If you send, then, your son to Paris, am I uncharitable in surmising that he may sometimes use the privilege of the place? It is, indeed, a question for philosophy to determine (and not for me), which of the two may be the less injurious to his health and morals—the gross intercourse he is exposed to in some other towns, or the more refined gallantries of the French capital. If you can preserve him, by religious and other influences, from either, as well as from the dangers of an ascetic and solitary abstinence—for solitude has its vices as well as dissipation—so much the better. He will be a better husband, a better citizen, and a better man.
But let me tell you that to educate a young man of fortune and leisure, to live through a youth of honesty, has become excessively difficult, even in the chaste nunnery of your “Two Hills;” and to expect that, with money and address, he will live entirely honest in Paris, where women of good quality are thrown in his face—women of art, beauty, and refined education—is to attribute virtues to human nature she is in no way entitled to in any country. He may have some trouble with his conscience, perhaps, the first month or two, but by degrees, he will become reconciled, and get along well enough. If he comes over with some refinement of taste, and moral inclinations and habits, or only on a transient visit, he will be secure from all the dangers (except, perhaps, gambling) to which I have alluded; he will live only in American society, which is quite as good and pure here as at home; he will have no acquaintance with the natives, but of that class in which a gentleman’s morals run less risk of temptation than even from the vulgar intercourse of American towns.
All that part of a city like Paris, that comes into relation with strangers, and lives by deceiving and plundering them, is of course gross and corrupt; yet I do not know any community in which the honesty of a gentleman is so safe from contamination.
It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; “nimium se æstimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.” He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, is certainly the complement of a good education.
The American society at Paris, taken altogether, is of a good composition. It consists of several hundred persons, of families of fortune, and young men of liberal instruction. Here are lords of cotton from Carolina, and of sugarcane from the Mississippi, millionaires from all the Canadas, and pursers from all the navies; and their social qualities, from a sense of mutual dependence or partnership in absence, or some such causes, are more active abroad than at home. The benevolent affections act in a contrary way from gravitation; they increase as the square of the distance from the centre.
The plain fact is, that Americans in Paris are hospitable in a very high degree; they have no fear of being dogged with company, and have leisure here, which they have nowhere else, to be amiable; the new comer, too, is more tender and thankful, and has a higher relish of hospitality and kindness; and the general example of the place has its effect on their animal spirits.
They form a little republic apart, and when a stranger arrives, he finds himself at home; he finds himself also under the censorial inspection of a public opinion, a salutary restraint, not always the luck of those who travel into foreign countries. One thing only is to be blamed: it becomes every day more the fashion for the élite of our cities to settle themselves here permanently. We cannot but deplore this exportation of the precious metals, since our country is drained of what the supply is not too abundant. They who have resided here a few years, having fortune and leisure, do not choose, as I perceive, to reside anywhere else.
It is now midnight, and more. I have said so much in this letter about grisettes, that I shall have a night-mare of them before morning. This “Latin Quarter,” is one of the most instructing volumes of Paris, but all I can do is just to open you here and there some of its pages, and shew you the pictures. Pictures in this country, recollect, are more à decouvert than in America. Please to make the allowance. Good night!
LETTER XI.
The Observatory—The Astronomers—Val de Grace—Anne of Austria—Hospice des Enfans Trouvés—Rows of Cradles—Sisters of Charity—Vincent de Paul—Maisons d’Accouchement—Place St. Jaques—The Catacombs—Skull of Ninon de l’Enclos—The Poet Gilbert—Julian’s Bath—Hôtel de Cluny—Ancient Furniture—Francis the First’s Bed—Charlotte Corday—Danton—Marat—Robespierre—Rue des Postes—Convents of former times—Faubourg St. Marceau.