"Alone on the wide, wide sea."
Nov. 3.—We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing "nine" (as delightful a sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for all is confusion on board.
Havre.—This is one of those places which scribbling travellers hurry through with a crisp mention of their arrival and departure, but, as I have passed a day here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to myself, and a good fire, why I will order anotherpoundof wood (they sell it like a drug here), and Monsieur and Mademoiselle Somebodies, "violin players right from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age, and miracles of music," (so says the placard), may delight other lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen, ink, and paper for No. 2!
If I had not been warned against being astonished, short of Paris, I should have thought Havre quite an affair. I certainly have seen more that is novel and amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not a dress, not a child even, not a stone in the street, nor shop, nor woman, nor beast of burden, looks in any comparable degree like its namesake the other side of the water.
It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to bed in that tiresome berth again last night, with a French hotel in full view, and no permission to send for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup ofmilk. It was nine o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late hour there was, of course, no officer to be had for permission to land; and there paced the patrole, with his high black cap and red pompon, up and down the quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his arquebuss would have been the consequence of any unlicensed communication with the shore. It was something, however, to sleep without rocking; and, after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept me conscious of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight, the "gentle goddess" sealed up my cares effectually, and I awoke at sunrise—in France!
It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it may seem idle and common-place to be enthusiastic about it; but nothing is common or a trifle, to me, that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the color to my temples as generously, as did my first conscious thought when I awoke this morning.In France.I would not have had it a dream for the price of an empire.
Early in the morning a woman came clattering into the cabin with wooden shoes, and apatoisof mingled French and English—ablanchisseuse—spattered to the knees with mud, but with a cap and 'kerchief that would have made the fortune of a New York milliner.Ciel!what politeness! and what white teeth and what a knowing row of papillotes, laid in precise parallel, on her clear brunette temples.
"Quelle nouvelle!" said the captain.
"Poland est a bas!" was the answer, with a look of heroic sorrow, that would have become a tragedy queen, mourning for the loss of a throne. The French manner, for once, did not appear exaggerated. It was news to sadden us all. Pity! pity! that the broad Christian world could look on and see this glorious people trampled to the dust in one of the most noble and desperatestruggles for liberty that the earth ever saw! What an opportunity was here lost to France for setting a seal of double truth and splendor on her own newly-achieved triumph over despotism. The washerwoman broke the silence with "Any clothes to wash, Monsieur?" and in the instant return of my thoughts to my own comparatively-pitiful interests, I found the philosophy for all I had condemned in kings—the humiliating and selfish individuality of human nature! And yet I believe with Dr. Channing on that dogma.
At ten o'clock I had performed the traveller's routine—had submitted my trunk and my passport to the three authorities, and had got into (and out of) as many mounting passions at what seemed to me the intolerable impertinencies of searching my linen, and inspecting my person for scars. I had paid the porter three times his due rather than endure his cataract of French expostulation; and with a bunch of keys, and a landlady attached to it, had ascended by a cold, wet, marble staircase, to a parlor and bedroom on the fifth floor: as pretty a place, when you get there, and as difficult to get to as if it were a palace in thin air. It is perfectly French! Fine, old, last-century chairs, covered with splendid yellow damask, two sofas of the same, the legs or arms of every one imperfect; a coarse wood dressing-table, covered with fringed drapery and a sort of throne pincushion, with an immense glass leaning over it, gilded probably in the time of Henri Quatre; artificial flowers all around the room, and prints of Atala andNapoleon mourantover the walls; windows opening to the floor on hinges, damask and muslin curtains inside, and boxes for flower-pots without; a bell-wire that pulls no bell, a bellows too asthmatic even to wheeze, tongs that refuse to meet, and a carpet as large as a table-cloth in the centreof the floor, may answer for an inventory of the "parlor." The bedchamber, about half as large as the boxes in Rattle-row, at Saratoga, opens by folding doors, and discloses a bed, that, for tricksy ornament as well as size, might look the bridal couch for a faery queen in a panorama; the same golden-sprig damask looped over it, tent-fashion, with splendid crimson cord, tassels, fringes, etc., and a pillow beneath that I shall be afraid to sleep on, it is so dainty a piece of needle-work. There is a delusion about it, positively. One cannot help imagining, that all this splendor means something, and it would require a worse evil than any of these little deficiencies ofcomfortto disturb the self-complacent, Captain-Jackson sort of feeling, with which one throws his cloak on one sofa and his hat on the other, and spreads himself out for a lounge before this mere apology of a French fire.
But, for eating and drinking! if they cook better in Paris, I shall have my passport altered. The nextprefetthat signs it shall substitutegourmandforproprietaire. I will profess a palate, and live to eat. Making every allowance for an appetite newly from sea, my experience hitherto in this department of science is transcended in the degree of a rushlight to Arcturus.
I strolled about Havre from breakfast till dinner, seven or eight hours, following curiosity at random, up one street and down another, with a prying avidity which I fear travel will wear fast away. I must compress my observations into a sentence or two, for my fire is out, and this old castle of a hotel lets in the wind "shrewdly cold," and, besides, the diligence calls for me in a few hours and one must sleep.
Among my impressions the most vivid are—that, of the twenty thousand inhabitants of Havre, by far the greater portion are women and soldiers—that the buildings all look toppling, andinsecurely antique and unsightly—that the privates of the regular army are the most stupid, and those of the national guard the most intelligent-looking troops I ever saw—that the streets are filthy beyond endurance, and the shops clean beyond all praise—that the women do all the buying and selling, and cart-driving and sweeping, and even shoe-making, and other sedentary craftswork, and at the same time have (the meanest of them) an air of ambitious elegance and neatness, that sends your hand to your hat involuntarily when you speak to them—that the children speak French, and look like little old men and women, and the horses, (the famed Norman breed) are the best of draught animals, and the worst for speed in the world—and that, for extremes ridiculously near, dirt and neatness, politeness and knavery, chivalry andpetitesse, of bearing and language, the people I have seen to-daymustbe pre-eminently remarkable, or France, for a laughing philosopher, is a paradise indeed! And now for my pillow, till the diligence calls. Good night.
Paris.—It seems to me as if I were going back a month to recall my departure from Havre, my memory is so clouded with later incidents. I was awaked on the morning after I had written to you, by a servant, who brought me at the same time a cup of coffee, and at about an hour before daylight we were passing through the huge gates of the town on our way to Paris. The whole business of diligence-travelling amused me exceedingly. The construction of this vehicle has often been described; but its separate apartments (at four different prices), its enormous size, its comfort and clumsiness, and, more than all, the driving of its postillions, struck me as equally novel and diverting. This last mentioned performer on the whip and voice (the only two accomplishments he at all cultivates), rides one of the three wheel horses, and drives the four or seven which are in advance, as a grazier in our country drives a herd of cattle, and they travel very much in the same manner. There is leather enough in two of their clumsy harnesses, to say nothing of the postillion's boots, to load a common horse heavily. I never witnessed such a ludicrous absence of contrivance and tact as in the appointments and driving of horses in a diligence. It is so in everything inFrance, indeed. They do not possess the quality as a nation. The story of the Gascoigne, who saw a bridge for the first time, and admired the ingenious economy that placed it across the river, instead of lengthwise, is hardly an exaggeration.
At daylight I found myself in thecoupé(a single seat for three in the front of the body of the carriage, with windows before and at the sides), with two whiskered and mustached companions, both very polite, and very unintelligible. I soon suspected, by the science with which my neighbor on the left hummed little snatches of popular operas, that he was a professed singer (a conjecture which proved true), and it was equally clear, from the complexion of the portfeuille on the lap of the other, that his vocation was a liberal one—a conjecture which proved true also, as he confessed himself adiplomat, when we became better acquainted. For the first hour or more my attention was divided between the dim but beautiful outline of the country by the slowly approaching light of the dawn, and my nervousness at the distressing want of skill in the postillion's driving. The increasing and singular beauty of the country, even under the disadvantage of rain and the late season, soon absorbed all my attention, however, and my involuntary and half-suppressed exclamations of pleasure, so unusual in an Englishman (for whom I found I was taken), warmed the diplomatist into conversation, and I passed the three ensuing hours very pleasantly. My companion was on his return from Lithuania, having been sent out by the French committee with arms and money for Poland. He was, of course, a most interesting fellow-traveller; and, allowing for the difficulty with which I understood the language, in the rapid articulation of an enthusiastic Frenchman, I rarely have been better pleased with a chance acquaintance. I found he had beenin Greece during the revolution, and knew intimately my friend, Dr. Howe, the best claim he could have on my interest, and, I soon discovered, an answering recommendation of myself to him.
The province of Normandy is celebrated for its picturesque beauty, but I had no conception before of thecultivatedpicturesque of an old country. I have been a great scenery-hunter in America, and my eye was new, like its hills and forests. The massive, battlemented buildings of the small villages we passed through, the heavy gateways and winding avenues and antique structure of the distant and half-hidden châteaux, the perfect cultivation, and, to me, singular appearance of a whole landscape without a fence or a stone, the absence of all that we define bycomfortandneatness, and the presence of all that we have seen in pictures and read of in books, but consider as the representations and descriptions of ages gone by—all seemed to me irresistibly like a dream. I could not rub my hand over my eyes, and realize myself. I could not believe that, within a month's voyage of my home, these spirit-stirring places had stood all my lifetime as they do, and have—for ages—every stone as it was laid in times of worm-eaten history—and looking to my eyes now as they did to the eyes of knights and dames in the days of French chivalry. I looked at the constantly-occurring ruins of the old priories, and the magnificent and still-used churches, and my blood tingled in my veins, as I saw, in the stepping-stones at their doors, cavities that the sandals of monks, and the iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years ago, had trodden and helped to wear, and the stone cross over the threshold, that hundreds of generations had gazed upon and passed under.
By a fortunate chance the postillion left the usual route atBalbec, and pursued what appeared to be a bye-road through the grain-fields and vineyards for twenty or twenty-five miles. I can only describe it as an uninterrupted green lane, winding almost the whole distance through the bosom of a valley that must be one of the very loveliest in the world. Imagine one of such extent, without a fence to break the broad swells of verdure, stretching up from the winding and unenclosed road on either side, to the apparent sky; the houses occurring at distances of miles, and every one with its thatched roof covered all over with bright green moss, and its walls of marl interlaid through all the crevices with clinging vines, the whole structure and its appurtenances faultlessly picturesque, and, when you have conceived a valley that might have contented Rasselas, scatter over it here and there groups of men, women, and children, the Norman peasantry in their dresses of all colors, as you see them in the prints—and if there is anything that can better please the eye, or make the imagination more willing to fold up its wings and rest, my travels have not crossed it. I have recorded a vow to walk through Normandy.
As we approached Rouen the road ascended gradually, and a sharp turn brought us suddenly to the brow of a steep hill, opposite another of the same height, and with the same abrupt descent, at the distance of a mile across. Between, lay Rouen. I hardly know how to describe, for American eyes, the peculiar beauty of this view; one of the most exquisite, I am told, in all France. A town at the foot of a hill is common enough in our country, but of the hundreds that answer to this description, I can not name one that would afford a correct comparison. The nice and excessive cultivation of the grounds in so old a country gives the landscape a complexion essentially different from ours.If there were another Mount Holyoke, for instance, on the other side of the Connecticut, the situation of Northampton would be very similar to that of Rouen; but, instead of the rural village, with its glimpses of white houses seen through rich and luxurious masses of foliage, the mountain sides above broken with rocks, and studded with the gigantic and untouched relics of the native forest, and the fields below waving with heavy crops, irregularly fenced and divided, the whole picture one of an overlavish and half-subdued Eden of fertility—instead of this I say—the broad meadows, with the winding Seine in their bosom, are as trim as a girl's flower-garden, the grass closely cut, and of a uniform surface of green, the edges of the river set regularly with willows, the little bright islands circled with trees, and smooth as a lawn; and instead of green lanes lined with bushes, single streets running right through the unfenced verdure, from one hill to another, and built up with antique structures of stone—the whole looking, in thecoup d'œilof distance, like some fantastic model of a town, with gothic houses of sand-paper, and meadows of silk velvet.
You will find the size, population, etc., of Rouen in the guide-books. As my object is to record impressions, not statistics, I leave you to consult those laconic chronicles, or the books of a thousand travellers, for all such information. The Maid of Orleans was burnt here, as you know, in the fourteenth century. There is a statue erected to her memory, which I did not see, for it rained; and after the usual stop of two hours, as the barometer promised no change in the weather, and as I was anxious to be in Paris, I took my place in the night diligence and kept on.
I amused myself till dark, watching the streams that poured into the broad mouth of the postillion's boots from every part of his dress, and musing on the fate of the poor Maid of Orleans;and then, sinking down into the comfortable corner of thecoupé, I slept almost without interruption till the next morning—the best comment in the world on the onlycomfortablething I have yet seen in France, a diligence.
It is a pleasant thing in a foreign land to see the familiar face of the sun; and, as he rose over a distant hill on the left, I lifted the window of thecoupéto let him in, as I would open the door to a long-missed friend. He soon reached a heavy cloud, however, and my hopes of bright weather, when we should enter the metropolis, departed. It began to rain again; and the postilion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked through, put on his greatcoat over it—an economy which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in every succeeding postilion on the route. The last twenty-five miles to Paris are uninteresting to the eye; and with my own pleasant thoughts, tinct as they were with the brightness of immediate anticipation, and an occasional laugh at the grotesque figures and equipages on the road, I made myself passably contented till I entered the suburb of St. Denis.
It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for kings, and the old abbey of St. Denis needs no association to make a sight of it worth many a mile of weary travel. I could not stop within four miles of Paris, however, and I contented myself with running to get a second view of it in the rain while the postilion breathed his horses. The strongest association about it, old and magnificent as it is, is the fact that Napoleon repaired it after the revolution; and standing in probably the finest point for its front view, my heart leaped to my throat as I fancied that Napoleon, with his mighty thoughts, had stood in that very spot, possibly, and contemplated the glorious old pile before me as the place of his future repose.
After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue, paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived at the port of St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck with the grandeur of the gate as we passed under, and, referring to the guide-book, I find it was a triumphal arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which the kings of France invariably enter. This also was restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without changing its design: and it is singular how everything that great man touched became his own—for, who remembers for whom it was raised while he is told who employed his great intellect in its repairs?
I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I never should have recognized the day. The shops were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelligible criers vociferating their wares, and the people in their working-day dresses. We wound through street after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns, and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into afiacre, and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I may as well describe theHotel d'Etrangers, Rue Vivienne, which, by the way, I take the liberty at the same time to recommend to my friends. It is the precise centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admirably kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there at the instance of my friend thediplomat.
Thefiacrestopped before an arched passage, and a fellow inlivery, who had followed me from the Messagerie (probably in the double character of porter and police agent, as my passport was yet to be demanded), took my trunk into a small office on the left, over which was written "Concierge." This person, who is a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in broken English, without waiting for the evidence of my tongue, that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring at what price I would have a room, introduced me to the landlady, who took me across a large court (the houses are builtroundthe yard always in France), to the corresponding story of the house. The room was quite pretty, with its looking-glasses and curtains, but there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet deep. I asked to see another, and another, and another; they were all curtains and looking-glasses, and stone-floors! There is no wearying a French woman, and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to my taste—a nutshell, to be sure, but carpeted—and bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for breakfast and was at home in Paris.
There are few things bought with money that are more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it at your room, it appears in the shape of two small vessels, one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of bread, with a thin, printed slice of butter, and one or two of some thirty dishes from which you choose, the latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish to be always at breakfast, but cooked and composed I know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma peculiarly exquisite, something quite different from any I ever tasted before; and thepetit-pain, a slender biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and warm, a delightful accompaniment. All this costs about one third as much as the beefsteaks and coffee in America,and at the same time that you are waited upon with a civility that is worth three times the money.
It still rained at noon, and, finding that the usual dinner hour was five, I took my umbrella for a walk. In a strange city I prefer always to stroll about at hazard, coming unawares upon what is fine or curious. The hackneyed descriptions in the guidebooks profane the spirit of a place; I never look at them till after I have found the object, and then only for dates. The Rue Vivienne was crowded with people, as I emerged from the dark archway of the hotel to pursue my wanderings.
A walk of this kind, by the way, shows one a great deal of novelty. In France there are no shop-men. No matter what is the article of trade—hats, boots, pictures, books, jewellery, anything or everything that gentlemen buy—you are waited upon by girls, always handsome, and always dressed in the height of the mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind the counters; and, when you enter, bow and rise to serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that would become a drawing-room. And this is universal.
I strolled on until I entered a narrow passage, penetrating a long line of buildings. It was thronged with people, and passing in with the rest, I found myself unexpectedly in a scene that equally surprised and delighted me. It was a spacious square enclosed by one entire building. The area was laid out as a garden, planted with long avenues of trees and beds of flowers, and in the centre a fountain was playing in the shape of afleur-de-lis, with a jet about forty feet in height. A superb colonnade ran round the whole square, making a covered gallery of the lower story, which was occupied by shops of the most splendid appearance, and thronged through its long shelteredpavèsbythousands of gay promenaders. It was the far-famedPalais Royal. I remembered the description I had heard of its gambling houses, and facilities for every vice, and looked with a new surprise on its Aladdin-like magnificence. The hundreds of beautiful pillars, stretching away from the eye in long and distant perspective, the crowd of citizens, and women, and officers in full uniform, passing and re-passing with French liveliness and politeness, the long windows of plated glass glittering with jewellery, and bright with everything to tempt the fancy, the tall sentinels pacing between the columns, and the fountain turning over its clear waters with a fall audible above the tread and voices of the thousands who walked around it—who could look upon such a scene and believe it what it is, the most corrupt spot, probably, on the face of the civilized world?
THE LOUVRE—AMERICANS IN PARIS—POLITICS, ETC.
The salient object in my idea of Paris has always been the Louvre. I have spent some hours in its vast gallery to-day and I am sure it will retain the same prominence in my recollections. The whole palace is one of the oldest, and said to be one of the finest, in Europe; and, if I may judge from its impressiveness, the vast inner court (thefaçadesof which were restored to their original simplicity by Napoleon), is a specimen of high architectural perfection. One could hardly pass through it without being better fitted to see the masterpieces of art within; and it requires this, and all the expansiveness of which the mind is capable besides, to walk through theMusée Royalewithout the painful sense of a magnificence beyond the grasp of the faculties.
I delivered my passport at the door of the palace, and, as is customary, recorded my name, country, and profession in the book, and proceeded to the gallery. The grand double staircase, one part leading to the private apartments of the royal household, is described voluminously in the authorities; and, truly, for one who has been accustomed to convenient dimensionsonly, its breadth, its lofty ceilings, its pillars and statuary, its mosaic pavements and splendid windows, are enough to unsettle for ever the standards of size and grandeur. The strongest feeling one has, as he stops half way up to look about him, is the ludicrous disproportion between it and the size of the inhabiting animals. I should smile to see any man ascend such a staircase, except, perhaps, Napoleon.
Passing through a kind of entrance-hall, I came to a spacioussalle ronde, lighted from the ceiling, and hung principally with pictures of a large size, one of the most conspicuous of which, "The Wreck," has been copied by an American artist, Mr. Cooke, and is now exhibiting in New York. It is one of the best of the French school, and very powerfully conceived. I regret, however, that he did not prefer the wonderfully fine piece opposite, which is worth all the pictures ever painted in France, "The Marriage Supper at Cana." The left wing of the table, projected toward the spectator, with seven or eight guests who occupy it, absolutely stands out into the hall. It seems impossible that color and drawing upon a flat surface can so cheat the eye.
From thesalle ronde, on the right opens the grand gallery, which, after the lesson I had just received in perspective, I took, at the first glance, to be a painting. You will realize the facility of the deception when you consider, that, with a breadth of but forty-two feet, this gallery is one thousand three hundred and thirty-two feet (more than a quarter of a mile) in length. The floor is of tesselated woods, polished with wax like a table; and along its glassy surface were scattered perhaps a hundred visiters, gazing at the pictures in varied attitudes, and with sizes reduced in proportion to their distance, the farthest off looking, in thelong perspective, like pigmies of the most diminutive description. It is like a matchless painting to the eye, after all. The ceiling is divided by nine or ten arches, standing each on four Corinthian columns, projecting into the area; and the natural perspective of these, and the artists scattered from one end to the other, copying silently at their easels, and a soldier at every division, standing upon his guard, quite as silent and motionless, would make it difficult to convince a spectator, who was led blindfold and unprepared to the entrance, that it was not some superb diorama, figures and all.
I found our distinguished countryman, Morse, copying a beautiful Murillo at the end of the gallery. He is also engaged upon a Raffaelle for Cooper, the novelist. Among the French artists, I noticed several soldiers, and some twenty or thirty females, the latter with every mark in their countenances of absorbed and extreme application. There was a striking difference in this respect between them and the artists of the other sex. With the single exception of a lovely girl, drawing from a Madonna, by Guido, and protected by the presence of an elderly companion, these lady painters were anything but interesting in their appearance.
Greenough, the sculptor, is in Paris, and engaged just now in taking the bust of an Italian lady. His reputation is now very enviable; and his passion for his art, together with his untiring industry and his fine natural powers, will work him up to something that will, before long, be an honor to our country. If the wealthy men of taste in America would give Greenough liberal orders for his time and talents, and send out Augur, of New Haven, to Italy, they would do more to advance this glorious art in our country, than by expending ten times the sum in any otherway. They are both men of rare genius, and both ardent and diligent, and they are both cramped by the universal curse of genius—necessity. The Americans in Paris are deliberating at present on some means for expressing unitedly to our government their interest in Greenough, and their appreciation of his merit of public and private patronage. For the love of true taste, do everything in your power to second such an appeal when it comes.
It is a queer feeling to find oneself aforeigner. One cannot realize, long at a time, how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; and, after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop window, or dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer by, or the accent of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of foreigners of all nations, and of course, physiognomies of all characters may be met everywhere, but, differing as the European nations do decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our countrymen, as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are met; not as Americans however, for, of the habits and manners of our country, people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be English: but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual indifference. As far as I can analyze it, it is the independent self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative expression which isthe index to our national character. The first is seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, and nothing puzzles a European more than to know how to rate the pretensions of an American.
On my way home from the Boulevards this evening, I was fortunate enough to pass through the grand court of the Louvre, at the moment when the moon broke through the clouds that have concealed her own light and the sun's ever since I have been in France. I had often stopped, in passing the sentinels at the entrance, to admire the grandeur of the interior to this oldest of the royal palaces; but to-night, my dead halt within the shadow of the arch, as the view broke upon my eye, and my sudden exclamation in English, startled the grenadier, and he had half presented his musket, when I apologized and passed on. It was magically beautiful indeed! and, with the moonlight pouring obliquely into the sombre area, lying full upon the taller of the threefaçades, and drawing its soft line across the rich windows and massive pilasters and arches of the eastern and western, while the remaining front lay in the heavy black shadow of relief, it seemed to me more like an accidental regularity in some rocky glen of America, than a pile of human design and proportion. It is strange how such high walls shut out the world. The court of the Louvre is in the very centre of the busiest quarter of Paris, thousands of persons passing and repassing constantly at the extremity of the long arched entrances, and yet, standing on the pavement of that lonely court, no living creature in sight but the motionless grenadiers at either gate, the noises without comingto your ear in a subdued murmur, like the wind on the sea, and nothing visible above but the sky, resting like a ceiling on the lofty walls, the impression of utter solitude is irresistible. I passed out by the archway for which Napoleon constructed his bronze gates, said to be the most magnificent of modern times, and which are now lying in some obscure corner unused, no succeeding power having had the spirit or the will to complete, even by the slight labor that remained, his imperial design. All over Paris you may see similar instances; they meet you at every step: glorious plans defeated; works, that with a mere moiety of what has been already expended in their progress, might be finished with an effect that none but a mind like Napoleon's could have originally projected.
Paris, of course, is rife with politics. There is but one opinion on the subject of another pending revolution. The "people's king" is about as unpopular as he need be for the purposes of his enemies; and he has aggravated the feeling against him very unnecessarily by his late project in the Tuileries. The whole thing is very characteristic of the French people. He might have deprived them of half their civil rights without immediate resistance; but to cut off a strip of the public garden to make a play ground for his children—to encroach a hundred feet on the pride of Paris, the daily promenade of the idlers, who do all the discussion of his measures, it was a little too venturesome. Unfortunately, too, the offence is in the very eye of curiosity, and the workmen are surrounded, from morning till night, by thousands of people, of all classes, gesticulating, and looking at the palace windows and winding themselves gradually up to the revolutionary pitch.
In the event of an explosion, the liberal party will not want partizans, for France is crowded with refugees from tyranny, of every nation. The Poles are flocking hither every day, and the streets are full of their melancholy faces! Poor fellows! they suffer dreadfully from want. The public charity for refugees has been wrung dry long ago, and the most heroic hearts of Poland, after having lost everything but life, in their unavailing struggle, are starving absolutely in the streets. Accident has thrown me into the confidence of a well-known liberal—one of those men of whom the proud may ask assistance without humiliation, and circumstances have thus come to my knowledge, which would move a heart of stone. The fictitious sufferings of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," are transcended in real-life misery every day, and by natures quite as noble. Lafayette, I am credibly assured, has anticipated several years of his income in relieving them; and no possible charity could be so well bestowed as contributions for the Poles, starving in these heartless cities.
I have just heard that Chodsko, a Pole, of distinguished talent and learning, who threw his whole fortune and energy into the late attempted revolution, was arrested here last night, with eight others of his countrymen, under suspicion by the government. The late serious insurrection at Lyons has alarmed the king, and the police is exceedingly strict. The Spanish and Italian refugees, who receive pensions from France, have been ordered off to the provincial towns, by the minister of the interior, and there is every indication of extreme and apprehensive caution. The papers, meantime, are raving against the ministry in the most violent terms, and the king is abused without qualification, everywhere.
I went, a night or two since, to one of the minor theatres tosee the representation of a play, which has been performed for thehundred and second time!—"Napoleon at Schoenbrun and St. Helena." My object was to study the feelings of the people toward Napoleon II., as the exile's love for his son is one of the leading features of the piece. It was beautifully played—most beautifully! and I never saw more enthusiasm manifested by an audience. Every allusion of Napoleon to his child, was received with that undertoned, gutteral acclamation, that expresses such deep feeling in a crowd; and the piece is so written that its natural pathos alone is irresistible. No one could doubt for an instant, it seems to me, that the entrance of young Napoleon into France, at any critical moment, would be universally and completely triumphant. The great cry at Lyons was "Vive Napoleon II.!"
I have altered my arrangements a little, in consequence of the state of feeling here. My design was to go to Italy immediately, but affairs promise such an interesting and early change, that I shall pass the winter in Paris.
TAGLIONI—FRENCH STAGE, ETC.
I went last night to the French opera, to see the first dancer of the world. The prodigious enthusiasm about her, all over Europe, had, of course, raised my expectations to the highest possible pitch. "Have you seen Taglioni?" is the first question addressed to a stranger in Paris; and you hear her name constantly over all the hum of thecafésand in the crowded resorts of fashion. The house was overflowed. The king and his numerous family were present; and my companion pointed out to me many of the nobility, whose names and titles have been made familiar to our ears by the innumerable private memoirs and autobiographies of the day. After a little introductory piece, the king arrived, and, as soon as the cheering was over, the curtain drew up for "Le Dieu et la Bayadere." This is the piece in which Taglioni is most famous. She takes the part of a dancing girl, of whom the Bramah and an Indian prince are both enamored; the former in the disguise of a man of low rank at the court of the latter, in search of some one whose love for him shall be disinterested. The disguised god succeeds in winningher affection, and, after testing her devotion by submitting for a while to the resentment of his rival, and by a pretended caprice in favor of a singing girl, who accompanies her, he marries her, and then saves her from the flames as she is about to be burned for marrying beneath hercaste. Taglioni's part is all pantomime. She does not speak during the play, but her motion is more than articulate. Her first appearance was in a troop of Indian dancing girls, who performed before the prince in the public square. At a signal from the vizier a side pavilion opened, and thirty or forty bayaderes glided out together, and commenced an intricate dance. They were received with a tremendous round of applause from the audience; but, with the exception of a little more elegance in the four who led the dance, they were dressed nearly alike; and as I saw no particularly conspicuous figure, I presumed that Taglioni had not yet appeared. The splendor of the spectacle bewildered me for the first moment or two, but I presently found my eyes rivetted to a childish creature floating about among the rest, and, taking her for some beautiful youngelèvemaking her first essays in the chorus, I interpreted her extraordinary fascination as a triumph of nature over my unsophisticated taste; and wondered to myself whether, after all, I should be half so much captivated with the show of skill I expected presently to witness.This was Taglioni!She came forward directly, in apas seul, and I then observed that her dress was distinguished from that of her companions by its extreme modesty both of fashion and ornament, and the unconstrained ease with which it adapted itself to her shape and motion. She looks not more than fifteen. Her figure is small, but rounded to the very last degree of perfection; not a muscle swelled beyond the exquisite outline; not an angle, not a fault.Her back and neck, those points so rarely beautiful in woman, are faultlessly formed; her feet and hands are in full proportion to her size, and the former play as freely and with as natural a yieldingness in her fairy slippers, as if they were accustomed only to the dainty uses of a drawing-room. Her face is most strangely interesting; not quite beautiful, but of that half-appealing, half-retiring sweetness that you sometimes see blended with the secluded reserve and unconscious refinement of a young girl just "out" in a circle of high fashion. In her greatest exertions her features retain the same timid half smile, and she returns to the alternate by-play of her part without the slightest change of color, or the slightest perceptible difference in her breathing, or in the ease of her look and posture. No language can describe her motion. She swims in your eye like a curl of smoke, or a flake of down. Her difficulty seems to be to keep to the floor. You have the feeling while you gaze upon her, that, if she were to rise and float away like Ariel, you would scarce be surprised. And yet all is done with such a childish unconsciousness of admiration, such a total absence of exertion or fatigue, that the delight with which she fills you is unmingled; and, assured as you are by the perfect purity of every look and attitude, that her hitherto spotless reputation is deserved beyond a breath of suspicion, you leave her with as much respect as admiration; and find with surprise that a dancing girl, who is exposed night after night to the profaning gaze of the world, has crept into one of the most sacred niches of your memory.
I have attended several of the best theatres in Paris, and find one striking trait in all their first actors—nature. They do not look like actors, and their playing is not like acting. They are men,generally, of the most earnest, unstudied simplicity of countenance; and when they come upon the stage, it is singularly without affectation, and as the character they represent would appear. Unlike most of the actors I have seen, too, they seem altogether unaware of the presence of the audience. Nothing disturbs the fixed attention they give to each other in the dialogue, and no private interview between simple and sincere men could be more unconscious and natural. I have formed consequently a high opinion of the French drama, degenerate as it is said to be since the loss of Talma; and it is easy to see that the root of its excellence is in the taste and judgment of the people.They applaud judiciously.When Taglioni danced her wonderfulpas seul, for instance, the applause was general and sufficient. It was a triumph of art, and she was applauded as an artist. But when, as the neglected bayadere, she stole from the corner of the cottage, and, with her indescribable grace, hovered about the couch of the disguised Bramah, watching and fanning him while he slept, she expressed so powerfully, by the saddened tenderness of her manner, the devotion of a love that even neglect could not estrange, that a murmur of delight ran through the whole house; and, when her silent pantomime was interrupted by the waking of the god, there was an overwhelming tumult of acclamation that came from theheartsof the audience, and as such must have been both a lesson, and the highest compliment, to Taglioni. An actor's taste is of course very much regulated by that of his audience. He will cultivate that for which he is most praised. We shall never have a high-toned drama in America, while, as at present, applause is won only by physical exertion, and the nice touches of genius and nature pass undetected and unfelt.
Of the French actresses, I have been most pleased with Leontine Fay. She is not much talked of here, and perhaps, as a mere artist in her profession, is inferior to those who are more popular; but she has that indescribable something in her face that has interested me through life—that strange talisman which is linked wisely to every heart, confining its interest to some nice difference invisible to other eyes, and, by a happy consequence, undisputed by other admiration. She, too, has that retired sweetness of look that seems to come only from secluded habits, and in the highly-wrought passages of tragedy, when her fine dark eyes are filled with tears, and her tones, which have never the out-of-doors key of the stage, are clouded and imperfect, she seems less an actress than a refined and lovely woman, breaking through the habitual reserve of society in some agonizing crisis of real life. There are prints of Leontine Fay in the shops, and I have seen them in America, but they resemble her very little.
JOACHIM LELEWEL—PALAIS ROYAL—PERE LA CHAISE—VERSAILLES, ETC.
I met, at a breakfast party, to-day, Joachim Lelewel, the celebrated scholar and patriot of Poland. Having fallen in with a great deal of revolutionary and emigrant society since I have been in Paris, I have often heard his name, and looked forward to meeting him with high pleasure and curiosity. His writings are passionately admired by his countrymen. He was the principal of the university, idolized by that effective part of the population, the students of Poland; and the fearless and lofty tone of his patriotic principles is said to have given the first and strongest momentum to the ill-fated struggle just over. Lelewel impressed me very strongly. Unlike most of the Poles, who are erect, athletic, and florid, he is thin, bent, and pale; and were it not for the fire and decision of his eye, his uncertain gait and sensitive address would convey an expression almost of timidity. His form, features, and manners, are very like those of Percival, the American poet, though their countenances are marked with the respective difference of their habits of mind. Lelewel lookslike a naturally modest, shrinking man, worked up to the calm resolution of a martyr. The strong stamp of his face is devoted enthusiasm. His eye is excessively bright, but quiet and habitually downcast; his lips are set firmly, but without effort, together; and his voice is almost sepulchral, it is so low and calm. He never breaks through his melancholy, though his refugee countrymen, except when Poland is alluded to, have all the vivacity of French manners, and seem easily to forget their misfortunes. He was silent, except when particularly addressed, and had the air of a man who thought himself unobserved, and had shrunk into his own mind. I felt that he was winning upon my heart every moment. I never saw a man in my life whose whole air and character were so free from self-consciousness or pretension—never one who looked to me so capable of the calm, lofty, unconquerable heroism of a martyr.
"Paris is the centre of the world," if centripetal tendency is any proof of it. Everything struck off from the other parts of the universe flies straight to thePalais Royal. You may meet in its thronged galleries, in the course of an hour, representatives of every creed, rank, nation, and system, under heaven. Hussein Pacha and Don Pedro pace daily the samepavé—the one brooding on a kingdom lost, the other on the throne he hopes to win; the Polish general and the proscribed Spaniard, the exiled Italian conspirator, the contemptuous Turk, the well-dressed negro from Hayti, and the silk-robed Persian, revolve by the hour together around the samejet d'eau, and costumes of every cut and order, mustaches and beards of every degree of ferocity and oddity, press so fast and thick upon the eye that one forgets to be astonished. There are no such things as "lions" in Paris.The extraordinary persons outnumber the ordinary. Every other man you meet would keep a small town in a ferment for a month.
I spent yesterday atPére la Chaise, and to day atVersailles. The two places are in opposite environs, and of very opposite characters—one certainly making you in love with life, the other almost as certainly with death. One could wander for ever in the wilderness of art at Versailles, and it must be a restless ghost that could not content itself withPére la Chaisefor its elysium.
This beautiful cemetery is built upon the broad ascent of a hill, commanding the whole of Paris at a glance. It is a wood of small trees, laid out in alleys, and crowded with tombs and monuments of every possible description. You will scarce get through without being surprised into a tear; but, if affectation and fantasticalness in such a place do not more grieve than amuse you, you will much oftener smile. The whole thing is a melancholy mock of life. Its distinctions are all kept up. There are the fashionable avenues, lined with costly chapels and monuments, with the names of the exclusive tenants in golden letters upon the doors, iron railings set forbiddingly about the shrubs, and the blessing-scrap writ ambitiously in Latin. The tablets record the long family titles, and the offices and honors, perhaps the numberless virtues of the dead. They read like chapters of heraldry more than like epitaphs. It is a relief to get into the outer alleys, and see how poverty and simple feeling express what should be the same thing. It is usually some brief sentence, common enough, but often exquisitely beautiful in this prettiest of languages, and expressing always thekindof sorrow felt by the mourner. You can tell, for instance, by the sentiment simply, without looking at the record below, whether thedeceased was young, or much loved, or mourned by husband, or parent, or brother, or a circle of all. I noticed one, however, the humblest and simplest monument perhaps in the whole cemetery, which left the story beautifully untold; it was a slab of common marl, inscribed "Pauvre Marie!"—nothing more. I have thought of it, and speculated upon it, a great deal since. What was she? and who wrote her epitaph?whywas shepauvre Marie?
Before almost all the poorer monuments is a minature garden with a low wooden fence, and either the initials of the dead sown in flowers, or rose-trees, carefully cultivated, trained to hang over the stone. I was surprised to find, in a public cemetery, in December, roses in full bloom and valuable exotics at almost every grave. It speaks both for the sentiment and delicate principle of the people. Few of the more costly monuments were either interesting or pretty. One struck my fancy—a small open chapel, large enough to contain four chairs, with the slab facing the door, and a crucifix encircled with fresh flowers on a simple shrine above. It is a place where the survivors in a family might come and sit at any time, nowhere more pleasantly. From the chapel I speak of, you may look out and see all Paris; and I can imagine how it would lessen the feeling of desertion and forgetfulness that makes the anticipation of death so dreadful, to be certain that your friends would come, as they may here, and talk cheerfully and enjoy themselves near you, so to speak. The cemetery in summer must be one of the sweetest places in the world.
Versaillesis a royal summer chateau, about twelve miles from Paris, with a demesne of twenty miles in circumference. Take that for the scale, and imagine a palace completed in proportion, in all its details of grounds, ornament, and architecture. It cost, says the guide book, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars; and, leaving your fancy to expend that trifle over a residence, which, remember, is but one out of some half dozen, occupied during the year by a single family, I commend the republican moral to your consideration, and proceed with the more particular description of my visit.
My friend, Dr. Howe, was my companion. We drove up the grand avenue on one of the loveliest mornings that ever surprised December with a bright sun and a warm south wind. Before us, at the distance of a mile, lay a vast mass of architecture, with the centre, falling back between the two projecting wings, the whole crowning a long and gradual ascent, of which the tri-colored flag waving against the sky from the central turrets was the highest point. As we approached, we noticed an occasional flash in the sun, and a stir of bright colors, through the broad deep court between the wings, which, as we advanced nearer, proved to be a body of about two or three thousand lancers and troops of the line under review. The effect was indescribably fine. The gay uniforms, the hundreds of tall lances, each with its red flag flying in the wind, the imposing crescent of architecture in which the array was embraced, the ringing echo of the grand military music from the towers—and all this intoxication for the positive senses fused with the historical atmosphere of the place, the recollection of the king and queen, whose favorite residence it had been (the unfortunate Louis and Marie Antoinette), or the celebrated women who had lived in their separate palaces withinits grounds, of the genius and chivalry of Court after Court that had made it, in turn, the scene of their brilliant follies, and, over all, Napoleon, whomusthave rode through its gilded gates with the thought of pride that he was its imperial master by the royalty of his great nature alone—it was in truth, enough, the real and the ideal, to dazzle the eyes of a simple republican.
After gazing at the fascinating show for an hour, we took a guide and entered the palace. We were walked through suite after suite of cold apartments, desolately splendid with gold and marble, and crowded with costly pictures, till I was sick and weary of magnificence. The guide went before, saying over his rapid rigmarole of names and dates, giving us about three minutes to a room in which there were some twenty pictures, perhaps, of which he presumed he had told us all that was necessary to know. I fell behind, after a while; and, as a considerable English party had overtaken and joined us, I succeeded in keeping one room in the rear, and enjoying the remainder in my own way.
The little marble palace, called "Petit Trianon," built for Madame Pompadour in the garden grounds, is a beautiful affair, full of what somebody calls "affectionate-looking rooms;" and "Grand Trianon," built also on the grounds at the distance of half a mile, for Madame Maintenon, is a very lovely spot, made more interesting by the preference given to it over all other places by Marie Antoinette. Here she amused herself with her Swiss village. The cottages and artificial "mountains" (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceedingly pretty models in miniature, and probably illustrate very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds for brooks that run at will ("les rivieres à volonté," the guide called them), and trees set out upon the crags at most uncomfortableangles, and every contrivance to make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as possible. The Swiss families, however, must have been very amusing. Brought fresh from their wild country, and set down in these pretty mock cottages, with orders to live just as they did in their own mountains, they must have been charmingly puzzled. In the midst of the village stands an exquisite little Corinthian temple; and our guide informed us that the cottage which the Queen occupied at her Swiss tea-parties was furnished at an expense of sixty thousand francs—two not very Switzer-like circumstances.
It was in the little palace ofTrianonthat Napoleon signed his divorce from Josephine. The guide showed us the room, and the table on which he wrote. I have seen nothing that brought me so near Napoleon. There is no place in France that could have for me a greater interest. It is a littleboudoir, adjoining the state sleeping-room, simply furnished, and made for familiar retirement, not for show. The single sofa—the small round table—the enclosing, tent-like curtains—the modest, unobtrusive elegance of ornaments, and furniture, give it rather the look of a retreat, fashioned by the tenderness and taste of private life, than any apartment in a royal palace. I felt unwilling to leave it. My thoughts were too busy. What was the strongest motive of that great man in this most affecting and disputed action of his life?
After having been thridded through the palaces, we had a few moments left for the grounds. They are magnificent beyond description. We know very little of this thing in America, as an art; but it is one, I have come to think, that, in its requisition of genius, is scarce inferior to architecture. Certainly the three palaces of Versailles together did not impress me so much as the single view from the upper terrace of the gardens. It stretchesclear over the horizon. You stand on a natural eminence that commands the whole country, and the plan seems to you like some work of the Titans. The long sweep of the avenue, with a breadth of descent that at the first glance takes away your breath, stretching its two lines of gigantic statues and vases to the water level; the wide, slumbering canal at its foot, carrying on the eye to the horizon, like a river of an even flood lying straight through the bosom of the landscape; the side avenues almost as extensive; the palaces in the distant grounds, and the strange union altogether, to an American, of as much extent as the eye can reach, cultivated equally with the trim elegance of a garden—all these, combining together, form a spectacle which nothing but nature's royalty of genius could design, and (to descend ungracefully from the climax) which only the exactions of an unnatural royalty could pay for.
I think the most forcible lesson one learns at Paris is the value of time and money. I have always been told, erroneously, that it was a place to waste both. You could do so much with another hour, if you had it, and buy so much with another dollar, if you could afford it, that the reflected economy upon what youcancommand, is inevitable. As to the worth of time, for instance, there are some twelve or fourteengratuitouslectures every day at theSorbonne, theSchool of Medicineand theCollege of France, by men like Cuvier, Say, Spurzheim, and others, each, in his professed pursuit, the most eminent perhaps in the world; and there are the Louvre, and the Royal Library, and the MazarinLibrary, and similar public institutions, all open to gratuitous use, with obsequious attendants, warm rooms, materials for writing, and perfect seclusion; to say nothing of the thousand interesting but less useful resorts with which Paris abounds, such as exhibitions of flowers, porcelains, mosaics, and curious handiwork of every description, and (more amusing and time-killing still) the never-ending changes of sights in the public places, from distinguished foreigners down to miracles of educated monkeys. Life seems most provokingly short as you look at it. Then, for money, you are more puzzled how to spend a poor pitiful franc in Paris (it will buy so many things you want) than you would be in America with the outlay of a month's income. Be as idle and extravagant as you will, your idle hours look you in the face as they pass, to know whether, in spite of the increase of their value, you really mean to waste them; and the money that slipped through your pocket you know not how at home, sticks embarrassed to your fingers, from the mere multiplicity of demands made for it. There are shops all over Paris called the "Vingt-cinq-sous," where every article is fixed at that price—twenty five cents! They contain everything you want, except a wife and fire-wood—the only two things difficult to be got in France. (The latter, with or without a pun, is much thedearerof the two.) I wonder that they are not bought out, and sent over to America on speculation. There is scarce an article in them that would not be held cheap with us at five times its purchase. There are bronze standishes for ink, sand, and wafers, pearl paper-cutters, spice-lamps, decanters, essence-bottles, sets of china, table-bells of all devices, mantel ornaments, vases of artificial flowers, kitchen utensils, dog-collars, canes, guard-chains,chessmen whips, hammers, brushes, and everything that is either convenient or pretty. You might freight a ship with them, and all good and well finished, at twenty-five cents the set or article! You would think the man were joking, to walk through his shop.
DR. BOWRING—AMERICAN ARTISTS—BRUTAL AMUSEMENT, ETC.
I have met Dr. Bowring in Paris, and called upon him to-day with Mr. Morse, by appointment. The translator of the "Ode to the Deity" (from the Russian of Derzhavin) could not by any accident be an ordinary man, and I anticipated great pleasure in his society. He received us at his lodgings in thePlace Vendome. I was every way pleased with him. His knowledge of our country and its literature surprised me, and I could not but be gratified with the unprejudiced and well-informed interest with which he discoursed on our government and institutions. He expressed great pleasure at having seen his ode in one of our schoolbooks (Pierpont's Reader, I think), and assured us that the promise to himself of a visit to America was one of his brightest anticipations. This is not at all an uncommon feeling, by the way, among the men of talent in Paris; and I am pleasingly surprised, everywhere, with the enthusiastic hopes expressed for the success of our experiment in liberal principles. Dr. Bowring is a slender man, a little above the middle height, with a keen, inquisitive expression of countenance, and a good forehead, from which the hair is combed straight back all round,in the style of the Cameronians. His manner is all life, and his motion and gesture nervously sudden and angular. He talks rapidly, but clearly, and uses beautiful language—concise, and full of select expressions and vivid figures. His conversation in this particular was a constant surprise. He gave us a great deal of information, and when we parted, inquired my route of travel, and offered me letters to his friends, with a cordiality very unusual on this side the Atlantic.
It is a cold but common rule with travellers in Europe to avoid the society of their own countrymen. In a city like Paris, where time and money are both so valuable, every additional acquaintance, pursued either for etiquette or intimacy, is felt, and one very soon learns to prefer his advantage to any tendency of his sympathies. The infractions upon the rule, however, are very delightful, and, at the generalréunionat our ambassador's on Wednesday evening, or an occasional one at Lafayette's, the look of pleasure and relief at beholding familiar faces, and hearing a familiar language once more, is universal. I have enjoyed this morning the double happiness of meeting an American circle, around an American breakfast. Mr. Cooper had invited us (Morse, the artist, Dr. Howe, a gentleman of the navy, and myself). Mr. C. lives with great hospitality, and in all the comfort of American habits; and to find him as he is always found, with his large family about him, is to get quite back to the atmosphere of our country. The two or three hours we passed at his table were, of course, delightful. It should endear Mr. Cooper to the hearts of his countrymen, that he devotes all his influence, andno inconsiderable portion of his large income, to the encouragement of American artists. It would be natural enough, after being so long abroad, to feel or affect a preference for the works of foreigners; but in this, as in his political opinions, most decidedly, he is eminently patriotic. We feel this in Europe, where we discern more clearly by comparison the poverty of our country in the arts, and meet, at the same time, American artists of the first talent, without a single commission from home for original works, copying constantly for support. One of Mr. Cooper's purchases, the "Cherubs," by Greenough, has been sent to the United States, and its merit was at once acknowledged. It was done, however (the artist, who is here, informs me), under every disadvantage of feeling and circumstances; and, from what I have seen and am told by others of Mr. Greenough, it is, I am confident, however beautiful, anything but a fair specimen of his powers. His peculiar taste lies in a bolder range, and he needs only a commission from government to execute a work which will begin the art of sculpture nobly in our country.
My curiosity led me into a strange scene to-day. I had observed for some time among the placards upon the walls an advertisement of an exhibition of "fighting animals," at theBarriére du Combat. I am disposed to see almost any sightonce, particularly where it is, like this, a regular establishment, and, of course, an exponent of the popular taste. The place of the "Combats des Animaux," is in one of the most obscure suburbs, outside the walls, and I found it with difficulty. After wandering about in dirty lanes for an hour or two, inquiring for it in vain, the criesof the animals directed me to a walled place, separated from the other houses of the suburb, at the gate of which a man was blowing a trumpet. I purchased a ticket of an old woman who sat shivering in the porter's lodge; and, finding I was an hour too early for the fights, I made interest with a savage-looking fellow, who was carrying in tainted meat, to see the interior of the establishment. I followed him through a side gate, and we passed into a narrow alley, lined with stone kennels, to each of which was confined a powerful dog, with just length of chain enough to prevent him from reaching the tenant of the opposite hole. There were several of these alleys, containing, I should think, two hundred dogs in all. They were of every breed of strength and ferocity, and all of them perfectly frantic with rage or hunger, with the exception of a pair of noble-looking black dogs, who stood calmly at the mouths of their kennels; the rest struggled and howled incessantly, straining every muscle to reach us, and resuming their fierceness toward each other when we had passed by. They all bore, more or less, the marks of severe battles; one or two with their noses split open, and still unhealed; several with their necks bleeding and raw, and galled constantly with the iron collar, and many with broken legs, but all apparently so excited as to be insensible to suffering. After following my guide very unwillingly through the several alleys, deafened with the barking and howling of the savage occupants, I was taken to the department of wild animals. Here were all the tenants of the menagerie, kept in dens, opening by iron doors upon the pit in which they fought. Like the dogs, they were terribly wounded; one of the bears especially, whose mouth was torn all off from his jaws, leaving his teeth perfectly exposed, and red with the continually exuding blood. In one of the denslay a beautiful deer, with one of his haunches severely mangled, who, the man told me, had been hunted round the pit by the dogs but a day or two before. He looked up at us, with his large soft eye, as we passed, and, lying on the damp stone floor, with his undressed wounds festering in the chilly atmosphere of mid-winter, he presented a picture of suffering which made me ashamed to the soul of my idle curiosity.
The spectators began to collect, and the pit was cleared. Two thirds of those in the amphitheatre were Englishmen, most of whom were amateurs, who had brought dogs of their own to pit against the regular mastiffs of the establishment. These were despatched first. A strange dog was brought in by the collar, and loosed in the arena, and a trained dog let in upon him. It was a cruel business. The sleek, well-fed, good-natured animal was no match for the exasperated, hungry savage he was compelled to encounter. One minute, in all the joy of a release from his chain, bounding about the pit, and fawning upon his master, and the next attacked by a furious mastiff, who was taught to fasten on him at the first onset in a way that deprived him at once of his strength; it was but a murderous exhibition of cruelty. The combats between two of the trained dogs, however, were more equal. These succeeded to the private contests, and were much more severe and bloody. There was a small terrier among them, who disabled several dogs successively, by catching at their fore-legs, and breaking them instantly with a powerful jerk of his body. I was very much interested in one of the private dogs, a large yellow animal, of a noble expression of countenance, who fought several times very unwillingly, but always gallantly and victoriously. There was a majesty about him, which seemed to awe his antagonists. He was carried off in hismaster's arms, bleeding and exhausted, after punishing the best dogs of the establishment.
The baiting of the wild animals succeeded the canine combats. Several dogs (Irish, I was told), of a size and ferocity such as I had never before seen, were brought in, and held in the leash opposite the den of the bear whose head was so dreadfully mangled.
The door was then opened by the keeper, but poor bruin shrunk from the contest. The dogs became unmanageable at the sight of him, however, and, fastening a chain to his collar, they drew him out by main force, and immediately closed the grating. He fought gallantly, and gave more wounds than he received, for his shaggy coat protected his body effectually. The keepers rushed in and beat off the dogs, when they had nearly finished peeling the remaining flesh from his head; and the poor creature, perfectly blind and mad with pain, was dragged into his den again, to await another day ofamusement!
I will not disgust you with more of these details. They fought several foxes and wolves afterward, and, last of all, one of the small donkeys of the country, a creature not so large as some of the dogs, was led in, and the mastiffs loosed upon her. The pity and indignation I felt at first at the cruelty of baiting so unwarlike an animal, I soon found was quite unnecessary. She was the severest opponent the dogs had yet found. She went round the arena at full gallop, with a dozen savage animals springing at her throat, but she struck right and left with her fore-legs, and at every kick with her heels threw one of them clear across the pit. One or two were left motionless on the field, and others carried off with their ribs kicked in, and their legs broken, while their inglorious antagonist escaped almost unhurt.One of the mastiffs fastened on her ear and threw her down, in the beginning of the chase, but she apparently received no other injury.
I had remained till the close of the exhibition with some violence to my feelings, and I was very glad to get away. Nothing would tempt me to expose myself to a similar disgust again. How the intelligent and gentlemanly Englishmen whom I saw there, and whom I have since met in the most refined society of Paris, can make themselves familiar, as they evidently were, with a scene so brutal, I cannot very well conceive.