"terrible butchery" of Eylau, and the "sanguinary day" of Friedland. Humanity is decidedly making progress when a French author can write of Napoleon's golrious victories as sanguinary deeds and frightful butcheries! The peace, concluded on a raft on the Niemen between Napoleon and Alexander, was celebrated by "Un Dîner par Victoire," played at the theatre of the Empress on the 31st of July, 1807, and in which the following strange couplet was spoken by an Englishman, with the stereotyped accent: Mon pays avec la France Il s'est jamais entendu ; Quand l'un pleure, l'autre danse; The unfortunate Briton was not let off with detestable French and a nasal twang, but he was told that the raft, which had been previously compared to the Ark, would become a frigate, and the Niemen an ocean, and Messieurs les Insulaires" were further told to beware of what would happen before a year had expired, by which time La France au pas redoublé This is amusing, but it was in exceeding bad taste that the author of "L'Hôtel de la Paix, Rue de la Victoire," not content with the statement that Napoleon and Alexander "de l'Anglais trompent l'espoir," penned also a long couplet on the afflictions of George III., which ended with C'est que, pour élaircir sa vue, Il lui faut de l'eau de Niemen. It is not surprising that "La Folie de Georges" should have been played in 1793; but in 1807, the respect due from one crowned head to another should have suppressed such sad reflections. But plays were not always prophetic. Josephine was still sung and spoken of on the stage as une épouse auguste et cherie," at the very time that preparations were being made for the reception of another empress at the Tuileries. It was merely a name to change in the madrigals. 66 The grandiose work of the First Empire was "Le Triomphe de Trajan," brought out with infinite splendour at the Opéra on the 23rd of October, 1807. Napoleon was hailed as Cæsar, in allusion to the intercepted letter of the Prince de Hatzfeld, which he handed over to the prince's wife: César n'a plus de preuve et ne peut condamner. Esménard, the author of the play, having, however, unluckily penned a satire against Russia, at a time when Napoleon wished to be in amity with that power, he was recommended to travel for his health, and, returning from Naples, his horses took fright near Fondi, and throwing him out against a rock, he was killed on the spot. "Les Embellissements de Paris" under the First Empire were celebrated in verse and on the stage. Spots now almost lost sight of, as the Marché aux Fleurs and the Canal de l'Ourcq, were spoken of then in rapturous terms. The Arc de l'Etoile had only been modelled in wood for the entrance of Marie Louise, and the edifice, once a temple of glory, which preserves its pagan physiognomy as the Church de la Madeleine, was only beginning to be built. One of the personages inquired: Mais comment réunirez-vous to which another replied: Je n'en sais rien. Je suis à l'affût des projets Je n'ai que des pierres d'attente. It remained for Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. to change the pierres d'attente into solid walls. The Embellissements de Paris" concluded with an allegorical figure of the city of Paris holding a transparency of the Empress, with the inscription: "Voilà mon plus bel ornement !" Nothing, indeed, could exceed the flattering encomiums with which Marie Louise was received by the devoted subjects of Napoleon I. Louise! ah! grands dieux! quel delire A son aspect vient nous saisir! was the style in which she was apostrophised, and the Duke de Rougemont, who lived to extol the fleurs-de-lis, as he then did the imperial bees, declared that Sur ce gage d'un doux accord Le bonheur des Français repose; As to the imperial husband, his mere glance could influence the weather, cause the buds to open, ripen the grapes, favour festivals, and unveil the future! The birth of the King of Rome, which occurred in the month consecrated to Mars, was duly celebrated by "Le Triomphe du Mois de Mars, ou le Berceau d'Achille," which was brought out at the Opéra. The Théâtre-Français also commemorated the same auspicious event in couplets, which ended with the usual allusion to the modern Cæsar : Le prince dont l'auguste père Sous l'heureuse étoile de Mars. The Opéra-Comique celebrated the event by "La Fête Villageoise ou l'Heureux Militaire," the theatre of the empress with "L'Olympe, Rome, Paris et Vienne," all four of which were indeed concerned in this happy birth. The vaudeville made the long arms of the telegraph carry the news to the farther extremities of the globe, and which news, we are told, En même tems qu'il epouvante Londre A Vienne il porte le plaisir. The divinities of Olympus were especially called upon in this "Dépêche Télégraphique" to endow the imperial child, Mars especially, but all they could grant would not be equal to his father's "star!" All perils were conjured and all felicities guaranteed by this happy event. Alas! for the anticipations of poor humanity! No such festivities hailed the birth of the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, yet the King of Rome died an exile, and the son of the rejected Josephine's daughter now rules in France! All these plays were written beforehand. "L'Heureuse Nouvelle," for example, came out the same night, and they were capable, with slight alterations, of being adapted for the birth of either a boy or a girl-that is, with the exception of the play at the Opéra, where the cradle of Achilles could scarcely have been adapted for a princess. As the Empire grew in power, the stage, which had passed from an early reticence to the most fulsome flattery and adulation, was glad even to be permitted to celebrate the virtues of those minor stars that moved in the imperial firmament. A M. Pain (bread), who generally had, curiously enough, for collaborateur a M. Bouilly (soup), celebrated, for example, the fête of the Archi-Chancellor Cambacérès by the production of "Le Manuscrit Déchiré." An impromptu by Moreau was sung after the play, which itself overflowed with adulatory paragraphs, concerning the "ami du plus grand des vainqueurs," in which John Cambacérès was compared (advantageously to himself) to John the Baptist, and Napoleon to the Saviour! Jadis au peuple Israelite Jean vint annoncer le Seigneur. The advantage that Cambacérès enjoyed over the ascetic of the Jordan was, that he was guided by the pagan goddess Minerva, and that he did not preach in a desert! This system of concentrating the nation in the person of one man, and of permitting France only to live by and through him, ever awaiting, as was repeated ad nauseam, for the fine weather and the inevitable success of his "star," was calculated to bear its fruits in time of reverses: Détestables flatteurs! present le plus funeste The disasters in Russia came to overthrow all these empty and adulatory Charles Martel represented Napoleon, but the oriflamme, although in the first mentioned hero's time only the banner of St. Denis, had been almost ever since the standard of the French monarchy. Charles Martel, who could alone decide the fate of combats and of empires, became the passion of the day. "Charles Martel, ou la France Sauvée," was played at the Ambigu. At the Gaîté it was " PhilippeAuguste à Bouvines," at the Opéra-Comique, "Bayard à Mezières." The Variétés had "Jeanne Hachette, or the Heroine of Beauvais," who invoked the chief of the Carlovingian dynasty to preserve the empire. The Théâtre-Français contented itself with reproducing "Le Siège de Calais," an essentially monarchical play, and not in any sense gratifying to French feelings. There seemed to be something almost ironical in reviving such reminiscences at such a crisis. The Oriflamme was still casting its poetical defiance at the enemy from the stage, when the enemy himself appeared at the gates of Paris, and a few days afterwards the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia were received with acclamations at the Opéra, the walls of which were still resounding with the martial chorus ! It was not a little curious that it was amidst such trying events, when the allies were approaching Paris, that the Théâtre Feydeau obtained one of the most brilliant successes that occurs in its annals. "Joconde" was played for the first time on the 28th of February, 1814, and people were humming the favourite airs of "J'ai longtems parcouru le Monde," "Dans un Délire extreme,” and “Quand on attend sa Belle," whilst battalions of the national guard, mobilised for the occasion, were marching out to oppose the great guns which already thundered in the distance. Last contrast! curious coincidence! Monday, the 28th of March, "Monsieur et Madame Jobineau, ou la Manie des Campagnes," was enacted for the first time at the Variétés. The second sense in which the word "campagnes" could be read as applying either to the country or to campaigns, lent itself to an equivocal satire upon the defeated emperor. The plot of the play lay in reality, however, in the unexpected expenses and the grotesque tribulations to which a respectable bourgeois family found itself exposed when attempting to establish themselves in a peaceful retreat in the environs of Paris. The particular village selected was Pantin, which was just about to experience tribulations of quite a different character. The very next day, the 29th, the Variétés was giving a second representation of "Monsieur et Madame Jobineau," whilst the allied troops, arriving by the high road from Meaux, were preparing for a general attack upon the positions that covered Paris. Pantin became a point where the most energetic resistance was presented to the advance of the enemy, and carried at the point of the bayonet, its houses were filled with the wounded, the dying, and the dead. On the night of the 30th, Paris could see the bivouac fires of the Russians and the Prussians burning on the heights of Montmartre, not very far from the Variétés. That constituted, we are told, the "spectacle" of the evening; and the next day, the 31st, the great city was indulged in a further "spectacle," which the public hastened to in crowds, and that was "Europe armed defiling along the boulevards." NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. RECENT TRAVELS IN THE HOLY LAND.* Ir will probably be a long time ere the traveller or explorer in the Holy Land will be expected to say what he has that is new or speculative in a brief and perspicuous form. The majority of readers prefer impressions of travel to matters of fact; and mere statements of facts or opinions, or the discussion of controversial matters, find but little favour in their eyes. If a competent person were to undertake, what is very much wanted, a practical synopsis of what is actually known in respect to the physical geography, the natural history, the comparative geography, the antiquities, the holy sites, and the traditions of the land of Israel, such a work would not meet with the same favourable reception as awaits the personal narratives, so pleasantly told, and the actual observations so eloquently expounded, of a Stanley, a Hepworth Dixon, or a Tristam. In the East, notwithstanding the raising up of a Palestine fund out of the ashes of an old Palestine Archæological Association, every one toils more or less for himself, and the wheat that he gleans has to be separated from a vast amount of useless investiture. Monographs like Pierotti's "Jerusalem Explored," or Lewin's "Siege of Jerusalem," De Sauley's "Dead Sea," Porter's "Damascus," Walpole's " Ansayrii,' Rey's "Hauran," Langlois's "Cilicia," and a few others, are rare, and even some of these works bear a deceptive title, and, when opened, are found to be occupied to a far greater extent with alien objects than with Syria," and "Palesthose held out as the main purport of the work. tine," the "Holy Land," or the "Land of Israel," are, in nine cases out of ten, the comprehensive topics which can alone satisfy the ambitious explorer, and the consequences are a number of imperfect works instead of one or two that would be progressively satisfactory. As a proof of this, even the sceptical but arduous explorer-Robinson-who kept less to the highways than the generality of travellers, and whose researches were carried into nooks and corners, found that he had to return to the charge again and again before he could clear up one tittle of the difficulties which present themselves in determining the localities mentioned in the Old Testament, or indeed bringing to light the few more simple footsteps of the Lord-a labour which, in many leading points, as in the instance of Cana of Galilee and of Capernaum, he signally failed. 66 * The Holy Land. By William Hepworth Dixon. Two Vols. Chapman and Hall. The Land of Israel. A Journal of Travels in Palestine, undertaken with special Reference to its Physical Character. By H. B. Tristam, M.A., F.L.S. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Oct.-VOL. CXXXV. NO. DXXXVIII. K |