an immense impulse to industry in this country. M. Costaz, a man of science, who has devoted much attention to manufactures, has estimated the general products of manufactures in France, in 1815, at two hundred millions of dollars more than in 1789. But as M. Chaptal only values the products of manufactures in France at rather more than three hundred and sixtyfour millions of French dollars, including the eighty-three millions two hundred thousand French dollars, for the rude materials drawn from agriculture, it is possible that M. Costaz's estimate may be somewhat too high. Yet as cottons, cassimeres, and chemical productions are all entirely new, and as the two first of these produced about fifty millions of dollars annually even three years ago, the aggregate increase may be supposed to be nearly equal to his valuation. One of the principal causes of this vast increase, is undoubtedly a change of opinion in the nation, by which industry is regarded to be more honourable; so that such men as the Duc de Liancourt-Rochefaucault now figure among the manufacturers of the kingdom. In absolute monarchies men who apply themselves to the mechanical and useful arts, are neither well rewarded, nor much esteemed; whilst those who devote themselves to the fine arts are very richly compensated. Hence, perhaps, it in some degree arises, that whilst painting, sculpture, and music, formerly flourished much on the continent, those arts which contribute to the solid well-being of the mass of society were neglected; and hence, also, the country which has carried the useful arts to a higher pitch of perfection than any other, (England) has produced the fewest painters, sculptors, and musicians of celebrity. Not that I would suggest that there is any incompatibility between the flourishing of the fine and of the useful arts at the same time in the same country, or sanction an idea but too common, that the cultivation of the one leads to the neglect of the other. On the contrary, I am convinced they will both ultimately flourish together. Hitherto the opulence and political circumstances of no nation have been adequate to the full encouragement of the fine and the useful arts at the same time. Where wealth has been concentrated into a few hands, it is lavished on the discoverers of things which contribute to luxury and ornament; and the nation in which it has been most dispersed, has not yet had time, since its diffusion, to

complete the circle of the mechanical, much less to perfect that of the elegant ones. Yet even already we perceive the English giving high encouragement to the fine arts, and rewarding the pencil of a West and a Lawrence, and the chisel of a Chantry, as well as the researches of a Davy, and the inventions of a Watts or an Arkwright. The same result is observable under the new order of things in France, where the useful arts have grown into reputation, and the more elegant ones have maintained the celebrity they formerly enjoyed. Thus at the late exhibition, at the same time that the halls of the old Louvre were appropriated to the gorgeous productions of mechanical industry, the spacious gallery of the new Louvre was radiant with the creations of the votaries of the fine arts. A communication between those palaces enabled the throng to circulate freely from the one to the other; and the same spectators that the impulses of curiosity invited into the halls of the first, were attracted by the pleasures of imagination into the galleries of the second.

Never, indeed, were there so many admirable productions of native talent exhibited; and I doubt whether all the countries in Europe have produced, in the last few years, as many good paintings as were there collected together. The tone of exaggeration, however, which characterizes the present national taste of France, and which but too frequently violates the "modesty of nature," was distinguishable in most of them. Genius never expressed any thing better than nature, and only differs from it in the enlarged capacity of inventing situations, and representing them as nature would have formed them. The chaste and the beautiful are, therefore, (although the most simple and sublime,) the most difficult and the latest of all attainments in the arts. In portrait painting, I do not, (as I suggested in my letter on the fine arts and the stage) think the French have any artist equal to Sir T. Lawrence, but in miniature painting, Sainte, Isabey, and Augustin, have no rivals. In historical painting, since the exile of David, Gérard holds the first place among French artists. He has, unquestionably, great merit; but there is an eternal straining after effect, and a sort of ranting in his attitudes, which I cannot admire. His master-piece is the triumphal entry of Henry into Paris, and it would be a

But are

monument of national genius, if it were not for the superb contortions of his horses and men. If the painter had been an inhabitant of an obscure hamlet in the mountains of Auvergne, and had passed his early youth at a distance from the scenes of a court, such ideas of the pompous fury of every animal in the presence of majesty might have been excusable. they pardonable in one who has witnessed the most tremendous revolutions which have ever astonished the civilized world-who has beheld Kings on scaffolds, and Corporals in palaces-who has twice loitered under the shading elms of the Boulevards, and seen the ladies taking their ices at Tortoni's, whilst the Czar and his Tartars were marching to tear the eagles from the Tuileries, and plant the lilies in their stead?

There are many inventions and improvements in the arts, beyond doubt, which I have forgotten, or omitted to mention in this letter; but I have probably noticed enough to give you an idea of the impulse which the industry of this country has derived from the revolution, and from the grand and stupendous genius of Napoleon. There yet remains, however, much to be done; and if the ill-omened changes in the policy of the government, which are now beginning to throw a cloud over the prospects of France, should not interrupt the progress of her civilization, a few years will produce an immense improvement in the condition of this people. Imagination is delighted to range over the prosperous scene which is before them, if their rulers should not destroy it by forgetting that the frenzy of intemperate friends is sometimes more dangerous than the hostility of open enemies, It is to be hoped, that the Bourbons have learned the wisdom of liberality from the lessons of history, and the adversity of their own lives. If they have not, new scenes of affliction await this liberal and gallant people. I must reserve, however, what I have to say on this subject for my next letter,* which I mean to appropriate to the moral and political effects of the revolution, and to such general observations on the present state of Europe, as could not be conveniently introduced in a narrative of the domestic affairs of France.

I am, &c.

*That letter is the introductory one in the present volume, from p. 9 to p. 67.

LETTERS FROM PARIS.

MY DEAR SIR,

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.*

Paris, 1820.

to be bour See F

There is no period of history so replete with extraordinary events as that which has elapsed since the beginning of the French revolution; nor any which deserves to be more attentively studied, both in its causes and effects, by all who feel an interest in the future fortunes of the human race. As long as the military ascendency of France threatened the independence of all other nations, she excited equally, of course, the solicitude of the ignorant and of the accomplished part of mankind; and if, since a series of unparalleled reverses of fortune have thrown her back within her ancient limits and prevented her soaring above the ordinary flight of the great pations of Europe, the curiosity she awakened may have lost something of its intensity among the vulgar, it has

* This letter was the last written, and is now placed first only because it contains a brief sketch of the opinions of the others and of the present condition of some of the states of Europe. It has undergone no alteration except the addition of a few introductory remarks from the first letter, and of a note on the military occupation of Naples. As the views of the Holy Alliance have completely unfolded themselves since these epistles were written, some parts of them may possibly be suppressed unless what Mendosa says should prove true. "El ambition de la emprenta es una colpa que no basta arrepantirse." Whatever is given, however, will be given unaltered.

been rather increased than diminished in the minds of reflecting men. As there never before occurred in the course of human events, so sudden a breaking up of the political encrustations of ages, as that occasioned by the French revolution; and as this general dissolution was in itself the inevitable consequence of causes similar to those which are now working with more or less effect in the other old monarchies of Europe, that revolution must be both in its character and consequences an object of the highest interest to statesmen and philosophers. Time, it is true, is yet far from having fully developed its ultimate effects on the social and political state of Europe; but enough is already known to correct many of the apprehensions which have been entertained respecting them. The acquisition of moral truths is always slow and gradual and a great part of human life is often spent in unlearning the errors of the multitude. Independent of the obstinacy of ignorance, there is a portion of vanity inseparable from our nature which makes the acknowledgment of error peculiarly mortifying, and for this reason we hold up its bandage as long as possible before our eyes.

Those who have written on the French revolution, instead of affording an illumination of the causes which produced that enormous political volcano; or of embodying its existing consequences into one view, so as to enable us to judge with tolerable precision, whether its eruptions are destined to increase or to wither the bloom of human civilization, have generally argued upon it with the prejudices of the nation to which they happened to belong and after the artificial habit of judging derived from the principles in which they were educated. They have consequently been misled rather by the suggestions of interest and the dictates of passion, than by an absolute want of candour. It has been the fashion too among the advocates of the new doctrine of legitimacy in France, and among the shallow and presumptuous observers of historical events in foreign countries to estimate the present moral feeling and political intelligence of the French by the monstrous atrocities and follies of the revolution. No sooner was the restoration accomplished than a flock of English writers, whose spleen had been engendered by the circumstances of a long and perilous war, hurried over to France to write journals. which should harmonise with the tone of public resentment at