Head-Quarters, Toulouse, May 2nd, 1814.—Having thanked you for your letter of the 12th of April, and papers to the same date, I must proceed on my old subject, Toulouse, and its sights and curiosities, regretting on your account, as well as my own, that they are not more interesting.
The great cannon-foundry here was formerly one of the most prominent, but it has now ceased to work for nearly three or four years. How or why this could happen, when military works and manufactures seemed alone to flourish in France during that period, I cannot say. The fact is, everything remains in a state as if the workmen were only all gone away to dinner, but in silent desolation, like a scene in Herculaneum, or Southey’s town under water. Unfinished moulds, guns, &c., and tools are lying about in all directions. To show how much the whole has been neglected, even Egalité has been suffered to remain on one entrance pillar, Liberté on the other, and the word Impérial in the middle. The fleur-de-lys will, I suppose, find its way there soon by some accident.
Suchet now commands both armies here. He told the Duke d’Angoulême that he had sixteen thousand men of his own army at his service. This hero, to whom the day of the month, yesterday (May-day), reminded me of a much nearer resemblance than the drum-major, has left us, and is off to his troops.
There are two public libraries here, in which I have spent the better part of a morning each, one containing about thirty thousand volumes, the other about twenty-five thousand. The former has too large a proportion of ecclesiastical learning; but they both contain some good editions of classics and good historians, annals, &c., particularly the smaller library. They are old episcopal and private foundations, and have neither gained nor lost much by the Revolution, which is rather extraordinary. There seems to have been no very valuable early editions or manuscripts—nothing very much worth plundering; and they say they were too conscientious to take advantage of the times, and enrich themselves by plunder. The arrangement of the books is not bad. Firstly, good polyglot and other Bibles of all kinds; then commentaries on sacred history, &c.; then history in general; then laws of nations, &c.; then laws in general, essays, &c.; then French voyages, arts, sciences, classics, and belles lettres. There is an atlas of the Grand Canal and its vicinity on an immense scale, which might have been important had we proceeded, though I think no other stand would have been made until after we had gone beyond the limits of the canal, and after a junction of Soult with Suchet at Narbonne. Amongst the books pointed out as of the most interest, were Racine’s Greek editions of Euripides and Æschylus, containing his name and several notes in his own handwriting,—a remarkably neat hand. The editions were Stephens’ and Stanley’s. The notes were either short free translations of passages and sentiments, or memoranda to call attention to particular passages for future use and application, or they were short remarks of approbation or disapprobation of scenes, passages, &c. I copied out nearly the whole, not being very long, and I now enclose them. Will you oblige me by putting them into my Euripides or somewhere, to be preserved.
Several of the private houses here of the merchants and nobles are on a very large scale, and contain very spacious suites of rooms round the court-yard. The architecture is, in general, very moderate. Most of the mansions have only the merit of extent; and one or two which have an attempt at more are in bad taste. The one most remarkable is particularly so. It has an immense heavy stone cornice, out of all proportion, and the capitals of all the pillars are a species of false Corinthian, or rather, Composite, with the upper ornaments, spread eagles, in most barbarous taste, and in the place of the most beautiful part of the true pillars of the Composite order.
Toulouse appears to have been for a very considerable time nearly stationary in size. There is not, as in some of our country towns, and in some of those in France, the new town as well as the old. The old brick walls, with occasional towers, remain entire almost all round, and still form nearly the city boundary, for there is scarcely any suburbs without the walls. At several of the entrances within there seems to have been some vacant spaces, and in two or three places an ornamental sort of crescent or square has been commenced,—one lately, but the others before the Revolution. They are all unfinished. In general, however, all within the city walls is covered with building of some sort or another.
The splendid façade of the Capitolium was raised before the Revolution. Henry IV. commenced the work, it is said, and his statue remains there. A very small beginning has been made towards stone façades on one of the other sides of the Grande Place of the Capital, but in general the old shabby buildings still remain, and seem likely to do so, for some time to come.
May 3rd.—Our Prince is gone to review his new army under Suchet, and leaves us quiet. Every day carries off some of our higher officers, and we all expect to move the instant Lord Wellington returns, if not before. To-morrow, if possible, I go with a party and passport to see the great basin de Feriol, the main feeder of the Grand Canal. It is the sight of this country, and therefore, though expecting to be disappointed, I have agreed to join Dr. Macgregor and a party to-morrow, and return the next day. It is near Revel, about thirty-two miles off.
I yesterday attended the Court of Appeal here for the four departments around—Aude, Tarn, Lot and Garonne, and Arriège. There were ten judges present: there exist, and may be present, as many as sixteen, and a quorum of seven is necessary to form a Court. There were, besides the Procureur-Général and Advocat-Général, about twenty-five barristers in gowns, nearly like ours, but with bonnets instead of wigs. They were dirty, and mostly old, and looked precisely like a set of provincial barristers in England. The same habits make the manners and appearance so similar in nations nearly equally civilized, that, until the language betrayed the difference, I could have fancied myself in England again.
The subject in dispute was half an acre of vineyard, and it turned on the construction of a confused legacy in a will of an old gentleman. The eagerness with which the contest was maintained reminded me of a Court of Quarter Sessions in England,—all talking at once, and with abundance of noise and action, especially just as the ten judges, like our juries, had laid their heads together to consider, and whilst le Procureur-Général was summing up the law and argument previously to the Court. Either the lawyers and judges must be starving, or the judicial establishment must be very expensive in France now.