Although he is neither student nor artist, the Frenchman knows therefore perfectly how to call science and art to his aid, demand their co-operation and inspiration, and transfer them with advantage into practice. Thanks to his instinct for order and method, he succeeds in drawing material profit from studious or sentimental subjects.
Having considered the bright side of the French nation, we will now see where they are deficient.
It is a recognized fact, that, among the French, one-third of the men and more than half the women can neither read nor write: this is equivalent to saying, that of the thirty-eight millions of individuals composing the population of France, fifteen millions can neither read nor write.
The French peasant does not read, and for a very good reason. On Sunday he has read to him extracts from the Almanack of Pierre Larrivay, of Matthieu Laensberg, or some other prophet of the same cloth, who foretells what is about to happen on each day of the year; and this is as much as he wants. La Bruyère drew of the French peasant in the time of Louis XIV. a forcible and sinister picture, which in many cases is true even at the present day: in the course of two centuries, the subject has altered but little.[5]
[5] “We meet with certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the country, black, livid, and dried up by the sun, attached to the soil which they turn and rummage about with an insuperable obstinacy; they seem to utter articulate sounds, and when they get upon their legs, show a human face. And in fact, these, it seems, are men.”
The French artisan reads very little. Works of popular science, which for some years past have happily been edited in France, are not read, as is imagined, by the working classes: those who seek works of this class are persons who have already received a certain amount of instruction, which they desire to increase by extending it to other branches of knowledge; these, for the greater part, include school-children, and persons, belonging to the different liberal professions, or engaged in commerce.
The bourgeois, who has some spare time, devotes a portion of it to reading, but he does not read books. In France, books are objects of luxury, used only by persons of refinement. The crowd, when they see a man go by with a book under his arm, regard him with respectful curiosity. Enter the houses, even those of the most wealthy, and you will meet with everything which is necessary for the comforts of life, every article of furniture which may be called for, but you will seldom or never find a library. Whilst in Germany, England, and Russia, it is thought indispensable, in France a library is almost unknown.
The French bourgeois reads only the papers. Unfortunately, French journals have always been devoted to politics. Literature and art, science and philosophy, nay, even commercial and current affairs, that is, all which go to make up the life and interests of a nation, are excluded with most jealous care from the greater part of the French journals, to make way for political subjects. Thus it is that politics, the most superfluous and barren of subjects, have become among the French the great and only object of consideration.
The press which indulges in light literature is much worse. Its articles are founded on old compilations. The bons-mots of the Marquis of Bièvre are borrowed from Bièvriana, and laid at the door of M. de Tillancourt; then Mlle. X. des Variétés is made the heroine of an anecdote borrowed from the Encyclopediana, and the trick is complete. The paper is sold at a sou, and is not worth a liard.
The papers are the chief means by which the French bourgeois stuff their heads with emptiness.