The American in Paris

By John Sanderson

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Title: The American in Paris

Author: John Sanderson

Release date: January 7, 2025 [eBook #75059]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, 1838

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


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                             THE AMERICAN

                                  IN

                                PARIS.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

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




       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
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,
humble servant.




CONTENTS.


LETTER I.

Havre--Description of the Town--The Mapseller--Manners of the
People--Law of Inheritance--State of Agriculture--Town and Country
Poverty--Foreign Trade--The Custom House, a School for Perjury--System
of Passports--The French Diligence--Rouen--The Cathedral--Joan of Arc
p. 1-24


LETTER II.

Paris--Street Cries--St. Roch--The Boulevards--Parisian
Lodgings--Manner of Living--The Grand Opera--Taglioni--The Public
Gardens--The Guinguettes--Dancing, the characteristic amusement of the
French--Sunday Dances--Dancing defended, from classical authority p.
25-53


LETTER III.

The Boulevards--Boulevard Madelaine--Boulevard des Capucines--Boulevard
Italien--Monsieur Carème--Splendid Cafés--The Baths--Boulevard
Montmartre--The Shoe-black--The Chiffonnier--The Gratteur--The
Commissionnaire--Boulevard du Temple--Scene at the Ambigù
Comique--Sir Sydney Smith--Monsieur de Paris--The Café Turc--The
Fountains--Recollections of the Bastille--The Halle aux Blés--The
Bicêtre--Boulevard du Mont Parnasse p. 54-92


LETTER IV.

The Palais Royal--French courtesy--Rue Vivienne--Pleasures
of walking in the streets--Cafés in the Palais Royal--Mille
Colonnes--Véry’s--French dinners--Past History of the Palais
Royal--Galerie d’Orleans--Gambling--The unhappy Colton--Hells of the
Palais Royal--Prince Puckler Muskau--Lord Brougham--The King and Queen
p. 93-125


LETTER V.

The Tuileries--The Gardens--The Statues--The Cabinets de Lecture--The
King’s Band--Regulations of the Gardens--Yankee modesty--The English
Parks--Proper estimate of riches--Policy of cultivating a taste
for innocent pleasures--Advantages of gardens--Should be made
ornamental--Cause of the French Revolution--Mr. Burke’s notion of the
English Parks--Climate of France p. 126-143


LETTER VI.

The Three Glorious Days--The plump little Widow--Marriage of
fifteen young Girls--Shrines of the Martyrs--Louis Philippe--Dukes
of Orleans and Némours--The National Guards--Fieschi--The Infernal
Machine--Marshal Mortier and twelve persons killed--Dismissal
of the Troops--The Queen and her Daughters--Disturbed state of
France--The Chamber of Deputies--Elements of support to the present
Dynasty--Private character of the King--The Daily Journals--The Chamber
of Peers--Bonaparte p. 144-165

LETTER VII.

The Garden of Plants--The Omnibus--The Museum of Natural
History--American Birds--The Naturalist--Study of Entomology--The
Botanic Garden--Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy--The Menagerie--The
Giraffe--Notions of America--The Cedar of Lebanon--Effects of French
Cookery--French Gastronomy--Goose Liver Pie--Mode of Procuring the
Repletion of the Liver p. 166-186


LETTER VIII.

Burial of the victims--St. Cloud--The Chateau--The Cicerone--The
Chevalier d’Industrie--Grave of Mrs. Jordan--The Bois de
Boulogne--Amusements on Fête Days--Place Louis XV.--The King at the
Tuileries--The American Address--His Majesty’s Reply--The Princess
Amelia--The Queen and her Daughters--The Dukes of Orleans and
Némours--Madame Adelaide--Splendour of Ancient Courts--Manner of
governing the French--William the Fourth--Exhibition of the Students at
the University p. 187-209


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--Isabelle
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 p. 210-250

LETTER X.

Faubourg St. Germain--Quartier Latin--The
Book-stalls--Phrenologists--Dupuytren’s Room--Medical
Students--Lodgings--Bill at the Sorbonne--French Cookery--A
Gentleman’s Boarding-house--The Locomotive Cook--Fruit--The
Pension--The Landlady--Pleasures of being duped--Smile of a French
Landlady--The Boarding-house--Amiable Ladies--The Luxembourg
Gardens--The Grisettes--Their naïveté and simplicity--Americans sent to
Paris--Parisian Morals--Advantages in visiting Old Countries--American
Society in Paris p. 251-284


LETTER XI.

The Observatory--The Astronomers--Val de Grace--Anne of
Austria--Hospice des Enfans Trouvés--Rows of Cradles--Sisters
of Charity--Vincent de Paul--Maisons d’Accouchement--Place St.
Jaques--The Catacombs--Skull of Ninon de l’Enclos--The Poet
Gilbert--Julian’s Bath--Hotel de Cluny--Ancient Furniture--Francis the
First’s Bed--Charlotte Corday--Danton--Marat--Robespierre--Rue des
Postes--Convents of former Times--Faubourg St. Marceau p. 285-302





THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.




LETTER I.

     Havre--Description of the Town--The Mapseller--Manners of the
     People--Law of Inheritance--State of Agriculture--Town and Country
     Poverty--Foreign Trade--The Custom House, a School for
     Perjury--System of Passports--The French Diligence--Rouen--The
     Cathedral--Joan of Arc.


_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 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.

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 opposition 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 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 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 protection. 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
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, 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.

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 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
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 cucumbers in summer, and extract the
sunbeams out of them, to keep themselves warm in winter. I like the
system which teaches us to increase the sum of human comforts. I think
it is better to live in an improved country, with clean streets and neat
dwellings, than to have the same means of living 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 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, 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 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 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 breakfast
is two francs, a dinner three, and a chamber two. You may count your
daily expenses at a dollar and a half in the best houses. The Havre is
our first acquaintance 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 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. 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 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 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; 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 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.




LETTER II.

     Paris--Street Cries--St. Roch--The Boulevards--Parisian
     Lodgings--Manner of Living--The Grand Opera--Taglioni--The Public
     Gardens--The Guinguettes--Dancing, the characteristic amusement of
     the French--Sunday Dances--Dancing defended, from classical
     authority.


_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 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.

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.

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 cathedral 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 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 comforts. 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 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.

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 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 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 shoemaker; 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 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 unwieldy
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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.


_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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

    Mεστοισιν δ’ωρχειτο πατηρ ανδρωντε Θεωντε.

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
Cornelius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an
evening party at Athens, passed for a clown, for refusing to take a
share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek, and to be talking
to women about the ancients. Don’t 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.




LETTER III.

     The Boulevards--Boulevard Madelaine--Boulevard des
     Capucines--Boulevard Italien--Monsieur Carème--Splendid Cafés--The
     Baths--Boulevard Montmartre--The Shoe-black--The Chiffonnier--The
     Gratteur--The Commissionnaire--Boulevard du Temple--Scene at the
     Ambigù Comique--Sir Sydney Smith--Monsieur de Paris--The Café
     Turc--The Fountains--Recollections of the Bastille--The Halle aux
     Blés--The Bicêtre--Boulevard du Mont Parnasse.


_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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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.

    “Et Balzac et Malherbe si fameux en bon mots,
     En cuisine peut-être n’aurait été que des sots.”

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 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-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 “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
recommendation. 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 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 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, 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 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.

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, 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.

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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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,
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 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 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 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 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.” “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 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 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 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--

    “With many a foul and midnight murder fed,”

the “high altar and castle of Despotism,” the _Bastille_! Where are now
the damp and secret cells, the sombre corridors, and the grim
countenances of the 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 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, 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 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 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--

    “Les murs murant Paris rendent Paris murmurant.”

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




LETTER IV.

     The Palais Royal--French courtesy--Rue Vivienne--Pleasures of
     walking in the streets--Cafés in the Palais Royal--Mille
     Colonnes--Véry’s--French dinners--Past History of the Palais
     Royal--Galerie d’Orleans--Gambling--The unhappy Colton--Hells of
     the Palais Royal--Prince Puckler Muskau--Lord Brougham--The King
     and Queen.


_Paris, July, 1835._

You wish to see the _Palais Royal_? Then you must step from the
Boulevard Italien a quarter of a mile to the 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 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.

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
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.

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 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!_ 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 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 “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 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 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-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 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 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 Colonnes_.” 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 introduce you to Madame de Motteville, and
other famous wits and beauties of those times. In the room just
opposite, where one dines upon soup, three courses, and a dessert, at
forty sous, I will 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 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;
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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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
Mademoiselle 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 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 letter. I am, yours.




LETTER V.

     The Tuileries--The Gardens--The Statues--The Cabinets de
     Lecture--The King’s Band--Regulations of the Gardens--Yankee
     modesty--The English Parks--Proper estimate of riches--Policy of
     cultivating a taste for innocent pleasures--Advantages of
     gardens--Should be made ornamental--Cause of the French
     Revolution--Mr. Burke’s notion of the English Parks--Climate of
     France.


_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 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, Prometheus 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 smoking, no long faces waiting
the preliminary soups, or turning up of noses over the relics of a
departed dinner. It is a spot sacred to the elegant and intellectual
enjoyments. The great walks are filled every fine evening with a full
stream of fashionable company, and that near the Rue Rivoli has always a
hedge of ladies extending along each margin, the third of a mile. In
another section, a thousand or two of children are engaged in their
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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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 business, 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 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 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 gardens, 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 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 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, display of
horsemanship, and military training, and for the games and ceremonies of
our public festivals; the other to be sacred to the arts, and to refined
and 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.




LETTER VI.

     The Three Glorious Days--The plump little Widow--Marriage of
     fifteen young Girls--Shrines of the Martyrs--Louis Philippe--Dukes
     of Orleans and Nemours--The National Guards--Fieschi--The Infernal
     Machine--Marshal Mortier and twelve persons killed--Dismissal of
     the Troops--The Queen and her Daughters--Disturbed state of
     France--The Chamber of Deputies--Elements of support to the present
     Dynasty--Private character of the King--The Daily Journals--The
     Chamber of Peers--Bonaparte.


_Paris, August 1st, 1835._

The Parisians have set apart three days annually, to commemorate their
Revolution of 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 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 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 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.


_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--_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 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 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.

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.


_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 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 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 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. 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.




LETTER VII.

     The Garden of Plants--The Omnibus--The Museum of Natural
     History--American Birds--The Naturalist--Study of Entomology--The
     Botanic Garden--Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy--The Menagerie--The
     Giraffe--Notions of America--The Cedar of Lebanon--Effects of
     French Cookery--French Gastronomy--Goose Liver Pie--Mode of
     Procuring the Repletion of the Liver.


_Paris, August 14th, 1835._

Here is an Englishman, who has interrupted me at the very outset of this
letter, and says I must dine 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 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” 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 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 rencontres. 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 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 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 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,

                  “or the wood-louse,
    That folds itself in itself for a house.”

There is a building apart also for the “Botanic Garden.” It has an
herbal of twenty-five thousand species of plants. You will see here a
very pretty collection of the mushrooms in wax--it is delightful to see
the whole family together. The Cabinet of “Comparative Anatomy” has
also separate lodgings. It contains skeletons of all animals compared
with man and with one another, about twelve thousand preparations. It is
a population of anatomies; it looks like Nature’s 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 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 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_!

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
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!”

“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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




LETTER VIII.

     Burial of the victims--St. Cloud--The Chateau--The Cicerone--The
     Chevalier d’Industrie--Grave of Mrs. Jordan--The Bois de
     Boulogne--Amusements on Fête Days--Place Louis XV.--The King at the
     Tuileries--The American Address--His Majesty’s Reply--The Princess
     Amelia--The Queen and her Daughters--The Dukes of Orleans and
     Némours--Madame Adelaide--Splendour of Ancient Courts--Manner of
     governing the French--William the Fourth--Exhibition of the
     Students at the University.


_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 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 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 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 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
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, 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. 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. 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,
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 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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 brother’s secretary, during
their residence in England. She revealed this marriage, with great fear
of his displeasure, to her brother, after his accession to the throne,
throwing herself on her knees.--After some pause, he said, 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 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 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 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, 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.




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 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 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--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 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!

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 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 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
clouds, with Gothic windows, and grizly saints painted on them,

    “So old, as if she had for ever stood,
     So strong as if she would for ever stand,”

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 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.

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 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 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
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 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 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 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. 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.

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; 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 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. Sometimes, I thought I could hear
distinctly _Isabeau!_ in the murmuring of the waters.

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

            “With disemboguing streams,
    Rolls the large tribute of its dead dogs.”

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

The _Pont des Arts_ is a light and airy bridge, from the door of the
Institute to the Quai 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, 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!

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.

    “Not Cleopatra, on her galley’s deck,
     Display’d so much of leg, or more of neck.”

This array of washing-boats relieves the French from that confusion and
misery of the American kitchen, the “washing-day;” but to give us the
water to drink, after all this scouring of foul linen, is not so polite.
I have bought a filter of charcoal, which, they say, will 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:--

    “The River Rhine, it is well known,
     Doth wash the city of Cologne;
     But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine,
     Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine.”

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, 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 apartment 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 astronomical purposes; but the
president, a shrewd man about machines, observed that its obliquity was
in an opposite direction to the stars.

The Seine flows gently by the side of the Tuileries, both from the
pleasure it has had in bathing the royal family, and the delight of
listening to the king’s band, which plays here every evening; and from
this onwards, the right bank is occupied by the gardens of the Tuileries
and 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 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 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 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 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.

    “Il en est jusqu’à trois que je pourrais nommer.”

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!

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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_.




LETTER X.

     Faubourg St. Germain--Quartier Latin--The
     Book-stalls--Phrenologists--Dupuytren’s Room--Medical
     Students--Lodgings--Bill at the Sorbonne--French Cookery--A
     Gentleman’s Boarding-house--The Locomotive Cook--Fruit--The
     Pension--The Landlady--Pleasure in being duped--Smile of a French
     Landlady--The Boarding-house--Amiable Ladies--The Luxembourg
     Gardens--The Grisettes--Their naïveté and simplicity--Americans
     sent to Paris--Parisian Morals--Advantages in visiting Old
     Countries--American Society in Paris.


_Paris, November 24th, 1835._

Nearly all who love to woo the silent muses are assembled in this
region, the _Faubourg St. Germain_. Here are the libraries bending under
their ponderous loads, and here are the schools and colleges, and all
the establishments devoted to science and letters; for which reason, no
doubt, it is dignified by the name of the _Quartier Latin_. When the
west of the river was yet 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,
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 Martyrs, 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 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 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 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.

A service of Soup,          3 Sous.
             Vegetables,    3   “
             Meat,          6   “
             Fish,          6   “
             Bread,         2   “
                           --
                           20

You have also, which serves at once for vinegar and wine, a half bottle
of claret, at six sous; and a dessert, a bunch of grapes or three
cherries, for two; or of 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, 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 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 restaurants, 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 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 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 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 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.

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. 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 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 acquaintance. Never dispute
any small items overcharged in her monthly bill, or she that was smooth
as the ermine, will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for
the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you
turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a 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 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.

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,” 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 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 explanations. “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.

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, 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 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, 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 herself 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 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
drunkenness 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 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 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 sugarcane 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. 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!




LETTER XI.

     The Observatory--The Astronomers--Val de Grace--Anne of
     Austria--Hospice des Enfans Trouvés--Rows of Cradles--Sisters of
     Charity--Vincent de Paul--Maisons d’Accouchement--Place St.
     Jaques--The Catacombs--Skull of Ninon de l’Enclos--The Poet
     Gilbert--Julian’s Bath--Hôtel de Cluny--Ancient Furniture--Francis
     the First’s Bed--Charlotte Corday--Danton--Marat--Robespierre--Rue
     des Postes--Convents of former times--Faubourg St. Marceau.


_Paris, Oct. 25th._

I rose this morning, and refreshed myself from the repose of the night,
by running boyishly up the broad and elegant walk which leads to the
south end of the garden, to the Observatory, the place where they make
almanacks; I went 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 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 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 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. 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 apprenticed to a trade. The sisters will
point you out a mother who has placed her infant here, and got herself
employed as child’s nurse to the hospital to give it nourishment and
care. I forgot to mention that mothers are not allowed to see their
babies, or receive their bodies if they die; they are reserved for the
improvement of anatomical science.

A useful appendage to this establishment are the numerous _Maisons
d’Accouchement_, distributed 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 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, 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.

    “L’indulgente et sage Nature
     A formé l’âme de Ninon
     De la Volupté d’Epicure,
     Et de la vertu de Caton.”

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 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 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,

    “Au banquet de la vie, infortuné convive,
       J’apparus un jour, et je meurs.
     Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, où lentement j’arrive,
       Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs!”

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 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 Sorbonne, 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. 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 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.

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_,
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; 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 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.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] We learn from tradition that Julian never washed hands or face, or
suffered any kind of ablution, unless, perhaps, at his christening. In
a word, he was a very dirty emperor. Is it not strange that his “Baths”
should be the only monument remaining of him in Paris? I presume they
are named ironically, or from the old rule of _non lavando_.

[2] Louis, by a royal edict, ordered that no other building should be
constructed in Paris until this work was completed, under a penalty of
imprisonment and ten thousand francs fine. It was something in those
days to be a king. One has now to ask the Deputies everything, even to
gilding the ceilings of the Madelaine.

[3] It is called also the Place de la Concord, and the Place Louis XV.



Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

Swiming-schools=> Swimming-schools {pg vii}

Your old acqaintance=> Your old acquaintance {pg 28}

These splended cafés=> These splendid cafés {pg 63}

and it wont do to have=> and it won’t do to have {pg 95}

Sparticus who had stepped=> Spartacus who had stepped {pg 143}

je sais que le rôti à manqué a deux tables!=> je sais que le rôti a
manqué à deux tables! {pg 184}

retain our demoracy=> retain our democracy {pg 208}

with Pharoah=> with Pharaoh {pg 244}






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