Part 4

Here is a most beautiful tomb of a lady surmounted by an image of Silence, her finger on her lip. Does it intimate the lady could keep a secret? Oh, no, it admonishes other ladies to hold their tongues. This one is _all_ French. “_Ici repose Georgina, fille de_ MADEMOISELLE _Mars_.” She adds, _Gardez vos larmes pour sa mère_. Whoever loves Thalia, and the Graces will not disobey the admonition. And now let me introduce you to _Bouffleur_, the _fleur des chevaliers_; to _Delille_, who went down to posterity behind Virgil and Milton; and to _Bernardin de St. Pierre_, of whom one forgets to remember only Paul and the delicious Virginia. Here, too, is _Laplace_, allotted his six feet like the rest. _Eheu! Quid prodest?_ and _Fourcroy_, undergoing one of his own experiments. In the centre of all these is _Molière_ himself. They should have left room beside him for Miss Mars, his best commentary--if, in spite of time, she should chance ever to die. Here, too, is _Talma_, and _Mademoiselle Raucourt_ immortal for feigning others’ passions, and _Lafontaine_, for telling other people’s tales. He has no occasion to think any thing new, who can dress others’ thoughts to such advantage. I observed also a few learned ladies, Madame Guizot, Dufresnoy, and above all, Madame _Cottin_. Are you not sorry she died at twenty-eight, when so many fools never die at all. It is plain, Providence does not trouble itself about what we call human greatness; or genius would not perish thus in its infancy, and so many glorious and manly enterprises would not die in the hatching. Virgil would have lived till the completion of his Æneid; Apelles would have put the finishing hand upon his Venus. I regret that I must pass with only a nod of recognition, Palissot, Mercier, Millevoye, Guinguené, David the painter, and even the elegant, the witty, and profligate Beaumarchais. Who can pass without a sigh the grave of Lavallette? His head was stripped of its hair, and prepared for the guillotine, when he was saved by his wife. Her agitation, and excessive terror lest he should be retaken, affected her brain, and she went mad. Her madness is of a calm and melancholy kind; she sits whole hours in meditation, and has not spoken a word these several years. She is lodged in a _maison de santé_ near Paris.

I strolled awhile amongst the “temporary cessions,” the graves of the poor. There are no trees here, nor artificial tombs. A border of boxwood, and sometimes a wire wicker work, with a wooden cross, is all their decoration. I read the inscriptions upon the crosses.

---- Pierre Robin Age de 67 ans Unes des victimes du 28 Juillet, 1830.

By the side in the same wicker enclosure:

Ici repose une victime _inconnu_, du 28 Julliet, 1830.

A little tri-coloured flag was waving between them.

The following is of a mother, upon a child of four years:--

Prés de mourir, elle nous disait: Ne pleure pas, Papa; ne pleure pas mamma; je me sens mieux, Et elle mourut!

Of a son:

Passant, donne une larme à ma mere, en passant à la tienne.

Of a wife:

Elle vecut bien, elle aima bien, elle mourut bien.

Of an old woman of 81:

Une jour on dira de moi, ce qu’on a dit des autres; Marie Anne Palet est morte, et l’on n’en parlera plus.

This one is pretty:

Pauvre Marie, A 29 Ans!

There is a still prettier one of the same kind at New York. “My Mother.”

The simple language of the heart succeeds better in epitaphs than the “lettered Muse;” for grief at the dissolution of natural ties is usually more intense amongst the poor than the rich; this is notoriously manifest in the funeral ceremonies of Père la Chaise. How indeed should any lady not rejoice when her lord is dead, if she looks well in black? and my young lord who has popped into an estate and title, how should he be sorry? One ought not, however, to blame the rich for exhibiting the signs of woe even where the reality is deficient. The affectation of a virtue is better than the neglect of it; but I would not have it carried to a ridiculous excess. I have heard of a French nobleman here, a M. Brumoi, who, at his mother’s death, put his park into mourning; he craped his deer; put black fish in his ponds; and brought from Paris several barrels of ink to supply his _jets d’eaux_. And every one has read of the Danish count, who had his statue placed by the grave of his wife upon a spring, causing the water to spurt through one of the eyes. This statue exists yet near Copenhagen, and is called the “Weeping Eye.”--You will often see, amongst the poor of Père la Chaise, a half-grown girl kneeling by the fresh earth after the convoy has departed, or a mother lingering over the grave of her child.

I ascended the hill again by the east side. Only think of walking upon the very earth consecrated so often by the pious footsteps of Madame de Maintenon. It was here she poured out her little peccadillos into the bosom of Père la Chaise. She brought him out from his obscurity of schoolmaster of Lyons, and raised him to the dignity of confessor (some say rival) to the king. This father was of extraordinary personal beauty, and polished manners. When he had stepped into the graces of the king, he used the royal favour to enrich himself and his order. His style of living was magnificent, his equipages gorgeous, and in his costly banquets he rivalled the most sumptuous monarchs. To gain admission to his soirées was a favour solicited by princes. He was crafty, wily, subtle, and eloquent, says Duclos, and he alarmed or soothed the conscience of the king as best suited his interests. “He surprises his Majesty,” says Madame de Maintenon, “into the most boundless liberality, by the mere force of his eloquence.” The king pronounced himself, the _éloge_ of his confessor at his death in 1709. “He was always,” says his Majesty, “of a forgiving temper.”

On the site of these tombs, were once his pleasure grounds, and here the proud Jesuit often stood and looked down upon the court and city at his feet. The ruins of his elegant summer palace have perished, but a part of his orchard still remains. I walked up through a low valley, once the channel of a stream that had supplied the water pots, the cascades, and fountains of this reverend father. It is a romantic spot, but barren of trees and shrubbery. I would plant here the drooping willow, the cypress of hoary gray; and I would teach the jay bird, in its plumage of crape, to build here its nest; and, while ambition climbs the summit of the hill, the tender poets and the unfortunate lovers should come to be buried in this melancholy valley.

It is an advantage of eternity, that one may squander as much as one pleases of it without diminishing the capital. I found that the sun of our world was descending fast upon the roofs of St. Cloud, and I was obliged to run over an acre or two of graves with only a general stare. I hurried about in search of several I had heard distinguished for their splendour, but in vain. There should be a “directory” to tell us where the dead people live. I stumbled at last upon a whole plot of English, coteried apart near the wall side; General Murray; Cochran, brother of the admiral; Caroline Sydney Smith, my lady Campbell, Captain O’Conner, and other august personages. Their tombs are very genteel. An Englishman always seems to me (foolishly perhaps) a greater man than a Frenchman, and a Roman than a Greek, with the same degree of merit. The one, I believe, makes his wisdom pass for more, the other for less than it is worth. The great polish of the human character diminishes its solidity. Lord Chesterfield would have been a greater man if he had been more an Englishman.

Lord Bacon and Shakspeare both say, that a certain reserve of speech and manner adds to the general opinion of one’s merits. The Frenchman wastes, and the Englishman husbands his greatness; the latter hides his little passions, and does small things by deputy. Like Moses, he retires into the mountain, and bids Aaron “speak unto the children of Israel.” But the truth is, there is an illusion in my mind at present about all that is English; I have been so long over head and ears in French people. I read over these English graves as a studious school-boy his lesson.

Whilst perusing this page of the great volume, I came with astonishment, not expecting such a rencontre, upon the names of several of our own countrymen, and even of our own townsmen. Of Philadelphia were William Temple Franklin, Adam Seybert, our old congressman and chemist, Samuel Rawlston and Jacob Girard Koch; he who used to “breakfast with the Houris and quaff nectar with Jove at noon.” His great regret, they say, in dying, was an apprehension that there might not be good dinners in the other world. There is here an eloquent and simple tomb upon the grave of Miss Butler, who was cut off in the expectation of unusual accomplishments and in the roseate freshness of her youth.

“Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L’espace d’un matin.”----

I remarked, also, the names of K. M. Smith, New York, Harriet Lewis, New London, Frances Morrison, Kentucky, Francina Wilder, and Mrs. Otis of Boston. A cypress is planted by the grave of Dr. Campbell of Tennessee, and some fresh garlands are hung upon its branches. Who is he who has won these pious attentions from the hands of strangers? I am now writing from the inkstand which once belonged to him, and which I will put with my relics. I am lodging in his room, and with the person who attended his fatal illness. She gave me his biography as follows: “He was always good, always polite, and every one loved him;” and then she burst into tears.

The last grave I looked upon, I will now read to you: “Died, March 1st, 1832, Frances Anne, Countess Colonna de Walewski, daughter of the late John Bulkeley, Esq., of Lisbon, widow of the late General Humphreys, of the United States, minister in Spain and Portugal.”--I could write a romance at the foot of this monument. I lingered here until the last glimmerings of day faded, and night covered all but the bleak and snowy marble. I then descended the hill, and with many a solemn reflection, reached my solitary lodge in the Faubourg St. Germain.

Let us reason awhile about the grave. The custom of locating grave yards in cities and towns, so universal in America, has been discontinued in nearly all these old countries of Europe. France has set the excellent example, which has been followed through the continent, and the large towns of England--London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and several others--and all the world acknowledges its necessity. Such a measure was not adopted here until the agency of burying grounds in corrupting the air and producing disease, was proved by numerous examples and experiments.

An account of these, contained in several hundred pages, was published by Maset, secretary to the Academy of Dijon, the one-twentieth part of which would fill with terror all those who live in dangerous contiguity with a city grave-yard. It is high time your towns in America should give this subject a serious attention. Your grave-yards are multiplying in number and extent prodigiously in the midst of communities which are likely, in a few years, to be numerously increased. Your Pottsville, which is about eight years old, has already six grave-yards, whose population nearly equals that of the village.

All those who die upon the railroads, mines, and canals, for twenty miles around, have themselves carried in and buried in town--as if to be convenient to market. A citizen of Pottsville does consent sometimes to reside in the country during his lifetime, but he does not think it genteel to pass his eternity out of town; and your miner soothes himself with the consolation that though he has many toils and perils in life, he will one day come out of the ground to be buried in Pottsville. It is in their infancy that such evils ought to be averted. They are more easily prevented than cured. And there are enough of other considerations besides health to urge the importance of the subject.

Every body knows the indecent irreverence and general inattention with which grave-yards are regarded in towns and cities. In many of them monuments are defaced and scribbled on, and the place even desecrated sometimes by the obscenity and brutal violation of visitors. To prevent this, they are often enclosed by high walls and rendered invisible. If the object were to forget one’s ancestors there could not be a better contrivance. It is worth while to squander away the best parts of a city to bring one’s deceased parents into oblivion or contempt! That this is the case cannot be denied. The citizen, the clergyman, the grave-digger, and the sexton, are all affected by the bones of their ancestors alike.

Who first brought this system of vampyrism into use? It was at least modern. At Babylon they buried the dead in the valley of ... look into your Bible; and the valley of Jehoshaphat, I believe, was out of town. The interment of the dead within the precincts of the city was prohibited at Rome by law. The Greeks had the same regulation, and forbade expressly that the temples of the gods should be profaned by the sepulture of the dead. The Achæans buried only one man in town, Aratus--look into your Plutarch. If they had governed our city councils they would have buried us all out of town, except “Benjamin Franklin, and Deborah his wife.” The first Christians followed the Pagans and Jews in this, and for a long time graves were not allowed to encroach upon the sanctuary of the church. But some pious and popular bishop having died in the course of time, I presume they buried him with his church, as they bury an Indian with his canoe; and then another and another, or perhaps some fat and lazy priest wished to have his dead family about him for the convenience of praying upon them. Who is going all the way to Père la Chaise? So he could just step out in his gown and slippers and dismiss the poor soul to purgatory, and then step back again to his _soupe à la Julien_. And then came avarice to sanction this convenience. We can heap generation upon generation and sell a church-yard over and over again to eternity.

Make me chief burgess of Pottsville, and I will provide a choice piece of ground overlooking the village, and apart from the living habitations--on a single plot, and with separate apartments for the several denominations; and this I will cultivate tastefully with trees and shrubbery, and lay it out with agreeable walks.

I will make the dead an ornament, instead of a nuisance and deformity to the living; and I will bind your erratic population to the soil, by the decency with which I will bury their fathers and mothers; and by improving the kindred affections, I will improve, at the same time, the moral and religious feelings of the community. I will carve out, from one of your rugged hills, a decent and solitary retreat, where we may sometimes escape from the business, the anxieties and frivolities of life, and where we may peruse the last sad page of our own history, upon the silent and solemn annals of the grave.

In a place of decent appearance, and of public resort and ample space, we have the means (which we have not in our shabby and contracted grave-yards of the towns) of paying honour to the memory of an eminent citizen, or public benefactor; a duty in which we are negligent beyond the example of all other nations; and emulating the princely splendour of Europe in other things, we cannot excuse ourselves upon the republicanism and simplicity of our tastes, in this. Are the virtues of a great man so graven upon our memories, that he needs no other memorial? And are we all so virtuous, ourselves and our children, as to need no excitements to emulation?--To do honour to those who have performed eminent service to the community, is as well a commendable policy, as it is an act of justice and gratitude. It produces, in generous minds, a rivalship of honourable actions. It makes one good deed the parent of a numerous offspring. It is the seed of virtue--the grain of corn that rewards the cultivator with a full and ripened ear.

On the other hand, neglect, the cold neglect that is practised in our country, freezes the current of public spirit; and the people, who are guilty of it, need not complain that they are barren of generous actions, or that they, who have been fortunate in acquiring wealth, should choose to spend it rather upon selfish and transitory interests, than upon schemes of permanent public utility. Even our savages pay respectful honours to the dead, and a luxury of grave-yards is of all antiquity; it has even the most ancient scriptural authority in favour of it.--“Thou art a mighty prince, in the _choicest_ of our sepulchres bury thy dead.”--(Genesis).

I will now put an end to this long letter, with a few of the French regulations for the inhumation of the dead of cities and towns.

All cemeteries are required to be located without the towns, avoiding low, wet, or confined situations. On an elevated site, the fœtid emanations are dispersed by the winds. The dead bodies are to be covered with, at least, four feet of earth, and placed in such a manner that there may be four feet of interval between each, and two feet at the head and foot--about fifty-two square feet for each corpse. It is known, from experiment, that animal decomposition requires about four years, and the grave-yard is to be made four times greater than appears necessary for the number of persons to be interred in it.

The graves are disposed of in perpetuity, or in temporary cessions of six years; the former at twenty-five dollars per metre, of three feet; two metres are required for a grave; and the latter at ten dollars. _These_ are disposable anew at the end of the term--the first occupant having the “refusal.” From the extent of the grounds, this has not yet been required. But Death has nearly filled up the whole space, and is looking out for additions to his estate. A miser, who lives next door to him, taking advantage of his necessity, asks, for three-quarters of an acre, twelve thousand dollars!

All the funerals are in the hands of a company, who have their office, keep a registry of the dead, and attend to all their wants. Companies having no souls, the French fulfil the scriptures, and “let the dead bury the dead.” Having its stock of carriages, grave-diggers, weepers, and all such things on hand, the company is enabled, they say, to bury cheaper than the individuals themselves. It has, besides, a fixed price for the rich, which enables it to eat an annual dinner, and to bury the poor for nothing. The dinner is, no doubt good, but the burying of the poor, as all things else which are done for nothing in Paris, is performed in a niggardly and heartless manner. If you make any such provision for your new grave-yard of Pottsville, let it honour the hand that confers it. Give the poor man his priest, and apply to a life, perhaps, of unmerited sorrows--a little extreme unction.

The leaves, nipt by the first frosts, are already strewed thick upon the Luxembourg; and your hills are, no doubt, putting on their variegated hues of the autumn. My advice is, that you dissolve the cold, by putting largely of the anthracite upon your grate; that you bring out your old wine, and be joyful, while your knees are green--see where Père la Chaise stands beckoning from the heights of Mont-Louis.--I give my compliments to the girls, and say you sweet, good night.

LETTER XIV.

The Louvre.--Patronage of the Fine Arts.--The Luxembourg.--The Palais des Beaux Arts.--The Sêvres Porcelain.--The Gobelins.--Manners of the common People in Paris.--A fair Cicerone.--Her remarks on Painting.--The French, Flemish, and Italian Schools.--English Patronage of Art.--The New National Gallery.--Sir Christopher Wren.--A tender Adieu.

PARIS, Nov. 14th, 1835.

I have passed the morning in the _Louvre_, and have nothing in my head but galleries and pictures; and you must expect nothing else through the whole of this letter. You may dread a long letter too, for you know, the less one is conversant with a subject the more one is likely to reason upon it. In the Louvre, the pictures occupy both walls of a room, thirty feet wide by a quarter of a mile long, and consist of about twelve hundred pieces of native and foreign artists. In the same building also is the _Musée des Antiques_ containing 736 statues, with bronzes and precious vases; also the _Musée des Desseins_, with 25,000 engravings; the _Musée de la Marine_, with models of vessels; and the _Musée Egyptien_, with collections of Egyptian, Roman and Grecian antiquities. An exhibition too is held here, from the first of March till May every year, of the works of living artists, painters, sculptors, engravers, architects, and lithographers.

Paris, in patronising the fine arts, has taken the lead of all the cities of Europe. The government spends annually large sums, and extensive purchases are made by the royal family, and wealthy individuals. They do not hoard their pictures in private houses, as in England, but place them, as in ancient Greece, in the public collections. They improve, therefore, the public taste and embellish their city. It is one of the means by which they entice amongst them rich foreigners, who always pay back with usurious interest the money spent for their entertainment.

There is, besides, a public gallery in the palace of the Luxembourg, which contains collections of paintings and sculpture of living French artists since 1825. The other museums are those of Natural History at the Garden of Plants, and the _Musée d’Artillerie_, containing all kinds of military weapons, used by the French from the remotest periods of their history; also the “Conservatory of Arts and Trades,” where models of every French invention, from a doll-baby to an orrery and steam-engine, have been preserved--the greatest museum of gimcracks, they say, in the world. This gives two courses of gratuitous lectures under distinguished professors, and has a free school in which young men are taught the arts.

To these you may add the “_Palais des Beaux Arts_,” begun in 1820, and now near its completion, which is destined to be one of the splendid miracles of Paris. The “Gallery of Architecture,” which is already rich, is to be increased with copies of the choice sculpture, statuary, and architecture of all the world, so that students will have no longer to run after the originals into foreign countries.