etc., which must have rather puzzled any scientific observer whose telescope was at that moment directed to the sky; and, to crown all, fireworks (the noise of which, a French gentleman remarked to me, the people loved, as reminding them of musketry) and an illumination. The illumination—all the little trees before the houses, as well as the houses themselves and the green arches thrown across the streets, being covered with lamps—was an extremely pretty sight. The outline of the old houses, and the windings and declivities of the old streets, wonderfully favored the effect. But the French are peerless in these things. The childish delight of the people was pleasant to see. Why cannot they be satisfied with their fêtes, and with the undisputed empire of cookery and dress, instead of making themselves a scourge to the world, and keeping all Europe in disquietude and under arms?
The Emperor is trying to inoculate his subjects with a taste for English sports, but with rather doubtful success. He tries to make them play at cricket, but they do not much like the swift bowling. There was a caricature in the Charivari of a Frenchman standing up to his wicket with an implement which the artist intended for a bat, but which was more like a pavior's rammer, in his hand. A friend was asking him whether he had a wife, children, any tie to life. "None." "Then you may begin." In a window at Lisieux there was a print of a fox-hunt, with the master of the hounds dismounting to despatch the fox with a gun! At Vire there was a print of a horse-race, with the horses in a cantering attitude, and a large dog running and barking by their side. I have seen something equally funny of the same kind in America, but I need not say what or where. I never witnessed a French horse-race, but I am told that they enjoy it moult tristement, as they say we English enjoy all our amusements.
Close to Lisieux is the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, a place without any charms that I could see, puffed into celebrity by Alexander Dumas. The Duke de Morny invested in building there a good deal of the money which he made by the coup d'état. Life at a French watering-place seems to be as close an imitation of life at Paris as French ingenuity can produce under the adverse circumstances of the case. Nothing but the religion of fashion can compel these people periodically to leave the capital for the sea. The mode of bathing is rather singular. I found that the Americans did not, as is commonly believed in England, put trousers on the legs of their pianos, but I believe you are more particular than we are; and therefore, perhaps, you would be still more surprised than we are at seeing a gentleman wrapped in a sheet stalk before the eyes of all the promenaders over the sands to the sea, and there throw off the sheet, and at his leisure get into the water. At the risk of exposing my English prudishness, I ventured to remark to a French acquaintance that the fashion was un peu libre. I found, rather to my astonishment, that he thought so too.
At Val Richer, near Lisieux, is the pleasant country-house of M. Guizot. There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, a pretty patriarchal picture, the veteran statesman and historian reposes after the prodigious labors and tragic vicissitudes of his life. I say he reposes; but his pen is as active as ever, only that he has turned from politics and history to the more enduring and consoling topic of religion. He has just given us a volume on Christianity; he is about to give us one on the state of religion in France. It will be deeply interesting. In the revival of religion lies the only hope of regeneration for the French nation. And whence is that revival to come? From the official priesthood, and the jesuitical influences depicted in Le Maudit? Or from the Protestant Church of France, itself full of dissensions and turmoils, in which M. Guizot himself has been recently involved?
