Let us suppose a case. A master and his servant make a simultaneous request to be presented to the King of France. Both are American citizens, and if either has any political claim, beyond mere courtesy, to have his request attended to, both have. The minister is left to decide for himself. He cannot so far abuse the courtesy that permits him to present his countrymen at all, as to present the domestic, and of course he declines doing it. In this case, perhaps, public opinion would sustain him, as, unluckily, the party of the domestics is small in America, the duties usually falling to the share of foreigners and blacks. But the principle may be carried upwards, until a point is attained where a minister might find it difficult to decide between that which his own sense of propriety should dictate, and that which others might be disposed to claim. All other ministers get rid of their responsibility by the acts of their own courts; but the minister of the republic is left exposed to the calumny, abuse, and misrepresentation of any disappointed individual, should he determine to do what is strictly right.

Under these circumstances, it appears to me that there are but two courses left for any agent of our government to pursue: either to take official rank as his only guide, or to decline presenting any one. It is not his duty to act as a master of ceremonies; every court has a regular officer for this purpose, and any one who has been presented himself, is permitted on proper representations to present others. The trifling disadvantage will be amply compensated for, by the great and peculiar benefits that arise from our peculiar form of government.

These things will quite likely strike you as of little moment. They are, however, of more concern than one living in the simple society of America may at first suppose. The etiquette of visiting has of course an influence on the entire associations of a traveller, and may not be overlooked, while the single fact that one people were practically excluded from the European courts, would have the same effect on their other enjoyments here, that it has to exclude an individual from the most select circles of any particular town. Ordinary life is altogether coloured by things that, in themselves, may appear trifling, but which can no more be neglected with impunity, than one can neglect the varying fashions in dress.

The Americans are not a shoving people, like their cousins the English. Their fault in this particular lies in a morbid pride, with a stubbornness that is the result of a limited experience, and which is too apt to induce them to set up their own provincial notions, as the standard, and to throw them backward into the intrenchments, of self-esteem. This feeling is peculiarly fostered by the institutions. It is easy to err in this manner; and it is precisely the failing of the countryman, everywhere, when he first visits town. It is, in fact, the fault of ignorance of the world. By referring to what I have just told you, it will be seen that these are the very propensities which will be the most likely to make one uncomfortable in Europe, where so much of the initiative of intercourse is thrown upon the shoulders of the stranger.

I cannot conclude this letter without touching on another point, that suggests itself at the moment. It is the fashion to decry the niggardliness of the American government on the subject of money, as compared with those of this hemisphere. Nothing can be more unjust. Our working men are paid better than even those of England, with the exception of a few who have high dignities to support. I do not see the least necessity for giving the President a dollar more than he gets to-day, since all he wants is enough to entertain handsomely, and to shield him from loss. Under our system, we never can have an exclusive court, nor is it desirable, for in this age a court is neither a school of manners, nor a school of anything else that is estimable. These facts are sufficiently proved by England, a country whose mental cultivation and manners never stood as high as they do to-day, and yet it has virtually been without a court for an entire generation. A court may certainly foster taste and elegance; but they may be quite as well fostered by other, and less exclusive, means. But while the President may receive enough, the heads of departments, at home, and the foreign ministers of the country, are not more than half paid, particularly the latter. The present minister is childless, his establishment and his manner of living are both handsome, but not a bit more so than those of a thousand others who inhabit this vast capital, and his intercourse with his colleagues is not greater than is necessary to the interests of his country. Now, I know from his own statement, that his expenses, without a family, exceed by one hundred per cent, his salary. With a personal income of eighty to a hundred thousand francs a years, he can bear this drain on his private fortune, but he is almost the only minister we ever had here who could.

The actual position of our diplomatic agents in Europe is little understood at home. There are but two or three modes of maintaining the rights of a nation, to say nothing of procuring those concessions from others which enter into the commercial relations of states, and in some degree affect their interests. The best method, certainly, as respects the two first, is to manifest a determination to defend them by an appeal to force; but so many conflicting interests stand in the way of such a policy, that it is exceedingly difficult, wisest and safest in the end though it be, to carry it out properly. At any rate, such a course has never yet been in the power of the American government, whatever it may be able to do hereafter, with its increasing numbers and growing wealth. But even strength is not always sufficient to obtain voluntary and friendly concessions, for principle must, in some degree, be respected by the most potent people, or they will be put to the ban of the world. Long diplomatic letters, although they may answer the purposes of ministerial exposes, and read well enough in the columns of a journal, do very little, in fact, as make-weights in negotiations. I have been told here, sub rosa, and I believe it that some of our laboured efforts, in this way to obtain redress in the protracted negotiation for indemnity, have actually lain months in the bureaux, unread by those who alone have power to settle the question. Some commis perhaps may have cursorily related their contents to his superior, but the superior himself is usually too much occupied in procuring and maintaining ministerial majorities, or in looking after the monopolizing concerns of European politics, to wade through folios of elaborate argument in manuscript. The public ought to understand, that the point presents itself to him in the security of his master's capital, and with little or no apprehension of its coming to an appeal to arms, very differently from what it occasionally presents itself in the pages of a President's message, or in a debate in Congress. He has so many demands on his time, that it is even difficult to have a working interview with him at all; and when one is obtained, it is not usual to do more than to go over the preliminaries. The details are necessarily referred to subordinates.

Now, in such a state of things, any one accustomed to the world, can readily understand how much may be effected by the kind feelings that are engendered by daily, social intercourse. A few words can be whispered in the ears of a minister, in the corner of a drawing-room, that would never reach him in his bureau. Then all the ministers are met in society, while the diplomate, properly speaking, can claim officially to see but one. In short, in saving, out of an overflowing treasury, a few thousand dollars a year, we trifle with our own interests, frequently embarrass our agents, and in some degree discredit the country. I am not one of your sensitives on the subject of parade and appearance, nor a member of the embroidery school; still I would substitute for the irrational frippery of the European customs, a liberal hospitality, and a real elegance, that should speak well for the hearts and tastes of the nation. The salary of the minister at Paris, I know it, by the experience of a housekeeper, ought to be increased by at least one half, and it would tell better for the interests of the country were it doubled. Even in this case, however, I do not conceive that an American would be justified in mistaking the house of an envoy for a national inn; but that the proper light to view his allowances would be to consider them as made, first, as an act of justice to the functionary himself; next, as a measure of expediency, as connected with the important interests of the country. As it is, I am certain that no one but a man of fortune can accept a foreign appointment, without committing injustice to his heirs; and I believe few do accept them without sincerely regretting the step, in after years.



LETTER XII.

Sir Walter Scott in Paris.—Conversation with him.—Copyright in America.—Miss Scott.—French Compliments.—Sir Walter Scott's Person and Manners.—Ignorance as to America.—French Commerce.—French Translations.—American Luxury.

To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE.

We have not only had Mr. Canning in Paris, but Sir Walter Scott has suddenly appeared among us. The arrival of the Great Unknown, or, indeed, of any little Unknown from England, would be an event to throw all the reading clubs at home into a state of high moral and poetical excitement. We are true village lionizers. As the professors of the Catholic religion are notoriously more addicted to yielding faith to miraculous interventions, in the remoter dioceses, than in Rome itself; as loyalty is always more zealous in a colony than in a court; as fashions are more exaggerated in a province than in a capital, and men are more prodigious to every one else than their own valets,—so do we throw the haloes of a vast ocean around the honoured heads of the celebrated men of this eastern hemisphere. This, perhaps, is the natural course of things, and is as unavoidable as that the sun shall hold the earth within the influence of its attraction, until matters shall be reversed by the earth's becoming the larger and more glorious orb of the two. Not so in Paris. Here men of every gradation of celebrity, from Napoleon down to the Psalmanazar of the day, are so very common, that one scarcely turns round in the streets to look at them. Delicate and polite attentions, however, fall as much to the share of reputation here as in any other country, and perhaps more so as respects literary men, though there is so little wonder-mongering. It would be quite impossible that the presence of Sir Walter Scott should not excite a sensation. He was frequently named in the journals, received a good deal of private and some public notice, but, on the whole, much less of both, I think, than one would have a right to expect for him, in a place like Paris. I account for the fact, by the French distrusting the forthcoming work on Napoleon, and by a little dissatisfaction which prevails on the subject of the tone of "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk." This feeling may surprise you, as coming from a nation as old and as great as France; but, alas! we are all human.

The King spoke to him, in going to his chapel, Sir Walter being in waiting for that purpose; but, beyond this, I believe he met with no civilities from the court.

As for myself, circumstances that it is needless to recount had brought me, to a slight degree, within the notice of Sir Walter Scott, though we had never met, nor had I ever seen him, even in public, so as to know his person. Still I was not without hopes of being more fortunate now, while I felt a delicacy about obtruding myself any further on his time and attention. Several days after his arrival went by, however, without my good luck bringing me in his way, and I began to give the matter up, though the Princesse —— with whom I had the advantage of being on friendly terms, flattered me with an opportunity of seeing the great writer at her house, for she had a fixed resolution of making his acquaintance before he left Paris, coute que coute.

It might have been ten days after the arrival of Sir Walter Scott, that I had ordered a carriage, one morning, with an intention of driving over to the other side of the river, and had got as far as the lower flight of steps, on my way to enter it, when, by the tramping of horses in the court, I found that another coach was driving in. It was raining, and, as my own carriage drove from the door to make way for the newcomer, I stopped where I was, until it could return. The carriage-steps rattled, and presently a large, heavy-moulded man appeared in the door of the hotel. He was grey, and limped a little, walking with a cane. His carriage immediately drove round, and was succeeded by mine, again; so I descended. We passed each other on the stairs, bowing as a matter of course. I had got to the door, and was about to enter the carriage, when it flashed on my mind that the visit might be to myself. The two lower floors of the hotel were occupied as a girl's boarding-school; the reason of our dwelling in it, for our own daughters were in the establishment; au second, there was nothing but our own appartement, and above us, again, dwelt a family whose visitors never came in carriages. The door of the boarding-school was below, and men seldom came to it, at all. Strangers, moreover, sometimes did honour me with calls. Under these impressions I paused, to see if the visitor went as far as our flight of steps. All this time, I had not the slightest suspicion of who he was, though I fancied both the face and form were known to me.

The stranger got up the large stone steps slowly, leaning, with one hand, on the iron railing, and with the other, on his cane. He was on the first landing, as I stopped, and, turning towards the next flight, our eyes met. The idea that I might be the person he wanted, seemed then to strike him for the first time. "Est-ce Mons. —— que j'ai l'honneur de voir?" he asked, in French, and with but an indifferent accent. "Monsieur, je m'appelle ——. Eh bien, donc—je suis Walter Scott."

I ran up to the landing, shook him by the hand, which he stood holding out to me cordially, and expressed my sense of the honour he was conferring. He told me, in substance, that the Princesse —— had been as good as her word, and having succeeded herself in getting hold of him, she had good-naturedly given him my address. By way of cutting short all ceremony, he had driven from his hotel to my lodgings. All this time he was speaking French, while my answers and remarks were in English. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said—"Well, here have I been parlez-vousing to you, in a way to surprise you, no doubt; but these Frenchmen have got my tongue so set to their lingo, that I have half forgotten my own language." As we proceeded up the next flight of steps, he accepted my arm, and continued the conversation in English, walking with more difficulty than I had expected to see. You will excuse the vanity of my repeating the next observation he made, which I do in the hope that some of our own exquisites in literature may learn in what manner a man of true sentiment and sound feeling regards a trait that they have seen fit to stigmatize unbecoming, "I'll tell you what I most like," he added, abruptly; "and it is the manner in which you maintain the ascendency of your own country on all proper occasions, without descending to vulgar abuse of ours. You are obliged to bring the two nations in collision, and I respect your liberal hostility." This will probably be esteemed treason in our own self-constituted mentors of the press, one of whom, I observe, has quite lately had to apologize to his readers for exposing some of the sins of the English writers in reference to ourselves! But these people are not worth our attention, for they have neither the independence which belongs to masculine reason, nor manhood even to prize the quality in others. "I am afraid the mother has not always treated the daughter well," he continued, "feeling a little jealous of her growth, perhaps; for, though we hope England has not yet begun to descend on the evil side, we have a presentiment that she has got to the top of the ladder."

There were two entrances to our apartments; one, the principal, leading by an ante-chamber and salle a manger into the salon, and thence through other rooms to a terrace; and the other, by a private corridor, to the same spot. The door of my cabinet opened on this corridor, and though it was dark, crooked, and anything but savoury, as it led by the kitchen, I conducted Sir Walter through it, under an impression that he walked with pain; an idea of which I could not divest myself, in the hurry of the moment. But for this awkwardness on my part, I believe I should have been the witness of a singular interview. General Lafayette had been with me a few minutes before, and he had gone away by the salon, in order to speak to Mrs. ——. Having a note to write, I had left him there, and I think his carriage could not have quitted the court when that of Sir Walter Scott entered. If so, the General must have passed out by the ante-chamber about the time we came through the corridor.

There would be an impropriety in my relating all that passed in this interview; but we talked over a matter of business, and then the conversation was more general. You will remember that Sir Walter was still the Unknown[14] and that he was believed to be in Paris in search of facts for the Life of Napoleon. Notwithstanding the former circumstance, he spoke of his works with great frankness and simplicity, and without the parade of asking any promises of secrecy. In short, as he commenced in this style, his authorship was alluded to by us both just as if it had never been called in question. He asked me if I had a copy of the —— by me, and on my confessing I did not own a single volume of anything I had written, he laughed, and said he believed that most authors had the same feeling on the subject: as for himself, he cared not if he never saw a Waverley novel again, as long as he lived. Curious to know whether a writer as great and as practised as he felt the occasional despondency which invariably attends all my own little efforts of this nature, I remarked that I found the mere composition of a tale a source of pleasure, so much so, that I always invented twice as much as was committed to paper in my walks, or in bed, and in my own judgment much the best parts of the composition never saw the light; for what was written was usually written at set hours, and was a good deal a matter of chance, and that going over and over the same subject in proofs disgusted me so thoroughly with the book, that I supposed every one else would be disposed to view it with the same eyes. To this he answered that he was spared much of the labour of proofreading, Scotland, he presumed, being better off than America in this respect; but still be said he "would as soon see his dinner again after a hearty meal as to read one of his own tales when he was fairly rid of it."

[Footnote 14: He did not avow himself for several months afterwards.]

He sat with me nearly an hour, and he manifested, during the time the conversation was not tied down to business, a strong propensity to humour. Having occasion to mention our common publisher in Paris, he quaintly termed him, with a sort of malicious fun, "our Gosling;"[15] adding, that he hoped he, at least, "laid golden eggs."

[Footnote 15: His name was Gosselin.]

I hoped that he had found the facilities he desired, in obtaining facts for the forthcoming history. He rather hesitated about admitting this. "One can hear as much as he pleases, as a gentleman, he is not always sure how much of it he can, with propriety, relate in a book; besides"—throwing all his latent humour into the expression of his small grey eyes—"one may even doubt how much of what he hears is fit for history on another account." He paused, and his face assumed an exquisite air of confiding simplicity, as he continued, with perfect bonne foi and strong Scottish feeling, "I have been to see my countryman M'Donald, and I rather think that will be about as much as I can do here, now." This was uttered with so much naivete that I could hardly believe it was the same man who, a moment before, had shown so much shrewd distrust of oral relations of facts.

I inquired when we might expect the work "Some time in the course of the winter," he replied, "though it is likely to prove larger than I at first intended. We have got several volumes printed, but I find I must add to the matter considerably, in order to dispose of the subject. I thought I should get rid of it in seven volumes, which are already written, but it will reach, I think, to nine." "If you have two still to write, I shall not expect to see the book before spring." "You may: let me once get back to Abbotsford, and I'll soon knock off those two fellows." To this I had nothing to say, although I thought such a tour de force in writing might better suit invention than history.

When he rose to go, I begged him to step into the salon, that I might have the gratification of introducing my wife to him. To this he very good-naturedly assented, and entering the room, after presenting Mrs. —— and my nephew W——. he took a seat. He sat some little time, and his fit of pleasantry returned, for he illustrated his discourse by one or two apt anecdotes, related with a slightly Scottish accent, that he seemed to drop and assume at will. Mrs. —— observed to him that the bergere in which he was seated had been twice honoured that morning, for General Lafayette had not left it more than half an hour. Sir Walter Scott looked surprised at this, and said inquiringly, "I thought he had gone to America, to pass the rest of his days." On my explaining the true state of the case, he merely observed, "He is a great man;" and yet I thought the remark was made coldly, or in complaisance to us.

When Sir Walter left us, it was settled that I was to breakfast with him the following day but one. I was punctual, of course, and found him in a new silk douillette that he had just purchased, trying "as hard as he could," as he pleasantly observed, to make a Frenchman of himself—an undertaking as little likely to be successful, I should think, in the case of his Scottish exterior, and Scottish interior too, as any experiment well could be. There were two or three visitors, besides Miss Ann Scott, his daughter, who was his companion in the journey. He was just answering an invitation from the Princesse ——, to an evening party, as I entered. "Here," said he, "you are a friend of the lady, and parlez-vous so much better than I; can you tell me whether this is for Jeudi, or Lundi, or Mardi, or whether it means no day at all?" I told him the day of the week intended. "You get notes occasionally from the lady, or you could not read her scrawl so readily?" "She is very kind to us, and we often have occasion to read her writing." "Well, it is worth a very good dinner to get through a page of it." "I take my revenge in kind, and I fancy she has the worst of it." "I don't know, after all that she will get much the better of me with this plume d'auberge." He was quite right, for, although Sir Walter writes a smooth even hand, and one that appears rather well than otherwise on a page, it is one of the most difficult to decipher I have ever met with; the i's, u's, m's, n's, a's, e's, t's, etc., etc., for want of dots, crossings, and being fully rounded, looking all alike, and rendering the reading slow and difficult, without great familiarity with his mode of handling the pen: at least, I have found it so.

He had sealed the note, and was about writing the direction, when he seemed at a loss. "How do you address this lady—as Her Highness?" I was much surprised at this question from him, for it denoted a want of familiarity with the world, that one would not have expected in a man who had been so very much and so long courted by the great. But, after all, his life has been provincial, though, as his daughter remarked in the course of the morning, they had no occasion to quit Scotland to see the world, all the world coming to see Scotland.

The next morning he was with me again, for near an hour and we completed our little affair. After this we had a conversation on the law of copyrights in the two countries, which as we possess a common language, is a subject of great national interest. I understood him to say that he had a double right in England to his works; one under a statute, and the other growing out of common law. Any one publishing a book, let it be written by whom it might, in England, duly complying with the law, can secure the right, whereas none but a citizen can do the same in America. I regret to say that I misled him on the subject of our copyright law, which, after all, is not so much more illiberal than that of England as I had thought it.

I told Sir Walter Scott, that, in order to secure a copyright in America, it was necessary the book should never have been published anywhere else. This was said under the popular notion of the matter; or that which is entertained among the booksellers. Reflection and examination have since convinced me of my error: the publication alluded to in the law can only mean publication in America; for, as the object of doing certain acts previously to publication is merely to forewarn the American public that the right is reserved, there can be no motive for having reference to any other publication. It is, moreover, in conformity with the spirit of all laws to limit the meaning of their phrases by their proper jurisdiction. Let us suppose a case. An American writes a book, he sends a copy to England, where it is published in March complying with the terms of our own copyright law, as to the entries and notices, the same work is published here in April. Now will it be pretended that his right is lost, always providing that his own is the first American publication? I do not see how it can be so by either the letter or the spirit of the law. The intention is to encourage the citizen to write, and to give him a just property in the fruits of his labour; and the precautionary provisions of the law are merely to prevent others from being injured for want of proper information. It is of no moment to either of these objects that the author of a work has already reaped emolument in a foreign country: the principle is to encourage literature by giving it all the advantages it can obtain.

If these views are correct, why may not an English writer secure a right in this country, by selling it in season, to a citizen here? An equitable trust might not, probably would not be sufficient; but a bona fide transfer for a valuable consideration, I begin to think, would. It seems to me that all the misconception which has existed on this point has arisen from supposing that the term publication refers to other than a publication in the country. But, when one remembers how rare it is to get lawyers to agree on a question like this, it becomes a layman to advance his opinion with great humility. I suppose, after all a good way of getting an accurate notion of the meaning of the law, would be to toss a dollar into the air, and cry "heads," or "tails." Sir Walter Scott seemed fully aware of the great circulation of his books in America, as well as how much he lost by not being able to secure a copyright. Still he admitted they produced him something. Our conversation on this subject terminated by a frank offer, on his part, of aiding me with the publishers of his own country;[16] but, although grateful for the kindness, I was not so circumstanced as to be able to profit by it.

[Footnote 16: An offer that was twice renewed, after intervals of several years.]

He did not appear to me to be pleased with Paris. His notions of the French were pretty accurate, though clearly not free from the old fashioned prejudices. "After all," he remarked, "I am a true Scot, never, except on this occasion, and the short visit I made to Paris in 1815, having been out of my own country, unless to visit England, and I have even done very little of the latter." I understood him to say he had never been in Ireland, at all.

I met him once more, in the evening, at the hotel of the Princesse ——. The party had been got together in a hurry, and was not large. Our hostess contrived to assemble some exceedingly clever people, however, among whom were one or two women, who are already historical, and whom I had fancied long since dead. All the female part of the company, with the silent delicacy that the French so well understand, appeared with ribbons, hats, or ornaments of some sort or other, of a Scottish stamp. Indeed, almost the only woman in the room, that did not appear to be a Caledonian was Miss Scott. She was in half-mourning, and, with her black eyes and jet-black hair, might very well have passed for a French woman, but for a slight peculiarity about the cheek-bones. She looked exceedingly well, and was much admired. Having two or three more places to go to, they stayed but an hour. As a matter of course, all the French women were exceedingly empressees in their manner towards the Great Unknown; and as there were three or four that were very exaggerated on the score of romance, he was quite lucky if he escaped some absurdities. Nothing could be more patient than his manner, under it all; but as soon as he very well could, he got into a corner, where I went to speak to him. He said, laughingly, that he spoke French with so much difficulty, he was embarrassed to answer the compliments. "I am as good a lion as needs be, allowing my mane to be stroked as familiarly as they please, but I can't growl for them, in French. How is it with you?" Disclaiming the necessity of being either a good or a bad lion, being very little troubled in that way, for his amusement I related to him an anecdote. Pointing out to him a Comtesse de ——, who was present, I told him, I had met this lady once a week for several months, and at every soiree she invariably sailed up to me to say—"Oh, Monsieur ——, quelles livres!—vos charmans livres—que vos livres sont charmans!" and I had just made up my mind that she was, at least, a woman of taste, when she approached me with the utmost sang-froid, and cried— "Bon soir, Monsieur ——; je viens d'acheter tous vos livres, et je compte profiter de la premiere occasion pour les lire!"

I took leave of him in the ante-chamber, as he went away, for he was to quit Paris the following evening.

Sir Walter Scott's person and manner have been so often described, that you will not ask much of me in this way, especially as I saw so little of him. His frame is large and muscular, his walk difficult, in appearance, though be boasted himself a vigorous mountaineer, and his action, in general, measured and heavy. His features and countenance were very Scottish, with the short thick nose, heavy lips, and massive cheeks. The superior or intellectual part of his head was neither deep nor broad, but perhaps the reverse, though singularly high. Indeed, it is quite uncommon to see a scull so round and tower-like in the formation, though I have met with them in individuals not at all distinguished for talents. I do not think a casual observer would find anything unusual in the exterior of Sir Walter Scott, beyond his physical force, which is great, without being at all extraordinary. His eye, however, is certainly remarkable. Grey, small, and without lustre, in his graver moments it appears to look inward, instead of regarding external objects, in a way, though the expression, more or less, belongs to abstraction, that I have never seen equalled. His smile is good-natured and social; and when he is in the mood, as happened to be the fact so often in our brief intercourse as to lead me to think it characteristic of the man, his eye would lighten with a great deal of latent fun. He spoke more freely of his private affairs than I had reason to expect, though our business introduced the subject naturally; and, at such times, I thought the expression changed to a sort of melancholy resolution, that was not wanting in sublimity.

The manner of Sir Walter Scott is that of a man accustomed to see much of the world without being exactly a man of the world himself. He has evidently great social tact, perfect self-possession, is quiet, and absolutely without pretension, and has much dignity; and yet it struck me that he wanted the ease and aplomb of one accustomed to live with his equals. The fact of his being a lion may produce some such effect; but I am mistaken if it be not more the influence of early habits and opinions than of anything else.

Scott has been so much the mark of society, that it has evidently changed his natural manner, which is far less restrained than it is his habit to be in the world. I do not mean by this, the mere restraint of decorum, but a drilled simplicity or demureness, like that of girls who are curbed in their tendency to fun and light-heartedness, by the dread of observation. I have seldom known a man of his years, whose manner was so different in a tete-a-tete, and in the presence of a third person. In Edinburgh the circle must be small, and he probably knows every one. If strangers do go there, they do not go all at once, and of course the old faces form the great majority; so that he finds himself always on familiar ground. I can readily imagine that in Auld Reekie, and among the proper set, warmed perhaps by a glass of mountain-dew, Sir Walter Scott, in his peculiar way, is one of the pleasantest companions the world holds.

There was a certain M. de —— at the soiree of the Princesse ——, who has obtained some notoriety as the writer of novels. I had, the honour of being introduced to this person, and was much amused with one of his questions. You are to understand that the vaguest possible notions exist in France on the subject of the United States. Empires, states, continents, and islands are blended in inextricable confusion, in the minds of a large majority of even the intelligent classes, and we sometimes hear the oddest ideas imaginable. This ignorance, quite pardonable in part, is not confined to France by any means, but exists even in England, a country that ought to know us better. It would seem that M. de ——, either because I was a shade or two whiter than himself, or because he did not conceive it possible that an American could write a book (for in this quarter of the world there is a strong tendency to believe that every man whose name crosses the ocean from America is merely some European who has gone there), or from some cause that to me is inexplicable, took it into his head that I was an Englishman who had amused a leisure year or two in the Western Hemisphere. After asking me a few questions concerning the country, he very coolly continued—"Et combien de temps avez-vous passe en Amerique, monsieur?" Comprehending his mistake, for a little practice here makes one quick in such matters, I answered, "Monsieur, nous y sommes depuis deux siecles." I question if M. de —— has yet recovered from his surprise!

The French, when their general cleverness is considered, are singularly ignorant of the habits, institutions, and civilization of other countries. This is in part owing to their being little addicted to travelling. Their commercial enterprise is not great; for though we occasionally see a Frenchman carrying with him into pursuits of this nature the comprehensive views, and one might almost say, the philosophy, that distinguish the real intelligence of the country, such instances are rare, the prevailing character of their commerce being caution and close dealing. Like the people of all great nations, their attention is drawn more to themselves than to others; and then the want of a knowledge of foreign languages has greatly contributed to their ignorance. This want of knowledge of foreign languages, in a nation that has traversed Europe as conquerors, is owing to the fact that they have either carried their own language with them, or met it everywhere. It is a want, moreover, that belongs rather to the last generation than to the present; the returned emigrants having brought back with them a taste for English, German, Italian, and Spanish, which has communicated itself to all, or nearly all, the educated people of the country. English, in particular, is now very generally studied; and perhaps, relatively, more French, under thirty years of age, are to be found in Paris who speak English, than Americans, of the same age, are to be found in New York who speak French.

I think the limited powers of the language, and the rigid laws to which it has been subjected, contribute to render the French less acquainted with foreign nations than they would otherwise be. In all their translations there is an effort to render the word, however peculiar may be its meaning, into the French tongue. Thus, "township" and "city," met with in an American book, would probably be rendered by "canton" or "commune" or "ville;" neither of which conveys an accurate idea of the thing intended. In an English or American book we should introduce the French word at once, which would induce the reader to inquire into the differences that exist between the minor territorial divisions, of his own country, and those of the country of which he is reading. In this manner is the door open for further information, until both writers and readers come to find it easier and more agreeable to borrow words from others, than to curtail their ideas by their national vocabularies. The French, however, are beginning to feel their poverty in this respect, and some are already bold enough to resort to the natural cure.

The habit of thinking of other nations through their own customs, betrays the people of this country into many ridiculous mistakes. One hears here the queerest questions imaginable every day; all of which, veiled by the good breeding and delicacy that characterize the nation, betray an innocent sense of superiority that may be smiled at, and which creates no feeling of resentment. A savant lately named to me the coasting tonnage of France, evidently with the expectation of exciting my admiration; and on my receiving the information coolly, he inquired, with a little sarcasm of manner—"Without doubt, you have some coasting tonnage also in America?" "The coasting tonnage of the United Slates, Monsieur, is greater than the entire tonnage of France." The man looked astonished, and I was covered with questions as to the nature of the trade that required so much shipping among a population numerically so small. It could not possibly be the consumption of a country—he did not say it, but he evidently thought it—so insignificant and poor? I told him, that bread, wine, and every other article of the first necessity excepted, the other consumption of America, especially in luxuries, did not fall so much short of that of France as he imagined, owing to the great abundance in which the middling and lower classes lived. Unlike Europe, articles that were imported were mere necessaries of life, in America, such as tea, coffee, sugar, etc. etc., the lowest labourer usually indulging in them. He left me evidently impressed with new notions, for there is a desire to learn mingled with all their vanity.

But I will relate a laughable blunder of a translator, by way of giving you a familiar example of the manner in which the French fall into error concerning the condition of other nations, and to illustrate my meaning. In one of the recent American novels that have been circulated here, a character is made to betray confusion, by tracing lines on the table, after dinner, with some wine that had been spilt; a sort of idle occupation sufficiently common to allow the allusion to be understood by every American. The sentence was faithfully rendered; but, not satisfied with giving his original, the translator annexes a note, in which he says, "One sees by this little trait, that the use of table-cloths, at the time of the American Revolution, was unknown in America!" You will understand the train of reasoning that led him to this conclusion. In France the cover is laid, perhaps, on a coarse table of oak, or even of pine, and the cloth is never drawn; the men leaving the table with the women. In America, the table is of highly polished mahogany, the cloth is removed, and the men sit, as in England. Now the French custom was supposed to be the custom of mankind, and wine could not be traced on the wood had there been a cloth; America was a young and semi-civilized nation, and, ergo, in 1779, there could have been no table-cloths known in America!—When men even visit a people of whom they have been accustomed to think in this way, they use their eyes through the medium of the imagination. I lately met a French traveller who affirmed that the use of carpets was hardly known among us.



LETTER XIII.

French Manufactures.—Sevres China.—Tapestry of the Gobelins.—Paper for Hangings.—The Savonnerie.—French Carpets.—American Carpets. —Transfer of old Pictures from Wood to Canvass.—Coronation Coach. —The Arts in France—in America.—American Prejudice.

To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE.

In my last, I gave you a few examples of the instances in which the French have mistaken the relative civilization of their country and America, and I shall now give you some in which we have fallen into the same error, or the other side of the question.

There has lately been an exhibition of articles of French manufacture, at Paris; one of, I believe, the triennial collections of this character, that have been established here. The court of the Louvre was filled with temporary booths for the occasion, and vast ranges of the unfinished apartments in that magnificent palace have been thrown open for the same purpose. The court of the Louvre, of itself, is an area rather more than four hundred feet square, and I should think fully a quarter of a mile of rooms in the building itself are to be added to the space occupied for this purpose.

The first idea, with which I was impressed, on walking through the booths and galleries, on this occasion, was the great disproportion between the objects purely of taste and luxury, and the objects of use. The former abounded, were very generally elegant and well-imagined, while the latter betrayed the condition of a nation whose civilization has commenced with the summit, instead of the base of society.

In France, nearly every improvement in machinery is the result of scientific research; is unobjectionable in principles, profound in the adaptation of its parts to the end, and commonly beautiful in form. But it ends here, rarely penetrating the mass, and producing positive results. The Conservatoire des Arts, for instance, is full of beautiful and ingenious ploughs; while France is tilled with heavy, costly, and cumbrous implements of this nature. One sees light mould turning up, here, under a sort of agricultural diligences, drawn by four, and even six heavy horses, which in America would be done quite as well, and much sooner, by two. You know I am farmer enough to understand what I say, on a point like this. In France, the cutlery, ironware, glass, door-fastenings, hinges, locks, fire-irons, axes, hatchets, carpenter's tools, and, in short, almost everything that is connected with homely industry and homely comfort, is inferior to the same thing in America. It is true, many of our articles are imported, but this produces no change in the habits of the respective people; our manufactories are merely in Birmingham, instead of being in Philadelphia.

I have now been long enough in France to understand that seeing an article in an exhibition like the one I am describing, is no proof that it enters at all into the comforts and civilization of the nation, although it may be an object as homely as a harrow or a spade. The scientific part of the country has little influence, in this way, on the operative. The chasm between knowledge and ignorance is so vast in France, that it requires a long time for the simplest idea to find its way across it.

Exhibitions are everywhere bad guides to the average civilization of a country, as it is usual to expose only the objects that have been wrought with the greatest care. In a popular sense, they are proofs of what can be done, rather than of what is done. The cloths that I saw in the booths, for instance, are not to be met with in the shops; the specimens of fire-arms, glass, cutlery, etc., etc., too, are all much superior to anything one finds on sale. But this is the case everywhere, from the boarding-school to the military parade, men invariably putting the best foot foremost when they are to be especially inspected. This is not the difference I mean. Familiar as every American, at all accustomed to the usages of genteel life in his own country, must be with the better manufactures of Great Britain, I think he would be struck by the inferiority of even the best specimens of the commoner articles that were here laid before the public. But when it came to the articles of elegance and luxury, as connected with forms, taste, and execution, though not always in ingenuity and extent of comfort, I should think that no Englishman, let his rank in life be what it would, could pass through this wilderness of elegancies without wonder.

Even the manufactures in which we, or rather the English (for I now refer more to use than to production), ordinarily excel, such as carpets, rugs, porcelain, plate, and all the higher articles of personal comfort, as exceptions, surpass those of which we have any notion. I say, as exceptions, not in the sense by which we distinguish the extraordinary efforts of the ordinary manufacturer, in order to make a figure at an exhibition, but certain objects produced in certain exclusive establishments that are chiefly the property of the crown, as they have been the offspring of regal taste and magnificence.

Of this latter character is the Sevres china. There are manufactures of this name of a quality that brings them within the reach of moderate fortunes, it is true; but one obtains no idea of the length to which luxury and taste have been pushed in this branch of art without examining the objects made especially for the king, who is in the habit of distributing them as presents among the crowned heads and his personal favourites. After the ware has been made with the greatest care and of the best materials, artists of celebrity are employed to paint it. You can easily imagine the value of these articles, when you remember that each plate has a design of its own, beautifully executed in colours, and presenting a landscape or an historical subject that is fit to be framed and suspended in a gallery. One or two of the artists employed in this manner have great reputations, and it is no uncommon thing to see miniatures in gilded frames which, on examination, prove to be on porcelain. Of course the painting has been subject to the action of heat in the baking. As respects the miniatures, there is not much to be said in their favour. They are well drawn and well enough coloured; but the process and the material give them a glossy, unnatural appearance, which must prevent them from ever being considered as more than so many tours de force in the arts. But on vases, dinner-sets, and all ornamental furniture of this nature, in which we look for the peculiarities of the material, they produce a magnificence of effect that I cannot describe. Vases of the value of ten or fifteen thousand francs, or even of more money, are not uncommon; and at the exhibition there was a little table, the price of which I believe was two thousand dollars, that was a perfect treasure in its way.

Busts, and even statues, I believe, have been attempted in this branch of art. This of course is enlisting the statuary as well as the painter in its service. I remember to have seen, when at Sevres, many busts of the late Duc de Berri in the process of drying, previously to being put into the oven. Our cicerone on that occasion made us laugh by the routine with which he went through his catalogue of wonders. He had pointed out to us the unbaked busts in a particular room, and on entering another apartment, where the baked busts were standing, he exclaimed—"Ah! voila son Altesse Royale toute cuite." This is just the amount of the criticism I should hazard on this branch of the Sevres art, or on that which exceeds its legitimate limits—"Behold his Royal Highness, ready cooked."

The value of some of the single plates must be very considerable, and the king frequently, in presenting a solitary vase, or ornament of the Sevres porcelain, presents thousands.

The tapestry is another of the costly works that it has suited the policy of France to keep up, while her ploughs, and axes, and carts, and other ordinary implements, are still so primitive and awkward. The exhibition contained many specimens from the Gobelins that greatly surpassed my expectations. They were chiefly historical subjects, with the figures larger than life, and might very well have passed with a novice, at a little distance, for oil-paintings. The dimensions of the apartment are taken, and the subject is designed, of course, on a scale suited to the room. The effect of this species of ornament is very noble and imposing, and the tapestries have the additional merit of warmth and comfort. Hangings in cloth are very common in Paris, but the tapestry of the Gobelins is chiefly confined to the royal palaces. Our neighbour the Duc de —— has some of it, however, in his hotel, a present from the king; but the colours are much faded, and the work is otherwise the worse for time. I have heard him say that one piece he has, even in its dilapidated state, is valued at seven thousand francs. Occasionally a little of this tapestry is found in this manner in the great hotels; but, as a rule, its use is strictly royal.

The paper for hangings is another article in which the French excel. We get very pretty specimens of their skill in this manufacture in America, but, with occasional exceptions, nothing that is strictly magnificent finds its way into our markets. I was much struck with some of these hangings that were made to imitate velvet. The cloth appeared to be actually incorporated with the paper, and by no ingenuity of which I was master could I detect the means. The style of paper is common enough everywhere, but this exhibition had qualities far surpassing anything of the sort I had ever before seen. Curiosity has since led me to the paper-maker, in order to penetrate the secrets of his art; and there, like the affair of Columbus and the egg, I found the whole thing as simple as heart could wish. You will probably smile when you learn the process by which paper is converted into velvet, which is briefly this:—

Wooden moulds are used to stamp the designs, each colour being put on, by laying a separate mould on its proper place, one mould being used after another, though only one is used on any particular occasion. Thus, all the black is put on now, the green to-morrow, and the yellow next day. As to the velvets, they are produced as follows:—Wool is chopped fine, and dyed the desired hue. I am not certain that cotton, or even other materials, may not be used. This chopped and coloured wool is thrown into a tub; the mould is covered with some glutinous substance, and, when applied, it leaves on the paper the adhesive property, as types leave the ink. The paper passes immediately over the tub, and a boy throws on the wool. A light blow or two, of a rattan, tosses it about, and finally throws all back again into the tub that has not touched the glue. The printed part, of course, is covered with blue, or purple, or scarlet wood, and is converted, by a touch of the wand, into velvet! The process of covering a yard lasts about ten seconds, and I should think considerably more than a hundred yards of paper could be velvetized in an hour. We laughed at the discovery, and came away satisfied that Solomon could have known nothing about manufacturing paper-hangings, or he would not have said there was nothing "new under the sun."

But the manufacture of France that struck me as being strictly in the best taste, in which perfection and magnificence are attained without recourse to conceits, or doing violence to any of the proprieties, are the products of the Savonnerie, and the exquisitely designed and executed works of Beauvais. These include chair bottoms and backs, hangings for rooms, and, I believe, carpets. At all events, if the carpets do not come from these places, they are quite worthy to have that extraction. Flowers, arabesques, and other similar designs, exquisitely coloured and drawn, chiefly limit the efforts of the former; and the carpets were in single pieces, and made to fit the room. Nothing that you have ever seen, or probably have imagined, at all equals the magnificence of some of these princely carpets. Indeed, I know nothing that runs a closer parallel to the general civilization between France and England, and I might almost add of America, than the history of their respective carpets. In France, a vast majority of the people hardly know what a carpet is. They use mud floors, or, rising a little above the very lowest classes, coarse stone and rude tiles are substituted. The middling classes, out of the large towns, have little else besides painted tiles. The wooden parquet is met with, in all the better houses, and is well made and well kept. There is a finish and beauty about them, that is not misplaced even in a palace. Among all these classes, until quite lately, carpets were unknown, or at least they were confined to the very highest class of society. The great influx of English has introduced them into the public hotels and common lodging-houses; but I have visited among many French of rank and fortune, in the dead of winter, and found no carpets. A few of a very coarse quality, made of rags, adroitly tortured into laboured designs, are seen, it is true, even in indifferent houses; but the rule is as I have told you. In short, carpets, in this country, until quite lately, have been deemed articles of high luxury; and, like nearly everything else that is magnificent and luxurious, at the point where they have been taken up, they infinitely exceed anything of the sort in England. The classical designs, perfect drawings, and brilliant colours, defeat every effort to surpass them,—I had almost said, all competition.

In all America, except in the new regions, with here and there a dwelling on the frontier, there is scarcely a house to be found without carpets, the owners of which are at all above the labouring classes. Even in many of the latter they are to be found. We are carpeted, frequently, from the kitchen to the garret; the richness and rarity of the manufacture increasing as we ascend in the scale of wealth and fashion, until we reach the uttermost limits of our habits—a point where beauty and neatness verge upon elegance and magnificence. At this point, however, we stop, and the turn of the French commences. Now this is the history of the comparative civilization of the two countries, in a multitude of other matters; perhaps, it would be better to say, it is the general comparative history of the two countries. The English differ from us, only, in carrying their scale both higher and lower than ourselves; in being sometimes magnificent, and sometimes impoverished; but, rarely, indeed, do they equal the French in the light, classical, and elegant taste that so eminently distinguishes these people. There is something ponderous and purse-proud about the magnificence of England, that is scarcely ever visible here; though taste is evidently and rapidly on the increase in England on the one hand, as comfort is here on the other. The French have even partially adopted the two words "fashionable" and "comfortable."

One of the most curious things connected with the arts in France, is that of transferring old pictures from wood to canvass. A large proportion of the paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were done on wood or copper, and many of the former are, or have been, in danger of being lost, from decay. In order to meet the evil, a process has been invented by which the painting is transferred to canvass, where it remains, to all appearance, as good as ever. I have taken some pains to ascertain in what manner this nice operation is performed. I have seen pictures in various stages of the process, though I have never watched any one through it all; and, in one instance, I saw a small Wouvermans stripped to the shirt, if it may be so expressed, or, in other words, when it was nothing but paint. From what I have seen and been told, I understand the mode of effecting this delicate and almost incredible operation to be as follows:—

A glue is rubbed over the face of the picture, which is then laid on a piece of canvass that is properly stretched and secured, to receive it. Weights are now laid on the back of the picture, and it is left for a day or two, in order that the glue may harden. The weights are then removed, and the operator commences removing the wood, first with a plane, and, when he approaches the paint, with sharp delicate chisels. The paint is kept in its place by the canvass to which it is glued, and which is itself secured to the table; and although the entire body of the colours, hardened as it is by time, is usually not thicker than a thin wafer, the wood is commonly taken entirely from it. Should a thin fragment be left, however, or a crack made in the paint, it is considered of no great moment. The Wouvermans alluded to, was pure paint, however, and I was shown the pieces of wood, much worm-eaten, that had been removed. When the wood is away, glue is applied to the back of the paint, and to the canvass on which it is intended the picture shall remain. The latter is then laid on the paint; new weights are placed above it, and they are left two or three days longer, for this new glue to harden. When it is thought the adhesion between the second canvass and the paint is sufficient, the weights are removed, the picture is turned, and warm water is used in loosening the first canvass from the face of the picture, until it can be stripped off. More or less of the varnish of the picture usually comes off with the glue, rendering the separation easier. The painting is then cleaned, retouched, and, should it be necessary, varnished and framed; after which it commonly looks as well, and is really as sound and as good as ever, so far, at least, as the consistency is concerned.

Among other wonders in the exhibition, was the coronation coach of Charles X. This carriage is truly magnificent. It is quite large, as indeed are all the royal carriages, perhaps as large as an American stage-coach; the glass, pure and spotless as air, goes all round the upper compartments, so as to admit of a view of the whole interior; the panels are beautifully painted in design; the top has gilded and well-formed angels blowing trumpets, and the crown of France surmounts the centre. The wheels, and train, and pole, are red, striped with gold. All the leather is red morocco, gilt, as is the harness. Plumes of ostrich feathers ornament the angles, and, altogether, it is a most glittering and gorgeous vehicle. The paintings, the gildings, and all the details are well executed, except the running gear, which struck me as clumsy and imperfect. The cost is said to have been about sixty thousand dollars.

Many new rooms in the Louvre were thrown open on this occasion, in order that the paintings on their ceilings might be viewed; and as I walked through this gorgeous magnificence, I felt how small were our highest pretensions to anything like elegance or splendour. The very extreme of art, of this nature, may, of itself, be of no great direct benefit, it is true; but is should be remembered, that the skill which produces these extraordinary fruits, in its road to the higher points of magnificence, produces all that embellishes life in the intermediate gradations.

In America, in the eagerness of gain, and with the contracted habits that a love of gain engenders, which by their own avidity, as is usual with the grosser passions, too often defeat their own ends, we overlook the vast importance of cultivating the fine arts, even in a pecuniary sense, to say nothing of the increased means of enjoying the very money that is so blindly pursued, which their possession entails. France is at this moment laying all Christendom under contribution, simply by means of her taste. Italy, where the arts have flourished still longer, and where they have still more effectually penetrated society, would drive the English and French out of every market on earth, were the national energy at all equal to the national tastes. These things do not as exclusively belong to extreme luxury as they may at first seem. Science, skill of the nicest investigation, and great research, are all enlisted in their behalf; and, in time, implements of the most homely uses derive perfection, as by-plays, from the investigations consequent on the production of luxuries. It is true, that, by blending a certain amount of information with practice, as in the case of the American labourer, our wants find the means of furnishing their own supplies; but, apart from the fact that the man who makes a chair is not obliged to sit in it, and is therefore content to consult his profits merely, the impulses of practice are much aided by the accumulated knowledge of study. The influence that the arts of design have had on the French manufactures is incalculable. They have brought in the aid of chemistry, and mathematics, and a knowledge of antiquity; and we can trace the effects in the bronzes, the porcelain, the hangings, the chintzes, the silks, down to the very ribands of the country. We shall in vain endeavour to compete with the great European nations, unless we make stronger efforts to cultivate the fine arts. Of what avails our beautiful glass, unless we know how to cut it? or of what great advantage, in the strife of industry, will be even the skilful glass-cutter, should he not also be the tasteful glass-cutter? It is true that classical forms and proportions are, as yet, of no great account among us; and the great mass of the American people still cling to their own uninstructed fancies, in preference to the outlines and proportions of the more approved models, and to those hues which art has demonstrated to be harmonious. This is the history of every society in its progress to perfection; and, cut off as we are from the rest of the civilized world, it is not to be expected that we are to make an extraordinary exception. But, while we may be satisfied with our own skill and taste, the happy lot of all ignorance, our customers will not have the same self-complacency, to induce them to become purchasers. We find this truth already. We beat all nations in the fabrication of common unstamped cottons. Were trade as free as some political economists pretend, we should drive all our competitors out of every market, as respects this one article. But the moment we attempt to print, or to meddle with that part of the business which requires taste, we find ourselves inferior to the Europeans, whose forms we are compelled to imitate, and of course to receive when no longer novel, and whose hues defy our art.

The wisest thing the United States could do, would be to appropriate thirty or forty millions to the formation of a marine, not to secure the coast, as our hen-roost statesmen are always preaching, but to keep in our own hands the control of our own fortunes, by rendering our enmity or friendship of so much account to Europe that no power shall ever again dare trespass on our national rights:—and one of the next wisest measures, I honestly believe, would be to appropriate at once a million to the formation of a National Gallery, in which copies of the antique, antiques themselves, pictures, bronzes, arabesques, and other models of true taste, might be collected, before which the young aspirants for fame might study, and with which become imbued, as the preliminary step to an infusion of their merits into society. Without including the vast influence of such a cultivation on the manners, associations, intellects, and habits of the people—an influence that can scarcely be appreciated too highly—fifty years would see the first cost returned fifty-fold in the shape of the much-beloved dollars. Will this happen? Not till men of enlightened minds—statesmen, instead of political partizans—are sent to Washington. It is the misfortune of America to lie so remote from the rest of the civilized world, as to feel little of the impulses of a noble competition, our rivalry commonly limiting itself to the vulgar exhibitions of individual vanity; and this the more to our disadvantage, as, denied access to the best models for even this humble species of contention with the antagonists we are compelled to choose, victory is as bad as defeat.

One of the great impediments to a high class of improvement in America, is the disposition to resent every intimation that we can be any better than we are at present. Few, perhaps no country, has ever enduced so much evil-disposed and unmerited abuse as our own. It is not difficult to trace the reasons, and every American should meet it with a just and manly indignation. But, being deemed a nation of rogues, barbarous, and manifesting the vices of an ancestry of convicts, is a very different thing from standing at the head of civilization. This tendency to repel every suggestion of inferiority is one of the surest signs of provincial habits; it is exactly the feeling with which the resident of the village resents what he calls the airs of the town, and that which the inland trader brings with him among those whom he terms the "dandies" of the sea-board. In short, it is the jealousy of inferiority on the exciting points; whatever may be the merits of its subject in other matters, and furnishes of itself the best possible proof that there is room for amendment. The French have a clever and pithy saying, that of—"On peut tout dire a un grand peuple." "One may tell all to a great nation."[17]

[Footnote 17:—Every one was telling me that I should find the country so altered after an absence of eight years, that I should not know it. Altered, indeed, I found it, but not quite so evidently improved. It struck me that there was a vast expansion of mediocrity that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood prominent as more excellent. This was perhaps no more than a natural consequence of the elasticity and growth of a young, vigorous community, which, in its agregate character, as in that of its individuals, must pass through youth to arrive at manhood. Still it was painful and doubly so to one coming from Europe. I saw the towns increased, more tawdry than ever, but absolutely with less real taste than they had in my youth. The art of painting alone appeared to me to have made any material advances in the right direction, if one excepts increase in wealth, and in the facilities to create wealth. The steam-boats were the only objects that approached magnificence; but while they had increased in show, they had less comfort and respectability. The taverns, as a whole, had deteriorated; though the three first I happened to enter might well compete with a very high class of European inns, viz. Head's, Barnum's, and Gadsby's.]



LETTER XIV.

False Notions.—Continental Manners.—People of Paris.—Parisian Women. —French Beauty.—Men of France.—French Soldiers.

To JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY.

I cannot tell you whence the vulgar notions that we entertain of the French, which, with many other pernicious prejudices, have made a part of our great inheritance from England, have been originally obtained. Certainly I have seen no thing, nor any person, after a long residence in the country, to serve as models to the flippant marquis, the overdressed courtiers, or the petites maitresses of the English dramatists. Even a French perruquier is quite as homely and plain a personage as an English or an American barber. But these Athenians grossly caricature themselves as well as their neighbours. Although Paris is pretty well garnished with English of all degrees, from the Duke down, it has never yet been my luck to encounter an English dandy. Now and then one meets with a "dresser," a man who thinks more of his appearance than becomes his manhood, or than comports with good breeding; and occasionally a woman is seen who is a mere appendage to her attire; but I am persuaded, that, as a rule, neither of these vulgar classes exists among people of any condition, in either country. It is impossible for me to say what changes the revolution, and the wars and the new notions, may have produced in France, but there is no sufficient reason for believing that the present cropped and fringeless, bewhiskered, and laceless generation of France, differs more from their bewigged, belaced, and powdered predecessors, than the men and women of any other country differ from their particular ancestors. Boys wore cocked hats, and breaches, and swords, in America, previously to the revolution; and our immediate fathers flourished in scarlet coats, powder, ruffled fingers, and embroidered waistcoats.

The manners of the continent of Europe are more finished than those of England, and while quiet and simplicity are the governing rules of good breeding everywhere, even in unsophisticated America, this quiet and simplicity is more gracious and more graceful in France than in the neighbouring island. As yet, I see no other difference in mere deportment, though there is abundance when one goes into the examination of character.

I have met with a good many people of the old court at Paris, and though now and then there is a certain roue atmosphere about them, both men and women, as if too much time had been passed at Coblentz, they have generally, in other respects, been models of elegant demeanour. Usually they are simple, dignified, and yet extremely gracious—gracious without the appearance of affability, a quality that is almost always indicative of a consciousness of superiority. The predominant fault of manner here is too strong a hand in applying flattery; but this is as much the fault of the head as of breeding. The French are fond of hearing pleasant things. They say themselves that "a Frenchman goes into society to make himself agreeable, and an Englishman to make himself disagreeable;" and the dire is not altogether without foundation in truth. I never met a Frenchman in society here, who appeared to wish to enhance his importance by what are called "airs," though a coxcomb in feeling is an animal not altogether unknown to the natural history of Paris, nor is the zoological science of M. Cuvier indispensable to his discovery.

I shall probably surprise you with one of my opinions. I think the population of Paris, physically speaking, finer than that of London. Fine men and fine women are, by no means, as frequent, after allowing for the difference in whole numbers, in the French, as in the English capital; but neither are there as many miserable, pallid, and squalid objects. The French are a smaller race than the English, much smaller than the race of English gentlemen, so many of whom congregate at London; but the population of Paris has a sturdy, healthful look, that I do not think is by any means as general in London. In making this comparison, allowance must be made for the better dress of the English, and for their fogs, whose effect is to bleach the skin and to give a colour that has no necessary connexion with the springs of life, although the female portion of the population of Paris has probably as much colour as that of London. It might possibly be safer to say that the female population of Paris is finer than that of London, though I think on the whole the males may be included also. I do not mean by this, that there is relatively as much female beauty in Paris as in London, for in this respect the latter has immeasurably the advantage; but, looks apart, that the physique of the French of Paris is superior to that of the English of London. The population of Paris is a favourable specimen of that of the kingdom; while that of London, Westminster excepted, is not at all above the level of the entire country, if indeed it be as good.[18]

[Footnote 18: This opinion remains the same in the writer, who between the years 1806 and 1833 has been six times in London, and between the years 1826 and 1833, five times in Paris. In 1833 he left Paris for London, sailing for home from the latter place. A few days after his arrival he went to Washington, where during the session of Congress, dress and air not considered, he thought he had never met so large a proportion of fine men in any part of the world. He was particularly struck with their size, as was an American friend who was with him, and who had also passed many years abroad, having left Liverpool the same day the writer sailed from Portsmouth.]

The very general notion which exists in America, that the French are a slightly-built, airy people, and that their women in particular are thin and without embonpoint, is a most extraordinary one, for there is not a particle of foundation for it. The women of Paris are about as tall as the women of America, and, could a fair sample of the two nations be placed in the scales, I have no doubt it would be found that the French women would outweigh the Americans in the proportion of six to five. Instead of being meagre, they are compactly built, with good busts, inclining to be full, and well-limbed, as any one may see who will take the trouble to walk the streets after a hard shower; for, as Falstaff told Prince Henry, "You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care not who sees your back." Indeed, I know no females to whom the opinion which we entertain of the French women may better apply than to our own, and yet I know none who are so generally well-looking.

The French are not a handsome nation. Personal beauty in either sex is rare: there is a want of simplicity, of repose, of dignity, and even of harmonious expression, what they themselves call finesse, in their countenances, and yet the liveliness of the eyes and the joyous character of their looks render them agreeable. You are not to understand from this that great personal beauty does not exist in France, however, for there are so many exceptions to the rule, that they have occasionally made me hesitate about believing it a rule at all. The French often possess a feature in great perfection that is very rare in England, where personal beauty is so common in both sexes. It is in the mouth, and particularly in the smile. Want of finesse about the mouth is a general European deficiency (the Italians have more of it than any other people I know), and it is as prevalent an advantage in America. But the races of Saxon root fail in the chin, which wants nobleness and volume. Here it is quite common to see profiles that would seem in their proper places on a Roman coin.

Although female beauty is not common in France, when it is found, it is usually of a very high order. The sweet, cherub-like, guileless expression that belongs to the English female face, and through it to the American, is hardly ever, perhaps never, met with here. The French countenance seldom conveys the idea of extreme infantile innocence. Even in the children there is a manner which, while it does not absolutely convey an impression of an absence of the virtues, I think leaves less conviction of its belonging to the soul of the being, than the peculiar look I mean. One always sees woman—modest, amiable, spirituelle, feminine and attractive, if you will, in a French girl; while one sometimes sees an angel in a young English or American face. I have no allusion now to religious education, or to religious feelings, which are quite as general in the sex, particularly the young of good families, under their characteristic distinctions, here as anywhere else. In this particular the great difference is, that in America it is religion, and in France it is infidelity, that is metaphysical.

There is a coquettish prettiness that is quite common in France, in which air and manner are mingled with a certain sauciness of expression that is not easily described, but which, while it blends well enough with the style of the face, is rather pleasing than captivating. It marks the peculiar beauty of the grisette, who, with her little cap, hands stuck in the pockets of her apron, mincing walk, coquettish eye, and well-balanced head, is a creature perfectly sui generis. Such a girl is more like an actress imitating the character, than one is apt to imagine the character itself. I have met with imitators of these roguish beauties in a higher station, such as the wives and daughters of the industrious classes, as it is the fashion to call them here, and even among the banking community, but never among women of condition, whose deportment in France, whatever may be their morals, is usually marked by gentility of air, and a perfectly good tone of manner, always excepting that small taint of roueism to which I have already alluded, and which certainly must have come from the camp and emigration.

The highest style of the French beauty is the classical. I cannot recall a more lovely picture, a finer union of the grand and the feminine, than the Duchesse de ——, in full dress, at a carnival ball, where she shone peerless among hundreds of the elite of Europe. I see her now, with her small, well-seated head; her large, dark, brilliant eye, rivetted on the mazes of a Polonaise, danced in character; her hair, black as the raven's wing, clustering over a brow of ivory; her graceful form slightly inclining forward in delighted and graceful attention; her features just Grecian enough to be a model of delicate beauty, just Roman enough to be noble; her colour heightened to that of youth by the heat of the room, and her costume, in which all the art of Paris was blended with a critical knowledge of the just and the becoming. And yet this woman was a grandmother!

The men of France have the same physical and the same conventional peculiarities as the women. They are short, but sturdy. Including all France, for there is a material difference in this respect between the north and the south, I should think the average stature of the French men (not women) to be quite an inch and a half below the average stature of America, and possibly two inches. At home, I did not find myself greatly above the medium height, and in a crowd I was always compelled to stand on tiptoe to look over the heads of those around me; whereas, here, I am evidently un grand, and can see across the Champs Elysees without any difficulty. You may remember that I stand as near as may be to five feet ten; it follows that five feet ten is rather a tall man in France. You are not to suppose, however, that there are not occasionally men of great stature in this country. One of the largest men I have ever seen appears daily in the garden of the Tuileries, and I am told he is a Frenchman of one of the north-eastern provinces. That part of the kingdom is German rather than French, however, and the population still retain most of the peculiarities of their origin.

The army has a look of service and activity rather than of force. I should think it more formidable by its manoeuvres than its charges. Indeed, the tactics of Napoleon, who used the legs of his troops more than their muskets, aiming at concentrating masses on important points, goes to show that he depended on alertness instead of bottom. This is just the quality that would be most likely to prevail against your methodical, slow-thinking, and slow-moving German; and I make no question the short, sturdy, nimble legs of the little warriors of this country have gained many a field.

A general officer, himself a six-footer, told me, lately, that they had found the tall men of very little use in the field, from their inability to endure the fatigues of a campaign. When armies shall march on railroads, and manoeuvre by steam, the grenadiers will come in play again; but as it is, the French are admirably adapted by their physique to return the career that history has given them. The Romans resembled them in this respect, Cicero admitting that many people excelled them in size, strength, beauty, and even learning, though he claimed a superiority for his countrymen, on the score of love of country and reverence for the gods. The French are certainly patriotic enough, though their reverence for the gods may possibly be questioned.

The regiments of the guards, the heavy cavalry, and the artillery are all filled with men chosen with some care. These troops would, I think, form about an average American army, on the score of size. The battalions of the line receive the rest. As much attention is bestowed in adapting the duty to the physique, and entire corps are composed of men of as nearly as possible the same physical force, some of the regiments certainly make but an indifferent figure, as to dimensions, while others appear particularly well. Still, if not overworked, I should think these short men would do good service. I think I have seen one or two regiments, in which the average height has not exceeded five feet three inches. The chances of not being hit in such a corps are worth something, for the proportion, compared to the chances in a corps of six-footers, is as sixty-three to seventy-two, or is one-eighth in favour of the Lilliputians. I believe the rule for retreating is when one-third of the men are hors de combat.

Now, supposing a regiment of three thousand grenadiers were obliged to retire with a loss of one thousand men, the little fellows, under the same fire, should have, at the same time, two thousand one hundred and thirty-seven sound men left, and of course, unless bullied out of it, they ought to gain the day.



LETTER XV.

Perversion of Institutions.—The French Academy.—Laplace.—Astronomy. —Theatres of Paris.—Immoral Plot.—Artificial Feelings.—French Tragedy.—Literary Mania.—The American Press.—American Newspapers.—French Journals—Publishing Manoeuvres.—Madame Malibran.

To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE.

It appears to be the melancholy lot of humanity, that every institution which ingenuity can devise shall be perverted to an end different from the legitimate. If we plan a democracy, the craven wretch who, in a despotism, would be the parasite of a monarch, heads us off, and gets the best of it under the pretence of extreme love for the people; if we flatter ourselves that by throwing power into the hands of the rich and noble, it is put beyond the temptation to abuse it, we soon discover that rich is a term of convention, no one thinking he has enough until he has all, and that nobility of station has no absolute connexion with nobleness of spirit or of conduct; if we confide all to one, indolence, favouritism, and indeed the impossibility of supervision, throws us again into the hands of the demagogue, in his new, or rather true character of a courtier. So it is with life; in politics, religion, arms, arts and letters, yea, even the republic of letters, as it is called, is the prey of schemes and parasites, and things in fact, are very different from things as they seem to be.

"In the seventeen years that I have been a married man," said Captain —— of the British navy, "I have passed but seventeen months with my wife and family," "But, now there is peace, you will pass a few years quietly in America, to look after your affairs," said I, by way of awkward condolence. "No, indeed; I shall return to England as soon as possible, to make up for lost time. I have been kept so much at sea, that they have forgotten me at home, and duty to my children requires that I should be on the spot." In the simplicity of my heart, I thought this strange, and yet nothing could be more true. Captain —— was a scion of the English aristocracy, and looked to his sword for his fortune. Storms, fagging, cruising, all were of small avail compared to interest at the Admiralty, and so it is with all things else, whether in Europe or America. The man who really gains the victory, is lucky, indeed, if he obtain the meed of his skill and valour. You may be curious to know of what all this is a propos? To be frank with, you, I have visited the French Academy—"ces quarante qui ont l'esprit comme quatre," and have come away fully impressed with the vanity of human things!

The occasion was the reception of two or three new members, when, according to a settled usage, the successful candidates pronounced eulogies on their predecessors. You may be curious to know what impression the assembled genius of France produced on a stranger from the western world. I can only answer, none. The Academy of the Sciences can scarcely ever be less than distinguished in such a nation; but when I came to look about me, and to inquire after the purely literary men, I was forcibly struck with the feebleness of the catalogue of names. Not one in five was at all known to me, and very few, even of those who were, could properly be classed among the celebrated writers of the day. As France has many very clever men who were not on the list, I was desirous of knowing the reason, and then learned that intrigue, court-favour, and "log-rolling" to use a quaint American term, made members of the academy as well as members of the cabinet. A moment's reflection might have told me it could not well be otherwise. It would be so in America, if we were burthened with an academy; it is so as respects collegiate honours; and what reason is there for supposing it should not be so in a country so notoriously addicted to intrigue as France?

One ought not to be the dupe of these things. There are a few great names, distinguished by common consent, whose claims it is necessary to respect. These men form the front of every honorary institution; if there are to be knights and nobles, and academicians, they must be of the number; not that such distinctions are necessary to them, but that they are necessary to the distinctions; after which the oi polloi are enrolled as they can find interest. Something very like an admission of this is contained in an inscription on the statue of Moliere, which stands in the vestibule of the hall of the Academy, which frankly says, "Though we are not necessary to your glory, you are necessary to ours." He was excluded from the forty, by intrigue, on account of his profession being that of a player. Shakspeare, himself, would have fared no better. Now, fancy a country in which there was a club of select authors, that should refuse to enrol the name of William Shakspeare on their list!

The sitting was well attended, and I dare say the addresses were not amiss; though there is something exceedingly tiresome in one of these eulogies, that is perpetrated by malice prepense. The audience applauded very much, after the fashion of those impromptus which are made a loisir, and I could not but fancy that a good portion of the assembly began to think the Academy was what the cockneys call a rum place, before they heard the last of it. We had a poem by Comte Daru, to which I confess I did not listen, notwithstanding my personal respect for the distinguished writer, simply because I was most heartily wearied before he began, and because I can never make anything of French poetry, in the Academy or out of it.

It would be unjust to speak lightly of any part of the French Academy, without a passing remark in honour of those sections of it to which honour is due. In these sections may be included, I think, that of the arts, as well as that of the sciences. The number of respectable artists that exist in this country is perfectly astonishing. The connoisseurs, I believe, dispute the merits of the school, and ignorant as I am, in such matters, I can myself see that there is a prevalent disposition, both in statuary and painting, to sacrifice simplicity to details, and that the theatrical is sometimes mistaken for the grand; but, after admitting both these faults, and some defects in colouring, there still remains a sufficient accumulation of merit, to create wonder in one, like myself, who has not had previous opportunities of ascertaining the affluence of a great nation in this respect.

As regards the scientific attainments of the French, it is unnecessary to say anything; though I believe you will admit that they ought at least to have the effect of counteracting some of the prejudices about dancing-masters, petits maitres, and perruquiers, that have descended to us, through English novels and plays. Such a man as Laplace, alone, is sufficient to redeem an entire people from these imputations. The very sight of one of his demonstrations will give common men, like ourselves, headaches, and you will remember that having successfully got through one of the toughest of them, he felicitated himself that there was but one other man living who could comprehend it, now it was made.

What a noble gift would it have been to his fellow-creatures, had some competent follower of Laplace bestowed on them a comprehensive but popular compend of the leading astronomical facts, to be used as one of the most ordinary school-books! Apart from the general usefulness of this peculiar species of knowledge, and the chances that, by thus popularizing the study, sparks might be struck from the spirit of some dormant Newton, I know no inquiry that has so strong a tendency to raise the mind from the gross and vulgar pursuits of the world, to a contemplation of the power and designs of God. It has often happened to me, when, filled with wonder and respect for the daring and art of man, I have been wandering through the gorgeous halls of some palace, or other public edifice, that an orrery or a diagram of the planetary system has met my eye, and recalled me, in a moment, from the consideration of art, and its intrinsic feebleness, to that of the sublimity of nature. At such times, this globe has appeared so insignificant, in comparison with the mighty system of which it forms so secondary a part, that I felt a truly philosophical indifference, not to give it a better term, for all it contained. Admiration of human powers, as connected with the objects around me, has been lost in admiration of the mysterious spirit which could penetrate the remote and sublime secrets of the science; and on no other occasions have I felt so profound a conviction of my own isolated insignificance, or so lively a perception of the stupendous majesty of the Deity.

Passing by the common and conceded facts of the dimensions of the planets, and the extent of their orbits, what thoughts are awakened by the suggestion that the fixed stars are the centres of other solar systems, and the eccentric comets are links to connect them all in one great and harmonious design! The astronomers tell us that some of these comets have no visible nucleuses—that the fixed stars are seen through their apparent densest parts, and that they can be nothing but luminous gases; while, on the other hand, others do betray dark compact bodies of more solid matter. Fixed stars unaccountably disappear, as if suddenly struck out of their places. Now, we know that aerolites are formed in the atmosphere by a natural process, and descend in masses of pure iron. Why may not the matter of one globe, dispersed into its elements by the fusion of its consummation, reassemble in the shape of comets, gaseous at first, and slowly increasing and condensing in the form of solid matter, varying in their course as they acquire the property of attraction, until they finally settle into new and regular planetary orbits by the power of their own masses, thus establishing a regular reproduction of worlds to meet the waste of eternity? Were the earth dissolved into gases by fusion, what would become of its satellite the moon? Might not the principles of our planet, thus volatilized, yield to its nearer attraction, assemble around that orb, which, losing its governing influence, should be left to wander in infinite space, subject to a new but eccentric law of gravity, until finally reduced again within the limits of some new system? How know we that such is not the origin of comets?

Many astronomers have believed that the solar system, in company with thousands of other systems, revolves around a common centre, in orbits so vast as to defy computation, and a religious sentiment might well suggest that this centre of the universe is the throne of the Most High. Here we may fancy the Deity seated in power, and controlling, by his will, the movements of worlds, directing each to the completion of his own mysterious and benevolent designs.

It certainly might be dangerous to push our speculations too far, but there can be no risk in familiarizing men to consider the omnipotence of God, and to feel their own comparative insignificance. What ideas of vastness are obtained by a knowledge of the fact that there exist stars in the firmament which ordinary telescopes show us only as single bodies, but which, on examination, by using reflectors of a higher power, are found to be clusters of orbs—clusters of worlds—or clusters of suns! These, again, are found to be binary stars, or two stars revolving round each other, while they are thought, at the same time, to revolve around their central sun, and accompanied by this again, probably, to revolve round the great common centre of all!

But, in the words of the quaint old song, I must cry "Holla! my fancy, whither dost thou go?" Before taking leave of the stars altogether, however, I will add that the French, and I believe all Europe, with the exception of England, follow the natural order of time, in counting the seasons. Thus the spring commences with the vernal equinox, and the autumn with the autumnal. This division of the year leaves nearly the whole of March as a winter month, June as a spring month, and September as belonging to the summer. No general division of the seasons can suit all latitudes; but the equinoxes certainly suggest the only two great events of the year, that equally affect the entire sphere. Had the old method of computing time continued, the seasons would gradually have made the circle of the months, until their order was reversed as they are now known to be in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Quitting the Academy, which, with its schools of the classical and the romantic, has tempted me to a higher flight than I could have believed possible, let us descend to the theatres of Paris. Talma was still playing last year, when we arrived, and as in the case of repentance, I put off a visit to the Theatre Francais, with a full determination to go, because it might be made at any time. In the meanwhile, he fell ill and died, and it never was my good fortune to see that great actor. Mademoiselle Mars I have seen, and, certainly, in her line of characters, I have never beheld her equal. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to conceive of a purer, more severe, more faultless, and yet more poetical representation of common nature, than that which characterizes her art. Her acting has all the finish of high breeding, with just as much feeling as is necessary to keep alive the illusion. As for rant, there is not as much about her whole system, as would serve a common English, or American actress, for a single "length."

To be frank with you, so great is the superiority of the French actors, in vaudevilles, the light opera, and genteel comedy, that I fear I have lost my taste for the English stage. Of tragedy I say nothing, for I cannot enter into the poetry of the country at all, but, in all below it, these people, to my taste, are immeasurably our superiors; and by ours, you know I include the English stage. The different lines here, are divided among the different theatres; so that if you wish to laugh, you can go to the Varietes; to weep, to the Theatre Francais; or, to gape, to the Odeon. At the Porte St. Martin, one finds vigorous touches of national character, and at the Gymnase, the fashionable place of resort, just at this moment, national traits polished by convention. Besides these, there are many other theatres, not one of which, in its way, can be called less than tolerable.

One can say but little in favour of the morals of too many of the pieces represented here. In this particular there is a strange obliquity of reason, arising out of habitual exaggeration of feeling, that really seems to disqualify most of the women, even from perceiving what is monstrous, provided it be sentimental and touching. I was particularly advised to go to the Theatre Madame to see a certain piece by a coterie of very amiable women, whom I met the following night at a house where we all regularly resorted, once a week. On entering, they eagerly inquired if "I had not been charmed, fascinated; if any thing could be better played, or more touching?" Better played it could not easily be, but I had been so shocked with the moral of the piece, that I could scarcely admire the acting. "The moral! This was the first time they had heard it questioned." I was obliged to explain. A certain person had been left the protector of a friend's daughter, then an infant. He had the child educated as his sister, and she grew to be a woman, ignorant of her real origin. In the meantime, she has offers of marriage, all of which she unaccountably refuses. In fine, she was secretly cherishing a passion for her guardian and supposed brother; an explanation is had, they marry, and the piece closes. I objected to the probability of a well-educated young woman's falling in love with a man old enough to be selected as her guardian, when she was an infant, and against whom there existed the trifling objection of his being her own brother.