From Blackwood's Magazine.
FRENCH CHILDREN.

THE present average duration of life in France is about thirty-eight years; the population amounts to thirty-eight millions; consequently, if we take fifteen as the age where childhood ends, there would appear to be about fifteen millions of children in France. This way of calculating is, of course, not absolutely exact, but it suffices to give an approximate idea on the subject; and, in the absence of any specific information in the census returns, it is the only one which can be applied.

their formation and consolidation on local and personal influences are liable to change with those influences, so long as time has not stamped them definitely and indelibly. And if this be true as a general principle; if the innumerable shades and tints of temperament which we observe in yet untrained minds are met with in every land; if, diversified as they are by nature, these minds are susceptible of endless other changes from the effect of the new contacts to which they may be successively exposed, it follows that in a country so large as France, composed of so many Fifteen millions of children imply fifteen different provinces, containing populations millions of different characters; for until of varied origin and habits, we shall reeducation, example, and habit have lev-mark, even more than elsewhere, the endelled the infinitely-varied dispositions with lessly-shifting phases of child-nature. But which we come into the world, it cannot be though France exhibits even less uniformsaid that any two of us are really alike. ity in the matter than is discoverable in Under the influence of our "bringing up "other countries, it shows no excessive conwe tend towards approximate uniformity, tradictions; and though the fifteen milexternally, at least; we learn to control lions of little people that we are talking our tempers, to guide our tongues, to sub- of possess fifteen millions of different little due our caprices. But children are more heads and hearts, the contrasts between natural: we see them almost as they are them are, after all, not so vast as to pre-the mass of them, that is; and so long vent us from grouping them into a few as they have not been led under the com- classes. mon yoke by common teaching, they ex- At first sight it may seem needless, and hibit a variety of humours and fancies indeed almost absurd, to say that the which we cease to find in their well-main distinction to establish between schooled elders. It is therefore impossible French children is to divide them into to lay down any general national type of boys and girls; the difference of sex is, character for children, especially as, in most however, accompanied in France by such cases, their habits of thought, their manners singular and such marked differences of and their prejudices, are susceptible of en-character and natural tendencies, that it is tire modification if they are removed dur- difficult to lay too much stress on it; it is ing childhood from one centre to another. the essential basis of the subject. The It has been proved, by numerous examples, French do not see it, at least it does not that a boy of ten, if he be transported to an- strike them with anything like the force other land, may forget in three years his with which it presents itself to foreign native language and his father's name; observers; and they are particularly surand though this example is excessive and prised to be told that the radical demarcaexceptional, it proves, at all events, that tion which exists between their men and with such plastic elements as children's women asserts itself from the cradle, and minds, original tendencies may be totally that the special masculine and feminine effaced, and that the form of their devel- peculiarities of their national temper are opment is but an accident depending distinctly visible in their children. Exmainly on the circumstances which sur- cepting the United States, no country exround them. Of course this in no way hibits a divergence of ideas and objects means that the real basis of character between the sexes such as we recognize in can be remodelled by outward leverage; France. Other nations show us a tolerall that is intended to be urged is, that the able unity of ends and means between parts of young natures which depend for men and women; we find elsewhere ap

amongst the men; and it seems to acquire force with education, and to be most glaringly conspicuous in the highest classes. Repression of manifestations of feeling forms no part of French teaching; on the contrary, those manifestations are regarded as natural and permissible. We therefore find that French mothers rather encourage their children, and especially their daughters, never to conceal the impressions which may agitate them, providing always that those impressions are honest and real, and are not of a nature to shock either convenances or principles. It follows that the impulses of children remain unchecked, that they rush into light directly they are felt, and that the influence of mothers and of governesses is employed to guide such impulses to a faithful and graceful form of expression far more than to suppress or even control them in themselves. There is a vast deal to be said in favour of this system. It stimulates individuality, it fortifies the affections, it develops sensibility in all its varied forms. It has been applied for generations, and it has produced an hereditarily-acquired capacity

proximately identical hopes and principles | tional and sensational faculties. This and springs of action. In America and in development exists in both sexes, but is France we discover, on the contrary, that far more evident amongst the women than though husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, may live together in admirable harmony, they differ profoundly in their views of life and its duties, and in the systems which they employ to attain the form and degree of contentment which their individual needs may crave for. It is not going too far to say - though the question must be approached with infinite prudence, in order to avoid exaggeration that the salient dispositions of the French man and the French woman drift in opposite directions. The sexes are held together by a common bond of interest and affection, but their tendencies are not the same; and they live, as a whole, in a chronic condition of disaccord on many of the main theories, obligations, and even pleasures of existence. The women stand, incontestably, far above the men. We need not look long or wide for a proof of this assertion: the attitude of the two sexes during the late war, and especially inside besieged Paris, supplies it with sufficient force. Of course all these observations are only general there are plentiful exceptions; but it cannot be denied that the higher moral qualities — resolute of sentiment which, at this present time, attachment to duty, self-sacrificing devo- is certainly greater than that possessed by tion, unyielding maintenance of principle, any other nation. The range of this sentiand religious faith, which is the key to all ment is most extensive. It applies to the rest are abundant amongst French almost every position and almost every women, and are relatively rare amongst accident of life, to art, and even to science; French men. It is pleasanter to state the but its full effect, its full consequences, are question in this negative form, to indicate naturally observed in the tenderer symthe qualities which the men have not, than pathies, in the emotions, and in the gentler to define it positively and to determine duties which fall particularly on women. the defects which they have; and it is There is, in most Frenchwomen, a gushingscarcely necessary, for the purpose which ness, an unrestrained outpouring of inuer we are pursuing, to be more precise in the self, which is reproduced in their daughters comparison between grown-up people. as abundantly as in themselves. Girls, Our inquiry is limited to children; and, from their very babyhood, live side by provided we clearly recognize the main side with demonstrative mothers, who outlines of the distinctions which exist show and say what they think and feel between their parents, that will suffice to with a natural frankness of which they are enable us to verify the statement that those scarcely conscious. The children not only same distinctions are visible, of course in inherit this disposition, but are aided to less vivid colours, amongst the little ones. develop it in their own little hearts by Every one will assent to the proposition example, contact, and advice. They are that the most marked feature of the born impulsive. They are shown how to French is the development of their emo-be so; and they are told that, provided

1

impulse be well expressed, and be directed | living under similar influences and prejuto worthy objects, it is a source of joy, of dices. When a wife comes in from another tenderness, and of charm. The English origin, she may perhaps introduce new theory is rather contrary to this; but such elements; but if so, they get effaced, or at matters are questions of race and of all events weakened, by the old traditions national habit. And furthermore, if we with which they have to contend; so that are honest, we shail own that keen suscep- the main features of the house continue to tibility of emotion is infinitely attractive be recognizable, and the child appropriates in a true woman. Young French girls them herself, and hands them over again have it to an astonishing extent, particu- when she, in her turn, becomes a mother. larly in the upper ranks. Their heads and This is, however, true only of the upper hearts live in the open air; their natures classes, where pride of race, and the are all outside. They have no place where supposed obligation to maintain preconthey can hide away a thought from their ceived notions, still exist with wonderful mother's sight; it must come out. It is vigour. In the middle and lower stages easy to understand, even at a distance, of society no such religion can be found. how this simplifies the guidance of a child. There, the operation of modern levelling Its merits and its defects come right into is seen in its fullest force; there, no anits mother's hand. She has not got to cestral theories compete with nineteenthhunt for them, and to doubt whether she century tendencies; there, the modern sees the truth; it glares at her in the woman and her modern child are fashioned hundred little acts and words of her ex- as the modern man requires, but always, pansive girl. The French child wears no though in varying degrees, with emotional mask. hearts and unchecked community of sym

And the direct action of the mother be-pathies. comes all the stronger from the almost The general result is, that wherever we universal custom of keeping her children look throughout France, in chateaux and with her day and night. Many a girl in in cottages, in the "hotels" of Paris, and France has never slept outside her mother's in workmen's lodgings, we see the girl chamber until she leaves it to be married, children echoing their mothers, sometimes and, at the worst, she is no farther off with absolute exactness, sometimes with than the next room, with an open door be- merely approximate resemblance, but altween. Such unceasing neighbourhood ways with a sort of outbursting natural brings about an action which may be not truth which is singularly winning, and only intellectual and moral, but possibly which inspires very thorough confidence physical and magnetic too. The mother in the honesty of their hearts. Such a passes into the daughter, the daughter beginning indicates pretty clearly that the absorbs the mother, their essences get girls will grow into women capable of mixed; and hence it is that Frenchwomen feeling in most of its best shapes; and exercise such singular power over their though the tone of the society into which girls, and that the girls so generally be- they may be thrown may deviate them come an exact reproduction of the mother from their first track, and may make them under whose constant eye they have grown worthless instead of worthy, they will none to womanhood. Between the transparent the less retain their early readiness of frankness of the child's nature and the sensation and their faculty of expressing indefatigable proximity of the parent, we it. If we look out of Paris, if we take the get the explanation of the regular trans- mass of the country population, we recogmission of those types of character which nize that a very small minority of the girls seem to remain unvaried in so many grow up to abandon their first teaching; French families, and which may almost be we see how difficult it is to eradicate the said to belong to them as their names do. stamp which the mother puts upon her The same qualities and the same defects child; and we own that these Frenchare reproduced from generation to genera- women, according to their lights, know tion amongst people of analogous position how to do their duty to their young.

Between these two exceptions-between the pert, pretentious, half-vicious little damsel that Paris often shows us, and the cheerless, over-prayer-booked, laughter-dreading victims at the other end of the scale-lie the real girls of France. Naturally we find in them all the shades of character which lie between the limits of utter worldliness and total piety; and we shall recognize that, however true it be that the parent's influence is extraordinarily powerful in France, it in no way suf fices even to unify the natures of children of the same mother, still less to reduce to any general type the fifteen millions of temperaments before us. The persistence of individuality in the child is especially remarkable, when we take into account the fact that most French children live entirely with their families; that they not only, as has been already said, sleep in their mother's room, but that they pass

Europe perhaps does not believe one word ples of saddened children who are taken of this; Europe measures France by what to church four times each day, and who it sees of it, by a few hundred Parisiennes are forbidden to play because play diswho stand forward in flagrant radiance, tracts from prayer. This sort of teaching and who damage their country in the defeats its own end; reaction comes with eyes of the entire world for the satisfaction liberty; and in cases of this class it is not of their own vanity. Those women are unfrequent to see the whole impress of the not France; those women's children are mother's efforts fade, instead of assuming not French children. The poor little a durable and lasting form, as is the rule creatures who are sent dressed up to the in France. Tuileries Gardens to play in public their mothers' parts are what travellers see, and what they, not unnaturally, imagine to be the normal type; but the error is as great as to take coarse novels as the expression of national literature. Furthermore, it should be remembered that, for the last thirty years, Paris has become the home of a large number of foreigners with money, and that a good many of the girls who make a moralist mourn when he looks at them in the Champs Elysées do not belong to France at all. The nation has faults enough, in all conscience; but it is not fair either to attribute to it what it does not deserve, or to ascribe to the entire people the sins of a special few. If there be one undoubted, indisputable merit of a Frenchwoman, it is her devotion to her girls, and her resolute effort to keep them pure. The remarkable young person of ten that an Englishman contemplates with stupefaction under the chest- the day with her, take all their meals with nut-trees round the obelisk, and in whom he observes a variety of precocious defects, is no more a sample of real French children than a peacock is an ordinary specimen of birds, or the "Vie Parisienne an example of everyday newspapers. She is a product of the period, an accident of the epoch; she is not the representative of her country. She may or may not be as impudent as Gavroche, as dictatorial as Napoleon, and as bumptious as Louis XIV.; that depends on her temperament and her mamma; but, whatever be the degree of her premature fastness, she is but a mem-ited to society of her own age. Yet she ber of a little tainted flock - she is not remains herself: her personality is not efFrance. We find real France elsewhere. faced by what she sees and hears. This The other extreme exists, as it does all maintenance of self makes French chilthe world over. It includes the offspring dren very attractive to study; one is sure of the terrifically strict people, of the in- to find peculiarities in each of them, and tensely rigid mothers who tie up their those peculiarities come out and show girls in a preserve of ruthless piety, out of themselves without reserve or hindrance, which the poor little things would fly away pushed forward as they are by impulsiveif they could. If there be any position in ness. If, however, they involved radical which a French child hides her real differences, it would be impossible to atthoughts, it is in a few of those appalling tempt any classification of character: they houses where devotion attains the height do not go so far as that; they only indiof cruelty. Happily there are not many cate subtle shades and delicate tints, and of them; but there are enough, particu- in no way imply fundamental distinctions. larly in country towns, to show us exam- We may therefore, without stopping at

her, are not sent into a nursery (there are no nurseries in France), are not left to the care of servants, and that they participate almost completely in the life of the grownup people round them. The consequence is that the French girl leads pretty much the same existence as her mother: she does not pay formal visits with her, or go to balls or theatres, but as, indoors, she scarcely leaves her mother's side, she thinks and feels with her, she chatters with her visitors, she is in permanent contact with men and women, and is not lim

those girls will breathe when they become women. At the worst, we may be sure that she will recruit no new followers now, and that the evil she has already done will extend no further.

After all, it is but natural that the mass

a

the sub-varieties, roughly divide the girls | her action on her girls may perhaps be of France pretty much as girls are divided counteracted by the new atmosphere which all the world over: there are the religious and the irreligious, the intelligent and the stupid, the affected and the natural, the self-sacrificing and the selfish. In indicating these main categories, it must at once be added that the majority of the children like the majority of the women, of European women should be good. belong to the four good classes. There Their tendency, without distinction of naare more religious, intelligent, natural, tionality, is towards duty, faith, and genunselfish children than the contrary. Pre- tleness. The French are only like the judice is no guide to truth; and though others, excepting that the manifestation there are a good many foreign lookers-on of their feelings, good or bad, assumes a who are quite convinced that most French more demonstrative form. Their girls folwomen are selfish coquettes, living mainly low the same rule; and, notwithstanding to amuse themselves and to satisfy their the infinite variety of their individual pevanity, that impression is radically false. culiarities, they present as a whole, the There are such women in what seems to same natural dispositions towards virtue be abundance, particularly in Paris; but and simplicity. But where French home in reality they constitute a feeble minor-life puts on a character of its own, which ity, and they only appear to be numerous distinguishes it from that of most other because the very nature of their defects countries, and especially from England, is leads them to publicly expose those de- in the astonishing power which certain fects. They need excitement and admira- children exercise over their parents tion, and they ask for both. The few for- power almost as great as that which the eigners who really go into French society parents themselves ought to possess over see specimens of such women at dinners their children. In certain exaggerated and at balls, hear the noise they make, cases, which, indeed, are by no means rare, scarcely notice their quieter companions, the child is her mother's mistress; she beand carry away the notion that everybody comes a tyrant, and enforces her will with is alike. This is an enormous error. For a pitiless vigour before which the mother one woman who goes to balls, there are, quails. The reason is, that the art of in all France, fifty who stop at home, out spoiling reaches a development in France of sight and out of reach. Those are the which is unknown elsewhere, and that mawomen who constitute the nation those ternal affection not unfrequently descends are the women who rear French girls: it to folly and imbecility. When this occurs, is upon them that opinion should be based, there is an end of all control and guidand not upon the exceptional Parisienne, ance on the mother's side, and of all obewho is so generally accepted as the type of dience in the child. If good qualities perFrance. It is, nevertheless, incontestable sist in a young heart under such conthat this latter model has become some-ditions, they must indeed be firmly rooted. what multiplied during the last twenty In what other country than France would years, and that recent habits of extrava- a mother permit her child to get upon the gance and luxury have sorely damaged table, in the presence of two strangers, the part of the rising generation which has been exposed to them; but here, again, the truth is that the number of rowdy women who grew into existence under the Empire was, relatively, very limited, and that their influence has been far less extensive than is supposed outside France. An infinitely large proportion of the educated population shrank from the contact of that new product the fast woman the evil consequences of her apparition will therefore be limited to her own offspring, and will not be transmitted to the children of others. Furthermore, a reaction against her seems to have seriously set in since the war, and she herself is probably condemned to disappear; if so,

and to blow the lamp and candles out in the middle of dinner? And where else would such a history as the following be possible? At a dinner-party of twenty people, two guests, man and wife, did not appear at the appointed hour; after wondering and waiting, the mistress of the house commenced her banquet. At ten o'clock in walked the absentees, looking somewhat foolish, but candidly confessing the motive of their absence as if it were quite natural. Their child, a girl of three, had been put to bed just as they were starting for the dinner; but when they went to fondly wish it good-night, the child said, "Mamma, I won't let you go out." The mother argued, but in vain. The