Diseased Literature of France.

19

and gambling spirit of Parisian society, in the appearance of the lionnes, as they were called, and other extravagant indecorums of fashionable life; but to the world at large, it was chiefly signalized in the strange taste and monstrous conceptions which degraded their popular and lighter literature, and in the general corruption which pervaded all departments of the administration. We very much question whether any period of history can furnish a parallel to the French fictitious and dramatic literature of the last twenty years. Former times may have furnished comedies more coarse, tragedies more brutal, novels more profligate; but none displaying a taste so utterly vicious, a style of sentiment so radically false and hollow, a tone and spirit so thoroughly diseased. Not only do voluptuous pictures everywhere abound; not only is the unrestrained indulgence of the natural passions preached up as venial, to say the least; not only is the conjugal tie habitually ridiculed or ignored; not only is genius ever busy to throw a halo of loveliness over the most questionable feelings, and the most unquestionable frailties ;but crimes of the darkest dye are chosen by preference, and with research, as the materials of their plot; criminals, black with every enormity which we hold most loathsome, are the picked and chosen favourites of the play-wright and the novelist ; scenes, which the pure and the refined mind shrinks even to dream of, are the commonest localities of their unholy delineations ;and the imagination of the writer is racked to devise the most unnatural occurrences, the most impossible combinations, the most startling horrors. This language sounds like exaggeration ; but it will not be deemed such by any one who has even dipped into the cloaca of modern French fiction, from its more moderate phase in Victor Hugo, to its culminating point in "Le Comte de Monte-Christo," and the "Mystères de Paris." The favourite plan the supreme effort-of these writers is to conceive some marvellous event or combination which has no prototype in nature, and could never have presented itself to a sound or healthy fancy; to depict some monstrous criminal, and surround him with the aureole of a saint, to describe some pure, beautiful, and perfect maiden, and place her, as her atmosphere and cradle, in the lowest and filthiest haunts, where barbarity nestles with licentiousness. Excitement-what the French call une sensation-is the one thing sought after; the object to which taste, decency, and artistic probabilities, are all sacrificed: or if any more serious idea and sentiment runs through this class of works, it is that of hostility to the existing arrangements of society,—its inequalities, its restraining laws, its few still unshattered sanctities. It is worthy of remark that Victor Hugo, the author of "Marion de L'Orme," "Lucrèce Borgia," "Bug-Jargal," and "Hans

tion is the most unsatisfactory and incongruous, while the influence they exert on the fortunes of the country is the most powerful. Their life is a combination of revolting contrasts, a feverish and perpetual struggle. Their cultivated intellect, their excited fancy, raise them every moment to a dazzling height, and show them in dreams all the felicities and grandeurs of the earth; while their waking hours "must stoop to strive with misery at the door," and be passed in conflict with the anxieties and humiliations of actual indigence or uncertain remuneration. They live in daily contact with men, their superiors in power and wealth, their equals or inferiors in character, in talent, or in cultivation; and the comparison disgusts them with inequalities of fortune, and the gradations of the social hierarchy. Their ambition, everywhere excited, and everywhere crushed back, finding in society as constituted no clear field, no adequate recompense, no prizes satisfying to their wants or glorious enough for their conceptions, sets itself to the task of reconstructing society afresh, after the pattern of their dreams. From this class are furnished the chiefs of the socialist and revolutionary movements;-men whose desires are at war with their destiny; and who in place of chastening and moderating the former, would re-fashion and reverse the latter.

There is yet another class, swayed by loftier motives, but pulling in the same direction. These are perhaps the most formidable of all, because their enthusiasm is of a more unselfish order, and flows from a purer spring. These are men of high powers and a fine order of mind, with little faith, or at most only a mystical and dreamy one, in God or in futurity, but overflowing with generous sympathies and worshipping a high ideal,— shocked and pained with the miseries they see around them, and confident in their capability of cure. They are a sort of political Werthers, profoundly disgusted with the actual condition of the world; the lofty melancholy, inseparable from noble minds, broods darkly over their spirits; an indescribable sadness

"Deepens the murmur of the falling floods;❞—

they are disenchanted with life, and hold it cheap, for it realizes none of their youthful visions; they deem that this world ought to be a paradise, and believe it might be made such; and, feeling existence to be not worth having, unless the whole face of things can be renewed, and the entire arrangements of society changed, they are prepared to encounter anything, and to inflict anything, for the promotion of such change. Hence obstacles do not deter them-sacrifices do not appal them-personal danger is absolutely beneath their consideration-and both in France and Germany we have seen them mount the barricades and fight in

Corruption of Manners.

17

the streets with a contempt of death which was utterly amazing, and seemed to have nothing in common either with the vaunting heroism of the French soldier, or the systematic and stubborn courage of the English, or the hardy indifference of the Russian. France has martyrs still-martyrs as willing and enthusiastic as ever-but their cause is no longer that of old. Instead of martyrs who suffered death for freedom, for country, for religion, for devotion to the moral law, we have men ready to encounter martyrdom for objects scarcely worthy of the sacrifice, for the exigencies of the passions, for the conquest of material felicity, for the realization of an earthly paradise.

The degree to which this universal and insatiable thirst for present and immediate enjoyment, and the schemes, associations, and ambitions to which it gives rise, must complicate the difficulties of any government formed at a time when such desires and such attempts at their realization are rife, must be obvious at a glance. One special point which even aggravates these difficulties, we shall have to recur to presently.

Side by side with the absence of religion in France-partly as a consequence, partly as a co-existing effect of remoter causes, there prevailed a deep-seated torpor and perversion of moral principle. We do not mean that there was not much virtue, much simple honesty, much conscientious adherence to the dictates of the moral sense, still to be found in many classes of the people, among the unsophisticated peasantry of the interior, among the scanty and scattered rural gentry who lived on their estates, and even among the artisan class of the cities. But a profound and mean immorality had spread its poisonous influence deep and wide through nearly all those ranks which, either directly or indirectly, act upon the Government, and give the tone to the national character and the direction to the national policy. So obvious was this painful truth, that it escaped neither foreigner nor native ;—it led to a general and frequently expressed, though vague expectation, that some great catastrophe must be at hand; it was dimly felt that nearly all those warning signs-those mystic letters on the wall-by which Providence intimates approaching change, were visible on the face of French society; and we well remember that one individual, thoroughly conversant with that society in all its circles, distinctly predicted the Revolution of February more than a year before it occurred, not on the ground of any political symptoms or necessities, but solely from the corruption of morals and manners which pervaded the higher and middle classes, the politicians, the writers, the commercial men, the artists, the circles of fashion-all alike. License in all that concerned the relations between the sexes was no novelty in France-in this respect the profligacy of the

VOL. XV. NO. XXIX.

B

d'Islande," is a leader of the extreme party in the Chambers; that Eugène Sue, the author of "Atar-Gull," "Le Juif errant," and "Les Mystères du Peuple," is the chosen representative of the more turbulent socialists; and that George Sand (whom we grieve to class with these even for a moment) was the reputed friend and right hand of the desperate democratic tyrant, LedruRollin. Literature in France has become allied not only with democracy that it may well be without any derogation from its nobility-but with the lowest and most envious passions of the mob, with the worst and most meretricious tastes of the coulisses and the saloon. Its votaries and its priests seem to have alike forgotten that they had an ideal to worship, a high ministry to exercise, a sacred mission to fulfil. Excellence, for which in former times men of letters strove with every faculty of their devoted souls, for the achievement of which they deemed no effort too strenuous, no time too long—is deposed from its "place of pride;" and success,-temporary, momentary, sudden success, -success among a class of readers whose vote can confer no garland of real honour, no crown of enduring immortality,— success, however tarnished, and by what mean and base compliances soever it be won,-is their sole object and reward.

The unwholesome and disordering sentiment which alone could flow from such a school is nearly all that the lighter intellect of France has had to feed upon for more than half a generation; and the corruption of the national taste and morals consequent upon such diet, is only too easily discernible. A passion for unceasing excitement, a morbid craving for mental stimulants thus constantly goaded and supplied, has rendered everything simple, genuine, and solid in literature, everything settled and sober in social relations, everything moderate, stable, and rigid in political arrangements, alike stale and flat. The appetite of the nation is diseased; and to minister to this appetite, or to control and cure it, are the equally difficult and dangerous alternatives now offered to its rulers.

The second form in which the national demoralization especially showed itself—at once a fatal symptom and an aggravating cause was in the general administrative corruption which prevailed. This did not originate under Louis Philippe, but was beyond question vastly increased during his reign; and was not only not discouraged but was actually stimulated by his personal example. The system of place-hunting-the universal mendicancy for public employment, which reached so shameless a height just before the last revolution, found in him one of its worst specimens. No jobbing or begging elector ever besieged the door of the minister for a tobacco-license, or a place in the customs or the passport office, with more impudent pertinacity, than

Jobbing and Public Corruption.

21

Louis Philippe showed in persecuting the Chambers for dotations for his sons. Those who were conversant with the French ministerial bureaux declare, that it is difficult to imagine, and that it was impossible to behold without humiliation and disgust, the passionate covetousness, the mingled audacity and meanness, displayed among the candidates for place. Everybody seemed turned into a hanger-on of Government, or a petitioner to become so everybody was seeking a snug berth for himself or for his son, and vowing eternal vengeance against the Government if he were refused. The system of civil administration in Francethe senseless multiplication of public functionaries--has to thank itself for much of this embarrassing and disreputable scramble. The number of places, more or less worth having, at the disposal of Government, appears, by a late return to the Chamber, to exceed 535,000. "Les Français (says a recent acute writer in the Revue des deux Mondes) se précipitent vers les fonctions, parceque c'est la seule carrière qui guarantisse l'existence même médiocre, et qui permette la sécurité du lendemain. Dans l'espoir d'assurer à leurs enfans un émargement au budget, nous voyons chaque jour de petits capitalistes consacrer au frais de leur éducation une partie ou la totalité de leur mince héritage. Les fonctions publiques sont considérées comme une assurance sur la vie, ou un placement à fonds perdus. Une place exerce sur l'esprit des familles la même fascination que faisait autrefois une prébende ou un canonicat. Madame de Staël disait autrefois : Les Français ne seront satisfaits que lorsqu'on aura promulgué une constitution ainsi conçue; article unique: Tous les Français sont fonctionnaires?' Le socialisme ne fait que généraliser sous une autre forme la passion des Français pour les places, et réaliser, sous un autre nom, le mot de Madame de Staël. La Charte du droit au travail peut, en effet, s'énoncer en une seule phrase: Tous les citoyens sont salariés par l'état."

The number of electors in Louis Philippe's time was 180,000— the number of places in the gift of the Crown was 535,000; that is, there were three places available for the purpose of bribing each elector. Put this fact side by side with that passion for the position of a Government employé which we have just described, and it will be obvious that the corruption must have been, as it was, systematic and universal. The electors regarded their votes as a means of purchasing a place. Each deputy was expected to provide in this way for as many of his constituents as possible, and knew that his tenure of his seat depended upon his doing so. Of course he was not likely to forget himself: having purchased his seat, it was natural he should sell his vote. Thus the Government bribed the Chambers, and the Chambers bribed the electoral body. Now, from this elee