I am seated in my snug little room at M. Belloc's. The weather is
overpoweringly hot, but these Parisian houses seem to have seized and
imprisoned coolness. French household ways are delightful. I like
their seclusion from the street, by these deep-paved quadrangles. I
like these cool, smooth, waxed floors so much that I one day queried
with my friends, the C.'s, whether we could not introduce them into
America. L., who is a Yankee housekeeper, answered, with spirit, "No,
indeed; not while the mistress of the house has every thing to do, as
in America; I think I see myself, in addition to all my cares, on my
knees, waxing up one of these floors."
"Ah," says Caroline, "the thing is managed better in Paris; the
_frotteur_ comes in before we are up in the morning, shod with
great brushes, and dances over the floors till they shine."
"I am sure," said I, "here is Fourrier's system in one particular. We
enjoy the floors, and the man enjoys the dancing."
Madame Belloc had fitted up my room with the most thoughtful care. A
large bouquet adorns the table; fancy writing materials are displayed;
and a waiter, with sirups and an extempore soda fount, one of Parisian
household refinements, stands just at my elbow. Above all, my walls
are hung with beautiful engravings from Claude and Zuccarelli.
This house pertains to the government, and is held by M. Belloc in
virtue of his situation as director of the Imperial School of Design,
to which institution about one half of it is devoted. A public
examination is at hand, in preparing for which M. Belloc is heart and
soul engaged. This school is a government provision for the gratuitous
instruction of the working classes in art. I went into the rooms where
the works of the scholars are arranged for the inspection of the
judges. The course of instruction is excellent--commencing with the
study of nature. Around the room various plants are growing, which
serve for models, interspersed with imitations in drawing or
modelling, by the pupils. I noticed a hollyhock and thistle, modelled
with singular accuracy. As some pupils can come only at evening, M.
Belloc has prepared a set of casts of plants, which he says are
plaster daguerreotypes. By pouring warm gelatine upon a leaf, a
delicate mould is made, from which these casts are taken. He showed me
bunches of leaves, and branches of the vine, executed by them, which
were beautiful. In like manner the pupil commences the study of the
human figure, with the skeleton, which he copies bone by bone. Gutta
percha muscles are added in succession, till finally he has the whole
form. Besides, each student has particular objects given him to study
for a certain period, after which he copies them from memory. The same
course is pursued with prints and engravings.
When an accurate knowledge of forms is gained, the pupil receives
lessons in combination. Such subjects as these are given: a vase of
flowers, a mediæval or classic vase, shields, Helmets, escutcheons,
&c., of different styles. The first prize composition was a hunting
frieze, modelled, in which were introduced fanciful combinations of
leaf and scroll work, dogs, hunters, and children. Figures of almost
every animal and plant were modelled; the drawings and modellings from
memory were wonderful, and showed, in their combination, great
richness of fancy. Scattered about the room were casts of the best
classic figures of the Louvre, placed there, as M. Belloc gracefully
remarked, not as models, but as inspirations, to cultivate the sense
of beauty.
I was shown, moreover, their books of mathematical studies, which
looked intricate and learned, but of which I appreciated only the
delicate chirography. "And where," said I, "are these young mechanics
taught to read and write?" "In the brothers' schools," he said. Paris
is divided into regular parishes, centring round different churches,
and connected with each church is a parochial school, for boys and
girls, taught by ecclesiastics and nuns.
With such thorough training of the sense of beauty, it may be easily
seen that the facility of French enthusiasm in aesthetics is not, as
often imagined, superficial pretence. The nerves of beauty are so
exquisitely tuned and strung that they must thrill at every touch.
One sees this, in French life, to the very foundation of society. A
poor family will give, cheerfully, a part of their bread money to buy
a flower. The idea of artistic symmetry pervades every thing, from the
arrangement of the simplest room to the composition of a picture. At
the chateau of Madame V. the whiteheaded butler begged madame to
apologize for the central flower basket on the table. He "had not had
time to study the composition."
The English and Americans, seeing the French so serious and intent on
matters of beauty, fancy it to be mere affectation. To be serious on a
barrel of flour, or a bushel of potatoes, we can well understand; but
to be equally earnest in the adorning of a room or the "composition"
of a bouquet seems ridiculous. But did not He who made the appetite
for food make also that for beauty? and while the former will perish
with the body, is not the latter immortal? With all New England's
earnestness and practical efficiency, there is a long withering of the
soul's more ethereal part,--a crushing out of the beautiful,--which is
horrible. Children are born there with a sense of beauty equally
delicate with any in the world, in whom it dies a lingering death of
smothered desire and pining, weary starvation. I know, because I have
felt it.--One in whom this sense has long been repressed, in coming
into Paris, feels a rustling and a waking within him, as if the soul
were trying to unfold her wings, long unused and mildewed. Instead of
scorning, then, the lighthearted, _mobile_, beauty-loving French,
would that we might exchange instructions with them--imparting our
severer discipline in religious lore, accepting their thorough methods
in art; and, teaching and taught, study together under the great
Master of all.
I went with M. Belloc into the gallery of antique sculpture. How
wonderful these old Greeks I What set them out on such a course, I
wonder--anymore, for instance, than the Sandwich Islanders? This
reminds me to tell you that in the Berlin Museum, which the King of
Prussia is now finishing in high style, I saw what is said to be the
most complete Egyptian collection in the world; a whole Egyptian
temple, word for word--pillars, paintings, and all; numberless
sarcophagi, and mummies _ad nauseam!_ They are no more fragrant
than the eleven thousand virgins, these mummies! and my stomach
revolts equally from the odor of sanctity and of science.
I saw there a mummy of a little baby; and though it was black as my
shoe, and a disgusting, dry thing, nevertheless the little head was
covered with fine, soft, auburn hair. Four thousand years ago, some
mother thought the poor little thing a beauty. Also I saw mummies of
cats, crocodiles, the ibis, and all the other religious
_bijouterie_ of Egypt, with many cases of their domestic
utensils, ornaments, &c.
The whole view impressed me with quite an idea of barbarism; much more
so than the Assyrian collection. About the winged bulls there is a
solemn and imposing grandeur; they have a mountainous and majestic
nature. These Egyptian things give one an idea of inexpressible
ungainliness. They had a clumsy, elephantine character of mind, these
Egyptians. There was not wanting grace, but they seemed to pick it up
accidentally; because among all possible forms some must be graceful.
They had a kind of grand, mammoth civilization, gloomy and goblin.
They seem to have floundered up out of Nile mud, like that old, slimy,
pre-Adamite brood, the what's-their-name--_megalosaurus,
ichthyosaurus, pterodactyle, iguanodon_, and other misshapen
abominations, with now and then wreaths of lotus and water lilies
round their tusks.
The human face, as represented in Assyrian sculptures, is a higher
type of face than even the Greek: it is noble and princely; the
Egyptian faces are broad, flat, and clumsy. If Egypt gave birth to
Greece, with her beautiful arts, then truly this immense, clumsy roc's
egg hatched a miraculous nest of loves and graces.
Among the antiques here, my two favorites are Venus de Milon, which I
have described to you, and the Diane Chasseresse: this goddess is
represented by the side of a stag; and so completely is the marble
made alive, that one seems to perceive that a tread so airy would not
bend a flower. Every side of the statue is almost equally graceful.
The small, proud head is thrown back with the freedom of a stag; there
is a gay, haughty self-reliance, an airy defiance, a rejoicing fulness
of health and immortal youth in the whole figure. You see before you
the whole Greek conception of an immortal--a creature full of
intellect, full of the sparkle and elixir of existence, in whom the
principle of life seems to be crystallized and concentrated with a
dazzling abundance; light, airy, incapable alike of love and of
sympathy; living for self, and self only. Alas for poor souls, who, in
the heavy anguish of life, had only such goddesses to go to! How far
in advance is even the idolatry of Christianity! how different the
idea of Mary from the Diana!
Yet, as I walked up and down among these remains of Greek art, I could
not but wonder at the spectacle of their civilization: no modern
development reproduces it, nor ever can or will. It is well to cherish
and make much of that ethereal past, as a specimen of one phase of
humanity, for it is past _forever_. Those isles of Greece, with
their gold and purple haze of light and shadow, their exquisite,
half-spiritual, half-bodily formation--islands where flesh and blood became
semi-spiritual, and where the sense of beauty was an existence--have
passed as a vision of glory, never to return. One scarcely realizes
how full of poetry was their mythology; all successive ages have drawn
on it for images of beauty without exhausting it; and painters and
artists, to this day, are fettered and repressed by vain efforts to
reproduce it. But as a religion for the soul and the heart, all this
is vain and void; all powerless to give repose or comfort. One who
should seek repose on the bosom of such a mythology is as one who
seeks to pillow himself on the many-tinted clouds of evening; soft and
beautiful as they are, there is nothing real to them but their
dampness and coldness.
Here M. and Madame Belloc entered, and as he wanted my opinion of the
Diane, I let her read this part of the letter to him in French. You
ought to have seen M. Belloc, with tears in his eyes, defending the
old Greeks, and expounding to me, with all manner of rainbow
illustrations, the religious meanings of Greek mythology, and the
_morale_ of Greek tragedy. Such a whole souled devotion to a
nation dead and gone could never be found but in France.
Madame Belloc was the translator of Maria Edgeworth by that lady's
desire; corresponded with her for years, and still has many of her
letters. Her translation of Uncle Tom has to me all the merit and all
the interest of an original composition. In perusing it I enjoy the
pleasure of reading the story with scarce any consciousness of its
ever having been mine. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall called.
They are admirably matched--he artist, she author. The one writes
stories, the other illustrates them. Madame M. also called. English by
birth, she is a true _Parisienne,_ or, rather, seems to have both
minds, as she speaks both languages, perfectly. Her husband being a
learned Oriental scholar, she, like some other women enjoying similar
privileges, has picked up a deal of information, which she tosses
about in conversation, in a gay, piquant manner, much as a kitten
plays with a pin ball.
Madame remembers Mesdames Recamier and De Stael, and told me several
funny anecdotes of the former. Madame R., she said, was always
coquetting with her own funeral; conversed with different artists on
the arrangements of its details, and tempting now one, now another,
with the brilliant hope of the "composition" of the scene. Madame M.
offered me her services as _cicerone_ to Paris, and so to-day out
we went--first to the Pantheon, of which, in her gay and piquant
style, she gave me the history.
Begun first in the time of Louis XVI. as a church, in the revolution
its destination was altered, and it was to be a temple to the manes of
great men, and accordingly Rousseau, Voltaire, and many more are
buried here. Well, after the revolution, the Bourbons said it should
not be a temple for great men, it should be a church. The next popular
upset tipped it back to the great men again; and it staid under their
jurisdiction until Louis Napoleon, who is very pious, restored it to
the church. It is not possible to say how much further this very
characteristic rivalry between great men and their Creator is going to
extend. All I have to say is, that I should not think the church much
of an acquisition to either party. He that sitteth in the heavens must
laugh sometimes at what man calls worship. This Pantheon is, as one
might suppose from its history, a hybrid between a church and a
theatre, and of course good for neither--purposeless and aimless. The
Madeleine is another of these hybrid churches, begun by D'Ivry as a
church, completed as a temple to victory by Napoleon, and on second
thoughts, re-dedicated to God.
After strolling about a while, the sexton, or some official of the
church, asked us if we did not want to go down into the vaults below.
As a large party seemed to be going to do the same, I said, "0, yes,
by all means; let us see it out." Our guide, with his cocked hat and
lantern, walked ahead, apparently in a now of excellent spirits. These
caverns and tombs appeared to be his particular forte, and he
magnified his office in showing them. Down stairs we went, none of us
knowing what we wanted to see, or why. Our guide steps forth, unlocks
the gate? of Hades, and we enter a dark vault with a particularly
earthy smell. Bang! he shuts the door after him. Clash! he locks it;
now we are in for it! and elevating his lantern, he commences a
deafening proclamation of some general fact concerning the very
unsavory place in which we find ourselves. Of said proclamation I hear
only the thundering _"Voilà"_ at the commencement. Next he
proceeds to open the doors of certain stone vaulted chambers, where
the great men are buried, between whose claims and their Creator's
there seems to be such an uncertainty in France. Well, here they were,
sure enough, maintaining their claim by right of possession.
_"Voilà le tombeau de Rousseau!"_ says the guide. All walked in
piously, and stood to see a wooden tomb painted red. At one end the
tomb is made in the likeness of little doors, which stand half open,
and a hand is coming out of them holding a flambeau, by which it is
intimated, I suppose, that Rousseau in his grave is enlightening the
world. After a short proclamation here, we were shown into another
stone chamber with _"Voilà le tombeau de Voltaire!"_ This was of
wood also, very nicely speckled and painted to resemble some kind of
marble. Each corner of the tomb had a tragic mask on it, with that
captivating expression of countenance which belongs to the tragic
masks generally. There was in the room a marble statue of Voltaire,
with that wiry, sharp, keen, yet somewhat spiteful expression which
his busts commonly have.
But our guide has finished his prelection here, and is striding off in
the plenitude of his wisdom. Now we are shown a long set of stone
apartments, provided for future great men. Considering the general
scarcity of the article in most countries, these sleeping
accommodations are remarkably ample. Nobody need be discouraged in his
attempts at greatness in Paris, for fear at last there won't be room
to bury him. After this we were marched to a place where our guide
made a long speech about a stone in the floor--very instructive,
doubtless, if I had known what it was: my Parisian friend said he
spoke with such a German accent she could not understand; so we humbly
took the stone _on trust,_ though it looked to the eye of sense
quite like any other.
Then we were marched into a part of the vault celebrated for its echo.
Our guide here outdid himself; first we were commanded to form a line
_en militaire_ with our backs to the wall. Well, we did form
_en militaire._ I did it in the innocence of my heart, entirely
ignorant of what was to come next. Our guide, departing from that
heroic grandeur of manner which had hitherto distinguished him,
suddenly commenced screaming and hooting in a most unparalleled style.
The echo was enough to deafen one, to be sure, and the first blast of
it made us all jump. I could think of nothing but Apollyon amusing
himself at the expense of the poor pilgrims in the valley of the
shadow of death; for the exhibition was persisted in with a
pertinacity inscrutable to any wisdom except his own. It ended by a
brace of thumps on the wall, each of which produced a report equal to
a cannon; and with this salvo of artillery the exhibition finished.
This worthy guide is truly a sublime character. Long may he live to
show the Pantheon; and when he dies, if so disagreeable an event must
be contemplated, may he have the whole of one of these stone chambers
to himself; for nothing less could possibly contain him. He regretted
exceedingly that we could not go up into the dome; but I had had
enough of stair climbing at Strasbourg, Antwerp, and Cologne, and not
even the prospect of enjoying his instructions could tempt me.
Now this Pantheon seems to me a monument of the faults and the
weakness of this very agreeable nation. Its history shows their
enthusiasm, their hero worship, and the want of stable religious
convictions. Nowhere has there been such a want of reverence for the
Creator, unless in the American Congress. The great men of France have
always seemed to be in confusion as to whether they made God or he
made them. There is a great resemblance in some points between the
French and the ancient Athenians: there was the same excitability; the
same keen outward life; the same passion for ideas; the same spending
of life in hearing or telling some new thing; the same acuteness of
philosophical research. The old Athenians first worshipped, and then
banished their great men,--buried them and pulled them up, and did
generally a variety of things which we Anglo-Saxons should call
fantastic. There is this difference, that the Athenians had the
advantage of coming first. The French nation, born after this
development, are exposed by their very similarity of conformation, and
their consequent sympathy with the old classic style of feeling, to
become imitators. This betrays itself in their painters and sculptors,
and it is a constant impulse to a kind of idolatry, which is not in
keeping with this age, and necessarily seems absurd. When the Greeks
built altars to Force, Beauty, Victory, and other abstract ideas, they
were doing an original thing. When the French do it, they imitate the
Greeks. Apotheosis and hero worship in the old times had a freshness
to it; it was one of the picturesque effects of the dim and purple
shadows of an early dawning, when objects imperfectly seen are
magnified in their dimensions; but the apotheosis, in modern times, of
a man who has worn a dress coat, wig, and shoes is quite another
affair.
I do not mean either to say, as some do, that the French mind has very
little of the religious element. The very sweetest and softest, as
well as the most austere and rigid type of piety has been given by the
French mind; witness Fénélon and John Calvin--Fénélon standing as the
type of the mystic, and Calvin of the rationalistic style of religion.
Fénélon, with his heart so sweet, so childlike, so simple and tender,
was yet essentially French in his nature, and represented one part of
French mind; and what English devotional writer is at all like him?
John Newton had his simplicity and lovingness, but wanted that element
of gracefulness and classic sweetness which gave so high a tone to the
writings of Fénélon. As to Calvin, his crystalline clearness of mind,
his calm, cold logic, his severe vehemence are French, also. To this
day, a French system of theology is the strongest and most coercive
over the strongest of countries--Scotland and America; and yet shallow
thinkers flippantly say the French are incapable of religious ideas.
After Madame M. and I had finished the Pantheon we drove to the
Conciergerie; for I wanted to see the prison of the hapless Marie
Antoinette. That restless architectural mania, which never lets any
thing alone here, is rapidly modernizing it; the scaffoldings are up,
and workmen busy in making it as little historical as possible.
Nevertheless, the old, gloomy arched gateway, and the characteristic
peaked Norman towers, still remain; and we stopped our carriage the
other side of the Seine, to get a good look at it. We drove to the
door, and tried to go in, but were told that we could not without an
order from somebody or other. (I forget who;) so we were obliged to
content ourselves with an outside view.
So we went to take another view of Notre Dame; the very same Notre
Dame whose bells in the good old days could be rung by the waving of
Michael Scott's wand:--
"Him listed but his wand to wave
The bells should ring in Notre Dame."
I had been over it once before with Mrs. C., and sitting in a dark
corner, with my head against a cold, stone pillar, had heard vespers,
all in the most approved style of the poetic. I went back to it now to
see how it looked after the cathedrals of Germany. The churches of
France have suffered dreadfully by the whirlwind spirit of its
revolutions. At different times the painted glass of this church has
been shattered, and replaced by common, till now there is too much
light in it, though there are exquisite windows yet remaining. These
cathedrals _must_ have painted glass; it is essential; the want
of it is terrible; the dim, religious light is necessary to keep you
from seeing the dirty floors, hanging cobwebs, stacks of little, old
rush-bottomed chairs, and the prints where dirty heads and hands have
approached too near the stone pillars. As I sat hearing vespers in
Notre Dame the first time, seeing these all too plainly, may I be
forgiven, but I could not help thinking of Lucifer's soliloquy in a
cathedral in the Golden Legend:--
"What a darksome and dismal place!
I wonder that any man has the face
To call such a hole the house of the Lord
And the gate of heaven--yet such is the word.
Ceiling, and walls, and windows old,
Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould;
Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs,
Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs."
* * * * *
However, Notre Dame is a beautiful church; but I wish it was under as
good care as Cologne Cathedral, and that instead of building
Madeleines and Pantheons, France would restore and preserve her
cathedrals--those grand memorials of the past. I consider the King of
Prussia as not only a national benefactor, but the benefactor of the
world. Cologne, when finished, will be the great epic of architecture,
and belong, like all great epics, to all mankind.
Well, Madame M. and I wandered up and down the vast aisles, she with
her lively, fanciful remarks, to which there was never wanting a vein
both of shrewdness and good sense.
When we came out of Notre Dame, she chattered about the place. "There
used to be an archbishop's palace back of the church in that garden,
but one day the people took it into their heads to pull it down. I saw
the silk-bottomed chairs floating down the Seine. They say that
somebody came and told Thiers, 'Do you know the people are rummaging
the archbishop's palace?' and he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Let
'em work.' That's the say, you know; mind, I don't say it is true!
Well, he got enough of it at last. The fact is, that with, the French,
destructiveness is as much developed as constructiveness, and they are
as good at one as the other."
As we were passing over one of the bridges, we saw a flower market, a
gay show of flowers of all hues, and a very brisk trade going on about
them. Madame told me that there was a flower market every day in the
week, in different parts of the city. The flower trade was more than
usually animated to-day, because it is a saint's _fête,_ the
_fête_ of St. Louis, the patron of Paris.
The streets every where showed men, women, and children, carrying
their pots of blooming flowers. Every person in Paris named Louis or
Louise, after this saint, has received this day little tokens of
affection from their friends, generally bouquets or flowers. Madame
Belloc is named Louise, and her different friends and children called
and brought flowers, and a beautiful India China vase.
The life of Paris, indeed of the continent, is floral, to an extent of
which the people in the United States can form no conception. Flowers
are a part of all their lives. The churches are dressed with flowers,
and on _fête_ days are fragrant with them. A _jardinière_
forms a part of the furniture of every parlor; a _jardinière_ is
a receptacle made in various fanciful forms for holding pots of
flowers. These pots are bought at the daily flower market for a
trifle, in full bloom and high condition; they are placed in the
_jardinière,_ the spaces around them filled with sand and covered
with moss.
Again, there are little hanging baskets suspended from the ceilings,
and filled with flowers. These things give a graceful and festive air
to apartments. When the plants are out of bloom, the porter of the
house takes them, waters, prunes, and tends them, then sells them
again: meanwhile the parlor is ornamented with fresh ones. Along the
streets on saints' days are little booths, where small vases of
artificial flowers are sold to dress the altars. I stopped to look at
one of these stalls, all brilliant with cheaply-made, showy vases of
flowers, that sell for one or two sous.
We went also to the National Academy of Fine Arts, a government school
for the gratuitous instruction of artists, a Grecian building, with a
row of all the distinguished painters in front.
In the doorway, as we came in, was an antique, headless statue of
Minerva; literally it was Minerva's _gown_ standing up--a pillar
of drapery, nothing more, and drapery soiled, tattered, and battered;
but then it was an antique, and that is enough. Now, when antique
things are ugly, I do not like them any better for being antique, and
I should rather have a modern statue than Minerva's old gown. We went
through all the galleries in this school, in one of which the prize
pieces of scholars are placed. Whoever gets one of these prizes is
sent to study in Rome at the expense of the government. We passed
through the hall where the judges sit to decide upon pictures, and
through various others that I cannot remember. I was particularly
interested in the apartment devoted to the casts from the statuary in
the Louvre and in other palaces. These casts are taken with
mathematical exactness, and subjected to the inspection of a
committee, who order any that are defective to be broken. Proof casts
of all the best works, ancient and modern, are thus furnished at a
small price, and so brought within the reach of the most moderate
means.
This morning M. and Madame Belloc took me with them to call on
Béranger, the poet. He is a charming old man, very animated, with a
face full of feeling and benevolence, and with that agreeable
simplicity and vivacity of manner which is peculiarly French. It was
eleven o'clock, but he had not yet breakfasted; we entreated him to
waive ceremony, and so his maid brought in his chop and coffee, and we
all plunged into an animated conversation. Béranger went on conversing
with shrewdness mingled with childlike simplicity, a blending of the
comic, the earnest, and the complimentary. Conversation in a French
circle seems to me like the gambols of a thistle down, or the rainbow
changes in soap bubbles. One laughs with tears in one's eyes. One
moment confounded with the absolute childhood of the simplicity, in
the next one is a little afraid of the keen edge of the shrewdness.
This call gave me an insight into a French circle which both amused
and delighted me. Coming home, M. Belloc enlarged upon Beranger's
benevolence and kindness of heart. "No man," he said, "is more
universally popular with the common people. He has exerted himself
much for the families of the unfortunate deportes to Cayenne." Then he
added, laughing, "A mechanic, one of my model sitters, was dilating
upon his goodness--'What a man! what sublime virtue! how is he
beloved! Could I live to see his funeral! _Quelle spectacle! Quelle
grande emotion!'"_
At tea, Madame M. commented on the manners of a certain English lady
of our acquaintance.
"She's an actress; she's too affected!"
Madame Belloc and I defended her.
"Ah," said M. Belloc, "you cannot judge; the French are never natural
in England, nor the English in France. Frenchmen in England are stupid
and cross, trying to be dignified; and when the English come to
France, it's all guitar playing and capering, in trying to have
_esprit._"
But it is hard to give a conversation in which the salient points are
made by a rapid pantomime, which effervesces like champagne.
Madame Belloc and Madame M. agree that the old French _salon_ is
no more; that none in the present iron age can give the faintest idea
of the brilliancy of the institution in its palmiest days. The horrors
and reverses of successive revolutions, have thrown a pall over the
French heart.
I have been now, in all, about a month in this gay and flowery city,
seeing the French people, not in hotels and _cafes,_ but in the
seclusion of domestic life; received, when introduced, not with
ceremonious distance, as a stranger, but with confidence and
affection, as a friend.
Though, according to the showing of my friends, Paris is empty of many
of her most brilliant ornaments, yet I have been so fortunate as to
make the acquaintance of many noble and justly celebrated people, and
to feel as if I had gained a real insight into the French heart.
I liked the English and the Scotch as well as I could like any thing.
And now, I equally like the French. Exact opposites, you will say. For
that reason all the more charming. The goodness and beauty of the
divine mind is no less shown in the traits of different races than of
different tribes of fruits and flowers. And because things are exact
opposites, is no reason why we should not like both. The eye is not
like the hand, nor the ear like the foot; yet who condemns any of them
for the difference? So I regard nations as parts of a great common
body, and national differences as necessary to a common humanity.
I thought, when in English society, that it was as perfect and
delightful as it could be. There was worth of character, strength of
principle, true sincerity, and friendship, charmingly expressed. I
have found all these, too, among the French, and besides them,
something which charms me the more, because it is peculiar to the
French, and of a kind wholly different from any I have ever had an
experience of before. There is an iris-like variety and versatility of
nature, a quickness in catching and reflecting the various shades of
emotion or fancy, a readiness in seizing upon one's own half-expressed
thoughts, and running them out in a thousand graceful little tendrils,
which is very captivating.
I know a general prejudice has gone forth, that the French are all
mere outside, without any deep reflection or emotion. This may be true
of many. No doubt that the strength of that outward life, that
acuteness of the mere perceptive organization, and that tendency to
social exhilaration, which prevail, will incline to such a fault in
many cases. An English reserve inclines to moroseness, and Scotch
perseverance to obstinacy; so this aerial French nature may become
levity and insincerity; but then it is neither the sullen Englishman,
the dogged Scotchman, nor the shallow Frenchman that we are to take as
the national ideal. In each country we are to take the very best as
the specimen.
Now, it is true that, here in France, one can find people as
judicious, quiet, discreet, and religious, as any where in the world;
with views of life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence
or show, but for the most rational and religious ends. Now, when all
this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting like mother-of-pearl
or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result
beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with
whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind;
and I have talked, by means of imperfect English, French, and
interpretations, with a good many. They have made my heart bleed over
the history of this most beautiful country. It is truly mournful that a people
with so many fine impulses, so much genius, appreciation, and effective
power, should, by the influence of historical events quite beyond the
control of the masses, so often have been thrown into a false position
before the world, and been subjected to such a series of agonizing
revulsions and revolutions.
"O, the French are half tiger, half monkey!" said a cultivated
American to me the other day. Such remarks cut me to the heart, as if
they had been spoken of a brother. And when they come from the mouth
of an American, the very shade of Lafayette, it would seem, might rise
and say, "_Et tu, Brute!_"
It is true, it is a sarcasm of Voltaire's; but Voltaire, though born a
Frenchman, neither imbodied nor was capable of understanding the true
French ideal. The French _head_ he had, but not the French heart.
And from his bitter judgment we might appeal to a thousand noble
names. The generous Henri IV., the noble Sully, and Bayard the knight
_sans peur et sans reproche_, were these half tiger and half
monkey? Were John Calvin and Fénélon half tiger and half monkey?
Laplace, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Cuvier, Des Cartes, Malebranche,
Arago--what were they? The tree of history is enriched with no nobler
and fairer boughs and blossoms than have grown from the French stock.
It seems a most mysterious providence that some nations, without being
wickeder than others, should have a more unfortunate and disastrous
history.
The woes of France have sprung from the fact that a Jezebel de Medici
succeeded in exterminating from the nation that portion of the people
corresponding to the Puritans of Scotland, England, and Germany. The
series of persecutions which culminated in the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, and ended with the dragonades under Louis XIV., drained
France of her lifeblood. Other nations have profited by the treasures
then cast out of her, and she has remained poor for want of them. Some
of the best blood in America is of the old Huguenot stock. Huguenots
carried arts and manufactures into England. An expelled French refugee
became the theological leader of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and
America; and wherever John Calvin's system of theology has gone, civil
liberty has gone with it; so that we might almost say of France, as
the apostle said of Israel, "If the fall of them be the riches of the
world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how
much more their fulness!"
When the English and Americans sneer at the instability, turbulence,
and convulsions of the French nation for the last century, let us ask
ourselves what our history would have been had the "Gunpowder Plot"
succeeded, and the whole element of the reformation been exterminated.
It is true, vitality and reactive energy might have survived such a
process; but that vitality would have shown itself just as it has in
France--in struggles and convulsions. The frequent revolutions of
France are not a thing to be sneered at; they are not evidences of
fickleness, but of constancy; they are, in fact, a prolonged struggle
for liberty, in which there occur periods of defeat, but in which,
after every interval of repose, the strife is renewed. Their great
difficulty has been, that the destruction of the reformed church in
France took out of the country entirely that element of religious
rationalism which is at once conservative and progressive.
There are three forces which operate in society: that of blind faith,
of reverent religious freedom, and of irreverent scepticism. Now,
since the human mind is so made that it must have religion, when this
middle element of reasonable religious freedom is withdrawn, society
vibrates, like a pendulum, between scepticism and superstition; the
extreme of superstition reacting to scepticism, and then the
barrenness of scepticism reacting again into superstition. When the
persecutions in France had succeeded in extinguishing this middle
element, then commenced a series of oscillations between religious
despotism and atheistic license, which have continued ever since. The
suppression of all reasonable religious inquiry, and the consequent
corruption of the church, produced the school of Voltaire and his
followers. The excesses of that school have made devout Catholics
afraid of the very beginning of religious rationalism; and these
causes act against each other to this day.
The revolution in England, under Cromwell, succeeded, because it had
an open Bible and liberty of conscience for its foundation, and united
both the elements of faith and of reason. The French revolution had,
as Lamartine says, Plutarch's Lives for its Bible, and the great
unchaining of human passion had no element of religious control. Plad
France, in the time of her revolution, had leaders like Admiral
Coligny, her revolution might have prospered as did England's under
Cromwell. But these revolutions, needlessly terrible as they have
been, still have accomplished something; without them France might
have died away into what Spain is. As it is, progress has been made,
though at a fearful sacrifice. No country has been swept cleaner of
aristocratic institutions, and the old bastiles and prisons of a past
tyranny. The aspiration for democratic freedom has been so thoroughly
sown in France, that it never will be rooted up again. How to get it,
and how to _keep_ it when it is got, they do not yet clearly see;
but they will never rest till they learn. There is a liberty of
thought and of speech in France which the tongue-tied state of the
press cannot indicate. Could France receive the Bible--could it be
put into the hands of all the common people--_that_ might help
her. And France is receiving the Bible. Spite of all efforts to the
contrary, the curiosity of the popular mind has been awakened; the
yearnings of the popular heart are turning towards it; and therein lie
my best hopes for France.
One thing more I would say. Since I have been here, I have made the
French and continental mode of keeping Sunday a matter of calm,
dispassionate inquiry and observation. I have tried to divest myself
of the prejudices--if you so please to call them--of my New England
education--to look at the matter sympathetically, in the French or
continental point of view, and see whether I have any occasion to
revise the opinions in which I had been educated. I fully appreciate
all the agreeableness, the joyousness, and vivacity of a day of
recreation and social freedom, spent in visiting picture galleries and
public grounds, in social _réunions_ and rural excursions. I am
far from judging harshly of the piety of those who have been educated
in these views and practices. But, viewing the subject merely in
relation to things of this life, I am met by one very striking fact:
there is not a single nation, possessed of a popular form of
government, which has not our Puritan theory of the Sabbath.
Protestant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and America cover the whole
ground of popular freedom; and in all these this idea of the Sabbath
prevails with a distinctness about equal to the degree of liberty. Nor
do I think this result an accidental one. If we notice that the
Lutheran branch of the reformation did not have this element, and the
Calvinistic branch, which spread over England and America, did have
it, and compare the influence of these two in sustaining popular
rights, we shall be struck with the obvious inference.
Now, there are things in our mode of keeping the Sabbath which have a
direct tendency to sustain popular government; for the very element of
a popular government must be self-control in the individual. There
must be enough intensity of individual self-control to make up for the
lack of an extraneous pressure from government. The idea of the
Sabbath, as observed by the Puritans, is the voluntary dissevering of
the thoughts and associations from the things of earth for one day in
seen, and the concentrating of the mind on purely spiritual subjects.
In all this there is a weekly recurring necessity for the greatest
self-control. No way could be devised to educate a community to be
thoughtful and reflective better than the weekly recurrence of a day
when all stimulus, both of business and diversion, shall be withdrawn,
and the mind turned in upon itself. The weekly necessity of bringing
all business to a close tends to give habits of system and exactness.
The assembling together for divine worship, and for instruction in the
duties of Christianity, is a training of the highest and noblest
energies of the soul. Even that style of abstract theologizing
prevailing in New England and Scotland, which has grown out of Sabbath
sermonizing, has been an incalculable addition to the strength and
self-controlling power of the people.
Ride through France, you see the laborer in his wooden shoes, with
scarce a thought beyond his daily toil. His Sunday is a _féte_
for dancing and recreation. Go through New England, and you will find
the laborer, as he lays his stone fence, discussing the consistency of
foreordination with free will, or perchance settling some more
practical mooted point in politics. On Sunday this laborer gets up his
wagon, and takes his wife and family to church, to hear two or three
sermons, in each of which there are more elements of mental discipline
than a French peasant gets in a whole lifetime. It is a shallow view
of theological training to ask of what practical use are its
metaphysical problems. Of what practical value to most students is
geometry? On the whole, I think it is the Puritan idea of the Sabbath,
as it prevails in New England, that is one great source of that
individual strength and self-control which have supported so far our
democratic institutions.
In regard to the present state of affairs here, it has been my lot to
converse unreservedly with some of all parties sufficiently to find
the key note of their thoughts. There are, first, the Bourbonists--mediaeval
people--believers in the divine right of kings in general, and of the
Bourbons in particular. There are many of them exceedingly interesting.
There is something rather poetic and graceful about the antique cast of
their ideas; their chivalrous loyalty to an exiled family, and their devout
belief of the Catholic religion. These, for the most part, keep out of Paris,
entirely ignore the present court, and remain in their chateaus in the
country. A gentleman of this class, with whom I talked, thought the
present emperor did very well in keeping other parties out till the time
should come to strike a blow for the true king.
Then there are the partisans and friends of the Orleans family. I
heard those who spoke, even with tears, of Louis Philippe and his
dynasty. They were patrons of letters and of arts, they say, of virtue
and of religion; and these good, faithful souls cling lovingly to
their memory.
And then there are the republicans--men of the real olden time,
capable of sacrificing every thing that heart holds dear for a
principle; such republicans as were our fathers in all, save their
religion, and because lacking that, losing the chief element of
popular control. Nevertheless, grander men have never been than some
of these modern republicans of France; Americans might learn many
lessons from them.
Besides all these there is another class, comparatively small, having
neither the prestige of fashion, rank, or wealth, but true, humble,
evangelical Christians, in whom the simplicity and spirituality of the
old Huguenot church seems revived. These men are laboring at the very
foundation of things; laboring to bring back the forgotten Bible;
beginning where Christ began, with preaching the gospel to the poor.
If any would wish to see Christianity in its loveliest form, they
would find it in some of these humble laborers. One, with whom I
conversed, devotes his time to the _chiffoniers,_ (rag pickers.)
He gave me an account of his labors, speaking with such tenderness and
compassion, that it was quite touching. "My poor people," he said,
"they are very ignorant, but they are not so very bad." And when I
asked him, "Who supports you in your labors?" he looked upward, with
one of those quick, involuntary glances by which the French express
themselves without words. There was the same earnestness in him as in
one of our city missionaries, but a touching grace peculiarly
national. It was the piety of Fénélon and St. John. And I cannot
believe that God, who loves all nations alike, and who knows how
beautifully the French mind is capable of reflecting the image of
Jesus, will not yet shine forth upon France, to give the light of the
knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ.
It was the testimony of all with whom I conversed, that the national
mind had become more and more serious for many years past. Said a
French gentleman to me one evening, "The old idea of _l'homme
d'esprit_ of Louis XIV.'s time, the man of _bon-mots_, bows,
and _salons_, is almost passed away; there is only now and then a
specimen of it left. The French are becoming more earnest and more
religious." In the Roman Catholic churches which I attended, I saw
very full audiences, and great earnestness and solemnity. I have
talked intimately, also, with Roman Catholics, in whom I felt that
religion was a real and vital thing. One of them, a most lovely lady,
presented me with the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, as a
ground on which we could both unite.
I have also been interested to see in these French Catholics, in its
most fervent form, the exhibition of that antislavery spirit which, in
other ages, was the boast of that church. One charming friend took me
to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, pointing out with great
interest the statues and pictures of saints who had been distinguished
for their antislavery efforts in France. In a note expressing her warm
interest in the cause of the African slave, she says, "It is a
tradition of our church, that of the three kings which came to worship
Jesus in Bethlehem, one was black; and if Christians would kneel
oftener before the manger of Bethlehem they would think less of
distinctions of caste and color."
Madame Belloc received, a day or two since, a letter from a lady in
the old town of Orleans, which gave name to Joan of Arc, expressing
the most earnest enthusiasm in the antislavery cause. Her prayers, she
says, will ascend night and day for those brave souls in America who
are conflicting with this mighty injustice.
A lady a few days since called on me, all whose property was lost in
the insurrection at Hayti, but who is, nevertheless, a most earnest
advocate of emancipation.
A Catholic lady, in a letter, inquired earnestly, why in my Key I had
not included the Romish clergy of the United States among the friends
of emancipation, as that, she said, had been always the boast of their
church. I am sorry to be obliged to make the reply, that in America
the Catholic clergy have never identified themselves with the
antislavery cause, but in their influence have gone with the
multitude.
I have received numerous calls from members of the Old French
Abolition Society, which existed here for many years. Among these I
met, with great interest, M. Dutrone, its president; also M. ----, who
presented me with his very able ethnological work on the distinctive
type of the negro race. One gentleman, greatly distressed in view of
the sufferings of the negro race in America, said, naively enough, to
Mrs. C., that he had heard that the negroes had great capability for
music, dancing, and the fine arts, and inquired whether something
could not be done to move sympathy in their behalf by training them to
exhibit characteristic dances and pantomimes. Mrs. C. quoted to him
the action of one of the great ecclesiastical bodies in America, in
the same breath declining to condemn slavery, but denouncing dancing
as so wholly of the world lying in wickedness as to require condign
ecclesiastical censure. The poor man was wholly lost in amazement.
In this connection, I cannot but notice, to the credit of the French
republican provisional government, how much more consistent they were
in their attachment to the principles of liberty than ever our own has
been. What do we see in our own history? Our northern free states
denouncing slavery as a crime, confessedly inconsistent with their
civil and religious principles, yet, for commercial and pecuniary
considerations, deliberately entering into a compact with slaveholders
tolerating a twenty years' perpetuation of the African slave trade,
the rendition of fugitives, the suppression of servile insurrections,
and allowing to the slaveholders a virtual property basis of
representation. It should qualify the contempt which some Americans
express of the French republic, that when the subject of the slave
colonies was brought up, and it was seen that consistency demanded
immediate emancipation, they immediately emancipated; and not only so,
but conferred at once on the slaves the elective franchise.
This point strongly illustrates the difference, in one respect,
between the French and the Anglo-Saxons. As a race the French are less
commercial, more ideal, more capable of devotion to abstract
principles, and of following them out consistently, irrespective of
expediency.
There is one thing which cannot but make one indignant here in Paris,
and which, I think, is keenly felt by some of the best among the
French; and that is, the indifference of many Americans, while here,
to their own national principles of liberty. They seem to come to
Paris merely to be hangers on and applauders in the train of that
tyrant who has overthrown the hopes of France. To all that cruelty and
injustice by which thousands of hearts are now bleeding, they appear
entirely insensible. They speak with heartless levity of the
revolutions of France, as of a pantomime got up for their diversion.
Their time and thoughts seem to be divided between defences of
American slavery and efforts to attach themselves to the skirts of
French tyranny. They are the parasites of parasites--delighted if they
can but get to an imperial ball, and beside themselves if they can
secure an introduction to the man who figured as a _roué_, in the
streets of New York. Noble-minded men of all parties here, who have
sacrificed all for principle, listen with suppressed indignation,
while young America, fresh from the theatres and gambling saloons,
declares, between the whiffs of his cigar, that the French are not
capable of free institutions, and that the government of Louis
Napoleon is the best thing France could have. Thus from the plague-
spot at her heart has America become the propagandist of despotism in
Europe. Nothing weighs so fearfully against the cause of the people of
Europe as this kind of American influence. Through almost every city
of Europe are men whose great glory it appears to be to proclaim that
they worship the beast, and wear his name in their foreheads. I have
seen sometimes, in the forests, a vigorous young sapling which had
sprung up from the roots of an old, decaying tree. So, unless the
course of things alters much in America, a purer civil liberty will
spring up from her roots in Europe, while her national tree is blasted
with despotism. It is most affecting, in moving through French
circles, to see what sadness, what anguish of heart, lies under that
surface which seems to a stranger so gay. Each revolution has cut its
way through thousands of families, ruining fortunes, severing domestic
ties, inflicting wounds that bleed, and will bleed for years. I once
alluded rather gayly to the numerous upsets of the French government,
in conversation with a lady, and she laughed at first, but in a moment
her eyes filled with tears, and she said, "Ah, you have no idea what
these things are among us." In conversation nothing was more common
than the remark, "I shall do so and so, provided things hold out; but
then there is no telling what will come next."
On the minds of some there lie deep dejection and discouragement.
Some, surrounded by their growing families, though they abhor the
tyranny of the government, acquiesce wearily, and even dread change
lest something worse should arise.
We know not in America how many atrocities and cruelties that attended
the _coup d'etat_ have been buried in the grave which intombed
the liberty of the press. I have talked with eye witnesses of those
scenes, men who have been in the prisons, and heard the work of
butchery going on in the prison yards in the night. While we have been
here, a gentleman to whom I had been introduced was arrested, taken
from bed by the police, and carried off, without knowing of what he
was accused. His friends were denied access to him, and on making
application to the authorities, the invariable reply was, "Be very
quiet about it. If you make a commotion his doom is sealed." When his
wife was begging permission for a short interview, the jailer, wearied
with her importunities, at last exclaimed unguardedly, "Madam, there
are two hundred here in the same position; what would you have me do?"
[Footnote: That man has remained in prison to this day.]
At that very time an American traveller, calling on us, expatiated at
length on the peaceful state of things in Paris--on the evident
tranquillity and satisfaction universally manifest.