CONTENTS
FOOTNOTES
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

{i}

THE AMERICAN

IN

PARIS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.


VOL. I.


LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1838.

{ii}

{iii}


T. C. Savill, Printer, St. Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross.

PREFACE.

* * * * * You have no sooner a guinea in London than you have none. In addition to the ways and means I pointed out in my last, gather together the letters I wrote you from Paris, and offer them to the booksellers. There are enough, if you have preserved them, for two volumes. I had partly the intention, in writing these letters, to dress them up one day into some kind of shape for the Public. I am not certain they are fit to be seen in their present dishabille—but leave that to the purchaser. A pretty woman slip-shod is a pretty woman still, and she is not so much improved as you think by her court dress. Tell the {iv}Public I do not mean them for great things: I am no critic, no politician, no political economist; but only, as Shakspeare would say, “a snapper up of inconsiderate trifles.” Under this title I have the honour to be, with the most perfect consideration, the Public’s very obedient, {v}humble servant.

CONTENTS.

{1}

THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.

LETTER I.

June 30th, 1835.

I have half a mind to describe this town to you. It has twenty thousand inhabitants, is at the mouth of the Seine, and twenty-four hours from Paris. The houses are high, and mostly of black slate, and patched often till nothing is seen but the patches, and mushrooms, and other vegetables, grow through the cracks. Villages in America have an air of youth and freshness harmonising with their dimensions. Small{2} things should never look old. This town presents you with the ungracious image of a wrinkled and gray-headed baby. The streets, except one, have no side walks; they are paved with rough stone, and are without gutters and common sewers; the march of intellect not having arrived at these luxuries. The exception is the “Rue de Paris;” it has “trottoirs,” a theatre, a public square, a market-house, a library with six thousand volumes, and a church very richly furnished, the organ presented by Cardinal Richelieu. I have been to the church this morning, to pay the Virgin Mary the pound of candles I owed, for my preservation at sea. The prettiest improvement I have seen (and it is no miracle for a town of so much commercial importance) is a dock, cut in from the bay along the channel of an old creek, which contains three or four hundred ships, a goodly number of which wear the American flag; it runs through the midst of the town, and brings the vessels into a pleasant sociability with the houses. When the tide is high, these vessels ride in their own element; when low, you see a whole fleet wallowing in the mud; and passengers, to get to sea, have to wait the complaisance of both wind and tide often a whole week.{3}

But step out through the Rue de Paris, a little to the north, and you will see a compensation for all this ugliness. It is a hill, running boldly up to the water’s edge, whose south side, several hundred feet high, is smothered with houses, which seem to be scrambling up the acclivity to get a look at the town; and the entire summit is covered with beautiful villas, and gardens rich with trees and shrubbery, and hedges, which at this season are a most luxurious ornament. Many American families, having grown rich here by commerce, are perched magnificently upon this hill. The view from the top is charming! The old town, in its motley livery of houses, ships, and fortifications, spreads itself out at your feet; on the west, there is an open view of the channel, and all the pretty images of a commercial port, such as vessels in the near and distant prospect, coming into harbour and going out upon their voyages; and on the south, and beyond the bay into which the Seine flows, is a fine romantic country of field and woodland, which runs gradually up, undulating like the sea, till it meets the blue sky. It is charming, too, in the night; for as soon as Mercury has hung out his lamps above, these Havrians light up theirs in the town, and set up a little opposi{4}tion to the heavens; and there you are between two firmaments, which of a fine evening is a fantastic and gorgeous spectacle. This is the Havre. It is the first thing I ever described, and I am out of breath.

And now the customs and manners. I have had dealings with hackney-coachmen, porters, pedlars, and pickpockets, and have found them eminently qualified in their several departments. In strolling last evening through the streets, going only to frank a letter at the post office, I remarked a person crying maps by a wall side. He walked up and down with arms folded, and had a grave and respectable face:—“A trente sous seulement! C’est incroyable! A trente sous!” I wished to look after a place in Normandy called Helleville; the very place where Guiscard and, that other choicest of all ladies’ heroes, Tancred were born. Only think of Tancred being born in the department of Coutance, and being nothing but a Frenchman; and only think, too, of the possibility of taking a piece of gold out of a man’s waistcoat pocket at mid-day, the owner being wide awake, and in full enjoyment of his senses. I had no sooner made my wants known to this polite auctioneer than, with a civilité toute Française, he placed{5} the map before my eyes—that is, between the eyes and the waistcoat pocket, and himself just behind the left shoulder, and assisted me in the search—“Hell—Hell—Hell—Helleville!—le voilà, monsieur!” He then resumed his walk and looked out for new customers; and I, with a return of his bow and smile, and a grateful sense of his politeness, took leave, and pursued my way contentedly, “not missing what was stolen,” to the post-office. Here I took out my letter, had it stamped, and put my hand complacently in my pocket, and then went home very much disgusted with the French nation. To be robbed at the Havre brings no excuse for one’s wit or understanding: in Paris, it is what one expects from the civilization of the capital.

The porters, coachmen, draymen, boatmen, and such like, about the Havre, are wrangling and noisy to excess. They burst out into a fury every few minutes, but it always terminates innocently. It reminds one of our militia musketry; there is a preliminary, and then a general explosion, and then a few scattering cartridges, and all ends in smoke. They seldom resort to duelling, and boxing is considered vulgar; and as for oaths, they make no sort of figure in French. In the article of swearing, we are{6} ahead, I believe, of all other nations. In their common intercourse, however, these people are much more respectful than we are to their betters and to one another. Mr. Boots, for no other reason than bringing your shoes in well polished, insists on your “pardon for having deranged you;” and the beggar takes leave of his fellow-beggar with his “respects to madam.” But these respects, I have heard, do not bear the test of any twopenny interest. There is no civility that stands against sixpence.

This common world is more social, and in appearance more joyous, than with us. It huddles together in public places, with wonderful conversation and merriment, till a late hour of the night; and what a quantity of green old age! grandmothers of sixty with their hair en papillote, are playing hide and go-seek with twenty-five. After all, what signifies the degree of poverty or age, if one is happy? Another remarkable thing is, the respect paid to property. Benches on the public squares are handed down to posterity with no other marks than the natural wear and tear of sitting on them; vegetables grow by the way-side untrodden, and gardens and fields offer their fruits without hedge or fence, or any visible protec{7}tion. I have talked these matters over with a Frenchman, who says, that it is the last generation only that lives at this rate, and that the present one dies off at a very reasonable age. The truth I believe is, that we, in our country, keep old persons inside the house; we wrap them up and lay them on the shelf, and ennui and neglect, no doubt, abridge a little their duration.

As for the security of property, he ascribes it entirely to a certain shepherdly swain, very common here, who wears red breeches, and is coiffed in a cocked hat, with one of the cocks exactly over his nose, called a Garde Champêtre, who watches day and night over the safety of the fields. A curiosity of the place is the peasant women, whom you will see mixed fantastically with the citizens in the market, and flocking in and out in great numbers at the town gate. Labour and the sun have worn all the feminine charms out of their faces, and they have mounted up over these ugly faces starched and white caps two stories high, in which they encounter all sorts of weather; they are seated on little asses, a large basket at each side, in which they carry vegetables to market, and carry back manure for the crops of the next year. The American{8} intercourse is so quickened by railroads and steamboats, that the characteristics of town and country are almost effaced; here they wear yet their distinct liveries.

And now the antiquities. I visited, this morning, a trumpery old palace of Charles V.; also a round tower, built, they say, by that great tower builder, Julius Cæsar; and returning through a solitary alley, I stumbled accidentally upon a monument of more precious memory, the birthplace of the author of Paul and Virginia. It is a scrubby old hut, with a bit of marble in front containing his name and day of nativity. Genius seems to have but mean notions of the dignity of birth; Pindar was born in the slough and vapours of Bœotia, and St. Pierre in this filthy alley of the Havre.

And now the politics. The children here are apportioned equally, and cannot be disinherited. All the father can dispose of by will, is a half, third, or fourth, of the estate, according as he has one, two, or more heirs. This kind of succession cuts up the land into small patches, and thus brings poverty on both town and country. Families being without capital to improve their agricultural resources, have but little to spare to the town, and can, therefore,{9} buy but little of its stores and manufactures; and, from inability to supply the raw materials and provisions cheap, buy this little at an enhanced price. In this way the two parties mutually beggar each other. Besides, under this system of minute divisions, the farming population increases enormously, poverty increasing in the same ratio.

Two-thirds of the French are already farmers; and in England, where farming is in so much greater perfection, the ratio is one-third. This law, too, in rendering the children independent of the father, destroys his authority and his check upon their conduct; it weakens the motives to exertion, which arise from fear of want or prospects of future good, and is consequently unfavourable to intellect and morals. The English system makes one son only a fool, the French besots the whole family. A redundant population is the great curse of all these old countries, and under this system of subdivision, a nation, unless the blessings of war or the plague intervene, becomes as multitudinous as the Chinese, eating dogs, and cats, and potatoes, and hutting with cows and pigs; a plough, as in Ireland, becoming a joint stock possession, and a horse belonging to a whole neighbourhood.{10}

The French, in spite of the Moscows and Waterloos, have added between five and six millions to their population of 1789. Agriculture, to be sure, was improved by the Revolution, by the divisions amongst the peasantry of the national domains and confiscated property of the nobles, by the abolition of tithes and game laws, and by bringing the waste lands into cultivation; but this condition is, or must soon be, on the reverse. In America, the abundance of idle and cheap land prevents this calamity for the present. I have travelled a few miles in the country, and have squeezed what sense I could out of the peasants. I find that, in all branches of husbandry, a labourer here performs a fourth less work daily than in America; and in ploughing and reaping, nearly a third. The French implements, too, are clumsy and bungling; oxen are yoked by the horns, harrows have wooden teeth, and the plough, mostly of wood, scratches up the earth instead of turning a furrow.

Another great evil in French politics is, the centralization of every thing in the metropolis. In our country, each borough or township is an independent community, and manages its concerns with scarce a sense of any foreign superintendence. An individual recommends{11} himself to favour first in his village, then in his county, next in his state, and finally in the United States; and none glimmer in the last sphere who have not shone in the first. Here this condition is reversed—there is a converging of all the rays into one general focus. Paris is the centre, and there is none but delegated authority any where else. So the French provinces are out at the heels and elbows, and Paris wears its elegant and fashionable wardrobe. Your Pottsville has a hundred miles of railroad, whilst the Havre transports the whole trade of the capital by a two-wheeled operation she calls the “roulage,” and her boats upon the channel carrying on the intercourse between the two greatest cities of the world, are about equal to yours, in which you cross over into Jersey to eat creams with mother Heyle.

A third reason of village and country poverty is, the neglect of machinery, by which production may be increased with a diminution of labour. Not a railroad has yet shewn its nose in this place, though it is the outlet to the foreign trade of one third of the French territory, including the capital, with its almost a million of inhabitants. They are cleaning their great dock to-day with a hundred or two of men armed{12} with spades, whilst a machine is doing the same work upon the Delaware with three or four negroes. The economists of the French school reason thus: If this clumsy apparatus is superseded, our workmen will be out of employ; besides, it is known that the increase of consumers always keeps pace with the increase of production, and you end where you began.—But you increase also your strength. Yes, and the difficulties of government.—You give life to a greater number of human beings. And little obligations have they for the gift, if they are to run the risk of being corrupted in this world and punished in the next; and the means of corruption are greater in a crowded than a thin population; greater amongst an idle and luxurious, than a simple and laborious people.

The American public was more happy and virtuous with its three millions than with its ten millions and its railroads. If this is all true, then the country which has least fertility of soil, and least skill in the arts of agriculture, is the most favoured by Providence; and the best system of economy is that which teaches us to procure the least possible produce with the greatest possible labour. The best employment, too, for the labourers, would be to plant cucum{13}bers in summer, and extract the sunbeams out of them, to keep themselves warm in winter. I like the system which teaches us to increase the sum of human comforts. I think it is better to live in an improved country, with clean streets and neat dwellings, than to have the same means of living with a destitution of such conveniences. I like even to starve with decent accommodations.

A fourth great cause of poverty is, the restriction which these nations have imposed upon their mutual intercourse, and the produce of each other’s industry. There is a total disagreement between natural reason and the custom of all countries on this subject. Nature, by giving us a diversity of soils, climates, and products, has pointed out the right objects of industry, and laid all nations under obligations of dependence and intimacy upon each other; and there is a general struggle amongst all to counteract this benevolent design. France, for example, has a natural fitness for wines, and the land producing this wine is unsuited to any other culture; yet she has so managed as to keep her wine trade stationary for the last fifty years. England buys her wine, of inferior quality, from Portugal and Spain, and carries{14} on a greater trade with the Chinese, her Antipodes, than with France, her next-door neighbour. All proclaim the benefits of foreign trade, and all legislate directly to get rid of their foreign customers. In what more direct way could France prevent the sale of her wines to Russia, Sweden, and England, than by refusing their coal, iron, woollen manufactures, and other products, for which they have a natural advantage in return?

But the great struggle of all is to become independent; and yet the very word implies the extinction of all foreign commerce. The greatest of all national blessings is assuredly that very dependence we are so eager to avoid. We cannot become dependent upon a foreign nation without laying it, at the same time, under a similar dependence. But in case of a war? This is the very way to make a war impossible. Men do not war against their own interests. We are dependent upon Lyons for her silks, and her petitions are now pouring in daily against the impending war with America; and many think they will go nigh to prevent it. Would not this war be more remote if the dependence were increased? If I wished to prevent all future wars with France and England,{15} I would begin by building a railroad from Paris to London, and removing their commercial restrictions. Each country would then improve to the uttermost that industry to which it is most fitted. Intimacies, too, would be improved, prejudices effaced, and they would become, at length, so dependent upon each other, that even should a mad or silly government involve them in a war, their mutual interests would force them to discontinue it.

Of all methods of gathering taxes, that of the Custom-house seems to me the worst. What an expensive apparatus of buildings! what a fleet of vessels! what an army of spies! what courts of admiralty! and what an array of new crimes upon the statute book! A custom-house is a school for perjury and other vices, and where the first lessons are made easy for beginners. There is nothing one robs with so little compunction as one’s country. It is, at the worst, only robbing thirty millions of people. A sin loses its criminality by diffusion, and may be so expanded as to be no sin at all.

All the functions of a custom-house are in their nature odious and vexatious. The first injunction is, to refuse the traveller, wearied of the sea, the common rites of hospitality on setting{16} his foot upon the land, to ransack even honest women by impudent police officers, and subject honourable men to a scrutiny practised elsewhere only upon thieves. I piqued a Frenchman on board our ship on the venality, which I had heard of, of the French ports. He replied, that he had been in the American trade for ten years, and accompanied each of his cargoes to our ports, for the express purpose of not paying the duties. Why, nothing is more easy. “There is an officer who examines; we know each other; he knocks off the top of the boxes, rummages the calico with great fuss and ceremony, and the silks and jewellery sleep quiet at the bottom. Whoever,” he says, “pays more than ten per cent. of his duties in any country, is unacquainted with his business.”

There is another item in European policy—the requirement of passports—the cost, the delays and vexatious ceremony attending it. This has incurred abundant reprehension, especially from American travellers; and there certainly is no other use in such a regulation than that a set of the most despicable creatures that creep upon the earth may get a living by it. But when one is used, for a long time, to see things done in a certain way, one does not conceive the{17} possibility of their being done in any other way. When I informed an intelligent Frenchman, of forty years, that even a stranger did not carry a passport about with him in America, and that we dispensed with all this array of police officers, and spies, and other such impediments to travelling and the intercourse of nations, he inferred that there could be no personal security. That alone, he said, would deter him from residing in the United States. When I cited against him the example of England, he remained incredulous, and required the confirmation of a better authority.

Don’t you imagine that I am going to treat you hereafter to so vulgar a thing as politics. Events have not yet thickened upon my observation, and I am obliged to make use of all my resources. If I could afford to send you blank paper all the way across the Atlantic, I would have omitted these last pages—hand them over to your husband. The living here is about equal in the quality of food and price to your best houses of Philadelphia. The hotels are shabby in comparison with ours; the one I lodge in has not been washed since the year of the world 1656; but the cookery and service are altogether in favour of the French. A break{18}fast is two francs, a dinner three, and a chamber two. You may count your daily expenses at a dollar and a half in the best houses. The Havre is our first acquaintance on the continent, and its history cannot be without some interest, especially to ladies who are just sighing to go to Paris. Adieu.

Rouen, July 3rd, 1835.

What a curiosity of ugliness is a French diligence. It exceeds in this quality even our American stages. But beauty is sacrificed to convenience: it carries three tons of passengers and luggage, with a speed of seven miles an hour. The coupé, in front, has three seats, the intérieur, six, and the rotonde as many in the rear, the price decreasing in the same direction—from the whole, to about the half of our American prices. There are also three seats aloft. These divisions are invisible to each other, and represent the world outside—the rich, the middling, and the poor. If you feel very aristocratic, you take the whole coupé to yourself, or yourself and lady, and you can be as private as you please. Each seat is numbered, and the traveller has his number on the way-bill{19} and in his pocket. A conducteur superintends luggage, &c., and is paid extra. The team has three horses abreast in front, and two in the rear, and upon one of the latter is mounted a postillion. This personage deserves a particular notice. He is immersed to his middle in a huge pair of boots, making each leg the diameter of his body; and his body, too, is squeezed into a narrow coat, which being buttoned to the chin, props his woeful countenance towards the firmament, so that he corresponds exactly with Ovid’s description of a man, or rather, he looks like the letter Y upside down. Cracking a whip he does not regard as an acquirement, but a virtue. He can crack several tunes; and, in a calm night, serenades a whole village.

The road to Rouen, in the diligence, has nothing in it agreeable. The land has the ordinary crops, but it is a wide waste of cultivation, without hedges, or barns, or cottages. The only relief is now and then a comfortless village, or a solitary and neglected chateau. You swallow a mouthful of dust at each breath, and you are disgusted at all the stopping-places by the wailing voices of beggars, old men and women recommending themselves by decrepitude, and children by rags and nakedness.{20} The children often run before the diligence for a quarter of a mile in quest of the charitable sous. I soon got out of change, and then reasoned myself into a fit of uncharitableness. They may be unworthy, and I shall encourage vice; besides, charity only increases the breed. What I give to these vagabonds I take from somebody else. I should otherwise lay it out in some article of trade, and if all do so, we shall only make a new set of beggars by relieving the old—reduce the industrious to mendicity by encouraging the idlers. Moreover, I can’t help all, and I won’t help any, or, if I do help any, I will give to my own countrymen, and not to these ragamuffin Frenchmen. In this way, you get along without much affecting the tranquillity of your conscience. My advice is, that you come by the Seine and the steamboat. It is a passage of only eight hours, and every one says it will delight you with its beautiful and romantic scenery.

I suppose you know this is the birth-place of Racine and Fontenelle. It deserves a passing notice on their account, as also on its own. The residence of those truculent old Norman dukes who made the world shake with fear, and gave sovereigns to some of the best nations{21} of Europe, cannot be an indifferent spot upon the globe. Indeed, we may trace to it many of our own institutions, as well as a good part of our language. Our terms of law, the very cries of our courts in Schuylkill county, are imported from this Old Normandy, of which Rouen is the capital. It is a fantastic old town, with earthenware tiles, and enclosed between two mountains, having a mixture of art and nature, which bring each other out finely into relief. One is delighted to see town in the country, and country in the town. Here is a large factory, or hotel, and there a set of gray and tawny-looking hovels, like a village of the Puttawattemies.

The peasants are seen amongst the tops and chimneys of the houses, cultivating their fields on the sides, and upon the summits, of the hills, which are arrayed in tufts of woodland, hedges, and pasturage; and all the avenues leading to the town are beautifully overshaded with chestnuts and elms. The Seine, too, has its fairy islands and weeping willows on its banks, and winds along through the middle of the town; and now and then a steamboat comes up the valley, with a puffing and fuss that would have made stare even the iron features of old Rollo. One can see such a town but once, and no one{22} can see it so well as he who has been used to the fresh and glaring villages of our country. Rouen has ninety thousand inhabitants, a library of four thousand volumes, a gallery of paintings, and manufactures of all sorts of calico and other cotton stuffs; also of velvets, shawls, linen, and bombasins. More than half the population is engaged directly in these manufactures. My advice is, that you sleep here one night instead of in the diligence, in running post to Paris; and in your evening’s walk, I invite you to step out and see Napoleon’s bridge, which has, in the centre of it, a fine statue of Corneille.

I went to see that famous piece of venerable antiquity, the Cathedral. You have its picture in all the “Penny Magazines.” Our guide, who knows it by heart, told us his tale as follows:—“Gentlemen, this is the tomb of Rollo, first duke of Normandy; no horse could carry him; had to walk on foot; died 917. Gentlemen, this is William Longsword, his son and successor; was on the point of taking the frock to be a monk, but was basely assassinated by Arnaud, Count of Flanders.” (And the devil a monk was he.) “Gentlemen, this is Pierre de Breze, Grand Seneschal of Anjou and Normandy; fell in the battle of Montilherry, 1467;{23} and this is John, Duke of Bedford, Viceroy of Normandy, who died in 1438. In this tomb, gentlemen (come a little nearer)—in this tomb is deposited the heart of Richard Cœur de Lion! (a tremor ran through our bones.) His heart is in this tomb, his brains are in Poictiers, and the other parts of him in Kent, in Great Britain. The man who took out his brains died of it. This is the last man Richard killed, and he had killed more than one.” Here our Cicerone ran down, and his features, just now so animated, were suddenly collapsed, the natural effect of inspiration.

We looked then at the great bell, and the organs, and the statues of saints, most of them mutilated in the Revolution. One, without a nose, they told us was St. Dunstan; the Devil and the Jacobins having retaliated. There is a headless trunk, too, they might very well pass for St. Denis. One of the remarkable features of this church is the painting on glass, representing scriptural scenes, of which the colours seem to have grown more vivid by time, though time has destroyed the secret of their composition. The architecture is Gothic, and the grandest specimen of this order in France. Its immense fluted columns, near a hundred feet high{24} and ten or twelve in diameter—its images of Christ and the Virgin, and the pictures of the apostles and saints, are both sublime and beautiful. The lightning has thought it worthy of a visit, and has overturned one of its huge towers.

Poor Joan of Arc! Here is her monument in the midst of the market square, where she was burnt. It is a pedestal of twenty feet, surmounted by her statue. Alongside of this trophy of French and English barbarism, instead of blushing for shame, they shew you, for sixpence, the room in which she was imprisoned. It is damp, and has only glimmerings of light, and is altogether a horrid remnant of antiquity. Farewell to Rouen.{25}

LETTER II.

Paris, July 4th, 1835.

When one has travelled all night in a French diligence in the dog-days, and is set down next morning in the “Place Notre Dame des Victoires,” three thousand miles from one’s home—oh dear! one has much less pleasure in the aspect of the great city than one expected. Voilà Paris! said the “conducteur,” announcing our approach; each one half opening his eyes, and then closing them suddenly. Four gentlemen and two ladies in a diligence, bobbing their heads at each other about six of the morning; the hour in which sleep creeps so agreeably upon one’s senses, is an interesting{26} spectacle. It was cruel to be interrupted in so tender an interview. Voilà Paris! was echoed a second time, so we awoke and looked out, except a lady, who reposed gently upon my left shoulder, who had seen Paris a thousand times, and had never slept with four gentlemen perhaps in her life. She lay still, I attentive not to awake her, until the ill-omened raven croaked a third time, Paris! A French gentleman now did the honours of the city to us strangers. “That, sir, is the ‘Invalids;’ see how the morning rays glitter from its gilded dome. And this, which peers so proudly over the Barrière de l’Etoile, is the grand Triumphal Arch of Napoleon;” and he read over the trophies—Marengo! Jena! Austerlitz! praised the sculpture and bas reliefs, and burst out into a great many tropes about French victories. We now passed down through the Champs Elysees, rolled along the beautiful Rue Rivoli, and arrived fast asleep upon the Place Notre Dame des Victoires. I advise you to sleep at St. Germains, where the steamboat will leave you, and come to Paris next morning with the imagination fresh for the enjoyment. To be wide awake improves wonderfully one’s capacity for admiration.{27}

I stood and looked about, and I felt the spirit of manhood die away within me; and every other spirit, even curiosity. I would rather have seen one of your haycocks than the queen. But, fortunately, here is no time for reflection. You are immediately surrounded by a score of individuals, who greet you with hats in their hands and with great officiousness, offering you all at once their services. Some are exceedingly anxious you should lodge in their hotels: La plus jolie location de tout Paris—des chambres de toute beauté! and others are dying to carry your luggage; others again are eager to sell you their wares, and thrust a bit of soap, or a cane, or a pair of spectacles, in your face suddenly. I mistook this for an attempt at assassination. Next, I had to bow to my toes for a lodging. With the address of three hotels, a mile apart, I had to pick one out of the street. I advise you not to run about town till your porter’s charges are of greater amount than the value of your luggage, but to put yourself and your trunks in a hack, and you will have at least a ride for your money; besides, the driver is limited in his charges, and the porter is à discretion, and discretion is one of the dearest of the French virtues.{28}

Who do you think I had for a fellow traveller? Your old acquaintance —— ——, who has lost his wife, and travels to dissipate his grief. He has not left off saying good things. He remarked that it was a bad day to go into Paris—the 4th of July; there would be such a crowd. Recollecting with what jubilee we celebrate this day at New York, he imagined how much greater must be the confusion at Paris. He feared we should have our brains knocked out by the mob. You can’t think what an advantage it is for one having but little of this commodity of brains, to travel into foreign countries; one grows into the reputation of a wit by not being understood. I do not mean to be arrogant in saying I am better versed, at least in our foreign relations, than my companion, and yet I was noticed on the way only as being of his suite, which I ascribe entirely to my capacity to express myself in a known tongue. As he did not speak French, I was mistaken for the interpreter to some foreign ambassador.

Paris is a wilderness of tall, scraggy, and dingy houses, of irregular heights and sizes, starting out impudently into the street, or retiring modestly, and without symmetry, a palace often the counterpart of a pig-sty, and a cathe{29}dral next neighbour to a hen-roost. The streets run zig-zag, and abut against each other as if they did not know which way to run. They are paved with cubical stones of eight and ten inches, convex on the upper surface like the shell of a terrapin; few have room for side-walks, and where not bounded by stores, they are dark as they were under king Pepin. Some of them seem to be water-tight. St. Anne, my first acquaintance, is yet clammy with mud after a week’s drought, and early in the morning when she gets up, she is filthy to a degree that is indecent. The etymology of Paris is mud; the etymology of the Bourbons is mud, and mud to the last note of time will be, Paris and the Bourbons.

As for the noise of the streets, I need not attempt to describe it. What idea can ears, used only to the ordinary and human noises, conceive of this unceasing racket—this rattling of the cabs and other vehicles over the rough stones, this rumbling of the omnibusses. For the street cries—one might have relief from them by a file and hand-saw. First the prima donna of the fish-market opens the morning: Carpes toutes fraiches; voilà des carpes! And then stand out{30} of the way for the glazier: Au vitrière! quavering down the chromatic to the lowest flat upon the scale. Next the ironmonger, with his rasps, and files, and augers, which no human ears could withstand, but that his notes are happily mellowed by the seller of old clothes, Marchand de drap! in a monotone so low and spondaic, and so loud, as to make Lablache die of envy. About nine is full chorus, headed by the old women and their proclamations: Horrible attentat contre la vie du roi Louis Philippe—et la petite chienne de Madame la Marquise—égarée à dix heures—L’Archevèque de Paris—Le Sieur Lacenaire—Louis Philippe, le Procès monstre—et tout cela pour quatre sous! being set loose all at the same time, tuned to different keys. All things of this earth seek, at one time or another, repose—all but the noise of Paris. The waves of the sea are sometimes still, but the chaos of these streets is perpetual from generation to generation; it is the noise that never dies. Many new comers have been its victims. In time, however—such is the complaisance of human nature—we become reconciled even to this never-ending hubbub. It becomes even necessary, it is said, to one’s com{31}forts. There are persons here who get a night-mare in a place of tranquillity, and can sleep only upon the Boulevards.

Paris and I, are yet on ceremonious terms. I venture upon her acquaintance as one who walks upon ice; it is the boy’s first lesson of skating. I am not much versed in towns any way; and this one is ahead of my experience. In my case, one is ignorant and afraid to ask information. I did venture this morning to ask what General that was—a fat, decent-looking gentleman, in silk stockings, and accoutred in regimentals? That General, sir, is Prince Talleyrand’s lacquey. Soon after, I inquired what house was that barn of a place? That house, sir, is the Louvre. So I must feel the ground under me. Yesterday, being Sunday, (which I found out by the almanac,) I went to St. Roch’s. I had the luck to hit upon the fashionable church; but the preacher was the god of dulness. The world, he says, is growing worse and worse; our roguish ancestors begot us bigger rogues, about to produce a worse set of rogues than ourselves. “The antichrist is already come.” If he had said the antichrist of wit, anybody would have believed him; and yet this is the very pulpit from which the Bossuets and Bourdaloues used{32} to preach. The church was filled almost entirely with women. One might think that none go to heaven in this country but the fair sex. The worshippers seem intent enough upon their devotions; but the wide avenues at the sides are filled with a crowd of idle, curious, and disorderly spectators. Give me a French church: one walks in here booted and spurred, looks at the pretty women and the pictures, whistles a tune if one chooses, and then walks out again. They have not spoilt the architectural beauty of St. Roch’s by pews and galleries. The walls are adorned splendidly with paintings; and here and there are groups of statuary; and the altar, being finely gilt and illuminated, looks magnificently. When I build a church I will decorate it somewhat in this manner. It is good to imitate nature as much as one can, in all things; and she has set us the example in this. She has adorned her great temple, the world, with green fields and fragrant flowers, and its superb dome, the firmament, with stars. I walked into the Tuileries after church, where I saw a great number of naked statues and pretty women. The pretty women were not naked. I sat down awhile by the goddess of wisdom. And this is the sum of my adventures.{33}

Oh, no! I ventured also a walk last night upon the Boulevards, about twilight. How adorable is the Madelaine! While staring at this church, (for staring is the only expression of countenance one pretends to, the first week in Paris,) a little girl—but not a little graceful and pretty—presented me a bouquet. But, my dear, I have no change. “Mais, qu’est ce que cela fait?” and she turned it about with her taper fingers, and fixed it and unfixed it, though there were but two leaves and a rosebud, and then arranged it in a buttonhole, shewing all the while her pearly teeth and laughing black eyes. She had the finesse to gain admiration for her charms without seeming to court it. We now walked on a few steps, when we met other women, of a richer attire, and of very easy, unembarrassed manners, who also said very obliging things to us, walking along side.

There is a kind of men in New England who cannot be beaten out of the dignity of a walk, who would rather die than be seen running, which is perhaps the reason they won the battle of Bunker’s Hill. Now, if you would represent to yourself something very comical, you must imagine my companion, straight-laced in his gravity, escorted by one of these sultanas of the{34} Boulevards, all betawdried, and rustling in her silks—Mon petit cœur!—Mon petit ami!—Venez donc! At last, turning suddenly upon her with a look and air of menace and expostulation, he invoked her in a most solemn manner to depart; though she understood not a word of the exorcism, she obeyed instantly, the gesture and tone being significant enough, and she went off as evil spirits do usually in such cases, murmuring, “Pourquoi me tenir donc à causer, ce diable d’homme? il m’a fait perdre au moins deux messieurs.”

We now descended by the Rue St. Anne towards our lodgings, talking as we went to prevent thinking; for we are both very tender-hearted so far from home—he of his Yankee wife, how industrious, how economical, and how she has resigned all the intercourse and pleasures of the world to teach the little children their catechism and their astronomy; and I, of our dear little wives of Schuylkill, so amiable, so cheerful, tempering their duties with amusements, and not forgetting the claims of society—when suddenly we observed, in a dark corner, reached only by a few rays of a distant lamp, a queer old woman, seated, her knees and chin together, and rocking herself on a chair. She{35} rose up in the face of my companion, who knows not a word of French, with an immense gabble: “Des demoiselles très distinguées!—jolies comme des anges!” and instantly we were hemmed round with a fluttering troop of the angels; but we escaped into the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, and locked our doors for the night. Please direct your letters to this house, No. 64, Rue St. Anne.

Hotel des Ambassadeurs, July 6th, 1835.

I must tell you how one lodges in Paris. A hotel is a huge edifice, mostly in the form of a parallelogram, and built around a paved courtyard, which serves as a landing for carriages as well as for persons on foot, and leads up to the apartments by one or more staircases. In the centre of the front wall, is a wide door (a porte cochère) opening from the street, and just inside a lodge (a concièrge) and a porter, who watches night and day over the concerns of the establishment. This porter is an important individual, and holds about the same place in a Paris hotel, that Cerberus holds—(I leave you a place for the rhyme.) He is usually a great rogue, a spy of the government, and a shoe{36}maker; he cobbles the holes he makes in your boots, while his wife darns those she makes in your stockings. He is always a bad enemy and a useful friend, and you purchase his good will by money and condescensions, as a first minister’s. He lets you rooms, he attends them, receives parcels, letters, messages, runs errands, answers your visits, and fines you a shilling if you stay out after twelve; and his relation with many lodgers enables him to give you these services, I am ashamed to tell you how cheap. By proper attentions also to his wife, there will come to your bed every morning, at the hour you appoint, a cup of coffee or tea, and the entertainment of the lady’s conversation while you sip it. Each story of a hotel is divided into apartments and rooms—that is, accommodations for whole families or individuals; distinction, and, of course, price, decreasing upwards; for example, he who lives a story lower down thinks himself above you, and you in return consider him overhead below you. A third story in the Rue Castiglione or Rivoli, is equal in rank to a second story anywhere else.

The porter’s lodge is a little niche, about eight feet square. It pays no rent, but receives a salary, usually of sixty dollars a year, from the proprietor. Our porter is a man of several{37} talents. He tunes pianos for ten sous, and plays at the “Petit Lazare” of a night for two francs. Indeed, his whole family plays; his grandmother plays the “Mother of the Gracchi.” He takes care, too, of his wife’s father; but he dresses him up as a Pair de France, or a Doge, and makes a good deal out of him also. Besides, he has a dog which he expects soon to play the “Chien de Montargis,” he is studying; and a magpie, which plays already in the “Pie Voleuse.” It is by these several industries that he is enabled to clean my boots once a day, take care of my room, and do all the domestic services required by a bachelor, at six francs a month; and he has grown into good circumstances. But, alas! impartial fate knocks at the Porter’s Lodge, as at the gates of the Louvre. He had an only son, who, in playing Collin last winter—a shepherd’s part in a vaudeville—had to wear a pair of white muslin breeches in the middle of the inclement season, and he took cold, and died of a fluxion de poitrine! The mother wept in telling this story; and then some one coming in, she smiled.

One is usually a little shy of these hotels at first sight, especially if one comes from the Broad Mountain. You take hold of an un{38}wieldy knocker, you lift it up cautiously, and open flies the door six inches; you then push yourself through, and look about with a kind of a suspicious and sheepish look, and you see no one. At length you discover an individual, who will not seem to take the least notice of you till you intrude rather far;—then he will accost you: Que demandez-vous, Monsieur?—I wish to see Mr. Smith? Monsieur?—Monsieur, il ne demeure pas ici.—Que tu es bête! exclaims the wife, c’est Monsieur Smit. Oui, oui, oui—au quatrième, Monsieur, au dessus de l’entresol; and with this information, of which you understand not a syllable, you proceed up stairs, and there you ring all the bells to the garret; but no one knows Mr. Smith. Why don’t you say Mr. Smit?

The houses here are by no means simple and uniform, as with us. The American houses are built, as ladies are dressed, all one way. First there is a pair of rival saloons, which give themselves the air of parlours: and then there is a dining room, and corresponding chambers above to the third or fourth story; and an entry runs through the middle or alongside a mile or two without stopping, at the farthest end of which is the kitchen; so that one always stands upon{39} the marble of the front door in December, until Kitty has travelled this distance to let one in. How many dinners have I seen frozen in their own sauces, how many lovers chilled, by this refrigeratory process? Here, if you just look at the knocker, the door, as if by some invisible hand, flies open; and when you descend, if you say “Cordon,” just as Ali Baba said “Sesame,” the door opens, and delivers you to the street. The houses, too, have private rooms, and secret doors, and intricate passages; and one can never be said to be at home in one’s own house. I should like to see any one find the way to a lady’s boudoir. A thief designing to rob, has to study beforehand the topography of each house, without which, he can no more unravel it than the Apocalypse. There are closets, too, and doors, in many of the rooms, unseen by the naked eye. If a gentleman is likely to be intruded on by the bailiff, he sinks into the earth; and a lady, if surprised in her dishabille, or any such emergency, just disappears into the wall.

No private dwellings are known in Paris. A style, which gives entire families and individuals, at a price that would procure them very mean separate lodgings, the air of living in a great castle; and they escape by it all that emulation{40} about houses, and door servants, and street display, which brings so much fuss and expense in our cities. I have seen houses a little straitened that were obliged to give Cæsar a coat to go to the door, another to bring in dinner, and another to curry the horses. To climb up to the second or third story is, to be sure, inconvenient; but once there, your climbing ends. Parlours, bedrooms, kitchen, and all the rest, are on the same level. In America, you have the dinner in the cellar, and the cook in the garret; and nothing but ups and downs the whole day. Moreover, climbing is a disposition of our nature. “In our proper motion we ascend.” See with what avidity we climb when we are boys; and we climb when we are old, because it reminds us of our boyhood. I have no doubt that the daily habit of climbing, too, has a good moral influence; it gives one dispositions to rise in the world. I ought to remark here, that persons in honest circumstances do not have kitchens in their own houses.

It is in favour of the French style not a little, that it improves the quality at least of one class of lodgers. Mean houses degrade men’s habits, and lower their opinions of living. As for me, I like this Paris way, but I don’t know why.{41} I like to see myself under the same roof with my neighbours. One of them is a pretty woman, with the prettiest little foot imaginable; and only think of meeting this little foot, with which one has no personal acquaintance, three or four times a-day on the staircase! Indeed, the solitude of a private dwelling begins to seem quite distressing. To be always with people one knows! it paralyzes activity, breeds selfishness, and other disagreeable qualities. Solitary life has its vices, too, as well as any other.

On the other hand, a community of living expands one’s benevolent affections, begets hospitality, mutual forbearance, politeness, respect for public opinion, and keeps cross husbands from beating their wives, and vice versa. If Xantippe had lived in a French hotel, she would not have kept throwing things out of the window upon her husband’s head. The domestic virtues are, to be sure, well enough in their way; but they are dull, and unless kept in countenance by good company, they go too soon to bed. Indeed, that word “home,” so sacred in the mouths of Englishmen, often means little else than dozing in an arm-chair, listening to the squeaking of children, or dying of the vapours; at all events, the English are the people of the{42} world most inclined to leave these sanctities of home. Here they are by hundreds, running in quest of happiness all about Europe.

But to return. My object, in setting out, was to shew you, as nearly as possible, my manner of living in the street of St. Anne. I have a chambre de garçon au second; this means, a bachelor’s room in the third story. As companions, I have General Kellerman, and a naked Mars over the chimney (not Mademoiselle), and a little Bonaparte about three inches long; and on a round table, with a marble cover, there is an old Rabelais and a Seneca’s Maxims, with manuscript notes on the margin, and a Bible open at Jeremiah. The floor is a kind of brick pavement, upon which a servant performs a series of rubbings, every morning, with a brush attached to his right foot, which gives it a slippery and mahogany surface. We have a livery stable also in the yard, and several persons lodge here for the benefit of the smell, it being good against consumption. Of the staircase I say nothing now, as I intend some day to write a treatise upon French Staircases. This one has not been washed ever, unless by some accident, such as Noah’s flood. Indeed, the less one says of French cleanliness in the way of houses the{43} better. Our landlady appears no more delighted with a clean floor than an antiquary would be with a scoured shield; and there is none of the middling hotels of Paris that presumes to be better than this. I ought to remark here, that servants do not run about from one garret to another as they do in America. A French servant is transmitted to posterity. Our coachman says he has been in this family several hundred years.

When one cannot travel in the highway of life with a fashionable equipage, it is pleasant to steal along its secret path unnoticed. A great man is so jostled by the throng that either he cannot think at all, or, in gathering its silly admiration, so occupied with intrigues and mere personal vanities that the good qualities of his understanding are perverted, and he loses at length his taste for innocent enjoyments. But, travelling in this sober, unambitious way, one may gather flowers by the road side; one has leisure for the contemplation of useful and agreeable things; and is not obliged to follow absurd fashion, or keep up troublesome appearances; and one can get into low company when one pleases, without being suspected. Now I can wander “on my short-tailed nag” all over{44} the country; I can get sometimes into a coucou and ride out to St. Germains, or stroll unconcerned through the markets, and ask the price of fruits; of cassolettes, muscats, and jargonelles, and of grapes; and I can eat a bunch or two upon the pavement, just fresh from Fontainbleau; and do a great many innocent things which persons of distinction dare not do. This is the life of those who lodge at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs.

Here are two sheets filled, with what meagre events! and how much below the dignity of history! I console myself that trifles, like domestic anecdotes, are often the most characteristic. I will be your Boswell to the city of Paris. But Boswell had to retail the sense of an individual, and I the nonsense of the multitude, and my own. However, I wish these letters to be preserved from the flames, if you can, frivolous as they are; I have partly a design to manufacture some sort of a book out of them on my return home. I intend them as notes upon the field of battle—like Cæsar’s Commentaries, with the exception of the wit.{45}

July 7th.

I went with my Yankee companion last night to the Grand Opera; and, at the risk of being enormously long, I am going to add a postscript; for it is a wet day, and I have no better way to beguile the lazy twenty-four hours. They admit the spectators to a French theatre in files of two between high railings, and under the grim and bearded authority of the police, which prevents crowding and disorder; and whoever wishes to go in, not having a seat provided, “makes tail,” as they call it, by entering the file in the rear. A number of speculators also stand in the ranks at an early hour, and sell out their places at an advance to the more tardy, so that you have always this resort to obtain a good enough seat. In approaching the house, persons will offer you tickets, with great importunity, in the streets. With one of these, which, by cheapening a little, I got at double price, I procured admission to the pit.

L’analyse de la Pièce; voilà le programme! These are two phrases—meaning only the analysis and bill of the play, at two sous—which you will hear croaked with the most obstreperous discord through the house, in the intervals of the performance, to bring out Monsieur{46} Auber, and Scribe, and the Donnas. It is probably for the same reason the owls are permitted to sing in the night, to bring out the nightingales. The opera last night was “Robert le Diable,”—voici l’analyse de la pièce.

There was the representation of a grave-yard and a resurrection; and the ghosts, at least two hundred, flocked out of the ground in white frocks and silk stockings, and they squeaked and gibbered all over the stage. Then they asked one another out to dance, and performed the most fashionable ballets of their country, certainly in a manner very creditable to the other world. And while these waltzed and quadrilled, another set were entertaining themselves with elegant and fashionable amusements, some were turning summersets upon a new grave; others playing at whist upon a tombstone, and others again were jumping the rope over a winding-sheet; when suddenly, they all gave a screech and skulked into their graves; there was a flutter through the house, the music announcing some great event, and at length, amidst a burst of acclamations, Mademoiselle Taglioni stood upon the margin of the scene. She seemed to have alighted there from some other sphere.{47}

I expected to be little pleased with this lady, I had heard such frequent praises of her accomplishments; but was disappointed. Her exceeding beauty surpasses the most excessive eulogy. Her dance is the whole rhetoric of pantomime; its movements, pauses, and attitudes, in their purest Attic simplicity, chastity, and urbanity. She has a power over the feelings which you will be unwilling to concede to her art. She will make your heart beat with joy; she will make you weep by the sole eloquence of her limbs. What inimitable grace! In all she attempts, you will love her, and best in that which she attempts last. If she stands still, you will wish her a statue that she may stand still always; or if she moves, you will wish her a wave of the sea that she may do nothing but—“move still, still so, and own no other function.” To me, she appeared last night to have filled up entirely the illusion of the play—to have shuffled off this gross and clumsy humanity, and to belong to some more airy and spiritual world.

But my companion, who is a professor, and a little ecclesiastical, and bred in that most undancing country, New England, was scandalized at the whole performance. He is of the old{48} school, and has ancient notions of the stage, and does not approve this modern way of “holding the mirror up to nature.” He was displeased especially at the scantiness of the lady’s wardrobe. I was born farther south, and could better bear it.

The art of dressing, as I have read in the history of Holland and other places, has been carried often by the ladies to a blameable excess of quantity; so much so, that a great wit said in his day, a woman was “the least part of herself.” Taglioni’s sins, it is true, do not lie on this side of the category; she produced last evening nothing but herself—Mademoiselle Taglioni in the abstract. Ovid would not have complained of her. Her lower limbs wore a light silk, imitating nature with undistinguishable nicety; and her bosom a thin guaze, which just relieved the eye, as you have seen a fine fleecy cloud hang upon the dazzling sun. But there is no gentleman out of New England who would not have grieved to see her spoilt by villainous mantua-makers. She did not, moreover, exceed what the courtesy of nations has permitted, and what is necessary to the proper exhibition of her art.

They call this French opera, the “Académie{49} Royale de Musique,” also, the “Français,” in contradistinction with the “Italien,” finally, the “Grand Opera;” this latter name because it has a greater quantity of thunder and lightning, of pasteboard seas, of paper snow-storms, and dragons that spit fire; also a gorgeousness of wardrobe and scenery not equalled upon any theatre in Europe. It is certain, its “corps de ballet” can outdance all the world put together.

Mercy! how deficient we are in our country in these elegant accomplishments. In many things we are still in our infancy,—in dancing we are not yet born. We have, it is true, our “balancés,” and “chassés,” and back-to-backs, and our women do throw a great deal of soul into their little feet—as on a “birth-night,” or an “Eighth of January,” or the like;—but the Grand Opera, the Opera Français, the Académie Royale de Musique! ah, ma foi, c’est là une autre affaire!—You have read, and so has everybody, of the “dancing Greeks;” of Thespis, so described by Herodotus, who used to dance on his head, his feet all the while dangling in the air; of the “Gaditanian girls,” so sung by Anacreon; of Hylas, who danced before Augustus; of the “dancing Dervishes,” who{50} danced their religion like our Shakers; of the pantomimic dances, described by Raynal; and the Turkish Ulemas, by the “sweet Lady Mary Montague,” (quere “sweet?”) and finally, every one has heard of the “Age of Voltaire, the King of Prussia, and Vestris,”—well, all this is out-danced by Taglioni and the Grand Opera.

This opera has seats for two thousand spectators, besides an immense saloon (two hundred feet by fifty) where a great number of fashionables, to relieve their ears from the noise of the singing, promenade themselves magnificently during the whole evening, under the light of brilliant lustres; and where the walls, wainscotted with mirrors, multiply their numbers and charms to infinity.—May I not as well continue dancing through the rest of this page?

Dancing, you know, is a characteristic amusement of the French; and you may suppose they have accommodations to gratify their taste to its fullest extent. There are elegant rotundas for dancing in nearly all the public gardens, as at “Tivoli,” “Waxhal d’Eté,” and the “Chaumière de Mont Parnasse.” Besides, there are “Guinguettes” at every Barrière; and in the “Village Fêtes,” which endure the whole summer, dancing is the chief amusement; and{51} public ball-rooms are distributed through every quarter of Paris, suited to every one’s rank and fortune. The best society of Paris go to the balls of Ranelagh, Auteuil, and St. Cloud. The theatres, too, are converted into ball-rooms, especially for the masquerades, from the beginning to the end of the Carnival.

I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and went with a lady from New Orleans to see the most famous of the “Guinguettes.” Here all the little world seemed to me completely and reasonably happy, behaving with all the decency, and dancing with almost the grace, of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell you it was Sunday night: it is so difficult to keep Sunday all alone, and without any one to help you. The clergy find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only, these places are seen to advantage. I am very far from approving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but I have no doubt that in a city like Paris the dancers are more taken from the tavern and gin-shops than from the churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute denunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of our religious classes in{52} America. If human virtues are put up at too high a price, no one will bid for them. Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, and a great deal in favour. Miriam danced, you know how prettily; and David danced. To be sure, the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable, according to the fashion of our climates. In the New Testament, to give enjoyment to the dance, the water was changed into wine. If you will accept classical authority I will give you pedantry par dessus la tête. The Greeks ascribed to dancing a celestial origin, and they admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and amusements of their divinities. The Graces are represented almost always in the attitude of dancing; and Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of wisdom, too, is called by Pindar the “dancer.” Indeed, I could shew you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself sometimes took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced a gavot.

There, it is proved to you from an ancient Greek poet. I could shew you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his rare qualities, is praised by Corne{53}lius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an evening party at Athens, passed for a clown, for refusing to take a share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek, and to be talking to women about the ancients. Don’t you say that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains, and I don’t know how many of the dumb animals—especially the bears, who, even on the South-Sea Islands, where they could not have any relations with the Académie Royale de Musique, yet always express their extreme joy (Captain Cook says) by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And if you won’t believe all this, I will take you to see a Negro holiday on the Mississippi. Now, this is enough about dancing; it is very late, and I must dance off to bed.

It is necessary to be as much in love with dancing as I am to preach so pedantically about it as I have in this postscript. Its enormous length, when you have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, needs no apology. When you do see her, take care her legs don’t get into your head; they kept capering in mine all last night.{54}

LETTER III.

Paris, July, 1835.

The main street of Paris, and one of the most remarkable streets in the whole world, is the Boulevard. It runs from near the centre towards the east, and coils around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent houses are large, black, and irregular in height, resembling at a distance, battlements, or turretted castles. Its course is zig-zag, and each section has a different name, and different pursuits; so that it presents you a new face and character, a new{55} and picturesque scene, at every quarter of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but is approved by the general taste. Our Broadways, and Chestnut streets, and Regent-streets, are exhausted at a single view; the Boulevard entertains all day. Its side-walks are delightfully wide, and overshadowed with elms.

Before the visit of the allies, it had eight miles of trees,—a kind of ornament that is held in better esteem in European than in American cities. Our ancestors took a dislike to trees, from having so much grubbing at their original forests, and their enmity has been infused into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a passion become hereditary, and I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous indulgence. A squatter of the back woods begins by felling the trees indiscriminately; and he is most honoured, as those first Germans we read of in Cæsar, who has made the widest devastation around his dwelling. Your Pottsville, which ten years ago was a forest, has to-day not a fig-leaf to cover its nakedness.

Here is a gentleman just going to Philadelphia, who will hand you this letter; I send also{56} a map of Paris, that I may have your company on such rambles as I may chance to take through the capital. To day I invite you to a walk upon the Boulevards.

On the west end is the Madelaine, in full view of the street. While the other monuments of Paris are “dim with the mist of years,” this stands, like a new-dressed bride, in white and glowing marble; its architecture fresh from the age of Pericles. This church became pagan in the Revolution; it was for a while the “Temple of Glory,” and has returned to the true catholic faith. Three mornings of the week, you will find at its feet half an acre in urns, baskets, and hedges, of all that nature has prettiest in her magazine of flowers; delighting the eye by their tasteful combination of colours, and embalming the air with their fragrance. I am sorry you are not a gentleman, I could describe to you so feelingly the flower-girl—her fichu too narrow by an inch; her frock rumpled and disordered, which seems hung upon her by the graces. Her laughing eyes emulate the diamond; and love has pressed his two fingers upon her brunette cheeks. This is the Boulevard Madelaine. On the south side, a sad looking garden occupies its whole length. I asked of a Frenchman{57} whose it was; he says “it is the Minister of Strange Affairs.” It is the hotel of Monsieur Thiers, who wrote a book about the Revolution and a “Treatise upon Wigs,” and is now minister des affaires étrangères. I do not like him, this Mr. Thiers, and I don’t care to tell you the reason. I experienced yesterday some impudence and pertness from one of the clerks of his office; and these underlings you know represent usually the qualifications of their masters in such particulars.

To leave Paris for London requires your passport to be signed at the police office, at the American and English ambassadors’, and at the French minister’s. At the first office you are set down with a motley crew upon a bench, and there you sit, like one of those virtues in front of the “Palais Bourbon,” often an hour or two, until your name is called; and when it is called you don’t recognise it, and you keep sitting on, unless you take some one along with you to translate it for you. There is not anything in nature so unlike itself as one’s name Frenchified—even a monosyllable. As for “John,” it changes genders altogether, and becomes “Jean.” To the last three offices you pay the valedictory compliment of thirty francs, and get their impudence{58} into the bargain. You will always find persons about your lodgings, called “facteurs,” (they should be called benefactors,) who will do all this for you, for a small consideration, much better than you can do it yourself.

You are now on the Boulevard des Capucines. It is raised about thirty feet, and the houses for a quarter of a mile are left in the valley. The garret and Miss Annette are alone above ground; all the high life here is below stairs. On the right side, you see apparently one of the happiest of human beings, the “marchand des chiens,” who sells little dogs and parrots. “A six francs ma caniche!”—“Margot à dix francs!” he cries, with a gentle voice, half afraid some one might hear him; he has become attached to his animals, and feels a sorrow to part with them. He feels as you for your chickens you have fed every day, when you must kill them for dinner. Poor little Azor, and Zémire! Only think of seeing them no more! He sells them a few francs cheaper, when the purchaser is rich and likely to treat them well. The French, especially the women, dote upon dogs beyond the example of all other nations, and yet have the nastiest race of curs upon the earth. A dog, they say, loves his master the{59} more he is a vagabond, and the French in return love their dogs the more they are shabby. What would I give for a few of those eloquent bow wows which resound in the night from an American barn-yard, and which protect so securely one’s little wife from the thieves and the lovers, while the husband is wandering in foreign lands.

Take off your hat; this is one of the choice and pre-eminent spots of the French capital; the very seat almost of the pleasures and amusements of Europe; it is the Boulevard Italien. It is here that gentlemen and ladies assemble of an evening to discuss the immense importance of a good dinner, when the labours of the day have closed, and not a care intrudes to distract the mind from the great business of deglutition and digestion. Men make splendid reputations here which live after them by the invention of a single soup. It is here they make the sauces in which one might eat his own grandfather. This place was respected by the Holy Alliance; and Lord Wellington, in 1815, pitched his marquee upon the Boulevard Italien.

It is in vain to expect perfection in an art unless we honour those who exercise its functions. Monsieur Carème, (whom I mention{60} for the sake of honour, and who lives close by here in the Rue Lafitte,) now cook to the Baron Rothschild and ex-cook to the Prince of Wales, is one of the most considerable persons of this age; holding a high gentlemanly rank, and living in an enviable condition of opulence and splendour. He keeps his carriage, takes his airings of an evening, has his country seat, and his box at the opera; and has, indeed, every attribute requisite to make a gentleman in any country. The number of officers attached to his staff is greater than that of any general of the present régime; his assistant roaster has a salary above our President of the United States. It is by this honourable recompence of merit that, through all the vicissitudes of her various fortunes, France has still maintained unimpaired her great prerogative of teaching the nations how to cook.

Monsieur de Carème is worthy a particular notice. He had an ancestor who was “chef de cuisine,” of the Vatican, and invented a soupe maigre for his Holiness; and another who was cook to the Autocratrix of all the Russias. How talents do run in some families! Himself, having served his apprenticeship under an eminent artist of the Boulevard Italien, he{61} invented a sauce piquante, when quite a young man; and by a regular cultivation of his fine natural powers, he has reached a degree of perfection in his art which has long since set envy and rivalship at defiance. The truth is, that a great cook is as rare a miracle as a great poet. It is well known that Claude Lorraine could not succeed in pastry with all his genius.

To whom, think you, does the British nation owe those Attic suppers, those feasts of the gods, which so surprised the Allied Monarchs, and brought so much glory upon his late majesty? To Monsieur de Carème. And to whom do you think the Baron Rothschild owes those clear and unclouded faculties with which he out-financiers all Europe and America? Certes, to Monsieur de Carème. All the Baron has to do is to dine; digestion is done by his cook. Carème has refused invitations to nearly every European court; and it was only upon the most urgent solicitations that he consented to reside eight months at Carlton House,—a portion of his life upon which he looks back with much{62} displeasure and repentance, and the remnant of his days he designs to consecrate, with the greater zeal on this account, to the honour and interests of his native country. He is now preparing a digest of his art, after the manner of the Code Napoleon; and eminent critics, to whom he has communicated his work, pronounce it excellent, both for its literary and culinary merits.

To this Boulevard also the sweetmeat part of the creation resort about twilight to their creams and lemonades and eau sucrée. They seat themselves upon both margins of the trottoir upon chairs, leaving an interval between, for the successive waves of pedestrians, who are also attracted hither by the fashion and elegance of the place. How charming, of a summer evening, to sit you down here upon one chair and put your feet upon another, and look whole hours away upon this little world; or to walk up and down and eye the double row of belles seated amidst the splendour of the gas-lamps. In this group are examples of nearly all that is extant of the human species. I have seen a Bedouin of the Mer Rouge stumble upon a great ambassador from the Neva; and a Mandarin of the Loo-koo run foul of an ex-school-{63}master of the Mohontongo. If any one is missing from your mines of Shamoken, come hither, and you will find him seated on a straw-bottomed chair on the Boulevard Italien.

These splendid cafés are multiplied by mirrors, and being open, or separated only by panels of glass, appear to form but a single tableau with the street, and those outside and in seem parts of the same company. I recommend you the Café de Paris, the Café Hardi, the Café Veron, if you wish to mix with the fashionable and merry world; if with the business world, with the great bankers, the millionaires, the noblesse de la Bourse, who smooth their cares with fat dinners and good wines, where else in the world should you go but to Tortoni’s? There are not two Tortonis upon the earth. A dinner you may get at the Rocher Cancale,—but a breakfast!—it is to be had no where in all Europe out of Tortoni’s. The ladies of high and fashionable life stop here before the door, and are served by liveried waiters elegantly in their barouches; they cannot think of venturing in, there are so many more gentlemen outside. You will see here, both in and out, the most egregious cockneys of Europe, the beau Brummels and the beau Nashes, the{64} “Flashes,” and “Full-Swells” of London town, and, in elegant apposition, the Parisian exquisites.

Was there ever anything so beautiful!—No, d’honneur! His boots are of Evrat, his coat Staub, vest Moreau, gloves and cravat Walker, and hat Bandoni; and Mrs. Frederic is his washerwoman! You will please give the superiority to the French. To make an elegant fop is more than the barber’s business; nature herself must have a finger in the composition. Besides, if a man is born a fool, he is a greater fool in Paris than elsewhere, there are such opportunities for acquirement.

These are the French people. Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in mustachios? If I had not the great Marlborough, and Bonaparte, and Apollo, on my side, all three unwhiskered, I would go home in the next packet. The moment one has made one’s debut here in the world of beards, one is a man, and there is no manhood, founded on any other pretensions, that can dispense with this main qualification. It is the one eminent criterion of all merit; it is a diploma; a bill of credit as current as in the days Albuquerque; it is promotion in the army, in the diplomacy, even in the church; you cannot be a saint without this grisly recom{65}mendation. One loves the women, just because they have no beards on their faces.

Otherwise—à la barbe près—the French are well enough. It is the same kind of population, nearly, that one meets by the gross in New York, and everywhere else. I looked about for Monsieur Dablancour, but could see nothing of him. In a foreign country a man is always a caricature of himself. The French are here in their own element, and swim in it naturally. One is always awkward from the very sense of not knowing foreign customs; and always ridiculous abroad because everything is ridiculous which departs from common and inveterate habit, and nothing is ridiculous which conforms with it. In a nation of apes, it is becoming to be an ape. If you place a man of sense in a company of fools, it is the man of sense who is embarrassed and looks foolish. If one travelled into Timbuctoo, I presume one would feel very foolish for being white.

But this is not all that is worth your attention on the Boulevard Italien. If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are the Bains Chinoises just opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtue par excellence. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. Hot baths{66} as good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous. The Bains Vigiers at twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count. You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry and lounges; baths double and single, with and without attendance, with a whole skin, or flayed alive with friction. And besides these baths ordinary and extraordinary—Russian, Turkish, and Chinese—you have baths specific against all human infirmities; baths alkalic, sulphurous, fumigatory, oleaginous, and antiphlogistic. All the mineral waters of Europe pour themselves at your feet in the middle of Paris. Spa, Seltzer, Barege, Aix-la-chapelle, and Ginsnack; manufactured, every one of them, in the street of the University, Gros Caillou, No. 21. And this is not all; there is the “ambulatory bath,” which walks to your bedside, and, embracing you, walks out again, at thirty sous. “C’est un vrai pays de Cocagne que ce Paris.”

And if you love gew-gaws, gingumbobs, and pretty shop-girls, why here they are at the Bazaar. The French take care, as no other{67} people, to furnish such places with pretty women, and they turn their influence, as women, to the account of the shop. The English, I have heard, put all their deformities into their bazaars, that customers, they say, may attend to the other merchandise. The French way is the more sensible. I have been ruined already several times by the same shop-girl, caressing and caressing each of one’s fingers, as she tries on a pair of gloves one does not want.

Or if you love the fine arts, where are all the print-shops of Paris? Why here. You can buy here Calypsos and Cleopatras all naked, with little French faces; and Scipios and Cæsars, and other marshals of the empire, from any price down to three sous a piece. Finally, if you love the best patés in this world, we will just step over into the Passage Panorama to Madame Felix’s. Sweet Passage Panorama! How often have I walked up and down beneath thy crystal roof as the dusky evening came on, with arms folded, and in the narcotic influence of a choice Havannah, forgotten all, all but that a yawning gulf lies between me and my friends and native country!

Give a sou to this little Savoyard with the smiling face, who sweeps the crossings. “Ah,{68} Madame, regardez dans votre petite poche si vous n’avez pas un petit sou à me donner!” How can you refuse him! If you do, he will make you just the same thankful bow, in the best forms of French courtesy.

We are now on the Boulevard Montmartre. Here are cashmeres and silks from Arabia; merinos veritable barbe de Pacha, chalys, mousseline Thibet, Pondicherry, unis et broché, and pocket handkerchiefs at two sous. Ah, come along! And here are six pairs of ladies’ legs, shewing at the window the silk stockings. How gracefully gartered! And from above, how the white curtain falls down modestly in front almost to the knee. Don’t be in such a hurry! they are twice as natural as living legs! And here are dolls brevetted by the king, and milliners à prix fixe, at a fixed price; and here is M. Dutosq, fabricant de sac en papier, manufacturer of little paper-bags-to-put-sugar-in to his majesty; and Madame Raggi, who lets out Venuses and other goddesses to the drawing-schools, at two sous an hour. And look at this shop of women’s ready-made articles. Here one can be dressed cap-à-pie for four francs and eleven centimes (three quarters of a dollar), frock, petticoat, fichu, bonnet, stockings and{69} chemise! A student, also, can buy here a library in the street from a quarter of a mile of books, at six sous a volume. I have just bought Rousseau in calf, octavo, at ten sous!

Since the last Revolution, commerce has taken a new spirit; the bourgeois blood has got uppermost. The greatest barons now are the Rothschilds, and the greatest ministers the Lafittes. The style, too, has risen to the level of the new bureau-cratic nobility. The shopkeeper of these times is at your service, a commerçant, his “boutique” is a magazin, his “contoir” his bureau, and his “pratique” his clientelle. Even the signs, as you see, speak a magnificent language. It is the “Magazin du Doge de Venise,” or “Magazin du Zodiaque—des Vépres Siciliennes,” or “Grand Magazin de Nouveauté.” And if the Doge of Venice is “selling out cheap,” the language is of course worthy of a Doge—it is “au rabais par cessation de commerce.” The Bourse is now a monument of the capital, and disputes rank with the Louvre. The “petit Marquis” is the banker’s son, and the marshals of the empire are sold “second hand” in the frippery market. I intended to write you in English, but the French creeps on in spite of me.{70}

This is one of the prettiest of the Boulevards, and you will see here a great many fine women en promenade of a morning about twelve. When a French lady walks out, she always takes on one side her caniche by a string, and at the other, sometimes, her beau without a string. In either way she monopolizes the whole street, and you are continually getting between her and the puppy, very much to your inconvenience; for if you offend the dog the mistress is, of course, implacable, and you will very likely have to meet her gallant in the Forest of Bondy the next morning. But you can turn this evil sometimes to advantage. If you see, for instance, a pretty woman alone, with her curly companion, you can just walk on, “commercing with the skies” till the lady gets one side of you and the dog the other; this will give you the opportunity of begging her pardon, of patting and stroking the dog a little,—it may break the ice towards an acquaintance, or, if the place be convenient to fall, you had better let her trip you up, and then she will be very sorry. If you think it is a little thing to get a pretty woman’s pity on your side, you are very much mistaken.

Let me introduce you to this shoe-black. He has, as you see, a little box, a brush or two in it,{71} and blacking, and a fixture on the top for a foot; this is his fond de boutique, his stock in trade. He brushes off the mud to the soles of your feet, and shews you your own features in your boots for three sous. This one has just dissolved an ancient firm; and his advertisement, which he calls a “prospectus,” standing here so prim upon a board, announces the event. The partnership is dissolved, but the whole “personnel,” he says, of the establishment remains with the present proprietor; and M. Badaraque, ex-partner, has also the honour to inform us, that he has transported the “appareil de son établissement” to the “Place de la Bourse, une des plus jolies locations de la ville.” The “Decrotteur en chef” at the Palais Royal, and other places of fashion, has his assistants, and serves a dozen or two of customers at a time. He has a shop furnished with cloth-covered benches in amphitheatre, as at the Chamber of Deputies, with a long horizontal iron support for the foot, and pictures are hung around the walls. “On dit, monsieur, que c’est d’après Teniers—celui, monsieur? c’est d’après Vandyke.” And there are newspapers and reviews; so that to polish a gentleman’s boots and his understanding are parts of the same process.{72}

There is a variety of other little trades and industries, which derive their chief means of life from the wants and luxuries of this street, which I may as well call to your notice en passant: I mean trades that are “tout Parisiennies”; that is to say, unknown in any other country than Paris. You will see an individual moving about, at all hours of the night, silent and active, and seeing the smallest bit of paper in the dark where you can see nothing, and, with a hook in the end of a stick, picking it up, and pitching it with amazing dexterity into a basket tied to his left shoulder; with a cat-like walk, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, stirring up the rubbish of every nook and gutter of the street, under your very nose—this is the chiffonnier. He is a very important individual. He is in matter what Pythogoras was in mind; and his transformations are scarcely less curious than those of the Samian sage.

The beau, by his pains, peruses once again his dicky, or cravat, of a morning, in the “Magazin des Modes,” whilst the politician has his breeches reproduced in the “Journal des Debats;” and many a fine lady pours out her soul upon a billet-doux that once was the dishclout. The chiffonnier stands at the head of the little{73} trades, and is looked up to with envy by the others. He has two coats, and wears on holidays a chain and quizzing-glass, and washes his hands with pâte d’amand. He rises, too, like the Paris gentry, when the chickens roost; and when the lark cheers the morning, goes to bed. All the city is divided into districts, and let out to these chiffonniers by the hour; to one, from ten to eleven, and from eleven to twelve to another, and so on through the night; so that several get a living and consideration from the same district. This individual does justice to the literary compositions of the day; he crams into his chiffonnerie indiscriminately the last Vaudeville, the last sermon of the Archbishop, and the last éloge of the Academy.

Just below him is the Gratteur. This artist scratches the live-long day between the stones of the pavement for old nails from horses’ shoes, and other bits of iron—always in hopes of a bit of silver, and even, perhaps, a bit of gold; more happy in his hope than a hundred others in the possession. He has a store in the Faubourgs, where he deposits his ferruginous treasure. His wife keeps this store, and is a “Marchande de Fer.” He maintains a family, like another man; one or two of his sons he brings up to scratch for{74} a living, and the other he sends to college; and he has a lot “in perpetuity” in Père la Chaise. His rank is, however, inferior to the Chiffonnier, who will not give him his daughter in marriage, and he don’t ask him to his soirées.

In all places of much resort you will see an individual, broad-shouldered and whiskered, looking very affable and officious, especially upon strangers, mostly about grocer-stores and street corners. Let me introduce you to him, also. He wants to carry your letters, and run errands for you from one end of Paris to the other. He will carry, also, your wood to your room, a billet-doux to your mistress, and your boots to the cobbler’s, and, for a modest compensation, perform any service that one person may require of another; also, as you see, a very important individual. Indeed, he holds amongst men nearly the same place that Mercury holds amongst the gods. About his neck he wears a brass medal, polished bright as honour—at once his badge of office and pledge of fidelity. If you seem to doubt his honesty, he points to his medal, and holds up his head; that’s enough. If only the Peers could point to their decorations with the same confidence! For instance, if you walk out in the bright day, not being a Parisian,{75} you are of course overtaken by the rain; for a Paris sunshine and shower are as close together as a babe’s smiles and tears; and then you just step into a “Cabinet de lecture,” and you have not read half the worth of your sou, when your coat has embraced you, and your umbrella is between you and the merciless heavens. This is the commissionnaire. I should have noticed among the little industries the “Broker of theatrical pleasures;” he sells the pass A, who retires early, to B, who goes in late; and the Clacqueur, who for two or three francs a night applauds or hisses the new plays. But we must get on with our journey.

Here on the Boulevard Poissonnière, or near it, resides Mr. ——, of New Jersey; he has been sent over (hapless errand!) to convert these French people to Christianity. He is a very clever man; and we will ask if he is yet alive. The journals of this morning say three or four missionaries have been eat up by the Sumatras.

This is the famous Arch of Triumph of the Porte St. Denis. It compliments Louis XIV. on his passage of the Rhine in 1672, and is the counterpart of the Napoleon Arch at the Barrière de l’Etoile. It is seventy-two feet high,{76} and has at each side an obelisk, supported by a lion, and decorated with trophies. That fat Dutch woman at the left base stands for Holland; and that vigorous, muscular-looking man on the right, is deputy to the Rhine; and that overhead on horseback, is great “baby Louis.”

We have now left the fashionable world at our heels—this is the Boulevard du Temple. This Boulevard, a few years ago, was a delightful and romantic walk of an evening; but noise and business have now violated all the secret retreats of Paris, one after another, and there is no spot left of the great capital in which you can hear your own voice. There were here, before the Revolution, five theatres; and the lists of fame are crowded with the theatrical celebrities which drew the homage of the whole city to this street. This is the only spot in the world that has furnished clowns for posterity; Baron and Le Kain are hardly more fresh in the memory of man than Galimafré and Bobèche. This was the theatre of their triumphs. It was here, too, that the world came to see a living skeleton of eight pounds, and his wife of eight hundred,—that men, to the great astonishment of our ancestors, swallowed carving knives and boiling oil,—that turkeys danced quadrilles, and{77} fleas drove their coaches and six; and it was here that Mademoiselle Rose stood on her head on a candlestick. There are yet six theatres here; but the street once so adorned with gardens, and equipages, and fashionable ladies, and an infinity of other attractions, is now, alas! built up with gaunt houses, and differs scarcely from the other Boulevards.

The simplicity of original manners is, however, wonderfully preserved in this district. The more fashionable parts are so filled with strangers—with parasite plants, that you can scarcely distinguish the indigenous population. This is the true classical and traditional district—the only place in which you can find unadulterated Frenchmen. The inhabitant of this quarter has rather more than a French share of embonpoint, and aims at dignity, and his whiskers leave a part of his chin uncovered; his clothes are large and fine in texture; he carries an umbrella, and, on fête days, a cane, to give him an important air and keep off the dogs. If it rains, he takes a fiacre; he keeps by him his certificate of marriage and “extrait de batême,” and has not got over the prejudice of being born in lawful wedlock. His wife is pretty, but not handsome; her features are{78} regular, and face plump—indeed, she is plump all over. He loves his wife by instinct. She keeps his books, and he asks her advice in all his business; she suckles his children, and gives him tisane when he is sick.

I saw this individual and his wife together a few evenings ago at the Ambigù Comique. I sometimes go to this theatre, and the Gaité and the Cirque Olympique. A vicious student was tempted every now and then to pinch Madame behind. She bore it impatiently, indeed, but silently, for some time. “Qu’est-ce que tu as?—Qu’as tu donc, ma femme?” At last she communicated to her husband the fact. He immediately grew a foot taller upon his seat; and then he looked at the young man from head to foot with one of those looks which mean so much more than words. Not wishing, however, to disturb the play, he contained himself, only riggling on his seat, and eyeing him occasionally, to the end of the act; and then he got up. “Quoi, monsieur,” said he, “vous avez l’impertinence de pincer les fesses de madame?” and then thrusting his tongue into the lower lip, he put on an expression, such as you will never meet outside the Boulevard du Temple. You would go a mile any time barefooted to see it. “I{79} would have you to know, sir, that I am a rentier, (a freeholder) que je paye rente à la ville de Paris; that I am called Grigou, monsieur; and that I live in the Rue d’Angouleme, No. 22;” and he sat down. The little wife now tried to appease him, which made him the more pugnacious; she reminded him he was the father of a family, had children, and, finally, that he had a wife; and then she sat up close by him, and then she came over to the other side, just in front of me, for security.—The bourgeois of this district lives in a larger house than he could get for the same rent in any other part of Paris; he is usually independent in his circumstances, and has a certain à plomb, or confidence in himself, and a liberty in all his movements, which give a full relief to his natural feelings and traits of character.

Some distance towards the right, you will find the great market of frippery—one of the curiosities of this district. Every old thing upon the earth is sold there for new. There are 1800 shops. Nothing was ever so restored from raggedness to apparent green youth and integrity as an old coat in the hands of these Israelites, unless it be the conscience of those who sell. A garment that has served at least two generations,{80} and been worn last by a beggar, you will buy in this market for new in spite of your teeth. It is a good study of human nature to see here how far the human face may be modified by its pursuits and meditations.

This building in the Rue du Temple, with the superb portico and Ionic columns, and two colossal statues in front, is one of great historical importance; and ladies who love knights would not pardon me for passing it unnoticed. The ancient edifice was built seven hundred years ago, and was occupied by one of the most powerful orders of Christianity—the Knights Templars. Here it was that Philip le Bel tortured and burnt alive these soldier monks, seizing their treasures, and bestowing their other possessions upon his new favourites, the Knights of Malta. Who has not heard of the war-cry of Beauseant, which chilled the blood of the Saracens on the plains of Syria, and has since made many a woman tremble in her slippers at midnight? This was his lodging. Heavens! how wide you open your eyes!—yes, here lodged the Knights of the Red Cross, and Richard Cœur de Lion used to put up in this temple in going to the Holy Land. It became national property in the Revolution, and was given at the{81} Restoration (1814) to the Princesse de Condé, who established the present “Convent of the Temple.” The ladies who now occupy it are called the Dames Benedictines, and, like the other nuns, of whom there are at present more than twenty orders in France, they devote themselves to education, and other benevolent employments.

It was in this old building that Louis XVI. and his queen were imprisoned in 1792. The king was taken out from here the 20th of January, 1793, to the scaffold; the queen about eleven months after; and Madame Elizabeth, his sister, in the following year; leaving his daughter here alone at thirteen years of age. Sir Sydney Smith was confined in the same room in 1798. Bonaparte, in 1811, demolished the old edifice to the last stone—from what motive?—and in 1812 it was fenced round, and the grass grew upon the guilty place. The religious ladies who now reside here, are purifying it by prayers and other acts of devotion. A propos of Sydney Smith; I met him at an evening party lately. He looks like the history of the last half century. He is a venerable old man, and very sociable with the young girls, who were climbing his knees, and hanging about{82} his neck, and getting his name albummed in their little books to carry to America.

I will now shew you a house in this street, (Rue des Marais du Temple, No. 31,) a house that, once seen, will never depart from your memory. Its closed doors and windows, as if no one lived there; its iron railing, without entrance, and the interstices condemned with wood, in front; and the slit in the centre of the door to receive the correspondence of its horrible master, who sits within as a spider in its web, you will see all the rest of your life. It is the house of Monsieur de Paris. Oh, dear! and who is Monsieur de Paris? He is a civil magistrate, and belongs to the executive department. No one living, is perhaps, so great a terror to evil doers as this Monsieur de Paris. “Monsieur,” you must recollect, has its particular and its general meanings. Monsieur means any body; un monsieur is a gentleman of some breeding and education; La maison de monsieur is the family of the king’s eldest son; Monsieur de Meaux means the Archbishop; and Monsieur de Paris means the Hangman! He is also called the “Executeur de la haute justice,” or “Executeur des hautes œuvres,” and vulgarly, the Bourreau. This is his Hotel. The name of{83} the present incumbent is Mr. Henry Sanson. His family consists of a son, a person of mild and gentle manners, who is now serving his apprenticeship to the business under his eminent parent; and two daughters. The elder, about fifteen, is remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. The father is rich, his salary being above that of the President of the Royal Court, and he has spared no expense in the education of the girls. They will be sumptuously endowed.

The two ends of society are affected sometimes in nearly the same way. A princess, being obliged to select her husband from her own rank and religion, runs the hazard of a perpetual virginity; and Mademoiselle de Paris experiences exactly the same inconvenience; she can marry but a hangman. There is no one of all Europe who has performed the same eminent functions as Mr. Henry Sanson, or to whom, without loss of dignity, he can offer the hand of his fair daughter. Ye lords and gentlemen, if you think you have all the pride to yourselves, you are mistaken, the hangman has his share, like another man.

Mr. Sanson has appropriated one or two rooms of this building to a museum of ancient{84} instruments used in judicial torture—Luke’s iron bed, Ravaillac’s boots, and such like relics; and is quite a dilettanti in this department of science. We expect a course of gratuitous lectures, as at the “Musée des Arts et Metiers,” when the season begins. Amongst other objects, you will see the sword with which was beheaded the Marquis de Laly. I am going to tell you an anecdote I have read of this too famous execution, which is curious.

About the year 1750, in the middle of the night, three young men of the high class of nobility, after breaking windows, and the heads of street passengers, and beating the guard, (which was the privilege of the higher classes in those times,) strolling down the Faubourg St. Martin, laughing and talking, and well fuddled with champagne, arrived at the door of this house. They heard the sound of instruments, and music so lively, seemed to indicate a hearty bourgeois dance. How fortunate! they could now pass the night pleasantly. One of them knocked, and a polite well-dressed person opened. A young lord explained the motive of their visit, and was refused. “You are wrong,” said the nobleman; “we are of the court, and do you honour in sharing your amusements.{85}” “I am obliged, nevertheless, to refuse,” replied the stranger; “neither of you know the person you are addressing, or you would be as anxious to withdraw, as now to be admitted.” “Excellent, upon honour! and who the devil are you?” “The executioner of Paris.” “Ha, ha! what you? you the gentleman who breaks limbs, cuts off heads, and tortures poor devils so agreeably?” “Such indeed are the duties of my office; I leave, however, the details you speak of to my deputies, and it is only when a lord like either of you is subject to the penalties of the law, that I do execution on him with my own hands.” The individual who held this dialogue with the executioner was the Marquis de Laly. Twenty years after, he died by the hands of this man, upon whose office he was now exercising his raillery.

One of the ornaments of this Boulevard is the Café Turc, fitted up with a furniture of two hundred thousand francs. It would do honour to the Italien. What a display of belles and beaux, about seven of an evening, through its spacious rooms, and gardens, and galleries!—one lends his ear to the concert; another, retired in a grotto at the side of his bonne amie, drinks large draughts of love; and another drinks eau{86} sucrée. And here is the largest elephant upon the earth, which bears the same relation to all other elephants that the Trojan horse did to all other horses. This monster was to be cast in bronze, and surmounted by a tower, forming a figure of about eighty feet in height. That which you see here is only the model, in plaster of Paris. The stair-way leads up through one of the legs, six and a quarter feet in the ancle. There were to be twenty-four bas reliefs in marble, representing the arts and sciences; and the bronze was to be obtained from the fusion of the cannon captured by the imperial army in Spain. Louis Philippe, who is charged with the public works begun by Bonaparte, will be puzzled to finish this elephant.

Paris contains one hundred and eighty-nine great fountains, of which, about twenty are of beautiful architecture, adorned with sculpture and statuary, and enlivened by jets d’eaux, and form a principal ornament of the city. This elephant was intended to add one to the number. That, so imposing and picturesque, which we just now passed, on the Boulevard du Temple, is called the Chateau. The building with the jet on the top forms a cone. The water falls from its summit into vases, which overflow in{87} cascades that tumble down from story to story into a large basin at the base, where eight lions of bronze spout torrents in jets d’eaux from their mouths. Its cost was one hundred thousand francs.

It would be too long to particularise the others. On one, you will see Leda caressing her swan, Cupid lurking on the watch; on another, Tantalus gaping in vain for the liquid, which passes by his lips into the pail of the waterman; on another, Hygeia giving drink to a fatigued soldier; and, on another, Charity suckling one of her children, wrapping another from the cold in the folds of her frock, and quenching the parched lips of a third with the pure stream. I have just bought you a clock representing the “Fountain of the Innocents,” with all its waters in motion. It was the Duchess de Berri’s, and is of delicate workmanship. Please to have the proper respect for its dignity, and indulgence for its frailty. I will send it by the next Packet.

The turning of wickets, the gingling of keys, and grating of bolts, were the sounds heard here forty-six years ago. What recollections rise out of the ground to meet you at every step as you tread upon this unhallowed spot. One hears{88} almost the chains clank, and the prisoner groan in his cell! It was here, where the charcoal now floats so peacefully on the lake, and where the boatman sings his absent mistress so joyously, that stood, in horrid majesty—

the “high altar and castle of Despotism,” the Bastille! Where are now the damp and secret cells, the sombre corridors, and the grim countenances of the gaolers, and where the mob of 1789, and the mad passions that levelled its towers and battlements? Quiet as the Seine that sleeps upon its dungeons! The present substitutes for the Bastille are, the Depôt at the Prefecture of Police; St. Pelagie for state crimes, and La Force for civil; the Conciergerie for those awaiting trial, and the Salpetrière for those awaiting the execution of their sentence.

Bonaparte has built here an immense granary, containing always corn enough for the consumption of the capital for two months. This, with the Halle aux blés in the centre of the city, supplies the whole population. Paris has six hundred bakers, who are obliged to keep always in this granary one hundred thousand sacks of flour, worth thirty shillings sterling per sack; and{89} therefore it is called the Grenier de Reserve. Here lived the witty and profligate Beaumarchais; his castle is rased; all but Figaro are dead. You have in sight the Hospital of the Quinze-vingts, which contains three hundred blind, who have twenty-four sous a day each for a living, with the produce of their industry, which is wonderfully ingenious. Now we have passed the Garden of Plants, and the Bridge of Austerlitz. For this latter favour we owe something to the Russians, who saved this bridge from its bad name and Blucher’s gunpowder.

That upon the hill is the Salpetrière, the Insane Hospital for women. What a huge pile! One to put the sane ones in would not be half the size. This front on the boulevard is six hundred feet. The building in the rear is of similar dimensions, and the Rotonde between, with the octagon dome, is the chapel. It contains now four thousand five hundred poor, aged above seventy; one thousand five hundred crazy; all women. I went in on Sunday. What immense conversation! There is a similar institution for the other sex, called the Bicêtre. Paris has twenty hospitals, affording thirty thousand beds, and classed by the several diseases and infirmities. It has no poor-houses,{90} but each of its twelve arrondissements, or municipal divisions, has a “Bureau de Bienfaisance,” which distributes provisions to the indigent, and provides labour for the idle; and there is a plenty of benevolent societies, with specific objects. Nor do they want customers, for the number of paupers are near fifty thousand. I forgot to tell you there is a hospital here (the Hospice des Ménages) for widowers. What an object of charity is a man without a wife! They have made, however, the terms hard; one has to stay married twenty years to be admitted. The institution is under the care of the sisters of Charity.

This of Val de Grace is for the military, and that of the Rue d’Enfer for the foundlings; not an unnatural association, but emblematic of the two chief concerns of the capital—killing off the people by war, and making up the loss by adultery. And this is the Rue St. Jaques, one of the classical streets of the city. The great rogues pay their last visit to this end of it, and the great men to the other: if you kill ten thousand of your fellow creatures you go to the Pantheon at the west end, if one only, you come here to the Place St. Jaques, now the seat of the guillotine and the public executions. At length{91} we are on the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, at the end of our journey. Yet could you not get a drop of helicon here, though perishing with thirst. All one can offer you is a little sour Burgundy, which is cheaper than inside the wall. This is the reason why you see all this rabble, five hundred at a view, carousing and dancing in their sabots, drinking and caressing, tour-à-tour, the necks of their bottles and their belles; it is the reason why thousands are crowding here to drink who are not dry, and Paris is losing daily her sober reputation, and learning to get drunk like her neighbours.

The bad system of the ports, is in France transferred to all the petty towns. A couple of sergeants, musketted and whiskered, walk with grim dignity at each side of the gates. They stop and examine all vehicles, public and private, and all such persons as carry in provisions to the market, forcing them to pay an octroi, or duty, to the city of Paris, which prevents those rogues, the poor people, from getting a dinner untaxed. They even stop sometimes the foot passengers; especially those notorious smugglers, the women. If any one chance to be half gone, she is not allowed to go any farther, unless she produce a certificate from the parish priest, or some equally{92} good authority. Quantities of lace and silks have passed in under such pretexts. The best commentary I know upon the wisdom of this policy is the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.

When Paris was surrounded by this wall, fifty years ago, the people murmured and made a riot, and hung up several of the ring-leaders, on the same principles of law recently laid down by our chief justice Lynch. They entered suits, too, against the city, to put her in the Bastille; but a compromise ended the strife, and the wall was built. Here is a line from an old book relating to these times—

I could not think of descending from Parnassus without a line of poetry.{93}

LETTER IV.

Paris, July, 1835.

You wish to see the Palais Royal? Then you must step from the Boulevard Italien a quarter of a mile to the south-west. If you hate Philadelphia sameness and symmetry, you will be gratified here to your heart’s content. In Paris there are ten hundred and eighty streets, besides lanes and alleys, all recommending themselves by the most charming irregularities. That which you will now pass through, the “Rue Vivienne,” is among the most bustling; it is a leading avenue, is alive with business, and has pretensions far above its capacity. I must tell you a{94} word about the etiquette of these streets before you set out.

If a lady meets a gentleman upon the little side walk, which French courtesy calls a “trottoir,” it is the lady always who trots into the mud. The French women seem used to this submission, and yield to it instinctively; and, indeed, all who feel their weakness, as children and old men, being subject to the same necessity, shew the same resignation. Also, if a number of gentlemen are coteried, even across the broad walk of the Boulevards, the lady walks round, not to incommode them; and it is not expected of a French gentleman in a public place or vehicle that he should give his seat to any one, of whatever age, sex, or condition, or that he should deviate from his straight line on the street for anything less than an omnibus. The French have been a polite people, and they continue to trade on the credit of their ancestors. What is curious to observe, is the complaisance with which human nature follows a general example. A Russian wife, when the husband neglects to beat her for a month or two, is alarmed at his indifference, and I have remarked that the French women are the warmest defenders of this French incivility.{95}

Recollect, that as soon as you put your little foot upon this Rue Vivienne, fifty waggons, a wedding coach, and three funerals, with I don’t know how many malle-postes, cabs, coucous, and bell-eared diligences—all but the fiacres, with their gaunt and fleshless horses, which plead inability—will set themselves to run over you, without the smallest respect for your Greek nose, your inky brows, and black eyes. The danger is imminent, and it won’t do to have your two feet in one sock. I have written home to your mother, to have prayers performed in the churches for women’s husbands sojourning in Paris. And by escaping from one danger, you are sure to run full butt against another. Scylla and Charybdis, too, are so close together, that the “prudent middle” is precisely the course that no prudent lady will think of pursuing. To make it worse, the natives will have not the least sympathy in your dangers; they have been used to get run over themselves from time immemorial, and when we staring Yankees come over to see the “Tooleries and the Penny Royal,” they are not aware that any allowance is to be made for our ignorance. Besides, the driver knows a stranger as far as he can see him, and takes aim accordingly; he gets twenty-five{96} francs for his body at the Morgue. It is known, that secret companies for “running over people” exist all over Paris, and that the drivers are the principal stockholders. The truth is, that it is reckoned amongst the natural deaths of the place, and two hundred and fifty are marked upon the bills of the last year. Under the old régime, when the nobility put out a greater train of vehicles, and had a kind of monopoly of running over the common people, I have heard it was still worse. Then, if any one walked about the streets unmashed for twenty years, he was entitled to the cross of St. Louis. I have escaped till now, but I set it down entirely to the efficacy of your innocent prayers, which have reversed the fates in my favour.

Your best way is to watch and imitate the address of the native women. Here they are now, in front of my window, sprinkled over the whole street, in their white stockings and prunellas, and in the very filthiest of the French weather, without a spot to their garters. The little things just pull up all the petticoats in the world more than half leg, and then tip-toe they step from the convex surface of one paving stone to another, with a dexterity and grace that go to one’s heart.{97}

A lady must expect, also, other embarrassments here, to which the delicate pusillanimity of the sex is yet but slightly exposed in our country, besides the cat and nine kittens that she must jump over, and the defunct lap-dogs that lie putrid in the gutters. The truth is, that these streets are very often (I ask pardon of Madame de Rambouillet and other good authorities) so in deshabille, they are not fit to be seen. A Parisian lady, therefore (and she is to be imitated also in this), when she ventures out on foot, is sharp-sighted as a lynx, and blind as an owl; she has eyes to see and not to see, and she runs the gauntlet through the midst of all these slippery and perilous obstructions in as careless a good humour as you upon the smooth trottoirs of your Chestnut and Broadways. It is true, the ladies of the haut ton do not much exercise their ambulatory functions—their “vertu caminante”—upon these unsavoury promenades.

A French gentleman, who has resided a week and a half at New York (just long enough to know the manners and customs of a country), told me this very morning, that you American ladies stare in the streets at the gentlemen, he ventured to say, “even to immodesty;” and I{98} have heard other foreigners make similar remarks, I presume without a proper attention to the peculiar circumstances of the different countries. In a Philadelphia street, a lady can give herself up to her thoughts, and her soul has the free use of its wings. She can get into a romance, or a reverie; she can study her lesson, or read a love-letter, and she can stare at a French gentleman, without the least apprehension of danger. Our streets are clean and decent, and are excellent places of parade; and gentlemen and ladies go out expressly on fine evenings to stare at one another. Indeed, Chestnut-street is so trim and neat that sometimes one is almost obliged, like Diogenes, to spit in somebody’s face not to soil its prettiness. Not so in Paris; you are here quite at your ease in all such matters. A French lady, therefore,—and very properly,—sees no one in the street, not even her husband. To get her to look at you, you are obliged to take hold of her, shake her, and turn her about three or four times. But when once upon the Boulevard Italien of an evening, or upon the broad walk of the elegant Tuileries, when she has no longer need of the faculties of her eyes, and ears, and nose too, to anticipate and obviate danger—ah, ma foi!{99} her diamond eyes are no more chary of their amorous glances than the hazle and bugle eyes of Chestnut or Broadway of theirs. I tried to persuade this French gentleman,—who is a baron, has a bel air, and large mustachios,—that this happened only to him. I told him (and it is true, too,) of others, who could not get the dear little girls of New York to look at them sufficiently. But I must shew you the Palais Royal.

It is a third less than your Washington Square. Its trees are in two regular rows along each margin. In the centre is an inclosure, containing a shrubbery and flowers; and also an Apollo and a Diana in bronze, and a jet d’eau that separates in the air, and falls in a “fleur de lis”—the only emblem of royalty that deceived the Revolution and the Jacobins; and a lake, where the little fishes “wave their wings of gold.” There is no access to vehicles, or street noise, to disturb the quiet of this fairy retreat. It is in the centre, too, of the city, in the vicinity of all the other chief places of diversion; and here all the world meets after dinner to take coffee, to smoke, and concert measures for the rest of the evening. You will see them creeping in from the neighbouring{100} streets, as you have seen the ants into a sugarhouse.

If you wish to know where is the centre of the earth, it is the Palais Royal. Ask a stranger, when he arrives, “whither will you go first?” he will answer, “to the Palais Royal;” or ask a Frenchman, on the top of Caucasus, “where shall I meet you again?” he will give you rendez-vous at the Palais Royal; and no spot, they say, on the earth, has witnessed so many tender recognitions. Just do you ask Mademoiselle Celeste, at New York, “where did you get that superb robe de chambre?” and, I will lay you six to one, she will say, “at the Palais Royal.”

Let us sit down beneath these pretty elms. Those upper rooms, which you see so adorned with Ionic columns, with galleries, and vases, and little Virtues, and other ornaments in sculpture—those are not his majesty’s apartments; not the salles des marechaux, nor the salle du trône, nor the chambre à coucher de la reine; they are the cafés and restaurants of the Palais Royal. And those multitudes you see circulating about the galleries, and looking down from the windows—those are not the royal family, nor the garde du corps, nor the{101} “hundred Swiss,” nor the chambellans, the écuyers, the aumoniers, the maitres de cérémonies, the introducteurs des ambassadeurs, nor the historiographers, nor even the chauf-cire, nor the capitaines des levrettes—they are the cooks, and the garçons, in their white aprons, of the cafés and restaurants; the only order that has suffered no loss of dignity or corruption of blood by the Revolution; the veritable noblesse of these times, the “cordons bleus” of the order of the gridiron.

Louis Philippe, our citizen king, and proprietor of this garden, gets thirty-two thousand francs annually from letting out these chairs. Sit you down. It being after dinner, I will treat you to a regale; which is, a cup of pure coffee, with a small glass of liqueur, eau de vie, or rum, or quirsh. You can take them separate or together; in the latter case, it is called “gloria;” or you may put your cognac into a cup, with a large lump of sugar in the middle, and set it on fire, to destroy the effects of the alcohol upon your nerves. See how the area of the garden is already covered with its smoking, drinking, and promenading community; and how the smoke, as if loth to quit us, still lingers, until the whole atmosphere is narcotic with its{102} incense. At a later hour, we shall find in the Rotunda, at the north end, and upon tables under these trees, ices in pyramids, and orgeat, and eau sucrée, and all the other luxurious refreshments. Those two oriental pavilions, with the gilded roofs, in front of the Rotonde, will distribute newspapers to the studious, and the whole garden will buzz with conversation and merriment, until the long twilight has faded into night.

Of the inside of the cafés and restaurants I must give you a few particulars. In each, there is a woman of choice beauty, mounted on a kind of throne. She is present always, and may be considered as one of the fixtures of the shop. When you enter any of these cafés, you will see, standing here and there through the room, an individual in a white apron; he has mustachios; he holds a coffee-pot in his left hand, and leaning gracefully over the right, reads his favourite journal—this is the waiter! When you have cried three times “Garçon!” the lady at the bureau will vibrate a little bell, and bring you instantly this waiter from his studies. If you are a very decent-looking man, she will let you cry only twice; and if you have an embroidered waistcoat, and look like a lord, and have{103} whiskers, she will not let you cry at all. The chair occupied by this she-secretary, at the Mille Colonnes, cost ten thousand francs; and she who sat, some years ago, upon that of the “café des Aveugles,” the “belle Limonadière,” charmed all who had eyes, and amongst the rest, a brother of the greatest emperor in the world.

There are above a thousand of these cafés in Paris, and several of the most sumptuous overlook the gardens of the Palais Royal. Ceres has unlocked her richest treasures here, and has poured them out with a prodigality that is unknown elsewhere. Fish, of fresh and salt water; rare wines, of home and foreign production; and as for the confectionaries, sucreries, fruiteries, and charcuiteries—the senses are bewildered by the infinite variety. And the artists here have a higher niche in the temple of Fame than even those of the Boulevard Italien. Monsieur Véry supplied the allied monarchs at three thousand francs per day. The “Purveyor of Fish” to his Majesty, who is of this school, is salaried a thousand dollars above our chief justice of the Union; and Monsieur Dodat, who is immortal for making sausages and the “Passage Vero-{104}Dodat,” has at Père la Chaise a monument towering like that of Cheops.

This is the true “Kitchen Cabinet” to which ours is no more to be compared than the dish water to the dinner. Véry is in the kitchen what the Emperor was in the camp; he is the Napoleon of gastronomy. All flesh is nothing in his sight. Why, he will transform you a rabbit to a hare, or an eel to a lamprey, as easily as you a Jackson-man to a Whig; and he turns cocks into capons, and vice versa, by the simple artifice of a sauce. You indeed condense the sense of a whole community into the single head of a senator, or a President; and he just as easily a whole flock of geese into a single goose. You, it is true, possess the wonderful art, all know in what excellence, of puffing a man up beyond the natural measure of his merits, and just so Monsieur Véry will puff you a goose’s liver, however unmathematical it may seem, beyond the size of the whole animal.

Now, in the midst of all this skill and profusion, “the devil’s in it if you cannot dine;” yet have I perished myself several times of hunger in the very midst of this Palais Royal. It is not enough that a table be loaded with its{105} dishes, there must be science, to call them by their names, and taste, to discriminate their uses. What can you do with an Iroquois from the “Sharp Mountain,” who does not know that sauce for a gander is not sauce for a goose. Unless you have studied the nomenclature, which is about equal to a first course of anatomy, you are no more fit to enjoy a dinner at Véry’s than Tantalus in his lake. For example, the garçon will present you a bill of fare as big as your prayer-book; you open it; the first page presents you thirty soups, (classically, potages,) and there you are to choose between a “puré,” a “consommé,” “à la Julien, à la Beauvais, à la Bonne Femme,” &c. &c. I prefer the “consommé,” and I will tell you how it is made. It is a piece of choice beef and capon boiled many hours over a slow fire to a jelly, and the juices concentrated, and served without any extraneous mixture. The “Julien,” is a pot pourri of all that is edible or potable in the list of human aliments. It is a soup, for which, if rightly made, an epicure would give away his birth-right; it was invented, not by Julian the Apostate, but by Monsieur Julien, of the Palais Royal.

The fluids being settled, you will turn then to{106} the following page for the solids: “Papillottes de Levreaud,” “filet à la Napolitaine,” “vol-au-vent,” “scolope de saumon,” “œuf au miroir,” “riz sauté à la gláce,” “piqué aux truffles,” &c. &c. Alas, my poor roasting and frying countrymen! There is not a day but I see some poor Yankee scratching his head in despair over this crabbed vocabulary of French dishes. Your best way in this emergency is to call the garçon, and leave all to him, and sit still like a good child, and take what is given to you. I have known many a one to run all over Paris for a beef-steak, and when he has got it, it was a horse’s rump. My advice is, that no one come to Paris to dine in mean houses on cheap dinners, where you will eat cats for hares, and have snails and chalk for your cream, and the jelly of the “consommé,” from the barber’s. You are no more sure of the ingredients of a dish under the disguises of a French cookery, than of men’s sentiments from their faces or professions. You can get, to begin with, olives, and eggs, boiled and poached, all that remains of old simplicity, if you know how to ask for them; if not, carry the shells about with you in your pocket.

We will dine to-morrow at the “Mille Co{107}lonnes.” Ladies often step into this café to be reflected; you can see here all your faces, and behind and before you, as conveniently as Janus. One always enters this threshold with reverence: it has dined the Holy Alliance. Besides the usual officers and attendants, you will sometimes see here a little man, grave, distrait, and meditative; do not disturb him; he is, perhaps, busy about the projét of some new sauce. He will start off abruptly sometimes, and leave you in the middle of a phrase; it is not incivility, he has just conceived a dish, and is going out to execute it, or write it upon his tablets. Never ask for him in the mornings before one—“il compose.” The French are not copyists in cookery, any more than in fashions. They are inventors, and this keeps the imagination on the rack. You will remark, that people always excel in those things in which they invent, and are always mediocre in those things in which they imitate.

After your potage, which you must eat sparingly, and without bread, (for bread will satiate, and spoil the rest of your dinner,) you will take a little “vin ordinaire,” or pure Burgundy, waiting for your first course; and you will just cast a look over the official part of the{108} Moniteur, for there is no knowing when one may be made a Peer of France; and on receiving one dish, always command the next. After the dessert you will read the news all round; the Messager, Gazette, Constitutionnel, Debats, Quotidienne, National, and the Charivari; and after coffee, you may amuse yourself at checkers, domino, or improve your morals by a game of chess. In looking about the room, you will see a great number of guests, perhaps a hundred, not in stalls, as in our eating-houses and the stables, but seated at white marble tables, in an open and elegant saloon; the walls tapestried with mirrors.

If it be a serious gentleman, reading deliberately the newspaper over his dessert, careless or contemptuous of what is going on around him, and drinking his bottle of champagne alone—that is an Englishman. If a partie carré, that is, a couple of ladies and their cavaliers, dining with much noise and claret, observing a succession and analogy of dishes, swallowing their wine drop by drop, as I read your letters, fearing lest it should come too soon to an end, and prolonging expressly the enjoyments of the repast—these are French people; or if you see a couple of lads, hurried and impatient, and{109} rating the waiters in no gentle terms, “D—n your eyes, why don’t you bring in the dinner? and take away that broth, and your black bottle; who the devil wants your vinegar, and your dishwater, and your bibs too? And bring us, if you can, a whole chicken’s leg at once, and not at seven different times,”—these are from the “Far West,” and a week old in Paris.

How should these little snacks of a French table not seem egregiously mean to an American, who is used to dine in fifteen minutes, even on a holiday, and to see a whole hog barbacued? The French dine to gratify, we to appease, appetite; we demolish a dinner, and they eat it. The guests who frequent these cafés are regular or flying visiters; some are accidental, others occasional, dining by agreement to enjoy each other’s company; others again are families, who dine out for a change, or to give a respite to their servants; and others live here, a kind of stereotype customers altogether: and these houses serve, in addition to their province of eating and drinking, as places of conference, or clubs; it is here that men communicate on political subjects, that news is circulated, and public opinion formed; and that kings are expelled, and others are set up on their thrones.{110}

On a range with the restaurants, and over them, you will see lodged many of the fine arts; painters, engravers, dentists, barbers, and beautiful sultanas, look out from the highest windows upon these fair dominions, to which the severity of French morals has forbidden them access. In the lower rooms, on a level with the area of the garden, and peeping through the colonnade, west and east, are riches almost immeasurable, in exquisite and fashionable apparel for both sexes, and in jewellery, trinkets, and perfumery. This trade, which in other cities is pedling and huckstering, assumes here the dignity of a great commercial interest, and its productions are reckoned at upwards of a hundred millions of francs. The stores themselves are so little, and yet so pretty, that I have thoughts of sending you one of them over by the packet. Their arrangements are changed every hour, so as to keep up a continuous emotion and a series of agreeable excitements, and so as to present you a new set of temptations twelve times a day.

Everything that human industry, sharpened by necessity or competition, can effect—everything which can excite an appetite, can heighten a beauty, or hide a deformity, is here. I begin to love art almost as well as nature: I begin to{111} love mother Eve in her fig-leaves, as well as in her unaproned innocence. After all, what is nature to us without art? Education is art. Indeed, rightly considered, art itself is nature; she has but left a part of her work unfinished to urge the industry and whet the ingenuity of man. In these stores, everything is sacrificed to the shop; there is no accommodation for the household gods. Persons with their families are not allowed to inhabit here. A man hoards space as a miser hoards money. It is a qualification indispensable in a clerk to be of a slender capacity. You would think you were in Lilliput, served by the fairies. The shop-girls, especially, are of such exquisite exility of figure, you can almost take one of them between your thumb and finger, and set her on the counter.

In our country, we have nothing yet to shew in the way of great works of art. We have nature, indeed, wild and beautiful, but without historic associations; tradition is dumb, and the “memory of man” runs back to the Eden of our race. It is a mighty advantage these old countries have over us; their reminiscences, their traditions, and their antiquities. What would be the Tower but for humpback Richard and{112} the babes; or, what Hounslow Heath but for the ghosts of those who have been murdered there? And in these countries, which have no beginning, they can supply the vacant space into which authentic history does not venture, by legends and romances; and no matter how obscure may be one of their mountains and lakes, they can lie it into a reputation. Some things are beautiful from their accessories alone; as lords are sometimes lords only from their equipages. What is there beautiful in a ruin? We have plains as desolate as Babylon, and no one looks at them.

The Palais Royal, however magnificent as a bazaar, has still higher and better merits. It is the history of some of the most remarkable personages and events of the last two ages. Some day, when we have a ticket from the “Intendant de sa Majesté,” I will shew you them all; and first, that very celebrated old fop the Cardinal de Richelieu, who used to strut, with his train of a monarch, through this very garden and these very halls. You shall see the very theatre upon which he represented his woeful tragedies; his flatterers crowding around with wonderful grimace, and Corneille’s muse cowering her timid wings in silence. As you are a lady, and love{113} trinkets, I will shew you, if it yet exists, that great miracle of massive gold and diamonds, the Cardinal’s Chapel; the two candlesticks, valued at a hundred thousand livres; the cross, twenty-two inches high, and of pure gold; the Christ of the same metal, and the crown and drapery all glittering in diamonds. And you shall see the prayer-book, too, encased in lamina of gold; in the centre the cardinal holding up the globe, and from the four corners four angels placing a crown upon his head. If you like, I will shew you also that other smooth-faced rogue, scarcely his inferior in political ability, the Cardinal Mazarin, who put the king’s money in his pocket, and stinted his little majesty in shirts. And if you love more cardinals, I will shew you yet another, more witty, and not less profligate and debauched, than the other two, the Cardinal de Retz. When we read his memoirs together, little did we foresee that one day we should look into the very chambers in which he held his nightly councils, with his fellow conspirators, plotting his rabble Revolution of the Fronde.

You shall see also Turenne and the great Condé. That gentleman gathering maxims—maxims of life at the court of Mazarin!—that is M. le due de Rochefoucauld; and I will in{114}troduce you to Madame de Motteville, and other famous wits and beauties of those times. In the room just opposite, where one dines upon soup, three courses, and a dessert, at forty sous, I will shew you the little “Grand Monarque” in his cradle. The dear little thing! It was here the great man first began; it was here he crept, I presume very unwillingly, to school; here he began to seek the bubble reputation, and to sigh at the feet—worthy a better devotion—of the “humble violet,” Madame la Vallière.

Just over head, Doctor Franklin used to sup with the Duke of Orleans and his family; and here Madame de Genlis gave lessons to the little Louis Philippe, causing his most Christian Majesty to walk fifteen miles a day in shoes with leaden soles. The Spartans did better, who, to make their kings hardy and robust, had them flogged daily at the shrine of some pagan goddess. In one of these rooms, the mob Republic held for awhile its meetings; and in this very garden, the tri-coloured cockade was adopted, at a great meeting in 1789, as the revolutionary emblem. On the south end is a gallery of paintings, they say very splendid. It was plundered in the Revolution, and since restored by the present proprietor, the King. If{115} any one steals a picture or a book in Paris, and can prove quiet possession for a certain time, it is a vested right, and the owner is obliged to buy back his goods from the thief.

I sometimes walk in this garden with the scholars and the bonnes, of a morning, but it is disagreeable; it is not yet aired, and has a stale stupefactive smell from the preceding night’s banquet. It is by degrees ventilated, and life begins to flow into it about ten. Then the readers of news begin to gravitate around Monsieur Perussault’s pavilion. There is a dial here which announces, with a loud detonation, twelve; and as the important hour approaches, every one having a watch takes it out, and looks up with compressed lips, and waits in uno obtutu until Apollo has fired off his cannon; then quick he twirls about the hands, and replaces it complacently in his fob, and walks away very happy to have the official hour in his pocket. You will see also a few badauds, who always arrive just afterwards, and stand the same way, looking up for half an hour or so, till informed that the time has already gone off.

It is of a hot summer evening, that this garden is unrivalled in beauty. You swim in a glare of light; the gas flashes from under the arcades;{116} lamps innumerable shine through the interior and look down from five hundred windows above. It is not night, it is “but the daylight sick.” It is haunted by its company, and is full of life to the latest hours, and revelry holds her gambols here, when Paris everywhere over the immense city is lulled into its midnight slumbers. When summer has turned round upon its axis, and the first chills of autumn frighten joy from her court, she retires then to her last hold, the “Galerie d’Orleans.” This delightful promenade extends across the south end of the garden; it is three hundred feet long by thirty wide; its roof is of glass and its pavement of tesselated marble; it is bounded on both sides by stores, and cafés, and reading rooms, eighteen feet square, renting annually at four thousand francs each. It is kept warm enough for its company in winter, and is a fashionable resort during that season. It is a pleasant walk also in the twilight of a summer evening.

I know an ex-professor, by dining with him at the same ordinary, and we walk often under the crystal vaults of this gallery, and reason whole evenings away—now we stop, and then walk on, and then take snuff, and then make a whole round arm in arm, in great gravity and{117} silence; at other times, being seated at a marble table, we calmly unfold the intricate mazes of the human mind and systems of human policy; and then we take coffee, with a little glass of quirsh. Last night we reasoned warmly upon the nature of slavery till I got mad, and whilst I sipped and read the newspaper, he amused himself with a drawing (for he is skilled in this art), which he presented me. It was a Liberty, of a healthy and robust complexion, her foot upon a negro slave. The negro sympathies have waxed very warm in this country.

Four of the houses just over us are consecrated to gambling. They are frequented, however, by rather the lower class and rabble of the profession. They who have some regard to reputation go to Frascati’s, to the Rue Richelieu; the more select to the “Cercle,” or to the “Club Anglais” upon the Boulevard, and the Rue de Grammont; and the “Jockey Club” receives the dandies and flash gentlemen of the turf. The three last are of English origin, and the “Club Anglais” is in the best English style. It receives only the high functionaries of the state, princes of the blood, ambassadors, and other eminent persons, and even these are not admitted to pick one another’s pockets here,{118} unless known to be of good moral character. Games of hazard are prohibited, and the bets correspondent to the dignity of the company. The “Cercle,” also, is frequented by the upper sort of folk; it is très distingué; and the eating and service are of no common rate.

The public gambling houses here are authorized by government, and pay for their charter annually six and a half millions of francs. The government has not thought it fit that the black-legs and courtezans should worship in the same temple. The ladies have therefore been turned out, poor things! to get a living as they can on the Boulevards and elsewhere, and the gamblers have the Palais Royal all to themselves. But why do not “the Chambers,” extend this system of financial economy to other moral offences, as stealing, drunkenness, and adultery? I would charter them every one, and enrich the state. If we can succeed in making a vice respectable, it is no vice at all; and why should not a proper protection of government and general custom render gambling or any vice as respectable as thieving or infanticide was at Sparta; or as duelling and privateering are amongst the modern civilized nations? The matter is now under discussion, but there{119} are members of both houses who oppose these doctrines; they say that the government by such licences becomes accessory to the crimes of its subjects, and that bad passions, already rank enough in human nature, should not be made a direct object of education; moreover, they find it awkward that legislators, after having given the whole community a public licence to pick one another’s pockets, should stand up in the national tribune and talk about honesty. There are persons who have absurd prejudices.

But to be serious; indeed, I am very well disposed to such a feeling; I have just fallen accidentally upon the story, which every one knows, of the unhappy Colton. He wrote books in recommendation of virtue, and critiques in reprobation of vice, with admirable talent. He was a clergyman by profession, and yet became a victim to this detestable passion. He subsisted by play several years amongst these dens of the Palais Royal, and at length falling into irretrievable misery, ended his life here by suicide. One feels a sadness of heart in looking upon the scene of so horrible an occurrence; one owes a tear to the errors of genius, to the weakness of our common humanity.{120}

Gambling seems to be the universal passion; the two extremes of human society are equally subject to it. The savage of the Columbia River gambles his rifle and his squaw, and like any gentleman of the “Cercle,” commits suicide in his despair. Billiards, cards, Faro, and other games of hazard, are to be found at every hundred steps, in every street and alley of Paris; haunted by black-legs in waiting for your purse; and there is scarce a private ball or soirée, even to those of the court, in which immense sums are not lost and won by gambling. The shuffling of cards or rattling of dice is a part of the music of every Parisian saloon, and many fathers of families of the first rank get a living by it. To know how much better it is in London, one has only to read the London books. And how much better is it in America? To know this, you have only to visit our Virginia Springs and other places of fashionable resort. You will hear there the instruments of gambling at every hour of the night; and you will see tables, covered with the infamous gold, set out in the shade during the day; and you will see seated around these tables those who make the laws for “the only Republic upon the earth,” the members of the American Congress—with the same{121} solemn gravity as if holding counsel upon the destinies of the nation. I have seen the highest officer of the House of Representatives step from the loo-table to the Speaker’s chair! The vices of the higher orders have this to aggravate their enormity, that the lower world is formed and encouraged by their example. Gambling in Virginia is a penitentiary offence.

I have visited these “Hells” of the Palais Royal. Their numbers are 113, 129, and 154 on the eastern gallery, and number 36 on the western; and from the look of the company, I presume one could get here very soon all the acquirements by which a man may be put in the way of being hanged. Bars are placed before the windows, by the humanity of the government, to prevent his Majesty’s subjects and others from throwing away their precious lives in their fits of despair.

That tall and robust, and stern-looking man, between fifty and sixty, in an old tattered great coat, and walking in the gait of a conspirator, is Chodruc Duclos. He was once the friend of Count Peyronnet, as they say; he lavished his fortune on him, and fought his duels. The Count became minister and Duclos poor; he claimed his protection, and was rejected by the{122} ungrateful minister. He now walks here daily at the same hour, like some mysterious, unearthly being. He never speaks; and the last smile has died upon his lips.

I have a mind to tell you a queer anecdote of myself, which will fill the rest of this page without much changing the subject. In a walk through the Rue Richelieu, a few evenings ago, with a wag of an Englishman, a fellow-lodger, he proposed to gratify me with a peep into one of the evening rendez-vous, as he said, of the nobility. I entered with becoming reverence through a hall, where servants in livery attended, taking our hats and canes, with a princely ceremony, and bringing us refreshments. Tables in the several rooms were covered with gold, at which gentlemen and ladies were playing, and others were looking on intently and silently. Around, some were coteried in corners, others were strolling in groups, or pairs, through the rooms; and others again were rambling carelessly through the walks of an adjacent garden of flowers and shrubbery, illuminated, or were seated in secret conversation amongst its arbours.

“That gentleman,” said my companion, “on the right, with the Adonis neck, with myrrhed{123} and glossy ringlets, is the Prince Puckler Muskau.” And when I had looked at him sufficiently—“That gentleman on the left in conversation with Don—Don—Don—I forget his name—that is Prince Carrimanico, of Rome; and that just in front is the Baron Blowminossoff, from Petersburgh.” I stared, particularly at my Lord Brougham, who had just come over to make a tour upon the continent for his health. He was attenuated by sickness and the cares of business, but I could discern distinctly the great traits of his character—the lowering indignation on his brow, the bitter curl and sarcasm on his lip, and the impetuous and overwhelming energy which distinguishes this great statesman, upon his strongly-marked features; and if I had not been informed his name, I should have marked him out at once as some eminent personage; and from a certain abrupt and fidgety manner, a hasty scratch at the back of his head, accompanied with two or three twitches of the nose, I should have suspected him for nobody else than the greatest statesman and orator of Europe—my Lord Brougham.

Among the ladies, also, several were highly distinguished. There were Madame la Contesse de Trotteville, and her beautiful cousin Made{124}moiselle Trottini, from Naples, with several of the French nobility; and there was the Countess of Crumple, and a fat lady, Madame Von Swellemburg, and others of the Dutch and English gentry. I fancied that a Duchess on my left (I forget her name) had a haughty and supercilious air, as if she felt the dignity of her blood, and the length of her genealogy. She seemed as if not pleased that everybody should be introduced, and wished someplace more exclusive. But there was one young and beautiful creature—but so beautiful that I could not with all my efforts keep my eyes off her—whom I observed more than once reciprocated my inquisitive looks. I felt flattered at being the object of her attention. The elegant creature! thought I; what a simplicity and sweetness of expression! and how strange, that, brought up amidst the art and refinement of a court, she should retain all the innocence of the dove upon her countenance.

In the midst of this admiration, and when I had just got myself almost bowed to by another countess, my companion let in the light upon the magic lantern. “These,” said he, “are women of the town, and these are gamblers and pickpockets, who come hither to Monsieur Frascati’s to rob and ruin one another.” I give you this{125} for your private ear; if you tell it, mercy on me, I shall never hear the last of it. I shall be sung all over the village. There are persons there of half my years who would have detected such company at once. As I was going away, Miss Emmeline, Miss Adelaide, and Madame Rosalie, gave me their cards.

I saw this morning the Queen and the King’s most excellent Majesty. They passed through the Champs Elysées to their country habitation at Neuilly. The equipage was a plain carriage with six horses, a postillion on a front and rear horse; two other carriages and four, and guards. To see a king for the first time is an event. Ai’nt you mad?—you who never saw anything over there bigger than his most unchristian Majesty Black Hawk, and Higglewiggin his squaw.—I have now come to the interesting part of this {126}letter. I am, yours.

LETTER V.

Paris, July 24th, 1835.

I am going now to escort you to the Tuileries, for which you must scramble through a few filthy lanes a quarter of a mile towards the south-west. Who would live in this rank old Paris if it were not for its gardens? This garden is in the midst of the city, and contains near a hundred acres of ground. It has the Seine on the south side; the Palace of the Tuileries on the east; and on the north, the beautiful houses of the Rue Rivoli, the street intervening; and on the west, the Place Louis XV. between it and{127} the Champs Elysées. The whole is enclosed with an iron railing tipped with gold near the Palace, and terraces, having a double row of tile trees are raised along the north and south sides. A beautiful parterre is spread out in front of the Palace, of oranges, red-rosed laurels, and other shrubs, with a reservoir, jets d’eaux, vases, and statues. The chief walks also have orange-trees on both margins during the summer, and one of these, as wide as Chestnut-street, runs from the centre pavilion of the palace through the middle of the garden, and continuing up through the Champs Elysées to the Barrière de l’Etoile, terminates in a full view of the great triumphal arch of Napoleon. In the interior are plots of woodland, and chairs, upon which, at two sous the sitting, you may repose or read in the shade, and little cabinets, which offer you for a sou your choice of the newspapers. The area is of hard earth and gravel, relieved here and there by enclosures of verdure; and on the west end, an octagonal lake is inhabited by swans, and fishes, and river gods, and a fountain is jetting its silvery streams in the air. This is the garden of the Tuileries. The whole surface is sprinkled with heathen mythology. Hercules strangles the Hydra, Theseus deals blows to the Minotaur, Prome{128}theus sits sullen on his rock, and Antinous is mad to see his own gardens outdone, and the Pius Æneas, little Jule by the hand, bears off his aged parent upon his shoulders. Venus, too, looks beautiful on the back of a tortoise, and Ceres is beautiful, her head coiffed in the latest fashion with sheaves of wheat.

On the side next the palace, you will see a knife-grinder, whom everybody admires, and statues of ancient heroes and statesmen majestic on their pedestals,—Pericles, Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cæsar, and Spartacus. You may imagine what life these images, set out alone and in groups through the garden, give to the perspective. The whole scene is as beautiful as my description of it is detestable. The French are justly proud of this garden, and are every year increasing the quantity of its statuary: it will become at length one of the splendid galleries of the capital; its silent lessons improving the public taste in the arts and elegances of life: how much better than the lessons of the schools! I like to see, in spite of English authority, a good deal of art in a city garden; a rude and uncivilized field seems to me no more appropriate there than a savage and unpolished community.

In this garden, there is no drinking, no smok{129}ing, no long faces waiting the preliminary soups, or turning up of noses over the relics of a departed dinner. It is a spot sacred to the elegant and intellectual enjoyments. The great walks are filled every fine evening with a full stream of fashionable company, and that near the Rue Rivoli has always a hedge of ladies extending along each margin, the third of a mile. In another section, a thousand or two of children are engaged in their infantine sports, and their army of nurses are gathering also a share of the health and amusements. Here are the most graceful little mothers, and children, and nurses, in the world; I will send you over one of each, some of these days, for a pattern.

How delightful to walk of an early morning amidst this silent congregation of statues of eminent men, of heroes, and mythological deities. I often rise with the first dawn for the sole luxury of this enjoyment. Very early, the Cabinet de Lecture opens its treasures to the anxious politicians, who sit retired here and there through the shady elms. One, with a doctrinal air, spreads open the “Journal des Débats;” reads, ruminates, ponders, and now and then writes down an idea on his tablets; another pours out his whole spirit{130} through his tangled hair and grisly mustachios, devouring the “National;” he rises sometimes, clenches his two fists, and sits down again; and a third, in a neat and venerable garb, a snuff-coloured coat and tie-wig, his handkerchief and snuff-box at his side (from the Faubourg St. Germain), lays deliberately upon his lap the “Quotidienne.” And here and there you will see a diligent school boy preparing his college recitations; perusing his Ovid at the side of a Daphne and Apollo, or by a group of Dryades skulking behind an oak, or of Naiades plunging into a fountain.

You will see one individual upon the southern terrace, his hands clasped, walking lonely, or standing still, his eyes stretched towards the west, till a tear steals down his cheeks. He is a stranger, and a thousand leagues of ocean yawn between him and his native country! I love this terrace of all things; it has a look towards home. When I receive your letters, I come here to read them; and when a pretty woman honours me with her company, why we come hither together, and in this shady bower, I tell her of our squaw wives and the little pappooses, until the sun fades away in the west.{131}

All day long, this elegant saloon has its society, and a lady can walk in it, unaccompanied, when and whither she pleases. Every day is fashionable, but some more than others, and from four till six are the fashionable hours. The crowd by degrees thickens, the several groups are formed, and towards four the panorama is complete. This is the time that one stands gaping at the long file of ladies upon each side of the wide walk, or that one strolls up and down eyeing them along the intervening avenue, or airs or fans one’s idle minutes upon the terrace overlooking this scene of enchantment. I never venture in here, without saying that part of the Lord’s prayer about temptation, which I used to leave out in the Coal Region.

At length, the day is subdued, and the long glimmering twilight, peculiar to these northern climates, wanes away gently into night. Then the king’s band strikes up its concert from the front of the palace, and then you will see the gravelled walk leading to the steps of the royal residence, and the transversal alley, filled with ten thousand listeners, bound in the spell of Rossini and Mozart for an hour; an hour, too, in which the air has a more balmy fragrance, and the music a more delicious harmony.{132}

Innumerable lights, in the meantime, shine out from the palace windows, and the Rue Rivoli, and glimmer through the tufted trees of the garden. The plantation of elms has also, at this hour, its little enchantments. Lovers, using the sweet opportunities of the night, and seated apart from the crowd, breathe their soft whisperings into each other’s ears, in a better music than the king’s; and you can see visions of men and women just flit by you now and then in the doubtful light, and fade away into the thin air. But I am venturing upon the poetical point of my description, which I had better leave to your fancy. Alas, I squandered away all my poetry last week upon the Palais Royal, and have left myself nothing but mere prose to describe to you the exquisite and incomparable Tuileries.

The regulations of this garden are simple. The world is admitted, if trim and dressed decently, with the morning dawn, and is dispersed about nine in the evening by the beating of a drum. One is not permitted to enter with anything of a large bundle. The Minister of Finance was stopped the other day; he was attempting to enter with the budget for this year! The rules are enforced by an individual{133} accoutred in a beard, mustachios, red breeches and a carabine, who walks gravely up and down at the entrance of each gate.

The statues (Lucretia and all) are exposed in a state of the most unsophisticated nakedness. If mother Eve should come back, she would find things here just as she left them, with the exception of the aprons. This to us green Americans, at our arrival, is a subject of great scandal. I had with me a modest Yankee (please excuse the tautology) on my first visit here, and we stumbled first on a Diana, which was passable, for she apologized, manibus passis, for her deshabille as well as she could; then a Hercules; and at length we fell in with a Venus just leaving her bath. “Come,” said he, interrupting my curiosity, and drawing me aside, “let us go out, I don’t think this is a decent place.” You must not imagine, however, my dear, that you Americans are essentially more modest than we French * * * * * * Things of every day’s occurrence are never a subject of remark; and if our first mother had not begun these modesties of the toilette, the world might have gone on, as in her time, and no one would have taken notice of it. Americans (I presume I may mention it to their credit) are{134} more easily reconciled to the customs of foreign nations than any other people; they are more plastic, and easily fitted to every condition of life. Talk to any one of your acquaintance, of a community of lodging in her mansion in Chestnut-street, and she will have a fit of hysterics at least, and six months after, you will find her climbing up a long Parisian staircase as long as Jacob’s ladder, in common with half a dozen of families, and delighted with her apartments. An English or Frenchman in foreign countries can no more change his habits than the Æthiop his skin.

I may as well go on gardening through the whole of this letter. Our little squares and squaroids of Philadelphia have their little advantages. I do not mean to disparage them, but from want of extent they are not susceptible of any elegant improvement, nor do they furnish a promiscuous multitude with the necessary accommodations; they lose, therefore, their rank in society, and become unfashionable. All your pretty squarets—and I believe those of New York too—could be put into the Tuileries alone.

I have not yet seen the English Parks, but report says they would swallow up our whole{135} city. And I have known even these little spots of ours to be looked at with a suspicious eye. I have heard men calculate the value of the houses and other things which might be built upon them. The “Independence Square” is worth a thousand dollars a foot, every inch of it; why don’t the New Yorkquois sell their “Battery” alongside the sea, which is big enough without it? Oh, the magnificent wharves, and oh, the warehouses and hotels, that might grow upon it.

Besides, who but the caterpillars enter it, and even they will be starved out shortly. With all its breezes from the sea, its port more beautiful than Naples, its fleets laden with India, Persia, and Arabia, a fashionable woman will not look through the fence.

Railroads and spinning-jennies are, to be sure, excellent things; but they lead us too much to measure value by its capacity to supply some physical necessity, and to forget that the moral condition of man has also its wants. If riches only were necessary to the prosperity of a nation, I should to-day, perhaps, instead of the Boulevards, be strolling through the fashionable streets of Babylon. If a painting, or a statue, by perpetuating the memory of virtuous and religious men, and the glorious events of{136} history, has the power of elevating the mind and inspiring it with emulous feelings, as Scipio Africanus and other great men used to testify; if it has the power of improving taste, which is improving virtue, or affording pleasure, which is a part of our natural wants, or even of employing time innocently, which might be otherwise employed wickedly—perhaps in getting drunk at the tavern—why then, a statue, or a painting, is not only more ornamental, but as useful as a steam-engine or a spinning-jenny.

The Scythian who preferred the neighing of a horse to a fine air of Timotheus, no doubt was a good Scythian; but we are not, in our present relations with the world, to remain long in a state of Scythian simplicity, and it is worth while to consider what is about to be the condition of a people, who have grown luxurious, consequently vicious, without the refinements and distractions of the fine arts and liberal amusements. Utility, with all her arithmetic, very often miscalculates. By keeping vacant spaces open in the midst of a town, an equivalent value is given to other localities. A garden would bring many, who now waste their time in travelling into airy situations, to the neighbourhood of the Exchange and other places of busi{137}ness, and it would drive many out from such places who may as well be anywhere else; whose time, at feast, is of less value.

Since human nature will have her diversion, the business of the statesman is to amuse her innocently; that is, to multiply pleasures which are cheap and accessible to all—pleasures which are healthy, and especially those which are public. Men never take bad habits under the eye of the world; but secret amusements are sedentary, unhealthy, and all lead to disreputable and dangerous excesses. Every one knows the social disposition of our race; it is a disposition founded upon both our good and bad passions—upon our love of kindred, and other loves, upon a sense of weakness and dependence,—and curiosity, vanity, and even malevolence, find their gratification in social intercourse. It is therefore the duty of statesmen to study that our crowds and meetings of pleasure, which they cannot prevent, should not be in gin-shops and taverns.

Let us have gardens, then, and other public places, where we may see our friends, and parade our vanities, if you will, before the eyes of the world. Did you ever know any one who was not delighted with a garden? What are the{138} best descriptions of the best poets? Their gardens. It is the original taste, it is transmitted from Paradise, and is almost the only gratification of the rich that does not cloy in the possession. I know an English gentleman here who has worn out all the pleasures that money can buy at twenty-eight; he is peevish, ill-natured, and insupportable; we sometimes walk together into the Luxembourg, where he suddenly brightens up, and is agreeable, and as happy for a while as if he was no lord.

To know the advantages of these places to the poor, one must visit the close alleys, crowded courts, and over-peopled habitations, of an over-grown city; where vices and diseases are festering in secret in the heart of the community. Why send missionaries to the South Seas, while their infected districts are unreclaimed? or why talk of popular religion, and morals, and education? The people who would employ about half the care and expense in preventing a disposition to vice, that they now employ in correcting it, would be the people the most happy and innocent of the earth. The best specifics I can conceive against the vagabond population of a city, are gardens, airy streets, and neat houses. Men’s habits of life are degraded always to the{139} meanness of their lodgings; if we build “beggar’s nests,” we must expect beggars to breed in them.

Gardens give a taste for out-door exercises, and thereby promote health and physical developement; and they aid in keeping up the energy of a nation, which city life, in depriving the women and children of air and exercise, tends perpetually to destroy. To the children, they give not only habits of health, cheerfulness, and gracefulness, but an emulation of neatness and good manners, which they would surely not acquire under the sober stimulus of home and the nursery; to the nurses, too, they impart a valuable share of the same benefits. Finally, by gardens and other embellishments of a city, we induce strangers to reside there. About fifty thousand English are now residents in France, and their necessary expenditure is rated at half a million of pounds sterling annually. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say, that no property pays so abundant a revenue to a city as its gardens. What is it that produces to a city the same reputation? Who speaks of Madrid without its Prado, of London without its Parks? And why should Paris be the choice residence of Europe, but for its galleries and public gar{140}dens, its Tuileries, its Palais Royal, its Luxembourg, its Tivoli, its Champs Elysées, and Bois de Boulogne?

But to make gardens is not enough; you must cultivate the public taste for them. For this, it is necessary that they be made ornamental, kept by a vigilant police, and that fashionable women should frequent them. The French women have a better sense of their advantages than to suffer their fine gardens to become vulgar. They have, to be sure, days and hours that are more genteel than others; but they are to be seen there every day, and there is room for all classes without incommoding each other. Even the poorer classes will not frequent a garden that only poor devils visit. They are flattered to be seen within the sphere of good company, and are encouraged to appear there with becoming decency. It is not to be denied that the poorer people of Paris are decent in their manners and dress, and graceful beyond the example of all other nations. In what more serviceable manner can a lady of fortune benefit her country and humanity, than by improving the manners and elevating the character of the lower classes? She is taking care of her own interests in taking care of the poor. It was the{141} pride of the French nobility, and not the Jacobins, that set loose the many-headed tyranny of their revolution: it was not Robespierre, but Louis XIV. and Louis XV., who put the axe to the throat of their unhappy successors.

Much intercourse of mind or society is not, indeed, to be expected between two classes of a different education and fortune; nor can it be desired by either; but there is nothing in our code of morals or religion which can justify the one in treating the other with unkindness or incivility. True dignity has no need to stand on the defensive. A lady, who has little of this quality, will always be most afraid to compromise it by vulgar associations; it is right to be economical of what one has but little. The contempt of the rabble, of which we hear so much, is three-fourths of it parade and affectation. She who abroad hangs the common world with so much scorn upon her nose, lives at home, under the same roof, almost at the same table, with the veriest rabble of the whole community, her own servants and slaves. Why should we abandon the Tuileries more than the Boulevards, and why the Washington-square more than Chestnut-street, because the common people walk in it? I have written upon this{142} subject more at length, and more earnestly, than perhaps I ought, from the mortification, the almost indignation, I feel, after witnessing the utility and ornament of gardens in other countries, at the immense defect occasioned by their stupid omission, in the face of European experience, in the beauty and comfort of our American cities.

But, without more scolding, let us see how far the evil may admit of a remedy. Mr. Burke, in pleading for the English Parks, which the Utilitarians of the day proposed to sacrifice to some temporary convenience or miserly policy, called them the “lungs of the city,” and supplicated the government not to obstruct the public health in one of its most vital and necessary functions. The question here is with our Philadelphia, which never had any other lungs than the grave-yards to supply these respiratory organs. I propose that some one of your old bachelors, as rich as Girard, shall die, as soon as he can be conveniently be spared, and leave us a second legacy, to be appropriated as follows: to buy two lots of fifty acres each upon the west bank of the Schuylkill; (they ought to be in the centre of the city, but time will place them there;) the one for the parade of equipages, dis{143}play of horsemanship, and military training, and for the games and ceremonies of our public festivals; the other to be sacred to the arts, and to refined and intellectual pleasures.

I know of no benefaction by which he could impose upon his posterity so sacred a debt of gratitude; there is none, surely, which should confer upon its author so lasting and glorious a reputation.

I have not a word of news, only that my health has improved, very much to the credit of this French climate; you would think it was Spartacus who had stepped from his pedestal in the Tuileries. The French summer is delightful; only think of reading at three in the morning without a candle, and stepping about in the daylight till ten o’clock at night. Adieu.{144}

LETTER VI.

Paris, August 1st, 1835.

The Parisians have set apart three days annually, to commemorate their Revolution of 1830—the 27th, 28th, and 29th of July; they call them the “Three Glorious Days.” On the 27th are showers of sermons all over town in the churches, and fastings over good dinners in the cafés. Pious visits, too, are paid to the graves of those who had the glory of being killed on the original “three days,” who are called “the martyrs,” and are buried on or near{145} the spot upon which they were killed. The military parade is the 28th, and the gala, or jubilee day, is the 29th.

As the time approaches, the town is big with visiters, and all is noise and preparation. Yew trees are planted by the graves of the “martyrs,” where the dogs and other obscene animals, the rest of the year, wallow; and willows are set a-weeping several days before. Theatres are erected at the same time, and orchestras and platforms for the buffoons; and the illuminations, which they keep ready made from year to year, are brought out upon the Champs Elysées. Every evening the whole of Paris comes out to see these works, and says, this is for the mourning of the 27th, and this is for the dancing of the 29th. On the present occasion a rain had turned the streets into mud; but the French turn out on their fête days, mud or no mud, and in numbers far exceeding our notions of arithmetic.

The 27th arrived, and every street and avenue poured their waves into the Boulevards and Champs Elysées, as so many rivers their waters to the ocean. A plump little widow of our hotel offered to guide my inexperience in the crowd, which I accepted. I took her for her{146} skill in the town, and she for my manhood, as a blind person takes a lame one for the use of his eyes. I should have profited by her services, but she was no sooner in the street, than she ran off in a hurry, each of her little feet doing its uttermost to get before the other, and kept me running after her all day long;—you have sometimes seen a colt running after its mother, now falling behind, and now catching up with her; and there were just in front of me, I verily believe, five thousand French women, each exhibiting a pair of pretty ancles. A stranger has a great many things to see that are no curiosities to the natives. Never take a native with you as a guide, but always some one who knows no more than yourself.

On these muddy occasions, a French woman just places her hand upon the right hip, gathering up her lower gear on the nether side to the level of the knee, and then whips along, totally regardless of that part of the world that is behind her; as in a chariot race you see the charioteer bending over the lash, and striving after the one just before him, not caring a straw for those he has passed by. You might have seen my guide and me, at one time walking slowly and solemnly in a file of sisters of charity, and{147} then looking down upon an awful procession from a gallery of the Boulevards; next you might have seen us behind a bottle of “vin ordinaire” at the café Turc, and then seated snugly together at the church of St. Roch.

Here we witnessed an interesting ceremony—a marriage. Fifteen young girls, and the same number of young men, children of the martyrs, were intermarried. They are apportioned by the government; and the marrying is to continue till the whole stock is married off—as encouragement to new “martyrs.” We stayed one hour here, and had a great deal of innocent squeezing, with prayers and sacred music, and then we went home and had our dinner.

After this repast, I sallied out again, under the ægis of my same guide, who now led me through long and intricate passages, and through thickets of men and women, all getting along in the slime of each other’s tracks towards the Hotel de Ville. Here, in the midst of an immense crowd, were the shrines of the martyrs, and over them a chapel of crape, with all the other mournful emblems. The relatives of the deceased were hanging up chaplets, and reverend men were saying prayers, and sprinkling holy water upon the graves.{148}

July 28th.

This day was given to the general parade. More than a hundred thousand of the National Guard was arrayed upon the Boulevards; and the side walks were choaked up, and running over with the crowd, which was pushed back now and then, in great fright and confusion, by the gens d’armes, and the tails of the horses; and all the rest of Paris looked on from the windows, balconies, and roofs of the adjoining houses—I as much noticed, as a leaf of the Alleghany, upon a verandah of the Boulevard du Temple. Great was the noise, and long and patient the expectation. At length, there was a sudden flustering and bustle among the multitude, and I sat up closer to Madame Dodu—it was the King! He was accompanied by the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Nemours, his sons, and passed along the line, followed by officers on horseback, very grim. He was received with not very ardent acclamations. Compared to “General Jackson’s visit,” it was a fifth-rate thing. Not a bird, though many flew over us, fell dead.

But how shall I describe to you the magnificence of the pomp? since in our country there is no object of comparison. How should we{149}—we, who can hardly contain the Washington Grays, or Blues—which is it? with Johnson’s band, and the twenty little boys who run after them—how should we be able to conceive of a regular infantry of more than a hundred thousand men, with their ten thousand drums, and trumpets, and clarions, and accoutred in uniform, and trained to the last grace and dexterity of discipline? But, alas! what avails to individual power this exhibition of human strength, since we see its haughtiest pretensions, every day, the sport of some ignominious chance?

Achilles, they say, was killed by the most effeminate roué of all Troy; and his great descendant, Pyrrhus, by an old woman, who lived “au troisième,” and pitched, Heaven knows what, upon his head through her window. What signifies the strength of Hercules, if it may be outwrestled by a vapour?—It is vexatious, too, to see how much events are under the control of accident, and how little Providence seems to trouble itself about them; and to think how vain a thing is that boast of the world—human wisdom! I knew a man, who missed his fortune, and was ruined by his prudence; and another, who saved his house from being burnt by his foolishness! Who has not heard of no{150} less an Emperor than Bonaparte being saved by some vanity of his wife?—the infernal machine blowing up, she fixing her tournure, or something in her chamber, and he fretting at the delay, and churning his spite through his teeth? Why, I have read of a lady who saved her life by staying at home at loo, on a Sunday, instead of going to prayers, where the church fell in, and killed the whole congregation. Yet, with all this experience, men still continue to be haughty of their strength, self-sufficient of their wisdom, and to throw Providence in each other’s teeth when anything happens.

But this morality is interrupting the thread of my story. As the king and his escort approached the east end of the Boulevards, a deadly machine, prepared by a man named Fieschi, (infernal machine maker to his Majesty,) was discharged from the window of a small wine store, and made havoc of the crowd; the king, with his two sons, by a special Providence, standing unhurt amidst the slaughter—not a hair was singed, not a garment was rent!—He continued to the end of the line, and returned over the scene of the murder. His cool and undaunted countenance gave a favourable opinion of his courage; and his danger, accompanied{151} by such cruel circumstances, has turned the sympathies of a great many in his favour, who cared not a straw for him yesterday. Of the twelve persons killed, Marshal Mortier, Duke of Treviso, is the most distinguished. Eighteen persons were wounded. I was so near as to smell the gunpowder, which was quite near enough for a foreigner. I have since visited the battle ground—what an atrocious spectacle!

The author of this murder is a Corsican, who has served a long time his apprenticeship to villainy in the French army. I have seen his machine: it is composed of a series of gun-barrels, and is a bungling contrivance. The French, with all their experience, don’t shine in this kind of manufacture. It would seem a most contemptible thing in the eyes of a Kentucky rifleman. This fellow’s fame, however, is assured; he will stand conspicuous in the catalogue of regicide villains. The others have all aimed at a single bird, but he at the whole flock. One is almost tempted to regret that Ravaillac’s boots are out of fashion. He attempted to escape through a back window, but the bursting of one of his guns disabled him. His head is fractured and mangled; they expect, however, that, by the care of his physician, he may get well enough to be hanged.{152}

The last scene, the dismissal of the troops, was in the Place Vendôme, where I procured a convenient view of the ceremony. I must not forget, that in this place I lost my faithful guide, who had borne the fatigues and adventures of the day with me. Whether she had wandered from the way, or wearied had sat down, or had stopped to garter up her stockings, is uncertain—certain it is that she was lost here in the crowd, nec post oculis est reddita nostris.

On the west of the great column, the statue of Bonaparte all the while peering over him, sat the king on horseback, saluting the brigades as they passed by. His three sons attended him, and some of his generals and foreign ambassadors; and the queen and her daughters, and Madame Adelaide, the sister, and such like fine people, were on a gallery overhead, fanned by the national flags. As the queen descended, there was a shout from the multitude more animated than any during the whole day. The king sat here several hours, and received the affection of his troops bareheaded, bow following bow in perpetual succession, and each bow accompanied by a smile—just such a smile as one is obliged to put on when one meets an amiable and pretty woman whom one loves, in a fit of the cholic.{153}

July 29th.

All Paris was so overwhelmed with grief for the death of General Mortier, and the “narrow escape of the king,” that it blighted entirely the immense enjoyment we had expected for this day—the last and best of the “three glorious days.” Ball-rooms and theatres were erected with extraordinary preparation all over the Champs Elysées, and the fireworks were designed to be the most brilliant ever exhibited in Europe. Multitudes had come from distant countries to see them. I say nothing of the private losses and disappointments; of the booths and fixtures put up and now to be removed, and the consequent ruin of individuals; or of the sugar-plums, candies, gingerbread-nuts, barley-sugar, and all the rancid butter of Paris bought up to make short cakes—all broken up by this one man; and the full cup of pleasure dashed from our very lips to the ground. We were to have such an infinite feast, too, furnished by the government. As for me, I was delighted a whole week in advance, and now—I am very sorry.

Under the Empire, and before, and long after, it was a common part of a great festival here to have thrown to the people bread and meat, and wine, and to set them to scramble for{154} the possession, as they do ravens, or hounds in a kennel, or the beasts at the Menagerie. To put the half-starved population up as an amusement for their better-fed neighbours; to pelt them with pound loaves and little pies; to set a hurricane of sausages to rain over their heads; and to see the hungry clowns gape with enormous mouths, and scramble for these eatables, and to see the officers,—facetious fellows, employed to heave out these provisions,—deceive the expectant mouths by feints and tricks, by throwing sometimes a loaf of leather, or of cork, to leap from one skull to another—what infinite amusement! One of the benefits of the last Revolution was to put an end to this dishonour of the French nation. This is all I have to say of the “three glorious days.” I must trust to-morrow to furnish me something for this blank space. Good night.

Rue St. Anne, August 2nd.

Louis Philippe has had nothing but trouble with these French people ever since he undertook their government. He has about the same enjoyment of his royalty, as one sea-sick, has of the majesty of the ocean. He is lampooned in{155} the newspapers, caricatured in the print-shops, hawked about town, placarded upon the walls of every street, and gibbeted upon every gateway and lamp-post of the city. In 1831, a revolt was suppressed by Marshal Soult at Lyons; another was got up in the same place in 1834, in which there were six days’ fighting, six thousand slain, and eighteen hundred crammed into the prisons. In Paris, there were three days’ skirmishing at the Cloister St. Merri, in which were five hundred arrests in one night; and one hundred and fifty are on trial (the “Procès Monstre,” so much talked of,) in the Chamber of Peers; and now we have, superadded, this affair of Fieschi, with great expectations for the future.

The foreigners here are full of ill-bodings, and I hear nothing but revolutions in every rustling leap. We shall have our brains knocked out by the mob some one of these days. It rains nothing but Damiens and Ravaillacs, and Jacques Clements, all over town. Every one is prophetic; and I am going, after the general example, to cast the king’s horoscope quietly in my corner, and calculate for you his chances. It will be a pretty thing if I can’t eke out a letter from so important an event, and the only{156} one of any kind that has happened since I have been in Paris.

The main strength of the government is the Chamber of Deputies, which is chosen by less than two hundred thousand electors. It represents, then, not the mass of the people, who are thirty-two millions, but property, which has a natural interest in peace and quietude upon any reasonable terms. Besides, the voters being divided into small electoral colleges, are tangible, and easily bribed by offices and local interests; and the members of the Chamber, also, are allowed to hold other offices, and are very eager to possess them; and if the king does not bind both these parties about his neck, he has less policy than the world gives him credit for. He has, with his ministry, one hundred and fifty thousand of these bribes at his disposal. So, also, has he a large majority of this Chamber in his favour. Freeholders paying less than two hundred francs annual tax are not entitled to a vote. These are murmuring and struggling for an extension of suffrage, but this they do not expect from a change, and are therefore in favour of the present dynasty.

This class, from the great division of property in the Revolution, is by far the most numerous.{157} Not more than fifteen hundred landed proprietors of the kingdom have a revenue above twelve thousand pounds. The king has also his means of popularity with the poorer classes, amongst which I may mention the “Savings Banks,” established on the responsibility of the government; one hundred of these are in Paris alone. They not only encourage the economy, industry, and orderly habits of the lower classes, but bind them by the strongest of all interests to the government. For the active support of this power, there is a national guard of eight hundred thousand men, all proprietors, and having interests to hazard in a revolution. There is an immense regular army of near five hundred thousand men, and disaffection in this body would indeed be dangerous; but who is the master spirit, who can hope, of a force so dispersed, and with a continual change of position and officers, to concert a general plan of revolt? Finally, the chief learning and talent of the nation is on the side of the king.

In his councils you find such men as Thiers, Guizot, Royer Collard, Villemain, Barrante, Keratry, and a number of others of the same caste, who were the main instruments in setting up the present government, and have of course a personal interest in its support.{158}

The elements of the opposition are the liberals in favour of a constitutional monarchy, with an extension of suffrage and other popular rights, unwilling to endure under their present rulers what they resisted under their predecessors; secondly, the republicans, downright enemies of all sorts of monarchy, and in favour of an elective government, as that of the United States; this party is numerous, but without any concentration of strength; and finally, the Carlists, the partisans of the ancient monarchy, and its legitimate sovereigns. These parties all abut against each other, and have scarce a common interest; and I do not see from what quarter any one of them can set up a rival dangerous to the existing authority.

The present king has industry and capacity in a high degree, and he exerts both diligently in improving the condition of the people. He favours agriculture, commerce, and the arts of peace; he thrives by his own wit, as well as by the silliness of his predecessors. New streets and houses are rising up to bless him all over Paris. The nation was dragooned into Louis XVIII. and Charles X. by foreign bayonets; Louis Philippe is its own free choice. He took part also in the Revolution, and cannot be feared as the partisan of anti-revolutionary doctrines; the{159} peasants need not dread under his reign a restitution of the spoils of the nobility. He is also exemplary in private life; he rises early and looks after his business, knocks up his boys and packs them off to school with the other urchins of the city, and thinks there is no royal way to mathematics.

For his pacific policy alone he deserves to go to heaven. It cannot be doubtful, that war is one of the most aggravated miseries that can afflict our wretched human nature this side the grave. For the essential cause of their revolutions and national calamities, the French need not reason beyond a simple statistical view of their wars for the last five centuries. They had, in this period, thirty-five years of civil, and forty of religious wars; and of foreign wars, seventy-six on, and one hundred and seventy-six off, the French territory; and their great battles are one hundred and eighty-four. One does not comprehend why the judgments of heaven should not fall upon a nation which consumes a half nearly of its existence in carrying on offensive wars. And, moreover (a new virtue in a French king), Louis Philippe keeps no left-handed wives—no “Belles Feronières,” no “Gabrielle d’Etrées,” or “Madame Lavallières;” he sticks to his rib of Sicily,{160} with whom he has nine children living, all in a fresh and vigorous health. Why then seek to kill a king recommendable by so many excellent qualities? Attempts at regicide are not always proofs of disloyalty in a nation.

A great number of desperate men, mostly the refuse of the army, have been turned loose upon the community, and these, in disposing of their own worthless lives, seek that of the king, in order to die gloriously upon the Place St. Jaques. I have no doubt that the majority of the nation desire ardently his safety. France has tried alternately the two extremes of human government, or rather misgovernment. She has rushed from an unlimited monarchy to a crazy democracy, and back into a military despotism. She has tilted the vessel on one side, then run to the other, and at length is taking her station in the middle. The general temper of the public mind now favours a moderate government, and this is wisdom bought at so dear a rate, that it would be underrating the common sense of the nation to suppose it will be lightly regarded.

Here is a copy of each of the Paris newspapers. You will see something of the spirit in which they are conducted, and one of the chief{161} engines by which the nation is governed. There is certainly no country in which a newspaper has so great an influence, and none in which the editor is so considerable a man, as in Paris.

The Constitutionnel opposes and defends all parties, and is pleased and displeased with all systems of government. It courts the favour of the “Petite Bourgeoisie,” the shopkeepers, who are always restless and displeased, but their interests require a quiet pursuit of business. This is the most gossiping gazette of them all, and gossips very agreeably.

The Journal des Debats represents the “haute Bourgeoisie,” the rich industrial classes, whose great interests are, order and security of property, and the maintenance of peace with foreign countries. The “Partie Doctrinaire,” the chief supporters of this paper, are a kind of genteel liberals, holding the balance between confirmed royalists and democrats, and ultra liberals. They have supported their doctrines with a great display of scholastic learning, which has given them their appellation of “Doctrinaires.” Their leaders are mostly from the schools, as Royer Collard, Guizot, and Villemain, Keratry and Barrante. This paper has a leaning towards a vigorous monarchy and{162} the Orleans dynasty; it is now doing what it can in its moderate way to discredit the republicanism of the United States.

The Gazette de France and the Quotidienne are opposed directly to the present government, and in favour of the legitimate monarchy in the person of Henry V. The former advocates royalty with extended suffrage, the increase of power in the provinces, and decrease of the influence of the capital; the latter insists upon the re-establishment, in its fullest extent, of the ancient monarchy.

The National asserts republicanism outright, on the system of the United States. It is conducted with spirit and ability, at present, by M. Carrel. In assuming his office he announced himself in his address as follows:—“La responsibilité du National pése en entier dès ce jour sur ma seule tête; si quelqu’un s’oubliât en invective au sujêt de cette feuille, il trouverait à qui parler.” With this the paper called the Tribune, edited also with ability, co-operates.

The Moniteur reports the speeches of the Chambers, and official documents, and is the ostensible organ of the government. The Temps, the Courier, the Messager, and Journal du Commerce, all advocate reform on constitutional{163} principles. There are smaller papers, too, conducted with ability. These, with Galignani, and some other English prints, make up the newsmongerie of Paris. The price of Galignani and the principal French papers is twenty dollars a year, and their number of regular subscribers about 20,000. In Paris they are generally read by the hour, and transferred from one individual to another, and disposed of in the evening to the public establishments, or sent off to the country. In this manner, they are read by an immense number of persons daily. The price of advertising in the best papers is about thirty sous per line.

The first men of the nation are amongst the constant contributors to these papers, both as correspondents and editors. The editorial corps around each, discuss the leading topics, and form a board to admit or reject communications. These have their daily meetings with the functionaries of the state, and their correspondents in every foreign country. Argus, with his hundred eyes, and Briareus, with his hundred hands, preside over the preparation of the daily meal. In our country, where the same man caters, cooks, and does the honours, it would be unfair to make any comparison of ability. There{164} is one point, however, in which there is no good reason why we should allow the French or any other people the superiority: it is, the decency of language in which animated debates are conducted. To be eloquent, or even vituperative, it is not necessary to be abusive, or transgress the rules of good breeding; polish neither dulls the edge nor enervates the vigour of the weapon. The existence of agencies between the owners and readers of newspapers is an immense gain to the liberty of the press. There can be very little freedom of opinion where the editor and proprietor, as in the United States, stand in immediate relation with their patrons.

In speaking of the powers of the government, I have said nothing of the Chamber of Peers. It is but a feather in either scale. It wants the hereditary influence and great estates necessary to command popular respect. The title of Peer is for life only, and is the reward of prescribed services in all the chief employments of the state. It is a cheap dignity, which pleases grown-up children, and consists of a ribbon in the button-hole.

I have said nothing, either, of Bonapartism, which has gasped its last. The most violent enmities against the Emperor seem to have{165} burnt out. No danger is now apprehended either from his family or his partisans, and the mind is open to a full sense of the glory he has conferred upon the nation; and there is mixed up with admiration of his talents, a sentiment of affection, from the recollection of his great reverses of fortune and his patient sufferings. I have heard all parties speak of him with great respect and praise. It is a good policy of the present government to have taken into favour all his plans for the improvement of the country, and to have placed him in his citizen’s coat, and cocked hat, stripped of its military plumes, upon his column.

When I write politics to ladies, Apollo keeps twitching me all the while by the ear; but I thought any other subject to-day would be impertinent. Yet why should ladies be ignorant of what enters so largely into the conversation of society, and makes so important a part of the learning of their children? I am meditating a journey to Rome, and expect to set out next week with a gentleman of Kentucky. His Holiness, I presume, will be delighted to see some one all the way from the Sharp Mountain. Direct your letters as usual. Very tenderly, yours.{166}

LETTER VII.

Paris, August 14th, 1835.

Here is an Englishman, who has interrupted me at the very outset of this letter, and says I must dine with him at the “Garden of Plants.” He is a kind of public informer, and does the honours of Paris to us raw Yankees, just come over. He has on his left arm, a basket of provisions, a couple of claret-bottles exhibiting their slender necks over the margin of the basket, and on his right a lady, his sister, who is to accompany us. She is exceedingly pretty, with a complexion of drifted snow, and a rosiness of cheeks. I have no comparison, only{167} strawberries and cream. She is not slow, neither, as English women generally, to shew her parts of speech. “Sir, it is as delightful and romantic a little spot as there is in the whole city. Only two centuries ago it was an open field, and the physician of Louis XIII. laid it out as a botanical garden; it now covers eighty-four acres, partly with wood. Wood is so delightful at this hot season. And there is now a botanic garden, besides immense conservatories; also, a splendid gallery of anatomy, of botany, and a menagerie; a library, too, of natural history, and laboratories, and an amphitheatre, in which there are annually thirteen courses of lectures. And then there is the School of Drawing and Painting, of Natural History, all gratuitous. We will just step into an omnibus on the Boulevards, and for six sous we shall be set down at the very gate. Oh, it is quite near, only two steps.” I resign myself to the lady. The excursion will perhaps furnish me, what I have great need of, a subject for this letter. Parisian civility never allows one place to be far from another. The French women, if the place should be at any considerable distance, cannot for their little souls tell you. It is always “two steps,” and under this temptation of “two steps{168}” you are often seduced into a walk of several miles. If there is any one virtue in Paris more developed than another, it is that of shewing strangers the way. A French lady asked me the way to-day, in the street, and though I did not know it, I ran all about shewing her, out of gratitude. The strangers who reside here soon fall, by imitation, into the same kind of civility. The Garden of Plants is distant from my lodging about three miles. Adieu till to-morrow.

August 15th.

The driver of a cab takes his seat at the side of his customer, and is therefore very civil, amiable, talkative, and a great rogue. The coachman, on the contrary, is a straight-up, selfish, and sulky brute, who has no complaisance for any one born of a woman; he is not even a rogue, for being seated outside, he has no communication with the passengers. He gives you back your purse if you drop it in his coach; he is the type of the omnibus-driver. You have your choice of the “Citadine,” which does not stop for way-passengers, but at its stations at half a mile; or the omnibus, which picks you up anywhere on the way. It sets off{169} always at the minute, not waiting for a load; and then you have a “correspondence;” that is, you have a ticket from the conducteur at the end of one course, which gives you a passage, without additional charge, for the next. You go all round the world for six sous. You change your omnibus three times from the Barrière du Trone to the Barrière de l’Etoile, which are at the east and west extremities of the city.

In Paris, everybody rides in an omnibus. The Chamber of Peers rides in an omnibus. I often go out in the one the king used to ride in before he got up in the world. I rode this morning between a grisette with a bandbox and a knight with a decoration. Some of the pleasantest evenings I have spent here were in an omnibus, wedged in between the easy embonpoint of a healthy pair of Frenchwomen. If you get into melancholy, an omnibus is the best remedy you can imagine. Whether it is the queer shaking over the rough pavement I cannot say, but you have always an irresistible inclination to laugh. It is so laughable to see your face bobbing into the face of somebody else; it is so interesting, too, to know what one’s neighbours may be thinking about one; and then the strange people, and the strange ren{170}contres. I often give six sous just for the comic effect of an omnibus. Precipitate jolts against a neighbour one never saw, as the ponderous vehicle rolls over the stones, gives agitation to the blood and brains, and sets one a thinking. And not the least part of the amusement is the getting in, especially if all the places but the back seat are filled. This back seat is always the last to have a tenant. It is a circular board of about six inches in diameter at the very farthest end, and to reach it you have to run the gauntlet between two rows of knees almost in contact; you set out, the omnibus setting out at the same time, and you get along sitting on a lady’s lap, now on this side, and now on that, until you arrive at your destination; and there you are set up on a kind of pivot to be stared at by seventeen pair of black eyes, ranged along the two sides of the omnibus.

The only evil I know of these vehicles is, that the seat being occupied by seven fat gentlemen, it may leave only six inches of space to a lady of two feet in diameter, so that she comes out compressed to such a degree as to require a whole day of the enlarging and tightening capacities of Madame Palmyre to get her back to{171} her shapes; a worse evil is, that you often take an interest in a fellow-traveller, from whom you are in a few minutes to be separated, perhaps for ever.

We arrived at the garden just time enough before our repast to expatiate lightly upon its beauties. We visited first the Museum of Natural History, which occupies two stories of a building three hundred feet long. On the first floor are six rooms of geological and mineralogical collections; on the second, are quadrupeds, birds, insects, and all the family of the apes—two hundred specimens—and groups of crystals, porphyry, native gold and silver, rough and cut diamonds. Overlooking this whole animal creation is a beautiful statue of Venus Urania—hominum divumque voluptas! In one apartment is a group of six thousand birds, in all their gay and glittering plumage; and there are busts about the room, in bronze, of Linnæus, Fourcroy, Petit, Winslow, Tournefort, and Daubenton.

Our American birds here have all got to be members of the Academy. You can know them only by their feathers. There would be no objection to call our noisy and stupid whip-poor-will, “caprimulgus vociferus,” but what do{172} you think of calling our plain and simple Carolina wren, “troglodytus ludovicianus!”

The insects have a room also to themselves, very snug and beautiful, in cases, and sparkling like gems in all their variety of vivid and fantastic colours. We met here a naturalist, an acquaintance, who has lived the chief part of his life among spiders’ legs, and he explained to us the properties of the insects. He conversed upon their tenacity of life. He shewed us a mite that had lived three months glazed to a bit of glass, and a beetle which had been above three years without eating, and seemed not particular how long it lived; a spider, also, which had been kept one year on the same abstemious regimen, and yet was going on living as usual. Are you not ashamed, you miserable mortals, to be outlived by a beetle? He shewed us, also, flies and spiders sepulchred in amber, perhaps since the days of Ninus—how much better preserved than the mummied ladies and gentlemen who have been handed down to us from the same antiquity.

This professor has been so long in the world of insects that he has taken a distaste to big things. I baited him with a whale and an elephant, but he would not bite. I knew once{173} a botanist in America who had turned entirely into a flower, and I accompanied an entomologist of this kind to the brow of one of those cliffs which frown over the floods of the Susquehanna, where one could not read Milton, and there he turned up rotten logs for grubs and snails for his museum. It seems that even the study of nature, when confined to its minute particles, does not tend to enlarge or elevate the mind. I have observed that the practice even of hunting little birds, or fishing for minnows, gives little thoughts and appetites; so, to harpoon whales, chase deer, bears, wolves, and panthers, gives a disdain of what is trifling, and raises the mind to vast and perilous enterprises. The study of entomology, I mean the exclusive study, leaves, I presume, to the artist, about as big a soul as the beetle,

There is a building apart also for the “Botanic Garden.” It has an herbal of twenty-five thousand species of plants. You will see here a very pretty collection of the mushrooms in wax—it is delightful to see the whole family together. The Cabinet of “Comparative Ana{174}tomy” has also separate lodgings. It contains skeletons of all animals compared with man and with one another, about twelve thousand preparations. It is a population of anatomies; it looks like Nature’s laboratory, or like the beginnings of creation, about the second or third day. Here are all the races which claim kindred with us, Tartar, Chinese, New Zealander, Negro, Hottentot, and several of our Indian tribes. Here is a lady wrapped in perpetual virginity and handed down to us from Sesostris, and the mummy of somebody’s majesty, that, divested of its wrappings, weighs eight pounds, that used to “walk about in Thebes’ streets three thousand years ago.”

We descanted much upon this wonderful school of nature—upon the varieties, analogies, and differences of the animal creation. “How strange that the Chinese should wear their cues on the top in that way!” said the lady. “How differently from us Europeans!” said the gentleman. “Only look at this dear little fish!” “Sister, don’t you think it is time to dine?”—And so we left the anatomical preparations for this more grateful preparation, the dinner. The great genius of this place, the Baron {175}Cuvier, is defunct. He has now a place, for aught I know, among his own collections. Alas, the skeleton of a Baron! how undistinguishable in a Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy!

In roaming about, we examined superficially the garden, the largest part of which is occupied by the menagerie,—this is not the reason it is called the “Garden of Plants.” There are seventeen different inclosures, and in each a committee of the several races of animals; in one are the huge and pacific, as the elephants and bisons; in another, the domestic, as goats, sheep, and deer. The camels are turning a machine to supply water—they who were born to dispense with this element. In one you will see the wild and ferocious beasts and their dens, as bears, tigers, hyenas, and wolves; and there is another containing the vultures, eagles, &c. The monkies are a beautiful family, about two hundred in number—their expression such as becomes sisters. The remainder of the garden also is divided into various apartments; one is a botanic garden, with six thousand five hundred species of plants; another is a collection of different soils and manures; another contains a specimen of every kind of hedge, fence, or ditch; another every culinary vegetable used for{176} the food of man; and another is a piece of water appropriated to aquatic plants.

The whole establishment contains five hundred and twenty-six thousand species of plants, minerals, and animals. In the hot-houses and conservatories are ten thousand different species of vegetables. In the midst of the birds you see the eagle; of the quadrupeds, his shaggy majesty, the king of the beasts; and I observed that sober cacique, the llama, reclining amongst his native trees. The most extraordinary of these animals (though nothing is extraordinary in Paris for a long time) is the giraffe. On her arrival, the professors and high dignitaries of the state went out to meet her at many days’ journey from the capital, and deputations from all the departments. She was attended by grooms and footmen, and “gentlemen of the bed-chamber,” from her native country; and an African cow supplied her with African milk. An antelope and three goats followed in an open barouche. She was formally invited to visit the Archbishop at his country seat near Lyons, but refused; whereupon his eminence, yielding to her claims of respect, went out to meet her, and was upset, his coach taking fright at the strange animal; et voilà son aristocratie par terre!{177}

A military escort also proceeded from Paris, with members of the Institute and other learned bodies, which met her at Fontainebleau; and her entrance to the garden was a triumphal procession. The curiosity of the public had now risen to its height, (and there is no place where it can rise higher than in Paris.) From ten to twenty thousand persons poured into this garden daily. Fresh portraits by eminent artists, and bulletins of everything she did remarkable, were published weekly. All the bonnets, and shoes, and gloves, and gowns—every species of apparel—was made “à la giraffe;” quadrilles were danced “à la giraffe;” café-au-lait was made “à la giraffe.” She has large black eyes, and pretty eye-lashes, and the mouth is very expressive. In philosophy, she is a Pythagorean, and eats maize and barley, and is very fond of roses; in religion, she is a Saint Simonian. She takes an airing every morning in the park in fine weather, and wears flannel next her skin in winter.

Our guide now mounted up, we following, by a spiral walk, to the summit of a hill, where there is a fine panoramic view of the city. In the centre of the spire is a little open kiosk, where we found seats, and a girl entertained us with choice sights through a telescope, at two sous{178} a look. At length, after several little searches for a convenient place, we sat ourselves down underneath a hospitable tree, which, from its solemn and venerable aspect, and from my biblical recollections alone, I knew to be the cedar of Lebanon. Here our dinner was spread upon the earth. At the bottom of the hill is a dairy, which supplied milk, honey, eggs, fruit, and coffee, with the services of the dairy-maid; and, like our great ancestor, being seated amidst creation, we partook with grateful hearts our excellent repast, the enjoyment being enhanced by occasional conversation.

“How I should like to pay a visit to your country!”

“It would give us great pleasure, madam, if you would come over.”

“And I also. The truth is, I have a hearty contempt for these d—d monkey French people! I can’t tell why I ever came amongst them.”

“How long have you been here, sir?”

“Twenty years. But what terrible accounts are coming over about your riots!—why, you hang people up there, I see, without a trial!”

“No; we try them after they are hung!”

“Oh dear! I should never be able to sleep quiet in my bed!{179}”

“The fact is, a republic won’t do.”

“Oh dear no; why cousin writes us from New York that he is coming back; and he says if things go on so, Europeans will leave off emigrating; that will be bad, won’t it? (Do let me help you to a little tongue.) But perhaps things will go better; America’s so young yet, isn’t she? And then your temperance societies are doing a deal of good; I read about them this morning. I am very particular about temperance; (you have nothing in your glass!) and then what Fanny Kemble says about the bugs—”

“Yes, and the fleas and mosquitoes too! Why it seems to me you can’t have need of any other kind of flea-bottomy.”

“Oh fie, brother!—I declare I like the Americans very much; they are so good natured. Only look at that dear little hen! Have you any muffled hens in your country—any bantams?” Thus a whole hour rolled by unheeded in this delightful interchange of sentiment; and the universe was created in vain for any notice we took of it till the end of the dinner. I now turned up my eyes upon the hospitable branches which had afforded us protection during this repast.

The verdure of this tree is perpetual, and its{180} branches, which are fashioned like the goose-quill, are spread out horizontally to cover an immense space. It pushes them from the trunk gradually upwards, and their outward extremity is bent gently towards the earth, so that the shelter is complete, the rain running down the trunk or from the tip of these branches. You would easily know it was intended as a shelter. From its connexion with sacred history, its venerable appearance, and extraordinary qualities, it is the most remarkable tree that grows upon the earth, and there is scarce any relic of the Holy Land more sacred. It is sung by Isaiah and Solomon: “Justus florebit sicut cedrus Libani.” “The glory of Lebanon, the beauty of Carmel, and the abundance of Sharon.”

It does not suffer the presence of any other tree, nor does the smallest blade of grass presume to vegetate in its presence. It served to build the splendid temples of David and Solomon; also Diana’s Temple at Ephesus, Apollo’s at Utica; and the rich citizens of Babylon employed it in the construction of their private dwellings. Its wood is the least corruptible substance of the vegetable world. In the temple at Utica, it has been found pure and{181} sound after two thousand years. Its saw-dust was one of the ingredients used to embalm the dead in Egypt, and an oil was extracted from it for the preservation of books. Its gum, too, is a specific for several diseases. Since this cedar lives in cold climates, and in unholy as well as holy lands, why does not some one induce it to come and live amongst us? This was brought to the garden by Jussieu in 1734.

It is a pity such gardens as these are not the growth of republics. What an ornament to a city! At the same time, what a sublime and pathetic lesson of religious and virtuous sentiment! What more can all the records, and commentaries, and polemics of theology teach us than this? My next visit here shall be alone. Alone, I could have fancied myself a patriarch, reclining under this tree. These camels on their tread-mill I could have turned into caravans, rich with spices of Arabia. I could have seen Laban’s flock in these buffaloes of the Missouri, and Rachel herself in the dairy-maid. If you take a woman with you, you must neglect the whole three kingdoms for her, and she will awake you in your most agreeable dreams; whilst you are admiring the order and beauty which reigns throughout creation, she{182} will stick you down to a muffled hen, or a johnny-jump-up; and while you are seated at the side of Jacob, or of some winged angel, she will make you admire the “goldfinches, the chaffinches, the bullfinches, and the greenfinches.”

* * * We will now adjourn from the “King’s Garden” to my apartments in the Rue St. Anne, where I must leave you, you know how reluctantly, till to-morrow. I am invited out by Mr. P——, one of the bravest men of the world, from the Mississippi, who is just going home, and in the grief of separation has called his friends around him at the Hotel des Princes, to dine. I must trust to the events of a new day to fill this remaining sheet.

Rue St. Anne, August 15th.

I have not the courage to describe our gorgeous banquet; I have an excessive head-ache. Though I eat of nothing but the soup, and the fish, and game, and of the roasts, and ragouts, and side dishes, and then the dessert,—drank scarcely anything but burgundy, medoc, and champagne, and some coffee, and liqueur, yet I feel quite ill this morning. If one should die of the stomach-ache by eating a gooseberry pie, I{183} wonder if it is suicide? However, if you want to eat the best dinners in the world, I recommend you to the Hotel des Princes, and the acquaintance of Mr. P. of the Mississippi.

It is very much to be feared that in cookery, especially the transcendant branches, we shall long remain inferior to these refined French people. We have no class of persons who devote their whole minds to the art, and there is nothing to bring talents out into exercise and improvement. If any one does by force of nature get “out of the frying pan,” who is there to appreciate his skill? He lives, like Bacon, in advance of his age, and even runs the risk of dying of hunger in the midst of his own dishes. Besides, in America, in cooking, as all things else, we weaken our genius by expansion. The chief cook in this “Hotel of the Princes” has spent a long life upon a single dish, and by this speciality, has not only ripened his talent unto perfection but has brought a general reputation to the house—as you have seen persons, by practising a single virtue, get up a name for all the rest. The English, too, are mere dabblers in this science. A French artist, to prepare and improve his palate, takes physic every morning; whereas an Englishman never sees{184} the necessity of taking medicine unless he is sick, (“que lorsqu’il est malade!”) his palate becomes indurated (“aussi insensible que le conscience d’un vieux juge.”) In this country, if a dish miss, or is underdone, do you believe that the cook survives it? No! he despises the ignominious boon of life without reputation—he dies! The death of Vatel is certainly one of the most pathetic, as well as most heroic events, recorded in history. No epicure can read it without tears.—“Votre bonté,” he said to the Prince, who sought to console him, “Votre bonté m’achève!—je sais ... je sais que le rôti a manqué à deux tables!” He then retired to his room—I cannot go on. I refer you to Madame de Sevigné, who has given a full account of the man’s tragical end.

I do not, however, approve of French gastronomy in everything. The cruelty exercised upon the goose is most barbarous. They recollect that a goose once brought ruin upon their ancestors in the Capitol, and they have no humanity for geese ever since. They formerly nailed the wretch by the feet to a plank, then crammed it, and deprived it of water, and exposed it to a hot fire (où elle passait une vie assez malheureuse) until the liver became nearly as{185} large as the goose, which, being larded with truffles, and covered with a broad paste, bore the name of the inventor with distinction through the whole earth.

A “Paté de foie gras” used to be a monopoly of diplomatic dinners, and it is known that a great national congress always assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle on account of the number of geese resident in that city; but they have now spread everywhere, from the Palais Royal to the very cabins of the Alleghany. I saw the whole village of Pottsville having an indigestion of one that was brought in there last year. Pray do not touch them unless with the veritable brand upon the crust; some make them of gum elastic. When genuine, they are wholesome, they are intelligential. I am glad to see that humanity, in the general march of civilization, has interfered in behalf of the goose. It is now enclosed immoveably in a box, where it is crammed with maize and poppy oil, and other succulent food, and its eyes put out, so that it may give the whole of its powers to digestion—as that old Greek philosopher, who put out his eyes to give the whole mind to reflection—and a dropsical repletion of the liver being produced{186} by the atony of the absorbents, the liver (the only part of a goose that is now of any account in Europe) is ready for the market. I received this information over a slice of goose-liver pie yesterday, from our host, and I was anxious to write it down, while yet fresh in memory. A single idea, you see, may be inflated, by nearly the same process as one of these livers, and made to cover a whole page. I have room only to say, I am entirely yours.{187}

LETTER VIII.

Paris, August 24th, 1835.

I believe I have not described to you the burial of the “victims,”—which is no great matter, since you will see it all in the newspapers. I fell in, the other day, with an immense crowd passing in a long file through the door of a church, and became one of its number. Here was a furnace, or chambre ardente, as they call it, into which a concealed flame threw a red and lurid light, and exhibited the corpses of those{188} who were murdered. From this place they were brought out, and carried about the streets in the most gorgeous of all funeral processions. It would have done credit to the best times of Babylon. No people of the world can get up a theatric display of this kind so prettily as the French; and on this occasion they outdid themselves. The day was appointed, four days ahead, when the general grief was to explode, and it did explode exactly as the Prefecture of Police had predicted. We all ran about the streets the whole day, and cried, “long live” Louis Philippe, and General Mortier—who was killed!

The Duke’s coffin was carried in front, by six horses, in all the solemnity of crape. The spokes of the wheels were silvered, and the rims glittered with a more precious metal. Overhead were flags,—I presume, taken from the enemy,—and groups of emblematic figures: France, with her tresses loose and streaming, and the Departments, all dressed in black frocks, mopping their eyes, and pouring out their little souls over the coffin. The others of the train, seven or eight, followed at long intervals, arrayed in nearly the same style, more or less elegant, according to the dignity of the corpses carried in{189} them. In the midst was a chariot, as rich as the others in decoration, and forming a splendid contrast, of dazzling white; and young girls, in raiment whiter than the snow, following in a long train, chanted hymns to their departed sister. This procession had everything but funeral solemnity. I had expected muffled drums and dead marches, and all but the bell-clappers silent over the face of Paris. The music, on the contrary, was thrilling and military; and all the emblems, but the crape and coffin, would have served as well for an elegant jubilee. The last scene—the entrance into the Chapel of the Invalids, and the ceremony there—was the most solemn. The church was hung in its blackest mourning weeds, and priests, in a long row, said masses upon the dead, holding black torches in their hands. The floor opened, and the deceased were laid by the side of each other in a vault, which closed its marble jaws. All Paris spent the day in the procession, and in the evening went to the Opera Comique. But I don’t like funerals; I will write of something else.

I will tell you of my first excursion to the country. Every one who loves eating, and drinking, and dancing, went out yesterday to{190} the fête at St. Cloud—c’est si jolie, une fête de village! and I went along. The situation of this village is very picturesque, on the banks of the Seine, and commands a delightful prospect of the city and environs of Paris. If St. Cloud would not take it ill, I should like to stay here a month. There are the sweetest little hills, and glades, and cascades imaginable,—not, indeed, beautiful and poetical as your wild and native scenery of Pottsville; one does not wander by the mountain torrent, nor by the clear stream, such as gushes from the flanks of your craggy hills, nor by the “Tumbling Run” that winds its course through the intricate valley till it mingles and murmurs no more in the wizard Schuylkill; nor does one stray through forests of fragrant honeysuckles, or gather the wild flower from the solitary rock; but it is sweet, also, to see the little fishes cut with their golden oars the silvery lake, and to walk upon the fresh-mown turf, and scent the odour from the neighbouring hedge; the rose and woodbine, too, are sweet, when nourished by the agricultural ingenuity and care of man.

All that kind of beauty which the fertile earth can receive from the hand of a skilful cultivator is possessed by these little hills of{191} St. Cloud in its most adorable perfection. I have listened here to the music of the bees, and in the calm and balmy evening to the last serenade of the thrush retiring to its rest. One forgets, in hearing this language of his native country, that he is wandering in a foreign land! St. Cloud has, also, an interest in its historical recollections. It was burnt once by the English; it was besieged and taken by Condé, in the religious wars; and Henry III. was assassinated here, by Jacques Clement. It was the favourite residence of Bonaparte. If he resided any where (for ambition has no home,) it was at St. Cloud. It was here he put himself at the head of the government, overthrowing the Directory, in 1799. The neighbourhood is adorned with magnificent villas. The French do not, like the English, plunge from the bustle and animation of their city into a lifeless solitude, or carry a multitude of guests with them to their country seats, to eat them out of house and home, as an antidote to the vapours. They select the vicinity of some frequented spot, as St. Cloud or Versailles, and secure the pleasures of society to their summer residences. I believe it is well for one who wishes to make the best of life, in all its circumstances, to study the French. I am{192} glad that, in imitating England in many things (as we ought), we have not copied her absurd whim of living in the country at Christmas.

The Chateau at St. Cloud is an irregular building; it has on its principal front four Corinthian columns; and Justice, and Prudence, and a naked Truth, and some other hieroglyphic ladies, are looking down from the balustrade. I had myself conducted through its apartments; the salle de compagnie—d’audience—de toilet, and the Queen’s bed-chamber. Only to think, here she used to sleep, the little queeny! They have made her bed just two feet high, lest she might fall out and break her majesty’s neck in the night. The King’s apartments are in a similar range. The salon de Diane is fine, with the tapestry of the gobelins, and the grand salon with Sêvres’ China vases. Its crimson velvet hangings cost twenty thousand dollars, and its four candelabra six thousand. The galérie d’Apollon has paintings by the best masters. I admired all these things excessively.

Every one knows the genealogy of admiration. They certainly exceed very far our usual republican notions of magnificence. Thou most unclassical Blucher! Why the fellow slept here, booted and spurred, in the Emperor’s bed,{193} and kennelled his hounds upon the sofas—both with an equal sense I presume, of the sumptuousness of their lodgings. If, at least, he had put his hounds into Diana’s saloon, the stupid Goth, he might have had some credit for his wit—he can have none for his brutality.

I was puzzled about the reward to be given to our Cicerone. To have all this service for nothing was unreasonable; and to offer money to a man with a cocked hat, and black velvet breeches—it was a painful feeling. I was in a situation exactly the reverse of Alexander the Great towards his schoolmaster.—What was enough for such a respectable gentleman to receive, was too much for me to give. I consulted a French lady; for French ladies know every thing, and they don’t knock you down when you ask them a question.—She told me a franc would be as much as he would expect. Think of giving a franc for an hour’s service, to as good a looking gentleman as General Washington!

Coming out from the Castle, I wandered through the Park, which contains some hundred acres, diversified with hills and valleys, and presenting from an eminence a delightful view of the surrounding country, including Paris.{194} On this spot is a “Lantern of Demosthenes,” copied from the monument of that name at Athens. A great part of the park is a public promenade, and is chiefly remarkable for its jets d’eaux, which on a fête day throw up the water sportively in the air, and for its numerous cascades, one of which is one hundred and twenty-five feet above the level of the basin. I next went with a guide into the “Petit Parc,” made for Marie Antoinette. She bought this chateau (one of her sins) just before the Revolution. This park is beautiful, with bowers, groves, pieces of water, statuary, and every imaginable embellishment. In wandering about here, I got acquainted with a nobleman. He is of that order of knighthood which the French call “Chevaliers d’Industrie.”—“This, sir, I think, is by Pigale, and this Cupid by Depautre. Look especially at this Venus by Coustan.”—“Point du tout, monsieur, I make it a duty as you are a stranger.” He liked the Americans excessively.—“To be the countryman of Franklin, c’est un titre!” I seldom ever met a more polite and accomplished gentleman, and fashionable. I had a purse, containing in silver twenty francs, which, being incommodious to a waistcoat, I had put into an outside coat pocket.{195} Late in the evening, you might have seen me returning homewards on foot, (the distance two leagues,) not having wherewith to hire a coach, and no money at my lodgings. If the devil had not been invented, I should have found him out on this occasion.

The verdure of this country is more fresh than ours under the dog star. There is a hazy atmosphere, which intercepts the rays of the sun and mitigates the heat. I don’t say a word here in favour of our summer climate from conscientious scruples. Indeed I have gained such a victory over my patriotism that I never find fault with these foreigners for having anything better than we have it ourselves; nor do I take any merit to myself because the Mississippi is two miles wide, or because the Niagara falls with such sublimity into Lake Ontario.

I was introduced by a mere accident to a Scotch lady of this village, who prevailed on my modesty to dine with her. She is a lady of experience and great affability, who has resided here and in Paris, eleven years. She is on a furlough from her husband, an Englishman. She shewed me the cathedral, the cemetery, and the grave of one who won princes by her smile, Mrs. Jordan. She asks a repetition of the visit,{196} and is too amiable and accomplished to be refused. She is at least forty-five—in the “ambush of her younger days” the invitation would not have been safe for the visiter.

On my return I walked through the Bois de Boulogne, where you and romantic Mary have so often assisted at a duel. It was in the glimmerings of the twilight, and now and then looking through a vista of the tangled forest, I could see distinctly, a ghost pulling a trigger at another ghost, or pushing carte and tierce at his ribs. This forest flanks the west side of the Faubourgs of Paris, and contains seventeen hundred acres of ground; in some parts an open wood, in others an intricate and impenetrable thicket. It is the fashionable drive for those who have coaches in the morning, and a solitary enough walk for one who has no coach of an evening. Young girls always find saddled at the east end a number of donkeys, upon which they take a wholesome exercise, and acquire the elements of equitation at three sous a ride. Some who have “witched the world with noble horsemanship,” have begun upon these little asses.

I had the light only of the gentle moonbeam to direct my footsteps through the latter part of{197} this forest; and I walked speedily, recollecting I should not be the first man who was murdered here by a great many. I feared to meet some rogue ignorant that I was robbed already, so I went whistling along, (for men who have money don’t whistle,) till I arrived at the Champs Elysées—its lamps sparkling like the starry firmament.

An hour sooner I should have found it alive with all sorts of equipages; with all the landaus, tilburys, and other private vehicles, and footmen glittering in golden coats, with feathers waving on their empty heads, whilst the edges of the road would have been fringed with ten thousand pedestrians on their evening walks. Now there were a few only in attendance upon Franconi’s, or the concert. In the former of these places they exhibit melodramas, and equestrian feats, in which the riding ladies only outstrip what we see in our own country. In the latter there is a band of near a hundred musicians, who charm all the world at twenty sous a piece, playing the fashionable airs from six till nine every evening. Innumerable cafés around pour out the fragrant nectar to their guests.

For an image of this place you need not read Virgil’s sixth book, or refer to any of your{198} classical associations. Fancy only, without a single inequality, a horizontal plain of an hundred or more acres, or rather a barren moor, a ball-alley, a baked and turfless common, or any most trodden spot upon the earth, and that is the French Elysium. Not a blade of grass, or shrub, or flower, dares grow upon its surface. The trees are straining and trying to grow but cannot. Yet it is precisely to this barren field that all the world comes, especially on fête days, to be perfectly delighted. It is surrounded by the city, and has an air of country in town. It is a kind of republican turn-out, where one may go as one pleases, without toilet or any troublesome respect to etiquette. It is a refuge always at hand from an uncomfortable home—from a scold or a creditor; it cures husbands of their wives, old bachelors of the vapours, and sometimes lovers of their sweethearts. On Sundays and holidays you will find here, of foolishness, all that you have ever seen, all that you have ever fancied, and if there is anything of this kind you have never seen or fancied, it is here. Besides the concert, and the circus, and fresco dances, here are all the jugglers and their tricks, mountebanks and their medicines, clowns and their fooleries, all the family of the punches,{199} and all the apes in regimentals; not counting the voltigeurs without legs, and the blind girls, who see to walk over eggs without breaking them. You may have a stage if you love to play harlequin, or a greasy pole if you wish to climb for a prize at the top of it. You may sit down on a swing like a water wheel, which will toss you fifty feet in the air, where you may run from yourself and after yourself by the hour; or on another, which will whirl you about horizontally on hobby horses till you become invisible. If thirsty, you may have an ice cream; if studious, a chair and a newspaper; and if nervous, a shock of electricity worth two sous. Moreover, you can buy cakes reeking hot that were baked a week ago, and a stick of barley-sugar, only a little sucked by the woman’s baby, at half its value.

On the outskirts, towards night, you may find also an opportunity of exercising your charity, and other benevolent affections. One poor woman is getting a living here by the dropsy, and another by nine orphan children, and such like advantages; another has lost the use of her limbs and is running about with a certificate. In coming out by the side next the city you are{200} at once upon the Place Louis XV., where you will see on their pedestals two superb and restive coursers, which tread on air, held in with difficulty by their two marble grooms. We are again upon St. Anne’s-street, and under the protection of her sainted wings I repose till to-morrow, bidding you an affectionate good night.

August 25th.

I called a few days ago upon the king. We Yankees went to congratulate his Majesty for not being killed on the 28th. We were overwhelmed with sympathy—and the staircase which leads up to the royal apartments is very beautiful, and has two Ionic columns just on the summit. You first enter through a room of white and plain ground, then through a second, hung round with awful field marshals, and then you go through a room very large, and splendid with lustres, and other elegant furniture, which conducts into a fourth with a throne and velvet canopy. The king was very grateful, at least he made a great many bows, and we too were very grateful to Providence for more than a couple of hours. There was the queen, and the two little princesses—but I will write this so that{201} by embroidering it a little you may put it in the newspapers.

The Chamber of Peers and Deputies, and other functionaries of the State, were pouring in to place at the foot of the throne the expression of their loyalty. This killing of the king has turned out very much to his advantage. There was nothing anywhere but laudatory speeches and protestations of affection—foreigners from all the countries of Europe uniting in sympathy with the natives. So we got ashamed of ourselves, we Americans, and held a meeting in the Rue Rivoli, where we got up a procession too, and waited upon his Majesty for the purpose above stated, and were received into the presence—the royal family being ranged around the room to get a sight of us.

Modesty forbids me to speak of the very eloquent manner in which we pronounced our address; to which the king made a very appropriate reply. “Gentlemen, you can better guess,” said he, “than I can express to you, the gratification,” &c.—I missed all the rest by looking at the Princess Amelia’s most beautiful of all faces, except the conclusion, which was as follows:—“And I am happy to embrace this occasion of expressing to you all, and{202} through you to your countrymen, the deep gratitude I have ever felt for the kindness and hospitality I experienced in America, during my misfortunes.” The king spoke in English, and with an affectionate and animated expression, and we were pleased all to pieces. So was Louis Philippe, and so was Marie Amelie, princess of the two Sicilies, his wife; and so was Marie-Christine-Caroline-Adelaide-Françoise-Leopoldine, and Marie-Clementine-Caroline-Leopoldine-Clotilde, her two daughters, and the rest of the family.

A note from the king’s aide-de-camp required the presence of our consul at the head of the deputation, which our consul refused. He did not choose, he said, to see the Republic make a fool of herself, running about town, and tossing up her cap, because the king was not killed, and he would not go. “Then,” said the king (a demur being made by his officers,) “I will receive the Americans as they received me, without fuss or ceremony.” So we got in without any head, but not without a long attendance in the ante-chamber, very inconvenient to our legs.—How we strolled about during this time, looking over the nick-nacks, and how some of us took out our handkerchiefs and{203} knocked the dust off our boots in the salle des marechaux, and how we reclined upon the royal cushions, and set one leg to ride impatiently on the other, I leave to be described by Major Downing, who was one of our party. I will bring up the rear of this paragraph, with an anecdote, which will make you laugh. One of our deputation had brought along a chubby little son of his, about sixteen. He returned, (for he had gone ahead to explore,) and said in a soft voice,—“Tommy, you can go in to the Throne, but don’t go too near.” And then Tommy set off with velvet steps, and approached, as you have seen timid old ladies to a blunderbuss,—he feared it might go off.

The king is a bluff old man, with more firmness of character, sense, and activity, than is indicated by his plump and rubicund features. The queen has a very unexceptionable face; her features are prominent, and have a sensible benevolent expression—a face not of the French cut, but such as you often meet amongst the best New England faces. Any gentleman would like to have such a woman for his mother. The eldest daughter is married to the King of Belgium; the second and third are grown up to manhood, but not yet married. They would{204} be thought pretty girls even by your village beaux, and with your ladies, except two or three (how many are you?) they would be “stuck up things, no prettier than their neighbours.”

The Duke of Orleans is a handsome young man, and so spare and delicate as almost to call into question his mother’s reputation. He assumes more dignity of manner than is natural to a Frenchman at his age; he is not awkward, but a little stiff; his smile seems compulsory, and more akin to the lips than the heart. Any body else would have laughed out on this occasion. He has been with the army in Africa, and has returned moderately covered with laurels. The Duke of Némours is just struggling into manhood, and is shaving to get a beard as assiduously as his father to get rid of it. He also has fought valiantly somewhere—I believe in Holland. Among the ladies there is one who pleases me exceedingly; it is Madame Adelaide, the king’s sister. She has little beauty, but a most affable and happy expression of countenance. She was a pupil of Madame Genlis, who used to call her “cette belle et bonne Princesse.” She was married secretly to General Athelin, her brothe{205}r’s secretary, during their residence in England. She revealed this marriage, with great fear of his displeasure, to her brother, after his accession to the throne, throwing herself on her knees.—After some pause, he said, embracing her tenderly,—“Domestic happiness is the main thing after all; and now that he is the king’s brother-in-law, we must make him a duke.” Madame Adelaide is now in the Indian summer of her charms.

One who knows royalty only from the old books, necessarily looks about for that motley gentleman, the king’s fool. The city of Troyes used to have a monopoly of supplying this article; but the other towns, I have heard, grew jealous of the privilege, and they have them now from all parts of the kingdom. Seriously, the splendour of ancient courts has faded away wonderfully in every respect. When Sully went to England, says the history, he was attended by two hundred gentlemen, and three hundred guns saluted him at the Tower. The pomp and luxury of drawing-rooms and levees were then most gorgeous.

The eye was dazzled with the glittering display; nothing but yeomen of the guards with halberds, and wearing hats of rich velvet, plumed{206} like the peacock, with wreaths and rosettes in their shoes; and functionaries of the law, in black gowns, and full wigs; and bishops, and other church dignitaries, in aprons of black silk; and there were knights of the garter, the lord steward, the lord chancellor, and the Lord knows who. And the same grandeur and brilliancy in the French courts—chambellans, and écuyers, and aumoniers, all the way down to the chauf-cire, and keeper of the royal hounds; and one swam in a sea of gems and plumes, and sweet and honied ladies. Republicanism has set her irreverend foot upon all this regal splendour. I wish I had come over a hundred years ago. The king’s salary before the Revolution, though provisions were at half their present rate, was thirty millions; that of Charles X. was twenty-five; and the present king’s is only twelve millions, with one million to the Duke of Orleans.

I and Louis Philippe do not agree altogether about the manner in which the French people ought to be governed. The censorship of the press, the espionage, the violation of private correspondence, the jail and the gibbet, will not arrest the hand of the regicide. I have read in a journal to-day, that 2,746 persons have already been imprisoned for having censured the acts of{207} the present government, in the person of the king. The devil will get his Most Christian Majesty if he goes on at this rate. Why don’t he learn that the strength of kings, in these days, is in their weakness? Why don’t he set up M. Thiers, and then M. Guizot, and then M. Thiers again, as they do in England? Look at King William—does any body shoot him? and yet he rides out with four cream-coloured horses, with blue eyes, every day, and sometimes he walks into the Hungerford Market, and asks the price of shrimps. Louis plays a principal part in all his measures, even his high-handed measures. If he makes himself a target, he must expect to be shot at. In the beginning of his reign, he played the liberal too loosely. “Why talk of censorship?” said he—“il n’y aura plus de délits de la presse.”—“I am but a bridge to arrive at the Republic.”

With his present acts, this language is in almost ludicrous contrast. He is a Jacobin turned king, say his enemies; and we must expect he will run the career of all renegades. I have not described his disasters and dangers in a lamentable tone, because I don’t choose to affect a sympathy I do not feel. He had a quiet and delightful habitation at Neuilly; and since{208} he has not preferred it to this “bare-picked bone of Majesty,” at the Tuileries, let him abide the consequences. However, I shall be one of those who will deplore his loss, from the good will I bear the French people, for I have not the least doubt that, with twenty years’ possession of the throne, he will bring them, in all that constitutes real comfort and rational liberty, to a degree of prosperity unknown to their history.

Remember, I am talking French, not American politics. To infer from the example of America, that the institutions of a Republic may be introduced into these old governments of Europe, requires yet the “experiment” of another century. If we can retain our democracy when our back woodlands are filled up, when New York and Philadelphia have become a London and Paris; when the land shall be covered with its multitudes, struggling for a scanty living, with passions excited by luxurious habits and appetites;—if we can then maintain our universal suffrage and our liberty, it will be fair and reasonable enough in us to set ourselves up for the imitation of others. Liberty, as far as we yet know her, is not fitted to the condition of these populous and luxurious countries. Her household gods are of clay, and her dwelling,{209} where the icy gales of Alleghany sing through the crevices of her hut.

I have spent a day at the exhibition of the students of the University, which was conducted with great pomp. There was a concour for prizes, and speeches in the learned languages; nothing but clarissimi and eruditissimi, Thiers and Guizots. Don’t you love modern Latin? I read, the other day, an ode to “Hannæ Moræ,” and I intend to write one some of these days to Miss Kittæ J. Nellæ, of Pine Hill. A propos! what is doing at the Girard College? when are they to choose the professors? and who are the trustees? I must be recommended τοισι ανθροποισι μεγαλοισι. Please tell Mr. S—— I confide to him my interests, as a good catholic does his soul to the priest, without meddling himself in the matter. Good night.{210}

LETTER IX.

Tour of Paris—The Seine—The Garden of Plants—The Animals—Island of St. Louis—The Halle aux Vins—The Police—Palais de Justice—The Morgue—Number of suicides—M. Perrin—The Hotel de Ville—Place de Grêve—The Pont Neuf—Quai des Augustins—The Institute—Isabeau de Bavière—The Bains Vigiers—The Pont des Arts—The Washerwomen’s Fête—Swimming schools for both sexes—The Chamber of Deputies—Place de la Revolution—Obelisk of Luxor—Hospital of the Invalids—Ecole Militaire—The Champ de Mars—Talleyrand.

September 14th, 1835.

After the nonsense of my last letter, I almost despair of putting you in a humour to enjoy the serious matter likely to be contained in this. I have just returned from an excursion on foot from the one end to the other of Paris, making, as a sensible traveller ought to do, remarks upon the customs, institutions, and monuments of the place, and here I am with a sheet of double post{211} to write you down these remarks. I would call it a classical tour, but I have some doubts whether walking in a straight line is a tour, and therefore I have called it simply a journal.

I had for my companion the Seine—he was going for sea-bathing to the Havre. His destination thence no more known than ours, when we float into eternity. Some little wave may, however, roll till it reach the banks of the Delaware—and who knows, that lifted into vapour by the sun, it may not spread in rains upon the Broad Mountain, and at last delight your tea-tables at Pine Hill. I therefore send you a kiss, and in recommending the river to your notice, I must make you acquainted with his history.

Most rivers except the Seine, and perhaps the Nile, have a high and noble descent; this, as I have read in a French author, runs out of a hole in the ground, in the flat and dirty country of the Côté d’or; it was contained once in a monk’s kitchen near Dijon, and began the world, like Russian Kate, by washing the dishes. At Paris it is called, by the polite French, the fleuve royale. Any stream in this country which is able to run down a hill is called a river,—this, of course, is a royal river. It receives a pretty large share of its bigness from the Maine and Yonne, and some{212} other streams, (for rivers, like great men, are not only great of their own merits, but by appropriating that of others) and is itself again lost in the great ocean. It is the most beneficent river on the Continent—it distributes water, one of the elements of life, to near a million of people, and it gives some to the milkwoman who furnishes me with café-au-lait in the Faubourg St. Germain (where you will direct your letters from this date.) It is received in its debut into Paris magnificently, the Garden of Plants being on the left, and the great avenue of the Bastille and the elephant on its right, and overhead, five triumphal arches, which were erected for its reception by Bonaparte, sustaining the superb bridge of Austerlitz. And here commences my journal.

At twelve I left the Garden of Plants, with only a peep through the railings. One cannot go inside here without stumbling against all creation. The whole of the three kingdoms—animal, vegetable, and mineral—are gathered into this garden from the four corners of the earth, as they were when Adam baptised them. I observed a great number of plants growing out of the ground as fast as they could, and little posts standing prim and stiff along side of them, to tell you their names in apothecaries’ Latin{213}—I mean their modern names—those they got at the great christening have been entirely lost, and Monsieur de Buffon and some others have been obliged to hunt them new ones out of the dictionary.

I did go in a little, and stood alongside of an American acacia, conceiting for a moment I was on my native earth again, and so I was, for the tree was transplanted from the Susquehanna, and the soil was brought with it. It would not otherwise grow out of its native country. Alas, do you expect that one’s affections, so much more delicate, will not pine and wither away where there is not a particle of their native aliment to support them! I looked a long time upon a cedar of Lebanon; it stands like a patriarch in the midst of his family, its broad branches expanded hospitably, inviting the traveller to repose. Along the skirts of the garden one sees lions, and tigers, and jackals, and an elephant—a prisoner from Moscara, lately burnt by the Grand Army. Several elephants fought and bled for their country on that occasion, and this is one of them. And finally, I saw what you never have seen in America, a giraffe, a sort of quadruped imitation of an ostrich, its head twenty feet in the air; and there were a great{214} number of children and their dear little mammas giving it gingerbread. Deers also were stalking through the park—but in docility and sleekness how inferior to ours of the Mohanoy! and several bears were chained to posts, but not a whit less bearish, nor better licked, though brought up in Paris, than ours of the Sharp Mountain.

I could not help looking compassionately at a buffalo, who stood thoughtful and melancholy under an American poplar; his head hanging down, and gazing upon the earth. He had perhaps left a wife and children, and the rest of the family, on the banks of the Missouri! Wherever the eye strayed, new objects of interest were developed. Goats afar off were hanging upon cliffs, as high as a man’s head; and sheep from foreign countries (poor things!) were bleating through valleys—six feet wide! All the parrots in the world were here prating; and whole nations of monkies, imitating the spectators. Nothing in all this Academy of Nature seemed to draw such general admiration as these monkies and these parrots. What a concourse of observers! It is so strange in Paris to hear words articulated without meaning, and see grimaces that have no communication with the heart!{215}

Just in leaving the Garden, the Seine has lent some of its water to St. Martin, to make an island—saints not being able to make islands without this accommodation. This island of St. Martin is covered, during summer, with huge piles of wood, ingeniously arranged into pyramids and conic sections. Some of the piles are built into dwellings, and let out for the warm season; so you can procure here a very snug little summer retreat, and burn your house to warm your toes in the winter. I ought to tell you (for acute travellers never let anything of this kind slip), that wood is here two sous a pound. That old woman, the government, is very expensive in her way of living, and the moment she finds any article of first necessity, as salt or fuel, &c., she claps a tax upon it. Besides, all that money which your railroad fanatics about Schuylkill lay out in contrivances to carry your coal to market, she lays out in new frocks—and this is the reason wood is two cents a pound.

A little onward, I stepped upon the quiet and peaceful island of St. Louis—quiet! and yet it is inhabited by nearly all the lawyers of Paris. St. Louis is the only saint that has not left off doing miracles. The noisy arts will not{216} venture on it, though four bridges have been made for their accommodation. It reminds one of that world of Ovid’s, where everything went off to Heaven except justice.—Astræa ultima. Like all other places of Paris, this island has its curiosities and monuments. You will find here the ancient Hotel de Mimes, its ceilings painted by Lebrun and Le Sueur, now a lumber-house for soldiers and their iron beds; and if you give a franc to the cicerone (the porter and his wife) you can get him to tell you that Bonaparte was hid here for two days after the battle of Waterloo. He will shew you, if you seem to doubt, the very paillasse upon which the Emperor, whilst the Allies were marching into Paris, slept. You will find here, also, some imperishable ruins of Lebrun and Le Sueur, in the once famous Hotel de Bretonvilliers, now venerable for its dirt, as well as its antiquity.

I admired awhile the Halle aux Vins, one of the curiosities of the left bank, enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the side of the Seine, by an iron railing 889 yards. It contains 800,000 casks of wine and spirits, from which are drawn annually, for the use of Paris, twenty millions of gallons. France, by a cunning legislation, prevents this natural produce{217} of her soil escaping from the country, by laying a prohibitory duty upon the industry of other nations, which would enable them to purchase it; so we have the whole drinking of it to ourselves, and we oblige John Bull to stick to his inflammatory Port and Madeira.

L’isle de la Cité comes next; the last, but not the least, remarkable of the three sister islands, called the Island of the Cité, because once all Paris was here, and there was no Paris anywhere else. Antony used to quaff old Falernian on this island with Cæsar, and run after the grisette girls and milliners, whilst they sent Labienus to look after Dumnorix; and here in a later age came the gay and gartered earls; knights in full panoply; fashionable belles in rustling silks, and the winds brought delicate perfumes on their wings. At present no Arabic incense is wasted upon the air of this island. Filth has set up her tavern here, and keeps the dirtiest house of all Paris. But in the midst of this beggary of comfort and decency, are glorious monuments which the rust of ages has not yet consumed; the Hôtel Dieu, Palais de Justice, and Præfecturate of Police; and I had like to have forgotten that majestic old pile, with fretted roofs and towers pinnacled in the{218} clouds, with Gothic windows, and grizly saints painted on them,

whose bells at this moment are tolling over the dead, the venerable, the time-honoured Notre Dame de Paris.

This old lady is the queen of the cité. Her corner-stone was laid by Pope Alexander III. upon the ruins of an old Roman temple of Jupiter, in 1163. So you see she is a very reverend old lady. Her bell is eight feet in diameter, and requires sixteen men to set its clapper in motion. On entering the church, the work of so many generations, in contemplating its size, the immense height of its dome and roofs, and the huge pillars which sustain them, with the happy disposition and harmony of all these masses, one is seized with a very sudden reverence and a very modest sense of one’s own littleness; and yet a minute before one looked upon the glorious sun, and walked under “this most excellent canopy” almost without astonishment.

You will see here, at all hours of the day, persons devoutly at their beads, intent on their{219} prayer books, or kneeling at the cross. Except on days of parade, you will see almost six women to one man; and these rather old. Women must love something. When the day of their terrestrial affections has faded, their loves become celestial. When they can’t love anything else, why they love God. “Aime Dieu, Sainte Thérése, c’est toujours aimer.” The Emperor Julian stayed a winter on this island, at which time the river washed (not the Emperor[1]) but the base of the walls of the city; and Paris was accessible only by two wooden bridges. He called it his Lutetia την φιλην Αευχετιαν, his beloved city of mud.

The Palais de Justice, or Lit de Justice, as the French appropriately call it, (for the old lady does sometimes take a nap) is a next door neighbour. This palace lodged, long ago, the old Roman Præfects; the kings of the first race, the counts of Paris under the second; and twelve kings of the third.{220}

The great Hôtel Dieu, or Hospital, counts all the years between us and king Pepin, about twelve hundred. It is a manly, solid, and majestic building; its façade is adorned with Doric columns, and beneath the entablature are Force, Prudence, and Justice, and several other virtues “stupified in stone.” But I will give you a more particular account of it, as well as of the right worshipful Notre Dame, and the Palace, when I write my book about Churches, Hospitals, and the courts of Justice. I will only remark now, that I visited this great Hospital a few days ago, and that I saw in it a thousand beds, and a poor devil stretched out on each bed, waiting his turn to be despatched; that the doctor came along about six, and prescribed a bouillon et un lavement to them all round; a hundred or two of students following after, of whom about a dozen could approach the beds, and when symptoms were examined, and legs cut off, or some such surgical operation performed, the others listened.

But it would be ungrateful in me to pass without a special notice the Præfecturate of Police. If I now lodge in the Rue D’Enfer, No.—, looking down upon the garden of the Luxembourg, and having my conduct registered{221} once a week in the king’s books; if I have permission to abide in Paris; and, above all, if ever I shall have the permission to go out of it; whither am I to refer these inestimable privileges, but to the never-sleeping eye of the Præfecturate of Police? But the merits of this institution are founded upon a much wider scheme of benefits; for which I am going to look into my Guide to Paris.

It “discourages pauperism” by sending most of the beggars out of Paris, to besiege the Diligence on the highways: and gives aid to dead people by fishing them out of the Seine, at twenty-five francs a piece, into the Morgue. It protects personal safety by entering private houses in the night, and commits all persons taken in the fact (flagrant délit;) it preserves public decency by removing courtezans from the Palais Royal to the Boulevards, and other convenient places; and protects his Most Christian Majesty by seizing upon “Infernal Machines,” just after the explosion. In a word, this Præfecturate of the Police, with only five hundred thousand troops of the line, and the National Guard, encourages all sorts of public morals at the rate of seven hundred millions of francs per annum, besides protecting{222} commerce by taking gentlemen’s cigars out of their pockets at Havre.

Towards the south and west of the Island, you will see a little building distinguished from its dingy neighbours by its gentility and freshness. It stands retired by the river side, modestly, giving a picturesque appearance to the whole prospect, and a relief to the giant monuments which I have just described. This building is the Morgue.

If any gentleman, having lost his money at Frascati’s—or his health and his money too at the pretty Flora’s—or if any melancholy stranger lodging in the Rue D’Enfer, absent from his native home and the sweet affections of his friends, should find life insupportable, (there are no disappointed lovers in this country,) he will lie in state the next morning at the Morgue. Upon a black marble table he will be stretched out, and his clothes, bloody or wet, will be hung over him, and there he will be kept (except in August, when he won’t keep) for three whole days and as many nights; and if no one claims him, why then the King of the French sells him for ten francs to the doctors; and his clothes, after six months, belong to François, the steward, who has them altered for{223} his dear little children, or sells them for second-hand finery in the market.

One of these suicides, as I have read in the Revue de Paris, was claimed the other day by his affectionate uncle as follows:—A youth wrote to his uncle that he had lost at gambling certain sums entrusted to him, in his province, to pay a debt in Paris, and that he was unwilling to survive the disgrace. The uncle recognised him, and buried him with becoming ceremony at Père la Chaise. In returning home pensively from this solemn duty, the youth rushed into his uncle’s arms, and they hugged and kissed, and hugged each other, to the astonishment of the spectators. It is so agreeable to see one’s nephews, after one has buried them, jump about one’s neck!

The annual number of persons who commit suicide in all France, I have seen stated at two thousand. Those who came to the Morgue in 1822 were 260. Is it not strange that the French character, so flexible and fruitful of resources in all circumstances of fortune, should be subject to this excess? And that they should kill themselves, too, for the most absurd and frivolous causes. One, as I have read in the journals, from disgust at putting on his breeches{224} in the cold winter mornings; and two lately (Ecousse and Lebrun) because a farce they had written did not succeed at the play-house. The authors chose to incur the same penalty in the other world that was inflicted on their vaudeville in this. And these Catos of Utica are brought here to the Morgue.

The greater part are caught in the Seine, by a net stretched across the river at St. Cloud. Formerly twenty-five francs were given for a man saved, and twenty if drowned; and the rogues cheated the government of its humanity by getting up a company, who saved each other. The sum is now reversed, so that they always allow one time, and even assist one a little sometimes, for the additional five francs.

The building, by the advance of civilization, has required, this season, to be repaired, and a new story is added. Multitudes, male and female, are seen going in and out at every hour of the day. You can step in on your way as you go to the flower market, which is just opposite. There is a lady at the bureau, who attends the sale and recognition of the corpses in her father’s absence, and who plays the piano, and excels in several of the ornamental branches.

She was crowned at the last distribution of{225} prizes, and is the daughter of the keeper, M. Perrin. He has four other daughters, who also give the same promise of accomplishment. Their morals do not run the same risk as most other children’s, of being spoilt by a bad intercourse from without. Indeed, they are so little used to associate abroad, that, getting into a neighbour’s the other day, they asked their playmates, running about through the house, “Where does your papa keep his dead people?” Innocent little creatures! M. Perrin is a man of excellent instruction himself, and entertains his visitors with conversations literary and scientific, and he writes a fine round text hand.

When a new corpse arrives, he puts himself at his desk, and with a graceful flourish enters it on the book; and when not claimed at the end of three days he writes down in German text, “inconnu;” if known, “connu.” The exhibition room is, since its enlargement, sufficient for the ordinary wants of society; but on emergencies, as on the “three glorious days,” and the like, they are obliged to accommodate a part of the corpses elsewhere. They have been seen strewed, on these occasions, over the garden; and Miss Perrin has to take some in her room. Alas! that no state of life should be{226} exempt from its miseries! You who think to have propitiated fortune by the humility of your condition, come hither and contemplate M. Perrin. Only a few years ago, when quietly engaged in his official duties, his own wife came in with the other customers. He was struck with horror; and he went to his bureau and wrote down “connu.”

The notorious Hôtel de Ville is well placed in a group with these obscene images. It is the seat of the administration of justice for all Paris, a grey and grief-worn castle, with the Place de Grêve by the side of it. There it stands by the great thermometer of Monsieur Chevalier, where the French people come twice a day to see if they ought to shiver or sweat. There is not a more abominable place in all Paris than this Place de Grêve. It holds about the same rank in the city that the hangman does in the community. There flowed the blood of the ferocious Republic, of the grim Empire, and the avenging Restoration. Lally’s ghost haunts the guilty place. Cartouche was burnt there, and the horrible Marchioness Brinvilliers; Damien and Ravaillac were tortured there. The beautiful Princess de Lamballe was assassinated there, and the martyrs of 1830 buried there.{227} To complete your horror, there is yet the lamp post, the revolutionary gibbet, and the window through which Robespierre leaped out and broke—if I were not writing to a lady I would say—his d——d neck. No accusing spirit would fly to Heaven’s chancery with the oath.

I began to breathe as I stepped upon the Pont Neuf. The atmosphere brightened, the prospect suddenly opened, and the noble river exhibited its twenty bridges, and its banks, turretted, towered, and castellated, as far as the eye could pierce. There is a romantic interest in the very name of this bridge, as in the “Bridge of Sighs,” though not a great deal richer in architecture than yours of Fair Mount. And what is the reason? Why is the Rialto more noble than your Exchange of Dock-street? You see Pierre and Jaffier, and the Jew, standing on it. The Pont Neuf has arched the Seine these two hundred years and more. It was once the centre of gaiety, and fashion, and business. Here were displayed the barbaric luxury of Marie de Medicis, and the pompous Richelieu; glittering equipages paraded here in their evening airings, and fair ladies in masks—better disguised in their own faces—crowded here to the midnight routes of the Carnival.{228}

A company in 1709 had an exclusive privilege of a depôt of umbrellas at each end, that ladies and gentlemen paying a sou might cross without injury to their complexions. The fine arts, formerly natives of this place, have since emigrated to the Palais Royal—ripæ ulterioris amantes—and despair now comes hither at midnight—and the horrid suicide, by the silent statue of the great Henry, plunges into eternity.

On the left is the Quai des Augustins, where the patient bibliopolist sits over his odd volumes, and where the cheapest of all human commodities is human wit. A black and ancient building gives an imposing front to the Quai Conti; it is the Hotel des Monnaies. Commerce, Prudence, and several other allegorical grandmothers are looking down from the balustrade. Next to it, (for the Muses, too, love the mint,) with a horse-shoe kind of face, is the Royal “Institut de France.” This court has supreme jurisdiction in the French republic of letters; it regulates the public judgment in matters of science, fine arts, language, and literary composition; it proposes questions, and rewards the least stupid, if discovered, with a premium, and gives its approbation of ingenious inventors;{229} who, like Fulton, do not die of hunger in waiting for it.

You may attend the sittings of the Académie des Sciences, which are public, on Mondays. You will meet Pascal and Molière in the ante-chamber—as far as they dared venture in their lives. The members you will see in front of broad tables in the interior, and the president eminent above the rest, who ever and anon will ring a little bell by way of keeping less noise; the spectators, with busts of Sully, Bossuet, Fenelon, and Descartes, sitting gravely, tier over tier, around the extremities of the room. The secretary will then run over a programme of the subjects, not without frequent tinklings of the admonitory bell; at the end of which, debates will probably arise on general subjects, or matters of form. For example, M. Arago will call in question the veracity of that eminent man, M. Herschel, of New York, and his selenelogical discoveries; which have a great credit here, because no one sees the moon for the fogs, and you may tell as many lies about her as you please.

Afterwards, a little man of solemn mien, being seated upon a chair, will read you, alas, one of his own compositions. He will talk of{230} nothing but the geognosie des couches atmospheriques; the isomorphism of the mineralogical substances, and the “Asyntotes of the Parabola,” for an hour. You will then have an episode from Baron Larrey (no one listening) upon a bag of dry bones, displayed, à la Jehoshaphat, upon a wide table; followed by another reader, and then by another, to the end of the sitting. You will think the empire of dulness has come upon the earth.

The Institute was once the College des Quatre Nations, and was founded by Mazarin upon the ruins of the famous Tour de Nesle. I need not tell you the history of this tower. Who does not know all about Queen Isabeau de Bavière?—of her window from the heights of the tower, from which she overlooked the Seine, before the baths of Count Vigier (what made him a count?) were invented. She was a great admirer of the fine forms of the human figure.

Her ill-treatment of her lovers—her sewing them up, to prevent their telling tales, in sacks, and then tossing them before day-light into the river, was, to say the least of it, very wrong! In crossing the Pont des Arts, towards midnight, I have often heard something very like the voices of lamentation and violence. Some{231}times, I thought I could hear distinctly Isabeau! in the murmuring of the waters.

All the world runs to the Bains Vigiers, which are anchored along this Quai, to bathe, at four sous; but the water is exceedingly foul. It is here the Seine,

And what is worst, when done bathing here, you have no place to go to wash yourself.

The Pont des Arts is a light and airy bridge, from the door of the Institute to the Quai du Louvre; upon which no equipages are admitted. The Arts use their legs—cruribus non curribus utuntur. Between this and the “Pont Royal,” (a bridge of solid iron,) the antiquarians have got together for sale all the curious remains of the last century, Chineseries, Sevreries, and chimney pieces of Madame Pompadour. Next is the Quai Voltaire, in the east corner of which is the last earthly habitation of the illustrious individual whose name it bears. The apartment in which he died has been kept shut for the last forty years, and has been lately thrown open.

On the opposite side you see stretched out,{232} huge in length, the heavy and monotonous Louvre, which, with the Tuileries adjoining, is, they say, the most spacious and beautiful palace in the world. I have not experienced what the artists call a perception of its beauties. There is a little pet corner, the eastern colonnade raised by Louis XIV., which is called the great triumph of French architecture. It consists of a long series of apartments, decorated with superb columns, with sculpture and mosaics, and a profusion of gilding, and fanciful ornaments.[2] From the middle gallery it was that Charles IX., one summer’s evening, amused himself shooting Hugonots, flying the St. Bartholomew, with his arquebuss. Nero was a mere fiddler to this fellow. This is the gallery of Philip Augustus, so full of romance. It was from here that Charles X. “cut and ran,” and Louis Philippe quietly sat down on his stool. See how the Palais des Beaux Arts is peppered with the Swiss bullets!{233}

The edge of the river, for half a mile, is embroidered with washerwomen; and baths, and boats of charcoal, cover its whole surface. One cannot drown oneself here, but at the risk of knocking out one’s brains. One of the curiosities of this place, is the fête des Blanchisseuses, celebrated a few days ago. The whole surface of the river was covered with dances; floors being strewed upon the boats, and the boats, adorned with flags and streamers, rowing about, and filled with elegant washerwomen, just from the froth, like so many Venuses—now dissolving in a waltz, now fluttering in a quadrille. You ought to have seen how they chose out, the most beautiful of these washerwomen—the queen of the suds—and rowed her in a triumphal gondola through the stream, with music that untwisted all the chains of harmony.

This array of washing-boats relieves the French from that confusion and misery of the American kitchen, the “washing-day;” but to give us the water to drink, after all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite. I have bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say,{234} will intercept, at least, the petticoats and other such articles as I might have swallowed. The Seine here suffers the same want as one of his brother rivers, sung by the poets:—

Just opposite this Quai, I observed “Schools of Natation,” for both sexes, kept entirely separate. An admonition is placed over the ladies’ school to this effect, in large letters; besides, it is hermetically secured against any impertinent intrusion, by a piece of linen. The ladies, however, were put to their last shifts, last summer, in maintaining this establishment. Such rigid notions do some persons here entertain of female decorum! But opposition has now died away; and the reports about gentlemen of the “other house” becoming love-sick, from swimming in the waters from the ladies’ bath, have been proved malicious: for the gentlemen’s house is farther up the stream, “et par consequence.”

The truth is, that a lady has as much right, and, unfortunately, in these ship-wrecking times,{235} as much necessity often, to swim as a gentleman; and it is ascertained that, with the same chance, the woman is the better swimmer of the two. (I have this from the lady who keeps the bureau.) Her head is always above the water. All of them, and especially those who have the vapours, can swim without cork. The process of instruction is easy. All that the swimming master has to do, is just to thrust the little creatures into a pair of gum-elastic trousers, and a cravat inflated, and then pitch them in, one after another—only taking care not to put on the trousers without the cravat.

I will finish this paragraph, already too long, by an anecdote. It will shew you that ladies who swim cannot use too much circumspection,—I mean, by circumspection, looking up, as well as round about them. The ever-vigilant police about the Tuileries had observed a young gentleman very busy with tools, at an opposite garret window, for whole weeks together. Sometimes till the latest hour of the night his lamp was seen glimmering at the said window. At length, by the dint of looking, and looking, they discovered something like an “Infernal Machine,” placed directly towards the apart{236}ment of the king and queen, and the bed-chamber of the dear little princesses and Madame Adelaide. It was just after the July review, and General Mortier’s disaster; and suspicion lay all night wide awake. What needs many words? They burst into the room—the “Garde Municipale,” and the “police centrale,” the “pompiers,” and the “sapeurs,” and the serjeants clad in blue, with buttons to their arms, and swords to their sides, and coifed in chapeaux, three feet in diameter—breaking down all opposition of doors, and dragged forth the terrified young man.

The tongues of all Paris were now set loose, as usual, and proclamations were read through the streets de l’horrible assassinat tenté contre la vie du roi, et de la famille royale, &c. &c., and all that for four sous! It was even said, that he had made important revelations to the Minister of the Interior; and that some of the most distinguished Carlists were implicated in his guilt. At length, he was brought up before the Chamber of Peers, with his machine; where it was examined, and discovered to be—what do you think?—a telescope! The young man alleged that he was getting it up for astrono{237}mical purposes; but the president, a shrewd man about machines, observed that its obliquity was in an opposite direction to the stars.

The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, both from the pleasure it has had in bathing the royal family, and the delight of listening to the king’s band, which plays here every evening; and from this onwards, the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées. If you wish to know how much more beautiful than the gardens of Armida is this garden of the Tuileries, I refer you to my former letters; especially to that one which I wrote you when I had just fallen from the clouds. I admired, then, everything with sensibility, and a good many things with ecstacy. Somebody has said, that every one who is born, is as much a first man as Adam; which I do not quite believe. He came into the midst of a creation, which rushed, with the freshness of novelty, upon his senses, and was not introduced to him by gradual acquaintance.

How many things did this first man see in Eden which you and I could never have seen in it; and which he himself had never seen in it if he had been put out to nurse, or had been brought up at the “College Rolin.” How often{238} have I since wandered through this garden without even glancing at the white and snowy bosom of the Queen of Love; how often walked upon this goodly terrace, strolling all the while, the pretty Miss Smith at one arm, and thy incomparable self at the other, by the wizard Schuylkill, or the silent woods of the Mohontongo.

Opposite this garden, on the Quai d’Orsay, is the Hotel, not finished, of the Minister of the Interior, the most enormous building of all Paris. It has turned all the houses near it into huts. That, just under its huge flanks, with a meek and prostrate aspect, as if making an apology for intruding into the presence of its prodigious neighbour—that is the Hotel of the Legion of Honour. Alas, what signifies it to have bullied all Europe for half a century!

Close by is a little chateau, formerly of the Marquis de Milraye, which I notice only to tell you an anecdote of his wife. The prince Philip came to Paris and died very suddenly, under Louis XIV. He was a great roué and libertine, and some one moralizing, expressed, before the Marchioness, doubts about his salvation. “Je vous assure,” said she, very seriously, “qu’à des gens de cette qualité-là, Dieu y regarde bien à deux fois pour les autres.” Which proves that ladies{239} bred in high life don’t think that kings may be condemned like you and I.

The next object of importance, and the object of most importance in all Paris, is the Chamber of Deputies. I wished to go in, but four churlish and bearded men disputed me this privilege. I sat down, therefore, upon the steps, having Justice, Temperance, and Prudence, and another elderly lady, on each side of me; and I consoled myself, and said—

“In this House the Virtues are shut out of doors.” I had also in the same group, Sully, Hôpital, Daguesseau, and Colbert. What superhuman figures! And I had in front the Bridge of Concord, upon which are placed twelve statues in marble, also of the colossal breed. A deputy, as he waddles through the midst of them, seems no bigger than Lemuel Gulliver, just arrived at Brobdignag. Four, are of men distinguished in war—Condé, who looks ridiculously grim, and Turenne, Duguesclin, and Bayard; and four eminent statesmen—Suger, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert; and four men famous on the sea—Tourville, Suffren, Duquesne, and who was the other? He whose name would shame an epic poem, or the Paris Directory, Duguay-Trouin. I took{240} off my hat to Suffren, for he helped us with our Independence.

On the back ground of this Palace is a delightful woodland, where the members often seek refreshment from the fatigues of business in the open air. Here you will see a Lycurgus seated apart, and ruminating upon the fate of empires; and there a pair of Solons, unfolding the mazes of human policy, straying arm in arm through its solitary gravel walks. M. Q——, a member of this Chamber, and sometimes minister, was seen walking here assiduously during the last summer evenings; and often, when the twilight had just faded into night, a beautiful female figure was seen walking with him. It did not seem to be of mortal race, but a spirit rather of some brighter sphere which had consented awhile to walk upon this earth with Monsieur Q——. It was, however, the wife of Monsieur O——, another member of this Chamber.

One essential difference you may remark between Numa Pompilius and Deputy Q——, is, that the one met ladies in the woods for the making of laws, and the other for the breaking of them. Monsieur O——, informed of the fact, took a signal revenge upon the seducer of{241} his wife. And what do you think it was? He called him out, to be sure, and blew out his brains. Not a bit of it. He waylaid him, then, and despatched him secretly? Much less. I will tell you what he did. He took Monsieur Q——’s wife in exchange. In telling this tale, which I had on pretty good authority, I do not mean to say—Heaven preserve me!—that there are not honest wives in Paris.

I have now before me one of the most execrable spots upon this earth—which all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten—the “Place de la Revolution”[3]—where the Queen of France suffered death with her husband, to propitiate the horrible Republic. I saw once my mother in agitation, upon reading a newspaper—sobbing and even weeping aloud;—she read (and set me to weeping too) the account of this execution of the Queen. It is the farthest remembrance of my life, and I am now standing on the spot—on the very spot on which this deed was perpetrated—which made women weep in their huts beyond the Alleghany!{242}

With the manifold faults of this Queen, one cannot, at the age of sober reason, look upon the place of her execution, and think over her hapless fate, without feeling all that one has of human nature melting into compassion. She was a woman whom anything of a gentleman would love, with all her faults. Moreover, no one expects queens, in the intoxication of their fortune, to behave like sober people. Not even the sound and temperate head of Cæsar preserved its prudence in this kind of prosperity. The guillotine was erected permanently in the centre of this Place, and was fed with cart-loads at a time. The most illustrious of its victims were, the Queen, Louis XVI., his sister Mademoiselle Elizabeth, and the father of the present king. The grass does not grow upon the guilty Place, and the Seine flows quickly by it.

If you wish to have the finest view of all Paris—the finest perhaps of all Europe, of a similar kind—you must stand upon the centre of this Place; and you must hurry, as the Obelisk of Luxor has just arrived from Egypt, and will occupy it shortly. Towards the east, you have spread out before you the gardens of the Tuileries, bordered by the noble colonnade of the Rue Rivoli and the Seine;—towards the{243} west, the Champs Elysées, and the broad walk leading gently up to Napoleon’s arch, which stands proudly on the summit, and “helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale.” On the north, you have in full view, through the Rue Royale, the superb Madelaine, on the side of its most brilliant sculpture; and in symmetry with it, the noble front of the Palais Bourbon on the south. On fine evenings, and days of parade, you will see from the Arch to the Palace, about two miles, a moving column of human beings upon the side walks; and innumerable equipages, with horses proud of their trappings, and lackeys of their feathers, meeting and crossing each other upon the intervening roads; and upon the area of the Tuileries, all that which animated life has most amiable and beautiful. You will see, amidst the parterres of flowers, and groups of oranges, and its marble divinities, swans swimming upon the silvery lakes; multitudes of children at their sports, and everywhere ladies and their cavaliers, in all the colours of the toilette, sitting or standing, or sauntering about, and appearing through the trees, upon the distant terraces, as if walking upon the air. All this will present you a rich and variegated{244} tableau, of which prose like mine can give you no reasonable perception.

The great obelisk which is to stand here, is now lying upon the adjacent wharf. It is seventy-two feet high, and is to be raised higher, by a pedestal of twenty feet. It is a single block of granite, with four faces, and each face has almost an equal share of the magnificent prospect I have just tried to describe. It tapers towards the top, and its sides, older than the alphabet, are embossed with a variety of curious images. Birds are singing, rustics labouring, or playing on their pipes, sheep are bleating, and lambs skipping. A slave is on his knees, and a Theban gentleman recumbent in his fauteuil; and one is at his wine,—he who “hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass, 3,000 years ago.”—The men are in caps, a third their size; and the women in low hoods, like a chancellor’s wig.

Little did the miner think who dug it from the quarry, little did the sculptor think, as he carved these images on it, and how little did Sesostris think, in reading over his history of Paris, that it would, one day, make the tour of Europe, and establish itself here in the Place de{245} la Concorde. An expensive and wearisome journey it has had of it. It is nine years since it stepped from its pedestal at Luxor. It was a good notion of Charles X., but not original. The Emperor Constantius brought one, the largest ever known, (150 feet high,) to Rome. Two magnificent ones, set up by the Doge Ziana, adorn the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s, brought from some island of the Archipelago.

The French army at Alexandria, in 1801, had two young ones on their way to Paris, which fell, poor things! into the rapacious hands of the British Museum. And now the English, jealous of this Luxorique magnificence, are going to bring over Cleopatra’s needle, to be up with them; and we are going to put something in our Washington Square; and then the French, some of these days, will bring over the Pyramids.

At the corner of the Rue Royale you will see two palaces, one the depôt of fine furniture and jewels, the other of the armour of the crown. Here are shields that were burnished for Cressy and Agincourt. Here is the armour of Francis when made prisoner at Pavia, of Henry when mortally wounded by Montgomery; complete sets of armour of Godfrey de Bouillon and Joan{246} of Arc, the sword of King Cassimer, and that of the holy father Paul V. Spiders are now weaving their webs in casques that went to Jerusalem. The diamonds of the crown deposited here before the Revolution in rubies, topaz, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, &c., were 7432 in number, amongst which were the famous jewels called the Sanci and the Regent, so notorious in the history of jewels; the latter has figured about the world in the king’s hats, and Napoleon’s sword. An antiquarian would find extreme delight in this room; as for me I scarce know which is Mambrino’s helmet and which the barber’s basin.

I had no sooner quitted the deputies than I found myself under the great Hospital of the Invalids, whose lofty and gilded dome was blazing in the setting sun. Napoleon put up this gilding to amuse gossiping Paris in his Russian defeats; as Alcibiades, to divert Athens from his worse tricks, cut off his dog’s tail; and as Miss Kitty, to withdraw a more dangerous weapon from the baby’s hand, gives it a rattle. 3800 soldiers are now lodged in this Hospital, or rather, pieces of soldiers; for one has an arm at Moscow, another a leg at Algiers, needing no nourishment from the state. Here is one whose lower{247} limbs were both lost at the taking of Paris. He seems very happy. He saves the shoemaker’s, hosier’s, and half the tailor’s bill. He is fat, too, and healthy, for he has the same rations as if he were all there. If I were expert at logic, I would prove to you that this piece of an individual might partly eat himself up, his legs being buried in the suburbs, and he dining on the potatoes which grow there; and I could prove, if I was put to it, that with a proper assistance from cork, he might be running about town with his legs in his cheeks. There are two sorts of historians,—one, of those who confine themselves to a simple narrative of facts and descriptions; the other, searching after causes and effects, and accompanying the narrative with moral reflections. I belong to the latter class.

This Hospital was planned by the great Henry; the great Louis built it; and it was furnished with lodgers by the great Napoleon. It has all the air of a hospital; long ranges of rooms and chilling corridors; and this réunion of mutilated beings is a horrid spectacle! They lead a kind of inactive, lounging, alms-house existence. How much better had the munificence of government given to each his{248} allowance, with the privilege of remaining with his friends and relations, than to be thus cut off from all the charities and consolations of domestic life, and without the last, best consolation of afflicted humanity—a woman.

The dome is magnificent with paintings, gildings, carvings, and such like decorations. The chapel, the most splendid part, is tapestried with flags taken in war from the enemy. What an emblem in a Christian church! There are several hundreds yet remaining, notwithstanding the great numbers burnt, to save them from their owners, the allies. “There are some here from all countries,” said my guide, growing a foot taller. “Those are from Africa; those from Belgium; and those three from England.” When I asked him to shew me those from America, he replied, with a shrug—“Cela viendra, monsieur.”

The immense plain to the west of the Invalids and in front of the Ecole Militaire, is the Champ de Mars, the rendezvous of horses fleet in the race, and cavalry to be trained for the battle. I am quite vexed that I have not space to tell you of the great Revolutionary fête which was once celebrated in this very place; how the ladies of the first rank volunteered and worked{249} with their own dear little hands to put up the scaffolding; and how the king was brought out here with his white and venerable locks and air of a martyr, and the queen, her eyes swollen with weeping; their last appearance but one! before the people. And it would be very gratifying to take a look at that good old revolutionary patriarch, Talleyrand. How he officiated at the immense ceremony, at the head of two hundred priests, all habited in immaculate white surplices, and all adorned with tri-coloured scarfs, and then how the holy man blessed the new standards of France, and consecrated the eighty-three banners of the Departments.

I wish to write all this, but winged time will not wait upon my desires; besides, this letter is already the longest that was ever written; it has as many curiosities, too, as the shield of Achilles. The bridge just opposite is the Pont de Jena. The allies were about to destroy it on account of its name, and put gunpowder under it, but Louis the Eighteenth would not allow it. Le jour où vous ferez sauter le Pont de Jena, je me mette dessus! and Blucher was moved. This bridge is the end of my letter and journey; finis chartæque viæque.

The cholera, the deuce take it, has got into{250} Italy, and I shall perhaps lose altogether the opportunity of a visit to that country. I shall not kiss the feet of his Holiness, nor see the Rialto, nor the Bridge of Sighs; nor Venice and her gondolas, nor look upon the venerable palace of her Doges. Alas, I shall not linger at Virgil’s tomb! nor swim in the Tiber, nor taste one drop of thy pure fountain, Egeria! nor thine, Fons Blandusiæ splendidior vitreo.{251}

LETTER X.

Paris, November 24th, 1835.

Nearly all who love to woo the silent muses are assembled in this region, the Faubourg St. Germain. Here are the libraries bending under their ponderous loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all the establishments devoted to science and letters; for which reason, no doubt, it is dignified by the name of the Quartier Latin. When the west of the river was yet{252} overspread with its forests, this quarter was covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a “Field of Mars” for the parade of the Roman troops, where Julius Cæsar used to make them shoulder their firelocks.

But now, though it contains a fourth of the population of the town, and retains its literary character, so far has luxury got ahead of philosophy, that it has no greater dignity of name than the “Faubourgs.” It stands apart as if the city of some other people. Some few, indeed, from the fashionable districts, in a desperate Captain Ross kind of expedition, do sometimes come over here, and have got back safe, but having found nothing but books and such things of little interest, it remains unexplored.

The population has become new by retaining its old customs. By standing still it shews the “march of intellect” through the rest of the city. Here you see yet that venerable old man who wears a cue and powder, and buckles his shoes, and calls his shop a boutique; who garters up his stockings over the knees, goes to bed at eight, and snuffs the candle with his fingers; and you see everywhere the innumerable people,{253} clattering through the muddy and narrow lanes in their sabots. Poverty not being able to get lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, the Palais Royal, and, though she tried hard, in the Boulevards, has been obliged, on account of the cheap rents, to come over here and to strike up a sort of partnership with science, and they now carry on various kinds of industry, under the firm of Misère et Compagnie.

In the central section of this Latin country, the staple is the bookshop. Everywhere you will see the little store embossed with its innumerable volumes inside and out, on the ceilings, on the floor, and on screens throughout the room, leaving just a little space for a little bookseller; and stalls are covered with the same article in the open air, in all those positions where, in other towns, you find mutton and fat beef. When you see a long file of Institutes and Bartholos wrapped in their yellow parchment, you are near the Temple of Themis—the Ecole des Lois.

When you see in descending St. Jaques, a morose, surly, bibliomaniacal little man, entrenched behind a Homer, a Horace, and a Euclid’s Elements, that is the Collège de France; and when you stumble over a pile of the Mar{254}tyrs, it is the Sorbonne; and as you approach the Ecole Médecine, five hundred Bichats and Richerands beckon you to its threshold. Besides, you will see ladies and gentlemen looking out from the neighbouring windows, and recommending themselves in their various anatomical appearances; en squellette, or half dissected, or turned wrong side out. There is a shop, too, of phrenological skulls, and a lady who will explain you the bumps; and if you like, you can get yourself felt for a franc or two, and she will tell you where is your Philo-pro—what do you call it? She told me our intellectual qualities were placed in front, and the sensual in the back part of the skull, very happily, because the former could look out ahead, and keep the latter in order. And next door is a shop of all the wax preparations of human forms and diseases, and here is another lady who will point you out their resemblances with originals, who will analyse you a man into all his component parts, and put him up again; and she puts up, also, “magnificent skeletons” and mannikins for foreign countries.

Now and then you will see arrive a cart, which pours out a dozen, or so, of naked men and women, as you do a cord of wood, upon the{255} pavement, which are distributed into the dissecting rooms, after the ladies and gentlemen standing about have sufficiently entertained themselves with the spectacle. And just step into “Dupuytren’s Room,” and you will see all the human diseases, arranged beautifully in families; here is the plague, and there is the cholera morbus; here is the gout, and there is the palsy staring you in the face; and there are whole cabinets of sprained ankles, broken legs, dislocated shoulders, and cracked skulls. In a word, every thing is literary in this quarter. One evening you are invited to a party for squaring the circle, another for finding out the longitude; and another:—“My dear sir, come this evening, we have just got in a subject. The autopsis will begin at six.”

The medical students are about four thousand; those of law and theology about the same number; and many a one lodges, eats, and clothes himself, and keeps his sweetheart, all for twelve dollars per month. With the exception of the last, I am living a kind of student’s life. I have a room twenty feet square, overlooking, from the second story, the beautiful garden of the Luxembourg, and the great gate opening from the Rue d’Enfer. This is my parlour during{256} the day, and a cabinet having a bed, and opening into it, converts the two into a bed-chamber for the night; and the price, including services, is eight dollars per month.

I find at ten, a small table covered with white porcelain, and a very neat little Frenchwoman comes smiling in with a coffee-pot in one hand, and a pitcher of boiling milk in the other, and pours me out with her rosy fingers a large cup of the best café au lait in the world, and sits down herself, and descants fluently on the manners and customs of the capital, and improves my facilities in French.

If you wish bad coffee, it is not to be had in this country. The accompaniments are two eggs, or some equivalent relish, a piece of fresh butter, and a small loaf of bread—all this for eighteen sous, (a sou is a twentieth less than our cent.) I dine out wherever I may chance to be, and according to the voracity or temperance of my appetite, from one and a half to five francs, at six o’clock. A French dinner comes at the most sociable hour, when the cares and labours of the day are past, and the mind can give itself up entirely to its enjoyments, or its repose.

I have dined sometimes at the illustrious{257} Flicoteau’s on the Place Sorbonne, with the medical students, and have looked upon the rooms once occupied by J. Jaques Rousseau, and upon the very dial on which he could not teach Thérése, his grisette wife, to count the hours. I have dined, too, at Viot’s, with the law students, and have taken coffee with Molière, and Fontenelle, and Voltaire, at the Procope. The following is a bill at the Sorbonne.

You have also, which serves at once for vinegar and wine, a half bottle of claret, at six sous; and a dessert, a bunch of grapes or three cherries, for two; or of sweetmeats, a most delicate portion—one of those infinitesimals of a dose, such as the Homœopathists administer in desperate cases. Yet this—if a dish were only what it professes to be on its face, the soup, not the rinsings of the dishcloth, the fricassee not poached upon the swill-tub,—this would still be supportable—if a macaroni were only a macaroni; which in a cheap Paris fare, I understand,{258} is not to be presumed. In sober sadness, this is very bad.

We have a right to expect that a thing which calls itself a hare, should not be a cat. But, alas! it is the end of all human refinement, that hypocrisy should take the place of truth. You can discern no better the component parts of a French dish in a French cookery, than you can a virtue in a condiment of French affability. But ——. It is an homage which a horse’s rump renders to a beefsteak. At my last dinner here, I had two little ribs held together in indissoluble matrimony of mutton. I tried to divorce them, but to no purpose, till the perspiration began to flow abundantly. I called the “garçon,” and exhibited to him their toughness.—“Cependant, Monsieur, le mouton était magnifique!” I offered him five francs if he would sit down and eat it; he refused. He had perhaps a mother or some poor relation depending on him; I did not insist.

M. Flicoteau belongs to the romantic school. I prefer the classical. I need hardly say that the French students, who dine here, have an unhealthy and shrivelled appearance—you recollect the last run of the shad on the Juniatta. It is the very spot on which the Sorbonne used{259} to starve its monks, and M. Flicoteau, for his own sake, keeps starving people here ever since? Sixteen sous is a student’s ordinary dinner. His common allowance for clothing, and other expenses by the year, is three hundred dollars.

He eats for a hundred, lodges for fifty, and has the remainder for his wardrobe and amusements. The students of medicine are mostly poor and laborious, and being obliged to follow their filthy occupation of dissecting, are negligent of dress and manners. The disciples of the law are more from the richer classes, have idle time, keep better company, and have an air plus distingué.

The doctors of law in all countries take rank above medicine. The question of precedence, I recollect, was determined by the Duke of Mantua’s fool, who observed that the “rogue always walks ahead of the executioner.” Theology, alas! hides her head in a peaceful corner of the Sorbonne, where once she domineered, and begs to be unnoticed in her humble and abject fortunes. A student of Divinity eats a soup maigre, a riz-au-lait, flanked by a dessert of sour grapes. His meals would take him to Heaven, if he had no other merits.

The other resorts of eating, besides the re{260}staurants, are as follow: the Gargotte, the Cuisine Bourgeoise, and, of a higher grade, the Pension Bourgeoise. In the Gargotte you don’t get partridges. Your dinner costs seven sous. You have a little meat, dry and somewhat stringy, veal or mutton, whichever Monsieur pleases. Whether it died the natural way, or a violent death by the hands of the butcher, it is impossible to know. You have, besides, a thick soup, a loaf of bread three feet long, standing in the corner by the broom, and fried potatoes; also, water and the servant girl à discretion. At seventeen sous, you have all the aforesaid delicacies, with a table cloth into the bargain; and at twenty, the luxurious addition of a napkin, and a fork of Algiers metal. This is the Gargotte.

When you have got to twenty-five sous, you are in the Cuisine Bourgeoise. Here your “couvert,” consists of a spoon, a fork, a knife, a napkin, a glass, and a small bottle, called a caraffon; your plate is changed—already a step towards civilization; and you have a cucumber a foot long, radishes a little withered, asparagus just getting to seed, and salt and pepper, artistly arranged; and a horse’s rump cooked into a beefsteak, and washed down with “veritable{261} macon”—that is, the best sort of logwood alcoholised. You have, also, a little dessert here of sour grapes, wrinkled apricots, or green figs, which are exhibited for sale, at the window, between meals.

The flaps of mutton and the drumsticks of turkeys, which you get so tender, have been served up, once or twice, at the Hotel Ordinary; but they are preferred much to the original dishes. One likes sometimes better Ephraim’s gleanings, than Abiezer’s vintage. The French have a knack of letting nothing go to loss. Why they make more of a dead horse or cow than others of the living ones. They do not even waste the putrid offals of the butcheries; they sell the maggots to feed chickens.

But when you pay forty sous, that’s quite another affair. You are now in the monde gourmande. Spinage has butter in it; custards have sugar in them; soup is called potage;—everything now has an honest name; bouilli is bœuf à la mode; fried potatoes pomme de terre à la maitre d’hotel; and a baked cat is, lapin sauté a l’estragon. This is the gentleman’s boarding-house.

I mean by gentleman, a youth, who has just come over from England or America, to the{262} lectures, or a French clerk of the corps bureaucratique, or an apprentice philosopher, who calls himself a “man of letters.” It is one of the advantages of this place, that you are not often oppressed by the intelligence and gravity of your convives, and have a chance of shining. It is in the power of any man to have wit, if he but knows how to select his company. In this pension, the dishes succeed one another, and are not crammed, as on our tables, roti fricandeau, salade, vol au vent—all into the same service, to distract and pall the appetite, or get cold waiting on each other.

The coquetry of a French kitchen keeps alive expectation, and enhances enjoyment by surprise. You have here, too, the advantage of a male cook; the kitchen prefers the masculine to the feminine, like the grammars; and, besides, you have the tranquillity of a private house. If you ask a dish at Flicoteau’s, the waiter bawls it down to the kitchen, and as they are continually asking, he is continually bawling. At the end of the feast, you will see, standing before you, a tumbler full of toothpicks, one of which you will keep fumbling in your mouth the whole afternoon, as an evidence you have dined; and especially if you have not{263} dined—for then you must keep up appearances;—some grease their mouths with a candle, and then you think they have been eating paté de foie gras.

I am sorry to have forgotten the locomotive cook; I mean a woman with an appareil de cuisine about her neck, having meat and fish hung, by hooks, on both her haunches, and sausages, or fish, or potatoes, hissing in a frying-pan; and diffusing, for twenty yards around, a most appetising flavour. She haunts, usually, the Pont Neuf and its vicinity, and looks like gastronomy personified. She will give you, for four sous, of potatoes, with yesterday’s gazette, and, reclining under the parapet of the Quai—the king perhaps, all the while, envying you from the heights of the Louvre—you eat a more wholesome dinner at ten sous, than at the Place Sorbonne at twenty-four.

All the common world of Paris buys its provisions second-hand. The farmer arrives about two in the morning—he sells out to the hucksters, and these latter to the public, mixing in the leavings of the preceding day, a rotten egg with a fresh one, &c. A patient old woman, having nothing else to do, speculates over a bushel of potatoes, or a botte of onions, twice{264} twenty-four hours; and your milkwoman, perhaps, never saw a cow; cows are expensive in slops and provender, and snails and plaster of Paris are to be had almost for nothing. The French eat greater quantities of bread than their neighbours—and why at a cheaper rate?—The price is fixed, by the police, every fortnight, and its average is two-and-a-half cents—sixty per cent. lower than in London; and how much lower than with us? 450 millions of lbs. are consumed in Paris annually; each man eating twelve dollars’ worth. If you establish a Frenchman’s expense at 100, you will find 19 parts for bread, 22 for meat, 27 for wine and spirits.

Peaches, and apples, and melons, are not to be spoken of, in comparison with ours; but cherries, plums, and especially pears, are in great variety and abundance; and the fine grapes of Fontainebleau are eight cents per pound. In England, they have all the fruits of the Indies in the noblemen’s hot-houses; but who can buy them? There are men there who have the conscience to pay £150 for the fruits of a breakfast. “The strawberries at my Lady Stormont’s, last Saturday, cost £150,” says Hannah More. But I must bridle in my muse: she is getting a fit of statistics.{265}

If a gentleman comes to Paris in the dog days, when his countrymen are spread over Europe, at watering places, and elsewhere, and when every soul of a Frenchman is out of town—if he is used to love his friends at home, and be loved by them, and to see them gather around him in the evenings—let him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor’s apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep alone! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and children, and settle his affairs.

Nor let him seek company at the Tavern Ordinary; here the guest arrives just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual place, crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, dines, and then disappears, all the year round, without farther acquaintance. But let him look out a “Pension,” having an amiable landlady, or, which is the same, amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here after some time, and find some relief from one of the trying situations of life. You know nothing yet, happily, of the solitude, the desolation, of a populous city to a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three months, for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the Mahonoy.{266} Go to a “Pension,” especially if you are a sucking child, like me, in the ways of the world; and the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will feel it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect you, and comfort you, or she will manage an acquaintance between you and some countess or baroness, who lodges with her, or at some neighbour’s.

I live now with a most spiritual little creature; she tells me so many obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I take to be the perfection of politeness in a landlady; and she admits me to her private parties—little family “réunions”—where I play at loto with Madame Thomas, and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, or cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; and then we have a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, and then a dance; and, finally, we play at little games, which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such penalties.

French people are always so merry; whatever be the amusement, they never let conversation flag, and I don’t see any reason why it should. One, for example, begins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then of Mrs. Alexander’s fine cakes, and then the pretty girl that sits behind the counter, and then of pretty girls that{267} sit anywhere; and so one just lets oneself run with the association of ideas, or one makes a digression from the main story, and returns or not, just as one pleases. A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor, and all that nonsense which we suffer to go to waste in our country, he economises for the enjoyment of society.

I am settled down in the family; I am adopted; the lady gives me, to be sure, now and then “a chance,” as she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery (“the only one left”) of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some lady who has had three children, where one never draws anything; or “a chance” of conducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken a fancy to me, to the play, who adores the innocency of American manners, and hates the dissipation of the French.

Have you never felt the pleasure of letting yourself be duped? Have you never felt the pleasure of letting your little bark float down the stream when you knew the port lay the other way. I look upon all this as a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much need of; I am anxious to be cheated, and the truth is, if you do not let a French landlady cheat you now and then, she will drop your acquaint{268}ance. Never dispute any small items overcharged in her monthly bill, or she that was smooth as the ermine, will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurricane?

Your actions should always leave a suspicion that you are rich, and then you are sure she will anticipate every want and wish you may have with the liveliest affection; she will be all ravishment at your successes; she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappointments. Helas! oh, mon Dieu! and if you cry, she will cry with you! We love money well enough in America, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness, and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiability for those who have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy; a French woman really does love you if you have a long purse; and if you have not (I do not say it is hypocrisy neither) she really does hate you.

A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweetness and variety of her smile—a quality in which French women excel universally. Our Madam Gibou keeps her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner time, and has{269} brought her smile under such a discipline as to suit it exactly to the passion to be represented, or the dignity of the person with whom she exchanges looks.

You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you were her private secretary, or the wealth and liberality of a guest better than his banker, by her smile. If it be a surly knave who counts the pennies with her, the little thing is strangled in its birth; and if one who owes his meals, it miscarries altogether; and for a mere visiter she lets off one worth only three francs and a half; but if a favourite, who never looks into the particulars of her bill, and takes her lottery tickets, then you will see the whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer evening, dies away gently on her lips.

Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was gasping its last; she has a way, too, of knocking a smile on the head; I observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health fall down and die without a kick.{270}

It is strange (that I may praise myself)—but I have a share of attentions in this little circle even greater than they who are amiable. If I say not a word, I am witty, and I am excessively agreeable by sitting still. “The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” My unacquaintance with life and wickedness puts me in immediate rapport with women, and removes many of the little obstacles which suspicious etiquette has set up between the sexes. Ladies, they say, never blush when talking to a blind man.

While a man of address is sailing about and about a woman, as Captain Ross hunting the North-west passage, I am looked upon either as a ship in distress and claiming a generous sympathy and protection, or a prize which belongs to the wreckers, and am towed at once into harbour. Sometimes, indeed, my ignorance of Paris and its ways is taken for affectation, and they suspect me for behaving as great ambassadors do, who affect simplicity to hide their diplomatic rogueries; but he cannot long pass himself for a rogue who is really honest. It is perhaps a mere complexion of physiognomy. I see, every day, faces which remind one of those doors which have written on them, “No admission,{271}” and others, “Walk in without knocking.” It is certain that what we call dignity, however admired on parade, is not a good social quality. “Dignitas et amor”—I forget what Ovid says about it.

And women, too, are more familiar and easy of access to modesty of rank. Jupiter, you know, when he made love to Antiope, with all his rays about him, was rejected, and he succeeded afterwards as a satyr. I knew a pretty American woman once, who, gartering up her stockings in the garden, was reminded, that the gardener was looking. “Well! he is only a working man,” she replied, and went on with the exhibition; she would have been frightened to death if it had been a lord. I make these remarks because other travellers would be likely to leave them out, and because it is good to know how to live to advantage in all the various circumstances of life.

In recommending you a French boarding-house, it is my duty at the same time to warn you of some of its dangers, which are as follows: Your landlady will be in arrears for her rent 200 francs, and will confide to you her embarrassment. Having a rigid, inexorable propriètaire, and getting into an emergency, she{272} will at length ask you, with many blushes and amiable scruples, the loan of the said money; and her gratitude, poor thing! at the very expectation of getting it, will overcome her so, she will offer you, her arms about your neck, her pretty self, as security for the debt.

This is not all; the baroness (her husband being absent at Moscow, or anywhere else,) will invite you to a supper. She will live in a fine parlour, chamber adjoining, and will entertain you with sprightly and sensible conversation, and all the delicacies of the table, until the stars have climbed half way up the heavens; and you will find yourself tête-à-tête with a lady at midnight, the third bottle of champagne sparkling on the board.—I am glad I did not leave my virtue in America; I should have had such need of it in this country! Indeed, if it had been anybody else, not softened by the experience of nine lustrums; not fortified like me by other affections—if it had been anybody else in the world, he would have been ruined by Madame la Baronne. Nor when you have resisted Russia, have you won all the victories. On a fine summer’s morning, when all is joyous and good-humoured, your landlady will present you the following cards, with notes and expla{273}nations. “This is from the belle Gabrielle. She assists her uncle in the store, and is quite disheartened with her business. Uncles are such cross things! This is from one of my acquaintances, Flora—oh, beautiful au possible! She paints birds and other objects for the print shops, but she finds the confinement injurious to her health. You must call and see them, especially Flora, she has such a variety of talent besides painting; and she will give you the most convincing proofs of good character and connexions. Gabrielle also is very pretty, but she is a young and innocent creature, and her education, especially her music, not so far advanced.”

The garden of the Luxembourg comes next. It contains near a hundred acres, and lies in the midst of this classical district. It is not so gaily ornamented as the Tuileries, but is rich in picturesque and rural scenery. It has, indeed, two very beautiful ornaments. At the north end, the noble edifice, constructed by Marie de Medicis, the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains a gallery of paintings, the chamber of Peers, and other curiosities; and the Observatory, a stately building, is in symmetry with this palace on the south.{274}

In the interior there are groves of trees and grass plots surrounded by flower-beds; and numerous statues, most of which have seen better days; ranges of trees, and an octagonal piece of water inhabited by two swans, which are now swimming about in graceful solemnity, adorn the parterre in front of the palace. All these objects I have in view of my windows. The garden has altogether an air of philosophy very grateful to men of studious dispositions. Many persons are seated about, in reading or conversation, or strolling with books through its groves, and squads of students are now and then traversing it to their college recitations.

On benches overlooking the parterre is seated, all day long, the veteran of the war, the old soldier, in his regimentals, his sword as a companion laid beside him on the bench; he finds a repose here for his old age amidst the recreations of childhood; and five or six hundred little men in red breeches, whose profession it is to have their brains knocked out for their country at sixpence a day, are drilled here every morning early, to keep step and to handle their firelocks. There is one corner in which there is a fountain surmounted by a nymph, and which has a gloomy and tufted wood, and an appearance of sanctity,{275} which makes it respected by the common world, and by the sun.

One man only is seen walking there at a time, the rest retiring out of respect for his devotions. For a week past it has been frequented daily by a poet. He recites with appropriate action his verses, heedless of the profane crowd. He appears pleased with his compositions, and smiles often, no doubt in anticipation of their immortality. I often sit an hour of an evening at my window, and look down upon the stream of people which flows in and out, and the sentinel who walks up and down by the gate ridiculously grim.

I love to read the views and dispositions of men in their faces. I witness some pleasant flirtations, too, under the adjacent lime trees, and many gratified and disappointed assignations. Now, a lady wrapped in her cloak walks up and down the most secret avenue, upon the anxious watch; the lover comes at length, and she hastens to his embraces, and they vanish; and next in his turn a gentleman walks sentinel, until his lady comes, or, impatient and disappointed, goes off in a rage, or night covers him with her sable mantle.—Were I not bound by so many endearing affections of kindred and{276} friendship to my native country, there is not one spot upon the earth I would prefer to the sweet tranquillity of this delicious retirement.

When you visit the Luxembourg you will see multitudes every where of bouncing demoiselles, with nymph-looking faces, caps without bonnets, and baskets in their hands, traversing the garden from all quarters, running briskly to their work in the morning, and strolling slowly homewards towards evening—These are the grisettes. They are very pretty, and have the laudable little custom of falling deeply in love with one. They are common enough all over Paris, but in this classical region they are as the leaves in Vallambrosa. They are in the train of the muses, and love the groves of the Academy. A grisette, in this Latin Quarter, is a branch of education. If a student is ill, his faithful grisette nurses him and cures him; if he is destitute, she works for him; and if he falls into irretrievable misfortune, she dies with him. Thus a mutual dependence endears them to each other; he defends her with his life, and, sure of his protection, she feels her consequence, and struts in her new starched cap the reigning monarch of the Luxembourg.

A grisette never obtrudes her acquaintance,{277} but question her and you will find her circumstantially communicative. Such information as she possesses, and a great deal more, she will retail to you with a naïveté and simplicity, you would swear she was brought up amongst your innocent lambs and turtle-doves of the Shamoken. She is the most ingenious imitation of an innocent woman in the world; and never was language employed more happily for the concealment of thought (I ask pardon of Prince Talleyrand) than in the mouth of a grisette. The Devil is called the father of lies (I ask pardon again of the Prince), but there is not one of these little imps but can outdo her papa in this particular.

When sent with goods from shopkeepers to their customers—the common practice of this place—she will lie and wrestle for her patron, and perjure herself like a Greek; when accused, she will listen to reproaches, insults, even abuse, as long as there is any point of defence, with the resignation of Saint Michael; and there is no trick of the stage, no artifice of rhetoric, recommended by Cicero, that she leaves out in her pleadings; if at last overcome—why, she surrenders.

She remains awhile mute, and then sets her{278}self to look sorry with all her might; at last she bursts into tears, with sighs and sobs, until she disarms you. “Well, let me see what you have got.” She will now wipe away gracefully the briny drops with the corner of her apron, brighten up again, shew you her goods again, and cheat you once more by way of reparation for her former rogueries.

There is a modiste, lodged in the adjoining room, from New Orleans, who entertains about twenty of these every morning at her levee. I make sometimes one of the group, and from this opportunity, and from the lady’s information, I am thus learned about grisettes.

It is important for one’s mamma to know whether it is a good or bad fashion that, so common now-a-days, of sending a young gentleman, just stepping from youth into manhood, to Europe, especially to Paris. I will venture some remarks for your information, though I have no very settled opinion on the subject. I know several Americans engaged here, some in medical and scientific schools, and some in painting and other arts, who appear to me to be exceedingly diligent, and to make as profitable a use of their time as they would anywhere else. I know some who mix pleasure with business, and a little folly{279} with their wisdom; and some (you will please to put me in this class) who do not taste dissipation with their “extremest lips.”

But I know some also, who, under pretext of law and medicine, study mischief only, and return home worse, if possible, than when they came out. I know one now, who, having too much health, overruns his revenues occasionally, and draws upon home for a doctor’s and apothecary’s bill; and another poor devil who has gone to Mont Pieté with his last trinket. There came one from the Mississippi lately, who being very young and rich, and unmarried, set up a kind of seraglio, and died of love yesterday; they are burying him to-day at Père la Chaise.

I know one also, who has lived here nine years, who reads Voltaire, keeps a French cook, and his principles are as French as his stomach; and another who entertains the French noblesse with fêtes and soirées, to the tune of a hundred thousand per annum; from his stable, thirty-six horses, full bred, better than many of his Majesty’s subjects, come prancing out on days of jubilee upon the Boulevards.

If a young man’s morals should get out of order at home, Paris is not exactly the place I would send him to be cured. It is true, if drunk{280}enness be the complaint, it is not a vice of the place; and, if curable at all, which I do not believe, Paris, from its common use of light wines, and variety of amusements, is perhaps the best place to make the attempt. It is certainly not the most dangerous place for falling into this vice. If he be fond of gambling, here it is a genteel accomplishment, and brought out under the patronage of the government. And to keep a mistress is not only not disgraceful in French society, but is always mentioned to one’s credit. It is a part of a gentleman’s equipage, and adds to his gentility; for it implies that he possesses that most considerable merit that a gentleman can aspire to in this country, and most others—money. “Il a la plus jolie maitresse de Paris!” you cannot say anything more complimentary if it were of the prime minister, and it would scarce be an injurious imputation if said of one’s father confessor.

If you send, then, your son to Paris, am I uncharitable in surmising that he may sometimes use the privilege of the place? It is, indeed, a question for philosophy to determine (and not for me), which of the two may be the less injurious to his health and morals—the gross intercourse he is exposed to in some other towns, or{281} the more refined gallantries of the French capital. If you can preserve him, by religious and other influences, from either, as well as from the dangers of an ascetic and solitary abstinence—for solitude has its vices as well as dissipation—so much the better. He will be a better husband, a better citizen, and a better man.

But let me tell you that to educate a young man of fortune and leisure, to live through a youth of honesty, has become excessively difficult, even in the chaste nunnery of your “Two Hills;” and to expect that, with money and address, he will live entirely honest in Paris, where women of good quality are thrown in his face—women of art, beauty, and refined education—is to attribute virtues to human nature she is in no way entitled to in any country. He may have some trouble with his conscience, perhaps, the first month or two, but by degrees, he will become reconciled, and get along well enough. If he comes over with some refinement of taste, and moral inclinations and habits, or only on a transient visit, he will be secure from all the dangers (except, perhaps, gambling) to which I have alluded; he will live only in American society, which is quite as good and pure here as at home; he will have no{282} acquaintance with the natives, but of that class in which a gentleman’s morals run less risk of temptation than even from the vulgar intercourse of American towns.

All that part of a city like Paris, that comes into relation with strangers, and lives by deceiving and plundering them, is of course gross and corrupt; yet I do not know any community in which the honesty of a gentleman is so safe from contamination.

It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; “nimium se æstimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.” He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, is certainly the complement of a good education.

The American society at Paris, taken altogether, is of a good composition. It consists of several hundred persons, of families of fortune, and young men of liberal instruction. Here are lords of cotton from Carolina, and of sugar{283}cane from the Mississippi, millionaires from all the Canadas, and pursers from all the navies; and their social qualities, from a sense of mutual dependence or partnership in absence, or some such causes, are more active abroad than at home. The benevolent affections act in a contrary way from gravitation; they increase as the square of the distance from the centre.

The plain fact is, that Americans in Paris are hospitable in a very high degree; they have no fear of being dogged with company, and have leisure here, which they have nowhere else, to be amiable; the new comer, too, is more tender and thankful, and has a higher relish of hospitality and kindness; and the general example of the place has its effect on their animal spirits.

They form a little republic apart, and when a stranger arrives, he finds himself at home; he finds himself also under the censorial inspection of a public opinion, a salutary restraint, not always the luck of those who travel into foreign countries. One thing only is to be blamed: it becomes every day more the fashion for the élite of our cities to settle themselves here permanently. We cannot but deplore this exportation of the precious metals, since our country is drained of what the supply is not too abundant.{284} They who have resided here a few years, having fortune and leisure, do not choose, as I perceive, to reside anywhere else.

It is now midnight, and more. I have said so much in this letter about grisettes, that I shall have a night-mare of them before morning. This “Latin Quarter,” is one of the most instructing volumes of Paris, but all I can do is just to open you here and there some of its pages, and shew you the pictures. Pictures in this country, recollect, are more à decouvert than in America. Please to make the allowance. Good night!{285}

LETTER XI.

Paris, Oct. 25th.

I rose this morning, and refreshed myself from the repose of the night, by running boyishly up the broad and elegant walk which leads to the south end of the garden, to the Observatory, the place where they make almanacks; I went in and saw great piles of astronomical books and instruments, an anemometer to measure the winds, and another affair baptised also in Greek, to measure the rain; also, a thing in the cellar, which, in this Latin quarter, they{286} call an “acoustic phenomenon.” By this you can talk aloud all day to any individual standing in a particular place, and not another of the company will be anything the wiser for it.

There are a number of men here, whom they call astronomers, who, while we are asleep, look after the stars, and observe what is going on in the moon; and who go to bed with Venus and the heavenly bodies towards morning.

There is an old woman here in a little stall, upon the broad and paved place in front of the Observatory, who sells tobacco and butter, besides vaudevilles and epic poems, who shewed me, what do you think?—the very stone upon which Marshal Ney stood to be shot. “There stood the wretches that shot him. Yes, sir, I saw him murdered, and I never wish to see the like again.”

Just east, I visited another remarkable building, which young girls read about in their romances, called Val de Grace. This church, built by Anne of Austria, was called Val de Grace. If you wish to see the prettiest fresco paintings of all Paris, you must go in here and look up at the dome; the chapels, too, are full of virgins and dirty little angels. She came here in 1624, and laid the corner-stone{287} with her own little hands. She bestowed some special privileges upon the monastery, amongst others the right of burying in this church the hearts of all the defunct princesses, beginning with herself; and at the Revolution, “one counted even to twenty-six royal hearts.” The convent of Val de Grace is now turned into a military hospital, and greasy soldiers are stabled where once lived and breathed the pretty nuns you read of in your novels.

Just in the neighbourhood is the Hospice des Enfans Trouvés, to which I paid a hasty visit. If a child takes it into its head to be born out of lawful wedlock, which now and then occurs, it is carried to this hospital for nourishment and education. The average number admitted here, is 6,000 annually, 16½ per day. They are received day and night, and no questions asked. All you have to do is, to place the little human being in a box, communicating with an apartment in the interior, which, on ringing a bell, is taken in, and gets on afterwards well enough, often better than we who think ourselves legitimate. It sucks no diseases from its mother’s milk; and from its father’s example no vices; and it has a good many virtues incident to its {288}condition. It has amongst these a great reverence for old age, not knowing but that every old gentleman it meets might be its papa.

On entering this hospital you will see two long rows of cradles running over with babies, and a group of sisters, in gowns of black serge, making and mending up the baby wardrobe, or extending to the little destitute creatures the offices of maternity; and indeed they take such care of them, as almost to discourage poor people from having legitimate children altogether. But what praise can be equal to the merits of these Sisters of Charity? You see them wherever suffering humanity needs their assistance; their devotion has no parallel in the history of the world. They are very often, too, of rich and distinguished families; women who leave all the enjoyments of gay society to pursue these humble and laborious duties, to practise, in these silent walls, prudence, patience, fortitude, and all those domestic virtues and peaceful moralities which, in this naughty world of ours, obtain neither admiration nor distinction. Think only of relinquishing fashion, and rank, and pleasure, to be granny to an almshouse!

This hospital was founded by one of the most respectable saints of all Paris, Vincent de Paul.{289} His statue is placed in the vestibule. It would do your heart good to see the babies go down on their bits of knees every evening, and bless the memory of this saint. A cradle used to be hung up as a sign to draw customers here, but the reputation of the house is now made, and it is taken down. Formerly the ringing of a bell, too, or the wailings of the infant, the mother giving it a pinch, was enough to announce a new comer, but lately so many dead children have been put in the box to avoid the expense of burying them that they have been obliged to stop up the hole. I am sorry for this; it was so convenient. You just put in a baby as you put a letter in the post-office; now you are obliged to carry it into a room inside, where the names, dress, the words, and behaviour of those who bring it, as also its death, are entered in a register; this register is kept a profound secret; never revealed to any one, unless one pays twenty francs. I visited the school-rooms, where those of proper age are taught to read and write. They seem very merry and happy; and, having no communication with the world, are unconscious of any inferiority of birth. When very young or sickly they are put out to nurse in the country, and at twelve are appren{290}ticed to a trade. The sisters will point you out a mother who has placed her infant here, and got herself employed as child’s nurse to the hospital to give it nourishment and care. I forgot to mention that mothers are not allowed to see their babies, or receive their bodies if they die; they are reserved for the improvement of anatomical science.

A useful appendage to this establishment are the numerous Maisons d’Accouchement, distributed everywhere over the city, in which persons find accommodations, as secretly as they please, and at all prices, to suit their circumstances. The evils of all these establishments are manifest: the good is, the prevention of infanticide, often of suicide, and of the perjuries innumerable, and impositions practised in some other countries. I doubt whether a city like Paris could safely adopt any other system. The tables of the last year’s births stand thus:—seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine legitimate; nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-one illegitimate. So you see that every second man you meet in Paris wants but a trifle of being no bastard. Expense, above a million and a half of francs.

Here is the Place St. Jaques; the place of{291} public execution. It is the present station of the guillotine, which has already made several spots of the city classical. And here is appropriately the Barrière d’Enfer. These barriers are found at all the great issues from the city through the walls. They are amongst the curiosities of Paris; often beautiful with sculpture, and other ornaments.

Whilst I was surveying this district, in my usual solitary way, I met two gentlemen and a lady, acquaintances, who were descending into the catacombs, whose opening is just here, and I went down with them.

This nether world bears upon its vaults three fourths of the Quartier St. Germain, with its superincumbent mass of churches and palaces. The light of Heaven is shut out, and so deep a silence reigns in its recesses, that one hears his own footsteps walking after him, and is so vast that several visitors, straying away a few years ago, have not yet returned. The bones of fifty generations are emptied here from ancient grave yards of Paris, now only known to history. What a hideous deformity of skulls! After entering half a mile we saw various constructions, all made out of these remnants of mortality; sepulchral monuments, an entire church,{292} with its pulpit, confessional, altars, tombs, and coffins; and the victims of several Revolutionary massacres, are laid out here chronologically. How unjacobinical they look!

On entering, you are confronted with the following inscription; “Arrête, c’est ici l’empire de la Mort!” and various other inscriptions are put up in the dead languages, and names often written upon skulls, to designate their owners. “Fix your eyes here,” said the lady; “this is the skull of Ninon de l’Enclos,” with verses.

And this is her skull! Every one knows her history, but I will tell you a little of it over again. I will give you a list of her court. Molière, to begin with, and Corneille; Scarron, St. Evermond, Chapelle, Desmarets, Mignard, Chateauneuf, Chaulieu, Condé, Vendome, Villeroi, Villars, D’Etrée, La Rochefoucauld, Choiseul, Sevigné and Fontenelle. She was honoured with the confidence of Madame Scarron, and the homage, through her ambassadors, of the Queen of Sweden. She made conquests at sixty, one at seventy, and died at ninety. Her{293} own son, the Chevalier de Villars, fell in love with her at fifty, and fell upon his sword when she revealed to him the secret of his birth. The Chevalier de Gourville confided to her twenty thousand crowns, when driven to exile, and a like sum to the Grand Penetencier; the priest denied the deposit, and the courtezan restored it, unasked.

I visited, a month ago, her chateau, and saw the rooms in which she used to give her famous suppers “à tous les Despreaux, et tous les Racines.” And this is her skull! While my doctor companions were turning it about, and explaining the bumps—how big was her ideality, how developed her amativeness, I turned her about in my mind, until I had turned her into shapes again—into that incomparable beauty and grace, which no rival was able to equal, and which sensuality itself was not able to degrade. I hung back the lips upon those grinning teeth, I gave her her smile again, her wit, and her eloquence. I assisted at her little court of Cyprus, in the Rue de Tournelle, where philosophers came to gather wisdom, and courtiers grace, from her conversation; I assisted at her toilette, and witnessed the hopes, the jealousies, the agonies, and ecstacies of her lovers. And{294} so we took leave of the exquisite Ninon’s skull—if it was her’s.

The poet Gilbert, who died of want, has here an apartment to himself, which he had not above ground. It is inscribed with his own mournful epitaph,

I could not help contradicting him, for the life of me.

In the very interior of the cavern are collections of water which have classical names. Here is the Styx just under the Ecole Médecine, and the River Lethe flows hard by the Institute. We came at length to a cabinet of skulls, arranged upon shelves, some for phrenology, and some for pathology, exhibiting in classes the several diseases, which our doctors explained with circumstantiality to their sybil conductor; rows of toes, of fingers, and jaws, and legs which used to cut pigeon-wings, and pirouettes, alas! how gracefully.

In the mean time I saw a couple of ghosts (I supposed them to be Cuvier, and Dr. Gall) skulking away as soon as they caught a glimpse{295} of our tapers, and I saw a great many other things, not interesting to people above ground. We began now to be apprehensive of taking cold, and being sent hither to enrich these cabinets; and so we deposited at the door our golden branch, and having mounted a straight stair-way one hundred feet, were purified in the open air.

The two doctors now left me their Eurydice, and she and I, being inspired alike with the spirit of sight-seeing, went a few hundred yards westward, and saw Julian’s Baths. Though he is said to have been little addicted to bathing, here are his baths, the only relic of his sojourn in Paris. This old building is an oblong, with very thick walls, which are crumbling to decay. One of them is entirely dilapidated. The vaults, rising forty-two feet above the soil, and furnaces under ground, and parts of the bathing rooms, are exposed to view, in all the naked majesty of a ruin; a ruin, too, of fifteen centuries.

This is but a single hall of an immense palace—the Palais des Thermes—which once covered the present site of the University. It was the scene of licentious revellings and crime, “latebra scelerum, Venerisque accommoda furtis,” afterwards of the theological disputes of the Sor{296}bonne, and now of the quiet lectures of the University; and Virgin Mary’s are now made out of the old Venuses.

I am a goose of an antiquary; all I could see was Mrs. Julian, jumping into her bath, and coming dribbling out again; but my companion was very different. She had a taste for putting her nose into every musty corner, and cracking off pieces of a bath, and the Roman mortar, of which posterity has lost the secret, to put in her cabinet. She has over-run all Europe, and has now got, she says, near a ton of antiquities. She has a stone from Kenilworth, and a birch from Virgil’s tomb, plenty of mosaics from the Coliseum, and of “auld nick-nackets” from Stirling castle. She has promised me a leaf from Tasso’s lemon tree, and one from Rousseau’s rose bush, also a twig of William Tell’s tree of liberty, and Shakspeare’s mulberry, and a little chip of Dr. Johnson’s cedar at Streatham. And nearly all our travelling Yankee ladies are bringing over a similar collection; after a while the commonest thing in the world will be a curiosity.

Close in this neighbourhood is the Hôtel de Cluny, to which we also paid a visit—I having a ticket from Mr. Sommerand, the proprietor.{297} In this hotel used to lodge Roman generals and emperors, and the first French kings. A suite of seven or eight rooms is crammed with furniture, the remains of the last age; some of it magnificently decayed; commodes, chests, boxes, second-hand tooth brushes, as good as new, and other national relics.

Nothing contemporary enters here; there was nothing, but the lady who accompanied me, under a hundred years old. First we entered the dining room, and saw a knight in full armour placed by a table; and the ghost of a mahogany sideboard at the opposite end—without date, and there is no knowing whether it was made before or since the flood—with its knives and spoons, and earthenware tea-cups, of the same antiquity; next, a bed chamber hung in gilt leather—whose do you think? Why Francis the First’s, with all the implements thereunto belonging.

An entire suit of steel armour, cap-a-pie, reposes upon the bed, with a visor of the knight’s, which had gained victories in jousts and tournaments; also an old coat out at the elbows, worn last, I presume, by his footman. Every little rag of his is preserved here. Here, too, are{298} girdles and bracelets, caskets and other valuables, and a necklace with its pedigree labelled on a bit of parchment; the Belle Feronières’, I suppose. Here is the very glass he looked into, with a Venus holding a garland in front, and a cross and altar behind, by way of symmetry; and here are the very spurs (I held them in my hand) which he wore at Pavia; finally, the very bed, the very sheets, his Majesty slept in.

This bed was hawked about all Paris in the Revolution—at last it was sold by auction in the public streets, a dix francs seulement, and was knocked down to Monsieur Sommerand—Francis the First’s bed and comfortable, and his little pillow, about as big as a sausage. I was much gratified with this collection, which is certainly unique in the world; and you are not hurried through by a Cicerone, but by the complaisance of M. Sommerand you can rummage and ransack things at your leisure. In the other rooms are vases and caskets, and precious cabinets, a spinette of Marie de Medicis, and other furniture of noble dames; one gets tired of looking at their trinkets; and in other rooms are castings, and inlayings, and carvings, and so forth.{299}

I now took Madame under my arm, and descending through one of the thousand and eighty streets of Paris into the Rue de l’Ecole Médecine, deposited her at her home. You should never pass into this street without stopping awhile to contemplate a very memorable dwelling in it—that in which Charlotte Corday assassinated Marat. One owes to this generous maid and disinterested martyr to humanity, a tribute in approaching its threshold. The house is also otherwise remarkable.

Danton used to call here of a morning from the bottom of the stairs upon Marat, and then they went arm in arm to the Convention; and Collot d’Herbois, the actor—what memorable names!—and Chabot the Capucin, Legendre the butcher, Chaumette the Atheist, and St. Just and Robespierre, used to hold here their nightly councils. It would puzzle Beelzebub to get up such another club. Under the outer door-way are remaining the letters * * or D * *, a part of the inscription effaced, “Liberty, Indivisibility, OR Death!”

I now dined and traversed leisurely the Place du Panthéon homewards, passing through the Rue de l’Estrapade into the Rue des Postes,{300} once famous for its convents. This is to a pious man, and one who lives a little back into the past, a holy region; it is consecrated by religious recollections beyond all the other spots of Paris. Here in this single “Rue des Postes,” was the old “Couvent des Dames de St. Augustin,”—“des Dames St. Thomas,”—“des Dames Ursulines,”—“des Dames de la Visitation!”—“de l’Adoration Perpetuelle,”—“du St. Sacrement.”

Alas, how many pretty women, born to fulfil a better destiny, are mewed up in perpetual youth, within those dismal cloisters! Here, too, were the convents of the “Filles de l’Immaculée Conception,”—“de la St. Providence,” and finally “les Filles de Bonne Volonté.” It is the very region of repentant lovers, of heart-sick maids, and all the friars and holy nuns of the romances.

Towards the close of a summer’s evening, one’s fancy sees nothing here but visions and spectres. You will descend, in spite of your reason, with Madame Radcliffe, into the subterranean chambers of the convent, and into the solitary prisons, where you will see poor Elena and her iron table, her dead lantern, her black bread, her cruche of water, and her crucifix;{301} and you will see the wretch Schedoni bare the bosom of the sleeping maid, hanging over the dagger. It is his own miniature!—his own daughter! And then you will walk through the long row of silent monks and smoky tapers, in the funeral of a broken-hearted sister, the sullen bell of the chapel giving news that a soul has fled.

The evening was still and solemn; and the sun just descending on your side of the globe; and lured by the novelty of the place, I travelled slowly onwards through a narrow lane to the Faubourg St. Marceau.

This street is different from all that I have seen in Paris; it is perhaps different from anything that is to be seen upon the earth. The houses are so immensely high that not a ray even in the brightest mid-day reaches the pavement, which is covered with a slimy mud. The darkened and grated windows give to the houses, the look of so many prisons. A chilling damp and horrid gloom invest you around; you feel stifled for want of air. Now and then, the whine of a dog, or the wailing of a beggar, interrupts the silence, and sometimes a sister of charity, wrapped in her hood and mantle, passes{302} quick from one house to another. I went out of this street willingly, as it was growing more horrible by the coming night, into the purer atmosphere of the Seine. And thus ended my adventures for the day.

END OF VOL. I.


T. C. Savill, Printer, 107, St. Martin’s Lane.