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.
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