My Unknown Chum Part 4

PARIS

This is a wonderful city. It seems to me, as I ride up and down the gay Boulevards on the roof of an omnibus, or gaze into the brilliant shop-windows of the Palais Royal, or watch the happy children in the garden of the Tuileries, or stand upon the bridges and take in as much as I can at once of gardens, palaces, and church towersit seems to me like a great theatre, filled with gay company, to whom the same grand spectacle is always being shown, and whose faces always reflect something of that brilliancy which lights up the gorgeous, never-ending, last scene of the drama. I know that the play has its underplot of vicious poverty and crime, but they shrink from the glare of the footlights and the radiance of the red fire that lights up the scene.

Taken in the abstracttaken as it appears from the outsideParis is the most perfect whole the world can show. It was a witty remark of a well-known citizen of Boston, touching the materialistic views of many of his friends, that "when good Boston people die, they go to Paris." I know many whose highest idea of heaven would find its embodiment in the sunshine of the Place de la Concorde or the gas light of the Rue de Rivoli. Paris captivates you at once. In this it differs from Rome. You do not grow to love it; you feel its charms before you have recovered from the fatigue of your journeybefore you have even reached your hotel, as you ride along and recognize the buildings and monuments which books and pictures have made familiar. In Rome all is different. Michel Angelos mighty dome, to be sure, does impress you, as you come to the city; but when you enter, the narrow streets are such a contrast to the broad, free campagna you have just left, that you feel oppressed and cramped as you ride through them. You find one of the old temples kept in repair and serving as a custom house; this is a damper at the outset, and you sigh for something to revive the ancient customs of the worlds capital. You walk into the Forum the next day, musing upon the line of the twelve Csars, and your progress is arrested, and your sense of the dramatic unities of your position deeply wounded, by an unamusing and prosaic clothes-line. You keep on and try to recall Cicero, and Catiline, and Jugurtha, and Servius Tullius, and Brutus, and Virginius,but it is useless, for you find a cow feeding there as quietly as if she were on the hills of Berkshire. The whole city seems sad and mouldy, and out of date, and you think you will "do the sights"

as rapidly as possible, and then be off. But before many days you find that all is changed. The moss that clothes those broken walls becomes as venerable in your sight as the gray hairs upon your mothers brow; the ivy that enwreathes those old towers and columns seems to have wound itself around your heart and bound it forever to that spot.

Clothes-lines, dirt, and all the inconveniences inseparable from the older civilization of Rome, fade away. The Forum, the Palace of the Csars, the Appian Way, all become instinct with a newor rather with their old life; and you feel that you are in the Rome of Livy and Sall.u.s.t,you have found the Rome of which you dreamed in boyhood, and you are happy. With Paris, as I have said, you are not obliged to serve such an apprenticeship. You have read of Paris in history, in novels, in guide-books, in the lucubrations of the whole tribe of correspondentsyou recognize it at once on seeing it, and accept it for all that it pretends to be. And you are not deceived. And this, I apprehend, is the reason why we never feel that deep, clinging affection for Paris that we do for that "G.o.ddess of all the nations, to whom nothing is equal and nothing second"that city which (as one of her prophet-poets said) shall ever be "the capital of the world, for whatever her arms have not conquered shall be hers by religion." You feel that Paris is the capital of Europe, and you bow before it as you would before a sovereign whose word was law.

I wonder whether every body judges of all new things by the criterion of childhood, as I find myself constantly doing. Whatever it may be, I apply to it the test of my youthful recollections of something similar, and it almost always suffers by the process. Those beautiful architectural wonders that pierce the sky at Strasburg and Antwerp will bear no comparison, in point of height, with the steeple of the Old South as it exists in the memory of my childhood. I have never seen a picture gallery in Europe which awakened any thing like my old feelings on visiting one of the first Athenum exhibitions many years ago. Those wonderful productions of Horace Vernet, in which one may read the warlike history of France, are nothing compared to my recollections of Trumbulls "Sortie of Gibraltar," as seen through an antediluvian tin trumpet which considerably interfered with my vision, but which I thought it was necessary to use. I have visited libraries which antedated by centuries the discovery of America,I have rambled over castles which seemed to recho with the clank of armour and the clarion calls of the old days of chivalry,I have walked through the long corridors and halls of the Vatican with cardinals and kings,I have mused in church-crypts and cloisters, in whose silent shade the dead of a thousand years reposed,but I have never yet been impressed with any thing like the awe which the old Athenum in Pearl Street used to inspire into my boyish heart. Pearl Street in those days was as innocent of traffic and its turmoil as the quiet roads around Jamaica Pond are now. A pasture, in which the Hon. Jonathan Phillips kept a cow, extended through to Oliver Street, and handsome old-fashioned private houses with gardens around them occupied the place of the present rows of granite warehouses. The Athenum, surrounded by horse-chestnut trees, stood there in aristocratic dignity and repose, which it seemed almost sacrilegious to disturb with the noise of our childish sports. There were a few old gentlemen who used to frequent its reading-room, whose white hair, (and some of them even wore knee breeches and queues and powder,) always stilled our boyish clamour as we played on the gra.s.s-plots in the yard. To some of these old men our heads were often uncovered,for children were politer in those days than now,and to our young imagination it seemed as if they were sages, who carried about with them an atmosphere of learning and the fragrance of academic groves. They seemed as much a part of the mysterious old establishment as the books in the library, the dusty busts in the entries, or the old librarian himself. Sometimes I used to venture into those still pa.s.sages, and steal a look into that reading-room whose quiet was never broken, save by the wealthy creak of some old citizens boots, or by the long breathing of some venerable frequenter of the place, enjoying his afternoon nap. In later years I came to know the Athenum more familiarly; the old gentlemen lost the character of sages and became estimable individuals of quiet tastes, who were fatiguing the Ma.s.sachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company by their long-continued perusal of the Daily Advertiser and the Gentlemans Magazine; but my old impression of the awful mystery of the building remains to this day. I mourned over the removal to the present fine position, and I seek in vain amid the stucco-work and white paint of the new edifice for the charm which enthralled me in the old home of the inst.i.tution. Some people, carried away by the utilitarian spirit of the age, may think that it is a great improvement; but to me it seems nothing but an unwarrantable innovation on the established order of things, and a change for the worse. Where is the quiet of the old place? Younger and less reverential men have risen up in the places of the old, and have destroyed all that rendered the old library respectable. The good old times when Dr. Ba.s.s, the librarian, sat on one side of the fireplace, and the late John Bromfield (with his silk handkerchief spread over his knees) on the other, and read undisturbed for hours, have pa.s.sed away. A hundred persons use the library now for one who did then; and I am left to feed upon the memory of better times, when learning was a quiet, comfortable, select sort of thing, and mutter secret maledictions on the revolutionary spirits who have made it otherwise.

But pardon me, dear reader,all this has little to do with Paris, except by way of ill.u.s.tration of my remark that the youthful standard of intellectual weights and measures is the only infallible one we ever know. But Paris is something by itself: it overrides all standards of greatness or beauty, and all preconceived notions of itself, and addresses itself with confidence to every taste. Ladies love Paris as a vast warehouse of jewelry and all the rich stuffs that hide the crinoline from eyes profane. Physicians revel in its hospitals, and talk of "splendid operations," such as make the unscientific change colour.

Paris is a world in itself. Here may the Yankee find his pumpkin-pie and sherry-cobblers, the Englishman his _rosbif_, the German his sauerkraut, the Italian his macaroni. Here may the lover of dramatic art choose his performance among thirty theatres, and he who, with Mr. Swiveller, loves "the mazy," will find at the Jardin Mabille a bower shaded for him. Here the bookworm can mouse about, in more than twenty large public libraries, and spend weeks in the delightful exploration of countless book-stalls. Here the student of art can read the history of France on the walls of Versailles, or, revelling in the opulence of the Louvre, forget his studies, his technicalities, his criticisms, in contemplation of the majestic loveliness of Murillos "sinless Mother of the sinless Child." Here may "fireside philanthropists, great at the pen," compare their magnificent theories with the works of delicate ladies who have left the wealth they possessed and the society they adorned, for the humble garb of the Sister of Charity and a laborious ministry to the poor, the diseased, and the infirm, and meditate in the cool quadrangles of hospitals and benevolent inst.i.tutions, founded by saints, and preserved in their integrity by the piety of their disciples. Here may the man who wishes to look beyond this brilliant world, find churches ever open, inviting to prayer and meditation, where he may be carried beyond himself by the choicest strains of Haydn and the solemn grandeur of the Gregorian Chant,or may be thrilled by the eloquent periods of Ravignan or Lacordaire, until the unseen eternal fills his whole soul, and the visible temporal glories of the gay capital seem to him the transient vanities they really are.

How few people really know Paris! To most minds it presents itself only as a place of general pleasure-seeking and dissipation. I have seen many men whose only recollections of Paris were such as will give them no pleasure in old age, who flattered themselves that they knew Paris. They thought that the whole city was given up to the folly that captivated them, and so they represent Paris as one vast reckless masquerade. I have seen others who, walking through the thronged _cafs_ and restaurants, have felt themselves justified in declaring that the French had no domestic life, and were as ignorant of family joys as their language is dest.i.tute of a single Word to express our good old Saxon word "home"; not knowing that there are in Paris thousands of families as closely knit together as any that dwell in the smoky cities of Old England, or amid the bustle and activity of our new world. Good people may turn up their eyes, and talk and write as many jeremiads as they will about the vanity and wickedness of Paris; but the truth is, that this great Babel has even for them its cheering side, if they would but keep their eyes open to discover it. Let them visit the churches on the vigils of great feasts, and every Sat.u.r.day, and see the crowds that throng the confessionals: let them rise an hour or two earlier than usual, and go into any of the churches, and they will find more worshippers there on any common weekday morning than half of the churches in New England collect on Sundays. Let them visit that magnificent temple, the Madeleine, and see the freedom from social distinctions which prevails there: the soldier, the civilian, the rich and the poor, the high-bred lady, the servant in livery, and the negress with her bright yellow and red kerchief wound around her head, are there met, on an equality that free America knows not of.

The observance of the Sunday is a sign of the times which ought not to be overlooked. Only a few years ago, and suspension of business on Sunday was so uncommon that notice was given by a sign to that effect on the front of the few shops whose proprietors indulged in that strange caprice. The signs (like certain similar ones on apothecary shops in Boston, to the effect that prescriptions are the only business attended to on the first day of the week) used to seem to me like a bait to catch the custom of the G.o.dly. But the signs have pa.s.sed away before this movement, inaugurated by the Emperor, who forbade labour on the public works on Sunday, and preached up by the late Archbishop of Paris and the parish clergy. There are few shops in Paris that do not close on Sunday nowat least in the afternoon. And this is done by the free will of the trades-people: it is not the result of a legislative enactment. The law here leaves all people free in regard to their religious duties. The shops of the Jews, of course, are open on Sunday, for they are obliged to close on Sat.u.r.day, and of course ought not to be expected to observe two days. Of course, too, the public galleries, and gardens, and places of amus.e.m.e.nt are all open; G.o.d forbid that the hard-faring children of toil should be cheated out of any innocent recreation on the only free day they have by any attempts to judaize the Christian Sunday into a sabbath. It is a great mistake to suppose that people can be made better by diminishing the sources of innocent pleasure. No; if the Sunday be made a hard, uninteresting day, when smiling is a grave impropriety, and a hearty laugh a mortal sin, children will begin by disliking the day, and end by despising the religion that made it gloomy. But provide the people with music in the public parks on Sunday afternoon and evening,make the day a cheerful, happy time to those who are ingulfed in the carking cares of life all the rest of the week,make it a day which children shall look forward to with longing, and you will find that the people are better, and happier, and thriftier for the change.

You will find that the mechanic or labourer, instead of lounging away his Sunday in a grog-shop, (for the business goes on even though the front door may be barred and the shutters closed,) will be ambitious to take his wife and children to hear the music, and will after a time become as well behaved as the common run of people. It is better to use the merest worldly motives to keep men in the path of decency, than to let them slide away to perdition because they refuse to listen to the more dignified teachings of religion.

I have been much impressed by a visit to a large, but unpretentious-looking house in the Rue du Bacthe "mother-house" of that admirable organization, the Sisters of Charity. It was not much of a visit, to be surefor not even my gray hairs and respectable appearance could gain for me an admission beyond the strangers parlour, the courtyard, and the cool, quiet chapel. But that was enough to increase my respect and admiration for those devoted women. The community there consists of _six hundred_ Sisters of Charity, whose whole time is occupied in taking care of the sick, and needy, and neglected in the hospitals and asylums, and in every quarter of the city. You see them at every turn, going quietly about their work of benevolence, and presenting a fine contrast to some of our noisy theorists at home. I may be in error, but it strikes me that that community is doing more in its present mode of action to advance the true dignity and "rights" of the s.e.x, than if it were to resolve itself into a convention, after the American fashion. I was somewhat anxious to inquire whether any of the sisters of the community had ever taken to lecturing or preaching in public; but the modest and una.s.suming manner of all those whom I saw, rendered such a question unnecessary. I fear that oratory is sadly neglected among them; with this exception, and perhaps the absence of a certain strong-mindedness in their characters, I think that they will compare very favourably with any of our distinguished female philanthropists. They wear the same gray habit and odd-shaped white bonnet that the Sisters of Charity wear in Boston. While we praise the self-forgetful heroism of Florence Nightingale as it deserves, let us not forget that France sent out her Florence Nightingales to the Crimea by fifties and hundredsyoung and delicate women, hiding their personality under the common dress of a religious order, casting aside the names that would recall their rank in the world, unencouraged in their beneficence by any newspaper paragraphs, and unrewarded save by the sweet consciousness of duty done. The Emperor Alexander, struck by the part played in the Crimean campaign by the Sisters of Charity, has recently asked the superior of the order to detail five hundred of the sisters, for duty in the hospitals of Russia. It is understood that the request will be complied with so far as the number of the community will permit.

If I were asked to sum up in one sentence the practical result of my observations of men and manners here on the continent, I should say that it was this: We have a great deal to learn in America concerning the philosophy of life. I do not mean that philosophy which teaches us that "it is not all of life to live," but the philosophy of making ninety-three cents furnish the same amount of comfort in America that five francs do in Paris. The spirit of centralization is stronger here than in any American city: (it is too true, as Heine said, that to speak of the departments of France having a political opinion as distinguished from Paris, "is to talk of a mans legs thinking;") and there is no reason why people of moderate means should not be able to live as respectably, comfortably, and economically in our cities as here, if they will only use a little common sense. The model-lodging-house enterprise was a most praiseworthy one, but it seems to have been confined only to the wants of the most necessitous cla.s.s in the community. There is, however, a large cla.s.s of salesmen, and book-keepers, and mechanics, on salaries of six hundred to twelve or fourteen hundred dollars, whose position is no less deserving of commiseration. When the prices of beefsteak and potatoes went up so amazingly a few years ago, there were few salaries that experienced a similar augmentation. The position of the men on small salaries therefore became peculiar, not to say unpleasant, as rents rose in the same proportion as every thing else. Any person, familiar with the rents of brick houses for small families in most of the Atlantic cities, will see how difficult it is for such people as these to live within their means. Now, the remedy for this evil is a simple one, but it requires some public-spirited men to initiate it. Suppose that a few large, handsome houses, on the European plan, (that is, having a suite of rooms, comprising a parlour, dining-room, two or three bedrooms, and a kitchen, on each floor,) were built in any of our great thoroughfares,the ground floors might be used for shops,for there is no reason why respectable people should any more object to living over shops there, than on the Boulevards. Such houses, it is easy to see, would be good paying property to their owners, as soon as people got into that way of living; and when salaried men saw that they could get the equivalent, in comfort and available room, to an ordinary five hundred dollar house for half that rent, in a central situation, depend upon it, they would not be long in learning how to live in that style.

The advantages of this plan of domestic life are numerous and striking.

Housekeeping would be disarmed of half its difficulties; the little kitchen would furnish the coffee and eggs in the morning and the tea and toast at nightthe dinner might be ordered from a neighbouring restaurant for any hourfor such establishments would increase with the increase of apartments. The dangers of burglary would be diminished, for the housekeeper would have only the door leading to the staircase to lock up at night. The washing would be done out of the house, and the steam of boiling suds, and all anxiety about clothes-lines, and sooty chimneys, and windy weather would thereby be avoided. Thousands of people would be liberated from the caprice and petty tyranny of the railroad directors, whose action has so often filled our newspapers with resolutions and protests, and, so far as Boston is concerned, its peninsula might be made the home of a population of three hundred thousand instead of a hundred and eighty thousand persons. The most rigidly careless person can hardly fail to become a successful housekeeper, when the matter is made so easy as it is by the European plan. The plan, too, not only simplifies the mysteries of domestic economy, but it snuggifies ones establishment wonderfully, and gives it a home feeling, such as what are called genteel houses nowadays wot not of. The change has got to comeand the sooner it does, the better it will be for our cities, and many of their people, who have been driven into remote and unpleasant suburbs by high rents, or who are held back from marriage by the expenses of housekeeping conducted on the present method.

PARISTHE LOUVRE AND ART

It is an inestimable advantage to an idle man to have such a place as the Louvre ever open to him. The book-stalls and print-shops of the quays, those never-failing sources of pleasure and of extravagance in a small way, cannot be visited with any satisfaction under the meridian sun; the shop windows, a perpetual industrial exhibition, grow tiresome at times; the streets are too crowded, the gardens too empty; the reading rooms are close; the newspapers are stupid; and what remains?

Why, the Louvre opens its hospitable doors, and, blessing the memory of Francis I., the tired wanderer enters, and drinks in the refreshing coolness of those quiet and s.p.a.cious halls. If he is an antiquarian, he plunges deep into the arcana of ancient Egypt, and emulates the great Champollion; if he is a student of history, he muses on the sceptre of Charlemagne, or the old gray coat and coronation robes of the first Napoleon; if he is devoted to art, he travels through that wilderness of paintings and statuary, and thinks and talks about _chiaro scuro_, "breadth of colour," or "bits of foreshortening." But if he be a man of simple tastes, who detests technicalities, and enjoys all such things in a quiet, general sort of way, without knowing exactly what it is that pleases him,he goes through room after room, now stopping for an instant before a set of antique china, now speculating on the figure he should cut in one of those old suits of armour, and finally settling down in a chair before some landscape by Cuyp or Claude, in which the artist seems to have imprisoned the sunbeams and the warm, fragrant atmosphere of early June; or else he seats himself on that comfortable sofa before Murillos masterpiece, and contemplates the supernal beauty and holy exaltation of the face of her whom Dante calls the "Virgin Mother, daughter of her Son." He is surrounded by artists, engaged in a work that seems to verify the old maxim, _Laborare est orare_,each one striving to reproduce on his canvas the effects of the angel-guided pencil of Murillo.

I find it useless for me to attempt to visit the Louvre systematically, as most people do. I have frequently tried to do it, but it has ended by my walking through one or two rooms, and then taking up my position before Murillos Conception, and holding it until the hour came for closing the gallery. When I was young, I used to think what a glorious thing it would have been to have felt the thrill of joy that filled the heart of the discoverer of America, or the satisfaction of Shakspeare when he had finished Hamlet or Macbeth, or of Beethoven when he had completed his seventh symphony; but all that covetousness of the impossible is blotted out by my envy of the great Spanish painter. What must have been the deep transport of his heart, when he gazed upon the heavenly vision his own genius had created! He must have felt

"like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet sails into his ken, Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific."

In spite of all my natural New England prejudice, I cannot help admiring and loving that old Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Its humanizing effects can be seen in the history of the middle ages, and they are felt amid all the bustle and roar of this irreverent nineteenth century. Woman cannot again be thought the soulless being heathen philosophy considered her; she cannot again become a slave, for she is recognized as the sister of her who was chosen to make reparation for the misdeeds of Mother Eve. I am strongly tempted to transcribe here some lines written in pencil on the fly-leaf of an old catalogue of the museum of the Louvre, and found on the sofa before Murillos picture.

The writer seems to have had in mind the beautiful conclusion of the life of Agricola by Tacitus, where the great historian says that he would not forbid the making of likenesses in marble or bronze, but would only remind us that such images, like the forms of their originals, are frail and unenduring, while the beauty of the mind is eternal, and can be perpetuated in the manners of succeeding generations better than by ign.o.ble materials and the art of the sculptor. The lines appear to be a paraphrase of this idea.

O blest Murillo! what a task was thine, That Mother to portray whose beauty mild Combined earths comeliness with grace divine, To whom our G.o.d and Saviour as a child Was subjectupon whom so oft He smiled!

Yet not less happy also in my part, For I, though in a world by sin defiled, Though lacking genius and unskilled in art, May paint that blessed likeness in a contrite heart.

Art is the surest and safest civilizer. Popular education may be so perverted as only to minister to new forms of corruption, but art purifies itself; it has no Voltaires, and Rousseaus, and Eugene Sues,for painting and sculpture, like poetry, refuse to be made the handmaids of vice or unbelief. Open your galleries of art to the people, and you confer on them a greater benefit than mere book education; you give them a refinement to which they would otherwise be strangers. The boor, turned loose into civilized society, soon catches something of its tone of politeness; and those who are accustomed to the contemplation of forms of ideal beauty will not easily be won by the grossness and deformity of vice. A fine picture daily looked at becomes by degrees a part of our own souls, and exerts an influence over us of which we are little aware. Some English writerHazlitt, I thinkhas said, that if a man were thinking of committing some wicked or disgraceful action, and were to stop short and look for a moment at some fine picture with which he had been familiar, he would inevitably be turned thereby from his purpose. It is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when each of our great American cities shall possess its gallery of art, which (on certain days of the week, at least) shall be as free to all well-behaved persons as the public parks themselves. We may not boast the artistic wealth of Rome, Florence, Paris, Dresden, or any of the old capitals of Europe; but the sooner we make a beginning, the better it will be for our galleries and our mob. We need some more effectual humanizer than our educational system. Reading, writing, and ciphering are great things, but they are powerless to overcome the rudeness and irreverence of our people. Our populace seems to lack entirely the sense of the beautiful or the sublime. As Charles Lamb said, "They have, alas! no pa.s.sion for antiquitiesfor the tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet.

If they had, they would no longer be the rabble." It is too true that the attempts which have been made to open private gardens to the enjoyment of the public have resulted in the most shameful abuses of privilege, and that flowers are stolen from the graves in our cemeteries; but there is no reason for giving our people up as past praying for, on the score of politeness and common decency. They must be educated up to it: some abuses may occur at first, but a few salutary lessons on the necessity of submission to authority will rectify it all, and our people will, in the course of time, become as well-behaved as the people of France or Italy.

I am no antiquarian. I do not love the antique for antiquitys sake. It must appeal to me through the medium of history, or not at all. Etruscan relics have no other charm for me than their beauty of form. I care but little for Egyptian sarcophagi or their devices and hieroglyphics, and I would not go half a mile to see a wilderness of mummies. Whenever I feel a longing for any thing in the Egyptian or heathen line, I can resort to Mount Auburn, with its gatewayand this thought satisfies me; so that I pa.s.s by all such things without feeling that I am a loser. With such feelings, there are many of the halls of the Louvre which I only walk through with an admiring glance at their elegance of arrangement. A few days since, in wandering about there, I found a room which I had never seen before, and which touched me more nearly than any thing there, except the paintings. It has been opened recently. I had been looking through the relics of royalty with a considerable degree of pleasure,meditating on the armour of Henry the Great, the breviary of St. Louis, and the worn satin shoe which once covered the little foot of Marie Antoinette,and was about to leave, when I noticed that a door was open which in past years I had seen closed. I pushed in, and found myself in a vast and magnificent apartment, on the gorgeously frescoed ceiling of which was emblazoned the namewhich is a tower of strength to every Frenchman_Napoleon_. Around the room, in elegant gla.s.s cases, were disposed the relics of the saint whom Mr. Abbotts bull of canonization has placed in red letters in the calendar of Young America.

Leaving aside all joking upon the attempts to prove that much-slandered monarch a saint, there was his history, written as Sartor Resartus would have written it, in his clothes. There was a crayon sketch of him at the age of sixteen; there was a mathematical book which he had studied, the case of mathematical instruments he had used; there was the coat in which he rode up and down the lines of Marengo, inspiring every heart with heroism, and every arm with vigour; the sword and coat he wore as First Consul; the glittering robes which decked him when he sat in the chair of Clovis and Charlemagne, the idol of his nation, and the terror of all the world besides; the stirrups in which he stood at Waterloo, and saw his brave legions cut up and dispersed; and, though last, not least, there was the old gray coat and hat in which he walked about at St. Helena, and the very handkerchief which in his dying hour wiped the chill dew of eternity from his brow. There were many things besidesthere were his table and chair; his camp bed on which he rested during those long campaigns; his gloves, his razor strap, his comb, the clothes of his little son, the "King of Rome," and the bow he played with; the saddles and other presents which he received during his expedition to the East, and his various court dressesbut the old gray coat was the most attractive of all. It was a consolation to notice that it had lost a b.u.t.ton, for it showed that though its wearer was an anointed emperor, he was not exempt from the vicissitudes of common humanity. I sat down and observed the people who visited the room, and I noticed that they all lingered around the old coat. It made no difference whether they spoke English, French, German, or any other tongue; there was something which appealed to them all; there was a common ground, where the student and the enthusiastic lover of high art could join in harmonious feeling, even with the practical man, who would not have cared a three-cent piece if Praxiteles and Canova had never sculptured, or Raphael and Murillo had never seen a brush. It required but a slight effort to fill the room up of the absent hero, and to "stuff out his vacant garments with his form," and perhaps this very thing tended to make the entire exhibition a sad one. It was the most melancholy commentary on human glory that can be imagined. It ought to be placed in the vestibule of a church, or in some more public place, and it would purge a community of ambition. What a sermon might Lacordaire preach on the temporal and the eternal, with the sword and the coronation robes of Napoleon I. before him!

The interest which I have seen manifested by so many people in the relics of Napoleon I. has afforded me considerable amus.e.m.e.nt. I have lately seen so much ridicule cast upon the relics of the saints preserved in many of the churches of Italy, by people of the same cla.s.s as those who lingered so reverentially before the gla.s.s cases of the Napoleon room in the Louvre, that I cannot help thinking how rare a virtue consistency is.

Perhaps it may be owing to some weakness in my mental organization, but I cannot acknowledge the propriety of honouring the burial-places of successful generals, and, at the same time, think the shrines of the saints worthy of nothing but ridicule and desecration. I found myself, a few years ago, looking with grave interest at an old coat of General Jacksons, which is preserved in the Patent Office at Washington; and I cannot wonder at the reverence which some people pay to the garments of a martyr in the cause of religion. I cannot understand how it may be right and proper to celebrate the birthdays of worldly heroes, and "rank idolatry" to commemorate the self-denying heroes of Christianity. I cannot join in the setting-up of statues of generals and statesmen, and condemn a similar homage to the saints by any allusions to the enormity of making a "graven image." In fine, if it is right to adorn and reverence the tomb of the Father of his Country, (and what American heart does not acknowledge its propriety?) it certainly cannot be wrong to beautify and venerate the tomb of the chief apostle, and the shrines of saints and martyrs who achieved for themselves and their fellow-men an independence from a tyranny infinitely worse than that from which Washington liberated America.

I have recently been visiting the three great monuments of the reign of Napoleon III.the completed Louvre, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Halles Centrales. As to the first, those who remember those narrow, nasty streets, which within six years were the approaches to the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and those rickety old buildings reminding one too strongly of cheese in an advanced stage of mouldiness, that used to intrude their unsightly forms into the very middle of the Place du Carrousel,those who recollect the junk shops that seemed more fitting to the neighbourhood of the docks than to the entrance to a palace and a gallery of art,feel in a manner lost, when they walk about the courtyards of the n.o.ble edifice which has taken the place of so much deformity. If the new wings of the Louvre had been built in one range instead of quadrangles, they would extend more than half a mile! Half a mile of palace, and a palace, too, which in building has occupied one hundred and fifty sculptors for the past five years! Those who have not visited Paris within five years will recollect the Bois de Boulogne only as a vast neglected tract of woodland, which seemed a great waste of the raw material in a place where firewood is so expensive as it is here. It is now laid out in beautiful avenues and walks, the extent of which is said to be nearly two hundred miles. You are refreshed by the sound of waterfalls and the coolness of grottos, the rocks for the formation of which were brought from Fontainebleau, more than forty miles distant from Paris. You walk on, and find yourself on the sh.o.r.es of a lake, a mile or two in length, with two or three lovely islands in it, and in whose bright blue waters thousands of trout are sporting. That wild waste, the old Bois de Boulogne, which few persons but duellists ever visited, has pa.s.sed away, and in its place you find the most magnificent park in the world. It is indeed a perfect triumph of landscape gardening. It is nature itself, not in miniature, but on such a scale as to deceive you entirely, and fill you with the same feeling of admiration that is awakened by any striking natural beauty. The old French notions of landscape gardening seem to have been entirely cast aside. The carriage roads and paths go winding about so that the view is constantly changing, and the trees are allowed to grow as they please, without being tortured into fantastic shapes by the pruning knife. The banks of the lake have been made irregular, now steep, now sloping gently to the waters edge, and in some places huge jagged rocks have been most naturally worked in, while ivy has been planted around them, and in their crevices those weeds and shrubs which commonly grow in such places. You would about as readily take Jamaica Pond to be artificial as this lovely sheet of water and its surroundings. The Avenue de lImpratrice is the road from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. It is half or three quarters of a mile in length, and is destined to be one of the most striking features of Paris. It is laid out with s.p.a.cious gra.s.s plots, with carriage ways and ways for equestrians and foot pa.s.sengers, with regular double rows of trees on either side. Many elegant chteau-like private residences already adorn it, and others are rapidly rising. An idea of its majestic appearance may be had from the fact that its entire width from house to house is about four hundred feet. The large s.p.a.ce around the Arc de Triomphe is already laid out in a square, to be called the Place de lEurope, and the work has already been commenced of reducing the buildings around it to symmetry. The Halles Centrales, the great central market-house of Paris, has just been opened to the public. It is built mainly of iron and gla.s.s. As nearly as I could judge of its size, I should think it would leave but little spare room if it were placed in Union Park, New York. It is about a hundred feet in height, and so well ventilated that it is hard to realize when there that one is under cover. A wide street for vehicles runs through its whole length, crossed by others at equal intervals. I have called these three public improvements the great monuments of the reign of Napoleon III.; not that I would limit his good works to these, but because these may be taken as conspicuous ill.u.s.trations of his care, no less for the amus.e.m.e.nts than for the bodily wants of his people, and of his zeal for the promotion of art and the adornment of his capital. But these n.o.ble characteristics of the Emperor deserve something more than a mere pa.s.sing notice, and may well form the subject of my next letter.

NAPOLEON THE THIRD

There is a period in the life of almost every man which may justly be termed the romantic period. I do not mean the time when a youth, whose heart is as yet unwarped by the selfishness of the world, and his brow unclouded by its trials and its sorrows, thinks that the performance of his life will fully come up to the glowing programme he then composes for it; neither do I refer to the period when, in hungry expectation, we clutched eagerly at the booksellers announcements of the last productions of the eloquent Bulwer, or of the inexhaustible James. But I refer to the time when childhood forgets its new b.u.t.tons in reading how poor Ali Baba relieved his wants at the expense of the wicked thieves; how Whittington heard Bow Bells ring out the prophecy of his greatness; how fierce Blue Beard punished his wifes curiosity; and how good King Alfred merited reproof by his forgetfulness of the herdsmans supper.

This is the true period of romance in the lives of all of us; for then all the romance that we read is clothed with the dignity of history, and all our history is invested with the charm of romance. This happy period does not lose its attractions, even when we outgrow the credulity of childhood; for the romance of history captivates us when we no longer are subject to the sway of the novelist; and we leave Mr. Thackerays last uncut, until we can finish a newspaper chapter in the history of these momentous times.

The author must plead guilty to a little hesitation (induced by the present aspect of European affairs) about incorporating this paper on the French Emperor, written some three years since, in his work.

He feels, however, that, whatever may be the issue of the present contest in Europe, the services of Napoleon III. to France and to civilization are a part of history; and he has no wish to disguise his satisfaction at having been one of the first Americans who confronted the vulgar prejudices of his countrymen against that remarkable man, and publicly recognized the wonderful talents which have placed France at the head of all civilized nations.

We know how eagerly we pursue the vicissitudes of fortune which have marked the career of so many of the worlds heroes; and this will teach us how future generations will read the history of the present century.

Surely the whole range of romance presents no parallel to the simple history of the wonderful man who now governs France. It is easy to see that his varied fortunes will one day perform a conspicuous part in that juvenile cla.s.sical literature of which I have spoken; and perhaps it may not be unprofitable, dear reader, for us to endeavour to raise ourselves above the excitement of partisanship and the influences of old prejudices, and look upon his career as may the writers of the twenty-fifth century.

It is a popular error in America to regard Louis Napoleon as a singular combination of knavery and half-wittedness. Even Mr. Emerson, in his _English Traits_, so far forgets the kindliness of his nature as to call him a "successful thief." The English journalists once delighted to ridicule him as the "nephew of his uncle," and the shadow of a great name, and Punch used to represent him as a pygmy standing upon the brim of his uncles hat, and wondering how he could ever fill it; but he has lived down ridicule, and they have long since learned that there is such a thing as the possibility of a mistake in judgment, even among journalists and politicians. It is time that we Americans got over a notion which has long since been exploded on this side of the Atlantic.

I know that I am flying in the face of those who believe in the plenary inspiration of the New York Tribune, when I claim for the Emperor any thing like patriotism or capacity as a statesman. I know that the Greeleian, "philanthropic" code exacts that we should _not_ "give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt," and that when any one whom we dislike does any good, we should attribute it to nothing but a selfish or ambitious motive. I know that this new-fangled love of all mankind requires us to hate those who differ from us politically, and never to lose an opportunity to blacken their characters and diminish their reputation; and therefore I make all due allowances for the refusal of the Tribune, and journals of the same amiable family, to see the truth.

In April, 1856, I was waiting for a train in a way station on the Worcester Railroad. A sun-burned, hard-working man was reading the news of the proclamation of peace at Paris from a penny paper, and he commented upon it to two or three others who were present, as follows: "Well, I dont know how tis, but it seems to _me_ that weve been most almightily mistaken about this ere _Lewis_ Napoleon. We used to think he was a shaller kind o feller any how, but it really looks now, judging from the _position_ of France in _European_ affairs, as if he was turning out to be altogether the _biggest dog in that tanyard_!" The old fellows conclusion was a true one, though his rhetoric would not have been commended at Cambridge; and it is to prevent this conclusion forcing itself upon the public sense, that the sympathizers with socialism have been labouring ever since. We are told that it is our duty as Americans and republicans to wish for the overthrow of Napoleon and his empire, and the establishment of the _rpublique dmocratique et sociale_. Now, having received my political principles from another source than the Tribune, I may be pardoned for having a prejudice in favour of allowing the people of France to govern France; and, as they elected Louis Napoleon President in 1848 by more than five millions of votes, and in 1851 chose him dictator (in their fear of the very party which the Tribune wishes to see in power) by more than _seven_ millions of votes, and finally, in 1852, made him their Emperor by a vote of more than seven millions against a little more than three hundred thousand, we may suppose France to have expressed a pretty decided opinion on this matter. The French empire rests upon the very principle that forms the basis of true republicanismuniversal suffrage. Louis Napoleon restored that principle after it had been suppressed or restricted, and proved himself a truer republican than his opponents. For nine years, Napoleon has been sustained by the people of France with a unanimity such as the United States never knew, except in the election of Washington as first President, and his majority has increased every time that he has appealed to the people. It is idle to say that there are parties here that are opposed to him; it would be a remarkable phenomenon if there were not. But there is a more united support here for the Emperor than there is in our own country for the const.i.tution of the United States, and any right-minded man would regret a revolutionary movement in one country as much as in the other.

If there was ever a position calculated to test the capabilities of its occupant, it was that in which Louis Napoleon found himself when he obeyed the voice of the French people, and accepted the presidency of the French republic. Surrounded by men holding all kinds of political opinions, from the agrarian Proudhon to the impracticable Louis Blanc, and men of no political opinions whatever,he found himself obliged to use all the power reposed in him by the const.i.tution, to keep the government from falling asunder. History bears witness to the fact that republican governments deteriorate more rapidly than those which are based upon a less changeable foundation than the popular will. But there was little danger of the French republic deteriorating, for it was about as weak and unprincipled as it could be in its very inception. There were a few men of high and patriotic character in the a.s.sembly, but (as is generally the case) their voices were drowned amid the clamourings of a crowd of radical journalists and ambitious _littrateurs_, whose only bond of union was a fierce hatred of law and religion, and a desire for the spoils of office. These were the men with whom Napoleon had to deal.

They had favoured his election to the presidency, for, in their misapprehension of his character, they thought him the mere shadow of a name, and expected under his government to have all things their own way. But they were not long in discovering their mistake.

His conduct soon showed that he was the proper man for the crisis. That unflinching republican, General Cavaignac, had before pointed out the dangers to all European governments, and to civilization itself, that would spring from the continuance of the sanguinary and sacrilegious Roman Republic; and Napoleon, accepting his suggestions, took immediate measures to put an end to the atrocities which marked the sway of Mazzini and his a.s.sa.s.sins in the Roman States. The success which attended these measures is now a part of history. There is a kind of historical justice in this part of Napoleons career which must force itself upon every reflecting mind. From the day when St. Remy told his royal convert, Clovis, to "burn what he had adored, and adore what he had burned," the monarch of France had always been considered the "eldest son of the Church." The Roman Pontiff was indebted to Pepin and Charlemagne for those possessions which rendered him independent of the secular power. In the hour of need it was always to the Kings of France that he looked for aid; and whether he sought aid against the oppressors of the Holy See or the infidel possessors of the Holy Sepulchre, he seldom appealed to them in vain. It was meet, therefore, that Napoleon should inaugurate his power by thus reviving the ancient traditionary spirit of the French monarchy; for he could not better prove his worthiness to sit on the throne which had been occupied by so many generous and heroic spirits, than by fighting the battles of the Church they loved so well.

Lest I should be thought guilty of speaking rashly with regard to the anarchy which Napoleon destroyed in 1849 at Rome, I take the liberty to transcribe a few extracts from the const.i.tution of the Society of "Young Italy," which will give some idea of the principles upon which the Roman Republic rested. I translate from the edition published at Naples, by Benedetto Cantalupo.

"_Article I._ The Society is established for the entire destruction of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the forming of Italy into a single state, under a republican government.

"_Art. II._ In consequence of the evils attendant upon absolute government, and the still greater evils of const.i.tutional monarchy, we ought to join all our efforts to establish a single and indivisible republic.

"_Art. x.x.x._ Those members who shall disobey the commands of the Society, or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission.

"_Art. x.x.xI._ The secret tribunal shall p.r.o.nounce sentence in such cases as the preceding, and shall designate one or more of the brethren to carry it into instant execution.

"_Art. x.x.xII._ The brother who shall refuse to execute a sentence thus p.r.o.nounced shall be considered as a perjurer, and as such shall be immediately put to death.

"_Art. x.x.xIII._ If the victim condemned to punishment should succeed in escaping, he shall be pursued unremittingly into anyplace whatever, and shall be struck as by an invisible hand, even if he shall have taken refuge on the bosom of his mother, or in the tabernacle of Christ.

"_Art. x.x.xIV._ Each secret tribunal shall be competent not only to condemn the guilty to death, but also to put to death all persons so sentenced."

The foreign and domestic policy which the Prince-President pursued excited at the same time the anger of the ultra republican faction, and the hopes of the religious and conservative portion of society. Order was restored, and an impetus was given to commercial enterprise and to the arts of peace such as France had not known since the outbreak of 1848. Still the discordant elements of which the a.s.sembly was composed, were a just cause of alarm to all friends of good order, and all parties, conservative and radical, regarded the existing state of affairs as a temporary one. Napoleon saw that the only obstacle in the path of the nation to peace and prosperity was the a.s.semblythe radicals of the a.s.sembly that the Prince-President was the only obstacle to their plans of disorganization and anarchy; and they also saw that, if the question were allowed to go to the people at the expiration of Napoleons term of office, he would surely be relected, and that his policy would be triumphantly confirmed. So, as the time drew near for the new election, the struggle between the President and the a.s.semblybetween order and anarchygrew more and more severe. Plots were formed against Napoleon, and were just ripening for execution, when, on the second of December, 1851, he terminated the suspense of the nation by seizing and throwing into prison all the chief conspirators against the public peace, and then appealed to the people to sustain him in his efforts to preserve his country from the state of anarchy towards which it seemed to be hastening. The people answered promptly and with good will to the call, and Napoleon gained an almost bloodless victory.

But we are told that by the _coup dtat_, "Napoleon violated his oath to sustain the const.i.tution of the republicthat he is a perjurer, and all his success cannot diminish his crime." So might one of the old loyalists have said about our own Washington. "He was a British subjectby accepting a commission under Braddock, he formally acknowledged his allegiance to the crownby drawing his sword in the revolution, he violated not only his fidelity as a subject, but his honour as a soldier." And what would any American reply to this? He would say that Washington never bound himself to violate his conscience, and that conscientiously he felt bound to defend the old English principles of free government even against the encroachments of his own rightful sovereign. And so, with equal reason, it may be said of Louis Napoleon, when the term of his presidency was approaching, and the radical members of the a.s.sembly were forming conspiracies to dispose of him so as to prevent his relection, he was bound in conscience, as the chief ruler of his country, to prevent the anarchy that must result from such a movement. And how could he do this save by dissolving the a.s.sembly and appealing to the people as he did? The const.i.tution was nullified by the plots of the a.s.sembly, and France in 1851 was really without a government, until the _coup dtat_ inaugurated the present reign of public prosperity and peace. The _coup dtat_ was not only justifiableit was praiseworthy. When the prejudices and party spirit of the present time shall have pa.s.sed away, the historian will grow eloquent in speaking of that fearless and far-sighted statesman, who, when his country was threatened with a repet.i.tion of the civil strife which had too often shaken her to her centre, threw himself boldly upon the patriotism of the people with those n.o.ble words, "The a.s.sembly, instead of being what it ought to be, the support of public order, has become a nest of conspiracies. It compromises the peace of France. I have dissolved it; and I call upon the whole people to judge between it and myself."The _coup dtat_ excited the anger only of the socialists and of those partisans of the houses of Bourbon and Orlans who loved those families more than they loved their countrys welfare; for they saw, by the revival of business, that confidence in the stability of the government was established, and that Napoleon had obtained a place in the affections of the French people from which he could not easily be dislodged.