\(^-:':/{-f. 9:->^h\. '-T' •/^'.^^V;V.V."/ Cornell University Library DC 277.1.J56 Gavroche Party 3 1924 028 268 658 The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028268658 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. " Est-il done vrai que toute chose Puisse etre ainsi fouUe aux pieds ; Le rocher cm I'aigk repose Comme la feuille de la rose. Qui tombe et meurt dans nos sentzers l" A. DE MUSSET. " Combien de sols voits faut-il pour faire uii public'}" Cham FORT. " Ces Robespierres en zinc, ces girondins de pldlrc, Et ces montagnards de cartons, — " Albert Millaud. THE GAVROCHE PARTY. BEING LITERARY ESTIMATES OF POLITICAL FRANCE. BLANCH ARD JERROLD. LONDON :. JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 1870. {All Rights reserved.] PREFACE. 'HPHE English reader may not deem it alto- gether uninstructive to compare the me- thods and forms of political contention among our neighbours, as I have endeavoured to present them, with those which apply to his own institutions. Candidates, speakers, and writers are unceremoniously posed for their portraits by the French journalist — and these are bitten in without hesitation as to the delicacy of the lines, and with no sensitive hand, when defects are under treatment. Thus Milliere is described who acts as one like a drunken man — on water : Lefran^ais is an vi PBEFAGE. Ambigu-Comique Marat who wears all his beard: while Araouroux is a little, pale, sententious Gravroche, with the voice of an old woman. Maurice Joly is a man who is trying to build himself a pedestal with the stones that are thrown into his garden. Carnot, in the electoral harlequinade, repre- sents dignity, and is an eloquent representa- tive- — of silence. Pouyer-Quertier is a gar- gantuan orator ; — nothing is more surprising than Pouyer speaking — except Pouyer breakfasting ! He used to drink three bottles of choice Bordeaux every evening at the Cafe d'Orsay, Jules AUix is accused of having been converted by Grlais-Bizoin's kitchen rather than by his arguments. Gaillard the younger, is so soft and sweet, that he would not kill his fleas — if he have any — a point on which the writer confesses his ignorance. Gaillard junior, is, however, PREFACE. vii furious when he remembers that he has been baptized. Raspail, a brilliant solitary man, lives on the summit of the Mountain, and is afraid that his shadow is in the pay of the police. Lissagaray has a nut-cracker tempe- rament ; and his eloquence sounds like win- dow-breaking'. These are frank touches which I lift at random out of the papers lying around me. The sovereign people who exacted an apologetic explanation from M. Eochefort, of the fact that he had actually stood godfather to Charles Hugo's last child, will have their gallery of portraits composed with bold sweeps of the pencil. The cheerful alacrity with which reputa- tions are attacked, and with which damaging antecedents are brought to light, is a lead- ing feature of poHtical combats in France. We may, it is true, adopt the Hastings' motto and say — M nos quoque tela sparsimus ; vui PREFACE. and yet we shall not be able to show the bold strokes that abound in the contem- porary journalism of Paris. Some of the sketches which are in this volume, have appeared in T/ie Atlienceum, and have been widely copied and translated. I cannot send them forth again without using the opportunity of expressing my indebted- ness to the learned professor Philarete Chasles, for the consideration and generous commendation which he gave to some of my literary estimates of his countrymen, in his course on English literature in the College of France. To be compared with La Bruyere for a single passage of critical estimate of French life, by a distinguished savant of La Bruyere's country, is a compli- ment which is a rich reward. I have left the papers which have ap- peared in Tlie Athmamn untouched. They PEEFAOE. ix are rough, it may be, in parts, but I have not seen my way to their amendment. Mr. Morris's lines occur to me : — " Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clue regain 7 The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower, Unfinished must remain." B. J. Reform Club, December 2nd, 1809. CONTENTS. PAGE DRUM-HEAD LITERATURE 13 FRENCH MEN OP LETTERS 19 THE PARIS COCKNEY WRITER 28 RUFFLES FOR THE SHIRTLESS 40 THE FATHER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY . . 51 PITILESS LITERATURE 65 THE MARQUIS D^ORVAULt's FUNERAL ... 67 A FALSE NOSE IN THE GRAVE 75 ROCHEFORT AND HIS " LANTERNE'"'' . . . 11 THE "lANTERNe" DARKENED 93 THE "inflexible" 101 OFFICIAL AND OPPOSITION SATIRISTS . . . 102 THE " CLOCHE " OF FERRAGUS 105 M. ABOUT ON THE " LANTERNe" .... 107 THE JOURNALISM OF 1848 AND 1869 . . Ill A COCKADE IN A NIGHT-CAP 120 THE DAYS OF JUNE, 1869 123 KING HUGO 138 HUGO AND NAPOLEON 145 C^SAR IS ILL 146 xii CONTENTS. rxGB C^SARj FATHER AND HUSBAND 153 THE PANTIN TRAGEDY 158 THE assassin's GUIDE 166 the liberties of england and france . 168 Heine's contrast between the English and french 173 THE German's love of liberty . . . .178 agitation in ENGLAND AND FRANCE . . . 182 THE FRENCH RADICAL 192 GAVROCHE 197 BELLEVILLE ORATORS 202 THE people's SOVEREIGNTY 205 direct government 208 gratuitous credit 212 rochefort's kiss 213 liberty enough for blackguards . . . 215 GAVROCHe's CANDIDATE 217 AN UNBECOMING EXPRESSION 225 LEDRU ROLLIN 227 CITIZEN Fe'lIX PYAt's MANIFESTO .... 231 FRAN901S-VICTOR Hugo's argument . . . 242 CITIZEN CHARLES RELIEVES HIS BROTHER . 252 THE " ABUSIVE " PRESS 253 Fe'lIX PYAT ON THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE . 260 PURVEYORS OF " ARLEQUINS " 268 PREVOST-PARADOL in ENGLAND .... 269 THE USE OF THE " BONNET-ROUGE " . . . 282 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. ' I "0 the sound of the drum always, and frantic drumming ; with pencil as well as pen as twin drumsticks — and drum- majors for editors ! Drum-head education : drum-head elections : drum-head proclama- tions of peace, and fraternity, and good- will : drum-head judgments on all who hap- pen to think quietly and soberly, or will not make a prie-JDieu of the Eepublican sheep's- skin. A paper peppered with lanterns, in which the wick has burned very low, and showing monkeys playing antics with drums over every paragraph that settles, in a few spasms, a question which has vexed noble minds for many years ! Screams, in- B J4 THE GAVBOCEE PARTY. stead of the self-contained resonance of ra- tional genius. The comedy is that of the ducasse. The ideas heaped together with red-hot shovels, are as incongruous and shabby as the contents of a clown's pocket. The mummers draw the foolish crowd around an honest citizen's grave. Could he wake and speak, he would say — " Begone from the Field of Rest, and don't mime profound emotion (with an eye to the reporters) where I lie. Leave my grave, and the air fresh and unpolluted to keep the leaves green which loving hands that never handled drumsticks to call the world to see their tenderness, have, unseen, and wanting to be unseen, laid upon my bosom. I did my honest work, fought my courageous fight, as be- came a man. Begone, and vex me not with this burlesque." A man, after many years of exile, passes home — to prove the prudence of putting him INTBODUCTION. 15 Iseyond the frontiers while order was in course of re-establishment on the wrecks of Liberty, left by the clashing of selfish, half- educated men, who would not understand that freedom rests secure on a series of com- promises ; on deference among disputants ; on respect for opponents ; on each man's admission that human reason is fallible, and that he may be in the wrong. He returns — he and an unwelcome host after his kind — to show Liberty in her most illiberal moods and forms and tempers : with mud in both hands, and boUing pitch between her teeth, to scatter upon all who have not the happi- ness to agree with him and his, that Society wants to be picked to bits, like a salad, and "fatigued" in a republican bowl with the fork of Hugo and the spoon of Eochefort, and — his own vinegar. But the illustration fails — there is no oil ! M. Felix Pyat, dwelling on the means at b'2 16 THE OAVBOGHE PARTY. liand to turn society upside down, that lie and others may come to the surface (and the turn must be mathematically complete to put some of them e?i evidence), cites the example of England. It is on this ground that I pretend to join issue with — the GrAVRocHE Party ! But I beg permission to turn back the leaves of the Book of Days a little, in order to justify myself; by showing that I have watched the • growth of Liberty in the arms of Order, before the laws of the Second Empire permitted Monsieur Felix Pyat to add himself to the ranks of the republican combatants who, I might say if I used their own weapons, are ready to pull down the entire fabric of society, that they may sh are the coins in the cavity of the fouu- dation-stone. I have advanced, watching step bjr step the developments of the party Avhich is putting the liberties of the people in INTRODUCTION. 17 jeopardy — as the reader will perceive — wlio shall have the patience to follow me. French men of letters seldom spare one another, and are pitiless towards their enemies. Poor Viennet could not be carried unmolested to his grave. We find passages as scandalous as the worst literary appear- ances of Scarron's time in the French journalism of this year. The Sapjjel draws a parallel at length between the Emperor and his ministers, and Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples ! I find a " tresjolie satire" by Rochefort, of which one line runs — A Jesus-Christ j'ai prete mes vieux gants. Men are dealt with like I pupazzi of Lemercier de Neuville. As we approach ihe present, even from only two or three years back, we find the spice becomes hotter : the hate more bitter : the disrespect pro- founder and wider spread. The very roots 18 TEE GAVBOGHE PARTY. of society are loosening. M. Eochefort, in- toxicated with the noise of his street mobs, casts wildly about for stronger flavours for his poisonous dishes. His clients crave the most biting food, since he has almost paralyzed their palates : not weekly, but daily : not in the Lanterne, but in the Mar- seillaise. He had a burning desire to call ministers calves with two heads, and lepers, more than a year ago ; so that the lowest argot must appear only spoon-meat to him by this time. Let us turn back a few months. MABGH, '68. 19 March, 1868. ' I ^HE manner in which French men of letters discuss their own interests offers some tempting features to our insular prosaic minds. We had our meeting of the Literary Fund the other day in London, and it was as orderly as a group of expectants gathered together in a bishop's parlour. Our Ob- servatory suggests Lyly's profoundly quiet hermitage, where a mouse was sleeping in a cat's ear. Our Premier — albeit English literature is not, I apprehend, Tory in the main — is announced to preside over our Fund-supporters in a week or two, at that altar of British charity the dinner-table. A starched, snowy cravat will be about every literate weasand on that occasion ; and a due number of acre representatives will sit 20 TEE GAVBOGEE FABTY. on the right side of " the pale spectrum of the salt." When gentlemen are looking for their hats, and Lady Domaine's carriage is stop- ping the way to Belgravia, " The Press" will be proposed by a lordship, who will be briefly civil ; and everybody will go con- tentedly and decently home to bed, reflect that the rent and taxes are paid, that church was duly attended twice last Sunday, that the house is being properly painted this spring ere the violets have broken through the fog, and that baby has successfully teethed at the exact time when, according to the doctor, well-regulated infants should teethe. In 1855, M. Theophile Grautier, — " the great Theo ", — in opening his Moniieur studies of the British School of Art (one of our national infant-schools, according to most Frenchmen), was pleased to observe that " English Art was always aristocratic et gentle manr So is English literatm-e. I MABGH, '68. 21 am sure rrenchmen have a fixed idea that a powdered footman bears away the inspira- tions of our insular Parnassus to the outer and vulgar world, ranged in unbroken rows, and silent as the liighway Sphinxes of Egypt. We have the reputation of being a starched race, not wholly liberated from the " spleen" in our most convivial moments ; and never rising beyond the gaiety or grace of well-read croque-morts in our wit-bouts. Our Bohemianism is heavy ; our rags are ruled; we take the exact, pre-arranged num- ber of cups every evening. The British literary upper-crust is smooth as the chin of a gentleman-usher, and dallies with fretted silver and fine linen, and is ferocious about the bienseances. There is etiquette in our poetry, respectability in our history, cere- monial sharpness in the conduct of our essay. When Black Eod — or, indeed, any other awful Eod — shall preface his sum- 22 THE OAVBOGEE PABTY. mons with, a double shuffle, and the Lord Chancellor shall lie at his ease stretched upon the woolsack, his brow covered with a handkerchief to keep the flies ofi" (flies being democratic in their most inner conscious- ness), — then, and not till then, will the English literary man "qui se respecte" take to an independent walk, get locks of hair flowing from his shoulders, smile upon a sugar-loaf hat, and, in fine, browbeat decent society. There are people to whom the act of puffing a fluted column of smoke into a king's face is an excellent expression of in- dependence ; as I can conceive of a com- pany in which it would be good manners to eat your peas with your knife, the edse diligently kept towards the lips. It is unfortunate that we are behind the times ; that our independence is all angles. We have good instincts ; we make a solid front against every attack upon our rights ; MABGH, '68. 2a but we are liumpisli, and look reverently at traditions, and permit masters of the cere- monies to trim our lamps. We are back- ward enough, to be loyal, and formal enough, to draw severe lines limiting the exercise of our descriptive faculties something short of our neighbours' bedroom and kitchen ; hence we are tame in colour as Quakers' drab when we are set beside our brethren of the banks of the Seine. Because our russet grey en- cases us, I shall not presume to say that we are monopolists in taste, and that the Gallic bird of wisdom, being of gay plumage, has not sweet notes in his throat. But albeit these are times of universal travel; and it is the lot of crowds of men to see things which would be strange indeed at their own hearths ; there are views of the French literary and scientific man which have not ceased to provoke our wonder, al- though the South-Eastern folk have been 24 TSE OAVBOGHE PARTY. advertising the easy possibility of taking- breakfast in London and an early dinner in Paris between the rising and the setting of the sun. Of late these views have been singularly brilliant and suggestive ; and I have taken some observations, which I will endeavour to lay clearly before my readers. The Hterary waters have been sharply rip- pled, by winds from all quarters of the com- pass. A jury of honour has been sitting. The legislative body has been busy with the jDress, and therefore with the doings and pretensions of journalists. A clause has been drawn about the life of the Second Empire — like a screen about a sick bed in an hospital ward. There has been turmoil among the dramatists. M. Hugo is implored to return to his country, and take his place among the lawgivers of the Opposition. We shall see the kind of answer he will make. The cry of sailors of a painted ship MARCH, '68. 25 ■upon a painted ocean has given pause to Caesar by the budding chestnuts of the Tuile- ries gardens. M. Henri Eochefort is so astonished at the attitude taken by M. Le- verrier, that he will find it difficult hence- forth, he declares, to distinguish the line which separates the philosopher from the pork-butcher. And, to come to the most serious matters, M. Jules Claretie quotes a few lines on the author of " The Life of Jesus," written, we are assured, by a very grave critic indeed. These lines, to quote a favourite phrase, illustrate an era. M. Eochefort, who is the prince of sneerers — a full blossom of the Second Empire — has never written in the slippers of prose any- thing so startling in the way of audacity as these lines, marshalled in all the cadence and full dress of verse. We have M. Eenan's " relations with the Divinity " measured to us by a cool scoffer, who, uninfluenced by 26 TSE GAVBOGHE PAJR.TY. the theme and the presence, weighs his syllables as though he were portioning ounces of acidulated drops for children. These three strophes are selected as sample bits from a " tres jolie satire " : — Je suis d'ailleurs plus malin que Voltaire. A tout hasard, s'il est un paradis Pour demeurer bien avec Dieu le pere En pension j'ai pris monsieur son fils. Des dieux mal mis nous n'avons plus le culte, Nous ne voulons que des dieux elegants, Et pour qu'U ne pariit pas trop inculte A Jesus-Christ j'ai prete mes vieux gants. A bout du temps de son apprentissage, En nous quittant nous nous embrasserons, II m'est venu simple dieu du village, J'en aurai fait le Jesus des salons ! More than two hundred years have passed and gone since Scarron provoked a mania for bui-lesque, and nothing was sacred in the hands of the expert literary buffoon. About 1649 appeared a little, poor work, " La Pas- sion de Notre Seigneur, en vers burlesques." MABCE, '68. 27 Is the Frencli literary bark tacking back to that time ? There is a fierce Hght beating about literary life here, and the persiflage is everywhere. M. de Kerveguen is pursued with a vigour that is exceedingly suspicious, because he has stirred into depths which it is not expedient to fathom. The peccant deputy, however, is, it seems to me, a mild man when compared with the Uterary sinners against men of letters. It is hard in a pelt- ing-bout, when a man, who has thrown just one stone, is thrust forward for punishment by the very fellows who have worn out their slings in the fight. I am inclined to submit an example or two* of the pen encounters, and the weapons now used, in French Hterary diffi- culties. The friendly sparring is sharp, and, * These examples make a natural preface to the literary violences which are now the everyday weapons of the Gavroche party. 28 THE GAVEOGHE PARTY. to our sight, strange. When the ^ens de lettres are under criticism, or there is a difference as to the new whereabouts of the Observatory, the moot point being "a removal of scientific sentinels to Fontenay-aux-Eoses, it is not with roses the disputants pelt each, other,— as I shall, I think, show. April 1, 1868. "T^HEEE is no cockney like the Paris cockney. He surveys the eternities through the atmosphere of the Boulevards. Has he a classical fit ? He votes for a filet of Pegasus truffe, and will have his nectar in a litre measure. He nicely calculates ses lignes upon the slopes of Parnassus. For the sake of a smile, he degrades heroic deeds APRIL, '68. 29 with commonplace images. Mrs. Grundy has no French sister. There has been — there is — commotion among the naturally turbulent gentlemen who compose the Societe des Gens de Lettres. The Government has, through M. Duruy, intimated to the Council that a State grant of 6000 francs will be afforded to the Society this year. Whereupon the Society falls under the critical eye of more than one chroniqueur. The time for M. Duruy's bounty is in truth ill chosen. Sainte-Pelagie is full; and one trenchant writer observes that since there is not prison- room for all the poor authors, and the Dubois Asylum charges for its beds, help is needful to the worn-out jockeys of race. The State gives the price of a -carriage-horse. The poor literati are to wait patiently in the vestibule of death, roofed with a bounty that would not buy 30 TEE GAVBOCHE PABTT. young Numskull a hack for the Bois. They who have not been hostile enough to com- mand a cell in the prison through the bars of which Beranger sang to the world of friendship ;* who have no scandalous corre- spondence with the great to sell, and who have not produced popular stuff for the common market, must have aid, even to be able to wear out the dusty shell upon a Dubois mattress. Six thousand francs are to " gild the agony " of these honest folk, Ferragiis records. This sum is an advance of one thousand francs on the grant of last year ; but then the crust is dearer than it was ; and we have reached times Avhen in the poor man's carte pump water threatens to be a supplement. * Que fait lagloire a qui succombe ! Amis, renonfons a briller ; Donnons les marbres d'une tombe, Pour les plumes d'ua oreiUer. AFBIL, '68. 31 The obolus burns in the palm of the honest hand — when there are so many dis- honest fingers about that are burnished to the nail-tips. The gardener who has the privilege of strewing the literary path with roses dwells, or lately dwelt, in the Eue Bellechasse, had a sentry at his gate, and the imperial eagle looked approvingly down upon him from a flagstaff as he entered his brougham. In the flesh of sensitive men the balmy coolness of the petals would not heal the wound of the thorns ; the rosy kiss reached not the blood-wejl bored by the golden arrow smuggled under the leaf. There is ever a race known iu oflicial par- lance as " difficult people : " a race the skin of which will not harden. The supply of tough hides for everyday use has not, how- ever, failed yet ; and these are ready to take a turn on poor Pegasus in any livery which includes a pocket and a purse. Virtue is at c 3 32 THE GAVBOCEE PARTY. her wit's end for a hiding-place very often ; and when she is angered with her bufFetings she will turn and have at the tough-skins who mimic her shivering fits and feast on terrines, while she nibbles the coarse leaf of a leek. Just now, according to Ferragus, she has driven the following into the hide of prosperous jockeys who wear the green : — Aux fonds secrets, poiir ses vertus, Puisant a flots, xiii tel s'eorie : Mille ecus par mois, mille ecus ! C'est moins d'un sou par calomnie. The crowns of the State handed to the Gens de Lettres are, we are told, for literary gruel. Secret ecus flow into the golden chariots of the Gensde Lettres — de la Maison de I'Empereur ! Pegasus, with shining eagles upon his harness, paws the Boule- vards at the door of the Cafe Anglais. When it is his sombre business to bear any wretch from the Societe, the destination is APRIL, '68. 33 the hospital, if not the madhouse. To these dismal outlets from the pain of life, 6000 francs will help a few shallow scribblers, who have remained so far behind their time, that they have obstinately declined to have their reeds tuned by the police. Within the rooms of the Societe there are figures, per- versely progressing hither and thither on two legs, yet making poor caricatures of men, who touch their hat to M. Duruy, keep their mouths closed but their pockets gaping. The libei-ty of the press has been discussed ; it has rained prosecutions ; writers swarm in a prison ; and the Societe has remained the faithful copyist of the obedient creature of whom Jean Paul said, "Like a lap-dog, he lays himself at the feet of the people in power, and wags his tail." Collector of the rights of authors (rights which are but imperfectly understood in England), — purveyor of funeral orations, 34 TEE OAVBOCHE PARTY. whicli have all a very strong family like- ness, and not of the most handsomely en- dowed family, — and almsgiver to those whose " wood-notes wild " have not caught the ears of the many-headed, — these are malcontents who are not pleased to put their literary interest under the Society's wing. There has been agitation for the re- form of the Society's statutes ; but now the call is for secession, and for the constitution of a Trench literary body that shall do some- thing more than carry the. unfortunate to the hospital, and flash a rhetorical nimbus about the skeleton head that lies in the fosse commune. We English understand what a schism in a literary society means. We have shown an indisposition to see pence distributed to the needy among our brethren in golden ladles ; we are no strangers to the art of polite and formal wrangling, which has been perfected by the long existence of APRIL, '68. 35 •our freedom in the matters of speaking, writing, and meeting. We know how to give the lie direct to "the distinguished friend" and "the hon. Member," and to convey our opinion to "the right honour- able gentleman " that there is not a spark of honour in all his policy. Freedom has yielded us this art ; and we have become unaccustomed to hard name-callingr and violent charges. Violent charges belong to times of violence. We have passed out of these. My colleagues are not in Newgate. Parliament has not been busy gagging us ; and, in a sliding scale of rights of meeting, we have not been placed lower than our dustman. In short, we have had no reason to trouble any society or club or corporation to defend us against a minister. We may ■excite the people to detest the Government at our good pleasure ; we might urge the English public to lessen their exalted idea 36 TEE GAVBOCHE PABTY. of the sovereign, and we should not be fined or imprisoned : we should be laughed at or despised, and put aside. Wlien we approach the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and observe its attitude at this moment, and mark what French literary men say of the decorous gentlemen who collect M. Ponson du Terrail's rights, and bury the Murgers, it is just to take into consideration the difference there is between their platform and ours. The dog which is tied up all day, whirls about, rolls in the dust, and jumps in the air when set free for a run; the dog habitually free, moves with sober step, is well behaved, and h'e& upon the leopard skin to warm his sagaci- ous nose at your study-fire. He ponders how he shall obtain an advantage over Fidele, who is upon my lady's lap in the drawing- room, when next they meet over a bone. He- will not be violent; but he is bent upon ATBIL, '68. 37 liaving the bone. I have a learned poodle, — Solon, we will say. Solon is tied up. I have company, and am anxious that Solon should go through his game of cards as gravely as a bishop at whist. I have only to approach him — to hold out to him a faint idea that I am going to set him at liberty — and he is upon his hind legs, and his deep baying wakes the echoes. He will not be cool and composed enough for cards for an hour to come. All this time Fidele has been performing before the ladies without committing a mistake. When the French Societe that, in recog- nition of its good conduct, has received a supplementary thousand francs of annual pocket-money, continues to please " the powers that be," — while the press is being calumniated from the tribune, and speech and thought are receiving an extra pound or two of irons, — the men of letters, wha 38 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. have no taste for leashes and cannot dance in fetters, even when stamped with the eagle, nor wear in comfort a prison dress freaked with golden bees ; must be excused a little wildness of epithet — some daring in imagery. While a little liberty lasts, it is natural to make the most of it. Every word is at blood-heat, because the chain and the collar are in sight, and the neck that has worn them tingles still with the old chafing. Cockney epithets fall upon things which, in a settled and civilized society, all should respect. When the law says that every male child shall be born to bear a musket ; when the nurseries of the genera- tions to come smell woundily of gunpowder, and the epaulet overshadows the sword of justice, and the sabre pollutes the fountains of learning ; men of genius and men of talent will not be mealy-mouthed. Sneer- ing becomes a profession. The " arts of 'APEIL, '68. 39 ambusli " penetrate literature. Two lite- rary camps are insensibly formed. Talent fills the camp, where, in the dark, pay is thrust from under the cloak of State into the scribe's hand. Genius, in serried tents, holds apart, conscious of strength that is not conquerable ; patient, because sure of vic- tory. Genius lifts a flaming sword to smite ; but we should not overlook the lesser chil- dren who, battling in the light of holy fire, carry but a handful of pebbles and a sling. Give them time, and the ants wiU clean the giant to his bones. 40 TBIS QAVBOGBE PABTT. AprU, 1868. "D UFFLES are provided for the shirtless Captain Pens on the French side of the Channel, as well as in the capital which in- cludes the site of Grub Street, and received the ashes of Chatterton. The winter that is saying so many cold good-byes to us, put out the light of Elias Regnault. Of that light it is not needful to say much — save that it was held in fair esteem. Elias Reg- nault's story may be gathered within the length of a Httle finger. He died dis- heartened and in great poverty. On the 3 1 st of last December his landlord gave him peremptory notice to leave. He was many quarters in arrear. On New Year's-day a little boy went to see his unhappy grand- father. Grrandpapa had not a sou: but a APRIL, '68. 41 .grandpapa cannot see his grandson on New Year's-day with empty hands. The old man went to his porter and borrowed two francs, with which the bag of bonbons was bought. Over the old man's grave, very soon after the sweetmeats were eaten, three eloquent orations were uttered ! Many an oraison funehre has echoed along the damp lines of afosse commune, and tingled in the ears of the impatient grave-digger. I remember a poor poet, a Dupont, who used to come to my hearth some fifteen years ago, pale, thin, most melancholy. He was in brown-black. Poor soul, he was full of pride and poetic affectation. Most people who met him believed that he was acting melancholy, and that there was the study of the hypocrite in the upturning of the eye. He dressed the part: but it was a weakness, not a cheat. He was of the nest of singing birds whom France should pro- 42 TEE OAVBOGEE PABTY. tect and love — at least as she loves the swallows skimming the balmy air amid the flowering chestnuts, that give shade by the fountains where the hardy little navigators of the Chaussee d'Antin and the Avenue de rimperatrice, launch their 'boats. In his soul he believed this : that he had a claim, and that it was shamefully neglected. There were crumbs for the swallows, and none for the poets. He sang this sad ditty to many tunes, in many circles of pitying people. He was a widower, left with a little girl, whose plaints woke the saddest tones of his ever-craped harp. How to help him ! A prouder man never crossed the threshold of a friend. A word of praise for his muse left out in the cold by the obdurate money- changing world, were the alms he craved of our compassion. He had a voice that was a musical wail. He would fold his hands, turn his white face to the burning APRIL, '68. 43 logs, and sadden the women's hearts with his first notes : — Dormez, 6 ma fiUe, Dormez sur mon cosiur ; Sans que mon aiguille Quitte sa labeur. The song was of sweet devotion in a bitter world. The child should not wake until mother's fingers had earned the crust for the soup. Sleep keeps the stomach quiet. The beggar pillowed on his wallet may be er- mine-nursed in his dreams, although he lies where the lizard shines on the rock. The policeman's thumb presses his rags, and yet he is king among men, until he is twitched into rascaldom. Why should he not rest ? The royalty of his dreams has not power to loosen a bell in the cap of the king's jester ? The thunder-cloud is not legal bed-covering. He must wake and put lawful lath and plaster between his beggar-limbs and the 44 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. wind. Some burden to this purpose was carried on the tremulous cadences of our friend's voice. The sweetness was pressed out of the grief. Had he not suffered, he had not sung. Years have passed since he last sipped his dish of tea with me. It may be that eloquent and touching speeches have been said over his poor bones, and that his ■daughter has opened her eyes upon the world that gave her father no supper for his song. I fear it is so. I never could hear that the gipsy Fortune even glanced into his tent. The sad ballad-writer was recalled to my mind by a brother in misfortune of his, who not long ago was fighting the world for himself and his younglings, with an unlucky pen. The brave soldier was footsore and thirsty, and fever beat in his pulse. The black enemy was upon him, and had an eye upon his sick child's cradle. Paris was APBIL, '68. 45 crowded; Paris was gay — gay enough to break this fainting Captain Pen's heart — in 1865. He stooped over the little stranger who was slipping away from him. The baby eyes brightened at the sight of the toys, and dimmed when tired of them. The writer was forgotten in the father, and was led into the open day presently, through love for baby. Baby must have more to3rs. Some caricatures lay about the floor. Had money been plentiful these would have been thrust out of sight; but when the pocket is empty, the hand wanders from it, and be- comes wondrously inventive. The carica- tures were cut out, pasted upon cardboard, and made to gambol ridiculously before baby, who munificently crowed acknowledgments, and cried for explanations. A light broke upon the father from the infant's sick bed, and he turned upon the world once more — this time with dolls and patter adapted to 46 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. children of the fullest growth. There are happy children crowned with ckiffions and intimate with razors in Paris, who shake their sides at Guignol in the May-days, and do honour to puppet-shows in ball dress on winter evenings ; so that straw-tickling is a very important profession by the banks of the Seine. From baby's sick cradle the poor father turned to the window, to mark whether the crowd would laugh. If it would laugh, it would pay. They didlavLgh; and forth went Lemercier de Nenville ! Who has not heard of '' I pv.pazzV ? The ■salons of this passing season have welcomed the clever man with his puppets and his sharp and bright patter, spiced with personal mischief. The dolls are admirable as cari- catures ; the talk is badinage, touched with satire lightly, as a cream is flavoured with vanilla. Whom do we envy most? — the happy natures that are so prone to enjoy- APRIL, '68. 47 ment, or the happy father and head of the laughing household his genius has made out of the sickness of a child? Why was it not given to my poor poet -friend, who could only sing his babe to sleep, and see it wake to a thin pot-au-feu, to arrest the crowd from his window with his eloquent sorrow ? They can laugh who cannot cry ; albeit only the laughter of those who have generously wept has mnsic in it. Tickling is better business than touching. The Punch and Judy man on our side of the Channel makes more, I take it, than the poor Italian Wordsworth sang, who bore about English lanes " blind old Milton " in the creamiest of plaster of Paris. There are " illustrations " of the hazards of the pen abounding in the dramatic and musical " worlds/' as well as in the " world " of literature. It is diflicult to strike a balance, in commercial phrase, between the D 2 48 THE GAmOGHE TARTY. worldly cliances of English and French men of letters ; but hitherto the Enghsh public have been treated almost exclusively to accounts of the extraordinary financial suc- cesses of French journalists and romancists. The quill has raised substantial palaces, since the author of " Monte Christo" sold his ; and his richly caparisoned steed pawed the ground at his gates. Men of letters in Paris are mostly men of business. We are astonished at the suras which Scribe realized, and are startled wheir we learn the number of thousands sterling which a new comedy pours into the coffers of the younger Dumas. Dramatic literature is a rich mine indeed in Paris, when the dramatist makes a hit. The payment of the author is more equitably arranged than it is with us. He takes his share of the profits of his work. But the plaints of the unsuccessful fill the air. The way to success is barred on all sides. Men APRIL, '68. 49 spend a lifetime, not in getting a hearing, but in getting a reading by a manager. A dramatist, tbe part author of a very success- ful piece which appeared ten years ago, has not yet obtained a second appearance on the stage. He proved that the manager never opened his manuscripts, by dropping gum, here and there, between the pages. Another, Neree Desarbres relates, had Moliere's " Tartuffe " copied in running lines as prose, just calling Tartuffe Pique-assiette, and so forth. The manager to whom he sent it, returned it as unfit for his stage ! A long letter is printed in the daily papers, with the startling heading, " Une Grande Misere." It is an appeal to the commisera- tion of the theatrical authorities by E. De la Eoche-Jager, an artist who has actually tnown successes. The complaint is — "I have ten operas in my ]5ortfoho, which have been refused without a hearing." And 50 THE GAVBOCSE PARTY. what is the composer's fate ? " Yesterday,, having neither shelter nor bread, I was com- pelled to get myself arrested." A pension of 110 francs per annum from the Societe des Artistes, a private allowance of a like amount, and about 800 francs, the proceeds of an annual concert, are the ordinary in- come of the petitioner. This year the poor composer has sujffered a long illness, and is now , too weak to give the usual concert. The landlord proves inexorable ; and the artist, whose work has been applauded, is in the streets, or sheltered as the vagabond trapped in the hanlieue quarry is sheltered. We gaze upon La Patti's charming resi- dence, and wonder how many thousands are laid at night under the bewitching head of its mistress. The salons of Gustave Dore are crowded with the rank and beauty and wit and wisdom of Paris ; and the owner (his own architect and builder) has hardly JULY, '68. 51 seen his fortieth year yet. Fortune works these wonders in Paris, and the echoes of the applause reach us in London. But mark, under La Patti's doorway the sick and heartsore creatm-e E. Peau de la Eoche-Jager crouches ; and my poor poet is passing, in a ffreen hearse, to his rest ! July, 1868. ' I ^HE old man is dead and huried at last ; and there can be no more laughter over his grey hairs. Paris includes one comic veteran the less. Jean P. Gr. Viennet is laid in the family vault ; and the regulation oratory has vibrated over his grave. A well-worn chair is open to the ambition of Janin and Gfautier. The hre- pressible writer and talker who took the 52 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. seat of the Count de Segur thirty-eiglit years ago, — who was a lieutenant in the navy in 1796, and a prisoner of war at Portsmouth in the following year, — who was decorated on the battle-field by ISTa- poleon, after Lutzen, — who was deputy in 1827, and peer of France in 1840, — went on year after year writing satires, pamphlets, tragedies, comedies and operas, fables and epic poems ; achieved popularity only to fall into that most intolerable disrepute which is manifested in the shajie of jokes and squibs, and being appointed the hero of every foolish story. The satii'ist became the chosen victim of satire; while his own shafts lay rotting and unregarded about him. I shall have something to say about pitiless literature. To understand it as it has grown in France of late years [and as the Gavroche Party are now developing it], the reader should gather together all that JULY, '68. 53 has been written against the late father of the French Academy. He said of himself, with the invincible gaiety which belonged to him, and showed a brave spirit, "they counted up at least 500 epigrams a year against my person, my poetry, my parlia- mentary speeches, — even to my green coat. Every schoolboy, on his escape from college into journalism, believed he owed me his first kick." His biographer notes of 1834 that it was the year in which Yiennet's un- popularity was at its height. Thirty-four years have passed over the vivacious Acade- mician since he was execrated as advocate of the repressive laws which followed upon the April days of 1834. His failure as a dra- matic author was, his good biographer ob- serves, " of the completest. He brought forth both tragedy and comedy between 1803 and 1805; in 1820 he produced an opera (' Aspasia and Pericles '), and a tragedy 64 TEE GAVBOGEE PARTY. CClovis'); between 1813 and 1825 the gratitude of the world was challenged with five tragedies. Alas ! these works never touched a single heart ; but they were the cause of merriment for years. ' Arbogaste ' was played one night only, but it was before the mocking world during many circlings of the seasons, under the cruel auspices of the waspish ch'oniqueurs. The dramatic career of the wonderful old man, who defied time to dim the sparkle in his eye, and who af- fected to think, with a greater man, that death had forgotten him; closed in 1859, when he produced the Tartar drama, ' Selma,' at the Odeon." M. Viennet pub- lished finally an edition of his " Epitres et Satires," the work by which he will be known, if he be known at all; and to this edition the unconquerable satirist added a piece addressed to his eighty years. He is bold who ralHes the fourscore years that JULY, '68. 55 track Ms footsteps. The writer who has been to this generation only a mark for the ridicule of men infinitely smaller than him- self, — who was famous, and lived to be only ridiculous, — who kept a green place in his heart when his enemies closed about him, and were not ashamed to mock his grey hairs, — who accomplished an extraordinary amount of literary work, good and bad, and presented his country with a patiently ges- tated epic poem in ten cantos (" La Fran- ciade") in his eighty-sixth year, — such a man, albeit his rage against the romantic school amounted to frenzy, should not be put out of the way in a Figaro fetdlleton, beaded with the word-twisting which passes for epigrammatic power on the Boulevards. The glorious time of Jean-Pons-Guillaume Viennet, of the stafi" of the Royal Gruard, was after the second return of the Bourbons, when his " Epitres " were appearing. The 56 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. strong public feeling of the time gave them nearly all their success. The man of southern temperament had an impetuous love of freedom in him, and was gallant in his attacks; but he hit wildly, and when he thought he had felled his adversary to the earth, it was his friend who com- plained that he had a black eye. His weapon was bright, and of tough steel in its time. The Epistle to the Muses on the romantic writers, was a sounding war-note that gathered a host about him. He beat his drum only to draw the bees together to sting him. They called him the vieux niais as far back as 1834. For his good work no credit was given to him. His Epistle to the Chiffonniers on Press Offences, which a hostile biographer is constrained to describe as a bold and spirited protest against a piece of odious and ridiculous legislation, Avas written forty years ago. It was popular JULY, '68. 57 in its day, but it has been forgotten hj the men whose cause it served. M. Viennet was the open enemy of despotism, and the denouncer of the Jesuits. He belonged to the strong and valiant Opposition that, in the end, made the restored Bourbons re- member and learn ; and he was among the lettered deputies who cleared the way for, and hailed, the Citizen King. It was when the King and the Charter had been accepted that he entered upon a career of unpopu- larity, which was unbroken to the day of his death. He elected to be with the counter-revolutionists. His ardour, as of old, was damaging to the cause he espoused. He was a stranger to discretion. His friends feared him more than his foes ; he overstated his case ; his ambition vaulted comically ; his Pegasus looked like a dummy horse in a burlesque. In striking an heroic attitude, the unfortunate actor fell into the big drum. X,8 THE GAVEOGHE PARTY. As deputy, in tlie time of Louis Philippe, lie was with the party of Order, and called the Left the stipendiaries of revolt * — a fair hit. But Viennet went on : "I desire," he declaimed with his grandest air, — " I desire the repose of the state, because mine de- pends upon it." This was to whet the edge and sharpen the point of a weapon for the use of his mortal foe. It is remembered of him to-day, while his bones are travelling to the Eastern Cemetery, with palm-em- broidered savants in the rear, polishing their periods of praise as they go, — -just as the light writer of 1868 scrapes up the " vieux niais" of 1834 to cast it after the old scholar's bier. Which are the better eentle- men? M. Viennet was a servant of freedom. * What would he have said of the " citoyens " who are drumming the " jRappeV ? JULY, '68. 59 who remained beyond suspicion. He blun- dered, but he was faithful ; he halted here and there, and would think for himself and in his own way, long after his ideas had become old-fashioned. He drew down the cheap jesters upon him ; and the laughing old gentleman sat himself down to count the arrows which had hit him. But we who keep aloof from the unworthy contest in which the Boulevard witling, elbowing us and flicking his toothpick under our nose, jostles the bright, lettered gentleman of the old school, remorseless in regard to his age, and ungenerously forgetful of his youth; — we who stand apart, albeit aHens, should hold it a duty within the limit of our influence, to see justice done. Possibly, Viennet was as well known for his absur- dities as for his merits. His poorest verses will live longest, it may be, because they have been unmercifully squibbed; but the 60 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. fine-hearted, liigh-minded, humble, urbane veteran surely deserves something more than a Terragus is likely to bestow upon his memory ! Theophile Gautier may take the fauteuil he has left vacant : but he would be unworthy of his place if he should say a word in disparagement of his predecessor, whom he reviled unceremoni- ously enough in his lifetime. Perhaps it is British phlegm working in me when I find myself blind to the charms of light criticism sprinkled over the writer who died yesterday. To-day, it appears to my stolid sense, is not the time for enlarg- ing on the weak and wearjdng qualities of Jean A^iennet. The satirist and deputy ex- hausted the patience of Louis Philippe when he got his royal master alone ; and ' the king begged his consort to draw off the prolix talker by engaging him in conversa- tion. The anecdote is not worth much. JULY, '68. 61 Dished up artfully, however, it will raise a laugh at the expense of the father of the Academy, while the i/itinorteiles.ave being Avreathed over his mortal part. An old prefect is supposed to tell the story. Viennet was enraptured with the attentions of Queen Amelie, and mistook them for the expressions of a tender passion. " What is the matter, Monsieur Viennet," said a gentleman who found the author pacing the Tuileries Gardens sorrowfully. " Alas ! " sighed the too tragic poet, glancing at the moon that smiles upon the palaces of kings as upon the cottages of the poor, — " Alas ! I am very unfortunate ! " — " You — who command every happiness ! " — " There are happinesses which crush ! " — " What do you mean?" — "I mean that in spite of me, without knowing it, I am about to make a division in the most august home in the king- dom."—" How ? "— " The Queen ! " The E 62 TEE GAVROGEE PARTY. poet ended with, gesticulations of the most poignant grief. The King and Queen were informed of the Academician's trouble, and laughed at it. The prefect who told the storj to Ferragus a day or two since, in a tobacconist's shop, could never see stiff M. Yiennet, carrying high his red head, without thinking of the amorous evening under the Tuileries balcony. He concludes by esteem- ing those happy who have nothing heavier than such jji'i Us ridicules upon their tombs. But why, before the cemetery mason has given the last touch of the trowel, hurry off to plump a disparaging story in the midst of the fresh immortelles ? The man in extremis furnishes copy. I find in the Figaro, " He confessed at the last moment : it was his final irony." The religious papers are besought not to be proud of these death-bed conversions. It is said, in an ancient canticle. JULY, '68. 63 C'est faire une sacrifice Qui nous a peu coute Que de quitter le vice Quand il nous a quitte. It is remarked tliat the last line is bad : but the sentiment is " excellently just." Is it excellently placed in the funeral offerings to the memory of the father of the Academy ? I would ask people to think of the effect such wi'iting must have upon the young. Viennet's preface to his Franciade, in which he speaks of his unrepresented tragedies and his unknown comedies, and finally, how he ended the sixth canto of his last epic with enthusiasm, undaunted by the jeers and sneers and neglect of his countrymen ; is a most pathetic bit of writing. The man is true to himself at any rate. He is not of the monkey-proportions of the creatures — mostly dead and forgotten — who have chattered at his heels, to degrade him. E 2 64 THE GAVBOCHE PAJRTY. Deep in the man lies a serious purpose, wHch governs his life. His light is not dazzling, but he works honestly according to it, throughout. And, with these hosts of comic gentlemen dancing through daily columns, it is refreshing to contemplate that which was respectable and gracious in the old school of French literary men. There is the scent of the midnight oil in a Viennet : in the writings of a Ferragus, a WoliF, a Lespes, a Marx, a Eochefort, I can detect — or think I can detect — ahsinthe. The abilities of these racy gentlemen it would be foolish to question ; but I prefer the old manner. Let this choice be given — a life ranging between Tortoni's and Brebant's — and a life in the quiet of the Sorbonne. How many, in these times, and in this city, would cross the river to take up their quarters? JULY, '68. 66 July, 18G8. 'npHEEE is, as I have remarked, a style of writing much in vogue just now — which I have called the pitiless style. One or two French journalists may claim to be masters of it. Of late some good examples of it have come under my notice, and they are Avorth marking, because the style is not easily described. You must have a horrible inci- dent — to begin with. Out of the Morgue much light literature has been made, A fanciful, passionless, touch-and-go cruelty animates the pitiless writer's page. He jests at scars. Disgrace, shabby or tragic, moves him to an exhibition of cultivated obduracy. He takes out his note-book over an open grave. [I shall show him pre- sently capering and running round a sick- 66 THE GAVBOGHE PABTT. bed, to the deligHt of Gavroche.] The fosse commune receiving the mortal coil of some disinherited greatness, is his field of the cloth of gold. You lift your cap ; he keeps his upon his head, and shakes the bells that are fixed in it. A stately procession is moving towards Pere La Chaise. The master of the black ceremonial is a dignitary indeed — who would despise the British undertaker, who looks like Death's butler ushering the coal-black wine to the coolness of mother earth. The great French ordonnateur is a lofty presence, with knightly sword girt to his hip, and with the pinch of his sable hat at a delicate angle above his Eoman nose. At a distance he has a strong family likeness to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The funeral car fol- lows on his stately way. Behind are two uncovered friends ; and, still in the rear, " in a first-class mourning-coach," is Madame JULY, '68. 67 la Marquise, widow of the defunct. Flit- ting around is the man of the pitiless pen, for he has heavy business on to-day. Under the coffin-lid, upon which the mechanically murmuring priest* is sprinkling holy water (his eye fixed upon two more funerals wind- ing up the steep), lies the mortal part of the Marquis d'Orvault ! The Marquis was a splendid subject, in the quick: hut there is something which may be picked off his bones. To begin with, his sad history may be re- capitulated, with fresh pitiless touches. The Marquise can be brought forward, for icy foolery. The Marquise — the cabman's daughter ! the convict's sister ! — and with other surroundings and traditions which may be twisted into biting paragraphs and phrases, — is a figure of important propor- * The Eappel congratulates its readers on the in- creasing numbers of funerals, unaccompanied by any jeligious rite whatever. 68 TEE GAVBOGEE PABTY. tions. She is susceptible of many literary amplifications. She drives home in the cab of Monsieur her father, to the palace of Monsieur the Marquis her husband. When her father does her the honour of a morning- visit, he leaves his number intead of his card. The mother of the Marquise begging in the offices of a newspaper, offers a capital contrast. The Marquise has her reception days, and so has Monsieur her brother, who is undergoing hard labour in prison. A daughter with a coat of arms, and a father with a coat provided by the Paris Cab Com- panjr, compose a picture agreeable to the vision of the pitiless. This first-class funeral is put in a parallel line with a cab-rank. Then the Marquis himself! The whereabouts of the maison mortuaire ;- the noble's peasant fare and lonely state, with some poor English creature true to the denuded man ; the disdain of splendid re- JULY, '68. 6!> latives at the bare idea of receiving his hones on his paternal acres ; the titter around the family circle at the mention of embalmment : these are notes for the cul- tivator of the pitUess style. Let the grave- digger cover up the old man's ashes ; and 'ikxQ flaneur will enjoy the story of ruin and disgrace and heartlessness and vice, all welded into a feuilleton, to-morrow evening. "Where is the respect which good men feel for the sorely-laden ? Where is the pity- ins: silence which beseems a Christian crowd gazing upon culprits who are bent low with their chains ? Who is it that meets the condemned in the market-place with jest- ing lips ? Is he the teacher? Is the crowd to be taught that their hooting and yelling about the guillotine may be com- mended, and that laughter is the thing to get out of suffering ? The pitiless French literature, of which I bave been a constant 70 THE GAVBOCEE PARTY. reader for many years past, says this — that he whose business is aimisement may gather the materials of his trade in the felon's cell and at the grave of disgrace. The clown is to grin through the widow's cap ; the harlequin slaps the back of age with his bat, and shivers it over the busy grave- digger ! M. Charles Monselet is essentially an amusing writer. He is a renowned /o«r- c/ietfe as well as a sparkling feuilletoimt, who gathers his wit at table, and is critic of a cutlet. His fame as a writer estab- lished, he moves whithersoever the public tend— humbly as the acrobat bears about his square of carpet. "Scenes de la Vie Cruelle " is now the title on his playbiU. One scene is a sample of the whole play. A cold day; Carnival time; about nine in the morning. No snow — and none is necessary to deepen the spectator's emotion. JULY, '68. 71 A funeral from tte Eue Jacolo is on its way to the cliurcli of St. Grermain-des-Pres. Tew followers — and for good reasons. It is an act of " enormous fatuity " to allow your- self to be buried too early in the morning. It is an imprudent defiance of human affec- tion. I pass over the half-hour at church, and the religious service. These formalities are always alike. Somehow the hearse reached Montparnasse Cemetery. Is it need- ful to say that the few followers had become less on the road ? Regrets, like other valu- ables, are regulated by weight and measure. There are the dead whom you accompany only to the church-door ; doubtless this is as much trouble as they are worth. For other dead men, you consent to dip your fingers in the holy water, and to hear the priest to the end. After this you withdraw discreetly, and return to business. There were then, on this occasion, only a 7-2 THE GAVEOCRE PARTY. dozen people in the cemetery. They stood before the open grave into which the body had been let down with ropes. At this moment an individual, who had been seen neither at the mortuary house nor at the church, pushed breathlessly to the front. His intentions were not misunderstood ; for he held a paper in his hand. The sexton paused to listen. The new individual was- in the black coat and white cravat proper to the occasion ; but in the details of his cos- tume a fine observer would have remarked a nicer and richer taste than is usual at a funeral. As his linen was embroidered with arabesques, his trousers were moulded too elegantly to his limbs. His shoes were too thin for the season. On the other hand, he was in profound grief. He opened : — " Gentlemen, the remorseless grave is opened once more to receive a good and just man : I have named Paul-Poly eucte Baumevieille^ JULY, '68. 73 maker of alimentary substances, who re- ceived medals more than once. Many long years did I know him, and nobody had a better opportunity than I enjoj^ed, of esti- mating the excellent qualities of his heart. Baumevieille — let us say this in his praise — rose from the lowest ranks of the people. It is then to himself alone, to his own rare perseverance, to his really superior intelli- gence, that he owed his splendid position — in the corn-market." The orator paused to gain breath. It was then that the spectator remarked his pallor. The paper trembled in his hand. He continued in a hollow voice, — "Tea, gentlemen, Paul-Poly eucte Baumevieille had the right to call himself a self-made man. After a short time passed in a lawyer's ofl&ce — Maitre Harnincy's, wherein the solid traditions of the old magistracy, of the Segniers and the Espre- menils, still lingered, — he threw himself 74 TBE GAVBOGHE FABTT. wholly into the study of the productions of our soil. In him the citizen was on a level with the merchant. He promoted human progress equitably ; he knew how to avoid the foolish Utopias which are the curse of our country. Pioneer of the future, he was at the same time the soldier of order. Honours came unsolicited to Baumevieille. Appointed judge in the Commercial Cham- ber of the Seine, he discharged his imposing and delicate functions in- a manner that gathered to him the general sympathy — the general — Baumevieille " A second time the orator paused. Unquestionably he had overstrained himself It was rather evident, when his costume was considered, that he had been up all night ; for it was that of a ball, and not of a funeral. He made another effort, and continued, — "Forgive me, gentlemen : grief suffocates me, and stifles my voice. And thou, Baumevieille, JVhY, '68. 75 thou, my respectable friend, disdain not the humble flowers I offer you. I shall come often to thy grave, to learn near thy shade the great lessons of life, and to fortify my- self anew in the austere delights, of duty. Adieu, Mabeauvieille, my poor friend — no — Baumevieille. Adieu ! Adieu !" Griving way to his emotion, the orator dived into his pocket for his handkerchief. Then a strange spectacle was seen. He drew forth with his handkerchief an im- m.ense pasteboard nose, with horsehair mous- tache attached, — a nose at home only at an opera masked-ball. The nose fell into the grave, and rebounded with a hollow sound from the coffin. But it soon disappeared under the earth which the grave-diggers were casting over the mortal part of Baume- vieille. Go to Montparnasse Cemetery ; follow the first alley on the left : a broken column is at the end of it. It is there Paul- .76 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. Polyeucte Baumevieille, manufacturer of alimentary substances, and judge at tlie Tribunal of Commerce of tlie Seine, sleeps the eternal sleep — under the pasteboard nose of his friend. Grim comedy is this surely at the best ! But it is plentiful on the Boulevards. We are hardly in the days of respect. The whole tendency of popular writing, reflecting and creating the pale, sneering and wicked little swell of the Bois and the Boulevards ; is from that reverence for serious and noble things, that deference for age, the chastity of mind that revolts at coarseness and cruelty in acting, speech or writing, which in duller days than these, wherein diamonds have risen so enormously, marked the lives of French gentlemen. Francis Magnard quotes "a sinister mot" on the funeral of the Marquis d'Orvault: " The Marquise, nee Schumacher, followed AUGUST, '68. 77 the procession in a mourning coach. The .brother-in-law of the Marquis, young Schu- macher, being otlierwise en(ja(jed, could not take part in the ceremony." The brother- in-law is a convict undergoing punishment. '" Pity's sleeping," and soundly. August, 1868. A MONGr the satirical writers of the Second Empire, Henri Eochefort, who does not date far back, has the sharpest and deepest sting. His weapon is cold and glittering. He is pitiless and plain-spoken. He conveys to his reader his own sense ■of enjoyment when he is using the scalping- knife. The mocker revels in phrases that degrade the diplomatic uniform to the footman's plush, and humble the princess 78 THE GAVBOOHE PARTY. to the cJdjfonniere. [Hence his leadership of the Gavroche party.] He delights to piu a ridiculous something upon a man's coat ; to stab with a mot ; to strip artfuUy-clothed deeds and things, and discover the mean motive of that which the bUnd world has agreed to call a noble action. Before Lefebvre's Fevime coucliee in this year's salon — he makes his note with a steel point. Two words suffice — -plantureuse gaillarde ! Get any poetry out of the work after this if you can. M. Eochefort only expresses daringly that which every spectator has felt. No goddess reposes here — but a very woman ; yea, a plan tureuse gaillarde ! AVhen the word has passed, people qui se resjjcdent begin to wonder why the artist should paint shamelessness. This is merely a general admission to the nude academy. Is the age only worthy to look upon the model ? Is the ideal dead and gone ; and AUGUST, '68. 79 have the degenerate sons of France turned their backs upon the goddess, to admire and court the gaiUarde? M. Lef6bvre, in sub- stance, says this in his picture, and M. Eochefort boldly interprets him in two words. Henri Eochefort has taken a place of his own — a place apart — among his literary brethren, which is creditable to his power, and which proves that the French relish for the most spiteful writing is as keen as it ever was. The Lanterne is a little weekly book in a red cover, wholly written by Henri Eochefort, and extending to fifty-six pages. Eochefort understands his audience. He is alive to the great value of audacity, and opens by saying that, although he admits the public have very often shown him sympathy, the devil may take him if he knows why. [Perceive the steady decline from the satire of poor despised F 2 80 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. Viennet and brave Beranger to the level of the Rajjpel at the close of 1869.] The sympathy exists, however, and lie was not inclined to cast it to the winds when, on one bitter winter's morning, he found him- self turned out of the Figaro office, and left without a paper in which he could ventilate his little ideas on great men. He was at liberty still to sound the praises of M. Eouher's patriotic virtues and to dwell on the majestic personal proportions of M. Pinard ; but he must end here, — and praise was not the strong note in his voice. Muzzle your savage dog, or short will be the days of the Figaro, said a warning voice from the Ministry of the Interior. Eochefort will not believe this ; but report has repeated the threat in many countries. Can he credit, he asks, that a minister would call an editor into his private room and say to him, " You have a contributor AUGUST, '68. 81 ■who is distasteful to me. Get rid of him, or don't be surprised to find your paper meet a sudden death ; that's all " ? We have now a parallel case ; a case that is penal according to the Code, articles 305 to 308. M. Eochefort wants to know how he would fare, should he write to the Baron Eothschild this suggestive epistle : — " My dear Baron, — If to-night, between eight and nine o'clock, you have not deposited nnder the eleventh flagstone on the left, in the Rue Laffitte, coining from the Boulevard, the sum of 55,000 francs, in good bank notes, you will find your house, your treasure, and yourself a heap of ruins." Yet he and the minister, he conceives, in his own mischievous way, would be in the same boat. They would have both offended against the above-quoted articles of the Code. Therefore he will not give a moment's attention to the current rumours, 82 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. or, as a good citizen, he would feel bound to prosecute the suspected criminal, — pro- vided he could obtain the authority of the Council of State, who invariably vote for the Government with a touching unanimity which brings tears into the eyes of the tender-hearted. Being left out in the cold, and refusing to believe for a moment the odious rumours spread to the disadvantage of the minister, Eochefort bought a sheet of official paper, and wrote to him — taking care to sweeten every Hne with compliments and to adopt a servile tone — requesting that his Excellency would permit him to establish a political organ of his own. He did not forget, at the same time, to inform his comrades of his proceeding. He was instantly over- powered with their sympathy, and made a martyr before return of post. The new law on the press passed — and thus the road to AUGUST, '68. 83 publicity was free to him — with the adver- tisement of martyrdom to help him in his career as editor. He risked the danger of the minister's favoui', but, happily, escaped it. Rochefort, on good terms with the " powers that be,'^ would have lost half the circulation which Eochefort the martyr ob- tains. [He played the same graceless part, when he was admitted within the French frontier, to pursue his candidature.] Accord- ing to his own view of the predicament, the fatal word " spy " would have been hissed against him. " ISTow you know,'' he says familiarly to his reader, " that once called a spy, a man who should mount the scaffold for his opinions would never regain the con- fidence of the public. People would be at hand to afSrm that they saw the executioner, while binding him to the fatal plank, slip his last quarter's wages into his hands." The satirist, when he bad posted his letter 84 THE GAVnOGEE FABTY. to the minister, felt a cold perspiration steal over him, and mortal fear possessed Mm. He was less prudent — and he knew it — ^than the gentleman who had never made a pro- posal of marriage to a lady, lest he should be accepted. He soliloquized — " H the minister is as intelligent as his friends describe him, I am lost ! He will say ' Yes.' He has only to add in his answer that he will send the Lanterne the govern- ment advertisements, and nothing will re- main for me but to blow my brains out." Happily, the minister did not prove so intelligent as his friends described him : — and Henri Rochefort was saved. The Lanterne is free from sn,spicion, and is- hung up, with every advantage arising from unquestionable official hate, at Henri Eoche- forte's gate, the proprietor laughing the while, at the minister. The new law gives- M. Rochefort the liberty to publish his little AUGUST, '68. 85- weekly book^ on payment of a sou stamp on every copy. He notes the alteration of the law, and says the Grovernment have sold him the right to say all his disagreeable things about them, at the rate of five centimes a paper. The money calculation is a good one, since the more violent Eoche- fort becomes in opposition, the more his- Lanierne will sell, and the more the traduced Government will gain. The journalist observes to the minister, " Sir, I have a burning desire to call you a leper, a calf with two heads, in pubHc. JEow much will these epithets cost me ?" — "Last year they would have cost you thirty francs a day. But I have reduced my prices a little : the amount will be twenty-five francs- only.-" — "Very well, sir; here are your twenty-five francs, and I'm off" to drag you through the mud." The five-centime stam]>, and a deposit of 1400/. caution money. 86 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. represent Eochefort's pecuniary relations with the Government. So much for the foundation of a little opposition satirical journal. It must be confessed that the editor and sole writer — the one light in the Lanterne — takes his money's worth. He is obliged to keep his pen off the Senate and the Corps L'egislatif ; and whimsically proves that these au.gust bodies have no existence ; but a broad range is left to him. His review opens with the case of Arch- bishop de Bonnechose, who has fallen foul of Doctor See ; and the lightning of whose eloquence struck, it seems, a child playing in the Luxembourg Gardens, and, remark- able effect of clerical lightning, changed the little creature into a green lizard ! The orator launches so many anathemas at the materialists in his three hours' speech, that the very same night all the anathema-dealers AUGUST, '68. 87 retires from business with 15,000 francs a year each. On the morrow the Archbishop learns that Dr. See has not used the words which provoked his magnificent harangue — and nothing remains but an apology ! The anathema-dealers are happy: but what about the green hzard in the Luxembourg Gardens ? A country is fortunate indeed in which all this happens. A legislator makes a noble oration on the cultivation of the beet-root, and at its close is informed that the potato is the subject under discus- sion. Well, well ; the Cardinal played the game splendidly — but it was a mis-deal. Mis-deals are not rare in the Senate. Colonel Lopez was deprived of his riband of the Legion for having betrayed Maximilian, and afterwards it was discovered that the Emperor was not given over to his enemies in his sleep by the Colonel, but that he was taken at the head of a regiment. Still the 88 THE GAVE CHE FABTY. Senate could not possibly withdraw its- generous indignation, and hand back tlie bauble to the outraged Colonel. The scene would have been too comic even for the Luxembourg Palace. Lopez remains de- graded, therefore, by mistake : and Eoche- fort has heard that since he has been dis- graced by the Imperial Senate of France, he is fattening out and flourishing. One amusing scene recalls another. When the Army Bill was before the enthusiastic Senators, a hot patriot exclaimed — " Where the French girl who would give her hand to the man who had refused to enter the Garde Nationale Mobile ?" With one accord the senators cried that no such depraved creature existed. Delightful simplicity of imperial patrons ! Should a millionnaire enter a dressmaker's shop to ask the hand of one of the apprentices, the sweet child — putting aside her own interests and the AUGUST, '68. 89 -charming perspective of a victoria with two horses — would reply, " Sir, do you belong to the Garde IS'ationale Mobile?" Should the millionnaire answer, " No, I do not ; I pay raj frotteur six francs a month to look after our frontiers in my place," — be quife sure that the sweet child would then say, " Leave, Sir ; we can never be united. I prefer cutting snips all my life to becoming the wife of a man who is not in the Garde Nationale Mobile." Eochefort conjures the enthusiastic sena- tors to be candid. When loves of girls of sweet seventeen give their hands to bedridden Methuselahs for the sole advan- tage of going to see the Grand Prix run in a chariot emblazoned with armorial bearings, can it be reasonably held that no man has the most distant hope of marriage who does not belong to the Garde ISTationale Mobile ? He asks their Great- 90 TSE GAVBOGSE PARTY. nesses, do they take Frenclimen to be, in the aggregate, fools ? They may be right or wrong; he respectfully asks the simple question. But he can see distinctly that posterity is clearing its throat to laugh at them. Eochefort's preliminary political reflections are summed up ; and his way is smooth to deal with everything he ma}^ find noteworthy in the papers, week after week. He promises little or no news ; but a commentary on the week's events that may have moved his amiable pen. He will wing his erratic flight from flower to flower, and never once forget his sting. Tou will not find him pestering you with " divers facts " about a lady who has lost her purse in an omnibus ; but he will be glad to receive authentic scandals. When your mistress deceives you, write to Eochefort. When the society in which your savings are invested is dissipating the capital in AUGUST, '68. 91 scandalous waste, turn your woes into the ear of the man who holds the Lanterne. He will be public consoler of real griefs. He will redress your private wrongs by printing off the account of them by thousands of copies. If this is not cheap and speedy consolation, what is ? Eochefort disdains a plan. He is a sharp- shooter, not a general. He hits wide of the mark occasionally. For instance, he ob- serves that the convict Barrett, after two reprieves, was hanged on the anniversary of Queen Victoria's birthday ! Fireworks replaced by a hanging ! he exclaims ; in- ferring that the two reprieves were designed to bring down the day of execution to the most popular of English holidays. He likens the plan to that of King Theodore, who celebrated his birthday by decapitating prisoners with his own hand. Eochefort is no friend of this country. It is not easy 92 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. to find out who is his friend, or for whom he has a generous shake of the hand. His appearance with his Lanterne shows no friendly light on the British side of the Channel. Friendliness blunts his style — and to him the style is the man. He must first be brilliant — he will see whether he <;an be just afterwards : generous he can never be. The thrusts at foes — and at per- sons who are xieither foes nor friends — are so coldly given, that you know a steady eye is watching for the wound. The blood provokes a smile. It is cruel sport. It bears that relation to the best satire which cockroach spinning bears to trout fishing. We may be content to think that the juxtapo- sition of Napoleon the Third and Theodore of Abyssinia, even sharply arranged and spiced, would not amuse us. [In 1869 the comparison is between Napoleon the Third and oiu- Saviour !] We love the satire that AUGUST, '68. 93 is just. The sword must be in noble bands to be welcome in the sight of Englishmen. A weekly sneer reaching from the Madeleine to the Bastile, and comprehending all authorities and presences, will succeed in Paris — if M. Sochefort be not answered by a policeman. The thing would not find its way into every library in this country. August, 1868. ' I "HE cloud that has overspread the wondrous fortunes of M. Henri Eochefort has darkened the Boulevards, cast gloom in the cafes, and discontent everywhere. The Lanterne had become a fashionable weekly amusement. The Em- peror's own friends looked forward eagerly to the new number. It contained the best G 94 T3E OAVBOGHE PARTY. satirical writiug of tlie time ; and the French, love a biting style, a hard blow, and the play of a wild, audacious fancy. It was equivalent to a weekly fencing lesson ; and each week the intrepid and polished master displayed a new grace and a stronger wrist. I would not maintain for a moment that half the play was fair ; that the satire was usually in good taste ; that charges were not insinuated whicli were incapable of proof The satirist did not behave towards his antagonist en galant liomme. Everything was set down in malice. By the light of the Lanierne, imperial institu- tions and Imperialists looked so much moving rottenness. A wise man has said that in any controversy, the instant we feel angry we have already ceased striving for truth, and begun striving for ourselves. Eochefort does not show his antrer. As I have before remarked, coldness is a main AUGUST, '68. 95 part of Ms force. But he contrives to con- vey to Ms reader a sense of the deep-rooted, bitter hate which is in his soul. If I had to select Ms type in the Zoological Gardens, I should point to the polar bear, and not to the tiger of the tropics. He is rage and hate— in ice. The flame is there, under the frozen sentences. His metal blisters by its frigidity, and not by its heat. The running readers of these very rapid times, never pause to ask themselves whether the satirist has not left truth on the lee, and taken to a free fight for his own purposes ; because he has had the cunning to bank up his fires — with snow. The outwardly cold man is the deeper hater. He impresses weaker folk, who are not able to contain their heat. Rochefort's success has been nearly all gained by the power he has shown of ripping up his foe without changing a muscle, or soiling G 2 96 THE OAVBOCHE PARTY. Ms sleeve. He cuts up the empire plea- santly, as a nurse divides a holiday cake in a nursery. All his readers make wry faces over the nastiness his polished blade lays bare ; only he remains outwardly unim- pressed by the impurity. A man so consti- tuted — the kernel a very Gaul, the shell a Dutchman — is a fresh presence, an original and fascinating form of literary power. Dry wit is as engaging as dry humour. The jester who can command his own face- is king of his company. Eochefort appears to be having a light touch-and-go conversa- tion with a gentleman of a different wa}' of thinking ; and, suddenly, he plunges a thin long knife into his bowels — that is all, — and quietly turns aside to run his critical thumb along a fresh blade ! So much for Eochefort's manner of pro- ceeding. The originality of the power used to make, in a few weeks, one of the most AUGUST, '68. 97 astonislimg journalistic successes of our epoch, is beyond dispute. Eochefort is un- like any other French writer of his time. He understands the science of srivingr, — which consists in conveying the idea that an enormous reserve fund is always on hand. People exclaim — " If Rochefort were to hit his hardest ! " They believe that if he chose to insert the nib of his pen under the corner-stone of the Louvre, the building would topple. Rochefort was becoming a popular idol ; for the people love strength. But "What is strength without a double share of wisdom ? " The Lanterne is dark- ened ; the trimmer of the light is condemned to prison. People must hie away to Bel- gium for that which was to be had by the thousand in the Rue Coq-Heron. The Prench edition has been carried off in hand- barrows to the Prefecture of Police. The satirist has had a fight with the printer of 98 THE GArBOCEE PABTY. an opposition satirical publication, and is iinder sentence. M. de Villemessant lias been attacked. Another journalist has been beaten bj an angry sailor. There is an odour of gunpowder in the printing- ofl&ces. Eochefort's opponents got away from the Halls of Justice armed with revolvers. Satire, pistols, sticks, and swords are jumbled together. Now, the name of a writer's infant is not safe from a blow, as M. Dumas Fils can testify. The petty satirists have sprung up in the wake of the lantern-bearer. The wit is answered with foul words ; a faultless Toledo ghtters against the walls in the Rue Coq-Heron ,- and in the dismal literary byways hang bludgeons and the bravo's weapon. In this chaos a figure is set up as a rallying-post. Liberty is the end and aim, first, of the lantern-bearer, and then of the crew who cover him with mud, and believe they AUGUST, '68. 9» answer, wlien they maltreat him. [We shall see the satirist turn upon them and have a feast of vengeance presently]. The sweet goddess whom our neighbours have served so fantastically for many years past, cannot be very proud of the men who defend her, under official protection, with ignoble weapons; nor, on the other hand, can she see in the unsparing critic who will mince the beard of his foe, and pulverize his little finger, a very trusty knight. It must end badly. M. Henri Rochefort is opposed to the dynasty of Napoleon. He detests Imperial institutions. He would pluck the eagles from the standard of Prance, and set the Bourbon lily floating over the Tuileries. [In December, 1869, the lihes fare no better than the bees.] In estimating his work and the Government response to him, his stand- point should be kept distinctly in view. 100 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. He starts with a Pretender in his eye ; his manner of proceeding is sweeping : he re- commends that which he desires, by picking to pieces and vilifying that which exists. He conveys to yon an idea that the Bona- partists are corrupt in every part. There is not an Imperial postboy who is not a rascal. All who are not knaves are fools. Unkind fate has handed France over to the Bonaparte to be sacked. AU this is con- veyed in points glittering as icicles in the morning sun. The Lanterne was lit, I may repeat, to show that all was rotten in Imperial France. The mistake, regarding the satirical journal as a means to an end, was in the wholesale nature of the slaughter. A violent over- statement may amuse when put in witty dressings, but it will engender suspicion, and will never carry conviction. It is quite debatable whether the snuffed-out Lanterne AUGUST, '68. 101 has not done harm instead of good to the cause of the Opposition. On the other hand, can any rational creature imagine for a moment, that the Imperial cause is served by the Marchals, or by driving outraged French writers to seek justice in Brussels? In the Injlexihle — a resolutely unscrupulous paper that is not prohibited while the Lanterne is — M. Henri Eochefort's satires against the Imperial Grovernment were answered with the insinuation that he was a twice-convicted swindler, who on this account had been refused permission to wear a foreign decora- tion ! Again, the Figaro, in demonstrating that the honour of M. Eochefort is with- out stain, shows by the official criminal reports of France that Marchal's is not. Charming amenities, that make the blood dance in the veins of Gavroche ! The tri- bunals have enough to do. The public is kept in a state of chronic perturbation. 102 THE GAVBOCRE PAHTY. LuUier, wlio struck M. Paul de Cassagnac, is before the Correctional Police for assault, and for having illegally worn a military uniform ! M. Eochefort has won damages which his defamers cannot pay, and for which they are not liable to imprisonment ; while he is condemned to durance vile for having struck the printer ! [He runs away, to re- turn chief of the Gavroche party.] Albert "Wolff, who has not been able to punish Stanier and Marchal in his own country, is pursuing them, with brighter hopes, in Brussels. Here is a mighty confusion of Official and Opposition satirists ! Henri Rochefort stands out among the combatants as the bravest and the most brilliant. He is as far removed from a Marchal or a Stanier as a crusader is above a bravo ; — and Eochefort is no hero. The Opposition show a front in which there is not, as yet, a dis- graced soldier ; but the ranks of the satirists. AUGUST, '68. 103 inspired from the Prefecture, exhibit com- pany on passing which honest men hold their noses, and hasten forward. The Opposition appeal to the Minister of the Interior to withdraw his official calum- niators, or the calumniators who fly at the throats of honourable citizens, from under the wing of the Prefecture. Ferra^us says : " What is the use of a police that betrays itself by its scent and aspect ? Tou want more ingenious spies — subtler agents." But Ferraffus wUl not believe that writers so base can be Government instruments, and he calls upon the Minister to repudiate them. It seems impossible, indeed, to put out the Lanterne of Rochefort, and leave the Inflexible of Marchal (a thing too bad for a French printer to touch) a free cir- culation across the Belgian frontier. The man of genius, whose coldly glitter- ing wit has brightened over Prance, is 10-i THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. silenced ; his calumniators, convicted of falsehood and of slander, remain upstanding and free to attack a fettered enemy. This is the situation. I am not prepared to say that Eochefort is a just — and he certainly is not a generous — satirist. He served his cause poorly, because he was unfair and ungenerous. But his life was beyond reproach. His conscience, he loudly says, was in his work. He was a foe worthy of the finest steel. His rashness and wide thrusts laid him open to attack from men on his own level. You find a knight armed with a true weapon and mailed with honour, in the lists ; and you permit varlets to squirt abomina- tions in his eyes, and then bind him and thrust him from the field ! What says the lady with the pensive eyes, sitting at her balcony ? Can the gallant knight who made a proud figure at the Eglintoun tournament AUGUST, '68. 10<> many years ago, and is Csesar now, have marked tlie game ? Yea, lie has marked it ! August, 1868. I '"HE success and prosecution of Henri Eochefort, together with the imitators and opponents who have been brought into the field, are already working to an end. The Lanterne has not been put out, but the satirist's light has been thrust under a bushel. The seizure of the little red book from people's hands in the public streets, the ebullition by the Sorbonne, the bearing about of a lantern in chains, the condemna- tion of the unscrupulous editor to a fine of ten thousand francs and one year's imprison- 106 THE OAVBOCHE FABTY. ment, and finally, the appearance of Perragus with, his Cloche, have brought the excitement to a crisis. The wonder has reached its tenth day. People are recover- ing from a passion, and are consenting to be just. Edmond About, writing in the Gaulois, says that the seizure of the Lanterne could not astonish any rational creature. From the discussion of abuses, the writer had degraded his page to outrages on j^ersons. Party men may excuse attacks upon women, especially when they stand in " the fierce light that beats about a throne," but a nation is more generous ; and the National Guard's ovation to the Empress was the answer of the impartial public to M. Eochefort's satire. M. Eochefort ran wild in his astonishment at the liberty which was given him. They who are guilty of licence are the autocrat's best friends ; they justify his chains. The eff'ect of the AUGUST, '68. 107 Lanterne, and of the airs which its editor has been giving himself from Brussels, is to make crowds of prudent citizens ask for a strong law and a firm Government. The first fruits of the liberty in journalism which has been given are as bad as they could well be. Rotten eggs have risen in the market. M. About tells the French public that the numbers, of the Lanterne sold, produced a profit of 12,000/., which was divided among three or four persons. He would have none imprisoned who have done this prosperous trade in licentious satire, but he would empty their pockets. He urges the Govern- ment to leave thought free, and not to withdraw the liberties recently given ; at the same time, he has the courage to de- nounce the party men who can even sow hatred in the breast of a boy at a distribution of school prizes, and lead him to commit a public outrage against the most liberal 108 THE GAVBOGHE PASTY. Minister who has held a portfolio under the Second Empire. The result of violence, of blind hatred, of untrue statements, of slanders, — all concentrated against a Gro- vernment, as the immediate consequence of the liberty it has given, — is a strong revulsion in favour of that Government. The misuse of satire has stirred the depths of society, and quickened the most odious forms of slander and vituperation. The public is stirred — but towards a reaction that shows how much the French masses have improved of late years. Silence the slanderers, punish the preachers of sedition, is the advice of About and other friends of freedom ; but keep tlie tree of Liberty where 3'ou have planted it. Nourish it conscien- tiously ; at the same time, guard it against the bad citizens who would hatch disorder, to their own profit, under its shelter. People of all shades of opinion are re- AUGUST, '68. 109 joiced at the result of the Wolff trial at Brussels — viz., the condemnation of the printer of the Infiexihle to pay ten thousand francs damages ; because the Inflexible is a paper de has etage. Its method and tone of criticism could serve no just cause; its ex- istence, with a crowd of contemporaries of its kidney, could be of service only to the enemies of liberty — to those whom it at- tacked. The •Lanterne is, I need not repeat, a journal removed — as the Cloche is — far above the Inflexible ; but all are excuses for a recurrence to repressive laws, and therefore are presences in French journalism which the friends of free speaking and free printing should not encourage. The first number of the Cloche contains, according to the Gaulois, a dominant note of most exasperating im- port. " Lately the public might read upon one of the gates of the Tuileries, where building was going forward, ' The public is H 110 TEE GAVBOGEE PARTY. not admitted.' A workman who was pass- ing shrugged his shoulders, picked up a lump of chalk, and added to the inscription, 'But if!'" The Gaulois cries, "A Httle more nerve, old ringer ! " Suppose — I say supj}ose — this kind of satire were set up in London, and were to be applied to Bucking- ham Palace — what cause would it serve ? Writers who use these weapons are blunder- ers, or something worse. If mere blunderers, they are as children into whose hands fire- arms have suddenly fallen. It is their friends who are in danger. OGTOBEB, '68. Ill October, 1868. ' I "HE new press law has quickened the Hterary energies of French journalists. When we got rid of the stamp and adver- tisement duties in England, it was predicted that very soon every English journalist would be " grinding his own organ ; " hut we have not proved so adventurous or pro- lific. Capital does not flow into printing- offices so copiously in England as the golden stream tends to the printing-presses of Erance. The number of literary ventures for which M. Henri Eochefort is respon- sible will make a curious page in the future history of French journalism. The fantastic, punning titles exhibit the malice of the national character: as those of the revolu- tions discovered at once its grimness and H 2 112 THE OAVBOGHE PARTY. irreverence. I repeat, the windows are full of the little lights which the unfortunate Lanterne has provoked ; but the rate of pro- duction (albeit three or four newspapers are announced every week) is far below that of a week in 1848. Then, Paris was wrapped in paper. The over-sanguine English pro- vincial printer who based his calculations of profit on the assumption that every man, woman, and child in his native town would take two copies (a circulation that would just cover expenses), was not more confident about the literary capacity of his public, than every Paris printer showed himself after the dethronement of Louis Philippe. The paper and print excitement which is abroad at this moment is warm enough ; but how far is it from the fecundity of seven days of revolution ! The last week in the month of May, 1 848, produced the following new publica- OCTOBER, '68. 113 tions in Paris : — the ArcJdves du Peuple, I! Aigle Mejmblicain, Le Petit Caporal, La Redingote Grise, Le Petit Fils du Fere Diichene, La France Nouvelle (by Alexandre Dumas), Les Debats de V Assemblee Nationale, La Constitution, La Pepublique Napoleonienne, Le Bonnet Rouge, La Colere du Vieiix Eepuhlicain, Le Volcan, Les Saltimbanques, Jacques BonJiomme, L' Organisation du Travail, Le Christ Bepublicain, by tlie Citoyenne Sans-peur, Le Lampion, Le Robespierre, Le Napoleonien, Le Bonapartiste, L'Epoque, Le Diable Rose, La Republique des Femmes, Le Journal des Cotillons, La Garde Mobile, and Le Tocsin des Travailleurs. The list shows the way the wind was blowing ; and if we were to make out a complete statement of the Lanterns and Clocks which have appeared of late within the fortifications, we might get together a little list of publications boding evil to the Imperial 114 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. Grovernment. In 1848 the Bonapartists were active and the blasphemer was not idle. The Bedingoie Grise did not do much towards the cause of Louis Napoleon ; but it was one of the long array of obscure^ cheap, Bonapartist prints that were filtered through the by-ways, and made a public opinion suited to the Prince's purpose. By persevering little blows, prodigious effects are produced. A man with a hammer drives home hot bolts that will collectively support endless successions of express trains. Nay, all the movements of importance which have been made here, have been got about by scores of little journals. When I want to see whither the blouse mind is tending. I leave the Boulevards and turn into the side streets of the Marais and the Quartier St.-Antoine. In the petty print and newspaper shops yo\i read the will and aspirations of \h& proUtaire ; and I find my OCTOBEB, '68. 115 interpreter of tlie bourgeois at the kiosk of the pretty newsvendor on the Boulevard des Capucines. The journalistic activity is prodigious both for the bourgeois and the workman. On one morning I see two new papers announced. M. de La Ponterie, an old contributor to La France, and now of Za Fresse, is to establish a new daily paper, with a capital of 26,000/. Havre is determined on a new daily organ, of very liberal proclivities, and has banked 16,000/. to begin with. No. less than 42,000/. embarked in journalism in one week ! Is all this activity and risk of capital ominous — as the Fedingote Grise, and the FepuUique Napoleonienne were ominous in 1848? There is a wide difference between the two activities. In 1848 there were two broadly- marked parties at work. The Bon- net Foiige was shaking defiantly before the 116 THE GAVBOGEE PARTY. Petit Cajyoral ; Le Robespierre was fighting Le Bonapartiste ; Le Tocsin des Travailleurs was sounding in the ears of La Constitution^ The two armies were distinct— plain in sight; and they fought a distinct battle. The eagle plucked the bonnet rouge from the republican head ; and the vanquished hosts tui-ned back into their workshops. But to-day you can perceive no line of battle. Discontent has taken many fantastic forms. The Opposi- tion is mighty in numbers, but it is a mob without a flag or a name. There are many would-be leaders : the pretenders may be counted on both hands. But an organ to be called Monsieur Chose would not last a week. Le Parapluie de Monsieur Smith would be an amusing title ; but only a few old bourgeois would rally round the stick. I am looking at this from a strictly literary point of view. Father Bugeaud's cap is among the old clothes of the army — as for- OGTOBEB, '68. 117 gotten as tlie last year's red breeches of a Zouave. The republican flag is more en evidence than any other pretension to rule Trenchmen, but it rocks in the storm of th& passions and quarrels which encompass it. Its friends, who are above suspicion, are doubtful ; its lip-adorers are a host. The mass cannot believe in the sound foundation of the republican principle, since they have seen it spread thrice only as concrete for a new throne. That which is most evident now is, that there are crowds of servants of the monarchical pretenders who are willing to drive the State to revolution, and so on through the disasters of an incoherent re- public, back to the lily, or the Charter of July. Hence the number of opposition prints which preach republicanism. But the crown and sceptre lie under their cap of liberty. In presence of the Spanish revolu- tion, they disagree even as to the first pro- 118 TEE GAVBOCHE PAJtTT. cess for the establishment of a new consti- tution. The httle affair is settled, in M. de Grirar- din's organ, in a few paragraphs ; but then the author of Ze Droit would reconstruct the Milky "Way any morning before break- fast, and find a moment for the re-adjust- ment of the map of Europe, into the bargain. The Gaulois welcomes Napoleon back to his capital, just advising him to be mindful of the example of Spain, and bring a few liberal reforms in his pocket. The pretty newsvendor by the Grand Hotel finds the evening papers almost torn out of her kiosk ; but, albeit they are chiefly Opposition organs, it is impossible to gather from them significant signs like those which were in the journalism of 1848. And in this a mighty advance in French public opinion may be descried. There are partisans of exiled royal families within the fortifications OCTOBER, '68. 119 still, but there are no strong pretenders' parties. Grroups of royalists in republican cloaks are about, and, as tbe Americans have it, " bobbing around ;" but the people ap- pear to have lived out of the necessity of special kingship, and to clamour for reforms to be granted by the sovereign they have. Herein we perceive one of the effects of our English example. It has been said again and again that free journalism would prosper and become solid in France if journalists would give up the service of pretenders, and direct their opposition against bad laws, and not against one dynasty for the benefit of another. While the little press is taking extra- ordinary, and in some cases detestable, forms ; the great press is, in the main, op- posing steadily and loyally all the short- comings of the actual regime — pegging away, in old Abe Lincoln's fashion, at the hard 120 THE GAVnOCSE PARTY. bits of despotism whicli deface their country. Tlie recent contention among the printers for the production of the Moniteur is an event which confirms the impression of im- partial observers, that journalism is consoli- dating itself for permanent freedom. M. Wittersheim, who is bound by his contract to distribute 95,000 copies of the little Moniteur gratuitously, at a cost of more than 30,000/. per annum ; has deposited a guarantee of 8000/. with the Minister of State. This gentleman, at any rate, has some faith in the peaceful solution of the diflSculties between the Imperial Government and the Opposition. The sovereign people were in the Tuileries — unbidden guests in Louis Philippe's wine cellars ! A curious observer was hastenincr to contemplate the scene. He was stopped at the gates by some sorry-looking rascals on guard. The leader said menacingly^ OCTOBER, '68. 121 ^' Your cockade, citizen ; where is your cockade ? " The man without the colour was sur- rounded at once by an unsavoury rabble. He was equal to the occasion. Lifting his hat, he steadily and minutely examined it ; then exclaimed — " It's most perplexing, most unaccountable, — I must have left it in ray night-cap." Men are not bound to wear colours now. A writer may pass without a prince's livery ; and that which is most hopeful in the pre- sent condition of journalistic affairs is, that the devotion of a cockade in a night-cap could not reach a high place. The friends of the Government attack its reactionary measures. The ministry is getting under criticism ; the proletaires are liberal, but neither EepubUcan, Orleanist, nor Legitim- ist. La Charrue, Le Pirate, Le Coq^-h-V Ane , L'Eteic/noir, La Lanterne Ma^ique, are whim- 122 TEE GAVBOGHE TARTY. sical, poisonous offshoots of M. Eocliefort's transported Lanferne. He wlio would study the altered and im- proved state of public opinion in France, should buy these petty papers and pamph- lets, and a host more, in the Passages du Havre or Jouffroy. There is an opposition, fierce and uncom- promising, in the journals cheap and dear ; but it is, in the main, His Majesty's Op- position. The firebrands are in sore need of fuel. TONH, '69. 123 June, 1869. T WAS up betimes yesterday, liaving a journey of some fifty miles to make before ten o'clock. The servant showed much excitement over the breakfast pre- parations, and I beard loud talking in the kitchen about the Mappel. With my coffee, Celestine brought me the information that " we were going to have war again.''' War ! war with whom ? where ? Why Monsieur would be good enough to remember that the husband of the cremiere was a serpent de ville. Last night he was called on duty at nine o'clock ; and he had been on duty all night long. Terrible things had taken place. It was beginning just as the troubles of 1848 began ; when the blood flowed along the gutters. Those journaHsts did not know 124. TBE GAVPiOCHE P^LRTY. what they wanted. Our milkwoman was certain of it, and being the wife of a sergent de ville, she ought to know. Celestine was hereupon very voluble and picturesque in her denunciations of the canaille (having spent her palmy days of service in the house- hold of a Count) ; and it would have gone ill (Celestine being gifted with a very per- suasive quantity of muscle) with any indi- viduals of that class, participators in the window-breaking, or kiosk destruction, who had come within her reach yesterday morn- ing. Although at the beginning of A in her elementary course of philosophy, Celes- tine was good enough to explain to me that she ventured to say no good ever came of breaking other people's windows ; and that as for the demolition of the poor women's kiosks, every man present at such an outrage deserved to be sent to reflect on it in prison; — and nobody would pity him. TUNE, '69. 125 ■" What do they want, the fools?"— Celestine exclaimed, waxing very hot, with the re- membrance of the cremiere's narrative — " crying and singing about the streets when they should be in bed, resting for to-mor- row's work ? A pretty business they made of it before, when they ruined nearly all of xis. No work done, and everybody king." If you want to know where the party of re- action is to be found, search the kitchens of Paris. The saving, hard-working citizens who keep clear of the wine-shops, and patiently hoard theh francs sou by sou, if they could be banded to-morrow as a city police, would fall upon the brawlers and madcaps of the Boulevards, and malce short work of them. The coup in the cabaret makes the blow in the street. The knife and fork would dispose of the Gavroche party in a trice. I went forth on my journey, and never I 126 TEE GAVBOOEE PAHTY. did great city look quieter than Paris in the' early summer light. At BatignoUes I came upon blouses (masons) by the score, smoking their black pipes, chattering and playing practical jokes, as their wont is, outside the various wine-shops. They were having the morning coup, and it was loosen- ing " the jesses of the tongue." Happier fellows I never saw bearing the fardel of life. "Were any of these at the win- dow-breaking or the kiosk demolitions ? If yea, they were simply lovers of mischief, improving the occasion ; as the crowds were lovers of a sight, determined to be gratified. I had an invitation in my pocket : " Come this evening ; dine at seven ; and after that go to Brebant's, to see the fun." At the railway-station there was a little excitement before the newspaper-stall. The eagerness to get news of the scenes on the Boulevards and the Place de la Bastille was noticeable ; JUNH, '69. 127 and in the waiting-room men's eyes were riveted on the Siecle and the D'ehats. In my railway carriage two well-to-do citizens discussed the details which they were read- ing. " It's just like us," said No. 1, " it's the Parisian all over. He is badaud to the marrow of his bones. He is the most curious specimen of the human race. ISTo danger will deter him. Something to see, the most stupid and trifling, and pan! he dives his hands into his pockets and keeps his nose in the air; nor will he move it many inches after it has been scratched by the bayonet of a Municipal Guard." " True ; it is only too true," No. 2 answered. "But the police have been stupid — stupid as geese. They should have been kept in the background. When there were nearly 20,000 people shouting and singing outside the Sorbonne no police demonstration was made — and pray, was the Quarter sacked ?" I 2 128 TEE GAKROGEE FABTY. " You are good, my dear fellow. And pray, are the elections over, or are they not ? While the elections were on, granted, the people had a right to meet and make a little iapage. Tajxige is salt to some Frenchmen, and to a great many. But (and here No. 1 majestically folded his arms and pointed the elbows with jerks towards his friend), but is this to continue always? Am I to be permitted to go to my business in quiet, or am I not ? Am I to be allowed to drink my choppe on the Boulevard des Italiens in the cool of the evening ; or am I to be driven down the Eue Richelieu at the point of a Municipal's bayonet, because a couple of hundred vaga- bonds, who choose to call me Citizen instead of Monsieur, will not keep quiet, and will shout Eochefort's name and break windows? Is my liberty to be respected first, or theirs?" No. 2 now protested that he was not on the JUNE, '69. 129 side of the canaille, but that he was con- vinced the police had shown trop de zlle. This roused No. 1 again: — Trop de zele ! That's magnificent. What ! when the mob were scattering the (/rillea from the trees, and hooting, and stone-throwing, and threatening pillage, the police were to fold their arms and bow to these little gam- bols of a sovereign people ! Tro2} de zele ! Do you think a sergent de ville likes to risk having his face cut to pieces by a set of blackguards, more than any other person ? Allans! it's monstrous, and you shouldn't try to defend it. It is indefensible. There are times when every weapon is a good one ; but not now. We have got our victory ; Paris has spoken her will ; that is enough. All beyond is puerile or criminal violence. I and you are too old, as Girardin says, to serve another apprenticeship. Let us work with the materials we have." 130 THE GAVBOGHB PARTY. No. 2 shrugged his shoulders, and gave himself the airs of a man who had a crush- ing reply, but was not disposed to use it, in pity for the weakness of his opponent. In a little country town, where I break- fasted with two or three local notabilities, the emeiites furnished the conversation. The guests were not Bonapartists ; they were all Liberals, — at least, all who took part in the discussion, which was so animated that the landlady thought the gentlemen would never get through the liors-d' ceuvre of crisp artichokes a Vlmile with which she had gladdened them. But throughout, an old, most emphatic, and commanding gentleman sounded regularly, in the luUs : — " What I say is, that it is not logical. We have got universal suffrage ; we have all voted ; some deputies whom I detest, have been returned ; — but I am bound, we are all bound, to re- spect the verdict of the majority. To rush JUNE, '69. 131 into tlie street, after you liave recorded your vote under universal suffrage, is illogical, ignoble ; but above all, and before all, it is illogical. Can you go beyond universal sufirage ? We liave the strongest weapon we can have in our hand ; and instead of using it like rational men, we are breaking it to pieces, as a bad child breaks its toy." After breakfast, the old man went away to his business, through the ancient kitchen of the hotel, neglecting, in his excitement, to notice the eke/ who capped to him ; and still repeating, brandishuig his arms, — "It's il- logical, and therefore ridiculous. With universal suffrage, I repeat, it's illogical." Back to Paris in the afternoon. I found the Boulevards crowded, not with insur- gents, but with weU-dressed hosts ; and an Imperial carriage slowly pushing its way through, amid cheers and waving of hats. " Well done ! Well done !" the people 132 THE GAVBOGHB PASTY. shouted. " This is brave ! This is a happy thought!" And Csesar, giving the silver edge of a smile to the black cloud of his thoughts ; and the gentle, charitable woman beside him, who graces his life with the hundred kindnesses she scatters far and wide, bowing and repeating audibly, " Merci, Messieurs," to the enthusiastic subjects at her wheels ; pass on in a whirlwind, the equerry imploring the crowd to keep clear^ or they will be crushed to death. This amid the broken lamps and kiosks of last night ! And in the evening, the night before and to-day, are reviewed over the coffee. The opinions are of the most perplexing kind. The movement is graver than we imagine. Behind the mischievous window-breaking lies and moves the party of Gravroche ! We must make no mistake about this. Some- body's money pays for it. It is in this way JUNH, '69. 13S- that revolutions liave always begun. The people are merry over it now, and the crowd is composed of nine hundred and ninety lookers-on for one disturber of the peace. But a little anger will get gradually mixed up with the business. There will be a fight on a small scale. Just one drop of blood wUl be tapped : and then ! Another knows exactly the position of affairs, having exceptional advantages for getting the best information. The whole affair is Orleanict to the centre. The Raj^pel has an obvious meaning. The men who ran away from Paris in revolution are ready to return, if their adherents will promise that not one of them shall receive the least scratch by the way. The working class is profoundly moved — but not towards this family, except as that most likely to furnish a King Log, — the next best thing to a Ee- pubhc. But what have the Orleanists got 134 THE GAYZOCHE PARTY. to tlieir back ? Wlio among ttiem is encom- passed with the smallest popular sympathy ? Who are ^their lieutenants ? Thiers is too old to begin over again ; and the men who might have served them are dead. The young generation know them not, and ex- press no wish to know them. Why should they ? The Government of July was re- putable in many ways. The court was virtuous ; Louis PhiHppe was bon pere de famille, but he was of the material out of which you carve a grocer, not a king. He, and the like of him, would not do again. And yet this rioting along the Boulevards is Orleanist ! But then the Orleanists are rich, and can afford to treat themselves to a distraction, to break the sadness of exile. Another. Paris has protested, Paris has triumphed — although she has no reason to be proud of her new men, who will only make the Chamber more like a bear-gai-den JUNE, '69. 135 than it was. What more does she want? She will get Eochefort, unless Carnot is op- posed to him. And then ? Does any rational man think for a moment that France would consent to make ministers of any of these brawlers? These are the men who are responsible for the rioting which is going forward in the great towns. What inter- pretation can be put on Bancel's address ? When shall we be a wise race ? Here we are, cheering a set of loud-mouthed fellows who are the very obstructives to liberty. Eochefort ! The man of ^ros mots ; the gentleman with the most capacious hand for lifting mud ! Girardin has spoken the right word. We must accept the position we have got, and not turn back the country fifty years, to serve a fresh apprenticeship to liberty. But back we are drifting. The troops are ordered out earlier to-night, and already the 136 THE GAV&OGHB PAHTY. Government have fifteen hundred prisoners at Bicetre and the Conciergerie. " Have you seen the black eye of our friend B ? Pie was ail violon all night." — " Serve him right." Poor Devisme ! He has not a gun in his shop. The shutters have been up all day. He must bless Orleanists, Eepublicans, and Messieurs les Voyous — their obedient ser- vants — at a price ! But, I repeat, gentlemen, it is all over. The Bourgeois has taken the matter into his own hand, since M. Pietri will not, or does not, protect his property. The voyous who appear, to touch shopfronts again, will get a hot reception from the shopkeepers, who have armed themselves with stout sticks like the sergents de ville. Society is getting into a passion, and wiU not be robbed with- out making a fight for it. But all is over — all is over. The Emperor's pluck put an end to it. JUNE, '69. 137 And M. Kouher's reign is for ever closed. He is to be President of the Senate or Grovernor of Algeria. He is good enough — for the Arabs. This is the end of Act the First produced by the strong writing. It might have been worse ; for jom-nalism, as it has developed in Paris during the last three months, has consisted of invective for the most, part ; with just a pinch, at wide intervals, of logic. Students of modern journalism will make a collection of French papers for 1869, and note, and file them. They will furnish a wonderful chapter of history. 138 TEE GAVBOCEE PARTY. October, 1869. T^T'HAT does King Hugo want? He is copious. The reader shall say wlietlier lie is explicit. In his letter to the five literary founders of the Happel (tin trumpeters who are to play in time and harmony, following a hhton beating above the chimney-pots of Hauteville House) he hugs the title of the journal in the estab- lishment of which he is not able, alas ! to participate. " Le Rappel. J'aime tons les sens de ce mot: Eappel des principes, par la con- science ; rappel des verites, par la philoso- phic ; rappel du devoir, par le droit ; rappel des morts, par le respect ; rappel du chatiment, par la justice ; rappel du passe, par I'histoire ; rappel de I'avenir, par la OCTOBER, '69. 139 logique ; rappel des faits, par le courage ; rappel de I'ideal dans I'art, par la pensee ; rappel du progres par la science, par 1' ex- perience et le calcTil ; rappel de Dieu dans les religions, par I'eliraination des idolatries ; rappel de la loi a rordre, par I'abolition de la peine de mort ; rappel du peuple a la souverainete, par le suflrage universel ren- seigne; rappel de I'egalite, par I'enseigne- ment gratuit et obligatoire ; rappel de la liberte, par le reveil de la Prance ; rappel de la lumiere, par le cri : Fiafjus ! " If points of exclamation were equivalent to bayonets, I would not give a week to M. Hugo's opponents, albeit they are the entire human race — as far as I can gather — with the exception of the few thousand men, unfortunately mostly of the working-class, who have caught the generous flames of the dreamers only to be landed in a boiling cauldron of words like the above. The roll 140 THE GAVBOOHE P,mTY. of M. Hugo's periods has tlie effect of the drum upon certain generous, half-informed natures ; and they " fall in " to them ; march to them ; and will shoulder arms at the word of command from his lieutenants. He never gives them time to mar their dreams " by tracing their source too well." They are served, hot and hot. His paper is to the poor fellows who buy it, even when sous are scarcest, what the hot brioches are to Gavroche in December, when the east wind sweeps the Boulevards. His teeth chatter as he drops the money, and picks up the fiery lump : but do you think the marcliande prays at night, for a southern wind and warm weather for his poor de- nuded bones ? The Bajj^di^ to be a luminous and steely weapon : now a sword and now a ray of light ! The poet, old and sad, sits apart, and claps his hands, and cries " Courage ! " OGTOBEB, '69. 141 Eemember, he says, the potency of laughter. You are about to take rank, as the auxiliaries of all good intentions, in the sparkling legion of the comic papers of Paris. I can do hut little. When I have pronounced the word " duty," I have already nearly done. Above all, be brotherly. I have two emo- tions in my heart, which I call ' conciliation ' and ' reconciliation ' — the former for ideas, the latter for men. Then the old apostle of peace who sits apart, and claps his hands — his gold-bags rattling as he moves — bids his lieutenants to strike home. The man with conciliation and reconciliation in his soul, exhorts his troops whom he inspires — with the lively Channel waves between them — to beware, lest a single projectile should be wasted ! " Let not a ball fall short in the battle of principles. The'democratic legion has two aspects — one political and one literary. The 142 TRE GAVBOGHE PABTY. political flag bears tlie numbers '89 and '92 ; the literary standard is emblazoned 1830. These dates of double ray, illumine — Eight on the one hand, and Thought on the other — and they mean, together : Revolution. We prefer the pele-mele of drama to cere- monial tragedy, and Paris to Versailles." The old, sad man pops centuries into nut- shells. The fifteenth century is the Pope ; the sixteenth, the Emperor ; the seven- teenth, the King ; the nineteenth, Man ! Man, come forth, erect and free, from that sublime gulf, the eighteenth century ! He approves his lieutenants who promise to be smiling and disagreeable. To smile is to fight. Irony affrights hydras, and Csesarism is one. ■'Remember," he says, "the cock crowing on the back of the tiger. The cock is irony : France also." And j)i'ay how shall we "place the tiger ? Shall we put a red cap over his cruel eyes ? OCTOBER, '69. 143 He is satis culotte ready to our hand. His breath is hot ; and he is alive when the stars are shining. M. Hugo, and all his disciples^ are great in sovereignties — hating sovereigns. The poet is at a perpetual sacre. He has just crowned Irony ! He says that the eigh- teenth century showed forth the sovereignty of Irony. Compare the twelve labours of Hercules with the twelve labours of Voltaire. ! Prejudices are the serpents in the cradle. In M. Hugo's letter to the five founders of the Rappel, through the cloudlands of which I have been wandering, at moments wondering whether I should ever reach solid ground again ; I at length reach a mountain-top — for a moment. M. Hugo, in 1851, in the days of the Eepublic, said, from the tribune of the As- sembly, " I denounce a plot, the object of K 2 144 TEE OAVBOGHE PARTY. ■vvhicli is the re-establishment of the Em- pire." M. Dupin hereupon threatened to call him to order ; but a compassionate mem- ber cried, " M. Hugo doesn't know what he is talking about " — and he was saved from the awful consequences of the presidential thunderbolt. Happily, the poet remarks, I have a reputation for stupidity ; and this saved me. Madame Vestris, in the heyday of her beauty, settles her mouth, wreathes her yqxj daintiest smile, advances to the footlights, and casts this into the entranced pit, — "Every- body knows how very ugly I am !" "Every- body knows how stupid I am !" says M. Hugo. If we asserted, in our calmer mo- ments, after the play, that both artists gagged their parts, should we libel either ? But here is my point of terra-jinna. The poet is very severe on M. Dupin, saying that he kept his thunderbolt where he OGTOBjEB, '69. 145 plugged his flag, and later, would have been glad to hide himself, viz., in his pocket. Is there no pane of glass in all M. Hugo's house — that he throws stones so plentifully — and is a moral Vesuvius, always in erup- tion ? It is more than whispered about among people in Paris not likely to be mis- informed, that M. Hugo talked with Napo- leon le Petit, in days not far preceding the Coup d'Etat ; and that the calm judgment of the Prince-President was, th-at the Em- pire could get no good out of Pegasus with the mors aux dents. The poet has never been in the habit of valuing his song at a small lump of sugar. Experience has justified Napoleon : and the Empire, with Hugo for its Beranger, would have been very much ■where it is with the author oiLes Chaiimenis, patting Bevolution in Paris on the back, from the safety of Hauteville House. 146 THE GAVBOGEE PASTY. October, 1869. T^IP your spoon into his soup ; slip finger and thumb under his sleeve, and feel his pulse. "When he sleeps, lay your head against his heart, and count its beatings. Does he cry aloud in the fiercest passages of his pain, be at hand, and keep the register upon ataUy-stick — a notch to each paroxysm. Caesar is ill. He is in a blue flannel dress- ing-gown, ungloved, unshorn, with drooping moustache and lack-lustre eye ; the monarch put away, and present only the creature, tortured and shaken Uke any peasant of the swamps ! Then have at him ! Sketch him when he winces ; be at his elbow when he turns froiji his food; reckon narrowly the chances against him ; and be sure he remem- bers, day by day, that his funeral can, at the OGTOBEB, '69. 147 most, occupy only two hours, let the car crawl as it may between the Tuileries and the Invalides. Then, when the old soldiers of the Empire shall have fired the last round, and the director of Funeral Pomps shall have folded the black cloths, and carried them off nimbly in the familiar green vans ; who wiU give another thought to the thing that will be left in the vault under the new gilded dome, or to the Sword of Solferino that will He beside that of Austerlitz ? Spare him not, albeit he has been a mighty worker in history. Eend his heart, if you can, while it is feeUng flesh, by putting under his eye aU his littleness and all your ingratitude. Be quite sure you remember no good he has wrought ; no nobility of in- telligence and of soul which he has dis- covered ; no pledge of his devotion to France which he has given through the Herculean labours of his most marvellous life. " Ee- 148 TEE GAVBOGHE PARTY. spect the burden," said tlie uncle of sick Cassar of St. Cloud ; but hearken not to the voice from Marengo appealing for a pinch of justice to the flaming sword that delivered Italy out of bondage. The lion is smitten : look then to the heaviness of your hoofs ! It matters nothing in the balance between Napoleon the Third, lately stretched upon his bed at St. Cloud, and the hostile press of Paris, how he has governed. That which is blameworthy in the articles which the furtively and openly unfriendly papers have published on his sickness, is, not the criti- cism, but the blithe inhumanity, the touch- and-go comment on a creature in suffering, the hilarious application of analysis to the death-sweat ! Not content with the ex- aggeration of every unfavourable rumour, and the dismissal of the living man as something past and gone, that would be out of the way and out of men's minds in a OGTOBEB, '69. 149 fortniglit ; the directors of the papers which are dubbed "Liberal," have kept up the devilish game, with the help of even light medical writers. The doctor has been called into the news- paper office to tell the French people how soon, in all reasonable probability, their Emperor will die, and free vent will be given to the score of political madcaps, who are bent on toppling everything over, for the vainglory of building up another chaotic, volcanic, ruinous regime, to be prodigal of resounding phrases about the " sovereignty of the people " and the like — and j^roductive of, general bankruptcy. The means, shamelessly employed, should and will, suffice to put a stigma on the pur- pose. He who is ruthless at the sick bed- side of his bitterest foe, is not the man to trust with the future of a kitten. Happily, we have no conception in 150 TSE GAVBOGHE PABTY. England, of a free condition of the public mind, that would tolerate a burlesque of a surgical operation. Imagine a merry-andrew flourishing a lancet and a probe : a sm-gical table for light comedy business : vivisection amid roars of laughter ! When, not many months ago, I wrote about the liberties which had been given to the French press, and the uses to which M. Eochefort was devoting them ; I expressed a hope that the licentious extravagances of 1848 would not be renewed, to give an ex- cuse to authority for a return to a system of repression. The argument I then held is good now. The press laws of France must not be judged by the English standard. In England the public is the severe censor. The writer who passes the bounds of de- cency is admonished by his readers, who cast his sheet to the winds, and trample it OCTOBER, '69. 151 tmder their angry feet. In like manner, he who argues in favour of a general bouleverse- ment, and recklessly attacks " the powers that be," is left unread. Suppose the English royal family subjected to the out- rages which accompanied the iUness of Napoleon. We cannot conceive the possi- bility of maintaining a print like the JRajypel or the Beveil for a week, after the appear- ance of such articles as those which dealt with the Emperor during his sickness. The English public would resent the in- humanity : call the writers jackals — and run them to earth. The result which has now been expected for some time past is — I am almost pre- pared to say — cordially as I detest the least curb put upon free speaking and printing — deserved. It was not wise Kberty which the sick Emperor's enemies used, to shake his throne 152 TRE GAVBOCHE PABTT. while lie was laid up in bed ; but licence such, as would not be tolerated in free — in free and stable — England, for a single day. Our freedom wears, because such licence turns every honest citizen into a policeman, and every reader into an officer of public safety. It must be said. The cruel side of the Erench character has peeped out once again. In the thousands of light-hearted readers who can enjoy fantastic dancing by the banks of the Styx, — who can find no better use for a poor human skull than to fix a gala candle in it ; and who can laugh and be merry over the dail}^ visits of three doctors to their sovereign, — there is surely something wanting ! In this fierce, cutting levity, this banqueting on a bed of pain, — and this utter forgetfulness of every item of a debt to the man whom they crowned with garlands when he swept, with his victorious OGTOBEB, '69. 15S liost, along tlie Fia Sacra from Vincennes to the Tuileries, home from emancipated Italy, — there is a leaven inexpressibly repulsive to men of calmer race and blood. Observe, pray, that my remark applies only to that section of the French people which is swayed by the Gavroche party. It was announced that the Emperor pro- cured and read the medical articles which condemned him to a speedy death ; and which told his subjects how the vital func- tions would soon fail in power to repair the waste of blood caused by his bodily afflic- tion. The perusal did not visibly alarm him. At the same time a portrait of the hus- band and father is presented, to the minutest details, by no friendly hand moreover — and yet the picture is winning in spite of the artist. It is grudgingly conceded that Napoleon the Third has the fine old manner 154 THE GAVB0G3E PARTY. of tlie cHvalrous Frencli gentleman, and bears himself towards Ids wife with affec- tionate grace, patience, and consideration. The republican spirit is not above the description of a little Court milli- nery ; and gratefully enjoys its Jenkins, who tells the despisers of kings and queens how the Emperor and Empress tidoyent one another at the breakfast-table in the bed- room, when her Majesty is in aj'je?y?2of/', red or purple, and plays with the dainty slippers on her feet. The Emperor's illness was, in a party literary sense, turned, uncompromisingly to every possible account. His bedroom is as well known as the Tour St. Jacques. That he soaks his bread in his tea in the morning is common knowledge, purchase- able at the Kiosks. His gastronomy is laid bare; and, for dark purposes, I doubt not, it is made known in the city which holds OCTOBEB, '69. 155 tlie great Dumas at work on liis long-pro- mised book on the French, cuisine, and which Jules Gouffe has chosen as the scene of his declining years — that the Imperial family have a weakness for brisket of veal ! Now Jenkins, of England, for very sufficient reasons, stopped at the halls of great people's houses. The French chroni- queur is a bird of far nobler pinion, and gets into the bedrooms. I cannot see that he is restrained by a single particle of feel- ing, nor by a spark of delicacy. I know, we English, are reputed fastidious and prone to the use of the word " shocking ;"* but we are not so squeamish as the untravelled chroniqueur imagines. We suffer Formosa, but we would not stand the free-and-easy light pen of France — yet ! * A word never used in the sense given to it by- French writers. 156 THE GAVBOCHE FAHTY. The clironiqueur can serve many dishes. To the irreconcileahle he can give the low number of the Emperor's pulse ; count his days, and hilariously predict the ingratitude of the nation on the morrow of the Imperial obsequies. He can frighten the Bourse with a picture of Ctesar in a blue flannel dressing-gown ; and affect the funds by dis- covering the Imperial valet administering Bordeaux cut with Vichy water, as the last word of baffled science on the mortal malady. The worst feature of the metier is the comedy and the extravaganza played as they have been of late. Its hoUowness and utter lack of earnestness are proved by the readiness with which the light, prying writer will turn his hand to any hero ; pull down any god of yesterday ; and sit before anything in power or disgrace, and wait to fetch and carry. Victor Hugo, was blessing little children OCTOBER, '69. 157 and transacting a little ceremonial crying in Switzerland, during the fine weather : and he had a Jenkins told off in his wake. Ca;sar lay sick : and King Hugo strutted in triumph at Lausanne. The contrast was one to which the big drums of the Gavroche party loved to draw popular attention. And bad taste and bad feeling weighed as nothing in the effort. But the people remained quiet^ and never showed the least disposition to pull their own capital about their own ears — for the prospective delight of being shown over the ruins, by M. Eochefort, with his Lantern ; or of being remodelled, from Hauteville House, by telegraph. THE GAVBOCBE FAJRTY. October, 1869. T EECUR to the light literature which, like thistle-down in the field, shows whither the current is tending ; the tone of public feeling — the public, in fine, upon whom the Gravroche partj^ are endeavouring to act. It is clear, I am afraid, that this public will not be disgusted by the worst the Gavroche organs may have to say. Mark a passage in the year's history. The picture has been painted in with patient touches in every part. Not a speck of blood, a hair of the murdered heads, a vein of the homicidal hand, has been slurred over. The materials have been sought far and wide ; not an incident has been lost ; no sigh has passed unrecorded upon the idle wind. The desolated homes of the butchered OGTOBEB, '69. 159 family, — the acute distresses of the criminal's relatives, — the nightmare of the murderer, — his attitude in the Morgue, — ^the trodden field at Pantin, where the bodies were raked up, — the emptied red grave marked by a stone, upon which a sentimental visitor among the thousands had cast a branch of mignonette, — the age of the Havre gendarme who arrested Troppmann, — the empty house of the Kincks at Eoubaix, the starving chickens and the grey shutters, — the funeral of the victims, — and the letters of the father and brothers, — were turned to the fullest account. The banquet of the savages was bounti- fully served, and with a searching art which our Enghsh reporters and penny-a-liners have not yet approached. We English are behind France in art- manufactures, in dress, in the cuisine. We ■can serve up the hot and cold in bulk ; but l2 ItJO THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. when there is a fastidious, exacting palate waiting at the mahogany tree, we are clumsy to brutality. Only the other clay I saw, in an English illustrated paper, a picture of truffle-gather- ing, accompaniedTjy letter-press that treated of truffles as though they were on a gastro- nomic line with ploughboy cabbage.* We take kindly to the details of a great murder of the Manning type, and justice should be done to the zeal with which the British penny-a-liner can serve his public when the scent is keen, and the papers are running a neck-and-neck race for bloody details ; but I insist that we fall far short of the Paris c/troniqueur who has a great case like that of Pantin on hand. The British explorer in the murderer's footsteps can just tell in plain * The potato is the democrat's truffle, it has been remarked, of late. OCTOBER, '69. 161 words the experiences which light tipoii his path; whereas the Parisian has a Zouave's lightness of step — a cheerfulness which the Morgue cannot overcome ; and he has a roundelay ready to your whim. For a day or two, sharply-pencilled sketches of the mangled human flesh, — the night scene on the bare plain under the moon. and when the blood got to the surface and glared to the eyes of the affrighted husband- man ; — of the doctor's work upon the Morgue slabs, with the fountain-water trickling over it; — of blood, and always blood, till the heart is at white heat, and the reader's eyes are fixed, and he can bear no more ! And then — a change of style, of attitude, of scene, of music. Pic-nics have been held in the al fresco workshop of Cain. The air of Pantin has been musical with corks. The Parisians must now have a song, jokes 162 THE OAVBOCRE PARTY. — murder-news whipped as light and smooth as Bignon's Mayonnaise. They are selling peacock's feathers upon the field of the murder : it is the hour for sprightliness. Pantin may be played upon. Louis Eatis- bonne protests, in the Bebats, as becomes a Christian gentleman, whose soul revolts over the dance which is proceeding, to fill up the interval between the Pantin night of crime and the sunrise scene of expiation on the Place de la Boquetfe ; but the fiddlers are upon their tubs, and the jesters have not put on the motley for nothing. The clowns are footing it, with crape upon their arms. All the fun of the fair parts, to let the seven coffins go to the Field of Best, and then closes again. Who can say a clever thing about the Morgue ? How will funeral baked meats taste with E^oederer? or does Madame prefer the sweeter wine of Widow Clicquot R OGTOBEB, '69. 163 Come, let us have tlie verses to the Princess de Solms, who, according to rnmour, assisted at the post-mortem on Troppmann's victims ! Troppmann never lifted his cap when con- fronted with the corpses. It is true his hands were tied behind him ; and the finest gentleman in France could hardly have done this civil thing under the circumstances. Why are there so many policemen gathered on the Pantin field ? Allans / a conundrum. A cause des at Troppmann ! fattroupementsj . Mle est honne ! It is not " the hour of feeling," but that of merry-making, while the man in the Con- ciergerie is waiting for the camisole de force, and the toilet of the condemned, by the valet of Paris who leads the way to the knife of Dr. Guillotin. So, the Pantin field shall be called the Troppmann cemetery. People have been talking about the " prin- 161 THE OAVBOGRE FAHTY. cipal " victims. What is it that gives one murdered person precedence and importance over another? In order to impart dignity to the tragedy, the chroniqueurs have de- scribed the field as at Anbervilliers, and not Pantin — Pantin having a ridiculous reputa- tion. A person of Pantin is a mock mer- chant, a mock count, a mock senator. But this, the mayor of Aubervilliers protests, is no reason why his realm should be saddled ■with the infamy; and he insists, amid volleys of laughter, that Pantin shall have all that belongs to Pantin. The ball must be kept rolling. The pretty newsvendor of the Boulevard des Capucines was asked how business was doing ? It had become flat, she said — " a present, il nous manque le pere." Another ingenious observer has remarked that Troppmann would have had infinite trouble in disposing of the Kinck property OCTOBER, '69. 165 had he got clear off with it, since he was not of age — "77 nest pas majeiir, mats il est diablement emancipe^' is the answer. Emile Blavet, in his criticism of ' Fausse Ilomiaie," at the Theatre de Cluny, ingeni- ously condemns a lugubrious actor, saying, " He plays the part of the Maestro a little too much a la Troppmann. Had he assassi- nated the entire Kinck family, he could not have been gloomier." The fun spreads to the Bourse, and we have a comic dialogue between two stock- brokers, who lament that the illness of the Emperor and the Pantin murder have — clashed! Aurelien SchoU, in his Lorgnon, records, in his lightest vein, how Troppmann has crowned his misdeeds by strangling the ex-Carmelite, Hyacinthe ; but he has saved the Church from the scandal which the eloquent protest of the preacher, who had 166 THE GAVBOCSE PARTY. just booted himself, was threatening to create. In short, the Troppmcmn-manie is at its height, and it is hinted that the mur- derer has saved the Ministers ! People have recovered from the terror, and are delighted with those who will jest their fears away. M. Charleroi of the Tintamarre, struck with the development of assassination in France, and the necessity for every con- ceivable precaution in the shady electoral byeways which abound under the patronage of the friends of Gavroche ; offers the Assassin's Guide in Paris — for the special benefit of " candidats -assassins " ! Here are a few valuable directions : 1. Keep your locks cut close. If your hair is long, it may be seized, and you will be shaken and disconcerted — and sometimes a little will remain in the hands of the dead man. OGTOBEB, '69. 167 2. Never buy arms at one of tlie known gnu-makers. Win a knife or a pistol, as by accident, at one of the barriere fairs. Fair dealers are never to be found. 8. Keep your nails short. If you seize the throat of your mother-in-law, the nails may betray you by their marks. Or, you may break them — mothers-in-law are so tough ! 4. Give sous to the poor, that you may be taken for a good man. 5. Never wear linen marked with yonr initials, or have it marked with the initials of a well-known huissier. If you lose your handkerchief, they are put off the scent. 6. Place no confidence in your wife. If there is anything to be feared from living woman, it is above all from one's wife. The subject will take many ingenious, perhaps witty, forms yet ; bnt already the literary reporters have proved their ver- 168 THE GAVBOGHE PAHTY. satility, tlieir alertness, and their heartless- ness. Botanizing on a grave is tame : spread the nappe, produce the terrine, cool the champagne in the cemetery mould, and, by way of dessert, black grapes from Fontainebleau. October, 18G9. /""OMPAEISONS are made between the liberties of England and those of France every day : as though France had cruel chains upon her, and England un- fettered wings. It will surprise many in France to hear of customs and laws which exist in old, free England; as it has as- tonished Englishmen to find, on inquiry, after having come in contact with French journalists foaming at the mouth and talking OCTOBEE, '69. 169 about lettres de cachet and the Bastile, that there is actually more than liberty — there is licence, under the very cocked hats of the Emperor's police. As there are laws in England which would not be suffered to exist twenty -four hours in France ; so there are in France institu- tions, restraints, through which the English people would break with an ugly rush. The traces of the revolutions through which the French people have passed, are apparent in all the laws that affect the well-being of the mass. Apply our County Court procedure to French working-men, and no army would be able to keep the people out of the streets, or the roads unturned. Establish the Eng- lish Poor Laws in Paris as they are worked in Loudon ; transfer the Gwydyr House staff to M. Husson's spacious hotel of the Assistance Publique in the Avenue Victoria. Why, the whole mass of the poor, with the 170 TSE GAVBOCHE FABTY. people at their backs, would sweep the hotel out in an hour. In the severest days of personal government, it would have been dangerous to send the brokers round the working quarters of Paris, as they have been travelling of late under the rating pro- visions of the Eeform Bill, in the poorer districts of London. It is not permitted to clear a man's bed from under him, in France. The rich get no advantage, even in the v\^ay of bail. Compare, in short, the French code, which comprehends all the laws that touch the citizen in his daily life, with our confusion and conflict of the old with the new ; and it will be seen that our neigh- bours, in the mass, are freer from social oppression than we are. Our laws have been made by, and for, the rich. They are tinged with feudalism, and the workman has not yet completely realized his dignity as a citizen, like his French neighbour. OCTOBER, '69. 171 This is evident in the bearing of the two men. While the Frenchman is independent and self-possessed in every company, the Englishman is shy, nervous, and awkward in the presence of his social superiors ; or, he is coarsel}^ defiant. The Frenchman has a sense of his personal dignity which never leaves him, and which he carries through the transaction of the humblest duties. Compare English with French waiters ; English with French tradesmen ; English with French domestic servants, — and the self-respecting dignity of the French will show in striking relief against English shamefacedness, servility, and bluntness. The advent of the working-class to political power, as electors, has long ago ceased to be a public question in France. He is never for one moment disturbed with a passing idea that he is not in every conceivable and possible respect the equal, as a citizen, of the 172 TSE GAVBOGHE PARTY. bom-geois — of his master — of everybody. At the stormy electoral meetings of Paris, Gavroche and his friends are composed of men of various callings — we should say, of different classes ; but the equality is abso- lute — and he would be in danger of personal violence, as well as of overwhelming ridicule, Avho should give himself superior airs in the steamy rooms of " the sovereign people." Forty years ago, when Henri Heine was observing the cast of the European mind, and cutting out sharp portraits of Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, by no means for- getting his own countrymen ; he made some comparisons between the kinds of liberty affected by various races, which are proved true to-day : which never, indeed, had a truer look than a few mornings ago, when the fan- tastic French crowd was about poor Deputy Baudin's grave, quite neglectful of Heine's, which is but a stone's throw away. I^ot OGTOBEE, '69. 173 sone would liave taken the trouble to throw a stone towards it to indicate its where- abouts, on that November morning. " Let me bring forth then, in this moment of excitement amid the most easily moved and promptly forgetful race in Europe, the words of the brilliant German who loved his Paris so well ; and was strong by his Teutonic birth ; and was brilliant by contact with races foreign to his own. He speaks of liberty in England, France, and Germany. " But if the main want of the English- man is personal liberty, the Frenchman can, at a pinch, do without it ; provided always that he is accommodated with that portion of freedom which we call equality. The French are not a home, but they are a sociable, people. They cannot endure those silent gatherings which they call conversa- tions Anglaises. They run, chattering, from cafe to club, and from club to drawing-room. M 174 TBU GAVBOCRE PABTY. Their light thin champagne blood, and their innate alertness in the common con- cerns of daily life, make them prone to sociability — the soul, and first condition of which is equahty. Equality was the natural consequence of the perfection of the social element in France ; and leaving the causes of the revolution out of the question, it is clear that it found its chief organs among those sjnriiue/s rotiiriers, who frequented the salons of Paris on a footing of seeming equality with the nobility, but upon whom, from time to time, a hardly perceptible and therefore more wounding feudal smile played, recalling to them their great and outrageous inequality. And when the canaille rolurierc took the liberty of decapitating the liaute noblesse, they coveted less the inheritance of their goods than of their ancestors. We are the more led to the belief that this thirst for equality was OGTOBEB, '69. 175 the main lever of tlie revolution, because we find tliat the French soon felt contented and happy under the rule of their great Emperor ; who, taking into consideration the incapacity of these prodigals, maintained all their liberty under his severe regime, and left in tlieir keeping only the joy of a full and glorious equality. "The Englishman bears with much greater patience than the Frenchman can show, the sight of a privileged aristocracy. He con- soles himself with the thought that the rights which he possesses prevent this aris- tocracy from interfering with his domestic comforts or his means of existence. These aristocrats never display their privileges, like the continental noblesse. Gay ribbons are seen in the streets of public places only upon women's bonnets ; and gold and silver lace only upon the backs of lacqueys. Moreover, the gaudy liveries of many M 2 176 THE GAVBOOEE PARTY. colours that annoy us, and denote an exclu- sive and privileged military caste, are nothing more in England than an honorary distinc- tion. The English officer, his duty over, hastens to doff his scarlet coat (like an actor wiping away his paint) and to put on the frock-coat, and become a sim- ple gentleman. It is only on the stage of St. James's that decorations are prized, and that the ragfs of the middle agjes are dis- ci o played. Here the ribbons flout and the stars flash ; the silk breeches and satin tails rustle ; golden spurs and exploded French clatter ; the knight swells with pride, and the noble lady airs herself But what does a free Englishman care about the comedy played at St. James's ! It never interferes with him, and he may play the same comedy at home if he pleases ; make his servants kneel before him, and amuse himself with his cook's garter — Hoiii soil qui mal y pense. OCTOBER, '69. 177 " As for the Grermans — they want neither liberty nor equality. They are a speculative, idealistic, dreaming people, who live in the past and future, and have no present. The English and French have a present. "With them each day has its struggle, its antagonism, and its history. The German has nothing to fight about. When he began to suspect, however, that there might be desirable things, his philosophers wisely taught him to doubt even the existence of these things. It cannot be denied that Grermans love liberty, but differently from other people. The Englishman loves Hberty as he loves his wife. He possesses her, and albeit he does not treat her over tenderly, he knows how, on occasion, to protect her like a man ; — and woe unto the red-coat who penetrates the sanctuary of his bedchamber — let him be officer or petty officer. The Erenchman loves liberty, like the betrothed 178 TSE GAVBOGHE FABTY. of his choice. He burns for her ; he is full of flame ; he casts himself at her feet with the wildest protestations ; he fights unto death for her ; and for her he commits a thousand follies. The Grerman loves liberty as he loves his old grandmother." This is, on the whole, just : and at this moment it would be well for Frenchmen if they would spare a few flowers from the overloaded tomb of Citizen Baudin for the earth that lies upon the bosom of Henri Heine. If, moreover, they would send a few calm, unprejudiced delegates from socialist, demo- cratic, revolutionary centres, to London ; and give them for mission, the examination of the liberty England enjoys at tliis moment, they would find the privileged aristocracy still in full enjoyment of its rights. The stars and garters remain the exclusive pro- perty of the old caste. Every ofiice of great OCTOBER, '69. 179 honour in tlie three kingdoms is the posses- sion of the reigning families. The plebeian Englishman is content with this state of illogical inequality, because he has not the Frenchman's quick insight, nor his abhor- rence of a stupidity. A Frenchman read, in his evening paper, not many months ago, that a poor English widow had been imprisoned some half dozen times, for a debt of a few shillings. He appealed to me and others of my country- men to contradict the enormity laid to the charge of our institutions. But the enor- mity was a fact, and one among a thousand. It led us to talk about the tally system — its extent and manifold evils eating into the very heart of English poverty. If this sys- tem were laid nakedly under the eyes of working-men of Paris, it would not, pro- bably, make them less noisy clamourers for the sovereignty of the people, nor calm the 180 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. impetuosity of St. Simonism, Fourierism, or any other ism that has taken to wear the blouse ; but it would make them cease to talk about la vieille Angleterre and her liber- ties — since liberty without absolute equality before the law, they cannot understand. The grand irony put about the breast of a young nobleman just out of his teens, who- had done nothing, nor shown the least sign of being able to do anything for his country, would be met with a shout of derision. Gavroche would make the round of his- acquaintance, and riddle with his plentiful small-shot, the government that had com- mitted the fameuse betise. Indeed, if he could be made a constant reader of the re- ports of English police-courts and county courts, he would use us as illustrations of the poisonous, fangous growth, that still crops up again and again, defying Reforms and Bnis of Eights, and Charters, while the OCTOBER, '69. 181 cold shade of a privileged aristocracy over- sliadows the land. I don't say Gravroche would be right ; but this he would say of our vieille Angleterre ; and he would concede, possibly, that the illustrious child of the sovereign people, I^apoleon the First, did something for the humblest Frenchman, when he drew out the Code which makes plain to all, the laws that rule and control all. October, 1869. ' I ""HE Revolutions have one and all left profound marks in the habits, modes of thought — nay, in the character, of French- men. The remark is old : but necessary again, when on all sides I find writers com- paring the manner and aims of political activity — as it is developing itself under the- :82 THE GAVEOCHJE PASTY. new liberties given by Napoleon the Third — with the British method of agitating and carrying questions. In England we are approaching the old French monster demon- strations, with flags and marshals, and women in the rant and file, and other ominous street-shows of hot opinion ; while in Paris there are a few hopeful signs of that mode- ration, with strength, which was most im- posingly and splendidly shown through the agitation for the Repeal of the Corn-Laws. Eeflect that, for sober, dignified determina- tion, the later exhibitions of popular strength, trailing through the thoroughfares of Lon- don, cannot bear comparison with the meet- ings over which Mr. Cobden cast the witchery of his English tongue. The feeling is sharper now. A. class animosity has been raised, I need not pause to say how and why — which did not exist thirty years ago ; which was hardly seen, indeed, as recently as the OCTOBER, '69. 183 cotton famine times. It is this class anger which, has gallicised English popular mani- festations ; and it is the dying out of class distinctions in Prance which has anglicised her stoutest and truest friends of liberty. The wildest ranter at one of the barriere meetings does not cry a has I'aristo, for he is assured that no class — with privileges and partial laws — is over him. The Eevolutions have swept him far out of the cold shade of aristocracy ; and he has ceased to think of the Faubourg Saint Germain's wizened mind and mien, except when he would have a merry laugh in his petit journal ; or is clearing the cobwebs from his work-life in the theatrical j9ffr«(/?s of his choice. He has made the patrician a comedy character, and planted him in the centre of his carnival ! His grandfathers laid cruel hands upon him ; and, in the work of clearance, committed many cowardly, shameful, savage acts. His 184 THE GAVROGEE PAHTY. blood grew white-hot, and he tore his- enemy and mauled him as vermin. The grandson has no fears in the old direc- tion. His personal dignity; his equality before his fellow, — and the said fellow handles a marshal's baton, or is jewel-capped and enthroned — is as firmly based as the Pont-Neuf. But being suddenly loosed, in the way of writing and talking, he feels all that wildness which is natural to every being at the loosing of it. He must talk and write ; and both talking and writing^ must hit at the constituted authorities. That he has no overwhelming, unbearable griev- ance left upon him, is shown in the placards which announce a series of Republican meetings. The heads of these meetings are at a loss for sounding lines — for subjects of debate. They must e'en trot out the old servants, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. They have turned out all the old clothes of OGTOBEB, '69. 185 Socialism : and the wearers liave been laughed at, like the few guardsmen of 1815, wlio shuffle to tlie Place Vend6me on the Little Corporal's fete day, to hang garlands upon the railings of the hero's gun-metal monu- ment. And when the leaders of disorder — lieutenants of the Hugo dynasty, as they are derisively called, in the satirical papers which are not of this dynasty — try to make an appointment for a revolution in the open streets ; the white blouse of to-day plants his hand in his capacious pockets, plugs his pipe, and, laughing, waits for the evening papers. Eochefort has served his turn. The call for him was scarcely more serious, al- though it was infinitely more dangerous, than that for Lambert. A people so easily tickled, cannot remember all the straws which touch their cheek. They have already finished with Gambetta. In none of the 186 T3E GAVBOCHE PABTT. names that have been lately set upon the walls, and heralded in the Rappel and kin- dred journals, is there the stuff that will endure. They represent, one and all, mis- chief, noise, the cessation of trade, troops in the street, impossible theories of life, everybody master ; and then, profound dis- couragement under a disgraced flag, general quarrelling, everybody in the wrong ; with, finally, an armed hand, to put all in order — by putting all in bondage once more ! I should be very glad to see some enter- prising speculator translate just six consecu- tive copies of Le Happel ; and bind them in octavo, for the edification of the British public. The number lying before me, opens with a violent, feverish, spasmodic poem, by Victor Hugo, called " The Three Horses," the lean horse being the poor agricultural labourer's beast. The insult intended to the Emperor is plain : but it is clumsy, and OCTOBER, '69. 187 therefore will not hit home. M. Eocliefort follows, with a series of his impertinences, each marked hy the drawing of a lantern. Little enough light shines from under any of them ; but very much that is petty, and of taste so low, that were an English journal to write parallel insults about Queen Victoria and her family, and tack the shabbiest motives to every State act, it would find no publisher in Holywell Street. To call the man who is the Chief of the State, and is respected by as many thousands as M. Eochefort can count individual admirers, the lodger of the Tuileries ; is to descend to the very lowest description of opposition journalism. Can writing like this serve the cause of enduring liberty? Will the often planted and often uprooted tree, flourish in soil like this ? It is to the credit of the mass of the French people that they see the juggle ; 388 THE GAVROCEE PARTY. .that they recognise the old apostles of dis- order ; that they perceive the kind of soHd glory they wonld get under a regime in which the lesser men of 1848 would advance to take foremost places. AU these rioters with pen and tongue, command the rounded phrases of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 ; and, vain as children with new pinafores, call one another " citizen," and cannot con- duct a public meeting without breaking the law ; and are vain to absurdity when they have constituted themselves martj^rs, hj having been locked up all night ! Most people on the English side of the Channel will be sorry to see the respected name of Louis Blanc mixed up with the raging trott^je of the Jiajjjjel. He has suifered with dignity for his opinions ; and has laboured brilliantly and profitably for his country, through a painful exile. Com- pare him for a moment with M. Henri OCTOBER, '69. 189 Eocliefort. Contrast him with M. Pyat! Put him with the other candidates of the Happel clique, who deafen Paris with their noisy egotism ! The sum of all the rant in the Happel, and of the republican electoral meetings, means just this : " Prance is great : Prance is glorious : France is the leading nation of the world — then hand her over to us, and we will at once give her that which England has been seeking, patiently and quietly, for two centuries in vain — perfect government ! The men who have been at the helm of the State by the banks of the Seine for the last eighteen years, are a set of rascals, knaves, and fools. We alone are honest ; we alone are great in wisdom and in virtue. Ply to us ! And the Prench nation is not gratefully besieging the ofiices of the Rappel ; albeit M. Victor Hugo opens his nouveaux chdti- ments, as the epilogue of the Empire ! N 190 THE GAVBOCHE FAJRTY. I am not a panegyrist of the Second Empire. But I see that under this regime. Frenchmen have grown in power and pres- tige. The national wealth has enormously increased. Under the order which has re- mained undisturbed, commerce and the arts have flourished. Moreover, and lastly, the gallant spirit of the people has vindicated its right to a free press and free speech. There is now a real Eepresentative Chamber ; there are responsible Ministers. Personal Government is at an end. Order remains with liberty. This is the end for which three disastrous revolutions have been fought — at the cost of incalculable misery. There is in the Legislative Chamber a sound, able, thoroughly-tried liberal band of politicians, who are ready to consolidate the liberty that has been gained, and to obtain that which may be properly demanded. Jules Favre, Ollivier, and Jules OCTOBER, '69. 191 ■Simon are leaders of this moderate band; as it is, I repeat, a happy augury for a strong and free France to come, that the great mass of their countrymen remain, to this time at any rate, of their way of think- ing. There is a far better chance for a free and flourishing nation without, than with, the G-avroche party. The success of madcaps (who have a selfish method in their madness) calling each other citizens, and presenting candidates who will not fulfil the first conditions of candidature — would be only a signal for disorder, that would destroy all the work of the last eighteen years, and drive liberty away once more at the point of the bayonet. " 'Tis Order maketh people great : Seek ye her cheery hght, and evermore Avithstand The spirit of Faction — bitter nurse of men, That comes with poverty and sorrow in her hand." But disorder maketh little men great, for N 2 192 TSE GAVBOGEE PAMTT. a moment ; and lience the noisy people of the Bcveil, the Rappel, the Eclipse, and the rest of the organs of disorder. November, 1869. /^ISTE moment, M. Louis Blanc. Eotten eggs have often been at a premium in election times in England : granted. Any- thing more disgraceful to rational men than an ordinary contested election, it is not easy to call to mind. The fighting, the bribery, the intimidation ; the lying and cheating ; the degradation of the citizen's first risht by every means that money can compass ; the unhandsome subterfuges of the candi- date and his friends ; the rise of the low and lawless to the surface, at the beckonine' of the greedy rascality that quickens about NOVEMBER, '69. 193 the committee-room and the hustings — are granted. The prize-fighters, the publicans, the drunkenness, the head-breaking and window-smashing, are also granted. And still we make no approach to Belle- ville, Clichy, and La Chapelle. In outward seeming ; in the manner of coming and going, the electoral crowds of Paris shine in comparison with ours. There is much less drunkenness. There is no bribery. Each man has a sense of his dignity, of his con- science, as a citizen. The sense comes from that habit of thought which followed upon the Revolution ; and which, as Heine ex- plains, Napoleon left untouched through all the mihtary severities of the First Empire. Each man on his way to his meeting-place, is on a personal mission. He has his politi- cal and social ideas. That these are inspired by the revolutions which have gone before, is evident from the closeness with which he 194 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. copies the forms of discontent of Ms father and grandfather. He puts titles away. The Emperor is Monsieur Bonaparte, or the Citizen Bonaparte — on an exact level with Gavroche. Gavroche is a Radical, he says ; but match me an autocrat of his steel if you can. The sovereign people, as he understands the Majesty, is a tyrant of the severest order. He is wanting in respect for most things ; and he is ready to impute the basest motives to all who have served the country. His force of language is astonishing. A richer and racier tongue never wagged in human head. All his venom is concentrated upon the fool. L'homvie capable is a presence — is the only presence, that compels his cap from the crown of his head. A week or two since (I have the incident from a friend) Gravroche and his companions were carousing in a wine-shop. One of their party saw a gentleman approaching from NOVEMBEE; '69. 195 the Sorbonne. He turned upon his friends and said — " Comrades, St. Marc Girardin is coming this way." The group of workmen turned out, and, as the learned professor passed, respectfully saluted him. Tou must understand this in the character of the French peuple — tins which is incomprehensible to the middle- class mercantile Englishman and to the En- glish mechanic also — before your estimate of the mobs who swarm home behind Eoche- fort's cab, and are ready to chop up the very roots of society for bonfire wood, can be just and whole. The French Eadical has inherited his creed — with additions to his inheritance, of course. He is in opposition always. His father created a dynasty, and his grandfather restored one, and his great- grandfather toppled a throne into the streets, and emptied St. Denis of the ashes of gene- 196 TSE OAVBOCEE FABTT. rations of kings — like a common dust-hole. Tor himself, he had a taste of revolution some nineteen years ago, and only a taste — enough to whet his appetite ; enough to shape his course and heat his blood, and, in the political arena, to give him the instincts of the man-tiger. Equality is for ever upon his lips. His conviction is apparent in his gait ; in the tone of his voice, and the cock- ing of his cap. He is the thirty-five-milliontli section of a king. The slaves, rascals, thieves, perjurers, and rakes are all the citizens who administer the Government, represent him abroad, sit in the Senate, or speak from the pulpit. He lately observed at a meeting in the first Circumscription that all the virtue which is to be found in Paris after the eighteen years of Bonapartist rule, dwells in the garrets. The searcher after chas- tity must get as near as possible to the slates ! If we turn, in our survey of the NOVEMBER, '69. 197 Frencb. electoral crowds, and especially tliose of Paris, and particularly those who shout for Ledru, Pyat, and Rochefort, and Cremieux, to their religious aspect, we frnd persiflaj/e. The Rappel notes, in a congratulatory tone, that secular burials are on the increase. The figure of the representati¥e unit of the million is full of interest and dramatic force ; a case comprehending a jumble of many conflicting qualities and opinions. There are noble aspirations — dreams about " the parliament of man " — a decided wish to hasten forward " the federation of the world." * He has his theory of life as it should be — generally a sad, soul-destroying level — but warmed with broad human syra- * M. Adolphe Bertion presented himself as " the Candidate of Humanity," to all the electors, at all the elections of the Universe. He was " for all and every- thing." He is p,n ex-magistrate, agriculturist, merchant, tradesman, inventor, engineer, among other qualifica- tions. 198 THE OAVBOGRE PARTY. patliies — with pity for his poor neighbour. The world, it seems to him, is Ms oyster. All who are not of his order are parasites. His hatred of men who affect to be his social superiors is so intense, and so warps his vision, that he turns upon parliaments and constitutions, and proclaims that he will do without them. Of this dream Ledru-EoUin (who knows Gavroche well, and who led him to the bloody days of June, 1 848, as he would now lead him to chaos under a Committee of Public Safety and to national beggary with the riff/it of every citizen to work) is the presiding hero. But Ledru must be Gavroche's most obedient. When a voyoiis_ cap shall be a crown ; and parliaments shall be as obsolete as theWittenagemote — and the sovereign people shall be in full possession of the world — Ledru will wait outside the Tuileries for the orders of the people assem- bled in the Hall of Marshals. Ledru will NOVEMBER, '69. 199 help (xavroclie into his coach, and be proud, for himself, to ride upon the box. Nor will Gravroche be a tender master. He has a long account to pay off. The marshals of France shall be humble waiters on his sovereign pleasure. He will have no deputies, but messengers ; eight-day clocks to be wound up with his own sovereign hands, to run down in any place appointed by him.* The palaces he reserves for him- self : any corner will do for his servants. With all this, he is bon erifant. A gene- rous sentiment thrills through his frame. He is in the seventh heaven when a citizen has done a noble action. He would have clasped Greorge Peabody to his heart, had he given to Paris one tithe of the treasure he showered upon our London poor. Kpomjner * Lord John Eussell objected, when standing for the City of London, to be a clock wound up at the Guild- hall to run down at St. Stephen's. 200 THE OAVBOGHE FAETY. saved two or three lives at the imminent risk of his own a few months ago ; whereupon the heart of the whole capital warmed towards him, and bought his photograph by the thousand. A grace, a delicacy, a skilful operation, a happy thought, will touch Gav- roche, and command his ungrudging ap- plause. The rich man is no god of his idolatry. He ducks to none. His standards of the admirable are loftier and purer than those which guide the English masses. He is ready to make a revolution for an idea. He has many points which are, to him, in- finitely more important than wages. And with all this, no more ominous figure than that of Gravroche ever appeared in the van of civilization. " But what is strengtli without a double share Of wisdom ? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties ; not made to rule, But to s^ibserve, where wisdom bears command." NOVEMBER, 69. 201 Gravroclie lias miglity strength, and half a share of wisdom ! He is quieter at his election ; he is purer ; he has loftier aims than his English brother — but he lacks patience, toleration, which the Englishman bas — and, for the very best reasons in the world to his half-informed understanding, he would turn the throne into charcoal and give it to the Auvergnats to roast the chest- nuts of the sovereign people ; and he would light the rolls of parliament and all the charters he ever heard of, with the flaming batons of the marshals. 202 THE GAVBOCEE PAMTY. November, 1869. A N electoral meeting, at the Folies- BelleviUe, or La Chapelle — or in a quarry, amid tire mushrooms. M. Gagne was received with laughter; but he was not the wildest of the speakers. Poor M. Gagne is the scapegoat, the sovereign people's fool, of the moment. He wants to make lavvs without the help of a deliberative assembly. He is ready to estab- lish an universal bank (the capital to be supplied by philanthropists) in order to abolish interest — and to do away with taxes. He is prepared to create an arch-monarch to be sovereign over all republican mon- archs : but he has not quite solved the pro- blem of universal unity — for the moment. The president is in his place : the assessors NOVEilBEB, '69. 203 are at his elbows — tlie secretary is chosen.* The bell, the sugar and water, and the com- missioner of police complete the details. The sovereign people, headed by Gavroche, fill the room. Thirty-five-millionth part of the popular sovereign, with long hair, strange apparel, and voices of every scale, pass to the tribune ; declaim, scream, growl, defy the representa- tive of authority, sip some sugar and water, and descend to the bosom of the not very savoury equaUty and fraternity massed in the body of the haU. Citizen Trasse draws upon himself a warning from the police commissioner by his sly allusions to the bladder. Citizen MaUet blames Jules Simon for regarding poverty as an eternal necessity ; * On the 13th November, at La Chapelle, the Citizen Christ was secretary. 204 THE GAVBOCHE PASTY. and votes for Eochefort because he represents a social revolution. Citizen Grunenwald remarks that the first number of the Layderne made people laugh : the second showed Citizen Eochefort putting his finsrer on the wound. It was said that Eochefort was no orator — neither was Robespierre — at first. Citizen Gaillard proposeth to surround the Tuileries with a crowd of Lanternes to light the people within. The servants of the State were mere clerks of the people. " We pay the commissioner who is good enough to attend on this occasion" — quoth the Citizen, " and we will take care that he remains in attendance on us till eleven o'clock." In his peroration, Citizen Gaillard denounced a regime that forbade a statue of Baudin, and permitted the erection of one to De Morny. Citizen Mauiice Joly observed that there NOVEMBEB, '69. ' 205 was still a caste in France — as in '89. There were 200,000 public servants, 1,200,000 soldiers, and 80,000 priests, all organized bodies in the way of a revolution. Citizen Dombret explained that the second Republic had broken up, because men's ideas were not ripe. The Eevolution was not pre- pared deliberately ; but now the social move- ment is well matured, and the Eevolution which is about to be made, will last. Citizen Sauge must have guarantees from Eochefort; and he must be closely questioned. He must, above aU, be asked how the work- Tnan is to obtain the legitimate fruit of his work. For himself, he was for the sup- pression of parasites. Every man should be a producer. Citizen Domangeain had been asking him- self whether the practice of the people's sovereignty corresponded with the principle ^of that sovereignty. In order to put the o 206 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. fact in harmony with the theory, the people, as free sovereign, should transact their own business, without the intervention of agents. Turning towards the reporter, the Citizen expressed his regret that the press had never ventilated this, the only absolutely democratic theory. It was humiliating for the sovereign to have to deliberate in con- fined, and often unhealthy, places.* Spacious and splendid halls were wanted, where affairs of local, national, and universal interest might be discussed in common. It was illogical that the delegates of the people should impose laws on the people. They may make mistakes, or be corrupted. The fate of the sovereign is therefore in unsafe hands. The Citizen concluded — " I am a tailor, and I know how to make seams : and yet I commit blunders sometimes. But it * The sovereign held at least one meeting, by torch- light, in a quarry. NOVEMBER, '69. 207 is a much graver matter when blunders are made in laws than when they are cut in seams." At this point the commissioner warned the meeting that the constitution must not be attacked. Citizen Domangeain denounced the use- lessness of " certain parasites who could not produce a lucifer-match ;" and wound up with a declaration in favour of an elective police. It should be a glory in a man's life to be elected a policeman by his fellow- citizens. Citizen Milliere sympathized with Citizen Domangeain, in his regrets that the sovereign people were obliged to meet in holes and corners, while there were so many unoccupied palaces. He agreed with the Citizen who had preceded him as to para- sites. He who produces everything, enjoys nothing : he who produces nothing, enjoys the labour of others. 2 208 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. Eocliefort must be good enough to under- stand that the applause of the people was addressed to the idea which he personified, and not to him individually. The people must be on their guard against the toJdte blouses. The authorities often hoped to deceive the people, by putting on their costume. The Revolution consists of two things — viz., in the destruction of the obstacles to progress, and in progress itself. Eochefort has all that is requisite for the first part of the work, which we shall help him to carry out. He is the only candidate who accepts the principle of the " mandat im2)eraiif!' By his permanent communion with us, he will be the faithful exponent of the ideas which we shall develope in common. Direct government is practised in some parts of America, and in three Swiss cantons. We must use the toleration of to-day and NOVEMBER, '69. 209 tlie liberty we shall have to-morrow, to study this new political machinery. [The orator suggests, pleasantly, that he and his friends should pull the clock to pieces, and then, set to work to study the principles of clockmaking. Meanwhile, the world must be content to have no account of time.] Citizen Giroux wants a deputy who will constantly plunge the peaceful sword of uni- versal suffrage, into the thighs of personal government. A phrase by Citizen Finet about the Pope, describing him as a representative of a God of peace and mercy, who has a Minister of War and an executioner, draws down a warning from the commissioner of police. Citizen Cavalier maintains that the oath taken by Eochefort doesn't count. He should like to see in the other three circum- scriptions, candidates who had taken no oath 210 THE GAVnOGHE PABTT. {insermentes). Whereupon another police warning. Citizen Peyrouton, opposing the candida- ture of M. Allou,* wants to know whether men who have august clients do not neglect the briefs of the people. In any case, will they elect an independent speaker ? Vote for Barbes ; for we have to take a signal revenge for the 2nd of December, the bloody image of which wounds every conscience. Loud cries of Vive Barbes! and the commissioner of police enters a warning ! We must open the gates of France to her great exiles : we must have another Ee- public. The commissioner of police again inter- feres. Citizen Brisson was of opinion that law costs ought to be abolished. * Independent Liberal, advocate ; was Prince Jerome's counsel in the famous Patterson case. NOVmiBBB, '69. 211 Citizen Grlais-Bizoin said the octroi must be put down : the enemy must be starved out : the Emperor's civil list of twenty-five millions must be reduced to a salary of a president of the republic. Citizen Guillaume blames the Left for not having questioned the Grovernment as to certain rascals, two of whom sat in the Chambers with the Opposition ; who have been committing monstrous robberies for eighteen years, and have ruined eleven hun- dred thousand families. Elect Barbes, the Bayard of democracy. Citizen Bibal supports Grent, on account of the socialist character of his candidature. The labour question should not and cannot be adjourned, as Citizen Arago thinks. Poverty must be suppressed if liberty is to be established ; and this by facilitating and developing production by the organization of credit and exchanges. No more Banks 212 THE GAVJtOOHE PAJRTY. of France with^ a privilege arranged to fill the pockets of the shareholders. Credit should be gratuitous. Citizen Serre will vote for the candidates who refuse to take the oath prescribed by law. He is in the presence of a constitu- tion violated by the man who created it, and consequently annulled. Can you take an oath of allegiance to a constitution that exists no longer ? Citizen Arago answers the charges against his socialism, by calling Ledru EoUin bis master, by saying that he defended Barbes^ at the trial of the 15th of May; and by the convincing fact that he tidoyait F. Pyat ! Citizen Hiimbert is not satisfied witk Citizen Arago's position in social questions. Is it not the worker who pays the taxes ?' Education and the whole of society must be re-arranged on a basis of justice. What were the means which he (Arago) and others. NOVEMBEB, '69. 21? used in 1848 to accomplisli this result? Witli liberty as he describes and under- stands it, those who are perishing with hunger, will still perish. In fact, whenever the socialist party arises, the formal repub- licans never fail to make common cause with the royalists. Citizen Lissagaray makes an elaborate oration in support of Eochefort. Thunders of applause, in the midst of which Citizen Eochefort puts his arms round the orator's neck, and kisses him warmly. The president observes that he has copied a line from a poster. Citizen Eochefort is called the " Candidal voi/ou." Is the work- man the voyou ? Citizen Lardeur will prove by A plus B that the candidature of Eochefort is inop- portune. He is met with shouts of "No algebra ! " — The orator bids the meeting not to insult him, or he will leave the 214 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. tribune. He repeats that Eochefort's can- didature is inopportune — whereupon a deaf- ening tumult. He manages to say that Eochefort has dipped his pen in gall to insult a woman (the Empress). Whereupon ironical cheers, and irrepressible clamour, amid which Citizen Lardeur disappears. Citizen Sauge holds the noise to be beneath the dignity of a sovereign assembly. Does the meeting wish to prove that it is not worthy of liberty ? It was more to Roche- fort's interest to listen to his antagonist than to prevent him from speaking. The true sovereign is the man who can command himself. Order is re-established, but Citizen Lardeur declares that he has too much dignity to resume. A voice informs him that he has not the courage of his opinions. " Are you, then, inquisitors ? " asks Citizen Lardeur. He proceeds to assert that to send Rochefort to the Chamber N0VE2IBEB, '69. 215 would be a political crime — and ceases, amid hissing, ironical cheers, and tumult. The candidate, Citizen Terme, is questioned by the irrepressible Citizen Milliere, amid con- fusion and noise. Citizen Terme is in favour of calm discussion ; and Citizen Milliere de- clares that to obtain calmness, liberty must be secured. A voice observes that quite enough liberty exists for blackguards. Bravo and applause. The Citizen Milliere declares himself a blackguard — and of the impatient blackguards. The Empire is to blame for the slackness of trade, and the want of work. Citizen Pascal Duprat did not want the support of Cremieux. Cremieux at his age was in need of support, rather than in a position to give it. The speaker is inter- rupted by dissentients, and a general tumult. The noise at an end, he continues. Let Ledru EolHn return and make his voice 216 THE QAVROCSE PARTY. heard — and his words of vengeance will be a bomb thrown upon the Tuileries. Citizen Jourdan presents himself as a candidate. If the electors want a name they must pass their own : if they want a man, he is at their service. Citizen Pellerin requires a candidate who will make the Empire writhe in its last agony. We will not take the oath to one who, in the night, put a knife across our throat. A closing incident. A citizen, although the legal hour is passed, insists on being heard. He must express his devotion, and his readiness to sacrifice his head for the sovereign people — but he is borne off with the crowd, making wild gesticulations, amid general laughter. At the doors there was a subscription for Gent's candidature : receipts sixty centimes [ NOVEMBER, '69. 217 November, 1869. /~^ AVEOCHB is wliistling' across the street : staring from right to left : and he holds a whip in his hand. He has the air of one in authority over something. What is it ? His dog ? ITo ; his candidate. The docile creature comes panting to his feet, and looks up imploringly into his eyes, and is delighted when his master deigns to give him a lesson in the art of fetching and carrying. The faithful animal rolls in the dust, plants his sagacious nose between his paws, and waits ; wags his merry tail, and craves another command ; for he is the most obedient of breathing things. He will plunge to the bottom of troubled waters, and fetch anything thence his master may command him. He will 218 THE GAVBOGEE FABTY. bark and bite to order. Gravrocbe is a severe proprietor : wbimsically good-natured at times, but, as a rule, of iron will. When be keeps a dog, tbe animal can labour under no mistake as to tbe weigbt or lengtb of its cbain. There are people of easy temper who allow their domestic pets to run free, and have their own way. Gavroche is not among these. The thing which serves him is honoured in the humblest offices of Ms service, and must do them, and gratefully look up from the earth for any slight mark of ap- proval his majesty may condescend to offer. A passing smile from Gavroche is of weightier value than a common king's ransom. Whom have we here, accompanied by a roaring mob? What citizen is this in a hackney cab, driving slowly from Belleville to the Faubourg Montmartre with a singing, shouting host of blouses, and bearded nondescripts ? Gavroche is taking his work NOVEMBEE; '69. 219 tome. That is all. The biped in the vehicle is Gravroche's. Gavroche beckons, and he wags his head as his proprietor re- quests. He has been going through his paces in an electoral riding school, under the whip of the sovereign people. The ju^e d' instruction has not stuck to the prisoner Troppmann more closely than Gav- roche, representative of King Blouse, has followed and questioned his messenger and slave. The creature arrived, out of the hands of the French police, from the Belgian frontier ; tired in mind and body. But he was not to rest. His master took him like a horse out of a horse-box, and examined his points, and trotted him out. He was " in bad form," and at once he went down in the list. His oratorical paces were poor ; but he was extremely docile. A child might safely play with him. Eochefort in Paris — is Eochefort on his •220 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. downward course ? His head is turned. Can he really be the man of the situation ; the Eobespierre of the nineteenth century, and does he hold, in truth, the flaming torch of holy vengeance ? He cannot realize the glory that is cast around him. The satirical paragraphist and political punster, raised from farce-writing to be chief figure in the most cultivated nation of the world ! The persifleur shaken out of his motley and folded in ermine ! The Lanterne made a guiding light among tlie nations ! He, in whose literary spasms there is not a single gene- rous passage, is shot over the heads of the learned, good, and great men of his time, who have pondered the well-being of their fellow-creatures through laborious lives ! The versatile insulter of the sovereign, who has mixed poison in ahundred little cups; who has drawn every conceivable form of sword and dagger and knife for the throat of one NOVEMBER, '69. 221 enemy; the acrobat of the multitude pro- moted from a square of carpet and a bye- street, to be the judge and the law-maker ! Brought before the sovereign people, at a public meeting, the caustic pen shook in the young man's hand. He was expected to consume everything repugnant to Gravroche, with flame from his forked tongue. Now was the empire to tremble to its foundations : the Senate to feel the damp sweat of death ; the employer to know that the era of wage- paying was closed ; and the workman to feel the golden dawn of universal mastership. The uproarious crowd hushed, prepared to hang, as the bee on the flower, upon the honey of his eloquent lip — with adoration as passionate as that of Lord Lytton's Pauline — and as evanescent and charged with selfishness. To use a Swedish pro- verb — he who had risen like a star, fell like a pancake. Eochefort was no orator. He 222 THE GAVBOCHE PABTY. had prepared a little offensive speecli, with his Lanterns points dotted about it — and this he hung out again and again. Gavroche did his best to appear contented. Robes- pierre, he said, failed at first. His candidate was overworked — and so he took him home in a cab, with the customary noise — and permitted him to go to bed. But his sleep was watched ; he must snore only with the permission of the people.* The morrow * Quand je m'dors, quand je m'eveille, Sans cesse un monsieur distingue Est la tout pres qui me surveille En qualite de delegue. Lorsque pour me coucher je rentre, Le soupcjon dans mon co3ur jaillit, Je m'^tale sur le ventre, Et je regarde sous mon lit. " Personne ! soufflons la chandelle Et dormons. Crao, j 'entends du bruit, Et vois mon delegue fidele Qui sort de ma table de nuit !" Albert Millaud. NOVEMBER, '69. 223 found the humble creature of tlie sovereign people, dazed — and inflated too. He had caught sight of his new state clothes, and was burning to put them on. He tried a strut. He made an attempt at a majestic toss of the head. Whereupon Gavroche approached him authoritatively, and observed : " This shouting about your carriage ; these resounding cheers in the too narrow halls of the people ; this general cry of Vive Eoche- fort ! — means nothing for ^ou. The little boys of London cheer round about the strav/- stuffed figure of Gruy Fawkes, which they burn in the evening. I have not made up my mind when I shall burn you : but it will very much depend on your behaviour while I choose to wheel you about in my barrow. A turn of my wrist, and you are in the mud. " Ah ! you thought the sovereign people were applauding you ! Learn, rash and vain p 2 224 THE GAVBOCHE FABTY. young man, that his majesty cheers only — himself. It has pleased him to put you up as a symbol of recldess and spiteful disorderj, and so long as it may suit him to keep you in that place of honour, I shall trouble you to be humble, subservient, and prone to the dust. But, before his majesty puts you into his livery, he will question you." Citizen Eochefort respectfully bowed his head, and was led back to the presence of the sovereign people. He would do every- thing. It was unnecessary to offer the least explanation of his own views. He was the most obedient, humble servant of King Mob. Elected, he would have no will — no thought of his own. Weekly he would spread his cloak upon the earth, and beseech his ma- jesty to walk over it. He would hire the school-room wherein the sovereign people would give him weekly lessons in the part he was to act in the Corps Legislatif, while NOVEMBER, '69. 225 the Corps was suffered to exist, pending direct legislation, by tlie people, for the people. To every question put to liim by atoms of His Majesty tbe Mob, he had one answer. He was the passive instrument of the sove- reign people. He was the Barbary organ : His Majesty was sole operator at the handle.* His wicked enemies had said that he had received a pencil-case from a prince of the House of Orleans ; and that when he went to London to throw his mantle over Ledru Eolhn and bring him back to Paris, he had seen the Orleans family. He repudiated * At a meeting in the lixie Dondeauville, Citizen Emanuel, having said that Ledru EoUin would not re- turn to France because he knew a ship was kept in readiness to transport him to Cayenne, was asked for proofs. He answered, " How can I have proofs ? I am not his Majesty." Murmurs. Several voices, " There is no majesty except that of the people." The President : " It is evidently by mistake that the speaker allowed this expression, most unbecoming in a popular assembly, to escape him." 226 THE GAVBOGEE FABTT. these charges. His reverent eyes had ever rested on the heroic proportions of King Mob. He kissed the hem of the blouse. He was the dear brother of the eloquent tailor who had just spoken, and words could not express his feelings towards boot- maker Gaillard, who was good enough to divert his mind awhile from upper soles to the salvation of the country. Had he not shown his detestation of the Imperialists — of the Bonaparte, in a hundred stinging sarcasms ? Everything which Citizen Gav- roche disliked should cease ; or, if they would permit him the dazzling glory, he would descend into the street. " Ascend," the quiet citizen growls. Will he put down misery ; erase pauperism from the Hst of human evils ; make every man his own roaster; put his heel upon every parasite, that is, upon every human creature who does not produce something ; NOVEMBER, '69. 227 as a deputy, cast himself into the skin of Citizen Gavroche ; having taken an oath of fidehty to the Empire, break it at the earhest opportunity, never ceasing, in addition, to call the Chief of the State, the Pei;iured One of December ; hug every ism that wears a blouse, and never cease from the slanders by which he has risen to the proud position of messenger and footman to King Mob ? Citizen Rochefort swallows the morsels with the air of a man who is assisting at a banquet cooked by Grouffe. He incorporates all, and is ready for more. Ledru Eollin would not come back with him; therefore he said Ledru was not on a level with his mission. Ledru was ready with his pen, but not with his skin. He would write a fiery pro- clamation that would give the centuries the lie, and order the world to try back, like a clumsy girl at her piano. Ledru was music- 228 THE GAVBOGEE PARTY. master to the spheres, you should be pleased to know, and not very proud of his pupils. When Citizen Gavroche sent his forward, spiteful boy to London, to lead the exile home, the veteran's scorn and rage were unbounded — so report said. And no wonder. Take two iconoclasts. Would he who had shivered the Venus de Medici to dust, and had lopped the limbs from Apollo, hearken to the counsel of a beginner, who had merely tripped up an image-boy in the streets ? Wlien a man rises, as Rochefort rose, he finds at his heels a pertinacious pack of writers who turn over his heap of antecedents with their hooks, and gather into their baskets every item that will tell to his dis- advantage. His Orleans pencil-case (a schoolboy gift) has gone the round of the press. But it was put in the shade by his attendance at the funeral of Queen Marie Am^lie. NOVEMBER, '69. 22a The sovereign people requested their slave to explain how it was that he attended the funeral of Louis Philippe's widow. Eoche- fort replied that kapjjeninj/ to be in London at the time, he was " fortuitously " in the crowd of the curious. He reckoned without the hook and basket of the chroniqueur . Citizen Rochefort, in days when he little dreamed that he would be permitted to wear the chains of the sovereign people, wrote a book, which he entitled La Grande BoJieme. At page thirty-five of that interesting work, the Figaro is good enough to remind him, the following sentence may be read : '' I have just returned from London, loldther I journeyed in the company of several honour able people, to pay our last duty to an honest woman, 8fc. Sfc." Having passed from La Grande Boheme to La Basse Boheme, Citizen Rochefort finds the sentence just a little embarrassing. But he 230 TRE GAVBOCSE PABTY. will get up a daily organ of his own,* and then we shall see who will have the best of it in the rival pillories. With a daily paper to direct, and provide with lampoons ; and a sovereign people to serve — taking his Majesty^s orders weekly, from a throne to be paid for out of his own pocket — Eochefort's work is cut out largely for him. His reward will be — the unbounded ingra- titude of his masters. He may die grand cross of the Inestimable order of the Sabot, and be honoured with a " secular funeral," but if he should live the allotted span of human life, his shouting constituents of to- day who shall have survived their political messenger, will be impatient with their even- ing paper for wasting a paragraph on him. He will have been long' ago — "Embalmed in hate and canonized by scorn." * La Marseillaise. NOVEMBER, '69. 231 November, 1869. I ^HE crowning deed of the days of dis- order^ of tumult, sugar-and- water drink- ing and accusations ; of society -making and marring; of mad propositions for the re- generation of the world by its most degenerate creatures ; of sadness over folly that will not die out, and of vanity that will fight and kill rather than remain obscure — the crowning deed of the days of shame, was the production of Citizen Felix Pyat's manifesto. I am not ready to say one word against the man. With his private life I have no concern. I am not at any trouble about his sincerity or his insincerity. I take him at his own value. I estimate him from his own lips. I con- vict him by his own admissions. I do not 232 THE GAVBOOHE PARTY. say lie is a fool, charged with an overween- ing sense of his personal merits and impor- tance ; I exhibit his folly. He leaves me no room for argument. How do you approach a man whom you find capering about a gun- powder magazine with lighted squibs in his hand? The magazine will be scattered in the air presently, but, — you will have seen him — that is Ids sole concern. Citizen Pyat wants to know what has become of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity during the last three months. He begins with liberty, which he defines as the right of man to exercise all his physical, moral, and mental faculties, within limits prescribed by his fellows, or approved by them— a definition which applies to the most meagre form of constitutional govern- ment — even to personal government, when this rests on universal suffrage. He pro- ceeds to review the application of the prin- NOVEMBER, '69. 233 ciple. Paris serves his turn, as tlie capital of France — some say the capital of the world. He supposes the arrival of a young man of fair abilities, bent on eanaing his living by the exercise of his faculties. To begin with, he is stopped at the city gates, is questioned — perhaps searched, before he passes the octroi !N"obody may enter, even with a lark for a pie, without paying the dues to liberty and the principles of '89. He pays and passes into the city. What will he do ? Citizen Pyat is most anxious not to overstate the case. He has a little money ; he can drive ; he buys a horse and cab, and is about to ply for hire. ' Prohibited/ the police cry, ' driving is a monopoly accorded to certain privileged persons by liberty and the principles of '89.' He is a good walker. " Oh, I am honest," he says ; " I wiU carry people's letters. The post is a paying concern, and I will get a 234. THE GAVBOGEE PARTY. good business by under-bidding it." ' Prohi- bited on principle/ the police sbout : ' this is another Government monopoly.' " Ah," the young man exclaims, " I have some ideas of chemistry. Tobacco is a thing of general necessity. Government makes money by selling it bad and dear. I will sell good tobacco, and at a cheaper rate than Government." Prohibited ! is the re- ply of the police : this is another Govern- ment monopoly. Then a brilliant idea strikes Citizen Pyat's model young man. He will manufacture gunpowder. " Gun- powder, rash youth ! only the Government manufactures gunpowder : uses and abuses it. It is more than a monopoly ; it is a double crime, a conspiracy. Trebly prohi- bited." Citizen Pyat is addressing his constituents at his ease — so he proceeds : — The devil ! the principles of '89 try the NOVEMBER, '69. 235 temper. The young man requests to know "what is permitted, since you answer me always 'Prohibited!' I am intelligent, educated. I read well : I write better. I will become a journalist." First warning: you must deposit caution-money. " A pam- phleteer, then ?" The stamp. " Printer ?" If master, a patent ; if workman, a livret. " A hawker." A visa. What remains ? Let me think again. " A publican ?" A Hcence. " A tradesman ?" The patent. "Professor ?" A diploma. " A stockbroker, advocate, soli- citor, notary, sheriff's officer ?" Tou must buy your place. " Porter, shoeblack, then ?" You must have a medal. Citizen Pyat's exposition of his political views so far is received with great applause. Encouraged, as well he may be when such crazy vapouring is cheered, he goes on : — In short, there is nothing free except the police — in the name of liberty and the prin- 236 THB GAVBOGHE PAHTY. ciples of '89. At last the young man, at the end of his tether, and desperate, thinks about destroying himself He will put an end to his life, and make Ms own cofBn. The last warning and monojjoly of Govern- ment turns up. Happily, he is only twenty and he is a conscript. He is saved ! He is condemned to nine years of hard principles and military liberty : he is '89 in uniform. This is liberty's last word. Citizen Pyat's hearers are in ecstasies. Such is liberty, the returned exile says, such is human prosperity in the France ; in the Paris which has made three revolutions for this first of rights. Everything is forbidden, and the rest is allowed. Paris cannot even elect her mayor. "We pass to the second principle— equality. Citizen Pyat is re- solved upon a striking illustration. Have you, citizens, who have the un- NOVEMBER, '69. 237 speakable pleasure of listening to rae— Solon in a red cap, ever observed an organ, or mem- ber, of the human body, taking advantage wantonly of the rest of the organs or members ? For example, in the hand, one finger taking all the substance of the other fingers — and becoming big and fat like a rich man, amid the others, lean like the poor ? If chance should make such a development, it would be a monstrosity. Nature, in fact, by a wise law of equilibrium, distributes to each member the strength proportioned to its functions. This is known in physiology as the balance of the organs ; and it should be known in socialism as the law of parti- tion, of equity, of justice — in one word, of equality. Alas ! this was received by Citizen Pyat's auditory with loud cheers. Shall we wonder at anything that may follow. Hereupon follow the citizen candidate's deductions. Q 238 THE GAVBOCHE PAHTY. Where, therefore, is the equality between a Eothschild and a rag-picker ? Where is the equality between fortune and education on one side, and misery and ignorance on the other ? Between the coat and the blouse ; the master and the workman, labour that produces everything and enjoys nought, and idleness that produces nothing and enjoys everything? Where lies the equality between the two castes — the one above, the other underneath ? Where is the equality between the son of the rich man, born as the English proverb says, with a silver spoon in his mouth, baptized in tepid water, putting the world under contribution for his food, cloth- ing, housing, and education — with his first cry; growing in hereditary luxuries and accumulations ; his fire in the winter and his ice in the summer ; with straw under his windows when he is ill, dying as he was born, in down — embalmed and blessed, and NOVEMBER, '69. 230 put away in marble : — where is the equality, not between bim, but between his horses, groomed and wrapped in blankets, — and the child of the poor, the child of labour, born in the asylum, Hving in the workshop, dying in the hospital, dissected in the amphitheatre, — used all his life, from his birth unto his death : — as workman, giving his sweat ; as soldier, his blood ; dead, his body to science that the rich man may be cured ; and so, turned to use after his last agony. Behold equality's last word ! Citizen Pyat made a sensation with this period — and was encouraged to continue the same Hne of calm and just and salutary reasoning. How many poor go to make one rich man ? Almost as many as there must be subjects to make a king. So long as, according to the law of equilibrium and of justice, the workman does not enjoy these Q 2 210 THE GAVROGIIE PARTY. three rights : 1 , the ris^ht over the whole of that which he produces, without draw- back; 2, the means of producing without capital; 3, the liberty to produce without patent or licence — there will not be the shadow of equality. There will be two castes, masters and slaves. Let us turn to fraternity. Fraternity is disposed of in a trice. The master excludes the brother. Love one another ! How can a man love his master ? Our master is our enemy. The wolf is not the father of the lamb, and if he loves him, it is to eat him. These sentences of Citizen Pyat's were received with " approving laugh- ter " — rires approdaiei/rs. He asked, what is the fraternity of the cannibal — of the sweater, who is the regu- lated cannibal? What is the fraternity of Prance and Europe, armed to the teeth ? The fraternity of the bayonet and the NOVEMBER, "69. 241 guillotine? The fraternity of the soldier and the priest, who slays and who damns ? The fraternity, not of bread, but of lead? The fraternity which gags the tongue of labour, and fires the throat of artillery? The fraternity of Judas and of Cain ? The fraternity of December and of Cayenne ? of Paris and of Eome? of Ricaraarie and of Aubin ? This burst yielded Citizen Pyat a round ■of enthusiastic cheers. He had more to say in the same convincing, sober, and rational strain. He compared Mazas to the Bastile, whereupon his frenzied audience roared that they would pull down the one like the other. I give a final touch of Citizen Pyat's justice: •as summed up in his " last word of fra- ternity." Before the Revolution, he said, there were twenty-seven executioners — twenty-seven too many ! — and to-day there are ninety -nine ! 242 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. The infamous inference suggested by tliis will give the reader a very good idea of the kind of gentlemen France would have to govern her, if, for her sins, she should be subjected, even for four-and-twenty hours, to the domination of the Reds ! November, 1869. A FTEE Citizen Pyat comes Francois- Victor Hugo — to wind up the follies of his party with a scream at everything that is opposed to him and his friends ; and to give the French public, who are not of "the sovereign people" of the Belleville meetings, an idea of the kind of men who would have the destinies of France in their hands if the red cap could NOVmiBEB, '69. 243 be planted upon a pole over King Victor Hugo in tlie Hall of Marshals — trans- formed into the Hall of the Mob. Citizen Francois- Victor turns back his sleeve, has a fresh bottle of gall opened for the occasion, seizes a quill from the bundle selected from the backs of the fretfullest of porcupines for the Bajjpel offices — and, enveloped in red curtains, lays lustily about him. Bees are sent humming under his nose to keep up the fury : and the inkstand is an eagle — and the gall is purple-tinted ! He is off. The Bonapartist writers get their esprit out of the fish-fag's catechism, their courtesy from Pere Duchene — their honour from Basile. ISTo epithet is repugnant to them. They mock at equity and truth. They have scorn for sacrifices ; they meet disinterested- ness with raillery, and nag at adversity. They associate heroism with scoundrelism — 244 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. Barbes with Troppmann. They give the lie to fact, and a slap in the face to evidence. They hold their sides laughing at the grave. And this is how Bonapartist journals en- deavour to mislead public opinion. But these are mere preliminary flourishes — trials of the wrist, and eye, and nerve. Citizen Francois-Victor now sets to work in downright earnest, stimulated by a prodi- gious bumble-bee, buzzing under the very nose of the thirty-five-millionth part of the sovereign people. The Bonapartists cry, in Grod's name, what should we do if the providential being who represents absolutism were to disap- pear. Commerce would be at a stand-still, property would cease ; the poor, relieved from the presence of gendarmes, would fall on the rich. Communism would triumph. The scaffold would arise — and terror reign again. Universal bankruptcy, civil war. NOVEMBEB, '69. 245 fratricidal struggle, return to barbarism ! Tableau ! Citizen Prancois-Yictor is ffood enoug-li to warn the Grovernment prints (and all are for tbe Grovernment, according to this quiet citi- zen, who are not ready to scatter the whole political fabric to the winds) that the system of frightening peaceable citizens with the prospect of chaos and the Eeds, is worn out. The Grovernment papers of the Restoration played the same game. To-day's justifica- tion of the coup d'etat was yesterday's justi- fication of the Ordonnances. The epithets now applied to the Irreconcileat)les were then directed to Manuel, Benjamin Constant, Lafayette, Casimir Perier, and Beranger. On the 29th of July, 1830, men saw what the predictions of the Ultras were worth. What did the omnipotent people do after the taking of the Tuileries ? Did they seize upon property? They shot the thieves. 246 THE OAVEOCHE PABTT. Did tliey show respect for persons ? They became their own police. Did they break into the banks and rifle the Treasury ? They placed ragged sentinels at the gates. Did they put their vanquished enemies to death ? They protected the flight of Charles X. and the royal family ; they gave a safe conduct to Madame De Polignac, and freedom to the Swiss prisoners. They pardoned the guiltiest. On the 3rd of August, 1830, the Journal des D'ehats was lost in admiration of the calm that prevailed, with 70,000 citizens of all classes — some very poor, in- deed — under arms. Eight days sufficed to pass from despotism to liberty. Citizen Trangois-Victor uses just so much of the Eevolution of 1830 as he finds con- venient to the series of jerks which he calls his argument. He blunders, however, in the very opening of his illustrations and comparisons. Who are the men of disorder NOVEMBER, '69. 247 in 1869, comparable, except for conservative purposes, with Benjamin Constant, Casimir Perier, and Beranger ? Moreover, the acts and theories which were repudiated by the Eevolutionists of twenty -nine years ago, are justified and advocated by the socialist talkers of 1869 — who want to see capital without interest, and labour without capital. But Citizen Francois-Victor has a flail as heavy for the back of the Grovernment of July, as he had for that of Charles X. He blames everything done in the way of government, from 93 to 1869. He complains that the writers who supported the Govern- ment of Louis Philippe after the Eevolution, charged the people of 1830 " with the terrible necessities of 93 ;" and hinted that they were hoping for the return of the Reign of Terror, bankruptcy, and the guillotine. They in- geniously exaggerated the quarrels of the Eadical party, and deduced from them their 248 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. constant assertion that tlieir advance to power would be the ruin of France. They called upon the Eadicals to learn how to govern themselves, to begin with. Let Proudhon come to an agreement with Fourier, and Cabet with St. Simon. This advice to the Eeds, and caution to the public generally, holds certainly good now — when the party of disorder is without a single guiding principle of political action — and its meetings exhibit " a general union of total dissent." Citizen Frangois-Victor passes nimbly to 1848. Again Democracy was victorious, and orderly. Paris, according to the Legitimist organ L' Union, put France and humanity under a debt of gratitude. Ledru-RoUin, from the ministry of the Interior, directs the departmental prefects to watch over the public peace. The Paris workmen are ex- horted to ]-cspect property, and to avoid NOVEMBER, '69. 249- every description of excess, and to remember that the nations are watching them. " You have deserved the admiration of the world by your irresistible courage and your gene- rosity. Learn to merit its continuance by your wisdom, and by being the examples of every virtue." Thus Cabet wrote in Le Popidaire. Eespect property is the cry of the leader of the Communists. An old conspirator, Caus- sidiere commands the police. Gruinard, another old conspirator, is at the head of the staff of the National Gruard. The Provisional Government was formed in a few hours. By what miracle ? By a compromise be- tween the extreme factions of the Eadical party. The socialist and the democrat, the old republican and the newly converted, the contributor to the Reforme and the contribu- tor to the National, sit together. Flocon near Marrast, Louis Blanc near Grarnier- 250 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. Pages, Ledru-EoUin near Cremieux, Lamar- tine, gentleman, near Albert, workman. And thus demagogues answered those who said they were incapable of harmonious action. These, the despised of yesterday, were saluted by the embassies, the robed magistracy, the clergy. Before them stood the mitres of the bishops and the plumes of the marshals. Lord Normanby daily oifered the friendship of England. Louis Napoleon prayed them to accept the expres- sion of his entire devotion, and submitted to them the abandonment of the Empire. Citizen Francois-Victor is warm in his harness, and breaks into a gallop — quite unconscious of the mischief he is doine. All this flighty and frothy description is so much against another trial. If, with in- finitely higher and nobler patriots than Prance could gather now out of the Eepub- lican, socialist, and communist ranks, the NOVEMBER, '69. 261 Eepublic went by the board into a sea of blood in 1848, when commercial confidence was maintained within sight of the barri- cades ;* what hope would there be for a regime with perhaps a comic writer, repu- diated by Ledru as a droll gamin, for chief — and the Hugo family to give ballast to Kepublican statesmanship ? Citizen Fran9ois- Victor says that mon- archy fell in 1830, and again in 1848 — and yet society remained unshaken : and there- fore it will not tumble to pieces should the crown go again to-morrow. But what do the enemies of hberty care for " the logic of facts ? " Now in 1830 the throne did not fall, to begin with. One gentleman vacated it, and another took his seat— as rapidly as an empty place in a popular omnibus is filled : * On the 26tli of February, 1848, the Bank dis- counted to the extent of seven millions of francs. 252 THE GAVBOCHU FABTY. and, in 1849, society, in order to save itself from all the wisdom and all tlie virtues of which the Eepublic was the dazzling ex- emplar, was even content with a military dictatorship. Society ran away from Ledru- EoUin, and took the arm of the pion-piou — the unlettered representative of Order. But Citizen Francois-Victor is tired. Citizen Charles Hugo relieves him — and throws fire and fury into the last words which are to inspire the people on their march to the electoral urns. The Abusive Press ! Citizen Charles Hugo has an excellent text. No bull's gaze ever fell upon a redder rag. The Citizen proceeds to show that the Maj^pel is not abusive ! He opens on M. Emile de Girardin, be- cause he accepts accomplished facts, and will direct his attention from the Coup cT Etat to the present Government of France. If the NOVEMBER, '69. 253 Empire governed in harmony with his inte- rests and logically, M. de Girardin would submit it to the historian as an admirable model, and would be surprised to see him remain severe. This is because, in politics, M. de Girardin is the enemy of faults rather than crimes. And now for " the abusive Press " — M. de Girardin's very proper description of the Hugo and kindred organs. Citizen Charles Hugo starts with a definition. To abuse is to calumniate. Do we calumniate, do we abuse the Empire ? Is it a calumny or a truth to say that on the 2nd of December, 1851, the President of the Eepublic, after having sworn before God and man to be faithful to the Eepublic, per- jured himself before God and man ? If it be the truth, can it be a calumny ? A series of Coup d'Etat questions follow, in which the Emperor is a spoliator of the 254 TEE OAVBOCRE FABTY. public Treasury, a corrupter of the army, a * defiler of justice, a wholesale slaughterman of men ! After every charge wrought in the accepted Hugo style, follows the ques- tion — Is this the truth ? And if it be the truth, is it a calumny ? Are the " abominable proclamations " of Maupas and St. Arnaud, efforts of Republican imagination? Do Citizen Charles Hugo and his friends falsify history, in recalling to men's minds the brigades of Canrobert, Marulaz, and the rest ; sweeping down and storming Paris from noon till iive o'clock on the 4th of December, in the name of Louis Bonaparte ? Have they merely imagined the list of the 191 victims, admit- ted by the prefecture of pohce ? Are thej- the dramatists of this tragedy, the forgers of this carnage ? Do they invent the dead of the Morgue, of the cite Bergere, of the boulevards, of the doorsteps, upon the stair- NOVEMBER, '69. 255 cases, in beds and alcoves ? Does tlie com- mon grave of Montmartre cemetery cry to them that they lie ?" Citizen Charles Hugo is of warmer blood than his brother. " Can it be said that in rais- ing all these spectres before the tribunal of public opinion, we produce false witnesses ?" The simple reader would imagine that French Republicans never scratched a single citizen's finger ; and would feel them- selves for ever dishonoured by a bloody nose.* Citizen Charles is as great with marks of interrogation, as his father is with points of admiration. " Has he invented Cayenne and its horrors ; solitary graves in the * According to the statement of the Republican Prud- homme, the first revolution cost 1,022,351 lives, exclu- sive of the victims of the Eepubiican wars. The guillotine fell upon 18,603 necks, including those of 1467 wives of labourers and of artisans. R 2 256 TSE GAVBOGEE PARTY. wilderness ; political convicts in the hulks ; Jules Mist and Charles RibeyroUes, dead thousands of miles away from France ? These are truths as clear as the sun of Lambessa. If the accusing tyrants of crimes is to be regarded as calumny, history will be hut one long slander. Pascal, Voltaire, Camille Desmoulins, Chateaubriand, are but pur- veyors of insult. Innocent ISTero has been calumniated. The human conscience should discredit Juvenal, and renounce Tacitus." Citizen Charles Hugo then imagines the answer of all who have the audacity, and incur the moral reproach of not being of his opinion. " All this happened eighteen years ago!" Who remembers the 3rd of December, 1851, to-day? Baudin is dead* and the * The candidature of Barbfes recalled to the public the grave of Lieutenant Drouineau, shot dead by this republican on the 15th May, 1849, before the Hotel de Ville. Barbes denies the impeachment : but the officer was shot, and certes, not by a Bonapartist. NOTEMBJSR, '69. 257 Coup d'Etat is buried. Leave us in peace. The citizens who make this reply, are also supplied by the writer's accommodating imagination. They are journalists from the shop of the Barber of Seville : complaisant pedagogues and comedians of importance: authors of the operetta of the Coup d'Etat, and moralists of the Empire. Figaros in fine, Trissotins, professors of Bonapartism at the St. Arnaud Lyceum ! These cry to the dead — to livid corpses — to skeletons scattered here, there, and every- where, in every common grave of every necropolis, and under every sky — •' you bother us." The Citizen is master of the art of piling up the agony. You bother us, Pauline Roland, patriot; Pauline Roland, the martyr; Pauline Roland, the transported • Pauline Roland, the great dead one ! You bother us, Louise Julien, 258 THE GAmOCHE PARTY. the prisoner of December, the prosciibed of France, the expelled from Brussels, the dying one of London, the dead one of Jersey ! Ye bother us, ye dead of the Boulevard Mont- martre, and thou gamin, with marbles in thy pocket and three bullets in thy head ! etc., etc. You bother us, set of dead ones of the Rue Taitbout. Guillotined of Clamecy, you bother us. Widows in black, your white hau'S bother us. Severed heads that loill speak, you bother us ! Wholesome food this, supplied by Citizen Charles Hugo, for the education of the sovereign people ! The reader has perceived how well the writer defends his party against M. de Grirardin's charge that it is abusive. The Red-hot citizen's opponents are not mealy-mouthed. Indeed tameness cannot be charged upon either side. The Republi- can writers have been baptized farceurs. NOVEMBER, '69. 259 cowards, Jocrisses, PolicHnelles, and break- neck politicians . A writer, not of the Itappel way of thinking, calls "Psitt!" to Rochefort, as to a poodle whose hind quarters he is about to shave. But if the mud used on both sides could be weighed, Rochefort's supply would out- balance all the hundred scribbling opponents of the kingdom of the people, of the empire of topsy-turvy, have thrown. It is, however, sagacious on the part of the Hugos to be the first to complain. Citizen Charles says his enemies have long ago ceased to argue. They answer a hostile observation with — one in the eye — "pan dans I'ceil." Count your bones that I may crush them — to this is polemical warfare re- duced — to official boxing, and devoted pugi- lism. " The Imperial profile bites the nose of the Revolution." Citizen Charles Hugo concludes by saying 260 THE OAVEOGHE PAJRTY. it is tlie official and moderate press that is- violent. For my own part, I find in the evening, that, to turn from the Rappel to, say, the Figaro, the Gaulois, the Liberie ; is like passing within the pier-heads after a storm. I turn down my collar and compose myself for a little quiet. November, 1869. /^ITIZEN Felix Pyat took an opportu. nity on the listh of November, of supplementing his directions to the working men of Paris, on the nearest way to an in- dustrial anarchy. He had endeavoured to- fiU their heads with impracticable ideas about liberty, equality, and fraternity ; but he was good enough to repair to the Fau- bourg Saint-Antoine, in order to provide NOVEMBER, '69. 261 the skulls that might not be quite full, with a padding of destructive doctrines — the ap- plication of which to daily life might give his party a hope of making their twenty-four hom's of power, forty-eight. He began by telling the workmen who were unfortunately present to listen to him, that liberty was never given : it must be seized. Their representatives, he said, had deceived them. " Eepresent yourselves," cried Citizen Pyat. " Be what you are — sovereigns ! Two sovereignties are before you — the sovereignty of all, and the sovereignty of one — Monarchy and Eepublic. One holds a sword, the other wields a tool : one de- stroys, the other produces. Let the sove- reignty of workmen be represented by working men. Can you imagine sheep re- presented by a butcher's bulldog ? ISTo ! Then why have you complained of being 262 THE GAVROCHE PARTY. bitten, torn, shorn, and eaten ? Emancipate yourselves from the innocence of the flock. Choose the best among yourselves, and give them the mandat imperatif^ Bind them, not to the butcher by an oath, but by a contract to the people. Make them your clerks, not your masters ! Command them to let the authorities know that you pre- tend to keep your own wool and skin for the future. A sovereign does as he pleases. He chooses, discharges, and commands his agents at his will : if not, he is no sovereign. Observe : is Bonaparte the master of Baroche, or is Baroche the master of Bona- parte ?" After the general laughter had subsided upon this claptrap. Citizen Pyat proceeded to ask, whether the people should be Gambetta's master, or Grambetta the * Binding the candidate to consult his constituents for every vote and detail of his political actions — to take his orders weekly — like Citizen Eochefort. NOVEMBEB, '69. 263 people's ? Gambetta, it should be noted, is wbat we should call an advanced Liberal : but not an immediate root-and-branch man of Pyat's stamp. " The world is up- side down : turn it up," quoth the Citizen, elated with his hit about Bonaparte and Baroche. Then a magnificent burst. The nineteenth century, is the century of the people : '48 was the revolution of the people. The epoch of steam and electricity, of human progress, is the epoch of the people. In the past, the two Aristocrats, war and robbery: in the present the Democrats — work and peace. In the middle ages, the reign of priest and noble : in the eighteenth century, the bourgeois : in the nineteenth century the coming of the people ! The people ! — the green and living plant : the barbarian giving a fresh youth to the world. Traders retired from business to their 26i THE GAVBOCRE PARTY. country seats, mate stomacli and die. The aristocracy made their fortunes by GaUic wars ; they retired, weakened, and were lost.. The bourgeois has reached his country-house, and, if not dead, is very old. The people alone are young. Only the people work r only the people have strength, life, thought, action, moral sense and common sense, brain and heart, the spirit of sacrifice and devotion. And as the middle class sinks, the people rise in political life. Citizen Pyat has his examples ready. What are these congresses of workmen, and these organs of labour, defining and proclaiming every social question in the two hemispheres — from Bale to 'New York ? What is Berezowski dying for Poland? — a workman ! What are Barrett, Allen^ O'Farell, dying for Ireland? Workmen 1 What is President Lincoln, dying for the slaves ? A workman ! What is Juarez, NOVEMBER, '69. 265 deliverer of the Eepublic ? A workman ! At this, the Bappel informs its readers, the hall resounded with acclamations — and the orator was brought to a standstill, by the fervour of his admirers. Pyat now turned to the dark side of the medal. What is Prhn, taking a lesson in December in the Louvre ? what is his professor ? what are the members of the Senate, the Corps Legislatif, the Council of State, who crush the people * under taxes, and military and other services ; who double their responsibilities, pare their rights, and increase their debts ; who dis- honour, despoil, and shoot Labour ; crown- ing baniruptcy by defeat, the wonders of Eome by the trophies of Mexico, and the * Between Citizen Pyat and M. Thiers a most instructive contrast might be set up. In the first days of June, electioneering busybodies besought M. Thiers to appear at the meetings of the people. He answered : " I am always ready to present myself before the people, but prove to me that your gatherings are the people." 266 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. trophies of Eicamarie by tlie wonders of Aubin? Wbat are all these accomplices, who have been too faithful to their oath given to the empire, to egotism, and to death ? Are they workmen ? And yet they call themselves democrats and workmen. Builders ! What works are these Tuileries, Luxembourg, and Palais- Bourbon ! How well labour is represented here, and how well it is done ! What an edifice they are building, journeymen and apprentices. Talk to us of master-mason Eouher, of journeyman Forcade, and of ap- prentice OUivier: without reckoning the architect, still white — or red — all over, with the mortar of December ! The workmen cheered — as flattered men will cheer their flatterer. Observe to the poet Close, that there is a deeper, subtler, nobler significance in his verse than in any numbers which have been NOVEMBER, '69. 267 musical in men's ears this century, and lie will probably believe you. Should we blame the satisfied — the misled versifier — or the flatterer ? Then what should be said to Pyat telling an audience of working men to topple over everything, and rebuild from the foundations with their own hands — leaving no whisper of a voice to any save of their own order. The middle class is to be per- mitted a peaceable decline, on the condition that every bourgeois will work with the working-man. The workman has corns on his hands — the bourgeois on his conscience. "'No more corns!" is Pyat's shout. And then he stigmatizes the best men of the Left as bourgeois; and in the face of their pro- test, proclamation, and programme (a radical one, if radicalism means anything) declares that they have deceived the people, and killed their own conscience. The people are to have nothing whatever to do with -268 TSm GAVFMCHE PARTY. "the constitution of ttie perjurer," — nor ■with the dark passages of the Coup d'Etat. " The people work in the daylight ! " The Emperor is presently called " the night workman of December : " and the parlia- mentary Opposition, who have steadily advanced Imperial institutions to a degree of liberty that tolerates language which would land an Englishman inNewgate ; is slandered as a purveyor of shreds and patches of re- form — in brief of aiieqtdm * — made up of political scraps. "They carve the Revolution for you," Citizen Pyat concludes — "like a chicken — offering you leg or head, but keeping the wings for him to whom the oath of allegi- * I should explain, that the " arlequin " is a dish of scraps, which the poorest buy in the lowliest Barriere restaurants, as the Grande Californie. Such Harlequins would make many faces merry in England, if English purveyors for the poor had the science to prepare them. NOVEMBER, '69. 269 ance is taken, and who has the civil list. Now, I say to you plainly — people can carve best for themselves. Have the whole joint. All programmes — all reforms are contained in this one word — Sevoluiion ! Isow, Citizen Pyat is the Emperor's best friend. It is the men who have served him who have been his bitterest enemies. November, 1869. T WAS discussing in mid-November, with an accomplished student of history, a writer of high critical authority in England, and a close observer of French political life, as well as a painstaking reader of French literature — the singular figure which M. Prevost-Paradol was then making, as a literary man, in England. s 270 THE GAVBOGHE PARTY. Said my friend, "Had Prevost-Paradol been born an Englisbman, and had he followed the exact English parallel of his literary career in France, he would be un- known, without fortune, and without a future." My friend, hereupon, ran through a list of accomplished English scholars who, he said, " had spent then- whole vital force, learning and genius in the service of the public, in the leading journals and reviews; and had died absolutely unknown beyond their own literary and social circle, liaving been, to the end, merely well-paid journey- men." He proceeded with a contrast between literary and political life in England and France ; and, it seemed to me, showed con- clusively that M. Prevost-Paradol was for- tunate as liomme de lettres, in having been born a Frenchman. " To begin with, the average French litte- NOVEMBEB, '69. 271 rateur is better paid, wliile those wlio have gained a reputation — even a second or tliird rate one — are men of fortune — if tliey avoid the habits of the spendthrift. There are a dozen — a score — of journahsts in Paris who live sumptuously, have property, keep their country places, give fashionable re- ceptions, and rank with the best society in the capital. Take Eochefort as an instance. As an English comic writer he would have commanded some five or sis guineas weekly. Take Sainte Beuve, and compare him with any Edinburgh or Quarterly Reviewer. Did you see his funeral? I knew him. He fought a very hard fight in the beginning ; and at the end he could not make the sums realized by the purveyors of cocotte lite- rature ; but he was on a proud eminence in the esteem of all classes. The prince next the throne would lunch and dine with him, and be glad of his acquaintance. And he died Senator ! He niiglit have been much more, had he pleased. Paris is the centre of intellectual Europe ; therefore the intel- lectual men at the centre obtain a conside- ration which spreads far and wide : therefore their breasts are covered with stars, and, when they travel, they are welcome in the palaces of the great. M. Prevost-Paradol had the dot exactly over the i when he described the French philosopher, or, more properly, the philosophic Frenchman, in his recent estimate of the social condition of Prance.* Le plaisir de V esprit, which is the * Un Franoais a raronient line passion reelle ort profonde pour le veritable pouvoir ou pour la fortune. Son ambition vise surtout a la repiitation, a I'eloge, a I'espoir de donner une haute idee de lui a ses concitoy- ens ou meme a un cercle etroit de familiers, et il se console facilement de bien des deboires s'il pent croire que ceux qui I'entourent le considerent comme superieur a sa fortune. II est assez dispose a accepter son sort et a I'adouoir par sa gaiete et par vine lieureuse facilite a jouir de toutes les bonnes clioses que la civilisation ou NOVEMBJEB, '69. 273 dominant passion of all classes of French- men, naturally carries tlie /tomme d'esprii very far in this Paris. He is master. He may aim at any post — the highest. His influence may be for good, or for bad ; but none can deny it, nor be rid of it. The popular meetings have shown, of late, the least lettered classes to be charged with this intuitive feeHng for the intellectual. The fool is their abhorrence : and they are merciless towards him. See how they have worried and tortured Gagne ! The workman will cap to Thiers, who will cock his coimre-chef insolently at Persigny or Fleury. Prevost- la nature gardent encore en reserve pour lui. Le nom de philosophe, dans le sens populaire d'liomme facile a contenter, est plus veritablement et plus souvent merite en France que partout ailleurs. Et parmi les plaisirs que mes concitoyens goutent si volontiers, et qui, meme dans I'adversite, allegent tellement pour eux le fardeau de la vie, je dois donner avec un certain sentiment d'orgueil national, le premier rang au plaisir de I'esprit." 274 TSE GAVBOCHE FAJRTY. Paradol spoke with, justifiable pride wlieii lie said that the man of philosophic tem- perament, who can be consoled for the rude buiTetings of fortune with intellectual riches, and can keep his admiration fixed on the plaisir de V esprit amid the glitter of events and titles, is essentially a French- man. In the whole range of French political events, from the Eevolution to this day, the men of genius have been in foremost places. Sneerers will say — hence the frequent disruptions of society : but no, hence the few excesses which have marked these disruptions. Lamartine's splendid moral force would never have commanded an English mob. The respect for intellect has reached to the bottom of French society : and it is not equal to that which exists for rank in any society of linglishmen. The impenetrability of our masses — as regards letters, science, and art, is woful ; because NOVmiBEB, '69. 275 in case of any upheaving of society, the lower strata will liave no umpires to parley between them and the rich and noble. The shock between Labour and the Aristocracy and Plutocracy will be a point-blank blow." A servant brought the Gatdois, and we fell upon an article by Francisque Sarcey — the burden of which was that no man is a prophet in his own country — the subject, exactly ours, Prevost-Paradol in England. Strange to say,M. Francisque Sarcey proceeds on the assumption that the French intellec- tual man is not a prophet in his own country; and that his best plan, when he desires a banquet of praise, is to cross from Calais to Dover, and make the best of his way to Charing Cross, thence to Edinburgh. We soon perceive, however, that the writer is not above the level of M. Alexander Dumas in his knowledge of England. Having read the accounts of M. Prevost-Paradol's Edin- 276 THE GAVBOCHE PARTY. burgh reception wliicli have appeared in. the public journals, he concludes that the Eng- Hsh literary path is one of roses. My friend grew very impatient indeed while he read M. Sarcey, where he said : — " Prevost-Paradol must have felt very melancholy on his return to France, to see himself no longer the centre of attraction, the feted — the lion of the party. He must have contrasted French coldness to the lite- rary man, with British warmth.'' This ig- norant estimate of the two publics is a pub- lic misfortune. My friend exclaims : — "Why, if Prevost-Paradol had been an Englishman his name would not have been known at all, to begin with. A leader- writer in the Debats ! Who knows any- thing about the leader-writers in the Times — or cares to know, in England? How many men of splendid, highly-wrought power, have been sacrificed to the reputation of that NOVEMBEB, '69. 277 one paper ? Its fame rests upon a whole churcliyard of graves of the great unknown? The writer in the Bevue des Deux Mondes is at once famous ! the " Edinburgh " or ■ " Quarterly " Eeviewer gives his genius to the glory of the periodical. In England it is ' Have you seen the "Quarterly" on Glad- stone's 'Juventus Mundi'? — in France, ' You must see Esquiros on England in the Deux Mondes' Prevost-Paradol was well received in England, because his name was famous in France, as an alert and finished Liberal journalist. He landed, a lion; but every hair of his mane was French. His country- men's profound veneration for \h& plaisir de r esprit had given him his pedestal ; and to say that had he been born an Englishman under our free institutions he would have simply had to choose his position, and pick out his ministerial portfolio, is to talk — well, nonsense. English middle-class society — 278 THE QAVROGHE PAHTY. and the upper class too — will run after any lion of tlie moment — tlie poet or the savage of the hour — the Ojibbeways, or Garibaldi, or Hans Christian Andersen, or Longfellow, or traveller Burton ; but they must have the lion ready trimmed for them, and to use a well known line, they prefer him when he shakes "a mane en papillottes!' The French have a nobler standard, and it reaches to the poorest workman." In this conflict of talk and writing which has closed in the return of a vau- devillist to be the champion of Eevolution in the Legislative Chamber, there is verj" much to regret, as I hope and trust I have shown. The " falsehood of extremes " is, however, glittering with epigrams and graced with a hundred happy literary forms.* The Budailles, and the rest of the declaimers and * The general respect for the intellectual quality was evident in the most grotesque forms of the late electoral ■NOVEMBER, '69. 279 writers, have caught the spbit of the times ; have read and have thought. They are at- tacked with their own weapons. The advo- cates of order pelt them with paper pellets ; answer their ridiculous shreds of theories with the exposure of past failures ; and reply to the foullsh patter about direct representa- tion, by a humorous picture of thirty-five millions — of the whole body — of the sove- reign people, met ou the plains of St. Denis to take certain bills into their consideration. While the debates last, who will bake the bread ? is the question put to Citizens Ledru and Pyat, v.dio regard Parliaments as Star Chambers of the nineteenth century. contest. Tapon Fougas, a fantastic candidate, an- nounced himself in this way : Eeturn Tapon-Fougas, and you -will return The true Juvenal ! The new Lamartine ! The new Ponsard ! And the new J. J. Eousseau ! 280 THE GAVBOGHE PAHTT. This is the weapon which is irresistible in France. It is one by the nse of which the inteUigence of the country is aroused, to beat back the men who are ready to lay the pick at the roots of society. A calm intelli- gence has been growing apace during the last twenty years, until it has become power- ful enough to hold the balance steady between the Absolutists on the one hand, and the Eeds,* who are reckless and desolating, but intellectual destructives, on the other. When Eochefort was carried, on the 22nd of November, to the Corps Legislatif, ra- tional liberals rejoiced, because there, they * These, albeit making much noise, are few in numbers, and affect very little the mass of the popula- tion. Mathieu de la Drume said at a political banquet: " You may corrupt individuals, but you cannot corrupt the masses. A glass of water may be poisoned, but I ■defy any one to poison the ocean. Call upon the nation to vote, instead of the imperceptible minority ; turn the popular flood into the electoral colleges, and it will carry off the filth!" NOVEMBER, '69. 281 knew, they could deal with. him. As to his weekly meetings with his constituents, or masters, they must only hasten his downfall, for already they were the staple food of the light political writers. Saint Evremont records of Nicholas Yau- guelin des Tveteaux that, at the point of death, he had a savahande played to him, that his soul might pass softly — " allegra- mento." At the time when a nation is passing out of the darkness and terrors of despotism into the light of quiet, enduring liberty, they who soften the passage, hush the tumult, and make the sweet voice of reason heard ; players of the sarabande who ride the storm ; are servants of their fellows to be paid, at a long date, by the children of their audience. Moderation is not a popular quality even among those who are most benefited by it. 282 TBE GAVBOCBE PARTY. " S ''HE Bonnet Eonge lias its uses. It is thrust into the air at certain political seasons, for much the same reason that flower-pots are inverted upon poles near young plants, to collect the vermin, and dispose of them. Liberty, a tree of tender growth, takes a fresh life, when the ground has been cleared. THE END. LOKTJOH : SATILLj ^DWAEDB AKD CO., PB.I^-TEES, CHAIfDOS aXKEET, COTENT G■i.BDE^'■. 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In cloth, IS. 6d. By personal friends, and literary cotemporaries. LONDON : JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY, AND ALL BOOKSELLERS AND RAILWAY STATIONS. rSRY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Mary Hollis; a Romance of the days of Charles II. imd WiUiam Prince of Orange, from the Dutoli of H. J. Schimmel, 'the Sir Walter Scott of Holland." 3 vols, crown %m, £1 lis. 6d. »** TliiB novel relates to one of Uie most interesting periods of our history. It liaa created the greatest excitement on tlie Continent, where it quicltly passed through several editions. It is now translated from toe Dutch with the assistance of the author. UNIFORM "WITH DOCTOR SYNTAX. ■Wonderful Characters. Memoirs and Anecdotes of Remarkable and Eccentric Persons of Every Age and Nation. From the text of Henry Wilson and J.oiES Caulmeld. 8vo. Sixty-one FULL-PAGE EngEATINGS OP EXTKAOKDINARY PERSONS. 7s. 6d. *#* One of the cheapest and most amusing books ever published. There are so many c matters discussed in this volume, that any person who takes it up will not readily lay it down. The introduction is almost entirely devoted to a consideration of Pig-Faced Ladies, and the various stories concerning them. Artemus Ward in Loudon. Including his well-kuown Letters to "Ptiiich." Square i6mo, is. 6d. ; cloth, 2s. *** An entirely new volumo of Wit and Fun by the f amoiiB humorist, and one ■which is sure lo become popular. NEW BOOK ON THE LONDON PARKS. Taking the Air ; or, the Story of our Iiondon Parks. By Jacob Larwood. With ntimerons iUiistrations. Vol. I., Hyde Park; Vol. II., St. James's Park, The Green Park, and Mary Bone Gardens. Price i8s. the two volumes. *** This is a new and roost interesting wprk, giving a complete History of these favourite out-of- door resorts, from the earliest period to the present time. The fashions, the promenades, the rides, the reviews and other display's in the parks from tile merry days of Charles II. down to the present airings in Rotten-row and drives "around !he ring," are all fully given, together with (ho exploits of bold highwaymen and the duels of rival lovers, and other appellants to the Code of Honour. John Camden Rotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. POFULAE, EDITION OF ME. DISRAELI'S SPEECHES. Disraeli's (The Kight Hon. B.) Speeches on the Con- stitutional PoUcy of the Last 30 Tears. Eoyal i6ino, is. 4d. ; in cloth, IS. lod. *** Selected and edited, with the approval of the late First Minister of the Crown, by J. F, Bulley, Esq. The text is mainly founded on a carefnl comparison of the Times newspaper and Hansard's Debates, as corrected by Mr. Disraeli, and of wtiich the poblisber has obtained special licence to avail himself. Artemus Ward's Lecture at tlie Egyptian Hall, with the Panorama, 6s. Edited by T. W. Eobertson (Author of "Caste," "Ours," "Society," &c.), and E. P. Kingston. Small 4to, exqui- sitely pHnted green and gold, with numerous tinted illustrations, price 6s. " Mr. Hotten has conceived the happy idea of printing Artemus Ward's * Lecture' in such a way as to afford the reader an accurate notion of the emphasis, by-play, &c., with -which it was delivered. "We have no hesita- tion, in saying that Mr. Hotten has almost restored the great humorist to the fiesh." — Dmly Telegraph. " The tomahawk fell from our bonda as we roared with langhter — tha pipe of peace slipped from between oar lips as our eyca filled with tears ! Laughter for Artemus's wit— rears for his untimely death ! This book is a record of botli. Those who never saw Ai-temua in the flesh, let them read of him in the spirit"— Tom a A oiofe. "It actually reproduces Ward's Lecture, which was brimful of flrst-clasa wit and humour." — —Daily News. " It keeps you in flta of laughter." — Leader. 'One of the choice and cm-ious volumes for the issue of which Mr. Hotten has become famous." City Press, " The Lecture is not alone droll ; it ig full of information,"— Exammer. " It adds one to the books of genuine fun we have got."— Sunday Times. Bedding's (Cyrus) Personal Beniiniscences of Emi- nent Men. Thick cr. 8vo, three vols., 5s. complete. *** Full of aTTiusing stories of eminent Literary and, other Qelebrities of the present century. The worlc is a fund of anecdote. Apply to Mr. Hotten direct /or this loorlc. Joh\i Camden Hottenj 74 and 75, Piccadilly, TT. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. The Champion Pig of England. A Capital Story for Schoolboys. Cloth gilt. With spirited lUustrations by Conoanen, coloured and plain, 30. 6d. " He was a pi^— take him for all in all, We ne'er shall look upon his like again." UNIFORM WITH MR. RUSKIN'S EDITION OP "GERMAN POPULAR STORIES." Prince TTbbely Bubble's New Story Book. TBE DRAaON ALL COVERED WITH SPIKES. THE LONG-TAILED NAO. THE THREE ONE-LEGGED MEN. THE OLD FLY AND THE YOUNG FLY TOM AND THE OGRE. And many other teles. By J. Templeton Ltjcas With ntimerons lUnstiationg by Matt Morgan, Barnes, Gordon Thompson, Bnmton, and other artists. In small 4to, green and gold, 4s. 6d. Gut leaves, 5s. 6d. *«* This is an entirely new story-book, and one tha,t is Hkely to become very popular. Acrostics in Prose and Verse. Bdited by A. B. H. i2mo, gilt cloth, gilt edges, 3s. SECOND SERIES, iimo, gilt cloth, gilt edges, 3s. THIRD SERIES, izmo, gilt cloth, gilt edges, 3s. FOURTH SERIES. With 8 Pictorial Acrostics. i2mo, gilt cloth, 3s. ■ FIFTH SERIES. Easy Double. Historical. Scriptural Acrostics. i2mo, gilt cloth, gilt edges, 3s. The most popular Acrostics published. *** Bach series told teparately. These are the best voinmes of Acrostics ever issued. They comprise Single, Double, Treble, and every variety of acrostic, and the set would amuse the younger members of a family for an entire winter. The whole complete in a case, " The Acrostic Box," price 15s. Jolm Camden Hotten, 74 cmcE 75, PiccaMlly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. NEW SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED HUMOROUS NOVELS. 1. The Story of a Honeymoon. By Chas. H. Koss and Ambrose Claeke. With numerous Illustrations. Crown 8to, cloth gilt, 6s. ♦** An inimitable story of the adventureB and troubles of a newly-married couple. Not unlike Mr. Bumand's " Happy Thouglata." 2. Cent, per Cent. A Story written upon a Bill Stamp. By BLANCHAan Jebeold. With numerous coloured lUustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 63. ME. MOSS, IN THE DISC0UNT1.\G LISE. *»* A,=apital novel, "intended not only for City readers, but for aU inleresied in money natters. — Aihcnaum. ' The Genial Showman ; or. Adventures with Artemus Wabd, and the Story of his Life. 2 vols., crown 8vo, Uiustrated by Beunton, 21S. „**• v."" l' » most interesting work. It eivos Sketches of Show-Life in the Far West, on tho Pacific Coast, amonR the Mmcs of Call fornin, in Salt Lake City, and across the Rocky Mountains i including chapters descriptive of Artemus Ward's visit to England. John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Wore Yankee Drolleries. A Second Series of cele* brated Works by the best American Humftrists. Aetemus Wakd's Tkavels; Hans Bkeitm ANN ; Pkokessok at the Breakfast-Table; BiGLOW Papeks, Part. IT. ; Josh Billings. With an Introduction by George Augustus Sala. Crown Svo, 700 pages, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. *+* An entirely new gathering o£ Transatlantio liumour. T^volvo thousand copies of the First scries ha?e heen sold. UNIFORM WITH DR. SYNTAX. Ziife in London; or, the Day and Niglit Scenes of Jerry Haivthom and Corinthian Tom. Crown Svo. WITH THE WB'OLE OF CBUIKSHANK'S VERY DROLL ILLUSTRATIONS, IN COLOURS, AFTER THE ORIGINALS. Cloth extra, 7s. 6d. Tom and Jerry taking a stroU. *** One of the most popular books ever issued. Tt was an immense favourite with George IV., and as a picture of London life 50 vears apo -was often quoted by Thackeray, who devotes one of his " Roundabout Papers" to a description of it. Clean second-hand copies of this worlt always realise from £1 to £2. Pierce Egan's "Finish" to "Life In and Out of London," Svo, cloth extra, -WITH SPIRITED Coloured IllustiiATIONS BY Ckuikshank, iSs. •,« This is the quaint original edition ol one of the most amusing pictures of London life ever Apply to Mr. Hotten bis-ECT for this work. Pine Old Hunting Books, with Coloured Plates MB. JORROCICS JAUNTS AND JOLLITIES. LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JACK MYTTON. ANALYSIS OF THE HUNTING FIELD. LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN. BY NIMROD. Apply to Mr. Hotten direct /or these boohs. John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. In 3 vols. 8vo, cloth very neat, price 363. Life and ITewly-Siscovered Writings of Daniel Defoe. Comprising Several Hundred Important Essays, Pamphlete, and other Writings, now first brought to light, after many years* diligent search. By William Lee, Esq. With Facsimiles and Illastrations. *#* For many years it has been well known in literary circles that the gentleman to Fjhom the public is indebted for this valuable addition to the knowledge if Defoe's Lite and Works has been an indefatigable coUeotor of everything relating to the subject, and that such collection had reference to a more fuU and correct Memoir than had yet been given to the world. In 3 vols., nriiform with " Macaulay's History of Euglajid." Vol. I.— A NEW MEMOIR OF DEFOE. Vols. II. and III.— HITHERTO trNKNOWW WRITINGS. •»* This will be a most vahiable contribution to English History amd English Literature. The Best Handbook of Heraldry. Frofnsely Ulns- trated with Plates and Woodcuts. By John E. Cussans. In crown 8vo, pp. 360, in eniblagoned gold cover, with copious Index, 7s. 6i. *#* Tins volume, heaiitifully printed on toned paper, contains not only the ordinary ^natter to be fbund in the best books oji the science of Armory, but several other subjects hitherto unnoticed. Amongst these may be mentioned:— i. Directions tor Tracing Pedigrees, i. De- CIPHERING Ancient MSS., illustrated by Alphabets and Facsimiles. 3. The Appointment op Liveries. 4. Contineniai, and American Heraldry, &c. SHichael Taraday. Philosopher and Christian. By The Rev. Samuel Martin, of Westminster. Toned paper. Portrait, 6d. •»♦ An admirable rejume— designed for popular reading— of this great man's life. John Camden Eotten, 74 and 75, PiccadiUy, W. VERY IMPORTAJS'l NEW BOOKS. Seymour's Sketches. A Companion Volume to 'k^!^^^'^ Pictures." The Book of Cockney Sports, Whims, and Oddities. Nearly 200 highly amuaing lUustratious. Oblong ito, a handsome volume, half morocco, price 1 23. ,„,*** ^ re-issue of the famous pictorial comioalltios which were go ponnlnr thirtr years a<.o TI«. volume IS admirably adapted for a tubie-book, and tl,o picture, will dSles, aSn meet^ih tl^ SplSS'papersT •"""""" '""""^ themwheu the irtist projected with iSckrethoil'SS The Famous "DOCTOR SYNTAX'S" Three Tours. One of the most Amusing and Laughable Books ever published. With the whole of Eowlandson's very droU full-page iUustrations, in colowrs, after the original drawings. Comprising the well-known TouES :— 1. In Search of the Picturesque. 2. In Search of Consolation. 3. In Search of a Wife. The three series complete and unabridged from the original editions m one handsome volume, with a Life of this industrious Author— the English Le Sage— now first written by John Camden Hotten. •#* It isnot a little surprising that the most voluminous and popular English writer since the days of Defoe should never before have received the small honour of a biography. This Edition contains the whole of the original, hitherto sold for £1 113. 6d., hut which is now •published at ys. 6d. only. A VEBT USEFUL BOOK. In folio, half morocco, cloth sides, 73. 6d. Literary Scraps, Cuttings from Ifewspapers, Ex- tracts, Miscellanea, &o. A FOLIO SCRAP-BOOK OF 340 COLUMNS, formed for the reception of Cuttings, &c., with guards. SS" Authors and literary men have tlumlced the puilisher for this useful book. *^f* A most useful volume, and one of the cheapest ever sold. The book is sure to be appreciated, (Uid to become popular. Hone's Scrap Book. A Supplementary Volume to the " Every-Day Book," the "Year-Book," and the "Table-Book." From the MSS. of the late William Hone, with upwards of One Hundred and Fifty engravings of curious or eccentric objects. Thick 8vo, uniform with " Tear-Book," pp. 800. [In preparation. John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. rj!:RY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Popular ShiP.ing Books of HtisioTir. Artemus Wakd : His Book. Artemus Ward Among the MOEMONS. BiGiow Papers. Oepheus C. Kerb Papers. Josh Billings. Hood's Veee Veeeker. Holmes' Wit and Humoue. Never Caught. Chips proji a Bough Log. Me. Speouts : His Opinions. Yaiikee Srolleries. Edited by George Augustus Sala, Containing Artemug Ward ; Biglow Papers ; Orpheus C. Kerr ; Major Jack Downing ; and Nasby Papers. One of tlie cheapest booirs ever published. New Edition, on toned paper, cloth ext.ra, 700 pages, 33. 6d. Orpheus C. Kerr Papers. Tlie Original American Edition, Three Series, complete. 3 vols. 8vo, cloth; sells at £1 2s. 6d., now specially offered at 15s. •** A most mirth-provoking work. It was first introdnced into this country by the EnpHsh olficorB who were quartered during the late war on the Canadian frontier. They found it one of the drollest pieces of composition they had ever met with, and so brought copies over for the deleclation of their fiiends. A Keepsake for Smokers. — " The Smoker's Text- Boot." By J. Hamer, F.R.S.L. This day, exquisitely printed from "eilver-faced" type, clotli, very neat, gilt edges, 23. 6d.j post free. THE TRUE CONSOLER. >t nnoka hi,tli althtt lilmi*lf the •ofUit thitirlUohconiMfr inV wliiipm the you WBmr. old ^d ngU, >YOii.»ir«iuL. .n>l ■coldi □■ On the -whole then, womjui in thiiiulB, tbe WMd in that, Jupitu. hanf out thy bi.laiica. uid wsifh th«m both i Aviil thou (iTa ths iiroIeruicB to womu. bLII an uy U. tha Dcxl Uma Juna lufflil thue— O Jupliei I tr^ tha nmd. BDLWSB'B "fn^twlUhaiswlUtftl-' ••A pipe le ft great comforter, a pleasant aoother. The man who amokca thinka lite a sage, anfl acts like a Samaritan." — Bulioer, " A tiny volome, dedicated to the votaries of the weecl ; beantifHlly printed on toned paper in, wa believe, the smaUest tj-pe ever made (caat especially for show at the Great Exhibition in Hydel^ark), but very clear notwilhstanding its minuteness, . , . Tbe pngea tinp; in various styToa the praises of tobacco. Amongst the w-riters laid under contribution aie Bulwer, Kliigaley, Charles Lamb. Thackeray, Isaac Browne, Cowper, and Byron." — The Field, laugMng Philosopher (The), consisting of several Thousand of the best Jokes, Witticisms, Puns, Epigrams, Humoeous Stomes, and Witty Compositions in the English Language ; intended as "Fun for the Mil l ion." Square izmo, nearly 800 pages, froutis- pieoe, half morocco neat, 5b. 6d. John Gwmdm Eottm, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W, VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. THE NEW "PUWIANA SERIES" OP CHOICE ILLUSTRATED WORKS OF HUMOUR. Elegantly pnnted on tojied paper, full gilt, gill edges, for tJie Drawing Room, price 6s. each : — 1. Carols of Cockayne. By Henry S. Zieigli. Vers de Societe, and clianniag Yerses descriptive of London life. With nnmerous exquisite little designs by AiFEED Concanen and the late John Leech. Small 4to, elegant, miifonn -with. "Pnniana," 6b. «3 . . ^ 2. The "Bab Ballads." New Illustrated Book of HuMOUE; OK, A Geeat Deal OF Ehyme with very little Eeason. By W. S. GiLBEET. With a most laughable illusteation on keaelt eveet page, deawn by the Authoe. On toned paper, gilt edges, price 63. " An awfully JoUy Book for Parties." 3. Fnniana. Best Book of Kiddles and Fans ever formed. Thoughts Wise — and Otherwise. With nearly 100 exquisitely fanciful drawings. Contains nearly 3,000 of the best Biddies and 10,000 most outrageous Puns, and is one of the moat popular^ books ever issued. !New edition, uniform with the " Bab Ballads," price 63. Why did Du Ohaillu get so amgry when he was chaffed alout the Gorilla ? Why ? we ask. Why is a chrysalis like a hot roll? You will doubtless rernark, "Be- cause it's the grub that makes the butter fly I" But see " Puiviana." Why is a loide-awake hat so called ? BecaMse it never had a narp, and never ivants one. The Satwdarj Review says of this most amuBlng work— " Enormous burlesque— unapproachaole and pre-eminent. We venture to think that this very qneer volume will be alavourite. It deserves to be so : and we should suggest that, to a dull person desirous to get credit with the young holiday people, it would be good poliey to invest in the book, and dole it out by instalments." John Camden Eotten, 74 amd 75, Piccadilly, W. VEILY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. VNIPOBM WITH MR. RUBKINS EDITION OF "GEmiAN FOPULAB STORIES." Slew Boot of Delightful Tales.—" Taniily Pairy Tales ;" or, Glimpses of Elfland at Heatheraton Hall." Edited "by OHOlsfoir- BELEY Pennell, Author of "Puck on Pegasus," &o., adorned with beautiful pictures of " My Lord Lion," " King Uggermugger," and other great f oUcs. Handsomely printed on tone^ paper, in cloth, gieen and gold, price 48. 6d. plain, 5s. 6d. coloured. %» This chamiiTig volume hns been tuiivcr>.l'y praised by the critical preiiK Poptilar Romances of ilie West of England ; or, the Drolls of Old Cormrall. Collectad and edited by Kobek",' Hunt, F.E.S. This day, in 2 vols. Sto, very handsomely printed, price 163. gS* Only a few copies of this very interesting 'work now remain^ cmd COPIES WILL SOON BECOME SCARCE. **♦ Munyoi the BtorieB are remarkable for their wild poetic beftufy; othere Bnrpriso us by their qDaintecAa ; whilst otheri, again, show forth a tragic force which caa only be associated with those rode ages whicll existed long before the period of autlreiitic history. Mr. Georgo Cruikshank baa supplied two wonderful plclures to the Viork, One is a portrait of Qiaot Bolster, a persoaage twelve miles high, Gnstave Dore's Favourite Pencil Sketches. — His- torical Cartoons ; or, Eough Pencillings of the World's History from the First to the Nineteenth Century. By GusTAVE Lore. With admirable letterpress descriptions by Thomas Wmght, F.S.A. Oblong 4to, handsome table book, 7s. 6d. •*♦ A new book of daring and Inimitable deBlgns, whicii will ;ascito considerable attention, and doubtless conunand a wiui^ uirculation. Captain Castagaette. His Surprising, almost Incre- dible AdventureB, 4to, with Gusiave Doke's Illustrations, is. gd. (sells at 5s.) DiBECT APPLICATION must he made to Mr. Eottenfor this look. Cent, per Cent. A Story written upon a Sill Stamp. By Blanchard Jekrold. With numerous coloured illustrationa in the stylo of the late Mr. Leech's charming designs. [^Immediately. *»* A Story of "The Vampires of Loudou," as they wore pithily termed in a recent notoriooa case, and one of undoubted Interest. John Camdmi Sotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VESY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. AAEON PENLET'S Sketching in Water Colours, for 2IS. By Aakoit Peklet, Author of " The English School in Watet- Colours, &c. Illusteated with Twentt-one Beatjtipul Chkomo- LiTHOGBAPHS, produced with the utmost care to resemble original WiTEa- CoiouB Deawiitgs. Small folio, the text tastefully printed, in hand- some binding, gilt edges, suitable for the drawing-room table, price sis. %• It bBB long: been felt tbat the maeo'Seent work of the trrea*. EnffUih maBter of paintSap in water-colours, publiBhed at £i -la., waa too dear for Reoera) rirculation. The above embodies all the iustructions at the liistlQgDiBhed atuhor, wUli tweat;-0De beautiful Bpeciuena of iratec-colour paimiag. A Clever and Brilliant Book {Companion to the "Son GauUier Sallads") PUCK ON PEGASUS. By H. Cholmondelet Pen- KEI.L. ^S» This most amusing work luis already passed through PITE EEiTiONa, receiving everywhere the highest praise as '• a clever and brilliant book." TO NO OTBBB WORK OF THM PZESENT BAT MAJTE SOMAlfTDISTINGUISBED ABTISTS CONTSISVTSD UjLXTSTBATIONS. To the designs of GEORGE CRTJIKSB.ANK, JOUN LEECH, JULIAN FORTCE, " FMIZ," and other artists. SIR NOEL FATEN, MILLAIS, JOBN TENNIEL, RICB.ABD LOTLE, and M. ELLEN ELWARBS ham note contributed several exquisite pictures, thus making the new edition — which is twice the bize op THE OLD OBB, and Contains irresistibly funny pieces — THE BEST BOOKEOB TSJE! DRAWING-ROOM TABLE NOW PUBLISUEB. In 4io, printed within an india-paper tone, and elegantly louni, gilt, gilt edges, price los. 6d. only. John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VJSRY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Sets of "Punch," 1841—1860. Mr. Hotten has puroliaged from the Messrs. Vbtue and Co. their ENTIEE remaindek of this important eet of boolcs, -which contains, among its 12,000 Illus- trations and Contributions from the most noted Wits of the time, the WHOLE OF Leech's Sketches, 4 vols. ; Leech's Pekcillings, 2 vols.; Tenniel's Cartoons ; Doyle's Mk. Pips hys Diary ; Manners and Customs op the Enolisii ; Brown, Jones, and Eobinson ,■ Punch's Almanacks, i vol. ; Thackeray's Miscellanies, 4 vols. ; The Candle Lectures; Story of a Feather; &c., &c. 39 half -yearly vols, bound in 10 vols., cloth gill, ffilt edges, pubhshed at £16 103., to be obtained of Mr. Hotten for £7 igs. only. She Standard Work 011 Diamonds and Preciotis Stones; their History, Value, and Properties, with Simple Tests for Ascer- taining their Reality. By Harry Emanuel, F.li.G.S. With nume- rous Illustrations, tinted and plain. New Edition, Prices brought down to Present Time, full gUt, cheap edition, 63. " Will ba aci.eptable to many render,?." — Times. "An Invaluable work for buyers rtiid sollcvn." — Sprctalar. See the Times' Revioiv of three columns. *^* This neiu edition is greatly superior to the 'prev-ious one. It gives the latest marhet value for Diamonds and Precious Stones of every size. The 'Zoting" Botanist : A Popular Gtiids to Elementary Botany. By T. S. E,vLp:r, of the Linnasan Society. In i vol., with 300 Drawings from Nature, "s. 6d. plain, 4s. 6d. coloured by hand. ♦*♦ An oxeellent book for the you"^ begimier. The objects selected as iUustraUous are either easy of access as speoiuicDS of wild piauts, or are coiuiiioii in gardens. Gunter's Modern Confectioner. The Best Book 011 Confectionery and Desserts. An Entirely New Edition of this ■Standard Work on the Preparation of Confectionery and the Arrange- ment of Desserts. Adapted for private families or large establish- ments. By William Jeanes, Chief Confectioner at Messrs. Guntcr s (Confectioners to Her Majesty), Berkeley-square. With Plates, post 8vo, cloth, 6s. 6d. "All housekeepers should have it"— DatVy TelegrapK *#* This luork has won for itself the reputation of leing the Standard English Booh on the preparation of all hinds of Confectionery, and on the arrangement of Desserts. 10 John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. John KusMn and George Cmifesliank. — " German Popular Stories." CoUected by the Brothers Grimm, from Oral ^rm^°m\^J^^£?-}r^^ hyEDGAE Taylor. Edited by John Euskin. 57™ ^^J^^^^-I^TTO ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER THE INIMI. TABLE DESIGNS OP GEORGE CRVIKSHANK. Both siries com- plote m I vol. Very choicely printed, in email 4to, price 6s. 6d. t^*t.T"'t' "^'.t ""' ^f-*^!' "'''='' '"''"°"'''''""I"'''''='!"'"S>''7.P'»':'''I? «! '" «1>0»« an SS\ K„™. ^^f «"."■ «° " '""'""' <■'•■""<""■ So rare hod the origiDiU book (published in 1823- 18i6) become, that £b to £6 por copy «•«» an ordinarj- price. By the consent o( Mr. Taylor's family • iiew Edition is now issued, under the care and superlntcndenco of the printers who issued the onginaJs forty years ofro. Tho IJlu.tratione are considered amongst the most extraordinary eiamplos of successful reproduction ever published. A very few copies on laeoe papeb, 21s. : or with proofs of plates on IxuiA PAl-ER, price 3l3. 6d. "'Grimm 'a German Stories' waa so well adapted to the genius of Cruikshank, that it hoa anggested one of the very best of all his etchings. The two elves, especially the nearer one, who is putting on bis breeches, are dra^vn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found tboir equals in comic etching anywhere It is aaid that these elves are regarded with peculiar affection by the great master who created them : it it oQly natural, for he has a right to be proud of them. "— iJa)nme/-to/i'j Etching and Ecc/iers. Hood's "Whims and OdcTities," 1826. A ITew and very Cheap Edition of this well-known Book, -with the Author's 40 inimitably funny 'Woodcuts. Square iimu, price is. stiff covers or cloth neat, is. 6d. ■'«* Christopher North once remarked of this book that "it oontainea more -wit, more fun and humour, than any other work of its size." Hawthorne's ITote Book. A new and most interesting volume of Autobiographical Eeminiscences, Ideas, and Suggestions by this dehghtful author, selected from his private Note Books. Square izmo, stiff cover, is.; or cloth neat, 13 6J. ftS* The poet Longfellow thus anticipates this charming book : — " Live ever, sweet, sweet book. It comes from the hand of a man of genius. Everything about it has the freshness of morning and May." John Camden Rotten, 74 a/nd 75, Piccadilly, Yi, v£:ry important new books. NEW BOOK BY THE AUTHOR OF "A NIGHT IN A WORK- HOUSE." Preparing, in crown 8to, handsomely printed, 'She Wilds of Xiondon : with, a Tull Account of the Natives. By the Amateur " Lambeth Casnal," Mr. Jajsies Gkeen- wooD, of the Pall Mall Gazette. " Mr. Jame3 Greenwood, tho brother of the editor of the Pall Mall Gaxette, who wrote such a epiritcd account of his workhouse experiences for this journal, has just commenced a aeries of 'descriptive alictchea, from the personal obsen-ations and esperiences of the writer, of remarkable scenes, people, and plaaes in London.' ■' — London Review. The Thames from Oxford to Ijondou. Forty Exquisite Photographs. Royal 4to. Both series complete in a neat French morocco foUo, with flaps, gilt side, £3 los. LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS.— FmsT Seeies. Oxford. Barges at Oxford. Ifley Mill. Bridge at Nuneham. Day's Lock. Shellingford. Wallingford Bridge. Bear Goring. Windsor (4 viewe). Eton College. Halliford. Ganick's Villa, ' Hampton. Pangbourne (3 views). Boat House, Park Place. Henley-on-Thames. Medmenham Abbey. New Lock, Hurley. Marlow. Second Seeies. Moulsey. Hampton Court (t views). Twickenham (3 views). Eel-pie Island. Great Marlow Lock. Boulter's Lock, Maid" enhead. Maidenhead Railway Bridge. Water Oakley, near Windsor. Dnke of Buccleuch'a. Richmond (2 views). Kew (2 views). Westminster Palace and Bridge. **t This is an admirable collection of Views of the most charmiusly picturesque spots on t]M Bver Thames, in the very higfiest style of Landscape Photography. A Tour in Crete, during the Insurrections of the Cretans, 1867. By Ed. Postlethwaite, Author of " The Fortunes of a Colonist," " Pilgrimage over the Prairies," " Diajy of George Dem," " Poems by Tristam," &c. This day, cloth neat, price 2s. 6d. Itetters from Greece, written in 1867. By Ed. PosTLETHWAiTE, Author of "A Tour in Crete," &c. With Three Photographs, cloth, 4s. 6d. FOLK-LORE, LEGENDS, PROVERBS OF ICELAND. Now ready. Cheap Edition, with Map and Tinted Illustrations, zs. 63. Oxonian in Iceland; with Icelandic Folk-lore and Sagas. By the Rev. Feed Metcalpe, M.A. Tom Marehmont: a Novel. Just out, 3 vols. 8vo, cloth, 3IS. 6d. "A story of English life, with a hero who is not depicted in accordance with the conventional inlea for masculine perfecuon framed by modem society." Jo /to Cam3.en Hottm, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VEMY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. MOST AMUSING NEW BOOK. Caricature History of tlie Georges (House of Hanover). Very entertaining book o£ 640 pages, witli 400 Pictures, Caricatures, Sauibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures. By T. Weight, S'.S.A. 7a. 6d. *#* Companion Volume to "History o£ Signboards." Reviewed in almost every Englisb journal with higliest approbation. "A set of caricatnrea Buch ns w© have in Mr, Wright's volnme brin^B the Burfaco of the ega before US with a vividness that no prose writer, even of the highest power, could emulate. Macaolay's most brilliant sentence is weak by the aide of the litU© woodcut fioia GUU'ay wicb gives as Bmke and Fox."Saiurday Review. " A EBore amnaiiig work of its kind never issued from the piees.**— Jrl Journal. '"This is one of the most agreeable and Interesting books of the season."— Pufi/ic Opinion. *' It seems saperflaons to say that this is an entertaining book. It is indeed one of the most entertaining books we have read for a long time. It is history teaching by caricature. There is oardly an event of note, hardly a personage of mark, haidly a social vvhimsey worth a moment's potiee, which is not satirised and illustrateJ in these pages. We have here the caricaturists from Jlogarth to Gillray, and from Gillray to Ciaikshauk." — Jf omin^ Slar. **\i is emphatically one of the liveliest of books, as also one of the most interesting. It has the Vvrofold merit of being at onco amusing and edifying. Tho 600 odd pages which make up the goodly volume are doulily enhaaced by some iOO Ulostraiiont, of which a dozen are full-page emgravings." — Morning Post. "Hr, Thomas Wright is so pipe a scholar, and is so rich in historical reminiscences, that he cannot fail to make an interesting book on anysubject he undertakes to iUoatrate. Ho has achieved a sKCcees on the present occasion."— F/'eif. ITotice. — targe-paper Edition, 4to, only 100 printed, on extra fine paper, wide margins for the lovers of choice books, with extra Portraits, half-morocco (a capital book to illustrate), 303. ]^omance of tlie Kod : an Anecdotal History of the Birch in Ancient and Modem Times. With some quaint illustrations. Crown 8vo, handsomely printed. [In praparatiorh John Camden Eotten, 74 wnd 75, Piccadilly, W. 11 VURY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Common Prayer. Illustrated toy Solbein and Albert Durer. With "Wood Engravings of the Daneo of Death, a singularly cnrions series after Holbein, with Scriptural Quotations and Proverbs in the Margin. 8vo, exquisitely printed on tinted paper, 8s- 6d.; in dark morocco, Elizabethan style, gilt edges, iSs. 6d. Apjjly DIKECT for this exquisite volume. AN APPROPKIATE BOOK TO ILLUMINATE. %* The attention of those who practise the beautiful art of Illuminating is requested to the following sumptuous volume. The Presentation Book of Common Prayer. Ulns- trated with Elegant Ornamental Borders in red and Wact, from "Books of Hours" and Illuminated Missals. By Geoffust Toey. One of the most tasteful and beautiful books ever printed. May now be seen at all booksellers. Although the price is only a few shillings (79. 6d. in plain cloth ; 8s. fid. antique do. ; 143. 6d. morocco extia), this edition is so prized by artists that at the South Kensington and other important Art Schools copies are kept for the use of students. Huglish Charcli Pnrniture, Ornaments, and Uscora- tions, at the Period of the Eeformation. Edited by Ed. Peacock, F.S.A. MOST INTERESTING BOOK ON ANGLICAN CHURCR ORNA- MENTS. Thick 8vo, with iUuetrations, 15s. "Very curious ng showing what articles of church fumitnre were in those days considered to be Idolatrous or unnecessary. The work, of which only a limited number has been printed, is of the highest interest to those who take part in the present Kitual discussion." — 6'ee Religiout Journals. NEAV BOOK BY PKOFESSOK BENAN'S ASSOCIATE. Apollouins of Tyana: the Pagau or Palse Christ of the Third Century. An Essay. By Albert Beville, P.istor of the "Walloon Ckurch at Botterdam. Antliorised translation. Price 3s. 6d. ♦** A most curious account of an attempt to rovi%'6 Paganism in the third century by means of a. false Chj'ist. Slrnnge tosay, tlio principal eveutsin thoUIeof Apollonius are almost ideaticalTvith the Gospel narrative. Carlyle on tlie Choice of Books. Address hy Thomas Caelyie, with Memoir, Anecdotes, Two Portraits, and View of his House in Chelsea. This day, elegantly printed, pp. 96, cloth zs. •♦* The leader in Daibj Telegraphy April 25tli, largely quotes from abovo "Memoir.'' Smiles's (Saml.) Story of the Iiife of George Stephen- son; a Companion Volumo to " Self- Help." Sells at 6s. A few copies only at 3s. gd. Apjily to Mr. Hotten direct for this iook. Iffialone's (Ed.) Xife. By Sir James Prior, -with his Manuscript Anecdotes, *' Maloniana," &c. A handsome library voL, with fine portrait. Sells at 14s. Cloth new, 4s. 3d. Apply to Mr. Hottea dikect for this loole. John Oamden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW ROOKS, Tlie History of Advertising in all Ages and Countries. A Companion to the " 5tstory of Signboard^." Witli many very amusing Anecdotes and Exajnples of Successful Advertisers.' By Messes. Larwood and Hotten. [In ;pre;pa/rationo Signboards : their History. With Anecdotes of Famous Taverns and remarkable Charactera. By Jasob Larwood and John Camden Hotten. "A book which will delight aM."—S:pectator. This day, Fourth Edition, pages 580, price 73. 6d. only. From the " Timet.* "It ia not fair oB the part of a re- viewer to pick out tha plums of an author's book, thus filchiDg awoy his cream, and leaving little but skim-milk remaining; but, even If we were ever so mfUiciooslj ioclmed* From the " Time J." we could not in tha present iastanco pick out oil McsrH. Larwood and Hot- ten's plums, becnupQ the good things are so numerous as to defy the most whole- sale depredation." — /ieut«M3 0/ three columtu. BULL AND MOTJTK. (Ang&l St, St Martin 'a-le-Grand, circa ISOS.^ *** Kearly 100 most cunons illustrations on wood are given, showing the various old signs which were formerly hung from taverns and other houses. The frontispiece represents the famous sign of " The Man loaded with Mischief," in tho colours of the original painting said to have been executed by Hogarth. Hotice. — " laarge-paper Edition," with Seventy-Tvirc extra Illustrations (not given in the small edition), showing Old London in the days when Signboards hung from almost every house. In 4to, half -morocco neat, 303. •** Only a email number printed on extra fine paper with wide margins for the lover of fine book*. The Parks of I.ondon. Their History and Asso- ciations from the Earliest Times. By Jacob Laewood. "With Iilus- TEATIONS BY THE AUTHOK. [^"11 the Press. AN EXTEAOKDINAKY BOOK. Hotten's Edition of " Contes Drolatiques " (Droll Tales collected from the Abbeys of Loraine). Par Balzac. With Tour Hundred and Twenty-five Marvellous, Extravagant, and Fan- tastic Woodcuts by Gustave Doee. Beautifully printed, thick Svo, half morocco, Eoxburghe, 122. 6d. ».* Th6 mo»l singular dosigm ever attempted by Buy artist This book is o fond of auiu.ement. ao CTmnmcd is it with pictures that even tho content, arc adorned with tlilrty-thrce Jlustratione. Direct application must be made to Mr. Hotten for this worTc. John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. NEW AND CHEAPBB EDITION OF SIR DAVID BEBWSTER'S WORKS. Brewster (Sir Bavid, XiXi.S.) More Worlds than One, the Creed of tie Pliilosoplier, the Hope of the Christian. Grown 8to, cloth, very neat, 4s. 6d. *** This is Oie Tenth Edition of tliis popular work. Srewster's (Sir D.) Martyrs of Science. Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler. Crown 8vo, cloth, very neat, 43. 6d. *** Tiiis maJtcs tiio Third Edition cf this favourite work. Brewster's (Sir D.) The Kaleidoscope Practically- Described. Crown Svo, with NUMBKOUS illusteations, cloth very neat, 4s. 6d. Brewster's (Sir D.) The Stereoscope Practically Described. Crown 8vo, with uumerous illustrations, cloth neat, 4s. 6d. *#* Tills was the great philosopher's liist contribution to practieal science. The Book of lITature and the Book of Man, in their Relation to each other. By Chas. 0. Gkoom Napiek, P.G-.S. Nmne- rous Wood Engravings and Photographs of Objects from Nature. With an Introduction by the late Lord Brougham. Demy Svo, cloth extra, i8s. *** An entirely new work on Christian Philosophy, and one that is calcnlated to be very popular. Darwinism Tested by the Science of Iiangnage. By PKorEssoK Schleicher. Translated by Dr. A. Y. W. Bikkers. Crown Svo, cloth. 3s. 6d. *** A very curious book, tracing all European Languages to an Asiatic source. The work hag attracted considerable attention on the Continent, Malone's (Ed.) Iiife. By Sir James Prior, with his Manuscript Anecdotes, "Maloniana," &c. A handsome library vol., with fine portrait. Sells at 14s. Cloth new, 4s. 3d. Apply to Mr. Rotten direct for this booh. Pedigrees. — Marshall's Index to the Printed Pedigrees of the Heralds' Yisitations. Svo, cloth, a very useful book to the Student of Family History. Sells at 5s. 2s. 6d. Apply DIRECT for this tvorh. John Camden Hottm, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. NEW BOOK BY THE "ENGLISH GUSTAVE DORE."— COMPANION TO THE "HATCHET THEOWBRS." Legends of Savage Life. By James Greenwood, tha famous Author of " A Night iu a "Workhouse." With 36 inimitably droll illuatrationa, drawn and coloured by Eenest Geisbt, the "English Gustavo Dori^." 4to, coloured, 7a. 6d. ; plain, 53. *** Benders who fomid amusement in tbe " Hatchet-Throwera" will not ro^et any acnuainfanca they may form with this comical work. The pictures aro among the most flarprisine which have come from this artist's pencil. " A Munchausen sort of book. The drawings by IL Grlset aro very powerful and ocoentrio."— Baturday Review. School Life at Wincliester College; or, the Eemi- niscenoes of a Winchester Junior. By the Author of " The Log of the Water Lily," and " The Water Lily on the Danube." Second edition, leTiaed, coloured plates, 73. 6d. •«• This boot do«B for Winchester what " Tom Brown's School Days" did for Hughy. Log of the "Water Lily" (Thames Gig), during Two Cruises in the Summers of 1851-52, on the Khine, Neckar, Main, MoseUe, Danube, and other Streams of Germany. By E. B. Mans- liELD, B.A., of University College, Oxford, and illustrated by Alfred Thompson, B.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge. [im prepa/ration. •** This was the earliest boat excursion of the kind ever made on the Continental rivers. Very recently the subject has been revived again in the exploits of Mr. MacGregor in his " Itob Roj Canoe, ' The volume will be found most iuterostiog to those who propose taking a similar trip, whether on the Continent or elsewhere. The Hatchet-Throwers. With Thirty-six Illustra- tions, coloured after the Inimitably Groteague Drawings of Eenest Geiset. The English Gustavo Dore. 4to, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. ; plates, nncoloured, 5s. *♦* Comprises the astonishinft advonttircs of Three Ancient Mariners, the Brothers Brflfla oft Eristol, Mr. Corker, and Mungo Midge. Jllelchior Gorles. By Henry Aitchenbie. & vols. 8vo, £1 IIS. 6d. »♦♦ The New Novel, illustrative of "Mesmeric Influence,' or whatever else we may choose tft term that strange power which some persons exercise over others. jQlm Camden Eoiten, 74 cmd 75, Ficcadilly, TT. V^RY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS, AN INTERESTING VOLUME TO ANTIQUARIES. Arzny Isists of the I^otuidlieads and Cavaliers in tlia Cidl War, 1642, 4to, lialf morocco, handsomely printed, price 7s. 6d, *#* Theeo moat curioua Lists ihnsv on which side the g-entiemen of England were to bo found during tlio f^rt-at conflict between the King and tlie Pnrliatncnt Only a very few copies have beco inoflt carefully rcpiinted on paper that will gladden tho heart of tlie lover oj choice books. lEagna Charta. Au Sxact Facsimile of tlie Original Document preserved in tho British Museum, very carefully drawn, and printed on fine plate paper, nearly 3 feet long by a feet wide, with the Arms and Seals of the Barons elaborately emblazoned in gold and colours. A.D. 1215. Price 5s. ; by post, on roller, 53. 4d. Handsomely framed and glazed, in carved oak of an antique pattern, 22s. 6d. •** Copied by express pcrmisaion, and the only correct drawin-? of the Great Charter ever taken. It ia uniform with tho "Boll of Battle Abbey." A fuU translation, witli Kotes, has just been prepared, price Gd. UNIFORM WITH "MAGNA CHARTA." KoU of Battle Abbey; or, a List of tlie Principal Warriors who came over from Normandy with William the Conctueror and settled in this country, a.d. 1066-7, from Authentic Documents, very carefully drawn, with tho Arms of the prmcipal Barona elaborately emblazoned in gold and colours, price 53. ; by post, on roller, 5s. 4d. Handsomely framed and glazed, in carved oak of an antique pattern, price 228. 6d. Illuminated Charter - Itoll of Waterford, Temp. Richard II. In i vol. 4to, with 19 large and most curious Plates in facsimile, coloured by hand, including an ancient View of the City of Waterford. Subscribers, 203.; Non-subscribers, 303. [Preiparing. •#* Of the very limited impres-jion proposed, mora than 130 copies have already been subscribed for. An ancSent Illuminated Itoll, of great interest and bcaotv, comprising all the early Charters and Grants to the City of ^Vaiciford, from the time of Henry II. to Richard U. Fiill-lengtli Portrait* oi each ICing adoi-n the margin, varying from eight to nine inches in length. The Oldest Heraldic KoU.— " The Roll of Csrlaver- loclc," with the Arms of the Earls, Barons, and Knights who were present at the Siege of this Castle in Scotland, 25 Edward I., a.d. 1300 ; including the Original Anglo-Norman Poem, and an English Translation of the MS. in the British Musenm. By Thomas "Weight Esq., M.A., P.S.A. THS ARMS SPLENDIDLY EMBLAZONED IN OOLD AND COLOURS. In 4to, very handsomely printed, extra gold cloth, i8s.; or crimson morocco extra, the Bides and back covered in rich fleur-de-lys, gold tooling, 553. • ,* A very hnnilsome volume, and a dolislitlul one to lovers of HeraUiy, as it is tho cailiost blazon or arms known to exist. o . « taii.i-ai. Now pubUahing in monthly parts, price is. A Hew and Complete Parochial History of Cornwall, Compiled from the Best Authorities, and Corrected and Improved from Aetna,! Survey; with Illustrations ojE the Principal Objects of Interest. Volume I. now ready, price i6s. John Camden Eotten, 74 and 7i, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. MR. SWINBURNE'S NEW BOOK. *JK* "A wonderful literary performance." — "Splendour oj style and majestic beauty of diction never surpassed." — WILLIAM BLAKE : A Critical Essat. With facsimile Paintings, coloured by hand, from the original drawings painted by Thick 8vo, pp. 350, i6s. with a sense of nary lenl, Blake and his wife, "An extraordi- work : vio extravagant, perverse, caloii lated to startle, to shock, and to alarm many readers, but abounding in beauty, and cha racterised by Intel leotual grrasp. . . , His power of word - painting is often truly won derful— sometimes it must be ad mitted, in excess, but always full of matter, form, and colour, and instinct sense vitality." — DaiVy News, Feb. 12, 1868. "It is in evory way worthy of Mr. Swinburne's high fame. In no prose work can be found passages of keener poetry or more finished grace, or more impressive harmony. Strong, vigorous, and musical, the style sweeps on like a river." — Sunday TivieSj . Jan. 12, Mr. Swinburne's ITew Poem. — A Song of Italy. Fcap. 8vo, toned paper, cloth, price 3s. 6d. •#* The At/vniFum remarks of this poem— Btren^h, and colour." 'Seldom i.a3 such a chant been heard 90 full of ^low. Mr. Swinburne's Foeius and Sallads. Third Edition. Price 93. Mr. Swinburne's ITotes on his Poems, and on the Reviews which have appeared upon them, is now ready, price is. Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. I'Tew Edition, fcap. 8vo, price 63. Mr. Swinburne's Edition. Price 73. Chastelard. A Tragedy. New Mr. Swinburne's Queen Mother and Bosamond. New Edition, fcap. 8vo, price 53. Mr. Swinburne's Bothwell. A NEW POEM. [In prepa/ration. John, Oamden Rotten, 74 '\'^}r?'l^lF'^„,'T°J}}'^"}f.'%*'^S^- Be i» the Blake whose wild dcsigos aecompany a splendid <^''^<"' S'' '}^^'^"'7;-"j^"S^ Zvei^eatZStTl must look upon him a. one of the most eitraordmary persona ol the age. - Chaeuis Lamb. George Chapman's Plays, from the Original Texts. Edited, with Notes and an Introduction, by Axgernon Chaeles SwiNEUKNE. 4 vols., tastefully printed, uniform with Wm. Pickermg 3 Editions of the " Old Dramatists." [.In prepwrahon. TJNIFORM WITH ME. SWINBURNE'S POEMS. Fcap. 8vo, 450 pages, Piue Portrait and Autograph, 7s. 6d. Walt Whitman's Poems, (leaves of Grass, Drum- Taps, &c.) Selected and Edited by William Michael Eosseiti. '. WhiBnan is a poet who bears and needs to be read a^ a whole, »»« 'l«n *he yelume andhOTent of his power car^- the dlsflsurements along w.tl. ,t and away.-He u reallj a toe fellow. - Chambers't Journal, In a very IO"g Notice, July 4ch, lafaS. /^S,^ «^ A great dsal of prejucUce in this coimtry has been sJwwn agadnst this very rema/rkahle o/ubthor. His work should he read hy iTidependent mi/nds, amd an opinion foTTned totally apart from, the attacks that have been made v/pon him. Kossettd's Criticisms on Swinhnme's Poems. Price 3s. 6d. The Prometheus Bound of .SIschylas. Translated in the Original Metres by C. B. Cayley, B.A. Cloth, price 33. 6d. SECOND EDITION.— Now ready, 4to, los. 6d., on toned paper, very elegant. Bianca. Poems and Ballads. By Bdward Brennan. Jo^/n Camden Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS, Fair Bosamoud, and other Poems. By B. Mout- GOMERiE Banking (of the Inner Temple). Fcap. Svo, price 6s. Strawberry Hill, and other Poems. By Colbnrn Maine, Eaq. In strawberry binding, fcap. 8vo, 7s. 6d. "It 19 abright, deTerUttle book, In «liich we find a great deal of pood rhyme, and some eennina and pleasmff poetry. Thero aroeovoval cliarmiuf- pictures of die Uistorio gioup, which wPkniw fnim Horace Walpole's letters and Sir JoBhua'a paiQting9."-itfor)nVi^ Star. iDfelxcia. Poems by Adah Isaacs Menken. Illus- trated -witll NUMEROUS GRACEFULLY PENCILLED DESIGNS DRAWN" ON "WOOD, BY Alfred Concanen. Dedicated, by permission, to Charles- Dickens, with photographic facsimile of hia letter, and a very beau- tifully engraved portrait of the Authoress. In green and gold, 5s. 6d, *'A pathetic little Tolnine exquisitely got up."— SuTi. "It iB full of pathos and senti- loent, displays a keen appreciatioa of bcauly, and has re- markable earliest* DGBs and passion."^ Globe. ** A loTiog and delicate care ba* bcea bestowed on perhaps the dain- tiest pagts of verse that have been issued for many years."— iloyd'* Hews. *' Few, If any, coold hare guessed tfee power and beaaty of the thoughts that pos- aeased her boqI, and found expression in language at once pure and melodious. .... Wboehall my Menken was not a poet? Through- out her versa there runs a golden thread of rich and pare poetry."— Prefi. *"There is a pas- Bi onate richness about many of Uie poems which is al- most etartUng."— Sunday Timet. *' What can ws eay of this gifted and wayward woman, the exist- ence of whose better nature will be sug- geated for the first time to many by the posthumous disclo- flure of this book? We do not envy the man who, reading it, has only a sneer for its writer; nor th e womaQ who finds it in her heart to tum away with averted face,"— Neio York Round Table. ••An amazing little book, unhappily posthumous, which 3 dlsttnguiahed woman has left as a legacy to mankind and the ages."- Saturday* Review. Anacreon in BngHsh. Attempted in the IVCetres of the Original. By Thomas J. Arnold. A choice Httle volume, price 4a. The Village on the Forth, and other Poems. By Philip Latimer. Just published, elegantly printed, price 3s. 6d. "Chips &om a Hongh Log; or. Extracts from a Journal kept on board the good ship " Parisian," by Hamilton D. GuNDRY, Pcap. 8vo, price 3a. 6d., cloth neat. John, Camden Hotten, 74 (md 75, Ficcadilly, W, VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. Poems from the Greek Mythology, and Iffiiscel- laneons Poems. By Edmund Olliee. This day, cloth neat, 53. 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A genuine nnmntilated Eeprint of the First Edition, price 6a. *#* Only a small number of copies of this very vulgar, but very curious, book have been printed for the Coilcctois of "Street Words" aud CoUoquiallsms, oa fine toned paper, Lalf-bound morocco, gilt top. Slang Dictionary; or, the Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and "Fast" Expkessions of High and Low Society; many with their Etymology, and a few with their History traced. With cueious tllusthations. A New Dictionary of Colloquial English. Pp. 318, in 8vo, price 6b. 6d., by post, 7a. H^l^l Bee Two uton Teit, in the Dicfionanft p. 264. jEgfptian Si«rofflyj)Kic verb, to ia drunk, ako'wing the ajitpu^ tation of a man's leg. Seo under Bbbakt Lbg (viz. Strong Brink) in (he Dicitora. 017, p. 8i, SS" One hund/red and forty newspa/pers in this cowniry alone heme reviewed with approbation this Dictionary of Colloquial EncjUsh. " It may he doubted if there exists a more amusing vohrnie in the English la/nguage." — Spectatoe. " Valuable as a work of reference" — Saturday Eeview. "All classes of society will find amusement and insi/mction in its pa^es." — Times. Original Edition of the Famous Joe Miller's Jests; or, the Wit'a Tade-Mecum ; a Collection of the most brilliant Jests, poUtest Eepartees, most elegant Bons-Hots, and moat pleasant short Stories in the English Language. London : printed by T. Read, 1739. An interesting specimen of remarkable facsimile, 8vo, half morocco, price 93. 6d. »,* ONLY A VERT FEW COPIES OF THIS HUMOROUS AND BACT OLD BOOK HATH BEEN REPRODUCED. John Camdm Hotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W. VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. In preparation, an entirely Wew Book by the late Artemns Ward, Edited by Lis executors, T. W. Eobertson and B. P. Hingston. Illnstrated with 35 pictureB, taken from Ids world-renowned Panorama. Immediately, cloth, very neat, 2s. 6d. The Works of Charles P. Browne, better known as "AarEMTjs Waed." Portrait by Gefloweki, the Sculptor, and fac- similes, &o. 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It contains some very curious and primitive Legis- lation on Trade and Domestic Matters, such as : — Price of Hats and Caps French "Wines Act for Peopling Isle of Wight Against Butchers Giving of Livery Concerning Customs Fires in London Eebels in the Field Correcting Priests Against Hunters Marrying a Woman against her Will, &c. Genealogical Collections concerning the Sir-lTame of Baird, and the Families of Auchmedden, Newbyth, and Sauchton HaJI in particular. With copies of old letters and papers worth pre- serving, and account of several transactions in this country during the last two centuries. Reprinted from the original MS. in the Advo- cates' Library, Edinburgh. Price to Subscribers, los. 6d. [Preparing. *^ The preeect edition will inclnde an appendix containing a large amonnt of fresh genealogical information. The work ia one possessing general interest, foreign to most Family Histories. No pains will he spared to make the work an accurate and beantiful one. Aa the impression will be limited strictly to 100 copies, early application mtist he made to secure them. AJSTECDOTES OF THE " LONG PARLIAMENT" OF 1645. The SCysteries of the Good Old Cause: Sarcastic Notices of those Members of the Long Parliament that held places, both Civil and Military, contrary to the Self-denying Ordinance of April 3, 1645 ; with the sums of money and lands they divided among themselves. In 4to, half morocco, choicely printed, price 7s. 6d. Warrant to Execnte Charles I. An Exact Facsimile of this Important Document in the House of Lords, with the Fifty- nine Signatures of the Regicides, and Corresponding Seals, admirably executed on paper made to imitate the Original Document, 22 in. by 14 in. Price zs. ; by post, 2s. 4d. Handsomely framed and glazed, in carved oak of an antique pattern, 14s. 6d. Warrant to Execnte ]VEary Queen of Scots. The Exact Facsimile of this Important Document, including the Signature of Queen Elizabeth and Facsimile of the Great Seal. 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Higgins' (Godfrey) Celtic Druids ; or, an attempt to show that the Druida were the Priests of Oriental Colonies, the introducers of the first or Cadmean System of Letters, the Builders of Stonehenge, of Camac, and other Cyclopean Works in Asia and Europe. 4to, numerous plates of Dmid monuments, rare, 32s. *»* The most philosophical digest of the existing information upon the origin of Druiw^wil Worship. Copies havo been sold for £7. At the above price the boolc is ridiculously cheap, com- pared with the sums of money that have been paid for it very recently. Large paper copy, boards, ioa. , very scarce. Direct Application must he made to procwre at these reduced prices. Esholt in Airedale, Yorkshire : the Cistercian Priory of St. Leonard, Account of, with View of Esholt Hall. Small 4to, IS. 6d. Iiondon Directory for 1667, the Earliest Known List of the London Merchants. i2mo, very choicely printed, price 6s. 6d. See Review in the Times, Jan. 22, *** This curious little volume has been reprinted verbatim from one of the only two copies knowtl to bo in existence. It contains an Introduction pointing out some of the principal persons mentioned In the list For historical and genealogical purposes the little iooh is of the greatest value. EXACT FACSIMILE, LETTER FOR LETTER, OP THE EXCES- SIVELY RARE ORIGINAL, Much Adoe about Nothing. As it hath been simdrie times puhlikely acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaino his seruants. Written by William Shakespeake, 1600. *** Small quarto, on fine toned paper, half -bound morocco, Eoxburghe style, only 4s. 6d. (Original price, los. 6d.) John Camden Eotten, 74 and 75, Piccadilly, W,