Page images
PDF
EPUB

which gives it a peculiar interest. A well- ous occasions. Falling on his knees, he dressed lady enters a shop, followed by a implores, with an eloquence almost irresistnursery-maid with a baby in long and flow-ible, the pardon, the compassion, of the ing robes: the lady requires all manner of smart things to be shown her, lays them aside with the usual fastidiousness of female taste, and demands others. In the midst of her purchases she is seized with a sudden paroxysm of tenderness for her baby; the good-humoured smiling bonne sets the darling on the counter, that its little face may be close to mamma's; and, when the caresses are concluded, takes it again upon her arm, and with it, under cover of its long robe, two or three selected pieces of silk.

The system of several distinct families living in one house, with a common staircase, affords the Parisian robber facilities unknown in London. Bonjouriers, Voleurs au bonjour, Chevaliers grimpans, are the happily significant names given to the numerous class of whom we are now speaking. They disdain the use of false keys, break open no doors, scale no walls; their only preparation is ascertaining the name of two of the residents, and this the printed Directories enable them to do. Well dressed, shod with noiseless pumps, and relying on his self-possession and ease of manner, one of these thieves boldly demands of the porter whether M. B- is at home, M. A- being the person he intends to rob. No sooner is he upon the stairs than he is all eyes to detect an unfastened door. He sees one with a key in it; he knocks again and again; if no one appears he steps in as far as the diningroom, makes straight for the buffet, fills his pockets and hat with silver, and glides out again. Should the owner of the apart ment, M. A, make his appearance, the robber with a courteous and smiling air demands whether he has not the honour to address M. B— - he is told that M. B- lives on the next floor, and the unsuspected villain, uttering a thousand apologies, departs with the best grace imaginable :-or suspicion may be half aroused, the party may be a matter-of-fact Englishman, or a slow-witted German, who looks grave and dangerous, and the Frenchman perceives that his safety hangs upon a thread. Nothing daunted, the rogue reiterates his rapid apologies, and performs a semicircle of active bows until he gets in a straight line with the door, and then vanishes with the rapidity of lightning Nay, should he be seized, and the stolen plate actually found upon him, he is not without his resources. He has a tale of woe, ready cut and dried for all such peril

VOL. LXX.

3

benevolent man whom he frankly admits he has so deeply injured-it is his first, his only offence-the fatal love of play has led him to it-to decide upon his fate will be to decide also upon the fate of as respectable a father as ever breathed-a father who would die were he to know of his son's dishonour! This frequently succeeds: the proprietor contents himself with kicking the penitent down stairs; who, well aware that his honour is of that description that knows no stain, considers this mode of retreat equivalent to a victory.

Every crowded street, every theatre, has its contingent of pickpockets, between whom and the police there is one unceasing conflict. As a specimen of our author's style, we will give his lively sketch of this warfare :—

les groupes par les motifs même qui y conduisent 'Les inspecteurs de police sont attirés dans

les filous. Ils ont, les uns comme les autres, les yeux fixés sur les poches des curieux, mais les premiers veillent à leur défense quand les seconds songent à les dépouiller. De là, cette animosité mutuelle, et pour ainsi dire instinctive, qui existe entre eux. Quel est celui d'entre nous qui appréhende les entreprises des filous à la promenade ou ailleurs? combien peu qui savent gré à la police de sa sollicitude, qui se doutent même de cette sollicitude? Il est pourtant vrai que dans un grand nombre de circonstances les agens de police et les filous luttent entre eux sur le terrain d'observations, de précautions, et d'addresse, précisément à l'occasion du sujet qui nous occupe le moins. Ce sont les seuls qui ne soient pas attentifs aux spectacles ou aux divertissemens qui fixent les regards de tous. Cette inattention doit être pour chacun d'eux une cause de défiance et de crainte, un signe d'hostilité, excepté quand l'inspecteur et le filou se connaissent, ce qui arrive assez souvent. Alors les rôles deviennent plus simples, l'évènement de la lutte ne tient plus qu'à une question de fait, au flagrant délit. Le public n'aperçoit qu'un accident imprévu dans ce fait qu'il y a eu un drame, un dénoûment, des que la rumeur porte à sa connaissance, tandis acteurs, le tout enveloppé d'un mystère profond,'

The pickpockets of the highest class are enabled, by the elegance of their dress and manners, to insinuate themselves into all public assemblies, even the most select. Splendidly dressed foreigners are the grand objects of their attention. Ils recherchent avidement les Anglais, et s'attachent à leurs pas comme à une proie riche et facile,' the outside and well-filled pockets of our countrymen being greatly to their taste.

Exploiter les positions sociales is the professed occupation of a numerous class of

swindlers. Many an industrious family, who bear a fair reputation in the world, have some fatal secret connected with them, which, if divulged, would crush them for ever. A liberated convict, for example, has become a reformed man, has married a respectable woman, and has set up in business, neither his wife nor his neighbours having the slightest idea of his former habits of life. One of his companions in prison finds him out, or the fact becomes known, by hazard, to some of the wretches who are constantly on the look-out for their prey. They open a correspondence with the wife; mysterious dangers are hinted to her; she becomes suspicious and alarmed; the husband is compelled to divulge his secret to her; and the dread of exposure induces them to accede to the demands of the robbers, in whose power they feel themselves to be. These demands for money are again and again repeated; and the unhappy couple may consider themselves fortunate if the scoundrel, after he has carried on his exactions for months, does not hand them over to some other of his tribe, to be subjected to a new series of threats and extortions. The prevalence in Paris of an offence of a hideous nature gives scope to a still darker species of conspiracy, unknown in England. We cannot stain our pages by explaining the machinations of these infamous gangs, who, with an audacity scarcely to be believed, frequently assume the garb and functions of the police.

In Paris, as elsewhere, each separate class of villains has within itself a certain number, generally very limited, of ferocious spirits, who, with a reckless indifference, are willing, for any cause, or none, to dye their hands in blood. The Parisian robbers affect to consider that these sanguinary and brutal propensities are to be found only among the rustics who join their ranks; but this is not the case. Many of the most merciless ruffians are town-bred, and have reached the pinnacle through a long gradation of crime. Even among their companions these men are feared and shunned, and they in return affect to despise and domineer over all those who are less bloodthirsty than themselves.

In enumerating the different species of crime, M. Frégier abstains entirely from any mention of those offences which are connected with political movements: he does so on the ground that, as the causes which lead to them are transitory and of rare occurrence, they form no part of the general elements of society. His view in this may be correct-but we are surprised

that he should also have omitted in his catalogue of crime the frequent and murderous duels which disgrace the French capital, as well as those vastly moving and romantic police-historiettes which perpetually adorn the journals, half murder and half suicide, and in which young ladies and gentlemen, to prove the ardour of their love, blow out each other's brains, or poison themselves in pairs. With regard to suicide, in fact, we see reason to suspect that our author looks upon it with favourable eyes.*

Looking at the general mass of crime in the two cities, we are inclined to doubt whether in intensity of guilt London may not claim a bad pre-eminence over Paris. The gay, good-humoured, and buoyant disposition of the French, so amiable and pleasing among the good, may, though faintly, be still traced among the depraved; and renders their pickpockets, their swindlers, and their thieves, some shades less revoltingly wicked than our own. The chief difference is in style and manner of procedure, not in the extent of talent and genius. In elegance of person, and dress, easy selfpossession, agility of limb, abundance of expedient, and cheerful submission to reverses of fortune, we believe that a Parisian scoundrel beats a Londoner hollow; but for steady, calculating villany, for deepsettled and well-combined plans of fraud and violence, we doubt whether the superiority be not with us: and, despite all the vapouring of M. Vidocq, and all the miracles of skill which he records, let us take an individual from some of our northern counties, let us give him the advantage of a couple of London seasons, and we are afraid that he might brag the world.

The preservatives from vice form the third division of the work. They are discussed with sense and feeling, and many important subjects are brought forward forcibly and well. There is, however, a good deal of amplification, and needless labour of demonstration; and many points of political economy which have long ago been fixed, are analysed and argued as if they were new ground. He well says:

'Let public institutions or private philanthroPy exert themselves as they may, the fate of the child and of the future man mainly depends on all, the most powerful school to teach what is the example of his parents. Our home is, after good or what is evil. In the large majority of families of every rank the anxious desire of the parents is to lead their children into the paths

Vide vol. i., page 207.

of virtue; and it is this holy feeling which keeps | deign to look at them whilst one paragraph down and limits crime. Labour is natural to on the more exciting subjects of politics, man; his moral happiness, however little he police and playhouses, remained unread.* may be disposed to think so, depends upon it as much as his bodily sustenance. This is one of the most important lessons that can be taught; and it is best taught by the example of industrious parents. But to render a life of unremitted labour endurable, to control and neutralise the evil propensities of our nature, to check idleness and discontent, demands wisdom and benevolence on the part of the masters.'

We with sorrow confess our belief that

In many parts of France, as in Germany and Switzerland, the labouring population change their vocation from the field to the city according to the demand for their service; and this with a facility, and to an extent, quite unknown among us. The frequent periods of inactivity, both in agriculture and manufactures-époques de chomage -are by this means rendered much less in

These form, M.

Frégier says, the élite of the labouring pop

there is in France more paternal watchful-jurious to the operative class than they ness, more kindly feeling on the part of the Would otherwise be. It is this facility of manufacturer and master-workman towards turning their hands to different occupations, those whom they employ than there is in ters' bench, that brings into Paris at cerfrom the plough to the loom or the carpenEngland. M. Frégier gives noble exam-tain seasons a large body of operatives, who, ples of liberality and goodness exhibited by during the rest of the year, live with their provincial manufacturers; but it is not to families in the country. these that we advert: they might be met, we well know, by instances of equal wis. ulation of Paris. In London we have no dom and virtue in our own country. We found our opinion upon the numberless cir- periodical movement of this sort: the great cumstances which prove that there is, on mass of country people who flock to Lonthe whole, more unison of feeling, more their fixed residence, and of these a large don do so for the purpose of making it sympathy, more mutual dependence and their fixed residence, and of these a large support between the different ranks of in- proportion are the lowest class of Irish, dustry, between the employers and the em- who, if they do not form the most vicious dustry, between the employers and the em-element of our metropolitan population, ployed, in France than with us. tional advantages resulting from this are least submissive to the laws. Paris has undoubtedly are the most turbulent and the most important; and it is to this cause, we conceive, in a great degree, that the combinations among workmen to enforce an increase of wages, which have at different times been carried to such a fearful extent in England, are in France, comparatively speaking, unknown. We are well aware that there are other operating causes; we believe that the one we have adverted

to is the most effective of all.

The na

but

both

evidently the advantage over us in this respect. At the same time we doubt wheth er the rural population in either kingdom possesses so great a superiority of virtue above the inhabitants of towns as our author claims for it. The criminal tables of indeed, that the numerical proprove, portion of crime is much higher in towns than in the country. A peasant has fewer M. Frégier is energetic in his appeal to opportunities to commit crime, fewer the newspaper press to devote a portion of temptations, and less chance of escaping the vast power which it wields to the en- fer the same individual to the city, place detection, than the townsman. But translightening, controlling, and rendering con- him on the same footing of opportunity and tented and tranquil, the national industry-safety as the townsman, and it will too often taking that term in its most extensive sense, be found that he is to the full as apt and as embracing agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. He asks indignantly,' Why they have not done this?' The answer is obvious. Disquisitions on political economy, however elementary and familiartreatises on agriculture and commercemoral essays, however well meant and well written, will not make any newspaper in France sell; and were the editors of all the journals in Paris, moved by a simultaneous fervour of benevolence, to devote a portion of their columns to such matters, we are quite convinced that little or no good would result from it: the classes for whom they were intended would never

*It is a circumstance not unworthy of notice, that the English newspaper supposed to be patronised most largely, and almost exclusively, by the highest classes of our society, is the only one that ventures to place before its readers in regular or nearly regular succession, a series of Essays treating on high and important questions of morality, social arrangement, and the merits of established works of literature. We can hardly believe that such a writer as the amiable and pure-hearted Tabie-Talker of the Morning Post would find extensive favour with the mass of those who take in any other morning paper in London. What a vast interval between the scope and tone of his elegant essays (two volumes of which are now collected) and the literary feuilletons of the fashionable journals of the French capital!

ready to fall into evil courses as those around him.

good order and economy, children are not admitted into the factories until the age of twelve; and at Nantes and Mulhouse there are schools especially established for apprentices, in which instruction is carried to a considerable extent, and the master's claim

M. Frégier prefaces his remarks on the effects of religion as a preservative from vice, by a long exposition of the present state of Christianity in France. This account goes to the startling length of assert-upon the time of the young people coming that religious faith has in effect ceased to exist throughout the nation, and that Christianity has no longer any hold on the public mind, as a revelation from Heaven. France was the well-spring from which nearly a century ago bold infidelity, nay, avowed atheism, flowed far and wide over many of the continental nations. Our own happy country, strong in its pure and firm Protestantism, was one of the few which, after a brief period of agitation, withstood the shock unharmed. We had believed that of late years this pernicious tide had been flowing back upon France in waves of fearful and still augmenting violence; but if M. Frégier be correct, she has no cause to fear the contagious impiety of any other country :—

'The religious crisis,' he says, 'which is now in progress in Germany, was brought to a conclusion in France half a century ago.'

mences only after the breakfast-hour. There are no such specific institutions in Paris; but the more respectable operatives are in the habit, when they bind a child to a trade, to stipulate that he shall be allowed a portion of each day for completing his education, and in return for this indulgence they either pay the master an equivalent in money for the time which he gives up, or the period of apprenticeship is lengthened. It is evident that in France education is carried further among the lower classes, both in the extent of time devoted to it and in the range of the things taught, than it is with us; and we are compelled to say that on this most important subject there is much which we might learn from our neighbours.

To

The greatest danger to which schoolchildren are exposed is that of contamination by intercourse with the worthless vagabonds who crowd the streets. We most firmly believe that our author check this as much as possible, M. Fréspeaks too broadly-even if, as we suppose, gier strongly urges that each school should he speaks of Paris rather than of France; have its own separate and enclosed playbut if we were to take him literally, we ground, and that the holidays should be as could not be surprised when he goes on to few as possible. In poor families, where tell us that in France, even among the the parents are constantly employed at a highest orders of the church, what we in distance from home, and are unable to England should call gross infidelity is counwatch their children, these intervals of idletenanced; or to find that, in treating of ness are periods of great danger. To su religion as one of the pillars of order, he persede them, and introduce in their stead looks at it only as a system of moral disci-a system of daily school recreation under pline, and gravely places 'singing classes' in the very foremost rank of the means which the Roman Catholic Church possesses for recovering its hold on the minds of the ple. Even this division of religious duty is to be indulged in, it appears, only by children or adult males, being too exciting for grown-up females!

peo

the eye of the master or his assistant, would, he says, be an improvement, the importance of which can scarcely be calculated. Our author is also of opinion that the abundant diffusión among the labouring classes of well selected books, moral, scientific, and entertaining, might be rendered a powerful instrument of social improvement. He warmly advocates the establishment of public libraries for the poor, which at present are unknown in Paris; and alludes in terms of high praise to the plan, at once ingenious and econo

mical, on which such libraries are conducted in some parts of Scotland. *

A large portion of our author's second volume is devoted to the subject of education. Among the points of difference between the two countries, those which chiefly strike us as offering matter worthy of our consideration, and if possible of our adoption, are the anxiety shown in France to postpone to as late an age as possible the period at which children are permitted A central library is established, with a certain to enter the factories, and the system of number of dependent libraries attached to it. Supcontinuing their education after their work-posing the number of these to be five, each of them ing life has commenced, At Sedan, where the operative classes are remarkable for

of books; retains them during half a year; and then is furnished with a sixth part of the entire collection transfers them to the next station; and so they are

In discussing the important subject of the residences of the poor, M. Frégier, whilst he admits the extreme difficulty which must attend their improvement on a general scale, urges in the strongest terms the duty of making the attempt. It is the government only, he says, that can do it with any prospect of success, as the expenses attendant on the erection of buildings of the nature required are so great in comparison with the rents to be obtained from them, that it never could become a profitable investment of capital; and he instances some speculations of this kind which were made in 1823-4-5, and which for that reason failed entirely. The account which he gives of the inferior classes of lodging-houses, and more especially of the lodgings that are let out for the night, are shocking; l'imagination, malgré sa fecondité et sa hardiesse, ne saurait atteindre, en cette matière, à la hauteur de la réalité;' yet we fear that still more frightful pictures might be drawn by any individual who, with energy and courage equal to his, should penetrate into the lowest abysses of London. Some widely extended

moved on, half yearly, from station to station, until they return to the central depôt. Thus every division of the library completes its circuit in three years, and each locality has the use of six times as many books as its own separate outlay could command. We should rejoice to see this plan adopted upon a Liberal scale throughout England. Under judicious management, and with a careful but not too severe selection of books, it might at the present time, when the intellectual activity of the lower orders is rapidly augmenting, do the State incalculable good.

Buring the last three years barrack libraries have been established for the use of our army, both at home and abroad, and liberal funds to maintain them have been voted by parliament. These libraries are open from two o'clock to eight, and the soldiers who wish to avail themselves of the arrangement pay a subscription of one penny a month. Strict regulations are established for the due preservation of the books, which, under certain conditions, are allowed to be taken by the men to their quarters. The system has worked admirably; the number of subscribers rapidly increases; and the library and the benches at its entrance are crowded with attentive readers. Very many are the instances in which young men, the whole of whose vacant time was formerly spent in the alehouse, have shaken off their habits of intemperance and become zealous and regular students. Great judgment has been shown by our military authorities in the selection of the books. Some are of a grave and religious nature, many are historical, many scientific; those relating to travels and voyages are numerous, and a large proportion are works of imagination, both prose and verse. This is wise-whether homilies and theological treatises are or are not the best of works is not the question: books such as these will but rarely be read by young soldiers. We believe that in another department of government, where the system of libraries was adopted, and where the books were almost exclusively of a religious nature, the result has been far less satisfactory.

measure of reformation on this head is, we conceive, a matter of urgent duty, nay of necessity. As our population becomes more and more dense, the present state of things leads to deeper and deeper shades of depravity; and each year the danger to the health of the metropolis becomes more imminent. Each year also, as the lower orders become more intelligent and more sensibly alive to the advantages of social order, the discomfort of such abodes is more acutely felt by them. We are aware that the subject has of late been much under discussion; and we sincerely hope that the difficulties, great as they are, which surround it, will not dishearten the patriotic members of parliament who have directed their attention towards it.

The number of persons living together in illicit connexion would appear to be proportionately much greater in Paris than in London. One especial cause of the extent of this evil is stated by M. Frégier to be the great expense of the formal instruments which the law requires prior to marriage. It is true that in Paris itself these are delivered gratuitously, but only to those persons who are inscribed as indigent; and when it is necessary to obtain the documents from a distant part of the country, the expense becomes so great, and the process so difficult, as frequently among the poorer classes to render marriage almost impossible. The disadvantage of this state of things became so apparent, that a society was established under the title of La Sociéte charitable de Saint François Régis, for the express purpose of remedying it. The members meet every Sunday evening to aid and assist all the well-disposed and poverty-stricken lovers in Paris, as well as those who have already illicitly united themselves. The applicants on each day amount to nearly 300; and from the institution of the Society in 1826, to the 1st January, 1837, it had, with an annual revenue not exceeding 10,000 francs, afforded assistance to the celebration of the marriages, civil and religious, of nearly 8000 indigent persons, and to the legitimating of many thousands of natural children, of whom the greater part had been removed by their parents from the Hospice des Enfans Trouvés. The society has had the great satisfaction of knowing that in nearly all the marriages of this nature the first object of solicitude on the part of the parents was to reunite their children to themselves; and that they have subsequently brought them up carefully and well. A similar society on a small scale, but with equally beneficial results.

« PreviousContinue »