THE SPECTATOR IN PARIS.
Paris, 20th March.
Slat nominis umbra—the soul of the Carnival is gone. The police had little occasion to put forth the usual admonitory invitation to the citizens, to temper their merriment with sayesse. Politics spoil every thing in this world. West- moreland was a pleasant pastoral county, till BROUGHAM'S patriotism contested the election; and Mardi Gras was a merry day, till philosophy and politics combineul to put down Popery and Lent ; for when the fast is no longer kept,
what call is there for feasting? The Carnival, however, like the Loudon Christ- mas, is 'still a season when the genius of the playwright and scene-painter is ex-
pected to be productive. The harvest is not considered very abundant this year, and the crop has been further reduced by authority, whirl has taken tithe. The Od(:on had produced its contribution under the title of a " Revolu- tion in Days of Yore," and the piece was very loudly iiromised a respectable longevity. An actor from without interposed,—M. PERIER'S police cut short the run ; and on the second night were superinduced over the usual advertise- ment, these words of ill omen—" Par ordre, reliiche." Curiosity thus dis- appointed here, may possibly be excited elsewhere, not so much on account of the piece itself, as of this short critique upon it by Government. What is the na- ture of a performance, regarded by M. le Ministre de l'Interieur as detrimental to public order ?
The revolution celebrated in the play is that which laid Caligula in a bloody grave, and took Claudius from behind a door to place him on the throne. Here is evidently perilous matter, moral as well as political. In a town unhap- pily not provided with a Society for the Concealment of Vice, there is a frank openness in some particulars, which is apt to strike a foreigner. Unaffixted na- kedness is everywhere the order of the day, from the two bare men of marble lately set up opposite the windows of Lours PitimreE, to the undisguised figures suspended in those of a print-shop. The single-minded public can thus acquire; en passant, that instruction in the mysteries of the boudoir and toilet, which, like moSt other parts of liberal education, is of less obvious attainment in Lon- don. It is easier to conceive than to express the lengths to which this all-dis7 covering privilege might, in the .delineation of the life and times of Caligula; have transported the imagination of a Parisian dramatist. But the realities of a court will always surpass the boldest fictions of the theatre ; and the stage of modern Paris is unequal to doing justice to the palace of the Roman Emperor. The Caligula, that was seen one, and but one night at the Odeon, betrays in- deed the debauchee and drunkard in the adjustment of Ids toga, and wears his laurel crown with the grace of a satyr ; he is ball and gross, cruel and cow- ardly, hairy and horrible; but withal an innocent by the side of the Emperor; whose only harmless pleasantry was the making his horse Consul, and who never showed mercy but in wishino.° that his subjects had hut one neck, to spare the repetition of his cruelties. The Caligula of the Odeon carried off his Consul's wife and treated her as his own, to the Consul's face ; but he did not sit in solemn banquet with his Ciesarean sisters, nor "eased the putting off the troublesome disguises we wear," whilst his imperial wife, gravely and decorously, and "think- ing no ill," graced the board with her presence. An act is consumed in nego- tiations for the favours of a certain fair actress—a Mrs. Robinson of those days, nor does the royal suitor lack his noble and right honourable go-betweens ; but the imperial hymeneals with Marcus Lepidus are not celebrated in view of the Parisian audience. This forbearance on the part of the authors—for there are two—two beads, according to the poetical creed, being held better than one in the composition of a play—has sunk the life and times of Caligula into what, on the London boards, would be thought a satire on the youth of a Prince of Wales.
It is not, therefore, in any moral considerations, or in any inordinate zeal for the suppression of vice, that we are to inquire for the motive of M. PEniEn's censorial intervention. Unhappily, the time of the action is too little remote from the days of a republic ; some of the personages that figure in it might have struck: a blow for liberty at Philippi ; there are of course some generous Roman sentiments, and a contrast is naturally suggested with the sordidness and servility of the empire. The reserved deportment of the principal characters has not atoned for a few political reflections, warped by the ready imagination of the parterre into a commentary on the present times. But worse than this, there is a revolution in the piece ; there is also a certain Claudius, gros, gras, et bete, found skulking behind a door, and, by the caprice of the Romans, heaved into the throne. The laughter was loud and unfeigned ; the gendarme at the door was scandalized ;. royalty was not to be made ridiculous even in ancient Rome; the police have taken the gros Claudius under their protection ; the cap has been officiously fitted to the head ; and Louis Philippe, frugal and domestic, polished and spirituel, has been detected by his Minister in the person of the stupid husband of Messalina. It is a misfortune, that at a moment when Government has especial need of showing itself sociable, indulgent, and even spirituel, France has a Minister who i9 neitherpkasant himself nor can brook pleasantry in others. Parody it interdicted and caricature proscribed, in a country where to laugh is as necessary as to sleep. Can this Government stand? If LOUIS PHILIPPE be not one of those deceptious Falstaff-looking figures who are not the less irritable and acerb for being fat and comely, he should be the first man to laugh at his own caricature. And yet they are now prosecuting for some offence done to the insipidity of the Duke of ORLEANS; who is reported to possess an album, rich in caricatures of all his acquaintances. It were to be wished, that the choleric M. PERIER could enjoy the benefit of a stroll down St. James's Street ; it might afford him a useful subject of reflection to see in one print-shop window matter to occupy his Prosecutor-General a whole month. The English Government, with its debt and its taxes, its places and sinecures, its tithes, boroughs, and bishops, is, with 'elm and his, the ne plus ultra of human wisdom. He might perceive that this pettern-system admits of much saturnalitui liceace, and is not endangered every time its head is made to play at leap-frog, or ride as Johnny Gilpin. This unreasonable sensitiveness necessarily provokes the genius of caricature ; and when a little pleasautry is visited by fine and imprisonment, it is not surprising that the caricaturist should iu turu grow rude and ill-natured. Then there is so much that is pros in the Juste- milieu! Majesty is gros, the Budget is pros, the traitemens are pros, the Banker- 3finieter's back is pros. Thus invention is stimulated to discover every form in which the pros and the gras may be personified. But as it has become dan- gerous to exhibit the pros upon two legs, the caricaturist, to avoid all possibility of misconstruction, has lately taken to the quadrupedal form ; and the Budget now promenades in the shape of a fatted pig, and the Juste-milisu is led in procession as the new bceuf gras of the Carnival. It will be seen from the following order of the procession, that caricature in France is more ingenious than pleasant, and too elaborate to be humorous : the broom-girl performing a jig round the May- pole, and kicking up the left leg with a grace, as with a smile of grave insinua- tion she holds forth the money-box, has more character and humour than is to be found in any of the productions that have brought down fine and imprison- ment on the ingenious M. PHILIPPON.
The new &sof gras, then, is an enormous ox, representing Le Juste-milieu, and supposed to be the fattest and heaviest in the whole kingdom. It is deco- tated with a profusion of tri-coloured ribbons, and a huge cockade of the same, with the device " Jemappe and Valmy." The ox is conducted by the President of the Chamber of Deputies in the juste-milieu of the street, that is to say, in the channel ; and as it thereby splashes its sleek and well-feLl sides, the editor ,of the Debats is employed in washing them, from time to time, clean with a mop. The animal is led at a foot's pace ; but, to remove all possibility of a too rapid movement, Messrs. GUIZOT and others are pulling it back, with all their might, by the tail. The Juste-milieu is followed by a great calf, denoting the courage of the system, and by a crowd of butchers and other shopkeepers, whose duty is to expatiate and fall into ecstasies on the bulk, the fatness, and succu- lence of the beast. After these, advances the state carriage, an old coach of CHARLES Dix, new painted in three colours already beginning to fade, and drawn by a team of asses and mules, emblematic of the wisdom and independence of Government. The reins are held by M. Cassasse. PERIER ; who, to relieve his bile or divert his ennui, distributes among them sundry kicks on the juste- milieu. On the state car is borne the Budget, an immense tub, drilled with as many holes as that of the Danaides ; on the summit sit Ministers in full costume, amongst whom the wax taper of Marshal SouLT is conspicuous. The suite is too long to particularize ; let us come to the catastrophe. The procession starts from the Rue 29 Juillet in the direction of the Mind de Ville; but by the exer- tions of Messrs. G vizor, &c., is made to retrograde to the Place de la Revolution, where the Juste-milieu sinks down from fatness and exhaustion, and the state car is overturned against a barricade.
Such is the sort of caricature libel, happily unknown in England, on which juries are here called to deliberate, and for which the ingenious CRUIKSHANK is sentto study in the St. Pelagie, and for gazing on which, women and children are corrected with thrusts of the bayonets. In the South of France, is a town called Grenoble, where the climate is warmer, the people more Catholic, and the Carnival better kept than in this cold capital of politics and scepticism. What is here delineated on paper, the Grenoblois have been reducing to action ; and Sunday last, le Dimanche des brandons, to which day the zeal of the South there prolongs, according to the custom of old times, the revelry of the Carnival, the Budget was solemnly walked through the town, and accompanied by two supplementary money bills, personified after a play called the Forse des Tuile- ries, and lately interdicted by the police and published by the author. As one of the figures had a decided embonpoint, authority, bilious and irascible, took offence. The military were called out, to use the technical phrase of a country heretofore singular in the enjoyment of these paternal corrections, but now zea- lously rivalled by her neighbour ; and from bad to worse, from folly to madness, from blows with the butt-end to "paiks" with the bayonet, the Carnival of Grenoble, as Sir WALTER Score would write, has "set in blood." Such is the consequence of M. PERIERPS system of police, which ten thousand troops, with horse and artillery, are now marching on Grenoble to uphold. And be pleased to remark, that is not the case of Lyons, where the bourgeoisie were in arms on the side of authority to resist the armed weavers. At Grenoble, Na- tional Guard, Bourgeoisie, Mayor, and Corporation, appear all to be in the serape, for all have been outraged by this decided conduct of M. PERIER'S man, the Prefect. The Guard was not called out till the mischief was consummated ; but when at length mustered, its first step was to end the fray by parting the combatants. The 31st was ordered out of the town, and the Prefect suspended ; for which M. PERIEa will doubtless suspend the Guard. It appears to be his present policy to disgust or disorganize this immense civic force, on which the throne of July was supposed to be seated, firm as on a rock. It is snubbed from the tribune ; it is maltreated by the Government scribes ; and no opportunity is neglected of disgusting or disbanding it. What has been done at Perpignan, at Mons, at Lyons, will be repeated at Grenoble, and wherever else the zeal of M. PERIER'S agents is troubling the waters: and it is the misfortune of the system of centralization, that the ill-humour of the chief, placed at the centre, diverges in as many directions as there are authorities immediately dependent on him—and they are all dependent—and extends to the farthest circumference. At Colmar, the Guard turns out to welcome to the town a number of unhappy Poles ; for which it is turned out—I mean disbanded, by the Government. At Beauvais, a dinner is given to General RomeasNO, and the commander of the district is present. The commander is dismissed. The Guard escorts him out of town with military honours, and the officer conducting it is suspended. The like respect is paid to the commander other towns on his route; and everywhere somebody is dismissed. The 'hate- milieu copies the follies of the Restoration as closely as its policy. How often in the last years of CHARLES Dix used we to read of authorities frappes by the Government and feted by the people ? Since the memorable days of July, I have often heard repeated a remark, of the truth of which the conviction is general and profound,—that if CHARLES Dix had retained the National Guard, he would not now be living in the retirement of Holyrood. And the why is obvious ; for, as in this recent affray at Grenoble, the Guard would have into- posed between the Tuileries and the Fauxbourgs, and as the Guard is after all Juste-milieu itself, CHARLES would have kept his crown by the sacrifice of his Ministers. I said in my last letter, that the Juste-milieu isplaced on a sufficiently broad basis to stand the shock of internal commotions ; but this was not said on the supposition that the Ministers of the juste-milieu should themselves fall to grubbing up the very foundations of the establishment. The danger of this per- nicious tampering with the securities of Government, is the greater among- a people ardent in their commerce and arts, and soon cooled by discouragement and obstruction. A student of the old French Revolution, when he finds at every step confusion growing worse confounded, is apt to inquire, where was the National Guard, that drew up in the beginning with so much energy, bravery, and force ? The second Revolution is in this respect a useful commen- tary on the first. Twelve months ago, you could not buy a pound of coffee without the apparition of the grenadier's cap and epaulettes: at this day, you may explore Paris from the Barrier de l'Etoile to the Barrier du Tram, without seeing a shakos on other shoulders than those of the grey-coated soldier of the line. The public gardens were crowded—a peaceful citizen might say, infested, by civic troops practising every sort of exercise, from the rudiments of gaucke- droit ! gauche-droit I gauche-droit ! to the complicated movements by com- pany and battalion. Ladies are nowadays in no danger of having a ramrod sent them through the window to assist at their toilet. This falling off in zeal is attributed invariably by the Opposition to the anti-national march of the Government. To this the proper reply would be—" Fudge !'" it is the natural march of the French people from the extreme of ardour to the extreme of indif- ference. And as in the old Revolution, let disorder once fairly get head, and the cry will be "sauce gra peut" from Paris to Grenoble. M. PERIER'S notions of interior police may possibly operate such a movement, in due course, and with circumstances favouring commotion from abroad. He is the angry pedagogue of the caricature, who threatens everybody with the rod, whilst the urchin he has put in penitence chalks a distorted likeness of his master under his very desk, and sets the whole class a tittering. Every single offence in the way of pleasantry visited by legal infliction will create ten more offenders, till the boys rebel, and, as they used to do in the North in my days, "bar the pedagogue out." The Minister's pewee is to govern with a strong hand. He bethinks him as how NAPOLEON ruled with a rod of iron, and so may M. CASIMIR PE RIER, after he shall have entered Vienna "one morning, one morning." He has fresh in memory Loess the Eighteenth and CHARLES the Tenth, who made their little finger tolerably heavy; but they reigned under the shadow of the Holy Alliance. This is hostile to the Juste-milieu ; and hitherto M. Prams's greatest achievement in the field, has been the breaking open, d coups de liar/me, the gates of a Papal town ; yet M. PERIER thinks himself authorized to take liberties, on which neither NaroLrost nor the Bourbons would have ventured.
A prophet has no authority in his own home and hie own country. In re- venge, M. PRRIER is a very RICHELIEU abroad, at least in the estimation of his Grace of WELLINGTON, who thinks or affects to- think the balance of- Eu- rope endangered by the ambitious policy of the Banker-Minister. Would that
the Lord could have the benefit of a week's instruction at Paris, to improve his speeches on foreign affairs, and open his eyes, if aught can open what one is re- solute to close. Much snore, I ween, is to be feared for Europe and her peace,
from Lord WELLINGTON than from M. PE RIER ; for if the great Duke ever get back into his great place—as pray Heaven he may not—he will not have been a month in, ere M. PERIER and the Juste-milieu are out. What between the hero
of Waterloo on the one hand, bent on soldiering and repairing, the Holy Alliance, and a Gauche Administration here, as obstinately resolute to break it up, the peace of Europe will be in Sue keeping. And it is curious as well as convincing to observe, how the very same declamation (excepting always the esprit and eloquence) employed here by the Opposition to batter down the Juste-milieu, is used by the Tories to assail the Whig Government. Here it is France, that like a crazy vessel is taken in tow by Great Britain ; there it is England, that is
bowing her head and truckling to France: here you are warnectagainst the am- bition and selfish policy of the Cabinet of St. James's ; there you are put on your guard against the wiles of that old fox TALLETRA ND : here France is disho-
noured by the conduct of Government towards Belgium and elsewhere ; there, England, on the same ground, is forfeiting her consideration by tolerating the aggressions of France, tec. This people, ardent and vainglorious, that acts first and then reflects, may be led by this Tory-gauche declamation, into some false step; but England, with Scotland at her elbow, will be more prudent, and dis- cern the re al meaning of this Boroughmongering talk. But at all events, pass the Reform Bill, and Europe will be safe both from the Gauche and the Tories.
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