It was a delicious morning when I packed my trunk to leave Paris. Indeed
it was so bright and cloudless that it seemed wrong to go away and leave
so fine a combination of perfections. It was more than the "bridal of
the earth and sky"; it was the bridal of all the created beings around
one and their works with the sky. The deep blue of the heavens, the
glittering sunbeams, the clean streets, the fair house fronts, the gay
shop windows, the white caps, and shining morning faces of the _bonnes_
and market women, the busy, prosperous look of the passers by, were all
blended together in one harmonious whole, more touching and poetical
than any scene of mere natural beauty that the dewy morn, "with breath
all incense and with cheek all bloom," ever looked upon. "Earth hath not
any thing to show more fair." Others may delight in communing with
solitary nature, and may rave in rhyme about the glories of woods,
lakes, mountains, and Ausonian skies; but what is all that compared to
the awakening of a great city to the life of day? What are the floods of
golden light that every morning bathe the mountain tops, and are poured
down into the valleys and fields below, compared to the playing of the
sunbeams in the smoke from ten thousand chimneys, and the din of toil
displacing the silence of night? I have seen the sunsets of the
Archipelago--I have seen Lesbos and Egina clad in those robes of purple
and gold, which till then I had thought were a mere figment of the
painter's brain--I have enjoyed that "hush of world's expectation as day
died"--I have often drunk in the glory of a cloudless sunrise on the
Atlantic, and even now my heart leaps up at the remembrance of it; but
after all, commend me to the deeper and more sympathetic feelings
inspired by the dingy walls and ungraceful chimney-pots of a metropolis.
Thousands of human hearts are there, throbbing with hope, or joy, or
sorrow,--weighed down perchance by guilt; and humanity with all its
imperfections is a noble thing. A single human heart, though erring, is
a grander creation than the Alps or the Andes, for it shall outlive
them. It is moved by aspirations that outrun the universe, and possesses
a destiny that shall outlive the stars. It is the better side of human
nature that we see in the early morning in large cities. Vice flourishes
best under the glare of gas-lights, and does not salute the rising sun.
The bloated form, the sunken eye, the painted cheek, shrink from that
which would make their deformity more hideous, and hide themselves in
places which their presence makes almost pestilential. Honest, healthful
labour meets us at every step, and imparts to us something of its own
hopefulness and activity. We miss the dew-drops glittering like jewels
in the grass, but the loss is more than made up to us by the bright eyes
of happy children, helping their parents in their work, or sporting
together on their way to school.
There was a time when I thought it very poetical to roam the broad
fields in that still hour when the golden light seems to clasp every
object that it meets, as if it loved it; but of late years a comfortable
sidewalk has been more suggestive of poetry and less productive of wet
feet. Give me a level pavement before all your groves and fields. The
only _rus_ that wears well in the long run is _Russ in urbe_. Nine
tenths of all the fine things in our literature concerning the charms of
country life, have been written, not beneath the shade of overarching
boughs, but within the crowded city's smoke-stained walls. Depend upon
it, Shakespeare could never have written about the moonlight sleeping on
the bank any where but in the city; had the realities of country life
been present to him, he would have rejected any such metaphor, for he
loved the moonlight too dearly to subject it to the rheumatic attack
that would inevitably have followed such a nap as that. It is with
country life very much as it is with life at sea. Mr. Choate, who pours
out his noblest eloquence on the glories and romance of the sea, seldom
sees the outside of his state-room while he is out of sight of land, and
all his glowing periods are forgotten in the realities of his position.
So, too, the man who wishes to destroy the poetry and romance of country
life, has only to walk about in the wet grass or the scorching heat, or
to be obliged to pick the pebbles out of his shoes, or a caterpillar off
his neck, or to be mocked at by unruly cattle, or pestered by any of the
myriads of insect and reptiles which abound in every well-regulated
country.
The excellent Madame Busque (_la dame aux pumpkin pies_) had prepared
for me a viaticum in the shape of a small loaf of as good gingerbread as
was ever made west of Cape Cod--a motherly attention quite in keeping
with her ordinary way of taking care of her customers. All who frequent
the _cremerie_ are her _enfans_, and if she does not show them every
little maternal attention, and tie a bib upon every one's neck, it is
only that we may know better how to behave when we are beyond the reach
of her kindly hand. Fortified with the gingerbread, I found myself
whirling out of the terminus of the Northern Railway, and Paris, with
its far-stretching fortifications, its domes and towers, and its
windmill-crowned Montmartre, was soon out of sight.
The train was very full, and the weather very warm. Two of my
car-companions afforded me a good deal of amusement. They were a fat
German and his wife. He was one of the jolliest old gentlemen I ever had
the good fortune to travel with. His silvery hair was cropped close to
his head, and he rode along with his cuffs turned up and his waistcoat
open. He seemed to feel that he was occupying a good deal of room; but
he was the only one there who felt it. No one of us would have had his
circumference reduced an inch, but we should all of us have delighted to
put a thin man who was there out by the roadside. His wife--a
bright-eyed little woman, whose hair was just getting a little
silvery--had a small box-cage in which she carried a large,
intelligent-looking parrot. Before we had gone very far, the bird began
to carry on an animated conversation with its mistress, but finally
disgusted her and surprised us all by swearing in French and German at
the whole company, with all the vehemence of a regiment of troopers. The
lady tried hard to stop him, but it was useless. The old gentleman (like
a great many good people who would not swear themselves, but rather like
to hear a good round oath occasionally) seemed to enjoy it intensely,
and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. At noon the worthy
pair made solemn preparations for a dinner. A basket, a carpet-bag, and
sundry paper parcels were brought out. The lady spread a large checked
handkerchief over their laps for a table cloth, and then produced a
staff of life about two feet in length, and cut off a good thick slice
for each of them. Cheese was added to it, and also a species of sausage
about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter. From these they
made a comfortable meal--not eating by stealth, as we Americans should
have done--but diving in heartily, and chatting together all the while
as cosily as if they had been at home. A bottle of wine was then brought
out from the magic carpet-bag, and a glass, also a nice dessert of
peaches and grapes. There was a charming at-home-ativeness about the
whole proceeding that contrasted strongly with our American way of doing
such things, and all the other passengers apparently took no notice of
it.
We arrived at Boulogne in the midst of a storm as severe as the morning
had been serene. So fair and foul a day I have not seen. An omnibus
whisked me to a hotel in what my venerable grandmother used to call a
_jiffy_, and I was at once independent of the weather's caprices. A
comfortable dinner at the _table d'hote_ repaired the damages of the
journey, and I spent the evening with some good friends, whose company
was made the more delightful by the months that had separated us. The
storm raged without, and we chatted within. The old hotel creaked and
sighed as the blast assailed it, and I dreamed all night of close-reefed
topsails.
"'Tis a wild night out of doors;
The wind is mad upon the moors.
And comes into the rocking town,
Stabbing all things up and down:
And then there is a weeping rain
Huddling 'gainst the window pane;
And good men bless themselves in bed;
The mother brings her infant's head
Closer with a joy like tears,
And thinks of angels in her prayers,
Then sleeps with his small hand in hers."
Having in former years merely passed through Boulogne, I had never known
before what a pleasant old city it is. Its clean streets and well-built
houses, and the air of respectable antiquity which pervades it, make a
very pleasant impression upon the mind. As you stand on the quay, and
look across at the white cliffs on the other side of the Channel, which
are distinctly visible on a clear day, the differences in the character
of the two nations so slightly separated from one another, strike you
more forcibly than ever. The very fish taken on the French side of the
channel are different from any that you see in England; and as to the
fishwomen, whose sunburnt legs, bare to the knee, are the astonishment
of all new-comers,--go over all Europe, and you will find nothing like
them. That superb cathedral, the shrine of our Lady of Boulogne, upon
which the storm of the first French revolution beat with such fury, is
now beginning to wear a look of completion. Its dome, one of the
loftiest and most graceful in the world, is a striking and beautiful
feature in the view of the city. For more than twelve centuries this has
been a famous shrine. Kings and princes have visited it, not with the
pomp and circumstance of royalty, but in the humble garb of the pilgrim.
Henry VIII. made a pilgrimage hither in his unenlightened days, before
the pious Cranmer had taught him how wicked it was to honour the Mother
whom his Saviour honoured, and how godly and just it was to divorce and
put to death the mothers of his children. Here it was that the heroic
crusader, Godfrey, kindled the flame of that devotion which nerved his
arm against the foes of Christianity, and added a new lustre to his
knightly fame. It is a fashion of the present day to sneer at the age of
chivalry and the crusades, and some of our best writers have been
enticed into the following of it. While we have so many subjects
deserving the treatment of the satirist, at our very doors,--while we
have the fashionable world to draw upon,--while we can look around on
political parsons, professional philanthropists and patriots,
politicians who talk of principle, and followers who are weak enough to
believe in them--it would really seem as if we might allow the crusaders
and troubadours to rest. Supposing, for the sake of argument,
Christianity to be a true religion,--supposing it to be a fact that
eighteen hundred years ago the plains of Palestine were trodden by the
blessed feet that were "nailed for our advantage on the bitter
cross"--the redemption of the land which had been the scene of the
sacred history, from the sacrilegious hands of the Saracens, was
certainly an enterprise creditable to St. Louis, and Richard the
lion-hearted, and Godfrey, and the other gentlemen who sacrificed so
much in it. It was certainly as respectable an undertaking as any of the
crusades of modern times,--as that of the Spaniards in America, the
English in India, or the United States in Mexico,--with this exception,
that it was not so profitable. I am afraid that some of our modern
satirists are lacking in the spirit of their profession, and allow
themselves to be made the mouthpieces of that worldly wisdom which it is
their office to rebuke. I can see nothing to sneer at in the crusader
exiling himself from his native land, and forfeiting his life in the
defence of the Holy Sepulchre; indeed, I am inclined to respect a man
who makes such a sacrifice to a conscientious conviction: it is a noble
conquest of the visible temporal by the unseen eternal. I can well
understand how such efforts for the protection of a mere empty tomb
would seem worthy of laughter and ridicule to those who can find no food
for satire in the _auri sacra fames_ which has been the motive of modern
foreign expeditions. It would be well for the world could we bring back
something of that age of chivalry which Edmund Burke regretted so
eloquently. We need it sorely; for we are every day sliding farther down
from its high standard of honour and of unselfish devotion to principle.
There is a little fishing village about a mile and a half from Boulogne,
on the sea coast towards Calais, which is celebrated in history as
having been the scene of the landing of Prince Louis Napoleon and his
companions in their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of
Louis Philippe. Napoleon III. has not distinguished the spot by any
memorial; but he has erected a colossal statue of Napoleon I. on the
spot where that insatiable conqueror, with his mighty army around him,
looked longingly at the coast of England. There is something of a
contrast between the day thus commemorated and that on which the "nephew
of his uncle" received Queen Victoria at Boulogne, when she visited
France. It must have been a great satisfaction to Louis Napoleon, after
his life of exile, and particularly after the studied neglect which he
experienced from the English nobility, to have welcomed the British
Queen to his realm with that kiss which is the token of equality among
sovereigns. Waterloo must have been blotted out when he saw the
Queen--in whose realm he had served the cause of good order in the rank
of special constable--bending down at his knee to confer upon him the
order of the garter.
In spite of its geographical situation, Boulogne can hardly be
considered a French town. The police department and the custom house are
in the hands of the French, to be sure; but in the course of a walk
through its streets, you hear much more of the English than of the
French language. You meet those brown shooting jackets, and checked
trousers, and thick shoes and gaiters that are at home every where in
the "inviolate island of the sage and free." You cannot turn a corner
without coming upon some of those beefy and beery countenances which
symbolize so perfectly the genius of British civilization, and hearing
the letter H exasperated to a wonderful degree. Every where you see
bevies of young ladies wearing those peculiar brown straw hats, edged
with black lace, with a brown feather put in horizontally on one side of
the crown, a style of head dress to which the French and Italians have
given the name of "_Ingleesh spoken here_." There is a large class among
the English population of Boulogne upon which the disinterested
spectator will look with interest and with pity. I mean those
unfortunate persons who have been obliged by "force of circumstances"
and the importunity of creditors to exile themselves for a time from
their native land. You see them on every side; and all ranks in society
are represented among them, from the distinguished-looking man, with the
tortoise-shell spectacles, who ran through his wife's property at the
club, to the pale, unhappy-looking fellow in the loose thread gloves and
sleepless coat. You can distinguish them at a glance from their
fellow-countrymen who have gone over for purposes of recreation, the
poor devils walk about with such an evident wish to appear to be doing
something or going somewhere. The condition of the prisoners, or rather
the "collegians," in the old Marshalsea prison, must have been an
enviable one, compared to these unfortunates, condemned to gaze at the
cliffs of Old England from a distance, and wait vainly for something to
turn up.
The arrival and departure of the English steamers is the only source of
excitement that the quiet city of Boulogne possesses. I was astonished
to find, after being there a day or two, what an interest I took in
those occurrences. I found myself on the quay with the rest of the
foreign population of the town, an hour before the departure of the
boat, to make sure, like every body else there, that not a traveller for
England should escape my notice. Besides the pleasure of inspecting the
motley crowd of spectators, I was gratified one day to see the big,
manly form and good-natured ugly face of Thackeray, following a leathern
portmanteau on its path from the omnibus to the boat. The great satirist
took an observation of the crowd through his spectacles as if he were
making a mental note, to be overhauled in due season, and then hurried
on board, as if he longed to get back to London among his books. He had
been spending the warm season at the baths of Hombourg. But the great
excitement of the day is the arrival of the afternoon boat from
Folkestone. It is better as an amusement than many plays that I have
seen, and it has this advantage, (an indispensable one to a large part
of the English population of Boulogne,) that it costs nothing. During
the days when I was there, the equinoctial gale was in full blow, and,
of course, there was a greater rush than usual to the quay. It was
necessary to go very early to secure a good place. From the steamer to
the passport office, a distance of two or three hundred feet, ropes were
stretched to keep back the spectators, forming an avenue some thirty
feet wide. Through this the wretched victims of the "chop sea" of the
Channel were obliged to pass, and listen to the remarks or laughter
which their pitiable condition excited among the crowd of their
disinterested countrymen. Any person who has ever been seasick can
imagine what it would be to go on shore from a boat that has just been
pitching and rolling about in the most absurd manner, and try to walk
like a Christian, with the eyes of several hundred amusement-seeking
people fixed upon him. Sympathy is entirely out of the question. The
pallid countenance and uncertain step, as if the walker were waiting for
the pavement to rise to meet his foot, excite nothing but mirth in the
spectators. The whole scene, including the lookers-on, was one of the
funniest things I ever saw. The observations of the crowd, too, were
well calculated to heighten the effect. "Ease her when she pitches,"
cried out a youngster at my side, as an old lady, who was supported by a
gentleman and a maid servant, seemed to be trying to accommodate herself
to the motion of the street, and testify her love for _terra firma_ by
lying down. "Hard a' starboard," shouted another, as a gentleman, with a
felt hat close reefed to his head with a white handkerchief, sidled
along up the leeward side of the passage way. "That 'ere must 'a been a
sewere case of sickness," said a little old man, in an advanced state of
seediness, as a tall man, looking defiance at the crowd, walked ashore
with a carpet-bag in his hand, and an expression on his face very like
that of Mr. Warren, in the farce, when he says, "Shall I slay him at
once, or shall I wait till the cool of the evening?" "Don't go yet,
Mary," said a young gentleman in a jacket and precocious hat, to his
sister, who seemed to fear that it was about to begin to rain
again,--"don't go yet; the best of all is to come; there's a fat lady on
board who has been _so_ sick--we must wait to see her!" And so they went
on, carrying out in the most exemplary manner that golden rule which,
applied to the period of seasickness, enjoins upon us that we shall do
unto others just as others would do to us.
It is no joke to most people to cross the Channel at any time, but to
cross it on the tail-end of the equinoctial storm is far from being a
humorous matter. I had crossed from almost all the ports between Havre
and Rotterdam in former years; so I resolved to try a new route in spite
of the weather, and booked myself for a passage in the boat from
Boulogne to London, direct. The steamer was called the Seine; and when
we had once got into the open sea, a large part of the passengers seemed
to think that they were _insane_ to have come in her. She was a very
good sea-boat, but I could not help contrasting her with our Sound and
Hudson River steamers at home. If the "General Steam Navigation Company"
were to import a steamer from America like the Metropolis or the Isaac
Newton, there would be a revolution in the travelling world of England.
The people here would no longer put up with steamers without an awning
or any shelter from sun or rain. After they had enjoyed the
accommodations of one of our great floating hotels, they would not think
of shutting themselves up in the miserable cabins which people pay so
dearly for here. But to proceed: when we got fairly out upon the _nasty_
deep, I ventured to gratify my curiosity, as a connoisseur in
seasickness, by a visit to the cabin. If I were in the habit of writing
for the newspapers, I suppose I should say that the scene "baffled
description." It certainly was one that I shall not soon forget. The
most rabid republican would have been satisfied with the equality that
prevailed there. The squalls that assailed us on deck were nothing
compared to the demonstrations of a whole regiment of infantry below,
who were illustrating, in a manner worthy of Retsch, one of the first
lines in Shakespeare's Seven Ages. Ladies of all ages were keeled up on
every side in various postures of picturesque negligence, and with a
forgetfulness of the conventionalities of society quite charming to look
upon. The floor, where it was unoccupied by prostrate humanity, was
nearly covered with hatboxes, and bonnets, and bowls, and anonymous
articles of crockery ware, which were performing a lively quadrille,
being assisted therein by the motion of the ship. But a little of such
sights, and sounds, and smells as these goes a great way with me, and I
was glad to return to the wet deck. They had managed to rig a tarpaulin
between the paddle-boxes, and there I took refuge until the rain ceased.
It was comparatively pleasant weather when we sailed past Walmer Castle,
where that old hero died on whom all the world has conferred the title
of "The Duke"; and of course there was no rough sea as soon as we got
into the Downs. Black-eyed Susan might have gone on board of any of the
fleet of vessels that were lying there without discolouring her ribbons
by a single dash of spray. Ramsgate and Margate (the Newport and Cape
May of England) looked full of company as we sailed by them, and crowds
of bathers were battling with the surf. The heavy black yards of the
ships of war loomed up at Sheerness in the distance, and suggested
thoughts of Nelson, and Dibdin, and Ben Bowlin. Now and then we passed
by some splendid American clipper ship towing up or down the river, and
I felt proud of my nationality as I contrasted her graceful lines and
majestic proportions with the tub-like models of British origin that
every where met my eye. The dock-yards of Woolwich seemed like a vast
ant-hill for numbers and busy life. Greenwich, with its fine
architecture and fresh foliage in the distance, was most grateful to my
eyes; and it was pleasing to reflect, as I passed the observatory, that
I could begin to reckon my longitude to the westward, for it made me
feel nearer home.