Volume I Part 12 (1/2)

As local curiosities, the attention of the amateur should be devoted to the productions of the painters to whom Rouen has given birth, Restout, Lemonnier, Deshays, Leger, Houel, Letellier, and Sacquespee, artists, not of the first cla.s.s, but of sufficient merit to do great credit to the exhibition of a provincial metropolis.

From these recent specimens, you would turn with the more pleasure to a picture by Van Eyck, the inventor, as it is generally supposed, of oil painting. Let us respect these fathers of the art. Let us pardon the stiffness of their composition, the formality of their figures, the inelegance of their draperies, the hardness of their outlines, and the want of chiaroscuro;--for, in spite of all these failings, there is a truth to nature, and a richness of coloring, which always attract and win. The picture in question is the _Virgin Mother in her Domestic Retirement_, surrounded by her family, a comely party of young females in splendid attire, some of them wearing the bridal crown. It is altogether a curiosity, partaking, indeed, of the general bad taste of the times, but painted with great attention to nature in the minutiae, and resembling Lionardo da Vinci in many particulars, especially in the high finis.h.i.+ng, the coloring of the carnations, and the grace, and beauty of some of the heads. The draperies, too, are rich and brilliant.

This museum is a recent erection: most, if not all, of the departments of France, possess similar establishments in their princ.i.p.al towns. The basis of the collection is founded upon the plunder of the suppressed monasteries; but M. Descamps told us that, in the course of a journey to Italy, he had been the means of adding to this, at Rouen, its princ.i.p.al ornaments. He had the greater merit of preserving it entire, when orders were transmitted from Paris to send off its best pictures, to replace those taken from the Louvre by the allies; for on all occasions, whether great or small, the interests of the departments are sacrificed without mercy to the engulphing capital. Descamps was firm in defending his trust: he resisted the spoliation, upon the principle that the museum was the private property of the town; and the plea was admitted.

The same conventual buildings also contain the rooms appropriated to the use of the academy at Rouen, a royal inst.i.tution of old standing, and which has published fifteen volumes of its transactions.--It was founded in 1744, under a charter granted to the Duke of Luxembourg, then governor of the province, and its first president. The present complement of members consists of forty-six fellows, besides non-resident a.s.sociates. Its meetings are held every Friday evening, and the members, as at the inst.i.tute at Paris, read their own papers. A few nights ago, at a meeting of this academy, I heard a memoir from the pen of the professor of botany, in which he dwelt at large upon the family of the lilies, but prized and praised them for nothing so much as for their connection with the Bourbon family. I mention the fact to shew you how readily the French seize hold of every occasion of displaying their devotion to the powers that be. In 1814, at the moment of the restoration of Louis XVIIIth, we were not surprised to see every town and village between Calais and Paris, decorated with a proud display of the busts of the monarch, the s.h.i.+elds of France and Navarre, and innumerable devices and mottoes, _consecrated_, as the French say, to the Bourbons; but four years have given time for this ebullition of loyalty to subside; and the introduction of such topics at the present day, and especially in the meetings of a body devoted solely to the improvement of literature and of the arts and sciences, appears to savor somewhat of adulation. These praises excited no remarks and no criticisms; though both might have been expected; for, during the reading of a paper, the by-standers are allowed to discuss its merits and its defects. This practice gives the sittings of a French literary society a degree of life and spirit wanting to ours in England; but I doubt if the advantage be not more than counter-balanced by the frequent interruptions which it occasions, and which an ill-natured person might in some cases suspect to proceed from a desire of attracting notice, rather than from fair, and just reprehension. I should be sorry to insinuate that any thing of this kind was evident at the time, just alluded to, which was the Friday previous to the annual meeting, the day appointed for taking into consideration the report intended to be submitted to the full a.s.sembly of the inhabitants. The president also read his projected speech, in the course of which he took the opportunity of declaring in strong terms his dislike to Napoleon's plan of education, directed almost exclusively to military affairs and mathematics: he even stated that the present generation ”etoit sans morale.”--The opinion could not be allowed to pa.s.s: he found himself beset on all sides; not an individual supported him; and after a variety of attempts to palliate and explain away the offensive pa.s.sage, he was obliged to consent to expunge it. This will give some farther idea of the state of public feeling in France: the compliment upon the lilies pa.s.sed as words of course; but the same body that tolerated it, positively refused to stamp with the sanction of their approbation, any comparison unfavorable to the system of Napoleon, when put in opposition to that of the subsisting government.

There is another literary body at Rouen; called _la Societe d'Emulation_, of more recent establishment, it having been founded in 1791. Conformably to the national spirit which then prevailed, it is directed exclusively to the encouragement of manufactories and agriculture.--This society distributes annual medals as the reward of improvements and discoveries, though I am afraid that as yet it has been productive but of slender utility.

Rouen also possesses a Botanic Garden, which was founded in 1738; but the scite which it now occupies was not thus applied till twenty years subsequently, when the munic.i.p.ality conveyed the ground in perpetuity to the academy in its corporate capacity, stipulating that it should yield a nosegay every year as an appropriate _rent in kind_. At the revolution a grant like this would scarcely be respected; still less did the jacobins appreciate the pleasures or advantages derived from the garden.

The demagogues of that period seem to have entered heartily into Jean Jacques Rousseau's notions, that the arts and sciences were injurious to mankind: this fine establishment was seized as national property, and, according to the revolutionary jargon, was _soumissione_; but a more temporate faction obtained the ascendancy before the sale was carried into effect.--The collection is extensive, and the plants are in good order: I am not however, aware that the city has ever given birth to any man of eminence in this department of science. Lately, indeed, the Abbe Le Turquier Deslongchamps, a very well-informed botanist, as well as a most excellent man, has published a _Flore des Environs de Rouen_, in two volumes; and there are many instances in which such works have been known to diffuse a taste, which public gardens and the lectures of professors had in vain endeavored to excite.

The variety of soil in the vicinity of the city renders it eminently favorable to the study of botany. It is peculiarly rich in the _Orchideoe_ of the most beautiful and interesting families of the vegetable kingdom. The curious _Satyrium hircinun_ is found in the utmost profusion upon the chalky hills immediately adjoining the city; and, at but a few miles distance, in a continuation of the same ridge, the bare chalk, under the romantic hill of St. Adrien, is purpled with the flowers of the _Viola Rothomagensis_, a plant scarcely known to exist in any other place.

The suburbs of Rouen abound with nursery-grounds and gardens: the former contribute greatly to the preservation of the genuine stock of apple-trees, which furnish the cider, for which Normandy has for many centuries been celebrated; the latter supply the inhabitants with the flowers which are seen at almost every window. The square in front of the cathedral is the princ.i.p.al flower-market; and the bloom and luxuriance and variety of the plants exposed for sale, render it a most pleasing promenade. Various species of jessamines and roses, with oleanders, pomegranates, myrtles, egg-plants, orange and lemon trees, the _Lilium superb.u.m_ and _tigrinum_, _Canna Indica_, _Gladiolus cardinalis_, _Clerodendrum fragrans_, _Datura ceratocolla_, _Clethra alnifolia_, and _Dianthus Carthusianorum_, are to be seen in the greatest profusion and beauty. They at once attest the care of the cultivators, and a climate more genial than ours. None of the flowers, however, excited my envy so much as the _Rosa moschata_, which grows here in the open air, and diffuses its delicious fragrance from almost every window of the town.

It is perhaps to the credit of Rouen, that science and learning appear to flourish more kindly than the drama. The theatre of Rouen is quite uncharacteristic of the pa.s.sion which the French usually entertain for _spectacles_. The house is shabby; the audience, as often as we have been there, has been small; and in this great city, the capital of an extensive, populous, and wealthy district we have witnessed acting so wretched, as would disgrace the floor of a village barn. We have been much surprised by seeing the performers repeatedly laugh in the face of the spectators, a thing which I should least of all have expected in France, where usually, in similar cases, the whole nation is tremblingly alive to the slightest violations of decorum. And yet Corneille, the father of the French drama, was born in this city: the scene that is used for a curtain at the theatre bears his portrait, with the inscription, ”_P. Corneille, natif de Rouen_;” and his apotheosis is painted upon the cieling. These recollections ought to tend to the improvement of the drama. The portrait of the great tragedian is more appropriate than the busts of Henry IVth and Louis XVIIIth, which occupy opposite sides of the stage; the latter laurelled and flanked with small white flags, whose staffs terminate in paper lilies.

Corneille and Fontenelle are the citizens, of whom Rouen is most proud: the house in which Corneille was born, in the _Rue de la Pie_, is still shewn to strangers. His bust adorns the entrance, together with an inscription to his honor. The residence of his ill.u.s.trious nephew, the author of the _Plurality of Worlds_, is situated in the _Rue des bans Enfans_, and is distinguished in the same manner. The whole _Siecle de Louis XIV_, scarcely contains two names upon which Voltaire dwells with more pleasure.--Rouen was also the birth-place of the learned Bochart, author of _Sacred Geography_ and of the _Hierozoicon_; of Basnage, who wrote the _History of the Bible_; of Sanadon, the translator of Horace; of Pradon, ”d.a.m.n'd,” in the Satires of Boileau, ”to everlasting fame;”

of Du Moustier, to whom we are indebted for the _Neustria Pia_; of Jouvenet, whom I have already mentioned as one of the most distinguished painters of the French school; and of Father Daniel, not less eminent as an historian.--These, and many others, are gone; but the reflection of their glory still plays upon the walls of the city, which was bright, while they lived, with its l.u.s.tre;--”nam praeclara facies, magnae divitiae, ad hoc vis corporis, alia hujuscemodi omnia, brevi dilabuntur; at ingenii egregia facinora, sicuti anima, immortalia sunt. Postrem corporis et fortunae bonorum, ut initium, finis est; omnia orta occidunt et aucta senesc.u.n.t: animus incorruptas, aeternus, rector humani generis, agit atque habet cuncta, neque ipse habetur.”