Our host, whose politeness is indefatigable, accompanied us a few days ago to St. Eloy, a large and magnificent abbey, about six miles from Arras. It is built on a terrace, which commands the surrounding country as far as Douay; and I think I counted an hundred and fifty steps from the house to the bottom of the garden, which is on a level with the road. The cloisters are paved with marble, and the church neat and beautiful beyond description. The iron work of the choir imitates flowers and foliage with so much taste and delicacy, that (but for the colour) one would rather suppose it to be soil, than any durable material.—The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations— especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the building useless for any other purpose.—A friend of Mr. de ____ has a charming country-house near the abbey, which he has been obliged to deny himself the enjoyment of, during the greatest part of the summer; for whenever the family return to Arras, their persons and their carriage are searched at the gate, as strictly as though they were smugglers just arrived from the coast, under the pretence that they may assist the religious of St. Eloy in securing some of their property, previous to the final seizure.
I observe, in walking the streets here, that the common people still retain much of the Spanish cast of features: the women are remarkably plain, and appear still more so by wearing faals. The faal is about two ells of black silk or stuff, which is hung, without taste or form, on the head, and is extremely unbecoming: but it is worn only by the lower class, or by the aged and devotees.
I am a very voluminous correspondent, but if I tire you, it is a proper punishment for your insincerity in desiring me to continue so. I have heard of a governor of one of our West India islands who was universally detested by its inhabitants, but who, on going to England, found no difficulty in procuring addresses expressive of approbation and esteem. The consequence was, he came back and continued governor for life.—Do you make the application of my anecdote, and I shall persevere in scribbling.—Every Yours.
Arras.
It is not fashionable at present to frequent any public place; but as we are strangers, and of no party, we often pass our evenings at the theatre. I am fond of it—not so much on account of the representation, as of the opportunity which it affords for observing the dispositions of the people, and the bias intended to be given them. The stage is now become a kind of political school, where the people are taught hatred to Kings, Nobility, and Clergy, according as the persecution of the moment requires; and, I think, one may often judge from new pieces the meditated sacrifice. A year ago, all the sad catalogue of human errors were personified in Counts and Marquisses; they were not represented as individuals whom wealth and power had made something too proud, and much too luxurious, but as an order of monsters, whose existence, independently of their characters, was a crime, and whose hereditary possessions alone implied a guilt, not to be expiated but by the forfeiture of them. This, you will say, was not very judicious; and that by establishing a sort of incompatibility of virtue with titular distinctions, the odium was transferred from the living to the dead—from those who possessed these distinctions to those who instituted them. But, unfortunately, the French were disposed to find their noblesse culpable, and to reject every thing which tended to excuse or favour them. The hauteur of the noblesse acted as a fatal equivalent to every other crime; and many, who did not credit other imputations, rejoiced in the humiliation of their pride. The people, the rich merchants, and even the lesser gentry, all eagerly concurred in the destruction of an order that had disdained or excluded them; and, perhaps, of all the innovations which have taken place, the abolition of rank has excited the least interest.
It is now less necessary to blacken the noblesse, and the compositions of the day are directed against the Throne, the Clergy, and Monastic Orders. All the tyrants of past ages are brought from the shelves of faction and pedantry, and assimilated to the mild and circumscribed monarchs of modern Europe. The doctrine of popular sovereignty is artfully instilled, and the people are stimulated to exert a power which they must implicitly delegate to those who have duped and misled them. The frenzy of a mob is represented as the sublimest effort of patriotism; and ambition and revenge, usurping the title of national justice, immolate their victims with applause. The tendency of such pieces is too obvious; and they may, perhaps, succeed in familiarizing the minds of the people to events which, a few months ago, would have filled them with horror. There are also numerous theatrical exhibitions, preparatory to the removal of the nuns from their convents, and to the banishment of the priests. Ancient prejudices are not yet obliterated, and I believe some pains have been taken to justify these persecutions by calumny. The history of our dissolution of the monasteries has been ransacked for scandal, and the bigotry and biases of all countries are reduced into abstracts, and exposed on the stage. The most implacable revenge, the most refined malice, the extremes of avarice and cruelty, are wrought into tragedies, and displayed as acting under the mask of religion and the impunity of a cloister; while operas and farces, with ridicule still more successful, exhibit convents as the abode of licentiousness, intrigue, and superstition.
These efforts have been sufficiently successful—not from the merit of the pieces, but from the novelty of the subject. The people in general were strangers to the interior of convents: they beheld them with that kind of respect which is usually produced in uninformed minds by mystery and prohibition. Even the monastic habit was sacred from dramatic uses; so that a representation of cloisters, monks, and nuns, their costumes and manners, never fails to attract the multitude.—But the same cause which renders them curious, makes them credulous. Those who have seen no farther than the Grille, and those who have been educated in convents, are equally unqualified to judge of the lives of the religious; and their minds, having no internal conviction or knowledge of the truth, easily become the converts of slander and falsehood.
I cannot help thinking, that there is something mean and cruel in this procedure. If policy demand the sacrifice, it does not require that the victims should be rendered odious; and if it be necessary to dispossess them of their habitations, they ought not, at the moment they are thrown upon the world, to be painted as monsters unworthy of its pity or protection. It is the cowardice of the assassin, who murders before he dares to rob.
This custom of making public amusements subservient to party, has, I doubt not, much contributed to the destruction of all against whom it has been employed; and theatrical calumny seems to be always the harbinger of approaching ruin to its object; yet this is not the greatest evil which may arise from these insidious politics—they are equally unfavourable both to the morals and taste of the people; the first are injured beyond calculation, and the latter corrupted beyond amendment. The orders of society, which formerly inspired respect or veneration, are now debased and exploded; and mankind, once taught to see nothing but vice and hypocrisy in those whom they had been accustomed to regard as models of virtue, are easily led to doubt the very existence of virtue itself: they know not where to turn for either instruction or example; no prospect is offered to them but the dreary and uncomfortable view of general depravity; and the individual is no longer encouraged to struggle with vicious propensities, when he concludes them irresistibly inherent in his nature. Perhaps it was not possible to imagine principles at once so seductive and ruinous as those now disseminated. How are the morals of the people to resist a doctrine which teaches them that the rich only can be criminal, and that poverty is a substitute for virtue—that wealth is holden by the sufferance of those who do not possess it—and that he who is the frequenter of a club, or the applauder of a party, is exempt from the duties of his station, and has a right to insult and oppress his fellow citizens? All the weaknesses of humanity are flattered and called to the aid of this pernicious system of revolutionary ethics; and if France yet continue in a state of civilization, it is because Providence has not yet abandoned her to the influence of such a system.