Gleanings in Europe
Date: 2025-11-23T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Cooper; James Fenimore; 1789-1851 -- Travel -- France

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Title: Gleanings in Europe

France, vol. 1 of 2

Author: James Fenimore Cooper

Release date: November 23, 2025 [eBook #77304]

Language: English

Original publication: Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1836

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GLEANINGS
IN EUROPE.
BY AN AMERICAN.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

PHILADELPHIA:

CAREY, LEA & BLANCHARD.

1837.

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by Carey, Lea & Blanchard, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

It may seem to be late in the day, to give an account of the more ordinary characteristics of Europe. But the mass of all nations can form their opinions of others through the medium of testimony only; and as no two travellers see precisely the same things, or, when seen, view them with precisely the same eyes, this is a species of writing, after all, that is not likely to pall, or cease to be useful. The changes, that are constantly going on every where, call for as constant repetitions of the descriptions; and although the pictures may not always be drawn and coloured equally well, so long as they are taken in good faith, they will not be without their value.

It is not a very difficult task to make what is commonly called an amusing book of travels. Any one who will tell, with a reasonable degree of graphic effect, what he has seen, will not fail to carry the reader with him; for the interest we all feel in personal adventure is, of itself, almost success. But it is much more difficult to give an honest and a discriminating summary of what one has seen. The mind so naturally turns to exceptions, that an observer has great need of self-distrust, of the powers of analysis, and, most of all, of a knowledge of the world, to be what the lawyers call a safe witness.

I have no excuse of haste, or of a want of time, to offer for the defects of these volumes. All I ask is that they may be viewed as no more than they profess to be. They are the gleanings of a harvest already gathered, thrown together in a desultory manner and, without the slightest, or at least a very small, pretension to any of those arithmetical and statistical accounts, that properly belong to works of a graver character. They contain the passing remarks of one who has certainly seen something of the world, whether it has been to his advantage or not, who had reasonably good opportunities to examine what he saw, and who is not conscious of being, in the slightest degree, influenced “by fear, favour, or the hope of reward.” His compte rendu must pass for what it is worth.

FRANCE.

LETTER I.
To Captain Shubrick, U. S. N.

My dear Shubrick—

“Passengers by the Liverpool, London and Havre packets, are informed that a steam-boat will leave the White Hall wharf precisely at 11, A. M. to-morrow, June 1st.” If to this notice be added the year, 1826, you have the very hour and place of our embarkation. We were nominally of the London party, it being our intention, however, to land at Cowes, from which place we proposed crossing the channel to Havre. The reason for making this variation from the direct route was the superior comfort of the London ship; that of the French line for the 1st June, though a good vessel and well commanded, being actually the least commodious packet that plied between the two hemispheres.

We were punctual to the hour, and found one of the smaller steamers crowded with those who, like ourselves, were bound to the “old world,” and the friends who had come to take the last look at them. We had our leave-takings too, which are sufficiently painful when it is known that years must intervene before there is another meeting. As is always done by good Manhattenese, the town house had been given up on the first of May, since which time, we had resided at a hotel. The furniture had been principally sold at auction, and the entire month had passed in what I believed to be very ample preparations. It may be questioned if there is any such thing as being completely prepared for so material a change; at all events, we found a dozen essentials neglected at the last moment, and as many oversights to be repaired in the same instant.

On quitting the hotel, some fifty or a hundred volumes and pamphlets lay on the floor of my bed-room. Luckily you were to sail on a cruise, in a day or two, and as you promised not only to give them a berth, but to read them one and all, they were transferred forthwith to the Lexington. They were a dear gift, if you kept your word! John was sent with a note, with orders to be at the wharf in half an hour. I have not seen him since. Then Abigail was to be discharged. We had long debated whether this excellent woman should, or should not, be taken. She was an American, and, like most of her country-women, who will consent to serve in a household, a most valuable domestic. She wished much to go, but, on the other side, was the conviction that a woman who had never been at sea, would be useless during the passage, and then we were told so many fine things of the European servants, that the odds were unfortunately against her. The principal objection, however, was her forms of speech. Foreign servants would of themselves be a great aid in acquiring the different languages, and poor Abigail, at the best, spoke that least desirable of all corruptions of the English tongue, the country dialect of New England. Her New England morals and New England sense, in this instance, were put in the balance against her “bens,” “an-gels,” “doozes,” “nawthings,” “noans,” and even her “virtooes,” (in a family of children, no immaterial considerations,) and the latter prevailed. We had occasion to regret this decision. A few years later, I met in Florence, an Italian family of high rank, which had brought with them from Philadelphia, two female domestics, whom they prized above all the other servants of a large establishment. Italy was not good enough for them, however, and after resisting a great deal of persuasion, they were sent back. What was Florence or Rome to Philadelphia! But then these people spoke good English, better, perhaps, than common English nursery maids, the greatest of their abuses in orthoepy, being merely to teach a child to call its mother a “mare.”

It was a flat calm, and the packets were all dropping down the bay with the ebb. The day was lovely, and the view of the harbour, which has so many, while it wants so many of the elements of first rate scenery, was rarely finer. All estuaries are most beautiful, viewed in the calm; but this is peculiarly true of the Bay of New York—neither the colour of the water, nor its depth, nor the height of the surrounding land being favourable to the grander efforts of nature. There is little that is sublime in either the Hudson, or its mouth, but there is the very extreme of landscape beauty.

Experience will teach every one, that without returning to scenes that have made early impressions, after long absences, and many occasions to examine similar objects elsewhere, our means of comparison are of no great value. My acquaintance with the Hudson has been long and very intimate; for to say that I have gone up and down its waters a hundred times, would be literally much within the truth. During that journey, whose observations and events are about to fill these volumes, I retained a lively impression of its scenery, and, on returning to the country, its current was ascended with a little apprehension, that an eye which had got to be practised in the lights and shades of the Alps and Appenines, might prove too fastidious for our own river. What is usually termed the grandeur of the Highlands was certainly much impaired; but other parts of the scenery gained in proportion, and, on the whole, I found the passage between New York and Albany to be even finer than it had been painted by memory. I should think, there can be little doubt that, if not positively the most beautiful river, the Hudson possesses some of the most beautiful river scenery, of the known world.

Our ship was named after this noble stream. We got on board of her, off Bedlow’s, and dropped quietly down as far as the quarantine ground, before we were met by the flood. Here we came to, to wait for a wind, more passengers, and that important personage, whom man-of-war’s men term the master, and landsmen the captain. In the course of the afternoon, we had all assembled, and began to reconnoitre each other, and to attend to our comforts.

To get accustomed to the smell of the ship, with its confined air, and especially to get all their little comforts about them in smooth water, is a good beginning for your novices. If to this be added, moderation in food, and especially in drink; as much exercise as one can obtain; refraining from reading and writing until accustomed to one’s situation, and paying great attention to the use of aperients, I believe all is said, that an old traveller and an old sailor, too, can communicate on a subject so important to those who are unaccustomed to the sea. Can your experience suggest any thing more?

We lay that night at the quarantine ground; but early on the morning of the 2nd, all hands were called to heave-up. The wind came in puffs over the heights of Staten, and there was every prospect of our being able to get to sea, in two or three hours. We hove short, and sheeted home and hoisted the three topsails; but the anchor hung, and the people were ordered to get their breakfasts, leaving the ship to tug at her ground tackle with a view to loosen her hold of the bottom.

Every thing was now in motion. The little Don Quixote, the Havre ship just mentioned, was laying through the narrows, with a fresh breeze from the south-west. The Liverpool ship was out of sight, and six or seven sail were turning down with the ebb, under every stitch of canvass that would draw. One fine vessel tacked directly on our quarter. As she passed quite near our stern, some one cried from her deck—“A good run to you, Mr. ——.” After thanking this well-wisher, I inquired his name. He gave me that of an Englishman who resided in Cuba, whither he was bound. “How long do you mean to be absent?” “Five years.” “You will never come back.” With this raven-like prediction we parted; the wind sweeping his vessel beyond the reach of the voice.

These words, “you will never come back!” were literally the last that I heard on quitting my country. They were uttered in a prophetic tone, and under circumstances that were of a nature to produce an impression. I thought of them often, when standing on the western verge of Europe, and following the course of the sun toward the land in which I was born; I remembered them from the peaks of the Alps, when the subtle mind, outstripping the senses, would make its mysterious flight westward across seas and oceans, to recur to the past, and to conjecture the future; and when the allotted five years were up, and found us still wanderers, I really began to think, what probably every man thinks, in some moment of weakness, that this call from the passing ship, was meant to prepare me for the future. The result proved in my case, however, as it has probably proved in those of most men, that Providence did not consider me of sufficient importance to give me audible information of what was about to happen. So strong was this impression to the last, notwithstanding, that on our return, when the vessel passed the spot where the evil-omened prediction was uttered, I caught myself muttering involuntarily, “—— is a false prophet; I have come back!”

We got our anchor as soon as the people were ready, and, the wind drawing fresh through the narrows, were not long turning into lower bay. The ship was deep, and had not a sufficient spread of canvass for a summer passage, but she was well commanded, and exceedingly comfortable.

The wind became light in the lower bay. The Liverpool ship had got to sea the evening before, and the Don Quixote was passing the Hook, just as we opened the mouth of the Raritan. A light English bark was making a fair wind of it, by laying out across the swash, and it now became questionable whether the ebb would last long enough to sweep us round the south-west spit, a détour that our heavier draught rendered necessary.

By paying great attention to the ship, however, the pilot, who was of the dilatory school, succeeded, about 3 P.M. in getting us round that awkward but very necessary buoy, which makes so many foul winds of fair ones, when the ship’s head was laid to the eastward, with square yards. In half an hour the vessel had ‘slapped’ past the low sandy spit of land, that you have so often regarded with philosophical eyes, and we fairly entered the Atlantic, at a point where nothing but water lay between us and the rock of Lisbon. We discharged the pilot on the bar.

By this time the wind had entirely left us, the flood was making strong, and there was a prospect of our being compelled to anchor. The bark was nearly hull down in the offing, and the top-gallant-sails of the Don Quixote were just settling into the water. All this was very provoking, for there might be a good breeze to seaward, while we had it calm in-shore. The suspense was short, for a fresh-looking line along the sea to the southward, gave notice of the approach of wind, the yards were braced forward, and in half an hour we were standing east southerly, with strong head-way. About sunset we passed the light-vessel which then lay moored several leagues from land, in the open ocean, an experiment that has since failed. The highlands of Navesink disappeared with the day.

The other passengers were driven below, before evening. The first mate, a straight-forward Kennebunk-man, gave me a wink, (he had detected my sea education by a single expression, that of “send it an end,” while mounting the side of the ship,) and said, “a clear quarter-deck! a good time to take a walk, sir.” I had it all to myself, sure enough, for the first two or three days, after which our land-birds came crawling up, one by one; but, long before the end of the passage, nothing short of a double-reefed-top-sail breeze, could send the greater part of them below. There was one man, however, who, the mate affirmed, wore the heel of a spare top-mast smooth, by seating himself on it, as the precise spot where the motion of the ship excited the least nausea. I got into my berth at nine, but hearing a movement over head, about midnight, I turned out again, with a sense of uneasiness I had rarely before experienced at sea. The responsibility of a large family, acted, in some measure, like the responsibility of command. The captain was at his post, shortening sail, for it blew fresher; there was some rain; and thunder and lightning were at work in the heavens; in the direction of the adjacent continent; the air was full of wild, unnatural lucidity, as if the frequent flashes left a sort of twilight behind them; and objects were discernible at a distance of two or three leagues. We had been busy in the first watch, as the omens denoted easterly weather; the English bark was struggling along the troubled waters, already quite a league on our lee-quarter.

I remained on deck half an hour, watching the movements of the master. He was a mild, reasoning, Connecticut man, whose manner of ministering to the wants of the female passengers, had given me already a good opinion of his kindness and forethought, while it left some doubts of his ability to manage the rude elements of drunkenness and insubordination which existed among the crew, quite one half of whom were Europeans. He was now on deck in a south-wester,[1] giving his orders in a way effectually to shake all that was left of the “horrors” out of the ship’s company. I went below, satisfied that we were in good hands, and before the end of the passage, I was at a loss to say whether nature had most fitted this truly worthy man to be a ship-master, or a child’s-nurse, for he really appeared to me to be equally skilful in both capacities.

1. Doric—sow-wester.

Such a temperament is admirably suited to the command of a packet, a station in which so many different dispositions, habits, and prejudices are to be soothed, at the same time that a proper regard is to be had to the safety of their persons. If any proof is wanting, that the characters of seamen in general, have been formed under adverse circumstances, and without sufficient attention, or, indeed, any attention to their real interests, it is afforded in the fact, that the officers of the packet-ships, men usually trained like other mariners, so easily adapt their habits to their new situation, and become more mild, reflecting, and humane. It is very rare to hear a complaint against an officer of one of these vessels; yet it is not easy to appreciate the embarrassments they have frequently to encounter from whimsical, irritable, ignorant, and exacting passengers. As a rule, the eastern men of this country, make the best packet-officers. They are less accustomed to sail with foreigners than those who have been trained in the other ports, but acquire habits of thought and justice, by commanding their countrymen; for, of all the seamen of the known world, I take it the most subordinate, the least troublesome, and the easiest to govern, so long as he is not oppressed, is the native American. This, indeed, is true, both ashore and afloat, for very obvious reasons: they who are accustomed to reason themselves, being the most likely to submit to reasonable regulations; and they who are habituated to plenty are the least likely to be injured by prosperity, which causes quite as much trouble in this world as adversity. It is this prosperity, too suddenly acquired, which spoils most of the labouring Europeans who emigrate, while they seldom acquire the real, frank, independence of feeling which characterizes the natives. They adopt an insolent and rude manner as its substitute, mistaking the shadow for the substance. This opinion of the American seamen is precisely the converse of what is generally believed in Europe, however, and more particularly in England; for, following out the one-sided political theories, in which they have been nurtured, disorganization, in the minds of the inhabitants of the old world, is inseparable from popular institutions.

The early part of the season of 1826, was remarkable for the quantities of ice that had drifted from the north into the track of European and American ships. The Crisis, a London packet, had been missing nearly three months, when we sailed. She was known to have been full of passengers, and the worst fears were felt for her safety; ten years have since elapsed, and no vestige of this unhappy ship has ever been found!

Our master prudently decided that safety was of much more importance than speed, and he kept the Hudson well to the southward. Instead of crossing the banks, we were as low as 40°, when in their meridian; and although we had some of the usual signs, in distant piles of fog, and exceedingly chilly and disagreeable weather, for a day or two, we saw no ice. About the fifteenth, the wind got round to the southward and eastward, and we began to fall-off more than we wished even, to the northward.

All the charts for the last fifty years, have three rocks laid down, to the westward of Ireland, which are known as the “Three Chimneys.” Most American mariners have little faith in their existence, and yet, I fancy, no seaman draws near the spot where they are said to be, without keeping a good look-out for the danger. The master of the Hudson, once carried a lieutenant of the English navy, as a passenger, who assured him that he had actually seen these “Three Chimneys.” He may have been mistaken, and he may not. Our course lay far to the southward of them, but the wind gradually hauled ahead, in such a way as to bring us as near as might be to the very spot where they ought to appear, if properly laid down. The look-outs of a merchant ship are of no great value, except in serious cases, and I passed nearly a whole night on deck, quite as much incited by my precious charge, as by curiosity, in order to ascertain all that eyes could ascertain, under the circumstances. No signs of these rocks, however, were seen from the Hudson.

It is surprising in the present state of commerce, and with the vast interests which are at stake, that any facts affecting the ordinary navigation between the two hemispheres, should be left in doubt. There is a shoal, and I believe a reef, laid down near the tail of the Great Bank, whose existence is still uncertain. Seamen respect this danger more than that of the “Three Chimneys,” for it lies very much in the track of ships between Liverpool and New York; still, while tacking, or giving it a berth, they do not know whether they are not losing a wind for a groundless apprehension! Our own government would do well to employ a light cruiser, or two, in ascertaining just these facts (many more might be added to the list,) during the summer months. Our own brief naval history is pregnant with instances of the calamities that befall ships. No man can say when, or how, the Insurgente, the Pickering, the Wasp, the Epervier, the Lynx, and the Hornet, disappeared. We know that they are gone, and of all the brave spirits they held, not one has been left to relate the histories of the different disasters. We have some plausible conjectures, concerning the manner in which the two latter were wrecked; but an impenetrable mystery conceals the fate of the four others. They may have run on unknown reefs. These reefs may be constantly heaving up from the depths of the ocean, by subterranean efforts; for a marine rock is merely the summit of a sub-marine mountain.[2]

2. There is a touching incident connected with the fortunes of two young officers of the navy, that is not generally known. When the Essex frigate was captured in the Pacific, by the Phœbe and Cherub, two of the officers of the former were left in the ship, in order to make certain affidavits that were necessary to the condemnation. The remainder were paroled and returned to America. After a considerable interval, some uneasiness was felt at the protracted absence of those who had been left in the Essex. On inquiry, it was found, that, after accompanying the ship to Rio Janeiro, they had been exchanged, according to agreement, and suffered to go where they pleased. After some delay, they took passage in a Swedish brig bound to Norway, as the only means which offered to get to Europe, whence they intended to return home. About this time, great interest was also felt for the sloop Wasp. She had sailed for the mouth of the British channel, where she fell-in with, and took the Reindeer, carrying her prisoners into France. Shortly after, she had an action with, and took the Avon, but was compelled to abandon her prize by others of the enemies’ cruisers, one of which (the Castillian,) actually came up with her and gave her a broadside. About twenty days after the latter action, she took a merchant brig, near the Western Islands, and sent her into Philadelphia. This was the last that had been heard of her. Months and even years went by, and no farther intelligence was obtained. All this time, too, the gentlemen of the Essex were missing. Government ordered inquiries to be made in Sweden, for the master of the brig in which they had embarked. He was absent on a long voyage, and a weary period elapsed before he could be found. When this did happen he was required to give an account of his passengers. By producing his log book and proper receipts, he proved that he had fallen in with the Wasp, near the line, about a fortnight after she had taken the merchant brig, named, when the young officers in question, availed themselves of the occasion to return to their flag. Since that time, a period of twenty-one years, the Wasp has not been heard of.

We were eighteen days out, when, early one morning, we made an American ship, on our weather quarter. Both vessels had every thing set that would draw, and were going about five knots, close on the wind. The stranger made a signal to speak us, and, on the Hudson’s main-topsail being laid to the mast, he came down under our stern, and ranged up along-side to leeward. He proved to be a ship called the “London Packet,” from Charleston, bound to Havre, and his chronometer having stopped, he wanted to get the longitude.

When we had given him our meridian, a trial of sailing commenced, which continued without intermission for three entire days. During this time, we had the wind from all quarters, and of every degree of force from the lightest air to a double-reefed-topsail breeze. We were never a mile separated, and frequently we were for hours within a cable’s length of each other. One night the two ships nearly got foul, in a very light air. The result showed, that they sailed as nearly alike, one being deep and the other light, as might well happen to two vessels. On the third day, both ships being under reefed topsails, with the wind at east, and in thick weather, after holding her own with us for two watches, the London Packet edged a little off the wind, while the Hudson still hugged it, and we soon lost sight of our consort in the mist.

We were ten days longer struggling with adverse winds. During this time, the ship made all possible traverses, our vigilant master resorting to every expedient of an experienced seaman to get to the eastward. We were driven up as high as fifty-four, where we fell into the track of the St. Lawrence traders. The sea seemed covered with them, and I believe we made more than a hundred, most of which were brigs. All these we passed without difficulty. At length a stiff breeze came from the south-west, and we laid our course for the mouth of the British Channel under studding-sails.

On the 28th, we got the bottom in about sixty fathoms water. The 29th was thick weather, with a very light, but a fair wind; we were now quite sensibly within the influence of the tides. Towards evening the horizon brightened a little, and we made the Bill of Portland, resembling a faint bluish cloud. It was soon obscured, and most of the landsmen were incredulous about its having been seen at all. In the course of the night, however, we got a good view of the Eddystone.

Going on deck early, on the morning of the 30th, a glorious view presented itself. The day was fine, clear, and exhilarating, and the wind was blowing fresh from the westward. Ninety-seven sail, which had come into the channel, like ourselves, during the thick weather, were in plain sight. The majority were English, but we recognised the build of half the maritime nations of Christendom in the brilliant fleet. Every body was busy, and the blue waters were glittering with canvass. A frigate was in the midst of us, walking through the crowd like a giant stepping among pigmies. Our own good vessel left every thing behind her, also, with the exception of two or three other bright-sided ships, which happened to be as fast as herself.

I found the master busy with the glass, and soon as he caught my eye, he made a sign for me to come forward. “Look at that ship directly ahead of us.” The vessel alluded to, led the fleet, being nearly hull down to the eastward. It was the Don Quixote, which had left the port of New York, one month before, about the same distance in our advance. “Now look here, in-shore of us,” added the master. “It is an American, but I cannot make her out.” “Look again: she has a new cloth in her main-top-gallant-sail.” This was true enough, and by that sign, the vessel was our late competitor, the London Packet!

As respects the Don Quixote, we had made a journey of some five thousand miles, and not varied our distance, on arriving, a league. There was probably, some accident in this; for the Don Quixote had the reputation of a fast ship, while the Hudson was merely a pretty fair sailer. We had probably got the best of the winds. But a hard and close trial of three days had shown that neither the Hudson nor the London Packet, in their present trims, could go ahead of the other, in any wind. And yet, here, after a separation of ten days, during which time our ship had tacked and wore fifty times, had calms, foul winds and fair, and had run fully a thousand miles, there was not a league’s difference between the two vessels!

I have related these circumstances, because I think they are connected with causes that have a great influence on the success of American navigation. On passing several of the British ships to-day, I observed that their officers were below, or at least out of sight; and in one instance, a vessel of a very fair mould, and with every appearance of a good sailer, actually lay with some of her light sails aback, long enough to permit us to come up with, and pass her. The Hudson probably went with this wind some fifteen or twenty miles farther than this loiterer, while I much question if she could have gone as far, had the latter been well attended to. The secret is to be found in the fact, that so large a portion of American ship-masters are also ship-owners, as to have erected a standard of activity and vigilance, below which few are permitted to fall. These men work for themselves, and, like all their countrymen, are looking out for something more than a mere support.

About noon we got a Cowes pilot. He brought no news, but told us the English vessel, I have just named, was sixty days from Leghorn, and that she had been once a privateer. We were just thirty from New York.

We had distant glimpses of the land all day, and several of the passengers determined to make their way to the shore, in the pilot boat. These channel craft are sloops of about thirty or forty tons, and are rather picturesque and pretty boats, more especially when under low sail. They are usually fitted to take passengers, frequently earning more in this way than by their pilotage. They have the long sliding bowsprit, a short lower mast, very long cross-trees, with a taunt top-mast, and, though not so “wicked” to the eye, I think them prettier objects at sea, than our own schooners. The party from the Hudson had scarcely got on board their new vessel when it fell calm, and the master and myself paid them a visit. They looked like a set of smugglers waiting for the darkness to run in. On our return we rowed round the ship. One cannot approach a vessel at sea, in this manner, without being struck with the boldness of the experiment, which launched such massive and complicated fabrics on the ocean. The pure water is a medium almost as transparent as the atmosphere, and the very keel is seen, usually, so near the surface, in consequence of refraction, as to give us but a very indifferent opinion of the security of the whole machine. I do not remember ever looking at my own vessel, when at sea, from a boat, without wondering at my own folly in seeking such a home.

In the afternoon, the breeze sprang up again, and we soon lost sight of our friends, who were hauling in for the still distant land. All that afternoon and night, we had a fresh and a favourable wind. The next day, I went on deck, while the people were washing the ship. It was Sunday, and there was a flat calm. The entire scene admirably suited a day of rest. The channel was like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of air, and some twenty or thirty vessels lay scattered about the view, with their sails festooned and drooping, thrown into as many picturesque positions by the eddying waters. Our own ship had got close in with the land; so near, indeed, as to render a horse, or a man, on the shore distinctly visible. We were on the coast of Dorsetshire. A range of low cliffs lay directly abeam of us, and as the land rose to a ridge behind them, we had a distinct view of a fair expanse of nearly houseless fields. We had left America verdant and smiling; but we found England brown and parched, there having been a long continuance of dry easterly winds.

The cliffs terminated suddenly, a little way ahead of the ship, and the land retired inward, with a wide sweep, forming a large, though not a very deep bay, that was bounded by rather low shores. It was under these very cliffs, on which we were looking with so much pleasure and security, and at so short a distance, that the well known and terrible wreck of an Indiaman occurred, when the master, with his two daughters, and hundreds of other lives, were lost. The pilot pointed out the precise spot where that ill-fated vessel went to pieces. But the sea in its anger, and the sea at rest, are very different powers. The place had no terrors for us.

Ahead of us, near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship’s head off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our course towards the distant bluff. Every thing was again in motion. The cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those before us rose, and lost their indistinctness; the blue of the latter soon became gray, and ere long white as chalk; this being the material of which they are, in truth, composed.

We saw a small whale, (it might have been a large grampus) floundering ahead of us, and acting as an extra pilot, for he appeared to be steering, like ourselves, for the Needles. These Needles, are fragments of the chalk cliffs, that have been pointed and rendered picturesque, by the action of the weather, and our course lay directly past them. They form a line from the extremity of the Isle of Wight, and are awkwardly placed for vessels that come this way in thick weather, or in the dark. The sloop of war got round them first, and we were not far behind her. When fairly within the Needles the ship was embayed, our course now lying between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, through a channel of no great width. The country was not particularly beautiful, and still looked parched, though we got a distant view of one pretty town, Lymington, in Hampshire. This place, in the distance, appeared not unlike a large New England village, though there was less glare to the houses. The cliffs, however, were very fine, without being of any extraordinary elevation. Though much inferior to the shores of the Mediterranean, they as much surpass any thing I remember to have seen on our own coast, between Cape Anne and Cape Florida; which, for its extent, a part of India, perhaps, excepted, is, I take it, just the flattest, and tamest, and least interesting coast in the entire world.

The master pointed out a mass of dark herbage, on a distant height, which resembled a copse of wood that had been studiously clipped into square forms, at its different angles. It was visible only for a few moments, through a vista in the hills. This was Carisbrooke Castle, buried in ivy.

There was another little castle, on a low point of land, which was erected by Henry VIII., as a part of a system of marine defence. It would scarcely serve to scale the guns of a modern twenty-four pounder frigate, judging of its means of resistance and annoyance by the eye. These things are by-gones for England, a country that has little need of marine batteries.

About three, we reached a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name, being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river, or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage, in the arm of the sea off this little haven, was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little more than pilot boats and crafts of a smaller size. The Hudson brought up among the former. Hauling up the fore-course of a merchant ship, is like lifting the curtain again on the drama of the land. These vessels rarely furl this sail; and they who have not experienced it, cannot imagine what a change it produces on those who have lived a month, or six weeks, beneath its shadow. The sound of the chain running out was very grateful, and I believe, though well satisfied with the ship as such, that every body was glad to get a nearer view of our great mother earth.

It was Sunday, but we were soon visited by boats from the town. Some came to carry us ashore, others to see that we carried nothing off with us. At first, the officer of the customs manifested a desire to make us all go without the smallest article of dress, or any thing belonging to our most ordinary comforts; but he listened to remonstrances, and we were eventually allowed to depart with our night bags. As the Hudson was to sail immediately for London, all our effects were sent within the hour to the custom house. At 3 P. M. July 2nd, 1826, we put foot in Europe, after a passage of thirty-one days from the quarantine ground.

LETTER II.
To Mrs. Pomeroy, Cooperstown, New York.

We were no sooner on English ground, than we hurried to one of the two or three small inns of West Cowes, or the principal quarter of the place, and got rooms at the Fountain. Mr. and Mrs. —— had preceded us, and were already in possession of a parlour adjoining our own. On casting an eye out at the street, I found them, one at each window of their own room, already engaged in a lively discussion of the comparative merits of Cowes and Philadelphia! This propensity to exaggerate the value of whatever is our own, and to depreciate that which is our neighbours’, a principle that is connected with the very ground-work of poor human nature, forms a material portion of the travelling equipage of nearly every one who quits the scenes of his own youth, to visit those of other people. A comparison between Cowes and Philadelphia, is even more absurd than a comparison between New York and London, and yet, in this instance, it answered the purpose of raising a lively controversy, between an American wife and a European husband.

The consul at Cowes had been an old acquaintance at school, some five-and-twenty years before, and an inquiry was set on foot for his residence. He was absent in France, but his deputy soon presented himself with an offer of services. We wished for our trunks, and it was soon arranged that there should be an immediate examination. Within an hour, we were summoned to the store-house, where an officer attended on behalf of the customs. Every thing was done in a very expeditious and civil manner, not only for us, but for a few steerage passengers, and this, too, without the least necessity for a douceur, the usual passe partout of England. America sends no manufactures to Europe; and, a little smuggling in tobacco excepted, there is probably less of the contraband in our commercial connexion with England, than ever before occurred between two nations that have so large a trade. This, however, is only in reference to what goes eastward, for immense amounts of the smaller manufactured articles of all Europe, find their way, duty free, into the United States. There is also a regular system of smuggling through the Canadas, I have been told.

While the ladies were enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I had twice visited England, professionally, before I was eighteen; and, on one occasion, the ship I was in, anchored off this very island, though not at this precise spot. I now thought the people altered. There had certainly been so many important changes in myself, during the same period, that it becomes me to speak with hesitation on this point; but even the common class seemed less peculiar, less English, less provincial, if one might use such an expression, as applied to so great a nation; in short, more like the rest of the world, than formerly. Twenty years before, England was engaged in a war, by which she was, in a degree, isolated from most of Christendom. This insulated condition, sustained by a consciousness of wealth, knowledge, and power, had served to produce a decided peculiarity of manners, and even of appearance. In the article of dress, I could not be mistaken. In 1806, I had seen all the lower classes of the English, clad in something like costumes. The channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames’ waterman, a jacket and breeches of velveteen, and a badge; the gentleman and gentlewoman, attire such as was certainly to be seen in no other part of the Christian world, the English colonies excepted. Something of this still remained, but it existed rather as the exception, than as the rule. I then felt, at every turn, that I was in a foreign country; whereas, now, the idea did not obtrude itself, unless I was brought in immediate contact with the people.

America, in my time, at least, has always had an active and swift communication with the rest of the world. As a people, we are, beyond a question, decidedly provincial, but our provincialism is not exactly one of external appearance. The men are negligent of dress, for they are much occupied, have few servants, and clothes are expensive, but the women dress remarkably near the Parisian modes. We have not sufficient confidence in ourselves to set fashions. All our departures from the usages of the rest of mankind, are the results of circumstances, and not of calculation, unless, indeed, it be one that is pecuniary. Those, whose interest it is to produce changes, cause fashions to travel fast, and there is not so much difficulty, or more cost, in transporting any thing from Havre to New York, than there is in transporting the same thing from Calais to London; and far less difficulty in causing a new mode to be introduced, since, as a young people, we are essentially imitative. An example or two, will better illustrate what I mean.

When I visited London, with a part of my family, in 1828, after passing near two years on the continent of Europe, Mrs. —— was compelled to change her dress—at all times simple, but then, as a matter of course, Parisian—in order not to be the subject of unpleasant observation. She might have gone in a carriage attired as a French woman, for they who ride in England, are not much like those who walk. But to walk in the streets, and look at objects, it was far pleasanter to seem English than to seem French. Five years later, we took London on our way to America, and even then, something of the same necessity was felt. On reaching home, with dresses fresh from Paris, the same party was only in the mode; with toilettes a little, and but very little, better arranged, it is true, but in surprising conformity with those of all around them. On visiting our own little retired mountain-village, these Parisian-made dresses were scarcely the subject of remark to any but to your connoisseurs. My family struck me as being much less peculiar, in the streets of C——, than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans, in submitting to the despotism of foreign fashions.

Another fact will show you another side of the subject. While at Paris, a book of travels in America, written by an Englishman, (Mr. Vigne,) fell into my hands. The writer, apparently a well-disposed and sensible man, states that he was dancing dos-à-dos in a quadrille, at New York, when he found, by the embarrassment of the rest of the set, he had done something wrong. Some one kindly told him that they no longer danced dos-à-dos. In commenting on this trifling circumstance, the writer ascribes the whole affair to the false delicacy of our women! Unable to see the connexion between the cause and the effect, I pointed out the paragraph to one of my family, who was then in the daily practice of dancing, and that too in Paris, itself, the very court of Terpsichore. She laughed, and told me that the practice of dancing dos-à-dos, had gone out at Paris a year or two before, and that doubtless the newer mode had reached New York before it reached Mr. Vigne! These are trifles, but they are the trifles that make up the sum of national peculiarities, ignorance of which lead us into a thousand fruitless and absurd conjectures. In this little anecdote we learn the great rapidity with which new fashions penetrate American usages, and the greater ductility of American society in visible and tangible things, at least; and the heedless manner with which even those who write in a good spirit of America, jump to their conclusions. Had Capt. Hall, or Mrs. Trollope, encountered this unlucky quadrille, they would probably have found some clever means of imputing the nez-à-nez tendencies of our dances, to the spirit of democracy! The latter, for instance, is greatly outraged by the practice of wearing hats in Congress, and of placing the legs on tables; and, yet, both have been practised in Parliament from time immemorial! She had never seen her own Legislature, and having a set of theories cut and dried for Congress, every thing that struck her as novel, was referred to one of her preconceived notions. In this manner are books manufactured, and by such means are nations made acquainted with each other!

Cowes resembles a toy-town. The houses are tiny, the streets, in the main, are narrow and not particularly straight, while every thing is neat as wax. Some new avenues, however, are well planned, and long ere this, are probably occupied: and there were several small marine villas in, or near, the place. One was shown me, that belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. It had the outward appearance of a medium-sized American country house. The bluff King Hal caused another castle to be built here, also, which I understood was inhabited at the time, by the family of the Marquis of Anglesey, who was said to be its governor. A part of the system of the English government-patronage is connected with these useless castles, and nominally fortified places. Salaries are attached to the governments, and the situations are usually bestowed on military men. This is a good, or a bad, regulation, as the patronage is used. In a nation of extensive military operations, it might prove a commendable and a delicate way of rewarding services; but, as the tendency of mankind is to defer to intrigue, and to augment power rather than to reward merit, the probability is that these places are rarely bestowed, except in the way of political quids pro quos.

I was, with one striking exception, greatly disappointed in the general appearance of the females that I met in the streets. While strolling in the skirts of the town, I came across a group of girls and boys, in which a laughable scene of nautical gallantry was going on. The boys, lads of fourteen or fifteen, were young sailors, and among the girls, who were of the same age and class, was one of bewitching beauty. There had been some very palpable passages of coquetry between the two parties, when one of the young sailors, a tight lad of thirteen or fourteen, rushed into the bevy of petticoats, and, borne away by an ecstasy of admiration, but certainly guided by an excellent taste, he seized the young Venus round the neck, and dealt out some as hearty smacks as I remember to have heard. The working of emotion in the face of the girl was a perfect study. Confusion and shame came first; indignation followed; and, darting out from among her companions, she dealt her robust young admirer such a slap in the face, that it sounded like the report of a pocket pistol. The blow was well meant, and admirably administered. It left the mark of every finger on the cheek of the sturdy little fellow. The lad clenched his fist, seemed much disposed to retort in kind, and ended by telling his beautiful antagonist that it was very fortunate for her she was not a boy. But it was the face of the girl herself that drew my attention. It was like a mirror which reflected every passing thought. When she gave the blow, it was red with indignation. This feeling instantly gave way to a kinder sentiment, and her colour softened to a flush of surprise at the boldness of her own act. Then came a laugh, and a look about her, as if to inquire if she had been very wrong; the whole terminating in an expression of regret in the prettiest blue eyes in the world, which might have satisfied any one that an offence occasioned by her own sweet face, was not unpardonable. The sweetness, the ingenuousness, the spirit mingled with softness, exhibited in the countenance of this girl, are, I think, all characteristic of the English female countenance, when it has not been marble-ized by the over-wrought polish of high breeding. Similar countenances occur in America, though, I think, less frequently than here, and I believe them to be quite peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race. The workings of such a countenance are like the play of lights and shades in a southern sky.

From the windows of the inn we had a very good view of a small castellated dwelling that one of the King’s architects had caused to be erected for himself. The effect of gray towers seen over the tree-tops, with glimpses of the lawn, visible through vistas in the copses, was exceedingly pretty, though the indescribable influence of association prevented us from paying that homage to turrets and walls of the nineteenth, that we were ready so devotedly to pay to any thing of the thirteenth, or fourteenth, centuries.

We broke bread, for the first time in Europe, that evening, having made an early and a hurried dinner on board the ship. The Isle of Wight is celebrated for its butter, and yet we found it difficult to eat it! The English, and many other European nations, put no salt in their table butter, and we, who had been accustomed to the American usage, exclaimed with one voice against its insipidity. A near relation of A——’s, who once served in the British army, used to relate an anecdote on the subject of tastes, that is quite in point. A brother officer, who had gone safely through the celebrated siege of Gibraltar, landed at Portsmouth, on his return home. Among the other privations of his recent service, he had been compelled to eat butter whose fragrance scented the whole Rock. Before retiring for the night, he gave particular orders to have hot rolls and Isle of Wight butter served for breakfast. The first mouthful disappointed him, and of course the unlucky waiter suffered. The latter protested that he had executed the order to the letter. “Then, take away your Isle of Wight butter,” growled the officer, “and bring me some that has a taste.”

Like him of Gibraltar, we were ready to exclaim, “take away your Isle of Wight butter, and bring us some from the good ship Hudson,” which, though not quite as fragrant as that which had obtained its odour in a siege, was not entirely without a taste. This little event, homely as it may appear, is connected with the principle that influences the decisions of more than half of those who visit foreign nations. Usages are condemned because they are not our own; practices are denounced if their connexion with fitness is not self-apparent to our inexperience; and men and things are judged by rules that are of local origin and local application. The moral will be complete when I add, that we, who were so fastidious about the butter at Cowes, after an absence of nearly eight years from America, had the salt regularly worked out of all we ate, for months after our return home, protesting there was no such thing as good butter in America. Had Mrs. —— introduced the Philadelphia butter, however, I think her husband must have succumbed, for I believe it to be the best in the world, not even excepting that of Leyden.

Towards evening, the Hudson having landed all her cabin passengers, and the most of those who were in the steerage, went round the eastern point of the little port, on her way to London.

After taking an early breakfast, we all got into a carriage called a sociable, which is very like a larger sort of American coachee, and went to Newport, the principal town of the island. The road ran between hedges, and the scenery was strictly English. Small enclosures, copses, a sward clipped close as velvet, and trees (of no great size or beauty, however) scattered in the fields, with an effect nearly equal to landscape gardening, were the predominant features. The drought had less influence on the verdure here than in Dorsetshire. The road was narrow and winding, the very beau idéal of a highway; for, in this particular, the general rule obtains that what is agreeable is the least useful. Thanks to the practical good sense and perseverance of Mr. M‘Adam, not only the road in question, but nearly all the roads of Great Britain have been made, within the last five-and-twenty years, to resemble, in appearance, but really to exceed in solidity and strength, the roads one formerly saw in the grounds of private gentlemen. These roads are almost flat, and when they have been properly constructed the wheel rolls over them as if passing along a bed of iron. Apart from the levels, which, of course, are not so rigidly observed, there is not, in fact, any very sensible difference between the draft on a really good M‘Adamized road and on a rail-road. We have a few roads in America that are nearly as good as most one meets with, but we have nothing that deserves to be termed a real imitation of the system of Mr. M‘Adam.

The distance to Newport was only four or five miles. The town itself, a borough, but otherwise of little note, lies in a very sweet vale, and is neat but plain, resembling, in all but its greater appearance of antiquity and the greater size of its churches, one of our own provincial towns of the same size. A—— and myself took a fly, and went, by a very rural road, to Carisbrooke, a distance of about a mile, in quest of lodgings. Carisbrooke is a mere village, but the whole valley in this part of the island is so highly cultivated, and so many pretty cottages meet the eye—not cottages of the poor, but cottages of the rich—that it has an air of finish and high cultivation that we are accustomed to see only in the immediate vicinity of large towns, and not always even there.

On reaching the hamlet of Carisbrooke we found ourselves immediately beneath the castle. There was a fine old village church, one of those picturesque rustic edifices which abound in England, a building that time had warped and twisted in such a way as to leave few parallel lines, or straight edges, or even regular angles, in any part of it. They told us, also, that the remains of a ruined priory were at hand. We have often laughed since at the eagerness and delight with which we hurried off to look at these venerable objects. It was soon decided, however, that it was a pleasure too exquisite to be niggardly enjoyed alone, and the carriage was sent back with orders to bring up the whole party.

While the fly—a Liliputian coach, drawn by a single horse; a sort of diminutive buggy—was absent, we went in quest of the priory. The people were very civil, and quite readily pointed out the way. We found the ruin in a farm yard. There was literally nothing but a very small fragment of a blind wall, but with these materials we went to work with the imagination, and soon completed the whole edifice. We might even have peopled it, had not Carisbrooke, with its keep, its gate-way, and its ivy-clad ramparts, lay in full view, inviting us to something less ideal. The church, too, the rude, old, humpbacked church was already opened, waiting to be inspected.

The interior of this building was as ancient, in appearance at least, and quite as little in harmony with right lines and regular angles, as its exterior. All the wood work was of unpainted oak, a colour, however, that was scarcely dark enough to be rich; a circumstance which, to American eyes, at least, eyes on whose lenses paint is ever present, gave it an unfinished look. Had we seen this old building five years later, we might have thought differently. As for the English oak, of which one has heard so much, it is no great matter; our own common oaks are much prettier, and did we understand their beauty, there would not be a village church in America, that, in this particular, would not excel the finest English cathedral. I saw nothing, in all Europe, of this nature, that equalled the common oaken doors of the hall at C——, which you know so well.

A movement in the church-yard called us out, and we became pained witnesses of the interment of two of the “unhonoured dead.” The air, manner, and conduct of these funerals, made a deep impression on us both. The dead were a woman and a child, but of different families. There were three or four mourners belonging to each party. Both the bodies were brought in the same horse cart, and they were buried by the same service. The coffins were of some coarse wood stained with black, in a way to betray poverty. It was literally le convoi du pauvre. Deference to their superiors, and the struggle to maintain appearances, for there was a semblance of the pomp of wo, even in these extraordinary groups, of which all were in deep mourning, contrasted strangely with the extreme poverty of the parties, the niggardly administration of the sacred offices, and the business-like manner of the whole transaction. The mourners evidently struggled between natural grief and the bewilderment of their situation. The clergyman was a goodlooking young man, in a dirty surplice. Most probably he was a curate. He read the service in a strong voice, but without reverence, and as if he were doing it by the job. In every way, short-measure was dealt out to the poor mourners. When the solemn words of “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” were uttered, he bowed hastily towards each grave,—he stood between them,—and the assistants met his wholesale administration of the rites with a wholesale sympathy.

The ceremony was no sooner over, than the clergyman and his clerk retired into the church. One or two of the men cast wistful eyes toward the graves, neither of which was half filled, and reluctantly followed. I could scarcely believe my senses, and ventured to approach the door. Here I met such a view as I had never before seen, and hope never to witness again. On one side of me two men were filling the graves; on the opposite, two others were actually paying the funeral fees. In one ear was the hollow sound of the clod on the coffin; in the other the chinking of silver on the altar! Yea, literally on the altar! We are certainly far behind this great people in many essential particulars; our manners are less formed; our civilization is less perfect; but thanks to the spirit which led our ancestors into the wilderness, such mockery of the Almighty and his worship, such a mingling of God and Mammon, never yet disgraced the temple within the wide reach of the American borders.

We were joined by the whole party before the sods were laid on the graves of the poor; but some time after the silver had been given for the consolations of religion. With melancholy reflections we mounted to the castle. A—— had been educated in opinions peculiarly favourable to England, but I saw, as we walked mournfully away from the spot, that one fact like this, did more to remove the film from her eyes, than volumes of reading.

Carisbrooke has been too often described to need many words. Externally, it is a pile of high battlemented wall, completely buried in ivy, forming within a large area, that was once subdivided into courts, of which, however, there are, at present, scarcely any remains. We found an old woman as warder, who occupied a room or two, in a sort of cottage that had been made out of the ruins. The part of the edifice which had been the prison of Charles I. was a total ruin, resembling any ordinary house without roof, floors, or chimneys. The aperture of the window, through which he attempted to escape, is still visible. It is in the outer wall, against which the principal apartments had been erected. The whole work stands on a high irregular ridge of a rocky hill, the keep being much the most elevated. We ascended to the sort of bastion which its summit forms, whence the view was charming. The whole vale, which contains Carisbrooke and Newport, with a multitude of cottages, villas, farm-houses, and orchards, with meads, lawns, and shrubberies, lay in full view, and we had distant glimpses of the water. The setting of this sweet picture, or the adjacent hills, was as naked and brown, as the vale itself was crowded with objects and verdant. The Isle of Wight, as a whole, did not strike me as being either particularly fertile, or particularly beautiful, while it contains certain spots that are eminently both. I have sailed entirely round it, more than once, and judging from the appearance of its coasts, and from what was visible in this little excursion, I should think that it had more than a usual amount of waste, treeless land. The sea-views are fine, as a matter of course, and the air is pure and bracing. It is consequently much frequented in summer. It were better to call it the “watering place,” than to call it the “garden of England.”

We had come in quest of a house where the family might be left, for a few days, while I went up to London. But the whole party was anxious to put their feet in bonâ fide old England, before they crossed the channel, and the plan was changed to meet their wishes. We slept that night at Newport, therefore, and returned in the morning to Cowes, early enough to get on board a steam-boat for Southampton. This town lies several miles up an estuary that receives one or two small streams. There are a few dwellings on the banks of the latter, that are about the size and of the appearance of the better sort of country houses on the Hudson, although more attention appears to have been generally paid to the grounds. There were two more of Henry VIIIth’s forts, and we caught a glimpse of a fine, ruined, Gothic window, in passing Netley Abbey.

We landed on the pier at Southampton about one, and found ourselves truly in England. “Boat, sir, boat?” “Coach, sir, coach?” “London, sir, London?”—“No—we have need of neither!”—“Thank ‘ee, sir—thank ’ee, sir.” These few words, in one sense, are an epitome of England. They rang in our ears for the first five minutes after landing. Pressing forward for a livelihood, a multitude of conveniences, a choice of amusements, and a trained, but a heartless and unmeaning civility. “No, I do not want a boat.” “Thank ’ee, sir.” You are just as much “thank ’ee” if you do not employ the man, as if you did. You are thanked for condescending to give an order, for declining, for listening. It is plain to see that such thanks dwell only on the lips. And yet we so easily get to be sophisticated; words can be so readily made to supplant things; deference, however unmeaning, is usually so grateful, that one soon becomes accustomed to all this, and even begins to complain that he is not imposed on.

We turned into the first clean-looking inn that offered. It was called the Vine, and though a second-rate house, for Southampton even, we were sufficiently well served. Every thing was neat, and the waiter, an old man with a powdered head, was as methodical as a clock, and a most busy servitor to human wants. He told me he had been twenty-eight years doing exactly the same things daily, and in precisely the same place. Think of a man crying “coming, sir,” and setting table, for a whole life, within an area of forty feet square! Truly, this was not America.

The principal street in Southampton, though making a sweep, is a broad, clean avenue, that is lined with houses having, with very few exceptions, bow-windows, as far as an ancient gate, a part of the old defences of the town. Here the High Street is divided into “Above-bar” and “Below-bar.” The former is much the most modern, and promises to be an exceedingly pretty place, when a little more advanced. “Below-bar” is neat and agreeable too. The people appeared singularly well dressed, after New York. The women, though less fashionably attired than our own, taking the Paris modes for the criterion, were in beautiful English chintzes, spotlessly neat, and the men all looked as if they had been born with hat-brushes and clothes-brushes in their hands, and yet every one was in a sort of sea-shore costume. I saw many men whom my nautical instinct detected at once to be naval officers,—some of whom must have been captains—in round-abouts; but it was quite impossible to criticise toilettes that were so faultlessly neat, and so perfectly well arranged.

We ordered dinner, and sallied forth in quest of lodgings. Southampton is said to be peculiar for “long passages, bow-windows, and old maids.” I can vouch that it merits the two first distinctions. The season had scarcely commenced, and we had little difficulty in obtaining rooms, the bow-window and long passage included. These lodgings comprise one or more drawing-rooms, the requisite number of bed-rooms, and the use of the kitchen. The people of the house, ordinarily trades-people, do the cooking and furnish the necessary attendance. We engaged an extra servant, and prepared to take possession that evening.

When we returned to the Vine, we found a visiter, in this land of strangers. Mrs. R——, of New York, a relative and an old friend, had heard that Americans of our name, were there, and she came doubting, and hoping, to the Vine. We found that the windows of our own drawing-room looked directly into those of hers. A few doors below us, dwelt Mrs. L——, a still nearer relative, and a few days later, we had vis-à-vis, Mrs. M‘A——, a sister of A——’s, on whom we all laid eyes for the first time in our lives! Such little incidents recall to mind the close consanguinity of the two nations, although for myself, I have always felt as a stranger in England. This has not been so much from the want of kindness and a community of opinion on many subjects, as from a consciousness, that in the whole of that great nation, there is not a single individual, with whom I could claim affinity. And yet, with a slight exception, we are purely of English extraction. Our father was the great-great-grand-son of an Englishman. I once met with a man, (an Englishman,) who bore so strong a resemblance to him, in stature, form, walk, features, and expression, that I actually took the trouble to ascertain his name. He even had our own. I had no means of tracing the matter any farther, but here was physical evidence to show the affinity between the two people. On the other hand, A—— comes of the Huguenots. She is purely American by every intermarriage, from the time of Louis XIVth, down, and yet she found cousins, in England, at every turn, and even a child of the same parents, who was as much of an English woman, as she herself was an American.

We drunk to the happiness of America, at dinner. That day, fifty years, she declared herself a nation; that very day, and nearly, at that hour, two of the co-labourers in the great work we celebrated, departed in company for the world of spirits!

A day or two was necessary to become familiarized to the novel objects around us, and my departure for London was postponed. We profited by the delay, to visit Netley Abbey, a ruin of some note, at no great distance from Southampton. The road was circuitous, and we passed several pretty country houses, few of which exceeded in size or embellishments, shrubbery excepted, similar dwellings at home. There was one, however, of an architecture much more ancient than we had been accustomed to see, it being, by all appearance, of the time of Elizabeth or James. It had turrets and battlements, but was otherwise plain.

The Abbey was a fine, without being a very imposing, ruin, standing in the midst of a field of English neatness, prettily relieved by woods. The window already mentioned, formed the finest part. The effect of these ruins on us proved the wonderful power of association. The greater force of the past than of the future on the mind, can only be the result of questionable causes. Our real concern with the future is incalculably the greatest, and yet we are dreaming over our own graves, on the events and scenes which throw a charm around the graves of those who have gone before us! Had we seen Netley Abbey, just as far advanced towards completion, as it was, in fact, advanced towards decay, our speculations would have been limited by a few conjectures on its probable appearance, but gazing at it, as we did, we peopled its passages, imagined Benedictines stalking along its galleries, and fancied that we heard the voices of the choir, pealing among its arches.

Our fresh American feelings were strangely interrupted by the sounds of junketting. A party of Southampton cocknies, (there are cocknies even in New York,) having established themselves on the grass, in one of the courts, were lighting a fire, and were deliberately proceeding to make tea! “To tea, and ruins,” the invitations most probably run. We retreated into a little battery of the bluff King Hal, that was near by, a work that sufficiently proved the state of nautical warfare in the sixteenth century.

LETTER III.
To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown.

At a very early hour, one of the London coaches stopped at the door. I had secured a seat by the side of the coachman, and we went through the “bar” at a round trot. The distance was about sixty miles, and I had paid a guinea for my place. There were four or five other passengers, all on the outside.

The road between Southampton and London, is one of little interest; even the highway itself is not as good as usual, for the first twenty or thirty miles, being made chiefly of gravel, instead of broken stones. The soil for a long distance was thirsty, and the verdure was nearly gone. England feels a drought sooner than most countries, probably from the circumstance of its vegetation being so little accustomed to the absence of moisture, and to the comparative lightness of the dews. The wind, until just before the arrival of the Hudson, had been blowing from the eastward for several weeks, and in England this is usually a dry wind. The roads were dusty, the hedges were brown, and the fields had nothing to boast of over our own verdure. Indeed, it is unusual to see the grasses of New York so much discoloured, so early in the season.

I soon established amicable relations with my companion on the box. He had been ordered at the Vine to stop for an American, and he soon began to converse about the new world. “Is America any where near Van Dieman’s Land?” was one of his first questions. I satisfied him on this head, and he apologized for the mistake, by explaining that he had a sister settled in Van Dieman’s Land, and he had a natural desire to know something about her welfare! We passed a house which had more the air of a considerable place than any I had yet seen, though of far less architectural pretensions than the miniature castle near Cowes. This my companion informed me, had once been occupied by George IVth, when Prince of Wales. “Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!” added the professor of the whip, with the leer of a true amateur.

These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays. They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or uniform, like the continental postillions, talk in a particular way, and act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague; he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a black-bird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. “He didn’t want to take the bla-a-a-ck-bud, but if the man wanted to send the bla-a-a-ck-bud, why didn’t he bring the bla-a-a-ck-bud?” This is one of the hundred dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an additional curb, before we ventured into the streets of London. I intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America, by filling their ears with cotton. This suggestion evidently gave offence, and he took occasion soon after to show it. He wrung the nose of the horse with a cord, attaching its end below, in the manner of a severe martingale. While going through this harsh process, which, by the way, effectually subdued the animal, he had leisure to tell him, that “he was an English horse, and not an out-landish horse, and he knew best what was good for him,” with a great deal more similar sound nationality.

Winchester was the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full of these political mystifications, and it is one of the reasons that she is so much in arrears in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in order, that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye, and not only the masters of the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great inconvenience, in order that this abstraction might not be violated. There may be some small remuneration, but no one can suppose, for a moment, that the keeper of a genteel establishment of this nature, wishes to see his carriage-houses, gate-ways, and halls, thronged with soldiers. Society oppresses him, to maintain appearances! At the present day, the presence of soldiers might be the means of sustaining justice, while there is not the smallest probability that they would be used for contrary purposes, except in cases in which this usage, or law—for I believe there is a statute for it—would not be in the least respected. This is not an age, nor is England the country, in which a judge is to be overawed by the roll of a drum. All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible political combinations, whether of individuals, or of men, are uniformly made at the expense of the majority. The day is certainly arrived when absurdities like these should be done away with.

The weather was oppressively hot, nor do I remember to have suffered more from the sun, than during this little journey. Were I to indulge in the traveller’s propensity to refer every thing to his own state of feeling, you might be told what a sultry place England is, in July. But I was too old a sailor, not to understand the cause. The sea is always more temperate than the land, being cooler in summer and warmer in winter. After being thirty days at sea, we all feel this truth, either in one way, or the other. I was quitting the coast, too, which is uniformly cooler than the interior.

When some twelve or thirteen miles from town, the coachman pointed to a wood enclosed by a wall, on our left. A rill trickled from the thicket, and run beneath the road. I was told that Virginia Water lay there, and that the evening before, a single foot-pad had robbed a coach in that precise spot, or within a few hundred yards of the very place where the King of England, at the moment, was amusing himself with the fishing-rod. Highway robberies, however, are now of exceedingly rare occurrence, that in question being spoken of as the only one within the knowledge of my informant, for many years.

Our rate of travelling was much the same as that of one of our own better sort of stages. The distance was not materially less than that between Albany and C——n, the roads were not so hilly, and much better than our own road, and yet, at the same season, we usually perform it, in about the same time, that we went the distance between Southampton and London. The scenery was tame, nor, with the exception of Winchester, was there a single object of any interest visible, until we got near London. We crossed the Thames, a stream of trifling expanse, and at Kew we had a glimpse of an old German-looking edifice in yellow bricks, with towers, turrets, and battlements. This was one of the royal palaces. It stood on the opposite side of the river, in the midst of tolerably extensive grounds. Here a nearly incessant stream of vehicles commenced. I attempted to count the stage-coaches, and got as high as thirty-three, when we met a line of mail-coaches that caused me to stop, in despair. I think we met not less than fifty, within the last hour of our journey. There were seven belonging to the mail, in one group. They all leave London at the same hour, for different parts of the kingdom.

At Hyde Park corner, I began to recall objects known in my early visits to London. Apsley House had changed owners, and had become the property of one whose great name was still in the germ, when I had last seen his present dwelling. The Parks, a gate-way or two excepted, were unchanged. In the row of noble houses that line Piccadilly, in that hospital-looking edifice, Devonshire-house, in the dingy, mean, irregular, and yet interesting front of St. James’, in Brookes’, White’s, the Thatched House, and various other historical monuments, I saw no change. Buckingham-house had disappeared, and an unintelligible pile was rising on its ruins. A noble “palazzo-nonfinito” stood at the angle between the Green and St. James’ Parks, and, here and there, I discovered houses of better architecture than London was wont, of old, to boast. One of the very best of these, I was told, was raised in honour of Mercury, and probably out of his legitimate profits. It is called Crockford’s.

Our “bla-a-a-ck-bud” pulled up, in the Strand, at the head of Adam-street, Adelphi, and I descended from my seat at his side. An extra shilling brought the glimmering of a surly smile athwart his blubber-cheeks, and we parted in good-humour. My fellow travellers were all men of no very high class, but they had been civil, and were sufficiently attentive to my wants, when they found I was a stranger, by pointing out objects on the road, and explaining the usages of the inns. One of them had been in America, and he boasted a little of his intimacy with General This, and Commodore That. At one time, too, he appeared somewhat disposed to institute comparisons between the two countries, a good deal at our expense, as you may suppose; but as I made no answers, I soon heard him settling it with his companions, that, after all, it was quite natural a man should not like to hear his own country abused; and so he gave the matter up. With this exception, I had no cause of complaint, but, on the contrary, good reason to be pleased.

I was set down at the Adam-street Hotel, a house much frequented by Americans. The respectable woman who has so long kept it, received me with quiet civility, saw that I had a room, and promised me a dinner in a few minutes. While the latter was preparing, having got rid of the dust, I went out into the streets. The lamps were just lighted, and I went swiftly along the Strand, recalling objects at every step. In this manner I passed, at a rapid pace, Somerset-house, St. Clements-le-Dane, St. Mary-le-Strand, Temple-bar, Bridge-street, Ludgate Hill, pausing only before St. Paul’s. Along the whole of this line, I saw but little change. A grand bridge, Waterloo, with a noble approach to it, had been thrown across the river just above Somerset-house, but nearly every thing else remained unaltered. I believe my manner, and the eagerness with which I gazed at long remembered objects, attracted attention, for I soon observed I was dogged around the church, by a suspicious-looking fellow. He either suspected me of evil, or, attracted by my want of a London air, he meditated evil himself. Knowing my own innocence, I determined to bring the matter to an issue. We were alone, in a retired part of the place, and, first making sure that my watch, wallet, and handkerchief had not already disappeared, I walked directly up to him, and looked him intently in the face, as if to recognise his features. He took the hint, and, turning on his heels, moved nimbly off. It is surprising how soon an accustomed eye will distinguish a stranger, in the streets of a large town. On mentioning this circumstance next day to ——, he said that the Londoners pretend to recognise a rustic air in a Countess, if she has been six months from town. Rusticity, in such cases, however, must merely mean a little behind the fashions.

I had suffered curiosity to draw me two miles from my dinner, and was as glad to get back, as just before I had been to run away from it. Still, the past, with the recollections which crowded on the mind, bringing with them a flood of all sorts of associations, prevented me from getting into a coach, which would, in a measure, have excluded objects from my sight. I went to bed that night with the strange sensation of being again in London, after an interval of twenty years.

The next day, I set about the business which had brought me to the English capital. Most of our passengers were in town, and we met, as a matter of course. I had calls from three or four Americans established here, some in one capacity, and some in others, for our country has long been giving back its increase to England, in the shape of Admirals, Generals, Judges, Artists, Writers, and notion-mongers. But what is all this, compared to the constant accessions of Europeans among ourselves? Eight years later, on returning home, I found New York, in feeling, opinions, desires, (apart from profit,) and I might almost say, in population, a foreign, rather than an American town.

I had passed months in London, when a boy, and yet had no knowledge of Westminster Abbey! I cannot account for this oversight, for I was a great devotee of Gothic architecture, of which, by the way, I knew nothing except through the prints, and I could not reproach myself with a want of proper curiosity on such subjects, for I had devoted as much time to their examination as my duty to the ship would at all allow. Still, all I could recall of the Abbey was an indistinct image of two towers, with a glimpse in at a great door. Now that I was master of my own movements, one of my first acts was to hurry to the venerable church.

Westminster Abbey is built in the form of a cross, as is, I believe, invariably the case with every catholic church of any pretension. At its northern end, are two towers, and at its southern, is the celebrated chapel of Henry VIIth. This chapel is an addition, which, allowing for a vast difference in the scale, resembles, in its general appearance, a school, or vestry room, attached to the end of one of our own churches. A Gothic church is, indeed, seldom complete, without such a chapel. It is not an easy matter to impress an American with a proper idea of European architecture. Even while the edifice is before his eyes, he is very apt to form an erroneous opinion of its comparative magnitude. The proportions aid deception in the first place, and absence uniformly exaggerates the beauty and extent of familiar objects. None but those who have disciplined the eye, and who have accustomed themselves to measure proportions by rules more definite than those of the fancy, should trust to their judgments in descriptions of this sort.

Westminster itself is not large, however, in comparison with St. Paul’s, and an ordinary parish church, called St. Magaret’s, which must be, I think, quite as large as Trinity, New York, and stands within a hundred yards of the Abbey, is but a pigmy compared with Westminster. I took a position in St. Margaret’s church-yard, at a point where the whole of the eastern side of the edifice might be seen, and for the first time in my life, gazed upon a truly Gothic structure of any magnitude. It was near sunset, and the light was peculiarly suited to the sombre architecture. The material was a gray stone, that time had rendered dull, and which had broad shades of black about its angles and faces. That of the chapel was fresher, and of a warmer tint; a change well suited to the greater delicacy of the ornaments.

The principal building is in the severer style of the Gothic, without, however, being one of its best specimens. It is comparatively plain, nor are the proportions faultless. The towers are twins, are far from being high, and to me they have since seemed to have a crowded appearance, or to be too near each other, a defect that sensibly lessens the grandeur of the north front. A few feet, more or less, in such a case, may carry the architect too much without, or too much within, the just proportions. I lay claim to very little science on the subject, but I have frequently observed since, that, to my own eye, (and the uninitiated can have no other criterion,) these towers, as seen from the parks, above the tops of the trees, have a contracted and pinched air.

But while the Abbey church itself is as plain as almost any similar edifice I remember, its great extent, and the noble windows and doors, rendered it to me, deeply impressive. On the other hand, the chapel is an exquisite specimen of the most elaborated ornaments of the style. All sorts of monstrosities have, at one period or another, been pressed into the service of the Gothic, such as lizards, toads, frogs, serpents, dragons, spitfires, and salamanders. There is, I believe, some typical connexion between these offensive objects, and the different sins. When well carved, properly placed, and not viewed too near, their effect is far from bad. They help to give the edifice its fretted appearance, or a look resembling that of lace. Various other features, which have been taken from familiar objects, such as parts of castellated buildings, port-cullises, and armorial bearings, help to make up the sum of the detail. On Henry VIIth’s chapel, toads, lizards, and the whole group of metaphorical sins are sufficiently numerous, without being offensively apparent, while miniature port-cullises, escutcheons, and other ornaments, give the whole the rich, and imaginative—almost fairy-like aspect,—which forms the distinctive feature of the most ornamented portions of the order. You have seen ivory work boxes from the east, that were cut and carved in a way to render them so very complicated, delicate and beautiful, that they please us without conveying any fixed forms to the mind. It would be no great departure from literal truth, were I to bid you fancy one of these boxes swelled to the dimensions of a church, the material changed to stone, and, after a due allowance for a difference in form, for the painted windows, and for the emblems, were I to add, that such a box would probably give you the best idea of a highly wrought Gothic edifice, that any comparison of the sort can furnish.

I stood gazing at the pile, until I felt the sensation we term “a creeping of the blood.” I knew that Westminster, though remarkable for its chapel, was, by no means, a first rate specimen of its own style of architecture; and, at that moment, a journey through Europe promised to be a gradation of enjoyments, each more exquisite than the other. All the architecture of America united, would not assemble a tithe of the grandeur, the fanciful, or of the beautiful, (a few imitations of Grecian temples excepted,) that were to be seen in this single edifice. If I were to enumerate the strong and excited feelings which are awakened by viewing novel objects, I should place this short visit to the Abbey as giving birth in me, to sensation No. 1. The emotion of a first landing in Europe had long passed; our recent “land-fall” had been like any other ‘land-fall,’ merely pleasant; and I even looked upon St. Paul’s as an old and a rather familiar friend. This was absolutely my introduction to the Gothic, and it has proved to be an acquaintance pregnant of more pure satisfaction, than any other it has been my good fortune to make since youth.

It was too late to enter the church, and I turned away towards the adjoining public buildings. The English kings had a palace at Westminster, in the times of the Plantagenets. It was the ancient usage to assemble the parliament, which was little more than a lit de justice previously to the struggle which terminated in the commonwealth, in the royal residence, and, in this manner, Westminster Palace became, permanently, the place for holding the meetings of these bodies. The buildings, ancient and modern, form a cluster on the banks of the river, and are separated from the Abbey by a street. I believe their site was once an island.

Westminster Hall was built as the banquetting room of the palace. There is no uniformity to the architecture of the pile, which is exceedingly complicated and confused. My examination, at this time, was too hurried for details, and I shall refer you to a later visit to England, for a description. A vacant space at the Abbey end of the palace, is called Old Palace Yard, which sufficiently indicates the locality of the ancient royal residence; and a similar, but larger space, or square, at the entrance to the Hall, is known as New Palace Yard. Two sides of the latter are filled with the buildings of the pile; namely, the courts of law, the principal part of the hall, and certain houses that are occupied by some of the minor functionaries of the establishment, with buildings to contain records, &c. The latter are mean, and altogether unworthy of the neighbourhood. They were plaistered on the exterior, and observing a hole in the mortar, I approached and found to my surprise, that here, in the heart of the English capital, as a part of the legislative and judicial structures, in plain view, and on the most frequented square of the vicinity, were houses actually built of wood, and covered with lath and mortar!

The next morning I sent for a hair dresser. As he entered the room, I made him a sign, without speaking, to cut my hair. I was reading the morning paper, and my operator had got half through with his job, without a syllable being exchanged between us, when the man of the comb, suddenly demanded, “What is the reason, sir, that the Americans think every thing in their own country, so much better than it is every where else?” You will suppose that the brusquerie as well as the purport of this interrogatory, occasioned some surprise. How he knew I was an American, at all, I am unable to say, but the fellow had been fidgetting the whole time to break out upon me with this question.

I mention the anecdote, in order to show you how lively and general the feeling of jealousy has got to be among our transatlantic kinsmen.—There will be a better occasion to speak of this hereafter.

London was empty. The fashionable streets were actually without a soul, for minutes at a time, and, without seeing it, I could not have believed that a town which, at certain times, is so crowded as actually to render crossing its streets hazardous, was ever so like a mere wilderness of houses. During these recesses in dissipation and fashion, I believe that the meanest residents disappear for a few months.

Our fellow traveller, Mr. L——, however, was in London, and we passed a day or two in company. As he is a votary of music, he took me to hear Madame Pasta. I was nearly as much struck with the extent and magnificence of the Operahouse, as I had been with the architecture of the Abbey. The brilliant manner in which it was lighted, in particular, excited my admiration, for want of light is a decided and a prominent fault of all scenic exhibitions at home, whether they are made in public, or in private. Madame Pasta played Semiramide. “How do you like her?” demanded L——, at the close of the first act. “Extremely; I scarce know which to praise the most, the command and the range of her voice, or her powers as a mere actress. But, don’t you think her exceedingly like the Signorina?” The present Madame Malibran was then singing in New York, under the name of Signorina Garcia. L—— laughed, and told me the remark was well enough, but I had not put the question in exactly the proper form. “Do you not think the Signorina exceedingly like Madame Pasta?” would have been better. I had got the matter wrong end foremost.

L—— reminded me of our having amused ourselves, on the passage, with the nasal tones of the chorus at New York. He now directed my attention to the same peculiarity here. In this particular, I saw no difference; nor should there be any, for I believe nearly all who are on the American stage, in any character, are foreigners, and chiefly English.

The next day we went to old Drury, where we found a countryman and townsman, Mr. Stephen Price, in the chair of Sheridan. The season was over, but we were shown the whole of the interior. It is also a magnificent structure in extent and internal embellishment, though a very plain brick pile externally. It must have eight or ten times the cubic contents of the largest American theatre. The rival building, Covent Garden, is within a few hundred feet of it, and has much more of architectural pretension, though neither can lay claim to much. The taste of the latter is very well, but it is built of that penny-saving material, stuccoed bricks.

We dined with Mr. Price, and on the table was some of our own justly celebrated Madeira. L——, who is an oracle on these subjects, pronounced it injured. He was told it was so lately arrived from New York, that there had not been time to affect it. This fact, coupled with others that have since come to my knowledge, induce me to believe that the change of tastes, which is so often remarked in liquors, fruits, and other eatables, is as much wrought on ourselves, as in the much abused viands. Those delicate organs which are necessary to this particular sense may readily undergo modifications by the varieties of temperature. We know that taste and its sister-sense, smelling, are both temporarily destroyed by colds. The voice is signally affected by temperature. In cold climates it is clear and soft; in warm, harsh and deep. All these facts would serve to sustain the probability of the theory that a large portion of the strictures that are lavished on the products of different countries, should be lavished on our own capricious organs. Au reste, the consequence is much the same, let the cause be what it will.

Mr. M——, an Englishman, who has many business concerns with America, came in, while we were still at table, and I quitted the house in his company. It was still broad day-light. As we were walking together, arm and arm, my companion suddenly placed a hand behind him, and said, “My fine fellow, you are there, are you?” A lad of about seventeen had a hand in one of his pockets, feeling for his handkerchief. The case was perfectly clear, for Mr. M—— had him still in his gripe, when I saw them. Instead of showing apprehension or shame, the fellow began to bluster and threaten. My companion, after a word or two of advice, hurried me from the spot. On expressing the surprise I felt, at his permitting such a hardened rogue to go at large, he said that our wisest course was to get away. The lad was evidently supported by a gang, and we might be beaten as well as robbed, for our pains. Besides, the handkerchief was not actually taken, attendance in the courts was both expensive and vexatious, and he would be bound over to prosecute. In England, the complainant is compelled to prosecute, which is, in effect, a premium on crime! We retain many of the absurdities of the common law, and among others, some which depend on a distinction between the intention and the commission of the act, but I do not know that any of our states is so unjust as to punish a citizen, in this way, because he has already been the victim of a rogue.

After all, I am not so certain our law is much better, but I believe more of the onus of obtaining justice falls on the injured party here, than it does with us, still we are both too much under the dominion of the common law.

The next day I was looking at a bronze statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park corner, which had been erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington. The place, like every other fashionable haunt at that season, was comparatively deserted. Still, there might have been fifty persons in sight. “Stop him! stop him!” cried a man, who was chasing another directly towards me. The chase, to use nautical terms, began to lighten ship, by throwing overboard, first one article and then another. As these objects were cast in different directions, he probably hoped that his pursuer, like Atalantis, might stop to pick them up. The last that appeared in the air was a hat, when finding himself hemmed in between three of us, the thief suffered himself to be taken. A young man had been sleeping on the grass, and this land-pirate had absolutely succeeded in getting his shoes, his handkerchief, and his hat; but an attempt to take off his cravat had awoke the sleeper. In this case, the prisoner was marched off under sundry severe threats of vengeance, for the robbee was heated with the run, and really looked so ridiculous that his anger was quite natural.

My business was now done, and I left London, in a night coach, for Southampton. The place of rendezvous was the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly, a spot almost as celebrated for those who are in transitu, as was the Isthmus of Suez, of old. I took an inside seat, this time, for the convenience of a nap. At first, I had but a single fellow traveller. Venturing to ask him the names of one or two objects that we passed, and fearing he might think my curiosity impertinent, I apologized for it, by mentioning that I was a foreigner. “A foreigner!” he exclaimed, “why, you speak English, as well as I do myself!” I confess I had thought, until that moment, that the advantage, in this particular, was altogether on my side; but it seems I was mistaken. By way of relieving his mind, however, I told him I was an American. “An American!” and he seemed more puzzled than ever. After a few minutes of meditation, on what he had just heard, he civilly pointed to a bit of meadow, through which the Thames meanders, and good naturedly told me it was Runny Meade. I presume my manner denoted a proper interest, for he now took up the subject of the English Barons, and entered into a long account of their modern magnificence and wealth. This is a topic, that a large class in England, who only know their aristocracy by report, usually discuss with great unction. They appear to have the same pride in the superiority of their great families, that the American slave is known to feel in the importance of his master. I say this seriously, and not with a view to sneer, but to point out to you a state of feeling that, at first, struck me as very extraordinary. I suppose that the feelings of both castes depend on a very natural principle. The Englishman, however, as he is better educated, has one respectable feature in his deference. He exults, with reason, in the superiority of his betters over the betters of most other people: in this particular, he is fully borne out by the fact. Subsequent observation has given me occasion to observe, that the English gentlemen, in appearance, attainments, manliness, and perhaps I might add principles, although this and deportment are points on which I should speak with less confidence, stands as a rule, at the head of his class, in christendom. This should not be, nor would it be, were the gentlemen of America equal to their fortunes, which, unhappily, they are not. Facts have so far preceded opinions, at home, as to leave but few minds capable of keeping in their company. But this is a subject, to which we may also, have occasion to return.

The coach stopped, and we took up a third inside. This man proved to be a radical. He soon began to make side hits, at the “nobility and gentry,” and, mingled with some biting truths, he uttered a vast deal of nonsense. While he was in the midst of his denunciations, the coach again stopped, and one of the outsides was driven into it by the night air. He was evidently a gentleman, and the guard afterwards told me he was a Captain Somebody, and a nephew of a Lord Something, to whose country place he was going. The appearance of the captain checked the radical, for a little while, but, finding that the other was quiet, he soon returned to the attack. The aristocrat was silent, and the admirer of aristocracy evidently thought himself too good to enter into a dispute, with one of the mere people; for to admire aristocracy was, in his eyes, something like an illustration; but wincing under one of the other’s home-pushes, he said, “These opinions may do very well for this gentleman,” meaning me, who as yet had not uttered a syllable—“who is an American; but I must say, I think them out of place, in the mouth of an Englishman.” The radical regarded me a moment, and inquired if what the other had just said was true. I answered that it was. He then began an eulogium on America; which, like his Jeremiad on England, had a good many truths blended with a great deal of nonsense. At length, he unfortunately referred to me, to corroborate one of his most capital errors. As this could not be done conscientiously, for his theory depended on the material misconstruction of giving the whole legislative power to Congress, I was obliged to explain the mistake into which he had fallen. The captain and the toady, were both evidently pleased; nor, can I say, I was sorry the appeal had been made, for it had the effect of silencing a commentator, who knew very little of his subject. The captain manifested his satisfaction, by commencing a conversation, which lasted until we all went to sleep. Both the captain and the radical quitted us in the night.

Men like the one just described, do the truth a great deal of harm. Their knowledge does not extend to first principles, and they are always for maintaining their positions by a citation of facts. One half of the latter are imagined; and even that which is true is so enveloped with collateral absurdities, that when pushed, they are invariably exposed. These are the travellers who come among us Liberals, and go back Tories. Finding that things fall short of the political Elysiums of their imaginations, they fly into the opposite extreme, as a sort of amende honorable to their own folly and ignorance.

At the distance of a few miles from Winchester, we passed an encampment of gipsies, by the way-side. They were better-looking than I had expected to see them, though their faces were hardly perceptible in the gray of the morning. They appeared well fed and very comfortably bivouacked. Why do not these people appear in America? or, do they come, and get absorbed like all the rest, by the humane and popular tendencies of the country. What a homage will it be to the institutions, if it be found that even a gipsy cease to be a gipsy, in such a country! Just as the sun rose, I got out to our lodgings and went to bed.

After a sound sleep of two or three hours, I rose and went to the drawing-room. A lady was in it, seated in a way to allow me to see no more than a small part of her side-face. In that little, I saw the countenance of your aunt’s family. It was the sister whom we had never seen, and who had hastened out of Hertfordshire to meet us. There are obvious reasons why such a subject cannot be treated in this letter, but the study of two sisters who had been educated, the one in England and the other in America, who possessed so much in common, and yet, who were separated by so much that was not in common, was to me a matter of singular interest. It showed me, at a glance, the manner in which the distinctive moral and physical features of nations are formed; the points of resemblance being just sufficient to render the points of difference more obvious.

A new and nearer route to Netley, had been discovered during my absence, and our unpractised Americans had done little else than admire ruins, for the past week. The European who comes to America, plunges into the virgin forest with wonder and delight, while the American who goes to Europe finds his greatest pleasure, at first, in hunting up the memorials of the past. Each is in quest of novelty, and is burning with the desire to gaze at objects of which he has often read.

The steam-boat made but one or two voyages a week, between Southampton and Havre, and we were obliged to wait a day or two for the next trip. The intervening time was passed in the manner just named. Every place of any importance in England, has some work or other written on the subject of its history, its beauties, and its monuments. It is lucky to escape a folio. Our works on Southampton, (which are of moderate dimensions, however,) spoke of some Roman remains in the neighbourhood. The spot was found, and, although the imagination was of greater use than common in following the author’s description, we stood on the spot with a species of antiquarian awe.

Southampton had formerly been a port of some importance. Many of the expeditions sent against France embarked here, and the town had once been well fortified, for the warfare of the period. A good deal of the old wall remains. All of this was industriously traced out, while the “bow-windows, long passages, and old maids,” found no favour in our eyes.

One simple and touching memorial, I well remember. There is a ferry between the town and the grounds near Netley Abbey. A lady had caught a cold which terminated in death, in consequence of waiting on the shore, during a storm, for the arrival of a boat. To protect others from a similar calamity, she had ordered a very suitable defence against the weather, to be built on the fatal spot, and to be kept in repair for ever. The structure is entirely of stone, small and exceedingly simple and ingenious. The ground plan is that of a Greek cross. On this foundation are reared four walls, which, of course, cross each other in the centre, at right angles, A little above the height of a man, the whole is amply roofed. Let the wind blow which way it will, you perceive there is always shelter. There is no external wall, and the diameter of the whole does not exceed ten feet, if it be as much. This little work is exceedingly English, and it is just as unlike any thing American as possible. It has its origin in benevolence, is original in the idea, and it is picturesque. We might accomplish the benevolence, but it would be of a more public character: the picturesque is a thing of which we hardly know the meaning; and as for the originality, the dread of doing any thing different from his neighbour, would effectually prevent an American from erecting such a shelter; even charity, with us, being subject to the control of the general voice. On the other hand, what a clever expedient would have been devised, in the first instance, in America, to get across the ferry without taking cold! All these little peculiarities have an intimate connexion with national character and national habits. The desire to be independent and original, causes a multitude of silly things to be invented here, while the apprehension of doing any thing different from those around them, causes a multitude of silly things to be perpetuated in America, and yet, we are children of the same parents! When profit is in view, we have but one soul, and that is certainly inventive enough; but when money has been made, and is to be spent, we really do not seem to know how to set about it, except by routine.

LETTER IV.
To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown.

On quitting England, we embarked from the very strand where Henry Vth embarked for the fruitless field of Agincourt. A fearful rumour had gone abroad, that the Camilla (the steam-boat,) had been shorn of a wing, and there were many rueful faces in the boat that took us off to the vessel. In plainer speech, one of the boilers was out of order, and the passage was to be made with just half the usual propelling power. At that season, or, indeed, at any season, the only probable consequence was loss of time. With a strong head wind, it is true, the Camilla might have been compelled to return, but this might also have happened with the use of both the boilers.

Our adventurers did not see things in this light. The division of employments, which produces prices so cheap and good, makes bad travellers. Our boats’ cargo embarked with fear and trembling, and “she has but one boiler!” passed from mouth to mouth, amid ominous faces. A bachelor-looking personage of about fifty, with his person well swaddled in July, declared in a loud voice that we were “all going on board, to be drowned.” This startled A——, who, having full faith in my nautical experience, asked what we were to think of it. It was a mere question between ten hours and fifteen, and so I told her. The females who had just before been trembling with alarm, brightened at this, and two or three of them civilly thanked me, for the information they had thus obtained incidentally!—“Boat, sir; boat?”—“Thank ’ee, sir; thank ’ee, sir.”

We found two or three parties on board, of a higher condition than common. Apprehension cast a shade over the cold marble-like polish of even the English aristocrat; for if, as Mrs. Opie has well observed, there is nothing “so like a lord in a passion, as a commoner in a passion;” “your fear” is also a sad leveller. The boat was soon under way, and gradually our cargo of mental apprehensions settled into the usual dolorous physical suffering of landsmen, in rough water. So much for excessive civilization. The want of a boiler, under similar circumstances, would have excited no feeling whatever, among a similar number of Americans, nineteen in twenty of whom, thanks to their rough-and-tumble habits, would know exactly what to think of it.

I was seated, during a part of the day, near a group of young men, who were conversing with a lady of some three or four and twenty. They expressed their surprise at meeting her on board. She told them it was a sudden whim; that no one knew of her movements; she meant only to be gone a fortnight, to take a run into Normandy. In the course of the conversation, I learned that she was single, and had a maid and a footman with her. In this guise she might go where she pleased, whereas, had she taken “an escort,” in the American fashion, her character would have suffered. This usage, however, is English, rather than European. Single women on the continent, except in extraordinary cases, are obliged to maintain far greater reserve even than with us; and there, single or married, they cannot travel under the protection of any man, who is not very nearly connected with them, domestics and dependants excepted.

The debates about proceeding at all, had detained us so long, and the “one boiler” proved to be so powerless, that night set in, and we had not yet made the coast of France. The breeze had been fresh, but it lulled towards sunset, though not before we began to feel the influence of the tides. About midnight, however, I heard some one exclaim, “Land!” and we all hastened on deck, to take a first look at France.

The boat was running along beneath some cliffs. The moon was shining bright, and her rays lighted up the chalky sides of the high coast, giving them a ghostly hue. The towers of two light-houses, also, glittered on a head-land near by. Presently, a long sea-wall became visible, and rounding its end, we shot into smooth water. We entered the little port of Havre, between artificial works, on one of which stands a low, massive, circular tower, that tradition attributes to no less a personage than Julius Cæsar.

What a change, in so short a time! On the other side of the channel, beyond the usual demands for employment, which were made in a modest way, and the eternal “Thank ’ee, sir,” there was a quiet in the people, that was not entirely free from a suspicion of surliness. Here, every man seemed to have two voices, both of which he used, as if with no other desire than to hear himself speak. Notwithstanding the hour, which was past midnight, the quay was well lined, and a dozen officials poured on board the boat to prevent our landing. Custom-house officers, gens-d’armes, with enormous hats, and female commissionaires, were counteracting each other, at every turn. At length we were permitted to land, being ordered up to a building, near by. Here the females were taken into a separate room, where their persons were examined, by functionaries of their own sex, for contraband goods! This process has been described to me, as being, to the last degree, offensive and humiliating. My own person was respected, I know not why, for we were herded like sheep. As we were without spot, at least so far as smuggling was concerned, we were soon liberated. All our effects were left in the office, and we were turned into the streets, without even a rag, but what we had on. This was an inauspicious commencement, for a country so polished, and yet, when one comes to look at the causes, it is not easy to point out an alternative. It was our own fault that we came so late.

The streets were empty, and the tall gray houses, narrow avenues, and the unaccustomed objects, presented a strange spectacle, by the placid light of the moon. It appeared as if we had alighted in a different planet. Though fatigued and sleepy, the whole party would involuntarily stop to admire some novelty, and our march was straggling and irregular. One house refused us after another, and it soon became seriously a question whether the night was not to be passed in the open air. P—— was less than three years old, and as we had a regular gradation from that age upward, our début in France promised to be any thing but agreeable. The guide said his resources were exhausted, and hinted at the impossibility of getting in. Nothing, but the inns, was open, and at all these we were refused. At length I remembered that, in poring over an English guide-book, purchased in New York, a certain Hotel de l’Angleterre had been recommended as the best house in Havre. “Savez-vous mon ami, ou est l’hôtel de l’Angleterre?” “Ma fois, oui; c’est tout près.” This “ma fois, oui,” was ominous, and the “c’est tout pres,” was more so still. Thither we went, however, and we were received.—Then commenced the process of climbing. We ascended several stories, by a narrow crooked stair-case, and were shown into rooms on the fifth floor.

The floors were of waxed tiles, without carpets or mats, and the furniture was tawdry. We got into our beds, which fatigue could scarcely render it possible to endure, on account of the bugs. A more infernal night I never passed, and I have often thought since, how hazardous it is to trust to first impressions. This night, and one or two more passed at Havre, and one other passed between Rouen and Paris, were among the most uncomfortable I can remember; and yet if I were to name a country in which one would be the most certain to get a good and a clean bed, I think I should name France!

The next morning I arose, and went down the ladder, for it was little better, to the lower world. The servant wished to know if we intended to use the table d’hôte, which he pronounced excellent. Curiosity induced me to look at the appliances. It was a dark, dirty and crowded room, and yet not without certain savory smells. French cookery can even get the better of French dirt. It was the only place about the house, the kitchen excepted, where a tolerable smell was to be found, and I mounted to the upper regions, in self-defence.

An hour of two afterwards, the consul did me the favour to call. I apologized for the necessity of causing him to clamber up so high. “It is not a misfortune here,” was the answer, “for the higher one is, the purer is the atmosphere,” and he was right enough. It was not necessary to explain that we were in an inferior house, and certainly every thing was extremely novel. At breakfast, however, there was a sensible improvement. The linen was white as snow; we were served with silver forks—it was a breakfast à la fourchette—spotlessly clean napkins, excellent rolls, and delicious butter, to say nothing of côtelettes that appeared to have been cooked by magic. Your aunt and myself looked at each other with ludicrous satisfaction when we came to taste the coffee, which happened to be precisely at the same instant. It was the first time either of us had ever tasted French coffee—it would scarcely be exaggeration to say, that either of us had ever tasted coffee, at all. I have had many French cooks since; have lived years in the capital of France itself, but I could never yet obtain a servant who understood the secret of making café au lait, as it is made in most of the inns and cafés, of that country. The discrepancy between the excellence of the table, and the abominations of the place, struck them all, so forcibly, that the rest of the party did little else but talk about it. As for myself, I wished to do nothing but eat.

I had now another specimen of national manners. It was necessary to get our luggage through the custom house. The consul recommended a commissionaire to help me. “You are not to be surprised,” he said, laughing, as he went away, “if I send you one in petticoats.” In a few minutes, sure enough, one of the beau sexe presented herself. Her name was Désirée, and an abler negotiator was never employed. She scolded, coaxed, advised, wrangled, and uniformly triumphed. The officers were more civil, by day-light, than we had found them under the influence of the moon, and our business was soon effected.

W—— had brought with him a spy-glass. It was old and of little value, but it was an heir-loom of the family. It came from the Hall at C——n, and had become historical for its service in detecting deer, in the lake, during the early years of the settlement. This glass had disappeared. No inquiry could recover it. “Send for Désirée,” said the consul. Désirée came, received her orders, and in half an hour the glass was restored. There was an oversight in not getting a passport, when we were about to quit Havre. The office hours were over, and the steam-boat could not wait. “Where is Désirée?” Désirée was made acquainted with the difficulty, and the passport was obtained. “Désirée, ou est Désirée?” cried some one in the crowd, that had assembled to see the Camilla start for England, the day after our arrival. “Here is an Englishman who is too late to get his passport visèd” said this person to Désirée, so near me that I heard it all, “the boat goes in ten minutes—what is to be done?” “Ma foi—it is too late!” “Try, ma bonne—it’s a pity he should lose his passage—voici.” The Englishman gave his fee. Désirée looked about her, and then taking the idler by the arm, she hurried him through the crowd, this way and that way, ending by putting him aboard without any passport at all. “It is too late to get one,” she said; “and they can but send you back.” He passed undetected. France has a plenty of these managing females, though Désirée is one of the cleverest of them all. I understood this woman had passed a year or two in England, expressly to fit herself for her present occupation, by learning the language.

While engaged in taking our passages on board the steam-boat for Rouen, some one called me by name, in English. The sound of the most familiar words, in one’s own language, soon get to be startling in a foreign country. I remember, on returning to England, after an absence of five years, that it was more than a week before I could persuade myself I was not addressed, whenever a passer by spoke suddenly. On the present occasion, I was called to by an old school-boy acquaintance, Mr. H——r, who was a consul in England, but who had taken a house on what is called the Côte, a hill-side, just above Ingouville, a village at no great distance from the town. We went out to his pretty little cottage, which enjoyed a charming view. Indeed I should particularize this spot, as the one which gave me the first idea of one species of distinctive European scenery. The houses cling to the declivity, rising above each other in a way that might literally enable one to toss a stone into his neighbour’s chimney-top. They are of stone, but being white-washed, and very numerous, they give the whole mountain-side the appearance of a pretty hamlet, scattered without order in the midst of gardens. Italy abounds with such little scenes; nor are they unfrequent in France, especially in the vicinity of towns, though whitened edifices are far from being the prevailing taste of that country.

That evening we had an infernal clamour of drums in the principal street, which happened to be our own. There might have been fifty, unaccompanied by any wind instrument. The French do not use the fife, and when one is treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relick of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it, in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with which one listens to a hundred or two of these plaintive instruments, beat between houses six or eight stories high, in a narrow street, and with desperate perseverance! The object is to recall the troops to their quarters.

Havre, is a tide-harbour. In America, where there is, on an average, not more that five feet of rise and fall to the water of the sea, such a haven would, of course, be impracticable for large vessels. But the majority of the ports on the British channel, are of this character, and indeed, a large portion of the harbours of Great Britain. Calais, Boulogne, Havre and Dieppe, are all inaccessible at low water. The cliffs are broken by a large ravine, a creek makes up the gorge, or a small stream flows outward into the sea, a basin is excavated, the entrance is rendered safe by moles which project into deep water, and the town is crowded around this semi-artificial port, as well as circumstances will allow. Such is, more or less, the history of them all. Havre, however, is, in some measure, an exception. It stands on a plain, that I should think had once been a marsh. The cliffs are near it, seaward, and towards the interior there are fine receding hills, leaving a sufficient site, notwithstanding, for a town of large dimensions.

The port of Havre has been much improved of late years. Large basins have been excavated, and formed into regular wet-docks. They are nearly in the centre of the town. The mole stretches out several hundred yards, on that side of the entrance of the port which is next the sea. Here signals are regularly made to acquaint vessels in the offing with the precise number of feet that can be brought into the port. These signals are changed at the rise or fall of every foot, according to a graduated scale which is near the signal pole. At dead low water the entrance to the harbour, and the outer harbour itself, are merely beds of soft mud. Machines are kept constantly at work, to deepen them.

The ship from sea makes the lights, and judges of the state of the tide by the signals. She rounds the Mole-Head at the distance of fifty or sixty yards, and sails along a passage too narrow to admit another vessel, at the same moment, into the harbor. Here she finds from eighteen to twenty, or, even twenty-four feet of water, according to circumstances. She is hauled up to the gates of a dock, which are opened at high water only. As the water falls, one gate is shut, and the entrance to the dock becomes a lock: vessels can enter, therefore, as long as there remains sufficient water in the outer harbour for a ship to float. If caught outside, however, she must lie in the mud until the ensuing tide.

Havre is the sea-port of Paris, and is rapidly increasing in importance. There is a project for connecting the latter with the sea, by a ship-channel. Such a project is hardly suited to the French impulses, which imagine a thousand grand projects, but hardly ever convert any of them to much practical good. The opinions of the people are formed on habits of great saving, and it requires older calculations, greater familiarity with risks, and more liberal notions of industry, and, possibly, more capital than is commonly found in their enterprises, to induce the people to encounter the extra charges of these improvements, when they can have recourse to what, in their eyes, are simpler and safer means of making money. The government employs men of science, who conceive well; but their conceptions are but indifferently sustained by the average practical intellect of the country. In this particular, France is the very converse of America.

The project of making a sea-port of Paris, is founded on a principle that is radically wrong. It is easier to build a house on the sea-side, than to carry the sea into the interior. But the political economy of France, like that of nearly all the continental nations, is based on a false principle, that of forcing improvements. The intellects of the mass should first be acted on, and when the public mind is sufficiently improved to benefit by innovations, the public sentiment might be trusted to decide the questions of locality and usefulness. The French system looks to a concentration of every thing in Paris. The political organization of the country favours such a scheme, and in a project of this sort, the interests of all the northern and western departments would be sacrificed to the interests of Paris. As for the departments east and south of Paris, they would in no degree be benefited by making a port of Paris, as goods would still have to be transhipped to reach them. A system of canals and rail-roads is much wanted in France, and most of all a system of general instruction, to prepare the minds of the operatives to profit by such advantages. When I say that we are behind our facts in America, I do not mean in a physical, but in a moral, sense. All that is visible and tangible is led by opinion; in all that is purely moral, the facts precede the notions of the people.

I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had just been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course, that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success, was owing to the fact, that in America, we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government meddled with every thing. But it was the state governments, (which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority) that had caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of their own—il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald. All governments do not wither what they touch.

Some Americans have introduced steam-boats on the rivers of France, and on the lakes of Switzerland and Italy. We embarked in one, after passing two delectable nights at the Hotel de l’Angleterre. The boat was a frail-looking thing, and so loaded with passengers that it appeared actually to stagger under its freight. The Seine has a wide mouth, and a long ground-swell was setting in from the channel. Our Parisian cockneys, of whom there were several on board, stood aghast. Nous voici en pleine mer! one muttered to the other, and the annals of that eventful voyage are still related, I make no question, to admiring auditors in the interior of France. The French make excellent seamen when properly trained; but, I think, on the whole, they are more thoroughly landsmen than any people of my acquaintance, who possess a coast. There has been too much sympathy with the army to permit the mariners to receive a proper share of the public favour.

The boat shaped her course diagonally across the broad current, directly for Honfleur. Here we first began to get an idea of the true points of difference between our own scenery and that of the continent of Europe, and chiefly of that of France. The general characteristics of England are not essentially different from those of America, after allowing for a much higher finish in the former, substituting hedges for fences, and stripping the earth of its forests. These, you may think, are, in themselves, grand points of difference, but they fall far short of those which render the continent of Europe altogether of a different nature. Of forest, there is vastly more in France than in England. But, with few exceptions, the fields are not separated by enclosures. The houses are of stone, or of wood, rough-cast. Honfleur, as we approached, had a gray distinctness that is difficult to describe. The atmosphere seemed visible, around the angles of the buildings, as in certain Flemish pictures, bringing out the fine old sombre piles from the depth of the view, in a way to leave little concealed, while nothing was meretricious or gaudy. At first, though we found these hues imposing, and even beautiful, we thought the view would have been gayer and more agreeable, had the tints been livelier; but a little use taught us that our tastes had been corrupted. On our return home every structure appeared flaring and tawdry. Even those of stone had a recent and mushroom air, besides being in colours equally ill-suited to architecture or a landscape. The only thing of the sort in America which appeared venerable and of a suitable hue, after an absence of eight years, was our own family abode, and this the despoiler, paint, had not defiled for near forty years.

We discharged part of our cargo at Honfleur, but the boat was still greatly crowded. Fatigue and ill health rendered standing painful to A——, and all the benches were crowded. She approached a young girl of about eighteen, who occupied three chairs. On one she was seated; on another she had her feet; and the third held her reticule. Apologizing for the liberty, A—— asked leave to put the reticule on the second chair, and to take the third for her own use. This request was refused! The selfishness created by sophistication and a factitious state of things renders such acts quite frequent, for it is more my wish to offer you distinctive traits of character than exceptions. This case of selfishness might have been a little stronger than usual, it is true, but similar acts are of daily occurrence, out of society, in France. In society, the utmost respect to the wants and feelings of others is paid, vastly more than with us; while, with us, it is scarcely too strong to say that such an instance of unfeeling selfishness could scarcely have occurred at all. We may have occasion to inquire into the causes of this difference in national manners hereafter.

The Seine narrows at Quilleboeuf about thirty miles from Havre, to the width of an ordinary European tide river. On a high bluff we passed a ruin called Tancarville, which was formerly a castle of the de Montmorencies. This place was the cradle of one of William’s barons; and an English descendant, I believe, has been ennobled by the title of Earl of Tankerville.

Above Quilleboeuf the river becomes exceedingly pretty. It is crooked, a charm in itself, has many willowy islands, and here and there a gray venerable town is seated in the opening of the high hills which contract the view, with crumbling towers, and walls that did good service in the times of the old English and French wars. There were fewer seats than might have been expected, though we passed three or four. One near the water-side, of some size, was in the ancient French style, with avenues cut in formal lines, mutilated statues, precise and treeless terraces, and other elaborated monstrosities. These places are not entirely without a pretension to magnificence; but, considered in reference to what is desirable in landscape gardening, they are the very laid idéal of deformity. After winding our way for eight or ten hours amid such scenes, the towers of Rouen came in view. They had a dark ebony-coloured look, which did great violence to our Manhattanese notions, but which harmonized gloriously with a bluish sky, the gray walls beneath, and a back ground of hanging fields.

Rouen is a sea-port; vessels of two hundred, or two hundred and fifty tons burden, lying at its quays. Here is also a custom house, and our baggage was again opened for examination. This was done amid a great deal of noise and confusion, and yet so cursorily as to be of no real service. At Havre, landing as we did in the night, and committing all to Désirée the next day, I escaped collision with subordinates. But, not having a servant, I was now compelled to look after our effects in person. W—— protested that we had fallen among barbarians; what, between brawls, contests for the trunks, cries, oaths and snatching, the scene was equally provoking and comic.

Without schooling, without training of any sort, little checked by morals, pressed upon by society, with nearly every necessary of life highly taxed, and yet entirely loosened from the deference of feudal manners, the Frenchmen of this class have, in general, become what they who wish to ride upon their fellow mortals love to represent them as being truculent, violent, greedy of gain, and but too much disposed to exaction. There is great bonhomie and many touches of chivalry in the national character; but it is asking too much to suppose that men who are placed in the situation I have named, should not exhibit some of the most unpleasant traits of human infirmity. Our trunks were put into a hand-barrow and wheeled by two men a few hundred yards, the whole occupying half an hour of time. For this service ten francs were demanded. I offered five, or double what would have been required by a dray-man in New York, a place where labour is proverbially dear. This was disdainfully refused, and I was threatened with the law. Of the latter I knew nothing, but, determined not to be bullied into what I felt persuaded was an imposition, I threw down the five francs and walked away. These fellows kept prowling about the hotel the whole day, alternately wheedling and menacing, without success. Towards night one of them appeared and returned the five francs, saying that he gave me his services for nothing. I thanked him, and put the money in my pocket. This fit of dignity lasted about five minutes, when, as a finale, I received a proposal to pay the money again, and bring the matter to a close, Which was done accordingly.

An Englishman of the same class would have done his work in silence, with a respect approaching to servility, and with a system that any little contre tems would derange. He would ask enough, take his money with a “thankee, sir,” and go off looking as surly as if he were dissatisfied. An American would do his work silently, but independently as to manner—but a fact will best illustrate the conduct of the American. The day after we landed at New York, I returned to the ship for the light articles. They made a troublesome load, and filled a horse cart. “What do you think I ought to get for carrying this load, squire?” asked the cartman, as he looked at the baskets, umbrellas, band boxes, velises, secretaries, trunks, &c. &c., “it is quite two miles to Carroll Place.” “It is, indeed; what is your fare?” “Only thirty-seven and a half cents;” (about two francs;) “and it is justly worth seventy-five, there is so much trumpery.” “I will give you a dollar.” “No more need be said, sir; you shall have every thing safe.” I was so much struck with this straight-forward manner of proceeding, after all I had undergone in Europe, that I made a note of it the same day.

The Hotel de l’Europe, at Rouen, was not a first rate inn, for France, but it effectually removed the disagreeable impression left by the Hotel de l’Angleterre at Havre. We were well lodged, well fed, and otherwise well treated. After ordering dinner, all of a suitable age hurried off to the cathedral.

Rouen is an old, and by no means a well built town. Some improvements along the river are on a large scale, and promise well; but the heart of the city is composed principally of houses of wooden frames, with the interstices filled-in with cement. Work of this kind is very common in all the northern provincial towns of France. It gives a place a singular, and not altogether an unpicturesque air; the short dark studs that time has imbrowned, forming a sort of visible ribs to the houses.

When we reached the little square in front of the cathedral, verily Henry VIIth’s chapel sunk into insignificance. I can only compare the effect of the chiseling on the quaint Gothic of this edifice, to that of an enormous skreen of dark lace, thrown into the form of a church. This was the first building of the kind that my companions had ever seen; and they had, in-so-much, the advantage over me, as I had, in a degree, taken off the edge of wonder by the visit, already mentioned, to Westminster. The first look at this pile was one of inextricable details. It was not difficult to distinguish the vast and magnificent doors, and the beautiful oriel windows, buried as they were in ornament, but an examination was absolutely necessary to trace the little towers, pinnacles, and the crowds of pointed arches, amid such a scene of architectural confusion. “It is worth crossing the Atlantic, were it only to see this!” was the common feeling among us.

It was some time before we discovered that divers dwellings had actually been built between the buttresses of the church, for their comparative diminutiveness, quaint style, and close incorporation with the pile, caused us to think them, at first, a part of the edifice itself. This desecration of the Gothic is of very frequent occurrence on the continent of Europe, taking its rise in the straitened limits of fortified towns, the cupidity of churchmen, and the general indifference to knowledge, and, consequently, to taste, which depressed the ages that immediately followed the construction of most of these cathedrals.

We were less struck by the interior, than by the exterior of this building. It is vast, has some fine windows, and is purely Gothic; but after the richness of the external details, the aisles and the choir appeared rather plain. It possessed, however, in some of its monuments, subjects of great interest to those who had never stood over a grave of more than two centuries, and rarely even over one of half that age. Among other objects of this nature, is the heart of Cœur de Lion, for the church was commenced in the reign of one of his predecessors, Normandy at that time belonging to the English kings, and claiming to be the depository of the “lion heart.”

Rouen has many more memorials of the past. We visited the square in which Joan of Arc was buried; a small irregular area in front of her prison; the prison itself, and the hall in which she had been condemned. All these edifices are Gothic, quaint, and some of them sufficiently dilapidated.

I had forgotten to relate, in its place, a fact, as an offset to the truculent garrulity of the porters. We were shown round the cathedral by a respectable-looking old man in a red scarf, a cocked hat, and a livery, one of the officers of the place. He was respectful, modest, and well instructed in his tale. The tone of this good old cicerone was so much superior to any thing I had seen in England—in America such a functionary is nearly unknown—that, under the influence of our national manners, I had awkward doubts as to the propriety of offering him money. At length the five francs rescued from the cupidity of the half-civilized peasants of la basse Normandie were put into his hand. A look of indecision caused me to repent the indiscretion. I thought his feelings had been wounded. “Est-ce-que Monsieur, compte me presenter tout ceci?” I told him I hoped he would do me the favour to accept it. I had only given more than was usual, and the honesty of the worthy cicerone hesitated about taking it. To know when to pay, and what to pay is a useful attainment of the experienced traveller.

Paris lay before us, and, although Rouen is a venerable and historical town, we were impatient to reach the French capital. A carriage was procured, and, on the afternoon of the second day, we proceeded.

After quitting Rouen, the road runs, for several miles, at the foot of high hills, and immediately on the banks of the Seine. At length we were compelled to climb the mountain which terminates near the city, and offers one of the noblest views in France, from a point called St. Catherine’s Hill. We did not obtain so fine a prospect from the road, but the view far surpassed any thing we had yet seen in Europe. Putting my head out the window, when about half way up the ascent, I saw an object booming down upon us, at the rate of six or eight miles the hour, that resembled in magnitude, at least, a moving house. It was a diligence, and being the first we had met, it caused a general sensation in our party. Our heads were in each other’s way, and finding it impossible to get a good view in any other manner, we fairly alighted in the highway, old and young, to look at the monster, unincumbered. Our admiration and eagerness, caused as much amusement to the travellers it held, as their extraordinary equipage gave rise to among us; and two merrier parties did not encounter each other, on the public road, that day.

A proper diligence is formed of a chariot-body, and two coach-bodies placed one before the other, the first in front. These are all on a large scale, and the wheels and train are in proportion. On the roof, (the three bodies are closely united) is a cabriolet, or covered seat, and baggage is frequently piled there, many feet in height. A large leathern apron covers the latter. An ordinary load of hay, though wider, is scarcely of more bulk than one of these vehicles, which sometimes carries twenty-five or thirty passengers, and two or three tons of luggage. The usual team is composed of five horses, two of which go on the pole, and three on the lead, the latter turning their heads outwards, as W—— remarked, so as to resemble a spread eagle. Notwithstanding the weight, these carriages usually go down a hill faster than when travelling on the plain. A bar of wood is brought, by means of a winch that is controlled by a person called the conducteur, one who has charge of both ship and cargo, to bear on the hind wheels, with a greater or less force, according to circumstances, so that all the pressure is taken off the wheel horses. A similar invention has latterly been applied to rail-road cars. I have since gone over this very road with ten horses, two on the wheel, and eight in two lines on the lead. On that occasion, we came down this very hill, at the rate of nine miles the hour.

After amusing ourselves with the spectacle of the diligence, we found the scenery too beautiful to re-enter the carriage immediately, and we walked to the top of the mountain. The view from the summit was truly admirable. The Seine comes winding its way, through a broad rich valley, from the southward, having just before run east, and, a league or two beyond, due west, our own Susquehanna being less crooked. The stream was not broad, but its numerous isles, willowy banks, and verdant meadows, formed a line for the eye to follow. Rouen, in the distance, with its ebony towers, fantastic roofs, and straggling suburbs, lines its shores, at a curvature where the stream swept away west again, bearing craft of the sea on its bosom. These dark old towers have a sombre, mysterious air, which harmonizes admirably with the recollections that crowd the mind, at such a moment! Scarce an isolated dwelling was to be seen, but the dense population is compressed into villages and bourgs, that dot the view, looking brown and teeming, like the nests of wasps. Some of these places have still remains of walls, and most of them are so compact and well defined that they appear more like vast castles, than like the villages of England or America. All are gray, sombre, and without glare, rising from the back ground of pale verdure, so many appropriate bas reliefs.

The road was strewed with peasants of both sexes, wending their way homeward, from the market of Rouen. One, a tawny woman, with no other protection for her head than a high but perfectly clean cap, was going past us, driving an ass, with the panniers loaded with manure. We were about six miles from the town, and the poor beast, after staggering some eight or ten miles to the market in the morning, was staggering back with this heavy freight, at even. I asked the woman, who, under the circumstances, could not but be a resident of one of the neighbouring villages, the name of a considerable bourg, that lay about a gun-shot distant in plain view, on the other side of the river. “Monsieur, je ne saurais pas vous dire, parceque, voyez-vous, je ne suis pas de ce pays là,” was the answer!

Knowledge is the parent of knowledge. He who possesses most of the information of his age, will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner, ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. The multitude of objects that surround them, becomes a reason of indifference; and they pass, from day to day, for a whole life, in full view of a town, without sufficient curiosity in its history to inquire its name, or, if told by accident, sufficient interest to remember it. We see this principle exemplified daily in cities. One seldom thinks of asking the name of a passer by, though he may be seen constantly, whereas, in the country, such objects being comparatively rare, the stranger is not often permitted to appear, without some question touching his character.[3]

3. When in London, two years later, I saw a gentleman of rather striking appearance pass my door for two months, five or six times of a morning. Remembering the apathy of the Norman peasant, I at length asked who it was—“Sir Francis Burdett,” was the answer.

I once inquired of a servant girl at a French inn, who might be the owner of a château near by, the gate of which was within a hundred feet of the house we were in. She was unable to say, urging, as an apology, that she had only been six weeks in her present place! This, too, was in a small country hamlet. I think every one must have remarked, cæteris paribus, how much more activity and curiosity of mind is displayed by a countryman, who first visits a town, than by the dweller in a city, who first visits the country. The first wishes to learn every thing, since he has been accustomed to understand every thing he has hitherto seen; while the last, accustomed to a crowd of objects, usually regards most of the novel things he now sees for the first time, with indifference.

The road, for the rest of the afternoon, led us over hills, and plains, from one reach of the river to another, for we crossed the latter repeatedly before reaching Paris. The appearance of the country was extraordinary, in our eyes. Isolated houses were rare, but villages dotted the whole expanse. No obtrusive colours, but the eye had frequently to search against the hill-side, or in the valley, and, first detecting a mass, it gradually took in the picturesque angles, roofs, towers and walls of the little bourg. Not a fence, or visible boundary of any sort, to mark the limits of possessions. Not a hoof in the fields grazing, and occasionally, a sweep of mountain land resembled a pattern card, with its stripes of green and yellow and other hues, the narrow fields of the small proprietors. The play of light and shade on these gay upland patches, though not strictly in conformity with the laws of taste, certainly was attractive. When they fell entirely into shadow, the harvest being over, and their gaudy colours lessened, they resembled the melancholy and wasted vestiges of a festival.

At Louviers we dined, and there we found a new object of wonder in the church. It was of the Gothic of the bourgs, less elaborated and more rudely wrought than that of the larger towns, but quaint, and, the population considered, vast. Ugly dragons thrust out their grinning heads at us from the buttresses. The most agreeable monstrosities imaginable, were crawling along the gray old stones. After passing this place, the scenery lost a good deal of the pastoral appearance, which renders Normandy rather remarkable in France, and took still more of the starched pattern-card look, just mentioned. Still it was sombre, the villages were to be extracted by the eye from their setting of fields, and, here and there, one of those “silent fingers pointing to the skies,” raised itself into the air like a needle, to prick the consciences of the thoughtless. The dusky hues of all the villages, contrasted oddly, and not unpleasantly; with the carnival colours of the grains.

We slept at Vernon, and before retiring for the night, passed half an hour in a fruitless attempt to carry by storm a large old circular tower, that is imputed to the inexhaustible industry of Cæsar. This was the third of his reputed works that we had seen, since landing in France. In this part of Europe, Cæsar has the credit of every thing for which no one else is willing to apply, as is the case with Virgil, at Naples.

It was a sensation to rise in the morning with the rational prospect of seeing Paris, for the first time in one’s life, before night. In my catalogue it stands numbered as sensation the 5th; Westminster, the night arrival in France, and the Cathedral of Rouen giving birth to No’s. 1, 2, and 4. Though accustomed to the tattoo, and the evening bugle of a man-of-war, the drums of Havre had the honour of No. 3. Alas! how soon we cease to feel those agreeable excitements at all, even a drum coming in time to pall on the ear.

Near Vernon we passed a village, which gave us the first idea of one feature in the old régime. The place was gray, sombre, and picturesque, as usual, in the distance; but crowded, dirty, inconvenient, and mean, when the eye got too near. Just without the limits of its nuisances, stood the château, a regular pile of hewn stone, with formal allées, abundance of windows, extensive stables, and broken vases. The ancient seigneur probably retained no more of this ancient possession than its name, while some Monsieur Le Blanc, or Monsieur Le Noir filled his place in the house, and “Personne dans la seigneurie.”

A few leagues farther brought us to an eminence, whence we got a beautiful glimpse of the sweeping river, and of a wide expanse of fertile country less formally striped, and more picturesque than the preceding. Another gray castellated town lay on the verge of the river, with towers that seemed even darker than ever. How different was all this from the glare of our own objects! As we wound round the brow of the height, extensive park grounds, a village more modern, less picturesque, and less dirty than common, with a large château in red bricks was brought in sight, in the valley. This was Rosny, the place that gave his hereditary title to the celebrated Sully, as Baron and Marquis de Rosny: Sully, a man, who, like Bacon, almost deserves the character so justly given of the latter by Pope, that of “The wisest, greatest, meanest, of mankind.” The house and grounds were now the property of Madame, as it is the ettiquette to term the Duchesse de Berri. The town in the distance, with the dark towers, was Mantes, a place well known in the history of Normandy. We breakfasted at le Cheval Blanc. The church drew us all out, but it was less monstrous than that of Louviers, and, as a cathedral, unworthy to be named with those of the larger places.

The next stage brought us to St. Germain en Laye, or to the verge of the circle of low mountains, that surround the plains of Paris. Here we got within the influence of royal magnificence and the capital. The Bourbons, down to the period of the revolution, were indeed kings, and they have left physical and moral impressions of their dynasty of seven hundred years, that will require as long a period to eradicate. Nearly every foot of the entire semicircle of hills, to the west of Paris, is historical, and garnished by palaces, pavillions, forests, parks, aqueducts, gardens or chases. A carriage terrace, of a mile in length, and on a most magnificent scale in other respects, overlooks the river, at an elevation of several hundred feet above its bed. The palace itself, a quaint old edifice of the time of Francis 1st., who seems to have had an architecture not unlike that of Elizabeth of England, has long been abandoned as a royal abode. I believe its last royal occupant was the dethroned James II. It is said to have been deserted by its owners, because it commands a distant view of that silent monitor, the sombre but beautiful spire of St. Denis, whose walls shadow the vaults of the Bourbons; they who sat on a throne not choosing to be thus constantly reminded of the time, when they must descend to the common fate and crumbling equality of the grave.

An aqueduct, worthy of the Romans, gave an imposing idea of the scale on which these royal works were conducted. It appeared, at the distance of a league or two, a vast succession of arches, displaying a broader range of masonry than I had ever before seen. So many years had passed since I was last in Europe, that I gazed, in wonder at its vastness.

From St. Germain we plunged into the valley, and took our way towards Paris, by a broad paved avenue, that was bordered with trees. The road now began to show an approach to a capital, being crowded with all sorts of uncouth looking vehicles, used as public conveyances. Still it was on a Liliputian scale as compared to London, and semi-barbarous even, as compared to one of our towns. Marly-la-Machine was passed; an hydraulic invention to force water up the mountains to supply the different princely dwellings of the neighbourhood. Then came a house of no great pretension, buried in trees, at the foot of the hill. This was the celebrated consular abode, Malmaison. After this we mounted to a hamlet, and the road stretched away before us, with the river between, to the unfinished arc de L’Etoile, or the barrier of the capital. The evening was soft, and there had been a passing shower. As the mist drove away, a mass rose like a glittering beacon, beyond the nearest hill, proclaiming Paris. It was the dome of the Hotel of the Invalids!

Though Paris possesses better points of view, from its immediate vicinity, than most capitals, it is little seen from any of its ordinary approaches, until fairly entered. We descended to the river, by a gentle declivity. The château and grounds of Neuilly, a private possession of the Duke of Orleans, lay on our left; the Bois de Boulogne, the carriage promenade of the capital, on our right. We passed one of those abortions a magnificent village (Neuilly,) and ascended gently towards the unfinished arch of the star. Bending around this imposing memorial of—Heaven knows what! for it has had as many destinations as France has had governors—we entered the iron gate of the barrier, and found ourselves within the walls of Paris.

We were in the avenue de Neuilly. The Champs Elysées, without verdue, a grove divided by the broad approach, and moderately peopled by a well-dressed crowd, lay on each side. In front, at the distance of a mile, was a mass of foliage that looked more like a rich copse in a park, than an embellishment of a town garden, and above this, again, peered the pointed roofs of two or three large and high members of some vast structure, sombre in colour and quaint in form. They were the pavillions of the Tuileries.[4] A line of hotels became visible through trees and shrubbery on the left, and on the right we soon got evidence that we were again near the river. We had just left it behind us, and after a détour of several leagues, here it was again flowing in our front, cutting in twain the capital.

4. Tuileries is derived from Tuil or tile; the site of the present gardens having been a tile yard.

Objects now grew confused, for they came fast. We entered and crossed a paved area, that lay between the Seine, the Champs Elysées, the garden of the Tuileries, and two little palaces of extraordinary beauty of architecture. This was the place where Louis XVIth, and his unfortunate wife, were beheaded. Passing between the two edifices last named, we came upon the Boulevards, and plunged at once into the street-gaiety and movement of this remarkable town.

LETTER V.
To R. Cooper, Esquire, Cooperstown.

We were not a fortnight in Paris, before we were quietly established, en bourgeois, in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. Then followed the long and wearying toil of sight-seeing. Happily, our time was not limited, and we took months for that which is usually performed in a few days. This labor is connected with objects that description has already rendered familiar, and I shall say nothing of them, except as they may incidentally belong to such parts of my subject as I believe worthy to be noticed.

Paris was empty in the month of August, 1826. The court was at St. Cloud; the Duchesse de Berri at her favourite Dieppe; and the fashionable world was scattered abroad over the face of Europe. Our own minister was at the baths of Aix, in Savoy.

One of the first things was to obtain precise and accurate ideas of the position and entourage of the place. In addition to those enjoyed from its towers, there are noble views of Paris from Monmartre and Père la Chaise. The former has the best look-out, and thither we proceeded. This little mountain is entirely isolated, forming no part of the exterior circle of heights which environ the town. It lies north of the walls, which cross its base. The ascent is so steep, as to require a winding road, and the summit, a table of a hundred acres, is crowned by a crowded village, a church, and divers windmills. There was formerly a convent or two, and small country houses still cling to its sides, buried in the shrubbery that clothe their terraces.

We were fortunate in our sky, which was well veiled in clouds, and occasionally darkened by mists. A bright sun may suit particular scenes, and peculiar moods of the mind, but every connoisseur in the beauties of nature will allow that, as a rule, clouds, and very frequently a partial obscurity, greatly aid a landscape. This is yet more true of a bird’s-eye view of a grey old mass of walls, which give up their confused and dusky objects all the better for the absence of glare. I love to study a place teeming with historical recollections, under this light; leaving the sites of memorable scenes to issue, one by one, but of the grey mass of gloom, as time gives up its facts from the obscurity of ages.

Unlike English and American towns, Paris has scarcely any suburbs. Those parts which are called its Fauxbourgs are in truth integral parts of the city, and, with the exception of a few clusters of wine-houses and guinguettes, which have collected near its gates to escape the city duties, the continuity of houses ceases suddenly with the barrières, and, at the distance of half a mile from the latter, one is as effectually in the country, so far as the eye is concerned, as if a hundred leagues in the provinces. The unfenced meadows, vineyards, lucerne, oats, wheat, and vegetables, in many places, literally reach the walls. These walls are not intended for defence, but are merely a financial enceinte, created for offensive operations against the pockets of the inhabitants. Every town in France that has two thousand inhabitants, is entitled to set up an octroi on its articles of consumption, and something like four millions of dollars are taken, annually, at the gates of Paris, in duties on this internal trade. It is merely the old expedient to tax the poor, by laying impositions on food and necessaries.

From the windmills of Montmartre, the day we ascended, the eye took in the whole vast capital, at a glance. The domes sprung up through the mist, like starting balloons; and, here and there, the meandering stream threw back a gleam of silvery light. Enormous roofs denoted the sites of the palaces, churches, or theatres. The summits of columns, the crosses of the minor churches, and the pyramids of pavillion-tops, seemed struggling to rear their heads from out the plain of edifices. A better idea of the vastness of the principal structures was obtained here, in one hour, than could be got from the streets in a twelvemonth. Taking the roofs of the palace, for instance, the eye followed its field of slate and lead, through a parallelogram, for quite a mile. The sheet of the French opera resembled a blue pond, and the aisles of Notre-Dame, and St. Eustache, with their slender ribs and massive buttresses, towered so much above the lofty houses around them, as to seem to stand on their ridges. The church of St. Geneviève, the Pantheon of the revolution, faced us, on the swelling land of the opposite side of the town, but surrounded still with crowded lines of dwellings; the Observatory limiting, equally, the view, and the vast field of houses, in that direction.

Owing to the state of the atmosphere, and the varying light, the picture before us was not that simply of a town, but, from the multiplicity and variety of its objects, it was a vast and magnificent view. I have frequently looked at Paris since from the same spot, or from its church towers, when the strong sun-light reduced it to the appearance of confused glittering piles, on which the eye almost refused to dwell; but, in a clouded day, all the peculiarities stand out sombre and distinct, resembling the grey accessaries of the ordinary French landscape.

From the town we turned to the heights which surround it. East and south-east, after crossing the Seine, the country lay in the waste-like unfenced fields which characterize the scenery of this part of Europe. Roads stretched away in the direction of Orleans, marked by the usual lines of clipped and branchless trees. More to the west commences the abrupt heights, which, washed by the river, encloses nearly half the wide plain, like an amphitheatre. This has been the favorite region of the kings of France, from the time of Louis XIIIth, down to the present day. The palaces of Versailles, St. Germain, St. Cloud, and Meudon, all lie in this direction, within short distances of the capital, and the royal forests, avenues, and chases, intersect it in every direction, as mentioned before.

Farther north, the hills rise to be low mountains, though a wide and perfectly level plain spreads itself between the town and their bases, varying in breadth from two to four leagues. On the whole of this expanse of cultivated fields, there was hardly such a thing as an isolated house. Though not literally true, this fact was so nearly so, as to render the effect oddly peculiar, when one stood on the eastern extremity of Montmartre, where, by turning southward, he looked down upon the affluence, and heard the din of a vast capital, and by turning northward, he beheld a country with all the appliances of rural life, and dotted by grey villages. Two places, however, were in sight, in this direction, that might aspire to be termed towns. One was St. Denis, from time immemorial, the burying place of the French kings, and the other was Montmorency, the bourg which gives its name to, or receives it from, the illustrious family that is so styled, for I am unable to say which is the fact. The church spire of the former, is one of the most beautiful objects in view from Montmartre, the church itself, which was desecrated in the revolution, having been restored by Napoleon. St. Denis is celebrated, in the Catholic annals, by the fact of the martyr, from whom the name is derived, having walked, after decapitation, with his head under his arm, all the way from Paris to this very spot.

Montmorency is a town of no great size or importance, but lying on the side of a respectable mountain, in a way to give the spectator more than a profile, it appears to be larger than it actually is. This place is scarcely distinguishable from Paris, under the ordinary light, but on a day like that which we had chosen, it stood out in fine relief from the surrounding fields, even the grey mass of its church being plainly visible.

If Paris is so beautiful and striking, when seen from the surrounding heights, there are many singularly fine pictures, in the bosom of the place itself. We rarely crossed the Pont Royal, during the first month or two of our residence, without stopping the carriage to gaze at the two remarkable views it offers. One is up the reach of the Seine which stretches through the heart of the town, separated by the island, and the other, in an opposite direction, looks down the reach by which the stream flows into the meadows, on its way to the sea. The first is a look into the avenues of a large town, the eye resting on the quaint outlines and endless mazes of walls, towers, and roofs, while the last is a prospect, in which the front of the picture is a collection of some of the finest objects of a high state of civilization, and the back ground a beautiful termination of wooded and decorated heights.

At first, one who is accustomed to the forms and movements of a sea-port, feels a little disappointment at seeing a river that bears nothing but dingy barges loaded with charcoal and wine casks. The magnificence of the quays seems disproportioned to the trifling character of the commerce they are destined to receive. But familiarity with the town soon changes all these notions, and while we admit that Paris is altogether secondary so far as trade is concerned, we come to feel the magnificence of her public works, and to find something that is pleasing and picturesque, even in her huge and unwieldy wood and coal barges. Trade is a good thing in its way, but its agents rarely contribute to the taste, learning, manners, or morals of a nation.

The sight of the different interesting objects that encircle Paris stimulated our curiosity to nearer views, and we proceeded, immediately, to visit the environs. These little excursions occupied more than a month, and they not only made us familiar with the adjacent country, but, by compelling us to pass out at nearly every one of the twenty, or thirty, different gates, or barriers, as they are called, with a large portion of the town also. This capital has been too often described to render any further account of the principal objects necessary, and in speaking of it, I shall endeavour to confine my remarks to things that I think may still interest you by their novelty.

The royal residences in Paris, at this time, are, strictly speaking, but two, the Tuileries and the Palais Royal. The Louvre is connected with the first, and it has no finished apartments that are occupied by any of princely rank, most of its better rooms being unfinished, and are occupied as cabinets or museums. A small palace, called the Elysée Bourbon, is fitted up as a residence for the heir presumptive, the Duc de Bordeaux; but, though it contains his princely toys, such as miniature batteries of artillery, &c., he is much too young to maintain a separate establishment. This little scion of royalty only completed his seventh year not long after our arrival in France, on which occasion one of those silly ceremonies, which some of the present age appear to think inseparable from sound principles, was observed. The child was solemnly and formally transferred from the care of the women to that of the men. Up to this period, Madame la Viscomtesse de Gontaut-Biron had been his governess, and she now resigned her charge into the hands of the Baron de Damas, who had lately been Minister of Foreign Affairs. Madame de Gontaut was raised to the rank of Duchess on the occasion. The boy himself is said to have passed from the hands of the one party, to those of the other, in presence of the whole court, absolutely naked. Some such absurdity was observed at the reception of Marie Antoinette, it being a part of regal etiquette that a royal bride, on entering France, should leave her old wardrobe, even to the last garment, behind her. You will be amused to hear that there are people in Europe, who still attach great importance to a rigid adherence to all the old etiquette, at similar ceremonies. These are the men who believe it to be essential that judges and advocates should wear wigs, in an age when, their use being rejected by the rest of the world, their presence cannot fail, if it excite any feeling, to excite that of inconvenience and absurdity. There is such a thing as leaving society too naked, I admit, but a chemise at least, could not have injured the little Duke of Bordeaux, at this ceremony. Whenever a usage that is poetical in itself, and which awakens a sentiment without doing violence to decency, or comfort, or common sense, can be preserved, I would rigidly adhere to it, if it were only for antiquity’s sake; but, surely, it would be far more rational for judges to wear false beards, because formerly Bacon and Coke did not shave their chins, than it is for a magistrate to appear on the bench with a cumbrous, hot, and inconvenient cloud of powdered flax, or whatever may be the material, on his poll, because our ancestors, a century or two since, were so silly as to violate nature in the same extraordinary manner.

Speaking of the Duke of Bordeaux, reminds me of an odd, and, indeed, in some degree, a painful scene, of which I was accidentally a witness, a short time before the ceremony just mentioned. The emigrés have brought back with them into France, a taste for horse-racing, and, supported by a few of the English who are here, there are regular races, spring and autumn, in the Champs de Mars. The course is one of the finest imaginable, being more than a mile in circumference, and surrounded by mounds of earth, raised expressly with that object, which permit the spectators to overlook the entire field. The result is a species of amphitheatric arena, in which any of the dramatic exhibitions, that are so pleasing to this spectacle-loving nation, may be enacted. Pavillions are permanently erected at the starting-post, and one or two of these are usually fitted up for the use of the court, whenever it is the pleasure of the royal family to attend, as was the case at the time the little occurrence, I am about to relate, took place.

On this occasion, Charles Xth came in royal state, from St. Cloud, accompanied by detachments of his guards, many carriages, several of which were drawn by eight horses, and a cloud of mounted footmen. Most of the dignitaries of the kingdom were present, in the different pavillions, or stands, and nearly or quite all the ministers, together with the whole diplomatic corps. There could not have been less than a hundred thousand spectators on the mounds.

The racing itself was no great matter, being neither within time, nor well contested. The horses were all French, the trial being intended for the encouragement of the French breeders, and the sports were yet too recent to have produced much influence on the stock of the country. During the heats, accompanied by a young American friend, I had strolled among the royal equipages, in order to examine their magnificence, and returning towards the course, we came out unexpectedly at a little open space, immediately at one end of the pavillion in which the royal family was seated. There were not a dozen people near us, and one of these was a sturdy Englishman, evidently a tradesman, who betrayed a keen and a truly national desire to get a look at the king. The head of a little girl was just visible above the side of the pavillion, and my companion, who, by a singular accident, not long before, had been thrown into company with les enfans de France, as the royal children are called, informed me that it was Mademoiselle d’Artois, the sister of the heir presumptive. He had given me a favorable account of the children, whom he represented as both lively and intelligent, and I changed my position a little, to get a better look of the face of this little personage, who was not twenty feet from the spot where we stood. My movement attracted her attention, and, after looking down a moment into the small area in which we were enclosed, she disappeared. Presently a lady looked over the ballustrade, and our Englishman seemed to be on tenter-hooks. Some thirty or forty French gathered round us immediately, and I presume it was thought none but loyal subjects could manifest so much desire to gaze at the family, especially as one or two of the French clapped the little princess, whose head now appeared and disappeared again, as if she were earnestly pressing something on the attention of those within the pavillion. In a moment, the form of a pale and sickly looking boy was seen, the little girl, who was a year or two older, keeping her place at his side. The boy was raised on the knee of a melancholy-looking and rather hard-featured female of fifty, who removed his straw hat, in order to salute us. “These are the Dauphine and the Duc de Bordeaux,” whispered my companion, who knew the person of the former by sight. The Dauphine looked anxiously, and I thought mournfully, at the little cluster we formed directly before her, as if waiting to observe in what manner her nephew would be received. Of course my friend and myself, who were in the foreground, stood uncovered; as gentlemen we could not do less, nor as foreign gentlemen could we very well do more. Not a Frenchman, however, even touched his hat! On the other hand, the Englishman, straddled his legs, gave a wide sweep with his beaver, and uttered as hearty a hurrah as if he had been cheering a member of Parliament who gave gin in his beer. The effect of this single, unaccompanied, unanswered cheer, was both ludicrous and painful. The poor fellow himself seemed startled at hearing his own voice amid so profound a stillness, and checking his zeal as unexpectedly as he had commenced its exhibition, he looked furiously around him, and walked surlily away. The Dauphine followed him with her eyes. There was no mistaking his gaitered limbs, dogged mien, and florid countenance; he clearly was not French, and those that were, as clearly turned his enthusiasm into ridicule. I felt sorry for her, as with a saddened face, she set down the boy, and withdrew her own head within the covering of the pavillion. The little Mademoiselle d’Artois kept her bright looks, in a sort of wonder, on us, until the circumspection of those around her, gave her a hint to disappear.

This was the first direct and near view I got of the true state of popular feeling in Paris, towards the reigning family. According to the journals in the interest of the court, enthusiasm was invariably exhibited whenever any of their princes appeared in public; but the journals in every country, our own dear and shrewd republic not excepted, are very unsafe guides for those who desire truth.

I am told that the style of this court has been materially altered, and perhaps improved, by the impetuous character of Napoleon. The king rarely appears in public with less than eight horses, which are usually in a foam. His liveries are not showy, neither are the carriages as neat and elegant as one would expect. The former are blue and white, with a few slight ornaments of white and red lace, and the vehicles are showy, large and even magnificent, but, I think, without good taste. You will be surprised to hear that he drives with what, in America, we call “Dutch collars.” Six of the horses are held in hand, and the leaders are managed by a postillion. There is always one or more empty carriages, according to the number of the royal personages present, equipped in every respect like those which are filled, and which are held in reserve against accidents; a provision, by the way, that is not at all unreasonable in those who scamper over the broken pavements, in and about Paris, as fast as leg can be put to the ground.

Notwithstanding the present magnificence of the court, royalty is shorn of much of its splendor in France, since the days of Louis XVIth. Then a city of a hundred thousand souls, (Versailles) was a mere dependant of the crown; lodgings for many hundred abbés, it is said, were provided in the palace alone, and a simple representation at the palace opera, cost a fortune.

It is not an easy matter to come at the real cost of the kingly office in this country, all the expenditures of the European governments being mystified in such a way, as to require a very intimate knowledge of the details, to give a perfectly clear account of them. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the charges that arise from this feature of the system do not fall much short, if indeed they do any, of eight millions of dollars, annually. Out of this sum, however, the king pays the extra allowances of his guards, the war office taking the same view of all classes of soldiers, after distinguishing between foot and cavalry. You will get an idea of the luxury of royalty, by a short account of the gardes du corps. These troops are all officers, the privates having the rank, and receiving the pay, of lieutenants. Their duty, as the name implies, is to have the royal person in their especial care, and there is always a guard of them, in an ante-chamber of the royal apartments. They are heavy cavalry, and when they mount guard in the palaces, their arm is a carabine. A party of them, always appear near the carriage of the king, or indeed near that of any of the reigning branch of the family. There are said to be four regiments or companies of them, of four hundred men each; but it strikes me the number must be exaggerated. I should think, however, that there are fully a thousand of them. In addition to these selected troops, there are three hundred Swiss, of the Swiss and royal guards; of the latter, including all arms, there must be many thousands. These are the troops that usually mount guard, in and about all the palaces. The annual budget of France appears in the estimates, at about a milliard, or a thousand millions of francs, but the usual mystifications are resorted to, and the truth will give the annual central expenses of the country, at not less, I think, than two hundred millions of dollars. This sum, however, covers many items of expenditure, that we are accustomed to consider purely local. The clergy, for instance, are paid out of it, as is a portion of the cost of maintaining the roads. On the other hand, much money is collected, as a general regulation, that does not appear in the budget. Few or no churches are built, and there are charges for masses, interments, christenings, and fees for a hundred things, of which no account is taken, in making out the sum total of the cost of government.

It was the policy of Napoleon to create a system of centralization, that should cause every thing to emanate from himself. The whole organization of government had this end in view, and all the details of the departments have been framed expressly to further this object. The prefects are no more than so many political aides, whose duty it is to carry into effect the orders that emanate from the great head, and lines of telegraphs, are established all over France, in such a way that a communication may be sent from the Tuileries, to the remotest corner of the kingdom, in the course of a few hours. It has been said that one of the first steps towards effecting a revolution, ought to be to seize the telegraphs at Paris, by means of which such information and orders could be sent into the provinces, as the emergency might seem to require.

This system of centralization has almost neutralized the advancement of the nation, in a knowledge of the usages and objects of the political liberty that the French have obtained, by bitter experience, from other sources. It is the constant aim of that portion of the community which understands the action of free institutions, to increase the powers of the municipalities, and to lessen the functions of the central government; but their efforts are resisted with a jealous distrust of every thing like popular dictation. Their municipal privileges are, rightly enough, thought to be the entering wedges of real liberty. The people ought to manage their own affairs, just as far as they can do so without sacrificing their interests for want of a proper care, and here is the starting point of representation. So far from France enjoying such a system, however, half the time a bell cannot be hung in a parish church, or a bridge repaired, without communications with, and orders from, Paris.

LETTER VI.
To Mrs. Pomeroy, Cooperstown, New York.

I quitted America with some twenty letters of introduction, that had been pressed upon me by different friends, but which were carefully locked up in a secretary, where they still remain, and are likely to remain for ever, or until they are distroyed. As this may appear a singular resolution for one who left his own country to be absent for years, I shall endeavour to explain it. In the first place, I have a strong repugnance to pushing myself on the acquaintance of any man; this feeling may, in fact, proceed from pride, but I have a disposition to believe, that it proceeds, in part, also, from a better motive. These letters of introduction, like verbal introductions, are so much abused in America, that the latter feeling, perhaps I might say both feelings, are increased by the fact. Of all the people in the world we are the most prodigal of these favors, when self-respect and propriety would teach us we ought to be among the most reserved, simply because the character of the nation is so low, that the European, more than half the time, fancies he is condescending when he bestows attentions on our people at all. Other travellers may give you a different account of the matter, but let every one be responsible for his own opinions and facts. Then, a friend, who, just as we left home, returned from Europe after an absence of five years, assured me that he found his letters of but little use; that nearly every agreeable acquaintance he made was the result of accident, and that the Europeans, in general, were much more cautious in giving and receiving letters of this nature, than ourselves.

The usages of all Europe, those of the English excepted, differ from our own on the subject of visits. There the stranger, or the latest arrival, is expected to make the first visit, and an inquiry for your address, is always taken for an intimation that your acquaintance would be acceptable. Many, perhaps most, Americans lose a great deal through their provincial breeding, in this respect, in waiting for attentions that it is their duty to invite, by putting themselves in the way of receiving them. The European usage is not only the most rational, but it is the most delicate. It is the most rational, as there is a manifest absurdity in supposing, for instance, that the inhabitant of a town is to know whenever a visiter from the country arrives, and it is the most delicate, as it leaves the new-comer, who is supposed to know his own wishes best, to decide, for himself, whether he wishes to make acquaintances, or not. In short, our own practices are provincial and rustic, and cannot exist when the society of the country shall have taken the usual phases of an advanced civilization. Even in England, in the higher classes, the cases of distinguished men excepted, it is usual for the stranger to seek the introduction.

Under such circumstances, coupled with the utter insignificance of an ordinary individual in a town like Paris, you will easily understand that we had the first months of our residence, entirely to ourselves. As a matter of course, we called on our own minister and his wife, and as a matter of course, we have been included in the dinners and parties, that they are accustomed to give at this season of the year. This, however, has merely brought us in contact with a chance-medley of our own countrymen, these diplomatic entertainments being quite obviously a matter of accident, so far as the set is concerned. The dinners of your banker, however, are still worse, since with them the visiting list is usually a mere extract from the leger.

Our privacy has not been without its advantages. It has enabled us to visit all the visible objects without the incumbrance of engagements, and given me leisure to note and to comment on things, that might otherwise, have been overlooked. For several months we have had nothing to do, but to see sights, get familiarized with a situation, that, at first, we found singularly novel, and to brush up our French.

I never had sufficient faith in the popular accounts of the usages of other countries, to believe one half of what I have heard. I distrusted, from the first, the fact of ladies, I mean real bonâ fide ladies, women of sentiment, delicacy, taste, and condition, frequenting public eating-houses, and habitually living, without the retirement and reserve, that is so necessary, to all women, not to say men, of the caste. I found it difficult, therefore, to imagine I should meet with many females of condition in restaurants and cafés. Such a thing might happen on an emergency, but it was assailing too much all those feelings and tastes which become inherent in refinement, to suppose that the tables of event the best house of the sort, in Paris, could be honored by the presence of such persons, except under particular circumstances. My own observation corroborated this opinion, and, in order to make sure of the fact, I have put the question to nearly every French woman of rank, it has since been my good fortune to become sufficiently acquainted with, to take the liberty. The answer has been uniform. Such things are sometimes done, but rarely; and even then it is usual to have the service in a private room. One old lady, a woman perfectly competent to decide on such a point, told me frankly, “We never do it, except by way of a frolick, or when in a humour which induces people to do many other silly and unbecoming things. Why should we go to the restaurateurs to eat? We have our own houses and servants, as well as the English, or even you Americans”—it may be supposed I laughed—“and certainly the French are not so devoid of good taste as not to understand that the mixed society of a public house, is not the best possible company for a woman.”

It is, moreover, a great mistake to imagine that the French are not hospitable, and that they do not entertain as freely, and as often as any other people. The only difference between them and the English, in this respect, or between them and ourselves, is in the better taste and ease which regulate their intercourse of this nature. While there is a great deal of true elegance, there is no fuss, at a French entertainment; and all that you have heard of the superiority of the kitchen, in this country, is certainly true. Society is divided into castes, in Paris, as it is every where else; and the degrees of elegance and refinement increase as one ascends, as a matter of course, but there is less of effort, in every class, than is usual with us. One of the best-bred Englishmen of my acquaintance, and one, too, who had long been in the world, has frankly admitted to me, that the highest tone of English society, is merely an imitation of that which existed in Paris, previously to the revolution, and of which, though modified as to usages and forms, a good deal still remains. By the highest tone, however, you are not to suppose I mean that labored, frigid, heartless manner, that so many, in England especially, mistake for high breeding, merely because they do not know how to unite with the finish which constant intercourse with the world creates, the graceful semblance of living less for one’s self than for others, and to express, as it were, their feelings and wishes, rather than to permit one’s own to escape him, a habit, that, like the reflection of a mirror, produces the truest and most pleasing images, when thrown back from surfaces the most highly polished. But I am anticipating, rather than giving you a history of what I have seen.

In consequence of our not having brought any letters, as has just been mentioned, and of not having sought society, no one gave themselves any trouble on our account, for the first three or four months of our residence in Paris. At the end of that period, however, I made my début, at probably as brilliant an entertainment, as one usually sees, here, in the course of a whole winter. Mr. Canning, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, came to Paris on a visit, and, as is usual on such occasions, diplomacy was a good deal mixed up with eating and drinking. Report says, that the etiquette of the court was a good deal deranged by this visit, the Bourbons not having adopted the hale-fellow hospitality of the English kings. M. de Villèle, or, M. de Damas, would be invited to dine at Windsor, almost as a matter of course; but the descendant of Hugh Capet hesitated about breaking bread with an English commoner. The matter is understood to have been gotten over, by giving the entertainment at St. Cloud; where, it would seem, the royal person has fewer immunities than at the Tuileries. But, among other attentions that were bestowed on the English statesman, Mr. Brown determined to give him a great diplomatic dinner; and, our own legations having a great poverty of subordinates, except in the way of travelling attachés, I was invited to occupy one end of the table, while the regular Secretary took his seat at the other. Before I attempt a short description of this entertainment, it may help to enliven the solitude of your mountain residence, and serve to give you more distinct ideas of the matter, than can be obtained from novels, if I commence with a summary of the appliances and modes of polite intercourse in this part of the world, as they are to be distinguished from our own.

In the first place, you are to discard from your mind, all images of two rooms and folding-doors, with a passage six feet wide, a narrow carpeted flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair, and hide their hats. Some such snuggeries, very possibly exist in England among the middling classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe, style is never attempted, without more suitable means to carry out the intention.

In Paris every one, who mingles with the world, lives in a hotel, or a house that has a court and an outer gate. Usually, the building surrounds three sides of this court, and sometimes, the whole four; though small hotels are to be found, in which the court is encircled on two, or even on three of its sides, merely by high walls. The gate is always in the keeping of a regular porter, who is an important personage about the establishment, taking in letters, tickets, &c., ejecting blackguards and all other suspicious persons, carrying messages, besides levying contributions on all the inmates of the house, in the way of wood and coal. In short, he is, in some measure, held to be responsible for the exits and entrances, being a sort of domestic gens-d’arme. In the larger hotels, there are two courts, the great and la basse cour, the latter being connected with the offices and stables.

Of course, these hotels vary in size and magnificence. Some are not larger than our own largest town-dwellings, while others, again, are palaces. As these buildings were originally constructed to lodge a single establishment, they have their principal and their inferior apartments; some have their summer and their winter apartments. As is, and always must be the case, where every thing like state and magnificence are affected, the reception rooms are en suite; the mode of building which prevails in America, being derived from the secondary class of English houses. It is true, that in London, many men of rank, perhaps of the nobility, do not live in houses any larger, or much better, than the best of our own; though I think, that one oftener sees rooms of a good size and proper elevation, even in these dwellings, than it is usual to see in America. But the great houses of London, such as Burlington-house, Northumberland-house, Devonshire-house, Lansdown-house, Sutherland-house, (the most magnificent of all,) &c. &c., are, more or less, on the continental plan, though not generally built around courts. This plan eschews passages of all descriptions, except among the private parts of the dwelling. In this respect, an American house, is the very opposite of a European house. We are nothing without passages, it being indispensable that every room should open on one; whereas, here, the great point is to have as little to do with them as possible. Thus you quit the great stair-case, by a principal door, and find yourself in an ante-chamber; this communicates with one or two more rooms of the same character, gradually improving in ornaments and fixtures, until you enter a salon. Then comes a succession of apartments, of greater or less magnificence, according to circumstances, until you are led entirely round the edifice, quitting it by a door on the great stair-case, again, opposite to the one by which you entered. In those cases in which there are courts, the principal rooms are ranged, in this manner, en suite, on the exterior range, usually looking out on the gardens, while those within them, which look into the court, contain the bed-rooms, boudoir, eating-rooms, and perhaps the library. So tenacious are those, who lay any claim to gentility here, of the use of ante-chambers, that I scarcely recollect a lodging of any sort, beyond the solitary chamber of some student, without, at least, one. They seem indispensable, and I think rightly, to all ideas of style, or even of comfort. I remember to have seen an amusing instance of the strength of this feeling, in the case of the wife of a former French Minister, at Washington. The building she inhabited, was one of the ordinary American double-houses, as they are called, with a passage through the centre, the stairs in the passage, and a short corridore, to communicate with the bed-rooms, above. Off the end of this upper corridore, if, indeed, so short a transverse passage deserves the name, was partitioned a room, of some eight feet by ten, as a bed-room. A room adjoining this, was converted into a boudoir and bed-room, for Madame de ——, by means of a silk screen. The usual door of the latter opened, of course, on the passage. In a morning call one day, I was received in the boudoir. Surprised to be carried up stairs, on such an occasion, I was still more so to find myself taken through a small room, before I was admitted to the larger. The amount of it all was, that Madame de ——, accustomed to have many rooms, and to think it vulgar to receive in her great drawing-room of a morning, believing au premier, or up one pair of stairs, more genteel than the rèz de chaussée, or the ground floor, and feeling the necessity of an ante-chamber, as there was an abruptness in being at once admitted into the presence of a lady from a stair-case, a sort of local brusquerie, that would suit her cook, better than the wife of an envoy extraordinary, had contrived to introduce her guests through the little bed-room, at the end of the up-stairs entry!

From all this you will be prepared to understand some of the essential differences between a reception in Paris, and one at New York, or even at Washington. The footman, or footmen, if there are two, ascend to the inner ante-chamber, with their masters and mistresses, where they receive the cloaks, shawls, over-coats, or whatever else has been used for the sake of mere warmth, and withdraw. If they are sent home, as is usually the case at dinners and evening parties, they return with the things at the hour ordered, but if the call be merely a passing one, or the guest means to go early to some other house, they either wait in the ante-chamber, or in a room provided for that purpose. The French are kind to their servants; much kinder than either the English, or their humble imitators, ourselves; and it is quite common to see, not only a good warm room, but refreshments, provided for the servants at a French party. In England, they either crowd the narrow passages and the door-way, or throng the street, as with us. In both countries, the poor coachmen sit for hours on their carriage-boxes, like so many ducks, in the drizzle and rain.

The footman gives the names of his party to the maitre d’hôtel, or the groom of the chambers, who, as he throws open the door of the first drawing-room, announces them in a loud voice. Announcing by means of a line of servants, is rarely, if ever, practised in France, though it is still done in England, at large parties, and in the great houses. Every one has heard the story of the attempt at Philadelphia, some forty years ago, to introduce the latter custom, when, by the awkwardness of a servant, a party was announced, as “Master and Mistress, and the young ladies;” but you will smile when I tell you that the latter part of this style is precisely that which is most in vogue at Paris. A young lady here, may be admired, she may be danced with, and she may even look and be looked at; but in society she talks little, is never loud or belleish, is always neat and simple in her attire, using very little jewelry, and has scarcely any other name than Mademoiselle. The usual mode of announcing is, “Monsieur le Comte, et Madame la Comtesse d’une telle, avec leurres des moiselles:” or, in plain English, “The Count and Countess Such-a-one, with their daughters.” This you will perceive is not so far, after all, from “Master and Mistress, and the young ladies.” The English, more simple in some respects, and less so in others, usually give every name, though, in the use of titles, the utmost good taste is observed. Thus every nobleman below a Duke, is almost uniformly addressed and styled Lord A——, Lord B——, &c., and their wives, Ladies A—— and B——. Thus the Marquess of Lansdowne would, I think, always be addressed and spoken of, and even announced, merely as Lord Lansdowne. This, you will observe, is using the simplest possible style, and it appears to me that there is rather an affectation of simplicity in their ordinary intercourse, the term “My Lord” being hardly ever used, except by the tradesmen and domestics. The safest rule for an American, and certainly the one that good taste would dictate, is to be very sparing in his use of every thing of this sort, since he cannot be always certain of the proper usages of the different countries he visits, and, so long as he avoids unnecessary affectations of republicanisms, and, if a gentleman, this he will do without any effort, simplicity is his cue. When I say avoids the affectations of republicanisms, I do not mean the points connected with principles, but those vulgar and under-bred pretensions of ultra equality and liberalism, which, while they mark neither manliness nor a real appreciation of equal rights, almost uniformly betray a want of proper training and great ignorance of the world. Whenever, however, any attempt is made to identify equality of rights and democratical institutions with vulgarity and truculency, as is sometimes attempted here, in the presence of Americans, and even in good company, it is the part of every gentleman of our country to improve the opportunity that is thus afforded him, to show it is a source of pride, with him, to belong to a nation in which a hundred men are not depressed politically, in order that one may be great; and also to show how much advantage, after all, he who is right in substance has over him who is substantially wrong, even in the forms of society, and in that true politeness which depends on natural justice. Such a principle, acted on systematically, would soon place the gentlemen of America where they ought to be, and the gentlemen of other countries where, sooner or later, they must be content to descend, or to change their systems. That these things are not so, must be ascribed to our provincial habits, our remote situation, comparative insignificance, and chiefly to the circumstance that men’s minds, trained under a different state of things, cannot keep even pace with the wonderful progress of the facts of the country.

But all this time, I have only got you into the outer salon of a French hotel. In order that we may proceed more regularly, we will return to the dinner given by our minister to Mr. Canning. Mr. Brown has an apartment in the Hôtel Monaco, one of the best houses in Paris. The Prince of Monaco is the sovereign of a little territory of the same name, on the Gulf of Nice, at the foot of the maritime Alps. His states may be some six or eight miles square, and the population some six or eight thousand. The ancient name of the family is Grimaldi, but by some intermarriage or other, the Duke of Valentinois, a Frenchman, has become the prince. This little state is still independent, though under the especial protection of the king of Sardinia, and without foreign relations. It was formerly a common thing for the petty princes of Europe to own hotels at Paris. Thus the present hotel of the Legion of Honour, was built by a Prince of Salms, and the Princes of Monaco had two, one of which is occupied by the Austrian ambassador, and, in the other, our own minister, just at this moment, has an apartment. As I had been pressed especially to be early, I went a little before six, and finding no one in the drawing-room, I strolled into the bureau, where I found Mr. Shelden, the Secretary of Legation, who lived in the family, dressed for dinner. We chatted a little, and, on my admiring the magnificence of the rooms, he gave me the history of the hotel, as you have just heard it, with an additional anecdote that may be worth relating.

“This hotel,” said the Secretary, “was once owned by M. de Talleyrand, and this bureau was probably the receptacle of state secrets of far greater importance than any that are connected with our own simple and unsupported claims for justice.” He then went on to say, that the citizens of Hamburgh, understanding it was the intention of Napoleon to incorporate their town with the empire, had recourse to a douceur, in order to prevent an act, that, by destroying their neutrality, would annihilate their commerce. Four millions of francs were administered on this occasion, and of these a large proportion, it is said, went to pay for the hotel Monaco, which was a recent purchase of M. de Talleyrand. To the horror of the Hambourgeois, the money was scarcely paid, when the deprecated decree appeared, and every man of them was converted into a Frenchman, by the stroke of a pen. The worthy burghers were accustomed to receive a quid pro quo, for every florin they bestowed, failing of which, on the present occasion, they sent a deputation forthwith to Napoleon, to reveal the facts, and to make their complaints. That great man little liked that any one but himself should peculate in his dominions, and, in the end, M. de Talleyrand, was obliged to quit the hotel Monaco. By some means, with which I am unacquainted, most probably by purchase, however, the house is now the property of Madame Adelaide of Orleans.

The rolling of a coach into the court was a signal for us to be at our posts, and we abandoned the bureau, so lately occupied by the great father of diplomacy, for the drawing-room. I have already told you that this dinner was in honor of Mr. Canning, and, although diplomatic in one sense, it was not so strictly confined to the corps as to prevent a selection. This selection, in honor of the principal guest, had been made from the representatives of the great powers, Spain being the least important nation represented on the occasion, the republic of Switzerland excepted. I do not know whether the presence of the Swiss Chargé d’Affaires was so intended or not, but it struck me as pointed, and in good taste, for all the other foreign agents were ambassadors, with the exception of the Prussian, who was an Envoy Extraordinary. Diplomacy has its honorary gradations as well as a military corps, and as you can know but little of such matters, I will explain them en passant. First in rank comes the ambassador. This functionary is supposed to represent the personal dignity of the state that sends him. If a king, there is a room in his house that has a throne, and it is usual to see the chair reversed, in respect for its sanctity, and it appears to be etiquette to suspend the portrait of the sovereign beneath the canopy. The Envoy Extraordinary comes next, and then the Minister Plenipotentiary. Ordinarily, these two functions are united in the same individual. Such is the rank of Mr. Brown. The Minister Resident is a lower grade, and the Chargé d’Affaires the lowest of all. Inter se, these personages take rank according to this scale. Previously to the peace of 1814, the representative of one monarch laid claim to precede the representative of another, always admitting, however, of the validity of the foregoing rule. This pretension gave rise to a good deal of heart-burning and contention. Nothing can, in itself, be of greater indifference, whether A. or B. walk into the reception-room, or to the dinner table, first, but when the idea of general superiority is associated with the act, the aspect of the thing is entirely changed. Under the old system, the ambassador of the Emperor claimed precedence over all other ambassadors, and, I believe, the representatives of the kings of France had high pretensions also. Now there are great mutations in states. Spain, once the most important kingdom of Europe, has much less influence to-day than Prussia, a power of yesterday. Then the minister of the most insignificant prince claimed precedency over the representative of the most potent republic. This might have passed while republics were insignificant and dependent, but no one can believe that a minister of America, for instance, representing a state of fifty millions, as will be the case before long, would submit to such an extravagant pretension on the part of a minister of Wurtemburg, or Sardinia, or Portugal. He would not submit to such a pretension on the part of the minister of any power on earth.

I do not believe that the Congress of Vienna had sufficient foresight, or sufficient knowledge of the actual condition of the United States, to foresee this difficulty, but there were embarrassing points to be settled among the European states themselves, and the whole affair was disposed of, on a very discreet and equitable principle. It was decided that priority of standing at a particular court, should regulate the rank between the different classes of agents at that particular court. Thus the ambassador longest at Paris, precedes all the other ambassadors at Paris, and the same rule prevails with the ministers and chargés, according to their respective gradations of rank. A provision, however, was made in favor of the representative of the Pope, who, if of the rank of a Nuncio, precedes all ambassadors. This concession has been made in honor of the church, which, as you must know, or ought to be told, is an interest much protected in all monarchies, statesmen being notoriously of tender consciences.

The constant habit of meeting, drills the diplomatic corps so well, that they go through the evolutions of etiquette as dexterously as a corps of regular troops perform their wheelings and counter-marches. The first great point with them is punctuality, for to people who sacrifice so much of it to forms, time gets to be precious. The roll of wheels was incessant in the court of the hotel Monaco, from the time the first carriage entered, until the last had set down its company. I know, as every man who reflects must know, that it is inherently ill-bred to be late any where, but I never before felt how completely it was high breeding to be as punctual as possible. The maitre d’hôtel had as much as he could do to announce the company, who entered as closely after each other as decorum and dignity would permit; I presume one party waited a little for the others in the outer drawing-room, the reception being altogether in the inner room.

The Americans very properly came first. We were Mr. Gallatin, who was absent from London on leave, his wife and daughter, and a clergyman and his wife, and myself; Mrs. —— having declined the invitation, on account of ill health. The announcing and the entrance of most of the company, especially as every body was in high dinner dress, the women in jewels and the men wearing all their orders, had something of the air of a scenic display. The effect was heightened by the magnificence of the hotel, the drawing-room in which we were collected being almost regal.

The first person who appeared, was a handsome, compact, well built, gentleman-like little man, who was announced as the Duke of Villa Hermosa, the Spanish Ambassador. He was dressed with great simplicity and beauty, having, however, the breast of his coat covered with stars, among which I recognised, with historical reverence, that of the Golden Fleece. He came alone, his wife, pleading indisposition for her absence. The Prussian Minister and his wife came next. Then followed Lord and Lady Granville, the representatives of England. He was a large well-looking man, but wanted the perfect command of movement and manner that so much distinguish his brethren in diplomacy; as for mere physical stuff, he and our own minister, who stands six feet four in his stockings, would make material enough for all the rest of the corps. He wore the star of the Bath. The Austrian ambassador and ambassadress followed, a couple of singularly high air and a good tone of manner. He is a Hungarian, and very handsome; she a Veronese, I believe, and certainly a woman admirably adapted for her station. They had hardly made their salutations, before M. le Comte, et Mad. la Comtesse de Villèle were announced. Here, then, we had the French prime minister. As the women precede the men into a drawing-room, here, knowing how to walk and to curtsey, alone, I did not, at first, perceive the great man, who followed so close to his wife’s skirts as to be nearly hid. But he was soon flying about the room, at large, and betrayed himself, immediately, to be a fidget. Instead of remaining stationary, or nearly so, as became his high quality, he took the initiative in compliments, and had nearly every diplomatic man, walking apart in the adjoining room, in a political aside, in less than twenty minutes. He had a countenance of shrewdness, and I make little doubt is a better man in a bureau than in a drawing-room. His colleague, the foreign minister, M. de Damas and his wife came next. He was a large, heavy-looking personage, that I suspect throws no small part of the diplomacy on the shoulders of the Premier, though he had more the manner of good society than his colleague. He has already exchanged his office for that of Governor of the Heir Presumptive, as I have already stated. There was a pause, when a quiet, even-paced, classical-looking man, in the attire of an ecclesiastic, appeared in the door, and was announced as “My Lord the Nuncio.” He was then an Archbishop, and wore the usual dress of his rank; but I have since met him at an evening party, with a red hat under his arm, the Pope having recalled him and raised him to that dignity. He is now Cardinal Macchi. He was a priestly and an intellectual-looking personage, and, externals considered, well suited to his station. He wore a decoration, or two, as well as most of the others.

“My lord Clanricarde and Mr. Canning” came next, and the great man, followed by his son-in-law, made his appearance. He walked into the room with the quiet àplomb of a man accustomed to being lionized, and, certainly, without being of striking, he was of very pleasing appearance. His size was ordinary, but his frame was compact and well built, neither too heavy nor too light for his years, but of just the proportions to give one the idea of a perfect management of the machine. His face was agreeable, and his eye steady and searching. He and M. de Villele were the very opposites in demeanour, though, after all, it was easy to see that the Englishman had the most latent force about him. One was fidgetty, and the other humorous; for with all his command of limb and gesture, nothing could be more natural than the expression of Mr. Canning. I may have imagined that I detected some of his wit, from a knowledge of the character of his mind. He left the impression, however, of a man whose natural powers were checked by a trained and factitious deference to the rank of those with whom he associated. Lord Granville, I thought, treated him with a sort of affectionate deference, and, right or wrong, I jumped to the conclusion, that the English ambassador was a straight-forward good fellow, at the bottom, and one very likely to badger the fidgetty premier, by his steady determination to do what was right. I thought M. de Damas, too, looked like an honest man. God forgive me, if I do injustice to any of these gentlemen!

All this time, I have forgotten Count Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador. Being a bachelor, he came alone. It might have been fancy, but I thought he appeared more at his ease, under the American roof, than any of his colleagues. The perfect good understanding between our own government and that of Russia, extends to their representatives, and, policy or not, we are better treated by them, than by any other foreign ministers. This fact should be known and appreciated, for as one citizen of the republic, however insignificant, I have no notion of being blackguarded and vituperated half a century, and then cajoled into forgetfulness, at the suggestions of fear and expediency, as circumstances render our good will of importance. Let us at least show that we are not mannikins to be pulled about for the convenience and humours of others, but that we know what honest words are, understand the difference between civility and abuse, and have pride enough to resent contumely, when, at least, we feel it to be unmerited. M. Pozzo is a handsome man, of good size and a fine dark eye, and has a greater reputation for talents, than any other member of the diplomatic corps now at Paris. He is, by birth, a Corsican, and I have heard it said, distantly related to Bonaparte. This may be true, Corsica being so small a country; just as some of us are related to every body in West Jersey. Our party now consisted of the prime minister, the secretary of foreign affairs, the Austrian and English ambassadors, and the Prussian minister, with their wives, the Nuncio, the Russian and Spanish ambassadors, the Swiss Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Canning, Lord Clanricarde, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Gallatin, and the other Americans already mentioned, or twenty-five in all.

If I had been struck with the rapid and business-like manner in which the company entered, I was amused with the readiness with which they paired off when dinner was announced. It was like a coup de théâtre, every man and every woman knowing his or her exact rank and precedency, and the time when to move. This business of getting out of a drawing-room to a dinner table is often one of difficulty, though less frequently in France, than in most other European countries, on account of the admirable tact of the women, who seldom suffer a knotty point to get the ascendency, but, by choosing the gentleman for themselves, settle the affair off hand. From their decision, of course, there is no appeal. In order that in your simplicity, you may not mistake the importance of this moment, I will relate an anecdote of what lately occurred, at a dinner given by an English functionary in Holland.

When William invaded England, in 1688, he took with him many Dutch nobles, some of whom remained, and became English peers. Among others, he created one of his followers an Irish Earl; but choosing to return to Holland, this person was afterwards known as the Count de ——, although his Irish rank was always acknowledged. It happened that the wife of the descendant of this person was present at the entertainment in question. When dinner was announced, the company remarked that the master of the house was in a dilemma. There was much consultation, and a delay of near half an hour before the matter was decided. The debated point was, whether Mad. de —— was to be considered as a Dutch or an Irish Countess. If the latter, there were English ladies present who were entitled to precede her; if the former, as a stranger, she might get that advantage herself. Luckily for the rights of hospitality, the Dutch lady got the best of it.

These things sound absurd, and sometimes they are so, but this social drilling, unless carried to extremes, is not without its use. In America, I have always understood that, on such occasions, silent laws of etiquette exist, in all good company, which are founded on propriety and tact. The young give way to the old, the undistinguished to the distinguished, and he who is at home to the stranger. These rules are certainly the most rational, and in the best taste, when they can be observed, and, on the whole, they lead perhaps to the fewest embarrassments; always so, if there happen to be none but the well bred present, since seats become of little consideration where no importance is attached to them. I confess to some manœuvering in my time, to get near, or away from a fire, out of a draught, or next some agreeable woman; but the idea whether I was at the head or the foot of the table never crossed my mind: and yet here, where they do mean the salt to come into the account, I begin to take care that they do not “bite their thumbs” at me. Two or three little things have occurred in my presence, which show that all our people do not even understand the ways of their own good society. A very young man lately, under the impression that gallantry required it, led one of the most distinguished women in the room, to the table, merely because he happened to be next her, at the moment dinner was announced. This was certainly a failure even in American etiquette, every woman being more disposed to appreciate the delicacy and respect which should have induced such a person to give place to one of higher claims, than to prize the head-over-heels assiduity that caused the boy to forget himself. Sentiment should be the guide on such occasions, and no man is a gentleman until his habits are brought completely in subjection to its dictates, in all matters of this sort.

There was very little sentiment, however, in marshalling the company at the dinner given to Mr. Canning. I will not undertake to say that all the guests were invited to meet this gentleman, and that he had been asked to name a day, as is usual when it is intended to pay an especial compliment; but I was asked to meet him, and I understood that the dinner was in his honour. Diplomatic etiquette made short work of the matter, notwithstanding, for the doors were hardly thrown open, before all the privileged vanished, with a quickness that was surprising. The minister took Mad. de Villele; M. de Villele, Mrs. Brown; M. de Damas the wife of the oldest ambassador, and the Nuncio, Mad. de Damas; after which, the ambassadors and ministers took each other’s wives in due order, and with a promptitude that denoted great practice. Even the charge disappeared, leaving the rest of us to settle matters among ourselves as well as we could. Mr. Canning, Mr. Gallatin, Lord Clanricarde, the divine, the secretary and myself, were left with only the wife of the clergyman and Miss Gallatin. As a matter of course, the Americans, feeling themselves at home, made signs for the two Englishmen to precede them, and Mr. Canning offered his arm to Mrs. ——, and Lord Clanricarde, his, to Miss Gallatin. Here occurred a touch of character that is worthy to be mentioned, as showing of how very little account an American, male or female, is in the estimation of a European, and how very arbitrary are the laws of etiquette among our English cousins. Mr. Canning actually gave way to his son-in-law, leaving the oldest of the two ladies to come after the youngest, because, as a Marquis, his son-in-law took precedence of a commoner! This was out of place in America, at least, where the parties were, by a fiction in law, if not in politeness, and it greatly scandalized all our Yankee notions of propriety. Mrs. —— afterwards told me that he apologized for the circumstance, giving Lord Clanricarde’s rank as the reason. “Semper eadem,” or “worse and worse” as my old friend O——n used to translate it. What became of the precedency of the married lady all this time, you will be ready to ask? Alas? she was an American, and had no precedency. The twelve millions may not settle this matter as it should be, but, take my word for it the “fifty millions” will. Insignificant as all this is, or rather ought to be, your grandchildren and mine will live to see the mistake rectified. How much better would it be for those who cannot stop the progress of events, by vain wishes and idle regrets, to concede the point gracefully, and on just principles, than to have their cherished prejudices broken down by dint of sheer numbers and power?

The dinner, itself, was like every dinner that is given at Paris, beautiful in decoration, admirable in its order, and excellent in viands, or rather, in its dishes; for it is the cookery and not the staple articles that form the boast of the French kitchen. As you are notable in your own region, for understanding these matters, I must say a word, touching the gastric science as it is understood here. A general error exists in America on the subject of French cookery, which is not highly seasoned, but whose merit consists in blending flavors and in arranging compounds, in such a manner as to produce, at the same time, the lightest and most agreeable food. A lady who, from her public situation, receives once a week, for the entire year, and whose table has a reputation, assured me, lately, that all the spices consumed annually in her kitchen did not cost her a franc! The effect of a French dinner is its principal charm. One of reasonably moderate habits, rises from the table with a sense of enjoyment, that, to a stranger, at least, is sometimes startling. I have, on several occasions, been afraid I was relaxing into the vices of a gourmet, if, indeed, vices they can be called. The gourmand is a beast, and there is nothing to be said in his favour, but, after all, I incline to the opinion that no one is the worse for a knowledge of what is agreeable to the palate. Perhaps no one of either sex is thoroughly trained, or properly bred, without being tant soit peu de gourmet. The difference between sheer eating, and eating with tact and intelligence, is so apparent as to need no explanation. A dinner here does not oppress one. The wine neither intoxicates nor heats, and the frame of mind and body in which one is left, is precisely that best suited to intellectual and social pleasures. I make no doubt, that one of the chief causes of the French being so agreeable as companions, is, in a considerable degree, owing to the admirable qualities of their table. A national character may emanate from a kitchen. Roast beef, bacon, pudding, and beer, and port, will make a different man, in time, from Château Margau, côtelettes, consommés and souflés. The very name of vol au vent is enough to make one walk on air!

Seriously, these things have more influence than may be, at a glance, imagined. The first great change I could wish to make in America, would be to see a juster appreciation of the substance, and less importance attached to outward forms, in moral things. The second, would be to create a standard of greatness and distinction, that should be independent, or nearly independent, of money. The next, a more reasoning and original tone of thought, as respects our own distinctive principles and distinctive situation, with a total indifference to the theories that have been broached to sustain an alien and an antagonist system, in England; and the last, (the climax) a total reform in the kitchen! If I were to reverse the order of these improvements, I am not certain the three last might not follow as a consequence of the first. After our people have been taught to cook a dinner, they ought also to be taught how to eat it.

Our entertainment lasted the usual hour and a half, and, as one is all this time eating, and there are limits to the capacity of a stomach, a part of the lightness and gaiety with which one rises from a French dinner ought to be attributed to the time that is consumed at the table. The different ingredients have opportunity to dispose of themselves, in their new abode, and are not crowded together pell mell, or like papers and books in —— —— library, as I think they must be after a transatlantic meal. As for the point of a mere consumption of food, I take it, the palm must be given to your Frenchman. I had some amusement to-day in watching the different countries. The Americans were nearly all through their dinner, by the time the first course was removed. All that was eaten, afterwards, was literally with them, pure make-weight, though they kept a hungry look, to the last. The English seemed fed even before the dinner was begun, and, although the continental powers in general, had the art of picking till they got to the finger bowls, none really kept up the ball but the Frenchmen. It happened to be Friday, and I was a little curious to discover whether the Nuncio came to these places with a dispensation in his pocket. He sat next to Mad. de Damas, as good a Catholic as himself, and I observed them helping themselves to several suspicious-looking dishes, during the first course. I ought to have told you before, that one rarely, almost never, helps his neighbour, at a French entertainment. The dishes are usually put on the table, removed by the servants to be carved, in succession, and handed to the guests to help themselves. When the service is perfect, every dish is handed to each guest. In the great houses, servants out of livery help to the different plats, servants in livery holding the dishes, sauces, &c., and changing the plates. I believe it is strictly haut ton for the servants in livery, to do nothing but assist those out of livery. In America it is thought stylish to give liveries; in Europe those who keep most servants out of livery, are in the highest mode, since these are always a superior class of menials. The habits of this quarter of the world give servants a very different estimation from that which they hold with us. Nobles of high rank are employed about the persons of princes, and, although, in this age, they perform no strictly menial offices, or only on great occasions, they are, in theory, the servitors of the body. Nobles have been even employed by nobles, and it is still considered an honor for the child of a physician, or a clergyman, or a shop-keeper, in some parts of Europe, to fill a high place in the household of a great noble. The body servant, or the gentleman as he is sometimes called even in England, of a man of rank, looks down upon a mechanic, as his inferior. Contrary to all our notions as all this is, it is strictly reasonable, when the relative conditions, information, habits, and characters of the people, are considered. But servants here, are divided into many classes; for some are scullions, and some are intrusted with the keys. It follows that those who maintain most of the higher class, who are never in livery, maintain the highest style. To say he keeps a servant out of livery, means that he keeps a better sort of domestic. Mere footmen always wear it, the maitre d’hôtel, or groom of the chambers, and the valet, never.

But to return to the dispensation, I made it a point to taste every dish that had been partaken of by the Nuncio and his neighbor, and I found that they were all fish; but fish, so treated, that they could hardly know what to think of themselves. You may remember, however, that an Archbishop of Paris was sufficiently complaisant to declare a particular duck, of which one of Louis XVIth’s aunts was fond, to be fish, and, of course, fit to be eaten on fast-days.

The fasting of these people would strike you as singular, for I verily believe they eat more of a fast-day, than on any other. We engaged a governess for the girls, not long after our arrival, and she proved to be a bigotted Catholic, a furious royalist, and as ignorant as a calf. She had been but a few weeks in the house, when I detected her teaching her élèves to think Washington an unpardonable rebel, La Fayette a monster, Louis XVIth a martyr, and all heretics in the high road to damnation. There remained no alternative but to give her a quarter’s salary, and to get rid of her. By the way, this woman was of a noble family, and, as such, received a small pension from the court. But I kept her fully a month longer, than I think I otherwise should, to see her eat on fast-days. Your aunt had the consideration, invariably, to order fish for her, and she made as much havoc among them as a pike. She always commenced the Friday, with an extra allowance of fruit, which she was eating all the morning; and, at dinner, she contrived to eat half the vegetables, and all the fish. One day, by mistake, the soup happened to be gras instead of maïgre, and, after she had swallowed a large plate-full, I was malicious enough to express my regrets at the mistake. I really thought the poor woman was about to disgorge on the spot, but by dint of consolation she managed to spare us this scene. So good an occasion offering, I ventured to ask her why she fasted at all, as I did not see it made any great difference in the sum total of her bodily nutriment. She assured me that I did not understand the matter. The fruit was merely “refraichissante,” and so counted for nothing; and as for the fish and vegetables, I might possibly think them very good eating, and for that matter, so did she, on Thursdays and Saturdays, but no sooner did Friday come than she longed for meat. The merit of the thing consisted, therefore, more in denying her appetite than in going without food. I tried hard to persuade her to take a côtellette with me, but the proposition made her shudder, though she admitted that she envied me every mouthful I swallowed. The knowledge of this craving did not take away my appetite.

Lest you should suppose that I am indulging in the vulgar English slang against French governesses, I will add that our own was the very worst, in every respect, I ever saw in, or out, of France, and that I have met with ladies in this situation, every way qualified, by principles, attainments, manners and antecedents, to be received with pleasure, in the best company of Europe.

Our convives in the Hotel Monaco, soon disappeared after the chasse café, leaving none but the Americans behind them. Men and women retired as they came; the latter, however, taking leave, as is always required by the punctilios of your sex, except at very large and crowded parties, and even then properly, and the former, if alone, getting away as quietly as possible. The whole affair was over before nine o’clock, at which hour the diplomatick corps was scattered all through Paris.

Previously to this dispersion, however, Mr. Gallatin did me the favor to present me to Mr. Canning. The conversation was short, and was chiefly on America. There was a sore spot in his feelings, in consequence of a recent negotiation, and he betrayed it. He clearly does not love us, but what Englishman does? You will be amused to hear that unimportant in other respects, as this little conversation was, it has been the means of affecting the happiness of two individuals of high station in Great Britain. It would be improper for me to say more, but of the fact I can entertain no manner of doubt, and I mention it here, merely as a curious instance of the manner in which “tall oaks from little acorns grow.”

I ought to have said that two, instead of one event, followed this dinner. The second was our own introduction into European society. The how and wherefore it is unnecessary to explain, but some of the cleverest and best-bred people of this well bred and clever capital took us by the hand, all “unlettered” as we were, and from that moment, taking into consideration our tastes and my health, the question has been not how to get into, but how to keep out of, the great world. You know enough of these matters, to understand that, the ice once broken, any one can float in the current of society.

This little footing has not been obtained without some contre tems, and I have learned early to understand that wherever there is an Englishman in the question, it behoves an American to be reserved, punctilious and sometimes stubborn. There is a strange mixture of kind feeling, prejudice and ill nature, as respects us, wrought into the national character of that people, that will not admit of much mystification. That they should not like us may be natural enough; but if they seek the intercourse, they ought, on all occasions, to be made to conduct it equally without annoyance and condescension, and on terms of perfect equality; conditions, by the way, that are scarcely agreeable to their present[5] notions of superiority.

5. The change in this respect, during the last ten years is patent. No European nation has, probably, just at this moment as much real respect for America, as the English, though it is still mixed with great ignorance, and a very sincere dislike. Still, the enterprise, activity, and growing power of the country are forcing themselves on the attention of our kinsmen; and if the government understood its foreign relations as well as it does its domestic, and made a proper exhibition of maritime preparation and of maritime force, this people would hold the balance in many of the grave questions that are now only in abeyance, in European politics. Hitherto we have been influenced by every vacillation in English interests, and it is quite time to think of turning the tables, and of placing, as far as practicable, American interests above the vicissitudes of those of other people. The thing is more easily done, than is commonly imagined, but a party politician is rarely a statesman, the subordinate management necessary to the one, being death to the comprehensive views that belong to the other. The peculiar nature of the American institutions, and the peculiar geographical situation of the country, moreover, render higher qualities necessary, perhaps, to make a statesman here, than elsewhere.

In order to understand why I mention any other than the French, in the capital of France, you will remember that there are many thousands of foreigners established here, for longer or shorter periods, who, by means of their money (a necessary that, relatively, is less abundant with the French) materially affect society, contriving to penetrate it, in all directions, in some way or other.

LETTER VII.
To Jacob Sutherland, Esq., New York.

Your legal pursuits, will naturally give you an interest in the subject of the state of justice in this part of the world. A correspondence like mine would not admit of any very profound analysis of the subject, did I possess the necessary learning, which I do not, but I may present a few general facts and notions, that will give you some idea of the state of this important feature of society. The forms and modes of English jurisprudence are so much like our own, as to create the impression that the administration of justice is equally free from venality and favor. As a whole, and when the points at issue reach the higher functionaries of the law, I should think this opinion true; but, taking those facts that appear in the daily prints, through the police reports and in the form of personal narratives, as guides, I should think that there is much more oppression, many more abuses, and far more outrages on the intention of the law, in the purlieus of the courts in England, through the agency of subordinates, than with us. The delays and charges of a suit in chancery, almost amount to a denial of justice. Quite lately, I saw a statement, which went to show that a legacy to a charity of about £1000, with the interest of some fourteen years, had been consumed in this court, with the exception of rather more than £100. This is an intolerable state of things, and goes to prove, I think, that, in some of its features at least, English jurisprudence is behind that of every other free country.

But I have been much impressed, lately, by a case that would be likely to escape the attention of more regular commentators. A peer of the realm having struck a constable on a race course, is proceeded against, in the civil action. The jury found for the plaintiff, damages £50. In summing up, the judge reasoned exactly contrary to what I am inclined to think would have been the case, had the matter been tried before you. He gave it as his opinion that the action was frivolous and ought never to have been brought, that the affair should have been settled out of court, and, in short, left the impression that it was not, as such, so great a hardship for a constable to be struck by a peer, that his honor might not be satisfied with the offering of a guinea or two. The jury thought differently; from which I infer that the facts did not sustain the judge in his notions. Now, the reasoning at home, would, I think, have been just the other way. The English judge said, in substance, a man of Lord ——’s dignity ought not to have been exposed to this action; you would have said, a senator is a law-maker, and owes even a higher example of order than common to the community; he insinuated that a small reparation ought to suffice, while you would have made some strong hints at smart-money.

I mention this case, for I think it rather illustrative of English justice. Indeed, it is not easy to see how it well can be otherwise: when society is divided into castes, the weak must go to the wall. I know that the theory, here, is quite different, and that one of the boasts of England is the equality of its justice, but I am dealing in facts and not in theories. In America it is thought, and with proper limitations, I dare say, justly, that the bias of juries, in the very lowest courts, is in favour of the poor against the rich, but the right of appeal restores the balance, and, in a great degree, secures justice. In each case, it is the controlling power that does the wrong; in England the few, in America the many.

In France, as you probably know, juries are confined to criminal cases. The consequence is a continuance of the old practice of soliciting justice. The judge virtually decides in chambers, and he hears the parties in chambers, or, in other words, wherever he may choose to receive them. The client depends as much on external influence and his own solicitations, as on the law and the justice of his case. He visits the judge officially, and works upon his mind, by all the means in his power. You and I have been acquainted intimately from boyhood, and it has been my bad luck to have had more to do with the courts than I could wish, and yet, in all the freedom of an otherwise unfettered intercourse, I have never dared to introduce the subject of any suit, in which I have been a party. I have been afraid of wounding your sense of right, to say nothing of my own, and of forfeiting your esteem, or at least of losing your society. Now had we been Frenchmen you would have expected me to solicit you, you would probably have heard me with the bias of an old friend, and my adversary must have been a singularly lucky fellow, or you a very honest one, if he did not get the worst of it, supposing the case to admit of doubt. Formerly, it was known that influence prevailed; bribes were offered and received, and a suit was a contest of money and favoritism, rather than one of facts and principles.

I asked Gen. La Fayette, not long since, what he thought of the actual condition of France, as respects the administration of justice. In most political cases he accused the government of the grossest injustice, illegality and oppression. In the ordinary criminal cases, he believed the intentions of the courts and juries perfectly fair, as, indeed, it is difficult to believe they should not be. In the civil suits he thought a great improvement had taken place, nor did he believe that there now exists much of the ancient corruption. The civil code of Napoleon had worked well, and all he complained of was a want of fitness between the subordinate provisions of a system invented by a military despot for his own support, and the system of quasi liberty that had been adopted at the restoration; for the Bourbons had gladly availed themselves of all the machinery of power, that Napoleon bequeathed to France.

A gentleman who heard the conversation, afterwards told me the following anecdote. A friend of his had long been an unsuccessful suitor in one of the higher courts of the kingdom. They met one day in the street, when the other told him that an unsealed letter which he held in his hand, contained an offer of a pair of carriage-horses, to the wife of the judge who had the control of his affair. On being told he dare not take so strong a step, M. de ——, my informant, was requested to read the letter, to seal it, and to put in the boite aux lettres with his own hands, in order to satisfy himself of the actual state of justice in France. All this was done, and “I can only add,” continued M. de ——,” that I afterwards saw the horses in the carriage of Mad ——, and that my friend gained his cause.” To this anecdote, I can only say, I tell it exactly as I heard it, and that M. de —— is a deputy, and one of the honestest and simplest-minded men of my acquaintance. It is but proper to add, that the judge in question has a bad name, and is little esteemed by the bar, but the above-mentioned fact would go to show that too much of the old system remains.

In Germany justice bears a better name, though the absence of juries generally, must subject the suitor to the assaults of personal influence. Farther south report speaks still less favourably of the manner in which the laws are interpreted, and, indeed, it would seem to be an inevitable consequence of despotism, that justice should be abused. One hears, occasionally, of some signal act of moderation and equity, on the part of monarchies, but the merits of systems are to be proved, not by these brilliant coups de justice, but by the steady, quiet, and regular working of the machine, on which men know how to calculate, in which they have faith, and which as seldom deceives them as comports with human fallibility, rather than by scenes in which the blind goddess is made to play a part in a melo-drama.

On the whole, it is fair to presume that, while public opinion, and that intelligence which acts virtually as a bill of rights, even in the most despotic governments of Europe, not even excepting Turkey perhaps, have produced a beneficial influence on the courts, the secrecy of their proceedings, the irresponsible nature of their trusts (responsible to power, and irresponsible to the nation) and the absence of publicity, produce precisely the effects that a common-sense view of the facts, would lead one, who understands human nature, to expect.

I am no great admirer of the compromising verdicts of juries, in civil suits that admit of a question as to amounts. They are an admirable invention to settle questions of guilty or not guilty, but an enlightened court would, nine times in ten, do more justice in the cases just named. Would it not be an improvement to alter the present powers of juries, by letting them simply find for or against the suitor, leaving the damages to be assessed by regular officers, that might resemble masters in chancery? At all events, juries or some active substitute, cannot be safely dispensed with, until a people have made great progress in the science of publicity, and in a knowledge of the general principles connected with jurisprudence.

This latter feature is quite peculiar to America. Nothing has struck me more in Europe, than the ignorance which every where exists on such subjects, even among educated people. No one appears to have any distinct notions of legal principles, or even of general law, beyond a few prominent facts, but the professional men. Chance threw me, not long since, into the company of three or four exceedingly clever young Englishmen. They were all elder sons, and two were the heirs of peers. Something was said on the subject of a claim of a gentleman, with whom I am connected, to a large Irish estate. The grandfather of this gentleman was the next brother to the incumbent, who died intestate. The grandson, however, was defeated in his claim in consequence of its being proved, that the ancestor, through whom he derived his claim, was of the half-blood. My English companions did not understand the principle, and when I explained by adding that the grandfather of the claimant was born of a different mother from the last holder in fee, and that he could never inherit at law (unless by devise) the estate going to a hundredth cousin of the whole blood in preference, or even escheating to the king, they one and all protested England had no such law! They were evidently struck with the injustice of transferring property that had been acquired by the common ancestor of two brothers, to a remote cousin, merely because the affinity between the sons was only on the father’s side, although that very father may have accumulated the estate, and they could not believe that what struck them as so grievous a wrong, could be the law of descents under which they lived. Luckily for me, one learned in the profession happened to be present, and corroborated the fact. Now all these gentlemen were members of parliament, but they were accustomed to leave legal questions of this nature to the management of professional men.[6]

6. This absurd and unaccountable provision of the common law, has since been superseded by a statute regulating descents on a more intelligible and just provision. England has made greater advances in common sense and in the right, in all such matters, within the last five years, than during the previous hundred.

I mentioned this conversation to another Englishman, who thought the difficulty well disposed of, by saying that if property ever escheated in this manner, I ought to remember that the crown invariably bestowed it on the natural heir. This struck me as singular reasoning to be used by a people who profess to cherish liberty, inasmuch as, to a certain degree, it places all the land in the kingdom, at the mercy of the sovereign. I need not tell you moreover, that this answer was insufficient, as it did not meet the contingency of a remote cousin’s inheriting, to the prejudice of the children of him who earned the estate. But habit is all in all, with the English in such matters, and that which they are accustomed to see and hear, they are accustomed to think right.

The bar is rising greatly in public consideration in France. Before the revolution there were certain legal families of great distinction, but these could scarcely be considered as forming a portion of the regular practitioners. Now, many of the most distinguished statesmen, peers, and politicians of France, commenced their careers as advocates. The practice of public speaking gives them an immense advantage in the chambers, and fully half of the most popular debators, are members who belong to the profession. New candidates for public favor appear every day, and the time is at hand when the fortunes of France, so lately controlled by soldiers, will be more influenced by men of this profession, than by those of all the others. This is a great step in moral civilization, for the country that most feels the ascendency of the law, and that least feels that of arms, is nearest to the summit of human perfection. When asked which profession takes rank, in America, I tell them the law in influence, and the church in deference. Some of my moustached auditors stare at this reply, for, here, the sword has precedence of all others, and the law, with few exceptions, is deemed a calling for none but those who are in the secondary ranks of society. But, as I have told you, opinion is undergoing a great change, in this particular. I believe that every efficient man in the present ministry are or have been lawyers.

LETTER VIII.
To Col. Bankhead, U. S. Artillery.

The army of France obtained so high a reputation, during the wars of the revolution and of the empire, that you may feel some curiosity to know its actual condition. As the Bourbons understand that they have been restored to the throne, by the great powers of Europe, if not in opposition to the wishes of a majority of Frenchmen, certainly in opposition to the wishes of the active portion of the population, and consequently to that part of the nation which would be the most likely to oppose their interests, they have been accused of endeavouring to keep the establishments of France so low as to put her at the mercy of any new combination of the allies. I should think this accusation, in a great degree, certainly, unmerited; for France, at this moment, has a large and, so far as I can judge, a well appointed army, and one that is charged by the liberal party with being a heavy expense to the nation, and that, too, chiefly with the intention of keeping the people in subjection to tyranny. But these contradictions are common in party politics. It is not easy here to get at statistical facts, accurately, especially those which are connected with expenditure. Nominally, the army is about 200,000 men, but it is whispered, that numerous congés are given, in order to divert the funds that are thus saved, to other objects. Admitting all this to be true, and it probably is so in part, I should think France must have fully 150,000 men embodied, without including the National Guards. Paris is pretty well garrisoned, and the casernes in the vicinity of the capital are always occupied. It appears to me there cannot be less than 20,000 men, within a day’s march of the Tuileries, and there may be half as many more.[7]

7. The sudden disbandment of the guards and other troops in 1830, greatly diminished the actual force of the country.

Since our arrival there have been several great military displays, and I have made it a point to be present at them all. The first was a petite guerre,[8] on the plains of Issy, or within a mile of the walls of the town. There may have been 15,000 men assembled for the occasion, including troops of all arms.

8. Sham-fight.

One of the first things that struck me at Paris, was the careless militia-like manner in which the French troops marched about the streets. The disorder, irregularity, careless and indifferent style of moving, were all exactly such as I have heard laughed at, a thousand times, in our own great body of national defenders. But this is only one of many similar instances, in which I have discovered that what has been deemed a peculiarity in ourselves, arising from the institutions perhaps, is a very general quality belonging rather to man than to any particular set of men. Our notions, you will excuse the freedom of the remark, are apt to be a little provincial, and every one knows that fashions, opinions and tastes, only become the more exaggerated, the farther we remove from the centre of light. In this way, we come to think of things in an exaggerated sense, until, like the boy who is disappointed at finding a king a man, we form notions of life that are any thing but natural and true.

I was still so new to all this, however, that I confess I went to the plain of Issy, expecting to see a new style of manœuvring, or, at least, one very different from that which I had so often witnessed at home, nor, can I say that, in this instance, there was so much disappointment. The plan of the day did not embrace two parties, but was merely an attack on an imaginary position, against which the assailants were regularly and scientifically brought up, the victory being a matter of convention. The movements were very beautiful, and were made with astonishing spirit and accuracy. All idea of disorder, or the want of regularity, was lost, here, for entire battalions advanced to the charges without the slightest apparent deviation from perfectly mathematical lines.

When we reached the acclivity that overlooked the field, a new line was forming directly beneath us, it being supposed that the advance of the enemy had already been driven in upon his main body, and the great attack was just on the point of commencing.

A long line of infantry of the French guards, formed the centre of the assailants. Several batteries of artillery were at hand, and divers strong columns of horse and foot were held in reserve. A regiment of lancers was on the nearest flank, and another of cuirassiers was stationed at the opposite. All the men of the royal family were in the field, surrounded by a brilliant staff. A gun was fired near them, by way of signal, I suppose, when two brigades of artillery galloped through the intervals of the line, unlimbered, and went to work as if they were in downright earnest. The cannonade continued a short time, when the infantry advanced in line, and delivered its fire by companies, or battalions, I could not discern which, in the smoke. This lasted some ten minutes, when I observed a strong column of troops dressed in scarlet, moving up, with great steadiness and regularity, from the rear. These were the Swiss guards, and there might have been fifteen hundred, or two thousand of them. The column divided into two, as it approached the rear of the line, which broke into columns, in turn, and for a minute there was a confused crowd of red and blue coats, in the smoke, that quite set my nautical instinct at defiance. The cuirassiers chose this moment to make a rapid and menacing movement in advance, but without opening their column, and some of the artillery reappeared and commenced firing, at the unoccupied intervals. This lasted a very little while, for the Swiss displayed into line like clock-work, and then made a quick charge, with beautiful precision. Halting, they threw in a heavy fire, by battalions; the French guard rallied and formed upon their flanks; the whole reserve came up; the cuirassiers and lancers charged, by turning the position assailed, and for ten or fifteen minutes there was a succession of quick evolutions, which, like the finale of a grand piece of music, appeared confused even while it was the most scientific, and then there was a sudden pause. The position, whose centre was a copse, had been carried, and we soon saw the guards formed on the ground that was supposed to have been held by the enemy. The artillery still fired, occasionally, as on a retreating foe, and the lancers and cuirassiers were charging and manœuvring, half a mile farther in advance, as if following up their advantage.

Altogether, this was much the prettiest field exercise I ever witnessed. There was a unity of plan, a perfection of evolution, and a division of matériel about it, that rendered it to my eyes, as nearly perfect as might be. The troops were the best of France, and the management of the whole had been confided to some one accustomed to the field. It contained all the poetry, without any of the horrors of a battle. It could not possess the heart-stirring interest of a real conflict, and yet it was not without great excitement.

Some time after the petite guerre of Issy, the capital celebrated the fête of the Trocadero. The Trocadero, you may remember, was the fortress of Cadiz, carried by assault, under the order of the Dauphin, in the war of the late Spanish revolution. This government, which has destroyed all the statues of the Emperor, proscribed his family, and obliterated every visible mark of his reign in their power, has had the unaccountable folly of endeavouring to supplant the military glory acquired under Napoleon, by that of Louis Antoine, Dauphin of France! A necessary consequence of the attempt, is a concentration of all the military souvenirs of the day, in this affair of the Trocadero. Bold as all this will appear to one who has not the advantage of taking a near view of what is going on here, it has even been exceeded, through the abject-spirit of subserviency in those who have the care of public instruction, by an attempt to exclude even the name of the Bonaparte from French history. My girls have shown me an abridgment of the history of France, that has been officially prepared for the ordinary schools, in which there is no sort of allusion to him. The wags here, say that a work has been especially prepared for the heir presumptive, however, in which the emperor is a little better treated; being spoken of as “a certain Marquis de Bonaparte, who commanded the armies of the king.”

The mimic attack on the Trocadero, like its great original, was at night. The troops assembled in the Champs de Mars, and the assault was made, across the beautiful bridge of Jena, on a sharp acclivity near Passy, which was the imaginary fortress. The result was a pretty good effect of night-firing, some smoke, not a little noise, with a very pretty movement of masses. I could make nothing of it, of much interest, for the obscurity prevented the eyes from helping the imagination.

Not long since, the king held a great review of regular troops and of the entire body of the National Guards of Paris and its environs. This review also took place in the Champs de Mars, and it was said that nearly a hundred thousand men were under arms, for the occasion. I think there might have been quite seventy thousand. These mere reviews have little interest, the evolutions being limited to marching by regiments on and off the ground. In doing the latter, the troops defile before the king. Previously to this, the royal cortège passed along the several lines, receiving the usual honours.

On this occasion, the Dauphine and the Duchesse de Berri, followed the king in open carriages, accompanied by the little Duc de Bordeaux and his sister. I happened to be at an angle of the field, as the royal party, surrounded by a showy group of marshals and generals, passed, and when there seemed to be a little confusion. As a matter of course, the cry of vive le roi had passed along with the procession, for, popular or not, it is always easy for a sovereign to procure this sign of affection, or, for others to procure it for him. You will readily understand, that employés of the government, are especially directed to betray the proper enthusiasm on such, occasions. There was, however, a cry at this corner of the area, that did not seem so unequivocally loyal, and, on inquiry, I was told that some of the National Guards had cried à bas les ministres. The affair passed off without much notice, however, and I believe it was generally forgotten by the population, within an hour. The desire to get rid of M. de Villèle, and his set, was so general in Paris, that most people considered the interruption quite as a matter of course.

The next day the capital was electrified by a royal ordinance disbanding all the National Guards of Paris! A more infatuated, or if it were intended to punish the disaffected, a more unjust decree, could not easily have been issued. It was telling the great majority of the very class which forms the true force of every government, that their rulers could not confide in them. As confidence, by awakening pride, begets a spirit in favour of those who depend on it, so does obvious distrust engender disaffection. But the certainty that Louis XVIth, lost his throne and his life for the want of decision, has created one of those sweeping opinions, here, of the virtue of energy, that constantly leads the rulers into false measures. An act that might have restrained the France of 1792, would be certain to throw the France of 1827, into open revolt. The present generation of Frenchmen, in a political sense, have little in common with even the French of 1814, and measures must be suited to the times in which we live. As well might one think of using the birch on the man, that had been found profitable with the boy, as to suppose these people can be treated like their ancestors.

As might have been expected, a deep, and what is likely to prove a lasting discontent, has been the consequence of the blunder. It is pretended that the shop-keepers of Paris are glad to be rid of the trouble of occasionally mounting guard, and that the affair will be forgotten in a short time. All this may be true enough, in part, and it would also be true in the whole, were there not a press to keep disaffection alive, and to inflame the feelings of those who have been treated so cavalierly, for he knows little of human nature who does not understand that, while bodies of men commit flagrant wrongs without the responsibility being kept in view by their individual members, an affront to the whole is pretty certain to be received as an affront to each of those who make an integral part.

The immediate demonstrations of dissatisfaction have not amounted to much, though the law and medical students paraded the streets, and shouted, beneath the windows of the ministers, the very cry that gave rise to the disbandment of the guards. But, if no other consequence has followed this exercise of arbitrary power, I, at least, have learned how to disperse a crowd. As you may have occasion, some day, in your military capacity, to perform this unpleasant duty, it may be worth while to give you a hint concerning the modus operandi.

Happening to pass through the Place Vendôme, I found the foot of the celebrated column, which stands directly in the centre of the square, surrounded by several hundred students. They were clustered together like bees, close to the iron railing which encloses the base of the pillar, or around an area of some fifty or sixty feet, square. From time to time, they raised a shout, evidently directed against the ministers, of whom one resided at no great distance from the column. As the hotel of the Etat Major, of Paris, is in this square, and there is always a post at it, it soon became apparent there was no intention quietly to submit to this insult. I was attracted by a demonstration on the part of the corps de garde, and, taking a station at no great distance from the students, I awaited the issue.

The guard, some thirty foot soldiers, came swiftly out of the court of the hotel, and drew up in a line before its gate. This happened as I reached their own side of the square, which I had just crossed. Presently, a party of fifteen or twenty gens-d’armes à cheval, came up, and wheeled into line. The students raised another shout, as it might be, in defiance. The infantry shouldered arms, and filing off singly, headed by an officer, they marched, in what we call Indian file, towards the crowd. All this was done in the most quiet manner possible, but promptly, and with an air of great decision and determination. On reaching the crowd, they penetrated it, in the same order, quite up to the railing. Nothing was said, nor was any thing done, for it would have been going farther than the students were prepared to proceed, had they attempted to seize and disarm the soldiers. This appeared to be understood, and instead of wasting the moments, and exasperating his enemies by a parley, the officer, as has just been said, went directly through them, until he reached the railing. Once there, he began to encircle it, followed in the same order by his men. The first turn loosened the crowd, necessarily, and then I observed that the muskets, which hitherto had been kept at a “carry,” were inclined a little outwards. Two turns, enabled the men to throw their pieces to a charge, and, by this time, they had opened their order so far, as to occupy the four sides of the area. Facing outwards, they advanced very slowly, but giving time for the crowd to recede. This manœuvre rendered the throng less and less dense, when, watching their time, the mounted gens-d’armes rode into it, in a body, and, making a circuit, on a trot, without the line of infantry, they got the mass so loosened and scattered, that, unarmed as the students were, had they been disposed to resist, they would now have been completely at the mercy of the troops. Every step that was gained, of course, weakened the crowd, and, in ten minutes, the square was empty; some being driven out of it in one direction, and some in another, without a blow being struck, or, even an angry word used. The force of the old saying, “that the king’s name is a tower of strength,” or, the law being on the side of the troops, probably was of some avail; but a mob of fiery young Frenchmen is not too apt to look at the law, with reverence.

I stood near the hotels, but still in the square, when a gens-d’arme, sweeping his sabre as one would use a stick in driving sheep, came near me. He told me to go away. I smiled, and said I was a stranger, who was looking at the scene purely from curiosity. “I see you are, sir,” he answered, “but you had better fall back into the Rue de la Paix.” We exchanged friendly nods, and I did as he told me, without further hesitation. In truth, there remained no more to be seen.

Certainly, nothing could have been done in better temper, more effectually, nor more steadily than this dispersion of the students. There is no want of spirit in these young men, you must know, but the reverse is rather the case. The troops were under fifty in number, and the mob was between six hundred and a thousand; resolute, active, sturdy young fellows, who had plenty of fight in them, but who wanted the unity of purpose that a single leader can give to soldiers. I thought this little campaign of the column of the Place Vendôme, quite as good in its way, as the petite guerre of the plains of Issy.

I do not know whether you have fallen into the same error as myself, in relation to the comparative merits of the cavalry of this part of the world, though I think it is one common to most Americans. From the excellence of their horses, as well as from that general deference for the character and prowess of the nation, which exists at home, I had been led to believe that the superior qualities of the British cavalry were admitted in Europe. This is any thing but true; military men, so far as I can learn, giving the palm to the Austrian artillery, the British infantry, and the French cavalry. The Russians are said to be generally good for the purposes of defence, and in the same degree deficient for those of attack. Some shrewd observers, however, think the Prussian army, once more, the best in Europe.

The French cavalry is usually mounted on small, clumsy, but sturdy beasts, that do not show a particle of blood. Their movement is awkward, and their powers, for a short effort, certainly are very much inferior to those of either England or America. Their superiority must consist in their powers of endurance, for the blooded animal soon falls off, on scanty fare and bad grooming. I have heard the moral qualities of the men, given as a reason why the French cavalry should be superior to that of England. The system of conscription secures to an army the best materials, while that of enlistment necessarily includes the worst. In this fact is to be found the real moral superiority of the French and Prussian armies. Here, service, even in the ranks, is deemed honorable; whereas with us, or in England, it would be certain degradation to a man of the smallest pretension to enlist as a soldier, except in moments that made stronger appeals than usual to patriotism. In short, it is primâ facie evidence of a degraded condition, for a man to carry a musket in a regular battalion. Not so here. I have frequently seen common soldiers copying in the gallery of the Louvre, or otherwise engaged in examining works of science, or of taste; not ignorantly and with vulgar wonder, but like men who had been regularly instructed. I have been told that a work on artillery practice lately appeared in France which excited so much surprise by its cleverness, that an inquiry was set on foot for its author. He was found seated in a cabriolet, in the streets; his vocation being that of a driver. What renders his knowledge more surprising, is the fact, that the man was never a soldier at all, but, having a great deal of leisure, while waiting for his fares, he had turned his attention to this subject, and had obtained all he knew by means of books. Nothing is more common than to see the drivers of cabriolets and fiacres reading in their seats, and I have even seen market women, under their umbrellas, à la Robinson, with books in their hands. You are not, however, to be misled by these facts, which merely show the influence of the peculiar literature of the country, so attractive and amusing, for a very great majority of the French can neither read nor write. It is only in the north that such things are seen at all, except among the soldiers, and a large proportion of even the French army are entirely without schooling.

To return to the cavalry, I have heard the superiority of the French ascribed also to their dexterity in the use of the sabre, or, as it is termed here, l’arme blanche. After all, this is rather a poetical conclusion; for charges of cavalry rarely result in regular, hand to hand, conflicts. Like the bayonet, the sabre is seldom used, except on an unresisting enemy. Still the consciousness of such a manual superiority might induce a squadron, less expert, to wheel away, or to break, without waiting for orders.

I have made the acquaintance, here, of an old, English General, who has passed all his life in the dragoons, and who commanded brigades of cavalry in Spain and at Waterloo. As he is a sensible old man, of great frankness and simplicity of character, perfect good-breeding and good nature, and, moreover, so far as I can discover, absolutely without prejudice against America, he has quite won my heart, and I have availed myself of his kindness to see a good deal of him. We walk together, frequently, and chat of all things in heaven and earth, just as they come uppermost. The other day I asked him to explain the details of a charge of his own particular arm to me, of which I confessed a proper ignorance. “This is soon done,” said the old gentleman, taking my arm with a sort of sly humour, as if he were about to relate something facetious—“against foot, a charge is a menace; if they break, we profit by it; if they stand, we get out of the scrape as well as we can. When foot are in disorder, cavalry does the most, and it is always active in securing a victory, usually taking most of the prisoners. But as against cavalry, there is much misconception. When two regiments assault each other, it is in compact line—.” “How,” I interrupted him, “do not you open, so as to leave room to swing a sabre?” “Not at all. The theory is knee to knee; but this is easier said than done, in actual service. I will suppose an unsuccessful charge. We start, knee to knee, on a trot. This loosens the ranks, and, as we increase the speed, they become still looser. We are under the fire of artillery, or, perhaps, of infantry, all the time, and the enemy won’t run. At this moment, a clever officer will command a retreat to be sounded. If he should not, some officer is opportunely killed, or some leading man loses command of his horse, which is wounded and wheels, the squadron follows, and we get away as well as we can. The enemy follows, and if he catches us, we are cut up. Other charges do occur, but this is the common history of cavalry against cavalry, and, in unsuccessful attacks of cavalry, against infantry, too. A knowledge of the use of the sword is necessary, for did your enemy believe you ignorant of it, he would not fly; but the weapon itself is rarely used on such occasions. Very few men are slain, in their ranks, by the bayonet, or the sabre.”

I was once told, though not directly by an officer, that the English dragoon neglected his horse in the field, selling the provender for liquor, and that, as a consequence, the corps became inefficient; whereas the French dragoon, being usually a sober man, was less exposed to this temptation. This may, or may not, be true; but drunkenness is now quite common in the French army, though I think much less so in the cavalry, than in the foot. The former are generally selected with some care, and the common regiments of the line, as a matter of course, receive the refuse of the conscription.

This conscription is, after all, extremely oppressive and unjust, though it has the appearance of an equal tax. Napoleon had made it so unpopular, by the inordinate nature of his demands for men, that Louis XVIIIth caused an article to be inserted in the charter, by which it was to be altogether abolished. But a law being necessary to carry out this constitutional provision, the clause remains a perfect dead letter, it being no uncommon thing for the law to be stronger than the constitution, even in America, and quite a common thing here. I will give you an instance of the injustice of the system. An old servant of mine has been drafted for the cavalry. I paid this man seven hundred francs a year, gave him coffee, butter, and wine, with his food, and he fell heir to a good portion of my old clothes. The other day he came to see me, and I inquired into his present situation. His arms and clothes were found him. He got neither coffee, wine, nor butter, and his other food, as a matter of course, was much inferior to that he had been accustomed to receive with me. His pay, after deducting the necessary demands on it, in the shape of regular contributions, amounts to about two sous a day, instead of the two francs he got in my service.

Now, necessity, in such matters, is clearly the primary law. If a country cannot exist without a large standing army, and the men are not to be had by voluntary enlistments, a draft is probably the wisest and best regulation for its security. But, taking this principle as the basis of the national defence, a just and a paternal government would occupy itself in equalizing the effects of the burden, as far as circumstances would in any manner admit. The most obvious and efficient means would be by raising the rate of pay to the level, at least, of a scale that should admit of substitutes being obtained at reasonable rates. This is done with us, where a soldier receives a full ration, all his clothes, and sixty dollars a year.[9] It is true, that this would make an army very costly, and, to bear the charge, it might be necessary to curtail some of the useless magnificence and prodigality of the other branches of the government, and herein is just the point of difference between the expenditures of America and those of France. It must be remembered, too, that a really free government, by enlisting the popular feeling in its behalf through its justice, escapes all the charges that are incident to the necessity of maintaining power by force, wanting soldiers for its enemies without, and not for its enemies within. We have no need of a large standing army on account of our geographical position, it is true, but had we the government of France, we should not find that our geographical position exempted us from the charge.

9. He now receives seventy-two.

You have heard a great deal of the celebrated soldiers who surrounded Napoleon, and whose names have become almost as familiar to us as his own. I do not find that the French consider the marshals men of singular talents. Most of them reached their high stations, on account of their cleverness in some particular branch of their duties, and by their strong devotion, in the earlier parts of their career, to their master. Maréchal Soult has a reputation for skill in managing the civil details of service. As a soldier, he is also distinguished for manœuvring in the face of his enemy, and under fire. Some such excitement appears necessary to arouse his dormant talents. Suchet is said to have had capacity, but, I think, to Massena, and to the present king of Sweden, the French usually yield the palm, in this respect. Davoust was a man of terrible military energy, and suited to certain circumstances, but scarcely a man of talents. It was to him Napoleon said, “Remember, you have but a single friend in France—myself; take care you do not lose him.” Lannes seems to have stood better than most of them as a soldier, and Macdonald as a man. But, on the whole, I think it quite apparent there was scarcely one among them all, calculated to have carried out a very high fortune for himself, without the aid of the directing genius of his master. Many of them had ambition enough for any thing, but it was an ambition stimulated by example, rather than by a consciousness of superiority.

In nothing have I been more disappointed than in the appearance of these men. There is more or less of character about the exterior and physiognomy of them all, it is true, but scarcely one has what we are accustomed to think the carriage of a soldier. It may be known to you that Moreau had very little of this, and really one is apt to fancy he can see the civic origin in nearly all of them. While the common French soldiers have a good deal of military coquetry, the higher officers appear to be nearly destitute of it. Maréchal Molitor is a fine man; Maréchal Marmont neat, compact, and soldierly looking; Maréchal Mortier a grenadier, without grace; Maréchal Oudinot much the same, and so on, to the end of the chapter. Lamarque is a little swarthy man, with good features and a keen eye, but he is military in neither carriage nor mien.

Crossing the Pont Royal, shortly after my arrival, in company with a friend, the latter pointed out to me a stranger, on the opposite side-walk, and desired me to guess who and what he might be. The subject of my examination was a compact solidly built man, with a plodding rustic air, and who walked a little lame. After looking at him a minute, I guessed he was some substantial grazier, who had come to Paris on business connected with the supplies of the town. My friend laughed, and told me it was Marshal Soult. To my inexperienced eye, he had not a bit of the exterior of a soldier, and was as unlike the engravings we see of the French heroes as possible. But here, art is art, and, like the man who was accused of betraying another into a profitless speculation by drawing streams on his map, when the land was without any, and who defended himself by declaring no one ever saw a map without streams, the French artists appear to think every one should be represented in his ideal character, let him be as bourgeois as he may, in truth. I have seen Marshal Soult in company, and his face has much character. The head is good, and the eye searching, the whole physiognomy possessing those latent fires that one would be apt to think would require the noise and excitement of a battle to awaken. La Fayette looks more like an old soldier than any of them. Gérard, however, is both a handsome man, and of a military mien.

Now and then we see a vieux moustache in the guards, but, on the whole, I have been much surprised at finding how completely the army of this country is composed of young soldiers. The campaigns of Russia, of 1813, 1814, and of 1815, left few besides conscripts beneath the eagles of Napoleon. My old servant Charles tells me that the guard-house is obliged to listen to tales of the campaign of Spain, and of the glories of the Trocadero!

The army of France is understood to be very generally disaffected. The restoration has introduced into it, in the capacity of general officers, many who followed the fortunes of the Bourbons into exile, and some, I believe, who actually fought against this country, in the ranks of her enemies. This may be, in some measure, necessary, but it is singularly unfortunate.

I have been told, on good authority, that, since the restoration of 1815, several occasions have occurred, when the court thought itself menaced with a revolution. On all these occasions, the army, as a matter of course, has been looked to, with hope, or with distrust. Investigation is said to have always discovered so bad a spirit, that little reliance is placed on its support.

The traditions of the service are all against the Bourbons. It is true, that very few of the men who fought at Marengo and Austerlitz still remain, but then the recollection of their deeds forms the great delight of most Frenchmen. There is but one power that can counteract this feeling, and it is the power of money. By throwing itself into the arms of the industrious classes, the court might possibly obtain an ally, sufficiently strong to quell the martial spirit of the nation; but, so far from pursuing such a policy, it has all the commercial and manufacturing interests marshalled against it, because it wishes to return to the bon vieux temps of the old system.

After all, I much question if any government in France, will have the army cordially with it, that does not find it better employment than mock-fights on the plain of Issy, and night attacks on the mimic Trocadero.

LETTER IX.
To Mrs. Singleton W. Beall, Green Bay.

We have lately witnessed a ceremony that may have some interest for one who, like yourself, dwells in the retirement of a remote frontier post. It is etiquette for the Kings of France to dine in public twice in the year, viz: the first of January, and the day that is set apart for the fête of the king. Having some idle curiosity to be present on one of these occasions, I wrote the usual note to the lord in waiting, or, as he is called here, “le premier gentil’homme de la chambre du roi, de service,” and we got the customary answer, enclosing us tickets of admission. There are two sorts of permissions granted on these occasions; by one you are allowed to remain in the room during the dinner, and by the other you are obliged to walk slowly through the salle, in at one side, and out at the other, without, however, being suffered to pause even for a moment. Ours were of the former description.

The King of France having the laudable custom of being punctual, and as every one dines in Paris at six, that best of all hours for a town life, we were obliged to order our own dinner an hour earlier than common, for looking at others eating on an empty stomach, is, of all amusements, the least satisfactory. Having taken this wise precaution, we drove to the château, at half after five, it not being seemly to enter the room after the king, and, as we discovered, for females impossible.

Magnificence and comfort seldom have much in common. We were struck with this truth on entering the palace of the King of France. The room into which we were first admitted, was filled with tall lounging foot soldiers, richly attired, but who lolled about the place, with their caps on, and with a barrack-like air, that seemed to us singularly in contrast with the prompt and respectful civility with which one is received in the ante-chamber of a private hotel. It is true that we had nothing to do with the soldiers and lackies who thronged the place; but if their presence was intended to impress visiters with the importance of their master, I think a more private entrance would have been most likely to produce that effect, for I confess, that it appeared to me as a mark of poverty, that, troops being necessary to the state and security of the monarch, he was obliged to keep them in the vestibule, by which his guests entered. But this is royal state. Formerly, the executioner was present, and in the semi-barbarous courts of the east, such is the fact even now. The soldiers were a party of the hundred Swiss, men chosen for their great stature, and remarkable for the perfection of their musket. Two of them were posted as sentinels at the foot of the great stair-case, by which we ascended, and we passed several more on the landings.

We were soon in the salle des gardes, or the room which the gardes du corps, on service, occupied. Two of these quasi soldiers, were also acting as sentinels here, while others lounged about the room. Their apartment communicated with the salle de Diane, the hall or gallery prepared for the entertainment. I had no other means but the eye, of judging of the dimensions of this room, but its length considerably exceeds a hundred feet and its breadth is probably forty, or more. It is of the proper height, and the ceiling is painted in imitation of those of the celebrated Farnese palace at Rome.

We found this noble room divided, by a low railing, into three compartments. The centre, an area of some thirty feet by forty, contained the table, and was otherwise prepared for the reception of the court. On one side of it, were raised benches for the ladies, who were allowed to be seated; and, on the other, a vacant space for the gentlemen, who stood. All these, you will understand, were considered merely as spectators, not being supposed to be in the presence of the king. The mere spectators were dressed as usual, or in common evening dress, and not all the women even in that; while those within the railings, being deemed to be in the royal presence, were in high court dresses. Thus, I stood for an hour, within five-and-twenty feet of the king, and part of the time much nearer, while, by a fiction of etiquette, I was not understood to be there at all. I was a good while within ten feet of the Duchesse de Berri, while, by convention, I was no where. There was abundance of room in our area, and every facility of moving about, many coming and going, as they saw fit. Behind us, but at a little distance, were other rows of raised seats, filled with the best instrumental musicians of Paris. Along the wall, facing the table, was a narrow, raised platform, wide enough to allow of two or three to walk abreast, separated from the rest of the room by a railing, and extending from a door at one end of the gallery, to a door at the other. This was the place designed for the passage of the public during the dinner, no one, however, being admitted, even here, without a ticket.

A gentleman of the court led your aunt to the seats reserved for the female spectators, which were also without the railing, and I took my post among the men. Although the court of the Tuileries, was, when we entered the palace, filled with a throng of those who were waiting to pass through the gallery of Diana, to my surprise the number of persons who were to remain in the room was very small. I account for the circumstance by supposing that it is not etiquette for any who have been presented to attend, unless they are among the court, and, as some reserve was necessary in issuing these tickets, the number was necessarily limited. I do not think there were fifty men on our side, which might have held several hundred, and the seats of the ladies were not half filled. Boxes were fitted up in the enormous windows, which were closed and curtained, a family of fine children occupying that nearest to me. Some one said they were the princes of the house of Orleans, for none of the members of the royal family have seats at the Grands Couverts, as these dinners are called, unless they belong to the reigning branch. There is but one Bourbon prince more remote from the crown[10] than the Duc d’Orleans, and this is the Prince de Condé, or as he is more familiarly termed here, the Duc de Bourbon, the father of the unfortunate Duc d’Enghein. So broad are the distinctions made between the sovereign and the other members of his family, in these governments, that it was the duty of the Prince de Condé to appear, to-day, behind the king’s chair, as the highest dignitary of his household; though it was understood that he was excused on account of his age and infirmities. These broad distinctions, you will readily imagine, however, are only maintained on solemn and great state occasions; for, in their ordinary intercourse, kings, now-a-days, dispense with most of the ancient formalities of their rank. It would have been curious, however, to see one descendant of St. Louis standing behind the chair of another, as a servitor, and, more especially, to see the Prince de Condé standing behind the chair of Charles Xth, for when Comte d’Artois and Duc de Bourbon, some fifty years since, they actually fought a duel, on account of some slight neglect of the wife of the latter, by the former.

10. 1827.

The crown of France, as you know, passes only in the male line. The Duke of Orleans is descended from Louis XIII. and the Prince de Condé from Louis IX. In the male line, the Duke of Orleans is only the fourth cousin, once removed, of the King, and the Prince de Condé the eighth or ninth. The latter would be even much more remotely related to the crown, but for the accession of his own branch of the family in the person of Henry IV., who was a near cousin of his ancestor. Thus you perceive, while royalty is always held in reverence, for any member of the family may possibly become the king, still there are broad distinctions made between the near, and the more distant branches, of the line. The Duke of Orleans fills that equivocal position in the family, which is rather common in the history of this species of government. He is a liberal, and is regarded with distrust by the reigning branch, and with hope by that portion of the people who think seriously of the actual state of the country. A saying of M. de Talleyrand, however, is circulated at his expense, which, if true, would go to show that this wary prince is not disposed to risk his immense fortune in a crusade for liberty. “Ce n’est pas assez, d’être quelqu’un; il faut être quelque chose,” are the words attributed to the witty and wily politician; but, usually, men have neither half the wit nor half the cunning that popular accounts ascribe to them, when it becomes the fashion to record their acts and sayings. I believe the Duke of Orleans holds no situation about the court, although the King has given him the title of Royal Highness, his birth entitling him to be styled no more than Serene Highness. This act of grace is much spoken of by the Bourbonists, who consider it a favour that for ever secures the loyalty and gratitude of the Duke. The Duchess, being the daughter of a King, had this rank from her birth.

The orchestra was playing when we entered the Gallery of Diana, and, throughout the whole evening it gave us, from time to time, such music as can only be found in a few of the great capitals of Europe.

The covers were laid, and every preparation was made within the railing, for the reception of the convives. The table was in the shape of a young moon, with the horns towards the spectators, or from the wall. It was of some length, and as there were but four covers, the guests were obliged to be seated several feet from each other. In the centre was an arm-chair, covered with crimson velvet, and ornamented with a crown, this was for the king. A chair without arms, on his right, was intended for the Dauphin; another on his left, for the Dauphine; and the fourth, which was still further on the right of the Dauphin, was intended for Madame, as she is called, or the Duchess of Berri. These are the old and favourite appellations of the monarchy, and, absurd as some of them are, they excite reverence and respect from their antiquity. Your Wolverines, and Suckers, and Buckeyes, and Hooziers would look amazed to hear an executive styled the White Fish of Michigan, or the Sturgeon of Wisconsin, and yet there is nothing more absurd in it, in the abstract, than the titles that were formerly given in Europe, some of which have descended to our times. The name of the country, as well as the title of the sovereign, in the case of Dauphiné, was derived from the same source. Thus, in homely English, the Dolphin of Dolphinstown, renders le Dauphin de Dauphiné, perfectly well. The last independent Dauphin, in bequeathing his states to the King of France of the day, (the unfortunate John, the prisoner of the Black Prince,) made a condition that the heir-apparent of the kingdom, should always be known by his own title, and consequently, ever since, the appellation has been continued. You will understand that none but an heir-apparent is called the Dauphin, and not an heir-presumptive. Thus, should the present Dauphin and the Duc de Bordeaux die, the Duke of Orleans, according to a treaty of the time of Louis XIV., though not according to the ancient laws of the monarchy, would become heir-presumptive, but he could never be the Dauphin, since, should the King marry again, and have another son, his rights would be superseded. None but the heir-apparent, or the inevitable heir, bears this title. There were formerly Bears in Belgium, who were of the rank of Counts. These appellations were derived from the arms, the Dauphin now bearing Dolphins with the lilies of France. The Boar of Ardennes got his soubriquet from bearing the head of a wild-boar in his arms. There were formerly many titles in France that are now extinct, such as Captal, Vidame and Castellan, all of which were general, I believe, and referred to official duties. There was, however, formerly, a singular proof of how even simplicity can exalt a man when the fashion runs into the opposite extremes. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there existed in France, powerful noblemen, the owners and lords of the castle and lands of Coucy or Couci, who were content to bear the appellation of Sire, a word from which our own “Sir” is derived, and which means, like Sir, the simplest term of courtesy that could be used. These Sires de Coucy were so powerful as to make royal alliances; they waged war with their sovereign, and maintained a state nearly royal. Their pride lay in their antiquity, independence and power, and they showed their contempt for titles by their device, which is said to have been derived from the answer of one of the family to the sovereign, who, struck with the splendour of his appearance and the number of his attendants, had demanded “What King has come to my court?” This motto, which is still to be seen on the ancient monuments of the family, reads—

“Je ne suis roi, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi;

Je suis le Sire de Coucy.”[11]

11. “I am neither king, nor prince, nor duke, nor even a count: I am M. de Coucy.”

This greatly beats Coke of Holkam, of whom it is said that George IV., who had been a liberal in his youth, and the friend of the great Norfolk commoner, vexed by his bringing up so many liberal addresses, threatened—“If Coke comes to me with any more of his Whig petitions I’ll Knight him.”

I have often thought that this simplicity of the Sires de Couci, furnishes an excellent example for our own ministers and citizens when abroad. Instead of attempting to imitate the gorgeous attire of their colleagues, whose magnificence, for the want of stars and similar conventional decorations, they can never equal, they should go to court as they go to the President’s House, in the simple attire of American gentlemen. If any prince should inquire—“Who is this that approaches me, clad so simply that I may mistake him for a butler, or a groom of the chambers?” let him answer, “Je ne suis roi, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi—I am the minister of the United States of Amerikey,” and leave the rest to the millions at home. My life for it, the question would not be asked twice. Indeed no man who is truly fit to represent the republic would ever have any concern about the matter. But all this time the dinner of the King of France is getting cold.

We might have been in the gallery fifteen minutes, when there was a stir at a door on the side where the females were seated, and a huissier cried out—“Madame la Dauphine!” and sure enough, the Dauphine appeared, followed by two dames d’honneur. She walked quite through the gallery, across the area reserved for the court, and passed out at the little gate in the railing which communicated with our side of the room, leaving the place by the same door at which we had entered. She was in high court dress, with diamonds and lappets, and was proceeding from her own apartments, in the other wing of the palace, to those of the king. As she went within six feet of me, I observed her hard and yet saddened countenance with interest; for she has the reputation of dwelling on her early fortunes, and of constantly anticipating evil. Of course she was saluted by all in passing, but she hardly raised her eyes from the floor; though, favoured by my position, I got a slight, melancholy smile, in return for my own bow.

The Dauphine had scarcely disappeared, when Her Royal Highness, Madame, was announced, and the Duchess of Berri went through in a similar manner. Her air was altogether less constrained, and she had smiles and inclinations for all she passed. She is a slight, delicate, little woman, with large blue eyes, a fair complexion, and light hair. She struck me as being less a Bourbon than an Austrian, and though wanting in embonpoint she would be quite pretty, but for a cast in one of her eyes.

A minute or two later, we had Monseigneur le Dauphin, who passed through the gallery, in the same manner as his wife and sister-in-law. He had been reviewing some troops, and was in the uniform of a colonel of the guards; booted to the knees, and carrying a military hat in his hand. He is not of commanding presence, though I think he has the countenance of an amiable man, and his face is decidedly Bourbon. We were indebted to the same lantern-like construction of the palace, for this preliminary glimpse at so many of the actors in the coming scene.

After the passage of the Dauphin, a few courtiers and superior officers of the household began to appear within the railed space. Among them were five or six duchesses. Women of this rank have the privilege of being seated in the presence of the king, on state occasions, and tabourets were provided for them accordingly. A tabouret is a stuffed stool, nearly of the form of the ancient cerulean chair, without its back, for a back would make it a chair at once, and, by the etiquette of courts, these are reserved for the blood-royal, ambassadors, &c. As none but duchesses could be seated at the grand couvert, you may be certain none below that rank appeared. There might have been a dozen present. They were all in high court dresses. One, of great personal charms and quite young, was seated near me, and my neighbour, an old abbé, carried away by enthusiasm, suddenly exclaimed to me—“Quelle belle fortune! Monsieur, d’être jeune, jolie et duchesse!” I dare say the lady had the same opinion of the matter.

Baron Louis, not the financier, but the king’s physician, arrived. It was his duty to stand behind the king’s chair, like Sancho’s tormentor, and see that he did not over-eat himself. The ancient usages were very tender of the royal person. If he travelled, he had a spare litter, or a spare coach, to receive him, in the event of accident, a practice that is continued to this day; if he ate, there was one to taste his food, lest he might be poisoned; and when he lay down to sleep, armed sentinels watched at the door of his chamber. Most of these usages are still continued, in some form or other, and the ceremonies which are observed at these public dinners, are mere memorials of the olden time.

I was told the following anecdote by Mad. de ——, who was intimate with Louis XVIII. One day, in taking an airing, the king was thirsty, and sent a footman to a cottage for water. The peasants appeared with some grapes, which they offered, as the homage of their condition. The king took them and ate them, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his attendants. This little incident was spoken of at court, where all the monarch does and says becomes matter of interest, and the next time Mad. de —— was admitted, she joined her remonstrances to those of the other courtiers. “We no longer live in an age when kings need dread assassins,” said Louis, smiling. A month passed, and Mad. de —— was again admitted. She was received with a melancholy shake of the head, and with tears. The Duc de Berri had been killed in the interval!

A few gentlemen, who did not strictly belong to the court, appeared among the duchesses, but, at the most, there were but six or eight. One of them, however, was the gayest-looking personage I ever saw, in the station of a gentleman, being nothing but lace and embroidery, even to the seams of his coat; a sort of genteel harlequin. The abbé, who seemed to understand himself, said he was a Spanish grandee.

I was near the little gate, when an old man, in a strictly court dress, but plain and matter of fact in air, made an application for admittance. In giving way for him to pass, my attention was drawn to his appearance. The long white hair that hung down his face, the cordon bleu, the lame foot, the imperturbable countenance, and the unearthly aspect, made me suspect the truth. On inquiring, I was right. It was M. de Talleyrand! He came as grand chamberlain, to officiate at the dinner of his master.

Everything, in a court, goes by clock-work. Your little great may be out of time, and affect a want of punctuality, but a rigid attention to appointments, is indispensable to those who are really in high situations. A failure in this respect, would produce the same impression on the affairs of men, that a delay in the rising of the sun, would produce on the day. The appearance of the different personages named, all so near each other, was the certain sign that one greater than all could not be far behind. They were the dawn of the royal presence. Accordingly, the door which communicated with the apartments of the king, and the only one within the railed space, opened with the announcement of “le service du Roi,” when a procession of footmen of the palace appeared, bearing the dishes of the first course. All the vessels, whether already on the table, or those in their hands, were of gold, richly wrought, or, at least, silver gilt, I had no means of knowing which; most probably they were of the former metal. The dishes were taken from the footmen, by pages of honor, in scarlet dresses, and by them placed in order on the table. The first course was no sooner ready, than we heard the welcome announcement of “le Roi.” The family immediately made their appearance, at the same door by which the service had entered. They were followed by a proper number of lords and ladies in waiting. Every one arose, as a matter of course, even to the “jeunes, jolies, et duchesses;” and the music, as became it, gave us a royal crash. The huissier, in announcing the king, spoke in a modest voice, and less loud, I observed, than in announcing the Dauphin and the ladies. It was, however, a different person, and it is probable one was a common huissier, and the other a gentleman acting in that character.

Charles X. is tall, without being of a too heavy frame, flexible of movement, and decidedly graceful. By remembering that he is a king, and the lineal chief of the ancient and powerful family of the Bourbons, by deferring properly to history and the illusions of the past, and by feeling tant soit peu more respect for those of the present day than is strictly philosophical, or perhaps wise, it is certainly possible to fancy that he has a good deal of that peculiar port and majesty, that the poetry of feeling is so apt to impute to sovereigns. I know not whether it is the fault of a cynical temperament, or of republican prejudices, but I can see no more about him than the easy grace of an old gentleman, accustomed all his life, to be a principal personage among the principal personages of the earth. This you may think was quite sufficient,—but it did not altogether satisfy the exigence of my unpoetical ideas. His countenance betrayed a species of vacant bonhomie, rather than of thought, or dignity of mind, and while he possessed, in a singular degree, the mere physical machinery of his rank, he was wanting in the majesty of character and expression, without which no man can act, well, the representation of royalty. Even a little more severity of aspect would have better suited the part, and rendered le grand couvert, encore plus grand.

The King seated himself after receiving the salutations of the courtiers within the railing, taking no notice, however, of those who, by a fiction of etiquette, were not supposed to be in his presence. The rest of the family occupied their respective places in the order I have named, and the eating and drinking began, from the score. The different courses were taken off and served by footmen and pages, in the manner already described, which, after all, by substituting servants out of livery for pages, is very much the way great dinners are served, in great houses, all over Europe.

As soon as the King was seated, the north door of the gallery, or that on the side opposite to the place where I had taken post, was opened, and the public was admitted, passing slowly through the room without stopping. A droller mélange could not be imagined, than presented itself in the panoramic procession; and long before the grand couvert was over, I thought it much the most amusing part of the scene. Very respectable persons, gentlemen certainly, and I believe in a few instances ladies, came in this way, to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. I saw several men that I knew, and the women with them could have been no other than their friends. To these must be added, cochers de fiacres, in their glazed hats, bonnes, in their high Norman caps, peasants, soldiers, in their shakos, epiciers and garçons without number. The constant passage, for it lasted without intermission, for an hour and a half, of so many queer faces, reminded me strongly of one of those mechanical panoramas, that bring towns, streets and armies, before the spectator. One of the droll effects of this scene was produced by the faces, all of which turned, like sunflowers, towards the light of royalty, as the bodies moved steadily on. Thus, on entering, the eyes were a little inclined to the right; as they got nearer to the meridian, they became gradually bent more aside; when opposite the table, every face was full; and, in retiring, all were bent backwards over their owners’ shoulders, constantly offering a dense crowd of faces, looking towards a common centre, while the bodies were coming on, or moving slowly off, the stage. This, you will see, resembled in some measure the revolutions of the moon around our orb, matter and a king possessing the same beneficent attraction. I make no doubt, these good people thought we presented a curious spectacle, but I am persuaded they presented one that was infinitely more so.

I had seen in America, in divers places, an Englishman, a colonel in the army. We had never been introduced, but had sat opposite to each other at tables d’hôte, jostled each other in the President’s House, met in steam-boats, in the streets, and in many other places, until it was evident our faces were perfectly familiar to both parties; and yet we never nodded, spoke, or gave any other sign of recognition, than by certain knowing expressions of the eyes. In Europe, the colonel reappeared. We met in London, in Paris, in the public walks, in the sight-seeing places of resort, until we evidently began to think ourselves a couple of Monsieur Tonsons. To-night, as I was standing near the public platform, whose face should appear in the halo of countenances, but that of my colonel. The poor fellow had a wooden leg, and he was obliged to stump on in his orbit, as well as he could, while I kept my eye on him, determined to catch a look of recognition, if possible. When he got so far forward as to bring me in his line of sight, our eyes met, and he smiled involuntarily. Then he took a deliberate survey of my comfortable position, and he disappeared in the horizon, with some such expression on his features as must have belonged to Commodore Trunnion, when he called out to Hatchway, while the hunter was leaping over the lieutenant, “Oh! d—n you; you are well anchored!”

I do not think the dinner, in a culinary point of view, was anything extraordinary. The King ate and drank but little, for, unlike his two brothers and predecessors, he is said to be abstemious. The Dauphin played a better knife and fork, but, on the whole, the execution was by no means great for Frenchmen. The guests sat so far apart, and the music made so much noise, that conversation was nearly out of the question, though the King and the Dauphin exchanged a few words, in the course of the evening. Each of the gentlemen, also, spoke once or twice to his female neighbour, and that was pretty much the amount of the discourse. The whole party appeared greatly relieved by having something to do during the dessert, in admiring the service, which was of the beautiful Sèvres china. They all took up the plates, and examined them attentively, and really I was glad they had so rational an amusement, to relieve their ennui.

Once, early in the entertainment, M. de Talleyrand approached the king, and showed him the bill of fare! It was an odd spectacle to see this old diplomate descending to the pantomime of royalty, and acting the part of a maitre d’hôtel. Had the duty fallen on Cambacérès, one would understand it, and fancy that it might be well done. The king smiled on him graciously, and, I presume, gave him leave to retire; for soon after this act of loyal servitude, the prince disappeared. As for M. Louis, he treated Charles better than his brother treated Sancho, for I did not observe the slightest interference on his part during the whole entertainment, though one of those near me said he had tasted a dish or two, by way of ceremony, an act of precaution that I did not myself observe. I asked my neighbour, the abbé, what he thought of M. de Talleyrand. After looking up in my face distrustfully, he whispered—“Mais, Monsieur, c’est un chat qui tombe toujours sur ses pièds,” a remark that was literally true to-night, for the old man was kept on his feet longer than could have been agreeable to the owner of two such gouty legs.

The Duchesse de Berri, who sat quite near the place were I stood, was busy a good deal of the time à lorgner the public through her eye-glass. This she did with very little diffidence of manner, and quite as coolly as an English duchess would have stared at a late intimate, whom she was disposed to cut. It certainly was neither a graceful, nor a feminine, nor a princely occupation. The Dauphine played the Bourbon better, though when she turned her saddened, not to say cruel eyes, on the public, it was with an expression that almost amounted to reproach. I did not see her smile once during the whole time she was at table, and yet I thought there were many things to smile at.

At length the finger bowls appeared, and I was not sorry to see them. Contrary to what is commonly practised in very great houses, the pages placed them on the table, just as Henri puts them before us democrats every day. I ought to have said that the service was made altogether in front, or at the unoccupied side of the table, nothing but the bill of fare, in the hands of M. de Talleyrand, appearing in the rear. As soon as this part of the dinner was over, the King arose, and the whole party withdrew, by the door on the further side of the gallery. In passing the gradins of the ladies, he stopped to say a few kind words to an old woman, who was seated there, muffled in a cloak, and the light of royalty vanished.

The catastrophe is to come. The instant the King’s back was turned, the gallery became a scene of confusion. The musicians ceased playing and began to chatter; the pages dashed about to remove the service, and every body was in motion. Observing that your —— was standing, undecided what to do, I walked into the railed area, brushed past the gorgeous state-table, and gave her my arm. She laughed, and said it had all been very magnificent, and amusing, but that some one had stolen her shawl! A few years before, I had purchased for her a merino shawl of singular fineness, simplicity and beauty. It was now old, and she had worn it, on this occasion, because she distrusted the dirt of a palace, and laying it carelessly by her side, in the course of the evening, she had found in its place, a very common thing of the same colour. The thief was deceived by its appearance, your —— being dressed for an evening party, and had probably mistaken it for a cashmere. So much for the company one meets at court! Too much importance, however, must not be attached to this little contre tems, as people of condition are apt to procure tickets for such places, and to give them to their femmes de chambre. Probably half the women present, the “jeunes et jolies” excepted, were of this class. But, mentioning this affair to the old Princesse de ——, she edified me by an account of the manner in which Madame la Comtesse de —— had actually appropriated to the service of her own pretty person, the cachemire of Madame la Baronne de —— in the royal presence; and how there was a famous quarrel, à l’outrance, about it; so I suspend my opinion, as to the quality of the thief.

LETTER X.
To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown, New York.

We have been to Versailles, and although I have no intention to give a laboured description of a place about which men have written and talked these two centuries, it is impossible to pass over a spot of so much celebrity, in total silence.

The road to Versailles lies between the park of St. Cloud and the village and manufactories of Sèvres. A little above the latter, is a small palace called Meudon, which, from its great elevation, commands a fine view of Paris. The palace of St. Cloud, of course, stands in the park; Versailles lies six or eight miles farther west; Compiègne is about fifty miles from Paris in one direction; Fontainebleau some thirty in another, and Rambouillet rather more remotely, in a third. All these palaces, except Versailles, are kept up, and, from time to time, are visited by the court. Versailles was stripped of its furniture, in the revolution, and even Napoleon, at a time when the French empire extended from Hamburgh to Rome, shrunk from the enormous charge of putting it in a habitable state. It is computed that the establishment at Versailles, first and last, in matters of construction merely, cost the French monarchy two hundred millions of dollars! This is almost an incredible sum, when we remember the low price of wages in France; but, on the other hand, when we consider the vastness of the place, how many natural difficulties were overcome, and the multitude of works from the hands of artists of the first order it contained, it scarcely seems sufficient.

Versailles originated as a hunting-seat, in the time of Louis XIII. In that age, most of the upland near Paris, in this direction, lay in forest, royal chases; and as hunting was truly a princely sport, numberless temporary residences of this nature, existed in the neighbourhood of the capital. There are still many remains of this barbarous magnificence, as in the wood of Vincennes, the forests of St. Germain, Compèigne, Fontainebleau, and divers others; but great inroads have been made in their limits, by the progress of civilization and the wants of society. So lately as the reign of Louis XV. they hunted quite near the town, and we are actually, at this moment, dwelling in a country house, at St. Ouen, in which tradition hath it, he was wont to take his refreshments.

The original building at Versailles was a small château, of a very ugly formation, and it was built of bricks. I believe it was enlarged, but not entirely constructed, by Louis XIII. A portion of this building is still visible, having been embraced in the subsequent structures, and, judging from its architecture, I should think it must be nearly as ancient as the time of Francis I. Around this modest nucleus was constructed, by a succession of monarchs, but chiefly by Louis XIV., the most regal residence of Europe, in magnificence and extent, if not in taste.

The present château, besides containing numberless wings and courts, has vast casernes for the quarters of the household troops, stables for many hundred horses, and is surrounded by a great many separate hotels, for the accommodation of the courtiers. It offers a front on the garden, in a single continuous line, that is broken only by a projection in the centre, of more than a third of a mile in length. This is the only complete part of the edifice that possesses uniformity; the rest of it being huge piles, grouped around irregular courts, or thrown forward in wings, that correspond to the huge body like those of the ostrich. There is on the front next the town, however, some attempt at simplicity and intelligibility of plan, for there is a vast open court lined by buildings, which have been commenced in the Grecian style. Napoleon, I believe, did something here, from which there is reason to suppose that he sometimes thought of inhabiting the palace. Indeed, so long as France has a king, it is impossible that such a truly royal abode can ever be wholly deserted. At present, it is the fashion to grant lodgings in it, to dependants and favourites. Nothing that I have seen gives me so just and so imposing an idea of the nature of the old French monarchy, as a visit to Versailles. Apart from the vastness and splendour of the palace, here is a town that actually contained, in former times, a hundred thousand souls, that entirely owed its existence to the presence of the court. Other monarchs lived in large towns, but here was a monarch whose presence created one. Figure to yourself the style of the prince, when a place more populous than Baltimore, and infinitely richer in externals, existed merely as an appendage to his abode!

The celebrated garden contains two or three hundred acres of land, besides the ground that is included in the gardens of the two Trianons. These Trianons are small palaces erected in the gardens, as if the occupants of the château, having reached the acmé of magnificence and splendour, in the principal residence, were seeking refuge against the effects of satiety, in these humbler abodes. They appear small and insignificant after the palace; but the great Trianon is a considerable house, and contains a fine suite of apartments, among which are some very good rooms. There are few English abodes of royalty that equal even this of le Grand Trianon. The Petit Trianon was the residence of Mad. de Maintenon; it afterwards was presented to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who, in part, converted its grounds into an English garden, in addition to setting aside a portion into what is called la petite Suisse.

We went through this exceedingly pretty house and its gardens, with melancholy interest. The first is merely a pavilion in the Italian taste, though it is about half as large as the President’s House at Washington. I should think the Great Trianon has quite twice the room of our own Executive residence, and, as you can well imagine from what has already been said, the capitol, itself, would be but a speck among the endless edifices of the château. The projection in the centre of the latter, is considerably larger than the capitol, and it materially exceeds that building in cubic contents. Now this projection is but a small part, indeed, of the long line of façade, it actually appearing too short for the ranges of wings.

Marie Antoinette was much censured for the amusements in which she indulged, in the grounds of the Little Trianon, and vulgar rumour exaggerating their nature, no small portion of her personal unpopularity is attributable to this cause. The family of Louis XVI. appears to have suffered for the misdeeds of his predecessors, for it not being very easy to fancy anything much worse than the immoralities of Louis XV. the public were greatly disposed “to visit the sins of the fathers on the children.”

La petite Suisse is merely a romantic portion of the garden in which has been built what is called the Swiss hamlet. It contains the miniature abodes of the Curé, the Farmer, the Dairy-Woman, the Garde de Chasse and the Seignieur, besides the mill. There is not much that is Swiss, however, about the place, with the exception of some resemblance in the exterior of the buildings. Here it is said the royal family used occasionally to meet and pass an afternoon in a silly representation of rural life, that must have proved to be a prodigious caricature. The King (at least so the guide affirmed) performed the part of the Seignieur, and occupied the proper abode; the Queen was the Dairy-Woman, and we were shown the marble tables that held her porcelain milk-pans; the present King, as became his notorious propensity to field-sports, was the Garde de Chasse, the late King was the Miller, and, mirabile dictu, the archbishop of Paris did not disdain to play the part of the Curé. There was probably a good deal of poetry in this account, though it is pretty certain that the Queen did indulge in some of these phantasies. There happened to be with me, the day I visited this spot, an American from our own mountains, who had come fresh from home, with all his provincial opinions and habits strong about him. As the guide explained these matters, I translated them literally into English for the benefit of my companion, adding that the fact rendered the Queen extremely unpopular, with her subjects. “Unpopular!” exclaimed my country neighbour; “why so, sir?” “I cannot say; perhaps they thought it was not a fit amusement for a Queen.” My mountaineer stood a minute cogitating the affair in his American mind, and then nodding his head, he said—“I understand it, now. The people thought that a King and Queen, coming from yonder palace to amuse themselves in this toy hamlet, in the characters of poor people, were making game of them!” I do not know whether this inference will amuse you, as much as it did me at the time.

Of the gardens and the jets d’eau, so renowned, I shall say little. The former are in the old French style, formal and stiff, with long straight allées, but magnificent by their proportions and ornaments. The statuary and vases that are exposed to the open air, in this garden, must have cost an enormous sum. They are chiefly copies from the antique. As you stand on the great terrace, before the centre of the palace, the view is down the principal avenue, which terminates at the distance of two or three miles with a low naked hill, beyond which appears the void of the firmament. This conceit singularly helps the idea of vastness, though in effect it is certainly inferior to the pastoral prettiness, and rural thoughts of modern landscape gardening. Probably too much is attempted here, for if the mind cannot conceive of illimitable space, still less can it be represented by means of material substances.

We examined the interior of the palace with melancholy pleasure. The vast and gorgeous apartments were entirely without furniture, though many of the pictures still remain. The painted ceilings, and the gildings too, contribute to render the rooms less desolate than they would otherwise have been. I shall not stop to describe the saloons of Peace and War, and all the other celebrated apartments, that are so named from the subjects of their paintings, but merely add that the state apartments lie en suite, in the main body of the building, and that the principal room, or the great gallery, as it is termed, is in the centre, with the windows, looking up the main avenue of the garden. This gallery greatly surpasses in richness and size any other room, intended for the ordinary purposes of a palace, that I have ever seen. Its length exceeds two hundred and thirty feet, its width is about thirty-five, and its height is rather more than forty. The walls are a complete succession of marbles, mirrors and gildings. I believe, the windows and doors excepted, that literally no part of the sides or ends of this room show any other material. Even some of the doors are loaded with these decorations. The ceiling is vaulted, and gorgeous with allegories and gildings; they are painted by the best artists of France. Here Louis XIV. moved among his courtiers, more like a god than a man, and here was exhibited that mixture of grace and moral fraud, of elegance and meanness, of hope and disappointment, of pleasure and mortification, that form the characters and compose the existence of courtiers.

I do not know the precise number of magnificent ante-chambers, and saloons through which we passed to reach this gallery, but there could not have been less than eight; one of which, as a specimen of the scale on which the palace is built, is near eighty feet long and sixty wide. Continuing our course along the suite, we passed, among others, a council room, that looked more like state than business, and then came to the apartments of the Queen. There were several drawing-rooms, and ball-rooms, and card-rooms, and ante-rooms, and the change from the gorgeousness of the state apartments, to the neat, tasteful, chaste, feminine, white and gold of this part of the palace was agreeable, for I had got to be tired of splendour, and was beginning to feel a disposition to “make game of the people,” by descending to rusticity.

The bed-room of Marie Antoinette is in the suite. It is a large chamber, in the same style of ornament as the rest of her rooms, and the dressing-rooms, bath, and other similar conveniences, were in that exquisite French taste, which can only be equalled by imitation. The chamber of the King looked upon the court, and was connected with that of the Queen, by a winding and intricate communication of some length. The door that entered the apartments of the latter, opened into a dressing-room, and, both this door and that which communicated with the bed-room, form a part of the regular wall, being tapestried as such, so as not to be immediately seen, a style of finish that is quite usual in French houses. It was owing to this circumstance that Marie Antoinette made her escape, undetected, to the King’s chamber, the night the palace was entered by the fish-women.

We saw the rooms in which Louis XIV. and Louis XV. died. The latter, you may remember, fell a victim to the small-pox, and the disgusting body, that had so lately been almost worshipped, was deserted, the moment he was dead. It was left for hours, without even the usual decent observances. It was on the same occasion, we have been told, that his grandchildren, including the heir, were assembled in a private drawing-room, waiting the result, when they were startled by a hurried trampling of feet. It was the courtiers, rushing in a crowd, to pay their homage to the new monarch! All these things forced themselves painfully on our minds, as we walked through the state rooms. Indeed, there are few things that can be more usefully studied, or which awaken a greater source of profitable recollections, than a palace that has been occupied by a great and historical court. Still they are not poetical.

The balcony, in which La Fayette appeared with the Queen and her children, opens from one of these rooms. It overlooks the inner court; or that in which the carriages of none but the privileged entered, for all these things were regulated by arbitrary rules. No one, for instance, was permitted to ride in the King’s coach, unless his nobility dated from a certain century, (the fourteenth, I believe,) and these were your gentilhommes; for the word implies more than a noble, meaning an ancient nobleman.

The writing cabinet, private dining-room, council room in ordinary, library, &c. of the King, came next; the circuit ending in the salle de gardes, and the apartments usually occupied by the officers and troops on service.

There was one room we got into, I scarce know how. It was a long, high gallery, plainly finished for a palace, and it seemed to be lighted from an interior court, or well; for one was completely caged, when in it. This was the celebrated Bull’s Eye, (oeil de boeuf) where the courtiers danced attendance, before they were received. It got its name from an oval window, over the principal door.

We looked at no more than the state apartments, and those of the King and Queen, and yet, we must have gone through some thirty or forty rooms, of which, the baths and dressing-room of the Queen excepted, the very smallest would be deemed a very large room, in America. Perhaps no private house contains any as large as the smallest of these rooms, with the exception of here and there a hall in a country house; and, no room at all, with ceilings nearly as high, and as noble, to say nothing of the permanent decorations, of which we have no knowledge whatever, if we omit the window glass, and the mantels, in both of which, size apart, we often beat even the French palaces.

We next proceeded to the salle de spectacle, which is a huge theatre. It may not be as large as the French Opera house at Paris, but its dimensions did not appear to me to be much less. It is true, the stage was open, and came into the view; but it is a very large house for dramatic representations. Now, neither this building, nor the Chapel, seen on the exterior of the palace, though additions that project from the regular line of wall, obtrudes itself on the eye, more than a verandah attached to a window, on one of our largest houses! In this place, the celebrated dinner was given to the officers of the guards.

The chapel is rich and beautiful. No catholic church has pews, or, at all events, they are very unusual, though the municipalities do sometimes occupy them in France, and, of course, the area was vacant. We were most struck with the paintings on the ceiling, in which the face of Louis XIV. was strangely and mystically blended with that of God the Father! Pictorial and carved representations of the Saviour, and of the Virgin abound in all catholic countries; nor do they much offend, unless when the crucifixion is represented with bleeding wounds; for, as both are known to have appeared in the human form, the mind is not shocked at seeing them in the semblance of humanity. But this was the first attempt to delineate the Deity we had yet seen; and it caused us all to shudder. He is represented in the person of an old man looking from the clouds, in the centre of the ceiling, and the King appears among the angels that encircle him. Flattery could not go much farther, without encroaching on omnipotence itself.

In returning from Versailles, to a tithe of the magnificence of which I have not alluded, I observed carts coming out of the side of a hill, loaded with the whitish stone, that composes the building material of Paris. We stopped the carriage, and went into the passage, where we found extensive excavations. A lane of fifteen or twenty feet was cut through the stone, and the material was carted away in heavy square blocks. Piers were left, at short intervals, to sustain the superincumbent earth; and, in the end, the place gets to be a succession of intricate passages, separated by these piers, which resemble so many small masses of houses among the streets of a town. The entire region around Paris lies on a substratum of this stone, which indurates by exposure to the air, and the whole secret of the celebrated catacombs of Paris, is just the same as that of this quarry, with the difference that this opens on a level with the upper world, lying in a hill, while one is compelled to descend to get to the level of the others. But enormous wheels, scattered about the fields in the vicinity of the town, show where shafts descend to new quarries on the plains, which are precisely the same as those under Paris. The history of these subterranean passages is very simple. The stone beneath, has been transfered to the surface, as a building material; and, the graves of the town, after centuries, were emptied into the vaults below. Any apprehensions of the caverns falling in, on a great scale, are absurd, as the constant recurrence of the piers, which are the living rock, must prevent such a calamity; though it is within the limits of possibility, that a house or two might disappear. Quite lately, it is said, a tree in the garden of the Luxembourg fell through, owing to the water working a passage down into the quarries, by following its roots. The top of the tree remained above ground, some distance; and, to prevent unnecessary panic, the police immediately caused the place to be concealed by a high and close board fence. The tree was cut away in the night, the hole was filled up, and few knew any thing about it. But it is scarcely possible, that any serious accident should occur, even to a single house, without a previous and gradual sinking of its walls giving notice of the event. The palace of the Luxembourg, one of the largest and finest edifices of Paris, stands quite near the spot where the tree fell through, and yet there is not the smallest danger of the structure’s disappearing some dark night, the piers below always affording sufficient support. Au reste, the catacombs lie under no other part of Paris, than the quartier St. Jaques, not crossing the river, nor reaching even the Fauxbourg St. Germain.

I have taken you so unceremoniously out of the château of Versailles to put you into the catacombs, that some of the royal residences have not received the attention I intended. We have visited Compèigne this summer, including it in a little excursion of about a hundred miles, that we made in the vicinity of the capital, though it scarcely offered sufficient matter of interest to be the subject of an especial letter. We found the forest deserving of its name, and some parts of it almost as fine as an old American wood of the second class. We rode through it five or six miles, to see a celebrated ruin, called Pierre Fond, which was one of those baronial holds, out of which noble robbers used to issue, to plunder on the highway, and commit all sort of acts of genteel violence. The castle, and the adjacent territory, formed one of the most ancient seigneuries of France. The place was often besieged and taken. In the time of Henry IV. that monarch, finding the castle had fallen into the hands of a set of desperadoes, who were ranked with the leaguers, sent the Duc d’Epernon against the place, but he was wounded and obliged to raise the siege. Marshal Biron was next despatched, with all the heavy artillery that could be spared, but he met with little better success. This roused Henry, who finally succeeded in getting possession of the place. In the reign of his son, Louis XIII. the robberies and excesses of those who occupied the castle became so intolerable, that the government seized it again, and ordered it to be destroyed. Now, you will remember, that this castle stood in the very heart of France, within fifty miles of the capital, and but two leagues from a royal residence, and all so lately as the year 1617, and that it was found necessary to destroy it, on account of the irregularities of its owners. What an opinion one is driven to form of the moral civilization of Europe, from a fact like this! Feudal grandeur loses greatly, in a comparison with modern law, and more humble honesty.

It was easier, however, to order the château de Pierre-font to be destroyed, than to effect that desirable object. Little more was achieved than to make cuts into the external parts of the towers and walls, and to unroof the different buildings, and, although this was done two hundred years since, time has made little impression on the ruins. We were shown a place where there had been an attempt to break into the walls for stones, but which had been abandoned, because it was found easier to quarry them from the living rock. The principal towers were more than a hundred feet high, and their angles and ornaments seemed to be as sharp and solid as ever. This was much the noblest French ruin we have seen, and it may be questioned if there are many finer, out of Italy, in Europe.

The palace of Compèigne after that of Versailles, hardly rewarded us for the trouble of examining it. Still it is large and in perfect repair. But the apartments are common-place, though there are a few that are good. A prince, however, is as well lodged even here, as is usual in the north of Europe. The present king is fond of resorting to this house, on account of the game of the neighbouring forest. We saw several roebucks bounding among the trees, in our drive to Pierre-font.[12]

12. Pierre-fond, or Pierre-font.

I have dwelt on the palaces and the court so much, because one cannot get a correct idea of what France was, and perhaps I ought to say of what France, through the reaction, will be, if this point were overlooked. The monarch was all in all, in the nation; the centre of light, wealth and honour; letters, the arts and the sciences revolved around him, as the planets revolve around the sun, and if there ever was a civilized people whose example it would be fair to quote, for or against the effects of monarchy, I think it would be the people of France. I was surprised at my own ignorance on the subject of the magnificence of these kings, of which indeed it is not easy for an untravelled American to form any just notion, and it has struck me you might be glad to hear a little on these points.

After all I have said, I find I have entirely omitted the orangery at Versailles. But then I have said little or nothing of the canals, the jets d’eau, of the great and little parks, which united are fifty miles in circumference, and of a hundred other things. Still, as this orangery is on a truly royal scale, it deserves a word of notice, before I close my letter. The trees are housed in winter, in long vaulted galleries beneath the great terrace, and there is a sort of sub-court in front of them, where they are put into the sun, during the pleasant season. This place is really an orange grove, and, although every tree is in a box, and is nursed like a child, many of them are as large as it is usual to find in the orange groves of low latitudes. Several are very old; two or three dating from the fifteenth century, and one from the early part of it. What notions do you get of the magnificence of the place, when you are told that a palace, subterraneous it is true, is devoted to this single luxury, and that acres are covered with trees, in boxes?

LETTER XI.
To James Stevenson, Esquire, Albany.

I intend this letter to be useful rather than entertaining. Living, as we Americans do, remote from the rest of the world, and possessing so many practices peculiar to ourselves, at the same time that we are altogether wanting in usages that are familiar to most other nations, it should not be matter of surprise that we commit some mistakes on this side of the water, in matters of taste and etiquette. A few words simply expressed, and a few explanations plainly made, may serve to remove some errors, and perhaps render your own contemplated visit to this part of the world more agreeable.

There is no essential difference in the leading rules of ordinary intercourse among the polished of all Christian nations. Though some of these rules may appear arbitrary, it will be found, on examination, that they are usually derived from very rational and sufficient motives. They may vary, in immaterial points, but even these variations arise from some valid circumstance.

The American towns are growing so rapidly, that they are getting to have the population of capitals without enjoying their commonest facilities. The exaggerated tone of our largest towns, for instance, forbids the exchange of visits by means of servants. It may suit the habits of provincial life to laugh at this, as an absurdity, but it may be taken pretty safely as a rule, that men and women of as much common sense as the rest of their fellow creatures, with the best opportunities of cultivating all those tastes that are dependant on society, and with no other possible motive than convenience, would not resort to such a practice without a suitable inducement. No one who has not lived in a large town that does possess these facilities, can justly appreciate their great advantages, or properly understand how much a place like New York, with its three hundred thousand inhabitants, loses by not adopting them. We have conventions for all sorts of things in America, some of which do good and others harm, but I cannot imagine anything that would contribute more to the comfort of society, than one which should settle the laws of intercourse, on principles better suited to the real condition of the country, than those which now exist. It is not unusual to read descriptions deriding the forms of Europe, written by travelling Americans, but I must think they have been the productions of very young travellers, or, at least, of such as have not had the proper means of appreciating the usages they ridicule. Taking my own experience as a guide, I have no hesitation in saying, that I know no people among whom the ordinary social intercourse is as uncomfortable, and as little likely to stand the test of a rational examination, as our own.

The first rule, all-important for an American to know, is that the latest arrival makes the first visit. England is, in some respects, an exception to this practice, but I believe it prevails in all the rest of Europe. I do not mean to say that departures are not made from this law, in particular instances; but they should always be taken as exceptions, and as pointed compliments. This rule has many conveniences, and I think it also shows a more delicate attention to sentiment and feeling. While the points of intrusion and of disagreeable acquaintances, are left just where they would be under our own rule, the stranger is made the judge of his own wishes. It is, moreover, impossible, in a large town, to know of every arrival. Many Americans, who come to Europe with every claim to attention, pass through it nearly unnoticed, from a hesitation about obtruding themselves on others, under the influence of the opinions in which they have been educated. This for a long time was my own case, and it was only when a more familiar acquaintance with the practices of this part of the world made me acquainted with their advantages, that I could consent freely to put myself forward.

You are not to understand that any stranger arriving in a place like Paris, or London, has a right to leave cards for whom he pleases. It is not the custom, except for those who, by birth, or official station, or a high reputation, may fairly deem themselves privileged, to assume this liberty, and even then, it is always better to take some preliminary step to assure one’s self that the visit will be acceptable. The law of salutes, is very much the law of visits, in this part of the world. The ship arriving sends an officer to know if his salute will be returned gun for gun, and the whole affair, it is true, is conducted in rather a categorical manner, but the governing principles are the same in both cases, though more management may be required between two gentlemen, than between two men-of-war.

The Americans in Europe, on account of the country’s having abjured all the old feudal distinctions that still so generally prevail here, labour under certain disadvantages, that require, on the one hand, much tact and discretion to overcome, and on the other, occasionally much firmness and decision.

The rule I have adopted, in my own case, is to defer to every usage, in matters of etiquette, so far as I have understood them, that belongs to the country in which I may happen to be. If, as has sometimes happened (but not in a solitary instance in France,) the claims of a stranger have been overlooked, I have satisfied myself by remembering, that, in this respect at least, the Americans are the superiors, for that is a point in which we seldom fail; and if they are remembered, to accept of just as much attention as shall be offered. In cases, in which those arbitrary distinctions are set up, that, by the nature of our institutions cannot, either in similar, or in any parallel cases exist in America, and the party making the pretension is on neutral ground, if the claim be in any manner pressed, I would say that it became an American to resist it promptly; neither to go out of his way to meet it, nor to defer to it, when it crosses his path. In really good society awkward cases of this nature are not very likely to occur; they are, however, more likely to occur as between our own people and the English, than between those of any other nation; for the latter, in mixed general associations, have scarcely yet learned to look upon, and treat us as the possessors of an independent country. It requires perfect self-possession, great tact, and some nerve for an American, who is brought much in contact with the English on the continent of Europe, to avoid a querulous and ungentlemanlike disposition to raise objections on these points, and at the same time to maintain the position, and command the respect, with which he should never consent to dispense. From my own little experience, I should say we are better treated, and have less to overlook, in our intercourse with the higher than with the intermediate classes of the English.

You will have very different accounts of these points, from some of our travellers. I only give you the results of my own observation, under the necessary limitations of my own opportunities. Still I must be permitted to say that too many of our people, in their habitual deference to England, mistake offensive condescension for civility. Of the two, I will confess I would rather encounter direct arrogance, than the assumption of a right to be affable. The first may at least be resisted. Of all sorts of superiority, that of a condescending quality is the least palatable.

I believe Washington is the only place in America, where it is permitted to send cards. In every other town, unless accompanied by an invitation, and even then the card is supposed to be left, it would be viewed as airs. It is even equivocal to leave a card in person, unless denied. Nothing can be worse adapted to the wants of American society than this rigid conformity to facts. Without porters; with dwellings in which the kitchens and servant’s halls are placed just as far from the street-doors as the dimensions of the houses will allow; with large straggling towns that cover as much ground as the more populous capitals of Europe, and these towns not properly divided into quarters; with a society as ambitious of effect, in its way, as any I know; and with people more than usually occupied with business and the family cares, one is expected to comply rigidly with the most formal rules of village propriety. It is easy to trace these usages to their source, provincial habits and rustic manners, but towns with three hundred thousand inhabitants, ought to be free from both. Such rigid conditions cannot well be observed, and a consequence already to be traced is, that those forms of society, which tend to refine it, and to render it more human and graceful, are neglected from sheer necessity. Carelessness in the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as ungracious in deportment, as it is unattractive in attire.

The etiquette of visits, here, is reduced to a sort of science. A card is sent by a servant, and returned by a servant. It is polite to return it, next day, though three, I believe, is the lawful limits, and it is politer still to return it the day it is received. There is no affectation about sending the card, as it is not at all unusual to put E. P. (en personne) on it, by way of expressing a greater degree of attention, even when the card is sent. When the call is really made in person, though the visiter does not ask to be admitted, it is also common to request the porter to say that the party was at the gate. All these niceties may seem absurd and supererogatory, but depend on it, they have a direct and powerful agency in refining and polishing intercourse, just as begging a man’s pardon, when you tread on his toe, has an effect to humanize, though the parties know no offence was intended. Circumstances once rendered it proper that I should leave a card for a Russian diplomate, an act that I took care he should know, indirectly, I went out of my way to do, as an acknowledgment for the civilities his countrymen showed to us Americans. My name was left at the gate of his hotel, (it was not in Paris,) as I was taking a morning ride. On returning home, after an absence of an hour, I found his card lying on my table. Instead, however, of its containing the usual official titles, it was simply Prince ——. I was profoundly emerged in the study of this new feature in the forms of etiquette, when the friend, who had prepared the way for the visit, entered. I asked an explanation, and he told me that I had received a higher compliment than could be conveyed by a merely official card, this being a proffer of personal attention. “You will get an invitation to dinner soon;” and, sure enough, one came before he had quitted the house. Now, here was a delicate and flattering attention paid, and one that I felt, without trouble to either party; one that the occupations of the diplomate would scarcely permit him to pay, except in extraordinary cases, under rules more rigid.

There is no obligation on a stranger to make the first visit, certainly, but if he do not, he is not to be surprised if no one notices him. It is a matter of delicacy to obtrude on the privacy of such a person, it being presumed that he wishes to be retired. We have passed some time in a village near Paris, which contains six or eight visitable families. With one of these I had some acquaintance, and we exchanged civilities, but wishing to be undisturbed, I extended my visit no farther, and I never saw anything of the rest of my neighbours. They waited for me to make the advances.

A person in society, here, who is desirous of relieving himself, for a time, from the labour and care of maintaining the necessary intercourse, can easily do it, by leaving cards of P. P. C. It might be awkward to remain long in a place very publicly, after such a step, but I ventured on it once, to extricate myself from engagements that interfered with more important pursuits, with entire success. I met several acquaintances in the street, after the cards were sent, and we even talked together, but I got no more visits or invitations. When ready to return to town, all I had to do was to leave cards again, and things went on as if nothing had happened. I parried one or two allusions to my absence, and had no further difficulty. The only awkward part of it was, that I accepted an invitation to dine en famille with a literary friend, and one of the guests, of whom there were but three, happened to be a person whose invitation to dinner I had declined on account of quitting town! As he was a sensible man, I told him the simple fact, and we laughed at the contre tems, and drank our wine in peace.

The Americans who come abroad frequently complain of a want of hospitality in the public agents. There is a strong disposition in every man, under institutions like our own, to mistake himself for a part of the government, in matters with which he has no proper connexion, while too many totally overlook those interests which it is their duty to watch. In the first place, the people of the United States do not give salaries to their ministers, of sufficient amount to authorize them to expect that any part of the money should be returned in the way of personal civilities. Fifty thousand francs a-year is the usual sum named by the French, as the money necessary to maintain a genteel town establishment, with moderate evening entertainments, and an occasional dinner. This is three thousand francs more than the salary of the minister, out of which he is moreover expected to maintain his regular diplomatic intercourse. It is impossible for any one to do much in the way of personal civilities, on such an allowance.

There is, moreover, on the part of too many of our people, an aptitude to betray a jealous sensitiveness on the subject of being presented at foreign courts. I have known some claim it as a right, when it is yielded to the minister himself, as an act of grace. The receptions of a sovereign are merely his particular mode of receiving visits. No one will pretend that the President of the United States is obliged to give levees and dinners, nor is a king any more compelled to receive strangers, or even his own subjects, unless it suit his policy and his taste. His palace is his house, and he is the master of it, the same as any other man is master of his own abode. It is true, the public expects something of him, and his allowance is probably regulated by this expectation, but the interference does not go so far as to point out his company. Some kings pass years without holding a court at all; others receive every week. The public obligation to open his door, is no more than an obligation of expediency, of which he, and he only, can be the judge. This being the rule, not only propriety but fair dealing requires that all who frequent a court, should comply with the conditions that are understood to be implied in the permission. While there exists an exaggerated opinion, on the part of some of our people, on the subject of the fastidiousness of princes, as respects their associates, there exists among others very confused notions on the other side of the question. A monarch usually cares very little about the quarterings and the nobility of the person he receives, but he always wishes his court to be frequented by people of education, accomplishments, and breeding. In Europe these qualities are confined to castes, and, beyond a question, as a general practice, every king would not only prefer, but were there a necessity for it, he would command that his doors should be closed against all others, unless they came in a character different from that of courtiers. This object has, in effect, been obtained, by establishing a rule, that no one who has not been presented at his own court, can claim to be presented at any foreign European court; thus leaving each sovereign to see that no one of his own subjects shall travel with this privilege, who would be likely to prove an unpleasant guest to any other prince. But we have neither any princes nor any court, and the minister is left to decide for himself who is, and who is not proper to be presented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page | Changed from | Changed to
35 | forms, at its different angels. It was visible only | forms, at its different angles. It was visible only

- Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

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Table of Contents

- GLEANINGS IN EUROPE. BY AN AMERICAN.

- PREFACE.

- LETTER I. To Captain Shubrick, U. S. N.

- LETTER II. To Mrs. Pomeroy, Cooperstown, New York.

- LETTER III. To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown.

- LETTER IV. To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown.

- LETTER V. To R. Cooper, Esquire, Cooperstown.

- LETTER VI. To Mrs. Pomeroy, Cooperstown, New York.

- LETTER VII. To Jacob Sutherland, Esq., New York.

- LETTER VIII. To Col. Bankhead, U. S. Artillery.

- LETTER IX. To Mrs. Singleton W. Beall, Green Bay.

- LETTER X. To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown, New York.

- LETTER XI. To James Stevenson, Esquire, Albany.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE