I have spent a day at the exhibition of the students of the University, which was conducted with great pomp. There was a concour for prizes, and speeches in the learned languages; nothing but clarissimi and eruditissimi, Thiers and Guizots. Don’t you love modern Latin? I read, the other day, an ode to “Hannæ Moræ,” and I intend to write one some of these days to Miss Kittæ J. Nellæ, of Pine Hill. A propos! what is doing at the Girard College? when are they to choose the professors? and who are the trustees? I must be recommended τοισι ανθροποισι μεγαλοισι. Please tell Mr. S—— I confide to him my interests, as a good catholic does his soul to the priest, without meddling himself in the matter. Good night.
LETTER IX.
Tour of Paris—The Seine—The Garden of Plants—The Animals—Island of St. Louis—The Halle aux Vins—The Police—Palais de Justice—The Morgue—Number of suicides—M. Perrin—The Hotel de Ville—Place de Grêve—The Pont Neuf—Quai des Augustins—The Institute—Isabeau de Bavière—The Bains Vigiers—The Pont des Arts—The Washerwomen’s Fête—Swimming schools for both sexes—The Chamber of Deputies—Place de la Revolution—Obelisk of Luxor—Hospital of the Invalids—Ecole Militaire—The Champ de Mars—Talleyrand.
September 14th, 1835.
After the nonsense of my last letter, I almost despair of putting you in a humour to enjoy the serious matter likely to be contained in this. I have just returned from an excursion on foot from the one end to the other of Paris, making, as a sensible traveller ought to do, remarks upon the customs, institutions, and monuments of the place, and here I am with a sheet of double post to write you down these remarks. I would call it a classical tour, but I have some doubts whether walking in a straight line is a tour, and therefore I have called it simply a journal.
I had for my companion the Seine—he was going for sea-bathing to the Havre. His destination thence no more known than ours, when we float into eternity. Some little wave may, however, roll till it reach the banks of the Delaware—and who knows, that lifted into vapour by the sun, it may not spread in rains upon the Broad Mountain, and at last delight your tea-tables at Pine Hill. I therefore send you a kiss, and in recommending the river to your notice, I must make you acquainted with his history.
Most rivers except the Seine, and perhaps the Nile, have a high and noble descent; this, as I have read in a French author, runs out of a hole in the ground, in the flat and dirty country of the Côté d’or; it was contained once in a monk’s kitchen near Dijon, and began the world, like Russian Kate, by washing the dishes. At Paris it is called, by the polite French, the fleuve royale. Any stream in this country which is able to run down a hill is called a river,—this, of course, is a royal river. It receives a pretty large share of its bigness from the Maine and Yonne, and some other streams, (for rivers, like great men, are not only great of their own merits, but by appropriating that of others) and is itself again lost in the great ocean. It is the most beneficent river on the Continent—it distributes water, one of the elements of life, to near a million of people, and it gives some to the milkwoman who furnishes me with café-au-lait in the Faubourg St. Germain (where you will direct your letters from this date.) It is received in its debut into Paris magnificently, the Garden of Plants being on the left, and the great avenue of the Bastille and the elephant on its right, and overhead, five triumphal arches, which were erected for its reception by Bonaparte, sustaining the superb bridge of Austerlitz. And here commences my journal.
At twelve I left the Garden of Plants, with only a peep through the railings. One cannot go inside here without stumbling against all creation. The whole of the three kingdoms—animal, vegetable, and mineral—are gathered into this garden from the four corners of the earth, as they were when Adam baptised them. I observed a great number of plants growing out of the ground as fast as they could, and little posts standing prim and stiff along side of them, to tell you their names in apothecaries’ Latin—I mean their modern names—those they got at the great christening have been entirely lost, and Monsieur de Buffon and some others have been obliged to hunt them new ones out of the dictionary.
I did go in a little, and stood alongside of an American acacia, conceiting for a moment I was on my native earth again, and so I was, for the tree was transplanted from the Susquehanna, and the soil was brought with it. It would not otherwise grow out of its native country. Alas, do you expect that one’s affections, so much more delicate, will not pine and wither away where there is not a particle of their native aliment to support them! I looked a long time upon a cedar of Lebanon; it stands like a patriarch in the midst of his family, its broad branches expanded hospitably, inviting the traveller to repose. Along the skirts of the garden one sees lions, and tigers, and jackals, and an elephant—a prisoner from Moscara, lately burnt by the Grand Army. Several elephants fought and bled for their country on that occasion, and this is one of them. And finally, I saw what you never have seen in America, a giraffe, a sort of quadruped imitation of an ostrich, its head twenty feet in the air; and there were a great number of children and their dear little mammas giving it gingerbread. Deers also were stalking through the park—but in docility and sleekness how inferior to ours of the Mohanoy! and several bears were chained to posts, but not a whit less bearish, nor better licked, though brought up in Paris, than ours of the Sharp Mountain.
I could not help looking compassionately at a buffalo, who stood thoughtful and melancholy under an American poplar; his head hanging down, and gazing upon the earth. He had perhaps left a wife and children, and the rest of the family, on the banks of the Missouri! Wherever the eye strayed, new objects of interest were developed. Goats afar off were hanging upon cliffs, as high as a man’s head; and sheep from foreign countries (poor things!) were bleating through valleys—six feet wide! All the parrots in the world were here prating; and whole nations of monkies, imitating the spectators. Nothing in all this Academy of Nature seemed to draw such general admiration as these monkies and these parrots. What a concourse of observers! It is so strange in Paris to hear words articulated without meaning, and see grimaces that have no communication with the heart!