“Wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighboured by fruits of baser quality.”
However this may be, it is certain that the middle class is the most sound and respectable of every community; and this is the class which is now ascendant in France. The Chamber of Peers is hardly noticed in the machinery of the government. This is partly owing to the democratic spirit transmitted from the Revolution, but chiefly to the want of hereditary titles and estates. A lordship, without money, is a weight about the neck of its owner. Shabby peasants look well enough, but one has no patience with ordinary people of quality. Nobility holds the same relation to society, as poetry to prose; it does not suffer mediocrity. The too indiscriminate and common use of the French titles, has done much, also, to their discredit.
“On ne porte plus qu’étoiles;
On les prodigue par boisseaux,
Au pekins comme aux genereaux,
Jusqu’aux marchands de toiles.”
M. Decaze made, during his ministry, as many as sixty nobles in a week. These gentlemen do not, themselves, seem to entertain a very high sense of their rank. I have heard of more than one hiding his decoration, to cheapen a piece of goods: as the Italian landlord, who passes himself for the waiter, to have the quelque chose à boire. I do not mean you to infer from this, that to be a nobleman it is necessary to be born so.
Nothing is so easy as to make any man think himself better than others; the facility even increases in proportion as he is ignorant. The footman advances his pretensions with a simple change of his livery—by stepping only from an earl’s coach to a duke’s. A girl will change her opinions of herself, from neat’s leather to prunella, and become prouder and nobler from cotton to silk stockings; but nothing can make any one noble who lacks the sense of superiority; in other words, who lacks money.
I must gossip a little to fill the rest of this blank paper. I dined with an American, this evening, at the Palais Royal, where he and a young Englishman, whom we met there, talked of the merits and demerits of their several countries, until their patriotism grew outrageous.
My rule is, to waive all discussions in which passion and prejudice have the mastery of reason. As far as Paris is concerned, and the travelling English whom I know here, America is yet undiscovered, and this ignorance, to us who think we have strutted into great historical importance, is sometimes quite offensive. To make it worse, they suppose that we cannot possibly know much of Europe, or indeed of any thing—how should we, being born so far from Paris?—and they began by teaching us the elements.
A very complaisant man of the university told me over, the other day, the Rape of the Sabines, with all its circumstances; and a French lady, of good literary pretensions and wealth, has paraded me more than once to amuse her company, by “talking American”—“Quel accent extraordinaire! cela ne ressemble à rien en Europe.”—“Ah! you are from Boston,” said another; “I am glad, perhaps you know my brother; he lives in Peru.”
---- The common people have a kind of indistinct notion, that all Americans are negroes—and as negro sympathies are now uppermost in Europe, we gain nothing by their disappointment.—The English know more; but their information, as far as I have yet observed, is altogether strained through Madame Trollope and Basil Hall, and the other caricaturists. In what manner have the English travelled in our country? An author, intent on making a book, comes over, and tells a lie; and the next who comes over steals it, and passes it for his own; and, at last, it is holy writ.
I read, twenty years ago, in English travels, that we gentlemen, at the taverns, clean our teeth with the same brush. This has been repeated, I presume, by Captains Hall and Hamilton, (for I have met it in all their predecessors,) and is now told positively for the last time, by Miss Fanny Kemble.—A propos, I saw Captain Hall, the other night, at the Geographical Society; he is a big man, and I did not flog him.