PERE-LA-CHAISE.

Iic mann% eb-patriam ptegnando vulnera passi. Quique sacer&tes casti. Sum vita mancbat, Qu:que pit vates, et Pbcebo Signs lecuti, Itiventas ant qui vitam encoluere per artes. Quique sot meetorea aliesfgeere.nterenilo.7_ • How fresh is the verdure of this hill-side grove! The stranger might repose his eye on it with gladness, and think it uninhabited by aught save the thrush and the blackbird. Yet what a dense population ! hew closely packed they lie—families and generations! What a horrible charnel-house would such an accumulation of graves be in the suburbs of London! Yet though Death reigns here and revels,—though the fell Exciseman has laid low his thou- sands and his tens of thousands, his character is half concealed; the genius of a happy-tempered people has mitigated his sternness, and converted his domain into a garden. In Pere-la-Chaise, how- ever, as elsewhere, there be those who have not had wherewithal to trick WM oüt, and cheat- him into- n stink. The ivitir black cross reveals him plainly, and to an "English eye he stands yet more confessed in the green moss-covereol stone and dank weeds that surround it. But these features are not obtrusive; the curious eye that pries into remote corners will alone detect them. Will ye say that he is there—in that neat structure raised as though to adorn a garden, and tended with the nicest care, where haply the tools of Flora are deposited, and her choicest plants; with a drawer, it may be, for a book—DELI LLE, the garden poet, or the lover of ELEANorta, the seductive PARNY ; and two chairs for social converse and respiration of a breeze loaded with Floral scents and redolent of roses? The bees there are busy- 1‘ floribus insidunt variis, et candida circum Lilia funduntur." Ci- git un bon ménage—there lie a whole family—pere, mere, and grand'-mere—there children and grandchildren—each in his niche, each with his tribute of affection. Or pause a moment by this fair marble monument, whose front offers a medallion with a bust in relief—a frank, good-humoured visage, and under inscribed, "A Desaugiers, see amis." This is one, we may swear, that lived while he lived, and died when he could not help it. This was one not over curious to span the term which Heaven had assigned him; but knew as well as his Epicurean master, carpere diem, and trusted not the morrow with the pleasures of to-day. This one went on to his grave singing as he went, " Toujours Francais, chantons encore : autant de pris sur l'ennemi!" As I lingered thus, ponder- ing what manner of man this might have been, there passed two young men, bavards and noisy like the lave, one of whom in- terrupted his eternal clack to exclaim, " Ah! Desaugiers ! c'est bien luil—le Desaugiers de Beranger :" and forthwith he fell a- humming an air. This reviving within me certain reminiscences, my hand dived instantly into my pocket for a Beranger that is sometimes there—provision against ennui and the spleen. The index directs you to page 191 for a song addressed "A mon ami Desaugiers ;" which begumeth thus, and closes every stanza with a chorus worthy the beginning- " Boa Desaugiers, mon camarade,

Mets dans tes poches deux flacons: Puis rassemble, en versant rasade, Nos auteurs piquans et f6conds. Ramene-les dans l'humble asile Oa renait le joyeux refrain.

Eh! va ton train, Gal boute-en-train !

Mets-nous en train, bien en train, tons en train."

The camarades of DESAUGIERS have been grateful for the flacons and fun of their departed friend : the monument is of the kind that bespeaks the consideration in which its inmate was held by his survivors. I tried to say, "Where be your gibes now? your gambols ? your songs ? your flashes of merriment that were *mitt° set the table in a roar? not one to mock your own grin- king? quite chap-fallen?" But, in sooth, DESAUGIERS is SO com- fortably housed, his good-humoured face shone so bright in the sun; the green of the cypress was so fresh, the roses bloomed so ardently under the blue sky, that the words passed idly into air, and I went -my way, humming unconsciously, " Eh ! va ton train," &c. as though just from the cabaret.

'Nevertheless, there be in these gay precincts some inscriptions that savour not of the Epicurean philosophy—the quiet mind in a sound body : witness the following, that may serve for the next Englishman who, in the month after this, shall disunite soul and body, as two irreconcileable foes that know no peace together: "J'ai vecu sans vivre, et je meurs sans regret." The epitaph- bunter regrets for once a brevity that leaves him in the dark as to the secret of this indifference. Was it some hopeless invalid that dragged out a lingering existence, cut off from the common joys of humanity? some sourd-muet that had not found a benevolent abbe to create him a second time ? or, worse than all, some incurably-diseased soul that joyed neither in man nor wo- man, but respired only discomfort, and whose being was despair? Weariness of existence is the burden of more epitaphs than this, and proves that the supposed insular malady has its victims even among the laughter-loving sons and daughters of gay hued France.

"Ala fin je suis dans le port Qui fit de tout temps mon envie; Car j'avais besoin de la mort Pour me reposer de la vie."

Such is the epitaph which, we are told by the inscription, was composed for herself des sa jeunesse by her that lies below. What! so soon aweary of life? Young, rich, beautiful, accomplished, yet longing for the still quiet of the grave ? She wearied long—for this is a column erected by a daughter: she went through all the duties, all the forms, all the relations of life—daughter, sister, wife, mother, and never retracted the wish of her youth, but wearied on to the tomb, regretted, not regretting! Here at least there is peace ; her repose is profound ; in her little garden nothing wakes but the bird twittering on the briar-rose that droops over her grave. The tomb is not more instructive in Pere-la-Chaise than in other cemeteries. Human respect, that dictates the law Nil nisi bonum de mortuis—affection that will be eloquent—flattery that will be fulsome—has, here as well as elsewhere, turned the .silent monitor into a flaming panegyrist ; and men that haply never de- served an encomium in their lives, are belauded on their tombs. That of one plain man tells us, "Jo ne/us ni le meilleur ni le plus mauvais des homme ;" but this is no more than the man might say, for it is only the ten thousandth that is a thief, a savant, or a hero. • Of the latter, there are several in the green alleys of this funereal pleasure-ground; but they are not easy to find : great men are kat in the crow‘d ; and so many pretended great affront the hea- vens With their proud obelisks and columns, that I sought long in vain even for the tomb of FOY. Glad am I to have found it, were it but to have an answer to the question put by young and old, " Monsieur, oil, est le monument du General Foy ?" Virtuous and consistent patriot! these be thy honours ; the humble and the aged inquire out thy grave; for thou wert no front-rank man to a bandied aristocratical faction, selfish, sordid, and ignorant, but a lover of France, the guardian of her honour, the people's friend: " Le nom de Thonneur ne pent s'entendre sans qu'il trouvc un echo dans le cceur de tout Francais." Pardon, if I alter thy phrase and spoil it, but the sentiment nothing can impair ; it ho. nours thee alike, thy whole country, and the meanest man in it; and therefore is it that the poor inquire for their friend, and the stranger steps from out his way to "do thee honour." Directly under the eye of Foy, who stands aloft fat marble, in the very atti- tude in which he so often denounced a slavish or Jesuitical Minis- try—" ces misbrables !"—repose in an humble grave the remains of him who dragged his dying body to the tribune, and breathed out his last accents in sorrow over the liberties so lately asserted in thunder, and so quickly evanished in smoke. They have writ- ten on the tomb of B E NJAMI N CONSTANT—" le reste de see travaur, et see °mores le suivent." Not having been of counsel with them that placed the stone and inscribed it, I know not in what sense this was intended; but I understand it in that of the profane wag who, seeing a new-raised scaffold break down under the unhappy wight who had been occupied in erecting it, exclaimed over his broken bones, "Blessed, &c., for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."

In this quarter also are tombs with names more wildly blazoned abroad and better known to Englishmen : men's evil deeds fly faster and farther than their good. Here lie MASSENA., that in the arms of victory thirsted for gold ; here SUCHET, who frightened a General of CASTLEREAGH'S into fits at Tarragona ; here KELLERMAN, Free- dom's brave soldier at Valmy—her traitor and a duke in his o here LEFEBRE and the rest, myrmidons and Lieutenants of 'Apo. LE ON—names familiar once in men's mouths as household words, read in bulletins and gazettes, associated with battles and broils, and now engraven on the monuments of a quiet cemetery. As I stood thus contrasting in my mind the profound silence of the spot and the lives of these sons of thunder, methought the dead warriors were at their old work, and were reacting Jemappe and Valmy in their graves. And, of a verity, once and again their obstreperous sport broke up from under my very feet in fire and smoke : for far below, hid by many an intervening grave and obelisk a company of the Guard were giving farewell vollies to a departed citizen-soldier. Such, said I, was the life of these war- riors; "a tale told by idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing !" " It is the cause, it is the cause" that hallows the field of battle, and sanctifies the soldier's grave. The tomb of a Hoer:1E or of a MARCEAU were eloquent here, but they lie afar, beyond the frontiers they so well defended; while these.proud marbles tell Of nought but despotism triumphant—subaltern spoilers—heads as unreasoning as the bayonets of the soldiers they led, and hearts as callous to freedom and country. -They have had their reward; and now they are indebted to-the sanctity of Death, which pro tects them from the contempt of the pilgrim. One only is sacred, for he was unfortunate; and if he was tyranny's satellite in life, in death he was its victim—" child of victory," true son of chivalry revived, what eye would not moisten over thy low and bloodstained grave? All in the midst of these monuments of patriotism,, science, and glory, or its counterfeit, the eye is caught by one that rises proudly on four columns of marble, supporting a cupola which covers a something indiscernible from the remote station I then occupied. Who is this that looks so proud and rears himself so high, in this august assemblage of bards, patriots, and heroes? Trespassing somewhat upon the laws of the cemetery, I made ray way by pillar and tomb near enough to discern that the object in question was—you may believe it, on my honour—a coronet on a cushion ! A misgiving overcame me, as I drew near to read the inscription; and I could not help reflecting on the supposed tenant of this boastful structure with unbecoming bitterness—" What ! could you not die at home, that you must come abroad to exalt your fool's bauble in the presence of Foy, the idol of his fellow-citi- zens, and him of Rivoli, the soldier's darling ?—amid the monu- ments of the great and the learned, the bravest and the best—the poet, orator, patriot, and warrior."

" Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love Recorded eminent ?"

But I was happily wrong. It was no born legislator of corn- laws—noble trafficker in ten boroughs—whose eloquence was beer and brandy, and whose clenching argument was a distraining or ejection : it was the honester, the downright plain-dealing lord ofa thousand slaves, who argues with the knout and convinces by impalement—a DEM I DOFF, in short, or STRONGONOFF, Or some other equally euphonic—off—one of the barbarian aristocracy which at this moment tread on the city of CONSTANTINE, while its left hand grasps at Calcutta and its right threatens the German Ocean. "0 for one hour" of the thunderbolt that sleeps in St. Paul's, to fire the last protocol ! The monuments—that is, the native ones—are in general nei- ther combined with ornament nor arrogant in style. The French know that a man who has done aught at all in his life is announced with more eclat by his simple name, than by a design however_ happy—an inscription, however choice the Latinity—or a string of titles, however imposing ; and if he be of the million, they leave him invested with the simple majesty of death. They do not write on the tomb of a plain curb that 'ne was chaplain to the Earl of this, and almoner to his Greer, of that ; nor, amid much other pompous verbiage, announce., the bones below to have been a "Grande de Espana de prir.aera classe." Ali, my friend! you are of the lowest here; I auf. above you, and not I alone, but that threadbare person whc. is framing himself into an attitude meet for craving a sou. T.'ne French intimate a great man by his works, and not by his titles : on the monument of LA PLACE, you read " Mecanique C&Ieste," and not " Marquis." MONGE may have been a Counsellor of State and a Baron to boot ; but his pyramidal mausoleum tells only of the reverence of the Polytechnic School that has erected it—" A Gaspard Along°, lea eleves de 1 Ecole Polyteclinique." For their military monuments, they write " Vainly " on the tomb of a KELLERMAN; on that of MASSENA, "Zurich and Rivoli;" over SUCHET, " Tarragona," &c. And by what terms more expressive could you praise such men, even if they better deserved a panegyric? Sometimes the list is formi- dable, when he that sleeps below only served, and never rose to command-: there is somewhere—fot place is predicable nowhere in Pere-la-Chaise—the tomb of an old warrior who first smelt fire at Fontenoy, and had a taste of all the fights in all the wars up to Conde and Valenciennes—a list as large as a drawing-room ga- zette. But this old gentleman is of the elder race—" Magnanimi heroes, nati melioribus annis." The modern taste is more brief- " Eylau," and a sword; as though, in St. Paul's, you were to read "Nile," or "Trafalgar," over a cannon; which, methinks, were better so than a naked warrior dying in the arms of Neptune, or Britannia weeping over a fallen tar.

But Nile and Trafalcrarl—Cona and Valenciennes I Heaven be praised, Englishmen on the great deep were active to redeem what Royal Dukes in leading-strings were sent to squander away on shore. And yet the wretched remnants of the same faction would engage England, the glorious and the free, in a second slave-alliance, to share with Sclavonic despots in a second series of shameful defeats ! Ah, Birmingham! Manchester ! Glasgow ! thank Heaven and you, England is safe from this renewal of de- gradation : your names were great in commerce, hereafter they will be heard of in history—freemen that knew how to protect your freedom ! But for the Sworder of Waterloo—history will do him Justice too.

' Away with these—true wisdom's world will be" by the twin tombs of Mo LIERE and LAFONTAINE, that stand sociably together, side by side, on the margin of the alley. The latter is a sarco- phagus, on the summit of which sits "Maitre Reynard," round Drawing is an art that is not cultivated, at least in this country, in any thing like a proportionate degree to its utility; and where it is learnt, it is commonly studied in so superficial a way, that nothing comes of it but a few wretched scribblings with pencil, or poor daubs of colour, that excite a smile even from partial friends, and when seen in that legiti- mate field for the fruits of waste time the Album. "They manage these things better in France." Drawing is a far more useful accomplish- What would Britain—Europe—the world say, if the profane merit than music, and its study and practice is quite as agreeable to the dividual; but t has not yet become a fashion, although it is much more bands of any Comte DE CHABROL, " Urbis Prmfectus," were to extensively pursued than formerly. Drawing teaches the eye to see objects more vividly and correctly, and adds to our pleasures by enabling us instinctively to perceive beauties of form and colour, of picturesque arrangement and effects of light and ...lade in nature, which before es- caped us, or were only seen as "through a glass darkly. The most in- those of LAURA in the precincts of Pere-la-Chaise. It would have significant as well as the grandest objects have their beauties. A tuft been a happy thought, and worthy the people who have dealt in of weeds, as well as a tree-crowned hill—the level mead and the rugged like manner by the relics of ABELARD and HELOISE ; and so we mountain—a shady lane, and a richly-wooded valley—become alike in- should have missed only Childe Harold's pilgrimage to his grave, teresting, though producing a different kind of delight,. It is the fa- " Sweet son, for Jesus' sake, forbear • To touch the bones that slumber here "- Westminster Abbey were to possess the ashes that lie more fitly by their native Awn. No cemetery in London suburbs shall ever be recruited with the spoils of country churchyards. But the French make a cemetery as they make a Louvre, with the spoils of other countries. It was desired to consecrate Pere-la-Chaise with great names; and therefore the remains of genius were to be car- ried off from the seclusion where the pilgrim's devotion would have sought and found them, to be lost in the magna solitudine of this city of the dead, in order that idle badauds may sing out, as they pass by, without love or reverence—" Molijre et Lafontaine ! Lafontaine et Moliere !"—cursed bavards, that cannot stint their Plate even in the presence of the dead! WALTER Scorr lies, they say, in the ruined Abbey of Dry-burgh: how much more fitly there, than under the pavement of Westminster Abbey, or even that of the Tron Churchl There "heaven's breath smells woo- ingly :" no doubt there may the mountain breeze rustle among the branches, like those that

"wave Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, And answering Lomond's breezes deep Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep."

seek himself out an immortality by disinterring the remains of the Mountain Bard to entomb them elsewhere in bronze or marble? It is well that the bones of PETRARCH have escaped being taken out of the keeping of the men of Arqua, to be assembled with ._ But the highest feeling of poetry is denied to the French ; they understand the forms of objects and to discriminate their colours, ena- flove effect and eclat, and sentiment is with them pretty, but not pro- bles us to appreciate the accuracy and beauty of their representation in found. I attest their monuments, their poets, and their removals. pictures. It gives the enviable power to delineate any object, to note However, "nought they did in hate, but all in honour ;" so let it down the features of a country through which we travel, its scenery', pass. Neither do I like the boastful strain of the inscription buildings, and costumes. In the ordinary business of life also, it is of placed by the Comte DE CHA.BROL on the tomb of LAFONTAINE, great utility on account of the facility it affords us of explaining by in which he is styled " Phmdri victor." If it be true, boasting means of a sketch or diagram the precise form or construction of any "in Wit a man, simplicity a child." Ce ne sont pas la dens traits, who with characteristic modesty says of himself and predecessors—. " Mais ce champ ne se pent tellement moissonner Que les dermers venus n'y trouvent glaner."

It was, most likely, no " Urbis Priefectus" that erected the sarco

phagus of DELILLE; and therefore the poet of the gardens an flounces himself "Jacques Delille," sans phrase. Or, if the second creator of the Georgics had wanted an inscription, how gladly would his own Virgil have furnished it I-

Manibus date lilia plenis :

Purpureos spargem fibres, animatnque poette,

His saltem accumulent donis, et fungar inani Munere.

PICARD, who seems to have been recently gathered to his two

wives, lies under a fair stone inscribed with his name; but as

this is of lesser note, it may not be improperly eked out with an addition-7" Picard, de l'Academie Francaise." There is an anonymous tomb, or rather enclosure of stone, that must not be forgotten: it is that of TALMA. What does this mean? No bust, no name, no emblem ! I doubt—I doubt there is priest.. craft in it. "He shall lie and rot here; but mark—no honours. It is true, the greatest man in Europe copied the dignity of his action—true, he gave to the view of these latter ages the Roman poet and the Roman sentiment; but he was a player, and there- fore he shall have neither bust nor name." Vain precaution! he is but the more conspicuous : " Prmfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non visebantur." The love of pilgrims has crowded his stone with his name and their names; admiration has written him endless epitaphs ; the laurel, the bay, and the myrtle flourish in the precinct; and he that passes by has the feeling, if he utters not the words, of Laertes- " I tell thee, churlish priest,

A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou hest howling."

After all, it is but a beggarly account of epitaphs. The old

lady I met one day would furnish you out a much better. "My dear," I overheard her say (for she was English) to one that might be her husband—" I think here is one that we hav'nt yet read:' "One not yet read !"—Gad-a-mercy, lady, how many months have you passed in the study of Pere-la-Chaise ?