la
duchesse de Berry"; and a thousand similar absurdities which,
however, are often very wittily written. One cannot but be
astonished at the means people here make use of to earn a few
pence.

All this and much more may be seen in Paris every day, but in 1831 Paris
life was not an everyday life. It was then and there, if at any time and
anywhere, that the "roaring loom of Time" might be heard: a new garment
was being woven for an age that longed to throw off the wornout,
tattered, and ill-fitting one inherited from its predecessors; and
discontent and hopefulness were the impulses that set the shuttle so
busily flying hither and thither. This movement, a reaction against
the conventional formalism and barren, superficial scepticism of the
preceding age, had ever since the beginning of the century been growing
in strength and breadth. It pervaded all the departments of human
knowledge and activity--politics, philosophy, religion, literature, and
the arts. The doctrinaire school in politics and the eclectic school
in philosophy were as characteristic products of the movement as
the romantic school in poetry and art. We recognise the movement in
Lamennais' attack on religious indifference, and in the gospel of a
"New Christianity" revealed by Saint Simon and preached and developed
by Bazard and Enfantin, as well as in the teaching of Cousin, Villemain,
and Guizot, and in the works of V. Hugo, Delacroix, and others. Indeed,
unless we keep in view as far as possible all the branches into which
the broad stream divides itself, we shall not be able to understand the
movement aright either as a whole or in its parts. V. Hugo defines
the militant--i.e., negative side of romanticism as liberalism in
literature. The positive side of the liberalism of the time might, on
the other hand, not inaptly be described as romanticism in speculation
and practice. This, however, is matter rather for a history of
civilisation than for a biography of an artist. Therefore, without
further enlarging on it, I shall let Chopin depict the political aspect
of Paris in 1831 as he saw it, and then attempt myself a slight outline
sketch of the literary and artistic aspect of the French capital, which
signifies France.

Louis Philippe had been more than a year on the throne, but the
agitation of the country was as yet far from being allayed:--

There is now in Paris great want and little money in
circulation. One meets many shabby