Amusements of French and English Artisans.

65

que les tuiles échauffées nous brûleront de leurs rayonnements, le vieux soldat, assis sous sa tonnelle, n'apercevra autour de lui que verdure ou que fleurs, et respirera la brise rafraîchie par un ombrage parfumé."

How rarely do we find among our town poor this cherishing of flowers and green plants! And how invariably, when we do find it, is it a sign of a comparatively refined disposition, and hopeful and easy circumstances!

The same difference of character in the two people manifests itself in other ways. An English artisan will spend any extra earnings in adding to his comforts or luxuries,-a French one in purchasing another ornament. The cottage of the Englishman will often be better furnished and more comfortable; but everything in it will be for use, not show. The Frenchman will have fewer chairs, a less solid table, and a poorer bed; but he will probably have a bit of a mirror, or an ornamental clock. He will have scantier and very inferior crockery, but is nearly certain to have a fragment of Sèvres China on his chimneypiece or chest of drawers. He will feed much worse in order that he may look somewhat better. There is something of the swell, and something also of the decayed gentleman about him. He will live in the poorest garret, and on the scantiest crust,food and lodging which the English artisan would scout,-in order that he may drink his eau sucrée and read his journal at a decent Café, or take his wife and children a walk on the boulevards, or in the Tuileries gardens in respectable attire. The desires and expenditure of the Englishman may be for the more solid good; but we doubt whether the preferences of the Frenchman are not far the surest guarantee against sinking in the social scale. The love of the latter for holidays and gala days, we hold also to be a wholesome safeguard, even though sometimes carried a little too far. These festivals are something to look forward to, something to save for, something to enliven and embellish an otherwise monotonous existence. Man's nature requires these breaks and brighteners to keep up its elastic spring; without them he becomes dull and spiritless, or gross; he cannot without injury to both soul and body live on

"Riding through Normandy one beautiful Sunday evening, I overheard a French peasant decline the convivial invitation of his companion. Why-no, thank you,' said he, I must go to the guinguette for the sake of my wife and the young people, dear souls !'

"The next Sunday I was in Sussex, and as my horse ambled by a cottage, I heard a sturdy boor, who had apparently just left it, grumble forth to a big boy swinging on a gate; You sees to the sow, Jim, there's a good un; I be's just a-going to the Blue Lion, to get rid of my missus and the brats-rot 'em !'"— Bulwer's England and the English.

VOL. XXI. NO. XLI.

E

work and sleep alone; to keep up heart, to maintain cheerfulness through the dull routine, the daily repetitions, the hot and dusty thoroughfares of this world's ordinary lots, some of these gay, stirring, enlivening "solutions of continuity" are imperatively needed. We, in this country, have far too few of them; and it is not easy to say how much of the depth to which poverty allows itself to sink is owing to this paucity.

"Lord, help us poor people !—and that's my defence

If we'd nothing to trust to but wisdom and sense!"

The ready and susceptible imagination of the Frenchman, too, must be of inestimable service in enabling him to embellish and glorify his poverty in ways that an Englishman would never dream of. Not only we believe are our poor, as a general rule, more discontented with their lot in life than the same class among our mercurial neighbours, but even where submissive and unmurmuring, they are so in a different spirit. The Englishman accepts his meagre fare and humble position doggedly, when the Frenchman accepts them cheerfully. The latter makes the best of matters, and puts a bright face on everything that will bear it; the former is too apt to take a diametrically opposite course. How "un-English" is the following narrative. The next neighbour of our Philosopher in the garret is an old soldier named Chaufour, minus one leg and one arm, and earning a scanty subsistence by working at coarse paper articles from long before sunrise till long after nightfall. He explains to his companion that he lost his leg at Waterloo, and his arm "while working in the quarries of Clamart :"

"Après la grande débâcle de Waterloo, j'étais demeuré trois mois aux ambulances pour laisser à ma jambe de bois le temps de pousser. Une fois en mesure de ré-emboîter le pas, je pris congé du major et je me dirigeai sur Paris, où j'espérais trouver quelque parent, quelque ami; mais rien; tout étoit parti, ou sous terre. J'aurais été moins étranger à Vienne, à Madrid, à Berlin. Cependant, pour avoir une jambe de moins à nourrir, je n'en étais pas plus à mon aise; l'appetit était revenu, et les derniers sous s'envolaient.

“A la vérité, j'avais rencontré mon ancien chef d'escadron, qui se rappelait que je l'avais tiré de la bagarre à Montereau en lui donnant mon cheval, et qui m'avait proposé chez lui place au feu et à la chandelle. Je savais qu'il avait épousé, l'année d'avant, un château et pas mal de fermes; de sorte que je pouvais devenir à perpétuité brosseur d'un millionnaire; ce qui n'était pas sans douceur. Restait à savoir si je n'avais rien de mieux à faire. Un soir je me mis à réflection.

"- Voyons, Chaufour, que je me dis, il s'agit de se conduire comme un homme. La place chez le commandant te convient; mais ne peux-tu rien faire de mieux? Tu as encore le torse en bon état et

Struggles of an Old Soldier.

67

les bras solides; est ce que tu ne dois pas toutes les forces à la patrie, comme disait l'oncle de Vincennes ? Pourquoi ne pas laisser quelque ancien plus démoli que toi prendre ses invalides chez le commandant? Allons, troupier, encore quelques charges à fond puis qu'il te reste du poignet. Faut pas se reposer avant le temps.

"Sur quoi j'allai remercier le chef d'escadron et offrir mes services à un ancien de la batterie qui était rentré à Clamart dans son foyer respectif, et qui avait repris le pince de carrier.

"Pendant les premiers mois, je fis le métier de conscrit, c'est-à-dire, avec plus de mouvements que de besogne; mais avec de la bonne volonté on vient à bout des pierres comme de tout le reste sans devenir, comme on dit, une tête de colonne, je pris mon rang, en serrefile parmi les bons ouvriers, et je mangeais mon pain de bon appetit, vu que je le gagnais de bon cœur. Cest que, même sous le tuf, voyezvous, j'avais gardé ma gloriole. L'idée que je travaillais, pour ma part, à changer les roches en maisons, me flattait intérieurement. Je me disais tout bas.

-"Courage, Chaufour, mon vieux, tu aides à embellir ta patrie. Et ça me soutenait le moral.

"Malheureusement, j'avais parmi mes compagnons des citoyens un peu trop sensible aux charmes du cognac; si bien qu'un jour, l'un d'eux, qui voyait sa main gauche à droite, s'avisa de battre le briquet près d'une mine chargée: la mine prit feu sans dire gare, et nous envoya une mitraille de cailloux qui tua trois hommes et m'emporta le bras dont il ne me reste plus que la manche.

-"Ainsi, vous étiez de nouveau sans état?' dis-je au vieux soldat.

-"C'est-à-dire qu'il fallait en changer,' reprit-il tranquillement. 'Le difficile était d'en trouver un qui se contentât de cinq doigts au lieu de dix: je le trouvais pourtant.'

"Où cela?'

"Parmi les balayeurs de Paris.' (Scavengers.)
"Quoi! vous avez fait partie

?'

-"De l'escouade de salubrité: un peu, voisin, et ça n'est pas mon plus mauvais temps. Le corps de balayage n'est pas si mal composé que malpropre, savez-vous! Il y a là d'anciennes actrices qui n'ont pas su faire d'économies, des marchands ruinés à la bourse; nous avions même un professeur d'humanités, qui, pour un petit verre, vous récitait du Latin ou des tragédies, à votre choix. Tout ça n'eût pas pu concourir pour le prix Monthyon; mais la misère faisait pardonner les vices, et la gaieté consolait de la misère. J'étais aussi gueux et aussi gai, tout en tâchant de valoir un peu mieux. Même dans la fange du ruisseau, j'avais gardé mon opinion que rien ne déshonore de ce qui peût être utile au pays.'

-"Cependant vous avez fini par quitter votre nouvelle profession?' ai-je repris.

"Pour cause de reforme, voisin; les balayeurs ont rarement le pied sec, et l'humidité a fini par rouvrir les blessures de ma bonne jambe. Je ne pouvais plus suivre l'escouade; il a fallu déposer les

armes. Voilà deux mois que j'ai cessé de travailler à l'assainissement de Paris.

"Au premier instant, ça m'a étourdi. De mes quatre membres, il ne me restait plus que la main droite; encore avait elle perdu sa force. Fallait donc lui trouver une occupation bourgeoise. Après avoir essayé un peu de tous, je suis tombé sur le cartonnage; et me voici fabricant d'étuis pour les pompons de la garde nationale; c'est une œuvre peu lucrative, mais à la portée de toutes les intelligences. En me levant à quatre heures et en travaillant jusqu'à huit, je gagne 65 centimes (about 64d.)! Le logement et la gamelle en prennent 50; reste trois sous pour les dépenses de luxe. Je suis donc plus riche que la France, puisque j'équilibre mon budget, et je continue à la servir, puis que je lui économise ses pompons.”

Now, it is possible that in reproducing these pictures of humble life on the Continent, we may have selected exceptions rather than examples; it may be that in contrasting the quiet and even tenor of middle-class life in Germany and France, with the turmoil, crush, and hurry of existence in England and America, we have drawn both in somewhat too vivid colours, and with too sharp an outline ;-still we cannot doubt the general correctness of the impression we have received and endeavoured to convey; after every discount and deduction has been made the broad fact will still remain,-that if our analogues abroad are often too torpid, passive, and unenterprising, we, on the contrary, are too restless, striving, and insatiable; that our extreme is assuredly not the happiest, nor possibly the noblest; and that, at all events, without exchanging it for theirs, we might do well to abandon it for some juste milieu, in which our course of life might become a sanity and not a madness."

The Union with England and Scottish Nationality. 69

ART. III.-1. History of Scotland, from the Revolution to the Extinction of the Last Jacobite Insurrection, (1689-1748.) By JOHN HILL BURTON. 2 vols. London, 1853.

2. Address to the People of Scotland, and Statement of Grievances. By the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights. Edinburgh, 1853.

In the year 1707, the sixth year of the reign of Queen Anne, the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, already for more than a century partially connected by the prior union of their Crowns, were united into one body-politic under the name of Great Britain. The population of England at that time was about six millions; that of Scotland was probably under one million.

The union of these two nations was a fact long anticipated and desired, and it may be pronounced, in the retrospect, to have been a political necessity, and a great political simplification. The territories they inhabited were parts of one island, geographically marked out to be sooner or later the seat of but one national polity and government; the populations themselves, too, with all allowance for the Gaels in the one, and the Welsh in the other, were essentially combinable, scions of the same stock; and, speaking the same language, with only differences of dialect. In these respects, indeed, the southern Scots were more akin to the northern English, than these to the southern English; the southern Scots and the northern English being Angles and Danes, with a Norman infusion, while the southern English were Saxons with a Norman infusion. By as sure a law, then, as that by which the English and Scottish kingdoms had themselves been formed out of a prior consolidation of smaller parts, were these two kingdoms, in their turn, to be consolidated into one. The only question was as to the time, and the mode of the consolidation. As early as the thirteenth century it had been tried, and tried by the mode of an English subjugation of Scotland. The great Wallace and Bruce outburst of that period was a revelation to all whom it might concern, that the consolidation was not to take place then, nor in that manner. The meaning of that phenomenon was, that the purposes of history and of humanity would be better answered by postponing the union of the kingdoms until such time as it could be accomplished with something like the voluntary consent of both. That time came in 1707; and even then the act was done all the better that it had been preceded by a century of partial rapprochement between the two king