FOOTNOTES:
[4] Vide Macaulay's article on Warren Hastings, in the Edinburgh Review.
STYLES OF PHILOSOPHIES.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE
BY REV. J. R. MORELL,
Translator of Fourier "On the Passions," &c.
The history of literatures, like that of nations, has presented its varieties as well as its curiosities, and both alike furnish similar though not identical features.
1st. Families and clans are traceable equally in each development, and the movements both of literatures and races have displayed a corresponding monotony and eccentricity, convergence and divergence, in proportion as they have progressed along the beaten track of opinion or performed outpost duty as the corps of guides.
2d. Not only is this family likeness obvious in the general characteristics of ethnography and authorship, but the laws of lineage and the hereditary transmission of qualities are as strongly marked in one case as in the other. Letters as well as races have their hereditary sceptres and coronets; but whereas, in the latter case the fleshly heir of the great of other days may chance to be unworthy of his sires, the spiritual sonship of the patrician writer is stereotyped upon each line and lineament of his nature.
3d. Nor is the connection between words and peoples confined to a law of analogy running through them both, but they have reacted upon and moulded each other in a manner curious to relate, and races and letters have mutually made and unmade each other.
4th. The Indo-Germanic people have left monuments of their sinewy energy in the psycho-physical characteristics of affiliated races and tongues, and individual family likenesses may be readily traced between groups of thinkers and dreamers on the banks of the Ganges, in the Academy, and at Weimar. Again the mystical semitic world, groaning beneath the weight of an overwrought ideal, and lacking the ballast of science and patient thought, has ever and anon given birth to prodigies and monsters of cabalistic or Gnostic extravagance.
5th. To follow the currents of peoples and tongues, the great subdivisions of the Teutonic and Romance tribes and literatures, their virtues and vices have stamped its present physical and moral character on the face of modern Europe. The Teutonic, representing strength and depth in word and work, has been the stronghold of emancipation in life and thought, yet tinctured with the savageness and chaos of unpolished and disordered nature. The Romance, fettered by the rhythm of Latinity, has yet possessed that voluptuous wealth of the ideal and that graceful tracery of thought and wit which have been denied to the other. The antagonism of the Catholic and Protestant mind is the result of this contrast, which has, moreover, been pictured in the tertian fevers of French revolution and in the mystical skepticism of modern Germany.
As certain races, so also certain families of writers, have in thought transcended the bounds of the existing and actual, and thrown out from their brain an ideal past, present, or future, beyond the horizon, and free from the flaws of their experience. Thus, whilst the followers of Tao-tse were in China seeking for the drug of immortality, the Greek and Roman poets and historians were dreaming of a golden age that cast its radiance over the past, or of that fabled Atlantis and those sweet Islands of the Blest in the far west—dreams and fables that have been somewhat justified by modern discovery. Again sacred voices mingled with these aspirations, and the semitic bards and seers pronounced in their oracles an Eden for the past and a millenium for the future of man.
Nor were these views confined to the old world, for the followers of Columbus found, among the cannibals of the gulf, the traditions of a fountain of eternal youth, and later travellers were regaled with gorgeous stories of El Dorado and his empire—traditions and stories that seemed to point, however obscurely, to the Sitzbath and Californian riches.
There has likewise been a class of writers broad-cast through the nations who have sought to mend the present and make the future by holding the mirror to contemporaneous deformity, or painting the perspective of an earthly elysium with the rainbow tints of hope. Negatively or positively, directly or indirectly, these men had, in common, faith in the regeneration of humanity. Utopias are the familiar homes of such minds, either because they have a cast in their eyes, or because they are more clairvoyants than the vulgar herd. In the spring-time of our race, a Plato reflected on the poetical extravagancies of his day, and refracted the rays of golden fancy in the enchanted land of his Republic. The Hebrew seers in like manner, whilst they apply no measured castigations to the money-changers who converted the temple of God into a den of thieves, love to soar in sublimest rhapsody above the valley of dry bones and the shadow of death cast around them, and to indulge in visions of a vernal future, when earth should smile in the sunshine of infinite love, when the wolf should dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid, and a little child should lead them. Affiliated members of this extensive and venerable company of cynics and seers have ever and anon in the current of ages lifted a frowning brow above the troubled waters round about them, and with the same breath that swept like a tempest over the wintry waste, their cradle and their home, have given utterance to strains of harmony that told of summer skies to come. Tracing the tides of the children of men in their eccentric ebbings and floodings, a little crew of rovers may be ever seen ploughing the world of waters, true to their principle of keeping aloof from the gulf-stream. Europe has been the chief nursery of these rovers, whose voices, though few and far between, have risen above the storms of evil passions howling about them, and have echoed through the ages. Thus a Rabelais could laugh the knell of monkery, and with his stentor voice, rich booming from the classic world of Nature, that had slept during the dark ages, could crack the babel of spiritual usurpation, and restore the balance of power between the seen and the unseen. A Cervantes in like manner could, in the fulness of time, inflict death-wounds with a stroke of his pen on a superannuated chivalry, and thus, by negatively giving a coup de grâce to the past, pave the way for an age of prose. Later in the day a Swift appears, in the heart of a rotten age, himself infected with the leprosy, yet he smites the idols of his time, of Stuart progeny, Lust and Lucre, and converts his fables into a house of correction for a nation's vices. The Tale of a Tub contains a stream of lustral water, and Gulliver is no mean adept at the photographic art. The Dean hath taught us how the "positive" fictions of a madman's brain may indirectly be a school to the nations at all times and in all seasons.
Poesy has mixed its plaintive strains in the lamentations and oracles of insane or inspired reformers, and the aberration or illumination of a kindred spirit breaks forth in the wizard words of a prophet or a bard. Some favored scions of the royal priesthood and chosen generation of whom we speak seem to mingle these various and heterogeneous ingredients, the cynic's lash with the seer's lamp, mathematical squares and compasses with the conjurations of the diviner. Their proportions, both harmonious and deformed, bespeak their consanguinity with an extensive family, whose branches are scattered through broad lands, and are not confined to a single variety of the human race, though the quality and quantity of their esprit de corps may be especially predicated of the Caucasian race.
There are sovereign natures that bespeak the choice blood of rival and remote races mingling in their veins, and which may claim kinsmanship in opposite and conflicting clans of teachers. We have Indo-Germanic minds, whose massive substance is relieved by the arabesque of the Semitic style of thought, and which, though stamped with the characteristic mould of their parentage, fling aside much of its speciality, and stand forth as magnates in the universal aristocracy of humanity.
An example of a rich nature cast in this mould has been presented of late years in France, in the person of Charles Fourier. Though indelibly French, he is still more human, and though Teutonic elements enter largely as component parts of his frame, and the Romance genius has cast its sunshine tints over his canvas, yet has he bravely shaken off the chains of generic and specific modes of thought and sight, and the priestly hieroglyphs and geometry of Egypt are seen to blend with Persian dualism and the prophetic wand of Hebrew seers in his pages. Nay, the mantle of Mohammed might seem to have fallen on his capacious shoulders, to judge from the strangely glorious flights of his fancy, and the tangible solids of his elysium. Thus the nations would appear to have converged towards and centred in this brain, and to have dropped in their pearls or their paste, as the case might be. Exaggerating the mathematical precision of French thought, it is yet tempered in a manner somewhat uncommon, by the most wholesale picture-writing on which man ever yet ventured. The flaming double-edged critic's sword is sometimes changed in his hands, after a manner wonderful to relate, into an Esculapian staff, which farther suffers a frequent conversion into Mercurian caduceus and Bacchanile Thyrsus, and at another time assumes the proportions of Midas's wand. Never was such a many-faced Janus seen in the flesh as this man, who exceeds Proteus and Hindoo avatars in multiplicity combined with unity.
The bitter laugh still curls our lips, elicited by his merciless satire, when the tears of pity come coursing down our cheeks, as he touches with magic finger the most godlike fibres of the soul. Luxuriance, bordering on levity, follows fast a sense of justice and of truth, that might have put a Brutus and an Aristides to the blush. National contrasts, harmonies, and deformities, all seem reflected in this representative man.
Yet it would be a very partial view that represented Fourier as nothing better than an expletive particle added to the genealogical list of idea-mongers, or a mosaic of valuable relics in earth's cabinet of curiosities. Though his pen inflicts wounds both broad and deep, yet a balm is ever at hand. Not satisfied with performing amputations for the good of the body corporate, he is a professor of the healing art, and affects to have discovered an elixir that shall wipe away all tears, by causing pain and sorrow to flee away. I do not profess to judge of the merits of the case, but one feature distinguishes Fourier from critics, reformers, and prophets, who are gathered to their fathers. He is a scientific explorer, and the plans that he has designed for the future structure of humanity, from the high order of architecture and mechanics which they exhibit, discriminate him from the vulgar herd as an originator, and place him in the category either of eminent scientific adventurers or inventors. Daring and caution shake hands at every page, and seem exhausted by his pen. The Archimedian lever found a resting-place in his brain, and sundry of his thoughts seem not inapt to upheave the world.
If Laplace deserves credit as the creator of a Mechanique Celeste, Fourier has equal claims to gratitude as the first and only propounder of a rigidly scientific system of mental mechanics. Though Pythagoras might smile complacently at his harmonies and sacred numbers, and Plato clap his hands on seeing so worthy a disciple of his Republic, yet the fiery Frenchman is but too apt to run counter to the past, and give a slap in the face to the wisdom of the fore-world. Though hope and faith ever brighten his pages, we could wish at times for a larger infusion of charity, to neutralize the gall in which his pen was dipped. Yet he nobly vindicates his claim as a reformer by the lash he applies with no measured hand to injustice, falseness, and hypocrisy, under whatever guise they may appear.
REMINISCENCES OF PARIS, FROM 1817 TO 1848.
On the original publication of this work, in German, at Berlin, we gave in the International some account of it; and we avail ourselves of the notice in the Athenæum of an English translation of it which has just appeared in London, to give some of its best passages. In the capital of a nation which, above all others, has been wont to project its gravest interests into the circles of fashion and gayety, the period included between 1817 and 1848 must have been rich indeed in matter for observation of all kinds, by the foreigner admitted to its saloons. With Waterloo at one end of the line, and the overthrow of Louis Philippe at the other, what a world of change lies between!—what unexpected turns of fortune, each throwing some new tint on the chameleon-play of social existence! We may not expect a lady's eye to see more than its outward features. But these alone, in such a scene and period, are themselves enough to give some permanent historical value, as well as a present attraction to the survey, if only taken with common feminine intelligence.
It is true that the retrospect is not actually so rich as the above dates would imply.—Connected notices of what might be seen in Parisian circles do not extend beyond the first seven years of the period in question. Afterwards, there is nearly a total hiatus, except in the two departments of music and painting—anecdotes of which are continued almost to the close of the Orleans dynasty. Of the persons and events which otherwise filled the scene from 1828 downwards, the Reminiscences are wholly silent, or only introduce one or two figures by anticipation while dwelling on the period of the Restoration. The volume ends, indeed, with a story, in which some of the very latest exhibitions of somnambulism serve to introduce a Spanish romance, founded, it may be, on a basis of fact, but evidently dressed up for effect by one not well enough acquainted with the Spain of this century to give to the composition a probable air. But here the display in the Parisian saloon is merely an occasional overture to the melo-drama that follows; and we learn next to nothing of the new faces and new fashions which the writer may have seen during the second half of the term included in her title. What is now published, therefore, can only be taken as a fragment—destined, perhaps, to be further completed at some future time.
The work appears anonymously; and it might be uncourteous to pry into the condition of the writer, beyond what it has pleased herself to reveal. This is to the effect that she came to Paris, unmarried, and hardly out of her teens, from some part of Germany, in the second year of the Restoration, and, at first, was chiefly conversant with the circles of the haute finance. We afterwards hear of her marriage, of journeyings and absences, and see her in contact with various circles, but, above all, with painters and musicians; intimate also with Henriette, the daughter of the celebrated Jewish philosopher, Mendelssohn. She left Paris, she further says, before the explosion of 1848. More of her personal history she does not tell—and we shall not take the liberty of guessing.
Her notes are penned without any attempt at order; and make no pretence to dive far beneath the surface of what she saw in the world. They contain such light, lady-like reflections as one may fancy taken down without effort from the kaleidoscope of Paris life, in its balls, soirées, and promenades; and such anecdotes of notable things and persons as were current in ordinary company—many of which are well known, having been already reported by others. Here and there a graphic trait, or a remark above the level of commonplace, gives token of more lively intelligence, but the general character of the reminiscence is merely gossipping—just on the ordinary level of such observations and ideas as prevail in the common talk of the saloons. It is only when she touches on the fine arts, especially on music, that the lady displays decidedly clever notions of her own. Gleanings of this easy kind, from any lesser field than Paris, might hardly have been worth preserving; here, the abundance of matter is so great, that even the most careless hand returns from that strange harvest with some gatherings of value.
Among these we shall dip here and there, without attempting more order in selection than the author herself has observed in arranging her notes. Each may be read by and for itself without any disadvantage whatever.
In no respect, perhaps, does the Paris of to-day differ more from that of thirty years since than in the article of domestic comfort. After praising Madame Thuret, one of the financial lionnes of the Restoration, for her attention to neatness, the lady adds:—
In Paris generally there was a marked contrast to this; as well as to the Parisian cleanliness of present times. In those days, even the dwellings of people of competent means, there was not a trace of comfort. I have a lively recollection of what happened when one of the younger partners of M. Thuret gave a ball soon after his marriage. Although the youth was rich, and had married a wealthy young lady, the young couple, according to the Parisian custom of the time, lived with their parents; who, rich as they were, desiring to be richer still, had let out their splendid hotel up to the fourth story. In this fourth story the whole family lived together. After the Parisian finery, I was not less struck with the Parisian filth of those days; and, in truth, I should vainly try to paint my amazement on finding myself compelled, while ascending the staircase, which was actually plastered with dirt, to hold up my dress as high as possible in order to appear tolerably clean in the ball-room.
But if modern Paris has improved in this respect, it has, on the other hand, we are told, lost far more in the chapter of manners. The generation born during the first Revolution still preserved some of the older style of social bearing; but, in the present descendants, we may now vainly seek for any of the graces that once gave to France her European credit for politeness.
The French, after lording it over the capitals of Europe for so many years, were impatient to the last degree of the retribution which the allied armies brought to their own doors in 1816. Even a returning émigré could not restrain his rage on finding that—
foreigners held the fortresses, and that he had to submit his passport for a vise to Prussian, Russian, or English authorities; and he lost all command of himself at the idea of the prostration of the grande gloire Française.... The same wrath at the occupation of France by foreign troops—an occupation which lasted for hardly three years—whereas the French had ravaged Germany for full twenty, from the siege of Mentz to the battle of Leipsic, was then felt in Paris by all classes. Every little theatre on the Boulevards played some piece referring to it in all the refrains urging the foreigners to be off at once; all the print-shops were full of caricatures of the English and Russians. The German soldiers, by-the-by, were, without exception, called Prussians. At that time there was less hatred expressed towards the Russians; in the theatres even the people would point with curiosity to Lostopchin, the author of the conflagration at Moscow. The hatred of the Russians grew much more decided under Nicholas. Alexander, on the contrary, was personally popular. Strictly speaking, the Prussians were detested; while the English, on the contrary, served as a perpetual butt for ridicule and wit. Their language, gestures, dress, afforded a complete series of dramas and caricatures.
This soreness of France under a very light application of her own Continental system, brings to mind an anecdote from the papers of the time, which is worth preserving:—
When the Prussian army entered Paris, one of its officers made particular interest to be quartered in a certain hotel in the Faubourg St Germain, the residence of a widow lady of rank. On taking possession of his billet, the Colonel at once haughtily refused the apartments offered him; and, after a survey of the premises, insisted on having the best suite on the first floor, then occupied by the lady of the house herself. She protested and entreated in vain—the Colonel was harsh and peremptory,—the lady had to abandon her sitting-room, boudoir, and bed-room, and content herself with the chambers intended for the officer. From these, however, she was as rudely dislodged on the next day, the Colonel demanding them for his orderly, and the lady had at last to creep into a servant's garret. This was not all. On first taking possession of his rooms the officer had summoned the maitre d'hotel, and commanded a rich dinner of twelve covers for the entertainment of a party of his comrades. They came—the cellar had to yield its choicest wines; the house was filled with bacchanalian uproar. The orgy was repeated both on the next day and on the next following. On the morning afterwards the officer presented himself before the lady of the house. "You are perhaps somewhat annoyed by my proceedings in your hotel?" "Certainly," was the reply, "I think I have cause to complain of the manner in which the law of the strongest has been used here, in defiance of the commonest regard due to my sex and age. I have been roughly expelled from every habitable room in my own house, and thrust into a garret; my servants have been maltreated; with my plate and provisions and the best of my cellar, you have forced them to wait on the riotous feasting of your comrades. I have appealed to your generosity, to your courtesy, but in vain. I protest against such conduct. It is unworthy of a soldier." "Madam," replied the Prussian, "what you say is perfectly true. Such conduct is brutal and unbecoming. I have the honor to inform you that what you have justly complained of for the last three days is but a faint copy of the manner in which your son daily behaved himself in my mother's house in Berlin for more than six months after the Battle of Jena. From me you shall have no further annoyance. I shall now retire to an inn. The hotel is entirely at your own disposal." The lady blushed, and was silent.
We can hardly choose amiss among the portrait sketches. Here is the Princess of Chimay, once celebrated as the fair Spanish Cabarus—or Madame Tallien of the "18th Brumaire." After giving up a name which she had no legal right to bear, she married the Count Caraman before he succeeded to a princely title. In 1818, this heroine—
was some forty years old. Her age was partly open to positive proof, as in '94 she was known to have just reached her twentieth year—it was partly shown by a fulness of person, rather tending to corpulence, which betrayed the retreat of her younger bloom; but still you would rarely find another beauty so well preserved, or a general appearance equally imposing. Tall, full, gorgeous, she reminded you of the historical beauties of antiquity. Such a figure you might imagine as an Ariadne, Dido, or Cleopatra. With a perfect bust, arms, and shoulders; white as an animated statue, regular features, beaming eyes, pearly teeth, hair raven black—hearing, speech, motion, still ravishingly perfect. Her costume, too, had a certain Grecian character.
Among the painters, Gérard was the lady's chosen intimate. When she first knew him, he had already been long famous and rich; but he seems to have taken pleasure in recalling the struggles of his early career. It was, in many respects, a strange one:—
His father was a Frenchman, who belonged to the domestic establishment of the Cardinal de Bernis, then ambassador at Rome. His mother, whose name was Tortoni, was the daughter of a plain Roman citizen. In 1782, Gérard's parents, with their three boys, of whom François, the eldest, was now twelve, returned to France, where the father died in 1789. A year afterwards the widow went back with her children to her own country, but had to return to France once more, for the preservation of a small income important in her narrow circumstances. On this occasion, besides her sons, she came back with her little brother Tortoni and his infant sister, some years younger than her eldest son François. Thus there was in the house an aunt younger than her nephew.
The family found it hard enough to live at all in Paris: and when François's great talent for drawing revealed itself, the household means were further pinched to provide him with paper and pencils. Under all obstacles, however, his powers soon grew evident: he got at last an introduction to David, and became his pupil:—
Gérard was created the perfect opposite, both physically and morally, of David. David was tall, with distorted features, rough, furious, cruel. Gérard was small, with a pleasing, regular physiognomy, delicate, soft, generous.... He would often tell how he was forced in those days (during the reign of terror) to deceive his master David, in order to preserve his own life. David, who in his zeal for reforming the world had become one of the most active members of the Committee of Safety, was incessantly busied in providing that bloody tribunal with familiars. Every one belonging to him, who desired his own preservation, was forced either to adopt republicanism in David's sense, or to evade it by some kind of deception. Gérard, although in perfect health, escaped the honor designed him by feigning sickness; and went about in public on crutches, which, however, he threw down the instant he knew himself safe from observation. Gérard's mother had died in 1792. Her brother, the painter's uncle, now a grown youth, took up the queer fancy of showing the Parisians the excellent manner in which the Romans are skilled in making confectioner's ices. The success of the Café Tortoni, on the Boulevard des Italiens, has now been for some fifty years known to all Europe. One of the children (Gérard) was dead, the youngest provided for elsewhere; and thus, after his mother's death, the young painter of two-and-twenty was left alone with his aunt, Mlle. Tortoni, who was but two years his junior. She became his wife. When relating the above, she would add, with naïveté, "At that time my nephew was in a manner forced to marry me, unless he chose to turn me out into the street. We were poor, but contented. Gérard's talent, as yet little known, and destitute of suitable means for its exercise, supported us, however, barely; and I continued to sew, darn, cook, carry water, and cut wood for our little household, as I had been wont to do before, when assisting his mother, my sister. In those days there was no marrying in the church, no priest, no banns. A few days after the death of my sister, we appeared in our poor work-a-day clothes, before the maire. He joined our hands, and then we became a couple."
Some months were passed in this obscure poverty, until calmer times prevailed in Paris. Isabey had somehow become aware of the young painter's talent, and now urged him to exhibit a picture at the first Exhibition. Gérard produced the sketch of his Bélisaire;[5] but declared he had no means to paint it on a grand scale. Isabey hereupon assisted him; and, after the picture was finished and exhibited with success, procured him a purchaser, at the price of 100 Louis d'or.
"On the receipt of this sum," Madame Gérard went on, "we were nearly losing our wits for joy. We were ravished, like mere children, by the glitter of the shining gold, which we kept again and again rolling through our fingers. We, who until now could not even afford to buy a common candlestick, so that we had to cut a hole in our poor wooden table to stick the rushlight in,—we now had a hundred louis!" By degrees Gérard advanced to a high European name; but those only who knew him personally could have any idea of his amiable, refined nature, of his pleasant conversation, of the various acquirements and highly intellectual peculiarities of this eminent man, who took up with equal clearness many of the most dissimilar sciences. You forgot time with him, or gladly gave him up the whole night, as he seldom made his appearance in company at his own house before ten.
Before leaving the grim figure of the old Revolution for more modern sketches, we must correct the lady's statement of its victims, in which she quite exceeds the utmost latitude of feminine gossip. "Two millions of heads" she assigns as the food of the devouring guillotine—a number transcendent, even for lady rhetoric. It is some five hundred times more than the largest estimate of those even who have done their best to aggravate the tale of its horrors. The Convention, when grown Anti-Jacobin, and anxious, of course, to justify its destruction of Robespierre and his fellows, it published lists of the sufferers, could not bring the number of the guillotined up to a full two thousand. Montgaillard, who complains that the returns were incomplete, may be taken as the author of the most extreme calculation on this subject: he does not get beyond a total of four thousand victims, including those who perished by fusillades and noyades. Even an anonymous lady cannot be suffered to pass with such a terrific exaggeration unquestioned. In 1823, she was present at an opening of the Chambers by "Louis the Desired," now grown fatter, it seems, than was desirable for such an operation. Indeed—
he could no longer walk; on this account the session was held in the Louvre; and the manner in which he suddenly pushed out on his low rolling chair, from beneath a curtain, which was quickly drawn back, as it is done on the stage, and as rapidly closed again, had an effect at once painful and ludicrous. Both these feelings were increased by the shrill piping treble which came squeaking forth from this unlucky corpulent body.... His brother, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the Tenth, was tall and thin, and had retained to his advanced age that habit of shuffling about with his legs, which teachers and governors had vainly tried to cure him of while young. He could not keep his body still for a single instant. His protruded head, his mouth always open, would of themselves have seemed to indicate mere stupidity rather than cunning, had not this impression been contradicted, partly by the vivacity of his eyes, and partly by his too notorious habit of intriguing. This idiotic air of poking forward the head, with the mouth always open—but aggravated by quite lifeless and almost totally closed eyes—was apparent in a still higher degree in his eldest son, the Duke of Angoulême. In the face of his wife there were still visible some traces, if not of a former beauty, at least of something characteristic and noble. In spite of her withered, lean figure, her gait was firm and majestic; but the terrorists of the Revolution had heaped misery of every kind in double and three-fold measure on this unhappy daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, and their cannibal severity had broken her heart for ever.... The Duchess of Berri, a Neapolitan princess, wife of the youngest son of the Count d'Artois, was young, but had been ill-treated by nature in her outward appearance. She was short, thin, with hair blonde almost to whiteness, and a kind of reddish fairness of complexion. In her irregular features, in her eyes which all but squinted, no kind of expression could be detected—not even that of frivolity, which she was accused of.... To both these ladies the rigorously-prescribed court-dress, as worn in open day, without candlelight, was very unbecoming. It consisted of a short white satin dress, called jupe, which means a dress without a train; the front breadth richly embroidered with gold, with a cut-out body, and short sleeves, leaving the neck and arms bare,—the effect of which was absolutely pitiable on the superannuated, yellow, and withered Duchess of Angoulême. Around the waist a golden ceinture held up a colored velvet skirt, with an enormous train, but no body. In front, this kind of outer dress, called manteau de cour, was open, and trimmed all round with broad lace. The head was decorated, or rather disfigured, by a thick upright plume of tall white ostrich feathers, to which were attached behind two long ends of blonde lace, called barbes, which hung down the back. On the forehead a closely-fitting jewelled diadem was worn, and diamond ornaments on the neck and arms, according to the usual fashion.
From such court scarecrows let us turn to keep a last corner for a figure of more modern and genial appearance—though this, too, was saddening, and is now, like the rest, grown a mere shadow. The lady saw much of the musician Chopin after 1832, and speaks of him with warm affection, and with a fine feeling of his genius:—
He was a delicate, graceful figure, in the highest degree attractive—the whole man a mere breath—rather a spiritual than a bodily substance,—all harmony, like his playing. His way of speaking, too, was like the character of his art—soft, fluctuating, murmuring. The son of a French father and of a Polish mother, in him the Romance and Sclavonic dialects were combined, as it were, in one perfect harmony. He seemed, indeed, hardly to touch the piano; you might have fancied he would do quite as well without as with the instrument: you thought no more of the mechanism,—but listened to flute-like murmurs, and dreamed of hearing Æolian harps stirred by the ethereal breathings of the wind; and with all this—in his whole wide sphere of talents given to him alone—always obliging, modest, unexacting! He was no pianoforte player of the modern sort: he had fashioned his art quite alone in his own way, and it was something indescribable. In private rooms as well as in concerts, he would steal quietly, unaffectedly, to the piano; was content with any kind of seat; showed at once, by his simple dress and natural demeanor, that he abhorred every kind of grimace and quackery; and began, without any prelude, his performance. How feeling it was—how full of soul!... When I first knew him, though far from strong, he still enjoyed good health; he was very gay, even satirical, but always with moderation and good taste. He possessed an inconceivable comic gift of mimicry, and in private circles of friends he diffused the utmost cheerfulness both by his genius and his good spirits.... Hallé has now the best tradition of his manner.
We pause, not for want of matter, but for want of room. Besides its lively sketches, the book contains some materials of a tragic interest—to which we may return.