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Between the Lakes, or where the river Green
Like molten glass o'er bed of jewels flows,
And sands of gold-I love to idly waste
The summer-day in converse sweet of friends,
With laugh of childhood joined, and bark of dogs,
And merry lads and lassies, crowned with leaves,
While frugal fare is spread upon the ground,
And sparkling cups enliven all. Nor does

The winter fail to bring domestic joys,

And pleasures of the mind, when hearthstones blaze,
And books from well-filled shelves the thoughts transport
Beyond Taconic's ridge, and winter's bounds.

Here do I live content; nor oft incline

To taste the pleasures of the distant town,
Save when affairs, or larger store of books,

Or friendship's claim, my halting footsteps draw.

For here unhindered, I can meditate

The noblest themes; reading the open book
Of life, and Nature's pages, turned each year
By the revolving months; searching what truths
Concerning human life and destiny

Are by the rolling seasons taught to man.
Here best I learn that life is good, not ill;
That time is long, not short; and happiness,
If rightly sought, by every man is found.
Long are God's years, and slow His steps of love;
Yet does He look with more regard on none
Of all His stars, than on this shining orb,
Where not a sparrow falls without His heed;
Nor raven cries for food, unheard; and lambs,
Though brute, are folded in His arms, as are
The cherubim. Surely, no truer love

Awaits the saint in heaven than guides him here.
No nobler aims his soul can ever fire

Than his own good, and others' weal on earth.
Complete, indeed, is no man's happiness;
For souls created rise from higher joys
To higher. Progress there is in every life
That's led aright, and in humanity.
As chaos, undeveloped, finds its type

In winter's reign, when nature lies entranced;
So bursting spring is emblem of the time
That infant man, as yet, on earth has lived.
Our race is in its bud, and tender leaf;
The summer-heats it has not felt; nor shown
Its flower-much less, has yielded golden fruit,
And sent its harvests home. Childish is all
Our wisdom still; and child-like is our faith.
But knowledge shall increase, as age to age
Succeeds. New arts will rise; and none be lost.
With lapse of time will science better learn
To scan the laws of life, and nature force
To yield her secrets up, and turn to use;
Till reason rule the world it comprehends.

Then chains, and wrongs, on earth, shall be extinct
As monsters since the flood. The nations fallen
Will rise once more; and Greece and Egypt build
Again their temples, better gods to serve.
E'en Afric's tawny head, upon that mount

Of time, shall shine transfigured; while the isles
Of ocean round float linked in equal love.

PINE CLIFF, March 21st.,

LIFE IN GREAT CITIES.

V.

PARIS.

THE city of Paris is the brilliant flower of modern civilization; to its shrines wend pilgrims in crowds, from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, and from America more than all. It is the paradise of women. Here are gathered and here are spent the taxes of all France; here comes the intellect of all France; here is exhibited the art of France and the world; here is amusement in a thousand shapes, and here is —a single religion.

Society was never brought to so thorough a system as here, and never was the art of preying upon man so completely organized.

If the end of civilization is to perfect mankind; to educate and develop a healthy, handsome, happy people; to promote good fellowship and kindness; to bring man into harmony with Godif this is so, then we may ask, Has the civilization of Paris done this? Perhaps not.

To-day, the central figure in France, and in Europe, too, is Louis Napoleon. In the city, and in all the empire, his will is law. He is the child of accident, but he has had the audacity to seize and the talent to use all the people and all the production of France, and to make them work out his purposes. It is a remarkable success, and it is the result of a belief nursed until it had become a fanaticism-cold-blooded, it is true, but still a fanaticism-a belief that he was to be Master of France. To serve France was not his dream, but to make France serve him. Cæsar was the model he studied, and he saw long ago that the Master of France must make the army of France his, as the Master of Rome had made it his twenty centuries ago. This he did, and since the 21st day of December, 1851, that army of five hundred thousand men has made a

nation of more than thirty millions pay tribute. In brief, each one man in the army is absolute master of more than sixty of the people of France out of the army; and nearly all the earnings of France, beyond a bare subsistence, go to support this army and the machinery which controls it. Ah! that is the secret.

The man who moves this thorough and perfect machine is Louis Napoleon. He is master of the army, and so potent is the system of what is called "government," that even this army itself finds itself the tool of somebody, and that somebody the possible nephew of the great Corsican adventurer. Just what amount of all the taxes of the people of France the army gets directly and indirectly, it might be difficult to say; but it seems, according to the Paris Temps, that 169,910,430 days are consumed by it every year. That amount of men which might be productive, is not only unproductive, but is consuming and destroying. It was estimated that every soldier in our war cost one thousand dollars a-year. If the French soldier costs but half that, it would make the respectable figure of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars.

Some have fancied that this vast body of armed men was kept up to operate upon the fields of Europe, to control empires, and enlarge boundaries. It may be so used, but it has other uses. It centres in Paris, and is useful there. Spacious barracks, filled with thirty thousand men, dominate the most important centres of the city. The great sewers are constructed with railways in them for the speedy and secret moving of troops. There is not a pavement left in the city with which an outraged populace can build a barricade. The Master of Paris thus guards him

self against his loving people, and an army is a most useful thing in his great housekeeping. But-it must be soothed and placated; it must be made to feel and to know that the soldier is better off than the civilian; that there are praise and pudding for him. He does feel it; and, so long as he does, no Emperor can be deposed. There are ugly stories afloat of what the Prætorian Guard did once in Rome, the Janissaries in Turkey,-and no Emperor can well forget them.

Espionage. So thorough is the system, that this army itself cannot unseat an Emperor except by a convulsion involving fearful risks and untold woes. The police of Paris is perfect: five men cannot stop on the corner of the street to have a little talk or to hatch a little conspiracy; nor can they meet in a room, privately or publicly, except by permission of the police, and with a policeman present to report their doings. The most brilliant members of the Institute can discuss political questions only under cover of Greece or Rome; and in the Parliament of the nation every statesman speaks with a curb in his mouth, upon which rests the finger of the President, upon whom rests the hand of the Emperor. Every man of note or influence is watched, and his doings, his plans, and his thoughts are known-the system is so perfect! How, then, is there to come any change to Paris? Only through the weakness or the generosity of the Emperor, or through a convulsion. For more than a thousand years Paris has been "governed" in this way; she is used to it, but from time to time she has broken up into eruption; the most frightful of which has come to be known as the French Revolution. Then the guillotine cut off the heads of kings and queens and dukes and princes in the Place de la Concorde, where to-day stands the Needle of Luxor. The blood is dried up, and fresh earth is strewn, and all is gay and bright; but-a sham civilization breeds mischief, and who can, who dare, predict the future?

It has been well said, "Bayonets are

a convenient thing, but it is difficult to sit on them."

The Government is paternal. The Emperor not only keeps the people from breaking out into disagreeable insurrections, but he sees that they are fed and amused. Taxation is thorough and searching, and none can fail to see how closely the Parisians live to starvation; but they never do starve. Why? From time to time we learn that France is in the market to buy wheat in vast quantities. What for? It is to feed the people of Paris, when work runs low and the machine creaks. The people must be cared for, too, when they are sick, and they must be amused to the requisite degree. These things "Government" undertakes to do in

Paris.

The whole administration of charities and public aid is also thoroughly organized, under the Prefect of the Seine. The Director, in 1864, estimated that those who would demand relief in 1865 would number 259,199,* of whom over 100,000 † were registered poor (permanent paupers), 91,355 were in hospital, 30,000 sick beside were treated at their own houses, and 23,416 abandoned children were placed in the country.

Two hundred and sixty thousand paupers in the city of highest civilization, does not tell a pleasant tale!

The population in 1860 was 1,700,000, and in 1866, 1,825,274-one eighth of all not able to support themselves by their own labor; another 100,000 were soldiers, and 60,000 ranked as criminal class. Any thing might happen, and some convulsion must happen. But "good order" prevails, and the Empire is peace—such is the word of the Emperor himself. The Prefect of Police has under his direction a body of 4,300 men and 4,400 gensdarmes, a large part of whom wear swords and guns. By their help, matters are kept serene. It is the most singular of paternal govern

ments

"And all its life is love."

After all, we may assume that every

*The Charities of France in 1866. † 118,000.

one of the two millions of human beings in Paris is as important in the eye of the Creator as Louis Napoleon. We are also interested in them, and in the life they lead there.

It is certain that life is as difficult there as anywhere, notwithstanding so many Americans who go there believe it the most delightful city of the world, and that life there is easy, gay, and fascinating. Paris is not all Champs Elysées and Rue de Rivoli.

It has been said there is no starvation, while there is,-a vast population of 260,000 belonging to the pauper class. Another indication of the widespread poverty and of the hard struggle for existence prevailing in Paris, is seen in the Mont de Piété. This is a great governmental pawnbroker's shop, with various branches, and is thoroughly systematized. It guards the poor against the extortion of free pawnbroking. Through fifteen years, 1,313,000 articles were pawned annually, and the average of the loans was but 17 francs 40 centimes -some three dollars and a half. This may help to dispel the illusion that the people of Paris are gay and lighthearted. My own experience (brief though it was) led me to the belief that no people lived so closely, so carefully, or were in such grim earnest to get a subsistence; and that nowhere are the large mass so entirely hopeless as to bettering their condition-except it be through revolution and convulsion. The system holds them in hopeless poverty or mediocrity; and the system cannot be changed except by revolution.

About one half of the whole people at Paris-say one million-are classed as workmen; of these, in the business of

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I discover another fact-new to me and it may be to you-that 87 out of the 100 of them can read and write.* It is not the want of what we call education, then, that Paris suffers from.

While among the figures, it may be well to say here, that for the last sixteen years Paris has exported annually some 160,000,000 francs, or $32,000,000, of manufactured articles.†

I have asked you to note that life is thoroughly systematized in Paris, under a paternal despotism of which Louis Napoleon is the father; and also that, notwithstanding this, nearly the whole population, while it never starves, lives as close to starvation as possible. You may wish a fact or two to sustain this assertion.

The budget of Paris-receipts and expenditures about the same- -for the year 1867 is officially stated at 241,653,613 francs, or about $48,330,000. Nearly the whole of this is raised from the people of Paris. Every egg is taxed every dog is taxed, water is taxed, burials are taxed, wood is taxed, hay is taxed, night-soil is taxed-every thing is taxed. It must be, for the police and National Guard require yearly the pretty little sum of 15,329,000 francs, and public works (what is called "beautifying Paris") 23,681,000 more. The people, the workmen, and those who amuse, get most of this from the strangers, and the government gets it from the workmen. Its system of taxation is thorough, and there is no escape.

Is Paris an earthly paradise for wom an? Rich women and strange women may find it so; but the great mass of women there are intensely industrious, and are poor. The Parisians have discovered the art of utilizing their women. They have converted them from lovely and loving companions for man, serene partner of his joys and his scrrows, doubler of his prosperities, sharer of his misfortunes-from careless, inconsequent, unproductive creatures, into the shrewdest, toughest, hardest, homeliest, and most productive of the race.

Galignani for 1867.

+ Ibid.

It is

doubted whether ten handsome women can be found in Paris to save it. They produce vastly, every thing but children.

"Love"-so-called-is in the market, and in the Latin quarter, as well as in others, whole populations of women, called Grisettes, are up for hire as temporary companions of students. These are not to be described as harlots. While the engagement lasts they are true to their part of the bargain; they keep the rooms, they cook the food, they wash and mend and make; and when Sunday comes, in their neat dresses they go out upon cheap and pleasant excursions, or they enjoy a cheap theatre in the evening, and are not abandoned women, in our sense of the term. This life is their business, and there is no shame and no condemnation among them.

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so registered, and there are 25,000 to 30,000 besides these who are not registered. They are not allowed to dress conspicuously, or to walk in the best streets soliciting custom. All is done decently and in order. Marriage is becoming more and more difficult, and non-marriage more and more easy.

Young American women, of the noureau riche, are taken to the Paris market, because there marquises and barons abound; these want money, the others want titles. Among the upper classes, too, so much rank strikes hands with so much rank or so much money; but all is a matter of business, settled upon business principles, before the final consummation. In such a condition of things we should not look for much domestic bliss, nor much domestic jealousy: we do not-they do not exist.

* Paris Guide, 1867, p. 1883.

We come now to a rather startling assertion. It is, that in the modern civilizations of Paris, and other great cities, the strongest instinct of woman's nature, maternity, is nearly extinct. Materialism has taken its place. Women marry for money, not for love; they yield their virtue to the charms of money, not to the blandishments of passion. They are not sensual. A few facts may help to sustain these assertions. The legitimate births to a marriage in the Department of the Seine (Paris), in 1854, were but 2.51; while in the rural populations they were 3.25. It appears that in 1800 the births in all France were 3.33; in 1855 they had declined to 2.50 per cent. Among the shopkeepers, the common reply is, "We cannot afford to have children;" and they do not have them. Among the upper classes they do not wish to have them, and they do not have them. Among the poorer classes there is, as there is everywhere, much heedlessness. But here steps in an agency which enables these poorer women to keep at work. There are eighteen crèches, or public nurseries, which receive some 2,500 babies ycarly, whose mothers, thus relieved of their care, are enabled to keep at work. We come now to another fact. About five thousand* children are annually abandoned to the foundling hospital. This has in its charge, mostly in the country, 23,228 abandoned children, who know neither father nor mother, and whose mothers never see or know their offspring.

The women of Paris do not love children, do not want them, and do not have them. The maternal instinct is suppressed, or it is sacrificed to the insatiable necessities of life, or to the exorbitant claims of pleasure. Is this, indeed, progress? Is it civilization?

The women of Paris are not beauti ful, nor are they loving; but they are most capable, most dexterous, most fascinating. What they lack in beauty, they make up in skill, in tact, in subtle flattery, in neatness, and in sense. They

* In 1864, 4,489.

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