Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), April 12, 1845, vol. 1, no. 15, p. ??

[page 225, column 1, continued:]

MICHELET’S HISTORY OF FRANCE, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. D. Appleton & Co. 200 Broadway.

One of the great merits of this unique history consists of a vein of intense national feeling that pervades the entire work, and colors its whole materials with the hues of Gaul. The reader very soon becomes infected with the heat of the historian, and forgets that there is any other country than France. M. Michelet talks, it is true, of a noble generalization — an abstract idea of home but little dependent on the senses, which will conduct him by a new effort to the idea of a universal country, a new city of Providence. But it is an effort which he has yet to make, and an idea yet to be realised. His sole idea of a country in his history, is France; [column 2:] his sole idea of France is Paris. In this he is a genuine Frenchman — a Parisian of Paris; and his history is all the better for it. It is what it professes to be — a history of France — not a history of French kings, warriors, and statesmen, but of French people, from the cobbler in his stall to the king on his throne; the sports, the superstitions, and the trades of the people as well as their wars and robberies, which other historians have considered the only acts of a people worthy of notice. He not only gives us the history of the people, but the fields and shops in which they labored, the cities in which they dwelt, their persons, habits, and local traditions. While the novelist strives to give his tale the appearance of history, by solemn generalizations and pedantic descriptions, M. Michelet adopts the true novelesque style in his history, rapid, brilliant, and minute. He is the most picturesque, imaginative, and familiar of historians. There is a picture in every page, and something to startle the thoughts in every sentence. As he skims over the surface of the country every thing arrests his eye — towers, churches, castles, fairs, orchards, battles, canals, artists, rivers, ships, herds and cottages. His is the history of a country, not of a country's rulers.

We make a few extracts from the description of the wine countries, “Lyonnais, Burgundy and Champagne; a vinous, joyous zone, fraught with poetry, eloquence, and elegant and ingenious literature.”

“There is none of the amenity of Burgundy in the dry and sombre districts of Autun and Morvan. To know the true Burgundy, the Burgundy of cheering smiles and of the grape, you must ascend the Saone by Chalons, then turn, through the Cote d’Or, to the plateau of Dijon, and follow the current towards Auxerre — a goodly land, where vine-leaves adorn the arms of the cities, where all are brothers or cousins, a land of hearty livers and of merry Christmases.

“Burgundy is a land of orators; of lofty and solemn eloquence. From the upper part of this province, from the district which gives rise to the Seine — from Dijon, and from Montbar — issued the voices which have most resounded through France, those of St. Bernard, of Bossuet, and of Buffon. But the sentimentality characteristic of Bur Bundy, is observable in other quarters — more graceful in the north, more brilliant in the south. Not far from Semur were born the good Madame de Chantal, and her grand-daughter, Madame de Sevigne; at Macon, Lamartine, the poet of the religious and lonely-minded; and at Charolles, Edgar Quinet, the poet of history and of humanity.

“Burgundy seems still to be allied to its wines; the spirit of Bea. UDC and of Macon mounts to the head like that of Rhenish. Burgundian eloquence trenches on the rhetorical; and the amplitude of its literary style is not ill typified in the exuberant charms of the women of Vermanton and Auxerre. Flesh and blood reign here: inflation, as well, and vulgar sentimentality; in proof, I need only cite Crébillon, Longepierre, and Sedaine. Something more sombre and severe is required to constitute the core of France.

“‘Tis a sad fall to step from Burgundy, into Champagne, and to leave its smiling slopes for low and chalky, plains. Not to speak of the desert of Champagne-Pouilleuse, (the lousy,) the country is almost universally flat, pale, and of a chillingly prosaic aspect. The cattle aro sorry; the plants and minerals present no variety. Dull rivers drag their chalky streams between banks poorly shaded by young or stunted poplars. The houses young too, and frail at their birth, endeavour to protect their fragile existence, by hooding themselves under as many slates as possible, or, at least, poor wooden slates: but beneath this false slating and its paint, washed off by the rain, the chalk be-betrays itself, pale, dirty, and misery stricken.

“Such houses cannot make tine cities. Chalons looks hardly more lively than the plains around it. Troyes is almost as ugly as it is industrious. The striking width of the streets of Reims makes its low houses appear lower still, and creates a gloomy impression — Reims, formerly the city of citizens and of priests, and twin sister of Tours, a sugarish city, with a tinge of devotion, manufacturing rosaries and gingerbread, excellent common cloth, an excellent small wine, and the seat both of fairs and of pilgrimages. [page 226:]

Champagne was the land of good stories, of droll anecdotes of the noble knight, the simple and unsuspicious husband, of Monsieur, the parson, and his servant lass. The genius for tale-telling, which prevails in Champagne and in Flanders, expanded into long poems and tine histories. Chrétien de Troyes, and Guyot de Provins, begin the list of our romance poets. The great lords of the country wrote their own actions — witness Villehardouin, Joinville, and the cardinal de Retz, who have themselves narrated to us the history of the Crusades and of the Fronde. History and satire are the vocation of the Champenois. While Count Thibiaut had his poems painted on the walls of his palace of Provins, surrounded by roses from the East. the grocers of Troyes scrawled on their counters the allegorical and satirical histories of Renard and Isengrin. The roost pungent pamphlet in our language — the satire of Menippee — is mostly due to some lawyers of this city.

“In this viny and literary zone, the mind of man has gone on increasing in distinctness and sobriety of thought. We have signalised three stages of this progress — the bre and intellectual intoxication of the south, the eloquence and rhetoric of Burgundy, and the grace and irony of Champagne. This is the last and most delicate fruit which France has borne. On these white plains and hungry slopes ripens the light wine of the north, full of caprice and sudden sallies. Scarcely does it owe anything to the soil; it is the child of labor and society. And here also grew that trifling thing (La Fontaine), profound, nevertheless, and at once ironical and dreamy, that discovered and elbowed the domain of fable.”

“The jeering spirit of the north of France displays itself in the popular fetes. In Champagne and other parts we find the roi de l’au-mone, (a citizen chosen to deliver two prisoners, &c.); the roi de l’etouf — king of the ball ( Dupin, Deux-Sevres); the roi des Arbalétriers, with his knights; the roi des guetifs, king of the poor; the roi des rosiers, king of the roses, or king of the gardeners, still kept up in Normandy, Burgundy, Champagne, &c. At Paris, the fete des sous diacres, or diacressouls, tipsy priests, who elected a bishop of unreason, offered him incense of burnt leather, sang obscene songs, and turned the altar into a table. At Evreux, on the first of May, St. Vital's day, was the fete des cornards, cuckold's holiday, when they crowned each other with leaves; the priests wore their surplices the wrong side outward, and threw bran in each other's eyes; the bell-ringers pelted each other with casse-museaux — hard biscuits. At Beauvais, a girl and child were promenaded round the town, taken to mass, and the burden of the chorus was hi-han! At Reims, the canons promenaded in two files, each dragging n herring, and stepping on the herring dragged by the one before him. At Bouchain was the fete du prevot des étourdés, of the captain of the careless; at Chalons-sur-Saone, of the gaillardons, the brave boys; at Paris, of the enfans sans sourci, sons of mirth; of the regiment de la calotte, the fool's-cap company; and of the confrerie de l’aloyau, the brotherhood of beef-eaters! At Dijon, the procession of the mere folle, mother madcap. At Harfleur, on Shrove Tuesday, the fete de la scie, the saw fete, (a saw figures in the arms of the president Cosse Brissac.) The magistrates kiss the teeth of the saw. Two monks carry the baton friseux (uprights of the saw). Then the baton friseux is taken to a husband, who beats his wife. The Chevalerie d’Honfleur has existed since the conquest of William.”