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ART. IX.-Pérégrinations d'une Paria (1833-1834); par M.me Flora Tristan. (The Peregrinations of a Pariah (18331-834;) by Madame Flora Tristan.) 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1838.

THE world has gone wrong from the beginning of time! Five thousand years have elapsed since it began; and in all that long interval of centuries, and systems, and creeds, that wide expanse of nature, society, and civilization, common-sense has never existed, wisdom never found a voice, until lately! In all the families into which the human race has been divided; in all the quarters of the globe into which they have spread; in all the languages that have breathed the boundless diversity of thought, and borne to answering hearts the warmest utterance of the heart, not a trace of reason can be found! The great divisions, the single families of mankind, have lived and died; their numbers are computed to rival the gigantic mass of Arthurs-Seat at Edinburgh; their tongues, such as have not died away into utter oblivion, still preserve and develope the institutes of their actual experience;— but all this, with themselves, is wrong. Three thousand four hundred languages exist at this moment, living shrines of the judgment of as many nations: every state, every people, every tribe, of even semi-civilization, in closest intercourse or widest separation, has brought in these 3400 tongues one uniform and universal result from each distinct and isolated specimen, to reverence the sanctity of marriage and uphold its institution. The yearnings of self-love to keep its own undisturbed; the principle of society, to abstain from the property of others; the ties of nature, clinging to its offspring; the pulse of affection, claiming to distinguish and cherish the very breath of its own being, to guard and guide the infant ray of its own spirit: the legislator's institute to fence the weak with paternal care, and guard the strong from the violence of their own overpowering passion; nay, the law of Heaven that enjoined the rite, and denounced wrath and woe on its violator:-All are wrong!-A young French lady has had a quarrel with her husband; and society must be unhinged, and the world remodelled, and human happiness and divine command be alike trampled under foot, that Madame Flora Tristan may become a Miss.

To attain due fulfilment of her ardent desires being obviously a matter of the greatest interest and importance to the whole human race, mankind might in their ignorant perversity have differed upon and contested the right mode of proceeding, had it not pleased the fair illuminator of our moral darkness to point it out herself for the general benefit of society, and of her own sex in

especial. "There is not a place in the most civilized countries," says this accurate and well-informed lady," where numerous "classes of individuals have not to undergo legal oppression. "The peasants in Russia, the Jews in Rome, sailors in England, "women everywhere: yes," she magnanimously exclaims,"wherever the cessation of that mutual consent, necessary to the "formation of marriage, does not suffice to break it, woman is in "servitude:" and, it seems, divorce obtainable at the will of one of the parties can alone place her on the same level as man in regard to civil rights: "Therefore,"-proceeds the same conclusive authority, and doubtless with good reasons for the objection "to publish the amours of women is to expose them to oppression."

The remedy for such manifold evils could only have been derived from direct inspiration: we know not in truth from what quarter, but suspect that at any rate it was not from M. Arthur Bertrand, our gentle Saint Simonienne's doubtless very respectable publisher. "Let the women whose lives have been agitated "by great misfortunes render their griefs eloquent; let them expose the troubles they have experienced owing to the position "in which laws have placed them, and to the prejudices with "which they are enchained." ** "Let every individual, in fine, "who has seen and suffered, who has had to struggle with Men "and Things, make a duty of relating in all their variety the events "they have shared in or witnessed, and specify by name those "who are to be blamed or eulogized."

This simple and efficacious device, to be performed after the fashion of their prototype, Madame Flora, at first sight appears likely to afford amusement enough. The exposure by name of the Men and Things with which the sex have struggled might gratify the inherent love of scandal in our nature, if it did not overwhelm it; but if every married woman were to write two volumes octavo of what occurred to her in the years 1833-1834 alone,-take only Paris, where the married couples are recently estimated at 97,000, and the number of the contented couples at 15, and what a sensation would it not produce! Every husband in France would be bound to read, and of course answer these outbreaks of conjugal affection; and M. Arthur Bertrand himself, for ought we know, be compelled to write his own private history instead of publishing for others. As the example spread, not only the European and Asiatic, the Hollander, the Laplander, the Mug and the Thug, but Esquimaux and Choctaw, Iroquois, Catabaws, and Chickasaws, wives in short and squaws of every denomination with all their thousand tongues would be filling the grand diapason of griefs through every octave and chord, tone, and semitone,

quavers with their subdivisions of demi, demi-semi, and shakes; from the turkey*-like pectoral of Arabia, the goose-like sibilation of England, and the Tuscan† eagle-scream, to the hen-clucking of southern Africa, and the hawked aspirations of the Peruvian. Coptic, Zend, and Sanscrit might be wakened and explored for lamentations, and interminable sorrows pour forth from Hottentot, Japanese, Chinese and Cherokees, which last have just invented an alphabet in time for the operation. Two hundred millions, the actual computed stock of the married, in couples, trios, quartets, or ad infinita, might thus be usefully occupied in writing each an octavo volume per annum, to praise themselves, and abuse the Beloved of their Souls, by name.

The rabble-rout and mass of a past period,

"those luckless brains

Who, to the wrong side leaning,"

from forty to fifty years since delighted to doat upon the peremptory superficialities of Paine and the dull platitudes of Godwin; in whom northern second-sight itself could discern nothing but foggy mists resembling elevations; that "rascaille rabble" could alone, we believe, have tolerated in their excited ignorance the vague impertinencies of Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wolstoncroft. These miserable quacks of womanhood have long since, thank Heaven! died away in England; and amongst our fair neighbours across the Channel the race does not seem to meet with encouragement at present,-even though a second Goddess of Reason comes forward to qualify herself for the office by vindicating and imitating the process that established her predecessor's claim. We judge of her by her own words, quoted above and hereafter. Nor does her shameless praise of the gross and licentious novels of Madame Dudevant, alias George Sand, induce the French public, any more than our own, to regard that ingenious Epicene, the sensuality of both sexes, in any other light than degrading the manhood she vainly assumes and disgracing the softer sex that justly repudiates her. We must not do France the injustice to imagine, because her children love excitement and are something less scrupulous than ourselves as to the means, that therefore those printed abominations form the real taste of the people. The unsettled state of French literature makes all novelty desirable, and, like every other fluctuating scene, conceals in part their monstrosity. But the incessant jest and sparkling sneer indicate, no less strongly than our graver remonstrances at home, a contemptuous estimation of the writer and her crew; and France is satisfied, instead of objurgating, to hold

Malcolm's Anecdotes of Persia.

† Porphyry.

up and define vice by a poignant phrase. Still less must the careless tone of the capital be taken as the feeling of the provinces. We, and the Parisians themselves, are apt to consider Paris as France: the two differ essentially; and we might almost as well consider Madrid as Spain. Provincial simplicity, in the best sense of the term, can meet no contrast more marked than in the gay capital of Gaul; and even what we too often deem levity there, is but the free, heedless, and harmless gaiety of a Southern organization. England might have been indignant through half her best regulated society, but we doubt if the highest indignation could so happily have assigned vice its due place in the public eye and feeling, as the insidiously respectful sarcasm by which French courtesy distinguished a somewhat too amiable personage as "lu Veuve de la Grande Armée." The quantum of morals and errors may be the same in both countries, though the mode of developement differs according to climate and constitutions. They indulge in satire; we rejoice in beer; and both à discretion; Anglicè, without any.

us.

An indirect betrayal of the real state of feeling with regard to married duties in France, so much misunderstood, and, we regret to say it, misrepresented among us, occurs in the volumes before It is clear from her own narrative that the complete and blissful ignorance of everything useful or rational in which Madame Flora Tristan remained while there, was owing to the absolute isolation from society produced by her attempts to carry her own philosophical vagaries into the practice of real life. Such enthusiasts are fain to display themselves all Soul, by exhibiting themselves all Body. The fair lady in truth had had the politeness to obey one law of the Creator-namely, that of multiplication; and had even condescended to this by the legitimate channel, of marriage-though, to do her justice, not by her own choice. But content with the merit of taking the vow of fidelity, she was above the vulgar temptation to adhere to it,-and accordingly, abandoning her husband, she volunteered with Saint Simon; the only saint, we suspect, she ever cordially embraced.

Her volumes then are founded on ignorance and error; and the basis, it must be allowed, is ample indeed. A celebrated infidel abhorred religion because, as was well remarked, it was troublesome to him. The creed of Madame Tristan being thus likewise a matter of taste, she selected that which made her all spirit, and thus disencumbered her of the restraints upon the flesh. Yet "to decent vice though much inclined" she appears to be vicious chiefly in sentiment and warm rather than wanton: but society could not afford the distinction; and, shut out from its

pale, having apparently little of character to lose, she of course turns reformer.

There is one virtue of a reformer that seems to have been wholly overlooked, alike by that sacred band and their impugners: to wit, disinterestedness. While in all other instances individuals are eager to appropriate advantages to themselves in the first place, the real champion of Reform, though convinced of its being the Sole Good, never seeks it for himself, but gives all the world the preference. He has nothing of the nature of that Epic Hero over the bottle, who

"First a glass himself poured out

"For fear it shouldn't go about :"

On the contrary, even should a portion of improvement be left after going the round of all mankind, he would reject it with virtuous scorn: if he follows the old adage-Every one should mend one-he commences at once with his nearest neighbour, whether an individual or a universe, Man or his Maker; anything and everything, in short, but himself. There is no selfishness in this; -it is true Liberality; and this is the system of Madame Flora Tristan.

Having thus premised at some length in order duly to prepare our readers for the advent of our authoress amongst them, we proceed to introduce her in person-that she may relate not only what she felt or fancied, but what also she actually saw. It is for the sake of these descriptions, of Persons and Things, given with something of talent, strength, and vividness, that we have noticed her work at all. We are bound in fairness to say that every eye familiar with the scenes she describes has recognized their truth, and their force: and that they present unknown places and costumes to the mind with some workings of reality. This effort after verity as regards Things is the more meritorious inasmuch as it is by no means one of the fair Flora's habitudes; but she atones to herself for the sacrifice in her elaborate portraiture of Persons, many of them outlined with truth and highly amusing as food for scandal; but all the filling up deeply tinted with hatred, lying, malice, and all uncharitableness; to the second of which amiabilities Flora openly asserts her unquestioned claim, and the rest do not require even that assertion, to be conceded her.

Madame Tristan sets out with a dedication to the Peruvians, in which she acquaints that uninformed race, what they might otherwise have very well doubted; namely, that they will be benefited by her book; though but few, she suspects, will read it: and that, having been benevolently received by them, they are to regard the unmeasured abuse she has heaped upon them in return as proofs of her friendship. They are, it seems, "corrupt to the core, sel

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