He assures us that the principal characters and events he describes are by no means only the imaginings of romance. In truth, it seems difficult to believe that the genius of the author alone could have impressed so wonderful an air of reality upon merely fictitious scenes. The popularity of the story was secured at once in the author’s own country, and it rapidly spread throughout Europe. Paul et Virginie was successively translated into English, Italian, German, Dutch, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. It became the fashion for mothers to give to their children the names of its hero and heroine, and well would it have been had they also adopted for them that method of innocent living which is the real, if too generally unrecognised, secret of the fascinating power of the book.
It is thus that he eloquently calls to remembrance the natural feasts of his young heroine and hero:—
“Amiable children! thus in innocence did you pass your first days. How often in this spot have your mothers, pressing you in their arms, thanked Heaven for the consolation you were preparing for them in their old age, and for the happiness of seeing you enter upon life under so happy auguries! How often, under the shadow of these rocks, have I shared, with them, your out-door repasts which had cost no animals their lives. Gourds full of milk, of newly-laid eggs, of rice cakes upon banana leaves, baskets laden with potatoes, with mangoes, with oranges, with pomegranates, with bananas, with dates, with ananas, offered at once the most wholesome meats, the most beautiful colours, and the most agreeable juices. The conversation was as refined and gentle as their food.”
The humaneness of their manners had attracted to the charming arbour, which they had formed for themselves, all kinds of beautiful birds, who sought there their daily meals and the caresses of their human protectors. Our readers will not be displeased to be reminded of this charming scene:—
“Virginie loved to repose upon the slope of this fountain, which was decorated with a pomp at once magnificent and wild. Often would she come there to wash the household linen beneath the shade of two cocoa-nut trees. Sometimes she led her goats to feed in this place; and, while she was preparing cheese from their milk, she pleased herself in watching them as they browsed the herbage upon the precipitous sides of the rocks, and supported themselves in mid-air upon one of the jutting points as upon a pedestal. Paul, seeing that this spot was loved by Virginie, brought from the neighbouring forest the nests of all sorts of birds. The fathers and mothers of these birds followed their little ones, and came and established themselves in this new colony. Virginie would distribute to them from time to time grains of rice, maize, and millet. As soon as she appeared, the blackbirds, the bengalis, whose flight is so gentle, the cardinals, whose plumage is of the colour of fire, quitted their bushes; parroquets, green as emerald, descended from the neighbouring lianas, partridges ran along under the grass—all advanced pell-mell up to her feet like domestic hens. Paul and she delighted themselves with their transports of joy, with their eager appetites, and with their loves.”
In his views upon national education, St. Pierre invites the serious attention of legislators and educators to the importance of accustoming the young to the nourishment prescribed by Nature:—
“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living upon vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by his virtues; Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquility of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.[193]
“I have seen an instance of it in a young Englishman aged fifteen, and who did not appear to be twelve years of age. He was of a most interesting figure, of the most robust health, and of the most sweet disposition. He was accustomed to take very long walks. He was never put out of temper by any annoyance that might happen. His father, Mr. Pigott, told me that he had brought him up entirely upon the Pythagorean regimen, the good effects of which he had known by his own experience. He had formed the project of employing a part of his fortune, which was considerable, in establishing in English America a society of dietary reformers who should be engaged in educating, under the same regimen, the children of the colonists in all the arts which bear upon agriculture. Would that this educational scheme, worthy of the best and happiest times of Antiquity, might succeed! Physically, it suits a warlike people no less than an agricultural one. The Persian children, of the time of Cyrus, and by his orders, were nourished upon bread, water, and vegetables.... It was with these children, become men, that Cyrus made the conquest of Asia. I observe that Lycurgus introduced a great part of the physical and moral regimen of the Persian children into the education of those of the Lacedemonians.” (Etudes.)[194]
Of the many practical witnesses of this period, more or less interesting, for the sufficiency, or rather superiority, of the reformed regimen, four names stand out in prominent relief—Franklin, Howard, Swedenborg, Wesley—prominent either for scientific ability or for philanthropic zeal. To his early resolution to betake himself to frugal living, Benjamin Franklin, then in a printer’s office in Boston, attributes mainly his future success in life.[195]