Part 35 (1/2)

”Indeed, no. This would be to discredit my own tastes and knowledge. In a hundred things, I think London quite the finest town of Christendom. It is not Rome, certainly, and were it in ruins fifteen centuries, I question if people would flock to the banks of the Thames to dream away existence among its crumbling walls; but, in conveniences, beauty of verdure, a mixture of park-like scenery and architecture, and in magnificence of a certain sort, one would hardly know where to go to find the equal of London.”

”You say nothing of its society, Miss Effingham?”

”It would be presuming, in a girl of my limited experience to speak of this. I hear so much of the good sense of the nation, that I dare not say aught against its society, and it would be affectation for me to pretend to commend it; but as for your females, judging by my own poor means, they strike me as being singularly well cultivated and accomplished; and yet---”

”Go on, I entreat you. Recollect we have solemnly decided in a general congress of states to be cosmopolites, until safe within Sandy Hook, and that _la franchise_ is the _mot d'ordre_.”

”Well, then, I should not certainly describe you English as a talking people,” continued Eve, laughing. ”In the way of society, you are quite as agreeable as a people, who never laugh and seldom speak, can possibly make themselves.”

”_Et les jeunes Americaines_?” said Mademoiselle Viefville, laconically.

”My dear mademoiselle, your question is terrific! Mr. Blunt has informed me that _they_ actually giggle!”

”_Quelle horreur_!”

”It is bad enough, certainly; but I ascribe the report to calumny. No; if I must speak, let me have Paris for its society, and Naples for its nature. As respects New York, Mr. Blunt, I suspend my judgment.”

”Whatever may be the particular merit which shall most attract your admiration in favour of the great emporium, as the grandiloquent writers term the capital of your own state, I think I can venture to predict it will be neither of those just mentioned. Of society, indeed, New York has positively none: like London, it has plenty of company, which is disciplined something like a regiment of militia composed of drafts from different brigades, and which sometimes mistakes the drum-major for the colonel.”

”I had fancied you a New Yorker, until now,” observed Mr. Sharp.

”And why not now? Is a man to be blind to facts as evident as the noon-day sun, because he was born here or there? If I have told you an unpleasant truth, Miss Effingham, you must accuse _la franchise_ of the offence. I believe _you_ are not a Manhattanese?”

”I am a mountaineer; having been born at my father's country residence.”

”This gives me courage then, for no one here will have his filial piety shocked,”

”Not even yourself?”

”As for myself,” returned Paul Blunt, ”it is settled I am a cosmopolite in fact, while you are only a cosmopolite by convention. Indeed, I question if I might take the same liberties with either Paris or London, that I am about to take with palmy Manhattan. I should have little confidence in the forbearance of my auditors: Mademoiselle Viefville would hardly forgive me: were I to attempt a criticism on the first, for instance.”

”_C'est impossible_! you could not, Monsieur Blunt; _vous parlez trop bien Francais_ not to love _Paris_.”

”I _do_ love _Paris_, mademoiselle; and, what is more, I love _Londres_, or even _la Nouvelle Yorck_. As a cosmopolite, I claim this privilege, at least, though I can see defects in all. If you will recollect, Miss Effingham, that New York is a social bivouac, a place in which families encamp instead of troops, you will see the impossibility of its possessing a graceful, well-ordered, and cultivated society. Then the town is commercial; and no place of mere commerce can well have a reputation for its society. Such an anomaly, I believe, never existed. Whatever may be the usefulness of trade, I fancy few will contend that it is very graceful.”

”Florence of old?” said Eve.

”Florence and her commerce were peculiar, and the relations of things change with circ.u.mstances. When Florence was great, trade was a monopoly, in a few hands, and so conducted as to remove the princ.i.p.als from immediate contact with its affairs. The Medici traded in spices and silks, as men traded in politics, through agents. They probably never saw their s.h.i.+ps, or had any farther connexion with their commerce, than to direct its spirit. They were more like the legislator who enacts laws to regulate trade, than the dealer who fingers a sample, smells at a wine, or nibbles a grain. The Medici were merchants, a cla.s.s of men altogether different from the mere factors, who buy of one to sell to another, at a stated advance in price, and all of whose enterprise consists in extending the list of safe customers, and of doing what is called a 'regular business.'

Monopolies do harm on the whole, but they certainly elevate the favoured few. The Medici and the Strozzi were both princes and merchants, while those around them were princ.i.p.ally dependants. Compet.i.tion, in our day, has let in thousands to share in the benefits; and the pursuit, while it is enlarged as a whole, has suffered in its parts by division.”

”You surely do not complain that a thousand are comfortable and respectable to-day, for one that was _il magnifico_ three hundred years since?”

”Certainly not. I rejoice in the change; but we must not confound names with things. If we have a thousand mere factors for one merchant, society, in the general signification of the word, is clearly a gainer; but if we had one Medici for a thousand factors, society, in its particular signfication, might also be a gainer. All I mean is, that, in lowering the pursuit, we have necessarily lowered its qualifications; in other words, every man in trade in New York, is no more a Lorenzo, than every printer's devil is a Franklin.”

”Mr. Blunt cannot be an American!” cried Mr. Sharp; ”for these opinions would be heresy.”

”_Jamais, jamais_” joined the governess.

”You constantly forget the treaty of cosmopolitism. But a capital error is abroad concerning America on this very subject of commerce. In the way of merchandise alone, there is not a Christian maritime nation of any extent, that has a smaller portion of its population engaged in trade of this sort than the United States of America. The nation, as a nation, is agricultural, though the state of transition, in which a country in the course of rapid settlement must always exist, causes more buying and selling of real property than is usual. Apart from this peculiarity, the Americans, as a whole people, have not the common European proportions of ordinary dealers.”

”This is not the prevalent opinion,” said Mr. Sharp.

”It is not, and the reason is, that all American towns, or nearly all that are at all known in other countries, are purely commercial towns. The trading portion of a community is always the concentrated portion, too, and of course, in the absence of a court, of a political, or of a social capital, it has the greatest power to make itself heard and felt, until there is a direct appeal to the other cla.s.ses. The elections commonly show quite as little sympathy between the majority and the commercial cla.s.s as is consistent with the public welfare. In point of fact, America has but a very small cla.s.s of real merchants, men who are the cause and not a consequence of commerce, though she has exceeding activity in the way of ordinary traffic. The portion of her people who are engaged as factors,--for this is the true calling of the man who is a regular agent between the common producer and the common consumer,--are of _a_ high cla.s.s as factors, but not of _the_ high cla.s.s of merchants. The man who orders a piece of silk to be manufactured at Lyons, at three francs a yard, to sell it in the regular course of the season to the retailer at three francs and a half, is no more a true merchant, than the attorney, who goes through the prescribed forms of the court in his pleadings, is a barrister.”