However, if Tivoli and Frascati throw open their delightful recesses to the votaries of pleasure only in spring and summer, even now, during the fogs of December, you may repair to
PAPHOS.
It might almost be said that you enter this place of amusement gratis, for, though a slight tribute of seventy-five centimes (circa seven-pence halfpenny sterling) is required for the admission of every person, yet you may take refreshment to the amount of that sum, without again putting your hand into your pocket; because the counter mark, given at the door, is received at the bar as ready-money.
This speculation, the first of the kind in France, and one of the most specious, is, by all accounts, also one of the most productive. It would be too rigorous, no doubt, to compare the frequenters of the modern PAPHOS to the inhabitants of the ancient. Here, indeed, you must neither look for élégantes, nor muscadins; but you may view belles, less gifted by Fortune, indulging in innocent recreation; and for a while dispelling their cares, by dancing to the exhilarating music of an orchestra not ill composed. Here, the grisette banishes the ennui of six days' application to the labours of her industry, by footing it away on Sunday. Hither, in short, the less refined sons and daughters of mirth repair to see and be seen, and to partake of the general diversion.
PAPHOS is situated on that part of the Boulevard, called the Boulevard du Temple, whither I was led the other evening by that sort of curiosity, which can be satisfied only when the objects that afford it aliment are exhausted. I had just come out of another place of public amusement, at no great distance, called
LA PHANTASMAGORIE.
This is an exhibition in the Cour des Capucines, adjoining to the Boulevard, where ROBERTSON, a skilful professor of physics, amuses or terrifies his audience by the appearance of spectres, phantoms, &c. In the piece which I saw, called Le Tombeau de Robespierre, he carries illusion to an extraordinary degree of refinement. His cabinet of physics is rich, and his effects of optics are managed in the true style of French gallantry. His experiments of galvanism excite admiration. He repeats the difficult ones of M. VOLTA, and clearly demonstrates the electrical phenomena presented by the metallic pile. A hundred disks of silver and a hundred pieces of zinc are sufficient for him to produce attractions, sparks, the divergency of the electrometer, and electric hail. He charges a hundred Leyden bottles by the simple contact of the metallic pile. ROBERTSON, I understand, is the first who has made these experiments in Paris, and has succeeded in discharging VOLTA's pistol by the galvanic spark.
FITZJAMES, a famous ventriloquist, entertains and astonishes the company by a display of his powers, which are truly surprising.
You may, perhaps, be desirous to procure your family circle the satisfaction of enjoying the Phantasmagoria, though not on the grand scale on which it is exhibited by ROBERTSON. By the communication of a friend, I am happy in being enabled to make you master of the secret, as nothing can be more useful in the education of children than to banish from their mind the deceitful illusion of ghosts and hobgoblins, which they are so apt to imbibe from their nurses. But to the point—"You have," says my author, "only to call in the first itinerant foreigner, who perambulates the streets with a galantee-show (as it is commonly termed in London), and by imparting to him your wish, if he is not deficient in intelligence and skill, he will soon be able to give you a rehearsal of the apparition of phantoms: for, by approaching or withdrawing the stand of his show, and finding the focus of his glasses, you will see the objects diminish or enlarge either on the white wall, or the sheet that is extended.
"The illusion which leads us to imagine that an object which increases in all its parts, is advancing towards us, is the basis of the Phantasmagoria, and, in order to produce it with the galantee-show, you have only to withdraw slowly the lantern from the place on which the image is represented, by approaching the outer lens to that on which the object is traced: this is easily done, that glass being fixed in a moveable tube like that of an opera-glass. As for approaching the lantern gradually, it may be effected with the same facility, by placing it on a little table with castors, and, by means of a very simple mechanism, it is evident that both these movements may be executed together in suitable progression.