Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vo | Page 5

so many centuries.--The people
were accordingly as angry, I believe, as Frenchmen can be, when the
folly was first committed: the court, however, had wit enough to
convert the place into a sort of Vauxhall, with tents, fountains, shops,
full of frippery, brilliant at once and worthless, to attract them; with
coffeehouses surrounding it on every side; and now they are all again
merry and happy, synonymous terms at Paris, though often disunited in
London; and Vive le Duc de Chartres!

The French are really a contented race of mortals;--precluded almost
from possibility of adventure, the low Parisian leads a gentle humble
life, nor envies that greatness he never can obtain; but either wonders
delightedly, or diverts himself philosophically with the sight of
splendours which seldom fail to excite serious envy in an Englishman,
and sometimes occasion even suicide, from disappointed hopes, which
never could take root in the heart of these unaspiring people.
Reflections of this cast are suggested to one here in every shop, where
the behaviour of the matter at first sight contradicts all that our satirists
tell us of the supple Gaul, &c. A mercer in this town shews you a few
silks, and those he scarcely opens; _vous devez choisir_[Footnote:
Chuse what you like.], is all he thinks of saying, to invite your custom;
then takes out his snuff-box, and yawns in your face, fatigued by your
inquiries. For my own part, I find my natural disgust of such behaviour
greatly repelled, by the recollection that the man I am speaking to is no
inhabitant of
A happy land, where circulating pow'r Flows thro' each member of
th'embodied state--
S. JOHNSON.
and I feel well-inclined to respect the peaceful tenor of a life, which
likes not to be broken in upon, for the sake of obtaining riches, which
when gotten must end only in the pleasure of counting them. A
Frenchman who should make his fortune by trade tomorrow, would be
no nearer advancement in society or situation: why then should he
solicit, by arts he is too lazy to delight in the practice of, that opulence
which would afford so slight an improvement to his comforts? He lives
as well as he wishes already; he goes to the Boulevards every night,
treats his wife with a glass of lemonade or ice, and holds up his babies
by turns, to hear the jokes of Jean Pottage. Were he to recommend his
goods, like the Londoner, with studied eloquence and attentive flattery,
he could not hope like him that the eloquence he now bestows on the
decorations of a hat, or the varnish of an equipage, may one day serve
to torment a minister, and obtain a post of honour for his son; he could
not hope that on some future day his flattery might be listened to by

some lady of more birth than beauty, or riches perhaps, when happily
employed upon a very different subject, and be the means of lifting
himself into a state of distinction, his children too into public notoriety.
Emulation, ambition, avarice, however, must in all arbitrary
governments be confined to the great; the other set of mortals, for there
are none there of middling rank, live, as it should seem, like eunuchs in
a seraglio; feel themselves irrevocably doomed to promote the pleasure
of their superiors, nor ever dream of sighing for enjoyments from
which an irremeable boundary divides them. They see at the beginning
of their lives how that life must necessarily end, and trot with a quiet,
contented, and unaltered pace down their long, straight, and shaded
avenue; while we, with anxious solicitude, and restless hurry, watch the
quick turnings of our serpentine walk; which still presents, either to
sight or expectation, some changes of variety in the ever-shifting
prospect, till the unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us,
and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections must now give
way to facts for a moment, though few English people want to be told
that every hotel here, belonging to people of condition, is shut out from
the street like our Burlington-house, which gives a general gloom to the
look of this city so famed for its gaiety: the streets are narrow too, and
ill-paved; and very noisy, from the echo made by stone buildings drawn
up to a prodigious height, many of the houses having seven, and some
of them even eight stories from the bottom. The contradictions one
meets with every moment likewise strike even a cursory observer--a
countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a
dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a flat silver ring on her
finger, like our ale-wives; a femme publique, dressed avowedly for the
purposes of alluring the men, with not a very small crucifix hanging at