The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862. Various
yield vast encouragement. There are more odd characters ensconced in the nooks of this capital than anywhere else in Europe;—men who have become unconsciously metropolitan friars—living in celibate dens, haunting libraries and gardens, subsisting on a bare competence, and working out some darling theory or speculative problem; lonely in the midst of a crowd, and content in their self-imposed round of frugality and investigation.
I found the dissatisfied spirit of a young artist, whom I had known in America, here completely soothed; instead of feeling himself overpowered by the commercial spirit of his own country, one of a neglected minority, striving in vain to excite interest in a vocation too profitless for a community absorbed in trade, politics, and fashion, he now experienced the advantage of a recognized class, and the excitement of a fraternity in art; his life, studies, aims were those of hundreds as limited in their circumstances and as ideal in their aspirations; galleries, studios, lectures, models, criticism, illustrious men, noble examples, friendly words and true companionship, made his daily life, independent of its achievements, one of self-respect, of growing knowledge, and assured satisfaction. Without some pursuit thus enlisting the higher powers and justifying, as it were, the independent career of a resident, it is astonishing how the crust of selfishness gathers over the heart in Paris; the habit of living with an exclusive view to personal enjoyment, where the arrangements of life are so favorable, becomes at last engrossing; and a soulless machine, with no instincts but those of self-gratification, is often the result, especially if no ties of kindred mitigate the hardihood of epicurism.
We soon learn to echo Rochefoucauld's words as he entered Mazarin's carriage,—'everything happens in France;' and, like Goethe, cast ourselves on the waves of accident with a more than Quixotic presage,—if not of actual adventure, at least of adventurous observation; for it is a realm where Fashion, the capricious tyrant of modern civilization, has her birth, where the 'vielle femme remplissait une mission importante et tutelaire pour tous les âges;' where the raconteur exists not less in society than in literature; the elysium of the scholar, the nucleus of opinion, the arena of pleasure, and the head-quarters of experiment, scientific, political, artistic, and social.
Imagine a disciplined mind alive to the lessons of the past and yet with sympathy for casual impressions, free, intent and reflective,—and Paris becomes a museum of the world. Such a visitor wanders about the French capital with the zest of a philosopher; he warms at the frequent spectacle of enjoyable old age, notwithstanding the hecatombs left at Moscow and Waterloo, Sebastopol and Magenta; he reads on the dome of the Invalides the names of a hundred battle-fields; muses on the proximity of the lofty and time-stained Cathedral, and the little book-stall, where poor students linger in the sun; detects a government spy in the loquacious son of Crispin who acts as porter at his lodgings; pulls the cordon bleu at a dear author's oaken door on the quatrième etage in a social mood, and recalls Wellington's marquee on the Boulevard Italien, in the midst of the gay throng; notes the dexterity of a peripatetic shoeblack at his work; loves to sup in one of the restaurants of the Palais Royal, because there Dr. Franklin was entertained by the Duke of Orleans; remembers, at the church of St. Genevieve, that Abelard once lectured on its site; and, gazing on the beautiful ware in one of the cabinets of the Louvre, muses of the holy patience of Palissy. By the handsome quays and bridges of the Seine, he tries to realize that once only an islet covered with mud hovels met the wanderer's view. He smiles at the abundance of fancy names, some chosen for their romantic sound, and others for the renowned associations, which are attached to vocalist, shop, and mouchoir. He separates, in his thought, the incongruous emblems around him at this moment,—tricolor and cresent, St. George and the Lilies, 'God save the Queen' and High Mass, banners that have floated over adverse armies since the crusades,—amicably folded over the corpse of a French veteran! Nor are character and manners less suggestive to such an observer; if an American, he beholds with astonishment, after all he has heard of the proverbial courtesy of the French, women habitually yield the wall to men, and stops with ill-disguised impatience, on returning from an afternoon's ride, to have his carriage examined at the gate; contrasts the degraded state of the lower orders with the general urbanity and quietness of demeanor and the stern sway of political rule; marks the little crucifix and cup of holy water at the head of the peasant's bed, and the diamond cross on the lace kerchief of the kneeling empress; recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise of sentiment, and the exquisite mixture in their proceedings of tact, calculation, and geniality.
THE TRUE BASIS
Never at any stage of American history was there such a crisis of ideas as at present, and never was there such urgent necessity of setting promptly, vigorously and clearly before the people the great and new principles which this crisis is bringing to life. So vast are the issues involved, so tremendous their inevitable consequences, that we acquit of exaggeration the statesman who, in comparing even the gradual unfolding of the mighty past with this our present, exclaimed, 'Now is the first of the world's progress.'5
The reader is doubtless perfectly familiar with the fact that in the battle between the North and the South two opposite principles are involved,—the same which have been at the bottom of all wars for freedom, from the beginning of time. The one party believes that one portion of society must flourish at the expense of another part, of a permanently sunken class; while the other holds that history proves that the lot of all persons in a commonwealth is capable of being gradually ameliorated, and that in any case it is our sacred duty to legislate for the poor, on this basis, by allowing them equal rights, and making every exertion to extend the best blessings of education to them, and open to every man, without distinction, every avenue of employment for which he is qualified.
The Northern party, or that of equal rights and free labor, like their predecessors, hold many ideas which coming years will see realized, for—as has always been the case in these contests—science and learning are always on the liberal side. By a strange accident, for the first time almost in history, the Republican party is for once in its constituted rights, on its own ground, while the feudal or conservative wing form the aggressors. As of old, too, the Southern conservatives are enforcing theories once the property of their foes, who have now advanced to broader, nobler, and more gloriously liberal views.
For instance, the men of the South believe that labor and capital are still antagonisms. Now it is true enough that they once were, and that when the people in different ages first began to rebel against their hereditary tyrants, the workman was only a serf to his capitalist employer. That was the age when demagogues flourished by setting 'the poor' against 'the rich.' A painful, sickening series of wars it was, ending too often by labor's killing itself with its adversary. Then, a foul, false 'democracy' was evolved, which was virtually a rank aristocracy, not of nobility, but of those who could wheedle the poor into supporting them. Such was the history of nearly all 'radicalism' and 'democracy' from the days of Cleon and Alcibiades down to the present time.
But the enormous developments of science and of industry have of late years opened newer and broader views to the world. As capital has progressed in its action it is seen that at every step labor is becoming—slowly, but surely, as Heaven's law—identified with it. The harmony of interests is now no longer a vague Fourieristic notion,—for nothing is plainer than that the more the operative becomes interested in the success of the enterprise which employs him, the better is it for him and it. And all work in it—the owner and the employee. But then, we are told that 'the owner gets the profits.' Does he? Sum up the companies and capitalists who have failed during the past decade,—compare what they have lost with what they have paid their workmen, and then see who have really pocketed the money, and whether on the whole the capitalists have been more than properly repaid for their risks, and wear and tear of brains. To be sure we are as yet far from having realized a regularly arranged harmony of interests. But I see that here, even in this New England, there is nothing which the great and most intelligent capitalists desire more than this harmony, or a system in which every man's brains and labor shall be properly and abundantly remunerated, since they see (as all must see who reflect) that the nearer we approach such practical adjustment of forces, the less liable will they be to fail. And the world, as it has reflected that labor has flourished among barren rocks, covering them with smiling villages, under
Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson.