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FRANCE, SOCIAL, LITERARY, AND POLITICAL.

BY HENRY LYTTON BULWER, ESQ.

THE above is an inaccurate, and somewhat ambitious title. Mr. Bulwer has produced two volumes which may form useful contributions to the kind of work announced, and a selection of materials laid in order; but one which is far indeed from the accomplishment of the projected design. Its completion, upon the scale contemplated by Mr. Bulwer, would, with the union of very dissimilar and rare attainments, require the leisure of a life. He has gallantly attempted what, perhaps, is not given to any one man, however gifted, to achieve,-to be at once a Gibbon, a Voltaire, an Adam Smith, a Malte Brun, and a Warton. There is, therefore, no disgrace in failing to fulfil a task which might tax the powers of another corps of French encyclopedists, and great merit in collecting the information which we find in his work, and producing those detached essays and sketches towards the main design, which will form useful studies to whoever shall succeed Mr. Bulwer in really composing "FRANCE, Social, Literary, and Political.”

This much premised, we shall better consult our duty, in speaking of the book as it is, than in carping about what it purports to be. The work shews considerable industry, liveliness of fancy, and power of original observation on the brilliant surfaces which French society presents to a stranger; but not much of the profundity of thought, or solidity and coherence of judgment, required in the philosophical historian of a great nation.

Closing the volumes, we can exactly tell what Mr. Bulwer thinks, at the moment, of the French people, but by no means what his steadfast opinion may be, of that chameleon race, those "Cynthias of the minute," which he has attempted to paint on a firm cloud. Assuming to be correct the statistical analysis of France, which is prefixed as a sort of map to the work, we may pronounce it a most valuable document. But the statistical information, and the historirical view of the political changes in France, we shall lay aside for the present, for the more attractive sketches of society and manners, to which the writer has linked his dry, useful facts. Of the three books into which Mr. Bulwer divides his work, we shall devote our attention principally to the first, or the Characteristics of the French People; pass over the second, which details the "Historical Changes" of the country; and advert slightly to the third, which is devoted to the "Predominating Influences" in France,-the influences, namely, of the Women, the Military Spirit, and the Press.

Paris is the heart of France. It is at least the focus of its wit, gallantry, frivolity, crime; aud of its literary, military, and female influences. Let us, then, at once enter Paris, under the guidance of our author, who seems thoroughly to know the surface of the ground.

To enter Paris with advantage you should enter it by

the Champs Elysées :-visiting for the first time the capital of a military nation, you should pass under the arch built to commemorate its reign of victories ;-coming to dwell among the most gay and light-hearted people in the universe, you ought at once to rush upon them in the midst of their festivities. Enter Paris, then, by the Champs Elysées! Here are the monuments that speak to you of the great soldiers; and here the "guinguettes" that display to you the great dancers of Europe. You pass by the old gardens of Beaujon; you find the "caserne" (and this tells you a good deal of the nation you are come to visit) intermingled with "cafés" and "salons littérraires ;" and you see the chairs under the trees, and the open spaces left for the ball; and if you stop to read an advertisement, it will talk of the "Chevaux mécaniques," and of the "Bal paré” and of the "Concert des Champs Elysées ;" and the sun shines upon the golden cupola of the stately Invalides, and on the glittering accoutrements of the sauntering soldier; and before you are the Tuileries, with their trees and terraces, which yonder misplaced monument cannot quite conceal; and to your right are the Seine and the Chamber of Deputies, and to your left the Corinthian architecture of those tall palaces that form the Rue de Rivoli. The tricolored flag floats from the gates of the Royal Gardens; the military uniform, mixed up with the colouring of every passing group, enriches it with its deep blue and its bright scarlet; the movement about you is universal; equipages of all kinds are passing in all directions; the movement is universal, but differing from that you are accustomed to in England,the movement is the movement of idleness and of pleasure; an indescribable mirth reigns in all you see, and the busy gaiety of Paris bursts upon you with the same effect as the glad brightness of Italy. The people, too, have all the habits of a people of the sun; they are not the people of one stock; collected in every crowd are the features and the feelings of divers races and different regions. In Paris you are not in the climate of Paris; France is brought into a focus; and concentrated in the capital you find all the varieties that vivify the many provinces of the kingdom.

Such is the scene;-let us next examine the actors by whom is occupied.

Oxford Street gives one aspect of London, Regent Street another, the Strand another; but the Boulevards, running directly through Paris, display the character of

the town in all its districts, and the character of its inhabitants in all their classes.

Go from the Rue Royale to the site of the old Bastille. You first pass by those zigzag and irregular houses that jut out upon the old rampart, and which have rather a picturesque appearance, from the gay little terraces and balconies, which, when there is a ray of sun, are sure to be lit up by it; and opposite, you have the stalls, gay also, (notwithstanding their poverty) where you may get nailed shoes and cotton-net braces, and works "six sous the volume!" stalls which carry, even into this scene of wealth and pleasure, the democracy of the epoch, and say that the people are everywhere buying, lounging, reading. And here you have a happy opportunity of admiring the vast variety of Parisian equipages,—the poor and the rich are on horseback, on foot, in carriages, in tilburies, in" citadines," in "demi-fortunes," in omnibuses, hurrying to or from the Champs Elysées; but once passed the Rue de la Paix, in the neigbourhood of the Bains Chinois, the Café de Paris, and Tortoni's, you are in a different region. It is not only a throng perpetually changing, which you now see. The cavalcade has in a great measure ceased; and you perceive a new and a more lazy, and a more lounging crowd seated at the doors of the " cafés," or strolling up and down before them. Those gentlemen who, to use the French expression, "eat their fortunes," are here; and here are the

* The Egyptian column.

gamblers of the stock exchange, of "the salon," and of Frescati's, the passionate race who crowd existence into a day, who live every minute of their lives, and who have come to enjoy the hour they have snatched from agitation. Here they saunter listlessly in the sun, or stand in clusters at the corners of the streets.

This is the spot, too, where you are sure to meet that smirking and happy gentleman, who, as La Bruyère

says,

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"encounters one everywhere;" that gentleman whom we just met in the Tuileries, whom we saw the night before at the opera, and whom we should be sure to stare in the face at the Variétés. Sit for half an hour on one of those chairs, there is hardly any class the type of which will not pass before you! The pretty nurse of the Chaussée d'Antin, the old bachelor of the Marais, the gros bourgeois" of the Rue St. Denis, the English family of two sons and seven daughters,-all these you are sure to see in turn! But there are portraits sacred to the place. Yonder elderly gentleman is one! He is about fifty-five years of age; tall, with a slight bend forward; he moves with a certain stiffness; his hair, closely cut, is a dark grey; his features, rather delicate and aristocratic than otherwise, are weatherbeaten, and perhaps in some degree worn and sharpened by debauch; he wears a black neckloth; the part of his shirt that is seen is remarkably white; his coat, decorated with a red ribbon, is buttoned up to his chest, and only just shows a stripe of a pale yellow waistcoat; he walks with a cane, and has that kind of half-haughty, half-careless air by which Bonaparte's soldier is still distinguished. A little behind him are two men, arm in arm; the hat of one, elaborately adjusted, is very much bent down before and behind, and turned up in an almost equal proportion at the sides; his waistcoat is peculiar and very long; his trowsers large about the hips, and tightening at the foot; he wears long spurs, immense moustaches, brandishes a cane, spits, and swaggers. The other, as insignificant in appearance as his friend is offensive, wears a little round hat, a plain spotted summer waistcoat, light-grey trowsers, and a thin stick, which he rather trails than flourishes. The inoffensive gentleman looks at nothing,-the swaggering gentleman looks at everything: the inoffensive gentleman plays at whist, and creeps into society,-the swaggering gentleman lives at the theatres, and drives about an actress. And now see a man, tall, dark, with an air in which fierceness and dignity intermingle! He walks alone; sometimes he shuts his eyes, sometimes he folds his arms; a variety of occasions on which he lost, a variety of chances by which he might have gained, give every now and then a convulsive twitch to his overhanging eyebrow,-he meets a rednosed gentleman of sleek and comely aspect, and who steps upon his toes, the two walk arm-in-arm together towards the Rue de Richelieu.

Pass on to the Rue Montmartre, and the Boulevard takes a different aspect. The activity of business mixes itself with the activity of idleness; here are the large magazines of the Parisian Medici; the crowd, less elegant, has the air of being more employed. Pass on again commerce assumes a quieter appearance; its luxurious companions have disappeared; there are no chairs, for there is no leisure; but go a little further, and the gaieties recommence; the gaieties, this time, not of the "nobilace," but of the "populace"-not of (the aristocracy of the "Chaussée d'Antin," but of the aristocracy of the "Temple." Grouped round yonder stage, much resembling the antique theatre of Thespis, you see the mob of modern Greece, enchanted with the pleasures of Dubureaux: and here you may put into the lottery for a cake, and here you may have your destiny told for a "sou;" and the great men-the great men of Francethe Marshals and Generals of the Empire, the distinguished orators of the Restoration, the literary celebrities of the day-Ney, Foy, Victor Hugo,-are there before you, as large a great deal larger, indeed-than life; for the multitude are rarely satisfied with things just as they are; they like to see their heroes fresh, fat, and magnificently dressed; and all this is easily accomplished when their heroes are-in wax. Where these great men at preseat exhibit themselves, there used formerly to be tum

blers; but the people's amusements have changed, though the people must still be amused.

And at last we have come to the silent and tranquil Boulevard of the agitated and turbulent Beaumarchais; and behind are the tall palaces of dark-red brick, and the low and gloomy arcades of the Place Royale, where you find the old-fashioned magistrate, the old-fashioned merchant, the retired respectability of Paris: and yonder! before us is the memorable spot, witness of the first excesses and the first triumphs of the Revolution-but the spectres of its old time are vanished, and the eye which rests upon the statue of yonder gigantic and sagacions animal, tries to legitimatize the monument, by considering it as a type of the great people who raised the barricades in July 1830, and overthrew the Bastille in July 1789.

With a lively description of the Palais Royale, the Quais, and the Tuileries, Mr. Bulwer blends picturesque details of the ancient Bourbon history, and of the more recent changes; and in a very pleasant manner, certainly, though it is not exactly that of a sober and philosophical writer. He endeavours to show that, throughout all the political changes, which French society has undergone, the national type, the great and distinctive features and impress of this distinguished European family remain the same in the age of Louis Philippe, that they were in that of his most remote ancestors; and next, our author accounts for those apparent alterations in the external aspect of the nation, which, he believes, reach little way below the surface.

In morals as in liberty, Mr. Bulwer, unlike some of our now superannuated anti-Jacobin alarmists, believes that France, and Paris which represents France, has benefited by the Revolution. There is still, we fear, but too much room for improvement.

To those who are fond of facts, the manners of Paris may be thus described :—

:

There are twenty thousand persons every night at the theatres five public libraries are constantly full; and one hundred cabinets de lecture. You will find about an equal number of celebrated dancing masters, and of celebrated teachers of mathematics; and the municipality pays one-third more for its féles than it does for its religion.

A passion for enjoyment, a contempt for life without pleasure, a want of religion and morality, fill the gambling house, the morgue, and the "enfans trouvés." Have such been the effects of the Revolution?

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No; the Revolution has had little to do with these misfortunes. Before the Revolution there were forty thousand prostitutes; there are now six thousand. Before the Revolution, there were fifteen licensed maisons de jeu,' there are now eight. "Before the Revolution," observes Mercier, "all the money of the provinces passed to the capital, and all the money of the capital passed to its Courtezans.' Before the Revolution, says Chamfort, I remember to have seen a man who quitted the ladies at the opera, because they had no more honour than the ladies of the world. The families that still inhabit the great hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain are more orderly, more economical, more moral in their habits, than here. tofore. But, as in a voluptuous people, the habits of the lower classes mount up to the higher, so in a vain nation the habits of the higher classes descend more naturally to the lower. The manners of the old aristocracy, then, have had a greater effect upon the manners of the middling classes, than the manners of the middling classes have had upon those of the aristocracy. Among the nobility of the stock exchange, the office, and the counter, there reigns a luxury at present, which, sometimes sighed for

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by such persons, was rarely seen of old. If you want a proof of this, you have the best,-you have the theatres, where the old scenery, the scenery which represented the apartments of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie of the ancient régime, too costly for the first, too meagre for the last, is obliged to be laid aside, in order to give place to new decorations, where Monsieur Magnon and Monsieur de Montmorency, the rich" notaire" and the rich "noble," equally display an elegant opulence unaccompanied by pomp. Wealth has lost its ancient and aristocratic splendour; but, in becoming more citizen-like in its air, it has become more complete and finished in its details. "There was greater state in my time among the rich," said an old gentleman to me the other day,-" more horses, more plate, more servants, but the table-cloth was not so fine and so clean, the rooms were not so well lighted. The bourgeoisie,' however, were a different race,— they lived frugally and laid by their money, not with the idea of becoming gentlemen themselves, but with the hope and expectation that their great grandchildren might become so. People rose gradually; the son of a shopkeeper purchased a charge,' his son purchased one higher, and thus by degrees the family which had begun at the shop rose to the magistracy and the Parliament." The diffusion of knowledge, the division of fortunes, have descended and spread tastes, formerly more exaggerated and more confined. The few have lost a habit of extravagance, the many have gained a habit of expense. There is a smaller number of persons who squander away their fortune, there is a smaller number of persons who

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In this, as in every thing else, the striking characteristic of Paris,-of Paris in 1834,-is the kind of universal likeness that reigns throughout it. The great mass of Parisians (whether we observe their habits, their manners, or their language) are so many casts struck from the same die.

After telling how the old actors vanished from the scene, Mr. Bulwer shows us who now strut upon it, and with what new airs and in what modern costumes.

In

Lo! before you, are the almost undistinguished mass of eighty thousand national guards, and fifteen thousand electors! In this community are confounded journalists, generals, bankers, barbers, the richest capitalist, and the poorest patentee,-all classes are comprised in one immense middle class,-a middle class, not like the middle of England, merely occupied in making money, and born of parents who have spent their lives in the same pursuit, -but a middle class of all degrees and all professions,a middle class that does not stand between the gentry and the people, but between the mob and the monarch. the streets, the walks, the theatres,-this class-sauntering on the Boulevard,-laughing loud at the Variétésundressed at the opera,-spreads everywhere its own easy and unceremonious air; and Paris is fashioned to its habits, as it was formerly to the habits of the spendthrift "noble," and the sober "bourgeois ;" and the same causes that have carried more seriousness into one portion of society, have carried more amusement into another. Few are poor, few are rich; many are anxious to enjoy; and everything is contrived to favour this combination of poverty and pleasure. There are many places where a person can live upon as little, but there is no place where a person can live so magnificently upon a little as in Paris. It is not the necessaries that are cheap, but the superabundancies. Monsieur Bontin, an old bachelor, whose few remaining locks are carefully adjusted, prefers enjoying his rent of eighty Napoleous a-year in idleness, to gaining six times as much by an occupation. You conclude immediately that M. Boutin is a man who has acquired in the world the best rules of philosophy, that he is a sample of unsophisticated tastes, and that it is precisely the same thing to him whether it is dine upon a "supreme de volaille" at the restaurants, or crunch a hard piece of dry bread in solitary discomfort. Here is the mistake, Monsieur Bontin dines not at Very's, but at La Place des Petits Pères ;-this is all the difference! He pays twenty-two sous, instead of eight francs, for his

soup, his two dishes, his wine, and his descrt. You say the meat is bad, the wine is sour, the desert is meagre,it may be so; he does not enter into these details. His dinner is composed of the same number of dishes, and has the same appearance that it would have if he were six times as rich. This is all he knows, and with this he is perfectly contented. Does he fancy a bath to quicken his flagging pulse, and flatter himself into the belief that he is not yet what should be called aged? Do you suppose that he is to abstain from this bath because he is poor? No; he is merely to abstain from the Bains Chinois, where he would pay three francs, and go to the Bains rue Montmatre, where he has the same portion of warm water for ten "sous." Is he of an amorous propensity? He sighs not, it is impossible, in the "foyer" and the "coulisses," He repudiates from his midnight dreams the voluptuousness of the opera dancer, the "agacerie" of the actress; he seeks not his "bonne fortune" at the banker's ball, or the duchess's "conversazione”—but he inspires with his flame the fair "lampiste" opposite; or reposes more languidly in the easy arms of the fair fringemaker, whose aërian habitation is approximate to his own. Has he that incongruity of disposition which distinguished our roving forefathers, holds he in equal abomination the quiet of his "quartier" and the exercise of his legs, and is he compelled to choose either dread alternative, because to him neither horse, nor groom, nor cabriolet, appertains? Heaven forbid! neither does he call to the cabriolet or the hackney-coach on the stand, which, in the first place, would be an exertion, and the next, an extravagance. No; he abides inertly at his door, with three-pence in his hand, and the first omnibus that passes transports him from the Jardin des Plantes to the Rue de Rivoli. I said that few in Paris are rich, few poor. No workman employed gains upon an average less than about eight hundred francs per annum. Hardly any workmen, willing to work, is without employment; and the average income of each Parisian, taking one with the other, has been considered one thousand francs. On this fact reposes the equality which strikes us, and the reign of that middle class, whose dominion and whose aspect I have discribed. This income of one thousand francs, Mr. Millot has divided, and, according to his calculation the washerwoman costs the Parisian more than the schoolmaster; the new-year's gift more than the accoucheur; the theatre twice as much as the nurse; the librarian and bookseller half as much as the theatre; the bath the same as the bookseller and librarian; and the money spent in luxury and amusements, considerably more than that which is expended in the purchase of fuel, the dearest article of Parisian existence. Nor let it be thought that Parisian gaiety is owing entirely to a Parisian climate! They who are now watching the weather-glass in our land of fogз, may like to know that the Parisians themselves have, in the way of weather, something to complain of.

Paris has in the year (on an average of twenty years,) but one hundred and twenty-six days tolerably fine.

But what may not be said of these one hundred and twenty-six days! They contain the history of France. The sun shines; and behold that important personage who has so frequently decided the destiny of Paris! See him in his black and besmeared "blouse," his paper cap, and his green apron. There he is on the quais, on the Boulevards, in the Palais Royal; wherever Paris is more essentially Paris-there he is, laughing, running, shouting, idling, eating. There he is, at the fete, at the funcral, at the bridal, at the burial, above all-at the Revolu tion. Hark, as he cries " Vive la France! vive la liberté !" And he rushes on the bayonet, he jumps upon the cannon, he laughs at death-he fears nothing-but a shower of rain; and was ever found invincible until Marshal Lobau appeared against him,-with a water-engine. Such is the "gamin" of Paris, who, in common with the gods, enjoys the privilege of perpetual youth. Young at the "League," young at the "Fronde," young in 1789, young in 1830; always young and always first when there is frolic or adventure; for the character of the Parisian is the character of youth: gay, careless, brave at all ages; he is more than ever gay, and careless, and brave, when

he is young. Such is the "gamin" of Paris; and in spite of his follies and his fickleness, there is something in the rags darkened by gunpowder, in the garment torn by the sword, and pierced by the ball, that a foreigner respects.

We shall pass the description of those young men termed the lions; swaggering profligates, as disgusting in manners as they are worthless and ignorant in heart and mind, and come to that better class of students who deserve the name. The extract affords an apt specimen of the faults and affectations of style into which Mr. Bulwer is too frequently seduced by the bad example of certain modern French writers.

But let us turn from those windows, where you see light and music, and champagne, and tumult, to yon dim and learned square, overshadowed by the Sorbonne ! There, opposite the miserable building, where Rousseau dreamt of Heloise, in the arms of his "grisette," (Therese,) there is a small, but clean and neat "restaurant." The name over the door is Flekoteau-name sacred to the early dinners of the wise and eloquent of France. Enter between three and four o'clock, and take your seat at one of the small tables, the greater number of which are already occupied. To your right there is a pale young man: his long fair hair, falling loosely over his face, gives an additional wildness to the eye, which has caught a mysterious light from the midnight vigil: his clothes are clean and threadbare; his coat too short at the wrists; his trousers too short at the legs; his cravat of a rusty black, and vaguely confining two immense shirt collars, leaves his thin and angular neck almost entirely exposed. To your left is the native of the south, pale and swarthy; his long black locks, parted from his forehead, descend upon his shoulders; his lip is fringed with a slight moustache," and the semblance of a beard gives to his meditative countenance an antique and apostolic cast. Ranged round the room, with their meagre portions of meat and bread, their pale decanter of water before them, sit the students, whom a youth of poverty and privation is preparing for a life of energy or science. With them is the future-but where is the past? Come with me, reader: it is our last pilgrimage: come with me to that spot, where, unhallowed as the flame that gleams about corruption, an unnatural gaiety lives among the dead!-come with me to those tombs, fantastically arranged, where a frivolous affection miserably displays itself, in hanging an artificial garland, bought at the gate for two "sous," upon the tomb of the lover who was adored! There lie Abélard and Heloise-the monk and his mistress: how many thoughts, customs, doctrines, chances, changes, revolutions, in that sepulchre ! There is Massena, General of the Empire-Foy, statesman of the Restoration; for yonder cemetery, opened only twenty years ago, already contains two dynasties. But pass through the crowd of pyramids, obelisks, mounds, columns, that surround you on either side; turn from the tombs that are yet fresh, and look down from yonder elevation on the monuments that mingle ages!-what a mass of history is there! Behold the ruins of that palace, built for the modern King of Rome! Behold the church of Saint Louis, the statue of Bonaparte! Look for the site of the Temple of Jupiter!-for the house of Ninon de l'Enclos!-for the apartment of Danton-the palace of Richelieu! It is time that gives a magnificence to vastness: it is memory that gives a venerability to age.

In a note which should have formed part of the text, Mr. Bulwer has given a soberer, and, perhaps, more correct account of those hopes of their country,-the future men of la jeune

France.

It is thus that the boy, taking with superior energy the universal direction, never fails to be at the head of every Parisian movement.

66

In

Neither are all students so serious and so learned as I presume my students to be. Many who go to the "Ecole de Droit," merely fulfil a certain form, and visit their college as we do our university, without much intention of benefiting by the instructions they receive there. These are chiefly the young men of wealthy families. Their allowance from four hundred to eight hundred francs a month, enables them to lead an idle and joyous kind of life. There is a "café" at the corner of the Rue de l'Odeon, famous for the pretty lady at the counter, where they usually breakfast, and occupy two or three hours in the morning in eating, reading the newspapers, and making love. In the evening they cross the water, dine in the Palais Royal, and frequently treat themselves to the theatre. The vacant time not thus disposed of, is occupied in smoking, talking, (still a favourite amusement of the French,) and reading the light works of the day, which fill the innumerable "salons litéraires," or circulating libraries, in that part of Paris where the schools are situated. This indeed is a circumstance worth remarking; no young Frenchman is ever completely idle, completely illiterate, and completely uninformed. our universities the great mass of those who are called gay men,' in contradiction to "reading men," the great mass of these never open a book, never take up a newspaper, never read three lines even of Byron or Walter Scott, or the most popular living authors of the day; they hunt, they shoot, and drive; or if they cannot afford the reality of these amusements, they gratify themselves with the shadow, and are to be seen smoking in a shooting-jacket, or lounging in the livery stables, or leaning out of the windows and flourishing a tandemwhip. The theatre, which would have afforded this set of scholars some resource and some education, is peremptorily forbidden, though it would be easy, by proper regulations, to obtain in it a means for elevating the taste, and giving a literary turn to the mind of many who are otherwise inaccessible to instruction or improvement. In Paris the most idle of these gay men I have been describing, have a certain elegance of taste and love of letters. They read, they admire, they frequently worship the popular genius of the time, and youth is not passed without producing some of those elevating and poetic emotions which ennoble the after-passages of life. But to few of the students is literature merely an amusement, few are the idle and jovial possessors of three or four hundred francs a month. The medical students, more particularly those born of poor parents, and struggling expressly for a profession, are frequently in a state of almost absolute destitution, and forty, fifty, and sixty francs a-month is the allowance of many of these, young men, who have lodging, food, and fire, and clothing to procure as they can out of this pittance; bad living, unhealthy air, and hard study, produce a frightful proportion of deaths amongst these unhappy youths. only comfort and consolation which their misery receives is at the hands of the grisette." This friend, an honest, though perhaps too indulgent personage, who has no parallel in our society, is the student's beneficent genius. Between the "grisette" and the student, there exists a species of fraternity: they lodge frequently in the same house. If the student be ill, the grisette attends him; if the student's linen be out of repair, which happens frequently, the "grisette" mends it for him. The student, in his turn, protects the "grisette," gives her his arm on a Sunday in the Luxembourg, or pays the necessary penny, and conducts her across the bridge. Equally poor, equally in need of kindness and protection, brought together by their mutual wants, they form naturally and immediately a new link in society.

The

Our author has omitted to tell us what becomes of the too susceptible and really kind grisette, when the object of her attentions has outgrown her affectionate ministrations, and what changes happen to both, when those temporary ties are severed, and both are fused down into the mass of society. Does the student become a grave, married, respectable physician,-the grisette a

bride of the order of St. Jacques? We order these things better in England.

Mr. Bulwer believes that the French people have lost much of the grace and polish of life, and the suavity of manner which distinguished their forefathers under the Grande Monarque and his successors, together with the blessings of the game laws, the gabelle, and the Bastille. Sterne would now look in vain for his high-bred monk. "The small sweet courtesies of life" have been jostled away in the tumults of Revolution, and our author imagines the French people now less polite than the English, but also infinitely less obsequious.

If you go to Boivin's, or if you go to Howel's and James's, with what politeness, with what celerity, with what respect your orders are received, at the great man's of Waterloo Place-with what an easy "nonchalence" you are treated in the Rue de la Paix! All this is quite true; but there are things more shocking than all this. I know a gentleman who called, the other day, on a French lady of his acquaintance, who was under the hands of her "coiffeur." The artist of the hair was there, armed cap-a-pie, in all the glories of National-Guardism, brandishing his comb with the grace and the dexterity with which he would have wielded a sword, and recounting, during the operation of the toilette, now a story of "Monsieur son Capitaine," now an anecdote, equally interesting, of "Monsieur son Colonel," now a tale of "Monsieur son Roi, that excellent man, on whom he was going to mount guard that very evening." My unhappy friend's face still bore the most awful aspect of dismay, as he told his story. "By G-d, there's a country for you!" said he;" can property be safe for a moment in such a country? There can be no religion, no morality, with such manners-I shall order post-horses immediately."

Mrs. Trollope might insert this anecdote of a polite people among her American adventures, and not find it out of place.

The regular old Joe Miller, for it is one-with which our next extract commences, somewhat shakes our faith in Mr. Bulwer's disparaging estimate of certain British qualities.

Lady D. was going to Scotland: a violent storm arose. Her ladyship was calmly dressing her hair, when the steward knocked at the cabin door. "My lady," said the man, "I think it right to tell you there is every chance of our being drowned." "Do not talk to me, you impertinent fellow, about drowning," said her aristocratical ladyship, perfectly unmoved; "that's the captain's business, and not mine."

Our great idea of civility is, that the person who is poor should be exceedingly civil to the person who is wealthy and this is the difference between the neighbouring nations. Your Frenchman admits no one to be quite his equal-your Englishman worships every one richer than himself as undeniably his superior. Judge us from our servants and our shopkeepers, it is true we are the politest people in the world. The servants, who are paid well, and the shopkeepers, who sell high, serape, and cringe, and smile. There is no country where those who have wealth are treated so politely by those to whom it goes; but at the same time there is no country where those who are well off live on such cold, and suspicious, and illnatured, and uncivil terms among themselves.

The rich man who travels in France murmurs at every nn and at every shop; not only is he treated not better for being a rich man-he is treated worse in many places, from the idea, that because he is rich he is likely to give himself airs. But if the lower classes are more rude to the higher classes than with us, the higher classes in France are far less rude to one another. The dandy who did not look at an old acquaintance, or who looked impertinently at a stranger, would have his nose pulled, and

his body run through with a small sword, or damaged by a pistol bullet, before the evening were well over. Where every man wishes to be higher than he is, there you find people insolent to their fellows, and exacting obsequiousness from their inferiors.

That most important topic-when treating of France-Gallantry, obtains, as it deserves, a chapter to itself, and is thus managed :

There is a small piece now acting at one of the minor theatres called "Pourquoi." It is very popular; every body goes to see it, and says, "It is so true.' " What tale lies hid under this mysterious title ?

There are two married friends living together. The wife of one is charming, always ready to obey and oblige, her husband's will is her law. Nothing puts her out of humour. This couple live on the best of terms, and the husband is as happy as husband can desire to be.Now for the other pair! Here is continual wrangling and dispute. The wife will have her own way in the merest trifles as on the gravest matters-storms when contradicted, still tosses her head when humoured. In short, nothing can be so disagreeable as this good lady is to her grumbling but submissive helpmate. Happiness and misery were never to all appearances brought more face to face than in these two domestic establishments. "Why" is one wife such a picture of good nature and submission? "Why" is the other such a detestable shrew? This is the pourquoi.

The spouse whom you shrink from in such justifiable terror is as faithful as woman can be. The spouse whom you cling to as such a pillow of comfort, is an intriguing hussey.

Hear, oh! ye French husbands! you must not expect your wives to have at the same time chastity and good temper: the qualities are incompatible. Your eyes must be picked out, or horns on your heads must grow. This is the farce which is "so popular." This is the picture of manners which people call "so true."

This, we apprehend, is more pointed than just. There is more truth in what follows; and yet, recurring to the continual histories found in the French newspapers, of young persons crossed in their "course of true love," expiring in couples over the fumes of a pan of charcoal, and from what we gather from the statistics of suicide, placed before us by Mr. Bulwer himself, we cannot imagine love so slight and frivolous a passion, even in Paris, as it is here represented.

"There is nothing of passion in it-never expect a folly! Not one lady in a hundred would quit the husband she deceives for the lover whom (soi-disant) she adores. As to the gentlemen-I remember a case the other day:-Madame de hating her husband

rather more than is usual to hate a husband, or liking her lover rather better than it is usual to like a lover, proposed an elopement. The lover, when able to recover from the astonishment into which he was thrown by so startling and singular a proposition-having, moreover, satisfied himself that his mistress was really in earnestput on a more serious aspect than usual.

"Your husband is, as you know, ma chère," said he, my best friend. I will live with you and love you as long as you like, under his roof-that is no breach of friendship; but I cannot do M. de so cruel and unfriendly a thing as to run away with you." In Italy love is fierce, passionate, impregnated with the sun; in England, as in Germany, love is sentimental, ideal. It is not the offspring of the heart, but of the imagination. A poet on the banks of the Rhine is irresistible-a lord on the banks of the Thames is the same. The lord indeed is a kind of a poet-a hallowed and mystic being, to a people who are always dreaming of lords, and scheming to be ladies. The world of fancy to British dames and dam. sels is the world of fashion: Almack's and Devonshire House are the "fata morgana" of the proudest and the

This is a fact.

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