The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

by Various

CHAPTER XI.

One afternoon, about six months after the opening of our story, Mrs. Kinloch and her son were talking together concerning the progress of his suit. He complained that he was no nearer the point than on the first day he and Mildred rode out together. "It was like rounding Cape Horn," he said, "where a ship might lie twenty days and drift back as fast as she got ahead by tacking." In spite of all his attention and kindness, Mildred was merely courteous in return;--he could not get near her. If she smiled, it seemed as though it was from behind a grating, as in a nunnery. Her pulse was always firm; and if her eye was soft, it was steady as the full moon. He didn't believe she had any blood in her. If she was in love with that fellow, she kept it pretty closely covered up.

Mrs. Kinloch encouraged her son to persevere; she was sure he had not been skilful. "Mildred," she said, "was not to be won with as little trouble as a silly, low-bred girl, like--like Lucy, for instance."

"What the deuse are you always bringing up Lucy to me for?" said the dutiful son.

"Don't speak so!"

"Confound it! I must. You keep a fellow shut up here for six months, going to meeting five times a week; you give him no chance to work off his natural spirits, and the devil in him will break out somewhere. It's putting a stopper in a volcano; if you don't allow a little fire and smoke, you're bound to have an earthquake."

After this philosophical digression, the first topic was resumed, and Mrs. Kinloch gave the young man some counsel, drawn from her own experience or observation, touching the proper mode of awakening and cultivating the tender passion. It is not every mother that does so much for her son, but then few mothers have so urgent a motive.

"What was it that she advised him to do," did you ask? Really, I've quite forgotten; and I am sure Mrs. Kinloch forgot also, at least for that day, because something occurred which turned her thoughts for the time in quite a different direction.

The ponies were brought out for Hugh and Mildred to take their customary canter. The young heiress, for whom so much time and pains were spent, looked ill; the delicate flush had vanished from her cheek; she seemed languid, and cheerful only by effort. A moment after they had gone, as Mrs. Kinloch closed the door, for it was a raw November day, she saw and picked up a rudely-folded letter in the hall. "Good-bye, Lucy Ransom," were the words she read. They were enough. Mrs. Kinloch felt that her heart was struck by a bolt of ice. "Poor, misguided, miserable girl!" she said. "Why did I not see that something was wrong? I felt it, I knew it,--but only as one knows of evil in a dream. Who can calculate the mischief that will come of this? O God! to have my hopes of so many years ruined, destroyed, by a wretch whose power and existence even I had not once thought of! Has she drowned herself, or fled to the city to hide her disgrace? But if this should be imagination merely! She may have run away with some lubberly fellow from the factory, whom she was ashamed to marry at home. But no! she was too sad last evening when she asked to go to her grandmother's for a day. What if"--The thought coursed round her brain like fire on a train of gunpowder,--flew quicker than words could utter it; and the woman bounded to her bureau, as though with muscles of steel. She clutched at the papers and bank-notes in her private drawer, and looked and counted them over a dozen times before she could satisfy herself. Her thin fingers nervously opened the packages and folds,--the papers crackling as her eye glanced over them. They were there; but not all. She pored over the mystery,--her thoughts running away upon every side-avenue of conjecture, and as often returning to the frightful, remediless fact before her. She was faint with sudden terror. By degrees she calmed herself, wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, smiled at her fright, and sat down again, with an attempt at self-control, to look through the drawers thoroughly. As she went on, the tremor returned, and before she had finished the fruitless search her heart beat so as to stop her breath; she gasped in an agony that the soul rarely feels more than once in this life. She shut up the drawers, walked up and down the room, noticed with a shudder her own changed expression as she passed before the mirror, and strove in vain to give some order to her confused and tumultuous thoughts. At length she sat down exhausted. She was startled by a knock. Opening the door, there in a newly-furbished suit, with clean linen, and a brown wig worn for the first time on his hitherto shining head, stood Theophilus Clamp. He had even picked a blossom from the geranium in the hall and was toying with it like a bashful boy.

"A fine day, Ma'am!" said he, as he took a seat.

"Yes, very," she answered, mechanically, scarcely looking up.

"The young folks have gone out to ride, I suppose."

"Yes, Sir."--A pause, in which Mrs. Kinloch covered her face with her handkerchief.

"You don't seem well, Ma'am. Shall I call Lucy?"

"Lucy is gone," she answered,--quickly adding, "gone to her grandmother's."

"Well, that is singular. I've been today to look at my land above the old lady's house, and she asked me to send word to Lucy to come up and see her."

"To-day?"

"Yes, Ma'am; not two hours ago."

Mrs. Kinloch was rapidly revolving probabilities. What interest had Lucy to interfere with her affairs? As for Mildred, she was not to be thought of as prying into secrets; she was too innocent. Hugh was too careless. Who more than this man Clamp was likely to have done or procured the mischief? "Have you given her the message?"

"Of course not, Ma'am,--how could I?"

"Then you haven't sent Lucy away on any errand?"

"Certainly not, Madam," said the lawyer, beginning to wince under the cross-examination. "Lucy's gone, you say; didn't she leave things all right,--your papers, and--and so forth?"

"Papers? Lucy is not presumed to know that I have any papers; if any are missing, I'll warrant they are in the hands of some one who knows at least enough to read them."

"She suspects me," thought the lawyer, "but can't have discovered that hers are only copies; they're too well done." He then added aloud, "Perhaps, Mrs. Kinloch, if you had honored me, your associate in the administration of the estate, with your confidence touching the private papers you speak of, I might have saved you some trouble in keeping them."

"Very likely; but no one spoke of papers beside yourself," she replied, with a trace of sarcasm in the tone which ill suited the expression of her pallid face and drooping head.

"I'm sorry to see you looking so careworn, Mrs. Kinloch," said he, with his blandest air. "I intended to bring up a topic more agreeable, it is to be hoped, than runaway house-maids or old documents." He rubbed his hands softly and turned his eyes with a glance meant to be tender towards the place where her chair stood; if he had been a cat, he would have purred the while.

Mrs. Kinloch now, for the first time, observed the wig, the unusual look of tidiness, and, above all, the flower in his hand; she also saw the crucified smile that followed his last remark. "The ridiculous old fool!" thought she,--"what can he mean?" But to him she translated it,--

"What is the more agreeable topic?"

"Really, you attack me like a lawyer. Don't you know, my dear Madam, how it confuses one to be sharply interrogated?"

"It would be something novel to see you confused, Squire Clamp."

"Pray, don't banter, Mrs. Kinloch. I hoped to find you in a more complaisant humor. There are topics which cannot be discussed with the square precision of legal rules,--thoughts that require sympathy before they can be expressed." And he dropped his eyes with a ludicrous sigh.

"Oh, I appreciate your tender susceptibilities. Please consider me as asking the question again in the most engaging manner."

His new wig was becoming uncomfortable, and he fidgeted in his chair, twirling the luckless blossom.

"Why, Mrs. Kinloch, the long regard I entertained for your late lamented husband,--ah, I mean my regard for you,--ah, my lonely domicil,--ah, since the decease of my--my sainted wife,--ah, and since the Scripture says it is not good for man to live alone,--ah, your charming qualities and many virtues,--not that your fortune,--ah,--I mean to say, that, though not rich, I am not grasping,--and the cottage where you lived would be a palace,--ah, for me, if not unworthy,--ah, no desire to unduly shorten the period of mourning,--ah, but life is short and uncertain"----

There was a dead silence. His mouth was vainly working, and his expression confused and despairing. The flower had wilted in his moist hand. Little streams of perspiration trickled down his face, to be mopped up by his bandanna. Such was the ordeal of talking hollow sentiment to a cool and self-possessed woman. She enjoyed the exhibition for a time,--as what woman would not? But the waves of her trouble rushed back upon her, and the spirit of mischief and coquetry was overwhelmed. So she answered,--

"You are pleased to be polite,--perhaps gallant. You must excuse me from taking part in such conversation to-day, however little is meant by it,--and the less meant the better,--I am not well."

She rose feebly, and walked towards the door with as much dignity as her trembling frame could assume. He was abashed; his fine speeches jumbled in meaningless fragments, his airy castle ready to topple on his unlucky head. He would have been glad to rebuke her fickle humor, as he thought it; but he knew he had made a fool of himself, so he merely said,--

"No offence, I hope, Ma'am; none meant, certainly. Wish you good-afternoon, Ma'am. Call and see you again some day, and hope to find you better."

Would he find her better? While the mystery remained, while the ruin of her hopes impended, what could restore to her the cheerfulness, the courage, the self-command she had lost?

[To be continued.]

[a]BRINGING OUR SHEAVES WITH US.] The time for toil is past, and night has come,-- The last and saddest of the harvest-eves; Worn out with labor long and wearisome, Drooping and faint, the reapers hasten home, Each laden with his sheaves. Last of the laborers thy feet I gain, Lord of the harvest! and my spirit grieves That I am burdened not so much with grain As with a heaviness of heart and brain;-- Master, behold my sheaves! Few, light, and worthless,--yet their trifling weight Through all my frame a weary aching leaves; For long I struggled with my hapless fate, And staid and toiled till it was dark and late,-- Yet these are all my sheaves. Full well I know I have more tares than wheat,-- Brambles and flowers, dry stalks, and withered leaves Wherefore I blush and weep, as at thy feet I kneel down reverently, and repeat, "Master, behold my sheaves!" I know these blossoms, clustering heavily With evening dew upon their folded leaves, Can claim no value nor utility,-- Therefore shall fragrancy and beauty be The glory of my sheaves. So do I gather strength and hope anew; For well I know thy patient love perceives Not what I did, but what I strove to do,-- And though the full, ripe ears be sadly few, Thou wilt accept my sheaves.

[FARMING LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND.]

New England does not produce the bread she eats, nor the raw materials of the fabrics she wears. A multitude of her purely agricultural towns are undergoing, more or less rapidly, a process of depopulation. Yet these facts exist by the side of positive advances in agricultural science and decided improvements in the means and modes of farming. The plough is perfected, and the theory of ploughing is understood. The advantages of thorough draining are universally recognized, and tiles are for sale everywhere. Mowing and reaping machines have ceased to be a novelty upon our plains and meadows. The natural fertilizers have been analyzed, and artificial nutrients of the soil have been contrived. The pick and pride of foreign herds have regenerated our neat stock, and the Morgan and the Black-Hawk eat their oats in our stalls. The sheepfold and the sty abound with choice blood. Sterling agricultural journals are on every farmer's table, and Saxton's hand-books upon agricultural specialties are scattered everywhere. Public shows and fairs bring on an annual exacerbation of the agricultural fever, which is constantly breaking out in new places, beyond the power of the daily press to chronicle. Yet it is too evident that the results are not at all commensurate with the means under tribute and at command. What is the reason?

In looking at the life of the New England farmer, the first fact that strikes us is, that it is actually a very different thing from what it might be and ought to be. There dwells in every mind, through all callings and all professions, the idea that the farmer's life is, or may be, is, or should be, the truest and sweetest life that man can live. The merchant may win all the prizes of trade, the professional man may achieve triumphs beyond his hopes, the author may find his name upon every lip, and his works accounted among the nation's treasures, and all may move amid the whirl and din of the most inspiring life, yet there will come to every one, in quiet evening-hours, the vision of the old homestead, long since forsaken; or the imagination will weave a picture of its own,--a picture of rural life, so homely, yet so beautiful, that the heart will breathe a sigh upon it, the eye will drop a tear upon it, and the voice will say, "It were better so!"

In a city like Boston there are farms enough imagined every year to make another New England. Could the fairest fancies of that congeries of minds be embodied and exhibited, we should see green meadows sparkling with morning dew,--silver-slippered rivulets skipping into musical abysses,--quiet pasture-lands shimmering so sleepily in the sun that the lazy flocks and herds forget to graze, and lie winking and ruminating under the trees,--and yellow fields of grain, along the hill-sides, billowy in the breeze, and bending before the shadows of the clouds that sail above them. And mingling and harmonizing with these visions, we should hear the lowing of kine, and the tinkle of the bell that leads the flock, and the shout of the boy behind the creeping plough, and the echoes of the axe, and the fall of the tree in the distant forest, and the rhythmical clangor, softened into a metallic whisper by the distance, of the mowers whetting their scythes. With these visions and these sounds there would come to the minds which give them birth convictions that rural life is the best life, and resolutions that, by-and-by, in some golden hour, when the sun of life begins to lengthen the eastward shadows, that life shall be enjoyed, and that the soul shall pass at last from the quiet scenes of Nature into those higher scenes which they symbolize. There is a thought in all this that the farm is nearer heaven than the street,--a reminiscence of the first estate, when man was lord of Eden; and this thought, old as art and artificial life, cannot be rooted out of the mind. It has a life of its own, independent of reason, above instinct, among the quickest intuitions of the soul.

Now this idea, so universal, so identical in millions of minds, springing with such spontaneity in the midst of infinitely varied circumstances, abiding with such tenacity in every soul, can have its basis nowhere save in a Divine intention and a human possibility. The cultivation of the farm is the natural employment of man. It is upon the farm that virtue should thrive the best, that the body and the mind should be developed the most healthfully, that temptations should be the weakest, that social intercourse should be the simplest and sweetest, that beauty should thrill the soul with the finest raptures, and that life should be tranquillest in its flow, longest in its period, and happiest in its passage and its issues. This is the general and the first ideal of the farmer's life, based upon the nature of the farmer's calling and a universally recognized human want. Why does the actual differ so widely from the ideal? It is not because the farmer's labor is hard and constant, alone. There is no fact better established than that it is through the habitual use both of the physical and mental powers that the soul achieves, or receives, its most healthful enjoyment, and acquires that tone which responds most musically to the touch of the opportunities of leisure. Why, then, we repeat, does the actual differ so widely from the ideal?

A general answer to this question is, that that is made an end of life which should be but an incident or a means. Life is confounded with labor, and thrift with progress; and material success is the aim to which all other aims are made subordinate. There is no fact in physiology better established than that hard labor, followed from day to day and year to year, absorbing every thought and every physical energy, has the direct tendency to depress the intellect, blunt the sensibilities, and animalize the man. In such a life, all the energies of the brain and nervous system are directed to the support of nutrition and the stimulation of the muscular system. Man thus becomes a beast of burden,--the creature of his calling; and though he may add barn to barn and acre to acre, he does not lead a life which rises in dignity above that of the beasts which drag his plough. He eats, he works, he sleeps. Surely, there is no dignity in a life like this; there is nothing attractive and beautiful and good in it. It is a mean and contemptible life; and all its maxims, economies, associations, and objects are repulsive to a mind which apprehends life's true enjoyments and ends. We say that it is a pestilent perversion. We say that it is the sale of the soul to the body; it is turning the back upon life, upon growth, upon God, and descending into animalism.

The true ideal of the farmer's life--of any life--contemplates something outside of, and above, the calling which is its instrument. The farmer's life is no better than the life of a street-sweeper, if it rise no higher than the farmer's work. If the farmer, standing under the broad sky, breathing the pure air, listening to the song of birds, watching the progress of

"The great miracle that still goes on,"

to work the transformation of the brown seeds which he drops into the soil into fields of green and gold, and gazing upon landscapes shifting with the seasons and flushed with new tints through every sunlit and moonlit hour, does not apprehend that his farm has higher uses for him than those of feeding his person and his purse, he might as well dwell in a coal-mine.

Our soil is sterile, our modes of farming have been rude until within a few years; and under the circumstances,--with the Yankee notion that the getting of money is the chief end of man,--exclusive devotion to labor has been deemed indispensable to success. The maxims of Franklin have been literally received and adopted as divine truth. We have believed that to labor is to be thrifty, that to be thrifty is to be respectable, that to be respectable is to afford facilities for being still more thrifty; and our experience is, that with increased thrift comes increased labor. This is the circle of our ambitions and rewards. All begins and ends in labor. The natural and inevitable result of this is both physical and mental deterioration.

It is doubtful whether the world furnishes a finer type of man, physically and intellectually, than the Irish gentleman. He is handsome, large, courageous,--a man of fine instincts, brilliant imagination, courtly manners, and full, vital force. By the side of the Irish gentleman, there has grown for centuries the Irish peasant. He is ugly, of stunted stature, and pugnacious; and he produces children like himself. The two classes started from a common blood; they now present the broadest contrast. We do not say that freedom from severe labor on one side, and confinement to it on the other, are entirely responsible for this contrast; difference of food and other obvious causes have had something to do with it; but we say that hard labor has, directly and indirectly, degraded from a true style of manhood the great mass of the Irish peasantry. They are a marked class, and carry in their forms and faces the infallible insignia of mental and physical degeneration.

We would by no means compare New England farmers with the Irish peasantry. We only present the contrast between these two classes of the Irish population as the result of unremitting toil on one side, and a more rational kind of life on the other. If we enter a New England church, containing a strictly rural assembly, and then visit another containing a class whose labor is lighter, and whose style of life is based upon different ideas, we shall see a contrast less marked, perhaps, but presenting similar features. The farming population of New England is not a handsome population, generally. The forms of both men and women are angular; their features are not particularly intellectual; their movements are not graceful; and their calling is evident by indubitable signs. The fact that the city assemblage is composed of a finer and higher grade of men, women, and children is of particular moment to our argument, because it is composed of people who are only one, two, or three removes from a rural origin. The city comes from the country; the street is replenished by the farm; but the city children, going back to the farm, show that a new element has been introduced into their blood. The angles are rounded; the face is brighter; the movements are more graceful; there is in every way a finer development.

There is probably no better exponent of the farmer's life than the farmer's home. We propose to present the portrait of such a home, and, while we offer it as a just outline of the farmer's home generally, in districts removed from large social centres, we gladly acknowledge the existence of a great multitude of happy exceptions. But the sketch:--A square, brown house; a chimney coming out of the middle of a roof; not a tree nearer than the orchard, and not a flower at the door. At one end projects a kitchen; from the kitchen projects a wood-shed and wagon-cover, occupied at night by hens; beyond the wood-shed, a hog-pen, fragrant and musical. Proceeding no farther in this direction, we look directly across the road, to where the barn stands, like the hull of a great black ship-of-the-line, with its port-holes opened threateningly upon the fort opposite, out of one of which a horse has thrust his head for the possible purpose of examining the strength of the works. An old ox-sled is turned up against the wall close by, where it will have the privilege of rotting. This whole establishment was contrived with a single eye to utility. The barn was built in such a manner that its deposits might be convenient to the road which divides the farm, while the sty was made an attachment of the house for convenience in feeding its occupants.

We enter the house at the back door, and find the family at dinner in the kitchen. A kettle of soap-grease is stewing upon the stove, and the fumes of this, mingled with those that were generated by boiling the cabbage which we see upon the table, and by perspiring men in shirt-sleeves, and by boots that have forgotten or do not care where they have been, make the air anything but agreeable to those who are not accustomed to it. This is the place where the family live. They cook everything here for themselves and their hogs. They eat every meal here. They sit here every evening, and here they receive their friends. The women in this kitchen toil incessantly, from the time they rise in the morning until they go to bed at night. Here man and woman, sons and daughters, live, in the belief that work is the great thing, that efficiency in work is the crowning excellence of manhood and womanhood, and willingly go so far into essential self-debasement, sometimes, as to contemn beauty and those who love it, and to glory above all things in brute strength and brute endurance.

Here we are ready to state the point and the lesson of our discussion:--The real reason for the deterioration of agriculture in New England is to be found in the fact, that the farmer's life and the farmer's home, generally, are unloved and unlovable things, and in the multitude of causes which have tended to make them so. Let the son of such a home as we have pictured get a taste of a better life than this, or, through sensibilities which he did not inherit, apprehend a worthier style of existence, and what inducements, save those which necessity imposes, can retain him there? He hates the farm, and will flee from it at the first opportunity. If the New England farmer's life were a loved and lovable thing, the New England boys could hardly be driven from the New England hills. They would not only find a way to live here, but they would make farming profitable. They would honor the employment to which they are bred, and would leave it, save in exceptional instances, for no other. It is not strange that the country grows thin and the city plethoric. It is not strange that mercantile and mechanical employments are thronged by young men, running all risks for success, when the alternative is a life in which they find no meaning, and no inspiring and ennobling influence.

The popular ideal of the farmer's life and home, to which we have alluded, we believe to be what God intended. That life contemplates the institution and maintenance of personal and social habits, and the cultivation of tastes and faculties, separate from, and above, labor. Every farm-house should be a residence of men and women, boys and girls, who, appreciating something of the meaning and end of life, rise from every period of labor into an atmosphere of intellectual and social activity, or into some form of refined family enjoyment. It is impossible to do this while surrounded with all the associations of labor. If there is a room in every farmer's house where the work of the family is done, there should be a room in every farmer's house where the family should live,--where beauty should appeal to the eye, where genuine comfort of appointments should invite to repose, where books should be gathered, where neatness and propriety of dress should be observed, and where labor may be forgotten. The life led here should be labor's exceeding great reward. A family living like this--and there are families that live thus--will ennoble and beautify all their surroundings. There will be trees at their door, and flowers in their garden, and pleasant and graceful architectural ideas in their dwelling. Human life will stand in the foreground of such a home,--human life, crowned with its dignities and graces,--while animal life will be removed among the shadows, and the gross material utilities, tastefully disguised, will be made to retire into an unoffending and harmonious perspective.

But we have alluded to other causes than labor as in some measure responsible for the unattractiveness of the farmer's life, and affecting adversely the farming interest. These touch the matter at various points, and are charged with greater or less importance. We know of no one cause more responsible for whatever there may be of physical degeneracy among the farming population than the treatment of its child-bearing women; and this, after all, is but a result of entire devotion to the tyrannical idea of labor. If there be one office or character higher than all others, it is the office or character of mother. Surely, the bringing into existence of so marvellous a thing as a human being, and the training of that being until it assumes a recognized relation to God and human society, is a sacred office, and one which does not yield in dignity and importance to any other under heaven. For a woman who faithfully fulfils this office, who submits without murmuring to all its pains, who patiently performs its duties, and who exhausts her life in a ceaseless overflow of love upon those whom God has given her, no words can express a true man's veneration. She claims the homage of our hearts, the service of our hands, the devotion of our lives.

Yet what is the position of the mother in the New England farmer's home? The farmer is careful of every animal he possesses. The farm-yard and the stall are replenished with young, by creatures for months dismissed from labor, or handled with intelligent care while carrying their burden; because the farmer knows that only in this way can he secure improvement, and sound, symmetrical development, to the stock of his farm. In this he is a true, practical philosopher. But what is his treatment of her who bears his children? The same physiological laws apply to her that apply to the brute. Their strict observance is greatly more imperative, because of her finer organization; yet they are not thought of; and if the farm-yard fail to shame the nursery, if the mother bear beautiful and well-organized children, Heaven be thanked for a merciful interference with the operation of its own laws! Is the mother in a farm-house ever regarded as a sacred being? Look at her hands! Look at her face! Look at her bent and clumsy form! Is it more important to raise fine colts than fine men and women? Is human life to be made secondary and subordinate to animal life? Is not she who should receive the tenderest and most considerate ministries of the farmer's home, in all its appointments and in all its service, made the ceaseless minister and servant of the home and all within it, with utter disregard of her office? To expect a population to improve greatly under this method is simply to expect miracles; and to expect a farmer's life and a farmer's home to be attractive, where the mother is a drudge, and secures less consideration than the pets of the stall, is to expect impossibilities.

Another cause which has tended to the deterioration of the farmer's life is its solitariness. The towns in New England which were settled when the Indians were in possession of the country, and which, for purposes of defence, were settled in villages, have enjoyed great blessings; but a large portion of agricultural New England was differently settled. It is difficult to determine why isolation should produce the effect it does upon the family development. The Western pioneer, who, leaving a New England community, plants himself and his young wife in the forest, will generally become a coarse man, and will be the father of coarse children. The lack of the social element in the farmer's life is doubtless a cause of some of its most repulsive characteristics. Men are constituted in such a manner, that constant social contact is necessary to the healthfulness of their sympathies, the quickness of their intellects, and the symmetrical development of their powers. It matters little whether a family be placed in the depths of a Western forest, or upon the top of a New England hill; the result of solitude will be the same in kind, if not in degree.

Now the farmer, partly from isolation and partly from absorption in labor, is the most unsocial man in New England. The farmers are comparatively few who go into society at all, who ever dine with their neighbors, or who take any genuine satisfaction in the company of the women whom their wives invite to tea. They may possibly be farmers among farmers, but they are not men among men and women. Intellectually, they are very apt to leave life where they begin it. Socially, they become dead for years before they die. The inhabitants of a city can have but a poor apprehension of the amount of enjoyment and development that comes to them through social stimulus. Like gold, humanity becomes bright by friction, and grows dim for lack of it. So, we say, the farmer's life and home can never be what they should be,--can never be attractive by the side of other life containing a true social element,--until they have become more social. The individual life must not only occupy a place above that of a beast of burden, but that life must be associated with all congenial life within its reach. The tree that springs in the open field, though it be fed by the juices of a rood, through absorbents that penetrate where they will, will present a hard and stunted growth; while the little sapling of the forest, seeking for life among a million roots, or growing in the crevice of a rock, will lift to the light its cap of leaves upon a graceful stem, and whisper, even-headed, with the stateliest of its neighbors. Men, like trees, were made to grow together, and both history and philosophy declare that this Divine intention cannot be ignored or frustrated with impunity.

Traditional routine has also operated powerfully to diminish the attractiveness of agricultural employments. This cause, very happily, grows less powerful from year to year. The purse is seen to have an intimate sympathy with intelligent farming. Were we to say that God had so constituted the human mind that routine will tire and disgust it, we should say in effect that he never intended the farmer's life to be one of routine. Nature has done all she can to break up routine. While the earth swings round its orbit once a year, and turns on its axis once in twenty-four hours,--while the tide ebbs and flows twice daily, and the seasons come and go in rotation, every atom changes its relations to every other atom every moment. Influences are tossed into these skeleton cycles of motion and event which start a myriad of diverse currents, and break up the whole surface of life and being into a healthful confusion. There are never two days alike. The motherly sky never gives birth to twin clouds. The weather shakes its bundle of mysteries in our faces, and banters us with, "Don't you wish you knew?" We prophesy rain upon the morrow, and wake with a bar of golden sunlight on the coverlet. We foretell a hard winter, and, before it is half gone, become nervous lest we should miss our supply of ice. The fly, the murrain, the potato-rot, and the grasshoppers, all have a divine office in tipping over our calculations. The phantom host of the great North come out for parade without announcement, and shoot their arrows toward the zenith, and flout the stars with their rosy flags, and retire, leaving us looking into heaven and wondering. Long weeks of drought parch the earth, and then comes the sweet rain, and sets the flowers and the foliage dancing. All the seasons are either very late or very early, or, for some reason, "the most remarkable within the memory of man."

This is God's management for destroying routine within the law of stated revolution, and for bringing the mind constantly into contact with fresh influences. The soul, encased by a wall of adamantine circumstances, and driven around a track of unvarying duties, shrivels, or gets diseased. But these circumstances need not imprison the farmer, nor these duties become the polished pavement of his cell. He has his life among the most beautiful scenes of Nature and the most interesting facts of Science. Chemistry, geology, botany, meteorology, entomology, and a dozen other related or constituent sciences,--what is intelligent farming but a series of experiments, involving, first and last, all of these? What is a farm but a laboratory where the most important and interesting scientific problems are solved? The moment that any field of labor becomes intelligently experimental, that moment routine ceases, and that field becomes attractive. The most repulsive things under heaven become attractive, on being invested with a scientific interest. All, therefore, that a farmer has to do, to break up the traditional routine of his method and his labor, is to become a scientific farmer. He will then have an interest in his labor and its results above their bare utilities. Labor that does not engage the mind has no dignity; else the ox and the ass are kings in the world, and we are but younger brothers in the royal family. So we say to every farmer,--If you would make your calling attractive to yourself and your boys, seek that knowledge which will break up routine, and make your calling, to yourself and to them, an intelligent pursuit.

A recent traveller in England speaks enthusiastically of a visit which he paid to an old farm-house in that country, and of the garden-farm upon which it stood, which had descended from father to son through a period of five hundred years. He found a family of charming intelligence and the politest culture. That hallowed soil was a beautiful body, of which the family interests and associations were the soul. To be dissociated from that soil forever would be regarded by its proprietors as almost equivalent to family annihilation. Proprietorship in English soil is one of the prime ambitions of the true Englishman; but we do not find in New England any kindred sentiments of pride in landed property and family affection for the paternal acres. The nomadic tribes of Asia would seem to have quite as strong local attachments as Yankee landholders, most of whom will sell their homesteads as readily as they will their horses. This fact we cannot but regard as one among the many causes which have conspired to despoil the farmer's calling of some of its legitimate attractions. The son slips away from the old homestead as easily as he does from the door of a hotel. Very likely his father has rooted up all home attachments by talking of removing Westward ever since the boy saw the light. This lack of affection for the family acres is doubtless owing somewhat to the fact that in this country landed property is not associated with political privilege, as it has been in England; but this cannot be the sole reason; for the sentiment has a genuine basis in nature, and, in not a few instances, an actual existence amongst us.

Resulting from the operation of all the causes which we have briefly noticed, there is another cause of the deterioration of farming life in New England, which cannot be recovered from in many years. Actual farming life has been brought into such harsh contrast with other life, that its best materials have been sifted out of it, have slid away from it. An inquiry at the doors of the great majority of farmers would exhibit the general fact, that the brightest boys have gone to college, or have become mechanics, or are teaching school, or are in trade, or have emigrated to the West. There have been taken directly out from the New England farming population its best elements,--its quickest intelligence, its most stirring enterprise, its noblest and most ambitious natures,--precisely those elements which were necessary to elevate the standard of the farmer's calling and make it what it should be. It is very easy to see why these men have not been retained in the past; it is safe to predict that they will not be retained in the future, unless a thorough reform be instituted. These men cannot be kept on a routine farm, or tied to a home which has no higher life than that of a workshop or a boarding-house. It is not because the work of the farm is hard that men shun it. They will work harder and longer in other callings for the sake of a better style of individual and social life. They will go to the city, and cling to it while half starving, rather than engage in the dry details and the hard and homely associations of the life which they forsook.

The boys are not the only members of the farmer's family that flee from the farmer's life. The most intelligent and most enterprising of the farmer's daughters become school-teachers, or tenders of shops, or factory-girls. They contemn the calling of their father, and will, nine times in ten, marry a mechanic in preference to a farmer. They know that marrying a farmer is a very serious business. They remember their worn-out mothers. They thoroughly understand that the vow that binds them in marriage to a farmer seals them to a severe and homely service that will end only in death.

As a consequence of this sifting process, to which we have given but a glance, a very decidedly depressing element is now being rapidly introduced into New England farming life. The Irish girls have found their way into the farmer's kitchen, and the Irish laborer has become the annual "hired man." At present, there are no means of measuring the effect of this new element; but it cannot fail to depress the tone of farming society, and surround it with a new swarm of menial associations.

In our judgment, there is but little in the improved modes of farming, in scientific discoveries, and new mechanical appliances, to be relied upon for the elevation of New England agriculture and the emancipation of New England farming life. The farmer needs new ideas more than he needs new implements. The process of regeneration must begin in the mind, and not in the soil. The proprietor of that soil should be the true New England gentleman. His house should be the home of hospitality, the embodiment of solid comfort and liberal taste, the theatre of an exalted family-life which shall be the master and not the servant of labor, and the central sun of a bright and happy social atmosphere. When this standard shall be reached, there will be no fear for New England agriculture. The noblest race of men and women the sun ever shone upon will cultivate these valleys and build their dwellings upon these hills; and they will cling to a life which blesses them with health, plenty, individual development, and social progress and happiness. This is what the farmer's life may be and should be; and if it ever rise to this in New England, neither prairie nor savanna can entice her children away; and waste land will become as scarce, at last, as vacant lots in Paradise.

[LES SALONS DE PARIS.][1]

The title is an ambitious one, for the salons of Paris are Paris itself; and, from the days of the Fronde and of the Hôtel Rambouillet down to our own, you may judge pretty accurately of what is going on upon the great political stage of France by what is observable in those green-rooms and coulisses called the Parisian drawing-rooms, and where, more or less, the actors of all parties may be seen, either rehearsing their parts before the performance, or seeking, after the performance is over, the several private echoes of the general public sentiment that has burst forth before the light of the foot-lamps. Shakspeare's declaration, that "all the world's a stage," is nowhere so true as in the capital of Gaul. There, most truly may it be said, are

----"All the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."

Therefore might a profound and comprehensive study of the drawing-rooms of Paris be in a manner a history of France in our own times.

Madame Ancelot's little volume does not aim so high; nor, had it done so, would its author have possessed the talent requisite for carrying out such a design. Madame Ancelot is a writer of essentially second-rate and subordinate capacity, and consequently her account of those salons de Paris that she has seen (and she by no means saw them all) derives no charm from the point of view she takes. To say the truth, she has no "point of view" of her own; she tells what she saw, and (thus far we must praise her) she tells it very conscientiously. Having waited in every instance till the people she has to speak of were dead, Mme. Ancelot has a pretty fair field before her for the display of her sincerity, and we, the public, who are neither kith nor kin of the deceased, are the gainers thereby.

So interesting and so amusing is the subject Madame Ancelot has chosen, that, in spite of her decided want of originality or even talent in treating it, her book is both an amusing and an interesting one. It is even more than that; for those who wish to have a correct notion of certain epochs of the social civilization of modern France, and of certain predominant types in French society during the last forty years, Madame Ancelot's little volume is full of instruction. Perhaps in no society, so much as in that of France, have the political convulsions of the state reacted so forcibly upon the relations of man to man, revolutionizing the homes of private persons, even as the government and the monarchy were revolutionized. In England, nothing of this kind is to be observed; and if you study English society ten years, or twenty years, or fifty years after the fall of Charles I., after the establishment of the Commonwealth, or after the restoration of Charles II., the definitive exile of the Stuarts, and the advent of a foreign dynasty to the throne, you find everywhere its constitutive elements the same,--modified only by such changes of time, circumstance, and fashion, as naturally, in every country, modify the superficial aspect of all society. But in France, it is the very substratum of the social soil that is overturned, it is the constitutive elements of society that are displaced; and the consequence is a general derangement of all relative positions.

In what is still termed la vieille société Française, little or nothing was left to chance, and one of its great characteristics was order and the perfectly regular play of its machinery. Everything was set down, noted, as it were, beforehand,--as strictly so as the ceremonies of a grand diplomatic ceremony, after some treaty, or marriage, or other occasion of solemn conference. Under this régime, which endured till the Revolution of '93, (and even, strangely enough, beyond that period,) politeness was, of course, the one chief quality of whosoever was well brought up,--urbanity was the first sign of good company,--and for the simple reason, that no one sought to infringe. There was no cause for insolence, or for what in England is called "exclusiveness," because there was no necessity to repel any disposition to encroach. No one dreamed of the possibility of encroaching upon his neighbor's grounds, or of taking, in the slightest degree, his neighbor's place.

The first French Revolution caused no such sudden and total disruption of the old social traditions as has been generally supposed; and as far as mere social intercourse and social conventionalities were concerned, there was, even amongst the terrible popular dictators of 1793, more of the tone of the ci-devant good company than could possibly be imagined. In later times, every one who knew Fouché remembers that he was constantly in the habit of expressing his indignation at the want of good-breeding of the young exquisites of the Empire, and used perpetually to exclaim, "In my time" this or that "would not have been allowed," or, "In my time we were accustomed to do" so and so. Now Fouché's "time" was that which is regarded as the period of universal beheading and levelling.

It is certain, that, under the régime of the Revolution itself, bitter class-hatreds did not at first show themselves in the peaceful atmosphere of society,--and that for more than one reason. First of all, in a certain sense, "society," it may be said, was not. Next, what subsisted of society was fragmentary, and was formed by small isolated groups or coteries, pretty homogeneously composed, or, when not so as to rank and station, rendered homogeneous by community of suffering. It must not be imagined that only the highest class in France paid for its opinions or its vanities with loss of life and fortune. The victims were everywhere; for the changes in the governing forces were so perpetual, that, more or less, every particular form of envy and hatred had its day of power, and levelled its blows at the objects of its special antipathy. In this way, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were often brought into contact; marriages even were contracted, whether during imprisonment or under the pressure of poverty, that never would have been dreamt of in a normal state of things; and whilst parents of opposite conditions shook hands in the scaffold-surveying charrettes, the children either drew near to each other, in a mutual helpfulness, the principle whereof was Christian charity, or met together to partake of amusements, the aim whereof was oblivion. For several years, the turn of every individual for execution might come, and therefore it was difficult, on the other hand, to see who might also not be a friend.

This began to be modified under the Empire, but in a shape not hitherto foreseen. Military glory began to long for what the genuine Revolutionists termed "feudal distinctions." Napoleon was desirous of a court and of an aristocracy; he set to work to create a noblesse, and dukes and counts were fabricated by the dozen. Very soon the strong love of depreciation, that is inherent in every Frenchman, seized upon even the higher plebeian classes, and, discontented as they were at seeing the liberties of the movement of '89 utterly confiscated by a military chief, and antipathetic as they have been, time out of mind, to what are called les traineurs de sabre, the civilians of France, her bourgeois, who were to have their day,--but with very different feelings in 1830,--joined with the genuine Pre-Revolutionary aristocrats, and the noblesse de l'Empire was laughed at and taken en grippe. Here was, in reality, the first wide breach made in France in the edifice of good-breeding and good-manners; and those who have been eye-witnesses to the metamorphosis will admit that the guillotine of Danton and Robespierre did even less to destroy le bon ton of the ancien régime than was achieved by the guard-room habits and morals of Bonaparte's glorious troopers, rushing, as they did, booted and spurred, into the emblazoned sanctuary of heraldic distinctions, and taking, as it were, la société by storm.

But soon another alliance and other enmities were to be formed. The Empire fell; the Bourbons returned to France; Louis XVIII. recognized the noblesse of the Imperial government, and the constitution of society as it had been battled for by the Revolution. At the same time his court was filled with all the great historic names of the country, who returned, no longer avowedly the first in authority, and therefore prompt to condescend, but the first in presumption, and therefore prompt to take offence. The new alliance that was formed was that of the plebeian caste with the noblesse de l'Empire, against which it had been previously so incensed. Notwithstanding all the efforts sincerely made by Louis XVIII. to establish a constitutional government and to promote a genuine constitutional feeling throughout France, class-hatreds rose gradually to so violent a height that the king's only occupation soon grew to be the balancing of expediencies. He was forever obliged to reflect upon the choices he could make around him, since each choice made from one party insured him a hundred enemies in the party opposed. This, which was the political part of the drama,--that which regarded the scenes played upon the public stage,--had its instantaneous reflex, as we have already said in the commencement of these pages, in the salons, which were the green-rooms and coulisses. Urbanity, amenity of language, the bland demeanor hitherto characterized as la grâce Française, all these were at an end. Society in France, such as it had been once, the far-famed model for all Europe, had ceased to exist. The ambition which had once been identified with the cares of office or the dangers of war now found sufficient food in the bickerings of party-spirit, and revenged itself by salon jokes and salon impertinence for the loss of a lead it either could not or would not take in Parliament. The descendants of those very fathers and mothers who had, in many cases, suffered incarceration, and death even, together, set to hating each other cordially, because these would not abdicate what those would not condescend to compete for. The noblesse cried out, that the bourgeoisie was usurping all its privileges; and the bourgeoisie retorted, that the time for privilege was past. The two classes could no longer meet together in the world, but formed utterly different sets and cliques; and it must be avowed that neither of the two gained in good-manners, or what may be called drawing-room distinction.

From 1815 to 1830, the noblesse had officially the advantage. From 1830 to 1848, the bourgeoisie ruled over the land. But now was to be remarked another social phenomenon, that complicated salon life more than ever. The middle classes, we say, were in power; they were in all the centres of political life,--in the Chambers, in the ministries, in the king's councils, in diplomacy; and with them had risen to importance the Imperial aristocracy, whose representatives were to be found in every department of the public service. All this while, the old families of the ancien régime shut themselves up among themselves entirely, constituted what is now termed the Faubourg St. Germain, which never was so exclusive or so powerful (socially speaking) as under Louis Philippe, and a tacit combat between envy and disdain was carried on, such as perhaps no modern civilization ever witnessed. The Faubourg St. Germain arrogated to itself the privilege of exclusively representing la société Française, and it must be confessed that the behavior of its adversaries went far to substantiate its claims.

Our purpose in these pages is not to touch upon anything connected with politics, or we could show, that, whilst apparently severed from all activity upon the more conspicuous field of the capital, the ancient French families were employed in reëstablishing their influence in the rural provincial centres; the result of which was the extraordinary influx of Legitimist members into the Chamber formed by the first Republican elections in 1848. But this is foreign to our present aim. As to what regards French society, properly so called, it was, from 1804, after the proclamation of the Empire, till 1848, after the fall of Louis Philippe, in gradual but incessant course of sub-division into separate cliques, each more or less bitterly disposed towards the others. From the moment when this began to be the case, the edifice of French society could no longer be studied as a whole, and it only remained to examine its component parts as evidences of the tendencies of various classes in the nation. In this assuredly not uninteresting study, Mme. Ancelot's book is of much service; for a certain number of the different salons she names are, as it were, types of the different stages civilization has attained to in the city which chooses to style itself "the brain of Europe."

The description, given in the little book before us, of what in Paris constitutes a genuine salon, is a tolerably correct one. "A salon," says Mme. Ancelot, "is not in the least like one of those places in a populous town, where people gather together a crowd of individuals unknown to each other, who never enter into communication, and who are where they are, momentarily, either because they expect to dance, or to hear music, or to show off the magnificence of their dress. This is not what can ever be called a salon. A salon is an intimate and periodical meeting of persons who for several years have been in the habit of frequenting the same house, who enjoy each other's society, and who have some reason, as they imagine, to be happy when they are brought in contact. The persons who receive, form a link between the various persons they invite, and this link binds the habitués more closely to one another, if, as is commonly the case, it is a woman of superior mind who forms the point of union. A salon, to be homogeneous, and to endure, requires that its habitués should have similar opinions and tastes, and, above all, enough of the urbanity of bygone days to enable its frequenters to feel at home with every one in it, without the necessity of a formal introduction. Formerly, this practice of speaking to persons you had not been presented to was a proof of good-breeding; for it was well known that in no house of any distinction would there be found a guest who was not worthy to be the associate of whoever was noblest and best. These habits of social intercourse gave a value to the intellectual and moral qualities of the individual, quite independent of his fortune or his rank; and in these little republics the real sovereign was merit."

Madame Ancelot is right here, and there were in Paris several of these salons, which served as the models for those of all the rest of Europe. Under the Restoration, two illustrious ladies tried to recall to the generation that had sprung from the Empire or from emigration what the famous salons of old had once been, and the Duchesse de Duras and the Marquise de Montcalm (sister to the then minister, the Duc de Richelieu) drew around them all that was in any way distinguished in France. But the many causes we have noted above made the enterprise a difficult one, and the various divergences of society, politically speaking, rendered the task of the mistress of a house one of surpassing arduousness. Mme. de Staël, who, by her very superiority perhaps,--certainly by her vehemence,--was prevented from ever being a perfect example of what was necessary in this respect, acquired the nickname of Présidente de Salons; and it would appear, that, with her resolute air, her loud voice, and her violent opinions, she really did seem like a kind of speaker of some House of Commons disguised as a woman. That the management of a salon was no easy affair the following anecdote will prove. The Duchesse de Duras one day asked M. de Talleyrand what he thought of the evening réunions at her house, and after a few words of praise, he added: "But you are too vivacious as yet, too young. Ten years hence you will know better how to manage it all." Mme. de Duras was then somewhere about fifty-four or five! We perceive, therefore, that, according to M. de Talleyrand, the proper manner of receiving a certain circle of habitués was likely to be the study of a whole life.

We select from Mme. Ancelot's book sketches of the following maitresses de maison, because they seem to us the types of the periods of transformation to which they correspond in the order of date:--Mme. Lebrun, Mme. Gérard, Mme. d'Abrantès, Mme. Récamier, Mme. Nodier. Mme. Lebrun corresponds to the period when Pre-Revolutionary traditions were still in force, and when the remembrance yet subsisted of a society that had been a real and not a fictive unity. Mme. Gérard--or we should rather say her husband, for she occupied herself little with her guests, whom the illustrious painter entertained--represents the period of the Empire, prolonging itself into the Restoration, and seeking by the immunities of talent and intelligence to bring the two régimes to meet upon what might be termed neutral ground. Mme. d'Abrantès is the type of that last remnant of the half-heroic, half-sentimental epoch which tried to endure even after the first days of 1830, and of which certain verses of Delphine Gay, certain impossible portraits of invincible colonels, certain parts played by the celebrated Elleviou, and the Troubadourish "Partant pour la Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Récamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any celebrity not being a frequenter of their tea-table. Mme. Nodier's--and here, as with Mme. Gérard, we must substitute the husband for the wife, and say Charles Nodier's--salon was the menagerie whither thronged all the strange beings who, after the Revolution of July, fancied they had some special and extraordinary "call" in the world of Art. Nodier's receptions at the Arsenal represent the literary and artistic movement of 1830.

To begin, then, with Mme. Lebrun. This lady was precisely one of those individualities who, since the days of Louis XIV., had found it easy to take their place in French society, who, under the ancien régime, were the equals of the whole world, and who, since "Equality" has been so formally decreed by the laws of the land, would have found it impossible, under the Citizen King, Louis Philippe, or under the so-called "Democratic Empire" of Louis Napoleon, to surround themselves with any society save that of a perfectly inferior description.

Mme. Lebrun was the daughter of a very second-rate painter of the name of Vigée, the sister of a poet of some talent of the same name, and was married young to a picture-dealer of large fortune and most expensive and dissipated, not to say dissolute habits, M. Lebrun. She was young,--and, like Mme. Récamier and a few others, remained youthful to a very late term of her existence,--remarkably beautiful, full of talent, grace, and esprit, and possessed of the magnificent acquirements as a portrait-painter that have made her productions to this day valuable throughout the galleries of Europe. She was very soon so brilliantly in fashion, that there was not a grand seigneur of the court, a grande dame of the queen's intimacy, a rich fermier-général, or a famous writer, artist, or savant, who did not petition to be admitted to her soirées; and in her small apartment, in the Rue de Cléry, were held probably the last of those intimate and charmingly unceremonious réunions which so especially characterized the manners of the high society of France when all question of etiquette was set aside. The witty Prince de Ligne, the handsome Comte de Vaudreuil, the clever M. de Boufflers, and his step-son, M. de Sabran, with such men as Diderot, d'Alembert, Marmontel, and Laharpe, were the original habitués of Mme. Lebrun's drawing-room. At the same time used to visit her the bitter, bilious, discontented David, the painter, who, though very young, was annoyed at a woman having such incontestable proficiency in his own art, and whose democratic ideas were hurt at her receiving such a number of what he styled "great people." Madame Lebrun, one day,--little dreaming that she was addressing a future coupe-tête of the most violent species, (perhaps the only genuine admirer of Marat,)--said, smilingly, to the future painter of Les Sabines, "David, you are wretched because you are neither Duke nor Marquis. I, to whom all such titles are absolutely indifferent, I receive with sincere pleasure all who make themselves agreeable." The apostrophe apparently hit home, for David never returned to Mme. Lebrun's house, and was no well-wisher of hers in later times. But on this occasion she had not only told the truth to an individual, she had touched upon the secret sore of the nation and the time; and vast classes were already brooding in silence over the absurd, vain, and empty regret at being "neither Duke nor Marquis." The Revolution was at hand, and the days rapidly approaching when all such pleasant assemblies as those held by Mme. Lebrun would become forever impossible. At some of these, the crowd of intimates, and of persons all acquainted with each other, was so great, that the highest dignitaries of the realm had to content themselves with sitting down upon the floor; and on one occasion, the Maréchal de Noailles, who was of exceedingly large build, had to request the assistance of several of his neighbors before he could be brought from his squatting attitude to his feet again.

Mme. Lebrun emigrated, like the majority of her associates,--going to Russia, to Italy, to Germany, to England, and everywhere increasing the number of her friends, besides preserving all those of former times, whom she sedulously sought out in their voluntary exile, and to whom, in many cases, she even proved an invaluable friend. In the commencement of the Restoration, Mme. Lebrun returned to France, and established herself definitively at Paris, and at Louveciennes near Marly, where she had a delightful summer residence. Here, as in her salons in the metropolis, she tried to bring back the tone of French society to what it had been before the Revolution, and to show the younger generations what had been the gayety, the grace, the affability, the exquisite good-breeding of those who had preceded them. The men and women of her own standing seconded her, but the younger ones were not to be drawn into high-heartedness; and an observer might have had before him the somewhat strange spectacle of old age gay, gentle, unobservant of any stiff formality, and of youth preoccupied and grave, and, instead of being refined in manners, pedantic. "The younger frequenters of Mme. Lebrun's salon," says Mme. Ancelot, "were strangers to the world into which they found themselves raised; those who surrounded them were of an anterior civilization; they could not grow to be identified with a past which was unknown to them, or known only through recitals that disfigured it.... Amidst the remnants of a society that had been historical, there was, as it were, the breath of a spirit born of our days; new ideas, new opinions, new hopes, nay, even new recollections, were evident all around, and served to render social unity impossible; but, above all, what failed in this one particular centre was youth,--there were few or no young people." This was perfectly true; and Mme. Lebrun's salon is interesting only from the fact of its being the last, perhaps, in which French people of our day can have acquired a complete notion of what the Pre-Revolutionary salons of France were.

The evening réunions at the house of Gérard, the celebrated painter, were among the most famous features of the society of the Restoration. The gatherings at Mmes. de Duras's and de Montcalm's splendid hotels were all but exclusively political and diplomatic; whereas at Gérard's there was a mixture of these with the purely mundane and artistic elements, and, above all, there was a portion of Imperialist fame blended with all the rest, that was hard to be found anywhere else. Gérard, too, had painted the portraits of so many crowned heads, and been so much admitted into the intimacy of his royal models, that, whenever a foreigner of any note visited Paris, he almost immediately asked to be put in a way to be invited to the celebrated artist's Wednesday receptions. This was, to a certain degree, an innovation in regular French society; the French being most truly, as has been said, the "Chinese of Europe," and liking nothing less than the intermixture with themselves of anything foreign. But Gérard was one of those essentially superior men who are able to influence those around them, and bring them to much whereto no one else could have persuaded them. Gérard, like many celebrated persons, was infinitely superior to what he did. As far as what he did was concerned, Gérard, though a painter of great merit, was far inferior to two or three of whom France has since been justly proud; but in regard to what he was, Gérard was a man of genius, who had in many ways few superiors. Few men, even in France, have so highly deserved the reputation of un homme d'esprit. He was as spirituel as Talleyrand himself, and almost as clear-sighted and profound. Add to this that nothing could surpass the impression made by Gérard at first sight. He was strikingly like the first Napoleon, but handsomer; with the same purity of outline, the same dazzlingly lustrous eyes, full of penetration and thought, but with a certain sympathetic charm about his whole person that the glorious conqueror of Marengo and Dictator of Gaul never possessed.

Gérard was not entirely French; born in Rome in 1770, his father only was a native of France, his mother was an Italian; and from her he inherited a certain combination of qualities and peculiarities that at once distinguished him from the majority of his countrymen. Full of poetic fire and inspiration, there was in Gérard at the same time a strong critical propensity, that showed itself in his caustic wit and, sometimes, not unmalicious remarks. There was also a perpetual struggle in his character between reflection and the first impulse, and sometimes the étourderie of the French nature was suddenly checked by the caution of the Italian; but, take him as he was, he was a man in a thousand, and those who were in the habit of constantly frequenting his house affirm loudly and with the deepest regret, that they shall never "look upon his like again."

Gérard had built for himself a house in the Rue des Augustins, near the ancient church of St. Germain des Près; and there, every Wednesday evening, summer and winter, he received whatever was in any way illustrious in France, or whatever the other capitals of Europe sent to Paris, en passant. "Four small rooms," says Mme. Ancelot, "and a very small antechamber, composed the whole apartment. At twelve o'clock tea was served, with eternally the same cakes, over which a pupil of Gérard's, Mlle. Godefroy, presided. Gérard himself talked; his wife remained nailed to a whist-table, attending to nothing and to nobody. Evening once closed in, cards were the only occupation of Mme. Gérard."

From Mme. de Staël down to Mlle. Mars, from Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo down to M. Thiers, there were no celebrities, male or female, that, during thirty years, (from 1805 to 1835,) did not flock to Gérard's house, and all, how different soever might be their character or position, agreed in the same opinion of their host; and those who survive say of him to this day,--"Nothing in his salons announced that you were received by a great Artist, but before half an hour had elapsed you felt you were the guest of a distinguished Man; you had seen by a glance at Gérard's whole person and air that he was something apart from others,--that the sacred fire burned there!"

The regret felt for Gérard's loss by all who ever knew him is not to be told, and speaks as highly for those who cherished as for him who inspired it. His, again, was one of the salons (impossible now in France) where genius and social superiority, whether of birth or position, met together on equal terms. Without having, perhaps, as large a proportion of the old noblesse de cour at his house as had Mme. Lebrun, Gérard received full as many of those eminent personages whose political occupations would have seemed to estrange them from the world of mixed society and the Arts. This is a nuance to be observed. Under the Empire, hard and despotic as was the rule of Bonaparte, and anxious even as he was to draw round him all the aristocratic names that would consent to serve his government, there was--owing to the mere force of events and the elective origin of the throne--a strong and necessary democratic feeling, that assigned importance to each man according to his works. Besides this, let it be well observed, the first Empire had a strong tendency to protect and exalt the Arts, from its own very ardent desire to be made glorious in the eyes of posterity. Napoleon I. was, in his way, a consummate artist, a prodigiously intelligent metteur en scène of his own exploits, and he valued full as much the man who delineated or sang his deeds, as the minister who helped him to legislate, or the diplomatist who drew up protocols and treaties. The Emperor was a lover of noise and show, and his time was a showy and a noisy one. Bonaparte had, in this respect, little enough of the genuine Tyrant nature. Unlike his nephew, he loved neither silence nor darkness; he loved the reflection of his form in the broad noon of publicity, and the echo of his tread upon the sounding soil of popular renown. Could he have been sure that all free men would have united their voices in chanting his exploits, he would have made the citizens of France the freest in the whole world. Compression with him was either a mere preventive against or vengeance for detraction.

Now this publicity-loving nature was, we repeat, as much served by Art and artists as by politicians; nay, perhaps more; and for this reason artists stood high during the period of the Empire. Talma held a social rank that under no other circumstances could have been his, and a painter like Gérard could welcome to his house statesmen such as Talleyrand or Daru, or marshals of France, and princes even. We shall show, by-and-by, how this grew to be impossible later. At present we will recur to Mme. Ancelot for a really very true description of two persons who were among the habitués of the closing years of Gérard's weekly receptions, and one of whom was destined to universal celebrity: we allude to Mme. Gay, and her daughter, Delphine,--later, Mme. Girardin. Of these two, the mother, famous as Sophie Gay, was as thorough a remnant of the exaggerations and bad taste of the Empire as were the straight, stiff, mock-classical articles of furniture of the Imperialist hotels, or the or-moulu clocks so ridiculed by Balzac, on which turbaned Mamelukes mourned their expiring steeds. All the false-heroics of the literature of the Empire found their representative (their last one, perhaps) in Mme. Sophie Gay, and it has not been sufficiently remarked that she even transmitted a shade of all this to her daughter, in other respects one of the most sagacious spirits and one of the most essentially unconventional of our own day. A certain something that was not in harmony with the tone of contemporary writers here and there surprised you in Delphine de Girardin's productions, and, as Jules Janin once said, "One would think the variegated plumes of Murat's fantastic hat[2] were sweeping through her brains!" This was her mother's doing. Delphine, who had never lived during one hour of the glory of the Empire, had, through the medium of her mother, acquired a slight tinge of its boursouflure; and had it not been for her own personal good taste, she would have been misled precisely by her strong lyrical aptitudes. Madame Gay found in Gérard's salon all the people she had best known in her youth, and she was delighted to have her early years recalled to her. Mme. Ancelot, who, like many of her country women, felt a marked antipathy for Madame Gay, has given a very true portrait of both mother and daughter.

"Many years after," she writes, "when these ladies were (through M. de Girardin) at the head of one of the chief organs of the Paris press, they were much flattered and courted; at the period I speak of" (about 1817-1825) "their position was far from brilliant, and Mme. Gay was far from popular. Every word that fell from her mouth, uttered in a sharp tone, and full of bitterness and envy, went to speak ill of others and prodigiously well of herself. She had a mania for titles and tuft-hunting, and could speak of no one under a marquis, a count, or a baron. Her daughter's beauty and talents caused her afterwards to be more generally admitted into society; but at this period she was avoided by most people."

Her daughter's beauty was certainly marvellous, and when, under the reign of Louis Philippe, American society had in Paris more than one brilliant representative and more than one splendid centre of hospitality, where all that was illustrious in the society of France perpetually flocked, we make no doubt many of our countrymen noticed, whether at theatre or concert or ball, the really queenlike air of Mme. de Girardin, and the exquisitely classic profile, which, enframed, as it were, by the capricious spirals of the lightest, fairest flaxen hair, resembled the outline of some antique statue of a Muse.

Delphine Gay and her mother were more the ornaments of the salon of the Duchesse d'Abrantès, perhaps, than of that of Gérard; and as the former continued open long after the latter was closed by death, not only the young girl, whose verses were so immensely in fashion during the Restoration, was one of the constant guests of Junot's widow, but she continued to be so as the wife of Émile de Girardin, the intelligent and enterprising founder of the newspaper "La Presse."

The salon of the Duchesse d'Abrantès was one of the first of a species which has since then found imitators by scores and hundreds throughout France. It was the salon of a person not in herself sufficiently superior or even celebrated to attract the genuine superiorities of the country without the accessory attractions of luxury, and not sufficiently wealthy to draw around her by her splendid style of receiving, and to disdain the bait held out to those she invited by the presence of great "lions." Gérard gave to his guests, at twelve o'clock at night, a cup of tea and "eternally the same cakes" all the year round; but Gérard was the type of the great honors rendered, as we have observed, to Art under the Empire, and to his house men went as equals, whose daily occupations made them the associates of kings. This was not the case with the Duchesse d'Abrantès. She had notoriety, not fame. Her "Mémoires" had been read all through Europe, but it is to be questioned whether anything beyond curiosity was satisfied by the book, and it certainly brought to its author little or none of that which in France stands in lieu even of fortune, but which is not easy to obtain, namely,--consideration.

The Duchesse d'Abrantès was rather popular than otherwise; she was even beloved by a certain number of persons; but she never was what is termed considérée,--and this gave to her salon a different aspect from that of the others we have spoken of. A dozen names could be mentioned, whose wearers, without any means of "entertaining" their friends, or giving them more than a glass of eau sucrée, were yet surrounded by everything highest and best in the land, simply because they were gens considérables, as the phrase went; but Mme. d'Abrantès, who more or less received all that mixed population known by the name of tout Paris, never was, we repeat, considérée.

The way in which Mme. Ancelot introduces her "friend," the poor Duchesse d'Abrantès, on the scene, is exceedingly amusing and natural; and we have here at once the opportunity of applying the remark we made in commencing these pages, upon Mme. Ancelot's truthfulness. She is the habituée of the house of Mme. d'Abrantès; she professes herself attached to the Duchess; yet she does not scruple to tell everything as it really is, nor, out of any of the usual little weaknesses of friendship, does she omit any one single detail that proves the strange and indeed somewhat "Bohemian" manner of life of her patroness. We, the readers of her book, are obviously obliged to her for her indiscretions; with those who object to them from other motives we have nothing to do.

Here, then, is the fashion in which we are introduced to Mme. la Duchesse d'Abrantès, widow of Marshal Junot, and a born descendant of the Comneni, Emperors of Byzantium.

Mme. Ancelot is sitting quietly by her fireside, one evening in October, (some short time after the establishment of the monarchy of July,) waiting to hear the result of a representation at the Théâtre Français, where a piece of her own is for the first time being performed. All at once, she hears several carriages stop at her door, a number of persons rush up the stairs, and she finds herself in the arms of the Duchesse d'Abrantès, who was resolved, as she says, to be the first to congratulate her on her success. The hour is a late one; supper is served, and conversation is prolonged into the "small hours." All at once Mme. d'Abrantès exclaims, with an explosion of delight,--"Ah! what a charming time is the night! one is so deliciously off for talking! so safe! so secure! safe from bores and from duns!" (on ne craint ni les ennuyeux ni les créanciers.')

Madame Ancelot affirms that this speech made a tremendous effect, and that her guests looked at each other in astonishment. If this really was the case, we can only observe that it speaks well for the Parisians of the epoch at which it occurred; for, assuredly, at the present day, no announcement of the kind would astonish or scandalize any one. People in "good society," nowadays, in France, have got into a habit of living from hand to mouth, and of living by expedients, simply because they have not the strength of mind to live out of society, and because the life of "the world" forces them to expenses utterly beyond what they have any means of providing for. However, we are inclined to believe that some five-and-twenty years ago this was in no degree a general case, and that Mme. d'Abrantès might perfectly well have been the first maitresse de maison to whom it happened.

"Alas!" sighs Mme. Ancelot, commenting upon her excellent friend's strange confidence,--"it was the secret of her whole life that she thus revealed to us in a moment of abandon,--the secret of an existence that tried still to reflect the splendors of the Imperial epoch, and that was at the same time perplexed and tormented by all the thousand small miseries of pecuniary embarrassment. There were the two extremes of a life that to the end excited my surprise. Grandeur! want!--between those two opposites oscillated every day of the last years of the Duchesse d'Abrantès; the exterior and visible portion of that life arranged itself well or ill, as it best could, in the middle,--now apparently colored by splendor, and now degraded by distress; but at bottom the existence was unvaryingly what I state."

Madame d'Abrantès, at the period of her greatest notoriety, occupied the ground-floor of a hotel in the Rue Rochechouart, with a garden, where dancing was often introduced upon the lawn. Some remnants of the glories of Imperialism were collected there, but the principal habitués were men of letters, artists, and young men who danced well! (les jeunes beaux qui dansaient bien!) That one phrase characterizes at once the ex-belle of the Empire, the contemporary of the sentimental Hortense de Beauharnais, and of the more than légère Pauline Borghése.

To the "new society of July" Mme. d'Abrantès was an object of great curiosity. "I dote on seeing that woman!" said Balzac, one evening, to Mme. Ancelot. "Only fancy! she saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a mere boy,--knew him well,--knew him as a young man, unknown,--saw him occupied, like anybody else, with the ordinary occurrences of every-day life; then she saw him grow, and grow, and rise, and throw the shadow of his name over the world. She seems to me somewhat like a canonized creature who should all at once come and recount to me the glories of paradise."

Balzac, it must be premised, was bitten just at this period by the Napoleon mania, and this transformed his inquisitive attachment for Mme. d'Abrantès into a kind of passion. It was at this period that he chose to set up in his habitation in the Rue Cassini a sort of altar, on which he placed a small statue of the Emperor, with these words engraved upon the pedestal:--

"Ce qu'il avait commencé par l'épée,
Je l'achèverai par la plume!"

What particular part of the Imperial work this was that Balzac was to "complete by the pen" was never rightly discovered,--but for a time he had a sun-stroke for Napoleon, and his attachment for Mme. d'Abrantès partook of this influence.

One anecdote told by Mme. Ancelot proves to what a degree the union of "grandeur" and "want" she has alluded to went. "Mme. d'Abrantès," says her biographer of the moment, "was always absorbed by the present impression, whatever that might happen to be; she passed from joy to despair like a child, and I never knew any house that was either so melancholy or so gay." One evening, however, it would seem that the Hôtel d'Abrantès was gayer than usual. Laughter rang loud through the rooms, the company was numerous, and the mistress of the house in unparalleled high spirits. If the tide of conversation seemed to slacken, quickly Madame la Duchesse had some inimitable story of the ridicules of the ladies of the Imperial court, and the whole circle was soon convulsed at her stories, and at her way of telling them. The tea-table was forgotten. Generally, tea at her house was taken at eleven o'clock; but on this occasion, midnight was long past before it was announced, and before her guests assembled round the table. If our readers are curious to know why, here was the reason: All that remained of the plate had that very morning been put in pawn, and when tea should have been served it was found that tea-spoons were wanting! Whilst these were being sent for to the house of a friend who lent them, Madame la Duchesse took charge of her guests, and drowned their impatience in their hilarity.

It must be allowed that this lady was worthy to be the mother of the young man who, one day, pointing to a sheet of stamped paper, on which a bill of exchange might be drawn, said: "You see that; it is worth five sous now; but if I sign my name to it, it will be worth nothing!" This was a speech made by Junot's eldest son, known in Paris as the Duc d'Abrantès, and as the intimate friend of Victor Hugo, from whom at one time he was almost inseparable.

The eccentric personage we have just spoken of--the Duchesse d'Abrantès--died in the year 1838, in a garret, upon a truckle-bed, provided for her by the charity of a friend. The royal family paid the expenses of her funeral, and Chateaubriand, accompanied by nearly every celebrity of the literary world, followed on foot behind her coffin, from the church to the burying-ground.

Madame d'Abrantès may be considered as the inventor, in France, of what has since become so widely spread under the name of les salons picaresques, and of what, at the present day, is famous under the appellation of the demi-monde. Her example has been followed by numberless imitators, and now, instead of presuming (as was the habit formerly) that those only receive who are rich enough to do so, it is constantly inquired, when any one in Paris opens his or her house, whether he or she is ruined, and whether the soirées given are meant merely to throw dust into people's eyes. The history of the tea-spoons--so singular at the moment of its occurrence--has since been parodied a hundred times over, and sometimes by mistresses of houses whose fortune was supposed to put them far above all such expedients. Madame d'Abrantès, we again say, was the founder of a genre in Paris society, and as such is well worth studying. The genre is by no means the most honorable, but it is one too frequently found now in the social centres of the French capital for the essayist on Paris salons to pass it over unnoticed.

The salon of Mme. Récamier is one of a totally different order, and the world-wide renown of which may make it interesting to the reader of whatever country. As far as age was concerned, Mme. Récamier was the contemporary of Mme. d'Abrantès, of Gérard, nay, almost of Mme. Lebrun; for the renown of her beauty dates from the time of the French Revolution, and her early friendships associate her with persons who even had time to die out under the first Empire; but the salon of Madame Récamier was among the exclusively modern ones, and enjoyed all its lustre and its influence only after 1830. The cause of this is obvious: the circumstance that attracted society to Mme. Récamier's house was no other than the certainty of finding there M. de Chateaubriand. He was the divinity of the temple, and the votaries flocked around his shrine. Before 1830 the temple had been elsewhere, and, until her death, Mme. la Duchesse de Duras was the high-priestess of the sanctuary, where a few privileged mortals only were admitted to bow down before the idol. It is inconceivable how easy a certain degree of renown finds it in Paris to establish one of these undisputed sovereignties, before which the most important, highest, most considerable individualities abdicate their own merit, and prostrate themselves in the dust. M. de Chateaubriand in no way justified the kind of worship that was paid him, nor did he even obtain it so long as he was in a way actively to justify it. It was when he grew old and produced nothing, and was hourly more and more rusted over by selfishness, churlishness, and an exorbitant adoration of his own genius, that the society of his country fell down upon its knees before him, and was ready to make any sacrifice to insure to itself the honor of one of his smiles or one of his looks. In this disposition, Madame Récamier speedily obtained a leading influence over Paris society, and when it was notorious that from four to six every day the "Divinity" would be visible in her salons, her salons became the place of pilgrimage for all Paris. As with those of Mme. d'Abrantès, there was a certain mixture amongst the guests, because, without that, the notoriety, which neither Chateaubriand nor Mme. Récamier disliked, would have been less easily secured; but the tone of the réunions was vastly different, and at the celebrated receptions of the Abbaye aux Bois (where Mme. Récamier spent her last quarter of a century) the somewhat austere deportment of the siècle de Louis XIV. was in vogue. All the amusements were in their nature grave. Mlle. Rachel recited a scene from "Polyeucte" for the author of "Les Martyrs," and for archbishops and cardinals; the Duc de Noailles read a chapter from his history of Mme. de Maintenon; some performance of strictly classical music was to be heard; or, upon state occasions, Chateaubriand himself vouchsafed to impart to a chosen few a few pages of the "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe."

In her youth Mme. Récamier had been reputed beautiful, and her sole occupation then was to do the honors of her beauty. She did not dream of ever being anything else; and as she remained young marvellously long,--as her beauty, or the charm, whatever it was, that distinguished her, endured until a very late epoch of her life,--she was far advanced in years before the idea of becoming famous through any other medium save that of her exterior advantages ever struck her. Madame Récamier had no intellectual superiority, but, paraphrasing in action Molière's witty sentence, that "silence, well employed, may go far to establish a man's capacity," she resolved to employ well the talent she possessed of making other people believe themselves clever. Mme. Ancelot, whose "good friend" she is supposed to have been, and who treats her with the same sincerity she applies to Mme. d'Abrantès, has a very ingenious and, we have reason to fancy, a very true parallel, for Mme. Récamier. She compares her to the mendicant described by Sterne, (or Swift,) who always obtained alms even from those who never gave to any other, and whose secret lay in the adroit flatteries with which he seasoned all his beggings. The best passages in Mme. Ancelot's whole Volume are those where she paints Mme. Récamier, and we will therefore quote them.

"The Recluse of the Abbaye aux Bois," she says, "had either read the story of the beggar, or her instinct had persuaded her that vanity and pride are the surest vulnerable points by which to attack and subject the human heart. From the first to the last of all the orators, writers, artists, or celebrities of no matter what species, that were invited to Mme. Récamier's house, all heard from her lips the same admiring phrases, the first time they were presented to her. With a trembling voice she used to say: 'The emotion I feel in the presence of a superior being does not permit me to express, as I should wish to do, all my admiration, all my sympathy;--but you can divine,--you can understand;--my emotion tells the rest!' This eulogistic sentence, a well-studied hesitation, words interrupted, and looks of the most perfect enthusiasm, produced in the person thus received a far more genuine emotion than that with which he was met. It was no other than the artifice of wholesale, universal flattery,--always and invariably the same,--with which Mme. Récamier achieved her greatest conquests, and continued to draw around her almost all the eminent men of our epoch. All this was murmured in soft, low tones, so that he only to whom she spoke tasted the honey poured into his ear. Her grace of manner all the while was infinite; for though she had no talent for conversation, she had, in the highest degree, the ability which enables one to succeed in certain little combinations, and when she had determined that such or such a great man should become her habitué, the web she spun round him on all sides was composed of threads so imperceptibly fine and so innumerable, that those who escaped were few, and gifted with marvellous address."

Mme. Ancelot confesses to having "studied narrowly" all Mme. Récamier's manoeuvres, and to having watched all the thousand little traps she laid for social "lions"; but we are rather astonished herein at Mme. Ancelot's astonishment, for, with more or less talent and grace, these are the devices resorted to in Paris by a whole class of maitresses de maison, of whom Mme. Récamier is simply the most perfect type.

But the most amusing part of all, and one that will be above all highly relished by any one who has ever seen the same game carried on, is the account of Mme. Récamier's campaign against M. Guizot, which signally failed, all her small webs having been coldly brushed away by the intensely vainglorious individual who knew he should not be placed above Chateaubriand, and who would for no consideration under heaven have been placed beneath him. The spectacle of this small and delicate vanity doing battle against this vanity so infinitely hard and robust is exquisitely diverting. Mme. Récamier put herself so prodigiously out of her way; she who was indolent became active; she who was utterly insensible to children became maternal; she who was of delicate health underwent what only a vigorous constitution would undertake. But all in vain; she either did not or would not see that M. Guizot would not be second where M. de Chateaubriand was first. Besides, she split against another rock, that she had either chosen to overlook, or the importance of which she had undervalued. If Mme. Récamier had for the idol of her shrine at the Abbaye aux Bois M. de Chateaubriand, M. Guizot had also his Madame Récamier, the "Egeria" of the Hôtel Talleyrand,--the Princess Lieven. The latter would have resisted to the death any attempt to carry off "her Minister" from the salons where his presence was the "attraction" reckoned upon daily, nay, almost hourly; and against such a rival as the venerable Princess Lieven, Mme. Récamier, spite of all her arts and wiles, had no possible chance. However, she left nothing untried, and when M. Guizot took a villa at Auteuil, whither to repair of an evening and breathe the freshness of the half-country air after the stormy debates of the Chambers, she also established herself close by, and opened her attack on the enemy's outposts by a request to be allowed to walk in the Minister's grounds, her own garden being ridiculously small! This was followed by no end of attentions directed towards Mme. de Meulan, M. Guizot's sister-in-law, who saw through the whole, and laughed over it with her friends; no end of little dancing matinées were got up for the Minister's young daughters, and no end even of sweet biscuits were perpetually provided for a certain lapdog belonging to the family! All in vain! We may judge, too, what transports of enthusiasm were enacted when the Minister himself was by chance (!) encountered in the alleys of the park, and with what outpourings of admiration he was greeted, by the very person who, of all others, was so anxious to become one of his votaries. But, as we again repeat, it was of no use. M. Guizot never consented to be one of the habitués of the salon of the Abbaye aux Bois. It should be remarked, also, that M. Guizot cared little for anything out of the immediate sphere of politics, and of the politics of the moment; he took small interest in what went on in Art, and none whatever in what went on in the so-called "world"; so that where a salon was not predominantly political, there was small chance of presenting Louis Philippe's Prime-Minister with any real attraction. For this reason he was now and then to be met at the house of Mme. de Châtenay, often at that of Mme. de Boigne, but never in any of the receptions of the ordinary run of men and women of the world. His own salon, we again say,--the salon where he was what Chateaubriand was at the Abbaye aux Bois,--was the salon of the Princess Lieven; and to have ever thought she could induce M. Guizot to be in the slightest degree faithless to this habit argues, on the part of Mme. Récamier, either a vanity more egregious than we had even supposed, or an ignorance of what she had to combat that seems impossible. To have imagined for a moment that she could induce M. Guizot to frequent her réunions shows that she appreciated neither Mme. de Lieven, nor M. Guizot, nor, we may say, herself, in the light of the high-priestess of Chateaubriand's temple.

However, what Mme. Récamier went through with regard to the arrogant Président du Conseil of the Orléans dynasty, more than one of her imitators are at this hour enduring for some "lion" infinitely illustrious. This kind of hunt after celebrated persons is a feature of French civilization, and a feature peculiarly characteristic of the French women who take a pride in their receptions. A genuine maitresse de maison in Paris has no affections, no ties, save those of her salon. She is wholly absorbed in thinking how she shall render this more attractive than the salon of some other lady, who is her intimate friend, but whose sudden disappearance from the social scene, by any catastrophe, death even, would not leave her inconsolable. She has neither husband, children, relatives, nor friends (in the genuine acceptation of the word);--she has, above all, before all, always and invariably, her salon. This race of women, who date undoubtedly from the famous Marquise de Rambouillet in the time of the Fronde, are now dying out, and are infinitely less numerous than they were even twenty years ago in Paris; but a few of them still exist, and in these few the ardor we allude to, and which would lead them, following in Mme. Récamier's track, to embark for the North Cape in search of some great celebrity, is in no degree abated. Madame Récamier is curious as the arch-type of this race, so purely, thoroughly, exclusively Parisian.

Perhaps to a foreigner, however, no salon was more amusing than that of Charles Nodier; but this was of an utterly different description, and all but strictly confined to the world of Literature and Art. Nodier himself occupied a prominent place in the literature that was so much talked of during the last years of the Restoration and the first years of the Monarchy of July, and his house was the rendezvous for all the combatants of both sides, who at that period were engaged in the famous Classico-Romantic struggle. Nodier was the Head Librarian of the Arsenal, and it was in the salons of this historic palace that he held his weekly gatherings. He himself was scarcely to be reputed exclusively of either party; he enjoyed the favors of the Monarchy, and the sympathies of the Opposition; the "Classics" elected him a member of the Académie Française, and the "Romantics" were perpetually in his intimacy. The fact was, that Nodier at heart believed in neither Classics nor Romantics, laughed at both in his sleeve, and only cared to procure to himself the most agreeable house, the greatest number of comforts, and the largest sums of money possible.

"By degrees," says Mme. Ancelot, "as Nodier cared less for other people, he praised them more, probably in order to compensate them in words for the less he gave them in affection. Besides this, he was resolved not to be disturbed in his own vanities, and for this he knew there was one only way, which was to foster the vanities of everybody else. Never did eulogium take such varied forms to laud and exalt the most mediocre things. Nowhere were so many geniuses whom the public never guessed at raised to the rank of divinities as in the salons of Charles Nodier."

The description contained in the little volume before us, the manner in which every petty scribbler of fiftieth-rate talent was transformed into a giant in the society of Nodier, is extremely curious and amusing, and the more so that it is strictly true, and tallies perfectly with the recollections of the individuals who, at the period mentioned, were admitted to the réunions of the Arsenal.

Every form of praise having been expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate into Olympus, and the strange, misapplied terms whereof seemed to the uninitiated the language of insanity. For instance, if, after a dozen little unshaved, unkempt poetasters had been called "sublime," Victor Hugo vouchsafed to recite one of his really best Odes, what was the eulogistic form to be adopted? Mme. Ancelot will tell us.

"A pause would ensue, and at the end of a silence of some minutes, when the echo of Hugo's sonorous voice had subsided, one after another of the elect would rise, go up to the poet, take his hand with solemn emotion, and raise to the ceiling eyes full of mute enthusiasm. The crowd of bystanders would listen all agape. Then, to the surprise, almost to the consternation, of the uninitiated, one word only would be spoken,--loudly, distinctly, and with strong, deep emphasis spoken; that word would be:

"Cathedral!!!

"The first orator, after this effort, would return to the place whence he had come, and another, succeeding to him, after repeating the same pantomime as the former, would exclaim:

"Ogive!!!

"Then a third would come forward, and, after looking all around, would risk the word:

"Pyramid-of-Egypt!!!

"And thereat the whole assembly would start off into frenzies of applause, and fifty or sixty voices would repeat in chorus the sacramental words that had just been pronounced separately."

The degree of absurdity to which a portion of society must have attained before such scenes as the above could become possible may serve as a commentary and an explanation to half the literature which flooded the stage and the press in France for the first six or eight years after the Revolution of 1830. However, to be just, we must, in extenuation of all these absurdities, cite one passage more from Mme. Ancelot's book, in which, in one respect, at all events, the youth of twenty years ago in Paris are shown to have been superior to the youth of the present day.

"Nodier's parties were extremely amusing," says our authoress; "his charming daughter was the life of the whole; she drew around her young girls of her own age; poets, musicians, painters, young and joyous as these, were their partners in the dance, and every one was full of hope and dreaming of glory. But what brought all the light-heartedness, all the enthusiasm, all the exultation to its utmost height was, that, in all that youth, so trusting and so hopeful, no one gave a single thought to money!"

Assuredly, it would be impossible to say as much nowadays.

Taken as a whole, Mme. Ancelot's little volume is, as we said, an amusing and an instructive one. It is not so from any portion of her own individuality she has infused into it, but, on the contrary, from the entire sincerity with which it mirrors other people. We recommend it to our readers, for it is a record of Paris society in its successive transformations from 1789 to 1848, and paints a class of people and a situation of things, equally true types whereof may possibly not be observable in future times.

[Footnote 1: Les Salons de Paris.--Foyers Eteints. Par Mme. Ancelot. 12mo. Paris.]

[Footnote 2: It will be remembered that on field-days Murat had adopted a hat and feathers of a most ridiculous kind, and that have become proverbial.]

[THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE] A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S "OROSIUS." Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right-hand. His figure was tall and stately; Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me; To the east are wild mountain-chains, And beyond them meres and plains; To the westward all is sea. "So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Fins,-- Whalebone, and reindeer-skins, And ropes of walrus-hide. "I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then With their sagas of the seas,-- "Of Iceland, and of Greenland, And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep;-- I could not eat nor sleep For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert,-- How far I fain would know; So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, As far as the whale-ships go. "To the west of me was the ocean,-- To the right the desolate shore; But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more. "The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one; And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. "The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast,-- But onward still I sailed. "Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night: Bound in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, With red and lurid light." Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, Ceased writing for a while; And raised his eyes from his book, With a strange and puzzled look, And an incredulous smile. But Othere, the old sea-captain, He neither paused nor stirred; And the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen, And wrote down every word. "And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea. "And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal: Ha! 'twas a noble game, And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel! "There were six of us altogether, Norsemen of Helgoland; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand!" Here Alfred the Truth-Teller Suddenly closed his book, And lifted his blue eyes With doubt and strange surmise Depicted in their look. And Othere, the old sea-captain, Stared at him wild and weird, Then smiled, till his shining teeth Gleamed white from underneath His tawny, quivering beard. And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said. "Behold this walrus-tooth!"

[THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.]