The modern business-like aspect of Rouen communicates itself even to religious matters, and before we have been here long, we think nothing of seeing piles of crucifixes, and 'Virgins and children', put out in the street in boxes for sale, at a 'fabrique d'ornaments de l'église.' We, the people of Rouen, do a great business in chasublerie, and the like; we drive hard bargains for images of the Saviour in zinc and iron (they are catalogued for us, and placed in rows in the shop windows); we purchase lachryma Christi by the dozen; and, for a few sous, may become possessed of the whole paraphernalia of the Holy Manger.
We have been cheated so often at Rouen, that we are inclined to ask the question whether we, English people, really possess a higher working morality than the French. Are we really more straightforward and honourable than they? Are there bounds which they overstep and which we cannot pass? It has been our pride for centuries to be considered more noble and manly than many of our neighbours; is there any reason to fear that our moral influence is on the wane, in these days of universal interchange of thought, free-trade, and rapid intercommunication?
In the course of our journey through Normandy, we have not said much about modern paintings, but at Rouen we are reminded that there are many French artists hard at work. The most prominent painters are those of the school of Edouard Frère, who depict scenes of cottage life, with the earnestness, if not always with the elevated sentiment of Mason, Walker, and other, younger, English painters. The works of many of these French artists are familiar to us in England, and we need not allude to them further; but there is an exhibition of water-colour drawings at Rouen, about which we must say a word.[51]
These sketches of towns in Normandy, and of pastoral scenes, have a curious family likeness, and a mannerism which the French may call 'chic,' but which we are inclined to attribute to want of power and patient study. There is an old-fashioned formality in the composition of their landscapes, which does not seem to our eyes to belong to the world of to-day, and a decidedly amateurish treatment which is surprising. They repeat themselves and each other, without end, and evidently are thinking more about Beranger than the places of which he sang; they would seek (as some one expresses it) to 'reconcile literal facts with rapturous harmonies,' in short they attempt too much, and accomplish too little. In form and feature, these pictures remind us (like Rouen itself) of a bygone time, when travelling on the Continent was difficult and expensive, and views of foreign towns were not easy to obtain; when some distinguished amateur (distinguished, perhaps, more for his courage and industry than for his art) visited the Continent at rare intervals, and brought home in triumph a few hazy sketches of a people that we had scarce heard of, and hardly believed in; and had them engraved and multiplied, for the art-loving amongst us, as the best treasures of the time.
The modernised aspect of Rouen is one that we (as lookers-on merely) shall never cease to regret, because it is the town of all others which should tell us most of the past; and it is, moreover, the one town in Normandy which most English people find time to see.
But if most of its individuality and character have vanished, its sanitary condition and its wealth, have, we must admit, improved greatly under the new regime. 'When I walk through the enormous streets and boulevards of new Paris,' says a well-known writer, 'I feel appalled by the change, but unable to dispute with it mentally, for it bears the imprint of an idea which is becoming dominant over Europe. For the moment the individuality of man as expressed in his dwelling (as in the house in our frontispiece) is gone—suppressed. The human creature no longer builds for himself, decorates for himself; no longer lets loose his fancy, his humour, his notions of the fitting and the comfortable. Science and economy go hand in hand, and lay down his streets and erect his houses.' Thus, although, from an artistic point of view, we shall never be reconciled to the changes that have come over Normandy, we cannot ignore the consequent social advantages. Mr. Ruskin, speaking of the change in Switzerland during his memory of it (thirty-five years) says:—'In that half of the permitted life of man I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure, is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sunk at their feet into crystalline rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore.'
But the clouds of smoke that defile the land, the shrieking of steam, and the perpetual, terrible grinding of iron against iron (sounds which our little children grow up not to heed) are part of a system which enables Mr. Ruskin, one day to address a crowd in the theatre of the British Institution, and on the next—or the next but one—to utter this lament on the banks of Lake Leman. His remarks, with which so many will sympathise, lose point and consequence from the fact of his own rapid translation from one place to another, and from the advantages we gain by his travelling on the wings of steam. And there is a certain consolation in the knowledge that in the days when the waters of Geneva were of 'purest blue,' the accommodation for travellers at the old hostelries was less favourable to peace of mind.
