The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860. Various
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such men as Alfieri and Coleridge. Simplicity and earnestness are the normal traits of efficient character, whether developed in action or Art, in sentiment or reflection; and manufactured verse, vegetation, and complexions indicate a faith in appearances and a divorce from reality, which, in political interests, tend to compromise, to theory, and to acquiescence in a military régime and an embellished absolutism.
It is this incompleteness, this comparative untruth, that gives rise to the dissatisfaction we feel in the last analysis of French character. It is delusive. The promise of beauty held out by external taste is unfulfilled; the fascination of manner bears a vastly undue proportion to the substantial kindness and trust which that immediate charm suggests. "Just Heaven!" exclaims Yorick, "for what wise reasons hast thou ordered it, that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other countries, should find a way to be at unity in this?" The bearing of an Englishman seldom awakens expectation of courtesy or entertainment; yet, if vouchsafed, how to be relied on is the friendship! how generous the hospitality! The urbane salutation with which a Frenchman greets the female passenger, as she enters a public conveyance, is not followed by the offer of his seat or a slice of his reeking pâtè,—while the roughest backwoodsman in America, who never touched his hat or inclined his body to a stranger, will guard a woman from insult, and incommode himself to promote her comfort, with respectful alacrity. It is so in literature. How often we eagerly follow the clear exposition of a subject in the pages of a French author, to reach an impotent conclusion! or suffer our sympathies to be enlisted by the admirable description of an interior or a character in one of their novels, to find the plot which embodies them an absurd melodrama! Evanescence is the law of Parisian felicities,—selfishness the background of French politeness,—sociability flourishes in an inverse ratio to attachment; we become skeptical almost in proportion as we are attracted. If we ask the way, we are graciously directed; but if we demand the least sacrifice, we must accept volubility for service. Thus the perpetual flowering in manners, in philosophy, in politics, and in economy, is rarely accompanied by fruit in either. To enjoy Paris, we must cease to be in earnest;—to pass the time, and not to wrest from it a blessing or a triumph, is the main object. The badges, the gardens, the smiles, the agreeable phrase, the keen repartee, the tempting dish, the ingenious vaudeville, the pretty foot, the elegant chair and becoming curtain, the extravagant gesture, the pointed epigram or alluring formula, must be taken as so many agreeabilities,—not for things performed, but imaginatively promised. The folly of war has been demonstrated to the entire sense of mankind; at best, it is now deemed a painful necessity; yet the most serious phase of life in France is military. Depth and refinement of feeling are lonely growths, and can no more spring up in a gregarious and festal life than trees in quicksands; citizenship is based on consistent acts, not on verbosity; and brilliant accompaniments never reconcile strong hearts to the loss of independence, which some English author has acutely declared the first essential of a gentleman. The civilization of France is an artistic and scientific materialism; the spiritual element is wanting. Paris is the theatre of nations; we must regard it as a continuous spectacle, a boundless museum, a place of diversion, of study,—not of faith, the deepest want and most sacred birthright of humanity.
The want of directness, the absence of candor, the non-recognition of truth in its broad and deep sense, is, indeed, a characteristic phase of life, of expression, and of manners in France. A lover of his nation confesses that even in "galantes aventures l'esprit prenait la place du coeur, la fantaisie celle du sentiment." Voltaire's creed was, that "le mensonge n'est un vice que quand il fait du mal; c'est une grande vertu quand il fait du bien." "L'exagération" says De Maistre, "est le mensonge des honnêtes gens."
In every aspect the histrionic prevails,—by facility of association and colloquial aptitude in the common intercourse of life,—by the inventive element in dress, furniture, and material arrangements, plastic to the caprice of taste and ingenuity,—by the habitudes of out-of-door life, giving greater variety and adaptation to manners,—and by a national temperament, susceptible and demonstrative. The current vocabulary suggests a perpetual recourse to the casual, a shifting of the life-scene, a recognition of the temporary and accidental. Such oft-recurring words as flâneur, liaison, badinage, etc., have no exact synonymes in other tongues. All that is done, thought, and felt takes a dramatic expression. Lamartine elaborates a "History of the Restoration" from two reports,—the one monarchical, the other republican,—and, by making the facts picturesque and sentimental, wins countless readers. Comte elaborates a masterly analysis of the sciences, proclaims a fascinating theory of eras or stages in human development; but the positive philosophy, of which all this is but the introduction, to be applied to the individual and society, eludes, at last, direct and complete application. A popular savant dies, and students drag the hearse and scatter flowers over the grave; a philosopher lectures, and immediately his disciples form a school, and advocate his system with the ardor of partisans; a disappointed soldier commits suicide by throwing himself from Napoleon's column, while a grisette and her lover make their exit through a last embrace and the fumes of charcoal; a wit seeks revenge with a clever repartee instead of his fists or cane. A lady is the centre of attraction at a reception, and, upon inquiry, we are gravely informed that the charm lies in the fact, that, though now fat and more than forty, as well as married to an old noble, in her youth she was the mistress of a celebrated poet. Notoriety, even when scandalous, is as good a social distinction as birth, fame, or beauty. Rousseau wrote a love-story, and sentiment became the rage. An artisan has a day to spare, and takes his family to a garden or a dance. Human existence, thus embellished, impulsive, and caricatured, becomes a continuous melodrama, with an occasional catastrophe induced by political revolutions. Louis XIV., the most characteristic king France ever had, is a genuine representative of this theatrical instinct and development.
Herein may we find a key to the riddle of governmental vicissitudes in France. People so easily satisfied with illusions, so fertile in superficial expedients, are like children and savages in their sense of what is novel and amusing, and their love of excitement,—and make no such demands upon reality as full-grown men and educated citizens instinctively crave. Their powers, in this regard, have not been disciplined,—their wants but vaguely realized. Accustomed to look out of themselves for a law of action, to consult authority upon every occasion, to defer to official sources for guidance in every detail of municipal and personal affairs,—the lesson of self-dependence, the courage and the knowledge needful for efficiency are wanting. "Savez-vous," asks an epicure, "ce qui a chassé la gaîté? C'est la politique." They rally at the voice of command, submit to interference, and take for granted a prescribed formula, partly because it is troublesome to think, and partly on account of inexperience in assuming responsibility. De Tocqueville has remarked, that, in every instance of attempted colonization, they have adapted themselves to, instead of elevating savage tribes. They have never gone through the process of state-education by the inevitable claim of personal duty, like the Anglo-Saxons. Hence their need of a master, and the feeling of stability realized among them only under legitimacy and despotism. Shallow reasoners argue from the mere acknowledgment of this state of things that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of political training. But those who look deeper know that this political inefficiency is but the external manifestation or the latent cause of more serious defects: by impeding healthful development in one way, it occasions a morbid development in another. If citizenship in its most free and active privilege were enjoyed, there would be less devotion to amusement, a more virile national character, and the sanctities of life would have observance. Public spirit and a political career are incentives to manly ambition,—to an employment of mind and feeling that wins men from trifling pursuits and vain diversion; they are the national basis of private usefulness; to thwart them is to condemn humanity to perpetual childhood,—to render members of a state machines.
The social evils and kinds of crime in France are referable in no small degree to the absence of great motives,—the limited spheres and hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not, therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military despotism is justifiable; when the truth is equally demonstrated, that such a sway, by indefinitely