more vulgar origin, the word blague became synonymous with humbug and imposture.

"Without blague," says M. de Maussion, "one is nobody. One may rigorously be a respectable man and a blagueur, but, as a general rule, be a blagueur at all events. The word, limited in its acceptation and application in former times, has, we are informed, in our own days been taken in its most comprehensive moral expression, and placed on the right hand of French civilisation.

"Le Français n'est pas précisément menteur," says M. Auguste Luchet, "mais il est essentiellement blagueur,-le Parisien surtout." The difference is this: one may be obliged to maintain a falsehood from feelings of pride or self-respect, but a blague can be given up without a scruple." My dear father-in-law, you are only an old blagueur," said Robert Macaire to the Baron of Wormspire, and they embraced one another: M. Proudhon says the same thing to those who controvert him, and all parties laugh. La blague is more especially glorified in France because it is a pet child of revolutions, and of the égalité which is supposed to spring from them. "Sans égalité point de blague," says M. de Maussion. We do not blaguer to those whom we respect, but in times of a general and fraternal equality no one is respected; therefore is the blague a pet offspring of égalité. It is essentially a socialist and democratic word. Nobody now-a-days tells a falsehood-it is only a blague! A falsehood is a thing condemned and despised by all-it is a vice; la blague is not a vice-it is an intellectual exercise, an agreeable pastime between the ingenious who lead, and the ingenuous who are led. A blagueur is a jovial impostor, a liar is a melancholy one.

Some people are blagueurs by profession; notoriously, commercial travellers, dentists, horse-dealers, managers of theatres, upholsterers, and others. Some are ambulating blagueurs: they call themselves collaborateurs of Alexandre Dumas or Scribe, nephews of Victor Hugo, or sons of George Sand: they invent ancestors and inheritances with the same indifference that they give an age to their wine and a special fabrication to their cloth.

Of all blagueurs those to whom precedence is undoubtedly due are the political. What magnificent displays of virtue, what torrents of devotion, what promises of a wondrous future, were not poured forth at each successive revolution! What embracings, what cheers, what gigantic engagements for the future! There was the suppression of the army, the extinction of offices and privileges, the lowering of interest, the simplification of law, abolition of imprisonment for debt, gratuitous loans, abjuration of the treaties of 1815, reprisals on foreigners, the extermination of the maritime commerce of Great Britain by a company of national pirates at Havre, the repayment of a milliard to emigrants, obligatory instruction, right to labour, fraternity of the poor with the rich, friendship of masters and valets, phalansterianism, Icarianism, Proudhomanism-all political blagues!

Science has its blagueurs as well as politics, oratory, and poetry. Such was the seal that said " Papa," the toad that had lived two hundred years in a stone, the beast seen in the moon by a telescope which had never existed, the inhabitants of the sun, so ably depicted by a recent visitor-a great literary blagueur. Still more is this the case in medi

cine. "I went the other day to see a friend," M. Auguste Luchet relates, "a man of honour and a loyal tradesman, who manufactures chemical products and furnishes pharmaceutical preparations to the homeopathists of all countries. He was gravely seated down before a number of pretty mahogany boxes, and a still greater number of phials, diversely and microscopically ticketed, one arnica, the other belladona, the other aconite; and I saw that he was pouring into each, from out of a large paper horn, a certain quantity of those globules of sweetstuff, called by confectioners nompareille blanche. Why, friend,' I said, struck with admiration, 'you put the same thing into all the different bottles ?' 'I know it,' he answered; 'the doctors know it also. We never do otherwise. The sick swallow them-faith does the rest.'" The honest and loyal tradesman no doubt treated M. Luchet to a blague-at least it is safest to suppose so-one more or less is nothing.

Then there are fashionable blagues, among which mesmerism takes a first rank. Imagine a person totally ignorant of pathology or therapeutics suddenly gifted with all the resources of the art of medicine merely from being mesmerised by a doctor, signalising disorders undetected by experience, and dictating modes of cure which extend the domains of science !

Granted that a table may be forced to move, or may be carried away by the magnetic current generated by a human chain-a very dubious thing-can anything be more absurd than to question that table, and to expect prophetic or inspired answers? Suppose if you will-and you must have the digestive powers of an ostrich to believe it-that you have the power to communicate to a table the fluid which belongs to you, and to make of it a new instrument, which shall manifest your thoughts. Well, agreed! What can that table tell you that you did not know before? What other tastes, what fears, what hopes can it entertain but those passed from yourself by your own fluid? It is not it that speaks or writes, it is you! If it acted differently it would be like the Irish echo.

In 1846, a year of renown for good claret, a captain of cavalry was in garrison on the Gironde. He was an amiable, educated man, of good family, refined manners, and remarkably handsome. Among other houses which he frequented was that of a wealthy vine-grower, who had an only daughter, a very pretty and a very spoilt child, of about ten years of age, but who took wonderfully to the gallant captain, and was playfully called his little wife.

Suddenly an order came for the regiment to embark for Africa; the captain had to bid his little friend farewell. It is needless to say that he covered himself with glory; he returned to France a major, decorated with the legion of honour, but with an arm, which, broken by a ball, had been badly set, and had remained ever since perfectly immovable. The officer had in the interval of six or seven years' absence kept up a regular correspondence with his friends on the Gironde; the memory of the pretty child, who promised to be so fine a woman, had lost none of its charms by absence. On his return he hastened to see her; she had grown up more beautiful than he anticipated. He was dazzled! He proposed to reward his long-tried constancy by marriage, and the parents did not object. But it was otherwise with the young lady. At first she May-VOL. CIV. NO. CCCCXIII.

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laughed at the captain's dead arm-a lame man is always so awkwardthen she cried a little; and at last she took it in horror and aversion. Asleep or awake she saw nothing but that terrible, anchylosed, motionless arm; it terrified her, and nothing could induce her to marry a man so afflicted. The captain, in despair, went to Paris to consult the professors of the art. They recommended him to have his useless limb cut off, and replaced by another of flesh-coloured, vulcanised caoutchouc, with motherof-pearl nails, of ravishing resemblance to reality, and which, fixed to the elbow joint, had established in it by the constant electricity emanating from the stump, a magazine of motive power, which the caoutchouc entertained and renewed at certain times, thus ensuring a constant and lively movement to the factitious member. The young lady had no longer any objections to make, and the gallant soldier won his little wife. Needless to say, a mesmeric blague.

The Exhibition at Paris is about to open; let us warn our readers against what are pompously designated as brevets d'invention. The generality of manufactures so announced are the veriest blagues in existence. This is so well known and understood, that government, whilst it accepts the payment of a tax for the registration of a pretended discovery, and gives a privilege to the assumed discoverer, carefully repudiates all responsibility, and inscribes upon every so-called brevet d'invention, sans garantie du gouvernement, or sometimes simply, S. G. D. G.

A Parisian manufacturer or tradesman-bourgeois and national guard -if he has what his fellow-citizens designate in their high-flown language, des conceptions hautes et le génie de son état, never stops at anything. If he has a brevet d'invention, and it does not sell, he uses it for something else; so also with a medal or a décoration. Not a bottle, nor a box, nor a ticket, is used now-a-days in business but is embellished with a portrait, a name, and a brevet. Sometimes a foreign medal is superadded. "Here is something," says the customer, "which is better than a brevet S. G. D. G. These lozenges have won a medal at the Universal Exhibition of London." "The man I deal with," says another, "has had a prize for his matches." Confiding customer! The gentleman who deals now in chocolat armorié formerly manufactured lamps and closets, which had no sale because they were essentially bad; and the medals which were awarded to him in that time by the Academy of Industry, the Athenæum, the Society of Encouragement, and other blind and stupid juries, is now used by him to adorn his chocolat with all kinds of armorial devices. The use of a medal, even of the croix d'honneur, may be borrowed for the benefit of a speculative business in ink, blacking, or any other commodity. It suffices that a member of the firm is an old soldier, and is entitled to wear such a medal, or that the manufacturer can refer to a cousin, an uncle, or a father-in-law, who is décoré, that he should also decorate his advertisements with the insignia of honour.

A trick well know in the United States is sometimes had recourse to in Paris. A man takes out a patent for some marvellous discovery which no one appreciates. He gets a friend to imitate it. To do this he even provides him with tools, models, and means. The counterfeiter then goes about from shop to shop praising his invention, and abusing the original. The patented individual is exasperated, and has the impostor

brought before the courts of law. There is a mock trial, newspaper reports, discussions as to the merits of the invention: it becomes known all over Paris, and the purpose is answered by the time that the discoverer has to pay the fine which his accomplice is mulcted in.

In Paris, it should be understood that every tradesman (marchand) is now a fabricant, and every shop (boutique) is a magasin: and as every individual represents his trade by himself, so his magazine signalises his business. A Parisian keeps a boulangerie, but he is not a boulanger, or a boucherie, without being a boucher; a botterie civile et militaire, without being a bottier. These refined abstractions must be understood to get on courteously in Paris. The individual is a bourgeois, a national guard, or tout bonnement, monsieur-best known at the nearest estaminet; madame does the business, and hence probably the reason why there are no longer any bakers, butchers, or shoemakers in Paris.

The blague of a name is well known. How many Jean Maria Farinas in Cologne! The only Anisette de Bordeaux that was permitted at table was that of Marie Brizard and Roger; there is no Mary Brizard nor Roger now alive, but the anisette still exists. "Tremper en hiver les bouteilles un instant dans l'eau tiède, pour rendre à cette liqueur sensible sa cristalline limpidité," is inscribed on the bottles. "Bonheur Français des beaux noms!" exclaims M. Auguste Luchet. Chronometers and mathematical instruments manufactured in Paris are inscribed with English names, and figure as the work of Johnson or Simpson, instead of Chevallier or Porc Epic. "French manufacturers," M. Luchet says, "send over good and inferior articles to this country. The Englishman divides them into two lots, engraves London on the good, Paris on the bad!" That is certainly not fair. We see that a mad project is under discussion, to separate at the forthcoming Exposition the good from the bad. Who will visit the latter department? If such a division were possible, it would be as well to do away with the bad altogether.

A blague in high life has revealed itself in modern times to Paris stupified! A gentleman arrives at the capital of the civilised world. (The idea entertained by every badaud, that Paris is the centre of the world, the point to which all roads are directed, the centre of all railway communications, a port de mer, the rendezvous of all that are wealthy, and the place from which no person absents himself in favour of Florence, Naples, Rome, Vienna, Constantinople, London, or any other city, if he can help it, peculiarly predisposes them to be taken in.) He comes from Africa or America, from St. Petersburg, or from Brives la Gaillarde, with an idea of his own. Naturally he wishes to make his fortune; that is the least he can do. The gentleman in question is an artist, great author of symphonies or harmonies, great player on the violin, or great poet; he has brought snuff-boxes from Russia, or violets from Toulouse, to attest to his wonderful ability. He asks in return praises from the Parisian press and a flattering reception from the fashionable world. Or it is some young gentleman that arrives, handsome, but without property; or some foreign general, with an old name of renown, which he is willing to give to a lady for a pecuniary equivalent. Speculator, artist, handsome young pretender, or ancient general, he must give an entertainment; without that there is no merit, no talent, no recommendations, no admissions. One fine morning he summons the élite of the capital, chief

editors and assistant editors, critics, professors, men of science, and literary men-men who patronise, who weigh a man's brains, and measure his intellect. Well, they all go. There is a grand ball and a tall Suisse. There are spacious rooms, handsome furniture, rich drapery, capital carpets, pictures, bronzes, great dog, piano, books, and pipes. Dinner is sumptuously served up, linen with crest, plate with crest, knives with crest, and liveried attendants. The dinner is recherché, the wines are good, the host agreeable and hospitable. It is quite clear all is right. There is nothing of the hotel or the restaurant there. The host is a charming man; he must be taken up. It is all blague. Everything can be hired in Paris. Your plate, napkins, and knives can be marked just as readily as your servant and your carriage. You can hire, if you want them, titles, state service, a genealogy, a known friend et une maîtresse classée, lion ou lionne.

Another still more common imposture is that of medical specialities. You are unwell; there is in Paris a special doctor for every class of diseases. They owe their success to the common belief that one man can only do one thing well. There is always a new and important discovery in vogue for the treatment of special disorders. You hasten to the point indicated by renown. There is a grand house with a great door, a row of carriages, the coachmen asleep on the boxes. You walk in and give your card. The ante-chamber is full of patients; you bow and take your place, laying in at the same time an unusual stock of patience. After the lapse of a short time, a servant, who appears to take a friendly interest in you, comes up and says he sees you are suffering; he will get you in before the others. A bell rings without it is a patient dismissed; the sympathising domestic whispers," Follow!" And you are introduced into the presence of the great specialist.

The doctor is busy writing: he asks pardon, will give you his attention in a moment. This allows you time to see piles of silver on the mantelpiece, not one of which contains less than four five-franc pieces. You see at once what is expected from you. Well, the whole affair is a blague. The carriages at the door, the crowd in the ante-chamber, the money upon the mantelpiece! The coachmen are hired, the patients are hired, the piles of silver are borrowed!

Some persons of a serious turn of mind would call all this imposture, falsehood, fraud. It is only substituting other words for blague-mere play upon synonymes. "Is it not," asks our author, "disgraceful to both parties, that before one man enters upon a conversation of serious import with another, he should be obliged to say to him: Ah! ça, pas de blagues,' when perhaps fortune, honour, or life are concerned? Is it not an outrage, the acme of reciprocal humiliation? Is it not a whole epoch, a whole generation, a whole people disgraced by a word?"

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