I delight in dancing, but then I love moderation, and I hate excess, coupled with which pleasure is (like the punishment of What's-hisname, the tyrant of old) a living body joined to a dead carcase. Now the French, at this season at least, think of nothing but fêtes, and do nothing but dance. All the world goes capering, and there is no fear of treason certainly, for every one seems to have "music in his sole." A working-day must be a delightful holiday, I am sure, when they can, without being singular, put their feet at full length upon the ground; for at present all, young, old, well or ailing, are from Sunday morning to Saturday night on the light fantastic toe"-except one hideous fat old woman, who nearly crushed the corn of my left foot with the treadmill pressure of her heavy heel the other day, at the horse-races in the Champ de Mars. And this reminiscence brings me round quite naturally to my subject. Horse-racing, then, in France, is precisely what opera-dancing is in England, or opera-singing in America. None of them are indigenous to the soil; the natives are not cut out for such exercises of the arm, the leg, or the voice. The performers must all be imported; for the homebreed, in their various ways, are too much or too little refined for the several accomplishments. It will ever be thus in countries so remote in manners and institutions. The social soil can never be ploughed, nor the national feelings harrowed up, so as to bring forth the fruits, which are looked on as the productions of a barbarous or a degenerate clime. Would John Bull give his Newmarket for L'Academie Royale de Musique-for which last word read la danse? Not he! any more than an independent Yankee would barter his hard-earned liberty, for the emasculated refinement that "Squeaks and gibbers in the Roman streets." For my part, I am always happy to see a people gazing with pleasure, in the heart of their capital, on an exhibition of foreign skill, which they nevertheless most heartily despise. It is a proof of independence of feeling; of a notion of self-superiority in matters of importance, without which no people can be great; and, above all things, it satisfies me that, in my time at least, there is no danger of those distinctive features being rubbed off, which keep all countries from becoming (the most abhorrent of improvements to my mind) one great, undistinguishable, monstrous family. I love to hear an Englishman allow the French to be the best dancers, and a Frenchman acknowledge us to be the best boxers in the world. There is something so naïve in the first, and so unsofisticated in the latter! and the admission is always made with so truly national a toss of the head or shrug of the shoulders, as the case may be! Vestris and Paul, kicking their heels against the fly-scenes of the opera-house, are objects of high delight and deep contempt to the applauding English audience-while Tom Cribb or Ran dall, making their best display in the Champs Elysées, would amuse the Parisians while they pronounced the pugilists to be barbarians. These national incongruities are all as they should be. What we are proud of, the French despise, and vice versa. We are, like our roast beef, too underdone and too plain for their palates; and they, like their fricassees, too unsubstantial and too saucy for ours. It is just as morally impossible for John Bull and Monsieur de Grenouilles to have the same notions of politics and pleasures, as it is phizically impossible that they could resemble each other in features or complexion. As to horse-racing, in which we excel, it is a matter of course that the French should botch it. To succeed in such a pursuit, men must, of all things, love the country, and have a relish for rural pleasures. Of them the French gentry know little or nothing, beyond transplanting their natural productions to the towns; and probably the greatest burlesque existing is the annual exhibition of horse-racing in the capital of France, from the simple reason, that the actors and the spectators have no sympathy in common. The place, too, appropriated, but not adapted, for the race, is enough to destroy all enjoyment in it; and has been chosen only from a stupid revolutionary imitation of the ancient Romans, who held their Fasta Equiriæ in the Campus Martius. Instead of a smooth and level turf, against which, with us, the noble animals strike their elastic limbs, and bound along in grace and beauty to the goal, here they plough through an immense bed of sand, labouring and panting, and covered with a coat of dust and sweat, jaded and disheartened, and looking any thing, in short, but what one expects in a "high-mettled racer." Such as the thing is, it is almost wholly in the hands of Englishmen. A French jockey rarely appears; and the only gratifying object, to my eyes, in the display, was the knowing air with which the riders mounted their steeds, and gave them their preparatory canter through the ranks of gaping spooneys about them. It was amusing too (though somewhat humiliating from its anti-English look) to see the winners of the prizes, two thorough-bred horsedealers, with all the blunt, and rather slangish, air of their profession, lead their respective horses up to the foot of balcony, (from which the Duchess of Berry superintended the scene) preceded by a band of music, and escorted by a troop of horse-grenadiers. I did not much like to see my two countrymen twirling their hats in one hand, stuffing the other into their breeches-pockets, and looking altogether so confoundedly gauche in the presence of "les augustes personnages." I could not help smiling, however, when they took their silver coffee-pot and ewer away in triumph under their arms; and as they gave their several scrapes of the foot, and bobbed their bows up to the balcony, and turned off upon their heels, I thought I distinguished on each of their countenances an expression that seemed to say, "All my eye, Betty Martin !" Next came Mademoiselle Garnerin and her balloon; and they were much more to the taste of the spectators-she gracefully bowing and looking gaily; it moving along, gaudy, inflated, and " full of emptiness." Up she sailed upon her aërial voyage, not to go round the world, but merely (a hard task, alas!) to get above it; and if a man may judge of his fellows by his own feelings or their faces, (most uncertain tests I allow,) there was scarce a looker-on who did not in the enthusiasm of the moment, wish to be yoked in the car with the adventurous nymph, "fat, fair, and forty," as she looked to be. I had long had a desire to assist (as we say in France) at la fête de la Rosière. Early associations, boyish imaginings, Madame de Genlis, and other delusions, had fixed this passion deep in my mind. Pasto rality and purity, and innocence and ingenuousness, and such animating alliterations, floated before me, and, as might be expected, prepared me for an utter disappointment. I had gone to the Champ de Mars, my brain crammed, like a Yorkshire newspaper, with the anticipated joys of horse-racing, and I came away knocked up like a sorry hackthere are various kinds, reader, as the booksellers could tell you. I went to the fête of the Rosière, my head as full as a flower-pot of bloom and fragrance, and I returned with every expectation as withered as the faded wreath that adorns the image of the Virgin over the porch of Suresne's Church. There never were such cruel pains taken by a Curé, with or without the commands of his superiors, to render common-place and unpopular an institution full of sense and sentiment, as have been taken in the present instance by the Curé of Suresne. The fête of la Rosière, established on the basis of national feeling and true morality, was in its origin meant to reward with a garland (full as honourable per se as a blue ribbon) the girl of the village who combined the best life with the most graceful demeanour. To-day the whole matter, if I am rightly informed, (and I beg that this clause may be a saving one,) has become an affair of paltry intrigue and party prejudice. The fortunate maiden last year was the daughter of the Maire! Now, though I would no more exclude the progeny of a Maire from the right to the Rosière any more than the prize of the horse-race, I think the public functionary ought not to have let his daughter enter the lists, lest the people might suppose his situation to have some influence in her success. They think so at Suresne, I can assure him; but the discontent is at its height this summer, from the Curé having refused the claims of all the girls of the village who could be convicted of having gone to a fête or a dance during the year! Imagine this, in France on the banks of the Seine within sight of Paris! It is the most preposterous innovation of modern epurations, for it strikes at the very root of national manners and character. A French girl entitled to be crowned Rosière in proportion as she is ignorant of "Balancer and Rigadoon!" why it is worthy of John Knox, who did not deal harder with Mary, his gaymannered and French-hearted Queen, than this Curé with his virgin parishioners. There were, as may be supposed, scarcely any candidates, for the favoured maiden, instead of being "one in a hundred," was, of course, only one out of four or five; and these, no doubt, the pious wallflowers of former ball-rooms, who, unable to get a flesh and blood partner in a mortal quadrille, have been forced to waltz through the year with the memory of some dead-and-gone saint of the second century. Mademoiselle Julienne Something-or-other may, therefore, arrange her garland before the looking-glass, without exciting the least envy in the majority of her fellow-villagers. As for me, I turned from the contemplation of these puny conten tions to the overwhelming enjoyments of "La Saint-Louis." Here, thought I, I shall see something worthy of the genuine fête of religion and royalty combined. Saint Louis and King Louis are to be cele brated together to-day-the throne and the altar-regal splendour with Christian piety-all the national virtues consecrating a few of the national vanities-civility and sobriety walking hand-in-hand with gracefulness and gaiety! That was something like a combination for an amateur of fêtes ;-so away I trudged in the hot sun of the 25th of August, glowing with expectation, and determined to be pleased :and a dogged fellow he must have been who was not pleased with the sight of the Champs Elysées at noon of that day. Every thing that could give pleasure (to an unthinking people at least) was gathered together. Merry-andrews, mountebanks, rope-dancers, bands of music, games of all kinds, and every kindly gaiety, were collected on the spot. I really wandered through these Elysian fields, something in the mood of the happiest of the shades. A thousand vagaries crossed me at every turn; but that, I think, which caused me to moralize the most, was the poor devils climbing up immensely high poles to come at the reward of their aspirings-a silver watch, a pair of buckles, or some such ornament. It was painfully amusing to see these climbers straining upwards; the earliest cleaning off the greasy unction, with which each pole was larded half-mast high, then slipping down to earth, and followed by others, all with their pockets filled with sand to fling upon the pole above them and give them a chance of clinging to it the better in their ascent. I thought of the strange contrast presented by this road to wealth and fame to all the others in life. Instead of being harsh and rugged, the only fault of this was being too smooth; and the only effort of the adventurers was, not to level obstacles, but to roughen their way to fortune. Here, too, were no sharp turns or shot cuts. This was plain, straight-forward, up-pole work; and so far from a needy aspirant being, as in common cases, the most looked down upon, the fellow the most in-kneed, on the present occasion, had the best chance of getting above the world. Then came the associations-those whirlwind disturbers of the nicest train of philosophical speculation. I bethought me of barbers' poles, and the Polish lancers, and the North Pole, and Capt. Parry, and so on-until I was roused by the noise of wheels, and the shouts of the human animals that were dragging along the body of a cart, with a huge empty barrel thereon. The group that presented itself was frightful. It consisted of a couple of dozen ragged, villain-visaged fellows, with about as many atrocious specimens of female degradation, coming forward towards the place where the wine was to be distributed. It was as if a band of demons had stolen into Paradise. They came on with gestures and exclamations fitting their appearance; brushed through the dancers; broke in upon the sports; and, as if under the special protection of the police, took up a position in front of one of the dépôts of provisions, which were to be immediately scattered gratis to the crowd. As every eye turned on these savages, each tongue exclaimed-" Ah, voila les gens des Faubourgs!" Aha! (said I to myself, like the Lord Chamberlain, in Henry VIIIth.)— "There's a trim rabble let in! Are all these Our faithful friends o' the suburbs?" And I moved forward for the purpose of inspecting this odious deputation from all that is most odious in France. I shall not detail the result of my observations, but merely state, that every stage erected for the distribution was guarded at foot by a band of those miscreants, who are as anxious to wallow in wine to-day, as their fathers (or themselves perhaps) were to bathe in blood this day thirty years. At two o'clock the distribution commenced. Bread, meat, sausages, &c. were showered down on the multitude, in a profusion that would have reminded me of the pleasant times when "Streets were paved with penny rolls, And houses thatch'd with pancakes ;" if my memory had not been pre-occupied by painful recollections of a more recent epoch, and all my feelings in revolt against the demoralizing spectacle. But when the edibles were exhausted, and the winegiving began then, indeed, I blushed for the profanation of the day, and the degradation of my species. When I looked on the struggling wretches, raving, raging, and deluged in the flood, rushing forward with pots, kettles, and cans, to catch the streaming liquor, and convey it to the barrels provided by each Faubourg as a common reservoir; while others, the great majority, glutted themselves into instantaneous drunkenness, rolled in the mud, and uttered yells, and songs, and blasphemy-it was then that all my indignation was up,-it was then that I cordially cursed the policy which debases and brutalizes a people, to give their rulers a better chance of crushing them. Then it was, that viewing the national sobriety and decorum violated, as it were, at the foot of the throne and by the royal ordonnance, I marvelled how a king could be honoured, or a saint be glorified, or man be bettered, or Heaven be pleased, by such a scene! I pondered all this so deeply, walked so fast, and used such ener getic action as I inwardly debated, that I saw I had attracted the remarks of some of the agents of that multocular monster-the Police; and fearing to be taken up for a malcontent, I wheeled away through the trees, and took French leave of the place. T. T. Which appeared in the 33d Number of the New Monthly Magazinę. OH! is it not because we love (Far more than Beauty's fleeting worth) The kindred soul which soars above Because Affection shuddering shrinks From the cold dust left mouldering here; Yes-if, when Beauty's dazzling mask But 'tis not so:-when we behold T. |