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MADAME IJJCE, OE ALGIERS. 159
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
A Short Account Of The Life And Labors O...
tently aiined at and attained an increase of political centralization . The country is ruled through , its remotest fibres by officials sent
from Paris , and the conqueror of the Capital is lord of the Kingdom . But in deeper social senses , Paris is still very far from being
France . There is a solid and a vigorous life in those old provinces , whose boundaries , destroyed in law , are still fresh in the hearts and
on the lips of the people , which even yet testifies to local individualityand which was much more impressive fifty years ago . Berry
and , Touraine have been fondly described again and again by the two greatest novelists of modern France . Georges Sand is a native
of Berry , and has resided much on an estate which she possesses thereBalsac "was from Touraineand writes of it with passionate
enthusiasm ; . If the "works of these , authors were not disfigured by moral blemishes which render most of their . books rightly
unacceptable to the English public , they would long ago have convinced our cultivated readers of . the miserable fallacy involved in the
notion that " Paris is France . " Brittany , again , affords the most marked example that can well
be imagined of persistent adherence to old customs and loyalty to old beliefs . "La vieille Bretagne , " as it is commonly called , is
cousingerman to our own Wales . Such names as Pen-hoel and du Guenic might be found in the valleys of Cader Idris , yet laid they in are adopted
hy Balsac in a novel whose opening scenes are Brittany . It was Brittany , once intimately connected with the fortunes of King Arthur ( and where Merlin got into that terrible scrape , and
allowed his lad , y-love to enchant and imprison him by one of his own spells , ) which longest remained faithful to the Bourbon cause .
Many of the actors in the last war of la Vendee are yet alive , even the heroic Madame in whose cause Felicie de Fauveau compromised
herself , the Duchesse de Berry herself , is not yet dead . In Burgundagainand in its capital town of Dijonnow one * of the
chief y , stations , on the liiie between Paris and Marseilles , , strong traces yet remain of local provincial life . In Dijon are to be seen
the town _blouses of the old noblesse _, dating from the days when such of them as were not immediately connected with the court spent
part of the year ( as they did in England ) in the county town . And it was far from being a mere individuality of residence or of
local duties . If the noblesse were provincial , so were the gentry , ¦ while the horizon of the farmers and the peasants was wholly
bounded the French by woman the nei of ghboring the provinces hills and from rivers her . Parisian Very different sisters was
dif-, ferent in dress , in manners , in ambitions . In some ways more stiff and conventional , more enslaved to the gossip of small circles
and the approbation of a petty sphere ; yet brought nearer to the > realities of _lifeenjojdng" more freedom of actionmixing among the
in poorer their nei experience ghbors , , . cognizant The French of their woman family of histories the , provinces , and , involved whether
noble lady in . the chateau , or daughter to the squire or the farmer ,
Madame Ijjce, Oe Algiers. 159
MADAME IJJCE , OE ALGIERS . 159
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1861, page 159, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051861/page/15/
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