The following Table of Contents has been added for the convenience of the reader.
PARIS: AND LIFE THERE.
A MEMORY.
HESPERUS.
REVELATIONS OF WALL-STREET:
A WINTER SCENE.
THE OBSERVATIONS OF MACE SLOPER, ESQ.
LIVING ALONE.
THE TAXIDERMIST.
THE LITTLE PEASANT.
FAUNTLEROY VERRIAN'S FATE.
THE MAN AT THE DOOR.
THE VAN GELDERS OF MATINECOCK.
THE RAIN.
SONNETS:
LITERARY NOTICES.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
Vol. LVII. JANUARY, 1861. No. 1.
BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.
IN TWO PARTS.—PART I.
There is a subtle relation between the mere spectacle of Parisian life andFrench history, like that which exists between physiognomy and character.Careful observation of this sparkling tide on the surface will reveal the hiddencurrents that direct its play. The success of a man in France has been justlydescribed as achieved moitié par son savoir, moitié par son savoir-faire. Twocharacteristics at once impress an American in Paris—the provision forlife independent of homes, and the excessive tendency to system and detail:from the one comes a diffusive habit of feeling well adapted to pastime, butmost unfavorable to efficient individuality; and from the other, a devotion toroutine which secures results brilliant in themselves but limited in their consequences.The bare fact that we of England and America, however wide andintense be the sphere of our activity, instinctively revolve about a permanentcentre, hallowed and held by the triple bond of habit, love, and religion, givesa certain dignity and permanence to our interests and aims which nourishpolitical as well as personal consistency. Imagine the case reversed: suppose,like civilized Ishmaelites, we dwelt in a kind of metropolitan encampment, requiringno domicile except a bed-room for seven hours in the twenty-four, andpassing the remainder of each day and night as nomadic cosmopolites: goingto a café to breakfast, a restaurant to dine, an estaminet to smoke, a nationallibrary to study, a cabinet de lecture to read the gazettes, a public bath forablution, an open church to pray, a free lecture-room to be instructed, athronged garden to promenade, a theatre to be amused, a museum for science,a royal gallery for art, a municipal ball, literary soirée, or suburban rendezvousfor society. Would not the very custom of enacting all the functions of mundaneexistence, apart from the idea and the retirement of home, generalize ourways of thinking, make us more children of the time, and weaken the tenacity,[2]as well as