Baltimore daily commercial. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1865-1867, 1865-12-19
,ooR OLD LAMARTJNE

One of the most pitiable displays of impo
tent anger on the part of distinguished man,
tbot we have ever seen recorded, is that of
Lamartiqe in his recent attempt to ,crite dopn
tbis country in his "Entretiens Litteraires."
After making himself an object of pity, min
oled sith contempt, to his own countrymen,
through a series of years, by his mendicant
appeals, and his unmanly winnings he is now
aiming at similar bad emnence in America.
His grievance against us lies in the fact that
some four or five years since, when going
through his annual custom of "sending round
the hat" he sent it to the United States,
expecting, in his senile self conceit that we
should all rush for the privilege of putting in
our dollars in order that the illustrious char
latan might save his ancestral estate from the
hammer of the auctioneer.
Lamartine's expectations from this quarter
was not agreeably answered. Instead of the
rush he anticipated towards the aforesaid hat
on the part of our ''ferce democracie, his
agent could hardly beg enough to pay his own
expenses. The chagrin and disappointment
of Lamartine at the failure were such that he
omitted no opportunity of boring Americans
in Paris with his complaints. His views of
our Republic, which had once been gracious,
underwent an immediate change; and thence
forth he missed no opportunity of denouncing
us as aworthless and reprobate race.
The French invasion and conquest of Mexico
has recently given him a theme for new de-
nunciations of the people of the United States.
He starts upon the principle that 'the globe
is the property of man! the new continent of
America is the property of Europe" From
this he deduces the conclusion that the powers
of the old world ought to protect ''the Latin
race in America, and for this end must take
their position at the menaced point against us.
He sneers at the folly of permitting the United
States ''to blockade WORLD as they have
Just done. TO leave the mines and the pro-
ducts of America to the United States would,
in his Judgment, be to give them the mastery
of the world. This, he says, is the secret
thought of the Mexican expedition, which
neither England nor Spain, nor even France
itself, has understood. And, with charming
diffdence, he adds, that of this expedition,
81 alone in France have seen the general
utility
The disappointed mendicant winds up his
TRADE with an abuse of our people so extrava-
giant as to be ludicrous. He asserts that the
gigantic monuments Of the Aztecs have left
on the earth traces Of intelligence and of
force, very much superior, thus far, to the
exclusively unitarian edifces of the Americans
of the North = In our legislative assemblies
''brutalities Of gesture and Of the closed fist
take the place Of the beautiful moral rtoleace
which the great modern or ancient orators of
Europe exercise by aid Of persuasion or
logic" tI6y eremple, witness the persuasion
exercised by Louis Napoleon at the time of
the coup de'atN
As for Our newspapers they are only $50
many receptacles Of the charatanisms recon-
mendcd by the Barnums Of the press" pretty
well this, when we call to mind the fact that
nearly two-thirds of the advertisements III the
Paris newspapers are Of quack medicines. y
Our manners, according to Lamartine, are
brutal, and our liberty consists in doing all
that may be the most disagrecable 10 our
neighbors. They (we) love no one; no one
loves them
And in this strain the poor old Frenchman
feeds fat his grudge because We Americans
did not subscribe literally to the fund for re-
lieving him Of the personal liabilities incurred
through improvidence and selfish expenditure!
If such support does not shatter what is left
of the Empire of Macmillan, then we shall
begin to think it is not so shaky as we had
SnpnOSed.