Potato myself, I can't help seeing that the tulip yonder has the best place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the most water, and the best tending--and not liking him over well.But I can't help acknowledging that Nature has given him a much finer dress than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at least, must give him the benefit.
Or say, we are so many cocks and hens, my dear (sans arriere pensee), with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, and tolerable snug roosting in the barn: yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail.Don't let us be too angry, my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because he despises us.
SOMETHING is there about Peacock that we don't possess.Strain your neck ever so, you can't make it as long or as blue as his--cock your tail as much as you please, and it will never be half so fine to look at.But the most absurd, disgusting, contemptible sight in the world would you and I be, leaving the barn-door for my lady's flower-garden, forsaking our natural sturdy walk for the peacock's genteel rickety stride, and adopting the squeak of his voice in the place of our gallant lusty cock-a-doodle-dooing.
Do you take the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the above types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of the Emperor's Generals.
Ventrebleu! Madam, what need have THEY of coats-of-arms and coronets, and wretched imitations of old exploded aristocratic gewgaws that they had flung out of the country--with the heads of the owners in them sometimes, for indeed they were not particular--a score of years before? What business, forsooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and aping its ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be? A clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been bred up genteelly at Eton and the university)--young Mr.George Canning, at the commencement of the French Revolution, sneered at "Roland the Just, with ribbons in his shoes," and the dandies, who then wore buckles, voted the sarcasm monstrous killing.It was a joke, my dear, worthy of a lackey, or of a silly smart parvenu, not knowing the society into which his luck had cast him (God help him! in later years, they taught him what they were!), and fancying in his silly intoxication that simplicity was ludicrous and fashion respectable.See, now, fifty years are gone, and where are shoebuckles? Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable past off the toes of all Europe!
How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this respect for shoebuckles.Where, for instance, would the Empire of Napoleon have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder?--the bold Republican who led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire to the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten imperial heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the father of it.It has always been so.They won't amalgamate.A country must be governed by the one principle or the other.But give, in a republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and it works and plots and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into place, and you find democracy out of doors.Is it good that the aristocracy should so triumph?--that is a question that you may settle according to your own notions and taste; and permit me to say, I do not care twopence how you settle it.Large books have been written upon the subject in a variety of languages, and coming to a variety of conclusions.Great statesmen are there in our country, from Lord Londonderry down to Mr.Vincent, each in his degree maintaining his different opinion.But here, in the matter of Napoleon, is a simple fact: he founded a great, glorious, strong, potent republic, able to cope with the best aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to beat them all; he converts his republic into a monarchy, and surrounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic institutions; and you know what becomes of him.The people estranged, the aristocracy faithless (when did they ever pardon one who was not of themselves?)--the imperial fabric tumbles to the ground.If it teaches nothing else, my dear, it teaches one a great point of policy--namely, to stick by one's party.
While these thoughts (and sundry others relative to the horrible cold of the place, the intense dulness of delay, the stupidity of leaving a warm bed and a breakfast in order to witness a procession that is much better performed at a theatre)--while these thoughts were passing in the mind, the church began to fill apace, and you saw that the hour of the ceremony was drawing near.
Imprimis, came men with lighted staves, and set fire to at least ten thousand wax-candles that were hanging in brilliant chandeliers in various parts of the chapel.Curtains were dropped over the upper windows as these illuminations were effected, and the church was left only to the funereal light of the spermaceti.To the right was the dome, round the cavity of which sparkling lamps were set, that designed the shape of it brilliantly against the darkness.In the midst, and where the altar used to stand, rose the catafalque.And why not? Who is God here but Napoleon? and in him the sceptics have already ceased to believe; but the people does still somewhat.He and Louis XIV.divide the worship of the place between them.
