Chapter XV (3)

_The Napoleon Column._--This is the grand feature of the Place de Vendôme, once the site of the Hôtel Vendôme, built by the son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées; afterwards pulled down by Louis XIV., afterwards abandoned to the citizens, and afterwards surrounded, as it is at this day, with the formal and heavy architecture of Mansard. The "Place" has, like everything in Paris, changed its name from time to time. It was once the "Place des Conquêtes;" then it changed to "Louis le Grand;" and then it returned to the name of its original proprietor. An old figure of the "Great King," in all the glories of wig and feathers, stood in the centre, till justice and the rabble of the Revolution broke it down, in the first "energies" of Republicanism. But the German campaign of 1805 put all the nation in good humour, and the Napoleon Column was raised on the site of the dilapidated _monarch_.

The design of the column is not original, for it is taken from the Trajan Column at Rome; but it is enlarged, and makes a very handsome object. When I first saw it, its decorations were in peril; for the Austrian soldiery were loud for its demolition, or at least for stripping off its bronze bas-reliefs, they representing their successive defeats in that ignominious campaign which, in three months from Boulogne, finished by the capture of Vienna. The Austrian troops, however, stoutly retrieved their disasters, and, as the proof, were then masters of Paris. It was possibly this effective feeling that prevailed at last to spare the column, which the practice of the French armies would have entitled them to strip without mercy.

In the first instance, a statue of Napoleon, as emperor, stood on the summit of the pillar. This statue had its revolutions too, for it was melted down at the restoration of the Bourbons, to make a part of the equestrian statue of Henry IV. erected on the Pont Neuf. A _fleur-de-lis_ and flagstaff then took its place. The Revolution of 1830, which elevated Louis Philippe to a temporary throne, raised the statue of Napoleon to an elevation perhaps as temporary.

It was the shortsighted policy of the new monarch to mingle royal power with "republican institutions." He thus introduced the tricolor once more, sent for Napoleon's remains to St Helena by permission of England, and erected his statue in the old "chapeau et redingote gris," the characteristics of his soldiership. The statue was inaugurated on one of the "three glorious days," in July 1833, in all the pomp of royalty,--princes, ministers, and troops. So much for the consistency of a brother of the Bourbon. The pageant passed away, and the sacrifice to popularity was made without obtaining the fruits. Louis Philippe disappeared from the scene before the fall of the curtain; and, as if to render his catastrophe more complete, he not merely left a republic behind him, but he lived to see the "prisoner of Ham" the president of that republic.

How does it happen that an Englishman in France cannot stir a single step, hear a single word, or see a single face, without the conviction that he has landed among a people as far from him in all their feelings, habits, and nature, as if they were engendered in the moon? The feelings with which the Briton looks on the statue of Buonaparte may be mixed enough: he may acknowledge him for a great soldier, as well as a great knave--a great monarch, as well as a little intriguer--a mighty ruler of men, who would have made an adroit waiter at a _table d'hôte_ in the Palais Royal. But he never would have imagined him into a sentimentalist, a shepherd, a Corydon, to be hung round with pastoral garlands; an opera hero, to delight in the sixpenny tribute of bouquets from the galleries.

Yet I found the image of this man of terror and mystery--this ravager of Europe--this stern, fierce, and subtle master of havoc, decorated like a milliner's shop, or the tombs of the citizen shopkeepers in the cemeteries, with garlands of all sizes!--the large to express copious sorrow, the smaller to express diminished anguish, and the smallest, like a visiting card, for simply leaving their compliments; and all this in the face of the people who once feared to look in his face, and followed his car as if it bore the Thunder!

To this spot came the people to offer up their sixpenny homage--to this spot came processions of all kinds, to declare their republican love for the darkest despot of European memory, to sing a stave, to walk heroically round the railing, hang up their garlands, and then, having done their duty in the presence of their own grisettes, in the face of Paris, and to the admiration of Europe, march home, and ponder upon the glories of the day!

As a work of imperial magnificence, the column is worthy of its founder, and of the only redeeming point of his character--his zeal for the ornament of Paris. It is a monument to the military successes of the Empire; a trophy one hundred and thirty-five feet high, covered with the representations of French victory over the Austrians and Russians in the campaign of 1805. The bas-reliefs are in bronze, rising in a continued spiral round the column. Yet this is an unfortunate sacrifice to the imitation of the Roman column. The spiral, a few feet above the head of the spectator, offers nothing to the eye but a roll of rough bronze; the figures are wholly and necessarily undistinguishable. The only portion of those castings which directly meets the eye is unfortunately given up to the mere uniforms, caps, and arms of the combatants. This is the pedestal, and it would make a showy decoration for a tailor's window. It is a clever work of the furnace, but a miserable one of invention.

The bronze is said to have been the captured cannon of the enemy. On the massive bronze door is the inscription in Latin:--"Napoleon, Emperor, Augustus, dedicated to the glory of the Grand Army this memorial of the German War, finished in three months, in the year 1805, under his command."

On the summit stands the statue of Napoleon, to which, and its changes, I have adverted already. But the question has arisen, whether there is not an error in taste in placing the statue of an individual at a height which precludes the view of his _features_. This has been made an objection to the handsome Nelson Pillar in Trafalgar Square. But the obvious answer in both instances is, that the object is not merely the sight of the features, but the perfection of the memorial; that the pillar is the true _monument_, and the statue only an accessory, though the most _suitable_ accessory. But even then the statue is not altogether inexpressive. We can see the figure and the costume of Napoleon nearly as well as they could be seen from the balcony of the Tuilleries, where all Paris assembled in the Carousel to worship him on Sundays, at the parade of "La Garde." In the spirited statue of Nelson we can recognise the figure as well as if we were gazing at him within a hundred yards in any other direction. It is true that pillars are not painters' easels, nor is Trafalgar Square a sculptor's yard; but the real question turns on the effect of the whole. If the pillar makes the monument, we will not quarrel with the sculptor for its not making a _miniature_. It answers its purpose--it is a noble one; it gives a national record of great events, and it realises, invigorates, and consecrates them by the images of the men by whom they were achieved.

_Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile._--It is no small adventure, in a burning day of a French summer, to walk the length of the Champs Elysées, even to see the arch of the Star, (Napoleon's _Star_,) and climb to its summit. Yet this labour I accomplished with the fervour and the fatigue of a pilgrimage.

Why should the name of Republic be ever heard in the mouth of a Frenchman? All the objects of his glory in the Capital of which he _glories_, everything that he can show to the stranger--everything that he recounts, standing on tip-toe, and looking down on the whole world besides--is the work of monarchy! The grand Republic left nothing behind but the guillotine. The Bourbons and Buonapartes were the creators of all to which he points, with an exaltation that throws earth into the shade from the Alps to the Andes. The Louvre, the Madeleine, the Tuilleries, the Hôtel de Ville, (now magnified and renovated into the most stately of town-houses,) the Hôtel des Invalides, Nôtre Dame, &c. &c. are all the work of Kings. If Napoleon had lived half a century longer, he would have made Paris a second Babylon. If the very clever President, who has hitherto managed France so dexterously, and whose name so curiously combines the monarchy and the despotism,--if Louis _Napoleon_ (a name which an old Roman would have pronounced an omen) should manage it into a Monarchy, we shall probably see Paris crowded with superb public edifices.

The kings of France were peculiarly magnificent in the decoration of the entrances to their city. As no power on earth can prevent the French from crowding into hovels, from living ten families in one house, and from appending to their cities the most miserable, ragged, and forlorn-looking suburbs on the globe, the monarchs wisely let the national habits alone; and resolved, if the suburbs must be abandoned to the popular fondness for the wigwam, to impress strangers with the stateliness of their gates. The _Arc de St Denis_, once conducting from the most dismal of suburbs, is one of the finest portals in Paris, or in any European city; it is worthy of the Boulevard, and that is panegyric at once. Every one knows _that it was_ erected in honour of the short-lived inroad of Louis XIV. into Holland in 1672, and the taking of whole muster-rolls of forts and villages, left at his mercy, ungarrisoned and unprovisioned, by the Republican parsimony of the Dutch, till a princely defender arose, and the young Stadtholder sent back the coxcomb monarch faster than he came. But the Arc is a noble work, and its architecture might well set a redeeming example to the London _improvers_. Why not erect an arch in Southwark? Why not at all the great avenues to the capital? Why not, instead of leaving this task to the caprices, or even to the bad taste of the railway companies, make it a branch of the operations of the Woods and Forests, and ennoble all the entrances of the mightiest capital of earthly empire?

The Arch of St Denis is now shining in all the novelty of reparation, for it was restored so lately as last year. In this quarter, which has been always of a stormy temperature, the insurrection of 1848 raged with especial fury; and if the spirits of the great ever hover about their monuments, Louis XIV. may have seen from its summit a more desperate conflict than ever figured on its bas-reliefs.

On the Arch of the Porte St Martin is a minor monument to minor triumphs, but a handsome one. Louis XIV. is still the hero. The "Grand Monarque" is exhibited as Hercules with his club; but as even a monarch in those days was nothing without his wig, Hercules exhibits a huge mass of curls of the most courtly dimensions--he might pass for the presiding deity of _perruquiers_.

The _Arc de Triomphe du Carousel_, erected in honour of the German campaign in 1805, is a costly performance, yet poor-looking, from its position in the centre of lofty buildings. What effect can an isolated arch, of but five-and-forty feet high, have in the immediate vicinity of masses of building, perhaps a hundred feet high? Its aspect is consequently meagre; and its being placed in the centre of a court makes it look useless, and, of course, ridiculous. On the summit is a figure of War, or Victory, in a chariot, with four bronze horses--the horses modelled from the four Constantinopolitan horses brought by the French from Venice, as part of the plunder of that luckless city, but sent back to Venice by the Allies in 1815. The design of the arch was from that of Severus, in Rome: this secured, at least, elegance in its construction; but the position is fatal to dignity.

The _Arc de l'Etoile_ is the finest work of the kind in Paris. It has the advantage of being built on an elevation, from which it overlooks the whole city, with no building of any magnitude in its vicinity; and is seen from a considerable distance on all the roads leading to the capital. Its cost was excessive for a work of mere ornament, and is said to have amounted to nearly half a million sterling!

As I stood glancing over the groups on the friezes and faces of this great monument, which exhibit war in every form of conflict, havoc, and victory, the homely thought of "_cui bono_?" struck me irresistibly. Who was the better for all this havoc?--Napoleon, whom it sent to a dungeon! or the miserable thousands and tens of thousands whom it crushed in the field?--or the perhaps more unfortunate hundreds of thousands whom it sent to the hospital, to die the slow death of exhaustion and pain, or to live the protracted life of mutilation? I have no affectation of sentiment at the sight of the soldier's grave; he has but taken his share of the common lot, with perhaps the advantage, which so few men possess, of having "done the state some service." But, to see this vast monument covered with the emblems of hostilities, continued through almost a quarter of a century, (for the groups commence with 1792;) to think of the devastation of the fairest countries of Europe, of which these hostilities were the cause; and to know the utter fruitlessness and failure of the result, the short-lived nature of the triumph, and the frightful depth of the defeat---Napoleon in ignominious bondage and hopeless banishment--Napoleon, after having lorded it over Europe, sent to linger out life on a rock in the centre of the ocean--the leader of military millions kept under the eye of a British sentinel, and no more suffered to stray beyond his bounds than a caged tiger--I felt as if the object before me was less a trophy than a tomb, less a monument of glory than of retribution, less the record of national triumph than of national frenzy.

I had full liberty for reflection, for there was scarcely a human being to interrupt me. The bustle of the capital did not reach so far, the promenaders in the Champs Elysées did not venture here; the showy equipages of the Parisian "_nouveaux riches_" remained where the crowd was to be seen; and except a few peasants going on their avocations, and a bench full of soldiers, sleeping or smoking away the weariness of the hour, the _Arc de Triomphe_, which had cost so much treasure, and was the record of so much blood, seemed to be totally forgotten. I question, if there had been a decree of the Legislature to sell the stones, whether it would have occasioned more than a paragraph in the _Journal des Debats_.

The ascent to the summit is by a long succession of dark and winding steps, for which a lamp is lighted by the porter; but the view from the parapet repays the trouble of the ascent. The whole basin in which Paris lies is spread out before the eye. The city is seen in the centre of a valley, surrounded on every side by a circle of low hills, sheeted with dark masses of wood. It was probably once the bed of a lake, in which the site of the city was an island. All the suburb villages came within the view, with the fortifications, which to a more scientific eye might appear formidable, but which to mine appeared mere dots in the vast landscape.

This parapet is unhappily sometimes used for other purposes than the indulgence of the spectacle. A short time since, a determined suicide sprang from it, after making a speech to the soldiery below, assigning his reason for this tremendous act--if reason has anything to do in such a desperate determination to defy common sense. He acted with the quietest appearance of deliberation: let himself down on the coping of the battlement, from this made his speech, as if he had been in the tribune; and, having finished it, flung himself down a height of ninety feet, and was in an instant a crushed and lifeless heap on the pavement below.

It is remarkable that, even in these crimes, there exists the distinction which seems to divide France from England in every better thing. In England, a wretch undone by poverty, broken down by incurable pain, afflicted by the stings of a conscience which she neither knows how to heal nor cares how to cure, woman, helpless, wretched, and desolate, takes her walk under cover of night by the nearest river, and, without a witness, plunges in. But, in France, the last dreadful scene is imperfect without its publicity; the suicide must exhibit before the people. There must be the _valete et plaudite_. The curtain must fall with dramatic effect, and the actor must make his exit with the cries of the audience, in admiration or terror, ringing in the ear.

In other cases, however varied, the passion for publicity is still the same. No man can bear to perish in silence. If the atheist resolves on self-destruction, he writes a treatise for his publisher, or a letter to the journals. If he is a man of science, he takes his laudanum after supper, and, pen in hand, notes the gradual effects of the poison for the benefit of science; or he prepares a fire of charcoal, quietly inhales the vapour, and from his sofa continues to scribble the symptoms of dissolution, until the pen grows unsteady, the brain wanders, and half-a-dozen blots close the scene; the writing, however, being dedicated to posterity, and circulated next day in every journal of Paris, till it finally permeates through the provinces, and from thence through the European world.

The number of suicides in Paris annually, of late years, has been about three hundred,--out of a population of a million, notwithstanding the suppression of the gaming-houses, which unquestionably had a large share in the temptation to this horrible and unatonable crime.

The sculptures on the Arc are in the best style. They form a history of the Consulate and of the Empire. Napoleon, of course, is a prominent figure; but in the fine bas-relief which is peculiarly devoted to himself, in which he stands of colossal size, with Fame flying over his head, History writing the record of his exploits, and Victory crowning him, the artist has left his work liable to the sly sarcasm of a spectator of a similar design for the statue of Louis XIV. Victory was there holding the laurel at a slight distance from his head. An Englishman asked "whether she was putting it on _or taking it off_?" But another of the sculptures is still more unfortunate, for it has the unintentional effect of commemorating the Allied conquest of France in 1814. A young Frenchman is seen defending his family; and a soldier behind him is seen falling from his horse, and the Genius of the _future_ flutters over them all. We know what that future was.

The building of this noble memorial occupied, at intervals, no less than thirty years, beginning in 1806, when Napoleon issued a decree for its erection. The invasion in 1814 put a stop to everything in France, and the building was suspended. The fruitless and foolish campaign of the Duc d'Angoulême, in Spain, was regarded by the Bourbons as a title to national glories, and the building was resumed as a trophy to the renown of the Duc. It was again interrupted by the expulsion of the Bourbons in 1830; but was resumed under Louis Philippe, and finished in 1836. It is altogether a very stately and very handsome tribute to the French armies.

But, without affecting unnecessary severity of remark, may not the wisdom of such a tribute be justly doubted? The Romans, though the principle of their power was conquest, and though their security was almost incompatible with peace, yet are said to have never repaired a triumphal arch. It is true that they built those arches (in the latter period of the Empire) so solidly as to want no repairs. But we have no triumphal monuments of the Republic surviving. Why should it be the constant policy of Continental governments to pamper their people with the food of that most dangerous and diseased of all vanities, the passion for war? And this is not said in the declamatory spirit of the "Peace Congress," which seems to be nothing more than a pretext for a Continental ramble, an expedient for a little vulgar notoriety among foreigners, and an opportunity of getting rid of the greatest quantity of common-place in the shortest time. But, why should not France learn common sense from the experience of England? It is calculated that, of the last five hundred years of French history, two hundred and fifty have been spent in hostilities. In consequence, France has been invaded, trampled, and impoverished by war; while England, during the last three hundred years, has never seen the foot of a foreign invader.

Let the people of France abolish the _Conscription_, and they will have made one advance to liberty. Till cabinets are deprived of that material of _aggressive_ war, they will leave war at the caprice of a weak monarch, an ambitious minister, or a vainglorious people. It is remarkable that, among all the attempts at reforming the constitution of France, her reformers have never touched upon the ulcer of the land, the Conscription, the legacy of a frantic Republic, taking the children of the country from their industry, to plunge them into the vices of idleness or the havoc of war, and at all times to furnish the means, as well as afford the temptation, to aggressive war. There is not at this hour a soldier of England who has been _forced_ into the service! Let the French, let all the Continental nations, abolish the Conscription, thus depriving their governments of the means of making war upon each other; and what an infinite security would not this illustrious abolition give to the whole of Europe!--what an infinite saving in the taxes which are now wrung from nations by the fear of each other!--and what an infinite triumph to the spirit of peace, industry, and mutual good-will!

_The Theatres._--In the evening I wandered along the Boulevard, the great centre of the theatres, and was surprised at the crowds which, in a hot summer night, could venture to be stewed alive, amid the smell of lamps, the effluvia of orange-peel, the glare of lights, and the breathing of hundreds or thousands of human beings. I preferred the fresh air, the lively movement of the Boulevard, the glitter of the Cafés, and the glow, then tempered, of the declining sun--one of the prettiest moving panoramas of Paris.

The French Government take a great interest in the popularity of the theatres, and exert that species of superintendence which is implied in a considerable supply of the theatrical expenditure. The French Opera receives annually from the National Treasury no less than 750,000 francs, besides 130,000 for retiring pensions. To the Théâtre Français, the allowance from the Treasury is 240,000 francs a-year. To the Italian Opera the sum granted was formerly 70,000, but is now 50,000. Allowances are made to the Opera Comique, a most amusing theatre, to the Odeon, and perhaps to some others--the whole demanding of the budget a sum of more than a million of francs.

It is curious that the drama in France began with the clergy. In the time of Charles VI., a company, named "Confrères de la Passion," performed plays founded on the events of Scripture, though grossly disfigured by the traditions of Monachism. The originals were probably the "_Mysteries_," or plays in the Convents, a species of absurd and fantastic representation common in all Popish countries. At length the life of Manners was added to the life of Superstition, and singers and grimacers were added to the "Confrères."

In the sixteenth century an Italian company appeared in Paris, and brought with them their opera, the invention of the Florentines fifty years before. The cessation of the civil wars allowed France for a while to cultivate the arts of peace; and Richelieu, a man who, if it could be said of any statesman that he formed the mind of the nation, impressed his image and superscription upon his country, gave the highest encouragement to the drama by making it the fashion. He even wrote, or assisted in writing, popular dramas. Corneille now began to flourish, and French Tragedy was established.

Mazarin, when minister, and, like Richelieu, master of the nation, invited or admitted the Italian Opera once more into France; and Molière, at the head of a new company, obtained leave to perform before Louis XIV., who thenceforth patronised the great comic writer, and gave his company a theatre. The Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera of France now led the way in Europe.

In France, the Great Revolution, while it multiplied the theatres with the natural extravagance of the time, yet, by a consequence equally inevitable, degraded the taste of the nation. For a long period the legitimate drama was almost extinguished: it was unexciting to a people trained day by day to revolutionary convulsion; the pageants on the stage were tame to the processions in the streets; and the struggles of kings and nobles were ridiculous to the men who had been employed in destroying a dynasty.

Napoleon at once perceived the evil, and adopted the only remedy. He found no less than _thirty_ theatres in Paris. He was not a man to pause where he saw his way clearly before him; he closed twenty-two of those theatres, leaving but eight, and those chiefly of the old establishments, making a species of compensation to the closed houses.

On the return of the Bourbons the civil list, as in the old times, assisted in the support of the theatres. On the accession of Louis Philippe, the popular triumph infused its extravagance even into the system of the drama. The number of the theatres increased, and a succession of writers of the "New School" filled the theatres with abomination. Gallantry became the _spirit_ of the drama--everything before the scene was intrigue; married life was the perpetual burlesque. Wives were the habitual heroines of the intrigue, and husbands the habitual dupes! To keep faith with a husband was a standing jest on the stage, to keep it with a seducer was the height of human character. The former was always described as brutal, gross, dull, and born to be duped; the latter was captivating, generous, and irresistible by any matron alive. In fact, wives and widows were made for nothing else but to give way to the fascinations of this class of professors of the arts of "good society." The captivator was substantially described as a scoundrel, a gambler, and a vagabond of the basest kind, but withal so honourable, so tender, and so susceptible, that his atrocities disappeared, or rather were transmuted into virtues, by the brilliancy of his qualifications for seducing the wife of his friend. Perjury, profligacy, and the betrayal of confidence in the most essential tie of human nature, were supreme in popularity in the Novel and on the Stage.

The direct consequence is, that the crime of adultery is lightly considered in France; even the pure speak of it without the abhorrence which, for every reason, it deserves. Its notoriety is rather thought of as an anecdote of the day, or the gossiping of the soirée; and the most acknowledged licentiousness does not exclude a man of a certain rank from general reception in good society.

One thing may be observed on the most casual intercourse with Frenchmen--that the vices which, in our country, create disgust and offence in grave society, and laughter and levity in the more careless, seldom produce either the one or the other in France. The topic is alluded to with neither a frown nor a smile; it is treated, in general, as a matter of course, either too natural to deserve censure, or too common to excite ridicule. It is seldom peculiarly alluded to, for the general conversation of "Good Society" is decorous; but to denounce it would be unmannered. The result is an extent of illegitimacy enough to corrupt the whole rising population. By the registers of 1848, of 30,000 children born in Paris in that year, there were 10,000 illegitimate, of which but 1700 were acknowledged by their parents!

The theatrical profession forms an important element in the population. The actors and actresses amount to about 5000. In England they are probably not as many hundreds. And though the French population is 35,000,000, while Great Britain has little more than twenty, yet the disproportion is enormous, and forms a characteristic difference of the two countries. The persons occupied in the "working" of the theatrical system amount perhaps to 10,000, and the families dependent on the whole form a very large and very influential class among the general orders of society.

But if the Treasury assists in their general support, it compels them to pay eight per cent of their receipts as a contribution to the hospitals. This sum averages annually a million of francs, or £40,000 sterling.

In England we might learn something from the theatrical regulations of France. The trampling of our crowds at the doors of theatres, the occasional losses of life and limb, and the general inconvenience and confusion of the entrance on crowded nights, might be avoided by the were adoption of French _order_.

But why should not higher objects be held in view? The drama is a public _necessity_; the people will have it, whether good or bad. Why should not Government offer prizes to the best drama, tragic or comic? Why should the most distinguished work of poetic genius find no encouragement from the Government of a nation boasting of its love of letters? Why shall that encouragement be left to the caprice of managers, to the finances of struggling establishments, or to the tastes of theatres, forced by their poverty to pander to the rabble. Why should not the mischievous performances of those theatres be put down, and dramas, founded on the higher principles of our nature, be the instruments of putting them down? Why should not heroism, honour, and patriotism, be taught on the national stage, as well as the triumphs of the highroad, laxity among the higher ranks, and vice among all? The drama has been charged with corruption. Is that corruption essential? It has been charged with being a _nucleus_ of the loose principles, as its places of representation have been haunted by the loose characters, of society. But what are these but excrescences, generated by the carelessness of society, by the indolence of magistracy, and by the general misconception of the real purposes and possible power of the stage? That power is magnificent. It takes human nature in her most _impressible_ form, in the time of the glowing heart and the ready tear, of the senses animated by scenery, melted by music, and spelled by the living realities of representation. Why should not impressions be made in that hour which the man would carry with him through all the contingencies of life, and which would throw a light on every period of his being?

The conditions of recompense to authors in France make _some_ advance to justice. The author of a Drama is entitled to a profit on its performance in every theatre of France during his life, with a continuance for ten years after to his heirs. For a piece of three or five acts, the remuneration is _one twelfth part_ of the gross receipts, and for a piece in one act, one twenty-fourth. A similar compensation has been adopted in the English theatre, but seems to have become completely nugatory, from the managers' purchasing the author's rights--the transaction here being made a private one, and the remuneration being at the mercy of the manager. But in France it is a public matter, an affair of law, and looked to by an agent in Paris, who registers the performance of the piece at all the theatres in the city, and in the provinces.

Still, this is injustice. Why should the labour of the intellect be less permanent than the labour of the hands? Why should not the author be entitled to make his full demand instead of this pittance? If his play is worth acting, why is it not worth paying for?--and why should he be prohibited from having the fruit of his brain as an inheritance to his family, as well as the fruit of any other toll?

If, instead of being a man of genius, delighting and elevating the mind of a nation, he were a blacksmith, he might leave his tools and his trade to his children without any limit; or if, with the produce of his play, he purchased a cow, or a cabin, no man could lay a claim upon either. But he must be taxed for being a man of talent; and men of no talent must be entitled, by an absurd law and a palpable injustice, to tear the fruit of his intellectual supremacy from his children after ten short years of possession.

No man leaves Paris without regret, and without a wish for the liberty and peace of its people.

MR RUSKIN'S WORKS.

_Modern Painters_, vol. i. Second edition.----_Modern Painters_,
vol. ii.----_The Seven Lamps of Architecture._----_The Stones of
Venice._----_Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds._ By JOHN
RUSKIN, M.A.

On the publication of the first volume of Mr Ruskin's work on Modern Painters, a notice appeared of it in this Magazine. Since that time a second volume has been published of the same work, with two other works on architecture. It is the second volume of his _Modern Painters_ which will at present chiefly engage our attention. His architectural works can only receive a slight and casual notice; on some future occasion they may tempt us into a fuller examination.

Although the second volume of the _Modern Painters_ will be the immediate subject of our review, we must permit ourselves to glance back upon the first, in order to connect together the topics treated by the two, and to prevent our paper from wearing quite the aspect of a metaphysical essay; for it is the nature of the sentiment of the beautiful, and its sources in the human mind, which is the main subject of this second volume. In the first, he had entered at once into the arena of criticism, elevating the modern artists, and one amongst them in particular, at the expense of the old masters, who, with some few exceptions, find themselves very rudely handled.

As we have already intimated, we do not hold Mr Ruskin to be a safe guide in matters of art, and the present volume demonstrates that he is no safe guide in matters of philosophy. He is a man of undoubted power and vigour of mind; he feels strongly, and he thinks independently: but he is hasty and impetuous; can very rarely, on any subject, deliver a calm and temperate judgment; and, when he enters on the discussion of general principles, shows an utter inability to seize on, or to appreciate, the wide generalisations of philosophy. He is not, therefore, one of those men who can ever become an authority to be appealed to by the less instructed in any of the fine arts, or on any topic whatever; and this we say with the utmost confidence, because, although we may be unable in many cases to dispute his judgment--as where he speaks of paintings we have not seen, or technicalities of art we do not affect to understand--yet he so frequently stands forth on the broad arena where general and familiar principles are discussed, that it is utterly impossible _to be mistaken in the man_. On all these occasions he displays a very marked and rather peculiar combination of power and weakness--of power, the result of natural strength of mind; of weakness, the inevitable consequence of a passionate haste, and an overweening confidence. When we hear a person of this intellectual character throwing all but unmitigated abuse upon works which men have long consented to admire, and lavishing upon some other works encomiums which no conceivable perfection of human art could justify, it is utterly impossible to attach any weight to his opinion, on the ground that he has made an especial study of any one branch of art. Such a man we cannot trust out of our sight a moment; we cannot give him one inch of ground more than his reasoning covers, or our own experience would grant to him.

We shall not here revive the controversy on the comparative merits of the ancient and modern landscape-painters, nor on the later productions of Mr Turner, whether they are the eccentricities of genius or its fullest development; we have said enough on these subjects before. It is Mr Ruskin's book, and not the pictures of Claude or Turner, that we have to criticise; it is his style, and his manner of thinking, that we have to pass judgment on.

In all Mr Ruskin's works, and in almost every page of them, whether on painting, or architecture, or philosophy, or ecclesiastical controversy, two characteristics invariably prevail: an extreme dogmatism, and a passion for singularity. Every man who thinks earnestly would convert all the world to his own opinions; but while Mr Ruskin would convert all the world to his own tastes as well as opinions, he manifests the greatest repugnance to think for a moment like any one else. He has a mortal aversion to mingle with a crowd. It is quite enough for an opinion to be commonplace to insure it his contempt: if it has passed out of fashion, he may revive it; but to think with the existing multitude would be impossible. Yet that multitude are to think with him. He is as bent on unity in matters of taste as others are on unity in matters of religion; and he sets the example by diverging, wherever he can, from the tastes of others.

Between these two characteristics there is no real contradiction; or rather the contradiction is quite familiar. The man who most affects singularity is generally the most dogmatic: he is the very man who expresses most surprise that others should differ from him. No one is so impatient of contradiction as he who is perpetually contradicting others; and on the gravest matters of religion those are often found to be most zealous for unity of belief who have some pet heresy of their own, for which they are battling all their lives. The same overweening confidence lies, in fact, at the basis of both these characteristics. In Mr Ruskin they are both seen in great force. No matter what the subject he discusses,--taste or ecclesiastical government--we always find the same combination of singularity, with a dogmatism approaching to intolerance. Thus, the Ionic pillar is universally admired. Mr Ruskin finds that the fluted shaft gives an appearance of weakness. No one ever felt this, so long as the fluted column is manifestly of sufficient diameter to sustain the weight imposed on it. But this objection of apparent insecurity has been very commonly made to the spiral or twisted column. Here, therefore, Mr Ruskin abruptly dismisses the objection. He was at liberty to defend the spiral column: we should say here, also, that if the weight imposed was evidently not too great for even a spiral column to support, _this_ objection has no place; but why cast the same objection, (which perhaps in all cases was a mere after-thought) against the Ionic shaft, when it had never been felt at all? It has been a general remark, that, amongst other results of the railway, it has given a new field to the architect, as well as to the engineer. Therefore Mr Ruskin resolves that our railroad stations ought to have no architecture at all. Of course, if he limited his objections to inappropriate ornament, he would be agreeing with all the world: he decides there should be no architecture whatever; merely buildings more or less spacious, to protect men and goods from the weather. He has never been so unfortunate, we suppose, as to come an hour too soon, or the unlucky five minutes too late, to a railway station, or he would have been glad enough to find himself in something better than the large shed he proposes. On the grave subject of ecclesiastical government he has stepped forward into controversy; and here he shows both his usual propensities in _high relief_. He has some quite peculiar projects of his own; the appointment of some hundreds of bishops--we know not what--and a Church discipline to be carried out by trial by jury. Desirable or not, they are manifestly as impracticable as the revival of chivalry. But let that pass. Let every man think and propose his best. But his dogmatism amounts to a disease, when, turning from his own novelties, he can speak in the flippant intolerant manner that he does of the national and now time-honoured Church of Scotland.

It will be worth while to make, in passing, a single quotation from this pamphlet, _Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds_. He tells us, in one place, that in the New Testament the ministers of the Church "are called, and call themselves, with absolute indifference, Deacons, Bishops, Elders, Evangelists, according to what they are doing at the time of speaking." With such a writer one might, at all events, have hoped to live in peace. But no. He discovers, nevertheless, that Episcopacy is the Scriptural form of Church government; and, having satisfied his own mind of this, no opposition or diversity of opinion is for a moment to be tolerated.

"But how," he says, "unite the two great sects of paralysed
Protestants? By keeping simply to Scripture. _The members of
the Scottish Church have not a shadow of excuse for refusing
Episcopacy_: it has indeed been abused among them, grievously
abused; but it is in the Bible, and that is all they have a
right to ask.

"_They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ
a written form of prayer._ It may not be to their taste--it
may not be the way in which they like to pray; but it is no
question, at present, of likes or dislikes, but of duties; and
the acceptance of such a form on their part would go half way
to reconcile them with their brethren. Let them allege such
objections as they can reasonably advance against the English
form, and let these be carefully and humbly weighed by the
pastors of both Churches: some of them ought to be at once
forestalled. For the English Church, on the other hand, _must_,"
&c.

Into Mr Ruskin's own religious tenets, further than he has chosen to reveal them in his works, we have no wish to pry. But he must cease to be Mr Ruskin if they do not exhibit some salient peculiarity, coupled with a confidence, unusual even amongst zealots, that his peculiar views will speedily triumph. If he can be presumed to belong to any sect, it must be the last and smallest one amongst us--some sect as exclusive as German mysticism, with pretensions as great as those of the Church of Rome.

One word on the style of Mr Ruskin: it will save the trouble of alluding to it on particular occasions. It is very unequal. In both his architectural works he writes generally with great ease, spirit, and clearness. There is a racy vigour in the page. But when he would be very eloquent, as he is disposed to be in the _Modern Painters_, he becomes very verbose, tedious, obscure, extravagant. There is no discipline in his style, no moderation, no repose. Those qualities which he has known how to praise in art he has not aimed at in his own writing. A rank luxuriance of a semi-poetical diction lies about, perfectly unrestrained; metaphorical language comes before us in every species of disorder; and hyperbolical expressions are used till they become commonplace. Verbal criticism, he would probably look upon a very puerile business: he need fear nothing of the kind from us; we should as soon think of criticising or pruning a jungle. To add to the confusion, he appears at times to have proposed to himself the imitation of some of our older writers: pages are written in the rhythm of Jeremy Taylor; sometimes it is the venerable Hooker who seems to be his type; and he has even succeeded in combining whatever is most tedious and prolix in both these great writers. If the reader wishes a specimen of this sort of _modern antique_, he may turn to the fifteenth chapter of the second volume of the _Modern Painters_.

Coupled with this matter of style, and almost inseparable from it, is the violence of his manner on subjects which cannot possibly justify so vehement a zeal. We like a generous enthusiasm on any art--we delight in it; but who can travel in sympathy with a writer who exhausts on so much paint and canvass every term of rapture that the Alps themselves could have called forth? One need not be a utilitarian philosopher--or what Mr Ruskin describes as such--to smile at the lofty position on which he puts the landscape-painter, and the egregious and impossible demands he makes upon the art itself. And the condemnation and opprobrium with which he overwhelms the luckless artist who has offended him is quite as violent. The bough of a tree, "in the left hand upper corner" of a landscape of Poussin's, calls forth this terrible denunciation:--

"This latter is a representation of an ornamental group of
elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them.
Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the
remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the
claws of a witch--the talons of an eagle--the horns of a fiend;
but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood
which can be told respecting foliage--a piece of work so
barbarous in every way _that one glance at it ought to prove
the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of
the old landscape-painters_.... I will say here at once, that
such drawing as this is as ugly as it is childish, and as
painful as it is false; and that the man who could tolerate,
much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his
canvass, _had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute
or excellence of God's works_. He might have drawn _the other
stem_ in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of
being able to improve upon nature, but this is conclusive and
unpardonable."--(P. 382.)

The great redeeming quality of Mr Ruskin--and we wish to give it conspicuous and honourable mention--is his love of nature. Here lies the charm of his works; to this may be traced whatever virtue is in them, or whatever utility they may possess. They will send the painter more than ever to the study of nature, and perhaps they will have a still more beneficial effect on the art, by sending the critic of painting to the same school. It would be almost an insult to the landscape-painter to suppose that he needed this lesson; the very love of his art must lead him perpetually, one would think, to his great and delightful study amongst the fields, under the open skies, before the rivers and the hills. But the critic of the picture-gallery is often one who goes from picture to picture, and very little from nature to the painting. Consequently, where an artist succeeds in imitating some effect in nature which had not been before represented on the canvass, such a critic is more likely to be displeased than gratified; and the artist, having to paint for a conventional taste, is in danger of sacrificing to it his own higher aspirations. Now it is most true that no man should pretend to be a critic upon pictures unless he understands the art itself of painting; he ought, we suspect, to have handled the pencil or the brush himself; at all events, he ought in some way to have been initiated into the mysteries of the pallet and the easel. Otherwise, not knowing the difficulties to be overcome, nor the means at hand for encountering them, he cannot possibly estimate the degree of merit due to the artist for the production of this or that effect. He may be loud in applause where nothing has been displayed but the old traditions of the art. But still this is only one-half the knowledge he ought to possess. He ought to have studied nature, and to have loved the study, or he can never estimate, and never feel, that _truth_ of effect which is the great aim of the artist. Mr Ruskin's works will help to shame out of the field all such half-informed and conventional criticism, the mere connoisseurship of the picture gallery. On the other hand, they will train men who have always been delighted spectators of nature to be also attentive observers. Our critics will learn how to admire, and mere admirers will learn how to criticise. Thus a public will be educated; and here, if anywhere, we may confidently assert that the art will prosper in proportion as there is an intelligent public to reward it.

We like that bold enterprise of Mr Ruskin's which distinguishes the first volume, that daring enumeration of the great palpable facts of nature--the sky, the sea, the earth, the foliage--which the painter has to represent. His descriptions are often made indistinct by a multitude of words; but there is light in the haze--there is a genuine love of nature felt through them. This is almost the only point of sympathy we feel with Mr Ruskin; it is the only hold his volumes have had over us whilst perusing them; we may be, therefore, excused if we present here to our readers a specimen or two of his happier descriptions of nature. We will give them _the Cloud_ and _the Torrent_. They will confess that, after reading Mr Ruskin's description of the clouds, their first feeling will be an irresistible impulse to throw open the window, and look upon them again as they roll through the sky. The torrent may not be so near at hand, to make renewed acquaintance with. We must premise that he has been enforcing his favourite precept, the minute, and faithful, and perpetual study of nature. He very justly scouts the absurd idea that trees and rocks and clouds are, under any circumstances, to be _generalised_--so that a tree is not to stand for an oak or a poplar, a birch or an elm, but for a _general tree_. If a tree is at so great a distance that you cannot distinguish what it is, as you cannot paint more than you see, you must paint it indistinctly. But to make a purposed indistinctness where the kind of tree would be very plainly seen is a manifest absurdity. So, too, the forms of clouds should be studied, and as much as possible taken from nature, and not certain _general clouds_ substituted at the artist's pleasure.