are both wanting, and the prospect is precisely as he states-no great matter.- -The town itself is small and shabby, and would be little known but from its vicinity to the Hermitage, and the influx of pilgrims to visit it, for whose accommodation a large and well-appointed establishment of donkies is in perpetual readiness. Not choosing to avail ourselves of this conveyance, we walked along a winding road, which led to the point of attraction, and here we did encounter the prettiest and most pastoral scene imaginable. A sudden dip of the path left some high and broken ground on our left, thickly planted with the finest walnut-trees we had yet seen. The sound of music induced us to climb this ascent, and upon the summit, under the shade of outspreading boughs, was a group of peasant girls dancing quadrilles, all attired alike in their Sunday costume, (for it was the Sabbath-day,) consisting of crimson cotton gowns, black aprons, and elegantly-worked caps; while the band had converted a grassy bank into an orchestra, and the parents, seated on benches, or reclining upon the ground, encircled the whole assemblage. Nothing could be more melo-dramatic than the dresses, scenery, dancing, and tout-ensemble of this picturesque little company; and yet nothing could be more unaffected, simple, and modest, than the air of the performers. It seemed a spontaneous effusion of tranquil enjoyment, and was rendered doubly attractive to us, whatever it might be to the parties concerned, by the absence of men, who in this country are in woeful discordance with all pastoral associations. Unwillingly quitting this primitive scene, we bent our steps to the Hermitage, which we found to be a common-place, square, vulgar house, in the court-yard of which stood a carriage, no very hermit-like appendage. Passing through some shabby rooms, we were ushered into the far-famed garden, a small, formal, square enclosure, surrounded by walls, in one corner of which was a poor bust of Jean Jacques, with some lines by his quondam patroness; in another was a bust of Gretry, the musician, who tenanted the house after Rousseau; and at the extremity was a miserable miniature attempt at rusticity, consisting of a cork-screw walk, a gutter with a large stone or two, meant to imitate a cascade and rock, and that indispensable article in all French gardening, a little basin with a jet d'eau. "O what a falling off was here!"-Disappointed and dejected I left this paltry cabbagegarden, resolved to plunge, for consolation, into the woods of Montmorency; but these have long since gone to warm ragouts and fricandeaus for the epicures of Paris, and nothing now exists but some mathematical rows of poplars, and straggling plantations of young trees and underwood. Yet this dry chalky valley, glaring with white houses, this forest of twigs and young poplars, this cockney hermitage, worthy of Mile End or Homerton, the Parisians consider as the beau idéal of all that is wild, sylvan, and romantic; proudly adducing them as irrefragable proofs of the superiority of their own environs, whenever a Londoner ventures to say a word in behalf of Richmond Hill.

Almost every eminence in the vicinity of Paris capable of affording a view, has been seized by some monarch or mistress for the construction of a chateau; and if Voltaire and other leading writers of the French have fixed their Augustan æra of literature in the reign of Louis Quatorze, and decried all deviation from this standard of perVOL. IV. No. 21.-1822.

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fection as barbarous, it is not to be expected that succeeding builders of palaces should depart from the established system of gardening practised by Le Notre under that grand monarque, and so happily illustrated in the quincunxes, stars, terraces, parterres, clipped allies, and verdant sculpture of Versailles. The ostentatious, formal and artifi cial style of that age has not only extended itself by means of the Academy to the literature of France, but has stamped itself upon the taste of the country, and left a legible impress upon the national character. Magnificence and extent in some degree redeemed the original;-its successors have only meanness and poverty superadded to the reproach of servile imitation, and this is the character of nearly all the gardens and grounds in the immediate vicinity of the capital. Circumstances have conspired to perpetuate the parsimony of nature. The practice of cutting down all the trees of a certain age for fuel is utterly destructive of any thing like scenery. Those hoary monarchs of the forest which impart a character of grandeur to the glades they overshadow, and awaken correspondent emotions in the spectator by carrying his thoughts into the past and the future, are strangers to these purlieus; but there is no lack of slim, sickly shoots,-plantations of underwood, and forests of sticks disposed in rows, with rectilinear avenues. With the exception of the trees that line the roads, and those forming the Boulevards, I have not yet seen one of any apparent age; nor even among these have I encountered a single noble or majestic specimen.

There is nothing fantastical in supposing some general analogy to exist between the features of a country and the character of its inhabitants. Unconversant with the physical beauties of nature, the French know not how to appreciate her moral charms; and as they supply her niggardliness in the one instance by a jet d'eau and an evergreen maze, so they substitute for the other, frigid declamation, pedantic rules, and elaborate art. Who can wonder at La Harpe's declaration, that pastoral poetry is more in discredit among them than any other species of composition? or at the Abbé de Lille's regretting that the "false delicacy and unfortunate prejudices" of his countrymen should have proscribed the style suited to such writings? Who can be amazed that they are not only blind to that fervent, impassioned, and enthusiastic drama which draws its inspiration from the deep founts of Nature, but that from the time of Voltaire they have ever flouted it with derision and contempt? Is it not consistent that they should exalt the classical, meaning by that term the productions of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, over the romantic, as exemplified in the works of such bunglers as Shakspeare? Can we wonder, in fine, that they should utterly fail in gardening, and in all those works of art the perfection of which requires an intense feeling of nature, or taste for simplicity; while they are the inventors of cocked-hats, hoops, and hair-powder; unrivalled in bijouterie, and all the littlenesses of art; peerless in dancing, as far as perfection consists in deviating from all natural attitudes, and paramount in cookery, which necessarily implies a similar departure from every thing primitive and simple.

The demolition of the wood of Boulogne is eagerly ascribed to the English who were quartered in it at the second occupation of Paris;

but the assertion is only true to a very limited extent. It has been cut down half a dozen times, and its principal destruction was effected by the French themselves, for the purpose of forming palisades at the period alluded to. Have they not, moreover, in the very heart of this classical metropolis fountains of the Elephant, of the Naiad, of Bacchus, and of the Devil; Barriers of Battle, Mount Parnassus, and Hell; a Hospital of Scipio, a Pantheon, Odeon, Gymnasium, Olympic Circus, a Cosmographic Saloon, besides Turkish Gardens, gardens of the Delta, and Tivoli? Not only have they triumphal Arches and Columns, but a single Coffee-House of a thousand Columns, which is at the same time a low shabby room with a fine lady in the bar, and a few pillars against the walls. May not the traveller who pays attention to their gaudy signs, encounter in the single street of St. Honoré, the Guardian Angel, the Symbol of Peace, the Palm of Victory, the Triumph of Trajan, the Blush of Aurora, and the Pharos of Leander?Even the Christian names of the rabble are pagan and poetical. The writer being in want of a maid-servant received applications from a Zoe, a Rosalie, an Adrienne, two Augustines, one Anastasie, and one Adêle; the latter of whom, by way of summing up her qualifications, declared that she was of a disposition altogether sweet and amiable; knew how to touch the piano a little, and could sing songs for the amusement of children. The French of all ranks, and under all circumstances, are just as fond of grandiloquence and altisonant phrases as they were in the time of Sterne. Boileau's maxim that " one would rather tolerate, generally speaking, a low or common thought, expressed in noble words, than a noble thought expressed in mean language," has not been lost upon them; for it was exactly adapted to the pride of a people who could more easily obtain the command of a thousand sounding words than of a single fine idea.