In my passage from Weymouth to Normandy, I landed at Jersey. The little, secluded bays of that island are the most perfect poetry of the sea. They are types of the spot in which Horace, in his poetic mood of imaginary misanthropy, wished to end his days.
"Oblitusque meorum obliviscendus et illis
Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem."
I was told that the scenery of Guernsey was even more beautiful; but the rough passage between the two islands is rather a heavy price to pay for the enjoyment. The islands are curious from their old Norman character, laws, and customs; their Norman patois; their system of small proprietors, whose little holdings, divided from each other by high hedges, cut the island into a multitude of paddocks; and the miniature republicanism and universal suffrage which the inhabitants enjoy, though under the paternal eye of an English governor, who, if the insects grew too angry, would no doubt sprinkle a little dust. But all that is native and original is fast being overlaid by the influx of English residents,—unhappy victims of genteel pauperism flying from the heavy taxes of England, which the Channel Islands escape; or, in not a few cases, persons whose reputation has suffered some damage in their own country. There are also a few exiles of a more honorable kind,—French liberals, who have taken refuge from imperial tyranny under the shield of English law,—the most illustrious of whom is Victor Hugo. The Emperor would fain get hold of these men, and he is now trying to force upon us a modification of the extradition treaty for that purpose. But the sanctity of our asylum is a tradition dear to the English people, and one which they will not be induced to betray. An attempt to change the English law for the purposes of the French police was fatal to Palmerston, at the height of his popularity and power.
The French government employs agents to decoy the refugees into conspiracies, in order that it may obtain a pretext for criminal proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.
Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and very unwilling to be annexed to France.
Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,—the active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the jingling of their bells. The figure of the gendarme, in his cocked hat and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in France.
Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills, commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with Mont St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium. But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the sous-préfet now stands. The building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and the hopes of man. The French Cæsars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III., though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman Cæsars, to have their official creed and their augurs.
I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize. Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting," replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.
In Ireland, the Christian Brothers maintain the most purely spiritual character, and the most complete independence of the state. But here, alas! a different tendency peeped out. The alliance of a Jesuit Church with the Empire, and the subserviency of education to their common objects, were typified by the presence of the sous-préfet and the maire in their gold-laced coats of office, who arrived escorted by a guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The harangue of the reverend head of the establishment was highly political, and amply merited by its recommendations of the duty of obedience to authority the eulogy of the sous-préfet on "the good direction" which the brotherhood were giving to the studies of youth. There is no garrison at Avranches. But all the soldiers in the place seemed to have been collected to give a military character to the scene. Other incentives of military aspiration were not wanting; and the boy who delivered the allocution told us, amidst loud applause, that he and his companions were being brought up to be, "not only good Christians, but, in case of need, good soldiers."
In France under the Empire a military character is studiously given to every act of public, and almost of social life. There you see everywhere the pomp of war in the midst of peace, as in America you saw everywhere peace in the midst of civil war. The images of war and conquest are constantly kept before the eyes of a people naturally full of military vanity, and now, by the decay alike of religious and political faith, almost entirely bereft of all other aspirations. There is at the same time a vast standing army, which is not occupied, as the army of the Roman Empire was, in defending the frontiers, nor, as the Austrian army is, in holding down disaffected provinces, and which is full of the memory of the Napoleonic conquests, and longs again to overrun and pillage Europe in the name of "glory." There is no restraining influence either of morality or of religion to keep the war spirit in check. The French priesthood are as ready as any priests of Jupiter or Baal to bless national aggression, if by so doing they can gain political power. In what can all this end? In what but a European war? The children in the schools of the Christian Brothers are no doubt faithfully taught the precepts of a religion of peace; but there is a teaching of a different kind before their eyes, which, it is to be feared, they more easily imbibe and less easily forget.