I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in the meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking.Two years ago, for instance, when I left the capital, Ileft the young gentlemen of France with their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the toes of their boots round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair combed flat, and, parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable shoulders; and, in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion has changed considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the old modes with the new.Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to another.
The revolution may be called a caricature of *******, as the empire was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same process.They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water, and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in David's time art and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism, now, on the contrary, these two commodities are imported from Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still farther distorted on passing the frontier.
I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and mysterious transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions; as well and solemnly as they can: not very solemnly, God wot; for I think one should always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking under the owl-like solemnity.
When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic reaction.Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures;churches were built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies' boudoirs, and picture-shops.One or two fashionable preachers rose, and were eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their pipes and billiards for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit under the feet of Lacordaire.I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic rage, and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the moment.It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings, in the very pink of the mode.The congregation did not offer a bad illustration of the present state of Catholic reaction.Two or three stray people were at prayers;there was no service; a few countrymen and idlers were staring about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid guardian of the place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his bench at the door.I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over: the students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and one or two cafes have been established, within the last year, that are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
However, if the immortal Gorres and the German mystics have had their day, there is the immortal Gothe, and the Pantheists; and Iincline to think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor.Voltaire and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt.Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, Ithink there is something more manly and earnest even in them, than in the present muddy French transcendentalism.Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to eprouver the besoin of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods accordingly.Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired;Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Debats, has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the saintete of the sacerdoce litteraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumiere, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new "Messiani**," and will hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse.Surely, the negatives of the old days were far less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must be, which has such high priests.
There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations.