Letters of a Traveller Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America

Excerpt

Letter I.

First Impressions of an American in France.

Paris, August 9, 1834.

Since we first landed in France, every step of our journey has reminded us that we were in an old country. Every thing we saw spoke of the past, of an antiquity without limit; everywhere our eyes rested on the handiwork of those who had been dead for ages, and we were in the midst of customs which they had bequeathed to their descendants. The churches were so vast, so solid, so venerable, and time-eaten; the dwellings so gray, and of such antique architecture, and in the large towns, like Rouen, rose so high, and overhung with such quaint projections the narrow and cavernous streets; the thatched cots were so mossy and so green with grass! The very hills about them looked scarcely as old, for there was youth in their vegetation--their shrubs and flowers. The countrywomen wore such high caps, such long waists, and such short petticoats!--the fashion of bonnets is an innovation of yesterday, which they regard with scorn. We passed females riding on donkeys, the Old Testament beast of burden, with panniers on each side, as was the custom hundreds of years since. We saw ancient dames sitting at their doors with distaffs, twisting the thread by twirling the spindle between the thumb and finger, as they did in the days of Homer. A flock of sheep was grazing on the side of a hill; they were attended by a shepherd, and a brace of prick-eared dogs, which kept them from straying, as was done thousands of years ago. Speckled birds were hopping by the sides of the road; it was the magpie, the bird of ancient fable. Flocks of what I at first took for the crow of our country were stalking in the fields, or sailing in the air over the old elms; it was the rook, the bird made as classical by Addison as his cousin the raven by the Latin poets.

Then there were the old chateaus on the hills, built with an appearance of military strength, their towers and battlements telling of feudal times. The groves by which they were surrounded were for the most part clipped into regular walls, and pierced with regularly arched passages, leading in various directions, and the trees compelled by the shears to take the shape of obelisks and pyramids, or other fantastic figures, according to the taste of the middle ages. As we drew nearer to Paris, we saw the plant which Noah first committed to the earth after the deluge--you know what that was I hope--trained on low stakes, and growing thickly and luxuriantly on the slopes by the side of the highway. Here, too, was the tree which was the subject of the first Christian miracle, the fig, its branches heavy with the bursting fruit just beginning to ripen for the market.

But when we entered Paris, and passed the Barrière d'Etoile, with its lofty triumphal arch; when we swept through the arch of Neuilly, and came in front of the Hotel des Invalides, where the aged or maimed soldiers, the living monuments of so many battles, were walking or sitting under the elms of its broad esplanade; when we saw the colossal statues of statesmen and warriors frowning from their pedestals on the bridges which bestride the muddy and narrow channel of the Seine; when we came in sight of the gray pinnacles of the Tuilleries, and the Gothic towers of Notre-Dame, and the Roman ones of St....