PARIS IN 1851. [From the Times.]

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 648, 30 June 1852, Page 3

PARIS IN 1851. [From the Times.]

If Sir Francis Bond Head would always be good enough to tell the public wh.it lie sees, and religiously keep to himself ail that ho thinks, he would prove as pleasant a companion as one nv'glit hope to meet in a day's march. lie has an eye for the picturesque, Iml not a head foo the practical ; he paints like a master, but he reasonsiikc a child ; he ->yields his free pencil with the vigour of a man, but he discourses of life with all the mental irritability and physical perturbation of a lady — in years. It was so live years ago when Sir Francis published The Emigrant. It was so a j ear since, when he raised the cry of national dc"fcncelessness. It is the case noAV, when he calls our attention to Paris, not as it is to-day, but as il was the day before yesterday. His portraits are all to the life ; his lectures are wearisome even unto death. It was not a bad idea that took Sir Francis to Paris last year. He informs us that he visited that lively capital, after forty years' absence, with the simple intention of consulting an oculist, and that during his three Aveeks' stay he availed himself of certain odd hours left at his disposal by | the surgeon to note matters most worthy of the traveller's observation. To borrow the title which Sir Francis Head originally intended to give to the a\ ork before us, we must confe&s that this explanation looks very like "All my eye." The oculist and his labours certainly come oIF second best. A more deliberate attempt at bookmakiug, we venture to affirm, was not made even when I Sir Francis Head introduced himself to the stokers and pokers of the North- Western with the express ohject of inditing a lively article for the Qiuuterhj. Our author evidently went to Paris determined to write a series of such articles, and to make " The Oculist" one of the number. The notion was good, and no man living, we are free to say, more competent to work it out than Sir Francis Head himself. But success has been far from perfect. Sir Francis has been q 1 eedy, and, in endeavouring to compass too much, has performed nothing completely. He calls his collection "A Faggot of French Sticks. 11 The majority of these sticks are, we allow, light and sharp enough, but some are unusually dry, others are heavy and without point, and the indiscriminate character of the whole bundle proves the gatherer to have been moie intent upon the number than upon the quality of his pickings up. The book is three times as long as it ought to be, and not half deep enough. The reader is tantalized with mere glimpses of objects, which, having once caught sight of them, he naturally desires to investigate closely. Sir Francis Head's essay upon the North -Western Hail way sold at once by thousands because it told the story of that iron institution, and left no more to be said or written on the subject. Everything, on the contrary, has to bo written on the foreign topics to which Sir Francis entts the notice of his English readers before they can be thoroughly appieciafccd and understood. The active gentleman, in his three weeks' scamper through Paris, during the intervals of indisposition, did too little and too much. lie should have accomplished more or less. Two perfect and thoroughly finished pictures would have been worth more than his 60 odd incomplete sketches. One serviceable piece of oak — something to lean upon for life, is surely far more useful to a man who needs a stick at all than a whole faggot of sticks that snap at once beneath his weight. But, rapid as Sir Francis's movements are, and meagre as are his accounts of many of the institutions he visits, it is impossible to accompany the acute traveller without being struck by his great aptitude for graphic description, or without stopping continually on the road to reflect seriously upon his facts. The writer himself takes no trouble to draw inferences from what he sees. He breakfasted in the morning, painted his forehead by way of improving his eyesight, and as soon as he was permitted to rub the unguent off rushed out of jis lodging into an omnibus 5 thence into a barrcck or slaughter-house as the case might be, looked about him; asked questions; made notes of what he saw or heard, and late at night, wearied with his labours, returned to liis roof to take rest before repeating the process the following day, and adding fresh chapters to the premeditated work anxiously looked for at No. 50, Albemarlestreet. A philosopher would have employed the omnibus less, and his own chair more ; would have made his eyes the va&sals of his mind, and appealed as often to his own judgment as to the experience of his chance informant. But for Sir Francis, " his affections do not that way tend." " Paris in 1851," or Paris in any other year, is a puzzle for the wisest. Its greatness is equalled by its littleness, its refinement by its indecency, its affectation of piety, by its open infidelity, its senlunentalisin by its callousness, its discipline and order by its licentiousness and impatience of restraint, its visible humanity by its palpable and thorough heartlessncss. The beaxi • tifulcity, its government, its people, its buildings, its habits, its passions, is a living mass of contradiction. We visit it to be gay, we remain to be shocked and dismayed. One day we devote to the inspection o£ its schools and economic establishments, and sigh over our own deficiencies and obtuse adherence to paths recommended by nothing but their age ; the next we take " our walks abroad," and, noting emphatically that all knov^edge is not wisdom, thank God that our people have not yet learned all that Paris is capable of teaching them. If we might venture to describe a whole people by the statement of a simple fact, we would tell the stranger that so susceptible is the Parisian mind, so exquisitely cultivated the senses, that a butcher in his professional costume cannot be tolerated in the public street; streets whose gutters may be recking today with the blood of slaughtered men, without diminishing by the weight of a feather the Parisian's light- hcartedness to-morrow. French nature is a nature offended and shocked by the violation of the proprieties, not of the sanctities, of life. It will not suffer an actor to be murdered in jest uprm the stage; it will behold, with scai-ccly a sluug, the house of life violated and destroyed before its eyes in the public thoroughfares. How fine is the generosity, the magnanimity, the traditional love of glory, that cluster in the Frenchman's heart; yet, whither have fled the virtues at the moment at which we write ? In what country has science assumed an aspoH more sublime; has art pursued her violorie. with move j undoubted ti iumph ; has literature levelled genitib more doJdcd jid profound, limn in il'u'Arioat. France ? By v.ii vcf&al consent P.iri < h the centre of European ci\ilization, the capital ofihewoild.

[ Her stamp proclaims thj fashion, ! or fantasy is universal law, her laniru^ge is the ihi.sg metal that passes cunent in u\eiy other land. It' on any spot of earth mankind m;/ congrogs'te to ascertain the glorious icsalts of iuuraa culture in i theso rnodotn times, surely avo hove told the place. We have done so such thing ! \', r e have spoken the bare truth, we warn the traveller off. Notwithstanding the rceit?d ficts, Paris willteauh us neither Low to live nor how to die. Political instruction, social e\ample ; religious practice, are i no more to be received at her luu'L thai* ideas of polish are to be acquiied fiom the stunted Bosjesman. Sir Francis lie id was never pushed in a Parisian ciowd. lie never asked a enaction of the poorest man he met in the street 1 * but he received a, respectful and eonsideiate vply. He stood one night among hundreds of poisons on a bridge in Paris, for v,e forget how nunv hours, watching Vac celebration of ? fCtc. The rain was pom-ing all the time, and not only van every man's umbiella up, 'nit cveiy man ws receiving the dripping of lib nen,hl>oui'a umbrella, most provokingly, down his neck ; yet, not an oath, not a breath of complaint, did he hear. The politeness of all p a lies complete. If Loui3 ! Napoleon, as no doubt ho will, should think proper to strike ofr a ino«l,>l in honour of S'a Francis's complimentary visit to Pa vis, we woxild humbly ad\ise thai Autocrat of all the Fienchmen to' have those fpelo symbolized upon one side of the bmv3. Upon the 'other thcro should be a portrait of the gallant L-aMler si.inding in a corner of the ?v. r or<,ue ; (vio-c him. "lying on its back, with a now ci u^iod I-at liko a regro, with its chocks swelled oul exa^iy as > f" it were loudly blowing a trumpet, the ~n (I'd 3n\l coip^a of a robust well-forme il ySvng •'/OJ'i.ui -*' about 20 years of age," and at his side, with iyv . steadily fixed upon the revolting sp"cticle, and seemingly enjoying it, " a fashionably and exceedingly welldressed lady, with two dnoghten. one about 16, the other about IX; oil Ihuv v>ith flowcis in their bonnets." Or, it the picture be deemed to hideous, we would beg for J Jic reverse or oui medal the full- 1 en;, th fi»uro of a mother, standing with her ov>n inllmi. child at the Foundling Hospital of Paris, placing it in the " turnabout" before the gate, and in the act of ringing the bell, in answer to whoic summons that relief and assiVianco to the helpless and deserted offspring are affoided which "strange and dreadful to say, of all the animals in creation, no other living mother but a woman would accept." If it were possible to adopt a system of friendly reciprocity between the tvo countri^, and foi England to give to 1> nice the peculiar advantages enjoyed by this i^l md in exchange f'tr thopjat benefits v.hich France is q 'ite competent to confer upon us, unparalleled inde-'d v*ould be the greatness and sub-.U.nt'ud plrny cj' these neighbouring kingdoms. The slaughh't aocoes of Paris, ke])t sacredly without the {,ati iC i, vid models of cleanlinoss and prop/iety wiiorevoi' lh n y arc met with, are institutions which should bring the blush of shame into our checks. The considerate care and tenderness exhibited foi animals, who are not forced to undergo all the horrors of purgatory before receiving their final reward hi the comfortable Elysium of the human stomach, are among the most admirable evidences of true civilization, and fAandinq lvp/oarhe^ against our own gratuitous ciuclty and shoil'iipjited disregard of decency and health. Fiom the OT'nibnfj establishments we may le.un thj wisdom of returning the servicob of our liw^i of burden with something more gi^telul than the lash and the goad, and how much more profitable ii is to sustain than to wear ovt the of our mo^t willing, albeit duml^andvaicajor.ing dej)endents. We still leave the buiial of our d^ad to tlie mercy of harpies who fatten on corruption, and take advantage of our «vw,i,-i to t..!:c measure of our pockets, and* still pollute the atmosphere of life with poison generated in d'\ith. Uut Paiis, more merciful than Lond» -\ *>> iw. . beconainer sepulture for the htimhle-^ ana separates, by the broadest lines of demai cation, the habitations of the living from tiie last homes of the dead. Sir Francis Head visUfl llio military schools of Paris, and was edified by the style of education which he found imposed upon the future officers of the French army, "The military system of that army," he writes "lias 01 tinned that no one can be appointed to the rank of sous -lieutenant until he has either seived at Jur^t two years as a non-commissioned officer hi some corps of the army, or for two years has been an cßve of the Ecolc Militau-e de St. Cyr, or l J olylechnir|ue, and has, moreover, pas/jd all the examinations thereof." If our young officer-, aio anxious to inquire into the nature of these i ximinaiions, we refer them to the Faggot of Siickt. They will agree with us, that whatever our uUammtnls in other respects military instruction is not precisely the science for which Englishmen ai-e chiefly to be distinguished. The schools of Fails were not the only establishments that called forth the admiration of our baronet. The Ulchens astonished him much more. lie visited half the asylums of the metropolis — from iiie hospital for aged women, which at this moment hou.es 5,000 helpless creatures, rendering the last .stage of life the easiest for .the worn-out traveller to beir, down to the opposite institution La ft Iclic, which receives in the very first sta"" oi liie eh i ld i en whose poor parents are com]) ]led to le'ive their homes for the day, and who iheuibro need other tenderness and care during the hours of inevitable absence. There Avas much to dvJight the heart and to instruct the mind of the visitor in all such cliai liable houses; but the kitchens alone elicited his wonder. In every instance the application of heat was so scientifically ananged, that within one or two hot plates of very small size, the smoke of which was carried In low, tho diurnal cookery for hundreds went on with less noise and bustle, nnd with far more pastionomic success, than " fish and a joint" arc fjo<juently prepared under our own clumsy culinary n.iraiv>ement i 3.i 3. Could France, then, we say, communicate to us across the Channel, by electric tomograph or otherwise, some of tho cmimejuitod a 1 vantages she enjoys, and others which we hvf all the inclination, but, unfortunately, not space enough to mention, how gladly, and how modestly withal, would we send back, in token cf our gratitude, a few samples of our own woiLHy possessions, the value of which time and c^:pcucilce have so satisfactorily tested. Fain wovH we give to Franco tho self-government which b the very salt of our political and social life — self-govern-ment Avhich is the law unto itself — the child of libeity, the parent of oidor, the solid foundation of real securit}\ Gladly, too, would wo tiansplant the universal love of law, the obcdicjice to constituted authority, which, ne^t to religious faith, stands highest in England's-; list of moral obligations. We will not boast, especially at this moment, that we need no army to extort a spurious loyalty, and to confiim the nation's liberty. We will say no more of the policeman's baton that sufficed to keep millions tranquil during the excited year th.it has now ihiobbcd its last ; but when Sir Francis Jlead t- i lls us that so perfect is tho oigani/ation of the Parisian police that it was impossible for hiui to put bis log out of bod without having tlu i'aci notified at the Pi'efcctiiio, we do absolutely ycun to lend Policeman X for one .short week t«> our PavLian I brothei s, if only to show them how vi»oiMis]y "duty" may bo perlbimed w'lhoul any unnecessary piying into the concerns of private life. And W: will make no ppolop,y for desiring to coiiili another inestimably height uvon friends on Avhoss Aveli being we h've, on many accounts, a, lively anO la,tini> i.itercsl. Sir L'l.mcis Head, natiuall}" anxious to paint Pi'iis in its v.v'im-st coloais, utv (1 hi i cyt-s, ii not his ]>d«ttcand his brush, mo-t vi^oi.msly on the Sunday. We 1 cjiiiX-. tho ftfuuii'-ji }>oiUons of ivii volumes arc ! the p ri "- s.'hit'b jnvscnt to us thai liotchpotch of

businev, pleasure, frivolity, au.l piety \.aich constitutoo the PaiLian Safohoih. We make no complaint thot tho students of the Polytechnic School have no religions instruction whatever, and, by the nibs ol" the <-y ibii-slnnent, li.ivc no opportunity oi going to church. If it is no part of our bu->int^s to inteif (i i>3Auth the political government of ouv neighbours., how much less is it our office to instiuct them in their religious duties ! But in sheer pity for ouv intelligent and wellmeauing allies, we do implore them, tho very next Sunday after the piiblication oi this article, for five minutes only, to sit, if they can, quietly down, and to ask themselves the simple question, whether it is probible that the most lively and excitable people on the Globe — even the French themselves — were intended by Fiovidence or nature, from the hour of their birth to the£day of their decease, without one moment's }* ->t, to be eternally on the move ; alwaj r s talking, always, mshiug, always leaping out of one exilement bodily into another i This is not .1 roligicus question, but a question of common sense, of health, cai thly happiness, and worldly advantage. Men, it is true, cannot Jive without action, bat action without ie 'lection is as purposeless as M. Poitevin on a donkey in the clouds. We defy any man to poifoim his bodily functions pioperl}with a pulse always at 120. And how can folks act rationally whose minds are always in a stale of fever ? One Sunday morning Sir luancte wt out for Versiillcs, leaving Pads as busy .is it had been any day duiing the preceding week. On his road he looked out of the railwa^y caniane, and ba y hor^s and calls, men and women, 1: u A ai, woik in the fields, and bricklayei 1 inclustiiou^!y 1 ooiing lious.es. At Versailles itself other labourers were actively employed in raising sea Holds and making preparations for fuewoiks and a file. Returning to Paris in the afternoon he beheld workmen in all directions taking down the ornaments of afCfe that had been held on the preceding Sunday. Why, if the very notion of God were extinguished in the human soul, could such a state of things last and men .still be happy \ A'3k a professional pedestrian hosv he feels alter walking a Aveek at a stretch. How are men likely to feel in body and mind who arc walking, running, rioting, and labouring for their whole lives at a stretch ? Perhaps, after all, the finest feature of this book is the tremendous effect produced upon Sir Francis Head by the personal condescension of Prince Louis Napoleon. The first time Sir Francis met the President was, it Avould appear, at the Hotel dcs luvalides. The Prince passed tho English baronet, who, " without presuming to bow," stood uncovered. To the astonishment of the Englishman, Napoleon the Second "acknowledged" him, and, so overcome was he by tho recognition, that he followed tho President's staff he "hardly knew where." An invitation to dine at the Ely&oe came as a matter of course. Tlriv the President of tho Republic, strange to say, "mulled familiarly witJi his gucity ivv 1 ., towards tho clo^c of the evening, invited Sir Francis to lide with him to a review on the fol- J lowing morning. The morning crane, and, punctual to the hour, there stood before the dour I of the Elysee, "veiy handsomely caparisoned;, the 3 'resident's hoi.se, held by a gioom on foot, and another fiae, high-bred looking English horse, with a plrfin saddle and double bridle, j with pink rosettes, held by a .second groom on foot." The horse with the pink loscites was for we know whom. A brilliant staff surrounded thi> entrance. Everybody was in a flutter, and Sir Francis, being "the only person in plain, clothes," stole quietly, Avith his pink rosettes, to tho rear. The procession moved on ; but " the Piince" sent his Aide-de-Camp to the too modest baronet, and "requested him to come up to him." Tho effect of all this and similar civility is only too palpable in Sir Francis Head's amusing adulation of the present French Dictator. We have no wissh. to expose the gross flattery. What the Avri tor's opinion of Louis Napoleon i& worlli may he guessed from the following &uinmij)f 3 up of the I'rinco'a ehm.xrcr- : — " Upi.i the c, hcLv, I am firmly of opinion," says Sir Francis Head, " that under a mild exterior, with gentle mannn-s, and a benevolent hcait, Louis Napoleon is an honest, hold, high-minded statesman, v>hose object is to maintain the peace of Europe, and the real glory and honour of France." These words were j>onncd before the late catastrophe ; so \aro those which follow. Sir Francis is describing the views of the President during his antagonism Avith the Assembly. "It is hi-> rlosiro," wo are gravely told, "utterly ii respective of paity, to summon to his council men of sound judgment, to listen to their opinions and co-operate with them in a plain, simple, straightforward, honest course of policy, which "would inevitably restore to France tranquillity, confidence, credit, and commerce." Whatever be the fate of " The Faggot of Sticfo," we recommend MM 1 '. Murray most .sincerely to put this one wretched stick at all events into the lire, before he ventures upon a second edition. i