V. A FRENCHMAN'S PILGRIMAGE TO WATERLOO. A pilgrimage to Waterloo in the very year of the Peace Congress! Waterloo not yawned over, between the Hotel de Ville of Brussels and the scenery of the Meuse at Namur, as one of the inevitable sights which it is in all travellers' bonds to visit-but Waterloo traversed in the true scallop-shell spirit of mingled tears and truculence, by a writer of influence with his countrymen, is a fact which jars somewhat with the pacific programme of Messrs. Cobden and Michel Chevalier. Yet M. Léon Gozlan, in whose lively company we propose to revisit the famous field, is by no means one of the regular Anglophagi (still, alas! more numerous amongst his countrymen than is generally supposed) who cry delenda est Carthago, and écrasez l' infame with true Gallic piety whenever question is made of perfidious Albion. M. Gozlan is a man of wit as well as good breeding, who, if he has national antipathies, instead of placarding, prefers to exhale them in a mocking laugh. He is, moreover, addressing that portion of the French public for whom "les Anglais" are always "pour rire"-who, as has been remarked, almost forgave Vilain-ton his insolent victories in favour of his name-who have analysed the character of John Bull too closely (from the pit of the Variétés or the Porte Saint Martin) to be put off with such sober studies of that stout gentleman's idiosyncrasy as are furnished by philosophers like M. M. Chasles, Milsand, Eugéne Forcade, and de Vigny. M. Léon Gozlan would not for the world disturb the good old national traditions; and so he paints his Englishman in a costume, and with a complexion and embonpoint which may be recognized a mile off. It must not be forgotten that, for a large number even of the Parisian public, the heroes of Acre and the sliding scale are still Sir Smith, and Sir Peel; our actresses are Miss Jane, or Miss Sarah; and some of the most remarkable speeches delivered in our Upper House are attributed to le duc Henri, or le comte Alfred. These good people are far too observant not to know that there is a diversity of age and sex to be found in the British Isles as in other countries; but they are well assured also, that there are some characteristics (of which an imperturbable phlegm, and a propensity to overfeeding are, perhaps, the most strongly marked) common to both sexes and all ages of free Britons. It is needless to say that our English gentry are all cold aristocrats, lavishing unheard of sums with the quaintest carelessness, and invariably possessing fabulous wealth to lavish; and who, if wanted on business, should be looked for by a sagacious inquirer at Chimborazo, or on the top of Cleopatra's needle. In the same way, of course, all English shopkeepers are filled with the spirit vulgarly attributed to Machiavel: and though apparently employed in tying up cheese, or packing a bale of sheetings, are, in reality, thereby glutting their spite against France and " riveting with their selfish commerce the chains of half a world." We suspect that in his heart of hearts M. Léon Gozlan has some misgivings as to the perfect accuracy of this portraiture, although out of respect to his auditory he forces himself to dissemble them. It is necessary to keep this in mind while following our pilgrim, or we might take his facts too literally. He is avowedly doing pilgrimage to the Sepulchre of French military supremacy, and if he is religious in respect to national vanity (which he must be confessed to the degree of superstition) we have no right to expect more. The great principle in behalf of which M. Gozlan has assumed the cross is that Frenchmen have at least as much ground to claim the glory of Waterloo as any other people;* and this doctrine he sums up in the following authoritative words :"The victory of Waterloo is too generally denied to the English for the dread of misinterpretation to deter me from doing justice to the endurance of their soldiers and the resolution of their general. No doubt they lost the battle; that is they had lost it, utterly and without a hope, when Blucher arrived; but all honour is due to the energy and patience they shewed in encountering the French, who were deficient in patience simply because they had too much courage. At Waterloo there were two armies defeated; the English and the French, but the English first. The victor was accident, or the Prussians, to whom the English might safely leave the microscopic honour, considering that the Prussians were fresh from all fatigue, whilst the French had been spending their blood and strength during twelve mortal hours-I say nothing here, too, of him who left our army on the eve of battle, nor * This he does by exhibiting the whole affair of Waterloo as a rather discreditable concern to all parties. As for the French and English they were so thoroughly beaten in turns, that it is really quite irrelevant to inquire who was beaten last; whilst the Prussians filched a victory which they had'nt earned in a manner which no gentleman can contemplate without abhorrence. of him who stayed away whilst it was being fought. Between these two Marshals let us pass in peace; God has judged them." This is conclusive in its way; so, far from wishing to quarrel with our ingenious pilgrim, we feel grateful that he has refrained from disproving the occurrence of Waterloo altogether. M. Gozlan's pilgrimage, strictly speaking, begins only from Brussels. The capital of Belgium seems in his eyes principally notable for possessing M. de Beriot in the body, and his wife's bones. Poor Malibran! Even her chief glory would appear to be, according to M. Gozlan, that she inspired the following verses to that illustrious Frenchman, M. de Lamartine : Beauté, génie, amour, furent son nom de femme, E crit dans son regard, dans son cœur, dans sa voix ; The lines are remarkable; for false sentiment and poorness of thought they would be so in any stone-cutter's garland. Mr. Gozlan found the difficulty of procuring conveyance to Waterloo from Brussels to be greater than it used to be, as far as we remember, some years ago. Our pilgrim, far from reaching Peter Pindar's pea-standard of piety, cannot go afoot; and, worst of all, seems rather to grudge the alternative expense of carriage. We think he grumbles unreasonably, for his coachman was a real economy. Not a few, we dare say, of our readers (who remember the outlay at which alone they could acquire the sword-hilt, the star of the Legion of Honour, or, it may be, the Eagle which formed their treasured souvenir of Waterloo) will now acknowledge that a driver of such commercial information, and candour in imparting it, as M. Gozlan's, would have been a positive saving at a couple of Napoleons. Here is one of the stories by which this Automedon illustrates a curious item of Belgian commerce. When we had done companion if he had "No, ma foi," replied "One day," said the Coachman, " I was bringing in two travellers back from Waterloo; the one was a French artist, the other was by nation a Prussian. The Prussian carried something, of which he took tender care, wrapped in a handkerchief upon his knees. about half the journey he asked his French brought away any memorial of the fatal field. the Frenchman; " I was very near, though, obtaining a very droll one, but they asked too much, a hundred francs, besides it was an awkward thing to carry yet it certainly would have had the merit of being both singular and appropriate." "Why, what was it, pray?" "You must not be annoyed, then, at my candour," replied the French painter :-" Nothing less than the skull of a Prussian colonel, a splendid developement, splendid, the more so that it was pierced by three balls-real Waterloo bullets! One hole was just in the centre of the forehead, and the others neatly on the temples. I must say a lamp made out of the skull of a Prussian colonel killed by the French would have been charming to read by: but, alas! a poor painter can't afford such luxury. Et vous, monsieur?" he demanded in his turn. "Why, for my part," replied the Prussian with some hesitation, as he half-raised the parcel which he held on his knees; "for my part, I. but the fact is," he said, interrupting himself, "that I am thunderstruck at the astonishing similarity of your adventure with what has really happened to myself." "You don't say so?" "A fact!" "Let us hear, nevertheless." "Why, yes, it is really very curious, but I happen to have procured this very morning the skull of a French colonel who was also killed at Waterloo." "What, you too!" Yes," modestly replied the Prussian; "and I'm thinking of having it mounted as a punch-bowl to drink Blucher's health out of on each anniversary of our victory." "I wonder if your skull is pierced with three balls likewise?" asked the Frenchman. "I really cannot exactly say," answered the other; "but I almost think. دو "Come, come, let us see then;" briskly rejoined the artist, who, guessing the precious object which his companion cherished in his lap to be the skull in question, ventured with a rapid motion to unfold the handkerchief which concealed it. Beyond a doubt, there was the skull, and there were the three holes made by the three bullets, or.... ... by something else. The Prussian seemed as much annoyed as the Frenchman was delighted. "You see, sir," said the Coachman, "it was the same head which became French when offered for sale to an Englishman, or Prussian; in the same way that it was Prussian or English when the hoped for customer was French." Every one who has visited Waterloo since the erection of the vast mound, called in guide-parlance the Montagne du Lion (from the colossal Belgic lion in bronzed iron which surmounts it) has regretted the unsatisfactory doubt as to the precise scenes of many of the most interesting events of the action, which the wholesale removal of the soil for the construction of the mound has occasioned. Well might the Duke say :-" they have spoilt me my Waterloo ;" for, in point of fact, a great part of the field has ceased, as to its individual identity, to exist. In the neighbourhood of the Montagne the surface of the plain is lower by some feet than it was on the memorable 18th June, 1815; and those peculiarities of ground, which the English commander turned to such skilful advantage have now been scraped to one dead level of uniformity." M. Léon Gozlan animadverts sharply on this fact; though it may be doubted whether he would have regarded the triumphal monument of the allied armies with much greater complacency, even if its constructors had not, in order to effect it, obliterated, or at least confounded, the especial localities of victory. In his criticisms, however, on the great Belgic lion as a work of art, M. Gozlan is as just as severe. No one can deny that the huge animal has (like, indeed, most of the Belgian lions) a ridiculously human countenance: it is almost sure to remind every spectator of some one of his own acquaintance. But the idea of ordering a work, which was to sum up the history of an epocha solemn and conspicuous commemoration by many nationsa work likely to confer fame enough to satisfy a Cellinithe idea of ordering such a work of an iron-founder as it were by the ton-weight! It is, perhaps, indeed, as well that no Canova invested his genius in a lion of such invidious pretensions, for it may be doubted if any artistic perfection would have protected it from hostile insult, such as the Belgic lion did suffer from the French on their return from the siege of Antwerp. It was at that time very near being blown up in all the forms by French engineers; and all Marshal Gérard's efforts could not save the poor beast's claws and tail from mutilation. Even in its truncated state, however, Mr. Cockerill's lion is quite sufficient to fulfil the proudest aspirations of les brave Belges, who acknowledge it on all hands to be the glory of their country. "There it is! there it is!" cried my conductor with a rapture which I believe he feels himself compelled to repeat at every trip; otherwise, I should have thought, from his enthusiasm, that it was an object as new to his eyes as to mine, with this difference, indeed, in his favour that he did see it, whereas as yet I could perceive nothing of it at all. At last, however, I contrived, under his tuition, to distinguish, though with great difficulty the artificial mountain and the lion in metal which surmounts it. I confess that when I first beheld the colossal monument, erected by our enemies in memory of our heroic disasters, the effect was so agonizing that, in the state of weakness in which a late attack of illness had left me, I was unable to maintain inyself erect. My legs shook, my heart was spasmodically contracted, and I felt that the colour had totally left my lips. ps. I fell back almost lifeless on the cushions of the carriage. Let those, who hold patriotism to be a prejudice, come and brave this spectacle, and then I may have some faith in their scepticism. I need scarcely, perhaps, observe that the 18th of June is the anniversary of Waterloo. I had selected that fatal day for my pilgrimage to Mont St. Jean in the hope of meeting on my road many veterans of the old army whom it was not unnatural I should suppose to have a pious interest in revisiting the immense Calvary. The GRAND ARMY ! Grand |