Note 6 — THE GATHERER

Footnote 6

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We are not permitted to allude to the fête of St. Cloud as a scene of pastoral amusement, or of the primitive simplicity which is associated with that epithet. The French are not a pastoral people, although they are not less so than the English; neither are the suburbs of a metropolis rural life. They are too near the pride of human art for pastoral pleasures, and no aristocracy is more infested with little tyrants than the neighbourhood of great cities, the oppressors being too timid to trust themselves far out of the verge of public haunts, in the midst of which they would be equally suspicious.

Amusements are at all times among the best indications of national character; a truth which the ancients seem to have exaggerated into their maxim in vino veritas. Here the national comparison is not "odious." Three Sunday fairs are held within six miles of Paris, in a park, as was once the custom at Greenwich: the latter, though a royal park, does not boast of the residence of royalty, as does St Cloud. The objection to the day of the French fêtes is cleared by another argument. But what would be the character of a week-day fair, or fête, in Kensington Gardens? The intuitive answer will make the moral observer regret that man should so often place the interdict on his own happiness, and then peevishly repine at his uncheery lot.