358 ONCE A WEEK. [October 29, 1869.
A book which was published last winter in
Paris, and which created a sensation wherever the
French tongue was spoken, — a book purporting to
treat of marriage, and of the care and attention
a husband ought to show to his wife, was a very
curious proof in point of what is the present
degenerate condition of the French female in all
ranks. In
his chapter on the “Health of Young
Women” you find rules laid down by M. Michelet which, to our English ideas, would almost alone suffice to reduce any woman to the lowest state of physical weakness. She is to be kept as quiet as possible, to eat little meat, and drink no wine; to take hardly any exercise; very moderately to improve her mind by reading, or any other rational employment; never to hear of cold bathing; and if ever she should guess at such follies as fine racing gallops over breezy downs on the back of a generous horse, to rank them among the mad and improper freaks which only those eccentric creatures les Anglaises ever indulge in! M. Michelet's “Model Wife” is simply infirm in body and soul. Yet, let it be remarked, she is the beau ideal of the contemporary Frenchwoman; and, whatever else may have been said of M. Michelet's book in the way of blame, no critic in all France ever suggested that his female type was not “adorable,” or that his manner of bringing her up or caring for her was not one worthy of universal imitation.
Let the English reader ask himself what the sons of such a mother as M. Michelet's “Model Wife” would be likely to be.
We disclaim all desire to “preach,” or unneces- sarily to run down our neighbours, and all wish to “prove ” any pet theory. We have merely thought a few moments might not be wasted in obtaining a nearer insight into certain details of social life in France. No one can say we shall never be brought into collision with the French nation, or that it can never be of any importance to us to know what is the relative worth of the two races, and in what particular points we should be likely in a serious struggle to show ourselves superior to them. Besides, whatever is really true is really instructive. It may, therefore, not be uninteresting to compare our country men and women with the people of France, and the French men and women of this day with those of a hundred and fifty years since. A very few facts will suffice to demonstrate that the British race has gone on modifying and improving itself, whilst still remaining at bottom what it was under glorious Queen Bess; and, on the other hand, it is as easy to show that the French race is not the same as it was under Henri TV. or under the Fronde. It is not “modified:” it is radically changed. Is it “improved?” This is a question we will not take upon ourselves to answer, but leave to individual appreciation, only begging our readers to meditate upon the following few words:
England has slowly adapted all her old insti- tutions to the exigences of modern times, and has overthrown scarcely one; France has overthrown every institution she possessed. How have the two systems acted upon the two races? Which is the freer? which the more powerful? which the happier of the two? AD.
PRAWN CURRY.
I have a weakness for prawns. For seven years I lived in a barbarous colony where they had no prawns. I shall not name that colony, because I have no desire to deter people of taste from going there; but for seven years I saw nothing like a prawn except some wretched potted shrimps embalmed in grease and red pepper. Homeward bound some months ago in a mail steamer, we ran into Galle harbour for coals. Now Galle is famed throughout the East for the most rapturous pre- paration of prawns, the most ecstatic aliment conceivable. To taste prawn curry at Ceylon makes one additionally grateful to Vasco do Gama for having found his way round the Cape. I had heard much on the voyage about these curried prawns and about the green cocoa-nut and artful concomitants used in preparing them, and the various accounts worked upon my fevered imagi- nation till my brain was filled with prawns caper- ing about like the lively monsters in a magnified drop of stagnant water.
“Any coals?” said the captain; “any news? ” asked the passengers; “any prawns?” whispered I, in a voice husky with emotion, for I trembled for the answer.
“Plenty prawns,” was the reply, and down the ship’s side I went into a sort of long washing-tub, kept from capsizing by a floating counterpoise about three yards off. My conductor was a Cin- galese commission riai re of pale gingerbread com- plexion, who was attired in a very small quantity of white calico and a tortoiseshell comb. We fought our way through mendicants, jewel -pedlers with their Birmingham rubbish tenderly bedded in white wool, and a bristling array of paper umbrellas thrust forward for purchase at six- pence each. Through this ordeal I passed scathe- less, all but a few shillings, for which I obtained an umbrella, two or three fans, a gold ring with rubies like red currants, an ebony walking-stick, and half a dozen pine-apples. We found an hotel, a stately Portuguese mansion of the olden time, through the door of which you might have driven a waggon of hay. The proprietor was smoking in a Manilla cane chair, with a boy and a feather brush behind to intimidate the flies; and when he understood that I had come several thousand miles to taste prawn curry, there was a glow of interest in his yellow coun- tenance that was quite gratifying. Arrangements were soon made. In four hours all that gastro- nomic science could accomplish would await my approval. A cheerful drive about the neighbour- hood was suggested as a suitable preliminary. The regular handbook sort of thing to do at Galle is a drive to the cinnamon-gardens, where you cut odori- ferous walking-sticks, fill your pockets with the fragrant bark, and come out quite spicy. There was also a very ancient Buddhist temple, with a huge strongly-gilt heathen deity sitting cross- legged on the altar, like a canonized tailor; and a Buddhist clergyman who chewed betel-nut and kept up a smothering supply of incense, and was very grateful for a two-anna piece and half a cigar. That golden tailor was at least ten
feet high as he sat, and he had eyes dispropor-