As I have before said, it is better for a traveller to endeavour to live as nearly as possible in the manner of the inhabitants of the country in which he is sojourning. I do not mean that he should feel bound to make as general a use of garlic as some of the people of Europe do, for in some places I verily believe that a custard or a blanc mange would be thought imperfect if they were not seasoned with that savory vegetable; but, ceteris being paribus, if the general manner of living were followed, the traveller would find it conducive to health and to economy. The habits of life among every people are not founded on a mere caprice; and experience proves that under the warm sun of Italy, a light vegetable diet is healthier and more really invigorating than all the roast beef of Old England would be.
In Europe, no man is ever ashamed of economy. Few Englishmen even shrink from acknowledging that they cannot afford to do this or that, and on the continent profuseness in the use of money is considered the sure mark of a parvenu. Every man is free to do as he pleases; he can travel in the first, second, or third class on the railways, and not excite the surprise of any body; and whatever class he may be in, he will be treated with equal respect by all. It is well to bear this in mind, for, taken in connection with the principle of paying for one's room and meals separately according to what one has, it puts it within one's power to travel all over Europe for a ridiculously small sum. You can live in Paris, by going over into the Latin quarter, on thirty cents a day, and be treated by every body, except your own countrymen, with as much consideration as if you abode among the mirrors and gilding of the Hôtel de Louvre. Not that I would advise any one to go over there for the sake of saving money, and live on salads and meats in which it is difficult to have confidence, when he can afford to do better. I only wish to encourage those who are kept from visiting Europe by the idea that it requires a great outlay of money. You can live in Europe for just what you choose to spend, and in a style of independence to which America is a total stranger. Every body does not know here what every body else has for dinner. You may live on the same floor with a man for months and years, and not know any more of him than can be learned from a semi-occasional meeting on the staircase, and an interchange of hat civilities. This seems so common to a Frenchman, that it would be considered by him hardly worth notice; but to any one who knows what a sharp look-out neighbours keep over each other in America, it is a most pleasing phenomenon. It is indeed a delightful thing to live among people who have formed a habit of minding their own business, and at the same time have a spirit of consideration for the rights and feelings of their neighbours.
If, in the above hints concerning the way to travel pleasantly and cheaply in Europe, I have succeeded in removing any of the bugbear obstacles which hold back so many from the great advantages they might here enjoy, I shall feel that I have not tasked my poor eyes and brain for nothing. We are a long way behind Europe in many things, and it is only by frequent communication that we can make up our deficiencies. It cannot be done by boasting, nor by claiming for America all the enterprise and enlightenment of the nineteenth century. Neither can it be done by setting up the United States as superior to every historical precedent, and an exception to every rule. Most men (as the old French writer says) are mortal; and we Americans shall find that our country, with all its prosperity and unequalled progress, is subject to the same vicissitudes as the countries we now think we can afford to despise; and that our history is
"——but the same rehearsal of the past—
First Freedom, and then Glory; when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption,—barbarism at last."
No, we cannot safely scorn the lesson which Europe teaches us; for if we do, we shall have to learn it at the expense of much adversity and wounding of our pride. Every American who comes abroad, if he knows how to travel, ought to carry home with him a new idea of the amenities of life, and of moderation in the pursuit and the use of wealth, such as will make itself felt in the course of time, and make the fast living and recklessness of authority and tendency to bankruptcy of the present day, give way to a spirit of moderation and obedience to law such as always produces private prosperity and public stability.
PARIS TO BOULOGNE
It was a delicious morning when I packed my trunk to leave Paris. Indeed it was so bright and cloudless that it seemed wrong to go away and leave so fine a combination of perfections. It was more than the "bridal of the earth and sky"; it was the bridal of all the created beings around one and their works with the sky. The deep blue of the heavens, the glittering sunbeams, the clean streets, the fair house fronts, the gay shop windows, the white caps, and shining morning faces of the bonnes and market women, the busy, prosperous look of the passers by, were all blended together in one harmonious whole, more touching and poetical than any scene of mere natural beauty that the dewy morn, "with breath all incense and with cheek all bloom," ever looked upon. "Earth hath not any thing to show more fair." Others may delight in communing with solitary nature, and may rave in rhyme about the glories of woods, lakes, mountains, and Ausonian skies; but what is all that compared to the awakening of a great city to the life of day? What are the floods of golden light that every morning bathe the mountain tops, and are poured down into the valleys and fields below, compared to the playing of the sunbeams in the smoke from ten thousand chimneys, and the din of toil displacing the silence of night? I have seen the sunsets of the Archipelago—I have seen Lesbos and Egina clad in those robes of purple and gold, which till then I had thought were a mere figment of the painter's brain—I have enjoyed that "hush of world's expectation as day died"—I have often drunk in the glory of a cloudless sunrise on the Atlantic, and even now my heart leaps up at the remembrance of it; but after all, commend me to the deeper and more sympathetic feelings inspired by the dingy walls and ungraceful chimney-pots of a metropolis. Thousands of human hearts are there, throbbing with hope, or joy, or sorrow,—weighed down perchance by guilt; and humanity with all its imperfections is a noble thing. A single human heart, though erring, is a grander creation than the Alps or the Andes, for it shall outlive them. It is moved by aspirations that outrun the universe, and possesses a destiny that shall outlive the stars. It is the better side of human nature that we see in the early morning in large cities. Vice flourishes best under the glare of gas-lights, and does not salute the rising sun. The bloated form, the sunken eye, the painted cheek, shrink from that which would make their deformity more hideous, and hide themselves in places which their presence makes almost pestilential. Honest, healthful labour meets us at every step, and imparts to us something of its own hopefulness and activity. We miss the dew-drops glittering like jewels in the grass, but the loss is more than made up to us by the bright eyes of happy children, helping their parents in their work, or sporting together on their way to school.
There was a time when I thought it very poetical to roam the broad fields in that still hour when the golden light seems to clasp every object that it meets, as if it loved it; but of late years a comfortable sidewalk has been more suggestive of poetry and less productive of wet feet. Give me a level pavement before all your groves and fields. The only rus that wears well in the long run is Russ in urbe. Nine tenths of all the fine things in our literature concerning the charms of country life, have been written, not beneath the shade of overarching boughs, but within the crowded city's smoke-stained walls. Depend upon it, Shakespeare could never have written about the moonlight sleeping on the bank any where but in the city; had the realities of country life been present to him, he would have rejected any such metaphor, for he loved the moonlight too dearly to subject it to the rheumatic attack that would inevitably have followed such a nap as that. It is with country life very much as it is with life at sea. Mr. Choate, who pours out his noblest eloquence on the glories and romance of the sea, seldom sees the outside of his state-room while he is out of sight of land, and all his glowing periods are forgotten in the realities of his position. So, too, the man who wishes to destroy the poetry and romance of country life, has only to walk about in the wet grass or the scorching heat, or to be obliged to pick the pebbles out of his shoes, or a caterpillar off his neck, or to be mocked at by unruly cattle, or pestered by any of the myriads of insect and reptiles which abound in every well-regulated country.
The excellent Madame Busque (la dame aux pumpkin pies) had prepared for me a viaticum in the shape of a small loaf of as good gingerbread as was ever made west of Cape Cod—a motherly attention quite in keeping with her ordinary way of taking care of her customers. All who frequent the crêmerie are her enfans, and if she does not show them every little maternal attention, and tie a bib upon every one's neck, it is only that we may know better how to behave when we are beyond the reach of her kindly hand. Fortified with the gingerbread, I found myself whirling out of the terminus of the Northern Railway, and Paris, with its far-stretching fortifications, its domes and towers, and its windmill-crowned Montmartre, was soon out of sight.
The train was very full, and the weather very warm. Two of my car-companions afforded me a good deal of amusement. They were a fat German and his wife. He was one of the jolliest old gentlemen I ever had the good fortune to travel with. His silvery hair was cropped close to his head, and he rode along with his cuffs turned up and his waistcoat open. He seemed to feel that he was occupying a good deal of room; but he was the only one there who felt it. No one of us would have had his circumference reduced an inch, but we should all of us have delighted to put a thin man who was there out by the roadside. His wife—a bright-eyed little woman, whose hair was just getting a little silvery—had a small box-cage in which she carried a large, intelligent-looking parrot. Before we had gone very far, the bird began to carry on an animated conversation with its mistress, but finally disgusted her and surprised us all by swearing in French and German at the whole company, with all the vehemence of a regiment of troopers. The lady tried hard to stop him, but it was useless. The old gentleman (like a great many good people who would not swear themselves, but rather like to hear a good round oath occasionally) seemed to enjoy it intensely, and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. At noon the worthy pair made solemn preparations for a dinner. A basket, a carpet-bag, and sundry paper parcels were brought out. The lady spread a large checked handkerchief over their laps for a table cloth, and then produced a staff of life about two feet in length, and cut off a good thick slice for each of them. Cheese was added to it, and also a species of sausage about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter. From these they made a comfortable meal—not eating by stealth, as we Americans should have done—but diving in heartily, and chatting together all the while as cosily as if they had been at home. A bottle of wine was then brought out from the magic carpet-bag, and a glass, also a nice dessert of peaches and grapes. There was a charming at-home-ativeness about the whole proceeding that contrasted strongly with our American way of doing such things, and all the other passengers apparently took no notice of it.