FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. IV.	B E T H A N Y, NOVEMBER, 1847.	NO. XI.

      My dear Clarinda--BEING much fatigued with my labors in London, and having a desire to visit Paris, and to see the French Metropolis at home, I resolved on a flying trip across the channel, via Boulogne, Amiens, and Abbeville, to the great continental metropolis. Leaving brother Henshall in London, who preferred to occupy himself in the field of labor, being by no means as yet exhausted, I set out alone on Monday morning from London bridge, in the cars, for Folkestone, showing myself another hundred miles of England. From Folkestone to Boulogne, across the channel, it is only twenty-one miles. After reposing a few hours at this beautiful spot, I crossed in a steamer in two hours and a half, and found myself among the French.

      To read French and speak French, especially with a Frenchman, are two very different employments. They speak so fast, and, in general, so indistinctly, that it is not quite as easy as one might suppose, to understand them. I had, therefore, to ask the favor of a little more time in answering my questions.

      I took the stage for Abbeville, and the day being fine, I had a very pleasant ride at the rate of some eight miles an hour. The country through which we passed exhibits a good deal of the chalky appearance which on both sides of the channel attracts the attention of all strangers.

      In a clear day one can see the chalk banks across the channel on either side. Coming into England from France, where the Romans first crossed, you will see at once, a good reason why they called it in their language, Albion, or the white land; for, really, the coasts [601] below Folkestone appear like snow banks in the distance. True, the French coast from Bologne to Calais has much the same appearance, still there is not so much of it, nor is it quite so brilliant as on the English side. There is, as you advance into France, occasionally on the side of a hill, and sometimes in the plough lands, a pale whiteness of the soil, indicative of the prevalence of chalk. This, however, diminishes as you recede from the coast.

      Neither the soil nor the cultivation here is equal to that of England. France wants the blooming hedges, the deep green fields, the luxuriant gardens, and the beautiful country seats so common in England. Indeed, it wants hedges and fences of all sorts, so far as my horizon extended on both sides of the public highways. I sometimes did not see a single enclosure, except occasionally around a dwelling house, in the sweep of ten thousand acres. After entering the rail cars you see a very slight fence along the railway to protect it from the intrusion of animals; but with this exception of a single palisado along the railroads, you see for miles and miles but one extended field, composed of an incalculable number of strips and patches of wheat, rye, oats, barley, peas, beans, and turnips, potatoes, carrots, poppies, flax, hemp, meadows, pastures, nurseries, &c. &c.

      In passing over one hundred and fifty miles of France, I saw but very little live stock, and that not of a very improved character. The flocks of sheep were but few and far between, and always attended by shepherds and their dogs. In some instances I saw a few hundred sheep on very slim pastures, narrow strips of meagre grass, with their shepherds lying asleep under a shrub, while their more faithful dogs were vigilantly walking round the green carrot, and turnip, and oat patches on either side, ready to seize by the nose the first sheep that presumed to approach, with a wishful eye, the green crops so tempting on every side.

      The cattle, horses, swine, and even the donkies themselves, are inferior to the English. Gardens, orchards, and dwelling houses seem to participate in the same general inferiority. The farming utensils, indeed, all the implements of husbandry, whether it be owing to the want of Anglo-Saxon blood, the brittle nature of the soil, the climate, the French language, or the Roman Catholic religion, I know not, and will not hastily decide, are all visibly, sensibly, and demonstrably inferior to the English. The stage-drivers, stage-horses, as well as the stages themselves, participate in the marked inferiority. Even the rail-roads and rail-cars are not wholly exempt from it. As you approach Paris, however, matters somewhat improve. [602]

      On entering the city, surrounded as it is with some fifty miles of a defensive wall, the city itself being eighteen miles in circumference, as we approach the centre the streets very much improve. Its new streets, indeed, its old ones, with its modern public improvements, are in most respects equal, and in some respects superior to those of London. Some of its palaces, towers, triumphal arches, gardens, parks, promenades, and churches are decidedly superior to things of the same sort in London. The genius of Napoleon is every where manifest in Paris. His new streets, his entrances to the Tuileries, his splendid arches and columns, together with the Place de la Concorde, the Place du Carrousel, the Place Vendome, the Louvre, with its rich displays of statuary, paintings, curiosities, &c., &c., all attest the boldness of his genius and the colossal dimensions of his ambition to make himself and Paris the admiration of the world.--The bronze column, in height 144 English feet, erected in 1810, made up in part of twelve hundred cannons taken by Napoleon in his wars, yet stands a proud monument of his military greatness and of his love of human worship.

      The obelisk of Luxor, sometimes called Cleopatra's Needle, covered with hieroglyphics, of the age of Sesostris, now three thousand years old, brought by Napoleon from Thebes, measuring ninety-five feet in one piece, was placed upon a pedestal twenty-five feet high in the year 1836, not far from the palace of the Tuileries. It was raised in the presence of all the foreign ambassadors and Louis Philippe, and placed, in great pomp, on the identical spot where stood the guillotine on which Louis XVI and his queen were beheaded in the Reign of Terror. The revolutionary guillotine occupied this place for eighteen months, during which period there were guillotined by the sentences pronounced by the revolutionary tribunals, not less than 18,603 persons. I could not express the varied emotions and reflections that crowded upon me while I stood for a few minutes gazing upon this awfully memorable spot where so many victims were immolated to the Moloch of heartless Atheism.¹ [603]

      Little did the hero of a hundred battles imagine the use to which the trophies of his genius and ambition would be dedicated, when gathering them into Paris from all the fields that he had won, and the people whom he plundered. On visiting the Louvre and the palace of the Tuileries, I found that many of the spoils which he had deposited there, making it for a time the wonder of the world, had been by his successors restored to the courts and capitals from which he had taken them. Still it is, compared with any other palace, probably the richest and most magnificent in the world, in all that the fine arts and "the peculiar treasure of Kings" can bestow.

      On my arrival in the City, and obtaining a comfortable room in one of the principal hotels, I called for a valet of the necessary accomplishments to accompany me to all the places in Paris I wished to see, and to be entirely at my disposal. A person well acquainted with the whole city was soon obtained, with whom I commenced my tour through Paris, beginning at the Palace, the Louvre, and the gardens of the Tuileries. An American: citizen, with proper [604] passports, has more rights than the citizens of Paris, so far as finding access on every day to certain places which only on certain days are open to them. Having through our minister obtained these, I found no difficulty whatever, by paying the ordinary fees, in seeing all that I desired.

      The Louvre alone will compensate any one for a visit from London to Paris, who desires to see the whole world of fine arts in full representation assembled in one building. Here in one immense suite of rooms, one of which is 1,350 feet long, are no less than 1,200 paintings, many of them large groups, works of all the great masters.--I presume not to go into details.

      Here are the gods, the arts the heroes, and the wonders of Egypt, specimens of all its marble treasures.--Urns of porphyry for the ashes of the dead, baths--sacred utensils, and heroes in marble transparent as glass--some white as snow, others black as ebony and smooth as ivory. Gods in granite, too, red, white, and variegated. Rooms are crowded with the richest sculpture. Everything Greek, Roman, Italian, ancient or modern. There stand Homer, Demosthenes, Herodotus, with all other chiefs in all the departments of human glory--in learning, poetry, oratory, and philosophy. The Roman Emperors, good and bad, are there, with their characters in their faces;--Julius, Augustus, Nero, and Caligula, with the good Aurelius. Nineveh, too, in its recently discovered ruins, is yet farther enriching this grand depository of the world's treasure.--One could not, in a volume, detail the displays of all the arts assembled here. It would require a residence of months, and the vocabulary of all the arts, and treasures, and curiosities of all the countries visited by the nations of Europe.

      During the revolution of three days, which placed Louis Philippe on the throne, both the army and the mob alternately took possession of the Tuileries and the Louvre. The devastations of the cannon and musketry are every where apparent in those splendid rooms. It was converted by both parties into a fortress. The mob drove the army out, took possession of it and of the palace. Yet, strange to tell, in all this paroxysm of lawless depredation, not an article was touched, or seized, or pilfered, though treasures of golden curiosities of immense value were every where accessible. In the highest phrenzy of the hour of triumph, the orders were, "touch nothing here," "we shall eat and drink in the palace whatever we can find, but we shall carry nothing hence. It is not treasure that we want. It is not to plunder that we have seized this palace. It is liberty, and law, and the rights of Frenchmen we demand." [605]

      The colonnade in the front of the Louvre--this grand masterpiece of French architecture, which excites the admiration of Europe--and the entrance, Saint Dennis, or grand arch two miles distant from the palace, with the splendid fountains and promenades in the gardens and royal pleasure grounds, are too magnificent to be noticed at all in such a sketch as this. Thirty millions of francs are said to have been expended on the grand entrance alone; and, indeed, all that taste, and science, and art, and treasure could bestow, have been lavished on the grounds in front of the Tuileries.

      I made a second visit in the evening when the gardens were illuminated, and spent an hour walking in this paradise in the midst of thousands of Parisians. The garden of the Tuileries is open to all respectable classes every evening. It is filled with statues, groves, and broad walks, bordered with orange trees; and though filled with the choicest fruits and flowers, nothing is touched by the thousands that are admitted to enjoy this richest of repasts.

      The walks, I should, were it not a garden, call them highways, (for they are some sixty feet wide,) are generally rectangular, and are separated from the plots of fruits and flowers only by a longitudinal iron railing, more, indeed, an ornament than a defence against intrusion. It is, therefore, the liberality of the king responded to by the grateful homage of the people, that protects every thing that is seen here, from the withering touch of a human finger or the rapacious grasp of a covetous hand.

      Louis Philippe, whatever may be said of his talents as a king, is a clever man. He is the richest sovereign in the world so far as his own private estate is valued. I was shown whole streets in Paris inherited by him from Lous XIV, the annual rent of which alone would be a princely fortune. In the midst of these stands "the Palace Royal," the property of the king, inherited from his royal ancestors, under the title of the "Duke of Orleans." His whole income from lands and tenements is equal to about a million and a half pounds sterling, or more than SEVEN MILLIONS of dollars per annum. It was from one of the windows in his own "Palace Royal," which was pointed out to me, that the Marquis La Fayette, after the three days insurrection, publicly announced to a waiting multitude that Louis Philippe was chosen king of France, that he himself had sworn allegiance to him, and that he hoped Paris and the whole nation would accept him with his liberal principles, and with him peace and prosperity.

      Strange to tell, about 700 boys, most of them not over seventeen years old--but well educated in the national polytechnic and military [606] school--planned and executed this grand insurrection. The mob agreed to advance and retreat at their bidding. They did so, and the regular army was defeated They had moderation and self-government enough to control an infuriated mob, and when they had driven the national guards out of the Tuileries, and were possessed of the royal cellars, at their bidding, no one presumed to drink one glass of wine unless mingled with water. Such desperation and cool deliberation, such exacerbation of feeling and self-possession have seldom or ever been exhibited, if I may believe the descriptions which I have heard from those who were themselves witnesses of the scenes, if not actors in the drama.

      Louis Philippe is a very popular king. He so manages his immense estate as to make it useful. Indeed he is but a bank for public advantage. He employs 600 servants in his different palaces, city and country, and gives constant employment to 4,000 laborers in improving his lands. Besides these, he employs many artists. I visited the tapestry rooms in which the most accomplished weavers fabricate the most beautiful woven pictures, landscapes, groups, and scenes, unsurpassed, I had almost said, by the pencil of the most elegant painters. Several splendid pictures, just finished, were exhibited in one of the rooms, which had been in the loom of an arras weaver some two or three years. The whole superficies was not more than eight yards by three or four. Nothing could excel these pieces for beauty and magnificence of design and execution. The cartoons of a Raphael, and such gifted masters are but the designs of which these are the development and consummation. They form a part of the "peculiar treasure of kings,"--the rich presents which they send from one to another, by which they sometimes propitiate kind feelings and corroborate the bonds of amity. One may estimate the value of one of these fine pieces of tapestry, embossed with the richest figures in high relief, dyed in fonts of gold, mingled with the ruby, the emerald, the hyacinth, and the sapphire, on which a Flanders weaver has sat for two or three years at from five to seven francs a day. With such tapestry are the halls of kings and queens adorned,--and for all of which the people must in some way pay the cost. Louis Philippe, however, out of his immense estate, keeps some two hundred and fifty of these artists at work, and of course has some royal gifts to bestow upon his royal friends abroad.² [607]

      Amidst all this voluptuousness and exuberant wealth, which despite of all the disbursements made, continues still to multiply and increase, there are myriads and myriads living in France upon six sous a day; and as in London so in Paris, there are myriads who know not to-night where their breakfast is to be found to-morrow.

      From the Louvre, and the Tuileries, and the Royal gardens we visited some of the churches. Of these, while that of St. Germain-de Pres, usually called St. Germain's, is celebrated for its antiquity, and that of Notre Dame for its richly gothic and magnificent proportions, that of La Madeleine is by far the most admired for the beauty of its architecture and the gorgeous riches of its internal decorations. It is unequalled in England and unsurpassed in the world, except we admit that St. Peter's at Rome, in amplitude and antique grandeur may excel it. Bonaparte laid the foundation for this church some forty years ago. But with him it was the foundation of a temple of glory in which were to stand, in marble or on canvass, his great men of the then living and future world. Louis Philippe has finished it and converted it into a church.

      Its twenty most majestic and Corinthian columns to a side, and its proportional number at each end, with all their corresponding splendors of architectural pride, in surmounting and adorning, give to its exterior a most imposing majesty and extort from the most careless spectator, as he passes along, a tribute of admiration. But on entering its grand room one is overwhelmed in contemplating its gorgeous magnificence. Its splendid nave, wide and lofty, carved, and gilded, and canopied with gold, after the manner of King's church at Cambridge University, only still more rich and imposing, constrains every visitant to feel or to exclaim, "How exuberantly grand and splendid!" But how blind the devotion that can be pleased with such a satire upon him that was born in a stable and who said--"The foxes have their dens, and the birds of the air have their [608] nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." Had the taste of the Roman or English hierarchy been consulted, Christ would have been born in a palace and rocked in a golden cradle enamlled with diamonds of the most costly brilliancy.

      While gazing on all the grandeur above and around me, I saw a priest standing before the altar with his back to half a dozen devotees kneeling in different parts of the church, performing various genuflections and grimaces. A large cross was inwrought on his coat, after the manner of Indian beads of various colors, so that while his back was to the people, a gorgeous cross from neck to heel was visible. What a splendid device! How easy to carry such a rich and beautiful cross, kneeling on a velvet cushion under a golden canopy, with a few august worshippers in his rear! What an ingenious commentary upon the words "take up your cross and follow me!" I turned away from this disgusting mummery and left the cathedral, questioning whether or not Louis Philippe had improved on Napoleon's design. It certainly would have been more congruous with nature, and reason, and fact, to have called this the temple of human glory and worldly pomp rather than a Christian chapel.

      Not having time to survey the "Palais Bourbon," where the Chamber of Deputies were in session, or the "Luxembourgh," where the House of Peers sat, I could only cast an eye upon their outward neatness and grandeur, as upon the Exchange, surrounded with its sixty-six pillars of the Corinthian order. I preferred to take a ride along the Seine and to inspect some of the beautiful bridges which span its silvery tide. This river passing from east to west through the city, has made it necessary to erect no less than twenty-one bridges across it for the convenience of the inhabitants. These have been made ornaments to the city. The bridge of Louis XVI is adorned with twelve beautiful white marble statues, representing some of the great men who contributed to the glory of France. The bridge of arts, and the wire bridge attract and captivate visitants from all lands. But to speak of its eighty-six fountains, its hospitals, its catacombs, its libraries, and all other matters of public interest, on account of which the French metropolis is visited and admired, would be to write a volume, for which I have as little taste as time, and for which my readers have just as little as myself.

      While Paris is not more than half as large as London, it contains more means of health and pleasure than the English metropolis.--Hyde Park and St. James' Park are indeed grand luxuries at one end of London. They are places of great resort and of infinite value to its inhabitants. But the public grounds, and walks, and [609] gardens of Paris, it must be confessed, are altogether more beautiful and more magnificent, as well as more ample and convenient. The French excel in the fine arts and in luxury, in gayety and dissipation; but the English in riches and commerce, in manufactures and in the useful arts, as well as in literary institutions, morality, and religion. England is a great, France is a gay nation. Both are, however, greatly, I had almost said supremely, devoted to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life! The Roman hierarchy is here allowed, but not devoutly worshipped. Popery, in France, is policy rather than religion. The nation, in the main, is really infidel. Marriage is not "honorable in all"--I had almost said honorable at all. It is, however, honored by a majority of the nation. But its obligations are less solemn in France than in England or in any Protestant country known to me. The Lord's day is the devil's great day in Paris. To church they go for one or two hours, while to the theatre or to the public resorts of profane pleasuire the multitude devote the day. The few Protestant congregations in France are an exception. But the influence is not seen nor felt.

      I learned from Dr. Cox in London, that the colporteurs are at work in France. In one district many Bibles have been circulated. Several priests and congregations have been in consequence convinced of the follies and absurdities of Popery, and are inquiring for Christian baptism. One of the priests on reading the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES had almost resolved to immerse himself, that he might immerse others who were inquiring for baptism. But on farther reflection he concluded to wait till the Lord gave him an opportunity of being immersed by another who had been immersed. Dr. Cox, and some other person, have been appointed to visit that part of France for the purpose of meeting the views of certain congregations there, now enlightened by the Bible and desiring help from abroad. May the Lord open for them a door of access to the hearts of this priest-ridden, and infidel-ridden community.

      I could have wished, while in Paris, that our American ladies, amateurs of Parisian fashions in dress and in manners, had a more particular acquaintance with that class of ladies whose costume and address are their beau ideals of modesty, good sense, and good manners. There is, indeed, a class of ladies in Paris, whose position in society and whose domestic virtues are such as to give them some claims upon public taste and admiration, but unfortunately their more rational, respectful, and decorous demeanor and appearance appear not to be known abroad, or if known, not to be so highly appreciated, and yet they are the political nobility and real gentility of [610] France and of Europe, if high place, good education, good sense, and polite manners ought to have any precedency or influence upon the sex, these certainly have transcendant claims upon their respect. But in the absence of such examples of good taste and good manners, I commend our Christian ladies to a very elegant, rational, and tasteful dissertation on this subject, in a very polite epistle, written by a very accomplished gentleman, Doctor Simon Peter, letter 1st, chapter ii. 3-6.

      From Paris, tired and satiated with all its greatness, its pomp and pageantry, I returned with railroad speed to Boulogne, neither knowing an individual nor making myself known to any one of the hundreds of thousands on whom I looked, and through whom I pushed my way. I met my engagements in London within three hours.--This delay was occasioned by a mist rising on the English channel which made it dangerous sailing, and therefore, I arrived in England after the cars had departed for London.

      I was greatly annoyed on my way through France by the absurd ceremony of obtaining, showing, and carrying passports. The French ought not to be visited by Americans until they learn better manners. England is the only country in Europe through which an American or foreigner can travel where he pleases without carrying in his pocket a certificate or license, to be demanded and shown at every point where the curiosity or insolence of some little officer, armed with a little brief authority, may demand it. The United States have already risen one hundred per cent in my esteem above any country I have seen since I left them. May they never sell for a mess of pottage their birthrights!!

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 4 (November 1847): 601-611.]