 Aline has arrived in Paris, accompanied by her father; and 
 Emmeric seeks to break his chain, and marry his first love. It 
 is Admiral St. Geran himself, who, ignorant of the attachment 
 of the cousins for each other, and feeling a strong interest in 
 Emmeric's welfare, thinks it would be well for a poor artist to 
 obtain a wealthy young wife ; whereupon, before he consults 
 Emmeric, he betakes himself to win the consent of Aline's 
 father. Monsieur Clerambeau. The latter refuses. But M. 
 Scribe has a capital claptrap expedient in store. Three of 
 M. Clerambeau's ships were once seized by the English, but 
 Captain St. Geran rescued them and brought them safe into 
 port, and surely after that a Bourdeaux merchant could not 
 refuse him any request. He yields consent upon the strict 
 condition that Emmeric will renounce any serious attachment 
 for another woman, should such exist; and this consent and 
 the accompanying condition, M. de St. Geran bears himself to 
 
 '74 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Emmeric. The unsuspecting admiral, dissatisfied with the cold 
 reception which his wife, as he supposes, gives Emmeric, begs 
 she will receive him with more attention ; and this passes so 
 gravely, that no one thinks of sneering at the husband for a 
 dupe, or at the lady for a hypocrite. Emmeric is led in and 
 presented to Madame St. Geran ; to " his Louisa," for whom he 
 has just been to engage a box at the opera, where he is to sit 
 beside her. They are left together : and then follows a scene 
 of tenderness upon her part, falsely coloured with the charms 
 of innocence, upon his of moody sullenness, for he has resolved 
 to break the chain. He will not go to the opera that evening. 
 But the threat of a rival levelled against himself is communi- 
 cated to him ; so not to seem afraid, he will go ; but it will be 
 for the last time. His confidant in this liaison is an attorney, 
 who bears the heroic name of Hector. This Homeric child of 
 romance has learned the before-named threat of insult, and 
 while Emmeric is embarassed as to his line of conduct, M. de 
 St. Geran presents himself, and to him the attorney submits, 
 under feigned names, a statement of this difficult process of 
 love and honour. The admiral takes, of course, the spirited 
 side of the question, and, bamboozled to his face by attorney 
 Hector, is still, by the cleverness of the author, kept respectable 
 in the eyes of the audience. The admiral decides that Em- 
 meric ought not to accompany a lady with whom he is resolved 
 to break ; but as he ought to go to the opera, lest his rival 
 should attribute his absence to fear, he must go with him 
 (M. de St. Geran) and sit in his box. Thus is the unfortunate 
 hero fixed in the very position from which he had essayed to 
 escape. The day is now appointed for signing the contract of 
 marriage, and the unhappy Louisa de St. Geran goes to the 
 house, where the act is to take place. Her presence is regarded 
 as a piece of gracious condescension suggested by her generous 
 husband. Once more she is alone with Emmeric, and once 
 more there is a scene of tenderness, with nothing to mark a 
 suspicion of impurity. In the meantime a letter from the 
 
 •75 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 before-mentioned rival, addressed to Madame de St. Geran, 
 falls into the hands of her husband, who calls him out and 
 wounds him : but not until the conscience-stricken Emmeric 
 has been thrown into a fever of unhappiness by St. Geran's 
 message to attend him with pistols, which he mistakes for a 
 challenge to himself. The countess, similarly mistaken, flies 
 in search of Emmeric. She discovers him in his apartment, at 
 the very moment that Aline, followed by her father, is upon the 
 stairs. He urges her to take refuge in a cabinet. M. Cleram- 
 beau, whose mind is still haunted by the impression of some 
 clandestine attachment, has his attention attracted to the 
 cabinet, into which he is entering, when suddenly stopped. 
 Opposition confirms him in his intention to discover the hidden 
 secret, and he threatens, unless satisfied, to annul the contract. 
 The admiral at this moment arrives, and again is made arbi- 
 trator of a diflSculty in which he himself is unconsciously 
 interested. He proposes to examine the cabinet himself ; but 
 while the confounded Emmeric is seeking to parry this, Cler- 
 ambeau rushes past him, and when he returns, declares that he 
 has seen nobody. In that case, the marriage may at once take 
 place, exclaims M. de St. Geran. But no, no. Some mysteri- 
 ous difficulty presents itself to M. Clerambeau, which the latter 
 keeps honourably to himself. St. Geran and Emmeric retire, 
 and Madame St. Geran is freed by Clerambeau. At the feet of 
 the provincial wine-dealer this lady, young, beautiful, and 
 accomplished, throws herself ; and her prayer is, not that he 
 will not betray her, but that he will refuse his daughter to 
 Emmeric in marriage, and so deprive Aline of her lover. But 
 a deeper mortification awaits the unhappy woman. She is 
 doomed to learn at last that her too favoured protege hates her. 
 The scales fall from her eyes, she withdraws her refusal to 
 accompany her husband to Martinique, and the marriage 
 between Emmeric and Aline is solemnized. 
 
 Brief as we have made this sketch, let us reduce it to a 
 closer and more tangible point. The interest of the audience 
 
 176 
 
ENGLISH CHARACTER ON FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 is fixed upon a married lady of rank, who chooses to commit 
 adultery with a musician : generally speaking, by far the least 
 mentally endowed of the artist class. Her crime is invested 
 with the charms of a spontaneous, unreflecting, innocent 
 affection ; so much so, that when the object upon whom it is 
 fixed, already wearies of his chain, declares that he hates her, 
 a murmur of indignation marks the direction of the spectators' 
 sympathies. We speak from knowledge of the fact. Every 
 one knows of this liaison except the husband, and all combine 
 to keep him in ignorance ; but no one seems to dream that the 
 slightest guilt marks the connexion, nor are they ashamed of 
 the subordinate parts which they play in its encouragement. 
 Nay, the good honest provincial merchant, who approaches the 
 licentious capital with dread, readily bestows his daughter's 
 hand upon the man who has deceived the good and gallant 
 friend that had saved himself from ruin. In all this there is no 
 indecency in the broad sense of the word, but there is much of 
 that thorough indelicacy which is the sure attendant upon a dull 
 moral sense. Does the presence of these in a play from the 
 pen of the most popular of living dramatic writers, exhibited 
 upon the boards of the most classic theatre, demonstrate a vice 
 in the social state of society ? or do a careless people seek to be 
 amused without reflecting upon the means, provided only they 
 are novel .? Perhaps, after all, this latter question suggests the 
 true solution. In either case, Scribe is as bad a teacher of 
 morals as he is an unwise and unsafe illustrator of history. It 
 will be said that he does not aspire to be either. If so, let him 
 remove his enervating pictures of an ill drawn and worse 
 imagined state of society from beside the rich comedy of 
 Molifere, whose joyous mirth, not over-nice neither, no more 
 shocks the delicacy of those that witness it, than would, to use 
 the illustration of Sterne, " the sprawlings of a naked infant." 
 Let Scribe return to the Gymnase, now under the ban of the 
 displeasure of the authors' society. Let him fix again in some 
 new combination his never-changing personages. The old 
 N.s.B. 177 N 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 colonel of the empire ; the rich young widow ; the banker ; the 
 gallant sea lieutenant ; and the half-sentimental heiress. In his 
 hands these are " marionettes" to be shifted about at his pleasure : 
 without character, colour, or physiognomy, it is true, but exciting 
 curiosity by varying changes of position, and still appearing to 
 talk from themselves, though it be but the author's voice which is 
 heard in the one unchanged tone, cutting his jokes upon the 
 passing occurrences of the day. In this light walk of the drama, 
 M. Scribe could not do much harm. The amount that he ever 
 did or might do, is accurately summed up by the writer of the 
 " Galerie des Contemporains illustres, par un homme de rien."* 
 
 " Having said that there is no poison in the pieces of M. Scribe, I do 
 not mean to gainsay my assertion — no ! They do not contain this 
 strong poison which kills at once, but they are charged with that sort 
 of sentimental opium which, distilled in petty doses, undermines 
 strength, and disposes the heart to dangerous capitulations. While 
 avoiding an air of over-rigid puritanism, I must say that we live in a state 
 of moral apathy, in producing of which M. Scribe has had no share. 
 Admitting his innocence in this respect, it must still be declared that 
 he has pushed quite far enough his system of toleration in the affairs 
 of the heart. Having already opened a thousand little charming 
 channels, through which to slip from the true to the false — having 
 created a thousand little delicate shades, which form so skilful a 
 gradation, that the eye fails to separate black from white, good from 
 evil^ — he must now advance further, and carry into the affairs of life a 
 desolating doubt and unexhaustless raillery in place of his former 
 playfulness, and its accommodating mode of compromise. " 
 
 We apprehend that in " Une Chaine," presented since M. 
 Scribe was hung up in the Authors' Gallery, the sentimental 
 opium is more largely distilled, the shades of gradation more 
 difficult to seize, the eye more confounded. M. Scribe has 
 become more grave, and his gravity and poison are spread over 
 five acts instead of two : in every respect changes for the worst. 
 
 * It is much to say, in praise of the writer under this signature, that 
 in drawing the likeness of the Duke of Wellington for his gallery, he 
 has painted that great man with a precision, impartiality, and justice, 
 such as could hardly have been expected from a Frenchman writing 
 under the influence of excited public opinion. 
 
 ■ 78 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 By EUGENE SUE. 
 
 The royal personages who figure in the Scott romances are 
 among the most charming, if not real, of the characters which 
 the delightful novelist has introduced to us. He was, if we 
 mistake not, the first romantic author who dealt with kings and 
 princes familiarly. Charles and Louis are made to laugh 
 before us as unconcernedly as schoolboys ; Richard takes his 
 share of canary out of the cup of Friar Tuck; and the last 
 words we hear from James are, that the cockaleeky is growing 
 cold. What is it that pleases us in the contemplation of these 
 royal people so employed ? Why are we more amused with 
 the notion of a king on the broad grin, than with the hilarious- 
 ness of a commoner.' That mingling of grandeur and 
 simplicity, that ticklish conjunction of awe and frivolity, are 
 wonderfully agreeable to the reader ; and we are all charmed 
 to know how heroes appear in the eyes of their valets de 
 chambre. 
 
 The drama, of course, was not slow to seize upon the 
 means of popularity which the introduction of royal characters 
 ensures ; and. as tragedy delighted in former days to describe 
 the crimes and sorrows of the owners of thrones and sceptres, 
 comedy and farce have made free with their eccentricities and 
 foibles ; and we have had on our own stage Charles XII. in- 
 ducing Mr. Listen to marry, Frederick the Great presiding over 
 a love intrigue, and a score of other great potentates employed 
 in no more dignified way. 
 
 The French have carried this style of romance almost as far 
 
 179 N 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 as possible, and have, especially of late years, introduced us to 
 a number of queens regnant, visionary empresses, and grand 
 duchesses of German states, involved in a number of comic 
 love-intrigues, and treated just as familiarly as the simplest 
 soubrette. Last winter, for instance, you might see two pieces 
 of a night at the Palais Royal Theatre, in one of which the 
 Empress Catherine was in love with a corporal of her guard, 
 while in a second, a queen of Portugal was desperately amour- 
 ach^e of an humble captain of dragoons. At the Comic 
 Opera there was another queen of Portugal and another love- 
 intrigue, in M. Scribe's piece of the "Diamans de la Couronne." 
 At the Th^itre Fran9ais, in the same indefatigable writer's 
 comedy of the " Verre d'Eau," her late Majesty Queen Anne (as 
 our readers may more fully have observed in a former part of 
 this Review) was laying bare the secrets of her heart in the 
 same easy way ; and at the Vaudeville, Mons. Arnal was just 
 married to a reigning princess of Baden, and the audience 
 were convulsed with laughter at the jocular perplexities of their 
 serene highnesses. 
 
 Such a decided exhibition of the public taste was not likely 
 to be lost upon a gentleman of M. Eugfene Sue's extreme 
 cleverness, and we owe to it, as we fancy, the chief character 
 of the singular novel before us. " The public likes princes en 
 deshabille. Let us give them one," says our novelist, " who shall 
 be as striking as Haroun Alraschid ; who shall be as majestic 
 as Apollo, and as vulgar as a commis-voyageur ; who shall lead 
 us, in his august company, from the sublime to the familiar, 
 and from the ridiculous to the terrible. Let us mingle together 
 the highest and the lowest of mankind in a confusion so 
 amazing, and find such virtues in vice, such vices in virtue, as 
 never novel-reader or writer has yet had the sense to discover. 
 We know our simple public, what its rank is, and what its 
 amount of intelligence; it loves to indulge its appetite for 
 wonder ; it is as far removed from the society of princes and 
 grandees, as it is from that of murderers and convicts j let us 
 
 1 80 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 bring high and low together in a tale, and keep our readers in 
 a perpetual delight of breathless terror. 
 
 "And as in the novels of our compeers, Soulie, Dumas, and 
 the rest, the nation has been entertained with accounts of a 
 particular vice, until really the descriptions of it interest no 
 longer, and apologies for the infidelity of wives actually provoke 
 yawns and ennui, in place of tears and sympathy; let us, in the 
 intrigues which it may be necessary for our purpose to introduce 
 into our narrative, take the virtuous side. Let all our heroines 
 be modest, and only outraged so much as shall be necessary to 
 provoke compassion for their fate. This at least has not been 
 essayed in French romance since the new school was founded, 
 and on this principle we may manage to excite the reader's feel- 
 ings, even while we are preaching the sternest virtue; and, while 
 writingsentiments that_ would do honour to asaint,we may make a 
 book quite as wicked as any reasonable novel-reader can desire." 
 
 In a word, we believe " Mathilde," and the romance before us, 
 by the same ingenious author, to be quite as much works of 
 calculation and trade, as any bale of French goods that is 
 shipped for a foreign market, and has been prepared to suit the 
 wants and catch the eyes of customers abroad : such for in- 
 stance, as new fashions for the ladies, cases of claret and 
 champagne for the planters, and a pretty assortment of glass 
 beads, red cloth, and hatchets, for the savages with whom the 
 merchant proposes to trade. Of all the literary merchants in 
 France, M. Sue is unquestionably the most successful : he has 
 kept the town with him for three years. While Soulie has been 
 obliged to subside into the minor papers, while even Balzac has 
 grown wearisome with his monotonous thrummings on the 
 cracked old string, while Dumas has become common, and his 
 fiftieth volume of " Impressions de Voyage " appears to impress 
 nobody, — all the world is still eager to know the fate of M. Sue's 
 heroes and heroines, and the happy inventor of those personages 
 is rewarded for his labours, it is said, at the rate of three francs 
 a line, 
 
 J8i 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Three francs a line ! Think of that, ye poor scribes in Eng- 
 land, who get but one thirtieth part of that same sum for the 
 produce of your brains ! Every feuilleton of " Mathilde " in 
 the D'ebats contains many hundred lines : these feuilletons 
 appear many times in a week : how often, then, in a year ? 
 Then there is the copyright afterwards ; so that every volume 
 is a little fortune. Nor should this point have been mentioned 
 at all, but that we are perfectly sure it is the main point with 
 M. Sue ; who, so long as he receives three francs per line, will 
 be pretty careless as to the rest, we take it ; and will not be 
 deterred by any scruples of taste or conscience, or be induced 
 to alter his course from any desire for reputation, or indeed for 
 any consideration whatever, unless, of course, that oi four 
 francs per line. 
 
 He is, then, as we fancy, a quack, certainly ; but one of the 
 cleverest quacks now quacking ; and a great deal more amusing 
 than many dullards of his trade, who have a perfect belief in 
 themselves, and outrage art, sense, and style, out of their con- 
 fidence that their stupid exaggerations are the result of a vast 
 imagination and an undoubted genius. Appearing as the work 
 before us does, in almost daily chapters, in the Debats news- 
 paper, the concluding sentence of each section is a mark of 
 extreme ingenuity on the writer's part. No story-teller on the 
 point of sending round his hat for contributions among the 
 audience, ever stopped in his narrative more dexterously. 
 One must hear what is to come at any cost : and so, with 
 Monsieur Sue, the man who has read the Debats of Tuesday, 
 must read the Debats of Wednesday. The heroine is just 
 carried off and thrust gagged into a hackney-coach ; the hero 
 is plunged into a vault, and the water has just risen up to his 
 neck ; the monster is on the point of being punished for, or 
 being triumphant in, his favourite crime. Read we must, and 
 in spite of ourselves; and the critic (for the truth must out, 
 that critics are mortal), though compelled for conscience sake 
 to abuse this book, is obliged honestly to confess that he has 
 
 j8? 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 read every single word of it, and with the greatest interest, too. 
 Here we are, in company with his Royal Highness the Grand 
 Duke, assisting at the most magnificent assembly of the beau 
 monde ; we accompany him in his disguise into the society of 
 the most prodigious rascals; we tremble for his royal high- 
 ■ ness's life, while at the same time we have the greatest 
 confidence in his consummate valour and strength ; and, 
 finally, though we know all this is sheer folly, bad taste, and 
 monstrous improbability, yet we continue to read to the 
 last page. 
 
 It is only then that the reader pauses to take breath ; and, 
 considering over the subject which has amused him, mayhap 
 feels rather ashamed of himself for having been so excited and 
 employed. What right has a reasonable being to spend precious 
 hours over this preposterous, improbable, impossible tale? 
 Did you not know, all the while you read, that every one of the 
 characters in that book were absurd caricatures ? Do you not 
 blush to have been interested by brutal tales of vice and blood ? 
 All this the repentant reader acknowledges, and cries out 
 " Mea culpa ; " but try him with a novel the next holiday, and 
 see whether he will fall into the same error or not ? More 
 philosophers than one would stop to see Punch, if they were 
 sure nobody saw them : and there's many a philanthropist has 
 seen a boxing match, from beginning to end. 
 
 With regard to the work before us, we find, after laying down 
 the first volume of the six that have already appeared (how 
 many more are to come, the author himself does not probably 
 know), we find, we say, that we have been guilty of being 
 interested in a history, of which, chapter by chapter, the 
 following is an accurate summary: 
 
 I. After warning his readers, in a solemn preface, of the 
 dreadful secrets which he is about to lay bare to them, our 
 author at once introduces us to three of the chief personages 
 of his history ; and the scene is in the dirty court of the house 
 
 183 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 of a receiver of stolen goods, in which pleasant locality an 
 appropriate incident occurs. 
 
 A poor young creature of seventeen, who, for the sweetness 
 of her voice, is called La Goualeuse, or the Singer, and for 
 the innocence and beauty of her looks, Fleur de Marie, flies 
 into the court, from the pursuit of a white-haired, red-whiskered, 
 red-eyed ruffian, known to his friends and at the galleys, where 
 he passed fifteen years, under the terrible name of the Chourineur, 
 the Stabber, or Knifer. The chourineur wants the goualeuse 
 to treat him to drink ; but the latter refusing, the stabber 
 rushes after her to beat her ; and has just seized her, and is 
 about to put his threat into execution, when a young fellow 
 steps opportunely forward, and puts himself before the goualeuse, 
 in a boxing attitude. The two gentlemen proceed at once to 
 fisticuffs. 
 
 The " milling match " is described with great accuracy and 
 gusto. The brute strength of the stabber has no chance 
 against the science of the stranger, who beats him most com- 
 pletely ; after which (for though the stabber was about to beat 
 the poor young girl, and has committed a murder or two in his 
 time, he is as good-natured and honest a kind of creature as 
 ever lived), after which, quite delighted at the elegant manner 
 in which his opponent has overcome him, the stabber gratefully 
 accepts an invitation to supper with his conqueror, who likewise 
 proposes the same repast to the goualeuse. 
 
 They go accordingly to supper at the house of the ogress. 
 
 II. The Ogress is the landlady of a tavern in the cit^; 
 which, though it has a White Rabbit for a sign, is no more 
 called by that name, than the landlady is by her paternal one. 
 The White Rabbit is called by the frequenters of the place, the 
 " Tapis Franc," which cannot be translated into comprehensible 
 English, but would be called, in slang language, the boozing 
 ken. 
 
 Here several guests were assembled : viz. — 
 
 I, A young thief drinking brandy. 
 
 184 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 2, Two murderers at supper. 
 
 3, A spy, who watches the two murderers, and presently goes 
 out, leaving our friends to sit down to supper. 
 
 Being at supper (over a dish made of " fowls' giblets, pie- 
 crust, fishes'-tails, cutlet-bones, cheese, vegetables, woodcocks'- 
 ' heads, fry, savoy-cakes, and salad" — delectable repast!) — our 
 three friends proceed to relate their histories. 
 
 III. The goualeuse begins. She is the daughter of she 
 knows not whom. When a very little girl she fell into the 
 hands of a dreadful woman, called the chouette : a cruel, 
 hook-nosed, one-eyed woman, who, while she sold fried pota- 
 toes on the Pont-Neuf, employed her little protdg^e in the 
 vending of barley- sugar in the same locality. If the goualeuse 
 sold ten sous' worth of barley-sugar, she received on going 
 home a crust of bread for her supper ; if she could not dispose 
 of goods to that amount, she received a beating and no supper. 
 She oftener received the beating than the supper. 
 
 Tired of this tyranny (whereof we have no space to give the 
 details), the goualeuse, who was a spirited little creature, one 
 day actually ate up her commodity of barley-sugar before her 
 mistress's eyes, and having that night been punished by that 
 personage (the chouette pulled out one of the goualeuse' s teeth, 
 with a threat to continue the treatment daily), the goualeuse 
 determined to run away. 
 
 She ran away. She was taken up as a vagrant, sent to a 
 house of detention as having no friends or passport, confined 
 at the house of detention until she was sixteen, when she 
 was told to go and get her own living, and received a little 
 capital of 300 francs, the produce of her labour while in the 
 house. 
 
 This sum of money the young woman spent very carelessly, 
 and having given away her last fifty francs to a poor woman in 
 distress (who was afterwards murdered by her husband), the 
 goualeuse had no other resource but shame, and became the 
 creature of the ogress in whose house she lived. With all 
 
 185 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 this, and although she had been accustomed to drinking, and 
 
 although she had been educated in a prison, and although she 
 
 .earned her livelihood in the way indicated, perhaps the world 
 
 \never contained a more lovely, fascinating, delicate, sweet 
 
 jcreature, than the goualeuse. 
 
 IV. It is now the turn of the knifer or chourineur to tell his 
 story. He, too, was the son of mystery. His early days he 
 spent in sleeping under the bridges and about the limekilns. 
 He then became an assistant to the knackers, or horse-killers, 
 at Montfau9on, and naturally of an ardent temperment, he 
 speedily conquered his first repugnance tn the killing of horses, 
 and "knifed, and knifed, and knifed," until he delighted in 
 blood. After his day's labour he used to feed on a horse- 
 steak : not the steak of a horse killed by himself or his friends, 
 for that kind of meat is sold to the restaurateurs, but of an 
 animal that died a natural death. All his joy was knifing, 
 and he grew so savage and ferocious that he became too 
 violent even for the knackers, who ended by dismissing 
 him. 
 
 He had but one resource — to go into the army. He did so : 
 and might probably in better times have directed his knifing 
 to some honourable purpose, but there was no war, and his 
 heroism consequently took an unhealthy turn. One day his 
 sergeant began to cane him, on which, seizing his knife, he 
 knifed the sergeant : he knifed the privates : he knifed until 
 he was finally overpowered, and, brought before a court-martial, 
 was condemned to fifteen years at the galleys. 
 
 He passed the prescribed time at that nursery of morality. 
 But though a murderer by taste, and though his education was 
 even worse than that of the goualeuse, he retained always the 
 highest principles of honour, and was in fact, as we have stated, 
 the most generous and kind-hearted of men. 
 
 V. The young man who gave the knifer the beating, now 
 tells his story. He is, says he, a fan-painter by trade; but 
 this is only his joking. He is, in fact, no other than His 
 
 1 86 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Royal Highness Gustavus Rodolph, Grand Duke of Gerolstein, 
 residing at Paris, under the name of Count de Duren. 
 
 [Whilst he is talking re-enter spy, with Bow-street officers : 
 spy points out the two murderers. Combat between 
 murderers and police. Exeunt police and murderers, 
 one of whom, refusing to walk, is carried to a hackney- 
 coach. 
 They are no sooner gone but a lady and gentleman arrive. 
 The lady has a hooked nose, a wicked face, and one green 
 eye. " The gentleman was not above five feet two or three 
 inches in height : his head, of an enormous size, was sunk 
 between two large, high, powerful, fleshy shoulders, which were 
 clearly seen under the folds of his blouse : his arms were long 
 and muscular, his hands short, and covered with hair to the 
 finger-tips : his legs were a little bent, but his enormous calves 
 gave evidence of athletic strength. As for his face, nothing 
 can be imagined more frightful than it was. It was scarred all 
 over with deep, livid cicatrices. The corrosive action of vitriol 
 had swelled his lips, the cartilages of his nose had been cut, 
 of which two shapeless holes replaced the nostrils. His eyes, 
 very bright, very little, very round, gleamed with ferocity ; his 
 forehead, flattened like that of a tiger, disappeared under a cap 
 of red fur, which looked like the mane of a monster." 
 
 This gentleman called at the galleys, the Maitre d'Ecole (on 
 account of his polite manners and learning), was in fact a 
 person of very good birth, who, condemned to the Bagne for 
 life, on account of a murder he had committed, had managed 
 to escape, and in order to prevent all further recognition, had 
 smeared his face with vitriol, and cut the cartilages of his 
 nose. As for his lady, she was no other than the chouette, 
 who recognised presently her poor goualeuse ; and the Maitre 
 d'Ecole taking a fancy to the young woman, orders her to come 
 home with him instanter. 
 
 She flies for rescue to her former preserver. The Maitre 
 d'Ecole puts himself at the door in a boxing attitude, and a 
 
 187 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 serious combat is just going to ensue, when a man appears at 
 the door over the shoulder of the Maitre d'Ecole, and says (in 
 English), " My lord Tom and Sarah are here." 
 
 Rodolph has only time to knock down the Maitre d'Ecole 
 and to disappear, when, 
 
 VI. Tom and Sarah arrive. Tom is Sir Thomas Seyton of 
 Halsbury. Sarah, his sister, is the Countess Sarah Macgregor. 
 In former days she had been privately married to Prince 
 Rodolph, then only hereditary prince of Gerolstein ; but the 
 marriage had been annulled, and the daughter that they had 
 had, had been carried off by Sarah, then lost, and supposed to 
 be dead. Sarah comes to the boozing ken, disguised as a man. 
 What does her ladyship want in such a place, and in such a 
 costume? She wants to know why Rodolph came to the 
 tavern I 
 
 VII. Going from the tavern (and serve them quite right) the 
 countess and Tom Seyton of Halsbury are robbed in the street 
 by the Maitre d'Ecole and the chouette, who ta ke from them 
 their money and papers. 
 
 Will you gain some more money ? asks Sarah with great pre- 
 sence of mind of the Maitre d'Ecole. He naturally assents. 
 Come then, says her ladyship, to a certain place, and I will tell 
 you what you are to do. 
 
 The place is appointed, the parties separate, and — the knifer, 
 who has heard every word of their conversation, jumps behind 
 the countess's hackney-coach, and is determined to know their 
 future proceedings. 
 
 VIII. Rodolph, resolved to rescue the goualeuse from her 
 degrading position, pays her debts to the ogress, and takes her 
 (after a slight interruption, IX.), in a hackney-coach (X.), to 
 (XL), a beautiful farm : where there is beautiful fruit, beautiful 
 fields, beautiful poultry, beautiful cows, and where, to her 
 indescribable joy, she is left with (XII.) Madame George. Be 
 happy for a while, poor Fleur de Marie ! put on a little pretty 
 country costume (that we may be sure is the first thing thought 
 
 'l88 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 of), milk the cows, feed the pouhry, water the flowers, and learn 
 your catechism from (XIV.) the excellent curate ! 
 
 A chapter (XIII.) containing a conversation between Rodolph 
 and his faithful attendant, Sir Walter Murph, we have omitted, 
 as not having much to do with the story. 
 
 XV. The very next day Rodolph meets the Maitre d'Ecole, 
 on whom he has a design. He proposes to the Maitre d'Ecole 
 to rob a house. The Maitre d'Ecole accedes to the proposal, 
 but suspecting his comrade (and it must be confessed with some 
 reason), vows not to lose sight of him till the deed is done. 
 They go (XVI.) to a tavern in the neighbourhood of the house, 
 an underground " cellar" in the Champs Elys^es. Rodolph has 
 managed meanwhile to make Sir Walter Murph aware of his 
 project. The house, in fact, is Rodolph's own, and his proposal 
 is to catch the schoolmaster there, and once in his power, to 
 get from him the pocket-book stolen from the countess, and 
 much further information. 
 
 XVII. The chouette goes to reconnoitre the house : all is so 
 safe, that the Maitre d'Ecole thinks he may have the robbing of 
 the house for himself : and therefore knocks down Rodolph into 
 
 XVIII. A cellar full of rats and water, in which he is just on 
 the point of drowning, when he is rescued by the knifer. 
 
 XIX. Rodolph is brought back to his own house, where he 
 recovers after a severe illness. 
 
 XX. The knifer relates how he has seized upon the school- 
 master, after a dreadful combat : and how he discovers the plot 
 against Rodolph. 
 
 XXI. Rodolph puts the schoolmaster's eyes out! 
 
 In the two remaining chapters of the volume, the prince, in 
 order to reward the faithful services of his friend, the knifer, 
 imagines a reward for him, and accordingly purchases a 
 butcher's shop, into which he inducts the chourineur : but after 
 killing the first sheep in his slaughterhouse, the knifer flings 
 down his knife — he will shed no more blood, he says : and the 
 prince, applauding his determination, sends him out to a farm 
 
 189 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in Algeria, where his courage, energy, and honesty, can be far 
 better employed. 
 
 As for the goualeuse, we need not tell any novel reader, that 
 she is the long lost daughter of the prince and the Countess 
 Sarah Macgregor : that must have been perceived by the com- 
 monest intelligence long ago. 
 
 There are five more volumes abounding in adventures : but of 
 these it will scarcely be necessary to give a r6sum6. We are 
 sometimes introduced to the very finest of fashionable life ; then 
 again we are carried into the porter's lodge of honest M. Pipelet, 
 whose tribulations are related with a comic force, which Monsieur 
 Paul de Kock himself could not surpass : we are taken to St. 
 Lazare, the woman's prison of Paris : into the garret of the 
 grisette : into the loft occupied by a starving family : and 
 finally, we are presented to a scoundrel, more scoundrelly even 
 than the Maitre d'Ecole, a monster of iron, whom our rescuing, 
 chastising angel of a Rodolph, no doubt, will overcome, ere the 
 work is brought to a conclusion. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that contrast and action are the merits 
 of this novel. It is a work indeed of no slight muscular 
 force. Murder and innocence have each other by the throat 
 incessantly, and are plunging, and shrieking, and writhing, 
 through the numberless volumes. Now crime is throttling 
 virtue, and now again virtue has the uppermost, and points her 
 bright dagger at the heart of crime. It is that exciting contest 
 between the white-robed angel of good and the black principle 
 of evil, which, as children, we have seen awfully delineated in 
 the galanty-show, under the personifications of the devil and the 
 baker. And the subject is interesting, let us say what we will : 
 if galanty-shows are now what they were some scores of years 
 since, that is : still is it a stirring and exciting theme. Some- 
 times it is the devil who disappears conquered out of the shining 
 disk, leaving the baker victorious : sometimes it is the baker, 
 who is hurled vanquished into the universal blackness, leaving the 
 
 190 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 fiend to shout his hideous song of triumph. Last Christmas, 
 no doubt, many hundred children sat in dark drawing-rooms, 
 and witnessed that allegorical combat, and clapped hands for 
 the baker, their favourite : and looked wistfully at each other 
 ■when the fight was over, and the whole room was awful and 
 'dark. 
 
 As with little unreflecting children, home for the holidays, in 
 jackets and sugar-loaf buttons ; so with those of whom the coat- 
 tails have grown and the stature has extended to six feet, more 
 or less. The old subjects intercut them ; the older they are, 
 perhaps, the better ; they do not care, in their leisure hours, to 
 be called upon to think too much ; their imaginations are, 
 for the most part, of a very simple, unsophisticated sort ; and 
 that galanty-show amuses them more than many a better thing 
 would. Depend upon it, a good play at Astley's, with plenty of 
 fighting, riding, and the old clowns uttering the old jokes, 
 interest them more than " Hamlet " ever did. It requires not 
 only some trouble, but some brain too, to understand 
 " Hamlet " : any body can understand a combat of six, or 
 Harlequin jumping through a clock-case. And provided the 
 combat is well combated, people are not too squeamish about 
 the dramatic propriety thereof. It lasted for ten minutes : it 
 was fought to martial music : it concluded (why, who can tell ? ) 
 with a grand blaze of blue and red lights, squibs, and 
 catherine-wheels : and it will be performed (under a thousand 
 different titles, and with more or less skill on the part of the 
 squib and scene makers), every evening, till further notice — for 
 hundreds and hundreds of years, no doubt: as long as men are 
 to be amused by theatres, or by novels. 
 
 Our author is one of the very best of play or novel wrights 
 that now exists in France or elsewhere ; and if he is so clever 
 as to see (one cannot help fancying so, at least) the outrageous 
 folly of the subjects he chooses, and to laugh secretly at the 
 public who applaud him, he yet knows his own interest a great 
 deal too well to allow his audience to see that he despises them 
 
 191 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and his work, and carries it on with excellent mock-gravity, and 
 an appearance of good faith. A man of his powers of mind 
 must see that his book is bad and vulgar ; that it contains sham 
 incidents (so to speak), sham terror, sham morality ; that it is a 
 g^oss, destestable, raw-head-and-bloody-bones caricature, fit to 
 frighten children with, unworthy of an artist ; but what then ? 
 He gets half-a-crown a line for this bad stuff, and has, one may 
 say with certainty, a hundred thousand readers every day. 
 Many a man and author has sold himself for far less. 
 
 As for the plot, it is scarcely worth while to examine its 
 construction, so absurdly and monstrously improbable is it. 
 Do reigning princes of consummate virtue and genius indulge 
 in freaks of this kind, and frequent thieves' boozing-kens. Do 
 Scotch countesses put on men's clothes, and walk the streets so 
 attired, without any reason? Would not a Scotch countess 
 desiring secrecy be far less remarkable in her natural muff and 
 tippet, than in a frock-coat and pantaloons ? And would her 
 ladyship plunge into a den of thieves, simply to know what 
 somebody else was doing there ? Would a clever thief, desirous 
 to escape notice, disfigure his face so monstrously, that all the 
 world must look at him for the monstrosity ? And would he, 
 by his preternatural hideousness, invite inquiry ? Are 
 murderers, after fifteen years of the galleys, commonly, 
 sometimes, ever, exceeding good fellows at bottom ? Are 
 young women, after (if possible) still worse an ordeal of prison 
 and crime, quite pure and angelic of heart .' And so delicate- 
 minded, that when restored to an honest and comfortable 
 position, they actually pine away at the thoughts of the life 
 which they formerly led .' Such characters are quite too absurd 
 to reason about, and such a plot passes all the bounds of 
 possibility. 
 
 To give such a story a moral tendency, is quite as absurd as 
 to invent it. We have no right to be interested with the 
 virtues of rufiianism, or to be called upon to sympathise with 
 innocent prostitution. A person who chooses to describe such 
 
 192 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 characters, should make us heartily hate them at once, as 
 Fielding did, whose indignation is the moral of his satire ; who 
 does not waste his kindly feelings by weeping over worthless- 
 ness; and who has been stigmatized as immoral in conse- 
 quence. The hearty English satirist did not write for ladies, 
 -to be sure ; but his coarseness is not near so dangerous as the 
 mock modesty of many another author, who makes rascals 
 bearable by sweetening them and perfuming them, and instructing 
 them how to behave in genteel company. The only good to 
 be got out of the contemplation of crime is abhorrence ; and 
 as the world is too squeamish to hear the whole truth (and the 
 world is right, no doubt), it is a shame only to tell the palatable 
 half of it. Pity for these rascals is surely much more indecent 
 than disgust; and the rendering them presentable for society, 
 the very worst service a writer can do it. 
 
 But here, and we shall not probably grudge it to him, a 
 French satirist has a certain advantage which, with our modest 
 public, an English novelist cannot possess. The former is 
 allowed to speak more freely than the latter ; and in conse- 
 quence, perhaps the best parts of M. Sue's book are the most 
 hideous, as where he describes the naked villainies of a certain 
 monstrous notary who figures in the latter volumes. There 
 can be no mistake about him : and the vigorous, terrible 
 description of the man is wholesome, though bitter. There is a 
 kind of approach to virtue in a good hearty negation of vice. 
 It is best, no doubt, to contemplate only the good ; and not to 
 be forced backwards, as it were, towards it, from a shrinking 
 fright and abhorrence, occasioned by some dreadful exhibition 
 of the opposite principle ; but at least let us have no mistake 
 between the one and the other, and not be led to a guilty 
 sympathy for villainy, by having it depicted to us as exceedingly 
 specious, agreeable, generous, and virtuous at heart. 
 
 For instance, with our friend the knifer, if he had not been a 
 dreadful murderer and rascal previously, we should never have 
 got the friendship for him that subsequently ensues ; and had 
 
 N.S.B. 193 o 
 
 f 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the goualeuse done her duty all her life as a spotless spinster, we 
 should have no particular compassion for her ; and if this be 
 true, it is their crimes which make us admire them ; that is (as we 
 have nothing for it but to admit), it is their crimes we admire. 
 
 However, we must come back to the point from which we set 
 out. In spite of all probability, and in spite of morality, and in 
 spite of better judgment, here are six volumes that any novel 
 reader who begins must read through. Although one knows 
 the author to be a quack, one cannot deny that he is a clever 
 fellow ; although the story is entirely absurd, yet it is extremely 
 interesting ; and although it may run on for half-a-dozen more 
 volumes, it is probable we shall read every one of them. 
 
 We subjoin an extract from the narrative, which may give an 
 idea of its character and style. 
 
 THE TAPIS FRANC AND ITS INMATES. 
 
 "The tavern called the Lapin Blanc is situated near the middle of 
 the Rue aux Feves. It occupies the ground floor of a tall house, to 
 which there is a public allee or entrance, vaulted and dark. Over the 
 door of this passage hangs an oblong lantern, with a cracked glass, on 
 which you read in red letters, ' Night Lodgings. ' 
 
 " The chourineur, the stranger, and the goualeuse, entered into this 
 tavern. 
 
 "It is a large, low room, with a smoky ceiling and black rafters ; 
 lighted up with the lurid red light of a bad lamp. The whitewashed 
 walls are covered with coarse designs, or sentences in the slang language 
 of the Bagne. The floor is beaten and muddy, and a quantity of straw 
 is placed by way of carpet before the comptoir, or bar of the ogress, 
 which stands to the right of the door, and underneath the lamp, 
 
 " Along each side of the room there are six tables, nailed at one end 
 to the wall, as are also the benches which accompany them. At the end 
 is a door leading to the kitchen, and on the right of the comptoir, 
 another door leading to the allee or passage which conducts to the 
 places where sleep may be had at three sous per night. 
 
 " And now a word or two with regard to the ogress and her guests. 
 
 " The ogress's name is Mother Ponisse, and her calling is triple. She 
 lets lodgings, she keeps the tavern, and she lets clothes to the miserable 
 women who swarm in this filthy quarter. 
 
 " Ihe ogress is about forty years old : a large, robust, high-coloured, 
 corpulent woman, and bearded somewhat on the chin. Her hoarse, 
 
 194 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 manly voice, her great arms, and heavy hands, give indications of no 
 common strength ; over her cap she wears an old red and yellow hand- 
 kerchief ; her old shawl crosses over her breast, and is tied at her back 
 in a knot ; and under the green woollen gown which she wears, you see 
 a couple of black sabots, a good deal burned by the chaufferette on 
 which she places her feet. Her face is copper-coloured, and inflamed 
 ' by the constant use of strong liquors. 
 
 "Her comptoir is covered with a plate of lead, on which stand several 
 wooden measures bound with iron, and some vessels of pewter ; and on 
 a shelf behind her stand several glass bottles, cast so as to represent 
 the figure of Napoleon. These bottles contain some horrible compound 
 liquors of green or rose colour, and going under the names of ' consola- 
 tion ' and ' parfait amour.' 
 
 " To conclude, a great black cat, with yellow eyes, is couched by the 
 ogress's side, and seems the familiar demon of the place. 
 
 " By a contrast so strange, that it would appear impossible, did not 
 one know what an impenetrable mystery the human mind is ; a twig of 
 ' buis de paques' (branches of box blessed at Easter in Catholic countries), 
 and bought at church by the ogress, was placed behind her, in the case 
 of an old cuckoo-clock. 
 
 " Two men of repulsive countenance, unshaven, and dressed almost in 
 rags, sat at one of the tables, and scarcely touched the broc of wine served 
 to them ; but were speaking together in a low, agitated tone of voice. 
 
 " One of them, especially, was extremely pale and livid, and was 
 continually pulling down over his face a sort of skull-cap he wore, He 
 kept his left hand almost always hid, and disguised it as much as 
 possible when called upon to use it. 
 
 " Further on sat a lad of scarcely sixteen, with a beardless, hollow, 
 worn, livid face, and lustreless eyes. His long black hair fell round his 
 neck ; and the lad, a type of precocious villainy, was smoking a short 
 pipe. With his back against the wall, his two hands in the pockets of 
 his blouse, his legs stretched along the bench, he never quitted his pipe 
 but to drink from a small can of brandy placed at his side. 
 
 "The other frequenters of the Tapis Franc offered nothing remark- 
 able. Their faces were either brutalized or ferocious, their gaiety gross 
 and licentious, their silence stupid or sombre. 
 
 " Such was the company assembled in the Tapis Franc at the 
 moment when the stranger, the chourineur, and the goualeuse entered. 
 
 " These three personages hold too important places in our history, and 
 the figures of each were too remarkable, to allow us to pass them over. 
 
 " The chourineur was a tall and athletic man, with hair exceedingly 
 fair — almost white ; thick eyebrows, and enormous whiskers of a bright 
 red. 
 
 195 O 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 '' Misery, exposure to cold and sun, the rude labours of the galleys 
 have bronzed his complexion to that sombre tint which is, one can 
 almost say, peculiar to the convict, 
 
 " In spite of his terrible surname, the features of this man rather 
 express brutal boldness than ferocity ; although the back part of his 
 head, very strongly developed, announces the predominance of the 
 brutal and sensual appetites. 
 
 " The chourineur wears an old blue blouse, and trousers of coarse 
 velvet, once green, but now scarcely to be distinguished from the coat 
 of mud which covers them. 
 
 " By a strange anomaly, the features of the goualeuse are of that 
 candid and angelical type which preserves its ideality even in the midst 
 of depravity ; as if the vices of the creature were unable to efface from 
 the countenance that noble imprint of beauty, which, on some privileged 
 beings, the Creator has bestowed. 
 
 " The goualeuse was sixteen years and a half old. 
 
 " The whitest and purest forehead in the world, surmounted a face of 
 a perfect oval ; a fringe of lashes so long that they curled a little, half 
 veiled her large blue eyes. The down of first youth velveted her round 
 and rosy cheek. The contour of her little purple mouth, of her straight, 
 fine nose, and of her dimpled chin, was of admirable beauty. On each 
 side of her smooth temples fell a plait of the finest blond hair, which 
 descended to the middle of her cheek, and then passing under her little 
 ear, of which one could perceive the lobe of rosed ivory, disappeared 
 under the folds of a large blue handkerchief of cotton stuff, tied over 
 her forehead. (This description, it must be confessed, fails wofuUy in 
 the English version ; but the phrases in French are by no means so 
 affected or outrageous as they appear in our language to be.) 
 
 " A coral necklace surrounded a neck of the most dazzling whiteness. 
 Her robe of brown stuff — a great deal too large— allowed one to perceive 
 how fine her waist was ; as supple and round as a cane. A poor little 
 orange shawl, with a green fringe, was crossed over her bosom. 
 
 " The charm of the goualeuse's voice had struck her unknown 
 defender. In fact, this voice was so sweet, harmonious, and thrilling, 
 that it had an extraordinary effect upon the society of knaves and aban- 
 doned women among whom this poor girl lived ; and they often asked 
 her to sing, and listened to her with delight, and had surnamed her the 
 Goualeuse, the Songstress 
 
 " The defender of the goualeuse (and we shall name the stranger 
 Rodolph) appeared to be thirty at the most. His light and active figure, 
 of a middle size and perfect proportion, did not seem to announce, at 
 first sight, the prodigious strength which be had displayed in his combat 
 with the athletic chourineur. 
 
 196 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 " It would have been difficult to assign any precise character to 
 Rodolph's physiognomy, which united in itself the strangest contrasts. 
 
 " His features were regularly beautiful, perhaps too beautiful for a 
 man. 
 
 " His pale and delicate complexion, his large brown eyes, almost 
 
 always half shut, and with a dark rim of azure round the lids, his care- 
 
 - less carriage, vacant and ironical smile, seemed to indicate a man, if 
 
 not blas6, at least with a constitution worn out or enfeebled by the early 
 
 vices of an opulent life. 
 
 " And yet that white and delicate hand had just overthrown a brigand, 
 one of the strongest and most terrible even in this quarter of brigands. 
 
 " Certain lines in Rodolph's forehead marked the profound thinker, 
 the essentially contemplative man : and yet there was a firmness about 
 the contour of the mouth, and a bold and imperious carriage of the 
 head, which showed the man of action : whose daring and physical 
 force always exercise an irresistible ascendency on the crowd. 
 
 " Sometimes his features bore the impress of a sad melancholy, when 
 an expression of the sweetest and gentlest pity would appear in his face- 
 At other moments, on the contrary, his look became severe, nay, wicked, 
 and his features expressed so much disdain and cruelty, that you would 
 not have supposed him capable of a gentle thought. The close of this 
 history will show what were the circumstances or ideas that excited in 
 his mind feelings so opposite. 
 
 " In his contest with the chourineur, Rodolph had exhibited neither 
 anger nor hate. His adversary was unworthy of him, and confiding in 
 his force, agility, and address, he had only shown contemptuous raillery 
 for the species of brute-beast whom he had overcome. 
 
 " To complete the portrait of Rodolph we must say that his hair was 
 of a light chestnut, of the same shade as were his nobly arched eye- 
 brows, and his fine and silky moustache ; his chin, which protruded 
 somewhat, was carefully shaved. 
 
 "The language and manner of these people, which he knew how to 
 assume with incredible ease, allowed him to pass quite unsuspected 
 among them. As they entered the tavern, the chourineur placed his 
 great hairy hand on Rodolph's shoulder, and said, 
 
 " ' Make way, boys, for my master. Yes, here is the master of the 
 chourineur ; it is only just now that he thrashed me ; so, gentlemen, if 
 any of you want a beating or a broken head, here is your man ! I will 
 back him against anybody, yes, against the maitre d'^cole himself, 
 who would find his master, lads, as I've just done.' 
 
 " At this speech the ogress, and every one of the guests in the Tapis 
 Franc, turned their eyes towards the conqueror of the chourineur, and 
 examined him with respectful awe ; some busily drew back their pots 
 
 197 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 and glasses to the end of the tables at which they were sitting, in order 
 to make room for Rodolph, should he propose to place himself by 
 them. Others went to the chourineur, and asked him in a low tone of 
 voice some particulars of the life of the unknown individual who had 
 just made so brilliant a d^but in society. 
 
 ' ' Even the ogress greeted Rodolph with one of her sweetest smiles ; 
 and with a monstrous and fabulous politeness, a politeness never before 
 heard of in the annals of the Lapin Blanc, she actually rose from her 
 place at the bar, and advancing towards Rodolph, respectfully asked 
 him what he and his friends would please to take ? This was an atten- 
 tion she never paid to the mattre d'ecole himself, that redoubtable 
 villain, who even made the chourineur tremble. 
 
 " One of the two ill-featured men whom we have mentioned (the 
 pale man who hid his left hand and always pulled his skull-cap over 
 his eyes) now leaned over to the ogress, who was carefully wiping 
 Rodolph's table, and said in a hoarse voice, 
 
 " ' Has the schoolmaster been here to-day ? ' 
 
 " ' No,' said Mother Ponisse. 
 
 " ' Was he here yesterday ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, he came yesterday.' 
 
 " ' With his new wife ? ' 
 
 " ' What do you mean by all this cross-questioning,' said the ogress : 
 ' do you think I'm a spy, and will split on my customers ? ' 
 
 " ' I've business with him." 
 
 " ' Business ! A pretty business it is, a set of cut-throats as you are.' 
 
 " ' You live by cut-throats,' answered the bandit, surlily. 
 
 "'Will you hold your tongue?' cried the ogress, coming forward 
 with a menacing air, and lifting the wooden measure which she held in 
 her hand. 
 
 " The man went back grumbling to his place. The goualeuse, as she 
 came in with the chourineur, had given a friendly nod to the lad who 
 was smoking : ' You're always at the brandy, Barbillon,' said the 
 knifer. 
 
 " ' I'd rather go without victuals and shoes,' said the lad, ' than with- 
 out my brandy and my backy,' and he discharged a great pufif of the 
 latter as he spoke. 
 
 « • » • * 
 
 "The entrance of a stranger interrupted all conversation, and 
 caused all heads to look up. He was a robust, active, middle-aged 
 man, in cap and jacket, perfectly au fait in all the customs of the place, 
 and employing the familiar slang language when he asked the hostess 
 for refreshment. 
 
 " Although he was not one of the frequenters of the Tapis Franc, the 
 
 198 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 people there speedily took no notice of him : he was known: for, to 
 know their comrades, rogues like honest men have no difficulty. 
 
 " The man took his place so as to observe the two ill-favoured men, 
 one of whom had asked for the schoolmaster. He kept his eye fixed 
 upon them ; but from the position they could not see that they were the 
 objects of his attention : from time to time he looked at a paper which 
 he had in his cap. 
 
 (The company now subsides into quiet, and the goualeuse, the chou- 
 rineur, and Rodolph, recount their histories.) 
 
 "The man now got up, and recommending the ogress to have an eye 
 upon his wine, went out for a moment, returning presently with an 
 energetic looking individual, of tall and athletic stature. 
 
 " ' Come in Borel,' said the man, ' and let us have a glass of wine.' 
 
 " The chourineur turned round to Rodolph, and whispered to him in 
 a low voice, ' Look out for squalls ; that man's a spy.' 
 
 The moment the two bandits (one of whom was the fellow in the 
 skull-cap who had so often asked for the schoolmaster) saw the stranger, 
 they looked at each other, jumped up, and made for the door ; but the 
 two police agents threw themselves upon the men, uttering at the same 
 time a particular cry. 
 
 " A terrible struggle took place. 
 
 " The door of the tavern was flung open, more agents rushed into 
 the room, and the muskets of the gendarmes were seen glittering in 
 the passage without. The man in the skull-cap screamed and shouted 
 with rage : half stretched on a table, he writhed and plunged so franti- 
 cally that three men could scarce hold him. Quite cowed and beaten 
 down, with pale, livid face and lips, and a hanging, trembling, lower 
 jaw, his companion made not the least resistance, but held out his 
 hands for the agents to manacle. The ogress seated at her counter, 
 and used to such scenes, remained quite calmly looking on, with her 
 hands in the pockets of her apron. 
 
 " ' What have the chaps been doing, M. Borel,' said she to that 
 personage, whom she appeared to know. 
 
 " ' They murdered an old woman, yesterday, in the Rue St. Chris- 
 tophe, in order to rob her lodgings. Before dying, the old woman said 
 she had bitten one of the men in the hand : we suspected these two 
 rascals, and my comrade came just now to see if they were our men. 
 They're caught, and that's all.' 
 
 " ' It's lucky I made 'em pay the wine,' said the ogress. ' Won't you 
 take a drop of something, M. Borel ; just one glass of Parfaitamour ? ' 
 
 " ' Thank you, no. Mother Ponisse ; I must first finish my job with 
 these chaps here — ha ! there's one of 'em kicking again.' 
 
 " It was the skull-cap man, who was still furiously struggling ; and 
 
 199 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 when the agents wished to take him to the hackney coach in waiting 
 in the streets, it became necessary to carry him. His comrade, 
 trembling nervously in every limb, could scarcely stand : his lips were 
 violet, and moved as if they wished to speak. This inert mass was 
 likewise flung ipto the carriage. 
 
 " Before quitting the Tapis Franc, the agent looked round attentively 
 at the various guests, and perceiving the chourineur, said to him in a 
 tone that was almost affectionate, 
 
 " ' You there, you rogue ? how comes it that we hear no more of you ? 
 no more fighting or quarrelling, eh ? You're growing quite quiet.' 
 
 " ' As quiet as a lamb, M. Borel ; and for the matter of that, you 
 know I never begin.' 
 
 " ' What business would such a great monster as you have to begin ? 
 With your strength, there's no one could stand up against you.' 
 
 " ' Here's one that can, and beat me too," said the chourineur, laying 
 his hand on Rodolph's shoulder. 
 
 "'Who are you? I don't know you,' said the agent, looking at 
 Rodolph : ' I don't kuow you.' 
 " ' And never shall, my lad,' answered he. 
 
 " ' Well, I hope not, for your sake : and so good-night. Mother Ponisse. 
 Your house is a regular trap ; here's the third murderer I've taken in it.' 
 " And I hope it won't be the last, and my service to you, Monsieur 
 Borel," said the ogress, smiling graciously on the agent as he departed. 
 ' Didn't you know the chap in the skull-cap,' said the lad before- 
 mentioned : ' I did at once ; it's Velu ; aud directly the beaks came in, 
 says I, I'm sure there's something wrong ; for I saw Velu always kept 
 his hand under the table. ' 
 
 "'It's lucky for the schoolmaster that he wasn't here,' said the 
 ogress : ' the skull-cap man asked for him twice, and said they had 
 business together. It's lucky for him : and that I'm an honest woman 
 too, and don't sell my customers. Come here and take 'em ; that's all 
 very well, but I never will peach. Well ! speak of the devil — here is 
 the schoolmaster with his wife. ' 
 
 " A sort of thrill of terror ran through the assembly at the entrance 
 of this redoubtable brigand ; and even Rodolph himself, in spite of his 
 natural intrepidity, felt some emotion as he examined him. 
 
 (The maitre d'ecole, and his companion, the chouette, are described : 
 
 the former casts his eyes upon the goualeuse, and bids her come 
 
 round to his table.) 
 
 " ' Don't you hear me ? ' said the monster, coming forward. ' If you 
 
 don't come this minute, I'll have one of your eyes out like the chouette's 
 
 here : and you chap with the moustache (to Rodolph), unless you hand 
 
 her over, I'll do for you.' 
 
 200 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 " ' Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! ' cried the poor goualeuse, clasping her 
 hands, ' O defend me ! ' and then reflecting she might be bringing 
 Rodolph into danger, she added, 'No, no, don't move. Monsieur 
 Rodolph ; if he stirs, I'll cry out ; and for fear of the police, I'm sure 
 the ogress will take my part.' 
 
 " ' Don't be alarmed, my child,' replied Rodolph, looking boldly at the 
 tnaitre d'^cole : ' you are at my side, and shall not leave it ; and as that 
 hideous beast yonder sickens you, as well as myself, it will be best for 
 both of us that I put him into the street.' 
 
 " ' You do it ? ' said the schoolmaster. 
 
 " ' I'll do it,' said Rodolph, and he got up, in spite of the entreaties 
 of the goualeuse. 
 
 " The schoolmaster could not help stepping back, as he looked at the 
 terrible aspect which Rodolph's face now wore. 
 
 " Fleur de Marie and the chourineur were similarly struck by it : a 
 look of diabolical rage and wickedness now suddenly contracted the 
 noble features of their companion. They could no longer recognise 
 him. In his combat with the chourineur he had been calm and dis- 
 dainful ; but in facing the schoolmaster he seemed possessed with a 
 ferocious rage, and his wide staring eyes shone with a strange wild 
 lustre. 
 
 " The looks of some men have an irresistible magnetic power. Certain 
 celebrated duellists, it is said, owe their horrid successes to this fatal 
 fascination of look, which demoralizes and prostrates their enemy. 
 
 " Rodolph possessed this frightful piercing glance, from which those 
 on whom it is once cast, endeavour to escape in vain. It terrifies and 
 masters them ; they feel it almost physically ; and, in spite of themselves, 
 they must seek it — they cannot withdraw their own eyes from it. 
 
 " The schoolmaster trembled, went back yet another step, and feeling 
 himself no longer safe, even with his prodigious strength, searched 
 in his blouse for his dagger. A murder would have probably stained 
 the Tapis Franc, but the chouette, suddenly jumping up, seizes the 
 schoolmaster by the hand, and cries ' Stop, stop, Fourline,* you shall 
 have them both presently, but stop and let us speak.' 
 
 (The chouette has recognised the goualeuse, and tells her history, 
 and that she has papers regarding the goualeuse, which show who 
 the parents of the girl are.) 
 
 "Forgetting the maitre d'ecole, Rodolph listened attentively to the 
 chouette, whose story interested him ; and the schoolmaster, mean- 
 while, now that his antagonist's eyes were off him, felt his courage 
 restored ; for he would not believe that the slightly-made individual 
 
 * Fourline is the diminutive of Fourloureur ; an assassin, in the 
 language of the galleys. 
 
 301 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 before him was in a condition to resist the herculean strength which 
 he himself possessed. So coming up to the champion of the goualeuse, 
 he said to the chouette, in a tone of authority, 
 
 " ■ Enough talk, chouette ; I'll just spoil this young fellow's beauty 
 for him, and then my pretty blonde here will find that I am the hand- 
 somer of the two.' 
 
 " Rodolph jumped over the table with one bound. 
 
 •' ' Mind my plates,' screamed the ogress. 
 
 " And the schoolmaster put himself into an attitude of defence : his 
 hands before him, his body a little back ; balanced on his robust reins, 
 and, as it were, arched and supported on one of his enormous legs, 
 which was as firm as a balustrade of stone. 
 
 " Rodolph was just going to attack him, when the door of the tavern 
 was flung open, and a man in the garb of a charbonnier,* almost six 
 feet in height, ran into the room, pushed the schoolmaster aside, and 
 coming up to Rodolph, whispered to him, in English, ' My lord, Tom 
 and Sarah are at the end of the street.' 
 
 " At these mysterious words, Rodolph, with an angry air, flung down 
 a louis upon the ogress's counter, and ran towards the door. 
 
 " The schoolmaster tried to stop the passage of Rodolph; but the 
 latter, turning rapidly round, dealt him two such blows in his face, 
 that the monster staggered, and fell back stunned on the tables. 
 
 " ' Bravo ! ' cried the chourineur. ' That's the very trick with which 
 he finished me.' 
 
 " The schoolmaster coming to himself after a few seconds, rushed out 
 into the street after his adversary ; but he and his comrade had disap- 
 peared in the sombre labyrinths of the city — it was impossible to 
 rejoin them." 
 
 And had we space, we would have given some of the grotesque 
 scenes in the volumes ; and the chapter in which the hero inflicts 
 condign punishment on the schoolmaster, by putting out the 
 eyes of that malefactor. By way of encouraging the romance 
 reader, it may be stated in conclusion, that the Debats has 
 just commenced a new series of this interminable story, in 
 which horrors more horrible, scoundrels more profound, 
 thieves, knaves and murderers, still more thievish, knavish and 
 murderous, than any to whom we have yet been introduced, 
 are made to figure on the scene. 
 
 • The charbonnier is Sir Walter Murph, the squire of H.R.H. the 
 the Grand Duke of Gerolstein. 
 
 302 
 
^ FRENCH ROMANCERS ON 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 It is hard to follow the progress of French novelists nowadays. 
 Their fecundity is so prodigious, that it is almost impossible to 
 take any count of the number of their progeny ; and a Review 
 which professes to keep its readers au courani of French light 
 literature, should be published, not once a quarter, but more 
 than once a day. The parliamentary debates with us are said 
 to be a great and growing evil ; and a man during the session, 
 and with private business of his own, has no small difficulty in 
 keeping up with his age, and in reading his newspaper from 
 end to end. Public speakers in France are not so verbose 
 generally ; or, at any rate, French parliamentary reporters are 
 not so desperately accurate. But, on the other hand, the 
 French reader must undergo a course of study infinitely more 
 various, and more severe too in the end, though in the easy 
 department of fiction. Thus with us, when you are once at 
 the conclusion of the debates in the Times, you are not 
 called upon to peruse the same orations in the Post or the 
 Advertiser : which each luckily contains precisely the same 
 matter. But since the invention of the Feuilleton in France, 
 every journal has its six columns of particular and especial 
 report. M. Eugfene Sue is still guillotining and murdering and 
 intriguing in the D'ebats (for the " Myst^res de Paris," of 
 which we noticed five volumes six months since, have swollen 
 into ten by this time) ; M. Dumas has his tale in the Stlcle ; 
 Madame Gay is pouring out her eloquence daily in the Presse ; 
 M. Reybaud is endeavouring, with the adventures of Jean 
 
 203 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Mouton in the National, to equal the popularity which he 
 obtained with " Jerome Paturot : " in a word, every newspaper 
 has its different tale, and besides, the libraries do not seem 
 more slack than usual with their private ventures. M. de 
 Balzac has happily subsided for the moment, and is at St. 
 Petersburg ; Madame Sand is, however, at her twelfth volume 
 of " Consuelo ; " and the indefatigable M. Soulid is everywhere. 
 He publishes circulating libraries at once. 
 
 A part of this astonishing luxury of composition on the part 
 of the famous authors, is accounted for, however, in the follow- 
 ing way. The public demand upon them is so immense, that 
 the authors, great as their talents may be, are not able to supply 
 it, and are compelled to take other less famous writers into 
 their pay. And as the famous wine merchants at Frankfort 
 who purchased the Johannisberg vintage of 1811, have been 
 selling it ever since, by simply mixing a very little of the wine 
 of that famous year with an immense quantity of more modern 
 liquor ; so do these great writers employ smaller scribes, whose 
 works they amend and prepare for press. Souli^ and Dumas 
 can thus give the Souli^ or Dumas flavour to any article of 
 tolerable strength in itself ; and so prepared, it is sent into the 
 world with the Souli6 or Dumas seal and signature, and eagerly 
 bought and swallowed by the public as genuine. The retailers 
 are quite aware of the mixture, of which indeed the authors 
 make no secret ; but if the public must have Johannisberg 
 of 181 1 and no other, of course the dealers will supply it, and 
 hence the vast quantity of the article in the market. Have we 
 not seen in the same way how, to meet the demands of devotion, 
 the relics of the saints have multiplied themselves ; how 
 Shakspeare's mulberry-tree has been cut down in whole 
 forests, and planed and carved by regiments of turners and 
 upholsterers ; and how, in the plains of Waterloo, crosses, 
 eagles, and grapeshot are still endlessly growing .? 
 
 We are not sufficient connoisseurs in Souli6 to say whether 
 the novel before us is of the real original produce, or whether it 
 
 204 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 has simply been flavoured, like the Johannisberger achtzehnhun- 
 dertdfer before mentioned. " The Bananier " may be entirely 
 original ; or, like many of Rubens's originals, a work of a pupil 
 with a few touches of the master. The story is cleverly put 
 together, the style is very like the real Souli^ ; and seeing the 
 author's signature, of course we are bound to credit. The tale 
 has been manufactured, we take it, not merely for a literary, 
 but also for a political purpose. There is a colonial-slavery 
 party in France ; and the book before us is written to show the 
 beauties of slavery in the French colonies, and the infernal 
 intrigues of the English there and in the Spanish islands, in 
 order to overthrow the present excellent state of things. The 
 subjects are two fine themes for a romantic writer. To paint \ 
 negro slavery as a happy condition of being ; to invent fictions ' 
 for the purpose of inculcating hatred and ill-will ; are noble 
 tasks for the man of genius. We heartily compliment Monsieur 
 Souli^ upon his appearance as a writer of political fiction. 
 
 The amiable plot of the piece is briefly this. A young 
 Frenchman, with the most absurd romantic ideas of abolition 
 and the horrors of slavery, goes to Guadaloupe, to see his 
 father's correspondent, a planter there, and perhaps to marry 
 his daughter. The planter has an English nephew who aspires 
 to the hand of the lady, and likewise has a special mission from 
 his government to procure abolition. For this end he has 
 instruction to hesitate at no means. He has orders to poison 
 the negroes, to burn the planters' houses, to murder the 
 planters, and to foment a general insurrection and massacre. 
 Let us not say a word of the author of repute who would con- 
 descend to write such a pretty fiction as this ; but rather wonder 
 at the admirable impartiality and good taste of a people to 
 whom such a tale could be supposed to be written. Unfortu- 
 nately, the fictions of the romancers are not greater than the 
 fictions of the grave politicians of the French public press. 
 What a noble characteristic of a nation, is this savage credulity 
 and hatred I What a calm sense of magnanimous superiority 
 
 205 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 does this mad envy indicate ! What a keen, creditable apprecia- 
 tion of character is this, which persists in seeing guile in the 
 noblest actions, and cannot understand generosity but as a 
 cover for some monstrous and base design ! Well, well, we 
 must hope that years will dissipate this little amiable and 
 charitable error of the most civilized, and therefore the most 
 humane and just, people of the world. It is in their com- 
 passionate interest for the entire human race, whom they were 
 formed by nature to protect, that they dread us perfidious 
 shopkeepers of England : an error of people whose love 
 makes them only too perspicacious, soliciti plena timoris amor 
 — an error of the heart, and on the right side. Some day or 
 other the great nation will perhaps relent. She will say, " I am 
 the guardian of humanity, as all the world knows perfectly well. 
 All the oppressed are looking up to me : night and day they 
 have their eyes turned towards me, and are invoking, as that of 
 a Providence, the sacred name of La France ! I am the Good 
 Principle of the Earth : you are the Evil. I say so. Victor 
 Hugo says so. M. de Lamartine, and all the French news- 
 papers, say so. I may have been wrong for once : it is just 
 possible, and I give you the benefit of the doubt. You did not 
 emancipate your negroes out of hatred to the French colonies. 
 It was not in order to set Guadaloupe and Bourbon by the ears 
 that you spent twenty millions — cinq cents millions de francs I 
 You are a nation of shopkeepers, and know the value of money 
 better. Go. You are forgiven this time. I am the Providence 
 of the World ! " Let us look forward in calm hope to that day 
 of rehabilitation ; and meanwhile, leaving the general question, 
 return to Monsieur Souli6 and his novel. 
 
 Our author lands his hero in Guadaloupe, and the day after 
 his arrival he proceeds, in a kind of incognito, to visit his 
 correspondent, the rich planter. On his journey to that 
 gentleman's house (his faithful servant Jean accompanying 
 him), they meet a negro, who, in an argument with Jean, 
 shows the latter that the negro slave is a thousand times 
 
 206 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 happier than a free Norman servant, who, after all, is only free 
 to choose what master he likes. They proceed to the coffee- 
 grounds and M. Sanson's estate, and there they find the 
 negroes in such a state of absurd happiness, indolence, and 
 plenty, that Jean is determined he will black and sell himself 
 at once, and resign the privileges of an illusory and most 
 uncomfortable freedom. Luckily, this manly argument for 
 slavery has been debated and settled in Europe some five 
 hundred years, and it is not probable that M. Souli6 would 
 have his countrymen turn slaves again ; but he means, we take 
 it, to establish the point, that our compassion is greatly thrown 
 away upon a set of idle good-for-nothing blacks, who are quite 
 unfit for liberty, and, in fact, greatly happier than they deserve 
 to be. 
 
 M. Clemenceau, the young Frenchman, will not believe in 
 these signs of prosperity ; he will have it that the blacks are 
 wretched, that they are only ordered to be happy for that day 
 under pain of flogging, and that there is some tremendous plot 
 against him. He is, in fact, extremely peevish, and absurdly 
 suspicious ; and because he cannot, or will not, understand 
 them, ready to calumniate all the world. Is it possible that a 
 young French philanthropist should ever be in such a state ? 
 and if one, is it possible that a whole nation should have such 
 prejudices ? Perhaps. But we are getting again on the general 
 question. The Frenchman is installed in the planter's house, 
 where, received with kindness, he is ready to mistrust and to 
 bully everybody (one cannot, do what one will, but think of the 
 general question), and here at length we have him in presence 
 of the Englishman. The scene is a dinner party, and the two 
 rivals begin quarrelling " as to the manner born." 
 
 " ' And what Parisian novelties have you brought us ? ' said Madame 
 de Cambasse. 
 
 " ' My father has begged me to offer some little presents on his part to 
 Mademoiselle Sanson, and as soon as my baggage is brought on shore. 
 I hope M. Sanson will permit me to present them to Mademoiselle. 
 
 207 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 " ' 1 accept for her with a great deal of pleasure,' said Monsieur 
 Sanson. 
 
 ""And lam sure that these presents will be in the best possible 
 taste,' said Monsieur Welraoth, 'if Monsieur Clemenceau has selected 
 them.' 
 
 " The sneer was evident, but Ernest did not choose to take personal 
 notice of it, and replied, 
 
 " ' There is no great merit in choosing in our country ; for elegancei 
 grace, and good taste, as Monsieur says, are to be found in every thing 
 which is done there.' 
 
 " ' It is certain that you are the kings of the mode,' said Welmoth, 
 still sneering. 
 
 " ' As you are the kings of commerce," replied Ernest, with the most 
 impertinent politeness. 
 
 "Jean at this made a grimace. He thought his master was not 
 holding his own, as the phrase is. Mr. Welmoth was of the same 
 opinion, for he continued in a pompous tone, 
 
 " ' The kings of commerce ! No frivolous empire that, I think.' 
 
 " ' Certainly not ; but it is an empire of circumstance which a 
 thousand events may destroy ; whereas that which is inherent in the 
 talent, the tact, the good taste of a nation, to use your expression, sir, 
 remains eternal. You may continue for a long time yet to be kings of 
 the coal-mine and the railroad : but we shall be always kings of the 
 fine arts, of literature, of every thing which elevates the soul and 
 aggrandizes the dignity of humanity. ' 
 
 " ' You speak of literature. Monsieur Clemenceau : you have never 
 read Sir Walter Scott. ' 
 
 " ' I know him by heart, sir. However ignorant Frenchmen may be, 
 they have not that narrow spirit of nationality which prevents them 
 from seeing the merit of their rivals. Almost all of you know French, 
 gentlemen ; but you don't know a word of our literature. In fact you 
 have the same spirit in everything — you know the mechanism, but you 
 know not the work.' 
 
 " ' And are they worth reading, your French books ? ' said Welmoth. 
 
 " ' You will be able to judge when you have read them.' 
 
 " Ernest pronounces these words in such a calm tone of disdain that 
 Monsieur Welmoth blushed red, and Madame de Cambasse turning to 
 Clemenceau, said, ' Have you brought many new books ? ' 
 
 " • A whole cargo,' said Clemenceau, laughing. 
 
 " At this moment Jean in waiting upon Clara committed some little 
 awkwardness. 
 
 " ' He ! ' said Edward with an arrogant air. ' Monsieur le domes- 
 tique Fran9ais, mademoiselle has her own people to wait upon her.' 
 
 208 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 "'Pardon me, mademoiselle,' said Ernest, "but the French domes- 
 tics are like their masters, and are in the habit of being polite to every 
 one.' 
 
 ■ The two young men looked each other in the face, the two grooms 
 exchanged hostile glances — war was declared, and the positions already 
 taken up." 
 
 This little bit of comedy is curious and laughable, not on 
 account of the two illustrious antagonists and their " grooms," 
 whom M. Souli6 has brought to wait at table, but on account 
 of the worthy author himself, who exhibits here no unfair 
 specimen of the scribes of his nation. From the National, 
 upwards or downwards, the animus is the same ; in great 
 public journals, and here, as we see, in humble little novels, 
 directly L'Angleterre is brought into question La France begins 
 to bristle up and look big, and prepare to ecraser the enemy. 
 They will have us enemies, for all we can do. Apropos of a 
 public matter, a treaty of commerce, or a visit to dinner, war is 
 declared. Honest Monsieur Souli^ cannot in a novel bring a 
 Frenchman and his servant in presence of an Englishman and 
 his groom (the latter, by the way, is described is being dressed 
 in a livery of yellow and crimson, an extremely neat and 
 becoming costume), but as soon as the two couples are together 
 they begin to hate each other. Jean, the French servant, 
 dresses himself in his most ficeli manner, in order to compete 
 with his antagonist in the crimson and yellow ; and similarly 
 recommends his master to put on his best clothes, so as to over- 
 come his British adversary. "When Cl^menceau was left 
 alone," our author says, " he comprehended that the gros bon 
 sens of Jean had advised him better than all his own personal 
 reflections, and he took particular care d. /aire ressortir tous 
 les avantages de sa personne." The imagination can supply 
 the particulars of that important toilet. Is it not a noble and 
 magnanimous precaution .' — a proof of conscious dignity 
 and easy self-respect? The hero to be sure is an imaginary \ 
 one : but who but a Frenchman would have thought of pre- I 
 paring a hero to overcome an enemy by the splendour of his 
 N.s.B. 209 p 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 clothes, the tightness of his waist, the manner in which his hair 
 was curled, and the glossy varnish of his boots ? Our author 
 calls this uneasy vanity gros bon sens. Thus, before he has an 
 interview with the Europeans, Quashimaboo's wives recommend 
 him to put another ring in his nose, and another touch of ochre 
 over his cheeks, in order that the chief may appear more 
 majestic in the eyes of the white men. There is something 
 simple, almost touching, in the nature of the precautions, and 
 in the naivety which speaks of them as gros bon sens. 
 
 When our author brings his personages together, the simple 
 artifices with which he excites our respect or hatred for them 
 are not less curious. He takes care even that the politeness of 
 the " groom " should be contrasted. Crimson and yellow 
 remains behind his master's chair after the fashion of his 
 insolent country, while the Frenchman is made to be polite to 
 everybody as Frenchmen always are. What a touch that is of 
 " He ! Monsieur le doviestique Franfais, Mademoiselle has her 
 own people to wait upon her." How like in all respects to the 
 conduct of an English gentleman in a strange house, to attack 
 other people's " grooms " for bad behaviour at table, and to call 
 them Messieurs les domestiques. The servants might make 
 what mistakes they chose ; the whole table might be upset ; the 
 sauce-boat might burst in shivers upon the lap of the Briton ; 
 and in a strange house ; and such is the indomitable pride of 
 those islanders, that impavidum ferient ruina. 
 
 As English reviewers we are not going to take a side with 
 Mr. Welmoth against M. Clemenceau and the author, but 
 would only point out humbly and good-naturedly such errors as 
 we conceive the latter commits. Thus the speech put into the 
 mouth of M. Clemenceau, that though Englishmen are almost 
 all acquainted with the French language, they do not know a 
 word about its literature ; and the hint that the French, though 
 they do not know our language, do know our literature, having 
 no narrow spirit of nationality which prevents them from seeing 
 the merit of their rivals — this speech may be considered as a 
 
 2IO 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 general observation, applicable to the two countries, rather than 
 to the story ; and might have taken a place in the " Memoirs of 
 the Devil," or in the " Four Sisters," or in the " General 
 Confession," or in the " Chateau des Pyr^n6es," or in any work 
 of M. Soulie. It is a proposition that may be asserted apropos 
 of any thing. 
 
 But is it a fair one and altogether unopen to cavil ? It stands 
 thus. The English do know French, but don't know French 
 literature. The French don't know English, but do know 
 English literature. We are the mechanicians, we know the 
 wheels but not the work ; they are the great spirits, which know 
 the work, but do not care for the petty details of the wheels. 
 Victor Hugo has enunciated in his book upon the Rhine an 
 opinion exactly similar to that of Soulie : viz., that France is the 
 great intellect and light of the world, and that, in fact, all the 
 nations in Europe would be fools without her. 
 
 Let us concede that pre-eminence. A nation which can 
 understand a language without knowing it, has advantages that 
 other European people do not possess. She is the intellectual 
 queen of Europe, and deserves to be placed at its head. There 
 is no coming up to her : we don't start with the same chances 
 of winning. But surely it should not be argued that our 
 knowing the French language operates against us as an actual i 
 disadvantage in becoming acquainted with French literature. ' 
 We have no other way of getting at it. We are not master- '. 
 spirits ; we can no more read books without knowing the \ 
 words, than make houses without setting up the bricks. Do 
 not turn us away and discourage us in our study of the 
 words. Some day or other we may get to comprehend the 
 literature of this brilliant France, and read the " Memoirs of 
 the Devil." 
 
 This is all we humbly pray for. The superiority of France i 
 we take for granted. But if in an English book we were to 
 come across such an argument and dialogue as the above to a 
 Frenchman, "We in England do not know your language, but 
 
 211 P 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 can perfectly appreciate your literature ; whereas, though I 
 admit you are acquainted with English, yet your natives are 
 much too great fools to understand it " — we should say that 
 the English author was a bigoted, vain coxcomb, and would 
 expose as in duty bound, his dulness, monstrous arrogance, 
 ignorance, and folly, 
 
 After giving the above satisfactory specimen of the elegance, 
 the grace, and the bon goU/ of his country, M. Souli6 prepares 
 to cure his hero of his generous error regarding slavery : and if 
 the romancer's epilogues have any moral to them, as no doubt 
 they are intended to have, we should argue from his story, not 
 only that slavery is not an evil, but actually a blessing and a 
 laudable institution. We will not say that this is the opinion in 
 France, but we will say that in that sentimental and civilized 
 country the slave-question has been always treated with the 
 most marked indifference, the slave sufferings have been heard 
 with scepticism. Is it that the French are not far enough 
 advanced and educated to the feelings of freedom yet, to, see 
 the shame and the crime of slavery ? or, rather, that they are 
 inspired by such an insane jealousy of this country, as to hate 
 every measure in which it takes the lead ? When the younger 
 Dupin said in the Chamber that the abolition of slavery by 
 England was " an immense mystification," and spoke what was 
 not unacceptable to the public, too — he satirized his own 
 country far more severely than the country he wished to abuse. 
 A man who sees his neighbour generous, and instantly attributes 
 a base motive to his generosity, exposes his own manners more 
 than his neighbour's A people living by the side of ours, who 
 can take no count of the spirit of Christian feeling in England, 
 of the manly love of liberty, which is part of our private and 
 public morals, shows itself to be very ignorant and very mean, 
 too, and as poorly endowed with the spirit of Christianity, as 
 with that of freedom. There was not a meeting-house in 
 England where sober, quiet, and humble folk congregated, 
 but the shame and crime of slavery was soberly felt and 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 passionately denounced. It was not only the statesmen and the 
 powerful that Wilberforce and Clarkson won over ; but the 
 women and children took a part, and a very great and noble 
 one, too, in the abolition of that odious crime from our legisla- 
 tion. It was the noblest and greatest movement that ever a 
 people made — the purest, and the least selfish : and if we speak 
 about it here, and upon such an occasion as this trumpery 
 novel gives us, it is because this periodical, from its character, 
 is likely to fall into some French and many foreign hands ; 
 and because, such is the persevering rage of falsehood with 
 which this calumny is still advocated by a major part of the 
 French press, that an English writer, however humble, should 
 never allow the lie to pass without marking his castigation of 
 it, and without exposing it wherever he meets it. 
 
 Our novelist, with the ardent imagination of those of his trade, 
 goes however to prove a great deal more than is required of 
 him : and gives such a delightful picture of the happiness of 
 French negroes, that poor Jacques Bonhomme might cry out to 
 be made a slave at once, if, by sacrificing his rights at present, 
 he could be inducted into such a charming state of dependence. 
 The hero of the story finds that the slaves only work six hours 
 in a week, for which they are well fed and clothed ; they have the 
 rest of their time to themselves; they earn as much money as 
 to satisfy their utmost avarice for indolence, their love of dress, 
 or of liquor. They would not be free if they could ; and one 
 meritorious slave, who is introduced especially, a new importa- 
 tion from Africa, exhibits the greatest alarm lest he should be 
 sent back to his native country. It was because led by such 
 writers as these, that in the imperial times, the French fancied 
 their domination was received as a welcome gift over Europe. 
 The Moniteur contains a hundred such statements regarding 
 Spain. As for the German Rhineland, we have seen how the 
 French believe to this moment it is theirs in heart and soul. 
 But let us give the secret of the English abolition as it is laid 
 down here for French instruction. M. Soulie has the whole 
 
 213 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 thread of the intrigue, and it was probably furnished to him by 
 the statesmen who ordered him to popularize their doctrines by 
 means of this tale. 
 
 The hero makes the acquaintance of an Irish superintendent 
 of the plantations, who by means of des relations qu'il a con- 
 servees en Anglelerre has the secret unveiled to him. " I am," 
 says Mr. Owen, " an Englishman, if, that is to say, an Irishman 
 has a right to that title — if, bom in a part of Great Britain which 
 is subject to the most insolent, the most ferocious, and the 
 most contemptuous tyranny, I can recognise as my countrymen 
 those who treat my compatriots with more rigour and more 
 disdain than the most insolent master uses towards his black 
 slaves. And yet, in spite of my just griefs against the English, 
 I have some hesitation in accusing them before you." 
 
 This is only a French novel to be sure, but it lies, as much as 
 the gravest newspaper in the anti-English interest. The only 
 point one would remark in the above statement is the hint that 
 some slave-masters do treat their slaves insolently and tyranni- 
 cally — the admission takes off from the beauty of the picture of 
 that paradise, a French colony. And now Mr. Owen unveils 
 the secret of secrets. 
 
 '• ' You know, sir, at what price England purchased the emancipation 
 of her colonies ? ' 
 
 " Ernest was about to break out into enthusiastic praises of this 
 sublime act of philanthropy, but he had not the time, for Monsieur 
 Owen continued as follows : 
 
 " ' You are too well aware of the real interests of France not to be 
 aware that England did not begin by completing with her own hands 
 the imminent ruin of her colonies, except that she might arrive through 
 these at the ruin of the French and Spanish colonies, the prosperity of 
 which is injurious to her. 
 
 " ' You are not, I suppose, about to give credit to the regular 
 organizers of famines in India for such a magnificent love of the black 
 race, as to induce them out of mere humanity to establish the abolition 
 and apprenticeship system in Jamaica. They know better than we, 
 and experience has proved the correctness of their calculations, that 
 the abolition of slavery was the instant destruction of all prosperity 
 and fortune. 
 
 314 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 " ' What was their calculation ? it was no doubt to the following 
 effect : The first blow at the colonies was the slave-trade abolition — 
 the last will be the abolition of slavery. We no doubt shall lose some 
 possessions by it, but France and Spain will lose more than we ; in 
 fact, they will lose every colony they possess, while the loss of a few 
 islands will hardly count among us whose possessions are so vast. 
 - " ' France and Spain will no longer have means of supplying them- 
 selves, and India will still remain ours : the only granary from which 
 the world will be obliged to furnish itself with produce, which has 
 now become as necessary to Europe as its own indigenous produce.' 
 
 " -This argument might be correct,' said Ernest, 'if, as you say, 
 ruin is the certain consequence of abolition.' 
 
 " ' Can you doubt it ? ' said Mr. Owen, with the air of a man quite 
 astonished that such a question could be put to him. ' I was at 
 Jamaica at the commencement of this organized catastrophe, and never 
 did ruin march with such rapidity. 
 
 " ' But this question, for the present at least, is not necessary to 
 prove to you by facts. The plans of the society, of which Mr. Welmoth 
 is here the secret agent, will prove to you up to what point the abolition 
 is considered by the English a means of infallible ruin. His first 
 orders, received from a society patronised by the East India Company, and 
 perhaps by the English government itself, are to become at the cheapest 
 price possible the proprietor of the most considerable estates in the 
 country. 
 
 " ■ This done, Mr. Welmoth and others who, as you will see, will 
 succeed him, will establish themselves at Guadaloupe ; and once pro- 
 prietors they will begin to labour according to the terms of their 
 mission, and successively emancipate their slaves. In the name of 
 philanthropy they will speed through the plantations ideas of revolt 
 and enfranchisement. 
 
 " ' Five hundred, six hundred, twelve hundred slaves so liberated by 
 them, will thus form a centre of mauvais sujets, round which the dis- 
 affected of the other plantations may rally. It will be a fomentation of 
 discord, a commencement of disorganization, which may be the cause 
 of new massacres. These dark enemies will be overcome no doubt ; 
 but it is to be feared that this spirit of insubordination will appear to 
 the French chambers a symptom of the maturity of the slave for 
 liberty, and that, hence, they will formally vote the abolition of 
 slavery. 
 
 " ' Let this result be far off or near at hand, England will march 
 with indefatigable perseverance, by means the most perfidious and the 
 most obscure, as by the most splendid demonstrations of philanthropy. 
 She will make every appeal to sentiments the most worthy as to those 
 
 215 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the most generous ; but she has one single aim to be attained by one 
 infallible means, the ruin of the French colonies by means of the 
 abolition of the slave trade, 
 
 " ' This I know. This I am sure of. This Monsieur Sanson does 
 not suspect from the frankness and loyalty of his nature.' " 
 
 He may well have " some hesitation " in telling a story so 
 damning to his country. But the secret is out now : and the 
 perfidy of Albion unveiled. It is the East India Company, the 
 rogues " who organize periodical famines in India," who have set 
 the incendiaries to work in the French and Spanish colonies. 
 Sir Welmoth has a mission from the Court of Directors (in the 
 month of April, 1838), and in truth executes it with more than 
 national perfidiousness. As he has a sincere love for his 
 cousin, the daughter of the planter whose happy negroes have 
 been described ; and as the young lady is heiress to the 
 paternal property of which her future husband may look one 
 day to have possession ; Sir Welmoth, in pursuit of his infernal 
 schemes, begins by lending the father money so as to harass 
 the property, and by poisoning the negroes on the estate. One 
 may ask why the young patriot, if bent upon executing this 
 scheme of " the East India Company," did not begin by 
 poisoning somebody else's negroes : but this, it will be remarked, 
 is of a piece with the policy of the country at large. Betore 
 ruining the French colonies, we begun by ruining our own. 
 But surely there is some break in the chain of argument here, 
 and the author has here the subject for at least another chapter: 
 for though a thief in the crowd, in order to avert suspicion, will 
 often say he has been robbed, he will not really fling away his 
 own purse containing twice as much as his victim's, for the 
 purpose of securing the latter. 
 
 This then we take to be a slight fault in the construction of 
 the romance ; though to do the author justice, the plot for the 
 most part is carried on with very considerable art. It is in 
 pursuance of the instructions of the East India Company that 
 Sir Welmoth is ordered to poison his uncle's slaves, but the 
 Court of Directors by no means wish that their agent should be 
 
 216 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 discovered — so what does he do ? He manages to lay the 
 blame upon the poor young French gentleman, whose 
 negrophily is well known ; to brouilhr him with his worthy 
 correspondent; and finally, as his presence may be likely to 
 gmer the plans of the Honourable East India Company, Sir 
 Welmoth has him assassinated under the banyan-tree : whence 
 the title of the novel. 
 
 The assassin wounds, but not kills his victim, who recovers 
 as we need not say, to expose the infernal conspiracies of the 
 atrocious emissary from Leadenhall-street. And the discovery 
 is brought about by a novel, an ingenious method. Jean, the 
 Frenchman's groom, has remarked that Sir Welmoth and his 
 man John are in the habit of riding out of a night no doubt to 
 meet the negroes in conclave ; and through the means of this 
 John, Jean determines to overcome the perfidious son of 
 Albion. He watches John with intense accuracy for many days, 
 and learns to mimic him & s'y meprende, He purchases a 
 scarlet and yellow livery, for all the world like John, intoxicates 
 that individual, and follows his master. But we must allow 
 Jean to tell his own tale : 
 
 " So I set myself to gallop after the Englishman, and we went a 
 quarter of a league across country. Then we came to a wood where we 
 had not gone four steps when Monsieur Welmoth turned suddenly to 
 the right, so suddenly that I who was not used to the thing was gallop- 
 ing by him, when he stopped and turned round and said to me in a 
 most furious passion . . . What the rascal said to me I don't know, as 
 I don't happen to understand his lingo — but I could make out that he 
 accused me of being drunk, and thought it not a bad hint to act on, 
 and so kept a dead silence and acted my part to a wonder. 
 
 "Monsieur Welmoth tied his horse to a tree: then he said some- 
 thing which seemed to me like a question. So I said, yes, sir ; and then 
 he took out a whistle and blew. Another whistle answered it, as soft 
 as the pipe of a frog on a rainy night, and that you may hear miles 
 round. Then he said, ' John, my pistols.' I knew what he meant, and 
 as I was getting the pistols from the holsters gave the horse a kick 
 which made him plunge a bit, so that I had time to take the caps off 
 the locks. . . . He went on and I followed him ; not so silently, but 
 that the bits of dry stick would crackle under my feet now and then : 
 
 217 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 when Monsieur Welmoth would stop, and you may be sure I would 
 stop and hold my breath too. Presently we saw a red light glaring 
 under the trees, and heard such a sound of voices as drowned the noise 
 of his steps and mine too. 
 
 " At last, and by the light of their candles, I saw some thirty of the 
 niggers, amongst them that rascal Theodore, and that other rascal 
 Idomenie. As for Monsieur Welmoth, if I had not been sure it was 
 he, I never should have known him : for he was dressed in a green face 
 and red eyes, and had on a great red cloak, just as in a play. It was 
 not only to disguise himself but to frighten the negroes that he was 
 dressed so ; for as soon as they saw him, the poor black devils tumbled 
 down on their knees ; but I think they were less frightened than they 
 pretended to be, for there was not one of them but when Monsieur 
 Welmoth came up to him, he held out his hand bravely for a gold 
 piece which the other gave him. 
 
 " After this, grace was said all round ; the man in the mask began to 
 speak in a hollow voice ; and then it was that, without the slightest 
 hesitation, he proposed to the niggers to set fire to the house of 
 Madame de Cambasse. He said, saving your presence ma'am, that 
 you were a monster, that you had killed thousands of slaves at Jamaica, 
 and had whole scores of them in prison there, ironed down with chains 
 that had spikes inside 'em. 
 
 " Idomente replied that the master's orders should be obeyed: on 
 which Welmoth said that if they did as he told them they should all be 
 made free the next day, and pass their lives doing nothing for ever 
 after. This touched them, and so did the rum which was handed 
 round in plenty ; during which time the mask and Idomen^e began 
 talking together in private, and precious rascality it was they talked, 
 too, as you shall hear. 
 
 " ' You understand that when the fire breaks out, and Monsieur 
 Sanson sees it, in spite of his coolness with Madame de Cambasse [the 
 planter was to have married this widow, but for the arts of the English- 
 man, who had managed to make a quarrel between them] he will be 
 sure to come to her aid. I too, must of course, accompany him ; but 
 when we are near Madame de Cambasse's house, I will fire off my 
 pistols, and you will take that as a signal for you and your people to 
 withdraw.' And with this he gave Idomende a taste of some particular 
 rum he kept in a bottle about him, and so this worthy couple parted." 
 
 The attack is made, the black villains are overpowered. The 
 mulatto and his principal accomplices, cut down, seized, and in 
 custody. As he expected, the perfidious Englishman is called 
 upon to make his appearance in company with the rescuers of 
 
 218 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 Madame de Cambasse, and the following is the concluding 
 scene of this strange story. 
 
 " I have no reason to say that Monsieur Sanson, though he wished 
 to go, stopped. What man in love would not, when hoping to hear a 
 justification of her conduct from the woman to whom he was attached ? 
 Welmoth looked attentively at all the objects and countenances round 
 about him ; he saw traces of blood on the ground ; and j udging then that 
 a struggle had taken place determined to use the utmost prudence as 
 some of his accomplices were perhaps prisoners. He was, however, 
 only personally known to Idomen^e, and had nothing to fear if the 
 latter was not captured, 
 
 " ' This fire,' said Madame de Cambasse, ' which has brought yon 
 hither to my rescue, is not an accident as you suppose. It is the com- 
 mencement of a plan which devotes this colony to ruin, and it is by the 
 hands of the slaves that it is to be brought about.' 
 
 " ' I don't know whom you accuse,' said Monsieur Sanson : ' not me, 
 certainly : the ruin of the colony would be my ruin, and the project 
 therefore can only be attributed to persons who are strangers to the 
 country, and who, excited by absurd philanthropy, or influenced by 
 darker and more odious views, have vowed its destruction.' 
 
 " ' Sir ! ' said Cl^menceau. 
 
 "'These words of Monsieur Sanson,' continued Madame de Cam- 
 basse, ' apply no more to you than mine do to M. Welmoth, but I beg 
 you to listen without interrupting me. This plot exists; and if, M. 
 Sanson, I have been the first apparent victim of it, believe me that you 
 have already suffered from it, although you were ignorant that your 
 losses were but the commencement of the execution of the conspiracy. 
 You have suffered by poison, as I was to suffer by fire, and with me 
 the conspirators knew it was necessary to act quickly, as I had my sus- 
 picions of which they were aware. ' 
 
 " ' But,' said M. Sanson, ' pardon me for saying that I can see no 
 reason why you should suspect a conspiracy.' 
 
 " ' One of the conspirators has been seized in my house,' said Madame 
 de Cambasse, and in spite of all his firmness, Welmoth's countenance 
 showed signs of alarm and emotion. ' This incendiary,' continued 
 Madame de Cambasse (without appearing to remark the Englishman's 
 concern), ' is one of your slaves — Theodore — who commenced in your 
 own plantation by poisoning your best workmen.' 
 
 " ■ Bring him before me,' said Monsieur Sanson ; ' let us question 
 him at once.' 
 
 " ' Presently. But before he comes, let me tell you what we have 
 already gathered from him. You will then judge whether his second 
 
 219 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 replies will correspond with his first. This man has sworn that he was 
 present to-night in the wood of Balisiers, at a meeting of blacks, where 
 the burning of my house was proposed to him by an individual in a 
 green mask with red circles round his eyes. He says he should not be 
 able to recognise this man from his voice or his figure, which were 
 both disguised ; but the mulatto Idomenie knows him.' 
 
 " ' During Monsieur Cl^menceau's illness, Idomen^e was always 
 making inquiries at his house. No doubt Monsieur CMmenceau is well 
 acquainted with him, and could give us some information on this sub- 
 ject,' said Welmoth. 
 
 " Cl^menceau was so astounded by this audacity of Welmoth's, that 
 he was at a loss for a moment to find a word in reply : but Madame 
 de Cambasse, who saw through Welmoth's project for shifting the 
 accusation on another, said quietly, ' I don't know what Monsieur 
 CMmenceau's relations with the mulatto may be, but with regard to 
 the man in the mask, Monsieur Ernest can give us no information — he 
 was here at the time of the meeting,' 
 
 "'You seem to be very certain of the hour of this meeting,' said 
 Welmoth, who could not help speaking as if he were accused. 
 
 '"Sure of the hour, and of every circumstance belonging to it. 
 This man in the mask, then, told Idomenee (and I beg you, my dear 
 Monsieur Sanson, to attend to this) that the fire could be seen from 
 the house which the mask inhabited ; that he would very probably be 
 compelled, therefore, to come to my aid ; but in order to warn the 
 incendiaries of his approach, he would fire off his pistols at a short 
 distance from the house ! ' 
 
 "This last circumstance threw a terrible light upon Monsieur San- 
 son. ' Fire his pistols ! ' cried he, looking Sir Edward in the face. ' You 
 attempted to fire yours at a short distance from this house.' 
 
 " ' Sir ! ' said Welmoth, ' after such a suspicion I cannot — ' 
 
 '"You could not fire your pistols,' said a man in full livery, who 
 barred the passage and spoke in a burlesque French. ' You could not 
 fire the pistols, because I had taken the caps away.' 
 
 " • Who is this ? ' said Sir Edward, starting back at the caricature of 
 John before him. 
 
 " ' I mean to say,' continued Jean, still mimicking John, ' that I 
 made the Goddam drunk, Monsieur Sanson, and that I mounted his 
 pony and followed the other Goddam to the negro-meeting, where I 
 heard and saw every thing.' 
 
 " ' The French are great comedians, I have always heard, ' said Welmoth, 
 but I never knew they were such accomplished mountebanks as this.' 
 
 " ' They wear no masks, sir, ' said Ernest, ' and as you do, let me help 
 you to one.' And he was about to strike Welmoth in the face, but 
 
 2 20 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 Monsieur Sanson held him back, while the Englishman, in the height of 
 fury, aimed his pistol at Cl^menceau's breast. 
 
 " ' It can't go off,' said Jean, laughing ; ' I prevented.' And Welmoth, 
 in a rage, dashed the weapons to the ground. 
 
 " ' It is not with pistols this affair must be settled,' said Ernest ; ' it 
 is a matter for the judge and the jury.' 
 
 , " ' What ? ' cried Welmoth — ' on the accusation of a slave who owns 
 he does not know me — on the accusation of a man's servant whom I 
 publicly challenged, and who had the cowardice to refuse — you believe 
 me guilty ! Uncle, have a care ; this farce may turn to your shame.' 
 
 " ' We have other witnesses,' said Madame de Cambasse : ' bring in 
 the prisoner. ' At the sight of Idomen^e Welmoth's countenance fell. 
 
 " ' You know Monsieur Welmoth ? ' said Monsieur Sanson. 
 
 " ' No.' 
 
 " ' He was not in the Wood des Balisiers to-night ? ' 
 
 '"Nobody was in the Wood des Balisiers to-night.' 
 
 " ' What ! ' cried Jean, ' you were not in the wood, and you did not 
 talk with him, and, hearing me move, you did not fling a knife towards 
 the bush where I was, and wound me here in the thigh ? ' 
 
 " ' These are all lies,' said Idomenee. 
 
 " 'Bring in Theodore,' said Monsieur Sanson. 
 
 " ' Theodore is dead,' answered Idomenee. 
 
 "'But at any rate the mask and mantle can't have disappeared,' 
 cried Jean, ' and must be among this gentleman's effects.' 
 
 " ' Of course, ' cried Welmoth, now quite himself, ' those who told 
 the lie could easily have put a cloak and a mask in my baggage.' 
 
 " Monsieur Sanson held down his head and said, after a moment's 
 silence, ' Pardon me, Edward, for having believed you guilty, but this 
 comedy has been so cleverly arranged that I was deceived for a moment. 
 As, however, it was one of my slaves who injured the property of 
 Madame de Cambasse, and as I have no desire she should be injured 
 by me or mine, I am quite ready to pay her an indemnity.' 
 
 " ■ I wish for nothing but what the law awards,' said the lady. ' My 
 only wish was to expose to you the infamous machinations of a villain.' 
 
 "She then sat down to write, while Edward preserved a perfectly 
 unmoved countenance. Her note finished — 'Mr. Owen,' said she, 
 ' have the goodness to carry this immediately to the Procureur du Roi ; 
 if the principal criminal escape, here is one at any rale whom nothing 
 can save. This mulatto forced an entry into my house with arms in 
 his hands. He wounded me with his knife — this at least is no comedy.' 
 
 " Idomenee, in spite of himself, could not help giving a look at Sir 
 Edward. He was perfectly unmoved. 
 
 " ' Let those who hired this villain save themselves as they can ; 
 
 221 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 continued Madame de Cambasse. Welmoth showed not the least 
 concern at this insinuation. ' Had we not better leave Madame to her 
 part of Grand Justiciary,' said he to M. Sanson, laughing. 
 
 ■" I am at your orders, and was sure, Edward, you never could have 
 lent yourself to this infamous conspiracy,' said M. Sanson. ' As for 
 this unhappy man, the only chance remaining for him is to name his 
 accomplices. ' 
 
 " It is what he had best do,' said Welmoth, calmly ; ' and I advise 
 him to do so. But it is to his judges, and not to us that he must 
 confess.' As he spoke thus, Welmoth looked with some agitation 
 towards Idomenee. Monsieur Sanson seemed quite confounded by the 
 latter's silence. 
 
 " ' Come,' cried Welmoth anxiously, ' let us go ; ' and Sanson moved 
 forward, as if to leave the room. 
 
 " At this moment the mulatto staggered, and uttered a loud, horrible 
 cry. ' Stop ! ' screamed he, ' stop. Monsieur Sanson ; ' and these words 
 caused every one to pause. 
 
 " ' I remember, now,' said the mulatto, groaning and writhing in 
 oain ; ' it was the rum he gave me in the wood. It was — it was — ' 
 
 " ' What ? ' cried every one. 
 
 ■"It was poisoned — oh ! poisoned ! I was to go when I heard his 
 pistol, and to die like a dog in the wood. That's the villain who made 
 me fire upon M. Clemenceau. ' 
 
 " ' I knew it ! ' cried Jean. 
 
 '" That's— that's he who' — the wretch could say no more, he 
 staggered and fell — but as he fell he made a bound towards Sir Edward 
 as if he would have killed him, and fell dead at his feet. The English- 
 man looked at his victim in silence, and with a ferocious joy. 
 
 " ' Monster ! ' cried Monsieur Sanson at length, and after a pause of 
 horror, ' and will you still deny ? ' 
 
 " ' What! do you join them too ?' said Sir Edward. ' Is this the 
 way in which you pay me back the gold guineas I lent you ? ' 
 
 " ' The money is ready, sir ; and the cause of my interview with 
 Madame de Cambasse, whose fair fame you have calumniated, was to 
 arrange the payment of this very sum, and to rescue Monsieur Sanson 
 from the ruin you had prepared for him.' 
 
 " ' Enough ! ' cried Sir Edward. ' I will answer no more questions 
 of lackeys, knaves, and strumpets, and their silly dupes.' 
 
 " ' Monsieur 1' Anglais ! ' said Jean, ' shall I make you a present 
 before you go ? Here it is— the caps for your pistols ; they'll serve you 
 to blow your brains out with.' 
 
 '"I take them,' said Sir Edward, grinding his teeth, ' in order to send 
 into your master's head the bullet I owe him.' 
 
 322 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 " He was about to put them on, but ere he could do so, Jean rushed 
 at him and felled him to the ground : those present rushed forward to 
 rescue Sir Edward, thinking Jean was strangling him. 
 
 " ' Stop, stop,' shouted the domestic, ' I want to see this gentleman's 
 flannel-waistcoat. John told me, when I made him drunk, that his 
 master carried some curious papers there. Ah ! here they are ! ' As 
 be spoke, Jean seized the papers, and springing up gave them to 
 Monsieur Sanson. 
 
 " But Sanson had scarcely began to read them, when Welmoth was 
 up too ; he had taken the pistols from the ground where he flung them, 
 and had armed them with the caps, which he still held in his hand. 
 
 " 'Now it's my turn,' said he, turning on the astonished and un- 
 armed group who were gathered round the papers ; ' listen to me. 
 Monsieur Sanson, I caused Clemenceau to be shot, because he inter- 
 fered with the projects of which I am pursuing the execution, and which 
 shall ruin you one day. France must lose her colonies. England has 
 decided it, and our decision is like that of Heaven, implacable and 
 inevitable. I own it all ; I was sent to ruin you — to ruin this woman's 
 reputation; I organized the fire this night. There, you have my 
 confession, and the proofs of my mission in the papers in your hand. 
 What will be my fate ? ' 
 
 " ' The scaffold, wretch ! ' said Monsieur Sanson. 
 
 •' ' Well, then, if I die for one crime or for ten what matters ? And 
 now hark you : I have two more to commit, which two victims shall 
 I choose here ? ' 
 
 " ' Monster ! ' cried Monsieur Sanson. 
 
 "'No, I will not hurt you ; but this woman here, and this young 
 dandy who would marry your daughter ' — Madame de Cambasse turned 
 pale, and Jean flung himself before her. 
 
 "'Not a movement,' said Welmoth, 'or she is dead ! But I make 
 one bargain with you. There is a candle near you, M. Sanson ; burn 
 in it, one after another, the papers you have been reading, and I 
 withdraw.' 
 
 " ' Never — never ; ' said M. Sanson. 
 
 "'Be it as you will," said Welmouth; and aimed at Madame de 
 Cambasse, who fell on her knees almost dead with terror. 
 
 " ' Yield, in the name of heaven,' said Clemenceau. 
 
 " ' You are afraid for yourself,' said Welmoth ; on which Clemenceau 
 was about to rush forward, but Jean held him back, saying, ' Stand 
 back, sir, the rascal will do what he says, else.' 
 
 "'Enough, enough;' said M. Sanson; and put the papers to the 
 flame. Welmoth saw him burn them, one after another; and when 
 the last was consumed, he walked to the window, fired his two pistols 
 
 223 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 in the air, and said, ' The honour of England is saved ; now, gentlemen, 
 I am at your disposition.' 
 
 " This act of ferocious heroism struck Cl^menceau and M. Sanson 
 with a strange admiration. ' Go,' said the latter; ' the day is before 
 you.' 
 
 " ' Thank you,' said Sir Edward ; and left the room." 
 
 It is strange that the writer of the tale, a good man of busi- 
 ness no doubt, as the present literary system in France will 
 cause most writers to be, has not turned the above invention to 
 still further profit, and adapted it for stage representation. The 
 perfidious Englishman is a character drawn as if expressly for 
 the actor of the villains of the Porte St. Martin Theatre, and 
 the imitations of Jean the Frenchman as John the Goddam 
 would convulse audiences with laughter. Nor is it necessary, 
 in order to amuse these merry folks, that the imitations should 
 be like ; it is only requisite that the imitation should be like 
 what they are accustomed to hear ; and were a real Englishman 
 to be produced on the stage they would give the palm to the 
 sham one. They have an Englishman for their politics as well 
 as for their theatre ; an Englishman of their own dressing up, 
 a monstrous compound of ridicule and crime, grotesque, vulgar, 
 selfish, wicked ; and they will allow their political writers to 
 submit to them no other. There is no better proof of the 
 intense hatred with which the nation regards us : of the rank- 
 ling humiliation which for ever and ever seems to keep 
 possession of a clever, gallant, vain, domineering, defeated 
 people. 
 
 The contrast to this spirit in England is quite curious. Say 
 to the English— the French hate you ; night and day they hate 
 you ; the government that should find a pretext of war with you 
 would be hailed with such shouts of exultation from one end 
 of the country to the other, as never were heard since the days 
 when the Patrie was in danger ; till they can meet you in war 
 they pursue you with untiring calumny — say this, and an Eng- 
 lishman, yawning, answers, " It is impossible," and declares 
 
 224 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 that the person who so speaks is actuated by a very bad spirit, 
 and wishes to set the two countries quarrelling. If an English 
 newspaper were to take the pains to collect and publish the lies 
 against England which appeared in the Paris journals of any 
 given month (the month of her Majesty's visit to France would 
 "hardly be a fair criterion, it was an extraordinary event, and 
 afforded therefore scope for extraordinary lying) — there would 
 be such a catalogue as would astonish readers here. Abuse of 
 England is the daily bread of the French journalist. He writes 
 to supply his market. If his customers were tired of the article, 
 would he give it to them ? No ; he would abuse the Turks, or 
 praise the English, or abuse or praise the Russians, or write in 
 praise or abuse of any other country or subject, that his readers 
 might have a fancy to admire or hate. All other fashions, 
 however, seem to have their day in France but this, and this is 
 of all days. They never tire of abusing this country. The 
 Carlist turns on the government-man, and says, " You truckle to 
 the English." The government-man retorts, " Who ever truckled 
 to the English as much as you did, who came into power with 
 his bayonet, and thanked him, under God, for your restoration ? " 
 The republican reviles them both with all his might, and says 
 that one courts the foreigner as much as the other. 
 
 If we speak in this manner, apropos of a mere novel of a 
 few hundred pages, it is because we believe that Monsieur 
 Souli6 had his brief given to him, and was instructed to write 
 in a particular vein. His facts, such as they are, have been 
 supplied to him; for there are evidences that the writer has 
 some sort of information upon the subjects on which he writes, 
 and there are proofs of wilful perversions from some quarter 
 or other. Take, for instance, the description of a treadmill. 
 " This punishment of the treadmill consists in hanging slaves 
 by the wrists, in such a manner that their feet are placed upon 
 the wings of a wheel. The wheel always yields under their 
 feet, and thus obliges the patient to seek a fooling upon the 
 upper wing. The wheel serves likewise to grind the prisoners' 
 
 N.s.B. 225 Q 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 com. An executioner {bourreau) armed with a hammer 
 {martinet) — the whip appeared too mild to these worthy pro- 
 tectors of the negro race — an executioner, I say, placed by the 
 side of the mill, is employed to excite the indolence of those 
 who do not move quick enough on the wheel : and a physician 
 from time to time feels the pulse of the person under punish- 
 ment, in order to see how long he can hear the torture." Now 
 this is written with evident bad faith, very likely not on the 
 writer's part, but on the part of some one who has seen this 
 instrument of torture, a treadmill, and whose interest it is to 
 maintain the slave-trade in the French colonies, and who knows 
 that, in order to enlist the mother-country in his favour, he has 
 no surer means than to excite its prejudices by stories of the 
 cruelties and conspiracies of England. Statements are proved 
 in different modes, arguments are conducted in all sorts of 
 ways ; and this novel is an argument for the slave-trade, proved 
 by pure lying. Its proofs are lies, and its conclusion is a lie. 
 It stands thus : " The English have fomented a demoniacal 
 conspiracy against the slave-trade in the French colonies. The 
 English are our wicked, false, dastardly, natural enemies, and 
 we are bound to hate them. Therefore slavery is a praiseworthy 
 institution and ought to be maintained in the French colonies." 
 It is to this argument that Monsieur Souli^ has devoted three 
 volumes which are signed by his celebrated name. 
 
 A romancer is not called upon to be very careful in his logic, 
 it is true ; fiction is his calling ; but surely not fictions of this 
 nature. Let this sort of argumentation be left to the writers of 
 the leading articles ; it has an ill look in the feuilleton, which 
 ought to be neutral ground, and where peaceable readers are 
 in the habit of taking refuge from national quarrels and abuse ; 
 from the envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, that inflame the 
 patriots of the Premier Paris. All the villains whom the 
 romancer is called upon to slay, are those whom he has created 
 first, and over whom he may exercise the utmost severities of 
 his imagination. Let the count go mad, or the heroine swallow 
 
 326 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 poison, or Don Alphonso run his rival through the body, or the 
 French ship or army at the end of the tale blow up the English 
 and obtain its victory ; these harmless cruelties and ultimate 
 triumphs, are the undoubted property of the novelist, and we 
 receive them as perfectly fair warfare. But let him not deal in 
 'specific calumnies, and inculcate, by means of lies, hatred of 
 actual breathing flesh and blood. This task should be left to 
 what are called hommes graves in France, the sages of the war 
 newspapers. 
 
 As to these latter, which are daily exposing the deep-laid 
 schemes and hypermachiavellian craft of England, we wonder 
 they have not noticed as yet another sordid and monstrous 
 conspiracy of which this country is undoubtedly the centre. 
 If this audacious plot be allowed to succeed, the nationalities 
 of Europe will gradually, but certainly disappear ; the glorious 
 recollections of feats of arms, and the noble emulation to which 
 they give rise, will be effaced by a gross merchant despotism ; 
 the spirit of patriotism will infallibly die away, and, to meet the 
 aggressions of the enemy, the frontier shall be lined with 
 warriors, and the tribune resound with oratory no more. The 
 public press, the guardian of liberty, the father of manly 
 thought, shall be as it were dumb : the Suck may cry woe 
 to perfidious Albion, and the public, stricken with a fatal in- 
 difference, shall be too stupid to tremble ; the National may 
 shout murder and treason against England, and a degenerate 
 nation only yawn in reply. " A conspiracy tending to produce 
 this state of things," we can imagine one of those patriotic 
 journals to say, " exists, spreads daily, its progress may be cal- 
 culated foot by foot all over Europe. The villains engaged in 
 it are leagued against some of the most precious and ancient 
 institutions of the world. What can be more patriotic than to 
 protect a national industry? their aim is to abolish trade- 
 protection, and to sweep custom-houses from the face of the 
 earth. What can be more noble than love of country and 
 national spirit } these conspirators would strike at the root of 
 
 227 Q 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the civic virtues. What can be more heroic than the ardour 
 which inspires our armies, and fills our youth with the generous 
 desire of distinction in war? these conspirators, if they have 
 their way, will not have an army standing ; they will make a 
 mockery and falsehood of glory, the noble aim of gallant 
 spirits; they will smother with the bales of their coarse com- 
 merce, the laurels of our former achievements ; the swords of 
 Marengo and Austerlitz will be left to rust on the walls of our 
 children; and they will clap corks upon the bayonets with 
 which we drove Europe before us." The Railroad, we need 
 not say, is the infernal English conspiracy to which we suppose 
 the French prophet to allude. It has been carried over to 
 France by Englishmen. It has crept from Rouen to the gates 
 of Paris ; from Rouen it is striding towards the sea at South- 
 ampton ; from Paris it is rushing to the Belgian frontier and the 
 channel. It is an English present. Timete Danaos : there is 
 danger in the gift. 
 
 For when the frontier is in a manner destroyed, how will the 
 French youth be able to rush to it ? Once have railroads all 
 over Europe, and there is no more use for valour than for post- 
 chaises now on the north road. Both will be exploded institu- 
 tions. The one expires, because nobody will ride ; the other 
 dies, because nobody will fight ; it is cheaper, easier, quicker, 
 more comfortable to take the new method of travelling. And 
 as a post-chaise keeper is ruined by a railroad, and as a 
 smuggler is ruined by free trade ; those concerned in the 
 maintenance of numberless other ancient usages, interests, 
 prejudices, must look to suffer by coming changes. Have 
 London at twelve hours' journey from Paris, and even French- 
 men will begin to travel. The readers of the National and 
 the Commerce will have an opportunity of judging for them- 
 selves of that monstrous artful island, which their newspapers 
 describe to them as so odious. They will begin to see that 
 hatred of the French nation is not the sole object of the Eng- 
 lishman's thoughts, as their present instructor would have them 
 
 228 
 
FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 believe ; that the grocer of Bond-street has no more wish to 
 assassinate his neighbour of the Rue St. Honore, than the 
 latter has to murder his rival of the Rue St. Denis; that the 
 ironmonger is not thinking about humiliating France, but only 
 of the best means of selling his kettles and fenders. Seeing 
 ' which peaceful and harmless disposition on our part, the wrath 
 of Frenchmen will melt and give way : or rather let us say, as 
 our island is but a small place, and France a great one — as we 
 are but dull shopkeepers without ideas, and France the spring 
 from which all the Light and Truth of the world issues — that 
 when we are drawn so near to it, we shall sink into it and 
 mingle with it as naturally as a drop of rain into the ocean (or 
 into a pail), and at once and for ever be absorbed in the flood 
 of French Civilization. 
 
 229 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 Of the myriads of books now yearly appearing which Time 
 shall swallow up, so that they or their memory be no more 
 seen, we hope this little work of Madame de Girardin's will 
 not be one. Not that it is more innocent or intrinsically 
 worthy of life than many others of its companions which will 
 be handed over to the inevitable Destroyer ; but it deserves to 
 have a corner in a historical library, where even much more 
 natural and meritorious publications might be excluded ; just 
 as a two-headed child will get a place in a museum-bottle, 
 when an ordinary creature, with the usual complement of 
 skull, will only go the way the sexton shows it. The " Lettres 
 Parisiennes " give a strange picture of a society, of an age, 
 and of an individual. One or the other Madame Girardin 
 exposes with an admirable unconscious satire ; and this is 
 satire of the best and wholesomest sort. One is apt to suspect 
 the moralist whose indignation makes his verse or points his 
 wit ; one cannot tell how much of personal pique mars the 
 truth of his descriptions, or how many vices or passions are 
 painted after the happy ever-present model himself ; and while 
 we read Swift's satires of a sordid, brutal, and wicked age, or 
 Churchill's truculent descriptions of the daring profligates of 
 his time, we know the first to be black-hearted, wicked, and 
 envious, as any monster he represents, and have good reason 
 to suspect the latter to be the dissolute ruffian whom he 
 describes as a characteristic of his times. 
 
 But the world could never be what the dean painted as he 
 looked at it with his furious, mad, glaring eyes ; nor was it the 
 wild drimken place which Churchill, reeling from a tavern, 
 
 230 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 fancied he saw reeling round about him. We might as well 
 take the word of a sot, who sees four candles on the table 
 where the sober man can only perceive two ; or of a madman 
 who peoples a room with devils that are quite invisible to the 
 doctor. Our Parisian chronicler, whose letters appear under 
 "the pseudonym of the Vicomte de Launay, is not more 
 irrational than his neighbours. The vicomte does not pretend 
 to satirize his times more than a gentleman would who shares 
 in the events which he depicts, and has a perfectly good 
 opinion of himself and them ; if he writes about trifles it is 
 because his society occupies itself with such, and his society 
 is, as we know, the most refined and civilised of all societies in 
 this world ; for is not Paris the European capital, and does he 
 not speak of the best company there .? — Indeed, and for the 
 benefit of the vulgar and unrefined, the vicomte's work ought 
 to be translated, and would surely be read with profit. Here 
 might the discontented artisan see how his betters are occu- 
 pied ; here might the country gentleman's daughter who, 
 weary of her humdrum village-retirement, pines for the 
 delights of Paris, find those pleasures chronicled of which 
 she longs to take a share ; and if we may suppose she 
 possesses (as she does always in novels and often in real 
 life) a sage father or guardian, or a reflective conscience of 
 her own, either monitor will tell her a fine moral out of the 
 Vicomte de Launay's letters, and leave her to ask is this the 
 fashionable life that I have been sighing after — this heartless, 
 false, and above all, intolerably wearisome existence, which the 
 most witty and brilliant people in the world consent to lead ? 
 As for the man of the humbler class, if after musing over this 
 account of the great and famous people he does not learn to be 
 contented with his own condition, all instruction is lost upon 
 him, and his mind is diseased by a confirmed enviousness 
 which no reason or reality will cure. 
 
 Nor is the Vicomte de Launay's sermon, like many others, 
 which have undeniable morals to them, at all dull in the 
 
 231 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 reading ; every page, on the contrary, is lively and amusing 
 — it sparkles with such wit as only a Frenchman can invent — 
 it abounds with pleasing anecdote, bright pictures of human 
 life, and happy turns of thought. It is entirely selfish and 
 heartless, but the accomplished author does not perceive this : 
 its malice is gentlemanlike and not too ill-natured : and its 
 statements, if exaggerated, are not more so than good company 
 warrants. In a society where a new carriage, or new bonnet, 
 is a matter of the greatest importance, how can one live but 
 by exaggerating ? Lies, as it were, form a part of the truth of 
 the system. But there is a compensation for this, as for most 
 other things in life — and while one set of duties or delights 
 are exaggerated beyond measure, another sort are depreciated 
 correspondingly. In that happy and genteel state of society 
 where a new carriage, or opera, or bonnet, become objects of 
 the highest importance, morals become a trifling matter; 
 politics futile amusement ; and religion an exploded ceremony. 
 All this is set down in the vicomte's letters, and proved beyond 
 the possibility of a doubt. 
 
 And hence the great use of having real people of fashion to 
 write their own lives, in place of the humble male and female 
 authors, who, under the denomination of the Silver Fork 
 School, have been employed by silly booksellers in our own 
 day. They cannot give us any representation of the real 
 authentic genteel fashionable life, they will relapse into 
 morality in spite of themselves, do what they will they are 
 often vulgar, sometimes hearty and natural ; they have not 
 the unconscious wickedness, the delightful want of principle, 
 which the great fashionable man possesses, none of the grace 
 and ease of vice. What pretender can, for instance, equal the 
 dissoluteness of George Selwyn's Letters, lately published ? — 
 What mere literary head could have invented Monsieur Suisse 
 and his noble master .' We question whether Mr. Beckford's 
 witty and brilliant works could have been written by any but a 
 man in the very best company ; and so it is with the Vicomte de 
 
 232 
 
iSIEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 Launay, — his is the work of a true person of fashion, the real 
 thing, (the real sham, some misanthropist may call it, but these 
 are of a snarling and discontented turn,) and no mere pretender 
 could have equalled them. As in the cases of George Selwyn 
 and Monsieur Suisse, mentioned before, the De Launay Letters 
 yo not tell all, but you may judge by a part of the whole, of 
 Hercules by his foot,- — by his mere bow, it is said, any one (in 
 high life) might judge his late Majesty George IV., to be the 
 most accomplished man in Europe. And so with De Launay, 
 though he speak but about the last new turban which the 
 Countess wore at the opera, or of her liaison with the 
 
 Chevalier , you may see by the gravity with which he 
 
 speaks of that turban, and the graceful lightness with which he 
 recounts the little breakage of the seventh commandment in 
 question, what is the relative importance of each event in his 
 mind, and how (we may therefore pretty fairly infer) the beau 
 monde is in the habit of judging them. Some French critics 
 who have spoken of Vicomte de Launay's work, do, it is true, 
 deny his claim to rank as a man of fashion, but there are 
 delicate shades in fashion and politeness, which a foreigner 
 cannot understand, and many a person will pass among us for 
 well-bred, who is not what Mrs. Trollope calls la crime de la 
 creme. The vicomte does not, as it would seem, frequent those 
 great and solemn houses of the Faubourg St. Germain, where 
 the ancient nobility dwell, (and which are shut to all the 
 roture*) — but he is welcomed at the court of Louis Philippe, 
 and the balls of the ambassadors (so much coveted by our 
 nation in France) — he dances in all the salons of the Faubourg, 
 and he has a box at all the operas ; if Monsieur de Castellane 
 gives a private play, the Vicomte is sure to be in the front 
 seats; if the gentlemen-sportsmen of the Jockey-club on the 
 
 * Except as in the case of a rich American, who, though once a 
 purser of a ship, has been adopted by the nobles of the Faubourg St. 
 Germain, and is said to have cut " the family at the Tuileries," and all 
 his old acquaintances of the Chauss^e d'Antin, 
 
 233 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Boulevard have a racing or gambling match in hand, he is 
 never far off : he is related to the chamber of deputies, and an 
 influential party there ; he has published poems, and plays, 
 and commands a newspaper ; and hence his opportunities of 
 knowing poets, authors, and artists, are such as must make 
 him a chronicler of no ordinary authenticity. 
 
 It is of matters relating to all these people that the gay and 
 voluble vicomte discourses ; and if we may judge of the success 
 of his letters by the number of imitations which have followed 
 them, their popularity must have been very great indeed. Half- 
 a-dozen journals at least have their weekly chronicle now upon 
 the De Launay model, and the reader of the French and English 
 newspapers may not seldom remark in the "own correspondence" 
 with which some of the latter prints are favoured, extracts and 
 translations from the above exclusive sources, compiled by the 
 ambassadors of the English press in Paris, for the benefit of 
 their public here. 
 
 It would be impossible perhaps for a journal here to produce 
 any series of London letters similar in kind to those of which 
 we are speaking. The journalist has not the position in London 
 which is enjoyed by his Parisian brother. Here the journal is 
 everything, and the writer a personage studiously obscure ; — if 
 a gentleman, he is somehow most careful to disguise his con- 
 nection with literature, and will avow any other profession but 
 his own : if not of the upper class, the gentry are strangely shy 
 and suspicious of him, have vague ideas of the danger of " being 
 shown up " by him, and will flock to clubs to manifest their 
 mistrust by a black ball. Society has very different attentions 
 for the Parisian journalists, and we find them admitted into the 
 saloons of ambassadors, the cabinets of ministers, and the 
 boudoirs of ladies of fashion. When shall we ever hear of 
 jMr. This, theatrical critic for the Morning Post, at Lady 
 Londonderry's ball, or Mr. That, editor of the Times, 
 closeted with Sir Robert Peel, and "assisting" the prime 
 minister to prepare ^ great parliamentary paper or a Queen's 
 
 334 
 
New accounts of paris. 
 
 speech? And, indeed, with all possible respect for the literary 
 profession, we are inclined to think the English mode the most 
 wholesome in this case, and that it is better that the duchesses, 
 the ministers, and the literary men, should concert with their 
 kind, nor be too intimate with each other. 
 
 For the truth is, the parties have exceedingly few interests in 
 common. The only place in England we know of where the 
 great and the small frankly consort, is the betting ring at 
 Epsom and Newmarket, where his grace will take the horse- 
 dealer's odds and vice versd, — that is the place of almost 
 national interest and equality, but what other is there ? At 
 Exeter Hall (another and opposite national institution) my lord 
 takes the chair and is allowed the lead, Go to Guildhall on a 
 feast day, my lords have a high table for themselves, with gold 
 and plate, where the commoners have crockery, and no doubt 
 with a prodigious deal more green fat in the turtle soup than 
 falls to the share of the poor sufferers at the plebeian table. The 
 theatre was a place where our rich and poor met in common, 
 but the great have deserted that amusement, and are thinkmg 
 of sitting down to dinner, or are preparing for the Opera when 
 three acts of the comedy are over. The honest citizen who takes 
 his simple walk on a Sunday in the park comes near his betters, 
 it is true, but they are passing him in their carriages or on 
 horseback, — nay, it must have struck any plain person who 
 may have travelled abroad in steamboat or railroad, how the 
 great Englishman, or the would-be great (and the faults of a 
 great master, as Sir Joshua Reynolds says, are always to be 
 seen in the exaggerations of his imitators), will sit alone perched 
 in his solitary carriage on the fore-deck, rather than come 
 among the vulgar crowd who are enjoying themselves in the 
 more commodious part of the vessel. If we have a fault to 
 find with the fashionable aristocracy of this free country, it is 
 not that they shut themselves up and do as they like, but that 
 they ruin honest folks who will insist upon imitating them : and 
 this is not their fault — it is ours. A philosopher has but to 
 
 235 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 walk into the Bedford and Russell Square district, and wonder 
 over this sad characteristic of his countrymen ; it is written up 
 in the large bills in the windows which show that the best 
 houses in London are to let. There is a noble mansion in 
 Russell Square, for instance, of which the proprietors propose 
 to make a club — but the inhabitants of Bloomsbury who want 
 a club must have it at the west end of the town, as far as possible 
 from their own unfashionable quarter ; those who do inhabit it 
 want to move away from it ; and you hear attorneys' wives and 
 honest stockbrokers' ladies talk of quitting the vulgar district, 
 and moving towards " the court end" as if they were to get any 
 good by living near her Majesty the Queen, at Pimlico ! 
 Indeed, a man who after living much abroad, returns to his 
 own country, will find there is no meanness in Europe like that 
 of the freeborn Briton. A woman in middle life is afraid of 
 her lady's-maid if the latter has lived in a lord's family 
 
 previously. In the days of the existence of the C club, 
 
 young men used to hesitate and make apologies before they 
 avowed they belonged to it ; and the reason was — not that the 
 members were not as good as themselves, but because they 
 were not better. The club was ruined because there were not 
 lords enough in it. The young barristers, the young artists, 
 the young merchants from the city, would not, to be sure, 
 speak to their lordships if they were present, but they pined 
 in their absence- — they sought for places where their august 
 patrons might occasionally be seen and worshipped in silence; 
 and the corner of Waterloo Place is now dark, and the friendly 
 steam of dinners no longer greets the passers by there at six 
 o'clock. How those deserters would have rallied round a 
 couple of dukes, were they ever so foolish, and a few 
 marquises no wiser than the author of a certian Voyage to 
 Constantinople. 
 
 Thus, as it seems to us, the great people in England have 
 killed our society. It is not their fault : but it is our meanness. 
 We might be very social and happy without them if we would : 
 
 236 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 but follow them we must, and as in the good old vicar's time, 
 the appearance of Lady Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs amongst 
 us (whom we will ask) instantly puts a stop to the joviality and 
 free flow of spirits which reigned before her ladyship's arrival ; 
 and we give up nature and blind man's buff for stiff conversa- 
 tions about " Shakspeare and the musical glasses." This 
 digression concerning English Society has to be sure no actual 
 reference to the subject in hand, save that moral one which the 
 Reviewer sometimes thinks fit to point out to his reader, who 
 travelling with him in the spirit to foreign countries, may thus 
 their manners noting, and their realms surveying, be induced 
 to think about his own. 
 
 With this let us cease further moralizing, and as we have 
 shown in the above sentences that the English reader delights 
 in none but the highest society, and as we have humbly alluded 
 in a former paragraph to young countrywomen, who, possibly 
 weary of the sameness of their hall or village, yearn after the 
 delight of Paris and the splendours of the entertainments there; 
 perhaps some such will have no objection to accompany 
 Madame or Monsieur Girardin de Launay through the amuse- 
 ments of a Paris season, in that harmless fashion in which 
 Shacabac partook of the first feast offered by the Barmecide, 
 and which entails no evil consequences upon the feaster. It 
 is the winter of 1837. Charles X. is just dead at Goritz, and 
 we (the vicomte and his reader) are for a while too genteel to 
 dance in public in consequence of the poor old monarch's 
 demise. We pass some pathetic remarks on the fate of exiled 
 kings ; we wonder how it happens that the Tuileries do not go 
 into mourning. We do so ourselves, just to be in the fashion 
 and to show our loyalty, but only for a few days — lest people 
 should fancy we could not afford to purchase spring fashions, 
 and so having decently buried the sovereign we give a loose 
 to our pleasures, and go of course to Madame d'Appeny's 
 ball. 
 
 " You have no idea how diamonds and your own hair are 
 
 237 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 come into fashion again — we remark this at the ball of the 
 ambassador of Austria, where really and truly the whole room 
 glistened with diamonds. Diamonds and hair ! everyone puts 
 on everybody's own diamonds, and everybody else's — every- 
 body wears their own hair, and somebody else's besides. Look 
 at the Duchess of Sutherland. Have you seen her grace and 
 her diamonds — all the world is crowding to look at them ; and 
 as he goes to look at her magnificent diadem, worth two millions 
 it is said, many a young man has iien des distractions in gazing 
 at her grace's beautiful eyes and charming face. 
 
 " This is in the Faubourg St. Honor^ — as for the people in 
 the Faubourg St. Germain, the poor creatures, on account of 
 the poor dear king's death, dare not dance — they only waltz — 
 its more triste to waltz, more becoming — it seems by chance as 
 it were. Someone sits down to the piano and plays a little 
 waltz — just a little pretty one — and someone else begins to turn 
 round in time. It is not a dance — no invitations were given, 
 only a few young people have amused themselves by keeping 
 time to M. de X. or L6on deB. They were in white, but their 
 parents were in black all the time — for the good old king, the 
 first gentleman in Europe (the French too had a first gentleman 
 in Europe), lies dead yonder at Goritz. 
 
 " As Lent comes on, we are of course too well-bred not to go 
 to church. And to speak about the preachers,^ done ! but we 
 positively must hear M. de Ravignan, for all the world goes to 
 N6tre Dame, and M. Dupanloup at Saint Roch, and the Abb^ 
 Combalot at Saint Eustache. We only mention their names as 
 a fact, and to point out that there is a return towards religion, 
 at which we are very happy ; but as for commenting upon, or 
 criticising the works of these ' austere inspired ones,' we must 
 not venture to do it ; they speak for our salvation and not for 
 their own glory, and we are sure, must be quite above all 
 worldly praise. And so no more about religion in Lent. And 
 oh, it is quite frightful to think how the people do dance in 
 Lent as it is ! " 
 
 238 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 ENGLISHWOMEN AT A FRENCH BALL. 
 
 " The masked ball given in benefit of the English has been so suc- 
 cessful, that imitations may be looked for ; the ball of the civil list is 
 to be in the same fashion it is said. We dearly love masked-balls — 
 handsome women appear there under quite novel aspects, and as for 
 ugly women whom a brilliant imagination carries thither, why they 
 become delightful too, in their way, the Englishwomen above all, 
 there is such an engaging frankness. It must be confessed that if we 
 look at the handsome English and admire them with something like 
 envy and bitterness of heart, there are natives of a certain other sort 
 whom the ' perfide Albion ' sends over to us, and who charm us beyond 
 expression ; let us say it to the island's double renown, that if the 
 modern Venus, that is beauty, has come to us from the waves of the 
 channel, the very contrary goddess (whom we need not name) has 
 risen in full dress out of the frightened waves of the Thames. In a 
 word, we admit that our neighbours provide our fetes with the most 
 beautiful women, and with those who are most of the other sort. 
 They do nothing by halves the Englishwomen, they bring beauty to 
 perfection or they carry ugliness to distraction ; in this state they cease 
 to be women altogether, and become beings of which the classification 
 is impossible. One looks like an old bird, another like an old horse, a 
 third, like a young donkey — some have a bison look, some a dromedary 
 appearance, and all a poodle cast. Now all this seated quietly in a 
 drawing-room, and reputably dressed looks simply ugly, and there's an 
 end of it ; but set it off in a masked ball — all these poor things dressed 
 and bedizened, all these strange faces, and graces, and grimaces, twist- 
 ing and hurling, and ogling and leering their best, you can't conceive 
 what a wonderful effect they have ! If you could but have seen them 
 the other day in the Salle Ventadour with seven or eight feathers in 
 their heads ; red feathers, blue feathers, black feathers, peacocks' 
 feathers, cocks' feathers, all the feathers of all the birds in the air — if 
 you could have seen their satisfied looks as they glanced at the looking- 
 glasses, and the grace with which their fair fingers repaired some 
 enchanting disorder of the dress, and the perseverance with which 
 they placed in its right position over the forehead that charming ring- 
 let which would come upon the nose, and the yellow slipper, or the 
 brown one, withdrawn or protruded with a like winning grace, and all 
 the shells, and beads, and bracelets, and all the ornaments from all the 
 jewel boxes of the family conglomerated on one strange person, and 
 looking as if astonished to find themselves so assembled ; you would 
 say as we do, it is a charming thing a bal costume, and if anybody 
 offers to show you such a sight for a louis, give it, my dear friend, yon 
 never laid out money so well." 
 
 239 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Indeed any person who has been in a Paris ball-room will 
 allow that the description is a very true and very amusing one ; 
 and as we are still addressing the ladies, we would beg them to 
 take warning, by the above remarks, on their visits to Paris ; to 
 remember what pitiless observers are round about them in the 
 meager persons of their French acquaintance ; to reflect that 
 their costume, in its every remotest part, is subject to eyes so 
 critical, that not an error can escape ; and hence, seeing the 
 almost impossibility, from insular ignorance, to be entirely in 
 the mode, to cultivate a noble, a becoming simplicity, and be, 
 as it were, above it. The handsomest women in Europe can 
 best afford to go unadorned — it is different for a Parisian 
 beauty, lean, yellow, and angular ; her charms require all the 
 aids of address, while her rival's are only heightened by 
 simplicity. And but that comparisons are odious in all 
 instances, and in this not certainly flattering, we would venture 
 to point out an unromantic analogy between Beauty and 
 Cookery in the two countries. Why do the French have 
 recourse to sauces, stews, and other culinary disguisements ? 
 — because their meat is not good. Why do the English 
 content themselves with roast and boiled ? — because they need 
 no preparations. And so Beauty like Beef . . . But let us 
 adopt a more becoming and genteel tone. Scotland is the 
 country where agriculture is best understood — France is most 
 famous for the culture of the toilet — and for the same reason ; 
 the niggardliness of nature to both countries, with which let 
 us console ourselves for any little national wants among 
 ourselves. 
 
 We are sure the fair reader will have no objection to 
 accompany Madame de Girardin to a ball at so genteel a place 
 as the English Embassy, where Lady Granville is celebrating 
 the birthday of our sovereigfn. 
 
 " On Friday was the beautiful jeU to celebrate the birthday of the 
 Queen of England : and as it is a woman who is king in England, the 
 men did not wear uniform at Lord Granville's ball, but the women. 
 
 240 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 Nothing could look more agreeable than all these white robes, strewed 
 over with roses, which made the most respectable matrons of the 
 company look young. It was the fete of the rose : and never did the 
 royal flower shine with more splendour. At the corner of each door 
 was a mountain of rose-trees in flower, ranged upon invisible steps : 
 indeed a beautiful sight ; and here and there you might perceive some 
 of the fair young dancers picking roses in order to replace the graceful 
 bouquets of their robes, which the whirl of the waltz had carried away. 
 Nor was the little theft likely of detection : there were enough roses 
 there to crown all the hundred-and-sixty English families with their 
 eighteen daughters — Isabella, Arabella, Rosina, Susanna, Eliza, Mary, 
 Lucy, Betsey, Nancy, &c. &c. 
 
 " Besides the flowers of the magnificent gardens and hothouses of 
 the embassy, ten or twelve hundred rose-trees had been sent for, of 
 which only eight hundred, it is said, could find a place in the reception- 
 rooms. Judge from this of the mythological splendour of the scene. 
 The garden was covered with a tent, and arranged as a conversation- 
 room. But what a room ! The large beds, filled with flowers, were 
 enormous jardinieres that all the world came to see — the gravel-walks 
 were covered over with fresh cloths, full of respect for the white satin 
 slippers of the dancers ; great sofas of damask and velvet replaced the 
 garden seats. On a round table there were books, and it was a pleasure 
 to come and muse and breathe the air in this vast boudoir, from which 
 one could hear the noise of the music, like fairy songs in the distance, 
 and see passing away like happy shades, in the three long galleries of 
 flowers round about, the lovely and sprightly young girls who were 
 hastening to the dance, and the lovely, but more sedate young married 
 women, who were hieing to the supper. 
 
 "There never is a pte without a lion, and the lion on this occasion 
 was a charming Anglo-Italian princess, whose appearance made the 
 most lively impression. Lady Mary Talbot, married two months since 
 to the Prince Doria, had arrived from Genoa only a few hours before 
 the ball, and only thought of going to rest after so long a journey, and 
 with regret of the splendid festival she must miss seeing- How could 
 a person, arrived only at four, think of being present at a fete at ten 
 o'clock ? Had it been four o'clock in the morning, there might have 
 been a chance yet to prepare a dress, and to recruit oneself from the 
 fatigues of travel. But now the case seemed hopeless, when of a 
 sudden the following wonderful words were uttered at the princess's 
 door, ' A ball dress is just brought for Madame la Princesse.' And as 
 one sees the courser stretched idly in the meadow start up and bound 
 across the plain at the first signal of the warlike trumpet, so did the fair 
 young traveller, stretched idly upon her couch, rouse herself on a 
 
 N.S.B. 341 R 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 sudden, and bound to the dressing-table at the first signal of coquetry. 
 Whence came this robe so beautiful ? what beneficent fairy had com- 
 manded it ? That question is easily answered— only a real friend could 
 have thought of such an attention. And shall I tell you, young 
 beauties, how to know a true friend ? She who admires you, deceives 
 you ; she who makes others admire you, really loves you." 
 
 In this passage the viscount-disguise is surely thrown off 
 altogether and the woman appears, as natural and as coquettish 
 as Heaven made her. If we have occasionally cause to 
 complain of the viscount's want of sincerity, here, at least, we 
 have no right to suspect Madame de Girardin. The incident 
 of the dress overcomes her nature ; and in the enthusiasm of 
 the moment, she lets the great secret regarding her sex escape 
 her. But for the moralities that have already been uttered, how 
 long and how profitable a sermon might be composed with that 
 last sentence for a text ! " She who admires you, deceives 
 you ; she who causes you to be admired, loves you." What a 
 picture it is of the woman of the world, and her motives, and 
 her simplicity, and her sincerity, and her generosity. That was 
 a fatal confession, Madame de Girardin. It may be true, but 
 it was a fault to say it ; and one can't but think of the woman 
 who uttered it with an involuntary terror. Thus we have seen 
 a man boast that he would play any tricks upon the cards, and 
 cut any given one any number of times running, which he did, 
 and the world admired — but nobody afterwards was anxious to 
 play at dearth with that man ; no, not for a penny a game. 
 
 And now having introduced the English reader to two such 
 fashionable assemblies as the foregoing, we must carry them 
 into company still more genteelly august, and see the queen and 
 the Princess Helen. It is in this easy, lively way that the gay 
 Parisian describes the arrival of the amiable widow of the Duke 
 of Orleans. 
 
 A FfiTE-DAY AT PARIS. 
 
 ■' The garden of the Tuileries was splendidly beautiful yesterday — it 
 was beautified by the king's orders and by the people's — by the sky's 
 
 242 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 and by the spring's. What a noble and cheerful sight it was ! Go 
 hang yourselves, ye inhabitants of the provinces, you who could not 
 see this magnificent picture, for the canvas is torn, and the piece will 
 never be exhibited again. Fancy now sights such as were never before 
 seen at Paris at the same time : fancy a sky bright blue — fancy the 
 trees real green— the people neat and well-dressed — and the crowd 
 joyous and in its best attire, revelling in the perfumes of the flowering 
 lilies. Confess now you never saw any thing like that — at Paris when 
 the sky is blue the trees are always gray, for the dust eats them up — at 
 Paris when the trees are green then you may be sure it has just rained, 
 and all the people are muddy and dirty . . . Oh, how brilliant nature 
 was that day, youthful and yet strong — young and yet powerful, fresh 
 and ripe, budding and full : it was like the passion of a pure girl who 
 should have waited till five-and-twenty before she began to love — it 
 had all the purity of a first love — but a first-love experienced when the 
 heart had attained its utmost power and perfection. 
 
 " How noble those lofty chesnuts are — how finely do their royal 
 flowers contrast with the sombre verdure of their leaves ! 
 
 " Look from here and see what a fine sight it is. The great alley of 
 the garden is before us — on the right, three ranks of national guards ; 
 on the left, three of troops of the line. Behind them the crowd — 
 elegant and brilliant with a thousand colours. Before us is a basin with 
 its fountain, which mounts upwards in a sunbeam : behind the jet d'eau, 
 look, you see the obelisk, and behind that the arch of triumph. By way 
 of frame to the picture are two terraces covered with people, and great 
 trees everywhere. Look down for a moment at yonder flower-beds and 
 tufts of lilac — every one of them blossomed on the same day. What 
 perfume ! what sunshine ! Hush ! here's a courier, the procession 
 must be drawing near — now comes a postilion all covered with dust, 
 and gallops away : and now comes a poodle dog and gallops away too, 
 quite frightened — immense laughter and applause from the crowd. 
 After the poodle comes a greyhound, still more alarmed — still more 
 laughter and applause from the crowd — and the first part of the pro- 
 cession serves to keep the public in good humour. A stout workwoman 
 In a cap elbows a genteel old beauty, and says, ' Let me see the 
 Princess, ma'am; you, you can go and see her at court.' The genteel 
 old beauty looks at her with a sneer, and says to her daughter, ' The 
 court, indeed ! The good woman does not seem to know that there is much 
 more likelihood for her to go to that court than for us.' ' No doubt,' 
 says the young lady. ' Only let her marry a grocer, and they'll make 
 her a great lady.' By which dialogue we learn that the legitimists also 
 have condescended to come and see the procession. At last it comes. 
 See ! here are the cuirassiers, they divide, and you see the reflection 
 
 243 R 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 of their breast-plates flashing in the fountain. Now comes the cavalry 
 of the national guards. What a fine corps, and what a fine horse 
 
 Mr. G has ! The king ! M. Montalivet — the ministers — they go 
 
 too fast, I can't see anything. The Queen ! how noble she looks ; 
 how charmingly dressed — what a ravishing blue hat ! The Princess 
 Helen looks round this way, how young her face seems ! ah, now you 
 can only see her hat, it is a sweet pretty one, in white paille de riz, with 
 a drooping marabout. Her robe is very elegant, white muslin, double 
 with rose. The Duke of Orleans is on horseback by the Queen's side ; 
 but, mercy on us, who are those people in the carriages of the suite ? 
 Did you ever see such old bonnets and gowns — for a triumphal entry 
 into Paris, surely they might have made a little toilet I The cortege has 
 a shabby air. The carriages are extremely ugly, and too full — indeed, 
 it was more worth waiting for it than seeing it." 
 
 If an English Baker-street lady had been called upon to 
 describe a similar scene in her own country, we fancy her letter 
 would have been conceived in a very different spirit from that 
 of the saucy Parisian. The latter does not possess the Baker- 
 street respect for the powers that be, and looks at kings and 
 queens without feeling the least oppression or awe. A queen 
 in a " ravissante capote bleue" — a princess of whom the 
 description is that she is a "jolie Parisienne." — Is not this a sad 
 disrespectful manner of depicting an august reigning family ? 
 Nor, if we guess right, would Baker-street have condescended to 
 listen to the vulgar conversation of the poor woman in the 
 crowd who was so anxious to see the procession. The sneer 
 of the great lady from the Faubourg St. Germain is very 
 characteristic, and the deductions by the lookers-on not a little 
 malicious and keen. The tasty description of the spring, too, 
 at the commencement of the passage, where its warmth is 
 likened to the love of an " honnfite jeune fille de 25 ans," could 
 only have been written by a French woman deeply versed in 
 matters of the heart. Elsewhere she utters still more queer and 
 dangerous opinions of the female sex, as this. 
 
 " Just look at the ' femmes passionn^es ' of our day, about whom the 
 world talk. They all began by a marriage of ambition : they have all 
 desired to be rich, countesses, marchionesses, duchesses, before they 
 
 244 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 desired to be loved. It is not until they recognised the vanities of 
 vanity, that they have resolved upon love. There are some among 
 them who have simply gone back to the past, and at eight-and-twenty 
 or thirty passionately devote themselves to the obscure youth whose 
 love they refused at seventeen. M. de Balzac is right, then, in painting 
 love as he finds it in the world, superannuated that is ; and M. Janin 
 is right too in saying that this sort of love is very dull. But if it is 
 dull for novel-readers, how much more dismal is it for young men, 
 who dream of love, and who are obliged to cry out in the midst of 
 their transports about the beloved object, ' I love her,' and ' Oh 
 heavens, how handsome she must have been ! ' " 
 
 The "femme passionn^e" we see then to be a recognised fact 
 in French fashionable life, and here, perhaps, our young 
 Englishwoman, who has read the genteel descriptions eagerly 
 will begin to be rather scandalised at the society into which she 
 is introduced, and acknowledge that the English modes are the 
 best. Well, well ; passion is a delicate subject — there is a 
 great deal more about it in this book (or of what is called 
 passion in Paris) than, perhaps, English mothers of families 
 would like to hear of : let us rather be faithful to fashion, and 
 as we have read of ambassadors and kings, now have an 
 account of pretenders. 
 
 " This makes me think of a young prince, prisoner at Strasburg, 
 whose audacious attempts we were far from foreseeing. Louis Bona- 
 parte is full of honour and good sense ; it could only be the ennui of 
 exile which inspired him with the foolish idea to war and be emperor 
 in France. Poor young man ! it was more pleasure to him to be a 
 captive in his own country than free in a foreign land. When one has 
 blood and a name like his, inaction is hard to bear. Had they but 
 given him right of citizenship in France, he had perhaps been con- 
 tented. We have often heard him say that all his ambition was to be 
 a French soldier, and gain his grade in our army — that a regiment 
 would suit him better than a throne. Eh ! mon Dieu ! it was not a 
 kingdom he came to look for here, it was only a country. 
 
 " We have often known him to laugh at the royal education which 
 had been given him. One day he gaily told us, that in his childhood 
 his great pleasure was to water flowers, and that his governess, Madame 
 
 de B , fearing lest he should catch cold, had the watering-pots filled 
 
 with warm water. ' My poor flowers,' said the prince, ' they never 
 
 245 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 knew the freshness of the waters ! I was but an infant then, and still 
 the precaution appeared ridiculous to me.' He never could speak of 
 France without a tender feeling, and in this he resembles the Duke of 
 Bordeaux. We were at Rome when we heard of the news of Talma's 
 death ; every one began at once to deplore his loss, and to tell all they 
 knew about the great actor, and speak of all the characters in which 
 they had seen him. Whilst he was listening to us, who was then 
 scarcely sixteen, he stamped his foot with impatience, and said, with 
 tears in his eyes. ' To think that I am a Frenchman and have never 
 seen Talma ! ' 
 
 "They say that on the day of his appearance at Strasburg, Prince 
 Louis, intoxicated by his first moment of success, despatched a courier 
 to his mother to say he was master of Strasburg and about to march 
 on Paris. Three days after he received in prison the answer of the 
 Duchess of St. Leu, who, believing him to be entirely victorious, en- 
 treated him to preserve the royal family from the fury of his partisans, 
 and to treat the king with the utmost possible respect. This shows us 
 how far illusions can be carried among those who live far away from 
 us, and that exiled princes are deceived as much as others." 
 
 To think he is a Frenchman and has not seen Talma ! What 
 a touch of pathos that is, of true French pathos. He has lost a 
 kingdom, an empire, but, above all, he has not seen Talma. 
 Fancy the pretender, our pretender, dying at Rome, and saying 
 on his deathbed that he dies unhappy at not having seen 
 Garrick in " Abel Drugger ! " There would have been a universal 
 grin through history at such a speech from such a man — but ours 
 is not a country of equality ; acting is an amusement with us, 
 and does not come within the domain of glory — but one can 
 see these French people with that strange fantastic mixture of 
 nature and affectation, exaggeration and simplicity, weeping not 
 altogether sham tears over the actor's death — and a prince 
 thinking it necessary to "placer son petit mot" on the 
 occasion. 
 
 We have a " petit mot," too, for the Duke of Bordeaux, no 
 doubt as authentic as that here attributed to the unlucky prisoner 
 of Ham. 
 
 " A traveller just returned from Goritz recounts an anecdote regard- 
 ing M. le Due de Bordeaux, which is not without interest. The prince 
 
 246 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 had invited several young men to ride, and every one admired his 
 boldness and agility. Hedges and ditches — nothing stopped him. 
 At last he came to a ravine, a sort of torrent, whereof the stream was 
 large enough to make the prince pause for a moment. But he turned 
 round smiling to his companions, and said ' Now, gentlemen, this is 
 the Rhine, let us pass into France ; ' and so saying he plunged his 
 horse into the torrent, and gained, not without difficulty, the opposite 
 bank. When he was landed, he was aware of his own imprudence, 
 for many of his companions were by no means so good horsemen as he. 
 ' Ah ! ' said he, looking towards them, and speaking with his usual 
 charming kindness, ' how thoughtless I am ! there is a bridge hard 
 by ; ' and he pointed out the bridge to his suite, and beckoned them to 
 pass over by it. All returned, admiring the young prince's courage 
 still more perhaps than his presence of mind. To cross torrents on 
 horseback is more glorious for oneself, but it is better to find a bridge 
 for one's friends. 
 
 Alas ! stern reason will not confirm this chivalrous opinion of 
 the Vicomte de Launay. Why is it more glorious to cross 
 torrents on horseback than to go over bridges ? To dance on 
 a tight-rope — to lock oneself into a hot oven — to swallow half 
 a score of scimitars, or to stand on one's head on a church 
 weathercock, would not even in France now-a-days be con- 
 sidered glorious, and so we deny this statement of the viscount's 
 altogether, as probably the Duke of Bordeaux would, should it 
 ever come to his royal highness's ears. But must we say it ? 
 this story, like many others in the book, that for instance, of 
 the English knights at the Eglinton tournament breaking their 
 lances in the first place, and pasting them afterwards together 
 with paper — are, as we fancy, due to the invention of the 
 writer rather than to the talk of the day, which he professes to 
 chronicle. One of these queer tales we cannot refrain from 
 giving. 
 
 " This," says Madame de Girardin, " puts me in mind of the 
 courier who had a wife at Paris, and another at Strasburg. 
 Was it a crime ? No." (O delicious moralist !) 
 
 "And this puts me in mind of the bigamist courier who had a wife 
 at Paris and another at Straisburg. Was it a crime ? No ; a faithful 
 
 247 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 but alternate inhabitant of these two cities, has he not a right to 
 possess a menage in each ? One establishment was not sufficient for 
 him : his life was so regularly divided, that he passed two days in each 
 alternate week at Paris and Strasburg. With a single wife he would 
 have been a widower for the half of his time. In the first instance he 
 had lived many years uniqutly married at Paris, but he came soon bitterly 
 to feel the inconvenience of the system. The care which his wife took 
 of him at Paris made him find his solitude when at Strasburg too 
 frightful. In the one place ennui and solitude, a bad supper and a bad 
 inn. In the other, a warm welcome, a warm room, and a supper most 
 tenderly served. At Paris all was pleasure : all blank loneliness at 
 Strasburg. 
 
 "The courier of the mail interrogated his heart, and acknowledged 
 that solitude was impossible to him, and reasoned within himself, that 
 if marriage was a good thing, therefore there could not be too much 
 of a good thing, therefore it became him to do a good thing at Stras- 
 burg as well as at Paris. 
 
 " Accordingly the courier married, and the secret of his second union 
 was kept profoundly, and his heart was in a perpetual and happy 
 vibration between the two objects of his affections. When on the road 
 to Strasburg he thought of his fair Alsacian with her blue eyes and 
 blushing cheeks ; passed two days gaily by her side, the happy father 
 of a family of little Alsacians, who smiled around him in his northern 
 home. However one day he committed a rash act of imprudence. 
 One of his Strasburg friends was one day at Paris, when the courier 
 asked him to dine. The guest mistaking Caroline for the courier's 
 sister, began talking with rapture of the blue-eyed Alsacian and the 
 children at Strasburg; he said he had been at the wedding, and re. 
 counted the gaieties there. And so the fatal secret was disclosed to 
 poor Caroline. 
 
 "She was very angry at first, but she was a mother, and the elder 
 of her sons was thirteen years old. She knew the disgrace and ruin 
 ■which would come upon the family in the event of a long and scan- 
 dalous process at law, and thought with terror of the galleys — the 
 necessary punishment of her husband, should his crime be made 
 known. She had very soon arranged her plan. She pretended she 
 had a sick relative in the country, and straightway set off for Strasburg, 
 where she found Toinette, and told her all the truth. Toinette, too, 
 was at first all for vengeance, but Caroline calmed her, showed her 
 that the welfare of their children depended on the crime not being 
 discovered, and that the galleys for life must be the fate of the criminal. 
 And so these two women signed a sublime compact to forget their 
 jealousies, and it was only a few hours before his death that their 
 
 248 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 husband knew of their interview. A wheel of the carriage breaking, 
 the mail was upset over a precipice ; and the courier, dreadfully 
 wounded, was carried back to Strasburg, where he died after several 
 days of suffering. As he was dying he made his confession ; ' My 
 poor Toinette,' said he, ' pardon me. I have deceived thee. I was 
 already married when I took you for a wife.' 'I know it,' said Toinette 
 sobbing, ' don't plague yourself now, its pardoned long ago.' ' And 
 who told you ? ' ' The other one.' ' Caroline ? ' ' Yes, she came here 
 seven years ago, and said you would be hanged were I to peach, and so 
 I said nothing.' ' You are a good creature,' said the two-wived courier, 
 stretching out his poor mutilated hand to Toinette ; ' and so is the 
 other one,' added he with a sigh ; ' its hard to quit two such darlings 
 as those. But the time's up now — my coach can't wait — go and bring 
 the little ones that I may kiss them — I wish I had the others too. 
 Heigh ho ! ' 
 
 " ' But here they are ! ' cried the courier at this moment, and his two 
 elder boys entered with poor Caroline, time enough to see him die. 
 The children cried about him. The two wives knelt on each side, and 
 he took a hand of each, and hoped that heaven would pardon him as 
 those loving creatures had ; and so the courier died. 
 
 " Caroline told Francois, her son, who had grown up, that Toinette 
 was her sister-in-law, and the two women loved each other, and never 
 quitted each other afterwards." 
 
 Here, however, our extracts must stop. But for the young 
 lady, for whose profit they have been solely culled, we might 
 have introduced half a score of others, giving the most wonder- 
 ful glimpses into the character if not of all the Parisian popu- 
 lation, at least of more than one-half of it — of the Parisian 
 women. There is the story of the padded lady. If a duke or 
 a prince came to her chateau, she sailed oat to receive them as 
 full-blown as a Circassian : if it was a dandy from Paris, she 
 appeared of an agreeable plumpness : if only her husband and 
 her old friends were present, she came to breakfast as meager 
 as a skeleton. There is the story of the lady at her tambour 
 or tapestry-frame, very much puzzled, counting the stitches 
 necessary to work the Turk or the poodle-dog, on which she is 
 engaged. Kou enter, says the Viscount de Launay, you press 
 your suit ; she is troubled, anxious ; as you pour out your 
 
 249 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 passion, what will she say — " O heavens ! I love him — Alphonse, 
 in pity leave me ! " no such thing ; she says, " Seven, eight, 
 nine stitches of blue for the eye ; three, four, six stitches of red 
 for the lip, and so on." Vou are supposed to be the public, 
 she the general Parisian woman. Vou seem to fall in love with 
 she, as a matter of course — (see the former extract regarding 
 Xht/emme passionnSe) — it can't be otherwise ; it is as common 
 as sleep or taking coffee for breakfast ; it is the natural condi- 
 tion of men and wives — other men's wives. Well, every country 
 has its customs ; and married ladies who wish to be made love 
 to, are married where they can have their will. 
 
 Then there is a delicious story about two old coquettes 
 travelling together, and each acting youth to the other. Each 
 writes home of the other, Madame de X. is charming, she has 
 been quite a mother to me. Only women can find out these 
 wonderful histories — women of the world, women of good 
 company. 
 
 And is it so.' Is it true that the women of Madame de 
 Girardin's country, and of fashionable life, are the heartless, 
 odious, foolish, swindling, smiling, silly, selfish creatures she 
 paints them .' Have they no sense of religious duty, no feeling 
 of maternal affection, no principle of conjugal attachment, no 
 motive except variety, for which they will simulate passion (it 
 stands to reason that a woman who does not love husband and 
 children, can love nobody) and break all law ? Is this true — 
 as every French romance that has been written time out of 
 mind, would have us believe ? Is it so common that Madame 
 de Girardin can afford to laugh at it as a joke, and talk of it as 
 a daily occurrence ? — if so, and we must take the Frenchman's 
 own word for it — In spite of all the faults, and all the respect- 
 ability, and all the lord-worship, and all the prejudice, and all 
 the intolerable dulness of Baker Street — Miss (the young and 
 amiable English lady, before apostrophized) had much better 
 marry in the Portman Square, than in the Place Vendome 
 quarter. 
 
 250 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 The titles of the two other works mentioned at the head of 
 our article have been placed there as they have a reference to 
 Parisian life, as well as the lively, witty, and unwise letters of 
 M. la Vicomte de Launay. Unwise are the other named works 
 too, that of the German and the Englishman, but it cannot be 
 s'aid that either of them, lays the least claim to the wit and 
 liveliness of the gay pseudo-vicomte. 
 
 Those who will take the trouble to compare the two authors. 
 Grant and Rellstab, will find in them a great similarity of senti- 
 ment, and a prodigious talent at commonplace ; but it is not 
 likely that many of the public will have the opportunity, or take 
 the pains to make this important comparison. Rellstab is a 
 Berlin cockney, with one of the largest bumps of wonder that 
 ever fell to man. His facility at admiration may be imagined, 
 when we state that at the very first page of his book he begins 
 wondering at the velocity of the German Schnell post. He 
 goes five miles an hour, and finds the breathless rapidity of the 
 conveyance like " the uncertain bewilderment of a dream." He 
 enters the Mallepost at Frankfort, and describes THE NEW 
 CONSTRUCTION of those vehicles in the most emphatic 
 manner, says that AT THE VERY MOST they take five 
 minutes to change horses on the road, and that the horses 
 go at A GALLOP. One can see his honest pale round face, 
 peering out of the chaise window, and the wondering eyes 
 glaring through the spectacles, at the dangers of the prodigious 
 journey. 
 
 On arriving, he begins straightway to describe his bedroom, 
 on the third floor, and the prices of other bedrooms. " My 
 room," says he, " has an elegant alcove with an extraordinarily 
 clean bed, — it is true, it is floored with titles instead of planks, 
 but these are covered with carpets. A marble mantelpiece, a 
 chest of drawers, a s^cr^taiie, a marble table by the bed, three 
 cushioned armchairs and three others form the furniture ; and 
 the room altogether has a homish and comfortable look." 
 
 As for the aspect of the streets, he finds that out at once, 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 "The entrance into Paris through the Faubourg St. Martin is 
 like the Kopnicker Street in Berlin, although the way from 
 the barrier to the post is not so long as in Paris ; " and then 
 Mr. Rellstab details with vast exactness, his adventures in the 
 yard of the messagerie, and the dexterity of an individual, who 
 with little assistance hoisted his luggage and that of his friend 
 on to his brawny shoulders, and conveyed them from the 
 carriage to the ground without making the slightest claim upon 
 their respective purses. The hotel, and the extraordinary furni- 
 ture of his apartment, described as above, he is ready to sally 
 with us into the streets. 
 
 " We proceeded first," he says, " through the Passage du 
 Panorama. ' Passage,' being the name given to such thorough- 
 fares, is made for the convenience of circulation in the different 
 quarters of the towns, are roofed over with glass, paved with 
 granite or asphalte, and are lined on either side by splendidly 
 furnished shops (we translate literally, being unwilling to add 
 to or take from the fact, that all passages are thus appointed). 
 Here I had the first opportunity of observing narrowly the taste 
 displayed in the arrangement of these latter. Nothing, not 
 even the plainest article for sale, is arrayed otherwise than with 
 the most particular neatness. Many shops surprised me by 
 their system of combination. In one, for instance, devoted to 
 the sale of such articles as tea, coffee, and the like, we do not 
 only see tea, coffee, and chocolate, all neatly laid out, each 
 with its price attached to it, but also the various apparatus for 
 the consumption of such articles ; teacups and saucers, teapots 
 and tea strainers, as also utensils of a similar nature for the 
 preparation of coffee and chocolate. * * I consider it a most 
 excellent arrangement, that to every article its price is attached. 
 The stranger who cannot judge of the price of an article, will 
 often decline making inquiry, lest the demand exceed his 
 opinion of the value — but if he sees what is the price, he is 
 much more likely to buy, as he will know whether his purse 
 will enable him to indulge his desire." Mr. Rellstab then goes 
 
 252 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. , 
 
 into a short disquisition on the price of hats, which he finds are 
 cheaper than in his own country. 
 
 Our author has not yet got into the streets of Paris, and we 
 begin to question whether our love of his company will allow 
 us to attend him there. However, we can make a short cut, 
 and come upon him again as he is passing very slowly along 
 the Boulevard des Italiens, for he has not got farther. He has 
 just remarked, we find, that a very vast proportion of the people 
 are in mourning, and accounted for it by informing us that 
 ceremony obliges mourning to be worn a long time. 
 
 " The boulevards draw a half circle round the heart of Paris, just as 
 the walks round Frankfort and Leipzig surround the whole of the more 
 ancient parts of these towns. But the half circle here is nearly five 
 miles in length ; their appearance is more town-like than garden-like ; 
 they rather resemble our Lime Tree walk (in Berlin), only that the 
 passage for carriages is in the centre, whilst two rows of wide-spreading 
 trees line a promenade on either side." 
 
 Here comes a minute description of the paving, in which we 
 cannot suppose all our readers interested. 
 
 " The general impression given by the buildings on the boulevards 
 resembles that given by the Ditch (Graben) of Vienna, though to be 
 sure, the construction of the houses differs considerably from that in 
 Vienna, and still more from that in Berlin. None of the lower floors 
 appear to be occupied by private individuals. They seem all to be made 
 of avail as shops or coffee houses ; even the first and second stories are 
 often similarly employed, and at enormous rents." 
 
 M. Rellstab soon after beholds " the Vend6me pillar with its 
 colossal statue of Napoleon, in the perspective of a broad noble 
 street, the Rue de la Paix, a shadowy form," he says, "which, 
 as by magic, darkened the present and brought forward, in its 
 murky light, the mighty past." 
 
 This and the next sentence, in which he makes history speak 
 to him and his friend, are of the finest order of fine writing. 
 He does not retail what history says to him, but assures us that 
 the few moments which he passed beneath the pillar produced 
 
 253 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 "emotions which are indescribable." On a carnival day he 
 comes upon the spot whence Fieschi fired his hell-machine on 
 the 28th July, 1S35. The poor fellow's terror breaks out in the 
 most frantic poetry, " Paris," shrieks he, " is like JEtm. In 
 the too-strong air of its with-plants-and-flowers-luxuriously- 
 decked ground (his epithets are always tremendous), the keenest 
 nosed dogs lose the scent, and in its wondrous environs, the 
 eye finds itself wandering and lost in such an immeasurable 
 labyrinth of beauty, that one forgets how the glowing lava 
 heaves below, and how every moment the thundering hell, in 
 the very midst of the Paradise, may tear open its mouth. 
 
 " On, on ! " 
 And " on " he rushes, but this perhaps is the richest passage of 
 eloquence in the book. 
 
 What can one say more about him ? Good introductions 
 and the name of a writer suffice to introduce M. Rellstab to 
 one or two characters of note. He calls upon them, and finds 
 them, in some instances, not at home, and going or returning 
 in a hired cabriolet, he makes use of the opportunity to print 
 the tariff and propensities of these conveyances. He goes to 
 the opera and is squeezed ; he attends the carnival balls and is 
 shocked ; he lives in Paris and wishes himself back at Berlin. 
 There is a particularizing throughout the book which is amazing, 
 and to an English reader most comic. But we live amongst 
 commonplace, and we like to read of what we daily see. M. 
 Rellstab's book will tell the reader what he already knows, and 
 if he learns nothing new from it, he will be able to flatter him- 
 self on its perusal with the idea — " I too could have been an 
 author." 
 
 And, finally, with respect to the work of the celebrated Mr. 
 Grant. The Morning Herald says, " it will find its way into 
 every library, and be read by every family " ; the Metropolitan 
 remarks that " they are able and comprehensive in plan, and 
 nothing could be better executed " ; the Jersey Times declares 
 (and this we admit) " that no living author could have presented 
 
 254 
 
NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 us with such a picture of Paris and its people" ; znd A t'nszvor /A' s 
 Magazine is of opinion " that Mr. Grant's volume will supersede 
 the trashy Guide-book of Galignani." Let us trust that these 
 commendations have had their effect, and that Mr. Grant has 
 sold a reasonable number of his volumes. 
 
 But for the honour of England, and as this Review is read in 
 France, we are bound to put in a short protest against the 
 above dicta of the press, and humbly to entreat French readers 
 noi to consider Mr. Grant as the representative of English 
 literature, nor to order the book which the Morning Herald 
 declares no English family will be without. If we are all to 
 have it, let us, at any rate, keep the precious benefit to our- 
 selves, nor permit a single copy of " Paris and its People " to 
 get out of the kingdom. II faut laver (the words are those of 
 his majesty the Emperor Napoleon) son linge sale en famille. 
 Let us keep Mr. Grant's works in the same privacy, or the 
 English man-of-letters will get such a reputation on the conti- 
 nent as he will hardly be anxious to keep. 
 
 English families may, if they please, purchase Mr. Grant's 
 book in place of Galignani's " trashy Guide-book," which is the 
 very best guide-book that we know of in any language, which 
 is the work of scholars and gentlemen, the compilation of which 
 must have necessitated a foundation of multifarious historical, 
 architectural, and antiquarian reading, (such as Mr. Grant 
 never could have mastered, for he knows no language, living or 
 dead, not even the English language, which he pretends to 
 write,) and which, finally, contains for half the price, four or 
 five times the amount of matter to be found in these volumes, 
 which every English family is to read. Let us be allowed in a 
 Foreign Review to make a protest against the above sentiments, 
 for the sake of the literary profession. 
 
 Mr. Grant spent some time in the months of July and 
 August in Paris ; he may have been there six, or possibly three 
 weeks. With this experience his qualifications for writing a 
 book on Paris were as follows : he did not know a syllable of 
 
 255 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 the language ; he is not acquainted with the civilized habits of 
 any other country ; his stupidity passes all bounds of belief ; 
 his ignorance is without a parallel that we know of, in pro- 
 fessional literature; he has a knack of blundering so extra- 
 ordinary that he cannot be trusted to describe a house-wall ; 
 and with these qualities he is said to write a book which is to be 
 read by all English families, and to ruin Galignani's trashy 
 publication. It is too bad : for the critic, however good- 
 natured, has, after all, a public to serve as well as an author; 
 and has no right, while screening the dulness and the blunders 
 of a favourite wit or blockhead, to undervalue the honest 
 labours and cultivated abilities of meritorious scholars and 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Mr. Grant begins to blunder at the first line of his book, and 
 so continues to the end. He disserts upon the gutters in the 
 streets, the windows in the houses, the cabs and their fares, the 
 construction of the omnibuses ; and by a curious felicity of 
 dulness, is even in these matters entirely untrustworthy. He 
 says that Chautebriand is a republican and a member of the 
 Chamber of Deputies, he visits the Madeline and the Citi^ he 
 calls Julius Cassar " that distinguished writer," and a nose " an 
 organ which it is needless to name." He discovers that the 
 Palais Royal* is the place to which all the aristocracy of France 
 resorts ; he sees " the most elegant ladies of the land sitting 
 alongside of dirty drivers in hack-cabriolets " ; and dining at an 
 eating-house for thirty sous, pronounces his meal to be the 
 height of luxury, and declares that the gentry of Paris are in 
 the habit of so dining. Does the Morning Herald seriously 
 recommend every " English family" to do likewise? We put 
 this as a home question. 
 
 156 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 By ALFRED MICHIELS. 
 
 The works of the author of this wonderful book have been 
 hitherto unknown to us : and we are curious to know the opi- 
 nion of the French critics concerning him. Has the volume 
 called " Angleterre " been received gravely as an authentic 
 narrative ? Does the French public believe its statements, and 
 gather matter out of its ingenious pages corroborative of its 
 hatred for our perfidious nation? Do the National and the 
 Slide quote from it with approval, and point out the 
 opinions of the " homme consciencieux, esprit distingu^, 
 ecrivain sdrieux, M. Alfred Michiels," as capable of directing 
 his countrymen in their judgment of England and its institu- 
 tions ? Indeed they are ignorant enough to believe him : and 
 of all the civilised countries in Europe, France is perhaps the 
 only one where such a book could be written, or published, or 
 credited. The narrative of that distinguished foreigner Hajji 
 Baba, of Ispahan, is almost as correct, and the travels of the 
 famous Hanoverian Baron, Monsieur de Munchausen, scarcely 
 less authentic. 
 
 When the great Michiels came among us does not appear. 
 The interesting date of that event our author keeps back with 
 studious obscurity. Nor does he appear to have seen anybody 
 of note in this country. He says he lived in a boarding-house, 
 and his " Angleterre " consists of Boulogne, London, Rich- 
 mond, Hampton Court, Windsor, and — Bethnal Green. Re- 
 garding all these places he has drawn much information out of 
 the guide-books, the origin of which learning he does not 
 
 N.s.B. 257 s 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 acknowledge, and adds reflections of his own far more curious 
 and valuable than any facts which he has gathered from the 
 various works of previous travellers which he has consulted. 
 
 History is indeed Michiels' forte : and he is happier than 
 most French travellers in being, as he says, a master of our 
 language. He had known it since his earliest youth. He had 
 perused a great number of British authors, and often had 
 dreamt of the " land of minstrels," and the moment he put his 
 foot on shore he resembled (in his private opinion) " a man 
 who had fallen in love with a woman at the sight of her por- 
 trait, who had mused in ecstasy over her image : who seeks her 
 trembling with hope, and falls down panting at her feet the 
 moment he has found her abode." Was ever country so 
 complimented by a Frenchman before ? Happy is ours to have 
 so passionate an admirer. It has been pronounced by the poet 
 to be a special benefit to mankind to be able " to see ourselves 
 as others see us." Let us accompany awhile this accomplished 
 M. Michiels through his peregrinations, and hear the remarks 
 that he makes regarding our manners and institutions. 
 
 These opinions are exceedingly curious. Arrived at Bou- 
 logne, and before he catches sight of England, our sentimental 
 traveller begins to point morals at us, and gives us some useful 
 lessons apropos of Buonaparte's pillar, — that object which eight 
 hundred cockneys weekly are now in the habit of visiting : 
 
 "On the 15th of August, 1804," says Michiels, "the ffite day of 
 Napoleon, a hundred thousand men were here assembled under the 
 orders of Marshal Soult. They were formed in a semicircle, in the 
 midst of which the throne of the emperor was raised, and over it 
 the banner of the nations which his genius and French intrepidity had 
 conquered. All hearts beat : a thousand visions of glory traversed the 
 mind. Buonaparte was about to found the legion of honour. Two 
 thousand drummers saluted him, and the fSte began. • * The menaced 
 shores of England trembled no doubt when the breeze brought to her 
 the murmurs of this enthusiastic crowd, when the shouts of the legion- 
 aries, mingled with the plaudits of the expiring waves, reached the 
 strand. The army desired that a monument should for ever recall the 
 remembrance of so great a ceremony. It raised half a column, not 
 
 358 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 having time to construct the capital. The pillar was terminated in 
 1841, by the orders of Louis Philippe. Elevated on the summit of the 
 rock it looks towards the hostile island, and seems to give it a perpetual 
 lesson." 
 
 A man who commences a book in this way is pretty sure to 
 prove an amusing companion, and we felt at once that his work 
 must be read with respectful interest. Each of these brief sen- 
 tences in which our author describes the above pillar is of vast 
 eloquence surely. All hearts beat. Napoleon founded the 
 legion of honour, and — and two thousand drummers saluted 
 him. The army, desirous to erect a monument to perpetuate 
 the remembrance of the ceremony, built half a column — because 
 they had not time to do any more. And there it stands — for 
 what purpose, in Heaven's name.' — to give England a perpetual 
 lesson. 
 
 That is a sly satire of Michiels. It is a lesson to England 
 certainly ; but it is a lesson to France too, which the sly moral- 
 iser would doubtless have his countrymen take to heart. It 
 seems to say — O England, let this monument teach you how 
 to regard us. We did all we could to frighten you. We went 
 every length to show our ill-will. We bullied and threatened 
 to our utmost. But we could do nothing and so we came 
 away ; erecting this monument as a token of the triumph which 
 we had achieved, and leaving it as a lesson to you in future 
 ages ; that sort of lesson which Canute read the waves, when, 
 according to the legend, he ran away from them, and left his 
 chair behind. And do not let any good-natured foreign reader 
 quarrel with us for mentioning a disagreeable subject : it is not 
 our moral, be it remembered, but that of our traveller, Alfred 
 Michiels. 
 
 He goes on musing from his mound upon the vast ocean 
 before him, and stating great and wonderful truths concerning 
 it. " Nations die — empires crumble — races perish — but Time, 
 which spares nothing else, never stops the music {melopcea) of 
 these eternal waves." They are also dangerous. " Voracious 
 
 259 s 2 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 monsters inhabit them, and menace the imprudent who con- 
 fide themselves to their waters. Vegetables and animals people 
 their solitude, and frighten the spirit by their singular forms 
 and heteroclite character. He thought the day would never 
 rise again, and that death and solitude were about to take 
 possession of the globe. Before such a sight any man, how- 
 ever small his sensibility, would have had difficulty to refrain 
 from tears." — Indeed he is a noble specimen of a French 
 cockney, and it is fine to picture to oneself the image of 
 Alfred Michiels waiting by the side of the ocean; that is if 
 he ever did visit the sea-side — about which we shall express 
 a few opinions presently. 
 
 He does not state whether he cried or not ; but night fell, it 
 was time to go into Boulogne; and in ten minutes after he 
 reached that city, he was on board the Harlequin steamer, 
 treading that menacing wave which he had just contemplated 
 with such profound emotion. The night was clear — the stars 
 bright overhead, did not yet shine bright enough to " illumine 
 the depths of the sea," and " the wheels of the vessel," Michiels 
 says, in a great image, " struck in obscurity the black /ace of 
 ocean " — boxed the ears of the Negro Neptune. 
 
 The consequences of such an insult to the god are but too 
 obvious. Michiels was sick. He was seized, he says, "with 
 astonishing promptitude " — and lay inanimate until morning. 
 " There are very humiliating things in this world," adds poor 
 Alfred, moaning out of his crib. 
 
 But with morning life was restored to Michiels. He attributes 
 his recovery to the re-appearance of that sun whose departure 
 he had announced the day before as likely to be eternal ; but 
 the probability is, that it was because Michiels now found 
 himself in calm water in the mouth of the Thames, that he 
 was no longer in a "humiliating" position. Other mariners 
 of his sort have experienced, under like circumstances, a 
 similar relief. Almost all the travellers came upon deck, and 
 an Englishman, " about forty years old," (the circumstantial 
 
 260 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 nature of the evidence is extremely interesting,) " cordially 
 presented " to Michiels a gourd full of brandy ; which offer 
 Alfred accepted. We can see him crawling out of the fore 
 cabin and fixing his pale lips upon the Englishman's "gourd " 
 — a vegetable which our islanders are always in the habit of 
 carrying. 
 
 He left his baggage at the Custom-house, and began, forth- 
 with, wandering about the city, that darling London, his passion 
 for which he has already described. The first thing he naturally 
 saw was the Monument of Fish Street Hill, on which he proceeds 
 to narrate the history of the famous fire of 1666 : from that he 
 branches off to an agreeable dissertation on the plague ; which 
 leads him to Old St. Paul's, whence he passes to the existing 
 edifice, of which Alfred has rather a contemptuous opinion. 
 "Wren," he says, " was not a man of genius, he was a poor 
 creature, a blind copyist, who fancied that he was producing 
 pure forms, whereas he only produced ' monsters without 
 character, without value, without harmony, and without vital 
 force.' " His claims at any rate are disposed of : and the 
 architect of St. Paul's and Greenwich has got his deserts. 
 However, he is not always so severe ; Michiels, cool with regard 
 to the cathedral, admires Guildhall very much, and finds it of 
 a remarkably pure Gothic architecture. 
 
 We have before signalised a practice of the modern French 
 tourists (Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas especially), who, 
 the instant they arrive at the place, proceed to rob the guide- 
 books wholesale, and to transfer the information contained in 
 those careful and useful, but not rare volumes to their own 
 pages. Now if this sort of robbery be considered as a proof 
 of skill— there is perhaps no man on record who has robbed 
 so much as Michiels, and who finds such opportunities to pass 
 off page upon page of his borrowed lore. Thus, in one instant, 
 still ill with the " humiliations " of the voyage, and with drops 
 from the revivifying " gourd " of the Englishman still on his 
 beard and mustaches, Michiels falls to with his archaeological 
 
 261 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 talk, and the city, the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor, and 
 the dinner to the allied sovereigns, are described before he is 
 even settled in his inn. The historical disquisitions, we, in 
 our discussion of Michiels, shall for the most part omit. They 
 are known to us ; or if not known, to be learned with ease : it 
 is Michiels personally who interests us, the elegant traveller, 
 the enthusiast, the wise and honest commentator upon things 
 which he has really seen and deeply meditated upon. 
 
 In speaking of the appearance of the city, he pays some very 
 high and deserved compliments to the sewers of London. 
 " The waters of the skies above," says he, " moisten its streets; 
 no impure streams are poured on them from any part. But — 
 and probably from the great fire of London — the town still 
 retains the physiognomy of a city that has been burned. Seen 
 from St. Paul's, the town has, so to speak, a scrofulous look : 
 retaining the appearance which the fire impressed upon it at 
 the most perilous period of its history, like those individuals 
 whom a horrid evil has stricken in their youth, and who bear 
 the tragic imprint of it for ever." This is quite novel and 
 elegant. London has never yet been looked upon in a scorbutic 
 point of view: nor, seeing that all the houses, and edifices 
 built by the wretched Wren, are new, could any but a man of 
 Michiels' genius have detected upon them the tragic imprint of 
 the old fire. 
 
 At night, however, he speaks of the city with a more tender 
 spirit. 
 
 " Past midnight the view of London is much more agreeable. When 
 the inhabitants are a prey to slumber, and the clatter of the vehicles 
 and the noise of the multitude are heard no more ; when the chimneys 
 have ceased to cast up their vapours— the sky, veiled until then, displays 
 its radiant dome. At the same time the soul purifies itself in contem- 
 plating the brilliancy of the stars. The eye plunges into immensity, 
 as if to seek for the God whose grandeur it recounts ! How brilliant 
 every thing is above yonder — how tranquil ! How every thing flatters 
 the imagination, and speaks a poetic language to the heart ! The 
 Tower, too, has been embellished by the change. The two ranks of 
 
 36a 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 candelabra along the pavements shine without any thing to interrupt 
 their splendour : they really compose an illumination which seems pro- 
 longed indefinitely. Each hotel has a lamp fixed over the gate, which 
 casts its brilliancy without as well as on the interior arcade. From 
 distance to distance a watchman circulates the protecting spirit of the 
 place : no fear troubles the spirit, nor disquiets the reverie. The calm, 
 the solitude, the darkness, which envelops them above and around, 
 gives the monuments an imposing expression which they do not possess 
 during the day. Here and there a tardy lamp is shining — it illumines 
 the dying man's bed, the speculator's window, or the delights of mutual 
 happiness. What dark projects and guilty schemes has this night 
 interrupted ! What hatred, what treasure, what brutal errors sleep in 
 those heads now lying low in temporary death, or in the shape of dark 
 dreams visit them ! Ah, if all men could but rise one morning burning 
 with a sacred passion for love and truth ! If they could wake and find 
 in their hearts only charitable sentiments, sage principles, and glorious 
 desires ! how the evils which at present infest life would be lessened or 
 diverted ! how noble and delightful would be the lot destined for our 
 race so worn by suffering and care ! ' ' 
 
 The passage about " a sainted love of truth," is above all 
 very fine. When a nian is writing down his own vocation, you 
 may be sure he is sincere. How many copies of this book 
 (Heaven bless us !) would be sold, if a sainted love of truth 
 actuated all Michiels' fellow-creatures ? And is it not praise- 
 worthy of a man to write against " treasons, hatred, and stupid 
 errors," when we have him presently discoursing in the following 
 fashion ? 
 
 " I had resolved to walk for several days about London as chance 
 should lead me, without any other purpose than to observe the general 
 aspect of men and things. Even the hotel in which I was lodged 
 offered me, at the onset, some subject for remark. It was a boarding- 
 house, to which, however, all the world was not welcome, but to which 
 a presentation was necessary. This precaution already gave me a proof 
 of the general want of confidence in England. Au teste the house was 
 small and snug, and well carpeted from head to foot. Two old English- 
 women kept it, and, with the exception of the kitchen-work, two Irish- 
 women performed the servants' work. Never, surely, were domestics 
 more wretched. The hatred which their nation awakens among their 
 oppressors, perpetually brought down upon these poor girls their mis- 
 tress's anger : a tempest of scolding, often accompanied by brutality, 
 
 263 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 poured on them from evening till night. Ill provided with bed, board, 
 or clothes, they were learning to understand what human justice and 
 charity are. They did all in their power to satisfy their despots, and 
 could not succeed : I doubt whether the whole year through a single 
 kind word was addressed to them. They had so profound a feeling of 
 their distress, that they ended by making no reply to the insults and 
 ill-treatment heaped upon them ; they could weep no longer. Why 
 weep, indeed, over such hopeless misfortune I 
 
 "I must confess the poor girls were not pretty: but still they 
 inspired me with a sovereign pity. I love the Gaelic nation where they 
 were born, and of which they exemplified to me the misery. The 
 wrecks of a race once powerful and covering all Europe, it is closing 
 now in the bosom of desolation a glorious and a painful career. The 
 Normans and Saxons who trample them under foot never give them a 
 moment's rest : they plunge them into that frozen mud into which the 
 Florentine poet exiles traitors ; each day they are thrust a degree 
 lower, and if they make an attempt to escape from the abyss, their 
 tormentors put a knife at their throats, infected with every deadly poison. 
 Ah! why cannot a nation expire like an individual? The agonies of 
 Ireland would then at last come to an end. 
 
 "And yet in spite of the triple malediction which weighs Jier down, 
 Ireland continues to produce great men ; she holds up her heid against 
 her cruel rival, and disputes with her the triumphs of glory. It seems 
 as if she wanted to render her rival's injustice and tyranny more con- 
 spicuous. She has always had a harp for her emblem — formerly she 
 embroidered it on her banners, and used it to sing her victories. Alas! 
 she has only sorrows now to sing, and the wind, as it passes through 
 the magic chords, only awakens from them the notes of despair. 
 
 " Whenever I spoke of these poor slaves, my hostesses contented 
 themselves by saying, ' They are Irishwomen ! ' as if their nationality 
 justified all crimes that were committed." 
 
 The two victims of British tyranny in this exclusive establish- 
 ment, honoured by the residence of Michiels, affected him 
 greatly by singing a certain song, entitled, he says, the " Two 
 Guardian Angels," a national melody, by turns sad and lively, 
 passing alternately from the tones of menace to those of frightful 
 despair. One of the guardian angels, Alfred says, counselled 
 resignation, tears and prayers; whereas the other rallied the 
 nation for its tranquillity, excited it to carnage, and doomed it 
 to endless affliction, if it drew not from its sheath the vengeful 
 
 264 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 claymore. Has any one ever heard of this poem and the 
 angels? It is quite clear which of the guardians Michiels 
 would be for following, for the young hero breaks out in the 
 following noble strain concerning them. 
 
 ■"O ancient Ireland, old sister of Gaul! listen to the song of thine 
 exterminating angel ! remain no longer motionless as the statue of 
 desolation, wave in the sun thy intrepid glaive — that sword of which 
 the brilliancy used to frighten thy enemies of old. Be not lulled to sleep 
 by vain harangues, by judicial subtleties, — the ways of diction are not 
 the paths of independence. For a people that would free itself the 
 roaring of cannon is the most eloquent of language — the sword and the 
 grape-shot the most persuasive of means. Do you fancy that you can 
 convince or mollify England ? Think you she will come and file your 
 chains and say, ' Let us embrace ? ' Never was folly equal to this. 
 What ? publicans weep for repentance and release their prey ! the 
 thing was never heard of. A rhetorician deliver millions of men ? it 
 never has, it never can be heard of. Every day of delay prepares for 
 you a year of servitude : in the midst of the fine protests that people 
 are reciting to you, the Normans take possession : troops and ships of 
 war cover your soil, and watch with lighted matches along your coasts. 
 Their barks take possession of your lakes and rivers, so that neither 
 earth, nor ocean, nor the waters which lave them, can afford you a 
 retreat. O ancient Ireland, listen to the song of thy destroying angel ! 
 Justice and truth are proscribed upon the globe : they only flourish in 
 the blood of martyrs, rust in the blood of oppressors. Rouse thee — 
 the world regards thee. If thou art to die, die the death of the brave, 
 and not the ignoble death which seizes thee by the entrails : be not 
 starved to death, as the wolves of Albion by the English hounds. Let 
 thy men struggle to the last sigh : let thy women next take their place ; 
 and thy children succeed them. Let the drum never cease to roar, and 
 the trumpet to peal — let an immense, eternal battle rage on thy fields. 
 At least thou wilt have caused thy rival to commit the greatest political 
 assassination whereof history has remembrance. 
 
 " But thou art not marked with the seal of reprobation : thou canst 
 vanquish and purge thine isle of the Norman race — the hypocrite race ! 
 Greece had six times less inhabitants, she had been chained for centuries, 
 she was as poor as thou art. See what she has done, and judge what 
 thou too may'st do ! What .fearest thou to lose ? Why hesitate ? 
 Strike, strike ! and count upon the God whom thou hast not abandoned, 
 upon thine own valour, thine own genius, and on fraternal nations, who 
 will thrill with hope and joy ! " 
 
 265 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 Is not this a lesson (like the pillar at Boulogne) of what some 
 Frenchmen would do for us if they could ? — Not that it is meant 
 to introduce the great Michiels as a representative of his country ; 
 but let any impartial man say, is that amateur incendiarism un- 
 common in France ? We have had lately specimens of it pub- 
 lished under very high authority, and with far different talent. 
 We have had a king's son, disclaiming, to be sure, all intentions 
 of hostility, yet suggesting plans of invasion, the facility of 
 burning our unarmed towns, the ease with which our merchant- 
 men might be assailed and sunk — all which points, if discussed, 
 might surely have been debated in private. Princes at peace 
 with each other need sign their names to no such 
 document ; if a prince of the English royal house had published 
 a paper showing the practicability of annoying the French coast 
 — would not all the French empire have rung with indignation 
 at the insult ? . . . But in the meanwhile we are forgetting 
 our friend Michiels bellowing out " Frappe I frappe I " and 
 giving the Irish the agreeable opportunity of allowing their 
 rivals to " commit the greatest political assassination, of which 
 history shall retain the remembrance " — the greatest, including 
 La Vendue of course. But even a Michiels should beware 
 when he talks of " fraternal nations thrilling with hope " at the 
 thought of the convulsion : our great traveller's known love of 
 truth and justice should keep his revolutionary instinct quiet. 
 
 From war he passes agreeably to love, stating in his pleasant 
 Gallican way, " Let us hate our neighbours as much as we 
 please, their wives and daughters demand very different senti- 
 ments from, us." Murder the men, says our Michiels, but be 
 kind to the women— the one sentiment is quite as flattering as 
 the other ; as graceful, as modest, and as honourable. Here is 
 an account of part of an adventure which occurred to some 
 lucky friend of Michiels' at the Haymarket. 
 
 " On going to the theatre, one is dazzled by the enchanting faces 
 which may be seen on every side. It is only in Italy that similar 
 
 266 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 assemblages of persons can be found. A magnetic fluid inundates as it 
 were the theatre. One of my friends lately told me of an adventure of 
 this kind which shows what seductions the fair daughters of the three 
 kingdoms exercise. Standing up in the pit of the Haymarket he turned 
 his eyes from box to box, from tier to tier. Charming eyes, brilliant 
 faces, mouths created for love, intoxicated him with admiration. All of 
 a sudden a young lady came and sat close to the balustrade of the lower 
 row of boxes : two men, her brother and her husband probably, placed 
 themselves near her. As soon as she appeared the other spectatresses 
 were eclipsed ; not one could bear comparison with her : for if they 
 were brilliant — she was divine. She possessed that perfect sort of 
 beauty which awakens a religious sentiment and softens the soul, as the 
 magnificences of nature— you perceive in them more lovely signs of the 
 creative hand, a purer ray of the celestial light ! Woe to those whom 
 such objects inspire with a hopeless idolatry ! One cannot love them 
 with a feeble love. They excite desire as violent and as unconquerable 
 as fanaticism. Passion then loses its habitual character: one would 
 say that the senses formed no part of this attachment, that it is the 
 soul alone which speaks — and wishes to embrace in a magic union the 
 immortal spirit under its passing form. Such a passion will brave all 
 perils — what are misfortunes, agony itself, compared to the ineffable 
 pleasure it demands ? 
 
 "No one feels this emotion more keenly than my friend. In consequence, 
 far from resisting the sudden transports, which now seized him, he gave 
 way to them without reserve. His eyes firm fixed upon the wonderful 
 stranger : he examined, scrutinised her difi'erent charms, and penetrated 
 himself with their electric influence. The play began ; but it was 
 impossible for him to see anything. His imagination would allow him 
 to see nothing but the fair Englishwoman, and he incessantly turned 
 his glances towards her. Tired of the equivocal position, he turned 
 round altogether, and sat with his back to the stage, and his face 
 turned towards the young lady. He had some fears lest he should 
 displease her, and cause her to leave the theatre : but on this point 
 he was speedily reassured. He seemed to say to her I sacrifice the 
 play to you — you in my eyes are the most interesting of chefs-d'auvres. 
 She understood this mute eulogium, and received it with favour. It 
 was delicate and manifestly sincere." 
 
 " Delicate " is just the word — nothing could be more delicate, 
 surely, than for a man in the pit to turn his back upon the 
 audience, to stare a lady full in the face in the box above him ; 
 and we can fancy how pleased she would be by this graceful 
 
 267 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 attention. How pleased also would her husband and her 
 brother be (those individuals who are stated to have accom- 
 panied the lady in question), by the politeness of the French 
 gentleman in the pit. Modest French gentleman ! though he 
 will have all us men handed to the Irish executioner : the ladies 
 he will preserve to gratify other elegant tastes of his own ! He 
 confirms it. As he looks round the theatre at the pretty 
 Englishwomen " he is inundated with a magnetic influence ! " 
 — chaste French gentleman ! He compares the feelings of 
 desire which are agitating his noble soul to a religious senti- 
 ment — pious French gentleman ! No, indeed, there is no man 
 in this world but a Frenchman, who can think and feel and 
 write in this way. 
 
 How this delightful adventure ended, there is little need to 
 say. The English lady was of course captivated by the graces 
 of her French admirer — they always are. The two gentlemen 
 who accompanied her, her brother and husband, were too 
 stupid to remark his elegant manner of paying her attention, 
 or too cowardly to punish him. My lady dropped her fan in 
 the lobby — a fan "with arms and a family title" upon it; 
 Michiels' friend carried it home the next day, and triumphed 
 over the lady of the boxes — indeed Michiels says, " Many 
 daughters of lords, of counts, of dukes, of barons, of marquises, 
 sont seduites par leurs valets." He knows it, the honest 
 creature ; his experience of London has proved it to him ; and 
 speaking of a class of our women still more degraded than the 
 daughters of the nobility above-mentioned, he says, " Je doute 
 qu'il en existe d'aussi belles dans aucun pays du monde, et Ton 
 seroit tent^ de leur dire : Ah ! si vous ^tiez pures, comme 
 Ton vous adorerait ! Si vous n'^tiez pas v^nales, de quels 
 sacrifices ne paierait-on pas votre possession." Noble 
 French moralist ! he wishes to see women pure that he may 
 pervert them ; and only regrets that they are lost already, 
 because he has not the opportunity to be the first to debauch 
 them ! 
 
 268 
 
ANGLETERRE. 
 
 Now let us venture to hint that this person, who knows so 
 much of the manners of the ladies of England, never spoke to 
 one ; that he never saw them or the country in which they live, 
 or the select boarding-house which he pretends to have 
 inhabited. There is not a word in this book which looks as if it 
 were the description of a scene actually witnessed by the writer. 
 There is not a word of description which might not have been 
 borrowed from a guide-book or two, such as the author might 
 easily procure at the public library, where he has the privilege 
 of sitting, and whence he can send his pure imagination travel- 
 ling. The man tells lies so audaciously that his very statement 
 of having been in England may be discredited, simply because 
 he himself has advanced it. He describes the misery of Bethnal 
 Green (a clever paper by M. L^on Faucher, in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes has probably inspired him), and by way of 
 authenticating his narrative, Michiels says he gave a poor 
 beggar whom he met a double shilling. That is a lie. He goes 
 to Hampton Court, and quitting the picture-gallery there when 
 night begins to fall, he goes to an inn, "of which the gothic 
 gables and multiplied windows" tempted him, and is conducted 
 to " a bed of the fourteenth century with its dais, and its panels, 
 and its open columns." These two are lies. In the morning 
 a minstrel comes and sings to him, " accompanying himself on 
 an ancient black guitar," a ballad in five-and-forty stanzas, 
 beginning : 
 
 " There was a knight was drunk with wine 
 A riding along the way, sir." 
 
 The whole ballad is to be found in " Percy's Relics." This 
 story also is a lie. He goes to Eton, where he finds a professor 
 who declares himself to be the author of the most popular book 
 in England, " The Memoirs of Punch," and editor of the 
 " Letters of Cicero to Atticus." The popular author had received 
 orders from all the princes in Europe — and wore them at his 
 button-hole. This is the last story in the book, and a lie too. 
 
 369 
 
THE NEW SKETCH BOOK. 
 
 There is no use in looking for polite phrases and qualifying 
 otherwise a book which is as gross and disgusting an imposture 
 as ever was pressed upon the incredulity of Frenchmen. With 
 which compliment, and hoping that his own countr}'men will 
 notice him as he merits, we will take leave of Alfred 
 Michieh. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 TITLES OF THE VARIOUS WORKS REVIEWED 
 IN THE PRECEDING ESSAYS, ALL OF 
 WHICH APPEARED IN THE "FOREIGN 
 QUARTERLY REVIEW." 
 
 Essay No. I. — The Rhine, by Victor Hugo, Foreign Quarterly 
 Review for April, 1842. 
 Le Rhin, lettres a. un ami, par Victor Hugo (Letters from 
 the Rhine), Paris, 1842. 
 
 Essay No. II. — The German in England, Foreign Quarterly 
 Review for July, 1842. 
 Mittheilungen aus dem Reisetagehuche eines Deutschen 
 Natur/orschers : England (Extracts from the Travelling 
 Journal of a German Naturalist : England), Basle, 
 1842. 
 
 Essay No. III. — Celebrated Crimes, by Alexandre Dumas, 
 Foreign Quarterly Review for October, 1842. 
 Crimes Cellbres (Celebrated Crimes), by Alexandre 
 Dumas, Paris, 1841. 
 
 Essay No. IV. — Letters from Paris, Foreign Quarterly Review 
 for January, 1843. 
 Briefe aus Paris, Von Karl Gutzkow (Letters from Paris, 
 by Charles Gutzkow), Leipzig, 1842. 
 
 Essay No. V. — Georg Herwegh's Poems, Foreign Quarterly 
 Review ioT April, 1843. 
 
 271 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Gedichte eines Lebendigen, mil titter Dedikation an den 
 Verstorbenen (Poems of a Living Man, with a Dedica- 
 tion to the Dead), Zweite-Auflage, Zurich and 
 Winterthur, 184 1-2. 
 
 Essay No. VI. — English History and Character on the French 
 
 Stage, Foreign Quarterly Review for July, 1843. 
 Le Verre d'Eau ; ou, Les Effets et les Causes (The Glass 
 
 of Water, or Effects and Causes). Le Fils du Cromwell 
 
 (The Son of Cromwell), Comedies, par Eugene Scribe, 
 
 Paris, 1842. 
 Gaetan, II Mammone. Drame, par Frederic SouLif, 
 
 Paris, 1842. 
 Halifax. Com6die, par Alexandre Dumas, 1842. 
 La Main Droite et la Main Gauche (The Right Hand and 
 
 the Left), Drame, by Leon Gozlan, Paris, 1843. 
 Les Deux Imperairices ; ou, Une Petite Guerre (The Two 
 
 Empresses ; or, A Little War), Comedie, par Madame 
 
 Ancelot, Paris, 1842. 
 Robert Macaire, role cree par Frederic Lemaitre. 
 
 Vautrin. Drame, par M. de Balzac, Paris, 1841. 
 Une Ckaine (A Chain). Comedie, par Eugene Scribe, 
 
 Paris, 1842. 
 
 Essay No. VII. — Balzac on the Newspapers of Paris, Foreign 
 Quarterly Review for July, 1843. 
 Monographie de la Presse Parisienne (Monograph of the 
 Parisian Press), by M. de Balzac, Paris, 1843. 
 
 Essay No. VIII. — The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue, 
 Foreign Quarterly Review for July, 1843. 
 Les Mysteres de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris), par 
 Eugene Sue, 6 vols., Paris, 1843. 
 
 Essay No. IX. — French Romancers on England, Foreign 
 Quarterly Review for October, 1843. 
 Le Bananier, par Frederic SouLifi, Paris, 1843. 
 272 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Essay No. X. — New Accounts of Paris, Foreign Quarterly 
 Review for January, 1844. 
 
 1. Lettres Parisiennes, par Madame Emile de Girardin 
 (VicoMTE DE Launay). Parisian Letters by Delphine 
 DE Girardin, under the pseudonym of the Vicomte de 
 Launay, Paris, 1843. 
 
 2. Paris in Fruhjahr, 1843, Von L. Rellstab, Leipzig, 
 
 1844- 
 
 3. Paris and its People, by the Author of "Random 
 Recollections of the House of Commons," London, 
 1843. 
 
 Essay No. XL — Angleterre. Foreign Quarterly Review for 
 July, 1844. 
 Angleterre, par Alfred Michiels (England, by 
 A. Michiels), Paris, Coquebert, 1844. 
 
 THE RHINE. 
 
 Towards 1840, four celebrated authors — ^Victor Hugo, 
 Alexandre Dumas, Gerard de Nerval and Fr6d6ric Soulie — 
 left Paris severally to visit the Rhine. 
 
 To Victor Hugo it seemed that the hour had come to under- 
 take the social mission of which he had dreamed ; to Alexandre 
 Dumas, whose sparkling " Impressions de Voyage " in Switzer- 
 land, and in the south of France, were in every hand, it occurred 
 that as he must " do " the Rhine sometime he might as well 
 see it while the eyes of his countrymen were eagerly watching 
 its right bank ; to Gerard de Nerval, who was fond of wan- 
 dering, but who always felt the need to attach himself to 
 someone, it seemed a happy idea to join Dumas at Frankfort. 
 As for Souli6, his journey was undertaken for the edification of 
 the readers of the Journal des Debats, he having a contract to 
 
 N.s.B. 273 T 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 forward feuilletons to it on Germany and the Germans, at so 
 much a line. 
 
 Of these four men, the first of whom was a poet, the second 
 a vulgarizer,* the third a dreamer, and the fourth a man of the 
 world, it may be said that the dreamer was the only one who 
 came home understanding the people among whom he 
 travelled. Hugo returned as ignorant of the Germans as when 
 he started ; Dumas' least idea was to study them ; Soulid took 
 care to see nothing which he could not turn into " copy " such 
 as his editor wanted ; while Gerard de Nerval contrived, no one 
 knows how, not only to understand what he saw, but to divine 
 what he did not see. Hugo wrote a marvellously picturesque 
 and poetic book from the literary point of view, and a mis- 
 chievous one from the political. Dumas with his usual good 
 fortune gathered up, wherever he went, a rich treasury of 
 legend, history and good stories, and dressing them up in his 
 own inimitable way, and interspersing personal adventures, 
 turned out three delightful volumes. Gerard distilled into a 
 comparatively few pages the essence of Germany. Souli6 by a 
 tissue of absurdities provoked the hilarity of the Germans 
 without disturbing the equanimity of the readers of the Debats. 
 
 Of the four travellers, Hugo was most probably the only one 
 to be disappointed. It is true that he was the most ambitious. 
 When in 1842 he published his " Letters on the Rhine " as the 
 result of his journey,| he was already the author of " Hernani," 
 " Le Roi s'amuse," " Ruy Bias," " Notre Dame de Paris," " Les 
 Feuilles d'Automne," " Les Chants du Cr^puscule," " Les 
 Voix Int^rieures," and " Les Rayons et les Ombres ; " in 
 1841 the Academy, in giving him its vacant chair, had adopted 
 as its own the cause for which he and his followers had fought, 
 
 • Note. — " Hugo and Lamartine are poets ; I am a vulgarizer." — 
 A. Ddmas. 
 
 t Note. — Thackeray's review is of course of the first edition. To 
 the second, published in 1845, Hugo added fourteen letters on Worms, 
 Mannheim, Heidelberg, &c., &c. 
 
 274 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 and even Victor Hugo could scarcely hope for a greater literary 
 success than he had already gained. No, his object in going 
 to the Rhine was to point out a way and to bring back a 
 message to his countrymen ; and incidentally to find the 
 materials for a grand mediaeval drama. The message was but 
 coldly received, and the drama " Les Burgraves," splendid as 
 literature, was such a failure on the boards that Hugo never 
 consented to stage a play again. 
 
 Thackeray clearly had no prepossessions in favour of Hugo. 
 His "Ah! in what disguise can a Frenchman hide himself, and 
 is there any corner in the world in which we cannot detect him 
 and laugh at him.? " was only playful sarcasm ; but a per- 
 formance of " Marion Delorme " had sickened him, and, 
 indeed, evidence is not wanting that Thackeray did not care 
 for any of the great leaders of the romantic school, nor indeed 
 for the school itself. He described Hugo as an Atlas bearing 
 a bladder, and he let no opportunity slip for poking fun at 
 him. Still, Thackeray's national prepossessions apart, he was 
 not consciously unfair to the author of " Hernani." When he 
 was struck by a fine passage he translated it, when he met 
 another so full of poetry that he could not trust his powers of 
 translation to do it justice, he copied it out. Hugo's bombast 
 and occasional grossness were offensive to him, and his pro- 
 phetic utterances seemed to him fantastic and absurd, as indeed 
 they were, but he saw no reason to depreciate his splendid 
 style, his poetic imagery. 
 
 The world has long ago learned to accept the inestimable 
 gifts which the genius of Victor Hugo had to bestow, smiling 
 as discreetly as possible at his poses and extraordinary fantasies. 
 Thackeray did not belittle these gifts ; but he laughed outright 
 at the poet's failings. That he did so will be rather a shock to 
 the present generation. Victor Hugo was not only a tremen- 
 dous author, but a great man, and when we find Thackeray 
 mockingly writing " One of the gendarmes not in the least 
 knowing the tremendous author of ' Notre Dame de Paris ' 
 
 275 T 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 demanded his passport. Just heavens ! A gendarme de- 
 manding the passport of Victor Hugo ! " the attempt to 
 ridicule him does to us savour of impropriety. 
 
 It was unkind of Thackeray to commence his paper with an 
 extract from a fulsome French critic's review of the " Letters," for 
 the quotation undoubtedlycreatesa prejudice. And Thackeray's 
 allusion to Hugo's innocent little adventure with the young 
 ladies was not happily made. As told by Hugo it makes 
 delightful reading.* Another matter about which the Hugo- 
 latre will want to pluck a crow with Thackeray is his statement 
 that Hugo found that the plan of the town of Varennes was 
 triangular like the knife of the guillotine. What Hugo really 
 wrote was that the little place of the town where the flight of 
 Louis XVI. and his family was stopped was triangular. It is 
 curious that this remark of Hugo, which most people would 
 pass over, stuck in Dumas' memory and led him in 1856 to 
 go seriously into the question whether Thiers and the other 
 historians were right in stating, as they did, that the arrest took 
 place in the grande place opposite the hotel Grand Monarque, 
 that is to say, in the higher town, after the bridge over the 
 river Aire is crossed, or in the little triangular shaped place 
 opposite the hotel Bras d'Or, as stated by Hugo. Dumas, 
 who sometimes went in for absolute accuracy, was able to prove 
 conclusively that Hugo was right and the historians wrong.j 
 
 * Did Hugo actually write and post his letters as he averred having 
 done ? Was 1839 the year of his visit to the Rhine, and, if it was, why 
 in the second edition of his book does he date the letters in 1838 ? 
 Hugoiatres and their opponents do not agree on these points. 
 
 t " The more ignorant of Dumas' readers caught up the current cry, 
 for which there was slender justification, and twitted him with taking, 
 in the most bare-faced manner, egregious liberties with historical truth 
 in order to heighten the interest of his novels. Now I admit that he 
 often sinned in this manner against tradition, but how many other 
 writers — historians even — have from quite other motives distorted 
 truth ; and when Alexandre Dumas desired to be exact, he was more 
 exact than anyone else. One occurrence in the French Revolution 
 
 276 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 After having read Thackeray's critique on Hugo's " Rhine " 
 nothing is more amusing than to read what Dumas wrote about 
 it. Seventeen years later we see Dumas bounding into the 
 kitchen of the Hotel de Metz at Sainte Menehould to find not 
 only Hugo's famous description of it exact in every particular, 
 but the plates and dishes, the clock and the tongs, still in the 
 same places, and not only this but the hostess calling down a 
 blessing from heaven on Hugo's head for the good he had 
 done. How characteristic is Dumas' commentary 1 
 
 " May the blessing of thy grateful soul cross the seas and reach the 
 exile borne on a breath of his native air.* 
 
 " The king passed with all the royal family ; we know it as a 
 historical fact, but no one can say that his passing did them good. On 
 the contrary the king was running away, the king was breaking his 
 oath, the king was going to seek foreigners who would return with him 
 to France. 
 
 " A poet passes ; he is unknown to the people with whom he stops; 
 still unknown he lets fall from his pen the description of a kitchen in 
 a village inn ; a million people read the description, henceforth no one 
 goes by without stopping at the inn : the fortune of its hostess is 
 made. 
 
 " Seventeen years later, in the depths of exile, the poet feels in the 
 
 which has always inspired me with the most lively curiosity is the 
 flight to Varennes, that strange expedition, undertaken on the shortest 
 night of the year, foolishly planned, badly carried out, and ending in 
 utter failure almost within sight of the frontier. It has long seemed 
 to me to be an incident of which little is known, but which is worthy 
 of study. ... I think I may say that few published documents, 
 relating to this event have escaped my notice, not excepting the letter, 
 written in invisible ink, sent by Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette 
 through the hands of Champcenetz to Barth^lemy, then the accredited 
 minister of France to the Court of St. James. Well, of all the books 
 which treat of the flight of the king the only one which is quite correct 
 is the "Journey to Varennes"by Alexandre Dumas. In it he shows the 
 most scrupulous respect for truth, he follows the fugitives stage by 
 stage, step by step, giving a lesson in the treatment of history, which 
 careless historians might study with advantage." — Maxime du Camp, 
 "Literary Recollections." 
 • In 1859 Hugo was in exile at Guernsey. 
 
 277 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 air which blows from France a caress as soft as the touch of an angel's 
 wing. It is the blessing of an old woman which has reached him." 
 
 So Hugo, by travelling to the Rhine, did some good after all. 
 
 THE GERMAN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 In the simple, kind hearted and unassuming German 
 naturalist Thackeray found a traveller much to his liking. He 
 was glad to notice his book, not for its own sake entirely, but 
 because it unconsciously points a moral at other travellers 
 more distinguished and talented, but less amiable and natural 
 and more egotistical and presuming. 
 
 Thackeray is always at his best when describing any happy 
 or unhappy travellers ; he positively revels in their discomforts 
 or enjoyment ; are they sea-sick, he watches over them with 
 sympathetic amusement ; when recovered and drinking double 
 stout he witnesses corks flying and froth streaming with the 
 deepest satisfaction. In the " Kickleburys on the Rhine," 
 The Times notice of which produced the caustic essay on 
 " Thunder and Small Beer," and in the travelling scenes in 
 "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes" he is at his best in 
 describing the eccentricities of Continental travellers of all 
 nationalities, and in the Paris Sketch Book, as well as in " The 
 Book of Snobs," he lashes Les Anglais a Paris with genial 
 severity. 
 
 But he has no mercy on the softer or home sick side of the 
 Teuton character. What business had the man to leave the 
 Fatherland who cannot accommodate himself to British malt 
 liquors and sighs for his native lager ? Nor does he feel less 
 repulsion for the traveller who cannot bear his sufferings at sea 
 with patience and resignation, and when dyspeptic on land not 
 only possesses a queasy stomach but moans over it in print. 
 
 278 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Even his great admiration for the "Leather Stocking Tales," 
 as declared in the " Roundabout Papers," did not blind him 
 for a moment to the shortcomings in this respect of their 
 author, James Fenimore Cooper. 
 
 Another American author and traveller incurred Thackeray's 
 displeasure from much more valid causes. This is Mr. N. 
 Parker Willis, whose principal works, " Pencillings by the 
 Way," " Letters from Under a Bridge," &c., though readable 
 enough and not devoid of merit, are sadly disfigured by 
 egotism and impertinences. He is thus sketched in "Vanity 
 Fair " :— 
 
 " There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the 
 American Embassy, and correspondent of the New York Dimagogue, 
 who, by way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady 
 Steyne during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear 
 friend George Gaunt liked the Brazils ? He and George had been most 
 intimate at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones 
 wrote a full and particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly 
 in the Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, 
 giving biographical sketches of the principal people. He described the 
 persons of the ladies with great eloquence, the service of the table, the 
 size and costume of the servants, enumerated the dishes and wines 
 served, the ornaments of the sideboard, and the probable value of the 
 plate. Such a dinner, he calculated, could not be dished up under 
 fifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until 
 very lately, of sending over proteges with letters of recommendation to 
 the present Marquess of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate 
 terms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late Lord. 
 He was most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the 
 Earl of Southdown, should have taken the fas of him on their pro- 
 cession to the dining room. 'Just as I was stepping up to offer my 
 hand to a very pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive 
 Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,' he wrote, 'the young patrician interposed 
 between me and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of 
 apology. I was fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's 
 husband, a stout, red faced warrior who distinguished himself at 
 Waterloo, where he had better luck than befell some of his brother 
 redcoats at New Orleans.' " 
 
 It is unnecessary to indicate more particularly the journal 
 above referred to, but anyone who will take the trouble to look 
 
 279 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 at its London correspondence about the middle of last century 
 can judge for himself whether this travesty exaggerates its 
 general tenor. The chapter on " Literary Snobs " in the 
 "Snobs of England," which originally appeared in Punch, 
 contains the following paragraphs : — 
 
 " An intelligent foreigner's testimony about our manners is always 
 worth having, and I think, in this respect, the work of an eminent 
 American, Mr. N. P. Willis, is eminently valuable and impartial. In 
 his ' History of Ernest Clay,' a crack magazine writer, the reader will 
 get an exact account of the life of a popular man of letters in England. 
 He is always the great lion of society. 
 
 " He takes the /as of dukes and earls ; all the nobility crowd to see 
 him ; I forget how many baronesses and duchesses fell in love with 
 him. Modesty forbids that we should reveal the names of the heart- 
 broken countesses and dear marchionesses who are pining for every one 
 of the contributors in this periodical." 
 
 Willis' " Dashes at Life " was reviewed at considerable 
 length by Thackeray in the Edinburgh Review for October, 
 1845. Of this book no more need be said than that it is a 
 farrago of absurdity, in which the author is the principal, 
 almost the sole, male character under various aliases. He is 
 pleasantly compared to Christopher Sly and Bottom the 
 Weaver by the reviewer, who gives him a merciless and well 
 deserved castigation for his vanity and presumption, little more 
 being required for this purpose than the copious extracts which 
 form the bulk of the review. The writer, however, cannot resist 
 bringing in Jules Janin, his bete-noire of feuilleton literature. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from this scathing criticism to the kind 
 treatment accorded to our simple, unaffected, but, it must be 
 confessed, somewhat prejudiced German naturalist. That 
 gentleman's observations are most entertaining, especially the 
 remarks on his fellow passengers. It is also interesting to note 
 the changes involved in the whirligig of time. At that period, the 
 smoking of tobacco, universal in Germany, was considered vulgar 
 in England, and a man who appeared in the street wearing a 
 moustache, and smoking a pipe, would stand a good chance of 
 
 280 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 being cut. But a young lord who promenaded the quarter 
 deck of a steamer towards evening blowing a cloud and attired 
 like Mr. Mantalini when the bailiff made a descent on the 
 show room, would now-a-days attract contemptuous astonish- 
 ment, not from his habit but from his costume. Those who 
 have read " Essays on Gormandising " will understand 
 Thackeray's tolerance for the Gargantuan tastes of the honest 
 German, though, as he justly says, if the traveller had the good 
 fortune to light on a Rotterdam steamer whose breakfast was of 
 the quality he describes, it would have been a kindness to give 
 its name. But what shall we say of Bussy's Tavern in Water 
 Lane, that fashionable resort where our travellers were made so 
 comfortable .? And where is Bussy ? Alas, we greatly fear he 
 has followed the footsteps of Monsieur Terr^, whose demise is 
 so feelingly recorded in " The Ballad of Bouillabaisse." And 
 the glories of Drayton Manor have also faded away. Its 
 hospitable owner came to an untimely end in Rotten Row eight 
 short years after the writing of the paper which appeared in the 
 Foreign Quarterly. His pictures, except those in the National 
 collection, and his treasures of art have long since been 
 dispersed hither and thither. 
 
 Perhaps our naturalist praises us, is praised by his reviewer a 
 bit too highly, to the disparagement of some friends across the 
 Channel, and perhaps there is something wanting in the 
 critic who prefers a naturalist's impressions of travel to a 
 poet's. The truth is that Thackeray preferred the matter of 
 fact to the poetic when with the latter he suspected the existence 
 of an admixture of humbug. 
 
 CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 Who was Thackeray's favourite novelist? Most people 
 seeing a strong affinity between the authors of " Barry Lyndon " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 and of " Joseph Andrews " would probably declare for Fielding. 
 Mr. Lewis Melville* declares for Alexandre Dumas. Indeed, he 
 says positively that Dumas was Thackeray's favourite author. 
 Can this be? And if so, what part of Dumas' work did 
 Thackeray specially admire .' Like Victor Hugo, Alexandre 
 Dumas pen was " a tremendous author," but his " tremendous- 
 ness " was chiefly in the volume and diversity of his productions. 
 Of what section or fragment or department of the OLuvres 
 Completes is Mr. Melville thinking? for certainly Thackeray did 
 not care for, and probably did not even know the whole of them. 
 
 It cannot have been Dumas the dramatist, that is the Dumas 
 of 1829 to 1841 or thereabouts, of whom Thackeray was fond. 
 So much is clear from the Paris Sketch Book, in which Dumas' 
 plays, " Caligula," " Kean " and " Don Juan de Marana " are 
 held up to public scorn. Nor can I discover any evidence that 
 Thackeray cared for any play of Dumas whatsoever. 
 
 Was it then Dumas the young poet, the author of the " Elegy 
 upon the death of General Foy," of " Canaris Dithyrambe," 
 of " La N6r6ide, El^gie Antique," " L'Aigle Bless6," and 
 so on ? Thackeray leaves no record of having as much as 
 heard of these ; nor do I think he considered Dumas to have 
 any claim to the title of poet. 
 
 Dumas the historian then, the author of " Gaule et France," 
 which on its appearance in 1833 received so handsome a review 
 in the Foreign Quarterly, of " Louis XIV. et son Sidcle," of 
 " Louis XV. et sa Cour," of " Louis XVI. et la Revolution " ; 
 what of him ? No, Thackeray mentions none of these books. 
 
 Perhaps Dumas the traveller, the author of a whole shelf-full 
 of " Impressions de Voyage " — "En Suisse," " Les Bords du 
 Rhin," " De Paris a Cadiz," " Le Speronare," " Le Corricolo," 
 "Le Vdloce," "En Russie," and many others ? No. Thackeray 
 good-humouredly cut up the " Travels on the Shores of the 
 Rhine" in the Foreign Quarterly, and is silent respecting the rest. 
 
 • " The Life of Thackeray," by Lewis Melville. 
 
 282 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Then it must be the Dumas of the wondrous Memoirs, says 
 the reader ; for surely Thackeray did not care for the Dumas 
 "who," as the biographical dictionaries tell us, "aided by 
 numerous assistants and forgetful of his great name, stooped 
 to write feuilletons in the daily press in competition with Souli6 
 and Sue." Thackeray detested Souli6 and may be said to 
 have despised Sue. Did he care for the rival romancer ? 
 
 Writing in Eraser's Magazine ior September, 1843, Thackeray 
 expresses an opinion that Sue in " Mathilde " had very nearly 
 succeeded in attaining a tone of ionne compagnie, while Balzac 
 was not fit for the salon, Dumas was about as gentle as a 
 courier and Soulie as elegant as a huissier. In the same article 
 he speaks of " Soulie, Dumas and the rest." Clearly in 
 September, 1843, Thackeray had not yet become an admirer 
 of Dumas, although those delightful romances "Ascanio," 
 " Georges," and the " Chevalier d' Harmental " had already 
 appeared. A few months later he reviews the " Excursions on 
 the Shores of the Rhine," and writes : — 
 
 " When time shall have further softened an emphatic, bullying 
 manner, which leads him at present to employ the largest and fiercest 
 words in place of simple and conciliating ones ; and he shall cease to 
 set down as armed castles all the peaceful windmills of everyday life, 
 it is probable that we shall be indebted to him for much amusing 
 leading . . . for he has both humour and eloquence, and in spite of 
 his hectoring manner his heart is both manly and kind. And so, 
 schooled down as we trust he will not fail to be, we may look forward 
 to his writing a couple of thousand volumes even more interesting than 
 those he has at present produced." 
 
 Thackeray's next mention of Dumas should probably be 
 placed in 1844. He made a most amusing drawing represent- 
 ing Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare sitting together after a 
 little dinner at Greenwich. Round the sketch he wrote " An 
 Unpublished Romance by Alexandre Dumas." And then, 
 after describing the removal from the table of the remains of 
 appetizing whitebaits and the leaving of a pot of porter and 
 a flask of canary, he gives an extract from "La Jeunesse 
 
 283 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 d' Elizabeth," a romance in forty volumes. We learn that the 
 canary was for the lady who was of ravishing beauty with red 
 hair, like all the English, and that she was fifty-six years of age, 
 that being, according to Dumas, the golden harvest-time of life. 
 Dumas, after mentioning that the poet sat at the feet of the lady 
 gazing at the navies of England, St. Paul's, the Tower, the 
 Monument, the hills of Canterbur)', and behind them the 
 mountains of Scotland, breaks into dialogue. Shakespeare 
 breathes his name, " William," to his fair companion, and the 
 scene closes with her request to be called " Betsi." 
 
 The excellence of this parody of Dumas' style proves 
 Thackeray's intimate acquaintance with his romances. And 
 it does something more. Until Dumas wrote the " Three 
 Musketeers," in which he introduced the Duke of Buckingham, 
 it would scarcely have occurred to anyone that he would be at 
 all likely to venture upon British soil in search of a hero or 
 heroine. But his success with Buckingham made this more 
 than likely, and the mere idea of Elizabeth and Shakespeare 
 in Dumas' hands in this connection no doubt inspired both 
 sketch and parody. 
 
 The " Musketeers " and the greater part of " Monte Cristo " 
 would doubtless be accessible to Thackeray in 1844. It does 
 begin to look as if that annus mirabilis had produced a change 
 in Thackeray's feelings towards Dumas, for in 1845 we find 
 him contributing to George Cruikshanks's "Table Book" 
 his delightful burlesque of Dumas' " Otto the Archer, " entitled 
 "A Legend of the Rhine." In 1846, by which time Dumas 
 had written "Vingt Ans Aprfes," "La Reine Margot,"and many 
 other romances, is he not even under his spell? Thackeray 
 addressed to Dumas the following open letter : — 
 
 ■ ' To the Most Noble Aleicandre Dumas, Marquis de la Pailleterie, &c. 
 "Mv Lord, 
 
 " Permit a humble literary practitioner in England, and a profound 
 admirer of your works, to suggest a plan for increasing your already 
 great popularity in this country. We are labouring, my lord, under a 
 woeful dearth of novels. Fashionable novels we get, it is true ; the 
 
 284 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 admirable Mrs. Gore produces half-a-dozen or so in a season ; but one 
 can't live upon fashionable novels alone, and the mind wearies rather 
 
 with perpetual descriptions of balls at D house ; of fashionable 
 
 doings at White's or Crocky's ; of ladies' toilettes ; of Gunter's 
 suppers ; of dejeuners, Almacks, French cookery, French phrases and 
 the like, which have been, time out of mind, the main ingredients of 
 the genteel novel with us. As for historical novelists, they are, or 
 seem to be, asleep among us. What have we had from a great and 
 celebrated author since he gave us ' The Last of the Barons ' ? 
 Nothing but a pamphlet about the water-cure, which, although it 
 contained many novel and surprising incidents, still is far from being 
 sufiicient for a ravenous public. Again, where is Mr. James ? Where 
 is that teeming parent of romance ? No tales have been advertised by 
 him for time out of mind. From him who used to father a dozen 
 volumes a year. . . . Where, finally, is the famous author, upon the 
 monthly efforts of whose genius all the country was dependent?' 
 Where is the writer of 'The Tower of London,' 'Saint James,' 
 ' Old Saint Paul's,' &c ? . . . There is a lull, sir, a dearth of novelists. 
 We live upon translations of your works ; of those of M. Eugene Sue, 
 your illustrious confrere, of those of the tragic and mysterious Soulie, 
 that master of the criminal code; and of the ardent and youthful 
 Paul F6val, who competes with all of them. 
 
 "I, for my part, am one of the warmest admirers of the new system 
 which you pursue in France with so much success— of the twenty- 
 volume novel system. I like continuations. I have read every word 
 of ' Monte Cristo ' with the deepest interest ; and was never more 
 delighted after getting through a dozen volumes of the ' Three 
 Musketeers,' than when M. Rolandi furnished me with another dozen 
 of the continued history of the same heroes under the title of ' Vingt 
 Ans Apres ' ; and ^if one could get the lives of Athos, Porthos and 
 Aramis until they were 120 years old, I am sure we should all read them 
 with pleasure. Here is the recess coming — the season over — no 
 debates to read — and no novels ! 
 
 " But suppose that heroes of romance, after eighty or ninety years of 
 age, grow a thought superannuated, and are no longer fit for their 
 former task of amusing the public ; suppose you have exhausted most 
 of your heroes, and brought them to an age when it is best that the 
 old gentlemen should retire ; why not, my dear sir, I suggest take up 
 other people's heroes, and give a continuation of their lives. 
 
 " I have thrown together a few hints which, if you will do me the 
 favour to cast your eyes over them, might form matter, I am sure, for 
 
 • Note.— Namely Dickens. 
 285 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 many, many volumes of a continuation of ' Ivanhoe ' ; and remain, 
 with assurance of profound consideration, 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 "Your Sincere Admirer." 
 
 In 1849 we come to proof. In that year Thackeray wrote 
 from Paris " All the forenoon I read with intense delight a 
 novel called ' Le Vicomte de Bragelonne,' a continuation of the 
 famous ' Mousquetaires,' and just as interesting, keeping one 
 panting and longing for more." 
 
 Was it in the same year that Dumas, whom he met at the 
 house of Gudin the painter, thoroughly aroused his enthusiasm? 
 Afterwards, in America, Thackeray said to Mr. Cooke " Dumas 
 is charming ... he is better than Walter Scott. I came near 
 writing a book on the subject of ' Les Trois Mousquetaires,' 
 and taking Monsieur d'Artagnan for my hero.* But Dumas 
 got ahead of me — he snaps up everything. He is wonderful." 
 
 There is no doubt after this that Thackeray had completely 
 
 * Note. — In his essay " On a Peal of Bells," in the " Roundabout 
 Papers," Thackeray wrote : "Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend 
 Monseigneur Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favourite. I have read 
 him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of mind. He 
 has passed through how many volumes ? Forty? Fifty? I wish, for 
 my part, there were a hundred more, and would never tire of him 
 rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running scoundrels through 
 the midrifif with his most graceful rapier. Ah ! Athos, Porthos, and 
 Aramis, you are a magnificent trio. I think I like d'Artagnan in his 
 own memoirs best. I bought him years and years ago, price five pence, 
 in a little parchment Cologne-printed volume, at a stall in Gray's Inn 
 Lane. Dumas glorifies and makes a marshal of him ; if I remember 
 rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a needy adventurer who died in 
 exile very early in Louis XIV.'s reign." Thackeray makes one or two 
 mistakes here. The "Memoires d'Artagnan" were not written by 
 d'Artagnan, but by Courtils de Sandraz, the author of many similar 
 works. The "Memoires" were originally published in three volumes, 
 of which it is evident that Thackeray picked up but the first, at the end 
 of which d'Artagnan is still a needy adventurer. The fact, however, 
 is that he was killed at the battle of Maestricht in 1673, and that both 
 Courtils de Sandraz and Dumas merely wrote history in their own 
 several ways. 
 
 286 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 succumbed to Dumas' fascination, and we are not surprised 
 when, in the " Roundabout Papers," he bursts out with " Oh, 
 Dumas! Oh, thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I 
 hereby offer thee homage and give thee thanks for many 
 pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for 
 thirteen hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house 
 fighting for the volumes." And again elsewhere when he 
 writes of reading Dumas' " Vingt Ans Aprfes " with amuse- 
 ment from morning to sunset, and with admiration of le 
 " Chevalier d'Harmental " and of the " Black Tulip." 
 
 After this accumulated evidence it is impossible to resist the 
 conclusion that Mr. Melville is not far wrong — that Dumas 
 the romancer was at least one of Thackeray's favourite authors, 
 and it is pleasant to know, as we do know on the authority of 
 M. Henri Blaze de Bury, that Dumas read Thackeray. If he 
 read Chapter XIV. of " Esmond," he must have observed that 
 he had influenced not only the minor works, but that here, in 
 a great romance, was a scene — I mean of course the duel 
 between Lord Mohun and Lord Castlewood — in the spirit of 
 the " Mousquetaires." 
 
 It is to be regretted that Dumas, who was an admirer of 
 "Adam Bede," and who prepared dramatic versions of 
 " Hamlet " and " Jane Eyre," besides fathering translations of 
 "Ivanhoe" and Trelawny's "Younger Son," never returned 
 Thackeray's compliment and burlesqued one of his works. The 
 " Yellowplush Papers," or " Major Gahagan,'' by Dumas, would 
 have had a succes fou. Perhaps it has never been pointed out 
 until now that the two men once did take the same subject. 
 The first part of " Les Blancs et les Bleus " and the story of 
 " Mary Ancel " (in the Paris Sketch Book) are both founded 
 on an adventure of Charles Nodier's at Strasburg, related by 
 him in his " Souvenirs de la Revolution." 
 
 The " Celebrated Crimes " reviewed by Thackeray were a 
 mere instalment of an immense book, sufficient in itself to 
 make a considerable reputation for its author. Yet Dumas' 
 
 287 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 "(Euvres Completes" do not contain it. What other 
 author could afford to allow his publishers to disregard such a 
 production ? " The Cenci," " Cesar Borgia," " Joan of Naples," 
 " Urbain Grandier," " The Marchioness of Brinvilliers," " The 
 Marchioness of Ganges," what subjects for the pen of Dumas ! 
 Thackeray, in the "Roundabout Papers," has vividly touched 
 off the peculiar powers which Dumas displayed in writing the 
 " Celebrated Crimes." Writing of Rubens he remarks " Better 
 see Rubens anywhere than in a church. At the Academy, for 
 example, where you may study him at your leisure. But at 
 church ! I would as soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a 
 sermon. Either would paint you a martyr, done very fiercely 
 and picturesquely — writhing muscles, flaming coal, scowling 
 captains and executioners, swarming groups, and light, shade, 
 colour, most dexterously brilliant or dark." 
 
 Shortly after the appearance of Thackeray's critique on 
 the " Crimes," Messrs. Chapman & Hall issued a bowdlerized 
 translation of the first volumes. In France, the book, 
 which appeared in livraisons or parts with alluring en- 
 gravings, had a great success, and was continued until eight 
 volumes were filled. Dumas was not, of course, without assist- 
 ance in the production of this book. Indeed, on the title page 
 of the last two volumes his name is associated with those of 
 Arnould, Fournier, Fiorentino, and MallefiUe. These are the 
 young men whom Thackeray compared to Rubens' pupils, who 
 painted on his canvasses, and to Lawrence's assistants, who 
 filled in his backgrounds. Thackeray owns that he himself 
 would often have liked to have had a competent, respectable 
 and rapid clerk for the business part of his novels, to say to 
 him on his arrival at eleven o'clock : " ' Mr. Jones, if you please, 
 the archbishop must die this morning, in about five pages. 
 Turn to article — dropsy (or what you will) in Encyclopaedia. 
 Take care there are no medical blunders in his death. Group 
 his daughters, physicians and chaplains round him. In Wales' 
 'London,' letter B, third shelf, you will find an account of 
 
 ?88 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Lambeth, and some prints of the place. Colour in with local 
 colouring. The daughter will come down and speak to her lover 
 in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs,' &c., &c. Jones (an intelligent 
 young man) examines the medical, historical, topographical 
 books necessary; his chief points out to him in 'Jeremy 
 Taylor ' (fol. London MDCLV.) a few remarks such as might 
 befit a dear old archbishop departing this life. When I 
 come back to dress for dinner, the archbishop is dead 
 on my table in five pages ; medicine, topography, theology, 
 all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours." 
 
 LETTERS FROM PARIS. 
 
 Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow, before he visited Paris in 1842, 
 had had a chequered career. He was born in i8ii, at Berlin, 
 where according to one account his father held a clerkship in 
 the War Office, and according to another was an ostler in some 
 prince's stables. Karl was educated at one of the gymnasia, 
 afterwards proceeding to the university, where he studied 
 theology and philosophy. While yet a student, he published a 
 periodical which reached a circulation of seventy copies, and 
 in 183 1 was invited by Menzel, the critic, to assist in editing 
 the Liter aiurhlatt at Stuttgart. There Gutzkow became a 
 leading spirit in the body of reformers known as " Young 
 Germany." In 1835 he wrote " Wally, or the Fair Sceptic," in 
 imitation of George Sand's " L^lia." Menzel attacked it, and 
 the Government at once confiscated the book as immoral and 
 irreligious, and imprisoned the author. While a prisoner at 
 Mannheim he wrote a novel " S^raphine." On being released 
 he went to Frankfort, where he married ; but being obstructed 
 by the Government in publishing his writings, he removed to 
 
 N.s.B. 289 U 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Hamburg. It was there that he produced his tragedy " Richard 
 Savage" — which though an extravagant, was an important 
 work, serving as it did to initiate Germany into the modern 
 drama — edited the German Telegraph, and wrote the " Life of 
 Borne," besides producing various miscellaneous works. When 
 he visited Paris his ideas and adventures were therefore very 
 well known, and he must have excited some curiosity. His 
 sojourn there was for longer than his reviewer supposed. 
 On Gutzkow's return to Germany, after preparing a collected 
 edition of his works, he went to Dresden, where he succeeded 
 Tieck in the direction of the Court Theatre. It was now that 
 he began to write the novels for which he is best remembered, 
 viz. : " The Knights of the Spirit " and " The Magician of 
 Rome." The success of these books, which deal with the 
 main tendencies of Germany in his time, induced Gutzkow to 
 found a journal which he continued till 1862. In 1864 he 
 attempted his own life in a fit of insanity, and afterwards, 
 although he continued to write, his powers gradually failed 
 him. He died in 1878 from accidental suffocation from smoke. 
 Gutzkow was a man of a bold enquiring spirit who thoroughly 
 comprehended modern society. His works undoubtedly exer- 
 cised a most powerful influence in Germany, particularly 
 towards 1840, and this influence will perhaps be longer remem- 
 bered than anything he produced. 
 
 Jules Gabriel Janin, like Gutzkow, was a journalist and a 
 dramatist, but it may be doubted whether they had a taste in 
 common except for pens and ink. Janin, who was born in 
 1804 at St. Etienne, very early betook himself to journalism. 
 His first important work was a novel called " The Dead Ass 
 and the Guillotined Woman" (1829), which brought him some 
 fame, and much ridicule from English critics, who failed to 
 understand that it was half a parody and half deliberately 
 " romantic." In 1836 Janin became the theatrical critic of the 
 Journal des D'ebats, and in France, where the theatre ranks as 
 a serious study, was now a man of importance. 
 
 290 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 " Who is Janin ? " * writes Thackeray. " He is the critic of France. 
 J. J. in fact, the man who writes a weekly feuilleton in the Journal des 
 Debats with such indisputable brilliancy and wit, and such a happy 
 mixture of effrontery, and honesty, and poetry, and impudence, and 
 falsehood, and impertinence, and good feeling, that one can't fail to be 
 charmed with the compound, and to look rather eagerly for the 
 Monday's paper. Jules Janin is the man who, not knowing a single 
 .word of the English language, as he actually confesses in the preface, 
 has helped to translate the " Sentimental Journey." He is the man 
 who when he was married (in a week when news was slack no doubt) 
 actually criticised his own marriage ceremony, letting all the public see 
 the proof-sheets of his bridal, as was the custom among some ancient 
 kings, I believe. In fact a more modest, honest, unassuming, blushing, 
 truth-telling gentleman-like J. J. it is impossible to conceive." 
 
 Much of this is unduly severe. In truth, Janin's worst fault 
 was his inconsistency. Dumas, whose delightful humour 
 could be tinctured with a spice of malice, brought out this 
 defect to the admiration of the civilised world by calmly 
 printing in some thirty numbers of his journal Le Mousquetaire 
 some of Janin's opinions in parallel columns — as thus : — 
 
 No. 26. 
 Opinions de M. Jules Janin, sur L^Iia, Indiana, et Valentine : — 
 
 Opinion du 24 March, 1834. Opinion du 20 Fevrier, 1843. 
 
 Indiana, Valentine, Lelia sont Lelia a detruit d'un seul coup 
 
 trois soeurs adulterines, sorties du tout I'effet moral de ses soeurs 
 
 meme cerveau, engendries dans le Indiana et Valentine, &c., &c. II y 
 
 meme moment de desespoir, et a une justice divine plus haute que 
 
 plongees pour toute baptemedans la justice de tout le monde, c'est 
 
 le meme fange, &c., &c. , trois la conscience d'unepersonne d'un 
 
 creatures identiques, trois mauvais immense talent qui rejulera, sans 
 
 personnages ne font qu'un seul et doute epouvantee, d'avoir donne 
 
 meme personnage, trois femmes d ces deux charmantes fiUes Indiana 
 
 que I'ennui plus que I'amour a et Valentine cette soeur plus qu' 
 
 plongees dans toutes sortes de adulterine, cette soeur inexplic- 
 
 miseres. able — Lelia. 
 
 Jules Janin. Jdles Janin. 
 
 * " Dickens in France," Eraser's Magazine, March, 1842. 
 291 U 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 But Janin wrote happily on. No one ever contributed more 
 prefaces or supplied more texts to illustrated books than he. 
 However, Sala filled more columns in the newspapers. Janin 
 became a member of the Academy in 1870, and died four years 
 later. His library was then found to contain an immense 
 number of " Dedication-books " — inscribed to him by their 
 authors. — Verd. sap. 
 
 GEORG HERWEGH'S POEMS. 
 
 Thackeray's friend gave him a tolerably exact account of 
 Georg Herwegh's adventures up to the date of his audience 
 with King Frederic William IV. and the appearance of his 
 famous letter to his Majesty in the Leipziger Allgemeine 
 Zeitung. Herwegh himself was ordered to leave the country. 
 Here, in Bowring's version, is Heine's witty, but unfair, account 
 of the incident : — 
 
 " ' I will, as my gracious Saviour did, 
 
 Find the sight of the children pleasant; 
 So suffer the children to come, and first 
 The big one, the Swabian peasant. ' 
 
 "Thus spake the monarch ; the chamberlain ran, 
 And returned, introducing slowly 
 The stalwart child from Swabia's land, 
 Who made a reverence lowly. 
 
 " Thus spake the king : ' A Swabian art thou ? 
 There's no disgrace in that, surely? ' 
 ' Quite right ! I was born in Swabia's land, 
 Replied the Swabian demurely. 
 * * * • * ' 
 
 " ' One wish I will grant thee,' the monarch said. 
 Then the Swabian, in deep supplication, 
 Knelt down and exclaimed : ' O Sire, I pray grant 
 Their freedom once more to the nation ! ' 
 292 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 "The monarch in deep amazement stood, 
 The scene was really enthralling : 
 With his sleeve the Swabian wiped from his eye 
 The tear that was well-nigh falling. 
 
 "At last said the king : ' In truth a fine dream, 
 Farewell, and pray learn discretion ; 
 And as a somnambulist plainly thou art, 
 Of thy person I'll give the possession 
 
 " ' To two trusty gendarmes, whose duty 'twill be 
 To see thee safe over the border — 
 Farewell ! I must hasten to join the parade. 
 The drums are beating to order.' " 
 
 All this occurred in November, 1842. About a year later 
 Herwegh published a second volume of his " Poems of a 
 Living Man." By most critics they are considered superior to, 
 if not " infinitely better " than, those which were reviewed by 
 Thackeray, but they failed to produce any great impression. 
 Professor Brandes says — 
 
 " If these powerful poems did not greatly move men's minds, it is to 
 be ascribed to the fact that the deficiencies of Herwegh's personal 
 character were subtly influencing his verse. They betray themselves 
 in a certain straining after effect, in his evident satisfaction with his 
 own witty sallies, and in his intellectual barrenness in every domain 
 except that of polemics. This second volume of poems is not a collec- 
 tion which suggests that its author has any store of ideas, of imagina- 
 tion, to draw upon. When we read it, we understand his life ; and his 
 life helps us to understand this book, with which his career as a poet 
 practically came to a close. All that he subsequently wrote, and he 
 lived for thirty-two years longer, is contained in one small volume, 
 published after his death. The poems of this last collection are full of 
 wit and full of enthusiasm for liberty ; they are written — hardly four in 
 the year — by a man who, to the day of his death, remained faithful to 
 his revolutionary youth." 
 
 The "young, rich and handsome Berlinerinn," mentioned 
 by Thackeray as having become " desperately enamoured of 
 the republican bard," proved to be a most devoted wife. The 
 happy couple lived peacefully enough for some time in Paris. 
 At length, however, Herwegh had the opportunity of taking up 
 
 293 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 a battle-axe and a chance of finding "the grave in the shade," 
 which in his poems he had foreseen for himself. It was after 
 the revolution of February, 1849, Herwegh, at the head of 
 some German and French workmen, marched into Baden. An 
 engagement with troops took place and Herwegh was beaten. 
 By reason of Heine's well-known description of the conflict 
 in " Simplicissimus I.," it is generally believed that the 
 poet behaved with cowardice. But his good wife, always 
 faithful, has written an account of what actually occurred ; and 
 after reading it no one can gainsay the fact that Herwegh, 
 though an indiscreet leader, was a brave man. Herwegh 
 attempted translations of some of Shakespeare's plays, but for 
 the most part lived an idle life. He came to London, where 
 he was one of a group of exiles, who, says Brandes, had 
 nothing to do but to fall in love with each other's wives. Later 
 he returned to Paris, and afterwards lived in Zurich. Always 
 cherishing the ideas of his youth, he was dissatisfied with the 
 progress made by Germany, attained as it was without liberty. 
 He died in 1875. 
 
 BALZAC ON THE NEWSPAPERS OF 
 PARIS.* 
 
 Janin's question " With whom is M. de Balzac angry ? " 
 seems a much more cynical one to-day, when the facts of the 
 great novelist's harassed existence have been made known, 
 than it did in 1843. Janin managed to insinuate in putting it 
 that Balzac's fulmination against the Paris Press had entirely 
 
 * Note. — Balzac's article entitled " Monographie de la Presse 
 Parisienne " will be found in Vol. 2 of the " CEuvres Diverses," 1870- 
 1872. 
 
 394 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 missed the mark, while persuading the public that so far as 
 Janin the critic was concerned, M. de Balzac had nothing to 
 be angry about. That Balzac as a strategist did wrong to 
 be angry is unquestionable.* That he had reason for anger 
 against certain editors, among whom were Buloz and 
 Girardin, and many critics, is as certain, but that he 
 had justification for attacking the whole Paris Press 
 and body of journalists has never been urged by his best 
 
 * Note. — The " Monographic de la Presse Parisienne ' ' ended with the 
 words " If the Press did not exist it would not be necessary to invent it." 
 The journalists commenced fresh hostilities which were concentrated 
 upon Balzac's play " Pamela Giraud," produced some months later. 
 In consequence, it was as absolute a failure as was " Vautrin," pro- 
 duced in 1840. Madame de Girardin wittily indicated the cause in the 
 " Lettres Parisiennes." 
 
 " The subject of all the talk this week is M. de Balzac's play. Well 
 what do you say about it ? 
 
 " ' It is abominable.' 
 
 "' It is detestable.' 
 
 " ' It is execrable." 
 
 "'It is deplorable.' 
 
 " ' It is miserable." 
 
 "'It is pitiable.' 
 
 " ' It is saddening.' 
 
 " ' It is disgusting.' 
 
 "' It is revolting." 
 
 " ' Have you seen it ? ' 
 
 " ' No." 
 
 " ' And you, madame ? ' 
 
 " ' No, I could not get a box.' 
 
 " ' And you, my little one ? " 
 
 " 'I ? Oh, that evening, dear aunt, I was at the opera.' 
 
 " ' How do you know then that it was so dreadful ? ' 
 
 " ' I read it in my journal.' 
 
 " Ah, there it is. The journals have abused it. And you believe 
 them ? You have been left in error. You do not understand why a 
 man who has written a book against journalists is attacked by all the 
 journals. Is it that you do not see that journals are written by 
 journalists ? Come make an effort, put these two ideas together, they 
 will explain many things to you and you will understand eventually why 
 a man of courageous mien is banned by the journals," 
 
 395 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 friends. However, by a series of unfortunate occurrences, 
 towards which his conduct may or may not have contributed, a 
 man may be driven to anger inexplicable to those unacquainted 
 with the circumstances, but pardonable by those who are 
 behind the scenes. That Balzac's contemporaries were 
 frequently much astonished and pained by his attitude towards 
 his literary brethren frequently appears. Miss Barrett in 
 writing to Robert Browning as late as April 5th, 1846, 
 expressed what was pretty generally felt when she said that 
 the very worst of Balzac was his bearing towards his literary 
 brethren, and pointed out that although he nobly painted the 
 genius of scientific men, that he invariably dishonoured it in 
 the man of letters. 
 
 Suppose that Miss Barrett possessed, when she wrote to 
 Robert Browning, the knowledge of Balzac which the Vicomte de 
 Spoelberch de Louvenjoul has to-day, she might still think 
 that the very worst of Balzac was his bearing toward his literary 
 brethren.* But as to understand is to pardon, she would, I think, 
 add some sympathetic words about this weakness of his. Balzac 
 was not considered an enigma by his contemporaries, for every 
 one seems to have formed an opinion about him ; only, if 
 those opinions had been collected and compared, it would have 
 been found that they were all different, for they were all formed, 
 not of Balzac but of particular aspects of him. The whole 
 man, Honors de Balzac, was something too big and grand, 
 and too fantastic and strange for any single contemporary — 
 except his sister — to comprehend entirely. 
 
 And not only did no one as far as I know hold the key to 
 Balzac's real character, but not until 1842, when his works 
 were brought together under the title " La Com^die Humaine," 
 
 * Note. — It is pleasant to find that Balzac wrote of George Sand, 
 " She had no littleness of soul, and none of those low jealousies which 
 obscure so much contemporary talent. Dumas is like her on this 
 point George Sand is a very noble friend." See the 'Lettres i. 
 I'Etrangere.' 
 
 296 
 
r 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 did the value of their scheme as apart from their merits as 
 separate works dawn upon the great majority of his readers. 
 It was only then that it was understood that Balzac was writing 
 the history of contemporary France. Indeed Balzac's works, 
 though many of them had very triumphant successes, were not 
 in great continuous demand as a whole until after his death.* 
 ■ When that occurred, but not until then, did the Balzac " legend" 
 begin to grow. 
 
 Thackeray's review of one of Balzac's most savage attempts 
 to tomahawk the Parisian press will revive many interesting 
 recollections in those who are familiar with his life : for the 
 reason of Balzac's " anger " must be connected not with any 
 one event, but with all the causes which together produced 
 such desperate financial straits and such desperate attempts to 
 reach smooth water. They will think of Balzac, the boy author 
 of tales of blood and thunder; of Balzac, publisher and 
 printer ; of his first success with " L' Enfant Maudit" and "Les 
 Chouans " ; of his mortal combats with his editors Amedee 
 Pichot, Fran9ois Buloz and fimile de Girardin, and consequent 
 chequered existence; of the bankruptcy of his publisher 
 Werdet and his own pursuit by the creditors of that unfortunate 
 man; of his failure to organize his literary friends into a sort 
 of Mutual Benefit Society known as the Cheval Rouge ; of his 
 wonderful Code Litteraire de la Soci^te des Gens-de-Lettres ; 
 of the perpetual alarums and excursions of Sainte-Beuve, Janin 
 and half a score of other critics; and of a thousand other 
 things. And as for those to whom these instances do not 
 readily occur, they will be stimulated — or should be — to improve 
 their knowledge of the greatest French novelist. 
 
 * Note.— Hetzel the well-known publisher issued ten years too soon 
 the complete works of Balzac in a library edition and had very serious 
 losses in connection with it. Later Houssiaux bought up this edition 
 (composed of 17 volumes) and completed it after Balzac's death by the 
 addition of 3 volumes. It then had a splendid sale ; and is an esteemed 
 edition still. 
 
 297 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 It is amusing to observe that Balzac and Dumas were botli 
 " assassinated " by the redoubtable Jules Janin, but while 
 Balzac sets that critic's attacks down to spite, Dumas wrote a 
 spirited causerie to prove that he could not help making them ! * 
 
 " What, Janin a critic ! Come now, Janin, the author of the ' Dead 
 Donkey and the Guillotined Woman ' ; Janin, the author of the ' Men 
 of Toulouse.' What the dickens makes you think that Janin is a critic ? 
 
 "Well, on Mondays he gives a critical summary of the plays of the 
 last week, doesn't he ? 
 
 " Yes, but you ought to study the delightful ancies which Janin calls 
 criticisms more attentively and you will see that he takes the titles of 
 the plays that have been performed either at the operas or the Theatre 
 Francais or at the Porte-Saint-Martin or elsewhere merely to give him 
 a pretext for writing in his own particular style. 
 
 " And it is quite true, as you say, that Janin is the master not the 
 slave of his style. When you meet Janin one evening at ii o'clock in 
 the theatre corridor moved and even shaken by what he has just seen 
 and heard, ask him what he thinks of the play which has stirred him 
 to the heart and he will tell you ' It's splendid, it's magnificent, it's 
 sublime.' And it really seems so to him ; for one has to know Janin to 
 understand all the spontaneity and heartiness of this big and witty 
 child. He will shake your hand and say, ' If you meet the author, my 
 dear fellow, tell him that he has produced a masterpiece.' 
 
 " Delighted, you hasten to the author and tell him what Janin has 
 said. The author can hardly believe you. His ' No ? ' his ' Really ? ' 
 his ' Good ! ' succeed each other as trembling from the strain of the 
 first performance they break from him in the wake of the just 
 vanished critic. He impatiently awaits Monday's paper— the Journal 
 dts Dibats — and says in confidence to his friends, ' You must look out 
 Janin's article; he is delighted with my play.' Sunday seems to 
 him to have forty-eight hours; at last Monday comes. Thrice 
 happy Monday which shall see his triumph. He rings for his man if 
 he has one ; he calls for his housekeeper if he has no man servant — or 
 for his maid of all work if he has no housekeeper. 
 
 " ' Go and get me the Journal dts Dibats,' 
 
 " ' But it's only six o'clock, sir. ' 
 
 '"Go all the same ; get it whatever you give for it, whether three 
 pence, six pence or a shilling. Go and be quick ! ' 
 
 "The man, the housekeeper or the maid of all work goes and is 
 
 ' Causeries," by A. Dum 
 298 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 away ten minutes, quarter of an hour, half an hour and comes back at 
 last with the thrice blessed paper. 
 
 "'Ah! here it is. Quick! hand it here.' 
 
 ' ' The wrapper is torn off, the paper opened. At the tenth word the 
 reader rubs his eyes, at the twentieth line he lets the paper fall. 
 
 " What's the matter ? 
 
 " The matter is that Janin damns the play and annihilates the author. 
 
 " And why ? Is it a case of treason, a broken promise, an organised 
 plot to run him down. No, it's nothing of that sort. 
 
 " It is simply that Janin has taken off his boots, has got into his 
 dressing gown, has sat down in his armchair, has drawn it to his desk 
 and has taken up his pen with the positive intention of praising the 
 play ; but the first line instead of taking the right turn has swerved to 
 the left ; Janin has followed the first line ; Janin's wheel has been set 
 going and it must go on ; he must in fact say the wrong thing because 
 he wanted to say the right— but you are not to suppose that he wanted 
 to do this ! This delightful dreamer is not a free agent. He is in the 
 power of every chance, of his cat playing with a spool of thread, of his 
 parrot who says ' Pretty Polly,' of his dog who runs ofi barking with 
 his slippers. 
 
 " Another time when you have written a poor play if his first line 
 turns to the right instead of to the left, you may be quite happy, he will 
 say as much good of the bad piece as he said harm of the good one 
 and you will be Quits." 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY AND CHARACTER 
 ON THE FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 One of the most entertaining essays in the Paris Sketch 
 Book is that on French dramas and melodramas. Nothing 
 indeed could be more ludicrous than the account given by 
 Thackeray of such pieces as " Don Juan de Marana " and 
 " Kean," unless it be the picture which he at the same time 
 unconsciously presented, of his Britannic self seated in front 
 of the footlights trying in vain to understand what it was that 
 so much delighted the rest of the audiences. To him the 
 
 299 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 wit seemed vulgar, the incidents coarse or absurd, the sentiment 
 false, and the plays immoral ; while the ignorance displayed, 
 when there was question of the history, manners and customs 
 of his native land, was to him simply shocking. French 
 audiences on the other hand found the wit exquisite, the 
 incidents dramatic, the sentiment such as frequently necessi- 
 tated the use of pocket-handkerchiefs, and the pieces generally 
 moral and improving. Had Thackeray's essay appeared in 
 the Paris press, it would probably have been considered by 
 many readers as a mere jeu d' esprit, the proper place for which 
 would have been the Charivari. If Thackeray had insisted that the 
 critique was seriously intended, many a Frenchman would have 
 asked, could a critic from the Chinese empire have stranger 
 notions about our barbarian plays than their English critic, 
 separated from us but by two hours of salt water ? 
 
 " Don Juan de Marana" and " Kean " were not only highly 
 successful when produced, but they have stood the test of 
 revival. " Kean " indeed is always treated by French critics 
 with the greatest respect; the fact is that if Dumas' many 
 mistakes in English history and manners are excused — it is 
 of course difficult for an Englishman to overlook them — it is 
 seen that " Kean " is really, from the standpoint of the theatre, 
 an excellent play. This, however, never occurred to Thackeray. 
 His whole attention was directed to the " Frenchiness " of the 
 piece, and to the singular mistakes in it. For instance, one of 
 the scenes takes place at a tavern on the banks of the Thames 
 called " le Coal-hole " and chosen by Lord Melbourn as a 
 rendezvous for a gang of thieves, who are to have their ship 
 in waiting in order to carry off a young lady of whom his 
 lordship is enamoured ! To the end of his life Thackeray 
 remembered this scene, and indeed was never tired of alluding 
 to its absurdity. It is true that in the "Roundabout Papers" 
 he acknowledged that it was of no use being squeamish about 
 the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction. 
 An extraordinary event had then recently occurred in 
 
 300 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Northumberland Street — a scene and catastrophe more strange 
 and terrible than even " the brave Dumas, the intrepid 
 Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue " could have invented. 
 Thackeray, in recalling his merriment over the Coal-hole 
 Tavern with the fleet of pirate ships moored alongside, wrote : 
 _" Pirate ships ! why not? what a cavern of terror was this in 
 Northumberland Street, with its splendid furniture covered 
 with dust, its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits the 
 grim 'agent,' aiming (with a pistol) at the head of his cus- 
 tomers ! " And we may be sure that to the end of his life 
 Dumas remembered the " Coal-hole " scene, considering it, 
 dramatically at all events, not the worst he had devised. 
 
 But if Thackeray was not, and I think he was not, a very 
 good or just critic of French plays, when they dealt with life 
 in England, his ironic humour enabled him to furnish copy 
 which, exceedingly entertaining when it originally appeared, 
 is far more so to-day, when the reader has learnt to know so 
 well the man who wrote it. Dumas' " Causeries " owe half 
 their charm to their author's personality. Paris readers were 
 entertained by them from day to day and from year to year, 
 precisely because they knew beforehand what Dumas would 
 say about his pets, his dinners, his plays, and his friends. 
 The comment was " That's Dumas all over." Now the Paris 
 Sketch Book is Thackeray all over ; but in 1840 his personality 
 was unknown, and the book was a failure. In the last years 
 of his life the " Roundabout Papers," which are of similar 
 quality much mellowed, had a great success, for the reason that 
 the public had by that time learnt to know the man who held 
 the pen. In " French Dramas and Melodramas " Thackeray 
 seems much disposed to pity himself for having been obliged 
 to witness so many plays, for having, as it were, been the 
 accessory to so many murders, rapes, adulteries, and other 
 crimes, and yet in this essay we find him relating his experiences 
 at half-a-dozen other plays, confessing to being a constant atten- 
 dant at the theatres of Paris for some years after the publication 
 
 301 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 of the Pam Sketch Book. In 1843 Scribe and Dumas were 
 still dispensing morals and amusement to the public. Only 
 Scribe had given up peopling the stages of the Gymnase and 
 Varietes with gay colonels, smart widows and silly husbands, 
 and had betaken himself to the Fran^ais, becoming in the 
 process, Thackeray considered, a professor of English history. 
 Dumas on the other hand, who when Thackeray first made 
 the acquaintance of his plays, wrote in his Satanic, or at least 
 Byronesque vein, had discovered that he had wit, and had 
 transferred himself from the Fran9ais to the Vari6t6s, much 
 to the horror of Thackeray, who little imagined how versatile a 
 genius Dumas was to prove himself. 
 
 The reader has had, in the " Letters from Paris," an excellent 
 sketch of Eugene Scribe from the pen of Jules Janin. Here 
 is a tribute to his popularity from Th^ophile Gautier : " For 
 fifteen years he has kept afloat all the theatres of Paris, of 
 the suburbs, of the provinces, of Europe, of the entire world. 
 The first thing that a traveller hears in the theatre in a foreign 
 country is a phrase of M. Scribe terminating in o or a 
 according to the country. Be certain that in Timbuctoo there 
 are at present actors rehearsing a vaudeville of M. Scribe and 
 that a young negress of Damanhour is studying before her 
 mirror of polished copper the affected r61es of Madame 
 Leontine Volays. The Papuans of the South Sea where they 
 play society comedies, always choose the ' Marriage of Reason ' 
 or ' Michel and Christine.' The Chinese themselves with 
 figures like two-handled pots and faces like the paintings on 
 folding screens, translate and perform upon their bamboo 
 theatres the vaudevilles of M. Scribe, which our professors of 
 Chinese retranslate into French and palm upon us as compo- 
 sitions of the time of the Hang or Hing dynasty. In Spain, 
 which is almost as far off as China, M. Scribe has dethroned 
 Lope de Vega, whose fecundity, with the aid of his collaborators. 
 Scribe has surpassed." 
 
 And Gautier goes on to ascribe the enormous success of 
 
 302 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Scribe to the fact of his not possessing the least spark of 
 poetry — a great advantage to a dramatist whose necessity it 
 is to please the philistines. 
 
 It was unlucky that Thackeray, who was sufficiently a 
 philistine to be well entertained by the " Bear and the 
 , Pacha" or any other of Scribe's hundred vaudevilles, chanced 
 to come in for the performances of "A Glass of Water" and 
 the "Son of Cromwell." In writing these comedies Scribe 
 had no idea of transforming himself into a professor of English 
 history, as Thackeray puts it. For historic accuracy, or indeed 
 for local colour. Scribe cared nothing. His idea once found, 
 his ingenious mind could develop it to any extent, while his 
 stock of characters, all ready made, seldom needed any 
 addition. To wind up and set them dancing was for Scribe an 
 easy task. Having once given the public a taste for the 
 peculiar Scribe flavouring it was waste of time or worse to try 
 anything different. The ideas worked up by Scribe were 
 frequently very clever and were often his own. Sometimes, 
 however, he borrowed them, and in giving an account of "A 
 Chain " Thackeray might have remarked that its subject was 
 taken and watered down from Dumas' powerful play " Angfele." 
 
 If Thackeray was unfavourably impressed by Scribe's ancient 
 history as dished up in the " Glass of Water " and the " Son 
 of Cromwell," he was horrified by the more modern history of 
 Frederic Soulie. It would appear that Thackeray was accus- 
 tomed to attack Soulie's novels, the mcsurs legeres of which 
 were peculiarly distasteful to him. Thackeray hints that 
 had not Soulie been on the staff of the Journal des D'ebats, 
 and therefore a prominent writer, he would have left his 
 play unnoticed ; but I think that Soulie's original notions about 
 the English were too attractive to him to be passed over. 
 " Gaetan, II Mammone " in fact abounds with happy strokes 
 of national character. Here again, however, Thackeray's 
 national prepossessions prevented him from enjoying what was 
 after all not a bad play. At all events it was successful enough 
 
 303 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 in Paris, where Soulie was rightly considered to have much 
 dramatic talent. 
 
 When Thackeray saw " Halifax " he seems to have been 
 quite unprepared for Dumas' translation to the Vari6t6s, and 
 his surprise may to some extent have prevented him from 
 enjoying the prologue to the piece. This prologue is admirable 
 and cannot even be read without enjoyment. Dumas, on the 
 occasion of the last rehearsal of the play (which is by no means 
 one of his best) addressing the actors, said " Mes enfants, the 
 piece is not a good one ; a prologue to it is absolutely necessary. 
 Are you up to learning your parts in one between this and 
 to-morrow ? If so, I am going to write it." The proposition 
 was accepted and the prologue was written, learnt and per- 
 formed in twenty-four hours.* 
 
 Our critic's withering notice of Leon Gozlan's " Right Hand 
 and the Left " was obviously influenced by the idea that the 
 play in its first shape contained allusions to Queen Victoria and 
 Prince Albert. It must be said that Thackeray was badly 
 inspired when he wrote that Gozlan was utterly devoid of 
 inventive power and quite incapable of embellishing a story or 
 giving it point. Few writers have possessed more brilliance 
 and sparkle than Gozlan, whose articles were for years so great 
 a feature in the lighter Parisian papers, whose short tales are in 
 their way unsurpassed, and whose " Medecin de Pecq " and 
 " Notaire de Chantilly " gained for him permanent fame. 
 
 It is strange to find that after condemning the plays of Scribe, 
 of Dumas, of Souli^, and of Gozlan, Thackeray is subjugated 
 by the charms of Madame Ancelot, a writer whose name has 
 scarcely come down to the present generation. But if there was 
 little to admire in " The Two Empresses," there was nothing to 
 which an Englishman could object. As Thackeray said, " If 
 we are to have nonsense about history, let us have it at least 
 in an agreeable shape." The other dramatists, it must be 
 
 * " Alexandre Dumas," by H. Blaze de Bury. 
 
 304 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 confessed, did not try to be agreeable, at least to a foreign 
 critic. 
 
 " In " Robert Macaire " Thackeray finds a theme entirely 
 suitable to him, and it is interesting to note how his style 
 brightens when he reaches it. He had already written about 
 Macaire in the Paris Sketch Book* The sketch of Macaire, 
 " with his heart of steel, his conscience seared as if with a hot iron, 
 his face radiant with mirth, his step elastic and his tongue 
 dropping pleasantries too oily to be caustic, is precisely the 
 Macaire drawn by Henley and Stevenson. Did tradition alone 
 inspire them .' 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS. 
 
 Thackeray on Sue! The author of " Vanity Fair " on the 
 author of the " Mysteries of Paris " ! 
 
 Eugfene Sue, the fashionable writer par excellence in the 
 Paris of the forties, made his appearance in London in weekly 
 numbers. Our elders still recollect the fascination in 
 stationers' windows of the horrific woodcuts on the outer pages, 
 and the gazer's dreadful impotence to turn the leaf and read the 
 story. Where are those weekly numbers now and where the 
 fame of Eugfene Sue ? Is he not chiefly remembered for his 
 eccentricities of style and taste, and best beloved for the 
 material for caricature that he afforded to the immortal Cham ? 
 And yet Sue had very real, if very disordered ability. 
 " Mathilda " and the " Mysteries of Paris," in widely different 
 ways, are remarkable books. Thackeray, in his amusing 
 critique, frankly takes the ground taken by the average 
 Britisher, who reads excitedly to the end of the last new novel 
 and, having pished and pshawed and thrown it down, turns to 
 
 • See " Caricatures and Lithography in Paris." 
 N.S.B. 305 X 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 abuse the person who brought " such rubbish" into the house. 
 The " Mysteries of Paris," long since discredited as a study 
 or even as a romance of "the people " and more than ever 
 impossible in the present day, which possesses such books as 
 " No. 5, John Street," " Tales of Mean Streets," and " Demos,' 
 can in fact only lay claim to the merit of having interested and 
 amused thousands of readers of its author's generation. 
 Thackeray, though he saw no intrinsic value whatever in the 
 book, yet undisguisedly admired and perhaps envied its en/ratn 
 and its author's power of enslaving his readers and forcing 
 them, willy-nilly, to read his countless volumes. 
 
 In 1843 Thackeray had few readers save for his magazine 
 articles ; he clearly saw that it was of no use writing if no one 
 read, and the feat of capturing practically all the readers in the 
 world at one stroke as Sue had done was one to appeal to him 
 as a writer, if not as a critic. In his " History of the Next 
 French Revolution," which he contributed to Punch in 1844, 
 Thackeray turns to account Sue's extraordinary popularity and 
 represents the frivolous Parisians as so fascinated with a new 
 feuilleton by him " that they did not care in the least for the 
 vacarme without the walls " of the city which was being fired at 
 by twenty-four forts simultaneously. 
 
 To Sue as an author Thackeray did little or no injustice, 
 but he would have spared the man some of his sarcasms 
 about "Three Francs a Line" had he known the circum- 
 stances in which the book was written and published. 
 
 Eugene Sue was about thirty-eight when his lawyer forced 
 upon his comprehension the fact that his remaining fortune 
 consisted of 15,000 francs and that he owed 130,000 francs. 
 His fashionable friends deserted him, and he felt himself 
 unequal to carrying any further his novel " Arthur," two instal- 
 ments only of which had appeared in la Presse* Fortunately 
 
 • Frederic Soulii, author of the " Memoires du Diable," was the 
 inventor of the long romance in six, eight or ten vols. Sue soon 
 imitated him. 
 
 306 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 he still had one friend — Goubaux, who had collaborated with 
 Dumas in the play of " Richard Darlington." Goubaux gave 
 him the excellent advice to put himself into the book — to 
 describe his own sorrows. Sue did so and completed " Arthur " 
 in three months, receiving a handsome sum for it. From that 
 moment Goubaux became his counsellor in all his literary 
 undertakings. Goubaux frequently urged upon Eugbne the 
 fact that as yet he had only studied the upper classes of society 
 and had ignored the town class — the urban proletariat. Sue, 
 at length, not seeing whither he would be led, bought one 
 day an old blouse covered with paint stains, a cap, a pair of 
 clumsy shoes, and canvas trousers ; put on these things, soiled 
 his hands and went to dine in a cabaret in the Rue aux F&ves. 
 Fortune favoured him. He was present at a serious affray. 
 The participants in this affray gave him the types of Fleur-de- 
 Marie and le Chourineur. He returned home and wrote the 
 first two chapters of the " Mysteries of Paris," as he had 
 written the first two chapters of " Arthur," that is, without any 
 plan. Then he wrote a third chapter and sent for Goubaux, 
 who found the first two chapters excellent ; the third, however, 
 was thrown into the fire. The friends then discussed the 
 material for some further chapters and agreed that a romance 
 of this description could not be issued in serial form and that 
 Sue should offer it to a publisher who had asked for " un livre 
 inidit." Sue then treated with the publisher, and it was agreed 
 that the romance should be in two volumes and should not run 
 in a newspaper. A fortnight later the publisher received the 
 first volume and sold its serial rights to the Journal des 
 D'ebats. From its first appearance the " Mysteries of Paris " 
 was a great success, four volumes were agreed on instead of 
 two, then six, then eight, then ten. 
 
 " To this fact," says Alexandre Dumas, from whose study on 
 Eugene Sue I take these particulars,* " is attributable the 
 
 * " Causeries," by A. Dumas. Sainte-Beuve declares in his 
 "Portraits Litteraires" that Sue, having written in his romance 
 
 307 X 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 languor and weakness of the last four volumes, the changes in 
 the characterisation and the numerous notes which were designed 
 to cover too startling contradictions, as for example that of 
 Fleur-de-Marie, prostitute in the first chapter and virgin and 
 martyr in the last, and a canoness ! "* 
 
 " Everyone read the book," says Theophile Gautier, " even 
 those who did not know how to read and who made some friendly 
 and learned hall-porter read it aloud to them, t people the most 
 apart from any sort of literature knew the Goualeuse, the Chouri- 
 neur, the Chouette, Tortillard, and the Maitre d'Ecole. All French 
 people occupied themselves for upwards of a year with the 
 adventures of Prince Rodolphe before attending to their own 
 business. Sick people waited for the end of the ' Mysteres 
 
 " Cecil " some scenes which proved too strong meat for the public taste, 
 flavoured the whole with a spice of philanthropy ; that this proving 
 successful, he took the hint and worked it out in the " Mysteries of 
 Paris." 
 
 * Did Ruskin read the whole of the " Mysteries of Paris"? In 
 " Modern Painters," vol. III., part iv., chapter xvii., note to s. 27, I 
 find the following : — 
 
 " Compare the characters of Fleur-de-Marie and Rigolette in the 
 '■ Mysteres de Paris." I know no other instance in which the two 
 tempers are so exquisitely delineated and opposed. Read carefully the 
 beautiful pastoral in the 8th chap, of Part I., where Fleur-de-Marie is 
 first taken into the fields under Montmartre and compare it with the 
 6th of Part II., its accurately traced companion-sketch, noting care- 
 fully Rigolette's ' Non, je deteste lacampagne.' She does not, how- 
 ever, dislike flowers or birds : ' Cette caisse de bois que Rigolette 
 appelait le jardin de ses oiseaux etait remplie de terre recouverte de 
 mousse pendant I'hiver. Elle travaillait aupres de la fenetre ouverte, 
 i demi voilee par un verdoyant rideau de pois de senteur roses, de 
 capucines oranges, de volubilis bleus et blancs.' " 
 
 f Compare this with the story of the charwoman who could not read 
 but was thoroughly acquainted with " Dombey." " It turned out that 
 she lodged at a snuff shop where there were several other lodgers, 
 and that on the first Monday of every month there was a tea, and the 
 landlord read the month's number of ' Dombey,' those only of the 
 lodgers who subscribed to the tea partaking of that luxury, but all 
 having the benefit of the reading." — Forster's "Life of Dickens." 
 
 308 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 de Paris ' before dying, the magic words ' Continued 
 to-morrow ' carried them on from day to day, and Death 
 understood that they would not be easy in the other world 
 unless they knew the denouement of this strange tale." 
 
 Moreover, in spite of all its defects, the book aroused in the 
 . upper classes of French society much sympathy for the poor, 
 a sympathy which Sue himself eventually shared. His pub- 
 lishers, for the time at least, secured practically all the profits 
 produced by the book ; however, not only was Sue's reputation 
 as an author established but he was acclaimed by a section of 
 the French press as a great social reformer. Henceforth most 
 of his books were imbued with socialism. 
 
 Shortly after the appearance of Thackeray's article upon "The 
 Mysteries of Paris " in the Foreign Quarterly Review, its pub- 
 lishers brought out a new and splendid edition of this book. On 
 the next page is their advertisement, than which nothing could 
 better testify to the popularity of Eugfene Sue in this country. 
 
 Of course, Messrs. Chapman and Hall were not Sue's only 
 English publishers. Others sought to excite and terrify, if not 
 to touch and refine, the British public, and did so to some 
 purpose, in spite of the employment of translators who while 
 forced to translate, salved their consciences by appending 
 footnotes.* Here are two, extracted from a translation of 
 " Martin the Foundling," or the "Valet de Chambre" as the 
 story is sometimes called :— 
 
 " The ludicrous allusion just now to the electric glance from Regina's 
 eyes, the scandalous misuse of the word Providence, and indeed the 
 whole of this chapter until Martin revives from his self-inflicted but 
 partial starvation, disgusts me beyond measure, and I take this oppor- 
 tunity of requesting the reader to believe that the alloy which he will 
 sometimes discover in this and other writings of this able advocate of 
 the poor and industrious classes is fully as distasteful to me as to 
 himself." 
 
 Translator's Note. 
 
 * The long piece of translation in Thackeray's essay on "The 
 Mysteries of Paris " appears to be from his own pen. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 SHORTLY WILL BE PUBLISHED, 
 
 In ff^tekly Numbers, each containing Sixteen Pages imperial octavo, 
 price Sixpence, 
 
 A NEW AND SPLENDID EDITION 
 OF 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS, 
 
 ADAPTED TO THE ENGLISH READER, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH 
 
 UPWARDS OF SIX HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD 
 
 OF ALL 
 
 THE CHARACTERS, SCENES, COSTUMES, AND LOCALITIES 
 
 DESCRIBED IN THIS EXTRAORDINARY WORK, 
 
 EXECUTED EXPRFSSLY FOR THIS EDITION BY THE 
 FIRST ARTISTS IN PARIS, 
 
 UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF MR. CHARLES HEATH. 
 
 This new and splendid Edition of M. Eugene Sue's celebrated Novel, the 
 Mysteries of Paris, is translated from the last carefully revised copy, now in 
 course of publication in Paris, and which has attained a sale of more than 
 Fifty Thousand Copies. 
 
 The design of this Publication is to present to the English Public a Trans- 
 lation which, while it excludes everything that can by possibility be thought 
 offensive to the English Reader, shall still preserve that intense interest which 
 has given to the original such universal popularity. 
 
 No man can read the Mysteries of Paris that will not be excited and 
 terrified, but yet touched and refined, by the perusal— none can read it but 
 must sympathise with the suffering and the poor ; and the Publishers believe 
 that their present beautifully illustrated edition will be found at once worthy 
 of the celebrated author and of the English Public, to whom they are desirous 
 to introduce him. 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. 
 
 J Menzies, Edinburgh; S. J. Machen, Dublin; A. Rdtherglen, Glasgow; 
 SiMMS AND DiNBAM, Manchester. 
 
 310 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 And again : 
 
 "There is no use in mincing the matter, Monsieur Sue, Martin did 
 succumb on that occasion ; the fact of the honest coachman having 
 found him half dead, and restoring him to life and to the means of 
 living does not destroy the other fact — the faintness of heart with which 
 Martin lay down to die in the suburban cellar. The position of our 
 hero, before he resolved to kill himself by starvation, was far less cruel 
 than that of Mark Tapley in ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' when he was smitten 
 with the fever in the horrid swamps of the back settlement ; and yet 
 the honest fellow did not give way even there, when all his vigour of 
 body was exhausted ; the first word he utters when he partially recovers 
 is the word ' Jolly ! ' I have insisted the longer on this point because 
 it is one of character between the two nations, and because the whole 
 body of French literature, since the present romantic school was 
 founded by Victor Hugo, Dumas, Soulie, Eugene Sue, and others, is 
 infected with the unmanly and ungodly idea of suicide being a 
 justifiable act ; and as these sections of ' Martin, the Valet de 
 Chambre,' pass weekly through the columns of the London Journal, 
 which is read by a quarter of a million of people, it would be 
 supremely unjust to them as to me and the other contributors to that 
 periodical, to let it be supposed that a belief so utterly at variance with 
 English principles is not an opinion which we all deplore." 
 
 Translator's Note. 
 
 The " Quarter of a Million People" who read "Martin the 
 Foundling," " Mathilde," and "The Wandering Jew," in weekly 
 numbers may or may not have " deplored " as they went along, 
 but for the time being Eugene Sue was a name to conquer with. 
 His success encouraged in France Paul F^val, masquerading 
 as Sir Francis Trolopp, to write " The Mysteries of London," 
 and G. W. M. Reynolds in England to pen still further 
 " Mysteries," and yet more " Mysteries " still in a sequel. In 
 1844 Dumas was asked to write something which would 
 compete with " The Mysteries of Paris " in popularity. In 
 answer to the demand he wrote "Monte Cristo." The first 
 part, which, as everyone knows, is closely connected with the 
 Chateau d'lf, was translated somewhat too literally into " The 
 Castle of If." Henceforward Dumas not only successfully 
 rivalled Sue as 2l feuilletonist, but found a permanent popularity 
 
 3" 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 among readers of a superior stamp. For years, however, 
 translations of Dumas' romances continued to be issued in 
 numbers like Sue's, with illustrations " in the first style of art." 
 Nor did Dumas escape the annotations of his translators, one of 
 whom had the temerity to remark after a delightful description 
 of a combat in the " Bastard of MauMon," 
 
 "The very conception of such manoeuvring in a combat of cavalry 
 is perfectly ridiculous." 
 
 Translator. 
 
 But what did the translator know of cavalry, one ventures to 
 enquire. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the style of Thackeray's critique 
 of the " Mysteries of Paris," written in 1843, with that of an 
 article contributed by him ten years before to Fraser's 
 Magazine, and entitled " Half-a-Crown's Worth of Cheap 
 Knowledge." Take the last sentence of the critique, which 
 uns as follows: — 
 
 ^: 
 
 ." By way of encouraging the romance reader it may be stated in 
 conclusion that the Debats has just commenced a new series of this 
 interminable story, in which horrors more horrible, scoundrels more 
 profound, thieves, knaves, and murderers, still more thievish, knavish, 
 and murderous, than any to whom we have yet been introduced, are 
 made to figure on the scene." 
 
 And the last sentence in the contribution to Eraser : 
 
 " ' This Town,' the ' Penny Age,' the ' Fly,' and the ' Shew-up 
 Chronicle,' contain a vast deal of matter to which we have not alluded 
 and which we assuredly shall not describe. SufiSce it to say that 
 ribaldry so infamous, obscenity so impudently blackguard and brazen, 
 can hardly be conceived and certainly never was printed in our day." 
 
 Thackeray did not fail to bear Eugfene Sue in mind, for in 
 July, 1845, we find him writing to the editor of the Edinburgh 
 Review offering to write an article concerning him. 
 
 " Eugene Sue has written a very great number of novels — beginning 
 with maritime novels in the Satanic style, so to speak, full of murder 
 and crime of every description. He met in his early works with 
 no very great success. He gave up the indecencies of language and 
 
 312 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 astonished the world with ■ Mathilde ' three years since, which had 
 the singular quality among French novels of containing no impro- 
 prieties of expression. To my mind it is one of the most immoral 
 books in the world.* 'The Mysteries of Paris' followed, with still 
 
 • The review of " Mathilde " in the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1842 
 is probably from Thackeray's pen. It opens as follows : — 
 
 " It would be difficult to find a collection of incidents more unnatural, 
 or a set of characters more exaggerated, than those which compose the 
 ' Mathilde ' of Monsieur Sue. And yet it has been the most popular 
 book of the season, the most universally read, and not undeservedly 
 so : for it interests, and has a foundation of truth and spirit at the 
 bottom of its extravagances, which draws the reader on from volume 
 to volume. 
 
 " We understood that the French had grown tired of their extravagant 
 school ; that the distortions of Hugo and Balzac had palled upon the 
 public taste ; that ' Hans of Iceland ' and ' Bug Jargal ' no longer 
 inspired horror, but ennui ; and that, in commercial phrase, there was 
 a demand for the natural and simple. Madame Dudevant at first 
 promised to satisfy this taste, and it was one of the secrets of her early 
 success. But Madame Dudevant unfortunately gave herself to philo- 
 sophical studies and speculations upon human life, which removed her 
 ninety degrees from any thing like nature. The misty spectacles she 
 put on distorted all objects fully as much as the green vision of either 
 Balzac or Hugo. Then came Charles de Bernard as the type of the 
 natural school, and clever and successful he proved. But in the end 
 his condiment was found not full-flavoured enough for French palates, 
 and all run back to Monsieur Eugene Sue's catering. 
 
 "The true secret of ' Mathilde's ' success, however, is the story 
 coming so home to every French female. Their life begins at the 
 moment when their prudent relatives betroth or sell them to a mortal 
 possessing the requisite qualifications for a husband. Of old, ladies 
 were not unwisely nurtured in convents, awaiting the time of sacrifice, 
 with curiosity and espiegterie unrepressed perhaps, but still un- 
 sophisticated, and unspoiled by a full sight and inspection of the 
 world, as is now the case. The young lady is not, indeed, allowed the 
 use of her tongue and of free intercourse ; but she has eyes and ears, 
 and is allowed the full liberty of judgment, if not of choice. Then, 
 however close may be drawn the curtains of the French nursery, the 
 prevalent ideas, the moral atmosphere which reigns and prevails with- 
 out, penetrate in some degree within, and coming upon the simplicity 
 of youth beget strange efiervescence. The last century in France 
 was corrupt enough : but there was a world of light and a world of 
 
 313 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 greater success, and the same extreme cleverness of construction and 
 the same sham virtue. It has been sold by tens of thousands in 
 London in various shapes, in American editions, and illustrated 
 English translations. The book just translated is an old performance, 
 it is called ' Latreaumont ' in the French original." 
 
 Had Thackeray made a similar proposition a little later, that 
 is to say after the appearance of Sue's "Wandering Jew" in 
 the Family Herald, where it had an enormous success, the 
 editor would have been well advised to accept from his pen a 
 critique upon it, for it could scarcely have failed to be 
 characteristic and entertaining. 
 
 FRENCH ROMANCERS ON ENGLAND. 
 
 Thackeray's survey of the result of the invention of the 
 feuilleton, when in the forties the day was not sufficiently 
 long to read the portions of Balzac, George Sand, Dumas, 
 
 darkness — purity, strictness, religion in the one ; the very contrary exist- 
 ing or affected in the other. Now there are no such compartments. Good 
 and ill in persons, in sentiments, in things, are intermingled, as veins 
 in marble, past tracing or separating. And there is no retreat from 
 pleasure to devotion. The young female is no longer intrusted to the 
 priest and the convent ; but is allowed to form her own code of 
 morality, her own tissue of sentiment, which in generous minds is of 
 course romantic. 
 
 "There is, hence, a great tendency in France towards exchanging 
 the matter-of-fact simplicity, which hitherto marked the young French 
 damsel, for a degree of sensibility and sentimentalism which surpasses 
 even the English standard. The work at present under review is 
 written to meet this taste. It has a Grandisonian hero, and a heroine 
 very unlike one of Balzac, or Madame Sand : a virtuous, high-minded, 
 self-denying female. Hitherto the female sex has been caricatured by 
 French romancers. M. Sue's portrait of his heroine at least is more 
 like the truth of the time. And the fury with which it is snatched up 
 and read, shows that it has started a vein of nature yet unexplored." 
 
 3U 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Reybaud, Sue and Soulie served up by the journals, recalls to 
 mind the expedient resorted to by the Government of 1847 to 
 make money out of the system. 
 
 Of this Dumas gives a most amusing account.* He says, 
 that the happy days of the feuilleton were the unhappy days of 
 politics. The journals were simultaneously publishing " The 
 Mysteries of Paris " of Sue, the " General Confession " of 
 Soulie, " Monte Cristo," " The Chevalier de Maison Rouge " 
 and "The Women's War" of Dumas. The politicians 
 of the day created little or no interest, and instead of 
 reading the discourses of Thiers and of Guizot, of Odilon 
 / Barrot, of Berryer, of M0I6, and of Duch^tel, people read the 
 //^fiction of Messrs. Balzac, Sand, Dumas, Reybaud, Sue and 
 Souli6. But suddenly Louis Philippe was overthrown, and 
 the noise he made in falling distracted attention from the 
 novelists. 
 
 Their turn soon came again. Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, 
 Cavaignac, and Prince Louis Napoleon were found less amusing 
 than the feuilletonists. So popular were they that some of 
 them were elected as deputies. One day a politician, adroitly 
 profiting by the fact that the Chamber was in a bad humour 
 with the literary men who were sitting there — Hugo, Felix Pyat, 
 Sue and others — rose to speak. He said that the feuilleton 
 was the reason why Ravaillac had murdered Henri IV., why 
 Louis XIII. had murdered the Marshal d'Ancre, why Louis XIV, 
 had murdered Fouquet, why d'Amiens had murdered Louis XV. 
 why Napoleon had murdered the Due d'Enghien, why Louvel 
 had murdered the Due de Berri, why Fieschi had murdered 
 Louis Philippe, and why M. de Praslin had murdered his wife. 
 He added that all acts of adultery that were committed, that 
 all tumults that arose, that all thefts that were accomplished, 
 were caused by the feuilletons ; that it was only necessary to 
 suppress the feuilleton, or to tax it, for the world to stop, and 
 
 • See the introduction to " La Comtesse de Charny." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 instead of continuing its way to destruction, to retrograde to 
 the age of gold, which it could not fail to reach some day, 
 provided that it rolled back as far as it had rolled forward. 
 The majority of the Chamber agreed with the speaker, and it 
 was decided to tax the newspapers which published the accursed 
 things. A half-penny was therefore imposed on each copy of 
 such newspapers ; so that supposing one to have a circulation 
 of 40,000 copies, four hundred francs would have to be paid 
 daily on the score of the feuilleton, or about double what the 
 author received for writing it. The consequence was that 
 "feuilletons romans" ceased to appear in the papers, and that 
 "feuilletons histoire" were published instead. Accordingly 
 all the romancers were asked to write history. Dumas was 
 actually invited to write a history of the Palais Royal, and a 
 history of the crimes of the Popes, and Emile de Girardin 
 wrote him the following letter : — 
 
 " My Dear Friend. 
 I desire that ' Ange Pitou ' may be completed in a further half- 
 volume, instead of in six volumes — in ten chapters instead of a 
 hundred." 
 
 It resulted from this that Girardin, instead of publishing 
 six volumes of a romance, on which he would have had to 
 pay duty, published twenty volumes of Dumas' " Memoirs." 
 There were people sufficiently uncharitable to say that the 
 "Memoirs" contained as much fiction as the romance would 
 have done; but de Girardin kept his readers while he saved 
 the duty. 
 
 When Thackeray criticized " Le Bananier" the feuilletonists 
 were yet unchecked, and Melchior Frederic Souli^ was the 
 most indefatigable of all of them. According to Mme. de 
 Girardin it was the fault of the ladies that he wrote stories of 
 a sensational order. She says that his early works, which were 
 of a mild and chaste nature, were left unread, and that it was 
 not until in desperation he wrote down to their tastes and 
 produced " The Magnetizer " that he became popular. 
 
 316 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Soulie was one of those men who seem to be born with a 
 pen between their fingers. At school, on being given a kind 
 of fable to compose, he put it into verse. His teacher found 
 this so surprising that he dismissed the boy from the class, 
 accusing him of presenting as his own work lines stolen from 
 some miscellany. Soulie complained to his father, who knew 
 that his son from the age of twelve had been accustomed to 
 make verses. Soulid pere called on the schoolmaster, who 
 answered that it was impossible that a schoolboy should make 
 French verses. "But," said the father, "you require this 
 schoolboy to make Latin verses." " Oh, that is different," was 
 the reply ; " I taught him to do that, and besides he has the 
 ' Gradus ad Parnassum.' " 
 
 In spite of his facility Soulie found poetry so unremunerative 
 that he connected himself with an undertaking for supplying 
 builders with window frames, but in 1827 he succeeded in 
 getting his " Rom^o et Juliette " unanimously accepted by the 
 committee of the Theatre Fran9ais. Unfortunately other 
 writers were busy with the same subject, and the committee 
 ultimately considering that a translation of Shakespeare's play 
 might be better than an adaptation produced one by Emile 
 Deschamps. Soulie took his piece to the Od^on, where it 
 was received, performed, and applauded. His next piece, 
 " Christine," was a dismal failure, and he then took to jour- 
 nalism, working with Balzac and Sue. In 1832, he was at 
 length successful, for " Clotilde " made him one of the most 
 popular dramatists of the day. His first stories achieved no 
 popular success, but " The Magnetizer," " The Two Corpses," 
 and the famous "Devil's Memoirs" placed him for a time in 
 front of every competitor. Success induced him to overstrain 
 his talent, and before his premature death in 1847 his 
 reputation had suffered by the production of manifestly inferior 
 works. 
 
 Soulid's talent was chiefly of a dramatic order. He had 
 great power, but not much finesse. His best books cannot 
 
 317 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 easily be put down ; but, when once laid aside, they soon pass 
 from the mind.* 
 
 It is only fair to Souli^ to say that " Le Bananier," which 
 was obviously written to the order of a political journal, is 
 not a fair specimen of his work. The book is now utterly for- 
 gotten, while Dumas' "Georges, or the Isle of France," which 
 also deals with the slave question, is deservedly popular still. 
 
 NEW ACCOUNTS OF PARIS. 
 
 Thackeray can seldom have had a more thoroughly con- 
 genial task than that of reviewing the sprightly " Parisian 
 
 * Lovers of Dickens who are unacquainted with the " Devil's 
 Memoirs " (published towards 1840) may be interested to compare the 
 following fine passage from Chapter I., vol. 5. of the Brussels edition, 
 with the description of the wind in Chapter II. of " Chuzzlewit" 
 (published in 1843). 
 
 " Comme une troupe de cavaliers a^riens lanc^e au galop, le vent 
 passait tout d'un trait k travers ces arbres et ces haies, criant. hurlant 
 et emportant avec lui des nu^es de feuilles qui semblaient dans la nuit 
 un vol d'oiseaux fuyant k tire d'aile. Puis tout i coup, commes si 
 ces escadrons invisibles en eussent rencontre de plus puissants, ils 
 s'arr^taient et paraissaient se briser : on les entendait reculer et 
 revenir par rafales in^gales et plaintives ; les feuilles disperses repas- 
 saient en tourbillonnant, et s'abattaient 9a et U sur la terre humide, 
 pareilles a une bande de passereaux qu'ont dispers^e et dScim^e les 
 plombs ^parpill^s d'un coup de fusil. Alors tous les grands bruits se 
 taisaient un moment pour laisser entendre le murmure de la pluie 
 tombant sur les arbres, le cri lugubre dune chouette et le chant 
 lointain dun coq. L'orage reprenait ensuite, allant, venant, luttant, 
 frappant de grands coup sourds et poussant des sifflements aigus : non 
 pas un de ces orages bouillants et superbes que sillonnent de puissants 
 Eclairs, qui parlent majestueusement par de grands Eclats de foudre, 
 qui jettent dans I'ame une sainte terreur pleine d'admiration, auxquels 
 ou s'expose, tete nue, pour s'impr^gner de leurs chaudes Emanations 
 et respirer leur atmosphere Electrique ; mais un de ces noirs orages 
 qui serrent le corps de froid et le cceur de tristesse, un de ces orages 
 auxquels ou ferme soigneusement sa fenfetre et sa porte pour s'accoter 
 au coinde I'&tre qui brule, ou se rouler dans les couvertures de son lit." 
 
 318 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Letters " of Delphine Corinne de Girardin, the daughter of 
 Sophie Gay and the wife of the well-known proprietor of La 
 Presse, Emile de Girardin. 
 
 The editor chose his critic well, when he sent that little pile 
 of volumes to Titmarsh. Of course the " Parisian Letters " 
 were not all new to Thackeray, for he must have read many of 
 them in la Presse, where for several years before they had 
 gradually appeared with so much success. 
 
 That he knew the fair author at all well may be questioned, 
 for I think that her friends were not deceived, as Thackeray 
 seems to have been, by the mask worn by her to fit the part of 
 the well-informed but somewhat frivolous and very worldly 
 Vicomte de Launay. 
 
 She certainly played the part admirably, but the woman who 
 wrote " La Joie fait Peur " and " Napoline " was more than a 
 De Launay. That acute observer Sainte Beuve somewhat 
 regrets that Delphine Gay the poet became Madame de 
 Girardin the journalist, and quotes a passage from " Napoline " 
 which will convince most readers that its author at one time at 
 least possessed the soul of a poet and not that of a clever 
 worldling. 
 
 "The tedium of life lulls genius to sleep and does not destroy it. but 
 the world ! . . . the world ! ... it makes us like itself ; it unceasingly 
 pursues us with its irony, it reaches the heart, its incredulity envelopes, 
 its frivolity dries us up ; it throws its cold glance upon our enthusiasm 
 and it extinguishes it, it drags forth our illusions one by one and it 
 disperses them, it robs us and when it sees us miserable like itself, made 
 in its own image, disenchanted, withered, without heart, without virtue, 
 without belief, without passion and cold as death itself, it places us 
 among the elect and says to us with pride, ' You belong to us ! ' " 
 
 Thackeray notices that Balzac and the critic Jules Janin 
 were already at fisticuffs in 1836 about "Woman." Janin's 
 article reproaching Balzac with having discovered the woman 
 of forty and calling him her Christopher Columbus is worth 
 quotation. 
 
 319 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 " The woman of from thirty to forty," wrote Janin, " was formerly a 
 region which did not exist for passion and was therefore unknown to 
 the novel and the drama. But now, thanks to these diverting dis- 
 coveries, the woman of forty reigns without a rival in both novel and 
 drama. This time the new world has eclipsed the old, the woman of 
 forty outshines the maiden of sixteen. 
 
 " ' Who's that knocking ? ' cries Drama in a gruff voice. 
 
 " ' Who's there ? ' asks Romance in flute-like tones. 
 
 "'It is I,' answers trembling sixteen with teeth like pearls, snowy 
 bosom, delicately curved form, fresh smile, and gentle expression ; ' it 
 is I. I am the age of Racine's Junie, of Shakspere's Desdemona, of 
 Moliere's Agnes, of Voltaire's Zaire, of Prevost's Manon Lescaut, of 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Virginie. Mine is the age— the fleeting, 
 magic age of all the heroines of Ariosto and Lesage, of Lord Byron 
 and Sir Walter Scott. I am youth, still hopeful and simple, fearfully 
 questioning the future with a glance as clear as the blue sky. Mine is 
 the age of all pure affections, of all noble instincts, the age of pride 
 and innocence. Let me in, I beg ! ' 
 
 " So speaks sweet sixteen to novelists and dramatists, and the 
 novelists and dramatists reply, ' Go away, child, your mother and we 
 are very busy ; come again in twenty years and perhaps we shall be 
 able to attend to you.' " 
 
 Madame de Girardin continued to write the " Paris Letters of 
 the Vicomte de Launay" until 1848. She died in 1855. 
 
 James Grant, editor of the Morning Advertiser, author of 
 " Random Recollections of the Lords and Commons," " The 
 Great Metropolis," and of thirty-four other works, was one of 
 Thackeray's aversions. Grant received many shrewd digs from 
 the Thackerayan pen. If any of them made him wince, 
 it may have been the following in Punch : — 
 
 "THE LAST INSULT TO POOR OLD IRELAND.* 
 
 " It is confidently reported that the author of ' The Great Metropolis ' 
 is going to write a book about this most unfortunate country." 
 
 " Paris and its People " roused Thackeray so much that 
 besides ridiculing it in Punch on several occasions he reviewed 
 
 • Punch, September 7th, 1844. 
 330 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 it twice over. He wrote from the Travellers Club on 
 
 November 4th, 1843 * : — 
 
 " It is needless to state to any gent in the upper circles of society 
 that the eyes of Europe have long been directed towards Grant. All 
 the diplomatic gents at this haunt of the aristocracy have been on the 
 look-out for his book. The question which Don Manuel Godoy 
 addresses to Field-Marshal Blucher (before they sit down to whist) is 
 in the Spanish language of course, ' When will it appear ? ' ' Prxhpssky, 
 Grantowitz bulbxwky ! ' exclaims his Excellency, Count Pozzo di 
 Borgo, before taking his daily glass of caviare and water, ' that terrible 
 fellow Grant is going to publish a work about Paris, I see.' ' Quand 
 sera-t-il-dehors ? ' screams Prince Talleyrand, ' When will it be out ? ' 
 and on the day of publication I know for a fact that a carrier was 
 waiting at the French embassy to carry off the volumes to His M — t — y 
 L^is Ph — 1 — ppe, and Monsieur G — zot. They have seen by this 
 time— they have read every word of those remarkable tomes, and I 
 have no doubt that they are trembling in their souliers at some of the 
 discoveries therein made." 
 
 Apart from Thackeray's peculiar aversion to " James " (as 
 in the article above quoted he persists in calling that talented 
 writer James Grant) he was very anxious that French people 
 should be under no illusion regarding him, and is at pains in 
 the Foreign Quarterly to make it perfectly plain why it was of 
 importance to notice the book there. Thackeray well knew 
 that Fraser (in the December number of which he crushed him 
 ■with brilliant sarcasms) had but a small foreign circulation, 
 while the Foreign Quarterly was to be found in every capital 
 in Europe. The reviewer of Alfred Michiels' " Angleterre " 
 felt thoroughly ashamed of his countryman. He certainly did 
 his best to pillory both authors and prevent their works from 
 doing any serious mischief either at home or abroad. 
 
 ANGLETERRE. 
 
 The ingenious author of "Angleterre," a gentleman of 
 Dutch origin who was born in 18 13, must have felt exceedingly 
 
 * Fraser, December, 1843. 
 N.S.B. 221 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 flattered at being honoured with such a long review as 
 Thackeray gave him. No doubt it helped the sale of his book 
 considerably ; and it is not to be doubted that in the pious 
 hope of getting another notice or two, he caused all his other 
 works to be sent to the Review as long as it continued to 
 appear. 
 
 Unquestionably, " Angleterre " was a successful book. It not 
 only went through three editions in the forties, but was re-issued 
 in handsome form as late as 1872 under the title "Voj'age 
 d'Un Amateur en Angleterre," with a new preface and supple- 
 ments. Michiels bravely stuck to it that he did see 
 "Angleterre," and headed his new preface thus : — 
 
 " All that I saw returns upon my view, 
 All that I heard comes back upon my ear. 
 All that I felt this moment doth renew." 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
 His success in placing a book written in 1842 with a new 
 publisher thirty years later very naturally gave him confidence 
 in its continued longevity. He says in his preface, " A lonely 
 monument by the side of the waves, beaten upon by the tem- 
 pest and overgrown with wild plants, has for poetic souls an 
 eternal charm. When this volume is only a ruin, I hope that 
 there will be found in it the melancholy attraction that exists 
 in nature and abandoned buildings.'' And he explains that 
 he wrote the book almost in spite of himself. " Leaving for 
 England without any other intention than that of seeing a 
 country whose literature I loved and of which I thoroughly 
 knew the language and somewhat the history, far from wishing 
 to relate my travels in an island so often explored, I had the 
 firm intention not to scribble a word about it, having all my 
 life abhorred ' les lieux communs.' On arrival I was surprised 
 at the new things that I saw, at the multitudinous remarks that 
 the monuments, the people and books suggested to me. I 
 experienced a sort of exaltation which suffused everything with 
 a soft and marvellous light. On my return to Paris, memory 
 
 322 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 proIony:ed this poetic emotion and inspired me with the desire 
 to take up my pen. An article published in a review having 
 been received with great favour, I wrote a second, then a third, 
 and eventually all my narrative was completed." 
 
 In spite or perhaps on account of these asseverations, I 
 think that Thackeray was right and that Michiels only saw as 
 much of England as was reflected in the eyes of someone who 
 had been. there. He was an industrious as well as an ingenious 
 fellow, this Joseph Alfred Xavier Michiels, if even though he 
 did not run the risk of sea sickness or the perils of inland 
 travel, but seated comfortably at the Bibliothfeque Nationale, he 
 produced the whole shelf-full of books which bear his name. 
 And even Michiels considered that there were limits to the 
 credulity of his countrymen, for in advertising them, I notice, 
 he felt constrained to classify a work entitled " Captain Firmin, 
 or Negro Life in Africa," and another on chamois-hunting, as 
 " Works of Imagination." Other books include a " History of 
 Flemish Art," " Studies on Germany," " A History of Literary 
 Ideas in France," " The Secret History of the Austrian Govern- 
 ment," " A History of Austrian Politics since Maria Theresa," 
 " Austria and the Polish Question," " The Rights of France in 
 Alsace-Lorraine," " A History of the Franco-German War," as 
 well as various books such as the " Nouveau Pech6 Originel," 
 whose tides suggest a lighter vein. 
 
 On one occasion Michiels had a great opportunity, and he 
 seized it. In 1846 Arsfene Houssaye produced in a splendid 
 folio volume illustrated with fine engravings, a "History of 
 Flemish and Dutch- Art," which had a great success among 
 collectors. Hardly had the book appeared when Michiels, who 
 had the year before produced his " History of Flemish and 
 Dutch Art," published at Brussels, publicly and vehemently 
 accused Arsfene Houssaye of having stolen from and plagiarized 
 his work. He published under the pseudonym of Jules Perrier 
 a pamphlet entitled "An Undertaker of Literature," in which he 
 accumulated his woes and stated his facts. Houssaye replied 
 
 323 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 to this pamphlet by a paper entitled " A Literary Martyr, 
 Touching Revelations," taking a tone half serious, half jesting, 
 where he justified himself with some success. This brought 
 forward a second pamphlet from Michiels, still more outspoken 
 than the first, and signed with the same pseudonym, called the 
 " Nouvelles Fourberies de Scapin." The affair, which made 
 much noise at the time, did no harm to either of the writers ; 
 strangely enough the sale of their books was considerably 
 increased by the warfare. • 
 
 * Georges d'Heilley's " Dictionnaire des Pseudonymes. " 
 
 THE END. 
 
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