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"IF I wished to impress my children with the greatness and the destiny of France, I should take them to some point, whence they could look down on the soldiers and army of the nation, and bid them there see the strength and future of their country." Thus speaks-not, perhaps, in these exact words, but with this meaning-a modern French writer ; and it was before the army became such an element in the government as it is now that this sentiment was expressed; it was before a war had given its prestige of fame, or a dynasty had sought its support, that a philosopher and a historian saw in the camp the leading principle, and in the soldier the leading character, of the national progress. Perhaps with the bulk of the people, with the mass of Frenchmen, this feeling is less deep, less strong, than it was in the days when the sentiment was uttered; and by many classes the army is recognised rather as the force of order than as the necessary or probable agent of future civilisation and progress. The glory-passion and the conquest-destiny are still, perhaps, the predominant expressions, and the outward sentiment of the nation; but in the depths of society, in the under-currents of ranks and classes, there have long been growing and growing feelings and ideas which must seek their development through

VOL. LXXXV.—NO. DXXI.

other elements and contrary agencies. The voice, however, which is yet heard most loudly proclaims as the national cry that the army is order, the army is progress.

Chalons, the camp, the representation of the army, is even regarded as an aspect of civilisation. "C'est là," says a French military writer, "qu'il a voulu réunir tous ces braves qui à Inkerman, Alma, Eupatoria, Traktir, Malakoff, et Sebastopol ont jeté les semences de cette civilisation chevaleresque qui, courant part tout l'univers, doit rendre, pour ainsi dire, solidaires les unes des autres, tous les nations du globe, et leur inscrire au front franchement et sans arrière pensée le nom glorieux de la France et Napoléon"!!!

Hear this, men of Manchester ! It is a civilisation chevaleresque of which the soldier is to be the missionary, and war the promulgating principle which shall effect the consolidation of peoples. Perhaps it would be as effective as cotton bales. The two ideas represent the extremes of the theories, in which men and nations are striving to expand and develop the destiny and the future of mankind.

The French phase is strange to us. We connect the soldier with defence, conquest, and finance budgets. We accept as national his heroism and his glory, but we never dream of

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associating him or his influences with our schemes or theories of advance and perfectability; and in this, perhaps, we deviate as much from the conclusions of history and the true moral estimate of vocations as the French do in their exaggeration of the soldier-mission.

The camp is the sphere, the natural home, of an army. It is there we see the soldier- character in its truest light the soldier-body in its highest manifestation. In this tent-covered plain at Chalons-in this aggregate of men, of martial might and martial means we might therefore hope to see some exposition of this civilisation chevaleresque, and in studying here the characteristics, institution, and probable destiny of the French soldier, we may obtain some knowledge as to what the soldier should be, and what he may become to other nationalities and other civilisations.

There are spots here and there in the world which seem destined to be sites of war and battle-some marked by their position, some by their sterility, some by their place in the great thoroughfares of migrations, in the great war-paths of conquest. The vast expanse of champaign country the succession of plains extending towards the north-east barrier of France, betwixt the great towns of Chalons, Rheims, and Epernay, has been again and again the high-road of invasion, the campingground of armies, and more than once the field of battle. The great plateau especially which lies betwixt the rivers Marne and l'Aisne and the valley d'Argonne, broad and sterile, unpeopled though environed by cities-solitary, though crossed and tracked by imperial roads and ancient highways-arid, yet dry and healthful-open to the breezes, and just sheltered and shadowed in the distance by hills, or rather uplandswatered by smaller streams, specious and undulating, and thus adapted for the movements and manoeuvres of armies-presents itself as a natural camp-as a world-space formed and fore-destined for a terrain militaire. Napoleon the First fixed on it as a strategic position for an advanced camp against invasion. Napoleon the Third has selected it as the

locality wherein he might mass and amalgamate the braves of the Crimea and Africa-wherein he might propagate the discipline, experiences, habits, and traditions of past campaigns and combats, and make them inspirations in the future of the armies of France. This camp is to do more; it is to have other than a strategic or military effect; it is also, in addition to its primary purposes, "to carry into the plains of Champagne, the aridity and sterility of which are proverbial, the fertilisation and prosperity produced by the establishment of a species of military colony."

It is a natural thing to associate pleasant things with pleasant places, and it is, therefore, a great outrage on old fancies, old fallacies, to hear of the plains of Champagne as sterile and arid-to find that the land of that creamy sparkling vintage, which brightens the eye, gladdens the heart, and loosens the tongue, is barren and desert. As we have seen the nectar foaming and bubbling in the glass, and felt its inspiration upon us, we have dreamed of its birthplace as a land of corn and wine, rich and luxuriant, where nature revelled in clustering vines, and man sat in trellissed arbours, a poetic Bacchanal, with the well-known long-necked bottle in one hand, and the graceful long-shaped glass-sacred to the memories of old draughts-in the other, alternately quaffing and chanting a chanson-à-boire. The reality is a striking reverse of such a picture. The sparkle and the brilliancy are all exported. Flat plains, bare fields unshaded by tree, and with no relief save narrow trenches to mark the boundaries, and now and then rows of stiff poplars-dull, uncouth peasants, who had not even the virtue of lifting the hat, which, with the Frenchman, like charity, covers a multitude of sins of true courtesy-have no kinship with the visions inspired by the vintage of Champagne, are as alien from them as romance from reality, poetry from prose. How far they may approximate when the promised fertility and prosperity shall bloom and blossom under the genial influences of military occupation, must be a revelation of the future. The

French soldier, taken individually, seems an unpromising missionary enough for such work; what a system of order, a colony of braves, planted amid sterility and boorishness, may effect, what chivalresqueness it may diffuse, will be a question of cause and effect, which will fill a strange and interesting page in the history of civilisation.

The French army, as long as the present policies and relations of states exist, must be a great agent in the destiny of the world-a great power in affecting the revolutions and developments of its government. When the millennium of arbitration and commercial reciprocity - foretold by peace prophets-shall have reached the fulness of time, we may expect to see this warlike assemblage dispersed, the martial array of tents assume a pastoral aspect, fierce Zouaves pruning vines, and stern chasseurs leading kine or fluting under trees, and battered vivandières milking goats. Meanwhile, as war is still an element in our system, and the soldier-vocation still a necessity, a French army as the representative of the theory of force, and the chivalresque civilisation which is to be promulgated by arms and conquest, a French camp as an illustration of soldier-life and discipline, are facts which must have an import, studies and suggestions for the present and future. Thus the camp at Chalons may be regarded. As the lanista of a great military systemthe experiment of a military colony -it is an event of the times demanding attention and interest. Let us look at it in its different aspects, pictorial, social, martial, and political.

Chalons gives its name to the camp, as being the place which connects it with the centre of government, though it is actually situated at the village of Mourmelon, distant about sixteen or eighteen miles. A railway keeps up the communication. The old city, with its old Gothic cathedral, its old inns with rambling corridors and galleries, and courts which remind one of caravanserais, old streets and bridges, its pretty gardens, and willows hanging over the banks of the Marne, have other

thoughts, memories, and associations at first, perhaps, than those of war or camp. Calm, still, almost dull, it is scarcely a congenial starting-point for the stir and bustle of military life. Then, again, there are the celebrated Caves de Jacqueson, the vast catacombs wherein repose legions of silver-capped bottles, which, like the enchanted champions in the Moorish caverns, are one day to burst their spell and sally forth into the world. These, too, were suggestive rather of balls, suppers, fetes champêtres, déjeûners, smiling faces, laughing hearts, merry voices, and broad jokes, than of grim soldiers and tented plains. Önce en route, however, once in the railway carriage, and the military element presents itself as the predominating one. There Monsieur le Capitaine fusses with his petit carpet-bag; there Monsieur le Fourrier lights his cigar, and Monsieur le Caporal broods over his ticket. We, the bourgeois, a peasant, his wife, and our-self, feel our insignificance in detached corners, and have an inward sense of the inferiority of duffle and tweed to lace and worsted. The prospect outside is not cheering, neither is our society very exhilarating flatness without, flatness within. The influences are decidedly drowsy. Monsieur le Capitaine dozes and dozes, and then wakes up to a remembrance of his bag. Monsieur le Fourrier makes spasmodic puffs, betwixt blinking and winking : le Caporal nods over his pass-ticket, rousing himself ever and anon to a fierce surveillance of it; the bourgeois snores remorselessly on his wife's shoulder. Our own eyes open and shut on a succession of flat fields with little boundary trenches, some in stubble, some in green crops-all, however, level and unwooded, altogether repudiating undulations and thickets. Occasionally we start up to look on a river or a row of poplars as a marked feature in the scene. Heavy rain, too, is making mud and mist everywhere. At last we are at the station, the Camp de Gare-not at Mourmelon-le-Grand-no, that is farther on this is Mourmelon-lePetit, quite an inferior sort of village, a very ordinary place, altogether unworthy of being the resort and ren

dezvous of braves. It is only the humble introduction to its grand namesake. At Chalons we had inquired of a learned bibliothécaire the name of the best hostelry at Mourmelon, and been particularly recommended above all things to pitch our portmanteau in the Hôtel du Soleil d'Or. The high-sounding title caught our fancy--we repeated it again and again, and at each repetition there arose visions of a luxurious chamber, of a grand salon, and of a table-d'hôte graced by all the élite of military circles. The word was still on our tongue when a garçon offered us an apartment belonging to the railway buffet. Like the prophet's chamber in the wall, it had its bed, and its table, and its candlestick-was clean and bare, well enough except to one dreaming of the "Soleil d'Or." A glimpse of the salon-de-manger, with its little tables covered with white cloths, its buffet rich in luscious fruits, preserves, gelatine, capons, and tongues, and pretty with flowers, tempted us for the moment; but the Soleil d'Or was the ignis fatuus which lured us on. So we mounted the omnibus, outside too, the rain pelting upon us, the mud scattering showers around. We never saw anything like that mud-it was liquid, red, sticky, and yet hard, striking one on the face like pellets. On the road, it lay like a puddle river; in the plain, in little lakes and seas of mire. We were passing by the camp; in vain we tried to get a sight of it. As often as our driver pointed to some position, the rain beat on our eyes, or a puff of wind endangered our hat. We were conscious now and then of huge masses covered with canvass, arising before and beside us, and occasionally of a group of tents lying betwixt the bushes; but everything had a misty, miry form and shape. Now we are entering Mourmelon-le-Grand. Its glories are sadly obscured by wet and mire. The banners from the cafés hang heavily the paint and gilding look cold and dull-the soldiers have a bedraggled look as they slip along the streets; for the soldier, like the cock and other fine birds, requires sunshine for his bravery, and is but a poor-looking creature when con

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tending with rain and dirt. stop; before us swings a huge board, whereon a gamboge face smirked through a halo of yellow spikes. It was the Soleil d'Or. Seen thus, through a haze and under a cloud, it had not the brilliancy we had dreamed of. The hostelry had nothing sunshiny or golden about it; on the contrary, it was rather dark and miry, and had the look of receiving its illuminations chiefly from oil or tallow. The court, like the marchioness's marble halls, was rather sloppy, and our reception by a garçon, who always appeared in his shirt sleeves, and always announced his presence by a grin betwixt impudence and idiotcy, in a salon which seemed only a roofed and glazed continuation of the court, and exhibited the barest garniture of tables and forms, at once damped out all our delusions. Would we see our chamber ?-there was hope yet, this might make up for all; and we followed our portmanteau up-stairs with anticipations that the Soleil d'Or might yet beam forth its splendour. A handmaiden, who despised stockings as much as her fellow the garçon did waistcoat and coat, ushers us in, and points with a look of pride to a narrow passage sort of room, in which stood two immense masses of woodwork piled up with mattresses. They looked like huge sofas which a lady of Brobdignag might have moved about or reclined on, but quite beyond the need or locomotion of lesser bulk or strength. It was a mystery to us for a long time, how they could have been brought up the staircase and into the door; and we settled at last that they had been built and fashioned in their places. They were so high, too, that a Geoffrey Hudson could only have sought repose therein by means of a ladder; and a King John's man must have had recourse to a leap or a scramble for the same purpose. When once we got over the dread of being smothered, and became a little adroit in the management of the mattresses, they were not bad sleeping-places. There was little space, however, left in the room for sitting or for lavatory operations. As a compensation for this, there was a large mirror in

a gilded frame. It was cracked and starred, so that it did the work of a dozen glasses, and showed the face in several styles and proportions, giving one a good idea of the appearance of one's physiognomy under the effect of enlargement or diminution; the gilt, too, was rather tarnished, and, like the Soleil d'Or, the mirror had only the dimness and haze of glory, The window-difficult to shut and more difficult to open, a daily trial and exasperation to us-looked out on a little open square, wherein stood booths with sweet-stuffs and little barrows of fruit. There was a guardhouse in front; and to the left rose the old church-tower with a largefaced clock, the figures of which we could trace even from the depths of our down. Three loud raps on the table with the handle of a fork announce the dinner-hour. The Soleil d'Or despised bell or gong; it had a great contempt, too, for tablecloths and napkins, and confessed reluctantly to sheets and towels. Another peculiarity of the Soleil d'Or was a repudiation of superfluous raiment. Our host took his place at the tabled'hôte in his shirt, quite innocent of vest or surtout-but then he atoned for this, by always assuming on such occasions a fur cap like a Tartar's. The guests followed his example, and always sat down be-capped or behatted. They were all intensely bourgeois-hagmen and yeomen done in French, and not much improved by the doing. There was a great scramble for places, and we, from our gaucherie in the mêlee, rather than from humility, had to take the lowest seat. The potage was ladled out with great parade. It reminded us strongly of a rich family broth said to have been prepared by a housewife of our acquaintance for the husband of her love, by stirring a tallow candle in a saucepan of boiling water. The Soleil d'Or, however, had advanced on this idea, by adding pieces of bread and litle strips of carrot and cabbage. The other dishes were well enough for those who had philosophic feelings with regard to grease, cinders, and a general savour as of an old lamp. The courses, too, were rather eccentric in their succession, and we were ever in pleasing uncer

tainty as to the order of our bouilli and rôti, and the rotation of fish and sweet. There were long, trying pauses, too, caused by a propensity of the garçon to taste every bottle of wine in his pantry as he opened it. The naked heels of his colleague were also a standing temptation, and many a time did a dish stray from its straight course, owing to the impulse he had to tickle them. Then there would be retaliation, and a tiny damsel who occupied the tribune would rush down from her stool to avenge the handmaiden, and a host of shirt sleeves and slip-shod feet, which seemed to have a loose attachment to the establishment, would issue forth to join the mêlee; and thus our dinner would halt until the garçon had finished his fun, or been roused by some angry remonstrance. 'Twas a curious ménage that of the Soleil d'Or. Yet how much better they manage all these things in France! How superior were these men with their caps on at their clothless table, struggling for places, making dashes at dishes, sopping up gravy with their bread, clashing their glasses, and indulging freely in one or two American fashions, to a burly English farmer over his beef and beer, or a bagman over his broiled mutton and port! The whole thing, too, how much was it above an English country inn with its sanded floor, coarse white sheets, eggs and bacon and stout! Ah, la belle France is the place for refinement in life and

manners!

The assumption of national virtues has often more credit than the reality. The French have set up themselves as a standard people in the courtesies and elegancies, in the refinements and delicacy of living. The world has taken them at their word, and thereby has been imposed upon, we think, or rather has imposed upon itself, as far, at least, as regards the French of to-day. Nowhere that we have set our foot are the life and manners and habits so selfish; nowhere is there so little of the courtesy which springs from heart and feeling, so much of the external show of bowing and phrasing. As for eating, except a Caffre or a Bushman, we believe that no living being

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