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of England and Henry VIII.'s device wrought in gold, in the middle of the breast. They carry the Gothic halbert-and their false collars are their only link with the present century. It is Bluebeard turned porter." Proceeding through Wapping, when visiting the docks and the Tunnel, he is particularly shocked by the rags and wretchedness he beholds. "After seeing the rags of London, Callot appears to be the draughtsman of a fashion-book. A man thrusts himself head foremost into a network of tatters, seeks an issue for his four limbs, and considers himself dressed. There sometimes remains, of a pair of trousers, nothing but a button-hole; he philosophically puts it on." Pursuing this strain of humorous exaggeration, he returns to Leicester Square, and exhibits the excursionists preparing for the opera. It was a Great extra night-so said the four-foot-long placards. A certain number of tickets had been taken; the Frenchmen dined early, and were requested to dress themselves for the solemnity. Of what then took place, Mr Wey gives the following ludicrous account:

"When the moment for departure arrived, most of our countrymen, having brushed their left sleeve with their right, and their right with their left, declared themselves satisfied with their toilet. They uttered loud cries when informed that a morning costume was inadmissible, and that dresscoats were indispensable. Many Parisians are persuaded that, outside of Paris, the whole universe is the country. These artless persons had come dressed in a light paletot, with a wide-awake beaver for a head-dress. A fowling-piece or a fishing-rod was alone wanting to complete their costume.

"There was a prodigious demand for black trousers. Dark frocks had their skirts doubled and sewn back, so as to imitate dress-coats. The hotel was converted into a dressing

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made his appearance shaved, gloved, and superbly attired in a magnificent blue silk waistcoat and a splendid scarf sprinkled with nasturtiumcoloured spots.

"Ah mon Dieu!' cried the guide, 'this gentleman will never be admitted.

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Really, unless I put on a low dress, ?' replied the well-dressed man, with much dignity.

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Sir, only black and white are admitted. Your waistcoat is blue, your cravat is shocking.'

"So the waistcoat had to be taken off, and the elegant scarf replaced by a white pocket-handkerchief folded cravat-wise.

"I must look hideous,' cried the patient.

"You look like somebody who has had leeches on his neck; but you are properly dressed.'

"When the caravan had satisfied etiquette, it was found that it had by no means sacrificed to the Graces: its appearance was simply burlesque."

The excursionists fagged through their week of laborious pleasure, and took their departure for that city whence no Frenchman, had he his free choice, would ever be long absent. Mr Wey found himself alone in the World of London, and set about delivering his credentials. A friend had given him a letter of introduction to an English merchant, Sir William P-, esquire (like most of his countrymen, Mr Wey finds an unaccountable difficulty in mastering the distinctions of English style and title), whose address was at the Reform Club. hours after he had left his card in Pall Mall his visit was returned, with an invitation to dine upon the mor

row.

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Mr Wey renders full justice to English cordiality and hospitality. "Nothing can be more courteous, obliging, and safe, than the social intercourse of the English. Their manner is simple, frank, obliging without obsequiousness, serviceable without pomp, and friendly without protestations." To meet his French guest, Sir William had an officer of the Guards and a literary man. "In England," says Mr Wey, one recognises military men by their gentleness of voice and manner, by a certain graceful bearing, and by the care they

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take to abstain from any roughness or blantness that might remind one of the barrack-room. Moreover, as these officers pass their leaves of absence travelling, and do duty in all the five divisions of the globe, they can talk of other things besides equipments, promotion, and forage." The sideblow is evidently for Mr Wey's military countrymen, who, however gallant and efficient in the field, do not shine either by the elegance of their manners, the gentleness of their tone, or their general accomplishments and information. A graceful guardsman, who had made the tour of Europe, swore not at all, and smelt of millefleurs, must have struck Mr Wey as the most extraordinary contrast to the usual run of French officers, loud voiced, untravelled, and usually redolent of the execrable weed dispensed to them by their national regie de tabac. The literary guest, happening to be well acquainted with Hungary, had been deputed thither, although not a professional journalist, by an important English newspaper, to watch the progress of the campaign and report upon it. His letters were, of course, to contain his own impressions, and the truth-as far as he could ascertain it-and they would regulate the opinions of the journal to which they were addressed. In this instance, as in many others, Mr Wey is struck by the vast chasm that separates English and French ideas and usages. "If," he says, "a French newspaper were rich enough to incur such an expense as this, it would say to its correspondent: Go, examine, and cut up the Hungarians; or, Observe everything, and celebrate the heroism of Hungary.' But as for travelling four or five hundred leagues to form an opinion independent of and superior to party feeling-such a thing will never be witnessed in France. And why? Because if the opinion were contrary to that of the subscribers to the paper, they would cease to take it rather than modify their ideas. The Englishman seeks knowledge, we prefer discussion; truth serves him, passion flatters us." During the dinner, the conversation turned on the old animosity between France and England, which the English present spoke of as an antiquated prejudice, extinct

amongst all classes. On this side the Channel we believe it really is extinct; we are more than doubtful of its being equally so upon the otherat least amongst certain classes. Mingled in society, individuals of the two nations harmonise well; they smile at each other's peculiarities, but the smile is good-humoured, and, like many other opposites, they blend cordially enough. But the French have not completely got rid of their dislike to the English as a nation in the first place, the majority have a sincere conviction, for which they are utterly unable to assign a foundation, of British perfidy; and then there are certain sore places that time as yet has but thinly skinned over, and a touch upon which stirs a Frenchman's bile as surely as a red rag irritates a fierce bull. Mont St Jean and St Helena are still ill-sounding names in their ears, notwithstanding England's generous efforts to obliterate their memory by the restoration of the hero's ashes, and by the little prominence she gives to her own glorious reminiscences. The French console themselves as best they may by execration of Sire Hoodson Loffe, and by the repetition of the two eternal hypotheses-If Grouchy had but come up-if the Prussians had not come up, the day was theirs. The greatest victories ever won might be turned into defeats by a single if. In the case of Waterloo the French have two, and are therefore entitled to reckon the battle as a double triumph. Mr Wey is not a hero-worshipper, and his patriotism sits lightly enough upon him, as becomes his slightly scoffing temper; but even he bristles up at the name of Wellington, upon whose statues he revenges himself and his country, bringing to the task his utmost critical ability-for whose exercise, we regretfully confess, our sculptors and artists have given him but too good an opening. "Not to speak," he says, "of the quantity of streets that bear the name of Waterloo or that of Wellington, it is to be observed that the hero's bust is in every museum, in every library-I found it even in the venerable and Gothic halls of the Bibliotheca Bodleiana at Oxford. In front of the Bank of England, Wellington is represented on horseback,

neither more nor less than a sovereign. But this is nothing. At the entrance of Hyde Park, at the extremity of a verdant lawn opposite to Lord Wellington's windows, Lord Wellington is represented naked, as Achilles, of colossal proportions. Achilles' legs are apart; with his left arm he presents a round buckler; about to hurl the dart, his formidable glance gives a terrible expression to his Anglo-Lacedemonian head. All this flattery appeared insufficient. An equestrian statue at the Bank, an allegorical statue in Hyde Park, busts everywhereit was pretty well! The victor of Waterloo could see himself from his bedroom as Achilles, but he could not behold himself from the windows looking upon the street. Struck by this great inconvenience, some influential persons, patrons of a statuary in quest of a job, opened a subscription for a new monument to the old duke. A shower of gold was the reply to their appeal, and an equestrian statue was perched upon the triumphal arch in front of Apsley House (the Wellington hotel). This statue is so ridiculous, that the English themselves cannot look at it without laughing. The worst statue that has been seen in France in our time, that of the late Duke of Orleans in the courtyard of the Louvre, was a masterpiece compared to this indecent caricature of the Duke of Wellington. An old French officer, who went with me to Hyde Park, examined the monument with gloom upon his brow; he cannot forget Waterloo. We are revenged,' he at last murmured with a satisfied air. In spite of the exaggerated honours thus clumsily rendered to a living man, ridicule never attained that sacred head. How different from France. . . . The Waterloo flourish of trumpets, sounded in London, everywhere, unremittingly and in every key, for thirty-eight years, diminishes the greatness of the English nation. This intoxication would seem more appropriate in the case of a people who, having never gained but one battle, could not recover from its surprise, or patiently wear a glory of which it had despaired."

...

We quite agree with Mr Wey's implied opinion, that in his country such

hero-worship as was offered to Wellington would have ended in the degradation of its deity. Raising statues to living men, however great their merits, is a hazardous experiment, apt to be attributed to adulation on the part of the projectors, and to cast ridicule on the person so honoured. And it is doubly hazardous in a country where such a strange fatality attaches to monuments of that kind, where some are perched upon the tops of columns, too high to be seen, and with lightning-conductors running up their backs; and where others, of which a nearer view is permitted us, are of such deplorable execution that we wish them further. To say nothing of minor failures and shortcomings, it may be safely averred that no city in the world, out of China, possesses three such specimens of bad taste in art as the Nelson column, the equestrian statue on Hyde Park arch, and that of George IV. in Trafalgar Square. They are almost enough to make us bow to the opinion somewhere expressed by Mr Wey, that the English are a people to whom art is foreign. If we remember that designs for such monuments are usually submitted to committees or bodies of men supposed to be eminent for artistic taste and knowledge, we certainly obtain a very low standard for the national feeling and judgment in matters of art. An opportunity now occurs, in the monument to be raised to the memory of the defunct Exhibition, of partly redeeming past blunders. It remains to be seen what profit will be made of it. The safest plan, unquestionably, would have been to have accepted a piece of sculpture which has already gone through the ordeal of public opinion, and come out triumphantly. Nothing could be more suitable, as a record of the crystal glories of 1851, than a statue which was one of the most prominent and admired objects then exhibited. Coeur-de-Lion

would have been a noble and appropriate memento of a remarkable event and year. It has been objected to, we believe, on account of its militant character, which clashes, it is said, with the eminently pacific nature of the gathering of nations intended to be recorded. The objection is trivial.

Strength and beauty, combined in the image of a king of Norman blood, it is true, but of thoroughly English heart and fame, would constitute no inappropriate emblem of an event of which England's power and the beauties of art were the two most prominent features. That sort of zeal for the fitness of things may be exaggerated, and we greatly doubt whether the projectors of the new monument -headed, we believe, by that distinguished civic functionary whom Mr Wey has promoted to the occasional presidency of the Privy Council-will mend Marochetti, or get up anything half as fine as his statue of Richard. We sincerely wish they may, for we have plenty of sculptural monstrosities and commonplace statues disfiguring our streets and squares, and need not see another thrust into Hyde Park.

To return, however, to the Wellington worship. Cannot Mr Wey, whom we do not proclaim a genius, but who is certainly, although sometimes more witty than wise, no fool, read the riddle for himself? We dare say not. His French vision needs the aid of English glasses. Ours are at his service, if he will condescend to avail himself of them. But those of almost any Englishman would do as well, and we are quite sure that his friend "Sir William P-, Esquire," or the fragrant guardsman, or the Hungarian correspondent, would have explained the matter to him, over the sherry cup he so warmly admires, just as we shall. "In France," he observes, "where the fear of ridicule is carried to an excess, no glory could have withstood such a regimen, or have passed with impunity through such deplorable manifestations." That we fully believe; and it is precisely because glory, as a Frenchman understands the word, was far from being the sole origin of the homage paid to Wellington, that the ridicule attaching to certain exaggerated manifestations did not touch him, and that he escaped unscathed even from his own statues. The hero-worship of which he was the object, was the expression of two feelings profoundly rooted in the hearts of Englishmen feelings that, in no small degree, have Contributed to England's greatness. It was the expression of gratitude for

services rendered, and of admiration of the steady and unswerving performance of duty. By no adroit flattery or personal fascinations did Wellington win the esteem, respect, and love which his countrymen took every means of testifying during his life, and which, upon his death, burst out in a demonstration such as was never before witnessed in this country. The Duke was unskilled in those arts by which Napoleon so well knew how to fetter a friend or win over an enemy. His nature did not lend itself to them. He was stern, severe, abrupt, laconic; although far from incapable of kind acts, there was no spontaneous flow of generosity in his character, which was essentially hard and rigid. But though he had possessed even fewer of the qualities which in most countries are almost indispensable to great popularity, he would still have attained this in England; for the two excellent reasons that no difficulties, however complicated, ever prevented his discriminating the path of honour and duty, and that no dangers, however great, ever deterred him from following it. More than "empty honours and loud huzzas," more than victories won and cities captured, are such qualities prized by the nation which you, Mr Wey, flatteringly describe as "a large class of old scholars competing for the prize of good conduct."

After staring at the statues of his country's former antagonist, Mr Wey felt desirous to see something of the soldiers who had done such great deeds under his command; and one morning, before going to visit Westminster Abbey, he walked down to St James's Park with two or three friends, to see the guard relieved. He gives a humorous account of the impressions made upon him by the sight.

"It is difficult to believe how different everything is from France, as soon as one has crossed the Channel. In London, which is reached in a few hours, one feels at an enormous distance from Paris. The English regiments are so dissimilar to ours, that the difference strikes you even before you see them. The battalion was still concealed from us by the trees, when our astonishment was excited

by the singular noise that announced its approach. Imagine a sort of bear's dance, monotonous and frisking, played by a score of shrill fifes, the while that, upon the big drum, a man beats the time with his right hand, and, with his left, again decomposes it by whipping the sheepskin with a little broom. These harsh sounds mark" they know not when they are the step for companies of infantry, whose scarlet coats, too short in the waist, are surmounted by enormous white epaulets.

hand, the Englishman's inconvenient dependence upon his "prog" is at least counterbalanced by the fact that the French soldier, brilliant in the advance, when once baffled is disheartened and surely defeated, whilst of British troops it has been said, by the highest hostile authority, that

"In ranks remarkably serried, these slender and extremely tall foot-soldiers advance, jogging their shoulders, with an undulation of the body which periodically follows the sound of the broom upon the drum. The chain of their schako rests between their lower lip and their chin, which inconveniences them, renders them motionless, and appears as odd as if they marched with a spoon balanced on their nose. Around the platoons are the officers and sergeants, all adorned with epaulets of heavy bullion, and carrying long canes with ivory knobs. The musket is carried conveniently, resting against the left breast, and slanted a little backwards. And so they pass us by, soldiers balancing their bodies, fifes squealing, and big drum playing rub-a-dub, with accompaniment of little broom."

Their first surprise over, the Frenchmen began to laugh and to talk of the African light infantry; and an English friend who accompanied them, and who took their mirth good-humouredly, admitted that he thought the little French infantrymen better for service, capable of enduring greater fatigue, and of putting up with worse rations. There is some truth in this: the English soldier is too much of a belly-god-too dependent upon his beef and beer, and apt to sink in spirits if long deprived of them; whereas the brio and natural vivacity of the Frenchman support him under much privation. That the Duke was thoroughly impressed with the importance of feeding his army well, is manifest from the tight hand he kept over the commissariat in the Peninsular War. His despatches show that there was no branch of the service upon which he more severely visited any dereliction of duty. On the other

beaten." As to the stature of the Guards (whose thews and sinews, bone and muscle, Mr Wey underrates if he supposes they are not in full proportion to their inches), we attach no more importance to it than to the additional height given to them by the bearskin that burthens their brows, and which, however picturesque it may be considered to look in Birdcage Walk or St James's Palace Yard, we sincerely trust will be exchanged for some more rational head-dress whenever the Households are again sent upon foreign service. "C'est le cœur qui fait le grenadier," Napoleon said and the little voltigeurs whom he formed and favoured, proved, upon many a bloody field, the truth of the words. Upon this principle, Mr Wey is perfectly justified, as a Frenchman, in preferring the brisk little Vincennes chasseur, as explosive as his own cartridges, and with two or three Bedouins spitted on his sabre-bayonet, to the long-legged, sedate-looking, carefully pipeclayed soldier of the British guards. And we are sure he will not feel annoyed at our expressing, as Englishmen, our perfect conviction that no infantry in Europe, whether its device be the imperial eagle of France, the double eagle of Russia, or any other variety of that military bird, would have the remotest chance of standing their ground, in equal numbers and on a fair field, against her Majesty's household brigade. Long may it be, say we, ere the experiment be tried.

At Westminster Abbey, two things greatly shocked Mr Wey-the exclusion of Byron, and the system of intra-mural interments. He was horrified to find the gravedigger at work in a frequented thoroughfare, and almost amongst the legs of the cabhorses. One Sunday afternoon, "on approaching," he says, "the side door of the Abbey, which was not yet open, I saw a labourer digging a trench, such

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