AMERICAN ART AND INDUSTRY—BRITISH JOURNALISM.
Since I left London, The Times has contained two Editorials on American contributions to the Great Exhibition, which seem to require comment. These articles are deprecatory and apologetic in their general tenor, evincing a consciousness that the previous strictures of the London Press on American Art had pushed disparagement beyond the bounds of policy, and might serve to arouse a spirit in the breasts of the people so invidiously and persistently assailed. So our countryman are now told, in substance, that they are rather clever fellows on the whole, who have only made themselves ridiculous by attempting to do and to be what Nature had forbidden. Nothing but our absurd pretensions could thus have exposed us to the world's laughter. America might be America with credit; she has broken down by undertaking to be Europe also, &c., &c.
"It is the attempt, and not the deed, confounds me."
But what are the nature and extent of this American audacity? Our countrymen have undertaken to minister to their own wants by the production of certain Wares and Fabrics which they had formerly been content either to do without or to buy from Europe. Being urgently invited to do so, they have sent over some few of these results of their art and skill to a grand exposition of the World's Industry. Even if they were as bad as they are represented, these products should be here; since the object of the Exhibition is not merely to set forth what is best but to compare it with the inferior, and so indicate the readiest mode of improving the latter. Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Barbary, Persia, have sent hither their wares and fabrics, which hundreds of thousands have examined with eager and gratified interest—an interest as real as that excited by the more perfect rival productions of Western Europe, though of a different kind from that. No one has thought of ridiculing these products of a more primitive industry; all have welcomed and been instructed by them. And so ours would have been treated had they been in fact the wretched affairs which the London Commercial press has represented them. It is precisely because they are quite otherwise that it has been deemed advisable systematically to disparage them—to declare our Pianos "gouty" structures—"mere wood and iron;" our Calicoes beneath the acceptance of a British servant-girl; our Farming Tools half a century behind their British rivals; our Hats "shocking bad," &c., &c.,—all this, in the first months of the Exhibition, while the Jurors appointed to judge and report upon the merits of rival fabrics were making the requisite investigations. Their verdict is thus substantially forestalled, and the millions who visit the Exhibition are invited to look at the American department merely to note the bad taste and incapacity therein displayed, and learn to avoid them.
But the self-constituted arbiters who thus tell the American people that Art is not their province—that they should be content to grow Corn and Cotton, looking to Europe for the satisfaction of their less urgent necessities, their secondary wants—are they impartial advisers? Are they not palpably speaking in the interest of the rival producers of Europe, alarmed by the rapid growth and extension of American Art? Would they have taken so much trouble with us if American taste and skill were really the miserable abortions they represent them?
These indications of paternal care for American Industry, in danger of being warped and misdirected, are not quite novel. An English friend lately invited me to visit him at his house in the neighborhood of Birmingham, holding out as an inducement the opportunity of inspecting the great Iron and Hardware manufactories in that neighborhood. A moment afterward he recollected himself and said, "I am not quite sure that I could procure you admittance to them, because the rule has been that Americans were not to be admitted. Gentlemen taking their friends to visit these works were asked, at the door, 'Is your friend an American?' and if the answer was affirmative, he was not allowed to enter—but I think this restriction has been generally abrogated." Here you see, was a compassionate regard for American Industry, in danger of being misled and deluded into unprofitable employments, which neither The Times nor any of its co-laborers has been able to more than humbly imitate.
To my mind, nothing can be more unjust than the intimation that, in attempting to supply her own wants (or some of them) in the domain of Art and Manufacture, America has rushed madly from her sphere and sought to be Europe. She has already taught Europe many things in the sphere of Invention, and is destined to teach her many more; and the fact that her Carriages are condemned as too light and her Pianos as too heavy, her Reaping Machines as "a cross between a treadmill and a flying chariot," &c., &c., by critics very superficially acquainted with their uses, and who have barely glanced at them in passing, proves nothing but the rashness and hostility of their contemners. From such unworthy disparagement I appeal with confidence to the awards of the various Juries appointed by the Royal Commissioners. They are competent; they have made the requisite examinations; they (though nearly all European and a majority of them British) are honorable men, and will render an impartial judgment. That judgment, I firmly believe, will demonstrate that, in proportion to the extent of its contributions, no other country has sent more articles to the Exhibition by which the whole world may be instructed and benefited than our own.
XVIII.
THE PALACES OF FRANCE.
Paris, Monday, June 16, 1851.
France, now the most Democratic, was long the most absolutely governed and the most loyally infatuated among the great Nations of Europe. Her cure of the dust-licking distemper was Homœopathic and somewhat slow, but it seems to be thorough and abiding. Those who talk of the National passion for that bloody phantom Glory—for Battle and Conquest—speak of what was, rather than of what is, and which, even in its palmiest days, was rather a penchant of the Aristocratic caste than a characteristic of the Nation. The Nobles of course loved War, for it was their high road to Royal favor, to station and renown; all the spoils of victory enured to them, while nine-tenths of its calamities fell on the heads of the Peasantry. But, though all France rushed to arms in 1793 to defend the National liberties and soil, yet Napoleon, in the zenith of his power and glory, could only fill the ranks of his legions by the abhorred Conscription. The great body of the People were even then averse to the din of the camp and the clangor of battle: the years of unmixed disaster and bitter humiliation which closed his Military career, served to confirm and deepen their aversion to garments rolled in blood; and I am confident that there is at this moment no Nation in Europe more essentially peaceful than France. Her Millions profoundly sympathise with their brethren of Germany, Italy and Hungary, groaning beneath the heavy yoke of the Autocrat and his vassals; but they realize that the deliverance of Nations must mainly be wrought out from within, and they would much rather aid the subject Nations to recover their rights by the influence of example and of a Free Press than by casting the sword of Brennus into the scale where their liberties and happiness hang balanced and weighed down by the ambition and pride of their despots. The establishment of the Democratic and Social Republic is the appointed end of war in Europe. It will not erase the boundaries of Nations, but these boundaries will no longer be overshadowed by confronted legions, and they will be freed from the monster nuisance of Passports. Then German, Frank, Briton, Italian, will vie with each other, as now, in Letters, Arts and Products, but no longer in the hideous work of defacing and desecrating the image of God; for Liberty will have enlightened and Fraternity united them, and a permanent Congress of Nations will adjust and dispose of all causes of difference which may from time to time arise.—Freedom, Intelligence and Peace are natural kindred: the ancient Republics were Military and aggressive only because they tolerated and cherished Human Slavery; and it is this which recently fomented hostilities between the two Republics of North America, and now impotently threatens the internal peace of our own. Liberty, if thorough and consistent, always did and must incline to Peace; while Despotism, being founded in and only maintainable by Force, inevitably fosters a martial spirit, organizes Standing Armies, and finds delight and security in War.
These reflections have been recalled by my walks through several of the late Royal (now National) Palaces of France, the most striking monuments which endure of long ages of absolute kingly sway. How many there are of these Palaces I have forgotten or never knew; but I recall the names of the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, the Elisée Bourbon, St. Germain, St. Cloud, Versailles, Meudon, and Rambouillet. These do not include the Palais Royal, which was built by the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, nor any of the spacious edifices erected for the several Ministers of State and for the transaction of public business. The Palaces I have named were all constructed from time to time to serve as residences for the ten to thirty persons recognized as of the blood Royal, who removed from one to the other as convenience or whim may have suggested. They are generally very spacious, probably averaging one to two hundred apartments each, all constructed of the best materials and furnished and adorned with the most lavish disregard of cost. I roughly estimate the cost of these Palaces, if they were now to be built and furnished in this style, at One Hundred Millions of Dollars; but the actual cost, in the ruder infancy of the arts when most of them were erected, was probably much more. Versailles alone cost some Thirty Millions of Dollars at first, while enormous sums have since been expended in perfecting and furnishing it. It would be within the truth to say that France, from the infancy of Louis XIV. to the expulsion of Louis Philippe, has paid more as simple interest on the residences of her monarchs and their families than the United States, with a larger population and with far greater wealth than France has averaged through that period, now pays for the entire cost of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial departments of her Government. All that we have paid our Presidents from Washington inclusive, adding the cost of the Presidential Mansion and all the furniture that has from time to time been put into it, would not build and furnish one wing of a single Royal Palace of France—that of Versailles.
But the point to which I would more especially call attention is that of the unwearied exertions of Royalty to foster and inflame the passion for Military glory. I wandered for hours through the spacious and innumerable halls of Versailles, in which Art and Nature seem to have been taxed to the utmost to heap up prodigies of splendor. At least one hundred of these rooms would each of itself be deemed a marvel of sumptuous display anywhere else; yet here we passed over floors of the richest Mosaic and through galleries of the finest and most elaborately wrought Marble as if they had been but the roughest pavement or the rudest plaster. The eye is fatigued, the mind bewildered, by an almost endless succession of sumptuous carving, gilding, painting, &c., until the intervention of a naked ante-room or stair-case becomes a positive relief to both. And the ideas everywhere predominant are War and its misnamed Glory. Here are vast, expensive paintings purporting to represent innumerable Sieges and Battles in which the French arms were engaged, many of them so insignificant that the world has wisely forgotten them, yet here preserved to inflame and poison the minds of hot-blooded, unreflecting youth, impelling them to rush into the manufacture of cripples and corpses under the horrible delusion that needless, aimless Slaughter, if perpetrated by wholesale, can really be honorable and glorious. These paintings, as a whole, are of moderate value as works of Art, while their tendency is horrible and their details to me revolting. Carriages shattered and overturned, animals transfixed by spear-thrusts and writhing in speechless agony, men riddled by cannon-shot or pierced by musket-balls and ghastly with coming death, such are the spectacles which the more favored and fortunate of the Gallic youth have been called for generations to admire and enjoy. These battle-pieces have scarcely more Historic than Artistic value, since the names of at least half of them might be transposed and the change be undetected by ninety-nine out of every hundred who see them. If all the French battles were thus displayed, it might be urged with plausibility that these galleries were historical in their character; but a full half of the story, that which tells of French disaster and discomfiture—is utterly suppressed. The Battles of Ptolemais, of Ivry, of Fontenoy, of Rivoli, of Austerlitz, &c., are here as imposing as paint can make them, but never a whisper of Agincourt, Crecy, Poictiers, Blenheim, or Ramillies, nor yet of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Leipsic, or Waterloo. Even the wretched succession of forays which the French have for the last twenty years been prosecuting in Algerine Africa here shines resplendent, for Vernet has painted, by Louis Philippe's order and at France's cost, a succession of battle-pieces wherein French numbers and science are seen prevailing over Arab barbarism and irregular valor in combats whereof the very names have been wisely forgotten by mankind, though they occurred but yesterday. One of these is much the largest painting I ever saw, and is probably the largest in the world, and it seems to have been got up merely to exhibit one of Louis Philippe's sons in the thickest of the fray. Last of all, we have the "Capture of Abd-el-Kader," as imposing as Vernet could make it, but no whisper of the persistent perfidy wherewith he has been retained for several years in bondage, in violation of the express agreement of his captors. The whole collection is, in its general effect, delusive and mischievous, the purpose being to exhibit War as always glorious and France as uniformly triumphant. It is by means like these that the business of shattering knee-joints and multiplying orphans is kept in countenance.
Versailles is a striking monument of the selfish profligacy of King-craft and the long-suffering patience of Nations. Hundreds of thousands of laborers' children must have gone hungry to their straw pallets in order that their needy parents might pay the inexorable taxes levied to build this Palace. Yet after all it has stood mainly uninhabited! Its immense extent and unequalled splendor require an immeasurable profusion in its occupant, and the incomes even of kings are not absolutely without limit. So Versailles, with six or eight other Royal Palaces in and around Paris, has generally stood empty, entailing on the country an enormous annual expense for its simple preservation. And now, though France has outgrown Royalty, it knows not what to do with its costly, spacious, glittering shells. A single Palace (Rambouillet) standing furthest from Paris, was converted (under Louis Philippe) into a gigantic storehouse for Wool, while its spacious Parks and Gardens were wisely devoted to the breeding and sustenance of the choicest Merino Sheep. The others mainly stand empty, and how to dispose of them is a National perplexity. Some of them may be converted into Hospitals, Insane Retreats, &c., others into Libraries or Galleries of Art and Science; but Versailles is too far from Paris for aught but a Retreat as aforesaid, and has cost so immense a sum that any use which may be made of it will seem wasteful. I presume it could not be sold as it stands for a tenth of its actual cost. Perhaps it will be best, therefore, to convert all the others into direct uses and preserve this for public inspection as a perpetual memorial of the reckless prodigality and all-devouring pomp of Kings, and as a warning to Nations never again to entrust their destinies to men who, from their very education and the influences surrounding them through life, must be led to consider the Toiling Millions as mainly created to pamper their appetites, to gratify their pride, and to pave with their corpses their road to extended dominion.
St. Cloud is a much smaller but more pleasantly situated, more tastefully furnished and decorated Palace, some miles nearer than Versailles to Paris, and commanding an admirable view of the city. The Luxembourg, situated in the southern section of the city, is externally a chaste and well-proportioned edifice, containing some fine pictures by living artists, and surrounded by spacious and delightful woods, shrubbery, &c., termed "the Gardens of the Luxembourg." The Tuileries, in the heart of the city, near the Seine, I have not seen internally, and the exterior seems low, straggling, and every way unimposing. Its extent is almost incredible by those who have not seen it—scarcely less than that of Versailles. The Louvre is the finest structure of all, and most worthily devoted. Its lower story is filled with Sculptures of no considerable merit, but its galleries contain more strikingly good Paintings than I shall ever again see under one roof. I have spent a good part of two days there, and mean to revisit it on my return.