assembled in the evening, and dancing on the damp ground with an air of perfect enjoyment and hilarity. At various stages of our journey we were pestered with applications from commissionaires, as they are termed, soliciting a preference for different inns on the road, and enforcing their respective recommendations with all the eloquence they could muster. One thrust a printed card into our hands, which kindly reminded us that Abbeville was Sterne's favourite town: another claimed the same distinction for Montreuil, adding, with a gracious and self-satisfied look, that he had had the pleasure of perusing his Sentimental Journey; but when we ventured in consequence to address him in English, he explained to us that he had read it in a French translation. A mounted supplicant of this sort followed us for two stages, and we only escaped him at last by knocking up his horse. The sight of an English carriage entering a town drew half a dozen fresh solicitants, tossing their cards in at the window, and we wondered what could be the cause of this vehement competition, till we had paid one or two of the bills, when we discovered that the charges for the most trifling refreshment made it well worth their while to employ a commissionaire. July 3.-Left Abbeville, after being detained two hours for horses, owing to our having omitted to order them the night before. This is one of the evils of the posting being a royal monopoly; and its miserable and defective appointment is another, for individual competition would soon explode all the antiquated and cumbersome apparatus now used, resembling the appendages of a Caffrarian wagon, and substitute something less unworthy "the great nation." Some of the stages have already been a little approximated to the English style, which they are still immeasurably behind, and nothing can be conceived more unwieldy and barbarous than the vehicles by which the mail is conveyed. The clumsiness of the whole contrivance, added to the jack-boots and fantastical dress of the postillions, and the wild shaggy look of the horses employed, present a tout-ensemble so singularly grotesque, that one can hardly believe the parties to be in earnest, or that the inscription "Celerifères," and "Carriage for the expedition of the royal mails," can be any thing but a burlesque, got up as a hoax upon travellers. The wonder is, that with such means and machines they should make the progress they do. In posting we averaged about five and a half English miles an hour, including stoppages, which were by no means short when we changed horses, the postillions moving with a most provoking deliberation, and frequently delaying to chat together before they started. It was obvious that time was no longer estimated by any class as it is among their commercial neighbours. It is stated in Espriella's letters, that a pastry-cook in one of the great thoroughfares of London obtained an additional sale, to a considerable extent, by leaving a window open to the street, which instantly ceased when it was shut; so many people in that busy metropolis would toss down a passing penny, who would not spare themselves a minute for entering the shop. No difference would ever be perceived in Paris. July 4.-Arrived at Beauvais, whose houses, still more grotesque and antiquated than any we had yet encountered, seemed only waiting for a decent excuse to fall down and die of old age. No new ones appeared to be building in any direction; and we more than once contrasted this stagnation with the perpetual enlargement and alteration of London, but we must not too hastily receive this activity as an indication of prosperity or increasing population. From the slightness of its construction an English house soon becomes superannuated, and must of necessity be rebuilt; a French one will outlast half a dozen generations of the flimsy edifices that spring up around our suburbs like mushrooms, and shake all over with apprehension if a heavy carriage drives briskly past them. There is reason, too, to believe that our capital, which a French writer pronounces to be no longer a city, but a province covered with houses, is enlarged at the expense of the country towns: its disproportionate size is a derangement of the system-a disease analogous to hydrocephalus in the human frame, where the swelling of the head only indicates the disordered and weakened state of the whole body. When Rome contained seven millions of inhabitants, she already began to totter with her own overgrown weight; and when Athens attained the summit of renown in arts and arms, she did not enrol above thirty thousand free citizens. Desolation seemed to sit brooding over the few chateaus we passed, which had a most forlorn and disconsolate aspect, presenting here and there their plantations of underwood and young consumptive-looking trees, instead of the noble avenues and hoary oaks which we are accustomed to expect in England; while wild meagre grass running up to the very walls was substituted for green velvet lawns; and the ponderous outside wooden blinds, always of a dirty white colour, and always shut, imparted to the whole an uninhabited air. Some little improvement in the scenery became perceptible as we approached Paris, but the general characteristics remained unchanged; and as we passed through tracks of corn, and along deserted roads, almost up to the barriers of the capital, we looked round in vain for the innumerable sylvan cottages and tasteful villas generated by the wealth of London, which, like a mighty and exhaustless fountain not only enriches the immediate spot where it springs up, but scattering its refreshing dews on every side, fertilizes and beautifies the country for miles round. In approaching Paris we saw nothing that deserved the name of a villa;-we stepped at once, as it were, out of the silent lonely fields into a noisy and bustling capital; and if the aspect of Calais, and of the provinces through which we had hitherto passed, appeared to have carried us back two or three centuries, we seemed, upon our entrance into Paris, to have jumped forward at least as much. The rattling wheels of equipages, cabriolets, and hackney-coaches-the cries of numerous hawkers and pedlars-the denser population-the rows of shops with their handsome signs and fantastical decorations, soon convinced us that we were traversing a great and busy city; and as we passed under the noble gate of St. Denis, to the spacious Boulevards, flanked with double rows of trees, and cross ed the Place Vendome with its bronze column to our hotel in the Rue St. Honoré, beholding on every side lofty edifices of fine design, and stately streets of stone, we felt as instant a conviction that it was a gay and magnificent capital. This would be conceded under any circumstances, but the impression is rendered more vivid by contrast, and the imaginary leap of time to which I have alluded arises from comparing the antique, Gothic, battlemented, projecting wooden and brick edifices to which the traveller has been accustomed, with the modern, elegant, lofty, classical mansions of stone which he encounters at every turn in Paris. A walk on the morning after our arrival delighted us with the variety of grandeur which was accessible within the immediate vicinity of our hotel. As a piece of modern architecture, the Louvre is justly rated high, and the façade which looks up the river, with its open gallery and beautiful colonnade, is truly admirable, though it has been objected that the almost Doric plainness of the lower hardly accords with the rich Corinthian of the upper part. In the Place Carousal stands the arch built by Napoleon, formerly surmounted by the celebrated Venetian horses; but it is every way unworthy the majestic objects by which it is surrounded. Here, as elsewhere, our eyes were offended with the sombre effect produced by the closed shutters or blinds of the building; but they were not much recreated by the few that were left open, for the coarse quality and dirty colour of the glass, as well as the clumsy construction of the frames, seemed totally inconsistent with English notions of a palace. In this species of finish the French buildings are universally defective, and a third rate tradesman in the Borough Road would be utterly ashamed of the windows with which Napoleon and the Bourbons have contented themselves. So much do our notions of luxury depend upon habit and association. For the present we had not leisure to feast our eyes with the treasures of art deposited in the halls and saloons of the Louvre, but passed through the spacious but antiquated Thuileries, on the centre of whose lofty roof the white flag was flouting the sky, into the front gardens, with their numerous marble statues, formal parterres of flowers, circular fountains and stone basins for gold and silver fish and swans, clipped avenues, rectilinear plantations of chesnut and lime, and regularly distributed boxes of orange, pomegranate, oleander, and rose laurel trees, all trained by tonsure into a circular form. This I found less offensive to the eye than I had anticipated, and though I would never defend verdant sculpture, and the introduction of peacocks, pyramids, and griffins of evergreen, yet I cannot help thinking, that, with certain limitations, the French style may be very appropriate in the immediate precincts of such a palace as this. Statues and architectural decorations evince that we are still within the verge of the court;-it would be too sudden a transition to emerge all at once from the most elaborate triumphs of art to the blankness of unassisted Nature. The hand of man should still be rendered perceptible, until, as we recede from the scene of its exertion, we relapse gradually into the unadorned scenery of the country. As far as was practicable, this has been realized at the Thuileries. A succession of noble gateways, entrances, and terraces, surmounted by bold statues and marble horses that appear to be leaping into the air, conduct you through the beautiful Place Louis Quinze, affording a fine view of the Palace of the Deputies and other handsome buildings, until you find yourself on the broad, far-extending, and well-planted causeway, which leads to the Champs Elysées, the avenue of Neuilly, and the triumphal arch which crowns the hill and closes the view. This is assuredly a noble assemblage of objects, to which the clearness of the sky, and freshness of the vegetation, gave full effect; and as I had been reading Ariosto in the morning, I could almost imagine that I beheld a realization of some of his descriptions. Retracing our steps, we crossed over to the Palais Royal, another vast piece of architecture, forming an oblong square, whose enclosure, of about six acres, is laid out in parterres, and formal rows of trees, with a jet d'eau in the centre; while the whole of its lower arcade is divided into innumerable shops, and its upper stories, as well as subterranean abodes, devoted to all imaginable purposes of business, amusement, and profligacy. As I recalled the fate of its first owner, recollections of the various scenes which had been enacted on the spot where I was standing crowded into my mind; but we had no time to indulge them, even if the succession of new objects would have permitted reflection, for we proceeded to inspect the brazen column in the Place Vendome. In its effect, when contemplated at a little distance, I was much disappointed. Its proportions are not majestic; the reliefs, with which it is encrusted, roughen its outline, and give it the appearance of a huge trunk of a tree; the eagles at the bottom are sparrows; the gallery at the top is a miserable tin-looking affair, and the summit, which is conical, but should certainly have been flat, forms a very unsatisfactory finish, not improved by the dirty white flag that crowns it. Napoleon's statue, fifteen feet high, was doubtless a handsomer termination; but nothing could ever have enabled it to bear a comparison with our Monument, the most beautiful piece of architecture in London, though nearly invisible from its unfortunate position. Columns on this large scale must always have a heavy effect if they be not fluted, and the dingy colour of that in the Place Vendome aggravates this tendency. I am aware that in that case the elaborate basso-relievo must have been sacrificed, (which, however, is already unintelligible except in the circles immediately above the base;) and that the example of Trajan's column may be pleaded; but this is a question of taste and opinion, not of precedent. On approaching it, the defects become less obvious and the merits more so; for, independently of the value of the material and the historical associations which it awakens, the workmanship on the plinth, and as far up the shaft as it can be distinctly followed, is exquisitely delicate and spirited, though we may doubt the good taste of the hussarboots and jackets which have been so liberally introduced upon the former. I was assured, that, in order to prove its stability at the time of its completion, a rope was carried from its summit to the Rue de la Paix, and that twelve stout horses could not displace a fragment of the consolidated mass. It is impossible not to attach a profound interest to this monument, when we reflect, that from its durability it will probably carry down to the remotest ages the name and exploits of the extraordinary man by whom it was erected, and prove, when we and many generations to succeed us shall have perished and become forgotten, the same source of inquiry and admiration to races yet unborn, that Trajan's pillar now is to us. Nor is it easy to forget the terrific scenes in which the materials we behold were once such fatal actors, in the form of cannon; but, as the representations of the victories in which they were taken, are seen winding spirally up the thickly-embossed shaft before us, we can almost fancy that we hear the roar of their brazen mouths, vomiting out fire and thunder; while through the dust and smoke we discover waving banners and gleaming swords, and catch the neighing of steeds, the groans of the wounded, and the deafening shouts of victory. Such are the associations this trophy appears to awaken in the minds of the French, and they are proud of it, in proportion as they are blind votaries of the false glory which it illustrates. The most common engraving exhibited on the Boulevards and the different walls of Paris, is a representation of this pillar, with the inscription" Ah! who is not proud of being a Frenchman, when he beholds this column ?"-while a youth is delineated in a heroic attitude swearing to conquer or die at its foot. With a self-satisfied inconsistency peculiar to this country, one of the warriors is holding the white flag at the base, and the same irrefragable evidence of the futility of all their conquests is seen waving at top.-A ramble on the Boulevards afforded us the same subject of delight with which we had been struck in the gardens of the Thuileries,-fresh and verdant vegetation, as well as beautiful flowers, in the very heart of the city, forming a pleasing contrast to the dingy leaves and sickly aspect of the London gardens: and wherever we could get a view of any extent, sharp and distinctly-defined masses of stonebuildings stood out in the clear atmosphere, with a lucid effect never to be observed in our smoky metropolis. Having seen in the course of a short morning's walk a richer assemblage of palaces, gardens, statues, magnificent hotels, noble streets of stone, and extensive avenues of trees, than we could have viewed in the whole circuit of London, we returned to our hotel profoundly impressed with the grandeur of what we had witnessed, and anticipating not less delight from the vast portion of the city which yet remained unexplored. SONG. Love, like the butterfly, takes wing, But friendship has the ivy's truth, And closer twines when tempests lour: It takes its root in early youth, And blossoms in life's latest hour. P. H. |