Various - "The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859"

Thomas Henry Huxley - "This is Essay #2 from Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Richard F. Burton - "Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2"

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - "Fabeln und Erzaehlungen"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Recollections of Europe

J >> J. Fenimore Cooper >> Recollections of Europe




Of the gardens and the _jets d'eau_, so renowned, I shall say little.
The former are in the old French style, formal and stiff, with long
straight _allees_, but magnificent by their proportions and ornaments.
The statuary and vases that are exposed to the open air, in this garden,
must have cost an enormous sum. They are chiefly copies from the
_antique_.

As you stand on the great terrace, before the centre of the palace, the
view is down the principal avenue, which terminates at the distance of
two or three miles with a low naked hill, beyond which appears the void
of the firmament. This conceit singularly helps the idea of vastness,
though in effect it is certainly inferior to the pastoral prettiness and
rural thoughts of modern landscape gardening. Probably too much is
attempted here; for if the mind cannot conceive of illimitable space,
still less can it be represented by means of material substances.

We examined the interior of the palace with melancholy pleasure. The
vast and gorgeous apartments were entirely without furniture, though
many of the pictures still remain. The painted ceilings, and the
gildings too, contribute to render the rooms less desolate than they
would otherwise have been. I shall not stop to describe the saloons of
Peace and War, and all the other celebrated apartments, that are so
named from the subjects of their paintings, but merely add that the
state apartments lie _en suite_, in the main body of the building, and
that the principal room, or the great gallery, as it is termed, is in
the centre, with the windows looking up the main avenue of the garden.
This gallery greatly surpasses in richness and size any other room,
intended for the ordinary purposes of a palace, that I have ever seen.
Its length exceeds two hundred and thirty feet, its width is about
thirty-five, and its height is rather more than forty. The walls are a
complete succession of marbles, mirrors, and gildings. I believe, the
windows and doors excepted, that literally no part of the sides or ends
of this room show any other material. Even some of the doors are loaded
with these decorations. The ceiling is vaulted, and gorgeous with
allegories and gildings; they are painted by the best artists of France.
Here Louis XIV. moved among his courtiers, more like a god than a man,
and here was exhibited that mixture of grace and moral fraud, of
elegance and meanness, of hope and disappointment, of pleasure and
mortification, that form the characters and compose the existence of
courtiers.

I do not know the precise number of magnificent ante-chambers and saloons
through which we passed to reach this gallery, but there could not have
been less than eight; one of which, as a specimen of the scale on which
the palace is built, is near eighty feet long, and sixty wide. Continuing
our course along the suite, we passed, among others, a council-room that
looked more like state than business, and then came to the apartments of
the Queen. There were several drawing-rooms, and ball-rooms, and
card-rooms, and ante-rooms, and the change from the gorgeousness of the
state apartments, to the neat, tasteful, chaste, feminine, white and gold
of this part of the palace was agreeable, for I had got to be tired of
splendour, and was beginning to feel a disposition to "make game of the
people," by descending to rusticity.

The bed-room of Marie Antoinette is in the suite. It is a large chamber,
in the same style of ornament as the rest of her rooms, and the
dressing-rooms, bath, and other similar conveniences, were in that
exquisite French taste, which can only be equalled by imitation. The
chamber of the King looked upon the court, and was connected with that
of the Queen, by a winding and intricate communication of some length.
The door that entered the apartments of the latter opened into a
dressing-room, and both this door and that which communicated with the
bed-room form a part of the regular wall, being tapestried as such, so
as not to be immediately seen,--a style of finish that is quite usual in
French houses. It was owing to this circumstance that Marie Antoinette
made her escape, undetected, to the King's chamber, the night the palace
was entered by the fish-women.

We saw the rooms in which Louis XIV. and Louis XV. died. The latter, you
may remember, fell a victim to the small-pox, and the disgusting body,
that had so lately been almost worshipped, was deserted, the moment he
was dead. It was left for hours, without even the usual decent
observances. It was on the same occasion, we have been told, that his
grandchildren, including the heir, were assembled in a private
drawing-room, waiting the result, when they were startled by a hurried
trampling of feet. It was the courtiers, rushing in a crowd, to pay
their homage to the new monarch! All these things forced themselves
painfully on our minds, as we walked through the state rooms. Indeed
there are few things that can be more usefully studied, or which awaken
a greater source of profitable recollections, than a palace that has
been occupied by a great and historical court. Still they are not
poetical.

The balcony, in which La Fayette appeared with the Queen and her
children, opens from one of these rooms. It overlooks the inner court;
or that in which the carriages of none but the privileged entered, for
all these things were regulated by arbitrary rules. No one, for
instance, was permitted to ride in the King's coach, unless his nobility
dated from a certain century (the fourteenth, I believe), and these were
your _gentilshommes_; for the word implies more than a noble, meaning an
ancient nobleman.

The writing cabinet, private dining-room, council-room in ordinary,
library, etc. of the King, came next; the circuit ending in the Salles
des Gardes, and the apartments usually occupied by the officers and
troops on service.

There was one room we got into, I scarce know how. It was a long, high
gallery, plainly finished for a palace, and it seemed to be lighted from
an interior court, or well; for one was completely caged when in it.
This was the celebrated Bull's Eye (_oeil de boeuf_), where the
courtiers danced attendance before they were received. It got its name
from an oval window over the principal door.

We looked at no more than the state apartments, and those of the King
and Queen, and yet we must have gone through some thirty or forty rooms,
of which, the baths and dressing-room of the Queen excepted, the very
smallest would be deemed a very large room in America. Perhaps no
private house contains any as large as the smallest of these rooms, with
the exception of here and there a hall in a country house; and, no room
at all, with ceilings nearly as high, and as noble, to say nothing of
the permanent decorations, of which we have no knowledge whatever, if we
omit the window-glass, and the mantels, in both of which, size apart, we
often beat even the French palaces.

We next proceeded to the Salle de Spectacle, which is a huge theatre. It
may not be as large as the French Opera-house at Paris, but its
dimensions did not appear to me to be much less. It is true, the stage
was open, and came into the view; but it is a very large house for
dramatic representations. Now, neither this building nor the chapel,
seen on the exterior of the palace, though additions that project from
the regular line of wall, obtrudes itself on the eye, more than a
verandah attached to a window, on one of our largest houses! In this
place the celebrated dinner was given to the officers of the guards.

The chapel is rich and beautiful. No catholic church has pews, or, at
all events they are very unusual, though the municipalities do sometimes
occupy them in France, and, of course, the area was vacant. We were most
struck with the paintings on the ceiling, in which the face of Louis
XIV. was strangely and mystically blended with that of God the Father!
Pictorial and carved representations of the Saviour and of the Virgin
abound in all catholic countries; nor do they much offend, unless when
the crucifixion is represented with bleeding wounds; for, as both are
known to have appeared in the human form, the mind is not shocked at
seeing them in the semblance of humanity. But this was the first attempt
to delineate the Deity we had yet seen; and it caused us all to shudder.
He is represented in the person of an old man looking from the clouds,
in the centre of the ceiling, and the King appears among the angels that
surround him. Flattery could not go much farther, without encroaching on
omnipotence itself.

In returning from Versailles, to a tithe of the magnificence of which I
have not alluded, I observed carts coming out of the side of a hill,
loaded with the whitish stone that composes the building material of
Paris. We stopped the carriage, and went into the passage, where we
found extensive excavations. A lane of fifteen or twenty feet was cut
through the stone, and the material was carted away in heavy square
blocks. Piers were left, at short intervals, to sustain the
superincumbent earth; and, in the end, the place gets to be a succession
of intricate passages, separated by these piers, which resemble so many
small masses of houses among the streets of a town. The entire region
around Paris lies on a substratum of this stone, which indurates by
exposure to the air, and the whole secret of the celebrated catacombs of
Paris is just the same as that of this quarry, with the difference that
this opens on a level with the upper world, lying in a hill, while one
is compelled to descend to get to the level of the others. But enormous
wheels, scattered about the fields in the vicinity of the town, show
where shafts descend to new quarries on the plains, which are precisely
the same as those under Paris. The history of these subterranean
passages is very simple. The stone beneath has been transferred to the
surface, as a building material; and the graves of the town, after
centuries, were emptied into the vaults below. Any apprehensions of the
caverns falling in, on a great scale, are absurd, as the constant
recurrence of the piers, which are the living rock, must prevent such a
calamity; though it is within the limits of possibility that a house or
two might disappear. Quite lately, it is said, a tree in the garden of
the Luxembourg fell through, owing to the water working a passage down
into the quarries, by following its roots. The top of the tree remained
above ground some distance; and to prevent unnecessary panic, the police
immediately caused the place to be concealed by a high and close board
fence. The tree was cut away in the night, the hole was filled up, and
few knew anything about it. But it is scarcely possible that any serious
accident should occur, even to a single house, without a previous and
gradual sinking of its walls giving notice of the event. The palace of
the Luxembourg, one of the largest and finest edifices of Paris, stands
quite near the spot where the tree fell through, and yet there is not
the smallest danger of the structure's disappearing some dark night, the
piers below always affording sufficient support. _Au reste_, the
catacombs lie under no other part of Paris than the Quartier St.
Jacques, not crossing the river, nor reaching even the Faubourg St.
Germain.

I have taken you so unceremoniously out of the chateau of Versailles to
put you into the catacombs, that some of the royal residences have not
received the attention I intended. We have visited Compiegne this
summer, including it in a little excursion of about a hundred miles,
that we made in the vicinity of the capital, though it scarcely offered
sufficient matter of interest to be the subject of an especial letter.
We found the forest deserving of its name, and some parts of it almost
as fine as an old American wood of the second class. We rode through it
five or six miles to see a celebrated ruin, called Pierre-fond, which
was one of those baronial holds, out of which noble robbers used to
issue, to plunder on the highway, and commit all sorts of acts of
genteel violence. The castle and the adjacent territory formed one of
the most ancient seigneuries of France. The place was often besieged and
taken. In the time of Henry IV. that monarch, finding the castle had
fallen into the hands of a set of desperadoes, who were ranked with the
Leaguers, sent the Duc d'Epernon against the place; but he was wounded,
and obliged to raise the siege. Marshal Biron was next despatched, with
all the heavy artillery that could be spared; but he met with little
better success. This roused Henry, who finally succeeded in getting
possession of the place. In the reign of his son, Louis XIII, the
robberies and excesses of those who occupied the castle became so
intolerable, that the government seized it again, and ordered it to be
destroyed. Now you will remember that this castle stood in the very
heart of France, within fifty miles of the capital, and but two leagues
from a royal residence, and all so lately as the year 1617; and that it
was found necessary to destroy it, on account of the irregularities of
its owners. What an opinion one is driven to form of the moral
civilization of Europe from a fact like this! Feudal grandeur loses
greatly in a comparison with modern law, and more humble honesty.

It was easier, however, to order the Chateau de Pierre-fond to be
destroyed, than to effect that desirable object. Little more was
achieved than to make cuts into the external parts of the towers and
walls, and to unroof the different buildings; and, although this was
done two hundred years since, time has made little impression on the
ruins. We were shown a place where there had been an attempt to break
into the walls for stones, but which had been abandoned, because it was
found easier to quarry them from the living rock. The principal towers
were more than a hundred feet high, and their angles and ornaments
seemed to be as sharp and solid as ever. This was much the noblest
French ruin we had seen, and it may be questioned if there are many
finer, out of Italy, in Europe.

The palace of Compiegne, after that of Versailles, hardly rewarded us
for the trouble of examining it. Still it is large and in perfect
repair: but the apartments are common-place, though there are a few that
are good. A prince, however, is as well lodged, even here, as is usual
in the north of Europe. The present king is fond of resorting to this
house, on account of the game of the neighbouring forest. We saw several
roebucks bounding among the trees, in our drive to Pierre-fond.[13]

[Footnote 13: Pierre-fond, or Pierre-font]

I have dwelt on the palaces and the court so much, because one cannot
get a correct idea of what France was, and perhaps I ought to say, of
what France, through the reaction, _will_ be, if this point were
overlooked. The monarch was all in all in the nation--the centre of
light, wealth, and honour; letters, the arts, and the sciences revolved
around him, as the planets revolve around the sun; and if there ever was
a civilized people whose example it would be fair to quote for or
against the effects of monarchy, I think it would be the people of
France. I was surprised at my own ignorance on the subject of the
magnificence of these kings, of which, indeed, it is not easy for an
untravelled American to form any just notion; and it has struck me you
might be glad to hear a little on these points.

After all I have said, I find I have entirely omitted the Orangery at
Versailles. But then I have said little or nothing of the canals, the
_jets d'eau_, of the great and little parks, which, united, are fifty
miles in circumference, and of a hundred other things. Still, as this
orangery is on a truly royal scale, it deserves a word of notice before
I close my letter. The trees are housed in winter in long vaulted
galleries, beneath the great terrace; and there is a sort of sub-court
in front of them, where they are put into the sun during the pleasant
season. This place is really an orange grove; and, although every tree
is in a box, and is nursed like a child, many of them are as large as it
is usual to find in the orange groves of low latitudes. Several are very
old, two or three dating from the fifteenth century, and one from the
early part of it. What notions do you get of the magnificence of the
place, when you are told, that a palace, subterraneous, it is true, is
devoted to this single luxury, and that acres are covered with trees in
boxes?




LETTER XI.

Laws of Intercourse.--Americans in Europe.--Americans and English.
--Visiting in America.--Etiquette of Visits.--Presentations at Foreign
Courts.--Royal Receptions.--American Pride.--Pay of the President.
--American Diplomatist.


To JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY.

I intend this letter to be useful rather than entertaining. Living, as we
Americans do, remote from the rest of the world, and possessing so many
practices peculiar to ourselves, at the same time that we are altogether
wanting in usages that are familiar to most other nations, it should not
be matter of surprise that we commit some mistakes on this side of the
water, in matters of taste and etiquette. A few words simply expressed,
and a few explanations plainly made, may serve to remove some errors, and
perhaps render your own contemplated visit to this part of the world more
agreeable.

There is no essential difference in the leading rules of ordinary
intercourse among the polished of all Christian nations. Though some of
these rules may appear arbitrary, it will be found, on examination, that
they are usually derived from very rational and sufficient motives. They
may vary, in immaterial points, but even these variations arise from
some valid circumstance.

The American towns are growing so rapidly, that they are getting to have
the population of capitals without enjoying their commonest facilities.
The exaggerated tone of our largest towns, for instance, forbids the
exchange of visits by means of servants. It may suit the habits of
provincial life to laugh at this as an absurdity, but it may be taken
pretty safely as a rule, that men and women of as much common sense as
the rest of their fellow-creatures, with the best opportunities of
cultivating all those tastes that are dependant on society, and with no
other possible motive than convenience, would not resort to such a
practice without a suitable inducement. No one who has not lived in a
large town that _does_ possess these facilities, can justly appreciate
their great advantages, or properly understand how much a place like New
York, with its three hundred thousand inhabitants, loses by not adopting
them. We have conventions for all sorts of things in America, some of
which do good and others harm, but I cannot imagine anything that would
contribute more to the comfort of society, than one which should settle
the laws of intercourse on principles better suited to the real
condition of the country than those which now exist. It is not unusual
to read descriptions deriding the forms of Europe, written by travelling
Americans; but I must think they have been the productions of very young
travellers, or, at least, of such as have not had the proper means of
appreciating the usages they ridicule Taking my own experience as a
guide, I have no hesitation in saying, that I know no people among whom
the ordinary social intercourse is as uncomfortable, and as little
likely to stand the test of a rational examination, as our own.

The first rule, all-important for an American to know, is, that the
latest arrival makes the first visit. England is, in some respects, an
exception to this practice, but I believe it prevails in all the rest of
Europe. I do not mean to say that departures are not made from this law,
in particular instances; but they should always be taken as exceptions,
and as pointed compliments. This rule has many conveniences, and I think
it also shows a more delicate attention to sentiment and feeling. While
the points of intrusion and of disagreeable acquaintances are left just
where they would be under our own rule, the stranger is made the judge
of his own wishes. It is, moreover, impossible, in a large town, to know
of every arrival. Many Americans, who come to Europe with every claim to
attention, pass through it nearly unnoticed, from a hesitation about
obtruding themselves on others, under the influence of the opinions in
which they have been educated. This for a long time was my own case, and
it was only when a more familiar acquaintance with the practices of this
part of the world made me acquainted with their advantages that I could
consent freely to put myself forward.

You are not to understand that any stranger arriving in a place like
Paris, or London, has a right to leave cards for whom he pleases. It is
not the custom, except for those who, by birth, or official station, or
a high reputation, may fairly deem themselves privileged, to assume this
liberty, and even then, it is always better to take some preliminary
step to assure one's self that the visit will be acceptable. The law of
salutes is very much the law of visits, in this part of the world. The
ship arriving sends an officer to know if his salute will be returned
gun for gun, and the whole affair, it is true, is conducted in rather a
categorical manner, but the governing principles are the same in both
cases, though more management may be required between two gentlemen than
between two men-of-war.

The Americans in Europe, on account of the country's having abjured all
the old feudal distinctions that still so generally prevail here, labour
under certain disadvantages, that require, on the one hand, much tact
and discretion to overcome, and, on the other, occasionally much
firmness and decision.

The rule I have adopted in my own case, is to defer to every usage, in
matters of etiquette, so far as I have understood them, that belongs to
the country in which I may happen to be. If, as has sometimes happened
(but not in a solitary instance in France), the claims of a stranger
have been overlooked, I have satisfied myself by remembering, that, in
this respect at least, the Americans are the superiors, for that is a
point in which we seldom fail; and if they are remembered, to accept of
just as much attention as shall be offered. In cases, in which those
arbitrary distinctions are set up, that, by the nature of our
institutions cannot, either in similar or in any parallel cases, exist
in America, and the party making the pretension is on neutral ground,
_if the claim be in any manner pressed_, I would say that it became an
American to resist it promptly; neither to go out of his way to meet it,
nor to defer to it when it crosses his path. In really good society
awkward cases of this nature are not very likely to occur; they are,
however, more likely to occur as between our own people and the English,
than between those of any other nation; for the latter, in mixed general
associations, have scarcely yet learned to look upon and treat us as the
possessors of an independent country. It requires perfect
self-possession, great tact, and some nerve, for an American, who is
brought much in contact with the English on the continent of Europe, to
avoid a querulous and ungentlemanlike disposition to raise objections on
these points, and at the same time to maintain the position, and command
the respect, with which he should never consent to dispense. From my own
little experience, I should say we are better treated, and have less to
overlook, in our intercourse with the higher than with the intermediate
classes of the English.

You will have very different accounts of these points, from some of our
travellers. I only give you the results of my own observation, under the
necessary limitations of my own opportunities. Still I must be permitted
to say that too many of our people, in their habitual deference to
England, mistake offensive condescension for civility. Of the two, I
will confess I would rather encounter direct arrogance, than the
assumption of a right to be affable. The first may at least be resisted.
Of all sorts of superiority, that of a condescending quality is the
least palatable.

I believe Washington is the only place in America where it is permitted
to send cards. In every other town, unless accompanied by an invitation,
and even then the card is supposed to be left, it would be viewed as
airs. It is even equivocal to leave a card in person, unless denied.
Nothing can be worse adapted to the wants of American society than this
rigid conformity to facts. Without porters; with dwellings in which the
kitchens and servants' halls are placed just as far from the
street-doors as dimensions of the houses will allow; with large
straggling towns that cover as much ground as the more populous capitals
of Europe, and these towns not properly divided into quarters; with a
society as ambitious of effect, in its way, as any I know; and with
people more than usually occupied with business and the family
cares,--one is expected to comply rigidly with the most formal rules of
village propriety. It is easy to trace these usages to their source,
provincial habits and rustic manners; but towns with three hundred
thousand inhabitants ought to be free from both. Such rigid conditions
cannot well be observed, and a consequence already to be traced is, that
those forms of society which tend to refine it, and to render it more
human and graceful, are neglected from sheer necessity. Carelessness in
the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal
civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like
carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as
ungracious in deportment, as it is unattractive in attire.

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