Imatges de pàgina
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of window-glass. Within this tiny chapel was usually a little doll, and an altar, ornamented with candles about the thick. ness and length of a common lucifer-match. On the black cross of every grave appeared, in white paint, an inscription, sometimes very long indeed, and sometimes very short; for instance, on the cross of one poor man there was merely written

"LAPONGE."

At the foot of this latter cross was a white plaster of Paris angel, about six inches high, firmly tied to the black wood by a piece of tarred whipcord round its neck. As I advanced I found in the graves, besides the ornaments I have enumerated China roses and flowers.

One of the little chapels contained, on its altar, a white "forget-me-not" wreath, a child's bonnet, and a child's whistle. In another, the humble tribute of affection, which the poor mother of the deceased had often, no doubt, come to visit, was a white garland, inscribed

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beneath was the child's toy, a horse drawing a red water-cart on wheels, which must have cost about two sous.

As I was wandering among these little memorials, which 1 felt to be infinitely more affecting than huge ugly specimens of bad sculpture which usually so inadequately explain what they are intended to represent, fancying I was entirely by myself, I almost trod upon a man dressed in a blouse, on his hands and knees arranging one of the gardens I have described. The creel, or basket, he had carried on his back, and which was resting against the oak railing, had contained all the requirements for a poor man's grave, namely, about half a bushel of garden earth, four little cypresses, box enough to border a path made in the form of a cross, and a stick to drill it in. He had just completed very neatly his job, and seemed much pleased at my admiring it.

As I approached the extremity of the space allotted for common graves, the roses and cypresses became gradually so high that they completely overshadowed their respective terri

tories.

*My beloved child!

On leaving this compartment of the cemetery I walked to the temporary graves, which, at a short distance, appeared to be a beautiful forest of cypresses, elegantly waving in the wind, and which, when closely inspected, were equally interesting. The grass, which, generally speaking, had resumed possession, was very nearly of the height (30 inches) of the little oak fences, within which, although here and there were to be discovered roses in bloom, the "immortelles" were faded and decayed. In short, vegetable life had apparently nearly extinguished human affections-the one had vigorously increased, the other had almost expired. Unhampered by a guide, I wandered about these narrow paths, up hill and down dale, with the greatest pleasure, turning suddenly to the right, then to the left, through paths so narrow that the boughs of the cypresses on cach side bent as I passed through them. In several graves I perceived lurking, with sundry little holes in their faces, breasts, wings, and legs, the remains of dilapidated small plaster statues In one grave was a honey-suckle in bloom, shedding fragrance around it to a considerable distance. On reaching the upper portion of the hill, there lay beneath me, at a distance, in the pays bas of the cemetery, the "fosses communes," surrounded on three sides by the green wilderness of the tenant portion. Among the permanent graves, which looked so grotesque, stiff, and formal, that for some seconds I paused on the threshold of their dominion, unwilling to enter, I observed, in front of an obelisk, and leaning against its iron rails in an attitude of pensive reflection rather than of prayer, a tall lady of an elegant figure, exceedingly well-dressed.

After walking for a considerable distance diagonally through the space allotted to permanent graves, I came, very nearly in the middle of the cemetery, to its chapel, a small, well-constructed, substantial, plain, appropriate building, containing a number of homely chairs, among which were two women very devoutly kneeling, and, as I was unwilling to disturb them, I continued my course until I reached the paved avenue leading to the lofty iron entrance gates, towards which, under a very burning sun and in a glaring light, I was descending, when I observed approaching me a stout and very short welldressed gentleman, of about forty, who, with blue spectacles resting on rather a small upturned nose, and with his face running down with perspiration, was affectionately puffing up the

hill, with the head of a small snow-white plaster angel in each of his hot hands, leaving the wings, body, and legs not only pendent, but vibrating in the air through which he walked. He had probably just bought them from one of the numberless shops in the Rue de la Roquette leading to the cemetery, and was on his road to deposit them on some grave as a tribute of his affection.

Although in the various little scenes I witnessed, and which I have faithfully described, exactly in the order, or rather disorder, in which they chanced to occur, there were occasionally some which may appear to the reader, as they appeared to me, to be less impressive than they were intended to be, yet in approaching the gate of the cemetery of Père la Chaise I could not but admit that the arrangements I had witnessed are on the whole not only highly creditable to the people of Paris, but that they form a striking contrast to those foul fashions-that horrid and unnatural mixture of the living and the deadthat have hitherto disgraced the metropolis of England.

In Paris, within twenty-four hours of the death of every inhabitant, the corpse, with any pomp or at any cost which its relatives may feel desirous to expend-or, if it be that of a poor person, at no cost at all-is by law delivered to the Ordonnateur des Pompes Funèbres to be carried beyond the barriers of the city, where, under official supervision, it is deposited in a sufficiently deep grave, subsequently ornamented in any way the pride, taste, or affection of survivors may dic

tate.

In London, under the tyranny of barbarous habits, which it has been deemed a fine thing to support, at exorbitant charges discreditable to the rich and ruinous to the poor, corpses, ornamented with frills, caps, and garments more or less fine, have, by the laws of fashion, been required, usually for a week, and often longer, not only to pollute the atmosphere of the living, but, as if to perpetuate the evil, they have afterwards been interred around almost every place of worship in the metropolis.-nay, even deposited beneath the very pavement on which the living have been congregating for prayer.

The corruption of hundreds of thousands of human bodies has, below ground, polluted the springs of water, while, above, it is a well-known fact that the miasma from the corpses of the inhabitants of London first attaches itself to, and then cor.

rupts, meat suspended in the larders of the neighbourhood; and thus people of fashion and high rank, and in beautiful clothes, every day ghoul-like drink up and eat up a portion of the carcases of their dead!

It is not so in Paris. In addition to the cemetery of Père la Chaise for the eastern district, there are that of Montmartre for the northern, that of Mont Parnasse for the southern, besides a cemetery appropriated for the use of hospitals and for the interment of criminals

CONCLUSION.

IN our parting scene my kind landlady had such a revolving series of last words to say to me, that on reaching the Embarcadère of the Great Northern Railway I had only time to take my ticket for Boulogne, and my seat, when the train started; and as a vessel sails out of harbour into open sea, so, on looking out of the windows on either side, I soon found myself flying through that boundless space of little unenclosed fields which of various shapes and colours compose the gay chequered surface of France.

The carriage was full, or, as it is called in French, was "complet." Most of my fellow travellers had, either at their side or beneath their feet, a basket full of eatables, a bottle and a glass Immediately opposite to me sat a large grave Frenchman of about forty. His omnium-gatherum of provisions lived in a red handkerchief; and after he had undone it, looked them all over, and tied them all up again, he took from his waistcoat-pocket a small short saw of black horn, with which he slowly flattened and reflattened every hair on his head, and then, looking me full in the face all the time he was doing it, he as carefully combed out his mustachios.

I have no doubt whatever that during the journey a variety of other little equally important circumstances occurred; I have, however, no recollection of them, for my truant mind, as if it had escaped out of the open window at my side, flew back to Paris to ruminate on the various subjects that had there oo

cupied its attention; in short, I felt it impossible to leave the neighbourhood of the metropolis of France without enumerating to myself a series of civilities and kindnesses which, so long as my memory lasts. will form a subject of agreeable reflection indeed, to be able to add to those for whom one has a lasting regard a whole nation, ought to be considered an acquisition of inestimable value, a blessing to intellectual vision, which, as it cheers in darkness as well as in daylight, is greater even than that in the power of the oculist to bestow.

The political state of France naturally next engrossed my attention, and although my very short residence at Paris did not enable me, and indeed would not entitle me, to presume to enter deeply on the subject, the following vague sketch has the solitary advantage of being drawn at least by a friendly hand.

Whatever may abstractedly be said against a Republic, it is undeniable that that established in France in 1848 was the result of a far-sighted, long-considered, deliberate desire on the part of the French people to exchange Monarchy for Democracy; and accordingly, in spite of every precaution that diplomacy and military science united could devise, in spite of rank, wealth, patronage, fortifications, and an army of enormous force, the power of the Monarchy, at a given moment, was precipitated, as suddenly as an element in chemistry falls. in impalpable powder through a liquid, which, from a preferential affinity for something else. refuses any longer to hold it in solution.

Why the French people disliked Monarchy, or why they preferred a Republic, no foreigner has any right to inquire; and accordingly feeling it to be my bounden duty not to enter upon this vexed question, on arriving at Paris all I desired was mutely and inoffensively to observe, as carefully as I was able, the movements of a piece of political machinery, which I conceived at all events possessed the inestimable qualification of pleasing the proprietors to whom it belonged. In this desire, people in England. I believe, generally concur, for. although nobody believes that the present state of France will last, many consider it as an interesting political experiment they are de sirous of watching carefully but impartially. They are looking at it step by step: but the end they truly say is not yet come, and therefore they do not want to hear a hasty sentence pronounced before the trial has been completed.

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