;TiS (J THE Mirror of the World THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD BY OCTAVE UZAiNNE AUTHOR OF " THE F.4.V," -SUNSHADE;' ETC. XUitb One 1F3unC»rcC) anC» Strtv? illustrations bv? IPaul Uvvil LONDON JOHN C. N I M M O 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND 1889 PUBLISHER'S NOTE. Only one hundred copies of Ihis large paper Edition printed th-otigliout on fitic Japanese paper is pul'Ushed. Each copy numbered as issued. No. ^-3 OF CONTENTS. PEOSCEXIUM THE "WOKLD AND SOCIETY ARTS AN-D LITERATURE . HOME-LIFE .... STUDY LOVE TRAVEL SPORTS THE TABLE .... THE REVERIE THE COUNTRY 17 33 49 65 81 97 113 12g '45 2025S67 PROSCENIUM. ■■ Mo^t people liviug in this world do not know it. for the same reason that cockchafers do not know natural histor)." — Chamfort. /' OPOLYMATHIC and particular readers, come hither . . . and make yoxir confession! — At the mei'e sight or mention of this title, The Mirror of the World, icill you not pour on our head a complete and hrilliont " middle-agty" bibliography, and uselessly disturb the dust of the rarest incunabulasf — Yes, cer- tainly, ive p)ossess already the Speculum vitse humanse of Rodericus Zamorensis, also the Speculum humanse salvationis, brought again to light by the learned brother Johann, of the monastery of Saint- Ulrich, and finally the Speculum triplex of Vincent of Beauvais, without forgetting the most illustrious Myrrour of the World, the first beautiful work uith cngrarings ptyHished in England, and printed in Westminster Abbey, by William Caxton, somewhere about 1581. — Is this cdl ? Prithee, geyitlemen, calm your erudite ardour, and cease to drone oxer this hook the litanies of your refectire memory. The ii THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. Mirror of the World, which is presented here to the admiring visual rays of the public of Heliopolis, has nothing in common ivith the eccentric catoptrics of your rigmarole of old hooks, and horroivs its splendour neither from the obsidian of hibliognosy, nor its reflection from the phengite of the catholic redeemers of antiquity. — It is a mere little looking-glass to hold in the hand, of very modern make, facet cut, coquettisJdy polished as the Ainé-y- sourid of Oriental tales, and its shape does not affect the spherical pretensions of the universal omniscience that might be ascribed to it. The author's only inclination ivas to complete a ivork of poly- logy, light and sparkling as paradoxical zigzags, or startling as the outbursts of an independent mind, a shadotvy, irridescent, nacreous ivork, as inconsistent and fugitive as all the soap bubbles of human vanities or illusions. He has, therefore, done his best to set in a sumptuous frame, heavily laden ivith ornaments, certain thoughts of perhaps a rather slight character, hut thickly tinged by the black or blue of his fleet- ing impressions, tvithout thinking to speak like Vauvenargues or Rivarol in these neiv perspectives of a work essentially created for the recreative ballad of the eye. — Alloiving himself to be smoothly drifted along by his sensations, the unfortunate type-fancier, the companion of Paid Avril, has meandered amidst the picturesque draivings of the artist, as a gurgling and babbling brook — ivhat Féneloyiesque imagery! — forces its way through large bosky sites and dingles of infttiite variety, now rattling in the merry sunlight over the pebbly soil, again rushing doivn at every ivinding of the road, and flnally losing itself amidst sleepy depths, neath melan- cholic and sombre groves. Unless he suffers from "false vision " the aforesaid tinker of the Mirror of the World thinks he has produced one of those agreeable and unpretending ivorks which Horace Walpole mentions, PROSCENIUM. ni one of those repositories people open when they have the gout, u'hen they are more bored than usual, or when they are waiting for some visitors; one of those smart essays, irradiated by gay colours, expelling from our eyes the monotonous black, just short enough to serve as an entr'acte between two leisure hours, and not long enough to pin doivn the butterfly fluttering in our brain; a book, in short, ivhich our looks devour, ivhich ive leave off and take up again, which allures us by the very reason that it does not engage u^, an almost ideal short treatise, divided in as many chapters as the budget of enjoyments of this life, an elegant book, partly a keep- sake, and partly a formulary of morals, easy to love and to prac- tise thoughtlessly as the prayer-book of a mundane religion, as digestible as nourishing pills clctd in golden copes, a book that slides down smoothly, arranged, as one tvould ivish it, for an asthmatic century. In alloiving himself to be completely disguised by a fanciful artist, ivho has knoivn hoiv to clothe ingeniously his pleasant ex- planatory versions, the innovating and fantastic but philodoxical author has repulsed any attempt at tight-fitting; lie did not wish to have a m,an in livery stick to his phrases, not liking at all to feel himself followed too closely by faithful or ill-timed zeal. He has, thus, placed in the hands of the "costumier" but the outlines of his thoughts, lit up from a dim distance; hence it follows that many of the draperies scarcely fit, except only those things not expressed but floating in the ambient air of a sylleptic impression ; ivhilst, at other times, we find only decked out the servant of a ratJter pretentious idea,, too stubborn to allow its measure to be taken. Moreover, we may be allowed to think that the marriage of pen and pencil, of ideologic and graphic art, in perfect comviunion of expression and feeling, unll never be anything but a complete Utopia. Between them can only exist a kind of free union, witJi iv THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. so7ne rovings and injidcUties when aivay from one another. Thus Music, united to Poetry, only narroivs and deforms it by sending it doivn the rolling-mill of tenors' throats, — TJie Nine Muses are sisters; tliey can unite, as the doomed ivomen of Baudelaire, hut to corrupt each other — a sai^phic union is graceful hut remains harren. Apollo, on the contrary, app>ears ahvays alone; a cour- tier, infatuated by his oicn glory, he pursues Daphne, hut secretly desires to see her metamorphosed into a laiirel. For every expres- sion of art must he subjective, lofty, and, for that very reason, rebellious to interpretation. The ideal sensation of personality is untranslatable, it remains not less isolated titan isolating. The sisterhood of Arts is, consequently, as silly and as ridiculous as the fraternity of p>eoples; every oi'iginal artist doing ivhat Narcissus did, looks at his oivn refection in his own fountain. — Let us pre- serve, therefore, for ever the Apollonian myth. It suffices to illu- mine truth, and to colour with its prism the entire lyre of the Beautiful. O. U. i^ The little marionettes Turn round, round, round Tlaree times gently, And then go away." — Old Roundelay. WE sell ourselves to the world so cheaply that in the end Ave pay very highly to serve it ; we sacrifice body and soul to it, and our sole reward are bubbles and idle expecta- tions. O treacherous world ! sometimes you exalt us, at other times you humble us ; sometimes you cheer us, and at other times you distress us. You bestow honours on the proud to surrender him afterwards to contempt ; you leave to the miser riches in order to increase his indigence ; you prostitute women to the voluptuary, so that his health may be destroyed ; and you lull the lazy man into idleness, so that he niay die and become benumbed by sloth. Your falseness is known to us ; and j-et we very greedily swallow your sweetened venom, until death surprises us and sends us to eternity, where divine justice dispenses the wages for the services rendered to you. The Jeremiah, who bewails with such a sombre pessimism the world and society, is a certain unknown Swedish philosopher, Count Oxenstiern, Avho died early last century. Moralists, in 3 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. general, are not much more tolerant when they come to consider any inroads on social ties, or the sorrows hidden nnderneath brilliant mundane re- lations. The world is not worth so many invectives ; there is only one way to enter it, but there are a hundred to leave it, spoke Montaigne maliciously. Of so- ciety it may also be said that nothing is easier than to with- draw from it ; for if some reap there nothing, others make the most of their acquaintances, and cleverly use social hy- pocrisies as a lever for their ambition. Whether society be compared to a cage full of madmen, or to a ship filled with fools, it is nevertheless the expression of civilised and luxurious life ; we must traverse it, if not halt there, were it merely to complete our studies by a contact with men and women. Moreover, to speak THE WORLD AXD SOCIETY. tlie truth, however solitary, thoughtful, retired, or grumpy our tastes or educa- tion has made us, the world, Avith its noise and parties, attracts us Ijy the charm and the mysterious unknown we love to ascribe to it (whatever illusions we may have lost) each time we are invited to its feasts. We swear not to abandon our dis- like for the world, and wc allow our- selves to be seduced by hundteds of suggestions and thousands of doubts, always springing up in our romantic and sentimental natxire. -• We arrive ft-esh, smart, enticed on the hip- pogriff of our ideal with a little Diogenes' lantern, in which sparkles the glimmer . of an expectation of meeting with a man or a woman in this conceited crowd ; we leave our chrysalis in the anteroom, and the heap of clothes, of uniform ugly shape and sad- r- jsw. ■^i^"-^te1 tfJJ JM\I 'te- :>- mgs. te ness of hue, akeady fills oiir mind Avith sombre and ominons forcbod- We enter, utter some commonplace i(,o compliments to the lady of the house, shake hands,"~"~~^ right and left, bow and smile, and grin and wink with might and main. In a first drawing-room are some females .(stuck on seats, side by side, imprisoned by their stays, sad CL and resigned to their being exhibited collectively. Stand- 3 ing up, frightened but smiling, hardly being able to move, j half choked, closely pressed, without elbow-room, men of all fvjiges push each other, advance Avith difficulty somehow, their \brows covered with perspiration, with the curious gait of , /ninnies expecting something to happen. Some scraps of dis- ^ connected phrases, early news picked up in the street, are \ \ heard everywhere, but without any pretence to regular con- J versation ; people have come to see and to be seen, working ( out a kind of joint-stock vanity, of which the host and the Î guests hope to touch the dividends by their names being men- X tioned in next day's newspapers, or being transmitted orally tb other drawing-rooms. Time flies amidst this nothingness, and ■when we enter our carriage neath an icy, wintry sky, worn out, tired, benumbed, full of emptiness and moral weariness, and drive away, amidst a snowstorm, through the lonely street, we feel that we are as stupid as possible, dulled by the incredible nullity of those slight acquaintances, furious at having deceived ourselves, sorry for having deserted our hearth, where, the lamp lit, amidst home comforts and beloved objects selected by ourselves, some winged minds, souls full of song, the friends of every hour, forti- fying and irradiating books, await us, ready to make us forget by their elevation the human splashes of the day. We then retake possession of our being and our home with a certain kind of voluptuousness ; we put ourselves under strict arrest for having idly strayed amidst the fair of triumphant follies ; we 6 ^p^ ■sc» & think we are for ever disabused, and our Diogenes' lantera, tired of being alight, has become covered up, if not gone out. For the moment we are no longer allured by attrac- tions from without ; shut up in our retreat, we remain, for one or several weeks, observing the vibration of our own sensations, and lead a reflective life, which is a hundred times more romanesque than a worldly life ; then, one fine morning, the weathercock turns round and creaks ; our judg- ment undergoes a change, a shower of invitations descends on our table, inveigling us by promises and allurements ; we ask ourselves if we are not our worst enemy as well as .. of our pleasant and temporary acquaintances ; we rekindle our lantern, saying to ourself that man is but a shadow, that life is a dream ; that we must think, Avitli Gratian, that a wise man is a Proteus who is mad with madmen, learned amongst the learned, a saint amongst the saints, and jolly with the meriy. We persuade ourselves that similarity being the connecting link of kindheartedness, it is our social duty to become more pliable and graceful, and to win hearts with less haughty sesthetic chivaliy, and with more cuiTent coin stamped with a die everybody knows. Behold us starting again, decked out in a dress-coat, in search of the best of modern societies. Balls, soirées, lectures, dinners, afternoon teas, we spend our time diligently everywhere ; we put ourselves as much as possible on a level with the cold and fashionable alacrity and the ordinary commonplace talk which does not set anything on fire. We superficially stir up the recep- tacle of everyday futilities, talk about the theatre, of so much con- sequence during the present fashion of mummer-worship, about pohtics, and, above all, about women, amongst men in the smoking- room, whilst each time some witty fellow inteiTupts regular conver- sation by a side-splitting joke. Disgust anew gets hold of us when wc listen to the slanders, kii *»^; :îI: the gossip, indiscretions, and tittle- tattle. Those women, amongst whom we thought to find a peerless soul drifting on this ocean of ejected in- famies, seem now to us only uncon- - '' scious, listless dolls, loving evil, with shattered nerves, perhaps really kind-hearted, but deadened by the hypocrisy of their connections ; anxious to unravel mysteries they think they can guess, insatiable in studying man, condemned to an elegant life, and milliner's dummies to flatter their husbands. Those men, Avith their stereotyped smile, wear on their coun- tenances what may be called the Parisian impress, of which Balzac has given so correct an analysis: "Ambitions frustrated or dead, inward misery, hatred lulled asleep by the indolence of a life sufficiently occupied by the external and daily sight of Paris, an inappctency in search of irritants, complaints without talent, an aping of strength, the venom of outward failures exciting men to smile at every joke, to fall foul of everything that becomes grand, not to recognise the most necessary powers, to rejoice at their embarrassment, and not to care for any social forms. This Parisian evil is to the active conspiracy of energetic people what the blea is to the sap of the tree ; it prescnes and conceals it." S THE WORLD AND SOCIETY. .:^ / And •when, at a late hour, all these human animals, swaddled in conventionalities, elegance, and decorum, half-starved, are let loose on the sideboard, do we not enjoy the admirable advantage of civilisation by beholding the cannibalism of all those appetites rushing on their food as hounds on their quarry, with the pushing, the egotism, the coarseness even of their primitive instincts? In official receptions, thanks to the rising mobocracy, it is no longer a sideboard but a trough, reached by bruising and fisticuffing ; it is the populace marching to conquer gratuitous Clicquot. In all these social crowds we arrive on wings, but go back limping, doubting everything, having no longer any notion of ourselves, exhausted, hurt, sullied discouraged ; for strength, talent, even genius have been attacked, virtue incriminated, courage blamed, grandeur abased, our idols destroyed, and our spirits crushed. — Some- times, on a corner of a couch, we exchange a few meaningless words with a smiling and coquet- tish woman of the world, whose charms and grace w^c appreciate ; but the dia- logue is cOh strained, hur ried,ill-po for we feel that this superficiar'^J'' ^^'^^V acquaint - , • .v ance must , ' never become intimate, and nsed, U|' ^^. -v^ .■-•/?i iiyy'l"^ THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. without time ever permitting us to strike more •vé'deeply the hook of often sincere sympathy. Society, as it is at present, remains therefore impalpable amidst a perpetual bustle, excluding intimacy .^- . ,^, and a thorough knowledge of the beings we behold ; '■;\P4 viN?"^^. jeach one rushes, in common madness, towards an un- l -^^"^ 'éertain goal, feverish, agitated, and frantic to make con- nections and to be introduced. People perceive one another, shake hands, slightly sniff', rightly or wrongly are pleased or dis- pleased, smile and congratulate one another, exchange a good many falsehoods, and led away by fresh desires, leave to see each other again for a second at certain turns on the road of life. What does the " dear friend " in our demoniacal society mean ? — A gentleman met by chance in a drawing-room, to whom we have been introduced and mumbled a few phrases, and with whom Ave have eaten some sandwiches ; we know, we feel it will never go beyond this, but we address and call each other " dear friend," exchange cards, loose verbal invitations which are not taken seriously by either of us ; vaguely we say, " Come and see me . . . you know', Thursday;" and the person thus addressed, also a humbug, replies, " Certainly, as soon as possible ; I have a good memory, don't be afraid ;" and then we disappear carelessly, stimu- lated by these meaningless words, carried away by the crowd, stopped on our way by other " very dear friends," scarcely known, always smiling, overff owing with praises, who have made of friendly commonplaces an absurd art and sport. To the thoughtful man going out alone, absorbed in the duality and progress of his dreams, to the brain-worker composing phrases or melodies according to the rhythm of the carriages, to the happy Parisian always humming a tune, and sick of illusions, all those friendships for external use are mere hindrances, disagree- able links, vexations to ■« liich one gets accustomed as to the useless tremulous music of ancient melodramas ; for tho.'-c connections 10 THE WORLD AND SOCIETY. form somehow the tremolo of active and inner life ; we succeed in creating a special box for our intellect, where we lodge a kind of keeper of commonplaces who replies for us, without disturbing the soaring of our thoughts. — Were it not so, life would become a prison where the bored bores would be the warders of analysts and dreamers, charmed and benumbed, as it were, by a focus of concentric thoughts. There exists, however, a select society, with doors scarcely ajar, where gaiety enters and sits down without ceremony, where even,- thing within us expands in a warm feeling of comfort, a desire to talk in an often paradoxical but always high-toned conversa- tion ; in those rare circles, where still lingers the superstition of the old proverb, " When there are more than ten, ears grow," we begin again to love our fellow-men, and to lull asleep our severity and habitual disgust; philosophy becomes jovial, eccentric, eiTatic, and good-natured, indulgent in a Christian-like manner to all weaknesses and platitudes ; for in this select company we meet refined partners, with whom it is the greatest of pleasm'es to converse ; we hobnob really with our brain with these same re- served visitors, so timid, dull, obscure, and silent in great noisy assemblies, but so penetrating, subtle, complex, and characteristic in a duologue. Then we no more lightly indulge in soft graceful talk, without any expression ; we., look on each other, as moral strategists, ready to steal away if the supposed enemy is not strong enough, happy to lay down our arms if we perceive him watchful and amply pro- vided with ammunition in the deep case- mates of his erudition and fancy. In those special meetings we feel amongst friends, '^^ with the same ideas and sympathies, we are at home ; we can abandon ourselves and say what we think, get rid of con- .1^ L % < better there, more flexible and^^^■'v" Tr)OW^ hlW^ HOME-LIFE. =AV= " Every well-organised home is the image of its master's mind." — J. J. Rocsseac. GENEKALLY the nations of Latin orij^in scarcely trouble themselves about adorning or making comfortable the inside of their houses; they are pretty indifferent as to the roof that shelters them, and prefer the rather noisy open-air enjoyments, the passing sensations of public resort, club or café- life to comfort indoors. Northern nations, and above all the English, understand better the infinite charms of a well-furnished and cosy home ; they know, through a very acute perception of what a shelter needs, to combine the utmost comfort and the delights of indoor life with a taste for luxury and magnificence. If we take ten thousand Frenchmen happily well off, we would scarcely find fifty who understand what home-life means, and like it ; the re- mainder dwell in temporary abodes, cold and bare, with hardly the necessary furniture, lamentably unprovided with those lovely superfluities which not only form the elegance of life and half of the commerce of nations, but which also enliven and cheer us, and 35 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. make us so luxuriate iu solitude, that home becomes a sanctuarj' Avhere we collect our thoughts, take refuge, and nestle almost shivering, intoxicated by our happiness, on having returned from icy out-door silliness. The French bourgeoisie has at present a liking for everything that is horrible, commonplace, and vulgar ; it feels attracted by the most hideous productions of our national industry ; by assist- ing and buying them it encourages the manufacture of monstrous and ignoble furniture ; it hungers after the ugly, and when it buys anything wretched, only cares that it will wear well and not fade. Brought up in the worship of mahogany, an immoderate love for rosewood and varnished arbor vitœ — above all, smitten with the veneer of modern furniture — it plans, when removing, homes fright- fully dull and horribly vulgar, where everj'thing that is ugly, un- gainly, meagre, awkward, and grotesque, ever invented by human imagination, is collected j j -, for the greatest delectation of bourgeois i] friends. Every little grown-up bourgeoise is haunted by two dreams, two ambitions, two nightmares, which she always realises ; the shapeless box of musical torture called a piano, and a wardrobe with looking- glasses, a pediment, foliage, and creaking doors, manu- factured wholesale, and as plentifully as sand on the seashore. It is gener- ally with such ideal furni- ture that she begins house- keeping. — The rest is in keeping with it. i HOME-LIFE. Try and make those people, whose brains are shrivelled up by a taste for the commonplace, the vulgar, and hideous, understand the charm of a dwelling attractive to the mind and eye, hospitable and lively, amply provided with books, those invariable friends always ready to chatter, with warm hangings and bright china, lit by beautiful stained glass, which allows light to penetrate, and not stupidly shuts it out by thick muslin or lace curtains ; trv to instil into those dull and vulgar heads the idea of a hall as roomy as an artist's studio, where furniture of every style pleads in favour of the beautiful, and calls up long forgotten things ; try to impress on them the most elementary notions of form, the simplest laws of the harmony of colours, and y'ou will imagine you address inmates of a penitentiary. The ^bourgeois does not know what a àome is ; to his dull eyes it is I^^^Tepresented by a well-stuffed arm- ---r—shair, which can be drawn to the s^s^- 'fire, whilst he is in slippers, and \ s wears a woollen dressing-gown; or else it will bring to his mind the talk of an evening spent in the dining-room, with the hang-lamp lit, the coffee brought in, and when quite jovial after a good meal, he will say, "Let us remain where we are, and not go to the drawing-room." — What a mass of vulgarity, constraint, and dulness is this drawing-room, with its chairs stuck near a velvet couch covered up, its little table in the middle, laden with albums, all standing on hideous strips of flowery carpet ! The drawing-room, the best apartment in the house, with its grey and gold paper on the walls, its white wainscoting, its stucco cornices, is the respected sanctuary; it is spoken of em- phatically, but people dread to live and become friendly in it ; it 38 bMBU is preserved, dusted as a mummy, and in the evening f traversed with a light, but amidst an icy shiver, as if in a ^ ceUar, for it smells damp and frowsy. The hoiivfjeois re- ; spects his drawing-room, and is as afraid of it as he is of I his best Sunday coat ; he does not feel comfortable in either of them, for they are only for show and receptions ; they are brushed, washed, and put in lavender, but he takes good care not to use them every day: they are merely for show. Everything in the furnishing of most of our houses all the glitter, the sham splendour, and comfort, arc lor the outside. It is for show that we expose those hideously gilt bronzes on our mantelpiece, that we arrange those brass shovels and tongs, that books are laid on the table, that the parrot is sent away, cushions placed on chairs, and plants put in vases ; it is also for show that we give an appearance of life to this drawing-room, so deserted morning and evening, that those seats are placed opposite one ^A ^mv r THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. auother, that the work is taken out of the work-box, that those curtains are held up by ribands, and every trifle is set out. But go and visit the old-fashioned room of the lady, and the wretched chamber of the master; glance at those scanty dressing-rooms, look at this miserable writing-table in a dark hole, observe everywhere the poor style of furnishing, this primitive installation, this normal bad taste ; and ask yourself if the French, so badly housed ^- in the provinces, the country, and even in the metropolis, are not the easiest people to live anywhere, the most accustomed to discomfort, the most able to bear the privation of superfluities, provided you leave them their hobby, their hereditary disease, namely, the desire for showing off", for parading, for adorning themselves i-^T^?-^^ externally in all their innate vain-glory and vanity, in which, everywhere '' " -"*" - and always, appearances go be- fore everything, I speak here of hourr/cois in general, who form the bulk of the nation, very backward in everything concern- ing art, progress, and comfort, for they re main hypnotised by considerations of ex- treme economy, and the innate idea of saving every penny haunts them all. France is richer than any other nation, for it has less indivi- HOME-LIFE. dual egotism ; it puts off till the morrow the care for its individua- lity, and unlearns the taste for spending by fakirising itself in the pleasure of saving. — In England, any man who does not put his profits into immediate circulation, in some way or other, is a bad citizen, as he does not assist directly the national prosperity. The entire diversity of home-comforts, so heterogeneous on both sides of the Channel, arises from a notion of political economy, diffe- rently understood. — As to my own ideas on this subject, though I admire and love my fellow-countiymen, I cannot refrain from bestowing all my sympathy on the pleasant English home, for I think that only in the intimacy of a well-understood domestic life existence can develop its delightful charm, just as by slowly heat- ing some perfume in a close room we develop all its quintessence and its intoxicating aroma. This deep-seated and enlightened taste for a modern home is so little^^eveloped-iru Prance, that we see in the houses of the best" amateurs, who collect and presence works of art, an incredible poverty of de- coration, a lamentable want of aiTangement, a pretentious show of wealth, but not the display of any feel- ing of artistic taste, and not the smallest original idea. Cer- tain amateurs or lovers of books pride themselves on having collected in their gal- leries or libraries THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. the finest pictures, furniture of tlie purest style, the most costly pottery, royal stuffs, or books from the most celebrated collec- tions, and we admire indeed all these rarities, and even envy their possessors, but we feel somewhat hampered, constrained, and sad, for we are convinced that those marvels are miserably out of place amongst these i^arvenus who do not even know how to give them a frame, a setting or surrounding worthy of them. — The reason of this is that in the present plutocracy, all these Turcarets, these protectors of art, are only dealers ; they mention their bargains with ostentation, and ticket them all with the price paid for them, allowing people to imagine that these objects are worth a great deal more ; they show us through their galleries, uttering all the while extraordinary chrematological speeches ; they have the manners of old dealers in antiquities, puffed up by sure profits, and ready for any profitable exchange. Those paunchy timocrats make us feel that they love money and hoard it ; but they place before the eyes of observers and philosophers their real unsympa- thetic poverty and their moral impecuniosity. — Do you not perceive that you walk on superfine carpets, but most repulsive to behold \ Are not those walls, ceilings, cornices, wainscotings, covered, orna- mented, painted most vulgarly by the most unrefined master- builders of the present day ? — Does not this chimney mantel, with its cold china and its white marble, chill more than it warms ? , And what shall we say of these window curtains, at so much a yard, which /darken the room ? What of these i^r- tièvL's, those lamps manufactured whole- sale, those looking-glasses crudely gilt, ' those gasaliers which look as if they came out of an office, and those billiard queus, and this absence of flowers and life 1 Does it not fi-ighten us, and are we really visit- HOME-LIFE. ing a wealthy and epicm-ean collector, or a mere store-house of curiosities ? Taste cannot be bought ; it springs from a feeling for the beau- tiful and harmony of colours. The attic of an artist or shop-girl, warm in tone, with its neat and smart-looking paper, and cheap ornaments of becoming colour, is often a thousand times more aesthetic and artistic than the richest hoard of big amateurs, without any personal taste for arrangement or adornment. — Taste is the rarest, the most imperceptible, and most personal of all things ; it has its own language, its own expressions, its individual physiognomy ; it reveals a character, a tendency, a special state of mind, and aids in the psychological constitution of any being. When we enter the abode of a man of a very distinct individuality, namely, with ideas sufBciently his own, and his taste not in- fluenced by the advice of the people around him, we immediately recognise the dominant traits of his mind, disposition, and man- ners ; this home, furnished according to the liking and taste of its master, will disclose the true expression of his entity ; we will find it eveiywhere, even in the smallest ornaments, in the arrangement of the pictures, the variety of the furniture, his preference for certain colours ; we divine his physical nature, age, and passions, so much this home, where his wandering thoughts nestle, will reveal of his mind and person. In this circle, where the whole of a man's life is spent in con- centrated sensations, everything ought to reflect the state of his feelings and the most secret conditions of his existence ; a gradually furnished home revealed to an intuitive observer, as Balzac was, a biography, an individual theory, an entire physio-psychological work. It is because a man who lives and thinks and is happy in his retreat, lives greatly by the things which reflect him ; he adorns his cage with soft-looking and subdued colours, wishes to enjoy all he possesses, and, like FonteneUe, does not care for things 43 \ .^ii; wm'^^h which require to be too much respected, such as too costly books, too thin glass, show pottery, etcetera. Through his artistic surroundings he possesses the art of animating his quietude, and of brightening his looks by glancing at the beautiful works he has acquired ; he continually adds something to this cosy comer where he evokes his dreams, but does nothing humedly nor hastily ; he understands in his own way the intoxication of possession, and likes to covet for a long time a certain object, to see it again and again when he passes the dealer's shop, before mak- ing it his own, and veiy carefully adorning his home with it. The man of taste, who devotes his leisure hours to the furnishing of his house, insists that he must do everything himself. Being once installed, he will scorn the assist- ance of the upholsterer, whose commonplace sayings, air ■SE-;,' of importance, and pretentious silliness, only greatly annoy him. Alone, or accompanied by an intelligent servant, he will harmonise at his leisure the hangings of the doors, the folds of the draperies, arrange his collection of armour, his vases, statuettes, busts, and figures ; he will know, if needs be, how to use a hammer, a saw, and all necessary tools, for he ^'^ has learned to his cost that it takes longer to order a thing, and to be understood, than to do it himself. Each day he will inspect his home, di-eamiug of fresh embellishments, manipulations, ameliorations ; one corner seems empty to him, another incongruous ; here he sees a vacant spot that wants filling up, yonder there is too much brilliancy ; he will be horrified by loud, crude colours, by too much glare, and things ■^ too new, and not covered by the patina of time. — Again he ^_^^_^^^_^^__^ will study the framing and hang- ing of his pictures, the decora- HOME-LIFE. tions above the doors, the oniaméiitatioit of his mantelpieces, the covering àî the gilt frames of his looking-glasses, and how to conceal nails and hooks under trifles, such as small masks, ancient plaq^ies, and medallions. For a man who loves to dwell between four walls, home is a world whose appearance he often delights in renewing, and as it is easy to purchase hric-à-hrac in large towns, he can create for himself the most characteristic, the most agreeable, the liveUest, and cosiest of retreats. If a man who likes his home is " modern," to use the slang of artists, and if he understands and worships the marv^els of the far East, if he belongs to the rising generation, and if his eye has become deUcately chastened by the exquisite taste of China, India, and Japan ; if he prefers a f ne auc Kakemone to any second-rate picture, and old china t 3 European ware; if, in short, he takes a dehght in handling those Indian tissues, so cloudy and supple that they seem to melt in the hand, and becomes intoxicated by touching them ; if he is mad with Japanese articles, he may plan an arrangement of his home in a manner as astonishing, sparkling, and brilliant as the art of primi- tive people, and deck the cold walls of his abode with imaginative fairy dreams on silk, with ingenious paradoxes on satin, leathern arabesques, fancies, and phantasmagories, embroidered by the most wonderful artists and the cleverest artisans who ever appeared in this world. Orientialism gives an exquisite originality to many Parisian dwellings, and when we reflect that the decorative art of the nineteenth century has no style properly so-called, we begin to imagine that the true style of the present time is perhaps merely 45 l^-^!''"' P*/^ zz~^ this massing of so many opposite styles ; so that, in certain ele- ^ gant dwelhngs, we meet, in the most happy confusion, with a per- fect litter of cosmopolitan art, which brings into com- ?§^i^>S^^'^ . munication the beauty of opposite poles. Observe, in some yf ^~ wealthy Parisian house, fitted up like a nest, by degrees, by .iJ>j'i some feminine temperament, a heap of furniture which ought to ,' clash with one another, and which, however, is grouped and mixed in a harmonious whole pleasant to the eye. We are im- mediately seduced, and observation permits us to analyse this upsetting of all unity. Near this chest of the Middle Ages we see a cabinet of the Italian Eenaissance, on which are some Oriental armour, and grinning Japanese masks ; further on, next to this Flemish piece of furniture, stands a Spanish pier-table of the six- teenth century, leaning against a j^ortière of Hungarian lace ; our feet rest on a Persian carpet ; the ceiling is decorated with Japanese draperies, with golden dragons ; the mantelpiece is crowded with Delft-ware, the windows are of old-stained Nuremberg glass ; more- over, to the right and left are Chinese grotesque figures, French silks of the eighteenth century, Genoa velvet, Venetian leather, armchairs by Brustolone, candlesticks by Gouttière ; all this com- pletely and perfectly harmonises, forming a veiy comfortable and agreeable whole, to which Parisian plants and fiowers add the brilliancy of their verdure and colours. It is madness, but a madness which we share, and which does not allow us to pro- test. It is a bazaar, a shop of a dealer of antiquities, if you like ; but it is in conformity with our actual asstheticism, which is a mosaic of the most varied ideas, and of the most superficial admirations. If no account were taken of the labours of professional people, of the critics of academical art, and of the hangers-on of the various ministries, a veiy interesting work might be written on the 46 HO. ME- LIFE. modern liome, with all its details, and in its general aspect, an original and heterodox book, fidl of truth and fantasy. I should like to see an independent mind get enamoured of this idea, and treat it without any regard for the opinion of all these school- masters who pretend to rule over modern furniture, with the delightful assistance of the bourgeois officials, who preside over the administration of hideous, contemporaiy art. Unfortunately only formal and silly judges, professors of industrial art, pedantic nincompoops, and numskulls of commonplace phraseology, trouble themselves to publish indigestible works on a subject which only depends on taste, and mercilessly breaks through all the rules and lines of these logical friends of diagrams. Architects, pretentious art practitioners, licensed teachers of the so-called School of Art, should not write such a work about the original ways and means of decking-out and adorning our home. An obsei*ver, witli a light and picturesque style, well acquainted with the harmony of colours and draperies, would be the right man for this, for he could introduce into his ornamental style his charm- ing phraseology, his alluring diction, his truly original ideas about everything that can enhance our present taste in furniture, and brighten up our cold combinations of upholstery and cabinet work. His work would be useful, for instead of frightening us by its dogmatic pretensions, he would allure us by a glimpse at fanci- '—^ ful things ; he would not lay down fixed ndes, but gradually allow his readers to assimilate his taste without becom- ing obtrusive. THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. He would, above all, defend this theory, that what is beautiful is not always costly and rare, and that ordinary draperies and chairs, the simplest chests, the most quiet hangings, can. by being arranged and decorated with mere trifles, become astonishing objects of value and taste, and present to our eyes the most perfect harmony. Let us wait for the appearance of this typical book. ÏÏ%.t^ 48 W/À iilil'lji: " Me, poor man ! — my library Was dukedom large enough. " — Shakespeare. E PRÉZEL, ia his Iconological Dictionary, gives us the ^ following allegorical figure of Study: "A pale young man, negligent in dress, reading or meditating by the light of a lamp. A bandage is over his mouth to let us under- stand that a studious man loves silence and solitude. A cock, the symbol of vigilance, is his usual emblem." — I do not know from what picture, bas-relief or print, De Prézel has copied this rather clever description ; I think it is wholly imaginative, but study has inspired so many allegories, that this last and essentially romantic one deserves to be mentioned. The eighteenth century, in particular, has symbolised Study under many different forms, and the artist's skill seems to have exhausted itself in the frontispieces and head and tail pieces of many delightful works, which made pleasant even the outside of dry lectures. Generally the artists of the last century depicted Study as a woman with a pensive air, looking towards the clouds where Cupids appear and carry all the mathematical and scientific SI THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. "t5^33nr?srs instruments then invented, whilst in the foreground books tumble down in disorder, as if tired of being consulted. Time, with his fluvial beard, seems delayed in its flight, and its scythe is covered with flowers which the charms of Study have suddenly caused to spring up on the murderous blade. Vanloo, Boucher, Eisen". Gravelot, Monnet, Marillier, Dubourg have each treated this subject, either in grisaille above doors, or in compositions which the engravers of that time have popularised. Greuze himself has painted a symbolical picture of Study, formerly in the San-Donato Galleiy, representing a young child with anxious mien, with a pair of compasses in his hand, who seems to seek the solution of a problem. If study is the safeguard of youth, as some wiseacre has said, it is also the warm and sheltering retreat of old age ; and Goethe's fiction of Faust reveals to us in its German metaphysical fog its real myth, which is rejuvenescence, for study provides us with an inextinguishable flame, and instils in us an ardour for ever re- newed by the curiosity it feeds on. To whatever researches a man's vocation leads him, whether he busies himself with rhetorics, logic, philosophy, physics, astronomy, history or chronology, canonical law or theology, geography or medicine, whether he studies, like uvier, the antediluvian world, describes the mysteries of concho- logy, of lepidopters, or moths, he who devotes his life exclusively to work dwells with happiness. — Study gives to the student a thirst for knowledge, which eternally reinvigorates the mind ; it lets fall on those who love it fervently a salutary and preserving (lew, which withdraws them from the grim harshness of external life; it enlarges their horizon by the radiant perspective of dis- coveries ; it concentrates their sensations into one ruling passion, and creates, so to say, a paradise for our weak humanity ; for, always unknown, it shows itself with fresh charms whenever and under whatever form we wish to behold it. In history, it reveals rf ,^^***^' \ ^, \ '^..i ^ STUDY. to US the ethnology of nations ; in morals, man as he is ; in ento- mology, it initiates us in the worship of mysterious nature, whilst philosophy makes us indulgent, and draws us nearer to God. The honest and academical Viennet has left us in the following distich, in prosaic verse, a paraphrase of an old Pythagorean saying : — " What makes life dear is study, to ns sent As a ne'er changing pleasure without end." Study is the indispensable gyrana-stics of the mind ; it takes off its rust, polishes, educates, softens, sways and assists it in dispelling the troubles of the heart and the tempests of reasoning. Euler says : " The kind of study to which each man devotes himself has so great an influence on his manner of thinking that the experimentaliser only demands experiments, and the reasoner reasonings." — Study leads us to logic, and to the discipline and science of reducing our vague thoughts and idle reasonings to certain rules, so that they can be shaped into modes and Jig ures, as our fathers used to say. However, study. Avhich only leads to mere erudition, means very little. — To be learned is within reach of the first being gifted with patience, Avill, memory, and an ordinary intelligence ; a scientist, an archivist, an archaeologist, an assyriologist are made as a soldier is made, by daily and persevering drill, by culti- vating the same lobes of the brain. Erudition is only 53 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. commonplace and without value, and remains a domestic science, if talent does not animate this concentrated force, and if the ar of demonstrating it does not give it the condiments necessary to the trituration of this mass of documents. Talent alone lends grac pliancy, charm, allurements to the dullest labours; and talent, speak the truth, is youth in its bloom, its strength, its whole expan- sive vitality ; it is the warm impetus of the blood, an exaggerated enthusiasm, an overflow of vital vigour that mounts to the brain and fills the entire body, firing the imagination, and irradiating every faculty by its brilliant light. It is a divine flame burning and vapourising the human essence in all its glory and beauty. Talent is the madness of strength, the heat of passion, the blindness of a faith only fed by youth. When the winter of life has arrived everything becomes dull and dark, just as at dawn ' everything looks grey, and slowly sinks into half tones ; ,i; nothing more stands out or gives umbrage but the pale electric light of acquired fame, a meagre compensa- tion not adding any bright flame to a hearth then filled with lukewarm ashes. However, study remains still and always a refuge where we pulverise our mummified belief which we yet think untouched, but which is slowly dried up by the ebbing of the blood in a climacteric age. ,j^^\,T The harvest is gathered, and only some little ,^^ branches remain which still delude their possessors. But the mind of the writer does not cany away, as of yore, the mind of the reader ; it only gives vent to repetitious ; it is the hour of severe and cold studies, of abstraction, and no longer a time for those serene intuitions which are the genius of youth. The noblest quality of mere erudition is its love for truth, but this love for truth is only ridiculous when it attacks genius. What does it matter if Shakespeare has committed thousands of anachronisms, if Voltaire has pervei-ted history, and if Hugo quotes texts which do not exist ? Does the fire of their genius not purify those miserable errors, and will the truth of beautiful legends not always appear more startling, more in conformity with our ideal belief, than the truth verified by fastidious and pedantic his- torians ? — Half of what Calderou and Molière wrote can be found in Bandello, Geraldi Cintio, and Lasca, but that half is made up chiefly of materials, and genius kills so entirely those it robs, that only the silliness and low envy of erudite and finnikin jackals dare to dig up those bodies and open an inquest for posterity. Certain studies belong to the gerocomy for workers ; we can hardly think of paleography as a juvenile passion; and, though many young and ardent men have abandoned themselves to the search for hieratic writings, to the analysis of hieroglyphics and anaglyphies, we can scarcely imagine an Egyptologist, except with the venerable aspect of an ancient Hierogrammatist, grown old amidst the slow study of pillars, Eg}-ptian vases, and Isiac mysteries. Those patient studies seem hardly to suit youth, who should be in fi-ont, or in the midst of ^^^ struggle for new ideas, original the forms, style, and colour. /}' ,^/ï~.When a graduate has just bid 11 x_ _.i_-:.„i.:_„ ,t '^^ ■ (^^\to order, to the study farewell to admiration, THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. of the classical dialogues of the dead, and the vague ideas crammed into him at the university, after an indigestion of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Molière, and the hygienic promenades in Attic literature, his mind needs fresh air, pants for independence, and wants to know itself; he feels a dislike for the lumber of dead languages, and is anxious to leam something of those unknown living tongues which seem sweet to him, and not as bitter as those compulsory draughts which until now he has been obliged to swallow ; he has an idea of the complete uncertainty of sciences in general, and nature offers too many inexhaustible treasures, resources and attrac- tions, for him to think of plunging into the learned ignorance of the short-sighted reconstructors of past ages. He will, therefore, launch out into art, literature, jurisprudence, geography, now so enticing, into military studies which hold out so many promises of glory, or into physiological sciences. The falsehoods of medicine will, above all, attract his attention ; he s-J will find there a flourishing career, because the upper classes of so- ciety are rest- less, nei-vous, and gene- f,> rally un- "'^ hinged. This study of the medical sciences com- bined with the materialistic philosophy of the day attracts studious and ambi- tious minds. Medicine, however, only exists by uncertainty, hesi- tation, and boldness ; it follows the fashions, and this causes it continually to deviate from its regular researches, whilst quackery, as in all other sciences, makes there more adepts than the severe and modest authority of real masters. Hippocrates' dogmatism is abandoned for a vague, modern eclecticism, which leads to a very superficial diagnosis, and to therapeutics wholly based on many prescriptions; moreover, doctors are injudiciously smitten with every new method, but then they reject them after having tried them on numberless victims. To the Tower of Babel of medicine is added every day a stoiy through the confusion of its tongues and systems, struggling against common-sense and nature. We have had, in turns, the Hippocratic, Galenic, active and expectant, curative and prophylactic, methodical and empirical, animistic and materialistic, hermetic and metallotherapeutic medicine, Avithout reckoning polypharmaceutic medicine, generally followed, and the most destructive. When we consider calmly the various methods of this heartrending concourse of legal murders, mostly conceived without any aetiology, we are dismayed, and turn away from the doctors as frightened as if they were assassins of former times ; we ask ourselves, not without feeling a great contempt for man- kind, how, amidst ideas so imperfect and uncertain that as yet 57 H ) 6 b l> 6 6 t à(> b t t Tmi they have not been a1)le to peiïetime the ray-^teries of tlie humeri body, certain beings can be fouhd, indifferent or bold enough io dare, thoughtlessly to go from theory to practice, and to pretend to exercise an art in which they are not certain of acting in concert with nature. It is right to add that Holy Writ tells us, Honora medicum propter necessUatem ; and that Ecclesiasticus also chari- tably warns us against executioners by prophesying that, He that siiineth in the sight of his Maker shall fall into the hands of the phi/sician. But the Bible is no longer sufficiently read. It contains all wisdom and philosophy, and clearly shows that medical science has only come into the world to punish criminals — namely, idlers guilty of high treason against creation, and those rash and proud people who, by overworking their bodies, and by forgetting the laws of vital equilibrium, guiltily outrage human faculties. Guil- lotin was perhaps the only physician courageous enough openly to avow his divine mandate by inventing the ingenious machine, named after him, and with which, later on, sad and renowned, he became inseparably connected. Study by itself cures better than any medicine. Osimandias judiciously called his library The j^harmacy of the mind, and it is indeed in books that we find the best remedy for the vanities of the world. The intercourse with books turns us pleasantly away from a too frequent and saddening intercourse with the living, and accustoms us gradually to that of the dead ; I mean those glorious immortals who have left us the quintessence of their STUDY. noblest thoughts. Plautus, after a life full of troubles and adversities, replied one day to some one who asked him Avhat amusement had soothed and satisfied him most : — "There exists no position which a man does not wish to change, no post of honour without danger, no riches without Avork and uneasi- ness, no prosperity lasting for ever, no pleasure of which he does not tire ; therefore, if ever I have been soothed and tranquillised, it is since I have entirely devote^ myself to reading." Heading, not by fits and starts, but healthy and absorbing, frees us from all the agitations and unpleasantness of external life ; it keeps alive in our mind a focus of light which creates for it a fictitious existence a thousand times superior to the real one. It makes us travel like the young gods of antiquity on the clouds of illusion, in fantastic countries wholly peopled by poetic sensations, so much the more beautiful and per- suasive as they are more vague ; it creates for us refined intellectual sympathies which no treason ' can destroy and no hypocrisy can poison. Books are so many faithful and serviceable friends^^, gently teaching us everything through their persuasive and wise experience ; the solid conversation of many authors who have disappeared is wholly made up of amenity, wit, humour, belief, and without the vivacity, bitterness, and cowardice which some- times make the conversation of the living so odious ; they are complaisant guides whom we abandon at our leisure, and take up again when tired. If we wish to revive antiquity, see again with the eyes of our imagination lîome, Carthage, Ninive, Byzan- 59 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. tium, Memphis, or Babylon, and sum up all the art treasures of those annihilated nations, books, without our paying too much for them, will lead us from our fireside into the midst of the oldest civilisations. If we are thinking of our salvation, the Fathers of the Church will present themselves to us, without pomp or pride, to purify our soul. If we wish to learn astronomy and the mysteries of the Heavens, count the planets and give a name to those thousands of luminous spots constellating the firmament, know everj'thiug that is to be known about the celestial bodies, their movements, distribution in space, physical shape, and, in short, understand the complicated mechanism of astrostatics, a hundred astro- nomers, Galileo, Kepler, Laplace, Newton, Halley, Lacaillc, Lalande, Herschel, Delambre, Ai'ago, and others, will initiate us freely into the cosmogony, latitude, longitude, uranology, and prodigious variety of the planisphere. — Laplace will teach us that of all natural sciences astro- nomy presents to us the longest chain of discoveries, and that the first view of the Heavens is not at all like the general view through which we embrace to-day the past and the future of the system of the world. After having reached through study the know- ledge of the zenith, we imagine, with Fonte- nelle,that the labours of the astronomers have given us eyes, and that, without them, we should ignore the pro- 60 ^■ m^ - STUD Y. digious magnificence of this world almost only inhabited by blind people. If the curiosities of nature tempt us, and if, amidst the delight of rustic solitude, we wish to enliven the monotonous channs of contemplative life by studying plants and birds, and thus introduce into our love for the country more observation, interest, rational passion, our dear friends, books, will again come to us, take a small place in our verdant retreat, and permit us to analyse the lives and manners of the organised beings suri'ounding us. Mono- graphies or ornithological fauna will attract our attention to all those graceful birds worshipped by the Egyptians, and we will be de- lighted to study with Cuvier, Saint - Hilaire, Vieillot, or Temminck, the various characters of jDrehensile and pigeon-like birds, of raptores, climbers, passerines, gallina- ceans, corriras, waders, and pal- mipeds, which, henceforth, cease to be in our eyes merely ornamental beings, to make us dote on them, whilst investigat ing the rapidity of their movements, or the most minute particulars of their manners and reproduction. THE MIRROR OK THE WORLD. The mere study of botany would even suffice to create for us unfore- seen resources, and make us enjoy v. ,,,_ life in the loneliest desert. — Botany -s"^' is not, as Eousseau thought, an ;^"'VVv>'v':.^ amusement for an idle and lazy - hermit, or the art of insulting plants in Greek, as a philosophic gar- dener said it was ; it is a taste con- tinually increasing, which makes us affable ; a taste sometimes useful for the vegetarian, for botanophily often leads to botanophagy ; and I know lovers of vegetable organogeny who have gradually succeeded in making everything eatable, and often treat their friends, not only with charming and exquisite amenity, but also to new and ex- traordinary dishes, such as stewed dahlia-bulbs, nettles, or early cowslips' soup. — But this hobby belongs almost to agricultural physiology. The study of botany would lead us to grant to plants a kind of life which, according to Aristotle, the founder of the sciences of observation, would place them in the scale of beings between inanimate bodies and animals, and would recognise between them no other difi'erence but their secretions which smell nicely, and their want of senses which does not permit them to take cognisance of external bodies nor of themselves. Botany, on the other hand, possesses this incomparable advan- tage, of exercising at the same time our intellectual and physical faculties, and of Avithdrawing us from the sedentaiy habits of ordinary studies to let us undertake erratic and healthy walks across plains, valleys, and mountains. Its followers travel from north to south, under every meridian, for it takes in the entire world by the geography of its infinitely varied y/om; it leads them 62 STUDY. to the liic^li table-lands of the New World, on the borders ot immense lakes, to the bottom of profound valleys, always in quest of details and the unknown. More than any other science it brings man to nature, which reveals itself to him, and inspires him with a taste for the simple, natural, and beautiful, for everything in the Universe is beautiful, and the smallest loaf is an incompar- able masterpiece of God. Every study to which our moral instinct inclines us is beneficent and regenerating ; it procures to our intellect many varied but agreeable forms, as well as most extraordinary moods ; we should, therefore, allow every science and sentiment to enter our mind ; and if they do not enter pell-mell, there is plenty of room. We should avoid indigestion and congestion, by well regulating our labours, court sciences as we do women, separately, and whilst fickle remain always true to curiosity, pass from tragic History to valuable Philosophy, from coquettish Literature to cunning and treacherous Jurisprudence, and only stop to contract a legiti- mate union when we have been most strongly impressed; or the future smiled on us most -"^^ -^ "^^ temptingly. Study and books are, in short, the great charmers of this life. If we freely give - ourselves up to them, they -vi-^.^- will neither disappoint nor grieve us, for they teach us modesty by daily convincing us of our infinite ignorance. ■:> f and by always -ifafljgS»^!^. leaving in us ■_ -i^* ^"v '..v. -^ «i»\ .Ty>,<;\-_; a desire for /-VT' '«-Vvs-; r A.- X THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. fresh knowledge. There is one book which never tires a refined mind — ourselves — the study of whicli is enough for a lifetime, if we bring to it a humility needed for the examination of our entire moral being. — Montaigne used to say : " I like better to create my mind than to furnish it ; tliere is no feebler or more arduous occupation than to keep up our thoughts : Quitus vivere est cogitare." 64 ;^^^ M^ tV LOVE. -$*e " Love is the architect of the Universe." — Hesiod. FKO:m the most remote Antiquity, from the pretty legend of the Cytherean Venus, who was no other than the Egyptian Nephtis or the wife of Typhon, from the ages of paganism, Buddhism, and idolatry, until modern times, amidst all nations, through the entire hierography of disappeared civilisations, the more we study, search, consider, investigate the philosophy of facts, the more it seems we can affirm that the history of love has always been the history of the human race. — We must believe with Nodier, that gentle story-teller and philologist, that the world had its origin in a marvellous paradise, decked out by the hands of the Creator, to serve as a nuptial palace for humanity, and that all nature, young, virginal, and flowery, was the enchanted cradle of first love. 67 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. After having deposited into the plants an organic phenomenon, into the brute creation instinct, and into the heart of man sentiment, the Divine Spirit invited its creatures to increase and multiply, and Heaven beheld then the sudden vibration of beings issuing into life and existence, seeking each other mysteriously, in order to meet, join, transubstantiate, and unite themselves theandrically in their essence amidst a sudden and disturbing convulsion to obey the commands of God. — Such might be a summary of our Christian Genesis. The pagan legend relates the birth of mythological Love in a hundred varied and ingenious ways. — According to Simonides, it sprung from the kisses Mars gave to Venus ; Alcmeon ascribes its birth to Flora and Zephyr ; Hesiod makes "> J it rise from chaos, bringing into the ' world troubles and devasta- tion ; Plato considers it a child of Poverty and Riches, for it often moves us by its trem- bling, and continually \ ' holds out his hand, whilst at other times it seems 68 i ^. % 1- :,»,ii- J- I LOVE. wealthier than all the gods and potentates on earth; Seneca calls it the son of Venus and Vulcan, for it forges its own fetters and arms at the incandescent hearths it stirs up by its breath ; Alcœus draws its genealogy from Zephyr and Eris, for it causes men to quan-el and to be disturbed ; Democritus laughs and excuses it, while Heraclitus drowns it in tears. The affabulation of ancient theogony is never at fault when there is question of Love.— According^/ to some poets this gentle little god was hatched '''^■ by Night out of an egg laid by her, after which it immediately flew away to awaken, rejoice, and disturb new worlds. — The bandage over his eyes shows that he is blind; the torch in his hand proves that he illumi- nates our mind, and kindles our senses ; wings are given to him to symbolise his airi- ness and his eternal aspira- tion towards the infinite ; he puts his finger to his ;j,; mouth to show he can be ,, ïV discreet; he sometimes serves as a guide to fortune ; at "" other times^ he leads - folly. All poets J 69 MIRROR or THE WORLD. ^*'^:-W^':W^- attune their lyres in his honour. The amiable and jovial ''*^' >■=,"■ S^^\ #- Anacreon composes an ode to Lorn in the Rain, and shows i^.Ix•'%^V '"'l*^ ' "s in this charming fiction Pity opening the door to the treacherous and maUcious Cupid, for Pity, the vestal guar- dian of sentiment, is often a prelude to love, and not seldom survives it ; and the ancients, who, however, scarcely knew what real feeling meant, did not ignore this. Ovid, Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, Theocritus, Catullus, and many others have sung their immortal loves ; Dido, Camilla, and Neeera express the merriment, charm, and torments of classical love, in its various aspects of tenderness, ardour, caprice, and in its inconstant voluptuousness and passion. Classical love can be depicted in these four words : to feel and to desire. The first of sentiments was the worship of the beautiful in its most complex forms, and physically and morally harmonis- ing ; what was then beautiful became divine, and was idolised as such. The Latins had the same word to express the idea of love and of selection. Love was therefore a more or less natural selection of the species, a quite aesthetic and sensual selection, in which did not enter all the psychical considerations which Chris- tian morality since then slowly has instilled within us. Chi-istianity, at its very beginning, invented, so to say, all our sentiments. Nodier, in a very eloquent page, depicts better than anybody this transformation of the human ideal : — " The shepherds," he wrote, " arrived before the manger with their hands full of flowers, like shepherds in poetry, and bestowed them on a rejuvenescent world as the pledge of a new spring ; the most precious of those gifts, now so despised, were liberty and Love. . " This Christian love, perhaps originated under the shadow of the silent contemplations of Pythagoras, developed in the sublime reveries of Plato, fed by the dreamy faith of the Essen ians, exalted by the romanesque sensibility of its followers, existed some cen- 70 LOVE. turies before it left behind the trials of martyrdom and exile in the catacombs. It came out thence chaste and gentle, but also sad, pale, and suffering, as the lamb going to be sacrificed for the last feast of nations. — We may say that after this love there is no other ; imagination cannot conceive anything to replace it, and it was right for this love to be born in a tomb, for its last flames will be extinguished on the eternal tomb of nations." After having rightly proved that Christianity is distinguished from any other religion, because its sanctuaiy is not in the imagination but in the heart, the learned and eloquent Nodier continues thus : — "The form of Christian love was not immutable as its principle was ; it followed, according to its nature, the various modifications of Christian society, but without changing the imposing character which reveals its origin. . . . TeU me, you, whom beauty always inspires, and Avho understand its language, what witchcraft is pos- sessed by beauty and love in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, in the mellifluous songs of the troubadours, in the romantic fables of the paladins ; and if you do not possess the secret of resuscitating the past, ask Hugo or Vigny for some of those transformations which are a mere trifle for their magic wand. The scene is already before oiu- eyes, with its almost cyclopean towers, its lanceolated ogives, its windows veiled by ivy, its lofty and large balconies, over which the chisel of a patient sculptor has caiTed a canopy of foliage which seemingly trembles. Here is the long gallery w'ith its resonant pavement ; and this young creature, lost in thought, incessantly walking up and down, and halting at each step, is the lady of the manor, who has been waiting for two years for her squire to come from Palestine, but who no longer expects him to return, for she is weeping. — And yet this Avarrior will bring her only an uncertain message, a consolation betrayed perhaps by a liundred 71 : I ) THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. battles, a rosary blessed by the Church, or a bloodstained scarf; happy if it be not some ill-omened case in which gradually has shrivelled up a heart which ceased to beat for her ! . . . Com- pared with such sentiments, the loves of Achilles and Eneas must appear foolish ! " We might make some remarks about this last and disdainful expres- sion of our author, but will go on. Chivalric love, the ofispriug of Chris- tianity and Teutonic manners, made men heroic, for it drew its strength from the veiy sources of honour" and fealty, as well as from a supreme principle of courage, respect, and pro- found morality. Let us call to mind Petrarch and Laura, Eomeo and Juliet, Isabella and Zerbiuo, or else Fran- cesca di Eimiui. Everywhere the purest, most constant, and ardent flame burns without being consumed in the Gothic temple of love during the Middle 'Ji Ages. — The heart seeming- ly beats stronger neatli "^ ' this armour which hin- dered motion whilst im- . _ proving the gait, which starched gracefulness and imprisoned all I3 o 1 d desires; 72 down must have been slow and majestic ; embraces terrific in their strength ; eveiything was solid, cold, imposing, monumental ; the worship of sentiment was almost as liturgical as divine worship; it had its laws and regulations ; and, in the Courts of Love, noble born ladies and gentle poets pronounced judgment on ques- tions of a jurisprudence of the heart, neither admitting taste nor likings, but only a fealty of souls by sacred in- vestiture. Love, when the Eenaissance ap- peared, left to the Amadis' such swaggering sentiments; it became more gallant, less respectful and tender, more enticing and boastful ; instead of going to Palestine H."^ Si 73 ^-^ it climbed balconiei, and committed the most outrageous misdeeds ; it no longer sighed in armour, but burst its doublet. In an age of splendour, feasts, and pleasure, it became ven- turesome, bustling, dramatic, dazzling till the end ; glory and the sanguine temperament of the Latin race excited it ; however, always courteous, it was governed sometimes by a kind of pragmatism, one of the last vestiges of feudal passions. ^vvÇ'Iv^^ People began to whisper soft nothings, to vow their love ïv^^^lkÉ^, ) ill serenades ; amorous poetry became then filled with all ; kinds of sweet and dainty things, with epicurean prettiness, with graceful and persuasive courtly trifles, with sweet and long-drawn sighs, tender diminutives, and an exquisite ;\v^ ,-. refinement in the bold expression of desire. — Sensuous ' appetence was not concealed, words were used more un- ■ iïhaste than indecent, for each one rushed in this medley of sensations in search of pleasure with unblushing t , impetuosity. — What prodigious and powerful vitality ! -•'■^'' What freshness in triumphant humanity! What carnal enthusiasm in this wonderful sixteenth cen- tury, so brimful of love that all its gi'eat or small W^ • , works still speak to our senses ! This Avas ■^■^ really the golden age for bold and ardent ^'^assions, ^^'^ for a har- vest to be reaped on I e m a 1 e lips, for healthy and vigor- ous unions, for manly and physical bravery, epic gallantry, and sturdy and jDowerful voluptuousness. The seventeenth centuiy mitigated tliis by introducing a somewhat new ideality. Love in the Italian style was suc- ceeded by Love in the Spanish fashion, a love full of affecta- tion and kind attentions, imprisoned by decorum, tied bv duty, never separated, based on complicated and dull meta- physics. The heroic, pastoral novel Astrea, of which the doctrines were first accepted by the frequenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet, to spread thence into fashionable society, mixed I chivalric feeling with platonic love, and, as Saint-ISIarc Girardin remarks, greatly contributed to bring to its acme the pre- ,. ponderance of women in society and literature. The -'"' typical perfect lover was the gentleman described by Faret, dying discreetly and quietly, suffering, sighing, and not saying a word ; the paragon of softened virtue was the lady depicted by Du Boscq so morally and coiTectly. Time was then the surest auxiliary of love, and all professed lovers and arrant gallants liked to languish in their slow and discreet pursuit; gentle allu- sions were made, eyes spoke but lips re- mained dumb, and madrigals 'i'^-- were so refined y,)^.) - that they became bombastic, in order to - touch with more certainty the heart through the mind. Tlie entire bewigged seventeenth centuiy regulates Love pompously, and strains sentiment so affectedly, that it must have suffered through it ; eveiything seems prepared, laid out, piomed like the gardens of Le Nôtre ; nothing was natural, lively, eccentric, independent, mad, but much was rectilinear, cold, courteous, and magnificent. These illustrious grand ladies, liked by Victor Cousin, inspire us, at a distance, with none of that retrospec- tive tenderness we bestow so willingly on those whose life has been illumined by Love, and who have become immortahsed by the very exuberance of their passions. — During the seventeenth centuiy Love was so prim, and so confined' by whalebone, silks, and decorum, that we can hardly imagine it in undress. It re- mains standing, and seems never to go to sleep ; it is as coiTect and majestic as a minuet. We must come to the eighteenth centuiy to find jovial, ephe- r '^,-ivjr. ■M < • '- -'^-^c^iajd*''-^!/; "J'^^ J^^^^^tîli V-'' meral, and mad- cap love. After the austere latter years of Louis XIV. Love seems to abandon all worship, and to become a butterfly ; epicurean society only wants fugitive sensa- tions ; the soul has nothing more to do with love, and sentiment becomes as fashionable as dress ; love is hawked about as a pam- phlet, and the little uhhés introduce it during their morning call on female gossips. — The heart no longer dares to vie with wit, and the whole of life is spent in joking and gallant skirmishing. Jealousy even is forbidden ; men worship in Love even the loves of their mistress. But is this really Love, or only a degraded and debased copy of it, without any genuine expression? — To say the truth, it is only a sixth sense slightly intoxicating, and indulged in exube- rantly ; the God of the gardens is thus coquettishly honoured and festooned with gew-gaws, baubles, and tinsel. In the ±scw Heloise, Jcan-Jacqucs Eousscau rekindles the 77 .-THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. extiuguislied fire, and leads us back to a melaucholic and dreamy tenderness, thirst- ing after the infinite ; he invented the meta- physical uneasiness of the passionate soul, and ascribing all sentiment to nature, whose beauties he perhaps for the first time re- vealed, he not only turned the French mind out to grass, as Sainte-Beuve said, but com- municated the disturbing and mystic charms of rural life to the heart. From that time Love felt incurable and analytical ; it became languishing, excited, inactive, crying ; it fed its passion hysterically whilst cursing it during the first twenty years of this century ; it contaminated our literature, the monotonous sentimentality of which has deadened the heart of so many rising generations ; thence spring De Musset and Lamartine. The Kevolutiou, however, established a current opposed to this exaggeration of the heart and senses, and seems to have destroyed, by its Pagan Renaissance, those effluvia and tempests of passions feeding on themselves. The feelings of the Ancient Eégime had gone down with it only to rise again twenty years later. The Eevolution led back Love to its ancient simplicity, and attempted to resuscitate, in its own w'ay, mythological voluptuousness. Each woman became a goddess ; they made love to Psyche, Flora, and Hebe ; Cupid untied the sandals of citizen-Phrynes, and every one tried to give to his heart no other rehgion but the so-called natural, or rather physical, religion. Cabanis, the physiological high priest of that time, clearly defines what revolutionised love should be : — " One of the causes," he says, " which have contributed to per- vert Love through artificial exaltation, is the want of objects of really great interest, and the general idleness of the wealthy. . . . 78 LOVE. Under the beneficent rule of equality, under the all-powerful interest of public reason, foreign to all exaggeration, all enthu- siasm, Love will be the consoler but not the arbiter of life, and will embellish but not occupy it. When he occupies it he degrades it, and soon becomes himself extinguished in disgust." In spite of Cabanis' decree, taken up later by Sénancourt, Love escaped the laws of civic reasoning. After the wars of the Empire, it retook possession of a nation enervated and morally aching to exercise its tyranny with more power than ever over litera- ture, society, and manners. It was not sparkling Love, varied by inconstancy, which came back from exile, but a sombre passion with an excessive development of desires neveT to be realised. People understood then that Love was a longing for immortality only to be divinised by obstacles and pain. They felt the empti- ness of possession, the annihilation of desire by the contact of the senses, and they adopted this Platonic morality, that there is no being so bad which pure Love does not J'ender peerless and virtuous. They thought that aiothing in Lote could be limited, except for limited minds, and wished it iû&aite beyond any human compre- hension, superior to paganism, above all laws, towering over the world which it moves and veils in -its mysteiies. "N^'here has anything better bees said of Love than in Tlie Imita- tion of Christ ? " Love willeth tq^ to be held down be raised up, and not by any mean thing. Love willeth : . to be free and aloof from all worldly afiec- tion, lest its inward power of vision be hindered, 79 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. lest it be entangled by any worldly prosperity or overcome by adversity. Nothing is sweeter than Love, nothing stronger, nothing loftier, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller nor better in heaven nor in earth, for Love was born of God, and cannot rest save in God above all created things. " He who loveth flieth, runneth, and is glad ; he is free and not hindered. lie giveth all things for all things, because he resteth in One who is high above all, from whom every good flioweth and proceedeth. " Love is watchful, and whilst sleeping still keepeth watch ; though fatigued it is not weary ; though pressed it is not forced ; though alarmed it is not terrified ; but, like the living flame and the burning torch, it breaketh forth on high and securely triumpheth ! " Only those who love or have loved can understand this eloquent language. 80 4 TRAVEL. " An Englishman travels to look at things ; a Frenchman to be looked at." — Rivarol. THE Ancients delighted in comparing the world to a colossal book, of which a man who had only seen his native conntiy had merely read one sheet. Nothing can be truer than this idea. Travel balances our mind by comparison, moderates our vanity, assures our judgment, and perfects us in everything, when we know how to derive from it the advantages Avhich it can procure, and to preserve us from the inconveniences which we very often meet. — " There is no better school for wisdom than travel," wrote already La Mothe Le Vayer, at a time when Madame de Sévigné proclaimed that " travel wears out the body and the car- riage;" and both these opinions have been continually discussed S3 ^ ^^^"^ «^ -^ ^^^ -«i by sedentary temperaments leading a monotonous and regulated life, with a mania for their own nationality; and by more venturesome and winged minds moving about in a circle of observa- tions which they rightly suppose as grand as the terrestrial sphere. Some people profess the theory that happiness here below consists in our having regular habits ; that living in the same / place, in an agreeable abode, amidst friendly faces always ^ the same, in the society of a woman who has made senti- ^ ment stable and love eternal, is the ideal of a Avise man ; that ^ ^ / to look for anything else is to move about in a vacuum and W never to settle ; that it is to flee from common-sense, logic, V ^ and from one's self, and to let weariness always follow you. f They add that imagination, that wanderer which traverses ^ space through a marvellous telepathy, peoples our dreams k 1^ with richer, more splendid, and warmer fancies than the A I remembrance of all the real visions hunted after in the J various panoramas of the globe ; they conclude, in short, by maintaining that in general man travels only to have ^ travelled, that is to say, through being vainer than his neighbour, and that, in all these useless removals, he loses in illusions what he gains in experience, thus changing his gold for silver coin. Others, not less judicious in their parrying, exclaim with grand gesticulations that to travel is really to live ; that thus we abandon the degrading and despotic slavery of ordinary life, cease to vege- tate and to become brutalised in a society which perforce grows provincial. They start up and point at the distant horizons where people study, make researches, dream ; they are of opinion that to ^ i^ -^^ i^ without knowing anything, and to be disgusted with verything we know, proves a nature dulled *ty daily going m its stupid and monstruously chosen corner ; that thus we resemble a cast horse and not a man divinely endowed, with eyes to see afar, and ears to hear every idiom ; they emit this paradox that every home for a long time dwelt in seems a kind of cellular prison, that all faces too often looked upon irritate and become odious'; that the regularity of meals, of going to bed, of rising, the identical character of the dishes eaten, of the neighbours perceived, the mattress on which we rest, constitute a sickening and loathsome existence from which we must withdraw ourselves by flight, no matter where, during winter by going to sunny lands, during summer by wan- derius throucrh various lands or on the shores of all countries. They set out, these spaiTows of sudden migrations, to war against the tautology of sedentary imaginations and the sameness of caged and stupidly homotonous and con- centric sensations ; they give us to understand that every- thing in created nature invites us to travel ; first the earth dragging us along in its course ; the moon iitii-. #?^K> travellingr around us ; the climates tra^ veiling to renew everywhere the seasons and the birds, insects, and germs, and anilv human reason so, moved too narrowly They make us under ften leaving rHS s for having ctt- ,^^_>i?-'^ on the same axis. \°/ ^-^i stand that travel is ^1 JJ THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. the indignant revolt of a man who does not wish to die like a snail, and who pretends to go as far as the columns of Hercules and find out all he can on the inhabited globe. — They understand, if need be, stagnant life in Paris for six months at most, for there anything unforeseen may turn up ; the whole of Europe passes, all the provinces flock thither ; there every hour of the day and night happens something unexpected and always renewed ; there our pas- sions become refined through exquisite variety and an intellectual exchange not to be found elsewhere ; there we have the sensation of being carried away rapidly, of chance, of an ever-growing curiosity, the free outlet of our fancy, and of the pleasant and easy loosening of all habits and customs. But does a sedentary life in the provinces not dull our faculties ; is it not figurative death amidst a heavy, cold, formal life, surveyed, I watched over, and systematically ticketed ? is it not weariness lit;. underneath a grey sky, caged in the chilliest and dampest in-pace, where we are dying whilst listening overhead to the droning of all the litanies of slander? — "The desert or Eome," said Saint ^;,, Jerome ; " the lone country, travel, or Paris," we say to-day. I will admit that in this endless con- troversy between the sedentaiy and the travellers I hold the golden mean ; I side, namely, with the latter when I set out and TRAVEL. with the fii-st wheu I return ; travel iu reality is only starting and arriving. The departure, so full of feverish agitation and intoxication, amidst the clashing of feelings of aÔection for those vce leave and the desire for the absolute independence we create, can never be forgotten, and is peculiarly intense ; life suddenly takes another course. The day before, friends on bidding us farewell, and shaking us by the hand, exclaim, "Lucky fellow!" The mar- ried ones add to this sigh of envy the complaint of people not fi-ee : "Make the most of it ! . . . when you'll be married . . ." Gradually we are left alone, we feel that we shall be born again and metamorphosed ; and, however, at the last moment, the sad- ness of the closed and darkened house penetrates us; then the carriage with the luggage leaves, and we seem already lighter. Amidst the noise at the station, the various leave-takings, the shriek of the locomotives, the huny, and the nishing into the train, amidst this characteristic departing crowd, a feeling of comfort, fi-eedom, oblivion, and vague curiosity settles on us, and thus the traveller becomes psychologically transformed. No expressions, inventions, human imagery, can coiTectly de- scribe and excel the variety, swiftness, and lightness of our first tra- velling sensations, now uneasy, then serene, sored by separation, and made happy by a careless and unforeseen new existence ; the stay- at-home and passive animal feels toi-por overcome him, whilst THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. the idealist and explorer, free and unfettered, has fanciful dreams. The hours pass quickly, ^.^^^^^^^^ whilst the wheels keep time with our thoughts, harbour where the boat the East, far from the tion has made us love, offing we will look soon as once bright and melan- Travel gradually tones tiens formed of inward in home life, but it develops tern, our intuition and recep- sible and more sensitive ; there and already we are in the ^« is lying to take us to land which our educa- and on which from the on a bride, with eyes at cliolic. down our normal percep- affections concentrated our impressible physical sys- tivity ; we become less sen- is a difference ; our perceptions are no longer in the heart, but in H the eye and the brain. We are active, and feel, however, less wayward than in the sphere of our ordinary ambitions ; we wear out less, abandoning ourselves to the machinery carrying us away, and to the servants who eveiywhere busy themselves as cleverly as in fairyland. We have nothing to do but to live, and that is why travelling is the greatest moral repose we can wish for. We soar above things as if we were in a balloon, not feeling anything. We float in space ; everything aids us and acts for us ; an intense feeling of comfort, indolence, and oblivion pervades us ; no more annoyance, worry, or strife ; varied things, manners, nations, landscapes pass before us, and we are without cares, for everything unknown will present itself to us at night or the next morning. Tired of seeing, we close our eyes to look within us, in this workshop of thought where the fire seems extinguished, so much have carelessness and indifierence dulled our notions of life. However, the air strikes and vivifies us, sweeping away in its passage all our past cares and troubles for the future ; profound peace reigns within us, and our absent beloved appear to us under vague forms, of which we inwardly catch a glimpse, smiling gently and caressingly, satisfied with our >>r^K^ rep TRAVEL. repose, our voluptuous non-existence, our momentaiy oblivion. We see again yonder, as in a lukewarm mist, those afiections Ave left behind us, which, in their impatience, discount the lonely sadness of the present with the always open bank of Hope, for the consoling hour of our return. But the true traveller is not moved for long by those apparitions which are only the ambient poetry of his migratory habits ; travel makes of its followers egotists, and loosens all ties and affections. The traveller by instinct and vocation gathers every fugitive sensation without allowing it to become sentiment, and thus leaves no Penelopes behind him, but rather Ariadnes courted for the nonce in eveiy port. 89 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. Life rocks him to sleep, and Avithout any fatigue he arrives in roseate and pleasant Eastern towns, amidst white minarets, under a radiant sun, with bluish shadows, spreading over all like molten gold. Everywhere he is received as a stranger with such atten- tions that he is free from all cares for material things ; he lands, and a hundred porters pounce on his trunks and baggage, a score of hotelkeepers quarrel to lodge him, as many dragomans solicit the honour of serving him ; eveiywhere he is feasted, solicited ; his slightest wishes are immediately realised ; he can believe him- self the Caliph of Bagdad, or a Prince on his travels. The day seems short to him, and he experiences that exquisite feeling of being absolute master of his time, of seeing the hours glide by, not Avith the burning anxiety of j the labourer, nor with the dreamy sad- | ness of the lover or philosopher, but carelessly and merrily. He gets up when he pleases, without any fear of being dis- turbed, and eats as much breakfast as he likes; he _ ' - has got rid of all those odious inquisitors of «■i^j.^- TRAVEL. European domesticity ; he can go wherever he wishes, without being controlled by these spies, abandon himself to chance, to the unforeseen, stop where he likes, and change his manners as he fancies. He can, if it pleases him, become a Mohammedan, reign over a seraglio, command musicians and bayaderes ; and decorum, etiquette, and public opinion, those jj «* -% merciless duennas, will not suddenly interfere with his caprices. Being a stranger gives him every right ; he is at liberty to realise the most unlikely follies. Whilst moving along, all kind of proposals are made to him, and gradually he becomes convinced that the whole Universe, with its vices and virtues, is for sale ; men and women, nations and towns, appear to him put up to auction by the scoundrels who sur- round him. Moreover, if the traveller be a man of culture, if imagination sways him with its exciting prism and its transforming light, this cosmopolite can raise up within him every incarnation, be Hassan in Stamboul and Casanova in Venice. Isolated ^^ in a world whence he can easily withdraw, and on which he can look as it suits him, it is easy for him to revive ' the past, to people those i Venetian lagunes with tliej 9' THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. extravagant colouring of the time when the Doge went to wed the Adriatic ; to hehold again brilhant feasts in the Pitti Palace and in this Florence, now so dead ; to let tempestuous civil war rage in Sienna, now as beautiful as in the Middle Ages, as if it had been kept in a jewel-box ; to breathe love sighs like Romeo in cold Verona, now only an historical tomb, a mausoleum of Art disappeared. Montaigne, who wandered so long through Germany, Switzer- land, and Italy, speaks charmingly of traveMng. " Travelling;" he says, "appears to me a profitable exerciser the mind is then con- tinually busy in observing unknown and new things ; I do not know a better school for fashioning life than incessantly to pro- pose to it the diversity of so many other lives, fancies, and customs, and to make it enjoy such a perpetual variety of forms of our nature. The body is then neither idle nor overworked, and this moderate agitation keeps it in order. The change of air and climate does not influence me ; eveiy sky is the same to me ; I am only moved by the internal changes I produce within me ; and those I feel less when I travel." He says elsewhere, " I consider all men as my fellow-countrymen, and would embrace a Pole as I would a Frenchman, postponing the tie of nationality to the universal and common Nature which has brought us into the world free and unfettered ; we imprison our- selves in certain limits, just as the Kings of Persia bound themselves to drink no other water but that from the river Chospaez. ... By ^^ ()2 ' \ iti^'felling L«fe^apeHlie opportunities of getting angiy, and rid myself of the 'knowledge of things that go wrong ; and if I cannot prevent my meeting at home at any time with something that dis- i ' pleases me7'I have not this care whilst travelling, and look at my business from afar and in a general way, and would feel less the falling in of a tower than at present the dropping of a slate." On this question of peregrina- tion, on the marital obligation to travel, on the slavery of habits, ^lontaigne entertains large and superior ideas, all interwoven witli this lofty common sense which gives such a high value ^ to his work. — Nothing is more curious than to see him corroborate our actual thoughts on this subject ; 93 '•:f we might imagine that his mind had been moA^ed at full speed in our cosmopolitan present centurj'. Travelling often gives rise to durable sympathies, singularly opposed to one another, such as would make us select as a residence either London or Venice — the one on account of its busy, noisy life, carrying us away in its excessive logical machinery, making us scent, as it were, the odours of the Universe, thanks to its formidable jostling, and its abundant trans-oceanic traffic, which makes of this gigantic town the storehouse and market of the whole world ; the other by its mysterious poetry as a town festooned with splendid reminiscences, and by the exquisite calm it produces in our mind by the mere rocking of its gondolas, moving carelessly along on the Grand Canal. No other town gives us in the same degree those profound sensations, neither New York, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, St. Peters- burg ; and, on the other hand, in comparison with Venice, neither Constantinople, Amsterdam, Dresden, Triest, nor even Nuremberg, that beauteous pearl of Germany, so artistically surrounded, where Ave love to behold untouched the room of the great artist, Albert Durer. 94 }t Switzerland, that anti-artistic land, seems ÏM only to have been created as a panorama for ' retired tradesmen who like to look on an horizon of snowy sugar loaves and ten-estrial bumps and cataclysms, before which they stand open-mouthed and deeply moved. They look on this pretentious and cragged countiy through their sheepish imagination, fed on the most inferior romantic trash, and, above all, through some comic opera, the £ songs of which they hear again in the jr musical snuff-boxes and pictures with music, as well as in the orchestras of the hotels on all parts of the Swiss Alps. Travelling in Europe is no longer to *r '■**"; THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. travel, for a sleeping-car only carries lis from one place to another ; and ou our continent furrowed by railroads, that which constitutes the going backward and forward, a change of locomotion, anything unforeseen, will doubtless disappear more and more. Already evei7where we find the same table d'hôte, the same cookery, the same faces, and the same conversation, and the hour is near Avhen the uniformity of manners, conventional ideas, and dress Avill impose themselves on the entire universe. If ever that day comes there will be no interest more in travelling, and people will circulate amongst homogeneous nations with a feeling of over- whelming monotony ; only the treasures and marvels of retrospective art will then make us rise from our chairs and lead us to admire the splendours of dead cities. 96 SPORTS. ^-^ 1 ->J^' " Sport implies three things, either simul- taneous or separated ; open air, betting, and the application of one or several physical qualities." — Chapus. IF we open an Encycloptedia at the word " sport " we read as follows : " By the term spo7't, of which the equivalent does not exist in French, and of which the meaning is not very precise in English, we describe a great many amusements, exer- cises, and simple pleasures, taking up a good deal of the time of rich or idle men. By sport we understand horse-racing, boat- ing, hunting, shooting, fishing, archery, gymnastics, fencing, shoot- ing with pistols and guns, boxing, single-stick, wrestling, tennis, cricket, driving, skating, swimming ; in a word, all amusements which try the various aptitudes of man, his courage, agility, skill, and elasticity. In France sjwrt is considered synonymous with the turf; but this is taking a part for the whole, for a sportsman 99 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. is not always on the turf, and a man on the turf is not always a sportsman." This is all very well, but the word sport introduced into French about this century is only a more or less lame restitution of the old French word desport, which means, in ancient fabliaux, to play, divert, amuse oneself, just as " sportively " is employed in English. If I did not fear the severe remarks of grave etymolo- gists, I might even add that perhaps desport is derived from the French dispos, hale, hearty, nimble, for nothing renders us more hale and hearty in mind and body than to exercise our muscles, and makes us better feel our strength, manhood, vitality, and courage. Sports, so well understood and organised among Northern nations, and more particularly in England, have not yet very deeply penetrated French habits and customs, and only are practised by the French upper classes, for fashion, elegance, and refinement require them to be more or less fond of sport, to ride gracefully, to fence elegantly and dashingly, and to swim very fairly, this latter art being particularly cultivated by women, in remembrance of Venus Aphrodite, and also for the sake of the numerous worshippers of form. The majority of Frenchmen do not care much for sport ; few countries have less horsey men than France ; I do not mean gentlemen-riders, but men who like the horse and horse-exercise. Since the First Empire and the Restoration, the passion for horse - exercise has gi'adually disappeared from French habits ; and whilst !l^ il in Austria, Hungary, Germany, England, and Belgium equestrian customs have lasted traditionally for ages, they sloAvly vanished in France about the middle of the century with the establishment of railways. Riding in France is only a luxury, and one-third of the Frenchmen of this generation will die without ever having been astride a smart horse. Indoor sports, such as gymnastics, fencing, and French boxing, have more followers ; gymnastics, above all, are pre-eminently national ; Frenchmen are already taught at college to practise on the trapeze, on the parallel-bar, with the rings and the dumb-bells, just in time to prepare their muscles, which they have the unpardonable weakness no longer to . exercise as young men, and allow to become paralysed in the dis- sipations of their twentieth year, without any regard for their strength and the aesthetics of their plastic forms. Shooting also attracts Frenchmen, either with pistols or rifles ; for amidst the noise, notoriety, and boasting they remain compara- tively inert, and only use their eyes and fingers. It pleases them to hit the breast of a cardboard figure, and to fire a hundred cartridges amidst the crash of smashed dolls ; gunpowder flies to their head and excites them by its special intoxication ; they per- ceive some imaginary slaughter, which gives them a perfectly pre- tentious assurance ; moreover, when they quickly shut one eye, carefully aim and resolutely pull the trigger, there is some mathe- matical certainty of death in a short time, which, without the .smallest philosophical idea, amuses them, because they are over- grown children. However, the French have too much old Latin blood in their veins, and indolently hatch too many fancies in their brain to become physically regenerated by outdoor summer and winter sports, with all the impassioned logic, the ardent faith and fondness of ,.^JL^ tf, the English ; Frenchmen will never have the persevering tenacity, the innate taste of the true English sportsman, whose whoh- existence is only a reaction, and who work their body like ancient Spartans. Sport ^'^ in France will never be anything else but the desport of the Middle Ages ; a tem- porary pleasure, a physical curiosity, a ' .. , search after iiTegular sensations, a momen- tary recreation ; for the French really are too Athenian by nature, too talkative, too fond of extraordinary things, too incoherent, too much inclined to a want of balance to submit to the patient labour, the precise observation, the characteristic study, and the severe laws of the great regularised sports. Their newspapers do not devote ten columns to sporting intelhgence, to describe, in the interest of thousands of readers, the exploits of pedestrians, the brilliant performances of sportsmen, the heroic struggles of rowing men on the Seine or the Marne, and all the details of Sporting Life. They notice at most, and in a few lines, the paper-chases of the officers of the army, carrousel-riding so peculiarly French, the pretty "riband" races and other echoes of fashionable sporting rather belonging to the elegant amusements of countiy life than to professional sport, which, to speak the truth, does not greatly attract us. Each division of sport has in Paris its centre, its special estab- Hshment, its club, its school, its regulations and its statutes, but THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. ^-•vv,. even if eveiy theory were taught there, and every practical science could he acquired, it is quite clear that sport in France is only an exception, and prohably will never become acclimatised. What, above all, charms the French in sports, is not so much their precision, or the physical benefits derived from them, but rather the showing off, the vivacity, the dash, and daring ; they the sooner give themselves , .;•..;, up to them the more they allow them to exhibit themselves in public ; for, in the circus of their vanities, they like to jump through hoops, to do the amiable, and to receive a flattering applause, which stimulates and rewards their efforts and emulation. On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that physical exer- cise and violent and permanent SPORTS. training is detrimental to the intellect ; sport ought only to be a mere derivative, otherwise it absorbs all the grey matter of our brain. If we have not to choose between spiritual and physical culture, we ought at least to grant priority to one of them. Life is so lamentably limited that we should merely be allowed to hyper- trophiate by excessive practice some muscles of the body, or only one brain-cell. — A fencer will not box, for it might damage his delicate skill ; a horsey man will only go boating to amuse him- self; a tennis-player will take care not to handle heavy weights, so as not to spoil his agility ; and a wrestler will only devote to the ladies his spare time. Whatever we may do, our vital essence has only one issue ; we may waste it away in idle dreams, in artistic expression, in our being haunted by one idea, or in physical fatigue, we shall never succeed in spending it gloriously or nobly Avithout our employing it for a special purpose. — We must exclusively become wedded to one passion, whether it be as Centaurs for a horse, as Tritons for the sea, or become engulfed by the mysteries of thought ; the gifted modern man, who prefers to be some one instead of remaining somebody or something, must obey this law which requires us to follow one occupation in preference to any other. There are, however, some summer sports or inde- pendent semi - sports which do not ex- clude the idyllic muse, the songs of rêverie, the reading of Horace or Theo- critus : these are THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. fishing and shooting, carnivorous pleasures which we can still poetise, for a love for the chase is only a remnant of the primi- tive state of our savage barbarism, and before it became a recrea- tion, the chase was an absolute necessity for man, compelled to provide his food. Grimm is certainly too much of a pessimist when he states that there is no pleasure less worthy of a thinking being than the chase, for the majority of our brave Nimrods only go shooting to exercise their physical strength and their legs. "The most prosaic shot," says George Sand, that literaiy Eosa Bonheur of rustic life, "the most shallow-brained sportsman, feels a particular charm amidst the mystery of the woods, and the absolute independence of his movements, fancies, and stoppages ; it is his art and his poetry ; " and, in fact, though the chase may be considered cruel by a morose philosopher, it procures to man an amusement at once healthy, noble, allowable, and moral, through the complete solitude surrounding him, the constant and compulsory study of nature, the various faculties which it exer- cises, and also, ridiculous as it may ap- pear, through beholding suddenly taken a life too slowly bestowed. There exists no sportsman, however coarse and hardened he may be, who has not experienced some peculiar sensa- tion on perceiving and touching his delicate victims, still breathing _and lukewarm, so abruptly sur- prised in their pretty gam- bols. Most of them have felt this silent emotion, which 1 06 ^:^: 51- made Bonfflers, himself a sportsman, write this pretty note to Madame de Sabran : — "I am a barbarian, my dear ; I have just been shooting some little birds ; with one shot I killed two charming turtle-doves. They were on the same tree, looking at each other, speaking to each other, kissing each other, only thinking of love, and death struck them between their gentle ejes. They fell ~ together motionless and without life, their heads bent with a certain sad and touchins: chann which would make one almost believe they still love after death, them I envied them ; they did not AVhilst pitying i^^J^- did not kill them ; their end in coolness ; their poor [^^^ilutter perhaps, and caress the air; ... all this pro- reflection." There arc few sports- grief suflfer ; love did not little souls still one another in vides food for men in lov( who have not thought such a letter, if they did not write one, for when out shooting, emotion, tenderness, pity, a vaguely pathetic philosophy, form part of their moral outfit. A sportsman delights in these disturbing sensations, for he is more agitated than when gambling, his heart beats stronger in a less vile combat ; he feels the vanity of his useless slaughter, but also the strange intoxication of murder, an intense excitement which thoroughly stirs him up, and suggests to him transcendental and impressive soliloquies like those of Shakespeare's heroes. Moreover, there is no shooting without a dog, this active, de- devoted, and faithful animal, this so profoundly honest companion, this unique, sincere friend of man, who watches the departure of sportsmen with such antics of saucy merriment, and THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. such expressive and friendly wagging of his tail ! — the dog, always lively, caressing, attentive to our slightest gestures, familiar with our disposition and habits — the dog, the soul of the chase, who knows how to guide us, either in the plain or the forest, to interest us, to enliven us, to instil in us such a community of inclinations that we almost converse with him ; he guides us with his unwaver- ing scent, his cleverness and cunning ; he excites us, encourages us, and keeps our attention on the watch, for he is so impetuous, nimble, and indefatigable that he drives away our indolence, and does not give us time to ascertain our fatigue. — Shooting is a highly intense, enticing, and perfect pleasure ; it excites in us a thousand opposite sentiments, very varied and absorbing ; it trains and strengthens us by our walking in the open air amidst all weathers and on every soil ; it accustoms us to the use of arms, and makes us strong and skilful. Shooting, enjoyed by all kinds of Frenchmen, during autumn, has made such headway, that soon, with the help of poachers, there will be more guns than Fishing is, to say the truth, a less noble sport, suitable to a contemplative, dreamy, sly man, who, if he uses a rod, is generally egotistical, fanciful, and fussy ; he practises his hobby in a bureau- cratical, methodical, and usually paltry way ; he is naturally patient, without possessing the virtue of patience which belongs to the impatient ; he •»>«^.'- .1 looks for shade and solitude, and affects to be disagree- able and quarrelsome when some one disturbs him in his *,1t^' little, slow, cautious, and trifling operations. A man witli -vi|f^ a rod is seldom lively, but remains as' dumb as the fish he is looking for. Fishing is a sport for people with a " corporation." Among the sports most suited to the genius of the French race, fencing, which our ancestors called the " noble science," is foremost, because it is traditional, and shows off bravery. Fencing masters in France are as highly valued as the trainers of gladiators were among the Romans. Fencing is practised everywhere, in Paris as well as in the provinces, among civilians and army men ; and though only part of the body is exercised, it makes them cany themselves well, and ] renders them elegant and supple. The French school of fencing 1 is superior to any other through its logical method, its clear- ness, and its synthetical spirit. Jean Louis' system, which, since the beginning of the Restoration, has renewed so success- ' fully the teaching of fencing, produces the best fencers in the world, and, at present, the French fencing schools are very pros- perous, thanks to the high spirits of our contemporaries, who have happily not lost their frantic passion for the noble art of fencing, nor the taste for those brilliant encounters which still remain as the last vestiges of ancient tournaments. Fencing, long practised, in making us conscious of our force, does not urge us to fight duels, or to provoke people thoughtlessly ; on the contrary, it strengthens our coolness and moderation amidst sudden altercations, for we can deliberately ascertain the vanity of futile encounters, and, entrenched in our knowledge of the art, ^ weigh Avisely the value of human without cowardice a duel on ^j> ; — * - life, and thus refuse >c.,i^'^ insufficient grounds. i^XÏÏ 109 Among the sports of modern creation, the bicycle and tricyle become every day more general. The English take again, in this respect, the lead, for we do not see in France, as in the neighbour- hood of London, clubs of cyclists on the move, forming on the high road a line more than a mile long of several hundred people of both sexes. The bicycle and tricycle familiarise us with the laws of physical equilibrium, they actively exercise our crural triceps, and procure to their worshippers fleeting sensations which almost seem like dreams. Cycling, which every day becomes more perfect, may be reckoned among the sports of the future, and its practical interest is so obvious, either for pleasure trips or travelling, that Ave can well imagine that the next century will behold the omnipotence of this brilliant sport. Eowing and boating are delicious open-air sports, but their adepts must practise them very exclusively, and be passionately fond of them. If a man wishes to practise them as ardently as Oxford or Cambridge men do, he must allow himself to be dieted according to strict rules, for every excess is forbidden, under penalty of dismissal ; he must submit or abdicate, if he wishes to preserve his strength, elasticity, breath, and remain a boating-man, in the noblest acceptation of the word. English oarsmen are, with regard to this, the first in the world. Rowing clubs and sailing clubs are very numerous in England. The French or Belgian boating-man is somewhat of a roysterer. SPORTS. He does not practise his favourite sport in silence, with the con- viction and fervour of his Koilhern brethren ; lie likes to be meny whilst rowing on the Seine or the Meuse, and even to "chaff" the natives ; he stops at small inns, lands at some aits to gambol under the willows, is delighted when he can smell the frying of fish or omelets, and willingly sits down in an arbour to digest his food, or to give vent to merry songs and to be noisy. — As for the yachting-man, he is a correct and immensely wealthy gentleman, who likes to air his weariness in a moving prison, in which he only acts as honorary captain. He commands a cook, several ser- vants, and a small crew engaged by the year. He comes on board with joy, and leaves it disgusted and sad ; hence there are so few men in France who keep their yacht for several years without letting it out to some other millionaire in search of fashionable pleasure, who will try yachting just long enough to find out how dull and useless it is. The most exquisite and most charming sport, that which suits best oui- spirit of strife and indo- lence, and perhaps a dreamer too. is swimming in the open sea. The rocking of the waves produces in us a profound intoxica- tion, a disturbing de- light, an amphibious ^ '• THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. comfort which only those powerful Tritons can understand who swim a good distance, far from the crowds on shore, or from the petty bathers who bob about the buoy, and chatter like magpies. — To swim a certain distance through waves fringed with silver, and to be rocked by them, to rest on this thick and soft couch whilst gazing blissfully at the infinity of the Heavens, to be dreaming amidst this immensity and to have the sensation of feeling one's body renovated by these comforting waters, which arc somewhat like the fountain of Jouvence, is really to live and to enjoy one's strength ; it is to glide in a new world ; it is, in short, to move without feeling the weight of one's carnal humanity. f mm THE TABLE "The pleasures of the table are special to the human race." — Beili^t-Savarin. " An artist, a scientist, a poet are born, and so is a gourmand." — Gcr de Maupassaxt. ACCORDING to the opinion of the leaders of gastronomy the alimentaiy art presents a field of great extent, of which the horizon incessantly retreats before every man who makes it an object of serious study and profound meditation. The Classics of the Table tell us that this art, which includes the three kingdoms of Nature, the four quarters of the globe, all moral con- siderations, all social relations, this art, in short, with which every- thing is more or less directly and closely connected, only appears superficial to inferior minds, who see in a kitchen nothing but stewpans, and in a dinner naught but dishes This gastronomic art, of which Alexandre Dumas, Rossini, Baron Brisse, and Monselet are the last representatives, seems somewhat neglected in the latter part of this century ; the Parisians "5 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. appear to place little value on nutritive invitations ; a real gour- mand becomes rare ; every one only cares for his own stomach, and weighs his food ; therapeutics are in a fair way completely to destroy gastronomy. In Germany, England, and, above all, in Belgium, and in the provinces of France, there is always plenty on the table, and the eating is so Rabolaisean that Gargantua would have rejoiced on beholding such copious feasts. In the provinces a dinner-party is considered an affair of State ; people busy them- selves about it two months beforehand, and the memc is so well arranged that it takes six weeks at least to digest it. But the busy Parisian, always in a state of agitation, can neither give the same time to his meal nor the same latitude to his diges- tion ; he cannot gorge as a snake, or spend many hours of torpor after his food. The Parisian is as sober as a Turk ; he becomes delicate and likes dainties, wants his coffee to be well made, the entre-mets to melt in the mouth, and the liqueurs to be choice; but he avoids gluttony, for he often knows by experience that tlie stomach i &gy our greatest enemy. ^^L ,1, Moreover, he is no epicure, and prefers, when at table, the agreeable pleasures of the mind to the sensation of refined eating. Gastronomy has, however, been lauded in everj^ possible way. Monselet says: "It delights people of every rank and age. It bestows beauty and intellect, it sprinkles golden sparks on the humid azure of our eyes, it gives to our lips a bright coral colour, it pushes our hair back, makes oui" nostrils quiver intelligently, and, above all. develops in us urbanity and politeness. " Attacking eveiy sense at once, gastronomy contains all poetry — the poetry of sound and colour, of taste and smell, the sovereign poetry of touch. It is sweet with the wood-strawberries, the grapes from the vines, the enticing chenies, the velvety peaches, and powerful with the startled deer and the dazzling pheasants ; it ranges from the most unbridled materialism to the most exquisite spiritualism, from Pontoise to Malaga, from Beaune to Johannisberg ; it loves the blood of the leverets and the racy gold, the gold poured out from flasks of Sauterne." A history of gastronomy would be somewhat like one of Love, a history of humanity, for in the Golden Book of celebrated epicures are to be found the most extraordinary names : Sardanapalus, Helio- gabalus, LucuUus, Cleopatra, Petronius, Tiberius, Belshassar, Aua- creon, Apicius, Vitellius, Martin Luther, the Emperor Julian, St. Gregory, Plutarch, the Emperor Geta, Maecenas, Pope Sergius IV. ; Hippocrates, who prescribed indigestion instead of purgatives ; Xenophon, the legislator of banquets ; Cato, Louis the Fat, Francis I., Henri IV. and Louis XIV., Philip of Orleans, the Marshal de 117 ^ï-^^iil^'^^M.^ irniini^fi^iini^ Richelieu, the inventor of the mayon- naise ; the fermiers-généraux Bouret and La Popelinière ; the English King Henry VIII. ; the Marshal of Saxe, the Duke of York, Madame de Pompadour, Grimod de la Reynière ; Campistron, who died of indigestion; Crébillon^/s, who swallowed a hundred dozen oysters ; Peter the Great ; Danton, Cambacérès, Antonin Carême ; Berchoux, the author of La Gastronomic ; La Mettrie, the Abbé de Lattaignant,- Piron, Brillat-Savarin, Panard, Fréron, Fontenelle, Mirabeau, Lord Sefton, Doctor Véron, the publisher Ladvocat, Ducray- Duminil, Henri Heine ; Papin, the in- ventor of the "digester;" Capefigue, Ilemi MonMier, Eugène Sue ; without THE TABLE. counting Cadmus, a cook and a king, Esop, a cook, and Vatcl, the unfortunate victim of his art and punctuality. — And this list is far from complete. Gastronomy can become an absorbing passion, excelling all other sensations, and Grimod de la Eeynière relates in his Almanacks des Gourmands that a disciple of Apicius one day bethought him- self of establishing a comparison between women and good cheer. " Let us first lay down our principle," he said ; " you will admit that the pleasures of the table are the soonest acquired, the latest left off, and most often enjoyed. Now, can you say as much of other pleasures ? " However handsome you may think a woman, even if she were a Mademoiselle Georges or a Madame Recamier, is she worth these admirable partridges of Cahors, Languedoc, or the Cevennes of '■^^'^Î%'i4;^>i^p^^ which the divine odour is better than all the perfumes of Ai'abia? Would you draw a parallel between her and these 2'>àtés de foie gras or de canards to which Strasburg, Toulouse, and Auch owe the best part of their reputation"? What is she compared to the stufied tougues of Troyes, the Lyon's mcn'tadella, the Paris brawn, or the sausages fi-om Aries or Bologna, which have procured so much glory to the pig? Can you place her pretty little painted and grinning face by the side of these admirable sheep of the Vosges or the Ardennes, which melt in the mouth, and are delect- 119 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. able to munch ? — What gourmand is depraved enough to prefer a lean and wretched fair girl to those enormous and juicy sirloins from the Limagne or the Cotentin, which inundate the carver, and delight those who eat them ? — Incomparable roasts ! it is from your vast sides, the source of all vital principles and real sensations, that the gourmand derives his existence, the musician his talent, and the poet his creative genius. What connection can be established between a smart, irregular featured face and those fowls from Bresse, those capons from Mans, those young cocks from Caux, of which the delicacy, beauty, juiciness, and rotundity excite all the senses at the same time, and marvellously titillate the sensitive nerves of eveiy delicate palate?" Thus this paradoxical gourmand, with his rather vulgar appetite, makes defile before us all the alimen- tary riches of France and foreign countries to arrive at the conclusion that the enjoyments of the table must be placed by a wealthy epicure in the foremost rank, and that they last much longer than those enjoyed by infringing the Seventh Commandment ; that they cause neither languor, disgust, fear, nor remorse ; that their source can be incessantly renewed without ever being exhausted ; that instead of enervating the temperament or weakening the brain, they become the happy principle of good health, brilliant ideas, and vigorous sensations. What can we think of this fantastic who has made of gastronomy his sole passion and the ideal of a busy life ? Instead of causing 120 gluttQ, THE TABLE. regret, of predisposing to hypochondria, and ending by making a man unbearable to himself and eveiybody else, we owe to it, he says, a cheerful face, the distinctive mark of all followers of Comus, so different from the pale and wan visage, the ordinary characteristic of bashful lovers. A gourmand is indeed often a misogynist and egotistical. Inviting himself to his own table, as Lucullus did, he voluptuously enjoys the dishes served up ; we feel he is absorbed in " masticating and tasting, talking inwardly to himself about the qualities of his food ; indifferent to externals, sometimes . _ent over his plate, sometimes leaning backwards, a smile p.^J 1 ^ on his sensuous lips, his eyes sparkling, he is monstrously /< T%appy in his voluntaiy solitude. A fjourmand always bears on his face the stamp of his egotistical sensuality ; whether he be a Chinese making tea, an Arab eating rice, an Italian sniffing macaroni, or an Englishman swallowing his pudding, ^ every lover of good cheer always has a peculiarly good-natured 'expression, but also an impress of some absorbing, innate, and ^^--interested personality, full of gastric subjectivity. " The ^ \ soul of a gourmand,'" says J. J. Eousseau, "'is wholly ',\ _.// in his palate ; he can do nothing but eat ; stupidly 3H^/j/y/l^^j,^■'^'încapable, his sole place is at table; he can only \fy/ Jk ^ ""^vjudge of dishes, and we'll leave him to do this." According to the dictionaiy of the French Aca- demy, gourmand, goulu, and glouton are synonymous words. All epicures protest against this definition, which does not seem to them exact, for the epi- thets " glutton " and " guzzler " should characterise intemperance and insatiable greediness. They 4* THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. argue that the word gourmand should bear in society a less unfavourable and much higher meaning, for a (joufmatid is not merely a being endowed by nature with an excellent stomach and a vast appetite — all strong and well-constituted men have this — but, on the contrary, he is often a man with a not veiy strong stomach, who possesses an exquisite taste, of which the first principle is a singularly delicate palate, matured by long experience. All the senses, they maintain, should be, in a gourmand, in constant har- mony Avith taste, for he must reason judiciously before bringing any morsel to his lips. Therefore his glance should be piercing, his hearing quick, his taste refined, and his tongue in good order. It would be an error to believe, they add, that this continual attention of a gourmand to all divisions of the alimentary art, towards which his sensations are exclusively directed, will make him materialistic and stupid ; more than any other man he can be amiable, and make his superiority be pardoned by sober men, usually envious. Eoubaud, in his Synonyms, is tempted to take the side of the gastronome, for he deigns to compare the gormau- diser, the guzzler, the glutton, and the gourma7id . He says: "A gourmand likes choice morsels, and is fond of good cheer. A gormandiser has such a tre- mendous appetite that he eats as much as he can, crams and gluts himself with everything, and swallows rather than eats. A guzzler only tears and swal- lows his food ; he does not chew, but gobbles it, bolts it, and stuifs himself. The glutton THE TABLE. '■-r' hurries to feed, makes a dis- r^f agreeable noise whilst eating, and is so voracious that he swal- lows one morsel after another until everj'thing has disap- peared ; one would say that he gulps them down." Other philologists distinguish again between a gourmand and an epicure, bestowing on the latter all the science and tact they refuse to the former. Quarrels also arise on all sides as to the choice of food ; some think, with Helvetius, in his book De V Esprit, that man is essentially a carnivorous animal ; others think, with J. J. Rousseau and Lamartine, that a man feeding on flesh is a depraved animal ; some are vegetarians, others water-drinkers, and generally people are agreed on this point, that man is omnivorous, and can choose his food in the animal as well as in the vegetable kingdom ; that everything that pleases him suits his organisa- tion, and that this happy faculty, a true gift of nature, is scarcely modified by the influence of climate, manners, and customs. Cabanis remarks that in countries where the poorer classes feed on coarse food, their intelligence is more dense, and all travellers agree that among savage tribes, whose manners have not become modified by political organisation, those whose principal food is flesh have more intelligence and activity than the tribes who only live on vegetables. Culinaiy art, already so delicate in the suppers and collations of the eighteenth century, rapidly moved towards its apogee when a constitutional government was established in France. Since 1815, after people had been weakened by twenty years troubles, wars, and conquests, they felt the necessity of acquiring a richer blood, and the Restoration merited its name in the opinion of all 123 ¥' :^ THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. those who affirm that great thoughts rise from the stomach. Gastronomy was then in its full glory, and a gourmand sauntering through Paris could rest at some remarkable restaurants — such as Very, the Frères pro- ^' rençaiix, the Café anglais, the Café Corazza, Yefour, Carchi, the Rocher de Cancale, the Bœuf h la Mode, Bignon, Le Doyen (then on the Place Louis XV.), Magny, the Quatre Sergents de la Rochelle, and a score more who well deserved their celebrity amidst a popula- tion of refined epicures, of which the type is gradually disappearing. When sometimes we stray in one of those old solitary restaurants of the Palais Royal we feel the solemnity of these ancient feasts ; we imagine that the souls of former epicures still haunt these quiet rooms, wainscoted with white and gold panels, with their dwarf-curtains, and their mahogany furniture inlaid in the Dutch fashion. Everything there is grave, pompous, cere- monious, and imposing, from the majestic barmaid with her ancient and handsome hair flat in bands who solemnly rings a bell, to the head-waiters and cellarmen so dignified in the exercise of their functions. — Nothing seems more cold, sad, and dull to us moderns, swallowing our meals as quickly as possible at the usual bars, amidst the hurry of our busy life ; but the provincials, who often come to Paris to feast, crowd in family parties those well-known houses of good repute, so respectable that people whisper there rather than talk loud, amidst a silence drizzling with sadness and the rankness of the past. 124 m These ancient Parisian restaurants, built and furnished for a slow and toothsome mastication, the worship of good cheer, the quiet labour of digestion, demonstrate to us merely by looking at them, better than all speeches, the singular revolu- tion produced in our manners during half a century. Evi- dently the pleasures of the table have undergone a change ; people do not enjoy them more as placidly, carefully, and silently; we care less for what we eat, and we discuss with more indifference the theory of culinary preparations ; we no longer pretend, as was done half a century ago, that cookery, as well as the drama, should obey the rules of Aristotle, and that a gourmand should only spend the day in eating one 'J, long meal, which ought to have an opening, a plot, and ^afding, and be divided in three supreme acts — breakfast, ;.'■ dinner, and supper. Only in the old French provinces is the Aristotlean rule still put into practice, and three meals occupy all the sesthetics of the day. During the early part of this century good cheer was gi'eatly liked, and the culinary art was really worshipped ; people break- fasted as if they were not going to dine, and dined as if they had had no breakfast ; the table was the prime motor of the vast mechanism of business ; politics, literature, gallantry, and commerce needed its assistance, — no nominations, promotions, business, love-affairs without eating ; the Amphitryons and Alcmenas were never more feasted or honoured, the magistrates distinguished themselves by their gulosity, and more than one minister became popular through being a gourmand. — White-meat and dark-meat dinners were invented, the latter composed of gravy and hare soups, brown stews, 125 mince-meat, hotch-potch, and a hun- dred other dishes ; the first scienti- fically arranged of Béchamels, forced meat - balls, stewed fowls, minced cucumbers, raised pies, poultry stuffed with cock's-combs, and many other dainty dishes slowly planned, which conciliated the appetite of the epicures of the classical and modern schools, according to the gastronomic saying, " Before everything hunger has to be considered." The prerogatives of a host were then settled by rules which made him the monarch of the table ; his duties were complicated ; he had to carve and appor- 'S^^ tion the principal dishes, strictly prac- ^{^0\ *^^^ ^^^ \?i^vs of hospitality, attend, as a good family man, to the comfort of the stomachs intrusted to his care ; above all, reassure the timid, encourage the modest, and jovially challenge the strong. He had to keep order at table, never to allow a plate or a glass to be full or 5*/^ empty, never to risk a doubtful word, to endeavour to bring out the intellect and erriment of his guests, and to take care place his guests beforehand accord- their different charac- ters. He alone had to propose toasts, and ^CvA -'S' every one was then M. ^^it:^ ~'\ THE TABLE. X^ ^v --v obliged to empty his glass. To the many codes then ^~^ ): governing France was added the Code gourmand, based I Q~ ^;{ / on the idea that Gastronomy ruled the world, was \ »; '^ friendly to aristocracies and republics, supported con- J stitutional states, and amidst the successive upheavals of civilisation, had so greatly increased its power, that it was urgent to settle the attributes of this cosmopolitan ruler by a fixed and immovable code. Its first meditation was : "Man is a sublime still. — In short, all sensations, actions, passions, imagination, in the admirable mechanism called a body, have only one aim — digestion ! " " Brillat-Savarin has resolutely justified gastronomy," writes Balzac, "but perhaps he has not sufiiciently insisted on the pleasure man feels when eating; — digestion, whilst employing all human forces, constitutes an inward battle, which, amongst epicures, is equal to the highest enjoyments of love ; we feel our vital capacities so largely developed that the brain is annihi- lated to the advantage of the second brain placed in the dia- phragm, and we become intoxicated by the inertness of all our faculties." There are still in Paris a good many gourmands who can analyse on themselves this observation of Balzac ; but certainly epicures become rarer, the taste and science of cookery disappear before the invading progress of chemistry, and also through a vague terror of the guests whom certain medical methods condemn to noble sobriety. People do no longer venture to taste freely of every dish ; they take care, fear to spoil their digestion, and lay their stomach somewhat under an interdict. — The Physiologie du Goût is neglected, and if things go on as they do, thanks to the 127 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. quackery of physicians smitten with fashionable theories, thanks to all kinds of falsification, and also to the ever-increasing manu- facture of universal remedies, it will not be astonishing if some clever literary man — if there remain any in the twentieth cen- tury — publishes the book which will attract all his contemporaries, namely, Tlie Physiology of Disgust : Meditations of Transcendental Indigestion, a theoretical, historical, and quite modern work, dedicated to the finical Parisian dyspeptics. "v^^-t^" 128 ■Mi :5v i. %;. ^^5 #r THE REVERIE. "Thought is the labour of intelligence, the Rêverie is its voluptuousness."— Victor Hcgo. SAINT FRANCOIS DE SALES, speaking of rêveries and visions, justly observes that women in general are more inclined than men to ecstasies of the brain: "The facile and tender imagination of girls," he says, " renders them suscep- tible of illusions. That is why their sex is more inclined to believe in dreams, to fear sin, and to be deceived by superstitions. They often think that they see what they do not see, hear what they do not hear, feel what they do not feel. It is possible that the evil spirit contributes to these illusions, but I am inclined to believe that he allows the imagination to act, and only aids it by mere suggestions." " It cannot be doubted," as ChaiTon wrote in his book On Wisdom, " that the imagination of women often needs more a guide 131 .* than a spur, and that it is a disobedient child to be held in leading-strings, for fear it should stumble. " — The imagination of a man is much more clog- ged; it only gambols when he is alone, in repose, during a rêverie near the fire, or between the halts of his busy life ; it opens to his mind, fatigued by its limited occupations, the brilliant and infinite domain of fancy, and impresses on the brain the invisible and the impenetrable, though they do not always tyrannise over it. — In each of us, as Sainte-Beuve observes, is to be found " that lame alliance of an exalted ideal and of positive and humdrum common sense ; with many it is only a question of age ; " we go to sleep a Don Quixote, and we awake a Sancho Panza. Our mind, like a balloon, after having foolishly hovered in the air, driven about by a cyclone of the most extravagant thoughts, comes down heavy, soiled, and limp, feeling all the weight of its rationalistic and human ballast. But for women, rendered more passive by social conventiona- lities, whose mind nature and education have less firmly balanced, for whom love is the whole of life, and who, feeling that they are slaves as daughters, wives, and mothers, are only the more anxious for liberty ; for these Cinderellas, the housekeepers or the dolls of the egotistical and busy providers of the family, a rêverie is the safety-valve, the magic key which admits to the Edens and Eldorados 132 THE RÊVERIE. which they delight to inhabit, and deck with their sensations, sentiments, and their sensitiveness too often repelled. The prison in which their soul languishes is draped with rêveries, and thinking itself free, it takes a prodigious and inordinate leap. Then the soul flies to dreamland, to a mysterious world filled with strange gleams and voices, to those warm countries whence it seems exiled, where it thaws before its worshipped ideal, to become animated amidst intangible sylphs, charmed by words so sweetly murmured in a divine and harmonious lan- guage ; there it lingers, reigns, soars, and becomes transformed amidst a luminous passion which subtilises its sensibility and slowly intoxicates it. On ^ leaving this provoking somnam- THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. bulism, reality, therefore, startles women, and the compulsory return of the erratic soul puts on the face of so many of them a deep impress of melancholy, like some sad lines of Paradise Lost. Everything is to a woman an excuse for rêverie; the book she has looked at, which brought her mind into contact with a suggestive idea, made her start for the ideal ; the visit she has just received, an unknown perceived the day before, a print looked at carelessly, the flickering flame of the hearth by which she warms A, her little feet, the sight of a delicate flower, the sound of a word frankly spoken ; everything she looks at, touches, smells, throws her into a state of gentle, dreamy catalepsy, of which she has never enough. In spite of her undoubted virtue, her imagination always complying with her inclinations, indulges her in more momentary caprices, love-affairs, y^'- and audacious desires than the most impudent females ever really felt. Such a woman, whom the slightest suspicion never has touched, and who is rightly con- sidered a most respectable Avife and mother, who always obeyed every conventional law and never failed to do her duty, might, in some distant '/ êverie, wholly and unreservedly abandon herself to a man who, for one moment, she deigned to enrich with her love, who never even suspected it, and therefore could not even be foolish enough to boast of it. Bossuet says rightly: ''Rêverie is the continuation , of a sensation, and the mind of ^' woman so quickly becomes £?^J0^ emotional, and runs to ex- ^}^; |/-^ tremes that her sensations, ' every moment excited, act 134 wonderful iatçnsity on the >^ centre of her larain." — Excès- . \- -j • /,_;;^^^;j )_- sîvely intuitive, she loves to guess '^-\.^''*^'Wy^'U--^' nciKH find find out the most hidden impressions, -^C vt'!^^'. for she is a Sphinx and an Œdipus at the ^ rl^T /< ' v ^ . . . . -"^f %v%-^^<- ' same time, hides mysteries and violates senti- ' /\!f^vi|f J ments ; and her rêverie only ceases to soar in the ^ ':\ Km d to <3) K? r\ i<^-àmaginary infinite vphen she divines there is a min ^ ilnlock. She is still dreaming when she wanders in the hidden recesses of a melancholic nature wrapped in ^ some unknown grief which tempts her. — When a woman ( ^s unmarried she languishes, thinking of her future afiec- tions ; she creates an ideal being to whom she will some day unite her fate ; she brings into her craving for love the already disturbing poison of her restlessness ; she learns to eel but not yet to think. When she becomes a wife her dreams, like rose-bushes of faded illusions, feel the thorns qf jealous thoughts, or are torn by the contrast with jè^lities. "When finally she is about to become a mother, her sublime dreams are alleviated by future xpectations, by the thought of so much joy and transubstantiated tenderness. — Rêverie is always n the alert in her: "Look at this bird on a ^')branch," writes La Mettrie in his Homme- Machine, " it seems ever ready to fly w^ ''a;\yay; imagination is likewise always rried away by the impetus of ç-.a/k) jblood and mind . . . a tn K >''- V ig' e of time incessantly destroyed and renewed. — Our ideas follow and chase one another as if they were waves . . . and if we do not steady our brain, fix it for some time on some fleeting object, and prevent it from straying on another which we ought not yet to contemplate, it will never be worthy of being called judgment." But rêverie needs no argument, logic, or rectitude ; it volatilises itself in ^ vague and translucid forms in a golden fairy light ; it holds our life in suspense under its exquisite and '^^ - unreal charm ; it dulls our intellect, lulls our feelings, and, above all, sends to sleep our reasoning. It carries us far away into countries without a name, M'here our loosened souls freely hover like those angels' heads with wings always beheld in the transfigurations of depicted Christian art ; it makes us soar in a world of odoriferous flowers, ofi'ering us their corollas to be kissed ; it gives us theurgical sensations, and lets 136 US taste OljTDpian ambrosia. Thanks to it, we are present at feasts as sacred as ancient Lectistemiums, when the images of the Gods were placed on couches, for our minds are so slightly subtilised in the radiant harmony of unknown things, that our bodies become like those statues of marble, and only represent all that is divine in them, bathed and purified in the depths of our soul. Then, if love beatifies us side by side, in the same tenderness, our united rêveries mount upwards in the infinite as a prayer of two voices — a praj'er of grateful intoxication to the grand All surround- ing us, a blessed prayer hovering over nature in love, over the sea, that infinite enchantress always murmuring or sighing, over these mysterious woods ; a prayer rising from the blade of grass to the mountain, and from the mountain to the joyful sun. — At this hour, when two souls are united in a pilgrimage towards a happiness lasting longer than for ever, when the lips are no longer glued together, but open wide before the abyss of eternity, when two hands unclasp as if tired of this finite expression, at this dis- turbing moment when two lovers, uneasy at feeling so soon the limits of restrained human caresses, endeavour to break the circle 137 a THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. of the impossible to attain a iiioie perfect union, their rêverie springs from their very powerlessness, and seems to wish to take from the stars an immutable light, to symbolise the immutable voluptuousness which pervades them. — But it is, above all, in \\\\ country air that these divine rêveries carry us beyond ourselves, in the purity of the light suiTounding us, for light (as that pre- J^j tended sceptic Voltaire wrote) is, of all creations or of all Avays of the great Creator, that which gives us the most extended idea of divinity, though it does not represent it by far. " Light is really a rapid messenger, running in the universe from one world to another," he writes ; " it has some properties of matter and ^uperior properties ; and if something can give us a feeble, ele- mentary idea, an imperfect notion of God, it is light ; it is and acts everywhere as He exists and acts." In isolating and isolated nature, our rêveries, when swathed in this very light, take characteristics infinitely more penetrating, philosophical, and healthy, for the coun- try, and, above all, the sea, give to our delighted eyes all the power of the infinite they reflect. — When in the fields, we are lying on the grass, our mind flies towards a plurality of worlds, or otherwise becomes involved in the contemplation of an ant-hill, a gigantic Babylon, where a whole nation scrambles to get work ; again it fol- lows the irregular flight of nimble, many - coloured buttei-flies, or allows itself to be charmed by the melancholic and monotonous cooing of doves, those companions of Venus. The sea, on the contrary, does not only give 138 us a discoiu'àa^- inar feelin? c immense ses us with an incom mensurable purity with which it saturates us. We §eerrrto see before us, in the transparent sea-green of this virgia rr^ water, in this pure and endless sky swept by tlie breeze, in this vivifying and healthy air, the pictujj^f an earthly pur gatory, cleansing, purifying, and transforming all human ^ pollutions. The eyes become clear and bright on behold- ing the immense ; the soul is cleansed, so to say, and con- soled and hopeful ; it is a general remedy for our morals, an abstergent for our body ; our dreams soar over the sea, as white gulls crying pitifully, and now and then dipping their wings into the azure waves, which carry them for a moment, and rock them on their crests ; these dreams have, at the same time, the undulations, the phos- phorescence, the caprices, the rebellions, and the becalming of Pelagian abysses. "^ "" In our rooms, the causality of our dreams changes with the various sensations of the home ; the brain more fagged, disturbed, congested by the unhealthy air of voluntary seclusion, urges us more and more into the domain of strange and imaginative para- doxes. Heading, talking, ideas about art investigated as far as the horrible and the beautiful, a curious search after • everything eccentric, odd, abnormal, fantastic, -s^ '^ „ and extravagant, lead us to dream in a disturbing, ^^gc^^fanciful, indescribable, but unheard of manner. ^/, We search for extr ra\^ ordinary incarnations -r^' v.- '' / tries, amidst unknown trees and ^''*\"^£^ ^'^' flowers ; we sail there, in delicious fabulous conn- ^*=^ ^■•' / idleness, on silvery rivers, seated in boats of ^ .' ivory, gold, and mother-of-pearl, which we care- i^f' /' {"'-^^'^ ' lessly steer with the feather of a gigantic bird. Our VS>" dreamy fancy also carries us to some undefined countries of India, where we are pleased to make the laws and regulate the architecture, landscape, climate, and atmos- phere, in opposition to all received ideas. We behold there a dull silvery sky, pale and immovable, lit up by an adamantine sun, brilliant as a jewel in a perennial V, firmament of elegantly cut rose-diamonds, whilst at , ^ dawn a moon of a dullish turquoise colour rises on a horizon of pale copper wholly con- stellated with carbuncles, emeralds, opals, rubies, cats'-eyes, topazes garnets, and .^«âjii 140 amethysts. We order there a red and blue vegetation, striped with gold, trunks of trees of amaranth, brown and violet v /' coloui", majolica palaces festooned with many-coloured \ and odoriferous silks ; and birds of all kinds with jade, \ onyx, or sardonyx eyes, and with red, tawny, or green bronzen paws, crowding and moving about as living objects of art. We alone in this country, young, beautiful, always in love, rule over a nation of women of every race and colour, of every style of beauty, of every freak of nature, of all kind of manners and character. — Our dream continues, and we are haunted by a fixed idea which finally creates artificiality. Lying on our Eastern couch, amidst this Chinese and Japanese art which gave birth •^neô the gi'eatest dreamers any generation and people have perhaps ever produced, we languidly pass many hours amidst our fancies. It seems to us that when we leave our ' palace we are can-ied in a palanquin on the shoulders of^ ' charming female slaves ; and whilst we imagine that / \ a singular, primitive, and enchanting music precedes ,' , our retinue, our mind's eye, delighted and dilated -""' ::^^^ lis fanciful fairy-show, beholds a panorapia which porcelain domes vie in splendour with minarets of basalt and bell-towers blood -red jasper - "s^either Golconda, //// 141 ,^. Bagdad, Heliopolis, nor Visapour equal in,-;^ beauty, "vvealth, and stately splendour our royal domain, for we have endowed it with all the precious stones, the magnificence, the pdmp, and also with all the supei-fluities and elegance of our artistic and extravagant ideas. — Rêverie gives us what real life cannot give us ; it makes of our mind a magnifying and deceiving mirror reflecting every image we evoke ; it knows how to delude our desires and feed our illusions ; it starts rustling as a dragon-fly and fills our mind with the metallic noise of its flight ; it wanders about and strays on various objects, but never settles. It rises up in happiness as well as in misfor- tune, but art alone captivates it and gives it an exquisite shape ; generally music, poetry, or rhythmical prose start it. It knows how to paraphrase a sonata, a motet, or a nocturne on the interminable key-board at its disposal for variations, and the most trifling song becomes, thanks to it, changed into a dithyrambical hymn ; it carries within itself gold and diamond dust with which it covers anything dull ; it poetises sesthetical thoughts, interprets the symbol of flowers, and deliciously develops the occult language of per- fumes. "Little is needed," says Montaigne, "to stir iup our soul ; an intangible rêverie sways it and agitates it." Rêverie induces in us a physical coma •through the torpor of its exquisite semi-somno- ![^S6-^' lence ; it always arises from a slight congestion of the brain ; it brings the sword out of its sheath, and the body feels those perpetual and distant peregi'inations of the wandering mind. However foolish it may be to cradle our dreams and thoughts 142 Î THE RÊVERIE. in a wandering and mystical soul, we will never consent to proscribe this grand consoler, nor .^, to lay on our wings burdens approved of by '^'■^ reason. — A mixed folly, not noisy and not hurting anybody, may be one of the forms of oui- happiness, if we are at peace with our- selves ; for eveiything is only madness here below, -with this difference, that the commonalty does not wish to look at general madness and does not consent to recognise particular cases ; — madness is to be mad in any other way than the demented united in society. <^'f JRevene is our mind taking wing ; it is a big window, through which we look on the in- finite ; we should often peep out there, for it is morally healthy, but take care not to be allured by the abyss, and become dizzy ; we should also try to r harmonise and balance conception and execution, apparently two inseparable sisters, but in reality temble rivals in art. The first, always wandering, invites man, as the Sirens did, to come in her azure gi-otto, and seduces us Circe like ; the second, a laborious Cinderella, often awaits in vain by the fire the aid of her elder sister, without which she can do nothinf^ — Both call for each other despairingly, but conception is flighty, and does not come back to enslave the active powers of her younger sister, so that Cinderella has to run after the inconstant enchantress to delay her for a moment. — To discipline both bv submitting the former to the despotic power of the latter, to lead back conception into the chains of execution, to hold them both in moral tutelage, is the masterpiece of life; for it is to employ the rêverie as the motive power of intellectual production, 143 THE MIRROR OF THE \VORLD. and to concenti'ate it in the accumulator of our will, to use it at leisure, and as we inwardly wish it. Kant says : " The more the conceptions of our mind are enlarged, the more we approach true happiness ; " — naturally he only spoke of the conceptions of our understanding, which in reality are only rêveries directed towards an eô'ective moral production. 144 ■«&'• COUNTRY. ^-o... ) i " A love for nature is the only love which does not deceive human expectations. Sooner or later an overwhelming sentiment of the permanency of nature fiUs our heart, stirs us deeply, and we end by our '' feeling uneasy about Providence." — Balz.\c. THE author of Les Paysans ^vrote perhaps a little too poten- tially : " I love a happy and quiet life in the countiy, where people are always kind, where great and powerful minds can continually exercise their faculties, where every day we dis- cover in the productions of nature reasons for admiring it ; and in real progress and real ameliorations an occupation worthy of man. I am aware," he added, " that great ideas engender gi-eat actions ; but as such ideas are very rare, I find that usually things are worth more than ideas. The man who makes a piece of land produce something, who improves his fi'uit trees, who makes grass grow on wretched soil, is much above those who hunt after formulas for humanity." Eural life is undoubtedly the happiest and most pleasant exist- ence for a human being void of ambition and purely contemplative, 147 . THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. who regulates his day according to the sun ; but a man who adores the country, without any other horizon than the country itself, must possess the artlessness of genius or the genius of simplicity, and not have a complex, unstable, and venturesome mind, perpetually thirsting after human psychology, and incessantly disturbed by the mystery of creation ; within him should not dwell a feverish spirit, only loving solitude amidst the hubbub of crowds ; above all, he ought not to be possessed by the demon of strife urging men to go in the midst of the current of ideas and passions. A lover of the country should have a limpid and transparent mind, worship his family, adore children and humble people, be openly and freely meny, and be simple-minded and indulgent ; thus he will draw near to Providence, as the Patriarchs did. Countiy-life makes us healthy, gives us new strength, and purifies our mind; it sweeps away all germs of disease, and forti- fies our virtue when despondent. It contracts, absorbs, and devours even our ideas ; it slackens the mainsprings of our existence, which soon become rusty. The habit of living in the country almost makes animals of us ; gradually bend over this soil from 148 which we expect so much, and before long are enve- loped by the wretched interests as well as bj' the low \and mean ideas surrounding us. Everything refined or ' artistic soon appears to us vain and superficial, and by degrees we neglect those studies or attainments for which we once thought we were created. Moreover, in the country we cannot have the same solitude as in town, where our ideas may be hidden, and our individuality rendered impervious ; in town solitude is within ourselves, it brings back our thoughts to us, restrains and narrows our desires and cares, and for ever makes us dwell in a congruous home. The country, on the contrary, makes us give up more of our time to rêveries, according to the state of the atmosphere, the shape of passing clouds, or the charms of the picturesque land- scape before us, for "nature," as Fontenelle says, "has the mar- vellous secret of diversifying all things, and at the same time of matching them by compensations." Moreover, through successive revolutions, we are very far from the country gentleman of the seventeenth century, who enjoyed in peace the property of his ancestors, without ambition or political ideas, and without being tormented by a vain desire of changing his position, or deceived by the false expectation of some chimerical rise. The horizon of that gentleman of the olden time was limited to the estate which he cultivated ; he received his reward when 149 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. there had been a good crop, and enjoyed his small income amidst the respect and attentions of the peasants willing to serve him. In the morning he only paid court to liis lands, and in the evening remained with his family instead of going visiting ; the chase was his amusement, and fishing his useful recreation. He kept the festivals of the Church, which he attended regularly, so that God might bless his labours. He almost realised the type of Horace's happy man, in an age when tillers of the soil settled as one family under one master. Nowadays, vestry quarrels, the rights of the people, voting, the lowering of the priesthood, the diffusion of lay education, and the subdivision of the land, have made of the pea- sants animals unchained, hostile, irreverent, evil-disposed, watch- ing with a crocodile's patience the large landed estates they will 'gradually swallow up. Quotations of Horace and Virgil are now out of place, for the wretched struggle for money is as intense in the country as in town, but in the country displays more low running, compromises, and duplicity, and shows itself with a meanness and odious ambiguity, a rampant villainy, and a never ):; changing, slouching gait. ^ This rural, insinuating, slandering, and cowardly enemy sur- rounds and watches us on all sides ; he has the ear of a Eed Indian and the piercing eye of a hawk ; we do not see him, but he is everywhere, for after some time he can- not be distinguished from the soil, so much does he harmonise with it. — We walk out in the open whilst the sun is shin- ing, and see or hear nothing ; everything appears at rest under a sultry sky, and even the birds are silent ; as far as we can see the road is deserted, and no head pops out ^ from under the yellow corn ; all around us is calm and lonely, but, for all that, the peasant is there, quite alive, and very busy ; he looks at you with his cunning round eyes, like the bird sitting motionless on a branch, or a contemplative liog peeping out from under the duckweed. If we advance he will come out of a hole, or suddenly appear from behind a tree, with a. sunburnt and inane countenance seems so solitary there are few places where there are more spies than in the countiy, where eople have less liberty of action, and where!;:. n those actions is placed a more villainous construction ; the soil has eyes invisible to other eyes ; people exist but silently ; the human voice is only heard in the heavy atmosphere > to excite a barking animal, ; or coarsely to abuse a passive ^ ruminant. "When the Angelus WM . ■r'^c. \i^ is tolled, the country becomes animated, and distant voices, tinkling bells, and loud footsteps are heard, for then the peasants come back from the fields, and the cattle, after having quenched their thirst, return with ^ ■ .,..,■. ^ gentle and slow gait to the stable to be milked. Nature is, as it were, tired of its labour, and the -~ gradually diminishing noise seems to us a drowsi- ness fallen from Heaven ; night already envelops the earth where the plants are thirsting for dew, the moon shines whilst day is declining, and the small animals begin their nocturnal concert, in which will r be predominant just now the slow, sad, sonorous, and charmingly plaintive voice of the toad — that little monster with its gentle eyes, that not understood Mirabeau of the claims of the batrachian race. Then by the light of the lamp — at the beginning of this ambient melody rising from east to west, from north to south — we collect our thoughts ; the serenity of the night refreshes us, and produces in us many grave and enchanting ideas, and a new feeling of com- fort ; we feel that repose is lying in wait for us, and we are startled by that mysterious and eternal series of days and nights, and by the wheels of time dragging us towards an unavoidable death ; our illusions, dreams, and fancies, those winged bats of our dark exist- ence, fly, rustle, and despotically deck our mind ; we take up a book and think Ave are reading : we dream. — Outside the quiet is only 152 M' liere . . every- distiirbed by the far away bark- ing of dogs belonging to farmers or sheep-folds. There is in this silence something solemn which gets hold of us, and instinctively ^,^ makes ns pray and collect our ^-x thoughts as if we were in a church. "The majestic night," wrote Balzac, " is really conta- gious ; it is imposing, it inspires. . . is some hidden power in this idea thing sleeps, and I am awake." Staying up in the countr>' at night disturbs us and gives us a feeling of mystery, and almost of superstition ; this gigantic and inscrutable night suiTOunding us is filled with strange mysteries, and keeps us awake, as if on the edge of an abyss ; we fall asleep weighed down by an obscurity which seems to animate and develop our inward light, and to make it more restless, intense, and even ludicrous through this profound and sacred darkness. Therefore we bless the dawn when it comes to say matins on our closed eyelids, and brings us down, like birds, on the branch of life ; as soon as it is light our mind beats the reveille in this sub- lime renewal of nature, where ever^-thing vibrates, retakes its fresh- ness, and sighs amidst a harmony formed by millions of sounds of animated beings, dwelling in the wood, the water, the air, and the gi-ass, blind at night, and welcoming the return of the fertihsing star. For the sun in its infinite majesty is the true divinity of the earth, the justly divinised Helios, the Mithra of the Persians, the Phra of the Egyptians, the mythological Apollo, touching us all as it did the statue of Memnon, and making us feel joyful as soon as it appears ; it is the god of all human fermentation ; the grand •53 ^ ■t .~**: getter-np of the bean- ties of the country, the brilliant torch of day which, like j oyons bnt- terflies, draws us body and soul towards its glo- rious sphere of light. Without the sun the country would be in mourning and widowed. — Behold a spring morn- ing under a sombre and grey sky ; gaiety and vegetation are stopped ; - an invincible somno- lence and despondency, a feeling of weariness fills the air ; life is sad, dull, almost overwhelming. All at once the sun slowly pierces the clouds ; at first he lights them up, edges them, fringes them, caresses and illumines them, then bores through them, disperses them, and drives them away. Then he sheds his brilliant rays, carrying everywhere life, strength, hope, and love ; he, displays and distributes himself on all points ; he slips in sombre dwellings, puts a ruby tinge on the glasses in the inn, and songs on the lips of the peasants within ; he filters through the brushwood a golden rain, powdering the locks of the Hamadryads of the forest ; and the dark shadows falling are the sombre contrasts of his power. — Beneath these simple sunny rays nature becomes festive and attractive. Everything revives and rejoices : the labourer on the threshold of his door, with gay and joyous mien and sparkling eyes, is whistling a tune and rubbing his horny hands in token of joy ; his wife appears with a baby 154 THE COUNTRY. at her breast, whilst at this very hour the cloyed and sickly minds of townsmen resuscitate, dilate, and take wùng in the splendidly clear atmosphere. — The sailor gets ready to start for this sea as brilliant as an azure mirror; humanity improves, becomes indul- gent, and congratulates itself, and the lover feels himself born again, and sees his beloved in an idyllic dream. He beholds Edens full of delights and rustic tête-à-têtes ; he feels his j-outh stimng within him, and can hardly contain his joy and his vague desires ; he dreams of kisses given and returned ; in a word, lust rises to his head and expands his senses — it is the fault of the sun ! The sun is the universal new birth ; the trees shake oS their dark bark under a sparkling light ; they throw their shadows on the ground as if to look at them and measure them, now that they are no longer convalescent ; their young buds seem like eyes staring with astonishment, serenely contemplating the Heavens. — Under the kisses of the divine star all nature arranges its garments ; the delighted birds sing, gambol, plume their feathers, fight, stretch themselves, and sentimentalise in their forest language ; the farm- yards are all alive, and the dung-hills become heated and ferment. Everything revives and multiplies ; the tomtits and the wagtails have new^ dresses to conquer new loves ; the nightingale opens the competition in the college of vernal hymns ; little snakes and adders put on new skins, and venture to creep out of their winter's If 'J-,^!^>(iBto':Y '30 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. nest, whilst the gentle and indefatigable lark always mounts upwards, and soaring in the air distils its crystalline notes, a Te Deum of love and gratitude delightfully rising on high as an ardent and fervent ecstatic prayer. The sun produces more masterpieces in one second than men of genius do in the whole of their exist- ence. He is indeed the incontested divinity of this congealed earth which turns lovingly around him ; he is indeed the god of poetry, music, and all arts, and without him we should be aesthetically as badly endowed as the Laplanders or Icelanders are. •.**^* ■** ^'^ 0' 1^ ^ SE» {jÀ(^^ ■^ The sun is the entire country, ~ the corn, the flowers, the grapes ; and without him everything Avould be dreary. In summer he is so gentle, bright, and fair that mythological deities seem to fill eveiy grove ; in our walks, near babbling brooks, he makes us think again of our classics, and sometimes even causes us to surprise some heavy peasant women taking their bath, but who, in spite of their robust charms, yet seem to us Pagan goddesses enthralling and reminding us by their splendid complexion of the nymphs sung by Tibullus and Catullus. — In winter, when he gambols pale and clear on the hoar-û'ost of the hedges and the nitrous white meadows, amidst a dull sky, he shines, sparkles, and still charms as the smile of a friend whom we feared ._; never to see again ; above all, in autumn, his farewell is touching, for, in his last caresses, Jie gives a colour to the plants which have sprung up, and which, though now scattered, form a golden carpet for that earth, yesterday yet so green. He leaves a re- membrance on the trees of the forest, on these trunks as brown, orange-coloured, and tawny as the neck of ^ the reapers ; he leaves also an impression on the bronze- X. .^ .coloured thatch and on the reddish moss on the top of the walls. Everything we see and feel reminds us of him, and when he has completely disappeared we are sad, chilled, and kindle on our hearth armfuls of branches giving out all their solar heat, slowly stored in their wooden cells, and this factitious sun warming our body and senses suddenly enlivens us. 157 w^ ^^'hatever has been written about the charms of rustic life, we may add that they elevate the soul but give no food to the mind ; whatever may be our existence in the coun- try, the ideas of man be- come rusty and narroAv in his monotony and phy- sical and moral comfort. Now, happiness deprives the human mind of its genius, its grandeur, its nobility of expression found in suffering, restlessness, and struggles. \Yhen everything within us is silent, peaceful, and quiet, we become dull and grow stout amidst an alarming epicurism. We no longer feel stir within us that science of living, that agitation of desire, that impetuosity of passion, and that effervescence of ambition which purify and subtilise our materiality. Observe that the sublime nearly always originates in intense gi'ief for which man seems to be created. "When the tempest ceases to rage within us, when on the infinite ocean of our soul . the waves flag and become quite calm, the divinity of our being seems to have less grandeur ; indifference slowly covers us with its grey shroud ; our heart is superannuated, and our mind no longer rears impetuously as a general anxious to win a battle. We must always have a promised land, othenvise our ideas give way ; happiness makes the animal stout and puts fetters on our thoughts. — Grief and passion, amidst a blast of madness and doubt, have given birth to all sublime works and have hardened the iron wùll of 158 THE COUNTRY. superior minds. We are not created to be contemplative, and if we wrestle not with the soil, as the peasant does, struggle with it, and dig in its bowels to fertilise it, we must at least fight for others, and sow kindness, even if we reap ingratitude, or else contend against ourselves, by fecundating our most extensive patrimony, namely, our brain, which has been left us with many encum- brances, through the atavism of numberless generations. In this intelligent culture of our thoughts we slowly discover the prodigious diversity of the various qualities and faults of which our nature is composed. We at last study ourselves with some interest, and discover in us not only a duality formed of passion and wisdom, but also many odd sensations introduced into us by the successive races which have formed us. These sensations only spring up when there is strife, when a struggle agitates and stirs our blood ; the moment we love, labour, sacrifice our- selves, take bold resolutions, we feel within us the profound eddies of contrary currents, and drawn in every direction by the voices of mysterious opinions, the last and distant cry of ancestors whom we dis- own, we feel the pleasure of imposing silence on all those doomed of our fiesh, by the supreme .^j decision of our masterly will. '] In the countiy we are in communion with nature, and we think at first that oiu* thoughts and healthy ideas can raise us above all human comedies and social buffooneries ; in the beginning of our rural life calm and solitude enlighten us, and capitally corroborate our first feelings ; but after six months or a year our nerves have become unstrung, and all our intellectual and active strength is really relaxed ; we dawdle amidst wretched local interests, mean surroundings, and the drowsiness of the 159 7 '^^K^-k^ if \ THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. conntiy overcomes us, and makes us indulge in an idleness so much the more dangerous and overpowering as it is less easy to discover. " Now I live no longer in the country, you will receive more letters from me," wrote one day Madame de Sévigné, on her return to town, and thus the pretentious letter-writer artlessly acknowledged what influence rural torpor had on the most restless and insatiable female lecturer in the world. She also felt disarmed through this contemplative life, and abdicated her mannerism before the grandeur and incommensurability of nature ; but she went back to town to recover her strength and elegance, and also to report, in her peculiar style, the small talk and gossip of the Court. To divide our life between the town and the country, to get cured of the sophistications of the first by the restoratives of the latter, deeply to love this contrast, and to economise physically and morally in the country, in order later on to be extravagant in society, is common sense. In short, we can live in town and die in the country, if we wish alternately to excite our vi,rtues and calm our human passions. \ ni-, // !: '■yf^i^^^z-^^ PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., EDINBURGH AND LONDON. u D 000 013 894 1 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. OL RET? 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