LETTER XVIII.

“Ye common people of the skies,What are ye when the sun doth rise?”

At the risk of surfeiting you with sweetmeats, I will take you next to the grand opera—theAcadémie Royale de Musique, where the best music is Taglioni. If you have read in your Virgil of that namesake of yours, who made no impression on the dust, nor bent the light corn or blade of grass as she walked upon it; if you have seen a ghost curtseying along the flank of the Sharp Mountain, and leaving no trace of its airy feet upon the winnowed snows, then you can imagine Taglioni upon the scene of the grand opera, as she flits along the boards, with just gravitation enough to detain her upon the earth. But why absent in the very season of her triumphs?—You must content yourself with her nearest representative, Miss Fanny Elsler—second only in grace, but second to none in any thing else.

I will describe you her performance. She will curtsey to her middle, and then rise in apirouettetwo yards high. This is her preliminary step. She will then set off, and skip over the whole area of the stage, lighting on it only occasionally, trying her limbs, and, as it were, provoking the dance from afar, and will present herself to the spectators in all the variety of human shapes and appearances. One while you will see her, “many twinkling feet” suspended in the air, then twirling herself around till her face and hips will seem on the same side of her: at last, (and this is the epic strain of the performance, and, therefore, the last), she will poise herself upon the extremity of the left toe, and bring the right gradually up to the level of the eye (the house will hold its breath!) and then she will give herself a rotary movement, continuing itin crescendotill she becomes invisible. You can no more count her legs, than the spokes of a rail waggon carrying the President’s Message.—This is Fanny Elsler. The description will seem bombast only to those who have not seen her, and to those who have, it will seem tame and inadequate. This letter has a greatstruggle between prose and poetry; it is like one who is set upon a gallop against his will, gets out of breath, and comes panting in at the end of the course. I should have kept Mars, Grisi, and Taglioni to make an impression in the end—but you can begin with the last page, as girls do the new novel. I was last week induced by an acquaintance to go to the Variètés. It is a merry theatre, said he—“il provoque le rire.” This is a kind of provocation I have had frequent need of since I came to Paris. If you think there is no place for melancholy amongst these unsighing French people, you are mistaken. I have sat in this Bastille of a hotel, grave as a bust of Seneca, for a whole week, till all the Paris blue devils —— and so I went to the Variètés, and sawFrederic Lemaitrein his own “Robert Macaire,” and, above all, the delightfulJenny Vertprès, and was not disappointed.

The French have a quick and lively observation, and can dress up a simple anecdote, or vaudeville, or a fancy-shop at the Palais Royal, with a prettiness no other nation need attempt to rival. There is a general good humour, too, about a French audience, which exhibits as much as the play.—There were several notable scenes in some of the pieces, which would beworth telling you, if I had time. If you are not frightened at little licenses, this is a delightful theatre. You will see hereAchard, who both sings and acts true comedy; andTansez, who “looks broad nonsense with a stare.” Brutus would have liked to have such a face when he played the fool at Rome; and, above all, you will see that exquisite rogue,Madame Dejaret.

I went to my next neighbour, theOdéon, not long ago, where I sawNéron, l’Empereur, et Madame sa mère, and Monsieur Britannicus. Mademoiselle George, once the delight of the capital and its emperor, is yet a well-timbered and hale old woman. She has, in her favour, the dignity of fat, and looks devil enough for Agrippina.—But the French wear the sock more gracefully than the buskin. Their tragic Muse is sublime always, and therefore always ridiculous. She puts on aqu’il mourutkind of face, and carries it about through the whole five acts. She calls the dogs always with the same voice, as when she sees the game. But tragedy, it seems, is in her decrepitude all over the world; the sublime is worn out of our nature; all we can do, now-a-days, is to be beautiful. Miss George, with a little help fromAnaisandDorval, has been lugging theold cripple about Paris, for several years, on her own back. Decent comedy has nearly the same service, but with more vigour, from Mademoiselle Mars. I have got over just in time to see the fag end of the two Goddesses.

The sterling old plays of Corneille and Crebillon, which recommended dignity and energy of character, are played no more—even upon their native scene, the Théâtre Français. It is not evenbon tonto speak much of them, it is provincial and almost vulgar; if played at all, it is only to revive, a little, the dying embers of Miss George.—I have seen played other tragedies, and one notably called “Hamlet.” I was lured by the name. It is so pleasant to meet an old friend in a foreign country! But, alas! it was not “Hamlet the Dane,” but Monsieur Hamlet, of the Théâtre Français—— When the French get hold of a foreign author, as Shakspeare or Göethe, they civilise him a little—frenchify him. It is not to be expected that he should have all the polish and all the graces, as if he was brought up in Paris. They chasten the music, too, in the same manner; and M. Hertz, Musard, and Co. spend whole lives in adapting (as they call it) Rossini, Mozart, and other foreigners, to French ears.

But in these light productions, the vaudevilles which are played at the “Gaieté” and “Variètés,” and such theatres, and which are the fashion of the day, the acting and composition are both perfect. Ligier, Bouffé, Armand, and Pontier, and the ladies Anais, Vertprès, and Fay, are no common-rate mimics. And there are many others of nearly the same merit, seemingly all made expressly for their several parts, in this great farce of human littleness. Who was that new comer (a Yankee) who said, “They wanted to make me believe the actors on the stage were living people, but I wasn’t such a novice as they took me for?” It has not been a Parisian theatre that this incredulous man visited.

I ought to conduct you, but have not time, to some of the other theatres—to the Porte St. Martin, where Mademoiselle George looks “Lucrece Borgia;” to the “Gymnase,” which smells of the counting-house, and Scribe’s plays, and where Bouffé plays, as no one else can play, his “Gamin de Paris;” and especially to the “Vaudeville,” to see the elegantBrohan, the lovelyTargueil, the sprightlyMayer, and tenderThenard, the scape-graceMadame Taigny, and the inimitable old womanGuillemin, andLafontandArnal—or to the “Opera Comique,” where you would hear those two mocking-birds MesdameDamoreauandLavasseur; and finally to Franconi’s, where you would see Madame Something else, on her head on horseback, andAuriolon his slack rope—the rest is stupid. I have seen them all; even the Funambules and the Marionettes; I have seen Madame Saqui’s little show, for six pence; and I have cried over a melo-drama, at the “Petit Lazari,” for four sous.

If one comes to Paris, one ought to see Paris. This you cannot do in the domestic circle—the stranger is not admitted there. And certainly not in public places, for the world no more goes thither, in its natural expression and opinions, than the fashionable lady in her natural shapes. You must look at it in its looking glass. A stage, patronised by twenty-five thousand spectators, every night, cannot be a very unfaithful representation.

The dignity of human greatness; the highborn, hereditary authority, and lowly reverence, which produced strong contrasts of passion with refined and elegant manners, have withered away under the Republican spirit of the age. Kings and lords, and heroes are no moreheld in veneration than Pagan Gods; not so much; for these at least are poetical. And from our universal reading and the easy intercourse which follows, a great man can scarce be got up any more in the world; we are all as intimate, with the imperfections of a hero as his valet de chambre. And the mock majesty of the stage has lost its respect at the same time.Dufresneused to say, “Sirrah, the hour”—to his hair dresser; who replied, “My lord, I know not.” Mademoiselle Clairon kept her train, and equipage, and herfemme de chambreaddressed her as a queen. The patronage of a splendid court then excited a spirit of emulation among the actors, and gave them a sense of their dignity, which was sustained by the public feeling.

To-day the tragic hero lives with the common herd undistinguished; he is not even refused Christian burial when he dies. The world has been used, too, these fifty years to gross sensuality and crime beyond the example of all former times, and human sympathy has been staled by custom; matrimonial jealousy, which held the wolf’s bane and dagger, is now either comic or insipid; a Phædra excites no disgust, an Œdipus inspires no horror. The passions,which sustained the deep tragic interest, are quenched; or they have become prurient and emasculate, and require to be tickled by a vaudeville. Farce has usurped the stage, and the dwarfish imp limps, where tragedy dragged her flowing robes upon the scene.

The French, who, before their Revolution, declaimed against the murders of the English drama, now out-kill all ages and countries. Rapes and massacres have been the staple of their lower plays for many years, and are not uncommon in the best. This taste is on the decline.—The intrigues and amours of young girls in Parisian society—are almost impossible. Danaë was not so guarded in her tower, as the unwedded females in Paris. The loves of married women are therefore the common plots of the French plays, as well as of French novels, and they are publicly applauded, as in the ordinary and natural course of society.—In our cities, the stage, ill attended, and not sustained by original compositions, must be a faithless mirror; but I have no doubt that in Paris it represents the general features correctly.

Each of the French theatres has its range of pieces assigned, and cannot compete with, or injure another. Four of the principal ones, theItalian and French Opera, Théâtre Français, and Opera Comique, pay neither rent nor license, but have two hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually from government. This sum is contributed from the five and a half millions derived from the gambling houses.

They make the devil pay his own debts. The Opera alone has two hundred thousand francs. And we expect in America to support two or three, and bring all our performers and fiddlers from Europe, on the taste of the community! A single singer may make her fortune in our cities, but a company must perish. The annual receipts from all the Parisian Theatres are about one and a half million of dollars. The author retains the control of his pieces, and receives from the theatres of the capital and provinces, a share of every night’s performance during life, with apost obitof ten years. Scribe’s revenue from this source is above twenty-five thousand dollars. A five-act piece pays the author at the “Théâtre Français” one twelfth.

There is a great deal of machinery about the French drama, which is but little known in countries less advanced in the art. For example, each theatre has attached to it a regulartroupeof applauders. These were originally got up for occasions, but in course of time they have become as an integral part of the corps dramatique;—they are calledClacqueurs, (AngliceClappers.) Their art requires a regular apprenticeship, as the other branches of a histrionic education, though not a branch at the “Repertoire.” A person of good capacity may make himself master of it in two or three months.

They who have taken lessons inClackingunder the professors, can clap louder than ordinary people, and they know where to clap, which is something. They can shew also a great deal more enthusiasm than if they were really delighted;—as they who cry at funerals can cry better than persons who are really grieved. On my first visits here, I could not help remarking how much more feeling was a French than an American audience. The Théâtre Français went off in a crash every now and then, which one could hear to the Boulevards; and I could see no great reason for the explosion. On nights of deep tragedy they bring out also the femaleClacqueurs. These are taught, one to sob, another to feign to wipe away a tear, and another to scream when a pistol goes off, and they aredistributed in different parts of the house. If you see any lady fainting on these occasions, don’t pick her up, she is getting her living by it.

No piece succeeds, or actor either, unless these salaried critics are employed. If neglected, they turn out among the hisses. Even Talma had to pay to this High Chancery his regular tribute. In some of the houses there are two rival companies, and the player is obliged to bribe both, or the rival pack will rise up and bark against him. The actor has his regular interviews with the chief officer, and they agree beforehand upon what parts are to be applauded, with the quality and quantity of the applause. “At this passage,” says Mars, “you must applaud gently, at this a little louder, and at this moderately”—Cependant Madame, abeau sentimentlike this——“Quoi! Cependent Monsieur.—It is forty years, sir, since I have been playing in this house, and no one has dared to say to me, ‘Cependant!’ I tell you, you are to keep your ardour to the end of the scene. I have no notion of being blown up to heaven in the middle of a passion, and left dangling two feet in the air at the end of it. Here is the place you are to applaud; here you may give aclap and abrava; and here, (mark well this point,) at this finale I must have the whole strength of your company.”

“Give me your hand, M. Gigolard; here are fifty francs, and a little present for your wife. And, recollect, I must have this evening myGrand Entrée; I have been absent these three months, and my return requires that attention.” AGrand Entréeis where the actress has a burst of acclamation just at her entrance, which is kept up afterwards louder and louder; she bows, and they applaud, and there must be a great conflict between joy and gratitude until she has exhausted a clap worth about ten francs.—TheseClacqueursare, on all ordinary occasions, arbiters of the fate of a play or the actor; it is only at a new piece, and a very full house, that they are obliged to consult a little the impressions of the audience.

The Parisians require to be fed continually upon new pieces, and are seldom contented with less than three of an evening, as the epicure prefers several courses, and does not throw away a good appetite upon a single dish. This has given vogue to their short and piquante pieces, the vaudevilles, and produces them several hundred new ones each season, and the manufacture of these pieces has become a regular business on a large scale. A prime vaudevillist does not pretend to furnish his pieces single handed; he has his partners, his clerks, and his understrappers.

These last are a kind of circumforaneous wits, who frequent public places, and run all over town in search of plots and ideas, or some domestic scandal of dramatic interest, and they have their regular cafés or places of rendezvous, where they work to each other’s hands. If you have come just green from the country, and entering a café, see a number of grave and lean persons seated about at tables, seeming entire strangers to one another, and saying not a word about Louis Philipe, or the “Procès Monstre,” this is a café of the vaudevillists. They hunt particularly after persons who arrive with some originality from the Provinces. In cities men are nearly all cast in the same mould; mixing continually together, there is little departure from the fashionable opinions and expressions.—You will see each one with a newspaper, a pencil, and a bit of paper, reading and commenting.

You will see a smile sometimes crossing the serious features of the divine man, and now and then he will start—he has harpooned an idea.Soon after you enter, one will make your acquaintance, especially if you have a comic face. He will treat you to rum and coffee, he will offer you the journal, point out to you the amusing subjects, and set you talking. And you will be delighted, and you will say, not without reason, the Parisians are called the politest people upon the earth. They will not let you go until they have sucked the last drop of your blood, noted down your clownish looks, and airs, copied your features, and robbed you of your very name. At last they will make you mad; for they must see you under the influence of different passions; and if you are impudent they will kick you out of doors.

When you are gone, they will very likely quarrel over your spoils—about the right of ownership; and when the dispute is compromised, the most needy will traffic you away for a consideration. One will sell one of yourbon motsfor a lemonade; and another one of your sheepish looks for ariz-au-laitor some more expensive dish according to its dramatic interest and novelty. Some of these men keep regular offices, and sell out plots and counter-plots andbon-mots, as brokers do mortgages and bills of exchange. Others bring theirrough materials to the great manufactory under which they are employed, and receive from Monsieur Scribe or some other master workman, their pay or an interest in the piece proportionate to the value of the contribution. I know of one who has been living upon the eighth of a vaudeville for several years; and another, who is getting along tolerably on a piece of a joke; being a partner with three or four others.

But you must not be running always to the theatre, there are other amusements which claim a share of your attention. At theTivoliyou will find concerts, balls, and fire-works; and you may take an airing every fine evening in a balloon. You have only to ride up to theBarrière de Clichy, or it will stop for you at your garret-window. Besides, you have to see the Panoramas, Cosmoramas, Neoramas, Georamas, and the Dioramas.

The Diorama is amongst the prettiest things in Paris. But how to describe it?—You find yourself seated in an immense church, into which you have passed through a dark entry; and whilst you are contemplating its august architecture, twilight comes on imperceptibly, and you see suddenly around you a full congregation, seated, or standing and kneeling, and very intent on their prayers; all which with a little brighter light were invisible. You are then regaled with solemn church music, and assist at the vespers. It is all enchantment. You forget it is day. The voices of men and virgins die away in the distant space, like the voices of unearthly beings. The light returns gradually, the worshippers fade away into air, and you are seated as at first in the silent and lonely cathedral.

You now enter another room, and a vast prospect of beautiful Swiss scenery is opened upon your view, bounded only by the horizon. Before you is a lake, and flocks and herds feeding, and all the glowing images of a country life. How still the atmosphere, and a little hazy and melancholy, as in our Indian summer; you can almost fancy the wood-pigeon’s moan. In the mean time a storm is brewing beyond the distant mountains; you see the gleams of the lightning, and hear the muttering of the thunder. At length the storm gathers thick around you; the end of a mountain is detached from its base, and the avalanche covers the lake, the flocks, inhabitants, and huts, and you are seated amidst the desolation. You are notconscious of the presence of any painting; all is nature and reality.

A few words of the musical entertainment will fill up the measure of this sinful letter. There is a rotunda in the Champs Elysées devoted to concerts every evening from six till nine, throughout the summer season. Here are played the fashionable airs and concertos, and all the chef-d’oeuvres of Italian and German masters. The little quavers play sometimes softly among the leaves of the trees, and now and then pour down like a deluge crash upon your ears. There are sixty musicians; and for all this ravishment a gentleman pays twenty sous, and a lady half-price.

In the winter season the whole of this music and more takes refuge at Musard’s, a central part of the city. Here is a large room fitted up brilliantly with lustres and mirrors, with a gallery over-head, and a room adjoining for refreshments. The orchestra is in the centre surrounded by seats for the audience. There are seats also around the extremities, and between is a wide promenade filled up every evening with visitors all the way from Peru and Pegu; and with any quantity of Parisianfashionables, who come hither to squeeze and quizz one another, and see the music.

Only think of all this refreshment of the ears, and eyes, this gratification and improvement of the taste at twenty sous a night! There is a similar establishment in another section of the city; and these with the concerts of the Conservatory, private concerts, and operas, make up the musical entertainments of Paris.

The French are not, naturally, a very musical people. After all their fuss about a royal “Académie de Musique,” and their twenty or thirty pupils at the expense of government, and sent for the improvement of their voices to Rome, they have produced little music. Their Boieldieu and Auber are the only composers who can take seats (and this at some distance) with the Rossinis, Mozarts, and Webers. Their great pianists, Hertz and Kalkbrenner, are Germans; Beriot, the greatest violin, is a Belgian; Lafont only is French. Their natural music, the Troubadour and the rest, has been so wailed in the nursery, and so screamed in the theatre, that the world is sick of it. A man advertised for a servant lately, who could not sing “Robin du Bois.”

Parisian habits.—The Chaussée d’Antin.—Season of Bon-bons.—Jour de l’An.—Commencement of the Season.—The Carnival.—Reception at the Tuileries.—Lady Granville.—The Royal Family.—Court Ceremonies.—Ball at the Hotel de Ville.—French Beauty.—A Bal de Charité.—Lord Canterbury.—Bulwer.—Sir Sydney Smith.—The Court Balls.—Splendid Scene.—The Princess Amelia.—Comparison between Country and City Life.

Paris, January 25th, 1836.

Asyour husband has gallantly allowed me the exclusive pleasure of writing to you this week, I am going to use the privilege in giving you his biography for the year 1836. For a wife to judge of her husband’s conduct from her husband’s letters, is absolute folly.—He rises at day-break, which occurs in this country, at this season, about nine; he makes his toiletwith Parisian nicety, breakfasts at eleven, and then attends his consultations, till three. After this hour he runs upon errands. Paris covers eight thousand five hundred square acres, and he has business at both ends of it; I have to run after him, just as a man’s shadow would, if people in this country had shadows, a league to the east, and then a league to the west, only because he don’t know a Frenchman calls his mother amare, and a horse ashovel. As he and his partner do not comprehend each other, and he cannot communicate with the world out of doors, you may imagine I have got myself into a business.

And here are all nations of the earth to be interpreted, and all sexes; French, Spaniards, Italians, Poles, and modern Greeks. “God’s life, my lords, I have had to rub up my Latin.” One might as well have been interpreter at Babel. We dine at six, and have all the rest of the day to ourselves.—Then comes smoking of Turkish tobacco in a long pipe, then a cup of good coffee and the little glass of quirsh; and then conversations—conversations, not about burning Moscara, and the Bedouin brothers; or whether beet sugar should be taxed; but that which it imports more our happiness to know,what vintage is the wine, and whether we are to pass the evening at the Italien, or Grand Opera. Our host, who is a French gentleman, a man of the world, and refined in learning, adds the perfume of his wit to the little minutes as they go fluttering by.

A proposof good coffee, I will tell you how to make it. Make it very strong, and then pour out with your right hand half a cup, and with your left the milk, foaming and smoking like Vesuvius upon it; it is reduced thus to a proper consistency and complexion, retaining its heat. Strange! that so simple a process should not have superseded the premeditated dishwater of our American cities. This is thecafé au laitof the breakfast; the coffee of the dinner is without milk.

At length conversation flags, and we sit each in a “Fauteuil,” recumbent, and looking silently upon the Turkish vapour as it ascends to the upper region of the room, till it has obscured the atmosphere in clouds as dark as science metaphysic; and then we sweeten ourselves with open air and evening recreations—

“Vive Henri Quatre! vive ce roi vaillant!”

And so we stroll, arm in arm, through the Boulevards to the “Rue Favart,” and theredrink down Grisi until the unwelcome midnight sends us to our pillows. This repairs us from the cares of the day, and raises us up fresh and vegetated to the duties of to-morrow. I must not forget to tell you, we live now in theRue Neuve des Maturins, a little east of the Boulevards. I was quite disdainful of this unclassic ground after so long an abode among the Muses; but this street is more than classic, it runs right-angled into the aristocraticChaussée d’Antin; is full of honour and high fare, and ennobled by some of the best Parisian blood.

Your husband—I suppose by living here, has got into thebel airof the French. (I forgot to put adashunder his name.) He has his share of Favoris, and mustachios, and a coat from Barde’s that would win the ear of a countess. Barde makes coats for “crowned heads,” and takes measures at Moscow;—and he never ties his cravat—(I mean your husband)—just in front, but always a quarter of an inch or so to the left; nor sends a lady a red rose, when white roses are in the fashion; and though he speaks nothing yet of the French jargon, he makes Paris agreeable to every one. Folks, to be liked in this country, are obliged to be amiable—aviolent effort sometimes for me. In this respect we have an advantage at home, where poor people only are required to have wit, and twenty thousand a-year may be as big a fool as it pleases.

This is the season ofbon-bons. I think I see you, and little Jack and Sall, parading your littleness upon the Boulevards—which I presume you will do this time next year. Here is the whole animal creation in paste, and all the fine arts insucre d’orge. You can buy an epigram in dough, and a pun in soda-biscuit; a “Constitutional Charter” all in jumbles; and a “Revolution of July” just out of the frying-pan. Or, if you love American history, here is a United States’ frigate, two inches long, and a belly-gut commodore bombarding Paris—(with “shin-plasters”)—and the French women and children stretching out their little arms, three quarters of an inch long, towards heaven, and supplicating the mercy of the victors, in molasses candy.

You will see also a General Jackson, with the head of a hickory-nut, with a purse, I believe, of “carraway comfits,” and in a great hurry pouring out the “twenty-five millions,” a king, a queen, and a royal family, all of plaster of Paris. If you step into one of these stores youwill see a gentleman in mustachios, whom you will mistake for a nobleman, who will ask you “to give yourself the pain to sit down,” and he will put you up a paper ofbon-bons, and he will send it home for you, and he will accompany you to the door, and he will have “the honour to salute you”—all for four sous.—But I must get on with my biography.

We went, the first day of the year, to the Palace, and saw the king and the queen with our own eyes. I must tell you all about it. Paris usually comes to town three months before this. The gentry, and the woodcock, and all the Italian singers come in October, and every thing runs over with the reflux of the natives, and the influx of foreigners. Of the latter, the greater part are English, who, to escape the ignominy of staying in London at this season, or being uneasy on their seats, (I mean their country seats,) come hither to walk in the Rue de la Paix, and sleep in the Rue Castiglione. You will see now and then a knot of American girls, who sun themselves upon the Boulevards, or sit in the Tuileries to do mischief with their looks upon bearded Frenchmen.

But the gaieties at this season only essay their little wings; they do not venture beyond theopera and private parties, and a display of black eyes and fashionable equipages at the Bois de Boulogne, until the close of the year. Then all the sluices are set loose. Then magnificent beauty encircles the boxes at the opera, decked in all the gems which the “swart Indian culls from the green sea,” and overlooks the gazing deluge of spectators from the pit, and the nut-brown maids of Italy and France wave around the ball-room in all the swimming voluptuousness of the waltz. Grisi warbles more divinely at the Italien, and, at the Grand Opera, more sweetly, Taglioni

“Twirls her light limbs, and bares her breasts of snow.”

“Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ivorio fatte,Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.”

Harlequin now puts on his fustian mantle, and all Paris, her caps and bells, turning out upon the Boulevards, and men and women run wild through the streets. This is the Carnival, which will continue gathering force as it goes, till the end of February, as a snow-ball upon your Pine-Hill comes down an avalanche into the valley. On Shrove-Tuesday all will be still—operas, balls, concerts, fêtes, the racket of the fashionable soirée, and the orgies of the Carnivalwill be hushed; and then the quiet and social parties will employ the rest of the season.

My Lord Granville will be “at home” on Monday, and the Duchess de Broglie “at home” on Saturday; in a word, every one that can afford it will be “at home” one evening in the week, receiving and entertaining with gaiety and simplicity his friends, until the dogstar shall send again the idle world to its shady retreats of Montmorency and St. Cloud. The first drawing-room or “reception” at court, on the New Year’s night gives the watch-word, and announces that the season of mirth has begun. This is followed by the regular court-balls, and balls ministerial and diplomatic; and the balls of the bankers and other opulent individuals bring up the rear.

We put ourselves in a black suit, in silk stockings and pumps, with a little, military tinsel, under the arm; stepped into aremise(a remise is a public carriage disguised as a private one) and in a few minutes stood upon the broad steps of the Tuileries; from which we were conducted up into the rooms, with no more ceremony than writing our names upon a registry in the hall.—The English and French books say that we Americans have a greatpenchantfor kings, and that we run after nobility and titles more than becomes republicans. Whether this be true or not, and whether it is really an inclination of human nature that, like other passions, will have its way, I do not stop to inquire; with me I declare it to be mere curiosity; I had the same when a mere child, for a puppet show, without wishing to be “Punch” or “Judy.” But here I am moralising again when I should be telling you of the “Reception.”

You must imagine a long suite of rooms, and the edges all round embroidered with ladies, strung together like pearls—ladies dressed in the excess of the toilet, and many hundred lustres pouring down a blaze of light upon their charms; and the interior of the rooms filled with gentlemen clad in various liveries, mostly military—in all you may reckon about four thousand, including Doctor C. andme. Here was my Lady Granville ambassadress and her Lord; I love a broad pair of shoulders on a woman—even a little too broad; and here was the fair Countess of Comar Plotocka. The richest mine that sleeps between your Broad and Sharp Mountains would not buy this lady’s neck. I have heard it valued at threemillions. It would make a rail-road from here to Havre.

I have half-a-mind to put in here as a note, that we Americans in our citizen coats, and other republican simplicities, make no kind of figure at a court. When one contemplates brother Jonathan by the side of Prince Rousimouski, all gorgeous in the furs of the Neva—I can’t find any other comparison than that character of arithmetic they callzero; for he seems of no other use than to give significance to some figure that is next to him. It is strange how much human dignity is improved by a fashionable wardrobe; I have seen a nobleman spoiled altogether by a few holes in his breeches.

The king, the queen, the princes and princesses entered about nine; they passed slowly round the rooms, saluting the ladies, saying a few words to each, with a gentle inclination of the head, and a proportionate jutting out at the head’s antipodes:—the latter part of the compliment intended for us gentlemen. At the end of this fatiguing ceremony the royal family retired, bowing to us all in the lump.—I forgot to say, that being apart in a corner, as a modest maid who sits alone, the queen in passingdropped me a curtsey for myself. When her Majesty bowed to the whole multitude the honour was wasted by diffusion. To have one all to one’s self was very gratifying. They now posted themselves in a room at the south end of the company, accessible by two doors, through one of which gentlemen were admitted Indian file, and introduced personally to the king, the king standing on the right, the queen on the left of the room, and the little queens in the middle.

It was an imposing ceremony; and this was the manner of the introduction. For example, the Doctor, entering, gave his name and nation to the Aid-de-Camp, who pronounced it aloud; the king thenprit la parole, et un verre d’eau sucrée, de la manière suivante: “You are from Philadelphia, I am glad to see you.”—And then the Doctor, who had studied his speech in the ante-chamber, replied, “Yes.”—After this he bowed a little to the queen, and walked out with an imperturbable gravity at the left door, as I had just done before him. We then went home, and told people we had spoken to the king.—This is a Reception at the Tuileries. To give you an account of the other charming fêtes we have seen this month, will requireanother sheet.—The hour is late, I bid you good night.

January 26th.

Thefirst fête of which we partook was a great ball given at the Hotel de Ville, to relieve the poor of the “Quartier St. Germain.” Here, as every place else, where there is a chance of an innocent squeezing, there was a crowd. There were two thousand souls, all dancing in the same room; and the ladies, whom I include in the article of souls, were dresseddans l’excès de la belle coiffure. The Queen and Madame Adelaide, and other such like fine people, who were announced in the newspapers, hoaxed us by not coming. However, we danced all the poor out of the hospitals. We put on our rustling silks that the grisettes might get a blanket for their shivering babies, and our dear little prunellas, that they might have a pair of sabots, and a little bit of wool about their feet in the Faubourg St. Germain. Charity affects people in different ways. In Philadelphia it gives one a chill, or it sends one with a long face to pray at St. Stephens’; here, to “cut pigeon wing” at the Hotel de Ville.—The bill of fare was only ices, lemonades and eau sucrée—no liquors.

A Frenchman is always fuddled enough with his own animal spirits, and needs no rum. In all French parties in high life there is little ceremony about eating and drinking; it is economical to be well bred. Dancing is performed in the same monotonous dull way as in America. The “pirouettesandentrechats” are a monopoly of the Opera Français. English gravity was always afraid of being caught cutting a caper, and John Bull leads his lady through a dance as if conducting her to her pew. The fashion of now-a-days is any thing English, especially English whims and nonsense. “They are not dancing, but only walking in their sleep,” is abon motof his Majesty, who is not much addicted to wit—better if he were; Fieschi would never have thought of killing him. But they are better walkers than we are. They are better dressed, too, though with less cost. In our country the same dress suits all ladies of the same size, being always made after the last doll that came over by the packet, only a little more fashionable. And so we are

“LacedFrom the full bosom to the slender waist,Fine by degrees and beautifully less.”

And some of us

“Gaunt all at once and hideously little.”

In Paris, a mantua-maker is abel esprit, and does not follow rigidly but studies to soften a little the tyranny and caprices of fashion, and she knows the value of the natural appearances in the constitution of beauty. The fashions have, to be sure, their general feature, but the shades of differences are infinite. The woman and the frock, though not indissolubly united, seem made for each other. The French lead fashion; we follow it: their genius is brought out by invention; ours quenched by imitation. I looked on upon this ball with all the gaze of young astonishment. Staring is an expression of countenance you will never see among savages and well-bred people; I am somewhere between the two.

Your husband dived into the crowd, to try to discover some pearl of French beauty; ineffectually. One is at a loss, he says, for a temptation. He is so anatomical! he would like better Helen’s skeleton than Helen herself. We don’t see the same thing in a woman by a great deal—or in anything else. Travellers don’t see the same things in Paris. Baron Rothschild and Sir Humphrey saw not the same thing in a guinea; and how many things did not Phidias see in his Venus, which neither you nor I will ever see in it.

The French women are nearer ugliness than beauty; but what women in the world can so dispense with beauty? Their cavaliers are handsomer, yet the exquisite creatures are loved just the same. I wonder if the peacock loves less his hen for the inferiority of her plumage, or she him the more for the elegance of his? The principal charm of a woman is not in the features; a lesson useful to be learnt. A turn-up nose once overturned the Harem, so says Marmontelle; Madame Cottin was an ugly thing, and yet killed two of her lovers; there are on record the examples of two women with only an eye each, who made the conquest of a king; La Vallière supplanted all her rivals, with a crooked foot. Ninon was not handsome, but who knows not the number of her victims? Self-flattery and the flatteries of admirers spoil pretty women, till at last, like sovereigns, they receive your homage as a tribute that is due, and enjoins no acknowledgment, and thereby they counteract the influence of their charms.—“But as I was saying—Pray, my dear, what was I saying?”—I will think of it to-morrow.

January 27th.

I cannotafford to give you all these sweetmeats at a single meal; I must serve you up a small portion for the dessert of each day. Ball the second. This was one of the most splendid and fashionable of the season; also abal de charité—given at the theatre Ventadour a few nights ago. A great number of Carlist nobles having lost their pensions and places, by the disaster of Charles X., have become poor, and this was to comfort them with a little cash. The parterre and stage formed an area for the dancing, and an array of mirrors at the furthest end doubled to the eye its dimensions, and the number of the dancers.

It was a vast surface waving like the sea gently troubled; and the boxes, filled with ladies, exhibited the usual display of snowy necks, and glittering ornaments overhead. The saloon and lobbies too, adorned with little groves of shrubbery, had their full share of the multitude. Here was the late Speaker of the Commons, Sutton, now better named for a ball-room, my Lord Canterbury, and my Lady Canterbury; and here was Bulwer, brother of Bulwer; and Sir Sydney Smith and other knights from afar; and all thebel airof the Paris fashionables; not the old swarm of St. Germain, the Condés and Turennes, the Rochefoucaulds, Montausiers, Beauvilliers and Montespans; but all that Paris has now the most elegant and aristocratic.

Here was Madame la Duchesse de Guiche, and who can be more beautiful? And the Duchesse de Plaisance, airy and light as Taglioni; and the prettiest of all Belgian ambassadresses, Madame le Hon—coiffé à ravir. And the night went round in the dance, or in circulating through the room, or in sitting retired upon couches among the oranges and laurels, where sage philosophy looked on, and beauty bound the willing listeners in its spell. The music was loud and most exhilarating. In some parts of the house were all the comforts of elbowings, shufflings, crammings and squeezings, and on the outside all the racket that was possible of screaming women, and wrangling coachmen, from miles of carriages through every avenue. Some were arriving towards morning, and others have not arrived yet. This is the ball of the Ventadour.

We reached home just as Aurora was opening her curtains with her rosy fingers, and we crept into bed. The tickets were at twenty francs; ices,eau d’orgéat, andeau sucrée, were the amount of refreshments.

I have just room for a word of the Court Balls; and they are so much prettier than any thing else in the world, I am glad they come in last to your notice. They are held at the king’s palace, the Tuileries; where a long suite of rooms are opened into one, and filled with a stream of light so thick and transparent, that the men and women seem to swim in it as fish in their liquid element. Between three and four thousand persons are exposed to a single coup-d’œil; the men gorgeously attired in their court-dresses; the women in all the sweetness of the toilet.

It is impossible to look in here without recognising at once the justice of Parisian claims upon the empire of fashion. Here is the throne and sceptre of the many-coloured goddess; and here from every corner of the earth her courtiers come to do her homage.

The king, on entering, repeats nearly the same ceremony as at his “Reception” of the new year; others of the royal family follow his example. A pair of cavaliers at length lead out the two princesses, and the ball begins through the whole area of the rooms.

To see so many persons, elegantly and richly attired at once entangled in the dance; crossing,pursuing and overtaking each other; now at rest, now in movement; and seeming to have no other movement than that communicated by the music; and to see a hundred couples whirling around in the waltz, with airy feet that seem scarce to kiss the slippery boards; first flushed and palpitating; then wearying by degrees and retiring, to the last pair, to the last one—and she the most healthful, graceful and beautiful of the choir, her partner’s arm sustaining her taper waist, foot against foot, knee against knee, in simultaneous movement, turns and turns, till nature at length overcome, she languishes, she faints, she dies!—A scene of such excitement and brilliancy, you will easily excuse my modesty for not attempting to describe.

As an episode to the dancing, there is a supper in theSalle de Diane, where you have a chance of seeing how royal people eat; with a remote chance of eating something yourself. A thousand or more ladies sit down, and are served upon the precious metals, or more precious porcelain; the king and princes standing at the place of honour, and a file of military-looking gentlemen dressed richly, along the flanks of the table. What a spectacle!Ladies eating out of gold, and kings to wait upon them.

I sat opposite the royal ladies, and looked particularly at the little Princess Amelia, with her pouting lip “as if some bee had stung it lately.” She just tasted a little of the roast beef, and the fish, and the capon, and other delicacies of the season; and then a bit of plum-pudding, and some grapes, and peaches, and apricots, and strawberries; and then she sipped a glass of port, and when her glass was out, my Lord Granville with great presence of mind filled her another; and then she finished off with a little burgundy, champagne, hermitage, Frontignac, bucella, and old hock—all which she drank with her own dear little lips.

These delicate creatures do almost every thing else by deputy, but eating and drinking. After the ladies, we gentlemen were admitteden masse, with not a little scrambling; which was the objectionable part of thefête. I was hungry enough to have sold my birthright, but did not taste of any thing; it required not only physical strength, but effrontery, and I have been labouring under the oppression of modesty all my life. Have you ever been to a dinner at the—“White House?” that’s likethe finale of the king’s supper in theSalle de Diane.

In my greener days, I saw the dance in my native Tuscarora, and went to see it twenty miles of a night upon a fleet horse, my partner behind, twining around my waist her “marriageable arms.” I have now seen the balls of the French court, which are called the most splendid in the world. The difference of dress, of graces, and such particulars, how vastly in favour of the Tuileries!—but as far as I can recollect and judge from the outward signs, the enjoyment was as vastly on the side of the Tuscarora.—Beauty is of every clime, as of every condition. I have seen Alcina’s foot upon the floors of the Ventadour, and upon a rock of the Juniatta, and all the varieties of human expression through all the ranges of human society. I have seen the humble violet upon the hill top, and the saucy lily in the valley. As for the pure and rapturous admiration of beauty and female accomplishment—alas, I fear it is not the growth of the libertine capital.—I am persuaded, that to have lived much in the country, conversant with natural objects, and subject to the privations of a country life, is essential to the perfection ofthe human character, and of human enjoyments. In a city, the pursuits are frivolous; they narrow the mind, and are pernicious to its most delightful faculty—the imagination. The passions are developed there too early, and worn out by use.—The Tuileries, lighted with its tapers, and “glittering with the golden coats,” is beautiful; the ladies’ bright eyes, and the pure gems that sparkle upon their snowy necks too are beautiful. But I have been at Moon’s Drawing Room upon your “Two Hills,” and have gathered its pure light from your piny leaves; the stars and heavenly bodies looking on in their court dresses.

To walk in the Rue Rivoli as the sun descends towards the west is delightful, and in the Tuileries amidst its marble deities, or upon the broad eastern terrace, which overlooks its two rows of fashionable belles.—But I have walked in the lone valleys of the Shamoken, and have seen the Naiads plunge into their fountains; I have walked upon the Sharp Mountain top, exhilarated with its pure air and liberty, raised above the grovelling species, and held communion with the angels—this is more delightful still. Numa communed with his Egeria in the sacred grove; Minos with hisNymph under the low-browed rock, and Moses retired to the mountain to converse with the Almighty. The pleasures of a city life stale upon the appetite by use; the delights of the country life “bring to their sweetness no satiety.”

I had intended to put you up the whole of the Paris Balls in this letter, but the Masquerades remain for another occasion. My time has run out; the last grain of sand is in the dial. Good night.

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