I am strongly in favour of a country life. I am a lover of the chase
and the angle.
Perhaps if I were to analyse the feeling, I might find that these
predilections have their source in a purer fountain--the love of Nature
herself. I follow the deer in his tracks, because they lead me into the
wildest solitudes of the forest--I follow the trout in its stream,
because I am guided into still retreats, by the margin of shady pools,
where human foot rarely treads. Once in the haunts of the fish and the
game, my sporting energy dies within me. My rod-spear pierces the turf,
my gun lies neglected by my side, and I yield up my soul to a diviner
dalliance with the beauties of Nature. Oh, I am a rare lover of the
sylvan scene!
And yet, for all this, I freely admit that the first hours spent in a
great city have for me a peculiar fascination. A world of new pleasures
is suddenly placed within reach--a world of luxury opened up. The soul
is charmed with rare joys. Beauty and song, wine and the dance, vary
their allurements. Love, or it may be passion, beguiles you into many
an incident of romantic adventure; for romance may be found within the
walled city. The human heart is its home, and they are but Quixotic
dreamers who fancy that steam and civilisation are antagonistic to the
purest aspirations of poetry. A sophism, indeed, is the chivalry of the
savage. His rags, so picturesque, often cover a shivering form and a
hungry stomach. Soldier though I may claim to be, I prefer the cheering
roll of the busy mill to the thunder of the cannon--I regard the tall
chimney, with its banner of black smoke, a far nobler sight than the
fortress turret with its flouting and fickle flag. I hear sweet music
in the plashing of the paddle-wheel; and in my ears a nobler sound is
the scream of the iron horse than the neigh of the pampered war-steed.
A nation of monkeys may manage the business of gunpowder: they must be
men to control the more powerful element of steam.
These ideas will not suit the puling sentimentalism of the boudoir and
the boarding-school. The Quixotism of the modern time will be angry
with the rough writer who thus rudely lays his hand upon the helm of the
mailed knight, and would deflower it of its glory and glossy plumes. It
is hard to yield up prejudices and preconceptions, however false; and
the writer himself in doing so confesses to the cost of a struggle of no
ordinary violence. It was hard to give up the Homeric illusion, and
believe that Greeks were men, not demigods--hard to recognise in the
organ-man and the opera-singer the descendants of those heroes portrayed
in the poetic pictures of a Virgil; and yet in the days of my dreamy
youth, when I turned my face to the West, I did so under the full
conviction that the land of prose was before me and the land of poetry
behind my back!
Thanks to Saint Hubert and the golden ring of the word "Mexico," I did
turn my face in that direction: and no sooner had I set foot on those
glorious shores, trodden by a Columbus and a Cortez, than I recognised
the home both of the poetic and the picturesque. In that very land,
called prosaic--the land of dollars--I inhaled the very acme of the
poetic spirit; not from the rhythm of books, but expressed in the most
beautiful types of the human form, in the noblest impulses of the human
soul, in rock and stream, in bird, and leaf and flower. In that very
city, which, thanks to perjured and prejudiced travellers, I had been
taught to regard as a sort of outcast camp, I found humanity in its
fairest forms--progress blended with pleasure--civilisation adorned with
the spirit of chivalry as with a wreath. Prosaic indeed! a
dollar-loving people! I make bold to assert, that in the concave of
that little crescent where lies the city of New Orleans will be found a
psychological _melange_ of greater variety and interest than exists in
any space of equal extent on the globe's surface. There the passions,
favoured by the clime, reach their fullest, highest development, Love
and hate, joy and grief, avarice, ambition--all attain to perfect
vigour. There, too, the moral virtues are met with in full purity.
Cant has there no home, hypocrisy must be deep indeed to avoid exposure
and punishment. Genius is almost universal--universal, too, is
activity. The stupid and the slothful cannot exist in this moving world
of busy life and enjoyment.
An ethnological _melange_ as well this singular city presents. Perhaps
no other city exhibits so great a variety of nationalities as in its
streets. Founded by the French, held by the Spaniards, "annexed" by the
Americans, these three nations form the elements of its population. But
you may, nevertheless, there meet with representatives of most other
civilised, and of many "savage" people. The Turk in his turban, the
Arab in his burnouse, the Chinaman with shaven scalp and queue, the
black son of Africa, the red Indian, the swarthy Mestize, yellow
Mulatto, the olive Malay, the light graceful Creole, and the not less
graceful Quadroon, jostle each other in its streets, and jostle with the
red-blooded races of the North, the German and Gael, the Russ and Swede,
the Fleming, the Yankee, and the Englishman. An odd human mosaic--a
mottled piebald mixture is the population of the Crescent City.
In truth, New Orleans is a great metropolis, more of a city than places
of much greater population either in Europe or America. In passing
through its streets you feel that you are not in a provincial town. Its
shops exhibit the richest goods, of best workmanship. Palace-like
hotels appear in every street. Luxurious _cafes_ invite you into their
elegant saloons. Theatres are there--grand architectural temples--in
which you may witness the drama well performed in French, and German,
and English, and in its season you may listen to the soul-moving music
of the Italian opera. If you are a lover of the Terpsichorean art, you
will fold New Orleans, _par excellence_, the town to your taste.
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I knew the capacities of New Orleans to afford pleasure. I was
acquainted with the sources of enjoyment, yet I sought them not. After
a long interval of country life I entered the city without a thought of
its gaieties--a rare event in the life even of the most sedate. The
masquerades, the quadroon-balls, the drama, the sweet strains of the
Opera, had lost their attractions for me. No amusement could amuse me
at that moment. One thought alone had possession of my heart--Aurore!
There was room for no other.