LETTER XXIII.

“Suave a guisa va di un bel pavone,Diritta sopra se, come una grua;”

with cock-feathers in weeping willow upon the crown.—I went in the evening to the ball with her—parole d’honneur; in her dress of satin, citron colour, trimmed ingauze volant, and a tunique of the same, with wreaths of roses; and in her hair a garland of forget-me-not, with gems assorted by Beaudran, and beautiful as the stars upon the azure firmament. In her morning walk, if she condescends ever to walk in the mornings, her mantle is of deep colours.She wears in half dress, achapeau bibi; in negligé, her tresses are parted under acapote, and her thin gauze handkerchief zig-zag, is narrow by an inch;

—— “’neath which you seeTwo crisp young ivory apples come and go,Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly,When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro.”

I send you a copy of her washerwoman’s list for the last week. I have seen one of the Queen Elizabeth’s somewhere, which began thus: Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, Ireland and France, Defender of the Faith.Two petticoats, &c.This Frenchwoman’s is without preface as follows: One frock,à l’abri galant; one ditto,souris effrayé; two ditto,rassurées; one juponinexorable; two ditto,implacables; with other articles too tedious to enumerate.

Apropos. The department of the wash-tub is important, and I may as well give you here its statistics. There is theBourgeoise, who superintends, and under her in order, thesavoneuse, theempeseuseandrefineuse. A plain washerwoman has forty-two sous per day, and a starcher, clear starcher and ironer, three francs.There is scarcely any thing in Paris more neat and elegant than aLingère. Each branch is brought, by a division of labour, to a nice perfection, which you will see in no other country; but, to find a single person, who can put a shirt through all its varieties, is nearly impossible. A gentleman’s account stands thus: Une chemise,trois sous; une veste,trois sous; une pantalon de drap,six sous; un collet,un sou; pair de bas,deux sous. And the washerwoman, when she brings you in your linen, will come in her court dress, and counting your shirts, she will inquire after your health, and as she retires she will have the “honour to salute you.” Madame Frederic is one of the notabilities of Paris, and no one who has a proper respect for clean linen ever speaks to her but with his hat in his hand; she has areputation Européenne, but she refuses to wash any thing under a ministerial shirt—and not even that, if it be worn twice.

And now I will proceed to tell you who this elegant woman is, in whom, by this time, you must have taken some interest. She is a Parisian by birth and education, a married woman, and the greatest coquette and most capricious creature of all Paris; and yet allParis—alas, more than all Paris, does nothing but run after her. As for me, I declare with Cicero, “malle me errare cum illa, quam aliis recte sapere.”

She has a brother too, as much admired by the ladies as she by the gentlemen, and is so exquisite in taste and dress, that many doubt whether he himself may not be of the softer gender. I wish I had time to describe to you his wardrobe also. Hispetite redingoteof blue, and his whitepantalonsin contrast with his black vest and azure cravat, for the morning promenade; his gracefulPolonaisetrousers black, and vest white, for the field sports, and his——

---- But he is a proud and insolent fellow, and I hate him because he always has an eye upon his sister, and unless you ruin yourself altogether, in expenses for new coats, he won’t speak to you. In fine, to keep you no longer in suspense about this elegant couple —— they are called “The Fashions.” Enough of parables; to-morrow I will treat you to matters of fact.

To-morrow, May 8th.

Thisold fool, Paris, has turned out again upon the Boulevards, three days of this week, as thick as aMardi gras; it is called thefête de Longchamps, and the object is to determine the fashions for the coming season. The most important decision of this year seems to be the entire suppression of “gigot sleeves.” Only think; they were last year as wide as the British Channel, and now they are to be all at once razed to the quick. The public, however, does not submit quietly to the curtailment. Nothing else indeed but mutton sleeves and the President’s message is thought fit for conversation, or discussion in the newspapers, this month past. It is found to be exceedingly difficult to legislate for the head and shoulders, and lower parts at the same time; what is a benefit to one section being a prejudice to the other. The waist especially is indignant; it has been straightened enough and squeezed enough in all conscience ever since it was first invented. It has remonstrated; and petition after petition has been sent in, signed by all the neighbouring states, threatening to nullify the union, unless these restrictions are taken off. However, by relieving a little the flatness and nakedness of the arm with a row or two ofpoint d’Angleterre, it is supposed a compromise may be effected. Indeed I have already seen several pairs of these sleeves venturing abroad, and two yesterdayamidst thebravasof the Tuileries. But what a figure is a woman, shrunk into those narrow circumstances above, and so prominent beneath! she seems scarcely of the same species. She is Horace’smulier formosa supernéreversed.

Another decree of the Longchamps is to lengthen the frock still more at the tail; though longer already than cleanliness or mercy to many a reluctant pair of ankles should have permitted. Ankles are said to be very beautiful in Paris, and they resisted with all their might this innovation the last season; they had enjoyed the privilege of being seen for years, and it was natural they should take some steps to maintain it; but did it avail? In this you see only another signal example of the despotism of Fashion. Not two years ago a frock was circumcised midleg—no one indeed looked at a lady’s legs, as a matter of curiosity, much below the knee—and now, unless in a whirlwind or stepping into a coach, not a “peeping ankle” is to be seen upon the whole pavé of Paris. Alas, all you can see now-a-days is

“The feet, that from each petticoatLike little mice creep in and out.”

Formerly, the cause of going to Longchamps was to say mass; now it is a mutton-sleeve.This Longchamps was once a Convent, and was founded by St. Louis’s sister, Isabelle de France, who after her death performed in this place (a pretty good number for a woman) forty miracles. The place therefore became very celebrated; pilgrims visited it by thousands, and the sick were carried there to be cured, and princesses shut themselves up in it from the temptations of the world. But these nuns were very pretty, and the rakes of Paris went thither on pilgrimage also; amongst the rest went Henry the Fourth to court Mademoiselle Catherine de Vérdun.

In the course of time every one heard certain holy concerts spoken of, that were given there on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays of the Holy week, (the days now celebrated.) On which occasions the church was illuminated, embalmed with incense, and the little nuns sang so sweetly, that many pious people thought their songs not of this earth, but hymns that came directly from the celestial choirs: and the crowds that frequented Longchamps was immense.

Not the inhabitants of Paris only came, but of London and other foreign cities, striving to rival each other in the richness of their dresses, and the magnificence of their equipages.Their emulation went so far at last, that the very wheels of the chariots were often gilt, and the shoes of the horses were also of the precious metals; and the coachmen and footmen more gold than gold (κρυσω κρυσοτερα.) But again libertinism broke into the sacred cloisters, and the concerts were suppressed; finally the Revolution came, and the convent was demolished; not a stone was left to testify the miracles of Isabelle de France. But the multitude still continues its annual pilgrimage to Longchamps.

In the present fêtes there is scarcely any thing which recals the sumptuousness of ancient times. Coaches indeed are varnished, stirrups are burnished, and lacqueys have a new livery; and here and there an English lord, or an American Colonel blazes out with chariots, postilions, and mounted gens d’armes. The French aristocracy has been so unvarnished by the Revolution, that twenty thousand a year has got very little chance of being exceedingly magnificent.

The procession is an uninterrupted train of vehicles of all sorts in motion the whole length of the Boulevards; and up through the Champs Elysées to the Bois de Boulogne, a distance of about four miles, and having arrived at a certain spot, the cavalcade wheels about and returns in the same manner; the one side of the way being used for going and the other for coming. The chief concern of the day is, the exhibition of pretty women in open barouches, clad in the splendours and novelties of the season. Mounted beaux, too, on steeds richly caparisoned are exceedingly in favour.

The decrees of Longchamps, like Cæsar’s, go forth upon the whole earth; and it is the only tribunal that can claim upon the earth this extensive jurisdiction. A revolution has passed, like a hurricane, over its very throne, and left its authority undisturbed; and there is no reason to believe that this supreme and universal power will ever pass away. Causes and effects both co-operate to perpetuate its existence. In other countries, men and women, follow fashion, and have consequently little exercise of taste or invention; but the Parisians are by general consent inventors; they are gay, vain and ostentatious, and from the nature of their commerce, and from the number of strangers who are induced to reside amongst them, they will give always to dress and fashion an importance they can have no where else. Let us then recognise our legitimate sovereigns, and bowgraciously to their natural and indisputable authority. Let us recognise, too, the wisdom of Providence, which by giving a diversity of products to the earth, and of capacities to the civilised nations, who inhabit it, has bound them by ties of mutual necessity, to live together in peace and harmony. The savages of our country, who have no such ties, who have but the same pursuits and capacities, have also but one passion, the destruction of each other.

To compare the American and French modiste, is to compare the mere manual operation, to the imaginative and intelligent exercise of the mind. A French bonnet maker is not made, she is born; she meditates, she invents, she conceives a hat—as much as Pindar did a lyric poem. And when she has made you a hat, your only wonder is, whether the hat was made for you, or you were made for the hat.

Why, in Philadelphia a hat may be worn by two faces; here it is a constituent part of the woman it was invented for, and they cannot be separated from each other without injury to both. Do you believe thatMadame Palmyreever makes two frocks alike? it would be the ruin of the woman’s reputation. What kind of feelings must a lady have, coming intoan assembly, and finding another woman’s frock having the same physiognomy as her own! I have seen more than one in a fit of hysterics from this very occurrence. And do you believe thatSimon’schapeaux are formed upon the cold precepts of the schools, or Herbault’sbibis? Do you think thatMichael’sshoes, or those exquisite bottines ofGelot, or those kid gloves ofBoivinare produced without enthusiasm? orBatton’sflowers orCartier’splumes, without inspiration?

A modiste in America indeed!—why the same woman cuts out a frock and makes it! The same woman who does the head-work of a bonnet, does the stitchings! In France there is an adaptation of labour to the abilities of the artist; and a modisteen chefno more thinks of the manipulation of a frock, than Scribe of a vaudeville, or Carème of a dinner.

Nor does she suffer her genius to be dissipated and wasted upon varieties even the most important. Each branch has its professor, whose whole mind is concentrated upon this one object. Even the invention has its specialities. One adapts colours to complexions, and another studies the proportions of the human form, and its shapes, and the congruity of dresses with itsvarious sizes; how to bring out an attraction more seductive by the sacrifice of one less potent; where to enhance a beauty by a defect; and how to discover a charm under pretext of concealing it; one is a kind of Minister of the Interior, another of Foreign Affairs.

In the manual operations, too, the same series is observed. One folds, another crimples, one bastes, another rips; one spends her days in “undoing,” another in “trying-on,” another again grows old in puckering, and so in crisping, pranking, curling, and flouncing—all have their several functions, and all their tasks assorted to their several abilities.

At the fête of the Longchamps the eye is dazzled by the splendour, and the attention is distracted by the variety. A fashion, to have vogue, must present itself in a more “questionable shape.” A pretty woman is therefore selected, who for a season may personate the many-coloured goddess; she is called during her reign the “Most fashionable”—not indeed as the king is called the “Most Christian,” for truly, she is the most fashionable—“la plus à la mode de Paris.”

The Parisians have a way of getting this fashionable woman up, pretty much as we getup a great man in the United States. A few of the leaders of fashion, young gentlemen in their first down, having made choice of a fit person, first direct upon her all the rays of their admiration. She is not required to be a duchess, or to have any more beauty or accomplishments than her neighbours, but she had better be the wife of a rich banker. If she rides out of an afternoon to the Bois de Boulogne, then will a dozen of these fashionables gather around her barouche; and hats in hand, they will canter alongside; they will be unable to contain their admiration, and they will set the multitude gaping. Thus in the crowd one stares at the heavens, and another, till at last the world is on the gaze; and as all see different wonders in the skies, one a whale, another a weasel, and many phantasms and idle visions; so in the heaven of this lady’s face, beauties are now struck out that had remained, but for this general regard, for ever undiscovered; beauties which herself, if possible, had never seen.

——“As learned critics viewIn Homer, beauties Homer never knew.”

The same gallants pursue her to the opera,and there gather into her box with noise and bustle and assiduities, till they have drawn the whole house upon her, and every glass is pointed; as in the chase, where the hare stands at bay, and the hunters have but a single aim; only that here the danger is reversed.

So at the concert, and so at the ball, where she is engaged for twenty sets a-head, before half up the stairs; so every where the same ardour, the sameempressement, the same adoration. She is gazetted too in the newspapers, and all her particulars, jetty hair, inky eye-brows, turn-up nose, pouting lips; every thing circumstantially described. Every one knows her, every one loves her, and every one not wishing to pass for a clown, without taste, swears she is adorable. She is in every one’s mouth, she is in every one’s heart, she is —— in a word, she isla femme la plus à la mode de Paris.

Thus our fashionable lady is turned about in the vortex of dissipation till Spring, and enjoys a flood of frothy adulation beyond the lot of all other monarchs. The spring arrives, and then the summer; and being fashionable, she leaves of course during the warm months for the Waterings, or her castle in a distant province, and returns in the Autumn: and in the Autumn she finds another “Fashionable Lady” in her place. It is scarce to be expected that such violent admiration should be bestowed on the same person for more than a season. She now abdicates and sinks into obscurity, or which is more common, being unable to endure the reverse of fortune, dies of mortification and spite.

I send you this by Mr. C——, of Philadelphia, with a single sheet of music, a delightful air from the Puritani—an air which is graven upon ten thousand hearts. Oh, if you had heard Rubini sing it over the coffin of Bellini at the Invalids! The sexton wept. It stole upon the ear as if from the spheres—mournful as the wood-pigeon’s moan:—

——“Soft as the mother’s lullabyWhen babies sleep.”

Learn to sing it in your most plaintive voice. I will love you the more for recalling one of the tenderest scenes of my absence. Good night.

Return of Spring.—A New Venus.—The Artesian Well.—Montmartre—Donjon of Vincennes.—St. Ouen.—St. Germain.—The Pretender.—Machine de Marli.—Versailles.—The Water-works.—The Swiss Garden.—Trianon.—Races at Chantilly.—Stables of the Great Condé—Lodgings in a French Village.—A Domestic Occurrence.—The Boots.—The Alarm.—The Bugs.—Extract from Pepys.—Delights of Chantilly.—Unlucky Days.—Solitude in a Crowd.—The Cure.—The King’s Birth-day.—The Concert.—The Fire-works.—The Illuminations.—The Buffoons.—Punch.—The Eating Department.—The Mat de Cocagne.

Paris, May 6th, 1836.

Yourletter, of March the 25th, has arrived. I am sorry to hear the north wind has given himself such airs. Here he has been quite reasonable. The lilacs of the Luxembourg are again in their pride. The gardener is stirring up the loose earth, while May recals the roseswith refreshing showers. How delightful to see the Spring thus repairing the desolations of Winter! Your trees of Pine Hill, which persevere in being green the year round, do not please so much as those which strip off in November, and put on their green and flowery robes in April. Pines are called rightly, the dress of winter and the mourning of summer.

What has immutability to do with this earth? where one tires even with a uniformity of excellence. If I were to make, like Ovid, a golden age, I would say not a word of eternal Spring. How delightful is this morning! The sun has just poured out its first rays upon the dews, and every lilac has a pearl in its ear. They are setting out, in the Palais Royal, a new Venus of the whitest marble. Look at the jade, in the south-east corner, in her impudent attitude; she is stooping, and ungartering a snake from her leg. Pretty, to be sure, if one had a taste for a hieroglyphic woman; as for me, I like the little thing in its natural attributes of flesh and blood, in its straight nose; lips double dyed; and overlooking the humid eye of gray, or dark, or blue, and the “darling little foot.”

They are also setting out chairs for theSummer, and the gallery of Orleans already weeps its empty halls. These chairs are let at two sous the sitting, and bring money to the private purse of our “citizen king.” The “right of location” is 32,000 francs, and the lessee gets rich by the bargain. This sitting out upon chairs is an ancient custom; it is the way Frenchwomen take a walk. I have read in Scarron some verses in allusion to it.

Tous les jours une chaiseMe coute un écu,Pour porter a l’aiseVotre chien, &c. &c.

A poetic husband is out of humour with his wife, whose sedentary habits have become a serious item in the household expenses.

As I am about to leave Paris I have taken several flights to the country, to satisfy what yet remains of unsatiated curiosity; to Fontainbleau, where I walked upon the footsteps of theBelle Gabrielle, and stood upon the spot where the thunder of retributive justice fell upon the head of Napoleon. I stood this morning at nine by theBarrière des Martyrsaccompanied by Mr. ——, of Philadelphia. We went to see an Artesian well they are boring there towards the centre of the earth; andthrough which we are to have a short passage to the Indies; and to get a peep of the sun at midnight. It is already nine hundred feet; the temperature increasing; and they are going to make mother Earth keep us in hot water. She is to heat our baths, warm our houses, make the tea, and spoil your trade in Anthracite coal; so says M. Arago, secretary of the Institute, member of the Chamber of Deputies, &c. But I have little taste for wells, except in very hot weather—unless it be those

——“delicatewellsWhich a sweet smile forms in a lovely cheek.”

These are agreeable in all weathers.

We breakfasted in coming along, on the Heights of Montmartre, where we surveyed the great village, and stood on a level with its steeples. This was Henry the Fourth’s Camp at his taking of Paris; and lately of the English on a similar errand. Here were a great many John Bullish looking children with jovial rubicund faces, running about the hill. They have profited, the little rogues, by the gallantry of their mothers. The French children of the poorer classes have generally a sallow and unhealthy look.

Next we walked around the “Donjon of Vincennes,” its ditches and its towers. It has great titles stuck on its scutcheon. It has imprisoned the great Condé, Retz, Fouquet, Vendome, and Conti; also in later times, Diderot and Mirabeau: and it contains in its chapel the remains of the Duc d’Enghein, who was shot here. It was formerly the residence of kings. Philip Augustus lived here, and St. Louis, and Francis I., and Henry IV., and Blanche of Castile, and Agnes, called the “Lady of Beauty.” Charles IX. died here, and Mazarin, and that wicked creatureIsabelle de Bavière. I visited this village last summer in fête-time, and had a dance in theRotonde de Mars, and excellent music in theGrand salon des Chorybantes.

On this excursion we strolled also into the village of St. Ouen, four and a half miles from Paris. Here is a royal chateau, where Louis XVIII. reposed the second of May 1814, before his solemn entrance into the city. It is a delightful situation, overlooking the Seine, and the old kings as far back as Dagobert had a place here, which Louis XI. gave to the monks of St. Denis, “Afin qu’ils priassent Dieu pour la conservation de sa personne.” The Pavilion ofQueen Blanche is yet remaining. On the site of the old palace is the elegant mansion of M. Terneaux, whose predecessors were M. and Madame Necker.

One of the curiosities of the place is the cradle, which rocked Madame de Staël. M. Terneaux is a member of the Deputies; he makes laws and Cashmere shawls—the shawls equal in tissue and beauty to those of Indus. Every body comes hither to see his Thibet goats and merinoes, and hissilos, which are immense excavations in which grain is preserved fresh for many years.

We now went two leagues and a half further to St. Germain, and walked upon its elegant Terrace. The Pretender is buried here, and several of the little Pretenders; and in going along we looked at theMachine de Marli, which desires to be remembered to the Falls of Niagara. The water is climbing up an immense hill by dribbles to supply the little squirting Cupids at Versailles.

St. Germain was once the seat of the pleasures and magnificence of the Grand Monarch. He left it, because St. Denis, standing upon a high eastern eminence, overtopped his palace, amemento moriamidst the royalcups. Kings do not choose that these telltales of mortality shall look in at their windows.

We then walked in the chestnut groves and deep solitudes of Montmorency, till we grew sentimental—till we could almost hear Heloise wail her unhappy lover. We saw a tree that had fallen to the earth, and the vine which had entwined it in its prosperity still clinging to it in its fall; it had refused to climb any other tree, but died with the trunk that had supported it. We thought of the perfidy and ingratitude of men, and we had serious thoughts of quitting their society and living altogether among trees. We visited the Hermitage and plucked each a leaf from the rose-bush, and sat upon Jean Jacques’s chair. We intended to visit Meudon on our return, to laugh at Rabelais, and to fly to the rocks of Vitry to kiss the footsteps of Madame de Sevigné, but did not. I have now given you my journey of a day.

I announced to you pompously, by the last boat, my departure for London, and you will be surprised to receive yet a letter from Paris. I stayed chiefly to see the waters “play” at Versailles. It is an amazing spectacle, and every body stays to see it. You must imaginea hundred little Cupids squirting away with all their might, and Diana, Amphitrite, and several other grown-up goddesses doing the same; and Apollo’s horses, which breathe the surge from their nostrils, and Neptune, astride of a whale, which vomits the ocean from its gills; with jets-d’eaux innumerable, spouting water, with fantastic figures along the main walks and vistas of the garden.

For the grand scene of all, you must imagine a wide avenue the fourth of a mile, and a row of watery trees at each side, and at the closed end a circular lake, with a liquid pillar rising from the centre, and several concentric circles jetting around at different heights, and scattering the drizzly vapour which makes rainbows as it descends. If you have imagined all this, with a temple, and Thetis and her nymphs seated in it, and plenty of cascades, waterspouts, and cataracts pouring down upon them—this is the “Play of the waters at Versailles.”

The multitude of the spectators was like a forest of the Mahonoy. The women were as thick as Catullus’s kisses. With one of them, whom I knew, I walked awhile, in the “Swiss Garden,” with its air of gentility and modesty. Here the Royal Family used to abdicate theirgreatness and play one week of the year a peasant’s life; and the royal girls romped about the garden in their linsey frocks, and check aprons, and coarse petticoats, and had bonny-clabber for supper. Louis XVI. was a miller, and Maria Antoinette was a dear little dairy-maid; but—

“More water glides by the millThan wots the miller of.”

The mill, and the dairy, and the cottages, and other monuments of these royal Saturnalia, are yet remaining. These were anciently the pastimes of monarchs, who had thirty millions of subjects; and they complain that the judgments of Heaven have overtaken them!

In strolling along a silent path through the woods, we came unexpectedly into a little retreat, which so lurked in a corner, that, after a week’s stay here, I had not observed it. They call it the ball-room. It is a circle, having an orchestra in the centre, and an area for dancing between it and the circumference; and here are two rows of columns of coloured marble, united by thirty arches, and beneath each, on the night of ceremony, is a jet-d’eau falling infleur de lis, and seeming to sustain lightedlustres, which are suspended by an invisible thread from the arches. It is inclosed by a hedge, and overshaded by branches from the surrounding trees. It seems as if made for some king of the elves, or fairy queen, to play her midnight gambols in.

The great palace of Versailles is a long squat edifice, which inspires no great reverence. It has one magnificent room, two hundred feet by thirty, now converted into a National Museum of pictures. There are two smaller palaces half a mile distant, graceful and elegant, called the great and littleTrianon. With the latter is connected, an English garden, in all the pretty disorder of nature, and in open contrast with the garden in general, which is tricked out in all the embellishments of art.

Nature has furnished the raw materials, and of a good quality; but a tree here is scarcely more like a tree in its natural shapes, than apaté de foie grasis like a goose. The sums expended upon this royal residence are reckoned at near forty millions sterling. The population of the town is twenty-eight thousand. I remained here a week last August, and then wrote you a detailed account of its garden andits palaces; Maria Antoinette's room, Josephine's room, and all the rooms, and the pictures and the beautiful Cathedral; and though I may presume from your silence this letter is lost, like so many others, I have no mind to return to the subject.

Apropos. I sent you more than three months ago, written by an amiable Parisienne, "the Literary Ladies of Paris;" I hope they are not miscarried. I am tired of consuming whole days for Louis Philippe's Post-office establishment.

With great expectation of pleasure I went to the Races at Chantilly, which are among the events of this week. This town is at ten leagues distance and has an elegant view, over the Seine, and a fine turf, which was trodden on this occasion by the prettiest little feet that ever went to Chantilly. And here were the full blooded coursers, which champed the bit and pawed the earth, and devoured the road and made gallant show and promise of their mettle. What a pity you had not been there You would have seen Miss Annette outstrip Volante; you would have been glad the one gained and the other lost without caring a pin for either, and you would have paid for a mutton chop the price of the whole sheep, and as for a bed, you would have got none either for love or money.

A little slice of hard fare is not without its advantages to pampered citizens, it works off the bad humours engendered by an idle life; and fits of poverty now and then in the country are grateful and genteel recreations of the rich, and have been praised by the poets,—You would have dreamed of slumbering by the waving pines, and soft murmurs of your little Schuylkills, and then of wandering alone in a foreign land, and then sitting the live-long night upon a chair in the stables of the Great Condé; of having jockeys and grooms for your chamber-maids and race horses for your bed curtains.—These stables, if you please, cost thirty millions, and it is an old saying in France,"que les cheveaux du Prince de Condé, sont mieux logés que les rois d'Angleterre."Famous knights used to mount here in full panoply, to carry terrors beyond the Duro and the Rhine. Alas, that stables should be sometimes the only memorials of one's earthly possessions! The castle of the Great Prince is demolished; the"magnifique maison de Plaisance,"which opened its folding doors to a thousand guests of a night, is now with the house of Priam, and the grass has grown upon its altars:—

——“Where one seeks for Ilion’s walls,The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.”

Indeed, castles in general in France, may be written in the catalogue of its ruins. The French nobles and princes are no longer great feudal barons or idlers. The aristocracy of now-a-days has to attend to business—to the Chamber of Peers and Deputies—and to go to market. Even the retreats of monarchy are moss-grown with neglect. The nation murmurs at the expense, and lets its ruins go to wreck for want of repair. The number of royal palaces are a dozen, and their annual expense of keeping, 160,000 dollars. Fontainebleau is content with a yearly visit; and the magnificent Versailles has become a national museum. I looked all about here for the eloquent Bossuet, but he too is so broken up, you scarce find the fragments. His magnificent gardens, jets-d’eaux, and chestnut groves, are the commons of Chantilly—and

“Thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,Now sweep the alleys they were born to shade.”

Paris and the neighbouring country pouredout upon the plains of Chantilly, this day, such multitudes as never went to Troy. To obtain a vehicle to return in was impossible, and to stay another night at Chantilly was impossible also; but I had to set my foot upon this latter impossibility. I was so lucky as to meet Mr. —— of New York, and by a long search together we found lodgings for the night; and what we little thought of finding in a French village, a fat landlady; but so fat, she is silently taking leave of her knees; before this reaches you she will have seen them, perhaps, for the last time; and her husband, still more ill favoured, sat by, his lower lip hanging towards the waistband of his breeches. At the lady’s feet was a chubby baby, nearly naked, resembling an unfeathered owl.

My companion, a man of address, nursed this brat, and called it tender names to please the mother. One grows so polite in this country; besides what does not one do for a lodging at Chantilly? Also in the back ground was a female, acting in the double capacity of chambermaid andbonne, who had her share in the general effect. She had been frightened, when young, till her eyes had started out of her head, and had stayed there, staring ever since; andher lips being too short for her teeth, gave her a look of affability without the trouble of smiling. To complete the interest of her physiognomy, she had a long beaky nose with the tip red. She was so ugly, the child would not cry after her. These were the protections, which it pleased Providence to put around our honesty at the races of Chantilly.

I describe this family only to introduce with more interest, a domestic occurrence, which I am going to relate, in order to relieve a little the serious details of this letter.—Night already held its middle course in the heavens, and a lady, our fellow-lodger, tired of waiting the untimely hours of her husband, had retired for the evening to her chamber; and there, being relieved from the apparel of the day, she took a look under the bed; a prudent caution, which she always observed, and which she says, her mother had observed before her;—and what do you think she discovered under the bed? The legs of a man! She fled, and forgetting the nakedness of her condition, rushed into the hall, where we, in the midst of the family circle, sat over a mug of French beer, with long pipes, smoking and watching the curling smoke as it ascended gracefully towardsthe ceiling. In the precipitation of her flight she fell over a stool, at full length, upon the floor—exhibiting the incomprehensible mechanism of the human figure in all its proportions. It fell to my lot, being nearest, to bring her to, which I did, wrapping her in a cloak, placing her on a couch, and encouraging her to speak. As soon as she had explained, the alarm became general; pipes were extinguished, and candles lighted, and we proceeded into the suspicious bed-chamber; the “bonne,” with her eyes farther out, smiling nevertheless, and the fat madame, and her husband walking on his lip; one carried the poker, one the boot-jack, and one the flat-iron, and we moved on in close file to the bed-side; and here we made a halt. I felt, (I will confess it,) my respiration stop; I stood in the van, being unwillingly placed there by the pride of sustaining American bravery in a foreign country. I thought of my little children, and then moved aside the curtain, respectfully. You have, perhaps, seen a man kill a rattle-snake with a short stick.—And after all, what do you think it was? A pair of boots;—the lady’s husband having gone out in his shoes.

We retired now to our chambers, where Dr. B. and I were eaten up by bugs; and there wasa Frenchman in the adjoining room, who passed also a melancholy night; we presumed from the same cause, for we heard him every now and then say——, which is the French for bug. So you see that not Americans alone are subject to these unsavoury afflictions—non soli dant sanguine pœnas. Get thee to Chantilly, Mrs. Butler. Indeed, I have learned from inquiry, and personal experience, too, that this kind of vermin and some others, creep higher up into good society here, than in the United States.

Our better houses, I mean, which keep servants, and pique themselves on their gentility, do not suffer such inmates at all. It is true, that the poorer sort of folks, and even the better sort of country taverns, do not care a straw for all the bugs of Christendom. They look upon them as the natural bleeders, provided for the poor, providentially, and a saving of expense, in cupping, leeching, and other kinds of phlebotomy.

But these English people, when did they all at once become so clean, that they should turn up their noses so fastidiously at others? Why, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, in Shakspeare’s time, in my Lord Bacon’s time, in my Lord Coke’s time, courtiers used to offend the verynose of majesty by coming with dirty feet into the presence. Oh, here is a quotation apropos, in Pepys’s Journal, which I have just been reading. “February 12th; Up, finding the beds good, butlousy.” Now, this is in London, and this Pepys, who found the beds so “good,” was secretary of the admiralty, only one hundred and fifty years ago. Besides our judges, I guess, don’t carry posies in their button holes—(though, it is not because they have not frequent need of them.)

These are the delights of Chantilly. If any one should go thither twice, he must be a much greater fool than I am, which I deem impossible. Yet here was the whole habitable earth; all the peasantry with their baked faces, and caps like your winnowed snows, and all the trim rabble of the towns, thebeau mondeof the Halles, and all that is richest in beauty, education, and blood, too, was here—not forgetting my Lord S——, who keeps horses for the turf, and liveries for Longchamps, nor him, so enviable for his skin and bones, so recommendable by his thinness, and who makes himself lighter on a pinch, by holding his breath, who rode Miss Annette, though Volante came up like a storm from the south, victoriously to thestake—Mr. Robinson. Now all these were at the races, and the newspapers have done nothing else for a week than describe their inexpressible enjoyments.

The truth is, I set out upon this excursion on one of my unlucky days. I have read of a giant somewhere, who one day swallowed down windmills without choking, and who was suffocated by a piece of fresh butter the next. Unlucky days are an old woman’s superstition. But there is scarce a wise man, who does not tell you some of his days that were nothing but a series of mishaps.

In the same manner, good fortune appears to attend some persons in all their enterprises, while others again seem marked for special persecution; adversity keeps barking at their heels through the whole course of their lives.

My grandmother, who brought me up, besides being a Presbyterian, was a Scotchwoman; she believed she was compelled to snuff out the candle by predestination; and it is not so easy a matter as you think, to get rid of one’s grandmother. My silly jaunt to Chantilly occurred on one of these days. It was not enough that I should be run against by a diligence, and almost irretrievably smashed;that I should be crammed into a stable; be destroyed by bugs, and frightened to death by a pair of boots; the same fortune pursued me on my return home. I hung up my watch by a nail, which had sustained it for six months; but it was my unlucky day; it fell, to its entire destruction, upon the brick floor. I gathered up the fragments, and to close my window curtains, mounted upon a chair, which tilted; I fell against an opposite table, which also upset, breaking the marble cover into several pieces; and there I was, with a broken head, amidst the ruins. I then crawled into bed, where I remained the next day with a fever, and sent for the doctor.

Now I will conclude this very absurd doctrine, with a sensible advice; namely, that you never set out to the Races, on any such abominable, horse-play, excursions of pleasure, in a melancholy, or ill-natured mood; it is the sure precursor of ill-luck; both because you will extract evil out of every occurrence, and, in your froward temper, you will be continually running into difficulties, which, in good humour, you would either have escaped, or turned to a merry account.

If you come to Paris without a soul withyou, having been spoiled a little at home with your domestic affections, you will every now and then fall into a fit of melancholy, which the doctors will call a “nostalgia;” and you will wish the very devil had Paris; and you will detest all French people, whatever be their merits; and, to be revenged of them, you will write home to your friends, and you will call the men all rogues, and the women all something else, and then you will feel a little better. I have been in the midst of this wilderness of men, as solitary as Robinson Crusoe, in his island. And I know of no kind of solitude half so distressful, as the aspect of a large city, especially to tender-hearted gentlemen, who have been brought up in villages.

To walk in the midst of multitudes of one’s own species, without a sign, or a look, or a smile of recognition, impresses one with a very humiliating sense of one’s own insignificance; besides, one feels the necessity of loving somebody, and of being loved. These feelings will be exceedingly bitter on your first arrival, and your fits of “blue devils” more frequent. My advice is, that you seek the distractions of gentlemanly amusements. For this, you must make the acquaintance of some French gentleman, (a French lady is much better,) who is well versed in the genteel world, and she will lead you into such consolations and mischiefs, as your unfortunate situation may require. She must be sufficiently attached to you, to take the trouble to instruct you, and you must take the trouble, by your amiability and assiduities, to win this attachment. How much better is this than sitting alone, and killing the minutes one by one, in your bachelor’s chamber; it is better, though you should gain nothing else from her acquaintance than hanging yourself in her garters.

Depend upon it, nature did not intend the whole of this life as a preparation for the next; else had she not opened to us so many means of enjoyment of the senses here. And, depend upon it, there is a world of delightful and genteel pleasures in Paris, if one has but the address to hunt for them. My special advice is, that you do not seek a cure for home-sickness, in excesses; if in wine, be assured that your spirits will soon pass from the vinous to the acetous fermentation; if in gambling in Paris, your ruin is accomplished. I repeat, there is but one effectual cure, it is the acquaintance of an amiable and sensible woman. This was thefirst remedy for solitude prescribed by Him, who knew best the heart and dispositions of man. Adam, I doubt not, while Eve slept, yet a rib in his bosom, was afflicted often with home-sickness; and I dare say he was never troubled with it afterwards.

Recollect, when I speak of women, I claim the right of being interpreted on the side of mercy. I speak of them with an entire sense of the respect due to the sex; as a gentleman should, who does not forget that his mother is a woman, his sisters, wife, and daughters are women. When I recommend woman’s society, you will please to think of the intercourse of the bee with the flowers; it gathers its honied treasures, where most rich and succulent, but meditates no injury to the plant by which they are supplied. But I am relapsing into morality; good night. I will fill the rest of this blank to-morrow.

May 7th.

WhenI was just ready to go to London, what should have occurred but the king’s birth-day; it fell out exactly on the first of May, and I had to stay to see it; and I am going now to give you a brief abstract of its entertainments, to finish this letter; it is already long, but remember it is the last. At half-past five,P.M.,the king made a bow, and the queen made one of the prettiest curtsies imaginable, from a gallery of the Tuileries; for we had all assembled there to listen to a concert served up,al fresco, in a hail storm. A platform was erected in front of the palace, and several hundred musicians were mounted on it; but a wintery rain from the north-east, mixed occasionally with snow, poured down the whole afternoon; and it rained, and rained, as if heaven had no ears for music. A howling storm, now and then, raved through anadagioof Mozart, and Jove descended on the fiddle-strings.

At the end of each piece there was a pause—not of the rain, but the music—and then came criticisms on all sides.—“Oh! that air of Bellini! said the lady; and then her eyes trotted about the garden. “Exquisite! said her cavalier, and took a pinch of snuff.—“Lafond? c’est un talent superbe.—Inférieur à Beriot? du tout, du tout, il n’y a que Pagga—(Une prise s’il vous plait.)Le Message du President est donc arrivé.What are they going to determine?—Determine?—To pay. (Dieu, quelle jolie femme!)On ne fait que payer dans ce pays-ci.” “As for the concerts of the Conservatory, I find them stupid beyond sufferance;”—thepoor musician, in the mean time, turning up his eyes towards heaven, and, with supplicating looks, imploring mercy from the clouds.

I did not take off my hat and shout with the rest, when his majesty bowed. I was not quite sure whether the law of nations would justify me in making a bow, until he has paid the “twenty-five millions.” However, I said, quietly to myself, “Vive le roi!” He is,sans compliment, the most sensible head of a king that is in Europe; and I wish him, from the good will I bear the French nation, to live out his time.—But I did not let the paltry sum of “twenty-five millions” interfere with the respect I owed her majesty’s curtsey.

They have fire-works always ready made here for such occasions; and keep them by them in a closet. On this birth-day they were more sublime and beautiful, than is common, even in Paris. To look down from the terrace of the Tuileries, upon the immense crowd covered with its umbrellas, moving and whirling about in the twilight, all over the Place Louis XI., and its environs, was a fantastic spectacle, and worth seeing. Have you ever looked at a million of crabs in vinegar, through a microscope?—We remained, a long time, in expectation,and the mud. What a delightful thing a publicfêteis, especially when one is expressly ordered to be diverted ten days a-head, by ordinance of the Police.

Suddenly, ten thousand sky-rockets hissed through the air, and exploded in constellations of stars, pale, pink, and vermilion, which dropped down slowly towards the earth. This was the note of preparation. Then went off Mount Ætna, and Vesuvius, and Hecla; and a Niagara of liquid fire poured down in a cataract, covering up a little Herculaneum and Pompeii; and the wholePyrotechniewas by degrees unfolded of Sieur Ruggieri, Ingénieur of Paris.

There were bouquets of all the flowers in the field, in their most brilliant and harmonious tints; and there was a fierce encounter of knights in the air, and lions ready to spring on you; and there was the devil on a pale horse; and, all at once, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, as large as life, stood blazing before us; its huge pillars, its pulpit, its sacristy, and a little fiery congregation, who exploded one after another; a lady went off, and then a gentleman; and, last of all, the priest went out at the altar, and suddenly all was night.—The atmosphere was sick with saltpetre, and the heavenswept tricoloured stars.—This was forty million times prettier than anything you ever saw in your life.

In the meantime, the illuminations blazed out through the town. The Madelaine stood in a basin of glimmering fire, and wore a garland of flaming beads upon her brows; and a belt of gas-lights, like sparkling diamonds, encircled the queen of streets, the Rue Rivoli; it was a mile long. The Pantheon too, and the Invalids, and the Arch of Neuilly, afar off, poured their ineffectual fires upon the thick night; and all the orchards of the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and Champs Elysées, were bending under the load of their golden fruits.—How jealous the moon and stars would have been, if they could have looked out upon the French capital this night.—If we don’t get up suchfêtesin America, it is not because we can’t, it is because we don’t feel in the humour, it is because —— in fine, it is because we don’t want to——

I had intended to pass over the recreations of the morning for want of room; but here is, unfortunately, room enough.—I generally walk out here, as in America, alone; for if one takes a companion one is obliged to walk his way; besides you can’t imagine what an effort it is tobe always agreeable. I like sometimes, in a solitary walk, to think you all over; to stray with you by the Mill Creek and Tumbling Run, or to sit down on your piny eminence and overlook the village, and enjoy your nonsense, which is enjoyed nowhere else in such perfection. In a word, if alone, I can get into a reverie; alone, I can fight duels, rout armies, save ladies from ruin, and do things that are impracticable.

It was only this morning that I fought the battle of Waterloo over again, and beat Lord Wellington; and when I take a companion along with me, he puts me out. So I went out this morning alone. I was in rather an ill humour, and I had resolved not to be pleased, or to laugh at anything, much less this buffoonery of ajour de fête;—in this mood I arrived in the Champs Elysées.

All the world was flowing in here from all quarters, as the little streams into the great ocean; and the immense plain was fitted up with scaffoldings for various representations, and tents and booths stood in long rows for the sale of all sorts of nick-nacks, and cakes and sweetmeats, and refreshments; and here were all themarionettesandfunambulaires, the buffoons, the harlequins and scaramouches, the most famous of Paris; and the jugglers

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