University of Virginia Library

SKETCHES IN PARIS IN 1825:
FROM THE TRAVELLING NOTE-BOOK OF
GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
THE PARISIAN HOTEL.

A great hotel in Paris is a street set on end: the grand stair-case
is the highway, and every floor or apartment a separate habitation.
The one in which I am lodged may serve as a specimen.
It is a large quadrangular pile, built round a spacious paved
court. The ground floor is occupied by shops, magazines, and domestic
offices. Then comes the entre-sol, with low ceilings, short
windows, and dwarf chambers; then succeed a succession of
floors, or stories, rising one above the other, to the number of
Mahomet's heavens. Each floor is a mansion, complete within
itself, with ante-chamber, saloons, dining and sleeping rooms, kitchen
and other conveniences. Some floors are divided into two
or more suites of apartments. Each apartment has its main door
of entrance, opening upon the staircase, or landing-places, and
locked like a street door. Thus several families and numerous
single persons live under the same roof, totally independent of
each other, and may live so for years, without holding more intercourse

than is kept up in other cities by residents in the same
street.

Like the great world, this little microcosm has its gradations
of rank and style and importance. The Premier, or first floor
with its grand saloons, lofty ceilings, and splendid furniture, is
decidedly the aristocratical part of the establishment. The second
floor is scarcely less aristocratical and magnificent; the other
floors go on lessening in splendor as they gain in altitude, and
end with the attics, the region of petty tailors, clerks, and sewing
girls. To make the filling up of the mansion complete, every odd
nook and corner is fitted up as a joli petit appartement à garcon,
(a pretty little bachelor's apartment,) that is to say, some little
dark inconvenient nestling-place for a poor devil of a bachelor.

The whole domain is shut up from the street by a great porte-cochère,
or portal, calculated for the admission of carriages. This
consists of two massy folding doors, that swing heavily open upon
a spacious entrance, passing under the front of the edifice into the
court-yard. On one side is a grand staircase leading to the
upper apartments. Immediately without the portal, is the porter's
lodge, a small room with one or two bedrooms adjacent, for
the accommodation of the concierge, or porter, and his family.
This is one of the most important functionaries of the hotel. He
is, in fact, the Cerberus of the establishment, and no one can pass
in or out without his knowledge and consent. The porte-cochère
in general is fastened by a sliding bolt, from which a cord or wire
passes into the porter's lodge. Whoever wishes to go out must
speak to the porter, who draws the bolt. A visitor from without
gives a single rap with the massive knocker; the bolt is immediately
drawn, as if by an invisible hand; the door stands ajar,

the visitor pushes it open, and enters. A face presents itself at
the glass door of the porter's little chamber: the stranger pronounces
the name of the person he comes to seek. If the person
or family is of importance, occupying the first or second floor, the
porter sounds a bell once or twice, to give notice that a visitor is
at hand. The stranger in the mean time ascends the great stair-case,
the highway common to all, and arrives at the outer door,
equivalent to a street door, of the suite of rooms inhabited by
his friends. Beside this hangs a bell-cord, with which he rings
for admittance.

When the family or person inquired for is of less importance,
or lives in some remote part of the mansion less easy to be apprised,
no signal is given. The applicant pronounces the name
at the porter's door, and is told, “Montez au troisième, au quatrième;
sonnez à la porte à droite, ou à gauche;” (“Ascend
to the third or fourth story; ring the bell on the right or left
hand door,”) as the case may be.

The porter and his wife act as domestics to such of the inmates
of the mansion as do not keep servants; making their beds,
arranging their rooms, lighting their fires, and doing other menial
offices, for which they receive a monthly stipend. They are also
in confidential intercourse with the servants of the other inmates,
and, having an eye on all the incomers and outgoers, are thus
enabled, by hook and by crook, to learn the secrets and the domestic
history of every member of the little territory within the
porte-cochère.

The porter's lodge is accordingly a great scene of gossip,
where all the private affairs of this interior neighborhood are discussed.
The court-yard, also, is an assembling place in the evenings
for the servants of the different families, and a sisterhood of

sewing girls from the entre-sols and the attics, to play at various
games, and dance to the music of their own songs, and the echoes
of their feet; at which assemblages the porter's daughter takes
the lead; a fresh, pretty, buxom girl, generally called “La Petite,”
though almost as tall as a grenadier. These little evening
gatherings, so characteristic of this gay country, are countenanced
by the various families of the mansion, who often look down
from their windows and balconies, on moonlight evenings, and
enjoy the simple revels of their domestics. I must observe, however,
that the hotel I am describing is rather a quiet, retired one,
where most of the inmates are permanent residents from year to
year, so that there is more of the spirit of neighborhood, than in
the bustling, fashionable hotels in the gay parts of Paris, which
are continually changing their inhabitants.

MY FRENCH NEIGHBOR.

I often amuse myself by watching from my window (which by
the by is tolerably elevated) the movements of the teeming little
world below me; and as I am on sociable terms with the porter
and his wife, I gather from them, as they light my fire, or serve
my breakfast, anecdotes of all my fellow-lodgers. I have been
somewhat curious in studying a little antique Frenchman, who occupies
one of the jolie chambres à garçon already mentioned. He
is one of those superannuated veterans who flourished before the
revolution, and have weathered all the storms of Paris, in consequence,
very probably, of being fortunately too insignificant to attract
attention. He has a small income, which he manages with
the skill of a French economist: appropriating so much for his

lodgings, so much for his meals, so much for his visits to St.
Cloud and Versailles, and so much for his seat at the theatre. He
has resided at the hotel for years, and always in the same chamber,
which he furnishes at his own expense. The decorations of
the room mark his various ages. There are some gallant pictures,
which he hung up in his younger days, with a portrait of a
lady of rank, whom he speaks tenderly of, dressed in the old
French taste, and a pretty opera dancer, pirouetting in a hoop
petticoat, who lately died at a good old age. In a corner of this
picture is stuck a prescription for rheumatism, and below it stands
an easy-chair. He has a small parrot at the window, to amuse
him when within doors, and a pug-dog to accompany him in his
daily peregrinations. While I am writing, he is crossing the
court to go out. He is attired in his best coat, of sky-blue, and
is doubtless bound for the Tuileries. His hair is dressed in the
old style, with powdered ear-locks and a pigtail. His little dog
trips after him, sometimes on four legs, sometimes on three, and
looking as if his leather small-clothes were too tight for him.
Now the old gentleman stops to have a word with an old crony
who lives in the entre-sol, and is just returning from his promenade.
Now they take a pinch of snuff together; now they pull
out huge red cotton handkerchiefs, (those “flags of abomination,”
as they have well been called,) and blow their noses most sonorously.
Now they turn to make remarks upon their two little
dogs, who are exchanging the morning's salutation; now they
part, and my old gentleman stops to have a passing word with
the porter's wife: and now he sallies forth, and is fairly launched
upon the town for the day.

No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so
scrupulous in measuring and portioning out his time as he whose

time is worth nothing. The old gentleman in question has his
exact hour for rising, and for shaving himself by a small mirror
hung against his casement. He sallies forth at a certain hour
every morning, to take his cup of coffee and his roll at a certain
café, where he reads the papers. He has been a regular admirer
of the lady who presides at the bar, and always stops to have a
little badinage with her, en passant. He has his regular walks
on the Boulevards and in the Palais Royal, where he sets his
watch by the petard fired off by the sun at mid-day. He has his
daily resort in the Garden of the Tuileries, to meet with a knot
of veteran idlers like himself, who talk on pretty much the same
subjects whenever they meet. He has been present at all the
sights and shows and rejoicings of Paris for the last fifty years;
has witnessed the great events of the revolution; the guillotining
of the king and queen; the coronation of Bonaparte; the capture
of Paris, and the restoration of the Bourbons. All these he speaks
of with the coolness of a theatrical critic; and I question whether
he has not been gratified by each in its turn; not from any inherent
love of tumult, but from that insatiable appetite for spectacle,
which prevails among the inhabitants of this metropolis. I
have been amused with a farce, in which one of these systematic
old triflers is represented. He sings a song detailing his whole
day's round of insignificant occupations, and goes to bed delighted
with the idea that his next day will be an exact repetition
of the same routine:

THE ENGLISHMAN AT PARIS.

In another part of the hotel, a handsome suite of rooms is occupied
by an old English gentleman, of great probity, some understanding,
and very considerable crustiness, who has come to
France to live economically. He has a very fair property, but
his wife, being of that blessed kind compared in Scripture to the
fruitful vine, has overwhelmed him with a family of buxom
daughters, who hang clustering about him, ready to be gathered
by any hand. He is seldom to be seen in public, without one
hanging on each arm, and smiling on all the world, while his own
mouth is drawn down at each corner like a mastiff's, with internal
growling at every thing about him. He adheres rigidly to English
fashion in dress, and trudges about in long gaiters and broad-brimmed
hat; while his daughters almost overshadow him with
feathers, flowers, and French bonnets.

He contrives to keep up an atmosphere of English habits,
opinions, and prejudices, and to carry a semblance of London into
the very heart of Paris. His mornings are spent at Galignani's
newsroom, where he forms one of a knot of inveterate quid-nuncs,
who read the same articles over a dozen times in a dozen different
papers. He generally dines in company with some of his own countrymen,
and they have what is called a “comfortable sitting,” after
dinner, in the English fashion, drinking wine, discussing the news
of the London papers, and canvassing the French character, the
French metropolis, and the French revolution, ending with a unanimous
admission of English courage, English morality, English

cookery, English wealth, the magnitude of London, and the
ingratitude of the French.

His evenings are chiefly spent at a club of his countrymen,
where the London papers are taken. Sometimes his daughters
entice him to the theatres, but not often. He abuses French
tragedy, as all fustian and bombast, Talma as a ranter, and Duchesnois
as a mere termagant. It is true his ear is not sufficiently
familiar with the language to understand French verse, and he
generally goes to sleep during the performance. The wit of the
French comedy is flat and pointless to him. He would not give
one of Munden's wry faces, or Liston's inexpressible looks, for
the whole of it.

He will not admit that Paris has any advantage over London.
The Seine is a muddy rivulet in comparison with the Thames;
the West End of London surpasses the finest parts of the French
capital; and on some one's observing that there was a very thick
fog out of doors: “Pish!” said he, crustily, “it's nothing to the
fogs we have in London!”

He has infinite trouble in bringing his table into any thing
like conformity to English rule. With his liquors, it is true, he
is tolerably successful. He procures London porter, and a stock
of port and sherry, at considerable expense; for he observes that
he cannot stand those cursed thin French wines: they dilute his
blood so much as to give him the rheumatism. As to their white
wines, he stigmatizes them as mere substitutes for cider; and as
to claret, why “it would be port if it could.” He has continual
quarrels with his French cook, whom he renders wretched by insisting
on his conforming to Mrs. Glass; for it is easier to convert
a Frenchman from his religion than his cookery. The poor

fellow, by dint of repeated efforts, once brought himself to
serve up ros bif sufficiently raw to suit what he considered the
cannibal taste of his master; but then he could not refrain, at the
last moment, adding some exquisite sauce, that put the old
gentleman in a fury.

He detests wood-fires, and has procured a quantity of coal;
but not having a grate, he is obliged to burn it on the hearth.
Here he sits poking and stirring the fire with one end of a tongs,
while the room is as murky as a smithy; railing at French chimneys,
French masons, and French architects; giving a poke, at
the end of every sentence, as though he were stirring up the very
bowels of the delinquents he is anathematizing. He lives in a
state militant with inanimate objects around him; gets into high
dudgeon with doors and casements, because they will not come
under English law, and has implacable feuds with sundry refractory
pieces of furniture. Among these is one in particular with
which he is sure to have a high quarrel every time he goes to
dress. It is a commode, one of those smooth, polished, plausible
pieces of French furniture, that have the perversity of five hundred
devils. Each drawer has a will of its own; will open or not,
just as the whim takes it, and sets lock and key at defiance.
Sometimes a drawer will refuse to yield to either persuasion or
force, and will part with both handles rather than yield; another
will come out in the most coy and coquettish manner imaginable;
elbowing along, zigzag; one corner retreating as the other advances,
making a thousand difficulties and objections at every
move; until the old gentleman, out of all patience, gives a sudden
jerk, and brings drawer and contents into the middle of the floor.
His hostility to this unlucky piece of furniture increases every

day, as if incensed that it does not grow better. He is like the
fretful invalid, who cursed his bed, that the longer he lay, the
harder it grew. The only benefit he has derived from the quarrel
is, that it has furnished him with a crusty joke, which he utters
on all occasions. He swears that a French commode is the most
incommodious thing in existence, and that although the nation
cannot make a joint-stool that will stand steady, yet they are
always talking of every thing's being perfectionée.

His servants understand his humor, and avail themselves of
it. He was one day disturbed by a pertinacious rattling and
shaking at one of the doors, and bawled out in an angry tone to
know the cause of the disturbance. “Sir,” said the footman,
testily, “it's this confounded French lock!” “Ah!” said the old
gentleman, pacified by this hit at the nation, “I thought there
was something French at the bottom of it!”

ENGLISH AND FRENCH CHARACTER.

As I am a mere looker-on in Europe, and hold myself as much
as possible aloof from its quarrels and prejudices, I feel something
like one overlooking a game, who, without any great skill of his
own, can occasionally perceive the blunders of much abler players.
This neutrality of feeling enables me to enjoy the contrasts of
character presented in this time of general peace; when the various
people of Europe, who have so long been sundered by wars, are
brought together, and placed side by side in this great gathering
place of nations. No greater contrast, however, is exhibited, than
that of the French and English. The peace has deluged this gay
capital with English visitors, of all ranks and conditions. They

throng every place of curiosity and amusement; fill the public
gardens, the galleries, the cafés, saloons, theatres; always herding
together, never associating with the French. The two nations
are like two threads of different colors, tangled together, but
never blended.

In fact, they present a continual antithesis, and seem to value
themselves upon being unlike each other; yet each have their
peculiar merits, which should entitle them to each other's esteem.
The French intellect is quick and active, It flashes its way into
a subject with the rapidity of lightning; seizes upon remote conclusions
with a sudden bound, and its deductions are almost intuitive.
The English intellect is less rapid, but more persevering;
less sudden, but more sure in its deductions. The quickness and
mobility of the French enable them to find enjoyment in the multiplicity
of sensations. They speak and act more from immediate
impressions than from reflection and meditation. They are therefore
more social and communicative; more fond of society, and of
places of public resort and amusement. An Englishman is more
reflective in his habits. He lives in the world of his own thoughts,
and seems more self-existent and self-dependent. He loves the
quiet of his own apartment; even when abroad, he in a manner
makes a little solitude around him, by his silence and reserve:
he moves about shy and solitary, and as it were, buttoned up,
body and soul.

The French are great optimists: they seize upon every good
as it flies, and revel in the passing pleasure. The Englishman is
too apt to neglect the present good, in preparing against the possible
evil. However adversities may lower, let the sun shine but
for a moment, and forth sallies the mercurial Frenchman, in holiday

dress and holiday spirits, gay as a butterfly, as though his
sunshine were perpetual; but let the sun beam never so brightly,
so there be but a cloud in the horizon, the wary Englishman ventures
forth distrustfully, with his umbrella in his hand.

The Frenchman has a wonderful facility at turning small
things to advantage. No one can be gay and luxurious on smaller
means; no one requires less expense to be happy. He practises
a kind of gilding in his style of living, and hammers out
every guinea into gold leaf. The Englishman, on the contrary,
is expensive in his habits, and expensive in his enjoyments. He
values every thing, whether useful or ornamental, by what it
costs. He has no satisfaction in show, unless it be solid and complete.
Every thing goes with him by the square foot. Whatever
display he makes, the depth is sure to equal the surface.

The Frenchman's habitation, like himself, is open, cheerful,
bustling, and noisy. He lives in a part of a great hotel, with wide
portal, paved court, a spacious dirty stone staircase, and a family
on every floor. All is clatter and chatter. He is good-humored
and talkative with his servants, sociable with his neighbors, and
complaisant to all the world. Any body has access to himself
and his apartments; his very bedroom is open to visitors, whatever
may be its state of confusion; and all this not from any peculiarly
hospitable feeling, but from that communicative habit
which predominates over his character.

The Englishman, on the contrary, ensconces himself in a snug
brick mansion, which he has all to himself; locks the front door;
puts broken bottles along his walls, and spring-guns and man-traps
in his gardens; shrouds himself with trees and window-curtains;
exults in his quiet and privacy, and seems disposed to keep out

noise, daylight, and company. His house, like himself, has a
reserved, inhospitable exterior; yet whoever gains admittance, is
apt to find a warm heart and warm fireside within.

The French excel in wit; the English in humor: the French
have gayer fancy, the English richer imaginations. The former
are full of sensibility; easily moved, and prone to sudden and
great excitement; but their excitement is not durable: the English
are more phlegmatic; not so readily affected; but capable of
being aroused to great enthusiasm. The faults of these opposite
temperaments are, that the vivacity of the French is apt to sparkle
up and be frothy, the gravity of the English to settle down and
grow muddy. When the two characters can be fixed in a medium,
the French kept from effervescence and the English from stagnation,
both will be found excellent.

This contrast of character may also be noticed in the great
concerns of the two nations. The ardent Frenchman is all for
military renown: he fights for glory, that is to say, for success
in arms. For, provided the national flag be victorious, he cares
little about the expense, the injustice, or the inutility of the war.
It is wonderful how the poorest Frenchman will revel on a triumphant
bulletin; a great victory is meat and drink to him; and at
the sight of a military sovereign, bringing home captured cannon
and captured standards, he throws up his greasy cap in the air,
and is ready to jump out of his wooden shoes for joy.

John Bull, on the contrary, is a reasoning, considerate person.
If he does wrong, it is in the most rational way imaginable. He
fights because the good of the world requires it. He is a moral
person, and makes war upon his neighbor for the maintenance
of peace and good order, and sound principles. He is a money-making

personage, and fights for the prosperity of commerce and
manufactures. Thus the two nations have been fighting, time
out of mind, for glory and good. The French, in pursuit of glory,
have had their capital twice taken; and John, in pursuit of
good, has run himself over head and cars in debt.

THE TUILERIES AND WINDSOR CASTLE.

I have sometimes fancied I could discover national characteristics
in national edifices. In the Chateau of the Tuileries, for
instance, I perceive the same jumble of contrarictics that marks
the French character; the same whimsical mixture of the great
and the little; the splendid and the paltry, the sublime and the
grotesque. On visiting this famous pile, the first thing that
strikes both eye and ear, is military display. The courts glitter
with steel-clad soldiery, and resound with tramp of horse, the roll
of drum, and the bray of trumpet. Dismounted guardsmen patrol
its arcades, with loaded carbines, jingling spurs, and clanking
sabres. Gigantic grenadiers are posted about its staircases;
young officers of the guards loll from the balconies, or lounge in
groups upon the terraces: and the gleam of bayonet from window
to window, shows that sentinels are pacing up and down the corridors
and ante-chambers. The first floor is brilliant with the
splendors of a court. French taste has tasked itself in adorning
the sumptuous suites of apartments; nor are the gilded chapel and
splendid theatre forgotten, where Piety and Pleasure are next-door
neighbors, and harmonize together with perfect French bienseance.

Mingled up with all this regal and military magnificence, is a
world of whimsical and make-shift detail. A great part of the
huge edifice is cut up into little chambers and nestling-places for
retainers of the court, dependants on retainers, and hangers-on of
dependants. Some are squeezed into narrow entre-sols, those
low, dark, intermediate slices of apartments between floors, the inhabitants
of which seem shoved in edgeways, like books between
narrow shelves; others are perched, like swallows, under the
eaves; the high roofs, too, which are as tall and steep as a
French cocked hat, have rows of little dormer windows, tier
above tier, just large enough to admit light and air for some dormitory,
and to enable its occupant to peep out at the sky. Even
to the very ridge of the roof, may be seen, here and there, one of
these air-holes, with a stove-pipe beside it, to carry off the smoke
from the handful of fuel with which its weasen-faced tenant simmers
his demi-tasse of coffee.

On approaching the palace from the Pont Royal, you take in
at a glance all the various strata of inhabitants; the garreteer
in the roof; the retainer in the entre-sol; the courtiers at the
casements of the royal apartments; while on the ground-floor a
steam of savory odors, and a score or two of cooks, in white caps,
bobbing their heads about the windows, betray that scientific and
all-important laboratory, the royal kitchen.

Go into the grand ante-chamber of the royal apartments on
Sunday, and see the mixture of Old and New France: the old emigrés,
returned with the Bourbons; little withered, spindle-shanked
old noblemen, clad in court dresses, that figured in these
saloons before the revolution, and have been carefully treasured
up during their exile; with the solitaires and ailes de pigeon of

former days: and the court swords strutting out behind, like
pins stuck through dry beetles. See them haunting the scenes
of their former splendor, in hopes of a restitution of estates, like
ghosts haunting the vicinity of buried treasure: while around
them you see Young France, grown up in the fighting school of
Napoleon; equipped an militaire: tall, hardy, frank, vigorous,
sunburnt, fierce-whiskered; with tramping boots, towering crests,
and glittering breastplates.

It is incredible the number of ancient and hereditary feeders
on royalty said to be housed in this establishment. Indeed all
the royal palaces abound with noble families returned from exile,
and who have nestling-places allotted them while they await the
restoration of their estates, or the much-talked-of law, indemnity.
Some of them have fine quarters, but poor living. Some families
have but five or six hundred francs a year, and all their retinue
consists of a servant woman. With all this, they maintain their
old aristocratical hauteur, look down with vast contempt upon the
opulent families which have risen since the revolution; stigmatize
them all as parvenus, or upstarts, and refuse to visit them.

In regarding the exterior of the Tuileries, with all its outward
signs of internal populousness, I have often thought what a
rare sight it would be to see it suddenly unroofed, and all its
nooks and corners laid open to the day. It would be like turning
up the stump of an old tree, and dislodging the world of
grubs, and ants, and beetles lodged beneath. Indeed there is a
scandalous anecdote current, that in the time of one of the petty
plots, when petards were exploded under the windows of the Tuileries,
the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at
four o'clock in the morning, when a scene of the most whimsical

confusion ensued. Hosts of supernumerary inhabitants were
found foisted into the huge edifice: every rat-hole had its occupant;
and places which had been considered as tenanted only by
spiders, were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It
is added, that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering
and slamming of doors, and whisking away in night-gowns
and slippers; and several persons, who were found by accident
in their neighbors' chambers, evinced indubitable astonishment at
the circumstance.

As I have fancied I could read the French character in the
national palace of the Tuileries, so I have pictured to myself
some of the traits of John Bull in his royal abode of Windsor
Castle. The Tuileries, outwardly a peaceful palace, is in
effect a swaggering military hold; while the old castle, on the
contrary, in spite of its bullying look, is completely under petticoat
government. Every corner and nook is built up into some
snug, cosy nestling-place, some “procreant cradle,” not tenanted
by meagre expectants or whiskered warriors, but by sleek placemen;
knowing realizers of present pay and present pudding; who
seem placed there not to kill and destroy, but to breed and multiply.
Nursery maids and children shine with rosy faces at the windows,
and swarm about the courts and terraces. The very soldiery
have a pacific look, and when off duty, may be seen loitering about
the place with the nursery-maids; not making love to them in
the gay gallant style of the French soldiery, but with infinite bonhommie
aiding them to take care of the broods of children.

Though the old castle is in decay, every thing about it
thrives; the very crevices of the walls are tenanted by swallows,
rooks, and pigeons, all sure of quiet lodgment: the ivy strikes

its roots deep in the fissures, and flourishes about the mouldering
tower.[1] Thus it is with honest John: according to his own
account, he is ever going to ruin, yet every thing that lives on
him, thrives and waxes fat. He would fain be a soldier, and
swagger like his neighbors; but his domestic, quiet-loving, uxorious
nature continually gets the upper hand; and though he
may mount his helmet and gird on his sword, yet he is apt to
sink into the plodding, painstaking father of a family; with a
troop of children at his heels, and his womenkind hanging on
each arm.

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO.

I have spoken heretofore with some levity of the contrast
that exists between the English and French character; but it
deserves more serious consideration. They are the two great
nations of modern times most diametrically opposed, and most
worthy of each other's rivalry; essentially distinct in their characters,
excelling in opposite qualities, and reflecting lustre on
each other by their very opposition. In nothing is this contrast
more strikingly evinced than in their military conduct. For
ages have they been contending, and for ages have they crowded
each other's history with acts of splendid heroism. Take the
Battle of Waterloo, for instance, the last and most memorable
trial of their rival prowess. Nothing could surpass the brilliant
daring on the one side, and the steadfast enduring on the other.

The French cavalry broke like waves on the compact squares of
English infantry. They were seen galloping round those serried
walls of men, seeking in vain for an entrance; tossing their arms
in the air, in the heat of their enthusiasm, and braving the whole
front of battle. The British troops, on the other hand, forbidden
to move or fire, stood firm and enduring. Their columns
were ripped up by cannonry; whole rows were swept down at a
shot: the survivors closed their ranks, and stood firm. In this
way many columns stood through the pelting of the iron tempest
without firing a shot; without any action to stir their blood, or
excite their spirits. Death thinned their ranks, but could not
shake their souls.

A beautiful instance of the quick and generous impulses to
which the French are prone, is given in the case of a French
cavalier, in the hottest of the action, charging furiously upon a
British officer, but perceiving in the moment of assault that his
adversary had lost his sword-arm, dropping the point of his sabre,
and courteously riding on. Peace be with that generous
warrior, whatever were his fate! If he went down in the storm
of battle, with the foundering fortunes of his chieftain, may the
turf of Waterloo grow green above his grave!—and happier far
would be the fate of such a spirit, to sink amidst the tempest,
unconscious of defeat, than to survive, and mourn over the
blighted laurels of his country.

In this way the two armies fought through a long and bloody
day. The French with enthusiastic valor, the English with cool,
inflexible courage, until Fate, as if to leave the question of superiority
still undecided between two such adversaries, brought up
the Prussians to decide the fortunes of the field.

It was several years afterward, that I visited the field of
Waterloo. The ploughshare had been busy with its oblivious
labors, and the frequent harvest had nearly obliterated the vestiges
of war. Still the blackened ruins of Hoguemont stood, a
monumental pile, to mark the violence of this vehement struggle.
Its broken walls, pierced by bullets, and shattered by explosions,
showed the deadly strife that had taken place within;
when Gaul and Briton, hemmed in between narrow walls, hand
to hand and foot to foot, fought from garden to court-yard, from
court-yard to chamber, with intense and concentrated rivalship.
Columns of smoke towered from this vortex of battle as from a
volcano: “it was,” said my guide, “like a little hell upon earth.”
Not far off, two or three broad spots of rank, unwholesome green
still marked the places where these rival warriors, after their
fierce and fitful struggle, slept quietly together in the lap of their
common mother earth. Over all the rest of the field, peace had
resumed its sway. The thoughtless whistle of the peasant
floated on the air, instead of the trumpet's clangor; the team
slowly labored up the hill-side, once shaken by the hoofs of rushing
squadrons; and wide fields of corn waved peacefully over the
soldiers' grave, as summer seas dimple over the place where
the tall ship lies buried.

To the foregoing desultory notes on the French military
character, let me append a few traits which I picked up verbally
in one of the French provinces. They may have already appeared
in print, but I have never met with them.

At the breaking out of the revolution, when so many of the
old families emigrated, a descendant of the great Turenne, by
the name of De Latour D'Auvergne, refused to accompany his
relations, and entered into the republican army. He served in
all the campaigns of the revolution, distinguished himself by his
valor, his accomplishments, and his generous spirit, and might
have risen to fortune and to the highest honors. He refused,
however, all rank in the army, above that of captain, and would
receive no recompense for his achievements but a sword of honor.
Napoleon, in testimony of his merits, gave him the title of Premier
Grenadier de France (First Grenadier of France), which
was the only title he would ever bear. He was killed in Germany,
at the battle of Neuburg. To honor his memory, his
place was always retained in his regiment, as if he still occupied
it; and whenever the regiment was mustered, and the name of
De Latour D'Auvergne was called out, the reply was: “Dead
on the field of honor!”

PARIS AT THE RESTORATION.

Paris presented a singular aspect just after the downfall of
Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbons. It was filled
with a restless, roaming population; a dark, sallow race, with
fierce moustaches, black cravats, and feverish, menacing looks;
men suddenly thrown out of employ by the return of peace;
officers cut short in their career, and cast loose with scanty
means, many of them in utter indigence, upon the world; the

broken elements of armies. They haunted the places of public
resort, like restless, unhappy spirits, taking no pleasure; hanging
about, like lowering clouds that linger after a storm, and
giving a singular air of gloom to this otherwise gay metropolis.

The vaunted courtesy of the old school, the smooth urbanity
that prevailed in former days of settled government and long-established
aristocracy, had disappeared amidst the savage republicanism
of the revolution and the military furor of the empire:
recent reverses had stung the national vanity to the quick;
and English travellers, who crowded to Paris on the return of
peace, expecting to meet with a gay, good-humored, complaisant
populace, such as existed in the time of the “Sentimental Journey,”
were surprised at finding them irritable and fractious,
quick at fancying affronts, and not unapt to offer insults. They
accordingly inveighed with heat and bitterness at the rudeness
they experienced in the French metropolis: yet what better had
they to expect? Had Charles II. been reinstated in his kingdom
by the valor of French troops; had he been wheeled triumphantly
to London over the trampled bodies and trampled standards
of England's bravest sons; had a French general dictated
to the English capital, and a French army been quartered in
Hyde-Park; had Paris poured forth its motley population, and
the wealthy bourgeoisie of every French trading town swarmed to
London; crowding its squares; filling its streets with their
equipages; thronging its fashionable hotels, and places of amusements;
elbowing its impoverished nobility out of their palaces
and opera boxes, and looking down on the humiliated inhabitants
as a conquered people; in such a reverse of the case, what de

gree of courtesy would the populace of London have been apt to
exercise toward their visitors?[2]

On the contrary, I have always admired the degree of magnanimity
exhibited by the French on the occupation of their
capital by the English. When we consider the military ambition
of this nation, its love of glory, the splendid height to
which its renown in arms had recently been carried, and with
these, the tremendous reverses it had just undergone, its armies
shattered, annihilated, its capital captured, garrisoned, and overrun,
and that too by its ancient rival, the English, toward whom
it had cherished for centuries a jealous and almost religious hostility;
could we have wondered, if the tiger spirit of this fiery
people had broken out in bloody feuds and deadly quarrels; and
that they had sought to rid themselves in any way, of their invaders?
But it is cowardly nations only, those who dare not
wield the sword, that revenge themselves with the lurking dagger.
There were no assassinations in Paris. The French had
fought valiantly, desperately, in the field; but, when valor was
no longer of avail, they submitted like gallant men to a fate
they could not withstand. Some instances of insult from the
populace were experienced by their English visitors; some personal
rencontres, which led to duels, did take place; but these
smacked of open and honorable hostility. No instances of lurking
and perfidious revenge occurred, and the British soldier patrolled
the streets of Paris safe from treacherous assault.

If the English met with harshness and repulse in social intercourse,

it was in some degree a proof that the people are more
sincere than has been represented. The emigrants who had just
returned, were not yet reinstated. Society was constituted of
those who had flourished under the late régime; the newly ennobled,
the recently enriched, who felt their prosperity and their
consequence endangered by this change of things. The broken-down
officer, who saw his glory tarnished, his fortune ruined, his
occupation gone, could not be expected to look with complacency
upon the authors of his downfall. The English visitor, flushed
with health, and wealth, and victory, could little enter into the
feelings of the blighted warrior, scarred with a hundred battles,
an exile from the camp, broken in constitution by the wars, impoverished
by the peace, and cast back, a needy stranger in the
splendid but captured metropolis of his country.

And here let me notice the conduct of the French soldiery
on the dismemberment of the Army of the Loire, when two hundred
thousand men were suddenly thrown out of employ; men
who had been brought up to the camp, and scarce knew any other
home. Few in civil, peaceful life, are aware of the severe trial
to the feelings that takes place on the dissolution of a regiment.
There is a fraternity in arms. The community of dangers, hard-ships,
enjoyments; the participation in battles and victories;
the companionship in adventures, at a time of life when men's
feelings are most fresh, susceptible, and ardent, all these bind
the members of a regiment strongly together. To them the regiment
is friends, family, home. They identify themselves with

its fortunes, its glories, its disgraces. Imagine this romantic tie
suddenly dissolved; the regiment broken up; the occupation of
its members gone; their military pride mortified; the career of
glory closed behind them; that of obscurity, dependence, want,
neglect, perhaps beggary, before them. Such was the case with
the soldiers of the Army of the Loire. They were sent off in
squads, with officers, to the principal towns where they were to
be disarmed and discharged. In this way they passed through
the country with arms in their hands, often exposed to slights
and scoffs, to hunger and various hardships and privations; but
they conducted themselves magnanimously, without any of those
outbreaks of violence and wrong that so often attend the dismemberment
of armies.

The few years that have elapsed since the time above alluded
to, have already had their effect. The proud and angry spirits
which then roamed about Paris unemployed, have cooled down,
and found occupation. The national character begins to recover
its old channels, though worn deeper by recent torrents. The
natural urbanity of the French begins to find its way, like oil, to
the surface, though there still remains a degree of roughness and
bluntness of manner, partly real, and partly affected, by such as
imagine it to indicate force and frankness. The events of the last
thirty years have rendered the French a more reflecting people.
They have acquired greater independence of mind and strength
of judgment, together with a portion of that prudence which results
from experiencing the dangerous consequences of excesses.
However that period may have been stained by crimes, and filled

with extravagances, the French have certainly come out of it a
greater nation than before. One of their own philosophers observes,
that in one or two generations the nation will probably combine
the ease and elegance of the old character with force and
solidity. They were light, he says, before the revolution; then
wild and savage; they have become more thoughtful and reflective.
It is only old Frenchmen, now-a-days, that are gay and trivial;
the young are very serious personages.

P.S. In the course of a morning's walk, about the time the
above remarks were written, I observed the Duke of Wellington,
who was on a brief visit to Paris. He was alone, simply attired
in a blue frock; with an umbrella under his arm, and his hat
drawn over his eyes, and sauntering across the Place Vendome,
close by the column of Napoleon. He gave a glance up at the
column as he passed, and continued his loitering way up the Rue
de la Paix; stopping occasionally to gaze in at the shop-windows;
elbowed now and then by other gazers, who little suspected that
the quiet, lounging individual they were jostling so unceremoniously,
was the conqueror who had twice entered their capital
victoriously; had controlled the destinies of the nation, and
eclipsed the glory of the military idol, at the base of whose column
he was thus negligently sauntering.

Some years afterwards I was at an evening's entertainment
given by the Duke at Apsley House, to William IV. The Duke
had manifested his admiration of his great adversary, by having
portraits of him in different parts of the house. At the bottom
of the grand staircase, stood the colossal statue of the Emperor,

by Canova. It was of marble, in the antique style, with one arm
partly extended, holding a figure of victory. Over this arm the
ladies, in tripping up stairs to the ball, had thrown their shawls.
It was a singular office for the statue of Napoleon to perform in
the mansion of the Duke of Wellington!