FRENCH COTTAGES.

29

less of the modern contrivances of veils and parasols, all might have passed for fair-a term which is, after all, only comparative. A real modern shepherdess, it is certain, possesses few of the charms which would attract or captivate even the most susceptible beau or romantic youth of modern times; and few indeed of the newly fledged young ladies from a fashionable boarding school would listen to a true shepherd, in the garb of a hardy laborer, with a face indicative of exposure to the weather, and hair reddened or bleached by the rays of the sun.

The English cottage, with its trim little garden in front of the door, and flowering vines trained over the windows, is wanting to cheer and decorate the French landscape views. The view of these rarely fails of exciting pleasing associations, as indicating some refinement of taste, and bespeaking the prosperous condition of the inmates, who have the disposition and the leisure to enjoy some of these little luxuries, after providing a supply of the necessaries of life. The cottages are not scattered along the roadside, or distributed over the distant hills, with the appendages of a great barn, out-buildings, and apple orchards, as is commonly observable in travelling over New-England.On the contrary, a gregarious disposition prevails, all the farm houses, or rather mud hovels, being built in clusters, or small villages. The cottages of the French peasantry appear very humble, the sides being formed commonly of clay or mud, rendered more tenacious and less liable to crumble by an admixture of chopped straw. Those which I saw had usually two little rooms on the ground floor, and lodging rooms in the garret. Into the garret the light is admitted by means of holes in the thatch, closed by a piece of board or shingle, as a substitute for windows of glass. The villages are, however, pleasantly located in the vales, surrounded by trees, which at a distance nearly embosom them amid verdant tufts of foliage. The peasants reside

30

FRENCH PEASANTS.

in these villages, which are in some instances two miles, or more, distant from the fields cultivated by their hands. On some of the roads, the traveller passes so many fields in succession without seeing a single habitation, that he looks about with excited curiosity for the dwellings of the laborers who till the land. Very little attention is bestowed in preserving the door yards of the mud cottages in neat order. The manure heaps,-the wealth of the farmer, are rather too ostentatiously exhibited in front of the doors, and under the very windows, sending forth unsavory

steams.

The French peasantry, it is stated, derive their principal enjoyments from social intercourse, frequently mingling together in small parties to amuse themselves by conversation, and to join in the gaiety of a dance. At the su try hour of noon day, we passed a house, the inmates of which we saw moving, before the open door and windows, in the mazes of the dance, to the music of a violin. An English or American farmer would probably consider any of his neighbors demented, who might set to with his family to dance a regular reel to the music of a fiddle, during the broad glare of a mid day sun, as an interlude or recreation after the fatigues of the morning. The enjoyments of the English and American farmers are of a more solid kind, derived from the view of their well fed cattle, corn ricks, and spacious well stored barns; and from participating with their families in the numerous comforts and luxuries, which they succeed in collecting around them.

Less thought is here bestowed in providing those numerous small articles of household furniture, (except perhaps stores of linen, which every industrious female maiden deems a sort of dowry,) that contribute so essentially to the enjoyment of the poor man's fireside. The laborer here is content to take his hasty meal any how and any where, provided he can make up by the gaiety of social

PARIS.

31

intercourse, what may be wanting in substantial good

cheer.

An industrious New-England mechanic commonly appears to take pleasure in his business: but the French mechanic is rather inclined to make a business of pleasure. The former is disposed to provide not only for the present, but also for the future welfare of his family ; the latter, with stoical philosophy, seems to be content when he has secured sufficient to supply his present wants, and is afterwards ready to devote his leisure moments to recreation, leaving his children after his death to depend on their own exertions for success.

VIEWS OF PARIS.

Few travellers can approach this celebrated city without feeling an intensely excited interest, on obtaining a first glimpse of its domes and spires. Few, however, enter it without experiencing sensations of disappointment on viewing the dusky walls of tall houses, crowded upon narrow, dark, and irregular streets, without side walks, in which every description of clumsy equipage is in motion, rattling along in close proximity with the walls of the houses.

At the gate of the city we were detained nearly an hour by the revenue officers, who examined the portmanteaux and boxes, to prevent the smuggling of various articles, which are subjected to duty on being transported from the surrounding country into the city. The high stone wall which entirely encompasses Paris, serves rather for purposes of revenue than for a military defence; and the gates, with their ornamental arches and columns, are commodious lurking places for revenue officers, as well as for

32

REVENUE OFFICERS AT THE CITY GATES.

military guards. The wagons loaded with merchandise, destined for sale in the city, are stopped and sometimes unloaded outside of the gates, in order to subject their contents to a vigilant inspection. Piles of boxes and bags, containing merchandise, are collected in the area in front of the gateway, as on the quay of a seaport. I saw sacks of flour and grain examined by being perforated by long steel probes, resembling rapiers, for which I mistook them, as their points, polished by continual use, gleamed and flashed like those more deadly weapons. It reminded me of Falstaff's attack on the dead body of gunpowder Percy, when the revenue officer thus armed with a steel probe proceeded gravely to a prostrate bag of meal extended at his feet on the ground, motionless as a dead enemy. He first pointed his glittering weapon at it in a hostile attitude, and then made two or three thrusts into the heart of it, with all the deliberation Falstaff exhibits in the play. Even the hackney-coaches or fiacres, on entering Paris from the country, are regularly stopped by the officers, who step up to the carriage door, and intrude their heads, whilst they feel with their hands beneath the seats to ascertain whether bottles of wine, or any other articles subject to duty, are secreted there. After this detention, the conducteur replaced the baggage, and the diligence resumed its lumbering pace through the arched passage of the overshadowing wall.

The French government derives a very great revenue from imposts on wine, cattle, and on numerous other kinds of articles consumed in the city of Paris. It appears from one of the late returns, that the amount collected at the gates of Paris bears a considerable ratio to the duties collected at all the ports of France. An anecdote is related of a wine merchant, who many years ago contrived to defraud the government of the duty, by entering his wines through a leaden pipe beneath the wall, instead of through

STREETS OF PARIS.

33

the gate. To effect this object, he hired two houses, one in the city adjacent to the walls, and one without their pale. He laid his pipes of communication between them, and conveyed his wines through this concealed channel into his wine vaults.

The diligence, like the English stage coach, stops at the general stage office of the proprietors, where the passengers are dropped, and are all left to find their way to their lodgings. The porter, who took our baggage, used a frame composed of a few light bars of wood shaped like a common chair, and fitted to be suspended on his back.— Bowing his body, he dexterously slipped the straps over his shoulders, and erected himself under his load, like another Atlas, with all the portmanteaux towering high above his head. These he continued to sustain balanced in their position, until he discharged them at the porter's lodge at the hotel. Upon suggesting to him the convenience of a hand cart or wheel barrow for facilitating his labors, he alledged, as a reason for not using porter's barrows, the inconvenient narrowness of the crowded streets, and the want of the protection afforded by posts and edge stones, there being no flagging for foot passengers. He said that the wheel barrow would soon be crushed under cart wheels. The whole street is devoted to those who ride, and the humble foot passenger is liable to be crowded against the walls by every horse that dashes impetuously along under the direction of careless drivers, or perhaps to be thrust aside by the hub of the wheel, with its black projecting greasy axle, the very approach to which causes the Parisian to shudder and start back, as if he were about to come in contact with an electrified Leyden jar. To escape out of the way, it is often necessary to dart into the nearest open door or passage that offers a shelter.

Sallying forth in the evening with a guide or valet, whom we engaged to attend us, whilst in Paris, we could not