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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
DEPOSITED BY THE
LINONIA AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

THE

STUDENTS' QUARTER

OR

PAEIS FIYE-AND-THIETY YEAES SINGE.

BY THE LATE
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKEEAY.

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WITH ORIGINAL COLOUSED ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

LONDON 1 PMNTED BY
BPOTTJSWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

PREFACE.

The chapters on French , Life, Literature, and
Art, comprised in this volume, were written by
the late Mr. Thackeray during his residence in
Paris in the years 1839-40. They were originally
addressed to a friend, the editor of a foreign
journal, in whose publication they first appeared.
A small portion was included by the author, in
1 840, in his ' Paris Sketch Book.' The remainder
have, it is believed, never appeared in this country
in any shape. The whole contents of the volume
may, therefore, be assumed to be unknown to
English readers.
The author's reason for omitting these sketches
from the edition of his miscellanies was, probably,
the temporary character of some of the subjects

iv Preface.
discussed. But the sketches abound in indica
tions of that genius which was destined to delight
so many thousands of readers : and as the earliest
of the literary efforts of their illustrious author,
they cannot fail to be welcome to his admirers.
The criticisms on the French school of painting
will be found peculiarly interesting, containing,
as they do, passages unsurpassed for beauty of style
by anything in the author's later writings. As the
impressions of the young Englishman of the
scenes around him in those early days of student
life in Paris, which he has so admirably described
in one of the letters, they will be read with in
terest, while to those who desire to trace the
gradual development of the style of this great
English classic, they will form a necessary sup
plement to his collected works.
J. C. H.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Off to Feance  17
CHAPTEE H.
A Week of Petes  43
CHAPTER III.
Fbench Fiction  63
'CHAPTER IV.
The Story of Spieidion .... 85
CHAPTER V.
Moee Aspects of Paeis Life . . .113
CHAPTER VI.
A French Jack Sheppaed .... 133
CHAPTER VII.
A Eamble in the Pictuee-Galleeies . . 160
CHAPTER VIII.
Another Ramble in the Pictuee-Galleeies 183

a

THE STUDENTS' QUARTER.

CHAPTEE I.
OFF TO FRANCE.
Steam-packet Experiences — Frenchmen at Sea — Boulogne
Hotels — The Mysterious Touter — Life in a French Watering-
place — The Journey in the Old Diligence — Inside and Outside
Passengers — Parallel between the Parliamentary Orator and
the French Diligence — Paris Streets — The Faubourg St. Denis
— The Prison of St. Lazare — The Courtyard of the Parisian
Hotel — Concluding Apostrophe to the Editor and Readers of
the Bungay Beacon.
About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet
is tolling a farewell to London Bridge, and warn
ing off the blackguard boys with the newspapers,
who have been shoving ' Times,' * Herald,' ' Penny
Paul Pry,' ' Penny Satirist,' ' Flare-up,' and other
abominations, into your face — just as the bell
has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people taking
leave of their families, and blackguard boys afore-

1 8 The Students', Quarter.
said, are making a rush for the narrow plank
which conducts from the paddle-box of the ' Eme
rald' steam-boat unto the quay — you perceive
staggering down Thames Street those two hack
ney-coaches, for the arrival of which you have been
praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing,
syr-  , (I beg your pardon, I believe the word
is not used in good society,) — and transpiring,
for the last half-hour. Yes, at last the two
coaches draw near, and from thence an awful
number of trunks, children, carpet-bags, nursery
maids, hat -boxes, band -boxes, bonnet -boxes,
desks, cloaks, and an affectionate wife, are dis
charged on the quay.
'Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane,' screams
that worthy woman, who has been for a fortnight
employed in getting this tremendous body of
troops and baggage into marching order.
' Hicks ! Hicks ! for heaven's sake mind the
babies!' 'George — Edward, sir, if you go near that
porter with that trunk, he will tumble down and
kill you, you naughty boy ! '
'My love, do take the cloaks and umbrellas,

Steam-packet Experiences. 19
and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy — and I wish
you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear ;
they want fifteen shillings, and count the pack
ages, love — twenty-seven packages, and bring
little Flo— where's little Flo?— Flo! Flo!'—
(Flo comes sneaking in ; she has been speaking
a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier, that
sneaks off similarly, landward).
As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in
like manner, when such a danger as a voyage
menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed
with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling
up and screaming in the front of her brood, and
in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
courage, in putting her enemy to flight. You
will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady
be good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-
humoured, before and during a great family
move of this nature.
Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are
paid, the mother, leading on her regiment of
little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
nurse-maids, are safe in the cabin; — you have
counted twenty-six of the twenty-seven parcels,
B2

20 The Students' Quarter.
and have them on board, and the horrid man
on the paddle-box, who for twenty minutes past
has been roaring out, ' Now, sir ! ' — says, ' now,
sir!' no more,
I never yet knew how a steamer began to
move, being always too busy among the trunks
and children, for the first half hour, to mark
any of the movements of the vessel. When
these private arrangements are made, you find
yourself opposite Greenwich, (Farewell, sweet,
sweet whitebait !) and quiet begins to enter into
your soul.
Your wife (I don't speak of Lady Yellowplush,
or Mrs. Gahagan, but of wives in general) smiles
for the first time these ten days; you pass by
plantations of ship-masts, and forests of steam
chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
ships, the barges salute you/ with oaths, grins,
and phrases facetious and familiar, the man on
the paddle-box roars, ' ease her, stop her,' which
mysterious words a shrill voice from below
repeats, and pipes out, 'ease her, stop her,' in
echo, the deck is crowded with groups of figures,
and the sun shines over all.

Young Englishmen at Sea. 21
The sun shines over all, and the steward comes
up to say, 'Lunch, ladies and gentlemen! will
any lady or gentleman please to take anythink ? '
About a dozen do : boiled beef and pickles, and
great red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure :
little dumpy bottles of stout are produced, and
fiz and bang about with a spirit one would never
have looked for in individuals of their size and
stature. The decks have a strange look : the people on
them, that is. Wives, elderly stout husbands,
nurse-maids, and children predominate of course,
in English steam-boats. Such may be considered
as the distinctive marks of the English gentleman
at three and four and forty : two or three of such
groupshave pitched their camps on the deck. Then
there are a number of young men, of whom three
or four have allowed their moustaches to begin to
grow since last Friday : for they are going 'on the
Continent,' and they look therefore as if their
upper-lips were smeared with snuff.
A danseuse from the opera is on her way to
Paris. — Followed by her bonne and her little dog,
she paces the deck stepping out in the real dancer

22 The Students' Quarter.
fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the
two young Englishmen are who can speak French
and make up to her ! — and how all criticise her
points and paces !
Yonder is a group of young ladies who are going
to Paris to learn how to be Governesses; those
two splendidly-dressed ladies are milliners from
the Eue Kichelieu, who have just brought over,
and disposed of their cargo of Summer fashions.
Here sits the Bev. Mr. Snodgrass with his pupils,
whom he is conducting to his establishment near
Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and
mathematical education (washing included) the
young gentlemen have the benefit of learning
French among the French themselves. Accord
ingly, the young gentlemen are locked up in a
great ricketty house two miles from Boulogne,
and never see a soul except the French
usher and the cook.
Some few French people are there already
preparing to be ill — (I never shall forget the
dreadful sight I once had in the little, dark,
dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four
gaunt Frenchmen, but for their pantaloons in

Frenchmen at Sea. 23

the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly
anointing themselves with some charm against
sea-sickness !) — a few Frenchmen are there, but
these, for the most part, and with a proper philo
sophy, go to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you
see them on the fore-deck (is that the name
for that part of the vessel which is in the
region of the bowsprit ?) lowering in huge cloaks
and caps, snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet, and
not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. —
I never could fancy the Mounseers formidable
at sea.
There are, of course, many Jews on board:
who ever travelled by steamboat, coach, diligence,
eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge, without
meeting some of the wandering race ?
By the time these remarks have been made
the steward is on deck again, and dinner is
ready: and about two hours after dinner comes
tea, and then there is brandy and water, which
he eagerly presses as a preventive against what
may happen ; and about this time you pass the
Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and
the groups descending, disappear, and your wife

24 The Students' Quarter.
giving you an alarmed look, descends with her
little ones to the lady's cabin, and you see the
steward and his boys issuing from their den
under the paddle-box, With each a heap of
round tin vases, like those which I believe
are styled in America expectoratoons, only these
are larger.

The wind blows, the water looks greener and
more beautiful than ever — ridge by ridge of long
white rock passes away. ' That's Eamsgit,' Says
the man at the helm ; and presently ' that there's
Deal — it's dreadful fallen off since the war;' and
'that's Dover round that there' pint, only you
can't see it;1 and in the meantime the sun has
plumped his hot face into the water, and the moon
has shown hers as soon as ever his back is turned,
and Mrs. Y. G.,* as the wife in general, has
brought up her children and self from the horrid
cabin, in which she says it is impossible to
breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by
* Mistress YeUowplush Gahagan.

Ladies at Sea. 25

the officious stewardess, and smart steward (ex-
pectoratoonifer) accommodated with a heap of
blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of
which they crawl, as best they may, and from the
heaving heap of which are, during the rest of
the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and
sounds of puking woe !
Dear, dear Maria ! Is this the woman who anon
braved the jeers and brutal wrath of swindling
hackney coachmen; — who repelled the insolence of
haggling porters with a scorn that brought down
their demands at least eighteenpence ? Is this
the woman at whose voice servants tremble, at
the sound of whose steps the nursery, aye, and
mayhap the parlour, is in order? Look at her
now, prostrate, prostrate — no strength has she to
speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one —
her suffering, struggling Eosa — to push to her
the — the instrumentoon !
In the midst of all these throes and agonies,
at which all the passengers (who have their
own woes), you yourself (for how can you help
them, — you are on your back on a bench, and
if you move all is. up with you ;) are looking

16 The Students' Quarter.
on indifferent — one man there is who has been
watching you with the utmost care, and be
stowing on your helpless family the tenderness
that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and
you have been conversing with him in the course
of the morning in French, which he says you
speak remarkably well, like a native, in fact, — and
then in English (which, after all, you find, is more
convenient). What can express your gratitude to
this gentleman for all his goodness towards your
family and yourself — you talk to him, he has
served under the Emperor, and is for all that,
sensible, modest, and well-informed. He speaks
indeed of his countrymen almost with contempt,
and readily admits the superiority of a Briton on
the seas and elsewhere. One loves to meet with
such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects
the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This
distinguished foreigner has travelled much, he
asks whither you are going, where you stop ? —
if you have a great quantity of luggage on
board ? — and laughs when he hears of the twenty-
seven packages, and hopes you have some friend
at the Custom-house who can spare you the

The Mysterious Touter. 27
monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has
¦ taken you weeks to put up.
Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner
is ever at your side, you find him now, perhaps,
(with characteristic ingratitude) something of a
bore, but at least he has been most tender to
the children, and their mamma.
At last a Boulogne light comes in sight (you
see it over the bows of the vessel, when having
bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly down).
Boulogne harbour is in sight, and the foreigner
says —
The distinguished foreigner says — says he
— ' Sare, eef you af no 'otel, I sail reccom-
mend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze
Quay, sare, close to ze bathing machines and
Custom Ha-oose. Goot bets and fine garten,
sare, table d'hote, sare, a cinq-heures ; break
fast, — sare, in French or English style, I am
the commissionnaire, sare, and vill see to your
loggish.'

Curse the fellow for an impudent, swindling,

28 The Students' Quarter.
sneaking, French humbug ! — Your tone in
stantly changes, and you tell him to go about
his business; but at twelve o'clock at night,
when the voyage is over, and the Custom
House business done, knowing not whither to
go with a wife and fourteen exhausted children,
scarce able to stand, and longing for bed, you
find yourself, somehow, in the Hotel Bedford,
and smiling chambermaids carry off your children
to snug beds, while smart waiters produce for
your honour a cold fowl, soy, and a salad, and
a bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer water.

The morning comes : I don't know a pleasanter
feeling than waking with the sun shining on
objects quite new (and although you may have
made the voyage a dozen times), quite strange.
Mrs. X  and you occupy a very lightbed, which
has a tall canopy of red ' percale ;' the windows
are smartly draped' with cheap gaudy calicoes and
muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet
about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all
seems as gay and as comfortable as may be : the

Boulogne Hotels. 29
sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a
year ; the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what
a cheery clatter of shrill, quick, French voices
comes up from the courtyard under the windows !
Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to
Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of
the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the
lookers-on. The landlord calls out for ' Quatre
bifteks aux pommes, pour le Trente-trois.'
(0, my countrymen, I love your tastes and
your ways !) — the chambermaid is laughing, and
says, ' finissez done, Monsieur Pierre ! ' (what
can they be about!) — a fat Englishman has
opened his window violently, and says, ' Dee
dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou
vooly voo pah ! ' He has been ringing for half
an hour — the last energetic appeal succeeds, and
shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-
room, where, with three hot rolls, grilled ham,
cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what
he calls his first French breakfast.
It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this
town of Boulogne; the' little French fishermen's
children are beautiful, and the little French

30 The Students' Quarter.
soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge
pompons on their caps, and brown faces, and
clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness,
far more military and more intelligent than the
heavy louts one has seen swaggering about the
garrison towns in England.
Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged fishermen;
there is the town idiot, mocking a woman
who is screaming c Fleur du Tage ' at an
inn-window to a harp, and there are the
little gamins mocking him. Lo! those seven
young ladies with red hair and green veils,
they are from neighbouring Albion, and going
to bathe.
Here come three Englishmen, habitues evi
dently of the place — dandy specimens of our
countrymen : one has got a marine dress, another
has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and
a pair of giltless spurs; all have as much hair
on the face as nature or art can supply, and all
wear their hats very much on one side. Believe
me, there is on the face of this world no scamp
like an English one, no blackguard like one of
these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,

Tiie English at Boulogne. 3 1
so ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so despe
rately heartless and depraved.
But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?
Take things coolly. As the poet has observed,
' Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich.'
With such, then, consort, be they cobblers or
dukes. ' Don't give me,' cries young Shambles,
' any abuse of my fellow-countrymen, but rather
continue in that good-humoured, facetious, de
scriptive style with which your letter has com
menced. Your remark, my good friend, is perfectly just,
and does honour to your head and excellent heart.
There is little need to give a description of
the good town of Boulogne, which, haute and
basse, with a new lighthouse, and the new
harbour, and the gas lamps, and the manufac
tories, and the convents, and the number of
English and French residents, and the pillar
erected in honour of the Grande Armee d'Angle-
terre, so called because it didn't go to England,
have all been excellently described by the facetious
Coghlan, the learned Dr. Millingar, and by innu
merable guide-books besides.

32 The Students' Quarter.
A fine thing it is to hear the stout old
Frenchmen of Napoleon's time, argue how that
audacious Corsican would have marched to Lon
don, after swallowing Nelson and all his gun
boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Es-
pagne, and cette glorieuse campagne d' Autriche,
which the gold of Pitt caused to be raised up
at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off
from the helpless country in his front. Some
Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that, in
Spain, they were never beaten at all; indeed, if
you read in the ' Biographie des hommes du Jour,'
article 'Soult,' you will find that, with the ex
ception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns
in Spain and Portugal were a series of triumphs :
only, by looking at a map, it is observable that
Vimiera is a mortal long way from Toulouse,
where, at the end of certain years of victories,
we somehow find the honest Marshal. And
what then ? He went to Toulouse for the pur
pose of beating the English there, to be sure.
A known fact, on which comment would be
superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this

The Old Diligence. 33

rate ; let us break off farther palaver, and away
at once.

(During this pause, the ingenious reader is
kindly requested to pay his bill at the hotel at
Boulogne, to mount the diligence of Lafitte,
Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-
five hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells
and screaming of postilions.
The French milliner, who occupies one of the
corners, begins to remove the little greasy pieces
of paper which have enveloped her locks during
the journey. She withdraws the 'Madras' of
dubious hue which has bound her head for the
last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the
black velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your
nose, has hung from the diligence roof since your
departure from Boulogne.
The old lady in the opposite corner, who
has been sucking bonbons, and smells dread
fully of anisette, arranges her little parcels in
that immense basket of abominations, which all
/5V

34 The Students' Quarter.
old women carry in their laps. She rubs her
mouth and eyes with her dusty cambric hand
kerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little
bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head
piece, covered with withered artificial flowers
and crumpled tags of ribbon, she looks wistfully
at the company for an instant, and then places
her handkerchief before her mouth ; her eyes roll
strangely about for an instant, and you hear a
faint clattering noise; the old lady has been
getting ready her teeth, which had lain in her
basket among the bonbons, pins, oranges, po
matum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books,
peppermint-water, copper-money, and false hair
stowed away there during the voyage.
The Jewish gentleman who has been so at
tentive to the milliner during the voyage, and is
a traveller and bagman by profession, gathers
together his various goods.
The sallow-faced English lad who has been
drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday,
and is coming to Paris to pursue the study
of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave
the cursed diligence, is sick of the infernal

The Journey to Paris. 35
journey, and d  d glad that the d  d voyage
is nearly over.
' Enfin ! ' says your neighbour, yawning,
and inserting an elbow in the mouth of his
right and left companion, 'Nous voila P
Nous toil! ! We are at Paris ! this must
k
account for the removal of the milliner's curl
papers, and the fixing of the old lady's teeth.
Since the last relais, the diligence has been tra
velling with extraordinary speed. The postilion
cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly.
The conductor blows incessantly on his horn;
the bells of the harness, the bumping and ringing
of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of
the great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman
stallions, have wondrously increased within this,
the last ten minutes; and the diligence, which
has been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a
league in an hour, now dashes gallantly forward,
as if it traversed at. least six miles in the same
space of time.
Thus it is, when Sir Eobert maketh a speech

36 The Students' Quarter.
at Saint Stephen's, he uses his strength at the
beginning only, and the end. He gallopeth at
the commencement; in the middle he. lingers;
at the close again, he rouses the House, which
has fallen asleep ; he cracketh the whip of his
satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism;
and urging his eloquence to its roughest canter,
awakens the sleepers, and inspires the weary,
until men say, What a wondrous orator ! what a
capital coach ! we will ride henceforth in it, and
no other !
But behold us at Paris! The diligence has
reached a rude-looking gate or grille, flanked by
two lodges ; the French kings of old made their
«ntry by this gate ; some of the hottest battles of
the late revolution were fought before it. At
present, it is blocked by carts and peasants, and
a busy crowd of men in green, examining the
packages before they enter, probing the straw
with long needles. It is the Barriere of St. Denis,
and the green men are the Customs' men of the
city of Paris.
If you are a countryman, who would in
troduce a cow into the Metropolis, the city

Paris Streets. 37

demands twenty-four francs for such a pri
vilege : if you have a hundredweight of tallow
candles, you must previously disburse three
francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per
whole hog ; but upon these subjects, Mr. Bui wer,
Mrs. Trollope, and other writers, have already
enlightened the public. In the present in
stance, after a momentary pause, one of the
men in green mounts by the side of the con
ductor, and the ponderous vehicle pursues its
journey. The street which we enter, that- of the Fau
bourg St. Denis, presents a strange contrast
to the dull uniformity of a London street, where
everything, in the dingy and smoky atmo
sphere, looks as though it were painted in
India-ink — black houses, black passengers, and
black sky.
Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times
more life and colours. Before you, shining in
the sun, is a long glistening line of gutter, not a
very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture
invaluable. On each side are houses of all
dimensions and hues ; some, but of one story ;

38 The Students' Quarter.

some, as high as the Tower of Babel. From
these the haberdashers (and this is their favourite
street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which
give a strange air of rude gaiety to the looks.
Milkwomen, with a little crowd of gossips round
each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
the chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait.
Gay wine - shops, painted red, and smartly
decorated with vines and gilded railings, are
filled with workmen taking their morning's
draught. That gloomy-looking prison on your right,
is a prison for women; once it was a convent
for Lazarists ; a thousand unfortunate individuals
of the softer sex now occupy that mansion:
they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the
bread of all the other prisons ; they mend and
wash the shirts and stockings of all the other
prisoners ; they make hooks and eyes and phos
phorus boxes, and they attend chapel every
Sunday: if occupation can help them, sure
they have enough of it.
Was it not a great stroke of the Legislature
to superintend the morals and linen at once,

Court-yard of a Paris Hotel. y)
and thus keep these poor creatures conti
nually mending? But we have passed the
prison long ago, and are at the Porte St. Denis
itself. There is only time to take a hasty glance as
we pass ; it commemorates some of the wonder
ful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus; and
abounds in ponderous allegories, nymphs and
river-gods, and pyramids crowned with fleur-de-
lis ; Louis passing over the ¦ Ehine in triumph,
and the Dutch lion giving up the ghost in the
year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch lion re
vived, and overcame the man sometime after
wards ; but of this fact, singularly enough, the
inscriptions make no mention.
Passing, then, round the gate, and not under
it (after the general custom, and in respect of
triumphal arches), you cross the boulevard,
which gives a glimpse of trees and sunshine,
and gleaming white buildings ; then, dashing
down the Eue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty
street, which seems interminable, and the Eue
St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast
on his horn, and the great vehicle clatters into

40 The Students' Quarter.
the courtyard, where its journey is destined to
conclude. If there was a noise before of screaming pos
tilions and cracked horns, it was nothing to the
Babel-like clatter which greets us now.
We are in a great court, which Hajji Baba
would call the Father of Diligences — half a
dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute ;
no light affairs, like your English vehicles, but
ponderous machines, containing fifteen pas
sengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast
towers of luggage on the roof— others are load
ing; the yard is filled with passengers coming
or departing — bustling porters, and screaming
commissionnaires. These latter seize you as you
descend from your place — twenty cards are thrust
into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering
with inconceivable swiftness, shriek into your ear,
'Dis way, sare; are you for ze Otel of Ehin?
Hotel de l'Amiraute ! — Hotel Bristol, sare!
Monsieur, l'Hotel de Lille? Sacr-rrre nom de
Dieu, laissez passer ce petit, Monsieur! Ow
mosh loggish ave you, sare ?'

Correspondents Abroad. 41
Here, as we are fairly arrived, and the paper is
covered to the very last corner, this letter had
perhaps better end. There would have been a
good opportunity, too, for a little egotistical
speech, and an address of thanks and compli
ments on this first occasion before a new audience.
But tempting as the occasion is, it had better be
passed over, for in sooth, 0 Editor of the Bungay !
I believe that your public is too wise to care
much for us poor devils, and our personal vanities
and foolishness — only too good is it to receive,
with some show of kindness, the works which we
from time to time, and urged by the lack of coin
and pressure of butchers' bills, are constrained to
send abroad. What feelings we may have in
finding good friends and listeners among strangers,
far, far away — in receiving beyond seas kind
crumbs of comfort for our hungry vanities, which
at home, God wot, get little of this delightful food
— in gaining fresh courage and hope, for pursuing
a calling of which the future is dreary, and the
present but hard. All these things, 0 Editor!
had better be meditated by the author in private,
than, as the fashion is now-a-days, poured over

42 The Students' Quarter.
yards of papery in fluent streams of ink. With
which, farewell. I hear the dinner-bell ringing,
and lo! white-aproned scullions bear smoking
soups across the court.

T. T.

Hotel Mibabeatj :
JvJy 25, 1839.

CHAPTEE II.
A WEEK OF FETES.
Character of tho French People — A Task for Dickens or Theodore
Hook — Abolition of ' la Peine de Mort' — Trial of a French
Conspirator — Victor Hugo and Louis Philippe — Poetry and
Criminal Justice — Frenchmen's Holiday-making — The Go
vernment of July — Jules Janin — Frederic Soulie — French
Literary Men — Arnal — Bouffc. — Madlle. Mars and Rachel —
Tho End of the Fetes.
We have arrived here just in time for the fetes
of July. You have read, no doubt, of that glo
rious revolution which took place here nine
years ago, and wliich is now commemorated an
nually in a pretty facetious manner, by gun-firing,
student processions, pole-climbing for silver
spoons, gold watches, and legs of mutton, mo-
narchial orations, and what not, and sanctioned,
moreover, by the Chamber of Deputies, with a
grant of a couple of hundred francs to defray the
expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and legs

44 The Students' Quarter.
of mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in .
the Place Louis Quinze, otherwise called the
Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la Ee-
volution, or else the Place de la Concorde, (who
can say why?) which I am told is to run bad
wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there
would have been a review of National Guards
and the Line, only since the Fieschi business
reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of
the festivity has been discontinued.
Do you not laugh — oh, intelligent editor
that you are — at the continuance of a humbug
such as this! — at the humbugging anniversary
of a humbug!
The King of the Barricades is, next to the
Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute, sovereign
in Europe — there is not in the whole of this fair
kingdom of France a single man who cares
sixpence' about him or his dynasty, except,
mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Chateau, who
eat his dinners, and put their hands in his purse.
The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old Charles
the Tenth ; the Chambers have been laughed at,
the country has been laughed at, all the sue-

A Task for Dickens. 45
cessive ministries have been laughed at (and you
know who is the wag that has amused himself
with them all), and behold, here come three
days at the end of July, and cannons think it
necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze
and fiz, fountains to run wine, kings to make
speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy mats-
de-cocagne in token of gratitude, and rejouissance
publique. My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow,
to utter, to enact humbugs, these French
people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the
other nations of this earth. In looking at these
men, their manners, dresses, opinions, politics,
actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
grave countenance — instead of having Carlyle
to write a history of the French Eevolution, I
often think it should be handed over to Dickens,
or Theodore Hook ; and oh, where is the Eabelais
to be the faithful historian of the last phase of
the Eevolution — the last glorious nine years of
which we are now commemorating — the last
glorious three days?
I had made a vow not to say a syllable on

46 The Students' Quarter.
the subject, although I have seen with my
neighbours all the gingerbread stalls down the
Champs-Elysecs, and some of the 'catafalques'
erected to the' memory of the heroes of
July, where the students and others not con
nected personally with the victims, and not
having in the least profited by their deaths,
come and weep — but the grief shown on the
first day is quite as absurd and fictitious as the
joy exhibited on the last subject is one which
admits of much wholesome reflection, and food
for mirth, and besides is so richly treated by the
French themselves, that it would be a sin and a
shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the
honour of translating, for your edification, an
account of the . first day's proceedings — it is
mighty amusing, to my thinking.
CELEBEATION OF TnE DATS OF JULY.
'To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies in
honour of the victims of July were held in the
various edifices consecrated to public worship.
These edifices, with the exception of some
churches (especially that of the Petits-Peres),

The ' Victims of July.' 47
were uniformly hung with black on the outside ;
the hangings bore only this inscription : 27, 28,
29 July 1830, surrounded by a wreath of oak
leaves. In the interior of the Catholic churches,
it had only been thought proper to dress little
catafalques, as for burials of the third and fourth
class. Very few clergy attended ; but a con
siderable number of the National Guard.
The synagogue of the Israelites was entirely
hung with black; and a great concourse of
people attended. The service was performed
with the greatest pomp.
In the Protestant temples there was likewise
a full attendance ; apologetical discourses on the
Eevolution of July were pronounced by the
pastors. The absence of M. de Quelen (Archbishop of
Paris), and of many members of the superior
clergy, was remarked at Notre-Dame.
The civil authorities attended service in their
several districts. The poles ornamented with
tri-coloured flags, which formerly were placed on
Notre-Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed.

48 The Students' Quarter.
The flags on the Pont Neuf were, during the
ceremony, only half-mast high, and covered with
crape, &c. &c.
The tombs of the Louvre were covered with
black hangings, and adorned with tri-coloured
flags. In front and in the middle was erected
an expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape,
and surmounted by a funeral vase.
These tombs were guarded by the Municipal
Guard, the troops of the Line, the Sergents de
Ville (town patrol), and a brigade of agents of
police in plain clothes, under the orders of
peace-officer Vassal.
Between 11 and 12 o'clock some young men,
to the number of 400 or 500, assembled on the
Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a tri-
coloured banner, with an inscription, "To the
Manes of July ; " ranging themselves in order,
they marched five abreast of the Marche des In-
nocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards
of the Halle-aux-Draps, where the post had been
doubled, issued out without arms, and the town
sergents placed themselves before the market to
prevent the entry of the procession. The young

A Task for Dickens. 49
men passed in perfect order and without saying
a word, only lifting their hats as they defiled be
fore the tombs. When they arrived at the Louvre,
they found the gates shut, and the garden eva
cuated. The troops were under arms, and formed
in battalion.
'After the passage of the procession, the garden
was again open to the public'
And the evening and the morning were the first
day. There is nothing serious in mortality — is there
from the beginning of this account to the end
thereof, but sheer, open, monstrous, undisguised
humbug ? I said before, that you should have a his
tory of these people by Dickens, or Theodore Hook,
but there is little need of professed wags — do not
the men write their own tale with an admirable
Sancho.-like gravity and naivete, which one could
not desire improved ? How good is that touch of
sly indignation about the ' little catafalques ? ' how
rich the contrast presented by the splendid dis
regard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews ;
and how touching the ' Apologetical Discourses
on the Eevolution,' delivered by the Protestant
D

50 The Students' Quarter.
pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the
gardes municipaux, the sergents de ville, the
police agents in plain clothes, and the troops
with fixed bayonets sobbing round the expiatory
monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted
by funeral vases, and compelled by sad duty to
fire into the public who might wish to indulge in
the same woe! Oh, 'Manes of July!' (the phrase
is pretty and grammatical), why did you with
sharp bullets break those Louvre windows ? Why
did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair
white facade, and braving cannon, musket, sabre,
perspective guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates,
rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and
hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of
kings, head over heels out of yonder Tuileries
windows ?
It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say ;
there is, however, one benefit that the country
has gained (as for liberty of press or person,
diminished taxation, a juster representation, who
ever thinks of them?). One benefit they have
gained, or nearly — abolition de la peine de mort,,
namely, pour <Mlit politique — no more wicked

A French Conspirator. 51
guillotining for revolutions. A Frenchman must
have his revolution — it is his nature to knock,
down omnibuses in the street, and across them to
fire at troops of the line — it is a sin to balk it —
did not the King send off revolutionary Prince
Napoleon in a coach and four ? Did not the jury
before the face of God and justice proclaim
revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty ? One
may hope soon, that if a man shows decent
courage and energy in half-a-dozen emeutes, he
will get promotion and a premium.
I do not (although perhaps partial to the sub
ject) want to talk more nonsense than the occa
sion warrants and will pray you to cast your eyes
over the following anecdote^ that is now going the
round of the papers, and respects the commuta
tion of the punishment of that wretched foolhardy
Barbes, who on his trial seemed to invite the
penalty which has just been remitted to him.
You recollect the braggart's speech : ' When the
Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he
knows the fate that awaits him, and submits his
head to the knife. — I am the Indian ! '
'Well  ' D 2

52 The Students' Quarter.

'M. Victor Hugo was at the Opera on the
night when the sentence of the Court of Peers,
condemning Barbes to death, was published ; the
great poet composed the following verses : —
Par votre ange envolde ainsi qu'une Colombo,
Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau,
Griee encore une fois ! Grice au nom de la tombe,
Gri.ce au nom du berceau ! *
' M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly
on a sheet of paper, which he folded, and simply
despatched them to the King of the French by the
penny post.
That truly is a noble voice which can at all
hours thus speak to the throne. Poetry in
old days was called the language of the gods —
it is better named now, it is the language of
kings. ' But the clemency of the King had anticipated
the letter of the Poet. The pen of His Majesty
* Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen: —
By your angel flown away just like a dove,
By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
Pardon yet once more ! Pardon in the name of the tomb,
Pardon in the name of the cradle ! — Note to original.

Victor Hugo and Louis Philippe. §3
had signed the commutation of Barbes, while
that of the poet was* still writing.
Louis Philippe replied to the author of " Euy
Bias" most graciously, that he had already
subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
had only confirmed his previous dispositions to
mercy.' Now in countries where fools most abound,
did one ever read of more monstrous, palpable
folly? in your country or mine, would a poet
who chose to write four crack-brained verses,
comparing an angel to a dove, and a little
boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magis
trate in the name of the angel or dove (the
.Princess Mary) in her tomb, and the little in
fant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have
received a ' gracious answer ' to his nonsense,
would he have ever despatched the nonsense?
and would any journalist have been silly enough
to talk of ' the noble voice that could thus speak
to the throne,' and the noble throne that could
return such a noble answer to the noble voice ?
You get nothing done here gravely and decently.
Tawdry stage tricks are played, and braggadocio

54 The Students' Quarter.
claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however
sacred or solemn, in face of death as by Barbes
with his hideous Indian metaphor, in the teeth
of reason as by M. Victor Hugo with his two
penny-post poetry, and of justice, as by the
King's absurd reply to this absurd demand?
Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is
that any reason why the law should not have its
course ?
Justice is the God of our lower world, our
great omnipresent guardian — as such it moves,
or should move on, majestic, awful, irresistible,
having no passions — like a God : but in the very
midst of the path across which it is to pass — lo !
M. Victor Hugo trips forward smirking, and
says : ' 0 Divine Justice, I will trouble you to
listen to the following trifling effusion of mine : —
Par votre ange envolee ainsi qu'une, &c.
Awful Justice stops, and bowing gravely, listens
to M. Hugo's verses, and with true French polite
ness, says : ' Mon cher Monsieur, these verses are
charming, ravissans, delicieux, and coming from

Poetry and Criminal Justice. $$

such a celebrite litteraire as yourself, shall meet
with every possible attention; in fact, had I
required anything to confirm my own previous
opinions, this charming poem would have done
so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo ; au
r&voir;' — and they part, Justice taking off hat
and bowing, and the author of 'Euy Bias'
quite convmced that he has been treating with
him d'&gal a 6gal. I can hardly bring my mind
to fancy that anything is serious in France,
it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play.
Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham
justice : — ou diable done la verite est-elle allee se
nicher ?

The last rocket of the fete of July has just
mounted, exploded, made a portentous bang, and
emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights, and then
(like many reputations) disappeared totally: the
hundredth gun on the Invalids-terrace has uttered
its last roar — and a great comfort it is for eyes
and ears that the festival is over. We shall be
able to go about our every-day business again,

$6 The Students' Quarter.
and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the
crowd. The sight which I have just come away from
is as brilliant, happy, and beautiful, as can be
conceived; and if you want to see French
people to the greatest advantage, you should go
to a festival like this, where their manners and
innocent gaiety show a very pleasing contrast to
the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same
class would exhibit in our own country — at Epsom
racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The
greatest noise I heard was that of a company of
jolly villagers from a place in the neighbourhood
of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over,
formed themselves into a line of three or four
abreast, and so marched singing home. As for
the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very hard
to describe, and very little was to be seen of
them; to me, the prettiest sight was the vast,
orderly, happy crowd, the number of children,
and. the extraordinary care and kindness of the
parents towards these little creatures. It does
one good to see honest, heavy Spiders, fathers of
families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or as

Frenchmen's Holiday-making. 57

to-night bearing them stoutly on their shoulders,
through many long hours, in order that the little
ones too may have their share of the fun. John
Bull, I fear, is more selfish; he does not take
Mrs. Bull to the public-house, but leaves her for
the most part to take care of the children at
home. The fete then is over, the pompous black pyra
mid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now, all
the flags have been miraculously whisked away
during the night, and the fine chandeliers which
glittered down the Champs Elysees for full half
a mile, have been consigned to their dens and
darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other
celebrations of the glorious 29th of July? I
think not; the Government which vowed that
there should be no more persecutions of the press
was on that very 29th seizing a Legitimist paper,
for some real or fancied offence against it: it
had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of per
sons merely suspected of being disaffected — (and
you may fancy how liberty is understood, when
some of these prisoners the other day on coming
to trial, were found guilty and sentenced to one

58 The Students' Quarter.
day's imprisonment after thirty-six days' deten
tion on suspicion). I tnink the government which
follows such a system, cannot be very anxious
about any further revolutionary fetes, and that
the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote more
money for them. Why should men be so mighty
proud of having on a certain day cut a certain
number of their fellow-countrymen's throats?
The Guard and the Line employed this time nine
years, did no more than those who cannonaded
the starving Lyonese, or bayoneted the luckless
inhabitants of the Eue Transnonain — they did
but fulfil the soldier's honourable duty — his supe
riors bid him kill and he killeth — perhaps had
he gone to his work with a little more heart, the
result would have been different; and then?
would the conquering party have been justified
in annually rejoicing over the conquered ? Would
we have thought Charles X. justified in causing
fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung,
and speeches to be spouted' in commemoration of
his victory over his slaughtered countrymen ? I
wish, for my part, they would allow the people

The Government of July. 59
to go about their business as on the other 362
days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysees
free for the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries
in quiet, so that the nursemaids might come as
usual, and the newspapers be read for a half
penny apiece.
Shall I trouble you with an account of the
speculations of these latter, and the state of the
parties which they represent ? — the complication
is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps,
the subject of future letters.
The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine,
a considerable part of the columns of the news
papers just now, and it is amusing to follow
them, one by one — to read Tweedledum's praise,
and Tweedledee's indignation — to read in the
Debats' how the King was received with
shouts and loyal vivats — in the 'National' how
not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on
the instant of his departure, how the people
called for the ' Marseillaise,' and applauded that.
¦ — But best say no more about the fete.
The Legitimists were always indignant at it.

<

60 The Students' Quarter.
The high Phihppist party sneers at and despises
it. The Eepublicans hate it — it seems a mighty
joke against them. Why continue it? If I may
hazard prophecies like the mighty 0. P. Q., who
has always in England and America shown a
wondrous talent for vaticination, I should like
you to print in the largest capitals : ' The fetes of
July are past.' This time next year the world
will have forgotten the prophecy, nor will the
prophet remind them of it unless perchance it
should come true.
With respect to literary news, there is, for
the present, none. Since that dreadful day
when Jules Janin, Soulie, and a host of other
literary geniuses went to visit the ravages of
a great late hailstorm at a village in the envi
rons of Paris — since that dreadful day when the
mayor of the commune, seeing a number of sus
picious-looking characters with beards, with mous
taches, with ringlets, with brutuses, with stays,
blouses, velvet coats, frogged surtouts, and all the
last abominations of Parisian fashion, instantly
took them for republicans, and so clapped into

French Celebrities. 61
prison some of the sublimest spirits of France —
a sort of awful panic seems to reign among the
literary men, and most of the confrerie have fled
the capital.
The theatres, too, languish, but these are
always pleasant, — only the pleasanter in this
hot weather, because people prefer to sit out-of-
doors. Eegarding these, however, and many other
subjects of vast importance, I shall be able to
give you better information in my next, when, if
you are anxious to know, you shall hear of the
very precise spot where the great Arnal is at pre
sent, where Bouffe is starring, where Mademoiselle
Mars intends to pass her holidays, and in what
happy provinces the fair Jewess, Mademoiselle
Eachel, proposes to teach the true manner of
declaiming Eacine and Corneille.
By the way, what a noble subject for a
tragedy is that conspiracy of the three hundred
Jews to put down the piece at the London
theatre about Gold Dust ! The French would
have made a dozen vaudevilles of it before
this.
T. T.

6i The Students' Quarter.
PS. — I break open my letter to say that the
fountain on the Place de la Concorde did not run
wine, and that, with regard to the Eastern ques
tion, there is not a syllable of news. , .

CHAPTEE III.
FRENCH FICTION.
Change in French Habits and Fashions — The Catholic Peaction
— Scene in a Church — Transcendentalism — Literature and Re
ligion — Madame Sand — The Romance of ' Spiridion' — Henri
¦ Heine — Professor Quinet — Religion and Philosophy in Novels
— Madame Sand again — Account of one of her most famous
Novels.
I noN'i know an impression more curious than
that which is formed in a foreigner's mind, who
has been absent from this place for two or
three years, returns to it, and beholds the
change which has taken place in the meantime
in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two
years ago, for instance, when I left the capital,
I left the young gentlemen of France with
their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the
toes of their boots round. Now the boot-toes
are pointed, and the hair, combed flat and
parted in the middle, falls ip ringlets on the

64 The Students' Quarter.
fashionable shoulders; and, in like manner
with books as with boots, the fashion has changed
considerably, and it is not a little curious to con
trast the old modes with the new. Absurd as was
the literary dandyism of those days, it is not a
whit less absurd now; only the manner is changed,
and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from
one caricature to another.
The Eevolution may be called a caricature
of freedom, as the Empire was of glory; and
what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the
same process. They take top-boots and macin
toshes from across the water, and caricature our
fashions; they read a little, very little Shak-
'speare, and caricature our poetry; and while in
David's time art and religion were only a cari
cature of heathenism, now, on the contrary,
these two commodities are imported from Ger
many, and distorted caricatures originally are
still further distorted on passing the frontier.
I trust in heaven that German art and reli
gion will take no hold in this country (where
there is a fund of roast beef that will expel any
such humbug in the end) ; but these sprightly

The Catholic Reaction. 65
Frenchmen have relished the mystical doctrines
mightily; and having watched the Germans,
with their sanctified looks, and quaint imita
tions of the old times, and mysterious transcen
dental talk, are aping many of their fashions, as
well and as solemnly as they can ; not very
solemnly, God wot, for I think one should
always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks
particularly grave, being sure that there is some
thing false and ridiculous lurking under that
owl-like solemnity.
When last in Paris, we were in the midst of
what was called a Catholic reaction. Artists
talked of faith in poems and pictures ; churches
were built here and there; old missals were
copied and purchased ; and numberless portraits
of saints, with as much gilding about them as
ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared
in churches, ladies' boudoirs, and picture-shops.
One or two fashionable preachers rose, and were
eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools
gave up their pipes and billiards for some time,
and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit
under the feet of Lacordaire. I went to visit
E

66 The Students' Quarter.
the church of Notre Dame de Lorette yester
day, which was finished in the heat of this
Catholic rage, and was not a. little struck by the
similarity of the place to the worship celebrated
in it, and the admirable manner in which the
architect has caused his work to express the
public feeling of the moment. It is a pretty
little bijou of a church : it is supported by sham
marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue
and gold, which will look very well for some
time, and ii filled with gaudy pictures and car
vings in the very pink of the mode. The con
gregation did not offer a bad illustration of the
present state of Catholic reaction. Two or three.
stray people were at prayers ; there was no
service; a few countrymen and idlers were
staring about at the pictures; and the Swiss,
the paid guardian of the place, was comfortably
and appropriately asleep on his bench at the
door. I am inclined to think the famous reaction
is over; the students have taken to their Sun
day pipes and billiards again; and one or two
cafes have been established within the last year,

Transcendentalism. 67
that are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame
de Lorette.
However, if the immortal Gorres and the
German mystics have had their day, there is
the immortal Goethe, and the Pantheists; and
I incline to think that the fashion has set very
strongly in their favour. Voltaire and the Ency-
clopsedians are voted, now, barbares, and there
is no term of reprobation strong enough for
heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but
to destroy, and who only thought to doubt.
Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I
think there is something more manly and earnest
even in them than in the present muddy French
transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have
begun to eprouver le besoin of a religious senti
ment ; and we are deluged with a host of gods
accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to
be inspired, Victor Hugo is a god, Madame Sand
is a god; that tawdry man of justice, Jules
Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the
'Debats,' has divine intimations; and there is
scarce a beggarly beardless scribbler of poems

68 The Students' Quarter.
and prose but tells you in his preface of the
saintete of the sacerdoce litteraire, or a dirty
student, sucking tobacco and beer, and reeling
home with a grisette from the Chaumiere, who is
not convinced of the necessity of a new ' Mes-
sianism,' and will hiccup, to such as will listen,
chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely,
the negatives of the old days were far less dan
gerous than the assertions of the present, and you
may fancy what a religion that must be which has
such high priests.
There is no reason to trouble the reader with
details of many of the lives of many of these
prophets and expounders of new revelations.
Madame Sand, for instance, I do not know per
sonally, and can only speak of her from report.
True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very
edifying, and so may be passed over: but as a
certain great philosopher told us in very humble
and simple words, that we are not- to expect to
gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles,
we may at least demand in all persons assuming
the character of moralist or philosopher, order,
soberness, and regularity of life ; for we are apt

Madame Sand. 69
to distrust the intellect that we fancy can be
swayed by circumstance or passion, and we know
how circumstance and passion will sway the intel
lect, how mortified vanity will form excuses for
itself, and how temper turns angrily upon con
science that reproves it.
How often have we called our judge our enemy,
because he has given sentence against us ! How
often have we called the right wrong, because
the right condemns us! And in the lives of
many of the bitter foes of the Christian doc
trine can we find no personal reason for their
hostility ? The men in Athens said it was out of
regard for religion that they murdered Socrates ;
but we have had time since then to reconsider the
verdict, and Socrates' character is pretty pure
now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of
those days.
The last work of Madame Sand, who is the
most elegant writer, I think, that lier sex ever
produced, and the best writer of her day now in
France, is a little novel called ' Spiridion,' in
which this extraordinary woman asserts openly
her pantheistical doctrine, and attacks the religion

7o The Students' Quarter.
which she is pleased to think so faulty. She
declares it to be useless now, and unfitted to the
exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual
world ; and though it would be hardly worth while
to combat her opinions in due form, it is at least
worth while to notice them, not merely from the
extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman
herself, but because they express the opinions of
a great number of people besides ; for she not
only produces her own thoughts, but imitates
those of others very eagerly; and one finds in
her writings so much similarity with others, or in
others so much resemblance to her, that the book
before us may pass for the expression of the sen
timents of a certain French party.
' Dieu est mort,' says another writer of the same
class, and of great genius, too ; ' Dieu est mort,'
writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking of the Chris
tian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
speech — ' N'entendez-vous pas sonner la clo-
chette ? — on porte les sacremens a un Dieu qui
se meurt I '
Another of the pantheist poetical philosophers,
Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem in which Christ

Religion in Novels. 7 i
and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly,
and the former is classed with Prometheus.
This book of ' Spiridion ' is a continuation of the
theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of the
author's expositions of it.
It must be confessed that the controversialists
of the present day have an eminent advantage
over their predecessors in the days of folios — it
required some learning then to write a book, and
some time at least, for the very labour of writing
out a thousand such vast pages would demand a
considerable period ; but now, in the age of duo
decimos, the system is reformed altogether; a
male or female controversialist draws upon his
imagination and not his learning — makes a story
instead of an argument, and, in the course of a
hundred and fifty pages (where the preacher has
it all his own way), will prove or disprove you
anything. And to our great shame be it said, we Pro
testants have set the example of this kind of
proselytism — those detestable mixtures of truth,
lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad grammar,
correct and genuine philosophy and piety — I mean

72 The Students' Quarter.
our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be
he ever so silly, can take upon himself to write
and sell for a penny, as if religious instruction
were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
have set the example in this kind of composition,
and all the sects of the earth will doubtless
speedily follow it. I can point you out blasphe
mies in famous pious tracts, that are as dreadful
as those above-mentioned, but that this is no place
for such discussions, -and we had better return to
Madame Sand.
As Mrs. Sherwood expounds by means of
many touching histories and anecdotes of little
boys and girls, her notions of Church history,
Church Catechism, Church doctrine — as the
author of 'Father Clement, a Eoman Catholic
Story,' demolishes the stately structure of eighteen
centuries, the mighty and beautiful Eoman Catho
lic faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints
and sages, by the means of a three-and-sixpenny
duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the vast
fabric as David's pebble-stone did Goliath — as
again the Eoman Catholic author of 'Eveline'
falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and drowns the

George Sand again. 73
awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the
sounds of her little half-crown trumpet — in like
manner, by means of pretty sentimental tales and
cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims her truth :
that we need a new Messiah, and that the Chris
tian religion is no more !
0 awful, awful name of God! Light un
bearable ! Mystery unfathomable ! Vastness
immeasurable ! Who are these who come forward
to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into
the depths of the light, and measure the im
measurable vastness to a hair? 0 name that
God's people of old did fear to utter! 0
light that God's prophet would have perished
had he seen ! Who are these that are now so
familiar with it? Women, truly, for the most
part weak women — weak in intellect, weak may
hap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously
strong in faith — Women who step down to the
people with stately step and voice of authority,
and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there
were some Divine authority for the wretched
nonsense recorded there !
With regard to the spelling and grammar, our

74 The Students' Quarter.
Parisian pythoness stands in the goodly fellow-'
ship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and as
far as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, and
beautifully rich and pure. She has a very exube
rant imagination, and with it a very chaste style
of expression. She never scarcely indulges in
declamation, as other modern prophets do, and
yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and
full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after
the manner of some prophets, who, when they
catch a little one, toy with it until tney kill it),
but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief,
rich, melancholy sentences, with plenty of food
for future cogitation.
I can't express to you the charm of them;
they seem to me like the sound of country bells,
provoking I don't know what vein of musing
and meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on
the ear.
This wonderful power of language must 'have
been felt by most people who read Madame Sand's
first books, 'Valentine' and 'Indiana.' In Spiridion
it is greater, I think, than ever ; and for those who
are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the

The Romance of Spiridion. 75
manner will be found most delightful. I doubt
not but that it has found many readers among
you ere now.
The author's intention, I presume, is to
describe in a parable her notions of the downfall
of the Catholic Church, and, indeed, of the whole
Christian scheme ; and she places- her hero in a
monastery in Italy, where, among the characters
about him, and the events which occur, the parti
cular tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine are
not inaptly laid down.
Innocent, faithful, tender-hearted, Spiridion
finds himself, when he has pronounced his vows,
an object of aversion and hatred to the godly
men whose lives he so much respects, and whose
love he would make any sacrifice to win.
After enduring much, he flings himself at the
feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy
and counsel ; but the confessor spurns him away,
and accuses him fiercely of some unknown and
terrible crime — bids him never return to the
confessional until contrition has touched his
heart, and the stains which sully His spirit are
by sincere repentance washed away.

7 6 The Students' Quarter.
' Thus speaking (says Spiridion), Father Hege- x
sippes tore away his robe, which I was holding in
my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness I
still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely
from Mm, and I fell with my face towards the
ground. He quitted me, closing violently after
him the door of the sacristy, in which this scene
had passed.
' I was left alone in the darkness.
' Whether from the violence of my fall, or the
excess of my grief, a vein had burst in my throat
and hemorrhage ensued. I had not the force to
rise, I felt my senses rapidly sinking, and pre
sently I lay stretched on the pavement, uncon
scious, and bathed in my blood.'
[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
' I know not how much time I passed in this
way. As I came to myself, I felt an agreeable
coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air
was playing round about me, stirring gently in my
hair, and drying the drops of perspiration on my
brow. It seemed to approach, and then again to
withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in

A Mysterious Visitor. 77
the distance, and now returning as if to give me
strength and courage to rise.
c I would not, however, do so as yet ; for I felt
myself as I lay under the influence of a pleasure
quite new to me, and listened in a kind of
peaceful aberration to the gentle murmurs of
the summer wind as it breathed on me through
the closed window blinds above me.
' Then I fancied I heard a voice that spoke
to me from the end of the sacristy. It whispered
so low that I could not catch the words. . I
remained motionless, and gave it my whole at
tention. At last I heard distinctly the following
sentence: — "Spirit of Truth, raise up these
' victims of ignorance and imposture ! "
' " Father Hegesippes," said I, in a weak voice,
" is that you who are returning to me ?" But no
one answered. I lifted myself on my hands and
knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I
got up completely, and looked about me ; I had
fallen so near to the only door in this little
room, that none after the departure of the con
fessor could have entered it without passing over
me ; besides, the door was shut, and only opened

78 The Students' Quarter.
from the inside by a strong lock of the ancient
shape. I touched it and assured myself that it
was closed. I was seized with terror, and for
some moments did not dare to move. Leaning
against the door, I looked round, and endeavoured
to see into the misty gloom in which the angles
of the room were enveloped.
'A pale light, which came from an upper window
half closed, was to be seen trembling in the midst
of the apartment. The wind beat the shutter to
and fro, and enlarged a diminished space through
which the light entered. The objects which were
in this half light, the praying-desk surmounted
by its skull — a few books lying on the benches —
a surplice hanging against the wall — seemed to
move with the shadow of the foliage that the air
agitated behind the window.
'When I thought I was alone, I felt ashamed
of my former timidity ; I made the sign of the
cross, and, was about to move forward in order
to open the shutter altogether ; but a deep sigh
came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed
to my place. , And yet I saw the desk distinctly
enough to be sure that no person was near it.

A Scene in the Sacristy. 79
' Then I had an idea which gave me courage.
Some person, I thought, is behind the shutter, and
has been saying his prayers outside without
thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to
express such wishes, and utter such a prayer as I
had just heard ?
c Curiosity, the only passion and amusement
permitted in a cloister, now entirely possessed me,
and I advanced towards the window. But I had
not made a step when a black shadow, as it
seemed to me, detaching itself from the praying-
desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards
the window, and passed swiftly by me. The
movement was so rapid that I had not time to
avoid what seemed a body advancing toward me,
and my fright was so great, that I thought I
should faint a second time. But I felt nothing,
and as if the shadow had passed through me. I
saw it suddenly disappear to my left.
' I rushed to the window, I pushed back the
blind with precipitation, and looked round the
sacristy; I was there entirely alone. I looked into
the garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day
wind was wandering among the flowers. I took

8o The Students' Quarter.
courage ; I examined all the corners of the room ;
I looked behind the praying-desk, which was
very large, and I shook all the sacerdotal vest
ments which were hanging on the walls ; every
thing was in its natural condition, and could
give me no explanation of what had just
occurred. ' The sight of all the blood I had lost led
me to fancy that my brain had probably been
weakened by the hemorrhage, and that I had
been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my
cell, and remained shut up there until the next
day.' I don't know whether the reader has been as
much struck with the above mysterious scene as
the writer has, but the fancy of it strikes me as
very fine, and the natural supernaturalness is kept-
up in the best style. The shutter swaying to
and fro, the fitful light appearing over the fur
niture of the room, and giving it an air of
strange motion, the awful shadow which passed
through the body of the timid young novice, are
surely very finely painted. 'I rushed to the

Natural Supernaturalness.

shutter and flung it back. There was no one in the
sacristy. I looked into the garden ; it was deserted,
and the mid-day wind was roaming among the
flowers.' The dreariness is wonderfully described, —
only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out
from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid
day wind walking in the solitary garden. How
skilfully is each of these little strokes dashed in,
and how well do all together combine to make a
picture ! But we must have a little more about
Spiridion's wonderful visitant.

' As I entered the garden, I stept a little on
one side to make way for a person whom I saw
before me. He was a young man of surprising
beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Al
though dressed in the large black robes which the
superiors of our order wear, he had underneath a
short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the
waist by a leathern belt, and a buckle of silver,
F

82 The Students' Quarter.
after the manner of the old German students.
Like them he wore, instead of the sandals of our
monks, short tight boots, and over the collar of
his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as
white as snow, hung in rich golden curls the
most beautiful hair I ever saw. He was tall,
and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me
that he was in the habit of commanding. Struck
with respect, and yet uncertain, I half saluted
him. He did not return my salute, but he smiled
on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same
time his eyes, severe and blue, looked towards me
with an expression of such compassionate ten
derness, that his ¦ features have never since then
passed away from my recollection. I stopped,
hoping he would speak to me, and persuading
myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that he had
the power to protect me ; but the monk who was
walking behind me, and who did not seem to
remark him in the least, forced him brutally to
step aside from the walk, and pushed me so rudely
as almost to cause me to fall.
' Not wishing to engage in a quarrel with this

Spiridion's Visitant. 83
coarse monk, I moved away; but after having
taken a few steps in the garden, I looked back,
and saw the unknown still gazing on me with
looks of the tenderest solicitude. The sun
shone full upon him, and made his hair look
radiant. He sighed, and lifted his fine eyes to
Heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my favour,
and to call it to bear witness to my misery ; he
turned slowly towards the sanctuary, entered into
the quire, and was lost presently in the shade.
' I longed to return, in spite of the monk, to
follow this noble stranger, and to tell him my
afflictions; but who was he that I imagined he
would listen to them, and cause them to cease ?
' I felt, even while his softness drew me towards
him, that he still inspired me with a kind of
fear, for I saw in his physiognomy as much
austerity as sweetness.'

Who was he ? My paper is just at an end,
and we will have more about him in our next
number. He was somebody, very mysterious
v 2

84 The Students' Quarter.
indeed, but our author has taken care, after the
manner of her sex, to make a very pretty fellow
of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
costume possible.
T. T.

CHAPTEE TV.
THE STORY OF ' SPIEIDION.'
The Church in Newman Street, London — Puseyism— Madame
Dudevant — A warning against Religious Speculation — The-
Moral of Spiridion — Spiridion's Manuscript — The Intoxication
of the Parisian Atmosphere — Byronic Sentimentalism.
The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar,
with the copious golden locks, and the solemn
blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion, and
inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe,
is a much more important personage than the
reader might suppose at first sight. This beautiful
mysterious dandy ghost, whose costume, with a
true woman's coquetry, Madame Dudevant has
so rejoiced to describe, is her religious type, a
mystical representation of faith, struggling up
towards truth, through superstition, doubt, fear,
reason, in tight inexpressibles, with a 'belt such

86 The Students' Quarter.
as is worn by the old German students.' You will
pardon me for treating such an awful person, as
this somewhat lightly; but there is always, I
think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the
French sublime, that the critic should try and
do justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair
account of either.
This character of Hebronius (the type of
Mrs. Sand's convictions, if convictions they may
be called, or at least the allegory under which
her doubts are represented) is in parts very
finely drawn, contains many passages of truth
very deep and touching, by the side of others so
entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the
reader's feelings are continually swaying be
tween admiration and something very like con
tempt, always in a kind of wonder at the strange
mixture before him; but let us hear Madame
Sand. 'Peter Hebronius,' says our author, 'was not
originally so named. His real name was Samuel.
He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
neighbourhood of Innspruck. His family, which
possessed a considerable fortune, left him in his

Peter Hebronius. 87
early youth completely free to his own pursuits
—from infancy he had shown that these were
serious. He loved to be alone, and passed his
days, and sometimes his nights, wandering
among the mountains and valleys in the neigh
bourhood of his birthplace. He would often
sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the
voice of their waters, and endeavouring to pene
trate the meaning which Nature had hidden in
those sounds,
' As he advanced in years his enquiries became
more curious and more grave. It was necessary
that he should receive a solid education, and
his parents sent him to study in the German
Universities. 'Luther had been dead only a century, and
his words and his memory still lived in the
enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was
strengthening the conquests it had made; the
Eeformers were as ardent as in the first days, but
their ardour was more enlightened and more
measured. 'Proselytism was still carried on with great
zeal, and new converts were made every day.

88 The Students' Quarter.
In listening to the morality and to the dogmas
(Which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism,
Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and
sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines
which were now submitted to him, with those
in the belief of which he had been bred, and
enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to
acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said
to himself, that a religion made for a single
people, to the exclusion of all others, which only
offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,
which neither rendered the present intelligible or
satisfactory, and left the future uncertain — could
not be that of noble souls and lofty intellects,
and that He could not be the God of truth who
had dictated in the midst of thunder His vacil
lating will, and had called to the performance of
His narrow wishes the miserable slaves of a
vulgar terror.
' Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who
had spoken what he thought, now performed
what he had spoke% and a year after his
arrival in Germany solemnly abjured Judaism,
and entered into the bosom of the reformed

Roman Catholicism. 89
church. As he did not wish to do things by
halves, and desired as much as was in him to
put off the old man and lead a new life, he
changed his name of Samuel to that of
Peter. * Some time passed, during which he strength
ened and instructed himself in his new re
ligion. ' Very soon he arrives at the point of searching
for objections to refute, and adversaries to over
throw. Bold and enterprising, he went at once
to the strongest, and Bossuet was the first
Catholic author that he set himself to read.
'He commenced with a kind of disdain,
believing that the faith which he had just em
braced contained the pure truth ; he despised
all the attacks which could be made, against
it, and laughed already at the irresistible argu
ments which he was to find in the works of the
Eagle of Meaux. But his mistrust and irony
soon gave place to wonder first, and then to
admiration ; he thought that the cause pleaded
by such an advocate must at least be respectable,
and by a natural transition came to think that

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great geniuses would only devote themselves to
that which was great.
'He then studied Catholicism with the same
ardour and impartiality which he had bestowed
on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain
instruction from the professors of the mother
church, as he had from the doctors of the
reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld,
Fenelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen,
and Bossuet himself.
' Guided by these masters, whose virtues made
him appreciate their talents the more, he rapidly
penetrated to the depths of the mysteries of
the Catholic doctrine and morality. He found
in this religion all that had for him consti
tuted the grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,
the dogmas of the unity and eternity of God,
which the two religions had borrowed • from
Judaism, and what seemed the natural conse
quence of the last doctrine, a doctrine, however,
to which the Jews had not arrived — the doctrine
of the immortality of the soul, free will in this
life, in the next recompense for the good
and punishment for the evil. He found more

Religious Speculation. 9 1
pure perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism
than in Protestantism, that sublime morality
which preaches equality to man, fraternity, love,
charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your
neighbour. ' Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess
that Vast formula and that vigorous unity
which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had in
deed, in its favour, the liberty of enquiry, which
is also a want of the human mind, and had pro
claimed the authority of individual reason; but
it had so lost that which is the necessary basis
and vital condition of all revealed religion — the
principle of infallibility; because nothing can
live except in virtue of the laws that presided at
its birth, and in consequence one revelation can
not be continued and confirmed without another.
Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation con
tinued by God, or the Word in the person of His
vicars.

c At last, after much reflection, Hebronius

92 The Students' Quarter.
acknowledged himself entirely and sincerely con
vinced, and received baptism from the hands
of Bossuet. He added the name of Spiridion
to that of Peter, to signify that he had been
twice enlightened by the Spirit. Eesolved
thenceforward to consecrate his- life to the
worship of the new God who had called him to
Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed
into Italy, and with the aid of a large fortune,
which one of his uncles, a Catholic like himself,
had left to him, he built this convent where we
now are.'

A friend cf mine who has just come from Italy,
says that he has left Messrs. Sp— -r, P — 1, and
W. Dr — d, who were the lights of the great
church in Newman Street (that you possibly have
heard of), who were themselves apostles, and
declared, and believed that every word of non
sense • which fell from their lips was a direct
Spiritual Intervention ; these gentlemen have
become Puseyites already, and are, my friend
states, in the highway to Catholicism.

Conversion of George Sand. 93
Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some
time since, having been converted to that faith
along with M. N  of the Academy of Music,
Mr. L  the pianoforte player, and one or two
other chosen individuals, by the famous Abbe de
la M  . Abbe de la M  (so told me in the
diligence, a priest who read his breviary and
gossiped alternately- very curiously and plea
santly) is himself an ame perdue; the man
spoke of his brother clergyman with actual
horror ; and it certainly appears that the Abbe's
works of conversion have not prospered, for
Madame Sand having brought her hero (and her
self, as we may presume) to the point of Catholi
cism, proceeds directly to dispose of that as she
has done of Judaism and Protestantism, and will
not leave ' of the whole fabric of Christianity a.
single stone standing.
I think the fate of our English Newman Street
apostles, and of M. de la M  , the mad priest
and his congregation of mad converts, should be
a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble
in religious speculations ; for in them, as in all
others, our flighty brains soon lose themselves,

94 The Students' Quarter.
and we find our reason speedily lying prostrate
at the throne of our passions ; and I think that
Madame Sand's novel of ' Spiridion ' may do a
vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with
it, though not such an one perhaps as our fair
philosopher intended — for anything he learned
Of Samuel, Peter, Spiridion, Hebronius might
have remained a Jew from the beginning to the
end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up
new faiths ? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and
be so preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so
eager to jump out of one religion, for the
purpose of jumping into another? See what
good this philosophical friskiness has done you,
and on what sort of ground you are come at
last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you
flounder in mud at every step; so amazingly
clear-sighted that your eyes cannot see an inch
before you, having put out with that extinguish
ing genius of yours every one of the lights that
are sufficient for the conduct of common men.

The Moral of Spiridion. 95
And for what? Let our friend Spiridion speak
for himself.
'After setting up his convent, and filling it
with pious monks, who entertain an immense
respect for his wealth and genius, Father Hebro
nius, unanimously elected Prior, gives himself up
to further studies, and leaves his monks to them
selves. Industrious and sober as they were
originally, they grow quickly intemperate and
idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear
among his flock until he has freed himself of the
Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the
Protestant, sees with dismay the evil condition
of his disciples, and regrets too late the preci
pitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever,
Christianity. 'But as he had no new religion to adopt in
its place, and as he had grown more prudent
and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself
unnecessarily once more of inconstancy and
apostasy; he still maintained all the exterior
forms of worship which inwardly he had abjured.
But it was not enough for him to have quitted
error, it was necessary to discover truth. But

96 The Students' Quarter.
Hebronius had well looked round to discover
it; — he could not find anything that resem
bled it.
' Then commenced for him a series of suffer
ings unknown and terrible. Placed face to face
with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was
frightened at its own solitude, and as it had
no other desire or aim on earth than truth, and
nothing else here below interested it, he lived
absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looking
ceaselessly into the vague that surrounded him,
like an ocean without bounds, and seeing the
horizon retreat and retreat when ever he wished
to near it.
'Lost in this immense uncertainty, he felt
as if attacked by vertigo, and his thoughts
whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with
his vain toils and hopeless endeavours, he
would sink down depressed, unmanned, life-
wearied, only living in the sensation of that
silent grief which he felt and could not com
prehend.'

The Church in Newman Street. 97
It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager
in his passage from one creed to another, and so
loud in his profession of the truth wherever he
fancied that he had found it, had not waited a
little before he avowed himself either Catholic or
Protestant, and implicated others in errors and
follies which might at least have been confined to
his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively
harmless. In what a pretty state, for instance, will Messrs.
Dr  d and P  1 have left their Newman
Street congregation, who are still plunged in
their old superstitions, from which their spiritual
pastors and masters have been set free! In what a
state, too, do Mrs. Sand, and her brother and sister
philosophers, Templars, . Saint Simonians, Tour-
nierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect may be,
leave the unfortunate people who have listened
to their doctrines, and who have not the oppor
tunity, or the fiery versatility of belief, which
carries their teachers from one creed to another,
leaving only exploded lies and useless recanta
tions behind them !
I wish the State would only make a law
G

98 The Students' Quarter.
that one individual should not be allowed to
preach more than one doctrine in his life, or at
any rate should be soundly corrected for every
change of creed : how many charlatans would
have been silenced, how much conceit would have
been kept within bounds, how many fools who
are dazzled by fine sentences, and made drunk
by declamation, would have remained quiet and
sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which
tbeir fathers held before them !
However, the reader will be glad to learn
that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiri
dion does discover the truth, (the truth, what
a wise Spiridion !) and some discretion with it ;
for, having found among his monks, who are
dissolute, superstitious, and all hate him, one
only being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid,
and pious, he says to him, 'If you were like
myself, if the first want of your nature were
like mine, to know, I would, without hesita-i
tion, lay bare to you my entire thoughts, I
would make you drink the cup of truth, which
I myself have filled with so many tears, at the
risk of intoxicating you with the draught. But

The Troubles of Faith. 99
it is not so, alas ! you are made to love, rather
than to know, and your heart is stronger than
your intellect.
'You are attached to Catholicism — I believe
so, at least — by bonds of sentiment which you
could not break without pain, and which if
you were to break, the truth which I could
lay bare to you in return would not repay
you for what you had sacrificed. Instead of
exalting, it would crush, you, very likely. It is
food too strong for ordinary men, and which,
when it does not revivify, smothers.
'I will not, then, reveal to you this doctrine,
which is the triumph of my life, and the con
solation of my last days, because it might,
perhaps, be for you only a cause of mourning
and despair.

' Of all the works which my long studies have
produced, there is one alone which is not given
to the flames ; for it alone is complete. In that
you will find me entire, and there lies the truth.
And as the sage has said, you must not bury your
a 2

ioo The Students' Quarter.
treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to the
brutal stupidity of these monks. But as this
volume should only pass into hands worthy to.
touch it, and be laid open for eyes that are
capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall
exact from the reader one condition, which at
the same time shall be a proof ; I shall carry it
with me to the tomb, in order that he who one
day shall read it, may have courage enough to
brave the vain terrors of the grave, in searching
for it amid the dust of my sepulchre. As soon as
I am dead, therefore, place this writing on my
breast. ' Ah ! when the time comes for reading it, I
think my withered heart will spring up again,
as the frozen grass at the return of the sun,
and that, from the midst of its infinite trans
formations, my spirit will enter into immediate
communication with thine ! '
¦ •••»••«
Does not the reader long to be at this precious
manuscript which contains the truth, and ought
he not to be very much obliged to Mrs. Sand for

Spiridion' 's Manuscript. 101
being so good as to print it for him ? We leave
all the story aside, how Fulgentius had not the
spirit to read the manuscript, but left the secret
to Alexis ; how Alexis, a stern old philosophical
unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to
lift the gravestone, but was taken with fever
and obliged to forego the discovery; and how
finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and
innocent as his name, was the destined person
who brought the long-buried treasure to light.
Trembling and delighted, the pair read this
tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF SPIRIDION.
Will it be believed that of all the dull, vague,
windy documents that mortal ever set eyes on,
this is the dullest ? If this is absolute truth,
& quoi bon search for it since we have long, long
had the jewel in our possession, or since, at least,
it has been held up as such by every sham philo
sopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares
on the public ?
Hear Spiridion —
'How much have I wept, how much have I

102 The Students' Quarter.
suffered, how much have I prayed, how much
have I laboured, before I understood the cause
and the aim of my passage on this earth ? After
many incertitudes* after much remorse, after
many scruples, I have comprehended that I was
a martyr! But why my martyrdom, said I —
what crime did I commit before I was born, thus
to be condemned to labour, and groaning from
the hour when I first saw the day, up to that
when I am about to enter into the night of the
tomb? ' At last, by dint of imploring God : by dint of
inquiry into the history of man, a ray of the truth
has descended on my brow, and the shadows of
the past have melted before my eyes. I have
lifted a corner of the curtain : I have seen
enough to know that my life, like that of the
rest of the human race, has been a series, of
necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly,
of incomplete truths, conducting more or less
slowly and directly to absolute truth and ideal
perfection. But when will they rise on the face
of the earth — when will they issue from the
bosom of the Divinity — those generations who

The Ideal on Earth. 103
shall salute the august countenance of truth, and
proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth ?
' I see well how humanity marches, but I neither"
can see its cradle nor its apotheosis. Man
seems to me a transitory race, between the beast
and the angel ; but I know not how many cen-*
turies have been required that he might pass
from the state of brute to the state of man, and
I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that
he may pass from the state of man to the state
of angel !
' Yet I hope, and I feel within me at the ap
proach of death, that which warns me that great
destinies await humanity,' &c. &c
The rest of the book of Spiridion (it consists
but of seven pages) is made up of the history
of the rise, progress, and (what our philo
sopher is pleased to call) decay of Christianity ;
of an assertion that the 'Doctrine of Christ is
incomplete,' that 'Christ may nevertheless take
His place in the Pantheon of divine men!'
and of a long, disgusting, absurd and impious
vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and

104 The Students' Quarter.

Elijah are represented, and in which Christ
is made to say — 'We are all Messiahs, when
we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth ;
we are all Christs when we suffer for it!'
And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret,
the absolute truth, and it has been published by
Mrs. Sand for so many napoleons per sheet, in
the 'Eevue des Deux Mondes;' and the Deux
Mondes are to abide by it for the future. After
having attained it, are you of the second world,
or are we of the first, a whit wiser ? ' Man ia
between an angel and a beast; I don't know how
long it is since he was a brute — I can't say how
long it will be before he is an angel.' Think of
people living by their wits, and living by such
wit as this ! Think of the state of mental debauch
and disease which must have been passed through,
ere such words could be written and could be
popular !
When a man leaves our dismal smoky London
atmosphere, and breathes, instead of coal-smoke
and yellow fog, this bright clear French air, he is
quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow
in his blood and a joy in his spirits, which scarcely

Intoxication of French Air. 105
thrice in a year, and then only at a distance from
London, he can attain in England.
Is the intoxication, I wonder, permanent
among the natives, and may we account for the
ten thousand frantic freaks of these people, by the
peculiar influence of French air and sun ? The
philosophers are from night to morning drunk,
the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel
and stagger from one absurdity to another, and
how shall we understand their vagaries ?
Let- us suppose charitably that Madame Sand
has inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this
laughing gas, when she wrote for us the precious
manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies
are in prospect for the human race, we may
fancy, without her ladyship's word for it ; but
more liberal than she, and having a little re
trospective charity, as well as that easy prospec
tive benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us
try and think there is some hope for our fathers
(who were nearer brutality than ourselves, ac
cording to the Sandean creed), or else there is
a very poor chance for us, who, great philoso
phers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed

106 The Students' Quartet .
from that angelic consummation which all
must wish for so devoutly. She cannot say —
is it not extraordinary? — how many centuries
have been necessary before man could pass from
the brutal state to his present condition, or how
many ages will be required ere we may pass from
the state of man to the state of angel !
What the deuce is the use of chronology or
philosophy ?
We were beasts, and we can't tell when our tails
dropped off: we shall be angels, but when our
wings are to begin to sprout, who knows ?
In the meantime, 0 man of genius, follow our
counsel : lead an easy life, don't stick at trifles ;
never mind about duty, it is only made for slaves ;
if the world reproaches you, reproach the world
in return, you have a good, loud tongue in your
head; if your strait-laced morals injure your:
mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned
stays, and leave your free limbs to rise- and fall
as nature pleases; and when you have grown
pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return
to restraint — curse the world and scorn it, and
be miserable, like my Lord Byron and other

Stages of Drunkenness. 107
philosophers of his kidney ; or else mount a step
higher, and with conceit still more monstrous,
and mental vision still more wretchedly debauched
and weak, begin suddenly to find yourself afflicted
with a maudlin compassion for the human race,
and a desire to set them right after your own
fashion. There is the quarrelsome stage of drun
kenness, when a man can as yet walk and
speak, when he can call names and fling plates
and wine-glasses at his neighbour's head with a
pretty good aim. After this comes the pathetic
stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philan
thropic, and weeps wildly as he lies in the gutter,
and fancies he is at home in bed — where he
ought to be ; but this is an allegory.
I don't wish to carry this any further, or to say
a word in defence of the doctrine which Mrs*
Dudevant has found ' incomplete ; ' here at least
is not the place for discussing its merits any more
than was Mrs. Sand's book the place for exposing,
forsooth, its errors ; our business is only with the
day and the new novels, and the clever or silly
people who write them. Oh, if they but knew

io8 The Students' Quarter.
their places and would keep to them, and drop
their absurd philosophical jargon ! Not all the
big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk
like a philosopher. When will she go back to
her old trade, of which she was the very ablest
practitioner in France ?
I should have been glad to give some extracts
from the dramatic and descriptive parts of the
novel, that cannot, in point of style and beauty, be
praised too highly. One must suffice — it is the
descent of Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript
of Spiridion.
' It seemed to me,' he begins, ' that the descent
was eternal, and that I was burying myself in the
depths of Erebus ; at last I reached a level place,
and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words,
as it were, to the secret centre of the earth: —
w He will mount that ascent no more ! " Imme
diately I heard arise towards me, from the depth
of invisible abysses, a myAad of formidable voices
united in a strange chant — " Let us destroy him !
Let him be destroyed ! What does he here among
the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture!
Let him be given again to life ! "

The Descent of Alexis. 109
' Then a feeble light began to pierce the dark
ness, and I perceived that I stood on the lowest
step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a mountain;
Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron,
before me nothing but a void, an abyss, and
sether ; the blue gloom of midnight beneath my
feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and
quitting that staircase, which, methought, it was
impossible for me to reascend, I sprung forth into
the void with an execration. But, immediately,
when I had uttered the curse, the void began to
be filled with forms and colours, and I presently
perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along which
I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness
around me, but the hollows of the vaults gleamed
with a red light, and showed me the strange and
hideous forms of their building.
' I did not distinguish the nearest objects ; but
those towards which I advanced assumed an ap
pearance more and more ominous, and my terror
increased with every step I took. The enormous
pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery
thereof itself, were figures of men of supernatural

no The Students' Quarter.
stature, delivered to tortures without a name.
Some hung by their feet, and, locked in the coils
pf monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the
marble of the pavement ; others, fastened by their
waists, were dragged upwards, these by their feet,
those by their heads, towards capitals where other
figures stooped towards them, eager to torment
them. , 'Other pillars again represented a struggling
mass of figures devouring one another; each of
which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or
to the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained
life enough to seize and devour that which was
near them.
'There were some who, half hanging down,
agonised themselves by attempting with their
upper limbs to flay the lower moiety of their
bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were
attached to the pedestals ; and others, who in their
fight with each other were dragged along by
morsels of flesh — grasping which they clung to
each other with a countenance of unspeakable
hate and agony.
'Along, or rather in place of, the frieze,

The Terrors of Hades. in
there were on either side a range of unclean
beings, wearing the human form, but of a loath
some ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to
pieces, in feasting upon their limbs and entrails.
From the vault, instead of bosses and pendants,
hung the crushed and wounded forms of children ;
as if to escape these eaters of man's flesh, they
would throw themselves downwards and be dashed
to pieces on the pavement. ....
'The silence and motionlessness of the whole
added to its awfulness. I became so faint with
terror that I stopped,. and would fain have re
turned. But at that moment I heard from the
depths of the gloom through which I had passed
confused noises like those of a multitude on its
march. And the sounds soon became more dis
tinct, and the clamour fiercer, and the steps
came hurrying on tumultuously, at every new
burst nearer, more violent, more threatening. I
thought that I was pursued by this disorderly
crowd, and I strove to advance, hurrying into
the midst of those dismal sepulchres.
'Then it seemed clearly as if those figures

112 The Students' Quarter.
began to heave, and to sweat blood, and their
beady eyes to move in their sockets. At once I
beheld that they were all looking upon me, and
they were all leaning towards me, some with
frightful derision, others with furious aversion.
Every arm was raised against me, and they made
as though they would crush me with the quivering
limbs they had torn one from the other.'
T. T.
Pabis: August 16, 1839.

CHAPTEE V.
MORE ASPECTS OF PARIS LIFE.
An Oratorio in a, Prison — Fair Hair and Musical Devotion—
The fashionable Oratorio — The Madeleine — Architecture and
Religion — The great Paris Library — King Clovis's Armchair
— The Arabian Nights — A French Museum — Versailles — Mr.
Leitch Ritchie — Fontainebleau — Anecdote of Louis Philippe
andM. Fortoul — The Gobelins Tapestry — The Museum of
Artillery — The Drachenfels— Sensual Enjoyments — A Dinner
at Vary's with Father Prout — French Singers and Comedians
— Madame Anna Thillon — French Farces and the Legitimate
Drama.
A lady who takes lessons of the famous Italian
singing-master, Monsieur M  , invited us to be
present at a concert or oratorio given by a hundred
of his pupils, whom he has instructed for the
last three months, and who live together at a
place where I fancy pious hymns have not been
often sung since the monks inhabited it — the
women's prison of Saint Lazare, in the Eue du
Faubourg Saint Denis.
Mass, you must know, is performed here at

114 The Students' Quarter.
eight o'clock in the morning, and we found the
clock, striking, and the Maitre de Chapelle at the
gate, just as we for a wonder reached it. ' This
is one of my bonnes ceuvres,' said Monsieur M 
(who does not receive precisely a napoleon a
lesson from each of his cleves in this establish
ment) — a bonne ceuvre which very few were
willing to imitate, or even come and see; for
our guide told us that he had expected une
SJcUtS, of which, however, none made their
appearance but ourselves. We may set it down
as a rule that good works in Paris do not
begin at seven o'clock in the morning, and before
breakfast. We went through three or four little quad
rangles, clean, dismal, and deserted, with a very
bright sky lighting them up, and making the
thousand little ghastly barred windows look
only more dark; and passing through an ante
room — where, on a great board of five feet
by seven, was chalked the music which Monsieur
M  's poor scholars had been practising,
and were about to sing — went into the gallery
of the chapel, and took our places along-

The Poor Girls of St. Lazare. 115
side of a number of the inhabitants of the
place. The service had already begun. The candles
were lighted over the shabby little altar, and
shone upon a few pictures which were hung
about it, a crucifix, two Magdalens, and an odious
head of Saint Vincent de Paul, before which an
old priest was quavering out the service, followed
hither and thither by a little boy in white, walk
ing up the altar steps, and down again, and round
about them; and kneeling down, and bobbing
his little shorn head, and swinging to and fro
a great clattering gilt incense-pot, as his Church
ordains. An old, shrivelled, bustling lady, with a bunch
of proper prison-like keys at her waist, made
way for us, and gave us seats, and robbing
another, I suppose inferior turnkey, of a wicker
chair at which she was kneeling, handed it
over to one of the ladies of our party, who
was very much puzzled to know what to do
with more than one; so as soon as the head
gaoleress had retreated to her seat, we gave
back the chair to its former possessor, who did

116 The Students' Quarter.
not seem to know how to pursue her devotions
without it.
It was the first time that I had ever been in
such distinguished female society, and I looked
at the faces of the poor girls about me with no
ordinary curiosity. On a former occasion at
Bicetre, I saw the mad hospital there, and
marvelled how sober all the people looked, and
visiting afterwards the convicts' prison (which
then formed part of the establishment),* I
thought that the men who came out to undergo
the now abolished operation of the ferrement,
seemed an honest, hearty, jovial-looking set;
but at Saint Lazare, the ladies looked certainly
as wretched as you could expect or desire;
among the two or three hundred whom I could
see, there were not above four that were even
tolerably good-looking.
One was regularly beautiful, but with a tre
mendous development of the back head, which,
would frighten a phrenologist ; some were so
characteristically hideous, that Hogarth or Cruik-
shank could wish no better model ; and whether
* It is now transferred to the Rue de la Roquette.

Merriment in a Penitentiary. 117
by mere chance I know not, but I remarked that
a very small portion of the Women, not half a
dozen, perhaps, were fair-haired. I do not recol
lect to have seen in the common population of
the town and streets, this vast majority of the
dark over the fair, and must leave to physiologists
to determine if there be any special virtue in
the skin.
Monsieur M  declared that his pupils were
among the best subjects of the prison, and as far
as outward appearance went, his words were cer
tainly borne out ; there was a decided superiority
in the looks and expression of the women and
children gathered round his instrument, to those
who were seated near us. As the music went on
(a smart young lady from the town, in white and
red ribands, singing much out of tune, sang the
solo) we observed a little girl close to us, who
seemed affected by it, and began to weep. Her
two companions would not allow her to remain
in any such fit of repentance, and speedily sneered
her out of it.
The mirth of these women was not a little
curious- to behold; they were perpetually nod-

1 1 8 The Students' Quarter.
ding, smiling, winking to other comrades in
distant parts of the chapel ; you saw all sorts
of wild signs going on amongst them, and
mysterious communications made with the fingers,
and hurried off as one has seen the deaf-and-
dumb pupils perform them.
What a strange activity is this of a prison !
what a dreadful merriment! what a wild, repk-
less, glancing, uneasy spirit, seems to urge them
on — a perpetual gnawing of the chain and
dashing against the bars !
The musicians, however, appeared to be pretty
tranquil — they pursue their study with vast'
industry, we were told, and give up the two-
or three hours of sunshine and exercise allotted
to them, in order to practise these hymns and
choruses. I think the prettiest sight I saw in
the place was a pair of prisoners, a grown
woman with a placid face, who had her arm
round the neck of a young girl; they were
both singing together off the same music-book,
and in the intervals seemed to be fond and
affectionate towards each other. Poor things,
poor things ! what was their history 9 I wonder

The Priest and his Prisoners.

119

whether you or I, Madame, are a whit better
than this couple of choristers in their dingy
prison dresses ; or whether, when we, at church,
out of gilt prayer-books with gold clasps, follow
the clerk and sing the Old Hundredth very
gingerly and genteely — I wonder, I say, whose
music is, in reality, the best ? But the music
has stopped : hark ! there is a great jingling of a
bell, and straightway all the prisoners fall on
their knees, and you see of a sudden five hundred
heads bow down, and as many hands make the
sign of the cross; presently afterwards the old
priest, followed by the dapper little boy in white
ascends the stairs, the boy swings about the
shabby incense-pot. His reverence marches in
front, holding, and waving right and left, a very
old brush that seems worn down to the stumps ;
seeing us in purple and fine linen, he makes for
us and offers the brush, from which, being
Protestants, and dreadfully frightened at. being
obliged to show that we don't know what to
do with the brush when we get it, we shrink-
ingly withdraw. Some of the prisoners begin
to giggle, the old woman who yielded up

1 20 Tiie Students' Quarter.
her praying-chair reaches forward and clutches
hold, for an instant, of the blessed brush.
Down below at the altar, you see a dirty
extinguisher on a pole, rising, quivering for
a moment over each of the lights, and pop
ping them out one by one ; his reverence gives
his blessing, the active old turnkeys bustle
about, and mustering their bands of prisoners
into squads, march with them out of the build
ing. The smart little incense-boy has put away
his white surplice and pot, and comes out of the
chapel pulling up his shirt collar ; he has brushed
some hair over the little bald place on his head,
and tries to look like a man of the world. We
pass through the quadrangles again; all the
prisoners have been consigned to their respective
quarters by this time, and the courts are as
deserted as before.
Half an hour spent in this prison has made us
weary of it, and the motion and gaiety of the
street strikes one most welcomely, as the porter
closes the guichet behind us, and shuts in the five
hundred poor women whom we have just seen, to

An Apology for ' Poor Sinners.' 121
work out their term of slavery and fulfil their
bargain with the State.
A short time afterwards, and at the proper
orthodox hour, we went to an exhibition somewhat
different in its details, but similar in its purpose,
and took our places along with a crowd of
fashionable miserable sinners at the Episcopal
Church, near the British Embassy, where we had
no mummery of clanking incense-pots, and
meagre consumptive wax candles, but a bishop,
with plenty of white sleeves, and a portly beadle
with a silver-knobbed stick, as the Christian
religion ordains.
We all agreed in pitying the poor be
nighted Catholic creatures, whose strange rites
we had just witnessed — and as for the organ,
it beat Monsieur M  's cracked harmonicon,
or whatever the instrument may be called (it
sounds like the music which we perform in child
hood by the aid of a piece of paper and a comb),
as for the organ, I say, it beat Monsieur M  's
harmonicon out of the field ; and as for the com
pany, it was the very pink of the fashion in Paris,
I can assure you.

122 The Students' Quarter.'
Well, let us be thankful that we have been
brought up not as our neighbours are : mise
rable sinners we are, it is true, but then there
are sinners and sinners' degrees, look you, and
differences. I wonder what the differences
are; and whether with her ease, her com
forts, her education, such as it is, her free
dom from temptation, her ladyship in satin
will weigh much lighter than yonder poor girl,
whose birthright has been want and crime ;
and who, so far as regards the breakage
of the eighth and one or two other com-;
mandments, has never known the meaning of
repentance. There are those poor devils — the
grown sinner and the little one — embracing each
other, smiling on each other, and singing hymns
out of the same book. I don't know where I
have seen anything more touching or beautiful;
there is a sort of homely sublimity about them:
it is more beautiful, yea, than my Lady Am
bassadress in her pew, surrounded by a whole
body of diplomatists, more sublime than the
bishop himself, and the beadle stalking before
him. ,

The Madeleine. 1 23
I have been to Paris once a year for these last
ten years, but was never inveigled into sight
seeing until the other day, with a party of newly-
arrived English, who issued out of Meurice's into
a glass coach, and took several hours of intolerable
pleasure. We went to the Madeleine (the walk round
it under the magnificent Corinthian columns is
one of the noblest things possible), and entered
the gorgeous hall of white marble and gold, with
its inner roof of three circular domes ranging the
length of the building, with a semi-dome covering
the northern end over the altar, and a circular
vault covering the vestibule. Galignani's guide
book (one of the best, most learned, and most
amusing books of the kind that have been pub
lished) will give you a full account of the place,
as of all others that sightseers frequent. It is as
fine, certainly, as fine can be in its details, and
vast and liberal in its proportions. Well, fancy a
beautiful, gorgeous, elegant, Brobdignac cafej
or banqueting room, and the Madeleine will
answer completely. It does not seem to contain -
a single spark of religion — no edifice built

1 24 The Students' Quarter.

in the Greek fashion ever did. Why should
we be prejudiced in favour of the Gothic?
Why should pointed arches, and tall steeples,
and grey buttressed walls built cross-wise, seem
to express — to be, as it were — the translation
into architecture of our religion? Is it true, or
is it only an association of ideas? You, who
have been born since Gothic architecture was
dead, can best answer the query. I suspect the
voluntary system would be puzzled to redeem
itself into a regular formula of brick and mortar,
as the Catholic Church did of old.
From the Madeleine we were carried to the
Bibliotheque du Eoi, where it was a show-day, and
where we saw long tables, with gentlemen reading
at them : some very fine prints in the little print
room, if one had but the time to examine them,
and some extraordinary beautiful knick-knacks in
the shape of canoes, guns, and medals. There
was Clovis's arm-chair, and one of the chessmen
sent by Haroun Alraschid to Charlemagne ! What
a relic! It is about the size of half a tea-
caddy — a royal chessman truly, think of Charle
magne solemnly lifting it and crying ' Check ! ' to

Bibliotheque du Roi. 125
Orlando! — think of the palace of pictures —
Zobeide has just been making a sherbet — Haroun
and the Grand Vizier are at tables there by the
fountain — the Commander of the Faithful looks
thoughtful, and shakes his mighty beard — Giaffour
looks pleased, although he is losing. ' Your
Majesty always wins,' says he, as he allows his
last piece to be taken. And lo ! yonder comes
Mesnour, chief of the eunuchs ; he has a bundle
under his arm. 'Sire,' pipes he in a cracked
voice, ' it is sunset ; here are the disguises ; your
Majesty is to go to the ropemaker's to-night.
If Sinbad should call, I will get him a jar of
wine, and place him in the pavilion yonder by
the Tigris.'
Of the rest of the collection it is best to say
nothing : there is a most beautiful, tender, inno
cent-looking head of young — Nero ! — a pretty
parcel of trinkets that belonged to Louis XV.'s
Sultanas (they may have been wicked, but they
were mighty agreeable, surely) — a picture of Louis
Quatorze, all wig and red-heeled pumps; another of
Louis XVIII., who, in the midst of his fat, looks
like a gentleman and a man of sense, and that

1 16 The Students' Quarter.
odious, inevitable, sickening, smirking counte
nance of Louis Philippe, which stares at you
wherever you turn. At Bicetre, for instance,
, there was a bust of the King, with an inscription,
' Au roi les detenus reconnoissans ' — ' To the
King, the rogues' remembrance.'
At Versailles, in the picture gallery, there is
. King Charles reviewing his troops ; near the
King a stout dragoon in white looks over his
shoulder, and grins at the spectator ; it is Louis
Philippe ; there, again is King Charles crowned at
Eheims — by his side stands the first Prince of the
blood, looking over his shoulder, and smirking as
ever — Louis Philippe, of course. I wonder the
man, considering the circumstances, has let these
pictures remain.
Talking of Versailles and the King, let me tell
you a story. Last year was published a book
of Versailles, with numerous engravings in the
Keepsake fashion. Mr. Leitch Eitchie did the
book in English — a very clever writer, as you
know, and an admirer, it appears, of the French,
whom, in his work, he took occasion to compli
ment warmly. The French version, or rather

The Gobelins Tapestry. xtj
¦ the French original, was by M. Hippolite Fortoul,
who has no such admiration for the King, and
scarcely mentioned his existence. Well, Fortoul
¦ was this year to write a description of Fontaine
bleau, as he had done of Versailles. The King,
on hearing this, actually sent down to the book
seller and offered him a book gratis if he would
give up Fortoul. Is not this a fine homage to
the Press ; and is it not a fine action for a
King?' From the Bibliotheque we rattled off to the
Gobelins, at which the ladies were highly amused.
You have seen ladies at work at a frame in the
midst of a great skurry and labyrinth of worsted-
balls, making slipper- tops, kettle-holders, foot
stool covers, wall carpets and other nonsense.
Fancy one of these frames six feet high by seven,
and when you have fancied this, fancy several
long rooms full of them, and fancy the stitches
infinitely smaller and neater, the needles, shuttles,
worsted and other traps more curiously arranged,
men with whiskers and moustachios seated be
hind the frames, instead of idle ladies in caps and
morning dresses, and you have a pretty good idea

123 The Students' Quarter.

of the Gobelins. It is all very pretty, but tailor
ing is a far more noble, useful, ornamental, and
agreeable profession, to my mind.
Hence with inconceivable swiftness we were
transported to the Musee d'Artillerie, and for a
description of this again you must be referred to
your guide-book. What can one say of the im
mense figure of Francis I., but wondei that a man
six feet six inches in height should have such
spindle shanks ? They are a miracle of thinness.
What can one say of Joan of Arc's armour, but
that it is an evident imposture ? There is Eavail-
lac's dagger, and yonder Henry IV.'s embossed
and ornamented suit of steel. There is Francis's
sword which he lost (with everything except
honour) at the fight of Pavia. Yonder are a
couple of the absurd, hideous, useless weapons,
covered with red baize and ornamented with
paltry tin, which David the painter invented at
the time of the classical rage, and on the Eoman
model. If you choose to examine further, every
variety of weapon, from to-day to the time of
the crusades, is exhibited for your notice. There
are models of all sorts of guns, possible and

Sight-seeing and Digestion. 129
impossible ; and the impression of the whole upon
the ignorant spectator who has been to this and
the half-dozen other sights above named, and has
come home after walking over some miles of
wooden planks — the impression I think is rather
a humiliating one. You have spent a guinea in
coach hire ; you did not have your breakfast com-*
fortably ; you have been whirling from gallery to
gallery; your eyes weak, your brain is mystified,
your back and limbs ache, you are thoroughly
bored. No reasonable man should see more than one
or two sights in a month — the digestion wont
stand it ; and to have the mens sana, you know,
the corpus sanum is absolutely requisite. My
dear sir, I once went up the Drachenfels be
fore breakfast, and descended a wiser and a
better man. I arrived at the top, and could
only see clouds; I came down and brought
back with me a headache and a fever, and I
vowed never to go up a mountain again of my
own free will, that is, in like manner with
sights. To a well-regulated, easy-going, comfort-
loving man, what sight after all is equal to a
1

130 . The Students' Quarter.
pretty white tablecloth, in a cabinet at the
Trois-Freres or the Eocher ; a bottle of Cham
pagne ('vides ut alta stet nive candidwm!')
is on the side-table, and yonder comes Franpois
the waiter with two plates containing just four
dozen Ostenders, to give an appetite for dinner !
Cry out as you will, and swear that such vulgar
tastes degrade humanity — fiddlestick ! I say that
Shakspeare or Eaphael never invented anything
that on a hot day at half-past five o'clock is equal
to Ay and oysters ; to enjoy them you can't
enjoy many other sights in the day, and must
come to them as you would to every other sen
sual enjoyment (all enjoyments are sensual enjoy-*
ments, the Pons Asinorum, the Greek masters,
Dr. Snorter's sermon, Taglioni dancing the Ma
zurka — K. T. Q). You must come to them as to
every other sensual enjoyment — calm, cool, quiet,
the mind at ease.
Now I will give you a proof of this. After
I had gone to see all these sights, I went to
Very's to dine; there appeared, as if dropped
from the clouds, that celebrated wandering

French Farces. 131
philosopher Father Prout.* We dined ; he had
been quieit all day, and what was the conse
quence? He beat your humble servant by twelve
oysters and a beefsteak au beurre d'anchois
This remarkable fac^; (connected with tHe lite
rature of our country) will show you what it is to
hurry too much over sight-seeing, and to disturb
the powers of that 'magister artis, ingenique
largitor,' which in some society, I fancy, is never
mentioned. I am keeping a little note of dinners, which,
when they are swelled out to a sufficient length,
shall be sent to you. Of theatres the same thing.
There are no actors of any particular note now in
Paris, except Mademoiselle Eachel, whom it is
almost impossible to see, so much do the people
flock after her. There is a charming Englishwoman,
Madame Thillon, singing at the Eenaissance, the
best actress and the best educated English singer
now on the stage ; but the comedians are absent,
chiefly the immortal Arnal, that sublime buffoon ;
Bouffe, that wonderful actor ; Vernet, Lepeintre,
* Mr. Mahony, the well-known editor of 'Eraser's Magazine.'
I 2

132 The Students' Quarter.
impudent little Dejazet and the rest, who make
a French farce the most sparkling, joyous, de
lightful thing in the world. How I love the old
airs, and the new jokes to them, and the fat old
propriMaires who marry the young people at the
end, and the saucy soubrettes, and the niais, on
whom all the tricks are played, and the heroine,
and the little insignificant hero himself, a lad of
eighteen generally, with a pinched waist and bud
ding moustachios, who has his hair curled at the
expense of the theatre, and a salary of thirty
pounds a year, may be. All these one must love,
with their merriment and their wit, and their
follies, and their delightful absurd affectation;
whereas, Bajazet is only a bawling bore (let it be
said in confidence); Athalie a great imperious
spouting Mademoiselle Georges of a woman ; the
Cid himself, the largest and noblest figure of
French tragedy, would talk more nobly still, if he
would but talk in prose, and get rid of that' odious
jingling rhyme.
T. T.
August 31.

CHAPTEE VI.
A FRENCH JACK SHEPPAED.
A BIOGRAPHICAL ROMANCE.
The famous Cartouche — Adventure with the Nightcaps —
The Honey-pots — The avaricious Jesuit — A curious Hiding-
place — The Penalties of Sinning — The Highwayman and the
Washerwoman — Joins a, Gang — Cartouche and his lovely
Sister — The Bridegrdom's Money-chest — A Marriage Episode
— St. Lazare — A Hint not thrown away — The Melun
Packet-boat — Monsieur de la Reynie — The lovely "Widow —
A pretty little Scene.
The lives of great men can never be too much
studied, and in consequence can never be out
of place. Having no better news for the
moment, I will take the liberty of confiding
to you the biography of a celebrated individual,
whose history I have been studying for the
last two or three days. .
Madame de Sevigne has given a very lively
account of the exploits of Monsieur Louis
Dominique Cartouche, and in many' other con
temporary records his name is mentioned with

134 The Students' Quarter.
applause : in the present rage for Jack Sheppards,
Oliver Twists, and Newgate literature in gene
ral, it is pleasant to look abroad for histories
of a similar tendency, and find that virtue is
cosmopolite, and exists among wooden-shoed
Papists, as well as honest Church-of-England
men. Louis Dominique was born in a quartier of
Paris called the Courtille, says one historian
whose work lies before me; born in the
Courtille, and in the year 1693. Another bio
grapher asserts that he was born two years
later, and in the Marais ; — of respectable parents,
of course. Think of the talent that, our two
countries produced about this time! Marl
borough, Villars, Marroquin, Turpin, Boileau,
Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere, Eacine, Jack
Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche, all famous
within the same twenty years, and fighting,
writing, ^robbing, a, Venvi!
Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he
began to show his genius ; Swift was but a dull,
idle, college-lad ; but if we read the histories of
some other great men mentioned in the above

The Story of the Nightcaps. 135
list — I mean the thieves- especially — we shall
find that they all commenced very early ; they
showed a passion for their art, as little Ea-
phael did, or little Mozart ; and the history of
Cartouche's knaveries begins almost with his
breeches. Dominique's parents sent him to school at the
College of Clermont (now Louis le Grand) ; and
although it has never been discovered that the
Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced
him much in classical or theological knowledge,
Cartouche, in revenge, showed by repeated
instances his own natural bent and genius,
which no difficulties were strong enough to over
come. His first great action on record, although not
successful in the end, and tinctured with the
innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to
him. He made a general swoop of one hundred
and twenty nightcaps belonging to his com
panions, and disposed of them to his satisfac
tion ; but it was discovered that of all the youths
in Clermont College, he only was the possessor
of a cap to sleep in. Suspicion, which, alas!

136 The Students' Quarter.
was confirmed, immediately fell upon him ; and
by this little piece of youthful naivete, a scheme,
prettily conceived and smartly performed, was
rendered nought.
Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eat
ing, and put all the apple-women and cooks,
who came to supply the little students, under
contribution. Not always, however, desirous of
robbing these, he used to deal with them occa
sionally on honest principles of barter ; that is,
whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows'
knives, books, rulers, or playthiDgs, which he used
fairly to exchange for tarts and gingerbread.
It seemed as if the Presiding Genius of Evil
was determined to patronise this young man ; for
before he had been long at college, and soon
after he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped
from the nightcap scrape, an opportunity oc
curred by which he was enabled to gratify both
his propensities at once, and not only to steal,
but to steal sweetmeats. It happened that the
Principal of the college received some pots of
Narbonne honey, which came under the eye of
Cartouche, and in which .that young gentleman,

Cartouche and the Honey-pots. 137
as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put
his fingers. The President of the college put
aside his honey-pots in an apartment of his own ;
and to which, except by the one door which
led into the room which his reverence usually
occupied, there was no outlet. There was no
chimney in the room ; the windows looked into
the court, too, where there was a porter at
night, and where people passed by day. What
was Cartouche to do ? — for have the honey he
must. Over the chamber which contained what his
soul longed after, and over the President's rooms,
there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
the dexterous Cartouche penetrated, and which
were divided from the rooms below, according to
the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
which reached across the whole building, and
across which rude planks were laid, which formed
the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of the
upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche
remove; and having descended by means of a
rope, tied a couple of others to the necks of the
honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his

138 The Students' Quarter.

prey in safety. He then cunningly fixed the
planks again in their old places, and retired to
gorge himself upon his booty.
And now for the punishment of avarice !
Everybody knows that the brethren of the Order
of Jesus are bound by a vow to have no more
than a certain small sum of money in their pos
session. The Principal of the College of Cler
mont had amassed a godly sum in defiance of
this rule; and where do you think the old
gentleman had hidden it? in the honey-pots:
as Cartouche dug his spoon into one of them,
he brought up, besides a quantity of golden
honey, a couple of golden Louis, which, with
ninety-eight more of their fellows, were comfort
ably hidden in the pots. Little Dominique, who
before had cut quite a poor figure among his
fellow-students, now appeared in as fine clothes
as any of them could boast of, and when asked
by his parents, on going home, how he came by
them, said that a young nobleman, one of his
schoolfellows, had taken a violent fancy to him,
and made him a present of a couple of his suits.
Cartouche the elder, good' man, went to thank

A curious Hiding-place. 139
the young nobleman ; but no such person
could be found, and young Cartouche disdained
to give any explanation of his manner of
gaining the money.
Here, again, we have to regret and remark the
inadvertence of youth. Cartouche lost a hundred
Louis — for what ? for a pot of honey not worth
a couple of shillings. Had he fished out the
pieces, and replaced the pots and the honey,
he might have been safe, and a respectable
citizen all his life after. The Principal would
not have dared to confess the loss of his money,
and did not speak; but he vowed vengeance
against the stealer of his sweetmeat, and a
rigid search was made, and Cartouche, as usual,
was fixed upon; — and in the ticking of his
bed, lo ! there were found a couple of empty
honey-pots !
From this scrape there is no knowing how he
would have escaped, had not the President him
self been a little anxious to hush it up ; and,
accordingly, young Cartouche was made to
disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold
pieces. Old Cartouche made up the deficiency^

140 The Students' Quarter.
and his son was allowed to remain unpunished
—until the next time.
This you may fancy was not very long in
coming, and though history has not made us
acquainted with the exact crime which Louis
Dominique next committed, it must have been a
serious one ; for Cartouche, who had borne philo
sophically all the whippings and punishments
which were administered to him ;at college, did
not dare to face that one which his indignant
father had in pickle for him. As he was coming
home from school on the first day after his crime,
when he received permission to go abroad, one of
his brothers, who was on the look-out for him,
met him at a short distance from home, and told
him what was in preparation, which so frightened
the young thief that he declined returning home
altogether, and set out upon the wide world to
shift for himself as he could.
Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived
at the full exercise of it, and his gains were by no
means equal to his appetite. In whatever pro
fession he tried — whether he joined the gipsies,
which he did, whether he picked pockets on the

The Penalties of Sinning. 141
Pont Neuf, which occupation history attributes to
him — Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry
and ragged, he wandered from one place and pro
fession to another, and regretted the honey-pots
at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and bouilli
at home.
Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was
a merchant, and had dealings at Eouen. One
day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentle
man saw a very miserable, dirty, starving lad,
who had just made a pounce upon some bones
and turnip-peelings that had been flung out on the;
quay, and was eating them as greedily as if they
had been turkeys and truffles. The worthy man
examined the lad a little closer. 0 heavens ! it
was their runaway prodigal, it was little Louis
Dominique ! The merchant was touched by his1
case, and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-
pots, and the rags and dirt of little Louis, took
him to his arms, and kissed and hugged him with
the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged
too, and blubbered a great deal — he was very re
pentant, as a man often is when he is hungry, and
he went home with his uncle, and his peace was

*42 The Students' Quarter.
made ; and his mother got him new clothes, and
filled his belly, and for a while Louis was as good
a son as might be.
But why attempt to balk the progress of genius?
Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen
years of age by this time — a smart, hardy young
fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamoured.
-of a lovely young washerwoman. To be success
ful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have
something more than mere flames and sentiment ;
a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon
sighs only, but must have new gowns, and caps,
and a necklace every now and then, and a fine
handkerchief, and silk stockings, and a treat into
the' country or to the play — how are all these
to be had without money? Cartouche saw at
once that it was impossible, and as his father
would give him none, he was obliged to look for
it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and
lifted a purse here and a watch there, and found,
moreover, an accommodating gentleman who took
the wares off his hands.
This gentleman introduced him into a very
select and agreeable society, in which Cartouche's

Cartouche and his lovely Sister. 143
merits began speedily to be recognised, and in
which he learned how pleasant it is in life to have
friends to assist one, and how much may be done
by a proper division of labour. M. Cartouche, in
fact, formed part of a regular company, or gang
of gentlemen, who were associated together for
the purpose of making war on the public and
the law.
Cartouche had a lovely young sister who was to
be married to a rich young gentleman from the
provinces : as is the fashion in France, the
parents had arranged the match among them
selves, and the young people had never met until
just before the time appointed for the marriage,
when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his
title-deeds, and settlements, and money. Now,
there can hardly be found in history a finer in
stance of devotion than Cartouche now exhibited.
He went to his captain, explained the matter to
him, and actually, for the good of his country as
it were (the thieves might be called his country),
sacrificed his sister's husband's property, Infor
mations were taken, the house of the bridegroom
was reconnoitred, and one night Cartouche, in

144 The Students' Quarter.
company with some chosen friends, made his first
visit to his brother-in-law's house. As the people
were gone to bed, and, therefore, for fear of dis
turbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions
spared him the trouble of opening the door, by
ascending quietly at the window. They arrived at
the room where the bridegroom kept his great
chest, and set industriously to work, filing and
picking the locks which defended the treasure.
The bridegroom slept in the next room, but
however tenderly Cartouche and his workmen
handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his
slumbers, their benevolent design was disap
pointed, for awaken him they did; and gently
slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he
had a complete view of all that was going on. ,
He did not cry out or frighten himself sillily,
but, on the contrary, contented himself with
watching the countenances of the robbers, so that
he might recognise ihem on another occasion,
and, though an avaricious man, did not feel
the slightest anxiety about his money-chest ; ,for
the fact is, he had removed the cash and
papers the day before.

A Marriage Episode. 145
As soon, however, as they had broken all the
locks, and found the nothing which lay at the
bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a loud
voice, ' Here,
' Thomas ! '
' John ! '
' Officer ! '
' Keep the gate ! '
' Fire at the rascals ! '
— That they, in continently taking fright,
skipped nimbly out of window, and left the
house free.
Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his
brother-in-law, but eschewed all such occasions
in which the latter was to be present at his
father's house. The evening before the marriage
came, and then his father insisted upon his
appearance among the other relatives of the
bride's and bridegroom's family, who were all to
assemble and make merry. Cartouche was obliged
to yield, and brought with him one or two of
his companions, who had been, by the way,
present in the affair of the empty money-boxes.
K.

146 The Students' Quarter.
Cartouche never fancied that there was any
danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had
no idea that he had been seen on the night of
the attack, but with a natural modesty which did
him really credit, he kept out of the young bride
groom's way as much as he could, and showed no
desire to be presented to him. At supper, how
ever, as he was sneaking stealthily down to a
side-table, his father shouted after him, 'Ho,
Dominique, come hither, and sit opposite your
brother-in-law!' which Dominique did, his friends
following. The bridegroom pledged him very
gracefully in a bumper, and was in the act of
making him a pretty speech, on the honour of an
alliance with such a family, and on the pleasures*
of brother-in-lawship in general, when, looking
in his face — ye Gods, — he saw the very man who
had been filing at his money-chest a few nights
ago ! By his side, too, sate a couple more of the
gang — the poor fellow, turned deadly pale and
sick, and, setting his glass down, ran out of
the room, for he thought he was in company of a
whole gang of robbers. And when he got
home, he wrote a letter to the. elder Cartouche

Cartouche and St. Lazare. 147
himself, humbly declining any connection with
his family.
Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked
the reason of such an abrupt dissolution of the
engagement ; and, much to his horror, he heard
of his eldest son's doings.
'You would not have me marry into such
a family ? ' said the ex-bridegroom.
And old Cartouche, an honest old citizen,'
confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would
not. What was he to do with the lad ? — he did not
like to ask for a lettre-de-cachet, and shut him
up in the Bastille — he determined to give
him a year's discipline at the Monastery of St.
Lazare. But how to catch the young gentleman ? Old
Cartouche knew that, were he to tell his son of
the scheme, the latter would never obey, and,
therefore, he determined to be very cunning. He
told Dominique that he was about to make a heavy
bargain with the Fathers, and should require a
witness, so they stepped into a carriage together,
and drove unsuspectingly to the Eue Saint Denis ;
K 2

148 The Students' Quarter.
but, when they arrived near the convent, Car
touche saw several ominous figures gathering
round the coach, and felt that his doom was
sealed. However, he acted as if he knew no
thing of the conspiracy, and the carriage drew
up and his father descended; and, bidding him
wait for a minute in the coach, promised to
return to him — Cartouche looked out — on the
other side of the way half-a-dozen men were
posted, evidently with the intention of arresting
him. Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated
stroke of genius, which if he had not been pro
fessionally employed in the morning, he never
could have executed. He had in his pocket a
piece of linen, which he had laid hold of at the
door of some shop, and from which he quickly
tore three suitable strips — one he tied round
his head, after the fashion of a nightcap, a
second round his waist like an apron, and with
the third he covered his hat, a round one, with a
large brim. His coat and his periwig he left
behind him in the carriage, and when he stepped
out from it (which he did without asking the

A Hint not thrown away. 149
coachman to let down the steps), he bore exactly
the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish,
and with this he passed through the exempts
quite unsuspected, and bade adieu to the Lazarists
and his honest father, who came out speedily to
seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find
only his coat and wig.
With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home,
father, friends, conscience, remorse, society be
hind him. He discovered (like a great number
of other philosophers and poets, when they have
committed rascally actions) that the world was all
going wrong, and he quarrelled with it outright.
One of the first stories told of the illustrious
Cartouche, when he became professionally and
openly a robber, redounds highly to his credit,
and shows that he knew how to take advantage of
the occasion, and how much he had improved in
the course of a very few years' experience. His
courage and ingenuity were vastly admired by his
friends, so much so that one day the captain of
the band thought fit to compliment him, and
vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche

150 The Students' Quarter.
would infallibly be called to the command-in-
chief. This conversation, so flattering to Cartouche,
was carried on between the two gentlemen as they
were walking, one night, on the quay by the side
of the Seine. Cartouche, when the captain made
the last remark, blushingly protested against it,
and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why
his comrades could never put entire trust in
him. ' Psha, man,' said the captain, 'thy youth is in
thy favour ; thou wilt live only the longer to lead
thy troops to victory. As for strength, bravery,
and cunning, wert thou as old as Methuselah, thou
couldst not be better provided than thou art now,
at eighteen.'
What was the reply of Mons. Cartouche ?
He answered not by words, but by actions.
Drawing his knife from his girdle, he instantly
dug it into his captain's left side, as near
his heart as possible, and then, seizing that im
prudent commander, precipitated him violently
into the. waters of the Seine, to keep company
with gudgeons and river-gods.

Cartouche eletted Captain. 151
When he returned to the band, and recounted
how the captain had basely attempted to assas
sinate him, and how he, on the contrary, had by
exertion of superior skill overcome the captain,
not one of the society believed a word of his
history, but they elected him captain forth
with. I think his Excellency Don Eafael Maroto,
the pacificator of Spain, is an amiable cha
racter, for whom history has not been written
in vain.
Being arrived at this exalted position, there is
no end of the feats which Cartouche performed,
and his band reached to such a pitch of glory,
that if there had been a hundred thousand, in
stead of a hundred of them, who knows but that
a new and popular dynasty might next have
been founded, and Louis Dominique, Premier
Empereur des Francais, might have performed
innumerable glorious actions, and fixed him
self in the hearts of his people, just as other
monarchs have done, a hundred years after
Cartouche's death ?
A similar story to the above, and equally moral,

152 The Students' Quarter.
is that of Cartouche, who, in company with two
other gentlemen, robbed the coche, or packet-
boat, from Melun, where they took a great quan
tity of booty, making the passengers lie down on
the decks, and rifling them at leisure.
' This money will be but a very little among
three,' whispered Cartouche to his neighbour,
as the three conquerors were making merry
over their gains. ' If you were but to pull the
trigger of your pistol in the neighbourhood
of your comrade's ear, perhaps it might go
off, and then there would be but two of us to
share.' Strangely enough, as Cartouche said, the pistol
did go off, and number three perished.
' Give hirn another ball,' said Cartouche, and
another was fired into him.
But no sooner had dartouche's comrade dis
charged both his pistols, than Cartouche him
self, seized with a furious indignation, drew
his. ' Learn, monster,' cried he, ' not to be so greedy
of gold ; and perish, the victim of thy disloyalty
and avarice.' So Cartouche slew the second

Monsieur de la Reynie. i $3
robber, and there is no man in Europe who can
say that the latter did not merit well his punish
ment. I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of
paper, with the tales of the triumphs of Cartouche
and his band; how he robbed the Countess of
0. going to Dijon in her coach, and how the
Countess fell in love with him, and was faithful
to him ever after ; how, when the Lieutenant of
Police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to
any man who would bring Cartouche before him,
a noble Marquis in a coach and six drove up to
the hotel of the police ; and the noble Marquis,
desiring to see Monsieur de la Eeynie on matters
of the highest moment alone, the latter intro
duced him into his private cabinet: and how,
when there, the Marquis drew from his pocket a
long, curiously-shaped dagger. 'Look at this,
Monsieur de la Eeynie,' said he, ' this dagger is
poisoned ! '
'Is it possible ? ' said M. de la Eeynie.
'A prick of it would do for any man,' said the
Marquis. ' You don t say so,' said M. de la Eeynie.

154 The Students' Quarter.
'I do, though, and, what is more,' said the
Marquis, in a terrible voice, 'if you do not
instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with
your face towards it, and your hands crossed
over your back, or if you make the slightest
noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger
between your ribs, as sure as my name is
Cartouche ! ! '
At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la
Eeynie sunk incontinently down on his stomach,
and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded ;
after which, Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands
upon all the money which was left in the
Lieutenant's cabinet. Alas and alas! many a
stout bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy,
went for that day without his pay and his
victuals !
There is a story that Cartouche once took the
diligence to Lille, and found in it a certain Abbe
Potter, who was full of indignation against this
monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he
went back to Paris, which he proposed to do in
about a fortnight, he should give the Lieutenant
of Police some information which would in-

The Abbe Potter. 155
fallibly lead to the scoundrel's capture. But
poor Potter was disappointed in his designs,
for, before he could fulfil them, he was made
the victim of Cartouche's cruelty.
A letter came to the Lieutenant of Police, to
state that Cartouche had travelled to Lille, in
company with the Abbe Potter of that tow(n:
that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards
Paris, Cartouche had waylaid him, murdered him,
taken his papers, and would come to Paris him
self bearing the name and clothes of the unfor
tunate Abbe, by the Lille coach, on such a day.
The Lille coach arrived, and was surrounded by
police agents ; the monster Cartouche was there
sure enough in the Abbe's guise. He was seized,
bound, flung into prison, brought out to be ex
amined, and on examination found to be no
other than 'the Abbe de Potter himself! It is
pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great
men, and find them condescending to joke like
the meanest of us.
Another diligence adventure is recounted of
this famous Cartouche. It happened that he
met in the coach a young and lovely lady,

156 The Students' Quarter.
clad in widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with
a couple of servants. The poor thing was the
widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles,
and was going to the capital to arrange with
her lawyers, and to settle her husband's will.
The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-pas
senger was called) was quite as candid as the
pretty widow had been, and stated that he was
a captain in the regiment of Nivernois, that he
was going to Paris to buy a colonelcy, which
his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince
de Montmorenci, the Commandeur de la Tre-
mouille, with all their interest at Court, could
not fail to procure for him.
To be short, in the course of a few days'
journey, the Count Louis Dominique de Grinche
played his cards so well, that the poor little
widow half forgot her late husband, and her
eyes glistened with tears as the count kissed
her hand at parting — at parting, he hoped, only
for a few hours.
Day and night the insinuating Count followed
her; and when, at the end of a fortnight, and
in the midst of a tete-a-tete, when they were

The lovely Widow. 157
alone, he plumped suddenly on his knees, and
said, 'Leonora, do you love me?' the poor
thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest
sigh in the world, and, sinking her blushing
head on his shoulder, whispered,
'0 Dominique, je t'aimel Ah,' said she,
'how noble it is of my Dominique to take
me with the little I have, and he so rich a
nobleman ! '
The fact is, the old Baron's titles and estates
had passed away to his nephews; his dowager
was only left with 300,000 livres, in rentes sur
I'Stat — a handsome sum, but nothing to compare
to the rent-roll of Count Dominique, Count de
la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pegre, Baron
de la Bigorne — he had estates and wealth which
might authorise him to aspire to the hand of a
Duchess at least.
The unfortunate widow never for a moment
suspected the cruel trick which was about to
be played upon her, and, at the request of
her affianced husband, sold out her money
and realised it in gold, to be made over to

158 The Students' Quarter.
him on the day when the contract was to be
signed. The day arrived, and, according to custom
in France, the relatives of both parties at
tended. The widow's relations, though respect
able, were not of the first nobility, being persons
chiefly of the finance and the robe : there was
the President of the Court of Arras and his
lady, a Farmer-General, a Judge of a Court
of Paris, and other such grave and respectable
people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he
was not bound for names, and, having the
whole peerage to choose from, brought a host
of Montmorencies, Crequis, De la Tours, and
Guises at his back. His homme d'affaires brought
his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans
of his estates, and the titles of his glorious
ancestry. The widow's lawyers had her money
in sacks, and between the gold on the one
side and the parchments on the other lay
the contract which was to make the widow's
300,000 francs the property of the Count de la
Grinche.

The Wedding interrupted. 159
The Count de la Grinche was just about to
sign, when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up
to him, said, 'Captain, do you know who the
President of the Court of Arras yonder is? —
It is old Manasseh, the Jew of Brussels. I
pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole
from Cadogan, when I was with Malbrook's army
in Flanders.'
Here the Due de la Eoche Guyon came forward,
very much alarmed. 'Eun me through the
body ! ' said his Grace, ' but the Controller-
General's lady there is no other than that old
hag of a Margoton who keeps the  .' Here
the Due de la Eoche Guyon's voice fell.
Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to
the table ; he took up one of the widow's fifteen
thousand gold pieces — it was as pretty a bit
of copper as you could wish to see
'My dear,' said he politely, 'there is some
mistake here, and this business had better
stop.' ' Count ! ' gasped the poor widow.
' Count be hanged ! ' said he. ' My name is
Caktouche.'

CHAPTEE VII.
A RAMBLE IN THE PICTURE GALLERIES.
Comparison between Erench and English Art — Art-Student
Life in France — Anecdote of an Art-Student in England —
Anecdote of Guizot — The Paradise of Painters and Penny-a-
Liners — M. G-udin — Tom Paine and Tom Macaulay — The
Royal Academy — Dr. Dionysius Lardner — Lord Byron's Sen-
timentalism — The Classical School of Art— Michael Angelo —
The School of Fine Arts — The Pictures at the Luxembourg
— Love of Murder Scenes — Delacroix — Horace Vernet —
Delaroche.
The three collections of pictures at the Louvre,
the Luxembourg, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts,
contain a number of specimens of French Art,
since its commencement almost, and give the
stranger a pretty fair opportunity to study and
appreciate it.
The French list of painters contains some very
good names, — no very great ones except Poussin
(unless the admirers of Claude choose to place
him among great painters), and I think the
school was never in so flourishing a condition

French and English Art. 161
as it is at the present day. They say there
are three thousand artists in this town alone,
of them a handsome minority paint not merely
tolerably, but well, understand their business,
draw the figure accurately, sketch with cleverness,
and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs'
shops in a decent manner.
To account for a superiority over England,
which I think, as regards Art, is incontestable, it
must be remembered that the painter's trade in
France is a very good one : better appreciated,
better understood, and generally far better paid.
There are a dozen excellent schools in which a
lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a
practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his
art at an expense of about ten pounds a year. In
England there is no school except the Academy,
unless the student can afford to pay a very large
sum, and place himself under the tuition of some
particular artist. Here a young man for his ten
pounds has all sorts of necessary instruction,
models, &c; he has further, and for nothing,
numberless incitements to study the profession
which are not to be found in England— the streets
L

1 62 The Students' Quarter.
are filled with picture-shops ; the people ^hem-
selves are pictures, walking about; the churches,
theatres, eating-houses, court-rooms are covered
with pictures.
Nature itself seems inclined more kindly to
him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright
and beautiful, and the sun shines for the greater
part of the year. Add to this, incitements more
selfish, but quite as powerful; a French artist
is paid very handsomely — for five hundred a
year is rich where all are poor — and has a rank
in society rather above his merits than below
them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses, in
places where titles are laughed at, and a baron
is thought of no more account than a banker's
clerk. The life of the young artist here is the easiest,
merriest, dirtiest existing possible. He arrives
most likely at sixteen from his province, his
parents settle forty pounds a year on him and
pay his master ; he establishes himself in the Pays
Latin, or in the new Quartier of Notre Dame de
Lorette, which is quite peopled with painters ; he
arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour,

Student Costumes. 163
and labours among a score of companions as
merry and poor as himself, Each gentleman has
his favourite tobacco-pipe, and the pictures are
painted in the midst of a dim cloud of smoke,
and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a
roar of choruses, of which no one can form an
idea that has not been present at such an as
sembly. As for their dress, you see among them every
variety of coiffure that has ever been known.
Some young men of genius have ringlets hanging
over their shoulders— you may smell the tobacco
with which they are scented across the street —
some have straight locks, black, oily, and re
dundant — some have toupees in the famous Louis
Philippe fashion — some are cropped close — some
have adopted the present mode, which he who
would follow must, in order to do so, part his
hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and
gum it with gum, and iron it flat down over his
ears ; when arrived at the ears, you take the tongs
and make a couple of ranges of curls close round
the whole head, such curls as, you may see under
a gilt three-cornered hat, and in Her Britannic
12

164 The Students' Quarter.
Majesty's coachman's state wig. This is the last
fashion. With respect of beards, there is no end
to them ; all my friends the artists have beards
who can raise them ; and Nature, though she has
rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French
nation, has been very liberal to them of hair.
Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of
caps, Chinese mandarin-caps, Greek skull-caps,
English jockey-caps, Persian or Kuzzilbash-caps,
middle-age caps (such as are called in heraldry
' caps of maintenance '), Spanish nets and striped
worsted nightcaps. Fancy all the jackets you
have ever seen, and you have before you, as well
as the pen can describe, the costumes of these
indescribable Frenchmen. In this company and
costume, the French student of art passes his
days and acquires knowledge: how he passes
his evenings, in what theatre, at what guin-?
guettes, in company with what seducing little
milliner, there is no need to say : I know one
who pawned his coat to go to the Carnival Ball,
and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse
for six weeks, until he could redeem the absent
garment.

The Art-Student in Paris. 1 65
These young men (together with the students
of sciences) comport themselves towards the sober
citizens pretty much as the German tursch to
wards the Philister, or as the military man
during the Empire did to the pekin ; from the
height of their poverty they look down upon
him with the greatest imaginable scorn — a scorn,
I think, by which the citizen seems dazzled,
for his respect for the Arts, is intense.
The case is very different in England, where
a grocer's daughter would think she made a
mesalliance by marrying a painter, and where
a literary man (in spite of all we can say
against it) ranks below that dubious class of
gentry composed of the Apothecary, the At
torney, the Wine-merchant, whose positions, in
country towns at least, are so equivocal. As,
for instance, my friend the Eeverend James
Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a
paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined
in Warwickshire in company with several squires
and parsons of that enlightened county. Asterisk,
as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable

1 66 The Students' Quarter.
at dinner, and delighted all present with his
learning and wit.
' Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?' said
one of the squires.
' Don't you know ? ' replied another ; * it's As
terisk, the author of so-and-so, and a famous
contributor to such and such a magazine.'
' Good heavens ! ' said the squire, quite terri
fied ; ' a literary man ! I thought he had been
a gentleman ! '
Another instance, Monsieur Guizot, when he
was a minister here, had the grand hotel of the
Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great
de par le monde, as Brantome says, and enter
tained them in a proper ministerial magnificence.
The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was
at one of his ministerial parties, and went a fort
night afterwards, as in duty bound, to pay her
respects to M. Guizot. But it happened in this
fortnight that Monsieur Guizot was minister no
longer, but gave up his portfolio and his grand
hotel to retire into private life, and to occupy
his humble apartments in a house which he
possesses, and of which he lets the greater >

The Paradise of Painters. 167

portion. A friend of mine was present at one
of the ex-minister's soirees, when the Duchess of
Dash made her appearance. He says the Duchess
at her entrance seemed quite astounded, and
examined the premises with a most curious
wonder. Two or three shabby little rooms,
with ordinary furniture, and a minister en re-
traite, who lives by letting lodgings! In our
country was ever such a thing heard of? No,
thank Heaven, and a Briton ought to be proud
of the difference.
But to our muttons. This country is sure the
paradise of painters and penny-a-liners, and when
one reads of Monsieur Horace Vernet, at Eome,
exceeding ambassadors by his magnificence, and
leading such a life as Eubens or Titian did of
old — when one sees Monsieur Thiers' grand villa
in the Eue Saint George (a dozen years ago he
was not even a penny-a-liner, no such luck) — when
one contemplates in imagination Monsieur Gudin,
the marine painter, too lame to walk through the
picture gallery of the Louvre, accommodated
therefore with a wheel-chair, privilege of princes
only, and accompanied, nay, for what I know,

168 The Students' Quarter,
trundled down the gallery, by majesty itself, who
does not long to make one of the great nation,
exchange his native tongue for the melodious
jabbef of France, or at least adopt it for his
native country, like Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and
Anarcharsis Clootz ?
Noble people ! they made Tom Paine a deputy,
and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a
dynasty of him.
Well, this being the case, no wonder there are
so many painters in France — and here at last we
are, back to them. At the Ecole Eoyale des
Beaux Arts you see two or three hundred speci
mens of their performances — all the prize-men
since seventeen hundred and fifty, I think,
being bound to leave there their prize sketch
or picture.
Can anything good come out of the Eoyal
Academy? is a question which has been con
siderably mooted in England (in the neighbour
hood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundreds
of French samples are, I think, not very satis
factory. The subjects are almost all what are
called classical — Orestes pursued by every variety

Classical Art. 169

of Furies — numbers of little wolf-sucking Eo-
muluses — Hectors and Andromaches in a com
plication of parting embraces, and so forth —
for it was the absurd maxim of our forefathers,
that because one or two giants could reach
these lofty supports, the race of pigmies must
get upon stilts and jump at them likewise;
and on the canvass, and in the theatre, the
French frogs (excuse the pleasantry) were in
fracted to swell out and bellow as much as pos
sible like bulls.
What was the consequence ? As the Eeverend
Dionysius Lardner says with much propriety — in
trying to make themselves into bulls, the frogs
make themselves into jackasses — as might be ex
pected. For a hundred and ten years the classical hum
bug oppressed the nations ; and you may see in
this gallery of the Beaux Arts seventy years' spe
cimens of the dulness which it engendered. As
nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his
own — she gave him a character of his own, too ;
and we, a foolish race, must try our very best to
ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas

170 The Students' Quarter.
fit us no more than their breeches ! It is the study
of Nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these
imitations of her. A man as a man, from a dustman
up to JEschylus, is God's work, and good to read,
as all works of nature are ; but what a worthless
creature it becomes when it tries to fit itself into
another shape, wants to deny its own identity,
and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts.
Because Lord Byron was wicked, and quarrelled
with the world, and found himself growing fat
and quarrelled with his victuals, and thus natu
rally grew ill-humoured, did not half Europe
grow ill-humoured too ? Did not every poet feel
his young affections withered, and despair and
darkness cast upon his soul because his lordship
was afraid of growing two or three stone heavier ?
Because certain mighty men of old could make
heroical statues and plays, must we not be told
that there is no other beauty but classical beauty?
Must not every little whipster of a French poet
chalk you out plays, Henriades, and such like,
and vow that here was the real thing, the unde
niable Kalon ?
The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred

Christian Art. 171

years, my dear sir, the world was humbugged by
the so-called classical art, as it is now by what is
called the Christian art (of which, anon) — and
it is curious to look at the pictorial traditions as
here handed down. The consequence of them is,
that not one of the pictures exhibited is worth
much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from
statuary in the first place, the colour of the
paintings seems as much as possible to partici
pate in it — they are mostly of a misty, stony,
green, dismal hue, as if they had been painted in
a world where no colour was. In every picture
there are, of course, white mantles, white urns,
white columns, white statues, those obliges accom
paniments of the sublime. There are the endless
straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper-
lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the
drawing-books, 'as if the latter were the Eevela-
tions of Beauty, issued by Supreme authority,
and from which there was no appeal ! Why is
the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder
simpering Venus of Medicis to be our standard of
beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our
notions of the sublime? There was no reason

lyi The Students' Quarter.

why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and
remain aval; avSp&v to eternity, and there is a
classical quotation which you may have occa
sionally heard, beginning 'Vivere fortes,' &c,
which, as it avers that there were a great number
of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may not
unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar
heroes were to succeed him. Shakspeare made
a better man when his imagination moulded the
mighty figure of Macbeth ; and if you will mea
sure Satan by Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's
work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not
Milton's angel surpass iEschylus's — surpass him
by ' many a rood ' ?
In this same school of the Beaux Arts, where are
to be found such a number of pale imitations of
the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought to be
thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-
sized copy of the ' Last Judgment' of Michael
Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by
the same splendid hand. There is the sub
lime if you please— a new sublime, an original
sublime, quite as sublime as the Greek sublime.
See, yonder, in the midst of His angels, the

Michael Angelo. 173
Judge of the world descending in glory, and
near Him, beautiful and gentle, and yet in
describably august and pure, the Virgin by His
side. There is the Moses, the grandest figure
that ever was carved in stone. It has about
it something frightfully majestic, if one may
so speak. In examining this, and the astonish
ing picture of the Judgment, or even a single
figure of it, the spectator's sense amounts al
most to pain. I would not like to be left in
a room alone with the Moses. How did the
artist live amongst them, and create them?
How did he suffer the painful labour of inven
tion? One fancies that he would have been
scorched up like Semele, by sights too tremendous
for his vision to bear ; one cannot imagine him,
with our small physical endowments and weak
nesses, a man like ourselves.
As for the Ecole Eoyale des Beaux Arts, then,
and all the good its students have done — it is
stark naught. There is only one picture among
the many hundreds that has, to my thinking,
much merit (a charming composition of Homer
singing, signed Jourdy)— and the only good that

174 The Students' Quarter.
the Academy has done by its pupils, was to send
them to Eome where they might learn better
things. At home, where the intolerably stupid classi-
calities taught by men, who, belonging to the
least erudite country in Europe, were them
selves, from their profession, the least learned
among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils
down, and cramped their hands, their eyes, and
their imaginations, drove them away from natural
beauty — which, thank God, is fresh and attain
able by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to
morrow — and sent them rambling after artificial
grace, withoutHhe proper means of judging or
attaining it.
A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux
Arts : it is beautiful, and as well finished and con
venient as beautiful ; with its light and elegant
fabric, its pretty fountains, its archway of the
Eenaissance, and fragments of sculpture, you can
hardly see, on a fine day, a place more riant and
pleasing. Passing from thence up the picturesque Eue de
la Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where

The Luxembourg. 175
bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen
with pig-tails, love to wander in the melancholy
quaint old gardens, where the peers have a new
and comfortable court of justice to judge all the
Omeutes which are to take place, and where, as
everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern
French artists, whom government thinks worthy
of patronage.
A very great proportion of these, as we see by
the catalogue, are of the students whose works
we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts,
and who, having performed their pilgrimage
to Eome, have taken rank among the professors
of the art. I dont know a more pleasing exhi
bition, for there are not a dozen really bad
pictures in the collection, some very good, and
the rest showing great skill and smartness of
execution. In the same way, however, that it has been
supposed that no man could be a great poet unless
he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up
among the painters, and we have here a vast
number of large canvasses, with figures of the
proper heroical length and nakedness. The

176 The Students' Quarter.
Anticlassicists did not arjse in France until
about 1827, and, in consequence, there are
at the Luxembourg plenty of specimens of
the old classical faith in full vigour. There
is Brutus, having chopped his son's head
off, with all the agony of a father — and then
calling for number two — there is JEneas carryr
ing off old Anchises — there are Paris , and
Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and
many more such choice subjects from Lem-
priere. But the chief samples of the sublime are in the
way of murders, with which the catalogue swarms.
Here are a few specimens : —
7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
¦ — The Grand Dauphiness dying.
18. Blondel, Chevalier de la Leg. — Zenobia
found dead.
36. Debay, Chevalier. — The Death of Lu-
cretia. 38. Dejeune. — The Death of Hector.
34. Court, Chevalier de la L. — The Death of
Csssar. 39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier.— Dante and

Taste for Murder Scenes. 177
Virgil in the Infernal Lake.— The Massacre of
Scio. — Medea going to Murder her Children.
43, 44. Delaroche, Chevalier. — Joas taken from
among the Dead. — The Death of Queen Elizabeth.
45. Edward V. and his Brother (preparing for
death). 50. Hecuba going to be sacrificed. — Drolling,
- Chevalier. 51. Dubois. — Young Clovis found Dead.
56. Henry, Chevalier. — The Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew. 75. Guerin, Chevalier. — Cain after the Death
of Abel.
83. Jacquand. — Death of Adelaide de Com-
minge. 88. The Death of Eudamydas.
93. The Death of Hyrnetho.
103. The Death of Philip of Austria,
And so on. You see what woful subjects they
take, and how profusely they are decorated with
knighthood. They are like the Black Bruns-
wickers, these painters, and ought to be called
Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the
merriest people in the world should please them-
M

178 The Students' Quarter.
selves with such grim representations and varieties
of murder, or why murder itself should be con
sidered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is
good at the end of a tragedy, but then it is good
because it is the end, and because by the events ¦
foregone, the mind is prepared for it ; — but these
men will have nothing but fifth acts, and
seem to skip as unworthy all the circumstances
leading to them. This, however, is part of
the scheme, the bloated, unnatural, stilted,
spouting, sham sublime that our teachers have
believed, and tried to pass off as real, and
which your humble servant, and other Anti-
humbuggists, should lustily, according to the
strength that is in them, endeavour to pull
down. What, for instance, could Monsieur Lafond
care about the death of Eudamydas? What
was Hecuba to the Chevalier Drolling or
Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay
a wager that neither of them ever conjugated
Tv-mwy and that their school-learning carried
them not as far as the letter, but only to the
game of taw. How were they to be inspired

Delacroix and Delaroche. 179
by such subjects? from having seen Talma
and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham
Greek costumes, and having read up the articles
Eudamydas, Hecuba, in the Mythological Dic
tionary. What a classicism inspired by rouge, gas
lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and
copied half from ancient statues, and half from
a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence
the hour!
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius,
and his Medea is a genuine creation of a noble
fancy — for most of the others, Mrs. Brownrigg
and her two female apprentices would have done
as well as the desperate Colchian with her vsieva,
§'CK-raTa. M. Delacroix has produced a great
number of rude, barbarous pictures, but there is
the stamp of genius on all of them ; the great
poetical intention which is worth all your
execution, Delaroche is another man of great merit,
with not such a great heart, perhaps, as the other,
but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an ex
cellent arranger of his subject. The death of
11 2

180 The Students' Quarter.
Elizabeth is a raw young performance seemingly,
not at least to my taste : the Enfants d'fidouard
is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in
a hundred different ways in print. ' It is properly
pathethic and gloomy, and merits fully its high
reputation. This painter rejoices in such sub
jects — in what Lord Portsmouth used to call
* black jobs.' . He has killed Charles I., and Lady
Jane Grey, and the Duke of Guise, and I don't
know whom besides. He is at present occupied
with a vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the
writer of this had the honour of seeing him— -a
little keen-looking man, some five feet in height ;
he wore on this important occasion a bandana
round his head, and was in the act of smoking a
cigar. Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Dela
roche married,is the king of French battle-painters,
an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart,
and has painted the grenadier francais under all
sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such subjects
are spirited, natural, and excellent, and he is so
clever a man that all he does is good to a certain

Horace Vernet. 181
degree. His Judith is somewhat violent, perhaps —
his Eebecca most pleasing, and not the less so for
a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless
singularity of costume. Eaphael and Michael
Angelo is as clever a picture as can be — clever
is just the word ; the groups and drawing excel
lent, the colouring pleasantly bright and gaudy ;
and the students study it incessantly ; there's a
dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.
His little scraps of woodcuts in the newly-
published 'Life of Napoleon ' are perfect gems in
their way, and the noble price paid for them not
a penny more than he merits.
The picture by Court, of the Death of Csesar,
is remarkable for effect and excellent workman
ship ; and the head of Brutus (who looks like
Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are
some beautiful beads of women, and some very
good colour in the picture.
Jacquand's Death of Adelaide de Comminge is
neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide
had, it appears, a lover, who betook "himself
to a convent of Trappists; she followed him
thither disguised as a man, took the vows, and

1 82 The Students' Quarter.
was not discovered by him till on her death*
bed. The painter has told this story in a most
pleasing and affecting manner ; — the picture
is full of onction and melancholy grace. The
objects, too, are capitally represented, and the
tone and colour very good.
Decaisne's Guardian Angel is not so good
in colour, but is equally beautiful in expres
sion and grace. A little child and a nurse are
asleep — an angel watches the infant. You see
women look very wistfully at this sweet pic
ture, and what triumph would a painter have
more? What more is to be observed concerning the
Luxembourg shall be written in a succeeding
letter, when I have a word or two to say about
the Louvre,
T. T.

CHAPTEE VIII.
ANOTHER RAMBLE IN THE PICTURE GALLERIES.
Tho Louvre — The Pictures of M. Ingres — The Chevalier Ziegler
— French Sculpture — Touffley and other Sculptors — David
— Sir Walter Scott and Romanticism — Gericault's Picture of
the Raft of the Medusa — G-irodet's Deluge — Poussin — Carel
— Dujardin — Watteau — Greuze — Lesueur's Crucifixion —
Conclusion.
One must not quit the Luxembourg without
noticing the dashing sea-pieces of Gudin, and
one or two landscapes of Giroux (the plain of
Grasivaudan), and the ' Prometheus ' of Aligny.
This is an imitation, perhaps; as is a noble
picture of 'Jesus Christ and the Children,' by
Flandrin; but the artists are imitating better
models, at any rate ; and one begins to perceive
that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
Poussin's magnificent ' Polyphemus ' (I only
know a print of that marvellous composition) has
perhaps suggested the first-named picture; and

184 The Students' Quarter.
the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic
study of the Eoman schools.
Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been
one of the chief instruments. He was, before
Horace Vernet, president of the French Academy
at Eome, and is famous as a chief of a school.
When he broke up his atelier here, to set out for
his presidency, many of his pupils attended him
piously some way on his journey ; and some, with
scarce a penny in their pouches, walked through
France, and across the Alps, in a pious pilgrim
age to Eome, being determined not to forsake
their old master.
Such an action was worthy of them, and of
the high rank which their profession holds in
France, where the honours to be acquired by art
are only inferior to those which are gained in
war. One reads of such peregrinations in old
days, when the scholar of some great Italian
painter followed him from Venice to Eome, or
from Florence to Ferrara. In regard to Ingres'
individual merit as a painter, the writer of this is
not a fair judge, having seen but three paintings

Absurdities in Art. 185
—one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his
disciples much admire.
Ingres stands between the Imperial Davido-
classical school of French art and the namby-
pamby mystical German school, which is for
carrying us back to Cranach and Durcr, and
which is making progress here.
Everything here finds imitation ; the French
have the genius of imitation and caricature. This
absurd humbug, called the Christian or Catholic
art, is sure to tickle our neighbours, and will be
a favourite with them when better known. I do
believe this to be a greater humbug than the
humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
latter was founded on nature at least, whereas the
former is made up of silly affectations and im
provements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
Chevalier Ziegler's picture of ' St. Luke painting
the Virgin.' St. Luke has a monk's dress on,
embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo,
with her son in her arms. She looks preter-
naturally solemn, as does St. Luke, who is eyeing

1 86 The Students' Quarter.
his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical
look. They call this Catholic art. There is no
thing, my dear friend, more easy in' life. First,
take your colours, and rub them down clean, —
bright carmine, bright yellow, bright sienna,
bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
costumes of your figures as much as possible like
the costumes of the early part of the fifteenth
century. Paint them in with the above colours ;
and if on a gold ground, the more ' Catholic' your
art is. Dress your apostles like priests before the
altar ; and remember to have a good commodity
of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as
you may see in the Catholic chapel in Sutton
Street and elsewhere. Deal in Virgins, and dress
them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or
Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to
their gowns, and proper angular draperies. Place
all their heads on one side, with their eyes shut,
and the proper solemn simper. At the back of
the head, draw and gild with gold-leaf a halo, or
glory, of the exact shape of a cart-wheel; and

A Charming Sculpture. 187
you have the thing done. It is Catholic art tout
cracM, as Louis Philippe says.
We have it still in England, handed down to
us for four centuries in the pictures on ,the
cards as the redoubtable king and queen of
clubs. Look at them, you will see that the
costumes and attitudes are precisely similar to
those which figure in the catholicities of the
school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
Before you take your cane at the door, look
for one instant at the statue-room. Yonder is
Touffley's 'Jeune file conflant son premier
secret a, VSnus.' Charming, charming! It is
from the exhibition of this year only, and I think
the best sculpture in the gallery — pretty, fanciful,
¦naif — admirable in workmanship and imitation
of nature. I have seldom seen flesh better
represented in marble. Examine also Jaley's
'Pudeur,' Jacquot's 'Nymph,' and Eude's 'Boy
with the Tortoise.' These are not very exalted
subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not
go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature.
But what then ? Are we gods, Miltons, Michael
Angelos, that can leave earth when we please,

1 88 The Students' Quarter.
and soar away to heights immeasurable ? No ;
but the fools of academicians would fain make
us so.
Are you not, and half the painters in London,
panting for an opportunity to show your genius
in a great ' historical picture ? ' 0 blind race !
Have you wings ? Not a feather ; and yet you
must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of
rugged hills; and arrived there, clapping and
shaking your ragged elbows, and making as
if you would fly ! Come down, silly Daedalus ;
come down to the lowly places in which nature
ordered you to walk. The «sweet flowers are
springing there; the fat muttons are waiting
there; the pleasant sun shines there; be con
tent and humble, and take your share of the
good cheer.
While we have been indulging in this dis
cussion, the omnibus has gaily conducted ua
across the water; and 'La garde qui veille
aux barrieres du Louvre, ne defend pas' our
entry. What a paradise this gallery is for French
students, or foreigners who sojourn in the capital 1

The Glories of Student-Life. 189
it is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune
with any extraordinary wealth, or means of enjoy
ing the luxuries with which Paris, more than any
other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury
which surpasses all others, and spend their days
in a palace which all the money of all the Eoths-
childs could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a
garret, and dine in a cellar ; but no grandee in
Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings' houses
have at best but damask hangings, and gilt
cornices. What are these to a wall covered with
canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of
Eubens ? Artists from England, who have a
National Gallery that resembles a moderate-sized
gin-shop, who may not copy pictures except
under particular restrictions, and, on rare and
particular days, may revel here to their hearts'
content. Here is a room half a mile long, with
as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from
sunrise till evening, and free to all manners and
all varieties of study: the only puzzle to the
student is to select the one he shall begin upon,
and keep his eyes away from the rest.

190 The Students' Quarter.
Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and
painted ceilings, and shining Doric columns, leads
directly to the gallery ; but it is thought too fine
for working days, and is only opened for the
public entrance on the Sabbath. A little back
stair (leading from a court in which stand nume
rous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx of polished
granite) is the common entry for students and
others who during the week enter the gallery.
Hither have lately been transported a number
of the works of French artists, which formerly
covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only
entitles the French painter to a place in the
Louvre); and let us confine ourselves to the
Frenchmen only for the space of this letter.
I have seen, in a fine private collection at St.
Germain, one or two admirable single figures of
David, full of life, truth, and gaiety. The colour
is not good, but all the rest excellent ; and one of
these so much lauded pictures is the portrait of a
washerwoman. ' Pope Pius ' at the Louvre is as
bad in colour, and as remarkable for its vigour
and look of life. The man had a genius for paint
ing portraits and common life, but must attempt

David, the Painter. 191
the heroic — failed signally; and, what is worse,
carried a whole nation blundering after him. To
have told a Frenchman sp twenty years ago, he
would have thrown the dementi in your teeth, or
at least laughed at you in scornful incredulity.
They say of us, that we don't know when we are
beaten : they go a step further, and swear their
defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory
of the Empire, and one might as well have said,
then that ' Eomulus ' was a bad picture, as that «
Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people
who believe in the Emperor, believe in the Theatre
Francais, and believe that Ducis improved upon
Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still it is
curious to remark in this place how art and
literature become party matters, and political
sects have their favourite painters and authors.
Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead.
He died about a year after his bodily demise ia
1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
from his castle of A.bbotsford, sent out a troop
of gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry out
laws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce.

192 The Students' Quarter.
two-handed swords, and harness on their back,
did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
and demigods of Greece and Eome. Notre Lame
a la rescousse ! Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert has
.borne Hector of Troy clear out of his " saddle.
Andromache may weep ; but her spouse is be
yond the reach of physic. See, Eobin Hood
twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly howling.
Montjoie Saint Denis! down goesAjax under the
mace of Dunois; and yonder are Leonidas and
Eomulus begging their lives of Eob Eoy Mac-
gregor. Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart
has taken Dr. Lempriere by the nose, and reigns
sovereign. Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we
need not, then, say much. Eomulus is a mighty
fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come
out to battle stark-naked (except a very handsome
helmet), it is because the costume became him,
and shows off his figure to advantage. But was
there ever anything so absurd as this passion for
the nude, which was followed by all the painters
of the Davidian epoch ? And how are we to sup
pose yonder straddle to be the characteristic of

Green Pictures. 193
the heroic and the sublime ? Eomulus stretches
his legs as far as • ever nature will allow ; the
Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper
to stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward
their arms.
Eomulus's is the exact action of a telegraph ;
and the Horatii are all in the position of the
lunge. Is this the sublime ? Mr. Angelo, of
Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his
namesake,. Michael, I don't think would.
The little picture of ' Paris and Helen,' one of
the master's earliest, I believe, is likewise one of
his best; the details are exquisitely painted.
Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a
most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male
figure are beautifully designed, and have not the
green tone which you see in the latter pictures of
the master. What is the meaning of this green ?
Was it the fashion or the varnish ? Girodet's
pictures are green; Gros's emperors and gre
nadiers have universally the jaundice. Gerard's
' Psyche ' has a most decided green sickness ; and
I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
N

194 The Students' Quarter.
enthusiasm which this performance inspired on
its first appearance before the public.
In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly
' Deluge,' and Gericauft's dismal ' Medusa.' Geri-
cault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
man who possessed a fortune of his own ; but pined
because no one in his day would purchase his pic
tures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present,
a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
All his works have a grand cachet ; he never did
anything mean. When he painted the ' Eaffc of
the Medusa,' it is said he lived for a long time
among the corpses which he painted, and that
his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not
seen the picture, you are familiar, probably, with
Eeynolds' admirable engraving of it. A huge
black sea — a raft beating upon it ; a horrid com
pany of men dead, half-dead, writhing and frantic
with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and far
away, black against a stormy sunset, a sail. The
story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate
tragic interest, so to speak, — deeper, because.
more natural, than Girodet's green ' Deluge,' for

Girodet's ' Deluge.' 195
instance, or his livid 'Orestes,' or red-hot
' Clytemnestra.' Seen from a distance, the latter's 'Deluge ' has
a certain awe-inspiring air with it. A slimy
green man stands on a green rock, and clutches
hold of a tree. On the green man's shoulders
is his old father, in a green old age; to him
hangs his wife with a babe on her breast, and
dangling at her hair another child. In the water
floats a corpse (a beautiful head); and a green
sea and atmosphere envelopes all this dismal
group. The old father is represented with a bag
of money in his hand ; and the tree which the
man catches is cracking, and just on the point.
of giving way. These two points were con
sidered very fine by the critics ; they are two such
ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French
tragedy. For this reason I have never been able
to read Eacine with pleasure, — the dialogue is so
crammed with these lugubrious good things —
melancholy antitheses, — sparkling undertaker's
wit; but this is heresy, and had better be spoken
discreetly. The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's
n 2

1 96 The Students' Quarter.
pictures ; they put me in mind of the colour of
, objects in dreams, — a strange, hazy, lurid hue.
How noble are some of his landscapes ! What a
depth of solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near
which, by the side of a black water, halts Dio
genes: the air is thunder-laden, and breathes
heavily. You hear ominous whispers in the vast
forest gloom.
Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I
believe, conceived in quite a different mood, but
exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding
up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-
wench. 'Omatutini rores aurceque salubresr
in what a wonderful way has the artist managed
to create you out of a few bladders of paint and
pots of varnish! You can see the matutinal
dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh
salubrious airs (' the breath of Nature blowing
free,' as the Corn-law man sings) blowing free
over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up
from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour
of the morning, and the time of the year ; you
can do anything but describe it in words. '
As with regard to the Poussin above men-

Watteau and his Dandies. 197
tioned, one can never pass it without bearing
away a certain pleasing dreamy feeling of awe
and musing; the other landscape inspires the
spectator infallibly with the most delightful brisk
ness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the
vast privilege of the landscape painter : he does
not address you with one fixed particular subject
or expression, but with a thousand never con
templated by himself, and which only arise out
of occasion. You may always be looking at a
natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation
of one ; it seems eternally producing new thought
in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its
own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent
companions for a gentleman than half-a-dozen
landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on
the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a
painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon
the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in
a room with David's sansculotte Leonidas staring
perpetually in your face.
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece
of fantastical brightness and gaiety it is ; what a

198 The Students' Quarter.
delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting
their fans, and trailing about in their long
brocades; what splendid dandies are those, ever
smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue
ribands to tie up their crooks and their pigtails,
and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches !
Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere^ rise
a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in
clusters as out of a champagne bottle, and melting
away in air. There is, to be sure, a hidden
analogy between liquors and pictures : the eye is
deliriously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and
yields itself up to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike
intoxication. Thus we were inclined to pursue
further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of
Claude, calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour,
should be likened to a bottle of Chateau-Margeaux.
And what is the Poussin before spoken of but
Eomane-Gale, — heavy, sluggish, — the luscious
odour almost sickens you : a sultry sort of drink ;
your limbs sink under it, — you feel as if you had
been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in
a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage in

Appreciation of Mediocrity. 199
a premature gout-fit, if he too easily or too often
indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in
my heart I am fonder of pretty tbird-rate
pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
Confess, how many times you have read Beranger,
and how many Milton ? If you go to the Star
and Garter, don't you grow sick of that vast
luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a
couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of
common ? Donkeys, since we have come to this
subject — say not so; Eichmond Hill for them.
Milton they never grow tired of; and are as
familiar with Eaphael, as Bottom with exquisite
Titania. Let us thank Heaven, my dear sir, for
according to us the power to taste and appreciate
the pleasure of mediocrity. I have never heard
that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and
of the earth ; glimpses of the sublime are but
rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses,
and to the donkeys; and if nothing profits us,
aerias tentasse domos along with them; let us
thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming

200 The Students' Quarter.
* Cruche Cassee ' of Greuze, which all the young
ladies delight to copy ; and of which the colour, a
thought too blue, perhaps, is marvellously grace
ful and delicate. There are three more pictures
by the artist, containing exquisite female heads
and colour ; but they have charms for French
critics, which are difficult to be discovered
by English eyes ; and the pictures seem weak
to me.
A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, ' Saint
Benedict Eesuscitating a Child,' deserves par
ticular attention, and is superb in vigour and
richness of colour.
You must look, too, at the large, noble,
melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Cham
pagne ; and the two magnificent Italian pictures
of Leopold Eobert; they are, perhaps, the
very finest pictures that the French school
has produced — as deep as Poussin, of a better
colour, and of a wonderful minuteness and
veracity in the representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur's church pictures are
worth examining and admiring ; they are full of
'unction' and pious mystical grace. 'Saint

Conclusion. 201

Scholastica' is divine; and the 'Taking Down
from the Cross ' as noble a composition as ever was
seen; I care not by whom the other may be.
There is more beauty and less affectation about
this picture than you will find in the perform
ance of many Italian masters with high-sounding
names (out with it, and say Eaphael at once). I
hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that
the Jardiniere is a puking, smirking miss, with
nothing heavenly about her. I yow that the
'Saint Elizabeth' is a bad picture, a bad com
position, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad
imitation of Titian — a piece of vile affectation. I
say, that when Eaphael painted this picture, two
years before his death, the spirit of painting had
gone from out of him ; he was no longer inspired ;'
it was time that he should die !
There, — the murder is out ! My paper is filled
to the brim, and there is no time to speak of
Lesueur's ' Crucifixion,' which is odiously coloured,
to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy.
But such things are most difficult to translate
into words, — one lays down the pen and thinks
and thinks. The figures appear, and take their

202 The Students'' Quarter.
places one by one, ranging themselves according
to order, in light or in gloom, the colours are
reflected duly in the camera obscura of the
brain, and the whole picture lies there complete;
but can you describe it ? No, not if pens were
fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint,
With wliich, for the present, adieu.
' Yours faithfully,
M. A. T.*
* The concluding letter of the series is thus signed. The ini
tials stand for ' Michael Angelo Titmarsh,' the author's favourite
nom de plume.

THE END.

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4-%'

2.. .saw-"

**%