words on the title page, he expects (unreasonably enough, we admit) to find the peculiarities of the peculiar metropolis of that most peculiar people, (if not the most thoughtful, certainly the most thought-suggestive in Europe) grouped by a comprehensive magic into the miniature epitome of a couple of post octavo volumes. Ah! that were indeed a task, admirable, and worth the labour of a life-time, if it were not all but impossible. To describe the whimsies of one man, often indicative of little beyond bile or tooth-ache, is no easy task; but to chronicle and characterise, to represent by idealisations, at once individual and representative, the whims and hobbies, the wit and pathos, the piety and profaneness, the sayings and doings, the folly and wisdom of a whole city, and that the central city of the most centralised nation of the world, the people in whom, thanks to their position, their temperament, their institutions, the pulse of modern civilisation may be most distinctly felt, and its health or sickness tested-that indeed were no easy task. Mr. Titmarsh had, so far as we can judge, small notions of attempting such an enterprise; he has wisely contented himself with a more trifling venture. Looking out of his windows au quatrieme in the Pays Latin, or taking a stroll on the Boulevards, or rambling through the galleries of the Louvre, he has sketched with careless grace, some striking features of the motley crowds around him. With some of the most remarkable of these it is our purpose to detain the reader, and we would hope also in some slight degree, to interest and instruct him. Taking the liberty for the present to skip what we do not approve of, the first paper which we shall notice is that on the Fêtes of July; and here we must premise that the author is an oddity in his way, and an oddity of a peculiar composition. Being, as we think likely, an Englishman, he is, if not a thorough John Bull, at least possessed of a good many of the characteristics of that peculiar breed. But he also has a good deal in him, which nine-hundred and ninety-nine bulls out of a thousand could never have dreamt of. The result is a mixture of practical button-your-breeches-pocket, anti-moonshine, good sense, so called, with occasional piercing gleams of a high and far-seeing etheriality, which has not a little amused us. In our author's political opinions too, a similar contrast (for it is not an inconsistency) may be remarked. If he be of any profession, he is, as he somewhere calls himself, an anti-humbuggist; but he also has some feeling that the denial even of humbugs is not the most profitable employment, and then, for a moment or two, he writes in a higher strain, and forgets his more prosaic self entirely. Being then an anti-humbuggist, the first humbug which, on his arrival in Paris, he takes it into his head to have a shot at, is THE FETES OF JULY. "We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July.-You have read, no doubt, of that Glorious revolution which took place here nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty facetious manner, by gun-firing, student processions, pole-climbing for silver spoons, gold watches, and legs of mutton, monarchical orations, and what not; and sanctioned, of a couple of hundred thousand francs to defray moreover, by Chamber-of-deputies, with a grant the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and legs of mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in the Place Louis Quinze, otherwise called Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la Revolusay why?)-which, I am told, is to run bad wine tion, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can during certain hours to-morrow, and there would have been a review of the National Guards and the Line-only, since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been discontinued. "Do you not laugh-O Pharos of Bungay-at the continuance of humbug such as this?-at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nithere is not, in the whole of this fair kingdom of cholas, the most absolute Sovereign in EuropeFrance, a single man who cares sixpence about him or his dynasty, except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Château, who eat his dinners, and alty is as dead as old Charles the Tenth; the put their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyChambers have been laughed at, the country has been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed at (and you know who is the wag hold, here come three days at the end of July, and that has amused himself with them all); and, becannons think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fiz, fountains to run wine, Kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy mâts-de-cocagne in token of gratitude, and tude to swallow, to utter, to enact humbugs, these réjouissance-publique !—My dear sir, in their aptiFrench people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve to write a History of the French Revolution, I a grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle often think it should be handed over to Dickens or Theodore Hook, and, oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful historian of the last phase of the Revolution—the last glorious nine years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days? "I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have seen, with my neighbours, Elysées, and some of the 'catafalques' erected to all the gingerbread stalls down the Champsthe memory of the heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths, come and weep; but the grief shewn on the first day is quite as absurd and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one which admits of much wholesome re. flection, and food for mirth; and, besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would be a sin and a shame to pass it over." Mr. Titmarsh then quotes from the French papers some account of the proceedings, and thus continues : "There's nothing serious in mortality:-is there, from the beginning of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous, undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags;-do not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naïveté, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the little catafalques! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the apologetical discourses on the Revolution,' delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes-Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes, and the troops, with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the expiatorymonuments-of-a-pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases, and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to indulge in the same wo! O, manes of July!' (the phrase is pretty and grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows? Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white façade, and braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head over heels, out of yonder Tuilleries' windows? "It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say :there is, however, one benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press, or person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of them?)-one benefit they have gained, or nearly-abolition de la peine-de-mort, namely pour délit politique-no more wicked guillotining for revolutions-a Frenchman must have his revolution-it is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops of the line-it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coachand-four? Did not the jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty?-One may hope, soon, that if a man shews decent courage and energy in half-a-dozen émeutes, he will get promotion and a premium." Yet with all this sarcasm, our sketcher has good nature in him, and a touch of fairness. Witness a passage further on :— "The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where their manners and innocent gaiety shew a very pleasing contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own country-at Epsom Racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the neighbourhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them. To me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the parents towards these little creatures. It does one good to see honest, heavy épiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuilleries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones, too, may have their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care of the children at home." With all this censure of these fêtes of liberty, the author is, we take it, a thorough democrat. It is indeed the intenseness of his democracy that makes him occasionally, as in the passages quoted above, unreasonably peevish with such commemorative farces,-forgetful that all farces have a tragic meaning in them, and that when nations choose to play them, they may be for juggling politicians and place-hunters, or aristocratic sneerers, farces laughable or contemptible; but that for the great mass of the people they are not so, but on the contrary instructive, serious, solemn, if otherwise, they soon get tired of playing them. We come next to a very pleasant and instructive sketch of one of the most the aspiring labours, and free and easy lives amusing phases of modern French societyof the innumerable artists, who swarm in the capital; and first of THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING. "They say there are three thousand artists in this town alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well understand their business; draw the figure accurately; sketch with cleverness: and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a decent manner. "To account for a superiority over Englandwhich, I think, as regards art, is incontestible-it must be remembered that the painter's trade, in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood, and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen excellent schools in which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense of about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruc tion, models, &c.; and has further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study his profession which are not to be found in England ;-the streets are filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms, are covered with pictures; Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for the greater part of the year. Add to this, incitements more selfish, but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five hundred a-year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in places where titles are laughed at, and a baron is thought of no more account than a banker's clerk. "The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his province; his parents settle forty pounds a-year on him, and pay his master he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labours among a score of companions as merry and as poor as himself. Each gentleman has his favourite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of choruses, of which no one can form an idea that has not been present at such an assembly. After some details of costume and amusements, which we omit, our author proceeds : "These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did to the pékin :-from the height of their poverty they look down upon him with the greatest imaginable scorn-a scorn, I think, by which the citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the The French classical attempts, which are, by all accounts, awfully bad, put the sketcher into a rage, till he grows really eloquent as he rebukes the mania which produced them. We quote largely, for though we think he goes a little too far, there are few artists who may not study his remarks with advantage. The subject is of not a little interest and importance in this country, as we have lately had in our Irish exhibition, some striking examples of the wonders that may be effected, apart from any imitation or affectation of the classical; though, we beg leave to maintain against all gainsayers, not without a deep feeling of the classical in art and nature; that perception of the calm, the harmonious, the beautiful; that vision of the heavenly, though robed in simple garb of lowliest humanity,-of that fulness of the Deity in the homeliest works of nature, revealed ineffably, and yet so blended with the life and light of every day existence, that while we breathe the breath of heaven, we never say we breathe it, nor feel the gloom of awe, or selfishness of fear, troubling the truer worship of our unconscious joy-that is the truly classical, as the Greeks knew it, created it, were it, and, by virtue of their deeper feeling thereof than ever people had, or can have, they are now and for ever the lords of all humanity. What they might have taught the world, had their policy been equal to their poetry, it is now idle to enquire; the dirty, unteachable, unideal Romans first ruined, and then mimicked them, and 'tis this mimicry, this uncouth caricature of the godlike, that for some fifteen centuries the stupid world has agreed to call the classical, and sacrificed on that false altar its dearest hope of selfdevelopment, its holiest birthright of true manhood, which should be filial, reverential, yet by the fullness of its own growth and independent being, self-ruled, self-guided, self-sustained. This mimicry of a mimicry, this apeing of an obsolete apery our author is right in assailing, and well he does it. God speed him, we cry, and so, we are sure, will the reader. "The subjects are almost all what are called classical. Örestes pursued by every variety of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and Andromaches in a complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had been the fashion twenty centu ries ago, they must remain so in sæcula sæculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs (exeuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as much as possible like bulls. "What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be ex pected. For a hundred and ten years the classi- | be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a fullcal humbug oppressed the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy years' specimens of the dulness which it engendered. Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of Nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman to Eschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked, and quarrelled with the world, and found himself growing fat, and quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew illhumoured, did not half Europe grow ill-humoured too? Did not every poet feel his young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul? Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and plays, must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical beauty?-must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out plays, Henriades, and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing, the undeniable Kalon? In sized copy of The Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by the same splendid hand. There is the sublime, if you please-a new sublime-an original sublimequite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the 'Moses,' the grandest figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the astonishing picture of The Judgment,' or even a single figure of it, the spectator's sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be left in a room alone with the Moses.' How did the artist live amongst them, and create them? How did he suffer the painful labour of invention? One fancies he would have been scorched up, like Semele, by sights too tremendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him, with our small physical endowments and weaknesses, a man like ourselves. "As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did any. thing, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed Jourdy); and the only good that the academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the intolerable, stupid elassicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down, and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means of judging or attaining it." We copy another short passage to the same effect: "The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to look at the pictatorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence of them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth much more than two and sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first place, the colour of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to participate in it; they are, mostly, of a misty, stony, green, dismal hue, as if they had been painted in a world where no colour was. every picture there are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns, white statues-those obligés accomplishments of the sublime. There are the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as the if latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme au- "Before you take your cane at the door, look thority, from which there was no appeal? Why for an instant at the statue-room. Yonder is is the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder Jouffley's Jeune Fille confiant son premier secret simpering Venus de Medicis to be our standard à Vénus.' Charming, charming! It is from the of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our exhibition of this year only; and, I think, the best notions of the sublime? There was no reason sculpture in the gallery-pretty, fanciful, naïve; why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and re- admirable in workmanship and imitation of Naremain ava àvdpwv to eternity: and there is a ture. I have seldom seen flesh better represented classical quotation, which you may have occasionally in marble. Examine, also, Jaley's 'Pudeur,' Jacheard, beginning, Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it quot's Nymph,' and Rude's Boy with the Toravers that there were a great number of stout fel-toise.' These are not very exalted subjects, or lows before Agamemnon, may not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him. Shakspere made a better man when his imagination moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not Milton's angel surpass Eschylus's-surpass him by many a rood?' "In this same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought to what are called exalted, and do not go beyond The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures: they put me in mind of the colour of objects in dreams-a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts DiogeThe air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom. nes. "Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggarwench. O matutini rores auræque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious air (the breath of Nature blowing free,' as the corn-law man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above-mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscapepainter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods." much richer than the doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honour the procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found out. "I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their favourite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the world. "If, then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,Go you to your own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; our histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspere have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;-be not you envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs despise us; such contempt of their neighbours is the custom of all barbarous tribes ;-witness, the learned Chinese : Tippo Sultaun declared that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon, which signifies to speak;' the ruffians imagining that they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were dumb. "Not so: others may be deaf; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent, instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his own ground, and argue with him; shewing that sham histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the reader. "As thus: " Julius Cæsar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia. "The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard, at "The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia. Were our fair readers ever persecuted for Blenheim. their (alas too exclusive) devotion to novel-reading, and neglect of wholesome study. Here is a cut-and-dry defence of them, which the author appears to have written specially for their benefit. A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL. "There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so "And what have we here?-so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and that Julius Cæsar's family name had been John Churchill ;-the fact would have stood, in history, thus : "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough, at Pavia. And why not?-we should have been just as wise; or it might have stated, that— "The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and Cæsar, writing home to his mamma, said, Madame, tout est perdu fors l'honneur. "What a contemptible science this is, then, |