Chapter 6

Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact, than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers, and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of tempering one's nationality by the candid comparison of our own institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which their ignorance has exposed them.

It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.

Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations, exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts, with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to Astley's. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The "_morgue Britannique_," so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies, spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters. They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness, libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d'hote_, and truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life. Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the entertainment of his friends.

Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy picture enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John Bull goes home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has laid in its stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home uncomfortable; his daughters pine after the flattering familiarities of their whiskered acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons lose all zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the more decisive changes of fortune, that await on _rouge et noir_. Yet even this is not the worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false and erroneous notions continental nations procure of our country, and its habits, from such specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the management of his farm, presents a fine example of those national traits we are so justly proud of--honest, frank, straightforward in all his dealings, kind and charitable in his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere of his occupations exists no longer--there is no exercise for the manly habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be duped; his frankness degenerates into credulity; the unsuspecting openness of his character makes him the butt of every artful knave he meets with; and he is laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which, exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the greatest country of the universe. Hence we have the tone of disparagement now so universally maintained about England, and Englishmen, from one end of the Continent to the other. It is not that our country does not send forth a number of men well qualified to induce different impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons move only in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not exist; and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous one also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.

There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks of our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding, upon which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner ignorant of the every-day _convenances_ of the world, you still more rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred. The _table d'hote_, like the mess in our army, has the effect of introducing a certain amount of decorum that is felt through every relation of life; and, although the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is a more civilized person than his type in England. This is easily understood: foreign breeding is not the outward exhibition of an inward principle--it is not the manifestation of a sense of mingled kindness, good taste, and self-respect--it is merely the rigid observance of a certain code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any thing felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness, with its saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An Englishman makes way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner--a Frenchman I should say--does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life; and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come back, however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling lies in the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our institutions are models of imitation for the world--in vain that our national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity--in vain the boast that the sun never sets upon a territory that girths the very globe itself, so long as we send annually our tens of thousands out upon the Continent, with no other failing than mere unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and the ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman, or Belgian, they meet with.

A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

Our law code would, were its injunctions only carried out in private life, effect most extraordinary reformations in our customs and habits. The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on another, the great argument of the defendant's counsel was based on the circumstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are whose quiet and unobtrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts of their own door--nay, how many estimable and excellent people who live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question, would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of reparation because they had been homely and domestic.

Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from. Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the present system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the hustings--profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming _debutante_, and, while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The _coram publico_ endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people, are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a certain number of times every year before the world, to assure that kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are possessed of.

It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must testify in your favour--it is the pit of a theatre--it is the company of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must adduce in evidence. They are the best--they are the only judges of what you, in the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own bosom.

Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband, offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if he mix much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him; and the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middlesex.

Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of conjugal vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway. Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years ago, and one of our sirens of song said,

"When should lovers breathe their vows? When should ladies hear them? When the dew is on the boughs-- When none else is near them."

Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels, the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion, and the din of conversation. The private boxes of the opera are even too secluded, and your happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.

The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at the Varietes will be more to the purpose. Scribe's farces will teach them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming, "_Maintenant je suis heureux--ma femme--mon meilleur ami!_" He then may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend. Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can cry, he'll get every shilling of the money.

A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.

Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another; thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and children--this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is, to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn't know whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he thinks of, is doing the honours of the institution; and although like a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says "No matter, pray go on." This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science; and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of doctors--what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world, yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged. The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind, destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To him alone does a man speak "_son dernier mot_:" while to the lawyer the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more than candid--yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings of human passion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed, scarcely the shadow of fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life, bearing with them but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!

The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate, and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of homoeopathy, the preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the highest order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.

Every man--and still more, every woman--imagine themselves to be doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the constitution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside, that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh; and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes it that these old ladies, of either sex, never meddle with the law? Is the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life? or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the "Ladies Bountiful" would take to the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their aid-de-camp--_vice_ Buchan retired.

A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.

There would be no going through this world if one had not an India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart, than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary. Every man's conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without hypocrisy.

Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject; just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient; but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough to damn them when the performance is over!

Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with O'Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in this circumstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we have it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our pockets, and then ---- I do not blame them in the least, if the popery of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help calling in aid from without.

Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned when he is done with; he insists on a share of the profits, and, moreover, to be treated with some respect too. He knows he is the star of the company, and can make his own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken up, and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like Matthews, he can get up a representation all to himself, and make a handsome thing of it besides.

If one could see it brought about something in the fashion of Sancho's government of Barrataria, I should certainly like to see O'Connell on the throne of Ireland for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King Dan, _par la grace de diable_, king of Erin, just for the joke's sake!

A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.

We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts, their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pass over, posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums, with a fine house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings around the throne.