The Parisians Are, However, The Same Gay People As Ever, And As
Easily Amused As When I Saw Them Last.
They crowd in as great numbers to
the opera and the theatres; the Boulevards, though better paved, are the
same lively places; the guingettes are as thronged; the public gardens are
as full of dancers.
In these, as at the New Tivoli, lately opened at
Chateau Rouge in the suburbs, a broad space made smooth for the purpose is
left between tents, where the young grisettes of Paris, married and
unmarried, or in that equivocal state which lies somewhere between, dance
on Sunday evening till midnight.
At an earlier hour on the same day, as well as on other days, at old
Franconi's Hippodrome, among the trees, just beyond the triumphal arch of
Neuilly, imitations of the steeple chase, with female riders who leap over
hedges, and of the ancient chariot-races with charioteers helmeted and
mailed, and standing in gilt tubs on wheels, are performed in a vast
amphiteatre, to a crowd that could scarcely have been contained in the
Colosseum of Home.
I have heard since I came here, two or three people lamenting the physical
degeneracy of the Parisians. One of them quoted a saying from a report of
Marshal Soult, that the Parisian recruits for the army of late years were
neither men nor soldiers. This seems to imply a moral as well as a
physical deterioration. "They are growing smaller and smaller in stature,"
said the gentleman who made this quotation, "and it is difficult to find
among them men who are of the proper height to serve as soldiers. The
principal cause no doubt is in the prevailing licentiousness. Among that
class who make the greater part of the population of Paris, the women of
the finest persons rarely become mothers." Whatever may be the cause, I
witnessed a remarkable example of the smallness of the Parisian stature on
the day of my arrival, which was the last of the three days kept in memory
of the revolution of July. I went immediately to the Champs Elysees, to
see the people engaged in their amusements. Some twenty boys, not fully
grown, as it seemed to me at first, were dancing and capering with great
agility, to the music of an instrument. Looking at them nearer, I saw that
those who had seemed to me boys of fourteen or fifteen, were mature young
men, some of them with very fierce mustaches.
Since my arrival I have seen the picture which Vanderlyn is painting for
the Rotunda at Washington. It represents the Landing of Columbus on the
shores of the New World. The great discoverer, accompanied by his
lieutenant and others, is represented as taking possession of the newly
found country. Some of the crew are seen scrambling for what they imagine
to be gold dust in the sands of the shore, and at a little distance among
the trees are the naked natives, in attitudes of wonder and worship.
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