Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and BusinessBartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
The outward condition of the streets of Paris often deceives the
stranger as to the morality of the city. Said one gentleman to me, who
had spent several weeks at a fashionable Paris hotel, "Paris is one of
the quietest, pleasantest towns in the world, and as for its morals, I
can see nothing which justifies its bad reputation abroad." After a
week's stay in it, such was my own opinion. Things which are tolerated
in London and New York streets, are not permitted in the streets of
Paris. A street-walker ventured to accost an Englishman in Paris at
night, and was taken in charge by the police. But this outward fairness
only indicates that in Paris, even the vices are regulated by the state.
Bad women cannot make a display and accost men in the street, but they
abound, and what is far worse, in all the circles and gradations of
society. It is society which is corrupt there. One need but to look at
the morals of its great men, to see this at once. What is the moral
character of the first men in the empire? Bad, as no Frenchman will
deny. Some of the very men who have won in America golden opinions for
their noble and eloquent advocacy of liberty, have been in their private
lives devoid of all virtue. It only shows the social condition of the
country. Some writers deny these allegations against Paris, but no man
will who has lived in it, and is honest and candid. Paris abounds with
illegitimate children. The statistics tell the story. Ten thousand
illegitimate children are born every year in that city! What can be the
morality of any town, while such facts exist in reference to its
condition?
I hate all cant, but am satisfied that the chief reason why France does
not succeed better in her revolutions is, because she lacks the
steadiness which a sincere devotion to religion gives to a nation. The
country needs less man-worship and more God-worship. It needs less
adulation of beautiful women, and more real appreciation of true
womanhood.
There is a great deal of art-worship in Paris, but it does not seem to
really elevate the condition of the people. The pictures and the statues
are generally of the most sensuous kind. Do these things improve the
morals of a city or nation? If so, why is it that wherever naked
pictures and sensual statuary abound, the people are licentious and
depraved? In America such things are not tolerated by the mass of the
people, and there prevails a higher style of virtue than in any other
land. But in France and in Italy, the beauty of the human form upon
canvas or in marble, in however offensive a manner, is adored--and in
those countries the people have little morality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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