There is, indeed, another conceivable end. C'est l'arrêt que le ciel prononce enfin contre les peuples sans jugement, et rebelles à l'expérience.[15] If France does not soon come back to reason, we shall be forced to think her given up of God, to become such a country as Germany, or perhaps as miserable as Spain. But we must not be too hasty in coming to conclusions so deplorable. Let the republic have its day. It will work its own cure; for the chastisement of France must be the curse of ancient Judah. "The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and everyone by his neighbour; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." For the mob of Paris, who got drunk with riot, and must grow sober with headache; for the blousemen and the boys who have pulled a house upon their head, and now maul each other in painful efforts to get from under the ruins; and for the miserable philosophes who see, in the charming state of their country, the fruit of their own atheistic theories; for all these it is but retribution. They needed government; they resolved on license: God has sent them despotism in its worst form. One pities Paris, but feels that it is just. My emotions are very different when I think of what were once "the pleasant villages of France." Miserable campagnards! There are thousands of them, besides the poor souls starving in provincial towns, who curse the republic in their hearts; and, from Normandy to Provence and Languedoc, there are millions of such Frenchmen, who care nothing for dynasties, or fraternities, or democracy, but only pray the good Lord to give peace in their time, that they may sit under their own vine, and earn and eat their daily bread. For them—may God pity them!—what a life Dame Paris leads them! If, with the simplicity of rustics, they were for a moment disposed to be merry last February—when they heard that thereafter loaves and fishes were to fling themselves upon every table, for the mere pleasure of being devoured—how bitterly the simpletons are undeceived! Their present notions of fraternity and equality they get from hunger and from rags. It is not now in France as in the days of Henry IV., when every peasant had a pullet in the pot for his Sunday dinner. That was despotism. It is liberty now—liberty to starve. There is no more oppression, for the very looms refuse to work, and water-wheels stand still; and the vines go gadding and unpruned, and the grape disdains to be trampled in the wine-vat. Yes—and the old paysan and his sprightly dame, who used to drive dull care away in the sunshine—she, with her shaking foot and head, and he with his fiddle and his bow, they have liberty to the full; for their seven sons, who were earning food for them in the sweat of their brow, have come home to the old cabin, ragged and unpaid; and they lounge about in hungry idleness, longing for war, but only because war would provide them with a biscuit or a bullet. What care they for glory, or for constitutions? They ask for bread, and their teeth are ground with gravel-stones. Let England look and learn. If she has troubles, let her see how easily troubles may be invested at compound interest, with the certainty of dividends for years to come. Is hard thrift in a kingdom so bad as starvation in a democracy? And whether is it better to wear out honestly, in this work-day world, as good and quiet subjects; or to be thrust out of it, kicking and cursing, behind a barricade of cabs and paving-stones, in the name of equality? These are the common-sense questions, that every English labourer should be made to feel and answer.
It provokes me, Basil, that my letter may be superannuated while it is travelling in the steamer! The changes of democracy are more frequent than the revolutions of a paddle-wheel. Adieu. Yours,
Ernest.
DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO.
Dalmatia and Montenegro. By Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson. London: Murray.
It is really astonishing that our want of information respecting Dalmatia, and its neighbourhood, has not long ago been supplied. It is by no means easy, now-a-days, to hit upon a line of country that may afford subject-matter for acceptable illustration. Travellers are so numerous, and authorship is so generally affected, that the best part of Europe has been described over and over again. You may get from Mr Murray a handbook for almost any place you will. Manners and customs, roads, inns, things to be suffered, and notabilities to be visited—in short, all the probable contingencies of travel between this and the Vistula, are already noted and set down. We take it upon ourselves to say, that it is one of the most difficult things in life to realise the sense of desolation and unwontedness that are poetic characteristics of the traveller. How can a man feel himself strange to any place where he is so thoroughly up to usages that no locandière can cheat him to the amount of a zwanziger? And, thanks to the books written, it is a man's own fault if he wend almost anywhither except thus μύστης γενόμενος.
In truth, European travelling is pretty nearly reduced to the work of verification. Events are according to prescription; and there remains very little room for the play of an exploring spirit. The grand thing to be explored is a matter pysychological rather than material; it is to prove experimentally what are the emotions that a generous mind experiences, when vividly acted upon by association with the world of past existences. Beyond doubt, this is the highest range of intellectual enjoyment; and to its province may be referred much that at first sight would appear to be heterogeneous, as, for instance, delights purely scientific. But at any rate, we must all agree that the main privilege of a traveller is, that he is enabled to test the force of this power of association. It is an enjoyment to be known only by experiment. No power of description can give a man to understand what is the sensation of gazing on the Acropolis, or of standing within Ἁγία Σοφία. It is as another sense, called into existence by the occasion of exercise.
To any but the uncommonly well read, there has hitherto been meagre entertainment in travelling among the Slavonian borderers on the Adriatic. It has been impossible to realise on their subject these high pleasures of association, because so little has been known of the facts of their history; rather should we perhaps say, that, of what has been known, so little has been generally accessible. But we are happy to find that the right sort o' "chiel has been amang them, takin' notes." The way is now open; and henceforth it will be easy to follow with profit. The book which Sir Gardner Wilkinson has given us seems to be exactly the thing which was wanted; and certainly the use of it will enable a man to travel in Dalmatia as a rational creature should. No mere dotter down of events could have passed through the course of this country without producing a document of considerable value. The widespread family of which its inhabitants are a branch have been intimately mixed up with the history of the Empire and of Christendom; and now again we behold them playing a conspicuous part in European politics. Modern Panslavism deepens the interest to be felt in this family, and quickens the anxiety to know what they are doing and thinking now, as well as what they have done in days of old. In the present volumes we have, besides the memoranda of things existing, a compendium of Slavonian history and antiquities, and an exhibition of the degree in which the race have been mixed up with European history. Besides this, an account is given of their more domestic traditions, of which monuments survive; and it must be a man's own fault if, having this book with him, he miss extracting the utmost of profit from a visit to the country.