THE PEOPLE.[72]

Mr Cobden, in the House of Commons, has given us a definition of the

term which heads this article:--THE PEOPLE _are the inhabitants of

towns_. "I beg to tell the honourable member for Limerick," said the

arch-leaguer, a few evenings since, "and the noble lord, the member for

Lynn, and the two hundred and forty members who sit behind him, that

there are other parties to be consulted with regard to their

proposition--that there are THE PEOPLE; I don't mean the country party,

but the people living in the towns, and who will govern this country."

"What is the city," says Shakspeare, "but the People?"----"True, the

people are the city."

Against Mr Cobden we pit Mr D'Israeli, who defines the people to be the

country gentlemen. Against Shakspeare, we bring M. Michelet, who, in an

affectionate dedication of his latest work to his fellow-labourer and

friend, M. Edgar Quinet, modestly acquaints the said M. Edgar, that THE

PEOPLE are neither more nor less than the author of the book and the

gentlemen to whom it is inscribed:--

"Recevez-le donc, ce livre du Peuple, parce qu'il est vous, parce qu'il

est moi. Par vos origines militaires, par la mienne, industrielle, nous

representons nous-memes, autant que d'autres peut-etre, les deux faces

modernes du Peuple, et son recent avenement."

There is, in truth an extensive amount of cant afloat just now, both

here and elsewhere, on this subject of THE PEOPLE. It is the staple

commodity of your newspaper-mongers, and the catchpenny song of the

streets. Agitators feed upon it, politicians play upon it, our needy

brethren of the quill pay outstanding debts with it. It is one of the

few things that pay at all in an age of fearful competition, and one

that always will pay whilst poor human nature holds the purse-strings.

The wretched beggarman of Ireland famishes for a crust, yet he has his

farthings to spare for the greedy hypocrite who flatters his vanity, and

heaps laudations on his social importance. JOHN HOWARD made four

pilgrimages to Germany, five to Holland, three to France, two to Italy,

with the simple object of mitigating the physical sufferings of his

fellow creatures; he visited Spain, Portugal, the United States, and

Turkey, with the same practical and praiseworthy purpose. He passed days

in pest-houses and lazarettos, and finally laid down his life in the

blessed work of charity at Cherson in the Crimea. _Nous avons change

tout cela._ Philanthropy is a luxurious creature now-a-days. She is

passive rather than active; she does not work--she _talks_. Her

disciples take no journeys, unless it be to Italy for their own

pleasure; they sit at home in satin dressing-gowns, supported on velvet,

feeding on turtle. They tell the labouring classes--whom they style the

bone and sinew of the land--that though they talk prose, and lead

prosaic lives, they are nevertheless first-rate poets, that though rough

at the surface, they are the gentlest of creation "at the core;" that

though dull, they are quick; though ugly, handsome; though stupid,

vastly clever; though commoners in the last degree, yet nobles of God,

and nature's grandees of the very first class. It is gratifying to

believe all this, and the charge is only threepence a-week, or a

shilling a-month. Open as we all are to flattery, who would not pay so

trifling a sum for the pleasure of so sweet a dream? If you cannot

relieve our sufferings, it is something to create an inordinate

self-esteem. If you cannot afford us a shilling from your pockets, it is

much that your goose-quill can convert us into birds of Paradise. The

successful writers of the day are those who have nauseously fawned upon

the million for the sale of their "sweet voices" and their halfpence.

There is not one of these popular authors who has had the manliness to

suggest, supposing that he has the head to discover, a remedy for the

evils which every honest mind perceives in the social condition of the

humbler classes. The most they have done is to drag further into the

light miseries which every one saw without their aid--to point out

exultingly distinctions of rank, which have always been, and can never

cease to be--to remove bonds of sympathy, that united for mutual benefit

one class with another--and to widen as far as possible the breach that

has arisen between the governed and the governing of this great empire.

We do them injustice--they have accomplished more. In seasons of

difficulty and trial, in those periods of convulsion and danger, to

which all great societies are liable, and a large mercantile community

like our own is especially subject, they have assuaged alarm and

appeased hunger by writing books with a _moral_; such a moral as that

upon which THE CHIMES was founded, and which the snarling author of Mrs

Caudle's Lectures loves to inculcate: we mean the moral that teaches the

loveliness of all that lies in the hovel, the hatefulness of all that

dwells in the palace; the sublimity of vulgarity, and the ridiculousness

of high birth; the innate virtues of ignorance and poverty, and the

equally essential wickedness of wealth and rank. Such are the exertions

of modern philanthropy! Such are the self-denying, humble, and glorious

achievements of the successors of John Howard!

There are two classes of philanthropists very busy just now on this side

the English Channel: viz., that composed of men who are particularly

anxious that no laws whatever should be passed for the effectual

punishment of the midnight assassin in Ireland; and that which stands up

for the murderer in England, denying the right of the legislator to

punish any man with death, and the expediency of the punishment,

provided the right be conceded. Should society be restored to

tranquillity, and crime be expurgated by the success of these

gentlemen's endeavours, it is very clear that France will take the wrong

track, by following the counsel of the belligerent M. Michelet,

according to whose views, peace and order are to be obtained only by the

proclamation of war, and the shedding of blood for the glory of his

native country. "My only hope," says the valiant historian, "is in the

flag." Every time, he tells us, that he sees the bayonets of the French

army, his heart bounds within him. "Glorious army! pure swords! holy

bayonets!" upon which the eyes of the world are fixed, and which will

eventually save that world by--cutting the throats of all the enemies of

France.

M. MICHELET has obtained some celebrity in Europe: amongst the learned

and the reading public by his histories; amongst the masses by that

remarkable work styled _Priests, Women, and Families_, which met with

many readers and elaborate notices in this country, and was reviewed in

the pages of this Magazine as recently as August last. We paid our

tribute of respect to an effort which, whatever might be its faults--and

serious faults it had--was distinguished by a commanding eloquence, a

manly energy, and an uncompromising zeal worthy of the cause which the

historian had undertaken; viz., the restoration of _woman_ to her

spiritual and social rights--rights invaded by the stranger, trampled

upon by priestcraft. We did not stay to inquire into the motives by

which the indignant professor of the College of France had been

actuated. It may have been, that, to avenge a slight inflicted upon him

by the Jesuits, the learned teacher aimed a blow at the entire Roman

Catholic Church; that having repudiated the sentiments of his early

life--sentiments which attached him affectionately to the religion,

poetry, and traditions of the middle ages--he burned with the new fire

of a convert or an apostate, and sought to establish the sincerity of

his conversion by deadly home-thrusts at the party he had forsaken. It

was sufficient for us that a scholar and a Frenchman had manfully

advanced to the rescue of his fellow-countrywomen; that he had detected

the errors that lay at the heart of their social condition; that he had

noted the hindrances that affected domestic purity and peace; and

bravely undertook, if possible, to remove, at all events to expose and

brand them.

There is great peril attending the career of any man who acquires the

reputation of a reformer of abuses. It is easier to acquire that

reputation than to sustain it. It is well when the necessity gives birth

to the reformer; but it is ill when the reformer, in order to live, is

forced to create the necessity. There was ease and grace, simplicity and

truthfulness, honesty and ardour, in that defence of woman, to which the

champion was urged by the conviction that he entertained of her wrongs.

Few of these qualities remain in the work now before us--a work

suggested by any thing rather than the crying evils of the community to

which the author belongs; a work that may have been written for

money--with the mere object of book-making--to bamboozle the million, to

inspire it with cock-like crowing; certainly, with no hope of

regenerating France, of removing one feather's weight from the load of

calamity to which her people, in common with the people of all the

nations of the earth, are mysteriously doomed.

We do not pretend to understand the motives which have carried M.

Michelet to his task; neither can we distinctly discern the object which

it is his purpose to reach. His book is divided into three parts, which

are again subdivided into chapters. There is a great appearance of

connexion, and indeed an affectation of logical cohesion in the

structure, but there is really and essentially no union whatever of the

several divisions. Part I. is styled, "_Of Bondage and Hatred_;" Part

II., "_Enfranchisement by Love--Nature_;" and Part III., "_Friendship_."

Each part is an essay, complete, so to speak, in itself, more or less

distinct; intelligible at times, but as often vague, dark, and

paradoxical; most satisfactory where it treats of simple, well-known

facts--least successful where it deals in the crudest theories, which

are not tedious only because they are ridiculous and amusing.

The spirit that pervades the entire book is that of intolerable

conceit--individual and national. We can pardon the author of _The

History of France_ much, but we will never forgive in him a vice that

has ceased to be supportable in the most ignorant of his countrymen. It

is impossible to conceive a philosopher and scholar so irritated and

perverted by thin-skinned vanity as M. Michelet appears throughout this

volume; and indeed we cannot do his intellect the injustice of supposing

him to believe the jargon that has fallen from his pen. The heart, we

fear, rather than the intellect, is at fault, when he who has the ear of

the people approaches it with accents that inflame its lowest passions,

rather than correct and guide, and bring to usefulness and good, its

best and noblest instincts.

Every thing is perfect in France; nothing is perfect elsewhere. This is

the theme of the song which M. Michelet circulates throughout the

empire. The people are nevertheless wretched, in poverty, and in

bondage; they are doomed to evil government; their social state is one

of tyranny and cruel persecution. An historian, sprung from the people,

has deemed it his duty to proclaim these facts, and to write a book

which shall go far to remove the evils he complains of; yet, at the

outset of the work, he announces, to our astonishment, that France is

beyond all other lands the favoured land of heaven, the mistress of the

world, the paragon of countries. We turn back a page, and ask--Was it

for this that the student stepped from his retirement, or was it to

prove facts the very opposite to these? If France be indeed so

pre-eminently good and great, why write so many pages to prove that she

lies in bondage? If the literature of France be perfect, her army pure,

her people great, her religion the only true revelation of God's

purposes and will, wherefore complain and cry aloud, and seek to remedy

a condition already so enviable, to elevate a character already so

super-eminent? Is it that France is too self-loving to hear of her

faults even from her own offspring, or that she will not take her

wholesome medicine without the gilding that removes its flavour, and

hides its ugliness? Is she a child, and must the teacher flatter her as

a child; coax, pacify, and bribe her as a child, in order to work her

reformation and secure her happiness?

Let us for awhile follow the author of _The People_, as he traces

bondage and hatred throughout the social scheme of France, and gather

from him, as well as we may, the remedies he has for their destruction;

so shall we do him greater justice, and obtain, if they be within grasp,

the intention and the object of his undertaking.

"If we would know," says M. Michelet, "the inmost thought, the passion

of the French _Peasant_, it is very easy. Walk any Sunday into the

country, and follow him. Look! he is yonder before us! It is two

o'clock; his wife is at vespers, and he is in his Sunday's clothes. I

warrant you he is going to see his mistress!" His mistress! Yes; but

tropically. The peasant's mistress is his _Land_; he loves it with

intensest delight, with procreative love. Happy for France that it is

so; for let it once cease, and the land is barren from that instant. She

brings forth because she is loved. "_La terre le veut ainsi, pour

produire; autrement, elle ne donnerait rien, cette pauvre terre de

France, sans bestiaux presque et sans engrais._" By _Love_, the reader

will understand needful care and culture, but he will err in the

interpretation. It is something far more poetical and French. The

peasant having arrived face to face with his mistress, "folds his arms,

stops, looks serious and thoughtful; he looks a long, long time, and

seems to forget himself; at last, if he fancies himself overlooked, if

he perceives any body passing, he moves slowly away; after a few steps,

he stops, turns round, and casts upon his land one last profound and

melancholy look: but to the keen-sighted, that look is full of passion,

full of heart, full of devotion. If that be not love, (!) by what token

shall we know it in this world? It is love--do not laugh." It were

indeed very easy to laugh, but, thus intreated, we forbear, and proceed.

To love is to covet possession. To have a bit of land, means "you shall

not be a mercenary, to be hired to-day and turned off to-morrow. You

shall not be a serf for your daily bread. You shall be free!" To acquire

that land, the peasant will consent to any thing, even to lose sight of

it. To obtain it he will sell his life, and go to meet death in Africa.

The peasant is very aspiring; he has been a soldier; he believes in

impossibilities. The acquisition of land is for him a combat; "he goes

to it as he would to the charge, and will not retreat. It is his battle

of Austerlitz; he will win it; it will be a desperate struggle, he

knows, but he has seen plenty of these under his old commander;" and

accordingly this brave and warlike peasant borrows money of a usurer at

seven, eight, or ten per cent, to purchase a piece of earth that shall

bring him in two. "Heroic man--are you surprised, if, meeting him on

that land which devours him, you find him so gloomy?" Certainly not. "If

you meet him," says M. Michelet--heroic and sublime as he is--"do not

ask him your road; if he answers, he may perhaps induce you to turn your

back on the place you are going to." It is the way with atrabilious

heroes. What is to be done? "We must take serious measures for defending

the nobility;" that is to say--the peasantry who are in the hands of the

usurers. Alter the laws. This "vast and profound," but very much

involved "legion of peasant-soldier proprietors," are the People: the

people are France. France is a principle, "a great political principle.

It must be defended at any cost. As a principle, she must live. _Live

for the salvation of the world (!!)_ In the midst of his difficulties,

the peasant learns to envy the town workman. He sees him on Sunday

walking about like a gentleman, and thinks he is as free as a bird; he

believes that a man who carries his trade with him, not caring a straw

for the seasons, is a lord of the creation: he remembers his own

liabilities to the usurer--and, lo! we have arrived at bondage and

hatred, No. 1.

But the _Workman_, after all, is not so well off as he looks in his

Sunday's best. Work fluctuates, and at times there is a want of work

altogether: moreover, there are wicked _cabarets_ and _cafes_, that play

havoc with his four or five francs _per diem_. And, above all, there is

that tremendous rival, with lungs of iron that know no rest, and never

cease, whom men call MACHINERY, and who laughs the skill and strength of

man to scorn. "It is humiliating," says the historian, "to behold, in

presence of machinery, man fallen so low. The head is giddy, and the

heart oppressed, when, for the first time, we visit those fairy halls,

where iron and copper of a dazzling polish seem moving of themselves,

and to have both thought and will, whilst pale and feeble man is the

humble servant of those giants of steel." No reverie, no musing is

allowed in the temples of MACHINERY. The _Lollards_, those mystic

weavers of the middle ages, received their name, because, whilst

working, they _lulled_, or hummed in an under tone some nursery rhyme

that cheered then in their labour: for it is wisely said by our author,

who can speak like a prophet and a sage when he will--shame to him when

he speaks otherwise!--that "in the manual labours subject to our

impulse, our inmost thought becomes identified with the work, puts it in

its proper place; and the inert instrument, to which we impart the

movement, far from being an obstacle to the spiritual movement, becomes

its aid and companion. The rhythm of the shuttle, pushed forth and

pulled back at equal periods, associated itself (in the case of the

Lollards) with the rhythm of the heart; in the evening, it often

happened, that, together with the cloth, a hymn, a lamentation, was

woven to the self-same numbers." No human heart beats harmoniously with

the thunder of machinery, whose abode is the real hell of _ennui_. "It

seems, during those long hours, as if another heart, common to all, had

taken its place--a metallic, indifferent, pitiless heart." Pitiless,

indeed, if it degrade the human creature to the level of the brute. "The

manufactory is a world of iron, a kingdom of necessity and fatality. The

only living thing there is the severity of the foreman; there they often

punish, but never reward. There man feels himself so little man, that as

soon as ever he comes out, he must greedily seek the most intense

excitement of the human faculties, that which concentrates the sentiment

of boundless liberty in the short moment of a delicious dream. This

excitement is intoxication, especially the intoxication of love." The

workman becomes vicious; but extreme physical dependency, the claims of

instinctive life, which once more revert to dependency, moral impotency,

and the void of mind, are the causes of his vices. Talk of the bondage

of the peasant! What is his slavery to that of the workman! _He_ was at

least a happy _child_. He lived in the air and played. He was at

liberty, whilst his body and his strength were forming: the chains did

not gall him till his wrist was hard: he was not called upon to suffer,

before his spirit was sufficient to cope with life. Yes, there is

positive bondage here.

And the _Artisan_? Is he at liberty? As an apprentice-boy, he is already

in bondage. "Whatever annoys or irritates his master or his master's

wife, falls very often upon his shoulders. A bankruptcy happens, the

apprentice is beaten: the master comes home drunk, the apprentice is

beaten: the work is slack or pressing, he is beaten all the same."

Apprenticeship over, the artisan marries--has a wife, family; expense,

misery! His children grow up, and the mother (we are in France, and M.

Michelet speaks) is ambitious. Drawing will be serviceable, says the

mother, to her boy in his business. She pinches herself for a few sous

for _crayons_ and paper, and a miserable artist is made of one who would

have proved a good workman. Or an inspired artist, the child of labour,

is left an orphan and a beggar in the midst of his aspirations and

struggles towards distinction: to subsist, he must desert art, and

become a workman like his father. "All his life he will curse his fate;

he will work here, but his soul will be elsewhere." If he weds, and has

a family--that family will become less and less loved. "A man embittered

in such a struggle, and wholly intent on personal progress, considers

every thing else of little value. He weans himself even from his native

land imputing to it the injustice of fate." And so there is imprisonment

and hatred also here.

Look at the _Manufacturer_. The manufacturers of France have, generally

speaking, all been workmen. Six hundred thousand have become

manufacturers or tradesmen since the peace. "Those brave men, who,

returning from war, wheeled suddenly to the right-about towards

Industry, charged as for an onset, and without difficulty carried every

position." But they brought to commerce more of the violence of military

life than the sentiment of honour, and treated unmercifully two classes

of individuals, viz. the workman and the consumer. Towards the latter

they behaved as the female shopkeepers ransomed the Cossacks in 1815.

They sold at false weight, false die, false measure. With respect to the

former, they applied to industry the great imperial principle--sacrifice

men to abridge warfare. Men were _pressed_ in town and country, and the

conscripts of labour were placed at the pace of the machine, and

required to be, like it--indefatigable. The successors of these men, the

present manufacturers, pay the penalty of their fathers' misdeeds. Their

reputation is gone in the market--they cannot get on. "Most of them

would be heartily glad to retire if they could; but they are engaged,

they must go on--_march! march!_" Such men are not likely to be

tender-hearted. They are unfeeling to their workmen, for the

money-lender is unfeeling to them. To live, the manufacturer must

borrow. To get back his interest he has recourse to the workmen, for the

consumer is on his guard. The former present themselves in crowds, and

are obtained at any price. But a glut in the market compels the

manufacturer to sell at a loss; the lowness of wages, which is death to

the workman, is no longer profitable to the master, and the consumer

alone gains by it. May not bondage and hatred be discerned in the

present condition of the French manufacturer?

We come to the _Tradesman_. "The tradesman is the tyrant of the

manufacturer. He pays him back all the annoyance and vexations of the

purchaser." The purchaser of to-day wishes to buy for nothing: he

requires two things, a showy article and the lowest price. The tradesman

must deceive or perish. His life is made up of two warfares--one of

cheating and cunning against the purchaser; the other of vexations and

unreasonableness against the manufacturer. We have said that no one can

talk more wisely than the author of _The People_ when he is so disposed.

The picture of the tradesman is drawn with a masterly hand. The original

may be found here as well as in France, and is, in truth, the creation

of the unwholesome time in which we live rather than of any particular

city or state.

"The repugnance for industry exhibited by the noble republics of

antiquity, and the haughty barons in the middle ages, is doubtless

unreasonable, if by industry we understand those complicated fabrics

which require science and art, or a grand wholesale trade, which

requires such a variety of knowledge, information, and combination. But

this repugnance is truly reasonable when it relates to the ordinary

usages of commerce, the miserable necessity in which the tradesman finds

himself of lying, cheating, and adulterating.

"I do not hesitate to affirm, that, for a man of honour, the position of

the most dependent working man is free in comparison with this. A serf

in body, he is free in soul. To enslave his soul on the contrary and his

tongue, to be obliged, from morning till night, to disguise his

thoughts, this is the lowest state of slavery.

"It is singular that it is precisely for honour that he lies every day,

viz. to _honour_ his affairs. Dishonour for him is not falsehood, but

bankruptcy. Rather than _fail_, commercial honour will urge him on to

the point at which fraud is equivalent to robbery, adulteration to

poisoning; a gentle poisoning, I know, with small doses, which kill only

in the long run.

"The manufacturer, and even the artisan, have two things which, in spite

of work, render their lot better than that of the tradesman--

"First.--_The tradesman does not create_; he has not the important

happiness--worthy of a man--to produce something--to see his work

growing under his hand, assuming a form, becoming harmonious, responding

to its framer by its progress, and thus consoling his _ennui_ and his

trouble.

"Secondly.--Another awful disadvantage, in my opinion, is, _the

tradesman is obliged to please_. The workman gives his time, the

manufacturer his merchandise, for so much money: that is a simple

contract which is not humiliating, neither has occasion to flatter. They

are not obliged, often with a lacerated heart and tearful eyes, to be

amiable and gay on a sudden, like the lady behind the counter. The

tradesman, though uneasy, and tormented to death about a bill that falls

due to-morrow, must smile, and give himself up by a cruel effort to the

prating of some young fashionable lady, who makes him unfold a hundred

pieces, chats for two hours, and, after all, departs without a purchase.

He must please, and so must his wife. He has staked in trade, not only

his wealth, his person, and his life, but often his family."

We need not ask, is bondage here? or stay to inquire whether the

condition of the tradesman thus described is likelier to engender love

or hatred towards mankind.

The _Official_, too, is enslaved. A vast proportion of men on the

Continent are officials. Great efforts and great sacrifices are

undergone to make the hope of the humble house a government servant. And

in France what does this mean? It means to serve a hard master, and to

receive ill wages for the service, to be subject to instant dismissal at

the will of an arbitrary overseer, to pass a life of changes, journeys,

and sudden transportations. A baker's boy at Paris earns more than two

custom-house officers, more than a lieutenant of infantry, more than

many a magistrate, more than the majority of professions; _he earns as

much as six parish schoolmasters_.

"Shame! infamy! The nation that pays the least to those that instruct

the people (let us blush to confess it) is France. I speak of the France

of these days. On the contrary, the true France, that of the Revolution,

declared that teaching was a holy office, that the schoolmaster was

equal to the priest. I do not conceal it; of all the miseries of the

present day, there is not one that grieves me more. The most deserving,

the most miserable, the most neglected man in France is the

schoolmaster. The state, which does not even know what are its true

instruments and its strength, that does not suspect that its most

powerful moral lever is this class of men--the state, I say, abandons

him to the enemy of the state--bondage; heavy bondage! I find it among

the high and the low in every degree, crushing the most worthy, the most

humble, the most deserving!"

The _Rich Man_ and the _Bourgeois_ do not escape the curse that attaches

to every other class: they too are in bondage. The ancient _bourgeoisie_

was characterized by security, the present has no such characteristic.

It lives in timidity and fear. It has risen from the Revolution, aspires

to nobility, feels none, and is jealous of the advancing masses. The

ancient _bourgeois_ was consistent. "He admired himself in his

privileges, wanted to extend them, and looked upwards. Our man looks

downwards: he sees the crowd ascending behind him, even as he ascended;

he does not like it to mount; he retreats, and holds fast to the side of

power. Does he avow to himself his retrograde tendency? Seldom, for his

part is adverse to it; he remains almost always in this contradictory

position--a liberal in principle, an egotist in practice, wanting, yet

not willing. If there remain any thing French within him, he quiets it

by the reading of some innocently growling, or pacifically warlike

newspaper."

The rich man of to-day was poor yesterday. He was the very artisan, the

soldier, the peasant, whom he now avoids. He has the false notion, that

people gain only by taking from others. He will not let his companions

of yesterday ascend the ladder by which he has mounted, lest in the

ascent he should lose something. He does not know that "every flood of

rising people brings with it a flood of new wealth." He shuts himself up

in his class, in his little circle of habits, closes the door, and

carefully guards--a nonentity. To maintain his position, the rich man

withdraws from the people--is insulated--and, therefore, in bondage.

Here let us stop. What is it that we have seen? The peasant in fetters,

the workman oppressed, the artisan crippled, the manufacturers

embarrassed, the tradesman corrupted, the official in misery, the rich

man exiled--all in bondage, all hating one another, and all

constituting the life and marrow of the great and civilized country, to

whose deplorable condition M. Michelet especially invites our attention.

Deplorable, said we? Oh, far from it! The calamity that would crush any

other nation, has a far different effect upon France. Bondage and hatred

may exist, misery may eat like a canker-worm at the heart of the empire;

but France, great, glorious, military, and beautiful, is consumed only

to rise phoenix-like, fairer and younger, from her ashes. The French

peasant may be in fetters, but he is also the nobleman of the world--the

only nobleman remaining, "whilst Europe has continued plebeian." (!) "It

is said the Revolution has suppressed the nobility, but it is just the

reverse; it has made thirty-four millions of nobles. When an emigrant

was boasting of the glory or his ancestors, a peasant, who had been

successful in the field, replied, '_I am an ancestor_.'" "The strongest

foundation that any nation has had since the Roman empire, is found in

the peasantry of France." "It is by that that France is formidable to

the world, and at the same time ready to aid it; it is this that the

world looks upon with fear and hope. What, in fact, is it? The army of

the future on the day the barbarians appear." If such is the picture of

a peasantry in bondage, what must we expect from a peasantry at liberty?

The workmen, as we have seen, are vicious enough, yet they are the most

sociable and gentlest creatures in the universe. Nothing moves them to

violence; if you starve them, they will wait; if you kill them, they are

resigned; they are the least fortunate, but the most charitable; they

know not what hatred is; the more you persecute, the more they love you.

If in our haste we called these men degraded, we recall our words, for

M. Michelet says that they stand amongst the highest "in the estimation

of God." We told you just now, always upon the authority of our author,

what rascals the French manufacturers were; and how the unfeeling

masters of to-day are paying the penalty of their fathers' frauds and

evil practices. We hinted, too, at the symptoms of decay already visible

in their condition. But we did not tell you that France manufactures, in

a spirit of self-denial that cannot be too strongly commended, for the

whole world, who come to her, "buy her patterns, which they go and copy,

ill or well, at home. Many an Englishman has declared, in an inquiry,

that he has a house in Paris _to have patterns_. A few pieces purchased

at Paris, Lyons, or in Alsatia, and afterwards copied abroad, are

sufficient for the English and German counterfeiter to inundate the

world. It is like the book-trade. France writes and Belgium sells." It

was stated that the official is cruelly paid for his labour, and M.

Michelet further hints, that peculation is but too often the grievous

consequence. In England this would be fatal to a man's self-respect, and

subject him to _bondage_ in more ways than one. But, across the Channel,

Providence miraculously interposes, and even rescues the official in the

hour of difficulty, for the honour and glory of _la belle France_. "Yes,

at the moment of fainting, the culprit stops short without knowing

why----because he feels upon his face the invisible spirit of the heroes

of our wars, _the breath of the old flag_!!"

It is really very difficult to go on satisfactorily with such a writer

as this. If there be truth in the picture which he draws of his

country's misery, there must be falsehood in the language with which he

paints her pre-eminence, and battles for her unapproachable perfection.

If she be perfect, the vital sores that have been presented to us exist

not in her, but only in the imagination of the enthusiastic and deluded

writer. Upon one page it is written that the situation of France is so

serious, that there is no longer room for hesitation. France is "hourly

declining, engulfed like an Atalantis." Five minutes afterwards, "the

idea of our ruin is absurd, ridiculous. For who has a literature? Who

still sways the mind of Europe? We, weak as we are. Who has an army? We

alone." What is the conclusion which any unprejudiced reader would draw

from the painful details which M. Michelet has deemed it his paramount

duty to bring before the notice of mankind, and especially to the

consciences of the French nation itself? Simply this--that France,

disabled and diseased, is weak, and feebler than many other nations of

the world. The conclusion of M. Michelet is the very opposite one. "Let

France be united for an instant, she is strong as the world. England and

Russia, two feeble bloated giants, impose an illusion on Europe. Great

empires, weak people!" So it is throughout. M. Michelet leaves far

behind him the butcher, who would not suffer any man to call his dog an

ugly name but himself. You must not only utter no syllable of

condemnation against his glorious country, but you must be prepared to

regard the abuse of the author as so much panegyric.

The means of enfranchisement suggested by the poetic historian are as

fanciful as the bondage itself appears to be. Freedom for every class is

to be gained by LOVE. Love for the native country: in other words,

Frenchmen of every class are to believe that there never existed, that

there never will exist, a country so great as their own; and then, as if

by a charm, all their troubles will cease, their sorrow will be turned

into joy--their imprisonment to liberty, such as mankind have never yet

witnessed, such as no children of the great human family are capable of

enjoying, but the darlings and favourites of God--beloved France. In the

nursery, we do not correct the young by flattery and cajolery. The

surgeon does not hesitate to cut to the marrow, if the safety of the

patient depend upon the bold employment of the knife; but neither

monitor nor doctor in France may approach the faults and corruptions of

her people without doing homage to the one, and viciously tampering with

the other. What but insult is the following balderdash offered to a

great people as a remedy for physical suffering--cruelty--oppression--want?

"Say not, I beseech you, that it is nothing at all to be born in the

country surrounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the ocean.

Take the poorest man, starving in rags, him whom you suppose to be

occupied solely with material wants. He will tell you it is an

inheritance of itself to participate in this immense glory, this unique

legend, which constitutes the talk of the world. He well knows that if

he were to go to the most remote desert of the globe, under the equator

or the poles, he would find Napoleon, our armies, our grand history, to

shelter and protect him; that the children would come to him, that the

old men would hold their peace, and entreat him to speak, and that to

hear him only mention those names, they would kiss the hem of his

garment."

Yes--the thing has come to pass in Africa, at Tahiti, on the coast of

Madagascar, whence the savages repulsed, with vindictive hatred, their

French invaders, and refused even to correspond with them save through

the medium of another nation. The feelings with which the natives of the

Marquesas regard at the present moment the embroidered gentry, who,

"protected by their grand history," and headed by that valiant fighting

man, Rear-Admiral Du Petit Thouars, took unwarrantable possession of

their shores, are of course faithfully described in the above

nonsensical outburst; and are not, as every body knows, those of fear

and utter detestation for a crew of wicked mountebanks and gold-laced

ruffians. Of course the children come to Du Petit Thouars, and the old

men hold their peace, and kiss the hem of his regimentals; and that's

the very reason why the said Du Petit points the fatal tubes of his

heavy, double-banked frigates and corvettes at the fragile bamboo sheds

that lie timidly and harmlessly in a grove of cocoa-nuts.

"For our part, whatever happens to us, poor or rich, happy or unhappy,

while on this side of the grave, we will ever thank God for having given

us this great France for our native land; and that not only on account

of the many glorious deeds she has performed, but because in her we find

especially at once the representative of the liberties of the world, and

the country that links all others together by sympathetic ties--the

initiation to universal love. This last feature is so strong in France,

_that she has often forgotten herself_(!!) We must at present remind her

of herself, and beseech her to love all the nations less than herself.

"Doubtless, every great nation represents an idea important to the human

race. But, gracious heaven! how much more true is this of France!

Suppose for a moment that she were eclipsed, at an end, the sympathetic

bond of the world would be loosened, dissolved, and probably destroyed.

Love, that constitutes the life of the world, would be wounded in its

most vital part. _The earth would enter into the frozen age, where other

worlds close at hand have already landed._"

We have never wittingly done injustice either to France or her people;

but we confess we had no notion of the claims of both upon our regard

and applause, until they were prominently put before us by her somewhat

Quixotic historian.

In the first place, if you would heap up all the blood, the gold, the

efforts of every kind, that each nation has expended for disinterested

matters that were to be profitable only to the world, France would have

a pyramid that would reach to heaven; "and yours, oh nations! all of you

put together--oh yours! the pile of your sacrifices would reach up to

the knee of an infant!"

And then God enlightens it more than any other nation, for she sees in

the darkest night, when others can no longer distinguish. "During that

dreadful darkness which often prevailed in the middle ages, and since,

nobody perceived the sky. France alone saw it."

Rome is nowhere but in France. Rome held the pontificate of the dark

ages--the royalty of the obscure; and France has been the pontiff of the

ages of light.

Every other history is mutilated. France's is alone complete. Take the

history of Italy, the last centuries are wanting; take the history of

Germany or of England, the first are missing; take that of France, _with

it you know the world_. Christianity has promised, France has performed.

"The Christian had the faith that a God-made man would make a people of

brothers, and would, sooner or later, unite the world in one and the

same heart. This has not yet been verified, but it will be verified in

us." The great and universal legend of France is the only complete one;

other nations have only special legends which the world has not

accepted. The natural legend of France, on the contrary, "is an immense,

uninterrupted stream of light, a true milky way, upon which the world

has ever its eyes fixed." An American once said, that for every man the

first country is his native land, and the second is France. This surely

was praise sufficient. But M. Michelet is very greedy of praise. "How

many," says he, "_like better_ to live here than in their own country!

As soon as ever they can break for a moment the thread that binds them,

they come, poor birds of passage, to settle, take refuge, and enjoy here

at least a moment's vital heat. They tacitly avow that this is the

universal country." Beau Brummel certainly avowed it; but then he, "poor

bird of passage," flew in a night from his own nest, to settle, take

refuge, and enjoy a moment's vital peace in France, away from duns and

creditors. Many, in similar circumstances, would unquestionably prefer

Paris to London, provided they could break the thread which attaches

them to their domestic responsibilities. France is the infant Solomon

sitting in judgment. Who, but she, has preserved the tradition of the

law? She has given her soul to the world, and the world is living on it

now; but, strange condition! "what she has left is what she has given

away. Come, listen to me well, and learn, oh nations! what without us

you would never have learned:--_the more one gives, the more one keeps_.

Her spirit may slumber within her, but it is always entire, and ever on

the point of waking in its might."

Now all this must be taught to the infant as soon as it can lisp, and he

will, no doubt, perfectly understand and appreciate it. The regeneration

of France (which is already so perfect, and is, besides, the great

exemplar of mankind) depends upon the child's proper appreciation of his

birthplace. If he will believe all that has been said, he is far on the

road, but by no means at the end of his journey. As soon as he is

breeched, his mother must become his instructor, and increase the dose

by some such foolish proceeding as the following:--

"Let her take him on St John's Day, when the earth performs her annual

miracle, when every herb is in flower, when the plant seems to grow

while you behold it; let her take him into the garden, embrace him, and

say to him tenderly, 'You love me, you know only me. Well, listen! I am

not all. You have another mother. All of us, men, women, children,

animals, plants, and whatever has life, we have all a tender mother, who

is ever feeding us, invisible, but present. Love her, my dear child; let

us embrace her with all our hearts.'

"Let there be nothing more. No metaphysics that destroy the impression.

Let him brood over that sublime and tender mystery, which his whole life

will not suffice to clear up. That is a day he will never forget.

Throughout all the trials of life and the intricacies of science, amid

all his passions and stormy nights, the gentle sun of St John's Day will

ever illumine the deepest recesses of his heart with the immortal

blossom of the purest, best love."

The little gentleman, however, is not done with yet. The dose is not yet

strong enough, although quite as strong as his mother, gentle creature,

could mix it. The early jacket is discarded in favour of the

swallow-tailed coat, and the youth passes into the hands of his

father:--

"His father takes him--'tis a great public festival--immense crowds in

Paris--he leads him from Notre Dame to the Louvre, the Tuileries, the

triumphal arch. From some roof or terrace, he shows him the people, _the

army passing, the bayonets clashing and glittering, and the tricolored

flag_. In the moments of expectation especially, before the _fete_, by

the fantastic reflections of the illumination, in that awful silence

which suddenly takes place in that dark ocean of people, he stoops

towards him and says, 'There, my son, look, there is France--there is

your native country! All this is like one man, one soul, one heart. They

would all die for one; and each man ought also to live and die for all.

Those men passing yonder, who are armed, and now departing, are going

away to fight for us. They leave here their father, their aged mother,

who will want them. You will do the same; you will never forget that

your mother is France.'"

The education is very nearly completed. The father suffers the

swallow-tail to wear out, the incipient mustache to take root, and then

he leads his second and better self to the mountain-side. This time he

does not stoop over him, for the youth is erect, and is as big a man as

his father. "Climb that mountain, my son," says the venerable gentleman,

"provided it be high enough; look to the four winds, you will see

nothing but _enemies_."

And so, by a very roundabout process, we reach the heart of the mystery.

M. Michelet loves fighting--remembers Waterloo--is game--is eager for

another round, and in his heart believes one Frenchman to be equal to at

least half a dozen Englishmen. He burns for one more trial of

strength--a last decisive tussle; and he writes a philosophical work to

prove the physical bout essential to the dignity, the grandeur, and the

redemption of his country. Every time, we repeat the words, that he

looks upon a bayonet, his heart bounds within him, and his only hope,

teacher and professor of the College of France though he be, rests in

trumpets, drums, swords, the epaulette, the sabredash, and the tricolor.

We have surely wasted ink enough upon this theme. In common with

ourselves, the reader will regard with due commiseration, a

manifestation of wicked folly, which will do no harm only because it

comes in an age not ripe for bloodshed, or happily too humanized for

unprovoked, gratuitous warfare; and because the French people

themselves, under a politic king and a peace-seeking ministry, have

learned a little to regard the blessings of undisturbed domestic

quietness. We quit the main subject of M. Michelet's book, to draw

attention to a few insulated passages worthy of the better days of the

author, and certainly out of place in the present volume. It were not

possible for M. Michelet to write four hundred pages that should not,

here and there, give evidence of his great genius--his general common

sense, and his touching sympathy for the suffering and the oppressed.

There are passages in the work under consideration that have universal

interest, and claim universal attention; his appeals on behalf of

children and women, the most neglected and oppressed of the community,

let them be found where they may, in England or in France, in Europe or

in Asia, are instinct with truthfulness and honest vigour; his

vindication of the _mission_ of the child, philosophical and just, is

beaming with the light that burns so steadily and clearly in the poems

of our own Wordsworth, which have especial reference to the holy

character of the "Father of the Man."

It is in one of the insulated passages of which we speak, that M.

Michelet bitterly and very sensibly complains of the exclusive regard

which modern romance writers have shown for the prisons and kennels, the

monsters and thieves of civilized societies; of the disposition every

where exhibited to descend rather than ascend for the choice of a

subject, or the selection of a hero. We have felt the inconvenience of

the same sickly taste in this country, and can understand the

complainings over productions similar to that of _The Mysteries of

Paris_, whilst we remember our own inferior and not less baneful _Dick

Turpins_ and _Jack Sheppards_. Hurtful to the morals of a nation, these

productions are equally unjust to the national character. We have drawn

our estimate of the present literature of France from what we have seen

and heard of her least healthy writers. As well might the novels of Mr

Ainsworth, or the miserable burlesques of Mr Albert Smith, be accepted

as the representatives of the Romance and Drama of the modern English

school. It is not one of the least crimes of which these unwholesome

writers are guilty, that they present to their own countrymen, and to

the world at large, only foul exceptions, hideously exaggerated, which

they would have us believe are faithful pictures of the mass; and in

their eager endeavours to interest and excite the unthinking many, rouse

the disgust and alarm of all well-constituted and thoughtful minds. The

perilous consequences of popular literature in France are finely pointed

out by M. Michelet. The timid take fright, when the people are

represented as monsters in the books which are greedily devoured, and

intensely applauded by the majority of their readers. "What!" cry the

citizens, "are the people so constituted? Then, let us increase our

police, arm ourselves, shut our doors, and bolt them." And all the alarm

has been occasioned by a conceited, and it may be clever, coxcomb, who,

descending from his drawing-room, has asked the first passenger in the

street where-abouts the People lived. He met with a fool, who directed

him to the galleys, the prisons, and the stews.

"One day," writes M. Michelet, "there came a man to the famous

Themistocles, and proposed to him an art of memory. He answered

bitterly, 'Give me rather the art of forgetfulness.' May God give me

this art, to forget from this moment all your monsters, your fantastic

creations, those shocking exceptions with which you perplex my subject!

You go about, spyglass in hand; you hunt in the gutters, and find there

some dirty filthy object, and bring it to us, exclaiming--'Triumph! we

have found the people!'

"To interest us in them, they show them to us forcing doors and picking

locks. To these picturesque descriptions they add those profound

theories, by which the People, if we listen to them, justify themselves

in their own eyes for this crusade against property. Truly, it is a

great misery, in addition to so many others, for them to have these

imprudent friends. These theories and these acts are by no means of the

people. The mass is, doubtless, neither pure nor irreproachable; but

still, if you want to characterise it by the idea which prevails in the

immense majority, you will find it occupied in founding by toil,

economy, and the most respectable means, the immense work which

constitutes the strength of this country, the participation of all

classes in property."

We believe it sincerely and heartily. The great writers of all ages have

believed it. Your low-minded scribblers have never doubted it; but it is

far easier to depict the limited class, with its violence and felony,

its startling incidents and painful murders--far less difficult to give

picturesque effect to its nauseous jargon and offensive situations, than

it is to work the simple portraiture of a whole community, who have

nothing to offer to the artist but the delicate and unobtrusive

material, such as Goldsmith could weave into a fabric whose colour and

texture shall endure and enchant for all time.

"I feel," continues M. Michelet, with great tenderness--"I feel I am

alone, and I should be sad indeed if I had not with me my faith and

hope. I see myself weak, both by nature and my previous works, in

presence of this mighty subject, as at the foot of a gigantic monument,

that I must move all alone. Alas! how disfigured it is to-day; how

loaded with foreign accumulations, moss, and mouldiness; spoilt by the

rain and mud, and by the injuries it has received from passengers! The

painter, the man of _art for art_, comes and looks at it; what pleases

him is precisely that moss. But I would pluck it off. Painter, now

passing by! This is not a plaything of art--this is our altar!"

"To know the life of the people, their toils and sufferings," he

continues, "I have but to interrogate my own memory." He has himself

sprung from the labouring population. Before he wrote books, he

_composed_ them in the literal sense of that term. He arranged letters

before he grouped ideas; the sadness of the workshop, and the

wearisomeness of long hours, are things known to his experience. The

short narrative of his early struggles forms another beautiful passage

in this singular and very unequal production. The great lesson which he

brought with him from his season of difficulty and affliction, is one

that authorizes him to approach the people as a teacher and a friend,

and ought to have inspired him with nobler aims than he puts forth

to-day. He has seen the disorders of destitution, the vices of misery;

but he has seldom found them extinguishing original goodness of heart,

or interfering with the noble sentiments that adorn the lowest as well

as the highest of mankind. There is nothing new, he tells us, in this

observation. At the time of the cholera in France, every body beheld one

class eager to adopt the orphan children. What class was that? _The

Poor._

Whilst in poverty himself, his soul was kept free from envy by noting

the unremitting devotedness, the indefatigable sacrifices of

hard-working families--a devotedness, he assures us, not even exhausted

in the immolation of one life, but often continued from one to another

for several generations.

The two families from which he descended were originally peasants. These

families being very large, many of his father's and mother's brothers

and sisters would not marry, in order that they might the better

contribute to the education of some of the boys, whom they sent to

college. This was a sacrifice of which he was early made aware, and

which he never forgot. His grandfather, a music-master of Laon, came to

Paris with his little savings after the Reign of Terror, where his son,

the author's father, was employed at the _Imprimerie des Assignats_. His

little wealth was made over to the same son, and all was invested in a

printing-office. To facilitate the arrangement, a brother and a sister

of the eldest son would not marry, but the latter espoused a sober

damsel of Ardennes. M. Michelet, the child of this industrious pair, was

born in the year 1798 in the choir of a church of nuns, then occupied by

the printing-office. "Occupied, I say, but not profaned; for what is the

Press in modern times but the holy ark?"

The printing-office, prosperous at first, fed by the debates of the

assemblies and the news of the armies, was overthrown in 1800 by the

general suppression of the newspapers. The printer was allowed to

publish only an ecclesiastical journal; and even this sanction was

withdrawn in favour of a priest whom Napoleon thought safe, but was

mistaken. The family of M. Michelet was ruined. They had but one

resource; it was to print for their creditors a few works belonging to

the printer. They had no longer any journeymen; they did the work

themselves. The father, who was occupied with his employment abroad,

could render no assistance, but the mother, though sick, turned binder,

cut and folded. The child--the future historian--was the compositor; the

grandfather, very old and feeble, betook himself to the hard work of

the press, and printed with his palsied hands.

The young compositor, at twelve years of age, knew four words of Latin

which he had picked up from an old bookseller, who had been a village

teacher, and doted on grammar. The scene of the lad's labors--his

workshop--was a cellar. For company he had occasionally his grandfather

who came to see them, and always, without interruption, an industrious

spider, that worked at the compositor's side, and even more assiduously

than he. There were severe privations to undergo, but there was also

much compensation.

"I had the kindness of my parents, and their faith in my future

prospects, a faith which is truly inexplicable, when I reflect how

backward I was. Save the binding duties of my work, I enjoyed extreme

independence, which I never abused. I was apprenticed, but without being

in contact with coarse-minded people, whose brutality, perhaps, would

have crushed the precious blossom of liberty within me. In the morning,

before work, I went to my old grammarian, who gave me a task of five or

six lines. I have retained thus much; that the quantity of work has much

less to do with it than is supposed; children can imbibe but a very

little every day; like a vase with a narrow neck, pour little or pour

much, you will never get a great deal in at a time."

We have said that in his struggles the aspiring boy knew nothing of

envy. It is to-day his solemn belief that man would never know envy of

himself, he must be taught it. The year 1813 arrived, and the home of

the historian, as well as France herself--it was the time of

Moscow--looked very cheerless. The penury of the family was extreme. It

was proposed to get the compositor a situation in the Imperial

printing-office. The parents, more fond than reasonable, refused the

offer, and strong in the belief that the child would yet save the

household, obtained an entrance for him in the college of Charlemagne.

The tale is told. From that hour he rose. His studies ended soon and

well. In the year 1821 he procured, by competition, a professorship in a

college. In 1827, two works, which appeared at the same time--_Vico_ and

_Precis d'Histoire Moderne_--gained him a professorship in the _Ecole

Normale_.

"I grew up like grass between two paving-stones; but this grass has

retained its sap as much as that of the Alps. My very solitude in Paris,

my free study, and my free teaching, (ever free and every where the

same,) have raised without altering me. They who rise almost always lose

by it; because they become changed, they become mongrels, bastards; they

lose the originality of their own class without gaining that of another.

The difficulty is not to rise, but in rising to remain one's self."

There is also another difficulty; one which, judging from the volume

before us, M. Michelet has yet to overcome: we mean the

difficulty--after education, and after achieving the heights to which

honourable ambition aspires--of forgetting the terrible and bitter

punishment of early penury and trouble; of cherishing no longer the

anger and hatred that were borne against the world, whilst the struggler

looked upon it as a world in arms against him. The author of THE PEOPLE

tells us, that in his saddest hours he knew no _envy_ towards mankind;

but he acknowledges also, that in his sufferings, he deemed all rich

men, all men, _bad_; that he pined into a misanthropic humour, and, in

the most deserted quarters of Paris, sought the most deserted streets.

"I conceived an excessive antipathy against the human species." The

writer, to use his own expression, "is raised, but not altered." The

antipathy, somewhat chastened by prosperity, is not removed. It takes a

bodily form in the volume that teaches France to regard the earth as her

enemy, and calls upon her to vindicate her pre-eminence and glory in the

field of battle and of blood.