The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-12 00:00:00

. , ~ • . . 1 11 44 13--------"—extyarig. mptikey---9;:enigthee . •• • Ass 'l' 11 E PRESS JUNE 12, 1858. On the subject of more particularly of the districts included between the author has a good deal to fittraturt. barrier wall and the fortifications built by Louis Philippe e is two hundred ; there are upon n b t e h r e o p f ari n s e stag w pieces produced every Beyond those fortifications, you find nearly everywhere . open ground , merely strewn here and there with villas and thirty-three theatres, though onelhyapefolsrt.y-yi‘oiairer. other houses, until the country is fairly reached, 1. Aspects of Paris. By Edward Copping. • • • • * • Roman Catholic churches and Copping is as severe as might b ee xpected upon The residents in the suburbs of Paris are not subjected London : Lon sus. to the duties collected at the bureaux I have just alluded the moral tone which pervades these dramas,-- Belgium, Wayside Pictures through France, Holland, to. They have other and special octroi dues to pay, but these are comparatively light. They are enabled in con- Belgium, and up the Rhine. By Robert Bell. sequence to buy many necessary articles at a lower price upon their exhibition of horronrotofbrifees what alsohor is horror's h an ea d lthy, their an g d en n e a ra tu l ml.avoidance He than they could within the walls. This fact , and the cheapness of house rent, are the causes which induce 1. TROUGH European travel is wellnigh exhausted, them to live in a sta te of semi outlawr y from the ca p ital. ju st, sbe London : Routledge. surdity which equally pervades French n ove l s,. as regards the beaten track and the great centres The great feature of the outer boulevards, but which has not received its due castigation in of civilization, something still remains to be which run parallel with the barrier-wall, is the either case : gleaned by the diligent explorers of neglected a l mo st uninterrupted line of eating-houses of Almost every sentimental hero dth Paris stage has places. Leading off from the great London every kind (in one place ninety to the mile), a habit of talking in super - filial tame of his mother. N o matter how much misery have neOseted her; an matter streets there is many a cul de sac which we pass phenomenon explained by the cheapness of pro- h ma w tter h h d oer . long be may he may Ism saesed.her; no. day after day for years without ever thinking to visions beyond the octroi barrier. A dinner of is o for u utifully he may have acted towards her ;wa wire explore it; and there are districts of all great soup, bread, meat, vegetables, and dessert, with ever on his lips, accompaniel by the bhabberings of cities—byways from all high-roads—which the half a bottle of wine, may be had for less than a hysterical pathos ordinary traveller passes in his hurried scamper franc ; but Mr. Copping does not appear to have There is a tendency among French &sande authors to without thought or interest, but which, perhaps, had courage to try it. " Beyond the barrier" is exagerate most passions, but sews is they mamas afford an insight into the habits and charac- the residence of the workman who wishes for language than this. h Their stage hero Mb* of his mother its h a e n r gir e g o e om w ea tch tho w r h o e u n h c i on i t o r d as i ted Irkh o. I ts enn wou d l uc d t ie t a o d war y is es teristics of not quite unimportant sections of cheap lodgings, and of the mauvais sujet who society. What an amusing picture of London does not like the surveillance of the police. It to believe that she I g ias y unlim u ited hrikkince over him, but might be constructed, if, on the principle of the is a sort of Alsatia, to which the vicinity of the on the very first occasion when that liatluence ought to physical geographers, who exhibit on their maps country is found advantageous : operate, it becomes without power. He *apt' the tsuder the distribution of animal life—the Arctic regions b eing w:io has so much affection for him, mad runs away Recently a step has been taken which, it is said, is to afte as.rich in bear and seal, the torrid zone as the be the precursor of others, intended to place the outskirts m illstoner some wicked hussey who has no more heart than a arid nurse of lions, and bristling Medusa-like of the capital on exactly the same footing as the rest of Paris audiences do not, however, share my views. With with serpents—some enterprising publisher were the city. them these gentlemen are special favourites. If jest to photograph the typical inhabitant of each o So ti r l emo o te t w h er t e th t e he ß se an o k u o ts f k F ir r ts an co a nsi o de i r d ed until a fewt before dying they do but allow ma mire to mope their metropolitan district ;—the City man on 'Change;lips, tears of condolence and sympathy ars at once ac- Po even us a d f isCou a nt, commercial b i ll s ma l e wu payable. the East India director, yellow before dinner in Th e great mone y e s t a bli s hment refus e d to send its clerks corded to them, no matter what amount of rassality they may have previously committed. Leadenhall-street, rubicund after dinner in Ty- on pilgrimages beyond the octroi walls. On the Ist of ...„ ~ burnia ;in Rotten-row, the elegant equestrian ; December, 1e157, it altered this system. The fortifications The f o llowing observations are eiso sensible, in Lambeth, the bone-boiler; in Bermondsey, a u re ok now t the boun daries Th of P d ari s . as recognised by the and may console those who are ' obliged to new district thatis h t o h w e ev c tl e r ,h l s oo w ke h d o v i ew the tanner ; in Regent-street, the j'iiineur ; in F rance . a French plays through the medium of the upon as u such dange e rou n s e every street the costermonger and the organist, traverse it are each armed with 'a six-barrel revolver. Olympic : with the donkey and the monkey respectively Imagine Islington or Clapham with such an evil repute- We are accustomed, I think, in England, to estimate appertaining to those professions. Lion, that Bank of England coilectors would be forced to foreign excellence of most kinds at by far too h'gh a Mr. Copping has diverged from the route of carry a similar weapon ! rate, substituting enthusiasm for discrimination, when the latter quality, in f iirness to our own countrymen, is . the conventional traveller somewhat after this The correspondents of our newspapers have most need e d. Nowhere has this been more strikingly fishion, though not to a very wide extent. pretty w e ll exhausted the subject o f New-year's seen t h an i n the j udgment we have passed upon what With the fashionable part of Paris—the inte- Day , with its expensive outlay for presents. It is call e d the constructive powers of the French dramatists. rior Boulevards, the Rue Rivoli, the Imperial is Boxing-day on a very increased scale, which We hold up the pieces of the Paris stage as model ills.- improvements, the public buildings, and the comprehends every person with whom you come trations of those powers, for all the world to copy. Do we not, in acting thus, give credit to the many, for what ornamental parts a the city in general—the in contact : is only rightly due to the few ? Numberless French public has become tolerably familiar. Mr. Bayle In no place are you safe from the banditti of the Jour dramas are undoubtedly put together with exceedirg 901. St. John, in his " Purple Pints," has delineated de l'An. Exhausted, perhaps, by the voluntary acts of Incident is dove-tailed into incident ; act is joined on to generosity which_ have been wrung from you during the act, with so much neatness and precision, that we are the students and the grisettes ; and readers of opo upon restaurant, you aa youan t e l hter, order h a e Eugene Sue will certainly recognize a tapis-franc d n e i] e r u n a i e c r g , you Th e ta g lc a e rc re o f a u refuge tnis y o ur i i n lesg al ia m h os F t a t r e i rapatecdrittoiclewelhieovdeetcliieareasasseorttaioen of f f t a certainßoule w v in - if they happen to see one. Mr. Copping has, smiles upon you as you sit down, he smiles upon you authors cut out plans of their pieces in wood before putting therefore, done well in avoiding these subjects, when you have finished your meal. Nay, so amiable has them on paper! Tint a good majority of the pieces pro- and has managed to give a certain air of novelty he become, that he brings you, unasked, an orange, which duced upon the French stage, including almost all those to the " aspects "he has selected. His Parisian he, still smiling, trusts you will accept. That orange of a so-called high class, such as moralizing M. Nonni, . costs you a five-franc piece. Your digestion tieing thus or tender-souled M. Legnuve , favour us with, ate anything sojourn has imparted to his writing a certain disarranged, you make the best of your way to the cafe, but molds of the constructive art. French grace and vivacity which render his and take a petit verre, or a little black coffee, exactly of The fact is, that nearly all the productions of the Paris. pages more agreeable reading than many works course as you would take a blue pill or a dose of quinine. stage which gain a footing upon the London boards hate of greater solidity and pretension. His book is But here too you meet with a smiling garcon. who Wig- been carefully selected from among a mass of others. It short—it contains something that is new—and it ingly offers you a cigar tied up with a piece of red ribbon. is their special excellence which has secured for them a. Your band is again in your pocket. For cigars cost as free passage across the Channel. is nowhere wearisome. More than this cannot much as oranges to-day. As a last resource you fly to • * • • • • be said. The author is rather frotte d'esprit than your reading-room, hoping to wrap yourself up in ajournal, To deny that many Paris plays are constructed with spirituel; and his material, though genuine, is and thus remain concealed. But the surly attendant, who considerable skill, or written with great talent, would be beaten out as thin as it will bear. Passages, of for a whole year has made you wait until six o'clock for absurd. Our own stage can show plenty of them " not which the following (from the chapter on "Paris the evening papers, and who has always told you that the translated, only taken from the French," as Sheridan p with i is engaged three deep, at once spies you out, and says, preserving all the features of their origin, tho ugh Plays" sm ile even ) is an example, are somewhat too abun - upon his face wishes you all sorts of arrayed in English dress. lam simply endeavouring to dant : compliments upon this moat auspicious day. show that a vast number of these plays, nay the majority. The number of new pieces which annually come to an Penny-a-liners in Paris are far more imag,ina- are as unshapely and ill-built craft as ever sailed o ver untimely end in Paris is, as I have said, very great. They fi ve and discursive than in London. They have dramatic waters. They pitch, they toss, they creak, they have knocked at the door of the public, but there has been their fi ct i t i ous f acts, o f t he same sort as with us, they will not answer the helm ; and if some few arrive no reply. They have knocked again, and with the same result. What is left for them, then, but to die miserably but they preface them with miniature treatises on safely in port amidst the hnrrahs of the spectators, the upon the door-step, of cold and neglect? Let us leave botany, love, or physiology, according as the rest break to pieces on the rocks, or miserably run aground them there. The undertaker's men will soon arrive and " fact" is an enormous gooseberry a charcoal- upon the sands. deposit them in the tomb. it is not for our sacrilegious suicide, or five children at a birth. Their literary, band, to disturb them in that hallowed resting-place. Sue ficient it will be, perhaps, if we make acquaintance with like their culinary, dishes, are alway ala some- Mr. Copping has a light and livel y pen, and the art of avoiding what is heavy orhac kneyed- ' the fortunate few who have passed the portals of sticcms, thing or other, and the original nucleus of fact Should he take a fanc y to " do" View*, and taken up their abode in the temple within. Let us, or the primitive stratum of meat are equally diffi- Pekin, or Timbuctoo, we shall certainl. . therefore, give them awhile our attention. cult to recognize in both. Mr. Copping gives a point of renewing our acquaintance wi him. However, there is better stuff than this in the some specimens of these which are very amusing, 2. The greater portion of Mr. Bell's volume volume. The topics touched upon are, Paris but too long for extract. has been before the public for some years, and we beyond the Barrier, Paris on New-year's Day, Th e " Ch ea p Literat u re of P ar i s " s ee ms t o b e the r efore feel that we are absolved from the ne- Paris penny-a-lining, the Cliffs of Belleville, conducted on the same principle as that of Lon- cessity of a lengthened notice of it. The repub- Cheap Literature, the Bois de Boulogne in its don, and to be remarkable for the same amount lished part describes a tour in Normandy .and present aspect, the new suburb of La Varenne, of well-spiced horrors as our own penny papers Brittany, with interesting notices of the principal a fete at St. Cloud, and a sketch of the career of present to their readers. The chapters on the towns. Compared with the travellers who betake Jean Journet, a poetical apostle of Fourierism. Bois d e Boulogne and the "new colony" we must themselves to Germany and Switzerland, the Beyond the outer boulevards of Paris runs a pass over. The Cliffs of Belleville are well number of those who travel in • Mr. Bell's foot- wall of sixteen miles in length, completely sur- enough described, but we question whether there steps is probably limited, and he has much to say rounding the city, at the gates of which is levied was much necessity for talung up the subject. A which if not altogether fresh, is at any rate . the octroi on all articles of merchandise and con- similar remark applies to the chapter on " A freshly told, and described in an independent and sumption which pass in : Neglected Poet." We cannot see anything in the unconventional spirit. With the new part of the . The suburbs, which have since grown tip beyond that history of M. Journet to distinguish him from book, which contains a tour up the Rhine and wall, are looked upon as irregular, outlawed districts by any other crack-brained enthusiast, and Mr. visits to several of the German watering places, the inhabitants of the city properly so-called. These c o , s • . ing s account of his conversation will hardly we are not so well satisfied. The author . appears suburbs are, in fact, with but a few exceptions, the abiding . IF places of poverty, respectable or otherwise, and of labour m uce eny one to make his acquaintance or pur- to have travelled more rapidly, that re- in its grimiest and least inviting aspects. I am speaking chase his works. tion is neither so useful nor so new as and his in A