[XXXVI]
"If my readers should at any time remark that I am particularly dull, they may rest assured there is a design under it."—British Essayist.
"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor."
Gray's Elegy.
Few things are more difficult, and, consequently, more rarely met, than correct portraiture of character, whether of the individual or of a community. It is easy enough, indeed, to trace out the prominent outlines in the picture; and with a degree of accuracy which shall render it easily recognised, while yet the more delicate shading and lighting is false; just as the artist may have transferred every feature in exact form, size, and proportion to his canvass, while the expression thrown over the whole may be incorrect. This has more than once been the case in descriptions hastily drawn of that singular being, the French villager of the Mississippi. One distinguished writer has given an absolute caricature of the race. My own design has been, therefore, merely to throw before the reader those characteristic traits which not even the most careless observer could have failed to detect.
161 Though betraying but little of that fiery restlessness which distinguishes the Parisian, these men are yet Frenchmen in more respects than mere origin. In their ordinary deportment we view, indeed, rather the calm gravity, the saturnine severity of the Spaniard; and yet in their fêtes and amusements, which were formerly far more frequent than at present, they exhibit all the gayety of the native of La Belle France. The calm, quiet tenour of their lives presenting but few objects for enterprise, none for the strivings of ambition, and but little occasion of any kind to elicit the loftier energies of our nature, has imparted to their character, their feelings, their manners, to the very language they speak, a languid softness strongly contrasted by the unquiet restlessness of the emigrant who is succeeding them. Hospitality was formerly, with them, hardly a virtue: it was a matter of course, arising from their peculiarity of situation; and the swinging sign of the tavern is a recent usurpation. The statute-book, the judiciary, courts of law, and the penitentiary, were things little recognised among these simple-hearted people; for where the inequalities of life were unknown, what was the inducement to crime demanding this enginery of punishment? Learning and science, too, were terms scarcely comprehended, their technicalities not at all; for schools were few, and learned men still more so; and thus reading, writing, and ciphering are, and ever have been, the acme of scholastic proficiency with the French villager. How many of the honest fellows can do even this, 162 is not for me to estimate. As to politics and the affairs of the nation, which their countrymen on the other side of the water ever seem to think no inconsiderable object of their being, they are too tame, and too lazy, and too quiet to think of the subject. Indeed, the worthy villagers very wisely look upon "earthly dignities" and the like much with the stoicism of Cardinal Wolsey in disgrace,
"Oh, 'tis a burden, Cromwell, 'tis a burden,
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven."
The virtues of these people are said to be many: punctuality and honesty in their dealings; politeness and hospitality to strangers; though, it must be confessed, the manifold impositions practised upon their simplicity of late years has tended to substitute for the latter virtue not a little of coolness and distrust. There is much friendship and warmth of feeling between neighbours and kindred, and the women make affectionate wives, though by no means prone to consider themselves in the light of goods and chattels of their liege-lords, as is not unfrequently the case in more enlightened communities. Indeed, as touching this matter, the Mississippi French villager invariably reverses the sage maxim of the poet,
"In things of moment on yourself depend;"