one of his inimitable representations, and really the expression was
no bad summary of an Englishman's faith. On the other hand, to hate
and detest the English is the _sine qua non_ of French nationality,
and to concede to them any rank in literature, morals, or military
greatness, is to derogate from the claims of his own country. Now the
question is, are the reproaches on either side absolutely just? They
are not. Secondly, if they be unfair, how comes it that two people
pre-eminently gifted with intelligence and information, should not
have come to a better understanding, and that many a long year ago?
Simply from this plain fact, that the opinions of the press have
weighed against those of individuals, and that the published satires
on both sides have had a greater currency and a greater credit than
the calm judgment of the few. The leading journals in Paris and in
London have pelted each other mercilessly for many a year. One might
forgive this, were the attacks suggested by such topics as stimulate
and strengthen national feeling; but no, the controversy extends to
every thing, and, worse than all, is carried on with more bitterness
of spirit, than depth of information. The reviewer "par excellence" of
our own country makes a yearly incursion into French literature, as an
Indian would do into his hunting-ground. Resolved to carry death and
carnage on every side, he arms himself for the chase, and whets his
appetite for slaughter by the last "_bonne bouche_" of the day. We
then have some half introductory pages of eloquent exordium on the
evil tendency of French literature, and the contamination of those
unsettled opinions in politics, religion, and morals, so copiously
spread through the pages of every French writer. The revolution of
1797 is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these evils;
and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful period is denounced
as but the first step of the iniquity which has reached its pinnacle,
in the novels of Paul de Kock. To believe the reviewer, French
literature consists in the productions of this writer, the works of
George Sand, Balzac, Frederic Soulie, and a few others of equal note
and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction, and adultery, are the
staple of French romance: the whole interest of every novel turning on
the undiscovered turpitude of domestic life; and the great rivalry
between writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of
depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a
sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books,
and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the
day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every
hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have
that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong
influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say
it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of
civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that
these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an
inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are,
doubtless, well read in the mysteries of Paul de Kock and Madame du
Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have
no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have
in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James's. Balzac has,
it is true, a wide-spread reputation; but many of his books are no
less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine
feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all
popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on
every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the
skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers,
Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose
contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the
age?
The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of
the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with
his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious
facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable
quarter of the town called St. Martin's-lane. This sweeping mode of
argument, _a particulari_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the
Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and
gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable
habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is
no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and
Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a
_short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a
dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long
experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any
man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however
palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and
time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all
nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and
habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
traveller has commented on the French Chamber of Deputies, without
expending much eloquence and a great deal of honest indignation on the
practice of speaking from a tribune, written orations being in their
opinion a ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what is
the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not ten, there are not
five men who could address the house extempore; not from any
deficiency of ability--not from any want of information, logical
force, and fluency--the names of Thiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Dupin,
Arago, &c. &c. are quite sufficient to demonstrate this--but simply
from the intricacy and difficulty of the French language. A worthy
alderman gets up, as the phrase is, and addresses a speech of some
three quarters of an hour to the collective wisdom of the livery; and
although he may be frequently interrupted by thunders of applause, he
is never checked for any solecisms in his grammar: he may drive a
coach and six through Lindley Murray; he may inflict heaven knows how
many fractures on poor Priscian's head, yet to criticise him on so
mean a score as that of mere diction, would not be thought of for a
moment. Not so in France: the language is one of equivoque and
subtlety; the misplacement of a particle, the change of a gender, the
employment of any phrase but the exact one, might be at any moment
fatal to the sense of the speaker, and would inevitably be so to his
success. It was not very long since, that a worthy deputy interrupted
M. Thiers by alleging the non-sequitur of some assertion, "_Vous n'est
pas consequent_," cried the indignant member, using a phrase not only
a vulgarism in itself, but inapplicable at the time. A roar of
laughter followed his interruption. In all the journals of the next
day, he was styled the deputy _consequent_; and when he returned to
his constituency the ridicule attached to his blunder still traced his
steps, and finally lost him his election.
"Thank God I am a Briton," said Nelson; a phrase, doubtless, many more
of us will re-echo with equal energy; but while we are expressing our
gratitude let our thankfulness extend to this gratifying fact, that
the liberty of our laws is even surpassed by the licence of our
language. No obscure recess of our tongue is so deep that we cannot by
_habeas corpus_ right bring up a long-forgotten phrase, and provided
the speaker have a meaning and be able to convey it to the minds of
his hearers, we are seldom disposed to be critical on the manner, if
the matter be there. Besides this, there are styles of eloquence so
imbued with the spirit of certain eras in French history, that the
discussion of any subject of ancient or modern days, will always have
its own peculiar character of diction. Thus, there is the rounded
period and flowing sententiousness of Louis XIV., the more polished
but less forcible phraseology of the regency itself, succeeded by the
epigrammatic taste and pointed brevity introduced by Voltaire. The
empire left its impress on the language, and all the literature of the
period wore the _esprit soldatesque_; and so on down to the very days
of the barricades, each changing phase of political life had its
appropriate expression. To assume these with effect, was not of course
the gift of every man, and yet to have erred in their adoption, would
have been palpable to all; here then is one important difference
between us, and on this subject alone I might cite at least twenty
more. The excitable Frenchman scarcely uses any action while speaking,
and that, of the most simple and subdued kind. The phlegmatic
Englishman stamps and gesticulates with all the energy of a madman. We
esteem humour; they prefer wit: we like the long consecutive chain of
proof that leads us step by step to inevitable conviction; they like
better some brief but happy illustration that, dispensing with the
tedium of argument, presents a question at one glance before them.
They have that general knowledge of their country and its changes,
that an illustration from the past is ever an effective weapon of the
orator; while with us the force would be entirely lost from the
necessity of recounting the incident to which reference was made.
A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS.
Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the
facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much
if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for
the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in
mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade
of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his
valet, like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects
the graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of
the tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked
upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar
people have a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn't they have
a villa at Twickenham--why not a box at the opera--a white bait dinner
at Blackwall--a yacht at Southampton? They have the money to indulge
their caprice, and it is no one's affair but their own. They make
themselves ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience
counterbalances the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which
side lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be
squandered, and the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there
is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we
have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an
hereditary _noblesse_, your banker is then your great man.
We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy
alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the
credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a
new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it
as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no
compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway
and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will
often be offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief
presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and
stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an
amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is
derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to
deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.
Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter
'Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must
stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man
now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all
his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained
to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his
self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.
Curran said that a corporation was, a "thing that had neither a body
to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned." And, verily, I begin to think
that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A
nation is a great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of
rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and
France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up
to them in the political world, as in society we do to those whose
rank and station are the guarantees of their power. Many other
countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but still smaller
in degree. Italy, with all its association of classical
elegance--Spain, whose history shines with the solemn splendour of an
illuminated missal, where gold and purple are seen blending their
hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we say of those
newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give
themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by a strange
mockery of institutions and customs of their greater neighbours, to
appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look, for instance,
to Belgium the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of politics, which, having
retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman on
its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its attempts at
high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for strange enough
the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to a nation,
and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon her
mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their
rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to
establish a corps of diplomacy.
Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a
tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but
whatever his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary
of a great household he can never attain to--he can never have a groom
of the chambers. This, like the "chasseur" abroad, is the appendage of
but one class, by constant association with whom its habits are
acquired, its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see
the tall Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind
the caleche of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous
minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled names,
that come east of St. Dunstan's.
So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court, a
senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with
diplomacy--the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your
diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he
be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many
types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand,
Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too
long given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error
concerning it; however, your little folk will not be denied the
pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy,
and they will be laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a
country in Europe, there is not a state however small, there is not a
Coburgism with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of
soldiers, where _they_ haven't a minister resident with
plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political and
commercial, although all the while the Yankees would be sorely
puzzled to point out on the map the _locale_ of their illustrious
ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason for their
embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy
is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American knows
no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his own
counsel and theirs also.
Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye,
on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting
their masters--some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of
reflected importance my lord's gentleman so justly wears; others, in
graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and
observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household.
While a third class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their
livery with an air of awkwardness and constraint, blushing at
themselves even a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches.
They feel themselves in masquerade--they were at the plough but
yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the innate
consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty and uneasy, and
would give the world for "a row" to conceal the defaults of their
breeding. Just so, your petty "diplomate" suffers agony in all the
quiet intercourse of life. The limited opportunities of small states
have circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the world, nor
is he a political character, for he represents nothing; nothing,
therefore, can save him from oblivion or contempt, save some political
convulsion where any meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus
on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly, he must stay
in his corner, but the moment they smash the lamps and shy the
decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and becomes as great as his
neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness of
Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such persons from the
councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of every-day life does upon
the breeding and good manners of our associates.
And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this
absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay
a _Charge d'affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in
his button-hole.
The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one
were but disposed to relate them.
Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who
obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a
gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search
of his master; so quick were the fellow's movements, so rapid his
transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed
that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls;
and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly
sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The
Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by
the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in
maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the
doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe
without ceasing: thus _The Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier
de L----, the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume
his diplomatic functions; _The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his
departure from the Dutch Court; _The Allgemeine Zeitung_ announces
the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has
a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico,
under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: "_non regio
terrae_," exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has
managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should
not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur
at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway.
Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a
wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.
The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his
functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it
looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.
Truly, Chevalier de L----, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
but a type of thee.
[Illustration]
A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.
Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I
scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact,
than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue
the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,
and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the
impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on
this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of
tempering one's nationality by the candid comparison of our own
institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly
the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our
observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of
a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So
conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon
his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would
inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice
to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the
continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous
information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient
for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their
ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty
and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they
see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have
no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw
inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its
fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which
their ignorance has exposed them.
It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done
to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the
habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I
shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue
are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our
countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.
Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of
British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To
watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you
would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in
London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not
so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on
Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted
six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they
are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations,
exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts,
with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to
Astley's. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they
unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The
"_morgue Britannique_," so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear
to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies,
spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of
their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters.
They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food
they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The
courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in
England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness,
libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window
of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d'hote_, and
truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life.
Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling
insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
entertainment of his friends.