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A PEEP AT PARIS.*

PERSUADED that for eleven hours out of the twelve, better ways may be found of employing the present, than keening for the tomb-ward carried past, or hushoing in a dream of anticipative paternity, the as yet unborn future, we are not (though considerably advanced in years) inclined to play too frequently the part of laudatores temporis acti. And yet, after all, the present age is (entre nous, dear reader) such a precocious puppy, so full of its own exquisite importance, so loud in its own praise, so blind to its many faults of foolishness or fribble inanity, that it sometimes puts us a little out of temper. When we note our young gentleman at the other end of the social board, twisting his mustaches, or caressing with a cautious nonchalance his overabundant tresses; when we hear his small voice, in genteel, short-nipped treble, squeaking forth to some mere digestive listener the tale of his own achievements, our patience gives way, and we cannot help crying out," Son Tom, or nephew Dick, whichever of you it is, that's keeping up such a clatter, send round the wine, and don't make a fool of yourself. Keep your small talk for the drawing room, my lad, and don't poison the parlour with it. Let there be one room in the house, which neither the name nor the breath of cigars or civilisation shall dare to pollute. I declare"- -here Tom, who is a little afraid of me, with all his impudence, spills the wine in his haste to obey-and Dick, the malicious ne'er-dowell, treads on my favourite spaniel's paw, so that the remainder of my objurgation is lost in the poor animal's howl of remon

strance

Well, the boys are at length gone up stairs; and as for Tim Brannagan, my wife's third cousin, who has come up from the county Meath to look after a little law suit of his, that he has been so soft or so stubborn as to get involved in-he's fast asleep. Poor man! he's dead tired, tramping over the city, keeping cantankerous witnesses, not in good humour, for that were impossible, but in town, which is just at present a matter of some importance; or hunting

*

agent and counsel from one court into another, and back again. I found him in the afternoon in the hall of the Four Courts, leaning breathless against the gas-woman,* and looking each successive minute to a different point of the compass, going circuit in fact, in a fashion of his own, round that eidolon of ugliness. "Well, Mr. Brannagan," said I, "you appear to be taking your ease; I hope things are going on to your satisfaction"-" Taking my ease, sir; you never made a greater mistake in your life. It's fairly killed I am, this blessed day, running all over the town, and here I was first better than an hour and a half looking for Counsellor O'Flatteral, and when I found him-what d'ye think, sir?the devil a taste of my brief he had read at all-and worse than that, if he had, the devil a use in it, for the cause won't come on till the day after to-morrow, the court is so busy. Well, after that, I went off across the water in search of the agent, and back again to Dorset-street, and from that to James's-street, and from that back here, where one of the old women told me he was just gone, in a covered car, with two other gentlemen, off to Kilmainham; so I gave him up, as a bad bargain, and now I'm looking out again for the counsellor, and resting myself against this born beauty, with the mould-four in her fist. Oh then, sir, it's an elegant stone, and a great pity to have it thrown away in this overgrown barn of a place. Pretty nonsense, indeed! as if an iron pillar wouldn't have done as well for the gas to spout from. I wish the big wigs would give it to me, I'd put it in one of my fields at home, 'twould be such a beautiful stone for the cows to scratch themselves against. That's what nature intended it for, and it's neither law nor equity to be keeping it here."'Twould be a proud day for

* It may be necessary to state for the information of our country readers, and of posterity, that the noble hall of our Four Courts is, in the winter (of what emblematical we are not prepared to say) afternoons, lighted by an unsightly figure in stone with a flaring gas-pipe held high in its uplifted hand.—ED.

* The Paris Sketch Book. By Mr. Titmarsh. London: Macrone, 1840.

you, Mr. Brannagan, that you carried such a prize as that to the country. Why 'twould be in all the papers :-Eloped Mr. Timothy Brannagan with the gas-woman of the Four Courts.-What would Mrs. Brannagan say to it ?". "Oh then, it's small reason she'd have, a little woman like her, to be jealous of such a giantess. And sure it's some recompense I'd be entitled to, taking such a trip to town, and learning practical geography on the hard flags at my time of life, and me such a fat man. I hadn't such a hunt since Mrs. Brannagan herself, and it's Kitty Molony she was then, was a little girl, and hid herself in the highest tree in the orchard, one day we were all playing hide-and-seek. 'Twas a long search we had after her, and frightened enough she was too, for it was not so easy to get down as to get up,-and the apple blossoms hid her so completely, she'd never have been found, only she cried out-and it's I was glad enough to hear her sweet voice, and when I got up into the tree, her cheek was like the apple blossoms themselves, a little paler than customary, but not deadly white, for she'd a brave spirit for a child, and a dawney little girl as she was then. (I wish the reader could have seen my true-hearted cousin, while talking sentiment thus, with his red face, and his portly form, his striped waistcoat and top boots) "Lord be praised! but those were the light times with us both; no law suits then, nor hunting attornies from one end of this big city to the other-No! I never was so knocked up, not the day the Kerry cow, your uncle gave me, took a tour to the sea side, all for diversion, the creature!—having a taste for the salt water, and that you know, is a pretty step from my place,but there's the counsellor"- -and stopping short in his harangue, Mr. Brannagan popped his handkerchief into his hat, clapped his hat on his head, and away with him after his counsel. I did not see him again till dinner was half over, when he made his appearance, and now, oh! blessed fruit of toil!-he sleeps soundly, oblivious alike of courts and causes, of Mrs. Brannagan, and the gas-woman.

As for my two remaining guests, Count Stiffinhisstock and Capt. Dieaway, they're deep in a discourse on foreign affairs. But I must introduce them to the reader. Count Stiffinhisstock is half a Pole, half a Frenchman, and if the rules of arithmetic and his own veracity be both unimpeachable, he must have been also originally a lusus naturæ. Certain it is, he was a colonel in Napoleon's

army, and as I have heard from him a thousand times, lost an arm in two different battles, one in Spain, and the other in Germany, and as he has one still remaining, I take it, in accordance with the aforesaid rules, that he must originally have had three arms. The remaining arm has only one finger, the rest being stumps, and with this digital relic, he is now, in my primest port, on my neatest mahogany, drawing a map of the proposed fortifications of Paris, while Capt. Dieaway, (whom I need not introduce, for every body knows him,) being a doctrinaire and a great admirer of Guizot, is watching jealously this inchoate sketch of the artistic Count. The back of the captain's chair being turned to the table, his head is of necessity retroverted, to overlook the operations of his antagonist; but this does not prevent his gulping hastily the remainder of his tumbler, (for though a doctrinaire, he drinks punch,) preparatory to a fierce attack on the ci-devant imperialist.

Well! they're deep in foreign affairs, and the argument will be a very pretty quarrel as it stands, without my interference; and my friend Brannagan's asleep, so what shall I do ?-why I'll even take a turn at foreign affairs myself in my own fashion. So I'll pull the bell. Mike-tread softly, Mike, or you'll waken Mr. Brannagan-bring over that small table that's in the corner, and se it by the fire, and bring me those two books in brown covers-the new ones, Mikethat lie on the side board; hand me that inkstand-and stay, let me see, go to my study and get me a few sheets of paper, and a couple of quills. And take my snuff-box to your mistress, and tell her to fill it for me; the Count has spilt an ounce of my princeza since dinner, taking it between his one finger and the palm of his handhe ought to snuff with a quill like the Scotch. And, Mike, see that there's a fire lighted in Mr. Brannagan's room, for it's a cold night, and he'll be going to bed early, I fancy-and bring the captain some hot water, for what's in the jug is cold-and, Mike, take Dido down with you, and see if anything ails her paw. Mr. Dick trod on it, and the poor thing has been licking it ever since-and now, Mike, snuff the candles, and shut the door after you.

So now, dear reader, that we've got acquainted, and you feel yourself at home, you are at liberty either to watch the progress

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of the grand engagement between the Captain and the Count, or if it likes you better, to look over one of these volumes in brown, while I examine the other.

Returning then to the plural number, and to those little advantages which we sometimes take the liberty of hinting that bye gone times had over the present, it may be reckoned among them, that until the last half-century, a fair probability always existed for the buyer of any book, not a novel, or a sermon, or a poem in ten-syllable verse, that though perhaps not exactly worth the money paid for it, it was yet good for something; that the writer was actually more or less in earnest, or meant to be so, and therefore that, on careful search, some shadow of an idea might be found therein. For if it were not in some hope of that kind, what on earth did people in those times buy books for? The print was generally bad, the paper coarse, and as for the boarding or binding, nothing could be plainer or uglier. The notion of making up for inward poverty by outward ornament, had as yet but faintly visited the bibliopolic brain. There was no gilding on the outside; there were no pictures inside, or if any, such things as would now be deemed disgraceful to a ballad or a two-penny tract. There was, unless the purchasers chose to dress their books so, little of a furniture air about them; books had not yet risen to be ranked with Brussels carpets, gilt mouldings, stuffed birds, alabaster ornaments, French mirrors, and ormolu. What therefore could people have bought them for, unless to read them; unless with the hope of finding some pleasure in the perusal, or instruction, or both? If a book had not this merit, it was good for nothing but to be sold to the snuff-man: and sold it was accordingly, or tossed into a lumber room.

Nowadays and here perhaps some may think that our times have the advantage after all-if a book has nothing in it, 'tis yet fifty to one it will make a pretty piece of furniture; it will lie so nicely on your show table in your show sitting room; or when the waning seasons discard it thence, 'twill look so well on cabinet or chiffonier, or bookcase, with a score of its unread contemporaries. The rows of gilt lettering will gleam so richly, and give such a finish to your apartment; and the stamped cloth, or imitation morocco, won't fade for a couple of years, if you're careful to keep the sun out. Verily, for people who have money to throw away, and who set no great value on their time, this upholsteric system may not be a bad one; but we'll leave it to them to

praise it. For our own parts, being far from rich, and moreover so unsophisticated as still to cherish the old notion of buying books to read them, and not to yawn or fall asleep over them, or locate them as ornamental icicles in that piece of petrified ostentation, ycleped a drawing room-we too often forget ourselves, and the age we live in, and thus have our hard-earned guineas filched from us irrevocably, before we recollect what we are about. Some too seducing piece of neatness, in new type, on cream-coloured paper, hot-pressed, with speckled lining, silken covering, and arabesqued in gold, is put into our hands by the insinuating bookseller; and bitter as our past experience has been, our good nature, or our sanguine temperament gets the better of our resolves; we cannot for the life of us, be so hard hearted as to believe so fair a piece of handy work altogether thoughtless or idealess and presto, we are bitten for the hundredth time, and before we have leisure to think of it, mulcted of our money, our patience, and our time.

After all, 'tis a pardonable infirmity, though would we could better afford it. We had rather lose a little by the world's wickedness, than by always bearing it in mind, keep our purse strings tight. 'Tis a mean tenure of existence, and beyond expression a sad one, to live thus fenced from harm by selfishness and fear; harbouring ever ruffian catchpoles and bailiffs in the fairest chambers of the soul; pillowing suspicion and hate where faith and hope might fitlier meet in ministry, where love and meek-eyed pity should never cease to dwell.

'Tis pleasant also, when worldliness and distrust will come thronging back too soon to the misgiving heart, to keep them off for a time by the spell of some kindly experience. 'Tis a truly welcome refreshment in the arid desert of life, when finding unexpectedly flowers amid weeds, fruit upon thorns, corn instead of chaff, we rebuke the baser powers in us for their too officious forebodings. For such an adventure we are always disposed to be thankful, and as these volumes have, in a slight degree, afforded us such a gratification, we feel bound, both by duty and by inclination, to share the pleasure with our readers.

So long as books are manufactured to order and for the market, it will be acknowledged to be desirable that those concerned in the fabrication should have some small portion of brains; brains implying here, not merely that degree of self possession, which

keeps a man out of bedlam, or that amount of cunning and mimicry, which in catering for the public taste seeks only to flatter its prevailing follies-but also some little sprinkling of humour and originality, the honey of experience sweetening the otherwise insipid repast, or the smile of intelligent sympathy bidding us good cheer. Manufactured and machine-born though the commodity be, the energy of a directing will should be displayed in it; the aim of a pervading idea uniting the whole map of taskwork; a few sparks of independent thought imparting to it animation, distinctness, sometimes perhaps even a remoter semblance of genuine life and power.

But, alas! among the motley myriads, for by myriads they may now be counted, who to keep soul and body together, have enrolled themselves in the grand army of British authors, or among the myriads more who, prompted by vanity or ambition, have joined as volunteers that doom-devoted host -how few, comparatively speaking, have ever had brains at all; and of those again how few, after half a dozen campaigns, have any discernible remains of the little they once possessed. Here again, as genuine truths never cease to be such, the old saying of the statesman, “ Quam parva sapientia gubernatur mundus," assumes a new and melancholy significance, for the children of a later time. For faute de mieux, faute de pire, those motley thousands are, though the many know it not, though they scarcely dream of it themselves-they are, even though sodden, spirit-broken anomalies, and mercenary cowards, and sumphs, and spoons, and sots, thou findest to thy dismay, so frequent among them-they are, in their own blundering, plundering fashion, as bravoes, bandits, or bullies; as mocking misanthropists, or blethering philanthropists; as cobblers or calculators; as phthisical cygnets of the bygone swans of song, amateurs, amiable, but awfully insipid; as oracular parvenus, or querulous people of quality; as literary tadpoles of every degree, or full grown toads and toadies, and overbearing deafening bull-frogs, dogmatists and doctrinaires (pardon us the alliterations, fastidious sir, for we have really striven to avoid them, but in calling over a catalogue what can we do?) or, turning to the comelier among them, as lordly lazy lumps of thew and sinew, stout and courageous enough, knew they only what to fight for, or whither to lead the insubordinate scapegraces whom 'tis their lot to captain-they are, in all their infinite variety, from king and kaisar

to suttler and shoeblack, from the cabinet
minister and the hierarch to the penny-a-
liner and the puff writer-they are, by fate,
or by the caprice of nature, the virtual rulers
of the world, or of their world; even of those
nations of the earth, who speak the Eng-
lish tongue, buy English books, or subscribe
to English newspapers. Strong is that host
in numbers, and not without its own enter-
prising spirit and dogged tenacity of endu-
rance; if it have not insight, it has instinct;
if it cannot boast of much heroism, it at
least has plenty of hunger to stimulate it-
and as for its faults and follies, what wouldst
thou require of it? At such a time, in such
a country as England, powerful, yet dena-
tionalized, seemingly prosperous, yet dis-
eased in every fibre; in such a state of so-
ciety, so intensely practical, so utterly
neglectful of the spiritual; with such ex-
tremes of idleness and toil, of riches and
poverty, amid the universal worship of wealth
and the mechanism which generates it; with
cant and affectation and conventionality
every where paramount, the hypocrisies of
outward decency masking internal corrup-
tion; with such an apathy to the finer
influences of art and poetry, and so fearful
an ignorance of the spirit of true religion,
cause, at once, and key, and consequence of
all we have been lamenting-what else
could be expected than that literature should
partake of such corruptions, and every day
shew itself more and more mercenary and
degraded, forgetful alike of its duties and its
rights? Art thou unreasonable, O reader?
In this chill prosaic winter, which hath girt
the earth about, wouldst thou have the flow-
ers of spring to greet thee, and autumn's
fruit upon the boughs? Surely not. Such
is not the course of the seasons. Ra-
ther be thou thankful, that like the rein-
deer thou canst, if thou'lt only scrape the
snow away, root up moss enough for thy
sustenance 'till for thee or thy children's
children a sunnier time arrive.

Not that we doubt for a moment that

there are hundreds-many hundreds we hope, aye, and even thousands-in that quill-driving host, animated by nobler influences, abounding still in energy and sincerity, and deficient only in that sagacity, that insight and calm wisdom, which are hardly attainable at such a period. Few men betake themselves to literature without something of a noble aim; with the most selfish views of such aggrandizement, something totally unselfish must necessarily combine itself. And if too many, beguiled by vanity, enter the arena only to exhibit their weak

ness; or if thousands on thousands, endowed with real powers, but unable from poverty or other untoward circumstance, to develope those powers, or find the fittest channels for their exercise, in any case so difficult a discovery, and the severest test of genius if thousands of such men sink into the lethargy of total inaction, or hire themselves as listless labourers in a course of ungenial toil, which gives them neither pleasure nor self-respect; if thousands thus be ruined, and perish as sots or slaves, or heart-broken imbeciles, are they not the more to be pitied, or is there aught on earth so pitiable? Ah, good upper-class or middle-class reader, who knowest not what starvation is, 'tis easy for thee to despise the literary hodman, and the more that, from the whiteness of his skin, thou takest it that he must once have been a gentleman, though now he be ragged and a mechanic. Good gentleman, or gigman,* fat goose that thou art, this lean goose whom thou sneerest at, was once a gosling too; this gander (perhaps a swan soi-disant) was once, even as thou wert, a foolish callow cackler, nestling beneath his mother's wing. He wore slobbering bibs once, this poor hack of an author, even like thyself, most sapient gigman or gigwoman! He was once a father's pride, a mother's hope and treasure. He who now writes, and lives, or starves by writing, had once to learn spelling; he blubbered in cold school rooms over his unfinished task, or offered piteously his reluctant palm to the master's descending cane. He too had innocent amusements once; he cheapened gingerbread and apples at street corners; he trundled hoops, or blew soap-bubbles (prismatic emblems of his future fate!) or played at marbles till his winnings wore holes in his pockets: for time, that untold treasure-that mercury of life, whose weight so tires men, that they cast it from them, and only as the glittering fragments hide themselves in the porous earth, perceive the value of what they have lost time was already a burthen to him. And now in meanness or in merit which of you hath the advantage? Thou by greasing the wheels of the chariot, hast gained a safer and a sleeker livelihood, while he, who too early, and with light head, aspired to mount and guide the vehicle, hurled from that proud eminence, is now a cripple and a pauper; or

* Can it be necessary to remind the reader of the definition of 'respectable,' given at Thurtell's trial? "Q. What sort of person was Mr. Weare? A. He was always a respectable person. Q. What do you mean by respectable? A. He kept a gig!"

does, to stave off poverty, what of good will he would not. The tragedy of life has been for both, alas! a sorry farce-and who shall decide between you? What if he had been as thou hast, a green grocer, or a stockbroker, and had a brass knocker to his hall door? Thou shopocratic sumph, he is, with all his faults and short-comings, thy brother, thy suffering brother, elder and worthier than thou; more sinned against than sinning, sinners though both of you be.

Of all the aforesaid perplexities, however, the sad and undeniable result is, that a large proportion of the books published are, as near as may be, altogether idealess, and therefore, in all worthier senses, utterly good for nothing. Books are announced, written, printed, bound, puffed, and sold off with a rapidity that is truly astonishing. Were their authors demigods, instead of demifools, or demidevils, the inevitable consequence would be a proportionate flimsiness of texture. Nor is all the blame to be laid upon them; the booksellers do more than half the cookery, and the authors are in their hands but as the unresisting paste, which with a dexterous application of their knuckles, they knead into the shape desired. Flimsier and more insipid are these commodities every day, and as more sterling goods grow scarce or entirely disappear, the harder is it to avoid their successors, or keep them, in some strange disguise or other, from slipping into your hands. To meet then in one of these productions, as we have done in the volumes before us, with some tokens of better fare, and the promise of more hereafter, was so agreeable a surprise, that we deemed it sufficient occasion for the foregoing remarks; in which however, even while we blamed the prevalent abuses of book-making, we were compelled to temper the asperity of our censures with condolence and regret for the sources of that abuse.

Summing up, therefore, all that we have been saying, in the brief maxim :—that so long as books shall be made, it is desirable that the makers thereof should have brains, and the more the better,-we_beg leave to introduce to our readers the "Paris Sketch Book," a piece of regular bookmaking, and yet, by singular good fortune, not without solid stuff in it—keen insight, pithy remark, eloquent remonstrance, humour of a sort, and other evidences of a passable sanity.

We cannot, however, allow the title to be a judicious one; it promises too much. "The Paris Sketch Book"-when a sanguine purchaser or borrower reads those

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